Tracing the Bridegroom in Dura: The Bridal Initiation Service of the Dura-Europos Christian Baptistery as Early Evidence of the Use of Images in Christian and Byzantine Worship 9781593337384, 2008026783, 1593337388

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Tracing the Bridegroom in Dura

Tracing the Bridegroom in Dura The Bridal Initiation Service of the Dura-Europos Christian Baptistery as Early Evidence of the Use of Images in Christian and Byzantine Worship

GERASIMOS P. PAGOULATOS

2008

First Gorgias Press Edition, 2008 Copyright © 2008 by Gorgias Press LLC All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. Published in the United States of America by Gorgias Press LLC, New Jersey ISBN 978-1-59333-738-4

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GORGIAS PRESS 180 Centennial Ave., Suite 3, Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA www.gorgiaspress.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pagoulatos, Gerasimos P. Tracing the Bridegroom in Dura : the bridal initiation service of the Dura-Europos Christian baptistery as early evidence of the use of images in Christian and Byzantine worship / Gerasimos P. Pagoulatos. -- 1st Gorgias Press ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Jesus Christ--Iconography. 2. Icons--Cult--Syria--Dura-Europos (Extinct city) 3. Mural painting and decoration--Syria--Dura-Europos (Extinct city) 4. Orthodox Eastern Church--Liturgy--History. 5. Holy Week services--History. I. Title. BT590.I3P24 2008 275.691’2--dc22 2008026783 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standards. Printed in the United States of America

Dedicated to the Captains’ Club of Cephallonia: Captain Andreas, the forever-young Captain Panayiotis, and the Captain of the oceans of Wisdom, Giorgos.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents....................................................................................................v List of Figures ........................................................................................................vii Colour Plates ..................................................................................................ix Foreword .................................................................................................................xi Acknowledgments ................................................................................................xiii Prologue ................................................................................................................xvii 1 Introduction: The Eleventh-Century Christ the Bridegroom Service and the Problem of Its Origins ..................................................................23 2 Introducing the Third-Century Dura-Europos Christian Baptistery Service ............................................................................................................31 1. Initial Remarks..........................................................................................31 2. The Dura-Europos Christian House and Its Baptistery ....................34 a. The Discovery...........................................................................................34 b. The Christian House ...............................................................................34 c. The Baptistery ...........................................................................................36 3. Literature Review .....................................................................................40 a. The Mystery of the Bridal Chamber......................................................40 b. Scholarship on the Baptistery ................................................................44 4. Scholars’ Views on Images in Ancient and Byzantine Christianity..50 5. Perspectives for a Fresh Understanding of the Dura-Europos Baptistery Service ................................................................................52 3 Images and Worship in Antiquity..............................................................59 1. The Place of Images in the Pagan World.............................................59 2. The Place of Images in Pre-Constantian Christianity ........................65 4 Τhe Bridal Initiation Service of the Dura-Europos Christian House Baptistery .......................................................................................................73 1. The Nature of the Liturgical Space of the Dura-Europos Christian Baptistery .............................................................................74 a. The Baptistery as a Space of Christ’s Epiphany ..................................74 b. The Unity of Space and Ritual in the Baptistery.................................86 c. The Eschata (End of Time) Experienced in the Service of the Baptistery ..............................................................................................87 v

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d. The Baptistery as a Space of Divine Light...........................................88 e. The Personal Character of the Participant’s Union with Christ in the Service of the Baptistery ..............................................................89 f. The Gates in the Service of the Baptistery: Meaning and Function................................................................................................94 2. The Initiation Bridal Service of the Dura-Europos Christian House Baptistery .................................................................................98 a. The Epistemology of the Dura-Europos Baptistery Service.............98 b. The Anthropology of the Dura-Europos Baptistery Service..........104 c. Reconstructing the Initiation Bridal Service of the Dura Baptistery ............................................................................................108 5 Conclusion...................................................................................................121 Appendix...............................................................................................................135 Selected Bibliography..........................................................................................175 I. Primary Sources ......................................................................................175 II. Secondary Sources ................................................................................176 A. General....................................................................................................176 B. Theology .................................................................................................177 C. Liturgy .....................................................................................................179 D. Art ...........................................................................................................180

LIST OF FIGURES (appearing on pages 136–165) Fig. 1. Άκρα Ταπείνωση (Imago Pietatis) (mosaic icon), c. 1300. Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (From Vokotopoulos). Fig. 2. Icon of Christ the Nymhios by Ilias Moschos, 1684 (From Xyngopoulos). Fig. 3. The Christian Building. Simplified ground plan. (From Kraeling, Final Report). Fig. 4. Women at the Tomb, hypothetical reconstruction of the sequence of scenes. (From Kraeling, Final Report). Fig. 5. East Wall, Lower Register. Women at the Tomb, first element (From Kraeling, Final Report). Fig. 6. North wall, lower register, east end, Women at the Tomb, second and third elements (From Kraeling, Final Report). Fig. 7. Women at the Tomb, third element, north wall, west end, tracing and Women at the Tomb, third element, north wall, west end, diagram of space used (From Kraeling, Final Report). Fig. 8. Painted decoration of the cella of the temple of Zeus Theos (Restoration by F. Brown) (From Rostovtzeff). Fig. 9. Diagram of the decorations of the baptistery. North and south walls (From Kraeling, Final Report). Fig. 10. Rome, Catacomb of Domitilla. Ceiling painting. (From Grabar, Beginnings). Fig. 11. Rome, Catacomb of San Callisto, Crypt of Lucina. The Good Shepherd. (From Grabar, Beginnings). Fig. 12. Rome, Catacomb of Priscilla. The Good Shepherd; Isaiah (or Balaam pointing to the Star) with the Virgin and Child. (From Grabar, Beginnings). Fig. 13. Ceiling painting, catacombs of SS. Peter and Marcellinus, Rome. Center: The Good Shepherd. Four quarters: The story of Jonah. (From Grabar, Iconography). vii

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Fig. 14. a. The Woman at the Well. Excavation photograph. b. The Woman at the Well. Tracing. (From Kraeling, Final Report). Fig. 15. Garden Scene. Excavation photograph (From Kraeling, Final Report). Fig. 16. The Holy Women at the Tomb of Christ. Palestinian ampulla, abbey of St. Columban, Bobbio, prov. Piacenza [124] (From Grabar, Iconography). Fig. 17. Mausoleum of El-Bagawat (From Millet). Fig. 18. Procession of Hunters to the Temple of Apollo and Diana, mosaic in a villa at Kheredinne in Carthage, c. 400. (From Mathews, Clash of God). Fig. 19. Procession of Bacchic Cupbearers, floor mosaic from Alcada de Henares, c. 400, Madrid. (From Mathews, Clash of God). Fig. 20. Rome, Catacomb of Priscilla, “Capella Greca.” Eucharistic Meal: “Fractio panis.” (From Grabar, Beginnings). Fig. 21. Rome, Catacomb of SS. Pietro e Marcellino, Hall of the Tricliniarch. Celestial Banquet. (From Grabar, Beginnings). Fig. 22. Rome, Catacomb of San Callisto, Chapel of the Sacraments. Eucharistic Meal (From Grabar, Beginnings). Fig. 23. Temple of Bel, sacrifice of Konon-National Museum, Damascus (From Perkins). Fig. 24. Porphyry portrait bust of an emperor, probably Licinius, A.D. 307323, Museum of Cairo. (From L’ Orange). Fig. 25. Suchos and Isis, c.200. Tempera on board. Ägyptishe Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin. (From Mathews, Byzantium). Fig. 26. Heron and Anonymous Military God, c.200. Tempera on board. Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire Brussels. (From Mathews, Byzantium). Fig. 27. Aedicula in the naos of the Temple of Bel (From Cumont). Fig. 28. Excavation photograph of the late sanctuary of the mithraeum (From Gates). Fig. 29. Synagogue as reconstructed by H. Pearson in the Museum of Damascus (northern half of the back wall and a part of the northern side wall) (From Rostovtzeff). Fig. 30. Isometric drawing by Henry Pearson of the last redecoration of the mithraeum which took place around 240 A.D. The area of the niche is shaded. (From Gates).

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COLOUR PLATES (appearing on pages 167–173) Fig. I. Dura-Europos. ‘Christian House,’ Baptistery: Overall View. Yale, University Art Gallery. (From Grabar, Beginnings). Fig. II. The Women at the Tomb, third element, north wall, west end (From Kraeling, Final Report). Fig. III. a. The Women at the Tomb, first element, west wall. b. The Women at the Tomb, second element, north wall, east end (From Kraeling, Final Report). Fig. IV. The Healing of the Paralytic and the Walking on the Water (From Kraeling, Final Report). Fig. V. Dura-Europos. ‘Christian House,’ Baptistery: The Good Shepherd and his Flock. Yale, University Art Gallery. (From Grabar, Beginnings). Fig. VI. The Woman at the Well. South wall. (From Kraeling, Final Report). Fig. VII. a. David and Goliath. South Wall. b. David and Goliath. Tracing (From Kraeling, Final Report).

I would like to acknowledge the following sources for generously granting permission to use photographs of archaeological material they hold in this book: 1. Basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Piazza Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Rome, Italy. I especially thank Padre Abate, the person who is in charge of the photo permission. 2. E En Athenais Archaiologeke Etairia, Athens, Greece. 3. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, USA. In particular, I thank Ms Megan Doyon and especially Dr. Susan Matheson, Curator of the Yale University Art Gallery. 3. Yale University, New Haven CT, USA. 4. Oxford University Press. 5. AMS Press. 6. Pontifical Institute of Sacred Archaeology. 7. Princeton University Press. 8. Ms Peggy Kallianis, graphic designer for her wonderful graphics and photo reproductions. See figs. 12, 13, 17, 28, and 30.

FOREWORD This book is a rare contribution to the study of both art and Christian liturgy in a historical context. It puts forward a new and revolutionary theory that the so-called Liturgy of the Bridegroom, celebrated in the Orthodox Church during Holy Week, provides an important clue to the development of the Christian liturgy and the use of images (icons) as an important part of worship. Thus, the book is a great detective story that assembles information over a span of at least two thousand years and that has significance for current understanding of the Orthodox Church, the cultures of the Orthodox peoples, and the ways in which these are similar to and different from those of Western Christians. This is particularly important today, as an expanding Europe brings together peoples who have had very different historical experiences. Thus the complex series of related questions addressed in the book are important for the self-identification of Orthodox peoples, but no less significant for western Christians who wish to understand better the rich development of eastern Christianity. Thus, despite the end of the Cold War and the formal opening of borders between East and West, there is still a tendency for both westerners and easterners to look down on the Byzantine tradition and to see it as impoverished in comparison with developments in the medieval West. This book raises issues that need to be considered by both sides in their quest for individual and more general group identities, not least because the Byzantine tradition discussed in the book can be seen as part of both the classical and the Near Eastern cultural worlds. It was therefore very rich and complex, made up of many threads that wind and unwind in interesting ways, including a central “crisis of identity” in the Iconoclastic Controversy of the 8th and 9th centuries CE. It is significant that the medieval West did not undergo such a crisis and, as other scholars have been quick to point out, this reflects one of the most important cultural differences between East and West in the Middle Ages and beyond. This difference was reflected in worship, but it had its basis in different philosophical traditions and, in a sense, different ways of “looking at things.” Examination of this difference is a fundamental undertaking in any attempt to bridge xi

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the real gaps between East and West, both in a historical context and in the 21st century. This book ranges widely and uses sources of many kinds, including most notably the well-known frescos from the Christian baptistery at DuraEuropus in Syria. These paintings and the equally important images from the Dura Synagogue have long puzzled scholars since they are difficult to understand and go against the Jewish and Early Christian hesitation to make use of figural representations in the context of worship. Since the paintings of the Dura baptistery and their location on the walls are unique in the context of 3rd-century religion, scholars have been divided in their interpretation of them. Pagoulatos presents his own view of the scenes and a completely new way in which to understand them in their physical setting. Much of this book is based on the assumption, accepted by most scholars today, that early Christian practices and beliefs made use of a much wider group of sources than those contained in the canonical Bible. In particular, Pagoulatos focuses on a group of so-called Gnostic texts—the Acts of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the Symposium of Methodius of Olympus. All of these are roughly contemporary with the painting of the Dura baptistery and they were widely read and considered as scripture by many Christians. Pagoulatos uses these texts as a window through which to view the Dura paintings and to reconstruct the acts of worship that went on in the sacred space there. To be sure, not all readers will accept the book’s conclusions. Nevertheless, the evidence on which these are based is clearly set forward and readers can make their own decisions about a final understanding of all the questions at issue. Pagoulatos’ points are clearly argued and he is very careful to point out the broader importance of the issues under consideration. Full citation is made of a vast array of secondary scholarship and the reader can easily see where Pagoulatos agrees and where he disagrees with this scholarship and where he provides new arguments that have not previously been made part of the discussion. The work is therefore an important contribution, not only to religious and liturgical studies, but more broadly to our understanding of the relationships between image and cult in a Christian context and to the ways in which the intellectual and religious traditions of the ancient world were transformed and re-interpreted during the Middle Ages. Timothy E. Gregory Professor of Byzantine History The Ohio State University

