Theology and Practice in Early Christianity: Essays New and Old With Updated Reception Histories (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament) 9783161548116, 9783161594885, 3161548116

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Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Herausgeber / Editor

Jörg Frey (Zürich) Mitherausgeber / Associate Editors Markus Bockmuehl (Oxford) · James A. Kelhoffer (Uppsala) Tobias Nicklas (Regensburg) · Janet Spittler (Charlottesville, VA) J. Ross Wagner (Durham, NC)

442

Troy W. Martin

Theology and Practice in Early Christianity Essays New and Old with Updated Reception Histories

Mohr Siebeck

Troy W. Martin, born 1953; 1990 PhD, University of Chicago; 1997-1998 sabbatical EberhardKarls Universität, Tübingen; 2005 sabbatical Ruprecht-Karls Universität, Heidelberg; 2018 Visiting Fellow Macquarie University; 2020 recipient of Festschrift With Gentleness and Respect: Pauline and Petrine Studies in Honor of Troy W. Martin; currently Professor of Biblical Studies at Saint Xavier University. orcid.org/0000-0002-5257-671X

ISBN 978-3-16-154811-6 / eISBN 978-3-16-159488-5 DOI 10.1628/ 978-3-16-159488-5 ISSN 0512-1604 / eISSN 2568-7476 (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen ­Testament) Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2020  by Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, Germany. www.mohrsiebeck.com This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was typeset by Martin Fischer in Tübingen, printed by Gulde Druck in Tübingen on non-aging paper and bound by Buchbinderei Spinner in Ottersweier. Printed in Germany.

For my parents

Troy Sibbley Martin and

LaValta Ruth Martin with my deepest gratitude and highest respect

Table of Contents Preface to the Collection: On the Study of Early Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . . IX

A. Early Christian Salvation I. Christians as Babies: Metaphorical Reality in First Peter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 II. Christ’s Healing Sore: A Medical Reading of First Peter 2:24 . . . . . . . . . . 23 III. Paul and Circumcision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 IV. Apostasy to Paganism: The Rhetorical Stasis of the Galatian Controversy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 V. The Scythian Perspective in Colossians 3:11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 VI. Scythian Perspective or Elusive Chiasm: A Reply to Douglas A. Campbell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

B. Early Christian Virtues VII. Faith: Its Qualities, Attributes, and Legitimization in First Peter . . . . . . 145 VIII. The Septuagint and Early Christian Hope Piety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 IX. ’Αγαπητοὶ Ἀδελφοί (“Beloved Siblings”): Terms of Endearment in Early Christian Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

C. Early Christian Sacraments X. The Covenant of Circumcision (Genesis 17:9–14) and the Situational Antitheses in Galatians 3:28 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 XI. But Let Everyone Discern the Body of Christ (Colossians 2:17) . . . . . . . 217 XII. Tasting the Eucharistic Lord as Usable (1 Peter 2:3) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

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D. Early Christian Pneumatology XIII. Ancient Medical Texts, Newly Re-discovered: The Medical Background of Biblical Breathing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 XIV. Paul’s Pneumatological Statements and Ancient Medical Texts . . . . . . 297

E. Early Christian Life and Practice XV. Paul’s Argument from Nature for the Veil in 1 Corinthians 11:13–15: A Testicle instead of a Head-Covering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 XVI. Περιβόλαιον as “Testicle” in 1 Corinthians 11:15: A Response to Mark Goodacre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343 XVII. Pagan and Judeo-Christian Time-Keeping Schemes in Galatians 4:10 and Colossians 2:16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 XVIII. Performing the Head Role: Man is the Head of Woman (1 Corinthians 11:3 and Ephesians 5:23) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 XIX. When Living, Be Unnoticed: An Epicurean Maxim and the Social Dimension of Colossians 3:3–4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395

F. Early Christian Eschatology XX. Watch During the Watches (Mark 13:35) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417 XXI. The Present Indicative in the Eschatological Statements of 1 Peter 1:6–8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435 XXII. Emotional Physiology and Consolatory EtiquetteReading the Present Indicative with Future Reference in the Eschatological Statement in 1 Peter 1:6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445

Original Publications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461 Index of References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 499 Index of Modern Authors and Persons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525 Index of Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535

Preface to the Collection: On the Study of Early Christianity 1. Introduction I have grown up and grown old with the Bible and in Christian communities. Some of my earliest memories are of my mother’s reading Bible stories to me and of both my mother and my father’s modeling biblical principles in their lives and practices. Hence, this volume of essays is appropriately dedicated to them. My early education in Bible continued with Essie Gary, who took a group of unruly children on Sunday evenings and told them Bible stories with the aid of a flannelgraph board. She had the extraordinary gift of making those still and motionless figures on that board come alive as she explained and described the real-life situations of those biblical characters. I still remember her vivid descriptions of the intrigues of Joseph’s brothers and of the seaweed wrapping around Jonah’s head in the belly of the big fish. In my faith community, she was not alone in her great love of the Bible, and many other women made great sacrifices to hold an annual Bible School and to teach Sunday school every week. In my teenage years, my Aunt Sue Currie and Lavern Connelly continued to fuel my curiosity about the Bible and its importance for Christian life and practice. Considering my up-bringing, I had, not surprisingly, read the Bible through cover-to-cover almost three times before I left my home and earliest Christian community to attend college. Naturally, I found my Bible classes at college the most interesting and stimulating. Studying the Bible in its original languages and cultures raised my curiosity to new heights, and I proceeded from college to seminary and then to The University of Chicago. In each stage of my education, I found some answers to my questions but ended each stage with far more questions than I had at the beginning. I was privileged to study with many excellent teachers and especially with Rabbi Charles D. Isbell, who first introduced me to the rhetorical dimension of scripture. At The University of Chicago, I was also extremely privileged to study with outstanding scholars including Dr. David Wilmot (Classical and Koine Greek), Prof. John D. Levenson (Hebrew Bible), and Prof. Hans Dieter Betz (New Testament and Early Christian Origins). My time in Chicago especially set the direction for my continued study of the Bible once my formal education came to an end, and I have spent the past thirty years following my curiosity and

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publishing on many different aspects of the Bible and its representation of early Christian theology and practice. The Bible and my study of it and my interest in Christian communities have indeed been the focus of my entire life from childhood to the present.

2. Approach and Method in this Collection The twenty-two essays in this volume represent some of my investigations into New Testament texts and their entextualization of early Christian theology and practice. The earliest one (21) was published in 1991, but the most recent two (8 and 9) are published here for the very first time. All of them have been revised and formatted for the present volume, and each is updated with a final section of reception history. In this section, I assess the influence and impact of my essays on the field of New Testament studies and the degrees to which the interpretations proposed and the conclusions reached have been accepted or rejected in subsequent scholarship. Of course, New Testament scholarship is not static, and thousands of articles, books, commentaries, and dissertations have appeared on the topics of my essays since their initial publication. Tracing every reference to my work in the content and notes of these other publications is not at all feasible, and although the sections on reception history are extensive and hopefully representative, they are not exhaustive. I am grateful to those scholars who have found at least some of my work persuasive, and I appreciate as well those who have taken time to pose counter arguments and who have forced me to think more carefully and to argue in more detail for the interpretations I propose. I remain convinced, however, of the relevance of the data I have collected in these essays and of the soundness of the arguments I have presented, and of the validity of the conclusions I have reached. Hence, I have decided to leave the content of each essay largely as it was in the original publication except for a few minor changes where I have changed my mind or now think differently about something and to reserve my further reflections and responses for the final section of reception history at the end of each essay.1 All these articles attempt to interpret biblical texts, and the goal of biblical interpretation is meaning, but not all meaning is the same. The discipline of biblical studies works with two basic types of meaning, namely, the creative meaning and created meanings. Humans speak or write to communicate meaning to other humans, and a speaker or writer usually has a specific meaning in mind that prompts the speaking and the writing. This meaning may be called the creative meaning since it is responsible for the creation of speech and text. Once cre These changes are pointed out in the footnotes where the change occurs.

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ated, however, an utterance or a text is heard or read by another human or other humans who create meaning from what they are hearing or reading. These meanings are what may be called created meanings, and they differ in some significant ways from creative meaning. Creative meaning is stable, synchronic, and uniform in that a speaker or writer is usually a single person who has a definite meaning or thought in mind that this person wishes to communicate in a finite act of speaking or writing. In contrast, created meanings may be quite diverse and differ from hearer to hearer or reader to reader. Especially in the case of texts, created meanings are diachronic and often somewhat infinite as they can sometimes span thousands of years. Even though creative meaning is stable and uniform, its investigation often results in a diversity of opinions. Even though created meanings differ from person to person, investigations of them usually reach more consensus. Even though these two types of meaning differ in these significant ways, the measure of a speaker or writer’s success in communicating is the degree to which created meanings correspond to a creative meaning. Of course, an utterance or speech is more likely to succeed with the initial hearer(s) or reader(s), but not always. In 1 Cor 5:9–11, for example, Paul mentions an earlier letter he has sent to the Corinthians warning them not to get mixed up with those (πόρνοι) who practice sexual immorality. He now writes again to the Corinthians and explains that he did not mean the immoral of this world but the immoral who call themselves a brother or sister in the community. Even with an initial audience, therefore, Paul is not sure they understood what he previously wrote, and he offers further clarification. Many other examples occur in the gospels when Jesus or the evangelists point to some misunderstanding of Jesus’ speech (Mark 4:12; 8:17, 21; Matt 13:13–15; 15:17; 16:9, 11; Luke 8:10; John 8:43; 12:40). These examples demonstrate the precarious nature of communication even with an initial audience, but this precariousness increases exponentially the greater the distance in time and space between a creative meaning and created meanings. These two types of meaning as well as the precarious nature of communication shape the field of biblical studies. For many centuries, biblical scholars devoted themselves to an investigation of the creative meaning of biblical texts. What these scholars sought to understand was the meaning that created or generated the text, and they used philological, historical, and contextual methods that eventually came to be known as the historical-critical method, at least among Englishspeaking scholars.2 James A. Kelhoffer cautions that this expression is misleading because the so-called historical-critical method “is not just one method” but “the expression is an umbrella term for a number of historically oriented, compara2  James A. Kelhoffer, Conceptions of “Gospel” and Legitimacy in Early Christianity, WUNT 324 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 13. Kelhoffer notes, “With rare exception, ‘historischkritische Exegese’ has been the standard terminology of German-language scholarship.”

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tive, and (most often) tradition-critical methods.”3 What enables these methods to be grouped together is their goal of investigating the creative meaning of biblical texts, and the adjective “historical-critical” applies not only to the older methods usually so-designated such as source, form, and redaction criticism but also to the newer narratological, sociological, and anthropological methods. In fact, almost any method that investigates the creative meaning of a biblical text qualifies as historical-critical. Recently, many biblical scholars influenced by Post-modernism turn their attention to the other type of meaning and investigate the created meanings of biblical texts. Biblical studies almost always showed some interest in a historyof-research that described the meanings of biblical texts through the centuries, but this interest has intensified in recent scholarship with the emergence of Reception Theory in the 1960s that has led to the publication since then of numerous volumes devoted specifically to reception history. This new focus on created meanings is the essence of reader-response criticism and has generated a whole host of methods attentive to the social and cultural location of readers as well as their gendered experiences, sexual preferences, and ideological perspectives. Annual meetings of the SBL now include program units devoted to African, African American, Asian, Asian American, Latino, Latino American, Feminist, Ecological, Postcolonial, and LGBTI/Queer Hermeneutics among others. The desire to know what a specific reader finds significant and meaningful in a biblical text provides coherence to all these diverse methods. Tensions often arise between scholars interested in the creative meaning and those focused on created meanings. The former sometimes disdain the latter as being neither historical nor critical. Indeed, methods investigating created meanings may be more or less historical depending on whether the reader under scrutiny is from the past or the present, but the assumption that a valid interpretive method must always be historical ignores the sound methodological principle that the object of investigation determines the method and not the other way around. History is indispensable for investigating the creative meaning of ancient texts but may not be as necessary in a study of created meaning. Furthermore, the very meaning of the term critical undermines the assumption that methods devoted to created meanings are uncritical. The Greek verb κρίνειν means to separate or distinguish based on some criterion or criteria, and every method describes in some detail or at least utilizes some criteria to obtain created meanings. In the end, historicity is not essential for every method to be effective, and all methods for interpreting the Bible, at least as far as I am aware, are critical 3  Ibid., 11. On p. 13, Kelhoffer recommends, “I find it more helpful – and more accurate – to speak not of one particular method as ‘historical-critical’ (i. e. ‘eine [sogenannte] historischkritische Methode’) but to speak of the goal of doing ‘historical-critical exegesis’ (‘historischkritische Exegese’).”

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even if they employ different criteria. In my opinion, the disdain of some biblical scholars for others does not serve our interpretive enterprise very well.4 Unhelpful also, in my opinion, is the charge of committing the intentional or authorial fallacy that is frequently leveled at scholars interested in creative meanings. The origin of this charge goes back at least to the argument of W. K. Wimsatt and M. C. Beardsley “that the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art.”5 Anyone who has ever worked to interpret an ancient text knows very well the philological, cultural, and historical obstacles to investigating the meaning that created that text, and indeed an author’s intention may be unavailable but no more unavailable than any other phenomenon in history. The fact remains that humans speak or write to communicate meaning, and this meaning is an appropriate object for investigation. Recognizing the difficulty and perhaps even the impossibility of knowing with absolute certainty what an ancient author intended does not preclude attempts to understand, and the more an interpreter knows about a text’s language, culture, and situation, the better informed and able that interpreter will be to investigate the creative meaning of that text.6 In spite of the unhelpful charge of committing the intentional or authorial fallacy, many scholars continue to explore the creative meaning of biblical texts. 4 Unfortunately, scholarly works sometimes contain disdainful and discriminatory language. For example, see Jennifer G. Bird, Abuse, Power and Fearful Obedience: Reconsidering 1 Peter’s Commands to Wives, LNTS 442 (New York: T&T Clark, 2011), 11–12. She labels my work along with that of other male scholars as malestream. She then comments, “Since malestream scholars indirectly imply that their interpretations are value-neutral by not naming their socio-political location, their contributions have a tone of universal authoritativeness” (p. 12). In her discussion of method, she criticizes malestream interpretations for not being liberative but rather reinforcing patterns of patriarchal submission (pp. 27, 33). I disagree with her characterization of my own work under her labeling of me as a malestream scholar and hope she will read essay 18 (pp. 383–393) in the present volume as well as my co-authored book entitled I Promise to Hate, Despise, and Abuse You: Marriage in a Narcissistic Age (Bourbonnais, IL: Bookend Publishers, 2010), passim. I consider my work more liberative with less of a tone of “universal authoritativeness” than her label indicates. Discrimination requires that a label be placed on a group targeted for discrimination, and Bird admits, “I think that labels are more harmful or detrimental than helpful because they are based upon a system of knowledge and power that needs to contain and circumscribe discourses” (p. 37). She continues, “Until the day comes that we can throw off the yoke of containment, however, I will participate in the discourses of power and choose my own labels.” Along with her, I welcome the day when all scholars discard the labels of discrimination that encourage and enable disdain for a scholar’s work based upon a discriminatory label that obscures and masks that scholar’s individual contribution to our common task of finding creative and created meanings in biblical texts. 5 W. K. Wimsatt and M. C. Beardsley, “The Intentional Fallacy,” The Sewanee Review 54 (1946): 468–488, here 468. 6 Peter Lampe, “Rhetorical Analysis of Pauline Texts – Quo Vadit?” in Paul and Rhetoric, ed. J. Paul Sampley and Peter Lampe (New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 3–21, here 7. Lampe states, “It still makes sense to confront the then-speaking and then-writing people with the then-current theories of text and language  – no matter how adequate or inadequate from today’s philosophical perspective these ancient theories might have been.”

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As a biblical scholar, the creative meaning rather than created meanings is what I find interesting, and my investigation of the creative meaning of the biblical text energies me and propels my scholarship. As the twenty-two essays in this volume demonstrate, I most want to know the meaning that generated the formulation and expression of each text I investigate. The numerous critiques of my articles make me acutely aware that many others do not consider any one of my interpretations to be the creative meaning I am seeking but merely my own opinion and a meaning I myself have created. Perhaps, but the understanding I have of the texts investigated in these essays is certainly not the same naïve opinion I held before investigating but an opinion shaped by the philological, cultural, and historical evidence that I present. Several scholars have already agreed with me on various points of interpretation, and hopefully the republication of these essays will enable and encourage many more to reach similar conclusions as well or at least to understand better why I reach such conclusions. Even though the essays in this volume are primarily about the creative meaning of biblical texts, I hope that those who focus on created meanings will nevertheless find these essays interesting and useful. Although my training and life-long interest in the Bible has been largely focused on historical-critical exegesis, I still value other interpretive approaches and take a similar attitude as Paul did with others who were preaching Christ (Phil 1:18). He queries what it matters since regardless of the motives, Christ is being preached. For whatever reason and with whatever methods we are studying the Bible, the Bible is still being studied and engaged, and for one who has grown up and grown old with the Bible, this interest in the Bible is quite enough. James A. Kelhoffer articulates a standard by which I hope my life’s work will be evaluated. He states, “In all scholarship, regardless of the discipline, the important question is not which method(s) are used. What scholars want to know is whether a colleague has something new, interesting and instructive to present from his or her research.”7 I hope and trust that my own work has indeed presented something “new, interesting and instructive” for other biblical scholars to consider and that when my work is evaluated according to this standard, it will not have been in vain. March 2020

 Kelhoffer, “Conceptions,” 14.

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A. Early Christian Salvation

I. Christians as Babies: Metaphorical Reality in First Peter* 1. Introduction Metaphors permeate First Peter from the very beginning, where the Christian recipients are described as “chosen sojourners of the Diaspora,” to the end, where the sender and his community are identified as the “co-chosen [Diaspora] of Babylon.”1 The author of First Peter is quite fond of metaphor, and an informed interpreter of this document as well as of the New Testament as a whole needs some understanding of metaphors and how they function both in thought and communication. R. Melvin McMillen notes, “Petrine scholars are well-advised to think deeply and read widely in the field of metaphor, not only because of its importance, but also because of its often-unnoticed complexities.”2 In explaining the nature of metaphor, Aristotle provides an explanation for the abundance of metaphors in First Peter. He states, “Metaphors must not be far-fetched, but we must give names to things that have none by deriving the metaphor from what is akin and of the same kind, so that as soon as it is uttered, it is clearly seen to be akin” (Rhet. 3.2.12 [1405a] [Freese, LCL]). First Peter addresses those “who formerly were no people but now are the people of God” (1 Pet 2:10). These recipients are non-Jews who have left their former life and now believe in the Jewish God (1 Pet 2:9).3 They are neither Greek nor Jew but a new * Earlier versions of this essay were read at the John Cardinal Cody Chair of Theology Faculty and Graduate Seminar at Loyola University Chicago on March 28, 2012; at the Department of Religious Studies Spring Research Colloquium at Saint Xavier University on April 12, 2012; and at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Chicago on November 17, 2012. I wish to thank Edmondo Lupieri, Eric Mason, and others in attendance at these meetings for their helpful comments and suggestions that improved the published version of this essay. Any faults or errors that remain are of course my own. All translations of ancient texts are also mine unless otherwise noted. 1 The term diaspora is lacking from 1 Pet 5:13 but should probably be supplied because of the connection between “chosen” in 1:1 and “co-chosen” in 5:13. The term brotherhood may also be supplied from 5:9. See Troy W. Martin, Metaphor and Composition in 1 Peter, SBLDS 131 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 145–146. 2  R. Melvin McMillen, “Metaphor and First Peter: The Essential Role of the Minds of FatherGod’s Children in Spiritual Conflict with a Special Focus on 1:13,” (PhD diss., University of South Africa, 2011), 3. 3  Scholars still debate whether the recipients are Jews, non-Jews, or a mixture of both. See

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race of humans, a καινὸν γένος according to Diognetus 1. Consistent with Aristotle’s explanation, metaphors are therefore necessary to “give names” to these recipients and to describe their new unique status. Indeed, one metaphor, Χριστιανός (“Christian;” 1 Pet 4:16), which this text uses perhaps for the very first time, will become the common designation not only for these recipients but also for all who belong to this new human race.4 Considering the importance of metaphors in First Peter, this essay will first survey various definitions of metaphor. Next, it will describe some of the recent theories about metaphor that interpreters have applied to First Peter. It will then investigate the salvific metaphor of newborn babies in 1 Pet 2:1–3 to illustrate the metaphorical reality of the recipients’ new life in Christ.

2. Defining Metaphor All speech is symbolic, but not all speech is metaphorical, and distinguishing metaphor from other symbolic speech requires definition. Metonymies are often confused with metaphor but can be distinguished because they only name a constituent part in reference to the whole. Numerous metonymies occur in First Peter and include “house” for the household (4:17) and “tongue” and “lips” for speech (3:10).5 Allegories and parables do not play a significant role in First Peter, but they are nonetheless figurative speech and are sometimes understood as extended metaphors. A simile is an expression that uses “like” or “as” to make a comparison, and simile is often contrasted with metaphor, which uses copulative verbs to join the two comparative entities. However, Aristotle states, “The simile also is a metaphor; for there is very little difference. … Similes must be used like metaphors, which only differ in the manner stated” (Rhet. 3.3.4 [1406b] [Freese, LCL]). The close connection of simile and metaphor is illustrated in First Peter, which uses both a metaphor (“exiles,” 1:1) and a simile (“as exiles,” 2:11) to compare its recipients to exiles. It is thus customary in Petrine studies to include similes such as the recipients as children (1:14) and newborn babies (2:2) when discussing the epistle’s use of metaphors. These and other types of symbolic speech necessitate defining metaphor.

James D. G.  Dunn, Beginning from Jerusalem, vol. 2 of Christianity in the Making (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 1158–1160. Dunn makes the case for Jewish recipients. Several passages such as 1 Pet 1:14, 18; 2:10; and 4:3–4, however, persuade the majority of interpreters that the letter is addressed to non-Jews. 4  David G. Horrell, “The Label Χριστιανός: 1 Peter 4:16 and the Formation of Christian Identity,” JBL 126 (2007): 361–381. 5  Bonnie Howe, Because You Bear this Name: Conceptual Metaphor and the Moral Meaning of 1 Peter, SBLBibInt 81 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), 368–369.

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The Greek word μεταφορά means “transference,” and transference is essential to the definition of metaphor. Aristotle writes, “A metaphor is the application of a word that belongs to another thing: either from genus to species, species to genus, species to species, or by analogy” (Poet. 21.7 [1457b] [Halliwell, LCL]; cf. Rhet. 3.10.7 [1411a–b]). Until recently, his definition determined the definition of “metaphor as ‘the transfer of a name,’ with emphasis on metaphor as an isolable word or phrase.”6 Modern theorists, however, deem Aristotle’s definition of metaphor and indeed the entire previous approach to metaphor as inadequate and operating on the faulty assumption that metaphor is primarily a phenomenon of language. Instead of defining metaphor as the transfer of a word, modern theorists define metaphor as a phenomenon of thought. George Lakoff explains that “the word ‘metaphor’ has come to mean a cross-domain mapping in the conceptual system.”7 This shift in understanding leads to this working definition: “The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.”8 Michael Kimmel gives a more detailed and functional definition: Metaphor is a mapping of certain salient and fitting characteristics of one domain to another domain, so as to give rise to a set of systematic correspondences. In order to characterize the directional nature of this mapping, we speak of a topical Target domain and a Source domain from which new structures are adduced.9

The notions of source and target domains as well as mapping have become essential to the modern treatment and definition of metaphor. Current definitions of metaphor are numerous, and no single one has gained consensus. McMillen notes, “The difficulty of defining metaphor is complicated by the fact that not all metaphors have identical features: some, for example, are based on shared attributes, while others depend on common relationships.”10 These diverse definitions and understandings of metaphor give rise to numerous modern theories about metaphor, but some notion of transference remains a common aspect of all of them.

 6  David E. Aune, The Westminister Dictionary of New Testament and Early Christian Literature and Rhetoric (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 301.  7  George Lakoff, “The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor,” in Metaphor and Thought, ed. Andrew Ortony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 202–251, here 203. Quoted by Howe, Because You Bear this Name, 68.  8  George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 5. Quoted by Howe, Because You Bear this Name, 60.  9  Michael Kimmel, “Metaphor, Imagery and Culture: Spatialized Ontologies, Mental Tools and Multimedia in the Making,” (Ph.D. diss. University of Vienna, 2002), 26. Quoted by McMillen, “Metaphor and First Peter,” 32. 10  Ibid.

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3. Theories of Metaphor The complexity of metaphor is demonstrated by the explosion of studies and investigations since 1970.11 The myriad of studies reveals that no single approach to metaphor has gained consensus and makes it difficult to integrate the diverse and competing theories. Nevertheless, some general observations can be made, and evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of specific theories used in the study of First Peter is possible. When I began to work on First Peter for my dissertation in the 1980s, modern theories about metaphor were only in their infancy.12 I relied on the theory of Harald Weinrich, who distinguished between an image-contributor and an image-receptor.13 The subsequent studies of First Peter by Bonnie Howe and R. Melvin McMillen intentionally apply modern metaphorical theory to First Peter and adopt the language of source domain and target domain instead of the terms I took from Weinrich.14 These studies criticize my dissertation for relying on an older conception of metaphor and for not giving more attention to the theory of metaphor.15 In the 1980s, however, the metaphor theory applied by each of these scholars to First Peter was not fully available to me, and both of these scholars have made important theoretical advances to the study of metaphors in First Peter. The thesis of Howe’s work “is that conceptual metaphor, grounded in basic embodied human experience, makes possible a shared moral language and discourse between the New Testament writers and readers of the New Testament today.”16 Her goal is to minimize the old hermeneutical gap between what First Peter meant then and what it means now so that the epistle can function as an exemplar and speak more directly to modern readers.17 She adopts Conceptual or Cognitive Metaphor Theory (CMT) and attempts to map the source domains to the target domains of the metaphors in First Peter. She describes the source domain as the “sensorimotor domain” and the target domain as the “non11  See Robert R. Hoffman, ed., Metaphor: A Bibliography of Post-1970 Publications (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1985), passim. See also Jean-Pierre van Noppen and Edith Hols, eds., Metaphor II: A Classified Bibliography from 1985–1990 (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1990), passim. Both surveys of the literature are cited by McMillen, “Metaphor and First Peter,” 2 n. 4. 12 My dissertation was published as Metaphor and Composition in First Peter in the SBL Dissertation Series. 13  Harald Weinrich, Sprache in Texten (Stuttgart: Klett, 1976), 276–341. See my discussion of his theory in Metaphor and Composition, 147. 14  Other terms for the image-receptor or target domain are “target,” “topic,” “tenor,” “subject,” and “focus.” The image-contributor or source domain is variously called “base,” “source,” “vehicle,” and “frame.” See McMillen, “Metaphor and First Peter,” 17. 15  See Howe, Because You Bear this Name, 271–272 nn. 10–11; and McMillen, “Metaphor and First Peter,” 7–8. 16  Howe, Because You Bear this Name, 5. 17  Ibid., 2.

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sensori-motor” domain. Thus, metaphor is experientially based in “basic bodily experience” and social interaction.18 Since human bodies do not differ much from the ancient to modern times and several social interactions are similar, she thinks that the distance between the metaphors in First Peter and today is not as great as the traditional hermeneutical gap has supposed.19 Obviously, Howe is correct that human bodies have not changed much. However, the perception and understanding of the human body has changed a great deal from when First Peter was written to now, and Howe’s study needs to be more sensitive to this change. Howe’s method is far too complex to summarize completely here, but it can be illustrated by her treatment of the newborn baby metaphor in 1 Pet 2:1–3, where the recipients are exhorted to desire the “logical, undiluted milk” as newborn babies so that they can grow into salvation. She describes this metaphor as blended from two source domain frames. Howe defines “frames” as “structured understandings of the way aspects of the world function.”20 The two frames on which this metaphor relies are the household frame and the body frame.21 Regarding the household frame, she comments, “When Christian believers as a group constitute the target domain, they are fitted into selected slots in the Household Frame.” She states that Christians “are fitted into the Child slot: they are ‘little children, infants’ whose desire to grow ‘into salvation’ is expressed as a ‘longing for the pure, spiritual milk.’” She then concludes, “Infantile longing for milk is mapped onto adult desire to ‘grow’ into salvation.”22 Regarding the body frame, she explains that an infant’s longing for milk is a clear example of good desire, for “we know what it is for newborns to want milk … not only for growth, but for life itself.”23 Thus, Howe’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory allows her to map the source and target domains of the metaphor of newborn babies in 1 Pet 2:1–3 and to observe some salient features of this metaphor. Her attempt to minimize the hermeneutical gap in her analysis, however, limits her treatment of this metaphor. She assumes that modern understandings of how infants are produced in a household and how they long for milk are the same as ancient understandings. Perhaps some aspects are the same, but some may be different. Ideas about how babies are conceived and how they grow in the womb have certainly changed in the past 2000 years, and notions of nutrition are most definitely different today than they were at the time of the writing of First Peter.

18 Ibid.,

81. 349, 352–353. 20 Ibid., 64. 21  Ibid., 280–286, 294–304. 22  Ibid., 286. 23  Ibid., 303. 19 Ibid.,

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Mapping metaphors requires an accurate understanding of not only the source domain but also the target domain. Howe’s treatment of the metaphors in First Peter is frequently lacking in such an understanding, as John H. Elliott observes: The method of cognitive metaphor analysis as presented by Howe holds much promise, I believe, for ethicians and exegetes and deserves our immediate attention. It is regrettable that the method so lucidly exposed in the first half of the book is not coupled with a vigorous exegesis of 1 Peter and sound hermeneutical reflection in the study’s second half.24

He concludes, “The combination of cognitive metaphor analysis with exegesis and ethics remains a promising idea in search of an adequate method.”25 McMillen agrees with Howe that Conceptual Metaphor Theory makes a significant contribution to the analysis of metaphors in First Peter but he thinks her method needs supplementing with Structure Mapping Theory (SMT).26 SMT is a type of comparative metaphor theory that “directly links Source and Target concepts.”27 Its primary objective is to identify “the system of relations in the Source that correspond to a system of relations in the Target.”28 Dedre Gentner explains, “The central idea in structure-mapping is that an analogy [or metaphor] is a mapping of knowledge from one domain (the base) into another (the target) which conveys that a system of relations which holds among the base objects also holds among the target objects.”29 McMillen prefers SMT theory because it “encourages interpreters to study all forms of similarity within a document, rather than artificially abstracting specific ones from its overall conceptual and textual context.”30 McMillen adapts SMT as well as other theories into his own Major Metaphor Model.31 His method is even more complicated than Howe’s and cannot be summarized completely here, but, like Howe’s, it can be illustrated by his treatment of the newborn baby metaphor in 1 Pet 2:1–3. Consistent with his method, McMillen describes as many structural similarities as he can between the source and target domains of this metaphor. First, he links 2:1–3 with the Father-God metaphor of 1:13–17 and sees a Father-God structure in the newborn baby 24  John H. Elliott, “Review of Bonnie Howe, Because You Bear This Name: Conceptual Metaphor and the Moral Meaning of 1 Peter,” URL: http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/5321_5610.pdf. 25  Ibid. 26  McMillen, “Metaphor and First Peter,” 11. McMillen relies on the numerous works of Dedre Gentner, “Structure-Mapping: A Theoretical Framework for Analogy,” Cognitive Science 7 (1983): 155–170; idem, “The Mechanisms of Analogical Learning,” in Similarity and Analogical Reasoning, ed. Stella Vosniadou and Andrew Ortony (London: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 199–241. For a list of her other publications, see McMillen, “Metaphor and First Peter,” 291–292. 27 Ibid., 81. 28 Ibid., 66. 29  Gentner, “Mechanisms,” 201. Quoted by McMillen, “Metaphor and First Peter,” 66. 30  McMillen, “Metaphor and First Peter,” 81. 31  Ibid., 83–105.

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metaphor in 2:1–3.32 He identifies the “milk” as the Father-God’s mercy and grace offered to his children who must desire it with humility. McMillen sees humility “implied in the Source of craving milk in terms of both its content and the desperate need.”33 This humility is “essential in relationship to Father-God and his family.”34 Second, McMillen observes a mental structure in the imperative ἐπιποθήσατε (“long for”) in 2:2, and he proposes that the “logical milk” must include “God’s Word, to the exclusion of all other objects of desire, leaving little doubt that filling the mind with its truth is enjoined.”35 Third, he sees a spatial structure in the “putting off ” of sinful attitudes (2:1) as external clothing in contrast to the spiritual nourishment that God’s children ingest, and McMillen understands the “logical milk” as spiritual nourishment.36 Finally, he perceives a conflict structure in this metaphor by hypothesizing “a Petrine view of God’s Word as a weapon in cosmic spiritual battle.”37 By earnestly desiring the “logical milk” of God’s Word, the recipients of the letter nourish “hope and trust in their father” and “grow towards the salvation that is its content.”38 As his treatment of the newborn baby metaphor in 1 Pet 2:1–3 demonstrates, McMillen’s method is far more productive of meaning than Howe’s. As with Howe, however, McMillen’s method assumes modern understandings of objects in the source domain of this metaphor. He does not investigate whether the ancients had a different understanding of “instinctual cravings” than moderns have.39 Furthermore, his shifting referent for “logical milk” from “God’s grace and mercy” to “God’s Word” and then to “spiritual nourishment” invites the question of whether the source domain could convey these meanings to ancient readers. In the end, McMillen admits, “No claim is made that this is the final, perfect template applicable even to First Peter’s metaphors, either in terms of content or structure.”40 The studies of Howe and McMillen raise important issues in the application of modern metaphor theories to First Peter. First and most obvious is the determination of which theory of metaphor to apply. Howe’s Cognitive Metaphor Theory and McMillen’s Structure Mapping Theory yield very different exegetical results, and selection of any one of the dozens of possibilities thus has important exegetical consequences.41 Second, their studies warn about obscuring the text 32 Ibid., 33 Ibid., 34 Ibid.

174–176. 175.

 Ibid., 176–177. 178. 37  Ibid., 179. 38  Ibid., 180. 39  Ibid., 176. 40  Ibid., 83. 41  Ibid., 25. He notes, “The development of theories of metaphor continues with no signs of exhaustion.” On p. 16, he admits, “On the one hand, the content and structure of First Peter 35

36 Ibid.,

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of First Peter behind a plethora of analytical terms and concepts. The heuristic test of a method or theory is the clarity it provides, and modern metaphor theory is useful to the degree that it clarifies the text of First Peter. To the degree that it does not, it is not helpful. When the method becomes an obstacle to understanding a text, it loses its functionality. Third, their methodologically focused studies demonstrate that no method is a substitute for a thorough understanding of the ancient source domains in First Peter, and such an understanding is absolutely necessary for an adequate mapping of these metaphors. Finally, their studies also confirm that mapping metaphors is of crucial importance and that many of the disagreements among Petrine scholars arise from differences in mapping the individual metaphors.

4. Mapping the New-Born Baby Metaphor Discussing all the specific metaphors in First Peter would far exceed the limitations of the present essay, and so I shall limit the remaining investigation to a single illustrative metaphor, namely Christians as babies (1 Pet 2:1–3). This expression is technically a simile, but the literature on First Peter both treats it as and calls it a metaphor.42 This metaphor illustrates the importance of thoroughly understanding the ancient source domain for mapping the analogous characteristics First Peter transfers to its recipients. The metaphors in First Peter describe the ontological reality of these non-Jewish believers in Israel’s God, and mapping each metaphor including the new-born baby metaphor is necessary for an informed understanding of First Peter’s description of its recipients. This metaphor of desiring the “logical, undiluted milk” as newborn babies in 1 Pet 2:1–3 occurs with other metaphors related to the elect household of God (1:14–2:10).43 The themes of divine choosing and its corollary, the chosen people of God, are prevalent in the Jewish Diaspora.44 The Jews of the Diaspora considered themselves to be the chosen people of God, and First Peter takes this prevalent Diaspora theme and applies this designation to its recipients. In their Diaspora sojourn, they are none other than the chosen people of God. This metaphor of newborn babies’ desiring the “logical, undiluted milk” thus fits in and contributes to the overarching and controlling metaphor of the Diaspora.45 invites a comprehensive metaphorical analysis; on the other hand, the burgeoning field of metaphor studies today has not yet reached any clearly defensible consensus on many of the key issues critical to its application to a text such as First Peter.” 42  Howe, Because You Bear this Name, 286, 303. 43 Martin, Composition and Metaphor, 161–188. 44  Ibid., 163 n. 91. 45  When I began writing my doctoral dissertation in the 1980s and investigating metaphors in First Peter, previous scholarship largely studied each metaphor in the letter individually with few attempts to understand how the metaphors related to each other or worked together

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In 1 Pet 2:2–3, the letter instructs its recipients to yearn for “the logical, undiluted milk” (τὸ λογικὸν ἄδολον γάλα) as newborn babies (ὡς ἀρτιγέννητα βρέφη) yearn for the logical, undiluted milk in order that by this milk they might grow into salvation if they have tasted that the Lord is χρηστός (“wholesome”).46 Achtemeier notes that mapping this metaphor has proven difficult.47 Some map the “newness” of newborn babies and conclude that the recipients are new converts or recently baptized.48 Others struggle over how to understand the adjective “logical” when applied to milk, and Achtemeier comments, “The proper understanding in this context of the adjective λογικός … is difficult to deterto communicate the message of First Peter. Some scholars recognized the need for identifying some basic or root metaphor for all the others as Paul Achtemeier explains, “Identifying that larger metaphor would be most helpful of all. Knowledge of that basic metaphor would aid us in determining on a case-by-case basis whether a given term is to be understood literally or figuratively. … There have been attempts to locate that controlling metaphor … but no attempt, to my knowledge, has been made either to isolate it specifically as the controlling metaphor, or to apply it to our problem of interpreting when and how the author of 1 Peter uses figurative language” (“Newborn Babes and Living Stones: Literal and Figurative in 1 Peter,” in To Touch the Text: Biblical and Related Studies in Honor of Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S. J., ed. Maurya P. Horgan and Paul J. Kobelski [New York: Crossroad, 1989], 207–236, here 224). In the same year that Achtemeier’s article appeared, I completed my dissertation, which filled this lacuna in Petrine studies. As I tried to “map” the conceptual field of Petrine metaphors, some emerged as overarching metaphors that provided a conceptual framework for the others. I labeled these overarching metaphors “metaphor clusters” and identified them as “the elect household of God” (1 Pet 1:14–2:10), “aliens in this world” (2:11–3:12), and “sufferers of the Dispersion” (3:13–5:11). I then identified the Diaspora as the controlling metaphor that provides coherence for these metaphor clusters and indeed for all the metaphors in First Peter. My identification of the Diaspora as the controlling metaphor generated a lively debate among scholars that continues to the present. A few deny altogether a controlling metaphor for First Peter, and these scholars include Howe, Because You Bear this Name, 268 n. 4; 309; J. Ramsey Michaels, “Review of Troy W. Martin, Metaphor and Composition in First Peter,” JBL 112 (1993): 358–360, here 359; and Joel B. Green, 1 Peter, The Two Horizons New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 2007), 218 n. 60. The majority of interpreters, however, agree there is one but thinks it other than the Diaspora. See the list provided by McMillen, “Metaphor and First Peter,” 8–17. Still others agree with my identification of the Diaspora as the controlling metaphor. See Philip L. Tite, Compositional Transitions in 1 Peter: An Analysis of the Letter-Opening (San Francisco: International Scholars Publications, 1997), 32, 43 n. 27. Tite comments, “Martin’s recognition of the role of metaphorical language within the letter is one of his key contributions to Petrine studies” (p. 31). 46  Not all milk was useful or wholesome for the nutrition of the baby. Aristotle states that a mother’s milk only becomes useful (χρήσιμον) after the seventh month of gestation when the mother’s blood nutrition is adequately shifted from her uterus to her breasts (Gen. an. 4.8 [766a]). Hippocrates says that this shift occurs in the eighth month (Epid. 2.3.17), and Soranus discusses several types of unwholesome milk (Gyn. 2.11–13 [17–21]). Translating χρηστός as “wholesome” thus fits the milk metaphor better than other possible translations. 47 Paul J. Achtemeier, 1 Peter: A Commentary on First Peter, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 145 n. 33. 48  For new converts, see J. N. D. Kelly, A Commentary on the Epistles of Peter and Jude, BNTC (London: Black, 1969; repr., Thornapple Commentaries; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1981), 84. For recently baptized, see Marie-Emile Boismard, “Une liturgie baptismale dans la Prima Petri,” RB 63 (1956): 161–183, here 196.

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mine.”49 Still others wonder what the milk and in particular the undiluted (ἄδολον) milk signifies and reflect on what the recipients are instructed to desire. Are they to desire the word of God or the Eucharistic food?50 Recent metaphor theory and an understanding of ancient physiology help to resolve some of these problems encountered by the interpreters of this metaphor.51 The source domain of this metaphor is not simply newborn babies but a blend of newborn babies and nutrition. The metaphor assumes that the recipients are familiar with infant nutrition and can transfer the appropriate analogy to their own conduct. To make the appropriate transfer to the behavior of the recipients of First Peter, an informed interpreter of this metaphor thus needs an understanding of the conception and nutrition of a child in the womb and immediately after birth. Ancient explanations of conception and birth begin with the reproductive fluid of mother and father.52 The mother’s blood collects in her body and is discharged monthly until the introduction of the father’s semen, which concocts, congeals, or sets the blood of the mother in the womb. Aristotle likens the process to the curdling of cheese by the introduction of rennet. He explains: The action of the semen of the male in “setting” the female’s secretion in the uterus is similar to that of rennet upon milk. Rennet is milk which contains vital heat, as semen does, and this integrates the homogeneous substance and makes it “set.” As the nature of milk and the menstrual fluid is one and the same, the action of the semen upon the substance of the menstrual fluid is the same as that of rennet upon milk. (Gen. an. 2.4 [739b] [Peck, LCL])

Aristotle’s analogy is appropriate because ancients thought that male semen was blood that is frothed or concocted more perfectly than the female’s blood in the uterus.53 The added heat of male semen thus enables it to be the agent that “sets” or congeals the more watery blood of the female and causes a pregnancy to occur. Aristotle states, “The female always provides the material, the male provides that which fashions the material into shape” (Gen. an. 2.4 [738b] [Peck, LCL]).  Achtemeier, 1 Peter, 146–147.  Ibid., 147–148. 51  Philip L. Tite, “Nurslings, Milk and Moral Development in the Greco-Roman Context: A Reappraisal of the Paraenetic Utilization of Metaphor in 1 Peter 2:1–5,” JSNT 31 (2009): 371–400. Tite investigates this metaphor from the source domain of ancient breast-feeding and infant moral development. He is a former student of mine, and I have for years been suggesting to my students an investigation of this metaphor from the ancient physiological source domain. Tite has investigated the source domains of breast-feeding and moral development, but I would like to focus more specifically on the physiological source domain of this metaphor. 52 Troy W. Martin, “Clarifying a Curiosity: The Plural Bloods (αἱμάτων) in John 1:13,” in Christian Body, Christian Self: Concepts of Early Christian Personhood, ed. Clare K. Rothschild and Trevor W. Thompson with Robert S. Kinney, WUNT 284 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2011), 175–185, here 179–180. 53 See for examples, Aristotle, Gen. an. 1.19–20 (727a–728a); Galen, De usu partium 14.10–11 (Helmreich, 2:316–324); and idem, Sem. 1.12. 49 50

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In Aristotle’s terms, therefore, the blood semen of the male provides the formal, efficient, and final causes while the female blood serves as the material cause. As long as the child remains in the womb, the mother does not discharge blood each month.54 Instead, this blood goes to her womb and nourishes the child as it hardens, congeals, and forms the child’s body according to the power of the male blood semen (Aristotle, Gen. an. 4.8 [776a–b]; Galen, De usu partium 14.10–11 [Helmreich, 2:316–324). Galen notes that the uteri and breasts are connected by vessels, and then he comments: Now when a woman is at the prime of life, in the time before conception Nature each month evacuates through the vessels extending to the uteri whatever surplus accumulates, but when she is pregnant, it is through these vessels that the embryo attracts nutriment. Since this surplus accumulates in these common vessels during the whole of pregnancy as if in reservoirs of nutriment, enlarging and distending them to the limit and, as it were flooding them, it seeks some place to go. But there is no place other than the breasts, into which the distended, burdened veins conduct it. (De usu partium 14.8 [Helmreich, 2:311])55

Hippocrates states that copious flows of milk from the breasts of a pregnant woman are a sign that the baby in the womb is weak (Aphor. 5.52). Galen explains that it is weak because it is undernourished (De usu partium 14.8 [Helmreich, 2:311–312]). The blood that should be going to it is being diverted to the breasts and frothed into milk. After the child is born, the mother still does not menstruate or only has light flows because her blood is now directed to her breasts, which froth her blood into milk. Soranus comments, “The uterus itself brings the seed to perfection, whereas the breasts prepare milk as food for the coming child; and menses occurring, the milk stops, whereas lactation occurring, menstruation appears no more” (Gyn. 1.3 [15]).56 Aristotle writes, “It is clear that milk is possessed of the same nature [substance] as the secretion out of which each animal is formed. … And this material … is the bloodlike liquid, since milk is concocted … blood” (Gen. an. 4.8 [777a] [Peck LCL]). Likewise, Galen writes, “No newborn animal could at that time digest solid food, and so for this reason Nature has prepared for it nutriment drawn from the mother, just as she did when it was still a fetus” (De usu partium 14.4 [Helmreich, 2:292).57 Thus, the child in the womb is nourished with the blood of its mother, and this child upon birth continues to be nourished 54  If she does menstruate during pregnancy, Hippocrates says that the embryo must be unhealthy (Aphor. 5.60). 55 Translation by Margaret T. May, Galen On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body “Περὶ χρείας μορίων; De usu partium:” Translated from the Greek with an Introduction and Commentary, 2 vols. (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press), 2:638–639. 56  Translation by Owsei Temkin, et al., Soranus’ Gynecology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press), 14. See also Hippocrates (Aphor. 5.39), who connects lactation with suppressed menses and recommends (Aphor. 5.50) applying a cupping-glass to the breasts and suctioning out the milk to suppress menstruation. 57  Translation by May, Galen, 2:625.

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with its mother’s blood, frothed or concocted, as milk. A newborn baby’s desire for its mother’s milk is therefore logical, and the author of First Peter refers to this milk as “logical, undiluted milk” (τὸ λογικὸν ἄδολον γάλα, 2:2). The addition of the adjective “undiluted” (ἄδολον) probably distinguishes this milk from the colostrum, a watery milky substance that the breast emits a few days before and after birth, and other types of “corrupted” milk that are not fit for infant nutrition. Aristotle says that the former and later milk is unfit for use (ἄχρηστον δὲ τὸ πρῶτον καὶ ὓστερον, Hist. an. 3.20 [522a]). Any milk produced before the seventh month of gestation is not useful according to Aristotle (Gen. an. 4.8 [776b]). Soranus discusses numerous reasons milk might not be useful or wholesome for the baby including its being too watery, too thick, or mixed with various juices from the foodstuffs ingested by the mother or wet nurse (Gyn. 2.11– 15 [17–29]). The milk that a newborn baby desires is the pure, undiluted, uncorrupted, wholesome milk that “comes in fully” a few days after the baby is born when the mother’s blood fully shifts from her uterus to her breast. This blood, or “logical, undiluted milk” from its mother’s blood, nourishes the baby and enables it to grow just as the mother’s blood did in her uterus. The ancient physiology of infant nutrition as the source domain of this metaphor in 1 Pet 2:1–3 indicates some connection between the conception and begetting of these recipients and the “logical, undiluted milk” that they as newborn babies are supposed to desire. This connection is provided in 1 Pet 1:23– 25. The recipients were begotten not from perishable seed but imperishable seed (οὐκ ἐκ σπορᾶς φθαρτῆς ἀλλ᾽ ἀφθάρτου, 1:23). Since seed or reproductive fluid is frothed blood according to ancient physiology, ancient readers are more likely than modern readers to understand blood as the material source of the new begetting of these recipients. Indeed, the blood of Christ is not included among the perishable things (οὐ φθαρτοῖς, 1:18–19) but is imperishable, and these recipients were chosen for sprinkling this imperishable blood (εἰς … ῥαντισμὸν αἵματος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, 1:2) as the people of God (1:1). Furthermore, ancient readers would likely have understood the word of God as the (male) active principle that shapes the recipients begotten from this blood into the new people that God intends. God is certainly the agent or father who begot these recipients anew (ἀναγεννήσας, 1 Pet 1:3), but the intermediate agency of their begetting is the living and remaining word of God (διὰ λόγου ζῶντος θεοῦ καὶ μένοντος, 1:23).58 The blood of Christ is thus the material source of the new begetting of these recipients, and the word of God is the active power or principle that shapes this blood into the new life created by this begetting. Reinhard Feldmeier comments, “This as well is again a relatively 58  Achtemeier sees no significance in the shift of the preposition ἐκ σπορᾶς to διὰ λόγου in 1:23 (1 Peter, 139). The interpretation offered here, however, follows Eugene A. LaVerdiere, who takes ἐκ as indicating origin or source and διά as expressing extrinsic principle or agent (“A Grammatical Ambiguity in 1 Pet. 1:23,” CBQ 36 [1974]: 89–94, here 92).

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daring image: The divine word is described in its action in analogy to human sperm.59 Feldmeier continues, “Just as this [sperm] makes possible biological life, so the word – which itself is ‘living and remaining’ – communicates its livingness and imperishability so that those newly born by it are removed from the general transience.”60 Given their understanding of ancient physiology and especially infant conception and nutrition, the ancient recipients could understand the source domain of this metaphor more immediately than modern readers can. The metaphor is productive for them in communicating the mutual effectiveness of both word and sacrament. The blood of Christ received in the sacrament provides the substance for the new life while the word of God shapes that life into a childlike form. The imperative for the recipients to desire the “logical, undiluted milk” (1 Pet 2:2) is thus conditioned by the circumstantial participle (ἀποθέμενοι, 2:1). This participle indicates that desire for this milk is conditioned by putting away all badness, guile, hypocrisies, envying, and evil-speaking (2:1a). Since all these vices are prohibited by the word of God and lacking in newborn babies, the recipients must put them away to realize a childlike desire for the “logical, undiluted milk.”61 This imperative is contextualized by the expression, “if you have tasted that the Lord is wholesome” (εἰ ἐγεύσασθε ὅτι χρηστὸς ὁ κύριος, 1 Pet 2:3), connecting intertextually with Ps 33:9 LXX, “Taste and see that the Lord is wholesome” (γεύσασθε καὶ ἴδετε ὅτι χρηστὸς ὁ κύριος). Early Christians sang this Psalm or recited parts of it in the Eucharistic liturgy (Apos. Con. 8.13; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 23.20 [=Cat. Myst. III 20]; Jerome, Ep. 71.6). The change in 1 Pet 2:3 from the LXX imperative γεύσασθε, which gives a command, to the indicative ἐγεύσασθε, which makes a statement, as well as the omission of the LXX words “and see,” indicates that First Peter uses this Psalm Eucharistically, perhaps for the first time in Christian literature.62 Psalm 33 is important to the message of First Peter, which will quote or allude to it again in 2:4 (Ps 33:6) and in 3:10–12 (Ps 33:13–17). This psalm is a testimony of God’s rescue from all the psalmist’s sojournings (ἐκ πασῶν τῶν παροικιῶν μου, Ps 33:5 LXX). This psalm therefore probably resonated with the recipients of First Peter, which describes them as sojourners and exiles (παροίκους καὶ παρεπιδήμους, 1 Pet 2:11) in need of rescue (1:5, 10–12) from their own Diaspora sojourn (1:1). Understanding modern metaphor theory and the ancient physiological source domain of this metaphor therefore helps resolve the sharp debate among modern 59  Reinhard Feldmeier, The First Letter of Peter: A Commentary on the Greek Text, trans. Peter H. Davids (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008), 123–124. 60  Ibid., 124. 61  Martin, Metaphor and Composition, 174–175. 62  Kelly, Commentary, 87.

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commentators about mapping the “logical, undiluted milk” to the word of God or to eucharistic food. The metaphor blends both ideas with the milk that images the eucharistic food and is then shaped and formed by the word of God in the lives of the recipients.63 Since the recipients were begotten from the blood of Christ, it is “logical” for them to desire this blood in the Eucharist as a means of continued nutrition so that they may grow into the salvation provided by Christ.

5. Conclusion: Metaphorical Reality Metaphor is sometimes understood as figurative in contrast to literal or real language. Modern theories about metaphor, however, emphasize that metaphor is a way of thinking about and expressing perceived reality. The metaphors in First Peter describe the reality of its recipients’ new status brought about by their becoming Christians. They have indeed been begotten by God in a very real sense. The letter exhorts them to desire the real blood of Christ in the Eucharist and to allow the word of God to shape them into a real people of God’s own making (λαὸς εἰς περιποίησιν, 1 Pet 2:9). Achtemeier notes a “dynamic element in the author’s understanding” in that “the Christian community is under way toward being God’s peculiar people.”64 The metaphors and similes in First Peter express this real ontological status of its recipients.65 On the basis of who these recipients really are, the letter exhorts them to act accordingly and to live as the people of God. Using various metaphors to describe their new status, First Peter creates new language to express the ontological reality of its recipients’ new life in Christ.66 In many ways, this language and these metaphors are still with us today as are the religious realities they name and express.

6. Reception History In the short reception history of this article, two aspects receive attention. First, those present at the oral presentations of papers out of which this article grew expressed much appreciation for my overview and simplification of the current state of metaphor studies.67 In his review of the volume in which my article 63  The negative connotations of milk in 1 Cor 3:1–3; Heb 5:12; 6:2 and the mapping of milk to elementary instruction or catechesis are lacking in the context of 1 Pet 2:2. 64  Achtemeier, 1 Peter, 166. 65  Martin, Metaphor and Composition, 143–144. 66 Feldmeier, First Letter, 128–129. 67  These presentations were at the John Cardinal Cody Chair of Theology Faculty and Graduate Seminar at Loyola University Chicago on March 28, 2012; at the Department of Religious Studies Spring Research Colloquium at Saint Xavier University on April 12, 2012; and at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Chicago on November 17, 2012.

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appears, John Gillman expresses similar appreciation of my investigation of metaphor and comments, “Troy W. Martin (‘Christians as Babies: Metaphorical Reality in 1 Peter’) offers an insightful analysis of both the source domain and the target domain of the metaphor of infant nutrition that is used in 1 Pet 2:2.”68 I am pleased Gillman finds my analysis of metaphor “insightful,” and I hope that others will as well. In his review of the same volume, however, Thomas J. Kraus criticizes my reliance on modern metaphor theory to explain the newborn baby and milk metaphors in 1 Pet 2:3.69 In particular, he wonders whether the concept of “metaphorical reality,” which occurs in the title of my article, “is not a contradiction in itself.” He asks, “How can metaphors be real or, in other words, how can these two terms be connected like that?” He states that I try to resolve this riddle in my conclusion when I contrast the older view that understands metaphors “as figurative in contrast to literal or real language” with the more recent understanding of metaphor as a way of thinking about and expressing reality.70 Kraus questions my preference for modern metaphor theory and suggests that “a closer investigation into Aristotle’s classic treatment of metaphors and similes would have been a more appropriate starting point to check what 1 Peter has to offer.” I am not surprised to receive criticism for my reliance on modern metaphor theory from Kraus and others who hold to an older view of metaphor, but I consider my integration of the older view of metaphor as a phenomenon of language with the more recent view as a phenomenon of thought to be more sophisticated and nuanced than Kraus realizes. Rather than limiting my resolution of the “riddle” of metaphorical reality to my conclusion as Kraus implies, I actually offer an explanation at the very beginning of my article.71 For my explanation, the most significant aspect of Aristotle’s metaphor theory is his statement, “We must give names to things that have none (τὰ ἀνώνυμα) by deriving the metaphor from what is akin and of the same kind” (Rhet. 3.2.12 [1405a] [Freese, LCL]).72 I understand Aristotle to say that metaphors give names to entities that have no names (τὰ ἀνώνυμα) and that 68  John Gillman, “Review: Reading 1–2 Peter and Jude: A Resource for Students, ed. Eric Mason and Troy W. Martin, RBS 77 (Atlanta: SBL, 2014),” CBQ 77 (2015): 801–802, here 801. 69 Thomas J. Kraus, “Review: Reading 1–2 Peter and Jude: A Resource for Students, ed. Eric Mason and Troy W. Martin, RBS 77 (Atlanta: SBL, 2014),” TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism 20 (2015), http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/v20/TC-2015-Rev-Mason-Martin-Kraus.pdf. Kraus writes an extremely negative review of the volume and its contributions, and he does not deem the book to be useful for advanced doctoral students. The essays in this volume are specifically intended for undergraduate and entry or mid-level graduate students. John Gillman correctly recognizes this goal of the collected essays and states that “the collection achieves its purpose” (“Review,” 802). 70  Martin, “Christians as Babies,” 112. 71 Ibid., 99–100. 72  Ibid, 99.

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these entities are real and exist in the real world.73 George A. Kennedy notes that this statement of Aristotle “is sometimes thought inconsistent with a rigorous ‘substitution’ theory” of metaphor as simply substituting one word for another, and indeed it is.74 This statement indicates that Aristotle’s theory is not totally devoid of the modern conception of metaphor as a phenomenon of thought since this statement indicates that the target of a metaphor, the entity named, is real rather than figurative and that a metaphor enables the mind to label, name, and conceive of that entity. My article applies this specific aspect of Aristotle’s theory to First Peter, which uses metaphors to name a new race of humans and to designate their new unique status as the people of God.75 The Petrine metaphors of new birth and milk thus name new realities for this author and his addresses, and my article attempts to describe how. The new birth that the early Christians experienced in salvation was real and not fictive as Jesus tried to explain to Nicodemus (John 3), and the “undiluted, logical milk” they were consuming in the Eucharist was an important aspect of this new reality for them. The new birth and the milk are not merely symbols but rather realities for the early Christians, and I deliberately use the expression “metaphorical reality” to emphasize that the metaphorical language used by these early Christians names these realities that formerly had no names. Their new reality of being in Christ exceeded the bounds of their former language and speech and demanded new language to express their new Christian experience. My explanation of the “riddle” of metaphorical reality is certainly more extensive than Kraus allows by limiting it to my conclusion and, in my opinion, more reliant on Aristotle’s theory than he indicates. As for my reliance on modern metaphor theory, however, I hope that others will see its usefulness for understanding the infant metaphors used not only in First Peter but also in other early Christian texts. In addition to metaphor, a second issue in my article that receives attention is my new approach to the old interpretive problem regarding the “logical, undiluted milk” and especially the translation of λογικόν and ἄδολον in 1 Pet 2:3. For those who heard my oral presentations, this issue was of great interest and importance, and this issue is also of primary interest to Alicia D. Myers. In her recent book, she cites my article as “against the general trend” for interpreting this verse, and she notes, “Martin translates the phrase as ‘logical, undiluted 73  See George A. Kennedy, Aristotle On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse Newly Translated with Introduction, Notes, and Appendixes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 224. Kennedy’s rendering expresses my understanding more explicitly that does the Loeb translation. Kennedy translates, “Further, in naming something that does not have a proper name of its own, metaphor should be used.” 74  Ibid., 224 n. 32. 75  Martin, “Christians as Babies,” 99–100.

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milk.’”76 These two descriptions of my article are accurate, but then she proceeds to say, “Martin … understands both God and Christ to be figured as male: God is the Father and Christ’s blood/word of God is his sperm (‘Christians as Babies,’ 110–111).”77 I fear she has misread what I have written and intended to communicate, for I neither describe nor understand Christ’s blood as God’s sperm and certainly not as fulfilling the male role in procreation. I explain that according to ancient physiology, “the blood-semen of the male provides the formal, efficient, and final causes [for conception], while the female blood serves as the material cause.”78 I conclude my explanation by stating, “The blood of Christ is thus the material source of the new begetting of these recipients, and the word of God is the active power or principle that shapes this blood into the new life created by this begetting.”79 Perhaps, my explanation would have been less open to misreading by Myers if I had stated that “the blood of Christ is thus the female material source” and that “the word of God is the active male principle.” That is certainly what I meant and what underlies my understanding of how the metaphorical language of infant conception and nutrition in First Peter communicates “the mutual effectiveness of both word and sacrament.”80 This understanding of Christ’s blood and God’s word as fulfilling the respective roles of the female and the male in conception also underlies my application of the metaphors when I state, “The blood of Christ received in the sacrament provides the substance for the new life, while the word of God shapes that life into a childlike form.”81 Again, adding female before the term substance might have provided more clarity, but I hope what I have now written makes it plain that I equally emphasize the female as well as the male conceptive role for Christ’s blood and God’s word.82 Myers also misrepresents my position when she accuses me of “collapsing [God’s] word with Christ’s blood” and paraphrases me as saying, “God is the Father and Christ’s blood/word of God is his sperm (‘Christians as Babies,’ 110– 111).”83 On these two pages she references, I argue precisely the opposite of what her paraphrase indicates. The formulation “Christ’s blood/word of God” is hers, not mine, and I wonder if Myers has confused my position with that of Philip 76  Alicia D. Myers, Blessed among Women? Mothers and Motherhood in the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), Chapter 4 n. 86. 77  Ibid., Chapter 4 n. 88. 78  Martin, “Christians as Babies,” 108. 79  Ibid., 110. 80  Ibid., 111. 81  Ibid. 82  I have a similar emphasis on the conceptive role of both male and female in my article “Clarifying a Curiosity,” 178–185. Myers, however, does not cite this article, which would have helped prevent her misreading. 83  Myers, Blessed among Women, Chapter 4 n. 88.

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L. Tite, who designates the milk in 1 Pet 2:3 as “the imperishable ‘word of God’ that is derived from the ‘precious blood of Christ.’”84 Myers discusses both of our articles together, and what Tite has written can be interpreted as collapsing God’s word with Christ’s blood. Regardless of what caused Myers’ misrepresentation, I want to emphasize that God’s word and Christ’s blood are not the same in my explanation of the new birth metaphor. God’s word provides the active male role in the new birth while Christ’s blood furnishes the female material role. God’s word penetrates the community through preaching while Christ’s blood is received in the Eucharist.85 In my opinion, Myers does precisely what she accuses me of doing, namely collapsing God’s word with Christ’s blood. She correctly notes that ancient physiology “can aid in our understanding of 1 Peter, particularly its combination of seed (spora, 1:23), word (logos, rhema, 1:23–2:2), blood (haima, 1:2, 19), and milk (gala, 2:2) that has puzzled modern interpreters.”86 She quotes 1 Pet 1:23–24 and explains that the imperishable seed that begets “is the ‘good news’ delivered to the believers” and that “their hearing and accepting the ‘good news’ has implanted God’s word in them and that this imperishable seed “contains both his [God’s] word and the ‘precious blood’ … of Jesus.”87 She equates God’s word (1 Pet 1:23–24) with Christ’s blood (1 Pet 1:18–19) because both are described as imperishable, and then she understands both as components of God’s imperishable seed. In 1 Pet 1:18–19, however, Christ’s imperishable blood is not the generative shaping-seed but the ransom that frees these believers from their former life. Myers’ collapsing of God’s word and the blood of Jesus into the generative seed thus rests on an equivocation of the adjective imperishable,  Tite, “Nurslings,” 390. “Christians as Babies,” 110–111. 86 Myers, Blessed among Women, 104. My article demonstrates the importance of ancient physiology for understanding the Petrine combination of all these concepts even though Myers does not credit my article here with this insight. Indeed, she never mentions my work in the body of her paper even though she adopts my approach for interpreting this Petrine passage. She does mention and quote my former student Philip Tite but relegates my work to a couple of footnotes. What future researchers of the history of ideas should know is that this line of interpretation was first suggested to me by Edward Englebrecht, “God’s Milk: An Orthodox Confession of the Eucharist” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Region of the Society of Biblical Literature, Wheaton College, Naperville, IL, 1997), 1–24. I later mentioned to a group of my former students the importance of interpreting this Petrine milk-metaphor from the source domain of ancient physiology. Philip Tite was among this group and took the idea for his own work. The transmission of this approach to interpreting this metaphor thus runs from Englebrecht to me, to Tite, and then to Myers with each of us adding our own contributions to the interpretation. See Martin, “Christians as Babies,” 107 n. 8 and idem, “Tasting the Eucharistic Lord as Usable (1 Peter 2:3),” CBQ 78 (2016): 515–525, here 517 n. 10. See also John David Penniman, Raised on Christian Milk: Food and the Formation of the Soul in Early Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017). Unfortunately, Penniman is unaware of Englebrecht’s contribution to this line of interpretation and does not even mention my work at all. Hopefully, future scholars will not overlook the origin and early transmission of this idea of Christian milk. 87 Myers, Blessed among Women, 104. 84

85 Martin,

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which indeed modifies blood, word, and seed but does not mean that all of these entitles are equivalent either in essence or in function. Furthermore, she also collapses God’s word and Jesus’ blood by conceiving both to be in the milk that these believers should desire. She explains, “Having been conceived and nourished by blood and word in the womb, these ‘newly begotten babes’ are to continue drinking these elements in the milk provided at the breast. Thus, they are continually shaped by this word in order to grow into their salvation.”88 She concludes, “The milk to be sought after is full of the word – or ‘word-like’ – because it continues to convey the ‘imperishable seed’ involved at conception and in generation. … The believers are drinking from – and indeed, drinking in – the Lord Christ himself.”89 Myers’ notion that the milk “continues to convey the ‘imperishable seed’” blurs a basic distinction in ancient physiology.90 While both seed and milk are frothed blood, these two bodily fluids are not the same. Seed is not milk and neither is milk, seed. The seed generates while the milk nourishes. Myers also blurs this physiological distinction when she asserts that by drinking milk, these believers “are continually shaped by this word in order to grow into their salvation.”91 The milk does not shape; the seed shapes while the milk nourishes. Consistent with the blurring of this physiological distinction, Myers then translates τὸ λογικὸν ἄδολον γάλα in 1 Pet 2:2 as “long for the pure, word-like milk.”92 Her translation demonstrates her collapsing of God’s generative word with the nourishing milk of Jesus’ blood.93 Her explanation of the milk metaphor in 1 Pet 2:2 and her translation are problematic not only because they blur a basic physiological distinction but also because they confuse First Peter’s Christology with that of John’s logos Christology. At the conclusion of her interpretation of 1 Pet 2:1–3, Myers comments, “In this way, the imagery of 1 Peter brings us back to that of the Gospel of John.”94 For Myers, the Petrine Christ is the logos/word of John’s Gospel, and thus according to her, Christ is both God’s generative seed and the nourishing milk these believers should desire.95 In contrast, my mapping of this Petrine metaphor clearly distinguishes and separates God’s generative and shaping seed, which  Ibid., 104.  Ibid., 105. 90  Ibid. 91  Ibid., 104. 92  Ibid., 103. 93  See further my evaluation of Myers’ translation and interpretation of this passage in the reception history of my article “Tasting the Eucharistic Lord as Useable (1 Pet 2:3)” at the end of essay 12 (pp. 266–269) of this volume. 94  Ibid., 105. 95  Myers’ understanding of the Petrine Jesus in terms of the Johannine logos must be demonstrated more thoroughly than she does since almost all modern interpreters reject such an understanding. 88 89

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is the preached gospel (1 Pet 1:28), from the nourishing milk as Christ’s blood, which supplies the material source for generation and continued growth through its consumption in the Eucharist. Therefore, I do not understand how Myers can accuse me of “collapsing [God’s] word with Christ’s blood,” and I really do not see how her own interpretation escapes this very charge.96 As my article continues to be read and engaged by other scholars, I hope that beyond differences of opinion about individual details of what I have written, we can all agree that ancient physiological understandings of conception and infant nutrition should be considered when interpreting 1 Pet 2:1–3 more than they have been in previous scholarship. I also hope that my article will influence translations of the expression τὸ λογικὸν ἄδολον γάλα in 1 Pet 2:2 to avoid renderings such as “spiritual” or “word-like milk” but rather to reflect more precisely the notion of “logical, undiluted milk.” I deem this translation and my use of ancient physiology in the interpretation of this passage to be the major contributions of this article, and I trust that future interpreters will continue to build on these insights.97

 Myers, Blessed among Women, Chapter 4 n. 88.  Surprisingly, Michael Pope does not even mention my article “Christians as Babies” in his recent publication “Luke’s Seminal Annunciation: An Embryological Reading of Mary’s Conception,” JBL 138 (2019): 791–807. Pope knows at least some of my work on ancient medicine, and in n. 27 on p. 798, he comments, “Previous scholarship has fruitfully mined ancient medical texts to expand and shift our understanding of how New Testament authors employed concepts of πνεῦμα and related ideas. See, e. g., Troy W. Martin, “Paul’s Pneumatological Statements and Ancient Medical Texts,” in The New Testament and Early Christian Literature in Greco-Roman Context: Studies in Honor of David E. Aune, ed. John Fotopoulos, NovTSup 122 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 105–126. Even though he mentions this article, he overlooks not only my article “Christian as Babies” but also my other embryological studies on ancient medicine and physiology that pertain more specifically to his “Embryological Reading of Mary’s Conception.” In addition, Pope does not investigate wind pregnancies, which are the most similar physiological contexts for understanding Mary’s wind or Spirit pregnancy. See especially Troy W. Martin, “Animals Impregnated by the Wind and Mary’s Pregnancy by the Holy Spirit,” Annali di storia dell’esegesi 31 (2014): 11–24; idem, Il vento fecondo: Gravidanze insolite nel mondo antico, Edizioni Dehoniane Bologna 13, trans. Romeo Fabbri. (Bologna: Centro Editoriale Dehoniano, 2015), passim; and idem, “Clarifying a Curiosity: The Plural Bloods (αἱμάτων) in John 1:13,” in Christian Body, Christian Self, WUNT 284, ed. Clare K. Rothschild and Trevor Thompson (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 175–185. See also Troy W. Martin, “Paul’s Argument from Nature for the Veil in 1 Corinthians 11:13–15: A Testicle instead of a Head-Covering,” JBL 123 (2004): 71–80; and idem, “Tasting the Eucharistic Lord as Useable (1 Pet 2:3),” 515–525. In future studies, Pope and others will hopefully consult these articles as well as my forthcoming publication “The DNA of Logos in First Peter 2:23–24,” in Listening Again to the Text: New Testament Studies in Honor of George Lyons, ed. Richard Thompson and Tom Phillips (Claremont: Claremont Press, forthcoming). 96 97

II. Christ’s Healing Sore: A Medical Reading of First Peter 2:24* 1. Introduction Sores are disgusting and especially those oozing pus or other bodily fluids. Sores are a pathological problem, and the various therapies focus on the sore to heal it and restore it to a healthy condition. All these statements about sores appear indisputable to anyone living today, and modern perceptions about sores make the translation and interpretation of the term μώλωψ (“sore”) in 1 Pet 2:24 quite difficult if not impossible. This term occurs in the relative clause οὗ τῷ μώλωπι ἰάθητε (“by whose sore you were healed”). The antecedent of the pronoun οὗ (“whose”) is Christ, and thus the Petrine author asserts that the healing of others occurs by means of Christ’s sore. Not surprisingly, Leonard Goppelt comments, “That Christ’s wound [sore] effects healing … represents an unclear image for the healing of the illness of sinning through his vicarious suffering.”1 This lack of clarity about the relationship between Christ’s sore and healing arises in part from a lack of understanding about the ancient source domain of Peter’s salvific metaphor of the sore in that commentators perceive a μώλωψ as a destructive problem rather than as part of a restorative process.

2. Translation and Interpretative Problems According to the Nestle-Aland 28th revised edition, the Greek text of 1 Pet 2:24 reads as follows: ὃς τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἡμῶν αὐτὸς ἀνήνεγκεν ἐν τῷ σώματι αὐτοῦ * Versions of this paper were presented to the Society for the Study of Early Christianity at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, on May 5, 2018; at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature on November 18, 2017; at the annual meeting of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas on August 11, 2017; and at the annual meeting of the Midwest Region of the Society of Biblical Literature on February 11, 2017. I am grateful for the comments from those in attendance at these meetings, and I especially want to thank Edmondo Lupieri, who offered several helpful suggestions for improving an earlier draft of this paper. Of course, I bear responsibility for any errors that remain, and all translations of ancient texts are mine unless otherwise noted. 1 Leonhard Goppelt, A Commentary on 1 Peter, ed. Ferdinand Hahn, trans. John E. Alsup (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 214.

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ἐπὶ τὸ ξύλον, ἵνα ταῖς ἁμαρτίαις ἀπογενόμενοι τῇ δικαιοσύνῃ ζήσωμεν, οὗ τῷ μώλωπι ἰάθητε. This verse consists of two relative clauses whose antecedent is Christ. The first relative clause presents the effects of Christ’s Passion as a forensic bearing of the sins of others, and similar forensic salvific metaphors are common in the early Christian tradition. The second clause, however, contains a hygienic salvific metaphor that is not as common, and this metaphor raises several problems for modern translators and commentators as they attempt to understand the term μώλωψ. One problem with translating and interpreting μώλωψ in 1 Pet 2:24 is the frequent rendering of this term as a plural even though it is singular in Greek (cf. American Standard Version, New American Bible, New American Standard Bible, New International Version). Common English translations include “through his bruises” (New Jerusalem Bible) or “by whose stripes” (King James Version) or “by his wounds” (Revised Standard Version) the healing of others occurs. Many commentators note that the term is singular but then render it as a plural. Examples include Paul Achtemeier and Karen Jobes, who translate “by whose wounds you were [are] healed.”2 A few commentators take issue with this plural rendering, and J. Ramsey Michaels, for example, notes that the term is singular and then cautions against translating it as “bruises” or as “stripes.”3 Nevertheless, he does not clearly explain why a plural translation of this singular Greek term should be avoided. Another problem with the translation of μώλωψ in 1 Pet 2:24 is the rendering of this single Greek term by so many different target words including “bruises” (New Jerusalem Bible), “stripes” (American Standard Version, The Darby Bible, Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition, English Revised Version, Geneva Bible, King James Version, Tyndale’s New Testament), and “wounds” (Bible in Basic English, Common English Bible, The Complete Jewish Bible, English Standard Version, New American Bible, New American Standard Bible, New English Translation, New International Version, Revised Standard Version). Perhaps, Peter’s source text of Isa 53:5 LXX partially explains these different renderings since this verse attributes all three of these types of sores to the Suffering Servant. According to the American Standard Version, this verse reads: “But he was wounded (ἐτραυματίσθη) for our transgressions, he was bruised (μεμαλάκισται) for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes (μώλωπι) we are healed.” The term μώλωψ in Isa 53:5 LXX is the same word used in 1 Pet 2:24, and many versions render it with the same English word (“bruises,” New Jerusalem Bible; “stripes,” American Standard Version, The Darby Bible, English Revised Version, Geneva Bible, King James Version; 2  Paul J. Achtemeier, 1 Peter: A Commentary on First Peter, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 190; Karen H. Jobes, 1 Peter, BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 196. 3  J. Ramsey Michaels, 1 Peter, WBC 49 (Waco, TX: Word, 1988), 150.

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“wounds,” Bible in Basic English, Common English Bible, English Standard Version, New American Bible, New English Translation, New International Version). Some of these versions, however, render this term in Isa 53:5 as “bruises” but as “stripes” (Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition) or “wounds” (The Complete Jewish Bible) in 1 Pet 2:24 or as “stripes” in the Isaian verse but as “wounds” in the Petrine verse (Revised Standard Version) or as “scourging” in Isaiah but as “wounds” in First Peter (New American Standard Bible). A recent English translation of the Septuagint renders the clause in Isaiah as “by his bruise we were healed.”4 This translation correctly renders the singular number of the term μώλωψ while limiting the meaning of the term to a “bruise,” which may be a type of wound or sore but is very different from a stripe. Lexicons are not very helpful either in resolving the translation difficulty of μώλωψ but actually compound the problem by presenting “welt” and “wale” as possible translations in addition to “bruise” and “wound.”5 The inconsistency in the rendering of the term μώλωψ in both Isa 53:5 LXX and 1 Pet 2:24 represents a substantial problem in translating this term. Related to problems with the singularity of the term and its meaning, yet another problem with μώλωψ in 1 Pet 2:24 is specifying its referent. Since a blow may cause a sore, many commentators understand the reference of μώλωψ in the Petrine text to be Christ’s scourging recounted in Mark 15:15; Matt 27:26; and John 19:1, and these commentators typically prefer the translation “stripes.”6 For example, a commentary attributed to Oecumenius notes that being scourged by Pilate, Jesus bore stripes (μώλωπας) upon his body.7 This commentary appro4  Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright, eds., A New English Translation of the Septuagint: A New Translation of the Greek into Contemporary English – an Essential Resource for Biblical Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). The decision of these translations to render the term as “bruise” may have been influenced by Brenton’s earlier popular English translation of the Septuagint, although Brenton renders the term as a plural. See Lancelot C. J.  Brenton, The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament, according to the Vatican Text, Translated into English: with the Principal Various Readings of the Alexandrine Copy and a Table of Comparative Chronology (London: Bagster, 1844). Of course, the preference for “bruise” or “bruises” to render μώλωπι is probably ultimately influenced by the underlying Hebrew word ‫חבּוּרה‬, which refers to a contusion or a bruise according to Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti Libros (Leiden: Brill, 1958), 270. 5  See for example, Frederick W. Danker, Walter Bauer, William F. Arndt, F. Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 663. 6   J. H. A.  Hart, The First Epistle General of Peter, The Expositor’s Greek Testament 5 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1903; repr. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 62; Charles Bigg, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1987), 149; Edward G. Selwyn, The First Epistle of St. Peter: The Greek Text with Introduction, Notes, and Essays, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1947; repr. Thornapple Commentaries; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1981), 181. 7  Oecumenius, Petri Apostoli prior epistola catholica 4.504 in Commentarii in epistolas catholicas (PG 119:544). Although the manuscript is attributed to Oecumenius, the Bishop of Trikka in Thessaly near the end of the tenth century, many doubts remain about this attribution

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priately uses the plural μώλωπας since a scourging would produce many stripes or sores, but the term μώλωψ in 1 Pet 2:24 is singular, not plural, and translating the term as “stripes” is not an accurate rendering of the singular term in the Petrine text. For some other commentators, this singular term points to the death of Jesus rather than specifically to his scourging while still others see the singular as a metonymy in reference to all of Christ’s suffering and death.8 In spite of their disagreement about the precise referent of Christ’s sore, commentators generally agree that it refers to some aspect of his suffering that vicariously effects healing.9 Ernst Kühl however perceptively notes, “Wie und warum das geschehen ist, bleibt ungesagt.”10 Indeed, the Petrine author does not explain how Christ’s sore effects the healing of others but rather relies on his ancient audience’s understanding of how a sore works. Lacking this understanding, modern interpreters encounter many problems in the interpretation and translation of μώλωψ in 1 Pet 2:24.

3. The Ancient Physiological Source Domain Whereas moderns tend to view all sores as unhealthy, pathological, and in need of healing, the ancients have a different view. Plutarch remarks that something resembling a sore (μώλωπα) appears when a bronze nail is driven into flesh since the decaying and damaged parts flow to this spot so that the rest of the surrounding flesh remains sound and healthy (Quaest. conv. 3.10 = Mor. 659d). Instead of simply presenting a health problem, a μώλωψ is a bodily response to as well as the dating. The text of the manuscript that contains the commentary on First Peter is identical with the commentary of Theophylactus of Achrida in the eleventh century, but the commentary attributed to Oecumenius is probably earlier and perhaps several centuries earlier. Regardless of authorship, this manuscript demonstrates that understanding μώλωψ in 1 Pet 2:24 in reference to Christ’s scourging prompts the commentator to use the plural form of this term in his comments on the Petrine text.  8  For examples of those who interpret μώλωπι in reference to Christ’s death, see Michaels, 1 Peter, 150; Mark Dubis, I Peter: A Handbook on the Greek Text, BHGN (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2010), 81; and Joel B. Green, 1 Peter, The Two Horizons New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 89–90. Those who see this term in reference to Christ’s suffering as a whole include Urbanus Holzmeister, Commentarius in Epistulas SS. Petri et Iudae Apostolorum, Cursus Scripturae Sacrae (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1937), 273; John H. Elliott, 1 Peter: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Yale Bible 37B (New York: Yale University Press, 2000), 536–537; and Duane F. Watson and Terrance Callan, First and Second Peter, Paideia Commentaries on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), 70–71.  9 See the comments by Ernst Kühl, Die Briefe Petri und Judae, 6th ed., KEK 12 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1897), 183–184; Rudolf Knopf, Die Briefe Petri und Judä, 7th ed., KEK 12 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1912), 120; J. N. D. Kelly, A Commentary on the Epistles of Peter and Jude, Thornapple Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1981), 124; Ernest Best, 1 Peter, The New Century Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), 123. 10 Kühl, Die Briefe, 184.

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27

trauma that facilitates the repair and healing of the injured tissue by drawing the damaged tissue away from the healthy tissue so that the latter can remain healthy. Thus, Lucian describes the punishment of a slave caught stealing votive coins from a sacred statue and says that this slave was flogged every night thereafter so that sores (μώλωπας) appeared on his body the next day (Philops. 20). This slave shortly died, not from the sores but rather from the beatings. The sores were his body’s attempt to repair itself from the damage caused by the beatings, but the continual beatings in the end overcame his body’s efforts to heal itself, and he died. A term related to μώλωψ but different in some ways is ἕλκος, which refers to a sore and specifically to a lesion caused either by trauma or an illness.11 This word is the nominal form of the verb ἕλκειν, which means “to draw” or “to drag”, and the word ἕλκος (“lesion”) thus emphasizes the function of a sore to draw and attract morbid and destructive substances to itself. Galen explains what a ἕλκος is when he writes, “One certain type of malady is the release of cohesion, which occurs in all the parts of animals but which is not called the same in all [the parts], for it is called a lesion (ἕλκος) in a fleshy part, a fracture (κάταγμα) in a bone, and a tear (σπάσμα) in a ligament” (De methodo medendi 14 [Kühn 10:232]). According to Galen, a lesion (ἕλκος) is a separation or opening of a fleshly part of the body that should cohere together, and he classifies this opening as a malady (νόσος) or deviation from the healthy. Galen’s description of a ἕλκος as a separation or opening of a fleshly part also applies to a μώλωψ, and an Aristotelian author describes a spring whose water treats lesions (ἕλκη) and bruises (θλάσματα), which are a type of μώλωψ, and makes them healthy (ὑγιεινά) by facilitating the growth of the edges of the opening back together (Mir. ausc. 117 [841b]).12 According to these authors, a sore is an indication that something is wrong, and they perceive the sore as an opening that separates and creates a space or cavity to which tissue and liquids are drawn since an open11  See Hesychius, Lexicon Π-Σ, 1277. Galen places both a lesion (ἕλκος) and a contusion (θλάσμα) in the same category of maladies characterized by the release of cohesion (De methodo medendi 14 [Kühn 10:232]). He says that a contusion (θλάσμα) sometimes occurs “in a ligament, other times both in bodily cavities and muscles from the force of a blow or of a fall or some other forceful movement.” Since a contusion (θλάσμα) is a type of μώλωψ, Galen thus places a μώλωψ in the same category in which he places a lesion (ἕλκος). 12  This author illustrates the power of this water to heal sores by saying that it enables a broken branch to grow together again and to become whole. Although the author is unknown, the work is generally considered to be from the Peripatetic School and belongs to the genre of paradoxography, which is a compilation of strange and astonishing phenomena recounted in various localities. Dates for the compilation range from the second to the sixth centuries CE. See Gwilym E. L. Owen, “Aristotle,” in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. Nicholas G. L. Hammond and Howard H. Scullard, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), 114–118, here 115. The account of this healing spring is part of the phenomenon of sacred springs and rivers in antiquity and especially those with healing powers. See Sam Eitrem and Joseph E. Fontenrose, “Springs, Sacred,” in Hammond and Scullard, Oxford Classical Dictionary, 1010.

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ing or cavity or hollow space according to ancient medical theory exerts suction power and attracts substances. While a sore is an indication of a malady, it also provides a means for healing that malady by attracting to itself the morbid substances causing that malady. The Hippocratic Corpus contains an entire treatise devoted to lesions or sores (ἕλκεα), and the author points out that a ἕλκος is moist whereas healthy tissue is dry, and he recommends not restricting the flow of fluid to or from a ἕλκος by the application of bandages or plasters unless the treatment enhances the power of the ἕλκος in drawing off the harmful liquids and substances. He explains, “It is necessary for the tissues that have been crushed and severed to melt and ooze out (ἐκτακῆναι) after they putrefy and become pus” (De ulceribus 1).13 Throughout this treatise, the author emphasizes that if this damaged tissue is not discharged through a ἕλκος, then it causes even more damage to the surrounding healthy tissue, and this notion of the function of a ἕλκος becomes a basic principle of the function of sores in ancient medicine. This principle is so essential that it provides an important prognostic tool and can even predict impending death or a restoration to health. A Hippocratic author writes, “If the patient happens to have a ἕλκος before the onset of the illness or if a ἕλκος arises during the illness, study it closely, for if the patient is about to die, the ἕλκος will become livid and dry or pale and hard before death” (Progn. 3). When a ἕλκος becomes dry or hard and ceases to draw off harmful substances, death is impending because these substances build up and increasingly damage the healthy tissue. According to this principle, the opposite is of course true as well, and a flowing ἕλκος can also signal a healthy outcome. In the treatment of avulsion (ἀπόσπασμα), for example, when a piece of bone has broken off inside the body, a flowing ἕλκος is the sign that the treatment has been effective, and the bone is about to be discharged. Another author of the Corpus explains, “The following is a sign if a discharge of bones is about to happen by this manner of treatment, for much pus flows from the ἕλκος and it appears well-watered” (Fract. 28).14 This author recommends changing the bandages frequently because of the abundance of fluids flowing from the ἕλκος but discourages applying the bandages so tightly so as to compress the ἕλκος and hinder the flow. Allowing the pus and harmful substances to flow freely from the ἕλκος thus facilitates health and healing, but hindering such flows is detrimental according to this basic principle of the function of sores in ancient medicine. According to this principle, a μώλωψ resembles a ἕλκος but differs in some important ways. Epictetus explains one of these differences and writes, “Certain 13 The Greek text published in the Loeb Edition reads: καὶ ἀνάγκη τὰς σάρκας τὰς φλασθείσας καὶ κοπείσας σαπείσας καὶ πῦον γενομένας ἐκτακῆναι. 14  The Greek text in the Loeb Edition reads: σημεῖον δὲ τόδε, ἢν μέλλῃ ὀστέων ἀπόστασις ἔσεσθαι ἐν τῷ τρόπῳ τούτῳ τῆς ἰητρείης πῦον γὰρ συχνὸν ῥέει ἐκ τοῦ ἕλκεος καὶ ὀργᾶν φαίνεται.

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marks (ἴχνη) and sores (μώλωπες) are left behind in the soul, which if someone should not erase them well, when this person receives blows again on these same marks and sores, [the soul] makes no longer self-contained, non-running sores (μώλωπας) but running sores or lesions (ἕλκη)” (Diatr. 2.18.11).15 Epictetus draws an analogy between the body and the soul in response to trauma, and he distinguishes between a μώλωψ as a non-running sore and a ἕλκος, which opens-up and oozes fluids. Both types of sores draw the damaged substances to themselves, but the ἕλκος is more likely to discharge and expel these harmful substances whereas a μώλωψ tends to retain them. Thus, ancient authors associate the term μώλωψ with several other terms referring to bodily responses to trauma that do not run or ooze fluids. Galen associates a μώλωψ with a σμῶδιξ, which is a raised or swollen welt (Glossarium [Kühn 19:139). Hesychius does the same and then connects both to a ὕφαιμος, which refers to a collection of blood under the skin or a bruise (Lexicon Π-Σ, 1296–1297). Hesychius defines all three as the wound or mark (τύπος) caused by a blow, and an Aristotelian author adds οὐλαί (“scars”) to this list (Probl. 9.1–14 [889b–891a]). None of these specific types of μώλωπες (“sores”) runs or oozes fluids but retains the damaged substances within itself. Soranus says that a bruise (θλάσμα) resembles an ulcer (κοίλωμα), but without a discharge (ἄνευ ῥήξεως; De signis fracturarum 9). The former is a type of μώλωψ while the latter is a type of ἕλκος. Both a μώλωψ and a ἕλκος, therefore, draw the damaged substances to themselves, but an important distinction between them is that a μώλωψ does not typically expel or discharge these morbid substances while a ἕλκος does. Oribasius suggests another important difference between a μώλωψ and a ἕλκος when he says that the black and blue tubercles caused by leprosy are most likened to sores (μώλωψι; (Collectiones medicae 45.28.3). Significantly, Oribasius does not call these tubercles a μώλωψ but rather says that they resemble it. Thus, the term μώλωψ does not typically designate a sore arising from an illness but rather from some blow or trauma to the body. Not surprisingly therefore, the terms μώλωψ and τραῦμα (“blow” or “damage” or “wound”) often occur together.16 For example, Judith prays that her deceitful speech will be for a “trauma and a sore” (τραῦμα καὶ μώλωπα) to all those who plot against her God’s covenant and house (Jdt 9:13 LXX). In his speech to his wives, Lamech places trauma (τραῦμα) and sore (μώλωπα) in parallel thoughts (Gen 4:23 LXX). Isaiah presents Yahweh as complaining in regard to his people that “from the feet to the head, no trauma (τραῦμα) or sore (μώλωψ) or festering wound (πληγὴ

15  The Greek text in the Loeb Edition reads: ἴχνη τινὰ καὶ μώλωπες ἀπολείπονται ἐν αὐτῇ, οὓς εἰ μή τις ἐξαλείψῃ καλῶς, πάλιν κατὰ τῶν αὐτῶν μαστιγωθεὶς οὐκέτι μώλωπας, ἀλλ’ ἕλκη ποιεῖ. 16  See this connection in Hesychius, Lexicon Π-Σ, 1277.

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φλεγμαίνουσα) is treated with plaster or oil or bandages” (Isa 1:6 LXX).17 In his description of the Suffering Servant, Isaiah explicitly makes a connection between trauma and a μώλωψ by describing the Servant as being traumatized (ἐτραυματίσθη) and then producing a sore (μώλωψ) that heals (Isa 53:5 LXX). The connection in all these texts between τραῦμα and μώλωψ indicates that the latter is usually produced by the body in response to some trauma suffered by the body whereas a ἕλκος may result from either trauma or an illness. When both types of sores are caused by trauma, the difference is that fluids typically ooze or flow from a ἕλκος but not from a μώλωψ. Regardless of these differences, however, the similarity should not be overlooked that both draw the damaged substances to themselves so that the surrounding tissue can become and remain healthy. This aspect of a μώλωψ is perhaps further demonstrated by its use in the Septuagint to render the Hebrew term ‫“( חבוּרה‬contusion,” “bruise,” or “sore”). Relevant passages include Gen 4:23; Exod 21:25; Isa 1:6; 53:5; and Ps 37(38):6. The etymology of this Hebrew word is complex and not entirely clear, but it likely derives from one of two roots. The first “conveys the concept of color or brightness,” and the second refers to uniting, associating, or forming some contractual connection.18 This latter option complements the idea of a μώλωψ in drawing or uniting the damaged substances within itself so that the surrounding tissue can remain healthy. The assertion that the Suffering Servant’s μώλωψ provides health in Isa 53:5 LXX favors this root with the idea of uniting as the preferred etymology for the Hebrew ‫“( חבוּרה‬contusion,” “bruise,” or “sore”) at least in this verse. The function of a sore in drawing harmful substances to itself to facilitate the health of the surrounding tissue represents a basic principle in ancient medicine and is an essential feature of the source domain of Peter’s metaphor of Christ’s healing sore in 1 Pet 2:24.

17 See Amy Kalmanofsky, “Israel’s Open Sore in the Book of Jeremiah,” JBL 135 (2016): 247– 263, here 249. Kalmanofsky deals with Isa 1:6 and other passages that refer to Israel’s incurable sore, and she seeks to understand how this image “is constructed broadly and how it functions throughout Jeremiah.” Unfortunately, her analysis is hindered by her decision not to “address each example of the sore in its immediate literary context.” Her study also uses the English word sore as its primary analytical category and does not discuss the implications of the differing nuances of the various Hebrew words for sores in these passages. She assumes a modern view of sores as pathological and does not rely on the ancient view of the healing function of sores even though this view supports her conclusion (p. 263) that “the image of the incurable sore is itself a source of healing.” The incurable sore demonstrates that Israel cannot heal itself by its own efforts but must turn to God for removal of its sin, which is the reason this sore developed in the first place. Once the underlying cause of sin is removed, this sore is no longer needed, and it will scab or scar over as a sign that Israel’s health has been restored. 18  H. Cazelles, “‫חבר‬,” TDOT 4:193–197, here 193.

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4. Christ’s Healing Sore Considering the source domain of Peter’s hygienic, salvific metaphor in 1 Pet 2:24, attempts to identify or specify Christ’s sore as the stripes from his scourging or as the puncture wounds from the thorns, the spikes, or the spear or even as his death obscure the target domain of the metaphor. Although it is a response to trauma, a μώλωψ does not emphasize the trauma itself but rather points to the body’s response in an effort to heal itself from the destructive trauma. Ancient authors demonstrate that the term μώλωψ in 1 Pet 2:24 can indeed refer to a “bruise,” “stripe,” “wound,” “welt,” or even a “scar,” but they also demonstrate that the Petrine author does not use a term specifying one or the other of these but rather a broader, more inclusive term for a genus of sores that includes all of these bodily responses to trauma. The Petrine author could have chosen a more limited word to specify one of these particular types of μώλωπες but instead opts for the broader, more general term μώλωψ that refers to any non-running sore produced by the body as a result of trauma, and this word choice is significant for the target domain of Peter’s metaphor. Rather than referencing any specific trauma or all the trauma that Christ received in his Passion, the term μώλωψ in 1 Pet 2:24 emphasizes the response of Christ’s body to heal itself of that trauma. This Petrine author uses the singular term likely in reference to Christ’s body as a whole since the trauma that Christ received in his Passion was so severe from his head to his feet that his entire body had to respond to it.19 The author presents this healing process as so efficacious that it suffices not only for Christ himself but also for all of his followers as well, and he writes to some Christian domestic slaves that “by Christ’s sore, you have been healed.” This metaphor presents Christ as drawing to himself on the cross all the damage caused by sin in the lives of these slaves so that they could become healthy. The source domain of a μώλωψ, therefore, provides this author a natural and vivid way for explaining the salvific healing effects Christ provides for all of his followers and especially for these domestic slaves the Petrine author is addressing since their bodies had often healed themselves from physical punishments by producing sores such as welts, raised welts, bruises, and scars.20 The damage caused by sin in their lives, however, could not be healed by any sore their bodies produced, but rather their healing from the destruction of sin was by means of Christ’s sore so that they could have spiritual health. Instead of specifying the destructive wounds that Christ received in his Passion, the Petrine 19 The singular number of μώλωψ is indeed taken over from Isa 53:5 LXX, but the Petrine author could have changed it to a plural if he had wanted since he makes other changes in his quotation of this source such as changing the personal pronoun to a relative pronoun and the first person of the verb to a second person. The singular number of μώλωπι must therefore be intentional. 20  Kelly, Commentary, 124.

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author’s metaphor of Christ’s μώλωψ emphasizes a salvific process of healing effected by Christ’s Passion and effective not only for these domestic slaves but also for all those who believe in Christ. This hygienic-salvific metaphor, however, exceeds its source domain since a sore on one body does not heal another body much less many other bodies. To be effective, a sore must have a connection with the body or body part that it heals. Of course, the early Christian tradition envisions such a connection since every believer is incorporated into the body of Christ and is a member of Christ’s body.21 Hence, Christ’s sore can provide healing for all his followers since they comprise his body. Perhaps, the Petrine author assumes this early Christian tradition for his metaphor of Christ’s healing sore, but he does not specifically reference a conception of Christ’s corporate body in his letter. Nevertheless, he does present a related idea with believers as living stones coming to Christ as the living cornerstone or keystone to form a spiritual house or temple (1 Pet 2:4–6), and other Christian texts also portray the body as a temple. Jesus says, “Destroy this temple, and I shall raise it in three days” (John 2:19). The Johannine author then explains that Jesus was speaking about the temple of his body (John 2:21). Paul also conceives of the body as a temple both individually and corporately.22 Even though the Petrine author does not explicitly state that believers are incorporated into Christ’s body, therefore, he does understand believers as connected to Christ, and this connection allows for Christ’s sore to heal all those who are in Christ and joined to him. This hygienic metaphor appropriately follows the Petrine author’s statement in 1 Pet 2:24a that Christ bore responsibility for the sins of these domestic slaves in his body (ἐν τῷ σώματι αὐτοῦ) on the wood [cross]. This statement is a more familiar forensic explanation of the effects of Christ’s Passion than the hygienic explanation expressed by the metaphor of Christ’s healing sore, but it nevertheless provides a focal point for both. The traumatized body of Christ on the cross is the locus and instrument that both releases these domestics from the punishment for their sins and heals the destruction caused by sin in their lives. In 1 Pet 2:24, the author retains the singular form of the term μώλωψ from his Isaian source, for just as Christ singularly bore responsibility for the sins of others in his body so also did he heal the damage these sins had caused by drawing this damage to his own traumatized body on the cross. When Christ bore the sins of the world in his body on the cross, he took away not only the punishment for sin but also the damage caused by sin. In the context of the earlier part of this verse, this healing means to be freed completely from sin’s damage and its fatal consequence so as to enable a life of rightness, wholeness, and health. Commenting 21  For examples, see 1 Cor 12:12–27; Gal 3:27–28; Col 1:18, 24; 2:17–19; 3:15; Eph 1:22–23; 2:21; 4:10–16; 5:23–32. 22  For an individual body as a temple, see 1 Cor 6:19–20. For the corporate conception, see 1 Cor 3:16–17; 2 Cor 6:16.

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on Peter’s Isaian source, Theodoret observes, “This is a new and paradoxical method of healing; the physician received the incision but the ailing patient obtained the healing” (Commentary on Isaiah 17.88–90 [SC 315:152]).23 Perhaps, Peter’s use of this image of the Suffering Servant is paradoxical if the metaphor is pushed too far, but mapping the source domain of a μώλωψ to the hygienic effects of Christ’s Passion goes a long way toward explaining how the Petrine author and his readers likely understood Christ’s healing sore and its salvific effects.

5. Conclusion The Petrine author’s hygienic metaphor of Christ’s healing sore poses many challenges for translators and interpreters since he is one of the few New Testament authors to present salvation in terms of healing and the only New Testament author to use the term μώλωψ in reference to Christ’s Passion.24 Even in the subsequent developing Christian tradition, his hygienic metaphor does not really take hold. Among the Apostolic Fathers, only 1 Clem. 16:5 and Barn. 5:2 use this term and even then only in a quotation of Isa 53:5 LXX, and so it is not clear if they are relying on or are influenced by 1 Pet 2:24. Hence, this metaphor does not enjoy the multiple references and differing treatments available for the interpretation of other soteriological metaphors such as those drawn from the courtroom or from the institution of slavery. The Petrine author’s intertextual source is Isa 53:5 LXX, but this source does not offer much help either since it poses many of the same interpretative problems and questions as 1 Pet 2:24. Surprisingly, few Petrine scholars examine the ancient perception of the function of sores to resolve these problems even though this perception provides the source domain of this hygienic metaphor. While Leonard Goppelt and other Petrine commentators may view Peter’s hygienic metaphor as presenting “an unclear

23  The Greek text in Sources chrétiennes reads: Καινὸς καὶ παράδοξος ἰατρείας τρόπος· ὁ ἰατρὸς (ἐδέ)ξατο τὴν τομήν, καὶ ὁ ἄρρωστος ἔτυχε τῆς ἰάσεως. The translation of Theodoret’s observation is mine, but I owe the reference to Selwyn (First Epistle, 181), who translates the observation as “a new and strange method of healing; the doctor suffered the cost, and the sick received the healing.” 24 I. Howard Marshall, 1 Peter, The IVP New Testament Commentary Series (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 95. Marshall comments, “Here, then, we have the basis for thinking of salvation in terms of healing, a metaphor that is not developed as much in the New Testament as we might have expected, although it is hard to believe that the healing stories in the Gospels were not used as illustrations of spiritual healing.” For New Testament passages that present salvation in terms of healing, see Matt 8:17; 13:15; John 12:40. All these passages are either quotations or paraphrases of statements about salvation as healing that are found in Isaiah.

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image for the healing of the illness of sinning,” an ancient audience would likely not find the image so unclear.25 Ancient authors often discuss sores, and their writings reveal that the ancients view sores differently than do moderns. Instead of being entirely pathological, sores are part of the body’s healing processes, and they facilitate healing by drawing damaged and morbid substances to themselves and either retaining them in the case of a μώλωψ or discharging them in the case of a ἕλκος. Thus, the Petrine author’s assertion that Christ’s sore has healing power would not be surprising to an ancient audience. What would be new for them, however, is the notion that Christ’s sore could heal others, but then this notion goes to the heart of the Christian proclamation of the mystery of Christ’s Passion and its salvific effects for the entire world. While other soteriological metaphors emphasize Christ’s work in freeing believers from the penalty and bondage of sin, the hygienic metaphor proclaims that Christ on the cross drew into his own body the damage caused by sin in the lives of believers so that they could become healthy. The Petrine author’s hygienic metaphor of Christ’s healing sore is thus a significant complement to other salvific metaphors and indeed confirms Christ as the greatest of healers and physicians.

6. Reception History Since this article is the most recent to appear of all the previously published articles in this volume, it has not yet been discussed in print. Nevertheless, it does have an oral reception history. When I read the manuscript of this article at the 72nd General Meeting of the SNTS in Pretoria, South Africa, my explanation of μώλωψ in 1 Pet 2:24 as Christ’s healing sore received a very enthusiastic and affirming response. Prof. Clare K. Rothschild commented that my explanation is most certainly the correct one, and Dr. Volker Rabens, who chaired the session, was likewise very affirming of my understanding of this term. When I presented the paper at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, it also received a positive response from many and from Prof. Fred Long in particular. Shortly before these presentations, Prof. Edmondo Lupieri inquired if I might have a manuscript that he could consider for publication in Vetera Christianorum. I sent him a copy of my paper, and he quickly recommended it for publication with a few changes. After proceeding through the blind review process, the editor of this journal, Dr. Laura Carnevale, accepted it for publication and sent me the comments of the reviewers. One of the reviewers wrote, “Clearly develops the argument and points out a lacuna in 1 Peter scholarship. Moving from biblical sources to Plutarch and the medical corpus is sound methodology.”  Goppelt, 1 Peter, 214.

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This same reviewer or perhaps a different one noted that my article “seems quite original” and that it “will make a strong contribution to 1 Peter scholarship and how scholars use the ancient medical corpora in their own work.” Along with their praise for the significance of my article, these reviewers did raise a concern that it “makes a huge interpretive leap going from the idea of a sore being a sign of the body’s healing process to assuming that the ancient reader would have understood Christ’s ability to heal others’ bodies (either physical or non-physical).” Responding to this concern, I added a paragraph to the original version of my manuscript that describes how the salvific metaphor of Christ’s healing sore exceeds its source domain since a sore must have a physical connection to the body it heals, and a sore on one body does not provide healing for another body. I suggest that the early Christian understanding of Christ’s body provides the connection of all believers to him and reasonably allows for his sore to heal them. I note that this primarily Pauline understanding of Christ’s body is not explicitly stated in First Peter but that this letter does describe a connection between Christ and his followers as living stones in a temple with Christ as the corner or capstone. Either one of these explanations provide the connection between Christ and his followers that enables this Petrine hygienic metaphor to communicate how Christ’s sore heals those who are in him. Of course, I am gratified that my interpretation of Christ’s healing sore in 1 Pet 2:24 has already received such a warm reception among my academic colleagues, and I look forward to their further engagement with my article. My earnest desire and prayer, however, is that this hygienic explanation of the effects of Christ’s passion will percolate from the pages of my article to the pulpits of contemporary Christian communities. In our world that is so broken and damaged by sin and in which live so many whose lives have been devastated by the ravages of sin’s sickness, the proclamation of Christ’s healing sore has never been more needed.

III. Paul and Circumcision* 1. Introduction Circumcision is a central concern of early Christianity.1 Arising from a Jewish founder in a Jewish context and propagated primarily by Jewish proponents, early Christianity nevertheless attracts large numbers of non-Jewish adherents. It thus creates the perfect storm, a circumcision-cyclone, swirling with contentious cultural and religious conflicts that threaten to undo the new religion. According to Acts 11:26, Antioch is the first church to be called Christian, and this church splits over this issue (Gal 2:11–13). The first Christian assembly convenes to investigate this divisive matter (Acts 15:6–21; cf. Gal 2:1–10). The first officially appointed Christian delegation is sent to inquire about this question (Acts 15:2), and the second delivers instructions as well as an official letter about circumcision (Acts 15:22). This first officially authorized Christian letter releases nonJewish adherents from this obligation (Acts 15:23–29). Some of the first unofficial Christian letters also address this issue (Galatians entirely; Rom 2–4; 1 Cor 7:18–19; Eph 2:11; Col 2:11; 3:11; 4:11; Titus 1:10; cf. Phil 3:3). Early Christian missionaries including Peter, Paul, and Barnabas encounter resistance and pressure from Jewish Christian believers (οἱ ἐκ περιτομῆς πιστοί) requiring circumcision for non-Jewish ones (Acts 10:45; 11:2; Gal 2:12; cf. Acts 15:1–2, 5; 21:20–21; Gal 1:7–9; 2:4–5). Indeed, these first missionaries sometimes even find themselves at loggerheads over this contentious issue (Gal 2:11–14). Clearly, circumcision is a central concern for early Christian communities. Why? Answering this simple, single word question is complex and requires consulting a number of sources ranging from Greco-Roman physicians and physiologists to poets and playwrights to religious proponents such as Philo and

* Versions of this essay were presented at the Thomas H. Olbricht Christian Scholars’ Conference, Lipscomb University, Nashville, TN, June 8, 2012 and to the Classical and Pre-Modern Colloquium, Saint Xavier University, Chicago, IL, October 10, 2012, and to the Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti Section at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, November 22, 2015. I wish to thank Christopher Hutson for responding to one of these early drafts and offering helpful suggestions and corrections. 1 In addition to the primary sources cited in what follows, the secondary literature also supports this observation.

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Paul.2 What these sources reveal is a clash of cultures with Greeks and Romans on one side, Jews and a few others on the other side, and Christians caught in the middle. To navigate the acrimonious attitudes of all sides, inclusive Christian communities must find solutions that transcend separation, alienation, or forceful compliance to circumcise or not. All these solutions are tried at various times by Greeks, Romans, and Jews but are incompatible with early Christian inclusiveness. Understanding why circumcision is a central concern for early Christians and how Paul finally arrives at a solution is the purpose of this essay, which contrasts Greek and Roman assumptions about circumcision with Philo’s polemic against those assumptions. This contrast explains why circumcision is such a contentious and divisive issue in the early Christian communities and why Paul’s solution resolves the problem, at least for some of these communities.

2. Circumcision in the Greco-Roman World of Paul’s Time 2.1. The Ideal Penis and Circumcision Medicine gives the illusion that it is objective and fact-based. However, it is part of culture and therefore culturally conditioned just as much as any other aspect of culture. Medicine indeed contributes to and confirms cultural conceptions, but it is also shaped and directed by the contributions of other aspects of culture such as art, philosophy, religion, law, and politics. Entire areas of modern medicine such as plastic and reconstructive surgery, for example, attempt to “restore” the culturally desirable “ideal” body. Steroid use and breast and hair implants as well as liposuction and other types of surgery to reduce weight are some of the most popular contemporary examples of how medicine is conditioned by cultural conceptions of the beautiful, the normal, and the ideal. Ancient medicine is no different except that it lacks much of the technology and sophistication of modern medicine. Ancient medical assumptions about circumcision, therefore, are particularly conditioned by ancient cultural conceptions of the ideal penis, and any discussion of circumcision should begin by clearly describing this ideal among poets, playwrights, and plastic artists. Aristotle describes the parts of the penis. He says: The penis … is of two parts: the extremity is fleshy … it is called the glans [βάλανος]. The skin around it (which has no special name) if cut does not grow together. … Common to

2  Many of these texts are conveniently collected by Menachem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974). For discussion and evaluation of these texts, see Andreas Blaschke, Beschneidung: Zeugnisse der Bibel und verwandter Texte, TANZ 28, (Tübingen: A. Francke Verlag, 1998), 327–360.

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this part and the glans is the acroposthia [ἀκροποσθία]. … The remaining part consists of gristle; it enlarges easily, and it protrudes and retracts. (Hist. an. 1.13 [493a] [Peck, LCL])3

Aristotle only gives specific names to the glans (βάλανος) and the prepuce or foreskin (ἀκροποσθία), and these two penile structures become focal features of the ideal penis. K. J. Dover and Frederick M. Hodges provide substantial descriptions of the ideal penis among the Greeks and Romans. Relying on phallic images of the flaccid penis in Greek visual arts, Dover summarizes, “The characteristic penis of a young male (human, heroic, or divine) is thin (sometimes notably thinner than a finger) and short (as measured from the base to the end of the glans), terminating in a long pointed foreskin, the axis of the penis and foreskin being almost always strait.”4 He further comments, “Even when the penis is shown erect, there is not, as a rule, any retraction of the foreskin.”5 Hodges concurs with Dover and states, “The Greeks valued the longer over the shorter prepuce in relation to the length of the entire penis, and the smaller over the larger penis as a whole.”6 Hodges also concurs with Dover’s assessment of the ideal erect penis and notes, “It is also a convention of vase painting that, even when in a state of erection, the prepuce of paragons of male beauty should retain its proportionality to the rest of the penis; despite erection, therefore, it is almost invariably represented as unretracted, long, and finely tapered.”7 Both Dover and Hodges support their conclusions about the ideal penis among Greeks and Romans by contrasting the ideal with the disfigured, ugly, and undesirable penis. Dover comments, “The disapproved penis is thick and long, sometimes far exceeding anything to be seen in real life, and tending to a ‘club’ shape, with a comparatively narrow base and a bulging glans.”8 Dover notes many of the representations of an undesirable penis include a retracted foreskin and exposed glans, regardless of whether the penis is flaccid or erect.9 Hodges again agrees and states, “Greek artists also took pains to represent ugly, decrepit old men, barbarian slaves, lecherous old satyrs, and comics as having a large, ungainly penis, sometimes with an exposed glans, even when unerect.”10 This un 3  Although Aristotle says it has no special name, Rufus of Ephesus will later call the skin around the glans the πόσθη (posthē), a term often used in reference to the entire penis (Onom. 102). See Frederick M. Hodges, “The Ideal Prepuce in Ancient Greece and Rome: Male Genital Aesthetics and Their Relation to Lipodermos, Circumcision, Foreskin Restoration, and the Kynodesmē,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 75 (2001): 375–405, here 377–378.  4 K. J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality: Updated and with a New Postscript (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 125.  5 Ibid., 127.  6 Hodges, “Ideal Prepuce,” 380.  7 Ibid., 376, cf. 394.  8  Dover, Greek Homosexuality, 127.  9  Ibid., 127–129. 10  Hodges, “Ideal Prepuce,” 393.

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desirable penis portrays the ugly, the immoral, the improper, the unsightly, and the indecent in contrast to the ideal penis, which portrays the reverse. A focal point of these portrayals is the glans. In the ideal penis, the glans is covered by the prepuce and does not even bulge under the skin. Dover explains: A small penis (especially if the existence of the corona glandis is not betrayed by any undulation in the surface of the penis) is an index of modesty and subordination, an abjuration of sexual initiative or sexual rivalry, and the painters’ adoption of the ideal youthful penis as the standard for men, heroes, and gods is one item in their general tendency to ‘youthen’ everyone.11

In the undesired penis in contrast, the glans bulges under the skin and is often exposed by a retracted or missing prepuce.12 Hodges comments, “The public exposure of the glans was unsightly and indecent.”13 The glans penis, therefore, becomes a primary focus distinguishing the ideal from the publicly improper penis. The Greek word ψωλός and the Latin words verpus and recutitus explain why the glans is so important in distinguishing a publicly acceptable and desirable penis from one that is not. These words mean with the glans exposed.14 In uncircumcised males, this exposure primarily occurs during sexual arousal when the prepuce is retracted either manually or by penetration and is held back by the elongation of the penis and especially by the corona of the enlarged glans.15 When the penis again becomes flaccid, the prepuce returns to its position and covers the glans. Hodges states that an exposed glans is unsightly and indecent “precisely because it was so strongly associated with erection.”16 Therefore, he says, “Eversion of the prepuce and exposure of the glans seems to have been desirable only under certain exceedingly intimate circumstances.”17 These circumstances need not be all that intimate, however, as demonstrated by the numerous statues of Priapos in gardens and by the hermes, a rectangular slab of stone that stood at the doorways of many homes. Both of these visualize an erect penis with glans exposed to warn adulterers and thieves that penetration by the god or householder is the penalty for their misdeeds.18 Dover hypothesizes,  Dover, Greek Homosexuality, 134–135.  Ibid., 127–129. 13 Hodges, “Ideal Prepuce,” 393. 14  J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 12–14, 36. See also Troy W. Martin, “Circumcision in Galatia and the Holiness of God’s Ecclesiae,” in Holiness and Ecclesiology in the New Testament, ed. Kent E. Brower and Andy Johnson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 219–237, here 224. Blaschke comments, “Das ‘recutitus’ (‘re-‘ = ‘zurück’; ‘cutis’ – ‘Haut’) … in der Bedeutung ist das ψωλός (psōlos) … vergleichbar” (Beschneidung, 340). 15 Hodges cites the scoliasts definition of ψωλός (psōlos) as “having an erection” (“Ideal Prepuce,” 392–393). 16  Ibid., 394. 17  Ibid., 393. 18  Dover, Greek Homosexuality, 105. 11 12

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“The Greeks felt, however inarticulately, that the penis was a weapon.”19 The erect ideal penis with covered glans is not nearly as ominous a weapon, however, as the penis with exposed glans ready to dominate and subordinate any and all malefactors, and a publicly exposed glans for this purpose is acceptable. These conceptions of the ideal penis with its long, tapered prepuce covering the glans and the close association of an exposed glans with male sexual arousal explain the overwhelmingly negative attitude toward circumcision among the Greeks and Romans. Both Hippocrates (Aph. 6.19) and Aristotle (Part. an. 2.13 [657b]) state that the skin of the prepuce will neither grow nor unite again once it is cut.20 Circumcision thus permanently exposes the glans and renders a male perpetually sexually aroused. Hodges notes that after circumcision “the remnant penis and its possessor would be cast into a permanent state of lewdness.”21 Naturally, Greeks and Romans are repulsed by and disapprove of this practice. Several authors illustrate the Greek and later Roman negativity toward circumcision.22 Strabo describes circumcision as a mutilation of the male reproductive organ (κολοβοὶ τὰς βαλάνους; Geog. 16.4.9).23 Josephus reports that Apion scorns the circumcision of the genitals (τὴν τῶν αἰδοίων χλεθάζει περιτομήν; C. Ap. 2.14 [137]).24 Tacitus describes circumcision as a base and abominable custom of the Jews (Hist. 5.2).25 Finally, Juvenal cites circumcision of a son as one of the bad influences of a father enamored with Jewish customs (Sat. 14.96–106).26 Some texts illustrate the difficulty of distinguishing the circumcised from the sexually aroused male, and some modern translators render ψωλός, verpus, or recutitus as circumcised while others understand these terms as sexually aroused or horny. For example, compare these two translations of Martial’s Epigram 12.82. Walter C. A. Ker translates: Menophilus’ person [penis] a sheath covers so enormous that it alone would be sufficient for the whole tribe of comic actors. This fellow I had imagined  – for we often bathe together – was solicitous to spare his voice, Flaccus; but while he was exercising himself in the view of the people in the middle of the exercise ground, the sheath unluckily fell off: lo, he was circumcised (verpus erat)! (Epig. 7.82 [Ker, LCL])

 Ibid., 134.  See also Aristotle, Hist. an. 1.13 (493a). 21  Hodges, “Ideal Prepuce,” 388. See Martin, “Circumcision in Galatia,” 224; and David L. Gollaher, Circumcision: A History of the World’s Most Controversial Surgery (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 13–14. 22  Martin, “Circumcision in Galatia,” 223–224. For an extensive list and discussion of these authors, see Blaschke, Beschneidung, 323–360. 23 See Stern, Authors, 1:312. 24  Ibid., 1:415. 25 Ibid., 2:19, 26. 26  Ibid., 2:102–103. 19 20

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Shaye J. D. Cohen, however, translates this last sentence, “He had an enormous erection.”27 Verpus may not refer to Menophilus’ circumcision at all but rather to his sexual arousal, and Blaschke notes that these differing translations arise “vor dem hintergrund der Doppeldeutigheit des ‘verpus’ = ‘geil’/ ‘beschnitten.’”28 The disagreement of Ker and Cohen over the translation of this epigram illustrates the difficulty of distinguishing the circumcised from the sexually aroused male. The double meaning of these terms causes some translators to render ψωλός, verpus, or recutitus as circumcised even when the context indicates the male is sexually aroused, not circumcised. For example, Benjamin B. Rogers translates Aristophanes’ Plutus 267 as “I really should not be surprised to hear the wretch is circumcised (ψωλὸν αὐτὸν εἶναι)” (Plutus 267 [Rogers, LCL]). Dover thinks that the context supports Rogers’ translation while Hodges does not and uses this passage to demonstrate that “the psōlos male need not necessarily be circumcised.”29 Considering the absence of any Jewish markers in this context and that the “wretch” is Plutus, the Greek god of wealth, Hodges is probably right to understand ψωλός in this passage as a reference to the wretch’s being horny or sexually aroused but not circumcised. Another example is Michael Heseltine and W. H. D. Rouse’s Loeb translation of Petronius’ Satyricon 68.4–8, “He [Habinnas’ slave] has only two faults, and if he were rid of them, he would be simply perfect. He is circumcised [recutitus est] and he snores.”30 Blaschke reasons, “Da Petronius die Beschneidung im folgenden Text [Satyr. 102.13–14] als exclusives Kennzeichen von Juden anführt, mag auch hier ein jüdischer Sklave im Blick sein.”31 The following text, however, is very different. In it, Giton requests, “Please circumcise us too, so that we look like Jews” (Satyr. 102.13–14 [Heseltine and Rouse, LCL]). The word referring to circumcision is circumcide, not recutitus, and the mention of Jews in this passage clearly signals a reference to circumcision. In Petronius’ Satyricon 68.4–8, however, the word is recutitus and no Jewish elements occur in the immediate context. In addition to snoring, the fault of Habinnas’ slave, therefore, is more likely that he is horny rather than circumcised. Heseltine and Rouse’s mistranslation and others as well demonstrate that the double meaning of ψωλός, verpus, and recutitus as circumcised or sexually aroused sometimes confuses translators. Other texts play on the confusion of the circumcised and the sexually aroused male. Martial resorts to this association in his denunciation of a poetic rival, whom he addresses once as verpe and three times as verpe poeta, circumcised 27  Shaye J. D. Cohen, “’Those Who Say They Are Jews and Are Not’: How Do You Know a Jew in Antiquity When You See One?” in Diasporas in Antiquity, ed. idem and Ernest S. Frerichs, Brown Judaic Studies 288 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 1–45, here 42. 28 Blaschke, Beschneidung, 347 n. 1420. Blaschke, however, does not think it impossible that Menophilus was a Jew. 29  Dover, Greek Homosexuality, 129–130; Hodges, “Ideal Prepuce,” 393. 30 See Stern, Authors, 1:442 31  Blaschke, Beschneidung, 341. Blaschke is following the reasoning of Stern, Authors, 1:443.

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and sexually aroused poet.32 Martial emphasizes the appropriateness of this address because the poet was born in Jerusalem and sodomizes Martial’s servant boy (Epig. 11.94).33 Martial clearly associates this Jewish poet’s circumcision with his lecherous, sexually aroused state. This confusion of circumcision with permanent male sexual arousal partially explains why Greeks and Romans view circumcision as a mutilation of the penis, socially unacceptable, and an affront to decency. For Greeks and Romans, therefore, the ideal penis is small and straight with a long, tapered prepuce that covers a modest glans. Its opposite is large and curved with an exposed glans that is often bulging. The ideal penis is modest and moral while its opposite is immodest and immoral. An unexposed or exposed glans differentiates between the two since an exposed glans signals male sexual arousal, acceptable in certain intimate situations but unacceptable or even ominous in others. By permanently exposing the glans, circumcision seemed to them “to be the ultimate in mindless, barbaric, irreverence, excess, and depravity.”34 2.2. Physicians and Physiologists on Circumcision Whether they realize it or not, ancient physicians and physiologists buy into these cultural conceptions of the ideal penis. They even legitimate these cultural conceptions by presenting the ideal penis as a product of nature. Galen for example writes about human genitalia, “Nature constructed for one of them [the genders] parts suited to receive semen and for the other, parts suited to emit it … all parts of the instruments, even the smallest, have the best position, size, contexture, and form” (De usu partium 14.1).35 He states that nature devises the penis to be straight and covered it with the prepuce “as an ornament” (De usu partium 14.3).36 He also describes the prepuce as one of the useful holes that nature made in the skin for the egress of liquid residues and semen (De usu partium 17.1). Galen further describes the prepuce, “Nature out of her abundance ornaments all the members, especially in man. … The ears show obvious ornamentation, and so, I suppose, does the skin called the prepuce at the end of the penis and the flesh of the buttocks; for if you look at an ape, you will clearly recognize the ugly shape of this part when it is uncovered” (De usu partium 11.13).37 His association of the prepuce with the buttocks and his description of an uncovered anus as ugly imply that an uncovered glans is also ugly. Galen’s medical analysis is clearly in32 Ibid.,

348.  See Martin, “Circumcision in Galatia,” 224. 34  Hodges, “Ideal Prepuce,” 388. 35  Translation by Margaret Tallmadge May, Galen on the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body “Περὶ χρείας μορίων; De usu partium” Translated from the Greek with an Introduction and Commentary, 2 vols. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968), 2:655. 36  Ibid., 2:659–661. 37  Ibid., 2:529–530. 33

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fluenced by cultural assumptions about the ideal penis as straight with a covered glans, and such assumptions are relevant for Paul’s observation in 1 Cor 12:24 that God gives greater honor to parts of the body that do not merit it. The notion of nature held by these physicians, therefore, is conditioned and determined by their cultural assumptions about nature. Their notion differs from modern conceptions of nature as whatever exists in the world apart from human agency or influence. For these physicians, nature fashions the ideal penis, but they do not blame nature when a male is born lacking a prepuce or having a short prepuce. Instead, they assist nature and devise various treatments to elongate the prepuce and cover the glans. They also have no problem stretching the skin, cutting a small slit underneath the prepuce, or removing a small triangular piece of skin from the underside of the prepuce when a male is born with a restricted opening in his prepuce.38 They simply call the former problem lipodermos or leipodermos (“lacking skin”) and the latter phimosis (“muzzled” or “constricted”) and treat both as pathological without necessarily blaming nature for the defect. Also influenced by their cultural assumptions, these physicians place circumcision in the pathological category of lipodermos.39 They do not even consider the physiological reality that circumcision and uncircumcision have no significant affect on the physiological function of the penis. For these physicians, lacking a complete prepuce whether artificially by circumcision or congenitally is the primary symptom of a pathological condition they called lipodermos. They devise treatments to restore the imperfect penis to a state of perfection, and their treatments range from topical medications to traction to surgery. All their treatments have the goal of restoring a short, defective, or missing prepuce and of covering the glans to achieve the culturally defined “ideal” penis.40 Dioscorides of Anazarbus (41–68 CE) describes two topical medications for extending the prepuce.41 One medication is honey. He recommends, “Lipodermos, if not due to circumcision, is cured by honey, if for thirty days the posthē is softened with honey, especially after a bath” (De materia medica 2.82.2).42 The other medication is an extract from the thapsia plant. He prescribes, “[Thapsia] is useful for the prepuce (ἐπαγώγιον) of those suffering from lipodermos, providing it not be as a result of circumcision. It induces swelling, which when bathed and anointed, restores the defect of the posthē” (De materia medica 4.153.4– 5).43 These topical applications rely on the basic ancient medical principle that sticky liquids and salves draw up substances from beneath the skin and thus sup38 For a description of these minor surgical procedures, see Celsus, De medicina 7.25.2 (Spencer, LCL). 39  Hodges, “Ideal Prepuce,” 394. 40 Ibid., 395. 41  Also see the topical salve prescribed by ps.-Galen in De compositione medicamentorum per genera 7.7, which is translated and discussed by Hodges, “Ideal Prepuce,” 396. 42  Ibid., 395. 43  Ibid., 395.

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plement the tissue where they are applied. These topical medications may have also made “the penile skin more supple” so that it could be stretched and elongated to cover the glans more completely.44 The limited success of these medications in healing lipodermos leads other physicians to devise more effective treatments. Some physicians prescribe various stretching techniques including massage, traction, and tension. For a lipodermic newborn, Soranus prescribes massage of the foreskin by the attending wet nurse. He instructs, “She should gently draw the tip of the foreskin forward or even hold it together with a strand of wool to fasten it. For if gradually stretched and continuously drawn forward, it easily stretches and assumes its normal length, covers the glans and becomes accustomed to keep the natural good shape” (Gyn. 2.34).45 Galen glues a strip of papyrus around the circumference of the penis to pull and stretch the skin by tension. He mentions others’ use of a lead spout over which the prepuce is stretched and secured with a soft leather cord (De methodo medendi 14.16).46 Hodges suggests that the κυνοδέσμη (“dog leash”), a thin leather strap tied around the penis and secured around the waist, may have served a similar purpose of extending the prepuce by tension.47 Hodges explains, “These techniques depend for their efficacy on the principles of tissue expansion. … Given sufficient application of constant tension, new and permanent skin can be induced to grow. Penile skin, noted for its great elasticity, is especially responsive to expansion techniques.” Nevertheless, the effectiveness of these techniques to treat a circumcised penis is unclear. Galen notes that his glue technique is most effective when only a “short stretch” is needed, and so this technique is probably ineffective in restoring a circumcised penis. Galen asserts, however, that the lead weight technique is more useful when more skin is lacking as would be the case in circumcision. Commenting on Martial’s Epigram 7.35, Hodges proposes, “The conical, leaden antilipodermos weight described by Galen may have been known as the pondus judaeus, which indicates that Hebrews were more closely identified with its use.”48 If Hodges is correct, then this epigram indicates that physicians treated a circumcised penis by using this technique of a lead weight.  Ibid.

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by Owsei Temkin, Soranus’ Gynecology: Translated with an Introduction (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956), 107. See Hodges, “Ideal Prepuce,” 396–397. 46  Ibid. 47 Ibid., 381. 48 Ibid., 401. Hodges is commenting on Martial’s Epig. 7.35.1–4 and assumes that the Roman speaker is wearing this weight just as is his Jewish slave. However, the speaker’s slave is probably his own penis, his Jewish weight (pondus judaeus) is his engorged glans, and his lack of foreskin is his retracted, uncircumcised prepuce. He is sexually excited by thinking of Laecania submerged in warm water. For other interpretations of this epigram, see Blaschke, Beschneidung, 345–346.

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Martial’s epigram, however, does not support Hodges’ proposal. D. R. Shackleton Bailey translates the epigram, “Your slave stands with a black strap around his loins whenever you submerge your whole self in the warm water. But my slave, Laecania, to say nothing of me, has a Jewish weight under his lack of foreskin” (Epig. 7.35.1–4 [Bailey, LCL]). The “black strap” worn by Laecania’s slave is the κυνοδέσμη, a thin leather strap tied around the prepuce and then around the waist to pull the penis upward. It is worn for modesty.49 The epigram contrasts the modesty of Laecania’s slave with the immodest slave of the Roman speaker. Hodges and others conclude that the speaker’s slave is circumcised and a Jew.50 In this erotic epigram, however, the Roman speaker’s slave is more likely his own penis. Furthermore, his Jewish weight (pondus judaeus) is his engorged, aroused glans, and his “lack of foreskin” refers to his retracted, uncircumcised prepuce due to his sexual excitement by thinking of “hot” Laecania submerged in warm water. Shaye J. D. Cohen more accurately translates the pondus judaeus as “a Jewish load under no skin.”51 Circumcision scars the glans, and the uncovered glans thickens and becomes calloused just as any other body part exposed to friction and irritation. The glans of Jews and other circumcised peoples are accurately portrayed as bulging, and Martial includes the Jews among a list of international “studs” that a promiscuous Roman girl could not resist (Epig. 7.30).52 To emphasize the immodest designs of the speaker on Laecania, the epigram likens the Roman speaker’s aroused, engorged glans to that of a Jew. On this reading, therefore, the epigram’s reference to a Jewish weight has nothing to do with Galen’s lead weight therapy as Hodges proposes, and traction therapy in general was probably not very helpful in correcting a missing prepuce resulting from circumcision. Only two lipodermic therapies are really useful in treating a circumcised penis. One is the highly invasive surgery Celsus describes among several other penile surgeries.53 Celsus begins by describing the surgery for a male in whom lipodermos is congenital. He instructs the surgeon: The prepuce around the glans is seized, stretched out until it actually covers the glans, and there tied. Next the skin covering the penis just in front of the pubes is cut through in a circle until the penis is bared. … This done the prepuce slides forwards towards the tie, and a sort of small ring is laid bare in front of the pubes, to which lint is applied in order that flesh may grow and fill it up. (De medicina 7.25.1 [Spencer, LCL]) 49  Although Hodges does not connect the κυνοδέσμη with the leather strap in this epigram, he nevertheless describes it and its purpose as the “protector of public morals.” See Hodges, “Ideal Prepuce,” 381. 50 Ibid., 400–401. See also Stern, Authors, 1:525. 51  Cohen, “Those Who Say They Are Jews,” 42. 52  See Stern, Authors, 1:524–525. 53 See the extended discussion of this surgical procedure by Blaschke, Beschneidung, 351–353. See also Hodges, “Ideal Prepuce,” 398–399.

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Celsus explains that this surgery is more effective “in a boy than in a man; in one in whom the defect is natural, than in one who after the custom of certain races has been circumcised; and in one who has the glans small and the adjacent skin rather ample, while the penis itself is shorter, rather than in one in whom the conditions are contrary” (De medicina 7.25.1 [Spencer, LCL]). For this surgery to be effective in correcting a circumcised penis, additional procedures are required. After the circular cut in front of the pubes is made, Celsus recommends: But in one who has been circumcised the prepuce is to be raised from the underlying penis around the circumference of the glans by means of a scalpel. This is not so very painful, for once the margin has been freed, it can be stripped up by hand as far back as the pubes, nor in so doing is there any bleeding. The prepuce thus freed is again stretched forwards beyond the glans. (De medicina 7.25.1 [Spencer, LCL])

This surgery frees the entire penile skin, which can now be slid toward the tip and create a new prepuce to cover the glans. In a day when anesthesia was limited, this surgery may not be “so very painful” for the physician, but the patient may feel differently. Nevertheless, it is obviously effective in correcting the uncovered glans of a circumcised penis but does not, however, restore the ideal tapered shape of the youthful prepuce. Such a surgery is highly invasive and leads to inflammation as Celsus recognizes by recommending that plaster bandages be withheld until the inflammation subsides. Some later physicians such as Paul of Aegina doubt that anyone would choose to submit to the dangers of such a surgery (Epitomae medicae libri septem 6.53).54 Considering the enormously painful and dangerous treatments some moderns endure to possess an ideal body, some ancients probably did submit to this horrific penile surgery recommended by Celsus. Instead of this surgery, however, infibulation is the most popular remedy for a circumcised penis. This procedure does not restore the prepuce but merely pulls the penile skin over the glans and fastens it with a fibula, a type of clothes pin. Celsus describes the procedure, “The foreskin is transfixed … by a threaded needle, and the ends of this thread are knotted together. Each day the thread is moved until the edges of the perforations have cicatrized. When this is assured the thread is withdrawn and a fibula inserted, and the lighter this is the better” (De medicina 7.25.2 [Spencer, LCL]).55 Infibulation is thus a type of body piercing and becomes the preferred method of hiding the marks of circumcision. All these medical treatments for lipodermos that are prescribed by Greek and Roman physicians assume the ideal penis determined by their culture. Their culture conditions them to conclude that a partially or completely uncovered  Ibid., 399.  Celsus, however, does not specify the usefulness of infibulation to hide circumcision. Instead, he states that infibulation is thought to preserve the voice or contribute to health. 54 55

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glans is pathological. Whatever the treatment, the goal is to enable the skin at the extremity of the penis to cover the glans and avoid an immodest and indecent display of this erogenous, publicly unacceptable part of the penis. They only prescribe circumcision in the extreme case when the glans becomes so ulcerated that it falls off.56 Then of course, the removal of the prepuce cannot expose a glans that is not there.57 In stark contrast, Jewish physicians and surgeons who perform circumcisions are informed by very different cultural assumptions that are clearly demonstrated by Philo and his polemic advocating circumcision. 2.3. Philo and the Jewish Polemic for Circumcision Andreas Blaschke observes, “Der Gegensatz zwischen der althergebrachten Hochschätzung der Beschneidung durch die Juden einerseits und der Geringschätzung durch the griechisch-römische Welt andererseits könnte schärfer und gegensätzlicher nicht sein.”58 Nowhere is Blaschke’s contradictory assessment of the veneration of circumcision by the Jews and the disparagement of it by Greeks and Romans better seen than in Philo’s polemic against Greco-Roman assumptions about circumcision. Philo’s negative opinion of the prepuce is consonant with the later Jewish sentiment that “the foreskin is disgusting” (b. Ned. 31b; cf. m. Ned. 3:11).59 Such a sentiment starkly contrasts Galen’s assessment that the prepuce is one of nature’s most beautifying ornaments (De usu partium 11.13 and 14.3). Also, the later Jewish tradition that certain notables such as Moses are born perfect and therefore born circumcised contradicts the pathological view of such undesirable births by Greek and Roman physicians.60 Philo therefore begins his polemic for circumcision by recognizing that the surgery is ridiculed by opponents and calls on them to consider the “real causes” of circumcision and why the custom has prevailed throughout so many generations (Spec. 1.1.2–3). Philo advances four physiological arguments for circumcision. First, he says it prevents burning inflammation and ulceration of the glans, a condition his opponents call a carbuncle in Latin or ἄνθραξ (anthrax) in Greek (Spec. 1.1.4). 56  Celsus, De medicina 6.18.2; Oribasius, Collectionum medicarum reliquiae 50.7; and Paul of Aegina, Epitomae medicae libri septem 6.57. See Hodges, “Ideal Prepuce,” 384. 57  The removal or absence of the glans is known in the ancient world and probably explains Paul’s wish in Gal 5:12 that those circumcised agitators who trouble the Galatians would cut themselves off (ἀποκόψονται). He is not wishing that they would castrate themselves or remove their entire penis but only the glans, which is the problematic, scandalous part of a circumcised penis in the eyes of the uncircumcised. In Gal 5:11, Paul mentions the agitators’ attempt to abolish or remove (κατήργηται) the scandal of the cross by preaching circumcision. In perhaps a humorous, yet serious twist, he points out that they could remove the scandal of their glans by cutting it off. 58 Blaschke, Beschneidung, 360. 59  Cited in Hodges, “Ideal Prepuce,” 389. 60  R. Joshua b. Qorha says, “Great is circumcision, for it was not suspended even for a moment for the sake of Moses, the righteous” (m. Ned. 3:11). Translated by Jacob Neusner, The Mishnah: A New Translation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 412.

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He thus begins his polemic on partially common ground by mentioning a pathological condition that both he and his opponents recognize. Even Greek and Roman physicians allow circumcision when the glans becomes ulcerated and falls off.61 However, they do not recognize circumcision as a preventative of the inflammation and ulceration as Philo claims. Philo must therefore support his claim by sound medical principles: Nearly all those who inhabit the southern regions near the torrid zone are circumcised. And what is the particular reason if not that in these places, especially in summer, the foreskin of the genitals, which is the skin that surrounds and covers (them), becomes inflamed and infected. But when this is cut off, by being laid bare (the penis) is restored, and the affliction is resisted and expelled. For this reason, the nations in the northern regions and all those to whom has been allotted a portion in those regions of the earth which are windy are not circumcised. For in those regions, as the heat of the sun is relaxed and diminished, so too is the disease which is produced by heat in the skin of those parts of the body. (QG 3.48 [Marcus, LCL])

Even though they do not agree with his conclusions, Greek and Roman physicians cannot really disagree with his medical reasoning since they hold many of these same “medical” principles about heating and cooling. Philo thus attempts to make his first argument persuasive by appealing to generally accepted medical principles. The second argument Philo advances is that circumcision allows for religious cleanliness since foreign matter can collect and lodge under the prepuce (Spec. 1.1.5). Ancient medicine does not value cleanliness as much as modern medicine does, so this argument may not have been very persuasive. Indeed, some of these physicians even recommend inserting foreign objects into the prepuce.62 Nevertheless, Philo supports his argument by appealing to the rituals of sprinkling and ablutions used to cleanse those who enter the courts of temples (QG 3.48).63 While modern medicine generally lacks religious associations, ancient medicine claims various deities as healers and especially Asclepius as its patron. Medical centers are often religious sites such as the Asclepium, which features diet, baths, exercise, and various religious rites and practices as therapies. Indeed, an essential Asclepian rite is “‘Incubation,’ the temple-sleep and its accompanying dream.”64 Thus, Philo’s second argument connecting circumcision with religious cleanliness may have resonated more persuasively in some ways for ancients than for moderns. Philo’s third argument is that circumcision makes the outward organ of the glans resemble more closely the inward organ of the heart, which is not 61  Celsus, De medicina 6.18.2; Oribasius, Collectionum medicarum reliquiae 50.7; and Paul of Aegina, Epitomae medicae libri septem 6.57. See Hodges, “Ideal Prepuce,” 384. 62  For example, Galen, De methodo medendi 14.16. 63  See also Philo, Spec. 1.1.5. 64  Charles Joseph Singer and Abraham Wasserstein, “Medicine,” OCD, 660–664, here 661.

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surrounded by skin. In addition to having a similar shape, Philo argues that both the heart and the glans “are framed to serve for generation” (Spec. 1.1.6 [Colson, LCL]). He explains: Both parts are prepared for the sake of generation; for the breath [pneuma] contained within the heart is generative of thoughts, and the generative organ itself is productive of living beings. Therefore, the men of old thought it right to make the evident and visible organ [the glans penis], by which the objects of the outward senses are generated, resemble that invisible and superior part [the heart], by means of which ideas are formed. (Spec. 1.1.5)65

Since pneuma is the generative force within semen and the heart pumps pneuma rather than blood into the arteries, both the heart and the glans project pneuma by throbbing. The heart throbs continually while the glans throbs only at the moment of ejaculation, but they both fulfill their somatic roles by throbbing.66 Philo’s argument is interesting from a medical point of view, but the primary impetus for his connecting these two organs is probably the conception of the circumcision of the heart that occurs in his sacred texts (Jer 4:4). He specifically mentions the circumcision of the heart once in his presentation of this argument (QG 3.48). Of course, his sacred texts carry little or no weight with his opponents. The fourth argument Philo presents as his most important is that circumcision allows the penis to accomplish its natural function better (Spec. 1.1.7). The prepuce can disrupt the flow of seminal fluid by scattering it or by retaining it under its skin. By removing the prepuce, Philo argues that circumcision enables the penis to accomplish the role assigned to it by nature to propagate the human race (QG 3.48). He emphasizes that those peoples who practice circumcision are the most prolific of all (Spec. 1.1.7 and QG 3.48). Perhaps, Philo designates this argument as the most important because he feels this argument is the most persuasive to his opponents. In addition to these four physiological arguments for circumcision, Philo advances two symbolic arguments. First, he says that circumcision is symbolic of the “excision of pleasures which bewitch the mind” (Spec. 1.1.9 [Colson, LCL]).67 He affirms that intercourse is the most exquisite of all these pleasures and that circumcision figuratively excises all of them. This argument turns the tables on his opponents, who perceive circumcision as rendering a man perpetually sexually aroused and therefore lecherous and consumed by passions. They probably shake their heads in disbelief that Philo presents the circumcised male as sexually temperate and modest.

65  Translated by C. D. Yonge, The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged, New Updated Version (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993), 534. 66  See Galen, De usu partium 14.10 and 14.14. 67  See also Philo, QG 3.48.

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Second, Philo says that circumcision enables a man to know himself and not to deify himself. He explains, “For there are some who have prided themselves on their power of fashioning as with a sculptor’s cunning the fairest of creatures, man, and in their braggart pride assumed godship, closing their eyes to the Cause of all that comes into being” (Spec. 1.1.10 [Colson, LCL]).68 Philo’s argument is consonant with the Delphic Maxim Know Thyself, which commands humans to recognize they are humans and not gods. Philo’s point is that circumcision imposes a certain modesty, recognizes the authority of God, and eliminates such conceit and pride. Considering the rejection and even prohibition of circumcision by Greeks and Romans long after Philo, his arguments do not apparently convince many. The divide between negative Greek and Roman assessments of circumcision on the one side and positive Jewish assessments on the other is just too deep and too wide to be traversed. The differing cultural understandings of nature that inform these assessments are simply incompatible and generate tension and at times outright conflict. Philo’s polemic advocating circumcision demonstrates the very different cultural assumptions of both sides in this disagreement over circumcision. By welcoming Greeks, Romans, Jews, and others into its communities, early Christianity creates the perfect storm in which these tensions and conflicts collide.

3. Circumcision in the Pauline Letters 3.1. Galatians Writing to the Galatians, Paul is the first author to address the controversy over circumcision in early Christian communities. He is also the first to attempt a resolution. Understanding both his description of the controversy in Galatia and his solution to it requires distinguishing three different connotations of the circumcision word group. The verb περιτέμνειν (“to circumcise”) and the noun περιτομή (“circumcision”) refer to the surgery or to a state or to a practice.69 The surgery takes only a short time to complete. Following this surgery, a person then lives in a circumcised state.70 Even though circumcised persons have no choice but to live in a circumcised state, they still must decide if they will practice social exclusiveness associated with the covenant of circumcision (Gen 17:14). These  Ibid.  Jost Eckert, Die urchristliche Verkündigung im Streit zwischen Paulus und seinen Gegnern nach dem Galaterbrief, BU 6 (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1971), 49–53; C. E. B. Cranfield, The Epistle to the Romans, 2 vols., ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975), 171 n. 4; and Joel Marcus, “The Circumcision and the Uncircumcision in Rome,” NTS 35 (1989): 67–81, here 74–75. 70  Joseph B. Tyson, “’Works of the Law’ in Galatians,” JBL 92 (1973): 423–431, here 428. 68 69

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three different connotations of circumcision are relevant for understanding the perceptions and positions of the participants in the Galatian controversy. The agitators are circumcised and therefore live in a circumcised state. However, Paul portrays their position in the debate as emphasizing the practice of circumcision to distinguish Christians from those outside. The participle περιτεμνόμενοι in Gal 6:13a describes the position of the agitators in Galatia.71 Because they are already circumcised, the participle cannot mean become circumcised or let oneself be circumcised.72 Thus, this participle cannot refer to the surgery itself. Neither can it designate the state of circumcision since Paul would then be including himself among the opponents of the Galatians.73 Consequently, only the meaning of circumcision as the practice of social exclusion based on circumcised and uncircumcised makes sense in Gal 6:13a. Even the present tense of this participle implies the ongoing, continuous nature of this action.74 Therefore, the best translation of the participle in 6:13a is those who practice the distinctions of circumcision.75 The agitators’ position in the controversy emphasizes 71  Heinrich Schlier, Der Brief an die Galater, KEK 7 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1962), 281; Eckert, Verkündigung, 34 n. 4; and F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 269–270. See Ernest de Witt Burton, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1921), 352–354. Burton contends that this participle refers to the Galatians and not to the agitators. His contention, however, requires a change of subject in the passage that lacks a corresponding grammatical marker. His suggestion is not convincing. Also see Emanuel Hirsch, “Zwei Fragen zu Gal 6,” ZNW 29 (1930): 192–197. Hirsch concludes that the participle designates the Gentile converts of the Judaizers. These converts compensated for their inability to keep the law by convincing other Gentiles to submit to circumcision. Hirsch’s position is superior to Burton’s because it does not require a shift in the subject of this verse. However, Hirsch’s position requires different groups among the Galatian churches, and the majority of scholars appropriately rejects this idea. 72  James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 8–12. Dunn argues along with a majority of scholars that the troublemakers are Jewish Christians. See, however, Johannes Munck, Paul and the Salvation of Mankind (Richmond: John Knox, 1959), 87–89. Munck contends that the agitators are Gentiles since the present middle participle always means “those who receive circumcision.” See the critique of Munck’s position by George Howard, Paul: Crisis in Galatia, SNTSMS 35 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 17. Furthermore, Munck’s argument is refuted by Gal 5:3, where this participle does not mean “those who receive circumcision.” 73  Robert Jewett, “The Agitators and the Galatian Congregation,” NTS 17 (1971): 198–212, here 202. Jewett astutely formulates this argument against understanding circumcision in Gal 6:13 as a state. Nevertheless, his suggestion of congruity in the meaning of circumcision in 6:13a and 6:13b is misleading. Circumcision in 6:13a relates to the agitators while circumcision in 6:13b pertains to the Galatians. The subject of the participle περιτεμνόμενοι is not the same as the subject of the infinitive περιτέμνεσθαι. This shift in subject indicates that the meaning of this verb also shifts between its first and second occurrences. 74 Some manuscripts place this participle in the perfect tense to emphasize the past definite action of circumcision and its continuous results. The textual evidence, however, favors the present tense. 75  Even though the agitators are primarily in view, this meaning of the participle would not exclude any Jew who practices the distinctions of circumcision. See Albrecht Oepke, Der Brief des Paulus an die Galater, THKNT 9 (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1957), 160.

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the practice of circumcision to distinguish themselves as Christians from the uncircumcised Galatians (Gal 4:17). This understanding of the practice of circumcision explains the use of περιτέμνω in Gal 5:2–3. In Gal 5:2, Paul says, “If you practice circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you.” In 5:3, he says, “Every man who practices circumcision is obligated to observe the whole law.” Many commentators understand the middle voice of these verbal forms in 5:2–3 as causative or permissive middles and perceive περιτέμνω as a reference to the surgery itself. They then translate the finite verb περιτέμνησθε as you become circumcised or you permit yourself to become circumcised.76 Correspondingly, they translate the participle περιτεμνομένῳ as one who becomes circumcised or one who lets oneself be circumcised. These commentators then apply these circumcision references in 5:2–3 to the Galatians and not to the agitators in spite of the participle’s use in 6:13 as a clear reference to these troublemakers.77 These commentators’ translations fail to explain why the Galatians would be excluded from Christ’s benefit if they become circumcised while Paul and other Jewish Christians as circumcised persons enjoy these same benefits.78 After all, the Galatians’ submission to circumcision really should not matter since in Christ neither circumcision nor uncircumcision makes any difference as Paul clearly states (Gal 5:6; 6:15; cf. 3:28 and 1 Cor 7:19).79 Thus, the references in Gal 5:2–3 cannot relate to the surgery or state of circumcision as almost all commentators assume because Paul receives Christ’s benefits and does not consider himself obligated to observe the whole law as understood by his opponents even though he is circumcised and lives as a circumcised person. Rather, the references in Gal 5:2–3 relate to the agitators’ practice of circumcision in excluding the uncircumcised.80 76 Pierre Bonnard, L’Épitre de Saint Paul aux Galates, CNT 9 (Paris: Delachaux & Niestlé, 1972), 103; Burton, Galatians, 272–274; Bruce, Galatians, 228–229; Dieter Lührmann, Galatians, Continental Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 94–96; and Joseph B. Lightfoot, The Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians, Zondervan Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1957), 203–204. 77  The practice of circumcision is a distinguishing characteristic of the agitators (Gal 2:12; 6:13) and indicates that Paul addresses the agitators in 5:2–3, not the Galatians. If Paul addresses the agitators in 5:2–3, as these references to circumcision indicate, then the agitators are probably also addressed in the entire section of 4:21–5:6 as I have demonstrated. See Troy W. Martin, “Apostasy to Paganism: The Rhetorical Stasis of the Galatian Controversy,” JBL 114 (1995): 437– 461, here 450–456; repr. in The Galatians Debate: Contemporary Issues in Rhetorical and Historical Interpretation, ed. Mark D. Nanos (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002). 78  Heikki Räisänen, Paul and the Law (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 190. 79 See Troy W. Martin, “Covenant of Circumcision (Gen 17:9–14) and the Situational Antitheses in Gal 3:28,” JBL 122 (2003): 111–125. 80  Hans Dieter Betz, Galatians, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 258; Oepke, An die Galater, 118; Franz Mußner, Der Galaterbrief, HTKNT 9 (Freiburg: Herder, 1988), 346; and Hermann N. Ridderbos, The Epistle of Paul to the Churches of Galatia, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956), 187.

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The correspondence in the second chapter of Galatians between the agitators in Syrian Antioch and the agitators in Galatia illustrates the agitators’ emphasis on the practice of circumcision to exclude the uncircumcised. The reference to circumcision in Gal 2:12 must relate to practicing the distinctions of circumcision since any other meaning does not differentiate between the agitators at Antioch on the one hand and Paul, Peter, and Barnabas on the other.81 This reference indicates that the practice of circumcision includes more than simply the surgery itself. Practicing circumcision also means maintaining exclusive distinctions between the circumcised and the uncircumcised (Gen 17:14) especially by refusing to engage in table fellowship. Paul states that before some of James’ people arrived, Peter and the other Jews were not observing the distinction of circumcision and did not exclude the Gentiles. Out of fear for those who practice circumcision (τοὺς ἐκ περιτομῆς; Gal 2:12), however, Peter and the other Jews separate themselves from the uncircumcised.82 The correspondence between the situation in Syrian Antioch and in Galatia illustrates the Galatian agitators’ emphasis on the practice of circumcision in the controversy in Galatia.83 The agitators’ position in the Galatian circumcision controversy focuses primarily on circumcision as a practice that provides a boundary marker to distinguish Christians from those outside.84 The agitators’ position is that the uncircumcised Galatians should and must submit to the surgery to relate properly to God. According to the agitators, the Galatians should be excluded or “shut out” (Gal 4:17) from the people of God if they refuse to submit to this surgery. The Galatians’ reaction to the position taken by the agitators thus becomes important for understanding the controversy in Galatia.85 While Paul clearly portrays the agitators’ position in this controversy, his portrayal of the Galatians’ reaction is more obscure. J. Louis Martyn represents the traditional conception of the Galatians’ reaction. Martyn conceives of the Galatians as eager to become circumcised after deserting Paul for the circumcision gospel. Martyn’s conception of the Galatians’ reaction, however, fails to explain why none of the Galatians has submitted to circumcision at the time of

81  See Dunn, Theology, 73–74; idem, “The New Perspective on Paul,” in Jesus, Paul, and the Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians (Louisville: Westminster, 1990): 183–205, here 198, 200; and idem, “The Incident at Antioch (Gal 2:11–18),” JSNT 18 (1983): 3–57, here 3–41. 82  Walter Schmithals, Paul and James, trans. D. M. Barton, SBT 46 (Naperville, IL: Alec R. Allenson, 1965), 66–68. Schmithals’ suggestion that circumcision in Gal 2:12 refers only to Jews and not to Jewish Christians should be rejected. For the association between the positions of the agitators at Antioch and Galatia, see Schlier, An die Galater, 84 and Michael Bachmann, Sünder oder Übertreter, WUNT 59 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1992), 110. See also the similar perspective of the party in Acts 11:2–3. 83  Martin, “Apostasy to Paganism,” 445–446. 84 Martin, “Circumcision in Galatia,” 226–228. 85  Ibid., 228–230.

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Paul’s writing the letter.86 The surgery requires only a few minutes to complete. His conception also fails to explain why Paul accuses the Galatians of returning to their former pagan time-keeping scheme (Gal 4:10).87 The immediate context of Gal 4:10 demonstrates the pagan character of this list. In 4:8, Paul mentions the former pagan life of the Galatian Christians. In 4:9, he asks them how they can desire their former life again. Paul then proposes their observance of the time-keeping scheme in 4:10 as a demonstrative proof of their reversion to their old pagan life.88 The most serious problem with Martyn’s conception of the Galatians’ reaction, however, is his failure to explain how several entire groups of Galatians could eagerly desire circumcision.89 Considering their physiological perception that circumcision renders a male permanently sexually aroused, how can Martyn 86 Paul’s failure to address a means of reintegrating the Galatians who have already submitted to circumcision strongly argues that none of the Galatians has become circumcised. 87 J. Louis Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 33A (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 414–418. Martyn offers a different explanation and argues that Paul objects to the Teachers’ solar calendar based on Gen 1:14. Martyn does not describe the calendar Paul gave to the Galatians but assumes that Paul and his communities operated without a calendar. The evidence from Paul’s letters and Acts undermines Martyn’s assumption. See Troy W. Martin, By Philosophy and Empty Deceit: Colossians as Response to a Cynic Critique, JSNTSup 118 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 125–129; and Brian Louis Allen, “Removing an Arrow from the Supersessionist Quiver: A Post-Supersessionist Reading of Colossians 2:16–17,” Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters 8 (2018): 127–146. Paul and his communities operated with a Jewish time-keeping scheme, and Paul would need to explain the incompatibility of the Jewish solar calendar with his own if indeed Gal 4:10 were to describe such a solar calendar. The lack of such an explanation in Galatians is evidence that Gal 4:10 describes a pagan rather than a Jewish time-keeping system. Martyn’s interpretation presumes that the Galatians could astutely discern the subtle distinctions among various Jewish time-keeping schemes while being completely ignorant of the issues associated with circumcision. 88 For additional arguments for the pagan nature of this time-keeping scheme, see Troy W. Martin, “Pagan and Judeo-Christian Time-keeping Schemes in Gal 4:10 and Col 2:16,” NTS 42 (1996): 105–119; and idem, By Philosophy and Empty Deceit, 124–134. See also Mark D. Nanos, The Irony of Galatians: Paul’s Letter in First-Century Context (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), 267–268; and Brigitte Kahl, Galatians Re-Imagined: Reading with the Eyes of the Vanquished, Paul in Critical Contexts (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010), 225. Nanos and Kahl agree with my identification of this time-keeping scheme as pagan rather than Jewish. Kahl list several other recent authors who have come over to this view although she surprisingly mentions neither me nor my article (p. 355 n. 67). I am pleased that my article was the initial challenge to the traditional consensus that the calendar in Gal 4:10 was Jewish, and I am gratified that so many others have now reached a similar conclusion that it is not. 89  Neil J. McEleney, “Conversion, Circumcision and the Law,” NTS 20 (1974): 319–340, here 321–323. McEleney gathers the evidence for Gentile acceptance of circumcision, but none of the examples includes the conversion of an entire group of Gentiles except at the point of a sword. No historical analogy exists for an entire community of Gentiles’ submitting willingly to circumcision as commentators suppose is the case among the Galatian churches. See Paul W. Barnett, “Jewish Mission in the Era of the New Testament and the Apostle Paul,” in The Gospel to the Nations: Perspectives on Paul’s Mission, ed. Peter Bolt and Mark Thompson (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 2000), 263–284, here 276. Barnett reaches a similar conclusion that isolated individuals but not groups of Gentiles converted to Judaism.

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and almost all other exegetes assume that the Galatians would eagerly submit to circumcision? After all, the Galatians belong to the uncircumcised group of Greco-Roman peoples that assumes antipathy toward circumcision.90 Does Martyn really think that the Galatians would be enthusiastic about entering a public bath or participating in the gymnasium in a sexually excited state? Should he not more reasonably conclude that the social ridicule would have simply been so overwhelming that the Galatians were not about to submit to circumcision no matter how much pressure the agitators exert? Martyn’s conception of the Galatians’ reaction appropriately emphasizes the importance of circumcision in the controversy but leaves several crucial problems unresolved. One attempt to address these problems is a recent line of interpretation that extends Paul’s Galatian letter beyond an intra-Jewish controversy to the broader context of the Roman imperial cult.91 This reconstruction of the Galatian controversy understands the agitators to be motivated less by concerns for Jewish law and more by fears of retaliation from “social control agents” for allowing non-Jewish, uncircumcised Christians to claim the Jewish exemption from participation in the emperor cult. Avoidance of this cult is also viewed as the motivation for the Galatians to seek circumcision for themselves. The proponents of this line of reasoning amass strong evidence for the presence of the imperial cult in Galatia but encounter difficulties connecting this cult to the specific controversy addressed in Paul’s letter since nowhere are problems with this cult explicitly discussed.92 Furthermore, Paul’s primary argumentation that the Galatians need not submit to circumcision does not resolve the supposed 90 In Petronius’ Satyricon, Giton sarcastically requests to be made to look like his enemies, “Oh, yes … and please circumcise us too, so that we look like Jews, and bore our ears to imitate Arabians, and chalk our faces till Gaul takes us for her own sons” (Satyr. 102.14 [Heseltine and Rouse, LCL]). The Galatians originate from Gaul and are clearly distinguished from circumcised Jews. 91  This line of interpretation is first suggested by Mark D. Nanos but extensively argued by Brigitte Kahl. See Nanos, Irony, 257–271; and Kahl, Galatians, 75, 224–227. See also Justin K. Hardin, Galatians and the Imperial Cult: A Critical Analysis of the First-Century Social Context of Paul’s Letter, WUNT 2.237, (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 140–142; and Stephen Mitchell, Anatolia: Land, Men, and Gods in Asia Minor, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 2:10. 92 When scholars lack persuasive evidence, they often resort to words such as may, might, can, could, would, seem, likely, clearly, and obviously. Possibilities only become probabilities when relevant and adequate evidence is provided. I have learned to pay attention when a scholar states that something is clear or obvious, and I usually assume it is neither clear nor obvious since the words would not then be needed. In the two paragraphs where Nanos proposes this line of interpretation, I count eight such words. See Nanos, Irony, 261–263. I count twelve such words in the two paragraphs in which Kahl describes this line of interpretation. See Kahl, Galatians, 224–225. Lest I be hypocritical, let me admit that I have also been guilty of this practice although I try to avoid it. I am thus personally aware of how these words obscure lack of evidence and only point out such words used by Nanos and Kahl to indicate how disconnected their proposed interpretation is from the text of Galatians itself.

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problem with the imperial cult or the “social control agents” imagined by the proponents of this line of interpretation. Understanding Paul’s portrayal of the Galatians’ reaction in the controversy as totally unwilling to submit to the “repulsive” surgery resolves interpretive problems better than either the traditional or this more recent line of interpretation.93 Paul portrays the Galatians as deserting him for the circumcision gospel and as accepting this gospel as the valid Christian gospel (Gal 1:6–9). Because of their aversion to circumcision, however, Paul portrays them as refusing to submit to circumcision, apostatizing from Christianity, and returning to their former paganism (Gal 4:8–11).94 This understanding of the Galatians’ reaction explains why none of the Galatians has submitted to circumcision and why they could recognize without elaboration that their pagan time-keeping scheme mentioned in Gal 4:10 is incompatible with Paul’s Jewish time-keeping scheme and a demonstration of their return to paganism.95 This understanding of the Galatians’ reaction avoids the problems associated with Martyn’s traditional conception and provides a more historically responsive description of the Galatians’ participation in the controversy by taking seriously the antithetical assessments of circumcision that are held by Greeks and Romans on the one side and Jews on the other. Paul engages this controversy about circumcision subsequent to the exchanges between the agitators and the Galatians, when their positions are already established.96 The agitators represent the Jewish positive assessment of circumcision as expressed by Philo and other Jewish authors. They have successfully convinced the Galatians that circumcision is essential to the valid Christian gospel. In contrast to the agitators’ Jewish socialization, however, the Galatians have been socialized to view circumcision as morally unacceptable and an affront to decency. Consequently, they decide no longer to continue their Christian run (Gal 5:7) but to return to their former gods instead (Gal 4:8–10). Thus, the agitators demand circumcision as a requirement of belonging to the people of God, but the Galatians cannot comply without becoming licentious and immoral according to their own culturally conditioned understanding of morality. The antithetical positions between the agitators and the Galatians in this controversy appear irreconcilable. Paul enters this controversy and argues that circumcision of the penis is not a requirement of the Christian gospel. For Paul, the very composition of the 93  Martin, “Apostasy to Paganism,” 437–461. See also Troy W. Martin, “The Voice of Emotion: Paul’s Pathetic Persuasion (Gal 4:12–20),” in Paul and Pathos, ed. Thomas H. Olbricht and Jerry L. Sumney, SBLSymS 16 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001), 181–202, here 183–184. 94  Martin, “Circumcision in Galatia,” 226–228; idem, “Apostasy to Paganism,” 443–444. 95  Martin, “Time-keeping Schemes,” 105–119. 96  Troy W. Martin, “The Syntax of Surprise, Irony, or Shifting of Blame in Gal 1:6–7,” BR 54 (2009): 79–98.

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people of God that includes both Jews and Gentiles denies circumcision as a requirement for membership (Gal 3:28).97 If Gentiles are forced to submit to circumcision and become Jewish proselytes, then the gospel is only for Jews and not for both Jews and Gentiles (Rom 1:16–17). According to Paul, the truth of the gospel (Gal 2:5, 14; cf. 5:7) is that both Jews and Gentiles are justified by faith in Jesus Christ and not by circumcision (Gal 2:15–16).98 In the Antioch incident, Paul views the separation of the circumcised from the uncircumcised as hypocrisy (Gal 2:13–14) since both are justified by faith in Christ and not from observance of the law (Gal 2:16). For Paul, the practice of circumcision that requires separation from the uncircumcised in the Christian community is contrary to the true, inclusive Gospel of Jesus Christ (Gal 2:14).99 Therefore, circumcision of the penis cannot be a requirement of this gospel or necessary for membership. Paul further argues that the surgery does not demonstrate faith in Christ but rather causes the Galatians’ faith to waver. By leaving their former gods (Gal 4:8–9), the Galatians demonstrate their faith in Christ. Only after they become convinced that their new faith requires an immoral, indecent surgery do they decide to abandon their new faith and return to their paganism.100 Paul points out to them that rather than demonstrating their faith, the surgical procedure of circumcision is destroying their faith by causing them to apostatize. Paul communicates to the Galatians that they can exercise their faith apart from circumcision just as Abraham did before his circumcision. In Gal 3:6, Paul quotes Gen 15:6, which states that Abraham believes God and that his faith establishes him in a right relationship with God. Abraham is uncircumcised at this time and does not receive the covenant of circumcision until later as narrated in Genesis 17. In Gal 2:15–16, Paul explains that just as with Abraham, God justifies uncircumcised peoples who respond in faith to God. Thus, Paul argues that circumcision is not essential to the demonstration of faith even with Abraham. Finally, Paul argues that circumcision does not provide purity because the Spirit and not circumcision provides purity for God’s people. In Gal 4:13, Paul reminds the Galatians that it was on account of the weakness of their flesh that he preached the gospel to them.101 In Gal 5:19–21, he further reminds them that those who engage the works of the flesh are not the people of God. Rather, the people of God are those who receive the Spirit in their hearts (Gal 4:6) and produce the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22–25). Even Hagar’s son, who was circum Martin, “Covenant of Circumcision,” 111–125.  Moisés D. Silva, “The Truth of the Gospel: Paul’s Mission according to Galatians,” in Bolt and Thompson, Gospel to the Nations, 51–62, here 56–57.  99  Dunn, “Incident,” 35–37. 100  Martin, “Apostasy to Paganism,” 440–445. 101 For a defense of this reading of Gal 4:13, see Troy W. Martin, “Whose Flesh? What Temptation? (Gal 4.13–14),” JSNT 74 (1999): 65–91.  97  98

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cised, was cast out because he was born according to the flesh rather than according to the Spirit (Gal 4:21–31). Hence, Paul argues that the Spirit rather than circumcision provides purity for the people of God. Paul attempts to persuade the participants in the Galatian circumcision controversy that neither the surgery nor the state of being circumcised is a requirement of the Christian gospel and that neither is necessary for membership (Gal 3:28; 5:6; 6:15). Through experiential and scriptural arguments, he tries to persuade the participants in this controversy that the surgery and the state of circumcision are irrelevant to being Christian (Gal 3:28–29; 5:6).102 According to Paul’s arguments, the practice of circumcision that requires separation from the uncircumcised in the Christian community is even contrary to the true, inclusive gospel of Jesus Christ (Gal 2:14; 5:2–6).103 To resolve the controversy, Paul proposes faith in Jesus Christ (Gal 2:16) and possession of the Spirit (Gal 3:2; 5:5, 22–25; 6:8) rather than circumcision as essential to being Christian. Assessing the success of Paul’s proposed solution to the Galatian controversy is difficult. The subsequent contribution of the Galatian churches to the Jerusalem offering (1 Cor 16:1) indicates the acceptance of Paul’s solution by the Galatians, who evidently maintain their faith in Jesus Christ even though uncircumcised.104 The success of Paul’s solution among the agitators is less demonstrable. What is more demonstrable is that in Romans, Paul’s continues developing his solution to the circumcision cyclone that almost destroys his Galatian communities and continues to blow through the early church. 3.2. Romans Whereas in Galatians Paul is preoccupied with the apostasy of his uncircumcised converts, he ponders in Romans the faithful response of uncircumcised Gentiles to the gospel of Christ (Rom 2:26–29) and the faithlessness of the majority of Jews (Rom 3:1–3; cf. Rom 9–11). To explain the acceptance of his gospel by Gentiles and the paradoxical rejection of it by Jews in general, Paul draws a thoroughly physiological conception from his tradition, namely, the circumcision of the heart (Rom 2:29). Although, the surgery pertains to the penis and has nothing to do with the heart, Paul connects circumcision with the heart to explain the paradoxical responses of Jews and Gentiles to his gospel. Like Philo, Paul draws this connection from his sacred scriptures, but the ancient ­physiological understanding of heart explains the appropriateness of the connection of circumcision with the heart to account for behavior.

 See Martin “Covenant of Circumcision,” 111–125.  Dunn, “Incident,” 35–37. 104  Eung Chun Park, Either Jew or Gentile: Paul’s Unfolding Theology of Inclusivity (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2003), 53. Park evaluates the evidence less positively. 102 103

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For us moderns, the heart is simply a pump that circulates blood throughout the body while the brain controls the body by sending electrical impulses through the nerves. The ancients, however, view the heart quite differently. For the majority of ancients, the heart is the bodily organ responsible for consciousness, intelligence, and volition.105 It is the center of thinking, perceiving, and decision-making. This ancient perspective is expressed not only in Jewish and Christian texts but also in the literature of the Greeks and Romans. According to the biblical view, God appropriately hardens Pharaoh’s heart to fix Pharaoh’s resolve to keep Moses and the Hebrews in Egypt (Exod 4:21; 7:3; 14:24). Deborah and Barak describe the indecision of the clans of Reuben as “great searchings of the heart” (Judg 5:16). Responding to the generous gifts his people have given to God, King David prays, “O Lord … keep forever such purposes and thoughts in the hearts of thy people and direct their hearts toward thee” (1 Chr 29:13). Daniel says to King Nebuchadnezzar that the revelation is given so that the king could know the thoughts of his heart (Dan 2:30). In Job 11:12, the niphil verbal form of the Hebrew noun for heart means to attain insight. In the Gospels, Jesus often links thinking with the heart. After healing the paralytic according to Matt 9:4 (RSV ), Jesus asks the scribes, “Why do you think evil in your hearts?” In Mark 7:21–22, Jesus explains to the Pharisees, “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.” Gerhard von Rad summarizes the biblical view, “The seat of all the activities of the human mind is the heart, [which is] not only the seat of the whole of the emotions, but also of the reason and the will.”106 Paul also subscribes to this view. In Rom. 1:21, Paul writes, “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless heart [καρδία] was darkened.” In 1 Cor. 2:9, Paul approvingly quotes the scripture, “What no eye has seen, nor 105  Andrea V. Oelger and Troy W. Martin, I Promise to Hate, Despise, and Abuse You until Death Do Us Part: Marriage in a Narcissistic Age (Bourbonnais, IL: Bookend Publishers, 2010), 60–62; Troy W. Martin, ““Performing the Head Role: Man is the Head of the Woman,” BR 57 (2012): 69–80, here 75–79. Not everyone in antiquity accepts the heart as the control center. Several prominent thinkers argue for the brain instead. Alcmaeon (ca. 500 BCE) is usually credited as being the first to articulate this view. See Thomas F. Glasson, “‘Visions of Thy Head’ (Daniel 228): The Heart and the Head in Bible Psychology,” Expository Times 81.8 (1970): 247– 248, here 247. Also see T. Clifford Allbutt, Greek Medicine in Rome: The Fitzpatrick Lectures on the History of Medicine Delivered at the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1909–1910 with other Historical Essays (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1970), 251. This competing view of the head as the control center is the minority view but becomes increasingly more popular. See Hippocrates, Morb. sacr. 19–20; Erasistratus, Fr. 289; Plato, Timaeus 44d; and especially Galen, De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis 7.3.2–3 and 7.3.10. After Galen, this view becomes increasingly dominant. 106 Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 1:153.

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ear heard, nor the heart [καρδίαν] of a human conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him.” In 1 Cor 4:5, Paul warns, “Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the hearts [καρδιῶν].” In 2 Cor 3:15, Paul explains, “Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their heart [καρδίαν].” In 2 Cor 9:7, Paul instructs, “Each one must do as he has determined in his heart [καρδία], not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” In Rom 1:21, Paul writes to the Romans that the ungodly become futile in their reasoning and their senseless hearts are darkened. Many translations replace the Greek word heart with the English word mind in these texts, but Paul clearly writes the Greek word for heart, for the heart is the center of cognition and volition for him and performs many of the functions we moderns attribute to the brain.107 The broader Greco-Roman world holds a similar view of the heart. In Homer’s Iliad 21.441, Poseidon berates Apollo for not joining the battle against the Trojans and accuses him of having a heart that lacks understanding. Earlier in the Iliad (10.244–247), Diomedes compliments Odysseus as one whose heart is beyond all others, for he is above all in understanding. In Sophocles’ play entitled “Antigone,” Ismene is frightened by her sister’s dangerous decision to bury Polynices, against King Creon’s decree. She says to Antigone, “Your heart is fiery in a matter that is chilling” (Sophocles, Ant. 88 [Lloyd-Jones, LCL]). When Creon reverses Antigone’s sentence of death, he says, “It comes hard, but I renounce my heart’s purpose” (Sophocles, Ant. 1105 [Lloyd-Jones, LCL]). Aristotle is also an ardent advocate of the heart as the control center of the body (Gen. an. 2.4 [739b–740a]; Part. an. 2.10 [656a]).108 Several physicians advocate a similar view of the heart.109 Diocles of Carystus and Praxagoras of Cos are two of the most prominent medical authorities in antiquity, and they both hold the heart to be the center of cognition and volition. When discussing the causes of phrenitis (delirium), an anonymous manuscript states, “Praxagoras says that phrenitis is an inflammation of the heart, whose natural activity, indeed, he believes to be reasoning, and that when the heart is disturbed because of this inflammation, it becomes productive of this affection” (Anonymous of Paris, De morbis acutis et chroniis 1).110 This manuscript further states, “Diocles says that phrenitis is an inflammation of the diaphragm (he gives this name to the affection on the basis of the place [affected], not of the activity  Oelger and Martin, I Promise, 63; Martin, “Performing the Head Role,” 69–80.  See Philip Barton Payne, “Response,” in Women, Authority and the Bible, ed. Alvera Mickelsen (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1986), 118–132, here 119–120. 109  James Longrigg, Greek Medicine from the Heroic to the Hellenistic Age: A Source Book (New York: Routledge, 1998), 76, 174. 110  Translated by Philip J. van der Eijk, Diocles of Carystus: A Collection of the Fragments with Translation and Commentary, 2 vols. Studies in Ancient Medicine 22 (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 1:143. 107

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[affected]), the heart being affected simultaneously (for he, too, seems to posit reasoning around this [i. e. the heart].”111 Several texts in the Hippocratic Corpus also espouse this view. One author writes, “For the intelligence of man is established in the left cavity [of the heart], and it rules over the rest of the soul” (De corde 10,12 [Potter, LCL]). Another author explains, “Both the preceding vessels and these later ones send branches into the heart, which is situated in a narrow space as if it were holding reins from every part of the body: for this reason sensations from the whole body are concentrated about the chest” (De ossium natura 19,6–9 [Potter, LCL]). The influence of these physicians along with poets and playwrights reinforce the broadly held view that the heart is the seat of intellectual and volitional activity. Considering this physiological understanding of the heart, Paul in Romans appropriately connects circumcision with the heart to explain the paradoxical volitional response of Jews and Gentiles to his gospel. Circumcision of the heart explains the Gentiles’ reception of his gospel while an uncircumcised heart accounts for a rejection of it by a majority of Jews (Rom 2:26–29). Indeed, Paul finds ample precedent in his tradition for attributing Jewish failure to an uncircumcised heart. Paul’s inherited tradition first connects circumcision with the heart in situations where circumcised peoples displease God. According to the Deuteronomistic traditions, Moses responds to the Israelites’ sin in making the golden calf at Mount Sinai by commanding, “Circumcise the foreskin of your heart and no longer stiffen your neck” (Deut 10:16). Stiffening the neck is a favorite Deuteronomistic image for rebelling against God’s command and being stubbornly disobedient as the Israelites are on this occasion.112 According to the Deuteronomistic traditions, this stubbornness culminates in the exile as Moses predicts: And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you, and return to the Lord your God … and obey his voice in all that I command you this day, with all your heart and with all your soul; then the Lord your God … will circumcise your heart … so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live. (Deut 30:1–2, 6 RSV )

The pernicious disobedience of the circumcised that results in the exile, therefore, occasions Moses’ connecting circumcision with the heart and portraying them as uncircumcised in heart. The exile provides an occasion for other biblical traditions to connect circumcision with the heart. In the Priestly traditions, Moses describes the exiles as having an uncircumcised heart, for they walk contrary to God (Lev 26:40–42).  Ibid.  Klaus Grünwaldt, Exile und Identität: Beschneidung, Passa und Sabbat in der Priesterschrift, BBB 85 (Frankfurt am Main: Anton Hain, 1992), 14. 111

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Jeremiah threatens exile to all circumcised peoples when he prophesies, “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will punish all those who are circumcised but yet uncircumcised – Egypt, Judah, Edom, the sons of Ammon, Moab, and all who dwell in the desert that cut the corners of their hair; for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart” (Jer 9:24–25; ET 9:25–26 RSV ).113 Jeremiah exhorts his circumcised contemporaries, “Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, remove the foreskin of your hearts, O men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem” (Jer 4:4 RSV ).114 The exile, therefore, provides biblical authors with an impetus to rethink circumcision. Circumcision, they conclude, must cut deeper than the skin at the extremity of the male reproductive organ. These authors conclude that circumcision must go beyond the outward excision of a piece of flesh to an inward operation on the heart, the physical organ of human cognition and volition. Circumcision must reach the heart, the center and in a sense the essence of a person. Only those circumcised people whose hearts are circumcised as well can obey God and please God. According to these authors, God demands nothing less than the total person, circumcised both in flesh and in heart. Thus, the biblical tradition connects circumcision with the heart in the exilic situation where circumcised peoples require a deeper surgery to please God, and this tradition in non-exilic situations envisions a new heart altogether. As heir to all these exilic traditions, Paul inherits these authors’ conclusion that circumcised people demonstrate the uncircumcision of their heart by disobedience. From the exilic traditions he inherited, Paul can explain those Jews who reject the gospel of Christ as having an uncircumcised heart. Paul, however, proceeds beyond these traditions to consider the reverse possibility that uncircumcised people who obey God have a circumcised heart and please God.115 This reverse possibility provides Paul with an explanation for those uncircumcised Gentiles who accept his gospel. In Romans 2:25–29, Paul instructs a circumcised man and says, “Circumcision is indeed beneficial if you practice the law, but if you should be a transgressor of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision.” Paul is probably drawing on Jer 4:25, where Jeremiah similarly accuses his circumcised contemporaries of becoming uncircumcised in heart by their disobedience. Paul then proceeds beyond Jeremiah as well as the exilic traditions and questions, “If therefore the uncircumcision [i. e. an uncircumcised person] should observe the righteous decrees of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be reckoned for 113  Avraham Faust, “The Bible, Archaeology, and the Practice of Circumcision in Israelite and Philistine Societies,” JBL 134 (2015): 273–290, here 282 n. 31. 114  Blaschke places Jeremiah in the pre-exilic category and is technically accurate chronologically but inaccurate in that Jeremiah’s prophetic work is so focused on the exile that it presupposes an exilic understanding of circumcision (Beschneidung, 54–64). 115  Ibid., 411.

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circumcision?” The way Paul phrases his question indicates he thinks the uncircumcision of an obedient person is indeed reckoned as circumcision. Paul draws the conclusion for the man he addresses, “So the [real] Jew is neither in the observable person nor is [his] circumcision in the observable person in the flesh. Rather the [real] Jew is in the hidden person, and his circumcision [is] of the heart by the spirit not by the letter. Such a person’s praise is not from humans but from God” (Rom 2:28–29). In the exilic traditions Paul inherited, circumcision of the heart is a necessary addition to physical circumcision, and both together characterize the people of God. For Paul, however, a circumcised person can live displeasing to God but a person circumcised in heart cannot, and circumcision of the heart, not penile circumcision, is the essential requirement of the inclusive gospel of Jesus Christ. In Romans, therefore, circumcision of the heart rather than circumcision of the penis now distinguishes those who belong to the people of God from those who do not (Rom 2:28–29).116 Paul utilizes this notion of the circumcision of the heart to explain the wide-spread rejection of his gospel among Jews in contrast to the world-wide acceptance of the gospel of Christ among Gentiles.

4. Conclusion The early Christian church is almost swept away by a circumcision cyclone created by its acceptance of both circumcised and uncircumcised. The Greek and Roman antipathy toward circumcision contrasts sharply with the Jewish reverence for it. Greeks and Romans view circumcision as rendering a male perpetually sexually aroused and therefore lecherous and immoral. Jews such as Philo view circumcision as tempering male sexual passion and enabling control of the passions. Consequently, they view uncircumcised persons as unclean. These opposing views create a circumcision cyclone threatening early Christian communities trying to incorporate those on both sides of this divisive issue. Paul’s arguments in Galatians and the circumcision of the heart he presents in Romans as the solution help the early church weather the swirling storm that threatens to destroy it. Gentile believers refuse the circumcision surgery they deem immoral and return to their paganism instead. Paul’s solution provides a way for them to be Christian by having their heart rather than their penis 116 Thomas R. Schreiner, The Law and Its Fulfillment (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1993), 244. Schreiner articulates a similar view about the circumcision of the heart replacing the need for physical circumcision. On page 166, he explains, “What physical circumcision pointed to has been fulfilled in Christ. The circumcision of the heart, to which Moses and Jeremiah referred (Deut. 10:16; 30:6; Jer 4:4), has become a reality with the gift of the Holy Spirit (Rom 2:28‐29; Phil. 3:3). The fulfillment inaugurated by Jesus Christ means that the literal rite is left behind and what the rite pointed to is now embraced.”

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circumcised. Jewish members can consequently accept them as moral and clean because their hearts are purified by the Holy Spirit.117 By turning the focus away from the circumcision of the penis to the circumcision of the heart, Paul provides a way forward that permits both sides of the circumcision controversy to come together in the church.118 Not surprisingly, an early Christian apparently living at the end of the first century in or near Antioch, where the circumcision controversy first arose decades before, composes an ode in praise of the circumcision of the heart. He writes, “My heart was pruned and its flower appeared, then grace sprang up in it, and it produced fruits for the Lord. For the Most High circumcised me by his Holy Spirit, then he uncovered my inward being toward him, and filled me with his love” (Odes Sol. 11:1–2).119 Later, another Christian author records a conversation between Jesus and his disciples, who ask, “Is circumcision beneficial or not?” Jesus answers, “If it were beneficial, their father would beget them already circumcised from their mother. Rather, the true circumcision in spirit has become completely profitable” (Gos. Thom. 53).120 This and other references to the circumcision of the heart among early Christian writers point to the importance of Paul’s proposed solution to the circumcision controversy. Even though not accepted by all, his solution nevertheless points the way forward for the new inclusive religion, and the Christian church becomes a place where the dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile is broken down and both those with penile circumcision and those without it worship together in peace (Eph 2:14– 16).

 The Jewish companions of Peter are naturally surprised when Cornelius’ uncircumcised household receives the Holy Spirit (Acts 10:45). According to Acts, Peter joins forces with Paul at the Jerusalem Assembly and explains that God made no distinction between the uncircumcised and the circumcised but gave them the Holy Spirit and purified their hearts by faith (Acts 15:8–9). Paul’s description of the circumcision of the heart is very similar to Peter’s explanation of what happened to the household of Cornelius. Paul affirms that circumcision of the heart is a work of the Holy Spirit (Rom 2:29). 118  Blaschke argues that Paul cancelled the requirement of circumcision not because circumcision was a scandal to non-Jews but because of his new Christian view of the law after his Damascus experience (Beschneidung, 383). Blaschke points out that Paul’s exchanging the cross for circumcision certainly scandalizes Jews (1 Cor 1:23), and he emphasizes that had Paul based his gospel on what plays well, he would have needed to adopt a more irenic attitude toward Jews. The increasingly Gentile composition of the early church, however, indicates that Paul’s final solution appeals more to Gentiles than to Jews, but I think Paul in addition to his own “conversion/call” experience nevertheless considers the sensitivities of both groups in developing his final solution. 119  Translated by James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985), 2:744. Charlesworth identifies Antioch as the most likely provenance, but he recognizes that his hypothesis is tentative (p. 727). 120  Translated by Thomas O. Lambdin in The Nag Hammadi Library in English, ed. James M. Robinson, 3rd ed. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990), 132. 117

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5. Reception History The short amount of time this article has been in print has not allowed many scholars to engage or evaluate the ideas presented here.121 Nevertheless, those attending public presentations of the material in this article have shown much interest and appreciation for the use of primary sources in understanding the circumcision controversy that swept through early Christian communities. I am grateful to Christopher R. Hutson for offering a formal response at one of these presentations.122 He quotes my observation that the “confusion of circumcision with permanent male sexual arousal partially explains why Greeks and Romans view circumcision as a mutilation of the penis, socially unacceptable, and an affront to decency.”123 Then, he states, “I find this helpful in understanding how Jews and Greeks could talk past one another and why changing one’s views regarding circumcision was a non-starter on both sides.”124 He further states: To my mind, the most valuable contribution of this essay for understanding Galatians is that Martin has explained why the Galatian Christians have not yet been circumcised and are indeed returning to their former pagan religious practices. On Martin’s reading, the agitators have simply asked too much of the gentile Christians. If Paul’s middle way … seems untenable, then his gentile converts must choose whether to be circumcised or to go back to paganism, and they are choosing paganism.125

Hutson thus accepts my argument that the troublemakers’ insistence on circumcision and the Galatians view of circumcision as rendering a male permanently sexually aroused result in the Galatians’ reverting to their paganism. Nevertheless, Hutson thinks that I may be “overplaying my hand” when I contend “that none of the gentile Christians has opted to accept circumcision” 121 Given the short timespan since its publication, I understand why this article has not had extensive engagement, but I wonder why an earlier article I published that states a similar thesis, albeit in a less detailed exposition, has also been largely ignored. See Troy W. Martin, “Circumcision in Galatia and the Holiness of God’s Ecclesiae,” in Holiness and Ecclesiology in the New Testament, ed Kent E. Brower and Andy Johnson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 219–237, esp. 228–232. One exception is Jason S. DeRouchie, “Circumcision in the Hebrew Bible and Targums: Theology, Rhetoric, and the Handling of Metaphor,” BBR 14 (2004): 175–203. Nevertheless, DeRouchie only responds to my argument that Abraham’s circumcision in Gen 17 marked not only his new commitment to God but also a clear renunciation of his former life in Ur, where no form of circumcision was practiced. Since DeRouchie does not locate Ur in southeastern Mesopotamia as do a majority of scholars but rather just north of Haran in modern-day southern Turkey, he obviously does not accept my argument. In any case, this argument is not included in my article “Paul and Circumcision.” 122  Christopher R. Hutson, “Martin, ‘Poets, Playwrights, Plastic Artists,’ Response by Christopher R. Hutson” (paper presented at the Thomas H. Olbricht Christian Scholars’ Conference, Lipscomb University, Nashville, TN, June 8, 2012), 1–3. 123  Martin, Paul and Circumcision, 118. 124  Hutson, “Response,” 1. 125  Ibid., 2.

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since “Paul addresses his readers as ‘you who want to be under Torah’ (4:21).”126 Hutson’s criticism arises from his assumption that Paul addresses his Galatian converts in 4:21, but I have argued elsewhere that 4:21–5:6 is Paul’s diatribe against the troublemakers, and my reading of 4:21 is thus consistent with my contention that none of the Galatians desires circumcision. Understanding that none of Paul’s gentile converts desires circumcision is more consistent with the strong antipathy against circumcision among non-Jews in the Greco-Roman world as demonstrated by the primary texts I cite and quote in this article “Paul and Circumcision.” According to these texts, none of the gentile Galatians can be eager to submit to circumcision, especially since they most likely consider circumcision as rendering a male permanently sexually aroused and hence immoral. This view of circumcision makes it highly unlikely that the Galatians are seeking to be circumcised and much more likely that they are reverting to their paganism. I agree with Hutson that this explanation for the Galatians’ refusal to submit to circumcision is “the most valuable contribution” of my presentation. In his essay on Philo and circumcision, Thomas R. Blanton utilizes not only my oral presentation but also my published article. In the acknowledgments of his essay, he remarks, “Thanks … to Troy Martin for sharing with me material related to his paper ‘Christianity and Conflicting Cultural Conceptions Concerning Circumcision,’ presented at the 2015 Society of Biblical Literature Meeting.”127 Blanton points out that “when discussing circumcision, scholars of the Hebrew Bible, early Judaism, and early Christianity tend to overlook artistic material.”128 He then cites my article as an exception to this tendency and comments, “Troy W. Martin … also recognizes the importance of the artistic material for Judaic and early Christian studies.”129 Blanton states that his essay will demonstrate that “Greco-Roman artistic depictions are highly relevant to the understanding of Judaic circumcision during the Greco-Roman period” and will establish that “Philo was thoroughly cognizant of the … Greek and Roman attitudes toward circumcision.”130 These two goals characterize both my published article and my oral presentation with its PowerPoint slides depicting artistic examples revealing Greco-Roman attitudes toward circumcision and male sexual arousal. Blanton further supplements the materials and confirms the conclusions of my work, especially relative to Philo.  Ibid. Martin, Paul and Circumcision, 126.  Thomas R. Blanton, IV, “The Expressive Prepuce: Philo’s Defense of Judaic Circumcision in Greek and Roman Contexts,” SPhiloA 31 (2019), 127–162, here 127. Thomas kindly sent me a pre-publication offprint, and the page numbers cited are from this offprint rather than the final published version, which had not yet appeared at the writing of this reception history. 128  Ibid., 128. 129 Ibid. 128 n. 3. 130  Ibid., 129. 126 127

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Blanton wants to prove that “Philo’s writings evidence both a keen awareness of and an intensive interaction with Greco-Roman discourses regarding both phallus and foreskin.”131 Blanton states, “For an important discussion of the significance of the terms ψωλός, verpus, and recutitus (all referring to the uncovering of the glans, either due to sexual arousal or to circumcision), see Martin, ‘Paul and Circumcision.’”132 He agrees with my explanation of the ambiguity of these terms and quotes, “As Troy Martin aptly notes, ‘Circumcision … permanently exposes the glans and renders the male permanently sexually aroused.”133 In stark contrast to this understanding of circumcision among Greeks and Romans, Blanton observes, “Philo asserts that the exposed glans of the circumcised Jewish phallus represents not a chronic state of lust, but chronic self-control and a rejection of lust.”134 Blanton’s observation is very similar to my own depiction of Philo’s argument when I explain: This argument turns the tables on his opponents, who perceive circumcision as rendering a man perpetually sexually aroused and therefore lecherous and consumed by passions. They probably shake their heads in disbelief that Philo presents the circumcised male as sexually temperate and modest.135

Blanton and I thus agree that Philo constructs his arguments favoring circumcision in “keen awareness” of prevailing Greco-Roman objections and stereotypes. Blanton agrees with but expands some other depictions of Philo’s physiological arguments in my work such as the medical rationale for the enhanced performance of a circumcised penis. Blanton states, “Philo supports his contention that circumcision is performed in order to increase the population by providing a medical rationale … because the foreskin is not present to impede the free flow of semen into the vaginal canal.”136 Blanton also adopts my depictions of the environmental explanation for the practice of circumcision by peoples in warmer southern zones but not in cooler northern ones and the philosophical explanation that circumcision is according to nature.137 He concludes, “Philo develops a medico-environmental rationale for the practice, combining medical and environmental justifications.”138 In his essay, Blanton thus confirms and significantly expands the depictions of Philo’s arguments for circumcision in my article. Of course, my article focuses on the early Christian controversy over  Ibid., 146.  Ibid., 154 n. 61. Martin, “Paul and Circumcision,” 117–118 (original publication page numbers). 133 Blanton, “Expressive Prepuce,” 153. Martin, “Paul and Circumcision,” 116 (original publication page number). 134 Blanton, “Expressive Prepuce,” 154. 135 Martin, “Paul and Circumcision,” 125 (original publication page number). 136  Blanton, “Expressive Prepuce,” 156. 137 Ibid., 156–159. 138  Ibid., 159. 131

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circumcision rather than on Philo, but I am pleased that Blanton finds my work useful in his more extensive research into Philo and hope other scholars will likewise find my work helpful in future studies of circumcision.

IV. Apostasy to Paganism: The Rhetorical Stasis of the Galatian Controversy* 1. Introduction The rhetorician faces a monumental task in reconstructing a controversy from a single letter written by only one of the disputing parties. Nevertheless, a reconstruction of the controversy is absolutely necessary for the recovery of at least part of the original context. The elder Seneca begins each of his controversiae with a short description of the situation causing the controversy. His practice demonstrates the difficulty of reading a response of one participant in a debate without knowing the context of the dispute. Paul’s letter to the Galatians poses just such a situation for the rhetorician. Although the task is formidable, rhetorical theory provides important tools for reconstructing this controversy. Specifically, stasis theory furnishes a means for moving from Paul’s accusations and arguments to his understanding of the basic issue of the dispute. In addition, the theory of argumentation permits identification of the positions Paul thinks the Galatians are taking or may take in response to his accusations. Both stasis and argumentative theory are important tools for understanding Paul’s controversy with the Galatians, and the following essay will investigate this controversy by using rhetorical theory.1 Following a short summary of stasis and argumentative theory, this essay will determine the principal and secondary stases of the controversy and then will classify the principal stasis. Next, a detailed explanation of how the stases generate the * I am grateful to George Lyons for reading an early draft of this essay and for offering many helpful suggestions. 1  Several different methods have been employed in reconstructing the situation in Galatia. Tyson, among others, extracts the opponents’ charges leveled against Paul from his responses to these troublemakers. See Joseph B. Tyson, “Paul’s Opponents in Galatia,” NovT 10 (1968): 241–254. For a summary and critique of this method, see George Lyons, Pauline Autobiography, SBLDS 73 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985), 79–121; and George Howard, Paul: Crisis in Galatia, SNTSMS 35 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 7–11. Other scholars rely upon certain “key” words or phrases but determining the criteria for identifying these “key” passages is problematic for this approach. The present article avoids these defects in method by relying on ancient stasis and argumentative theory to ascertain the “key” passages and how these passages relate to one another. This theory accords primary significance to Paul’s accusations against the Galatians, and these accusations occur in the text of Galatians itself.

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arguments of the letter will follow. Finally, this essay will offer some brief remarks concerning the species of rhetoric to which Galatians belongs.2

2. Stasis and Argumentative Theory The Greek term στάσις comes from the root STA and means “a standing still.” In Aristotelian physics, stasis refers to the pause between the end of one motion and the beginning of another.3 A stasis must necessarily exist between opposite or contrary movements since an immobility or station must be established before a change in direction can occur.4 Not every cessation of motion, however, is a stasis. If the “standing still” following a motion endures or continues, the “standing still” is a rest (ἠρεμία), not a stasis. In rhetoric, a stasis refers to the pause following an affirmation or accusation (κατάφασις) and preceding a response or answer (ἀπόφασις) to that affirmation or charge. The response or answer determines whether a stasis exists. If the response agrees completely with the initial affirmation or accusation, then a rest (ἠρεμία) or agreement occurs instead of a stasis. Only when the response takes some issue with the κατάφασις does a stasis arise. Thus, a stasis is determined by joining the κατάφασις with its ἀπόφασις.5 The development of a stasis produces a controversy in which two parties disagree. The stasis of the disagreement is determined by joining the accusing statement made by the first party with the defensive response of the second party. When the conflicting statements of both parties are conjoined, the basis or stasis of the disagreement becomes evident. This principal stasis (prima conflictio) produces a controversy (secunda controversia) when the first party formulates a new charge in reaction to the defending party’s response, and the defending 2 Robert G. Hall argues that the application of stasis theory to Galatians prejudices the determination of the species of rhetoric (“The Rhetorical Outline for Galatians: A Reconsideration,” JBL 106 [1987]: 277–288, here 281 n. 12; 285 n. 16). Since several ancient rhetoricians include deliberative as well as forensic rhetoric in their stasis theory, applying this theory to Galatians does not prejudice the case as Hall contends. See Raymond E. Nadeau, “Classical Systems of Stases in Greek: Hermagoras to Hermogenes,” GRBS 2 (1959): 53–71, here 59, 65; and idem, “Hermogenes’ On Stases: A Translation with an Introduction and Notes,” Speech Monographs 31 (1964): 361–424, here 377, 381, 384–386, 411–413. 3 Modern stasis theorists understand Aristotelian physics as the basis for rhetorical stasis theory. See Nadeau, “Hermogenes,” 370–372; and O. A. L. Dieter, “Stasis,” Speech Monographs 17 (1950): 345–364, here 349–351. For a discussion of stasis theory, see George A. Kennedy, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World 300 B. C.-A. D. 300 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 623; and idem, The Art of Persuasion in Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 306–312. 4  Dieter, “Stasis,” 349–351. 5  See ps.-Cicero, Rhet. Her. 1.11; and Quintilian, Inst. 7.1.6. See also Nadeau, “Hermogenes,” 374.

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party composes an appropriate rejoinder.6 This process of accusation and defense generates secondary stases that represent subsequent contrary positions taken by both parties in the debate. This process continues until the controversy is resolved or until the disagreeing parties despair of resolution. The principal stasis, formed by the initial accusation and response, limits the scope of the controversy and controls the arguments advanced by the conflicting parties.7 The initial accusation (κατάφασις) reveals the cause (αἰτία) of the dispute while the initial response (ἀπόφασις) provides the containment (συνέχον) of the controversy by identifying the chief issue to be decided. For example, in a stasis of conjecture an accuser alleges, “You did this.” The accused responds, “I did not do this.” The alleged action is the cause of the dispute, and the denial indicates the chief issue to be decided – in this case, whether the accused performed the alleged action. This chief issue represents the principal stasis of the entire controversy. All counter charges and defensive statements must flow from this principal stasis to be pertinent to the dispute and useful for advancing the arguments of the accuser or accused. The principal stasis falls into one of four classifications.8 The stasis of conjecture (στοχασμός) arises when the performance of an alleged act is denied by the accused. For example, an accused murderer may deny participation in the murder. If the accused admits the act but then redefines it, a stasis of definition (ὅρος) occurs. The accused murderer may accept responsibility for the death of the victim but plead self-defense or manslaughter. If both the act and the definition of the act are accepted by the accused, the accused may appeal to some mitigating circumstances such as the victim deserved death, some benefit accrued from the victim’s death, someone else is really to blame, or leniency should be shown in this case. This appeal to extenuating circumstances represents a stasis of quality (ποιότης).9 When a defendant does not pursue any of the preceding options but objects to the entire proceedings because of a technicality, the case rests on a stasis of objection (μετάληψις). According to the rhetoricians, the principal stasis in every controversy assumes one of these four classifications. The classification of the principal stasis determines the purpose and controls the development of the arguments. According to the theory of argumentation, arguments either prove one’s claims or refute the claims of another (ps.-Cicero, Rhet. Her. 1.3.4; 1.10.18; and Quintilian, Inst. 5. Prooemium 2 and 5.13.53). Thus, 6  Dieter, “Stasis,” 355, 362–367; Nadeau, “Classical Systems,” 54–55; and idem, “Hermogenes,” 369. 7  Dieter, “Stasis,” 355. 8  Nadeau, “Hermogenes,” 370, 372–373, 382–386; idem, “Classical Systems,” 53–54; and Dieter, “Stasis,” 356–358. Some identify only three stases by omitting the stasis of objection. See Nadeau, “Hermogenes,” 364. 9  A stasis of quality is the most complicated of the four types. See Nadeau, “Classical Systems,” 55–56; and idem, “Hermogenes,” 393–394, 406–409.

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arguments become important indicators of both parties’ positions in a debate. Nevertheless, arguments may not always describe the actual positions taken by participants since arguments are sometimes constructed hypothetically. Carefully ascertaining the positions that arguments intend to prove or refute illuminates the positions both parties are taking or may take in a debate. This brief discussion of stasis and argumentative theory describes the rhetorical tools needed to reconstruct the Galatian controversy from Paul’s perspective. The primary and secondary stases of the dispute will now be determined.

3. Determining and Classifying the Stases To determine the principal and secondary stases of the Galatian controversy, Paul’s accusations must be joined to the anticipated responses of the Galatians.10 The former are explicitly expressed in the text of Galatians itself; the latter must be reconstructed from both the accusations Paul makes against the Galatians and the arguments Paul develops in the letter. Since arguments may visualize hypothetical as well as actual situations, Paul’s accusations take precedence over his arguments in reconstructing the responses he anticipates from the Galatians. The joining of Paul’s accusations and the anticipated Galatian responses permit the stases of the controversy to emerge. Although previous studies identify only one accusation against the Galatians, there are actually two.11 The first occurs in Gal 1:6–9; the second in 4:8–11.12 In Gal 1:6–9, Paul charges the Galatians with exchanging his gospel for a different gospel, which requires circumcision and observance of the Jewish Law. In 4:8–11, Paul accuses the Galatians of apostatizing to paganism. Since these two charges appear irreconcilable, traditional scholarship dismisses the latter in favor of the former.13 However, recognizing both these charges is necessary for determining the principal and secondary stases of the controversy.  Quintilian discusses both the role and dangers of anticipation (Inst. 5.13.44–49).  Exceptions are proponents of the two-front hypothesis such as Wilhelm Lütgert, Gesetz und Geist: Eine Untersuchung zur Vorgeschichte des Galaterbriefes, BFCT 22.6 (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1919); and James H. Ropes The Singular Problem of the Epistle to the Galatians, HTS 14 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1929). Their “two-front” hypothesis does not, however, rely on an analysis of the rhetorical stases of Gal 1:6–9 and 4:8–11. Instead, it relies on a misunderstanding of the purpose of Gal 5:7–6:10. 12  James D. Hester locates the stasis in Gal 1:11–12, but this passage is a proof to establish the proposition in Gal 1:10 and not an accusation (“The Rhetorical Structure of Galatians 1:11–14,” JBL 103 [1984]: 223–233, here 223). 13 Hans Dieter Betz, Galatians: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 46–47; Pierre Bonnard, L’Épitre de Saint Paul Aux Galates, CNT 9 (Paris: Delachaux & Niestlé, 1972), 22; Ernest de Witt Burton, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1921), 18; F. F.  Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 19–20; James 10 11

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It is possible for both charges to stand as stated because the Galatians’ decision relative to the valid Christian gospel must be distinguished from their decision to live or not live according to this gospel. The Galatians could accept the circumcision gospel as the legitimate Christian gospel and still reject its claims upon their lives. In such a case, they agree with Paul’s opponents that circumcision and observance of the Jewish law are proper requirements of the gospel.14 Nevertheless, they decline to submit to circumcision and decide to return to paganism instead. Several considerations indicate that Paul simultaneously accuses the Galatians both of exchanging his gospel for the circumcision gospel and of returning to paganism. First, Paul does not consider any of the Galatians to have submitted to circumcision even though he accuses them of accepting the circumcision gospel (Gal 1:6; 3:1–5; 5:7).15 If they had already become circumcised, Paul’s argument against this practice would be pointless because the process cannot be reversed apart from extreme measures (Gal 5:2–12).16 Paul’s argument in Gal 3:5 presupposes that the Galatians have not submitted to circumcision or the law.17 Furthermore, the opponents’ desire to shut out the Galatians dissipates when the Galatians submit to circumcision (4:17). Consequently, the opponents’ desire indicates the Galatians have not yet submitted to circumcision (6:13). Since the operation requires only a few minutes, the Galatians’ uncircumcised state even after they accept the circumcision gospel as valid demonstrates a reticence rather than an eagerness to submit to circumcision.

D. G.  Dunn, The Theology of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, New Testament Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 29; Dieter Lührmann, Galatians, Continental Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 12, 83; Franz Mussner, Der Galaterbrief, HTKNT  9 (Freiburg: Herder, 1988), 53–54, 290; Heike Räisänen, Paul and the Law (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 169; Herman N. Ridderbos, The Epistle of Paul to the Churches of Galatia, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956), 46, 160; Heinrich Schlier, Der Brief an die Galater, KEK 7 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1962), 36, 201–203; and Friedrich Sieffert, Der Brief an die Galater, KEK 7 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1899), 41, 254. For other attempts to subsume Gal 4:8–11 to 1:6–9, see the survey by Howard, Crisis, 66–76. In contrast to traditional scholarship, the two-front hypothesis more clearly emphasizes the pagan dimension of 4:8–11. 14  These opponents are traditionally called Judaizers, but Dunn appropriately criticizes this label (Theology, 10). The present study avoids this term in favor of designations such as “troublemakers,” “agitators,” “opponents,” or “other missionaries.” The term opponent is used even though it too may be inappropriate. See Lyons, Pauline Autobiography, 78–79. 15  Lyons provides several arguments proving the Galatians have not yet submitted to circumcision (Pauline Autobiography, 126–127). 16 Albrecht Oepke, Der Brief des Paulus an die Galater, THKNT 9 (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1957), 118. The surgery can be reversed by an even more invasive surgery, and it can also be masked by a procedure called epispasm. See my previous essay in the present volume and Troy W. Martin, “Paul and Circumcision,” in Paul in the Greco-Roman World: A Handbook, ed. J. Paul Sampley, rev. ed., 2 vols. (New York: T&T Clark, 2016), 1:113–142, here 122–123. 17  Betz, Galatians, 136.

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Second, the willingness of the Gentile Galatians to submit to circumcision when they recognize the circumcision gospel as legitimate should not be assumed.18 Judaism had long provided the Galatians with the option of circumcision and submission to the law. However, they had refused to take such steps.19 The Gentile abhorrence of circumcision prevented the widespread acceptance of this Jewish practice.20 Among Gentiles, the adult circumcision of entire social groups is not attested except in rare instances of military compulsion. Unless the Galatian situation is a phenomenon unique to the Greco-Roman world, the Galatian churches are not contemplating circumcision even though they accept the circumcision gospel as the true Christian gospel. Finally, the social structure of the Galatian churches contests their submission to circumcision. These churches were pre-existing household units before conversion to Paul’s gospel.21 The decision of the head of the household determined the religious status of that household. Paul does not address individuals within the churches that are causing disruption. Instead, he addresses the churches as a whole and treats them homogeneously.22 Even if a few of the Galatian churches accept circumcision, the unanimous acceptance of this practice by all of these autonomous Gentile units is extremely unlikely. Paul’s argument suggests either they have all agreed to submit to circumcision or none of them has. Among a diverse group of Gentiles, the latter is much more probable than the former. Consequently, it is unlikely the Galatian churches have unanimously agreed to circumcision despite their recognizing circumcision as a requirement of the Christian gospel.23 Since the accusations in Gal 1:6–9 and 4:8–11 are both possible, the rhetorician should seriously consider both in reconstructing the Galatian controversy. Either 1:6–9 or 4:8–11 functions as the principal stasis of the controversy. Traditional scholarship identifies the accusation in 1:6–9 as the accusation (κατάφασις) of the principal stasis.24 Two factors deny that this accusation provides the κατάφα18  David J. Lull examines three external arguments to explain the Galatians’ eagerness to be circumcised; none is convincing (The Spirit in Galatia: Paul’s Interpretation of Pneuma as Divine Power, SBLDS 49 [Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1980], 29–39). 19  Jost Eckert discusses the barrier circumcision posed for Jewish proselytization (Die urchristliche Verkündigung im Streit zwischen Paulus und seinen Gegnern nach dem Galaterbrief, BU 6 [Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1971], 57). 20 See the previous essay in this volume. See also Rudolf Meyer, “περιτέμνω,” TDNT 6:72–84, here 78–79; and Eckert, Verkündigung, 56–57. 21  Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 75–77. 22  Bernard H. Brinsmead, Galatians: Dialogical Response to Opponents, SBLDS 65 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982), 187. 23  John M. G. Barclay perceives the improbability of a group of Gentiles voluntarily submitting to circumcision (Obeying the Truth: A Study of Paul’s Ethics in Galatians, SNTW [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988], 46–47). 24  Brinsmead, Galatians, 49; Lyons, Pauline Autobiography, 173–174; and Bernard C. Lategan, “The Argumentative Situation of Galatians,” Neot 26 (1992):383–395, here 269.

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σις of the principal stasis. On the one hand, locating the principal stasis in 1:6–9 places Paul’s accusation in 4:8–11 outside the containment (συνέχον) of the controversy.25 Hence, scholars who identify 1:6–9 as the central issue must dismiss the accusation in 4:8–11 in one way or another. On the other hand, recognizing 4:8–11 as the accusation of the principal stasis permits the accusation in 1:6–9 to fit appropriately into the containment of the controversy. Paul seeks to discredit the circumcision gospel and those who proclaim it because the Galatians’ acceptance of this gospel excuses both their apostasy to paganism and their failure to honor their initial agreement with Paul and, ultimately, God Thus, 4:8–11 is the accusation of the principal stasis of the controversy. This principal stasis is a stasis of quality (ποιότης) since the charge is neither denied (στάσις στοχασμός) nor redefined (ὅρος) nor rejected upon technical grounds (μετάληψις).26 This class of stasis investigates the seriousness of the alleged action “from the standpoint of its non-essential attributes and attendant circumstances.”27 The stasis of quality subdivides into four types, based on whether or not the non-essential attributes and circumstances relate to a person (epideictic, περὶ προσώπου), to the future (deliberative, περὶ αἱρετῶν καὶ φευκτῶν), to the past (forensic, δικαιολογική), or to legal questions (pragmatic, πραγματική).28 Since the principal stasis of Galatians pertains to the past act of the Galatians’ apostasy (4:8–11) and the secondary stasis to their prior exchange of Paul’s gospel for the circumcision gospel (1:6–9), the qualitative stasis of the Galatian controversy is forensic (δικαιολογική). The forensic type subdivides into actions forbidden (ἀντίθεσις) and not forbidden (ἀντίληψις). The past actions of the Galatians fall into the former category, which further subdivides into countercharge (ἀντέγκλημα), counter-plea (ἀντίστασις), shifting of blame (μετάστασις), and plea for leniency (συγγνώμη). Paul’s response to the Galatians’ actions indicates that shifting of blame (μετάστασις) is the specific substasis of the Galatian controversy.29 The blame for the Galatians’ apostasy rests squarely upon the proponents of the circumcision gospel (1:7–9; 4:17; 5:8, 10, 12). Thus, the 25  For a discussion of containment in stasis theory, see Dieter, “Stasis,” 355; and Nadeau, “Classical Systems,” 54. 26 Even though he considers the stasis differently, Betz correctly understands Paul’s arguments as a response to an issue of quality (Galatians, 129). Hall dismisses the idea of a stasis in Galatians but admits that a stasis of fact would be the most appropriate stasis for Galatians (“Rhetorical Outline,” 285 n. 16). Hall’s confusion about the stasis arises from his assumption that the stasis, if there is one, must arise from accusations against Paul instead of Paul’s accusations against the Galatians. 27 Nadeau, “Classical Systems,” 54. See also Nadeau, “Hermogenes,” 370, 372–373, 406–413; and Dieter, “Stasis,” 355–358. 28  Nadeau, “Classical Systems,” 56; and idem, “Hermogenes,” 375, 383–386. 29 For a treatment of this specific sub-stasis, see Nadeau, “Hermogenes,” 394. On pp. 419–420, Nadeau defines these rhetorical terms.

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stasis of the Galatian controversy is a qualitative stasis of the forensic type, subdivided into a substasis of actions forbidden and further subdivided into a substasis of shifting of blame. This classification of the stasis and the identification of 4:8–11 as the accusation of the principal stasis as well as the joining of Paul’s accusations with his anticipated responses from the Galatians permit a reconstruction of the Galatian controversy.30 Paul accuses the Galatians of abrogating their initial agreement with him by apostatizing from Christianity to paganism (4:8–11). He anticipates the Galatians will agree with the charge but will contend that they were innocent in taking this course of action because the true Christian gospel requires circumcision and observance of the Jewish Law (3:1–5; 6:12–13), two requirements Paul had failed to mention.31 Paul levels a new charge that they are then guilty of altering the original agreement because the true Christian gospel does not require circumcision and observance of the Jewish Law (1:6–9; 2:3, 7–9, 14, 21; 3:2, 5, 10–12; 4:21; 5:2–6, 11; 6:12–15). To this charge, he expects the Galatians will respond that they are blameless in accepting this gospel because some people have arrived and told them the truth about the actual requirements of the gospel (1:7–9; 4:16–17; 5:8–12; 6:12–13).32 Paul’s letter to the Galatians is dispatched at this stage of the controversy and attempts to nullify both excuses. Consequently, the letter begins at this point in the secunda controversia (1:6–9) and then moves to the prima conflictio (4:8–11). If the Galatians persist in their present course of action, they will behave unjustly toward Paul (μέ ἠδικήσατε, Gal 4:12) since Paul’s arguments have removed both their actual or anticipated excuses.33 After they receive this letter, the Galatians will be without excuse and must bear the consequences for their breach of contract if they continue in their apostasy. This identification and classification of the stases produce a reconstruction of the controversy that differs at several points from traditional interpretations 30 This process of reconstruction yields rhetorical data, not historical data. Paul’s arguments reveal only the responses he thinks the Galatians are making or will make to his accusations, and Paul could be misinformed or even mistaken. Establishing the historicity of the situation is a separate issue from determining the rhetorical stasis. 31  Barclay says the opponents “may even have argued that Paul, himself a circumcised Jew, normally circumcised his converts but had left them in Galatia with an inadequate initiation” (Obeying the Truth, 59). On this issue, see Howard, Crisis, 44–45; and Peder Borgen, “Paul Preaches Circumcision and Pleases Men,” in Paul and Paulinism: Essays in Honor of C. K. Barrett, ed. Morna D. Hooker and Stephen G. Wilson (London: S. P. C. K., 1982), 37–46. 32 Paul’s report that even Peter and Barnabas were persuaded by a similar group of people at Antioch implies that the Galatians should not be severely blamed for not withstanding these people either (Gal 2:12–13). 33  In Gal 4:12, Paul states that the Galatians have wronged him. Paul removes any validity to their excuses for their actions, and the Galatians must act differently so as not to continue mistreating Paul. See Troy W. Martin, “The Ambiguities of a ‘Baffling Expression’ (Gal 4:12),” Filologia Neotestamentaria 12 (1999): 123–138.

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of Galatians.34 First, this reconstruction seriously considers both of Paul’s accusations and not only Gal 1:6–9. Second, the accusation in 4:8–11 represents the basic accusation (κατάφασις), and along with the Galatians’ anticipated response constitutes the principal stasis of the controversy. Third, Paul’s accusations, not his arguments, determine the actual issues of the debate. Paul’s strong argument against circumcision leads exegetes to conclude that the Galatians are seeking circumcision.35 However, the present reconstruction, which considers Paul’s accusations to be more reliable than his arguments, concludes that the Galatians have not and never intend to let themselves be circumcised.

4. Arguing the Stasis 4.1. Epistolary Prescript Paul responds to the Galatian controversy by dispatching a letter to the churches of Galatia. He begins this letter affirming his apostleship through Jesus Christ and through God the Father (1:1).36 This affirmation, introduced in the prescript, is repeatedly mentioned throughout the letter. Paul mentions his divinely ordained mission (1:10–12, 15–16; 2:9; 5:11; 6:17) and reminds the Galatians that when he first arrived in Galatia, they recognized his apostleship by receiving him as a messenger from God and as Christ Jesus Himself (4:14). At the end of the letter, Paul asserts his legitimacy because he bears in his own body the marks of Jesus Christ (6:17).37 Thus, beginning with the prescript and continuing throughout the letter, Paul establishes as a matter of record that he is the authorized representative of the deity the Galatians reject in their return to paganism. Consequently, he can accuse the Galatians of abrogating their initial agreement with him and the deity he represents (4:8–11). He can then summon them to fulfill the terms of this original agreement (5:7–8; 6:14–16) and avoid an unpleasant faceto-face confrontation (4:20). 34  If this reconstruction of the controversy is accepted, then Paul’s theology must be reconsidered since Galatians represents a significant source. It is beyond the scope of the present article to determine how this reconstruction affects “the new perspective on Paul” that E. P. Sanders introduced (Paul and Palestinian Judaism [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977]) and James D. G. Dunn explicated (“The New Perspective on Paul,” in Jesus, Paul, and the Law [Louisville: Westminster, 1990], 183–206). See the evaluation of Sanders’ and Dunn’s positions by Heike Räisänen, “Galatians 2.16 and Paul’s Break with Judaism,” NTS 31 (1985): 543–553. See especially the balanced treatment by Stephen Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 249–258. 35  Dunn, Theology, 9. 36  Despite the general assumption that these affirmations respond to attacks upon Paul, Paul’s gospel and not his apostleship provides the focus of the controversy. See Charles H. Cosgrove, The Cross and the Spirit (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1988), 25; and Bernard C. Lategan, “Is Paul Defending his Apostleship in Galatians?” NTS 34 (1988): 411–430, here 411. 37 Eckert, Verkündigung, 38.

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4.2. Body-Opening Paul proceeds directly from the epistolary prescript to the body-opening (1:6–9) where he outlines the topics treated in the letter.38 He expresses astonishment that the Galatians have rejected the validity of his gospel in favor of another gospel (1:6) that is dependent upon circumcision and observance of the law (2:3–5, 12, 15–17; 3:2–5, 10–12; 4:21; 5:2–4; 6:12–13).39 He anathematizes those who proclaim such a gospel and disrupt the Galatian churches (1:7–9). In the body-opening, Paul appropriately introduces the topics he intends to discuss with the Galatians, and he treats these topics in the order in which they are introduced. Paul begins by arguing for the validity of his gospel over against the other gospel proclaimed by the agitators (1:10–4:20). He then refutes the troublemakers themselves (4:21– 5:10) and reaffirms the essential requirements of his own gospel (5:11–6:10). These topics introduced in the body-opening coherently develop from the primary stasis described above. Paul already knows that the Galatians have apostatized from Christianity to paganism. He anticipates they will defend their action by shifting blame to his failure to tell them the truth that circumcision and observance of the Jewish law are requirements of the true Christian gospel. In his letter, Paul reaffirms the truth of his initial proclamation and rejects these added requirements as perversions of the true gospel (1:10–4:20). Furthermore, he shifts the blame for the Galatians’ apostasy to those who insist on the practice of circumcision. According to Paul, these trouble-makers pervert the true gospel and place themselves outside the Christian community of grace (4:21–5:10). Finally, Paul reiterates the essential requirements of his gospel of freedom as a reminder to the Galatians of the original agreement made between themselves on the one hand and himself and the deity he represents on the other (5:11–6:10).40 He desires for the Galatians to honor this agreement, reject the validity of the circumcision gospel, reverse their return to paganism, and live in peace as Christians according to his gospel of freedom (6:11–17).

38  For a discussion of the nature and function of the body-opening in letters, see John L. White, The Form and Function of the Body of the Greek Letter, SBLDS 2 (Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1972), 33–41. See also the works cited by David E. Aune, The New Testament and Its Literary Environment, LEC (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987), 180–182, 222–225. 39  John L. White lists expressions of astonishment as a way of introducing the body-opening (“Introductory Formulae in the Body of the Pauline Letter,” JBL 90 [1971]: 91–97). For a discussion of how Paul conditions his astonishment, see Troy W. Martin, ““The Syntax of Surprise, Irony, or Shifting of Blame in Gal 1:6–7,” BR 54 (2009): 79–98. 40  For a discussion of the various ways the function of Gal 5:11–6:10 has been understood, see Barclay, Obeying the Truth, 9–26; and Howard, Crisis, 11–14. The present article understands this section neither as an attack by the opponents nor as a defense of Paul’s own gospel but as a re-articulation of Paul’s original agreement with the Galatians.

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4.3. Body-Middle Following the body-opening, the various sections of the body-middle treat each of these topics in detail. Paul moves to each section of the body-middle by posing a question (1:10; 3:1–4; 4:8–9, 21; 5:7, 11). These questions introduce the topic for the section and set up the argumentative situation. Each of these questions, the topics they introduce, and Paul’s argument must be investigated more thoroughly. 4.3.1. First Transitional Question (Gal 1:10). ​At the beginning of the bodymiddle, Paul asks the Galatians in 1:10, “Am I now persuading humans or God, or am I still seeking to please humans?”41 This question considers Paul’s two available options; either circumcision is or is not a requirement of his gospel. The latter portion of this question asks if Paul is still [ἔτι] seeking to please humans by advocating circumcision as he once did (1:13–14; 5:11). Paul curtly dismisses this option by stating that if he were still advocating circumcision, he would not be the slave of Christ (1:10d). Having dismissed the circumcision option, Paul now considers in more detail the validity of his current [ἄρτι] rejection of circumcision, which the former portion of his question in 1:10a raises.42 Paul asks, “Am I persuading humans to accept my gospel or God?” If Paul is trying to persuade God to accept his gospel and to relinquish the requirements of circumcision and law-keeping, then the validity of Paul’s gospel is questionable. If Paul is trying to persuade humans, however, then the validity of his gospel should not be impugned. Paul answers this portion of the question with an emphatic denial of his attempt to persuade God (1:11). On the contrary, God gave him this gospel through revelation (1:12), and Paul narrates his call to demonstrate that he does not persuade God (1:13– 17).43 Since God entrusted him with this gospel (1:15–16), it is absurd to think that Paul now must persuade God of its validity.44 41 Oepke correctly notes the role this question plays in this section of the epistle (An die Galater, 26–27). Usually, scholars consider the two portions of this question parallel and interpret the former by the latter. However, this approach disregards the meaning of πείθω in the active voice and ignores the disjunctive ἤ that connects the two portions of the question. Further, the adverb ἄρτι in the first portion indicates an action in which Paul is now engaged whereas the adverb ἔτι, associated with the latter portion, implies an activity in which Paul was once engaged but is no longer. Therefore, the latter portion is not parallel to the first. See Rudolf Bultmann, “πείθω,” TDNT 6:1–11, here 2. 42 The traditional view of Gal 1:13–2:14 holds that Paul’s autobiographical remarks establish his independence from Jerusalem. This view does not adequately assess the significance of the question Paul poses in 1:10. Galatians 2:2 substantiates that Paul’s autobiographical remarks demonstrate his attempt to persuade other church leaders of the validity of his gospel, not his independence from them, as Lührmann (Galatians, 12) and Howard (Crisis, 21–45) correctly observe. 43  Paul’s oath in Gal 1:20 has a rhetorical function. See Quintilian, Inst. 5.6.1–2. 44  Even though James D. G. Dunn considers independence an important goal of Paul’s argument, he correctly perceives the argument intends to safeguard Paul’s claim for the divine

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Instead of God, it is humans who require convincing, and Paul illustrates this point by recounting three journeys in which he interacts with other Christians (1:18–2:10).45. Paul briefly describes a trip he made to Jerusalem to visit [ἱστορῆσαι] Cephas (1:18a). He spent two weeks with him and also saw James, the Lord’s brother (1:18b–19). This brief account tacitly suggests Paul’s acceptance by certain important figures in Jerusalem. Paul then narrates his journey to Syria and Cilicia but only to explain his absence from Judea, where a report about him circulated (1:21–23). This report implies the acceptance of Paul’s gospel as valid among the churches of Judea (1:23–24). Even though these two journeys are only briefly summarized, they illustrate Paul’s efforts to associate with Jewish Christianity and imply initial success. Paul narrates in greater detail a third journey, where he seeks explicit validation for his gospel in Jerusalem (2:1–10).46 Even though he encountered stiff opposition from some who operate from devious motives (2:4–5), he successfully convinced James, Cephas, and John, who were the pillars of the community (2:9).47 These three journeys illustrate Paul’s attempts to commend his gospel to humans. From these reports, therefore, the Galatians should conclude that Paul directs his persuasive efforts toward humans and not toward God. Paul’s argument concerning his persuasive efforts culminates in his report of an incident at Antioch. In contrast to the positive results of Paul’s overtures to the churches in Jerusalem and Judea, the arrival in Antioch of Cephas and later of some others from Jerusalem had disastrous results. Paul was compelled to champion the implications of his gospel before the hypocrisy of Cephas, Barnabas, and the rest of the Jews, who practiced the distinctions of circumcision and rejected the effectiveness of Paul’s gospel to place the Gentiles on equal standing with themselves (2:11–21).48 Paul’s summary of his position in 2:15–21 origin of his gospel (“The Relationship between Paul and Jerusalem according to Galatians 1 and 2,” NTS 28 [1982]: 461–478, here 465). Dunn sees the validity of Paul’s gospel as the primary issue in Paul’s visit to Jerusalem (p. 468). 45 The adverb ἔπειτα (“then”) introduces each example (Gal 1:18, 21; 2:1). 46 Paul’s need to persuade others of the validity of his gospel, not the needs of the Jerusalem community, occasioned his visit. See Sieffert, An die Galater, 91–92; Schlier, An die Galater, 66–69; and Dunn, “Paul and Jerusalem,” 466–468. For a contrary position, see Walter Schmithals, Paul and James, trans. D. M. Barton, SBT 46 (Naperville, IL: Alec R. Allenson, 1965), 43. 47  Dunn, Theology, 70. 48  Commentators recognize the difficulty of explaining the actions of Cephas, Barnabas, and the emissaries of James in Gal 2:11–21. If the chronological sequence of 2:1–21 follows the narrative sequence, then the accord reached at the Jerusalem Assembly reported in 2:1–10 appears to contradict their actions. However, the Jerusalem accord only recognized the acceptance of uncircumcised Gentiles into the Christian community (2:3) on the basis of faith in Christ (2:16). Still, the distinctions of circumcision remained (2:9). The incident at Antioch addresses the issue of how this distinction is to be maintained. Under pressure from James’ emissaries, Cephas and Barnabas shift their position from the complete equality of Jew and Gentile to a position of inequality. This issue was not decided at Jerusalem. See Dunn, Theology, 69–80; and idem, “The Incident at Antioch (Gal 2:11–18),” JSNT 18 (1983): 3–57, here 37–38.

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insinuates that he was successful, but he gives no clear statement of the final outcome.49 Perhaps, Paul leaves the outcome in question because the problem the Galatians now face proves that Paul has not been completely successful in convincing everyone that his understanding of the circumcision-free gospel is valid. Nevertheless, Paul implies that he was at least partially successful, and his summary of the incident should convince the Galatians his position is correct. 4.3.2. Second Transitional Question (Gal 3:1). ​Following his argument that he persuades humans rather than God, Paul continues to establish the validity of his gospel by appealing to the Galatians’ experience and to scripture (3:1–4:7).50 Paul asks the Galatians who has maligned (ἐβάσκανεν) them into denying their own sense experience (3:1).51 He queries them as to whether they received the Spirit by observance of the law or by the hearing of faith (3:2). He questions their intelligence if they think they mature by the flesh after beginning by the Spirit (3:3).52 Finally, he asks whether their supply of Spirit and miracles comes from works of law or the hearing of faith (3:5). Of course, the Galatians’ experiences are sufficient to answer all these questions.53 Nevertheless, Paul proceeds to substantiate their experiences by detailed scriptural exegesis (3:7–4:7). The scriptures prove that the covenant with Abraham was based upon faith in God’s promise (3:7–20) and that the imposition of the law does not nullify the promise 49  Dunn concludes from Paul’s silence about the outcome that Paul lost this confrontation (Theology, 13–14; “Incident,” 38). If Paul were defeated at Antioch as Dunn and others conclude, however, Paul should have suppressed this incident and focused upon the Jerusalem accord instead. Indeed, J. C. O’Neill proposes that Paul does not report a victory over Cephas because “the victory had already been reported in the favorable judicial decision at Jerusalem” (The Recovery of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians [London: S. P. C. K., 1972], 44). See Dan Cohn-Sherbok’s critique of Dunn’s position (“Some Reflections on James Dunn’s ‘The Incident at Antioch,’” JSNT 18 [1983]: 68–74, here 72–73). 50  According to Betz, the argumentative section of the letter begins here (Galatians, 130). 51  The verb βασκαίνω, used to describe the opposition’s persuasive methods, can mean either “bewitch” or “malign.” The better translation is “malign” since these methods are described in Gal 4:17 as “shutting out,” in 6:12 as pride, and possibly in 4:29 as persecution. 52  Interpreters equate the Galatians’ “finishing up in the flesh” in Gal 3:3 with their desire to be under law (Dunn, Theology, 103–104) or to submit to circumcision (Betz, Galatians, 134; Eckert, Verkündigung, 75). In addition to lacking proof that the Galatians desired to be under law or to submit to circumcision, this interpretation renders unintelligible the statement in Gal 3:4 that such a shift from Spirit to flesh makes their prior suffering vain. If Gal 4:8–9 describes the Galatians’ reversion to their pagan lifestyle, then “finishing up in the flesh” in 3:3 describes the Galatians’ return to paganism, and Gal 3:4 becomes intelligible. When the Galatians accepted Paul’s gospel and renounced their paganism, they probably suffered the social pressures associated with such a conversion and renunciation as Barclay notes (Obeying the Truth, 58). The Galatians’ return to their former lifestyle renders vain whatever trials they experienced as a result of their brief trek into Christianity. Thus, Gal 3:3 does not refer to the Galatians’ intention to submit to circumcision or to the law. 53  Dunn discusses the various aspects of the Galatians’ experiences (Theology, 52–63). He also observes the dual argument Paul makes from the Galatians’ experience and scripture (“Works of the Law and the Curse of the Law (Gal 3:10–14),” NTS 31 [1985]: 523–542, here 533).

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(3:21–4:5).54 The Galatians’ experiences engendered by Paul’s circumcision-free gospel are valid (4:6–7); consequently, Paul’s gospel is also valid. 4.3.3. Third Transitional Question (Gal 4:8). ​In Gal 4:8–20, Paul applies his preceding demonstration of the validity of his gospel (1:10–4:7) to the Galatians’ behavior. He asks the Galatians for the reason they are returning to their paganism (4:9), as evidenced by their renewed observance of their former pagan time-keeping scheme (4:10).55 He reminds them of their original just treatment of him (4:12b–15), but he implies by his present concern and perplexity for them that they currently are injuring him by rendering his labor in vain and by forcing him to repeat tasks he had already performed (4:11, 19–20).56 He questions their steadfastness (4:15a) and asks if he is now their enemy in spite of his continued faithfulness to them (4:16). Paul’s preceding demonstration of the validity of his gospel removes the one excuse the Galatians could have offered for the unjust actions they are now taking toward Paul (4:11–20) and toward God (4:8–10). 4.3.4. Fourth Transitional Question (Gal 4:21). ​ Having dismantled the Galatians’ excuse for the abrogation of their initial agreement, Paul now addresses their excuse for preferring the circumcision gospel over his own. In the concluding section of 1:10–4:20, Paul abruptly introduces the proponents of the circumcision-law gospel (4:17–18). He questions their sincerity in shutting out or excluding the Gentile Galatians. In the next section (4:21–5:6) of the body-middle, Paul summons these troublemakers to account for their misrepresentation of the true gospel of Jesus Christ. He refutes them by scripture (4:21– 5:1) and by his own understanding of the gospel (5:2–6). Paul’s dismissal of these proponents of circumcision removes any excuse the Galatians might make for recognizing the circumcision gospel as the true Christian gospel. The identification of the addressees is the most significant exegetical problem in 4:21–5:6. Paul either addresses the Galatians as a whole, a group of Galatians who are prepared to follow a Judaizing line, or the proponents of the circumcision gospel.57 Although this problem is difficult for later interpreters, the Galatians 54  For an explanation of Paul’s use of scripture to discount the law in favor of faith, see E. P.  Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 160–162. 55  For substantiation of the pagan nature of this list, see Troy W. Martin, “Pagan and JudeoChristian Time-keeping Schemes in Gal 4:10 and Col 2:16,” NTS 42 (1996): 105–119. This article is included in the present volume as essay 17 (pp. 359–381). 56  J. van W. Cronje, “The Stratagem of the Rhetorical Question in Gal 4:9–10 as a Means toward Persuasion,” Neot 26 (1992): 417–424. 57  Almost all commentators identify the Galatians as the addressees of this section. See Bonnard, Aux Galates, 95; Burton, Galatians, 252; Lührmann, Galatians, 89; Mussner, Galaterbrief, 317; Oepke, An die Galater, 110; and Schlier, An die Galater, 216. Lütgert (Gesetz, 11, 88) and Sieffert (An die Galater, 278), however, argue that only a portion of the Galatians who are prepared to follow a Judaizing line are addressed. Walter Schmithals holds that Gal 3:6–4:7, 21–31 addresses neither the Galatians nor the opponents since it is drawn from Paul’s debates with the Jews (Paul and the Gnostics [Nashville: Abingdon: 1972], 41). As the following discussion demonstrates, Herbert Ulonska correctly perceives that Paul addresses the opponents in Gal

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would have known immediately to whom Paul was speaking. According to the present essay, the stasis of the controversy specifies that all the Galatians had no intention of submitting to circumcision or keeping the Jewish law. Consequently, Paul addresses the proponents of the circumcision gospel in this section, not the Galatians either in whole or in part.58 However, this problem of the addressees must be resolved without appeal to the hypothesis of the present essay to avoid circular reasoning. Several considerations indicate that Paul addresses the troublemakers in 4:21– 5:6 instead of the Galatians themselves.59 The most important clues occur in the references to circumcision in this section. The verb περιτέμνω and the noun περιτομή refer either to an act, a state, or a practice.60 As an act, circumcision relates to the physical operation itself. Following this surgery, a person then lives in a state of circumcision.61 Even though circumcised persons have no choice but to live in a circumcised state, they still must decide if they will practice the distinctions associated with the covenant of circumcision (Gen 17:14). The author of First Maccabees describes those who have been circumcised and live in a circumcised state but erase the distinction between themselves and the Gentiles (1 Macc 1:11–15, 52). Paul uses all three of these meanings in his discussion of circumcision in 1 Cor 7:18–20. For Paul, the act and the state of circumcision pose no hindrance for Christianity. However, the new community established by Jesus Christ excludes the practice of distinguishing between circumcised and uncircumcised members. Paul’s succinct statements in 1 Cor 7:18–20 ac4:21–27 (“Die Funktion der alttestamentlichen Zitate und Anspielungen in den paulinischen Briefen” [Dissertation, Münster, 1963], 65). On p. 65, Ulonska begins by arguing that the phrase “those under the law” (Gal 4:21) refers to the opponents whom Paul polemically asks, “Do you not understand the law?” According to Ulonska, Paul then develops the argument by using an authority accepted by the opponents – namely, the OT (pp. 65–66). Ulonska contends that Paul uses the pronoun ἡμῶν in Gal 4:26 to associate himself with his Jewish opponents and then shifts the pronoun to ὑμεῖς in 4:28 to address again the entire community as brothers (pp. 68– 71). Ulonska’s first argument is convincing, but his second argument is inconclusive since the Galatians as well as the agitators respected the OT. His third argument is not persuasive because it rests upon the dubious assumption that Paul could not shift pronouns without changing his addressees. In Gal 2:14–15, Paul shifts from a second personal pronoun to a first personal pronoun in his conversation with Peter. Even though Ulonska recognizes that the opponents are addressed in 4:21–27, he has presented neither adequate argumentation nor correct identification of the extent of Paul’s address to the opponents. 58  Paul addresses the proponents of the circumcision gospel as brothers and includes them within the Christian community since they were Jewish Christians. See Troy W. Martin, “The Brother Body: Addressing and Describing the Galatians and the Agitators as Ἀδελφοι,” BR 47 (2002): 5–18. Nevertheless, Paul attempts to demonstrate the defects in their understanding of faith in Christ. See Sanders, Jewish People, 19; and James D. G. Dunn, “Echoes of Intra-Jewish Polemic in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians,” JBL (1993): 459–477. 59  Oepke (An die Galater, 110) and Ridderbos (To Galatia, 173), among others, note a distinct break in the letter between Gal 4:20 and 4:21. 60  Eckert discusses all these meanings (Verkündigung, 49–53). 61  Joseph. B. Tyson, “’Works of the Law’ in Galatians,” JBL 92 (1973): 423–431, here 428.

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curately describe his position in Galatians as well. Each reference to circumcision in Galatians must be carefully scrutinized to determine which meaning Paul intends. Paul uses the participle περιτεμνόμενοι in 6:13a to describe the agitators in Galatia.62 Because they are already circumcised, the participle cannot mean become circumcised or let yourself be circumcised.63 Thus, this participle cannot refer to the act of circumcision. Neither can it designate the state of circumcision since Paul would then be including himself among the opponents of the Galatians.64 Consequently, only the meaning of circumcision as the practice of distinguishing between circumcised and uncircumcised makes sense in Gal 6:13a. Even the present tense of this participle emphasizes the ongoing, continuous nature of this action.65 Therefore, the best translation of the participle in 6:13a is those who practice the distinctions of circumcision.66 The reference to circumcision in Gal 2:12 must also refer to practicing the distinctions of circumcision since any other meaning does not differentiate between the agitators at Antioch on the one hand and Paul, Peter, and Barnabas on the other.67 This reference indicates that the practice of circumcision includes more than simply performing the physical act itself. Practicing circumcision also means maintaining distinctions between the circumcised and the uncircum62  Schlier, An die Galater, 281; Eckert, Verkündigung, 34 n. 4; and Bruce, Galatians, 269–270. Burton’s contention that this participle refers to the Galatians and not the agitators requires a change of subject in the passage without a corresponding grammatical marker (Galatians, 352– 354). Hence, his suggestion is not convincing. Emanuel Hirsch concludes that the participle designates the Gentile converts of the Judaizers. These converts compensated for their inability to keep the law by convincing other Gentiles to submit to circumcision (“Zwei Fragen zu Gal 6,” ZNW 29 [1930]: 192–197). Hirsch’s position is superior to Burton’s because it does not require a shift in the subject of this verse. However, Hirsch’s position requires different groups among the Galatian churches, and this idea is rejected by the majority of scholars. 63 Dunn argues along with a majority of scholars that the troublemakers are Jewish Christians (Theology, 8–12). However, Johannes Munck contends that the agitators are Gentiles since the present middle participle always means “those who receive circumcision” (Paul and the Salvation of Mankind [Richmond: John Knox, 1959], 87–89). Munck’s proposal has been adequately critiqued by Howard, Crisis, 17. Furthermore, Munck’s argument is refuted by Gal 5:3 where this participle does not mean “those who receive circumcision.” 64  Robert Jewett astutely formulates this argument against understanding circumcision in Gal 6:13 as a state (“The Agitators and the Galatian Congregation,” NTS 17 [1971]: 198–212, here 202). Nevertheless, his suggestion of congruity in the meaning of circumcision in 6:13a and 6:13b is misleading. Circumcision in 6:13a relates to the agitators while circumcision in 6:13b pertains to the Galatians. The subject of the participle περιτεμνόμενοι is not the same as the subject of the infinitive περιτέμνεσθαι. This shift in subject indicates that the meaning of this verb also shifts between its first and second occurrences. 65  Some manuscripts place this participle in the perfect tense to emphasize the past definite action of circumcision and its continuous results. The textual evidence, however, favors the present tense. 66  Even though the agitators are primarily in view, this meaning of the participle would not exclude any Jew who practices the distinctions of circumcision. See Oepke, An die Galater, 160. 67  See Dunn, Theology, 73–74; idem, “Incident,” 3–41; and idem, “New Perspective,” 198, 200.

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cised (Gen 17:14) especially by refusing to engage in table fellowship. Paul states that before some of James’ people arrived, Peter and the other Jews were not observing the distinction of circumcision by excluding the Gentiles. Out of fear for those who practice circumcision (τοὺς ἐκ περιτομῆς, 2:12), however, Peter and the other Jews separate themselves from the uncircumcised.68 Paul views this separation as hypocrisy (2:13–14) since both circumcised and uncircumcised are justified by faith in Christ and not from observance of the law (2:16). Therefore, the practice of circumcision that requires separation from the uncircumcised is contrary to the true, inclusive Gospel of Jesus Christ (2:14).69 This understanding of the practice of circumcision explains Paul’s use of περιτέμνω in 5:2–3. In 5:2 Paul says, “If you practice circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you.” In 5:3 he says, “Every man who practices circumcision is obligated to observe the whole law.” Many commentators understand the middle voice of these verbal forms in 5:2–3 as causative or permissive middles and understand περιτέμνω as a reference to the surgical operation. They then translate the finite verb περιτέμνησθε as “you become circumcised or you permit yourself to become circumcised.”70 Correspondingly, they translate the participle περιτεμνομένῳ as “one who becomes circumcised” or “one who lets himself be circumcised.” These commentators then apply these circumcision references in 5:2–3 to the Galatians and not the agitators despite the participle’s use in 6:13 as a clear reference to the troublemakers. These commentators’ explanation fails to explain why the Galatians would be excluded from Christ’s benefit if they become circumcised while Paul, as a circumcised person, enjoys these same benefits.71 After all, the Galatians’ submission to circumcision really should not matter since in Christ neither circumcision nor uncircumcision makes any difference (5:6). Thus, the references here cannot refer to the act or state of circumcision as almost all commentators assume because Paul receives Christ’s benefits and does not consider himself obligated to observe the whole law even though he is circumcised. Rather, the references to circumcision in 5:2–3 designate the practice of circumcision.72 In verse two, Paul addresses those who practice circumcision

68  Schmithals’ suggestion that circumcision in Gal 2:12 refers only to Jews and not Jewish Christians should be rejected (Paul and James, 66–68). For the association between the positions of the agitators at Antioch and Galatia, see Schlier, An die Galater, 84; and Michael Bachmann, Sünder oder Übertreter, WUNT 59 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1992), 110. See also the similar perspective of the party in Acts 11:2–3. 69  Dunn, “Incident,” 35–37. 70 Bonnard, Aux Galates, 103; Burton, Galatians, 272–274; Bruce, Galatians, 228–229; Lührmann, Galatians, 94–96; and Joseph B. Lightfoot, The Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians, Zondervan Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1957), 203–204. 71 Räisänen, Paul and the Law, 190. 72  Oepke, An die Galater, 118; Mussner, Galaterbrief, 346; and Ridderbos, To Galatia, 187.

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as a means of determining the members of the covenant.73 For Paul, the benefit of circumcision excludes the benefit of Christ and vice versa (cf. Rom 4:14).74 In verse 3, Paul restates his contention that those who practice circumcision in this way are obligated to observe the entire law (Gal 3:10).75 Because circumcision is only of benefit if the entire law is observed (cf. Rom 2:25), circumcision is nullified if the law is broken.76 Therefore, Paul warns that those who practice circumcision as a sign of the covenant are abolished from Christ and fallen from grace (Gal 5:4).77 This practice of circumcision is a distinguishing characteristic of the agitators (2:12; 6:13) and indicates that Paul addresses the agitators in 5:2–3, not the Galatians. If Paul addresses the agitators in 5:2–3, as these references to circumcision indicate, then the agitators are probably also addressed in the entire section of 4:21–5:6. Indeed, two other considerations support this interpretation. Paul’s exhortation in 5:1 and his description of the addresses in 4:21 pertain to the agitators more than to the Galatians. According to context, Paul’s exhortation in 5:1 to avoid submitting again to a yoke of slavery describes the agitators’ pre-Christian state, not the Galatians’. Even though Oepke astutely notes that both were in a state of slavery, the yoke metaphor in this passage relates only to those enslaved under the law – namely, Jews.78 This type of slavery does not pertain to the Galatians, who were enslaved 73 Betz,

Galatians, 258.  Eckert, Verkündigung, 41, cf. 33, 39–40. Eckert views circumcision as the primary issue between Paul and his opponents (p. 31). 75  Schlier notes that πάλιν in Gal 5:3 is omitted in some manuscripts because Paul’s statement lacks a prior referent (An die Galater, 231). This adverb could indicate a prior communication of Paul to the Galatians, or it could refer loosely to the previous verse. The least problematic explanation, however, is that it alludes to Paul’s quotation in Gal 3:10. 76  Many understand individual transgressions as constitutive of breaking the law. See Räisänen, Paul and the Law, 94–96; and Hans Hübner, Law in Paul’s Thought, SNTW (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1984), 18–19. Since the law provides a means of addressing individual transgressions, Dunn argues that breaking the law refers to the breach of the covenant upon which the law is based since living from the law (Gal 3:10) excludes living from faith (Theology, 83–87). Either interpretation serves the argument of the present essay. However, Dunn’s understanding is preferred. See the debate between C. E. B. Cranfield (“‘The Works of the Law’ in the Epistle to the Romans,” JSNT 43 [1991]: 89–101) and James D. G. Dunn (“Yet Once More – ‘The Works of the Law,’” JSNT 46 [1992]: 99–117). 77  Dunn, Theology, 86; and idem, “New Perspective,” 196–200. 78  Oepke, An die Galater, 101–103. See also Betz, Galatians, 204; and Ferdinand Hahn, “Das Gesetzesverständnis im Römer und Galaterbrief,” ZNW 67 (1976): 26–63, here 59. According to Hahn, the discussion of the law in Galatians primarily pertains to Jews, not Gentiles (pp. 51– 53). Hahn admits that the law is not completely irrelevant to Gentiles, but the law pertains differently to Gentiles, who do not possess it, than it does to Jews, who do (pp. 34–35). Thus, he understands Gal 2:16 and 3:22, which place all under sin and deny the law the ability to justify anyone, as the only passages in Galatians that relate the law to the Gentiles (p. 52). On this issue of the relationship of Gentiles to the law, see Sanders, Jewish People, 81–82; and Markus Barth, “Die Stellung des Paulus zu Gesetz und Ordnung,” EvT 33 (1973): 496–526, here 508–511. 74

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to false deities and not the law (4:8–10).79 The pre-Christian slavery of Jews differs from that of Gentiles (Acts 15:10). Jews were under the tutelage of the law; they were under a paidagogos until the Father’s appointed time (Gal 3:23–25).80 Their slavery thus served some purpose in the plan of salvation.81 The slavery of the Gentiles on the other hand was vain and led to no positive results.82 The yoke metaphor in 5:1 can only be applied to the Galatians’ pre-conversion state if important distinctions between the slavery of Jews and Gentiles are ignored.83 According to Paul’s gospel of freedom, the agitators were under the yoke of the law before becoming Christian; the Galatians, however, were not. Thus, 5:1 refers to the agitators, not the Galatians. Paul’s description of his addressees in 4:21 as those who desire to be under law also specifies the agitators, not the Galatians.84 Throughout the letter, Paul describes the agitators as those who desire to be under law (2:4–5, 12; 3:1–2; 5:1, 4, 79 Sanders,

Jewish People, 69. Sanders, however, obscures this distinction. Dunn cogently argues that the phrase ὑπὸ νόμον includes Jews but not Gentiles (“Works of the Law,” 529). See also Terence L. Donaldson, “The ‘Curse of the Law’ and the Inclusion of the Gentiles: Galatians 3.13–14,” NTS 32 (1986): 94–112. 80 To include the Gentiles under the paidagogos metaphor, Sanders must ignore the shift in pronouns throughout this passage (Jewish People, 68–69). He concurs with Bo Reicke that the first and second personal pronouns in this section do not refer to different groups (“The Law and this World According to Paul,” JBL 70 [1951]: 259–276). Paul’s argument in this section rests on his statement in Gal 3:13–14 and depends on the first personal pronouns referring to Jews and the second personal pronouns to the Gentile Galatians. Christ redeemed the Jews from the curse of the law so that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles. Paul uses sudden shifts in the person of the pronouns to make this point explicit. Since Jews as well as Gentiles are saved by faith in God’s promises and not by the observance of the law, there can be no distinction between the two groups in the church (Gal 3:28). Paul uses pronouns to make a similar contrast between Jews and Gentiles in Gal 2:15. This contrast does not apply to every section of Galatians, however, and the antecedents of the personal pronouns in each section must be carefully considered from the standpoint of the flow of thought. 81  Hahn, “Gesetzesverständnis,” 56. See also Dunn, Theology, 88–90; and Richard N. Longenecker, “The Pedagogical Nature of the Law in Galatians 3:19–4:7,” JETS 25 (1982): 53–61, here 57–59. 82  Lightfoot, however, argues that both Judaism and paganism had a salvific purpose (Galatians, 173). 83 See Oepke, An die Galater, 102; and Karl H. Rengstorf, “ζυγός,” TDNT 2:896–901, here 899. 84 The determination of the addressees in Gal 4:21 relates to the discussion of those under law in 3:21–4:11, where Paul describes Jews and not Gentiles as those under law as Donaldson has demonstrated (“Curse of the Law,” 94–112). Paul’s use of the pronouns we and you suggests that he does not confuse the two groups. Linda L. Belleville argues that the first person pronouns in 3:21–25 and 4:1–5 “refer specifically to pre-Christian, Jewish life under the law” (“‘Under Law’: Structural Analysis and the Pauline Concept of Law in Galatians 3:21–4:11,” JSNT 26 [1986]: 53–78, here 68). In contrast, Paul uses second person pronouns in 3:26–29 and 4:6–11 to address his Gentile readers. Older commentators adopt a similar point of view. However, Schlier (Galatians, 193), Bruce (Galatians, 181), and Betz (Galatians, 204) take the alternative view that Paul refers to the pre-Christian state of both Jew and Gentile in 4:1–5. For a list of commentators on both sides of this issue, see Betz, Galatians, 204 n. 25. See also the excellent discussion by George S. Duncan, The Epistle of Paul to the Galatians, MNTC (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1934), 129–130.

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12; 6:12–13). In contrast, this desire is never attributed to the Galatians.85 Interpreters usually cite the observance of the days, months, seasons, and years in Gal 4:10 as evidence for the Galatians’ intention to live under law.86 However, this passage designates a pagan temporal scheme, not a Jewish one.87 There is simply no evidence in the letter to prove the Galatians desired to live according to the Jewish law. Indeed, the argument in Gal 3:5 presupposes that the Galatians have not yet begun to live “under law.”88 Thus, this description in 4:21 is more apropos to the agitators than the Galatians. Furthermore, Paul’s use of this descriptive phrase is necessary to denote a shift of subject from the preceding verse, where the Galatians are addressed, to verse 21, where the agitators are addressed in diatribe style.89 These arguments provide substantial warrant for viewing the agitators as those whom Paul addresses in 4:21–5:6. This understanding explains why the scriptural argument here is separated from the scriptural arguments in the previous section (3:7–4:7), where Paul validated his gospel over that of the agitators.90 In 4:21–5:6, Paul invalidates the agitators themselves.91 He calls the agitators to account for their desire to be under law after the coming of Christ (4:21) and constructs an allegory from Abraham’s two sons, Ishmael and Isaac, to erode the agitators’ claim of being Abraham’s chosen offspring. A most important yet unstated assumption for this allegory is that both Ishmael and Isaac were circumcised (Gen 17:23–26; 21:4).92 Nevertheless, only 85  Commentators who argue that the Galatians desire to be under law usually cite 4:21. See Burton, Galatians, 252; Mussner, Galaterbrief, 317; Oepke, An die Galater, 110; Ridderbos, To Galatia, 173; and Schlier. An die Galater, 216. Of course, these commentators’ argument dissipates if Gal 4:21 addresses the agitators and not the Galatians. 86 For example, see Bonnard, Aux Galates, 90–91; Bruce, Galatians, 205; Burton, Galatians, 232–233; Dunn, Theology, 94; Ridderbos, To Galatia, 161–162, 173; and Schlier, An die Galater, 204. Betz (Galatians, 217) and Mussner (Galaterbrief, 303) agree that this temporal scheme relates to life under the law, but they do not think the Galatians are yet practicing this scheme. 87  See Martin, “Time-keeping Schemes,” 105–119. 88  Betz, Galatians, 136. 89  Donaldson, “Curse of the Law,” 97. 90  For other solutions to this problem, see Betz, Galatians, 239 nn. 4 and 5. The usual criticisms are that the scriptural argument is superfluous or misplaced. 91  Betz correctly notes that Paul returns to interrogatio in this section (Galatians, 240). However, he identifies the Galatians, not the agitators, as those being addressed. C. K. Barrett connects the origin of this allegory with the opponents and their propaganda (“The Allegory of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar in the Argument of Galatians,” in Rechtfertigung: Festschrift für Ernst Käsemann, ed. J. Friedrich [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1976], 1–16). He contends, however, that Gal 4:30 is addressed to God’s eschatological agents and expresses the fate of the circumcision party (p. 13). 92 This allegory is often understood as a continuation of the scriptural arguments begun in Gal 3:7–4:7 that establish circumcision as an unnecessary mark of the Christian covenant. See Burton, Galatians, 251; Oepke, An die Galater, 110; and Betz, Galatians, 238. Since Ishmael and Isaac were both circumcised, however, this allegory cannot prove the irrelevancy of circumcision as the previous scriptural material does, but it can invalidate the circumcised agitators by

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through Isaac, the son of promise, were Abraham’s descendants named (Gen 21:12) even though Ishmael, the son of the slave woman, would produce a nation (Gen 21:13). Paul describes Ishmael as born completely through human design (κατὰ σάρκα, Gal 4:23, 29) from the slave woman even though he bore the mark of circumcision. Furthermore, he did not receive the inheritance (4:30) and persecuted Isaac (4:29b). The distinguishing mark of Abraham’s elect son was birth from a free mother according to the promise (Gal 4:22–23). For Paul, those who desire to be under law identify with the slave Ishmael (4:25, 30–31), originate from human design (4:29a), fail to gain the inheritance (4:30), and persecute the promised heirs (4:29b). In contrast, Abraham’s true heirs are free (4:26, 30–31), originate from promise (4:28) and Spirit (4:29), and receive Abraham’s inheritance (4:30).93 Paul designs this allegory to prove that those who desire to be under law and practice the distinctions of circumcision are not the chosen offspring of Abraham even though they are circumcised. Paul concludes that only those who enjoy the freedom from the law provided by Christ are truly heirs of Abraham (4:30). He exhorts those who desire to be under law not to submit again to the yoke of slavery under the law (5:1). Paul’s allegory from scripture excludes those who desire to be under law from the covenant of promise.94 This allegory erodes the agitators’ insistence upon law and circumcision as marks of the covenant and even places them outside of the covenant since their antagonistic behavior toward the Galatians associates the agitators with Ishmael rather than Isaac.95 In 5:2–6, Paul sharpens his refutation of the agitators by bringing his own testimony against them. Paul testifies that those who practice circumcision as a mark of the covenant do not receive Christ’s benefits (5:2), become transgressors since they do not actually keep the law (5:3; 6:13; cf. 3:10), are separated from Christ in their attempt to practice the legal distinctions between themselves and others (5:4a), and fall from grace (5:4b).96 In contrast, he testifies that those in associating them with Ishmael rather than Isaac. Paul’s testimony in Gal 5:6 and his previous arguments from scripture in 3:7–4:7 invalidate circumcision as a sign of the Christian covenant; the allegory in 4:21–5:1 invalidates the proponents of circumcision themselves. 93  Barrett perceives this connection as the primary point of the allegory. According to Barrett, Paul constructs this analogy because the agitators use the plain meaning of the Abraham story to compel the Galatians to circumcise (“Allegory,” 10). The present essay argues that the Hagar material is more important to Paul’s case than the Sarah material. Cosgrove correctly observes that Paul emphasizes the agitators’ connection with Ishmael rather than the Galatians’ relationship to Isaac (Cross, 81–82). 94  Dunn, Theology, 91. 95 Ibid., 96–97. See also Daniel H. King, “Paul and the Tannaim: A Study in Galatians,” WTJ 45 (1983): 340–370, here 368–369; and George W. Hansen, Abraham in Galatians, JSNTSup 29 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989), 146–147. 96  Sanders rejects the notion that human inability to keep the law is a basic assumption in Paul’s argument (Jewish People, 22–25, 27), and Dunn concurs (“Yet Once More,” 116). See Phil 3:6. The argument in Gal 3:10, however, requires at the very least an assumption that no one does observe all the law even though the argument does not address whether one could observe all

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Christ and not under law expect the hope of righteousness through faith (5:5) and perceive the decisive distinction between themselves and others as faith operating through love (5:6).97 For Christians, the distinction between the circumcised and uncircumcised is irrelevant (5:6a; cf. 3:28).98 Paul’s testimony, like the allegory in the previous section, excludes those who desire to be under law from those in Christ. The agitators seek to exclude the Galatians from the Christian covenant (4:17); Paul through scriptural allegory and testimony excludes the agitators.99 4.3.5. Fifth Transitional Question (Gal 5:7).  ​In 5:7–10, Paul applies his preceding refutation of the agitators to the Galatians’ behavior.100 He asks the Galatians who has hindered them from obeying the truth (5:7). He asserts that the additional requirements advocated by the agitators were not part of the original agreement made between the Galatians and himself, acting on behalf of God (5:8). He expects the Galatians to agree with him (5:10a) that circumcision and observance of the law are not requirements of the Christian gospel. Paul concludes his refutation of the troublemakers by placing the blame for the troubles in Galatia squarely on them (5:10b). 4.3.6. Sixth Transitional Question (Gal 5:11).  Having dismissed the circumcision gospel and those who proclaim it, Paul now proceeds in 5:11–6:10 to reiterate the requirements of his gospel as the basis for his original agreement with the Galatians.101 He reminds them of his circumcision-free gospel (5:11) and its sharp contrast with the “other gospel” advocated by his opponents (5:12). Paul’s gospel summons the Galatians to live a life of freedom in loving service (δουλεύετε) to one another (5:13). Their love for one another fulfills the entire law (5:14; cf. 6:2). As they are led by the Spirit and not by the law, they produce the fruit of the Spirit in their lives and shun the works of the flesh (5:15–26). Their community life is characterized by relationships arising from the Spirit and not the flesh (6:1–10). Paul encourages the Galatians to continue in his gospel the law. Thus, Paul’s assumption is descriptive rather than theoretical. Paul’s accusation probably addresses failure to achieve the purpose of the law rather than failure to keep individual precepts. See Barclay, Obeying the Truth, 139.  97  Eckert, Verkündigung, 37.  98 Dunn, Theology, 99.  99  In his address to these agitators in Gal 4:21–5:6, Paul uses inclusive language (4:26, 31; 5:1, 5) and Christian labels such as brother (4:28, 31) because this discussion is an intra-Christian debate. These circumcised agitators consider themselves to be the true members of the Christian community. Paul accepts them as Christians but demonstrates that by their desire to be under law they exclude themselves from this community. See Martin, “Brother Body,” 5–18. 100 The shift in subject is marked by Paul’s statement, “You were running well” (5:7a). This statement pertains only to the Galatians, not the agitators. The following question about who is troubling them is, however, a reference to the agitators. 101  Barclay surveys the various ways Gal 5:13–6:10 has been related or unrelated to the preceding material (Obeying the Truth, 9–26).

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by effecting the good for all and especially for the household of faith until the coming of the Lord (6:9–10). 4.4. Body-Closing In the body-closing (6:11–17), which precedes the farewell (6:18), Paul reviews the points he has made in the body-middle. The agitators should be ignored because they possess impure motives and are transgressors of the law (6:12–13).102 Paul’s circumcision-free gospel, which produces a new creation, is the valid Christian gospel since in Christ circumcision and uncircumcision do not matter (6:14–15). Only those who continue in this new creation and do not return to the old pagan lifestyle are blessed with peace and mercy; it is these who constitute the Israel of God (6:16). Paul summons the Galatians not to furnish him with labors by continuing their apostasy (6:17a; cf. 4:11, 19). He reminds the Galatians that he is the legitimate representative of Jesus Christ and has the right to dispatch this letter to them (6:17b). He certifies that this letter is not a forgery by affixing his own hand (6:11).103 This body-closing concludes the body of the letter and Paul’s argumentation as well.

5. Identifying the Species of Rhetoric The preceding investigation has applied rhetorical theory to the Galatian controversy. The stasis of this controversy was identified as a stasis of quality. Paul charges the Galatians with apostasy from Christianity to paganism. The Galatians do not deny this charge but claim justification because the valid Christian gospel requires circumcision and observance of the law, neither of which is acceptable to them. Paul objects that the true gospel does not contain these requirements. The Galatians respond that it does require circumcision because some individuals have told them the truth. Paul’s letter dismisses the Galatians’ justifications by refuting the circumcision gospel as well as its proponents. Paul shifts the blame for the Galatians’ apostasy to the agitators. If the Galatians continue in their apostasy after receiving this letter, however, they will be without excuse and receive Paul’s blame when he is again present with them (4:20). This reconstruction of the Galatian controversy enables identification of the species of rhetoric to which Galatians belongs. H. D. Betz originally placed 102 Howard rejects the view that the agitators taught only part of the law (Crisis, 15). Instead, he argues that the function of Gal 6:13 is to damage the influence of the troublemakers by asserting that they do not keep the law perfectly. Eckert discusses the possible relationships of the agitators to the law (Verkündigung, 41–42). 103  Quintilian’s discussion of these practices may explain why Paul signs his name in such large letters and calls the Galatians to witness his signature (Inst. 5.5.1 and 5.7.1). Their witness verifies the genuineness of the letter.

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Galatians in the category of forensic rhetoric, but subsequent scholars increasingly prefer the deliberative category.104 This disagreement arises both from misunderstanding the stases of the Galatian controversy and from ambiguity in the determining criteria for each of these rhetorical species.105 Since Paul is not in a court of law and he is seeking to persuade the Galatians to alter their behavior, several scholars conclude that Galatians cannot pertain to forensic rhetoric.106 However, forensic rhetoric was often practiced outside the courtroom as the numerous classroom examples illustrate. In addition, forensic rhetoric sometimes seeks to persuade someone to adopt a different course of action. For example, a plaintiff may seek the aid of the court to force a defendant in breach of contract to fulfill the original agreement or pay damages. Thus, the distinguishing criteria used by scholars in identifying the species of rhetoric are inadequate. A much more promising approach is that of Seneca the Elder. He distinguishes controversiae, which are issues that may be argued in a court of law, from suasoriae, which cannot.107 According to this approach, Galatians is a controversiae, not a suasoriae. The breach of the original agreement between Paul and the Galatians represents an issue that could be tried in a court of law. Of course, whether this issue would ever come to trial depends upon the decision of the plaintiff in this case – namely, Paul.108 Galatians, therefore, belongs in the category of forensic rhetoric as Betz concluded even though its initial reading occurs outside a courtroom. Although it belongs to forensic rhetoric, Galatians is a letter and not a speech designed for the courtroom.109 It is a pre-trial letter written to an offending party to summon that party back to the original agreement. The letter removes two legal maneuvers available to the defendants if the case should ever come to trial. The Galatians cannot shift the blame for their apostasy to a change in the original 104 Betz, Galatians, 24. Hall rejects Betz’s forensic identification and argues for the deliberative species instead (“Rhetorical Outline,” 277–287). See Bachmann, Sünder, 15–18, especially nn. 125–126. He also prefers the deliberative species (pp. 159–160). 105  For example, compare Aristotle’s Rhet. 1.3.3–5 with Quintilian’s Inst. 3.4.1–16. 106  Hall presents the essential contours of this argument (“Rhetorical Outline,” 278–282). 107  Seneca the Elder usually begins each controversia by quoting a law pertinent to the case as well as a short description of the actions in dispute. See Michael Winterbottom, The Elder Seneca, LCL (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), xvi. Seneca begins his suasoriae with the formula: “X, in circumstances Y, deliberates” (Winterbottom, Seneca, xx). See also Quintilian, Inst. 3.4.6–7; and Nadeau, “Hermogenes,” 368. 108  Lyons refutes prior identifications of Galatians as forensic (Pauline Autobiography, 112– 121). However, the studies he dismisses only consider Paul’s self-defense or his accusations against opponents. The present study identifies Galatians as forensic in that Paul accuses the Galatians. Thus, Lyons’s criticisms do not pertain to the present study. 109 Galatians should be analyzed as a letter since it is written in epistolary form. Rhetorical analyses should not indiscriminately superimpose the structure of a speech upon the epistolary structure as Margaret M. Mitchell correctly notes (Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation: An Exegetical Investigation of the Language and Composition of 1 Corinthians [Louisville: Westminster, 1992], 10 n. 33 and 22 n. 5).

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agreement since Paul verifies that the original agreement remains intact. Neither can the Galatians shift the blame for their acceptance of the circumcision gospel as the valid Christian gospel to the agitators since Paul refutes these insincere troublemakers as perverters of the true gospel. If this case should ever come to trial, the letter to the Galatians is one of the documents the plaintiff, Paul, would most certainly enter as evidence against the defendants, the Galatians.110 It is unlikely this case would ever find its way into a Roman courtroom at Paul’s instigation. At several places, however, Paul reminds the Galatians of an eschatological judgement.111 He mentions the judgement borne by the troublemakers (5:10) and warns the Galatians that those who perform the works of the flesh will not inherit the Kingdom of God (5:21). He develops the eschatological judgement metaphor of sowing and reaping in 6:7–10 and threatens more severe action than the letter when he is again present with the Galatians if they do not return to the agreement (4:20). Further, the conditional blessing in 6:16 carries an implicit threat against those who do not return to life according to Paul’s gospel.112 Paul’s pre-trial letter removes the potential excuses the Galatians might offer at the eschatological judgement for their abandonment of the deity Paul proclaims. Of course, the Galatians can avoid such an eventuality by renouncing their return to paganism and resuming their life according to Paul’s gospel. Galatians is in the tradition of a divine lawsuit (‫)ריב‬. Like the prophets of old, Paul threatens the Galatians with legal proceedings for breach of contract. Paul emphasizes his apostleship to establish his right to represent the deity in the proceedings. Like the prophets, Paul continues addressing his audience as covenant partners because he refuses to ratify their apostasy by letting them go. In the Hebrew Bible, God also refused to accept the apostasy of the Israelites by concluding the legal suit. Both the prophets and Paul exert pressure upon the unfaithful partner to return to covenant faithfulness. Perhaps, Paul’s legal action was more successful than the efforts of his prophetic counterparts but rendering a verdict on this issue requires further investigation.113

6. Reception History Two general issues addressed in my article “Apostasy to Paganism” require mention when reviewing its reception history. The first is my use of rhetorical stasis theory to analyze the Galatian controversy. Brian K. Peterson observes:  Thus, the letter functions as an inartificial proof (ἄτεχνος). See Quintilian, Inst. 5.1.1–2.  Dunn discusses other apocalyptic aspects (Theology, 46–52). 112  Betz, Galatians, 321. 113  If Galatians were written before 1 Cor 16:1, then the Galatians’ participation in the collection for Jerusalem indicates that they renounced their apostasy and the letter achieved Paul’s objective. 110 111

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Given the importance and stability of stasis theory in ancient rhetoric, it is surprising that the modern revival of rhetorical analysis in New Testament studies has not paid more attention to it … Attention to the stasis of the argument in the Pauline letters remains an area of rhetoric that has been largely neglected in recent study.114

For studies that give specific and sustained attention to stasis theory, Peterson can only point to an article by James D. Hester and my article “Apostasy to Paganism” about which he says, “Troy Martin is also careful and explicit about his use of stasis theory to explore the rhetorical situation addressed by Galatians.”115 After my article was accepted but before it was published in the Journal of Biblical Literature, I spoke with John J. Collins, who was the general editor at the time, and he said that as a rule the journal did not publish extended descriptions of method but that he would waive that rule for my article since stasis theory was so new and unfamiliar. Consequently, my article has served to introduce and promote the use of stasis theory for explaining the argumentative issue not only in Galatians but also in other New Testament texts.116 The use of stasis theory has not, however, been welcomed by everyone.117 R. Dean Anderson Jr. asserts categorically, “The intricate details of στάσις doctrine and its use to pinpoint the precise issue at stake is of little relevance to Paul’s letters.”118 Anderson limits stasis theory to judicial rhetoric and concludes, “The lists of specific τόποι which are provided for the various στάσεις … have little in common with the kinds of subjects dealt with in the letters of Paul.” Anderson’s limitation of stasis theory to judicial rhetoric is surprising especially since Quintillian explains how stasis theory is used in the deliberative and epideictic species of rhetoric as well (Inst. 3.6.1). Not only my article but also other studies reject Anderson’s categorical assertion and employ stasis theory as an effective interpretive tool. In addition to introducing and promoting the use of stasis theory, a second general issue addressed in my article “Apostasy to Paganism” probably has more 114  Brian K. Peterson, Eloquence and the Proclamation of the Gospel in Corinth, SBLDS 163 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 36, 38. 115  Ibid., 37. See Hester, “Rhetorical Structure,” 225–228. 116  For a discussion of these other studies, see Troy W. Martin, “Invention and Arrangement in Recent Pauline Rhetorical Studies,” in Paul and Rhetoric, ed. J. Paul Sampley and Peter Lampe (New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 48–118, here 87–92. 117  For example, see Mika Hietanen, Paul’s Argumentation in Galatians: A Pragma-Dialectical Analysis, Library of New Testament Studies 344 (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 33. Hietanen cites my article among those rhetorical analyses “that strictly conform to some classical theory” and that represent “a period of experimentation before an understanding of the limits and uses of the method developed.” He says that these approaches have “received the harshest critique.” Once dismissed in this way, my article and its use of stasis theory receive no further treatment by Hietanen. Of course, I and many others disagree with Hietanen’s negative assessment of the usefulness of such rhetorical approaches. 118 R. Dean Anderson Jr., Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Paul: Revised Edition, 2nd ed., CBET 18 (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), 103.

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far-reaching implications for the study of the New Testament and early Christianity. Rather than proposing a new translation or understanding of a specific passage or verse, this article proposes a different explanation of the entire Galatian controversy and of the reaction of gentiles to a circumcision gospel. Instead of assuming the Galatians were eager to submit to circumcision, this article argues that when confronted with circumcision as a “valid” requirement of the gospel, Paul’s gentile converts refuse circumcision and return to their paganism. Thomas E. Phillips comments, “Troy W. Martin’s article on the Galatian Christians’ temptation to retreat back to paganism rather than to adopt a heavily Jewish form of Christianity” calls “for serious attention from all who work in the field.”119 Nevertheless, Phillips notes that my thesis has “not yet received the recognition” that it deserves.120 Several scholars, however, have evaluated my thesis of the Galatians’ apostasy to paganism. In a thoroughgoing engagement with my article, Thomas A. Rand highlights the major issues that have caught scholars’ attention.121 He notes: Using stasis theory, Troy Martin has demonstrated that … the Galatians had no intention of actually becoming circumcised as traditional scholarship assumes. Instead, when they accepted the premises of the “circumcision gospel,” they chose to apostatize rather than to accede to the law.122

Rand correctly perceives that at the time I wrote my article, “traditional scholarship” almost universally assumed the eagerness of the Galatians to accept circumcision and to live under the Mosaic Law and rarely, if ever, considered the possibility of the Galatians’ rejection of circumcision and apostasy to paganism. Since the appearance of my article, however, the term apostasy appears much more frequently in the secondary literature discussing Galatians, but with two distinct meanings.123 119  Thomas E. Phillips, “Review of New Testament Studies,” Religious Studies Review 37.2 (2011): 101–106; here 101. Phillips is reviewing Paul Foster’s New Testament Studies, 4 vols., Sage Benchmarks in Religious Studies (London: Sage, 2010). Surprisingly, Foster does not include my “Apostasy to Paganism” article among his “Benchmarks” but rather in vol. 3, pages 237–258, my article “Whose Flesh? What Temptation? (Galatians 4.13–14),” JSNT 74 (1999): 65–91. This article builds on the thesis of apostasy as argued in my “Apostasy to Paganism” article, and this is the thesis that Phillips thinks worthy of more serious consideration than it had received by 2010, when he wrote his review. Phillips is thus not commenting specifically on my “Apostasy to Paganism” article, but his comments pertain to this article as well. 120  Phillips, “Review,” 101. 121  Thomas A. Rand, “Set Free and Set Right: Ritual, Theology, and the Inculturation of the Gospel in Galatia,” Worship 75.5 (2001): 453–468. 122 Ibid., 455–456. 123  In his recent massive commentary on Galatians, for example, A. Andrew Das includes an entire section with the heading “A Return to Paganism” in which he describes and evaluates my thesis (Galatians, Concordia Commentary: A Theological Exposition of Sacred Scriptures [Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2014], 4–5).

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In my article, I used the term apostasy in reference to the Galatians’ falling away from Christianity and returning to their past paganism, and Galatian scholars who use the term in this way are often more or less agreeing or disagreeing with my thesis. Scholars voicing agreement include James A. Kelhoffer, Mark D. Nanos, Roy E. Ciampa, and Susan Elliott. Kelhoffer cites my article and observes Paul as being “fearful that the Galatians have abandoned their more recently-found Christian origins for their traditional pagan religious practices.”124 Kelhoffer thus accepts “the plausibility of the Galatians’ having relapsed into paganism (and not having been converted to the different form of Christianity preached by Paul’s opponents!)”125 He considers this apostasy thesis to be “consistent with Paul’s charge that his opponents wish ‘to exclude’ the Galatians … (Gal 4:17).”126 Furthermore, he directs readers to my argument “that the Galatians were considering relapsing into paganism and, thus rejecting the messages of both Paul and his Christ-believing opponents.”127 In addition to Kelhoffer, Nanos also agrees with my apostasy thesis and comments, “Troy Martin has argued, against the consensus, that what the addressees are turning back to are not Jewish practices but pagan ones. I find his case convincing, and it is useful for evaluating the matter at hand.”128 Nanos later comments, “I suggest that Martin has gotten it right that the addressees are in some way beginning to return (or at least contemplate returning) to pagan public cult practices.”129 Also voicing his agreement, Ciampa states, “Troy Martin sees the stasis of the letter as one of apostasy to paganism. This is clearly the scenario Paul describes.”130 Some in agreement with my apostasy thesis nevertheless understand its significance differently than I. After noting that I have “missed what this [my thesis] signifies,” Nanos proposes that Paul’s converts face a “status ambiguity” since they are neither pagans nor Jews and “are not protected from their pagan civic responsibilities by the authority of Jewish communal identity.”131 Nanos explains that some of the Galatians resolve this status ambiguity by returning 124 James A. Kelhoffer, Conceptions of “Gospel” and Legitimacy in Early Christianity, WUNT 324 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 112. See also idem, “The Struggle to Define Heilsgeschichte: Paul on the Origins of the Christian Tradition,” BR 48 (2003): 45–67, here 59. 125 Kelhoffer, Conceptions, 112. 126 Ibid. 127  Ibid., 192. 128 Mark D. Nanos, The Irony of Galatians: Paul’s Letter in First Century Context (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), 267. 129 Ibid., 268 130 Roy E. Ciampa, The Presence and Function of Scripture in Galatians 1 and 2, WUNT 2.102 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 71. 131 Nanos, Irony, 268. See also Barclay, Obeying the Truth, 60; and Ben Witherington III, Grace in Galatia: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (London: T&T Clark, 1998), 362. Witherington states, “Barclay also rightly points out that by accepting circumcision and following the Mosaic Law they could regularize their position in the Galatian society. They would be seen as Jews, a part of the Jewish subculture in the cities of Galatia, and would avoid the suspicion that they were part of a novelty or a superstitio.”

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to paganism while others seek to become full Jewish proselytes by submitting to circumcision. Nanos thus understands the problem in the Galatian churches as arising not from an intra-Jewish disagreement about the requirements for belonging to the people of God but rather from these converts’ ceasing to participate in civic society and especially in the emperor cult. A similar understanding informs the work of Brigitte Kahl, who states: It is in particular the withdrawal from previous participation in imperial religion that probably represents the actual storm center of the Galatian correspondence, an assumption that from various vantage points and within different interpretational frameworks more recently has been strongly supported by Bruce Winter, Mark Nanos, Thomas Witulski, and Justin Hardin.132

Of course, Kahl does not include me in this list, for I do not subscribe to this line of interpretation since nowhere in Paul’s letter are problems with this cult explicitly discussed and I remain convinced that the problem in Galatia is an intra-Jewish one. Nevertheless, the proponents of this understanding of the Galatian controversy often cite my work to substantiate the pagan dimension of their proposals and see some affinity of my work with their own. For instance, Hardin comments: Martin argues that due to their aversion of circumcision, the Galatians had rejected the circumcision gospel and had instead returned to paganism. On his reading, Paul’s theological arguments were therefore not written to turn the Galatians away from any judaising (Judaizing) tendencies, but instead “to invalidate the circumcision gospel” and therefore to win the Christians from paganism back to Christianity.133

Hardin then proceeds to articulate his own position, and crucial for his argument is my contention about the pagan nature of the time-keeping scheme in Gal 4:10.134 My paganism thesis is thus important for those who pursue an imperial-cult line of interpretation including Nanos, Hardin, and Kahl, even though she does not specifically reference my work. Several of these scholars rely on my 132 Brigitte Kahl, Galatians Re-Imagined: Reading with the Eyes of the Vanquished, Paul in Critical Contexts (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010), 220. In addition to Nanos’ Irony, Kahl refers to the works of Bruce W. Winter, Seek the Welfare of the City: Christians as Benefactors and Citizens, First Century Christians in the Graeco-Roman World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994); Thomas Witulske, Die Adressaten des Galaterbriefes: Untersuchungen zur Gemeinde von Antiochia ad Pisidiam, FRLANT 193 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000); Justin K. Hardin, Galatians and the Imperial Cult: A Crtical Analysis of the First-century Social Context of Paul’s Letter, WUNT 2.237 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008); and Thomas Witulski, Kaiserkult in Kleinasien: Die Entwicklung der kultisch-religiösen Kaiserverehrung in der römischen Provinz Asia von Augustus bis Antoninus Pius, Novum Testamentum et OrAnt/SUNT (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007). 133  Hardin, Galatians and the Emperor Cult, 127. 134  Ibid., Chapter 5, which is entitled “‘Days, Months, Seasons, Years’ and the Imperial Cult?” I shall have more to say about the importance of my article on time-keeping schemes in the reception history at the end of that article, which is reprinted in this volume (pp. 359–381).

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paganism thesis as a springboard for their own understanding of the role that civil society and the imperial cult play in the Galatian controversy.135 Roy E. Ciampa also uses my apostasy thesis as a springboard for his own work. After noting that I am “absolutely correct to regard apostasy as the rhetorical stasis of the Galatian controversy,” Ciampa states that I nonetheless misread the rhetoric by taking Paul’s “references to a potential return to paganism literally rather than as stock elements of intra-Jewish polemic.”136 Ciampa criticizes me for arguing “that the Galatians are truly intending to return to paganism” and states that my mistake comes “from a failure to realize the scriptural and Jewish background to Paul’s polemic here.”137 Indeed, a major contribution of Ciampa’s work is showing how Paul’s polemical language in Galatians utilizes concepts and strategies from the apostasy traditions of ancient Israel. Based on these traditions, Ciampa concludes that Paul portrays falling away from his gospel to the form of Judaism advocated by his opponents as apostasy. Ciampa argues that this portrayal is part of Paul’s rhetorical strategy to persuade the Galatians to return to his gospel. While I consider Ciampa’s linking of Paul’s polemic to the Israelite apostasy traditions as supportive of some kind of apostasy thesis, Paul’s accusations against the Galatians that they are “so quickly deserting him” (Gal 1:6) and that they “are observing” a pagan calendar (Gal 4:8–10) remain persuasive for me to conclude that the apostasy in Galatia is actually occurring and that it involves a return to the Galatians’ pre-Christian paganism. Yet another scholar who accepts my paganism thesis but takes it in a different direction is Susan Elliott. She explains that “at the heart of Paul’s rhetorical strategy … is not the Law in itself but the audience’s potential regression, an ‘apostasy to paganism’. This is shown in Troy Martin’s analysis of the letter based on stasis theory.”138 Elliott, however, is convinced that “Paul does indeed ‘equate being under the law with being under the στοιχεῖα,’” and she states that “this equation is the issue.”139 She further explains, “Martin’s analysis points to the difficulty: How can apostasy to paganism be the issue for Paul when the Galatians are turning to the Law?”140 Elliott answers this question by explaining that Paul “makes explicit for them that their attraction to circumcision is based on subliminal and vestigial influences of their Anatolian context, as a ritual with 135  Surprisingly, however, Kahl never mentions my work or any of my articles that deal with specific issues she discusses in her “re-imagining” Galatians. See additional comments about her neglect of my work in the reception history at the end of essay 17 (pp. 359–381), which reprints my time-keeping schemes article. 136  Ciampa, Presence and Function of Scripture, 292. 137 Ibid. 138  Susan Elliott, Cutting Too Close for Comfort: Paul’s Letter to the Galatians in Its Anatolian Cultic Context, JSNTSup 248 (London: T&T Clark, 2003), 52. 139  Ibid., 52–53. 140  Ibid., 53.

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functional similarity to castration.”141 She understands Paul’s argument as trying “to show the Galatians that circumcision would mean a return to the religious ‘enslavement’ they had left or rejected in their context.”142 Even though the letter describes both the Mosaic Law and paganism as being under the στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου (Gal 4:3, 9), this law is not equated with paganism any more than it is equal to the entire world, which is also under the στοιχεῖα and passing away. Even though I do not think that Gal 5:12 refers to castration, I nevertheless appreciate Elliott’s taking my apostasy thesis so seriously and using it to pose the central question that her monograph seeks to answer.143 In contrast to these scholars who use the term apostasy and voice some agreement with my thesis, many other scholars use the term in either partial or complete disagreement. George Lyons is an example of the former. He sees my work as providing “reasons to challenge the typical scholarly assumption that a majority of the Galatians were anxious to get circumcised.”144 Citing my “Apostasy to Paganism” article, he comments: It seems entirely possible that the majority of the Galatian communities resisted the urging of the Agitators to get circumcised. It is even possible that some were so repulsed by circumcision that they were prepared to abandon Christianity and return to paganism rather than accept it … but there are other possibilities.145

While Lyons allows for the possibility of my apostasy thesis, he nevertheless refers to his 1982 dissertation when describing the purpose of Galatians, and he argues in his dissertation that Paul “uses deliberative rhetoric to persuade the Galatians to abandon their plans to get circumcised and to return to his gospel of justification by faith alone.”146 While sympathetic to my apostasy thesis, therefore, Lyons leans more toward the traditional understanding of Galatians.147 In addition to Lyons, Todd A. Wilson also does not reject my apostasy thesis out-of-hand. He writes that “Paul’s chief purpose in writing” is “to halt the imminent apostasy of his converts, incited by those who, as he says, want to pervert the gospel of Christ (1.7).”148 Wilson then references my article in a footnote and instructs his readers to confer with it but adds that my thesis of the Galatians’ returning to paganism “is open to question.”149 Wilson then develops  Ibid., 257.  Ibid. 143  Martin, “Time-keeping Schemes,” 117. 144  George Lyons, Galatians: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition, New Beacon Bible Commentary (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 39. 145  Ibid. 146  Ibid., 43–44. Lyons’ book Pauline Autobiography is the published version of his dissertation. Lyons is referring specifically to pp. 173–174. 147  Lyons, Galatians, 46. 148  Todd A. Wilson, The Curse of the Law and the Crisis in Galatia: Reassessing the Purpose of Galatians, WUNT 2.225 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 24. 149  Ibid., 24 n. 4. 141

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his own explanation of the Galatian crisis and writes, “Paul has framed Galatians with a conditional curse (1:8–9) and blessing (6:16), indicating that the letter as a whole is intended to confront his apostatizing converts with a stark choice between these two alternatives.”150 According to Wilson, blessing is attained by following Paul’s gospel while cursing results from the troublemakers’ gospel. Wilson is open to using my term apostasy, but in contrast to my apostasy thesis, he nevertheless describes the apostasy as following the circumcision gospel. Examples of those, however, who use the term apostasy with complete rejection of my apostasy thesis are numerous and include J. Louis Martyn, A. Andrew Das, Karin B. Neutel, Thomas R. Schreiner, Simon Légasse, and Richard Valantasis among others. Martyn was one of the first to evaluate my “Apostasy to Paganism” article, and in a footnote he comments, “Recently, T. Martin … has advanced a rhetorical thesis that is so fanciful as to have the effect of suggesting a moratorium of some length in this branch of research.”151 As a young scholar, I was initially deeply discouraged by Martyn’s blunt assessment until I realized that he had advanced no substantive argument against my thesis. He presents no argument to substantiate his disparaging characterization of my thesis as “fanciful,” and his call for “a moratorium of some length” on the method of rhetorical analyses is an attempt to silence someone with whom he strongly disagrees. In biblical studies however, debate and argument and not moratoriums should be the response to theses with which we disagree, and I took some encouragement from the lack of any substantive arguments in Martyn’s rejection of my apostasy thesis. Rather than any substantive arguments, Martyn dismisses my apostasy thesis with an argument from ethos, namely his authority to call for a moratorium on my work. Perhaps, an argument from ethos, therefore, might be an appropriate way to respond to him. John J. Collins was general editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature when I submitted my manuscript for consideration. I saw John at a meeting of the Midwest SBL shortly thereafter, and he informed me that he thought my thesis significant enough to send my manuscript to peer-reviewers. I responded that I hoped they could find good reason for rejecting my thesis since I was troubled that no one, as far as I could tell, had ever before seen apostasy to paganism as the primary issue in Galatians. When I first realized that the Galatians were apostatizing to paganism, I tried for weeks to convince myself that such a reading of Galatians did not work, but I could not, and so I hoped that perhaps these reviewers could. Not long after that, John contacted me to let me know that the reviews were so affirmative that he was publishing my manuscript immediately in JBL 114.3 even though another article of mine had just been published in JBL 114.2 and the policy of the journal was not to publish two articles by the same author in a single issue. Even though I still am not certain whether John  Ibid., 44.  Martyn, Galatians, 21 n. 26.

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or these reviewers agreed with my apostasy thesis, they nevertheless deemed my article significant enough for publication and for consideration by other biblical scholars. Most importantly, no one except Martyn called for a moratorium. In contrast to Martyn, others have offered some substantive arguments for rejecting my apostasy thesis. A. Andrew Das comments: Troy W. Martin, who has written at length on Galatians, took 4:10 as his starting point to argue a very different thesis: The Galatians are returning to paganism because of the difficulty posed by the requirement of circumcision. The “special days and months and seasons and years” really do refer to their former calendar to which they are returning.152

Das perceptively recognizes the progression of my thought. I still remember the moment in which I first realized that Gal 4:10 describes a pagan time-keeping scheme, and even though I was alone in my study, I mumbled in stunned surprise, “The Galatians are returning to paganism.” Understanding Gal 4:10 in reference of a pagan calendar thus provided the initial impetus for my apostasy thesis, and those who read this verse as describing a pagan calendar see some form of paganism as the issue in the Galatian churches. Those who reject my thesis must read this verse in reference to a Jewish calendar or, as Das does, in reference to some form of “ironic equation of the days, months, seasons, and years of the new found Jewish calendar with the calendars of the Galatians’ pagan past.”153 Since my article entitled “Pagan and Judeo-Christian Time-keeping Schemes in Gal 4.10 and Col 2.16” is included later in this volume, I shall comment more thoroughly on its reception at the end of that essay, but the reasons given for rejecting the pagan nature of the time-keeping scheme in Gal 4:10 are often the same as those put forward for rejecting my apostasy thesis since the two are interdependent. In addition to Gal 4:10, scholars often cite Paul’s accusation in Gal 1:6–9 as the basis for rejecting my apostasy thesis while nevertheless still employing the term apostasy. Commenting on Gal 4:10, Jeffrey R. Wisdom observes, “Paul’s use of the adverbs πάλιν and ἄνωθεν clearly implies that the Galatians are in danger of returning to their former life as pagans with its concomitant idol worship.”154 He then notes: Martin … has applied rhetorical theory to Galatians and has argued that the Galatians did return to paganism because they would not accept circumcision under pressure from those who came in and troubled them. According to Martin, Paul thus argues against the other gospel in order to draw the Galatians, who have returned to their pagan idolatry, back to Christ.155  Das, Galatians, 4.  Ibid., 5. 154  Jeffrey R. Wisdom, Blessing for the Nations and the Curse of the Law: Paul’s Citation of Genesis and Deuteronomy in Gal 3.8–10, WUNT 2.133 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 208. 155  Ibid., 208 n. 35. 152 153

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Wisdom thinks, however, that the situation in the letter would be clearer if the Galatians were actually returning to their paganism, and he reasons, “The whole thrust of Paul’s letter to the Galatians is not that they have returned to paganism, but rather that they are in danger of becoming apostates by turning to the law.”156 Wisdom considers my rhetorical analysis of Galatians as failing “to account for the clear direction of the argument beginning in 1.6,” and he concludes, “Paul thought that by turning to the law the Galatians would be returning to their pagan roots and they would thus be apostates.”157 Wisdom’s reasoning illustrates a traditional reading of Galatians that reconstructs the controversy largely on the basis of the accusation in Gal 1:6–9 while subsuming or dismissing the accusation in Gal 4:8–10.158 Not surprisingly, those who take Gal 1:6–9 as the primary or only accusation assume “the whole thrust of Paul’s letter” and the “clear direction” of his argument to be preventing the Galatians from adopting the circumcision gospel of the troublemakers and from turning to the law. As I point out in my article, however, this assumption is faulty, for “the Galatians’ decision relative to the valid Christian gospel must be distinguished from their decision to live or not live according to this gospel.”159 When Gal 4:8–10 is read as the principal accusation and Gal 1:6–9 as the secondary, then “the whole thrust of the letter” and the “clear direction” of Paul’s argument is indeed an attempt “to discredit the circumcision gospel and those who proclaim it” but for the purpose of removing the cause of the Galatians’ apostasy to their former paganism.160 For these reasons among others, I do not consider Gal 1:6–9 as a hindrance to my apostasy thesis but rather as an integral part of that thesis. In addition to Gal 1:6–9, those who reject my thesis also frequently cite Gal 4:21 as evidence of the Galatians’ desire to be under law and thus of their not returning to their former paganism. One among these is Das, who objects to my apostasy thesis by writing, “Gal 4:21, however, suggests that the Galatians’ desire to be under the Law is serious and sincere.”161 Another is Karin B. Neutel, who mentions my apostasy thesis and then reasons, “Since Paul … addresses his audience as ‘you who want to be under the law’, he clearly has the same problem of gentiles being urged to follow the law in view … as in the whole of the letter.”162 Of course, I had already anticipated such an objection if Gal 4:21 is read in the traditional way as an address to the Galatians, and I have followed  Ibid., 208–209.  Ibid., 209–210. 158  Martin, “Apostasy to Paganism,” 440. 159  Ibid., 441. 160  Ibid., 443. 161  Ibid., 4. 162  Karin B. Neutel, A Cosmopolitan Ideal: Paul’s Declaration ‘Neither Jew Nor Greek, Neither Slave Nor Free, Nor Male and Female’ in the Context of First-Century Thought, LNTS 513 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), 96–97 n. 55. 156 157

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Herbert Ulonska in concluding that this verse was addressed rather to “the proponents of the circumcision gospel” as was the whole of 4:21–5:6.163 Das calls my conclusion a “somewhat strange thesis” and objects to it because elsewhere in the letter Paul makes a “careful distinction … between ‘you’ Galatians (3:1; cf. 1:2) and ‘those’ people (5:12).”164 While I agree that elsewhere in Galatians Paul speaks about these troublemakers in the third person, his practice in other letters of shifting from the third to the second person to address an actual or imaginary opponent in diatribe style removes any strangeness from Paul’s shifting to the second person and speaking directly to these troublemakers in 4:21–5:6.165 After all, Terrence L. Donaldson states, “In Galatians a Jewish Christian author debates an opposing Jewish Christian position for the benefit of his Gentile Christian readers.”166 Thomas R. Schreiner proposes more arguments than Das for reading Gal 4:21 in the traditional way and for rejecting my conclusion that this verse addresses the troublemakers. First, Schreiner summarizes my apostasy thesis and writes: Troy Martin argues a rather idiosyncratic position relative to Galatians scholarship, contending that the Galatians were not tempted to return to Judaism but were actually falling back into their former paganism (4:8–11). When they learned from the opponents that circumcision was a requirement of the gospel, they relapsed into paganism since they would not want to submit to circumcision.167

Schreiner then comments: Despite the creativity and ingenuity of Martin’s reading, it is most plausible to conclude that the lengthy discussion on the law and circumcision is best explained by the Galatians’ temptation to submit to such. Martin can sustain his thesis only by claiming that Paul turns from the Galatians to address the opponents in 4:21–5:6. Such a reading seems like a counsel of desperation.”168

I actually did not feel desperate when I advanced several reasons for concluding that this passage addresses the troublemakers rather than the Galatians.169 Schreiner does not respond to these reasons, however, but merely states his own arguments for rejecting my conclusion that Gal 4:21 addresses the troublemakers. Schreiner proposes three arguments. First, he asserts, “We have no other example in a Pauline letter where part of the letter is addressed directly to opponents.” Paul’s frequent use of diatribe, however, detracts from the veracity 163  Martin, “Apostasy to Paganism,” 451. See Ulonska, “Die Funktion,” 65–71. Ulonska, however, limits this address to the troublemakers to Gal 4:21–27 while I extend it to 5:6. 164 Das, Galatians, 4–5. 165  For examples, see Rom 2:1; 9:19–20; 1 Cor 15:36; 2 Cor 8:9–12. 166  Donelson, “Curse of the Law,” 97. 167  Thomas R. Schreiner, Galatians, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 37–38. 168  Ibid. 169  Martin, “Apostasy to Paganism,” 451–457.

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of Schreiner’s assertion. In particular, 2 Cor 8:9–12 undermines this assertion. In this passage, Paul addresses two groups at Corinth, namely the weak and the strong, and he sides with the weak while opposing the strong. In v. 9, he describes the position of the weak in the third person. Next, he addresses both groups in v. 8 by shifting to the first-person plural. Then he turns to address the strong directly in vv. 9–12 by shifting to the second person, and this part of the letter is addressed directly to those in the community whom Paul opposes. Hence, I do not think Schreiner’s assertion accurately describes the ways in which Paul addresses opponents in his letters, and consequently I am not persuaded by Schreiner’s first argument. Next, Schreiner argues, “Most important[ly], we lack clear evidence that Paul redirects his words to a distinct group in the congregation beginning in 4:21.”170 I do not know what counts as “clear evidence” for Schreiner, but I consider the abrupt address in 4:21 to those who desire to be under law as “clear evidence” that Paul “redirects his words” to the troublemakers.171 In the immediately preceding verses (4:17–20), Paul explicitly distinguishes between his Galatian converts, who are being shut out, and these troublemakers, who desire to be under law and compel the Galatians to do likewise. This distinction is consistent with the rest of the letter in which being under law characterizes the troublemakers, not the Galatians (2:4–5, 12; 3:1–2; 5:1, 4, 12; 6:12–13). By addressing those who desire to be under law, Paul can, therefore, alert the Galatians that he now begins in 4:21 to speak specifically to the troublemakers. I also see “clear evidence” that Paul shifts back to addressing the Galatians in 5:7. In contrast to Schreiner, therefore, I do see “clear evidence that Paul redirects his words to a distinct group in the congregation beginning in 4:21.” Finally, Schreiner ends by arguing, “Since Paul almost certainly addresses the whole congregation beginning with 4:21 and asks them why they want to be under the law, Martin’s claim that they desired to return to their pagan past should be rejected.”172 This argument rests on the interdependence of my apostasy thesis and the addressees in 4:21. If this verse addresses the “whole congregation” and not the troublemakers as Schreiner contends, then my apostasy thesis is excluded. Since the causal clause of his argument, however, assumes the issue to be proven, his argument is circular, and the words “almost certainly” in this causal clause must logically also be included in the result clause so that the most Schreiner can say is that my apostasy thesis “should almost certainly be rejected” but not that it “should be.” After carefully considering the arguments of both Schreiner and Das, I remain convinced that Gal 4:21–5:6 addresses the

 Schreiner, Galatians, 38.  Martin, “Apostasy to Paganism,” 455–456. 172  Schreiner, Galatians, 38. 170 171

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troublemakers and not Paul’s Galatian converts, and I do not consider 4:21 to be a refutation of my apostasy thesis.173 In addition to Gal 1:6–9 and 4:10, 21, some scholars also see 5:2–5 as a hindrance to my apostasy thesis.174 Das comments, “Martin is forced to take passages like 5:2–5, with its severe warning against circumcision, as addressing a merely hypothetical contemplation.”175 Similarly, Simon Légasse comments: Ainsi selon T. Martin … pour qui les Galates, qui auraient refusé avec horreur de se faire circoncire, n’auraient eu d’autre altenative que de revenir aux cultes païens. Mais … il est impossible de ramener, comme le fait Martin … Ga 5,2–5 à n’être qu’une pure hypothèse sans que les Galates aient jamais songé à la circoncision.176

I accept the criticism of both these scholars but would point out that they are referring to my “Pagan and Judeo-Christian Time-keeping Schemes” article, published in 1996, and not to my “Apostasy to Paganism” article, published in 1995. Since John Collins rushed the publication of the latter, the publication dates reflect the reverse order in which these articles were written and submitted. In other words, I wrote the “Time-keeping Schemes” article before my “Apostasy to Paganism” article, and between the writing of these two articles, I changed my mind about the argumentative role of Gal 5:2–5. In my “Time-keeping Schemes” article, I indeed propose that “Gal 5.2–5 does not conclusively prove the Galatians are considering submission to circumcision” since “Paul constructs an argument that hypothetically envisions the Galatians’ compliance with the circumcision gospel so he can demonstrate its disastrous consequences.”177 After I wrote and submitted that article, however, I discovered the works of Herbert Ulonska and Jost Eckert. Ulonska helped convince me that Gal 4:21–5:6 addresses the troublemakers while Eckert made me realize that the verb περιτέμνω and the noun περιτομή can refer to a surgery, a state, or a practice of circumcision.178 I came to see that Paul had only this limited word group to reference these three different aspects of circumcision and that in each instance, the context must determine which meaning is intended.179 Paul’s statement that circumcision is irrelevant in Gal 6:15 must refer to the surgery and the state since Paul himself and other Christian Jews had been circumcised and live in a circumcised state but are neither cut off from Christ 173 See

Rand, who agrees that 4:21–5:6 addresses the troublemakers (“Set Free,” 162).  For example, see Bruce W. Longenecker, The Triumph of Abraham’s God: The Transformation of Identity in Galatians (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 30 n. 10. Longenecker comments, “I find it difficult to square Martin’s view with passages like 5.2–5 … and especially 4.29, which seems far more significant to Paul’s case than Martin’s scenario seems to allow.” 175  Das, Galatians, 5. 176  Simon Légasse, ĽÉpître de Paul aux Galates, Lectio Divina Commentaires 9 (Paris: Cerf, 2000), 316 n. 4. 177  Martin, “Time-keeping Schemes,” 117. 178  Ulonska, “Die Funktion,” 65–71; Eckert, Verkündigung, 49–53. 179  Martin, “Apostasy to Paganism,” 451–454. 174

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nor fallen from grace (Gal 5:4). The references to circumcision in Gal 5:2– 4, however, refer to practicing the distinction of circumcision as a boundary marker for determining who belongs and who does not belong to Christ, and this aspect of circumcision does matter to Paul because he deems it incompatible with his gospel.180 When I wrote my “Apostasy to Paganism” article, therefore, I explained Gal 5:2–5 not as a hypothetical argument envisioning the Galatians as in my earlier article on time-keeping schemes but as the conclusion of Paul’s diatribe against the troublemakers, who were practicing the distinctions of circumcision. Hence, the explanation of Gal 5:2–5 in my “Apostasy to Paganism” article represents my more developed understanding of how Gal 5:2–5 functions in Paul’s argument. Since I no longer consider this passage hypothetical, the criticisms of Das and Légasse lose their force and relevance, and according to my current understanding, this passage poses no problem for my apostasy thesis. Richard Valantasis is yet another scholar who rejects my apostasy thesis but for different reasons than those already mentioned. He comments: Troy Martin (“Apostasy to Paganism”) argues that the primary problem with the Galatians is their supposed return to paganism. Martin’s argument proceeds through an analysis of the rhetoric (stasis theory) of the letter, but his argument fails to convince me that the Galatians are indeed apostatizing.”181

Valantasis cites his “subjectivity theory” as the reason for his rejection of my paganism thesis. He explains, “By ‘subjectivity’ I refer to the person that a society authorizes and designates as an agent, an actor, and a subject.”182 He designates three subjectivities in the letter including a “natural subjectivity,” which he describes as the pagan past of the recipients; a second subjectivity that he identifies as first-century Judaism; and a third that the specifies as Paul’s Jewish sectarian group. According to Valantasis, these subjectivities are competing and two of them must be left behind in preference for the one.183 He then reasons, “As will be seen in this analysis, the natural subjectivity does not receive sufficient attention to pose a real threat to the primary two subjectivities the letter develops.”184 In my view, however, the repulsive view of circumcision that is informed by the Galatians’ pagan past is sufficient “to pose a real threat” both to Judaism and to Paul’s Jewish sectarian group, and several texts provide evidence of the tensions 180  Rand accurately articulates my position when he writes, “Specifically, he [Martin] argues that the issue of circumcision in 5:2ff does not relate to the act of circumcision, but to the practice of circumcision, by which he means the maintenance of holiness boundaries. If one ‘practices the distinctions of circumcision,’ Christ is of no benefit (5:2) because Christ nullifies those distinctions (3:28)” (“Set Free,” 460). 181 Richard Valantasis, The Making of the Self: Ancient and Modern Asceticism (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2008), 218 n. 16. 182  Ibid., 215. 183 Ibid., 217. 184  Ibid.

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and dangers circumcision posed for both Jews and early Christians.185 I am thus not persuaded by Valantasis’ subjectivity theory. In addition to the more general issues of stasis theory and my paganism thesis, some specific issues in the reception history of my “Apostasy to Paganism” article deserve mention. Before my article appeared, Galatian scholarship focused almost exclusively on Gal 1:6–9 as the only or at least the primary accusation that Paul makes against the Galatian churches and that prompted his writing. I pointed out, however, that although previous studies identify only one accusation against the Galatians, there are actually two” and that “the first occurs in Gal 1:6–9; the second in 4:8–11.”186 Furthermore, I identified Gal 4:8–11 as the primary accusation and 1:6–9 as the secondary. My pointing out this distinction has shifted scholarly attention from an exclusive focus on the accusation in Gal 1:6–9 to a more intentional consideration of the one in 4:8–11 as well. In his survey of the literature on Galatians, Jean-Pierre Lémonon comments: En 1995, T. Martin («Apostasy») a rattaché Galates au genre judiciaire, mais par une voie tout autre. La lettre serait une accusation dirigée contre les Galates. Elle comporterait une double accusation (1,6–9; 4,8–11). La seconde est la principale. Fondamentalement, Paul reproche aux Galates d’être retournés vers le paganisme (4,8–11). En raison de cette situation dramatique, il met en avant une deuxième accusation: les Galates ont suivi un pseudo-évangile en accueillant le discours des missionnaires venus d’ailleurs (1,6–9). En effet, les Galates reviennent vers le paganisme, car l’Évangile exigerait circoncision et pratique des prescriptions de la Loi, réalités qui leur seraient insupportables. Paul leur démontre que, dès l’origine, il leur a prêché le véritable Évangile, celui de la liberté.et de la vie guidée par l’Esprit.187

Even though Lémonon does not accept my apostasy thesis, he nevertheless recognizes my departure from previous Galatian studies in distinguishing two accusations against the Galatians that prompted Paul’s response.188 Some scholars find this distinction helpful. Susan Elliott, for example, describes a two-fold purpose in Paul’s rhetorical strategy as he seeks to dissuade the Galatians from seeking circumcision and from being influenced by their pagan past. She explains that for this rhetorical strategy to succeed, Paul “must both reveal the regression he sees and diminish the power of the vestigial influences he has diagnosed.”189 She then notes:  See Martin, “Paul and Circumcision,” passim.  Martin, “Apostasy to Paganism,” 440. 187  Jean-Pierre Lémonon, Ľépitre aux Galates, Commentaire biblique: Nouveau Testament 9 (Paris: Cerf, 2008), 41. 188 Lémonon adopts the traditional view of the Galatians’ seeking circumcision and keeping the law, but he proposes their desire to participate more fully in the Abrahamic traditions of the people of God as the reason for their departure from Paul’s gospel. Lémonon comments, “Avant qu’ils mettent en œuvre ce projet et se coupent du véritable Évangile, Paul leur adresse la lettre, objet de ce commentaire” (Ľépitre aux Galates, 46). 189  Elliott, Cutting too Close, 257. 185 186

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Martin’s internal rhetorical analysis based on stasis theory also points in this direction by recognizing that Paul simultaneously charges his audience with replacing his gospel with the circumcision gospel and with turning to paganism. He assumes that these must be two different charges, rather than just one.190

Justin K. Hardin also acknowledges my distinction between these two different charges and uses my work as a springboard for his own.191 These scholars among others demonstrate that my emphasis on two charges rather than just one has focused more attention on the importance of Gal 4:8–11 for Paul’s argumentative strategy in Galatians. Another minor issue in my “Apostasy to Paganism” article that has not gone unnoticed in the secondary literature is my use of Eckert’s work to specify Paul’s use of the verb περιτέμνω and the noun περιτομή in reference to the surgery, the state, or the practice of circumcision as a boundary marker. Thus, Mark A. Seifrid notes: Troy Martin argues that peritemnomenoi in Gal 6:13 describes the agitators and therefore cannot refer to the act of circumcision. Nor can it refer to the state of circumcision, since then it purportedly would include Paul. He then goes on to make the case that one should translate the verb “those who practice the distinction of circumcision” (“Apostasy to Paganism,” pp. 86‑ 87).192

Seifrid disagrees with my rendering of this participle and writes: But this argument entails a plain confusion of meaning and reference. It is fairly clear that Paul refers to his opponents (who obviously insist on the distinction of circumcision), but it is more than likely that with this participle he signifies them as the ones who are circumcised.193

Seifrid agrees with me that the participle in Gal 6:13 refers to the troublemakers and that they are both circumcised and insisting on the distinctions of circumcision, but he places the emphasis on their circumcised state while I emphasize their insisting on the distinctions of circumcision. Since Paul’s problem with these troublemakers has nothing to do with their circumcised state but rather with their insistence on circumcision as a boundary marker, I therefore consider the participle in Gal 6:13 to refer “more likely” to this aspect of circumcision. Whether or not others concur with any particular renderings I give for Paul’s use of words from the περιτέμνω word group, I at least hope they will be more  Ibid., 257 n. 59.  Hardin, Galatians and the Imperial Cult, 127–129. 192 Mark A. Seifrid, “Review: Mark D. Nanos. The Galatians Debate: Contemporary Issues in Rhetorical and Historical Interpretation. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2002,” TJ 25.2 (2004): 267–270, here 269. Seifrid uses my remarks to accuse me of mirror-reading, but Hardin states, “Martin does well to avoid the common mirror-reading trap” (Galatians and the Imperial Cult, 127). Perhaps, mirror-reading is largely in the eye of the beholder? 193  Seifrid, “Review,” 269. 190 191

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aware of the various possibilities Eckert’s work offers and not translate every occurrence of these words simply as a reference to the surgery itself. Still other minor issues in my article attract the attention of scholars. In his comments on Gal 3:5, Tom Thatcher acknowledges, “I am indebted to Troy Martin for his help in clarifying the connection here between God, Spirit, and the Galatians.”194 In his investigation of faith in Gal 5:5–6, Hung-Sik Choi cites p. 457 of my “Apostasy to Paganism” article as support for understanding the contrast between Gal 5:5 and 5:4.195 More of these minor issues could be mentioned, and I am pleased scholars are finding some of the minor points in my “Apostasy to Paganism” article helpful in understanding more fully the letter Paul wrote to the Galatians. Speaking of my article, Philip Kern predicted, “Troy Martin argues both that the Galatian crisis was a reversion to paganism and that this broken agreement constituted grounds for litigation; neither view will convince all.”196 Indeed, Kern has been right, for not all are persuaded about my use of stasis theory or my apostasy thesis, but some have been, and I hope the republication of this article and this description of its reception history will encourage all to reconsider these general issues once again. Beyond the mere acceptance or rejection of my views on these general issues, however, my article raises the awareness of the Galatians’ background to explain their reaction to circumcision in the controversy. In contrast, the traditional view with its assumption that the Galatians desire circumcision has minimized the role the Galatians’ background played in the Galatian controversy. My article was one of the first to probe the Galatians’ perspectives on circumcision as a way of understanding the controversy, and my article has thus encouraged others to explore the broader pagan background of the recipients as well. My article has thus provided part of the impetus for the recent trend investigating how the Galatians’ former paganism informs the argumentative issue of the letter. Many of the early works reflective of this trend acknowledge the influence and importance of my article (e. g., Nanos, Elliott, and Hardin), but as this trend has continued, some of the more recent works do not (e. g., Kahl). Among the latter is Clinton E. Arnold, who explains, “I simply want to probe more deeply into the background of the Galatians themselves and ask why they were so quick to turn away from the Pauline gospel.”197 My answer to the question Arnold intends to investigate is that the Galatians were convinced by the troublemakers  Tom Thatcher, “The Plot of Gal 3:1–18,” JETS 40.3 (1997): 401–410, here 408 n. 40.  Hung-Sik Choi, “ΠΙΣΤΙΣ in Galatians 5:5–6: Neglected Evidence for the Faithfulness of Christ,” JBL 124 (2005): 467–490, here 480 n. 71, 196  Philip Kern, “Review: THE GALATIANS DEBATE Edited by Mark D. Nanos (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2002),” RTR 63.1 (2004): 54–55, here 54. 197  Clinton E. Arnold, “‘I Am Astonished that You Are So Quickly Turning Away!’ (Gal 1.6): Paul and Anatolian Folk Belief,” NTS 51 (2005): 429–449, here 429. 194 195

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of the necessity of circumcision as part of the Christian gospel and that consequently the Galatians were apostatizing from Christianity and returning to their paganism because this surgery would have rendered them permanently sexually aroused.198 I hope the publication of my articles on “Paul and Circumcision” and “Pagan and Judeo-Christian Time-keeping Schemes” together in this volume along with my “Apostasy to Paganism” article will bolster my apostasy thesis and strengthen my case for concluding that the Galatians were not seeking circumcision but rather repulsed by this immoral surgery. I further hope more scholars will be persuaded that the Galatians are therefore returning to their paganism and that Paul writes Galatians to summon them back to his circumcision-free gospel and to their Christian walk.199

198  Hardin notes, “Here Martin should be applauded for his sensitivity to the ancient world, where, unlike twenty-first-century North American culture, circumcision was scorned by nonJews” (Galatians and the Imperial Cult, 127 n. 47). 199  See the epitome of my sustained work on Galatians and circumcision over the past few decades at the end of my article entitled “Galatians” in the Oxford Handbook of Rhetoric, ed. Mark D. Given (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). In addition to my “Paul and Circumcision,” “Apostasy to Paganism,” and “Time-keeping Schemes” articles, see also idem, “Whose Flesh?” 65–91; idem, “Ambiguities of a ‘Baffling Expression,’” 123–138; idem, “Brother Body,” 5–18; idem, “Syntax of Surprise,” 79–98; idem, “Covenant of Circumcision (Gen 17:9–14) and the Situational Antitheses in Gal 3:28,” JBL 122 (2003): 111–125; idem, “The Voice of Emotion: Paul’s Pathetic Persuasion (Gal 4:12–20),” in Paul and Pathos, ed. Thomas H. Olbricht and Jerry L. Sumney, SBL Symposium Series, 16 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 2001), 181– 202; and idem, “Circumcision in Galatia and the Holiness of God’s Ecclesiae,” in Holiness and Ecclesiology in the New Testament, ed. Kent E. Brower and Andy Johnson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007).

V. The Scythian Perspective in Colossians 3:11* 1. Introduction The pairing of barbarian and Scythian in Col 3:11 poses difficult exegetical problems. Each of the other pairs in this verse describe mutually exclusive categories such as Greek/Jew, circumcised/uncircumcised, and slave/free. In the opinion of many exegetes, the categories of barbarian and Scythian are not mutually exclusive but overlapping.1 In Greco-Roman literature, Scythians are either hailed as the noblest or the most backward of barbarians.2 In either assessment, the term Scythian belongs to the category of barbarian according to the dominant usage of the terms from a Greek perspective, and exegetes propose various solutions for the problematic inclusion of this overlapping pair with the other mutually exclusive pairs in Col 3:11.

* This article developed ideas from a paper entitled “Translating Barbarian and Scythian in Col. 3:11” that was presented at the Midwest AOS/SBL/ASOR Meeting on February 13, 1995. 1 For example, see Petr Pokorný, Colossians: A Commentary (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991), 170. Pokorny concludes, “The next couple of terms is not an antithesis but an escalation: barbarian-Scythian.” See also Peter T. O’Brien, Colossians, Philemon, WBC 44 (Waco, TX: Word, 1982), 193. O’Brien observes, “The list of terms overlaps somewhat. ‘Barbarian’ and ‘Scythian’ are not contrasted like ‘Greek’ and ‘Jew,’ or ‘bondman’ and ‘freeman.’ Rather, they stand over against ‘Greek’ when the latter is used in its cultural sense.” 2  The positive assessment of Scythians considers them to be a simple, nomadic people living apart from the ills that afflicted Greco-Roman civilization. Strabo says, “In fact, even now there are Wagon-dwellers and Nomads, so called, who live off their herds, and on milk and cheese … and know nothing about storing up food or about peddling merchandise either, except the exchange of wares for wares. How, then, could the poet be ignorant of the Scythians. … Homer called ‘most just’ and ‘proud’ those who by no means spend their lives on contracts and moneygetting but actually possess all things in common except sword and drinking-cup, and above all things have their wives and children in common, in the Platonic way” (Geog. 7.3.7 [Jones, LCL]). The Cynics adopt this view and closely identify with the Scythians as the Cynic epistles attributed to the Scythian Anacharsis demonstrate. See Abraham J. Malherbe, The Cynic Epistles, SBLSBS 12 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), 36–51. The negative assessment, however, dominates the Greco-Roman literature, and this view considers the Scythians as a crude, ferocious, and inhuman people. Accordingly, Scythians become the lowest of barbarians in the estimation of almost all Greeks. For the numerous references, see Otto Michel, “Σκύθης,” TDNT 7:447– 450, here 448.

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2. Proposed Exegetical Solutions The exegetical tradition attempts to resolve the problems of this pairing of barbarian and Scythian in at least two different ways.3 The first approach considers Scythian within the category of barbarian.4 Depending upon the assessment of Scythian as a pejorative or a positive reference, the term Scythian is understood as an example of the worst or noblest type of barbarian.5 The chief argument for this approach is that it maintains the common meanings of barbarian and Scythian. The chief defect in this approach is that the pair barbarian/ Scythian is not congruent with the other pairs since it does not depict mutually exclusive categories. The second approach considers barbarian and Scythian as exclusive geographical or racial categories. Geographically, barbarian refers to peoples that live in the South while Scythian refers to peoples that live in the North.6 Racially, barbarian refers to the black race; Scythian to the white race.7 The strongest argument for this approach is that it makes the pair barbarian/Scythian congruent with the other pairs in this list of exclusive categories. The most serious flaw in this approach is that it restricts the meaning of barbarian to peoples living on the southern side of the Mediterranean Sea.8 Although these peoples are indeed 3  Michel comments, “It is hard to say whether Σκύθης is simply an outstanding example of a barbarian people or whether βάρβαρος and Σκύθης are meant to differ from one another culturally, geographically, and racially” (“Σκύθης,” 7:449). 4  See Eduard Lohse, Colossians and Philemon, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971), 144. Lohse comments, “The words ‘barbarian’ and ‘Scythian’ which follow in the series, are no longer juxtaposed to one another antithetically but are an enumerative continuation of the series. … The Scythians are cited as an especially strange kind of barbarian.” 5  Pejorative interpretations prevail among commentators. For example, see Joseph B. Lightfoot, St. Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon (London: Macmillan, 1875; reprint, Zondervan Commentary Series, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979), 216–217. Lightfoot explains, “The Apostle offers the full privileges of the Gospel to barbarians and even barbarians of the lowest type.” See also Michel, who says, “The obvious meaning is that even the offence which a Scythian must give to natural sensibility is overcome by the baptism of the Messiah Jesus” (“Σκύθης,” 7:450). 6  Arguing that the list of Greeks, Jews, barbarians, and Scythians represents the nations in the four quarters of the Greco-Roman world, Bengel suggests that the barbarians are the most southerly of uncivilized peoples and the Scythians the most northerly. See John A. Bengel, Gnomon of the New Testament, ed. and trans. Charlton T. Lewis and Marvin R. Vincent, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Perkinpine & Higgins, 1860), 2:468–469. However, he does not place Scythian and barbarian in completely exclusive categories but prefers to understand Scythian as an intensified subcategory of barbarian. 7 Theodor Hermann, “Barbar und Skythe. Ein Erklärungsversuch zu Kol 3,11,” TBl 9 (1930): 106–107. Hermann builds upon Bengel’s suggestion and intimates that the contrast may be between the white Scythians and the black barbarians of Somalia or Ethiopia. 8  Eduard Schweizer, The Letter to the Colossians (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1982), 199. Schweizer critiques the suggestions by Bengel and Hermann when he says, “To take this to indicate four nations set in the west, east, south, and north respectively is difficult, in spite of the fact that the expression ‘barbarian’ is occasionally applied to Africans. The word rather

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referred to as barbarians, barbarians live in all directions of the Mediterranean world.9 Furthermore, cultural and especially linguistic criteria determine the category of barbarian more than geographical or racial criteria.10 Both of these basic approaches in the exegetical tradition assume a Greek perspective in the interpretation of the pair barbarian/Scythian.11 This perspective causes the first approach to deny that the pair refers to mutually exclusive categories even though the immediate context requires such an understanding. This perspective induces the second approach to adopt untenable restrictions upon the meanings of the two terms. Both approaches are defective because they rely upon a Greek perspective for their interpretation of the pair, and neither of these basic approaches is able to resolve the exegetical problems associated with the pairing of barbarian with Scythian in Col 3:11 because they operate from this Greek perspective. A new approach is needed that permits the perspective of the text to emerge. The following interpretation attempts such an approach.

3. A New Exegetical Solution An interpretation of this third pair of categories should begin with the recognition that this pair does not necessarily reflect a Greek perspective since this pairing of barbarian and Scythian occurs third in a list of pairs that does not maintain a consistently Greek perspective. The first pair in the list reflects a Jewish point of view.12 Ever since their incorporation into the Greek empire, the Jews perceived denotes anyone who is a non-Greek; and for the west, the Romans would be more obvious than the Greeks. Thus it is hardly a racial contrast between black and white that the writer has in mind here.” Schweizer is accurate except for his understanding of barbarian as exclusively a non-Greek.  9  The ancient authors who describe these peoples as barbarians do not restrict the term to these peoples. 10  Strabo states, “I suppose that the word ‘barbarian’ was at first uttered onomatopoetically in reference to people who enunciated words only with difficulty and talked harshly and raucously, like our words ‘battarizein’” (Geog. 14.2.28 [Jones, LCL]). Strabo continues, “Those, therefore, they called barbarian in the special sense of the term at first derisively, meaning that they pronounced words thickly or harshly; and then we misused the word as a general ethnic term, thus making a logical distinction between the Greeks and all other races.” Lightfoot correctly comments, “The word βάρβαρος properly denoted one who spoke an inarticulate, stammering, unintelligible language” (Colossians, 217). 11  See Hans Windisch, “βάρβαρος,” TDNT 1:546–553, here 553. Windisch states, “We are thus forced to explain the formula [barbarian/Scythian] in relation to βάρβαρος/Ἕλλην.” Unfortunately, almost all subsequent commentators accept this incorrect assumption. 12 Joachim Gnilka, Der Kolosserbrief, HThKNT 10.1 (Freiburg: Herder, 1980), 190. Gnilka observes, “Das erste Gegensatzpaar gliedert die Menschheit vom jüdischen Standpunkt aus.” O’Brien explains, “It was necessary for Paul to underscore the abolition of the distinction between Jew and Gentile in the light of the Jewish stamp of the teaching he was countering” (Colossians, 192). O’Brien correctly recognizes the Jewish perspective reflected in the first pair, but he incorrectly assesses its relevance. The opponents at Colossae did not bear a Jew-

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non-Jews as Greeks.13 If this first pair were to articulate a Greek perspective, the contrast would be between Greek and barbarian instead of Greek and Jew. The second pair in the list with its reference to circumcision also adopts a distinction primarily important for the Jews.14 Since the list does not develop a Greek point of view in the first two pairs, the Greek perspective should not be assumed for the third pair of barbarian/Scythian either.15 An interpretation of this third pair of categories should also recognize this pair describes mutually exclusive categories.16 The exclusive nature of both the two preceding pairs of Greek/Jew and circumcised/uncircumcised and the following pair of slave/free argues for such a conclusion.17 Furthermore, the author lists these pairs in order to affirm that Christ breaks down divisions. Minimizing the disjunctive categories of Scythian and barbarian minimizes the potency of Christ’s work in a passage designed to emphasize this potency. Therefore, this pair should be interpreted as referring to mutually exclusive categories. The exegetical problem now rests upon the meaning of the term barbarian. The Greeks employ the term to refer to non-Greek speaking peoples, and this meaning becomes overwhelmingly dominant. However, the meaning of this term depends upon the perspective of the person who uses it. In 1 Cor 14:11, Paul explains, “But if I do not know the meaning of the language, I shall be a barbarian to the speaker, and he a barbarian to me.” The meaning of the term ish stamp. For substantiation of this assertion, see Troy W. Martin, By Philosophy and Empty Deceit: Colossians as Response to a Cynic Critique, JSNTSup 118 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), passim. 13  Pokorný asserts, “The Gentile world is described as ‘Greek’ – a metonymy for the entire culture, its value system, and its religious milieu” (Colossians, 169). See also T. K. Abbott, Epistles to the Ephesians and to the Colossians, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1968), 285. 14  Gnilka notes, “Dem religiösen Gegensatz beider Gruppen ist das zweite Paar, ganz jüdisch empfunden, gewidmet” (Kolosserbrief, 190). 15  Gnilka correctly observes the contrast in viewpoints between the first and the third pairs of categories. He states, “Charakteristisch für diese Aufreihungen ist die latente Spannung, die zwischen den Gegensätzen Grieche – Jude einerseits und (Grieche – ) Barbar andererseits besteht. Der erste is jüdisch, der zweite hellenistisch” (Kolosserbrief, 191). Although he correctly observes there is a contrast between the perspectives of the pairs, he incorrectly identifies the second as a Greek perspective. 16  Several commentators argue that the author cannot contrast barbarian with Greek because he already used Greek to contrast Jew. For examples, see Norbert Hugedé, Commentaire de l’Epître aux Colossiens (Genève: Labor et Fides, 1968), 178 n. 83; and A. S. Peake, The Epistle to the Colossians, Expositor’s Greek Testament 3 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 540. The argument that this third pair cannot maintain exclusive categories because the author has already used the term Greek begs the question of why the author mentions barbarian at all. Three pairs are enough to make the point as Gal 3:28 demonstrates. 17 Hermann states, “Diese Auslegung behauptet aber etwas, was noch des Nachweises bedarf: daß βάρβαρος und Σκύθης Gegensätzliches meint. Es sollte wenigstens ein solches sein. Denn da die beiden ersten Paare und das vierte schroffe Gegensätze: den nationalen, religiösen und sozialen bezeichnen so dürfen für das dritte, das mitteninne steht, auch Antitheta als Glieder erwartet werden” („Barbar,“ 106).