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS During the writing of this book, there were times that I saw its completion being challenged and jeopardized. Enthusiasm, passion and persistence proved the main driving forces that enabled this book to come to an end. Nevertheless, this momentum would have been annihilated without the holy presence of the icons of Christ, Virgin Mary, St. Gerasimos, the Archangel Michael the Panormetes. Especially, the presence of the icon of St. George was extremely beneficial for this book. I would especially like to thank my father Panayiotis and my mother Christine for their continuous support and affection that has nurtured me ontologically throughout my life. I thank both my parents for supporting this publication ethically and materially. Moreover, I thank my wife Konstantina for her affection and persistent faith in me as well as my son Panayiotakis for his positive energy and shiny smiles. The constant ethical support and constructive comments of Giorgos Ioannou, Archaeologist and Philologist, friend and spiritual brother as well as his valuable assistance in proofreading this book and challenging its content played a tremendous role towards the completion of this project. I thank also my brother Dr. Nikolaos Pagoulatos, Biomedical Engineer for keeping me informed on the current developments of digital technology and the role that images play in it. I am deeply thankful to Ms. Angela Koniaris, Curator of the Slide Room Collection of Fogg Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass, USA for turning moments of frustration to moments of hopes and joy. I especially thank Ms Koniaris for encouraging me to complete this book as well as helping me with various aspects of scholarship related to this manuscript. Ms Koniaris has been like a family member to me since I was a Harvard University graduate student in the early 1990s; her strong spirit has inspired me to preserve my optimism perpetually. Furthermore, I would like to thank my dear friend, Dr. Maria Mavroudi, Assistant Professor of Byzantine Art at Berkeley University, San Francisco, California, USA, who strongly directed me towards turning this material to a published book. I am indebted to Professor Mavroudi for her xiii

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valuable assistance in examining bibliographical sources related to this book. As far as the main corpus of this book is concerned, I would like to thank primarily Dr. Timothy Gregory, Professor of Ancient Greek and Byzantine History and Archaeology at the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA for his continuous enthusiasm for this book as well as his extremely helpful and extensive comments on this project throughout its final phase of completion. Dr. Gregory’s creative and inquisitive spirit enabled the further clarification and elaboration of this book’s material. I also thank Professor Moshe Barasch, Art Historian at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel, for his enlightening remarks on this material during the summer of 2000. Furthermore, I thank Professor Paul Magdalino of the University of St Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland, for the constructive comments and bibliographical suggestions he made on this material in the year 2001. Additionally, I am indebted to Professor Pierre Leriche of the École Normale Supérieure, Paris, France, for his kindness to share his research on Dura-Europos with me. I am indebted to the Byzantine Museum of Athens, Greece (the Director Dr. Demetrios Konstantios, the staff and the spiritual environment of the sacred icons and objects) for inspiring me to revise my views and approaches to human history as well as to Byzantine and Greek civilization. In particular, I deeply thank Dr. Eugenia Chalkia, Deputy Director for the constructive discussions she was kind enough to conduct with me on issues of early Christian art and archaeology in the Byzantine Museum during the year 2004. Moreover, I thank Dr. Anastasia Lazaridou, Archaeologist and Curator at the Byzantine Museum of Athens for her interest and enthusiasm for this book as well as for indicating to me material relevant to this book. Finally, I thank Dr. Helena Papastavrou, Archaeologist and Curator at the Byzantine Museum of Athens for her enlightening comments on complex and delicate scholarly issues of this book as well as Nikos Kastrinakis, Archaeologist and Evangelos Arbilias, Conserver for their help in searching Byzantine Museum iconographic sources relevant to the subject of this book. For the initial synthesis of this material that took place at Harvard University and St. Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA, I must acknowledge the spiritual, scholarly, and ethical support of my mentor Dr. Richard Valantasis as well as the continuous support and motivating comments of his wife Janet Carlson. I also thank Dr. G. Jack Renard, professor of Islamic Studies at Saint Louis University and Fr. Terrence E. Dempsey Ph.D., S.J., The May O’Rouke Jam Endowed Teaching Chair in Art History

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for their continuous encouragement, scholarly guidance and support. Additionally, I acknowledge the generous assistance of the Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church of America, Dr. Demetrios Trakatellis who both encouraged this exploration and assisted me in defining this complex problem clearly. I also acknowledge the enlightening conversations on my topic with Dr. Paul Corby Finney, Professor of History at the University of Missouri, Saint Louis, USA and Dr. Anna Kartsonis, Professor of Byzantine Art at the University of Washington in Seattle, USA. I would like to thank deeply Dr. Susan Matheson, Curator of the Yale University Art Gallery for her kindness to make possible to me the access of the Dura-Europos Christian House chapel frescoes. I warmly thank Dr. Christ Porprovak and Dr. Cynthia Stolehans, Chair of the Art History Department, Saint Louis University for helping me proofread the original part of this project and for offering helpful comments. In addition, I thank Professor Alan Evans who welcomed me in his Late Antiquity Seminar at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens during the spring of 1999; in this seminar, and particularly through the guidance and scholarship of Dr. Evans, I was driven to reshape the structure of the initial stage of this material and rediscover the main goal of my argument. As far as the formation of the intellectual background of this material is concerned, I am indebted to Professor Helmut Koester of Harvard University who inspired in me the enthusiasm for relating religion to archaeology and art as well as the Harvard University Professor David Mitten who taught me ways to discover aspects of reality in ancient history through the study of ancient coins. I thank Dr. Margaret Miles, Dean of the Graduate Theological Union, for her scholarly and ethical support at difficult times of my career as a graduate student in the United States and Dr. Christine Kondoleon, Curator of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Mass, USA for her support and assistance as well as scholarly advice. I would like to thank Professor Kenneth Steinhauser of the Saint Louis University for his generous assistance and guidance. I also need to mention the continuous scholarly feedback and support of Dr. Hail Parker, Professor of History at St. Louis University. Moreover, I acknowledge the valuable contribution of M. B. McNamme, Ph.D., S.J., Professor of Art History at St. Louis University whose solid knowledge of art and civilization and in particular of the field of Northern Renaissance art enabled me to built new bridges between Byzantine and Western art. I recognize the passionate lectures of Professor Bentley Lane of the St. Louis University who introduced me to the territory of American philosophy and theology and taught me how to relate them to the Hellenic spirit. Finally, I

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need to refer to the moral support, friendship and scholarship of the St. Louis University Professor J. A. Wayne Hellmann, O.F.M. Conv., who indicated to me that humanitarianism is a cross-cultural value that is identified with the very nature of human being.

PROLOGUE During a conversation I had with a technocrat concerning Byzantium, I realized how difficult it was to convince him about the validity that Byzantine art and particularly Byzantine images may still preserve in the contemporary world of economics and technological sovereignty. The technocrats’ skepticism reflects a reality in the Western world that pertains not only to Byzantine images but also to images in general throughout the ages. The problem focuses on the use of images as tools of knowledge. In Medieval Europe, this problem was related to the use of images in the liturgy. Unlike Byzantium, where, especially after the end of Iconoclasm in 843, the liturgical use of images was finally restored, Western medieval thought and practice as seen for instance in the eighth-century Carolingian Books (Libri Carolini), was characterized by a skepticism to acknowledge images the ability to reveal divine knowledge and God Himself and therefore by a reluctance to use material images symbolically in the Eucharistic liturgy. 1 Additionally, according to Moshe Barasch, the symbolic theory of Augustine denies to material symbols (and therefore to images also) the ability to reveal divine knowledge. 2 Developing his anthropology in line with his symbolic theory, Augustine maintained that divine knowledge pertained to the human mind and this knowledge was accessible only through the mind and memory, 3 excluding in this way the body and the senses from it. Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence. A History of the Image before the Era of Art (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1994) 297–304. Dom Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (London: Dacre Press, Adam and Charles Black, 1975) 424. 2 Moshe Barasch, Icon: Studies in the History of an Idea (New York and London: New York University, 1995) 170–171. 3 St. Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate. Nicene and post Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 3, 16–228. St. Augustine of Hippo, Contra Academicos. Fathers of the Church, vol. 1, 103–222. 1

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The middle of the seventeenth-century is characterized as the time when in Europe the rationalization of the religion, economy and the state began to take place. Already from the sixteenth-century, scientists, by means of experiment and mathematics, focused on the study of the natural world, which they believed as the only place where truth might have been discovered. In this way, science began to abolish the monopoly of theology and metaphysics that pursued absolute truth outside the boundaries of the sensible, visible world. 4 As a consequence of these developments, theologians and philosophers articulated the Western medieval skepticism and distrust towards the liturgical use of images in an even bolder way. Even Martin Luther, whose views on images are considered moderate in comparison to the rest of the Reformers, such as John Calvin and Ζwingli, expressed an obvious ambiguity on the role that images could play. He attributed to images (like the medieval western theologians did before) a memorial function and disconnected images from any type of medieval popular worship. 5 His views on images were compatible with his anthropology. Like Augustine, Luther maintained that divine knowledge was perceived mainly through the human intellect and not through the senses and emotions. 6 Furthermore, the British philosopher Francis Bacon claimed, in his Novum Organum, that the superstitions and idols of the medieval past, which blurred the rational mind, ought to be removed from the method of modern science. 7 As the Western medieval art historian Michael Camille notes, the philosophers of the French Enlightenment (who were influenced by Bacon’s ideas on science) stressed the priority of ideas over idols as tools of thought. 8 W. J. Thomas Mitchell notes that the ambiguity on the image’s 4 Williston Walker, Richard A. Norris, David W. Lotz, Robert T. Handy, A History of the Christian Church, 4th ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1985) 567–572. 5 Bob Scribner, “The Image and the Reformation,” Disciplines of Faith, Studies in Religion, Politics and Patriarchy, ed. J. Obelkevich, Lyndal Roper, Raphael Samuel (London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987) 545–547. 6 Bergendoff, Conrad, ed. Luther’s Works, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1958) 60–65. Walther von Loewenich, Luther’s Theology of the Cross (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Publishing House, 1976) 58–60. 7 W. J. Thomas Mitchell, Iconology. Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987) 164–168. 8 Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994) XXV.