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barbarian is relative and based upon the linguistic perspective of the speaker.18 The Maccabean author describes the armies of Antiochus Epiphanes and his son Eupator as “barbarian hordes” (2 Macc 2:21).19 Thus, the term does not always refer to non-Greeks; it can be used by non-Greeks to refer to the Greeks.20 When the terms barbarian and Scythian are paired as they are in Col 3:11, only the Scythian perspective permits them to be understood as mutually exclusive categories. From a Scythian viewpoint, the term barbarian means anyone who is a non-Scythian. This perspective is attested in the traditions concerning Scythia and especially concerning Anacharsis, a Scythian prince who visited Greece in the sixth century BCE. These traditions place non-Scythian speech and customs into the barbarian category. From a Scythian perspective, even Greeks are included in this category. Several epistles attributed to Anacharsis are preserved in the Cynic Epistles. In a letter to the Athenians, ps.-Anacharsis remonstrates, “You laugh at my speech, because I do not pronounce the Greek sounds clearly. In the opinion of the Athenians, Anacharsis speaks incorrectly, but in the opinion of the Scythians, the Athenians do” (Epistle 1 [Malherbe]). This quotation illustrates that the Scythian perspective is just as capable as the Greek perspective of establishing an exclusive category based upon one’s mother tongue. Nevertheless, ps.-Anacharsis argues that articulate speech is a poor criterion upon which to divide humanity. Instead, he contends that intention and action provide better criteria and that moral categories are better than the arbitrary category of proper speech.21 At the conclusion of his letter, ps.-Anacharsis reverses the Greek understanding of barbarian by asserting that employment of the criterion of proper speech as the Greeks do is the concern of uneducated and ignorant people (Epistle 1). In a letter addressed to Solon, ps.-Anacharsis adopts the Greek perspective in order to criticize the Greek category of barbarian (Epistle 2). Since wisdom and stupidity are the same for both Greeks and barbarians, he reasons, the classifica18 Strabo says, “The fact is, however, that through our long acquaintance and intercourse with the barbarians this effect was at last seen to be the result, not of a thick pronunciation or any natural defect in the vocal organs, but of the peculiarities of their several languages … as is also the case with us in speaking their languages” (Geog. 14.2.28 [Jones, LCL]). 19  Of course, the numerous foreign mercenaries in these armies could also explain this reference. In two other instances, however, the Maccabean author considers Greek practices to be more barbaric than Scythian practices. See 2 Macc 4:47 and 3 Macc 7:5. See Andreas Lindemann, Der Kolosserbrief, ZBK 10 (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1983), 58. Lindemann comments, “Die aus jüdischer Sicht bestehende Scheidung der Menschheit in zwei Gruppen – «Griechen», d. h. Nicht- Juden auf der einen, Juden auf der anderen Seite – ist beseitigt.” 20 Windisch astutely notes, “The Hellene is a ‘barbarian’ to the non-Hellenes, as was Ovid to the ‘barbarian’ Getae” (“βάρβαρος,” 551). 21  In a second letter, ps.-Anacharsis argues that since wisdom and stupidity are the same for both Greeks and barbarians, moral and immoral behavior should be the categories used to differentiate human beings from one another instead of the arbitrary categories of Greek and barbarian (Epistle 2).

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tions of Greek and barbarian are inadequate and result in incorrect judgments about people. Ps.-Anacharsis uses his own experience of initial rejection by Solon because Solon considered him a barbarian as an illustrative proof to clinch his argument. Solon’s initial refusal to offer hospitality is characteristic of a barbarian, not a civilized Greek. A Scythian such as Anacharsis can comprehend and critique the arbitrary discrimination implied by the Greek category of barbarian. In a letter to Croesus, last king of Lydia, ps.-Anacharsis warns Croesus of the danger of adopting the Greek practice of private possessions (Epistle 9). He describes this practice as a foreign thing [ἀλλότριον] that afflicts almost all humans and occasions many evils.22 In contrast to the foreign practice of the Greeks and most humans, ps.-Anacharsis states, “But the Scythians have stood apart from all of these things. All of us possess the whole earth. What it freely gives, we accept. What it hides, we dismiss from our minds” (Epistle 9 [Malherbe]). He explains that Solon, the Athenian, had tried to communicate the same truth to Croesus but Solon could not speak openly [ἄντικρυς] because he was not a Scythian. Ps.Anacharsis expresses a Scythian perspective that assumes the mutually exclusive categories of Scythian and non-Scythian. From this perspective, whatever is nonScythian is foreign even if it originates from the Greeks. Clement of Alexandria quotes Anacharsis as saying, “All the Greeks speak Scythian to me (ἐμοὶ δὲ πάντες Ἕλληνες σκυθίζουσιν)” (Stromata 1.16 [Wilson, ANF]). In this quotation, Anacharsis uses a disparaging verb to characterize the Greeks. The Greeks created the verb σκυθίζω from the noun Σκύθης (“Scythian”) to describe anyone who acts or talks in a degraded manner like the Scythians. As a Scythian, Anacharsis views the speech and customs of the Greeks to be just as barbaric as the Greeks view the speech and customs of the Scythians. Lucian’s dialogue between Anacharsis and Solon on the topic of athletics illustrates this principle. Throughout this dialogue, Anacharsis misunderstands and ridicules the activities of the Greek athletes as insanity, and Solon replies to Anacharsis: It is only natural, Anacharsis, that what they are doing should have that appearance to you, since it is unfamiliar and very much in contrast with Scythian customs. In like manner you yourselves probably have much in your education and training which would appear strange to us Greeks if one of us should look in upon it as you are doing now. (Lucian, Anach. 6 [Harmon, LCL])

Solon’s reply operates from the same principle as Anacharsis’ quotation. Greeks appear to Scythians as Scythians appear to Greeks. What one considers strange and foreign depends upon one’s native perspective. 22  Ps.-Anacharsis relates to Croesus, “I have heard that this evil which befalls most men has befallen you, too. From this evil, others follow. For neither great wealth nor possessions of fields has ever brought wisdom. For, it is said, those persons whose bodies are filled with many foreign things will also be filled with diseases” (Epistle 9 [Malherbe]).

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A letter of ps.-Diogenes to the “so-called” Greeks inverts the Greek perspective and adopts the Scythian one in order to castigate the Greeks (Epistle 28). At the beginning of this letter, ps.-Diogenes calls down a plague upon the “so-called” Greeks. At the end of his letter, he reiterates his imprecation to the Greeks and exclaims, “I call a plague on you real barbarians, until you learn in the Greek way and become true Greeks” (Epistle 28.8 [Malherbe]). His description of the true Greeks indicates that he is referring to the Scythians.23 From this Scythian perspective, ps.-Diogenes classifies the Scythians as true Greeks and the Greeks as real barbarians. Understanding the pairing of barbarian and Scythian from a Scythian perspective rather than a Greek perspective resolves the exegetical problems of Col 3:11. Everyone who does not speak Scythian is a barbarian to the Scythian. This perspective permits the pair of barbarian/Scythian to be interpreted along with the other pairs in this list as a mutually exclusive category. This perspective is attested in the traditions about Scythia that illustrate a relationship between barbarian and Scythian similar to the one in Col 3:11. The Colossian author affirms that Christ obliterates the barbarian/Scythian pair of divisive cultural categories along with the other pairs of exclusive classifications listed in this verse.

4. An Explanation for the Scythian Perspective Even though this Scythian perspective resolves the exegetical problems associated with the pairing of barbarian with Scythian in Col 3:11, it raises the question of why the Colossian author adopts this perspective and deviates from the more common barbarian/Greek dichotomy.24 Other investigations of Colossians locate the Colossian opponents within certain Hellenistic philosophical traditions and 23  Ps.-Diogenes states, “Those who are called Greeks war against the barbarians, while the barbarians think it necessary only to protect their own land, since they are content with what they have” (Epistle 28.8 [Malherbe]). The context of this statement and the Greek attack upon Scythia in 325 BCE indicate that he is referring specifically to Scythians. Ps.-Diogenes affirms the servitude of both Greeks and barbarians to popular opinion and consequently places both Greeks and barbarians in the same category (Epistle 7.1). However, Cynic tradition portrays the Scythians as a race that lives the undeluded Cynic lifestyle. Ps.-Anacharsis writes, “But the Scythians have stood apart from all of these things. All of us possess the whole earth. What it freely gives, we accept. What it hides, we dismiss from our minds. We protect our cattle against wild beasts, and in return receive milk and cheese. We have weapons, not to attack other people, but to defend ourselves, if it should be necessary” (Epistle 9 [Malherbe]). 24 See Michel, “Σκύθης,” 7.449–450. Michel suggests, “The name Σκύθης is mentioned separately because of the peculiar relations at Colossae.” His suggestion is insightful, but unfortunately his explanation of these “peculiar relations” is unsatisfactory since his explanation that the Scythian is the worst type of barbarian does not preserve the dichotomy between the terms barbarian and Scythian.

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suggest that an answer to this question may be found in these traditions. Eduard Schweizer examines Pythagorean philosophy as the primary background for the opponents. He states, “Hence we may conclude that the movement in Colossae was probably a kind of Pythagorean philosophy, embellished with rites borrowed from both Hellenistic mystery religions and Judaism.”25 He presents an epitome of his investigations in his Colossian commentary.26 In his investigation, Richard DeMaris hails Schweizer’s work as a “bona fide” alternative to previous approaches and accords philosophy a larger portion in the syncretistic background of the opponents than do previous scholars.27 Nevertheless, DeMaris rejects Schweizer’s identification of the philosophy as Pythagorean in favor of Middle Platonism.28 Neither Schweizer’s Pythagoreanism nor DeMaris’ Middle Platonism, however, provides an explanation for the Scythian perspective of Col 3:11. Nevertheless, these investigations suggest the importance of the philosophical background of the Colossian opponents for explaining a number of features in the Colossian letter. Of all the philosophical traditions, Cynic philosophy best explains the adoption of the Scythian perspective in Col 3:11.29 In particular, two aspects of Cynic thought significantly contribute to this explanation. First, the Cynics distinguish themselves from the rest of deluded humanity by identifying with the Scythians. The Cynic materials cited above assume the Scythian/barbarian dichotomy as analogous to the Cynic/deluded humanity dichotomy so essential to the Cynic self-conception. Other materials also assume this analogy and relate Cynics to Scythians in dress and in living a life free from cultural constraints. Ps.-Anacharsis writes to Hanno, “For me, a Scythian cloak serves as my garment, the skin of my feet as my shoes, the whole earth as my resting place. … Therefore, since I am free from those things for which most people sacrifice their leisure, come to me, if you need anything of mine” 25  Eduard Schweizer, “Christianity of the Circumcised and Judaism of the Uncircumcised: The Background of Matthew and Colossians,” in Jews, Greeks, and Christians: Religious Cultures in Late Antiquity, Festschrift for W. D. Davies, ed. Robert Hamerton-Kelly and Robin Scroggs (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 245–260, here 255. 26  Schweizer, Colossians, 125–134. 27  See Richard E. DeMaris, The Colossian Controversy: Wisdom in Dispute at Colossae, JSNTSup 96 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994), 18–40. DeMaris provides a history of research on these proposals and systematizes prior studies into five distinct approaches: Jewish Gnosticism, Gnostic Judaism, Mystical Judaism, Hellenistic Syncretism, and Hellenistic Philosophy (pp. 38– 39). He credits Lightfoot with establishing Judaism and Gnosticism as the parameters for the first four approaches and praises Schweizer for providing a fifth alternative to the previous suggestions (pp. 18–19, 88). DeMaris himself should be commended for organizing these diverse and varied proposals into a coherent, comprehensible system. 28  DeMaris concludes, “Hence, the Colossian philosophy appears to be a distinctive blend of popular Middle Platonic, Jewish, and Christian elements that cohere around the pursuit of wisdom” (Controversy, 17). 29  For this background, see Martin, By Philosophy and Empty Deceit, passim.

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(Epistle 5 [Malherbe]). He also writes to the son of a king, “You are a slave, but I am free. And you have many enemies, but I have none. But should you be willing to throw away your money, to carry bows and a quiver, and to live as a free citizen with the Scythians, then these same conditions will obtain for you, too” (Epistle 6 [Malherbe]). This Cynic identification with Scythians is not surprising since the Scythians derived their way of life from Σκύθης, the son of Heracles, and the Cynics look to Heracles as the patron saint of their way of life (cf. Herodotus, Hist. 4.8–10). Thus, the Cynics identified with the Scythians and used this identification to distinguish themselves from the rest of humanity. If the Colossian opponents share this aspect of Cynic thought, the analogy of Scythian and Cynic provides an explanation for the Colossian author’s selection of the dichotomy barbarian/Scythian.30 In his list of all the divisive categories obliterated by Christ, this author is careful not to overlook the divisive category established by the Cynics themselves.31 The Cynics exclude and castigate everyone who does not adopt their simple, uncultured way of life and live a life according to nature. Even though the Cynics are opposed to divisive cultural categories, their teachings and actions result in the creation of divisive categories as is plain to the Colossian author and to the Christians suffering under their opponents’ critique. The Colossian author proclaims that Christ has so completely obliterated the arbitrary categories dividing humanity that he has abolished even the divisive Cynic categories of those who live according to nature as the Scythians and those who do not. A second aspect of Cynic philosophy significant for explaining the Scythian perspective in Col 3:11 is the Cynic assessment of the human predicament. Despite their separation from the rest of humanity, Cynics blame the evils that afflict humanity precisely upon the imposition of divisive categories such as the ones mentioned in Col 3:11. Ps.-Anacharsis writes to Croesus: The earth was long ago the common possession of the gods and men. In time, however, men transgressed by dedicating to the gods as their private precincts what was the common possession of all. In return for these, the gods bestowed upon men fitting gifts: strife, desire for pleasure, and meanness of spirit. From a mixture and a separation of these grew all the evils which afflict all mortals: tilling the soil, sowing, metals, and wars. (Epistle 9 [Malherbe])

Ps.-Anacharsis’ explanation of the cause of evils as the division of the original unity of gods, humans, and the cosmos and as the holding of private property reflects a basic Cynic rationale.

30  The heresiologers understood Σκύθης in Col 3:11 to be a reference to the opponents at Colossae. For a discussion and references, see Lightfoot, Colossians, 219. 31  These categories are usually labeled σοφός (“wise”) and τῦφος (“deluded”). For the uses of these terms in Cynic materials, see the Greek index in Malherbe’s Cynic Epistles.

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Using similar reasoning, ps.-Heraclitus chides the Ephesians for their ethnic pride that excludes the non-Ephesian from their city. Writing to Hermodorus, he says: I am persuaded that nobody is an Ephesian except in the sense that a dog or a cow is an Ephesian. An Ephesian man, if he is good, is a citizen of the world. For this is the common country of all men, in which the law is not something written, but is God, and the one who transgresses against what is not fitting is impious. (Epistle 9.2 [Malherbe])

In the same letter, he castigates the Ephesians for enslaving other humans and questions, “How much superior are the wolves and lions to the Ephesians? They do not reduce one another to slavery, nor does one eagle buy another eagle, nor does one lion pour wine for another lion” (Epistle 9.4 [Malherbe]). He concludes that the Ephesian practice of constructing exclusive ethnic and socio/economic categories engenders envy, hatred, and animosity (Epistle 9.7–8). The description of a new humanity in Col 3:11 that ignores all ethnic, religious, cultural, and socio-economic barriers cogently addresses this Cynic assessment of the human predicament.32 The Colossian author’s description of a new humanity in Col 3:11 occurs in the middle of a discussion of the clothing metaphor. It forms a transition from the practices of the old humanity that are to be put off (3:8–9) and a transition to the practices of the new humanity that are to be put on (3:12–17). The position of this description implies that all these categories that separate humans from one another are part of the old humanity with its evil practices. The position of this description also implies that certain practices enjoined upon the new humanity are possible because of the breakdown of these divisive categories. This Cynic understanding of the human problem may explain the distinctive application of the Pauline antitheses in Col 3:11. Pauline antitheses are used in 1 Cor 12:13 and Gal 3:28 to emphasize the unity that Christ effects for the church. In Colossians, however, the emphasis is upon the repudiation of the evils associated with the old humanity and the realization of the practices of the new humanity.33 This particular application of these antitheses is unique to Colossians and addresses the Cynic understanding of the primary obstacle to realizing the ideal human community. The author of Colossians affirms that Christ has de32  These four types of barriers are recognized by almost all commentators. For example, see E. K.  Simpson and F. F.  Bruce, The Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians: The English Text with Introduction, Exposition and Notes, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 274. See also Martin Dibelius, An die Kolosser, Epheser, an Philemon, 3rd rev. ed. HNT 12 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1953), 32. Dibelius notes the loose connection of the syntax of ὅπου in this verse and identifies the kingdom of the new humanity (“Reich des neuen Menschen”) as the place where all these barriers are erased. 33  Lightfoot recognizes a difference in perspective between Galatians and Colossians. He proposes that in Galatians Paul contends against national exclusiveness but in Colossians against intellectual exclusiveness (Colossians, 99). Although he correctly observes a distinction, he does not adequately identify the distinction.

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stroyed all the divisive categories that engender evils and prohibit the realization of the ideal human state. Christ resolves the human problem even when that problem is articulated in Cynic terms. For the Colossian author, Christ so completely resolves the problem that even the divisive category established by the Cynics themselves is obliterated.

5. Conclusion Obviously, establishing the Cynic background for the opponents at Colossae far transcends the present essay.34 Nevertheless, positing a Cynic affiliation for the opponents at Colossae permits an adequate explanation for the Scythian perspective in Col 3:11. The Cynics identified with the Scythians to express a sharp distinction between themselves and the rest of humanity. At the same time, the Cynics inconsistently advocated that all human evils arise from segregation and differentiation. By stating that Christ obliterates the mutually exclusive categories of barbarian/Scythian as well as the other exclusive categories in this verse, the Colossian author astutely underscores for his readers this Cynic inconsistency and the remedy Christ offers. The Colossian author adopts a Scythian perspective for the pairing of barbarian/Scythian to address certain inconsistent aspects of his opponents’ philosophical self-conception.

6. Reception History The reception history of my article on the Scythian perspective in Col 3:11 is intertwined with an article written by Douglas A. Campbell on Col 3:11 that appeared about a month later.35 Since these two articles address the same verse, their interconnection in the ensuing scholarly debate was almost inevitable. What connects them even more closely together, however, is a subsequent short note that Campbell wrote in which he comments: After decades of neglect, the question of Σκυθης and its interpretation in Col 3:11b seems suddenly to have surged into prominence. However, the two recent, more substantial studies of the question, which urge different readings, have appeared too closely together for any interaction between them to take place. This short note is an attempt to fill some of that unfortunate shortfall.36 34  For an extended argument for such a background, see Martin, By Philosophy and Empty Deceit, passim. 35  Douglas A. Campbell, “Unravelling Colossians 3.11b,” NTS 42 (1996): 120–132. Campbell’s article appeared shortly after mine. 36  Douglas A. Campbell, “The Scythian Perspective in Col. 3.11: A Response to Troy Martin,” NovT 39 (1997): 81–84, here 81.

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In his short note, Campbell then proceeds to defending his article on Col 3:11 against mine, and I subsequently felt compelled to write a rejoinder not only to his short note but also to his initial article.37 Of course, I could not include either of his works in a volume of my essays, but I have included in the next essay my rejoinder and shall discuss more thoroughly at the end of that essay the reception history of my article on the Scythian perspective in Col 3:11.

37 Troy W. Martin, “Scythian Perspective or Elusive Chiasm: A Reply to Douglas A. Campbell,” NovT 41 (1999): 256–264.

VI. Scythian Perspective or Elusive Chiasm: A Reply to Douglas A. Campbell* 1. Introduction Two articles, one written by me and the other by Douglas A. Campbell, address the problem of the couplet barbarian/Scythian in Col 3:11b and agree that the traditional interpretation of this couplet as overlapping categories is unsatisfactory since the other couplets in this verse describe mutually exclusive categories such as Greek/Jew, circumcised/uncircumcised, and slave/free.1 Both articles concur that barbarian and Scythian should also be understood as mutually exclusive categories but propose quite different explanations of this exclusivity. My article was published first and criticizes the traditional interpretation for assuming a Greek perspective that includes Scythian in the category of barbarian. I propose instead that this couplet is antithetical and mutually exclusive if understood from a Scythian perspective since Scythians view all nonScythians as barbarians. I conclude that understanding barbarian and Scythian from a Scythian perspective permits this couplet to describe mutually exclusive categories in agreement with the other antithetical couplets in this verse. Campbell’s article appeared a year later and criticizes the traditional interpretation for failing to recognize the elusive chiastic structure of Col 3:11b.2 His article proposes reading the last two couplets barbarian/Scythian and slave/free as a chiasm similar to the chiastic structure of the first two couplets Greek/Jew and circumcised/uncircumcised.3 According to the A-B-B-A structure, barbarian corresponds to free and Scythian corresponds to slave. Through a socio-historical approach, Campbell seeks to establish that Scythian means slave, and he concludes that Scythian is opposed to barbarian “in terms of the social categories slave and free.”4 * I wish to thank Saint Xavier University for granting me a sabbatical during the academic year of 1997–1998 and Prof. Hermann Lichtenberger and the Theological Faculties at EberhardKarls-Universität Tübingen for hosting me and providing research resources for writing this response to Douglas Campbell. 1 Troy W. Martin, “The Scythian Perspective in Col. 3:11,” NovT 37 (1995): 249–261; Douglas A. Campbell, “Unravelling Colossians 3:11b,” NTS 42 (1996): 120–132. 2  Ibid., 128; cf. 121–126. 3 Ibid., 127–128. 4  Ibid., 128–132.

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2. Campbell’s Critique of My Scythian Perspective In a subsequent short note, Campbell criticizes the Scythian perspective that I propose as not “entirely plausible for a number of reasons.”5 These reasons deserve a reply. First, Campbell claims the Scythian perspective limits the couplet to “a straightforward ethnic” antithesis that would not function plausibly in the audience of Col 3:11b.6 The Scythian perspective, however, places no such limitation upon the couplet since the Cynic materials discussed in my article figuratively use this couplet to express a Scythian perspective. Indeed, the “straightforward ethnic” antithesis between barbarian and Scythian provides the basis for the figurative use of this couplet but does not exclude the figurative use. My subsequent monograph on Colossians argues at length that Cynic Philosophy poses the problem at Colossae and explains how Col 3:11b, interpreted from a Scythian perspective, functions plausibly in the overall argument of this letter to the Colossian Christians.7 Second, Campbell argues that the Scythian perspective is implausible because “presumably a genuinely Scythian perspective on all outsiders would be expressed in the appropriate indigenous dialect (to speak Greek contradicts the point!).”8 Campbell’s presumption is contradicted, however, by the Cynic Epistles, which are written in Greek and nevertheless present a Scythian perspective.9 Indeed, ps.-Anacharsis composes his first letter and consistently adopts a Scythian perspective, and he writes in Greek because he addresses the Athenians. Audience, not ethnic perspective, determines the language a multi-lingual speaker uses. Third, Campbell asserts that the Scythian perspective does not explain the antithesis between barbarian and Scythian in Col 3:11b since “βάρβαρος should be correlated with Σκύθης, both of which should oppose Ἕλλην, for the slogan to work in true Cynic fashion.”10 Campbell’s assertion assumes that the Cynic critique was limited to Greek civilization and idealized all barbarians. Even though this critique is most often directed against Greco-Roman culture, every culture fell under its purview. Ps.-Diogenes describes the Persian kings in need of his therapy to cure their luxurious lifestyle (Epistle 38.4 [Malherbe]).11 Ps.-Hera 5 Douglas A. Campbell, “The Scythian Perspective in Col. 3:11: A Response to Troy Martin,” NovT 39 (1997) 81–84, here 82.  6  Ibid., 83.  7  Troy W. Martin, By Philosophy and Empty Deceit: Colossians as a Response to a Cynic Critique, JSNTSup 118 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 195–200.  8  Campbell, “Response to Troy Martin,” 83.  9  See Martin, “Scythian Perspective,” 254–256 (original publication page numbers). This article is included as essay 5 (pp. 113–124) in the present volume. 10  Campbell, “Response to Troy Martin,” 83. 11  All translations of the Cynic Epistles are those found in Abraham J. Malherbe’s The Cynic Epistles, SBLSBS 12 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1977).

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clitus criticizes the Persian custom of prostration and payment of homage (Epistle 8.1 [Malherbe]). Responding to King Darius’ invitation to come to Persia, ps.Heraclitus declines saying, “All men who dwell on earth keep themselves from truth and from practicing what is just. Because of their base folly, they cleave to insatiable desire and vainglory” (Epistle 2 [Malherbe]). Heraclitus does not expect to find better humans living in Persia than he finds in Greece. Cynics criticize both barbarian and Greek cultures for failing to realize the Cynic ideal life. When Cynics single out the Scythians as living a life according to nature, they do not praise Scythian “barbarity” but the Scythian lifestyle, which corresponds to the Cynic ideal life.12 In contradiction to Campbell’s assertion, therefore, Σκύθης cannot be correlated with βάρβαρος “for the slogan to work in true Cynic fashion” but must oppose this term as it does in Col 3:11b. The Scythian perspective, therefore, does explain the antithesis between barbarian and Scythian in Col 3:11b. Fourth, Campbell argues that the Scythian perspective is not plausible because it is “caught in a series of conundrums” since it requires a “Cynic reading of the couplet” but a Cynic reading requires “ Ἕλλην to stand opposite Σκύθης or opposite βάρβαρος.”13 Campbell himself creates these conundrums by interpreting the couplet barbarian/Scythian from a Greek rather than a Scythian perspective.14 Only from a Greek perspective, should Ἕλλην “oppose” Σκύθης or βάρβαρος, and only from a Greek perspective, should Σκύθης “be correlated” with βάρβαρος.15 From a Scythian perspective, Σκύθης should oppose βάρβαρος as it does in Col 3:11b. Campbell’s contention is inaccurate that the term Scythian “systematically opposes Ἕλλην or its equivalent” in Cynic materials and that “consequently, we never see Scythian Cynics opposed to barbarians in the few pieces of literature written from that perspective and now extant.”16 Contrary to Campbell’s contention, Ps.-Anacharsis’ first letter contrasts Scythians with others of foreign speech and specifically identifies these others not only as Athenians but also as Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Persians (Epistle 1). Instead of requiring Ἕλλην to stand opposite either Σκύθης or βάρβαρος, therefore, a Cynic reading of the couplet prohibits such a pairing. Neither this reading nor the Scythian perspective produces the conundrums Campbell creates. Consequently, none of the reasons given by Campbell in his short note demonstrates the implausibility of the Scythian perspective. Instead, they demonstrate his misreading of this perspective in the Cynic materials and his insistence 12  For a description of this life, see Troy W. Martin, “The Chronos Myth in Cynic Philosophy,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 38 (1997): 85–108. 13  Campbell, “Response to Troy Martin,” 84. 14 Ibid., 84 n. 9. Campbell’s citation of Rom 1:14, which articulates the Greek perspective, as analogous to Col 3:11b, which articulates the Scythian perspective, demonstrates his interpretation of the later perspective in terms of the former. 15 Ibid., 83–84. 16  Ibid., 83.

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on interpreting Col 3:11b from the Greek perspective. In this same short note, Campbell suggests that his own chiastic reading “manages to oppose barbarian and Scythian plausibly” and brings balance to “the four couplets in the series as a whole.”17 Both of these suggestions also merit reply.

3. My Critique of Campbell’s Elusive Chiasm In his article “Unravelling Colossians 3.11b,” Campbell contends that “an elusive chiasm” connects the third couplet barbarian/Scythian to the fourth couplet slave/free and permits barbarian to oppose Scythian in terms of the social categories slave and free.”18 This chiasm, however, does not oppose Scythian and barbarian since both terms refer to barbarians as in the traditional interpretation, which Campbell criticizes. Instead, this chiasm opposes slave, modified by Scythian, and free, modified by barbarian. The opposition then is not between Scythian and barbarian but between “free barbarian and Scythian slave.”19 3.1. Critique of Σκύθης as Meaning Slave Campbell astutely recognizes this problem with his explanation and attempts to substantiate that the term Σκύθης alone means slave. He asserts that Σκύθης “denoted slaves procured from the north of the Black Sea” and then concludes, “In sum, many races living to the north of the Black Sea were dubbed ‘Scythians’ in NT times, and any slaves procured from this general area were also therefore known, rather loosely, as the same – and there were indeed many such ‘Scythian’ slaves in the first century CE.”20 His geographical location of the Scythians is correct, and there were Scythian slaves during this period just as there were slaves from every other ethnic group, although determining the prominence of slaves from a particular ethnic group is problematic. What Campbell must substantiate, however, is whether slaves were “known, rather loosely, as” Σκύθαι.21 Campbell cites four ancient authors to prove that Σκύθης denotes slave. He begins with Plutarch’s record that a slave named Σκύθης was present at the murder of Pompey (Pomp. 78.4). This slave, however, may not even be a Scythian. His name could arise from the mythical tradition, where Σκύθης is the son of Heracles, or from any number of other reasons. Campbell himself notes that a slave could “derive the name from that of the trader” who sold him or her and that Scythians were slave traders.22 Campbell then cites Dio Cassius’ record that 17 Ibid.,

84.

18 Campbell,

“Unravelling Colossians,” 127–128. 128. 20  Ibid., 129–131. 21  Ibid., 131. 22  Ibid., 131 nn. 36–37. 19 Ibid.,

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Antoninus had both Scythian and Celtic retainers and that some but not all were slaves (Hist. 79.5.5–79.6.3). Dio Cassius only proves that some Scythians were slaves but does not prove that Σκύθης denoted a slave any more than it proves that Κελτός denoted a slave. After all, Dio Cassius would not need to add that some of these Scythians were slaves if Σκύθης meant slave. He would only need to specify that some of these Scythians surprisingly were free. Neither Plutarch nor Dio Cassius, therefore, supports Campbell’s claim that Σκύθης means slave. Campbell next cites Strabo (Geogr. 11.6.2) and Pliny the Elder (Nat. 4.80–81) for support, but Strabo only locates the Scythians north of the Caspian Sea but does not refer to them as slaves. Pliny also locates the Scythians in this region and then comments that these “base-born Scythians descended from slaves.” Campbell interprets Pliny’s comment as an “explicit reference to slaves under the general rubric of ‘Scythian.’”23 Pliny, however, does not use Scythian as a general rubric to designate slaves but merely slurs the Scythians by disparaging their ignominious origin. Such slurs were common in ethnic rhetoric but do not prove that an ethnic designation necessarily means slave. Hence, neither Strabo nor Pliny substantiates Campbell’s claim that Σκύθης correlates “sociohistorically with ‘slave.’”24 In support of his claim that Σκύθης means slave, Campbell also cites some secondary literature. This literature, however, is no more persuasive than the primary literature cited by him. Indeed, this secondary literature is often less rigorous than Campbell in consulting primary sources. Otto Michel, for example, states, “In the Graeco-Rom. world the Scythian represented a specific oriental slave-type located around the Black Sea.”25 The only evidence Michel gives for his statement is the unconvincing Plutarch text cited by Campbell. According to Campbell, the source of the assertion that Σκύθης means slave in the secondary literature apparently derives from R. J. G. Mayor’s comment, “Barbarian slaves were drawn in the main either from Western Asia (Lydians, Phrygians, Syrians, etc.) or from the tribes round the Black Sea, who were known by the generic name of Scythians.”26 Mayor’s comment is interesting both because it cites no primary sources and because it does not say that Σκύθης means slave. Mayor does not say there were barbarian slaves known as Scythians but that there were tribes generically known as Scythians around the Black Sea. Slaves were taken from these tribes just as they  Ibid., 130. 131. 25 Otto Michel, “Σκύθης,” TDNT 7:447–450, here 448. 26 Campbell, “Unravelling Colossians,” 122 n. 5; cf. n. 28. See R. J. G. Mayor, “Slaves and Slavery,” in A Companion to Greek Studies: Edited for the Syndics of the University Press, ed. Leonard Whibley, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: University Press, 1916), 507–513, here 510. Since Mayor’s work represents the source of much of the secondary literature Campbell cites, it is surprising that Campbell does not evaluate the reliability of this source, which cites no primary texts for support. 23

24 Ibid.,

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were from the Lydians, Phrygians, and Syrians, but these ethnic designations do not mean slave any more than Scythian does. Unless persuasive evidence is forthcoming, the secondary literature should not continue to perpetuate the mistaken claim that Σκύθης means slave or denotes a slave class. Neither the primary literature nor the secondary literature cited by Campbell substantiates such a claim. 3.2. Critique of the Chiasm Campbell’s failure to substantiate that Σκύθης alone means slave leaves only his “elusive chiasm” to oppose the terms barbarian and Scythian in Col 3:11b. This chiasm is so “elusive” that it escapes the notice of Joachim Jeremias, who recognizes the chiastic structure of Col 3:11a but not 11b.27 It also escapes the notice of Ian H. Thomson, who does not mention this chiasm in his study of Pauline chiasmus even though he does mention other passages in Colossians that are chiastic.28 The problem with chiasmus is that ancient authors neither define nor discuss this figure, and Thomson recognizes that even now “an adequate methodology for identifying, verifying and using chiasmus as an exegetical tool has yet to emerge.”29 Campbell complicates this problem by proposing successive chiasms in Col 3:11b with the structure A-B-B-A-C-D-D-C, which include eight different terms. Indeed, the chiasm of Greek/uncircumcision and Jew/circumcision in the first half of the series gives Campbell “critical information for reading the second half of the series in v. 11b” as a chiasm.30 Unfortunately, Campbell provides no other examples of such a double chiasm. Both Jeremias and Thomson investigate some complicated chiasms, but neither discusses a double chiasm. Even if examples of such a chiasm were produced, the warrant for a double chiasm in Col 3:11 still requires demonstration. Thomson explains, “As a general rule, the greater the number of objective balances of vocabulary and syntax in potentially corresponding elements, the more likely there is to be an authentic chiasmus present.”31 The lack of objective balance between barbarian and free as well as between Scythian and slave casts considerable doubt on Campbell’s proposed double chiasm. His failure to substantiate that Σκύθης alone means slave and that barbarian lexically corresponds to free indicates that this chiasm may be in Thomson’s words “a product of the commentator’s ingenuity, artificially imposed upon the text.”32 27 Joachim

Jeremias, “Chiasmus in den Paulusbriefen,” ZNW 49 (1958): 145–156, here 146.  Ian H. Thomson, Chiasmus in the Pauline Letters, JSNTSup 111 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995). 29 Ibid., 22. 30  Campbell, “Unravelling Colossians,” 128. 31  Thomson, Chiasmus, 33. 32  Ibid., 34. 28

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Thus, Campbell’s suggestion in his short note that his chiastic reading “manages to oppose barbarian and Scythian plausibly” is difficult to accept.33 He fails to satisfactorily demonstrate that Σκύθης means slave and that Col 3:11b is structured as a chiasm. His further suggestion in this short note that his chiasm brings balance to “the four couplets in the series as a whole” is also difficult to accept since the balance he claims is marred by two imbalances.34 First, Campbell designates both nouns in the second couplet as inversely modifying the nouns in the first couplet. The antithesis in both these couplets is between “circumcised Jew and uncircumcised Greek.”35 Even though the fourth couplet contains two adjectives, Campbell does not similarly designate these adjectives as inversely modifying the nouns in the third couplet. Instead, he designates slave, the first term in the fourth couplet, as a substantivized adjective modified by Σκύθης, the second noun in the third couplet. Then he identifies free, the second term in the fourth couplet, as an adjective modifying barbarian in the third couplet. According to Campbell, the antithesis in these couplets is between “free barbarian and Scythian slave.”36 His inconsistent designation of nouns as modifiers and adjectives as nouns mars the balance he claims his chiastic reading brings to the couplets in Col 3:11. Campbell defends his designation by assuming that the four couplets in Col 3:11 contain only two contrasts.37 He sees a similar double contrast “in the closely parallel texts” in 1 Cor 7:17–24; 9:20–22; 12:13 and Gal 3:28, where “an initial contrast between Jew and Greek (in a baptismal context) is always followed by another contrast between slave and free (not between Greek and barbarian).”38 His limitation of the four couplets in Col 3:11 to only two contrasts as found in the baptismal tradition is methodologically unsound. He cites Gal 3:28 as “closely parallel” to Col 3:11 but correctly recognizes that Gal 3:28 adds a third contrast male/female to the two traditional ones.39 Campbell explains Paul’s addition of this third contrast in Gal 3:28 by saying that the baptismal tradition was “deployed by Paul with some flexibility in terms of the actual epistolary situation.”40 Campbell does not explain why Paul could flexibly add a third contrast in Gal 3:28 but the Colossian author could not exercise a similar flexibility by adding a third or fourth contrast in Col. 3:11.  Campbell, “Unravelling Colossians,” 84.  Ibid. 35  Ibid., 127–128. 36  Ibid., 128. 37  Ibid., 126. 38 Ibid., 124. 39  For an explanation of the contrasts in Gal 3:28, see Troy W. Martin, ““Covenant of Circumcision (Gen 17:9–14) and the Situational Antitheses in Gal 3:28,” JBL 122 (2003): 111–125. This article is included as essay 10 (pp. 191–216) in the present volume. 40  Campbell, “Unravelling Colossians,” 121. 33 34

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Furthermore, the two traditional baptismal contrasts in 1 Cor 7:17–24 occur in the context of other contrasts such as married and unmarried as the epistolary situation requires. The influence of the epistolary situation on the use of these contrasts is clearly indicated by Rom 1:14, 16, where the contrast Jew/Greek is preceded, not followed, by the contrasts Greek/barbarian and wise/foolish, but the contrast slave/free does not occur at all. This passage demonstrates that the contrasts Greek/Jew and barbarian/Scythian in Col 3:11 are a viable combination and that the contrast barbarian/Scythian should not be forced into a slave/free contrast as Campbell does. The balance that Campbell claims his chiastic reading provides is further marred because his reading, similar to the traditional interpretation he criticizes, distinguishes the third couplet from the other couplets in the series. Maintaining a Greek perspective, Campbell does not interpret barbarian/Scythian as describing inherently exclusive categories, since both terms according to Campbell refer to barbarians. In his opinion, a Scythian is a barbarian, and a barbarian could be a Scythian. The terms in the other couplets, however, are mutually exclusive. A Greek is not a Jew. A circumcised person is not an uncircumcised person. A slave is not a free person. These couplets describe mutually exclusive categories even apart from their placement in the series in Col 3:11b. In contrast, the couplet barbarian/Scythian does not describe exclusive categories according to Campbell’s interpretation. Maintaining the same Greek perspective toward Scythians and barbarians as in the traditional interpretation, Campbell’s chiastic reading perpetuates rather than removes the traditional imbalance of this third couplet in relation to the other couplets in Col 3:11. Thus, Campbell’s suggestion that his chiastic reading brings balance to the four couplets as well as his suggestion that his reading manages to oppose barbarian and Scythian plausibly is not persuasive. Attempting to unravel Col 3:11b, Campbell’s own chiastic reading unravels.

4. Conclusion The Scythian perspective is not only more plausible but also more probable than Campbell’s “elusive chiasm.” The Scythian perspective better explains the mutually exclusive categories of barbarian and Scythian in Col. 3:11b and provides the balance that Campbell seeks between this couplet and the other couplets in this verse. Furthermore, the Scythian perspective is confirmed by primary sources whereas Campbell’s “elusive chiasm” lacks such confirmation. Most importantly, the Scythian perspective supports, in Campbell’s own words, “the exciting scenario of Cynics fomenting unrest at Colossae.”41 This perspective  Campbell, “Response to Troy Martin,” 84.

41

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provides a socio-historical proof for this scenario that strengthens the linguistic and exegetical proofs for Cynic opponents that my monograph on Colossians provides.42 The differences between my article and Campbell’s article that explain the couplet barbarian/Scythian in Col. 3:11b should not obscure our significant agreement that the traditional interpretation of this couplet as describing overlapping categories is unsatisfactory. Our articles will hopefully represent a watershed in the interpretive tradition, and subsequent exegetes should interpret barbarian and Scythian as mutually exclusive categories. The exegetical issue then becomes whether an “elusive chiasm” or the Scythian perspective better explains the terms in this couplet as mutually exclusive.

5. Reception History The reception history of my article on the Scythian perspective in Col 3:11 that is reprinted in the previous essay in this volume begins with Campbell’s short note of response to that article.43 In his note, he gives four reasons for rejecting my explanation that the terms Σκύθης and βάρβαρος designate mutually exclusive categories if read from a Scythian perspective. Since my reply that is reprinted here presents my arguments for not accepting these reasons and for rejecting Campbell’s own chiastic reading as well, I shall not repeat these arguments even though I still consider them to be valid and persuasive in substantiating my reading of a Scythian perspective in Col 3:11b. Rather, I shall describe in this reception history the various reactions to our works in subsequent scholarly discussions of the βάρβαρος/Σκύθης pairing in Col 3:11.44 One reaction to the exchange of articles between Campbell and me is the preference of my article over Campbell’s. Peter Nathan writes: Another possible tie to the Cynics is found in the third chapter of Colossians. Here Paul sets out a series of opposites: “neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free” (Colossians 3:11). The contrast of Greek to Jew, circumcised to uncircumcised, slave to free makes immediate sense. Paul lists mutually exclusive groupings to show the way in which Jesus Christ breaks down barriers between people. But what about “barbarian” and “Scythian”?45  Martin, By Philosophy and Empty Deceit, passim. “Response to Troy Martin,” 81–84. 44 In addition to the reactions discussed below, some scholars merely summarize the articles Campbell and I have written without providing much assessment. For example, see Craig L. Blomberg, From Pentecost to Patmos: An Introduction to Acts through Revelation (Nashville: B&H Publishing, 2006), 295 n. 77. 45  Peter Nathan, “A Mysterious Case of Persecution: Paul and the Colossians’ Critics,” Religion and Spirituality (Summer 2012), URL: http://www.vision.org/visionmedia/religionand-spirituality-apostle-paul-colossians/57889.aspx. 42

43 Campbell,

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Nathan thus accurately poses the problem with this pairing and asks the key question. He then answers this question by explaining: To the Greeks, non-Greeks were by definition culturally inferior and thus classified as barbarians, with Scythians among the lowest of the low. But the Cynics viewed the nomadic, pastoral Scythian lifestyle as an ideal; they referred to themselves as Scythians and to their tattered outer garments as “Scythian cloaks.”46

Nathan continues explaining that the Cynic “humility ironically became a source of pride” and that “to them, the worldly Greeks were the inferior barbarians, as Diogenes proclaimed in one of his letters (Epistle 28.8).”47 Nathan concludes, “Seen in this light, Paul’s reference to barbarians and Scythians is indeed another pair of opposites and also makes sense of his reference to ‘false humility’ (Colossians 2:18).”48 Nathan states his final assessment, “More parallels can be drawn to link the Cynics to the Colossians, though space does not permit a fuller discussion here. But based on a careful review of the evidence now available, it does seem entirely plausible that the persecution the Colossian church faced was from Cynics.”49 Throughout his work, Nathan appropriately acknowledges that he is adopting my solution to the pairing of βάρβαρος and Σκύθης in Col 3:11, and since he also discusses the views of Campbell, Arnold, DeMaris, Hooker, and others, Nathan explicitly prefers my solution not only over Campbell’s proposal but also over the others as well. Another scholar who prefers my solution over Campbell’s is Torsten Jantsch, who relies on my solution in his comparison of Cynic argumentative strategies with Paul’s arguments in Romans 1–2. Jantsch comments: Dieses Motiv des Tauschs der Position einer “Ingroup” mit einer “Outgroup”, so lautet unsere These, ist typisch für die kynische Tradition. Diese Behauptung muss allerdings noch untermauert werden. Troy Martin hat in einem Aufsatz zu Kol 3.11 interessantes Material aus den kynischen Pseudo-Anacharsis-Briefen zusammengetragen, das für unseren Zusammenhang relevant ist … Troy Martin dürfte darin recht haben, dass dies im Kontext von Ps.-Anacharsis Ep. 2 so zu verstehen ist, dass dieses Verhalten Solons “characteristic of a barbarian, not a civilized Greek” ist, so dass auch hier (wenn auch implizit) Barbaren und Griechen die Plätze tauschen.50

Using my solution for the pairing of βάρβαρος and Σκύθης in Col 3:11, Jantsch concludes: Insbesondere das (wie gezeigt) typisch kynische Motiv, dass eine Ingroup (Griechen, Athener) mit einer Outgroup (Barbaren, Skythen) den Platz tauscht  – die Barbaren werden als wahre Griechen angesehen, die Griechen als die eigentlichen Barbaren – hat  Ibid.

46

47 Ibid.

 Ibid.  Ibid. 50 Torsten Jantsch, “Kynische Argumentation im Römerbrief: Römer 1–2 und Ps.-Diogenes, Epistula 28 im Vergleich,” NTS 64 (2018): 44–63, here 59–61. 48 49

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eine erstaunliche Parallele in Röm 1–2. Hier tauschen Juden und Heiden (“Griechen”, “die Völker”) ihre Plätze.51

I am pleased Jantsch accepts my solution for the pairing of βάρβαρος and Σκύθης in Col 3:11 and finds it so helpful for understanding Paul’s argumentation in Romans 1–2. Another reaction to the exchange of articles between Campbell and me is to maintain the traditional understanding of Col 3:11 that equates Σκύθης and βάρβαρος or sees Σκύθης as an extreme barbarian.52 This reaction dismisses both of our works and especially our agreement that “the traditional interpretation of this couplet as overlapping categories is unsatisfactory” since this pairing should “be understood as mutually exclusive categories.”53 Edwin Yamauchi represents just such a reaction.54 He summarizes my explanation of the couplet from a Scythian perspective and without stating any specific objections simply dismisses my explanation by citing Campbell’s criticism of my proposal as “implausible.”55 Yamauchi does, however, state his reasoning for rejecting Campbell’s chiastic proposal and says, “The objection to his proposal would be that, while it may be conceded that the terms Scythian and slave were often linked, the terms ‘barbarian’ and ‘free’ were not.”56 Yamauchi then concludes by favoring “the customary understanding of Scythian’ as implying a ‘savage’” even though Campbell and I deem such an understanding as unsatisfactory because it makes the pairing of Σκύθης and βάρβαρος inconsistent with the other antithetical pairs in Col 3:11. To support his conclusion, Yamauchi asks, “But, suppose that Paul, when writing or dictating his letter, was not overly concerned with consistency, but was moved with impassioned intensity at the wonderful promise of the Gospel?”57 I admit that in his writings, Paul may have been inconsistent at times, but a consistent reading of what he wrote is, if possible, preferable to an inconsistent one. At least, Campbell and I both consider the traditional reading of Σκύθης and βάρβαρος as somehow synonymous as Yamauchi does to be the least preferable option. Yet another reaction to our work rejects both of us along with the traditional reading and instead proposes a different explanation of the pairing of Σκύθης and βάρβαρος in Col 3:11. Rick Strelan notes, “There has been some debate 51 Ibid.,

62.  See R. McL. Wilson, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Colossians and Philemon, ICC (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 254–255. Wilson critiques Campbell’s position but only mentions my work on Col 3:11 without engaging it. Nevertheless, Wilson rejects both of our proposals and instead prefers to see Scythian as the most barbarian of barbarians. 53  Martin, “Reply to Campbell,” 256. 54  Edwin Yamauchi, “The Scythians – Who Were They? And Why Did Paul Include Them in Colossians 3:11?” Pricilla Papers 21 (2007): 13–18. 55  Yamauchi, “The Scythians,” 16. 56  Ibid. 57  Ibid., 18. 52

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between Martin and Campbell about this passage, but neither of them interprets the categories along linguistic lines.”58 Strelan explains what he means by “linguistic lines” and says that “being barbarian most often refers to speech more than to anything else of a stranger’s culture.”59 The only reason Strelan gives for rejecting both of our articles is that our explanations are not “along linguistic lines.” While I can see how Strelan’s criticism applies to Campbell’s article, I fail to see how it applies to mine, for I point out that “the meaning of the term barbarian is relative and based upon the linguistic perspective of the speaker.”60 Furthermore, I point out that anyone who is not a native Scythian speaker falls into the category of a βάρβαρος from a Scythian perspective.61 Thus, I do rely upon a linguistic basis to explain the distinction of the terms βάρβαρος and Σκύθης, and I do not understand why Strelan criticizes me for not doing so. Nevertheless, Strelan dismisses both of our articles and then proceeds to present his own solution to the problem of this pairing. He states, “The concern of the author of Colossians might well have been for a unity that he saw threatened by language divisions.”62 Strelan reasons, “Since it is used in a letter to the Colossians, might ‘Scythians’ in fact refer to the Phrygians in this context?”63 He points out, “Like Scythians, Phrygians were ‘originally’ nomadic and from the North-West, coming into the Lycus Valley from elsewhere but having political and cultural control for a period.”64 He then concludes, “A Scythian would then belong to the ‘in’ group; being labeled ‘barbarian’ would put one among the ‘outsiders.’”65 Thus, Strelan thinks the problem at Colossae is a status claim by an in-group on the basis of their descent from these Phrygians and that this group is causing divisions in the Colossian church with those in the out-group. Strelan’s alternative proposal for resolving the difficulties with the pairing βάρβαρος and Σκύθης fails to persuade me for many reasons. First, the period of Phrygian control was at least six centuries before the writing of Colossians. Second, he offers no proof that being Phrygian is a status symbol in the second half of the first century CE. Third, his argument proceeds by stringing together possibilities, and he often uses phrases such as “might well have been” or “might ‘Scythian’ in fact refer to the Phrygians.” A persuasive argument must proceed with probabilities, not possibilities. Finally, evidence for internal divisions with58  Rick Strelan, “The Languages of the Lycus Valley,” in Colossae in Space and Time: Linking to an Ancient City, ed. Alan H. Cadwallader and Michael Trainor (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 77–103, here 98. 59  Ibid. 60 Martin, “Scythian Perspective,” 253. 61 Ibid., 256. 62 Strelan, “Languages,” 98–99. 63  Ibid., 99. 64 Ibid. 65  Ibid.

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in the Colossian church is lacking within the Colossian letter itself, which instead describes a critique coming from an outside philosophy.66 Even though I remain unpersuaded by his proposal, I nevertheless welcome his agreement with Campbell and me in rejecting the traditional equation of βάρβαρος and Σκύθης. Still another reaction to our work that ignores rather than rejects both Campbell and me also rejects the traditional reading in favor of a reading that differs from both of our explanations. Such is the case with David M. Goldenberg’s proposal that the pairing of βάρβαρος and Σκύθης is racial in contrasting black and white and-geographical in designating south and north.67 He comments: It would appear that Paul was using the place-name Barbaria in opposition to the placename Scythia, and his antithesis, then, was racial-geographic (black/white), according with the national (Greek/Jewish), religious (circumcised/uncircumcised) and social (slave/free) antitheses in the passage.68

I agree with the critique of Goldenberg’s proposal by Yamauchi, who explains: The problem with Goldenberg’s solution is that barbaros is not the same as the place “Barbaria,” nor is skuthēs the same as the place Scythia; moreover, if Paul had wished to make such a contrast, he could well have used the term aithiops, the Greek term which literally meant “sun-burnt face” and which was used by the Greeks for dark‑ or blackskinned peoples, especially those south of Egypt.69

Along with Yamauchi, I do not consider Goldenberg’s proposal an adequate explanation of the pairing even though I view him as an ally along with Campbell 66  See Allan R. Bevere, Sharing the Inheritance: Identity and the Moral Life in Colossians, JSNTSup 226 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), 34; and Christian Stettler, “The Opponents at Colossae,” in Paul and His Opponents, ed. Stanley E. Porter, Pauline Studies 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 169–200, here 174–175. Bevere comments, “Martin correctly notes that there is no indication that the Colossian opponents came from within the church.” Some scholars do, however, see evidence for an internal problem. See Jerry L. Sumney, Colossians: A Commentary, NTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008), 157. Commenting on Col 2:8 and 19, Sumney states, “These two passages also demonstrate that the teachers opposed by Colossians claim a connection with Christ, and so are within the church (contra T. Martin 1996, 28–34); otherwise, asserting that they have no connection to Christ would carry no argumentative weight.” Sumney’s own argument assumes that the author is attempting to convince the opponents, but I disagree with this assumption and understand the Colossian author’s persuasion to be directed toward those inside the church for whom pointing out that the philosophy has no connection to Christ would have persuasive force and keep them from being led away from Christ to this non-Christian philosophy. 67 My remarks here specifically relate to David M. Goldenberg, “Scythian-Barbarian: The Permutations of a Classical Topos in Jewish and Christian Texts of Late Antiquity,” Journal of Jewish Studies 49 (1998): 87–102. See also idem, The Curse of Ham (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 2003). Goldenberg is not the first to propose this interpretation that was already advanced by Theodor Hermann, “Barbar und Skythe. Ein Erklärungsversuch zu Kol 3,11,” TBl 9 (1930): 106–107. 68  Goldenberg, “Scythian-Barbarian,” 96. 69  Yamauchi, “The Scythians,” 17.

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in rejecting the traditional equation of these terms and for seeking a different explanation. A related reaction is that of Jerry L. Sumney, who accepts Goldenberg’s proposal while explicitly rejecting those advanced by me and Campbell.70 Criticizing Campbell’s solution of the pairing, Sumney comments, “But the evidence that ‘Scythian’ would automatically be understood as a reference to slaves is too thin to support this interpretation. Furthermore, there is no evidence that ‘barbarian’ would be taken as a reference to free people, as Campbell argues.”71 Sumney accepts my evidence for the Cynic use of Scythian and states, “Cynics used the word to speak of the noble savage who has not been corrupted by culture.”72 In spite of his acceptance, however, he instructs his readers, “See also D. Campbell’s rejection of Martin’s argument that this understanding of Scythians supports the view that the teachers Colossians opposes are non-Christian Cynics.”73 Unfortunately, Sumney does not direct his readers to my reply to Campbell’s response that was published long before Sumney’s work and is republished in the present essay of this volume. At any rate, my reasons for considering Goldenberg’s proposal as inadequate pertain to Sumney’s proposal as well since they are the same. Yet another reaction is the preference for Campbell’s explanation instead of mine. After acknowledging the difficulty of the paring of Σκύθης with βάρβαρος in Col 3:11, Angela Standhartinger accepts Campbell’s explanation of the chiastic structure as well as his identification of the Scythians as slaves and the barbarian as free.74 She then notes: Einen anderen Vorschlag hat Martin, Scythian Perspective, unter Aufnahme der Perspektiventhese von Gnilka gemacht. Die Verf. nähmen an dieser Stelle die Perspektive von Skythen ein, für die alle Nicht-Skythen Barbaren seien, wobei die kulturkritischen Implikationen beabsichtigt wären. Diese skythische Perspektive sei eine Anspielung auf die Verherrlichung der Skythen, besonders des Anacharis, durch die Kyniker.75

Except for perhaps implying that Gnilka also adopts the Scythian perspective, Standhartinger accurately summarizes my solution.76 Standhartinger then comments, “Dagegen hat Campbell, Scythian Perspective, m. E. zu Recht darauf hingewiesen, dass eine kynische Opposition Skythe-Barbar unwahrscheinlich ist, da die Kyniker die Skythen wegen ihrer ‘barbarischen’  Sumney, Colossians, 208–209.  Ibid., 208. 72  Ibid. 73  Ibid., 208 n. 38. 74  Angela Standhartinger, Studien zur Entstehungsgeschichte und Intention des Kolosserbriefs, NovTSup 94 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 234–235. 75  Ibid., 235 n. 225. 76  Martin, “Scythian Perspective,” 252 n. 15. Even though I adopt Gnilka’s approach of identifying the perspective reflected by these pairs, I explicitly note that he adopts a Greek perspective for the βάρβαρος-Σκύθης pair and even paraphrases the pair as “(Grieche‑) Barbar.” 70 71

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Lebensart bewunderten.”77 Unfortunately, she does not have my reply to Campbell since it was published in the same year as her monograph, but the problem I see with Campbell’s criticism that persuades Standhartinger is that it fails to understand the Cynics, who “criticize both barbarian and Greek cultures for failing to realize the Cynic ideal life.”78 What Cynics admire in the Scythians is not their “barbarity” but their primitive, nomadic, rural, natural lifestyle that starkly contrasts with the largely urbanized, unnatural lifestyle of the GrecoRoman world. I think that both Campbell and Standhartinger misread the Scythian perspective in the Cynic materials and insist on interpreting Col 3:11 from a Greek rather than a Scythian perspective.79 Another scholar who prefers Campbell’s explanation over mine is John P. Heil, who comments: A Scythian perspective along with a Cynic reading of the pairing “barbarian/Scythian” that allows it to be interpreted along with the other pairs listed in 3:11 as mutually exclusive categories has been proposed by Troy W. Martin. … But interpreting “barbarian/Scythian” as an antithesis from a Scythian viewpoint and Cynic reading has been shown to be implausible by Douglas A. Campbell.80

Heil further comments, “The interpretation employed here concurs with that of Campbell despite the rejoinder by Troy W. Martin.”81 Heil neither engages my arguments nor explains why he prefers Campbell’s explanation over mine, and so I do not know what specific arguments he finds unpersuasive in my article and rejoinder. Still another reaction ignores my article on the Scythian perspective but cites Campbell’s while deeming the problem of this pairing to be beyond resolution. After noting the difficulty of this pairing, Michael Dübbers asserts, “Wie das Ausdruckspaar βάρβαρος-Σκύθης zu verstehen ist, kann nicht mehr eindeutig festgestellt werden.”82 He asks, “Ist hier an eine Steigerung (die Skythen als besonders grausame und wilde Barbaren) oder an eine Gegenüberstellung zu denken?”83 He deems this question unanswerable but nevertheless assumes that the pairing has less to do with “literarische Klischees” and more likely references the “konkrete Situationswissen” of the addressees. However, he concludes, “Das zu erkennen ist dem heutigen Interpreten freilich verwehrt.”84 Be Standhartinger, Studien, 235 n. 225.  Martin, “Response to Campbell,” 258. 79  Ibid., 259. 80  John P. Heil, Colossians: Encouragement to Walk in All Wisdom as Holy Ones in Christ, SBL Early Christianity and Its Literature 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 151 n. 26. 81  Ibid. 82  Michael Dübbers, Christologie und Existenz im Kolosserbrief: Exegetische und semantische Untersuchungen zur Intention des Kolosserbriefs, WUNT 2.191 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 298 n. 47. 83 Ibid. 84  Ibid. 77 78

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fore concluding that the situational knowledge of the addressees is no longer recoverable, Dübbers should at least consider every previously proposed solution including mine especially since my solution explains the pairing as arising specifically from the “konkrete Situationswissen” of the addressees about a Cynic critique that was occurring at Colossae. Unfortunately, however, he does not. Among these diverse reactions to the exchange of articles between Campbell and me are two primary reasons for rejecting my Scythian perspective solution to the problem of the pairing βάρβαρος and Σκύθης in Col 3:11. First, some scholars simply cite Campbell’s response to my article as sufficient for rejecting my solution without engaging the supporting arguments I provide and often without considering my reply to Campbell.85 Hopefully, the reprinting of both my initial article and my reply to Campbell in this volume will invite scholars to take a closer look at the exchange between Campbell and me, for I have reviewed all the evidence and arguments Campbell and I make and remain convinced that “the Colossian author adopts a Scythian perspective for the pairing barbarian/ Scythian to address certain inconsistent aspects of his opponents’ philosophical self-conception.”86 A second reason for rejecting my Scythian perspective explanation is that accepting this explanation provides a persuasive argument for my identification of Cynic philosophy as the cause of the problem addressed by Colossians. I conclude my reply to Campbell by stating, “This perspective provides a socio-historical proof … that strengthens the linguistic and exegetical proofs for Cynic opponents.”87 F. Gerald Downing, who is otherwise critical of my work, agrees and states, “It does seem that a Cynic link of sorts remains a possibility worth keeping in mind. As just one instance, the inclusion of ‘Scythian’ in the list at 3:11 does seem to point us in that direction, as Martin has argued.”88 Not surprisingly, those who reject my identification of the Colossian opponents as Cynics also reject my Scythian perspective solution for the pairing of βάρβαρος and Σκύθης in Col 3:11 since this perspective supports my Cynic identification while those who accept my identification also accept my solution. Since the numerous proposals identifying the Colossian opponents rest largely on passages in Colossians that are variously translated and interpreted, the pairing of βάρβαρος and Σκύθης in Col 3:11 is the only definite clue to the opponents’ identity. Whereas other proposals fail to integrate an explanation of this pairing into their identification of the opponents, my Scythian perspective solution not only fits but also supports the identification of the opponents as Cynics. The reception history of my article on the Scythian perspective and  For example, see Sumney, Colossians, 208–209.  Martin, “Scythian Perspective,” 261. 87  Martin, “Reply to Campbell,” 263. 88  F. Gerald Downing, “Review of By Philosophy and Empty Deceit: Colossians as Response to a Cynic Critique, by Troy W. Martin,” JBL 117 (1998): 542–544, here 544. 85 86

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my reply to Campbell thus flows into the larger reception history of my Cynic identification of the Colossian opponents, and I shall describe that larger history more fully in the reception history at the end of essay 11 (pp. 217–251) in which my article on Col 2:16–17 is reprinted in this volume.

B. Early Christian Virtues

VII. Faith: Its Qualities, Attributes, and Legitimization in First Peter* 1. Introduction Faith is an important concept in the letter of First Peter, which uses several words for faith that are formed on the πιστ stem. Nominal forms of πίστις occur in 1 Pet 1:5, 7, 9, 21 and in 5:9. Adjectival forms of πιστός appear in 1:21; 4:19; and 5:12 while verbal forms of πιστεύω occur in 1:8 and in 2:6, 7. In addition, a form of the verb ἀπιστέω appears in 2:7 to designate the negation of the concept of faith. Words for faith formed on the πιστ stem occur at least a dozen times in 1 Peter and demonstrate the importance of this concept in this letter. This quantifiable analysis easily demonstrates the importance of the concept of faith for First Peter, but the quality of the concept and its specific attributes in the letter are much more difficult to determine. The letter shares two general qualities of the concept with other documents that contain the concept of faith but develops its specific notion of faith by particular attributes that are not present in all these documents.1 Indeed, these particular attributes make the concept of faith in First Peter specific to this letter. While many of these attributes occur in other documents, only First Peter brings them all together to express its own specific concept of faith. An investigation of the qualities of the concept of faith and its attributes in First Peter is thus necessary for understanding this concept in the letter.

* An earlier version of this essay was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Region of the Society of Biblical Literature in Bourbonnais, IL on February 12, 2011. I am grateful to Eric F. Mason, who edited this essay for publication and made several helpful suggestions and corrections. 1 These two general qualities are persuasion to trust and appropriate action arising from that persuasion and trust. See the discussion below.

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2. The General Qualities of Faith in First Peter One way to investigate the qualities of the concept of faith in 1 Peter is to begin with an analysis of the formation of the πιστ stem itself.2 Words formed on the πιστ stem are from the aorist middle/passive root πιθ, and somehow relate to the broad semantic range of persuasion. In their lexicon, Liddell, Scott, and Jones (LSJ) give several meanings for the middle/passive form of this root.3 The first and essential meaning of the passive voice is to be won over or to be persuaded. A derivative meaning in the middle voice is to listen to someone or to obey, but this obedience is based on persuasion. Having been persuaded by someone, a person then appropriately obeys. Another derivative meaning from the middle voice is to believe someone or to trust someone. Again, this belief and trust is based on persuasion. Having been persuaded by someone or some entity, a person believes in or trusts that individual or entity. The essential idea of persuasion conveyed by the πιθ root and these derivative meanings provide the basic ideas for words formed on the πιστ stem from this root. Consequently, verbal nouns, verbal adjectives, and denominative verbs formed on the πιστ stem convey some semantic notion of persuasion. Thus, the verbal noun πίστις names the action of trusting in or believing in someone or something.4 This trust or belief is based on the persuasion that this someone or something is indeed trustworthy. The verbal adjective πιστός expresses possibility and attributes this trustworthiness to the substantive it modifies.5 This trustworthiness or ability to be trusted or believed, however, rests on persuasion. If a person is not persuaded that a bridge will bear weight, that person does not think the bridge can be trusted. The denominative verbs πιστεύω and ἀπιστέω “denote a condition” or a “state” and refer to believing or not believing re2  The root of the πιστ stem is πιθ from the second aorist middle/passive form (ἐπιθόμην). See Herbert Weir Smyth, Greek Grammar (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), § 471. A verbal adjective in ‑τος and an abstract noun in τις form from this verbal stem πιθ (ibid., §§ 472 and 840.1). When a verbal adjective in ‑τος is formed from this root, the theta of the root changes to a sigma before the dental tau of the suffix since a dental stop before another dental becomes sigma (§ 83). So, the form πιθ–τος becomes πιστός. A similar phonetic change occurs in the nominal form, and πιθ–τις becomes πίστις (§ 834e). The denominative verbs πιστεύω and ἀπιστέω form on this substantive stem πιστ (§§ 866.2 and 866.4). 3  LSJ, “πείθω,” B. The present tense is formed by lengthening the short internal vowel iota to the diphthong ει. See Smyth, Greek Grammar, § 502. 4  See Teresa Morgan, Roman Faith and Christian Faith: Pistis and Fides in the Early Roman Empire and Early Churches (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), passim. Morgan investigates the role of pistis and fides in domestic, governmental, and religious relationships in the early Roman Empire and in Christian churches and concludes that these terms are essentially relational and have the meaning of trust and that this trust provides the basis for the development of communities. 5  Smyth, Greek Grammar, § 472. Smyth gives this meaning as one alternative. The other alternative is that these verbal adjectives convey the sense of a perfect passive participle.

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spectively.6 Again, the condition or state of believing in someone or something is based on a prior persuasion that this someone or something should be believed. Words formed on the πιστ stem from the πιθ root therefore convey some semantic notion of persuasion. Of course, the specific meaning of each of these words must be determined from context, but their word formation indicates that some notion of persuasion factors into their contextual meanings. Relating persuasion to words formed on the πιστ stem is further supported by antonyms for these words in First Peter. Once, the alpha privative of a πιστ stem denominative verb provides the antonym (ἀπιστοῦσιν; 1 Pet 2:7). More often, however, the antonym is a form of the verb ἀπειθέω (2:8; 3:1, 20; 4:17). The English translation of this verb as “disobey” obscures the connection of this verb with πιστ stem words that mean faith or belief. Nevertheless, this verb is formed from the same root πιθ as πιστ stem words. This verb forms on the stem from the adjectival form ἀπειθής, which the LSJ lexicon defines as disobedient or not persuasive, and this verb indeed means to be disobedient but disobedient because of a lack of persuasion.7 It refers to disobedience resulting from a different cause than disobedience referenced by verbs such as παρακούω and the negated ὑπακούω, which refer to disobedience as a result of faulty hearing (cf. Rom 5:19; 2 Cor 10:6).8 The disobedience referenced by forms of the verb ἀπειθέω is the result of a lack of persuasion. As an antonym to words formed on the πιστ stem, the verb ἀπειθέω expresses the negative of the concept of faith in First Peter. In 1 Pet 2:8, unbelievers stumble because they disobey the word (τῷ λόγῳ ἀπειθοῦντες). In 3:1, unbelieving husbands disobey the word (ἀπειθοῦσιν τῷ λόγῳ). In 4:17, unbelievers who do not obey the gospel of God (τῶν ἀπειθούντων τῷ τοῦ θεοῦ εὐαγγελίῳ) face an ominous end. In these three instances, the unbelievers are not persuaded of the truth of the gospel and therefore do not act in accordance with it. As an antonym to words formed on the πιστ stem, therefore, the verb ἀπειθέω indicates that these words in First Peter express a concept of faith whose qualities include persuasion about the truth of the gospel of God and behavior or action consonant with that gospel. These two qualities of faith in 1 Peter are congruent with the ancient moral maxim that right thinking leads to right action while faulty thinking leads to inappropriate action. According to this maxim, words formed on the πιστ stem refer to a persuasion that leads to action appropriate to that persuasion, and these two qualities of persuasion and appropriate action are essential to the concept of faith in First Peter. This letter, however, shares these two general qualities of the concept of faith with other documents, and the spe-

 Ibid., § 866.2 and 866.4.  LSJ, s. v. 8  Gerhard Kittel, “ἀκούω,” TDNT 1:216–225, here 223. 6 7

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cific understanding of faith in 1 Peter requires an investigation of the specific attributes ascribed to faith in the letter.

3. Specific Attributes of Faith in First Peter The construction of a πιστ stem word with a prepositional phrase that begins with εἰς determines the specific attributes of faith in First Peter. This construction occurs three times. First, it occurs in 1 Pet 1:5, which describes the recipients as guarded through faith in a salvation (διὰ πίστεως εἰς σωτηρίαν) prepared to be revealed at the last time. Second, it occurs in 1:8, which identifies Christ as the one in whom the recipients believe (εἰς ὃν … πιστεύοντες). Finally, it occurs in 1:21, which describes the recipients as believers in God (τοὺς … πιστοὺς εἰς θεόν). These three occurrences of a πιστ stem word with the preposition εἰς determine the attributes and specify the concept of faith in First Peter. These occurrences will be examined in the reverse order of their occurrence in the letter. 3.1. Belief in Israel’s God A πιστ stem word with the preposition εἰς occurs in 1 Pet 1:21, which describes the recipients of the letter as believers in God (τοὺς … πιστοὺς εἰς θεόν) and affirms that their faith and hope are in God (τὴν πίστιν ὑμῶν καὶ ἐλπίδα εἶναι εἰς θεόν). This God is not just any god but the God of Israel, and the Israelite tradition thus provides much of the specific content for the conception of faith in this Petrine letter. The recipients have been persuaded that the God of Israel is the true and only God (1 Pet 1:23), and they have appropriately abandoned the futile conduct inherited from their ancestors (1:18).9 This conduct involved living according to human passions rather than by the will of Israel’s God (4:2) and included carrying on in sensualities, passions, drunken stupors, carousals, drinking bouts, and prohibited idolatries (4:3).10 While these activities were permitted in their former life, such conduct is prohibited once they are persuaded that Israel’s God is the true God and they become believers in this God. The concept of faith in First Peter is thus shaped by the faith of Israel and its God.

 9 Eugene A. LaVerdiere, “A Grammatical Ambiguity in 1 Pet. 1:23,” CBQ 36 (1974): 89–94. LaVerdiere argues that the participles in 1:23 construe with λόγου, not θεοῦ, and he is followed by Paul J. Achtemeier, 1 Peter: A Commentary on 1 Peter, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 139–140. 10  According to Achtemeier, the plural forms in this vice list “indicate categories of activities rather than individual acts” (1 Peter, 282). He follows Uwe Holmer and Werner de Boer, Die Briefe des Petrus und der Brief des Judas (Wuppertal: Brockhaus, 1978), 140.

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3.1.1 Faith and the End Times Several features of Israel’s faith provide content for First Peter’s conception of its recipients’ faith. First, the letter describes their faith in a salvation prepared to be revealed at the end time (1 Pet 1:5).11 The notion of an end time in which there will be both salvation and judgment is characteristic of Israel’s classical prophets (1:10–12). Hans-Christoph Hahn explains: The prophets … speak emphatically of the judging, but also redeeming future of God. The phrase en tō kairō ekeinō, “in that time”, now takes on a future reference (Isa. 18:1; Jer. 3:17; 4:11; 8:1;… Dan. 12:1; Joel 3:1; Amos 5:13; Mic. 3:4; Zeph. 3:16, 19 f.) and points to an intervention by God in the near or far-off future which will have the character of a comprehensive judgment. For the godless in and around Israel, the time of the end (kairou peras, Dan. 11:27; 12:9; kairos synteleias, Dan. 12:1) or “the day of the Lord” will be a time of visitation (kairos episkopēs, Jer. 6:15; 10:15;… Wis. 3:7), of wrath (kairos orgēs, Sir. 44:17; cf. Ezek. 7:7, 12; Jer. 18:23) and of punishment (kairos ekdikēseōs, Jer. 26[46]:21; Sir. 5:7; 18:24). But Zion and those who remain obedient (cf. Ps. 81[80]:16) and practice righteousness … await everlasting salvation (Zeph. 3:16, 19 f.; cf. Isa. 60:20 ff.; Jer. 27[50]:4, 20; Dan. 12:1 f.).12

First Peter uses this prophetic vision of the future to specify the faith of its recipients as a faith in a salvation prepared to be revealed at the end time. Just as the righteous in the prophetic prediction, the recipients will experience salvation (1 Pet 1:5, 9) while those outside will have to give account of their evil deeds (4:5) and face an ominous end with little hope of salvation (4:17–18). 3.1.2 Faith and the Refining of Gold Second, First Peter describes their faith as being tested by suffering so that it might be found to be more precious than gold for their praise, glory, and honor and of God’s as well (1 Pet 1:7).13 While the metaphor of gold’s being tried in the fire occurs among Greco-Roman authors, the link of this metaphor with “a person’s trust in God … [just] as precious metal was tested by fire was a common11  David Horrell, “Whose Faith(fulness) Is It in 1 Peter 1:5?” JTS n.s. 48 (1997): 110–115. Horrell proposes that God’s faithfulness rather the recipients’ faith may be meant in this verse, and Joel B. Green thinks his proposal is consistent with the emphasis on God’s faithfulness in the passage (1 Peter, THNTC [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007], 21 n. 27). The primary problem I have with Horrell’s proposal is that vv. 8–9 clearly indicate that the recipients believe in Jesus and will receive the end of (their) faith to be the salvation of their souls. Because their belief in Jesus cannot be attributed to God, neither can the end of faith. Since these verses do not refer to God’s faithfulness in relationship to salvation, v. 5 probably does not either. 12  Hans-Christoph Hahn, “καιρός,” NIDNTT 3:833–839, here 836. See also Richard H. Hiers, “Day of the Lord,” ABD 2:82–83. 13 Although God is not specified as receiving this praise, glory, and honor, these three are not explicitly attributed to anyone else. See Leonhard Goppelt, A Commentary on 1 Peter (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 92. Goppelt understands all three as belonging to both God and the recipients and explains, “Consequently, the intention here is that ‘praise, glory, and honor’ are accorded by God and Christ to faith that has endured. God gives to those who are kept in faith what belongs to God himself.”

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place of Jewish thought.”14 The people of Israel sang, “You tested us, O God, tried us as silver tested in the fire” (Ps 66:10). Contemplating the Babylonian exile, the Lord says, “I shall turn my hand against you and refine your dross in the forge by removing all of your alloy” (Isa 1:25). After the exile, the Lord speaks to the exiles, “Behold, I have refined you like silver, tested you in the forge of affliction” (Isa 48:10). Zechariah and Malachi prophesy that the Lord will refine and purify a remnant of the people at the last time (Zech 13:8–9; Mal 3:1–3).15 First Peter adopts this Israelite commonplace of faith purified in a forge, just as metals are purified, to describe the purity of its recipients’ faith, and this commonplace provides a specific attribute for the concept of faith in the letter. 3.1.3 Faith and the Devil Third, 1 Peter exhorts its recipients to resist the devil by being firm in their faith (1 Pet 5:9). Although the canonical Scriptures of Israel lack a portrayal of the devil as the archenemy of humans, the term διάβολος is frequently used in the LXX as a translation for the Hebrew ‫שׂטן‬. The notion of the devil develops in later Jewish writings, and J. Ramsey Michaels comments, “Διάβολος, ‘the devil,’ refers consistently in the NT to Satan (Heb: ‫שׂטן‬, ‘accuser’), regarded in Christian tradition (and in the Judaism of the Petrine author’s day) as the archenemy of God and the source of evil in the world.”16 Even though a complete notion of the devil does not occur in Jewish writings and is not worked out consistently until much later, the notion is characteristically Jewish and does not occur in ancient non-Jewish writings.17 Even First Peter’s admonition for its recipients to resist the devil by being firm in their faith assumes a role of the devil or Satan that is depicted in non-canonical Jewish writings. Werner Foerster explains: If a formula is sought to describe the special position of Satan, one is almost impelled to say that Satan is the one who tries to disrupt the relation between God and man, and especially between God and Israel. This takes place in three ways, by temptation to sin, by accusation before God and by trying to thwart the divine plan of salvation. Thus Satan is represented as the tempter of the race and of Israel, e. g., in the case of the fall [L. A. E. 12; Apoc. Ab. 13; Apoc. Mos. 16], of Cain and Abel [Apoc. Mos. 2], of Noah [Jub. 11:5], of Abraham [Jub. 17:16], of the Exodus [CD 5:18], of the golden calf [b. Šabb. 89a], of David [b. Sanh. 107], of the history of Israel [CD 4:12], and of many rabbis [b. Qidd., 91a].18

As in these writings, the letter of First Peter conceives of the devil as trying to destroy and disrupt the relationship between its recipients and God. Their faith 14 Achtemeier,

1 Peter, 102. other references of this metaphor, see Jer 6:29–30; Prov 17:3; Sir 2:5; and Wis 3:4–6. 16  J. Ramsey Michaels, 1 Peter, WBC 49 (Waco, TX: Word, 1988), 298. 17 Werner Foerster, “διαβάλλω, διάβολος,” TDNT 2:75–81, here 77. 18  Ibid., 76. 15 For

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connects them to Israel’s God (1 Pet 1:21), and First Peter exhorts them to resist the devil’s intentions by being strong in their faith (5:9). Furthermore, 1 Peter’s depiction of the devil as a roaring lion seeking someone to devour has its roots in Israel’s traditions.19 Leonhard Goppelt notes, “This image is not a freely constructed visualization of the threat. It is a traditional simile, appropriated here, as most often in the NT, in connection with the OT.”20 Goppelt mentions Daniel’s experience in the lion’s den (Dan 6:23; cf. Heb 11:33) and cites Ps 21[22]:14 and several Qumran documents. One passage consistently overlooked by the commentators as a background for this simile in 1 Pet 5:8 is Gen 4:7, which portrays sin as crouching near the door and urges Cain to master it. The same Hebrew word for crouching (‫ )רבץ‬refers to the activity of a lion in Gen 49:9; Ps 104:22; and Ezek 19:2. While sin is portrayed as crouching and not roaring, it is nevertheless visualized as a lion poised to pounce on the unsuspecting. This theriomorphic depiction of sin as a lion in Gen 4:7 is part of a long tradition in which the devil as a lion is the epitome and provides a background for the depiction of the devil as a roaring lion in 1 Pet 5:8. First Peter 5:8 echoes another lion passage in Israel’s tradition when it depicts its recipients as exiles (1 Pet 1:1, 17; 2:11) facing their adversary the devil as a roaring lion who seeks to devour (5:8). First Peter’s depiction resembles Jeremiah’s portrayal of exiled Israel devoured by lions.21 Jeremiah writes, “Israel is a hunted sheep driven away by lions. First, the king of Assyria devoured him, and now at last Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has gnawed his bones” (Jer 50:17 RSV ). Still another lion passage is 2 Kgs 17:25–26, which describes dangerous lions attacking the foreigners that the king of Assyria settled in Israel. The intertextual echoes between these passages is strong, and First Peter’s exhortation for its recipients, strong in their faith, to resist the devil as a roaring lion is yet one more particular attribute of faith that the letter draws from Israel’s traditions. 3.1.4 Faith and the Diaspora The reference to and depiction of the devil (1 Pet 5:8) along with faith’s being tested as gold in a furnace (1:7) and the notion of the end times (1:5) are all features of Israel’s faith that provide content for First Peter’s conception of its recipients’ faith. This letter uses one other aspect of Israel’s faith tradition to set the context for all these features. In my published dissertation on First Peter, I proposed the Diaspora as the controlling metaphor in the letter. The beginning of the letter addresses the recipients as the elect exiles of the Diaspora (1 Pet 1:1), and 19  See Troy W. Martin, “Roaring Lions among Diaspora Metaphors: First Peter 5:8 in its Metaphorical Context,” in Bedrängnis und Identität: Studien zu Situation, Kommunikation und Theologie des 1. Petrusbriefes, ed. David du Toit, BZNW 200 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013), 167–179. 20  Goppelt, 1 Peter, 360. 21  Martin, “Roaring Lions,” 174.

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1 Pet 1:17 mentions the time of their exile or sojourn. The middle of the letter exhorts the recipients as sojourners and exiles (1 Pet 2:11), and the end of the letter refers to the Babylonian Diaspora (5:13). My proposal has met with at least two objections. Paul Achtemeier thinks my proposal is too narrow. He identifies the controlling metaphor as all Israel, while Joel Green doubts the letter has a controlling metaphor at all.22 I think that Achtemeier and certainly Green do not give enough exegetical weight to the sustained references to the Diaspora from the beginning to the end of the letter and to its function. Achtemeier’s counter proposal that all Israel is the controlling metaphor is problematic because several periods of Israel’s history are not marked by faith but disbelief and apostasy. The wilderness wanderings were a time of disbelief and rebellion. The period of the judges was characterized by apostasy and punishment. Even during the monarchy, the prophets castigate the people for their stubbornness and hardness of heart. The Diaspora, however, was different. The Babylonian exile was indeed a punishment for sin (Lev 26:27–33; Deut 28:58–68; 1 Kgs 14:15; Jer 9:16; 13:24–27; 18:17; 23:24; Ezek 12:8–16), but it was also a time of salvation and a return to faith in Israel’s God. According to Deut 4:25–31, Moses predicts the exile of the people as judgment for their evil but then prophesizes, “But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find him. … When you are in tribulation and all these things come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the Lord your God and obey his voice (Deut 4:29–30 RSV ).” According to Ezek 22:15, God says, “I will scatter you among the nations and disperse you through the countries, and I will consume your filthiness out of you” (RSV, cf. Ezek 36:24–32). Jeremiah has the most to say about the exile as a punishment but nevertheless writes, “‘Then fear not, O Jacob my servant,’ says the Lord, ‘nor be dismayed, O Israel; for lo, I will save you from afar, and your offspring from the land of their captivity. … For I am with you to save you,’ says the Lord” (Jer 30:10–11; RSV ). Jeremiah views the exile and Diaspora as an opportunity for God to establish a new covenant (31:31–40) and to save God’s people (23:5–6). Both Joel (3:1–3) and Zechariah (1:12–2:12; 7:14–8:8) articulate a similar understanding of exile and Diaspora as a time of the renewal of faith. It is thus significant that First Peter places its recipients in the Diaspora and not in any other period of Israel’s history. Other periods of Israel’s history do not provide as rich a context for describing the recipients of the letter as believers in God (1 Pet 1:21; cf. Deut 4:5–31) and as those who have returned to the Shepherd (1 Pet 2:25; cf. Jer 23:3–4; 50:19; Ezek 34:1–5). Other periods are not as helpful in allowing First Peter to describe their present suffering in the Diaspora as a demonstration of the purity of their faith refined in a furnace (1 Pet 1:7; cf. Ezek 22:15–31).  Achtemeier, 1 Peter, 69–72; Green, 1 Peter, 218 n. 60.

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Other periods are not as conducive for describing the non-Jewish recipients of the letter as becoming God’s people who have been shown mercy (1 Pet 2:10; cf. Zech 1:12–17; 2: 6, 11). After exhorting the exiles to return to the Lord from the four winds and from Babylon (Zech 2:6), Zechariah says, “Many nations shall join themselves to the Lord in that day and shall be my people” (Zech 2:11; RSV ). The Diaspora, therefore, serves First Peter’s portrayal of its recipients as the faithful people of God better than any other period of Israel’s faith tradition. Thus, the Diaspora as the controlling metaphor of the letter remains persuasive and provides a rich context for understanding the concept of faith expressed in the letter. Considering all the connections with Israel’s faith tradition, it is hard to underestimate the importance of the recipients’ faith in Israel’s God for the concept of faith in the letter. The numerous quotations from Israel’s Scriptures, the reference to the recipients as the flock of God (1 Pet 5:2–5; cf. Jer 23:1–6), the mention of Sarah and Abraham (1 Pet 3:6) along with so much else in the letter can only be understood against the background of Israel’s faith tradition, which shapes, informs, and provides the particular attributes for the concept of faith in 1 Peter. 3.2. Belief in the Lord Jesus Christ Belief in Israel’s God, however, is not all that First Peter says about the faith of its recipients. A πιστ stem word occurs with the preposition εἰς in 1 Pet 1:8, which affirms that the recipients believe in the Lord Jesus Christ (1:8; cf. 2:6–8), and the letter thus adds Christian attributes to its conception of faith. Just as the recipients’ belief in the God of Israel enable the letter to draw specific attributes of their faith from the traditions of Israel, so also the recipients’ belief in Jesus Christ permits First Peter to particularize their faith by drawing from Christian ideas. 3.2.1. Faith and the Passion The recipients’ belief in Jesus Christ includes the passion among the specific attributes of their faith. The letter describes them as born anew through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Pet 1:3). Although without sin (2:22– 23), Jesus suffered on behalf of them (2:21) and bore their sins in his body on the wooden cross (ξύλον; 2:24). The term ξύλον, which means wood and then by metonymy tree is used in reference to Jesus’ cross in early Christianity (Gal 3:13; Acts 5:30; 10:39; 13:29) and provides an intertextual link to Deut 21:22, which curses everyone who hangs on a tree. This link enables an understanding of Jesus’ cursed death on the cross to be vicarious and redemptive so that First Peter’s recipients might die to sin and live to righteousness (1 Pet 2:24).23 According to the letter, the blood of Christ they are to sprinkle (1:1) ransomed them from their former futile life (1:18–20). The short, succinct kerygmatic confession  Goppelt, 1 Peter, 213.

23

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in 1 Pet 3:18–22 describes Jesus’ vicarious, redemptive death, his resurrection, and his being seated at the right hand of God. The passion is so central an attribute of their faith that the letter describes its recipients as believers in God who raised Jesus from the dead and gave him glory (1 Pet 1:21). Thus, the letter includes the passion of Jesus and its effects among the specific attributes of its conception of faith. 3.2.2. Faith and the Parousia The recipients’ belief in Jesus Christ includes the Parousia among the specific attributes of their faith. The letter refers often to the second coming of Christ and describes it as the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Pet 1:7, 13; cf. 4:13; 5:1), the day of visitation (2:12), or the manifestation of the chief Shepherd (5:4). First Peter implicitly refers to the Parousia by announcing the nearness of the end of all things (4:7), the time for beginning the judgment (4:17), and the readiness of God to judge the living and the dead (4:5).24 First Peter describes the Parousia as the time of salvation ( 1 Pet 1:5, 9; cf. 5:10) and its recipients’ faith in this salvation prepared to be revealed at the end time (1:5) as the intermediate agent of their being preserved for that time.25 Consistent with other Christian theological reflections on the Parousia, First Peter contrasts the future salvation and glory at the Parousia with the present time of suffering and tribulation (1 Pet 1:5–6, 11; 4:12–13; 5:1–6, 9–11).26 Indeed, the Parousia as a time of future glory in contrast to the present time of suffering is a prominent attribute of faith in First Peter. 3.2.3. Faith and Paraenesis The recipients’ belief in Jesus Christ includes certain conduct among the specific attributes of their faith. In its station or household code, the letter explains to the slaves: If while doing good [ἀγαθοποιοῦντες] and suffering you endure, this is favor with God, for you were called for this purpose because Christ also suffered on behalf of you with the purpose of leaving behind an example for you in order that you might follow in his footsteps. (1 Pet 2:20b–21)27

Believing in Jesus entails following in his footsteps, and this conduct is referenced by words formed on the stem ἀγαθοποι‑ (“doing good”). This term describes the 24  First Peter 4:5 does not specify God as the judge, and Jesus is certainly a possibility as being this judge (Matt 25:31–33; Luke 21:34–36; and Acts 17:31). However, God is the judge in 1 Pet 1:17; 2:23; and 4:19 and thus probably also in 4:5 as well. 25  See Horrell’s proposal that is discussed in note 11 above. 26 Troy W. Martin, Metaphor and Composition in 1 Peter, SBLDS 131 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 107–113. See also Karl O. Sandnes, “Revised Conventions in Early Christian Paraenesis – ‘Working Good’ in 1 Peter as an Example,” in Early Christian Paraenesis in Context, ed. James Starr and Troels Engberg-Pedersen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005), 373–403, here 392. 27  My translation. See Steven R. Bechtler, Following in His Steps: Suffering, Community, and Christology in 1 Peter, SBLDS 162 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 6.

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ideal conduct of slaves here and wives in 1 Pet 3:6 but of all the recipients of the letter in 2:14–15; 3:17; and 4:19.28 Antonymous words formed on the stem κακοποι‑ (“doing bad”) occur in 1 Pet 2:12, 14, 3:12, 17; and 4:15 in reference to conduct the recipients should avoid. Thus, Edward G. Selwyn observes that ἀγαθοποιεῖν occurs more times in First Peter than in the rest of the New Testament put together, and he identifies it as a key word in the letter.29 Karl O. Sandnes builds on Selwyn’s observation and argues that “doing good” summarizes the paraenesis in the letter as a whole.30 Doing good thus encompasses obedience to Christ (1 Pet 1:2), subjection to every human institution for the Lord’s sake (2:11), sanctifying Christ as Lord (3:15), ceasing from human passions and living according to the will of God (4:1–5), and glorifying God by the name Christian (4:12–16) as well as all the other exhortations in the letter. The motivations for doing good expressed in the letter thus base this paraenesis on faith in Jesus Christ.31 The letter clearly states that its recipients believe in the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Pet 1:8; cf. 2:6–8). Because they believe, they are “in Christ” (3:16; 5:10, 14) and share fellowship with him. This fellowship is a doing good even while suffering in the hope of sharing future honor and glory with Christ. The letter explains to its recipients, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal which comes upon you to prove you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice in so far as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed” (1 Pet 4:12–13). This theme of present suffering and future glory with Christ is repeated several times in the letter (1 Pet 1:6–12; 2:21–23; 3:13–22; 4:1–6; 5:1–4, 6–10). The paraenesis in the letter is thus based on faith in Jesus Christ, and the recipients’ doing good even while suffering is an attribute of faith in 1 Peter.32 28 Sandnes observes, “Christ is presented as the master-model for ‘doing good’ in two ways. First there is the direct manner in 2:21–25 and then in 3:1, 7, where ὁμοίως helps the reader keep in mind the relevance of Christ’s example to the entire code” (“Revised Conventions,” 402). Since the code in one place or another addresses all the recipients, doing good applies to all of them. 29  Edward G. Selwyn, The First Epistle of St. Peter: The Greek Text with Introduction, Notes, and Essays, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1947; repr. Thornapple Commentaries; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1981), 89. 30  Sandnes concludes, “It seems justified, therefore, to say that ‘doing good’ really summarizes the content of paraenesis in 1 Peter” (“Revised Conventions,” 382). 31 David G. Horrell, “The Label Χριστιανός: 1 Peter 4:16 and the Formation of Christian Identity,” JBL 126 (2007): 361–381. If Richard Pervo’s dating of Acts to the second century is accepted and Josephus’s use of Christian in Ant. 18.64 is rejected, then First Peter may be the earliest surviving document to use the term Christian. See Horrell’s discussion on pp. 367–368 and Richard I. Pervo, Acts: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), 5. 32  Goppelt notes, “Only at the beginning (1:5, 7, 9, 21) and here [5:9] at the conclusion does 1 Peter refer to ‘faith.’ But faith is for the letter the orientation of one’s entire conduct toward God as it has become directed by the gospel” (1 Peter, 362).

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Paraenesis is the recommendation of conduct that is generally accepted and usually uncontroversial.33 While First Peter may broadly share paraenetic prescripts with other documents, its emphasis on faith in Christ as a motivation for the recommended conduct distinguishes it from these documents.34 Sandnes explains, “Faith in Christ separates the believers from the evildoers. By making this identity foundational to the conduct of believers, Peter may well give his consent to general values that receive common recognition in society, but he does so with an emphatic reference to Christian ideology.”35 Faith in Christ, therefore, adds the conduct recommended by the paraenesis to the particular attributes of faith in the letter. Along with belief in Israel’s God, belief in Jesus Christ provides specific attributes for faith in First Peter. The passion and Parousia of Christ as well as conduct modeled on his example are all features of the faith of the letter’s recipients. First Peter particularizes their faith by drawing from the tradition of Israel and by adding Christian ideas. Of course, none of the attributes of faith in the letter would be possible if the recipients did not believe in the salvation of Gentiles, and this salvation becomes yet another specific attribute of faith in the letter. 3.3. Belief in the Salvation of Gentiles A πιστ stem word occurs with the preposition εἰς in 1 Pet 1:5, which mentions the recipients’ faith in a salvation prepared to be revealed at the last time (1:5) and then affirms that the end of their faith will be the salvation of their lives (1:9). First Peter further explains that Israel’s prophets inquired about this salvation and discovered it was not for them but for the letter’s recipients (1:10–12). The letter thus applies the prophetic predictions of future salvation as well as other Scriptures of Israel to its recipients who are Gentiles, not Jews.36 Paul Achtemeier comments: In 1 Peter, the language and hence the reality of Israel pass without remainder into the language and hence the reality of the new people of God. As a result, that language is more than simply illustrative – it is foundational and constitutive for the Christian community.37  Martin, Metaphor and Composition, 114–115.  See Travis B. Williams, Good Works in 1 Peter: Negotiating Social Conflict and Christian Identity in the Greco-Roman World, WUNT 337 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 278–279. Williams describes the function of good works in First Peter as “assimilated resistance.” 35  Sandnes, “Revised Conventions,” 394. 36  Scholars debate whether the recipients are Jews, Gentiles, or perhaps a mixture of both. Achtemeier provides a list of those who think the recipients are Jews (1 Peter, 50 n. 521). Most recently, James D. G. Dunn has adopted this position. See his Beginning from Jerusalem, vol. 2 of Christianity in the Making (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 1158. Achtemeier himself thinks “the more careful conclusion is to posit a mixture of both gentile and Jewish readers” (p. 51). However, the majority of exegetes decides for a Gentile audience because of decisive statements in 1 Pet 1:14, 18; 2:10, 25; and 4:3–4. See Achtemeier, 1 Peter, 51 nn. 525 and 526. I concur with the majority on this issue. 37  Achtemeier, 1 Peter, 69. 33 34

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The letter so thoroughly applies the prophecies of future salvation to its recipients that it can refer to outsiders as Gentiles (1 Pet 2:12; 4:3). Indeed, the letter no longer refers to its recipients as Gentiles at all but as the holy people of God (2:9) who maintain good conduct among the Gentiles (2:12). The recipients’ faith in a salvation of Gentiles, therefore, takes its place alongside their faith in Israel’s God and their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as another specific attribute of faith in 1 Peter.

4. Apostolic Legitimization of the Recipients’ Faith In addition to the general qualities and specific attributes of faith in First Peter, the letter also authenticates its recipients’ faith by giving it apostolic legitimization. The author, the letter carrier, and the destination of the letter lend this legitimization. The stated author of course is Peter, Apostle of Jesus Christ (1 Pet 1:1) and a witness of the passion of Jesus (5:10).38 Whether or not the name is a pseudonym, it functions to legitimate the faith of the recipients.39 The letter presents none other than Peter, Apostle of Jesus Christ, as affirming that the grace in which they stand is the true or genuine grace of God (5:12).40 The earliest reference to First Peter is probably 2 Pet 3:1, which is addressed to those Gentiles who have obtained a faith of equal standing with the Jews (2 Pet 1:1).41 Second Peter clearly recognizes that Peter’s name lends legitimization to Gentile faith.  Martin, Metaphor and Composition, 42–43. 43 n. 8. 40 The antecedent to ταύτην in 1 Pet 5:12 is problematic. Scholars propose the terms tribulation or grace or even the epistle itself as the antecedent. I argue grammatically that the antecedent is χάριν (“grace”) (Martin, Metaphor and Composition, 57–58). In contrast, Mark Dubis opts for “epistle” as the antecedent by arguing that ancient letters sometimes summarize their contents in their closing (1 Peter: A Handbook on the Greek Text, BHGNT [Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2010], 175). He cites Achtemeier (1 Peter, 349, 352) as evidence, but I have examined Achtemeier’s examples of this phenomenon (Gal 6:11–17; 1 Tim 6:20–21; Phlm 21–22; Heb 13:22), and in each of these examples, no feminine pronoun refers to the epistle as in 1 Pet 5:12. Rather, the summary is usually expressed by the epistolary aorist ἔγραψα. Thus, 1 Pet 5:12 provides a summary of the contents of the epistle even if “epistle” is not the antecedent of ταύτην. In contrast to Dubis, I remain persuaded by the grammatical argument that χάριν (“grace”) is the antecedent of ταύτην in 1 Pet 5:12. 41   J. N. D.  Kelly, A Commentary on the Epistles of Peter and Jude, Black’s New Testament Commentaries (London: Black, 1969; repr., Thornapple Commentaries; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1982), 352. Kelly discusses two hypotheses that 2 Pet 3:1 does not refer to First Peter but to other Petrine letters now lost. He then comments, “Neither of these hypotheses is in the least plausible.” Recent commentaries on First Peter therefore understand 2 Pet 3:1 as a reference to First Peter and do not even mention other possibilities. See Reinhard Feldmeier, The First Letter of Peter: A Commentary on the Greek Text, trans. Peter H. Davids (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008), 39. See also Green, 1 Peter, 236. For a discussion of this issue, see Jeremy F. Hultin, “The Literary Relationships among 1 Peter, 2 Peter, and Jude,” in Reading 1–2 Peter 38

39 Ibid.,

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Along with Peter’s apostolic authority, the letter further legitimizes its recipients’ faith by designating Silvanus (Silas) as the letter carrier (5:12).42 Regardless of whether Silvanus ever actually delivered this letter or if his name is also pseudonymous, his persona legitimates the recipients’ faith. Although commentators debate the identity of this person, the legitimizing effect of his bearing the same name as the carrier of the letter sent by the apostles after the Jerusalem Council and as the traveling companion of Paul in Asia Minor remains.43 Calling him Silvanus rather than Silas, First Peter uses the name more familiar to the recipients in Asia Minor since Paul’s letters also prefer that name (1 Thess 1:1; 2 Thess 1:1; 2 Cor 1:19) and Silvanus is likely the name he used when traveling with Paul. Because of his association with Paul, commentators understand his name in First Peter as giving the letter a “Paulinist” cast.44 John Elliott, however, objects and proposes instead that his name in 1 Pet 5:12 is more correctly explained from his role in Acts 15. Silas was one of the bearers of the Apostolic Letter that legitimated the Gentiles’ faith without their having to become Jews first. Elliott understands his name in 1 Pet 5:12 to function similarly and to authenticate the faith of the Asia Minor recipients of the letter.45 Although, unlike Peter, Silvanus cannot lend apostolic authority to the recipients’ faith, he nevertheless contributes to the legitimization of their faith as a faithful brother who has been involved in the legitimization of Gentile faith from the early days of the church (5:12). Even the destination of First Peter serves to legitimate the faith of its recipients in Asia Minor.46 As far as the data indicate, only Paul evangelized areas of Asia Minor, and no information remains to place any other apostle there, at least during the lifetime of Peter.47 Paul’s apostleship was clearly not universally recognized (1 Cor 9:1–2) because he had not seen or known Jesus prior to Jesus’ passion. Paul did not satisfy the essential requirements for being an apostle acand Jude: A Resource for Students, ed. Eric F. Mason and Troy W. Martin, SBLRBS 77 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014), 27–45, here 41–42. 42  Achtemeier comments, “In early Christian literature, including the NT, the phrase γράφειν διά τινος identifies not the author of the letter, or its scribe, but its bearer, the one who delivered it to its readers” (1 Peter, 350). 43  John Gillman, “Silas,” ABD 6:22–23. Gillman comments, “The person called ‘Silas’ in Acts is undoubtedly the same person named ‘Silvanus’ in Paul’s letters … The person named Silvanus in 1 Pet 5:12 is probably to be identified with the Silas/Silvanus known to Paul.” 44  Ibid., 23. 45 John H. Elliott, A Home for the Homeless: A Sociological Exegesis of 1 Peter, Its Situation and Strategy (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), 279. 46 Troy W. Martin, “Peter and the Expansion of Early Christianity in the Letters of Acts (15:23–29) and First Peter,” in Delightful Acts: New Essays on Canonical and Non-canonical Acts, ed Harrold W. Attridge, Dennis R. MacDonald, and Clare K. Rothschild, WUNT 284 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 87–99. 47  The apostle John is later associated with Ephesus in the province of Asia. For a concise list of the sources of this tradition, see Raymond F. Collins, “John (Disciple),” ABD 3:883–887, here 885.

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cording to Acts 1:21–22. Paul may claim to have seen the Lord (1 Cor 15:8; 2 Cor 9:1; cf. Gal 1:16; Acts 9:1–9; 22:6–11; 26:12–20), but his seeing the resurrected Lord does not qualify him to be an apostle since he could not verify that the resurrected Lord was the same Jesus who was baptized by John and walked with the disciples (Acts 1:22). Since Paul’s apostleship was questionable, the apostolic legitimization of the Christians in Asia Minor was also in doubt. The traditions in Acts 8 and 10–11 demonstrate the crucial importance of having apostolic legitimization. The apostles in Jerusalem send Peter and John to validate Philip’s Samaritan converts (Acts 8:14–16). A divine vision (Acts 10:9– 16) sends Peter to the household of Cornelius where a similar validation occurs (10:44–48). Peter travels to almost every place that early Christianity spread except to Asia Minor and the eastern Diaspora in Babylon, and consequently he did not bestow his apostolic legitimization there. Since Paul’s apostolic legitimization was doubtful, First Peter ensures the legitimization of the faith of its recipients in Asia Minor by having Peter bestow his apostolic legitimization upon their faith by the sending of this letter. The letter’s origination in Babylon also legitimates the Christians in the eastern Diaspora. The letter of First Peter thus legitimates the faith of Christians in areas where Peter did not travel during his lifetime, at least as far as the sources indicate. This legitimization is demonstrated in the letter by its author, its bearer, and its origin and destination.

5. Conclusion Faith is an important concept in the letter of First Peter. Along with other faith documents, this letter shares two general qualities of faith, namely being persuaded and then acting on that persuasion. The recipients have been persuaded of the truth of the gospel of God and have responded and acted accordingly. They have been persuaded that Israel’s God is the true God and that this God is also the father of the Lord Jesus Christ in whom they also believe. They have been persuaded that God’s salvation is now offered to them as Gentiles. Their belief in this good news specifies several attributes of their faith that are drawn from Israel’s faith tradition and early Christian ideology. While First Peter may share these two general qualities of faith with other documents, the way it brings together and presents these attributes of faith are specific to its conception of faith. Finally, faith in First Peter finds apostolic legitimization by the letter’s author, bearer, origination, and destination. Faith is indeed an important concept for understanding and interpreting this early Christian letter.

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6. Reception History The short amount of time since the publication of this article means that not much can be said about its reception history. Beyond the content of this article, one thing I hope other scholars will take away is the approach of allowing each early Christian document to express its own specific understanding of faith rather than imposing a generic understanding. In general, the term certainly conveys the qualities of persuasion and then acting on that persuasion, but each early Christian document presents specific attributes of faith that contribute to the development and deepening of the Christian faith tradition.

VIII. The Septuagint and Early Christian Hope Piety* 1. Introduction The Greek of the Septuagint is filled with oddities that sound strange to normal Greek speakers. For example, Cleomedes, an astronomer whose dates range from 50 BCE to 200 CE, disparages Jewish Greek speakers in a passage where he castigates Epicurus for expressing abstract ideas with words ending with the suffix ‑μα, which makes words concrete (De motu circulari corporum caelestium 2.1.482–502).1 Of course, such words are expressive of Epicurean philosophy, which understands everything including thoughts and dreams to be material atoms. Cleomedes thus criticizes Epicurus for creating concrete neologisms with unnatural abstract meanings and blames Epicurus for creating an argot, an idiomatic vocabulary peculiar to his group, and for not using good Greek. Cleomedes deprecates Epicurus’ jargon by saying that some of his words come from whore houses but that others resemble the things spoken by the women at the Thesmophoria and that still others are Jewish words from the synagogue and from those who pray at it (De motu circulari corporum caelestium 2.1.498–502). Cleomedes then calls some of Epicurus’ neologisms “Jewish (Ἰουδαïκά) words, which are debased calques or recoinages (παρακεχαραγμένα) [of the Hebrew] and lower than cockroaches.” In many contexts, the verb παραχαράσσειν refers to reminting a coin by melting it and re-stamping it but replacing part of the precious metal with metals of less worth. Thus, this verb describes the making of a false or debased coin that misrepresents the value of the original. In Cleomedes’ context, this verb refers to the creation of novel Greek words and syntactical structures by taking the spellings of Hebrew words or the syntactic structures of the Hebrew Language and replacing them with Greek morphemes. The result * This essay has never before been published, but versions of it have been presented at Sydney College of Divinity in Sydney, Australia on May 9, 2018, at the 2016 National Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in San Antonio, TX on November 21, 2016, and as a Plenary Address at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Region of the Society of Biblical Literature in Bourbonnais, IL on February 5, 2016. A version of this paper with the title “The Septuagintal Background of New Testament Hope” was also presented at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Central States Region of the Society of Biblical Literature in St. Louis, MO on March 14, 2016. I am grateful to all those in attendance for their helpful comments and enthusiastic interest. 1 For a translation of this passage, see Manahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974–1979), 2:157–158.

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looks Greek but is in reality a loan word or an expression borrowed from the Hebrew. The Greek word Σάββατον (“Sabbath”) is a good example. Cleomedes thus criticizes Epicurus, whores, women at the Thesmophoria, and Jews for speaking jargon Greek that contains loan words, calques, neologisms, and mixed speech.2 Cleomedes is one of the few and perhaps the only ancient author to comment on how Jews speak Greek, and his criticism demonstrates that a Greek speaker can distinguish between good Greek and the odd Jewish words and expressions that typify the Greek of the Septuagint and those who speak it. Even modern biblical scholars acknowledge the oddities of Septuagint Greek and create the word septuagintism to refer to Semitic expressions used by New Testament writers that are peculiar to or characteristic of the Greek of the Septuagint. Several scholars have even written specialized grammars and monographs describing and explaining this “odd” Greek found in the Septuagint. While these oddities are numerous, nowhere are they more evident than in the way that the Septuagint translators wrest the Greek verb ἐλπίζειν (“to expect” or “to hope”) from its classical usage, give it a new syntax, and imbue it with a fuller and deeper meaning. In so doing, these translators contribute to the development of what can be called a Hellenistic hope piety that flies in the face of the ambivalent and even negative assessment of hope in the broader Greco-Roman world neither influenced by the Septuagint nor affected by its hope piety.

2. The Septuagint and the Hellenistic Syntax of Ἐλπίζειν The Septuagint drastically alters the syntax of the verb ἐλπίζειν by using a prepositional complement with this verb, and this verb only occurs with prepositions in Jewish and Christian texts that are dependent on or influenced by the Septuagint.3 Elsewhere, this verb takes either the dative or an infinitive complement although the nominal form ἐλπίς does occur occasionally in non-Jewish writings with the preposition ἐν (“in”), probably as a result of the encroachment of this preposition on the dative case.4 An essential meaning of ἐλπίζειν is expectation, and it thus takes the dative of targeting or an infinitive in classical texts to state the future object or action toward which the expectation is orientated. The dative and infinitive sometimes provide the compliment to this verb in Jewish and Christian texts (e. g., Tob 10:8) as well, but these texts overwhelmingly prefer a prepositional compliment such as ἐν, εἰς, πρός, and especially ἐπί with either a dative or accusative object. 2  See Georg Walser, The Greek of the Ancient Synagogue: An Investigation on the Greek of the Septuagint, Pseudepigrapha, and the New Testament, Studia Graeca et Latina Lundensia 8 (Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell International, 2001), 184. 3   F. J. A.  Hort, The First Epistle of St Peter I.1 – II.17: The Greek Text with Introductory Lecture, Commentary, and Additional Notes (London: Macmillan, 1898), 66. 4  For examples, see Xenophon, Cyr. 1.4.25.12–13 and Isocrates, Paneg. 121.8–9.

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The cause of this syntactical alteration is the Septuagint translators’ decision to use the verb ἐλπίζειν to render several different Hebrew expressions that take a preposition.5 The following list presents some of these expressions in their order of frequency, provides a general English translation, and includes an example of each. The number in parentheses indicates the number of times this Hebrew expression is rendered in the Septuagint by ἐλπίζειν completed by a preposition. 1. ‫( בטח ב‬46) – to trust in, to believe in, to put confidence in MT 2 Kgs 18:5 ‫ֹלהי־יִ ְׂש ָר ֵ ֖אל ָּב ָ ֑טח‬ ֽ ֵ ‫ּביהו֥ה ֱא‬ ָ (“he trusted in Yahweh, the God of Israel”) LXX 4 Kgdms 18:5 ἐν κυρίῳ θεῷ Ισραηλ ἤλπισεν (“he hoped in the Lord God of Israel”) 2. ‫( חסה ב‬20) – to seek refuge in MT Ps 5:12 ‫ֹוסי ָ֡בְך‬ ֵ ‫ל־ח‬ ֪ ‫“( ויִ ְׂש ְמ ֙חּו ָכ‬But let all who take refuge in you rejoice” or “but all who take refuge in you will rejoice”) LXX Ps 5:12 καὶ εὐφρανθήτωσαν πάντες οἱ ἐλπίζοντες ἐπὶ σέ (“but let all who hope in you rejoice”) 3. ‫ יחל ל‬or ‫( יחל אל‬piel 10; hiphil 3) – to wait for, to wait on MT Ps 42:12c ‫אֹלהים‬ ִ ‫הֹוח ִילי ֵֽ ֭ל‬ ֣ ִ (“wait for God”) LXX Ps 41:12c ἔλπισον ἐπὶ τὸν θεόν (“hope upon God”) or MT Ps 131:3a ‫הו֑ה‬ ָ ְ‫“( יַ ֵ ֣חל ִי ְׂ֭ש ָר ֵאל ֶאל־י‬Oh Israel, wait on Yahweh”) LXX Ps 130:3a ἐλπισάτω Ισραηλ ἐπὶ τὸν κύριον (“Israel, hope upon the Lord”) 4. ‫( ׂשבר אל‬piel 2) – to wait on, to wait expectantly on MT Ps 145:15a ‫“( ֵ ֽעינֵ י־ ֭כֹל ֵא ֶל֣יָך יְ ַׂש ֵ ּ֑ברּו‬the eyes of all wait expectantly on you”) LXX Ps 144:15a οἱ ὀφθαλμοὶ πάντων εἰς σὲ ἐλπίζουσιν (“the eyes of all are hoping for you”) 5. ‫( גלל אל‬1) – to roll on, to commit to MT Ps 22:9a ‫הו֣ה‬ ָ ְ‫“( ֹּ֣גל ֶאל־י‬commit to Yahweh”) LXX Ps 21:9a ἤλπισεν ἐπὶ κύριον (“hope upon the Lord”) 6. ‫( דרׁש אל‬1) – to seek after, to apply to MT Isa 11:10c ‫אליו ּגֹויִ ֣ם יִ ְד ֑ר ֹׁשּו‬ ֖ ָ (“the nations will seek him out”) LXX Isa 11:10c ἐπ᾽ αὐτῷ ἔθνη ἐλπιοῦσιν (“upon him shall the nations hope”) 7. ‫( חׁשק ב‬1) – to cling to MT Ps 91:14a ‫“( ִ ּ֤כי ִ ֣בי ָ ֭ח ַׁשק וַ ֲא ַפ ְּל ֵ ֑טהּו‬Because he clings to me, therefore I shall deliver him”) LXX Ps 90:14a ὅτι ἐπ᾽ ἐμὲ ἤλπισεν καὶ ῥύσομαι αὐτόν (“Because he hoped upon me, I shall also deliver him”) 8. ‫( ִקוה ל‬piel 1) – to wait for MT Isa 25:9b ‫ֹלהינּו ֶז֛ה ִקִ ּ֥וינּו ֖לֹו‬ ֥ ֵ ‫“( ִהּנֵ֙ ה ֱא‬Behold, this is our God; we waited for him”) LXX Isa 25:9 ἰδοὺ ὁ θεὸς ἡμῶν ἐφ᾽ ᾧ ἠλπίζομεν (“Behold our God upon whom we hoped”) 9. ‫( ׁשען על‬niphal 1) – to lean on MT 2 Chr 13:18 ‫יהם‬ ֽ ֶ ‫בֹות‬ ֵ ‫ֹלהי ֲא‬ ֥ ֵ ‫הו֖ה ֱא‬ ָ ְ‫נׁש ֲענ֔ ּו ַעל־י‬ ְ ‫הּודה ִ ּ֣כי‬ ֔ ָ ְ‫“( וַ ֶּי ֶֽא ְמ ֙צּו ְּב ֵנ֣י י‬and the sons of Judah prevailed because they leaned upon Yahweh, the God of their fathers”) LXX 2 Chr 13:18 καὶ κατίσχυσαν οἱ υἱοὶ Ιουδα ὅτι ἤλπισαν ἐπὶ κύριον θεὸν τῶν πατέρων αὐτῶν (“and the sons of Judah prevailed because they hoped upon the Lord God of their fathers”) 5 These translators also use the nominal ἐλπίς to render several different Hebrew expressions, but this paper focuses only on their renderings of the verbal forms.

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All these Hebrew expressions take a prepositional complement and in translation so now does ἐλπίζειν, although outside of this Septuagintal jargon, this verb never construes with a preposition but rather only with datives and infinitive complements. Thus, the Septuagint translators alter the normal Greek syntax of ἐλπίζειν, and the resulting use of this verb with prepositional complements including ἐν, εἰς, πρός, and ἐπί must sound strange and odd to Cleomedes and other Greek speakers not influenced by the Septuagint. It would be interesting to know why the Septuagint translators use ἐλπίζειν to render so many different Hebrew expressions especially since the literal meaning of the Hebrew is not retained in the Greek translation. Ascertaining the reasons, however, is difficult and quickly descends to speculation. Nevertheless, some proposed reasons are more obvious and perhaps more plausible than others. Rendering the Hebrew verb ‫“( חסה‬to seek refuge”) with ἐλπίζειν, for example, is surprising especially since καταφεύγειν (“to flee for refuge”) expresses this meaning much more accurately than ἐλπίζειν (“to expect” or “to hope”). The translators use καταφεύγειν (“to flee for refuge”) in reference to cites or places of refuge (Gen 19:20 LXX; Deut 4:42 LXX; 19:5 LXX; Josh 20:9 LXX) but rarely in reference to seeking refuge in God with the exceptions of Esth 4:17 LXX; Ps 142:9 LXX; and Jer 27:5 LXX. Perhaps, the close connection of this verb with fleeing for refuge to a pagan temple (e. g., Herodotus, Hist. 2.113) explains their reticence to use it in reference to God, but any certainty with this or any other explanation for their rendering all these different Hebrew expressions with ἐλπίζειν remains elusive. That they changed the syntax of this verb, however, is certain, and this change in syntax affects the semantics of ἐλπίζειν as well.

3. The Septuagint and Hellenistic Semantics of Ἐλπίζειν The Septuagint translators’ decision to use this single verb ἐλπίζειν to render so many different Hebrew expressions profoundly affects texts and communities relying on the Septuagint. One effect is wide latitude in the way that specific biblical passages are understood and transmitted for the next two millennia. For example, several English versions of Ps 5:11 have the more literal translation of seeking refuge in God (ASV, CEB, CJB, ESV, GWN, NAS, NET, NIB, NIV, NJB, NLT, NRS, ROT, RSV ) while several others shift to trusting in God (DBY, ERV, GNV, KJV, LEE, NAB, NOY, WEB, YLT) or having faith in God (BBE) or hoping in God (DRA). Another example is Isa 25:9, where a form of the Hebrew verb ‫קוה‬ (“to wait”) occurs twice. The majority of translations render both occurrences as waiting for God (ASV, CEB, DBY, DRA, ERV, ESV, GNV, GWN, KJV, LEE, NAS, NET, NOY, NRS, ROT, RSV, WEB, YLT) or trusting in God (NIB, NIRV, NIV, NLT, ) while others render the first as waiting but the second as hoping (BBE, CJB) or both as hoping (NJB). The influence of the Septuagint is clearly seen in

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the wide latitude of the English translations not only of these two verses but also of many others as well. Another effect is that translating all these different Hebrew expressions by the single Greek word ἐλπίζειν expands the semantic range of this word group.6 Outside the Septuagint and its influence, the verb ἐλπίζειν is completed by an infinitive to express an expectation to do something, or it is completed by a substantive in the dative to express expectation fixed on or targeted toward some object. This verb is thus largely restricted to expressing expectation. The Septuagint translators, however, broaden the semantic range of this Greek verb from narrowly expressing expectation to including notions such as seeking refuge in (‫)חסה‬, leaning upon (‫)שׂען‬, waiting for (‫)קוה‬, and relying upon or trusting in (‫)בטח‬ with God or the Lord as the object of almost all of these prepositions. They thus broaden the meaning of ἐλπίζειν from expectation to the fuller and more nuanced meaning of hope. In addition, translating all these different Hebrew expressions by the single Greek word ἐλπίζειν, understood now to mean hope, gives hope a more central focus in the Septuagint than in the original Hebrew texts. In the Septuagint, hope now becomes the appropriate reaction to adverse or dangerous situations and the proper response to God’s initiatives. Instead of being encouraged to seek refuge in Yahweh, for example, the Septuagint text now instructs worshippers to hope in Yahweh, and hope characterizes not only the pious person but the people of God according to the Septuagint. By focusing these numerous different renderings of hope on God, these translations thus occasion the development of a distinctive Hellenistic hope piety that makes hope central to the communities nurtured by the Septuagint. The Septuagint turns these communities into communities of hope. Furthermore, these Septuagint translators create a positive assessment of ἐλπίζειν by not using it to render the negative sense of some of these same Hebrew expressions. One example is the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew verb ‫“( בטח‬to rely upon” or “to trust in”) in Ps 115:8–11 MT. Verse eight refers to all who trust in idols (‫)ּכל ֲא ֶׁשר־ּב ֵ ֹ֣ט ַח ָּב ֶ ֽהם‬, and the translator in Ps 113:16 LXX renders this expression rather literally as “all who trust in them” (πάντες οἱ πεποιθότες ἐπ᾽ αὐτοῖς). Verses nine to eleven refer to the trust that Israel (‫ִי ְׂ֭ש ָר ֵאל‬ ‫)ּב ַ ֣טח‬, ְ the house of Aaron (‫)ּב֣ית ַ ֭א ֲהר ֹן ִּב ְט ֣חו‬, ֵ and those who fear Yahweh (‫יִ ְר ֵ ֣אי ְי֭הוָ ה‬ ‫)ּב ְט ֣חּו‬ ִ place in Yahweh (‫)ּביהו֑ה‬. ָ In these verses (Ps 113:17–19 LXX), the Septuagint translator significantly shifts the rendering of ‫ בטח‬from the second perfect πεποιθότες (“trusting”) to the aorist form ἤλπισεν ἐπὶ κύριον (“hoped upon the 6  Using ἐλπίζειν and even the noun ἐλπίς to render so many different Hebrew expressions broadens and deepens the meaning of hope. For a list of additional Hebrew expressions that are translated either with the verb ἐλπίζειν or the noun ἐλπίς, see Edwin Hatch and Henry A. Redpath, A Concordance to the Septuagint and the Other Greek Versions of the Old Testament (including the Apocryphal Books), 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1983), 1:453–454.

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Lord”). These verses thus illustrate Alfred Jepsen’s general observation that the Septuagint translators “rendered bṭḥ in the negative sense predominantly by pepoithénai, ‘to trust in, believe in, put confidence in,’ but when a text used bṭḥ to convey the idea of relying on God, they ordinarily used elpízein, ‘to hope.’”7 The Septuagint translators follow this pattern fairly consistently not only with Hebrew expressions with ‫ בטח‬but also with the other expressions as well. They thus imbue ἐλπίζειν with an overwhelmingly positive connotation that pervades the Hellenistic hope piety developing among Jewish and Christian faith communities, and this positive assessment of hope is in stark contrast to the rest of the Hellenistic world.8

4. The Septuagint and Hellenistic Attitudes toward Hope The almost completely positive assessment of ἐλπίζειν in the Septuagint that is taken over by the New Testament is unusual and contrasts with the ambivalent and even negative attitude toward hope in the world in which these testaments arise. Two divergent interpretations of the Pandora Myth amply illustrate this ambivalence toward expectation. The woman Pandora and a jar (πίθος) are standard features in all accounts of this myth, but the ancients understand the jar differently.9 In the tradition, Zeus has two jars, one filled with blessings and good things but another containing evils and bad things (Homer, Il. 24.527; Plato, Resp. 2.379d; ps.-Plutarch, Cons.Apoll. 7 = Mor. 105c–d). According to what is probably the earlier understanding of this myth, the jar contains good things that fly away and return to Zeus after Pandora opens the jar (Anacharsis or Ananias lines 458–462; Babrius, Fabulla, 58). Only hope hiding in the rim of the lid remains in the jar after Pandora replaces the lid. This interpretation of the myth views hope as one of the positive blessings and indeed the only one that remains under human control following Pandora’s ill-advised opening of the jar. While humans now lack the other blessings as they face the challenges of life, they nevertheless can still hope and expect better things. Another interpretation of this myth that becomes dominate in the Hellenistic world, however, takes the jar as full of bad things and evils (Hesiod, Op. 95–105; cf. idem, Theog. 560–612 and Origen, Cels. 4.38). After Pandora opens the jar, all these miseries fly out into the world and remain in the world to afflict humans.  Alfred Jepsen, “‫בּטח‬,” TDOT 2:88–94, here 89. Bultmann, “ἐλπίς,” TDNT 2:517–523. 9 The modern accounts of Pandora and her box rather than a jar derive from a mistranslation of πίθος by pyxis (“box”) in Latin versions of this myth. This mistranslation is usually attributed to Erasmus. See Willem J. Verdenius, A Commentary on Hesiod’s Works and Days, vv. 1–382, Mnemosyne: Bibliotheca Classica Batava Supp. 86 (Leiden: Brill, 1985), 64. See also Jane E. Harrison, “Pandora’s Box,” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 20 (1900): 99–114. 7

8 Rudolf

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Only hope is left in the jar and under human control as a most pernicious evil that “makes humans glad of heart as they embrace their own destruction” (Hesiod, Op. 57–58). According to this version of the myth, hope is a very bad thing indeed. All that transpires in the Pandora Myth is in accordance with the will of Zeus, who plans for hope to stay in the jar and remain under human control (Origen, Cels. 4.38). Although humans can no longer control the other miseries after they escape the jar, humans retain the ability to hope for a better future. Just as Zeus plans, hope keeps humans going as they face adversity and so increases their pain and misery in retribution for Prometheus’ stealing the divine fire and giving it to humans (Hesiod, Op. 106). In addition to the Pandora Myth, several ancient authors illustrate this ambivalent attitude toward hope as either a good or an evil. Thucydides provides a good example as the Athenians attempt to convince the Melians to abandon hope of rescue and to surrender. The Athenians say: Hope, that comforter in danger! If one already has solid advantages to fall back upon, one can indulge in hope. It may do harm but will not destroy one. But hope is by nature an expensive commodity, and those who are risking their all on one cast find out what it means only when they are already ruined. Hope never fails them in the period when such a knowledge would enable them to take precautions. (Thucydides, Hist. 5.103)10

The Athenians then exhort the Melians: Do not let this happen to you … and do not be like those people who, as so commonly happens, miss the chance of saving themselves … and, when every clear and distinct hope has left them in their adversity, turn … to prophecies and oracles and such things which by encouraging hope lead men to ruin. (Thucydides, Hist. 5.103)11

The Athenians recognize that some consider hope positively as a comforter in danger but then emphasize the negative aspects of hope that result in disaster. Another example of the ambivalent attitude toward hope is Sophocles, who has the chorus point out, “Widely wandering hope is an enjoyment to many of humans but to [others], it is a deception of vain longings” (Sophocles, Ant. 615– 617). These examples could be multiplied but these sufficiently demonstrate the ambiguous assessment of hope as either a good or an evil and as either helpful or harmful to humans. Some authors dispense with the ambiguity altogether by viewing hope entirely as negative. Thus, Hesiod calls hope empty and no good because it makes humans lazy by hindering efforts to change or improve their situation (Op 498, 500). Aeschylus portrays Prometheus’ confessing that he caused “blind hope” to dwell in humans so that they would not foresee their doom (Prom. 250, 252). Euripides 10  Translation by Rex Warner, Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War, Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK: Penguin Books, 1985), 404. 11  Ibid.

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has the herald warn, “Hope is not trustworthy” (ἐλπὶς γάρ ἐστ’ ἄπιστον; Suppl. 479). The Stoics as well as the Epicureans have little positive regard for hope unless of course it is hope in oneself (Epictetus, Diatr. 3.26.11). Even a Platonist such as Plutarch finds hope troublesome. He quotes a few lines of Euripides (Phoen. 396–397) in which Jocasta exclaims, “Tis said that exiles live upon their hopes,” to which Polyneices responds, “Their eyes hold promise, but they tarry ever” (Plutarch, Exil. 606d–e = Mor. 7.563 [De Lacy and Einarson, LCL]). Plutarch then explains this exchange as he seeks to minimize the negative assessment of exile for his friend, perhaps Menemachus of Sardis. Plutarch writes: This [exchange] is rather a charge against stupidity than against exile. For it is not those who have learned and know how to put the present to good use, but those who are ever hanging upon the future and longing for what they do not have, that are tossed about on hope as on a raft, though they never go beyond the city wall. (Exil. 606d–e = Mor. 7.563 [De Lacy and Einarson, LCL]).

For Plutarch and these other authors, hope is entirely negative. Of course, these entirely negative assessments of hope must be set against the Roman Cult of Hope in honor of the goddess Spes, who had a festival on August 1 and a temple in the Forum Holitorium in Rome and another on the Esquiline Hill as well as several others in various places.12 Tacitus mentions that the emperor Germanicus consecrated a temple to Spes, who was variously called Spes Vetus (“Ancient Hope”), Spes Populi Romani (“Hope of the Roman People”), or Spes Augusta (“Hope of Empire through the Imperial Family”) (Ann. 2.49). Indeed, this deity “played a special role in ensuring progeny for the emperor.”13 As revered as she was, however, she is sometimes portrayed as holding up her long flowing robe “as if about to hurriedly run off.”14 Although a goddess, she is nevertheless fleeting and unreliable as even her divine images demonstrate, and Mark E. Clark comments, “Spes was one of the most shadowy and elusive of the Roman virtues.”15

12  Lesley Adkins and Roy A. Adkins, Dictionary of Roman Religion (New York: Facts on File, 1996), 210. 13 Mark Reasoner, “Paul’s God of Peace in Canonical and Political Perspectives,” in The History of Religions School Today, ed. Thomas R. Blanton IV, Robert Matthew Calhoun, and Clare K. Rothschild, WUNT 340 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 13–25, here 23 n. 38. See also Mark E. Clark, “Images and Concepts of Hope in the Imperial Cult,” in Society of Biblical Literature 1982 Seminar Papers, ed. Kent H. Richards (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1982), 39–43; J. Rufus Fears, “The Cult of Virtues and Roman Imperial Ideology,” ANRW 2.17.2.827–948, here 861–863. 14  Adkins and Adkins, Dictionary, 210. 15  Mark E. Clark, “Spes in the Early Imperial Cult: ‘The Hope of Augustus,’” Numen 30 (1983): 80–105, here 80.

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5. The Septuagint and Hellenistic Hope Piety In the context of this ambivalent and even negative assessment of hope, Hellenistic hope piety emerges and several texts of later composition in the Septuagint contrast the negative hope of those without God with the sure hope of the people of God. The hope of the ungodly and those who despise wisdom is vain (Wis 3:11; 5:14; Sir 34:1).16 The hope of the ungrateful will melt like winter’s frost (Wis 16:29), and the hopes of idolaters are fixed on dead things (Wis 13:10) and are cheaper than dirt (Wis 15:10). The hopes of those who oppose God’s people are uncertain (2 Macc 7:34). In contrast, the hope of those who fear God is certain and ensures their protection and salvation (Sir 34:14–17; 49:10). The wise have a future and their hope is full of immortality (ἡ ἐλπὶς αὐτῶν ἀθανασίας πλήρης; Wis 3:4). Those who keep hope in God are blessed (Sir 14:2; 34:13–15). In contrast to the ungodly whose expectation is based on the vicissitudes of circumstances or on the frailty of human effort, the hope of God’s people is fixed on the eternal God, who does not and indeed cannot disappoint. Several Hellenistic Jewish authors influenced by the Septuagint articulate a similar contrast between the hopes of God’s people and the hopes of the ungodly. For example, Philo distinguishes between negative, false hopes based on human projections and wishes (Alleg. Interp. 2.12 [43]; 3.28 [85]; 3.56 [164]; Cher. 2.23 [75]) and the perfect, true hope based on God (Opif. 14 [46]; 26 [81]; Post. 8 [26]; Det. 38 [138]). He often differentiates between the two by calling the latter χρηστὴ ἐλπίς (“useable” or “useful hope;” Alleg. Interp. 3.69 [194]; Cher. 2.31 [106]). He states that hope belongs only to the wise person who calls upon God (Det. 38 [138]). To support his view, Philo quotes Moses’s description of Enos as the person who first hoped to call upon the name of the Lord God (Gen 4:26). Philo quotes the Septuagint and not the Hebrew reading of Gen 4:26 (Det. 38 [138]) and states that Enos bears the name of the whole human race since his name means human, and this one first “hoped in the father and creator of the universe” (ἤλπισεν ἐπὶ τὸν τῶν ὅλων πατέρα καὶ ποιητήν; Abr. 2 [9]). Philo concludes that hope in God characterizes the true person and that whoever lacks hope is not a person at all (Det. 38 [139]; cf. Abr. 2 [7–9]). It is Philo’s conviction that those true persons with a correct understanding of God do not abandon their hope in God (Cher. 1.9 [29]). Philo uses the ελπ word group hundreds of times and usually in ways that demonstrate the influence of the Septuagint and its Hellenistic hope piety on him and his writings. Hellenistic hope piety becomes particularly prominent in early Christianity and the writings of the New Testament. Paul describes the deity worshipped by Christians as the God of hope (Rom 15:13), and he or someone writing in his name designates Jesus Christ in Christians as the hope of glory (Col 1:27).  Bultmann, “ἐλπίς,” 529.

16

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Indeed, a later Paulinist calls Jesus Christ the Christians’ hope (1 Tim 1:1) and another describes them before they came to Christ as without hope in the world (Eph 2:12). Paul himself advises Christians not to grieve as outsiders who have no hope (1 Thess 4:13), and the author of First Peter exhorts Christians, “Hope to the end upon the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (τελείως ἐλπίσατε ἐπὶ τὴν φερομένην ὑμῖν χάριν ἐν ἀποκαλύψει Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ; 1 Pet 1:13). Recognizing the ambivalent perception of hope, he further encourages them to be ready to give a reason for this hope in them to anyone who asks (1 Pet 3:15). The New Testament writings thus perpetuate the hope piety promulgated by the Septuagint by presenting Christians as those who have a sure hope in God in contrast to outsiders who either have false hopes in themselves and in circumstances or simply lack hope altogether.

6. Conclusion Translations obviously matter, and the decision of the Septuagint translators to render numerous Hebrew expressions by the single verb ἐλπίζειν not only changed the syntax of this verb but also broadened its semantic range from simple expectation to encompass a full-blown Hellenistic hope piety. The reader of Hebrew Bible texts certainly encounters hope especially in the word ‫“( תקוה‬expectation” or “hope”), whose semantic range roughly corresponds to the Greek ἐλπίς (“expectation”). The Septuagint reader, however, encounters the notion of hope several additional times and in many more contexts and circumstances since the Septuagint translators decided to render so many different Hebrew expressions with the single Greek verb ἐλπίζειν. The reasons for their translation decision remain obscure even in the Letter of Aristeas, which nevertheless attempts to explain the originating circumstances of the Septuagint as a whole. To Ptolemy’s question about the fruits of wisdom, this epistle answers that the fruits are a clear conscience and a life of truth (Let. Aris. 261). From these fruits, this epistle continues, the greatest joy and steadfastness of soul and good hopes in God (ἐλπίδες ἐπὶ θεῷ καλαί) accrue to the king who rules his realm piously (κρατοῦντί σοι τῆς ἀρχῆς εὐσεβῶς). In some ways, this answer articulates one of the fruits of the Septuagint in promoting good hopes in God of a pious life for everyone including Jews and Christians drawn into the Septuagint’s Hellenistic hope piety. While others in the Greco-Roman World may be ambivalent or even negative toward hope, Jews and Christians think otherwise. The reason for their hope is precisely what refutes all the accusations against it and guarantees that their hope is sure and firm. Their hope is in God and not in the vicissitudes of circumstances or in the fallibility of human effort, and the expression of their hope piety continues even to the present and represents one of the lasting and

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enduring contributions of the Septuagint to the modern world. In a hopeless world, communities nurtured by the Septuagint’s hope piety continue to radiate hope even to this very day.

7. Reception History The written reception history of this article begins with its initial publication in this volume. Nevertheless, the three public presentations of earlier versions of this article have generated much interest and appreciation for the ideas expressed here and especially for the investigation of early Christian jargon. Hopefully, those who now can read what was presented will also find my explanation of the development of Hellenistic hope piety helpful for understanding early Christian theology and practice.

IX. ’Αγαπητοὶ Ἀδελφοί (“Beloved Siblings”): Terms of Endearment in Early Christian Literature* 1. Introduction The fictive terms ἀδελφός (“brother”), ἀδελφή (“sister”), and ἀγαπητοί (“beloved”) appear repeatedly in Christian texts to express the endearing relationships Christians have with one another.1 Scholarly investigations typically concentrate on identifying the sources from which Christians appropriated these terms, and the Septuagint of course figures prominently in these investigations. The Septuagint, however, only uses the plural ἀγαπητοί (“beloved”) four times in reference to the people of God (Ps 59:7 LXX [60:7 MT]; 107:7 LXX [108:7 MT]; 126:2 LXX [127:2 MT]; Baruch 4:16 LXX) while the plural form of this term occurs hundreds of times in Christian texts. This term obviously becomes much more significant for Christian communities than the four Septuagintal precedents can explain. In contrast, the fictive terms ἀδελφός (“brother”) or ἀδελφή (“sister”) occur many more than four times in the Septuagint, but the nuances of these terms in Jewish texts are not quite the same as in Christian texts. Since the people of Israel supposedly descended from a common ancestor, the Hebrew term ‫“( אח‬brother”) and the Septuagint’s ἀδελφός (“brother”) often refer to one’s kinsman and in a broader sense to a fellow tribesman or a fellow countryman, and these terms are thus not truly fictive.2 The ethnically diverse Christian communities composed of both Jews and non-Jews, however, cannot claim any even supposedly consanguinal (blood) or affinal (marriage) ties as a basis for their brotherhood, and Paul’s attempts in Galatians and Romans to give them a common ancestor on the basis of faith only underscores the lack of any true or real kinship ties. Christians certainly appropriate these terms of endearment from the

* This essay is published here for the first time, but oral presentations of the ideas in this essay were presented at Morling College in Sydney Australia on May 14, 2018, and at the 372nd Meeting of the Chicago Society of Biblical Research at Judson University in Elgin, IL on April 9, 2016. 1  For the recent critique of the notion of “fictive” among anthropologists, see the discussion below. 2  Helmer Ringgren, “‫אח‬,” TDOT 1:188–193, here 190.

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Septuagint, but the shifts in usage and nuance predispose some scholars to seek elsewhere for precedents.3 Considering the paucity of the fictive use of these terms in secular Greek literature, previous scholarship sometimes assumes that the fictive use of ἀδελφός (“brother” or “sibling”) to include those not consanguinally or affinally related is a distinctively Christian usage.4 Commenting on the φιλαδελφία (“sibling love”) word group for example, Eckhard Plümacher categorically asserts, “A significant shift in meaning has occurred over against secular Greek” in which “the word group always refers to ‘love of one’s brother [sibling]’ in the literal sense. … In contrast, the NT uses the terms only fig. to refer … to brotherly love between Christians united through their common status as children of God.”5 Recent studies, however, question this assertion and even refute this assumption.6 Philip A. Harland explains, “There are clear indications that some ‘pagans,’ like some Jews and some Christians in the first centuries, did express a sense of belonging in an association, guild, or organization by identifying their fellows as ‘brothers’ (or, less often attested, ‘sisters’).”7 The use of sibling language in such associations is not surprising considering the similarity of bonding that occurs between siblings and those in an organization. Aristotle compares but contrasts the love of siblings with the love expressed in an association or club (Eth. Nic. 8.12.6 [1162a]). He assumes that a great degree of pleasure and utility exists both in sibling love (ἐν τῇ ἀδελφικῇ) and in the love shared in an association or club (ἐν τῇ ἑταιρικῇ). However, he argues that the pleasure and utility of biological siblings exceeds that of an association since biological siblings are more agreeable and similar. He also 3 For

example, Hans Freiherr von Soden comments, “There can be no doubt … that ἀδελφός is one of the religious titles of the people of Israel taken over by the Christian community” (“ἀδελφός,” TDNT 1:144–146, here 145). 4 For example, see Charles A. Bigg, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1987), 123 and J. N. D. Kelly, A Commentary on the Epistles of Peter and Jude, Black’s New Testament Commentaries (London: Black, 1969; repr., Thornapple Commentaries; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1982), 79. 5  Eckhard Plümacher, “φιλαδελφία,” EDNT 3:424. 6  See Ilaria Ramelli, Hierocles the Stoic: Elements of Ethics, Fragments, and Excerpts, ed. and trans. David Konstan, WGRW 28 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), 91–93; 127 n. 43; Peter Arzt-Grabner, “‘Brothers’ and ‘Sisters’ in Documentary Papyri and in Early Christianity,” RivB 50 (2002): 185–204; and Reidar Aasgaard, My Beloved Brothers and Sisters: Christian Siblingship in Paul, Early Christianity in Context (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 107–116. 7  Philip A. Harland, “Familial Dimensions of Group Identity: ‘Brothers’ (ΑΔΕΛΦΟΙ) in Associations of the Greek East,” JBL 124 (2005): 491–513, here 495. See Richard S. Ascough, Philip A. Harland, and John S. Kloppenborg, eds, Associations in the Greco-Roman World: A Sourcebook (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012), 65–67, 130. Many of these texts that use sibling language are later and may be influenced by Christian practice, but Text 215 on p. 130 predates Vespasian and speaks of a sacrifice to Apollo. The use of brother-language in this text is therefore not likely due to Christian influence. The editors of this sourcebook comment, “This is among the clearest cases of the use of fictive sibling language (‘brothers’) within associations” (p. 130).

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states that siblings are more intimate and belong together more (οἰκειότεροι) than those in a club or association and that siblings love one another naturally from birth (ἐκ γενετῆς ὑπάρχουσι στέργοντες ἀλλήλους). Furthermore, he says that siblings are more alike than those in an association because they are from the same parents, raised together, educated similarly, and have a longer proven relationship. Although exact nuances may differ, the fictive use of ἀδελφός (“brother” or “sibling”) and of other terms for endearment is therefore not completely without precedent outside the Christian tradition. Still, the fictive use of these terms among Christians turns Aristotle’s assumption on its head by assuming that their fictive ἀδελφότης (“siblinghood”) exceeds their biological relations. Although some sociologists and scholars label the Christian use of these terms fictive, Christians often consider their relationships with one another more determinative for their identity and behavior than that established by their biological birth.8 Some recent anthropologists insightfully critique the distinction between real and fictive kinship since the fictive ties in some cases are more real and consequential than those established on either a consanguinal or affinal basis. The use of these terms for endearment among Christians represents one such case, and these fictive terms abound in Christian texts to express the real relationships Christians have with one another.9 The term ἀδελφότης (“siblinghood”), for example, is first used in 1 Pet 2:17 and then again in 1 Pet 5:9 but eventually becomes a favorite designation for the church among the church fathers.10 Like the Petrine author, many church fathers recognize the appropriateness of using not only this word but also ἀδελφός (“brother”), ἀδελφή (“sister”), and ἀγαπητοί (“beloved”) to express the endearing relationships Christians enjoy with one another. Studies of the precedents and sources have certainly advanced the knowledge and understanding of these terms of endearment in early Christianity. However, these studies neither specifically address what these terms mean to the early Christians nor adequately describe the nature of the endearment that Christians feel for one another.11 Examining the semantic ranges, subtle nuances, and cultural assumptions associated with these terms, however, provides insight into what makes these terms so expressive of the endearing relationships Christians  8  Jesus explicitly establishes this principle (Mark 3:31–35; Matt 12:46–50; Luke 8:19–21) and explains that his followers may be betrayed by biological brothers, fathers, or children (Mark 13:12–13; Matt 10:21–22). In the Acts of Paul, for example, Thecla demonstrates her commitment to Paul’s teaching over her consanguinal and affinal ties.  9  David M. Schneider, A Critique of the Study of Kinship (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984), passim; Janet Carsten, ed., Cultures of Relatedness: New Approaches to the Study of Kinship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), passim. 10  For examples, see 1 Clem. 2:4; Shepherd of Hermas 38:10 = Herm. Mand. 8:10; Irenaeus, Haer. 2.48.2; Origen, Comm. Jo. 2.34.210; Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.7.2; 5.19.2; 6.45.1; Basil (over 100 times); and John Chrysostom, Hom. Gen. 54.528. 11  Aasgaard, Beloved Brothers, 306.

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feel for one another and why these terms become so popular and are used so extensively in early Christianity. In addition to the study of precedents, therefore, an investigation of these terms themselves in their social and cultural contexts is needed to understand and comprehend the endearing relationships expressed by the Christian use of ἀδελφός (“brother”), ἀδελφή (“sister”) and ἀγαπητοί (“beloved”).

2. Ἀγαπητοί (“Beloved”) as a Term of Endearment Christian use the term ἀγαπητός (“beloved”) in two basic contexts. They use it in the singular to express the special relationship between God and Jesus (Matt 3:17; 12:18; 17:5; Mark 1:11; 9:7; Luke 3:22; 9:35; 2 Pet 1:17) and in the plural, mainly in letters and often in the vocative case, to emphasize the philophronesis or special relationship the sender has with the recipients (Rom 12:19; 1 Cor 4:14; 10:14; 15:58; 2 Cor 7:1; 12:19; Eph 5:1; Phil 2:12; 4:1; 1 Thess 2:8; 1 Tim 6:2; Heb 6:9; Jas 1:16, 19; 2:5; 1 Pet 2:11; 4:11; 2 Pet 3:1, 8, 14, 17; 1 John 2:7; 3:21; 4:1, 7, 11; 3 John 1, Jude 3, 17, 20).12 Of course, the singular is also used of individual Christians (Rom 16:5, 8, 9, 12; 1 Cor 4:17; Eph 6:21; Col 1:7; 4:7, 9, 14; 2 Tim 1:2; Phlm 1, 16; 2 Pet 3:15, 3 John 2, 5, 11), and the plural term can on occasion also express the relationship between Christians and God (Rom 1:7; 1 John 3:2). The term obviously refers to some type of endearment as the English translation beloved indicates, but this and other translations in modern languages are incapable of presenting to a modern reader the subtle nuances and cultural assumptions associated with and communicated by this term in the Greco-Roman World. Yet, it is precisely these nuances and assumptions that make this word so appropriate for expressing what the early Christians were feeling for one another and for God and what God was feeling for them and for Jesus.13 The term ἀγαπητός (“beloved”) belongs to the ἀγάπη word group and expresses some aspect of ἀγάπη (“love”), but the world of these early Christians also recognizes other types of love. Indeed, ἔρως (“erotic love”) and φιλία (“friendship love”), the usual words for love in their former life, are no longer adequate to express their new love for one another since their love is neither 12  Heikki Koskenniemi, Studien zur Idee und Phraseologie des griechischen Briefes bis 400 n. Chr., Soumalaisen Tiedeakatemian Toimituksia; Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae 102.2 (Helsinki: Akateeminen Kirjakauppa, 1956), 35–38; and Troy W. Martin, Metaphor and Composition in First Peter, SBLDS 131 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 75–77. 13 Aasgaard, Beloved Brothers, 312. Aasgaard’s study focuses on the ethical implications of sibling language rather than on the feelings expressed by this language. Although he mentions feelings several times, he never really explores them but rather concentrates on actions that are certainly more easily accessed, observed, and analyzed than feelings. In an otherwise exhaustive study, his avoidance of feelings occasions the need for the present essay, which is much more intentional about the feelings this language reveals.

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erotic nor exactly friendship love although Johannine Christian communities find the latter somewhat useful. Instead, the noun ἀγάπη or the verb ἀγαπᾶν become the preferred words for love as in the Septuagint. These special words are perhaps not completely unknown to the early Christians in their former life but just less often used.14 In their new social group, however, these Christians now employ these words almost exclusively when referring to their love for one another. One way to understand the type of love referenced by the ἀγάπη word group is to compare the motivations and objects of this type of love with ἔρως (“erotic love”) and φιλία (“friendship love”). Erotic love is of course motivated by a god or goddess and is not freely chosen by the lover. Hence, a lover is often described as smitten, overcome, or conquered by love, and sight both occasions and impels erotic love (Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 9.12.1 [1171b]). The object of this love is desired not for itself but for what it can do or what need it can satisfy and fulfill in the lover. Friendship love involves somewhat more of a choice, but the choice still is not completely free. Indeed, this love is based on utility or pleasure, and the object is desired for its usefulness to the lover or for the pleasure it affords the lover. The highest form of friendship love is based on shared virtue between the lover and the beloved, but even this love is still not freely chosen since it is dependent on the common virtuous nature of the beloved (Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 8.3.1 [1156a]). In contrast to these two types of love, the ἀγάπη word group arises from a different motivation and is directed toward different kinds of objects. In contrast to erotic or friendship love, the object of ἀγάπη-love is chosen for its own sake and not for the sake of the lover. When Aristotle describes goods pursued and loved for their own sake (καθ’ αὐτά), he uses ἀγαπώμενα, a term from the ἀγάπη word group (Eth. Nic. 1.6.8 [1096b]). When he describes contemplation (θεωρητικὴ ἐνέργεια) as the only activity loved for its own sake (δι’ αὑτήν), it uses ἀγαπᾶσθαι, a verbal cognate of ἀγάπη (Eth. nic. 10.7.5 [1177b]). The object of ἀγάπη-love is thus chosen for its own sake because it is unique, rare, or precious in some way. Aristotle explains that we love more (μᾶλλον ἀγαπῶμεν) things that are not easily obtained and things that are more unique to ourselves than things that are more common (Top. 3.2.30 [117b]). He thus describes the senses as particularly precious to a person and preferred (ἀγάπησις) and loved or chosen (ἀγαπῶνται) for their own sakes (δι’ αὑτάς; Metaph. 1.1.1 [980a]). He notices that people are especially fond (ἀγαπῶσι) of their own unique creations (Eth. nic. 4.1.20 [1120b]; 9.7.3 [1167b–1168a]). Socrates explains to Euthydemus that what is rare (σπάνιον) is precious and costly (τίμιον; Plato, Euthyd. 304b). In his speech “Against the Grain-Dealers,” Lysias mentions a time when grain was expensive (τίμιος) and the grain-dealers were outbidding one another to buy it up and hold it in store until the scarcity made it even more precious and its  Gottfried Quell and Ethelbert Stauffer, “ἀγαπάω,” TDNT 1:21–55, here 37–38.

14

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price even higher (Or. 22.8). This ancient principle that what is rare is precious and of great worth and to be chosen for its own sake and loved above things of less worth is basic to ἀγάπη-love. Since the object of ἀγάπη-love is chosen for its own sake, the lover’s choice of this object is without constraint, and the ἀγάπη-word group is used in contexts when something or someone is freely chosen. Significantly, this word group is often used somewhat synonymously with terms for selection and choosing. In several places where Aristotle discusses preferable things, he expresses the preference with terms from both the ἀγάπη word group and the ἁιρεῖσθαι (“to select” or “to choose”) word group (cf. Top. 3.2.29–30 [117b]; Metaph. 9.1.1 [980a]). Particularly characteristic of ἀγάπη-love is the notion of preference without constraint, and to love (ἀγαπᾶν) is “to set one good or aim above another” at the lover’s discretion or “to esteem one person more highly than another” again as the lover sees fit.15 As a preference, ἀγάπη-love is thus an act of the will and free choice, and it can therefore be commanded since it arises neither from pleasant associations with a friend (φιλία) nor from sight inflamed by a god or goddess (ἔρως). Given these subtle nuances and cultural assumptions associated with the ἀγάπη word group, Christians naturally prefer this word group over the ἔρως or φιλία word groups to express the special endearing relationships they enjoy. Their use of this word group gives some indications about the nature of the endearment they feel toward one another. Their love is a free act of the will that prefers fellow Christians and freely chooses to commit to them and to enter into social contracts with them. They can command and exhort one another to this kind of love because it is freely chosen (1 Pet 1:22; 2:17), and according to John 13:34 (cf. 15:12; 1 John 3:23; 4:21; 2 John 5), Jesus gives his followers a new commandment that they love (ἀγαπᾶτε) one another as he (ἠγάπησα) loved them. By using terms for endearment from this word group, a Christian can emphasize just how unique, rare, and precious other Christians are, and this emphasis is clearly present in the Christian use of ἀγαπητός (“beloved”) as a term of endearment. The term ἀγαπητός (“beloved”) forms on the nominal stem of ἀγάπη (“love”) by adding the ‑τός suffix, which makes the word a verbal adjective having “the meaning of a perfect passive participle.”16 This adjective thus describes those who have been and continue to be loved according to the type of love expressed by the ἀγάπη word group. Since the object of ἀγάπη-love is often unique, nonChristian authors almost exclusively use the term ἀγαπητός (“beloved”) to describe an only child who is precious to its parents because it has a special, unique relationship with them. Thus, Homer uses this adjective in reference to Astyanax, the babe and only son of Hector and Andromache, to heighten the pathos as  Quell and Stauffer, “ἀγαπάω,” 36.  Herbert Weir Smyth, Greek Grammar (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), § 472.

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Hector leaves his wife and only son for his final fatal battle with the Achaeans (Il. 6.401). Similarly, the nurse Eurycleia describes Telemachus as the only child of Odysseus and hence ἀγαπητός (“beloved;” Homer, Od. 2.365), and Telemachus’ mother Penelope also calls him her παῖς ἀγαπητός (“beloved child;” Homer, Od. 4.817). This usage is so well established that Demosthenes can use ἀγαπητός (“beloved”) to imply that Niceratus is the only son of Nicias without specifically mentioning that fact (Mid. [Or. 21] 165). Aristotle explains that the two motives of ownership (τὸ ἴδιον) and uniqueness (τὸ ἀγαπητόν) move a father and a son to care for and love one another (Pol. 2.1.17 [1262b]). In the case of multiple sons, the former motive is present but not the latter. In the case of an only son, however, both motives contribute to the uniquely special relationship between father and son. The Septuagint retains this classical usage and employs the singular in reference to an only child. Thus, Isaac is called beloved (ἀγαπητόν, ἀγαπητοῦ) as the only son of Abraham and Sarah (Gen 22:2, 12, 16 LXX). The use of this term in Genesis 22 LXX drastically deepens the pathos of Abraham’s intention to sacrifice Isaac as a holocaust offering. Similarly, Jephthah’s daughter is beloved (ἀγαπητή) since she is his one and only child (μονογενής; Judg 11:34 LXX), and her description as beloved also deepens the lamentable sadness of his vow to sacrifice her. In like manner, Sarah is the only daughter of Raguel and Edna, and she is beloved (ἀγαπηή; Tobit S 3:10 LXX; cf. 3:15 LXX), a description that makes her affliction by the evil demon Asmodeus even more sinister. The Septuagint, however, exceeds the classical usage of this term by employing the unusual plural form of this term in reference to the people of God (Ps 59:7 LXX [60:7 MT]; 107:7 LXX [108:7 MT]; 126:2 LXX [127:2 MT]; Baruch 4:16 LXX). Classical texts have the plural form only a few times, and each time the plural refers to a class of individuals who lack siblings and are the only object of their parents’ love (e. g., Xenophon, Mem. 2.1.33). The Septuagint’s use of the plural in reference to the people of God as a beloved group thus emphasizes the uniqueness of the relationship the Jewish people have with God and the intense love God has for this “unique” and special people. Like the Septuagint, Christian texts also employ both singular and plural forms of ἀγαπητός (“beloved”). In the Parable of the Tenants, the description of the owner’s one and only son as beloved (ἀγαπητόν) emphasizes how highly he regards his son and the depth of his anger when the wicked tenants murder him (Mark 12:6; Luke 20:13). When Christian texts describe Jesus as God’s beloved son, they also emphasize that Jesus is God’s only son whom God highly regards and with whom God is well pleased (Mark 1:11; Matt 3:17; Luke 3:22; Mark 9:7; Matt 17:5). If God were to have had two sons, then Jesus could not have been ἀγαπητός (“beloved”). As God’s only son, however, God’s entire parental love is solely directed to Jesus, and the term ἀγαπητός (“beloved”) stresses the intensity and magnitude of God’s love for this only child.

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Again like the Septuagint, early Christians also exceed the Classical usage of this term and begin to call and address one another as ἀγαπητοί (“beloved”) as an indication of their special and intense loving relationships with one another and with God. The excessive use of the plural in Christian texts is Christian jargon since only Christians really use this plural term of one another. This jargon, however, expresses the special and unique way Christians view one another and the intense feelings of endearment that they have for each another. Specific allusions to and examples of this kind of love are numerous in the pages of the New Testament and early Christian literature, but these texts also contain other terms and especially sibling language that gives further insight into how early Christians understand and view their endearing relationships.

3. Ἀδελφός (“Brother”), Ἀδελφή (“Sister”), and Ἀδελφότης (“Siblinghood”) When Christians use the terms ἀδελφός (“brother”), ἀδελφή (“sister”), and ἀδελφότης (“siblinghood”), they are certainly following a Septuagintal precedent and probably a secular usage of these terms as well in reference to members of a guild or association. Christian usage of these terms, however, differs from both Septuagintal and secular usage as the early Christians take the specific nuances and cultural assumptions associated with these terms but then stamp and shape these terms in particularly Christian ways to make these terms expressive of the kind of endearment Christians feel for one another. To understand this special Christian usage, the secular use of these terms with which Christians begin merits consideration. Both ἀδελφός (“brother”) and ἀδελφή (“sister”) form from the inseparable prefix α and the second declension adjectival ending ος or the first declension adjectival ending η attached to the root δελφ from the noun δελφύς (“womb” or “uterus”). From this root word, the Greeks thus appropriately name the womb of the world Delphi, at which they erect a marble omphalos representing the navel of the world.17 The alpha prefix is not ἀ-privative but rather ἀ-copulative, which “denotes union, likeness,” or togetherness, and the adjective ἀδελφός (“brother”) or ἀδελφή (“sister”) thus characterizes a person united with all those who shared the same birth-womb or birth-uterus.18 When early Christians address one another with these terms, they exploit a common topos in Hellenistic moral theory that refers to the ancient abstract notion of the relational bond that forms between those who share the same birth-womb.19  Joseph E. Fontenrose, “Omphalos,” OCD, 2nd ed., 752.  See Smyth, Grammar § 885.4. 19  See Aasgaard, Beloved Brothers, 74–75, 98–99; and Paul A. Holloway, Coping with Prejudice: 1 Peter in Social-Psychological Perspective, WUNT 244 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 166–167. 17 18

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The ancient understanding of the womb further specifies this conception of sibling bonding. The activity in the womb begins with a male’s sowing of his seed or semen in the female. Provided it is not rejected by the female or destroyed (Soranus, Gynaecia, 1.9 [34–35]), she draws it up, and its force on her own seed according to the Hippocratics or only on her menstrual blood according to Aristotle congeals a fetus (Hippocrates, Genit. 5; Nat. puer. 12.1; Aristotle, Gen. an. 2.4 [739b]; 4.1 [765b]; Soranus, Gynaecia, 1.8 [33]; 1.14 [46]; 1.10 [36]; 1.12 [43]; 3.13 [47]).20 The active force of the male seed is the πνεῦμα (“wind,” “spirit,” or “breath”), which enters the embryo from the very beginning and forms the substance of the soul (Aristotle, Gen. an. 2.3 [736b–737a]; Hierocles, Elements of Ethics, 1.1). Since the soul is co-extensive with the body (Galen, Quod animi mores corporis temperamenta sequuntur 3 [Kühn, 4:776]), the soul grows along with the body in the womb.21 Siblings who share the same birth-womb and the same seed-origin thus have an affinity of soul even though their bodies are separate, and this affinity provides the physical basis of sibling love.22 Several Hellenistic authors describe the various ways this physical sibling connection is expressed or should be expressed by one sibling toward another. For example, Plutarch writes, “That fact is clear to all that from one seed and one source, nature makes two or three or more brothers, not for dissonance and antagonism but so that although they are separate, they might the more work together with one another” and “preserve the principle of consensus and concord that nature bestowed on them” (Frat. amor. 2 = Mor. 478e–f ). Plutarch calls the love that nature implants in brothers a primal love (πρώτη φιλία; Frat. amor. 3 = Mor. [479d]), and he calls brothers soul-partners (κοινούς) in emotions and actions (Frat. amor. 5 = Mor. 480b). He frequently mentions the natural impetus for brothers to love one another and calls this love a natural bond (ἡ φύσις ἐμπεποίηκε φιλίαν) between brothers (Frat. amor. 3 = Mor. 479d; cf. Frat. amor. 5 = Mor. 480c; Frat. amor. 6 = Mor. 480e). In addition to Plutarch, other authors such as Xenophon (Cyr. 8.7.14–16; idem, Mem. 2.3.3–4) and Aristotle (Eth. nic. 20 Troy W. Martin, “Clarifying a Curiosity: The Plural Bloods (αἱμάτων) in John 1:13,” in Christian Body, Christian Self: Concepts of Early Christian Personhood, ed. Clare K. Rothschild and Trevor W. Thompson, WUNT 284 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 175–185, here 179–180, 182–185; idem, “Paul’s Argument from Nature for the Veil in 1 Corinthians 11:13–15: A Testicle instead of a Head Covering,” JBL 123 (2004): 71–80, here 78–79, 82–84; idem, “Ancient Medical Texts, Newly Rediscovered: The Medical Background of Biblical Breathing,” Early Christianity 1 (2010): 513–538, here 517; idem, “Christians as Babies: Metaphorical Reality in 1 Peter” in Reading 1–2 Peter and Jude: A Resource for Students, ed. Eric F. Mason and Troy W. Martin, SBLRBS 77 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014), 99–112, here 108–109; and idem, “Περιβόλαιον as ‘Testicle’ in 1 Corinthians 11:15: A Response to Mark Goodacre,” JBL 132 (2013): 453–465. 21  See Martin, “Ancient Medical Texts,” 527–528; and Heinrich von Staden, “Body, Soul, Nerves: Epicurus, Herophilus, Erasistratus, the Stoics, and Galen,” in Psyche and Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment, ed. John P. Wright and Paul Potter (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 79–116, here 90 n. 22; 106. 22  Aasgaard, Beloved Brothers, 74–75, 98–99.