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ability to communicate knowledge that was developed in the West, led even the Empiricists to become sceptical towards images. For instance, according to Mitchell, John Lock maintained that it is possible for images to be “clear and distinct” as long as they “are regulated by the ideal purposes of language, by the rule of judgment and prosaic difference.” 9 David Hume sustained that there exists a contradiction between the human mind and senses and that the latter transferred to the mind impressions of the natural world that could be false. 10 In his Iconology. Image, Text, Ideology, Mitchell indicates that Western modern and contemporary philosophers, theorists, and art historians generally define “image” as a mental construction confined within the human intellect. Additionally, Western theory is characterized by a number of contradictions, such as the superiority of poetry and speech over the visual arts, the gap between word and image, and finally, the gap between the realm of the invisible and visible. 11 Furthermore, Mitchell argues that theorists such as Goodman, Lessing, and Burke (with the exception of Gombrich’s moderate iconoclasm) distrust material images’ ability to convey truth and reveal the invisible reality. They are concerned with the manipulation of images and their propagandistic use. 12 According to Mitchell, Wittgenstein appears to deviate from this rule since he criticizes the validity and objectivity of the mental image over the material one. 13 These definitions acknowledge only the intellectual, invisible image and exclude sensory, visible images. The latter are not considered reliable tools of communicating knowledge. Material, visible images are considered inferior (if not completely incapable of being reliable at all) in the acquisition of knowledge when compared to the invisible, intellectual images. Mitchell concludes that modern and contemporary philosophers and art historians still manifest that ancient platonic iconoclasm. It appears, though, as Mitchell observes, that material images “have a power in our world undreamed of by the ancient idolaters.” 14 One may say that Western epistemology is based on an anthropology that is generally inclined to define humans primarily as intellectual beings. Mitchell 121–123. “Hume, David,” The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 ed. 11 Mitchell 9–46. 12 Mitchell 47–149. 13 Mitchell 9–46. 14 Mitchell 8. 9

10

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The mind and the intellect are the major realms to which knowledge appeals. Human senses and emotions are not given equal role with the mind in the acquisition of knowledge. 15 Recently, it appears that the Western theory has begun to question this anthropological model and consider parts of human reality, other than the mind, as equally valuable for humans. 16 Nevertheless, Western epistemology is characterized by a general scepticism as far as including human senses and emotions in the acquisition of scientific knowledge. The shift in Western science and technology concerning the use of image in the twentieth-century (that it may also open new perspectives in the traditional Western epistemological and anthropological model analysed above), confirms Mitchell’s last observation on the power of images. Despite the above-mentioned iconoclasm of Western epistemology, material images constitute the major means of achieving knowledge in most fields of contemporary science. Digital imaging technology is used in scientific fields, such as for instance astronomy, medicine, biochemistry, meteorology, geological sciences as well as in art conservation. 17 Scholars and technologists hope that the expansion of the use of computers and multi-media in education will lead toward using both words and images in a more balanced manner. 18 Additionally, the expansion of the use of image in modern science and technology has triggered the development of departments of imaging science in Western universities and especially in the United States of America, Mitchell 121–123 and 164–168. Camille XXV–XXVI. For an informative study on the significant role that emotions play in humans beings see, Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence (New York: Bantam Books, 1995). The same author challenges the monolithic evaluation of human intelligence through the “intelligence quotient” (IQ) test. See also the innovative study by David Servan-Schreiber, The Instinct to Heal. Curing Stress, Anxiety, and Depression Without Drugs and Without Talk Therapy (USA: Rodale, 2004). In this study the author suggests methods of curing that appeal directly to the body, such as, for instance massage, and which methods seem to divert from the traditional psychological methods of talk therapy. 17 “Imaging Science in Astronomy,” “Imaging Science in Medicine,” “Imaging Science in Biochemistry,” “Imaging Science in Meteorology,” “Imaging Applied to the Geological Sciences,” “Imaging Science in Art Conservation,” Encyclopedia of Imaging Science and Technology, 2002 ed. 18 Robert N. Beck, “The Future of Imaging Science,” Advances in Visual Semiotics—The Semiotic Web, ed. Thomas Sebeok and Jean Umiker-Sebeok (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, Mouton Publications, 1994) 609–642. 15 16

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such as for instance the department of imaging science of the University of Chicago. Furthermore, scholars, such as, for instance, Barbara Maria Stafford of the University of Chicago have taken a step further and have become interested in the comparative study of perception, images and science from the seventeenth-century up until nowadays and the expanding imaging technology in the area of medicine and information. 19 According to the above, a study that presents ancient evidence in the history of Western civilization that employed an inclusive epistemology (word and image) and inclusive anthropology (human mind and body) in the communication of knowledge may not be completely irrelevant to the contemporary Western theorist and scientist. This ancient evidence comes from the realm of Christian and Byzantine liturgy. We have to bear in mind that the study of worship is not a specialized, isolated discipline. On the contrary, it pertains to the study of human history and touches the very heart of human life and culture. 20 Ritual practices, as we will realise from our later analysis (particularly in chapter four), reflect the worldview of the society by which these practices were performed. 21 Therefore, the study of the origins of Christ the Bridegroom service goes 19 From Professor’s Stafford numerous and erudite bibliography on the subject, I mention, for instance, Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 1991), Visual Analogy: Consciousness as the Art of Connecting (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1999) and Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen, (coauthor: Frances Terpak) Catalog for an exhibition to be held at The Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, November 13, 2001 to February 6, 2002 (Getty Research Institute, 2001). 20 Clifford Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System,” Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. Michael Banton (London: Tavistock Publications, 1969) 1– 46. Richard Schechner, “Magnitudes of Performance,” The Anthropology of Experience, ed. Victor W. Turner and Edward M. Bruner (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986) 344–369. D. J. Crichton, “A Theology of Worship,” The Study of Liturgy, revised edition, ed. C. Jones, G. Wainwright, E. Yarnold SJ, P. Bradshaw (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) 7–9. 21 Edward Thomas Rewolinski, “The Use of Sacramental Language in the Gospel of Philip (Cairensis Gnosticus II, 3),” diss., Harvard University Press, 1978, 55–64. I am indebted to Professor Richard Valantasis for indicating to me this source. Averil Cameron, “The Language of Images: The Rise of Icons and Christian Representation,” The Church and the Arts. Papers Read at the 1990 Summer Meeting and the 1991 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed. Diana Wood (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1992) 33–34. I thank Professor Paul Magdalino for bringing this article to my attention.

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beyond the strict boundaries of ritual and reaches the realm of human life, and for the interest of contemporary theorists and scientists the realm of philosophy and of epistemology. The Byzantine service of Christ the Bridegroom as it appears in the third-century sources (that is, the initiation service of the Dura-Europos Christian House Baptistery), constitutes the earliest known Christian service that employed the arts in the communication of knowledge. The thirdcentury service of the Dura-Europos Christian Baptistery lies at the origins of a tradition of inclusive epistemology (use of word and image) and anthropology (human mind, body and the senses) in the communication of knowledge that continued later in Byzantium and today’s living tradition of Hellenism. Unlike Western theory and practice (with the exceptions mentioned above), images in Byzantium and in the Orthodox Church of today are thought to reveal divine knowledge. 22 The author hopes that this book, with its focus on subjects, such as theory of vision and knowledge, definition and function of images in early Christian and Byzantine epistemology, engages the recent growing interest in the study of images in Western civilization and contemporary science. In this way, the present study may appeal not only to the natural interest of the specialist in the fields related to the subject of Byzantine studies but also to the curiosity of contemporary theorists and scientists.

22

See also Cameron 15 and 24–34.

1 INTRODUCTION: THE ELEVENTH-CENTURY CHRIST THE BRIDEGROOM SERVICE AND THE PROBLEM OF ITS ORIGINS “Behold the Bridegroom comes in the middle of the night; …I see Thy bridal chamber adorned, O my Saviour, and I have no wedding garment that I may enter there. Make the robe of my soul to shine, O Giver of Light, and save me” (three times). 23

These verses based on Matt. 22.11, 25.1–13 and 24.46–51 come from the hymn appointed for the Matins of the Holy and Great Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of the Greek Orthodox Church’s Holy Week hymnography. That Matins, which is still in use in Greek Orthodox Church today, is called the service of “Christ the Bridegroom” and is an auditory and visual spectacle, as one would have expected from a Byzantine liturgical piece. It is a service that I know well and that has fascinated me for many years. The service unfolds with dramatic action. The Icon of Christ the Bridegroom constitutes not only an integral part of the service, but it forms its center. While the hymn “Behold the Bridegroom” is being chanted, the priest, holding the Icon of Christ the Bridegroom exits from the north door of the Iconostasis (the dividing wall between the altar area and the main church space) preceded by the altar servers. The priest and the servers form a procession that proceeds around the Church. When the priest comes into the area before the Iconostasis, he places the Icon on a stand and censes the Icon. At the end of Matins, the congregation processes to revere/kiss the Icon of Christ the Bridegroom, in Greek called the Nymphios (figs. 1 and 2). 24 Throughout the course of the service, the Icon stands in the sight of 23 Ware, Kallistos and Mother Mary, ed., The Lenten Triodion (London & Boston: Faber and Faber, 1978) 510–514. 24 In Byzantium, the iconographic form of the Nymphios icon, which must have originated around the twelfth-century, may be related to the iconographic type of the dead portrait of Christ. See Demetrios Pallas, Passion und Bestattung Christi in Byzanz. Der Ritus-das Bild, Miscellanea Byzantina Monacensia, 2 (Munich, 1965) 233 onwards. Hans Belting, “An Image and Its Function in the Liturgy: The Man of

23

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the congregation to underscore the presence of Christ the Bridegroom in their midst. In this service, the image of Christ the Bridegroom dominates; the faithful are encouraged to meet Christ the Bridegroom in it. This multifaceted Byzantine service that takes place in a specific liturgical space, consists of music/chant, hymnography, liturgical texts, visual icons, incense, and movements. Nevertheless, the use of the arts in the liturgy of Byzantium is not self-evident. A fully developed artistic liturgy emerged out of a contest with Iconoclasm and grew after the introduction of Palestinian, monastic elements into the liturgy of Constantinople. The earliest manuscript, in which the Bridegroom service has survived dates from the eleventh-century 25 and thus it reflects the state of Byzantine liturgy after the end of Iconoclasm (843 CE) when the use of images was no longer in question and the Constantinopolitan and Palestinian liturgical elements were synthesized into one. 26 To study the artistic service of Christ the Bridegroom in its original form, before its incorporation in the final Sorrows in Byzantium,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 34–35 (1980–81): 1–16 and especially 11–12. Hans Belting, The Image and Its Public in the Middle Ages. Form and Function of Early Paintings of the Passion, trans. Mark Bartusis and Raymond Meyer (New Rochelle, New York: Aristide D. Caratzas, Publisher, 1990) 90–129 and especially 120. Professor Andreas Xyngopoulos argues that the Nymphios icon where Christ is represented in a stand-up position wearing the purple garment and the thorny crown on his head is an iconographic type, which was influenced by the western type of Ecce Homo and was disseminated later in art (especially in the art of the Ionian islands) possibly through the seventeenth-century Cretan painter Ioannis Moschos. See, A. Xyngopoulos, Sxediasma istorias tes threskeutikes zografikes meta ten alosin, reprint (Athenai: e en Athenais archaiologeke etairia, 1999) 246–247 and plate 59.1. I thank Dr. Helena Papastavrou, Archaeologist and Curator at the Byzantine Museum in Athens for her constructive and valuable comments on the topic. 25 Aleksej Dmitrievskij, ed., Opisanie Liturgitseskich Rukopisej (Germany: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1965), vol. 1, 256–614 and especially 543–546. Egon Wellesz, A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography, 2nd edition revised and enlarged (Sandpiper Books Ltd., 1998) 134. 26 “Stoudite Typika,” The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, 1991 ed. Robert F. Taft, “The Liturgy of the Great Church: An Initial Synthesis of Structure and Interpretation on the Eve of Iconoclasm,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 34–35 (1980–81): 45–75. Robert F. Taft, The Great Entrance: A History of the Transfer of Gifts and other Preanaphoral Rites of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 200 (Roma: Pont. Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1975) 416. Wellesz 129–135. Belting, Likeness 164–183.