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8.12.6 [1162a]) also articulate a similar understanding of the physical basis of sibling love.23 Several Hellenistic Jewish authors likewise express a similar view.24 According to the author of Jubilees, Rebecca makes a dying request of Esau that he love his brother Jacob (Jub. 35:18–20). Esau responds, “Jacob, my brother, I shall love more than all flesh. And I have no brother in all the earth except him alone. And this is not a great (thing) for me if I love him because he is my brother and together we came forth from your womb. And I if I do not love my brother, whom shall I love?” (Jub. 35:21–22).25 The author of Fourth Maccabees 13:19–23 comments: You cannot be ignorant of the charm of brotherhood (τὰ τῆς δελφότητος φίλτραγαπη) which the divine and all-wise providence has allotted through fathers to their offspring, implanting it, in fact, in their mother’s womb. There brothers dwell for the same period and are formed over the same duration of time; they are nurtured from the same blood and are brought to maturity through the same source of life. They are brought to birth through the same span and draw milk from the same fountains, and through being embraced at the same breast, fraternal souls are nourished. … The ties of brotherly love, it is clear are firmly set.26

For these Hellenistic Jewish authors, sibling love clearly arises or should arise from a physical basis. This conception of a physical basis for sibling love informs the Christian use of sibling language generally, but it is particularly evident in some texts such as 1 Pet 1:22–23, which reads, τὰς ψυχὰς ὑμῶν ἡγνικότες ἐν τῇ ὑπακοῇ τῆς ἀληθείας εἰς φιλαδελφίαν ἀνυπόκριτον ἐκ καθαρᾶς καρδίας ἀλλήλους ἀγαπήσατε ἐκτενῶς ἀναγεγεννημένοι οὐκ ἐκ σπορᾶς φθαρτῆς ἀλλ᾽ ἀφθάρτου διὰ λόγου ζῶντος θεοῦ καὶ μένοντος (“since you have purified your souls for un-hypocritical sibling love by [your] obedience of the truth, love one another intently from your heart because you have been begotten anew not from a perishable but an imperishable sowing through the living and enduring word of the living and enduring God”).27 The Petrine author of this text states a pre-condition and a reason for the typical Christian exhortation to ἀγάπη-love and both are physical. The participle ἡγνικότες (“having purified”) and its object τὰς ψυχὰς ὑμῶν (“your souls”) as well as the purpose clause εἰς φιλαδελφίαν (“for sibling love”)  Many of these texts are cited by Aasgaard, Beloved Brothers, 74 n. 85.  Ibid., 74–75. 25  Translation in O. S. Wintermute, “Jubilees: A New Translation and Introduction,” in Expansions of the “Old Testament” and Legends, Wisdom and Philosophical Literature, Prayers, Psalms, and Odes, Fragments of Lost Judeo-Hellenistic Works, vol. 2 of The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985), 35–142, here 123. 26  Translation in H. Anderson, “4 Maccabees: A New Translation and Introduction,” in Charlesworth, Expansions of the “Old Testament” and Legends, 531–564, here 558. 27  My translation. 23 24

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indicate that a pure soul is a pre-condition for sibling love and that an impure soul hinders such love. This Petrine author thus expresses the common understanding also held by other authors of the physical connection between the soul and sibling love. Zeno of Sidon for example quotes a statement of Timocrates, who “said that he both loved his brother as no one else did and hated him as no one else” (Philodemus, De libertate dicendi, Col. XXb).28 Zeno then comments, “Souls that are unable to calculate what is advantageous suffer and do many things by opposites.” Zeno clearly explains Timocrates’ problem of loving his brother completely as a problem with his soul. Although nature co-begets the principle of sibling love with the child at birth, Plutarch explains that certain faults of the soul such as contentiousness or anger can destroy love for a sibling, and he recommends cleansing (ἀποκαθῆραι) such defects before they sink in as dye and become hard to wash out and before they destroy the natural bond of sibling love (Frat. amor. 8 = Mor. 482b; Frat. amor. 17 = Mor. 488b). A pure soul unencumbered by rivalry, greed, ambition, or any other defect will naturally possess sibling love. Conversely, an impure soul hinders and even destroys love for siblings. The author of 1 Pet 1:22–23 agrees that a pure soul is a necessary precondition for sibling love. According to this Petrine author, a pure soul will have ἀνυπόκριτον (“unhypocritical”) sibling love while the love of an impure soul will be, by implication, hypocritical. Plutarch also addresses the problem of hypocritical sibling love by describing the man who uses the term brother but then does not even speak to his own brother and who honors the name brother but then hates and shuns his own brother (Frat. amor. 3–4 = Mor. 479d–e). Plutarch describes his attempts to arbitrate between two estranged brothers and concludes that one of them is masquerading under a false name and appellation (ψευδεπίγραφος καὶ ψευδώνυμος) since he does not act like a brother to his brother. Plutarch confronts him, but he responds that he considers it of no importance to have sprung from the same loins as his brother. Plutarch knows of many such hypocritical brothers who are brothers in name only because they ignore the special physical bond that naturally exists among siblings. Like Plutarch, Paul likewise knows of false brothers (ψευδαδέλφοι) who act contrary to the way Christian siblings should act (2 Cor 11:26; Gal 2:4), and he advises against hypocritical love (Rom 12:9; 2 Cor 6:6). The Petrine author specifies the pre-condition of a pure soul for un-hypocritical sibling love and implies that an impure soul is responsible for the hypocritical love described by Plutarch and Paul. In addition to this physical pre-condition, the Petrine author also states a physical reason for the sibling love he recommends as he explains that his Chris28 Translation by David Konstan et al., Philodemus On Frank Criticism: Introduction, Translation, and Notes, SBLTT 43, Greco-Roman Series 13 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 123.

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tian readers “have been begotten anew not from a perishable but an imperishable sowing through the living and enduring word of the living and enduring God.” The participle ἀναγεγεννημένοι (“having been begotten anew”) is in the passive voice and is a divine passive, and so even though God is not specifically mentioned, God is the father of all Christians who are begotten anew. According to this Petrine author, being generated anew by the Father God is the reason Christians are siblings of one another and the reason they should feel for one another as siblings do. Even though the new birth is often understood as a metaphor, it nevertheless is a very real experience in the lives of these early Christians and leads them to value their new birth and their new siblings more highly than their biological birth and their biological siblings.29 Because of the generating power of their Father-God, early Christians consider themselves to be siblings and to belong to an ἀδελφότης (“siblinghood”) that includes all those so generated throughout the world (1 Pet 5:9). This Petrine author and other early Christian authors who mention a new or second birth thus conceive of a physical basis for their sibling love since Christians must be generated anew and have a purified soul to feel and show un-hypocritical love for one another. Hippocrates and Galen provide some interesting insights into the physicality of sibling love that helps illuminate the Christian use of sibling language as terms of endearment. Hippocrates discusses parts of the body that are so closely connected that one cannot move without moving another part as well (Artic. 57). He specifically mentions the joint at the ham that cannot move without also moving the joint at the groin. He then notes that many parts of the body have such fraternities (ἀδελφίξιας). Commenting on this passage, Galen explains, “It has been said by me before that he [Hippocrates] was accustomed to call the partnerships (κοινωνίας) and likewise co-relations (συγγενείας) of parts fraternities (ἀδελφίξιας) just as if he indeed said brotherhoods (ἀδελφότητας)” (In Hippocratis librum de articulis et Galeni in eum commentarii iv [Kühn, 18a:635]). Galen thus understands the word Hippocrates uses as a synonym for the same word that Christians will later use to describe themselves. These passages from Hippocrates and Galen demonstrate that sibling language can be used to designate pairs or groups of body parts that have the closest connection with one another as a result of their common generation and partnership, and these ideas often occur when other ancient authors use sibling language. For example, Dio Chrysostom exploits the physical basis of sibling love as he attempts to establish concord between Nicomedia and Nicaea, two cities in the Province of Bithynia. He urges the Nicomedians to recognize a siblinghood (ἀδελφότης) with the Nicaeans, and throughout this speech, he describes in detail what a siblinghood looks like (Nicom. 15 = Or. 38.15). This speech could appropriately be entitled Περὶ ἀδελφότητος (“Concerning Brotherhood”). He asks,  Martin, “Christians as Babies,” 112.

29

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“What other thing is siblinghood (ἀδελφότης) than a concord of siblings (ἀδελφῶν ὁμόνοια). This concord of a siblinghood goes beyond sameness of mind and agreement of sentiment to include the pooling, sharing, and uniting of resources and possessions such as land, crops, money, and military forces (Nicom. 42 = Or. 38.42–44). Dio likens a siblinghood to brothers who do not divide their inheritance but rather share completely a common estate with the whole belonging to both (Nicom. 45 = Or. 38.45). He argues that such a siblinghood (ἀδελφότης) should be realized between the Nicomedians and Nicaeans because of their common ancestry and their similar worship of the gods (Nicom. 46 = Or. 38.46). He points out that it would be lamentable if these cities do not realize their siblinghood since they have ancestry, gods, customs, and festivals in common. In this speech, Dio thus uses sibling language to designate a grouping of these cities in a siblinghood that is based on common ancestry and worship of the divine. Similar to Dio’s speech, Christians also exploit the physical basis of sibling love to describe how they feel toward one another. They are joined at the hip, to coin a Hippocratic expression, in the closest of relationships so that when one suffers, they all suffer (1 Cor 12:26; 2 Cor 1:6) and the actions of each necessarily affect all (1 Cor 6:15–17). The members of this community are or should be of one mind (1 Cor 1:10; 2 Cor 13:11; Phil 1:27; 2:2; 4:2; 1 Pet 3:8) and voice (Rom 15:6; 1 Cor 1:10), and they certainly share one Lord, one faith, one baptism (Eph 4:5). Some of them at least hold all things in common such that no one claims possessions to be his or her own (Acts 4:32–37). They do not or should not vie for honors but rather defer to one another (Rom 12:3–7, 16; 1 Cor 6:7) and especially to the weaker sibling (Rom 14:1–4, 13–23; 1 Cor 8:9–13). They look not to their own affairs but to the affairs of others (1 Cor 10:24). In short, they comprise an ἀδελφότης (“siblinghood”) and love one another and feel for one another as siblings naturally should (1 Pet 1:22). Specific examples of this kind of love that characterizes or should characterize the Christian siblinghood are numerous in the pages of the New Testament and early Christian literature, and the Johannine Jesus identifies love for one another as the one identifying mark of his disciples (John 13:35). Even an outsider such as Lucian recognizes sibling love as a defining characteristic of Christians in his account of Peregrinus, a Christian convert (Peregr. 12–13). When the authorities detain Peregrinus, the Christians make every effort to rescue him, and when they cannot, they wait outside his place of detention and even bribe the guards to stay inside with him (Peregr. 12). Lucian says that Christians came from all over at their own expense to encourage Peregrinus and gave him much money and that they even spent their all for him (Peregr. 13). Lucian then explains that they act in this “misguided” way toward a total stranger because their first lawgiver persuaded them that they are all siblings of one another (ἀδελφοὶ ἀλλήλων; Peregr. 13). The Christians feel for Peregrinus and treat him as they would their very own flesh-and-blood brother. Even as an outsider, Lucian testifies to the

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deep fraternal feelings that Christians have for one another and that motivate their acts of love. When Christians choose ἀδελφός (“brother”), ἀδελφή (“sister”), and ἀδελφότης (“siblinghood”) as their preferred terms of endearment, they are selecting terms rich in nuances and cultural assumptions that most approximate the intimate feelings they have for one another. Of course, Christians do not simply appropriate these terms but also build on them and shape them in distinctively Christian ways to express even more precisely the deeply endearing relationships they feel for one another. Their siblinghood is created not by their natural birth but by their new birth, and it arises not from their biological fathers but from their Father God. The Christian use of these terms is so much developed from the ordinary and the common that an outsider such as Lucian considers the Christian usage of these terms odd and quite absurd. For early Christians, however, these terms with their new insider nuances and assumptions become the terms most expressive of their endearing relationships with one another.

4. Conclusion It is of course quite impossible to know for sure what another person is feeling. Feelings are subjective and belong solely to the one feeling. Nevertheless, we humans access the feelings of another empathetically through our own experiential feelings, and the terms of endearment that early Christians use provide windows through which to sense their feelings. When they use the ἀγάπη word group, they consider other Christians as rare, unique, and special and particularly worthy of a love freely chosen and willful. When we think of our own feelings for the special persons in our lives, we have some idea of what the early Christians feel for one another. When they address one another as ἀγαπητοί (“beloved”), they further specify just how uniquely and completely loved other Christians are. When we think of our love for an only child or an only friend or an heirloom that cannot be replaced, we have some idea of the special way the early Christians love one another. When they call one another ἀδελφός (“brother”) and ἀδελφή (“sister”), they indicate that they are womb-sharers as a result of their new birth and therefore soul-mates in the closest and most endearing of relationships.30 Those who have experienced the rare “soul-mate” love have some 30 Paul uses sibling language without mentioning new birth but rather adoption as the basis of this language (Gal 4:4–7; Rom 8:15; contra Aasgaard, Beloved Brothers, 151, 308–309). Paul’s new creation language might imply new birth or new generation (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15), but Paul does not specifically use natal language. Depending on dating, the author of First Peter is the first to base sibling language on the new birth, and he will be followed by the Johannine author (John 3) and the Pauline author of Tit 3:5. Following the sources diachronically, sibling language precedes new birth language and may even have suggested such natal language to

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inkling of the very special way early Christians love one another. These terms of endearment used by the early Christians provide windows through which we can access empathetically their profound feelings for one another. As intimate as ἀγαπητοί (“beloved”) and the sibling terms are, however, even they alone cannot adequately express the depths of Christian endearment, and eventually these two basic designations for endearment are combined. A few early Christians are singled out with the double designation ἀγαπητὸς ἀδελφός (“beloved sibling”). Thus, Paul describes Onesimus as Philemon’s beloved brother to emphasize just how special and loved Onesimus should be to Philemon (Phlm 16; cf. Col 4:9). Tychicus also receives the special designation of a beloved brother (Col 4:9; Eph 6:21), and the Petrine author of Second Peter calls Paul himself our beloved brother in recognition of Paul’s special status in the brotherhood. Finally, all Christians receive this double designation as ἀδελφοὶ ἀγαπητοί (“beloved siblings;” 1 Cor 15:58; Phil 4:1; Jas 1:16, 19; 2:5), and with this double designation, the early Christians push the limits of the ability of language to express their deepest and most endearing feelings for one another.

5. Reception History Just as with the previous essay in this volume, the written reception history of this essay also begins with its initial publication in this volume. The ideas in this essay, however, have been presented orally in both the United States and in Australia and were well-received. Those attending these public presentations found it especially important that the term ἀγαπητός is limited to characterizing the relationship of a parent with an only child. They found this characterization significant for understanding not only the special relationship God has with Jesus but also the deep feelings that Christians have for one another. Hopefully, others who can now read this essay for the first time will also find the ideas expressed in it helpful for understanding the virtues and social dynamics of early Christian communities.

the mind of the author of First Peter as the first to use such language, at least according to the surviving written sources.

C. Early Christian Sacraments

X. The Covenant of Circumcision (Genesis 17:9–14) and the Situational Antitheses in Galatians 3:28* 1. Introduction At the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in 2000, the Pauline Epistles Section devoted a full session to a panel review of J. Louis Martyn’s Anchor Bible commentary on Galatians.1 In the session, Beverly R. Gaventa stated that she understood how the antithesis Jew/Greek in Gal 3:28a related to the situation in Galatia but admitted that she could not comprehend how the antitheses slave/free and male/female in Gal 3:28bc pertained to Paul’s argument.2 She asked Martyn what Paul meant by these last two antitheses and Martyn responded, “I don’t know.” Such an honest admission from someone who has devoted years to the study of Galatians emphasizes the difficulty of relating the antitheses slave/free and male/female to the situation in Galatia.

2. The Baptismal-Formula Explanation In his treatment of Gal 3:28, Martyn follows the common explanation that Paul cites these antitheses by rigidly adhering to an early Christian baptismal formula.3 Martyn comments, “Paul names three of these elemental opposites because he is quoting the formula. In writing to the Galatians, however, he is interested only in the first pair.”4 Thus, Martyn explains the occurrence of the three pairs of * Versions of this essay were presented at the annual meeting of the Studiourm Novi Testamenti Societas at the University of Durham in Durham, UK on August 9, 2002 and at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Region of the Society of Biblical Literature in Bourbonnais, IL on February 23, 2002. 1  J. Louis Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 33A (New York: Doubleday, 1997). 2 Similarly, Madeleine Boucher states, “It is necessary in explaining Gal 3:28 to account somehow for the addition of the last two pairs, slave/free and male/female, since the passage concerns only the Jew/Gentile question” (“Some Unexplored Parallels to 1 Cor 11,11–12 and Gal 3,28: The NT on the Role of Women,” CBQ 31 [1969]: 50–58, here 53). 3  For a list of some other scholars who espouse the baptismal-formula explanation, see Dennis Ronald MacDonald, There is No Male and Female: The Fate of a Dominical Saying in Paul and Gnosticism, HDR 20 (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 4 n. 7. 4 Martyn, Galatians, 376.

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antitheses in Gal 3:28 because this grouping is how Paul finds them in the baptismal liturgy.5 Martyn concludes that the slave/free and the male/female pair have nothing to do with the situation in Galatia but are only vestiges of the formula Paul quotes to remind the Galatians that the Jew/Greek antithesis is abolished by Christian baptism.6 This baptismal-formula explanation of the three pairs of antitheses in Gal 3:28 is not entirely satisfying, however, for at least three reasons.7 First, this explanation presents Gal 3:28 as the absolute abolition of the distinctions represented by these pairs of antitheses. Martyn comments, “To pronounce the nonexistence of these opposites is to announce nothing less than the end of the cosmos.”8 This interpretation may adequately describe Col 3:11 and perhaps more precisely the Tri. Trac. 1.5.132, but the argument in 1 Cor 12:13 presupposes that for Paul the distinctions of these antitheses continue, for otherwise the singular body could not have many members. Even Martyn is forced to admit, “From reading Paul’s other letters, we know that the apostle was aware of the fact that even in the church, the beachhead of God’s new creation, there were as yet some marks of sexual and social differentiation.” Nevertheless, Martyn asserts, “In writing to the Galatians he [Paul] does not pause over that matter.”9 The lack of clear evidence for Martyn’s assertion leaves open the question of whether Gal 3:28 proclaims the absolute abolition of the distinctions represented by these pairs of antitheses. Second, the precise listing of the pairs in Gal 3:28 occurs in none of the other passages that supposedly contain this baptismal formula.10 First Corinthians 12:13 lacks the male/female pair as does the list in Col 3:11, which nevertheless adds a circumcision/uncircumcision and barbarian/Scythian pair not  5 Thus, scholars such as Henning Paulsen presuppose that the antitheses in Gal 3:28 existed independently of this verse (“Einheit und Freiheit der Söhne Gottes–Gal 3.26–29,” ZNW 71 [1980]: 74–95, here 87–88). Gerhard Dautzenberg, however, thinks that the negative formulations as well as the γάρ in 3:28b indicate that these antitheses belong to a broader context and did not exist as independent, free-floating sayings (“‘Da ist nicht männlich und weiblich,’ Zur Interpretation von Gal 3,28,” Kairós N. S. 24 [1982]: 193–202, here 183).  6  See also Michel Bouttier, “Complexio Oppositorum: Sur les Formules de 1 Cor. XII.13; Gal. III.26–28; Col. III.10–11,” NTS 23 (1976): 1–19, here 7; Hartwig Thyen, “‘… nicht mehr männlich und weiblich …’ Eine Studie zu Galater 3,28,” in Als Mann und Frau geschaffen: Exegetische Studien zur Rolle der Frau, ed. Frank Crüsemann and Hartwig Thyen (Berlin: Burckhardthaus Verlag, 1978), 107–201, here 111–112; and Dautzenberg, “Da ist nicht männlich,” 196.  7  Dautzenberg proposes additional arguments for rejecting the baptismal-formula explanation (“Da ist nicht männlich,” 181–206). For a summary of these arguments, see Mac­Do­ nald, No Male and Female, 5 n. 8.  8  Martyn, Galatians, 376.  9 Ibid., 377. 10  For an analysis of the differences in the Pauline passages, see Bouttier, “Complexio,” 3–11; and Dieter Lührmann, “Wo man nicht mehr Sklave oder Freier ist. Überlegungen zur Struktur frühchristlicher Gemeinden,” WD 13 (1975): 53–83, here 57–63. For passages other than those discussed here, see Thyen, “Nicht mehr männlich,” 138–144; and Paulsen, “Einheit,” 80–85.

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present in Gal 3:28. Even the Jew/Greek antithesis, which Martyn identifies as so important to Galatians, is missing in the formulation found in the Tripartite Tractate (1.5.132), which adds an angel/human antithesis to the other antitheses found elsewhere. Liturgical and kerygmatic formulas may indeed be flexible in their wording, but such flexibility is not indicative of a fixed baptismal formula that would have constrained Paul to include pairs of antitheses irrelevant to the situation in Galatia.11 Third, the baptismal-formula explanation presupposes that Gal 3:28 is not adapted to the situation in Galatia whereas the other lists are shaped by the situations and contexts in which they occur.12 In contrast to the singular formulation of the other lists, the pairs in 1 Cor 12:13 are plural to fit Paul’s emphasis on the singular body’s having various members such as Jews, Greeks, slaves, and free persons.13 In response to the Cynic critique of the Christian community at Colossae, the list in Col 3:11 includes the barbarian/Scythian pair, not found in any of the other lists.14 Emphasizing Gnostic ontological unity, the Tri. Trac.  Ibid., 79.  H. von Soden comments, “Gal 3.28; Rm 10.12, Gal 5.6; 6.15, Rm 1.16, 2.9f, 1 Kor 12:13 hat jedesmal ihrem Grund im Kontext” (Die Briefe an die Kolosser, Epheser, Philemon, HThKNT 3 [Freiburg: C. A. Wagner, 1891], 61). See also Bernard H. Brinsmead, Galatians–Dialogical Response to Opponents, SBLDS 65 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982), 147–148. 13 Bouttier interprets the plural in 1 Cor 12:13 as more concrete and specific than the singular in Gal 3:28 and Col 3:11 (“Complexio,” 7). Dautzenberg explains the lack of the male/female antithesis in 1 Cor 12:13 as due to the “besondere Lage der Adressaten des 1. Korintherbriefes” (“Da ist nicht männlich,” 183–186). 14  Troy W. Martin, “The Scythian Perspective in Col 3:11,” NovT 37 (1995): 249–261; and idem, By Philosophy and Empty Deceit: Colossians as Response to a Cynic Critique, JSNTSup 118 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 195–200. See also Douglas A. Campbell, “The Scythian Perspective in Col. 3:11: A Response to Troy Martin,” NovT 39 (1997): 81–84; and my reply, “Scythian Perspective or Elusive Chiasm: A Reply to Douglas A. Campbell,” NovT 41 (1999): 256–264. Gerald Downing agrees that the presence of Scythian in Col 3:11 indicates a link between this list and Cynicism (“Review: By Philosophy and Empty Deceit: Colossians as Response to a Cynic Critique, by Troy W. Martin,” JBL 117 (1998): 542–544). He also agrees that “of known ‘schools’ they [the Cynics] are certainly the most likely to have advanced the critique discerned” in Colossians. Nevertheless, he expresses reservations about some “fresh Cynic technicalities” I have “created” “to fit the Colossian opponent(s).” He mentions four specific reservations. First, he notes that “perishable commodities” in Col 2:22 are not an “explicit Cynic concern” since this “key term” is not used in any surviving Cynic text. In my book, I recognize that this term is not used in Cynic materials but that it does “signify a distinction that is frequently encountered in the Cynic materials” (By Philosophy and Empty Deceit, 65 n. 2). The Cynics were concerned with consumer goods that were not replenished by the natural processes of the cosmos. All other commodities “perish” with consumption and must be replenished by human toil. Consumption of these “perishable commodities” enslaves the consumer to the producers of these commodities. Ps.-Crates for example admonishes the young not even to taste (μὴ γεύεσθε) fish and wine, and this admonition uses terms resembling the decree (μηδὲ γεύσῃ) in Col 2:22 (Epistle 14). Even though the term “perishable commodities” does not occur in surviving Cynic texts, it nevertheless aptly describes a Cynic distinction between two types of consumer goods, those according to nature that procure freedom and those according to human production that enslave. Second, Downing asserts that “there is no evidence” for Cynic 11 12

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1.5.132 lists the male/female pair first and concludes with an angel/human pair, which is absent from the other lists. Even if these lists may occur in baptismal liturgies, they are clearly adapted to fit the contextual situations in which they occur. The adaptation of each of these lists increases the probability that contrary to the baptismal-formula explanation, the list in Gal 3:28 is also adapted to fit the situation in Galatia, even though neither Gaventa nor Martyn – nor apparently anyone else – understands how. For these reasons, therefore, the baptismal-formula explanation is not completely satisfying.15 Much more satisfying would be an explanation of these humility in the face of nature and the evidence for Cynic humility in the face of human authority “is ambivalent.” The evidence, however, is neither as absent nor as ambivalent as Downing asserts. When Dio Chrysostom adopts the Cynic lifestyle, he dons a humble cloak (ταπειὴ στολή; Exil. 10). The term here does not carry its Christian connotations, however, but means poor. The Cynics’ poverty enables them to live according to nature and to repudiate human authority. The use of this word to describe the Cynics’ lifestyle differs from its description of Christian conduct as I explain (By Philosophy and Empty Deceit, 73–78; 143–148) but correlates with the description of the opponents’ ταπεινοφροσύνη in Col 2:23. Third, Downing notes that Diogenes Laertius 6.72 is the only evidence that the elements played any role in the Cynics’ views on diet and that this linkage is Stoic rather than Cynic. In my book, I only suggest that this linkage, if it is Cynic, “may explain the Cynic contention that adequate nourishment may be obtained by eating only one type of food” (By Philosophy and Empty Deceit, 102). Even if this linkage is not Cynic, Cynic reasoning from the elements of the cosmos to substantiate Cynic moral maxims still correlates with the description of the opponents in Col 2:8, 20 as the numerous Cynic texts I cite demonstrate (By Philosophy and Empty Deceit, 98–104). Indeed, the Cynic reliance on the Chronos Myth and rejection of any later creative activity locate the explanation for the cosmos in its elements. See my argument in “The Chronos Myth in Cynic Philosophy,” GRBS 38 (1997): 85–108. Fourth and finally, Downing notes the oddity of the absence in Colossians of the “polemical commonplaces” used by outsiders to disparage Cynics. This absence is easily explained by the rhetorical situation in Colossae and does not prohibit an identification of the opponents as Cynics. Colossians represents a Christian rather than a “commonplace” response to Cynicism. Thus, I conclude that the antithetical pairs in Col 3:11 should be read in the context of a Cynic critique as I have done (By Philosophy and Empty Deceit, 195–204; cf. Martin, “Scythian Perspective, 249–261). 15  Other explanations proposed by exegetes are also inadequate. F. F. Bruce among others suggests that the choice of antitheses in Gal 3:28 is determined by the traditional morning prayer of a pious Jew (The Epistle to the Galatians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982], 187). Bruce was not the first to make this suggestion. See also Thyen, “Nicht mehr männlich,” 139; Dautzenberg, “Da ist nicht männlich,” 186–187; and MacDonald, No Male and Female, 123–124. Paulsen (“Einheit,” 85) and Simon Légasse (L’Épître de Paul aux Galates, LD 9 [Paris: CERF, 2000], 283–284) correctly critique this suggestion. Indeed, the prayer itself probably arises from a Greek “rhetorical commonplace … variously attributed to Thales or Plato” that gave thanks for being born a human being rather than a beast, a man rather than a woman, and a Greek rather than a barbarian. For the primary and secondary sources of this commonplace, see Wayne A. Meeks, “The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity,” HR 13 (1974): 165–208, here 167 nn. 7–8. James D. G. Dunn proposes that these antitheses are chosen because they are the three “most profound and obvious differences in the ancient world” (The Epistle to the Galatians, BNTC [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993], 206–207). Dunn’s proposal broadens the context of Gal 3:28 beyond its argumentative situation as does even more the proposal of an androgynous Christ-redeemer for this verse. See Meeks, “Androgyne,” 165–166, 180–183; and Hans Dieter Betz, Galatians: A Commentary

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three pairs of antitheses in Gal 3:28 that recognizes the continuing distinctions represented by these pairs in Paul’s genuine letters, that releases Paul from rigid adherence to a fixed baptismal formula, and that relates the formulation of these pairs to the situation in Galatia. An adequate understanding of the Covenant of Circumcision in the Galatian controversy facilitates such an explanation.16

3. The Situational Explanation In Martyn’s reconstruction of the Galatian controversy, circumcision plays a central role. He assumes the Galatians are eager to become circumcised after deserting Paul for the circumcision gospel. Martyn’s reconstruction, however, fails to explain why none of the Galatians has submitted to circumcision at the time of Paul’s writing the letter.17 The operation requires only a few minutes to complete. His reconstruction also fails to explain why Paul accuses the Galatians of returning to their pagan time-keeping scheme (Gal 4:10). The immediate context of Gal 4:10 argues for the pagan character of this list. In 4:8, Paul mentions the former pagan life of the Galatian Christians. In 4:9, he asks them how they can desire their former life again. He then proposes their observance of the timekeeping scheme in 4:10 as a demonstrative proof of their reversion to their old life.18 Martyn’s reconstruction interprets this scheme as a Jewish time-keeping scheme, but the lack of an explanation in Galatians for the incompatibility of this Jewish scheme with Paul’s own Jewish time-keeping scheme renders Martyn’s on Paul’s Letter to the Churches of Galatia, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 197–200. MacDonald surveys the various explanations proposed by exegetes (No Male and Female, 1–14). MacDonald’s own proposal that Paul in Gal 3:28 reworks a Dominical Saying neither addresses the Jew/Greek and slave/free antitheses nor convincingly establishes the priority of such a saying before the writing of Galatians (pp. 113–126). 16  Bernard H. Brinsmead locates the three antitheses in Gal 3:28 in the opponents’ teaching about circumcision (Galatians: Dialogical Response to Opponents, SBLDS 65 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982], 159–160). However, he does not relate these antitheses to the stipulations of the Covenant of Circumcision but rather speculates that the opponents were proposing circumcision as a sacrament that removes the distinctions represented by each of these antitheses. MacDonald appropriately criticizes Brinsmead’s speculation (No Male and Female, 13–14). 17  Paul’s failure to address a means of reintegrating the Galatians that have already submitted to circumcision strongly argues that none of the Galatians has become circumcised. For additional proof that the Galatians neither have been circumcised nor desire to do so, see Troy W. Martin, “Paul and Circumcision,” in Paul in the Greco-Roman World: A Handbook, ed. J. Paul Sampley, rev. ed., 2 vols. (New York: T&T Clark, 2016), 1:113–142; and idem, “Circumcision in Galatia and the Holiness of God’s Ecclesiae,” in Holiness and Ecclesiology in the New Testament, ed Kent E. Brower and Andy Johnson, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 219–237. 18  For additional arguments for the pagan nature of this time-keeping scheme, see Troy W. Martin, “Pagan and Judeo-Christian Time-keeping Schemes in Gal 4:10 and Col 2:16,” NTS 42 (1996): 105–119; and idem, By Philosophy and Empty Deceit, 124–134.

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interpretation improbable.19 His interpretation presumes that the Galatians could astutely discern the subtle distinctions among various Jewish time-keeping schemes while being completely ignorant of the issues associated with circumcision. Martyn’s reconstruction of the Galatian controversy appropriately emphasizes the importance of circumcision but leaves several crucial problems unresolved. My own reconstruction of the Galatian controversy also emphasizes the importance of circumcision but avoids the problems of Martyn’s reconstruction.20 The Galatians indeed desert Paul for the circumcision gospel and accept this gospel as the valid Christian gospel. Because of their aversion to circumcision, however, they apostatize from Christianity and return to their former paganism.21 My reconstruction explains why none of the Galatians has submitted to circumcision and why they could recognize without elaboration that their pagan time-keeping scheme mentioned in Gal 4:10 is incompatible with Paul’s Jewish time-keeping scheme. Martyn’s critique of my reconstruction underscores its avoidance of problems. He comments, “Recently, T. Martin (“Stasis”) has advanced a rhetorical thesis that is so fanciful as to have the effect of suggesting a moratorium of some length in this branch of research.”22 Although Martyn dismisses my reconstruction as fanciful, he offers no substantive argument against my reconstruction. His failure to offer an adequate counter to the arguments I advance for my reconstruction emphasizes that my reconstruction avoids any substantive problems. At least, Martyn identifies none. Both Martyn’s reconstruction and my own emphasize the importance of circumcision in the Galatian controversy, and the stipulations of the Covenant of Circumcision in Gen 17:9–14, therefore, should be considered to explain the formulation of the three pairs of antitheses in Gal 3:28 as well as their relevance to the situation in Galatia.23 The passage reads: 19  Martyn argues that Paul objects to the Teachers’ solar calendar based on Gen 1:14 (Galatians, 414–418). Martyn does not describe the calendar Paul gave to the Galatians but assumes that Paul and his communities operated without a calendar. The evidence from Paul’s letters and Acts contradicts Martyn’s assumption. See my By Philosophy and Empty Deceit, 125– 129. Paul and his communities operated with a Jewish time-keeping scheme, and Paul would need to explain the incompatibility of the Jewish solar calendar with his own if indeed Gal 4:10 were to describe such a solar calendar. The lack of such an explanation in Galatians is evidence that Gal 4:10 describes a pagan rather than a Jewish time-keeping system. 20  Troy W. Martin, “Apostasy to Paganism: The Rhetorical Stasis of the Galatian Controversy,” JBL 114 (1995): 437–461. See also idem, “The Voice of Emotion: Paul’s Pathetic Persuasion (Gal 4:12–20),” in Paul and Pathos, ed. Thomas H. Olbricht and Jerry L. Sumney, SBLSymS 16 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001): 181–202, here 183–184. 21 For an explanation of the strong antipathy to circumcision in the Greco-Roman World, see Martin, “Paul and Circumcision,” in Sampley, Paul in the Greco-Roman World, 1:113–142; and idem, “Circumcision in Galatia,” in Brower and Johnson, Holiness and Ecclesiology, 219–237. 22  Martyn, Galatians, 21 n. 26. 23  L. Ann Jervis comments, “The inclusion of the phrase ‘male nor female’ in Galatians may

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And God said to Abraham, “As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your descendants after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He that is eight days old among you shall be circumcised; every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house, or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, both he that is born in your house and he that is bought with your money, shall be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.” (Gen 17:9–14 RSV )

The establishment of the Covenant of Circumcision provides the rationale for the selection and formulation of the pairs of antitheses in Gal 3:28.24 This covenant distinguishes between Jews and others such as Greeks, who do not submit to circumcision.25 Jews who belong to the family of Abraham must be circumcised. This surgery designates those who are Jews and those who are not. Even someone born into the family of Abraham but uncircumcised is “cut off from his people.” He is not a Jew. Yet, someone not born into the family of Abraham but bought as a slave enters the covenant through circumcision. The Covenant of Circumcision trumps even biological descent from Abraham as a determination of who is and who is not a Jew. Thus, this covenant supplies the basis for the distinction between Jew and Greek in the antithetical pair in Gal 3:28a. This covenant also distinguishes between slave and free. Slaves in a Jewish household must be circumcised even if they are not born into the household but bought from foreigners. The covenant recognizes no exceptions but stipulates, “Both he [the slave] that is born in your house and he that is bought with your money, shall be circumcised.” The free person, however, who dwells in a Jewish community is not required to be circumcised but is treated as a sojourner or resident alien (‫)גר‬. Jewish legal texts frequently refer to such uncircumcised persons in the community (Lev 16:29; 17:10; 19:10; 24:16; Deut 14:21; 24:14). The day laborer may work in the Jewish household business alongside the slaves but is not required as a free person to submit to circumcision unless he desires to participate in the Passover meal (Exod 12:45, 48; Num 9:14). Hence, the Covenant be because of the issue of circumcision” (Galatians, NIBCNT [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999], 107). She does not explain what she means but quotes Justin Martyr’s Dial. 23 (ANF 1:206), which relates circumcision to Gal 3:28 differently than the present essay does. 24 Lührmann explains the selection of the pairs of antitheses in Gal 3:28 on the basis of conditions in the Galatian communities that can no longer be known (“Nicht mehr Sklave,” 58). Basing the selection on the Covenant of Circumcision provides an observable common denominator for the selection that Lührmann overlooks. 25  For other passages where Paul uses Greek for Gentile, see Rom 1:16; 2:9–10; 3:9; 10:12 and 1 Cor 1:24; 10:32; 12:13. See also Col 3:11.

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of Circumcision distinguishes between slave and free and provides a basis for the antithetical pair slave/free in Gal 3:28b. Finally, this covenant distinguishes between male and female, for circumcision is required only of males. The covenant stipulates, “Every male (‫ )זכר‬throughout your generations … shall be circumcised” and “Any uncircumcised male (‫ )זכר‬who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.” This stipulation pertains to the prepubescent as well as adult males and explains the use in Gal 3:28c LXX of ἄρσεν/θῆλυ, which include children and adults, rather than the pair ἀνήρ/γυνή, which connotes adults.26 In contrast, the obligation of circumcision does not pertain to females, and Jewish communities never practice female circumcision. The avoidance of circumcision among females contributes to their inferior status in a circumcision community.27 The Covenant of Circumcision clearly distinguishes between male and female and establishes a basis for the antithetical pair male/ female in Gal 3:28c. Connecting the male/female pair to the Covenant of Circumcision is preferable to connecting it to the Creation Story. Almost all exegetes assume the connection of Gal 3:28c with Gen 1:27 because of the verbal similarity.28 This verbal similarity alone, however, is insufficient to establish a link between Gen 1:27 and Gal 3:28c. Gerhard Dautzenberg correctly notes that the formulation is widespread and comprehensible apart from Gen 1:27.29 Wayne A. Meeks ac26  For a similar use, see Rom 1:26–27. Krister Stendahl comments on Gal 3:28, “This statement is directed against what we call the order of creation, and consequently it creates a tension with those biblical passages  – Pauline and non-Pauline  – by which this order of creation maintains its place in the fundamental view of the New Testament concerning the subordination of women” (The Bible and the Role of Women: A Case Study in Hermeneutics, FBBS 15 [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966], 32). Stendahl’s comment assumes that the male/female antithesis in Gal 3:28 is taken from Gen 1:27 and abolishes the order of creation. The present essay proposes instead that this antithesis is taken from the Covenant of Circumcision, stipulated in Gen 17:9–14, and that Gal 3:28 abolishes not the order of creation but the communal distinctions established by this covenant. Hence, Gal 3:28 is not in tension with other Pauline statements based on the order of creation. 27  Stephen B. Clark comments, “The free circumcised male was the only full Israelite. It is against this background that we have to understand ‘neither male nor female’” (Man and Woman in Christ: An Examination of the Roles of Men and Women in Light of Scripture and the Social Sciences [Ann Arbor: Servant Books, 1980], 149). See also T. B. Allworthy, Women in the Apostolic Church: A Critical Study of the Evidence in the New Testament for the Prominence of Women in Early Christianity (Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons, 1917), 40–41; and Ben Witherington III, “Rite and Rights for Women – Galatians iii.28,” NTS 27 (1980–81): 593–604, here 595–596. 28 Thus, Gen 1:27 passes Hays’ second test for an echo. However, a string of only three words is hardly enough to establish a high-volume echo. Furthermore, Gen 1:27 fails Hays’s fourth test since it does not fit the line of argument Paul is developing. Genesis 1:27 as a precursor text to Gal 3:28c does not illuminate Paul’s argument. For these tests, see Richard B. Hays, Echos of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989): 29–32. 29  Dautzenberg comments, “Es bleibt aber zu fragen, ob es sich nur um eine durch Gen 1,27

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curately asserts, “The allusion to Genesis 1:27 in the third pair of Galatians 3:28 has no connection with the immediate context nor with any of Paul’s themes in Galatians.”30 Hartwig Thyen attempts to refute this assertion by citing Gal 6:15 as proof that Gal 3:28 refers to a new creation that abolishes the antitheses of the old creation. The problem with Thyen’s argument is that Gal 6:15 refers not to the original creation where circumcision and uncircumcision are absent but to the Covenant of Circumcision.31 Paul’s communities are indeed a new creation compared to the old communities shaped by the Covenant of Circumcision, but Paul’s concern in Galatians is not overturning the original order of creation but contextualizing the Covenant of Circumcision. In his argument, Paul announces in Gal 3:28c not the abolition of the male/female antithesis but its irrelevance for determining candidates for Christian baptism and membership in the Christian community. The establishment of the Covenant of Circumcision in Gen 17:9–14, therefore, relates the three pairs of antitheses in Gal 3:28 to the controversy over circumcision in Galatia. Almost all scholars relate the first antithesis Jew/Greek to the issue of circumcision, and a few include the third antithesis male/female as well. Stephen B. Clark comments: In this context, the phrase ‘neither male nor female’ takes on a special significance, because women could not be circumcised. Circumcision was a sign of the covenant of Israel and was only open to the male. According to Paul, Christians obtain the status of mature sonship through their baptism and initiation into Christ. … The woman, then, comes into the covenant relation of God’s people through her own faith and baptism, and is fully part of the covenant relationship with God.32

Scholars such as Clark, however, overlook the relationship of the second anti­ thesis – slave/free – to the issue of circumcision and do not perceive how the Covenant of Circumcision in Gen 17:9–14 provides the rationale for the selection and integration of each of the three antitheses in Gal 3:28.33 veranlasste stilistische Variation oder um eine auch sachlich bedeutsame und bedachte Abweichung vom durch die ersten beiden Glieder vorgegebenen Schema der negativen Korrelation handelt. … Die Form arsen ist über den Gebrauch in LXX und Neuem Testament hinaus weit verbreitet, so daß auch mit einer hellenistischen, von Gen 1,27 relativ unabhängigen Verständnismöglichkeit gerechnet werden kann” (“Da ist nicht männlich,” 182). 30  Meeks, “Androgyne,” 181. 31 Thyen, “Nicht mehr männlich,” 109–110, 116. In contrast, see Dautzenberg, “Da ist nicht männlich,” 193. 32 Clark, Man and Woman, 141. See also Witherington, “Rite,” 599; Allworthy, Women, 40–41; and Colin Brown, “ἄρσην,” NIDNTT 2:569–572, here 570. 33  Jacob Jervell asserts, “Das Verhältnis δούλος-ἐλεύθερος spielt nicht dieselbe Rolle wie Jude–Grieche” (Imago Dei: Gen 1,26 f. im Spätjudentum, in der Gnosis und in den paulinischen Briefen, FRLANT NS 58 [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1960], 298). He explains that the law subordinates Greeks to Jews and wives to husbands but not slaves to free. Similarly, Paulsen argues that the emphasis falls on the Jew/Greek antithesis rather than the other two antitheses

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Martyn’s reconstruction of the Galatian controversy assumes that the Galatians are so eager to become circumcised that they ask few, if any, questions. My reconstruction proposes that the Galatians are so reticent to become circumcised that they prefer to return to their paganism instead. Such reticence suggests that the Galatians probably inquire about this new obligation and at least ask about the extent of this obligation. Based on the covenant established in Gen 17:9–14, the agitators respond that the obligation pertains not to females but only to males and not even to those males who are free laborers in the Galatians’ household businesses but only to the slaves who are under the Galatians’ control.34 In short, all those males who desire to be Jews and not Greeks must become circumcised. In contrast to the distinctions that determine the extent of the obligations of circumcision, Gal 3:28 states that none of these distinctions is relevant for determining candidates for Christian baptism. The Covenant of Circumcision distinguishes between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female. In these antithetical pairs, those described by the first member of the pair have an obligation to be circumcised in a Jewish community while those described by the second member do not.35 Although not obligated, the Greek and the free person may choose to become circumcised but the female may not. This feature of the circumcision legislation probably explains the variation in the syntax of Gal 3:28 from ούκ … ούδέ in the first two pairs to ούκ … καί in the third.36 In Chris(“Einheit,” 90). Jervell’s and Paulsen’s inability to relate each of these antitheses equally illustrates the failure of scholars to relate all these antitheses to the stipulations of the Covenant and Circumcision. Robin Scroggs criticizes attempts to justify the slave/free antithesis in Gal 3:28 by appealing to the slave/free analogy in ch. 4 (“Paul and the Eschatological Women,” JAAR 40 [1972]: 283–303, here 291). He argues, “The usefulness of this analogy depends upon the reality of the distinction, not its abolition.” Scroggs thinks Gal 3:28 is a rhetorical comment taken from the baptismal liturgy and that only the Jew/Greek antithesis has any relevance for Paul’s argument in Galatians (p. 288). For a critique of Scroggs, see Elaine H. Pagels, “Paul and Women: A Response to Recent Discussion,” JAAR 42 (1974): 538–549, here 538–544. 34  I still prefer the term agitators, popularized by Robert Jewett (“The Agitators and the Galatian Congregation,” NTS 17 [1971]: 198–212), even though I recognize it is not a neutral term. Martyn proposes Teachers as more neutral, but this designation of the opponents is no more neutral than the term agitators since it arises from and supports Martyn’s historical reconstruction of the situation in Galatia. See J. Louis Martyn, “A Law-Observant Mission to the Gentiles: The Background of Galatians,” SJT 38 (1985): 307–324, here 312–314. A similar critique also pertains to Mark Nanos’s designation of the opponents as Influencers. See Mark D. Nanos, The Irony of Galatians: Paul’s Letter in First-Century Context (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), 14–16, 193–199. Paul twice uses the verb ταράσσω (Gal 1:7; 5:10) to describe those he opposes. This verb means to stir up, disturb, trouble, and disquiet. This term is also consonant with other descriptions in Gal 3:1; 4:17; 5:7; and 6:12. Thus, the term agitator is congruent with Paul’s description of the activities of his opponents and is preferable to other terms arising from historical reconstructions external to the text of Galatians itself. 35  This rationale explains the ordering of the pairs of antitheses better than the chiastic explanation proposed by Dautzenberg (“Da ist nicht männlich,” 183) and Lührmann (“Nicht mehr Sklave,” 57). 36  Eduard Schweizer observes, “There is a problem thinly veiled by this list. A person is born male or female and neither can nor should change this” (The Letter to the Colossians

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tian baptism, however, none of these distinctions is relevant. Christian baptism recognizes neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, and it does not distinguish between male and female. All are baptized into Christ and have put on Christ (Gal 3:27). All become one in Christ Jesus (3:28). Christian baptism ignores the distinctions required by the Covenant of Circumcision and provides a basis for unity in the Christian community.37 This unity, however, is not uniformity.38 In Christian baptism, Jews are baptized as Jews, Greeks as Greeks, slaves as slaves, free persons as free persons, males as males, and females as females. Baptism does not abolish such distinctions but treats them as irrelevant for entrance into the community of faith.39 Once in this community, of course, the baptized person must still contend with her or his cultural, economic, and gendered status as well as with the differing status of others.40 Nevertheless, all have full standing in the community in that all are baptized. The diversity produced by these distinctions creates many members in the one body according to 1 Cor 12:12–14. When Gal 3:28 proclaims that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, and that in Christ there is no male and female, the proclamation only pertains to the absence of these distinctions as requirements for baptism in contrast to the requirements in the Covenant of Circumcision.41 This verse does not proclaim the absolute abolition of these distinctions but only their irrelevance for participation in Christian baptism and full membership in the Christian community. According to 1 Cor 12:12–14, these distinctions must remain intact to reflect the true nature of the body as composed of many members.

[Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1982], 200). Boutier explains the substitution of καί for οὐδέ as an influence of Gen 1:27 LXX (“Complexio,” 7). For a refutation of the connection of Gal 3:28 with Gen 1:27, see the discussion above. 37 Clark, Man and Woman, 149. 38 Gerhard Delling states, “In Christus sind sie alle eins, aber nicht gleich” (Paulus’ Stellung zu Frau und Ehe, BWA(N)T 108 [Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1931], 120). See Clark, Man and Woman, 149–155; Thyen, “Nicht mehr männlich,” 155; and especially Dautzenberg, who explains, “1 Kor 12,13 spricht dagegen nicht von der Aufhebung oder Außerkraftsetzung dieser Unterschiede, sondern feiert die Erfahrung, daß jene, die sonst nicht zusammenkommen können, in einem ‘Leib’ verbunden sind, ohne zu sagen, daß die zwischen ihnen bestehenden Differenzen außer Kraft gesetzt sind. Die Juden, Griechen, Sklaven und Freien von 1 Kor 12,13 sind weiterhin das, was sie als solche waren” (“Da ist nicht männlich,” 184). 39 Dautzenberg states, “Die Erweiterung des Gegensatzpaares Juden/Griechen um das Paar Sklaven/Freie ist wohl nur von daher zu verstehen, daß diese Differenz für die Aufnahme in die Gemeinde und für die Teilnahme an ihrem Leben ohne jede Bedeutung war” (“Da ist nicht männlich,” 184). 40 Dautzenberg explains, “Gal 3,28 spricht von der Gleichheit aller Glieder der Gemeinde coram Deo, von der Wirklichkeit der Gleichheit aller in Christus, ohne die soziale Wirklichkeit inner‑ und außerhalb der Gemeinde in Fragen zu stellen” (“Da ist nicht männlich,” 188). 41  Dautzenberg states that either “among you” or “in Christ” must be supplied to complete the thought of Gal 3:28 (“Da ist nicht männlich,” 182).

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Nevertheless, later interpreters of the tradition push this verse in the direction of a complete dissolution of these distinctions. After introducing the concept of the new humanity established by Jesus Christ, the author of Col 3:11 writes, “Where there is no Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, and free but Christ is all and in all.” Eduard Lohse comments, “Where the Body of Christ exists and where his members are joined together into a fellowship, there the differences which separate men from one another are abolished.”42 As interpreted by Lohse, this text transcends the uniform application of baptism to all the members of the Christian community as in Gal 3:28 and implies that these distinctions are completely abolished in the new community.43 The station code in Col 3:18–4:1, however, recognizes that at least some of these distinctions continue to exist in the new community. This station code, which affirms the continuance of the social distinctions, is certainly dissonant with an interpretation of Col 3:11 that proclaims their abolishment.44 Markus Barth and Helmut Blanke resolve this dissonance by explaining that the resolution of the contradictions “must still await until the end of time.”45 Their eschatological explanation interprets Col 3:11 as articulating the essential uniformity of the body of Christ even though the realization of this uniformity awaits the eschaton. Eschatology is the most common way of resolving the apparent dissonance between the station codes and the ideas expressed in Col 3:11 and Gal 3:28.46  Eduard Lohse, Colossians and Philemon, Hermeneia (Philadephia: Fortress, 1971), 144–

42

145.

43  The Tri. Trac. 1.5.132 emphasizes more explicitly than Colossians the complete eschatological dissolution of the distinctions articulated in Gal 3:28. The relevant portion of the text reads: “For when we confessed the kingdom which is in Christ, escaped from the whole multiplicity of forms and from inequality and change. For the end will receive a unitary existence just as the beginning is unitary, where there is no male nor female, nor slave and free, nor circumcision and uncircumcision, neither angel nor man, but Christ is all in all.” In this text, the restoration of the Pleroma demands the dissolution of these antithetical pairs. For the translation, see Harold W. Attridge, Elaine H. Pagels, and Dieter Mueller, trans., “The Tripartite Tractate (I, 5),” in The Nag Hammadi Library in English: The Definitive New Translation of the Gnostic Scriptures, Complete in One Volume, ed. James M. Robinson, 3rd rev. ed. (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990), 58–103, here 101. This Gnostic view is often read into Gal 3:28, but Dunn notes, “As so often with the hypothesis of Gnostic influence on Paul, the influence most obviously ran the other way, with a passage like Gal. iii 28 providing one of the points round which the Gnostics wove the detail of their systems” (Galatians, 206–207). 44  Concerning the station code, Meeks comments, “The baptismal reunification formula’s ‘no more male and female’ has not produced any radical reassessment of the social roles of men and women in the congregation” (“Androgyne,” 206). 45  Markus Barth and Helmut Blanke, Colossians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 34B (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 415. Dautzenberg criticizes the translation of οὐκ in Gal 3:28 as “no longer” or “no more” (“Da ist nicht männlich,” 182). He states that such translations are not grammatically grounded but arise from the interpretation that Gal 3:28 proclaims a new creation as a replacement for the old. Dautzenberg’s criticism pertains also to Barth and Blanke’s translation of Col 3:11 (p. 414). 46  See Hermann Ringeling, “Frau IV. Neues Testament,” TRE 11:431–436, here 433; and Meeks, “Androgyne,” 207–208.

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Nevertheless, several exegetes reject this eschatological interpretation and prefer to interpret Gal 3:28 as describing actual social conditions in the community.47 Dautzenberg comments, “Dagegen sprechen sowohl Gal 3,28 wie 1 Kor 12,13 von einer Aufhebung oder Versöhnung der Gegensätze in der Gegenwart.”48 He then lists four areas in which the Pauline community already experiences the dissolution of the antithesis male/female and concludes that the station codes simply contradict Gal 3:28 and reestablish the antithesis. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza also argues that Gal 3:28 reflects existing conditions in Pauline communities but thinks that the “love patriarchalism” of the deutero-Pauline station codes develops from Paul’s own modification of Gal 3:28 in the interests of communal order and propriety (cf. 1 Corinthians 7 and 11–14).49 Likewise, Dieter Lührmann reasons that Gal 3:28 is a supporting argument and must therefore reflect actual conditions in the community. In contrast to Dautzenberg and Fiorenza, however, Lührmann does not think these conditions were very different from the conditions described in the station codes since both Paul and later Paulinists resorted to existing social structures to organize their Christian communities.50 The present essay also rejects the eschatological resolution and agrees with those scholars who understand Gal 3:28 as a description of existing social realities in the churches of Galatia but explains this reality differently. Galatians 3:28 articulates a common entrance requirement that ignores cultural, social, and sexual differences and provides for the full membership of all the baptized. It does not, however, explain how this full membership is understood. Other Pauline passages articulate full membership neither as social homogeneity (1 Cor 7:17–24; 12:12–27) nor as uniformity of social roles and obligations (Rom 12:3–8; 47  See Paulsen, “Einheit,” 94–95; and Averil Cameron, “Neither Male nor Female,” GR N. S.  27 (1980): 60–68, here 64. Both Paulsen and Cameron agree that Gal 3:28 should be interpreted as a present reality in the community, and they attempt to resolve the dissonance between Gal 3:28 and the station codes by restricting Gal 3:28 to a theological or spiritual affirmation rather than a sociological description. Their solution does not adequately comprehend the integration of the theological and sociological dimensions of Paul’s thought. Likewise, Delling’s (Paulus’ Stellung, 120–121) and Boucher’s (“Unexplored Parallels,” 55–57) restriction of Gal 3:28 to a person’s relationship with God recognizes neither the intimate connection between a person’s relationship with God and others nor the inherent social dimension of the Galatian controversy. See also James E. Crouch, The Origin and Intention of the Colossian Haustafel, FRLANT 109 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972), 144; and Robert Jewett, “The Sexual Liberation of the Apostle Paul,” JAARSup 47, no. 1 (1979): 55–87. Both Crouch and Jewett also interpret Gal 3:28 as a present reality and recognize the tension between this verse and the station codes. They resolve this tension by proposing that the station codes respond to excesses that arose in Christian communities by an overly enthusiastic application of Gal 3:28. For a summary and critique of their position, see Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 205–207. 48  Dautzenberg, “Da ist nicht männlich,” 193; cf. 196–197, 199–200. 49  Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 208–233. 50 Lührmann, “Nicht mehr Sklave,” 57, 59, 71–83.

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1 Cor 7:1–16, 25–40; 11:2–16; 12:1–11, 28–31). Even though they may not reflect Paul’s own practice, later station codes are not necessarily in tension with Gal 3:28 since everyone addressed in these codes is considered as a full member of the community. Contemporary interpreters of Christianity may disagree with these codes along with their understanding of full membership and are free to offer other possibilities, but these reformulations exceed the situational context of Gal 3:28. Later interpreters who use Gal 3:28 to develop idealistic notions of the body of Christ as a reality that completely erases all distinctions and inequalities take Gal 3:28 far beyond its situational context.51 In response to the Agitators’ insistence on the distinctions in the Covenant of Circumcision, Paul simply denies that these distinctions have any relevance for determining candidates for Christian baptism and entry into the Christian community. Whereas not everyone in the Jewish community is circumcised, everyone in the Christian community is baptized. Thus, baptism into Christ provides for a unity that cannot be realized in a circumcised community. Nevertheless, Paul still recognizes the distinctions between Jew/Greek, slave/free, and male/female as realities within the body of Christ, which is composed of many members. Later interpreters who transform Paul’s situational antitheses in Gal 3:28 into an absolute ideal unnecessarily place this verse in tension with some other Pauline statements. Galatians 3:28 does not represent an absolute ideal but a specific pastoral response to the specific situation in the churches of Galatia. As such, Gal 3:28 is not in tension with other Pauline texts that recognize differing social obligations and responsibilities.

4. Conclusion The situational explanation offered in the present essay avoids the problems of the baptismal-formula explanation and provides a more adequate understanding of the role Gal 3:28 plays in the Galatian controversy. Relating the three pairs of antitheses in Gal 3:28 to the stipulations in the Covenant of Circumcision, this situational explanation recognizes the continuing distinctions represented by these pairs in Paul’s genuine letters, releases Paul from rigid adherence to a fixed baptismal formula, and relates the formulation of these pairs to the situation in Galatia. These three pairs of antitheses occur in Gal 3:28 not because of a fixed baptismal formula but because these are the antitheses established by the Covenant of Circumcision in determining who must be circumcised. According to Gal 3:28, the distinctions represented by these antitheses are irrelevant in Chris51  For example, Meeks describes Gal 3:28 as a “utopian declaration of mankind’s reunification as a solemn ritual pronouncement” (“Androgyne,” 182).

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tian baptism, which is open to all those who believe in Christ Jesus without distinction. Whether Jew or Greek, whether slave or free, whether male or female, all members of the Christian community live baptized as full members of the community. This situational explanation provides an adequate response to Gaventa’s question at the SBL annual meeting in 2000 about how the antitheses slave/free and male/female relate to the situation in Galatia.

5. Reception History In his overview of research on Galatians from 2000–2010, D. Francois Tolmie finds that Gal 3:28 “receives more attention” in the secondary literature “than any other verse in Galatians.”52 Not surprisingly, therefore, my article on Gal 3:28 is cited and discussed numerous times in its seventeen-year reception history. Tolmie devotes another survey of research to this specific verse and structures his survey according to the following categories: “Translation, grammar, origin, Paul’s views expressed in this verse, new interpretative approaches, the verse viewed in terms of other Pauline/Biblical texts/perspectives from the world of the New Testament, the Wirkungsgeschichte of the verse, and the implications of the verse for church and society.”53 Although he only discusses my article in his category of “origin,” he could have also discussed it in almost all of his other categories as well, and I shall use several of Tolmie’s categories to structure my description of the diverse ways my article has been cited and discussed in the scholarly interpretation of Gal 3:28. 5.1. Translation and Grammar The shift in the syntax of the list of opposing pairs in Gal 3:28 from οὐκ … οὐδέ in the first two pairs to οὐκ … καί in the third presents a thorny problem in the translation of Gal 3:28. Scholars have long pondered the significance of this shift and wondered whether or not it represents a different relationship between the opposites in the first two pairs and the opposition of male and female in the third. All three of these pairs contrast the second members who are not obligated to be circumcised from the first members who are. I explain the shift of syntax in the third pair as distinguishing females, who cannot even choose to be circumcised, from Greeks and free persons, who could choose circumcision even though none of the persons in any of these categories is obligated to be circumcised.54 52  D. Francois Tolmie, “Research on the Letter to the Galatians: 2000–2010,” AcT 32.1 (2012): 118–157, here 130. 53  D. Francois Tolmie, “Tendencies in the Interpretation of Galatians 3:28 Since 1990,” Acta Theologica 2014 Supplement 19 (2014): 105–129, here 105. 54  Martin, “Covenant of Circumcision,” 121.

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When I first presented the paper out of which this article grew, Bastiaan Van Elderen took me aside afterward and commented that he thought I had solved the problem of the syntactical shift to οὐκ … καί in the third pair “male and female” in Gal 3:28.55 Since then, others also prefer my solution and especially James A. Kelhoffer, who comments: According to Genesis 17, Jewish men, male babies, and male slaves owned by Jews must be circumcised; Gentile and freeborn men could choose whether to become circumcised. Women (whether Jewish or Gentile, slave or free), however, could not receive the sign of the Abrahamic covenant. Martin’s interpretation of Gal 3:28 explains Paul’s unusual use of καί in οὐδὲ … οὐδὲ … καί.56

Thomas R. Schreiner also notes, “It may be the case that males and females are introduced here because females could not be circumcised.”57 I am pleased that some scholars accept my interpretation as the best solution to the problem of the shift in syntax in the third pair of opposites in Gal 3:28.58 Some scholars who disagree, however, think that the shift in syntax in the pairings in Gal 3:28 is due to influence from a baptismal formula. Pauline N. Hogan states: Some scholars have, however, questioned the majority opinion that places the origin of Gal. 3:27–28 in an already existing baptismal liturgy. Martin, for example, argues that the passage is constructed to contrast the situation of a Jewish household with that of a Christian community. In a Jewish household, according to Martin, some members (Jews, slaves, and males) would be distinguished by circumcision from others.59

Hogan then comments, “A major problem with his position, however, is his neglect of arguments from form-critical study, which point out the changes in grammatical forms that set these verses apart from their context and thus testify to a quotation.”60 Of course, I was aware of the form-critical arguments when I wrote my article, but I simply do not find them persuasive. The pairings in Rom 10:12 and 1 Cor 12:13 and Col 3:11 vary from those in Gal 3:28 both in their syntactical structure 55  As an elder scholar, Bas was a great encouragement to me in the early days of my career. See the notice of his death as written by Edwin Yamauchi, “Bastiaan Van Elderen, 1924‑ 2004,” SBL Forum, http://sbl-site.org/Article.aspx?ArticleID=356. 56  James A. Kelhoffer, Conceptions of “Gospel” and Legitimacy in Early Christianity, WUNT 324 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 110 n. 30. 57  Thomas R. Schreiner, Galatians, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 258. 58  In a blog entry, Matthew Baldwin comments on my article and finds that “the basic idea about the connection of the language of Gal. 3:28 to the language of the Genesis circumcision covenant language was sound.” See Matthew Baldwin, “Troy Martin on Galatians,” CorpusPaul, July 9, 2003, https://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/corpus-paul/20030709/004462.html. 59  Pauline N. Hogan, “No Longer Male and Female:” Interpreting Galatians 3:28 in Early Christianity, LNTS 380 (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 23–24. 60  Ibid., 24.

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and in the categories represented by the pairs. Such variations do not indicate Paul is quoting a pre-existing formula in each instance as much as he is formulating these pairs to fit the context of his argument. Furthermore, I do not agree that “changes in grammatical forms” in Gal 3:27–28 “set these verses apart from their context.” Conjunctive γάρ in v. 27 clearly connects this verse with what has preceded, and the asyndetic structure of the pairings in v. 28 is a rhetorical figure that adds forcefulness to Paul’s argument. R. Dean Anderson Jr. explains that asyndeton “has the effect of making several things seem more when listed without conjunctions (cf. Quintillian, Inst. 9.3.50).”61 Anderson notes that adding conjunctions brings the list together and so destroys the emphasis on many items.62 The asyndeton in Gal 3:28 thus emphasizes the many different categories of people in the Galatian churches that are unified by oneness in Christ. For these reasons, I do not agree with Hogan’s form-critical argument that a Pauline quotation of a pre-existing formula influences the grammar and syntax of Gal 3:27–28. Still other scholars who disagree with my interpretation of the shift in syntax in Gal 3:28 think that other passages such as Gen 1:27 and Mark 12:24–25 take precedence over the immediate context of Galatians and influence this shift in syntax more than I allow. After stating that my interpretation of Gal 3:28 “est difficile à admettre,” Jean-Pierre Lémonon considers Gen 1:27 along with Mark 12:24–25 as sufficient to account for the shift in syntax.63 He notes, “Ce troisième couple est construit sur un mode différent des deux premiers.”64 He sees this third pair as “une allusion à Gn 1,27” and states, “La négation de ce couple se situe dans la ligne de la parole de Jésus en Mc 12,24–25.”65 Since Lémonon does not think that this third pair has anything to do with the issue of circumcision in Galatia, he is persuaded that the shift in its formulation is due to wording and ideas found in other passages outside of Galatians. His non-acceptance of my explanation of the syntax of this third pair highlights the difference between my approach, which gives priority to the immediate context of Galatians, and his approach, which does not, and this difference in approaches also leads to disagreements over the origin of these pairs.

61  R. Dean Anderson Jr., Glossary of Greek Rhetorical Terms: Connected to Methods of Argumentation, Figures and Tropes from Anaximenes to Quintilian, CBET 24 (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), 33. 62 Ibid. 63  Jean-Pierre Lémonon, Ľépitre aux Galates, Commentaire biblique: Nouveau Testament 9 (Paris: Cerf, 2008), 138–139. 64 Ibid., 139. 65  Ibid.

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5.2. Origin of the Pairs in Gal 3:28 At the time of the writing of my article on the covenant of circumcision, the prevailing view among scholars was that the three pairings in Gal 3:28 originated from and were a vestige of a baptismal formula also found in 1 Cor 12:13 and Col 3:11. Tolmie identifies my article as mounting the first and most serious challenge to this baptismal consensus. He states: Troy W. Martin … identified several problems caused by the baptismal formula hypothesis, including the fact that it presupposes that this verse was not adapted to its situation by Paul. Martin argues that one should rather link the three antitheses to the situational context of the letter, and particularly to the fact that they can all be linked to the covenant of circumcision – an issue that was central to the Galatian controversy.66

Likewise, David E. Aune explains: Those who think that Gal 3:28 does not entirely fit its present context typically argue that it is a liturgical tradition cited by Paul, though he is really only interested in the abolition of the distinction between Jew and Greek; e. g., J. Louis Martyn. … On the other hand, others argue that Gal 3:28 is entirely suited to its context and that it is probably not a traditional liturgical formulation; e. g. Troy Martin.67

Tolmie and Aune accurately perceive that the difference between my circumcision explanation for the origin of these three pairs in Gal 3:28 and the baptismal explanation is based on whether these pairs fit their immediate context. Challenging a consensus is difficult, and not surprisingly, Tolmie only cites one other scholar, Bernard C. Lategan, who also rejects a baptismal origin for these pairs. Lategan reasons: The conclusion is inescapable: If all believers are children of God through faith in Jesus Christ, if all who have been baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ (3:26–27), there can be no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female (3:28). Verse 28 is the climax of a carefully constructed theological argument and not merely an after-thought lifted from an obscure baptismal formula.68

Lategan concludes, “The case for a pre-Pauline formula is not convincing. The passage is best understood as a conscious statement by the apostle himself.”69 Although my article was published several years before Lategan wrote, he does not cite it but apparently arrives at a similar conclusion by pursuing a different line of reasoning.  Tolmie, “Tendencies,” 107.  David E. Aune, “Galatians 3:28 and the Problem of Equality in the Church and Society,” in From Judaism to Christianity: Tradition and Transition, A Festschrift for Thomas H. Tobin, S. J., on the Occasion of his Sixty-fifth Birthday, ed. Patricia Walters, NovTSup 136 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 153–184, here 163 n. 29. 68  Bernard C. Lategan. “Reconsidering the Origin and Function of Galatians 3:28.” Neot 46.2 (2012): 274–286, here 283. 69  Ibid. 66 67

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Although Tolmie does not mention them, other scholars besides Lategan are persuaded, often by my article, to reject the baptismal origins explanation for these pairs in Gal 3:28. After noting that “the origin of this baptismal tradition is … difficult to trace,” Martinus C. de Boer writes, “T. Martin (2003) denies that Paul here cites a formula at all and traces Paul’s use of the three pairs back to the influence of Gen 17:9–14.”70 Also cautiously voicing some agreement is Jason S. DeRouchie, who comments: Troy W. Martin argues that the three antitheses mentioned in Gal 3:28 are context-specific to the argument in Galatians, each pair pointing to spheres in which the old covenant made distinctions by circumcision but where the new covenant does not (‘The Covenant of Circumcision’ … 111–125, esp. 117–19). If correct, Paul is stressing high discontinuity between the old and new covenants in a way that discourages a mere equating of the covenant signs of physical circumcision and water baptism, the latter being linked solely with faith in Christ.71

DeRouchie then proceeds to explain the three pairs in Gal 3:28 as I do according to the circumcision prescriptions in Gen 17. Voicing more explicit agreement is Andrew A. Das, who comments, “Unfortunately, the claim that Paul is drawing on traditional creedal language is ultimately unverifiable.”72 Das then adopts my circumcision explanation for the pairs in Gal 3:28 and states, “The distinctions of Jew and Greek, save and free, and male and female were the product of the covenant of circumcision in Gen 17:9–14.”73 Das concludes that I “was right to emphasize the connection with Genesis 17.”74 Yet another scholar explicitly influenced by my article to prefer the circumcision rather than a baptismal explanation for the origin of these pairs is Gesila Nneka Uzukwu, who notes, “Martin … points to Gen. 17.9–14 as the background of the three pairs of antitheses used in Gal. 3.28.”75 Investigating not only Gal 3:28 but also 1 Cor 7:17–24 and 1 Cor 12:13 as well as Col 3:11, Uzukwu reports: Although these passages contain pairs of opposites, we noted that in terms of content, word use, theme, and context, there are not convincing common grounds to suggest the probable influence of a pre-Pauline baptismal formula. On the contrary, the uses of pairs 70 Martinus C. de Boer, Galatians: A Commentary, NTL (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2011), 246. 71  Jason S. DeRouchie, “Counting Stars with Abraham and the Prophets: New Covenant Ecclesiology in OT Perspective,” JETS 58 (2015): 445–485, here 48 n. 107. See also idem, “Circumcision in the Hebrew Bible and Targums: Theology, Rhetoric and the Handling of Metaphor,” BBR 14.2 (2004): 175–203. 72  Andrew A. Das, Galatians, Concordia Commentary (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2014), 381. 73  Ibid., 383. In support of his statement, Das cites my article in n. 259. 74  Ibid., 386 n. 272. 75  Gesila Nneka Uzukwu, The Unity of Male and Female in Jesus Christ: An Exegetical Study of Galatians 3.28c in Light of Paul’s Theology of Promise, LNTS 531 (London: T&T Clark, 2015), 23.

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of opposites in the passages in question grew organically out of the line of argument found in the respective letters. And with regard to Gal. 3.28, what was going on in Galatia determined the function and meaning of the passage in question.76

Uzukwu is thus another scholar who is influenced by my article to reject “the prevailing opinion about the alleged pre-Pauline baptismal formula” and to interpret Gal 3:28 in its immediate context as specifically related to the circumcision controversy.77 Some scholars are persuaded by my circumcision explanation for the pairs in Gal 3:28 but nevertheless do not think that a pre-Pauline baptismal formula is entirely excluded. Bruce Hansen appreciates my work for attempting “to frame the saying explicitly within a cultural symbol system while assessing the significance of all three pairs in Gal 3.28 for the broader argument of the epistle,” and he notes that “many commentators neglect these important concerns.”78 He then summarizes my argument for rejecting the baptismal explanation and comments: Not only is he unpersuasive, this aspect of his argument is beside the point. He could have argued just as well that the saying’s original aim was to replace circumcision with baptism as the ritual of covenant initiation, whether it was coined by Paul or other early Christians.79

Similarly, David E. Aune deems the “either/or positions” of my debate with the baptismal formula explanation to be “problematic,” and he prefers to integrate the two positions as does Brigitte Kahl, who concludes, “Pre-Pauline in origin, the baptismal formula nevertheless is genuinely Pauline in its present rhetorical embedding and literary shape.”80 These scholars correctly point out that the pairs could possibly be from a pre-Pauline liturgical formula and still pertain to the circumcision controversy in Galatia, but the question of the probability of such a formula remains. Many consider the origin of these pairs from a baptismal formula to be more probable and reject my circumcision explanation altogether. For example, Lémonon summarizes my position: Martin s’oppose à l’idée d’une formule baptismale prépaulinienne car, en cette épître, la circoncision occupe une place centrale; le trois couples mis en valeur s’expliqueraient par Gn 17,9–14 précisant qui doit être circoncis. Paul n’accepterait pas de tells discriminations à l’occasion du baptême.81  Ibid., 203. 211. 78  Bruce Hansen, ‘All of You Are One’: The Social Vision of Gal 3.28, 1 Cor 12.13 and Col 3.11, LNTS (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 22. 79  Ibid., 22 n. 58. 80  Aune, “Galatians 3:28,” 163 n. 29. See Brigitte Kahl, “No Longer Male: Masculinity Struggles behind Galatians 3.28?” JSNT 79 (2000): 37–49, here 38. As far as I can tell, however, Kahl never cites my article. 81  Lémonon, Ľépitre aux Galates, 138. 76

77 Ibid.,

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He then states that my position is difficult to accept because en effet, on pourrait passer sans rupture du v. 26 au v. 29; le premier couple «Juif-Grec» est seul vraiment pertinent dans le context des communautés de Galatie; la formule des couples contraires se retrouve en d’autres passages de lettres, plus ou moins complete (Rm 10,12–13; 1 Cor 12,13; Col 3,11).82

I do not, however, find Lémonon’s three reasons persuasive. To his first reason that one could pass directly from v. 26 to v. 29, I can say that vv. 27–28 are in the text and that Paul must have considered them important enough for his argument not to skip over them as Lémonon suggests doing. His second reason that only the Jew/Greek pair alone is relevant to the context of the Galatian churches is more of an assertion than a fact and is contradicted by the evidence I presented in my article. Circumcision does in fact affect the members of these churches differently depending on their categorization not only as Jew/ Greek but also as slave/free and male/female. All the pairs in Gal 3:28 are, therefore, indeed relevant in the circumcision controversy taking place in the Galatian churches. I would be more persuaded by Lémonon’s third argument if the lists in Paul’s other letters had more similarity with the list in Gal 3:28, but they do not and vary both in syntax and in the categories listed. After carefully considering the arguments of Hogan and Lémonon as well as others, I remain convinced that the circumcision explanation for the pairs in Gal 3:28 best accounts for the origin of the pairings in the immediate context of Galatians. The baptismal explanation is problematic for me since no such prePauline formula that contains these pairs has yet been found. In her extensive survey of interpretations of Gal 3:28 in early Christianity, furthermore, Hogan finds “no surviving evidence that Gal. 3:28 may have persisted as part of a baptismal liturgy.”83 If such a liturgy with these pairs existed before Paul, influenced him, and received his authoritative approval by being quoted in his letters, I wonder how these pairs could have vanished from the baptismal practice of early Christianity without so much as even a faint trace. Finally, the various pairings in Gal 3:28; 1 Cor 12:13; and Col 3:11 occur in observations made by the author and not in confessions made by someone being baptized or by those attending a baptismal rite. Hence, I maintain that the immediate context of Paul’s argument in the circumcision controversy is more determinative for the formulation of the pairs in Gal 3:28 than a supposed baptismal liturgy. I am pleased that some scholars agree with me either in whole or in part, but challenging a consensus is indeed difficult and others not surprisingly still hold to the baptismal formula explanation. Nevertheless, Tolmie lists my article among “important new insights” that “have come to the fore” and represent  Ibid.  Hogan, No Longer Male and Female, 194.

82 83

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“progress in our interpretation of the verse.”84 He affirms my challenge to the consensus view and states, “Furthermore, some of the issues regarding the interpretation of the verse that were previously regarded as settled, have rightfully been challenged by some scholars, for example, the question of the origin of the text (Martin and Lategan).”85 5.3. Paul’s Views Expressed in Gal 3:28 In spite of the attention given to the translation, grammar, and origin of the pairs in Gal 3:28, the primary intention when I wrote my article was to explain what this verse contributes to Paul’s argument in the circumcision controversy in Galatia and how this verse is itself shaped by that argument. At the time of my writing, this verse was popularly interpreted as “a manifesto for early Christian feminism or egalitarianism” without much concern for how such a manifesto might serve Paul’s argument.86 Todd A. Wilson points out that I, in contrast to the usual reading, argue that the pairs in Gal 3:28 are “a polemical inversion of the terms of the covenant as outlined in Gen 17.10–14.”87 Some scholars thus correctly note that my article is in some tension with “manifesto” interpretations, and David J. Rudolph, for example, cites a number of articles including mine that offer “a reassessment of the traditional reading” of Gal 3:28.88 Tending to favor the arguments and conclusions in my article are scholars opposed to a “manifesto” reading of Gal 3:28 that proclaims Paul as advocating a dissolution of all ethnic, economic, gender, and social distinctions. A good example is Thomas R. Schreiner, who notes, “Troy Martin righty says, ‘This verse does not proclaim the absolute abolition of these distinctions but only their irrelevance for Christian baptism and full membership in the Christian community.’”89 Schreiner then quotes my remark, “Later interpreters who use Gal 3:28 to develop idealistic notions of the body of Christ as a reality that completely erases all distinctions and inequalities take Gal 3:28 far beyond its situational context.”90 Agreeing with my article, he consistently concludes, “Equality as members of Abraham’s family does not rule out all social distinctions.”91  Tolmie, “Tendencies,” 121.  Ibid. 86  Hogan, No Longer Male and Female, 193. 87  Todd A. Wilson, The Curse of the Law and the Crisis in Galatia: Reassessing the Purpose of Galatians, WUNT 2.225 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 62 n. 61. 88  David J. Rudolph, “Messianic Jews and Christian Theology: Restoring an Historical Voice to the Contemporary Discussion,” Pro Ecclesia 14 (2005): 58–84, here 79 n. 97. 89  Schreiner, Galatians, 258 n. 16. The quotation is from Martin, “Covenant of Circumcision,” 122. 90  Schreiner, Galatians, 258 n. 16. Again, the quotation is from Martin, “Covenant of Circumcision,” 124. 91  Schreiner, Galatians, 258. 84 85

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Another scholar who agrees with the argumentation and conclusion of my article is Kathy Ehrensperger, who summarizes my reading of Gal 3:28: Rather than taking the word pair male-female as resonating with Gen 1:27 Martin ‘hears’ this pair as well as the slave-free pair as resonating with Gen 17: 9–14, the covenant of circumcision. From this, he concludes, Paul is referring not to an abolition of the created order – creation is not the scope of his argumentation – but rather the distinction between the Christ believing communities and the ‘covenant of circumcision’. Whilst the distinction between Jew and Greek, slave and free, and male and female are relevant for membership in the covenant of circumcision, they are not entry requirements for being ‘in Christ’.92

Ehrensperger then notes, “This, however, does not imply that these distinctions are abolished or obsolete in Christ. To be one in Christ does not presuppose sameness. But such distinctions should not serve as a legitimation for inequality and domination.”93 She further notes, “That diversity is presupposed by Paul, is indicated by his image of the one body of Christ as composed of many members (1Cor 12:12–14 and Rom 12:4ff ).”94 Next, she makes an important distinction, “Significantly Martin’s reading does not create an opposition between the ‘covenant of circumcision’ and being ‘in Christ’ nor does it separate them, it just distinguishes the two entities.”95 She concludes, “I find Martin’s argument quite convincing.”96 Some scholars who accept the arguments and conclusions of my article in general nevertheless want to read Gal 3:28 beyond the immediate argument of Galatians and as an expression of Paul’s social vision for his churches. These scholars typically consider my article as too limited or as not going far enough. Bruce Hansen explains: Thus, Martin argues that Gal 3.28 makes baptism the replacement for circumcision as the entry requirement into the covenant people. … To do this, however, Martin has to deny that ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ echoes Gen. 1.27 and argue that it is merely a stylistic variation of the pattern expressed in the first two pairs. His thesis requires that phrase to be merely a rejoinder to the covenant of circumcision’s male focus.97 92  Kathy Ehrensperger, “Scriptural Reasoning: The Dynamic that Informed Paul’s Theologizing,” The Journal of Scriptural Reasoning 5.3 (October 2005), http://jsr.shanti.virginia.edu/ back-issues/vol-5-no-3-october-2005-teaching-and-scriptural-reasoning/scriptural-r​e​a​s​o​n​i​n​g-​t​ h​e​-​dynamic-that-informed-pauls-theologizing/. 93  Ibid. 94  Ibid. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid. Ehrensperger does, however, disagree with my “perception of circumcision as the reason for the inferior status of women in Judaism.” She recognizes that such a status existed for women but that it “has to be seen in the context of the patriarchal structures of Mediterranean societies in antiquity generally, not due to any Jewish commandment.” Of course, I agree with her that any one reason is insufficient to explain the complicated and often disadvantaged status of women not only in Judaism but in any other groups in the Greco-Roman or modern worlds. 97  Hansen, All of You Are One, 22.

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Hansen continues his criticism: In focusing the saying of Gal 3.28 on determining candidates for baptism, Martin underinterprets its force and neglects its social implications. In fact, he neither explores the social situation created by circumcision being differently applied to these pairs nor does he connect Gal 3.28 to Paul’s social vision for the churches in Galatia.98

Hansen is not the only scholar who generally accepts the arguments and conclusions of my article but nevertheless wants to read Gal 3:28 beyond its immediate argument as an expression of Paul’s social vision. David E. Aune is another who considers the focus of my article too limited and thinks that Gal 3:28 has social implications beyond Paul’s immediate argument in Galatians. Aune states: That is, according to Paul’s understanding of the new covenant, salvation is available to people of all nationalities, social statuses and genders, who are all equal coram deo (“in the sight of God”). A similar position is articulated by Troy Martin: “When Gal 3:28 proclaims that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, and that in Christ there is no male and female, the proclamation only pertains to the absence of these distinctions as requirements for baptism in contrast to the requirements in the covenant of circumcision. This verse does not proclaim the absolute abolition of these distinctions but only their irrelevance for participation in Christian baptism and full membership in the Christian community.”99

Aune then comments: Yet this reading of Gal 3:28, at least in my view, does not go far enough. Paul is not only concerned with the irrelevance of nationality, social status, and gender for entry into the church through baptism, he is equally concerned to emphasize that after entry, believers continue to be “one in Christ Jesus,” i. e., brothers and sisters in the new family of God.100

Like Hansen, Aune agrees with the situational explanation in my article in general but thinks that it is too limited in scope. Yet another scholar who agrees in general but thinks more needs to be said is Christopher Mount, who affirms, “Troy Martin … is right to point out the lack of any set pattern for such antitheses as the basis for a standard baptismal formula in early Christianity.”101 Mount continues, “However, in relating Gal 3:28 to the situation addressed by Paul, Martin understates the consequences of such antitheses  Ibid., 22–23. “Galatians 3:28,” 164. The quotation of my work is from Martin, “Covenant of Circumcision,” 122. 100 Aune, “Galatians 3:28,” 164. Aune distinguishes between social roles that remain in Pauline churches from hierarchies that do not. Nevertheless, I do see evidence for some hierarchical structures in these churches, and so I am not convinced that his distinction is as decisive as he thinks. 101  Christopher Mount, “1 Corinthians 11:3–16: Spirit Possession and Authority in a NonPauline Interpolation,” JBL 124 (2005): 313–340, here 322 n. 28.  98

 99 Aune,

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for roles in the new communities.”102 Mount thinks that my “conclusion misses an important redefinition of roles in the community for those possessed by the spirit that Paul represents,” for “the social hierarchies enshrined by the antitheses Jew-Greek, slave-free, and male-female have been replaced by a hierarchy determined by spirit possession.”103 I agree with Hansen, Aune, and Mount that Paul is describing the practice of his churches in Gal 3:28 in accepting everyone regardless of social status. Otherwise, Paul could not cite this practice in support of his argument against the necessity of circumcision. I also largely agree with all three of them that such inclusive acceptance has implications for the community life and organization of these churches, but I still do not think that these implications are the point of Paul’s argument in Gal 3:28 beyond the contrast of these inclusive baptismal communities with circumcision communities. From what Paul says in his other letters, his social vision for his churches is not the elimination or erasure of all social divisions but rather the representation of all social divisions among the many members of the body of Christ. Hence, I read Gal 3:28 not as some social manifesto but rather as a description of the practices of Pauline churches he cites as evidence that the surgery and state of circumcision really do not matter for these churches in contrast to the practice of discriminating against members in these churches on the basis of circumcision that does matter and must be eliminated. 5.4. Gal 3:28 and Other Biblical Texts Some who agree with my circumcision explanation for the origin of the pairs in Gal 3:28 also see no real influence from Gen 1:27 on this verse. For example Uzukwu states, “Gal. 3.28c cannot be interpreted in the light of the creation narrative in Gen. 1.27 LXX.”104 Others, however, agree with my circumcision explanation but affirm some connection between Gal 3:28 and Gen 1:27. For example, Das comments: While Troy Martin (“Covenant of Circumcision”) was right to emphasize the connection with Genesis 17, he too quickly dismissed an allusion to Gen 1:27. The only instances of the phrase “male and female” in literature of the second century BC through the first century AD are in reference to Gen 1:27.105

Thus, Das accepts my interpretation of the pairs in Gal 3:28 but does not think that it excludes an allusion to Gen 1:27.106 These scholars demonstrate that accept Ibid.

102

103 Ibid.

 Uzukwu, Unity of Male and Female, 211.  Das, Galatians, 386 n. 272. See also Hansen, All of You Are One, 22. 106 Likewise, Don Garlington comments in a blog, “I heard Martin’s original paper at SNTS in Durham last summer and have subsequently read the SBL article. My overall impression 104 105

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ing the circumcision interpretation of Gal 3:28 does not depend on seeing or not seeing a connection between this verse and Gen 1:27. Even though I do not think such a connection is being made, I nevertheless understand those who do and view this minor disagreement of far less importance than our agreement that the pairs in Gal 3:28 be interpreted in the context of the circumcision controversy that prompted Paul’s letter. 5.5. Implications of Gal 3:28 for Church and Society My article has been and hopefully will continue to be cited by those assessing the implications of Gal 3:28 for church and society, but I shall cite only a single example here. Lovemore Togarasei discusses the role of Christian identity in overcoming the ethnic and regional conflicts and problems in Africa. He argues: Newness calls for new identity expressed in uprightness in the life of the new creature. Thus interpreting Galatians 3:28 against the circumcision covenant, Troy Martin says that “Paul’s communities are indeed a new creation compared to the old communities shaped by the covenant of circumcision” (Martin 2003: 119).107

Togarasei uses my interpretation of Gal 3:28 to suggest a model for African society to imitate. Just as inclusive baptism created new-creation communities that eliminated the social divisions recognized in circumcision communities, Togarasei calls for the shaping of new Christian identities in Africa that replace divisive ethnic and regional ones. It is gratifying to think that an article written in my isolated study in Bourbonnais, IL could play even a small role in addressing social problems as far away as Africa, and I am most grateful to Togarasei for using my article in this way. 5.6. Summary According to Tolmie, scholars devote more attention to Gal 3:28 than to any other verse in Galatians and indicate thereby just how important this verse is not only for understanding early Christianity but also for directing and informing contemporary Christian faith and practice. I am so pleased my article has been taken up in this important scholarly discussion, and I look forward to reading how scholars further engage the arguments and conclusions of my article and use them in their own work. is quite favorable” (“Martin on Galatians,” Corpus-Paul, July 9, 2003, https://lists.ibiblio.org/ pipermail/corpus-paul/20030709/004454.html). Garlington agrees with my circumcision explanation but thinks my exclusion of an echo to Gen 1:27 is unnecessary given the new creation theme in Galatians. Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to access his commentary An Exposition of Galatians: A New Perspective/reformational Reading (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2002). 107  Lovemore Togarasei, “Rethinking Christian Identity: African Reflections from Pauline Writings,” Perichoresis 14 (2016): 101–114, here 107.

XI. But Let Everyone Discern the Body of Christ (Colossians 2:17) 1. Introduction The short clause τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ at the end of Col 2:17 is misunderstood by an exegetical tradition that ignores the grammatical structure of the clause in favor of a semantic antithesis between shadow (σκιά) and body (σῶμα).1 Eduard Schweizer calls the syntax of the clause obscure and suggests emending the genitive Χριστοῦ to a nominative so that the clause would correspond “precisely to the usual contrast between shadow and substance.”2 His proposed emendation, which has no textual support, demonstrates the importance of the antithesis 1  The completely negative assessment of the shadow conception among some commentators is not present in this text. Subtly shifting the antecedent of the relative pronoun at the beginning of v. 17 from practices to regulations or stipulations permits many commentators to interpret σκιά in a completely pejorative manner. The regulations or stipulations of the opponents are considered as worthless shadows. See Eduard Lohse, Colossians and Philemon, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971), 117 n. 22. However, the opponents’ regulations are not necessarily mentioned in v. 16, which may mention the practices of the Colossian community that are being critiqued. These Christian practices may comprise the shadow, and they are not presented negatively except by the opponents. Furthermore, some commentators subtly shift the tense of ἐστίν in the relative pronoun clause at the beginning of v. 17. The tense is present and affirms that these things are now shadows. These commentators translate the past tense and conclude that these stipulations have ended now that the true substance has arrived since they were only shadows. This shift of tense is evident when Lohse states, “The regulations are merely shadows of things to come. … Since reality is with Christ alone, the shadowy appearances have lost all right to exist. … The reality which exists solely with Christ is shared only by those who, as members of the body of Christ, adhere to the head (2:19). Therefore, for them the shadows have become completely meaningless, and the ‘regulations,’ to which the arrogant exponents of the ‘philosophy’ refer, have lost all binding force” (Colossians, 117). Despite Lohse’s eisegesis, the text affirms a present, albeit temporary, validity to the shadow. H. A. W. Meyer correctly argues, “The μέλλοντα have not yet been manifested at all, and belong altogether to the αἰὼν μέλλων, which will begin with the coming again of Christ to set up His kingdom. … The μέλλοντα could only be viewed as having already set in either in whole or in part, if ἦν and not ἐστίν were used previously, and thereby the notion of futurity were to be taken relatively, in reference to a state of things then already past” (Critical and Exegetical Handbook to the Epistles to the Philippians and Colossians [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1875], 387). Petr Pokorný concurs with Meyer (Colossians [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991], 144). Although Meyer and Pokorný correctly understand the temporal reference, they do not understand its significance since they insist upon associating σκία with the opponents’ practices. 2  Eduard Schweizer, The Letter to the Colossians (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1982), 157.

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between shadow and body for the interpretation of this clause. Schweizer concludes his interpretation by saying, “However one understands this phrase grammatically, the meaning at least is clear.”3 His conclusion shows the irrelevance of the grammar for his interpretation. Schweizer should not be criticized too harshly since he merely follows the exegetical tradition he has received. At least, his recognition of the grammatical problems inherent in the text surpasses many other exegetes. In order to remove the misunderstanding of this clause, an adequate explanation of its grammar and syntax is needed.

2. First Exegetical Issue The first exegetical issue that demands resolution is the syntactical relationship of this clause to its larger sentence. This clause occurs at the end of a sentence that begins in Col 2:16. The Greek text of this sentence reads as follows: Μὴ οὖν τις ὑμᾶς κρινέτω ἐν βρώσει καὶ ἐν πόσει ἢ ἐν μέρει ἑορτῆς ἢ νεομηνίας ἢ σαββάτων·ἅ ἐστιν σκιὰ τῶν μελλόντων, τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ. The critical exegetical tradition almost unanimously connects the last clause in the sentence with the relative clause that immediately precedes it because of the contrast between σκιά and σῶμα. For example, Peter T. O’Brien interprets the clause τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ as a nominal clause with an elided ἐστί. He connects this clause syntactically to the subordinate relative clause ἅ ἐστιν σκιὰ τῶν μελλόντων because of the semantic connection between σκιά and σῶμα.4 He then adopts the NIV’s translation, which reads, “These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.”5 O’Brien’s grammatical analysis does not support his preferred translation. He identifies the construction as a compound subordinate clause but shifts to independent clauses in order to translate the construction. O’Brien’s error is shared by virtually every other commentator. This interpretive error is caused by forcing a coordinating conjunction to connect two clauses that are not grammatically equivalent. When it is used to connect clauses, the coordinating conjunction δέ connects clauses of the same type.6 When the clause τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ is understood as a nominal clause with an elided ἐστί, then it becomes an independent clause. ­Syntactically,  Ibid., 158.  Peter T. O’Brien states, “But the sentence can be understood more simply by referring it to the shadow/substance contrast alone” (Colossians, Philemon, WBC 44 [Waco, TX: Word, 1982], 141). 5  Ibid., 140. 6  According to BDF § 438, the conjunction δέ is always coordinating, and coordinating conjunctions are “those which connect elements in sentence structure which are on a par with each other.” 3 4

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a c­ oordinating conjunction cannot link this independent clause with the subordinate relative clause ἅ ἐστιν σκιὰ τῶν μελλόντων without creating an anacoluthon. In order to connect these two clauses, O’Brien and others interpret the subordinate relative clause as an independent clause. This interpretation contradicts the grammatical construction of the text, which clearly contains both a subordinate and an independent clause. Thus, his connection of the concluding independent nominal clause with the preceding dependent relative clause creates a grammatical anacoluthon because in this clause δέ is a coordinating conjunction that can only connect grammatical equivalents. If the clause introduced by δέ is connected to the relative clause as the commentators insist, then τὸ σῶμα in this clause must be a predicate nominative with the relative pronoun ἅ as its subject. Since σκιά also serves as a predicate nominative for this pronoun, τὸ σῶμα would form a compound predicate nominative with σκιά. The translation would read, “which things are a shadow of the things to come but which things are the body of Christ.” The relative pronoun’s antecedents, the food and temporal references in v. 16, would then be equated with the body of Christ.7 This equation is nonsensical since the eating and drinking and the temporal references are not likely both the shadow and the body at one and the same time. Therefore, the clause τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ does not connect with the relative clause that precedes despite the overwhelming consensus of modern commentators. In contrast to the explanation offered by the commentators, the scribal tradition in the manuscripts often places a full stop after μελλόντων and takes τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ as the direct object of the following verb καταβρα7 The

majority of commentators understands the criticisms both of food and of time in v. 16 as the antecedent to the relative pronoun ἅ. For example, H. von Soden comments on this pronoun in 2:17, saying, “Was (nicht nur auf die Zeiten, sondern auch auf die Speiseordnungen zu beziehen; die Relativsatz gibt in Form einer Aussage über jene Dinge eine Begründung der Forderung: μή τις ὑμᾶς κρινέτω)” (Der Brief an die Kolosser, HKNT 3 [Freiburg: Akademische Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1891], 52). See also Johannes Lähnemann, who says “daß der ‘Schatten des Kommenden’ die in 2,16 angedeuteten Gebote kennzeichenen soll” (Der Kolosserbrief, SNT 3 [Gütersloh: Mohn, 1971], 136). Others, like Paul Ewald, argue that the antecedent is limited to the temporal references because only these pertain to the Jewish law, which was a shadow of the things to come (Der Brief an die Kolosser, KNT 10 [Leipzig: Deichert, 1905], 392). Grammatically, either interpretation is possible. However, the conjunction ἤ primarily indicates disjunction, not contrast, and consequently is not able to bear the weight that Ewald and others put on it. If the Colossian author explicitly intended a contrast between the eating and temporal references, a contrasting construction such as μέν … δέ instead of the coordinating conjunction ἤ would be necessary. Furthermore, the variant reading in some manuscripts of a singular pronoun instead of the plural pronoun indicates that several early Christian scribes understood the entire preceding verse as the antecedent for the pronoun ἅ. For these reasons, it is best to include both the temporal and the food regulations as the antecedents for this pronoun as a majority of commentators do. See Joseph B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon (London: Macmillan, 1875; repr., Zondervan Commentary Series, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979), 195.

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βευέτω in 2:18. Ian A. Moir has championed this understanding in more recent times, and he translates the construction, “But (or ‘see that you’) let no one deprive you of / defraud you of / do you out of / exclude you from / the body of Christ.”8 This suggestion is appealing because it recognizes the integrity of δέ as a coordinating conjunction and understands τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ as an accusative direct object. Moir himself, however, expresses hesitation about this interpretation because it requires the extremely unlikely construal of καταβραβευέτω with two accusatives.9 In addition to this objection, Moir and the scribal tradition’s explanation of the syntax destroys the parallelism between μὴ … κρινέτω and μηδεὶς … καταβραβευέτω. It also results in a strange paraenetic construction in which two negated imperatives are connected by δέ. In the usual paraenetic construction, the coordinating conjunction δέ contrasts a positive imperative with a negative one. Consequently, τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ should not be construed with the verb καταβραβευέτω in 2:18, and the critical texts correctly place a full stop after Χριστοῦ. Since the prepositional phrases in 2:16 cannot be grammatically equivalent to this independent clause either, the only remaining grammatical option is to connect τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ with the independent clause μὴ οὖν τις ὑμᾶς κρινέτω at the beginning of the sentence. This conclusion resolves the first exegetical issue of the syntactical relationship of τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ to the overall sentence. However, this conclusion generates the second exegetical issue of how the two independent clauses in this antithetical compound sentence relate to one another.

3. Second Exegetical Issue The construction μὴ οὖν τις ὑμᾶς κρινέτω … τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ is an antithesis. The negative member is stated first; the contrasting positive member introduced by an adversative conjunction occurs second. Obviously, there is an ellipsis in the second member. All the commentators supply the elided verb ἐστίν, which is a possibility since this verb can be elided at any time. The resulting translation reads, “Therefore, let no one judge you … but the body (substance) belongs to Christ.” As this translation demonstrates, supplying the verb ἐστίν in the second member does not produce a clause that is antithetical to the previous 8 Ian A. Moir, “Some Thoughts on Col. 2,17–18,” TZ 35 (1979): 363–365. See also his earlier discussion in his article “Review: The Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament, edited by Kurt Aland, Matthew Black, Bruce M. Metzger and Allen Wikgren,” NTS 14 (1967): 136–143, here 142. 9  Moir, “Some Thoughts,” 365. For additional problems with Moir’s interpretation, see Robert H. Gundry, Soma in Biblical Theology: With Emphasis on Pauline Theology, (London: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 42–43.

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one. Whatever such a statement might mean, it is not an antithesis. Another option is required. A common ellipsis in antitheses occurs when the verb of the first member is not repeated in the second member.10 A clear example is 1 Cor 10:24, which reads, Μηδεὶς τὸ ἑαυτοῦ ζητείτω ἀλλὰ τὸ τοῦ ἑτέρου. The imperative ζητείτω belongs to both members even though it is absent from the second, and the verse translates, “Let no one seek her or his own benefit, but let everyone seek the benefit of another.” Except for the absence of οὖν and the substitution of ἀλλά for δέ, this verse is grammatically parallel to the antithesis in Col 2:16–17. This example from Corinthians indicates that the verb κρινέτω is elided in the second member of the antithesis in Colossians. When this elided verb is supplied, the antithesis in Col 2:16–17 reads, μὴ οὖν τις ὑμᾶς κρινέτω … τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ κρινέτω. The antithesis is formed by the negative adverb μή in the first member and the adversative conjunction δέ in the second. The accusative personal pronoun ὑμᾶς and the accusative neuter noun σῶμα function as the direct objects of the first and second members respectively.11 The verb κρινέτω determines the action that is forbidden by the first member and then enjoined by the second member of this antithesis. This explanation of the relationship between the two independent clauses of this antithesis leads to a third exegetical issue; namely, the meaning of the verb κρινέτω in each clause.

4. Third Exegetical Issue From its basic meaning to part or to sift, the verb κρίνω develops several different nuances including dividing, selecting, deciding, discerning, determining, valuing, assessing, and judging.12 Some of these nuances are positive or neutral while others are negative. The prohibition in the first clause of the antithesis in Col 2:16 indicates that the nuance of κρινέτω is negative. Hence, the nuance of judging or criticizing is probably the best selection. However, the action enjoined by the second clause requires a positive nuance. Consequently, the nuance of deciding or discerning is the best option here. An example of precisely this combination of nuances occurs in the antithesis in Rom 14:13, which reads, Μηκέτι οὖν ἀλλήλους κρίνωμεν ἀλλὰ τοῦτο κρίνατε μᾶλλον. It then translates as follows, “Let us no longer judge (κρίνωμεν) one another, but rather determine  This is a good classical construction according to BDF § 479.1.  Understanding σῶμα as an accusative is contrary to all the commentators who understand it as a nominative. Of course, it can be either according to its form. If my arguments regarding the grammar and syntax of this verse are correct, then σῶμα must be accusative as the scribal tradition often indicates by its punctuation of this verse. 12  Friedrich Büchsel, “κρίνω,” TDNT 3:921–941, here 922–923. 10 11

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(κρίνατε) this. …”13 These same nuances occur in the antithesis found in Col 2:16–17 where κρινέτω in the first clause of the antithesis refers to judging and in the second clause to discerning. This type of ellipsis where the meaning of the omitted word changes from the meaning of its non-elided occurrence is a common type of ellipsis. For example, Socrates says in his own defense, “I did not care for the things that most people care about (ἀμελήσας ὧνπερ οἱ πολλοὶ [ἐπιμελοῦνται])” (Plato, Leg. 36b).14 Socrates’ description of his own action with the verb ἀμελέω indicates that some form of this verb with a different nuance should be supplied to describe the actions of the people with whom Socrates contrasts himself. Herbert Weir Smyth comments, “From a preceding word its opposite must often be supplied, especially an affirmative after a negative.”15 The shift in the nuances of κρινέτω in the two independent antithetical clauses of Col 2:16–17 is common in antithetical ellipses. In addition to the shift in the meaning of κρινέτω, the subject of this verb needs clarification. In the first member of this antithesis, the subject of κρινέτω is specified as no one (μή τις). When a restrictive reference like μηδείς or μή τις occurs in the first member of an antithesis, the following member takes an understood subject such as everyone (πᾶς) or each (ἕκαστος) that includes all persons excluded by the first subject.16 Demosthenes says, “No one should marvel at my extravagance toward Zeus and the gods, but let everyone favorably ponder what I say (καὶ μου πρὸς Διὸς καὶ θεῶν μηδεὶς τὴν ὑπερβολὴν θαυμάσῃ, ἀλλὰ μετ᾿ εὐνοίας ὃ λέγω θεωρησάτω)” (Cor. 199 = Or. 18). The implied subject of θεωρησάτω is either πᾶς or ἕκαστος, and the word everyone must be added to the English translation for the meaning to be clear.17 Thus, the subject of the elided κρινέτω in the second clause in the antithesis in Col 2:16–17 is everyone or each one. One further observation about Greek ellipsis bears on the understanding of the syntax of this antithesis in Col 2:16–17. Greek ellipsis occurs when two clauses are grammatically parallel. Only a few of the elements of the first clause are repeated in the second clause and the remaining parallel elements must be supplied. In the δέ clause, the direct object τὸ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ parallels the direct object ὑμᾶς in the first clause. Hence, everything following ὑμᾶς in the first clause from κρινέτω to μελλόντων should be supplied in the δέ clause.18  BAGD, 453.

13

14 Translation

by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, eds, The Collected Dialogues of Plato Including the Letters, Bolingen Series 71 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 21. 15  Herbert W. Smyth, Greek Grammar (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), § 3018m. 16  Ibid. 17  First Corinthians 10:24, discussed and translated above, also illustrates this principle. 18  The preposition ἐν linked to the verb κρινέτω that has an accusative direct object designates the activity by which the direct object is condemned. Someone is attempting to condemn the Colossians either for their dietary practice or from the standpoint of the accuser’s

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5. Conclusion The resolution of the grammatical and syntactical problems of the clause τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ, supports the following translation of Col 2:16–17, “Therefore do not let anyone critique you by [your or her/his?] eating and drinking or by [your or her/his?] participation in a feast, a new moon, or sabbaths, which things are a shadow of future realities, but let everyone discern the body of Christ by [your or her/his?] eating and drinking or by [your or her/his?] participation in a feast, new moon, or sabbaths, which things are a shadow of future realities.” As this translation indicates, the determination of whose practices are being critiqued remains ambiguous even though the grammar and syntax of this sentence have been explained. Some commentators attribute the eating and drinking to the Colossians while others identify these practices with the opponents.19 Almost all commentators, however, attribute the time-keeping scheme to the opponents. The ambiguity in this passage arises because of another ellipsis. The author felt no need to supply the missing pronouns since his readers know perfectly well whose practices were being critiqued.20 The definitive determination of which pronoun should be supplied depends on the identification of the opponents at Colossae. Since such an identification proceeds beyond the grammar and syntax of this passage, the determination of whose practices are being critiqued requires a further, more comprehensive study.21 Nevertheless, the preceding grammatical and syntactical investigation of the clause τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ in Col 2:17 suggests that the practices mentioned in 2:16 are those of the Colossian Christians and not the opponents. The eating and drinking associated with the Christian Eucharist certainly foreshadow future realities. Although the observance of νεομηνία is less certain, early Christians observe both feasts and sabbaths. If the practices in 2:16 are those of the Christians, then the humility and worship or veneration of messengers in the parallel construction of 2:18 probably also represent Christian practices. own practice of eating and drinking. Von Soden comments on 2:16, “Richte im (ἐν bezeichnet das Gebeit, in welchem sich das Richten bewegt, vgl. Rm 2:1; 14:22)” (An die Kolosser, 51). More precisely, Wilhelm Steiger states, “ Ἐν zeigt die Sphäre oder den Gegenstand an” (Der Brief Pauli an die Kolosser [Erlangen: Carl Heyder, 1835], 244). 19 It is significant that the words for eating and drinking here designate an activity. Lohse says, “The words ‘eating’ (βρώσις) and ‘drinking’ (πόσις) are to be distinguished from ‘food’ (βρώμα) and ‘drink’ (πόμα)” (Colossians, 115 n. 4). If the eating and drinking are practices of the Colossian Christians, then a related idea of discerning the body of Christ through the Eucharist occurs in 1 Cor 11:29, which reads, “For the person who eats and drinks while not discerning (διακρίνων) the body eats and drinks judgment (κρίμα) to herself or himself.” 20  “Ellipses dependent on individual style and choice go much farther, especially in letters, where the writer can count on the knowledge which the recipient shares with himself and where he imitates ordinary speech” (BDF § 481). 21  See Troy W. Martin, By Philosophy and Empty Deceit: Colossians as Response to a Cynic Critique, JSNTSup 118 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), passim.

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In future studies, exegetes should seriously consider the possibility that Christian practices and not those of the opponents are criticized in Col 2:16, 18. The exegetical tradition’s failure to adequately consider the grammar and syntax of τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ in Col 2:17 results in a misunderstanding of this clause along with the whole of Colossians. In contrast, the preceding study of the grammatical structure coherently explains this clause in its immediate context and suggests new possibilities for the interpretation of Colossians as well.

6. Reception History Shortly after this essay was published, Herold Weiss traveled from Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, IN to Chicago to meet me and to affirm my grammatical analysis and interpretation of Col 2:16–17.22 From the very beginning, he has been an ardent supporter of my interpretation of these verses. Weiss states: Martin has effectively criticized the established exegetical tradition that has given pride of place to historical polemics rather than to grammar and syntax. On the basis of a careful and convincing analysis of the text, Martin has opened up new possibilities for understanding how the author builds his argument.23

Weiss correctly understands the importance of my grammatical and syntactical analysis for interpreting Col 2:16–17, and he perceptively recognizes the differences between my interpretation and the usual way these verses are read. Weiss notes that Col 2:17 consists of two clauses and that I concentrate “on finding the syntactical connection for the adversative elliptical clause” τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ to the preceding relative clause ἅ ἐστιν σκιὰ τῶν μελλόντων.24 He summarizes the traditional reading and says: Over the years the first clause has been taken to offer a contrast to the second. It is explained that a “shadow” is being contrasted with the “body.” Accordingly, the author is saying that whereas regulations about food and festivals are a shadow of things to come, Christ is the real thing.25

Weiss then epitomizes four semantic, grammatical, and syntactical objections that I raise in rejecting this traditional reading. He says: 22  Herold Weiss is professor emeritus of religious studies at Saint Mary’s College. In general, other scholars also find my grammatical and syntactical analysis helpful. For example, see Benjamin A. Edsall, “Reading with a Forger: Christoph Pfaff and the Reception of Colossians 2:16,” JBL 138 (2019): 845–862, here 851 n. 29. Edsall comments, “Troy W. Martin’s careful exegesis of Col 2:16–23 helpfully illuminates the many difficult syntactical decisions facing interpreters, among all the other historical, philosophical, and theological difficulties the passage may pose.” 23  Herold Weiss, A Day of Gladness: The Sabbath among Jews and Christians in Antiquity (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2003), 134. 24  Ibid. 25  Ibid.

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First, the adversative conjunction but can only link two clauses of the same kind. In this case, the text has an independent clause “the body of Christ” and a relative clause “which are a shadow of things to come.” Syntax does not allow a relative clause to be linked to an independent clause by a conjunction.26

I would emphasize that this syntactical rule applies only to coordinating conjunctions. Weiss then continues: Second, the traditional reading overlooks that the text says, “the body of Christ.” To make a contrast with the “shadow,” it is read as if it said, “the body is Christ.” To make sense … translators and commentators take out the genitive … which is explicit in the original Greek.27

The third of my objections that Weiss epitomizes is that the traditional reading is problematic in “the way in which the verbal forms in the relative clause are understood,” and he notes: It does not say, “which were a shadow of what was to come.” Rather, it says “which are a shadow of things to come.” In other words, the author does not say that the Old Testament festivals were shadows that have been displaced by the death and resurrection of Christ, which had already taken place when he was writing.28

Weiss correctly recognizes the importance of the present tense ἐστίν rather than a past tense form for my criticism of the traditional reading of this clause. Fourth and finally, Weiss discusses my objection to “the way in which the main verb in the statement is read,” and he explains, “The words ‘let no one judge you in questions of food or drink or with regard to a festival, or a new moon, or a Sabbath’ (2:16) are read to mean that the false teachers are imposing on the Colossians regulations in matters of food and festivals.”29 Weiss correctly points out that “to judge does not normally mean to impose.”30 After epitomizing my four objections to the traditional reading, Weiss next summarizes my reading not only of the two clauses in Col 2:17 but also of the entire sentence that begins in v. 16 and my explanation for resolving the problem of the syntax of the final clause τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ. Weiss states: Looking for a solution to the syntactical puzzle, Martin finds it by recognizing that the elliptical verb in the clause is not the verb to be but the main verb in the sentence, that is, the verb to judge. Read in this way, the antithesis introduced by but contrasts both who should judge and what should be judged. What was taking place was that other teachers were judging the Colossian Christians on their Sabbath observance, among other things. … The text, then, says, “Therefore, let no one assess [judge] you by the way in which you eat or drink, or in matters of a festival, or new moon, or Sabbath, which are a shadow of things to 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid.

 Ibid., 134–135. 135. 30  Ibid. 28

29 Ibid.,

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come, but [let everyone assess] the body of Christ [by the way in which you eat or drink, or in matters of a festival, or a new moon, or Sabbath].”31

Weiss not only accepts my reading of Col 2:16–17 but also uses it to provide significant information for his description of how early Christians understood and practiced the Sabbath as a “day of gladness.” Brian Louis Allen also agrees with my reading of Col 2:16–17 and uses it in his post-supersessionist reading of these verses. After describing the traditional understanding of these verses, Allen argues, “Rather than the Colossians’ being judged for rejecting Jewish practices, the situation is reversed: the Colossians were being critiqued by ascetics for eating and drinking on Sabbaths, festivals, and the new moon.”32 Allen then notes the similarity of his argument and interpretation with my own reading and understanding of Col 2:16–17.”33 He agrees with my grammatical and syntactical analysis of Col 2:16–17 and states: Troy Martin argues that Col. 2:16–17 should be understood as a complete sentence. He forcefully asserts that τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ (“but the body of Christ”) is an independent clause and consequently cannot be associated with the unequal relative clause ἅ ἐστιν σκιὰ τῶν μελλόντων (“which are a shadow of what is to come”) because δὲ (“and”) is a coordinating conjunction and when used to link clauses it only links clauses that are equivalent. Martin proposes that τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ (“but the body of Christ”) be connected with the independent clause at the beginning of Col. 2:16 μὴ οὖν τις ὑμᾶς κρινέτω (“Therefore no one is to act as your judge”).34

Following this summary of my explanation of the syntax of Col 2:16–17, Allen remarks, “This resolution makes grammatical sense.”35 Allen adopts several of my other linguistic proposals for translating these verses and concludes, “We will now take the linguistic points above to assemble an alternative reading of Col. 2:16–17: ‘Therefore no one is to judge you 31 Ibid.

32 Brian Louis Allen, “Removing an Arrow from the Supersessionist Quiver: A Post-Supersessionist Reading of Colossians 2:16–17,” Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters 8 (2018): 127–146, here 128. 33 Ibid., 128 n. 3. Allen also cites others who adopt a similar reading and approach to this passage, and these include Daniel T. Lancaster, Torah Club: Chronicles of the Apostles, 6 vols. (Marshfield, MO: First Fruits of Zion, 2016), 3:881; idem, From Sabbath to Sabbath (Marshfield, MO: First Fruits of Zion, 2016), 197–204; and Aaron Eby, Biblically Kosher: A Messianic Jewish Perspective on Kashrut (Marshfield, MO: First Fruits of Zion, 2012), 47–52. My interpretation of Col 2:16–17 is particularly important to this messianic Jewish movement. In support of my interpretation, Allen also cites Weiss, Day of Gladness, 132–146; and Samuele Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday: A Historical Investigation of the Rise of Sunday Observance in Early Christianity, Biblical Perspectives 1 (Rome: Pontifical Gregorian University Press, 1977), 326–342. I was not aware of Bacchiocchi’s work when I wrote my article “But Let Everyone Discern the Body of Christ.” By the time I wrote my entry on “Sabbath” for The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Ethics, however, I had run across his work and included it in that dictionary entry. See Troy W. Martin, “Sabbath,” The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Ethics 2:233–237. 34  Allen, “Post-Supersessionist Reading,” 143–144. 35  Ibid., 145.

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regarding food or drink or in respect to a festival, or a new moon, or Sabbaths, things which are a shadow of what is to come; but [let everyone consider] the body of Christ.’”36 Allen continues, “This [reading] is greatly influenced by Troy Martin’s rendering, but not as verbose.”37 Both Allen and Weiss recognize that my interpretation of Col 2:16–17 is squarely based on a careful grammatical and syntactical analysis, and since they deem my analysis of these verses probable, they also accept my interpretation. Angela Standhartinger is yet another scholar who accepts my analysis of Col 2:16–17, but she relies less on my article and more on the expanded argument in my monograph By Philosophy and Empty Deceit. She recognizes that almost all exegetes relate the activities mentioned in these verses to the Colossian opponents, and then she says, “Damit wird eine neuerdings von Martin vorgeschlagene zweite Möglichkeit auch wahrscheinlich, nämlich ‘in Essen und Trinken etc.’ als Verhalten der Gemeinde selbst zu verstehen.”38 She is particularly persuaded by and quotes my argument that the “preposition ἐν linked to the verb κρινέτω that has an accusative direct object designates the activity by which the direct object is condemned.”39 She then comments, “Essen und Trinken sei also die Tätigkeit der Gemeinde, die von den Gegnerinnen und Gegnern verurteilt werde.”40 She also finds other arguments supportive of my interpretation and adds, “Ein weiterer Hinweis, dass hier das Verhalten der Gemeinde und nicht das der Gegnerinnen und Gegner angesprochen sei, sind für Martin die substantivierten Tätigkeitsbeschreibungen βρῶσις statt βρῶμα und πόσις statt πόμα.”41 In contrast to Weiss, Standhartinger also accepts my argument that “the humility and worship of messengers in the parallel construction of 2:18 probably also represent Christian practices.”42 Weiss comments: Martin thinks that the items described in 2:18 are also being defended by the author, but in this he is unconvincing (Philosophy, 137–39). He fails to realize that the expression “wishing in” (θέλων ἐν) is a Hebraism, and not a brachylogy. He argues correctly, however, that the practices in 2:16 are being defended by the author and are not the teaching of the other teachers.43

Standhartinger, however, cites me for support “daß θέλων im klassischen Griechisch die Motivation angibt, mit der die Verbalhandlung ausgeführt  Ibid., 145.  Ibid. 38  Angela Standhartinger, Studien zur Entstehungsgeschichte und Intention des Kolosserbriefs, NovTSup 94 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 187. 39  Ibid. 40  Ibid. This argument is so important for her that she had already quoted it in n. 94 on p. 22. See Martin, By Philosophy and Empty Deceit, 116 n. 1. 41  Standhartinger, Studien, 22 n. 94. 42  Martin, “But Let Everyone Discern the Body of Christ,” 255. See also idem, By Philosophy and Empty Deceit, 134–167. 43  Weiss, Day of Gladness, 193 n. 10. 36 37

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wird.”44 Having rejected the possibility of a Hebraism as I also do, Standhartinger explains: Die meisten Ausleger verstehen auch hier “in Demut und Verehrung der Engel” als Handlung der Opposition. Aber die Demut ist nach 3,12 eine Tugend der Gemeinde. Die “Verehrung der Engel” könnte auch, wie Martin bereits vorgeschlagen hat, die Beschreibung des Gemeindegottesdienstes sein, den der “Verurteilende” “sieht, wenn er eintritt”. Der Effekt des Eintretens “grundlos aufgeblasen vom Denken seines Fleisches” ist wiederum unter Aufnahme der antiken Philosophenpolemik beschrieben.45

She concludes: Während V. 18 mit einer möglichen Verurteilung der Gemeinde von Außenstehenden rechnet, hat V. 16 interne Kritikerinnen und Kritiker im Blick, die während des gemeinsamen Essens und Trinkens und des gemeinsamen Feierns ihre Geschwister richten könnten, aber nicht sollen.46

Except for understanding the critique in v. 16 as coming from within the community, Standhartinger, in contrast to Weiss, has been influenced by my explanation of the grammar and syntax not only of Col 2:16–17 but also of 2:18. Other scholars allow for the possibility of my analysis but do not think it probable and develop differing explanations of Col 2:16–17.47 For example, Jerry L. Sumney comments: Troy Martin’s study has much to commend it. Martin wrestles with the grammar and syntax of difficult passages with a rigor and openness that is rare in New Testament studies. Such careful and open examinations of the text demand the attention and consideration of all readers. Many of his proposals for readings of difficult passages have received too little attention, even though he argues on solid grounds.48

Regarding Col 2:17 in particular, Sumney instructs his readers, “See T. Martin’s discussion … of the translation of this verse, along with his suggested emendations.”49 Nevertheless, Sumney concludes, “While no translation of … v. 17 is certain, its sense is to contrast the spiritual blessings in the church with the other teachers’ regulations.”50 Sumney criticizes my reading of this verse and other passages in Colossians for allowing my reconstruction of the opponents as Cynics “to determine pre Standhartinger, Studien, 188. See Martin, By Philosophy and Empty Deceit, 137–139.  Standhartinger, Studien, 188. 46  Ibid., 189. 47  In addition to those discussed below, see also Scot McKnight, The Letter to the Colossians, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 271 n. 211. 48  Jerry L. Sumney, “Studying Paul’s Opponents: Advances and Challenges,” in Paul and His Opponents, ed. Stanley E. Porter, Pauline Studies 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 7–58, here 51–52. 49  Jerry L. Sumney, Colossians: A Commentary, NTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008), 152 n. 33. 50  Ibid., 152. 44 45

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maturely” my understanding “of the language of Colossians.”51 In my opinion, his interpretation of the sense of v. 17 falls under a similar criticism, for he bases his understanding of v. 17 on his reconstruction of the Colossian opponents as ascetic, apocalyptic visionaries within the church. Even though Sumney claims that no translation of v. 17 is certain, he nevertheless adopts a certain translation based on his identification of the opponents and then uses this verse to support his identification. Perhaps, no interpretation of Colossians can escape such circular reasoning, but at least my reading of this verse and other passages relevant to my reconstruction is based on a careful grammatical and syntactical analysis of the text as even Sumney himself recognizes. Another scholar who allows for the possibility of my analysis but rejects it is Allen R. Bevere, who comments, “Troy Martin … is to be commended for his precise analysis of vocabulary and syntax of the pertinent texts, particularly those portions of the second chapter that are quite obscure.”52 Bevere continues, “It is noteworthy, however, that such precise attention to detail becomes elusive in Martin’s translation of the key passages of Colossians. It is quite difficult to read the practices mentioned in 2.16–23 as a reference to the rituals of the Colossians themselves.”53 Bevere queries, “Can ‘food and drink’ in 2.16 actually refer to the Colossians’ practice of the Eucharist? Can ‘festival or a new moon or a Sabbath’ refer to the Colossians own calendar?”54 I would answer all of these questions in the affirmative and do not find it at all difficult to read the practices critiqued in Col 2:16–23 as those of the Colossian Christians as I have explained. Bevere then asserts, “It seems clear that the practices mentioned are not those of the Colossian church, but of the Colossian philosophers, as the consensus of scholarship has rightly concluded.”55 It is simply not clear to me that these practices are those of the Colossian philosophers, and I do not think the “consensus” interpretation is supported as well as is my own by a “precise analysis of vocabulary and syntax of the pertinent texts” as even Bevere admits.56 Nevertheless, he continues along a similar line of argumentation and says: Martin’s translation, though creative, is questionable. His translation is crucial for his thesis, and it is a translation hard to sustain. One would also think that if Cynics were criticizing the Colossian church for their practices, more would be found throughout the letter specifically referring to those practices. It is difficult to place Martin’s translation of 2.16–23 in the context of the rest of the letter.57  Sumney, “Studying Paul’s Opponents,” 51. R. Bevere, Sharing the Inheritance: Identity and the Moral Life in Colossians, JSNTSup 226 (New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), 42. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 55  Ibid., 42–43. 56  Ibid., 42. 57  Ibid., 43. 51

52 Allan

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One may think “more would be found throughout the letter,” but interpretation must rely on what is in the text and not what one may think should be there. In my monograph on Colossians, I have explained not only how my reading of Col 2:16–23 fits a Cynic critique but also how the rest of the letter responds to such a critique.58 Bevere correctly recognizes that my translation of Col 2:16–23 is “crucial” for my Cynic thesis, but he finds my translation “hard to sustain” because it simply does not support his own interpretation that “the letter is a response to issues raised by the synagogue in Colossae that the Christians there have no right to claim a share in the inheritance of Israel.”59 If only the ancient city could be excavated before it is completely looted, we would know for sure if it even had a synagogue as Bevere’s interpretation of the letter demands.60 Although Bevere dismisses my Cynic thesis in favor of his own interpretation, he nevertheless considers my thesis “formidable and not to be ignored.”61 Still another scholar who admits that my analysis is possible but does not consider it to be probable is Sang-Won Aaron Son, who comments on my analysis and says, “From the grammatical and syntactical point of view, this construction may be possible, but it poses serious exegetical problems.”62 He then lists four. First, he says, “Martin assumes that the conjunction δέ is used in an adversative sense, even though he finds no σκιά–σῶμα contrast in the verse.”63 Son does not explain this problem, and I fail to see how not finding a σκιά–σῶμα contrast prohibits my taking δέ in an adversative sense” since my analysis does not connect the final δέ clause containing σῶμα with the previous relative clause containing

 Martin, By Philosophy and Empty Deceit, passim. Bevere is aware of my sustained argument for a Cynic critique in the rest of the letter. For example, he comments, “Martin argues that the Haustafel is a culture-affirming response to a culture-denying Cynicism. If indeed Colossians is a response to a Cynic critique, the Haustafel would clearly be related to the Colossian philosophy and germane to the argument of the letter” (Sharing the Inheritance, 239). Nevertheless, Bevere dismisses my argument by saying, “The problem with Martin’s argument, however, remains its tangential connection to the rest of Colossians” (Ibid.). I would ask others to read my monograph to see for themselves if my sustained argument for a Cynic critique has more than “a tangential connection to the rest of Colossians.” 59  Bevere, Sharing the Inheritance, 255. 60 I visited the site in July of 2001 and noticed three deep holes where looters had been seeking treasures. Ancient Colossae is one of the most important sites for New Testament studies yet to be excavated. The geo-political realities of the present probably prohibit such an excavation anytime soon, but this site really needs to be excavated before it is destroyed by looters and by the cultivation of crops on top of the site. Excavating this site could provide important information for the interpretation of the Colossian letter. 61  Bevere, Sharing the Inheritance, 35. 62  Sang-Won Aaron Son, “τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ in Colossians 2:17,” in History and Exegesis: New Testament Essays in Honor of Dr. E. Earle Ellis for His Eightieth Birthday, ed. idem (New York: T&T Clark, 2006), 222–238, here 232. 63  Ibid. 58

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σκιά but rather with the independent clause at the beginning of v. 16 as Son himself understands.64 Second, Son says that I expansively “construct the text of Col 2:16–17,” when I do not construct the text but rather attempt to explain the ellipses in this passage.65 Son quotes my translation: Therefore do not let anyone critique you by [your or her/his?] eating and drinking or by [your or her/his?] participation in a feast, a new moon, or Sabbaths, which things are a shadow of future realities, but let everyone discern the body of Christ by [your or her/his?] eating and drinking or by [your or her/his?] participation in a feast, a new moon, or sabbaths, which things are a shadow of future realities.66

Son then comments, “This imaginative construction assumes an ellipsis of too many words and creates too many of its own.”67 The only words I “create” that are not in the text, however, are the pronouns in brackets, and I add them to alert the English reader of the ambiguity of whose practices are being critiqued. The Colossian author felt no need to include Greek pronouns in the text because he could assume his readers would experientially know whether they were being critiqued for their own practices or for not participating in the practices of their opponents. The other words in italics are already represented in the Greek text at least once but must be repeated to show a modern English reader the ellipses. As for eliding too many words, I am unaware that the Greek Language places any limit on the number of words that may be omitted when an elliptical clause is paralleled with a fuller and more complete clause. Until that number is established, the number of words elided in the final clause in Col 2:17 poses no problem. Furthermore, I consider my careful grammatical and syntactical analysis to qualify my explanation of this ellipsis as more than an “imaginative construction” as Son deems it. The two final problems that Son finds with my analysis are that it “assigns two different meanings to the same word κρινέτω” and that it “understands the practices mentioned in Col 2:16 as those of the Colossian believers and not of the opponents.”68 Negative and positive meanings of the same word, however, are common in antitheses and even with the verb κρίνειν as the example in Rom 14:13 demonstrates.69 Son characterizes my analytical understanding that the practices critiqued are those of the Colossian Christians rather than of the opponents as the most serious problem with my analysis. Son argues, “The teachings and practices against which the author gives serious warnings can 64 Ibid.,

232 n. 44.  Ibid., 232. 66 Ibid. See Martin, “But Let Everyone Discern the Body of Christ,” 255. 67  Son, “Colossians,” 232. 68  Ibid. 69  For additional examples, see Martin, “But Let Everyone Discern the Body of Christ,” 252–254. 65

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hardly be those that he would offer for the Colossian believers.”70 Since the observance of Sabbaths in some manner was the practice of early Christians, it seems to me that the other practices mentioned in Col 2:16 are more likely than not Christian practices as well in spite of what Son asserts. Even though I do not consider any of the four problems Son identifies as persuasive for rejecting my analysis, he nevertheless prefers his own grammatical analysis to mine and translates Col 2:17 as “which are a shadow of what is to come; namely, the body of Christ.”71 Son understands “the body of Christ” to be in apposition to “what is to come,” and he thinks that the body of Christ refers “to his individual body crucified on the cross” without excluding completely “the idea of the corporate body of Christ.”72 I agree with Allen, who deems Son’s translation as “unsatisfactory” because it does not solve “the complexity of this text” but “leaves much ambiguity.”73 Furthermore, a major problem with Son’s analysis and translation is that the crucified body of Christ had already come when this author wrote and that he should therefore have used a past tense rather than the present tense ἐστίν in the relative clause in Col 2:17 to indicate that the practices were a shadow of what was to come. The present tense verb in this relative clause is a major obstacle not only for Son but also for others who understand Christ’s body as the things about to be. Some scholars do not even allow the possibility of my grammatical and syntactical analysis of Col 2:16–17. For example, Michael Dübbers comments: Unwahrscheinlich ist dagegen die Interpretation von Martin, Body 252–255, der die Wendung τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ wider die semantische Opposition σκιά–σῶμα nicht mit dem vorangehenden Relativsatz, sondern mit dem Hauptsatz μὴ οὖν τις ὑμᾶς κρινέτω verbinden will.74

Dübbers argues, “Dadurch wird jedoch nicht nur der Sinn dieses Satzes völlig zerstört, sondern Martin strapaziert zudem die Möglichkeiten elliptischer Rede bis an ihre Grenze.”75 Perhaps, my grammatical and syntactical analysis destroys the sense of the sentence that Dübbers needs for his reconstruction of the situation at Colossae, but my analysis provides a quite meaningful sentence for my own reconstruction as well as for the interpretations of Weiss and Allen. As for my analysis straining the possibilities of elliptical speech to its limit, I am unaware that anyone has established the limits of elliptical speech. For many years, I have gathered materials for a study of Greek ellipsis but have not com70 Son,

“Colossians,” 232–233.  Ibid., 237. 72  Ibid., 238. 73  Allen, “Post-Supersessionist Reading,” 143. 74  Michael Dübbers, Christologie und Existenz im Kolosserbrief: Exegetische und semantische Untersuchungen zur Intention des Kolosserbriefes, WUNT 2.191 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 268 n. 311. 75  Ibid. 71

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pleted it. Nevertheless, I consider the analogy of the ellipsis in 1 Cor 10:24 as sufficient to demonstrate that the rules of Greek ellipsis allow the antithetical sentence in Col 2:16–17 to read μὴ οὖν τις ὑμᾶς κρινέτω … τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ [κρινέτω] (“let no one judge you … but let everyone discern the body of Christ”). Allen agrees and comments, “Martin provides 1 Cor 10:24” as an example in which “the verb ζητείτω (“seek”) is elided and the subject of the verb is changed from ‘no one’ to an implied ‘everyone’: ‘Let no one seek her or his own benefit, but let everyone seek the benefit of another.’”76 Allen then states, “This same linguistic strategy can be applied to Col. 2:16–17.”77 Neither Allen nor I consider the ellipsis to be strained but rather appropriate for antithetical sentences and for the Greek language, which values economy of words. Another scholar who does not even allow the possibility of my grammatical and syntactical analysis of Col 2:16–17 is Ian K. Smith. He acknowledges that my “approach is novel” but claims that “it is lacking in significant exegetical evidence.”78 Smith thinks that my “English translations are idiosyncratic, differing significantly from standard renditions.”79 He explains: Martin’s conclusions, however, rest on two unsubstantiated assumptions: the reference to food and drink in 2.16 refers to the Eucharist and not to dietary restrictions; and the notion that these are a shadow of the things to come points to their fulfillment in Christ. Therefore, Martin’s conclusion that there is a Cynic critique of the Eucharist … rests on exegetically questionable presuppositions.80

Smith continues: Similarly, his argument that θρησκείᾳ τῶν ἀγγέλων is a genitive of source and “indicates the nature of the Cynic critique of … Christian worship practices (which) are inferior because they arise from human messengers” is flawed. In the midst of a passage that mentions terms such as στοιχεὶα, ἀρχαί and ἐξουσίας, it is unlikely that the first-century reader of Colossians would have understood τῶν ἀγγέλων as human messengers!81

Smith clearly does not accept my analysis and interpretation of Col 2:16–18, but neither am I persuaded by his arguments. I understand how he can characterize my careful grammatical and syntactical analyses and translations of the text as not providing “significant exegetical evidence” since he dismisses my analyses and translations as differing too much from the “standard renditions.” I do not, however, understand his claim that my conclusions rest on “unsubstantiated assumptions” that are “exegetically questionable” since I engage in careful textual analysis before reaching each ex76 Allen,

“Post-Supersessionist Reading,” 144.  Ibid. 78 Ian K. Smith, Heavenly Perspective: A Study of the Apostle Paul’s Response to a Jewish Mystical Movement at Colossae, LNTS 326 (London: T&T Clark, 2006), 29. 79  Ibid., 29–30. 80  Ibid., 30. 81  Ibid. 77

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egetical conclusion. His contention that τῶν ἀγγέλων could only be understood as heavenly angels in a context with words such as στοιχεῖα, ἀρχαί, and ἐξουσίας is circular, for he must assume that all these terms refer to heavenly realities. All of these words, however, can refer to earthly realities, and for στοιχεῖα in particular, John Barclay notes, “After decades of debate, recent research has confirmed that τὰ στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου most likely refers to the physical elements of the world (not to ‘rudimentary teaching’ or ‘elemental spirits’).82 Barclay is commenting on Gal 4:9, but I have made a similar case for Col 2:20.83 Hence, I disagree with Smith’s contention that my argument for human messengers in Col 2:18 is flawed, and I consider my analysis of Col 2:16–18 as having more exegetical weight than he allows. Of all those who disagree with my analysis and interpretation of Col 2:16–18, the most sustained challenge comes from H. Ross Cole. After summarizing my analysis and interpretation of Col 2:16–17, Cole comments, “Martin’s innovative interpretation is syntactically feasible; however, he is unduly dismissive of the traditional interpretation.”84 Cole’s argumentative strategy is to place my syntactical analysis of these verses on par with the analysis informing the traditional interpretation and then to give the advantage to the traditional interpretation by allowing the contrast between σκιά and σῶμα to decide the issue. Cole correctly perceives that the advantage goes to my analysis if the coordinating conjunction δέ in the concluding clause τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ in Col 2:17 can only connect grammatically equivalent clauses. Since everyone interprets this concluding clause as independent, the conjunction must connect this clause to the independent clause at the beginning of 2:16. Cole, however, seeks to deprive my analysis of this advantage by inventing a different rule for this conjunction. He asserts, “The equivalence required between coordinating clauses is that of their position within the hierarchy of the sentence, not that of their clause types.”85 In contrast, Blass and Debrunner state that coordinating conjunctions are “those which connect elements in sentence structure which are on a par with each other.”86 Cole, however, cites no grammarians who disagree with Blass and Debrunner or who articulate his own contrary and invented rule but merely points to two examples in Colossians that he thinks support it. The first example is Col 1:26, but Cole’s analysis of this verse is supported neither by textual critics nor grammarians. Nevertheless, Cole states: In Col 1:26, the independent clause, νῦν δὲ ἐφανερώθη τοῖς ἁγίοις αὐτου (“but now it has been manifested to his holy ones”), is clearly coordinate with the preceding relative clause,  John M. G. Barclay, Paul and the Gift (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 409. By Philosophy and Empty Deceit, 31–33, 154. 84  H. Ross Cole, “The Christian and Time-Keeping in Colossians 2:16 and Galatians 4:10,” AUSS 39 (2001): 273–282, here 274. 85 Ibid., 275. 86  BDF, § 438. 82

83 Martin,

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τὸ μυστήριον τὸ ἀποκεκρυμμένον ἀπὸ τῶν αἰώνων καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν γενεῶν (“the mystery hidden from the ages and from the generations”), rather than with either of the nearest preceding independent clauses in v. 24.87

In contrast to Cole’s analysis, textual critics demonstrate the lack of connection between the νῦν δέ independent clause and the nominal phrase at the beginning of v. 26 by placing an em-dash between them as in the NA28 text. Many grammarians also see a lack of connection, and Max Zerwick and Mary Grosvenor, for example, note that a new construction begins at the end of the nominal phrase “after the break at τῶν γενεῶν.”88 These textual critics and grammarians do not apply Cole’s invented rule of “positionally equivalent clauses” for the conjunction δέ but rather adhere to the established rule that when this particle is used as a coordinating conjunction, it must connect grammatically equivalent clause types. Even though Cole cites no grammarians to support his invented rule, he could have mentioned grammarians such as A. T. Robertson and F. Blass and A. Debrunner, who classify this construction in Col 1:26 in the category of anacolutha.89 Smyth explains this grammatical category, “Anacolūthon … or grammatical inconsistency, is inadvertent or purposed deviation in the structure of a sentence by which a construction started at the beginning is not followed out consistently.”90 Blass and Debrunner explain, “In more complicated sentences an interrupting clause or sentence sometimes causes the author to forget the original construction and substitute another for it in resuming.”91 Blass and Debrunner identify the coordination of a circumstantial participle with a finite verb as one type of anacolutha and cite Col 1:26 as an example even though the participle in this verse is attributive and not circumstantial as in their other examples.92 These grammarians treat anacolutha as inconsistences or violations of the rules of grammar that are caused by defective transmission of the text or authorial mistakes due to forgetfulness, lapse of memory, oversight, or even laziness. Rather than recognizing Cole’s invented rule of a coordinating δέ connecting different clause types, however, these grammarians treat such instances including Col 1:26 as inconsistences to the established rule that this conjunction connects grammatically equivalent clause types. Rather than classifying the construction in Col 1:26 as a mistake or inconsistency, however, a better approach is first to determine whether this construction conforms to accepted rules of Greek grammar and syntax. A key to the syntax of 87 Cole,

“The Christian and Time-Keeping,” 275.  Maximilian Zerwick and Mary Grosvenor, Epistles – Apocalypse, vol. 2 of A Grammatical Analysis of the New Testament (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1979), 605. 89 BDF, § 468; A. T. Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research (Nashville: Broadman, 1934), 440. 90  Smyth, Greek Grammar, § 3004. 91  BDF, § 467. 92  Ibid., § 468. 88

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this verse is to recognize that its independent clause is the second in a compound sentence that begins in v. 24. The problem is where to construe the nominal phrase τὸ μυστήριον τὸ ἀποκεκρυμμένον ἀπὸ τῶν αἰώνων καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν γενεῶν (“the mystery hidden from ages and generations”), which occurs at the beginning of v. 26. Cole and others include this phrase within the first independent clause since the conjunction δέ, which they take to introduce the second independent clause, normally comes at the head of its clause. The juxtaposition of the accusative τὸν λόγον at the end of v. 25 however, with the nominative τὸ μυστήριον that begins v. 26 indicates a disjunction and specifies that the first independent clause that begins in 1:24 ends in v. 25 and that the second independent clause begins in v. 26 with this nominal phrase.93 This resolution of the first problem of where to separate the two independent clauses now creates a second problem. The problem now becomes how to explain the fronting of the nominal phrase τὸ μυστήριον τὸ ἀποκεκρυμμένον ἀπὸ τῶν αἰώνων καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν γενεῶν since it is outside of and precedes the independent clause within which it belongs. The Greek language offers the ability to pull an element out of a clause to emphasize that element, and the Colossian author is particularly fond of this construction. In Col 1:21–22 for example, he begins the sentence with the accusative ὑμᾶς (“you”) in v. 21, but ὑμᾶς and its modifiers are the direct object of the verb ἀποκατήλλαξεν (“he reconciled”) and therefore belong in the independent clause introduced by νυνὶ δέ at the beginning of the next verse (Col 1:22).94 Pulling this accusative direct object out of its clause and fronting it allows this author to emphasize the “you” whom Christ has reconciled, but this construction does not violate an accepted means in Greek grammar for expressing heavy emphasis. In addition to the accusative, however, this emphatic construction also occurs with the nominative, and Smyth describes both an independent nominative and a nominative in suspense. For the former, he says, “A sentence may begin with the nominative as the subject of the thought in place of an oblique case.”95 For the latter, he says, “The nominative ‘in suspense’ may stand at the head of a sentence instead of another case required by the following construction.”96 Of course, the nominative in suspense need not stand instead of another case if it is used as the subject of the sentence, and the nominal phrase τὸ μυστήριον τὸ ἀποκεκρυμμένον ἀπὸ τῶν αἰώνων καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν γενεῶν in Col 1:26 is the subject of its independent clause. Thus, the nominal phrase τὸ μυστήριον τὸ ἀποκεκρυμμένον ἀπὸ τῶν αἰώνων καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν γενεῶν is the subject of the verb ἐφανερώθη (“it was revealed”) and belongs within the second independent clause (Col 1:26) syntactically connected 93  Of course, τὸ μυστήριον may also be accusative, but its function as the subject of the verb ἐφανερώθη requires that it be nominative. 94  For an explanation of this construction, see Smyth, Greek Grammar, § 3008.f. 95  Ibid., § 940. 96  Ibid., § 3008.e.

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to the previous independent clause in vv. 24–25 by νῦν δέ. This nominal phrase has been pulled out of its clause and placed in a position of strong emphasis. Furthermore, the nominative of suspense provides an appropriate nuance of suspense for the semantic notion of mystery that has been hidden from ages and generations. The second independent clause in Col 1:26 should be translated into English as “but now the mystery that has been hidden from ages and generations has been revealed to his [God’s] holy ones.” Another key to the syntax of Col 1:26 is to recognize that the independent clause in this verse is not connected with δέ but rather with νῦν δέ, which introduces a correction or specification to what was said in the previous sentence in vv. 24–25. Smyth explains, “Adversative δέ often marks a … contrast … to something just said … in objections or corrections … in τὸ δέ, τὰ δέ on the contrary, whereas really, where a true opinion is opposed to a false one; similarly in νῦν δέ but in fact, but as the case stands.”97 Noting that adversative and copulative δέ “are not always clearly to be distinguished,” Smyth says that this conjunction is “used in connecting successive clauses or sentences which add something new or different, but not opposed to what precedes.”98 The νῦν δέ independent clause in Col 1:26 thus contrasts the holy ones’ present fuller knowledge of the hidden mystery with the time of Paul’s former sufferings to proclaim and fill up the word of God that he recalls with rejoicing. In Col 1:26, the author of Colossians neither creates a mistake nor inconsistency but rather employs an accepted grammatical and syntactical means of placing emphasis on the nominative by pulling that nominative out of the clause in which it belongs and fronting it to express heavy emphasis. The first example that Cole gives, therefore, does not support his invented rule that the coordinating conjunction δέ connects different clause types that are juxtaposed to one another, but neither does his second example. He states: In Col 3:8, the independent clause νυνὶ δὲ ἀπόθεσθε καὶ ὑμεῖς τὰ πάντα (“but now you also kill all things”), stands in contrast to the relative clauses of v. 7, ἐν οἷς καὶ ὑμεῖς περιεπατήσατέ ποτε, ὅτε ἐζῆτε ἐν τούτοις (“in which you also walked then, when you lived in them”) rather than having any direct connection with the nearest preceding independent clause in v. 5.99

Again, Cole’s second example does not use a simple δέ as in Col 1:17 but νυνὶ δέ, which, as in his first example, is resumptive and continues the compound sentence by temporally contrasting the entire independent clause in Col 3:8 with the entire independent clause in vv. 5–7. Neither of Cole’s two examples, therefore, support his invented rule that the conjunction δέ connects its clause with 97  Ibid., § 2835. See also Robertson, who comments on John 15:22, 24 and explains that “νῦν δέ gives the contrast to the preceding conditions, ‘but as it is’” (Grammar, 1147). 98  Smyth, Greek Grammar, § 2834, 2836. 99  Cole, “The Christian and Time-Keeping,” 275. I am unsure why Cole translates the verb ἀπόθεσθε with the English verb kill.

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the immediately preceding clause even when the two clauses are of different clause types. Even though Cole’s rule lacks support from textual critics, grammarians, and even his own examples, some commentators and interpreters nevertheless cite it as an established grammatical rule.100 For example, David W. Pao comments on Col 2:17b and agrees with Cole that the coordinating conjunction δέ “connects the previous relative clause with this independent clause.”101 Pao specifically rejects the alternative syntactical explanations offered by Son and me and adopts Cole’s reading instead.102 Pao states, “Various other constructions have been suggested, but the contrast between ‘the shadow of things to come’ and ‘the substance [that] belongs to Christ’ is still the least problematic reading.”103 Pao then cites Cole’s rule as evidence and explains, “While δέ is a coordinating conjunction, ‘the equivalence required between coordinating clauses is that of their position within the hierarchy of the sentence, not that of their clause type.’”104 Pao cites none of the standard Greek grammars but rather only Cole as the sole authority for this rule.105 Cole’s evidence, however, is not only insufficient to establish this rule but also unable to substantiate a preference for the traditional reading of Col 2:17 over the analyses of either Son or me. Consequently, the first part of Cole’s argumentative strategy fails to demonstrate that the traditional interpretation of Col 2:16–17 is on par with my own analysis, interpretation, and translation of these verses. Rather, my analysis offers several advantages. First, my analysis does not require the coordinating conjunction δέ to violate rules of Greek grammar by connecting unequal clauses as does the traditional interpretation. Second, my analysis does not require the unusual insertion of the verb ἐστί in the phrase τὸ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ (“the body of Christ”) to turn this phrase into a clause as in the traditional reading that “the body is Christ or is Christ’s.”106 Elsewhere in the New Testament, this phrase occurs in Rom 7:4; 1 Cor 10:16; 12:27; and Eph 4:12, but always as a phrase and never as a clause with an elided ἐστί.107 Third, my analysis does not require that the relative clause in Col 1:17 refer to the past as in the traditional reading “which things were a shadow of things to come.” The verb ἐστίν in this relative clause is present tense, not past, and explicitly states that the practices are presently a shadow of future things yet to  See also Christian Stettler, “The Opponents at Colossae,” 181 n. 77.  David W. Pao, Colossians and Philemon, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012), 187. 102 Ibid., 187 n. 25. 103  Ibid., 187. 104 Ibid. See Cole, “The Christian and Time-Keeping,” 271. 105  Hopefully, no other commentators or interpreters will cite Cole’s invented rule as an established grammatical rule without further consideration and evidence. 106 Martin, By Philosophy and Empty Deceit,” 118. 107  Son, “Colossians,” 230. 100 101

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come.108 Fourth, my analysis does not force the construction κρινέτω ἐν to mean the imposition of ordinances or practices as in the traditional understanding of Col 2:16. Elsewhere in Greek literature, this construction with “an accusative direct object designates the activity by which the direct object is condemned.”109 Rather than the opponents’ imposing their practices on the Colossians, this construction describes the practices of the Colossian Christians that their opponents are critiquing. Despite Cole’s argumentative attempts to the contrary, my grammatical and syntactical analysis, therefore, has many advantages over the traditional interpretation of these verses, and Weiss succinctly expresses these advantages by stating that my reading “does not make a conjunction link two unequal clauses, does not overlook the genitive preposition of, does not make the relative clause refer to the past, and does not understand that to judge, or to assess, is to impose observances.”110 Nevertheless, Cole concludes, “The question of the translation of Col 2:17 clearly cannot be settled on syntactical grounds alone.”111 I along with Weiss and others strongly disagree and remain convinced that the translation of this verse and of v. 16 as well not only can but also must be settled on syntactical and grammatical grounds. On these grounds, my translation informed by a careful grammatical and syntactical analysis has decided advantages over the traditional interpretation preferred by Cole. The second part of Cole’s argumentative strategy appeals to a contrast between σκιά and σῶμα to give the advantage to the traditional interpretation. Cole explains: Martin’s proposed translation of the clause τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ in Col 2:17, “but [let everyone discern] the body of Christ,” has as much syntactical validity as the traditional translation, “but the body [is] Christ’s.” However, a comparative study of Col 2:17 and Heb 10:1 shows that in Col 2:16, the phrase σκιὰ τῶν μελλόντων (“a shadow of things to come”) is pejorative, a fact that decidedly favors the traditional translation. The evidence is thus against Martin’s proposal that the practices of Col 2:16 are those of the Colossian Christians rather than those of the opponents. While these practices may have had validity at one time, this validity has ended with the advent of Christ.112

An essential component in Cole’s argument against my interpretation of Col 2:17, therefore, is his comparison of this verse with Heb 10:1. Cole begins his comparison by asserting, “‘Shadow’ (σκιὰ) stands in the same relationship to ‘image’ (εἰκών) in Heb 10:1 as it does to ‘body’ (σῶμα) in Col 2:17.”113 He offers no demonstration for the validity of his assertion, but assumes 108 Martin,

By Philosophy and Empty Deceit,” 119 n. 2. 116 n. 1. 110 Weiss, Day of Gladness, 135. 111  Cole, “The Christian and Time-Keeping,” 275. 112  Ibid., 277. 113  Ibid., 275. 109 Ibid.,

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its truth on the basis of the traditional syntactical connection of the two clauses containing σκιά and σῶμα in Col 2:17. Cole’s assertion thus involves circular reasoning since this connection, which is an essential premise of his assertion, is what he is trying to prove by his assertion. Since my syntactical analysis does not construe the independent clause containing σῶμα with the relative clause in which σκιά occurs, the εἰκόνα (“image” or “reality”) in Heb 10:1 correlates with τῶν μελλόντων (“of future realities”) in Col 2:17, not with σῶμα (“body”) as Cole assumes. Furthermore, Son’s much more extensive survey of the relationship between σκιά and σῶμα leads him to conclude: Contrary to the common assumption, therefore, the evidence from the Greco-Roman and Jewish literature does not seem sufficient enough to justify the assumption of a clear use of a σκιά-σῶμα opposition and to support the use of σῶμα in the sense of “substance” or “reality,” particularly in the Platonic dualistic sense of reality.114

Indeed, Son points out that “the word σῶμα is never employed in Paul’s letters to denote a ‘reality’ or ‘substance.’”115 The validity of Cole’s assumption, however, demands that σῶμα mean reality in Col 2:17 since Harold W. Attridge notes that the εἰκών in Heb 10:1 “is in fact used for the reality itself.”116 Hence, Cole’s assumed equivalence between “image” (εἰκών) in Heb 10:1 and “body” (σῶμα) in Col 2:17 is not persuasive, and Cole’s comparison of these two verses begins with a circular if not invalid assumption. Cole’s comparison of the term σκιά (“shadow”), which occurs in both verses, focusses on the temporal and polarized aspects of this term. Regarding the temporal aspect, he says, “Martin notes that, according to Col 2:1, the practices of v. 16 ‘are a shadow of things to come’ (present tense). Thus, he argues that ‘the text affirms a present, albeit temporary, validity to the shadow.’”117 In contrast, Cole contends, “Heb 10:1 affirms that the law is ‘a shadow of good things to come,’ despite the fact that the Epistle to the Hebrews provides no argument for the continued validity of the shadow.”118 Cole asserts, “There is no reason to believe that the situation should be any different with the use of the present tense in Col 2:17.”119 Cole, however, overlooks a very significant distinction between the temporal perspective of this verse and Heb 10:1 that provides a very good reason for concluding that the situation is different in this verse. Regarding Heb 10:1, Cole mistranslates the verse as saying that “the law is ‘a shadow of good things to come.’” The participle ἔχων, however, means that 114 Son,

“Colossians,” 226–227.  Ibid., 230. 116 Harold W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews: A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1989), 270. 117  Cole, “The Christian and Time-Keeping,” 276. 118  Ibid. 119  Ibid., 277. 115

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the law has or contains a shadow of future good things and not that it itself is a shadow of these things.120 This distinction is important, for not all stipulations or aspects of the Law for the author of Hebrews are a shadow but rather only the sacrificial system specified by this verse. This verse then implies that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is what casts this shadow, and this verse is part of the larger argument that Jesus’ sacrifice is superior to the sacrificial system in the Law since his sacrifice is once and for all while the sacrifices prescribed by the Law had to be repeated. In Heb 10:1, therefore, the futurity of the good things to come is from the perspective of the Mosaic Law rather than from the perspective of the recipients of this letter. Attridge comments, “Hence, the futurity of the ‘good things’ is defined primarily in relationship to the Law and not to the present condition of the addressees.”121 In Heb 10:1, therefore, the good things to come refer to Christ’s sacrifice, which is a future event relative to the Law but a past event relative to the present situation of the addressees. The argument in Colossians, however, is very different from that in Hebrews and focusses not on the Law but rather on the present condition of the addressees, who are being critiqued for present practices whether theirs as in my interpretation or the opponents’ as in the traditional interpretation, and these practices are, not have, a shadow of future realities. Consequently, these future realities cannot refer to past events such as Jesus’ passion as Cole and others contend but rather to eschatological events yet to be. Attributing these practices to the opponents, however, would bestow eschatological legitimacy on these practices and detract from the argument in Colossians against these opponents and their critique. Rather than supporting Cole’s argument, therefore, the temporal aspect of the term σκιά in Col 2:17 and Heb 10:1 provides evidence to the contrary of what he is attempting to prove. Cole’s focus on the polarized aspect of the σκιά-σῶμα pairing in his argument is also problematic because he equivocates on the term inferior. Cole states, “In Heb 10:1, the shadow is clearly portrayed as inferior to the image or reality it represents.”122 I agree with this statement since the inferior/superior contrast is central to the argument of Hebrews. From this statement, however, Cole concludes, “A comparative study of Col 2:17 and Heb 10:1 shows that in Col 2:16 the phrase σκιὰ τῶν μελλόντων (“a shadow of things to come”) is pejorative, a fact that decidedly favors the traditional translation.”123 Cole’s argument subtly shifts from inferior in his premise to pejorative in his conclusion without any demonstration that the term inferior carries such a negative connotation. 120  Attridge correctly translates that “the Law has a shadow of the good things to come” (Hebrews, 267). 121  Ibid., 269. 122  Cole, “The Christian and Time-Keeping,” 275–276. 123  Ibid., 277.

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While this term may attribute a pejorative or negative nuance as Cole’s conclusion implies, it does not necessarily do so. Standhartinger explains: Allerdings ist σκιά als Schlagwort der Erkenntnistheorie doppeldeutig. Es kann Schatten sowohl im Sinne von Trugbild als auch im Sinne von prolongierendes Abbild des Eigentlichen bedeuten. In V. 17 scheint mir die erstere Bedeutung ausgeschlossen, denn der vorausreichende Schatten des kommenden Leibes Christi kann kaum dessen Trugbild sein, sondern ist sein Angeld.124

In contrast to Cole’s pejorative assessment of σκιά in Col 2:16, Standhartinger reasonably concludes that the term is used with a positive nuance in this verse. Furthermore, Son investigates the σκιά-σῶμα pairing in many other writings and not just Hebrews as Cole does. Regarding Philo’s use of this pair, Son concludes: It is true that more value is given to the second word [σῶμα], and in this sense one may say that a certain contrast exists between the two words in each pair. The contrast is, however, not clear cut because the first word [σκιά] also has a positive function as it points forward to the second word. The relationship between the two words in each pair, therefore, seems more analogous rather than contrasting: The letters, shadows, and copies are produced by the oracles, bodies, and originals respectively, and as such they carry the image of and point forward to their respective counterparts, which are, for Philo, the allegorical meaning.125

After surveying other authors, Son further concludes, “There are a very limited number of instances in ancient literature where σκιά and σῶμα are clearly juxtaposed. … Even in these instances, σκιά is seldom directly paired up with σῶμα or used in a completely negative sense.”126 In regard to Hebrews in particular, Son concludes, “Although the word ‘shadow’ … may allude to … inferiority … it is … used in a preliminary rather than in a negative sense.”127 Therefore, Cole’s equivocation on the term inferior to attribute a negative connotation to σκιά does not allow for a valid argument favoring the traditional translation of Col 2:17 over mine and neither does his focus on the temporal aspect of this term even though many scholars cite Cole’s study as a sufficient reason for rejecting my translation of this verse.128 For example, Edwin Reynolds 124  Standhartinger, Studien, 187. For a similar view, see also Son, “Colossians,” 225; Allen, “Post-Supersessionist Reading,” 138–144; and David H. Stern, Jewish New Testament Commentary: A Companion Volume to the Jewish New Testament (Clarksville, MD: Jewish New Testament Publications, 1992), 611. Dübbers, however, takes the opposite position (Christologie, 269 n. 314), and scholars are divided over whether σκιά in Col 2:17 carries a positive or negative connotation. After considering the arguments, I agree with Standhartinger, Stern, and those who conclude that a positive connotation of this term in this verse is more consonant with all the evidence. 125 Son, “Colossians,” 225. See also Sumney, Colossians, 152. 126  Son, “Colossians,” 226. 127  Ibid., 228. 128 In addition to the examples discussed, see also John P. Heil, Colossians: Encouragement to Walk in All Wisdom as Holy Ones in Christ, SBLECL 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 122 n. 50.

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states, “Cole … points out that Troy Martin’s proposed translation of v. 17 … ignores the fact that σκιὰ τῶν μελλόντων is pejorative, as shown by a comparative study of Col 2:17 and Heb 10:1.”129 Another example is Christian Stettler, who concludes, “It is the most natural and straightforward solution to read Col 2:16–17a as referring to the Torah of Moses. Those who ‘condemn’ the Colossian Christians must then be local Torah-observant Jews.”130 If the practices mentioned in these verses, however, are those of the Colossian Christians, then a major piece of evidence for Stettler’s Jewish view vanishes as he himself realizes. After describing my syntactical analysis and translation, he states, “For a good refutation of this view, see H. R. Cole.”131 Hopefully, my explanation of why Cole’s arguments are not persuasive will encourage Reynolds, Stettler, and other scholars to scrutinize Cole’s arguments more closely and to take another look at the reasons for my translation of Col 2:16–17 rather than simply citing Cole to reject my syntactical analysis and interpretation of these verses. Of course, much is at stake in the translation of these verses for identifying the opponents and for describing the nature of the opposition against the Colossian Christians. My identification of the Colossian opponents as Cynics and the opposition as a Cynic critique motivates some to reject my interpretation of these verses as evidence for such an identification and critique. The reception history of my article “But Let Everyone Discern the Body of Christ” as well as my articles on “The Scythian Perspective” and “Judeo-Christian Time-keeping Schemes” are thus caught up in the reception history of my identification of the Colossian opponents as Cynics. In my monograph By Philosophy and Empty Deceit, I integrate these articles into a sustained and thorough argument for this identification, and a reception history of these articles would be incomplete without some attention to the reception of my monograph and my Cynic identification of the Colossian opponents. Richard E. DeMaris systematizes discussions of these opponents into five different approaches including Jewish Gnosticism, Gnostic Judaism, Mystical Judaism, Hellenistic Syncretism, and Hellenistic Philosophy.132 Others reduce the categories to three by collapsing DeMaris’ first three into a single Jewish category.133 Robert M. Royalty explains: 129  Edwin Reynolds, “‘Let No One Judge You’: Col 2:16–17 in Exegetical Perspective,” Journal of the Adventist Theological Society 20.1–2 (2009): 208–222, here 216 n. 34. 130  Stettler, “Opponents,” 182. 131  Ibid., 181 n. 77. 132 Richard E. DeMaris, The Colossian Controversy: Wisdom and Dispute at Colossae, JSNTSup 96 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994), 38–39. 133  See Sumney, “Studying Paul’s Opponents,” 29; and Michael Sokupa, “The Calendric Elements in Colossians 2:16 in Light of the Ongoing Debate on the Opponents,” Neot 46 (2012): 172–189, here 173. Of course, some deny the presence of opponents in Colossae altogether or think the interpretive focus on opponents is unwarranted. For the former see Morna D. Hooker, “Were There False Teachers in Colossae?” in Christ and the Spirit in the New Testament, ed.

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First, a number of scholars have located the Colossian opponents in ascetic-mystical strands of ancient Judaism. … Second, several scholars have placed the opponents in the context of Anatolian syncretistic religious culture. … Third, scholars … attach the opponents in the letter to a specific Greco-Roman philosophical school. These different approaches, with their attendant sets of comparative texts, represent the major areas of research on the Colossian errorists.134

In either the five or three categorization schemes, scholars appropriately place my Cynic identification of the opponents in the Hellenistic philosophy category, often along with the Pythagorean and Middle Platonism proposals by Eduard Schweitzer and DeMaris respectively.135 Scholars who evaluate these proposals for identifying the opponents frequently recognize that my Cynic identification relies on a more careful grammatical and syntactical analysis of the text than do other proposals.136 Michael Sokupa observes, “Martin has been commended, even by those who disagree with him, for the focus he has demonstrated on the text using a grammatical and synBarnabas Lindars and Stephen S. Smalley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 315–331. For the latter see Walter Bujard, Stilanalytische Untersuchungen zum Kolosserbrief als Beitrag zur Methodik von Sprachvergleiche, SUNT 11 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973), 129, 229; Thomas H. Olbricht, “The Stoicheia and the Rhetoric of Colossians: Then and Now,” in Rhetoric, Scripture and Theology: Essays from the 1994 Pretoria Conference, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Thomas H. Olbricht, JSNTSup 131 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 308–328, esp. 310–312; and Jeffrey Peterson, “‘The Circumcision of the Christ’: The Significance of Baptism in Colossians and the Churches of the Restoration,” ResQ 43 (2001): 65–77. On pp. 70–71, Peterson states, “From the numerous reconstructions of ‘the Colossian heresy’ in the secondary literature, we might scarcely guess that the explicitly polemical passages of the letter total only ten verses out of ninety-five, all of them found within chapter 2. To construe the letter in its entirety as polemical, these clear references to dangerous teaching have to be filled out with conclusions derived from a ‘mirror reading’ of passages that are not clearly polemical; the most optimistic verdict that can be pronounced over such adventurous interpretations is ‘not proven.’” 134  Robert M. Royalty, “Dwelling on Visions: On the Nature of the So-called ‘Colossians Heresy,’” Bib 83 (2002): 329–357, here 330. 135 DeMaris, Colossian Controversy, passim; Eduard Schweitzer, “Christianity of the Circumcised and Judaism of the Uncircumcised: The Background of Matthew and Colossians,” in Jews, Greeks, and Christians, ed. R. Hamerton-Kelly and Robin Scroggs (Leiden: Brill, 1076), 245–260, here 255; idem, “Die ‘Elemente der Welt’ Gal 4,3.9; Kol 2,8.20), in Verborum Veritas: Festschrift für Gustav Stahlin, ed. O. Bocher and K. Haacker (Wuppertal: Theologischer Verlag Brockhaus, 1970), 245–259; idem, “Slaves of the Elements and Worshipers of Angels: Gal 4.3, 9 and Col 2.8, 18, 20,” JBL 107 (1988): 455–468; idem, The Letter to the Colossians: A Commentary, trans., Andrew Chester (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1982), 125–134. For examples of the discussion of our three views in the philosophical category, see Sumney, “Studying Paul’s Opponents,” 31; Michael F. Bird, Colossians and Philemon: A New Covenant Commentary, New Covenant Commentary Series (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2009), 17; and Christian Stettler, Der Kolosserhymnus: Untersuchungen zu Form, traditionsgeschichtlichem Hintergrund und Aussage von Kol 1,15–20, WUNT 2.131 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 58–59. 136 Troy W. Martin and Todd D. Still, “Colossians,” in The Blackwell Companion to the New Testament, ed. David E. Aune (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 489–503, here 490–491.