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shape of the Byzantine office, one may have to examine the period prior to the ninth-century and search for the earliest possible piece of evidence of the Bridegroom service. This forgotten service’s previously unknown origins coincide with the origins of the liturgical use of images in Byzantium and thus, its study is critical for a fresh understanding of the place of images in Byzantine liturgy. The history of synthesis of the Byzantine Typikon (as Egon Wellesz has observed) is a complex issue 27 that cannot be fully examined in the present study. Yet, a brief reference to its history prior to the ninth-century may be made by looking at specific characteristics of the Constantinopolitan and Palestinian tradition as well as an overview of the history of the Christian worship prior to the Peace of the Church. This may lead us towards locating the place of the Byzantine Bridegroom Matins in the Christian and Byzantine liturgy and suggesting a path towards the discovery of its origins. As the later analysis will indicate, Christian apologists of the first three centuries, following Plato, criticised the use of images of gods in Greek pagan religion, implying a spiritual kind of Christian worship far from the pagan superstitions. 28 Nevertheless, in pre-Constantinian Christianity one may trace evidence for a type of Christian worship that used images and material means to transmit divine knowledge to the entire human being. For instance, in Christian texts such as the Gospel of John and the second-century First Epistle to John we may trace references to a Christian worship that is characterized by a spiritual and material dimension. 29 Furthermore, the frescoes in the Christian Catacombs dating prior to the fourth-century constitute evidence of the use of images in the ritual that took place in these underground places. 30 Yet it has been argued that prior to the fourth-century, images and elements of the ceremonial were used symbolically outside the Eucharistic liturgy on occasions, such as the agape meals of preWellesz 135. See analysis in pages 65–66. 29 See analysis in page 68. 30 André Grabar, The Beginnings of Christian Art. 200–395 (Thames and Hudson, 1967) 23–41 and 80–122. André Grabar, Christian Iconography. A Study of Its Origins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968) 5–30. Konstantinou Kallinikou, O christianikos naos kai ta teloumena en auto, 5th ed. (Athens: Ekdoseis Grigoris, 1969) 24. Nicolai Vincenzo Fiocchi, Bisconti Fabrizio, Mazzoleni Danilo. The Christian Catacombs of Rome. History, Decoration, Inscriptions, trans. Cristina Carlo Stella and Lori-Ann Touchette (Regensburg: Schnell and Steiner, 1999) 71–145. See also page 68. 27 28

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Constantinian Christians. It was during the fourth-century that elements of the ceremonial began to be used symbolically in the Christian liturgy. 31 Furthermore, the introduction of images in Christian worship has been dated between the fifth and seventh-centuries. 32 The Typikon of the Orthodox Churches and Monasteries contains the Rule for all the liturgies, celebrations, special services, the Eucharist, the divine offices, the pastoral offices, and all other liturgical practices. The Typikon is arranged according to the Calendar of the year and the movable feasts as well as with the specific instruction for the celebration of the feasts and of all other offices. Wellesz argues that historically, the Typikon consisted of two different rites: the Constantinopolitan one, representing the liturgical tradition of the imperial church of Constantinople; and the Palestinian or Monastic one, representing the tradition of Jerusalem. 33 Prior to the ninth-century, the tradition of Constantinople appears to have ignored many of the artistic elements found in the Palestine, monastic tradition. For instance, the lamplighting service known as the Lychnicon or Lucernare is mentioned as of monastic origin and there are cases where its use was limited and modified. 34 The hymn Phos Hilaron (Oh Gladsome Light) that was sung in the Lychnicon was unknown in Constantinople before the ninth-century. 35 The concealment of the mysteries during the liturgy Dix 82–100, 350 and 397–433. Taft, The Great Entrance 149–151. See discussion in pages 68–70. 32 André Grabar, Martyrium: recherches sur le culte des reliques et l’ art chrétien antique, vol. 2 (Paris: Collège de France, 1943–1946) 343 onwards and 357. Ernst Kitzinger, “The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 8 (1954): 89–95. Peter Brown, “A Dark-Age Crisis: Aspects of the Iconoclastic Controversy,” The English Historical Review 88 (January 1973): 1–34. Cameron 4–5. Leslie Brubaker, “Icons Before Iconoclasm?” Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi Sull’ Alto Medioevo XLV. Morfologie Sociali e Culturali in Europa fra Tarda Antichità e Alto Medioevo. 3–9 aprile 1997, tomo secondo (Spoleto: Presso la Sede del Centro, 1998) 1253–1254. I thank Professor Paul Magdallino for indicating this article to me. Belting, Likeness 41. Thomas F. Mathews, Byzantium. From Antiquity to the Renaissance (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1998) 52. See also analysis in pages 50–52. 33 Wellesz 133–135. 34 G. Bertonière, The Historical Development of the Easter Vigil and Related Services in the Greek Church Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 193 (Roma: Pont. Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1972) 121–124. 35 “Phos Hilaron,” The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, 1991 ed. Robert Taft S.J., “The Byzantine Office in the Prayerbook of New Skete: Evaluation of a Proposed 31

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through the erection of the Iconostasis and its curtains is described by the Byzantine sources as a monastic custom unknown in Constantinople before the eleventh-century. 36 Moreover, as far as the use of icons in the liturgy of Constantinople is concerned, before the ninth-century, Robert F. Taft maintains that liturgical texts of the Constantinopolitan tradition, such as euchologies and diataxeis, make no mention of icons being used in the liturgy except at a later date. The same scholar maintains that the place of icons in the liturgy or their presence in the Iconostasis or elsewhere was not essential to the performance of the Great Church liturgy. 37 It is worth noticing that even after the end of Iconoclasm, the place of icons in the public liturgy of the Byzantine capital was still problematic. Neither in the liturgy of the great monasteries or in that of the capital was the incorporation of icons in the ceremony an easy process. There is evidence of eleventh-century monasteries where only the cross and the Gospel were carried in processions like in the “oldest tradition of the ‘Great Church,’ Hagia Sophia.” The Gospel book represented Christ. On the contrary, one can easily find icons that were prescribed in the typika of private monasteries founded by laymen since these patrons could impose the use of their favourite icon on the ceremonies of their monastery. It was towards the end of the Byzantine Empire that icons were routinely used in the daily liturgical practice of the Byzantine church, even that of the Hagia Sophia. 38 The present Byzantine Rite-Typikon, in which the service of the Bridegroom is contained, has been preserved in the eleventh or twelfthcentury Typikon of the Euergetes Monastery in Constantinople, Codex 788 of the University Library in Athens. 39 Despite its monastic origin, the manuscript no longer solely represents a typikon of the Palestinian liturgical tradition solely. On the contrary, this manuscript represents the general “Byzantine Rite” of the mid-eleventh century, that is, the one, which contains both Cathedral elements of the Constantinopolitan typikon and PalesReform,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 48 (1982): 343–344. Juan Mateos, “Un horologion inédit de Saint Sabas,” Mélanges Eugène Tisserant, vol. 3 (Vatican: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1964) 56 and 70–74. 36 Thomas F. Mathews, The Early Churches of Constantinople: Architecture and Liturgy (University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1971) 162–171. See also, Taft, Great Entrance 405–416. 37 Taft, The Great Entrance 416. 38 Belting, Likeness 228–230 and Catia Galatariotou, “Byzantine ktetorika typika: a comparative study,” Revue des études byzantines 45 (1987): 77–138. 39 Wellesz 134. See also Dmitrievskij, vol. 1, 256–614 and especially 543–546.

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tinian elements from the monastic typikon. 40 Therefore, the surviving typika manuscripts cannot be reliable sources for the Byzantine Monastic order since they contain elements from both traditions, that is, that of the Constantinopolitan, imperial church and of the Palestinian one. There is, however, a means by which one may be able to classify the Bridegroom hymnography into one of those divergent ritual traditions and suggest a key that would lead us to its origins. The oldest example of the Byzantine typikon is preserved in Patmos Codex 266, dating from the ninth or tenth-century, that is, the time before the combination of the two main elements, published in vol. I of Dmitrievskij’s edition as well as in that of Juan Mateos. 41 It is the typikon of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople before the end of Iconoclasm (843 CE), that is, before the introduction of Palestinian elements and monastic Hymnography. 42 This Typikon does not contain the hymns of Christ the Bridegroom. Since these hymns are found in the eleventh or twelfth-century typikon of the Euergetes Monastery, this leads me to think that the Bridegroom hymns originated in a monastic environment; they do not echo the tradition of the Church of Constantinople but the monastic one of Palestine. Thus, in order to glimpse the original form of the monastic Bridegroom hymns before their incorporation in the composite Byzantine typikon, I should look for the earliest possible evidence in Christian worship that contains pieces of this service. The earliest stage of Christ the Bridegroom service’s historical development in literature and archaeology may geographically be located in third-century Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia. The third-century initiatory bridal service of the Dura-Europos Christian House Baptistery can be analysed through its physical evidence (installations and frescoes) with the aid of the third-century textual sources of the Gospel of Philip, Acts of Thomas, and the Symposium. The current use of the Holy Week Matins service indicates a striking similarity with the thirdcentury bridal service of the Dura-Europos Christian Baptistery. In both the early third and later eleventh-twelfth centuries, this service takes place in a unified sacred space, 43 takes place early in the morning, 44 uses elements of Wellesz 135. Dmitrievskij, vol. 1, 1–152 and especially 127–129; Juan Mateos, Le Typicon de la Grande Église, 2 vols., (Rome: 1962–63). 42 Wellesz 133–134. 43 See description of the current Bridegroom service in pages 23–24 and also pages 86–87. 40 41

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the ceremonial to communicate its knowledge, and culminates at uniting the participant emotionally with Christ who is made present in it visually. 45 The eleventh-century and current Bridegroom service set the platform for the examination of the third-century material. 46 In this book, I study the origins of the service of Christ the Bridegroom as this appears in the initiation bridal service of the Dura-Europos Christian House baptistery. I analyse the service of the Dura-Europos Christian baptistery focusing on the role that images played in it, an aspect that proves to be crucial for the service’s better understanding, an aspect neglected by previous scholarship. For the reconstruction of this service, I use the information that the installations and frescoes of the room provide. The physical evidence of the Dura-Europos baptistery invokes images congruent with the synchronous liturgical traditions preserved in the thirdcentury texts. The Dura-Europos baptistery is a luminous instance of a precisely dated aboveground Christian edifice prior to the Peace of the Church where art was used in the room’s initiation service 47 with the image of Christ the Good Shepherd at its center. The textual sources in question preserve valuable evidence about initiatory ritual practices in pre-Constantinian Christianity that advocated the liturgical use of images and placed Christ’s image at the center. Thus, the textual sources in question, used here for the See Acts of Thomas, 26–29. Gospel of Philip, 85.32–35 and 85.1–4. Symposium, Logos 6: Agathe, 5. See also page 74, note 237. 45 The third century sources (visual and textual) testify to the visual presence of Christ, that is, Christ’s epiphany in this service and in particular under the image of Christ the Good Shepherd depicted in the lunette of the canopied font of the Dura baptistery. The eleventh-century manuscript does not mention the use of any Icon in the service of Christ the Bridegroom. See, Dmitrievskij, vol. 1, 256–614; On July 1997, during a phone conversation in Greece, Dr. John Foundoulis, Professor of Liturgics at the University of Thessaloniki confirmed that there was no mention of Christ the Bridegroom Icon in the same manuscript. During the same time, after a series of private conversations I had with the Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church of America, Demetrios Trakatellis at his house in Athens, Greece, he mentioned to me that the Icon of Christ the Bridegroom and its procession may have originated later than the eleventh-century service itself. Finally, on July 1997, Dr. Nikos Zias, Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek art at the University of Athens agreed with Trakatellis on the issue in question during a private conversation at his office in Athens, Greece. 46 For differences among the third century, the eleventh century, and the current use of the Bridegroom Matins, see page 29, note 45. 47 Grabar, Beginnings 23–24 and 80. 44

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first time for the analysis of ritual, 48 appear to be appropriate for the further comprehension of the Dura-Europos Christian baptistery’s service. The main argument of this book is that the Dura-Europos Christian House Baptistery hosted an initiation bridal service in which the real presence of Christ is signified by His image, and the initiates are emotionally united with Christ, who reveals Himself as Good Shepherd and Bridegroom through contemplation of His image. The room’s service prepares and transforms the participant ontologically in order for him/her to unite with the image of Christ as an anticipation of his/her union with Christ Himself in the Second coming. Second, I will argue that the Dura-Europos Christian baptistery ritual is the earliest known Iconophile service, a unique known instance of an initiation service that used images in preConstantinian Christianity. The Dura baptistery itself constitutes the earliest known instance of an above ground Christian religious edifice that housed a service, which used images symbolically.

From the three texts in question, the Acts of Thomas and the Symposium have already been used for the interpretation of the scene narrated in the fresco of the Women at the Tomb as we will see from the later discussion of the relevant secondary literature. 48

2 INTRODUCING THE THIRD-CENTURY DURAEUROPOS CHRISTIAN BAPTISTERY SERVICE 1. INITIAL REMARKS The baptistery room of the Dura-Europos Christian House is a space of Christ’s epiphany. Within this space Christ appears under the image of the Good Shepherd in the lunette of the canopied font, which functions as the innermost sanctuary of the baptistery (fig. I). As I will prove later, the initiates develop an emotional bond with Christ by becoming His brides. This can be seen especially in the fresco of the Women at the Tomb where the initiates of the ritual are represented as brides processing to meet Christ the Bridegroom before His epiphany at the end of time (figs. I and II). In the service of the baptistery, the initiates unite with Christ who is revealed as the Good Shepherd and Bridegroom by means of His image. To the Acts of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip and the Symposium, the innermost sanctuary, which is likened to a bridal chamber, is the space of Christ’s epiphany where the participants of “the mysteries of this marriage” (as the author of the Gospel of Philip calls the initiation ritual, see Gospel of Philip, 86.1-3) are united with Christ the Bridegroom through His image. Christ appears in this service visually under the image of the Good Shepherd. Seeing Christ is the key element. Sight occupies the highest position in this service since the object of knowledge is Christ’s visual image, and knowledge itself is communicated through sight. The participant of this service is ontologically transformed to know and see Christ’s person, who reveals the invisible kingdom to the sensory world in the sacred space of the baptistery. Union of the participant with Christ’s image is the culminating point of the service. The transformation of the senses happens for the sake of sight. In the service of the Dura baptistery (as my argument will prove), an ontological transformation of the entire human being (intellect, senses, and emotions) occurs and the participant gains divine knowledge. The service achieves this inclusive transformation of the participant by using sensory means, such as lamps, incense, vestments, and oil. These elements of the 31

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ceremonial make the supernatural, heavenly truth tangible to the participants by appealing to various human senses. For instance, the lamp pertains to the sense of sight, incense to the sense of smell, the food used in the Eucharist to the sense of taste, the oil and vestments (white robe) used in the chrism to the sense of touch. Human senses (above all sight) along with emotions, in fact, occupy a central part in the acquisition of divine knowledge within this service. The bridal language is used in this service 49 to indicate that the emotional manner in which the participant approaches and comprehends the divine is intimately related to the image. As we will realize from our later analysis, the emotional understanding of the divine functions more readily in a liturgical space that images are employed. 50 A type of ritual that appeals only to the intellect does not use artistic means that appeal to the senses and emotions, since the two latter are out of its spectrum. Platonists, Christian apologists, and later Byzantine Iconoclasts advocated an intellectual type of worship that excluded images and, thus, parts of human reality from it, such as senses and emotions. 51 Contrary to these views, in the bridal initiation service of the Dura baptistery, we may find a developed anthropology that included the entire human being, that is, intellect, senses, and emotions, in the acquisition of divine knowledge. The anthropology of this service sets the stage for the construction of its epistemology. The author of the Gospel of Philip offers his own view to the problem of acquisition of true knowledge in the phenomenal world that was a main issue in the epistemology of the time by relating the participant’s ontological transformation in the bridal chamber mystery to vision. What the participant or son of the bridal chamber sees in the liturgical space of the Dura baptistery is not an illusion or mere opinion (logos doxastikos), to use Platonic language, but “true knowledge” (logos epistimikos) 52 since the liturgical reality constitutes an extension of his/her being. In the Dura bapThe sources of this bridal imagery can be traced in Matt. 22.11, 25.1–13, 24.46–51. 50 Gary Vikan, “Sacred Image, Sacred Power,” Icon (Baltimore, Maryland: The Walters Art Gallery, 1988) 9–18. 51 Gerhart B. Ladner, “The Concept of the Image in the Greek Fathers and the Byzantine Iconoclastic Controversy,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 7 (1953): 11. Paul Corby Finney, The Invisible God. The Earliest Christians on Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994) 39–68. Jaroslav Pelikan, Imago Dei. The Byzantine Apologia for Icons (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) 116. Belting, Likeness 36. 52 Finney, The Invisible God 42–43. 49

THIRD-CENTURY DURA-EUROPOS CHRISTIAN BAPTISTERY SERVICE 33 tistery initiation service, the participant sees the real person of Christ and thus, the visible manifestation of the invisible God because he/she likens him/herself to Christ. In this service, likeness is a prerequisite of vision, and thus of knowledge. One may argue that the Dura baptistery service’s sources understand worship as an act of epiphany, that is, a ritual that focuses on the revelation of Christ through an image. The various material means are used in this service to enable the participant’s emotional union with Christ by means of His image. This will be evident in the employment of the artistic program of the Dura-Europos Christian baptistery in the analysis of its service. The initiation service of the Dura-Europos Christian baptistery emerges as a unique instance of a known Christian initiation service in preConstantinian Christianity, in which images were used liturgically. The other instance of the use of images in worship comes from the Catacombs; yet, the context there where images were used symbolically was the office of the dead. The evidence of the Dura baptistery initiation service becomes more important when we recall that, as it has been argued, prior to the fourthcentury, the place of elements of the ceremonial and images in Christian worship was controversial. 53 The victory of the Byzantine Iconophiles “restored the union between liturgy and art.” 54 Post-Iconoclasm Byzantine art, which scholars characterize as emotional, was used in the liturgy to arouse the senses and emotions of its audience 55 aiming at uniting the entire human being with God. The evolution of Byzantine art after the ninth-century indicates that emotions became a significant tool for understanding the divine. The Byzantine liturgy in its final shape included the entire human being (intellect, sense and emotions) in its spectrum. The use of images and the emotional manner of approaching God in the service of the Dura baptistery indicate that the type of worship that became the norm for Byzantium after the end of Iconoclasm, was already developed in the third-century milieu of the Durene Christians.

See analysis in pages 25–26 and 68–71. Pelikan 119. 55 Robin Cormack, “Painting after Iconoclasm,” Iconoclasm: Papers Given at the Ninth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies. University of Birmingham. March 1975, ed. Anthony Bryer and Judith Herrin (Birmingham, England: Center for Byzantine Studies, University of Birmingham, 1977): 153. 53 54

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2. THE DURA-EUROPOS CHRISTIAN HOUSE AND ITS BAPTISTERY a. The Discovery Yale University and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters excavated the ancient city of Dura-Europos, located on the west bank of the Euphrates River in the part of Mesopotamia which is now Syria, in the time period between 1928 and 1937. 56 The excavations brought to light a city with a rich secular, as well as diverse religious art. The ambitious expedition discovered the Christian House in 1931–2. Originally a private house, it was converted to a Christian meeting and worship place around 232 CE. 57 The House church of the Dura-Europos is the oldest known instance of an above ground Christian worship and meeting space. 58 The discovery of the Dura-Europos Christian House baptistery captivated scholarly interest for several reasons. The Christian community of Dura, along with the Jews of the same city, appear to have ignored the biblical prohibitions for making religious images but, instead, used them in the liturgical space. The frescoes on the walls of the Christian House’s baptistery reveal that the Dura Christian community did not share the feeling of ambiguity over the use of images in their liturgical space as their contemporary Christian theologians did. 59 b. The Christian House The Christian House at Dura consisted of a central courtyard where scholars assume that the common meals (agapai) were held and the instruction of the Christian children and the katechoumenoi took place. On the left side of the central court, a large oblong room was used as a meeting hall for prayer. 60 Finally, on the right side of the atrium, a small room, the only one of the entire house that was decorated with wall frescoes, functioned as a

Susan B. Matheson, Dura-Europos. The Ancient City and the Yale Collection (Yale University Art Gallery, 1982) Foreword. 57 Michael Rostovtzeff, Dura-Europos and its Art (New York, New York: AMS Press, INC, 1978) 101. 58 Richard Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986) 27. 59 Matheson 25–30. See also analysis of the Christian intellectuals’ views on images in pages 65–67. 60 Rostovtzeff 130. 56

THIRD-CENTURY DURA-EUROPOS CHRISTIAN BAPTISTERY SERVICE 35 baptistery (fig. 3), as we will realize later from the room’s literature review. 61 Above the baptistery was a room accessible through a staircase. 62 This upper room was probably more a “by-product of the desire to provide a lower ceiling” for the baptistery rather than “something desired in and for itself.” 63 Carl Hermann Kraeling maintains that, although there is no evidence that can lead us with certainty to conclude on this room’s function, this upper room might have served as a residence for the watchman of the house. 64 At this point I have to mention that the lack of any permanent installation in the rooms of the house, except for the baptistery, prevents us from determining with certainty any ritual function. A low raised platform against the east wall of the Assembly Hall is the only exception found (Room 4, see fig. 3). Scholars suppose that it was used as a bema or podium where the leader of the congregation stood. 65 The performance of the Eucharist in this room has been argued on the basis of the large size of the room 66 and the general practice in early Christianity that used to place a portable Eucharistic table in front of the bishop’s chair. 67 Yet, Kraeling appears hesitant to acknowledge with certainty any ritual function for this room since it lacks other installations. 68 As far as the function of Room 5 is concerned (fig. 3), Kraeling assumes that it might have been a room for the first part of initiation (exorcisterium). He argues this because of the position of Room 5, which was next to the baptistery, and because of the various ritual stages that were part of early Christian baptism. 69

See pages 44–50. Rostovtzeff 130–131. 63 Carl Hermann Kraeling, The Excavations at Dura-Europos. Conducted by Yale University and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters. Final Report VIII, Part II: The Christian Building, ed. C. Bradford Welles (New Haven: Dura-Europos Publications, 1967) 25. 64 Kraeling, Final Report 155. 65 Kraeling, Final Report 142–143. 66 M. J. Moreton, “Ει̉ς α̉νατολάς βλέψατε. Orientation as a Liturgical Principle,” Studia Patristica 17.2 (1982): 577–578. 67 Margaret Deanesly, “Dura-Europos,” Church Quarterly Review 168 (1967): 8– 10. 68 Kraeling, Final Report 141–142. 69 Kraeling, Final Report 151–154. 61 62

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The baptistery was the only room of the house where cultic installations were found. Ann Perkins takes a step further and explicitly maintains that the baptistery room was the only chamber used for ritual. 70 In any case, whether the baptistery was the only cultic space of the house or not, we are dealing with an exceptional religious space in pre-Constantinian times. The fact that Durene Christians decorated this room alone out of the entire house tells us that they considered the ritual performed in it extremely important. 71 c. The Baptistery As soon as the participants of the service entered the baptistery, accessible by its two doors, they would see the fresco of the Resurrection sequence, or Women at the Tomb (figs. 4 and I). The painting of the women’s procession was a continuous sequence that was well over 5m. long and occupied the lower register of the east and north wall. The theme of the women processing toward Christ’s Tomb was the central focus of the fresco. Both the length and position of the fresco in the baptistery proved its importance over all the other frescoes of the room. 72 According to Kraeling’s presentation of the fresco, the composition consisted of three elements. The first was painted on the south wall. The preserved part of the fresco depicted the feet and the lower ends of the garments of five figures that were placed symmetrically across the wall in frontal position. The soft boots and the long robe (chiton) were garments that were typically worn by women. Thus, we may say that the figures of the scene were rendered as women. From the position of their feet, it appears that the five women were painted as coming from the right and processing to the left toward the eastern end of the north wall where the scene continues in the second element without break. The continuity of the scene from the east to the north wall can be concluded from the unbroken surface of the plaster that follows the east and north walls (figs. IIIa and 5). The second element of the scene represented a half-open door facing the actual door of the baptistery that led to the courtyard of the house. The half-opened door marked the end of the first element and the beginning of the third element that continued on the north wall (figs. 4, IIIb, 5, and 6). The surviving part of the third element of Ann Perkins, The Art of Dura-Europos (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1973) 29. 71 Kraeling, Final Report 24 and 40. 72 Kraeling, Final Report 72; Rostovtzeff 131. 70

THIRD-CENTURY DURA-EUROPOS CHRISTIAN BAPTISTERY SERVICE 37 the scene represented three women who had already entered into a chamber through the half-open door of the second element and they moved towards a huge white sarcophagus. The sarcophagus’ lid was closed and adorned with a vine. Two stars were placed at the acroteria of the structure. The sarcophagus did not contain any image of Christ (figs. II and I). The artist used deep red background color in the third element scene and contrasted it with the reddish brown, brightened with pink of the east wall to indicate that the figures of the north wall were located in an interior space (figs. II and IIIa-b). From the three figures, only the upper torsos of the two and the elbow of the third have survived. They wore white garments and their heads were covered with veils. The women held torches and bowls of incense 73 and they processed toward the white sarcophagus, which was the ultimate goal of the procession. The figures of the women were represented in frontal position processing in a solemn and repetitive fashion that was the typical manner of depicting oriental processions (figs. II and 7). 74 Similar processional scenes on the walls of the Durene pagan shrines depicted the worshippers moving toward the rear wall of the naos where the image of the cult deity stood. In this way, these paintings made clear to the beholder/worshipper where the focus of the ritual was (fig. 8). 75 The figures depicted on the east wall were also repeated on the north wall. Kraeling thinks that although on the north wall there were only three incomplete figures remaining, there was space for another two. Thus, he argued that there were five figures on the east wall that were repeated on the north wall. Nevertheless, he admits the possibility that the space of the north wall might have been too narrow for five women. 76 Unlike the lower Kraeling thinks the bowls that the women of the fresco held contained unguent. See, Kraeling, Final Report 79. I agree with Pallas who thought that since the bowls were open they contained incense. See Demetrios I. Pallas, Synagoge meleton byzantines archaiologias (techne-latreia-koinonia), vol. 1 (Athena: 1987–88) 91. Later in pages 113–114, we will see that the textual sources (Acts of Thomas, Gospel of Philip and the Symposium) I use to support the visual evidence of the Dura baptistery describe processions similar to that of the Women at the Tomb fresco where there is mention of the use of incense. 74 Kraeling, Final Report 71–80. 75 Kraeling, Final Report 157–160. Rostovtzeff 57–99. Marie-Henriette Gates, “Dura-Europos: A Fortress of Syro-Mesopotamian Art,” Biblical Archaeologist 47.3 (1984): 168–171. Matheson 9–25. 76 Kraeling, Final Report 83–85. Goranson finds Kraeling’s argument problematic and supports the possibility of three women on the north wall. See Stephen 73