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tactical approach.”137 Bevere likewise comments, “In presenting Colossians as an argument against Cynic critique, Troy Martin presents a unique point of view” and “is to be commended for his precise analysis of vocabulary and syntax of the pertinent texts.”138 Similarly, Sumney characterizes my grammatical and syntactical analysis as rigorous and states that I argue on “solid grounds.”139 I appreciate these scholars’ recognizing the grammatical and syntactical advantage of my Cynic identification over other proposals. Still other scholars recognize various strengths of my Cynic identification for explaining specific passages of Colossians. For example, Talbert comments on Col 2:21 and states: These regulations, of course, could reflect the ritual practices of more than one of the ancient religions or philosophies. For example, Cynics practice an extreme asceticism that not only forbade eating and drinking but also touching or handling commodities that were not produced naturally. Such commodities passed away. Goods produced naturally by the processes of nature, however, were durable. Water, for example, will not perish with consumption but wine will because it is not produced naturally (T. Martin 1996, 45, 65). … This is the point at which the Cynic hypothesis is strongest.140

Even though he recognizes this strength, Talbert nevertheless is not persuaded by my analysis of Col 2:16–17 and understands the references to the temporal scheme and eating and drinking as pointing to some type of Jewish philosophy advocated by the opponents. Bevere recognizes that my Cynic identification of the Colossian opponents is one of the few that gives “detailed attention to the paraenesis and its place in the argument of the letter, and how it assists in revealing the target of the letter to the Colossians.”141 He criticizes other studies for leaving “the paraenesis of Colossian … out of the discussion … on the nature of the Colossian problem.”142 Bevere then comments, “The exceptions to this are Martin who devotes a short chapter to the paraenesis at the end of his monograph, Arnold,… and Schweizer.”143 Bevere explains: Martin argues that the Haustafel is a culture-affirming response to a culture-denying Cynicism. If indeed, Colossians is a response to Cynic critique, the Haustafel would clearly be related to the Colossian philosophy and germane to the argument of the letter.144

137 Sokupa,

“Calendric Elements,” 175. Sharing the Inheritance, 42. 139 Sumney, “Studying Paul’s Opponents,” 51–52. 140  Charles H. Talbert, Ephesians and Colossians, Paideia Commentaries on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 221–222. 141 Bevere, Sharing the Inheritance, 46. 142  Ibid. 143 Ibid. 144  Ibid., 239. 138 Bevere,

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Bevere thus admits that my Cynic identification integrates the polemical portion of the letter in Col 2:16–23 with the Haustafel and the paraenesis in a way that other studies do not, but he nonetheless concludes, “The problem with Martin’s argument, however, remains its tangential connection to the rest of Colossians. Even though he also disagrees with my Cynic identification of the opponents, Hans Hübner nevertheless praises my understanding of Cynicism and comments on Chapter 2 of my monograph: In diesem Kap. ist es ihm in ausgezeichneter Weise gelungen, die Kyniker zu beschreiben. Man kann einem Studenten besten Gewissens raten, sich aufgrund dieser Beschreibung ein konkretes und lebendiges Bild der kynischen Bewegung anzueignen. Vor allem die Anmerkungen zitieren in guter Auswahl aus den antiken Quellen.145

Hübner continues: Recht hat M[artin] allerdings, wenn er mit der Möglichkeit rechnet, daß dort, wohin der Kol gelangen soll, Kyniker anzutreffen sind. … Und ein gewisses Wahrheitsmoment eignet auch seiner Überlegung, daß die an die Kyniker gerichtete Aufforderung, nur da zu betteln, wo man ihnen bereitwillig gibt, sie bewegen konnte, auch bei Christen zu betteln, die ja gemäß Lk 6,30 38 handeln sollen.146

Hübner further comments: Wieder zeigt der Autor, daß er sich gut im Kynismus auskennt. … Er verweist immer wieder auf richtige Sachverhalte, er kennt die kynische Philosophie in der Regel recht gut … er immer wieder in der Darstellung der kynischen Philosophie gängige Fehlurteile korrigiert, z Β wenn er darauf insistiert, daß der Kynismus von seinem Wesen her keine atheistische Philosophie ist.147

He concludes, “Man liest das gut geschriebene Buch mit großem Interesse, man kann aus ihm viel lernen … aber die Grundthese des Autors ist leider falsch.148” Despite his high praise for my understanding and description of Cynic Philosophy, Hübner nevertheless rejects my Cynic identification of the Colossian opponents. Scholars thus point to various strengths of my Cynic identification, and while some are unconvinced by my arguments, others are. For example, Brian Allen remarks, “Troy Martin, who proposes that the ascetic critics are of a Cynic philosophy, makes a convincing case that a Cynic would critique practices that involved drinking wine and enjoying festive foods centered on a specific timekeeping system.”149 He further remarks: 145  Hans Hübner, “Die Diskussion um die deuteropaulinischen Briefe seit 1970 I. Der Kolosserbrief (II),” TRu N. S. 68.4 (2003): 395–440, here 409. 146 Ibid. 147  Ibid., 410–411. 148 Ibid., 411. 149  Allen, “Post-Supersessionist Reading,” 138.

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Martin explains that the “anticipation of the Parousia causes serious consternation for the Cynic who pities the deluded Christian’s eating and drinking to proclaim their Lord’s death until He returns. … This vain hope in the Parousia … would prompt a stern, pejorative judgment against Christian eating and drinking.”150

Allen concludes, “Martin provides a welcome robust alternative to understanding who the Colossian opponents were. It is probable that, instead of being Jewish legalists, the critics at Colossae held a Cynic worldview.”151 Another example is Peter Nathan, who concludes, “More parallels can be drawn to link the Cynics to the Colossians. … But based on a careful review of the evidence now available, it does seem entirely plausible that the persecution the Colossian church faced was from Cynics.”152 In spite of this agreement with my Cynic identification of the opponents, Sokupa nevertheless observes that my “method used to arrive at the conclusion that the Colossians are … facing judgment from the Cynics is applauded by many, but the conclusions are hardly accepted by scholars.”153 One hindrance to the scholarly evaluation of my Cynic identification is the lack of a thorough understanding of Cynic philosophy. Hübner poses a crucial question when he asks, “Wie viele Theologen sind wirklich mit dem Kynismus vertraut?”154 Lacking such an understanding, many scholars rely on the critical review of my monograph by F. Gerald Downing, whom they deem to be an expert on Cynicism.155 In his review, Downing comments that the Cynic reconstructed in my monograph is “a figure shaped to fit the Colossian opponent(s), even if with more initial justification than have the ‘photo-fit’ reconstructions of others.”156 Downing’s critique is often voiced by scholars. For example, Royalty states, “F. G. Downing critiques Martin’s tendency to shape Cynicism to fit the Colossian opposition.”157 Wilson also points to this review and notes that Downing’s critique is “the more telling in that it comes from the author of Cynics, Paul and the Pauline Churches.”158 150 Ibid.

151 Ibid.,

140.  Peter Nathan, “A Mysterious Case of Persecution: Paul and the Colossians’ Critics,” Religion and Spirituality (Summer 2012), URL: http://www.vision.org/visionmedia/religionand-spirituality-apostle-paul-colossians/57889.aspx. 153 Sokupa, “Calendric Elements,” 175. 154  Hübner, “Diskussion,” 411. 155  F. Gerald Downing, “Review: By Philosophy and Empty Deceit: Colossians as Response to a Cynic Critique by Troy W. Martin,” JBL 117 (1998): 542–544. 156 Ibid., 543. See also F. Gerald Downing, Cynics, Paul and the Pauline Churches: Cynics and Christian Origins II (London: Routledge, 1988), 93 n. 30. Downing states that I create my “own ideal Cynic to match the issues in the epistle.” 157 Royalty, “Dwelling on Visions,” 342 n. 53. See also Stettler, “Opponents,” 178 n. 57; and Smith, Heavenly Perspective, 30. Smith comments, “It appears that the Cynic who is presented by Martin is stylized to fit the specific situation in Colossians.” 158 R. McL. Wilson, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Colossians and Philemon, ICC (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 54 n. 107. 152

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To support his critique, Downing states, “No surviving Cynic text seems to use the key terms Colossians ascribes to this supposed Cynic in the same way – or at all.”159 Smith follows Downing and states that “there is a lack of specifically Cynic vocabulary” in Colossians.160 Specifically, Smith notes, “The words that are normally associated with a Cynic’s public speech include πάθεια, ἀσκῆσις, αὐτάρκεια, ἐλευθερία, ἡδονή, κύων, παρρησία and πόνος.”161 This criticism would be more to the point if I were proposing that a Cynic author wrote Colossians, but I am not. I demonstrate throughout my monograph that the Christian author of Colossians responds to Cynic concepts and practices referenced by many of these Cynic terms. On the opposite side, Downing notes that “the terms outsiders use in (critical) accounts of Cynicism” such as “anaideia” and “apatheia” are missing in Colossians, and Downing finds it “a little odd that this writer to the Colossian congregation opposes a Cynic infiltrator without using any of the traditional polemical commonplaces.”162 I do not, however, consider it at all odd that a Christian author interested in the conversion of others would avoid the usual terms of insult and invective heaped upon Cynics. This author offers a substantive response to the Cynic critique of the Colossian Christians that moves beyond terms of insult and invective to the real differences between Christian theology and practice and the views and training advocated by Cynics. While Downing and others criticize my Cynic identification for lacking terms used by Cynics and their detractors, Sumney and others in contrast criticize my identification for relying too much and too quickly on terms common to Colossians and Cynicism.163 Commenting on the identification of the Colossian opponents by Clinton Arnold and me, Sumney states: These two studies make similar moves methodologically. … Both allow reconstructions of movements they find in the culture to determine prematurely their understandings of the language of Colossians … by means of vocabulary parallels between Colossians and the group they use to identify the opponents.164

Sumney further states: More importantly methodologically, Martin allows the terminology parallels he finds to exercise more influence than is sound. His level use of both parallels and the reconstruction of Cynic thought is an intentional methodological decision. But this decision means that Cynic language and teaching determine the meaning of the text of Colossians at a very early stage.165 159 Downing,

Review,” 543. Heavenly Perspective, 30. 161  Ibid., 30 n. 71. 162 Downing, “Review,” 543–544. 163  Jerry L. Sumney, ‘Servants of Satan’, ‘False Brothers’ and Other Opponents of Paul, JSNTSup 188 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 189–190. 164  Sumney, “Studying Paul’s Opponents,” 51. 165  Ibid., 52. 160 Smith,

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Sumney concludes, “The basic methodological problem is that the reconstruction of the Cynics determines the meaning of the texts of Colossians.166 Sumney sees two basic methodological problems with my Cynic identification of the opponents. First, he states that I allow my Cynic identification of the opponents to “determine the meaning of the text of Colossians at a very early stage.” While the published results of my research certainly give this impression, my investigation of the opponents followed Sumney’s own method, which “demands that the primary information about the opponents be supplied from Colossians itself.”167 I began my investigation by carefully translating the text of Colossians and mapping the ambiguities in the text when words could have more than one meaning and when phrases, clauses, and sentences in the text could have more than one interpretation. This initial approach led me to discover that the calendar and eating practices in Col 2:16–17, for example, were not necessarily those of the opponents as almost everyone had concluded prior to my study but rather could be and likely were those of the Colossian Christians. I then used this map of the ambiguities in the text as a guide to evaluate various groups and movements that could potentially account for the Colossian opposition. Some groups fit some of the characteristics but eventually had to be excluded because they could not account for every description of the opposition in the text no matter which way a word, phrase, or clause in the text was interpreted. After much trial and error, I came to the Cynics and was able to work their thinking and practices through the text of Colossians while admittedly having to make certain exegetical decisions about ambiguous terms or passages such as Col 2:16–17. In my investigation, the Cynics were the only group able to account for all the characteristics of the opponents described in the text of Colossians itself no matter which way an ambiguity of the text was resolved. When I published my monograph and reported the results of this investigation, I did not describe all the failed attempts but rather focused on showing how a Cynic critique is able to explain the whole text of Colossians. I can therefore understand Sumney’s perception that my Cynic identification of the opponents seems to control the exegesis “at a very early stage,” but his perception does not reflect the actual method and approach I used to identify the opponents and to interpret Colossians. Actually, I was dismayed when the results of my investigation identified the Cynics as the most fitting opponents because I was aware of others such as Burton L. Mack, John Dominic Crossan, and F. Gerald Downing, who interpreted the New Testament against the background of Cynicism, and I disagreed with their work as lacking a clear description of what constituted Cynicism.168 In  Ibid., 53.  Martin, By Philosophy and Empty Deceit, 20. See Jerry L. Sumney, “Those Who ‘Pass Judgment’: The Identity of the Opponents in Colossians,” Bib 74 (1993): 366–388, here 366. 168  For a discussion of the works of these scholars and those who criticize their Cynic approach, see Martin, By Philosophy and Empty Deceit, 15–16. I was further dismayed when Down166 167

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my own work, I tried to avoid this deficiency by relying upon ancient sources and especially primary Cynic sources such as the Cynic Epistles for my understanding of Cynicism. I sought to explain not just the surface expressions of Cynicism, but what made this philosophy “tick” and the grounds upon which Cynics developed their thought and practice. I concluded that the essence of Cynicism was the attempt to realize human life as it was during the age of Chronos before Zeus and his brothers ruined paradise by their greed and ambition.169 I am gratified that Hübner thinks my method succeeded in understanding the essence of Cynicism, and my response to the first problem Sumney sees with my method is that I did not prefer or choose the Cynics as the opponents first or even early on in my investigation but rather thoroughly analyzed and carefully translated the text of Colossians first as the basis for making the Cynic identification.170 Sumney’s second methodological problem with my Cynic identification of the opponents is that I allow my reconstruction to determine the interpretation of the text. I recognize this problem not only with my own interpretation of Colossians but also with every other interpretation, including Sumney’s. His identification of the Colossian opponents as ascetic visionaries requires him to interpret the text in specific ways consonant with his reconstruction.171 For example, he asserts that “the most certain characteristics” of the opponents are “mild asceticism and attaining visions,” but his assertion demands a certain translation of Col 2:18 and especially of θρησκείᾳ τῶν ἀγγέλων ἃ ἑόρακεν ἐμβατεύων, which admits of other renderings not supportive of his ascetic-visionary reconstruction.172 Sumney accuses me and others of “mirror-reading,” but his own interpretation does not avoid this charge.173 Since all of us have only the text of Colossians with which to reconstruct the situation that prompted the writing of the letter, some type of mirror-reading is inevitable, and we only have control of which type of mirror-reading we shall employ. Sumney and others who adopt syncretistic reconstructions of the opponents are able to tailor the opponents to fit how these scholars translate the text of Colossians, but “an adequate reconstruction should serve as an external corroboration to the exegesis of the text.”174 Mirror-readings that do not identify a recognized group from antiquity lack objective control and ing reviewed my work, for I knew that his review would primarily reflect our disagreement over Cynicism rather than a balanced evaluation of my arguments for the Cynic identification of the Colossian opponents. 169  Troy W. Martin, “The Chronos Myth in Cynic Philosophy,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 38 (1997): 85–108. 170  Hübner, “Diskussion,” 406–411. 171  See Sumney, Colossians, passim; idem, “Those Who ‘Pass Judgment,’” 366–388; and idem, Servants of Satan, 188–200. 172  Sumney, “Studying Paul’s Opponents,” 58. 173  Sumney, Colossians, 130 n. 4. 174  Martin, By Philosophy and Empty Deceit, 24.

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cannot be verified in the same way as mirror-readings such as my own that can be checked by the objective socio-historical analogue of a group known apart from the text of Colossians.175 After summarizing the beliefs and practices of the opponents that I draw from “mirror-reading” the text of Colossians, Sumney states, “While these elements may not appear elsewhere combined as they are in Cynic thought, the various elements that Martin identifies as Cynic are, in fact, found elsewhere. … Still, there are distinctive things about the Cynic combination of these elements.”176 I agree that many of the characteristics of the opponents that I draw from the text of Colossians may be found elsewhere, but only Cynicism provides a combination for all of them in a coherent system of thought and practice that accounts for everything in the Colossian letter. Identifying this specific group as the opponents thus provides checks and balances to the mirror-reading and prevents it from being an imaginative reconstruction without any controls. Those such as Downing may claim that some characteristic of the opponents described in the text of Colossians does not fit the Cynics, but either their understanding of Cynicism is deficient, in my opinion, or their translation of the text of Colossians is not based on an adequate syntactical and grammatical analysis of the text. After carefully considering the objections others have of my Cynic identification of the Colossian opponents, I remain convinced that this identification has decided advantages over the proposals of others and especially over the traditional rendering and interpretation of Col 2:16–17 and of the Scythian/barbarian contrast in Col 3:11 as well. I hope that others will no longer find my Cynic identification of the opponents a hindrance to accepting my analysis and translation of these verses.

 Ibid., 15, 23–25.  Sumney, “Studying Paul’s Opponents,” 52.

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XII. Tasting the Eucharistic Lord as Usable (1 Peter 2:3)* 1. Introduction The expression “tasting the Lord” in 1 Pet 2:3 appears rather odd to modern readers even though the Petrine author is paraphrasing Ps 33:9 LXX. This expression occurs in a highly metaphorical sentence (1 Pet 2:1–3) filled with other apparent oddities in which Christians are addressed ὡς ἀρτιγέννητα βρέφη (“as newborn babies”) and exhorted τὸ λογικὸν ἄδολον γάλα ἐπιποθήσατε (“yearn for the logical, undiluted milk”).1 Not surprisingly, Petrine commentators differ significantly in their explanations about how to understand the Petrine author and how his original readers may have understood this sentence and especially what the expression “tasting the Lord” may have signified to them.

2. Scholarly Explanations of “Tasting the Lord” Some Petrine commentators concentrate on the newness of newborn babies in this sentence and conclude that the recipients of this letter are new converts or recently baptized.2 Others wonder how to understand the adjective λογικόν (“logical”) when applied to milk.3 A few commentators and translators even render this adjective as “spiritual” even though the Petrine author does not write πνευματικόν (“spiritual”) as this translation would require but rather λογικόν

* A version of this essay was presented at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Region of the Society of Biblical Literature in Bourbonnais, IL on February 7, 2015. 1  For a discussion of this sentence in the light of modern metaphorical theory, see Troy W. Martin, “Christians as Babies: Metaphorical Reality in 1 Peter,” in Reading 1–2 Peter and Jude: A Resource for Students, ed. Eric F. Mason and Troy W. Martin, SBLRBS 77 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014), 99–112. 2 For the former position, see J. N. D. Kelly, A Commentary on the Epistles of Peter and Jude, Black’s New Testament Commentaries, (London: Black, 1969; repr., Thornapple Commentaries; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1982), 84. For the latter, see M. E. Boismard, “Une liturgie baptismale dans la Prima Petri,” RB 63 (1956): 182–208, here 196. 3  For example, Paul J. Achtemeier, 1 Peter: A Commentary on First Peter, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 146–147.

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(“logical”).4 Still others wonder what the milk – and in particular the ἄδολον (“undiluted”) milk – signify and what these recipients are instructed to desire and whether the milk refers to the word of God or in a more general sense to Christ himself or in particular to the Eucharistic food.5 Indeed, most modern commentators understand the milk as the word of God and the entire sentence including “tasting the Lord” as in some way related to this word. A few of these interpreters and translators want to leave no doubt about the reference of milk to the word of God and render λογικὸν … γάλα (“logical milk”) as “milk of the word” even though Peter does not write γάλα τοῦ λόγου (“milk of the word”) and such a rendering of λογικόν is highly unusual if not unprecedented.6 Commenting on this phrase, F. J. A. Hort says flatly that “milk of the word” is simply an “impossible” translation.7 Furthermore, the negative connotations of milk as word in 1 Cor 3:1–3 and Heb 5:12 and 6:2 as well as the mapping of milk to elementary instruction or initial catechesis are lacking in the context of 1 Pet 2:2.8 Thus, the reference of milk to the word of God in 1 Pet 2:2 is not as conclusive as some commentators and translations assume. In her commentary, Karen H. Jobes notes: The widespread consensus among modern interpreters that the pure spiritual milk of 2:2 is the word of God may seem too strong to question, much less abandon. However, going back at least as far as Calvin, a few dissenters have seen in the metaphor a wider view of God’s life-sustaining grace in Christ.9

4  For examples, see the NAB; RV; RSV; NEB; and NIV as well as Leonhard Goppelt, A Commentary on 1 Peter, trans., John E. Alsup (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 131 n. 47; and Rudolph Knopf, Die Briefe Petri und Judä, 7th ed., KEK 12 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1912), 86. 5  For an understanding of the milk as the word of God, see Ernst Kühl, Die Briefe Petri und Judae, 6th ed., KEK 12 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1897), 135–136; as well as Goppelt, 1 Peter, 131; Kelly, Commentary, 84–85; and Achtemeier, 1 Peter, 147–148. For the general use of milk in reference to Christ himself, see Knopf, Die Briefe, 86–87; F. J. A.  Hort, The First Epistle of St Peter I.1 – II.17: The Greek Text with Introductory Lecture, Commentary, and Additional Notes (London: Macmillan, 1898), 102; and Francis W. Beare, The First Epistle of Peter: The Greek Text with Introduction and Notes, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1970), 90. See also the discussions by J. Ramsey Michaels, 1 Peter, WBC 49 (Waco, TX: Word, 1988), 86–88; and Karen H. Jobes, 1 Peter, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 140–141. For the interpretation of milk as a reference to the eucharistic food, see Ernst Lohmeyer, “Das Mahl in der ältesten Christenheit,” TRu 9 (1937): 273–312, here 296. See also the discussions by Edward G. Selwyn, The First Epistle of St. Peter: The Greek Text with Introduction, Notes, and Essays, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1947; repr. Thornapple Commentaries; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1981), 157; and Beare, First Epistle of Peter, 90. 6  Examples of this rendering include the AV and Kelly, Commentary, 84–85. See also Panagiōtēs N. Trempelas, Ὑπόμνημα εἰς τὴν πρὸς Ἐβραίους καὶ τὰς ἑπτὰ Καθολικάς (Athens: Adelphotēs Theologōn ē Zōē, 1941), 260. 7  Hort, Epistle of St Peter, 100. 8  Kühl, Die Briefe, 135. 9  Jobes, 1 Peter, 141.

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As Jobes demonstrates, the problem of mapping the metaphor of the milk in 1 Pet 2:2 remains, and this mapping also affects the understanding of the other metaphors in this sentence and especially of the odd expression “tasting the Lord” in 1 Pet 2:3. Even though Petrine commentators differ significantly in their explanations of the metaphorical sentence in 1 Pet 2:1–3, all agree that the metaphors have something to do with nutrition. Surprisingly, however, Petrine commentators and interpreters do not give sustained attention to ancient nutritional theory as the source domain for the metaphors in this sentence. An investigation of ancient nutritional theories and the role that taste plays in these theories provide important clues enabling a modern reader to understand how the Petrine author and his ancient readers may have understood this sentence. Such an investigation shows that a eucharistic reading of 1 Pet 2:1–3 fits these theories better than any other reading even though this understanding of 1 Pet 2:1–3 is not represented as prominently in the exegetical tradition as are other readings. Indeed, understanding the metaphorical sentence in 1 Pet 2:1–3 in reference to the eucharistic practices of the Petrine author and his audience makes the most sense of the ancient source domains of nutrition in general, infant nutrition in particular, and the role that taste plays in nutrition.10 The Petrine author assumes that his readers are familiar with these theories and with the function of taste and that they are capable of mapping the metaphors he uses in 1 Pet 2:1–3. A modern reader would do well therefore to investigate these assumptions as a way of understanding how the Petrine author and his readers may have read and mapped the metaphors in this sentence. The following investigation indicates that a eucharistic reading of the metaphorical sentence in 1 Pet 2:1–3 makes the most sense of the nutritional source domains of these metaphors and of tasting the Lord as “usable.”

3. General Nutritional Theory The sentence containing the expression “tasting the Lord” begins with the participle ἀποθέμενοι (“after you reject”), which is followed by a vice list. Many commentators relate this participle to a clothing metaphor and in particular to the baptismal practice of removing old clothing before the sacrament and putting on new clothes afterward.11 In the Petrine author’s faith tradition, this 10 This line of interpretation was first suggested to me by Edward Englebrecht, “God’s Milk: An Orthodox Confession of the Eucharist” (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Region of the Society of Biblical Literature, Wheaton College, Naperville, IL, 1997), 1–24. 11  Ernest Best, 1 Peter, NCBC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), 96; Goppelt, 1 Peter, 128; Beare, First Epistle of Peter, 87; Peter H. Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, NICNT (Grand

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verb is indeed used to describe believers as having put off the vices of their old life as they would an old garment (Rom 13:12; Eph 4:22, 25; Col 3:8; Jas 1:21).12 Rather than a clothing metaphor, however, this participle (ἀποθέμενοι) belongs more appropriately to the nutritional metaphor that the Petrine author develops in 1 Pet 2:1–3. A basic principle of ancient nutritional theory is that like attracts like and conversely that unlike repels unlike. To prove this nutritional principle, the ancients use the analogy of the loadstone or magnet that attracts iron objects similar to itself but nothing else (Galen, Nat. fac. 3.15).13 Anaxagoras and other preformationists hold that all parts of the body including bone, tissue, and blood already exist as minute particles in foods and that once food is eaten, the chewing of the mouth and the juices of the stomach break this food down into its more basic substances. In contrast, Galen and other alterationists think that the nutritive faculty alters the substances in foods to make them capable of assimilation to the body parts. Despite these differences, all agree that cooking facilitates nutrition by initiating the breakdown of foods even before they enter the body. The nutritive faculty itself is a kind of cooking that is called πέψις (“coction”). According to Galen, this process culminates in the veins and especially the liver where the appropriate substances in foods turn to blood. The blood carries these substances and presents them to the tissues and bodily organs. Whatever in these substances resembles the tissues or bodily organs adheres or attaches to them and is eventually assimilated and becomes part of them (Nat. fac. 1.11). These processes of presentation, adhesion, and assimilation only occur, however, with likes (τὸ οἰκεῖον). With unlikes (τὸ ἀλλότριον), the presentation leads not to adhesion but rather to repulsion and rejection expressed by the middle voice of any form of the verb ἀποτίθεσθαι (“to reject” or “to repel”). The Petrine author uses this same verb in its participial form in 1 Pet 2:1 to express this rejection. Explaining the faculties or powers of attraction (ἑλκτική) and rejection (ἐκκριτική), Galen states, “Whenever each of the parts attracts a substance similar to itself, then detains that substance, and then takes from it, each of the parts Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 79–80; and Kelly, Commentary, 83–84. Kelly even calls it a technical term for Christians (p. 83), and Selwyn proposes that it belongs to a catechetical form he calls Deponentes or renunciations of the old life in order to assume the new life in Christ (First Epistle, 393–400). Other commentators are uncertain the word ἀποθέμενοι alone can bear all this exegetical weight. For example, see Michaels, 1 Peter, 83. Still other commentators conclude that this verb has nothing to do with clothing imagery but refers in general to any rejection or to any action of putting away. Examples include Hort, Epistle of St Peter, 97; and Achtemeier, 1 Peter, 144. 12 Nancy Pardee, “Be Holy, for I am Holy: Paraenesis in 1 Peter,” in Mason and Martin, Reading 1–2 Peter and Jude, 113–134, here 122. 13  For a discussion of this principle, see Troy W. Martin, “Paul’s Pneumatological Statements and Ancient Medical Texts,” in The New Testament and Early Christian Literature in GrecoRoman Context: Studies in Honor of David E. Aune, ed. John Fotopoulos, NovTSup 122 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 105–126, here 121–123.

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is eager to reject (ἀποθέσθαι) the additional residue” (Nat. fac. 3.13). Galen explains that every part of an animal has an affinity or appetite for its own quality but an aversion to foreign qualities (3.6). If an animal is compelled to eat a food disagreeing with it, the stomach of that animal will either bring it up immediately or endeavor to reject (ἀποθέσθαι) the discomforting food. He states further that the stomach and the other organs attract the most usable parts of the food and that when they are sated, they reject (ἀποτίθεσθαι) the rest of the food as something troublesome (3.7). The stomach rejects (ἀπωθεῖται) displeasing food, and likewise each organ has the faculty of attracting what is proper to it and of rejecting what is foreign to it (3.11). Galen thus uses various forms of the middle voice of the verb ἀποτίθεσθαι (“to reject” or “to repel”) to express the rejection of foods disagreeable to an animal and its parts. When the Petrine author uses the participle ἀποθέμενοι (“after you reject”) in 1 Pet 2:1, he is using it not in a clothing metaphor but rather in a nutritional metaphor.14 This participle expresses the rejection side of the nutritive process. The vices listed in 1 Pet 2:1 are no longer consonant with the Petrine author’s recipients after they are generated anew through the Logos of God (1 Pet 1:23) as the efficient cause acting and forming the imperishable blood of Christ as the material cause (1 Pet 1:18–19).15 These vices are contrary to the recipients’ new, divinely begotten nature, which rejects these vices as dissonant and dissimilar. Just as dissimilar foods are not nutritive, these vices cannot nourish these recipients. Just as dissimilar foods affect the body negatively, so these vices diminish these recipients, make them unhealthy, and interfere with their appetite for good things. Rejection of these vices is one side of the nutritive process that is completed by the attraction of these recipients to the nutritive food of the logical, undiluted milk (1 Pet 2:2), which is similar to their new nature and by which they can grow up into salvation. The aorist participle ἀποθέμενοι (“after you reject”) is thus temporal and denotes an action antecedent to Peter’s imperative ἐπιποθήσατε (“desire,” “yearn for”). The participle and the imperative express the two sides of the nutritive process that includes both rejection or putting away and attraction.16 According to the ancient understanding of nutrition, rejecting the dissimilar is part of the process that allows for attracting and assimilating the similar, and this understanding explains the combination of the participle ἀποθέμενοι (“after you reject”) with the imperative ἐπιποθήσατε (“desire,” “yearn for”). The participle expresses what is rejected while the imperative relates to what is to be attracted and assimilated.  Ibid.  Martin, “Christians as Babies,” 110–111. 16  For an explanation of the antecedent use of the aorist participle, see Herbert W. Smyth, Greek Grammar (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), § 1872.c.1. 14 15

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3. Infant Nutrition Rejecting all the vices is a precondition for the Petrine author’s recipients to engage his exhortation to “desire the logical, undiluted milk as new-born babies [desire the logical, undiluted milk]” (ὡς ἀρτιγέννητα βρέφη τὸ λογικὸν ἄδολον γάλα ἐπιποθήσατε).17 The Petrine author assumes that his readers are familiar with infant generation and nutrition, which begin at conception with the reproductive fluid of mother and father.18 The mother’s blood collects in her body and is discharged monthly until the introduction of the father’s semen, which concocts, congeals, or sets the blood of the mother in the womb. Aristotle likens the process to the curdling of cheese by the introduction of rennet (Gen. an. 2.4 [739b]). This analogy is appropriate because male semen is blood that is frothed or concocted, cooked, and heated more perfectly in male testicles than the female’s blood is in her colder uterus (Ibid., 1.19 [727a]; 1.20 [728a]; Galen, De usu partium 14.10–11; idem, De semine 1.12). The added heat of male semen enables it to be the agent that “sets” or congeals the watery blood of the female and causes a pregnancy to occur. Aristotle states that the female furnishes the material while the male provides the force to fashion her material into a fetus (Gen. an. 2.4 [738b]). In Aristotle’s terms, therefore, the blood semen of the male provides the formal, efficient, and final causes while the female blood serves as the material cause.19 While the fetus remains in the womb, the mother’s menstrual cycle is suspended, and she does not discharge blood each month. Instead, this blood goes to her womb and nourishes the fetus as it hardens and congeals and forms the animal’s body according to the power of the male blood-semen (Aristotle, Gen. an. 4.8 [776a–b]; Galen, De usu partium 14.8, 10–11). Galen notes that the uteri and breasts are connected by vessels and that after the animal is born, the blood that had been going to the uterus now switches to the breasts, which froth it into milk as nourishment for the newborn (De usu partium 14.8). If milk flows from the breasts during pregnancy, then the fetus is weak and unhealthy because it is undernourished since the blood-nourishment it should be receiving is being diverted to the breasts and frothed into milk (Hippocrates, Aph. 5.52; 5.60). Even after the child is born, the mother still does not menstruate or only has light flows because her blood is now directed to her breasts and frothed into 17  Troy W. Martin, Metaphor and Composition in First Peter, SBLDS 131 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 175. 18  Troy W. Martin, “Clarifying a Curiosity: The Plural Bloods (αἱμάτων) in John 1:13,” in Christian Body, Christian Self: Concepts of Early Christian Personhood, ed. Clare K. Rothschild and Trevor W. Thompson, WUNT 284 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 175–185, here 179–80; and idem, “Christians as Babies,” 108. 19  Ibid.

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milk. Ancient physicians perceptively observe the inverse relationship between menses and milk production. When a female menstruates, her breasts do not produce milk; when she lactates, she does not menstruate (Hippocrates, Aph. 5.39; 5.50; Soranus, Gynaecia 1.3 [15]). From this observation, Aristotle (Gen. an. 4.8 [777a]) and other physiologists (Galen, De usu partium 14.4) reason that the blood nourishing the fetus in the womb now flows upon birth to the breasts to provide similar nutriment to the newborn. Therefore, the same blood-nutriment out of which each animal is formed in the womb now nourishes the animal upon its birth. The animal in the womb is nourished with the blood of its mother, and this animal upon birth continues to be nourished with its mother’s blood, frothed or concocted, as milk. A newborn baby’s desire for its mother’s milk is therefore logical according to the basic nutritional principle that like attracts and nourishes like, and the Petrine author appropriately refers in 1 Pet 2:2 to this milk as “logical, undiluted milk” (τὸ λογικὸν ἄδολον γάλα).20 Several centuries later, Eusebius provides an illuminating usage of this same adjective to describe the eucharistic flesh of Christ (De sollemnitate Paschali 2). Eusebius explains: As we are nourished with the logical flesh [ταῖς λογικαῖς σαρξί] from the sacrifice [θύματος] of this Savior, who restores to himself the race of all humans by his own blood ([this is] clearly in [his] teachings and sayings announcing the Kingdom of the Heavens), we naturally fare luxuriously on the natural nutrition according to God.

Eusebius clearly applies this adjective to the Eucharistic food, which he describes as a logical form of nutrition for Christians. Similarly, the Petrine author’s mention of “logical, undiluted milk” describes the eucharistic food as a “logical” (λογικόν) form of nutrition for those generated again by the Logos of God (1 Pet 1:23) and the blood of Jesus Christ (1 Pet 1:18–19). Since Eusebius does not explicitly quote or cite 1 Pet 2:3, his precise relationship to this text is not specified, but he certainly demonstrates that the adjective the Petrine author uses appropriately characterizes the eucharistic foods according to ancient nutritional understandings. In this understanding, an infant is nourished by consuming its mother’s flesh, before birth in the form of blood and after birth in the form of milk, and this infant nutrition is considered logical and natural and operates on the principle that like attracts to like. Since the infant is conceived by the blood semen of the father concocting the blood menses of the mother, the mother’s blood – whether in menses or milk – is the logical food for an infant as ordained by Nature.21  Ibid., 107–109.  Peter’s adjective ἄδολον (“undiluted”) probably distinguishes this milk from the colostrum, a watery milky substance that the breast emits a few days before and after birth and from other types of corrupted milk that are not fit for infant nutrition. According to Aristotle, any 20 21

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Relying on this source domain of infant nutrition, the Petrine author can exhort his recipients as newborn babies to desire the logical milk that is the eucharistic flesh and blood of Jesus. This author can also refer to their tasting the Lord since taste occasions desire for food, and these recipients cannot desire this food unless they have tasted that it is usable.

4. Taste and Nutrition The Petrine author exhorts his recipients to desire the logical, undiluted milk by adding in 1 Pet 2:3 the protasis “if you have tasted that the Lord is usable” (εἰ ἐγεύσασθε ὅτι χρηστὸς ὁ κύριος). This protasis provides a reason or motivation for them to desire this milk, and that motivation is because they have tasted that their Lord is usable.22 Since taste is one of the five senses, ancient authors often discuss how it works and what it does (see Aristotle, Sens. 4 [440b–442b]; Theophrastus, Sens. 6.3; 9.7; 19.8; 20.3; 28.1; 72.11). Generally, they discuss taste as a faculty of the soul through the organ of the tongue. For example, Aristotle explains that this sense concerns itself with the tasteful (γευστοῦ) and the distasteful (ἀγεύστου) (De an. 2.10 [422a]). He describes the former as according to nature (κατὰ φύσιν) and the latter as foul (φαύλη) and destructive (φθαρτική). According to Aristotle, the principle or function of the sense of taste is to discriminate between what is drinkable or edible and what is not (see Aristotle, Eth. nic. 3.10.9 [1118a]). Pleasant-tasting foods are to be pursued while unpleasant ones are to be avoided (Aristotle, Sens. 1 [436b]). Thus, foods are either usable (χρηστός) or not usable (ἄχρηστος; Aristotle, Hist. an. 3.20 [522a]), and foods that are usable according to an animal’s nature taste usable, while those that contain foul substances dissimilar to the animal’s nature are not usable and therefore they are distasteful. milk produced before the seventh month of gestation is not usable for nourishing the baby (Gen. an. 4.8 [776b]). Soranus discusses numerous reasons why milk might not be usable or wholesome for the baby including its being too watery, too thick, or mixed with various juices from the foodstuffs ingested by the mother or wet nurse (Gyn. 2.11–15 [17–29]). The milk that a newborn desires is the pure, undiluted, uncorrupted, wholesome milk that “comes in fully” a few days after the baby is born when the mother’s blood fully shifts from her uterus to her breast, and this blood or “logical, undiluted milk” from its mother’s blood nourishes the baby and enables it to grow just as the mother’s blood did in her uterus before birth. 22  Some commentators and translators understand this conjunction in 1 Pet 2:3 as introducing a subordinate conditional clause while others think it introduces a causal clause. For the former, see Charles A. Bigg, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1987), 127. For the latter, see Kühl, Die Briefe, 137; Knopf, Die Briefe, 87; John H. Elliott, 1 Peter: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 37B (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 402; and Achtemeier, 1 Peter, 148. Rendering this Greek conjunction as “if and since” is an over-translation in that it adds an additional causal clause where the Greek has none, but this translation nevertheless captures both the syntax of a conditional clause and the semantics of causality.

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Galen states that an animal cannot derive nutriment from just any kind of food and that humans, for example, cannot be nourished from grass although cattle can (Nat. fac. 1.10). Foods that have an affinity with an animal’s nature taste usable while those lacking affinity do not taste usable. When discussing the preparation of bread, Galen explains that the healthiest is bread prepared with the most leaven and salt, but then he stipulates: Let taste be your criterion of “most” in regard to the leaven and the salt; for in a stronger mixture of these the unpleasant taste indicates that it is unhealthy. So it is better to increase the amount of them to just short of when taste recognizes unpleasantness from the mixture.” (Alim. fac. 1.4)23

Galen thus expresses the basic understanding of the function of taste in nutrition. Foods with a pleasant taste are usable for nutrition while distasteful foods are not. Galen mentions foods that taste sweet and usable (γλυκύ καὶ χρηστόν) and states that they do not produce unhealthy bile in the animal (Nat. fac. 2.8). Furthermore, he criticizes Asclepiades for equating the common idea of “usable according to taste” (τὸ κατὰ γεῦσιν χρηστόν) with the stomach’s rendering of foods usable by the body as though the actions of the stomach make foods taste better (Nat. fac. 3.7). Thus, the ancients discuss and talk about foods that taste usable (χρηστός). Although it seems odd to moderns, the ancients often say that a food tastes χρηστός (“usable”) just as the Petrine author describes how the Lord tastes to his recipients. With this description, this author confirms that his recipients are truly generated anew because they now have an affinity with their Lord. Generated from the Father’s sowing of the precious and imperishable blood of Christ (1 Pet 1:23), these exiles now taste the body and blood of the Lord in the eucharistic food as usable for their nutrition and growth. Since moderns do not think of foods as tasting usable, perhaps rendering χρηστός as “wholesome” or “suitable” or even “serviceable” expresses this ancient idea better than any other possible translation. Rendering this Greek word as “usable,” however, emphasizes and highlights the differences between ancient and modern conceptions of taste and nutrition. The intertextual connection of 1 Pet 1:23 is with Ps 33:9 LXX, “Taste and see that the Lord is usable” (γεύσασθε καὶ ἴδετε ὅτι χρηστὸς ὁ κύριος). Early Christians sing this psalm or recite parts of it in the eucharistic liturgy (Apos. Con. 8.13; Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat. myst. 5.20; Jerome Ep. 71.6), although some commentators argue that this practice postdates First Peter. The change from the LXX’s imperative γεύσασθε to the indicative ἐγεύσασθε in 1 Pet 2:3 and the omission of the LXX words “and see” indicate that the Petrine author uses this 23  Translation by Owen Powell, Galen On the Properties of Foodstuffs (De alimentorum facultatibus): Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 44.

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psalm eucharistically, perhaps for the first time in Christian literature.24 The eucharistic use of this psalm had to begin with someone, and this author has the best claim upon this honor – at least in its written expression. Nevertheless, the considerable gap of time separating First Peter from the later witnesses to this usage makes any certainty on this matter difficult. In 1 Pet 2:2–3, the Petrine author instructs his recipients that if they have tasted the Lord is usable, they should desire “the logical, undiluted milk” (τὸ λογικὸν ἄδολον γάλα) as newborn babies (ὡς ἀρτι γέννητα βρέφη) [yearn for the logical, undiluted milk] in order that by this milk they might grow into salvation (ἵνα ἐν αὐτῷ αὐξηθῆτε εἰς σωτηρίαν). The purpose of nutrition is the growth and maintenance of the animal (Aristotle, Gen. corr. 1.5 [320a–322a]). Galen states that nutrition is necessary for growing things and that, without it, things may give the appearance of growth but that it is not true growth (Nat. fac. 1.7). Aristotle explains that growth occurs when that which is nourished takes hold of the nutriment that is potentially itself and turns it into itself and assimilates it (Gen. corr. 1.5 [322a]). After the animal is fully grown, the purpose of nutrition is of course to maintain the animal. As newborn babies, Peter’s recipients are not fully grown. They thus require the nutrition provided by the logical, undiluted milk in the eucharistic food to grow into salvation (εἰς σωτηρίαν).25 Peter has already specified that the goal of their faith is the salvation of their lives (1 Pet 1:9). Obviously, they have not yet attained this goal in their present grief and suffering, but the eucharistic food nourishes them and facilitates their attainment of this eschatological salvific goal as the end or maturity of their faith. They may be newborn babies now, but the Petrine author exhorts them to desire the flesh and blood of Christ in the Eucharist. Since these exiles are begotten from the blood of Christ, this blood tastes usable to them, and it is “logical” for them to desire this eucharistic blood as a means of continued nutrition so that they may grow into the salvation provided by Christ.

5. Conclusion Tasting the Lord is indeed an odd expression for modern readers, but its oddity is greatly diminished when it is understood in the context of ancient nutritional theories and especially conceptions of infant nutrition. Just as an infant feeding on the flesh of its mother in the form of either blood or milk, so Christians as new-born babies are naturally nourished by the body and blood of their Lord.  Kelly, Commentary, 87; contra Achtemeier, 1 Peter, 148.  Martin, “Christians as Babies,” 111; Philip L. Tite, “Nurslings, Milk and Moral Development in the Greco-Roman Context: A Reappraisal of the Paraenetic Utilization of Metaphor in 1 Peter 2:1–5,” JSNT 31 (2009): 371–400, here 390. 24 25

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Since they were generated anew by his precious blood, consuming this blood in the Eucharist is logical food for them according to the nutritional principle that like attracts and assimilates like. They know that the eucharistic food provided by their Lord is nourishing and useful for them because of its taste, and taste in the ancient theories of nutrition is a reliable guide to foods that are usable. While the expression “tasting the Lord” may strike the modern reader as odd, ancient nutritional theory provides the Petrine author and his recipients with a way of understanding what they are doing in their eucharistic practices as perfectly normal and logical without any oddity. A eucharistic reading of the metaphorical sentence in 1 Pet 2:1–3 thus makes the most sense of the nutritional source domains of the metaphors in this sentence and provides a way of understanding the otherwise odd expression of “tasting the Lord” as usable.

6. Reception History The recent appearance of this article means that it does not yet have a substantial reception history. In the peer-review process for its publication in The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, however, one anonymous reader comments that the “article is generally well-written” and that its argument is “clearly and logically developed” while another reader states that “the essay is interesting and the research sound.”26 I am grateful to these readers for recommending my article for publication and to Leslie J. Hoppe, OFM, General Editor of The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, for accepting it for publication. I also received positive feedback from those attending the public presentation of an early version of this article at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Region of the Society of Biblical Literature in Bourbonnais, IL on February 7, 2015. As far as I am aware, no one who has interacted with this article has taken issue with its main thesis that a eucharistic reading of the metaphorical sentence in 1 Pet 2:1–3 makes the most sense of ancient theories of nutrition in general, of infant nutrition in particular, and of the role that taste plays in nutrition. Someone who does disagree with the assessment of colostrum in my article is Fika J. van Rensburg. I had a delightful conversation with him at the 2017 SNTS Meeting in Pretoria, South Africa, and we both became aware of one another’s articles on 1 Pet 2:1–3. We both take seriously the new birth metaphor as the context for interpreting the references to milk and tasting in this passage. Rensburg reasons: The something that the “newborn babies” had already tasted, must have been given to them … between the present time of their being “newborn babies” and the time of their 26 These comments were sent to me by Leslie J. Hoppe, OFM, General Editor of The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, in a letter dated September 28, 2015.

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birth. … The yearn exhortation … has as its object milk … and the taste-activity is (a form of ) milk. Immediately colostrum springs to mind, and the possibility that the implicit object of ἐγεύσασθε actually is colostrum, needs to be explored.27

Rensburg concludes: Viewed as part of the “rebegetting” and its resultant new birth, God has given the addressees colostrum to sustain them in their salvation. Having tasted the colostrum they now know that the Lord is good. This experience of the goodness of the Lord becomes the reason why they must yearn for more milk. The milk they are urged to yearn for, is no longer colostrum, which as part of the birth-process (i. e. as part of the process through which God has saved them), was for their initial sustenance. Rather the milk they should now yearn for is τὸ λογικὸν ἄδολον γάλα the “unadulterated milk of God’s word”, which will make them grow up in their salvation.”28

Rensburg’s reasoning and conclusion have points of both agreement and disagreement with the interpretation of 1 Pet 2:1–3 that is presented in my article. Rensburg and I agree that the source domain of the phrase τὸ λογικὸν ἄδολον γάλα is the pure, undiluted, uncorrupted, wholesome milk that “comes in fully” a few days after the baby is born. However, he thinks this milk is the word of God whereas I understand the milk to be the eucharistic foods. We also disagree over the translation of λογικόν, which he translates as spiritual but I as logical. He interprets this word in reference to the word of God in contrast to my understanding of the referent as the logical eucharistic foods for these newborn babies begotten by the Father’s sowing and the precious and imperishable blood of Christ (1 Pet 1:23). We also disagree about the object of the tasting. He thinks what has been tasted by these recipients is the colostrum while I think it is the eucharistic flesh and blood of Jesus. In a long footnote, Rensburg praises the positive essence of colostrum as well as its health benefits for newborns, and he asserts that both the author of First Peter and the addressees … were “fully aware of the sustaining effect of colostrum” even though they “would not have been able to explain this effect.”29 Rensburg’s view of colostrum is modern, not ancient, and I doubt that the ancients were aware of the “sustaining effect of colostrum” or that they viewed it positively.30 Rensburg correctly recognizes that the Greek term for colostrum is the masculine πύος and that it does not occur in First Peter.31 He does not note, however, that the neuter πύον, a term formed on the same root as πύος, refers to 27  Fika J. van Rensburg, “The Referent of Egeusasthe (You Have Tasted) in 1 Peter 2:3,” AcT 2 (2009): 103–119, here 114. 28  Ibid., 115–116. 29 Ibid., 114 n. 22. 30  Aristophanes’ inclusion of colostrum in lists of delicacies does not prove that colostrum is considered a nutritive food, for delicacies and exotic foods were usually not thought to be healthy (Vesp. 710; Pax 1150). 31  Rensburg, “Referent,” 115.

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the watery discharge or pus from a sore that is full of impurities and damaged tissue and not at all nourishing (Hippocrates, Morb. 1.15; idem, Aph. 2.47).32 The similar formation of the masculine πύος and the neuter πύον indicate that colostrum is not necessarily viewed positively, and Empedocles even describes milk as a “whitish pus” (πύον κευκόν) according to Aristotle (Gen. an. 4.8 [777a]).33 Aristotle criticizes Empedocles and distinguishes pus (πύον), which is caused by putrefaction, from milk (γάλα), which is formed by concoction (Gen. an. 4.8 [777a]). Aristotle states that these two processes, although both effect change, are opposites and that pus has no nutritive value while milk, which is concocted or cooked blood, does. Aristotle’s criticism of Empedocles and the similarity of the terms πύον (“pus”) and πύος (“colostrum”) may explain why Aristotle does not use the specific term πύος for colostrum but rather uses the term γάλα for both milk and colostrum. Nevertheless, Aristotle does distinguish the two and states, “The first milk in the breasts appears little in quantity and full of filaments” (Hist. an. 9.3 [583a]). Aristotle says that this milk is not at all serviceable (ἄχρηστον) until after the seventh month of gestation since some women give birth at that time (Gen. an. 4.8 [776a]) but even then not completely serviceable until after women actually give birth (Gen. an. 4.8 [776b]; 4.8 [777a]) because this milk has not been cooked or concocted (πεπεμμένον) enough. For Aristotle, therefore, colostrum is not as nutritive as is fully concocted milk produced in the final stages of the concoction process a few days after birth. Both Galen and Pliny the Elder comment on the nutritive problems of colostrum. Galen states, “While the milk after parturition is very liquid, as time goes on it becomes continually thicker … the thicker is more nourishing and the thinner less so” (Alim. Fac. 3.14).34 Pliny the Elder notes the danger of becoming pregnant when women are nursing and says that their nursing babies are called “colostrati” since the milk they are consuming resembles the “colostra,” the first milk secreted after birth that is spongy and coagulated (Nat. 28.33 [123]). Pliny further notes that for female donkeys grazing on rich pasture, their milk is fatal to their offspring the first two days after birth (Nat. 11.96 [237]). Even though colostrum for Galen is less nutritive and for Pliny the Elder too rich for nurslings, both understand the problems colostrum can cause to infants, and neither agrees with modern physiology or with Rensburg that colostrum is highly beneficial for newborn babies. 32 See the discussion in my article “Christ’s Healing Sore: A Medical Reading of 1 Peter 2:24,” republished as essay 2 (pp. 23–35) in this volume. 33 James Longrigg, Greek Medicine: From the Heroic to the Hellenistic Age: A Sourcebook (New York: Routledge, 1998), 64 n. 1. Longrigg notes, “Here Empedocles resorts to word-play and exploits the similarity between puon (pus) and puos (‘beestings’, colostrum or the first milk secreted towards the end of pregnancy).” 34  Translation by Powell, Galen On the Properties of Foodstuffs, 124. Galen does explain that thinner milk moves the bowels more than the thicker.

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Rensburg’s praise of the positive essence of colostrum does not therefore reflect the ancient view most likely held by the author and audience of First Peter, and colostrum as the object of the tasting in 1 Pet 2:3 is not very likely. Rather than colostrum or “the word of God” as the object of the tasting, the author of First Peter specifically identifies the Lord as the object of ἐγεύσασθε (you have tasted). The early Christians’ eucharistic belief that the bread and wine are the body and blood of their Lord and their regular practice of celebrating Eucharist provide the most likely context for understanding the expression of tasting the Lord. Furthermore, their new birth as a result of the blood of Jesus means that the eucharistic wine as liquid blood and bread as flesh, which is congealed blood, taste good to them on the principle that the same nutrient that provided for their new birth now continues to nourish them as they grow into salvation. In addition to Rensburg, Alicia D. Myers has written recently about tasting the Lord in 1 Pet 2:3.35 In the reception history for my article “Christians as Babies” (essay 1 in the present volume), I have already discussed some areas of agreement and disagreement between our interpretations of 1 Pet 2:1–3, but here I would like to focus on our differing translations of λογικόν and χρηστός in 1 Pet 2:2–3. I translate λογικόν as “logical” while she criticizes such translations and renders this term as “word-like” or “full of the word.”36 To support her translation, she appeals to an unsubstantiated aspect of ancient physiology that male semen concocts the blood of the female into breastmilk just as God’s seed/word shapes the milk the recipients of First Peter are to desire. She begins by relying heavily on ancient physiology as explained in my article “Christians as Babies,” but she understandably does not mention a similar explanation in my article “Tasting the Eucharistic Lord” even though it was published a year before her monograph. She accepts the connection I point out between the blood nutriment received by the baby in the womb and breastmilk consumed by the baby after birth.37 In contrast to my explanations, however, she asserts that “breastmilk is a tempered substance; transformed by the masculine heat of male semen from a monstrous substance to the ‘most useful’ substance for nourishment.”38 She cites Pliny the Elder (Nat. 28.33 [123]) for support, but this passage does not corroborate her assertion. She also asserts, “Breastmilk is superheated menstrual blood. Male semen is the source of this heat, providing the pneuma (spirit) lacking in female blood.”39 Appealing to Aristotle’s Gen. an. 4.8 (776a–776b) for support, she quotes Aristotle’s comment that when the embryo is completed in the womb, the well-con35  Alicia D. Myers, Blessed among Women? Mothers and Motherhood in the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 103–105. 36 Ibid., 105. 37  Ibid., 104. 38 Ibid., 78. 39  Ibid., 80.

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cocted residue that molded it in the womb “makes its way out … and that is the time when the milk becomes serviceable.”40 Myers interprets Aristotle’s comment: According to Aristotle, the heat – indicative of the injection of pneuma and logos that the masculine force of semen brings to the feminine uterus – does more than shape the menstrual blood to form the collecting mass into a developing fetus. It also makes the production of useable breastmilk in the final months of gestation, when the embryo was nearing completion in form and, as a result, not using as much material matter.41

This interpretation of Aristotle’s comment is crucial for Myers’ assertion that semen concocts breastmilk, but it is not without its problems. Significantly, Myers omits an essential portion of Aristotle’s comment. She quotes Aristotle’s comment that the well-concocted residue “makes its way out,” but she uses an ellipsis to leave out the continuation of Aristotle’s comment that this well-concocted residue “changes over to another process of formation as now possessing all that belongs to it, and it no longer takes what does not belong to it” (Gen. an. 4.8 [776b] [Peck, LCL]).42 This part of his comment indicates that Aristotle sees the material blood supplied by the female undergoing a different process to form milk than the process it undergoes by force of male semen in the womb to form the fetus. This comment also expresses Aristotle’s view that the male semen in the womb does not participate in the process of milk production since the female blood residue in this process “no longer takes what does not belong to it,” namely the male semen. Aristotle’s full comment is thus problematic for Myers’ interpretation of what Aristotle is saying and demonstrates that this comment does not corroborate her assertion that male semen is responsible for concocting breastmilk. In contrast to Myers’ interpretation of Aristotle, his view agrees with the ancient physiological notion that the female’s own natural heat concocts her blood into milk without the action of male semen. Some Hippocratics even thought that a woman’s body could produce milk without ever becoming pregnant or receiving male semen. One author writes, “If a woman who neither is pregnant nor has given birth should have milk, the menses of this same woman must be suppressed” (Hippocrates, Aph. 5.39). Aristotle also describes some non-pregnant female animals who do not submit to a male but nevertheless produce breastmilk (Hist. an. 3.20 [522a]). Even though the production of breastmilk is usually associated with pregnancy, these exceptions demonstrate that male semen is not necessary for lactation, and Lesley Dean-Jones comments,  Ibid, 81. Myers is using the translation in the Loeb Classical Library.  Ibid. 42  In his Loeb edition, A. L. Peck notes, “This remark is obscure, and the sentence may be an interpolation” (469 n. d). I do not consider this sentence to be obscure, and even if it is an interpolation, which is doubtful, it nevertheless clarifies that male semen has no continued participation in the process of milk production. 40 41

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“A ­woman’s blood, which was used to nurture the embryo in the womb, was converted finally into milk in the breasts to nourish the child once it was born.”43 An anonymous ancient medical writer explains, “Any blood that has not yet been used as nourishment by the uterus flows along its natural course into the breasts, turns white as a result of their [the breasts’] influence, and acquires the quality of milk”(Anonymus Bruxellensis, De semine 1).44 According to ancient physiology, therefore, a woman’s own body provides for the concoction of milk in her breasts without the operation of male semen in her body. Dean-Jones describes two prevalent theories explaining the production of breastmilk in a woman’s body. One theory holds that the blood that goes to the breasts comes from the womb, the hottest part of a woman’s body, and is partially concocted by this heat. Dean-Jones explains, “The menstrual material has been concocted in the womb to the point where it can take advantage of the extra heat from the heart when it returns to the breasts, and thus turn into milk.”45 Since the stoma of the womb is closed in pregnancy, any blood going to the womb that is not used for the development of the fetus is drawn to the breasts where the second heating is sufficient to turn it into milk. A second theory holds that the growth of the fetus puts pressure on a woman’s stomach and squeezes out the sweetest and fattest parts of the consumed food that are then drawn directly to the breasts from the stomach and heated into milk.46 On either theory, no action or heating from male semen is required since a woman’s own body, even though colder than male bodies, provides sufficient heat to concoct her blood into milk. On the basis of her unsubstantiated assertion that male semen concocts breastmilk, therefore, Myers translates λογικόν in 1 Pet 2:2 as “word-like” or “full of the word” and states, “The milk to be sought after is full of the word – or ‘word-like’ – because of its source … resulting in the continued conveyance of their heavenly Father’s superior seed/word.”47 In ancient physiology, however, a mother’s milk does not convey the father’s seed and does not support Myers’ translation of λογικόν as “word-like” or “full of the word.” This translation leads her to see a conflation of maternal and paternal roles in this passage even though she recognizes that “it is through Christ that both [milk and blood images] are administered.”48 Rather than a conflation of these roles, the Petrine author clearly distinguishes between the word of God as the masculine formal cause (semen) and the blood  Lesley Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994),

43

215.

44  Translation by Philip J. van der Eijk, Diocles of Carystus: A Collection of Fragments with Translation and Commentary, 2 vols., Studies in Ancient Medicine 22–23 (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 1:77. 45 Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 217. 46  Ibid., 218–219. 47  Myers, Blessed among Women, 105. 48  Ibid.

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of Christ as the feminine material cause of the new birth of these newborn believers as I have explained in my articles “Christians as Babies” and “Tasting the Eucharistic Lord.” The milk that is consumed is not the word but rather the body and blood of the Lord that is the logical food for these newborns and that tastes useable to them because the same blood that nourished them in their new birth now nourishes them in their continued growth into salvation. Myers admits as much when she interprets the tasting metaphor and says, “Having ‘tasted that the Lord is good’ indicates that the believers are drinking from – and indeed, drinking in – the Lord Christ himself. It is from Christ that they drink, just as it was through his parturitive Passion and resurrection that the believers were ‘newly begotten’ (1:3, 23).”49 She likens Jesus’ role in the birthing and nurture of these newborns to a mother, but then inconsistently understands Jesus as the male logos of John’s Gospel and translates λογικόν as “word-like” or “full of the word” in reference to God’s word as seed. In contrast, the translation “logical” and a eucharistic understanding of tasting the Lord are much more consistent with ancient physiology.50 A further difference between Myers’ interpretation and mine is her translation of χρηστός as “good” or “benevolent” rather than as “useable” as in my article.51 My translation better accounts for the numerous times Aristotle uses the adjective χρηστός or χρήσιμος to describe breastmilk that is usable and nutritious for the infant (Gen. an. 4.8 [776a–b]). My translation also accounts better for the ancient discussion of taste as a measurement of whether a food is usable or not for nourishing a body. Indeed, my investigation of the role of taste in nutrition introduces an important aspect of ancient physiology that has largely been ignored in discussions of 1 Pet 2:1–3, and, in my opinion, this physiological aspect lends an advantage to my explanations not only over Myers’ but also over other translations and interpretations of this passage. Beyond the disagreements, I hope Myers and others will consider more carefully the ancient contexts of taste and infant nutrition for interpreting 1 Pet 2:1–3 and reach more of a consensus with the interpretation of this passage advanced by my article.

 Ibid.  Ibid. Myers states, “In this way, the imagery of 1 Peter brings us back to that of the Gospel of John.” 51  Ibid. 49 50

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XIII. Ancient Medical Texts, Newly Re-discovered: The Medical Background of Biblical Breathing* 1. Introduction When we think of new discoveries, we usually conceive of uncovering some new artifact or text, but new discoveries can also include new applications or uses of texts or artifacts that have long been known. Such is the case with the ancient medical texts. These texts were well known and indeed used as the basis of medical theory and practice until the advent of modern medicine a few centuries ago. The invention of the microscope and the discovery of bacteria as well as advances in chemistry relegated ancient medical texts to the category of antiquarian, and they were subsequently largely ignored and forgotten. The recent rediscovery of these texts by biblical scholars is largely a result of a renewed interest in and an increased availability of these texts. As late as 1846, John R. Coxe laments that none of Galen’s treatises and only a few of the treatises in the Hippocratic Corpus had been translated into English.1 He could have said the same about other modern languages such as German and French as well. In the last century and a half, almost all these treatises have been translated into a modern language and several critical editions of these texts have appeared. The Loeb Classical Library in English, the Teubner Series in German, and the Budé Edition in French have made several of these texts much more available and accessible to modern readers. The Corpus Medicorum Graecorum in all three of these languages has also made an important contribution in raising the visibility of these texts. Ancient medical texts, however, include many more than those contained in the Hippocratic and Galenic corpuses, and the basis for classifying a treatise as a medical text becomes relevant. A narrow classification is to restrict the category to only those texts written by ancient authors recognized as physicians. This narrow category would then include writings not only attributed to Hippocrates and Galen but also to Diocles, Soranus, and other notable physicians. Such a * This publication is a version of a paper I presented as my presidential address at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Region of the Society of Biblical Literature in Bourbonnais, IL on February 16, 2008. All translations of ancient texts are mine unless another translator is cited. 1 John R. Coxe, The Writings of Hippocrates and Galen, Epitomized from the Original Latin Translations (Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1846), iii.

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narrow definition would nevertheless exclude many authors such as Plato and Aristotle, who had much to say about medicine. A broader classification expands the category of medical texts to include all those texts and portions of texts that contain information about medicine. This broader classification thus requires a definition of medicine. The author of De locis in homine makes a helpful comment by stating, “The nature of the body is the beginning of the subject matter in medicine” (Hippocrates, Loc. Hom. 2). According to this comment, ancient medicine is interested in the structure and function of the body according to nature or beyond nature and in respect to health and wholeness or illness and deformity. Thus, the body provides the basis for ancient medical discussions. Since the ancients saw an analogy between humans and animals, medical texts also discuss the bodies of animals. Discussions of the body in these texts include much more than the modern limitation to bodily organs or parts. Since the body is considered the instrument of the soul and cannot live without breath or spirit, discussions of soul and spirit frequently occur in ancient medical texts. In this broader classification, therefore, any text that addresses the natural or unnatural structure and function of the body contains medical information and may be consulted as an ancient medical text. Regardless of its author, such a text provides information on the medical background of the biblical materials, and biblical scholars recently have appropriately turned to these texts for significant exegetical insights. Until recently, the use of ancient medical texts in biblical exegesis was largely limited to a discussion of the ascribed author of Luke/Acts. Although these New Testament works are anonymous, they are traditionally ascribed to Luke, the physician and traveling companion of Paul. The classic study is that of William K. Hobart and entitled The Medical Language of St. Luke: A Proof from Internal Evidence that the Gospel according to St. Luke and the Acts of the Apostles Were Written by the Same Person, and that the Writer Was a Med. Man.2 A more recent comprehensive treatment of this topic is that of Annette Weissenrieder in a book entitled Images of Illness in the Gospel of Luke: Insights of Ancient Medical Texts.3 Weissenrieder’s work represents the renewed interest in the ancient medical texts and illustrates the new exegetical methods and approaches to which these texts are being applied. She notes the renewed interest in these texts and then describes three different approaches in the use of these texts. First, she says, “The majority of exegetes 2 Published

in Dublin in 1882 by Hodges, Figis & Co. Weissenrieder, Images of Illness in the Gospel of Luke: Insights of Ancient Medical Texts, WUNT 2.164 (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003). See also idem, “The Plague of Uncleanness? The Ancient Illness Construct ‘Issue of Blood’ in Luke 8:43–48,” in The Social Setting of Jesus and the Gospel, ed. Wolfgang Stegemann, Bruce J. Malina, and Gerd Theissen (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), 207–222. 3 Annette

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examine the illnesses in the New Testament in terms of modern-day diagnostic methods and refer to ancient medical texts only as supplementary sources.”4 This approach understands human illnesses as constant from ancient to modern times and often provides anachronistic explanations for the biblical texts. Second, she labels another approach as socio-anthropological, which also “assumes that illness is a constant of nature” but observes differences in the way various cultures perceive and understand illnesses.5 This approach is primarily interested in this cultural perspective as a means of interpreting biblical texts. Third, she describes an approach “devoted almost exclusively to medical data concerning the particular illness being observed, as it was depicted in antiquity.”6 Although she does not label this approach, it may be designated as the physiological application of the ancient medical texts to biblical exegesis. She criticizes each of these approaches on its own as being too narrow and adopts a broader, more comprehensive approach in her study. Since the recent turn to the ancient medical texts is still in its infancy, a comprehensive survey of the scholars, approaches, and methods is not possible at this time and is perhaps somewhat premature. It is still too early to tell what directions the application and use of the ancient medical texts will ultimately take. Nevertheless, Weissenrieder’s description of what has already occurred is helpful, and representative scholars of the second and third approaches she describes are of primary interest since these are the ones that rely on ancient medical texts in their explication of biblical materials. In 1986, Howard C. Kee addresses the lack of attention to ancient medical texts by providing an introduction to the sources.7 His work is followed throughout the 1990s by several studies of John J. Pilch. The primary contribution of Pilch is to make a distinction between disease and illness.8 Disease refers to the biological and physical aspects of a malady whereas illness refers to the cultural perception and understanding of that malady. Pilch’s distinction has become standard in the applications of medical texts to biblical materials although, as Weissenrieder notes, this distinction was already recognized by Adolf von Harnack.9 Also in the 4  Weissenrieder, Images of Illness, 1. A recent example of this approach is the investigation of the illnesses of Herod the Great and the medical explanation for the death of Jesus. See François P. Retief and Louise Cilliers, Health and Healing, Disease and Death in the Graeco-Roman World, Acta Theologica Supplementum 7 (Bloemfontein: Publications Office of the University of the Free State, 2005), 278–309. On p. ix, the authors call their approach “retrospective diagnosis” as they identify ancient illnesses by their modern labels and explanations. 5 Weissenrieder, Images of Illness, 1. 6  Ibid. 7  Howard C. Kee, Medicine, Miracle, and Magic in New Testament Times, SNTSMS 55 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 8  John, J. Pilch, Healing in the New Testament: Insights from Medical and Mediterranean Anthropology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 13, 25. 9  Adolf von Harnack, Das Wesen des Christentums: Sechzehn Vorlesungen vor Studierenden aller Fakultäten im Wintersemester 1899/1900 an der Universität Berlin gehalten von Adolf von

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mid-90s, Dale B. Martin uses ancient medical texts in his explanation of Paul’s body metaphor at Corinth.10 Martin uses these texts to argue that by exercising its power to define beauty, status, and nature, the upper class creates the conceptual construct of the Greco-Roman body. Martin contends that Paul employs this construct in his body metaphor to challenge and critique Greco-Roman hierarchical assumptions. These authors are not alone in their use of ancient medical texts in biblical exegesis, but they nevertheless represent some of the most significant studies to date. My own applications of medical texts to the biblical materials have yielded the following exegetical results. While conducting a TLG search of Paul’s phrase “weakness of the flesh” (ἀσθένειαν τῆς σαρκός) in Gal 4:13, I became aware of a large number of medical texts that describe illness as a weakness.11 None of these texts, however, refers to illness as a weakness of the flesh. Instead, these texts maintain that all flesh is weak in that flesh can absorb substances and powers. Understanding this phrase as a reference to illness in Gal 4:13, as almost all exegetes do, is not only unusual but also unsubstantiated by the ancient medical texts. I therefore proposed that the phrase “weakness of the flesh” in this verse does not refer to an illness of Paul but rather to the state of the Galatians’ flesh that prompted Paul to preach his gospel to them. This interpretation is consonant with Paul’s use of this same phrase in Rom 6:19. I have also used the physiology of male and female bodies as described in ancient medical texts to explain Paul’s argument from nature for the veil in 1 Cor 11:13–15.12 The ancient conception that hair is hollow and attracts reproductive fluid explains Paul’s statement about nature’s teaching that it is a shame for a man to have long hair. Long hair retains a man’s reproductive fluid at the wrong end of his body since his testicles are designed to draw the reproductive fluid down to his genital area and dispense it. Long hair on the other hand is a glory for women because its suction power assists her body in drawing up and retaining reproductive fluid to form a fetus. In this sense, Paul can say that her long hair is given to her instead of a testicle (περιβολαίου). His argument from nature makes sense from an ancient physiological perspective.

Harnack, ed. Claud-Dieter Ostenhövener (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005). See Weissenrieder, Images of Illness, 10–11. 10 Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). 11 Troy W. Martin, “Whose Flesh? What Temptation? (Gal 4.13–14),” JSNT 74 (1999): 65–91. 12 Troy W. Martin, “Paul’s Argument from Nature for the Veil in 1 Corinthians 11:13–15: A Testicle instead of a Head-Covering,” JBL 123 (2004): 71–80. See also idem, “Veiled Exhortations Regarding the Veil: Ethos as the Controlling Factor in Moral Persuasion (1 Cor 11:2–16),” in Rhetoric, Ethic and Moral Persuasion in Biblical Discourse: Essays from the 2002 Heidelberg Conference, ed. Thomas H. Olbricht and Anders Eriksson, Emory Studies in Early Christianity 11 (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 255–273.

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Finally, I have used ancient medical texts to explain Paul’s pneumatological statements.13 I have shown that these texts provide a productively coherent context in which to read Paul’s statements about the reception of the spirit and the spirit’s function in effecting movement, rationality, health, and life. It is this line of investigation that I would like to expand in what follows. In particular, I would like now to demonstrate the usefulness of ancient medical texts for reading and interpreting biblical passages pertaining to breathing.

2. Physiologies of Breathing in the Greco-Roman World Take a deep breath, inhale and then exhale. What did you just do? How did you do what you just did? Why did you do what you just did? These simple questions elude easy answers. According to our thinking, we have drawn oxygen rich air into our lungs, which exchange the oxygen for carbon dioxide, and then we expel the carbon dioxide along with other gasses. We know that our breathing is controlled by our brain stem, which sends signals to the diaphragm and chest muscles through the vagus and the phrenic nerves. For us, breathing is a subconscious, automatic process even though we can control it consciously if we choose. We understand that the diaphragm along with other muscles is responsible for the inhaling and exhaling by causing an alternation in the air pressure between the lungs and the outside air. Physiologically, we have clear ideas about the what, the how, and the why of breathing. Nevertheless, breathing is not simply perceived even in our own culture. We can speak of shallow breathing, heavy breathing, or labored breathing and each type of breathing carries certain sociological or psychological connotations. We can say something takes our breath away or that we are breathless even though physiologically only cadavers could really make such statements if indeed they were to have the breath for it. We speak of bad breath or morning breath and have a whole range of products to freshen the breath. We describe those consumed by something as living and breathing music, math, or theater. We advise others to save their breath, to hold their breath, or not to waste their breath in various social circumstances. Psychologically and sociologically, our culture gives differing answers to the questions about the what, the why, and the how of breathing. Even though breathing is common to all living humans, various human cultures give diverse answers to the question of what breathing is and the biblical cultures are no different. When we read about breathing in the Bible, we 13  Troy W. Martin, “Paul’s Pneumatological Statements and Ancient Medical Texts,” in The New Testament and Early Christian Literature in Greco-Roman Context: Studies in Honor of David E. Aune, ed. John Fotopoulos, NovTSup 122 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 105–126.

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could, and many do, read our own physiological and cultural understandings of breathing into the text.14 We may, however, appropriately investigate how a reader from another culture might read and comprehend the biblical breathing texts. I shall limit my comments to the physiological conceptions of breathing. Leaving aside other cultural conceptions of breathing does not mean that these are not ripe for investigation, for indeed much biblical material about breathing expresses psychological and sociological perceptions. I shall further limit my investigation to the interpretive possibilities for first century CE Greco-Roman readers and explore the physiological conceptions with which they could read the breathing texts in the Bible. I shall first explore the interpretive possibilities and then consider some of the biblical texts related to breathing. Describing the physiologies of breathing in the Greco-Roman World requires a consideration of the questions asked by those attempting to understand breathing. Many ancient thinkers reflected on the phenomenon of breathing, and several complete treatises devoted to breathing survive such as those by ps.Hippocrates (Breaths [De flatibus]), Aristotle (On Respiration [De respiratione]), ps.-Aristotle (On Breath [De spiritu]), and Galen (On the Use of Respiration [De usu respirationis]). In addition to complete treatises, passing comments about breathing occur in several ancient authors. In this literature, ancient authors attempt to answer three questions. What is breathing? How does breathing occur? Why does breathing occur? Answers to these questions are by no means uniform, and Aristotle criticizes others as not discussing breathing very well (οὐ καλῶς) but doing so without perception of the circumstances surrounding breathing (ἀπειροτέρως τῶν συμβαινόντων; Resp. 1 [470b]). Nevertheless, these questions and the diverse answers given reveal the various conceptions of breathing with which a Greco-Roman reader could have read the biblical references to breathing, and these questions and their answers merit consideration. 2.1. What is Breathing? Answers to the question of what is breathing are convoluted by the fluidity of terms used by ancient authors. The term respiration (ἀναπνοή) sometimes refers only to inhalation (εἰσπνοή) or to exhalation (ἐκπνοή) and not to the complete process.15 The primary terms for breath, namely πνεῦμα, φῦσα, and ἀήρ, are often used indiscriminately. The author of De flatibus states categorically that inside bodies wind (πνεῦμα) is called breath (φῦσα) but outside bodies wind 14 See A. Thivel, “Air, Pneuma and Breathing from Homer to Hippocrates,” in Hippocrates in Context: Papers read at the XIth International Hippocrates Colloquium, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 27–31 August 2002, ed. Philip J. van der Eijk, Studies in Ancient Medicine 31 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 239–249, here 239. 15  Aristotle criticizes Anaxagoras and Diogenes for using the term respiration in this way (Resp. 2 [470b–471a]).

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(πνεῦμα) is called air (ἀήρ; Hippocrates, Flat. 3).16 Other authors do not adhere to this neat categorization however, and even this author is not completely consistent. Some on occasion equate the two primary word groups for breathing, namely πνέω and φυσάω usually occurring with εἰσ‑ and ἐκ‑ prefixes (e. g., Philo, Leg. 1.13 [36]), even though these terms sometimes refer to snorting, snoring, belching, or farting.17 While few in our culture would relate belching or farting to exhalation in breathing, the similarity did not escape some ancients. A digression at this point along these lines would doubtless produce raucous laughter, but in the interests of decorum, I shall refrain and return to the question of what is breathing. Aristotle defines breathing as inhalation and exhalation of air (ἀναπνοὴ γὰρ καλεῖται ταύτης δὲ τὸ μὲν ἐκπνοή ἐστι τὸ δ’ εἰσπνοή; Resp. 2 [471a]). His definition would seem self-evident so as to preclude any disagreement about breathing. Nonetheless, Aristotle provides this definition in a disagreement with Democritus of Abdera, Anaxagoras, and Diogenes among others, who discuss the breathing of lungless creatures such as fish and oysters. Aristotle states: Anaxagoras claims that fish breathe by drawing the air which occurs in their mouth whenever they expel water through their gills since there can be no void. In contrast, Diogenes proposes that whenever they expel water through their gills, they draw the air to the void in the mouth from the water surrounding the mouth on the ground that air is in the water. (Resp. 2 [471a])

Aristotle adamantly rejects their explanation as limiting breathing to inhalation and overlooking exhalation. If they were to have included the latter in their explanation, they would have realized that fish must then exhale the air as bubbles in the water. Although such an eventuality would greatly assist those engaged in fishing, Aristotle points out that fish do not actually exhale bubbles (Resp. 3 [471b]). Aristotle concludes that animals without lungs do not breathe. Aside from the disagreement whether fish can draw air from the water, Aristotle’s contention with these other thinkers highlights differing answers to the question about what breathing is. For Aristotle’s opponents, inhaling air into the mouth sufficiently constitutes breathing. Aristotle counters that fish have no windpipe because they have no lung, and therefore they cannot breathe even if they draw air into their mouth when pulled from the water. Aristotle points out that given these explanations of breathing, fish should be able to breathe better in the air than in the water, but of course fish die in the air. Aristotle ridicules Diogenes’ explanation that fish die because they get too much air when pulled from the water. No animal dies from over respiration according to Aristotle. For Aristotle then but not for others, breathing is the inhalation of air through the 16  The text may be translated as “Winds, the ones in the bodies, are called breaths, but the ones outside the bodies are called air.” 17  For the relevant texts, see LSJ s. v.

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mouth, down the windpipe, and into the lungs. The Hippocratic author of the treatise De alimento apparently agrees and states, “The beginning of the nutriment of breath (πνεύματος) is the nostrils, mouth, windpipe, lungs, and the rest of the means of respiration” (Hippocrates, Alim. 30). Another Hippocratic author, however, disagrees and explains that inhaled air travels first to the brain. In his treatise De morbo sacro, he writes: For whenever a human draws in breath (πνεῦμα) into himself, it arrives first in the brain, and thus the air is dispersed into the remaining body after it has deposited in the brain its greatest strength, namely, the thing that has both sense and understanding. For if the air were to arrive in the body first and afterwards in the brain, after it has left behind its power of discernment in the fleshly parts, and in the vessels, it would come into the brain while it is warm and not pure but mixed with the moist secretions both from the fleshly parts and the blood so as no longer to be perfect. (Hippocrates, Morb. sacr. 16)

For this author, air that enters the nostrils in breathing does not travel to the lungs but to the brain first. Aristotle of course adamantly disagrees that breathing is such. Aristotle’s disagreement with this and other authors is not limited to where inhaled air travels in the body but also to what happens to the air once it enters the body. Many including Aristotle contend that the air inhaled is entirely exhaled and provides no residue or nourishment to the soul or innate heat (Resp. 6 [473a]). Galen comments: For it [the pneuma] can all be breathed out again, as indeed has been the opinion of the majority of both physicians and philosophers and the most accurate of them, who say that the heart requires not the substance but the quality of the pneuma, since it needs to be cooled. … We have shown in The Use of Breathing [2] that either very little or none at all of the substance of the pneuma is transmitted to the heart.” (An in arteriis natura sanguis contineatur 6.3)18

Others counter that some of the air inhaled goes to other parts of the body so that the air inhaled is not the very same as the air exhaled. For the Hippocratic author of The Sacred Disease, not all the air inhaled is immediately exhaled but travels to other parts of the body and deposits some of its qualities there contrary to the thinking of Aristotle. Galen himself is somewhat ambivalent on this point.19 Many ancient authors thus agree that breathing is the inhaling and exhaling of air but disagree about which body parts must receive the air to constitute breathing. For some, drawing air into the mouth is sufficient while for others the air must be drawn into the brain, lungs, or some other body part. These authors 18 Translation by David J. Furley and J. S. Wilkie, Galen on Respiration and the Arteries: An Edition with English Translation and Commentary of De usu respirationis, An in arteriis natura sanguis contineatur, De usu pulsuum, and De causis respirationis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 169. See also Donald F. Proctor, A History of Breathing Physiology, Lung Biology in Health and Disease 83 (New York: Marcel Dekker, 1995), 20. 19  See Furley and Wilkie, Galen, 264 n. 39.

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also disagree about what happens to the air once it enters the body. Some contend that it is entirely breathed out again while others hold that some of it remains in the body or transfers some of its qualities before being exhaled. Ancient authors do not therefore give a uniform answer to the question of what breathing is although they do provide the options available for consideration. The same may be said for their responses to the question of how breathing occurs. 2.2. How Does Breathing Occur? Explanations of how breathing occurs are undoubtedly related to definitions of breathing. Just as the definitions of breathing are debated and contested, so also are the explanations. Some of the earliest explanations of how breathing occurs appear ludicrous not only to us moderns but also to some of the ancients as well. Alcmaeon of Croton (6th–5th century BCE), for example, apparently thought that goats breathe through their ears. His own words do not survive, and perhaps the reports have misunderstood his discovery of the Eustachian tubes and his realization that air passes through them. At any rate, this view was prevalent enough to prompt Aristotle to deny that the ears have anything to do with breathing.20 In his simile of a little girl’s playing with a clepsydra, Empedocles (490– 430 BCE) provides one of the most celebrated explanations of how breathing occurs. A clepsydra is a device for drawing and transferring liquids. A small tube at the top widens to a bell shape that contains numerous perforations in the strainer at the bottom. Holding her finger over the tube and inserting the clepsydra into water prevents the water from entering. Releasing her finger allows the water to enter while replacing her finger over the opening of the tube prevents the water from leaving. Water and other liquids can thus be transferred, and the little girl’s playing with the clepsydra forms a simile for breathing according to Empedocles. Aristotle thought Empedocles’ entire passage worth quoting: In this manner, all humans inhale and exhale. Bloodless pipes in all of the flesh are stretched to the outmost region of the body and in these at their openings, the farthest extremities of the nostrils (ῥινῶν) are pierced through and through with constricted furrows so that blood is contained but a ready means for moving is cut for the pure air by the thoroughfares. Then when the smooth blood retreats from there, pure air surging in a raging wave rushes down but when the blood springs up, the pure air again blows out from there, just as whenever a girl plays with a clepsydra of gleaming metal. When she dips the clepsydra into a smooth body of silver-white water after placing the opening of the tube against her graceful hand, not one drop enters the vessel. The mass of air shuts it out by falling upon the constricted (πυκνά) perforations until she uncovers the close ranked (πυκινόν) stream. However then, a fitting measure of water enters as the spiritair falls back. Just so when she holds water at the bottom of the metal clepsydra because the opening as well as the passage has been blocked up by human skin, the pure air out Proctor, History of Breathing, 8.

20

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side since it eagerly desires the inside holds back the storm of water at the gates by seizing the high ground of the dull-sounding (δυσηχέος) strainer until she releases the storm of water with her hand. Then contrary to before, a fitting measure of water runs out from under the strainer as the spirit-air rushes back again. Just so, as the smooth blood surges through the limbs whenever indeed it rushes down hastening back to its stronghold (μυχόνδε), a stream of pure air immediately comes down as it rushes along in a wave of pure air. But when the blood springs up, the pure air again blows out equal in reverse action. (Empedocles fr. 100; Aristotle, Resp. 7 [473b–474a])

Aristotle states that this simile expresses Empedocles’ explanation of breathing. In Empedocles’ simile, the military imagery is prominent. In military tactics, the adjective πυκνός refers to close ordered ranks of troops as opposed to ἀραιός, thin or sparse ranks. The adjective δυσηχής refers to the dull sound of metal striking metal and probably continues the military imagery. The air seizes the high ground or most defensible position, lays siege to the water, and restrains the water at the gates or openings. The noun μυχός refers to the inmost part of a house or city, and the adverb μυχόνδε in this military context probably refers to an acropolis or to the inmost, most defensible portion of a city to which the water retreats. In the clepsydra, the battle between air and water ebbs and flows in a process analogous to breathing. In the body, air and blood engage in a similar warfare. Empedocles thus explains breathing as a battle between blood and breath.21 According to his philosophy, all processes operate by the contrary divine impulses of Love (Φιλία) or Strife (Νεῖκος) sometimes personified as Aphrodite and Ares. Significantly, Empedocles does not explain breathing as a love process. Indeed, Love would induce air and blood to unite, and breathing would only consist of a single inhalation. For Empedocles, only strife can explain how breathing occurs as the ebb and flow of the air and the blood as they refuse to unite but remain in constant enmity and warfare. The process of breathing is thus a conflict between opposites, and this view has broad support among ancient authors. Empedocles’ explanation about how breathing occurs greatly influences Plato and Aristotle, who nevertheless disagree about the word ῥινῶν in line 4 of Empedocles’ Fragment. Aristotle reads it as the genitive plural of ῥίς, the word for nostril. Aristotle criticizes Empedocles for thinking that the sinus cavities at the extremity of the nostrils are the place where air enters and exits the body rather than through the windpipe as Aristotle thinks. Plato reads ῥινῶν as the genitive plural of ῥινός, meaning skin, and understands Empedocles’ advocating the pores of the skin as the place where the air enters and exits the body. If Aristotle’s reading is correct, then Plato is the first to describe cutaneous breathing 21  Furley and Wilkie, Galen, 3. Furley and Wilkie comment on this passage, “It is of great importance for the understanding of Greek physiology to observe that from the earliest recorded theory the two systems of blood flow and respiration were linked.”

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or breathing through the skin largely as a result of his misreading of Empedocles although this point is contested.22 In his Timaeus, Plato is concerned to explain the movement of air in breathing without postulating a void as the atomists do. Plato writes: Again, let us look at the experience of breathing. … Since nothing is a void into which any of the flowings of the spirit could enter but since the spirit is flowing outside from us, the consequence of this is already clear to everyone that the spirit flows not into a void but dispels the adjacent spirit from its place. But the dispelled spirit always expels the spirit adjacent to it and according to this necessity every spirit follows close upon the spirit flowing out by being driven around into the place from which the spirit went out as it enters there and fills the place. And this whole process happens simultaneously similar to a loop going around on account of nothing being a void. Therefore then, after they release the spirit outside, the chest and the lung become full again by the air around the body as it makes its way inside through the loose-textured flesh and is driven around. But in turn, the air also as it is returned again and as it goes outside through the body pushes around the breath at the passage of the mouth and the nostrils. … But the spirit, which undergoes the same things and gives back the same things over and over again, causes inhalation and exhalation to occur as the spirit moves back and forth, here and there, in a circular motion produced by both directions of flow. (Tim. 79a–79e)

Plato’s idea of cutaneous breathing and his connection of the pores of the body with respiration are widely accepted in the ancient world.23 For example, one Hippocratic author writes: Loosness of body, from which bodies more is taken away in respiration, is a healthy thing. Compactness of body, from which bodies less is taken in respiration is an unhealthy thing. Those persons who respire well are more susceptible and more predisposed to health and recover from illness with ease. Those persons who respire poorly are more resistant before falling ill but after they become ill, they recover with difficulty. These statements pertain both to the whole body and to each part of the body. (Hippocrates, Alim. 28)

For this author, a body with more pores can breathe better than a body with fewer pores. Breathing is both through the oro-nasal passages as well as through the skin known as cutaneous breathing. 22  D. O’Brien, “Empedocles’ Simile of the Clepsydra: ‘The Effects of a Simile,’” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 90 (1970): 140–179. O’Brien prefers Aristotle’s reading over Plato’s but disagrees with G. A. Seeck, who argues that the idea of cutaneous breathing is first documented in Plato if it is not described in Empedocles’ Fragment 100. See O’Brien, “Empedocles’ Simile,” 172; and Gustav A. Seeck, “Empedocles B 17.9–13, B 8, B 100 bei Aristoteles,” Hermes: Zeitschrift für die klassische Philologie 95 (1967): 28–53, here 50–52. For a list of those on both sides of this debate, see Furley and Wilkie, Galen, 4 n. 1. 23 Plato perhaps derived his notion of cutaneous breathing from Philistion, whose views Anonymus Londinensis explains, “The condition of our body is a cause of disease in the following way. When, he says, the whole body breathes well and the breath passes through unhindered, health is the result. For breathing (ἀναπνοή) takes place not only by way of mouth and nostrils, but also over all the body” (De medicina 20, translation mine). See Furley and Wilkie, Galen, 6–7.

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The oro-nasal passages and the skin are not the only ways air enters and exits the human body, however. One Hippocratic author explains: It is necessary that much air (πνεῦμα) enter with much food, for differing amounts of wind (πνεῦμα) depart from outside the body and arrive in the body with all things that are both eaten and drunk. This fact is proven by belching, for belching occurs in the greatest number of people after the foods and drinks are consumed. Whenever the air (ἀήρ) breaks the enclosures in which it is hidden in the food or drink, it rushes upward. Whenever the body is filled from a fullness of nourishment, it is still more full of wind (πνεύματος). (Hippocrates, Flat. 7)

Another Hippocrataic author mentions air’s traveling through the digestive system. Discussing constipation, he says, “Blockages occur when the upper cavity is heated and the lower cavity is cooled, for the bowel consequently withers so that it lets neither air (πνεῦμα) nor foods pass through” (Hippocrates, Morb. 3.14). In addition to the oro-nasal passages and the skin, therefore, the digestive system provides an explanation of how air enters and exits the body. Aristotle reacts quite adamantly to other explanations of the process of breathing and insists that breathing be restricted to the entrance and exit of air into the lungs through the windpipe. Galen provides the most complete explanation of breathing through the windpipe and lungs. He says: In all animals that inhale through the mouth from the atmosphere and exhale into it again, the lung, which is an instrument of both the voice and respiration, fills the thoracic cavity. The source of its motion is the thorax. … For when the whole thorax expands in inspiration … and then causes the entire lung to expand to fill the space left vacant, the membranous parts of [the trachea and its branches] readily increase in breath and length. (De usu partium 6.2)24

Galen further observes that the diaphragm is “not only the wall of partition between the viscera above and below, as Plato calls it, but also a not unimportant instrument of respiration” and that the abdominal muscles act to emit the breath (De usu partium 4.14).25 Aristotle likens the process to bellows and says, “Humans inhale by raising the region of the thorax just as they raise the bellows in the forges. … They exhale by collapsing and pressing down the region of the thorax as indeed they do the bellows there” (Resp. 7 [474a]). Using bellows to explain how breathing occurs is commonly accepted as is demonstrated by the word φῦσα used in reference to both breath and bellows. As explanations of how breathing occurs, the analogy of the bellows and Empedocles’ simile of the clepsydra enjoy broad popularity among ancient authors, who nevertheless disagree about the precise ports of entry and exit for 24  Translated by Margaret T. May, Galen: On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body “Περὶ χρείας μορίων; De usu partium” Translated from the Greek with an Introduction and Commentary, 2 vols. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968), 1:279. See Proctor, History of Breathing, 21. 25  Translated by May, Galen, 1:231. See Proctor, History of Breathing, 21.

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the air. Ancient authors debate whether humans breathe only through the oronasal passages or also through other parts of the body such as the pores of the skin or perhaps also the digestive system. They also contest whether windpipe and lungs are necessary to the process. Just as ancient authors debate and contest definitions of breathing, therefore, they also disagree about the explanations of how breathing occurs. Their sharpest disagreements, however, arise when they attempt to specify the reason for breathing. 2.3. Why Breathe? Galen provides a succinct and concise summary of the reasons for breathing that are offered by ancient authors. He writes: What therefore then is the significant benefit for us from breathing? Is it the origin of the soul itself as Asclepiades says? Or is it not the origin of the soul but a certain nourishing of the soul as Praxagoras, the son of Nicarchus, says? Or is it a certain cooling of the innate heat as Philistion and Diocles kept saying? Or [is it] both nourishing and cooling as Hippocrates says? Or is it none of these things, but we breathe on account of filling the arteries as Erasistratus thinks? (De usu respirationis 1.2)

Each view mentioned by Galen merits consideration. Asclepiades’ notion that the breath constitutes the soul is common among ancient authors.26 Anaximenes states, “That the air we breathe should be the life itself which animates us is a common idea, and the breath-soul is a universal conception” (Aetius, De placita philosophorum, 1.3.4). The necessity of breathing for living makes a strong argument for associating the breath with the soul, whose presence or absence determines life and death. According to this view, the substance of the soul is wind (πνεῦμα) and differs little from the air outside the body except for its being inside. Breathing allows a living being to inspire air and thus supplement the soul. Such a view provides an easy explanation about how the soul grows along with the body while other views had difficulty explaining how the soul increases without receiving additional substance. Asclepiades is an atomist among whom this view is preferred although variations occur. One contentious point is when the soul atoms enter the body whether at conception, sometime during gestation, or at birth. Another contested point is what purpose continued breathing serves once the full number of atoms constitutes the soul. Aristotle records Democritus’ explanation that breathing prevents the soul from being crushed out (Resp. 4 [472a] [Hett, LCL]). Democritus’ notion is that soul atoms diffuse and disperse unless other soul atoms enter the lungs in respiration. Breathing thus maintains equilibrium between the soul atoms inside the body with those outside, and life continues. When breathing ceases, the internal soul atoms disperse to the outside, and death 26 Asclepiades was from Prusa in Bithynia but practiced medicine in Rome. He died in the first century BCE.

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occurs. Although not agreeing on every point, atomists prefer the view that breath constitutes the soul, but many non-atomists also subscribe to this view. Praxagoras does not think that breathing constitutes the soul but that it nourishes or replenishes the soul. The preservation of his view is fragmentary, but he apparently thinks the cause of the soul to be the reproductive seed. Once the soul is constituted in an offspring, however, breathing nourishes the soul and facilitates its growth and life. Praxagoras distinguishes veins, which are filled with blood, and arteries, which carry wind (πνεῦμα). The fragments do not preserve his explanation, if he ever proposed one, of how the inspired air becomes psychic pneuma or if there is a qualitative difference between the two. Nevertheless, he considers the psychic pneuma to issue from the heart and to pass through the arteries and to cause motion and movement. Hence, a blockage of the pneuma in the arteries by phlegm or other substances results in paralysis.27 One common conception among those who think that breathing nourishes the soul is that the soul is constituted by fire (e. g., Aristotle, Resp. 6 [473a]). Just as fire requires a constant supply of air, so also the soul requires a supply of air through breathing. Just as a fire dies when shut off from air, so also animals die when breathing stops supplying air and they grow cold. Breathing thus nourishes the firey soul not by providing it with substance but by supplying it with a necessary ingredient for its continuance. The notion of the soul as fire is closely related to the idea of inborn heat whether or not the soul is equated with this heat, and breathing is essential for nourishing or maintaining this heat. Philistion and Diocles’ view is that the purpose of breathing is neither to constitute the soul nor to nourish or replenish it but to cool the innate heat. Plato, Aristotle, and others champion this view, which becomes the most accepted explanation of breathing in the ancient world. Aristotle explains, “Speaking generally, the nature of animals requires cooling owing to the fierce heat which the soul acquires in the heart. This cooling is achieved by breathing” (Resp. 15 [478a]). It is obvious to Aristotle that exhaled air is hot while inhaled air is cool and that an internal cooling process has occurred (Resp. 5 [472b]). According to Aristotle, cessation of breathing results in death because the heat is consumed by itself when it is not moderated by cooling (Resp. 17 [479a]). This view maintains that all inhaled air is exhaled and does not contribute either to the constitution or nourishing of the soul. Hippocrates’ holding that breathing both nourishes and cools demonstrates that these various views need not be mutually exclusive and that some ancient authors attempt to combine these views into a coherent explanation of why breathing occurs. Galen is most persuaded by Hippocrates and perhaps provides one of the most thorough synthetic explanations of the purpose of breathing. 27 See Anonymus Parisinus, De morbis acutis et chroniis 20. See also Robert Fuchs, “Anecdota medica graeca,” Rheinisches Museum 49 (1894): 532–558, here 550.

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Galen writes, “The breathing through the arteries is enough for all other members, but for the brain and the heart two special organs of breathing are provided; for the first, the nostrils; for the second, the lung” (De usu respirationis 6.4).28 Thus, Galen synthesizes a number of different views in thinking the breath from the nostrils goes directly to the brain, the breath from the lungs to the heart, and the breath from the skin to all parts of the body through the arteries. Concerning breathing through the arteries, Galen writes, “Through being expanded they [the arteries] draw from their whole neighborhood through their extremities and their pores, whatever can most readily fill their expanded size” (An in arteriis sanguis contineatur 7.4).29 He explains, “They [the arteries] eliminate through the mouths that end in the skin all the waste matter that is vaporous and smoky, and take up into themselves in exchange no small part of the air that surrounds us” (De usu pulsuum 5.2).30 Thus, Galen thinks that the arteries breathe through the skin, and he therefore subscribes to the notion of cutaneous breathing. Hence, the pneuma supplied both nourishes the psychic pneuma and cools the parts of the body other than the heart and brain, which are cooled and supplied with pneuma by other types of breathing (De usu respirationis 5.2–4).31 Concerning breathing through the lungs, Galen thinks that the heart is the primary recipient of the air that enters the lung and that the heat of the heart is regulated by this type of breathing (De usu respirationis 5.4).32 Julius Rocca summarizes Galen’s view: According to Galen, the creation of psychic pneuma begins when ‘inspired air’ (ἔξωθεν ἀήρ) enters the lungs, which alter it into a ‘pneuma-like (πνευματῶες) substance. … From the lungs this new entity enters the left ventricle of the heart where it is fully elaborated into vital pneuma. This change is made possible by innate heat (ἔμφυτον θερμόν) within the left ventricle acting in concert with altered venous blood from the right ventricle. … Galen’s vital pneuma now has access to the arterial system, affording it entry into the brain where it infuses two vascular structures, the retiform plexus … and the choriod plexus … which complete the transformation of vital (πνεῦμα ζωτικόν) to psychic pneuma (πνεῦμα ψυχικόν). … The ventricles are the final repository of psychic pneuma which then continues – in a way not fully determined by Galen – through the nerves and thence to the rest of the body, providing sensation and voluntary motion.33

Galen’s distinction of inspired air, vital pneuma, and psychic pneuma affords a sophistication to his view of breathing through the lungs that is lacking in some other explanations. 28 Translated

by Furley and Wilkie, Galen, 127.  Ibid., 177. 30 Ibid., 213. 31  Ibid., 122–127. 32  Ibid., 126–127. 33  Julius Rocca, Galen on the Brain: Anatomical Knowledge and Physiological Speculation in the Second Century A. D. (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 64–66. 29

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Concerning breathing through the nostrils, Galen thinks that the brain is the primary recipient and receives the air directly from the nostrils. He writes: The brain does not at all need the pneuma from the heart. It is accepted that either the vapor rising to it from the blood is sufficient, or what is inhaled through the nostrils; but it is probable that the rising vapor too becomes scarce, when the arteries are ligatured (this too is shown in The Use of the Pulse). So it must be that it is for the most part from breathing in through the nostrils that the nourishment comes for the psychic pneuma. (De usu respirationis 5.2)34

Galen agrees with Hippocrates that “the pneuma appears … to come directly through the nostrils into the hollows in the brain.”35 As for the use of breathing, Galen thus synthesizes several views into one of the most thorough explanations of breathing and the reasons for it. He agrees with Aristotle that breathing cools the innate heat. However, Galen follows Hippocrates more closely and allows that the inspired air both cools the innate heat and nourishes the vital and psychic pneuma as faculties of the air other than coolness are transferred to the body through breathing.36 As with the questions of what breathing is and how it occurs, ancient authors provide various answers to the question of the purpose of breathing. It either constitutes the soul or nourishes it or perhaps both or perhaps neither. It either cools the innate heat or nourishes that heat or perhaps both or perhaps neither. The answers to these questions just depend upon whom you ask. Galen laments the results of the ancient investigation about breathing when he says: If life is the activity of the soul, and life seems to be greatly served by breathing, how long shall we be likely to remain ignorant of the manner of this service? As long, I suppose, as we remain ignorant of the substance of the soul. All the same, we must make so bold as to seek out the truth; even if we do not reach it, we shall certainly come a good deal nearer to it than we are now. (De usu respirationis 1.2)37

Although the ancient investigation fails to provide consistent answers to questions about breathing, it does nevertheless raise the questions and propose answers that inform Greco-Roman readers of the biblical breathing texts, which now merit consideration.

3. Greco-Roman Readings of Biblical Breathing Passages Biblical passages do not of course discuss breathing in the same way as the medical texts. These passages are primarily theological and not interested in ex Translated by Furley and Wilkie, Galen, 123, 125.  See Galen, De usu respirationis 5.1 and the translation by Furley and Wilkie, Galen, 123. See also Galen, De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis 2.8. 36  Galen, De usu respirationis 5.8. See Furley and Wilkie, Galen, 132–133. 37  Ibid., 83. 34 35

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plaining the physiology of breathing or describing the what, the how, and the why of breathing. Nevertheless, the biblical passages are written and read in contexts that presuppose physiological understandings of breathing and these presuppositions are worth considering even though the interpretive tradition has largely ignored them. It is beyond the scope of the present article to consider all the biblical passages related to breathing so I would like to focus on only a few. First, I want to discuss Genesis 2:7 and 6:3 since these two texts are foundational for other biblical breathing passages and then turn to some New Testament passages that describe the reception of the Holy Spirit through breathing. Admittedly, my discussion will be incomplete, and I am certain that other passages will readily come to mind as I proceed. My interest is in how Greco-Roman readers would read the following passages. 3.1. Genesis 2:7 and 6:3 The physiological context of Gen 2:7 and 6:3 is prominent. God forms a clay clod from the ground and blows into this clay clod’s nostrils the breath of life, and the clay clod is turned into a living being.38 A bit later, God becomes so disturbed by the behavior of the clay clods that God decides God’s spirit would no longer strive, shield, contend, or remain in the clay clods but that they would return to the ground. These two short verses describe the profound physiological realities of life and death and associate both with breath and breathing. The context of these verses requires Greco-Roman readers to ask and answer several physiological questions and to form some physiological conceptions of what these passages are describing. One question relates to God’s blowing the breath of life. What does God’s blowing do to the clay clod? The verb ‫ נפח‬means both to blow and to set aflame, and the nominal form ‫ מפח‬means bellows in Jer 6:29. The semantic range of this verb permits a Greco-Roman reader to connect breathing with the innate heat necessary for life as in the medical literature. Indeed, the LXX translation of this verb is ἐνεφύσησεν, a Greek verb derived from the nominal stem φῦσα, meaning bellows. Physiologically, God’s blowing engenders heat in the cold clay clod. Greco-Roman readers may disagree about whether God’s blowing ignites this heat or only nourishes or fans this heat or perhaps both. Each view is possible for a Greco-Roman reader. Nevertheless, such readers connect the breathing and the heating of the cold clay clod. Another question relates to the breath of life and the clay clod’s turning into a living being or soul. For Greco-Roman readers, does the breath constitute the soul or only nourish or sustain it in some way? Does the clay clod exhale all the inhaled breath or does some of it remain in the clay clod as the soul or part of the soul? Depending upon the reader, answers to these questions are of course  For this use of γίνομαι with εἰς, see Gen 20:12 LXX and the comment in LSJ s. v.  II.3.c.

38

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varied. Philo Judaeus, for example, provides one Greco-Roman reading of these passages. He writes, “That man who was … created as a vessel is formed by a potter, was formed out of dust and clay as far as his body was concerned; but he received his soul by God breathing the breath of life into his face” (QG 1.4).39 Philo further writes, “Now that which breathes in is God, that which receives what is breathed in is the mind, and that which is breathed in is the spirit” (Leg. 1.13 [37]).40 Philo asks, “Why is it said that God breathed into his face the breath of life?” He answers, “Because … man is created to be a partaker not only of a soul but also of a rational soul” (QG 1.5).41 Philo explains: So also is the mind the dominant portion of the soul. It is into this alone that God breathes. … Of the qualities which the mind has received from God, it gives a share to the irrational portion of the soul, so that the mind is vivified by God, and the irrational part of the soul by the mind. (Leg. 1.13 [39])42

For Philo, all humans, both good and bad, have this spirit in their rational soul, for otherwise humans would have no idea of virtue and could not be judged for their sins (Leg. 1.13 [35]). Philo then does not think this spirit is exhaled but that it inspires the rational soul of the human, and he provides one among many varied answers to the question of the relationship between the breath of life and the soul. A final question raised by the physiological context of Gen 2:7 and 6:3 relates to God’s spirit interacting with the clay clods. Modern interpreters propose a range of meanings for the Hebrew verb ‫ידון‬, and each of these meanings would resonate with Greco-Roman readers. The proposal that God’s spirit strives or contends with the clods, who are but flesh, permits an Empedoclean reading of Gen 6:3, especially since flesh is considered to be nothing other than congealed blood. Life is a battle between blood and breath. Death results when breath retreats from the battlefield and ironically leaves blood as the vanquished victor in the struggle. The proposal that God’s spirit shields humans is also possible for Greco-Roman readers since breathing is considered a protection for life against death. In addition, the proposal that God’s spirit remains in humans is understandable to Greco-Roman readers as demonstrated by Philo and the LXX translation of this Hebrew verb with καταμείνῃ, which means to remain in or reside. Regardless of how God’s spirit interacts with the clay clods, its removal results in death, and this point would not be lost on Greco-Roman readers. Readers in the Greco-Roman world would not read the foundational passages in Gen 2:7 and 6:3 in the same way. Despite many disagreements, they would nevertheless perhaps agree that God’s breathing is somehow responsible for 39  Translated by C. D. Yonge, The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged New Updated Edition (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1993), 791. 40  Ibid., 29. 41  Ibid., 791–792. 42  Ibid., 29.

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turning the cold clod into a warm clod and for maintaining that warmth. They would also agree that God’s breathing somehow relates to the soul either in its creation, in certain of its essential qualities, or in its maintenance. Finally, they would all agree that the withdrawal of the breath of life results in death. Their reading of these foundational passages is consonant with the way they would read other biblical passages related to breathing such as the New Testament passages about the reception of the Holy Spirit through breathing. 3.2. John 20:22 Greco-Roman readers would not likely miss the strong intertextual connections between John 20:22 and Gen 2:7. Jesus breathes on his disciples as God breathes into the clay clod. The same Greek verb ἐφυσάω occurs in both verses. John 20:22 is the climax of several passages in John’s Gospel that echo themes associated with Gen 2:7. In John 1:33, John the Baptist introduces Jesus as the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. According to John 7:39, this baptism will occur, and believers will receive the Spirit only after Jesus is glorified. In his conversation with Nicodemus in John 3, Jesus describes this Spirit as wind blowing where it will in imagery similar to the creative spirit of God that hovered over the waters in Gen 1:2. As in Genesis, this Spirit brings new birth in John 3:6–8 and new life in John 14:19. The use of the phrase παρέδωκεν τὸ πνεῦμα in John 19:30 to describe Jesus’ death echoes Gen 2:7. The verb means to transmit, grant, or bestow. Just as God transmitted, granted, or bestowed the breath of life to the clod, Jesus’ Spirit can now be transmitted or granted to his disciples because of Jesus’ death. John 20:22 describes the climactic moment after his death when Jesus’ breathes on his disciples and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Greco-Roman readers would likely perceive the prominent intertextual connections between Gen 2:7 and John 20:22. They would understand that both verses present a similar view of breathing. Breathing is oro-nasal in both verses, and the transfer of the spirit is through the oro-nasal passages. In both verses, breathing occurs by divine initiation and activity. In both verses, the spirit that is inhaled is not completely exhaled but rather remains in the body to provide life to the recipient. Thus, Greco-Roman readers would see God’s breathing into the clod in Gen 2:7 and Jesus’ breathing on his disciples in John 20:22 as being very similar in their understanding of breathing and their presentation of the reception of the Spirit. 3.3. Mark 15:39 Greco-Roman readers would also perceive a connection in the reception of the Spirit in John 20:22 and Mark 15:39 as Jesus’ breathes his last. As in John’s Gospel, Mark recounts John the Baptist’s announcement that Jesus is the one who baptizes in the Holy Spirit. Markan commentators often remark that this

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announcement is never realized in Mark’s Gospel. Greco-Roman readers would not perceive this problem but would understand Jesus’ breathing out the Spirit in v. 37 and the centurion’s then breathing in the Spirit in v. 39. In contrast to John’s παρέδωκεν, Mark uses the verb ἐξέπνευσεν to describe Jesus’ final exhalation. Alone of all the Gospels, Mark then positions this centurion directly in front of Jesus, face-to-face with him (ὁ παρεστηκὼς ἐξ ἐναντίας αὐτοῦ). As Jesus breathes out the Spirit, the centurion breathes in the Spirit. The centurion’s confession that Jesus is the Son of God is the evidence that he has received the Spirit, for in the Christian tradition such Christological confessions can be made only by the Holy Spirit as 1 Cor 12:3 makes plain (cf. Matt 16:17). As a bearer of the Spirit of Jesus, this centurion later becomes the only witness that Pilate believes to confirm Jesus’ death (Mark 15:44–45). Greco-Roman readers would thus connect the oro-nasal transferal of the Spirit as Jesus breathes his last in Mark 15:39 and as he breathes on his disciples in John 20:22. These two verses, therefore, can arguably be referred to as the Markan and Johannine Pentecost accounts. 3.4. Acts 2:1–4 Of course, the classic narrative of the reception of the Spirit in the New Testament is the Lukan account of Pentecost in Acts 2:1–4. Greco-Roman readers would understand the wind’s filling the house and then the Spirit’s filling the disciples as the disciples’ inhaling the Spirit through the oro-nasal passages, and Luke certainly presents the reception of the Spirit in this manner in other passages. Such readers would not miss, however, the reference to cutaneous breathing in the reference that the fire sat upon (ἐπί) each of the disciples. Indeed, cutaneous breathing is Luke’s favorite method for the reception of the Spirit especially by the laying on of hands. At the Samaritan Revival, for example, the Samaritans do not receive the Holy Spirit until the Spirit-filled apostles Peter and John lay hands upon them (Acts 8:17). This method is repeated in Paul’s reception of the Spirit from Ananias (Acts 9:17), and the Ephesian disciples’ reception of the Spirit from Paul (Acts 19:6). Even when the laying on of hands is not specifically mentioned, Luke prefers the preposition ἐπί with the accusative case to describe the reception of the Spirit. Luke 3:22 presents the Spirit’s descending upon Jesus’ moistened skin at his baptism while Acts 10:44 portrays the Spirit’s falling upon Cornelius and his household. Being familiar with cutaneous breathing, GrecoRoman readers would not miss these cutaneous references to the reception of the Spirit especially in Luke’s Pentecost account. Just as in John and Mark’s Gospels, the Spirit remains for Luke after its reception and is not exhaled. In Luke’s Pentecost account, the Spirit enables the disciples to speak in the languages of the nations. For Luke, the purpose of inhaling the Spirit either through the oro-nasal passages or through the skin is for empowerment. According to Luke, Jesus promises the disciples that they would

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receive power after the Holy Spirit comes upon them and that they would become His witnesses (Acts 1:8). Luke’s conception of the inhaled Spirit’s enabling the disciples to do various things is consonant with Greco-Roman readers’ beliefs about the function of the inhaled spirit. 3.5. Paul’s Letters Although Paul’s letters have nothing resembling a Pentecost account, reception of the Spirit is crucially important, for in Rom 8:9 Paul defines a Christian as someone who has the Spirit of Christ.43 Although Gal 3:1–5 may indicate reception of the Spirit through the oro-nasal passages, certain other explicit pneumatological statements in Paul’s letters reflect other means for the entrance of the Spirit. Paul’s association of the reception of the Spirit with water baptism in 1 Cor 12:13a implicates the pores of the moistened skin as the ports of the Spirit’s entry into the human body. The latter portion of this verse also specifies the digestive system as the entrance for the Spirit when Paul writes ἕν πνεῦμα ἐποτίσθημεν.” Hans-Josef Klauck links this statement with the reference to the spiritual drink in 1 Cor 10:4 and translates, “We were made to drink one Spirit.”44 Indeed, Paul’s discussion of the Eucharist in 1 Cor 10:3–4 reflects the entrance of the Spirit through the digestive system. The one who eats the spiritual bread and drinks the spiritual drink receives the Spirit. Friedrich W. Horn explains: It can be contested only with difficulty that Paul declares a realistic understanding of the Sacrament and that the Spirit, connected substantially with the food, is transferred with the food. … 1 Cor 12:13b proves that Paul sees a substantial transfer of the Spirit given in the Sacramental act.45

Thus, Horn and Klauck interpret Paul’s statements as evidence for the entrance of the Spirit with the ingested eucharistic foods. Even though not all exegetes would agree with Horn or Klauck, Greco-Roman readers would have no difficulty understanding the eucharistic reception of the three necessary nutrients of solid food, liquid beverage, and Spirit through the digestive system. They would read Paul’s statement in 1 Cor 12:13 as the Spirit’s entry through the pores of the moistened skin in baptism and through the digestive system in the Eucharist. In baptism, the Spirit initially enters the body through the moistened pores, and in the Eucharist, the Spirit is replenished by repeatedly entering the human body through the digestive system. While 43  James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 423. Dunn says that this verse represents the nearest thing to a definition of what it means to be a Christian for Paul. 44  Hans-Josef Klauck, Herrenmahl und Hellenistischer Kult: Eine religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zum ersten Korintherbrief, NTAbh n.s. 15 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1982), 334–335. 45  Friedrich. W. Horn, Das Angeld des Geistes: Studien zur Paulinischen Pneumatologie, FRLANT 154 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992), 169–170 (translation mine).

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modern readers would connect neither of these means with breathing, GrecoRoman readers would easily make the connection as the ancient discussions about breathing demonstrate. 3.6. Summary Regarding the biblical breathing passages, therefore, Greco-Roman readers would understand these texts as presenting definite answers to the three questions of the what, the how, and the why of breathing. First, these readers would see that breathing in these passages is more than air simply entering the mouth or nostrils. The air or pneuma must travel to other parts of the body although these biblical passages often do not identify the specific location. Even though some of these readers may not agree with the perspectives presented in these passages, they would nevertheless understand that these passages presuppose that not all of the air is breathed out but some, much, or all of it is retained. Second, these readers would perceive the divine impetus for breathing in these passages, and they would easily understand the means for the transfer of the Spirit through the oro-nasal channels, through the skin, or through the digestive system since all of these means are proposed in the ancient discussions about breathing. Finally, Greco-Roman readers would conclude that these passages advocate the reception of the Divine Spirit as the primary reason for the breathing they describe. These readers would see some of these passages as advocating a connection between the Divine Spirit and the warmth indicative of life and others of these passages as presenting various relations of this Divine Spirit with the human soul. All three questions of the what, the how, and the why of breathing are thus presupposed by the biblical breathing passages, and Greco-Roman readers would probably not have overlooked them.

4. Conclusion So how would Greco-Roman readers understand the biblical passages about breathing? Doubtlessly, variously since the ancient discussions about breathing do not even reach a common consensus. One thing remains certain, however; they would not have read them as we moderns do, and an investigation about what the ancient medical texts say about breathing is helpful for seeing just how differently Greco-Romans would have read the biblical passages related to breathing. The questions they ask and the answers they give about breathing provide an interesting and productive context for interpreting the biblical breathing passages. This investigation of the biblical breathing passages demonstrates the usefulness of the re-discovered ancient medical texts for biblical exegesis. This study

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along with the recent studies of many other scholars provides new exegetical insights from these old medical texts. Doubtless, many more insights await discovery from the use of the ancient medical texts in the exegesis and interpretation of biblical passages, and, hopefully, many more studies will be forthcoming.

5. Reception History This article engages the renewed interest in ancient medical texts for interpreting the New Testament and makes three contributions to this interpretative approach. First, it surveys some of the more important studies that use ancient medical information in the exegesis of specific biblical passages. Soham Al-Suadi summarizes with approval my survey without adding any additional studies even though several have appeared since I first published my article.46 Second, my article explores the various understandings of breathing in ancient medical texts and concludes that the process and function of breathing are variously understood. Annette Weissenrieder agrees with my conclusion and states that the medical sources describe “the process of breathing in diverse ways.”47 Third, my article applies this diverse understanding of breathing to some specific biblical texts to see how an ancient reader would likely understand the references to breathing in these texts. While my discussions of Gen 6:3, Mark 15:39, and Acts 2:1–4 have largely gone unnoticed, my investigations of Gen 2:7, John 20:22, and some passages in First Corinthians and Galatians have received more attention. In her attempt to specify the meaning of ἐμφυσάω, Weissenrieder engages with my interpretations of Gen 2:7 and John 20:22 and urges caution in assuming that the use of the verb ἐμφυσάω in either text implies that God exhaled the breath of life or that Jesus exhaled the Holy Spirit.48 She contends, “The verb describes the mechanics of air pressure, for which one may use the terms ‘blow into’ or ‘kindle.’ Therefore, the mechanics of breathing are to be distinguished from the content: God gives the breath of life to Adam, formed from the soil; but this is not synonymous with the ‘breathing out/exhaling of God.’”49 While the mechanics of breathing denoted by the verb ἐμφυσάω may not be synonymous with 46  Soham Al-Suadi, “Even before His Birth He Will Be Filled with the Holy Spirit – Luke 1:15 in the Spectrum of Theological and Medical Discourses of Early Christianity,” in The Holy Spirit, Inspiration, and the Cultures of Antiquity: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Jörg Frey and John R. Levison, Exstasis 5 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017), 95–118, here 101 n. 16. 47  Annette Weissenrieder, “The Infusion of the Spirit: The Meaning of ἐμφυσάω in John 20:22–23,” in The Holy Spirit, Inspiration, and the Cultures of Antiquity: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Jörg Frey and John R. Levison, Exstasis 5 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017), 119–151, here 126. 48  Ibid., 125. 49  Ibid., 142.

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exhaling, the majority of interpreters including me understand exhaling as part of the process implied by the use of this verb in both Gen 2:7 and John 20:22.50 The reason for this majority opinion lies in the mechanics of the verb ἐμφυσάω itself. The uncompounded verb φυσάω contrasts with the verb ἀάζω, which refers onomatopoetically to the exhalation of air in the pronunciation of the word aha.51 Ps.-Aristotle uses ἀάζω to describe the exhalation of breath with the mouth wide open but uses φυσάω for exhalation through a narrow mouth (διὰ στενοῦ τοῦ στόματος; Prob. 34.6 864a). The verb φυσάω, therefore, refers to a stream of air forcefully blown though a narrow passage or channel, and the compounded form ἐμφυσάω refers to blowing this stream of air into someone or something. Consequently, the majority of interpreters logically conclude that God must exhale to blow into the face of the human in Gen 2:7 and that Jesus must likewise exhale to blow the Holy Spirit into the disciples in John 20:22. Near the end of her article, Weissenrieder with apparent inconsistency with the rest of her argument seems to assume as much when she states that in John 20:22, “Jesus breathes πνεῦμα on his disciples.”52 While the use of the verb ἐμφυσάω in Gen 2:7 and John 20:22 may not focus on exhaling, it does not necessarily exclude exhalation as Weissenrieder contends. Weissenrieder mentions but does not elaborate on some additional problems she has with my article. She briefly states: Several further aspects of Martin’s article, which cannot be discussed in this article, remain unclear, especially his interpretation of the baptism and the Last Supper. For critical theological points on Martin’s observations, see Volker Rabens, The Holy Spirit and Ethics in Paul: Transformation and Empowering for Religious Ethical Life, WUNT II/283 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010).53

Since Rabens interacts more with my article on Pauline pneumatology rather than with my article on biblical breathing, my consideration of his interaction belongs more appropriately to the reception history at the end of the next essay and is included there.

50  For example, see Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, 2 vols. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003), 2:1204–1206. 51  See the entry for this verb in LSJ. 52  Weissenrieder, “Infusion,” 149. 53  Ibid., 125 n. 19.

XIV. Paul’s Pneumatological Statements and Ancient Medical Texts* 1. Introduction Studies of Pauline pneumatology demonstrate the methodological importance of contextualizing Paul’s pneumatological statements. In these studies, context includes not only the immediate literary context but also and more importantly the conceptual context of Paul’s statements about pneuma. Thus, James D. G. Dunn emphasizes the theological context of Paul’s pneumatological statements while Gordon Fee concentrates on the experiential and Friedrich W. Horn focuses on the history-of-religions context of these same statements.1 The conclusions reached in these studies underscore the significance of context for understanding Pauline pneumatology. Dunn’s theological emphasis leads him to describe Paul’s conception of the Holy Spirit primarily as one of the three aspects of the beginning of salvation. Fee’s concentration on the experiential context predisposes him to portray Paul’s understanding of the Holy Spirit as God’s empowering * Earlier versions of this essay were presented at the International Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature at Cambridge University on July 23, 2003, and as A Keynote Address to the Undergraduate Theological Conference at Crown College in Minneapolis, MN, April 28, 2005, and at the Association of Chicago Theological Schools: New Testament Group, McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago, IL, March 18, 2003. In the original publication of this article, I dedicated it to Prof. David E. Aune. I first encountered David early in my graduate studies at the University of Chicago by noticing that his name appeared on the borrower’s card of every book I found in the library. I remember wondering if he had read every book from and about the ancient world. Then, I began to read his own publications and was further convinced of the comprehensiveness of his scholarship. I finally met David in person at a meeting of the Chicago Society of Biblical Research and was immediately taken by his friendliness and encouragement to a beginning scholar, and I have enjoyed our professional friendship ever since. After David left Saint Xavier University and I assumed the Biblical Studies position there, someone asked me if I had replaced David Aune. I responded, “No, but I have moved into his former office.” I had already discovered that David was not replaceable unless, of course, one possessed encyclopedic knowledge of the ancient world. Although I possess no such knowledge, I was pleased to dedicate this essay to someone who does. Unless otherwise noted, the translations of ancient texts are mine. 1  James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 413–441; Gordon D. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), passim; Friedrich Wilhelm Horn, Das Angeld des Geistes: Studien zur paulinischen Pneumatologie, FRLANT 154 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992), passim.

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presence. Horn’s focus on the history-of-religions context brings him to the conclusion that the Holy Spirit for Paul is both the functional and material (stofflich) down payment (Angeld; 2 Cor 1:22; 5:5; Rom 8:23). The works of Dunn, Fee, and Horn are representative of other studies on Pauline pneumatology that demonstrate the methodological importance of context. The purpose of the present essay is not to evaluate the merits of these various contextual proposals but simply to introduce a contextual consideration that has yet to enter the discussion in any significant way.2 Ancient medical texts frequently present physiological conceptions of pneuma that provide a productive context for understanding Paul’s pneumatological statements. Specifically, these texts present ways in which pneuma enters the human body and produces dynamic, rational, health-giving, and life-giving effects. Obviously, what these texts mean by pneuma differs from Paul’s conception of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, the similarities between these texts and Paul’s pneumatological statements are striking and illuminating. Following a brief description of the physiological conception of pneuma in these texts, the present essay will describe some of the more interesting similarities between these texts and Paul’s statements about the Spirit.

2. The Ancient Physiology of Pneuma 2.1. Reception of the Spirit Surprising for us moderns, ancient medical texts place pneuma in the category of nutrition (τροφή). One Hippocratic author writes a treatise on nutrition and discusses liquid nutrients such as beverages and solid nutrients such as foods. Then, he makes the surprising assertion that pneuma in the form of breath is also a nutrient (Hippocrates, Alim. 48).3 Another author explains, “Now bodies, of men and of animals generally, are nourished by three kinds of nourishment, and the names thereof are solid food, drink, and wind (πνεῦμα)” (Hippocrates, Flat. 3 [Jones, LCL]). Of these three essential nutrients, pneuma is the most important, for a person without food can live a few months and without water a few days but without pneuma only a few minutes. This author concludes that the greatest nutritive bodily need is pneuma and probably recommends to patients, 2  An exception is Dale B. Martin’s The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). Martin discusses many of the same medical texts as the present essay regarding the role of pneuma “in and around the human body” (p. xiii). He has a concise discussion of the “pneumatic body” that correctly assesses pneuma as “a kind of ‘stuff ’ that is the agent of perception, motion, and life itself ” (pp. 21–25). Although working with similar medical texts, the present essay attempts neither to correlate this medical understanding with Paul’s higher-status, upper class opponents nor to limit the discussion to issues arising only in Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians. 3  One Hippocratic author explains the relationship by saying, “Wind (πνεῦμα) in bodies is called breath (φῦσα), but outside of bodies [wind is called] air (ἀήρ)” (Hippocrates, Flat. 3).

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“Drink plenty of fluids, eat balanced meals, and always remember to breathe” (cf. Hippocrates, Flat. 4). Various theories exist about how the body receives the nutriment of pneuma. Options include the pores of the skin, the digestive system, and the oro-nasal passages as the ports of entry for pneuma. T. Clifford Allbutt credits Philistion (5th to 4th century BCE) with the notion that pneuma was drawn in by the pores all over the body and Diocles of Carystus (3rd century BCE) with supposing that the pneuma entered partly through the stomach.4 One Hippocratic treatise discusses the porousness of the body for respiration ( Ἀραιότης σώματος ἐς διαπνοίην; Hippocrates, Alim. 28), and another treatise explains that both pneuma and food pass through the intestines (Hippocrates, Morb. 3.14). A majority of ancient medical texts, however, opt for oro-nasal respiration.5 One text explains that the nutriment of pneuma flows into the body through the “nostrils, mouth, throat, lungs, and the transpiratory system generally” (Hippocrates, Alim. 30).6 Once the pneuma leaves the lungs, these texts disagree over whether the pneuma then travels to and nourishes the brain or the heart. This difference of opinion arises over whether the brain or the heart is the seat of intelligence and rationality.7 The Hippocratics generally and the Alexandrian anatomists in particular hold the brain to be the seat of intelligence.8 The author of The Sacred Disease reasons: 4  T. Clifford Allbutt, Greek Medicine in Rome: The Fitzpatrick Lectures on the History of Medicine Delivered at the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1909–1910 with Other Historical Essays (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1970), 109–110, 235–236, 239. See also James Longrigg, Greek Medicine from the Heroic to the Hellenistic Age: A Source Book (New York: Routledge, 1998), 81– 82. Plato also describes the pores of the skin as ports of entry for pneuma (Tim. 79). 5  Ancient anatomists disagree over the purpose of respiration. Galen discusses Asclepiades’ assertion that respiration forms the soul itself, Philistion and Diocles’ notion that it cooled the innate heat, and Hippocrates’ position that it both nourished and cooled (De usu respirationis 1.2–3). See the translation of this text by Philip J. van der Eijk, Diocles of Carystus: A Collection of the Fragments with Translation and Commentary, 2 vols., Studies in Ancient Medicine 22 (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 1:65–66. On this topic in general, see David J. Furley and J. S. Wilkie, eds., Galen on Respiration and the Arteries: An Edition with English Translation and Commentary of De usu respirationis, An in arteriis natura sanguis contineatur, De usu pulsuum, and De causis respirationis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), passim. For Aristotle and the Lyceum in general, spirit was transmitted with the seed and was not inbreathed. Respiration served merely to cool the innate heat of the heart. See Allbutt, Greek Medicine, 227–228. Allbutt states, “The interminable but vital controversy between the theory of animal Heat by internal combustion and the doctrine of Innate Heat is one of the most … cardinal conflicts of ideas in the history of medicine” (p. 250). 6 See also Hippocrates, Morb. sacr. 7. 7  Allbutt understands Diocles of Carystus as holding an intermediate position in which the heart makes the psychic pneuma but then delivers it to the brain, the organ of the special senses, even though the heart remained the center of intelligence (Greek Medicine, 252). Longrigg is more cautious about Diocles’ actual position but explains, “The brain supplies the contents of both sensation and intelligence, but it is the heart which hears and understands” (Greek Medicine, 76). 8  Allbutt comments, “The still and bloodless brain (‘bloodless and cold,’ Arist. Hist. an. 495a) appeared to the ancients rather as a chilling than a quickening body. … We may wonder indeed

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For when a human draws in pneuma, it arrives first in the brain, and thus the air is dispersed into the remaining [members of the] body after having deposited in the brain its highest part, namely the part that could have understanding and the means of knowing. … If [the air] were to arrive in the body first and afterwards in the brain, it would after depositing discernment in the flesh and the veins come into the brain hot and not pure but mixed with the moisture both from the fleshly parts and from the blood so that [the air] would no longer be perfect. (Hippocrates, Morb. sacr. 19)9

Whereas this author relies primarily on theory, the Alexandrian anatomists He­ro­philus of Chalcedon (330/320–260/250 BCE) and Erasistratus of Ceos (3rd cen­tury BCE) rely more on empirical observation and receive permission from Ptolemy to dissect cadavers and even living criminals.10 Through their dissections, they discover the nervous system, distinguish motor from sensory nerves, and postulate the brain as the organ of perception and bodily activity.11 Erasistratus cautiously proposes, “All the nerves grow out of the brain, and, speaking generally, the brain seems to be the source of bodily activity” (Fr. 289).12 Even the author of The Sacred Disease that agrees with them is forced to admit, “Some people say that the heart is the organ with which we think, and that it feels pain and anxiety” (Hippocrates, Morb. sacr. 20 [Jones, LCL]). Erasistratus’ caution is due to the overwhelming popular belief that the heart, not the brain, through the activity of the pneuma was responsible for perception and purposive motion. Consequently, the “novel” ideas of the Alexandrian anatomists are not popularly accepted. Diocles of Carystus (3rd century BCE) and Praxagoras of Cos (4th century BCE) were two of the most prominent medical authorities in antiquity, and they both held the heart to be the center of cognition and volition. When discussing the causes of phrenitis (delirium), an anonymous manuscript recognizes that Erasistratus and Hippocrates attribute the disease to a brain disorder but states, “Praxagoras says that phrenitis is an inflammation of the heart, whose how, in the conceptions of certain Hippocrateans, of certain of the school of Croton, and of others of the pre-Aristotelian period before the nerves were discovered, the brain held its own as the seat of the understanding. It held its own chiefly because the special senses especially the chief senses of sight and hearing, had their seats about it, and by certain ‘ducts’ that obviously led into it (Alcmaeon)” (Greek Medicine, 251).  9  See also Hippocrates, Morb. sacr. 10. 10  For ancient authors both commending and condemning the practice of vivisection, see Longrigg, Greek Medicine, 84–86. 11  For Herophilus as the discoverer of the nervous system, see Friedrich Solmsen, “Greek Philosophy and the Discovery of the Nerves,” Museum Helveticum 18 (1961): 184–197. Rufus states, “Herophilus also calls … the excrescences from the brain … sensory and purposive (i. e. motor) nerves, through which sensory and purposive motion and all bodily action are accomplished” (On the Naming of the Parts of Man 149–150). For text and translation, see Charles Daremberg and Charles Émile Ruelle, Oeuvres de Rufus d’Éphèse (Paris: l’Imprimerie Nationale, 1879; repr., Amsterdam, 1963), 153; and Longrigg, Greek Medicine, 88, text VII.9. 12 Quoted in Galen, De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis 7.3. Translated by Longrigg, Greek Medicine, 93, text VII.16.

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natural activity, indeed, he believes to be reasoning, and that when the heart is disturbed because of this inflammation, it becomes productive of this affection” (Anonymous of Paris, De morbis acutis et chroniis 1).13 This manuscript further states, “Diocles says that phrenitis is an inflammation of the diaphragm (he gives this name to the affection on the basis of the place [affected], not of the activity [affected]), the heart being affected simultaneously (for he, too, seems to posit reasoning around this [i. e., the heart]” (Anonymous of Paris, De morbis acutis et chroniis 1). Under the influence of these and other medical authorities, therefore, the heart was popularly viewed as the seat of intellectual activity.14 The general belief was that the pneuma leaves the lungs and travels to the heart, which nourishes the entire body through the system of veins and arteries.15 Praxagoras of Cos first distinguishes arteries from veins and the Alexandrian anatomists Herophilus and Erasistratus advance his distinction.16 Herophilus notes that arteries do not collapse at death as do the veins since their walls are six times thicker. Galen (2nd century CE) describes Erasistratus’ developed understanding by writing: Erasistratus believes that the artery is the vessel of the pneuma, the vein that of the blood. The larger vessels are continually divided into smaller but more numerous vessels and are carried all over the body; for there is no place where there does not exist a termination of a vessel. They finally come to an end in such minute terminations that by the closure of their extreme orifices the blood is held constrained within them. In consequence, the blood remains in its own boundaries [i. e., in the veins] and nowhere encroaches on the vessels of the pneuma [i. e. the arteries]. (De venae sectione adversus Erasistratum 3)17

Thus, the ancients are aware of the heart’s pumping action but do not think the arteries are connected to the veins or that the blood circulates.18 Instead, the heart pumps blood into the veins where the blood remains until it is congealed into flesh.19 The ancients view the veins as irrigation ditches.20 Just as the water 13 This

and the following translation are by Eijk, Diocles, 143.  For others who opted for the heart, see Longrigg, Greek Medicine, 76, 174. 15  Galen criticizes Praxagoras and Aristotle for declaring the heart to be the source of nerves (De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis 1.6). See the translation of this passage by Longrigg, Greek Medicine, 77. Galen is mistaken because the nerves were not discovered until later by Herophilus. 16  Longrigg, Greek Medicine, 144. 17  Translated by Longrigg, Greek Medicine, 95. 18  A general belief among ancient doctors was that the veins originated in the liver, which produced the blood, even though the heart pumped this blood to all parts of the body. 19  One Hippocratic author describes the termination of veins in the body and says, “There are vessels [veins] that have their terminus at the vertex of the head. … Two … end at the corners of the eyes. … Two other vessels pass … between the temples … and are always throbbing, for they are the only vessels that do not dispense their moisture, so that the blood is turned back out of them; on turning back it clashes with the new blood that is flowing to them; and the blood that turns back tries to flow up the vessel, while the new blood that is coming from above tries to flow down the vessel, and both currents … produce a pulsation in the vessels” (Hippocrates, Loc. hom. 3 [Potter, LCL]). 20  For this metaphor, see Longrigg, Greek Medicine, 95. This is a common metaphor that 14

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flows through the ditches and is absorbed by the earth, so also the blood flows through the veins and is absorbed by the various bodily parts. Thus, the heart provides liquid and solid nourishment to the body by keeping a steady supply of blood in the veins. Whereas the heart pumps blood into the veins, it pumps pneuma into the arteries, which contain no blood.21 One author reasons, “The greatest amount of heat is in the vessels [arteries] and heart, and for this reason the heart, being the hottest part in a person, holds the breath (πνεῦμα). … The heart and the hollow vessels [arteries] are in constant movement” (Hippocrates, Carn. 6). This same author asserts that the heart holds the pneuma but more importantly distributes, dispenses, manages and regulates the pneuma (Hippocrates, Carn. 5). Furthermore, this author states that from the two hollow vessels [arteries] that come out of the heart, “other vessels [arteries] branch off through the whole body” (Hippocrates, Carn. 5). Another author elaborates, “Root of veins, liver; root of arteries, heart. Out of these travel to all parts blood and breath (πνεῦμα)” (Hippocrates, Alim. 31 [Jones, LCL]). Thus, the heart is the bodily organ responsible for nourishing the body with pneuma through the arteries.22 2.2. Pneumatic Movement and Rationality Even though these ancient medical authors disagree over whether the pneuma first enters the brain or the heart, they completely agree that pneuma in the human body causes movement, rationality, health, and life. The author of Breaths is one of the Sophistic authors in the Hippocratic corpus and illustrates the cosmological speculation about pneuma by writing: It (πνεῦμα) is the most powerful of all and in all, and it is worth while examining its power. … Trees are torn up by the roots through the force of the wind (πνεῦμα), the sea swells into waves, and vessels of vast bulk are tossed about. Such then is the power that it has in these things, but it is invisible to sight, though visible to reason. For what can take place without it? In what is it not present? What does it not accompany? For everything between heaven and earth is full of wind (πνεῦμα). (Hippocrates, Flat. 3 [Jones, LCL])23 is already found in LevR 15 (116a2). I am grateful to Annette Weissenrieder for this reference. See her Images of Illness in the Gospel of Luke: Insights of Ancient Medical Texts, WUNT 2.164 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003). 21  Before Praxagoras of Cos (4th century BCE) distinguished veins and arteries, the notion was that the spirit flowed along with the blood. Later doctors who believed the arteries also carried blood believed that the spirit flowed along with the blood. See Galen, On Fullness 11; cited by Longrigg, Greek Medicine, 88. Erasistratus recognized that blood spurts from arteries when they are cut but explained the phenomenon as the spirit’s rapid evacuation that leaves a vacuum that draws the blood from the surrounding tissue. See Longrigg, Greek Medicine, 95–96. 22  Vindicianus states, “The controlling principle of the soul is located in the heart, which through the fineness of the breath is disseminated throughout the whole body” (On the Seed 41 [Longrigg, Greek Medicine, 76]). 23  See W. H. S. Jones, et al. trans., Hippocrates, 9 vols., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge:

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According to this author and in the ancient view generally, pneuma is the force that moves all things, and without pneuma, nothing moves. The dynamic operation of pneuma in the cosmic macrocosm is analogous to the operation of pneuma in the human body’s microcosm.24 This same Hippocratic author explains the relationship by saying, “Wind (πνεῦμα) in bodies is called breath (φῦσα), but outside of bodies [wind (πνεῦμα) is called] air (ἀήρ)” (Hippocrates, Flat. 3 [Jones, LCL]). Whether inside the body and called breath or outside the body and called air, pneuma is the cause of movement in both the cosmological macrocosm and in the bodily microcosm. Hermann Kleinknecht aptly comments on pneuma, “Profane Gk. firmly maintains the basic etym. idea of a powerful, material, moving breath with its many functions in man and the cosmos. … The characteristic feature of the Gk. concept of spirit … is that of something which is elementally dynamic.”25 Praxagoras of Cos and Diocles of Carystus both designate the arteries as the vessels through which the heart transmits voluntary motion to the body.26 The author of The Sacred Disease explains the general conception of the body’s pneumatic movement by saying, “For when a man takes in breath (πνεῦμα) by the mouth or nostrils … the air that goes into the lungs and the veins is of use when it enters the cavities … thus causing … movement of the limbs” (Hippocrates, Morb. sacr. 10 [Jones, LCL]).27 This same author attributes paralysis to a stoppage of pneuma in the body. He states: By these veins we take in the greater part of our breath (πνεῦμα), for they are vents of our body drawing the air to themselves, and they spread it over the body in general through the minor veins and cool it; then they breath it out again. For the breath (πνεῦμα) cannot rest [stand still], but moves up and down. If it is caught anywhere and rests [stands still], that part of the body where it rests becomes paralyzed. A proof is that should minor veins be so compressed, when a man is lying or seated, that the breath (πνεῦμα) cannot pass through the vein, a numbness immediately seizes him.” (Hippocrates, Morb. sacr. 7 [Jones, LCL]28

The ancient physicians are absolutely convinced that the pneuma causes bodily movement, for, as this author concludes, “when the veins are cut off from the air … the patient is rendered speechless and senseless” (Hippocrates, Morb. sacr. Harvard University Press, 1923–2010), 2:224. Jones discusses the problems of translating pneuma. 24  For examples, see Plato’s Phaed. 112b and Heraclitus’ Ep. 6.7–20 in Abraham J. Malherbe’s The Cynic Epistles, SBLSBS 12 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1977), 198–199. It should be noted that the notions of the macrocosm and microcosm only arise in late antiquity after the time of the texts examined in the present essay. 25  Hermann Kleinknecht, “πνεῦμα,” TDNT 6:332–359, here 337–338. 26 Longrigg, Greek Medicine, 115, 121. 27  Another author describes bodily limbs as having hollow cavities surrounded by muscles but filled with spirit (Hippocrates, De arte. 10). Apparently, the pneumatic pressure and not the muscles provides movement. 28  Praxagoras and Diocles held similar views. See Longrigg, Greek Medicine, 115, 121.

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10 [Jones, LCL]). Indeed, suffocation or stoppage of pneuma soon leads to the body’s complete and continued stillness as these medical writers astutely ascertain. Ancient physiology attributes not only movement but also rationality to the operation of pneuma.29 The author of The Sacred Disease holds the brain as the center of intelligence and states, “When a man takes in breath (πνεῦμα) by the mouth or nostrils … the air … is of use when it enters … the brain, thus causing intelligence (φρόνησιν)” (Hippocrates, Morb. sacr. 10 [Jones, LCL]. This same author asserts that the brain “is the first of the bodily organs to perceive the intelligence (φρονήσιος) coming from the air” (Hippocrates, Morb. sacr. 20 [Jones, LCL]. Another author who holds the heart as the center of intelligence counters, “There is a thick vein [artery] in each breast. These things have the largest part in understanding (ξυνέσιος)” (Hippocrates, Epid. 2.6.19 [Smith, LCL]. Whether or not intelligence is located in the brain or the heart, however, pneuma is responsible for human rationality. 2.3. Pneumatic Health and Life Along with movement and rationality, pneuma also provides health to the body. A basic axiom of ancient medicine is that disease is an imbalance in the body, especially in the bodily fluids known as humours. The role of the pneuma in maintaining or restoring balance is crucial. One physician describes the healthy condition of a human being as “a movement … produced … by breath (πνεῦμα), warmth and coction of the humours” (Hippocrates, Praec. 9 [Jones, LCL]. Another describes the role of pneuma in removing an overabundant secretion that destroys health (Hippocrates, Vict. salubr. 2.66). Yet another describes the body as having many hollow parts that in health are filled with pneuma but in disease with fluid (Hippocrates, De arte. 10 [Jones, LCL]. These authors’ frequent mention of how a patient breathes emphasizes the role of pneuma in providing health to the body. Good respiration provides a prognosis of recovery from disease, but deep and rapid respiration is a sign the body is not fighting the disease successfully (Hippocrates, Progn. 5 and 15; cf. Alim. 48). According to these authors, “those who will recover breathe easily … those who will die have difficulty in breathing” (Hippocrates, Progn. 20). Thus, the pneuma plays a crucial role in the health of the body. In the final analysis, moreover, pneuma imparts life to the body. The author who states plainly that spirit is the cause of life explains, “So great is the need of wind (πνεῦμα) for all bodies that … if the wind (πνεῦμα) passages into the body be cut off he [the person] will die in a brief part of a day” (Hippocrates, 29  Allbutt credits Diogenes of Apollonia (4th century BCE) with first conceiving or at least carrying forward “the idea of thought as a universal bodily function fed by air in the bloodvessels” (Greek Medicine, 236).

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Flat. 4. [Jones, LCL]). Constricted breathing is a very fatal sign, and when the lungs fill with fluid and no longer draw pneuma into the body, death soon follows (Hippocrates, Epid. 7.107; idem, Morb. 1.12). Indeed, the boundary of death is reached when “there passes away all at once the breath (πνεῦμα) of the heat … into the whole [universe] again, partly though the flesh and partly through the breathing organs in the head, whence we call it the ‘breath of life’” (Hippocrates, Aph. Appendix following 7.87 [Jones, LCL]). The physiology of pneuma presented in these medical texts provides an interesting context for several of Paul’s pneumatological statements about the reception of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s function in providing movement, rationality, health, and life. Indeed, the presentation of pneuma in these ancient medical texts provides a productively coherent context in which to read Paul’s pneumatological statements.30

3. Paul’s Pneumatological Statements 3.1 Reception of the Spirit In Paul’s pneumatology, the reception of the Spirit is the decided difference between his converts’ pre-Christian existence and their new life in Christ. Dunn comments on Rom 8:9, “In this verse, in fact, Paul provides the nearest thing to a definition of a Christian (someone who is ‘of Christ’). And the definition is in terms of the Spirit. It is ‘having the Spirit’ which defines and determines someone as being ‘of Christ.’”31 Reception of the Spirit is thus crucially important to Pauline pneumatology and asking how the Spirit enters Paul’s new converts is a significant question. The ancient physiology of pneuma identifies three options for the entry of pneuma that are reflected in Paul’s statements: the oro-nasal passages, the pores of the skin, and the digestive system. Reception of the Spirit through the oro-nasal passages is not clearly attested in any of Paul’s pneumatological statements. Nevertheless, certain questions in Gal 3:1–5 may reflect the reception of the Spirit through the oro-nasal passages if the scenario in Galatia resembles events at the household of Cornelius in Acts 10.32 Twice, Paul asks the Galatians if they received the Spirit through the hearing 30 Martin recognizes the importance of these medical texts and comments, “Paul’s theology is constrained by his physiology” (Corinthian Body, 134). 31 Dunn, Theology of Paul, 423. 32 John 20:22 presupposes the reception of the Spirit through the oro-nasal passages. Mark 15:39 may also be an example of this means of the Spirit’s transfer if the centurion is baptized with the Spirit that Jesus exhales. This understanding of the entry of divine pneuma into a person was also known outside of Christianity. Vergil writes, “As she [Deiphobe, priestess of Phoebus and Hecate] stood speaking before the entrance neither her face nor her color was the same, nor did her hair stay arranged, but her breast panted and her heart swelled in uncon-

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of faith. Fee comments on these questions, “Even though Paul seldom mentions any of the visible evidences of the Spirit in such contexts as these, here is the demonstration that the experience of the Spirit in the Pauline churches was very much as that described and understood by Luke.”33 If the reception of the Spirit in Galatia happened as Luke describes the events at the household of Cornelius in Acts 10, then Gal 3:1–5 may reflect the entrance of the Spirit through the oronasal passages.34 However, caution is advised not only because of the problem of interpreting Paul in the light of Acts but also because the author of Acts elsewhere distinguishes Paul’s understanding of the reception of the Spirit from the events at Cornelius’ household. In Acts 19, this author records Paul’s encountering some disciples at Ephesus. Paul asks them if they received the Holy Spirit when they believed. After they answer that they had not, Paul then asks them into what baptism they were baptized. Learning that they were baptized with John’s baptism, Paul baptized them in the name of the Lord Jesus and laid hands on them. At this point, they received the Holy Spirit. Thus, the author of Acts closely associates Paul’s understanding of the reception of the Spirit through the pores of the skin in baptism and the laying-on of hands rather than simply through the oro-nasal passages in the hearing of faith as at the household of Cornelius. Galatians 3:1–5, therefore, may reflect an understanding of the reception of the Spirit through the oro-nasal passages, but certain other explicit pneumatological statements in Paul’s letters reflect alternative means for the entrance of the Spirit. Paul’s association of the reception of the Spirit with water baptism in 1 Cor 12:13a implicates the pores of the moistened skin as the ports of the Spirit’s entry into the human body.35 The author of Nutriment writes that moisture is trolled frenzy. She became larger, nor was her voice human, since she was breathed upon by the power of the god, now closer to her” (Aen. 6.46–51). The translation is by Kevin Guinagh, The Aeneid of Vergil: Newly Translated with an Introduction by Kevin Guinagh (New York: Rinehart, 1953), 138. 33  Fee, God’s Empowering Presence, 383–384. 34  Another option is entrance through the pores of the skin. The author of Acts parallels many features of the Cornelius narrative with events at Pentecost in which the Spirit in the form of flames of fire sat upon each of them. The language could envision reception of the Spirit through the pores of the skin. 35  Horn comments, “Pl setzt jedenfalls als in der Gemeinde bekannt voraus, daß der Geist mit einer Substanz, einer Flüssigkeit vergleichbar ist, die dem Glaubenden sacramental inkorporiert worden ist, die damit die neue Substanz seiner Existenz geworden ist” (Angeld, 172–175). Mehrdad Fatehi disagrees and prefers to understand the Spirit in functional or relational categories (The Spirit’s Relation to the Risen Lord in Paul, WUNT 2.128 [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000], 168– 169). So also does Volker Rabens, “The Development of Pauline Pneumatology: A Response to F. W.  Horn,” BZ n.s. 43 (1999): 161–179, here 169–172. Rabens criticizes Horn’s terminology by writing, “Not only is the definition of substance as ‘forma substantialis’ and its differentiation from Stoff extremely vague; but the relation of Spirit as function to Spirit as substance and Stoff is also not spelled out” (p. 176). The basis of this disagreement over the nature of the Spirit lies in the metaphorical degree of Paul’s statements. Fatehi and Rabens assess the statements as being

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the vehicle of nutriment and without moisture the body cannot assimilate nutriment (Hippocrates, Alim. 55 [Jones, LCL]). Thus, water baptism is necessary for receiving the nutriment of Spirit. This means of entry is not unknown in the Christian tradition, for Mark’s account of Jesus’ baptism also implicates the moistened pores as the entrance of the Spirit. Mark 1:10 recounts that as Jesus stepped out (ἀναβαίνων ἐκ) of the water, the Spirit stepped into (καταβαῖνον εἰς) him. Since baptism does not involve drinking the holy water until later among the Gnostics and Mandaeans but rather involves immersing the body in water, the baptismal reception of the Spirit in 1 Cor 12:13a does not reflect an understanding of the Spirit’s entry through the digestive system or through the oronasal passages but rather through the pores of the moistened skin. Not every Pauline pneumatological statement, however, reflects the Spirit’s entry through the pores of the skin, for Paul associates the reception of the Spirit with the Eucharist in 1 Cor 12:13b when he states, “ἓν πνεῦμα ἐποτίσθημεν.” Paul’s ambiguous language in this verse creates a disagreement over whether he refers to baptism or to the Eucharist. Many scholars understand the language to refer to baptism and translate, “we were imbued with the Spirit.” C. K. Barrett thinks this interpretation is more likely because ἐποτίσθημεν is aorist tense, which does not refer “to a repeated act (as the Supper would be).”36 HansJosef Klauck disagrees, explains the aorist as ingressive, interprets the verb as a reference to Eucharist, and translates, “we were made to drink one Spirit.”37 In physiological terms, this disagreement centers on the reception of the Spirit in Baptism through the pores of the skin or in the Eucharist through the digestive system. Since the verb ποτίζω can mean to imbue or irrigate land or to give someone something to drink, both sides in this disagreement find support. Considering Paul’s description of the Corinthians as God’s field, the translation “to imbue” or “to water” is possible. Nevertheless, Klauck’s interpretive linking of baptism in 1 Cor 10:2 with the eucharistic drink in 10:4 is a cogent argument for interpreting ἐποτίσθημεν as a reference to drinking the Spirit in the Eucharist in 12:13b, which follows the mention of baptism in 12:13a. Indeed, Paul’s discussion of the Eucharist in 1 Cor 10:3–4 reflects the entry of the Spirit through the digestive system. The one who eats the spiritual bread and drinks the spiritual drink receives the Spirit. Horn explains, “Es kann schwerlich more metaphorical than in Horn’s assessment. The ancient medical context of these statements permits these statements to be interpreted either literally or metaphorically, for even if the statements are completely metaphorical, the ancient physiology of pneuma provides the perceived reality from which the metaphors arise. 36 C. K. Barrett, A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, Harpers New Testament Commentaries (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 289. See also G. J. Cuming, “ΕΠΟΤΙΣΘΗΜΕΝ (1 Corinthians 12.13),” NTS 27 (1981): 283–285. 37  Hans-Josef Klauck, Herrenmahl und Hellenistischer Kult: Eine religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zum ersten Korintherbrief, NTAbh n.f. 15 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1982), 334–335. Klauck evaluates other arguments against both positions.

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bestritten werden, daß Pl hierbei ein realistisches Sakramentsverständnis bekundet, daß also der Geist substanzhaft mit der Speise übereignet wird. … 1. Kor 12,13b … belegt, daß Pl im Sakramentsgeschehen eine substanzhafte Übereignung des πνεῦμα gegeben sieht.”38 Klauck adds, “Paulus trifft sich mit seinen Adressaten insofern, als auch er die Elemente Träger des Pneumatischen sein läßt.”39 Even though not all exegetes would agree with Horn or Klauck, the eucharistic reception of the three necessary nutrients of solid food, liquid beverage, and Spirit through the digestive system correlates well with the understanding of nutrition in the ancient medical texts. Interpreting Paul’s pneumatological statements in the light of ancient medical texts, therefore, identifies three options for the reception of the Spirit in these statements. The questions of Gal 3:1–5 may reflect entrance through the oro-nasal passages in the hearing of faith but more explicit statements in other Pauline passages reflect entrance through the pores of the moistened skin in baptism and through the digestive system in the Eucharist. In baptism, the Spirit initially enters the body through the moistened pores, and in the Eucharist, the Spirit is replenished by repeatedly entering the human body through the digestive system. Klauck aptly describes this physiological understanding of the reception of the Spirit when he writes, “Er [der Geist] wird ihr (der Gemeinde) eingestiftet durch die pneumahaltigen sakramentalen Zeichen, durch die Taufhandlung und die eucharistischen Gaben.”40 The ancient medical texts thus provide an interesting and productive context for understanding Paul’s pneumatological statements about the reception of the Spirit. 3.2. Spiritual Movement and Rationality Several of Paul’s pneumatological statements relate that once the Spirit enters the Christian, it travels to the heart as in some of the ancient medical texts and produces movement and rationality. In Gal 4:6, Paul writes, “God sent the Spirit of His son into our hearts, and the Spirit cries, ‘Abba, Father.’” In Rom 5:5, Paul asserts, “The love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, which was given to us.” These statements agree with the ancient physiological conception that pneuma after entering the human body locates primarily in the heart, the center of human volition and cognition. The heart then dispenses and regulates the Spirit throughout the entire body so that Paul 38 Horn, Angeld, 169–170. Rabens translates and interprets Horn’s position by writing, “Horn defines his locution ‘the Spirit as the substance of the new being’ more closely only in the context of his discussion of 1 Cor: ‘Paul … presupposes that the church is familiar with the fact that the Spirit is comparable to a substance or fluid which has been incorporated sacramentally into the believer; it has thus become the new substance of his existence’” (“Development of Pauline Pneumatology,” 163 n. 5). 39  Klauck, Herrenmahl, 257. 40  Ibid., 334.

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can exhort the Thessalonians not to quench the Spirit (1 Thess 5:19). Paul can also affirm in 1 Cor 6:19, “Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.” What Paul affirms earlier in 1 Cor 3:16 about the community’s being the temple of the Holy Spirit, he now affirms about the individual members of the community. Several of Paul’s statements attributing movement and rationality to this indwelling Spirit are very consistent with the ancient physiology of pneuma. In Rom 8:14, Paul proposes that the children of God are led (ἄγονται) by the Spirit of God. The nature of this leading is ambiguous. Hans Conzelmann comments on 1 Cor 12:2, “The significance of the words (ἀν)άγειν and ἀπάγειν allows of no certain conclusion. The phrase certainly implies that they were not their own masters.”41 Udo Borse contrasts the Corinthians’ being driven by dumb idols as heathens to their being led by God’s Spirit as Christians.42 Conzelmann and Borse suggest that being led by the Spirit of God goes beyond gentle inducement to a forceful impetus that motivates in a certain direction. Aristotle presents a similar notion of leading when he writes, “Though the former universal judgment says ‘Avoid that thing,’ the desire leads (ἄγει) you to it (since desire can put the various parts of the body in motion)” (Eth. nic. 7.3.10 [1147a–b] [Rackham, LCL]). These notions of leading as a motivation or impetus to action fit well with Rom 8:14. The leading of the Spirit as the motivating force also fits well with other assertions Paul makes. Paul’s comments that those led by the Spirit walk by the Spirit and not by the flesh (Gal 5:16–18; Rom 8:4) and produce the fruits of the Spirit rather than accomplish the works of the flesh (Gal 5:22–14). The Spirit moves those it leads to speak (1 Cor 12:3), to perform miracles (Gal 3:5), and to engage in gifts of ministry (1 Cor 12:4–11). According to Pauline pneumatology, the Spirit is indeed the motivating force in the Christian life. Several of Paul’s pneumatological statements imply that the Spirit provides not only movement but also rationality for Christians. The Spirit is the instrument that circumcises the heart, the center of human rationality (Rom 2:29).43 Those 41 Hans Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians: A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, Hermeneia; (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 205. 42  Udo Borse, “ἄγω,” EDNT 1:24–25, here 25. 43  The prepositional phrase ἐν πνεύματι could be translated as “in the spirit” and designate the human spirit as the inward sphere in which the circumcision occurs. Three considerations, however, favor the translation “by the Spirit” as the divine agent of the circumcision. First, the pre-Pauline tradition knows of circumcision of human ears (Jer 6:10), lips (Exod 6:12, 30), and heart but not of circumcision of the human spirit. Second, Paul contrasts Spirit and letter in other texts, such as Rom 7:6 and 2 Cor 3:6–8. Each time, the context clearly contrasts the Holy Spirit and the letter of the Mosaic Law, and English translations appropriately capitalize the word Spirit in these texts. Third, later traditions specify the Holy Spirit as the instrument of the circumcision of the heart. Ode 11:1–2 in The Odes of Solomon, perhaps the earliest Christian hymnbook, reads, “My heart was pruned … for the Most High circumcised me by His Holy Spirit.” Translation by James H. Charlesworth, “Odes of Solomon: A New Translation and Introduction,” in Expansions of the “Old Testament” and Legends, Wisdom and Philosophical Lit-

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who walk according to the Spirit set their minds (φρονοῦσιν) on the things of the Spirit in contrast to those who walk according to the flesh and set their minds on the things of the flesh (Rom 8:5). What the rulers of this age do not understand (1 Cor 2:8), Christians understand because of God’s revelation through the Spirit (1 Cor 2:10). Only those who have the Spirit of God understand the gifts of God, for “no one has known the things of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Cor 2:11– 14). Indeed, the spiritual have the rationality of Christ (1 Cor 2:16). Considering the ancient physiology of pneuma, Paul’s pneumatological statements describe the Spirit’s traveling to the heart where it is dispensed to all parts of the body. Physiologically consonant with the ancient medical texts are Pauline statements such as “For the Spirit searches all things even the deep things of God, for who of humans knows the things of a human except the spirit of the human in the human” (1 Cor 2:10–11). According to the ancient medical texts, pneuma provides movement by exerting pneumatic pressure in the hollow parts of the body. Consistent with this understanding is Paul’s exhortation to the Thessalonians not to quench (σβέννυτε) the Spirit and thereby hamper the Spirit’s ability to move those in the community (1 Thess 5:19). The Spirit provides rationality by bringing the mind of Christ to the human heart, the center of human volition and cognition (1 Cor 2:16). Paul’s presentation of the Spirit as the provider of movement and rationality is thus consonant with the ancient physiology of pneuma but so is Paul’s presentation of the Spirit as the provider of health and life. 3.3. Spiritual Health and Life Paul’s pneumatological statements reflect the ancient physiology of pneuma in attributing health and life to the Spirit. A key Pauline passage is the discussion of the Eucharist in 1 Cor 11:27–34, which connects both health and life to the Spirit. This passage does not emphasize the spiritual food and drink as does 1 Cor 10:3–4 but instead concentrates on the activities of eating and drinking. This passage exhorts each person to examine her/himself before eating and drinking to avoid consuming judgment in her/himself (1 Cor 11:28–29a). This passage states that those “not discerning the body” are weak and sick and a sufficient number have died (vv. 29b–30). A comment by Ignatius of Antioch leads many scholars to interpret this key Pauline passage against the background of ancient magic (Trall. 6.2).44 However, the emphasis on eating and drinking and the lack of any magical features point to the ancient medical discussion of nutrition as a more natural interpretive context. In the ancient medical texts, proper eating and drinking are essential for both health and life. These texts recognize that correct nutrition depends not on some erature, Prayers, Psalms, and Odes, Fragments of Lost Judeo-Hellenistic Works, vol. 2 of The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985), 744. 44  See Klauck, Herrenmahl, 327–328.