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register on the north wall, which was dedicated to the participant of the service (as is the case for frescoes of the entire lower register of the baptistery’s walls), the upper register of the north wall was dedicated to the deeds of Christ. On this part of the baptistery’s wall, the artist depicted miracle scenes including Christ healing the paralytic and Christ walking on the water (figs. 9 and IV). 77 At the west wall, the focal point of the room, the initiate could behold a font covered with a vaulted construction, that is, an aedicula whose two columns were painted to imitate marble. 78 The position of this structure in the room made it the culminating point of the room’s ritual. 79 The outer face of the canopy was crowned with a red band of fruit garland, including purple grapes, three yellow pomegranates, and yellow ears of grain. The vault of the canopy directly above the font was adorned with white stars set against a blue background symbolizing the sky (fig. I). 80 The fresco of Christ the Good Shepherd with His flock is found in the lunette between the font and the vault of the canopy. The image depicted Christ the Good Shepherd holding a ram on his shoulders (criophoros), while moving toward a flock of rams in his right. The shepherd wore a short robe (chiton) that was known as the exomis. The rams were placed in a pastoral scene. The image of the Good Shepherd, as with the rest of the frescoes, was different from the manner it was depicted in the West. For instance, in the Catacombs of Domitilla, San Callisto, Priscilla and SS. Peter and Marcellinus we find a more balanced composition where the shepherd stood among his sheep (figs. V, 10, 11, 12 and 13). 81

Goranson, “7 versus 8: The Battle over the Holy Day at Dura-Europos,” Bible Review XII.4 (1996): 24–33 and 44, note 23. I will not debate over the number of the fresco’s figures since it does not pertain to my argument. Whether they were eight or ten, the important thing is that these figures represented a religious procession. 77 Kraeling, Final Report 57–65. 78 Aedicula was a canopied niche flanked by colonnades intended as a shelter for a statue or a shrine. See, “Aedicula,” Illustrated Dictionary of Historic Architecture, 1977 ed. 79 See also, Gabriel Millet, “Dura et El-Bagawat,” Cahiers archéologiques VIII (1956): 2. Millet notes that the baptismal font occupied the place of the sanctuary. 80 Kraeling, Final Report 43–45. Rostovtzeff 131. The ceiling for the entire room was a star-studded sky with a moon. 81 Kraeling, Final Report 50–55. P. V. C. Baur, “The Christian Chapel at Dura,” American Journal of Archaeology XXXVII (1933): 377–380. Grabar, Beginnings 30–31,

THIRD-CENTURY DURA-EUROPOS CHRISTIAN BAPTISTERY SERVICE 39 In the lower left-hand side, but in a smaller scale than the rest of this fresco were the figures of Adam and Eve, naked, and the tree. At the bottom of the tree a serpent was depicted. The background color used here was reddish brown and this scene appeared to be an addition to the lunette painting. 82 The lunette painting depicted two spaces that represented two realities: the space of the Good Shepherd with his flock in the pastures and the space of Adam and Eve. The two episodes were distinguished from one another through the different background color juxtaposing in this way the fall and redemption of human “through saving power of Christ” (fig. V). 83 Adjacent to the font, on the lower register of the south wall, between the door leading to Room 5 and the southern end of the west wall, the participant of the ritual could see the painting of the Woman at the Well. In this fresco, the artist depicted a woman pulling water from a well. She wears a white garment similar to that of the Women at the Tomb fresco. On her garment, there was a five-pointed star. Christ was not in the scene, as one might have expected (figs. 9, VI and 14a–b). 84 On the upper register of the same wall, one may discern the partially damaged Garden scene. This depicted a garden with trees and bushes similar to the pastures of the Good Shepherd’s flock in the lunette of the canopied structure. Kraeling thinks that the Garden or Paradise scene was the conclusion of the Miracle cycle on the upper register of the north wall (figs. 9 and 15). 85 Finally, on the lower register of the south wall, there was the fresco depicting David fighting with Goliath. Although it is not completely visible, Kraeling suggested that perhaps David’s dress was a shepherd’s exomis. The giant Goliath was dressed in a heavy armor with sword and shield. The artist depicted the unarmed David winning the unequal fight by decapitating the giant soldier. 86 The artist separated this scene from the Woman at the Well by a frame band as well as by placing the fresco between the two doorways of the baptistery (figs. 9 and VIIa-b). 87 As far as the style of the Dura-Europos Christian baptistery frescoes is concerned, this needs to be examined in the general context of Durene art. 82–83, 98 and 108. Grabar, Iconography 11. Robert Milburn, Early Christian Art and Architecture (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988) 27–31. 82 Kraeling, Final Report 50–57. 83 Perkins 53. 84 Kraeling, Final Report 67–69. 85 Kraeling, Final Report 65–67. 86 Kraeling, Final Report 212–213. 87 Kraeling, Final Report 69–71.

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I notice that, despite the influences that the various artistic traditions (Greek, Semitic and in a lesser degree the Western) had on the art of DuraEuropos, 88 they were all joined together and formed a “local idiom” recognizable as Durene art. 89 Elements, such as frontality, unrealistic bodies, absence of third dimension, generally static quality, cursory drawing may be identified as the major characteristics of Durene art. 90 The frescoes of the Christian baptistery follow this local tradition. Nevertheless, one may say that the baptistery’s frescoes betray oriental influences (figures are shown in a hieratic, frontal, simplified rather than individualized manner, with limited action as in the Women at the Tomb fresco); Western (action) as well as Hellenistic (narrative) influences are also present. 91 Finally, I will add that, unlike the rigid style of the fresco of the Women at the Tomb, the miracles of Christ painting was executed in an illusionistic and free style. 92

3. LITERATURE REVIEW a. The Mystery of the Bridal Chamber For the purposes of this book, my literature review concerning the textual sources will concentrate on the initiation practices reflected in them. In the Gospel of Philip, initiation practices are intimately related to the mystery of the bridal chamber. The latter is the last of the five mysteries referred in the text: “The lord [did] everything in a mystery, a baptism and a chrism and a eucharist and a redemption and a bridal chamber” (Gospel of Philip 67.27– 30). 93 An issue that has occupied scholarship is the sacramental dimension in the Gospel of Philip. Edward Rewolinski argued that the sacramental lanProfessor Pierre Leriche has argued the continuing Hellenistic presence and influence on the institutions of the city of Dura-Europos from the Hellenistic to the beginning of Roman times. See, Pierre Leriche, “Europos-Doura hellénistique,” Topoi Supplément 4 (2003): 171–191. I am indebted to Dr. Leriche who generously indicated this article of his to me. I also thank Dr. Anastasia Lazaridou, Archaeologist and Curator at the Byzantine Museum in Athens who made me aware of Professor’s Leriche interest in Dura-Europos. 89 Perkins 9 and 49–55. Gates 166–168. Matheson 6–38. 90 Perkins 52 and 117. 91 Kraeling, Final Report 163–169. Rostovtzeff 132–134. 92 Rostovtzeff 131–132. Perkins 52–55. 93 All Gospel of Philip quotations come from the translation of Bentley Layton, ed., The Coptic Gnostic Library. Nag Hammadi Codex II, 2–7. Tractate 3. The Gospel According to Philip (New York: E. J. Brill, 1989). 88

THIRD-CENTURY DURA-EUROPOS CHRISTIAN BAPTISTERY SERVICE 41 guage found in the Gospel of Philip is not merely used on a symbolic level but it reflects actual ritual practices. 94 Elaine Pagels explored the similarities between the baptismal theology developed in the Gospel of Philip and that of other contemporary Christians. She argued that what the author of the Gospel of Philip basically does is to distinguish between those who have gnosis and participate in the sacraments of the Church, particularly in the baptismal rite and those who live in error abstaining from the sacraments. 95 Furthermore, scholarship has dealt with the number of rites (five) listed in the text, that is, baptism, chrism, Eucharist, ransom, and bridal chamber (Gospel of Philip 67.27–30), maintaining that we are dealing with five stages of an initiation characterized by an internal unity. In fact, the term “bridal chamber” is used for the entire initiation process. 96 Moreover, Eric Segelberg sees the bridal chamber as “the conclusion of the rites of death.” 97 Jorunn Jakobsen-Buckley thinks that in the Gospel of Philip, the bridal chamber stands in the highest rank of all other mysteries. 98 Additionally, Segelberg has been concerned with the issue of unity and number of mysteries mentioned in the Gospel of Philip. 99 In his turn, D. T. Tripp supports a “three-phase program” of mysteries instead of the five mentioned in the Gospel of Philip. 100 Another issue with which scholars have been concerned is that of whether the mystery of the bridal chamber, involves an actual or spiritual marriage. The issue of the sacred marriage (hieros gamos) was well known in antiquity. We know that in the Ancient Near East, sacred marriages beRewolinski 98–140. Elaine Pagels, “Ritual in the Gospel of Philip,” The Nag Hammadi Library after 50 Years; Proceedings of the 1995 Society of Biblical Literature Commemoratio, ed. John D. Turner and Anne Mc Guire (Leiden; New York: Brill, 1997) 280–291. I thank Dr. Timothy Gregory for indicating this source to me. 96 See, Rewolinski 139 and Bentley Layton ed., 136. See also Michael A. Williams, “Realized Eschatology in the Gospel of Philip,” Restoration Quarterly 14 (1971): 11–13. 97 Eric Segelberg, “The Coptic-Gnostic Gospel according to Philip and Its Sacramental System,” Numen VII (1960): 198. 98 Jorunn Jakobsen-Buckley, “A Cult Mystery in the Gospel of Philip,” Journal of Biblical Literature 99 (1980): 571. 99 Segelberg, “The Coptic-Gnostic Gospel,” 189–200. See also, Eric Segelberg, “The Baptismal Rite according to some of the Coptic-Gnostic Texts of NagHammadi,” Studia Patristica V (1962): 125–128. 100 D. H. Tripp, “The ‘Sacramental System’ of the Gospel of Philip,” Studia Patristica 17.1 (1982): 253–256. 94 95

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tween humans (kings, priests) and gods took place in temples. In ancient Greece, from the mythology we learn about the sacred marriage between Zeus and Hera, the union between the god of heaven and the goddess of earth. On the island of Crete, in the area near by Knossos, the marriage of Zeus and Hera was celebrated by means of “an evening bridal procession followed by a nocturnal festival” as Walter Burket notes. 101 Additionally, we know that it was on the island of Crete that the union between Demeter and Iasion occurred. In the mystery initiation rites, such as Eleusis, sexuality played an important role but due to the secret character of these rites we cannot be certain. In the Dionysian initiation rites, though, it appears that initiation required certain actual sexual acts. Finally, in the Dionysian festivals of Anthesteria that took place in Athens, the wife of the king was given to the Dionysos as a wife. 102 In the Gospel of Philip, the author of the text deals with the mystery of marriage and the bridal chamber: No [one can] know when [the husband] and the wife have intercourse with one another except the two of them. Indeed marriage in the world is a mystery for those who have taken a wife. If there is a hidden quality to the marriage of defilement, how much more is the undefiled marriage a true mystery! It is not fleshly but pure. It belongs not to desire but to the will. It belongs not to the darkness or the night but to the day and the light. If a marriage is open to the public, it has become prostitution, and the bride plays the harlot not only when she is impregnated by another man but even if she slips out of her bedroom and is seen. Let her show herself only to her father and her mother and to the friend of the bridegroom and the sons of the bridegroom. These are permitted to enter every day into the bridal chamber. But let the others yearn just to listen to her voice and to enjoy her ointment, and let them feed from the crumbs that fall from the table, like the dogs. Bridegrooms and brides belong to the bridal chamber. No one shall be able to see the bridegroom with the bride unless [he become] such a one. (Gospel of Philip, 81.34–82.26)