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fixed list of healthy and unhealthy foods but on the nature or constitution of the individual.45 The author of Affections recommends, “Administer both food and drink to patients in accordance with their body and their spirit (ψυχή); for in this way they are helped most” (Hippocrates, Aff. 46 [Potter, LCL]). This same author instructs, “If you make your administrations to patients in accordance with their disease and their body, the body will consume the foods in due course and be neither in want nor overfull; if, however, you miss the right measure either in one direction or in the other, in both cases harm will be done” (Hippocrates, Aff. 47 [Potter, LCL]). In addition to the constitution of the individual, the specific condition of the person determines proper eating and drinking. When sick, a person should avoid some foods that can be eaten when she/he is well. The author of Airs, Waters Places notes: A man in health and strength can drink any water that is at hand without distinction (μηδὲν διακρίνειν), but he who because of disease wishes to drink the most suitable can best attain health in the following way. Those whose digestive organs are hard and easily heated will gain benefit from the sweetest, lightest and most sparkling waters. But those whose bellies are soft, moist, and phlegmatic, benefit from the hardest, most harsh and saltish waters, for these are the best to dry them up. For waters that are best for cooking and most solvent naturally loosen the digestive organs the most and relax them; but harsh waters, hard and very bad for cooking, contract most these organs and dry them up … so that the digestive organs too are stiffened by them rather than loosened. (Hippocrates, Aer. 7.80–100 [Jones, LCL])46

Similarly, the author of Ancient Medicine determines the proper diet by correlating the various powers inherent in different foods with the three possible modes of living, namely being in health or falling into or recovering from disease (Hippocrates, Vet. med. 14 [Jones, LCL]).47 The author of Epidemics reports on the case of a man who dined and drank too much when he was hot. He became seriously ill and suffered acute fever with pains all over and died eleven days later (Hippocrates, Epid. 1.26.289–308 [Case 12]). In these ancient medical texts, therefore, proper nutrition depends on both the natural constitution and the present condition of the person. A person’s failure to consider both her/his constitution and condition in deciding what and when to eat and drink has serious consequences. The author of Affections warns, “If the foods and drinks that are most nourishing to the body and most sufficient for nourishment and health are employed at an inopportune moment or in an excessive amount, diseases result and, from the diseases,  See for example, Hippocrates, Vet. med. 20.17–34 (Jones, LCL).  Hippocrates, Aer. 7.80–100 (Jones, LCL). 47  For examples of the various powers of certain foods, see Hippocrates, Acut. 50 (Jones, LCL) and Aff. 47 (Potter, LCL). 45 46

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deaths” (Hippocrates, Aff. 50 [Potter, LCL]). The author of Ancient Medicine explains: The ancients too seem to me to have sought for nourishment that harmonized with their constitution, and … to adapt all to the constitution and power of man, thinking that from foods which, being too strong, the human constitution cannot assimilate when eaten, will come pain, disease, and death, while from such as can be assimilated will come nourishment, growth and health. (Hippocrates, Vet. med. 3 [Jones, LCL])

Hence, proper nutrition results in health while improper nutrition contrary to a person’s constitution and condition leads to serious consequences such as disease and death. This ancient medical discussion of nutrition illuminates Paul’s exhortation that each person at the Eucharist should examine her/himself before eating and drinking to avoid consuming judgment in her/himself (1 Cor 11:28–29a). The food and drink consumed in the Eucharist is spiritual food and drink and consequently very powerful. Consuming such food with an unworthy constitution or in an unworthy condition is harmful. The author of Ancient Medicine further explains, “It is the strength of each thing [food or drink], that which, being too powerful for the human constitution, it cannot assimilate, which causes harm” (Hippocrates, Vet. med. 14 [Jones, LCL]). Paul correctly notes that whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily is guilty of [not assimilating] the body and blood of the Lord (1 Cor 11:27). This guilt results in a judgment against the physical body (11:29; κρίμα ἑαυτῷ).48 Consuming foods and beverages that the body cannot assimilate causes weakness (depletion) in the body and the unassimilated excess (repletion) causes sickness, an imbalance in the body.49 Both weakness and sickness can result in death as Paul correctly notes 48 Deciding whether τὸ σῶμα in 1 Cor 11:29 refers to the human body or to the Lord’s body is difficult since physiologically both options are possible. If the body is the human’s mentioned in v. 28, then μὴ διακρίνων in v. 29 refers to a failure to determine the constitution and condition of one’s own body when deciding to eat or drink. If the body is the Lord’s mentioned in v. 27, however, then διακρίνων in v. 29 refers to the actual process of digestion. The verb διακρίνω often occurs in the Hippocratic Corpus with the meaning to separate substances into their component parts. See for example, Hippocrates, Nat. hom. 12; idem, Epid. 6.8.6; cf. idem, Epid. 2.3.17. Digestion requires the separation of foods into their component parts so that the lighter can be assimilated and the heavier can pass through and be discharged. The author of Nutriment writes, “Liquid nutriment more easily changed than solid; solid nutriment more easily changed than liquid. That which is hardly altered is hard of digestion, and that which is easily added is easy of digestion” (Hippocrates, Alim. 49 [Jones, LCL]). The author of Affections explains, “When one of these [foods] comes into the cavity, the body draws out of it what is suitable of itself ” (Hippocrates, Aff. 47 [Potter, LCL]). If the body in v. 29 is the Lord’s, then μὴ διακρίνων refers to a failure to break down the eucharistic foods so that the appropriate parts can be assimilated. 49  One author explains depletion and repletion by writing, “If the matter were simple … and both sick and well were hurt by too strong foods, benefited and nourished by weaker foods, there would be no difficulty. For recourse to weaker food must have secured a great degree of safety. But as it is, if a man takes insufficient food, the mistake is as great as that of excess, and

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(11:30). From the ancient nutritional point of view, therefore, Paul’s statements appropriately warn the eucharistic participants to examine their constitution and condition before partaking of the spiritually powerful eucharistic foods. As in the ancient physiology of pneuma, Paul’s eucharistic statements in 1 Cor 11:27–34 assume the health-giving and life-giving role of the Spirit. These statements do not explicitly mention the Spirit when describing the effects of eating and drinking unworthily. Nevertheless, the Spirit or the lack of the Spirit is probably the cause of these serious consequences, for the spiritual food and the spiritual drink consumed in the Eucharist replenish the Spirit through the digestive system and the Spirit cannot nourish a person whose constitution or condition prohibits the assimilation of these spiritual foods. Lacking the Spirit, such a person becomes weak or sick and will ultimately die if the lack of nourishment continues. According to statements in 1 Cor 11:27–34, only by partaking of the Eucharist in a worthy manner can a person avoid these serious consequences and enjoy the health and the life provided by the Spirit. Statements in still other Pauline passages emphasize the life-giving effect of the Spirit. Paul writes to the Romans that the law of the Spirit of life sets them free from the law of sin and death (Rom 8:2). He explains to them that God, who raised Christ from the dead, will give life to their mortal bodies through his Spirit, which dwells in them (Rom 8:11). Paul communicates to the Corinthians that the last Adam has become a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor 15:45) and that it is the Spirit that gives life (2 Cor 3:6). Paul writes to the Galatians that the one who sows to the Spirit will ultimately reap eternal life from the Spirit (Gal 6:8). Reflecting the ancient physiology of pneuma, these statements correctly emphasize that the Spirit provides not only health but also life to those in Christ. Those who possess the Spirit enjoy health and life while those who lack the Spirit suffer sickness and death.

4. Conclusion The present essay demonstrates that the physiology of pneuma presented in the ancient medical texts provides an interesting and cogent context for understanding Paul’s pneumatological statements. Consonant with an ancient view of pneuma, several of these statements address the reception of the Spirit and reflect an entry through the oro-nasal passages in the hearing of faith or through the harms the man just as much. For abstinence has upon the human constitution a most powerful effect, to enervate, to weaken and to kill. Depletion produces many other evils, different from those of repletion, but just as severe. Wherefore the greater complexity of these ills requires a more exact method of treatment. For it is necessary to aim at some measure. But no measure, neither number nor weight, by reference to which knowledge can be made exact, can be found except bodily feeling (τοῦ σώματος τὴν αἴσθησιν)” (Hippocrates, Vet. med. 9 [Jones, LCL]).

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pores of the body in baptism or through the digestive system in the Eucharist. These statements portray the initial reception of the Spirit in the hearing of faith and baptism but the continued reception of the Spirit through the spiritual food and drink of the Eucharist. Once the Spirit enters the body, several Pauline statements affirm that the Spirit causes movement, effects rationality, provides health, and imparts life. In their conception of the Spirit’s entry and function in the human body, therefore, Paul’s pneumatological statements reflect the physiology of pneuma in ancient medical texts, and these texts provide a productively coherent context in which to read Paul’s statements about the Spirit. Consequently, the ancient medical texts will hopefully no longer be so neglected in the contextual considerations of Pauline pneumatology.

5. Reception History My essay on Paul’s pneumatological statements participates in a recent debate about Paul’s conception of material pneuma.50 Identifying the major participants in this debate, Jeremy W. Barrier states: While discussions related to anthropological pneuma in Scripture have been addressed generally by Friedrich Wilhelm Horn and Dale Martin, the idea was taken to new depths when Troy Martin successfully applied medical concepts of pneuma to Paul, broadly speaking, by examining Paul’s undisputed writings. Since then, Volker Rabens has attempted to repudiate a number of the ideas presented by Horn, D. Martin, and T. Martin, thus deepening the discussion. In this same year, Troels Engberg-Pedersen published a thorough explication of the corporeal and embodied understanding of pneuma within Paul’s epistles, thus providing a quite decisive cosmology (and philosophy) of Paul that demonstrates “pneuma as a through and through material, bodily phenomenon.”51 50  For a brief history of scholarship on the notion of a material Spirit in Pauline studies, see Volker Rabens, The Holy Spirit and Ethics in Paul: Transforming and Empowering for ReligiousEthical Life, WUNT 2.283 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 4–15. 51  Jeremy W. Barrier, “Jesus’ Breath: A Physiological Analysis of πνεῦμα within Paul’s Letter to the Galatians,” JSNT 37 (2014): 115–138, here 118. In addition to my essay, Barrier is referencing Horn, Angeld, passim; D. Martin, Corinthian Body, passim; Rabens, The Holy Spirit and Ethics, passim; and Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul: The Material Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), passim. The quotation from Engberg-Pedersen’s book is from p. 3. See Matthew Thiessen, Paul and the Gentile Problem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 221 n. 70. Thiessen notes, “Taking his cue from Troy Martin’s work, Jeremy W. Barrier … helpfully connects Christ the sperma to the reception of the pneuma using GrecoRoman medical texts.” Concerning my own proposals for the reception of the Spirit, Thiessen comments, “As tantalizing as Martin’s suggestion is, it remains conjectural – unfortunately Paul does not provide us with a discussion of the mechanics of pneuma reception” (p. 109). I agree with Thiessen that Paul does not explicitly describe how the Spirit enters, but he does not need to provide such an explanation, for he relies on the sociology of knowledge that he shares with his readers to provide that explanation. Since the ancient medical texts allow us to understand that sociology of knowledge, I would argue that my proposals for how Paul and his readers understood the entry of the Spirit are more than “conjectural” and even highly probable.

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Disagreeing with Rabens, Barrier sides with those of us who argue for Paul’s conception of material pneuma. Barrier applies our physiological ideas about material pneuma specifically to Galatians “as a way of testing this hypothesis further and demonstrating that the pneumatic language in Paul’s letter to the Galatians is much more extensive than even suggested by me or Engberg-Pedersen.”52 Before presenting his own views, Engberg-Pedersen critiques his predecessors who argue for material pneuma in Paul’s letters. Even though Horn’s work preceded D. Martin’s by three years, Engberg-Pedersen credits Dale Martin with initiating the debate by articulating “in 1995 with gusto … that Paul probably had a material understanding of the pneuma like most other people in the ancient world, not least philosophers.”53 Engberg-Pedersen, however, criticizes D. Martin for placing “Paul on the side of ‘apocalypticism’ in a distinctly nonphilosophical – and in fact basically Marxist – reading which turns Paul into a spokesman for the social non-elite over against upper-class members of society, to whom philosophers would in principle belong.”54 Engberg-Pedersen thus shares my reticence to embrace D. Martin’s use of the conception of material pneuma to expose a “Marxist-inspired opposition between lower and upper classes,” and both of us think that a broader investigation of the material Spirit in Paul is needed beyond D. Martin’s limited focus on First Corinthians.55 Engberg-Pedersen compliments Horn’s work as “substantial” and “magisterial” and comments: Horn helpfully distinguishes between six uses of pneuma in Paul: a functional one (where the pneuma is active in making believers act or speak the way they do), a substantive one (when the pneuma is said to “live in” believers), a material one (as applied in sacramental contexts), a “hypostasis” use (of the pneuma as distinct from God and believers), a normative one (where the pneuma has ethical implications), and an anthropological one (where Paul speaks of “my” or “your” pneuma).56

Despite his positive assessment, Engberg-Pedersen criticizes Horn for not holding “the different uses together at a sufficiently general level in a single grip” and for not explaining how material pneuma might underly all of the other uses.57 Regarding my article on Pauline pneumatology, Engberg-Pedersen is also complementary and comments: Troy W. Martin presents some of the same medical material as the other Martin, in particular texts from the ancient medical Hippocratic corpus that speak of “reception of the pneuma” and the pneuma as responsible for movement, rationality, health, and life, all 52 Barrier,

“Jesus’ Breath,” 119.  Engberg-Pedersen, Cosmology and Self, 16. See D. Martin, Corinthian Body, Chapter 1. 54 Engberg-Pederson, Cosmology and Self, 17. 55  Ibid., 18. See T. Martin, “Paul’s Pneumatological Statements,” 106 n. 2 (original publication page number). 56  Engberg-Pedersen, Cosmology and Self,” 18. See Horn, Angeld, 60. 57  Engberg-Pedersen, Cosmology and Self, 18. 53

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of which may then be correlated with Pauline views on the pneuma. This is both helpful and on the right track.58

Even though complementary, Engberg-Pedersen deems my focus on the medical texts in need of supplementation as he explains, “However, what we need is a biological, medical trajectory focusing on the way the pneuma works on and in human bodies in combination with a cosmological trajectory that speaks of the activity of the pneuma in the world as a whole.”59 I agree with Engberg-Pedersen that the ancient biological conception of a material pneuma must be correlated with cosmological speculation, and Engberg-Pedersen even acknowledges that my essay does not completely lack such a correlation. He notes that I reference the “cosmological speculation about pneuma in the Hippocratic text Breaths.”60 Given this close correlation, Barrier criticizes Engberg-Pedersen’s own work for not sufficiently considering the medical texts. Barrier states, “While Engberg-Pedersen does an astounding job of framing pneuma as part of a complete cosmological and philosophical world view (i. e., Stoic), he nevertheless neglects the indigenous language of pneuma as it would be found, shall we say, in situ: namely, the language of medicine and physiology.”61 Barrier concludes, “Therefore, if Paul is speaking literally (or even metaphorically) about pneuma, then one needs to understand the indigenous language that encapsulates the concept. One must look to physiology and ancient medicine.”62 In his review of Engberg-Pedersen’s book, John R. Levison agrees with this conclusion and queries: Again, why not exploit Greco-Roman medical texts a bit more to fill out gaps in the mechanics of inspiration – how pneuma entered believers and effected progressive transformation? Was it through the ears or, as Troy Martin suggests, through baptismal water in pores of moistened skin, or in some other way.63

As Barrier and Levison rightly perceive, the inherent correlation between physiological and cosmological pneuma makes Engberg-Pedersen’s book and my article complimentary and supplementary rather than contrary. Of all those who have engaged my article, Barrier is the most enthusiastic and applies the physiological insights about pneuma in my article to argue “that Paul’s concept of pneuma in Galatians is rooted in a popular understanding of an anthropological, medical metaphor that describes the physiological ‘breath’  Ibid., 211 n. 23.

58

59 Ibid.

60  Ibid. See T. Martin, “Paul’s Pneumatological Statements,” 112 (original publication page number). 61  Barrier, “Jesus’ Breath,” 119–120. 62  Ibid. 63  John R. Levison, “Paul in the Stoa Poecile: A Response to Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul: The Material Spirit (Oxford 2010),” JSNT 33 (2011): 415– 432, here 432.

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of life.”64 He references my article when he states, “In Galatians, this pneuma is best understood as an enriched physical substance emanating from a divine source, as represented by Jesus (e. g., 1 Cor 15:45).”65 He also references my article when he affirms that some Pauline statements envision the pneuma entering “the body through the oro-nasal passages.”66 He likewise relies on my article when he states, “Already we see that Paul seems to be speaking in a manner consistent with ancient popular, medical concepts of pneuma as it moves into the heart of humans.”67 I am pleased that Barrier finds my article so fruitful in his investigation of material pneuma in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, and I hope other scholars will follow Barrier’s lead and apply the insights in my article to the investigation of other Pauline letters. In contrast to Barrier and those of us advocating Paul’s conception of material pneuma, Rabens is the most ardent representative of the other side of this debate. He labels our position as “infusion-transformation” since we hold that for Paul a material Spirit is infused into a Christ-believer at conversion or baptism and throughout a believer’s life. Rabens primarily criticizes us for misunderstanding metaphors related to the Spirit, for lacking relevant comparative sources for a material Spirit in Paul, and for subscribing to an automatic transformation of a believer by the infusion of a material Spirit. Regarding metaphor, Rabens states, “It will be shown that both the assumed physical nature of the Spirit as well as the mode of (substance-ontological) transformation of the believer that is derived from this particular concept of the Spirit rest predominantly on a misunderstanding of metaphoric and symbolic language.”68 Rabens is referring to expressions such as the “pouring out of the Spirit,” the “indwelling of the Spirit,” and “having the Spirit.”69 He criticizes our interpretation of these expressions as too literal and argues, “Metaphors that imply materiality do not necessarily mean πνεῦμα is material.”70 In contrast to a material understanding of Spirit, Rabens argues for a more figurative interpretation of this metaphorical Spirit language to express union or intimate relationship with Christ, and he refrains from describing what is poured out or received or possessed.71 Rabens is thus content to leave open the question

 Barrier, “Jesus’ Breath,” 119.  Ibid., 123. He relies on my comment about 1 Cor 15:45. See Martin, “Paul’s Pneumatological Statements,” 125 (original publication page number). 66  Barrier, “Jesus’ Breath,” 121, 125. See Martin, “Paul’s Pneumatological Statements,” 107, 115– 119 (original publication page numbers). 67  Barrier, “Jesus’ Breath,” 124. See Martin, “Paul’s Pneumatological Statements,” 115–119 (original publication page numbers). 68 Rabens, The Holy Spirit and Ethics, 23–24. 69  Ibid., 40, 82–86. 70 Ibid., 54. 71  Ibid., 85. 64 65

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of Paul’s ontology of the Spirit.72 He concludes, “It is illegitimate to establish a scientific definition of the ontology of the Spirit on the basis of what appears to be strongly metaphorical language.”73 Rabens’ criticism of our interpretation of Spirit metaphors relies on inadequate analytical categories. He himself recognizes that “a binary interpretation” of metaphorical language “in the sense of either literal or metaphorical will not suffice,” and he prefers a gradient interpretive model that places any given metaphor on a continuum between literal and figurative.74 Even his gradient model, however, relies on the categories of literal and figurative and places the focus on trying to determine just how literal or figurative a metaphor is. Much more helpful are the analytical categories proposed by Michael Kimmel, who writes: Metaphor is a mapping of certain salient and fitting characteristics of one domain to another domain, so as to give rise to a set of systematic correspondences. In order to characterize the directional nature of this mapping, we speak of a topical Target domain and a Source domain from which new structures are adduced.75

The notions of source and target domains as well as mapping have become essential to the modern treatment, definition, and interpretation of metaphor, but Rabens neither references Kimmel’s work nor mentions these analytical categories that are much more helpful than literal and figurative categories. Although not specifically mentioning them, Rabens does, however, recognize the value of Kimmel’s categories. Rabens states, “In order to interpret a metaphor properly, one needs to take into consideration the context of culture.76 Instead of asking about the meaning of metaphors, Rabens advocates trying to determine how people understand any given metaphor.77 He states that the interpretation of Spirit metaphors “depends on a priori conceptions of the Spirit” and that those “who are accustomed to the idea that the Holy Spirit is a material substance … might very well apply this spectrum of meaning” to Spirit metaphors.78 Rather than misunderstanding Spirit metaphors as Rabens proposes, our position con72 Ibid.,

86. 37. 74  Ibid., 85. 75  Michael Kimmel, “Metaphor, Imagery and Culture: Spatialized Ontologies, Mental Tools and Multimedia in the Making,” (Ph.D. diss. University of Vienna, 2002), 26. Quoted by R. Melvin McMillen. “Metaphor and First Peter: The Essential Role of the Minds of FatherGod’s Children in Spiritual Conflict with a Special Focus on 1:13,” (Ph.D. diss. University of South Africa, 2011), 32. For a discussion and demonstration of this approach to analyzing metaphor, see Troy W. Martin, “Christians as Babies: Metaphorical Reality in First Peter,” in Reading 1–2 Peter and Jude: A Resource for Students, ed. Eric Mason and Troy W. Martin, RBS 77 (Atlanta: SBL, 2014), 99–112. 76  Rabens, The Holy Spirit and Ethics, 48. 77  Ibid., 48. 78  Ibid., 48, cf. 113. 73 Ibid.,

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siders the context of culture and uses ancient sources to describe the source domains of these metaphors to determine that Paul and his culture would most likely have understood the Spirit as material and interpreted the Spirit metaphors accordingly. In addition to our interpretation of metaphors, Rabens criticizes the comparative sources we use to understand the source domains of Pauline Spirit metaphors. He claims that the notion of a material Spirit entered modern Pauline studies through the religionsgeschichtliche Schule, and he faults early representatives of this school for not providing sources to support this notion. He then credits my work along with that of Horn, Dale Martin, and EngbergPedersen “as actually providing Hellenistic sources for a material Spirit that influenced Paul.”79 Nevertheless, Rabens concludes that our sources are irrelevant for understanding Paul’s notion of the Spirit. Even though Rabens does not explicitly state the evaluative criteria by which he reaches this conclusion, they may be deduced from his scattered comments, and these comments reveal that he uses four evaluative criteria to argue that our sources are irrelevant. His first criterion is that a source can only be relevant if it specifically mentions the Holy Spirit. He comments that our sources are “inexact” because they “frequently do not differentiate between occurrences of πνεῦμα that refer to either the divine or the atmospheric, cosmological, or anthropological spirit.”80 Furthermore, he comments that the material spirit in our sources is neither the Holy Spirit nor related to ethical transformation.81 This criterion excludes the relevance of almost all non-Jewish and non-Christian Hellenistic sources except for Seneca, who “clearly connects ethics to a holy spirit.”82 Nonetheless, Rabens dismisses Seneca as a source because his holy spirit is a human rather than a divine spirit. Seneca’s Stoic view of deity as encompassing the entire universe, however, blurs this decisive distinction that Rabens is trying to make. An additional problem with Rabens’ first criterion is that it assumes the Holy Spirit has no similarities to spirit in general, for if there are some similarities, then the Hellenistic sources that discuss spirit become relevant for understanding the Holy Spirit. Jewish and Christian authors see at least enough similarities to use the same term πνεῦμα for God’s Holy Spirit that is used in these other texts for spirit or wind in general. Rabens’ second criterion is that a “relevant” source must connect the infusion of a material spirit with ethics. He recognizes that some of our sources do describe a material spirit that affects a person’s behavior and that these sources give “evidence of (physical) infusion.”83 Nevertheless, he dismisses these sources 79 Ibid.,

26 n. 5. 26 n. 5. 81  Ibid., 25–35, 245. 82 Ibid., 32. 83  Ibid., 27 n. 9. 80 Ibid.,

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such as those related to the Pythia at Delphi by commenting that “there is no connection with ethics.”84 The problem with Rabens’ second criterion is that it assumes a spirit’s means for producing amoral and immoral behaviors must be different from the means used by the Holy Spirit in producing moral behavior, for if the means are similar in any way, then texts discussing the effect of the spirit on amoral and even immoral behavior become relevant for understanding the ethical work of the Holy Spirit. Sources that use πνεῦμα with a modifier such as “unclean” or “evil” to explain bad conduct is at least semantically if not phenomenologically related to the use of the adjective “Holy” with πνεῦμα to explain the ethical conduct produced by the Holy Spirit. Rabens’ third criterion is that to be relevant a source must literally and not metaphorically discuss the materiality of spirit in connection with ethics. Applying this criterion, Rabens dismisses several texts that connect the spirit and especially the Holy Spirit with ethics. For example, Rabens comments on 1QHa 15:6–7 and says, “Should the author here operate with a physical concept of the Spirit, one could conclude that he may also be inclined to think of the work of the Spirit in infusion-transformation categories.”85 Rabens dismisses this text, however, because in his view the metaphorical description of the Spirit’s being “poured over” or “sprinkled over” or “distilled into” or “swung into” is figurative and does not demonstrate a material understanding of Spirit.86 Rabens never explains why the author of this text and numerous other authors consider material metaphors so appropriate for describing the reception and activity of the Spirit. His assertion that material metaphors do not indicate a material Spirit remains an essential point of disagreement with those of us convinced that they more likely do. Hence, we deem his third criterion that a relevant source must use literal rather than figurative language to be arbitrary and contrary to the nature of the sources we have. Even with this third arbitrary criterion, Rabens has trouble dismissing Philo’s writings in which the Spirit is literally described as an incorporeal substance (ἀσωμάτος οὐσία) and extensively connected to ethics. Philo’s writings thus meet Rabens’ first three criteria for relevant sources supporting the infusiontransformation position. Rabens simply comments that Philo is an “exception” to all other sources that do not meet these criteria87 Philo is not just an exception but a significant exception, for his interest in making Judaism philosophically acceptable leads him to discuss both the ontology and the ethical work of the Spirit. He is the exception because other Jewish ethical authors presuppose rather than explicate their ontology of the Spirit, but Philo demonstrates that the ontology assumed in their writings is more likely material than not. Unfor84 Ibid.,

27 n. 9.  Ibid., 42. 86  Ibid., 43. 87  Ibid., 79. 85

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tunately, Rabens does not adequately assess the significance of Philo’s exception by meeting the first three criteria Rabens requires for a relevant source. Rabens’ fourth criterion is that to be relevant for supporting the infusion-transformation position, a source should connect the infusion of the Spirit with a conversion-initiation experience. He comments that some sources are not relevant because in them the Spirit “is not infused into people at conversion-initiation, enabling henceforth ethical life.”88 Rabens largely ignores the Pentecost Narrative in Acts 2 even though this text arguably meets his fourth criterion.89 This text narrates the transforming power of the infusion of the Spirit in the lives of the disciples, but Rabens of course dismisses the material Spirit metaphors of wind and fire in this text. Nevertheless, this text should be considered when assessing the relevance of sources since it provides some insight into how early Christians may have understood Paul’s description of conversion-initiation with demonstrations of the Spirit and power (1 Cor 2:4; Gal 3:5). Relying on these four criteria, Rabens concludes that “infusion by a material πνεῦμα” resulting “in a substance-ontological transformation which results in ethical life as such could not be found in Graeco-Roman literature (at least up to 100 CE).”90 He further concludes, “As far as the concept of infusion-transformation is concerned … neither Hellenism nor Judaism give any proof for its existence in Biblical times.”91 The faulty assumptions and the arbitrariness in his evaluative criteria, however, contest the reliability of his sweeping conclusions about the relevance of sources supporting the infusion-transformation position. Rabens’ conclusions can of course be further contested by differing interpretations of these sources, and even he admits that some of these sources provide “a number of rudimental presuppositions” for the infusion-transformation position.92 In particular, he cites the Stoic sources but minimizes them by noting, “For the Stoics, the physical concept of πνεῦμα did not explicitly play a central role in their ethics but in their physics.”93 Discussions of the material ontology of the spirt do more often occur in Stoic sources dealing with physics rather than ethics, but the spirit does play a role in Stoic ethics and that spirit is material.94 Stoic ethical sources assume rather than discuss the ontology of a material spirit in much the same way as Paul does in his writings. Rabens has to admit that these and other sources demonstrate a wide-spread notion of “a physical conception of πνεῦμα” while only a few debatable sources may reference an im Ibid., 33. mentions this text seven times but mostly in footnotes and never in a sustained analysis. 90 Rabens, The Holy Spirit and Ethics, 35. 91 Ibid., 79. 92  Ibid., 35. 93  Ibid., 33. 94  Ibid., 32. Rabens notes, “Seneca clearly connects ethics to a holy spirit.” 88

89 Rabens

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material spirit.95 Rather than being irrelevant for Paul as Rabens contends, the source material demonstrates that the Spirit for Paul is much more likely material than immaterial. In addition to criticizing our interpretation of metaphors and the relevance of our sources, Rabens also criticizes the infusion-transformation model for leading to an “automatism of ethical living.”96 He criticizes this model by asserting, “The ethics that follows from this substantial view of the Spirit is one of compulsion.”97 Rabens astutely realizes that a similar criticism could be directed against his own relational model, and he responds, “It is possible to resist the relational work of the Spirit.”98 He explains, “Resisting the love of God and of Christ and defying the encouragement that can be experienced in the church … means missing out on the ethically transforming and empowering work of the Spirit.”99 Rabens defense of his relational model can also be used as a defense for the infusion-transformation model since the impulses and work of a material Spirit can likewise be resisted as Paul’s exhortation not to quench the Spirit demonstrates (1 Thess 5:19). Neither this reason nor any of the other reasons and arguments Rabens provides convinces me to view Paul’s ontology of the Spirit in any other way than material. Even Rabens must conclude, “It has to remain uncertain whether Paul ever understood God’s Spirit as an immaterial substance.”100 Rabens’ uncertainty about whether Paul understood Spirit as immaterial contrasts sharply with his certainly that Paul did not conceive of the Spirit as material, and both his approach and arguments reveal inconsistences. In his review of Rabens’ work, Kenneth D. Litwak observes: The book argues against a substance view of the Spirit, but the author does not hold to an immaterial view of the Spirit either. If Rabens does not hold the latter view, is it not problematic to argue against the former? Either could be correct, and if, as Rabens argues, we cannot tell what Paul thought, does it make sense to challenge one of these two options while not accepting the other and not offer perhaps a third alternative?101

Litwak correctly perceives an inconsistency in Rabens’ arguments against the notion of a material Spirit in Paul and notes the oddity of this inconsistency because Rabens’ contends, “As Paul does not discuss or evidently presuppose a particular ontology of the Spirit, I maintain that it is best to refrain from such  Ibid., 35, cf. 29–30.  Ibid., 2–3, 173.  97  Ibid., 9.  98  Ibid., 251.  99  Ibid., 251–252. 100  Ibid., 86. 101  Kenneth D. Litwak, “Review: Volker Rabens, The Holy Spirit and Ethics in Paul: Transformation and Empowering for Religious-Ethical Life, Second Edition (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014),” Society of Biblical Literature Review of Biblical Literature (July 2016), URL: www. bookreviewws.org/bookdetail.asp?titleld+9654.  95  96

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claims regarding the nature of πνεῦμα in Paul – whether immaterial or material.”102 Litwak and many other perceptive readers understand Rabens as taking a decided position against a material ontology of the Spirit in Paul and perceive an inconsistency in Rabens’ arguments. Litwak further observes that Rabens’ proposal for the relational work of the Spirit in the second half of his book does not really depend upon the resolution of the question of whether Paul’s ontology of the Spirit is material or immaterial. This observation is only partially correct, for Rabens’ arguments against a material Spirit in the first part of his book are meant to dismiss the notion of an automatic transformation by the reception of a material Spirit. Rabens comments, “The reception of the stofflich πνεῦμα comes close to an automatism of ethical life as the result … believers are substance-ontologically transformed by the infusion of the (physical) Spirit.”103 He further comments, “The ethics that follows from this substantial view of the Spirit is one of compulsion.”104 Rabens thinks that this substance-ontological model must be dismissed to make room for his relational-transformation model of Pauline ethics. According to this thinking, the relational model in the second part of the book does depend on the arguments against a material Spirit in the first part in contrast to what Litwak observes and Rabens explicitly says about this relationship. This binary thinking of an either/or but not both is not only unnecessary but also unhelpful. After presenting his relational model, Rabens asserts, “While we have not ruled out that Paul might operate with aspects of a substanceontological framework, we have suggested an approach that seems to do more justice to Paul’s thought.”105 Actually, combining both models does more justice to Paul’s ethics than choosing between one or the other. I agree with much that Rabens says about the relational work of the Spirit and think this model explains many Pauline passages where relationships among believers and with God and Christ are the means of growth and transformation. However, this model is not as useful for explaining Paul’s description of the reception of the Spirit with demonstrations of the Spirit and power (1 Cor 2:4; Gal 3:5). The relational model is also less helpful in explaining the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22), and Rabens, not surprisingly, avoids giving this topic an “in-depth treatment.”106 The infusiontransformation model with its notion of a material Spirit likewise better explains other Pauline passages such as the Corinthians’ becoming sick and even dying for not consuming the Eucharistic foods properly or Paul’s discussion in Romans 8 of the empowering work of the Spirit related to our mortal bodies. Rabens’ 102  Volker Rabens, The Holy Spirit and Ethics in Paul: Transformation and Empowering for Religious-Ethical Life, Second Revised Edition (Minneapolis Fortress, 2014), vi. 103 Rabens, The Holy Spirit and Ethics, 3, cf. 4–5, 23, 35, 173–174. 104  Ibid., 9. 105 Ibid., 248. 106  Ibid., 174.

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relational model does not therefore exclude a material ontology of the Spirit in Paul but rather complements it as Rabens himself now apparently recognizes in the preface to the second edition of his book.107 Before concluding this reception history, one specific misunderstanding of my work needs correcting. Rabens quotes my contention that “Paul’s association of the reception of the Spirit with water baptism in 1 Cor 12:13a implicates the pores of the moistened skin as the ports of the Spirit’s entry into the human body.”108 He then asks “why the Spirit would first need to move into the water and then into the believer.”109 Regarding the parallel I propose with Jesus’ baptism, Rabens states, “In Mark 1:10 the Spirit came from above … not ‘from below’ out of the water that Jesus is leaving behind.”110 Apparently, Rabens understands me to be saying that the Spirit comes from the water into Jesus or into the believer at baptism, but this understanding is incorrect. Rather, my contention is that the material Spirit comes from above and enters through the pores of the moistened skin. The water is not the vehicle of the Spirit’s reception but the means by which the skin is softened to facilitate the Spirit’s entry. My contention relies on the rock-solid basic tenet of ancient physics that hard things such as stones do not absorb while soft things such as sponges do. Rabens rejects my contention on the grounds that it rests on “shaky” foundations and is “overstated,” but his rejection itself rests on his misunderstanding of the mechanism I propose for the material Spirit’s baptismal entry. Rabens’ misunderstanding is further demonstrated when he comments on the Markan baptism narrative and says: Had there been anything physical involved in the reception of the Spirit, it would have been transferred via the dove and not via the water. However, it is important to note that the author explicitly says ‘like a dove.’ Moreover, εἰς needs to be rendered as ‘upon’ (so all major translations) in the sense of empowering and not ‘into’ in Martin’s sense of ‘entry.’111

My position is that in baptism the Spirit is neither transferred via the dove nor the water but rather through the pores of the skin.

107  Rabens, Holy Spirit and Ethics in Paul, vii. He explains, “‘Relational transformation’ as we see it in Paul implies a ‘substantive’ dimension. I have argued that believers can ‘hardly fail to be transformed by a living relationship with the life-giving God’ which implies that Paul’s more ‘substantive language’ has a place in our concept of the relational work of the Spirit in Paul’s ethics too. The adjacent pairs which are often conceived as opposites (i. e. relational versus substance-ontological transformation; [functional] empowering versus [ontological] transformation; new self-understanding versus a completely new self ) thus converge in our concept of transforming relationships.” 108 Rabens, The Holy Spirit and Ethics, 99. Quotation from Martin, “Pneumatological Statements,” 116–117 (original publication page numbers). 109  Rabens, The Holy Spirit and Ethics, 101. 110 Ibid., 100. 111  Ibid., 100 n. 89.

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The dove metaphor is appropriate for the reception of a material Spirit at Jesus’ baptism because doves are ground nesters. The ancients of course knew them as birds of the sky, but doves, unlike other birds, dwell in small hollows in the ground. The Flood Story assumes this characteristic of doves, for Noah sent out a dove after his failed attempt of releasing a raven to ascertain whether the dry land had yet appeared. When the dove did not return, he knew it had found a place to nest in the dry ground. Hence, ancient readers would have no trouble mapping the source domain of this dove metaphor to the target domain that the Spirit came from the sky as do doves and took residence in and not upon Jesus as doves nest in the earth. I hope my explanations clarify what I was trying to say about the reception of a material Spirit at baptism and correct Rabens’ misunderstanding of my work. My essay on Paul’s pneumatological statements thus participates in a robust debate about the ontology and work of the Spirit in Paul’s writings, theology, and ethics. My essay takes the position that ancient writings about spirit are relevant for understanding Paul’s conception of the Holy Spirit even though Rabens and some others question this relevance.112 The absence of any description of the ontological nature of the Spirit in Paul’s writings indicates that he relies on common assumptions and beliefs held by his readers about the nature and work of spirit in general that will enable them to comprehend and understand his statements about the Holy Spirit. Because of the wide-spread understanding of the material nature of spirit in Paul’s world, I and many others remain convinced of the material nature of the Holy Spirit not only for Paul but also for Hellenistic Judaism and early Christianity as well.

112 For example, see Jonathan Armstrong, “Review of John Fotopoulos (Hg.), The New Testament and Early Christian Literature in Greco-Roman Context, Supplements to Novum Testamentum, Bd. 122, Leiden (Brill) 2006,” ZAC 11 (2007): 551–554, here 553. Armstrong comments, “Troy W. Martin attempts to determine the Pauline doctrine of the Spirit. … The author’s analysis of the extra-canonical sources is unobjectionable, but his presumption that Paul’s convictions concerning the life of the Spirit would have precisely mirrored those of his pagan contemporaries leads him to a highly suspect conclusion.” See also Volker Rabens, “Power from In Between: The Relational Experience of the Holy Spirit and Spiritual Gifts in Paul’s Churches,” in The Spirit and Christ in the New Testament and Christian Theology: Essays in Honor of Max Turner, ed. I. Howard Marshall, Volker Rabens, and Cornelis Bennema (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 138–155, here 148 n. 27. Rabens states, “Generally speaking, however, the philosophic language and conceptual world of Stoicism fundamentally differs from that of Paul. This is also true for the ancient medical texts (on which, see Troy W. Martin …). Furthermore, the proponents of these approaches would need to provide evidence that Stoic and medical pneumatology was part of the general education of the members of Paul’s churches (and not just of the educated elite), and that they would, over and above that, be able to fill the logical gaps between the role of πνεῦμα in Stoic physics and ancient medicine on the one hand and Paul’s Spirit-language on the other.”

E. Early Christian Life and Practice

XV. Paul’s Argument from Nature for the Veil in 1 Corinthians 11:13–15: A Testicle instead of a Head-Covering* 1. Introduction Paul’s notorious argument in 1 Cor 11:2–16 for the veiling of women in public worship is frequently criticized for being logically convoluted and confused.1 Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza expresses the scholarly assessment of Paul’s argument by saying: We are no longer able to decide with certainty which behavior Paul criticizes and which custom he means to introduce in 1 Cor 11:2–16. Traditionally, exegetes have conjectured * A version of this essay was presented as “Greek Medicine and Paul’s Sexual Argument in 1 Corinthians 11:2–16” on the Crossroads of Early Christianity Tour in Turkey on July 9, 2001. A related paper was presented as “Veiled Exhortations Regarding the Veil: Ethos as the Controlling Factor in Moral Persuasion (1 Cor 11:2–16)” at the 2002 Heidelberg Conference on Rhetoric, Ethic and Moral Persuasion in Biblical Texts in Heidelberg, Germany on July 24, 2002 and subsequently published as “Veiled Exhortations Regarding the Veil: Ethos as the Controlling Factor in Moral Persuasion (1 Cor 11:2–16),” in Rhetoric, Ethic and Moral Persuasion in Biblical Discourse: Essays from the 2002 Heidelberg Conference, ed. Thomas H. Olbricht and Anders Eriksson, Emory Studies in Early Christianity 11 (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 255–273. 1 This article interprets Paul’s argument from nature in 1 Cor 11:13–15 against the background of ancient physiology. The Greek and Roman medical texts provide useful information for interpreting not only Paul’s letters but also other NT texts. For my other studies that utilize these sources for NT exegesis, see Troy W. Martin, “Whose Flesh? What Temptation? (Gal 4.13–14),” JSNT 74 (1999): 65–91; idem, “Paul’s Pneumatological Statements and Ancient Medical Texts,” in The New Testament and Early Christian Literature in Greco-Roman Context: Studies in Honor of David E. Aune, ed. John Fotopoulos (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 105–126; idem, “Ancient Medical Texts, Newly Re-Discovered: The Medical Background of Biblical Breathing,” Early Christianity 1 (2010): 513–538; idem, “Clarifying a Curiosity: The Plural Bloods (αἱμάτων) in John 1:13,” in Christian Body, Christian Self, ed. Clare K. Rothschild and Trevor Thompson, WUNT 284 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 175–185; idem, “Performing the Head Role: Man is the Head of the Woman,” BR 57 (2012): 69–80; idem, “Christians as Babies: Metaphorical Reality in First Peter,” in Reading 1–2 Peter and Jude: A Resource for Students, Resources for Biblical Study, ed. Eric Mason and Troy W. Martin (Atlanta and Leiden: SBL and Brill, 2014): 99–112;. idem, “Emotional Physiology and Consolatory Etiquette: Reading the Present Indicative with Future Meaning in the Eschatological Statement in 1 Pet 1:6,” JBL 135 (2016): 649–660; and idem, “Tasting the Eucharistic Lord as Useable (1 Pet 2:3),” CBQ 78 (2016): 515–525. See also Andrea V. Oelger and Troy W. Martin, I Promise to Hate, Despise, and Abuse You until Death Do Us Part: Marriage in a Narcissistic Age (Bourbonnais, IL: Bookend Publishers, 2010), 57–74.

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that Paul was insisting that the pneumatic women leaders wear the veil according to Jewish custom. Yet, v. 15 maintains that women have their hair instead of a head-covering (περιβολαίου), and thus militates against such an interpretation. In a very convoluted argument, which can no longer be unraveled completely, Paul adduces several points for “this custom” or hair fashion.2

Similarly, Victor Paul Furnish comments: There is no doubt that Paul also means to provide a theological basis for his instructions about the hairstyle of women who pray or prophesy, but in this case his argument is obscure, at least to modern interpreters, and it may well have seemed unsatisfactory even to the apostle himself. At any rate, in the end he abandons argument altogether by suggesting that if his directives are not followed the Corinthians will be departing from the convention that obtains in other congregations (v. 16).3

Describing Paul’s argument as “bewilderingly difficult,” Marion L. Soards states, “One hopes that the Corinthians had an easier time following Paul’s logic than do modern readers.”4 One may hope, but the scholarly assessment is that neither the Corinthians nor possibly even Paul himself completely comprehended this argument for the veiling of women.

2. Argument from Nature While many features of this argument in 1 Cor 11:2–16 require explanation, the argument from nature in vv. 13–15 is particularly problematic.5 The rationale for the natural shame of a man with long hair is obscure (vv. 14–15a). Especially problematic is the statement that a woman’s long hair is given to her instead of a covering (ἀντὶ περιβολαίου) in v. 15b. As traditionally understood, this statement nullifies the previous argument that a woman should wear a covering since her long hair apparently serves that purpose. A satisfactory explanation of this argument from nature should resolve the apparent contradiction and enable this argument to support Paul’s contention that women should wear the veil in public worship. 2.1. Translating περιβόλαιον in the Argument The term περιβόλαιον in v. 15b provides the key for explaining this argument from nature. This portion of the verse is usually translated “For her hair is given 2  Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 227–228. 3  Victor Paul Furnish, The Theology of the First Letter to the Corinthians, New Testament Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 77. 4  Marion L. Soards, 1 Corinthians, NIBCNT (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999), 221, 224. 5  For an analysis of the entire argument, see Martin, “Veiled Exhortations,” 255–273.

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to her instead of a covering (περιβολαίου).” In an influential article, Othoniel Motta argues that περιβόλαιον here means some type of head covering.6 Paul Ellingworth and Howard Hatton explain: The word translated covering is a general word for a garment, possibly one used as an outer covering. Although it does not specify any particular piece of clothing, there seems to be an obvious relation between this verse and the discussion in verses 4 and 5 about a covering for the head.7

Even though these scholars have identified the dominant semantic domain of this word, the term περιβόλαιον has a much broader semantic range. Since περιβόλαιον is contrasted with hair, which is part of the body, the physiological semantic domain of περιβόλαιον in 1 Cor 11:15b becomes particularly relevant. Euripides uses περιβόλαιον in reference to a body part (Herc. fur. 1269). He casts Hercules as complaining, “After I received [my] bags of flesh, which are the outward signs of puberty, [I received] labors about which I [shall] undertake to say what is necessary” (ἐπεὶ δὲ σαρκὸς περιβόλαι’ ἐκτησάμην ἡβῶντα, μόχθους οὓς ἔτλην τί δεῖ λέγειν).8 A dynamic translation of the first clause would be: “After I received my testicles (περιβόλαια), which are the outward signs of puberty.” In this text from Euripides, the term περιβόλαιον refers to a testicle.9 Achilles Tatius plays on this meaning of περιβόλαιον in his erotic description of a garden in which Clitophon seeks an amorous encounter with Leucippe (Leuc. Clit. 1.15.2). Achilles Tatius describes the entwinings of the flowers, embracings of the leaves, and intercoursings of the fruits (αἱ τῶν πετάλων περι6  Othoniel. Motta, “The Question of the Unveiled Woman (1 Co. 11.2–16),” ExpTim 44 (1933): 139–141. 7 Paul Ellingworth and Howard Hatton, A Translator’s Handbook on Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, Helps for Translators (London: United Bible Societies, 1985), 221. 8  Mark Goodacre has criticized my translation of the aorist ἔτλην as a future tense in English (“Does περιβόλαιον Mean ‘Testicle’ in 1 Corinthians 11:15?” JBL 130 [2011]: 391–396, here 393). I understand this verb to be an aorist denoting resolution “that has already been formed by the speaker and remains unalterable” (Herbert Weir Smyth, Greek Grammar [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980], §§ 1938–1939). This verb expresses Hercules resolve to recount what is necessary about the labors he has had to endure. Since he then proceeds to enumerate these labors, I translated this aorist verb as “[shall] undertake” to indicate Hercules’ resolve and his intent to recount his labors. I also placed the modal verb shall in brackets to indicate that my translation of the aorist was interpretive. In addition, Goodacre questions my “choice not to translate τί as an interrogative” but rather as an indefinite pronoun (“Does περιβόλαιον Mean ‘Testicle,’” 393). Both the indefinite and interrogative options are of course grammatically possible, but I think rendering this pronoun as indefinite and as the object of the infinitive λέγειν fits the syntax and sense of the passage better than the interrogative option. 9 Words in the semantic domain of clothing also occur in the semantic domain of body parts. For example, the Hippocratic author of Fleshes likens membranes to tunics (χιτῶνας; Hippocrates, Carn. 3). Some may interpret Euripides’ statement as referring to the scrotum, but the plural περιβόλαια more likely refers to the testicles rather than the scrotum (ὄσχη), which is singular. Furthermore, the scrotum is visible from birth, whereas the testicles enlarge and become pronounced at puberty and may be said to be received at that time.

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πλοκαί, τῶν φύλλων περιβολαί, τῶν καρπῶν συμπλοκαί). He portrays this erotic garden by allusions to male and female sexual organs. The term περιπλοκαί alludes to the female hair, the term περιβολαί to the testicle in males, and the term συμπλοκαί to the mixing of male and female reproductive fluid in the female. Achilles Tatius’ description of this garden associates female hair with the testicle in males.10 2.2. The Physiological Assumptions of the Argument Ancient medical conceptions confirm this association. Hippocratic authors hold that hair is hollow and grows primarily from either male or female reproductive fluid or semen flowing into it and congealing (Hippocrates, Nat. puer. 20).11 Since hollow body parts create a vacuum and attract fluid, hair attracts semen. Appropriately, the term κόμη refers not only to hair but also to the arms or suckers of the cuttlefish (see Maximus of Tyre, Phil. 4.5). Hair grows most prolifically from the head because the brain is the place where the semen is produced or at least stored (Hippocrates, Genit. 1).12 Hair grows only on the head of prepubescent humans because semen is stored in the brain and the channels of the body have not yet become large enough for reproductive fluid to travel throughout the body (Hippocrates, Nat. puer. 20; Genit. 2).13 At puberty, secondary hair growth in the pubic area marks the movement of reproductive fluid from the brain to the rest of the body (Hippocrates, Nat. puer. 20; Genit. 1).14 Women have less body hair 10  For other texts that describe erotic gardens, see Bryan P. Reardon, ed., Erotica Antiqua: Acta of the International Conference on the Ancient Novel (Bangor: ICAN, 1977), 34–35. 11  Émile Littré, Œuvres completes d’Hippocrate: Traduction nouvelle avec le texte grec en regard, collationné sur les manuscrits et toutes les éditions, accompagnée d’une introduction, de commentaires médicaux, de variantes et de notes philologiques, 10 vols. (Paris: Bailliere, 1839– 1861; repr. Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1961–1962), 7:506.23–7:510.17. For a summary of the Hippocratic and Aristotelian conceptions of hair, see Lesley Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 83–85. 12  Hippocrates himself may have held a different view, for ps.-Galen states, “The seed is secreted, as Plato and Diocles say, from the brain and the spinal marrow, but Praxagoras, Democritus, and Hippocrates too, [say that it is secreted] from the whole of the body” (Definitiones medicae, 439). Translated by Philip J. van der Eijk, Text and Translation, vol. 1 of Diocles of Carystus: A Collection of the Fragments with Translation and Commentary, Ancient Studies in Medicine 22 (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 85. Aristotle affirms the brain as the origin of the reproductive fluid (Gen. an. 5.3 [783b–784a]). 13  The author of Airs, Waters, Places states that cutting the vein behind each ear renders a man impotent (Hippocrates, Aer. 22). This statement assumes that this cutting severs the connection between the brain and the genitals. See also Hippocrates, Genit. 2 and Loc. hom. 3. 14 John Chadwick and W. N. Mann translate the latter, “This [reproductive] fluid is diffused from the brain into the loins and the whole body, but in particular into the spinal marrow: for passages extend into this from the whole body, which enable the fluid to pass to and from the spinal marrow. Once the sperm has entered the spinal marrow it passes in its course through the veins along the kidneys. … From the kidneys it passes via the testicles into the penis” (Hippocratic Writings [New York: Penguin Books, 1978], 317–318). See also Aristotle, Gen. an. 1.20 [728b]).

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not only because they have less semen but also because their colder bodies do not froth the semen throughout their bodies but reduce semen evaporation at the ends of their hair (Hippocrates, Nat. puer. 20).15 According to these medical authors, men have more hair because they have more semen and their hotter bodies froth this semen more readily throughout their whole bodies (Hippocrates, Nat. puer. 20). The nature (φύσις) of men is to release or eject the semen.16 During intercourse, semen fills all the hollow hairs on its way from the male brain to the genital area (Ps.-Aristotle, Probl. 10.24 [893b]). Thus, men have hair growth on their face, chest, and stomach. A man with hair on his back reverses the usual position of intercourse. A man with long hair retains much or all his semen, and his long hollow hair draws the semen toward his head area but away from his genital area, where it should be ejected. Therefore, 1 Cor 11:14 correctly states that it is a shame for a man to have long hair since the male nature (φύσις) is to draw down and eject rather than retain semen. In contrast, the nature (φύσις) of women is to draw up the semen and congeal it into a fetus (Hippocrates, Genit. 5; Nat. puer. 12).17 A woman’s body is simply one huge gland, and the function of glands is to absorb (Hippocrates, Gland. 3).18 The author of Glands writes: In women the substance of the glands is very rarefied (ἀραιή-loose textured), just like the rest of their bodies. … The male is close-pressed like a thick carpet both in appearance and to the touch. The female, on the other hand, is rarefied (ἀραιόν ‑loose textured) and porous (χαῦνον) like a flock of wool in appearance and to the touch: it follows that this rarefied and soft tissue does not reject moisture. (Hippocrates, Gland. 16 [Potter, LCL])

Earlier, this author describes glands with these same descriptive adjectives and likens the glands to wool (Hippocrates, Gland. 1). Just as loose-textured, porous glands absorb, so also the loose-textured, porous body of a woman absorbs. This author also writes that glands and hair fulfill similar bodily functions. Just as glands absorb the excess bodily fluid that flows to them, so also hair collects the excess, frothed fluid that rises to the surface (Hippocrates, Gland. 4). What glands do within the body, hair does on the surface of the body. As one 15 For texts illustrating the ancient debate of whether women’s bodies were colder or hotter than men’s, see Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 230–231. 16 Aristotle, Gen. an. 1.22 (730a–b); 2.4 (739a–b); 4.1 (765b); Soranus, Gyn. 1.8 (33). 17  See also Aristotle, Gen. an. 2.4 (739b); 4.1 (765b); Soranus, Gyn, 1.8 (33), 1.14 (46), 1.10 (36), 1.12 (43), and 3.13 (47). 18  See also Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 56. Soranus states that a woman’s uterus resembles her whole body (Gyn, 1.9 [34–35]). In selecting a female capable of conception, he recommends looking “for a woman whose whole body as well as her uterus is in a normal state. For just as no poor land brings seeds and plants to perfection, but through its own badness even destroys the virtues of the plants and seeds, so the female bodies which are in an abnormal state do not lay hold of the seed ejected into them, but by their own badness compel the latter also to sicken or even to perish.” Translated by Owsei Temkin, Soranus’ Gynecology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956), 34.

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large gland designed to absorb male reproductive fluid, a woman’s body is assisted by long hollow hair that increases the suction power of her hollow uterus (Aristotle, Gen. an. 2.4 [739a–b]). Consequently, another author ps.-Phocylides appropriately states, “Long hair is not fit for males, but for voluptuous women” (ἄρσεσιν οὐκ ἐπέοικε κομᾶν, χλιδαναῖς δὲ γυναιξίν; Sententiae 212).19 This conception of hair as part of the female genitalia explains the favorite Hippocratic test for sterility in women.20 A doctor places a scented suppository in a woman’s uterus and examines her head the next day to see if he can smell the scent of the suppository. If he smells the scent, he diagnoses her as fertile. If he does not smell the scent, he concludes she is sterile because the channels connecting her uterus to her head are blocked. The suction power of her hair cannot draw up the semen through the appropriate channels in her body. The male seed is therefore discharged rather than retained, and the woman cannot conceive. Aristophanes plays on this Hippocratic test in the scene where Blepyrus accuses his wife Praxagora of sexual unfaithfulness during her clandestine earlymorning excursion (Eccl. 523–524). She denies the accusation and invites Blepyrus to test her fidelity by smelling her head to see if she smells of the sweet odor of semen from her head (εἰ τῇ κεφαλῇ ὄζω μύρου).21 Blepyrus doubts the veracity of the test by inferring that a woman can engage in intercourse without  P. W. van der Horst, “Pseudo-Phocylides: A New Translation and Introduction,” in Expansions of the “Old Testament” and Legends, Wisdom and Philosophical Literature, Prayers, Psalms, and Odes, Fragments of Lost Judeo-Hellenistic Works, vol. 2 of The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985), 565–582, here 581. 20 See Hippocrates, Aph. 5.59; Aristotle, Gen. an. 2.7 (747a). Soranus rejects the validity of this test not because he rejects the theory on which it is based but because he conceives of “certain invisible ducts” that can conduct the scent upward without being able to conduct the reproductive fluid, which has a greater viscosity (Gyn. 1.9 [35]). 21  Stephen Halliwell translates Praxagora’s test as “Why, smell my hair for trace of scent,” and Blepyrus’ response as “What? Can’t a woman be fucked without some scent?” (Aristophanes: Birds, Lysistrata, Assembly-Women, Wealth: A New Verse Translation with Introductions and Notes, [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997], 173). Aristophanes plays on the double meaning of μύρον as the scent of perfume and of semen in the exchange between Myrrhine and Kinesias, who is pressuring her to satisfy his erection (Lys. 937–947). She stalls by claiming they need perfume (μύρον) and asks, “Do you wish that I should perfume (μυρίσω) you?” He protests with an oath since he should perfume her in the act of intercourse rather than the other way around. He then interjects, “O that the perfume (μύρον), Master Zeus, might stream out!” Of course, Kinesias refers to his desired ejaculation. Finally, he curses the man who first refined (ἑψήσας) perfume (μύρον). The verb ἕψω means to boil and refers to the bodily function of frothing bodily fluids. Hence, it often means to nurse, for milk is frothed blood. Semen is also frothed blood, and this verb refers both to the refining of perfume with fire and to the frothing of semen in the male body. Throughout the exchange, therefore, Aristophanes plays on the double meaning of μύρον as both perfume and semen. See also Plato, who stipulates that an effeminate bard be sent away from the ideal city after having myrrh poured down his head (Resp. 398a) and after being crowned with fillets of wool (Resp. 395d). Both actions symbolize the effeminateness of the bard. 19

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scent. Praxagora’s response admits that some women can have intercourse without the scent of semen from the head, but she cannot. Of course, an infertile woman could because the scent of semen would not be drawn to her head, but a fertile woman could not. Fertile women who engage in illicit intercourse eat garlic to mask the scent (Aristophanes, Thesm. 492–494). Praxagora affirms both her fertility and her fidelity by inviting Blepyrus to smell her head.22 This conception of hair as part of the female genitalia also explains one of Soranus’ signs of conception. He uses the adjective φρικώδης to describe the sensation a woman feels when she conceives after coitus (Soranus, Gyn. 1.12 [44]).23 Owsei Temkin translates that the woman is conscious of “a shivering sensation” while James Ricci explains that she “feels erection of the hair on the skin.”24 Soranus’ connection of conception with the physiological experience of a chill often accompanied by erection of hair on the skin relates the hair to a woman’s reproductive processes, and one Hippocratic author recommends that a woman neither bathe nor get her hair wet after coitus if she wants to retain the semen (Hippocrates, Mul. 1.11).25 This conception of hair probably explains the frequent depilation of women’s pubic hair.26 Although sometimes inflicted on male adulterers, depilation of the pubes is common among Greco-Roman women and enhances their attractiveness to males.27 Plucking, singeing, and applying caustic resins are the means 22 R. G. Ussher explains this test from the common practice of a woman’s perfuming before intercourse (Aristophanes Ecclesiazusae: Edited with Introduction and Commentary [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973], 148). Perfuming, however, explains neither Praxagora’s confidence in the test nor her invitation to smell her head rather than other parts of her body that would have been perfumed. In contrast, the Hippocratic test explains both features of the scene. 23  See also Hippocrates, Carn. 19. 24  Temkin, Soranus, 43. James V. Ricci, The Genealogy of Gynaecology: History of the Development of Gynaecology throughout the Ages 2000 B. C.-1800 A. D., 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Blakiston Company, 1950), 118. The role of the woman is to cool the hot male semen and congeal it into a fetus. The sensation of a chill, therefore, indicates that conception has occurred. Since erection of body hair is a physiological response to a chill, Ricci appropriately identifies this response as one of Soranus’ signs of conception and appropriately indicates that hair plays an important role in the female reproductive system. 25  See Martin, Corinthian Body, 237–238. 26  See Werner A. Krenkel, “Me tua forma capit,” WZ Rostock 33 (1984): 50–77, here 72–75; Kenneth J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality: Updated and with a new Postscript, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 105–106, 117; Ussher, Aristophanes, 73; Bettina E. Stumpp, Prostitution in der römischen Antike, 2nd ed., Antike in der Moderne (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1998), 106–107; and Gerd Hagenow, “Kosmetische Extravaganzen (Martial Epigramm III. 74),” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie NF 115 (1972): 48–59. 27 For depilation as the punishment for adulterous males, see Aristophanes, Nub. 1083. Nigel M. Kay comments, “Depilation of the pubic area of males is not commonly attested” (Ausonius Epigrams: Text with Introduction and Commentary, [London: Duckworth, 2001], 261). He notes, however, that Ausonius “deals with the subject of male depilation being an indication of passive homosexuality” (p. 260). For male attraction to a depilated feminine pudendum, see Halliwell, who explains, “The practice was meant to please male preferences for visible, youthful pudenda” (Aristophanes, 268). See also Stumpp, Prostitution, 107.

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of removing the hair, but singeing is the most effective in enhancing fertility.28 In Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae 13, Praxagora praises the lamp for singeing the flowering hair. Vase paintings depict women engaged in singeing the pubes, and to secretly infiltrate the Thesmophoria and appear as a woman, Mnesilochus submits to the depilation of his pubes by singeing.29 Bettina E. Stumpp surmises that the practice originally served a hygienic and then an aesthetic purpose before becoming the dominant fashion.30 Depilation serves a hygienic purpose by removing the pubic hair and destroying its power to draw reproductive fluid to the genital area. In contrast to plucking the hair, singeing seals the opening in the hair and more effectively removes the suction power of the pubes. Thus, depilation of the pubes and especially depilation by singeing enhances female fertility by removing the pubic counterforce to the upward draw of the hair on the head, and post-menopausal women cease or should cease depilating the pubes (Martial, Epigram 10.90). Finally, this conception of hair explains why prepubescent girls were not required to wear the veil whereas adult women were. Before puberty, a girl’s hair is not a functioning genital and does not differ from a boy’s hair. After puberty, however, this situation changes. Tertullian draws an analogy between prepubescent children and Adam and Eve, who were naked before they became aware of genital differentiation. Afterwards though, Tertullian notes, “They each marked the intelligence of their own sex by a covering” (Virg. 11 [ANF 4:34]). Noting the growth of the pubes to cover the female pudendum, Tertullian exhorts, “Let her whose lower parts are not bare have her upper likewise covered” (Virg. 12 [ANF 4:35]). Tertullian’s analogy and exhortation presume that hair becomes a functioning part of a young woman’s genitalia at puberty similar to the way testicles begin functioning at puberty as part of the male genitalia in facilitating the dissemination of semen.31 Prepubescent girls, therefore, need not cover their hair, but pubescent young women should, and Tertullian recommends that the extent 28 Krenkel,

“Me tua forma capit,” 74–75.

29 John D. Beazley, Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1942), 218; Aris-

tophanes, Thes. 216, 236–248. 30  Stumpp, Prostitution, 106. 31  In contrast to pubescent girls who began to cover their hair, pubescent boys cut their hair as a rite of passage. In his life of Theseus, Plutarch describes a custom at Delphi of youths’ sacrificing their hair when they reach puberty (Thes. 5.1 [Perrin, LCL]). He writes, “Since it was still a custom at that time for youth who were coming of age to go to Delphi and sacrifice some of their hair to the god, Theseus went to Delphi for this purpose.” The custom evidently involved the shaving of the head because Theseus only shaved the front part of his head, and his action was considered so unusual that this hairstyle or tonsure became known as Theseis. The physiological reason Theseus’ shaved only the front part of his head is that the brain, which produces and stores the semen, is located there. See Aristotle, Gen. an. 5.3 (783b–784a). This rite probably had several meanings. From a physiological perspective, however, the hair that had attracted the reproductive fluid upward before puberty is shaved as the testicles develop and begin to attract this fluid downward in pubescent boys.

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of the veil be “co-extensive with the space covered by the hair when unbound” (Virg. 17 [ANF 4:37]). The masculine functional counterpart to long feminine hair then is the testicle.32 Aristotle calls the male testicles weights that keep the seminal channels taut (Gen. an. 1.4 [717a–b]). Their function is to facilitate the drawing of semen downward so it can be ejected. Without them, the seminal channels draw up inside the body, and the male becomes unable to dispense semen into the female. The female is not given such weights but instead develops a hollow uterus and appropriate vessels to draw the semen upward (Aristotle, Gen. an. 2.4 [739a–b]).33 Thus, testicles do not develop at puberty for females as they do for males. Long feminine hair assists the uterus in drawing semen upward and inward; masculine testicles, which are connected to the brain by two channels, facilitate the drawing of semen downward and outward (Hippocrates, Loc. hom. 3). Long hair is a glory for the female φύσις but a shame for the male φύσις as Paul correctly states in 1 Cor 11:14–15a. This ancient physiological conception of hair indicates that Paul’s argument from nature in 1 Cor 11:13–15 contrasts long hair in women with testicles in men. Paul states that appropriate to her nature, a woman is not given an external testicle (περιβόλαιον, 1 Cor 11:15b) but rather hair instead. Paul states that long hollow hair on a woman’s head is her glory (δόξα, 1 Cor 11:15) because it enhances her female φύσις, which is to draw in and retain semen. Since female hair is part of the female genitalia, Paul asks the Corinthians to judge for themselves whether it is proper for a woman to display her genitalia when praying to God (1 Cor 11:13).

32  The Greek term ὄρχις refers both to male testicles and female ovaries. However, ancient medical science did not ascribe a corresponding reproductive function to testicles and ovaries. The testicles served as receptacles for reproductive fluid and performed the final frothing to transmit the heat that carried the form of the individual. The Hippocratics, however, did not ascribe such a function to ovaries. Their flat shape was not conducive to attracting reproductive fluid. Dean-Jones comments, “Nor did they [the Hippocratics] feel it necessary to discover a female analogy to the testicles. In both sexes, they believed that the seed was drawn either from all over the body at the time of conception or from a reservoir in the head. Although both sexes supplied seed it was accepted without question that they differed in reproductive anatomy. Moreover, the Hippocratics were not compiling an anatomy for its own sake and their models of disease and procreation in women worked well for them without having to invoke two small organs which had only been seen in quadrupeds and whose function was not immediately apparent” (Women’s Bodies, 68). 33  The Hippocratic author of Ancient Medicine describes the shape of the uterus as designed for the attraction of fluids (Hippocrates, Vet. med. 22). See Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 65– 67. Soranus lists one of the initial signs of conception as the lack of moisture in the vagina because “the whole of the moisture [reproductive fluid] its greater part having been directed upward” (Gyn. 1.12 [43]). Translated by Temkin, Soranus, 43–44.

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2.3. Jewish Assumptions in the Argument Informed by the Jewish tradition, which strictly forbids display of genitalia when engaged in God’s service, Paul’s argument from nature cogently supports a woman’s covering her head when praying or prophesying. In Isa 6:2, the seraphim who participate in the divine liturgy have six wings. Two are for flying, two cover the face for reverence, and two cover the feet for modesty. The term feet euphemistically refers to the genitals of the seraphim.34 The priests in Yahweh’s service receive special instructions for approaching the altar so that their nakedness (genitalia) is not exposed (Exod 20:26). As a further precaution when entering the tent of meeting or approaching the altar, these priests wear “linen breeches from the loins to the thighs to cover their naked flesh” (Exod 28:42–43 RSV ). Again, a euphemism, “flesh,” refers to the genitals (Lev 15:2, 19; Ezek 16:26; 23:20). These breeches are for the glory and beauty of the priest (Exod 28:40) while exposure of the genitals in service to God subjects the priest to guilt and death (Exod 28:43). Informed by this tradition, Paul appropriately instructs women in the service of God to cover their hair since it is part of the female genitalia. According to Paul’s argument, women may pray or prophesy in public worship along with men but only when both are decently attired.35 Even though no contemporary person would agree with the physiological conceptions informing Paul’s argument from nature for the veiling of women, everyone would agree with his conclusion prohibiting the display of genitalia in public worship. Since the physiological conceptions of the body have changed, however, no physiological reason remains for continuing the practice of covering women’s heads in public worship, and many Christian communities reasonably abandon this practice.

3. Conclusion Confusing a testicle with a head-covering will render even the deftest of arguments “convoluted” and prevent anyone from being “able to decide with certainty which behavior” the argument reproaches or recommends. The problem with Paul’s argument from nature for the veiling of women in public worship arises not from Paul’s convoluted logic or flawed argumentation but rather from the philological confusion of modern interpreters who fail to understand the 34 Marvin H. Pope, “Bible, Euphemism and Dysphemism,” ABD 1:720–725, here 721. See Ronald A. Veenker, “Forbidden Fruit: Ancient Near Eastern Sexual Metaphors,” HUCA 70–71 (1999–2000): 57–73. 35  Thus, Annie Jaubert among others argues that the covering signified decency and honor rather than subordination (“Le voile des femmes (I Cor. XI.2–16),” NTS 18 [1971–1972]: 419– 430, here 425–428), but see Troels Engberg-Pedersen, “1 Corinthians 11:16 and the Character of Pauline Exhortation,” JBL 110 (1991): 679–689, here 681–682 n. 9.

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ancient physiological conception of hair (κόμη) and confuse a testicle (περιβόλαιον) with a head-covering. Ancient philology and physiology demonstrate that both Paul and the Corinthians probably comprehended quite well this cogent argument from nature for the veiling of women.

4. Reception History Of all that I have written, this article has received the most fanfare and notoriety.36 Even before its publication, Mark D. Given heard an oral presentation related to this article, and he commented in an online blog that my “paper … contains a lexical argument … that Paul is saying a woman’s hair is given to her in place of a testicle.”37 He then exclaims, “It’s a hoot!” Almost immediately after its publication, my article was featured in the online Forum of the Society of Biblical Literature and then summarized and discussed by John Dart in an article entitled “Paul: Female Hair too Sexy to Go Unveiled.”38 Numerous emails and personal conversations about my article followed, and some were of a serious nature while others were comical and a few even mocking and dismissive. This notoriety demonstrated that my article had introduced not only a new lexical meaning for περιβόλαιον in 1 Cor 11:15 but also a new physiological context for understanding Paul’s argument from nature in this passage. Some scholars have accepted both my proposed lexical meaning of περιβόλαιον and the physiological context for this passage as well. In his blog, Given states that my lexical argument is “a rather strong one,” and Christopher Mount affirms that I have argued persuasively for the lexical meaning of περιβόλαιον in 1 Corinthians 11.39 Citing my article and its influence on other scholars, Monica Rice summarizes: Connecting the text to surrounding social implications has also led some scholars to study cultural physiology of ancient society. For the Greek culture, hair was an integral part of the male and female reproductive systems. It aided in moving necessary reproductive components around the body. In this schema, Greeks believed that sperm were 36  Of course, this article has also been ignored by many scholars. For example, see Philip B. Payne, Man and Woman, One in Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Paul’s Letters (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009). He includes my article in his bibliography, but does not list me in the author index, and in sections of his book that should engage my work such as “Shameful Head Coverings Explained as Hair” (pp. 199–210), he does not mention my alternative proposal that “head-coverings” really refers to a testicle. 37  Mark D. Given, “Troy Martin on Galatians,” Corpus-Paul, July 9, 2003, https://lists.ibiblio. org/pipermail/corpus-paul/20030709/004462.html. The paper Given heard was subsequently published as Martin, “Veiled Exhortations, 255–273. 38  John Dart, “Paul: Female Hair too Sexy to Go Unveiled,” ChrCent (May, 2004): 16. 39  Christopher Mount, “1 Corinthians 11:3–16: Spirit Possession and Authority in a NonPauline Interpolation,” JBL 124 (2005): 313–340, here 333. Given’s blog is accessed at https:// lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/corpus-paul/20030709/004462.html.

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created in the male head. They then needed to be pulled by hair to the lower regions of the male body, injected into the female body and be drawn by hair on the female to her head, where it was believed that conception happened. In this context, hair was an integral part of the reproductive system, essentially another sexual organ. So when Paul writes, “Judge for yourselves, is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head unveiled?” in verse 13, it can be a rhetorical comment referencing coming to worship with one’s most private parts exposed.40

These scholars are representative of those who accept my proposals for both the lexical meaning of περιβόλαιον and the physiological context of Paul’s argument from nature for the veil. Other scholars are less convinced by the lexical meaning I propose but more persuaded by the physiological context. Roy E. Ciampa and Brian S. Rosner comment: But even if one does accept Troy Martin’s (unlikely) proposal that the word normally translated “covering” in v. 15 should be understood as a reference to the male testicle, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that woman’s hair was understood to be an object of intense sexual attraction and even possibly as part of her genitalia.41

Similarly, Branson Parler rejects my lexical case for the meaning of περιβόλαιον as testicle but then explains, “My goal is not to revive Martin’s lexical case about 1 Cor 11:15 but rather to expand on his contextual case regarding hair and physiology to shed further light on 1 Cor 11:14.”42 He states that he relies on “Martin’s convincing case that hair and the reproductive system were interconnected in ancient physiological paradigms.”43 Parler indeed replicates much of my article in his own and is fourteen pages into his article before he comments: At this juncture, it is important to note both my reliance on and difference from Troy Martin, who also addresses the topic of hair and physiology in antiquity. … I use many of the same sources as he does in the course of my argument, although my summary expands on and differs on a few points.44

Except for his rejection of my lexical argument, the differences between our articles are scant, if any, and it seemed as though I was reading a paraphrase of my work as I read Parler’s article. Given his heavy reliance upon the information 40  Monica Rice, “Covering Questions,” Brethren Life and Thought 58.2 (2013): 19–24, here 22–23. Some specifics of Rice’s summary do not accurately portray ancient physiology since not all ancient authors considered semen to be produced in the brain but rather simply stored there and conception does not occur in the head bur rather in the uterus. 41  Roy E. Ciampa and Brian S. Rosner, The First Letter to the Corinthians, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 517. 42  Branson Parler, “Hair Length and Human Sexuality: The Underlying Moral Logic of Paul’s Appeal to Nature in 1 Corinthians 11:14,” CTJ 51 (2016): 112–136, here 126 n. 46. 43 Ibid. 44  Ibid.

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in my article, he should have referenced my work at the beginning of his publication and in his main text rather than in a footnote after he had already written fourteen pages. Near the end of his article, he finally mentions my work in his main text and comments, “As Martin points out, just as men have testicles to aid in drawing the semen downward, so the long hair of women aids in drawing the semen upward into her uterus.”45 He then further comments, “Here, then is the key point for my argument and the potential context we have been missing. Por (sic) Hippocrates and Aristotle, the hair on one’s head is not merely a social marker of gender but an interconnected, functional part of the body’s reproductive system.”46 The key point Parler claims for his argument is precisely the key point for the argument in my article, and the arguments are very similar, if not the same. In conclusion, Parler explains, “In this article, I have shown that the underlying moral logic of 1 Corinthians 11:14 is not merely an appeal to custom but to what Paul and the Corinthians understood to be the natural, physiological difference between male and female.”47 Again, this is what I demonstrated in my article, and Parler should have done more to present his sources, argument, and conclusion as less of his own. Still other scholars reject not only my lexical proposal for the meaning of περιβόλαιον but also my proposed physiological context for 1 Cor 11:13–15. For example, Preston T. Massey argues that “veiling is a reflection or extension of long hair.”48 He explains, “A woman’s hair is to be in a natural state, not curled or braided. And it is to be covered with a veil. The veil thus follows the contour of a woman’s long hair and accentuates the glory (δόξα) of her natural beauty without creating the social stigma of either immodesty or ostentatiousness.”49 He then quotes me as arguing that the “ancient physiological conception of hair indicates that Paul’s argument from nature in 1 Cor 11:13–15 contrasts long hair in women with testicles in men.”50 Massey states, “I see the argument as just the opposite: the expression ἀντὶ περιβολαίου conveys the notion of ‘as a head covering.’”51 Massey demonstrates that the traditional translation of περιβόλαιον in this passage as a head covering continues to influence him as well as other scholars even after the publication of my article and that they also consequently reject my proposed physiological context for this passage.  Ibid., 129.  Ibid. For support of this key point, Parler references Hippocrates, Barrenness, 2.2, 2.4, and 6 and Aristotle, Gen. an. 747a.12–15 and Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae 520–24. He does not, however, note that these references are taken from my article. 47  Ibid., 136. 48  Preston T. Massey, “Long Hair as a Glory and as a Covering: Removing an Ambiguity from 1 Cor 11:15,” NovT 53 (2011): 52–72, here 72. 49  Ibid., 72 n. 53. 50  Ibid. See Martin, “Paul’s Argument,” 83. 51  Massey, “Long Hair,” 72 n. 53, 45 46

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Mark Goodacre is one of these scholars, and he has published the most pointed and sustained argument against my proposals.52 In an extensive published rejoinder of my own, I have summarized his arguments and dismissed his reasons for rejecting my proposals.53 Even though I cannot include his publication in this volume, I republish my rejoinder in the next essay and there continue the description of the reception history of my article on Paul’s argument from nature for the veil.

52 Mark Goodacre, “Does περιβόλαιον Mean ‘Testicle’ in 1 Corinthians 11:15?” JBL 130 (2011): 391–396. 53  Troy W. Martin, “Περιβόλαιον as ‘Testicle’ in 1 Corinthians 11:15: A Response to Mark Goodacre,” JBL 132 (2013): 453–465.

XVI. Περιβόλαιον as “Testicle” in 1 Corinthians 11:15: A Response to Mark Goodacre* 1. Introduction In a recent article, Mark Goodacre evaluates my proposed reading of περιβόλαιον in 1 Cor 11:15 as a “testicle.”1 I am grateful that he has taken my proposal so seriously and has provided me with an opportunity to explain my reading in greater detail. Although the purpose of his article is to evaluate my reading of 1 Cor 11:15, he devotes the majority of his article to challenging my translation of περιβόλαιον in Euripides’ Herc. fur. 1269 and Achilles Tatius’ Leuc. Clit. 1.15.2, since these texts, he assumes, provide “the necessary lexical basis for the [my] desired translation of 1 Cor 11:15.”2 Goodacre’s entire argument in his article rests on this assumption. I want to begin my response by pointing out that his assumption is questionable in the light of recent linguistic theory.

2. Critique of Goodacre’s Linguistic Assumption Modern linguistics emphasizes that words have meaning in context, and “the necessary lexical basis” for any particular meaning of any word is the specific context in which that word is used.3 A particular context may indicate a special * A version of this response was presented as “That Contested Testicle in 1 Corinthians 11:15: A Response to Mark Goodacre” at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Region of the Society of Biblical Literature in Bourbonnais, IL on February 11, 2012. I am grateful to Clare K. Rothschild and Christopher Matthews for reading drafts of my response and offering helpful comments and suggestions. Of course, I am responsible for any errors that remain. 1 Mark Goodacre, “Does περιβόλαιον Mean ‘Testicle’ in 1 Corinthians 11:15?” JBL 130 (2011): 391–396. Goodacre is evaluating my publication “Paul’s Argument from Nature for the Veil in 1 Corinthians 11:13–15: A Testicle instead of a Head Covering,” JBL 123 (2004): 75–84. 2  Goodacre, “Does περιβόλαιον Mean ‘Testicle,’” 396. 3 Kurt Baldinger, Semantic Theory: Towards a Modern Semantics (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980), 15–16. Baldinger comments, “The isolated word is put into a broader context, and through this it is decided what is meant by the individual word; i. e. the context determines the meaning within the concrete linguistic situation.” For a survey, discussion, and critique of recent works on lexical semantics, see Vyvyan Evans, How Words Mean: Lexical Concepts, Cognitive Models, and Meaning Construction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 3–26. Evans comments, “The observation with which this book proceeds, then, is that words are never

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meaning for a word that is not illustrated by uses of that word in other contexts. Even if other examples of this meaning cannot be found, that particular context still provides “the necessary lexical basis” for that special meaning of that word.4 Thus, modern linguistics emphasizes that the context of 1 Cor 11:15 determines the meaning of περιβόλαιον in this verse even if no other contexts illustrate that meaning.5 2.1. Context and the Meaning of ψήφισμα For example, consider the use of ψήφισμα in Aristophanes’ Nub. 1019. Now, this word means “decree” or “edict” in many contexts. In this line in Aristophanes’ play, however, ψήφισμα occurs in a list of undesirable body parts that Pheidippides will have if he follows bad reasoning. Lines 1016–1019 read: πρῶτα μὲν ἕξεις στῆθος λεπτόν, χροιὰν ὠχράν, ὤμους μικρούς, γλῶτταν μεγάλην, πυγὴν μικράν, ψήφισμα μακρόν. The published English translations of these lines refuse to take the context seriously and to translate ψήφισμα as a body part. So, Jeffrey Henderson translates, “You’ll start by having a puny chest, pasty skin, narrow shoulders, a grand tongue, a wee rump and a lengthy edict [ψήφισμα].”6 An edict is not a body part and is not a satisfactory translation of ψήφισμα in this context. The more recent translation by Paul Roche is similarly unsatisfactory. He translates, “a tiny bottom and a long harangue.”7 A harangue is not a body part, and neither of these translations makes sense of the passage. Even less satisfactory are the translations that render ψήφισμα μακρόν as “long harangues” or “decrees” and understand the word as disparaging oratory.8 None of these translations makes sense of this passage in Aristophanes’ comedy because each fails meaningful independent of the utterance in which they are embedded, and the encyclopaedic knowledge and extra-linguistic context which guide how words embedded in an utterance should be interpreted” (p. 21). 4  Evans says it is possible to assume that a word “has exactly the same number of distinct meanings … as the number of different sentences in which it appears” (Ibid., 19–20). 5  Evans states, “As observed by a large number of scholars, the meanings associated with words are flexible, open-ended, and highly sensitive to utterance context” (Ibid., 22). After listing a number of these scholars, Evans concludes, “Word meaning, from this perspective, is always a function of a situated interpretation: the context in which any given word is embedded and to which it contributes” (p. 23). 6  Jeffrey Henderson and Benjamin B. Rogers, trans., Aristophanes, 4 vols., LCL (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 2:148. 7 Paul Roche, trans., Aristophanes: The Complete Plays (London: New American Library, 2005), 178. 8 See Cyril Bailey, trans., Aristophanes Clouds (Oxford: Clarendon, 1921), 65; and Alan H. Sommerstein, ed. and trans., Clouds: Edited with Translation and Notes, vol. 3 of The Comedies of Aristophanes (Chicago: Bolchazy-Carducci, 1982), 109, 210. Bailey translates, “And your public harangues never come to an end” (p. 65). Sommerstein translates the word as “long … winded decree” (p. 109) and explains, “Under the aegis of the Worse Argument, Pheidippides will become an orator and propose verbose decrees in the assembly” (p. 210).

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to consider ψήφισμα in this context as a reference to a body part.9 Each translation misses the hilarious point of Aristophanes’ use of ψήφισμα in reference to Pheidippides’ penis. The context is a list of body parts, and the passage makes sense only if ψήφισμα is understood as referring to a body part. The passage contrasts the body parts Pheidippides will come to possess if he follows wrong thinking and not right thinking.10 Line 1019 specifically contrasts undesirable body parts with the desirable body parts in line 1014. The words ψήφισμα μακρόν in line 1019 directly contrast with the words πόσθην μικράν (a small penis) in 1014. The word ψήφισμα in line 1019 thus refers to Pheidippides’ penis. Instead of refusing to understand ψήφισμα in reference to a body part and specifically to a penis, we need to explore why in this context Aristophanes uses ψήφισμα in reference to a penis. In many other contexts, ψήφισμα refers to a decree or act representing the result of a decision-making process that is passed by a majority of votes with small stones (ψῆφοι). Once the legislators cast their votes or stones, the decision is out of their control and rests solely with the stones. In other words, the stones determine the decision that is finally made, and this decision prescribes and controls the behavior of the populace and hopefully the legislators as well. By referring to a penis with the word ψήφισμα, Aristophanes connects the penis to decision-making and behavioral control. He thus expresses a thought akin to the colloquial English notion of a man who “thinks with his dick.” If Pheidippides follows wrong reason, his decision-making will rest not with him and his good sense (cf. line 1010) but with his “long dick” (line 1019). Aristophanes explains how in the lines that follow (1020–1023). In these lines, the subject of the two verbs ἀναπείσει (1020) and ἀναπλήσει (1023) is not clearly stated. The subject could be wrong reason since these verbs form part of the apodosis for the protasis, which reads “if you Pheidippides practice what current men practice” (1015). Since wrong reason instructs these men to do what they do (987), wrong reason could be what persuades (ἀναπείσει) Pheidippides that the shameful is good and fills him (ἀναπλήσει) with unnatural lust as well. The subject, however, is more likely Pheidippides’ long penis (ψήφισμα μακρόν) since these words are the last image left in the mind of the audience before these verbs are spoken. Thus, Pheidippides’ long penis will convince him that the shameful is good and fill him with unnatural lust. Seeing Pheidippides’ long penis as the subject of these verbs contributes to the humor of these lines. Whether wrong reason or a long penis is the subject of these verbs,  9 Although he does not explicitly state that ψήφισμα refers to a penis, Kenneth J. Dover nevertheless comments that “either a reference to the penis or a surprise substitute for it” is what is needed. He concludes, “ψήφισμα μακρόν gives precisely the new twist needed” (Aristophanes Clouds: Edited with Introduction and Commentary [Oxford: Clarendon, 1968], 223). 10  Cornelius C. Felton, The Clouds of Aristophanes with Notes (Cambridge: Bartlett, 1858), 206.

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the flow of thought is similar. The reference to Pheidippides’ long penis (ψήφισμα μακρόν) allows Aristophanes to transition from a list of undesirable body parts to a description of Pheidippides’ moral degradation resulting from his following wrong reason. In this example from Aristophanes’ Nub.1019, the context specifies the referent of “penis” for ψήφισμα. Now, this referent is not given for ψήφισμα in LSJ, and, as far as I can tell, ψήφισμα never refers to a penis anywhere else in the surviving literature from the ancient world. Considering this example, one cannot say that there is no lexical basis for translating ψήφισμα as “penis” or that “penis” is an incorrect translation of ψήφισμα just because there are no lexical parallels to support this referent for ψήφισμα in Aristophanes’ Nub.1019. Yet, Goodacre’s argument based on his questionable linguistic assumption would require denying that ψήφισμα refers to a penis in this passage. 2.2. Context and the Meaning of σύναμμα An even more pertinent example that illustrates Goodacre’s dubious assumption is the use of σύναμμα in reference to testicles in Aristotle’s Gen. an. 5.7 (788a). This word means “knot,” “syllogism,” or “clamp” in other contexts, but is used in association with the testicles only in this passage in Aristotle and in the commentary on this passage by John Philoponus.11 Goodacre’s argument requires providing other texts in which this word is used in association with the testicles before allowing this association in this passage in Aristotle. No association other than “testicles,” however, makes sense of σύναμμα in the context of Gen. an. 5.7 (788a). Furthermore, Aristotle uses the singular form of this word in reference to the testicles even though Goodacre reasons, “If Paul had wished to contrast women’s hair with male testicles in 1 Cor 11:15, we would have expected him to use a plural noun.”12 Although other examples could be cited, these two from Aristotle and Aristophanes are sufficient to demonstrate the dubious linguistic assumption of Goodacre’s argument against my reading περιβόλαιον as “testicle” in 1 Cor 11:15.13 2.3. Evaluative Summary Goodacre thus dismisses Euripides’ Herc. fur. 1269 and Achilles Tatius’ Leuc. Clit. 1.15.2, the two lexical illustrations I provide, and concludes that “‘testicle’ is an incorrect translation of περιβόλαιον” in 1 Cor 11:15.14 He further concludes, 11  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae Philosophorum. 7.191.18; Plutarch, Alex. 18.3–4 (Vit. 274); Aristotle, Part. an. 4.10 (687b); John Philoponus, In libros de generatione animalium commentaria 14.3. 12  Goodacre, “Does περιβόλαιον Mean ‘Testicle,’” 395. 13  For references to further examples, see note 24 below. 14  Goodacre, “Does περιβόλαιον Mean ‘Testicle,’” 393.

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“There is no basis, then, for translating περιβόλαιον as ‘testicle’ in 1 Cor 11:15.”15 Goodacre’s entire argument in his article rests on his mistaken linguistic assumption that by dismissing these two illustrative texts, he has destroyed my case for translating περιβόλαιον as ‘testicle’ in 1 Cor 11:15.

3. Critique of Goodacre’s Translation of περιβόλαιον 3.1. The Physiological Context Even if I were to concede for the sake of argument that Goodacre had dismissed the two lexical illustrations I provide, he still cannot cogently conclude that περιβόλαιον does not mean “testicle” in 1 Cor 11:15 because the context of this passage must be considered. This lack of consideration, I deem to be the weakest part of his article, for he does not account for the context but skirts it. He says that my reading “opens up a new and intriguing possibility” and that my “exposition of ancient attitudes to sex and gender is intriguing.”16 He concludes, “The interesting ancient medical data may shed light on the kinds of perspectives that Paul and his readers shared with respect to hair, but, in the absence of the necessary lexical basis for the desired translation of 1 Cor 11:15, Martin’s case is not established.”17 Goodacre does not discuss the context of περιβόλαιον in 1 Cor 11:15 but ignores this context, which is the most important lexical basis for translating περιβόλαιον as “testicle.” Aside from lexical illustrations, I would argue that the most persuasive lexical evidence for translating περιβόλαιον as “testicle” is the specific context of 1 Cor 11:15. In this passage, Paul develops an argument from nature about the different functions of long hair in men and women.18 The context is thus one of physiology and the contrasting body parts of men and women.19 Paul’s statement that long hair is given by nature to a woman instead of a περιβόλαιον requires a translation of περιβόλαιον that refers to a male body part lacking in a woman but having a function corresponding to her long hair.20 The only translation proposed thus far that satisfies this context of περιβόλαιον is “testicle.” Elsewhere, I have provided the substantial gynecological material demonstrating long feminine hair as the functional counterpart to a male testicle, and “testicle” is the only translation of 15 Ibid.,

395.  Ibid., 391–392. 17  Ibid., 396. 18  Martin, “Paul’s Argument,” 78–79. 19  Ibid., 77. I tried to make this point clear when I wrote, “Since περιβόλαιον is contrasted with hair, which is part of the body, the physiological semantic domain of περιβόλαιον in 1 Cor 11:15b becomes particularly relevant.” 20  Ibid., 83. 16

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περιβόλαιον that makes sense of the passage and provides a cogent explanation of Paul’s argument and his flow of thought.21 The traditional translation of “covering” does not satisfy this context since hair provides a covering for both men and women (see Aristotle, Hist. an. 2.1 [498b]). This traditional translation thus leads to conclusions that Paul’s flow of thought does not make sense or that Paul has lost the thread of his argument.22 Goodacre states that “there may be good answers to the puzzles thrown up by this passage.”23 If he has any good answers, I certainly would like to hear them so I can evaluate their merit in the light of my proposed reading. At present, however, only my reading makes sense of this passage and satisfies the lexical context of περιβόλαιον. Since translating περιβόλαιον as “testicle” makes sense of the context, I would argue that this context is the “necessary lexical basis” for this translation even if the word περιβόλαιον, just as ψήφισμα in Aristophanes’ Clouds or σύναμμα in Aristotle’s Generation of Animals, never occurs elsewhere with this meaning in the material that survives from the ancient world. 3.2. Lexical Parallels to περιβόλαιον in 1 Cor 11:15 The problem with providing lexical illustrations for these words and others like them is that colloquial euphemisms are often used for sexual body parts.24 The material that survives from the ancient world, however, is largely literary, technical, and scientific, and the living colloquial speech is often not adequately represented. It is not surprising that the two illustrative texts I provide are from plays and erotic literature, which preserve more of the colloquial speech than some other types of ancient materials. If only the literary production of intellectuals and academics in our culture survives the next 2,000 years, we should not be surprised if colloquial terms such as “balls,” “nuts,” or “family jewels” in reference to testicles are rarely represented in that body of literature. 21 Ibid.,

77–84.  Neither does the more recent suggestion of “hairstyles” as the issue make sense of Paul’s argument. See Preston T. Massey, “The Meaning of κατακαλύπτω and κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων in 1 Corinthians 11.2–16,” NTS 53 (2007): 502–523. Massey’s linguistic argument against hairstyles would be even more conclusive if he had shown that this issue does not satisfy the physiological context of this passage and especially of περιβόλαιον in 1 Cor 11:15. 23  Goodacre, “Does περιβόλαιον Mean ‘Testicle,’” 396. 24  The euphemisms are numerous and diverse as Kenneth J. Dover comments, “We must be prepared for the possibility that words which we could not recognize as sexual by inspecting them in isolation … had a precise sexual reference” (Greek Homosexuality: Updated and with a New Postscript [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989], 17). Among other examples, Dover cites Aristophanes’ use of “rope” (σχοινίον) in reference to Lovecleon’s penis (Vesp. 1343–1344), and the general comic use of the plural of “barley” (κριθαί) as slang for “penis” (p. 59). Further examples can be found in Jeffrey Henderson, The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), passim; and Jeremy F. Hultin, The Ethics of Obscene Speech in Early Christianity and Its Environment, NovTSup 128 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), passim. 22

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Before turning to the specifics of Goodacre’s arguments against translating περιβόλαιον as “testicle” in Euripides’ Herc. fur. 1269 and Achilles Tatius’ Leuc. Clit. 1.15.2, I want to emphasize that my case for translating περιβόλαιον as “testicle” in 1 Cor 11:15 does not ultimately rest on the meaning of this word in these two illustrative texts but rather on the specific context of 1 Cor 11:15. Although parallels may be helpful and instructive, they are not decisive. Context, however, is. Unfortunately, Goodacre’s article is based primarily on the linguistic assumption that if περιβόλαιον does not mean “testicle” in Euripides’ Herc. fur. 1269 or Achilles Tatius’ Leuc. Clit. 1.15.2, then it does not mean “testicle” in 1 Cor 11:15. In this assumption, he could not be more mistaken from the perspective of recent linguistic theory. Nevertheless, I intend to respond to his specific arguments against the two illustrative texts that I provide and not concede that he has dismissed them. 3.2.1. Euripides’ Herc. fur. 1269 Goodacre takes issue with my translation of the clause ἐπεὶ δὲ σαρκὸς περιβόλαι’ ἐκτησάμην ἡβῶντα in Euripides’ Herc. fur. 1269. I translate these words as Heracles’ saying literally, “After I received [my] bags of flesh, which are the outward signs of puberty,” or saying dynamically, “After I received my testicles, which are the outward signs of puberty.” Goodacre points out that “there are important problems” with my translation and asserts, “‘Testicle’ is an incorrect translation of περιβόλαιον.”25 Instead of a body part, Goodacre prefers to understand περιβόλαια as a clothing metaphor and to translate the clause σαρκὸς περιβόλαι’ … ἡβῶντα as “youthful vestures of flesh” or “youthful garb of flesh.” Although he points to problems with my translation, he fails to recognize at least three significant problems with his own. The first problem is his inconsistent treatment of the plural περιβόλαια as a clothing metaphor. He translates it with both the plural noun “clothes” and the singular noun “garb” before finally settling on the plural noun “vestures.”26 He appeals to “all published translations of the passage” to support his translation of περιβόλαια. Almost all these translations, however, render the Greek plural noun with an English singular noun. Hence, Theodore A. Buckley translates περιβόλαια as “vesture,” Robert Browning as “garb,” and E. P. Coleridge as “cloak.”27 For support, Goodacre also appeals to Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, who comments on this passage, “To see the body as a garment [singular] is a metaphor stemming from Orphic circles.”28 The published English translations and the comment by Wilamowitz-Moellendorff indicate that the bodily clothing 25 Goodacre,

“Does περιβόλαιον Mean ‘Testicle,’” 393.  Ibid., 393 and 396. 27  Ibid., 393–394 nn. 14–16. 28  Ibid., 393 n. 12. The translation is my own. 26

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metaphor employs a singular noun, not a plural one such as περιβόλαια in Euripides’ Herc. fur. 1269. Several texts demonstrate the use of a singular noun rather than a plural in clothing metaphors referring to the body. The body is described as a sack (Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum 9.10 [59]) and as a robe, garment, coat, cloak, or tunic (Empedocles, Fr. 126; Philo, Leg. 3.22 [69]; QG 1.53; Corpus hermeticum 7.3; Ascen. Isa. 11:35; Apoc. Ab. 13:14; Acts Thom. 108–113; Teach. Silv. 105:13–16). Philo’s interpretation of Gen 3:21 is particularly instructive (QG 1.53). Although the text of Genesis contains the plural “garments of skin,” Philo shifts to the singular “garment of skin” each time he refers to a single, individual body.29 In texts that contain bodily clothing metaphors, a singular noun is thus commonly used as a metaphorical reference to the body. Goodacre mentions a few texts that use a plural noun in a clothing metaphor, but he fails to recognize that the context of these uses differs markedly from the use of περιβόλαια in Euripides’ Herc. fur. 1269.30 One text is Euripides’ Bacchae 746, which contains the phrase “garments of flesh” (σαρκὸς ἐνδυτά) in reference to the bodies of the cows and bulls that are being torn asunder by the Bacchae. Although “garments” is plural, the context of many cows and bulls indicates that each bovine has only a single body or garment of flesh. Another text cited by Goodacre is Plato’s Phaed. 87c, which compares a succession of cloaks worn out by a weaver to the many bodies worn out by a soul. At any given time, however, the soul is wearing only a single garment or body since Plato writes, “When the soul perishes, it must necessarily have on its last cloak” (Phaed. 87e). Plato refers to a single, individual body not with the plural “cloaks” but with the singular “cloak.”31 The final text cited by Goodacre is Euripides’ Herc. fur. 549, which refers to “our having put on garments of death” (θανάτου … περιβόλαι’ ἐνήμεθα). The plural subject and verb in this context indicate that each person mentioned bears only a single mortal body or garment of death and not many bodies or garments at the same time.32 The context of these three texts, therefore, differs markedly from the context of Euripides’ Herc. fur. 1269, which has only a single, individual body in view at the specific time of puberty. Referring to Heracles’ body with a clothing metaphor as “vestments of flesh” or “garments

29  Unfortunately, this passage from Philo survives only in translation and not in the original Greek. 30  Goodacre, “Does περιβόλαιον Mean ‘Testicle,’” 393 n. 12. 31 For a similar use of the plural in reference to a group of individual bodies, see Plato’s Gorg. 523c. 32  Other texts not mentioned by Goodacre that use a plural noun in a clothing metaphor in reference to many bodies also have in view only a single garment for each body. For examples, see Origen, Cels. 4.40 and Apoc. El. 5:6 although this latter text may be explained by Zech 3:1–5 or the transfiguration of Jesus. See the explanation below.

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of flesh” is very unusual and not supported by any of the texts or material that Goodacre provides.33 This unusual use of the plural περιβόλαια as a clothing metaphor for an individual body signals caution in translating this word as “clothes,” “vestures,” or “garb” in Euripides’ Herc. fur. 1269. I have not been able to find a precedent early enough to illustrate a plural noun in reference to a single body in a clothing metaphor. Much later than Euripides, the Jewish and Christian traditions speak of an individual’s wearing garments in an afterlife, and these garments may refer to an individual’s body (Rev 3:4; 6:11; 7: 9, 13–14; 22:14; Apoc. El. 5:6; 4 Ezra 2:45; 2 En. 22:8; 1 Apoc. Jas. 28:16–17; Great Pow. 44:25–26; Lucian, Peregr. 40). The sources of these traditions are Zech 3:1–5 and Jesus’ transfiguration (Mark 9:2–8 and parallels). In both sources, however, the garments do not refer to the body of the prophet or to the body of Jesus, whose face and hair are described separately from his garments. Hence, the secondary literature debates whether the plural noun “garments” in these traditions refers to the body or simply to an individual’s moral and spiritual condition in the afterlife.34 In either case, the use of the plural “garments” is too late and too tradition-specific to provide a precedent for reading the plural περιβόλαια in Euripides’ Herc. fur. 1269 as a clothing metaphor referring to a single body. Goodacre’s inconsistent treatment of the plural περιβόλαια is the first significant problem with his contention that this noun is a clothing metaphor referring to the entire body of Heracles rather than to body parts such as testicles. Almost all the published translations of this passage want to translate the plural περιβόλαια as though it were singular to fit the clothing metaphor. To his credit, Goodacre finally settles on a plural translation of περιβόλαια as “vestures,” but does not consider that the plural is unnatural for a clothing metaphor on which he bases his translation.35 Translating the plural περιβόλαια as a reference to body parts in this passage is therefore much more natural than understanding it as a clothing metaphor. Furthermore, the specific context of περιβόλαια in this passage points to even more significant problems with Goodacre’s clothing metaphor. The second significant problem with Goodacre’s contention that περιβόλαια does not refer to testicles in Euripides is his translation of the participle ἡβῶντα as “youthful.” The English word youthful has a broad semantic range since the term youth includes stages of development both before and after puberty. The 33 One other text cited by Goodacre is Pindar’s Nem. 11.15 (Goodacre, “Does περιβόλαιον Mean ‘Testicle,’” 393 n. 12). This text describes clothes’ covering mortal members of the body and the earth’s being the final clothing of these members. This text does not use the plural “clothes” or “garments” as a reference to a single body and is therefore not parallel to the use of περιβόλαια in Euripides’ Herc. fur. 1269. 34  For a discussion of the options and references to other texts, see David E. Aune, Revelation 1–5, WBC 52a (Dallas: Word, 1997), 222–223. 35  Goodacre, “Does περιβόλαιον Mean ‘Testicle,’” 396.

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Greek verb ἡβάω, however, is a denominative verb formed from the noun ἥβη, which refers to the pubic hair or pubes and then to other aspects of development associated with puberty (Hippocrates, Epid. 3.4; Aristotle, Hist. an. 1.14 [493b]).36 Aristotle comments, “Now in human beings this stage [puberty] is marked by a change in the voice, and by a change both in the size and in the appearance of the sexual organs … and above all by the growth of the pubic hair” (τῆι τριχώσει τῆς ἥβης; Hist. an. 5.14 [544b] [Peck, LCL]).37 Goodacre’s translation of the participial form of this denominative verb as “youthful” obscures the essential connection of this participle and περιβόλαια, the noun it modifies, with puberty. In contrast, my translation of this participle as “which are the outward signs of puberty” makes this connection explicit. Goodacre criticizes my translation as “clunky” and a “lexical leap,” but he does not demonstrate that it is a lexical leap.38 My translation satisfies the context of specifying a time when Heracles’ labors began, namely at the time when his testicles appeared at puberty and he transitioned from a boy to a man. Furthermore, Goodacre’s translation of the participle ἡβῶντα as “youthful vestures of flesh” overlooks the fact that the participle with this meaning would more naturally modify σαρκός than περιβόλαια. The ancients certainly distinguished between old and youthful flesh. In an extended discussion, one Hippocratic author explains the difference between the flesh of young and old (Hippocrates, Morb. 1.22). When someone is described as bearing youthful flesh, the participial form of ἡβάω modifies σάρξ. Thus, Aeschylus describes Lasthenes as sporting or bearing youthful flesh (σάρκα δ’ ἡβῶσαν φύει [variant: φέρει]; Sept. 622). Goodacre’s translation of the participle ἡβῶντα in Euripides’ Herc. fur. 1269 would be more natural if the participle modified “flesh” (σαρκός), but it does not. It modifies περιβόλαια. When distinguishing between young and old bodies, the ancients prefer the expressions “youthful flesh” and “old flesh” to “youthful garments” and “old garments.” Goodacre’s translation of the clause ἐπεὶ δὲ σαρκὸς περιβόλαι’ ἐκτησάμην ἡβῶντα in Euripides’ Herc. fur. 1269 as “youthful vestures of flesh” is therefore neither as natural nor as straightforward as he implies. The third significant problem with Goodacre’s treatment of this clause is his inadequate consideration of the verb ἐκτησάμην (“I acquired”). Whatever the word περιβόλαια means in this context, it refers to something associated with puberty that Heracles acquired. To imply as Goodacre does that Heracles acquired “youthful vestments of flesh” or a body of flesh at puberty overlooks Heracles’ having a (youthful) body of flesh both before and after this time. Instead of a body, the primary acquisition for males at puberty is the testicles according to  Compare also Aristophanes, Nub. 976 and Theopompus Comicus, Frag. 37.  See also, Aristotle, Hist. an. 9.1 (581a–b). 38  Goodacre, “Does περιβόλαιον Mean ‘Testicle,’” 393 n. 11. 36 37

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the common view that the testicles first appear on the outside of the male body at puberty. Hippocrates describes puberty as marked by the appearance of a testicle on the outside of the body (Epid. 6.4.21).39 Galen quotes Hippocrates approvingly and describes the testicles as appearing (ἐπισημαίνει) or swelling-out (ἐξαίροιτο) at puberty (De usu partium 14.7). The Greek verb κτάομαι accurately expresses this ancient perception that the testicles were the primary acquisition of males at puberty and that their appearance marked the passage from a child to a pubescent youth.40 This verb supports translating the plural περιβόλαια in Euripides’ Herc. fur. 1269 as “testicles,” not “vestures,” and Goodacre’s translation does not adequately account for this verb. The issue to be decided, therefore, is whether Goodacre’s translation “youthful vestures of flesh” or my translation “bags of flesh” and specifically “testicles” more adequately renders σαρκὸς περιβόλαια in Euripides’ Herc. fur. 1269. The phrase “bags of flesh” is an apt description of testicles. Aristotle says that the testicles are not the same as flesh but are not far from it (Hist. an. 1.13 [493a]). He makes this statement because he considers flesh to be a uniform part of the body whereas a testicle is a non-uniform part of the body (Hist. an. 1.1 [486a]). A piece can be cut from a uniform part such as flesh, bone, hair, or blood, and that excised part remains completely flesh, bone, hair, or blood. A piece cut from a nonuniform part such as the face, hand, or testicle cannot fully be that bodily part but only a piece of that part. Thus, Aristotle cannot say that the testicles are the same as flesh, but he recognizes that they are not far from it. He perceives them to be very fleshlike. Physiologically, a testicle is a mass of flesh enclosed in a membrane or sack. Anyone who has ever castrated or slaughtered an animal and cut into a testicle would recognize Euripides’ phrase σαρκὸς περιβόλαια as a reference to the testicles. The ancients often slaughtered and castrated animals and even ate the flesh of testicles. Galen comments, “The people around me cut the testicles off young pigs and bulls … goats and sheep. … All the animals just mentioned have testicles that are difficult to digest and unwholesome, although when cooked properly they are nourishing” (Alim. Fac. 3.6).41 He points out that the defects and virtues of the testicles as food “parallel what was said about flesh” (Alim. Fac. 39 In his Loeb translation of this passage, Wesley D. Smith renders τράγος as “lubriciousness” or “sexual urge.” Galen understands it more accurately as a reference to puberty (De usu partium 14.7). In other contexts, the word means “he-goat” and often refers to puberty because of the pubescent change of voice that resembles the sound made by this animal. 40  See Aristotle, Gen. an. 5.7 (787b–788a) and 1.20 (728a). Dover comments, “Old Philokleon in Wasps 578, listing the enjoyable perquisites of jury service, includes ‘looking at the genitals of boys’ whose attainment of the age necessary for registration as full citizens had been questioned and referred to a law court” (Greek Homosexuality, 125). 41  Translated by Mark Grant, Galen on Food and Diet (London: Routledge, 2000), 160.

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3.6).42 Euripides’ description of the testicles as bags of flesh would have been very familiar to the ancients, and their familiarity with the physical nature of testicles, therefore, is a very persuasive argument that σαρκὸς περιβόλαια in Euripides’ Herc. fur. 1269 refers to Heracles’ testicles and not to garments or vestures as a metaphor for Heracles’ entire body as Goodacre wants to translate. Goodacre states that there are “important problems” with my translation of the passage from Euripides (p. 393), but I have demonstrated that Goodacre’s translation encounters problems more significant than mine.43 I maintain that translating περιβόλαια as “testicles” in this passage fits the context better and provides a lexical illustration for the usage of this word in 1 Cor 11:15. My case for translating περιβόλαιον as “testicle” in 1 Cor 11:15, however, ultimately depends not on Euripides’ Herc. fur. 1269 but on the specific context of the passage in First Corinthians. 3.2.2. Achilles Tatius’ Leuc. Clit. 1.15.2 The second text I provide as a lexical illustration for translating περιβόλαιον as “testicle” in 1 Cor 11:15 is Achilles Tatius’ Leuc. Clit. 1.15.2. Goodacre allows that this text can support the meaning of “testicle” for περιβόλαιον if that meaning is established elsewhere. I think I have demonstrated sufficiently that this word does convey this meaning in Euripides’ Herc. fur. 1269 so I hope Goodacre can now also see this passage in Achilles’ erotic work as an allusion to male and female sexual organs. Again, however, my case for translating περιβόλαιον as “testicle” in 1 Cor 11:15 does not finally rest on Goodacre’s seeing this allusion in Achilles’ work.

4. Critique of Goodacre’s Scattered Arguments Finally, I want to respond to some scattered arguments that Goodacre makes against my reading of 1 Cor 11:15. Goodacre concludes, “If Paul had wished to contrast women’s hair with male testicles in 1 Cor 11:15, we would have expected him to use a plural noun, and the noun of choice would have been ὄρχις.”44 Paul could not have used the word ὄρχις, however, without confusing his readers since the semantic range of this Greek word includes both male testicles and

42  Translated by Owen Powell, Galen On the Properties of Foodstuffs (De alimentorum facultatibus): Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 121. 43  Another problem with Goodacre’s translation is that it mistakenly implies youthful bodies are strong and vigorous. Such is not always the case, however. See Aristotle, Hist. an. 9.1 (581b–582a). 44  Goodacre, “Does περιβόλαιον Mean ‘Testicle,’” 395.

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female ovaries.45 Both genders thus have ὄρχεις, but the appearance and function of these ὄρχεις differ significantly between the genders.46 A female ὄρχις or ovary is flat, thin, and small and plays a marginal role in her genital system. In contrast, a male ὄρχις or testicle is large, hollow, and porous. It plays a most significant role in drawing the bloodlike fluid and concocting it into pure semen.47 Referring to a male testicle as a bag thus distinguishes it and its function from the female’s ὄρχις since she does not have a bag. If the English word “testicles,” for example, could refer both to male testicles and female ovaries, then an English writer would need to use a colloquial expression such as “balls” or “nuts” to specify the meaning of male testicles. Since the Greek word ὄρχις does not refer to a male body part lacking in a woman, this word does not therefore fit the contextual requirements of 1 Cor 11:15. Paul must use a colloquial word to specify a male testicle and its function in contrast to a female’s genital system and the word he uses is περιβόλαιον, which is best rendered by the English word testicle. Goodacre further states, “If Paul had wished to contrast women’s hair with male testicles in 1 Cor 11:15, we would have expected him to use a plural noun.”48 Paul however does not use plural nouns in contexts similar to 1 Cor 11:15. Paul’s ancient physiology does not perceive the testicles as working in tandem in the same way as the kidneys or lungs (Aristotle, Gen. an. 4.1 [765a]). The testicles’ independent function resembles the function of the eyes or the ears in that a man with only one testicle, eye, and ear can still reproduce, see, and hear. When Paul speaks of dual body parts that function independently of one another, he customarily speaks of the singular eye, hand, or ear and not the plural (1 Cor 2:9; 12:15–17, 21; 15:52).49 In 1 Cor 11:15, Paul contrasts the function of a woman’s long hair with male testicles, and he characteristically does so with the singular περιβόλαιον (“testicle”) rather than the plural περιβόλαια (“testicles”). Goodacre further insists that if σαρκὸς περιβόλαια in Euripides’ Herc. fur. 1269 means “testicles,” then the limiting genitive (σαρκός) must occur with περιβόλαιον in 1 Cor 11:15 if περιβόλαιον means “testicle.” There are so many nouns that express a specific meaning with and without a limiting genitive that his insistence seems arbitrary and unrealistic in the case of περιβόλαιον. The context determines whether a limiting genitive is needed to specify the meaning of a noun or whether this noun can be used with this meaning without the genitive. In any case, our task is not to rewrite what Paul has written but to try to make sense of the words as he has written them.

 Aristotle, Hist. an. 1.17 (497a); Galen, De usu partium 14.6 and 14.9.

45

46 See the extended discussion of the differences in Galen, De usu partium 14.6, 10, 12, and 14.

 See for example, Galen, De usu partium 14.10 and 14.14.  Goodacre, “Does περιβόλαιον Mean ‘Testicle,’” 395. 49 When Paul refers to dual body parts and their mutual function is in view, however, he uses the plural. See his use of the plural “feet” in 1 Cor 12:21. 47 48

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Finally, Goodacre criticizes me for not giving more attention to possible alternative meanings of περιβόλαιον in 1 Cor 11:15.50 Actually, I did consider the possible reference of περιβόλαιον to the scrotum more seriously than my brief reference in a footnote indicates.51 This alternative is appealing because the scrotum is called a “wrapping,” which falls within the semantic range of περιβόλαιον, although not in reference to a scrotum. Aristotle calls the scrotum a shelter (σκέπης) and a covering (καλύμματος) that protects the testicles (Gen. an. 1.12 [719b]). He calls it “the skin that surrounds the testicles) (πέριξ δέρμα; Hist. an. 1.13 [493a]) and “a skin covering” (σκέπη δερματική; Gen. an. 1.12 [719b]). In reference to the scrotum, Aristotle uses words such as περιληπτική and περιλαβεῖν, which are rendered with the English word wrapping in Peck’s Loeb translation. Galen also describes the scrotum as surrounding a testicle (ὁ ἀμφ’ αὐτὸν ὄσχεος; De usu partium 14.7). Understanding περιβόλαιον in 1 Cor 11:15 as a reference to a scrotum is thus appealing. In addition, the male genital structure is downward and outward while the female structure is inverted from the male and is oriented inward and upward.52 The scrotum, therefore, forms the covering for the extremity of the male genital structure just as a woman’s hair forms a covering for the extremity of her genital system. Thus, it is possible for περιβόλαιον in 1 Cor 11:15 to mean “scrotum” as I suggest in a footnote.53 I decided not to pursue this alternative, however, because the function of a woman’s hair corresponds more closely both to the structure and function of a male testicle. The structure of the scrotum is skin wrapped around the testicles while the testicles themselves are hollow and porous (διάκενοι καὶ σηραγγώδεις) similar to the hollow and porous structure of a woman’s hair (Galen, De usu partium 14.10).54 The function of a scrotum is to protect the testicles and keep them warm. Although it participates in the coction of semen, it does not draw the semen downward as a testicle does (Aristotle, Gen. an. 1.12 [719b]). Since a woman’s hair participates in the drawing up of semen, I decided that the contrasting male part to a woman’s hair in 1 Cor 11:15 is a testicle, not the scrotum.55 Nevertheless, περιβόλαιον in 1 Cor 11:15 may refer to a scrotum, but it seems to me that a reference to a testicle is the better alternative.

50 Goodacre,

“Does περιβόλαιον Mean ‘Testicle,’” 395.  Martin, “Paul’s Argument,” 77 n. 7. 52 Aristotle, Hist. an. 1.14 (493b); Galen, De usu partium 14.6 and 14.10. 53  Martin, “Paul’s Argument,” 77 n. 7. 54  For texts that hold the hair to be hollow, see ibid., 77–79. 55  For the ancient sources that describe the physiological function of female hair and male testicles, see ibid., 77–83. 51

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5. Conclusion After carefully considering Goodacre’s evaluation and article, I conclude that my reading of περιβόλαιον as “testicle” in 1 Cor 11:15 makes better sense of this passage than any other reading proposed thus far. If Goodacre or anyone else can suggest a more cogent reading, I am happy to consider it. Until then, however, I shall continue to read this passage in the only way that makes sense by translating περιβόλαιον in the context of 1 Cor 11:15 as “testicle.”

6. Reception History I found it necessary to write this rejoinder to Goodacre because some scholars were convinced by his article to reject my proposed translation of περιβόλαιον. For example, Branson Parler writes, “Martin’s thesis is that peribolaiou in 1 Cor 11:15 means ‘testicle’ rather than ‘covering.’ Mark Goodacre, however, convincingly argues against Martin’s lexical case.”56 What Parler wrote surprised me because I certainly was not convinced by Goodacre’s arguments and therefore thought it necessary to explain why in this rejoinder. I do not know if my rejoinder has persuaded Parler to change his mind, but in a conversation, Christopher Matthews commented to me that I should be grateful to Goodacre for providing me an opportunity in this rejoinder to make an even stronger case for translating περιβόλαιον as testicle in 1 Cor 11:15. Whether others are persuaded or not, my article on Paul’s argument from nature for the veil and my rejoinder to Goodacre introduce not only a new lexical meaning for περιβόλαιον in this passage but also a physiological context for understanding 1 Cor 11:13–15 that differs from the clothing or coiffure contexts previously suggested. Hopefully, these two contributions will remain in the history of scholarship, but I also hope a significant number of scholars will come to see that my translation and explanation of this passage make the most sense of Paul’s argument from nature for the veil.

56 Branson Parler, “Hair Length and Human Sexuality: The Underlying Moral Logic of Paul’s Appeal to Nature in 1 Corinthians 11:14,” CTJ 51 (2016): 112–136, here 126 n. 46.

XVII. Pagan and Judeo-Christian Time-Keeping Schemesin Galatians 4:10 and Colossians 2:16* 1. Introduction Exegetes often cite the list in Gal 4:10 (ἡμέρας καὶ μῆνας καὶ καιροὺς καὶ ἐνιαυτούς [“days and months and seasons and years”]) as parallel in content and function to the list in Col 2:16 (ἑορτῆς ἢ νεομηνίας ἢ σαββάτων [“a festival or a new moon or Sabbaths”]).1 Joseph B. Lightfoot provides the most extensive explanation of the content and function of these lists, and he reaches two conclusions that permeate the exegetical tradition of these two verses.2 First, he concludes that the content of the list in Galatians describes a Jewish time-keeping scheme since the list in Colossians clearly does so.3 His rationale is strengthened, he thinks, by Paul’s polemic against the Judaizers in Galatians.4 Second, he deduces that the Colossian list functions to describe the non-Christian practices * See also my earlier article entitled “Time and Money in Translation: A Comparison of the Revised Standard Version and the New Revised Standard Version,” BR 38 (1993): 55–73, which was based on a paper I presented to the Chicago Society of Biblical Research on January 31, 1993. Unless otherwise noted, all translations of ancient texts are mine. 1  Gerhard Delling explains, “Finally, μήν occurs in Gl. 4:10 in connection with Judaizing aberrations in the churches, cf. the νεομηνία of Col. 2:16. The two statements correspond in structure; for the observation of months naturally consists in the celebration of the feast of the new moon, as does that of years in the celebration of New Year’s Day. … If the error of the Galatians is not the same as that of the Colossians, the latter approximating closer to syncretism, it is still possible to treat the two passages together from our standpoint” (“μήν,” TDNT 4:638– 642, here 641). 2  Joseph B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, (London: Macmillan, 1875; repr. Zondervan Commentary Series; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979), 193– 194. 3  Heinrich Schlier concurs, “Diese Forderungen verraten nach Geist und Inhalt wieder die Art eines Judentums, dessen Spuren wir noch im aeth. Hen. und bei judenchristlichen Sekten finden. … Daß solche Anschauungen in christliche Gemeinden auch sonst eindrangen, bestätigt wiederum der Kolosserbrief. Vgl. Kol 2:16–23” (Der Brief an die Galater, 12th ed., KEK 7 [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1962], 204, 206). 4 Franz Mussner argues, “Da die Gegner judaisierende Judenchristen sind, muß eine Fährte, die ins Frühjudentum zurückführt, aufgenommen werden; diese Aufnahme bleibt nicht ohne Erfolg. Es gab im Frühjudentum, speziell bei den Apokalyptikern und den Qumranessenern, eine ‘Kalenderfrömmigkeit,’ die nicht am Rande, sondern im Zentrum der religiösen Glaubensüberzeugung stand” (Der Galaterbrief, HThKNT 9 [Freiburg: Herder, 1988], 298–299).

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of the opponents since the list in Galatians is clearly a non-Christian temporal scheme that should be rejected.5 The present essay argues that both of Lightfoot’s conclusions are misleading since the two lists are parallel neither in content nor in function.6 The content of the list in Colossians is exclusively Jewish while the list in Galatians could be either Jewish or pagan. Functionally, the Galatian list describes a calendar categorically rejected by Paul whereas the Colossian list represents a calendar not so easily disassociated from the Pauline communities. Consequently, this essay contends Gal 4:10 cannot substantiate that the calendar in Col 2:16 belongs to the opposition and neither can Col 2:16 establish the Jewishness of the list in Gal 4:10. In contrast to the exegetical tradition influenced by Lightfoot, this essay carefully examines the content and function of each list within its own context before comparing one list with another.

2. The List in Col 2:16 The content of the list in Col 2:16 is unquestionably Jewish. The temporal categories of festival, new moon, and Sabbaths are characteristic of a Jewish 5 Joachim Gnilka, Der Kolosserbrief, HThKNT 10.1 (Freiburg: Herder, 1980), 146 n. 9; and E. K.  Simpson and F. F.  Bruce, Commentary on the Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 244. 6  Exegetes who argue for syncretistic Judaizers at Galatia frequently appeal to the non-Jewish formulations in Gal 4:8–11 and either implicitly or explicitly distinguish between Gal 4:10 and Col 2:16. These interpreters represent an exception to the tradition influenced by Lightfoot. See note 41 below. Philip Vielhauer discusses these interpreters and refutes their principal argument based upon the term στοικεῖα (“Gesetzesdienst und Stoicheiadienst im Galaterbrief,” in idem, Oikodome: Aufsätze zum Neuen Testament, vol 2 of Aufsätze zum Neuen Testament, ed. Günter Klein, TB 65 [Munich: Kaiser, 1979], 183–195). More recently, Dieter Lührmann explains these lists as emphasizing different dimensions of the Jewish Torah. The cosmic calendar in Gal 4:10 is based upon the courses of the heavenly bodies and reflects the cosmic order established by the Torah. The festival calendar in Col 2:16 arises from the historical experiences of Israel and emphasizes the cultic aspect of the Torah. According to Lührmann, the former calendar more effectively than the latter serves the interests of the Jewish proselytization of Gentiles (“Tage, Monate, Jahreszeiten, Jahre (Gal 4,10),” in Werden und Wirken des Alten Testaments: Festschrift für Claus Westermann, ed. Rainer Albertz et al. [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980], 428–445, here 430–431). The dependence of the Jewish festival calendar upon the heavenly bodies and the cultic celebrations connected with the cosmic calendar minimize Lührmann’s distinction between these lists in Jewish practice. Either the sun (Jub 2:9) or the moon (Sir 43:6–7) or both (1 Enoch 82:9) determine the times of the feasts. Nevertheless, Lührmann’s distinction is useful in theory if both lists are considered Jewish. Unfortunately, Lührmann does not seriously consider that the list in Gal 4:10 may be pagan instead of Jewish. Robert Jewett has also depicted the differences in these lists as an attempt by the Galatian agitators to present Jewish cultic activity in Hellenized terms to win converts more quickly (“The Agitators and the Galatian Congregation,” NTS 17 [1971]: 198–212, here 208). As the present essay demonstrates, none of these explanations adequately explains the differences since all incorrectly connect the list in Gal 4:10 with Judaism and the list in Col 2:16 with the opponents.

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religious calendar.7 These same categories frequently occur in Jewish documents, and all three categories occur together in the LXX in 1 Chron 23:31, 2 Chron 2:3; 31:3, and Hos 2:13. In these passages, these categories designate the segments of time marked out by the Jewish religious calendar. Jewish Sabbath celebrations mark the time-segment of a week; new moon, the month; and festivals, the seasons of the year. As these passages and other Jewish documents indicate, the list in Col 2:16 is Jewish. The function of this list is more difficult to ascertain. The Colossian author warns his readers not to permit anyone to criticize or judge them in regard to eating or drinking or in respect to a festival, a new moon, or Sabbaths. It is unclear as to whether these practices form the object or the basis of the opponents’ critique. The critics may condemn the Colossian Christians for engaging, not engaging, or engaging incorrectly in these practices. The function is ambiguous. Although commentators disagree as to whether eating and drinking are practices of the Christians or their opponents, all commentators agree in ascribing the religious calendar to the opposition.8 Interpreters appeal to the Pauline notion of Christian freedom to contend that Pauline Christians at Colossae would never submit to observing sacred days and times.9 According to these commentators, the Colossian author exhorts his readers not to permit anyone to condemn them for their non-participation in these religious celebrations.10 Christian freedom is certainly an important tenet of Pauline theology. However, the Pauline conception of freedom does not mean removal of all constraints but fulfilling one’s communal and ethical responsibility.11 If Christian responsibility involves adherence to a specific religious calendar and avoidance of unaccept Lührmann, “Tage,” 430–431.  E. F. Scott states, “In this respect the heresy plainly shewed its Jewish affiliations. Three kinds of festival were recognized in Judaism – annual, monthly, weekly. These all, as we can gather here, were adopted by the heretical sect” (The Epistles of Paul to the Colossians, to Philemon and to the Ephesians, MNTC [London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1930], 52).  9  Norbert Hugedé, Commentaire de l‘Epître aux Colossiens (Genève: Labor et Fides, 1968), 143; Adolf Schlatter, Die Briefe an die Galater, Epheser, Kolosser und Philemon, Erläuterungen zum Neuen Testament 7 (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1963), 285. For a discussion of how the notion of Christian freedom functions in the argument in Galatians, see Schlier, An die Galater, 207. 10  As the perceptive interlocutor in John Calvin’s commentary observes however, “We [Christians] still keep some observance of days” (The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians, trans. T. H. L. Parker, Calvin’s Commentaries [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965], 337). Calvin’s unconvincing response to this interlocutor argues that Christians observe these days out of pragmatism, not obligation. 11  Hans Dieter Betz explains, “Paul’s … Corinthian correspondence is almost entirely preoccupied with his attempts to interpret Christian freedom as communal and ethical responsibility” (Paul’s Concept of Freedom in the Context of Hellenistic Discussions about the Possibilities of Human Freedom, Protocol of the Colloquy of the Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture 26 [Berkeley: The Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture, 1977], 11). See also F. Stanley Jones, “Freiheit” in den Briefen des Apostels Paulus: Eine historische, exegetische und religionsgeschichtliche Studie, GTA 34 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987); Samuel Vollenweider, Freiheit als neue Schöpfung: Eine  7  8

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able alternatives, then these commentators’ argument based upon Christian freedom collapses. Since commentators acknowledge Paul’s Gospel requires a rejection of pagan calendars built upon idolatrous presuppositions, the question of how Paul’s communities reckon time arises. Their options are limited. Only by avoiding timekeeping altogether as many exegetes uncritically assume or by adhering to a Jewish calendar can the Pauline communities escape idolatrous alternatives.12 Other calendrical systems name the days and the months after pagan deities and mark out the seasons by pagan rites.13 In contrast, the Jews distinguish the seasons by festivals that obviously have no pagan connotations. They recognize the months by new moons and name these months using agricultural terms.14 They designate the week by Sabbaths, and beginning from the Sabbath, they number, instead of name, the days of the week one through six.15 Jewish, pagan, or no time-keeping system at all are the only options available to Paul and his communities, and the evidence indicates they opt for the former.16 The references to time in Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians exclusively reflect the adoption of a Jewish calendar. Even in a place like Corinth, Paul speaks of the first day from Sabbath (κατὰ μίαν σαββάτου; 1 Cor 16:2), not the day of the sun.17 He builds an elaborate argument based upon the festivals of Passover and unleavened bread (1 Cor 5:6–8) in order to exhort the Corinthians, “Let us keep the festival” (1 Cor 5:8). Although the temporal references in Paul’s letters are sparse, First Corinthians provides strong evidence for the Pauline adoption of the Jewish practice that marked time by festivals and Sabbaths.

Untersuchung zur Eleutheria bei Paulus und seiner Umwelt, FRLANT 147 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989). 12 Paul constantly warns his communities against idolatrous practices. See 1 Cor 5:10–11; 6:9; 10:7, 14; and Gal 5:20. 13  For examples, see Elias J. Bickerman, Chronology of the Ancient World, Aspects of Greek and Roman Life (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1968), 20, 50, 59. 14  Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology: Principles of Time-Reckoning in the Ancient World and Problems of Chronology in the Bible (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), 34–46. 15  The only exception being the day before the Sabbath that became known as the day of preparation for the Sabbath. See Finegan, Handbook, 15. 16  N. T. Wright perceptively notes Paul never says in Colossians or in Galatians that Christianity has nothing to do with Judaism even though such a statement would clinch his argument against observance of Jewish regulations (Colossians and Philemon, TNTC [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986], 119). 17 Herbert Jennings Rose states, “Strictly speaking, neither Jews nor Christians observe a week, since both officially reject astrology, but a festival (Sabbath and Sunday respectively) which occurs at intervals of seven days” (“Time-Reckoning,” OCD, 2nd ed. [Oxford: Clarendon, 1970], 1075–1076, here 1075). For a discussion of the Jewish Sabbath practices, see Robert Goldenburg, “The Jewish Sabbath in the Roman World up to the Time of Constantine the Great,” ANRW II, Principat 19.1:414–447.

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In addition to First Corinthians, the portrait of Paul and Christian communities in the book of Acts demonstrates that Christians adhered to the Jewish calendar.18 Paul enters the synagogue at Antioch of Pisidia on several Sabbaths and proclaims the Gospel (Acts 13:14, 44). According to Acts, it was Paul’s custom to enter the synagogue on the Sabbath, and in Thessalonica he reasoned for three Sabbaths from the Scriptures (Acts 17:2).19 Paul addresses the community at Troas on the first day from Sabbath (Acts 20:7). Concerning feasts, Paul sails from Philippi after the days of unleavened bread (Acts 20:6) and intends to arrive in Jerusalem by the feast of Pentecost (Acts 20:16). The portrayal of Paul in Acts supplies clear evidence that Christians mark time by the segments of festivals and Sabbaths.20 Evidence from Acts that substantiates the observance of new moons in the Christian time-keeping scheme is less obvious because Acts uses the term μήν (“month”) instead of νεομηνία (“new moon;” Acts 18:11; 19:8; 20:3; 28:11). This preference does not confirm that Acts adopts a non-Jewish temporal scheme since Jewish documents written in Greek use both terms when referring to the time segment of a month.21 Nevertheless, the use of μήν in Jewish materials presupposes νεομηνία since Jewish practice marks the month by the new moon.22 The lunar month is indispensable for determining the appropriate times for the feasts, especially Passover. The Christian adoption of the Jewish festivals as a temporal marker implies that they also designated the month by the new moon. Thus, Acts provides indirect evidence that the Christians in Asia Minor in which Colossae is situated designated the month by the new moon.23 18  These events support the Christian adoption of the Jewish time-keeping system regardless of whether these events ever occurred. 19  The RSV’s translation “three weeks” is incorrect. The text reads, “three Sabbaths.” Since the Jews number inclusively, three Sabbaths would only designate two weeks. 20  Troy W. Martin, “Sabbath,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Ethics, ed. Robert L. Brawley, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 2:233–237, here 236. 21  T. C. G. Thornton explains, “The word: μήν, as well as meaning ‘month,’ can also be used to refer to a new moon or New Moon festival. … Both Biblical and Rabbinical writers use the same word (‫ )חדש‬to refer to both ‘new moon’ and ‘month’” (“Jewish New Moon Festivals, Galatians 4:3–11 and Colossians 2:16,” JTS 40 [1989]: 97–100, here 99 n. 13). 22  Emil Schürer states, ‘The Jewish months have continued always to be what the ‘months’ of all civilized nations were by origin; namely, genuine lunar months” (The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B. C.-A. D. 135), ed. Emil Schürer, Géza Vermès, and Fergus Millar, rev. ed., 3 vols. [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1973], 1:588). He further specifies the Jewish practice at the time of Jesus Christ by saying, “They [the Jews] still had no fixed calendar, but on the basis of purely empirical observation, began each new month with the appearance of the new moon, and similarly on the basis of observation, intercalated one month in the spring of the third or second year in accordance with the rule that in all circumstances Passover must fall after the vernal equinox” (History, 1.590). 23  The exegetical insistence upon interpreting νεομηνία exclusively as a Jewish New Moon festival fails to distinguish between the dual uses of this term as a temporal marker and as the name of a religious festival. Delling cites examples of both usages (“μήν,” 639–640).

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More directly, the late second century Quartodeciman debate in which Pope Victor excommunicated the entire church in Asia Minor for its observance of Easter on the fourteenth day of Nisan rather than the Sunday nearest the fourteenth confirms the practice of beginning the month with the new moon. According to Jewish reckoning, the fourteenth day of Nisan could not be calculated without counting from the appearance of the new moon. Acts and First Corinthians as well as other Christian writings demonstrate that the Pauline communities and other early Christians adopted a Jewish timekeeping scheme in order to avoid the idolatrous systems of the pagans around them.24 The segments of time designated by this calendar are festival, new moon, and Sabbaths as listed in Col 2:16.25 In addition, the Colossian author’s use of new moon (νεομηνία) in his temporal scheme rather than month (μήν) is probably an attempt to further specify the Jewish system in contrast to its pagan counterpart.26 The adoption of the Jewish religious calendar by Paul and his communities does not necessarily mean that they also practice Jewish religious rituals.27 Following the destruction of the Jewish temple in 70 CE, the Jewish temporal system remains intact even when the Jews are no longer able to offer the prescribed sacrifices. Furthermore, the Gentile adoption of Sabbath observance that Josephus reports does not involve a concomitant adoption of all Jewish  Philip Carrington has studied the Christian time-keeping scheme in detail. He provides evidence that “a Liturgical Year of the Hebrew type” was established in early Christian communities (The Primitive Christian Calendar: A Study in the Making of the Marcan Gospel [Cambridge: University Press, 1952], 37–44). Carrington then reconstructs the Christian Liturgical Year beginning with the seventh new moon from Passover and includes the temporal segments of Sabbaths, months demarcated by new moons, and festivals that determine seasons of the year (pp. 117–202). In contrast to Carrington, Thornton cites Diogn. 4:1 and Kerygma Petrou (Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 6.5.41) as evidence that Christians reject the Jewish temporal scheme (“New Moon,” 98). However, these passages as well as Barn. 2:5; 15:8 merely object to the Jewish practices performed on the days of Sabbath and new moon without denying the timesegments determined by these days. All these passages demonstrate is that Christian practices on these days differed from Jewish practice by the time these documents were written. 25  Lightfoot notes, “The same three words occur together, as an exhaustive enumeration of the sacred times among the Jews” (Colossians, 193). 26  Although almost all the peoples of the Mediterranean world mark the month by the appearance of the new moon, several civil calendars with fixed months that ignored the moon gained prominence among many other peoples but not the Jews (Bickerman, Chronology, 17). See Finegan’s discussion of the Jewish calendars in Jubilees and 1 Enoch as well as at Qumran (Handbook, 44–57). Finegan concludes that these calendars were solar and reacted against the reliance upon the moon for determining the feasts and holy days. Nevertheless, these solar calendars never gained prominence among the Jews of the first century, and the sectarian reaction against lunar calculations actually confirms the importance of the moon to Jewish time keeping in general (Schürer, History, 1.599). 27  Paul Giem correctly distinguishes between the cultic practices and sacrifices that occurred on Sabbaths and festivals and the days themselves (“Sabbaton in Col. 2:16,” AUSS 19 [1981]: 195–210). Unfortunately, he incorrectly argues that this list refers primarily to cultic practices. 24

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rituals.28 Even if Paul and his communities adopt the Jewish religious calendar, they may either practice, modify, or reject the Jewish religious rituals associated with it.29 The type of religious rituals practiced by Paul and his communities is a separate issue from the recognition that they adopted a Jewish liturgical calendar.30 Only a precise identification of the opponents at Colossae can definitively settle the question of whose practices are described by the temporal scheme in Col 2:16. Nevertheless, this essay provides evidence that the Pauline community at Colossae, not the opponents, practices the temporal scheme outlined by Col 2:16. The significance of this proposal can only be assessed within the context of a more comprehensive investigation of the situation at Colossae, and the explanation of how and why this Judeo-Christian calendar falls under the critique of the opposition belongs to a more extensive study that transcends the purposes of this present essay.31 This investigation into the function of the list in Col 2:16 indicates that the Colossian Christians, not their critics, participate in a religious calendar that includes festivals, new moons, and Sabbaths.

3. The List in Gal 4:10 Whereas Col 2:16 is exclusively Jewish, the list in Gal 4:10 describes either a pagan or a Jewish temporal scheme. This list is completely compatible with pagan time-keeping systems. In pagan chronography, the smallest unit larger than a single day is a group of nine or ten days.32 In the majority of systems, these are the ten days respectively of the waxing moon, full moon, and waning moon.33 These three groups of ten days comprise a month of thirty days. Three months make one of the four seasons, and four seasons make a year.34 The years are then 28  Josephus, C. Ap. 2.38 [282] (Thackeray, LCL). Indeed, Sabbath practices were not uniform in the various Jewish communities. See Goldenburg, “Jewish Sabbath,” 415, 424–426. 29  First Corinthians 5:8 indicates some modification of the Jewish rituals by the Pauline communities. 30  Schlier notes a similar distinction in the Galatian list between the time-segments and the religious practice associated with them (An die Galater, 203). 31  A complete argument for the Christian practice of the calendar in Col 2:16 requires an investigation of the phrase ἅ ἐστιν σκιὰ τῶν μελλόντων in Col 2:17 and an identification of the practitioners of the humility, worship from messengers, and eating and drinking in 2:16, 18. See my article “But Let Everyone Discern the Body of Christ (Col 2:17),” JBL 114 (1995): 249– 255; and my monograph “By Philosophy and Empty Deceit” Colossians as Response to a Cynic Critique, JSNTSup 118 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 116–167. 32  The astral week of seven days named after the sun, moon, and five planets is another alternative. However, this alternative would have been just as repulsive to Paul and his communities as any other non-Jewish system. 33  Another system is the Roman market day. Every ninth day was a market day, and each of the days are designated by the letters A-H. 34  Rose, “Time-Reckoning,” 1075–1076.

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grouped into Olympiads of four years or eras of varying lengths.35 When Paul refers to days, months, seasons, and years in Gal 4:10, he lists categories most characteristic of a pagan time-keeping system.36 This list in Gal 4:10 is not as easily related to Jewish practice as the wide discrepancies among commentators prove.37 Nevertheless, Jewish texts such as Gen 1:14, Hymn of the Initiates 1–10, and 1 Enoch 75:3; 79:2; 82:7 establish the Jewish nature of this list even though its precise correspondence with the Jewish festival calendar is debatable.38 Since the list in Gal 4:10 can be either pagan or Jewish, only its context in Galatians can determine the issue. The immediate context of Gal 4:10 argues for the pagan character of this list.39 In Gal 4:8, Paul mentions the former pagan life of the Galatian Christians. In 4:9, he asks them how they can desire their former life again. He then proposes their observance of the time-keeping scheme in 4:10 as a demonstrative proof of their reversion to their old life.40 Considering only the immediate context of Gal 4:10, the list must be understood as a pagan temporal scheme. The argument against the Judaizers in the broader context of Galatians, however, leads many commentators to the opposite conclusion.41 Paul’s pro Bickerman, Chronology, 70–79.  Lührmann correctly notes the pagan nature of season in contrast to the Jewish festival (“Tage,” 437–438). 37 Schlier discusses the enormous divergence of opinion about how this list in Galatians relates to the Jewish liturgical calendar (An die Galater, 206 n. 1). Even though he continues to equate the functions of the two lists, H. D. Betz astutely notes distinctions in their content. He comments on Gal 4:10, “Also, the cultic activities described in v 10 are not typical of Judaism (including Jewish Christianity), though they are known to both Judaism and paganism” (Galatians: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia, Hermeneia [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979], 217). Similarly, Eduard Schweizer says, “The Jewish character of the formulation of Gal 4:10 … is less evident” (“Slaves of the Elements and Worshipers of Angels: Gal 4:3, 9 and Col 2:8, 18, 20,” JBL 107 [1988]: 455–468, here 465). Even Lightfoot, who equates these lists, must admit that seasons, months, and days in Gal 4:10 are less specific than their counterparts of festival, new moon and Sabbaths in Col 2:16 (Colossians, 194). 38  Schlier cites other parallels to Gal 4:10 from Jubilees and the Qumran documents (An die Galater, 204–205). Even though Jewish authors make various attempts to integrate and correlate this scheme into the liturgical calendar established by the Mosaic covenant, these attempts prove unsuccessful. The hope for precise integration resides largely in the expectation of a new creation when all will be synchronized. Jewett notes, “The search for exact equivalents has ended in vain” (“Agitators,” 207–208). 39 Mussner, Galaterbrief, 301. Mussner’s explanation, however, sacrifices the integrity of the immediate context for the broader context. 40 Betz comments, “Paul submits a test which demonstrates that his evaluation of the Galatians’ intent is correct” (Galatians, 217). 41  For example, see Ronald Y. K. Fung, The Epistle to the Galatians, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 192–193. A few exegetes, however, refuse to surrender the immediate context to the broader context. Instead, they propose a syncretism in which pagan elements combine with Jewish legal observances. See Frederic R. Crownfield, “The Singular Problem of the Dual Galatians,” JBL 64 (1945): 491–500; Walter Schmithals, Paul and the Gnostics, trans. John 35 36

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nounced arguments against submission to circumcision and the Jewish law cause these commentators to conclude that this list must describe Jewish legal observance expressed by the Galatians’ participation in the cultic festivals of Judaism.42 This assessment of the situation among the Galatian churches encounters several problems. The traditional explanation of the Galatian situation labors under a major discrepancy. Commentators agree that the Galatians have not yet submitted to circumcision because otherwise Paul’s arguments against submitting to circumcision would be pointless. Yet, these same commentators assume that the Galatians are already practicing the opponents’ cultic calendar. However, circumcision is the criterion that renders the Galatians acceptable to the opponents. The observance of the opponents’ sacred times is useless because the Galatians remain shut out (Gal 4:17) unless they take the necessary step of circumcision.43 This discrepancy is not adequately explained by commentators. Furthermore, the traditional explanation produces distinct tensions in the text. Many commentators recognize that some important passages indicate the Galatians have already exchanged Paul’s circumcision-free gospel for the opposition’s other gospel (Gal 1:6; 3:1–5; 5:7). Nevertheless, commentators minimize this information because the Galatians have obviously not yet submitted to circumcision (Gal 5:1, 10). These commentators attempt to resolve this tension by proposing that the Galatians are only seriously contemplating the exchange. This proposal, however, creates another tension because Paul’s severe tone in the letter evinces more than mere consideration of an alternative gospel.44 These tensions reveal inadequacies in the traditional explanation.45 E. Steely (Nashville: Abingdon, 1972), 43–46; idem, “Judaisten in Galatien?” ZNW 74 (1983): 27– 58; Jewett, “Agitators,” 207–208. For a discussion of this interpretive tradition, see note 6 above. 42  Bernard H. Brinsmead argues that if the calendrical observances of 4:10 are non-Jewish, then circumcision must also be non-Jewish (Galatians: Dialogical Response to Opponents, SBLDS 65 [Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982], 29). Since the latter is unlikely, he contends that the former is also unlikely. Thus, he denies the immediate context in favor of the broader context. 43 Charles H. Cosgrove questions whether circumcision is an entrance requirement, a requirement only for full membership, or simply an option for those who desire spiritual perfection (The Cross and the Spirit [Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1988], 7). All these positions are represented among exegetes, but the force of ἐκκλεῖσαι in 4:17 argues for circumcision as an entrance requirement. Horst Balz translates, “They want to shut you out [from the community of salvation]” (“ἐκκλείω,” EDNT 1.410). See also Schlier, An die Galater, 212; and E. P.  Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 17–29. Sanders comments, “The debate in Galatians is a debate about ‘entry’ in the sense of what is essential in order to be considered a member at all” (p. 20). Jewett explains, “The phrase … οὗτοι ἀναγκάζουσιν ὑμᾶς περιτέμνεσθαι (vi. 12), refers to the ‘necessity’ of circumcision. Apparently, for the agitators it was a condition sine qua non for salvation” (“Agitators,” 200). 44  Joseph B. Lightfoot discusses the severe tone of the letter (The Epistle of Saint Paul to the Galatians, Zondervan Commentary Series [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1957], 64–65). 45 After summarizing the traditional interpretation, Jewett states, “It is a rather puzzling state of affairs” (“Agitators,” 209).

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The traditional interpretation incorrectly assumes that acceptance of the opponents’ gospel as the valid gospel of Christianity leaves the Galatians with only the one option of submitting to circumcision.46 This option of circumcision to remain Christian is certainly available to the Galatians, but a complete rejection of Christianity and a return to their former status is just as viable an option. Several factors indicate that the Galatians have chosen the latter option, not the former. Accepting circumcision as essential to the genuine Christian gospel is one thing; but submission to circumcision is quite another. The willingness of the Galatians to submit to circumcision must not be presumed.47 Circumcision and submission to the law were available to the Galatians all along in Judaism, but they like a majority of Gentiles refused to take such steps. Widespread acceptance of Jewish circumcision among Gentiles is not attested except in instances of military compulsion. Unless the Galatian situation is a phenomenon unique to the Greco-Roman world, the Galatian churches are not contemplating circumcision. It is a Christian prejudice that presumes the Galatians would accept circumcision to be Christians but not to become Jews. The Gentile abhorrence of circumcision indicates the Galatians do not select the option of circumcision.48 The social structure of the Galatian churches also argues against their selecting the option of circumcision. According to the available evidence, the Galatian churches were pre-existing household units before conversion to Paul’s gospel.49 The decision of the head of the household determined the religious status of that household even though some individual members might follow a different religion. Paul’s argument in Galatians is not directed toward individuals 46  For example, Bernard C. Lategan identifies the basis of Paul’s argument as the Galatians’ decision to submit to circumcision (“The Argumentative Situation of Galatians,” Neot 26 [1992]: 383–395, here 269). 47  David J. Lull examines three arguments to explain the Galatians’ eagerness to be circumcised (The Spirit in Galatia: Paul’s Interpretation of Pneuma as Divine Power, SBLDS 49 [Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1980], 29–39). First, the Galatians took religion seriously. This argument fails because much of the ancient world should have been circumcised if circumcision results from religious intensity. Second, the Galatians wanted to be genuinely circumcised Jews. Apart from the traditional interpretation of Galatians, there is no evidence that acceptance of Christianity among Gentiles ever produced such a desire, and Lull’s citing Galatians as evidence only results in a circular argument. The example of Izates’ conversion to Judaism that Lull mentions is not parallel to the situation in Galatia since this conversion only involves a single person whereas this issue affects all the churches of Galatia. Third, the Galatians were frustrated by the inability of the gospel to curb problems with the flesh, and they sought to remedy this defect by circumcision. Even Lull recognizes problems with this argument. Thus, none of the arguments Lull examines is a convincing proof that the Galatians were desiring circumcision. 48 Troy W. Martin, “Paul and Circumcision,” in Paul in the Greco-Roman World: A Handbook, ed. J. Paul Sampley, rev. ed., 2 vols. (New York: T&T Clark, 2016), 1:113–142; idem, “Circumcision in Galatia and the Holiness of God’s Ecclesiae,” in Holiness and Ecclesiology in the New Testament, ed. Kent E. Brower and Andy Johnson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 219–237. 49  Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 75–77.

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within the churches that are causing the disruption of individual households. His argument is directed toward the churches as a whole and he treats them homogeneously.50 Bernard Brinsmead states, “There are no literary signals that there are two groups within the congregations.”51 Even if a few of the Galatian churches accept circumcision, the unanimous acceptance of this practice by all of these autonomous units is extremely unlikely.52 Since Paul’s argument makes no distinction among the churches, they either have all agreed to submit to circumcision or none of them has. Among a diverse group of Gentiles, the latter is much more probable than the former. Consequently, it is unlikely the Galatian churches have unanimously agreed to circumcision. If acceptance of the other gospel is not demonstrated by the Galatians’ submission to circumcision or by futile partial participation in fringe aspects of the circumcision gospel, only the reversion to their former pagan lifestyle can signal such acceptance.53 Confronted with circumcision as a requirement of the true Christian gospel, the Galatians most likely apostatize and return to their former status as Gal 4:8–11 plainly states. Paul’s argument against circumcision in Galatians, therefore, does not arise because the Galatians are seriously considering circumcision.54 Paul argues against the circumcision gospel because its acceptance by the Galatians results in their rejection of Christianity and return to paganism since they refuse to be circumcised. Paul argues against circumcision to invalidate the circumcision gospel and thus to remove the cause of the Galatians’ apostasy to paganism. In his argument, he first validates his own circumcision-free gospel by an appeal to his call (1:10–24) and his conference with the leaders in Jerusalem (2:1–10).55 He then proceeds to invalidate the circumcision gospel in favor of his 50 For opposing positions, see the discussion by Brinsmead, Galatians, 187. Brinsmead, however, argues for homogeneity based upon his dialogical analysis. 51 Ibid., 28. 52 Brinsmead’s statement that the Galatians as a whole group had accepted circumcision is true but not in the way he means it (Galatians, 218 n. 54). The Galatians recognize circumcision as a valid requirement of the Christian gospel, but they do not agree to become circumcised. 53  The option of partial participation in the opposing gospel is unlikely because this option would still leave the Galatians excluded from Christianity. See the discussion of this option above. 54  The exegetical effort devoted to explaining Paul’s argument in Galatians is immense. In addition to the older works, dozens of articles have appeared, esp. in Neot. 26.2 (1992). Unfortunately, this enormous effort rests upon an incorrect understanding of the actual stasis of Paul’s argument. The stasis is the Galatians’ apostasy from Christianity and return to paganism, both of which are occasioned by their acceptance of circumcision as a requirement of the Christian gospel. In view of this stasis, all previous interpretations of Paul’s argument in Galatians require reconsideration. See Troy W. Martin, “Apostasy to Paganism: The Rhetorical Stasis of the Galatian Controversy,” JBL 114 (1995): 437–461. 55  Galatians 1:11–2:21 is generally understood to be a defense of Paul’s apostleship in response to the hostile accusations of his opponents. As Bernard Lategan and Donald J. Verseput adequately demonstrate, however, the basic purpose of this passage is to validate Paul’s circum-

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gospel by recounting his confrontation with Cephas at Antioch (2:11–21), the experience of the Galatians themselves (3:1–5), scriptural exegesis (3:6–4.7; 4:21– 5:1), his relationship with the Galatians (4:8–20), and the contrast between the spirit and the flesh (5:2–6:16).56 Thus, the issue of Paul’s argument turns upon the Galatians’ acceptance of this circumcision gospel as the genuine gospel of Christianity (2:14, 5:7) and their subsequent rejection of Christianity altogether, not their acceptance or even contemplated acceptance of circumcision. This understanding of the Galatians’ response to the opponents’ gospel harmonizes the broader context of Galatians with the immediate context of Gal 4:10 without denying the validity of either. As the immediate context specifically states, Paul is worried that he has labored for the Galatians in vain since they have returned to their former pagan life as evidenced by their renewed preconversion reckoning of time. Because of its association with idolatry and false deities, marking time according to this pagan scheme is tantamount to rejecting Paul’s Gospel and the one and only true God it proclaims (4:8–9).57 Galatians 4:10, therefore, stipulates that when the Galatians accepted Paul’s Gospel with its aversion to idolatry (4:8), they discarded their pagan method of reckoning time. Thus, the immediate context of Gal 4:10 indicates the Galatians have returned to their former pagan lifestyle because they refuse circumcision even though, as the broader context of Gal 4:10 demonstrates, they are persuaded circumcision is an essential aspect of the Christian gospel. Three contrary arguments against the preceding interpretation of the Galatian situation must be addressed. First, the term στοιχεῖα in Gal 4:9 does not prove the Jewishness of the list in 4:10 even though it is connected with the Jewish law in 4:3. This term here and elsewhere refers to this present material world as cision-free gospel. Lategan locates the misreading of Galatians as a defense of Paul’s apostleship in the unwarranted influence of the Corinthian correspondence (“Is Paul Defending His Apostleship in Galatians?” NTS 34 [1988]: 411–430, here 411). Verseput remarks, “Paul employs the story of his own independent calling and career to defend neither his right to preach the gospel nor his authority over the Galatian church, but to support the validity of his converts’ salvation without incorporation into the ranks of Jewish Christendom” (“Paul’s Gentile Mission and the Jewish Christian Community: A Study of the Narrative in Galatians 1 and 2,” NTS 39 [1993]: 36– 58, here 38). Unfortunately, neither Lategan nor Verseput comprehends the significance of their insight for the basic stasis of Paul’s overall argument. Furthermore, a sharp dichotomy between the related issues of Paul’s apostolic defense and the validation of his gospel should be avoided. 56  Betz discusses these various aspects of Paul’s argument (Galatians, 28, 30–33). For more recent studies of these aspects, see Karl Kertelge, “The Assertion of Revealed Truth as Compelling Argument in Galatians 1:10–2:21,” Neot 26 (1992): 339–350; G. M. M. Pelser, “The Opposition Faith and Works as Persuasive Device in Galatians (3:6–14),” Neot 26 (1992): 389– 405; J. van W. Cronje, “The Stratagem of the Rhetorical Question in Gal 4:9–10 as a Means toward Persuasion,” Neot 26 (1992): 417–424; Emil A. C. Pretorius, “The Opposition PNEUMA and SARX as Persuasive Summons (Gal 5:13–6:10),” Neot 26 (1992): 441–460. 57  Despite incorrectly identifying the list in Gal 4:10 as a list of Jewish temporal categories, Mussner correctly observes that astrological associations are the reason Paul would reject this list (Galaterbrief, 302).

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several recent studies demonstrate.58 For Paul, both Judaism and paganism belong to this world, which is passing away (Gal 1:4); Paul dismisses both as enslavement to this transient, material world.59 Second, Gal 5:2–5 does not conclusively prove the Galatians are considering submission to circumcision as almost all commentators assume.60 Elsewhere, I have argued extensively that Paul is not even addressing the Galatians in Gal 5:2–5 but rather the agitators.61 Furthermore, the verb περιτέμνησθε in Gal 5:2 does not necessarily mean “let yourselves be circumcised” even though almost all commentators and translations render it this way. This verb can refer to an act, a state, or a practice.62 As an act, the verb refers to the physical operation of circumcision. Following this surgery, a man then lives in a state of circumcision, but this man must still decide if he will practice the distinctions associated with the covenant of circumcision (Gen 17:14). For Paul, the act and the state of circumcision pose no hindrance in his Christian communities (Gal 5:6), and the verb περιτέμνησθε in Gal 5:2 cannot therefore refer to the circumcision surgery or to the circumcised state. In Paul’s view, however, the practice of circumcision 58 Josef Blinzler, “Lexikalisches zu dem Terminus τὰ στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου bei Paulus,” AnBib 18 (1961): 429–442; Schweizer, “Slaves of the Elements,” 455–468; Dietrich Rusan, “Neue Belege zu den στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου (Gal 4, 3. 9; Kol 2, 8. 20),” ZNW 83 (1992): 119–125. More recently, see Martin, By Philosophy and Empty Deceit, 31–33; and Martinus C. de Boer, “The Meaning of the Phrase τὰ στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου in Galatians,” NTS 53 (2007): 204–224. Most recently, John M. G. Barclay notes, “After decades of debate, recent research has confirmed that τὰ στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου most likely refers to the physical elements of the world (not to ‘rudimentary teaching’ or ‘elemental spirits’)” (Paul & the Gift [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015], 409). 59  Albrecht Oepke, Der Brief des Paulus an die Galater, THKNT 9 (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1957), 102–103. 60 This paragraph has been rewritten and is different from the original publication since I have changed my mind about how Gal 5:2–5 functions in Paul argument. For ease of comparison of what changed, I include the original paragraph: “Secondly, Gal 5.2–5 does not conclusively prove the Galatians are considering submission to circumcision. Paul constructs an argument that hypothetically envisions the Galatians’ compliance with the circumcision gospel so he can demonstrate its disastrous consequences. He contends that if the Galatians should circumcise themselves, Christ would be of no benefit to them since worshipping the true God as a Jew was always and continues to be available through proselytization (5:2). However, Paul quickly adds that Gentile Christians who submit to circumcision as a requirement of justification fall under the curse of the law, are separated from Christ, and fall from grace (5.3–4). A gospel that results in such dreadful consequences cannot be the true Christian gospel. Thus, Gal 5.2–5 invalidates the circumcision gospel without necessarily confirming the eagerness of the Galatians to receive circumcision.” 61  Martin, “Apostasy to Paganism,” 450–457; and idem, “The Brother Body: Addressing and Describing the Galatians and the Agitators as Ἀδελφοί,”BR 47 (2002): 5–18. See also Herbert Ulonska, “Die Funktion der alttestamentlichen Zitate und Anspielungen in den paulinischen Briefen” PhD diss., Münster, 1963), 65–71. Ulonska argues that Paul addresses his opponents in Gal 4:21–27, and I agree with Ulonska but extend Paul’s address to the Agitators to include all of Gal 4:21–5:6. 62  Jost Eckert discusses all these meanings (Die urchristliche Verkündigung im Streit zwischen Paulus und seinen Gegnern nach dem Galaterbrief, BU 6 [Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1971], 49–53). See also Martin, “Apostasy to Paganism,” 451–454.

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to determine who can belong to these communities is destructive and must be completely rejected. Hence, the verb in Gal 5:2 refers to the practice of circumcision as a boundary marker, and Paul addresses in this verse the agitators, who advocate a gospel with such a practice. Thus, Gal 5:2–5 invalidates the practice of circumcision to determine who can belong to Paul’s communities and does not confirm the eagerness of the Galatians to receive circumcision. Third, the address of the letter to the churches of Galatia does not deny their apostasy. Since Christianity was superimposed upon the existing social networks of households, its repudiation would leave the household intact.63 A social unit, therefore, would remain to which Paul could address his letter. The terse address of Galatians lacks the epithets and polite compliments Paul usually bestows upon his churches.64 Paul cannot commend the Galatians’ apostasy (μετατίθημι; Gal 1:6), their stupidity in turning from the truth (ἀνόητος; 3:1–5), their reversion to their pagan past (ἐπιστρέφω; 4:8–11), or their hindrance in obeying the truth (ἀληθείᾳ μὴ πείθεσθαι; 5:7).65 Paul is genuinely perplexed about them (ἀπορέω; 4:20), and his concern is adequately explained by a household’s resumption of its domestic cult following apostasy from the gospel. Paul continues to address such a unit as an ἐκκλησία and its members as brothers because he refuses to ratify their apostasy by his rejection of them (Gal 4:12). The decision to resume their Christian course (5:7) remains with them, and Paul writes to remove the original cause of their disruption (ταράσσω; 1:7; 5:10) and apostasy by denying circumcision as a requirement of the true Christian gospel.66 Thus, not one of these three contrary arguments refutes the preceding interpretation that the Galatians apostatized when confronted with circumcision as a necessary prerequisite of Christianity. Although the list in Gal 4:10 can describe either a pagan or a Jewish temporal scheme, the preceding examination of both its immediate and broader contexts indicates that it refers to a pagan calendrical system. Here, as in Col 2:16, the final determination of the content and function of this list in Gal 4:10 requires a thorough analysis of the entire letter.67 Nevertheless, this essay provides evidence that Gal 4:10 describes a pagan instead of a Jewish time-keeping scheme. If Paul were arguing against observance of Jewish sacred days in Gal 4:10, the patently Jewish formulation of festivals, new moons, and Sabbaths more appropriately  Meeks, Urban Christians, 76.  Lightfoot, Galatians, 64–65. 65  Brinsmead states, “ Ἐπιστρέφειν (4.9) therefore denotes a complete apostasy from the deep things of religion as does the sequence of beginning and ending in 3.1–5” (Galatians, 122). 66 Brinsmead correctly contends that the Galatians are “at once judge, jury, and offending party” to Paul’s argument (ibid., 235). J. Paul Sampley’s study confirms Brinsmead’s contention because the oath Paul takes in Gal 4:15–16 is directed to the Galatians and oaths were usually directed to the opposing party in a legal dispute (“‘Before God, I do not Lie’ (Gal 1.20): Paul’s Self-Defense in the Light of Roman Legal Practice,” NTS 23 [1977]: 477–482). 67  See the analysis of the entire Galatian letter in my article “Apostasy to Paganism,” 445–459. 63 64

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serves his argument. The conclusion that Paul argues against adoption of a pagan temporal scheme instead of a Jewish one explains why the list in Galatians does not use this exclusively Jewish formulation. A comparison of this list and the list in Col 2:16 is now appropriate.