Scholars who dealt with the issue in question are divided into two schools of interpretation. The first school led by Hans-Martin Schenke, advocated the spiritual dimension of the mystery of the bridal chamber. Schenke interpreted the mystery of marriage and the bridal chamber as ritual acts symWalter Burkert, Greek Religion, trans. John Raffan (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1985) 108. 102 Burkert 108–109. 101

THIRD-CENTURY DURA-EUROPOS CHRISTIAN BAPTISTERY SERVICE 43 bolically enacted through a “holy kiss that the mystes receives from the mystagogue.” Schenke argued that those ritual acts were not related to actual marriage or ordinary sexual practice. 103 Scholars, such as Segelberg, Yvonne Janssens, Tripp, and Michael Williams appear to agree with Schenke. Segelberg argues, in line with Schenke, that the bridal chamber sacrament implies a symbolic marriage. 104 Janssens saw an encratitic tendency in the mystery of the bridal chamber, which did not imply a sexual union for slaves and animals but a pure one for free men and virgin women. 105 Tripp interpreted the bridal chamber as referring to the Eucharist, which was a type of ritual marriage-feast. 106 Williams, in his turn, agrees with the above-mentioned scholars that the mystery of the bridal chamber implies only a spiritual marriage. 107 The second group of scholars who dealt with the mystery of the bridal chamber in the Gospel of Philip argued for an actual marriage. The scholar who first articulated this view was Gilles Quispel. 108 In turn, Jacques Ménard supported the idea that the bridal chamber implied not merely a kiss but an actual corporeal sexual union. 109 Robert Grant agreed with Ménard although he expressed a reservation concerning the risk of favoring the one type of union over the other, that is, the spiritual over the actual and vice versa. 110 A. H. C. van Eijk maintained that the spiritual union is effectuated by the sacramental marriage. 111 Finally, J.-Buckley argued that the earthly Hans Martin Schenke, “Das Evangelium nach Philippus,” Theologische Literaturzeitung 84 (1959): 5. 104 Eric Segelberg, “The Coptic-Gnostic Gospel,” 189–200. 105 Yvonne Janssens, “L’ Évangile selon Philippe,” Muséon 81 (1981): 79–133. 106 Tripp, “ ‘The Sacramental System’, ” 251–260. 107 Williams, Realized Eschatology 1–17. Michael, A. Williams, “Uses of Gender Imagery in Ancient Gnostic Texts,” Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols, ed. Caroline Walker Bynum, Steven Harrell, and Paula Richman (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986) 196–227. 108 See, Elaine H. Pagels, “The ‘Mystery of Marriage’ in the Gospel of Philip Revisited,” The Future of Early Christianity. Essays in Honor of Helmut Koester, ed. Birger A. Pearson (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991) 442–443. 109 Jacques E. Ménard, L’ Évangile selon Philippe.Theologica Montis Regii 35 (Montreal: Université de Montréal, 1964) 50. 110 Robert M. Grant, “The Mystery of Marriage in the Gospel of Philip,” Vigiliae Christianae 15 (1962): 129–140. 111 A. H. C. Van Eijk, “The Gospel of Philip and Clement of Alexandria: Gnostic and Ecclesiastical Theology on the Resurrection and the Eucharist,” Vigiliae Christianae 25 (1971): 94–120. 103

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marriage is a presupposition for the spiritual union. 112 Although Pagels maintained earlier that the mystery of the bridal chamber was an actual marriage, 113 she later criticized that by questioning the type of union in the Gospel of Philip’s bridal chamber. For Pagels, the question now “becomes not whether to marry or remain celibate but rather how to reconcile the freedom gnōsis conveys with the Christian’s responsibility to love.” 114 Richard A. Batey, in his study of the image of the bridal chamber in the NT, emphasized its importance and argued that the “nuptial chamber is virtually a universal expression of man’s religious experience and of his quest for a full life.” 115 As far as the secondary literature on both the Acts of Thomas and Methodius’ Symposium relative to the bridal imagery and the theme of the bridal chamber is concerned, Alfred Rush examined the use of bridal imagery in these texts among other early Christian sources to study “the development of bridal mysticism” in Christianity. 116 This type of mysticism images the spiritual marriage of the individual as part of the “ecclesial collectivity” with Christ, which marriage originates in baptism and “looks to the spiritual marriage of death that leads to the eternal union with Christ, the Messianic Bridegroom.” 117 b. Scholarship on the Baptistery The scholars who have argued about the function of that room may be divided into two groups: those who support the view that the room served as a martyrium and those who think of the room as a baptistery. The fact that the font was not deep enough to allow immersion as well as the fact that the font resembled a reliquary led Hans Lietzmann to argue that the room J.-Buckley 569–581. Elaine H. Pagels, “Adam and Eve, Christ and the Church: a Survey of Second Century Controversies concerning Marriage,” The New Testament and Gnosis: Essays in Honor of Robert McL. Wilson, ed. A. H. B. Logan and A. J. M. Wedderburn (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1983) 146–175. 114 Pagels, “The ‘Mystery of Marriage’, ” 442–454. 115 Richard A. Batey, New Testament Nuptial Imagery (Leiden: Brill, 1971) 1. 116 Alfred C. Rush, “Death as a Spiritual Marriage: Individual and Ecclesial Eschatology,” Vigiliae Christianae 26 (1972): 81–82 and 81–101. 117 Rush 82–84. For a full bibliography on the Acts of Thomas see, Edgar Hennecke and Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ed., New Testament Apocrypha. Writings Relating to the Apostles; Apocalypses and Related Subjects (Philadelphia: The Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991. II) 322–323. 112

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THIRD-CENTURY DURA-EUROPOS CHRISTIAN BAPTISTERY SERVICE 45 served as a martyrium. 118 Also M. Aubert supported the idea of the room’s use as a martyrium, arguing that if the Christian house of Dura-Europos were to have a room for religious ceremonies it should have been for the celebration of the Eucharist rather than for baptism. 119 A second group of scholars, such as Armin von Gerkan, Michael Rostovtzeff, and Kraeling, based their arguments mainly on the themes of the decorations of the room, which seemed to them appropriate for the rite of baptism. They supported the view of the baptistery. The latter appears to be the dominant view among scholars today. 120 Moreover, Kraeling thinks that the installations of the baptistery room can be associated with the form of baptismal ritual (in its essential elements) practiced in Syria and Mesopotamia. 121 It is worth mentioning that Kraeling’s work is the final report and the most complete presentation of the Dura-Europos Christian House and baptistery’s visual evidence. The most recent studies on Dura-Europos art that include a discussion of the Christian baptistery are those of Stephen Goranson and MarieHenriette Gates. Both scholars are concerned with the thematic and aesthetic analysis of the baptistery’s frescoes and not with the room’s ritual. Goranson focuses on the main fresco of the baptistery, that is, the Women at the Tomb. He argues for an interpretation of this fresco “as part of a major dispute between Jews and Christians over which day—Saturday or Sunday as we would call them—is the proper day of worship.” 122 Finally, Gates, based on the artistic program of the synagogue, Mithraeum, and Christian 118 Hans Lietzmann, rev. of The Excavations at Dura-Europos conducted by Yale University and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters. Preliminary Report of Fifth Season of Work October 1931–March 1932; Prelim. Report of Sixth Season of Work October 1932–March 1933, ed. by M. I. Rostovtzeff, A. R. Bellinger, C. Hopkins and C. B. Welles, Gnomon 13 1937: 233–237. 119 M. Aubert, “Les fouilles de Doura-Europos,” Bulletin monumental (1934): 398–401. 120 Armin von Gerkan, “Die frühchristliche Kirchenanlage von Dura,” Römische Quartalschrift XLII (1934): 227; Rostovtzeff 130–131; Kraeling, Final Report 145– 151. Matheson 28–30. Johannes Quasten, “The Painting of the Good Shepherd at Dura-Europos,” Medieval Studies IX (1947): 1, note 2. A. J. Pelekanides, “To protochristianikon baptisterion tes Douras-Europou kai hai toichographiai autou,” Nea Sion 31 (1936): 50–57, 138–149, 209–220, and 282–291. Milburn 10. John Lowden, Early Christian and Bynantine Art (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1997) 18–21. 121 Kraeling, Final Report 152. 122 Goranson 24.

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baptistery, argues that the religious buildings of Dura retained the local artistic tradition despite the foreign influences. 123 Another aspect of the Dura baptistery that scholarly discussion has been focused on is the fresco of the Women at the Tomb. As I mentioned already, this fresco appears to be a very significant element of the room and, as we will realize from the later analysis, it will prove crucial for the further understanding of the room’s ritual. Based only on the painting of the north wall, P. V. C. Baur thought that the painting depicted the holy women at Christ’s tomb on Easter morning, illustrating the narrative found in Mark 16.1–8. 124 Following Baur’s identification of the scene, scholars suggested several alternatives concerning the meaning of the painting in question. One suggestion implied a doctrinal dimension in the scene, that is, that the depiction of Christ’s resurrection in the baptistery was meant to assure beholder that the resurrection from the dead was also possible for those who related themselves to Christ. 125 William Seston proposed that this scene intended to present Christ as the victor over death. 126 Finally, Jeanne Villette suggested that the fresco meant that the initiate in baptism dies and rises, imitating Christ’s example. 127 Kraeling questioned the above interpretations. He found problematic the interpretation of the painting as recalling the four canonical gospel narrative of the Easter morning for several reasons. The Dura fresco neither resembled any of the later known scenes of the resurrection in Christian art nor matched any of the four-gospel stories that the depictions were based on. In the Dura painting, Christ does not appear in the scene as the canonical gospels read. The guards at Christ’s tomb as well as the angel who announced the resurrection were missing. The women of the Dura painting held lamps, which was an element not mentioned in the four gospels. The Gates 166–168. The Excavations at Dura-Europos conducted by Yale University and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters, Preliminary Report of Fifth Season of Work, October 1931– March 1932, ed. M. I. Rostovtzeff (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934) 270– 275. 125 The Excavations at Dura-Europos, Fifth Season 283. Rostovtzeff 132. E. Mâle, Rome et ses vieilles églises (Paris, 1942) 48. 126 William Seston, “L’ église et le baptistère de Doura-Europos,” Annales de l’ école des hautes-études de Gand (1937): 177. 127 Jeanne Villette, “Que représente la grande fresque de la maison chrétienne de Doura?” Revue Biblique LX (1953): 410. 123 124

THIRD-CENTURY DURA-EUROPOS CHRISTIAN BAPTISTERY SERVICE 47 later representations of this scene in Christian art depicted the two (Eastern tradition) or three (Western tradition) holy women encountering the angel at the tomb whose stone was removed. Then, two holy women or Mary Magdalene encountered Christ Himself. In those scenes, the tomb was represented based on the architecture of the Constantinian Anastasis Rotunda in Jerusalem (fig. 16). 128 Moreover, Kraeling ruled out the doctrinal character of the scene for the reason that the third-century Mesopotamian Christianity did not have any organized doctrine that we know of. 129 Additionally, Kraeling observed that the other two paintings on the lower register of the baptistery’s walls, that is, Woman at the Well and David and Goliath referred to the participation of the initiate in the rite of baptism and not to a major Christian doctrine. 130 Another alternative interpretation suggested that the fresco reflected the Parable of the Foolish and the Wise Virgins (Matt. 25.1–13). The scholars who supported this solution compared the Dura fresco with that from El-Bagawat in Egypt, dating from the fifth/sixth-century. This painting represented seven women who held torches processing towards a temple. In the fresco, there was also the inscription “virgins,” (I use Millet’s photo for the reason that it preserves the inscription in question, see fig. 17) and therefore, scholars thought to represent the parable in question. 131 This interpretation was found problematic for two reasons: first, the door in the second element of the fresco was half-open and not shut, as it should be in order to express visually the exclusion of the five foolish virgins “from the marriage feast of the bridegroom.” Second, the structure in the third element resembled a sarcophagus and not the house of the bridegroom. 132