4. Conclusion This essay indicates that Col 2:16 and Gal 4:10 are parallel neither in content nor in function. Concerning content, the Colossian list is exclusively Jewish while the list in Galatians can be either Jewish or pagan. Since the context of the Galatian list designates it as pagan, the two lists are not parallel in content but describe competing calendrical systems. Concerning function, the list in Colossians describes the religious calendar practiced by Pauline communities while the list in Galatians describes a pagan calendar unacceptable to Paul and his communities. The Jewish nature of the Colossian list, however, does not require that Paul’s communities necessarily assume the practice of any specific Jewish rituals. A comparison of these lists demonstrates that Gentile conversion to Paul’s gospel involves rejection of idolatrous pagan temporal schemes in favor of the Jewish liturgical calendar. Consequently, Col 2:16 cannot be used to prove the list in Gal 4:10 is Jewish. Neither can Gal 4:10 be used to prove the Jewish scheme in Col 2:16 belongs to non-Christian practice. Lightfoot’s equation of the content and function of these two lists should be rejected in future exegetical studies.

5. Reception History By the time I published this article, a few scholars such as Robert Jewett and Dieter Lührmann had already noticed distinctions between the calendrical lists in Col 2:16 and Gal 4:10 that undermine Lightfoot’s equation of the content of these lists.68 My article contributes to this interpretive direction, and J. Louis Martyn cites my article when he states, “Lührmann is right to warn against interpreting Gal 4:10 on the basis of Col 2:16.”69 Robert M. Royalty explicitly mentions my article when he notes, “T. Martin contends that the Colossian list is Jewish while the Galatian list could be Jewish or pagan.”70 George Lyons also mentions my article and comments: 68  The reception history of this article is closely related to the reception of my articles on Paul and circumcision, apostasy to paganism, and discerning the body of Christ that are included in this volume as essays 3 (pp. 37–69), 4 (pp. 71–112), and 11 (pp. 217–251). 69  J. Louis Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Bible 33A (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 416 n. 76. 70  Robert M. Royalty, “Dwelling on Visions: On the Nature of the So-called ‘Colossians Heresy,’” Bib 83 (2002): 329–357, here 347 n. 67.

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Lightfoot has persuaded most subsequent interpreters that v 10 and Col 2:16 are parallel and that both reflect a Jewish time-keeping scheme. But there is considerable evidence to the contrary. Martin makes a plausible case for concluding that the immediate context (Gal 4:8–10) reflects a pagan temporal system.71

Thus, scholars recognize that my article furthers an interpretive impetus to distinguish the temporal lists in Gal 4:10 and Col 2:16. Some scholars accept the distinction made in my article between a Jewish list in Col 2:16 and a pagan one in Gal 4:10. Jeremy Barrier attests, ““T. Martin presents compelling arguments for not giving up on some form of ‘non-Jewish’ elements with regard to the problem in Galatians.”72 Similarly, Sigve K. Tonstad notes, “The distinctive contribution of Martin’s study, then, is to see actual Sabbath-keeping in Colossians and to affirm it.”73 Regarding Gal 4:10, Tonstad states, “Martin proposes that ‘the Galatians are so reticent to become circumcised that they prefer to return to their paganism instead.’”74 He continues, “Greek aversion toward circumcision enhances the plausibility of Martin’s reconstruction. Psychological inferences and textual evidence are additional reasons for giving this option a serious hearing.”75 Tonstad then explains, “In fact, the immediate context of Paul’s warning against ‘days, and months, and seasons, and years’ (4:10) pictures them turning back to their former pagan ways.”76 Both Barrier and Tonstad affirm the distinction in my article between the Jewish timekeeping scheme in Col 2:16 and the pagan one in Gal 4:10. Mark D. Nanos also affirms my position and states, “Troy Martin has argued, against the consensus, that what the addresses are turning back to are not Jewish practices but pagan ones. I find his case convincing.”77 Nanos then continues, “I suggest that Martin has gotten right that the addressees are in some way beginning to return (or at least contemplate returning) to pagan public cult practices.”78 Nevertheless, he thinks that I have “missed what this signifies.”79 Nanos is part of a group of scholars who understand the calendar as pagan because they interpret Gal 4:8–11 against the background of the imperial cult.80 For example, Brigitte Kahl comments: 71  George Lyons, Galatians: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition, New Beacon Bible Commentary (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 251. 72  Jeremy W. Barrier, “Jesus’ Breath: A Physiological Analysis of πνεῦμα within Paul’s Letter to the Galatians,” JSNT 37.2 (2014): 115–138, here 128 n. 56. 73  Sigve K. Tonstad, The Lost Meaning of the Seventh Day (Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 2010), 265. 74 Ibid., 231. 75 Ibid. 76  Ibid. 77  Mark D. Nanos, The Irony of Galatians: Paul’s Letter in First-Century Context (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), 267. 78  Ibid., 268. 79  Ibid. 80  For others who pursue this line of interpretation, see Bruce W. Winter, Seek the Welfare of

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If in this notoriously difficult passage the Galatians are accused of returning, or considering a return, to the idolatrous service of the “non-gods” to whom they were enslaved before, resuming the observance of “special days and months and seasons and years,” this probably has nothing to do with keeping a Jewish calendar. Many of the interpretational difficulties of this passage can be resolved if we assume that the Galatians are accused here not of “Judaizing,” but, on the contrary, of resubmitting themselves to the civic obligations of public and especially imperial religion.81

Interpreting the calendar in Gal 4:10 as pagan is crucial for this line of interpretation, and Nanos credits my article as breaking from the consensus and being the first to argue for a pagan calendar in this verse, but Kahl does not mention my work at all. Nanos, Kahl, and others understand the significance of the pagan calendar in Gal 4:10 differently than I. They see the Galatians’ returning to their pagan calendar because of pressure to participate in the imperial cult. Kahl explains: As we have seen in our discussion of the Priene decree, Caesar had imposed his own calendar on the sequence of days, months, and years, marking the rhythm of political, individual, and cosmic life. The emperor was celebrated both as supreme “time-giver” and as archetypical restorer of the order of time in a manner reminiscent of Zeus.82

Kahl continues, “Non participation in the numerous periodic commemorations and celebrations of public life in a Roman city would have brought public visibility and potential shame on the messianic Galatians, singling them out from their customary civic environment.”83 The agitators or influencers and social control agents as Nanos calls them thus compel the Galatians to circumcise and become full Jewish proselytes to obtain the Jewish exemption from emperor worship and to resolve their ambiguous status as neither Jews nor non-Jews.84 Nanos accurately perceives the different significance my article places on the pagan time-keeping scheme in Gal 4:10. He remarks: Martin has taken this to mean that the addressees have decided on the persuasive case of the influencers that circumcision was necessary to become part of the Christ-group, which the City: Christians as Benefactors and Citizens, First-century Christians in the Graeco-Roman World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 123–143; Thomas Witulski, Die Adressaten des Galaterbriefes: Untersuchungen zur Gemeinde von Antiochea ad Pisidiam, Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments 193 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000); idem, Kaiserkult in keinasien: Die Entwicklung der kultisch-religiösen Kaiserverehrung in der römischen Provinz Asia von Augustus bis Antoninus Pius, Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus/Studien zur Umwelt des Neuen Testaments (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007); Justin K. Hardin, Galatians and the Imperial Cult: A Critical Analysis of the First-century Context of Paul’s Letters, WUNT 2.237 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008). 81  Brigitte Kahl, Galatians Re-Imagined: Reading with the Eyes of the Vanquished, Paul in Critical Contexts (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010), 225. 82  Ibid., 225. 83  Ibid. 84 Nanos, Irony, 268–271. See also Kahl, Galatians, 224–227 and Winter, Seek the Welfare, 136–142.

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they do not wish to undertake, and thus that the addressees have decided to abandon the Christ-group and return to pagan life.85

I agree with Nanos, Kahl, and others that the time-keeping scheme may refer to the Julian Calendar but also to any number of other pagan time-keeping schemes that were available to the Galatians. The pagan nature of the calendar without specification sufficiently demonstrates Paul’s point that the Galatians are abandoning Christianity and returning to their paganism. Nanos correctly understands that my article describes this apostasy as caused by pressure to circumcise rather than to participate in the imperial cult. He then declares: This conclusion strikes me as virtually impossible. It runs against the grain of Paul’s argument, which assumes that the addressees have begun, if not to internalize the message of proselyte conversion as good for themselves, to consider it as the more desirable option to reduce the dissonance.86

My article explains how my conclusion does not run “against the grain” of Paul’s argument but rather provides coherence for it, and Nanos needs to demonstrate the assumptions he claims for Paul’s argument. This proposal by Nanos and others that the apostasy or potential apostasy is caused by pressure to participate in the imperial cult is not persuasive. The number of times in their arguments that these scholars use the terms imagine, suppose, suggest, and assume is striking. Equally striking are the numerous subjunctive verbs in their arguments. Kahl asserts that her book “establishes a basic exegetical model for decoding Galatians and justification by faith as an intervention into the imaginary construct of Roman imperial ideology and idolatry.”87 She explains, “Critical re-imagination is a method that supplements the traditional set of historical-critical and ideological-critical methodologies.”88 Rather than supplementing, however, this imaginative method supplants the historical-critical method. Nanos asserts about the Galatians, “It is logical to imagine that the synagogue’s social control agents would be on guard to ensure that their practices conformed to the policies governing this nonconformist behavior.”89 While it may be “logical to imagine” for Nanos, this description of such agents and indeed the connection of the imperial cult to the exigence of Paul’s letter can only be accepted as fact when demonstrated by evidence, and the evidence is either lacking or adverse to their proposal.90 85 Nanos,

Irony, 268.  Ibid., 268. 87  Kahl, Galatians, 27. 88  Ibid. 89  Nanos, Irony, 263. 90  In a review of Kahl’s book, John Anthony Dunne comments, “However, there are no methodological controls given for Kahl’s analysis” (“Review: Brigitte Kahl, Galatians ReImagined: Reading with the Eyes of the Vanquished, [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010],” http:// 86

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Crucial for this imperial-cult interpretation is Paul’s assessment in Gal 6:12 that the opponents are urging circumcision to avoid persecution. Nanos and Kahl attribute this persecution to Roman authorities who refuse to grant the Jewish exemption to uncircumcised Christ-believers even though Gallio’s ruling in Acts 18:14–15 indicates that these authorities took little to no interest in such matters.91 Paul’s explicit reference to persecution in the allegory of Hagar and Sarah in Gal 4:29 specifies that the persecutors are children of Abraham and not Roman authorities. Paul himself was such a persecutor (1 Cor 15:9; Phil 3:6; cf. Acts 9:1–30; 22:1–30; 26:1–23), and he knows well the sustained animosity of some Jews who do not believe in Christ (1 Thess 2:14–16; 2 Cor 11:24). The evidence thus points toward Jewish rather than Roman persecution for accepting the uncircumcised into a Christ-believing community, and I remain convinced that pressure to circumcise rather than to participate in the imperial cult prompts the Galatians’ apostasy to paganism as evidenced by their return to a pagan calendar.92 Rather than understanding the calendar in Gal 4:10 as exclusively pagan, other scholars follow a line of interpretation that takes seriously the observation in my article that this calendar can be either pagan or Jewish. They think that Paul intentionally uses the ambiguous nature of this calendar to point out to the Galatians that submitting to circumcision and the law is equivalent to returning to their paganism. H. Ross Cole comments, “However, a possibility that Martin has overlooked is that in Gal 4:8–10 Paul is intentionally identifying the Galatians’ practice of the Jewish calendar as the spiritual equivalent of the paganism they have left behind.”93 Similarly, Martinus C. de Boer refers to my article when he explains: With his choice of words, which is neither specifically pagan nor specifically Jewish, but could be either or both, Paul implies that the Jewish observances that the Galatians are now wanting to observe are no different in kind from the observances linked to ta stoicheia tou kosmou. Paul thus intentionally uses terms that cover both Jewish and pagan calthemelios.thegospelcoalition.org/review/galatians-re-imagined-reading-with-the-eyes-of-thevanquished.) 91  Kahl, Galatians, 226; Nanos, Irony, 265. In note 118 on p. 267, Nanos references Gallio’s ruling, but Nanos should address it in the body of his text, for this ruling provides explicit evidence against his argument. 92  Matthew Thiessen, Paul and the Gentile Problem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 210 n. 70. Thiessen writes, “I disagree with Troy W. Martin (‘Pagan and Judeo-Christian TimeKeeping Schemes …) and Justin K. Hardin (Galatians and the Imperial Cult …), who conclude that Paul refers not to Jewish calendrical observance, but to the Roman imperial cult.” Thiessen mistakenly equates me with Hardin’s imperial-cult interpretation. Even more surprising is Thiessen’s failure to engage with my articles on apostasy to paganism and circumcision, both of which address the Gentile problem differently than Thiessen does. 93  H. Ross Cole, “The Christian and Time-Keeping in Colossians 2:16 and Galatians 4:10,” AUSS 39 (2001): 273–282, here 280. In note 37, Cole cites several other scholars who expressed this view before him.

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endrical observances, for he wants the Galatians to realize that by turning to the law, they are going back to where they came from. The observance of the law is not a step forward, but a step backward.94

John W. Taylor describes this explanation as the usual one. He states: Martin argues that the list in 4:10 indicates pagan calendric observances … but … the usual explanation for the list not including distinctively Jewish terms is that Paul was reinforcing his point (4:8–9) that for his Gentile converts to be circumcised and follow the law of Moses would be the equivalent of returning to paganism.95

The observation in my article that this calendar can be either pagan or Jewish thus becomes the basis for the explanation of de Boer, Taylor, and others. The problem with this explanation is its assumption that the Galatian Christians must operate without any calendar at all. Almost all scholars agree that Paul does not approve of the time-keeping scheme in Gal 4:10. If this scheme refers to both Jewish and pagan calendars as de Boer, Taylor, and others think, then no other calendrical options are available to the Galatians.96 As my article argues, the best evidence demonstrates that Paul and his communities observe a calendar that includes at least a week designated by sabbaths and larger blocks of time designated by new moons and festivals. Brian Louis Allen has recently provided even more evidence for the use of a Jewish calendar in these communities.97 The assumption that the calendrical terms used in Gal 4:10 are ambiguous and prohibit both Jewish and pagan time-keeping schemes is therefore most unlikely, and I still find the limitation of this scheme to paganism to be more persuasive. Rather than seeing the time-keeping scheme in Gal 4:10 as pagan or even as ambiguous, several other scholars maintain the traditional view that the calendar is Jewish. Dieter Kremendahl comments: Paulus beschreibt die Gefahr eines Rückfalls … und es sieht auf den ersten Blick so aus, als meine er einen Rückfall der Galater in ihr früheres Heidentum, da der Terminus στοιχεῖα 94 Martinus C. de Boer, Galatians: A Commentary, NTL (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2011), 276–277. 95  John W. Taylor, “The Eschatological Interdependence of Jews and Gentiles in Galatians,” TynBul 63 (2012): 291–316, here 310 n. 69. 96  Many other scholars could be mentioned here. For examples, see Bruce W. Longenecker, The Triumph of Abraham’s God: The Transformation of Identity in Galatians (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 30 n. 10 and A. Andrew Das, Galatians, Concordia Commentary: A Theological Exposition of Sacred Scripture (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2014), 424–425. Das explains, “Paul is consciously avoiding using language that would directly identify these calendrical observances as Jewish. He is downgrading and dismissing the rivals’ Jewish calendar by effectively equating it with the idolatrous observances of the Galatians’ past that honored the ‘elements’ (Gal 4:9). For that ironic equation to work, Paul must use generic language that could apply to both Jewish and pagan calendrical observances.” 97  Brian Louis Allen, “Removing an Arrow from the Supersessionist Quiver: A Post-Supersessionist Reading of Colossians 2:16–17,” Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters 8 (2018): 127–146, here 132–136. See also Hardin, Galatians and the Imperial Cult, 120–121.

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traditionsgeschichtlich in die heidnische Kultpraxis und Philosophie zurückführt und das Kalenderschema (4,10) recht unspezifisch zu sein scheint.98

He notes my article and comments, “T. Martin … versucht nachzuweisen, dass es sich in 4,10 um ein paganes Zeitschema handelt, and folgert daraus, dass die Galater aus Angst vor der Beschneidung zum Heidentum zurückfliehen wollen.”99 He then argues: Von einem derartigen Rückfall ins Heidentum ist aber im Brief sonst nicht die Rede, sondern vielmehr von einer an der Beschneidung exemplifizierten Hinwendung zum jüdischen Gesetz. D. Lührmann hat nun aufgezeigt, dass die στοιχεῖα und ebenso die ἡμέραι, μῆνες, καιροί und ἐνιαυτοί als Gegenstände des Natur‑ bzw. Zeremonialgesetzes sehr wohl Elemente des jüdischen Gesetzes.100

Kremendahl sees no other evidence of a relapse into paganism in the rest of the letter, and he thus follows Lührmann’s designation of the time-keeping scheme in Gal 4:10 as Jewish rather than pagan. My “Apostasy to Paganism” article, however, provides the evidence that Kremendahl fails to see and demonstrates how the entire letter of Galatians not only can but should be read as persuasion against returning to paganism. In addition to Kremendahl, other scholars see the calendar in Gal 4:10 as Jewish rather than pagan because they perceive the problem in Galatia as a turn to Jewish Law rather than a return to paganism.101 Thus, Yon-Gyong Kwon asserts, “In 4:8–11 the problem is described as the observance of the Jewish calendar (v. 10).”102 He then notes, “Contra T. Martin, ‘Apostasy’ (1995) 437–461, who suggests a reference to ‘pagan’ idol worship.”103 Kwon’s note is not an argument but rather a recognition that the designation of the calendar in Gal 4:10 as either pagan or Jewish depends on whether the letter as a whole is read as a response to the Galatians’ turning to Judaism or returning to paganism.104  98  Dieter Kremendahl, Die Botschaft der Form: Zum Verhältnis von antiker Epistolographie und Rhetorik im Galaterbrief, NTOA 46 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 225.  99  Ibid., 225, n. 71. 100  Ibid., 225–226. 101  See Karin B. Neutel, A Cosmopolitan Ideal: Paul’s Declaration ‘Neither Jew Nor Greek, Neither Slave Nor Free, Nor Male and Female’ in the Context of First-Century Thought, LNTS 513 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), 96–97. Her interaction with my work is discussed in the reception history of my “Apostasy to Paganism” article republished as essay 4 (pp. 71– 112) in this volume. 102 Yon-Gyong Kwon, Eschatology in Galatians: Rethinking Paul’s Response to the Crisis in Galatia, WUNT 2.183 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 34. 103 Ibid., 34 n. 30. 104 H. Ross Cole, however, notes that a few scholars understand the calendar as pagan without seeing the problem in Galatians as a return to paganism. See Cole, “The Christian and TimeKeeping,” 278 n. 30. The scholars he cites are Martin Luther, A Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, rev. trans. (London: James Clarke, 1953), 392; and R. A. Cole, The Epistle of Paul to the Galatians: An Introduction and Commentary, TNTC (London: Tyndale, 1969), 119.

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Bruce W. Longenecker also recognizes this connection and comments that I have challenged the generally accepted view of Gal 4:10 “as part of a reconsideration of the Galatians’ response to the agitators’ gospel.”105 He explains: According to Martin, the Galatians accepted that circumcision was necessary to true Christianity but, rather than being attracted to a circumcision gospel, they had abandoned their Christian commitment altogether. In this case, 4.10 includes no reference to Jewish calendrical observances but to pagan time-keeping schemes.106

Longenecker objects, “I find it difficult to square Martin’s view with passages like 5.2–5 … and especially 4.29, which seems far more significant to Paul’s case than Martin’s scenario seems to allow.”107 Longenecker’s objection assumes that Gal 5:2–5 and 4:29 are addressed to the Galatians. When I wrote my article on time-keeping schemes, I thought the same thing and explained 5:2–5 as an argument that hypothetically envisions the Galatians’ compliance with the circumcision gospel. Shortly after writing this article, however, I encountered the influential writings of Herbert Ulonska and Jost Eckert. Ulonska convinced me that Gal 4:21–5:6 addresses the troublemakers while Eckert informed me that the verb περιτέμνω and the noun περιτομή can refer to a surgery, a state, or a practice of circumcision.108 By the time I wrote my “Apostasy to Paganism” article, therefore, I explained Gal 5:2–5 not as a hypothetical argument envisioning the Galatians as in my earlier article on time-keeping schemes but as the conclusion of Paul’s diatribe against the troublemakers, who were practicing the distinctions of circumcision. Longenecker’s objection thus loses it force when Gal 5:2–5 and 4:29 are read as addressed to the agitators rather than the Galatians.109 One problem with Longenecker’s and others’ designating the calendar in Gal 4:10 as Jewish is that Paul and his communities observed some form of a Jewish calendar as my article on time-keeping schemes demonstrates. Michael Sokupa observes, “Martin makes a point that is worth noting, ‘The adoption of the Jewish method of time-keeping by Paul and his communities does not necessarily mean that they also practice Jewish religious rituals.’ This buttresses the argument on the use of the Jewish religious calendar by Christians  Longenecker, Triumph, 30 n. 10.  Ibid. 107 Ibid. 108 Herbert Ulonska, “Die Funktion der alttestamentlichen Zitate und Anspielungen in den paulinischen Briefen” (Dissertation, Münster, 1963), 65–71; Jost Eckert, Die urchristliche Verkündigung im Streit zwischen Paulus und seinen Gegnern nach dem Galaterbrief, BU 6 (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1971), 49–53. 109  These problems also detract from Thiessen interpretation of the problem in Galatia since he assumes that Gal 5:2–3 is addressed to the Galatians and not to the agitators. Furthermore, he does not differentiate between circumcision as an act, a state, and a discriminatory practice. See Thiessen, Paul and the Gentile Problem, 92. 105 106

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in general.”110 If the calendar in Gal 4:10 is Jewish, Paul needs to explain why this Jewish calendar is unacceptable while the Jewish calendar he originally gave the Galatians is appropriate. Since Paul offers no such explanation, however, the calendar in Gal 4:10 must not be Jewish as Longenecker and others contend. My article on time-keeping schemes thus participates in a wide-ranging debate about whether the calendar in Gal 4:10 is pagan, Jewish, or perhaps both. Since Paul and his communities kept a Jewish calendar, the calendar of which Paul disapproves in this verse must not be Jewish. Designating this calendar as both Jewish and pagan would leave Paul and his communities with no calendrical options, but the evidence indicates they observed a Jewish calendar. The only option that accounts for all the evidence is for the calendar referenced in Gal 4:10 to be a pagan calendar that Paul uses as an indication of the Galatians’ apostasy to paganism, and I remain convinced that this option best explains the rhetorical strategy and contents of Paul’s letter to the Galatians.

110 Michael Sokupa, The Calendric Elements in Colossians 2:16 in Light of the Ongoing Debate on the opponents.” Neot 46 (2012): 172–189, here 175.

XVIII. Performing the Head Role: Man is the Head of Woman (1 Corinthians 11:3 and Ephesians 5:23) I. Introduction A debate over the meaning of κεφαλή (“head”) arises in the latter half of the twentieth century.1 The focal point of this debate centers on Pauline passages such as 1 Cor 11:3 and Eph 5:23, which state that man is the head of the woman or the husband is the head of his wife. The pro-position in this debate proposes that κεφαλή means “source” and refers to origin. This position may be labeled as the egalitarian position.2 It proposes that head specifies man as the source of or * Versions of this essay were presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Society of Biblical Literature in San Diego, CA on Nov 19, 2007, at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Region of the Society of Biblical Literature in Bourbonnais, IL on February 17, 2007, and at the “Women and Gender Symposium: Margins and Centers – Interrogating the Limits of Privilege” that was held in Chicago, IL on January 26, 2008. I wish to thank Prof. S. Scott Bartchy for his continual encouragement to publish this paper and for his helpful suggestions for improving the argument. This paper should be read in the context of my other work on 1 Corinthians 11. See Troy W. Martin, “Paul’s Argument from Nature for the Veil in 1 Corinthians 11:13–15: A Testicle instead of a Head-Covering,” JBL 123 (2004): 71–80; idem, “Veiled Exhortations Regarding the Veil: Ethos as the Controlling Factor in Moral Persuasion (1 Cor 11:2–16),” in Rhetoric, Ethic and Moral Persuasion in Biblical Discourse: Essays from the 2002 Heidelberg Conference, ed. Thomas H. Olbricht and Anders Eriksson, Emory Studies in Early Christianity 11 (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 255–273. See also Mark Goodacre, “Does περιβόλαιον Mean ‘Testicle’ in 1 Corinthians 11:15?” JBL 130 (2011): 391–396; and my response “Περιβόλαιον as ‘Testicle’ in 1 Cor 11:15: A Response to Mark Goodacre,” JBL 132 (2013): 453–465. A discussion of male headship and female submission for the general public can be found in Andrea V. Oelger and Troy W. Martin, I Promise to Hate, Despise, and Abuse You until Death Do Us Part: Marriage in a Narcissistic Age (Bourbonnais, IL: Bookend Publishers, 2010), 57–74. 1  Andrew C. Perriman, “The Head of a Woman: The Meaning of Kephalē in 1 Cor. 11:3,” JTS 45 (1994): 602–622, here 602. Perriman describes the debate as “extremely complex” and proposes that neither position in the debate is “quite satisfactory.” 2  Egalitarianism need not necessarily apply to every aspect of Pauline communities. Paul’s communities could be egalitarian in terms of membership while still maintaining social differences among the members. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza explains, “There is a descending hierarchy, God-Christ-Man-Woman, in which each preceding member, as ‘head’ or ‘source,’ stands above the other ‘in the sense that he establishes the other’s being. …’ Paul insists that he does not want to deny the equality of men and women ‘in the Lord’” (In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins [New York: Crossroad, 1983], 229). Joel Delobel also accepts the meaning of “source” for κεφαλή but understands the reference to man’s priority and woman’s secondary place without necessarily implying her inferiority (“1 Cor 11,2–

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the one who resources the woman and that both are equals in rule, control, decision-making, and leadership.3 John P. Meier concisely describes this position: We have here a later Hellenistic use of kephalē with metaphysical overtones. The idea is “source” or “origin,” especially the origin of something’s existence. A chain of sources and emanations is being set up. God is the source of the Messiah, since the Son comes from the Father and is sent into the world by Him. … Since the Son is God’s instrument in creation (a Jewish-Hellenistic Wisdom-motif reflected in 1 Cor 8:6), the male is created immediately by Christ, and so proceeds directly from him.4

The initial proponent of this egalitarian position is usually identified as Stephen Bedale, who is followed by several notable scholars including F. F. Bruce, C. K. Barrett, Gordon D. Fee, Jerome Murphy O’Connor, and Berkeley and Alvera Mickelsen.5 16: Towards a Coherent Interpretation,” in L’Apôtre Paul: Personnalité, Style et Conception du Ministère, BETL 73, ed. A. Vanhoye [Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1986], 369–389, here 377– 378). See also Troy W. Martin, “The Covenant of Circumcision (Genesis 17:9–14) and the Situational Antithesis in Galatians 3:28,” JBL 122 (2003): 111–125; John S. Kloppenborg, “Egalitarianism in the Myth and Rhetoric of Pauline Churches,” in Reimagining Christian Origins: A Colloquium Honoring Burton L. Mack, ed. Elizabeth A. Castelli and Hal Taussig (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996), 247–263, here 258–259; and Loren T. Stuckenbruck, “Why Should Women Cover Their Heads Because of the Angels? (1 Corinthians 11:10),” StoneCampbell Journal 4 (2001): 205–234, here 217 n. 30. 3  The positions in this debate are variously designated. For example, David W. Odell-Scott designates the egalitarian position as the metaphysical interpretation and the traditional position as the domination interpretation (A Post-Patriarchal Christology, American Academy of Religion Academy Series 78 [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991], 167–168). The positions in this debate are not simply polarized, however, for Odell-Scott among others adopts both meanings of κεφαλή. He states, “Both readings of kephalē in v 3 are suggested in vv 8 & 9” (p. 169, cf. 176). However, he thinks the hierarchy of vv. 3, 8, 9, and 10 represents the Corinthian’s ply while the egalitarian statements of vv. 11, 12, and 16 represent Paul’s reply (p. 173). In contrast, the present essay reads the entire passage as expressive of Paul’s position. See also Francis Watson, “The Authority of the Voice: A Theological Reading of 1 Cor 11.2–16,” NTS 46 (2000): 520–536. Watson argues for interdependence rather than the polarity of hierarchical or egalitarian perspectives as the best way to approach this passage. Compare the proposal of interdependence and reciprocity by Wayne A. Meeks, “The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity,” HR 13 (1974): 165–208, here 200. Dale B. Martin does not think hierarchical readings of Paul’s statements can be avoided regardless of the meaning of κεφαλή (The Corinthian Body [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995], 232–233). 4  John P. Meier, “On the Veiling of Hermeneutics (1 Cor 11:2–26),” CBQ 40 (1978): 212–226, here 217. 5  Stephen Bedale, “The Meaning of κεφαλή in the Pauline Epistles,” JTS 5 (1954): 211– 215; F. F.  Bruce, 1 and 2 Corinthians, NCB (London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1971), 103; C. K.  Barrett, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, HNTC 9 (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 248; Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 501–505; Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, “Sex and Logic in 1 Corinthians 11:2–16,” CBQ 42 (1980): 482–500, here 482; and Berkeley and Alvera Mickelsen, “What Does Kephalē Mean in the New Testament?” in Women, Authority and the Bible, ed. Alvera Mickelsen (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 97–110. See also Gilbert Bilezikian, Beyond Sex Roles: A Guide for the Study of Female Roles in the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1985), 137–144; and

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In contrast to the egalitarians, the con-position in this debate argues that κεφαλή means “ruler” and refers to authority. This position holds that head establishes man as the ruler, controller, decision-maker, and leader of woman. The con-position may be designated as the traditional position because it claims to preserve traditional Christianity and to preserve the view of the Church Fathers.6 Wayne Grudem and D. A. Carson are the most articulate and vocal advocates of the traditionalists’ position.7 Indeed, the articles by Wayne Grudem provide a good way to understand this debate. He summarizes the points of Bedale’s argument that κεφαλή means “source:” (1) Kephale does not normally mean “ruler.” (2) The ancient world did not think that the head controlled the body. (3) The Septuagint shows that kephale can mean “source.”

Grudem surveys 2,336 examples of the use of κεφαλή in ancient Greek literature to refute the first two points of Bedale’s argument. Grudem presents 32 examples of κεφαλή with the meaning of “authority over” or “ruler.” In a subsequent article, Grudem surveys even more examples and adds 17 more for a total of 49 examples of κεφαλή with this meaning. Based on these examples, Grudem counters: This first point of Bedale’s argument is simply a misstatement of the facts and cannot be accepted as valid. … Bedale’s second major point, that a metaphor of the head ruling the body “would be unintelligible to St. Paul or his readers,” must be rejected as contrary to fact and therefore invalid.8

Grudem then examines Bedale’s Septuagint examples and counters that none of them contains the meaning “source” for κεφαλή. Grudem concludes, “We may hope that Bedale’s article will no longer be quoted as proving that kephale at the

Paul S. Fiddes, “‘Woman’s Head is Man’ A Doctrinal Reflection upon a Pauline Text,” Baptist Quarterly 31 (1986): 370–387. 6  The patristic evidence is particularly persuasive to Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “Kephalē in 1 Corinthians 11:3,” Int 47 (1993): 52–59, here 56–57. 7  Wayne Grudem, “Appendix I: Does kephale (‘head’) Mean ‘Source’ or ‘Authority Over’ in Greek Literature? A Survey of 2,336 Examples,” in The Role Relationship of Men and Women: New Testament Teaching, ed. George W. Knight, Revised Edition (Chicago: Moody Press, 1985), 49–80; idem, “Appendix 1: The Meaning of Kephale (‘Head’): A Response to Recent Studies,” in Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism, ed. John Piper and Wayne Grudem (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1991), 425–468; and D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1996), 37–38. See also Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “Another Look at ΚΕΦΑΛΗ in 1 Corinthians 11:3,” NTS 35 (1989): 503–511; idem, “Kephalē,” 52–59. Fitzmyer adopts the traditionalists’ position although he concedes that κεφαλή can mean either “source” or “ruler.” 8 Grudem, “Does kephale (‘head’) Mean ‘Source,’” 54–55.

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time of the New Testament could mean ‘source,’ for his first two points are simply contrary to fact, and his third point commits a major exegetical blunder.”9 Egalitarians advance their position somewhat by their “Septuagint Argument”10 and especially by their contextual argument that 1 Cor 11:8 and 12 clearly refer to man as the source of woman.11 However, Grudem’s survey of lexical examples and demand for clear instances where κεφαλή means “source” put the egalitarians on the defensive in this controversy, and egalitarian attempts such as that by Richard S. Cervin to rebut Grudem meet with a swift and forceful response.12 Grudem’s examples from Plato (Tim. 44d), Plutarch (Quaest. conv. 6.7.1 = Mor. 692d), and Philo (Mos. 2.30; Somn. 2.207), who specifically describe the head as the ruling part of the body, appear to end this controversy with a decisive victory for the traditionalists.13  Ibid., 56–57.

 9

10 See Mickelsen and Mickelsen, “What Does Kephalē Mean?” 100–104. Grudem summarizes

the Michelsens’ Septuagint Argument, “The Septuagint translators used kephale to translate the Hebrew word ro’sh (‘head’) in a sense of ‘leader’ or ‘ruler’ in only eight out of the 180 cases in which Hebrew ro’sh means ‘leader’ or ‘authority over.’ In all the other cases they used other words, most commonly archon, ‘ruler’ (109 times). Therefore, since the Septuagint translators had about 180 opportunities to use kephale meaning ‘leader,’ and they did so eight times, it shows that the translators desired to avoid kephale in the sense of ‘authority’ or ‘leader over’” (“Meaning of Kephale,” 450). Many agree with the Michelsens however. See Philip B. Payne, “Response,” in Women, Authority and the Bible, ed. Mickelsen, 118–132; and Daniel C. Arichea, Jr., “The Covering on the Woman’s Head: Translation and Theology in 1 Corinthians 11.2–16,” The Bible Translator 55 (2004): 460–469, here 461. 11  Oelger and Martin, I Promise, 65–66. Traditionalists such as George W. Knight, III dismiss these later verses as a way of interpreting the head metaphor (“The New Testament Teaching on the Role Relationship of Male and Female with Special Reference to the Teaching/Ruling Functions in the Church,” Journal of Psychology and Theology 3 [1975]: 216–229, here 221). Knight states that these verses are “not added to negate the previous argument.” Conversely, some egalitarians dismiss the earlier portion of this passage as Paul’s description of the Corinthians’ position while expressing his own in the later portion. See Alan Padgett, “Paul on Women in the Church: The Contradictions of Coiffure in 1 Corinthians 11:2–16,” JSNT 20 (1984): 69– 86; and Thomas P. Shoemaker, “Unveiling of Equality: 1 Corinthians 11:2–16,” BTB 17 (1987): 60–63. Other egalitarians refuse to place vv. 11–12 against the earlier part of the passage and argue that the entire passage is an interpolation. See William O. Walker, “1 Corinthians 11:2–16 and Paul’s Views Regarding Women,” JBL 94 (1975): 94–110; and G. W. Trompf, “On Attitudes toward Women in Paul and Paulinist Literature: 1 Corinthians 11:3–16 and Its Context,” CBQ 42 (1980): 196–215. 12  Richard S. Cervin, “Does Kephale Mean ‘Source’ or ‘Authority’ in Greek Literature? A Rebuttal,” Trinity Journal 10 NS (1989): 85–112; and Grudem, “The Meaning of Kephale,” 426–449. See the arguments against Grudem’s position by Perriman, “The Head of a Woman,” 602–610. 13 Grudem, “Does kephale (‘head’) Mean ‘Source,’” 54–55. However, Perriman argues, “Neither the ‘authority over’ nor the ‘source’ interpretation of κεφαλή is as well established lexicologically as their proponents would like to think” (“The Head of a Woman,” 616). Perriman proposes that the term means “prominent,” “foremost,” or “pre-eminent” (p. 618). For a similar proposal, see Walter L. Liefeld, “Women, Submission and Ministry in 1 Corinthians,” in Mickelsen, Women, Authority and the Bible, 134–154, here 139–140. For an evaluation of the status of the debate, see Russell D. Moore, “After Patriarchy, What? Why Egalitarians Are

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Nevertheless, Grudem admits that his survey is not exhaustive and there may be examples where κεφαλή means “source” although he found none. He invites “anyone who wishes to search for such evidence to go ahead and do so.”14 Grudem asks, “What kind of evidence is needed?” He answers, “The same kind needed to establish the possible meaning of any word in ancient literature: brief quotations from a few occurrences of the word in any ancient Greek writer where the context makes it clear that the author is using kephale to mean ‘source.’”15 Lacking such evidence, Grudem calls for the egalitarians “to give up once for all the claim that kephale can mean ‘source.’”16 If even one text can be found, however, then Grudem’s call for an end of the debate in favor of the traditionalists may be somewhat premature. One such text Grudem’s survey does overlook is Hippocrates’ Nat. puer 33.2, which reads, “The heart is the source (ἀρχή) of blood; the head is the source of phlegm; the spleen is the source of water; and the region above the liver is the source of bile. These four are the sources of these fluids or humors.”17 A text ascribed to Aristotle reads: Why does the face sweat most? Is it because sweat passes most easily through parts which are rare and moist? And the head seems to be the source of moisture, as it is due to the considerable moisture that the hair grows. This part is rare and porous; naturally, therefore, the moisture passes through. (ps.-Aristotle’s Probl. 2.10 [867a] [Hett, LCL])

In these texts, the term κεφαλή is used in the singular as in 1 Cor 11:3 and Eph 5:23, and the head is understood to be the source of something. In addition to texts that specifically mention the whole head as source, others present parts of the head as sources of something. A Hippocratic author states that the mouth is the beginning of both liquid and dry nutriment (Hippocrates, Alim. 30). Several texts present the eyes, ears, and nostrils as parts of the head that provide the source of seeing, hearing, and smelling (cf. Aristotle, Part. an. 2.10 [656a]). Thus, the meaning “source” for κεφαλή in Pauline texts is not as completely unsubstantiated in Greek usage as Grudem contends.18 Before conceding the debate to the traditionalists, egalitarians would also do well to consider the significance of an ancient controversy over the role of the head. Indeed, this controversy reveals differing and competing physiologies among the participants. All of Grudem’s examples in which κεφαλή means Winning the Gender Debate,” JETS 49 (2006): 569–576. He warns that the debate is about more than the meaning of kephalē (p. 573). 14 Grudem, “Does kephale (‘head’) Mean ‘Source,’” 69. 15  Ibid., 52. 16  Ibid., 70. 17 Translations of Greek texts are mine except where a specific translator or translation is cited. 18  Payne discusses some texts where he proposes κεφαλή to mean “source” (“Response,” 124–125). See also the examples cited by Fitzmyer, “Kephalē,” 54–55. The notion of the head as source also fits the context of Col 2:19 and Eph 4:13.

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“authority” arise from a single type of physiology held by Plato, Plutarch, and Philo among others. When specifying the meaning of κεφαλή in Pauline texts, the appropriate questions to ask are whether Paul also subscribes to this physiology and whether interpreting κεφαλή as authority or ruler is consistent with his physiology. The central issue of this ancient controversy is whether the head or the heart is responsible for thinking and decision-making.

2. The Ancient Disagreement over the Function of Head and Heart In its discussion of phrenitis or insanity, an ancient medical text summarizes the positions taken by some of the persons in this controversy. The text reads: Praxagoras says that phrenitis is an inflammation of the heart, whose natural activity he holds to be mental sanity; the heart, disturbed by the inflammation, becomes the constitutive cause of this affection. Diocles says that phrenitis is inflammation of the diaphragm, naming the affection from its place and not from the [impeded] action, when the heart becomes involved in the affection as well. It seems, in fact, that he places mental sanity in the heart. From this [heart] those people are also stricken with attacks of madness. Hippocrates says that the mind is placed in the brain like a holy statue. … When this gets corrupted by the bile, the nourished part also changes its own faculty. In fact, if its wellordered natural motion was mental sanity, the disordered unnatural motion will be loss of mental sanity. (Anonymi Medici, De morbis acutis et chroniis 1.2–4)19

Aêtius describes similar positions in his inquiry into the ruling principle of the soul. He writes: What is the ruling principle of the soul and in what does it exist? Plato and Democritus say that it is in the whole head, Strato in the space between the eyebrows, and Erasistratus around the membrane of the brain, which he calls the epicranium. Herophilus says that it is in the cavity of the brain, which is also its base. Parmenides and Epicurus say that it is in the whole chest. All the Stoics say that it is in the whole heart or in the breath around the heart. Diogenes says that it is in the heart’s left ventricle, which is the breath ventricle. Empedocles says that it is in the composition of the blood. Some say that it is in the neck of the heart, others in the pericardium, still others in the diaphragm. More recently, some say that it extends from the head to the diaphragm. Pythagoras says that on the one hand the vital ruling principle is around the heart but on the other hand the rational and intellectual ruling principle is around the head. (ps.-Plutarch Plac. philos. 4.5 = Mor. 899a–b).

The positions taken in this controversy reveal at least two competing physiologies, one of which holds the head and another of which holds the heart to be the center of intelligence and bodily control.

19  Original text in Ivan Garofalo, Anonymi Medici, De Morbis Acutis et Chroniis: Edited with Commentary, trans. Brian Fuchs, Studies in Ancient Medicine 12 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 3. See Oelger and Martin, I Promise, 61.

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3. Heart as the Center of Intelligence and Bodily Control Several texts represent the heart as the control center of the body. In the Hippocratic Corpus, for example, one text reads, “For the intelligence of man is established in the left cavity [of the heart], and it rules over the rest of the soul” (Hippocrates, De corde 10 [Potter, LCL]). Another text explains, “Both the preceding vessels and these later ones send branches into the heart, which is situated in a narrow space as if it were holding reins from every part of the body: for this reason sensations from the whole body are concentrated about the chest” (Hippocrates, De ossium natura 19 [Potter, LCL]). Aristotle is the most ardent advocate of this position.20 He argues: Some say (erroneously … that the brain is the organ of sensation … And, of course, the brain is not responsible for any of the sensations at all; it has no more power of sensation than any of the residues. People adopt these erroneous views because they are unable to discover the reason why some of the senses are placed in the head; but they see that the head is a somewhat unusual part, compared with the rest, so they put two and two together and argue that the brain is the seat of sensation. The correct view, that the seat and source of sensation is the region of the heart, has already been set forth. (Part. an. 2.10 [656a] [Peck and Forster, LCL])

For Aristotle as for some Hippocratic texts, the heart is the controlling organ that is responsible for thinking and decision-making (cf. Gen. an. 2.4 [740a]).

4. Brain as the Center of Intelligence and Bodily Control In contrast to the “heart position,” some texts from the Hippocratic Corpus argue for the head or the brain as the center of control in the body.21 One text, for example, reads: In these ways, I hold that the brain is the most powerful organ of the human body, for when it is healthy it is an interpreter to us of the phenomena caused by the air, as it is the air that gives it intelligence. Eyes, ears, tongue, hands and feet act in accordance with the discernment of the brain; in fact the whole body participates in intelligence in proportion to its participation in air. To consciousness the brain is the messenger. For when a man draws breath into himself, the air first reaches the brain, and so is dispersed through the rest of the body, though it leaves in the brain its quintessence, and all that it has of intelligence and sense. … Wherefore, I assert that the brain is the interpreter of consciousness. … Some people say that the heart is the organ with which we think, and that it feels pain and anxiety. But it is not so. (Hippocrates, De morbo sacro 19–20 [Jones, LCL])  Payne, “Response,” 119–120. See also Oelger and Martin, I Promise, 60–61.  Alcmaeon (ca. 500 BCE) is usually credited as being the first to articulate this view. See Thomas F. Glasson, “‘Visions of Thy Head’ (Daniel 228): The Heart and the Head in Bible Psychology,” ExpTim 81.8 (1970): 247–248, here 247. 20 21

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Based on its pneumatology, this text argues for the head as the control center of the body. Plato provides a cosmological argument for this position that holds the head to exercise control over the body and writes: First, then, the gods, imitating the spherical shape of the universe, enclosed the two divine courses in a spherical body, that, namely, which we now term the head, being the most divine part of us and the lord of all that is in us; to this the gods, when they put together the body, gave all the other members to be servants, considering that it must partake of every sort of motion. (Tim. 44d)22

Plato’s cosmological argument strengthens the position that the head controls the body. The advocate of this position, however, that ultimately turns the tide early in the second century by winning debates with the Stoics is Galen, who relies on his dissections to point out, “And the outgrowths of the nerves were all from the brain; and by and large the brain appears to be the source of the nerves in the body” (De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis 7.3.10).23 Galen concludes, “I have proved that an animal after birth is governed by three sources, one located in the head, whose work is by itself to provide imagination and memory and recollection, knowledge and thought and ratiocination, and in its relation to the other parts of the animal to guide the sensation of the sensory parts and the motion of the parts that move voluntarily” (De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis 7.3.2).24 The other two sources are the heart and the liver. To the heart, Galen assigns the innate heat and the passions; to the liver, he attributes nutrition and the production of blood (De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis 7.3.2–3).25 Galen is clearly on the side of those who place the control center in the head, and his careful observations based on dissections ultimately carry the day, and the more popularly held view of the heart as the center of control gives way to an understanding of the head as the center of cognition and decision-making.26 22  Translation in Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, eds., Plato: Including the Letters, Bollingen Series 71 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 1173. 23  Translated by Phillip De Lacy, Galen: On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, 3 vols., Corpus medicorum Graecorum 5.4.1.2 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1980), 2:443. See Oelger and Martin, I Promise, 61–62. 24  De Lacy, Galen, 2:439. 25  Ibid., 2:438–441. 26  For additional texts and a discussion of this position, see Clinton E. Arnold, “Jesus Christ: ‘Head’ of the Church (Colossians and Ephesians),” in Jesus of Nazareth: Essays on the Historical Jesus and New Testament Christology, ed. Joel B. Green and Max Turner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 346–366, here 350–358. Arnold follows the lead of Joseph B. Lightfoot (Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon [London: Macmillan, 1875; repr. Zondervan Commentary Series, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979], 198–201) and Markus Barth (Ephesians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, 2 vols., AB 32A-B [New York: Doubleday, 1974], 1:190), and interprets the Pauline head metaphor against the background physiology of ancient medicine (pp. 350–355). He concludes, “Christ’s headship implies both leadership and

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5. Paul’s Position in this Controversy Several Pauline texts clearly position Paul on the side of the cardiologists in this controversy.27 In Rom 1:21, Paul writes, “For although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless heart [καρδία] was darkened.” In 1 Cor 2:9, Paul approvingly quotes the scripture, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart [καρδίαν] of a human conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him.” In 1 Cor 4:5, Paul warns, “Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the hearts [καρδιῶν].” In 2 Cor 3:15, Paul explains, “Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their heart [καρδίαν].” In 2 Cor 9:7, Paul instructs, “Each one must do as he has determined in his heart [καρδία], not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” These texts clearly place Paul on the side of the cardiologists. For Paul, the heart rather than the head is the center of intelligence, reason, thinking, and decision-making. If Paul wanted to construct a metaphor consistent with his physiology to specify man as the ruler of the woman, he would need to identify man as the heart of a woman. By identifying man as the head of woman, Paul does not specify man as the leader, controller, or ruler of the woman. Specifying κεφαλή as “authority over” as Grudem does is incompatible with Paul’s physiology. Furthermore, Grudem’s lexical arguments including his 49 examples of κεφαλή as meaning “ruler” or “leader” are not really relevant to Paul’s use of the term since these authors adhere to a position opposite Paul in this controversy. Authors such as Plato, Philo, and Plutarch hold the head to be the center of control in the body.28 Consistent with their physiology, therefore, they can use κεφαλή metaphorically to mean “ruler.” Paul’s physiology, however, is quite different because he sides with Aristotle and other authors who defend the heart as the seat of sensation and volition. source of provision” (p. 351). Arnold asserts, “It is also likely that the opinion of Hippocrates, Galen, and Rufus regarding the function of the head in relationship to the body reflects the common physiological understanding of the time (with due respect to the variant opinion of Aristotle and the Stoics)” (p. 355). Arnold reverses the dominate position in this controversy before the second century CE and does not accurately situate Paul within the controversy. Thus, Arnold interprets the head metaphor in Colossians and Ephesians against the background of the position of Hippocrates, Plato, Galen, and Rufus rather than the more generally accepted views of Aristotle and the Stoics and even some Hippocratic texts such as De corde, with whom Paul’s physiology more closely agrees (pp. 358–366). 27  See Payne, “Response,” 121; and Oelger and Martin, I Promise, 61–63. 28  Perriman correctly notes the limited range of authors cited by the traditionalists although he does not recognize the significance of their limited citations (“The Head of a Woman,” 603).

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6. Conclusion The egalitarian position, which interprets the Pauline head metaphor to mean man is the source of or the one who resources the woman, therefore, has more to commend it than Grudem and the traditionalists allow. At the very least, Grudem’s lexical arguments are neither as definitive nor as conclusive as he would like. He interprets Paul’s head metaphor against the physiology of Plato, Philo, and Plutarch. Paul, however, holds a different physiology that makes it unlikely for κεφαλή in his writings to mean “ruler” or to refer to authority. Therefore, “source” is a much more likely meaning for κεφαλή in Pauline passages such as 1 Cor 11:3 and Eph 5:23. The interpretive debate between traditionalists and egalitarians will likely continue and perhaps yield even more evidence in support of specifying the meaning of κεφαλή as “source.” The implications of this interpretive debate far transcend the meaning of a word and indicate how modern scholars conceive of gender relations in early Christian communities.29 Understanding κεφαλή in 1 Cor 11:3 and Eph 5:23 implies that these communities were probably neither as patriarchal nor as hierarchical as the traditionalists and some feminist scholars perceive. Other texts such as Gal 3:28, however, do not substantiate the complete dissolution of gender roles in these communities as egalitarians sometimes argue.30 Galatians 3:28 merely states the irrelevance of gender for baptism and for who may become full members of a Christian community. Once someone is baptized into one of these communities, however, that person is expected to conform to certain gender roles as Paul’s instructions in 1 Cor 7 and the household codes make plain. Over-simplification by one side or the other in the modern debate between egalitarians and traditionalists does not accurately portray gender relations in early Christian communities, and these relations were probably as complex and interesting as in the broader society in which early Christians lived.

7. Reception History As far as I can tell and much to my surprise, this article is largely ignored in subsequent scholarship. I am only aware of a single reference to the oral presentation from which this article arises. Gail P. C. Streete mentions the debate over the meaning of kephalē and notes, “This passage refers to a paper by Troy W. Martin, ‘Male Headship in Pauline Texts,’ delivered in the session on Gender in the Disputed Paulines, SBL Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA, November 19, 29  For a presentation of how the issues in this debate affect the lives of real people today and especially women, see the chapter entitled “Male Headship and Female Submission” in Oelger and Martin, I Promise, 57–74. 30  For a discussion of these issues, see Martin, “Covenant of Circumcision,” 111–125.

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2007, in which he discusses the interpretation of kephalē in 1 Cor. 3, Eph 5:23, and Col 2:19.”31 She mentions this presentation once more in passing but does not engage with it further.32 Perhaps, some other scholars mention this article, but none of whom I am aware. Thousands of women and some men, however, have read the popularized version of this article that is published as Chapter 3 of my co-authored I Promise book.33 The hundreds of positive comments convince me of the importance of making critical biblical scholarship available and accessible to the general public, but I do hope the re-publication of this article here will give it greater visibility among my academic colleagues.

 Gail P. C. Streete, “Response: Are Women Interested?” LTQ 42.1 (2007): 51–58, here 52.  Ibid., 55. 33  Oelger and Martin, I Promise, 57–74. 31 32

XIX. When Living, Be Unnoticed: An Epicurean Maxim and the Social Dimension of Colossians 3:3–4* 1. Introduction The enigmatic statement in Col 3:3–4 engenders many different interpretations as exegetes explore various theological dimensions of this text. The passage reads ἀπεθάνετε γὰρ καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ὑμῶν κέκρυπται σὺν τῷ Χριστῷ ἐν τῷ θεῷ ὅταν ὁ Χριστὸς φανερωθῇ, ἡ ζωὴ ὑμῶν, τότε καὶ ὑμεῖς σὺν αὐτῷ φανερωθήσεσθε ἐν δόξῃ (“For you died and your life has been hidden with Christ in God. Whenever Christ, your life, should be revealed, then you also shall be revealed with him in glory”). In particular, the three antitheses of hidden/revealed, dead/alive, and obscure/renown in this passage require explanation, and previous studies explore the temporal, spatial, or mystical dimensions of these antitheses. Eduard Schweizer emphasizes the temporal dimension in Col 3:3–4 by writing: What has already been accomplished “above,” that is in God’s world, will only become visible “on earth” at some point in the future. Therefore the community lives … in expectation of this by abandoning everything that vv 5–11 describe as negative and by performing everything that vv 12–15 set out as positive.1

Schweizer prefers this temporal rather than a spatial dimension for interpreting the passage even though he recognizes that spatial terminology is prevalent in Colossians as a whole. He also recognizes the mystical dimension of the phrase * Note the change in the title above from the original publication and see note 17 below for an explanation. A version of this essay was presented on the Crossroads of Early Christianity Tour in Turkey on July 11, 2001. In the original publication, I dedicated this essay to Hans Dieter Betz with whom I was privileged to study for almost a decade at The University of Chicago. During my studies, Dieter gave me two pieces of advice that I believe were formally influenced by his work on the Delphic maxim “Know thyself ” (Hans Dieter Betz, “Delphic Maxim ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΑΥΤΟΝ in Hermetic Interpretation,” HTR 63 [1970]: 465–484). As I began my dissertation on First Peter, Dieter advised me, “Read everything.” As I prepared for my doctoral exams and inquired about what I should know, he responded, “Know everything.” I hesitate to label these two pithy responses as “Dieter Maxims,” but they epitomize for me the character of Dieter’s own scholarship. In my studies with him, I rarely encountered anything he had not read or did not know. Even though the following essay does not fully satisfy these “Dieter Maxims,” I rededicate this essay to him now in gratitude for all he taught me about biblical exegesis and the Greco-Roman World. 1  Eduard Schweizer, The Letter to the Colossians (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1982), 178.

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with Christ but comments, “Perhaps there are still some traces of this usage here, although v 3 in fact describes the period between baptism and consummation.”2 According to Schweizer, therefore, the antithesis between hidden and manifested is primarily a temporal antithesis between present reality and future consummation.3 In contrast to Schweizer, Franz J. Steinmetz argues these antitheses should be interpreted from the spatial rather than the temporal dimension.4 Since Christ is seated at the right hand of God (3:1), Steinmetz contends that the Colossians’ lives must be located there if they are hidden with Christ. To support his argument, he emphasizes other spatial antitheses in Colossians such as “above” and “on the earth” (3:1–2); “hope stored up in heaven” and “the gospel bearing fruit in the cosmos” (1:5–6); or “in the heavens and upon the earth” (1:16, 20, 23). He minimizes the explicit temporal references of 1:22–23; 3:4, 24–25 as well as the repeated mention of hope in the epistle and sees only a trace of futuristic eschatology in Colossians.5 Although he recognizes both the temporal and spatial terminology, Martin Dibelius prefers the mystical dimension as an explanation of the antitheses. Dibelius proposes that baptism initiates a mystical union of the believer with Christ and that the parousia brings this union to completion.6 He admits that mysticism and eschatology usually represent exclusive categories in other religions but asserts that Christianity brings them together. For Dibelius, however, the em Ibid., 176–178.  The temporal dimension forms the basis for the interpretations of Joachim Gnilka, Der Kolosserbrief, HTKNT 10.1 (Freiburg: Herder, 1980), 175; Petr Pokorný, Colossians: A Commentary (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991), 160–161; N. T. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, TNTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 132–133; and Otto Merk, Handeln aus Glauben: Die Motivierungen der Paulinischen Ethik, Marburger Theologische Studien 5 (Marburg: Elwert, 1968), 203–204. 4  Franz J. Steinmetz, Protologische Heils-Zuversicht: Die Strukturen des soteriologischen und christologischen Denkens im Kolosser‑ und Epheserbrief, Frankfurter Theologische Studien 2 (Frankfurt am Main: Knecht, 1969), 51–67. More correctly than others, Steinmetz refuses to use the spatial categories in Ephesians to substantiate his spatial interpretation of Col 3:3–4. For example, compare Steinmetz (Protologische Heils-Zuversicht, 13) with Franz Mussner (Christus, das All und die Kirche: Studien zur Theologie des Epheserbriefes, TThSt 5 [Trier: Paulinus, 1955], 93). 5  Steinmetz, Protologische Heils-Zuversicht, 29–32, 43–44. 6  Martin Dibelius, An die Kolosser, Epheser, an Philemon, 3rd rev. ed., HNT 12 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1953), 40. The term mysticism and its various derivatives are problematic. In striking contrast, Eduard Lohse comments on Col 3:3–4, “The state of affairs cannot be described as mysticism” (Colossians and Philemon, Hermeneia [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971], 134 n. 15). The disagreement between Dibelius and Lohse arises from differing definitions of the term mysticism. Since Dibelius introduced this term into the exegetical discussion, the present essay uses it, not with its technical meaning of unification with deity but with a more general meaning of communion of devotee and deity. To describe this relationship, Peter T. O’Brien uses union while James D. G. Dunn uses identification. See O’Brien, Colossians, Philemon, WBC 44 (Waco, TX: Word, 1982), 169–171; and Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 206. 2 3

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phasis in 3:1–4 is not upon the eschatological aspect because the passage uses the prepositional phrase σὺν τῷ Χριστῷ (“with Christ”) rather than the more common ἐν τῷ Χριστῷ (“in Christ”). Dibelius distinguishes between the former, which refers to the eternality of the union, and the latter, which expresses union with Christ in this world. According to Dibelius, the mystical union effected by baptism is only latently available at present, but this union will be brought to completion at the parousia. He concludes that hidden in Col 3:3–4 refers to the former mystical state; manifested to the later mystical state.7 Even though the temporal, spatial, and mystical dimensions accentuate important aspects of the antitheses in Col 3:3–4, emphasizing one of these dimensions to the exclusion of the others eclipses significant elements of these antitheses. The temporal dimension minimizes the spatial dimension implied by the verb κέκρυπται and the prepositional phrase σὺν τῷ Χριστῷ (“with Christ”), which locates the readers’ lives with Christ. The spatial dimension minimizes the shift from past and present (3:3) to future verbal tenses (3:4). The mystical dimension subordinates both the spatial and temporal dimensions of this text to the notion of participation in and with Christ.8 Even though there are temporal, spatial, and mystical dimensions to these antitheses, any one of these theological dimensions alone is inadequate to illuminate the plenitude of Col 3:3–4. Furthermore, these theological dimensions inadequately relate these antitheses to their social context.9

2. The Social Context Colossians 3:3–4 occurs in a thoroughly social context. In his preceding discussion, the Colossian author emphasizes the social dimension of the Colossians’ acceptance of the Christian gospel. He addresses them as brothers [and sisters] 7  The verb κέκρυπται (“has been hidden”) in Col 3:3 implies that something or someone is concealed from something or someone else. Colossians 3:3–4 explicitly identifies the Colossian Christians and Christ as the concealed ones, but it does not identify from whom these are concealed. Dibelius articulates the traditional interpretation by suggesting that the concealment is internal (An die Kolosser, 40). Yet, the Colossians’ acceptance of the gospel demonstrates that they already recognize the reputation of Christ (Col 1:11, 27). The Colossian author’s repeated commendation for his readers indicates that their reputation is noticed by other members of the community (1:4, 6, 8). Furthermore, the reputation of Paul (1:23–24; 2:1), Epaphras (1:7; 4:12–13), Tychicus (4:7), Onesimus (4:9), and others (4:10–11, 14–17) is no secret to the members of the Colossian community. This aspect of Dibelius’ mystical interpretation – that identifies the members of the community as the ones from whom their own reputation is hidden – is therefore problematic. The hiddenness is primarily external as Dunn correctly recognizes (Colossians, 207). 8  Albrecht Oepke prefers the mystical interpretation but admits that the paraenesis that follows Col 3:3–4 is not very compatible with it (“κρύπτω,” TDNT 3:957–1000, here 977). 9  Gnilka correctly observes, “Prägend für den Abschnitt ist die Christusgemeinschaft” (Kolosserbrief, 171, cf. 175). See also Pokorný, Colossians, 158.

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in Christ (Col 1:2). He commends them for their expression of love for all the saints (1:4, 8). The fruit of the gospel is evident among them just as it is in all the cosmos (1:6, 10). They share in the inheritance of the saints in light (1:12) since they were transferred from the realm of darkness into the kingdom of the son of God’s love (1:12–13) and changed from death to life (2:13–14). He describes this kingdom as the church (ἐκκλησία), and this church is none other than the body of Christ (1:18, 24; cf. 3:15). Furthermore, the Colossian author continually stresses the social dimension of his relationship with his readers in the discussion preceding Col 3:3–4. He accentuates this social dimension by referring to God as our father (1:2, 12), Jesus Christ as our Lord (1:3), and salvation as our mutual possession (1:13–14; 2:13– 14). He nurtures his social relationship with his readers by giving thanks, by commending them for their conduct (1:3–4; 2:5), and by insisting that he joyfully labors on their behalf (1:23–24, 29; 2:1–2). Although absent from them as the need for a letter implies, he claims to be with them in spirit (2:4) and sides with them against their critics (2:16–23). Indeed, in writing a letter at all, he reinforces the social aspect of his relationship with his readers since a letter is one-half of a dialogue and all dialogues occur in a social context. In the paraenetic material that follows Col 3:3–4, the social dimension is even more evident. The author urges his readers to avoid destructive behavior toward one another (3:5–9) and to inculcate behavior that strengthens and edifies the community (3:10–17). He then addresses specific individuals in the community and reminds them of their duties (3:18–4:1). Finally, he cements his relationship with his readers by correlating his own missionary activity with theirs (4:2–6) and by exchanging greetings with them (4:7–18). Within this social context, Col 3:1–4 participates in a resocialization process that began when Epaphras first taught the gospel to the Colossian Christians (1:7) and they received Jesus Christ as Lord (2:6).10 Following exhortations to resist outside intimidation and possible defection (2:6–23) that threaten to disrupt the order and resolve of their new faith (2:5), the indicatives of Col 3:1–4 certify the Christians’ new status within Christ’s body and confirm this status vis-à-vis the rest of society from which they were drawn (1:12–14; 3:5–8). The imperatives exhort them to authenticate this status both inside and outside the community by their conduct.11 Even though some of these indicatives and imperatives may be new or newly formulated for this letter, they clearly participate in a resocialization process that began when these Christians first accepted Jesus as Lord. 10  Lohse correctly interprets Col 2:6 as a reference to the confession that Jesus Christ is Lord (Colossians, 93). 11  Lohse discusses the interplay between indicative and imperative in this passage (Colossians, 135).

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The thoroughly social context of Col 3:3–4 points to the importance of examining the social dimension of the antitheses in this passage that describe the new social existence of Christians. The temporal, spatial, and mystical theological dimensions of this passage that previous studies have investigated provide important boundary markers to distinguish this group from other groups also described by these antitheses. Considering the social dimension, therefore, is important in interpreting this passage.

3. The Social Dimension Examining the social dimension of texts is the task of social-scientific criticism. One concern with the application of this method to the NT is the imposition of modern social categories on ancient texts and societies.12 To avoid this problem, the present essay adopts Betz’s more historical approach of using ancient categories to analyze ancient texts. A general, pervasive principle in Betz’s exegetical work is his insistence that ancient categories should take precedence in structuring and shaping the hermeneutical discussion.13 This principle explains Betz’s frequent use of interpretive categories from Greco-Roman religions and rhetoric. In particular, Betz has demonstrated the significance of the categories contained in Plutarch’s works for interpreting the NT.14 Following Betz’s ap12  For a discussion and some examples of this problem, see John H. Elliott, What is SocialScientific Criticism? GBS: NT Series (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 97–98. 13  Betz’s exegetical approach differs from social-scientific criticism by his focus on the historical data and emic categories. Elliott asserts that social-scientific critics “work with emic data but necessarily shift to etic categories when they seek to explain evidence from one culture with social and cultural constructs drawn from their own time” (Social-Scientific Criticism, 39). Social-scientific critics shift to etic categories that “generalize” about the societies under investigation. Richard Rohrbaugh explains, “Generalizations are, of course, what cross-cultural models are designed to provide. … Models are intrinsically generalizations and as such they tend to blur the contours of particular historical situations” (The Social Sciences and New Testament Interpretation, [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996], 8). Betz himself recognizes the impossibility of a purely objective interpretation and the necessity of shifting to etic categories. Nevertheless, his focus remains on the specific historical phenomena under investigation. In “Jesus as Divine Man,” Betz writes, “It has always been one of the pitfalls of historicocritical research that there are hidden dogmatic interests and requirements which diminish one’s sensitivity and ability to apprehend fully the complexity and multiplicity of the historical phenomena. Because there can be no description of the historical phenomena without simultaneous interpretation of some sort, we can only protect ourselves against false schematisms if we allow, as best we can, the historical phenomena to be seen in all their complexity and differentiation” (“Jesus as Divine Man,” in Jesus and the Historian, ed. F. Thomas Trotter [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968], 114–133, here 115). Whereas the method of social-scientific criticism relies on abstraction, Betz’s method relies on analogy. Instead of seeking or creating abstract models that generalize, Betz’s approach identifies emic categories that illuminate the historical phenomenon under consideration. 14  Hans Dieter Betz, ed., Plutarch’s Theological Writings and Early Christian Literature, SCHNT 3 (Leiden: Brill, 1975); and idem, Plutarch’s Ethical Writings and Early Christian

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proach, the present essay investigates the social dimension of the three antitheses in Col 3:3–4 by comparing them to similar antitheses used by Plutarch to describe and critique Epicurean communities.15 Even though previous exegetes primarily recognize only the theological dimensions of the antitheses in Col 3:3– 4, Plutarch demonstrates that the three antitheses of hidden/visible, buried/alive, and obscure/renown also reflect a sociological dimension.16 Literature, SCHNT 4 (Leiden: Brill, 1978). The present essay further relates to Betz’s work by seeking interpretive categories from Epicurean materials. In particular, Betz investigates the Epicurean use of moral sayings as an analogy to the Christian use (Essays on the Sermon on the Mount [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985], 11–16; and idem, The Sermon on the Mount: A Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, Including the Sermon on the Plain (Matthew 5:3– 7:27 and Luke 6:20–49), Hermeneia [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995], 72–80). Betz’s position is strengthened by a comparison of Col 3:16 and Philodemus’ Lib. Col. XIXb that demonstrates the mutual admonition common in both Christian and Epicurean communities. See David Konstan et al, Philodemus: On Frank Criticism, SBLTT 43, Graeco-Roman Series 13 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 5–6, 120–121. 15 In referring to Epicurean groups, the present essay uses the term community but recognizes Martha Nussbaum’s observation that the good life for Epicureans is an individual rather than a communal matter. See Martha Nussbaum, “Therapeutic Arguments: Epicureans and Aristotle,” in The Norms of Nature: Studies in Hellenistic Ethics, ed. Malcolm. Schofield and Gisela Striker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 31–74; and idem, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, Martin Classical Lectures, New Series 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 128. Joseph M. Bryant notes that Epicurean groups were free associations of individuals for mutual support and benefit in the realization of personal tranquility and pleasure (Moral Codes and Social Structure in Ancient Greece: A Sociology of Greek Ethics from Homer to the Epicureans and Stoics, SUNY Series in the Sociology of Culture [Albany, NY: SUNY, 1996], 416–417). Nevertheless, the problem of an individual’s relationship to an Epicurean group cannot be resolved by ignoring the communal nature of the group itself. See Wayne A. Meeks, The Origins of Christian Morality: The First Two Centuries, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 225 n. 5. The internal nature of these communities is variously explained. Using Philodemus’ treatise De liberate dicendi, Norman W. de Witt proposes an academic analogy for these communities (“Organization and Procedure in Epicurean Groups,” CP 31 [1936]: 205–211). More recent research on this treatise, however, affirms no more than that it “discloses a form of psychagogy that depends upon the active participation of all members of the community in the correction of one another” (Konstan, Philodemus, 8; cf. 23–24). Determining the internal nature of these communities is not necessary for the present essay since the three social antitheses investigated in this essay primarily address the external rather than the internal relations of Epicurean and Christian communities. 16 A comparison of Christian and Epicurean communities is complicated because neither are static. Reimar Müller represents an older consensus when he states, “In dieser Arbeit wird die epikureische Gesellschaftstheorie, d. h. die Lehre Epikurs und der Epikureer als eine Einheit betrachtet” (Die Epikureische Gesellschaftstheorie, 2nd ed., Schriften zur Geschichte und Kultur der Antike 5 [Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1972], 9). More recent scholarship recognizes that Epicureanism was constantly developing and adapting to meet new situations. Several papers from the conference entitled “Tradition and Innovation in Epicureanism” are published in GRBS 30 (1989): 145–335. These papers explore developments in several areas of Epicureanism, and Pamela Gordon also provides a sustained argument for development in Epicureanism (Epicurus in Lycia: The Second-Century World of Diogenes of Oenoanda (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1996), 21, 43–65, 107). An adequate comparison of Epicurean and Christian communities thus requires some limitations. The present essay selects two authors whose writings are separated by only a few decades. The comparison is based on three similar

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Plutarch understands λάθε βιώσας (“be unnoticed when living”) as the Epicurean maxim that is especially important for understanding the social relationship of Epicurean communities to the rest of society.17 The various philosophical schools vigorously debated the issue of retirement from active participation in politics and society. The Platonist responded to the suggestion of retirement with a resounding “Never!” The Stoics permitted limited retirement but only as a preparation for renewed involvement. The Epicureans advocated a continual and complete retirement as the only way to achieve a life of pleasure and security (Epicurus, Sent. 14, 40).18 Epicurus admonished his followers to be unnoticed when living (λάθε βιώσας) by forming private communal enclaves secluded from the larger society.19 These communities provided an alternative to life in the broader society.20 Epicureans could affirm a certain usefulness of society and politics while at the same retiring from both since participation in social antitheses used by each author to describe the relationship of Christian and Epicurean communities to the broader society. This comparison is further specified by three theological considerations used by the Colossian author as an insider of the Christian community. Sensitive to both “tradition and innovation” in Epicureanism, this comparison uses Epicurean materials external to Plutarch, who as an outsider does not always adequately describe the Epicurean position. 17 LSJ (p. 1029) explain the translation of λανθάνω, “Most freq. with a part. added, in which case we usually translate the part. by a Verb, and express λανθάνω by an Adv., unawares, without being observed.” Everett Ferguson provides a typical rendering of λάθε βιώσας when he translates, “live secretly, live keeping hidden” (Backgrounds of Early Christianity [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987], 300). In the original publication of my article, I accepted these explanations of the translation of λάθε βιώσας, but I have since changed my mind because I think these explanations confuse translation into English for grammatical analysis and skew the emphatic nuance of the formulation of the maxim. The imperative λάθε emphasizes the exertion of the will to be unnoticed, and the participle βιώσας is subordinate to it and expresses the adverbial notion of “when living.” The translation “live unnoticed” reverses this emphasis and makes living the object of the will’s exertion but being unnoticed an adverbial modifier. According to the formulation of the maxim, living happens without an intentional decision to live while being unnoticed requires the intentional application of the will. Rather than translating the maxim as “live unnoticed,” I therefore now think that λάθε βιώσας is more accurately rendered as “be unnoticed when living.” 18 Bryant comments, “The Epicurean policy of public disengagement is not based on philosophical theorizing but on a sociological assessment of how best to achieve security and well-being” (Moral Codes, 420). See also Eduard. Zeller, The Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics, trans. and ed. Oswald J. Reichel, rev. ed (New York: Russel & Russel, 1962), 491; John M. Rist, Epicurus: An Introduction, (Cambridge: University Press, 1972), 135; and George K. Strodach, The Philosophy of Epicurus: Letters, Doctrines, and Parallel Passages from Lucretius, (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1963), 197–198. 19  Howard Jones explains, “The injunction λάθε βιώσας, a warning not to seek security in active involvement in worldly affairs, was important enough to find a place among Epicurus’ Principle Doctrines, and it remained central to Epicurean teaching on the happy life” (The Epicurean Tradition [London: Routledge, 1989] 89). Jones lists several primary sources that associate this doctrine with Epicurus (p. 228 n. 60). 20  Jones describes both Christian and Epicurean groups as alternative communities (Ibid., 116). See also Bernard Frischer, The Sculpted Word: Epicureanism and Philosophical Recruitment in Ancient Greece (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 11, 35–41, esp. 52–66;

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society and politics produced disturbance, not tranquility (ἀταραξία).21 The Epicureans nevertheless sought good relations with rulers and society at large so that their own communities could exist undisturbed.22 As a Platonist, Plutarch enters this debate and employs at least three pairs of social antitheses to describe and critique the Epicurean lifestyle, which results from the implementation of the maxim λάθε βιώσας. First, Plutarch uses the antithesis between hidden and manifest to describe the Epicurean lifestyle as a hiding of one’s life in an Epicurean community.23 He contrasts this hidden lifestyle with the visible lifestyle of the person who engages in society and politics. He compares those who enter the Epicurean communities with people who hide their moral and physical disorders from others who might effect a cure and warns: You too go ahead, afflicted by your vice, a desperate and deadly disease, hiding (ἀποκρύπτων) your fits of envy and superstition, as you might some throbbing inflammation, because you dread to submit them (παρασχεῖν) to those who can warn and heal. … As it is, when they deny, conceal (ἀποκρυπτόμενοι) and disguise their disorders they are embedding their vices deeper in themselves. (An recte dictum sit latenter esse vivendum 2 = Mor. 1128d–e [Einarson and De Lacy, LCL])

According to Plutarch, following the maxim λάθε βιώσας means hiding oneself in a community where one’s vices are beyond the reach of the healers of both body and soul. In Plutarch’s opinion, following this precept is antithetical to living the visible public life and is unwise. He warns his readers: If you remove publicity from our life as you might the illumination from a drinking party, so that every pleasure may freely be indulged without detection – “live unknown.” Yes indeed, if I am to live with Hedeia the courtesan and end my days with Leontion and “spit on noble action” and place the good in the “flesh” and in “titillations”; these rites require darkness, these require night, and for these let us have concealment (λήθη) and oblivion (ἄγνοια). (An recte dictum sit latenter esse vivendum 3–4 = Mor. 1129a–b [Einarson and De Lacy, LCL])

He describes the end of those who engage in such a life by saying: No, there is in truth but one penalty for those who have lived ill: obscurity (ἀδοξία), oblivion (ἄγνοια), and utter effacement (παντελῶς ἀφανισμός), which carries them off and Cyril Bailey, Epicurus: The Extant Remains with Short Critical Apparatus, Translation, and Notes (Oxford: Clarendon, 1926), 356–357. 21  Müller, Epikureische Gesellschaftstheorie, 10–13, 26. 22 Frischer, Sculpted Word, 41. 23 Seneca’s explanation to Lucilius about how to retire uses several words and phrases that describe retirement with the antithesis of hidden/revealed. These words and phrases include ne inveniri possint, condita, abstrusa, in secreta, latere, a conspectu hominum secedere (Ep. 68.1– 5 [Gummere, LCL]). A little later, Seneca admits that his advice could be mistaken as being Epicurean (Ep. 68.5).

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from Lethe to the joyless river and plunges them into a bottomless and yawning ocean, an ocean that sucks into one abyss all failure to serve or to take action and all that is inglorious and unknown. (An recte dictum sit latenter esse vivendum 7 = Mor. 1130e [Einarson and De Lacy, LCL])

Plutarch warns his readers that those who fail to live the manifest life (φανισμός) will receive their just reward and disappear (ἀφανισμός) in Hades. Thus, Plutarch contrasts the hidden Epicurean lifestyle with the more advantageous, visible public life. Instead of living hidden, he recommends living the manifest life when he says, “Just as light makes us not only visible (φανερός) but also useful to one another, so being known lends to our virtues not only renown (δόξα) but also the means of action” (An recte dictum sit latenter esse vivendum 4 = Mor. 1129c [Einarson and De Lacy, LCL]). In Col 3:3–4, the Colossian author employs a similar social antithesis between living hidden and living manifest to describe the Christian community. This passage twice uses the verb φανερόω (“to make manifest”) as an antithesis to the verb κρύπτω (“to hide”). The Colossian author uses κρύπτω in reference to both the Christians’ initiation into and subsequent life in the community. He uses φανερόω in reference to the parousia and consequent manifestation of the Christians’ life in glory. This diction is comparable to Plutarch’s use of the verb ἀποκρύπτω to describe the hidden Epicurean lifestyle and his use of the adjective φανερός to portray the antithetical visible lifestyle of the healthy person. As an outsider, Plutarch uses hidden to describe Epicureans pejoratively and manifest to describe the preferred life. As an insider, the Colossian author uses both to describe positive aspects of the Christian community. Despite their differing outsider and insider perspectives, both Plutarch and the Colossian author use this antithesis between living hidden and living openly to address the relationship of Epicurean or Christian communities with the broader society. Both authors’ reliance on this antithesis reveals certain social similarities between Epicurean communities, which implemented the maxim λάθε βιώσας, and Christian communities, which formed in response to the Gospel.24 Both 24  Norman W. de Witt vastly overstates the similarities between Epicurean and Christian communities and probably discouraged further research in this area (Epicurus and His Philosophy and St Paul and Epicurus [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1954]). Wayne A. Meeks states, “In a number of ways, the groups founded by Paul and his circle and the groups that traced their basis to Epicurus seemed to have arrived at similar solutions for a number of parallel goals and practical requirements. The analogies would repay a more careful investigation than the present context permits” (The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983], 84). The present essay contributes to this “more careful investigation” and attempts to be more balanced than de Witt’s work. See also the brief comparisons of Epicureans and Christians by Ferguson (Backgrounds, 301) and Jones (Epicurean Tradition, 115–116). See also Richard Jungkuntz, “Fathers, Heretics, and Epicureans,” JEH 17 (1966): 3–10, here 9–10; Abraham J. Malherbe, “Self-Definition among Epicureans and Cynics,” in Self Definition in the Greco-Roman World, vol 3 of Jewish and Christian SelfDefinition, ed. B. F. Meyer and E. P. Sanders (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982), 46–59, here 46–48;

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groups separate from the larger society and require “sectarian resocialization” of their members, albeit in different ways.25 Inductees of both join a closely knit social group based on the institution of the “Hellenic household.”26 Their involvement disrupts their previous life-style by an all-consuming participation in the new community where they lavish their attention upon one another (Col 1:4, 12–13; 2:11–15; 3:16–17). Consequently, both groups require ethical transformation, albeit according to different standards of morality.27 Both Plutarch and the Colossian author aptly describe Epicureans and Christians as hidden in a community where their reputation is neither manifest to nor dependent upon the larger society but rather depends upon their participation in this new social enclave (Col 2:16–18; 3:4; 4:5–6). Similar to the Epicureans, Christians attempt to co-exist but their separatist lifestyle is often viewed with distrust and contempt (Lucian, Alex. 25, 38). Although hidden in relation to the broader society and often maligned, both groups nevertheless attract large numbers of converts.28 The similarities shared by both groups should not, however, obscure certain differences in socialization that are clearly indicated by the temporal, spatial, idem, Paul and the Thessalonians: The Philosophic Tradition of Pastoral Care (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987) 40–46, 96–97, 104; and idem, Social Aspects of Early Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 25–26; Wayne A. Meeks, “‘To Walk Worthily of the Lord:’ Moral Formation in the Pauline School Exemplified by the Letter to the Colossians,” in Hermes and Athena: Biblical Exegesis and Philosophical Theology, ed. Eleonore Stump and Thomas P. Flint, Studies in the Philosophy of Religion 7 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), 37–58, here 48; idem, The Moral World of the First Christians, LEC (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986), 56– 60, 130; and Adelaide D. Simpson, “Epicureans, Christians, Atheists in the Second Century,” TAPA 72 (1941)]: 372–381, esp. 377; and Clarence E. Glad, Paul and Philodemus: Adaptability in Epicurean and Early Christian Psychagogy, NovTSup 81 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), passim. 25  Meeks, Origins of Christian Morality, 28. 26 Meeks notes the use of the household and intimacy as common features of the two groups (Urban Christians, 83). The degree and nature of the separation from the rest of society, however, vary. In contrast to Christians, Epicureans participated in the public cult, and Epicurus himself “shared in the mysteries at Athens” (Philodemus, Piet. 558–559, 808–810). Nevertheless, Epicurean cultic participation was considered as insincere parody because Epicureans rejected the traditional understanding of the gods, and Epicurus was accused of mocking the mysteries (Philodemus, Piet. 1395–1400). Thus, both Epicureans and Christians were maligned as atheists (Lucian, Alex. 25, 38); the Epicureans for their ideological and the Christians for their physical separation. 27  Meeks, Moral World, 130. 28  Meeks cites active propagandizing to win proselytes as a common feature of the two groups (Urban Christians, 83). For a brief summary of the extent of Epicurean appeal, see Anthony A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, Classical Life and Letters (New York: Scribner, 1974), 17. For the method of this appeal as friendship, see Benjamin Farrington, The Faith of Epicurus, Culture and Discovery (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967), 20, 122–125; as sympathy, see Diskin Clay, Paradosis and Survival: Three Chapters in the History of Epicurean Philosophy (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1998), 101–102; as dissemination of literature, see Dirk D. Obbink, “POxy. 215 and Epicurean Religious ΘΕΩΡΙΑ,” in Atti del XVII Congresso Internazionale di Papirologia (Naples: Centro Internazionale per lo Studio dei Papiri Ercolanesi, 1984), 2:607–619); and as sculpture, see Frischer, Sculpted Word, 67–86. For a critique of Frischer’s theory, see Gordon, Epicurus, 54.

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and mystical dimensions of Col 3:3–4. Plutarch contends that those who live hidden in this life will justly disappear in the afterlife, and he thus plays upon the Epicurean disbelief in an afterlife.29 The Colossian author eschatologically affirms in Col 3:3–4 that the Christian life although hidden now will be manifest at the parousia and in the afterlife. This eschatological perspective poses a striking difference between the Christian and Epicurean understandings of living hidden. For Plutarch, Epicureans have no hope of overcoming the social disadvantages of the hidden life. They may enjoy the tranquility that their communal life provides now, but they will never reverse the pejorative perceptions of outsiders. In contrast, the Colossian author offers Christians the hope that the parousia will remove the disadvantages of living hidden in this life. Whereas outsiders may critique and disqualify Christians now (Col 2:16, 18), the true reputation of their lives will be manifest to all at the parousia (3:3–4). Thus, both authors use the similar antithesis of hidden/manifest to describe the relationship of Epicureans or Christians to the rest of society, but the temporal dimension in Col 3:3–4 clearly differentiates between the Christian and Epicurean understandings of this relationship. In addition to this temporal dimension, the spatial dimension in this text also distinguishes Christian from Epicurean socialization. Epicurean physics describes the universe as an infinite void containing an infinite number of atoms. Worlds form and decay as these atoms randomly collide and unite and then detach from one another. No divine providence or will regulates the confluence and dissolution of these combinations of atoms, and Epicureans recognize no qualitative difference between above and below even though Epicureans assert that atoms, except in the case of collisions, fall downward.30 Everywhere there are only atoms and void. The Epicurean community exists in this universe with no expectation of either help or harm from deities above. The spatial world of the Christian community is far different. The stark contrast between above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God (Col 3:1) and 29 See Epicurus, Epistle to Menoeccus 124 (Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum 10.124) and Epicurus, Sententiae 139 (Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum 10.139). Diskin Clay discusses Lucretius’ De rerum natura 2.1023–1174, which describes the end of this world (Lucretius and Epicurus [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983], 239–250). Epicureans posited a continuous conglomeration and dissolution of atoms. This world arose by a confluence of atoms and it will decay as these atoms detach from one another to form a new world. In addition, Diogenes of Oenoanda posited that a Golden Age would ensue if everyone followed Epicurus’ teachings (Frag. 56; NF 21). Both these Epicurean notions are very different from Christian eschatology and the notion of the parousia. For the fragments of Diogenes of Oenoanda, see C. W. Chilton, Diogenes of Oenoanda: The Fragments (London: Oxford University Press, 1971). 30  Epicurus, Epistle to Herodotus 60–61 (Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum 10.60–61). Farrington summarizes Cicero’s criticism (Fin. 1.6) “that there is no up-and-down in infinite void” and “to make the atoms fall is meaningless” (Faith of Epicurus, 113). Cicero’s critique misses the careful existential nuance Epicurus gives to the notion of upward and downward.

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below where various evils abound (3:5–9) orients Christian communal life. The Colossian author exhorts his readers to seek and think the things above, not the things upon the earth (3:1–2). Their death with Christ has severed their former lives upon the earth (2:20; 3:5). Their co-resurrection with Christ (3:1) elevates them to a new life oriented above (3:2, 10–15). Just as Christ put off the body of his flesh by death (1:22) and assumed an ecclesial body (1:24), so also Christians put off the body of flesh (2:11) and become the body of Christ (1:18, 24; 2:17, 19; 3:15). Since they now belong to Christ’s body and Christ is seated above at the right hand of God (3:1), their life is located above with Christ (3:3). They have already received benefits from Christ (1:13–14, 21–22; 2:11–15) and hope to avoid the wrath of God (3:6, 25) and receive future benefits such as their inheritance with the saints in light (1:5, 12). In contrast to Epicureans, Christians live hidden in a community that is oriented above, not below, and the spatial world of the Christian community is thus very different from its Epicurean counterpart. In addition to these temporal and spatial distinctions, socialization of Christians also differs mystically from that of Epicureans. Epicurus seeks to “demythologize” the gods to dispel the religious dread that so disturbs humans.31 He does not deny the existence of the gods, for otherwise he could not explain the images of them in dreams.32 According to him, their existence requires them to be composed of atoms, albeit of extremely fine atoms, and thus the gods are material.33 They are nevertheless immortal because they receive the exact number of atoms that they emit and inhabit the intermundia (μετακόσμια, διαστήματα) the spaces between the confluence and dissolution of the worlds.34 They are tranquil and happy because they do not involve themselves in human affairs.35 Humans, therefore, have nothing to fear or to expect from the gods.36 Epicurus 31 For a summary of Epicurus’ view of deity and a discussion of some of the primary sources, see A. J.  Festugière, Epicurus and His Gods (New York: Russell & Russell, 1955), 61–65; Farrington, Faith of Epicurus, 115–118; Wolfgang Schmid, “Götter und Menschen in der Theologie Epikurs,” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie NF 94 (1951): 97–156; Dirk D. Obbink, “The Atheism of Epicurus,” GRBS 30 (1989): 194–202; and idem, Philodemus, On Piety: Part 1: Critical Text with Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 1–23. 32  Philodemus, Piet. 225–231; Sextus Empiricus, Math. 9.25. All references to Philodemus’ De pietate are from the continuous line-numbering of Obbink (On Piety). See also Schmid, “Götter und Menschen,” 143–144; and Dietrich Lemke, Die Theologie Epikurs: Versuch einer Rekonstruktion, Zetemata 57 (Munich: Beck, 1973), 55. 33  A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley argue that Epicurus’ gods exist fundamentally as concepts (The Hellenistic Philosophers I, 2 vols. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987], 1:144– 149). Obbink appropriately nuances their position by stating, “In the Epicurean view, concepts in fact have the same corporeal, atomic composition as all ὑπάρχοντα” (“Atheism of Epicurus,” 201 n. 49). See also Obbink, On Piety, 3–6; and Lemke, Theologie Epikurs, 41. 34  This notion of the intermundia may be a later inference from Epicurus’ location of the gods ἔξω τοῦ κόσμου. See Obbink, “Atheism of Epicurus,” 198 nn. 34–35. 35  Epicurus, Epistle to Herodotus 76–78 (Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum 10.76–78). 36  Lucretius’ frequent appeal to deities for assistance in his De rerum natura appears to contradict Epicurean theology and practice. Clay explains that these appeals are a rhetorical device

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and Epicureans participate in religious festivals neither to appease the wrath of the gods nor to elicit benefits from them but to contemplate and celebrate their happiness.37 The communion of such deities with humans is impossible without threatening divine tranquility and happiness.38 In contrast, Christians enjoy communion with a deity actively involved in human affairs (Col 2:12). In the past, they were co-buried and co-raised with Christ in baptism through faith (2:12–13, 20; 3:1, 3) and now belong to his body (1:18, 24; 2:17, 19; 3:15). Outsiders should discern the body of Christ in the Christians’ celebration of the Eucharistic meal (2:16–17).39 Christians are being renewed according to his image (3:10) and are exhorted to walk in him since they are rooted and grounded and established in him by faith (2:6–7). Their old life is dead, and their new life is hidden with Christ in God (3:4). To be hidden in a Christian community is to be intimately related to Christ, and this communion with the deity is quite foreign to those hidden in an Epicurean community.40 Christians may resemble Epicureans in relation to the rest of society by being hidden in community, but certain aspects of their socialization  – such as eschatological expectation, spatial understanding of the universe, and mystical relationship with Christ  – clearly distinguish them from the Epicureans.41 Hiddenness for Epicureans is an imperative (λάθε βιώσας) and thus depends on the continued exercise of one’s will. Hiddenness for Christians is an indicative and results from the gracious act of God in Christ. Epicurean hiddenness permits participation in the public cult; Christian hiddenness does not. Christian hiddenness permits participation in politics and public service; Epicurean hiddenness does not.42 For Plutarch and the Epicureans, this antithesis distinguishes to draw the reader into the text and force a decision “between a belief in the angry and violent gods of Roman religion and the tranquil gods of Epicurean theology” (Paradosis and Survival, 138–160). 37 Ibid., 83; and Obbink, “POxy. 215,” 613. 38 Obbink explains, “While the intervention of the gods in the world is ruled out by its incompatibility with their own blessedness, they do nevertheless have a real, if indirect, influence on the human world, inasmuch as one’s own view of the gods has a major impact for better or worse on one’s own διάθεσις, or psychosomatic constitution” (“Atheism of Epicurus,” 199–200). This “divine influence” is a major Epicurean defense against the charge of Atheism but still does not involve the gods in communion with humans. 39  Troy W. Martin, “But Let Everyone Discern the Body of Christ (Col 2.17),” JBL 114 (1995): 249–255; and idem, By Philosophy and Empty Deceit: Colossians as Response to a Cynic Critique, JSNTSup 118 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 116–123. 40 For Epicureans, humans and deities share the same telos; namely, pleasure. Even though deities can take no thought for humans without endangering divine pleasure, humans can derive pleasure and benefit from contemplating the true blessedness of the gods. The divine-human relationship is thus one of contemplation from a distance whereas in Christianity the relationship is one of communion and incorporation into the body of Christ. See Schmid, “Götter und Menschen,” 127–156; Festugière, Epicurus and His Gods, 61–65; and Obbink, On Piety, 9. 41  Jones, Epicurean Tradition, 94–110. 42  Evidence that Christian hiddenness allows political participation is abundant in the NT. First, the proconsul Sergius Paulus believes the Word of God (Acts 13:7, 12), and his office is

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between the private life of the community and the public sphere. For the Colossian author and the Christians, this antithesis describes a religious distinction between those incorporated into Christ and those outside. Each author uses this antithesis to describe a group whose socialization results in differing understandings of what it means to be hidden when living in relation to the rest of society.43 In a further critique of the Epicurean lifestyle, Plutarch resorts to a second sociological antithesis to distinguish Epicurean communal life from the rest of society. He contrasts those buried in Epicurean communities with those who live life courageously. Commenting upon the Epicurean maxim λάθε βιώσας, he says, “But he who casts himself into the unknown state and wraps himself in darkness and buries his life in an empty tomb would appear to be aggrieved at his very birth and to renounce the effort of being.”44 He employs the metaphor of burial again when he says, “A repose of which nothing is heard and a life stationary and laid away in leisure withers not only the body but the mind.”45 As an outsider, Plutarch casts a pejorative light upon the Epicurean lifestyle by describing it as a burial for those afraid to live life in the real world. As an insider, the Colossian author also uses this antithesis of buried/alive in Col 3:3 when he writes, “For you died and your life has been hidden with Christ not portrayed as a hindrance to his Christian life. Second, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council (Mark 15:43; Luke 23:50–51), is identified in the tradition as a disciple of Jesus (Matt 27:57; John 19:38). Third, the dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, does not identify his office-holding as problematic, but rather his lack of new birth (John 3). Fourth, Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believes in the Lord but does not renounce his office to realize the full benefits of his new life in Christ (Acts 18:8; cf. Sostenes in 18:17). Fifth, Jesus does not demand that Zacchaeus retire from his profession as a tax collector (Luke 19:1–10). Sixth, John the Baptist does not require tax collectors or soldiers to leave their professions when they repent and are baptized (Luke 3:12–14). Finally, Paul’s reference to saints or Christians from the household of Caesar in Phil 4:22 may indicate the compatibility between Christianity and bureaucratic office-holding. Of course, this reference is too vague to prove the case on its own. The other data, however, whether factual or fabricated, indicate that Christian sources do not engage in a critique of holding public office as prohibiting on hindering the realization of Christian living. 43  The differing reasons for joining these communities should also be considered. Epicurean communities form from self-interest in not being harmed but in being benefited. To avoid harm, one must refrain from harming. To receive benefits, one must confer them, and friendship describes this essential relationship among members of this community. Cicero criticizes the Epicurean notion of friendship for its basis in utility and self-interest (Fin. 2.83). Peter Preuss responds to this criticism by arguing that friendship is an intrinsic good because it provides “katastematic pleasure” (Epicurean Ethics: Katastematic Hedonism, Studies in the History of Philosophy 35 [Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1994], 200, 210–213). Nevertheless, an Epicurean’s willingness to die for a friend usually met with charges of inconsistency with the founding principle of self-interest. In contrast, Christian communities form from the selfless act of Jesus Christ, so willingness to die for Christ and others in no way contradicts the founding motivation of this community. 44  Plutarch, An recte dictum sit latenter esse vivendum 6–7 = Mor. 1130b–c (Einarson and De Lacy, LCL). 45  Ibid., 4 = Mor. 1129d (Einarson and De Lacy, LCL).

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in God.”46 Colossians 2:12 specifies this hiddenness as co-burial with Christ in baptism. The Christians have died, and their lives have been hidden, not in a tomb but with Christ. Resembling Epicureans, Christians enter a community distinct from the broader society. This community is a closely-knit social group resembling a family whose members address one another as brother or sister and refer to God as their father (1:2). The boundaries separating this group from those outside (4:5–6) are clearly demarcated, and outsiders often fail to perceive the quality of life and the true reputation of these Christians (2:16–19; 3:3–4; 4:5–6). Members of this community formerly lived as outsiders (3:5–11) in the dominion of darkness (1:12), but now the readers have been transferred to the kingdom of God’s beloved son (1:13). Their lives have been hidden with Christ in God and they now live as insiders (3:3). Even though the antithesis of buried/alive may be applied to both Epicureans and Christians, the temporal, spatial, and mystical dimensions in Col 3:3–4 again provide important distinctions in socialization. The mystical participation of Christians in Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection in baptism (2:11–13) has no counterpart in Plutarch’s description of the Epicurean community.47 The Christians’ burial and resurrection to new life provide entrance into the community defined as a place where the “old man” is being put off and the “new man” is being put on (3:9–11). The life of the Christian community is spatially located above with the one who makes alive (3:3; 2:13), and this life awaits its future manifestation with Christ (3:4). The Christian community is thus a place of new life in contrast to the Epicurean community, which in Plutarch’s view is a place of burial and thus of death. Of course, Plutarch represents an outsiders’ view, and Epicureans would argue that their community is the only place where one can live tranquilly and undisturbed. Nevertheless, the Christian community communes with the deity, experiences resurrection, and hopes for a future afterlife whereas the Epicurean community does none of these things. The temporal, spatial, and mystical dimensions in Col 3:3–4 draw important contrasts between Christian and Epicurean socialization even though the antithesis of buried/alive is used to distinguish both groups from the rest of society. 46  Robert C. Tannehill, Dying and Rising with Christ: A Study in Pauline Theology, BZNW 32 (Berlin: Alfred Töpelmann, 1967), 47–54. 47  Nevertheless, Epicurean materials shed light on the association of fullness, circumcision, and baptism in Col 2:11–12 that is unique in the NT. The affirmation in Col 2:10 that the readers have been filled (πεπληρωμένοι) may be compared to the Epicurean ideal life filled with pleasure (Epicurus, Sententiae. 10; Epistle to Menoeccus 128). Epicurean texts use a form of πληρόω to express this fullness. The affirmation in Col 2:11 that the readers have been circumcised as part of their entry into the community may be compared to the charge of self-inflicted castration leveled at the Epicureans. See Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum 4.43. Bryant comments, “There is no reason to doubt that the formula Lathe Biôsas and mê politeuesthai were widely viewed as entailing a kind of self-inflicted ‘castration,’ a severing of the self from that full humanity that is to be experienced only within the framework of civic life” (Moral Codes, 426).

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In his critique of life in an Epicurean community, Plutarch uses a third social antithesis that also occurs in Col 3:3–4. He contrasts the Epicurean life of obscurity (ἀδοξία) with the life of renown (δόξα) by recounting a dialogue in which Theon argues that Epicurus’ maxim λάθε βιώσας makes a pleasant life impossible. In one section of the dialogue, Theon asserts that the retired life of the Epicureans prevents them from attaining the pleasures derived from the glory and reputation found in the active public life.48 Theon charges the Epicureans with performing only trivial services for their fellow community members instead of accomplishing great feats.49 He mocks their pettiness and pities their maxim’s prohibition against achieving a glorious reputation (δόξα) by outstanding public service. Indeed, the primary problem with the Epicurean way of life according to Theon is its inability to procure δόξα for its adherents in the broader society.50 If Plutarch had permitted some Epicureans to express their own perspective in this dialogue, they would probably have countered by pointing out that entrusting one’s honor to a society that is at best indifferent and at worst hostile threatens one’s tranquility and produces disturbance. According to the Epicureans, society is a fickle measure of one’s level of honor. By limiting the ascription and acquisition of honor to the Epicurean community, a community of friends, however, Epicureans entrust their honor only to their friends, and consequently it is much more safe and secure than for those like Theon, whose honor depends on the whims of the broader society. Plutarch’s dialogue exposes a difference of opinion about the source of both ascribed and acquired honor and results in a dilemma for the one who must choose between an obscure life hidden in community and a life of renown in the broader society.51 Both Theon and the Epicureans agree that honor is the public recognition of one’s social standing, but they disagree about the extent of the “public.” For Theon, the public includes the broader society; for the Epicureans, it is limited to the Epicurean community. For Theon, one’s level of honor is ascribed by and acquired in the broader society; for the Epicureans, in the Epicurean community. This dialogue exposes a dilemma. Either one chooses to live a life of obscurity in community and safeguard one’s “petty” honor or to live a life of renown and continually defend one’s “glorious” honor but, in the end, risk losing honor altogether. A similar social antithesis between obscurity and renown also describes the Christian experience according to Col 3:3–4, but the temporal, spatial, and mystical dimensions of this text avoid the dilemma created by this antithesis.  Plutarch, Suav. viv. 15–19 = Mor. 1096f–1100d (Einarson and De Lacy, LCL).  Ibid., 15 = Mor. 1097a–d (Einarson and De Lacy, LCL). 50  Ibid., 17 = Mor. 1098d (Einarson and De Lacy, LCL). 51  For the distinction between ascribed and acquired honor, see Halvor Moxnes, “Honor and Shame,” in Rohrbaugh, Social Sciences, 19–40, here 20. 48 49

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The concealment implied by the verb κέκρυπται indicates that the reputation of the members of the Christian community is hidden from those outside. Indeed, incorporation into this community occasions criticism for its members from outsiders (2:16–19) and pressure to defect (2:4, 8). The outsiders’ reaction is understandable given the disparaging manner by which insiders view them. In contrast to the insiders, the outsiders belong to the authority of darkness (1:13) and ultimately receive God’s wrath (3:6). The outsiders’ reaction is also comprehensible considering that the insiders’ participation in this new group is supposed to be all-consuming. Everything the members of this group do, whether in word or deed, is to be done in the name of the Lord Jesus (3:17). Christians enter a communal life in which their honor is indeed obscured from outsiders. The Colossian author, however, reminds his readers that their reputation (δόξα) or level of honor does not depend upon the misguided opinion of outsiders from whom their reputation is hidden at present (Col 2:16–23). Instead, their reputation for a holy, blameless, unindictable life is ascribed by and acquired in the Christian community (1:3–8, 12–14, 22–23). Their reputation is secure because of its location in heaven (1:5, 12, 27) and its derivation from participation in Christ’s reputation (1:27; 3:4). Even though outsiders do not ascribe honor to Christians at present, their level of honor will become evident to all at the parousia when Jesus Christ himself is revealed (3:4). At that time, their level of honor – evident now only in the community (1:3–8) – will be recognized by the broader society (3:4).52 According to this author, the Colossian Christians’ lives are hidden with Christ now, but their lives will be manifested in glory (δόξα) at Christ’s parousia. Thus, the Colossian author uses the antithesis between a life of obscurity and a life of renown to describe the Christian communal life but avoids the dilemma inherent in the opposing positions of Theon and the Epicureans in Plutarch’s dialogue. By an appeal to temporal, spatial, and mystical considerations, the Colossian author agrees with the Epicureans in limiting the ascription and acquisition of honor to a specific community in the present but also agrees with Theon by expanding the recognition of the honor of this community to the broader society at the parousia. This theological solution to the dilemma safeguards Christian honor and presents this honor as most “glorious” since it will in the end be recognized by all as the eschatological scenario unfolds. The three social antitheses used by Plutarch in his discussion of the Epicurean maxim λάθε βιώσας illustrate the social dimension of similar antitheses used by the author of Col 3:3–4. The antithetical categories of hidden/visible, buried/ alive, and obscure/renown explain the relationship of both Epicurean and Christian communities to the rest of society. Members of both groups live hidden, buried, and obscure in relation to the broader society. Certain temporal, spatial,  Dunn, Colossians, 208.

52

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and mystical considerations, however, clearly differentiate between Christian and Epicurean socialization. The Colossian author can describe the Christian community not only as hidden, buried, and obscure but also as visible, alive, and renown in contrast to Epicurean groups, which according to Plutarch possess none of the latter three characteristics.

4. Conclusion In addition to the theological dimensions of the antitheses in Col 3:3–4, the recognition of the social dimension is necessary to illuminate adequately the plenitude of these verses. Recognizing this dimension of the antitheses appropriately situates this passage within its social context and makes the three antitheses of hidden/visible, buried/alive, and obscure/renown congruent with Plutarch’s use of similar antitheses. Both Plutarch and the Colossian author use these antitheses to express the relationship of a specific community to the rest of society. Recognizing the social dimension highlights the temporal, spatial, and mystical dimensions of this passage as important boundary markers that distinguish Christian from Epicurean socialization. The Christian community, which formed in response to the gospel, is different from Epicurean communities, which implemented the maxim λάθε βιώσας, even though both groups may be described as hidden, buried, and obscure in relation to the rest of society.

5. Reception History In her review of the festschrift in which this article originally appeared, Patricia M. McDonald comments, “One function of the festschrift form is to stimulate thought by allowing readers to move into new territory or to renew their familiarity with half-forgotten topics. There are many fine possibilities for this in the present volume, including … Martin on the Epicureans.”53 Despite McDonald’s assessment that my article offers a “fine” possibility for readers moving “into new territory,” few readers have apparently accepted the offer. As far as I can tell, scholarly interest in and interaction with this article are rather limited, and the research for this reception history only identified a single author who engages this article. In her investigation of alienation in the eastern Mediterranean, Antigone Samellas appropriately considers the Epicureans. She contends: 53  Patricia M. McDonald, “Review: Adela Yarbro Collins and Margaret M. Mitchell (eds.), Antiquity and Humanity: Essays on Ancient Religion and Philosophy: Presented to Hans Dieter Betz on His 70th Birthday (Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 2001),” CBQ 65 (2003): 150–152, here 151.

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It is true that Epicurus preached emancipation from “the prison of politics. …” Yet simultaneously he did not deny that the philosopher ought to intervene in exceptional circumstances, in the event of a tyranny or of a breakdown of the social order, to restore the conditions that had allowed him to live in relative seclusion and security.54

In a note, she cites my article for support and explains, “According to Troy Martin, for the Epicurean retirement was an interval that prepared him for renewed participation in the public life, see his excellent article “Live Unnoticed: An Epicurean Maxim and the Social Dimension of Colossians 3:3–4.”55 I am pleased she describes my article as “excellent,” but my comment to which she refers concerns the conception of retirement advocated by the Stoics rather than the Epicureans. My comment reads, “The Stoics permitted limited retirement but only as a preparation for renewed involvement.” I do not necessarily disagree with her contention, and my description of Epicurean retirement that follows my comment about the Stoics is somewhat consonant with what she contends. I agree with McDonald that my article offers a “fine” possibility for moving “into new territory.” This article illustrates how descriptions of non-Christian groups by ancient authors provide emic analytical approaches and categories for evaluating and understanding early Christians’ descriptions of themselves and their communities and how outsiders may have viewed them. Hopefully, the reprint of this article will result in its no longer being unnoticed but lead to greater scholarly engagement by encouraging those who use a similar comparative approach and by inspiring others to employ this method as well in their investigations of the social world of the early Christians.

54  Antigone Samellas, Alienation: The Experience of the Eastern Mediterranean (50–600 AD) (Bern: Peter Lang, 2010), 130. 55  Ibid., 130 n. 55.

F. Early Christian Eschatology

XX. Watch During the Watches (Mark 13:35)* I. Introduction German scholars assume that Evening (ὀψέ), Midnight (μεσονύκτιον), Roostercrow (ἀλεκτοροφωνία), and Morning (πρωΐ ) in Mark 13:35 are widely used in the Greco-Roman world as common designations for the four night watches.1 Samuel Krauss describes these names as “Umgangsprache” and classifies them as colloquial rather than proper speech.2 After noting that numbers one through four provide the proper designations for the watches, Hermann. L. Strack and Paul Billerbeck call the names in Mark 13:35 „populäre Bezeichnungen der vier Nachtwachen.“3 Echoing agreement, Erich Klostermann notes that Mark 13:35 presents „die vier Nachtwachen nach römischer Zählung mit ihren volkstümlichen Namen.“4 Because the Romans divided the night into four watches and the Jews into three, Klostermann assumes that these four names are Roman designations for the night watches. Rudolf Pesch reflects this assumption by commenting, „Die Nachtwachen sind nach der volkstümlichen römischen, allerdings auch in Palästina gebräuchlichen Zählweise.“5 These German descriptions of * A version of this essay was presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Society of Biblical Literature in Denver, Colorado on November 18, 2001. This essay is dedicated in appreciation to the memory of Dr. David J. Wilmot, who introduced me to ancient time-keeping schemes and taught me much of what I know about Classical and Koine Greek. Dr. Wilmot was a dedicated, effective teacher and a careful scholar full of curiosity. Thanks to him, I have translated all the ancient texts in this article unless otherwise noted. 1  For a discussion of the twelve-hour day and the four-watch night, see Troy W. Martin, “Time and Money in Translation: A Comparison of the Revised Standard Version and the New Revised Standard Version,” BR 38 (1993): 55–73, here 60–69. On time-keeping in general, see idem, “Pagan and Judeo-Christian Time-Keeping Schemes in Gal 4.10 and Col 2.16,” NTS 42 (1996): 105–119; and idem, By Philosophy and Empty Deceit: Colossians as Response to a Cynic Critique, JSNTSup 118 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 124–134. 2  Samuel Krauss, Talmudische Archäologie, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Gustav Fock, 1910–1912), 2:420. 3  Hermann L. Strack and Paul Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch, 6 vols. (München: C. H. Beck, 1922–1961), 1:689. 4  Erich Klostermann, Das Markusevangelium, 4th ed., HNT 3 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1950), 139. 5 Rudolf Pesch, Das Markusevangelium: II Teil Kommentar zu Kap. 8,27–16,20, HThKNT 2.2 (Freiburg: Herder, 1977), 315.

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the names of the watches in Mark 13:35 assume that these names are common Greco-Roman designations for the watches. English scholars concur with this assumption. Relying upon Friedrich Blass, both James H. Moulton and Wilbert F. Howard describe Roostercrow as “vulgar” speech.6 Henry B. Swete calls the names in Mark 13:35 “popular equivalents” to the numbered watches that are “not to be too strictly interpreted.”7 Robert H. Gundry states that the Jews originally had three night watches in contrast to the four watches of the Romans and concludes that Mark 13:35 “substitutes Roman watches for Jewish ones.”8 Likewise, Vincent Taylor comments that the temporal expressions in Mark are “popular in character” and “correspond to Roman usage.”9 Clearly, both German and English scholars agree that Evening, Midnight, Roostercrow, and Morning are common popular Greco-Roman names for the four night watches.

2. Greek and Roman Usage The evidence, however, challenges the validity of this assumption. Greek and Roman authors use numbers rather than these names to designate the night watches.10 The lexicons rarely specifically attest “night watch” as a meaning for these names, and when they do, they cite only Mark 13:35 as an example.11 A Pandora search of each of these names within four lines of φυλα‑ on the TLG D Disk identifies no authors who place these names in any syntactical relationship to the word watch (φυλακή). This search cautions against supplying φυλακή to ἡ ἀλεκτοροφωνία to mean night watch as Blass does.12 Greek and Roman authors avoid adding the word watch to specify these names as watches. Instead of night watches, Greek and Roman authors use these names as less structured temporal references. Evening (ὀψέ) indicates a time “late in the day” in contrast to Morning (πρωΐ ), the early portion of the day.13 Midnight (μεσονύκτιον) is the  6 James H. Moulton and Wilbert F. Howard, Accidence and Word-Formation with an Appendix on Semitisms in the New Testament, vol. 2 of A Grammar of New Testament Greek (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986), 271.  7  Henry B. Swete, The Gospel According to St Mark: The Greek Text with Introduction and Notes, 3rd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1909), 318.  8  Robert H. Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 797.  9  Vincent. Taylor, The Gospel According to St Mark: The Greek Text with Introduction, Notes, Indexes, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1966), 524. 10  C. H. Mayo, “St. Peter’s Token of the Cock Crow,” JTS 22 (1921): 367–370, here 368. 11  LSJ do not specify the meaning night watch for any of these four names. The BDF lexicon only attests night watch as a meaning for Morning (πρωΐ ) and Roostercrow (ἀλεκτοροφωνία) but not for Evening (ὀψέ) or Midnight (μεσονύκτιον). 12  BDF § 123.1. 13  BAG s. v. ὀψέ and πρωΐ.

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time when the sun reaches the midpoint of its night journey, and Roostercrow (ἀλεκτοροφωνία) is the time when roosters crow. The use of these names as less structured temporal references contrasts with the more specific interpretation of these names in Mark 13:35 as watches, which divide the night into four equal segments. The occurrences of Roostercrow in Greek and Roman authors amply illustrate this contrast. In all Greek literature to the sixth century CE, roostercrow (ἀλεκτοροφωνία) occurs in only two non-Jewish or non-Christian passages.14 Strabo uses the term to describe Mt. Athos: Mt. Athos is breast-shaped, has a very sharp crest, and is very high, since those who live on the crest see the sun rise three hours before it rises on the seaboard. … Mt Athos is … so high that on its crests the sun is up and the people are weary of ploughing by the time cock-crow begins (ἡνίκα ἀλεκτοροφωνίας ἀρχή) among the people who live on the shore. (Geogr. Fr. 7.33, 35 [Jones, LCL])

Horace L. Jones includes a note in his translation that identifies ἀλεκτοροφωνία as “the third watch of the night.”15 The third watch of the night, however, begins around 12:00 midnight, and the crest-dwellers of Mt. Athos would not be plowing before this time. Instead, Strabo’s description associates ἀλεκτοροφωνία with the sunrise. Strabo says that the crest-dwellers experience ἀλεκτοροφωνία three hours before the shore-dwellers. Therefore, they are up and tired of plowing before the rooster hails the break of day for the shore-dwellers. Strabo’s use of the term ἀλεκτοροφωνία refers not to the third watch but to the breaking light of early morn when roosters crow. The other occurrence of ἀλεκτοροφωνία demonstrates a similar understanding. Aesop recounts the fable of an industrious widow who had several handmaids (Fab. 55.1.2). The handmaids erroneously blamed the rooster for the widow’s habit of rising to work during the night toward roostercrow (νυκτὸς πρὸς ἀλεκτοροφωνίαν). They killed the rooster, but their action only caused the industrious widow to rise earlier because now she no longer had the rooster to inform her of the time. If Aesop uses ἀλεκτοροφωνία to designate the third watch of the night, the widow would be rising before 12:00 midnight to begin her work. This interpretation is absurd, for the widow would be sleeping very little before and hardly at all after the death of the rooster. Instead of the third watch of the night, ἀλεκτοροφωνία refers to early dawn when roosters crow. Aesop says that the widow arose just before this time until her handmaids killed the rooster and then she arose much earlier. 14 The results of a search of ἀλεκτοροφωνία on the TLG D Disk yielded 13 occurrences of this word outside the NT: eight in Origen’s works, two in Macarius’ Ser., two in Aesop’s Fab. 55.1.2, and one in Strabo’s Geogr. Fr. 7.33, 35. 15  Horace L. Jones, The Geography of Strabo, 8 vols., LCL (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 3:357 n. 1.

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The Greco-Roman world was well aware of the early morning crowing of roosters. In Lucian’s farcical dialogue, Micyllus exclaims to his rooster, who is a reincarnation of Pythagoras, “When you notice that the sun is about to come up, you raise your voice far in advance and give warning of his rising” (Gall. 1 [Harmon, LCL]). One of Aristophanes’ characters calls the rooster a κῆρυξ for its ability to herald the dawn (Eccl. 30–31). Athena complains to Zeus that she could not sleep because the frogs croaked all night until the rooster crowed (Homer, Batrachomyomachia 191–192 [Evelyn-White, LCL]). These texts associate roosters’ crowing with the fourth watch when humans awake to go about their business.16 Pliny the Elder also associates the crowing of roosters with the fourth rather than the third watch of the night: Nearly equally proud and self-conscious are also our Roman night-watchmen, a breed designed by nature for the purpose of awakening mortals for their labors and interrupting sleep. They … at the fourth camp-watch recall us to our business and our labour and do not allow the sunrise to creep upon us unawares, but herald the coming of day with song. (Nat. 10.24.46 [Rackham, LCL])17

A late Greek text confirms Pliny’s association: ὄρθρος μὲν γάρ ἐστιν ἡ ὥρα τῆς νυκτός, καθ’ ἣν ἀλεκτρυόνες ᾄδουσιν, ἄρχεται δὲ ἐνάτης ὥρας καὶ τελευτᾷ εἰς διαγελῶσαν ἡμέραν (“For pre-dawn is the period of the night during which roosters crow, and it begins during the ninth hour of the night and ends at sunrise”).18 Thus, Pliny the Elder and other authors confirm that Greco-Roman culture associates the crowing of roosters with the fourth watch or predawn rather than the third watch of the night. These occurrences of Roostercrow amply illustrate how Greek and Roman authors use the names mentioned in Mark 13:35 as temporal references less structured than night watches. According to Greco-Roman practice, these watches are numbered rather than named. The only exception to the numbering system is the fourth watch, which is sometimes called ἡ ἑωθινὴ φυλακή.19 Authors who name the fourth watch still number the other watches first, second, and third.20 Even the name ἑωθινή for the fourth watch demonstrates that πρωΐ is not a common Greco-Roman designation for this watch. Thus, the way Greek  See also Aristophanes, Av. 488–490 (Henderson, LCL).  See Gustav Bilfinger, Die antiken Stundenangaben (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1888), 48–49. 18  The text is that of Immanuel Bekker, Anecdota Graeca, 3 vols. (Berlin: Nauck, 1814–1821), 1:54. Cited by Bilfinger, Stundenangaben, 49. The English translation is my own. 19 Appian, Syr. 118.2; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ant. rom. 3.56.1; Plutarch, Pomp. 68.3 (Vit. 655); Caes. 43.6 (Vit. 547); Arat. 7.5 (Vit. 1030); Polybius, Hist. 3.67.2; cf. Exod 14:24 LXX; and Jdt 12:5. See Bilfinger, Stundenangaben, 48–49. 20  Diodorus Siculus, for example, names the fourth watch ἡ ἑωθινὴ φυλακή (Hist. 15.84.1; 17.56.1; 19.93.2; 19.95.3) but refers to the other watches as first (3.48.1; 13.47.2; 13.111.1; 19.32.2; 19.38.3; 19.96.4), second (14.24.5; 17.68.7; 18.40.3; 19.26.1; 20.96.4; 20.98.5), and third (19.95.5). 16 17

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and Roman authors use the names mentioned in Mark 13:35 as well as their numbering of the watches challenges the validity of the assumption that these names are common popular Greco-Roman designations for the night watches. Further evidence also challenges this assumption. The names of the Midnight and Roostercrow watches are anomalies in the four-watch Roman system. In this system, the Midnight watch refers to the second quarter of the night from about 9:00 p.m. to 12:00 midnight. This watch does not occur in the middle of the night but in the first half of the night as some of the rabbis correctly perceive.21 This anomaly indicates that μεσονύκτιον (“Midnight”) is not an original GrecoRoman name for this watch, and this inept name never succeeds with Greek and Roman authors. Similarly, the name ἀλεκτοροφωνία (“Roostercrow”) is anomalous in the fourwatch Roman system since it designates the third watch of the night from about 12:00 midnight to 3:00 a.m., when roosters do not crow. Hans Kosmala tries to resolve this anomaly by testifying that during his visit to Jerusalem, he heard roosters’ crowing at 12:30 a.m., 1:30 a.m., and 2:30 a.m.22 Kosmala’s explanation is problematic. Even if roosters crow in the middle of the night in modern Jerusalem with its electric lighting, it does not follow that ancient roosters had the same practice. If a rooster were to crow just after midnight, such a confused rooster would likely encounter the same fate as Micyllus’ rooster in Lucian’s farcical dialogue. After his rooster’s surprise crowing just after dark, Micyllus threatens, “I’ll pay you back, never fear, as soon as it is daylight, by whacking the life out of you with my stick” (Lucian, Gall. 1 [Harmon, LCL]).23 In spite of Kosmala’s testimony, it is unlikely that roosters crow just after midnight. If they do, Aristophanes could not call them “heralds of the dawn” (Eccl. 30–31). The evidence, therefore, refutes the assumption of German and English scholars that the names in Mark 13:35 are common popular Greco-Roman designations for the night watches.

21 The

rabbis discuss whether the night has three or four watches (b. Ber. 3b).  Hans Kosmala, “The Time of the Cock-Crow,” ASTI 2 (1963): 118–120. See also idem, “The Time of Cock-Crow [II],” ASTI 6 (1968): 132–134, here 132. 23 Mayo mentions the blowing of the buccina to mark the transition from one watch to another and proposes that the blast at the end of the third watch was popularly called the Gallicinium to which Jesus’ prediction refers (“St. Peter’s Token,” 367–370). The only supporting text Mayo cites is Apuleius’ Metam. 8.1, and this text more likely mentions the crowing of a rooster rather than the blast of a horn, and a horn blast is not given as a meaning for Gallicinium in The Oxford Latin Dictionary. Bilfinger labels each of the horn blasts that separated the night into four parts a Hahnenschrei but cites no textual support for such a labeling (Stundenangaben, 65). 22

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F. Early Christian Eschatology

3. Night Watches or General Temporal References? One is led to ask, then, whether these names in Mark 13:35 refer to the night watches at all. These names could simply be less structured temporal references, as they are in Greek and Roman authors. Several considerations, however, confirm these names as designations for the night watches in the pre-Markan tradition even though the final redactor(s) of Mark fails to recognize them as such. First, the immediate context of Mark 13:35 relates the names in this verse to the night. The Son of man will come during a period of darkness (Mark 13:24– 25) when humans are prone to sleep (13:36). Jesus exhorts his followers to watch and be alert for the arrival of the master of the house (13:34–37). Even though the language is figurative, the period of darkness when humans are prone to sleep most aptly describes the night, the time when extra vigilance is needed. Thus, the immediate context of Mark 13:35 relates these names to the period of night. Second, the early Christian description of a nocturnal parousia also associates the names in Mark 13:35 with the night and more specifically with the watches.24 The traditional metaphor of the thief related to the parousia suggests a nocturnal parousia (Rev 3:3; 16:15). Warning that the Lord will return as a thief in the night, Paul exhorts the Thessalonians not to sleep but to keep awake and be sober (1 Thess 5:2, 6: cf. Rom 13:11–14; Eph 5:14). According to the Q tradition, the thief might arrive during any one of the night watches (Q 12:39–40/Matt 24:43).25 The Lukan version of Q 17:34 likewise envisions a nocturnal parousia and does not specify which watch when it records Jesus as saying, “On that night, two humans 24  For a discussion of whether this articulation of a nocturnal parousia is metaphorical or literal, see Alfons Weiser, Die Knechtsgleichnisse der synoptischen Evangelien, SANT 29 (Munich: Kösel, 1971), 156–158. Jan Lambrecht says, “Der Redaktor denkt vom Bild einer nächtlichen Heimkehr her (vgl. ἀγρυπνεῖτε v. 33). In keinem Fall rät es sich, diese Ausdrücke allegorisch zu deuten” (Die Redaktion der Markus-Apokalypse: Literarische Analyse und Strukturuntersuchung, AnBib 28 [Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1967], 246). After investigating the evidence, Victoria Balabanski concludes, “The reference to the thief metaphor and to the need to keep awake do form a constellation of ideas which attest the tradition of a nocturnal parousia” (Eschatology in the Making: Mark, Matthew and the Didache, SNTSMS 97 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997], 32 n. 25). However, Matthew’s two men in the field (Matt 24:40) instead of Luke’s two humans in the bed (Luke 17:34) at the parousia suggests the possibility of a diurnal parousia and warns against interpreting the nocturnal metaphors too literally. Whether metaphorical or not, the articulation of a nocturnal parousia associates the names in Mark 13:35 with the night watches. 25  The Matthean version (Matt 24:43) has ποίᾳ φυλακῇ and indicates that the ποίᾳ ὥρᾳ of the Lukan version (Luke 12:39) refers to the periods of the night. Furthermore, every reference or allusion to the parousia in Luke assumes a nocturnal parousia (Luke 12:35–38; 17:34). John S. Kloppenborg and others accept the Matthean rather than the Lukan version as original to Q (Q Thomas Reader [Sonoma, CA: Polebridge, 1990], 62). James M. Robinson and others do the same (The Critical Edition of Q: Synopsis including the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Mark and Thomas with English, German, and French Translations of Q and Thomas [Leuven: Peeters, 2000], 360–361).

XX. Watch During the Watches (Mark 13:35)

423

shall be sleeping upon one bed. One human shall be taken and the other human left” (Luke 17:34). In the special Matthean material, however, the bridegroom in the parable of the Ten Virgins comes in the middle of the night (μέσης νυκτός; Matt 25:6).26 Mark’s account of Jesus’ walking on the water encourages Mark’s suffering community to hope in the parousia and associates Jesus’ arrival with the fourth watch of the night (Mark 6:45–52; cf. Matt 14:25).27 This early Christian description of a nocturnal parousia associates the names mentioned in Mark 13:35 with the four night watches. Third, the traditional material most closely related to Mark’s parable of the Porter specifies the return of the master of the house during the night watches. The parable of the Watching Servants in Luke 12:35–38 warns that the master of the house might return from the wedding feast in the second or third watch and exhorts his servants to keep their lamps burning and stay awake. Jacques Dupont reasons that the same original parable lies behind both the Markan and Lukan redactions.28 Even though these redactions alter various features of the original parable, they do not change the original idea of the master’s return during the night watches.29 Hence, Dupont reasonably concludes that the names in Mark 13:35 designate the watches.30 26  Amand Puig i Tàrrech restricts μέσης νυκτός too narrowly to “exactement au milieu de la nuit” (La Parabole des Dix Vierges (Mt 25, 1–13), AnBib 102 [Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1983], 60–63). Others such as Balabanski unnecessarily limit μέσης νυκτός to the Midnight watch (Eschatology, 32–33). This temporal phrase encompasses the second and third watches in a four-watch system and thus includes a period of about six hours. The second and third watches in Luke 12:38 correspond to Matthew’s μέσης νυκτός and articulate an expectation of the parousia during one of these two watches. 27 Martin Hengel, Studies in the Gospel of Mark (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 41; Robert M. Fowler, Let the Reader Understand: Reader-Response Criticism and the Gospel of Mark (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 85–87. Dwight N. Peterson surveys and criticizes such reconstructions of the Markan community (The Origins of Mark: The Markan Community in Current Debate, BibInt 48 [Leiden: Brill, 2000], passim). 28  Jacques Dupont, “La Parabole du Maître qui Rentre dans la Nuit (Mc 13, 34–36),” in Mélanges Bibliques en Hommage au B. Rigaux, ed. A. Descamps and A. de Halleux (Gembloux: Duculot, 1970), 89–116, here 106. 29  Of course, the precise shape of this parable of the Porter in the pre-Markan tradition is debatable, but almost everyone identifies the elements of application as redactional. See Weiser, Knechtsgleichnisse, 142–175; and Vernon K. Robbins, “Summons and Outline in Mark: The Three-Step Progression,” in The Composition of Mark’s Gospel: Selected Studies from Novum Testamentum, ed. David E. Orton, Brill’s Readers in Biblical Studies 3 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 103– 120, here 117. For an alternative view, see Edwin K. Broadhead, Prophet, Son, Messiah: Narrative Form and Function in Mark 14–16, JSNTSup 97 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994), 149 n. 3. E. J. Pryke lists scholars who think Mark 13:33, 34a, 35a, and 37 are redactional (Redactional Style in the Marcan Gospel: A Study of Syntax and Vocabulary as Guides to Redaction in Mark, SNTSMS 33 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978], 21, 146, 171). Charles B. Cousar’s limitation of the pre-Markan parable to v. 34 is too narrow, for the names of the watches in Mark 13:35 are also traditional as Mark’s failure to understand the Roostercrow watch in the passion narrative demonstrates (“Eschatology and Mark’s Theologia Crucis: A Critical Analysis of Mark 13,” Int 24 [1970]: 321–335, here 332). Rudolf Pesch’s argument that these names are redactional be-

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F. Early Christian Eschatology

Finally, the temporal structure of the passion narrative demonstrates that the names in Mark 13:35 designate the night watches in the pre-Markan tradition. Robert H. Lightfoot argues that the four watches as named in Mark 13:35 provide the structure for the passion narrative. He notes that during the Evening watch, Jesus celebrates the Passover meal with his disciples (Mark 14:17). The events and arrest in Gethsemane occupy the Midnight watch, which is not specifically mentioned in the narrative. Nevertheless, Peter denies Jesus in this watch just before the Roostercrow watch (Mark 14:72). In the Morning watch, the council convenes and delivers Jesus to Pilate (Mark 15:1). Lightfoot comments, “It is very noticeable that in the Passion narrative of this gospel the last hours of the Lord’s life are reckoned at three-hour intervals which is also the method adopted in 13:35.”31 This temporal structure of the passion narrative, the original form of the parable of the Porter, the early Christian articulation of a nocturnal parousia, and the immediate context of Mark 13 demonstrate that Evening, Midnight, Roostercrow, and Morning name the four night watches in the pre-Markan tradition.

4. The Jerusalem Provenance of Night-Watch Designations Since the names for the watches in Mark 13:35 do not originate among the Greeks and Romans, the issue of their provenance arises. The context of Mark 13:35 places these names in the area of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. The entire discourse in Mark 13 arises from a disciple’s request for Jesus to consider the temple buildings (13:1). Jesus responds with an oracle of the temple’s destruction (13:2). As they sit on the Mount of Olives in view of the temple, other disciples ask Jesus to explain when these events would occur. In his response, Jesus explicitly warns those in Judea to flee to the mountains (13:14). At the end of the discourse, Jesus relates the parable of the Porter (Mark 13:34–36) in which several intertextual echoes such as κύριος, οἰκίας, ἔρχεται, ἐλθών, and ἐξαίφνης recall Mal 3:1 LXX, “The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.” Malachi 3:10 specause they occur in the passion narrative fails to recognize the redactional misunderstanding of the Roostercrow watch in this narrative (Naherwartungen: Tradition und Redaktion in Mk 13, KBANT [Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1968], 201). Pesch later changed his mind and in his commentary included Mark 13:35–36 along with v. 34 in the pre-Markan tradition (“Markus 13,” in L’Apocalypse johannique et l’Apocalyptique dans le Nouveau Testament, ed. Jan Lambrecht, BETL 53 [Louvain: Louvain University Press, 1980], 355–368, here 356–357). 30  Dupont, “Parabole,” 106 n. 1. Dupont, however, incorrectly identifies the temporal reference in Luke 12:38 as Palestinian and the one in Mark 13:35 as Roman. The use of numbers in Luke 12:38 and names in Mark 13:35 to designate the watches indicates the reverse is more likely. 31 Robert H. Lightfoot, The Gospel Message of St. Mark (Oxford: Clarendon, 1950), 53. Donald Senior concurs with Lightfoot (The Passion of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, The Passion Series 2 [Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1984], 39). For evidence connecting the whole of Mark 13 with the passion narrative, see Balabanski, Eschatology, 66–69; and Francis Dewar, “Chapter 13 and the Passion Narrative in St. Mark,” Theology 64 (1961): 99–107.

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cifically identifies this temple with the Lord’s house. Thus, this parable forms an inclusio with Mark 13:1–3; the discourse begins and ends with reference to the Jewish temple.32 Even though this parable shifts the focus from the house of the Lord in vv. 1–3 to the Lord of the house, it nevertheless associates the names in Mark 13:35 with the temple in Jerusalem as does the entire context of the discourse in Mark 13.33 The term ὀψέ as a designation for the Evening watch also connects the names in Mark 13:35 with Jerusalem and the temple. When referring to evening, both Matthew (8:16; 14:15, 23; 16:2; 20:8; 26:20; 27:57) and Mark (1:32; 4:35; 6:47; 14:17; 15:42) prefer ὀψία to ὀψέ. Nevertheless, ὀψέ occurs occasionally in Matthew and Mark. In the thoroughly Jewish temporal expression in Matt 28:1, ὀψέ refers to the Evening of the Sabbath when the women come to Jesus’ tomb. Of course, the scene of this pericope is Jerusalem. Mark also uses ὀψέ as a temporal reference in scenes located in Jerusalem and more specifically in the temple. Mark 11:19 reports that after Jesus’ action in the temple, he departed and went outside the city when Evening (ὀψέ) came. If the variant ὀψέ is read in Mark 11:11, Mark refers yet again to Jesus’ leaving Jerusalem and the temple at this time.34 The other occurrence of ὀψέ in Mark is in 13:35 in the context of the temple. Matthew and Mark’s use of this designation only in scenes depicting Jerusalem and the temple connects ὀψέ and by association the other names in Mark 13:35 with the environs of Jerusalem. The anomalies created by the terms Midnight and Roostercrow in a fourwatch system are explained if they are caused by the shift from three Jewish night watches to the four-watch Roman system.35 In the three-watch system, the  Étienne Trocmé asserts, “Mark certainly used Palestinian traditions formed at a very early date for the … two parables in Mark 13” (The Formation of the Gospel according to Mark [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975], 43). The present investigation supports Trocmé’s assertion at least for the parable of the Porter. 33  Even though the Jerusalem temple provides the inscribed context of Mark 13, it does not provide the implied context of this chapter. Balabanski argues that ἐν τῇ Ἰουδαίᾳ in Mark 13:14 is a redactional addition locating the implied audience outside Judea (Eschatology, 90). David E. Aune’s identification of this entire discourse as a Greco-Roman tempeldialog also suggests an implied context that transcends the temple in Jerusalem (Prophecy in Early Christianity and the Ancient Mediterranean World [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983], 184–187). See also Vernon K. Robbins, Jesus the Teacher: A Socio-Rhetorical Interpretation of Mark (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 178–179. 34  Markan usage suggests that ὀψέ is traditional in material associated with Jerusalem and the temple whereas ὀψία reflects redaction. The use of οὔσης in the temporal phrase of Mark 11:11 indicates that this phrase belongs to the tradition since Mark elsewhere always uses γενομένης (8:16; 14:15, 23; 16:2). The ὀψέ of ‫ א‬and Origen is more difficult syntactically and probably preserves the traditional form of this temporal phrase while the ὀψίας of other manuscripts is less difficult since it resolves the syntactical difficulty and conforms to Markan practice. 35  Jewish texts such as Judg 7:19 and Jub. 49:10–12, which were written before Roman power extended to Palestine, presuppose a threefold division of the night. Those written later such as 32

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F. Early Christian Eschatology

middle watch from about 10:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. lies midway through the night, and Midnight (μεσονύκτιον) is an apt name for this watch (cf. Judg 7:19). When a fourth watch is added, however, the Midnight watch is relegated to the first half of the night and no longer occupies its former middle position. In the Jewish three-watch system, roosters crow in the third watch from 2:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m., and Roostercrow is an apt name for this watch. The addition of a fourth watch, however, relegates the third watch to a time from 12:00 midnight to 3:00 a.m., when roosters do not crow, and the name, although retained, is no longer apropos. These anomalies indicate that Midnight and Roostercrow are most likely relics of the old Jewish three-watch system with the Morning watch added for congruence with the Roman four-watch system. Several texts substantiate a Jewish provenance for the names in Mark 13:35. The adjective form of πρωΐ (πρωινή or πρωΐα) modifying φυλακή occurs only in Jewish and Christian materials and suggests that this name arises in a Jewish rather than a Roman context.36 The designation of the third watch as Roostercrow and the second as Midnight as well as the mention of an earlier watch occurs in m. Yoma 1:8: ‫פּוּרם ֵמ ֲחצוֹת‬ ִ ‫יאת ַהגֶּ ֶבר אוֹ ָסמוְּך ְלוֹ ֵבּין ְל ָפנָ יו ֵבּין ְל ַא ֲח ָריו׃ בּיוֹם ֵה ִכּ‬ ַ ‫בּק ִר‬ ְ ‫תּוֹר ִמין ֶאת ַה ִמּזְ ֵבּ ַח‬ ְ ‫ְבּ ָכל יוֹם‬ ‫יְתה ָה ֲעזָ ָרה ְמ ֵל ָאה ִמיִּ ְשׂ ָר ֵאל׃‬ ָ ‫יאת ַהגֶּ ֶבר ַמגַּ ַעת ַעד ֶשׁ ָח‬ ַ ‫יִתה ְ ִק ִר‬ ָ ‫מוּרה ָה ִראשׁוֹנָ ה׃ וְ לֹא ָה‬ ָ ‫וּב ְרגָ ִלים ֵמ ַא ְשׁ‬ ָ Every day they used to remove the ashes from off the Altar at cock-crow, or near to it, either before it or after it; but on the Day of Atonement [they did so] at midnight, and on the Feast at the first watch. And before the [time of ] cock-crow drew near the Temple Court was filled with Israelites.37

Beginning with the Roostercrow watch, which is the usual time for the removal of the ashes, this text stipulates an earlier removal of the ashes on the Day of Atonement and an even earlier removal at the Feast. The mention of midnight (‫ )חצות‬as a time during the night earlier than Roostercrow (‫ )קריאת הגבר‬and of Mark 6:48//Matt 14:25 and Josephus A. J. 18.9.6 (356) and B. J. 5.12.2 (510–511) reflect a fourfold division of the night. The differing perspectives within such texts prompt the subsequent discussion among the rabbis about whether the night has three or four watches. See b. Ber. 3b. 36  A Pandora search of the TLG D Disk with the parameters πρωι‑ within four lines of φυλακ‑ identifies only Jewish and Christian occurrences such as 1 Sam 11:11 LXX; Ps 129:6 LXX; Athanasius, Expositiones in Psalmos (PG 27:520); John Chrysostom, Expositiones in Psalmos (PG 55:376) and Fragmenta in Proverbia (PG 64:668); and Origen, Selecta in Psalmos (PG 12:1649). Theodoretus states, φυλακὴ γὰρ πρωΐα ἡ τελευταία ὥρα τῆς νυκτός (“For the morning watch is the final period of the night;” Interpretatio in Psalmos [PG 80:1901]). 37 Chanoch Albeck, ‫סדר מועד‬, vol. 2 of ‫( ששה סדרי משנה‬Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1988), 225; Herbert Danby, The Mishnah: Translated from the Hebrew with Introduction and Brief Explanatory Notes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933), 163. I have used Danby’s translation rather than Jacob Neusner’s (The Mishnah: A New Translation [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988], 266) because Danby’s translation of the two occurrences of ‫קריאת הגבר‬ in this passage does not replicate the confusion of the Roostercrow watch with an actual rooster’s crowing.

XX. Watch During the Watches (Mark 13:35)

427

the initial watch (‫ )אשמורה הראשונה‬of the night as earlier than either of these two indicates that this passage refers to the watches of the night.38 Jewish texts, therefore, such as m. Yoma 1:8 use the names in Mark 13:35 to designate the watches of the night. A textual variant in the Palestinian and Babylonian versions of m. Yoma 1:8 even replicates the shift in Mark’s Gospel from the singular Roostercrow as a watch of the night (Mark 13:35) to the plural of a rooster’s crowing twice during Peter’s denial (Mark 14:30, 72). The Palestinian version of m. Yoma 1:8 contains the plural construct ‫ קרות הגבר‬whereas the Babylonian version contains the singular construct ‫קריאת הגבר‬. The plural construct “crowings of the rooster” changes the meaning of Roostercrow from a watch of the night to an actual rooster’s crowing. Even though Johannes Meinhold prefers the plural, the singular is more congruent with the context.39 The removal of the ashes at the Midnight watch on the Day of Atonement concludes the sacrifice. Israelites are more likely to fill the Temple Court during the sacrificial process in the Evening and Midnight watches preceding the Roostercrow watch than in the early morning before a rooster crows when nothing is happening. Even though the Babylonian version contains the better reading, its Gemara (b. Yoma 20b) on this passage reveals a complete loss of the conception of Roostercrow as a watch of the night by the third century. A dispute between R. Shila and Rab arises over the definition of Roostercrow (‫)קריאת הגבר‬. Rab insists that it means the “call of a man” (‫ )קרא גברא‬while R. Shila tenaciously asserts it means the “call of a rooster” (‫)קרא תרנגולא‬. The dual meaning of ‫ גבר‬as either a man or a rooster forms the semantic basis for this dispute in which neither participant correctly recognizes ‫ קריאת הגבר‬as a night-watch. Both the presence and the misunderstanding of Roostercrow in these Jewish texts indicate that these names for night watches represent Jewish practice. More specifically, these Jewish texts locate these names in the environs of Jerusalem by linking the Evening, Midnight, and Roostercrow watches to the temple cult prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Jews and others outside these environs as well as Jews of a later time mistake the night watch designation Roostercrow for an actual rooster’s crowing. This misunderstanding of Roostercrow by those separated geographically from Jerusalem and temporally from the first century limits the provenance of this name and probably the other names in Mark 13:35 38 Johannes Meinhold asserts, “Es ist doch wohl anzunehmen, daß die Nachtwache hier nach der jüdischen Rechnung als 1/3 und nicht nach der römischen auch später von den Juden übernommenen als 1/4 der Nacht zu nehmen ist” (Joma (Der Versöhnungstag): Text, Übersetzung und Eklärung nebst einem textkritischen Anhang, vol. 2.5 of Die Mischna, ed. G. Beer and O. Holtzmann [Gießen:Töpelmann, 1913], 35). Friedrich Avemarie observes that the passage makes sense with either a three or four watch system (Yoma Versöhnungstag, vol. 2.4 of Übersetzung des Talmud Yerushalmi [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995], 36 n. 280). 39  Meinhold, Joma, 34. See pp. 74–75 for his text-critical evidence.

428

F. Early Christian Eschatology

as well to Jews in the environs of Jerusalem during the Second Temple period.40 Furthermore, the addition of Morning as the fourth watch specifies that the names as they appear in Mark 13:35 are from the Roman era of the Second Temple Period when Jewish practice shifted from three to four night watches.

5. Redactional Implications Following Willi Marxsen’s emphasis on Mark 13 in his study of Mark, several redactional studies of this chapter have appeared.41 All of these studies, however, assume that the names in Mark 13:35 are common Greco-Roman designations of the night watches.42 The present investigation challenges this assumption and concludes that these names most likely designate the night watches in Jerusalem prior to the destruction of the temple in 70 CE. This conclusion has implications for the redactional study not only of Mark 13 but also of the passion narrative. The primary problem of Markan redaction is separating the tradition from the redaction.43 The similarity of other parousia parables (Luke 12:35–46; 19:12– 27 and Matt 24:42–51; 25:13–30) to Mark’s parable of the Porter (Mark 13:34– 36) suggests – and the names of the watches in Mark 13:35 confirm – that this 40  This conclusion discounts Allan J. McNicol’s contention that Mark has used Matthew as a “repository of the Palestinian material” (“The Composition of the Synoptic Eschatological Discourse,” in The Interrelations of the Gospels: A Symposium Led by M.-É. Boismard, W. R. Farmer, and F. Neirynck, Jerusalem 1984, ed. David L. Dungan, BETL 95 [Louvain: Louvain University Press, 1990], 157–200, here 183, 198). Mark rather than Matthew preserves the Palestinian names of the watches. 41 Willi Marxsen, Mark the Evangelist: Studies on the Redaction History of the Gospel (Nashville: Abingdon, 1969), 151–206. George R. Beasley-Murray summarizes and critiques studies prior to 1993 (Jesus and the Last Days: The Interpretation of the Olivet Discourse [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993], 175–349, 377–475). 42  This assumption induces many to conclude the names are redactional rather than traditional. See Lambrecht, Redaktion, 246, 250; Weiser, Knechtsgleichnisse, 142–143, and F. Flückiger, “Die Redaktion der Zukunftsrede in Mark 13,” TZ 26 (1970): 395–409, here 408. Considering parousia parables, however, others such as Dupont (“Parabole,” 106) and Egon Brandenburger (Markus 13 und die Apokalyptic, FRLANT 134 [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984], 41, 126, 167) conclude that Mark 13:35b–c is traditional. Cilliers Breytenbach thinks that Mark 13:35 is traditional but that the extent of Markan redaction remains open (Nachfolge und Zukunftserwartung nach Markus: Eine methodenkritische Studie, ATANT 71 [Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1984], 303–304). The present study demonstrates that at least the names for the watches are traditional rather than redactional. 43  Jack D. Kingsbury, “The Gospel of Mark in Current Research,” RelSRev 5 (1979): 101– 107, here 104. Robert H. Stein describes twelve redactional criteria that require the ability to distinguish tradition from Markan redaction (“The Proper Methodology for Ascertaining a Markan Redaction History,” in Orton, Composition, 34–84, here 34–51). To these twelve criteria, C. C. Black adds two more (The Disciples according to Mark: Markan Redaction in Current Debate, JSNTSup 27 [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989], 36–37; cf. 266, n. 64). The present redactional argument that Mark’s misunderstanding of a cultural phenomenon distinguishes tradition from redaction does not precisely conform to any of these fourteen criteria.

XX. Watch During the Watches (Mark 13:35)

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parable belongs to the pre-Markan tradition since neither Mark nor any of the other evangelists understands these names as designations of the night watches.44 Their misunderstanding indicates that the pre-Markan tradition connects this parable to the passion narrative and uses the names of the watches in Mark 13:35 to structure this narrative.45 The evangelists’ misunderstanding is most evident in their handling of the Roostercrow watch in the pre-Markan tradition of Jesus’ prediction of Peter’s denial and of the actual denial itself. In the pre-Markan tradition, Jesus’ prediction of Peter’s denial either mentions the Roostercrow watch or an actual rooster’s crowing. Internal evidence favors the former over the latter. Accordingly, Jesus predicts that before the Roostercrow watch, Peter would deny him three times. Ernst Lohmeyer argues that the other temporal references in the immediate context of Jesus’ prediction support this understanding.46 The inclusion of “today” (σήμερον; Mark 14:30; Luke 22:34, 61) and “in this night” (ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ νυκτί; Mark 14:30; Matt 26:34) with “before Rooster crow watch” (πρὶν ἀλεκτοροφωνίας) marks movement from the longest span of time to the shortest.47 “Today” designates approximately a 22-hour period 44 For

the parallels, see John S. Kloppenborg, Q Parallels: Synopsis, Critical Notes, and Concordance, FF Reference Series (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge, 1988), 138–139, 196–201. Harry T. Fleddermann argues that Mark 13:35 is secondary to the more general reference to “hour” in Q 12:40 (Mark and Q: A Study of the Overlap Texts, BETL 122 [Louvain: Louvain University Press, 1995], 206–208). The present study indicates that the reverse is more likely. For a discussion of how this “Q” material relates to Mark 13:34–36, see Balabanski, Eschatology, 81; BeasleyMurray, Jesus, 470–471; Dupont, “Parabole,” 97–98; Weiser, Knechtsgleichnisse, 174–175); and David Wenham, The Rediscovery of Jesus’ Eschatological Discourse, vol. 4 of Gospel Perspectives (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1984), 15–100. 45 The use of the night watches in Mark 13:35 to structure the passion narrative demonstrates that this structure is prior to the redaction that misunderstands the Roostercrow watch for an actual rooster’s crowing. In the debate about whether the passion narrative is a pre-Markan tradition or a Markan creation, the names of the watches in Mark 13:35 favor the former over the latter without precluding Markan redaction. For a discussion of the issues, see William R. Telford, Mark, NTG (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 55–56; and Thomas Söding, “Der Evangelist in seiner Zeit,” in Der Evangelist als Theologe: Studien zum Markusevangelium, ed. idem, SBS 163 (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1995), 11–62, here 35–38. For a list of scholars on both sides of this debate, see Broadhead, Prophet, 12 n. 1 and 14 n. 1. 46  Ernst Lohmeyer, Das Evangelium des Markus, 17th ed., KEK 2.1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967), 313. 47  Since the final redactors of these versions do not understand the Jewish transition from one day to the next in the Evening, it is more likely they would delete rather than add these temporal references as the tendency in the manuscript tradition indicates. Several later scribes delete σήμερον from Mark 14:30. This deletion associates these scribes with Roman culture, which began the new day at 12:00 midnight and placed a rooster’s crowing in the early predawn hours. For these scribes, Jesus made His prediction before midnight, and Peter’s denial occurred in the morning just prior to a rooster’s crowing. Accordingly, Jesus did not make His prediction on the same day as Peter’s denial according to the Roman reckoning of the beginning of the new day. Therefore, these scribes consider “today” (σήμερον) as an incorrect time designation and delete it from Jesus’ prediction. Unfortunately, these scribes do not comprehend the original Jewish context of Jesus’ prediction.

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of time from the moment of Jesus’ prediction to the following evening when the first three night lights appear. “In this night,” which ends at sunrise, limits the time period to about 10 hours. “Before Roostercrow watch,” which begins at 12:00 midnight, limits the time period to about 4 hours. According to Lohmeyer, the increasing specificity of these three temporal references intensifies the seriousness of Jesus’ prediction. This intensification only results if Jesus’ prediction refers to the Roostercrow watch and not to an actual rooster’s crowing. Some manuscripts also support a similar understanding of Jesus’ predictions in the pre-Markan tradition. In place of πρὶν ἀλέκτορα φωηῆσαι (“before rooster’s crowing”) in Matt 26:34, 75, a few manuscripts preserve the reading πρὶν ἀλέκτοροφωνίας (“before Roostercrow watch”). The third century P37 and P45 contain this reading in Matt 26:34 as does a fourth century parchment codex from Antinoopolis for Matt 26:75.48 Even though this reading does not have strong external support, Günther Zuntz contends that it nevertheless represents the form of the prediction in Matthew’s original text since it conforms with the Matthean redactional tendency to reduce Markan phrases to a single word.49 Few commentators follow Zuntz in accepting this reading as original with Matthew, but several conclude that this reading actually represents the original form of the tradition, which each of the evangelists misunderstands. W. M. L. de Wette comments on Matt 26:34, “Wenn Jesus diese Worte gesagt hat, so meinte er bloss das Nachtviertheil der ἀλέκτοροφωνία; die Evangg. denken aber dabei an einen wirklichen Hahnenruf.”50 Not only Jesus’ prediction but also the actual account of Peter’s denial in the pre-Markan tradition mentions the Roostercrow watch rather than an actual rooster’s crowing. Kim E. Dewey explains, “The first denial, Peter’s response to the maid (14:68), also appears to be tradition, having no strong evidence of redaction.” In contrast, heavy Markan redactional elements occur in the second and third denials. Dewey concludes, “Mark has created the second and third denials.” Since the rooster’s crowing is connected with Peter’s third denial, she further concludes, “The traditional story has no cockcrow motif.”51 This conclusion that a rooster’s crowing is absent from the pre-Markan tradition of Peter’s 48  Colin H. Roberts, John W. B. Barnes, and Henrik Zilliacus, eds., The Antinoopolis Papyri, 3 vols. (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1960), 1:11. 49  Günther Zuntz, “A Note on Matthew XXVI.34 and XXVI.75,” JTS 50 (1949): 182–183. 50   W. M. L. de Wette, Kurze Erklärung des Evangeliums Matthäi, KEK 1.1 (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1836), 223. Lohmeyer (Markus, 313) and Alfred Plummer (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Luke, 5th ed., ICC [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975], 505) express a similar interpretation in their comments on Jesus’ prediction in Mark 14:30 and Luke 22:34. A majority of commentators, however, favor an actual rooster’s crowing over the Roostercrow watch. See Pesch, Markusevangelium, 2:383; and C. E. B. Cranfield, The Gospel According to Saint Mark: An Introduction and Commentary, CGTC (Cambridge: University Press, 1959), 429. 51  Kim E. Dewey, “Peter’s Curse and Cursed Peter,” in The Passion in Mark, ed. Werner H. Kelber (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), 96–114, here 100–101, 103.

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denial corroborates the other evidence indicating that Jesus’ prediction in the original tradition mentions the Roostercrow watch rather than an actual rooster’s crowing. Neither Mark nor any of the other evangelists, however, recognizes the Roostercrow watch in either Jesus’ prediction or Peter’s denial.52 The prediction occurs twice in each of the Synoptics (Mark 14:30, 72; Matt 26:34, 75; Luke 22:34, 61) and once in John (13:38). Except for the addition of δίς in Mark 14:72, ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ νυκτί in Matt 26:34, and σήμερον in Luke 22:61, all of these versions exhibit exact verbal agreement: πρὶν ἀλέκτορα φωνῆσαι τρὶς ἀπαρνήσῃ με (“Before rooster’s crowing, you will deny me three times”).53 Mark 14:30 incorporates all these additions into the most complete version of the prediction: σὺ σήμερον ταύτῃ τῇ νυκτὶ πρὶν ἢ δὶς ἀλέκτορα φωνῆσαι τρίς με ἀπαρνήσῃ (“Today, in this night, before rooster crowing twice, thrice you will deny me”). Luke 12:34 and John 13:38 further emphasize the rooster’s crowing in Jesus’ prediction. Instead of the Matthean and Markan temporal phrase πρίν with the infinitive, Luke 22:34 substitutes an indicative statement of fact: Πέτρε, οὐ φωνήσει σήμερον ἀλέκτωρ ἕως τρίς με ἀπαρνήσῃ εἰδέναι (“Peter, a rooster will not sound today until you deny three times that you know me”). John 13:38 replaces the temporal phrase with a prohibition: Οὐ μὴ ἀλέκτωρ φωνήσῃ ἕως οὗ ἀρνήσῃ με τρίς (“A rooster will in no wise sound until which time you deny me three times”). Both evangelists move Jesus’ prediction even further than either Mark or Matthew from any possible reference to Roostercrow as the third watch of the night.54 This misunderstanding intensifies in the actual account of the denial itself, for each evangelist reports a rooster’s crowing after Peter’s denial (Mark 14:42; Matt 26:74; Luke 22:60; John 18:27).55 Many manuscripts report a second 52  Jesus’ discourse in Mark 13 plays an important role in the overall narrative. See, Norman R. Petersen, “When is the End not the End? Literary Reflections on the Ending of Mark’s Narrative,” Int 34 (1980): 151–166, here 163–166; idem, “The Reader in the Gospel,” NeoT 18 (1984): 38–51; and Willem S. Vorster, “Literary Reflections on Mark 13:5–37: A Narrated Speech of Jesus,” in The Interpretation of Mark, ed. William R. Telford, 2nd ed., Studies in New Testament Interpretation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995], 269–288). The pre-Markan tradition connects this discourse or at least Mark 13:35 to the passion narrative and uses the night watches to structure this narrative. By substituting a rooster’s crowing for the Roostercrow watch, the final redactor or redactors of Mark’s Gospel fail to understand the structural significance of the night watches and hence are not responsible for this connection of Mark 13:35 and the passion narrative. 53 The word order does vary, however, and δίς probably does not belong to the earliest tradition as recognized by Dewey (“Peter’s Curse,” 104), Mayo (“Peter’s Token,” 369–370), and George D. Kilpatrick (“Some Notes on Marcan Usage,” BT 7 [1956]: 2–9, 51–56, here 51–52). 54  Peter’s recollection of the prediction in Luke is very similar to Matthew’s and Mark’s version of the recollection. Luke 22:61 reads, Πρὶν ἀλέκτορα φωῆσαι σήμερον ἀπαρνήσῃ με τρίς (“Before rooster’s crowing today, you will deny me three times”). 55  Of course, this statement excludes the three manuscripts mentioned above that contain the reading πρὶν ἀλέκτοροφωνίας (“before Roostercrow watch”).

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rooster’s crowing in Mark 14:68. By recognizing Roostercrow as a watch of the night neither in Jesus’ prediction nor in Peter’s denial, Mark and the other evangelists demonstrate that they understand the names in Mark 13:35 as Greeks and Romans and not as first-century Jews familiar with practices in Jerusalem.56 The names of the watches in Mark 13:35 indicate that the pre-Markan tradition of the parable of the Porter and of the passion narrative originate in the environs of Jerusalem during the first century CE.57 Each of the evangelists is a stranger to these environs since each is unfamiliar with these names for the night watches. These redactors use numbers rather than names when designating the night watches (Mark 6:48//Matt 14:25; Luke 12:38) and reshape the material according to their own Greco-Roman understanding of these names as less structured temporal references.58 Their redactions misunderstand the original pre-Markan temporal references and transmit this misunderstanding to their broader GrecoRoman audiences.

6. Conclusion In their assessment of Evening, Midnight, Roostercrow, and Morning, German and English scholars are accurate in some respects but not in others. As designations of the night watches, these names are certainly “Umgangsprache,” colloquial expressions not accepted as “proper” speech in the broader GrecoRoman world. They are also “volkstümlichen Namen,” in that they are ethnic Jewish names. Both Greeks and Romans, if they understand these names at all, no doubt consider them “vulgar” designations of the night watches. However, “populäre Bezeichnungen” of the night watches, they are not. In the end, the evidence refutes the assumption that these names are common Greco-Roman designations for the watches. The names for the night watches in Mark 13:35 are 56  The final Markan redactor’s ignorance of the names of the night watches excludes John Mark of Jerusalem from consideration as the final redactor. However, these names indicate that someone from Jerusalem was responsible for the pre-Markan tradition, and that tradition could have come from John Mark. 57  Beasley-Murray states, “There is good reason, accordingly, to view the core of the parable as an authentic reminiscence of the teaching of Jesus” (Jesus and the Last Days, 471). Although the present study does not conclusively confirm Beasley-Murray’s statement, it does prove that the parable arises from an early tradition associated with Jerusalem. 58  Beasley-Murray and others understand the four names in Mark 13:35 as a later variant of the threefold Jewish division of the night in Luke 12:38 (Jesus and the Last Days, 471). This understanding is problematic. First, Luke mentions the second and third watches of the night, not a threefold division of the night, and Luke’s numbering rather than naming the watches suggests a four-watch Roman system rather than a three-watch Jewish system. Second, the names in Mark 13:35 are not Roman but Jewish. Finally, the second and third watches in Luke 12:38 correspond to Matthew’s middle of the night (Matt 25:6) only if a first precedes and a fourth watch follows. Hence, the temporal scheme in Mark 13:35 is not later than the one in Luke 12:38, and both schemes are four-watch systems.

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neither common nor indigenously Roman. Instead, these names reflect Jewish practice in the environs of Jerusalem during the late Second Temple period, even though the final redactors of Mark and the other canonical Gospels fail to recognize them as such. The use of these names to designate a nocturnal parousia, therefore, date the origins of this tradition before the destruction of the temple and locate this tradition in or around Jerusalem before its subsequent incorporation into the Evangelists’ passion narratives.

7. Reception History The response to this article has generally been positive with some reservations. In a note to his readers, Pierluigi Piovanelli advises, “For the crowing of the cock in the Gospel narratives, see Troy W. Martin, ‘Watch during the Watches (Mark 13:35).’”59 Robert H. Stein also refers his readers to my article and comments: The four temporal periods described in 13:35b … represent the conventional Roman divisions of the twelve hours of night into four quarters or watches of three hours each … cf., however, Martin 2001, who argues that while the fourfold designations reveal a Roman reckoning of the four watches that make up the night, the names given to the four watches are not Roman but Jewish.60

John R. Donahue and Daniel J. Harrington similarly comment, “The Romans divided the night into four periods or watches. But see Troy W. Martin, ‘Watch during the Watches.’”61 These scholars apparently approve of my article even though they do not expressly indicate whether they accept its arguments and conclusions. In contrast, Camille Focant accepts some of the data on which my conclusions are based but expresses uncertainty about the conclusions themselves. He comments: The four nouns ὀψέ, μεσονύκτιον, ἀλεκτοροφωνία, and πρωΐ are almost always considered popular Greco-Roman designations of the four watches of the night. … The system of dividing into four watches is effectively Roman, whereas the Jews distinguish only three. But Mark normally uses the number method to speak specifically of a watch of the night (6:48). And the nouns used here do not correspond to any known Greek or Roman use. They could rather reflect the Jewish usage in the suburbs of Jerusalem at the end of the era of the second temple (Martin). But this remains uncertain, and these temporal references do not necessarily arise from an official system of time division.62 59  Pierluigi Piovanelli, “Exploring the Ethiopic Book of the Cock, An Apocryphal Passion Gospel from Late Antiquity,” HTR 96 (2003): 427–454, here 450 n. 74. 60  Robert H. Stein, Mark, BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 624–625. 61  John R. Donahue and Daniel J. Harrington, The Gospel of Mark, SP 2 (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2002), 377. 62  Camille Focant, The Gospel according to Mark: A Commentary, trans. Leslie Robert Keylock (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012), 555–556.

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Focant thus deems my conclusions about the Jerusalem provenance of these names for the watches possible but uncertain. Since he restates some of my arguments and does not offer counter arguments to the others, understanding why my conclusions remain uncertain to him is difficult to ascertain. Perhaps, Focant needs more evidence than my article provides, but historians must draw conclusions from the material and evidence they have and rarely possess absolute proof and almost never all the evidence they would like. I wish more evidence existed to demonstrate that the names for the watches in Mark 13:35 arise from the environs of Jerusalem, but I was unable to find any. Relying on adductive reasoning, however, my article draws together the available disparate but relevant evidence to formulate a conclusion, and this reasoning makes this conclusion more than possible and at least probable if not conclusive, at least as far as the surviving evidence allows. This evidence refutes Focant’s assertion that “these temporal references do not necessarily arise from an official system of time division.”63 Rather, the available evidence demonstrates that these names are the “official” designations for the watches for the Second Temple establishment in Jerusalem during the Roman period. This conclusion is significant, for it means that this exhortation to watch during the watches is very early and represents the heightened eschatological fervor of the Jewish followers of Jesus during the first few decades of early Christianity. Since these temporal designations for the watches structure the passion narrative as well, they also establish the Jerusalem provenance of the earliest version of this narrative. The remnants of these Second Temple temporal designations in the redacted versions by the evangelists thus demonstrate that the death of Jesus and his resurrection and ascension and imminent return are the beliefs of the earliest Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. Not surprisingly, therefore, these beliefs form the core of the early Christian kerygma and find expression in the earliest Christian creeds. Although the developing Christian tradition ceases to use these names for the watches and often misunderstands them, these temporal designations were significant for the earliest articulation and proclamation of the Christian faith and message.

 Ibid.

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XXI. The Present Indicative in the Eschatological Statements of 1 Peter 1:6–8* 1. Introduction Leonhard Goppelt alludes to three possible interpretations of ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in 1 Pet 1:6, 8.1 First, it can be understood as a present indicative with a present meaning, “you are rejoicing.” John Calvin proposed this interpretation, which was later defended by Conrad Horneius.2 Second, it can be taken as a present indicative with future meaning, “you will rejoice.” Ps.-Oecumenius articulated this interpretation widely held by ancient commentators.3 Third, it can be perceived as a present imperative with imperatival meaning, “rejoice.” Augustine suggested this interpretation, which was later defended by S. F. N. Morus.4 Each of these interpretations claims adherents among Petrine commentators, and this results in a lively exegetical debate. The most probable interpretation of ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in verses six and eight rests on four exegetical issues: (1) the mood of ἀγαλλιᾶσθε, (2) the time reference of the circumstantial participles dependent on ἀγαλλιᾶσθε, (3) the antecedent and gender of the relative pronoun ᾧ in verse six, and (4) the use of the present indicative with future meaning. These exegetical issues must be examined.

* A version of this essay was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Region of the Society of Biblical Literature in Madison, WI on February 19, 1990. 1  Leonard Goppelt, Der Erste Petrusbrief, KEK 12.1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978), 98–99. 2 John Calvin, The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews and The First and Second Epistles of St Peter, trans. William B. Johnston, Calvin’s Commentaries 12 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963), 234–237; Conrad Horneius, In epistolam catholicam sancti apostoli Petri priorem expositio litteralis (Braunschweig: Duncker, 1654), 16. 3 Ps.-Ocecumenius, Petri Apostoli prior epistola catholica (PG 119:517). Church fathers use the future tense in their quotations of 1 Pet 1:6, 8. Early Latin and Syriac versions use a future to translate ἀγαλλιᾶσθε. See Walter Thiele, Die Lateinischen Texte des 1. Petrusbriefes, VL 5 (Freiburg: Herder, 1965), 84. 4  For Augustine’s position, see Panagiōtēs N. Trempelas, Ὑπόμνημα εἰς τὴν πρὸς Ἐβραίους καὶ τὰς ἑπτὰ Καθολικάς (Athens: Adelphotēs Theologōn ē Zōē, 1941), 250. Samuel F. N. Morus, Praelectiones in Jacobi et Petri epistolas (Leipzig: Sumptibus Sommeri, 1794), 105.

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2. Mood of ἀγαλλιᾶσθε Because the form of ἀγαλλιᾶσθε can be either indicative or imperative, context decides this exegetical issue. Morus argues that the verb ἀγαλλιᾶσθε is an imperative rather than an indicative because the letter is engaged in exhortation.5 However, he fails to consider the form and function of the blessing section in which this verb occurs. In this section, the author is stating the context in which the letter should be read. The indicative, not the imperative, is the appropriate mood for his declarations.6 The imperatives do not begin until the body of the letter in 1 Pet 1:13.7 For these reasons, Morus’s argument should be rejected.8 Ps.Oecumenius and Calvin correctly interpret ἀγαλλιᾶσθε as an indicative, not as an imperative.9

3. Temporal Reference of the Circumstantial Participles The exegetical issue regarding the temporal reference of the circumstantial participles dependent on ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in verses six and eight polarizes commentators. Keil presents comprehensive arguments for the future understanding of ἀγαλλιᾶσθε based on these participles.10 He argues that the aorist participle λυπηθέντες (“after being grieved”) in verse six indicates time antecedent to the action of the main verb. If ἀγαλλιᾶσθε is present, then the readers’ grieving has taken place in the past. However, this aorist participle is modified by the adverb ἄρτι (“now” or “just now”). The text clearly states that the grieving is taking place now. The only way this present grieving can take place before the rejoicing of the finite verb ἀγαλλιᾶσθε is if that rejoicing is understood as future. Although ἀγαλλιᾶσθε is present in form, therefore, it must be future in meaning. In verse eight, the present participle κομίζοντες (“as you receive”) indicates time coincident with the main verb. Since this participle clearly refers to future events, the main verb ἀγαλλιᾶσθε must also be future in meaning. Reasoning from these

 5 Morus,

Praelectiones, 105.  Paul Schubert, The Form and Function of the Pauline Thanksgiving, BZNW 20 (Berlin: Töpelmann, 1939), 180.  7  Johann Gerhard, Commentarius super priorem D. Petri epistolam (Hamburg: Hertelius, 1709), 67.  8  J. Iacobus Hottinger argues for the indicative mood of ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in verse six because the same verb occurs in verse eight as an indicative (Epistolae D. lacobi atque Petri I [Leipzig: Libraria Dyckiana, 1815], 100–101).  9  Ps.-Oecumenius, Petri Apostoli prior epistola catholica (PG 119:517); Calvin, Epistles of St Peter, 234. 10  Carl F. Keil, Commentar über die Briefe des Petrus und Judas (Leipzig: Dorfeling & Franke, 1883), 49.  6

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participles, Keil presents persuasive arguments for understanding ἀγαλλιᾶσθε as future in meaning.11 A few years later, Robert Johnstone pointed out a major weakness in Keil’s argument by observing that Keil failed to consider all of the circumstantial participles in verse eight.12 The participles ὁρῶντες (“seeing”) and πιστεύοντες (“believing”) are preceded by ἄρτι (“now”). These participles clearly refer to present events and hang on ἀγαλλιᾶσθε. Since they are present participles that indicate time coincident with that of the main verb, Johnstone argues that ἀγαλλιᾶσθε must also be present.13 As Johnstone has correctly perceived, Keil’s argument is weak because he does not consider these present tense circumstantial participles in verse eight. Similarly, however, Johnstone’s argument is also weak because he cannot account for the use of the aorist participle λυπηθέντες in verse six or the present participle κομίζοντες (“as you receive”) in verse eight. In the final analysis, the arguments of Keil and Johnstone based on the tense of these circumstantial participles are tenuous because the relationship of the time expressed by the participle to that of the main verb is determined primarily by context, not the tense of the participle.14 In relation to the main verb, the aorist and present participles usually express antecedent and coincident time respectively, but they do not always do so. If ἀγαλλιᾶσθε is present, then the aorist participle λυπηθέντες in verse six expresses coincident action. If ἀγαλλιᾶσθε is future in meaning, then the present participles ὁρῶντες and πιστεύοντες in verse eight express antecedent action. Both possibilities are permissible according to the grammarians.15 A more substantial argument can be made from the use of the adverbial adjunct ἄρτι (“now”), which modifies these circumstantial participles in verses six and eight. Adverbs are often used to specify the adverbial relations implied in the participle.16 By using this adverbial adjunct with both the aorist and present participles, the author of First Peter clearly states that the action of the participle is antecedent to the action of the main verb. This adverbial adjunct is not used with the participle κομίζοντες (“as you receive”) in verse eight because that participle denotes action coincident with the main verb. This adverbial 11 In addition to these participles, Henry Alford sees the strongest argument for the future meaning of ἀγαλλιᾶσθε to be the participle δεδοξασμένῃ in verse eight (The Epistle to the Hebrews: The Catholic Epistles of St. James and St. Peter: The Epistles of St. John and St. Jude: And the Revelation, The Greek Testament 4 [Boston: Shepard, 1872], 336). 12  J. Ramsey Michaels discusses the problem of the participles in verse eight (1Peter, WBC 49 [Waco: Word, 1988], 34). 13  Robert Johnstone, The First Epistle of Peter: Revised Text with Introduction and Commentary (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1888), 60–64. In further support of his position, he also pointed out that the finite verb ἀγαπᾶτε of the preceding relative clause is present, not future. 14  Herbert Weir Smyth, Greek Grammar (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), § 1872. 15  Ibid., § 1872a, b, c. 16  Ibid., § 2079.

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adjunct ἄρτι creates an antithesis between the present events expressed by the participles and the future events expressed by the main verb ἀγαλλιᾶσθε.17 This adverbial adjunct indicates that the aorist participle λυπηθέντες (“after being grieved”) in verse six is used with its customary antecedent action but that the present participles ὁρῶντες (“seeing”) and πιστεύοντες (“believing”) in verse eight function as participles of the imperfect expressing antecedent action.18 Thus, the use of ἄρτι (“now”) resolves the exegetical issue regarding the time reference of the participles attached to ἀγαλλιᾶσθε.

4. Antecedent and Gender of the Relative Pronoun ᾧ Determining the antecedent and gender of the relative pronoun ᾧ in 1 Pet 1:6 is a crucial exegetical issue in the interpretation of ἀγαλλιᾶσθε. Morus’s argument that its gender is neuter and that it is used absolutely to mean “therefore” should be rejected even though the Greek language does allow for an absolute use of ἐν ᾧ to mean “while” or “therefore.”19 The author of First Peter knows of this absolute use of ἐν ᾧ and uses it in 1 Pet 2:12; 3:16; and 4:4. However, in these three cases, it is impossible to relate the relative pronoun to a preceding noun. In 1 Pet 3:19 on the other hand, πνεύματι (“in spirit”) provides a possible antecedent to ἐν ᾧ and few commentators argue for the absolute use of ἐν ᾧ in this verse.20 Thus, 1 Pet 3:19 provides the clearest parallel for the use of ἐν ᾧ in 1 Pet 1:6. Because the absolute use of ἐν ᾧ meaning “therefore: is very unlikely when there is a clear antecedent for the relative and because ἐν καιρῷ ἐσχάτῳ (“at the last time”) at the end of verse five provides such an antecedent, Morus’s argument for the absolute usage of ἐν ᾧ is not convincing. Similarly, Calvin’s argument that the gender is neuter and that the preceding clause as a whole should be regarded as the antecedent is possible grammatically but overlooks the most obvious solution.21 The simplest solution maintains that the antecedent of ᾧ is not everything preceding but rather ἐν καιρῷ ἐσχάτῳ (“at the last time”) at the end of verse five. Again, as with Morus, 1 Pet 3:19 provides the strongest rebuttal to Calvin’s argument. William J. Dalton argues that the antecedent of ἐν ᾧ in 1 Pet 3:19 is the previous noun πνεύματι.22 Dalton’s 17  James Moffatt, The General Epistles: James, Peter, and Judas, MNTC (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1947), 96. 18 See Smyth, Greek Grammar, § 1872a, 1. 19  Morus, Praelectiones, 105. Smyth, Greek Grammar, § 2511. 20  Bo Reicke recognizes the consensus that ἐν ᾧ in 1 Pet 3:19 refers to πνεύματι in verse 18 (The Disobedient Spirits and Christian Baptism: A Study of 1 Peter 3:19 and Its Context, ASNU 13 [Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1946], 103). He unsuccessfully attempts to refute this consensus. 21  Calvin, Epistles of St Peter, 234; Smyth, Greek Grammar, § 2501a. 22  William J. Dalton, “Interpretation and Tradition: An Example from 1 Peter,” Greg 49 (1968): 11–37, here 25.

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argument relating to the antecedent of ἐν ᾧ in 3:19 pertains to 1 Pet 1:6 as well. The only reason for Calvin to ignore ἐν καιρῷ ἐσχάτῳ as the antecedent of ἐν ᾧ is to avoid the future meaning of ἀγαλλιᾶσθε.23 If this present tense verb can bear future meaning as demonstrated below, then there is no reason to reject ἐν καιρῷ ἐσχάτῳ (“at the last time”) as the antecedent of ἐν ᾧ. For these reasons, Calvin’s identification of the antecedent and gender of ἐν ᾧ is improbable.24 Ps.-Oecumenius’s interpretation of ἐν ᾧ avoids the criticisms that Morus and Calvin encountered. Ps.-Oecumenius understands the gender of this pronoun to be masculine and the antecedent to be ἐν καιρῷ ἐσχάτῳ.25 The only objection to ps.-Oecumenius’s interpretation is that the present tense verb ἀγαλλιᾶσθε must have future meaning. If this verb can bear such meaning, then no objections to his interpretation remain.

5. Present Tense in Reference to Future Time The real crux of the interpretation of ἀγαλλιᾶσθε is whether this verbal form can bear future meaning. Conrad Horneius, following Calvin, argues that the form of ἀγαλλιᾶσθε is present, not future. He concludes that the only way to interpret ἀγαλλιᾶσθε is with present meaning.26 However, both the grammari23 Johann C. W. Augusti argues that ἐν ᾧ does not refer to ἐν καιρῷ ἐσχάτῳ since ἀγαλλιᾶσθε cannot stand for the future ἀγαλλιάσεσθε (Die katholischen Briefe: Neu übersetzt und erklärt und mit Excursen und einleitenden Abhandlungen [Lemgo: Meyer, 1801], 207). However, Johann T. Beck does not think that connecting ἐν ᾧ with ἐν καιρῷ ἐσχάτῳ forces the verb into a future meaning because the author has the new birth in mind in which the future has already taken root in his readers’ lives (Erklärung der Briefe Petri, ed. Julius Lindenmeyer [Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1896], 47–48). Beck’s argument based on realized eschatology is faulty for two reasons. First, the author of First Peter uses the plural in the phrase ἐπ’ ἐσχάτου τῶν χρόνων in 1 Pet 1:20 to refer to the last times in which his readers are living, not ἐν καιρῷ ἐσχάτῳ. Second, in 1 Pet 1:11; 4:17; and 5:6, the singular καιρός is used to refer to the consummation of the end time, not to the messianic times in which the readers are living. 24  See Keil, Commentar, 49. Keil adds a further rebuttal of Calvin’s position by stating that the ground or occasion for rejoicing is usually expressed by the preposition ἐπί with the dative or accusative (Luke 1:47; Ps 118:162 LXX; 83:3 LXX) or with ὅτι (Matt 5:12) or ἵνα (John 8:56). However, the preposition ἐν does occur with ἀγαλλιᾶσθε (John 5:35; Ps 92:5 LXX; 3 Macc 2:17). 25  Ps.-Oecumenius, Petri Apostoli prior epistola catholica (PG 119:517). F. J. A. Hort attempts unsuccessfully to identify the antecedent of ᾧ as God or Christ (The First Epistle of St. Peter 1:1– 2:17: The Greek Text with Introductory Lecture, Commentary, and Additional Notes [London: Macmillan, 1898], 39–40). In contrast, Johann E. Huther more persuasively argues that ἐν καιρῷ ἐσχάτῳ is the antecedent of ἐν ᾧ on account of the subsequent ὀλίγον ἄρτι … λυπηθέντες, which forms a distinct antithesis to ἀγαλλιᾶσθε, and on account of the idea that suffering occurs in the present time and exultation in the future (Critical and Exegetical Handbook to the General Epistles of James, Peter, John and Jude, trans. D. B. Croom [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1881], 60–61). Huther also argues that in this section of the epistle what follows is linked directly to the word immediately preceding in verses five, eight, and ten, and this linkage indicates that ἐν ᾧ refers to ἐν καιρῷ ἐσχάτῳ. 26  Horneius, In epistolam catholicam, 16.

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ans and several NT examples indicate that in the Greek language a present tense verb can refer to future action. Smyth says, “The present is used instead of the future in statements of what is immediate, likely, certain, or threatening.”27 Blass agrees and adds, “Ordinarily a temporal indication of the future is included.”28 This clause in 1 Pet 1:6 is a textbook example of the statements made by Smyth and Blass, complete with a temporal indication of the future that is expressed by ἐν ᾧ, meaning “at which last time.” Several examples of this usage occur in the NT. In Rom 2:16, Paul says “on which day God will judge (κρίνει) the secrets of humans.” The notion is clearly future, but the present tense κρίνει (“he is judging”) stands in the Nestle-Aland 28th revised edition, not the future tense κρινεῖ (“he will judge”).29 In 1 Cor 15:32, Paul quotes Isa 22:13, “Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we will die (αὔριον γὰρ ἀποθνῄσκομεν).” In this verse, there is no ambiguity. A present tense verb (ἀποθνῄσκομεν) modified by a temporal adverb (αὔριον) refers to a future action. Another example of this use of the present occurs in Jesus’ prophecy of his death and resurrection in Mark 9:31, where the present tense verb παραδίδοται (“he is handed over”) is used. This use of the present is even more striking because when this prophecy is repeated in Mark 10:33, the future tense παραδοθήσεται (“he shall be handed over”) is used. As the grammarians and these examples indicate, the present tense can be used for the future when there is a clear reference to future time. This future reference is supplied in 1 Pet 1:6 by the prepositional phrase ἐν ᾧ (“at which last time”) and in verse eight by the circumstantial participle κομίζοντες (“as you receive”).

6. Conclusion The preceding examination of the exegetical issues demonstrates that the ancient interpretation of ἀγαλλιᾶσθε, articulated by ps.-Oecumenius, is much more probable than the interpretations of Calvin-Horneius or Augustine-Morus. This interpretation best explains both the textual and contextual features of these verses. It appropriately recognizes the juxtaposition of ἐν ᾧ (“at which last time”) at the beginning of 1 Pet 1:6 with ἐν καιρῷ ἐσχάτῳ (“at the last time”) at the end of verse five and maintains the antithesis between present and future. It also accounts best for the aorist tense of the participle λυπηθέντες (“after being grieved”) in verse six as well as the use of the adverbial adjunction ἄρτι (“now”)  Smyth, Greek Grammar, § 1879.  BDF § 323. 29  Barbara Aland et al., eds., Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th rev. ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2013), 484. Since κρίνω is a liquid verb, it differentiates between the two tenses in question only by the accent. The editors of the text favor the present tense instead of the future even though a few manuscripts have the future accentuation. 27 28

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in verses six and eight. The major objection Horneius raises to the future interpretation is that ἀγαλλιᾶσθε is present in form, not future. Since a present tense verb can be used to refer to future action, this objection lacks force. A secondary objection to this interpretation is the use of the present tense circumstantial participles in verse eight that then refer to action antecedent to the main verb. The use of the present participle as the participle of the imperfect referring to antecedent time renders this objection inconsequential. For these reasons, the ancient interpretation expressed by ps.-Oecumenius expresses the most likely meaning of ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in 1 Pet 1:6, 8. According to this ancient interpretation, verse six should be translated “at which end time you will rejoice although for a little while now by necessity you are grieved by manifold trials.” Similarly, verses eight and nine should be translated “whom although you have not seen you love, in whom, although you do not now see but believe, you will rejoice with joy unspeakable and glorious as you receive the end of your faith to be the salvation of your lives.” As this translation of verses six and eight indicates, the present tense verb ἀγαλλιᾶσθε is indeed used with future meaning.

7. Reception History This article enters an established debate about whether the temporal reference of the verb ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in 1 Pet 1:6, 8 is present or future. Rather than introducing a new position into this debate, this article contributes by providing precise grammatical arguments for reading this verb as future. Scholars who take the side of a future reading in this debate accept these arguments as persuasive. For example, Alexander E. Stewart states, “Troy Martin helpfully discusses the interpretive difficulties associated with the present tense verb ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in 1:6 and 8 and cogently argues that the context indicates future meaning.”30 After summarizing my arguments, Stewart supplements them by explaining: This argument for an interpretation of the two present tense verbs as future in meaning can be strengthened by two further points. First, δόξα and the accompanying verb δοξάζω, are often used throughout 1 Peter in association with future, eschatological salvation in the revelation of Jesus Christ (1:7; 2:12; 4:13; 5:1, 4, 10). … Second, the third use of ἀγαλλιάω in the letter describes the rejoicing believers will experience when Christ’s glory is revealed (4:13). This clear eschatological orientation in 4:13 adds to the case for a future interpretation of ἀγαλλιάω in 1:6 and 8. Inexpressible and glorious joy will fill believers in that future day when they fully receive their inheritance and salvation at the return of

30  Alexander E. Stewart, “When Are Christians Saved and Why Does It Matter? An Investigation into the Rhetorical Force of First Peter’s Inaugurated Soteriology,” TJ N. S. 32 (2011): 221–235, here 225.

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Christ. Such future joy is directly contrasted with the suffering they must endure in the present to test and refine their faith.31

In this debate, Stewart takes the position of a future reference of ἀγαλλιᾶσθε, is persuaded by my arguments, and adds a few additional arguments of his own in favor of this position. He also agrees with my article that this future reference expresses a stark contrast between the present grieving and future rejoicing of the recipients of First Peter. Other scholars in this debate are persuaded by my article about the future meaning of ἀγαλλιᾶσθε but disagree that future joy is completely future in contrast to present grieving. Citing my article, David G. Horrell and Wei Hsien Wan comment on ἀγαλλιᾶσθε, “There is some uncertainty here as to whether the force is future or present, but a future reference seems likely, notwithstanding the sense that this future grace is already, in part, a matter of present experience (cf. 1.8–9, where the ‘already/not-yet’ tension is well spelt out).”32 They further comment, “Although the author of 1 Peter gives no explicit indication as to how near or distant he considers this final day to be … the joyous salvation of the future seems already to be seeping into the experience of the present (1.6–9).”33 These scholars are thus persuaded by my article to understand ἀγαλλιᾶσθε as having a future reference but think on the basis of realized eschatology that this future joy is already experienced by the recipients of this letter in their present grieving. Still other scholars reject the arguments of my article altogether and maintain that ἀγαλλιᾶσθε refers to present rather than future joy. Referring to my article, Donald G. Miller remarks: A very learned attempt has lately been made to revive a very ancient interpretation of this passage, where the present tense was given a future meaning. In this case, the this of verse 6 would refer to the last time in verse 5. The resultant meaning, then, would be “at which end time you will rejoice.” Although the possibility of this is demonstrable from other New Testament passages, the tone of the context does not seem consonant with such a future interpretation.34

Rather than engaging specific arguments in my article, Miller dismisses them by asserting that “the tone of the context” does not seem to indicate future joy. His assertion merely establishes our disagreement about “the tone of the context” without providing substantive demonstrations either in support of his understanding or in refutation of my own. My reasons for disagreeing with him “about the tone of the context” are already stated in my article and need not be repeated here.  Ibid., 227.  David G. Horrell and Wei Hsien Wan, “Christology, Eschatology and the Politics of Time in 1 Peter,” JSNT 38 (2016): 263–276, here 267 n. 8. 33  Ibid., 267. 34  Donald G. Miller, On this Rock: A Commentary on First Peter, Princeton Theological Monograph Series 34 (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick Publications, 1993), 136. 31 32

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Dieter Zeller is another scholar who rejects the arguments of my article for the future reference of ἀγαλλιᾶσθε, but he at least provides specific reasons for his rejection. He cites many recent Petrine commentators who interpret the relative pronoun in the prepositional phrase ἐν ᾧ in 1:6 as a neuter in reference to vv. 3–5, but he does not agree with them.35 He then explains: In der Minderheit sind die Versuche, das ἐν ᾧ von einem vorausgehenden Nomen abhängig zu machen. Troy W. Martin hat es in dem unmittelbar vorher stehenden ἐν καιρῷ ἐσχατῷ suchen wollen und verweist als Sachparallele auf den eschatologischen Jubel in 4,13. Aber das Präsens ist hier nicht das Äquivalent eines Futur, was sonst schon mal Vorkommen mag, sondern wird durch den näherliegenden Vers 1,8 als glaubende Vorwegnahme dieses Jubels in der Gegenwart gedeutet.36

Zeller thinks that v. 8 provides the interpretive key for v. 6 because of its proximity and because the relative pronouns ᾧ in v. 6 and ὅν in v. 8 have the same antecedent, namely Christ. He explains: Daneben wird ein personaler Haftpunkt kaum in Betracht gezogen. Er könnte in »Gott« zu finden sein, der nicht nur V. 3, sondern auch V. 5 als letztes Maskulinum genannt wird (»in der Macht Gottes«). Erinnert man sich an das dreifache ἐν ᾧ in der Eulogie Eph 1,7.11.13, ist auch eine Beziehung auf Jesus Christus V. 3 zu erwägen. Das Relativpronomen hinge an dem Genitiv wie V. 8, wo er freilich unmittelbar davor steht. Dass Christus der Grund von Jubel (άγαλλιασθαι) und Freude ist, legen auch 1,8 und 4,13 nahe. Das kausale ἐν »In ihm jubelt ihr« wird durch V. 8 erklärt: »An ihn glaubend, obwohl ihr ihn jetzt noch nicht seht, jubelt ihr mit unaussprechlicher und von Herrlichkeit bestimmter Freude«. Der freudige Jubel wird endgültig bei der Offenbarung der Herrlichkeit Christi (4,13).37

By identifying the joy in both vv. 6 and 8 as “in Christ,” Zeller concludes that the verb ἀγαλλιᾶσθε has a present reference to the joy experienced now by faith but then ultimately at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Zeller’s reasoning for the use of ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in both verses in reference to present joy encounters some problems. He correctly perceives that belief in Christ in v. 8 is the way believers will experience ultimate joy, but this verse specifies that the belief and not the joy is present now. Thus, Zeller’s reasoning does not adequately account for the repeated ἄρτι (“now”) in both vv. 6 and 8 that contrasts present grieving, believing, and not seeing Christ with future joy. Furthermore, the joy expressed by the verb ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in v. 8 is future joy experienced as believers receive the end of their faith. The temporal reference of this verb in v. 8 must therefore be to the future. The most that Zeller’s reasoning can prove is that only the verb in v. 6 refers to the present. His reasoning in that verse, however, depends on identifying God and by implication Jesus Christ as the antecedent of the relative pronoun ᾧ in this verse, and this reasoning over35  Dieter Zeller, “Miszellen: Nominal unbestimmtes ἐν ᾧ im Neuen Testament,” ZNW 104 (2013): 268–276, here 273. 36  Ibid. 37  Ibid., 273–274.

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looks the more proximate grammatical antecedent ἐν καιρῷ ἐσχατῷ at the end of v. 5. In my opinion, these problems render Zeller’s reasoning unpersuasive. Zeller and others who reject my grammatical arguments for a future reading of the verb ἀγαλλιᾶσθε convinced me that this debate would not be settled by grammatical or contextual arguments alone. Therefore, I decided to take a different approach and investigate ancient consolation literature to see if it ever included an assertion of rejoicing for someone who is grieving. Since those who argue for ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in reference to present joy must assume that joy and grieving are experienced simultaneously, I also decided to investigate ancient physiology to see if such contradictory emotions can be experienced at the same time. The results of my investigations are published in the article that is included in the next and final essay of this volume.

XXII. Emotional Physiology and Consolatory Etiquette Reading the Present Indicative with Future Reference in the Eschatological Statement in 1 Peter 1:6* 1. Introduction An article I published in 1992 took sides in the exegetical debate over the temporal reference of the verb ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in 1 Pet 1:6, which reads: ἐν ᾧ ἀγαλλιᾶσθε, ὀλίγον ἄρτι εἰ δέον [ἐστὶν] λυπηθέντες ἐν ποικίλοις πειρασμοῖς (“at which [time] you [will] rejoice although now for a little while, if it is necessary, you are grieved by manifold trials”).1 This verb is clearly present tense in form, but I argued in that article for reading this verb in reference to future time.2 Even though I considered my arguments to be compelling, some subsequent commentaries including those by Paul J. Achtemeier, Mark Dubis, Karen H. Jobes, and Reinhard Feldmeier nevertheless continue to read ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in reference to present * This paper was presented at the National Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Atlanta, GA on November 23, 2015. All translations of ancient texts are mine unless otherwise noted. 1 Troy W. Martin, “The Present Indicative in the Eschatological Statements of 1 Pet 1:6, 8,” JBL 111 (1992): 307–312. This article is included as the previous essay in the present volume. For a succinct summary of the issues in this debate, see Troy W. Martin, Metaphor and Composition in First Peter, SBLDS 131 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 59–64; and Reinhard Feldmeier, The First Letter of Peter: A Commentary on the Greek Text, trans. Peter H. Davids (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2008), 79–80. 2  The strongest argument for those who read ἀγαλλιᾶσθε as present rejoicing is the present tense form of this verb itself. Both the grammarians and several classical and New Testament examples, however, indicate that in the Greek language a present tense verb can refer to future circumstances (e. g., Mark 9:31; 1 Cor 15:32; see Martin, “Present Indicative,” 311; idem, Metaphor and Composition, 63–64). Ernest de Witt Burton states that the present tense “used with reference to a fact still in the future is recognized by all grammarians,” and he lists several of these nineteenth century grammarians (Syntax of the Moods and Tenses in New Testament Greek, 3rd ed. [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1976], 10). His statement also pertains, however, to more recent twentieth century grammarians including among others Herbert W. Smyth (Greek Grammar [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980], § 1879); Maximilian Zerwick (Biblical Greek: Illustrated by Examples, SPIB 114 [Rome: Iura Editionis et Versionis Reservantur, 1963], § 278); Stanley E. Porter (Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament, with Reference to Tense and Mood, Studies in Biblical Greek 1 [New York: Lang, 1989], 230–232); and K. L. McKay (A New Syntax of the Verb in New Testament Greek: An Aspectual Approach, Studies in Biblical Greek 5 [New York: Lang, 1994], § 4.2.3).

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time.3 Rather than restating the arguments from my initial article, I present here a brief history of this debate and then critique two assumptions required by a present temporal reading of ἀγαλλιᾶσθε that are incompatible with ancient physiology and consolatory etiquette, theory, and practice.

2. History of the Debate Ancient Greek interpreters consistently understand ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in 1 Pet 1:6 as future. In a passage where he proposes that the one who remains until the end will be saved, for example, Origen quotes 1 Pet 1:6–7 but uses the future ἀγαλλιάσεσθε (“you will rejoice”) rather that the present (Mart. 39).4 Origen’s change in tense may mean that the manuscript he is using has the future. Since no surviving manuscript of First Peter has the future, however, it more likely means that Origen understands the present as a future as do subsequent Greek commentators. Ps.-Oecumenius and Theophylact comment, “‘In the last time, you will rejoice (ἀγαλλιάσεσθε),’ the ἀγαλλιᾶσθε has been received for a future circumstance rather than a present circumstance.”5 To support their future reading of the present, these commentators cite John 17:11 and 16:33, where affliction is the lot of this world but affliction will be turned into rejoicing in the future.6 Resembling the Greek commentary tradition, Latin commentators also understand ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in reference to a future rejoicing. The Venerable Bede translates and comments, “In which you will exult [exultabitis]. … When he [Peter] says, ‘in which,’ he refers to that time when a prepared salvation will be revealed

3  Paul J. Achtemeier, 1 Peter: A Commentary on First Peter, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 99; Mark Dubis, I Peter: A Handbook on the Greek Text, BHGNT (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2010), 10; Karen H. Jobes, 1 Peter, BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 92–93; and Feldmeier, First Letter of Peter, 79–80. For additional commentators who argue for a present-tense reading, see Ernst Kühl, Die Briefe Petri und Judae, KEK 12, 6th ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1897), 82–86; Rudolph Knopf, Die Briefe Petri und Judä, KEK 12, 7th ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1912), 47–49; Edward G. Selwyn, The First Epistle of St. Peter: The Greek Text with Introduction, Notes, and Essays, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1947; repr. Thornapple Commentaries, Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1981), 126, 258–259; J. N. D.  Kelly, A Commentary on the Epistles of Peter and Jude, BNTC (London: Black, 1969; repr., Thornapple Commentaries, Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1982), 53; Peter H. Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 54–55; and I. Howard Marshall, 1 Peter, IVP New Testament Commentary Series (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 39–40. 4  See also Irenaeus, Haer. 4.9.2; 5.7.2. The Latin manuscripts of Irenaeus’ work have the future exultabitis for ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in 1 Pet 1:8 and indicate that the original Greek Vorlage may have also had a future form of this verb. For a discussion, see Selwyn, First Epistle, 258–259. 5  Ps.-Oecumenius, Petri Apostoli prior epistola catholica (PG 119:517); Theophylact, Expositio in Epistolam Primam S. Petri (PG 125:1196). 6 Martin, Metaphor and Composition, 60.

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and will be given to those who are worthy.”7 Didymus Alexandrinus, Eusebius Hieronymus, ps.-Hilarius, and Martinus all interpret ἀγαλλιᾶσθε with the Latin future verb exultabitis (“you will rejoice”) as do almost all Latin commentators.8 Explaining the Latin translations and quotations of 1 Pet 1:6, Walter Thiele notes, “The future in 1:6 is easily understood after 1:5.”9 Thus, the ancient Greek and Latin commentary traditions understand ἐν καιρῷ ἐσχάτῳ (“at the end time”) at the end of 1 Pet 1:5 to be the antecedent of ἐν ᾧ (“at which [end time]”) at the beginning of 1 Pet 1:6 and then take the present ἀγαλλιᾶσθε as a reference to the future.10 This understanding of ἐν ᾧ designating the end time and ἀγαλλιᾶσθε as having future reference dominates the interpretation of 1 Pet 1:6 until the reformation when John Calvin proposes a present tense reading of this verb.11 Calvin’s proposal is later defended by Conrad Horneius, who argues: The ancient translator has the future tense, “in which you will rejoice. …” But they translated it in that way primarily because they referred the phrase ἐν ᾧ, in which, taken independently, to the final day and secondarily because this phrase seemed to have some appearance of incompatibility; you are rejoicing although you are grieved by sadness. … But it is more correct that the present tense be retained, which has been received in the manuscripts, for the ἐν ᾧ refers to everything that precedes.12

Horneius acknowledges that the tradition he receives understands ἀγαλλιᾶσθε 1 Pet 1:6 as a reference to the future. Nevertheless, he follows Calvin by taking exception to the ancient reading of a future reference for this verb. Instead, like  7  David Hurst, trans., The Commentary on the Seven Catholic Epistles of Bede the Venerable, CistSS 82 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1985), 43.  8 Didymus Alexandrinus, Enarratio in Epistolas Catholicas (PG 39:1756); Eusebius Hieronymus, Divina bibliotheca (PL 29:877); ps.-Hilarius Arelatensis, Expositio in Epistolas Catholicas (PL Sup 3:85); Martinus Legionensis, Expositio in epistolam I B. Petri Apostoli (PL 209:219).  9  Walter Thiele, Die lateinischen Texte des 1. Petrusbriefes, VL 5 (Freiburg: Herder, 1965), 84. 10  When a present tense verb is used with future reference, Blass and Debrunner explain, “Ordinarily a temporal indication of the future is included” (BDF § 323). Thus, ἀγαλλιᾶσθε (“you will rejoice”) in 1 Pet 1:6 is a textbook example of the present tense for the future that has ἐν ᾧ (“at which [end time]”) as a temporal indication of the future followed by ἄρτι (“just now”) as an antithesis to this future reference. Regarding the purpose for using a present tense with future reference, Smyth explains, “The present is used instead of the future in statements of what is immediate, likely, certain, or threatening” (Greek Grammar, § 1879). Peter thus uses the present tense form rather than the future to emphasize that this rejoicing is not far away in the distant future but rather more immediate, likely, and certain. The present tense form with a future temporal reference rather than a future tense form better serves his attempts to console and encourage his recipients, when he says ἐν ᾧ ἀγαλλιᾶσθε (“at which end time, you will rejoice”). 11 John Calvin, The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews and The First and Second Epistles of St Peter, trans. William B. Johnston, Calvin’s Commentaries 12 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963), 234. 12  Conrad Horneius, In Epistolam Catholicam Sancti Apostoli Petri Priorem expositio litteralis (Braunschweig: Duncker, 1654), 16.

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Calvin, he reads the verb in reference to present rejoicing and thus occasions the debate that continues to divide subsequent commentators, some of whom read ἀγαλλιᾶσθε as present but others as future.13

3. The Physiological Assumption In reading ἀγαλλιᾶσθε as present, both Calvin and Horneius and those who follow their reading must make a crucial physiological assumption that a human being can rejoice and grieve simultaneously. Calvin states: It seems somewhat inconsistent when he [Peter] says that the faithful, who exult with joy, are at the same time sorrowful, for these are contrary feelings, but the faithful know by experience that these things can exist together much better than can be expressed in words. … Hence, they experience sorrow because of evils, but it is so mitigated by faith that they never cease at the same time to rejoice. Thus sorrow does not prevent their joy, but rather gives place to it.14

Similarly, Horneius asserts: Neither is it incompatible for the same men to feel simultaneously both happy and sad since this happens for different reasons: for believers are grieved on account of present afflictions; but they rejoice on account of eternal hope of retribution. … And Paul says in 2 Cor 6:10, “Being afflicted but always rejoicing.”15

Calvin and Horneius both recognize that their reading of ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in 1 Pet 1:6 in reference to the present rests on the crucial assumption that a human can simultaneously experience joy and grief. To support this assumption, they appeal to the experience of their fellow believers. To be valid, this experiential argument requires a consistent understanding of the emotions that does not change during the sixteen centuries separating Calvin and Horneius and their fellow believers from the author of First Peter and his readers. Significantly, neither Calvin nor Horneius cites any ancient author to substantiate the argument or the assumption that humans can rejoice and grieve at the same time. 13 For the present reading, see the commentators cited in note 3. For the future reading, see Hans Windisch, Die Katholischen Briefe, HNT 15, ed. Herbert Preisker (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1951), 53; James Moffatt, The General Epistles: James, Peter, and Judas, MNTC (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1947), 96; Leonhard Goppelt, A Commentary on 1 Peter, ed. Ferdinand Hahn, trans. John E. Alsup (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 88–89; J. Ramsey Michaels, 1 Peter, WBC 49 (Waco: Word, 1988), 27; Martin, “Present Indicative,” 307–312; idem, Metaphor and Composition, 59–64; Philip L. Tite, Compositional Transitions in 1 Peter: An Analysis of the Letter-Opening (San Francisco: International Scholars, 1997), 78–79; and Barth L. Campbell, Honor, Shame, and the Rhetoric of 1 Peter, SBLDS 160 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 47. 14  Calvin, Epistles of St Peter, 234. 15  Horneius, In epistolam catholicam, 16.

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Experiencing simultaneous joy and grief, however, is not only unsubstantiated by ancient understandings of the emotions but impossible.16 For example, Aristotle treats the emotions as pairs of opposites (ἐναντία) (Rhet. 2.2– 11 [1378a–1388b]).17 Thus, anger is the opposite of settling down, and friendly feelings the opposite of enmity. Since these emotions move people to action, Aristotle advises the orator in how to engender or create (ἐμποιεῖν) these emotions in an audience. Aristotle’s entire treatment rests on the understanding that experiencing one of these emotions necessarily replaces and excludes its contrary. Although Aristotle does not specifically treat grief and joy in his discussion of the emotions (Rhet. 2.2–11 [1378a–1388b]), he does mention them earlier and says, “For we do not render decisions similarly while we are grieving or distressed (λυπούμενοι) and while we are rejoicing (χαίροντες) or while we are loving and hating” (Rhet. 1.2.5 [1356a]; cf. Aristotle, De an. 1.1 [403a]). Since he specifically treats loving and hating as opposites in his discussion of the emotions, he clearly regards grief or distress and joy as opposite emotions as well although he may have good reasons for not including them in his treatment of the emotions useful for an orator.18 As opposites, grief or distress and joy cannot be experienced simultaneously, as Socrates says, “How astonishing the relation it [pleasure] has with what is thought to be it opposite, namely pain! A man cannot have both at the same time” (Plato, Phaed. 60b).19 Socrates proceeds to state that one almost always follows the other. Although pleasure and pain are not emotions but rather sensations that engender emotions, the thought that a painful emotion such as distress or grief and a pleasant emotion such as joy can be experienced simultaneously is precluded.20 Aristotle even says that no one could account happy a person living a life of misery or misfortune except in philosophical discussions of a paradox (Eth. Nic. 1.5.6 [1096a]). Indeed, joy and grief exclude each other since these emotions are movements of the soul, and the soul can move only in one direction or another but not in opposite directions at the same time (Aristotle, De an. 1.1 [403a–408b]). From 16  Troy W. Martin, “The Voice of Emotion: Paul’s Pathetic Persuasion (Gal 4:12–20),” in Paul and Pathos, ed. Thomas H. Olbricht and Jerry L. Sumney, Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series 16 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001), 181–202; idem, “Sorting the Syntax of Aristotle’s Anger (Rh. 2.2.1 1378a30–32),” Hermes: Zeitschrift für die klassische Philologie 129 (2001): 474–478; Olbricht and Sumney, Paul and Pathos, passim. 17  David Konstan, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Greek Literature, Robson Classical Lectures (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 34. 18  Ibid., 244–258. 19  Translation by G. M. A.  Grube, Plato: Five Dialogues Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), 96. 20  See Plato, Tim. 42a–b, where love or desire (ἔρως) is said to be mingled with pleasure and pain. This statement does not mean that pleasure and pain occur simultaneously but that love or desire can occasion or cause either pleasure or pain – at different times, however.

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the ancient physiological understanding, therefore, grief or distress and joy are opposites and cannot be present in a single person at the same time, and reading ἀγαλλιᾶσθε 1 Pet 1:6 as a present indicative informing the recipients that they are rejoicing now while simultaneously grieving or being distressed (λυπηθέντες) is not only highly improbable but impossible from ancient physiological perspectives on the emotions. Calvin and Horneius’ assertion most likely represents a Christian physiological development from late antiquity that is based on a present tense reading of 1 Pet 1:6. In the seventh century, Maximus the Confessor quotes this verse and then asks how it is possible for someone to rejoice while grieving.21 He answers by redefining grief as twofold. He distinguishes a hidden grief of the soul from a manifest grief of the senses. One can, therefore, be grieving outwardly while rejoicing inwardly and vice versa. In contrast, Aristotle states, “It is likely that all the affections of the soul are with the body … for along with these affections of the soul, the body also suffers something” (De an. 1.1 [403a]). In addition to Aristotle, many ancient authors explain that movements of the soul are also linked to the action of a specific corresponding bodily member.22 For example, Hippocrates describes the emotions arising from external stimuli and then states that to each of these emotions the appropriate member of the body also responds (De humoribus 9). Hence, Maximus’ separation of the soul from the physical senses departs from the ancient understanding of the soul as the mediator or facilitator of the bodily senses and marks a Christian physiological development that postdates the letter of First Peter. This physiological development required by the Reformation assertion about simultaneous joy and grief is simply unavailable to Peter and his recipients. Calvin and Horneius’ experiential argument to support their assumption is also faulty. Their appeal to their fellow believers’ experience of simultaneous joy and grief is not convincing because the understanding of the emotions and what the human body is capable of experiencing changed between the writing of First Peter and the Reformation. In contrast to these reformers, therefore, ancient commentators correctly perceive that joy and grief are incompatible emotions and understand ἀγαλλιᾶσθε (“you will rejoice”) in reference to future rather than present rejoicing. One other argument made by Horneius merits consideration. He tries to substantiate his assumption about the emotions and his present tense reading of ἀγαλλιᾶσθε by citing 2 Cor 6:10, where Paul says, ὡς λυπούμενοι ἀεὶ 21 Maximus the Confessor, Quaestiones ad Thalassium 58. See Carl Laga and Carlos Steel, eds., Maximi confessoris quaestiones ad Thalassium, 2 vols., CCSG 7 and 22 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1980–1990). 22  Beate Gundert, “Soma and Psyche in Hippocratic Medicine,” in Psyche and Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment, ed. John P. Wright and Paul Potter (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), 13–35, here 29–30.

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δὲ χαίροντες (“as though grieving but always rejoicing”).23 At first sight, this verse appears to demonstrate that grieving and rejoicing can be simultaneous. This verse, however, occurs in a context (2 Cor 6:4–10) that C. K. Barrett describes as “an impassioned and almost lyrical passage, where precision in the interpretation … is probably not possible.”24 Furthermore, the juxtaposition of grieving and rejoicing occur in a series of paradoxical pairs in which the first is introduced by the adverbial adjunct ὡς (“as though”). This adverbial adjunct does not state a fact but rather “sets forth the ground of belief ” or the mental “opinion … pretense … impression” that someone has “without implicating the speaker or writer.”25 The first member of these paradoxical pairs describes the mental conception others hold of Paul and his ministry team without implicating Paul in this assessment.26 Thus, others perceive Paul’s team as though they are deceivers (ὡς πλάνοι; 2 Cor 6:8), as though unknown nobodies (ὡς ἀγνοούμενοι; 2 Cor 6:9), as though dying (ὡς ἀποθνῄσκοντες; 2 Cor 6:9), as though being divinely punished (ὡς παιδευόμενοι; 2 Cor 6:9), as though being grieved (ὡς λυπούμενοι; 2 Cor 6:10), as though poor (ὡς πτωχοι; 2 Cor 6:10), and as though having nothing (ὡς μηδέν ἔχοντες; 2 Cor 6:10). The adverbial adjunct ὡς (“as though”) indicates that all these first members of each paradoxical pair do not express reality but rather only the false and unreal perceptions that others have of Paul and his ministry team. In paradoxical contrast, the second member of each pair states the reality that Paul and his group are actually genuine (ἀληθεῖς; 2 Cor 6:8), actually recognized by God (ἐπιγινωσκόμενοι; 2 Cor 6:9), actually alive (ζῶμεν; 2 Cor 6:9), actually not under sentence of death (μὴ θανατούμενοι; 2 Cor 6:9), actually always rejoicing (ἀεὶ χαίροντες; 2 Cor 6:10), actually having the means to enrich many (πολλοὺς πλουτίζοντες; 2 Cor 6:10), and actually possessing everything (πάντα κατέχοντες; 2 Cor 6:10). The phrase ὡς λυπούμενοι ἀεὶ δὲ χαίροντες (“as though being grieved but actually always rejoicing”) in 2 Cor 6:10 thus proves the opposite of what Horneius tries to demonstrate by citing it. In this verse, Paul does not claim to experience the emotions of grief and joy  Horneius, In epistolam catholicam, 16. The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, HNTC (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 185. 25  Smyth, Greek Grammar, § 2086. See also A. T. Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research (Nashville: Broadman, 1934), 966; Nigel Turner, Syntax, vol. 3 of A Grammar of New Testament Greek by James H. Moulton (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1963), 158; and H. P. V. Nunn, A Short Syntax of New Testament Greek (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), § 229. Also see the discussion of the force of this adverbial adjunct in 1 Pet 2:13–14 by Louis R. Donelson, I & II Peter and Jude: A Commentary, NTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010), 72–73. 26  John T. Fitzgerald, Cracks in an Earthen Vessel: An Examination of the Catalogues of Hardships in the Corinthian Correspondence, SBLDS 99 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 195. 23

24 C. K. Barrett,

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simultaneously, and neither does this verse substantiate the impossible mixture of these emotions in 1 Pet 1:6.27 Subsequent commentators who want to take ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in reference to present rejoicing also cite several other texts expressing the theme of joy in suffering such as Matt 5:11–12; Luke 6:22–23; Rom 5:3; Heb 10:32–36; Jas 1:2; and even 1 Pet 4:13.28 None of these texts, however, is parallel to 1 Pet 1:6, for none speaks of the experience of joy and grief or distress at the same time but rather joy in suffering. Ancient physiology certainly allows for a human to experience joy in the midst of trying circumstances and suffering by a change of mindset that engenders joy or apathy rather than grief or distress, and the Stoics in particular strive to master this strategy. First Peter 4:13, for example, calls for those suffering to rejoice by considering that they are partners in the sufferings of Christ. This verse calls upon the recipients not to experience the conflicting emotions of joy and grief or distress at the same time but to change their mindset when suffering so that they experience joy rather than distress or grief. These additional texts cited by those who want to interpret ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in 1 Pet 1:6 as a reference to present joy while simultaneously experiencing grief do not actually support this interpretation. In contrast, ancient Greek and Latin commentators interpret ἀγαλλιᾶσθε (“you will rejoice”) in 1 Pet 1:6 from their own ancient physiological understanding in which joy and grief or distress cannot be experienced simultaneously. These commentators, therefore, understand ἀγαλλιᾶσθε (“you will rejoice”) as a present tense verb in reference to future rejoicing since Peter’s recipients 27  Someone might cite 2 Cor 12:10 as an example of an impossible mixture of opposites in Paul’s statement that when he is weak, then he is strong. This statement occurs at the end of the Fool’s Speech (2 Cor 11:1–12:10) and is typically ironical and paradoxical. Only a fool can claim to be both weak and strong because such a claim is foolishly impossible. The Lord utters the truth that power is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor 12:9). Indeed, only in weakness does power attain its proper essence. When two forces of equal power meet, equilibrium ensues and neither power can exert itself. When one force encounters a weaker one, however, the powerful one conquers and obliterates the weaker force and attains its proper essence as power. In his Fool’s Speech, Paul demonstrates to the Corinthians that God has inverted the world’s conceptions of wisdom and foolishness and of weakness and power (cf. 1 Cor 1:18–25; Lawrence L. Welborn, Paul, the Fool of Christ: A Study of 1 Corinthians 1–4 in the Comic-Philosophic Tradition, JSNTSup 293 [London: T&T Clark, 2005], 117). The Peristasenkatalog that precedes Paul’s paradoxical statement demonstrates his weakness according to the world’s standards, but Paul is actually strong and powerful because these circumstances are merely occasions for the power of Christ to be demonstrated in his life (Fitzgerald, Cracks in an Earthen Vessel, 205). Thus, Paul’s foolish paradoxical statement in 2 Cor 12:10 does not demonstrate an impossible mixture of opposites, for although Paul appears weak by worldly standards, he is really strengthened by Christ’s power in circumstances of weakness. Hence, Paul’s statement does not support a reading of 1 Pet 1:6 in which the opposite emotions of joy and grief are concurrently experienced since Paul’s statement does not actually concern the emotions but rather weakness and power – and even these opposites do not really ever co-exist. 28 For example, see Wolfgang Nauck, “Freude im Leiden: Zum Problem einer urchristlichen Verfolgungstradition,” ZNW 48 (1957): 68–80. See also Achtemeier, 1 Peter, 99–100.

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are distressed in the present. Therefore, the crucial physiological assumption made by Calvin and Horneius to support their present reading of ἀγαλλιᾶσθε is simply impossible from an ancient perspective of what a human body is capable of feeling, and ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in 1 Pet 1:6 can be read only with a future reference by the ancients.

4. The Consolatory Assumption In addition to their impossible physiological assumption in their reading the present in 1 Pet 1:6, Calvin and Horneius also assume that Peter informs his readers that they are rejoicing as he attempts to console them in their grief. This assumption also encounters difficulties. The ancients are sensitive to appropriate and inappropriate ways to converse with the grief stricken.29 Plutarch writes to Apollonius, who is grieving over the untimely loss of his son, that to deal with grief (λύπη) is the hardest of all the emotions (πάντων παθῶν) (Cons. Apoll. 2 = Mor. 102c). Plutarch explains that it would have been unsuitable (ἀνοίκειον) for him to urge Apollonius, immediately after the loss of his son, to bear his loss as a man (Cons. Apoll. 1 = Mor. 102a). He further explains that he needed to give Apollonius the time and the permission to grieve as well as to allow himself to share Apollonius’ grief (συμπαθεῖν). Plutarch then quotes Aeschylus (Prom. 379– 380), “Words are healers of an ailing soul whenever someone soothes the heart at an appropriate time” (Plutarch, Cons. Apoll. 2 = Mor. 102b). Plutarch demonstrates that οἰκείωσις (“taking as one’s own”) and συμπάθεια (“sympathy”), when expressed at the right time, are essential to consoling. The word οἰκείωσις means that the one who consoles “takes an interest in what concerns another as though it were his or her own, up to the point of being as concerned for the other as one is for oneself.”30 The word συμπάθεια means that the consoler empathetically puts himself or herself in the shoes of the grieving. Ps.-Demetrius illustrates both these strategies in his sample letter of consolation that begins, “When I heard of the terrible things that you met at the hands of thankless Fate, I felt the deepest grief, considering that what had happened to you had not happened to you more than to me … all that day long, I cried over them” (Formae epistolicae 5).31 After identifying with the grief-stricken, this sample letter then offers words to alleviate the grief. 29 Paul A. Holloway, Consolation in Philippians: Philosophical Sources and Rhetorical Strategy, SNTSMS 112 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), passim; idem, Coping with Prejudice: 1 Peter in Social-Psychological Perspective, WUNT 244 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 76–112. 30  Ilaria Ramelli, Hierocles the Stoic: Elements of Ethics, Fragments, and Excerpts, ed. and trans. David Konstan, WGRW 28 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), 123. 31  Translation by Abraham J. Malherbe, “Ancient Epistolary Theorists,” OJRS 5 (1977): 3–77, here 33; repr., Ancient Epistolary Theorists, SBLSBS 19 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988).

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The second century CE letter of Irene to Taonnophris and Philo, who have just lost a child, illustrates in an actual letter these two consoling strategies of identifying with and empathetically sharing the grief of another.32 Irene writes, “I grieve and weep over the deceased as I wept for Didymas.” Previously, Irene has lost a husband or more likely a child and thus identifies with Taonnophris and Philo’s grief by naming her own lost loved one. Irene then informs them that she and all her household have done what is fitting (καθήκοντα). Ancient consolatory etiquette stipulates that empathy and sensitivity are of utmost importance when consoling and conversing with someone in grief, and Paul A. Holloway affirms, “It was not uncommon … for consolers to begin with words of sympathy acknowledging the depth of the other’s suffering.”33 If Peter were writing to his grieving recipients and informing them that they are rejoicing while grieving, he would be violating consolatory etiquette and demonstrating his insensitivity and lack of empathy. This etiquette allows for the use of an imperative at the appropriate time to exhort the grieving to replace their grief or distress with rejoicing as Peter does later in his letter in 1 Pet 4:13. Etiquette, however, does not sanction the use of an indicative to inform the grieving that they are rejoicing especially before treating or addressing their grief. Peter’s use of the indicative in this way to tell these exiles that they are rejoicing would be highly insensitive to the emotion of grief they are feeling and would demonstrate neither his identification with (οἰκείωσις) nor his sharing of (συμπάθεια) this vexing emotion as Plutarch does with Apollonius and Irene with Taonnophris and Philo. If Peter had begun his letter by informing his recipients that they are rejoicing while grieving, then his letter would furthermore be sui generis and without analogy in ancient consolatory theory or literature. Ps.-Demetrius “broadly defines the consolatory letter as one written to those grieving ‘because something unpleasant has happened to them’” (Formae epistolicae 5).34 He does not even hint that such a letter could be written to someone who is rejoicing and grieving at the same time. His definition is confirmed by the preserved corpus of such letters from antiquity since these letters do not address anyone who is concurrently rejoicing and grieving. Indeed, such letters urge recipients to replace their grief with a different emotion such as joy or no emotion at all, and such letters, the purpose of which is to alleviate grief, are not needed if the recipient has already found a way to rejoice while grieving. Neither those who write about consolation nor those who practice the art envision the need to console 32  Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East: The New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World, trans. Lionel R. M. Strachan (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1978), 176–177. 33  Holloway, Coping with Prejudice, 80. Holloway also notes that the first task of Job’s friends was to join him in his mourning rites and grief (p. 89–90). 34  Ibid., 79.

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someone who is both rejoicing and grieving because they consider the experience of simultaneous joy and grief impossible. Reading ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in 1 Pet 1:6 in reference to present rejoicing while the recipients are grieving as Calvin and Horneius do makes this letter most unusual and even unique when it is compared to ancient consolatory etiquette, theory, and practice. Their assumption that Peter writes to console those rejoicing while grieving, therefore, conforms neither to the theory nor to the practice of ancient consolations. If ἀγαλλιᾶσθε refers to future rejoicing, however, then First Peter conforms quite nicely as the Petrine author holds out the prospect and indeed even the certainty of future rejoicing for his grieving recipients.

5. Conclusion Both the physiological and consolatory assumptions necessary for reading ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in 1 Pet 1:6 with present reference are not only improbable but also impossible from ancient perspectives. Although Calvin and Horneius and those who follow them read ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in reference to present rejoicing, the original author and readers of First Peter could not have. For them, experiencing joy and grief at the same time exceeds the ability of the human body or at least their understanding of the body and how it works. Furthermore, Peter’s telling his grieving recipients that they are presently rejoicing would more likely disturb rather than console them. The ancients’ understanding of physiology and their sensitivities of how to console the grieving can only be respected and retained by reading ἀγαλλιᾶσθε with a future reference as did the ancient commentators and interpreters of 1 Pet 1:6. Even though the article that I published in 1992 failed to persuade all subsequent commentators, perhaps these additional considerations may at last lead to some consensus in the debate about how to read ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in 1 Pet 1:6 as well as this same verb in 1 Pet 1:8. Of course, reading ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in 1 Pet 1:6 with future reference indicates that this same verb in verse eight also relates to future rejoicing. Since verse eight does not mention grief or distress, however, the physiological arguments pertaining to verse six cannot be made for verse eight. Nevertheless, the argument from consolatory etiquette, theory, and practice does have some bearing on how to read ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in 1 Pet 1:8 since mentioning rejoicing before treating the grief is inappropriate. In both verses, this verb refers to future rejoicing as I initially argued in my 1992 article.35 A final observation about ἀγαλλιᾶσθε is that this verb does not occur in secular Greek but is developed in biblical Greek to express a rejoicing occasioned by the divine presence. This verb forms from the nominal stem of ἀγαλλία  Martin, “Present Indicative,” 307–312.

35

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(“joy”), which is a combination of the root ἀγαλ‑ with an iota suffixed. This noun names a joy to which the ἄγαλμα (“cult statue”) belongs or pertains in some way.36 Thus, the joy expressed in this word group arises from being in the presence of the divine image. The cult image for Christians is not some statue made from gold, silver, stone, or wood but their living, resurrected Lord. When he is revealed at the last time, Christians will rejoice exuberantly as they see their Lord face to face although they do not see him at present (1 Pet 1:8) and are grieved by manifold trials (1 Pet 1:6). The present tense verb ἀγαλλιᾶσθε is therefore the appropriate word in both 1 Pet 1:6 and 1:8 to express this future exuberant joy at the revelation of Jesus Christ and to emphasize the nearness and certainty of this joy for those who are grieving at present.

6. Reception History I wrote this article because many in the interpretative debate over the temporal reference of ἀγαλλιᾶσθε in 1 Pet 1:6, 8 remained unpersuaded by the grammatical and contextual arguments in my initial publication on these verses. This follow-up article was submitted to the Journal of Biblical Literature, and one reviewer expressed surprise that this article did not simply repeat the arguments of the first but rather took a different argumentative approach altogether. I hope this second article will now persuade those who remained unconvinced by the first one that simultaneous joy and grief are not possible for the Petrine author and his audience. The only way to avoid this impossibility is to interpret ἀγαλλιᾶσθε with a future temporal reference in these verses. Interpreting this verb as future joy has significant implications for understanding the eschatology not only of the Petrine author but also of early Christianity as well.

 Smyth, Greek Grammar, § 858.2.

36

Original Publications A. Early Christian Salvation I. “Christians as Babies: Metaphorical Reality in First Peter.” Pages 99–112 in Reading 1–2 Peter and Jude: A Resource for Students. Edited by Eric Mason and Troy W. Martin. Resources for Biblical Study 77. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2014. © 2014 by the Society of Biblical Literature, reprinted with permission. II. “Christ’s Healing Sore: A Medical Reading of 1 Petri 2:24.” Vetera Christianorum 54 (2017): 143–154. © by Edipuglia s. r. i., reprinted with permission. III. “Paul and Circumcision.” Pages 113–142 in vol, 1 of Paul in the Greco-Roman World: A Handbook. Revised Edition. Edited by J. Paul Sampley. 2 vols. New York: T&T Clark, 2016. © 2016 by J. Paul Sampley, reprinted with permission. IV. “Apostasy to Paganism: The Rhetorical Stasis of the Galatian Controversy.” Journal of Biblical Literature 114 (1995): 437–461 © 1995 by the SBL Press, reprinted with permission. Reprinted as Chapter 5; Pages 73–94 in The Galatians Debate: Contemporary Issues in Rhetorical and Historical Interpretation. Edited by Mark D. Nanos. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002. Excerpt from The Galatians Debate edited by Mark D. Nanos; © 2002, by Baker Academic, reprinted with permission. V. “The Scythian Perspective in Col 3:11.” Novum Testamentum 37 (1995): 249–261. © 1995 by Brill, Leiden, reprinted with permission. VI. “Scythian Perspective or Elusive Chiasm: A Reply to Douglas A. Campbell.” Novum Testamentum 41 (1999): 256–264. © 1999 by Brill, Leiden, reprinted with permission.

B. Early Christian Virtues VII. “Faith: Its Qualities, Attributes, and Legitimization in 1 Peter.” Biblical Research 61 (2016), 46–61. © 2016 by the Chicago Society of Biblical Research, reprinted with permission. VIII. Contributions of the Septuagint to Early Christian Hope Piety – Published here for the first time but adapted from three unpublished paper presentations: “Septuagint Hope Piety and the Shaping of Hellenistic Hope Communities.” A plenary address at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Region of the Society of Biblical Literature. Olivet Nazarene University. Bourbonnais, IL, February 5, 2016; “The Seputagintal Background of New Testament Hope.” A paper presented at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Central States Region of the Society of Biblical Literature. St. Louis Marriott West Hotel. St. Louis, MO, March 14, 2016; and “Contributions of the Septuagint to Hellenistic Hope Piety.” A paper presented at the 2016 National Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. San Antonio, TX, November 21, 2016.

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IX. Ἀγαπητοὶ Ἀδελφοί (“Beloved Siblings”): Terms of Endearment in Early Christianity – Published here for the first time but adapted from an unpublished paper: “ Ἀγαπητοὶ Ἀδελφοί (‘Beloved Siblings’): Septuagintal Terms of Endearment in Early Christian Literature.” A paper presented to the Chicago Society of Biblical Research. Judson University, Elgin, IL, April 9, 2016.

C. Early Christian Sacraments X. “Covenant of Circumcision (Gen 17:9–14) and the Situational Antitheses in Gal 3:28.” Journal of Biblical Literature 122 (2003): 111–125. © 2003 by the SBL Press, reprinted with permission. XI. “But Let Everyone Discern the Body of Christ (Col 2:17).” Journal of Biblical Literature 114 (1995): 249–255. © 1995 by the SBL Press, reprinted with permission. XII. “Tasting the Eucharistic Lord as Useable (1 Pet 2:3).” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 78 (2016): 515–525. © 2016 by The Catholic Biblical Association of America, reprinted with permission.

D. Early Christian Pneumatology XIII. “Ancient Medical Texts, Newly Re-Discovered: The Medical Background of Biblical Breathing.” Early Christianity 1 (2010): 513–538. © by Mohr Siebeck, reprinted with persmision. XIV. “Paul’s Pneumatological Statements and Ancient Medical Texts.” Pages 105–126 in The New Testament and Early Christian Literature in Greco-Roman Context: Studies in Honor of David E. Aune. Edited by John Fotopoulos. Leiden: Brill, 2006. © 2006 by Brill, Leiden, reprinted with permission.

E. Early Christian Life and Practice XV. “Paul’s Argument from Nature for the Veil in 1 Corinthians 11:13–15: A Testicle instead of a Head-Covering.” Journal of Biblical Literature 123 (2004): 71–80. © 2004 by the SBL Press, reprinted with permission. XVI. “Περιβόλαιον as ‘Testicle’ in 1 Cor 11:15: A Response to Mark Goodacre.” Journal of Biblical Literature 132 (2013): 453–465. © 2013 by the SBL Press, reprinted with permission. XVII. “Pagan and Judeo-Christian Time-keeping Schemes in Gal 4:10 and Col 2:16.” New Testament Studies 42 (1996): 105–119. © 1996 by Cambridge University Press, reprinted with permission. XVIII. “Performing the Head Role: Man is the Head of the Woman.” Biblical Research 57 (2012): 69–80. © 2012 by the Chicago Society of Biblical Research, reprinted with permission. XIX. “Live Unnoticed: An Epicurean Maxim and the Social Dimension of Col 3:3–4.” Pages 227–244 in Antiquity and Humanity: Essays on Ancient Religion and Philosophy

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Presented to Hans Dieter Betz on His 70th Birthday. Edited by Adela Yarbro Collins and Margaret M. Mitchell. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001. © by Mohr Siebeck, reprinted with permission.

F. Early Christian Eschatology XX. “Watch during the Watches (Mk 13:35).” Journal of Biblical Literature 120 (2001): 685– 701. © 2001 by the SBL Press, reprinted with permission. XXI. “The Present Indicative in the Eschatological Statements of 1 Pet 1:6–8.” Journal of Biblical Literature 111 (1992): 307–312. © 1992 by the SBL Press, reprinted with permission. XXII. “Emotional and Consolatory Etiquette: Reading the Present Indicative with Future Reference in the Eschatological Statement in 1 Pet 1:6.” Journal of Biblical Literature 135 (2016): 649–660. © 2016 by the SBL Press, reprinted with permission.

Bibliography Reference Works Adkins, Lesley and Roy A. Adkins. Dictionary of Roman Religion. New York: Facts on File, 1996. Anderson, R. Dean, Jr. Glossary of Greek Rhetorical Terms: Connected to Methods of Argumentation, Figures and Tropes from Anaximenes to Quintilian. Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology 24. Leuven: Peeters, 2000. Aune, David E. The Westminister Dictionary of New Testament and Early Christian Literature and Rhetoric. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003. Balz, Horst, and Gerhard Schneider, eds. Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament. 3 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990. Blass, Friedrich, Albert Debrunner, and Robert W. Funk. A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961. Botterweck, G. Johannes, et al., eds. Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. 15 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997. Brown, Colin, ed. New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. 4 vols. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1975–1978. Burton, Ernest de Witt. Syntax of the Moods and Tenses in New Testament Greek. 3rd ed. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1976. Danker, Frederick W., Walter Bauer, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich. A GreekEnglish Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Ellingworth, Paul, and Howard Hatton. A Translator’s Handbook on Paul’s First letter to the Corinthians. Helps for Translators. London: United Bible Societies, 1985. Freedman, David N. Anchor Bible Dictionary. 6 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1992. Hatch, Edwin and Henry A. Redpath. A Concordance to the Septuagint and the Other Greek Versions of the Old Testament (including the Apocryphal Books). 3 vols. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1983. Kittel, Gerhard and Gerhard Friedrich, eds. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. 10 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964–1976. Koehler, Ludwig, and Walter Baumgartner, eds. Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti Libros. Leiden: Brill, 1958. Liddell, Henry G., Robert Scott, and Henry S. Jones. A Greek-English Lexicon. 9th ed. with a Supplement. Oxford: Clarendon, 1983. McKay, K. L. A New Syntax of the Verb in New Testament Greek: An Aspectual Approach. Studies in Biblical Greek 5. New York: Lang, 1994.

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Moulton, James H., and Wilbert F. Howard. Accidence and Word-Formation with an Appendix on Semitisms in the New Testament. Vol. 2 of A Grammar of New Testament Greek. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986. Müller, Gerhard, Horst Balz, and Gerhard Krause, eds. Theologische Realenzyklopädie. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1977–2004. Nicholas, G. L. Hammond and Howard H. Scullard, eds. The Oxford Classical Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1984. Nunn, H. P. V. A Short Syntax of New Testament Greek. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969. Porter, Stanley E. Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament, with Reference to Tense and Mood. Studies in Biblical Greek 1. New York: Lang, 1989. Robertson, A. T. A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research. Nashville: Broadman, 1934. Smyth, Herbert Weir. Greek Grammar. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980. Strack, Hermann L. and Paul Billerbeck. Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch. 6 vols. München: C. H. Beck, 1922–1961. Temporini, Hildegard, and Wolfgang Haase, eds. Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung. Part 2, Principat. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1972–. Turner, Nigel. Syntax. Vol. 3 of A Grammar of New Testament Greek by James H. Moulton. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1963. Zerwick, Maximilian. Biblical Greek: Illustrated by Examples. Scripta Pontificii Instituti Biblici 114. Rome: Iura Editionis et Versionis Reservantur, 1963. –, and Mary Grosvenor. Epistles – Apocalypse. Vol. 2 of A Grammatical Analysis of the New Testament. Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1979.

Texts and Translations Aland, Barbara, et al., eds. Novum Testamentum Graece. 28th rev. ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2013. Albeck, Chanoch. ‫סדר מועד‬. Vol. 2 of ‫ששה סדרי משנה‬. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1988. Anderson, H. “4 Maccabees: A New Translation and Introduction.” Pages 531–564 in Expansions of the “Old Testament” and Legends, Wisdom and Philosophical Literature, Prayers, Psalms, and Odes, Fragments of Lost Judeo-Hellenistic Works. Vol. 2 of The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Edited by James H. Charlesworth. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985. Ascough, Richard S, Philip A. Harland, and John S. Kloppenborg, eds. Associations in the Greco-Roman World: A Sourcebook. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012. Avemarie, Friedrich. Yoma Versöhnungstag. Vol. 2.4 of Übersetzung des Talmud Yerushalmi. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995. Babbitt, Frank C. et al. trans. Plutarch’s Moralia. 16 vols. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969–2004. Bailey, Cyril, trans. Aristophanes Clouds. Oxford: Clarendon, 1921. –. Epicurus: The Extant Remains with Short Critical Apparatus, Translation, and Notes. Oxford: Clarendon, 1926.

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Index of References 1. Hebrew Bible/Septuagint Genesis 1:2 291 1:14 196, 366 1:26 199 1:27 198–199, 201, 207, 213, 215–216 2:7 289–291, 295–296 3:21 350 4:7 151 4:23 29–30 4:26 169 6:3 289–290, 295 15:6 58 17 58, 206, 209 17:9–14 53, 131, 191, 196–200, 209–210, 213, 384, 458 17:10–14 212 17:14 51, 54, 85, 87, 371 17:23–26 90 19:20 164 20:12 289 21:4 90 21:12 91 21:13 91 22 179 22:2 179 22:12 179 22:16 179 49:9 151 Exodus 4:21 60 6:12 309 6:30 309 7:23 60 12:45 197 12:48 197

14:24 60, 420 20:26 338 21:25 30 28:40 338 28:42–43 338 28:43 338 Leviticus 15:2 338 16:29 197 17:10 197 19:10 197 24:16 197 26:27–33 152 26:40–42 62 Numbers 9:14 197 Deuteronomy 4:5–31 152 4:29–30 152 4:42 164 10:16 62, 64 14:21 197 19:5 164 21:22 153 24:14 197 28:58–68 152 30:1–2 62 30:6 62, 64 Joshua 20:9 164 Judges 5:16 60

500

Index of References

7:19 425–426 11:34 179 First Samuel/First Kingdoms 11:11 426 First Kings/Third Kingdoms 14:15 152 Second Kings/Fourth Kingdoms 17:25–26 151 18:5 163 First Chronicles 23:31 361 29:13 60 Second Chronicles 2:3 361 13:18 163 31:3 361 Esther 4:17 LXX

164

Judith 2:5 420 9:13 29 Tobit 3:10 179 3:15 179 10:8 162 First Maccabees 1:11–15 85 1:52 85 Second Maccabees 2:21 117 4:47 117 7:34 169 Third Maccabees 2:17 439 7:5 117 Fourth Maccabees 13:19–23 182

Psalms 5:11 (5:12 LXX) 163–164164 22:9 (21:9 LXX) 163 22:14 (21:14 LXX) 151 34 (33 LXX) 15 34:4 (33:5 LXX) 15 34:5 (33:6 LXX) 15 34:8 (33:9 LXX) 15, 253, 261 34:12–16 (33:13–17 LXX) 15 38:5 (37:6 LXX) 30 42:12 (41:12 LXX) 163 60:7 (59:7 LXX) 173, 179 66:10 150 81:16 (80:16 LXX) 149 84:2 (83:3 LXX) 439 91:14 (90:14 LXX) 163 93:5 (92:5 LXX) 439 104:22 151 108:7 (107:7 LXX) 173, 179 115:8 (113:16 LXX 165 115:9–11 (113:17–19 LXX) 165 119:162 (118:162 LXX) 439 127:2 (126:2 LXX) 173, 179 130:5 (129:6 LXX) 426 131:3 (130:3 LXX) 163 143:9 (142:9 LXX) 164 145:15 (144:15 LXX) 163 Proverbs 17:3 150 Wisdom of Solomon 3:4–6 150 3:4 169 3:7 149 3:11 169 5:14 169 13:10 169 15:10 169 Sirach/Ecclesiasticus 2:5 150 5:7 149 14:2 169 18:24 149 31:1 169 31:13–15 169 31:14–17 169

501

Index of References

43:6–7 360 44:17 149 49:10 169 Hosea 2:13 361 Amos 5:13 149 Micah 3:4 149 Joel 3:1–3 152 3:1 149 Zephaniah/Sophonias 3:16 149 3:19 149 Zechariah 1:12–2:12 152 1:12–17 153 2:6 153 2:11 153 3:1–5 350–351 7:14–8:8 152 13:8–9 150 Malachi 3:1–3 150 3:1 424 3:10 424 Isaiah 1:6 30 1:25 150 11:10 163 18:1 149 22:13 440 25:9 163–164 48:10 150 53:5 24–25, 30–31, 33 60:20 149 Jeremiah 3:17 149

4:4 50, 63–64 4:11 149 4:25 63 6:10 309 6:15 149 6:29–30 150 8:1 149 9:16 152 9:25–26 (9:24–25 LXX) 63 10:15 149 13:24–27 152 18:17 152 18:23 149 23:1–6 153 23:3–4 152 23:5–6 152 23:24 152 30:10–11 152 31:31–40 152 46:21 (26:21 LXX) 149 50:4 (27:4 LXX) 149 50:5 (27:5 LXX) 164 50:17 151 50:19 152 50:20 (27:20 LXX) 149 Baruch 4:16

173, 179

Ezekiel 7:7 149 7:12 149 12:8–16 152 16:26 338 19:2 151 22:15–31 152 22:15 152 23:20 338 34:1–5 152 36:24–32 152 Daniel 2:28 60, 389 2:30 60 6:23 151 11:27 149 12:1 149 12:9 149

502

Index of References

2. Other Ancient Jewish Literature Apocalypse of Abraham 13 150 13:14 350 Apocalypse of Elijah 5:6 350–351 Apocalypse of Moses 2 150 16 150

Jubilees 2:9 360 11:5 150 17:16 150 35:18–20 182 35:21–22 182 49:10–12 425 Odes of Solomon 11:1–2 65, 309

Ascension of Isaiah 11:35 350

Letter of Aristeas 261 170

Damascus Document (Cairo Genizah Copy) 4:12 150 5:18 150

Life of Adam and Eve 12 150

First Enoch 75:3 366 79:2 366 82:7 366 Second Enoch 22:8 351 Fourth Ezra 2:45 351 Hymn of the Initiates 1–10 366 Josephus A. J. 18.3.3 (64) 18.9.6 (356)

155 426

B. J. 5.12.2 (510–511) 426 C. Ap. 2.14 (137) 2.38 (282)

41 365

Philo Abr. 2 (7–9) 2 (9)

169 169

Alleg. Interp. 2.12 (43) 3.28 (85) 3.56 (164) 3.69 (194)

169 169 169 169

Cher. 1.9 (29) 2.23 (75) 2.31 (106)

169 169 169

Det. 38 (138) 38 (139)

169 169

Leg. 1.13 (35) 1.13 (36) 1.13 (37) 1.13 (39) 3.22 (69)

290 279 290 290 350

Mos. 2.30 386

503

Index of References

Opif. 14 (46) 26 (81)

169 169

Post. 8 (26)

169

Rabbinic Literature b. Ber. 3b

421, 426

b. Ned. 31b 48

QG 1.4 290 1.5 290 1.53 350 3.48 49–50

b. Qidd. 91a 150 b. Šabb. 89a 150

Somn. 2.207 386

b. Sanh. 107 150

Spec. 1.1.2–3 48 1.1.4 48 1.1.5 49–50 1.1.6 50 1.1.7 50 1.1.9 50 1.1.10 51

b. Yoma 20b 427 m. Ned. 3:11 48 m. Yoma 1:8 426–427 LevR 15 (116a2) 302

3. Greco-Roman Literature ps.-Anacharsis

Achilles Tatius Leuc. Clit. 1.15.2

331, 343, 346, 349, 354

Aeschylus Prom. 250 167 252 167 379–380 453

Ep. 1 117, 127 2 117, 134 5 120–121 6 121 9 118–119, 121 Anonymus Bruxellensis

Sept. 622 352

De semine 1 268

Aesop

Anonymus Londinensis

Fab. 55.1.2 419

De medicina 20 283

Aëtius (ps.-Plutarch)

Anonymous of Paris (Anonymi Medici)

De placita philosophorum 1.3.4 (Mor. 876a–b) 285 4.5 (Mor. 899a–b) 388

De morbis acutis et chroniis 1 61, 301 1.2–4 388 20 286

504 Appian Syr. 118.2 420 Aristophanes Av. 488–490 420 Eccl. 13 335 30–31 420–421 520–524 341 523–524 334 Lys. 937–947 334 Nub. 976 52 987 345 1010 345 1014 345 1016–1019 344 1019 344–346 1020–1023 345 1020 345 1023 345 Plut. 267 42 Thesm. 492–494 335 Vesp. 578 353 1343–1344 348 Aristotle De an. 1.1 (403a–408b) 449 1.1 (403a) 449–450 2.10 (422a) 260 Eth. Nic. 1.5.6 (1096a) 449 1.6.8 (1096b) 177 3.10.9 (1118a) 260 4.1.20 (1120b) 177 7.3.10 (1147a–b) 309

Index of References

8.3.1 (1156a) 177 8.12.6 (1162a) 174, 181–182 9.7.3 (1167b–1168a) 177 9.12.1 (1171b) 177 10.7.5 (1177b) 177 Gen. an. 1.4 [717a–717b) 337 1.12 (719b) 356 1.19–20 (727a–728a) 12 1.19 (727a) 258 1.20 (728a) 258, 353 1.20 (728b) 332 1.22 (730a–b) 333 2.3 (736b–737a) 181 2.4 (739a–b) 333–334, 337 2.4 (738b) 12, 258 2.4 (739b) 12, 181, 258, 333 2.4 (739b–740a) 61 2.4 (740a) 389 2.7 (747a) 334, 341 4.1 (765a) 355 4.1 (765b) 181, 333 4.8 (766a) 11 4.8 (776a–b) 13, 258, 266, 269 4.8 (776a) 265 4.8 (776b) 14, 260, 265, 267 4.8 (777a) 13, 259, 265 4.10 (687b) 346 5.3 (783b–784a) 332, 336 5.7 (787b–788a) 353 5.7 (788a) 346 Gen. corr. 1.5 (320a–322a) 262 1.5 (322a) 262 Hist. an. 1.1 (486a) 1.13 (493a) 1.14 (493b) 1.16 (495a) 1.17 (497a) 2.1 (498b) 3.20 (522a) 5.14 (544b) 9.1 (581a–b) 9.1 (581b–582a)

353 38–39, 41, 353, 356 352, 356 299 355 348 14, 260, 267 352 352 354

Index of References

Metaph. 1.1.1 (980a) 9.1.1 (980a) [Mir. ausc.] 117 [841b

177 178

Top. 3.2.29–30 (117b) 178 3.2.30 (117b) 177

27

Babrius

Part. an. 2.10 (656a) 2.13 (657b)

61, 387, 389 41

Poet. 21.7 (1457b)

5

Pol. 2.1.17 (1262b)

179

[Probl.] 2.10 (867a) 387 9.1–14 (889b–891a) 29 10.24 (893b) 333 34.6 (864a) 296 Resp. 1 (470b) 2 (470b–471a) 2 (471a) 3 (471b) 4 (472a) 5 (472b) 6 (473a) 7 (473b–474a) 7 (474a) 15 (478a) 17 (479a)

278 278 279 279 285 286 280, 286 281–282 284 286 286

Rhet. 1.2.5 (1356a) 449 1.3.3–5 (1358b) 94 2.2–11 (1378a–1388b) 449 2.2.1 (1378a) 449 3.2.12 (1405a) 3, 17 3.3.4 (1406b) 4 3.10.7 (1411a–b) 5 Sens. 1 (436b) 4 (440b–442b)

260 260

[Spir.] 278

505

Fabulla 58 166 Celsus De medicina 6.18.2 48–49 7.25.1 46–47 7.25.2 44, 47 Cicero Fin. 1.6 405 2.83 408 [Rhet. Her.] 1.3.4 73 1.10.18 73 1.11 72 Cleomedes De motu circulari corporum caelestium 2.1.482–502 161 Corpus hermeticum 7.3 350 Demosthenes Cor. (Or. 18) 199 222 Mid. (Or. 21) 165 179 Dio Cassius Hist. 79.5.5–79.6.3 128–129 Dio Chrysostom Exil. 10 194

506 Nicom. (Or. 38) 15 184 42 185 45 185 46 185 Ps.-Demetrius Formae epistolicae 5 453–454 Diodorus Siculus Hist. 3.48.1 420 13.47.2 420 13.111.1 420 14.24.5 420 15.84.1 420 17.56.1 420 17.68.7 420 18.40.3 420 19.26.1 420 19.32.2 420 19.38.3 420 19.93.2 420 19.95.3 420 19.95.5 420 19.96.4 420 20.96.4 420 20.98.5 420 ps.-Diogenes Ep. 7.1 119 28 119, 134 28.8 119, 134 38.4 126 Diogenes Laertius Vitae philosophorum 4.43 409 6.72 194 7.191 346 9.59 350 10.60–61 405 10.76–78 406

Index of References

10.124 405 10.139 405 Diogenes of Oenoanda Fr. 56 405 21 (NF) 405 Dionysius of Halicarnassus Ant. rom. 3.56.1 420 Dioscorides of Anazarbus De materia medica 2.82.2 44 4.153.4–5 44 Empedocles Fr. 100 281–283 126 350 Epictetus Diatr. 2.18.11 29 3.26.11 168 Epicurus Epistle to Herodotus 60–61 405 76–78 406 Epistle to Menoeccus 124 405 128 409 Sent. 10 409 14 401 40 401 139 405 Erasistratus Fr. 289

60, 300

507

Index of References

Euripides Bacch. 746 350 Herc. fur. 549 350 1269 331, 343, 346, 349–355

De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis 1.6 301 2.8 288 7.3.2–3 60, 390 7.3.2 390 7.3.10 60, 390

Phoen. 396–397 168

Quod animi mores corporis temperamenta sequuntur 3 181

Suppl. 479 167–168

Sem. 1.12

Galen Alim. fac. 1.4 261 3.6 353–354 3.14 265 An in arteriis natura sanguis contineatur 6.3 280 7.4 287 [De compositione medicamentorum per genera] 7.7 44 [Definitiones medicae] 439 332 Glossarium 19:139 (Kuhn)

29

In Hippocratis librum de articulis et Galeni in eum commentarii iv 18a:635 (Kuhn) 184 De methodo medendi 14 27 14.16 45, 49 Nat. fac. 1.7 262 1.10 261 1.11 256 2.8 261 3.6 257 3.7 257, 261 3.11 257 3.13 257 3.15 256

12, 258

De usu partium 4.14 284 6.2 284 11.13 43, 48 14.1 43 14.3 43, 48 14.4 13, 259 14.6 355–356 14.7 353 14.8 13, 258 14.9 355 14.10–11 12–13, 258 14.10 50, 355–356 14.12 355 14.14 50, 355 17.1 43 De usu pulsuum 5.2 287 De usu respirationis 1.2 285, 288 5.2–4 287 5.2 288 5.4 287 5.8 288 6.4 287 De venae sectione adversus Erasistratum 3 301 ps.-Heraclitus Ep. 2 127 6.7–20 303 8.1 126–127

508

Index of References

9.2 122 9.4 122 9.7–8 122 Hermogenes On Stases

72–73, 77

Herodotus Hist. 2.113 164 4.8–10 121 Hesiod Op. 57–58 167 95–105 166 106 167 498–500 167

31 302 48 298, 304 49 312 55 307 Aphor. 2.47 265 5.39 13, 259, 267 5.50 13, 259 5.52 13, 258 5.59 334 5.60 13, 258 6.19 41 7.87 (Appendix) 305 De arte. 10 303–304 Artic. 57 184

Hesychius

Carn. 3 331 5 302 6 302 19 335

Lexicon Π–Σ 1277 27, 29 1296–1297 29

De corde 10 389 10.12 62

Theog. 560–612 166

Hierocles Elements of Ethics 1.1 181 Hippocrates/Hippocratic Corpus Acut. 50 311 Aer. 7.80–100 311 22 322 Aff. 46 311 47 311–312 50 311–312 Alim. 28 30

283, 299 280, 299, 387

Epid. 1.26.289–308 (Case 12) 311 2.3.17 11, 312 2.6.19 304 3.4 352 6.4.21 353 6.8.6 312 7.107 305 Flat. 3 278–279, 298, 302–303 4 299, 304–305 7 284 Fract. 28 28 Genit. 1 332 2 332 5 181, 333

Index of References

Gland. 1 333 3 333 4 333 16 333 De humoribus 9 450 Loc. Hom. 2 274 3 301, 332, 337 Morb. 1.12 305 1.15 265 1.22 352 3.14 284, 299 Morb. sacr. 7 299, 303 10 300, 303–304 16 280 19–20 60, 389 19 300 20 300, 304 Mul. 1.11 335 Nat. hom. 12 312 Nat. puer. 12.1 181 20 332–333 De ossium natura 19 389 19.6–9 62 Praec. 9 304 Progn. 3 28 5 304 15 304 20 304 Steril. 2.2 341 2.4 341 2.6 341

De ulceribus 1 28 Vet. med. 3 312 9 313 14 311–312 20.17–34 311 22 337 Vict. salubr. 2.66 304 Homer [Batrachomyomachia] 191–192 420 Il. 6.401 178–179 10.244–247 61 21.441 61 24.527 166 Od. 2.365 179 4.817 179 Isocrates Paneg. 121.8–9 162 John Philoponus In libros de generatione animalium c­ ommentaria 14.3 346 Juvenal Sat. 14.96–106 41 Lucian Alex. 25 404 38 404 Anach. 6 118

509

510 Gall. 1

Index of References

420–421

Paul of Aegina

Peregr. 12–13 185 12 185 13 185 40 351

Epitomae medicae libri septem 6.53 47 6.57 48–49

Philops. 20 27

Lib. Col. XXb

Lucretius De rerum natura 2.1023–1174 405 Lysias Or. 22.8 177–178 Martial Epig. 7.30 46 7.35 45 7.35.1–4 45–46 10.90 336 11.94 43 12.82 41 Maximus of Tyre Phil. 4.5 332 Oribasius Collectiones medicae 45.28.3 29 Collectionum medicarum reliquiae 50.7 48–49 Petronius Satyr. 68.4–8 42 102.13–14 42 102.14 56

Philodemus 183

Piet. 225–231 406 558–559 404 808–810 404 1395–1400 404 ps.-Phocylides Sententiae 212 334 Plato Leg. 36b 222 Phaed. 60b 449 87c 350 87e 350 Euthyd. 304b 177 Phaed. 112b

303

Resp. 2 (379d) 3 (395d) 3 (398a)

166 334 334

Tim. 42a–b 449 44d 60, 386, 390 79a–79e 283 Pliny the Elder Nat. 4.80–81 129 10.24.46 420 11.96 (237) 265 28.33 (123) 265–266

511

Index of References

Polybius

Plutarch Alex. 18.3–4 (Vit. 274)

346

Arat. 7.5 (Vit. 1030)

420

An recte dictum sit latenter esse vivendum 2 (Mor. 1128d–e) 402 3–4 (Mor. 1129a–b) 402 4 (Mor. 1129c) 403 4 (Mor. 1129d) 408 6–7 (Mor. 1130b–c) 408 7 (Mor. 1130e) 402–403 Caes. 43.6 (Vit. 547)

420

[Cons.Apoll.] 1 (Mor. 102a) 453 2 (Mor. 102b) 453 2 (Mor. 102c) 453 7 (Mor. 105c–d) 166 Exil. 606d–e (Mor. 7.563)

168

Frat. amor. 2 (Mor. 478e–f ) 3–4 (Mor. 479d–e) 3 (Mor. [479d) 5 (Mor. 480b) 5 (Mor. 480c) 6 (Mor. 480e) 8 (Mor. 482b) 17 ( Mor. 488b)

181 183 181 181 181 181 183 183

[Plac. phil.] (see under Aëtius) Pomp. 68.3 (Vit. 655) 78.4 (Vit. 661)

420 128

Quaest. conv. 3.10 (Mor. 659d) 26 6.7.1 (Mor. 692d) 386 Suav. viv. 15–19 (Mor. 1096f–1100d) 410 15 (Mor. 1097a–d) 410 17 (Mor. 1098d) 410 Thes. 5.1 (Vit. 2)

336

Hist. 3.67.2 420 Quintilian Inst. 3.4.1–16 94 3.4.6–7 94 5.Prooemium 2 73 5.1.1–2 95 5.5.1 93 5.6.1–2 81 5.7.1 93 5.13.44–49 74 5.13.53 73 7.1.6 72 9.3.50 207 Seneca Ep. 68.1–5 402 Seneca the Elder Suasoriae 94 Sextus Empiricus Math. 9.25 406 Sophocles Ant. 88 61 615–617 167 1105 61 Soranus Gyn. 1.3 (15) 1.8 (33) 1.9 (34–35) 1.9 (35) 1.10 (36) 1.12 (43) 1.12 (44)

13, 259 181, 333 181, 333 334 181, 333 181, 333, 337 335

512

Index of References

1.14 (46) 181, 259, 333 2.11–15 (17–29) 14, 260 2.11–13 (17–21) 11 2.34 45 3.13 (47) 181, 333

20.3 260 28.1 260 72.11 260

De signis fracturarum 9 29

Fr. 37 352

Strabo

Thucydides

Geog. 7.3.7 113 7.33 (Fr.) 419 7.35 (Fr.) 419 11.6.2 129 14.2.28 115, 117 16.4.9 41

Hist. 5.103 167

Tacitus Ann. 2.49 168 Hist. 5.2 41 Theophrastus Sens. 6.3 260 9.7 260 19.8 260

Theopompus Comicus

Vindicianus Sem. 4 302 Virgil Aen. 6.46–51 305–306 Xenophon Cyr. 1.4.25.12–13 162 8.7.14–16 181 Mem. 2.1.33 179 2.3.3–4 181

4. New Testament Matthew 3:17 176, 179 5:3–7:27 400 5:11–12 452 5:12 439 8:16 425 8:17 33 9:4 60 10:21–22 175 12:18 176 12:46–50 175 13:13–15 XI 13:15 33

14:15 425 14:23 425 14:25 423, 432 15:17 XI 16:2 425 16:9 XI 16:11 XI 16:17 292 17:5 176, 179 20:8 425 24:40 422 24:42–51 428 24:43 (Q) 422

Index of References

25:6 423, 432 25:13–30 428 25:31–33 154 26:20 425 26:34 429–431 26:74 431 26:75 430–431 27:26 25 27:57 408, 425 28:1 425 Mark 1:10 307, 324 1:11 176, 179 1:32 425 3:31–35 175 4:12 XI 4:35 425 6:45–52 423 6:47 425 6:48 432 7:21–22 60 8:16 425 8:17 XI 8:21 XI 9:2–8 351 9:7 176, 179 9:31 440, 445 10:33 440 11:11 425 12:6 179 12:24–25 207 13 423–425, 428, 431 13:1–3 425 13:1 424 13:2 424 13:5–37 531 13:12–13 175 13:14 424 13:24–25 422 13:33 423 13:34–37 422 13:34–36 423–424, 428 13:34 423 13:35 417–429, 431–434, 459 13:37 423 14–16 423 14:15 425

14:17 424–425 14:23 425 14:30 427, 429, 431 14:42 431 14:68 430, 432 14:72 424, 427, 431 15:1 424 15:15 25 15:37 292 15:39 291–292, 295, 305 15:42 425 15:43 408 15:44–45 292 16:2 425 Luke 1:15 295 1:47 439 3:12–14 408 3:22 176, 179, 292 6:20–49 400 6:22–23 452 6:30 246 6:38 246 8:10 XI 8:19–21 175 8:43–48 274 9:35 176 12:34 431 12:35–46 428 12:35–38 422–423 12:38 423–424, 432 12:39–40 422 12:39 422 12:40 429 17:34 422–423 19:12–27 428 20:13 179 21:34–36 154 22:34 429, 431 22:60 431 22:61 429, 431 23:50–51 408 John 1:13 12, 22, 181, 258, 329 1:33 291 2:19 32

513

514

Index of References

2:21 32 3 18, 186, 408 3:6–8 291 5:35 439 7:39 291 8:43 XI 8:56 439 12:40 XI, 33 13:34 178 13:35 185 13:38 431 14:19 291 15:12 178 15:22 237 15:24 237 16:33 446 17:11 446 18:27 431 19:30 291 19:38 408 20:22 291–292, 295–296 Acts 1:8 293 1:21–22 159 1:22 159 2:1–4 292, 295 4:32–37 185 5:30 153 8 159 8:14–16 159 8:17 292 9:1–30 377 9:1–9 159 9:17 292 10:9–16 159 10–11 159 10:39 153 10:44–48 159 10:44 292 10:45 37, 65 11:2–3 54 11:2 37 13:7 407 13:12 407 13:14 363 13:29 153 13:44 363

15 158 15:1–2 37 15:2 37 15:5 37 15:6–21 37 15:8–9 65 15:10 89 15:22 37 15:23–29 37, 158 17:2 363 17:31 154 18:8 408 18:11 363 18:14–15 377 18:17 408 19 306 19:1–10 408 19:6 292 19:8 363 20:3 363 20:6 363 20:7 363 20:16 363 21:20–21 37 22:1–30 377 22:6–11 159 26:1–23 377 26:12–20 159 28:11 363 Romans 1–2 134–135 1:7 176 1:14 127, 132 1:16–17 58 1:16 132, 193, 197 1:21 60–61, 391 1:26–27 198 2–4 37 2:1 105, 223 2:9–10 197 2:9 193 2:16 440 2:25–29 63 2:25 88 2:26–29 59, 62 2:28–29 64 2:29 59, 65, 309

Index of References

3:1–3 59 3:9 197 4:14 88 5:3 452 5:5 308 5:19 147 6:19 276 7:4 238 7:6 309 8:2 313 8:4 309 8:5 310 8:9 293, 305 8:14 309 8:15 186 8:23 298 9–11 59 9:19–20 105 10:12 193, 197, 206 12:3–8 203 12:3–7 185 12:4 213 12:9 183 12:10–13 211 12:16 185 12:19 176 13:11–14 422 13:12 256 14:1–4 185 14:13–23 185 14:22 223 15:6 185 15:13 169 16:5 176 16:8 176 16:9 176 16:12 176 First Corinthians 1:10 185 1:15–20 244 1:18–25 452 1:23 65 1:24 197 2:4 321, 323 2:8 310 2:9 60, 355, 391 2:10–11 310

515

2:10 310 2:11–14 310 2:16 310 3 393 3:1–3 16, 254 3:16–17 32 3:16 309 4:5 61, 391 4:14 176 4:17 176 5:6–8 362 5:8 362 5:9–11 XI 5:10–11 362 6:7 185 6:9 362 6:15–17 185 6:19–20 32 6:19 309 7 203, 392 7:1–16 204 7:17–24 131–132, 203, 209 7:18–20 85 7:18–19 37 7:19 53 7:25–40 204 8:6 384 8:9–13 185 9:1–2 158 9:20–22 131 10:3–4 293, 307, 310 10:3 307 10:4 293, 307 10:7 362 10:14 176, 222, 233, 362 10:16 238 10:24 185, 221 10:32 197 11 339, 383 11–14 203 11:2–16 204, 329–331, 338, 348, 383–384, 386, 458 11:3–16 214, 339 11:3 383–385, 392 11:8 384, 386 11:9 384 11:10 384 11:11–12 191, 386

516

Index of References

11:11 384 11:12 384, 386 11:13–15 22, 181, 276, 329–330, 337, 341, 343, 357, 383 11:13 337 11:14–15 330, 337 11:14 333, 340–341, 357 11:15 181, 330–331, 337, 339, 341–344, 346–349, 354–357, 383, 458 11:16 338, 384 11:27–34 310, 313 11:27 312 11:28–29 310, 312 11:28 312 11:29–30 310 11:29 223, 312 11:30 313 12:1–11 204 12:2 309 12:3 292, 309 12:4–11 309 12:12–27 32, 203 12:12–14 201 12:12–14 213 12:13 122, 131, 192–193, 197, 201, 203, 206, 208–211, 293, 306–308, 324 12:15–17 355 12:21 355 12:24 44 12:26 185 12:27 238 12:28–31 204 14:11 116 15:8 159 15:9 377 15:32 440, 445 15:36 105 15:45 313, 317 15:58 176, 187 16:1 59, 95 16:2 362 Second Corinthians 1:6 185 1:19 158 1:22 298

3:6–8 309 3:6 313 3:15 61, 391 5:5 298 5:17 186 6:4–10 451 6:6 183 6:8 451 6:9 451 6:10 448, 450–451 6:16 32 7:1 176 8:9–12 105–106 8:8 106 8:9 106 9:1 159 9:7 61, 391 10:6 147 11:1–12:10 452 11:24 377 11:26 183 12:2 452 12:9 452 12:10 452 12:19 176 13:11 185 Galatians 1 82, 370 1–6 37, 75, 367 1:1 79 1:2 105 1:4 370 1:6–9 57, 74–80, 104, 107, 109 1:6–7 57, 80 1:6 80, 100, 104, 111, 372 1:7–9 37, 77–78, 80 1:7 101, 372 1:8–9 102 1:10–4:20 80, 84 1:10–4:7 84 1:10–2:21 370 1:10–24 369 1:10–12 79 1:10 81 1:11–2:21 369 1:11–14 74 1:11–12 74

Index of References

1:11 81 1:12 81 1:13–2:14 81 1:13–17 81 1:13–14 81 1:15–17 79 1:15–16 81 1:16 159 1:18–2:10 82 1:18–19 82 1;18 82 1:20 81, 372 1:21–23 82 1:21 82 1:23–24 82 2 82, 370 2:1–21 82 2:1–10 37, 82, 369 2:1 82 2:2 81 2:3–5 80 2:3 78, 82 2:4–5 37, 82, 89, 106 2:4 183 2:5 58 2:7–9 78 2:9 78–79, 82 2:11–21 82, 370 2:11–18 82 2:11–14 37 2:11–13 37 2:12 37, 53–54, 80, 86, 87–89, 106 2:13–14 58, 87 2:14–15 85 2:14 58–59, 78, 87, 370 2:15–21 82 2:15–17 80 2:15–16 58 2:15 89 2:16–17 378 2:16 58–59, 82, 87–88 2:21 78 3:1–4:7 83 3:1–18 111 3:1–5 75, 78, 293, 305–306, 308, 367, 370, 372 3:1–4 81

517

3:1–2 89, 106 3:1 83, 105, 200 3:2–5 80 3:2 59, 78, 83 3:3 83 3:4 83 3:5 75, 78, 83, 90, 111, 309, 321, 323 3:6–4:7 370 3:6–14 370 3:6 58, 91 3:7–4:7 83, 90–91 3:7–20 83 3:10–14 83 3:10–12 78, 80 3:10 88, 91 3:13–14 89 3:13 153 3:21–4:11 89 3:21–4:5 84 3:21–25 89 3:22 88 3:23–25 89 3:26–27 208 3:26–29 89, 192 3:26 211 3:27–28 32, 206–207 3:27 201, 207 3:28–29 59 3:28 53, 58–59, 89, 92, 108, 112, 116, 122, 131, 191–216, 384, 392, 458 3:29 211 4:1–5 89 4:3–11 363 4:3 101, 244, 366, 371 4:4–7 186 4:6–11 89 4:6–7 84 4:6 58, 308 4:8–20 84, 370 4:8–11 57, 74–79, 109–110, 360, 369, 372, 374, 379 4:8–10 84, 89, 100, 104–105, 374, 378 4:8–9 58, 81, 83, 370, 378 4:8 84, 195, 366, 370 4:9–10 84, 370

518 4:9

Index of References

55, 84, 101, 195, 234, 244, 366, 370–371, 378 4:10 55, 57, 84, 90, 103, 107, 195–196, 359–360, 365–367, 370, 372–374, 377–380, 417, 458 4:11–20 84 4:11 84, 93 4:12–20 57, 112, 196, 449 4:12–15 84 4:12 78 4:13–14 329 4:13 58, 276 4:14 79 4:15–16 372 4:15 84 4:16–17 78 4:16 84 4:17–20 106 4:17–18 84 4:17 53–54, 75, 77, 83, 92, 98, 200, 367 4:19–20 84 4:19 90 4:20 79, 85, 93, 95, 372 4:21–5:10 80 4:21–5:6 53, 67, 84, 88, 90, 92, 105–107, 380 4:21–5:1 84, 91, 370 4:21–31 59 4:21–27 85 4:21 67, 78, 80–81, 84–85, 88–90, 104–107 4:22–23 91 4:23 91 4:25 91 4:26 85, 91–92 4:28 85, 91–92 4:29 83, 91, 107, 377, 380 4:30–31 91 4:30 90–91 4:31 92 5:1 88–89, 91–92, 106, 367 5:2–6:16 370 5:2–12 75 5:2–6 59, 78, 84, 91 5:2–5 107–108, 371–372, 380 5:2–4 80, 108

5:2–3 53, 87–88, 380 5:2 53, 87, 91, 108, 371–372 5:3–4 371 5:3 52, 86–88, 91, 111 5:4 88–89, 91, 106, 108 5:5–6 111 5:5 59, 92, 111 5:6 53, 59, 87, 91–92, 193, 371 5:7–6:10 74 5:7–10 92 5:7–8 79 5:7 57–58, 75, 81, 92, 106, 200, 367, 370, 372 5:8–12 78 5:8 77, 92 5:9–21 58 5:10 77, 92, 95, 367, 372 5:11–6:10 80, 92 5:11 48, 78–79, 81, 92 5:12 48, 77, 90, 92, 101, 105–106 5:13–6:10 92, 370 5:13 92 5:14 92 5:15–26 92 5:16–18 309 5:20 362 5:21 95 5:22–25 58–59 5:22–14 309 5:22 323 6:1–10 92 6:2 92 6:7–10 95 6:8 59, 313 6:9–10 93 6:11–17 80, 93, 157 6:11 93 6:12–15 78 6:12–13 78, 80, 90, 93, 106 6:12 83, 200, 367, 377 6:13 53, 75, 86–88, 91, 93, 110 6:14–16 79 6:14–15 93 6:15 53, 59, 107, 186, 193, 199 6:16 93, 95, 102

Index of References

6:17 79, 93 6:18 93 Ephesians 1:7 443 1:11 443 1:13 443 1:22–23 32 2:11 37 2:12 170 2:14–16 65 2:21 32 4:5 185 4:10–16 32 4:12 238 4:13 387 4:22 256 5:1 176 5:14 422 5:23–32 32 5:23 383, 392–393 6:21 176, 187 Philipians 1:18 XIV 1:27 185 2:2 185 2:12 176 3:3 37, 64 3:6 377 4:1 176, 187 4:2 185 4:22 408 Colossians 1:2 398, 409 1:3–8 410 1:3–4 398, 403 1:4 397–398, 404 1:5–6 396 1:5 406, 410 1:6 397–398 1:7 176, 397–398 1:8 397–398 1:10 398 1:11 397 1:12–14 398, 410 1:12–13 398, 404

519

1:12 398, 406, 409–410 1:13–14 398, 406 1:13 409–410 1:16 396 1:17 237–238 1:18 32, 398, 406–407 1:20 396 1:21–22 236, 406 1:21 236 1:22–23 396, 410 1:22 236, 406 1:23–24 397–398 1:23 396 1:24–25 237 1:24 32, 236, 398, 406–407 1:25 236 1:26 234–237 1:27 169, 397, 410 1:29 398 2:1–2 398 2:1 240, 397 2:2 193 2:4 398, 410 2:5 398 2:6–7 407 2:6–23 398 2:6 398 2:8 244, 371, 410 2:10 409 2:11–15 404, 406 2:11–13 409 2:11–12 409 2:11 37, 406, 409 2:12–13 407 2:12 407, 409 2:13–14 398 2:13 409 2:16–23 229–230, 246, 359, 398, 410 2:16–19 409–410 2:16–18 233–234, 404 2:16–17 141, 221–224, 227–228, 231–233–234, 238, 243, 245, 249, 251, 407 2:16 55, 84, 103, 195, 218–220–221, 223–225, 228–229, 231–234, 239–242, 359–261,

520

Index of References

363–366, 372–274, 377, 381, 405, 417, 458 2:17–19 32 2:17–18 220 2:17 217, 219, 223–225, 229–232, 234, 238–243, 365, 406–407, 458 2:18 134, 220, 224, 227–228, 250, 405 2:19 217, 387, 393, 406–407 2:20 220, 234, 244, 371, 406–407 2:21 245 2:23 194 3:1–4 397–398 3:1–2 396, 406 3:1 396, 405–407 3:2 406 3:3–4 395–400, 405, 409–413, 458 3:3 396–397, 407–408–409 3:4 396–397, 404, 407, 409–410 3:5–11 395 3:5–9 398, 406 3:5–8 398 3:5–7 237 3:5 406 3:6 406, 410 3:8–9 122 3:8 194, 237, 256 3:9–11 409 3:10–17 398 3:10–15 406 3:10 407 3:11 37, 113–115, 117, 119–120–128, 130–135, 139–140, 192–194, 197, 202, 206, 208–211, 251, 457 3:12–17 122 3:12–15 395 3:12 228 3:15 32, 398, 406–407 3:16–17 404 3:16 400 3:17 410 3:18–4:1 202, 398

3:19 406 3:20 194 3:24–25 396 3:25 406 4:2–6 398 4:5–6 404, 409 4:7–18 398 4:7 176, 397 4:9 176, 187, 397 4:10–11 397 4:11 37 4:12–13 397 4:14–17 397 4:14 176 First Thessalonians 1:1 158 2:8 176 2:14–16 377 4:13 170 5:2 422 5:6 422 5:19 309–310, 322 Second Thessalonians 1:1 158 First Timothy 1:1 170 6:2 176 6:20–21 157 Second Timothy 1:2 176 Titus 3:5 186 1:10 37 Philemon 1 176 16 176, 186 21–22 157 Hebrews 5:12 16, 254 6:2 16, 254 6:9 176

Index of References

10:1 239–241, 243 10:32–36 452 11:33 151 13:22 157 James 1:2 452 1:16 176, 187 1:19 176, 187 1:21 256 2:5 176, 187 First Peter 1:1 4, 14–15, 151, 153, 157 1:2 14, 20, 155 1:3–5 443 1:3 14, 153, 269, 443 1:5–6:11 154 1:5 15, 145, 148–149, 151, 154–156, 443–444, 447 1:6–12 155 1:6–9 442 1:6–8 459 1:6–7 446 1:6 329, 435, 438, 440–441, 443, 445–448, 450, 452–453, 455–456, 459 1:7 145, 149, 151–152, 154–155, 441 1:8 145, 148, 153, 155, 435, 441, 443, 445, 455–456 1:9 145, 149, 154–156, 262 1:10–12 15, 149, 159 1:11 15, 439 1:13 3, 154, 170 1:14–2:10 10–11 1:14 4, 156 1:17 151–152, 154 1:18–20 153 1:18–19 14, 20, 257, 259 1:18 4, 148, 156 1:19 20 1:20 439 1:21 145, 148, 151–152, 154–155 1:22–23 182–183 1:22 178, 185 1:23–2:2 20

521

1:23–25 14 1:23–24 20 1:23 14, 20, 148, 257, 259, 261, 264, 269 1:28 22 2:1–5 12 2:1–3 4, 7, 9, 10, 14, 21–22, 253, 255–256, 263–264, 266, 269 2:1 9, 15, 256–257 2:2–3 11, 262, 266 2:2 4, 9, 14–15–17, 20–22, 254–255, 257, 259, 268, 441 2:3 15, 17–18, 20–22, 253, 255, 259–261, 264, 266, 329, 458 2:4–6 32 2:4 15 2:6–8 153, 155 2:6 145 2:7 145, 147 2:8 147 2:9 3, 16, 157 2:10 4, 153, 156 2:11–3:12 11 2:11 4, 151–152, 155, 176 2:12 154–155, 157, 438 2:14–15 155 2:14 155 2:17 175, 178 2:20–21 154 2:21–25 155 2:21–23 155 2:22–23 153 2:23–24 22 2:23 154 2:24 23–26, 30–35, 153, 265, 457 2:25 152, 156 3:1 147, 155 3:6 153, 155 3:7 155 3:8 185 3:10–12 15 3:10 4 3:12 155 3:13–5:11 11

522

Index of References

3:13–22 155 3:15 155, 170 3:16 155, 438 3:17 155 3:18–22 154 3:19 438–439 3:20 147 4:1–6 155 4:1–5 155 4:2 148 4:3–4 4, 156 4:3 148, 157 4:4 438 4:5 149, 154 4:7 154 4:11 176 4:12–16 155 4:12–13 154–155 4:13 154, 441, 443, 452 4:15 155 4:16 4 4:17–18 149 4:17 4, 147, 154, 439 4:19 145, 154–155 5:1–6 154 5:1–4 155 5:1 150, 441 5:2–5 153 5:4 154, 441 5:6–10 155 5:6 439 5:8 151 5:9–11 154 5:9 3, 145, 150–151, 155, 175, 184 5:10 154–155, 157, 441 5:12 145, 157–158 5:13 3, 152 5:14 155

2 Peter 1:1 157 1:17 176 3:1 157, 176 3:8 176 3:14 176 3:15 176 3:17 176 First John 2:7 176 3:2 176 3:21 176 3:23 178 4:1 176 4:7 176 4:11 176 4:21 178 Second John 5 178 Third John 1 176 2 176 5 176 11 176 Jude 3 176 17 176 20 176 Revelation 3:3 422 3:4 351 6:11 351 7: 9 351 7:13–14 351 16:15 422 22:14 351

523

Index of References

5. Other Early Christian and Pre-Reformation Literature Acts of Thomas 108–113 350

De sollemnitate Paschali 2 259

Apocalypse of James 28:16–17 351

Gospel of Thomas 53 65

Apostolic Constitutions and Canons 8.13 15, 261

Ignatius of Antioch

Athanasius Expositiones in Psalmos 27:520 (PG) 426 Barnabus 2:5 364 5:2 33 15:8 364

Trall. 6.2 310 Irenaeus Haer. 2.48.2 175 4.9.2 446 5.7.2 446 Jerome

Clement of Alexandria

Ep. 71.6

Strom. 1.16 118

John Chrysostom

First Clement 2:4 175 16:5 33

15, 261

Expositiones in Psalmos 55:376 (PG) 426 Fragmenta in Proverbia 64:668 (PG) 426

Concept of our Great Power 44:25–26 351

Hom. Gen. 54.528 175

Cyril of Jerusalem

Ps.-Oecumenius

Catechetical Lecture 23.20 (Cat. Myst. 3.20) 15

Petri Apostoli prior epistola catholica 119:517 (PG) 435, 439, 446 119:544 (PG) 25

Cat. myst. 5.20

261

Diognetus 1 4 Eusebius Hist. eccl. 5.7.2 175 5.19.2 175 6.45.1 175

Origen Cels. 4.38 166–167 4.40 350 Comm. Jo. 2.34.210 175 Mart. 39 446

524 Selecta in Psalmos 12:1649 (PG) 426 Shepherd of Hermas 38:10 (Herm. Mand. 8:10) 175 Teachings of Silvanus 105:13–16 350 Tertullian Virg. 11 336 12 336 17 336–337

Index of References

Theodoret (Theodoretus) Commentary on Isaiah 17.88–90 (SC 315:152) 33 Interpretatio in Psalmos 80:1901 (PG) 426 Theophylact Expositio in Epistolam Primam S. Petri 125:1196 (PG) 446 Tripartite Tractate 1.5.132 192–194, 202

Index of Modern Authors and Persons Aasgaard, Reidar ​174–176, 180–182, 186 Abbott, T.  K. ​116 Achtemeier, Paul J. ​11, 14, 16, 24, 148, 150, 152, 156–158, 253–254, 256, 260, 262, 445–446, 452 Adams, J.  N. ​40 Adkins, Lesley ​168 Adkins, Roy A. ​168 Aland, Barbara ​440 Aland, Kurt ​220 Albeck, Chanoch ​426 Albertz, Rainer ​360 Alford, Henry ​437 Allbutt, T. Clifford ​60, 299, 304 Allen, Brian Louis ​55, 226–227, 232–233, 246–247, 378 Allenson, Alec R. ​54, 82 Allworthy, T.  B. ​198–199 Al-Suadi, Soham ​295 Alsup, John E. ​23, 448 Anderson, H. ​182 Anderson, R. Dean, Jr. ​96, 207 Arichea, Daniel C., Jr. ​386, 467 Armstrong, Jonathan ​325 Arndt, William F. ​25 Arnold, Clinton E. ​111, 245, 248, 390–391 Arzt-Grabner, Peter ​174 Ascough, Richard S.  174 Attridge, Harold W. ​158, 202, 240–241 Augusti, Johann C. W. ​439 Aune, David E. ​5, 22, 80, 208, 210, 214–215, 244, 256, 277, 297, 329, 351, 425, 458 Avemarie, Friedrich ​427 Bacchiocchi, Samuele ​226 Bachmann, Michael ​54, 87 Bailey, Cyril ​344, 402 Bailey, D. R. Shackleton ​46

Balabanski, Victoria ​422–425, 429 Baldinger, Kurt ​343 Baldwin, Matthew ​206 Balz, Horst ​367 Barclay, John M. G. ​76, 78, 80, 83, 92, 98, 234, 371 Barnes, John W. B. ​430 Barnett, Paul W. ​55 Barrett, C. K. ​90–91, 307, 384, 451 Barrier, Jeremy W. ​314–317, 374 Bartchy, S. Scott ​383 Barth, Markus ​88, 202, 390 Barton, D. M. ​54, 82 Bauer, Walter ​25 Baumgartner, Walter ​25 Beardsley, M. C.  XIII Beare, Francis W. ​254 Beasley-Murray, George R. ​428, 432 Beazley, John D. ​336 Bechtler, Steven R. ​154 Beck, Johann T. ​439 Bedale, Stephen ​384–385 Bekker, Immanuel ​420 Belleville, Linda L. ​89 Bengel, John A. ​114 Bennema, Cornelis ​325 Best, Ernest ​26, 255 Betz, Hans Dieter  IX, 53, 74–75, 77, 83, 88, 90, 93–95, 194, 361, 366, 370, 395, 399–400, 458 Bevere, Allan R. ​137, 229–230, 245–246 Bickerman, Elias J. ​362, 364, 366 Bigg, Charles ​25, 174, 260 Bilezikian, Gilbert ​384 Bilfinger, Gustav ​420–421 Billerbeck, Paul ​417 Bird, Jennifer G.  XIII Bird, Michael F. ​244 Black, C.  C. ​428

526

Index of Modern Authors and Persons

Black, Matthew ​220 Blanke, Helmut ​202 Blanton, Thomas R.  IV ​67–68 Blaschke, Andreas ​38, 41–42, 46, 48, 63, 65 Blass, Friedrich ​234–235 Blinzler, Josef ​371 Blomberg, Craig L. ​133 Bocher, Otto ​244 Boer, Martinus C. de ​209, 371, 377–378 Boer, Werner de ​148 Boismard, Marie-Emile ​11, 253, 428 Bolt, Peter ​55, 58 Bonnard, Pierre ​53, 74, 84, 87, 90 Borgen, Peder ​78 Borse, Udo ​309 Boucher, Madeleine ​191, 203 Bouttier, Michel ​192–193, 201 Brandenburger, Egon ​428 Brawley, Robert L. ​363 Brenton, Lancelot C. J. ​25 Breytenbach, Cilliers ​428 Brinsmead, Bernard H. ​76, 193, 195, 367, 369, 372 Broadhead, Edwin K. ​423, 429 Brower, Kent E. ​66, 112, 195, 368 Brown, Colin ​199 Browning, Robert 349 Bruce, F. F. ​52–53, 74, 86–87, 89–90, 122, 194, 360, 384 Bryant, Joseph M. ​400–401 Büchsel, Friedrich ​221 Buckley, Theodore A. 349 Bujard, Walter ​244 Bultmann, Rudolf ​166, 169 Burton, Ernest de Witt ​52–53, 74, 84, 86–87, 90, 445 Cadwallader, Allen H. ​136 Cairns, Huntington ​222, 390 Calhoun, Robert Matthew ​168 Callan, Terrance ​26 Calvin, John ​361, 435–436, 438–440, 447–450, 455 Cameron, Averil ​203 Campbell, Barth L. ​448 Campbell, Douglas A. ​123–141, 193, 457

Carnevale, Laura ​34 Carrington, Philip ​364 Carson, D.  A. ​385 Carsten, Janet ​175 Castelli, Elizabeth A. ​384 Cazelles, H. ​30 Cervin, Richard S.  386 Chadwick, John ​332 Charlesworth, James H. ​65, 182, 309–310, 334 Chester, Andrew ​244 Chilton, C.  W. ​405 Choi, Hung-Sik ​111 Ciampa, Roy E. ​98, 100, 340 Cilliers, Louise ​275 Clark, Mark E. ​168 Clark, Stephen B. ​198–199, 201 Clay, Diskin ​404, 406 Cohen, Shaye J. D. ​42, 46 Cohn-Sherbok, Dan ​83 Cole, H. Ross ​234–235, 237–243, 377, 379 Cole, R.  A. ​379 Coleridge, E. P. 349 Collins, Adela Yarbro ​412, 458 Collins, John J. ​96, 102, 107 Collins, Raymond F. ​158 Colson, F.  H. ​50–51 Connelly, Lavern  IX Conzelmann, Hans ​309 Cosgrove, Charles H. ​79, 91, 367 Cousar, Charles B. ​423 Coxe, John R. ​273 Cranfield, C. E. B. ​51, 88, 430 Cronje, J. van W. ​84, 370 Croom, D.  B. ​439 Crossan, John Dominick ​249 Crouch, James E. ​203 Crownfield, Frederic R. ​366 Crüsemann, Frank ​192 Cuming, G.  J. ​307 Currie, Sue  IX Dalton, William J. ​438 Danby, Herbert ​426 Danker, Frederick W. ​25 Daremberg, Charles ​300 Dart, John ​339

Index of Modern Authors and Persons

Das, A. Andrew ​97, 102–108, 209, 215, 378 Dautzenberg, Gerhard ​192–194, 198–201, 203 Davids, Peter H. ​445–446 Davies, W.  D. ​120 De Lacy, Phillip ​168, 390, 402–403, 408, 410 Dean-Jones, Lesley ​267–268, 332–333, 337 Debrunner, Albert ​234–235 Deissmann, Adolf ​454 Delling, Gerhard ​201, 203, 359, 363 Delobel, Joel ​383 DeMaris, Richard E. ​120, 243–244 DeRouchie, Jason S.  66, 209 Descamps, Albert ​423 Dewar, Francis ​424 Dewey, Kim E. ​430–431 Dibelius, Martin ​122, 396–397 Dieter, O. A. L. ​72–73, 77 Donahue, John R. ​433 Donaldson, Terence L. ​89–90, 105 Donelson, Louis R. ​451 Dover, Kenneth J. ​39–40, 42, 345, 348, 353 Downing, F. Gerald. ​140, 193–194, 247–249, 251 Dübbers, Michael ​139–140, 232, 242 Dubis, Mark ​26, 157, 445–446 Duncan, George S.  89 Dungan, David L. ​428 Dunn, James D. G. ​4, 52, 54, 58–59, 74–75, 79, 81–83, 85–92, 95, 156, 194, 202, 293, 297, 305, 396–397 Dunne, John Anthony ​376 Dupont, Jacques ​423–424, 428–429 Eby, Aaron ​226 Eckert, Jost ​51–52, 76, 79, 85, 88, 92, 107, 110, 371, 380 Edsall, Benjamin A. ​224 Ehrensperger, Kathy ​213 Eijk, Philip J. van der ​61, 268, 278, 299, 301, 332 Einarson, Benedict ​168, 402–403, 408, 410 Eitrem, Sam ​27 Elderen, Bastiaan Van ​206

527

Ellingworth, Paul ​331 Elliott, John H. ​8, 26, 158, 260, 399 Elliott, Susan ​98, 100–101, 109, 111 Engberg-Pedersen, Troels ​154, 314–316, 319, 338 Englebrecht, Edward ​20, 255 Eriksson, Anders ​276, 329, 383 Evans, Vyvyan ​343–344 Evelyn-White, Hugh H. ​420 Ewald, Paul ​219 Farmer, William R. 428 Farrington, Benjamin ​404, 406 Fatehi, Mehrdad ​305 Faust, Avraham ​63 Fears, J. Rufus ​168 Fee, Gordon D. ​297, 306, 384 Feldmeier, Reinhard ​13–16, 157, 445–446 Felton, Cornelius C. ​345 Ferguson, Everett ​401, 403 Festugière, A.  J. ​406–407 Fiddes, Paul S.  385 Finegan, Jack ​362, 364 Fitzgerald, John T. ​451 Fitzmyer, Joseph A. ​11, 385, 387 Fleddermann, Harry T. ​429 Flint, Thomas P. ​404 Flückiger, F. ​428 Focant, Camille ​433–434 Foerster, Werner ​150 Fontenrose, Joseph E. ​27, 180 Foster, Paul ​97 Fotopoulos, John ​22, 256, 277, 325, 329, 458 Fowler, Robert M. ​423 Freese, John H. ​3, 17 Frerichs, Ernest S.  42 Frey, Jörg ​295 Frischer, Bernard ​401–402, 404 Fuchs, Brian ​388 Fuchs, Robert ​286 Fung, Ronald Y. K. ​366 Furley, David J. ​280, 282–283, 287–288, 299 Furnish, Victor Paul ​330 Garlington, Don ​215 Garofalo, Ivan ​388

528

Index of Modern Authors and Persons

Gary, Essie  IX Gaventa, Beverly R. ​191–194 Gentner, Dedre ​8 Gerhard, Johann ​436 Giem, Paul ​364 Gillman, John ​17, 158 Gingrich, F. Wilbur ​25 Given, Mark D. ​339 Glad, Clarence E. ​404 Glasson, Thomas F. ​60, 389 Gnilka, Joachim ​115–116, 138, 360, 396–397 Goldenberg, David M. ​137 Goldenburg, Robert ​362, 365 Gollaher, David L. ​41 Goodacre, Mark ​181, 331, 342–343, 346–357, 383, 458 Goppelt, Leonhard ​23, 33, 149, 151, 153, 155, 254–255, 435, 448 Gordon, Pamela ​400, 404 Grant, Mark ​353 Green, Joel B. ​26, 149, 152, 157, 390 Grosvenor, Mary ​235 Grube, G. M. A. ​449 Grudem, Wayne ​385–387, 391 Grünwaldt, Klaus ​62 Guinagh, Kevin ​306 Gummere, Richard M. ​402 Gundert, Beate ​450 Gundry, Robert H. ​220, 418 Haacker, K. ​244 Hagenow, Gerd ​335 Hahn, Ferdinand ​23, 88–89 Hahn, Hans-Christoph ​149 Hall, Robert G. ​72, 77, 94 Halleux, Andre de ​423 Halliwell, Stephen ​334 Hamerton-Kelly, Robert ​120, 244 Hamilton, Edith ​222, 390 Hammond, Nicholas G. L. ​27 Hansen, Bruce ​210, 213–215 Hansen, George W. ​91 Hardin, Justin K. ​56, 99, 110–112, 375, 377–378 Harland, Philip A. ​174 Harmon, A. M. ​118, 420 Harnack, Adolf von ​275–276

Harrington, Daniel J. ​433 Harrison, Jane E. ​166 Hart, J. H. A. ​25 Hatch, Edwin ​165 Hatton, Howard ​331 Hays, Richard B. ​198 Heil, John P. ​139, 242 Helmrich, Georg ​12–13 Henderson, Jeffrey ​344, 348, 420 Hengel, Martin ​423 Hermann, Theodor ​114, 116, 137 Heseltine, Michael ​42 Hester, James D. ​74, 96 Hiers, Richard H. ​149 Hietanen, Mika ​96 Hirsch, Emanuel ​52, 86 Hobart, William K. ​274 Hodges, Frederick M. ​39–46, 48 Hoffman, Robert R. ​6 Hogan, Pauline N. ​206–207, 211–212 Holloway, Paul A. ​453–454 Holmer, Uwe ​148 Hols, Edith ​6 Holzmeister, Urbanus ​26 Hooker, Morna D. ​78, 243 Hoppe, Leslie J. ​263 Horgan, Maurya P. ​11 Horn, Friedrich Wilhelm ​293, 297, 306–308, 314–315, 319 Horneius, Conrad ​435, 439–441, 447–451, 455 Horrell, David G. ​4, 149, 154–155, 442 Horst, P. W. van der ​334 Hort, F. J. A. ​162, 254, 256 Hottinger, J. Iacobus ​436 Howard, George ​52, 71, 75, 78, 80–81, 86, 93 Howard, Wilbert F. ​418 Howe, Bonnie ​4, 6–10 Hübner, Hans ​88, 246–247, 250 Hugedé, Norbert ​116, 361 Hultin, Jeremy F. ​157, 348 Hurst, David ​447 Huther, Johann E. ​439 Hutson, Christopher R. ​37, 66–67 Isbell, Charles D.  IX

Index of Modern Authors and Persons

Jantsch, Torsten ​134 Jaubert, Annie ​338 Jepsen, Alfred ​166 Jeremias, Joachim ​130 Jervell, Jacob ​199–200 Jervis, L. Ann ​196 Jewett, Robert ​52, 86, 200, 203, 360, 367 Jobes, Karen H. ​24, 254–255, 445–446 Johnson, Andy ​66, 112, 195, 368 Johnson, Mark ​5 Johnston, William B. ​435, 447 Johnstone, Robert ​437 Jones, F. Stanley ​361 Jones, Henry S.  146–147 Jones, Horace L. ​113, 115, 117, 419 Jones, Howard ​401, 407 Jones, W. H. S.  302–305, 307, 311–313 Jungkuntz, Richard ​403 Kahl, Brigitte ​55–56, 99–111, 210, 374–377 Kalmanofsky, Amy ​30 Kay, Nigel M. ​335 Kee, Howard C. ​275 Keener, Craig S.  296 Keil, Carl F. ​436–437, 439 Kelber, Werner H. ​430 Kelhoffer, James A.  XI–XII, XIV, 98, 206 Kelly, J. N. D. ​11, 15, 26, 31, 157, 174, 253–254, 256, 262, 446 Kennedy, George A. ​18, 72 Ker, Walter C. A. ​41–42 Kern, Philip ​111 Kertelge, Karl ​370 Keylock, Leslie R. ​433 Kilpatrick, George D. ​431 Kimmel, Michael ​5, 318 King, Daniel H. ​91 Kingsbury, Jack D. ​428 Kinney, Robert S.  12 Kittel, Gerhard ​147 Klauck, Hans-Josef ​293, 307–308, 310 Klein, Günter ​360 Kleinknecht, Hermann ​303 Kloppenborg, John S.  174, 384, 422, 429 Klostermann, Erich ​417 Knight, George W. ​385–386 Knopf, Rudolf ​26, 254, 446

529

Kobelski, Paul J. ​11 Koehler, Ludwig ​25 Konstan, David ​174, 183, 400, 449, 453 Koskenniemi, Heikki ​176 Kosmala, Hans ​421 Kraus, Thomas J. ​17–18 Krauss, Samuel ​417 Kremendahl, Dieter ​378–379 Krenkel, Werner A. ​335–336 Kühl, Ernst ​26, 254, 260, 446 Kühn, Karl G. ​27, 29, 181, 184 Kwon, Yon-Gyong ​379 Laga, Carl ​450 Lähnemann, Johannes ​219 Lakoff, George ​5 Lambdin, Thomas O. ​65 Lambrecht, Jan ​422, 428 Lampe, Peter  XIII Lancaster, Daniel T. ​226 Lategan, Bernard C. ​76, 79, 208, 212, 368–370 LaVerdiere, Eugene A. ​14, 148 Légasse, Simon. ​102, 107–108, 194 Lemke, Dietrich ​406 Lémonon, Jean-Pierre ​109, 207, 210–211 Levenson, John D.  IX Levison, John R. ​295, 316 Lewis, Charlton T. ​114 Lichtenberger, Hermann ​125 Liddell, Henry G. ​146–147 Liefeld, Walter L. ​386 Lightfoot, Joseph B. ​53, 87, 89, 114–115, 120–122, 219, 359–360, 364, 366–367, 372–373, 390 Lightfoot, Robert H. ​424 Lindars, Barnabas ​244 Lindemann, Andreas ​117 Lindenmeyer, Julius ​439 Littré, Émile ​332 Litwak, Kenneth D. ​322 Lloyd-Jones, Hugh ​61 Lohmeyer, Ernst ​254, 429–430 Lohse, Eduard ​114, 202, 217, 396, 398 Long, Anthony A. ​404–406 Longenecker, Bruce W. ​107, 378, 380 Longenecker, Richard N. ​89 Longrigg, James ​61, 265, 299–303

530

Index of Modern Authors and Persons

Lührmann, Dieter ​53, 75, 81, 84, 87, 192, 197, 200, 203, 360–361, 366, 373, 379 Lull, David J. ​76, 368 Lupieri, Edmondo ​3, 23, 34 Lütgert, Wilhelm ​74, 84 Luther, Martin ​379 Lyons, George ​22, 71, 75, 94, 101, 374 MacDonald, Dennis R. ​158, 191–192, 194–195 Mack, Burton L. ​249, 384 Malherbe, Abraham J. ​113, 117–119, 121–122, 126–127, 303, 403, 453 Malina, Bruce J. ​274 Mann, W.  N. ​332 Marcus, Joel ​51 Marcus, Ralph ​49 Marshall, I. Howard ​33, 325, 446 Martin, Dale B. ​276, 298, 305, 314–315, 319, 333, 335, 384 Martin, Troy W. ​3, 10–12, 15–20, 22, 41, 43, 53–55, 57–58, 60–61, 66–68, 75, 78, 80, 80–85, 90, 92, 96–98, 100–112, 116, 120, 123–127, 131–140, 151, 154, 157–158, 176, 181, 184, 193–196, 205–206, 208–209, 213–216, 223–224, 226–234, 238–240, 243–251, 253, 256–258, 262, 265, 275–277, 296, 314–318, 324–325, 329–330, 339–343, 346–347, 356–357, 359, 363, 365, 368–369, 371, 373–374, 377–380, 383–384, 386, 388–393, 395, 407, 412–413, 417, 433, 441–443, 445–446, 448–449, 455, 457 Martyn, J. Louis ​54–57, 102–103, 191–196, 200, 208, 373 Marxsen, Willi ​428 Mason, Eric F. ​3, 17, 145, 158, 181, 253, 256, 318, 329, 457 Massey, Preston T. ​341, 348 Matthews, Christopher ​343, 357 May, Margaret T. ​13, 43, 284 Mayo, C. H. ​418, 421, 431 Mayor, R. J. G. ​129 McDonald, Patricia M. ​412–413 McEleney, Neil J. ​55 McKay, K.  L. ​445 McKnight, Scot ​228

McMillen, R. Melvin ​3, 5–6, 8–9, 318 McNicol, Allan J. ​428 Meeks, Wayne A. ​76, 194, 198–199, 202, 204, 368, 372, 384, 400, 403–404 Meier, John P. ​384 Meinhold, Johannes ​427 Merk, Otto ​396 Metzger, Bruce M. ​220 Meyer, Ben F. ​403 Meyer, H. A. W. ​217 Meyer, Rudolf ​76 Michaels, J. Ramsey ​11, 24, 26, 150, 256, 437, 448 Michel, Otto ​113–114, 119, 129 Mickelsen, Alvera ​384, 386 Mickelsen, Berkeley ​383, 386 Millar, Fergus ​363 Miller, Donald G. ​442 Mitchell, Margaret M. ​94, 412, 459 Mitchell, Stephen ​56 Moffatt, James ​438, 448 Moir, Ian A. ​220 Moore, Russell D. ​386 Morgan, Teresa ​146 Morus, Samuel F. N. ​435–436, 438–440 Motta, Othoniel ​331 Moulton, James H. ​418, 451 Mount, Christopher ​214–215, 339 Moxnes, Halvor ​410 Mueller, Dieter ​202 Müller, Reimar ​400, 402 Munck, Johannes ​52, 86 Murphy-O’Connor, Jerome ​384 Mussner, Franz ​53, 75, 87, 90, 359, 366, 370, 396 Myers, Alicia D. ​18–21, 266–269 Nadeau, Raymond E. ​72–73, 77, 94 Nanos, Mark D. ​53, 55–56, 98–99, 111–112, 200, 374–377, 457 Nathan, Peter ​133–134, 247 Nauck, Wolfgang ​452 Neirynck, F. ​428 Neusner, Jacob ​426 Neutel, Karin B. ​102, 104, 379 Noppen, Jean-Pierre van ​6 Nunn, H. P. V.  451 Nussbaum, Martha ​400

Index of Modern Authors and Persons

Obbink, Dirk D.  ​404, 406–407 O’Brien, D. ​283 O’Brien, Peter T. ​113, 115, 218, 396 Odell-Scott, David W. ​384 Oelger, Andrea V.  60–61, 329, 383, 386, 388–393 Oepke, Albrecht ​52, 75, 81, 84–90, 371, 397 Olbricht, Thomas H. ​37, 57, 66, 112, 196, 244, 276, 329, 383, 449 O’Neill, J.  C. ​83 Orton, David E. ​423 Ortony, Andrew ​5, 8 Ostenhövener, Claud-Dieter ​276 Owen, Gwilym E. L. ​27 Padgett, Alan ​386 Pagels, Elaine H. ​200, 202 Pao, David W. ​238 Pardee, Nancy ​256 Park, Eung Chun ​59 Parker, T. H. L. ​361 Parler, Branson ​340–341, 357 Paulsen, Henning ​192, 194, 199–200, 203 Payne, Philip B. ​61, 339, 386–387, 391 Peake, A. S.  116 Peck, A. L. ​12–13, 267 Pelser, G. M. M. ​370 Penniman, John David ​20 Perriman, Andrew C. ​383, 386, 391 Pervo, Richard I. ​155 Pesch, Rudolf ​417, 423–424, 430 Petersen, Norman R. ​431 Peterson, Brian K.  ​96 Peterson, Dwight N. ​423 Peterson, Jeffrey ​244 Pfaff, Christoph ​224 Phillips, Thomas E. ​22, 97 Pietersma, Albert ​25 Pilch, John, J. ​275 Piovanelli, Pierluigi ​433 Piper, John ​385 Plümacher, Eckhard ​174 Plummer, Alfred ​430 Pokorný, Petr ​113, 116, 217, 396–397 Pope, Marvin H. ​338 Pope, Michael ​22 Porter, Stanley E. ​137, 228, 244, 445

531

Potter, Paul ​62, 181, 301, 311–312, 450 Powell, Owen ​261, 265, 354 Preisker, Herbert ​448 Pretorius, Emil A. C. ​370 Preuss, Peter ​408 Proctor, Donald F.  ​280–281, 284 Pryke, E.  J. ​423 Puig I Tàrrech, Armand ​423 Quell, Gottfried ​177–178 Rabens, Volker ​34, 296, 306, 308, 314, 317–325 Rackham, Harris ​420 Rad, Gerhard von ​60 Räisänen, Heike ​53, 75, 79, 87–88 Ramelli, Ilaria ​174, 453 Rand, Thomas A. ​97, 107–108 Reardon, Bryan P. ​332 Reasoner, Mark ​168 Redpath, Henry A. ​165 Reichel, Oswald J. ​401 Reicke, Bo ​89, 438 Rengstorf, Karl H. ​89 Rensburg, Fika J. van ​263–264, 266 Retief, François P. ​275 Reynolds, Edwin ​242–243 Ricci, James V.  335 Rice, Monica ​340 Ridderbos, Hermann N. ​53, 75, 85, 87, 90 Ringeling, Hermann ​202 Ringgren, Helmer ​173 Rist, John M. ​401 Robbins, Vernon K. ​423, 425 Roberts, Colin H. ​430 Robertson, A. T. ​235, 237, 451 Robinson, James M. ​202, 422 Rocca, Julius ​287 Roche, Paul ​344 Rogers, Benjamin B. ​42, 344 Rohrbaugh, Richard L. ​399 Ropes, James H. ​74 Rose, Herbert Jennings ​362, 365 Rosner, Brian S.  340 Rothschild, Clare K. 12, 22, 34, 158, 181, 258, 329, 343 Rouse, W. H. D. ​42

532

Index of Modern Authors and Persons

Royalty, Robert M. ​243–244, 247, 373 Rudolph, David J. ​212 Ruelle, Charles Émile ​300 Rusan, Dietrich ​371 Samellas, Antigone ​413 Sampley, J. Paul  XIII, 75, 96, 195, 368, 372, 457 Sanders, E. P. ​79, 84, 89, 91, 367, 403 Sandnes, Karl O. ​154–156 Schlatter, Adolf ​361 Schlier, Heinrich ​52, 54, 75, 82, 84, 86–90, 359, 361, 365, 367 Schmid, Wolfgang ​406–407 Schmithals, Walter ​54, 84, 87, 366 Schneider, David M.  ​175 Schofield, Malcolm ​400 Schreiner, Thomas R. ​64, 102, 105–106, 206, 212 Schubert, Paul ​436 Schürer, Emil ​363–364 Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth ​203, 329–330, 383 Schweizer, Eduard ​114, 120, 200, 217, 244–245, 366, 371, 395–396 Scott, E.  F. ​361 Scott, Robert ​146–147 Scroggs, Robin ​120, 200, 244 Scullard, Howard H. ​27 Sedley, D.  N. ​406 Seeck, Gustav A. ​283 Seifrid, Mark A. ​110 Selwyn, Edward G. ​25, 33, 155, 254, 256, 446 Senior, Donald ​424 Shoemaker, Thomas P. ​386 Sieffert, Friedrich ​75, 82, 84 Silva, Moisés D. ​58 Simpson, Adelaide D. ​404 Simpson, E. K. ​122, 360 Singer, Charles Joseph ​49 Smalley, Stephen S.  244 Smith, Ian K. ​233, 247–248 Smith, Wesley D. ​304, 353 Smyth, Herbert Weir ​146, 178, 180, 222, 235–237, 257, 331, 437–438, 445, 447, 451, 456 Soards, Marion L. ​330

Soden, Hans Freiherr von ​174, 193, 219, 223 Söding, Thomas ​429 Sokupa, Michael ​243–245, 247, 381 Solmsen, Friedrich ​300 Sommerstein, Alan H. ​344 Son, Sang-Won Aaron ​230–232, 238, 240, 242 Spencer, W.  G. ​46–47 Staden, Heinrich von ​181 Standhartinger, Angela ​138–139, 227–228, 242 Starr, James ​154 Stauffer, Ethelbert ​177–178 Steel, Carlos ​450 Steely, John E. ​366–367 Stegemann, Wolfgang ​274 Steiger, Wilhelm ​223 Stein, Robert H. ​428, 433 Steinmetz, Franz J. ​396 Stendahl, Krister ​198 Stern, David H. ​242 Stern, Menachem ​38, 41–42, 46, 161 Stettler, Christian ​238, 243–244, 247 Stewart, Alexander E. ​441–442 Still, Todd D. ​244 Strachan, Lionel R. M. ​454 Strack, Hermann L. ​417 Streete, Gail P. C. ​392–393 Strelan, Rick ​135–136 Striker, Gisela ​400 Strodach, George K. ​401 Stuckenbruck, Loren T. ​384 Stump, Eleonore ​404 Stumpp, Bettina E. ​335–336 Sumney, Jerry L. 57, 112, 137–138, 196, 228–229, 242–245, 248–251, 449 Swete, Henry B. ​418 Talbert, Charles H. ​245 Tannehill, Robert C. ​409 Taussig, Hal ​384 Taylor, John W. ​378 Taylor, Vincent ​418 Telford, William R. ​429, 431 Temkin, Owsei ​13, 45, 333, 335, 337 Thackeray, H. St. J. ​365 Thatcher, Tom ​111

Index of Modern Authors and Persons

Theissen, Gerd ​314 Thiele, Walter ​435, 447 Thiessen, Matthew 314, 377, 380 Thivel, A. ​278 Thompson, Mark ​55, 58 Thompson, Richard ​22 Thompson, Trevor W. ​12, 22, 181, 258, 329 Thomson, Ian H. ​130 Thornton, T. C. G. ​363 Thyen, Hartwig ​192, 194, 199, 201 Tite, Philip L. ​11–12, 19–20, 262, 448 Tobin, Thomas H. ​208 Togarasei, Lovemore ​216 Toit, David du ​151 Tolmie, D. Francois ​205, 208–209, 211–212, 216 Tonstad, Sigve K. ​374 Trainor, Michael ​136 Trempelas, Panagiōtēs. N. ​254, 435 Trocmé, Étienne ​425 Trompf, G.  W. ​386 Trotter, F. Thomas ​399 Turner, Max ​325, 390 Turner, Nigel ​451 Tyson, Joseph B. ​51, 71, 85 Ulonska, Herbert ​84–85, 105, 107, 371, 380 Ussher, R.  G. ​335 Uzukwu, Gesila Nneka ​209, 215 Valantasis, Richard ​102, 108 Vanhoye, A. ​384 Veenker, Ronald A. ​338 Verdenius, Willem J. ​166 Vermès, Géza ​363 Verseput, Donald J. ​369–370 Vielhauer, Philip ​360 Vincent, Marvin R. ​114 Vollenweider, Samuel ​361 Vorster, Willem S.  431 Vosniadou, Stella ​8 Vosniadou, Stella ​8 Walker, William O. ​386 Walser, Georg ​162

Wan, Wei Hsien ​442 Warner, Rex ​167 Wasserstein, Abraham ​49 Watson, Duane F. ​26 Watson, Francis ​384 Weinrich, Harald ​6 Weiser, Alfons ​422–423, 428–429 Weiss, Herold ​224–228, 232, 239 Weissenrieder, Annette ​274–275, 295–296, 302 Welborn, Lawrence L. ​452 Wenham, David ​429 Westerholm, Stephen ​79 Wette, W. M. L. de ​430 Whibley, Leonard ​129 White, John L. ​80 Wikgren, Allen ​220 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich von ​349 Wilkie, J. S.  280, 282–283, 287–288, 299 Williams, Travis B. ​156 Wilmot, David J.  IX, 417 Wilson, R. McL. ​135, 247 Wilson, Todd A. ​101–102, 212 Wimsatt, W. K.  XIII Windisch, Hans ​115, 117, 448 Winter, Bruce W. ​374–375 Winterbottom, Michael ​94 Wintermute, O. S.  182 Wisdom, Jeffrey R. ​103–104 Witherington, Ben  III, 98, 198–199 Witt, Norman W. de ​400, 403 Witulske, Thomas ​99, 375 Wright, Benjamin G. ​25 Wright, John P. ​181, 450 Wright, N. T. ​362, 396 Yamauchi, Edwin ​135, 137, 206 Yonge, C. D. ​50, 290 Zeller, Dieter ​443–444 Zeller, Eduard ​401 Zerwick, Maximilian ​235, 445 Zilliacus, Henrik ​430 Zuntz, Günther ​430

533

Index of Subjects antithesis (antitheses) ​53, 112–113, 122, 126–127, 131, 137,139,191–205, 208,209, 214, 217, 220–222, 225, 231, 384, 395–397, 399–403, 405, 407–412, 438–440, 447, 458 apostasy ​53–54, 57–59, 71, 77–78, 80, 93–98, 100–112, 152, 196, 369, 371–373, 376–377, 379, 380–381, 457 baby (babe, babies) ​3–4, 7–15, 17–22, 178, 181, 184, 206, 253, 257–260, 262–266, 269, 318, 329, 457 baptism (baptized, baptismal) ​11, 114, 131–132, 159, 185, 191–195, 199–206, 208–216, 244, 253, 255, 291–293, 296, 305–308, 314, 316–317, 324–325, 385, 392, 396–397, 407–409, 438 barbarian ​39, 113–121, 123, 125–140, 193–194, 202, 251 belief (believe, believers) ​3, 7–8, 10, 20–21, 32–35, 37, 58, 61, 64, 98, 111, 146–149, 152–156, 159, 163, 166, 205, 208, 213–214, 231–232, 240, 251, 256, 266, 269, 291–293, 300–302, 306, 308, 315–317, 323–325, 337, 339, 340, 377, 395–396, 407–408, 434, 437–438, 441, 443, 448, 450–451 beloved ​155, 173–183, 185–187, 409, 458 beverage(s) ​293, 298, 308, 312 blood(s) ​11–16, 19–22, 29, 50, 60, 153, 173, 181–182, 185, 256–269, 274, 280–282, 286–288, 290, 299–302, 304, 312, 329, 334, 353, 355, 387–388, 390 body ​7, 12–13, 22, 27–32, 34–35, 38, 43–44, 46–47, 49, 60–62, 79, 85, 92, 112, 181, 184, 256–58, 261, 267–269, 274, 276, 280–285, 287–291, 293–294, 298–312, 314–315, 317, 324, 329,

331–335, 337–341, 344–355, 371, 385–286, 389–391, 402, 408, 450, 453, 455 body (of Christ) ​25, 153, 192–193, 201–202, 204, 212–213, 215, 217–221, 223–227, 231–233, 238–240, 243, 262, 266, 269, 276, 310, 312, 351, 365, 373, 384, 398, 406–407, 458 brain ​60–61, 277, 280, 287–288, 299–300, 302, 304, 332–333, 336–337, 340, 388–390 breast(s) ​11–14, 21, 38, 182, 258–260, 265, 268, 304–305, 419 breast milk ​266–269 breath ​50, 181, 274, 277–280, 282–287, ​ 289–291, 295–296, 298, 302–305, 314–317, 374, 388–389 breathe (breathing) ​181, 273, 277–292, 294–296, 299, 304–306, 329, 458 brother(s)  IX, XI, 82, 85, 92, 112, 158, 173–176, 180–183, 185–187, 214, 248, 250, 371–372, 397, 409 brotherhood(s) ​3, 182, 184, 187 calendar ​55, 100, 103, 196, 229, 249, 360–366, 373–381 chiasm (chiastic) ​124–125, 128, 130–133, 135, 138, 193, 200, 457 child (children)  IX–X, 3–4, 7, 9, 12–13, 15, 19, 113, 174–175, 178–179, 183, 186–187, 198, 208, 258, 268, 318, 336, 353, 377, 454 circumcision ​37–59, 62–69, 74–88, 90–93, 95, 97–105, 107–112, 116, 130–131, 191–192, 195–202, 204–216, 244, 309, 367–375, 377, 380, 384, 392, 409, 457–458 colostrum ​14, 259, 263–266 conscience ​170

536

Index of Subjects

conscious (consciousness) ​60 , 208, 277, 335, 378, 389, 420 console (consolation, consolatory) ​329, 444–447, 453–455, 459 critique  XIV, 52, 55, 71, 83, 86, 96, 114, 116, 118, 121, 126, 128, 130, 135, 137, 140, 173, 175, 193–194, 196, 200, 203, 217, 223, 226, 228–231, 233, 241, 243, 245–249, 276, 315, 343, 347, 354, 361, 365, 400, 402, 404–405, 407–408, 410, 417, 528, 446 Cynic(s) ​55, 113, 116–117, 119–123, 126–127, 132–134, 138–141, 193–194, 223, 228–230, 233, 243–251, 303, 365, 403, 407, 417 Cynicism ​194, 230, 245–251 day(s)  XIII, 14, 27, 32, 44, 47, 62–63, 90, 99, 103, 149–50, 152–154, 158, 171, 197, 206, 224, 226–227, 239, 259–260, 264–265, 298, 304, 311, 334, 359, 361–366, 372, 374–375, 390–391, 402, 417–420, 426–429, 432, 440–442, 447, 453 Diaspora ​3, 10–11, 15, 42, 151–153, 159 digest (digestion, digestive) ​13, 284–285, 293–294, 299, 305, 307–308, 311–314, 353 drink (drinking) ​21, 113, 148, 219, 223, 225–227, 229, 231, 233, 245–247, 260, 269, 284, 293, 298–299, 307, 310–314, 361, 402, 440 emotion(s) ​57, 60, 112, 181, 196, 329, 444–445, 448–454, 459 empathy ​454 Epicurean(ism) ​161, 168, 395, 400–413, 458 eschatology (eschatological) ​90, 95, 200, 202–203, 241, 262, 329, 378–379, 396–397, 405, 407, 411, 415, 422–425, 428–429, 434–435, 437, 439, 441–443, 445, 456, 459 etiquette ​329, 445–446, 454–455, 459 eucharist (eucharistic) ​12, 15–16, 18, 20–22, 223, 229, 233, 253–255, 259–264, 266, 269, 293, 307–308, 310, 312–314, 323, 329, 407, 458

evening  IX, 417–418, 424–425, 427, 429–430, 432 exhale (exhalation) ​277–281, 283–284, 286, 289–292, 295–296, 305 exile ​4, 15, 62–63, 150–153, 168, 261–262, 454 faith  IX, 58–59, 65, 82–85, 87–89, 92–93, 95, 101, 111, 145–160, 164, 166, 173, 185, 199, 201, 208–209, 216, 255, 262, 306, 308, 313–314, 334, 270, 376, 398, 404–407, 434, 441–443, 448, 457 feeling(s) 176, 180, 186–187, 313, 448–449, 453–454 fibula(ae) ​47 food(s) ​12–14, 16, 20, 113, 194, 219, 223–225, 227, 229, 233, 246, 254, 256–257, 259–265, 268–269, 284, 293, 298–299, 308, 310–314, 323, 353–354 foreskin ​39, 45–49, 62–63, 68, 197–198 genital(s) ​39, 41, 43, 49, 276, 332–338, 340, 353, 355–356 gland ​333–334 glans ​38–41, 43–50, 68 grief (grieve, grieving) ​170, 262, 436, 438, 440–445, 447–456 hair ​38, 63, 276, 305, 330, 332–341, 346–348, 351–357, 387 hairstyle(s) ​330, 336, 348 head(s)  IX, 29, 31, 50, 60–61, 68, 76, 175, 217, 301, 305, 329, 331–338, 340–341, 368, 383–392, 458 head-covering ​22, 181, 276, 329–331, 338–339, 341, 343, 383, 458 heart ​34, 49–50, 58–65, 100, 152, 167, 182, 268, 280, 286–288, 299–305, 308–310, 317, 387–391, 453 Holy Spirit ​22, 58–59, 64–65, 76, 79, 83, 91–92, 111, 214–215, 243, 277, 289–298, 305–310, 313–315, 317–325, 339, 367–368, 370, 398, 438 hope(d)  XIII–XIV, 9, 17–19, 22, 69, 92, 102, 110–112, 148–149, 155, 160–171, 247, 251, 269, 317, 325, 330, 354, 357, 366, 385, 393, 396, 405–406, 409, 423, 448, 456

Index of Subjects

ill(s) (illness) ​27–30, 34, 113, 274–276, 283, 302, 311, 313, 402 immaterial ​322–323 infant(s) ​7, 12, 14–15, 17–19, 22, 255, 258–260, 262–263, 265, 269 inhale (inhalation) ​277–284, 286, 288–289, 291–293, 359 life  IX–X, XIV, 3–4, 7, 13–16, 19–20, 32, 39, 55, 66, 89–90, 92, 95, 103, 120–121, 127, 137, 139, 148, 153, 166, 170, 176–177, 182, 195, 215–216, 229, 250, 254, 256, 277, 285–286, 288–291, 294–296, 298, 302, 304–305, 309–310, 313–315, 317, 321–325, 327, 336, 340, 362, 366, 370, 375–376, 395, 398, 400–411, 413, 421, 424, 449, 452 lipodermos ​39, 44–47 Lord ​11, 15, 20–22, 60–63, 65, 82, 93, 149–150, 152–153, 155, 157, 159, 163, 165–166, 169, 185, 247, 253–255, 260–264, 266, 269, 306, 312, 329, 383, 390–391, 398, 404, 408, 411, 422, 424–425, 452, 456, 458 love  IX, 61–62, 65, 92, 174–187, 203, 282, 308, 322, 391, 398, 441, 449, 454 lung(s) ​277, 279–280, 283–285, 287, 299, 301, 303, 305, 355 mapping ​5, 8–11, 16, 21, 33, 249, 254–255, 318, 325 material ​12–14, 19–20, 22, 66–67, 91–92, 120–121, 126–127, 134, 139, 161, 193, 232, 257–258, 267–269, 274–276, 278, 298, 303, 314–325, 347–348, 351, 363, 370–371, 398, 400–401, 406, 409, 423, 425–426, 428–429, 432, 434 medicine (medical) 22, 28–30, 34–35, 38–39, 43–44, 46–50, 60–61, 68, 181, 256, 265, 268, 273–278, 281, 283, 285–286, 288–289, 294–295, 297–305, 307–308, 310–317, 325, 329, 332–333, 337, 347, 388, 390, 450, 457–458 metaphor(s) (ical) ​3–12, 14–21, 23–24, 30–35, 66, 88–89, 95, 122, 149–154, 156–157, 176, 181, 184, 209, 253–258, 262–263, 269, 276, 301, 306–307, 316–322, 325, 329, 338, 349–351, 354,

537

385–386, 390–392, 408, 422, 445–446, 448, 457 metonymy (metonymies) ​4, 26, 116, 153 midnight ​417–419, 421, 423–427, 429–430, 432 milk ​7, 9–22, 113, 119, 182, 253–255, 257–260, 262–269, 334 mind  X–XI, 3, 9, 18, 50,60–62, 66, 107, 115, 118–119, 140, 155, 181, 185, 187, 264, 289–290, 310, 318, 345, 357, 371, 388, 401, 408, 424, 439, 450 month(s)(ly) ​11–14, 90, 99, 103, 123, 258, 260, 265, 267, 298, 359, 361–366, 374–375 morning ​194, 277, 334, 417–418, 420, 424, 426–429, 432 mouth ​256, 279–280, 283–284, 287, 294, 296, 299, 303–304, 387 nature (natural)  XI, 3, 5, 12–13, 22, 43–44, 48, 50–52, 55, 68, 80, 84, 86, 89, 99, 103, 116, 121, 127, 167, 175, 177–178, 181, 183, 193–195, 201, 233, 243–245, 257, 259–261, 274–276, 286, 306, 309, 311, 317–318, 320, 323, 325, 329–331, 333, 335, 337–343, 347, 354, 357, 366, 373, 376–377, 383, 400, 404, 420, 458 new birth ​18, 20, 184, 186, 263–264, 266, 269, 291, 408, 439 newborn ​10, 258, 262 new moon ​223, 225–227, 229, 231, 359–366, 372, 378 nostril(s) ​280–283, 287–289, 294, 299, 303–304, 387 nutrition (nutriment) ​7, 11–17, 19, 22, 255–266, 269, 280, 293, 298–299, 306–308, 310–313, 387, 390 opponent(s) ​48–50, 52–53, 68, 71, 75–76, 78, 80, 84–86, 88, 90, 92, 94, 98, 100, 105–106, 110, 115, 119–121, 123, 133, 137, 140–141, 193–195, 200, 217, 223–224, 227–229, 231, 238–239, 241, 243–251, 279, 298, 360–361, 365, 367–371, 377, 381 pagan (paganism) ​53–55, 57–58, 64, 66–67, 71, 74–75, 77–80, 83–84, 89–90,

538

Index of Subjects

93, 95–112, 164, 174, 195–196, 200, 325, 359–360, 362, 364–366, 369–381, 417, 457 paraenesis ​154–156, 245–246, 256, 397 Parousia ​154, 156, 247, 396–397, 403, 405, 411, 422–424, 428, 433 penis ​38–41, 43–50, 57–59, 64–66, 68, 332, 345–346, 348 phallus ​68 philosophy (philosophical)  XIII, 38, 55, 68, 116, 119–121, 123, 126–127, 133, 137, 140, 161, 182, 193–196, 217, 223–224, 227–230, 234, 238–239, 243–247, 249–250, 280, 282, 285, 300, 309, 314–316, 320, 325, 334, 346, 350, 365, 371, 379, 401, 404–409, 412–413, 417, 449, 452–453, 458 pneuma ​50, 76, 266–267, 278, 280, 286–288, 294, 297–305, 307–310, 313–317, 368, 370 prepuce ​39–50, 67–68, 469 rejoice(ing) ​155, 163, 237, 435–436, 439, 441–442, 444–456 respiration ​278–280, 282–285, 287–288, 299, 304 roostercrow ​417–427, 429–432 sacrament ​15, 19, 189, 195, 255, 293, 306, 308, 315, 458 salvation ​7, 9, 11, 16, 18, 21, 33, 52, 86, 89, 148–150, 152, 154, 156–157, 159, 169, 214, 257, 262, 264, 266, 269, 297, 367, 370, 398, 441–442, 446, 457 Scythian ​113–121, 123–140, 192–194, 202, 243, 251, 457 season(s) ​90, 99, 103, 359, 361–362, 364–366, 374–375 seed ​13–14, 20–21, 181, 266, 268–269, 286, 299, 302, 332–334, 337 semen ​12–13, 19, 43, 50, 68, 181, 258–259, 266–268, 332–337, 340–341, 355, 356 shadow(s) ​217–219, 223–227, 231–233, 238–242 sibling ​173–177, 179–187, 458 siblinghood ​175, 180, 184–186 sick (sickness) ​33, 35, 310–313, 323, 333

simile(s) ​4, 16–17, 151, 281–284 sister  XI, 61, 173–176, 180, 186, 214, 397, 409 sore ​23–35 soul(s) ​20, 29, 62, 149, 170, 181–184, 186, 260, 274, 280, 285–286, 288–291, 294, 299, 302, 350, 388–389, 402, 449–450, 453 soul-mate ​186 source domain(s) ​5–10, 12, 14–15, 17, 20, 23, 26, 30–33, 35, 255, 260, 263–264, 318–319, 325 sperm ​15, 19, 314, 332, 339 spirit(s) ​121, 181, 234, 266, 274, 281–283, 291, 293, 299, 302–304, 309–311, 316, 319–322, 325, 370–371, 398, 438 spiritual(ity) ​3, 7, 9, 22, 31–33, 133, 203, 228, 247, 253–254, 264, 293, 307–308, 310, 312–314, 318, 325, 351, 367, 377 stasis (stases) ​53, 71–74, 76–80, 85, 93–98, 100, 108–111, 196, 369–370, 457 Stoic(ism) ​168, 174, 181, 194, 316, 319, 321, 325, 388, 390–391, 400–401, 404, 413, 452–453 suffer(ing) ​23–24, 26, 30, 33, 44, 83, 121, 149, 152–155, 183, 185, 237, 262, 311, 313, 423, 439, 442, 450, 452, 454 sympathy ​404, 453–454 target domain(s) ​5–8, 17, 31, 318, 325 taste (tasting) ​11, 15, 20–22, 193, 253–255, 257, 259–266, 269, 329, 458 testicle(s) ​22, 181, 258, 276, 329, 331–332, 336–343, 345–357, 383, 458 time-keeping ​55, 57, 84, 90, 99, 101, 103, 107–108, 112, 195–196, 223, 234–235, 237–241, 243, 359, 362–366, 372, 374–381, 417, 458 uterus (uteri) ​11–14, 180, 258, 260, 267–268, 333–334, 337, 340–341 veil(ing) ​22, 61, 181, 200, 276, 329–331, 336–343, 357, 383–384, 386, 391, 458 virtue(s) ​168, 177, 187, 290, 333, 353, 403, 457 watch(es) ​417–434, 459 weak (weakness) ​6, 13, 58, 106, 185, 258, 276, 310, 312–313, 347, 437, 452

Index of Subjects

wind ​22, 49, 153, 181, 278–279, 284–286, 291–292, 298, 302–304, 319, 321, 344 windpipe ​279–280, 282, 284–285 womb ​7, 12–13, 21, 180–182, 186, 258–259, 266–268

539

year(s) ​7, 11–12, 90, 99, 103, 125, 139, 191, 205, 208, 224, 232, 266, 314–315, 348, 359, 361, 363–366, 374–375, 437