Kraeling, Final Report 80–81 and 85–86. Kraeling, Final Report 190–191. 130 Kraeling, Final Report 191. 131 Millet 1–8. Joseph Pijoan, “The Parable of the Virgins from DuraEuropos,” Art Bulletin XIX. 4 (December, 1937): 592–595. For a colored picture of the El-Bagawat fresco in question where, however, the inscription “virgins” does not seem to be visible anymore, see Mahmoud Zibawi, Bagawat. Peintures paléochrétiennes d’ Égypte (Paris: Éditions A. & J. Picard, 2005) 47, figure 19. For the variety of the scholarly views concerning the interpretation of the fresco in question, see Zibawi 70–71. 132 Kraeling, Final Report 81. See also Jean Lassus, Sanctuaires chrétiens de Syrie, bibliotheque archéologique et historique, vol. XLII (Paris, 1947) 10–19. André Grabar, 128 129

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Seston proposed a very intriguing interpretation of this fresco. He suggested analysing the scene not as a mere gospel narrative but as a liturgical procession similar to the one that accompanied the celebration of the fourth-century Jerusalem Easter vigil described by Egeria. According to her account, the bishop led the neophytes, after they were baptized, from the baptistery to the Anastasis rotunda where the holy light was burning. Seston referred to the testimony of a similar procession depicted in the fresco of El-Bagawat in Egypt. Finally, he mentioned that the Epiphany, the day of the feast of the lights was also the preferred day for baptism during which a similar procession to the Anastasis took place. On Epiphany day, Christ’s Incarnation and baptism were celebrated. On the same joyful feast, Christ’s death and resurrection were commemorated also. Thus, baptism was related to Christ’s epiphany. Seston thought that a similar liturgical procession like the one mentioned above might have been recorded in the Women at the Tomb fresco of Dura. 133 Although this interpretation was found very interesting, Kraeling questioned it since Seston used fourth-century Palestinian sources to interpret a third-century Christian site in Mesopotamia. 134 Finally, the possibility that this scene alluded to Paul’s interpretation of baptism in Romans 6.3–4 was also rejected. According to Kraeling, the scene did not imply the idea of purification of sins and death but rather a joyous event, that is, “the events of Easter morning.” Furthermore, Kraeling argues that the physical evidence of the baptistery favors the idea of baptism as a rite of perfection and not as a rite of dying and purification of sins. 135 Kraeling suggested Tatian’s Diatessaron as a source of inspiration for the scene. This work was an attempt to harmonize the various gospel stories and it became the normal text for many Syrian Christians in the fifthcentury. The original work was lost and survived only in later translations. 136 According to Kraeling, if Dura was different from all the resurrection narratives found in individual gospels, then we must hypothesize that the Dura fresco was based on a text that harmonized various gospel stories. Kraeling thought that Tatian’s Diatessaron was such a text. “La fresque des saintes femmes au tombeau a Doura,” Cahiers archéologiques VIII (Paris, 1956): 9–26. 133 Seston 169–170. 134 Kraeling, Final Report 191–2. 135 Kraeling, Final Report 192–197. 136 “Tatian (second century),” Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, 1990 ed. “Diatessaron,” Encyclopedia of the Early Church, 1992 ed.

THIRD-CENTURY DURA-EUROPOS CHRISTIAN BAPTISTERY SERVICE 49 He assumed that the Durene Christians possibly knew the Diatessaron because a fragment of its Greek original was found in Dura. 137 Kraeling thought that the Arabic version of the Diatessaron, which we could not completely rely on for the reconstruction of the original text (as he himself acknowledges) offered a narrative that came close to the Dura composition. He concluded that the five women in the first element of the painting could be explained only if we assume that the composition was based on the Arabic Diatessaron. 138 Kraeling argued that the Diatessaron harmonized two successive episodes necessary for the interpretation of the fresco. The first episode describes the women approaching the open tomb with an angel sitting over it. The next episode deals with the entrance of the women inside the tomb. The text of the Diatessaron reads that “when he (the angel seated over the stone) had left, the women entered into the sepulcher,” where the other angels were found. 139 According to Kraeling, in the Dura fresco we have on the east wall, five women approaching the open door of the tomb chamber. Continuing on the north wall, are another five women, already in the tomb chamber approaching the sarcophagus with the two stars on its lid. According to him, the only elements of the painting that do not agree with this text are the missing angel over the half-open doors and the doors instead of a stone. Kraeling attempted to solve this last problem by saying that first the upper part of the doors was destroyed and thus, there might have been an angel symbolized with a star. Second, that the artist used doors instead of stone probably because the tombs at Dura did not have stones in their entrance and therefore, the artist was not familiar with this practice. 140 I think that although Kraeling’s interpretation on the meaning of the fresco in question is helpful, it does not appear to solve the problem and comprehend fully the fresco, and thus, the baptistery’s function. He supports his analysis based on a later Arabic unreliable version of the original text of the lost Diatessaron. Additionally, from the Kraeling’s abovementioned interpretation, it appears that many of the fresco’s elements are not in harmony with the Diatessaron’s description of the resurrection episode (the missing angel and doors instead of a stone). Moreover, the number of 137 Carl H. Kraeling, A Greek Fragment of Tatian’s Diatessaron from Dura (Studies and Documents, ed. K. and S. Lake, III, London 1935) 3. Kraeling, Final Report 32. 138 Kraeling, Final Report 86–88. 139 Arabic Diatessaron, LII, 45–LIII, 4, ed. Mamardji, 505–507, from Kraeling, Final Report 87. 140 Kraeling, Final Report 32 and 86–88.

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the women (five) he tends to believe were represented on the third element of the fresco is not something that we can be entirely certain of, as scholarship has indicated. 141 If the number of the women in the third element is other than five, then we have another element inconsistent with the Diatessaron. Finally, Kraeling assumes that the interior space of the fresco’s third element is a tomb chamber based on the same text. Demetrios Pallas, in turn, argued that the Dura fresco of the women did not represent a historical episode but it reflected a liturgical procession. He used the third-century Symposium by Methodius of Olympus to contextualize the fresco in the spirit of the third-century East. Based on Methodius, Pallas argued that the fresco depicted the women before Christ’s epiphany, in the manner that people went out in processions to meet the emperor-god. According to Pallas, the fresco was a reminder of Christ’s epiphany after His entombment, an allegory of the Resurrection. The scene represented a procession of the women who processed to meet Christ in heaven in the end of times. 142

4. SCHOLARS’ VIEWS ON IMAGES IN ANCIENT AND BYZANTINE CHRISTIANITY The idea of images in ancient Christianity and Byzantium was very different from that which permeates modern and contemporary Western scholarship. For instance, unlike the fifth-century Pseudo-Dionysius, today’s Western theory emphasizes the difference between the symbol and the symbolized rather than the similarity between the two. 143 As we see in the concluding chapter of this book, the author of the Gospel of Philip and Dionysius argue for the ontological connection between symbols and symbolized. 144 Unlike ancient Christian and Byzantine spirituality, Western epistemology and anthropology favour the role of the mind and the word over the body as well as its senses and images in the process of knowledge. As a consequence, the use of images in the liturgy was not part of the Western Church’s tradition. 145 It is important to keep in mind these theoretical considerations since they may shed light on the scepticism and prejudice with which vari141 That the women of the third element were five is only Kraeling’s hypothesis and has been debated by other scholars. See pages 37–38, note 76. 142 Pallas, Synagoge meleton, vol. 1, 91–92. 143 Barasch, Icon 167. 144 See page 127. 145 See pages xvii–xviii.

THIRD-CENTURY DURA-EUROPOS CHRISTIAN BAPTISTERY SERVICE 51 ous scholars of antiquity have generally approached the development of early Christian icons and their veneration. In the beginning of the twentieth-century, Hugo Koch examined the writings of the early Christian apologists (in particular their attack on images), and related that literature to the question of images in early Christianity before their appearance in the early third-century. He concluded that there was widespread iconoclasm among the early Christians before the third-century. 146 Ernst Kitzinger, in his turn, related image worship to superstition and interpreted the phenomenon as the “naïve, animistic ideas of the masses.” 147 Nevertheless, recent scholarship has gradually begun to re-evaluate the function and role of images in antiquity. Paul Corby Finney who carefully examined the apologetic literature in relation to its literary context and historical setting argued, in opposition to Koch, that the writing of a group of Christian elite, such as the early Christian apologists, could not testify for a general iconoclasm in early Christianity. Since Christians were an illegal religious group in the Roman Empire during the first three centuries, apologists undertook to present Christianity as a pious religion, faithful to the emperor, rational in its nature, and disconnected from any type of pagan idolatry and popular religious superstition. Their purpose was to legitimise Christianity within the empire. 148 Peter Brown disagreed with Kitzinger’s interpretation of the development of the icon cult, which, according to Brown, was based on nineteenth-century anthropological theories of animism. He approached the phenomenon of icon veneration by looking more closely at the culture and piety of Late Antiquity. He attributed the rise of image cult to a deeper psychological human need for divine intercession, which appealed to both the simple folk as well as to the upper class. The encounter with an icon was considered of major importance by the people of Late Antiquity and later by the Byzantines because of the emotional impact that it had on the beholder. 149 As we will see, the presence of sensory images in the service of the Dura baptistery implies their use for the acquisi-

146 Koch’s work is considered to be one of the most influential studies in the field of art history advocating Christianity as an aniconic religion. See, Hugo Koch, Die altchristliche Bilderfrage nach den literarischen Quellen (Göttingen: 1917). 147 Kitzinger 89 and 146. 148 Paul Corby Finney, “Idols in Second and Third Century Apology,” Studia Patristica 17.2 (1982): 684–687. 149 Brown 11–17.

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tion of divine knowledge that was transmitted to the entire human being (mind, senses and emotions). Art historians have dated the beginning of icon veneration by looking mainly at panel icons and canonical sources. André Grabar argued that the cult of icons began in the sixth-century. 150 Kitzinger argued that the cult of images was prepared in the fourth-century “by the increasingly widespread adoption of other material props…notably crosses and relics.” In the first half of the sixth-century, Kitzinger thinks we have the first literary evidence of “proskynesis being practiced before images in churches”; finally, he sees an intensification of image cult in the second half of the sixth-century. 151 Both Hans Belting and Brown agree also that the sixth-century was the time that the cult of images appeared. 152 Averil Cameron dates the beginning of icon veneration in “the late sixth and seventh-centuries.” 153 Leslie Brubaker in her turn argues that although one can attest the existence of sacred portraits, “there is little indication that these images received special veneration in any consistent fashion before the late seventh-century.” 154 Unlike the rest, Thomas Mathews thinks that icons appeared in the churches of the East already in the fifth-century. 155

5. PERSPECTIVES FOR A FRESH UNDERSTANDING OF THE DURAEUROPOS BAPTISTERY SERVICE The above-mentioned scholars have dated the beginning of the use of images in Christian liturgy later than the fourth-century because they limited their understanding of images to art historical categories, such as panel icons. Additionally, the lack of familiarity with the symbolic function of images in early and eastern Christianity prevented them from acknowledging images as valuable tools of communicating divine knowledge in the liturgy at an early date. The use of eikon (icon) as well as the liturgical context within which images function is testified in earlier sources, such as, for instance the Gospel of Philip, the Acts of Thomas and the Symposium and the DuraEuropos Christian baptistery physical evidence, as we will see from the later analysis. The use of images in the third-century initiation service of the Grabar, Martyrium, vol. 2, 343 onwards and 357. Kitzinger 89–95. 152 Belting, Likeness 41; Brown 1–34. 153 Cameron 4–5. 154 Brubaker 1253. 155 Mathews, Byzantium 52.

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THIRD-CENTURY DURA-EUROPOS CHRISTIAN BAPTISTERY SERVICE 53 Dura-Europos baptistery implied no type of superstition or “naiveté of the masses” but a conscious attempt of a specific religious community to unite with God completely. The liturgical tradition that is revealed in the DuraEuropos baptistery service made liturgical use of images already from the third-century. 156 As far as the secondary literature of the bridal chamber in the Gospel of Philip is concerned, I would note that scholars have ignored the fact that images were used symbolically, 157 as my analysis will indicate later on in chapter four, in the initiation mystery of the bridal chamber. Unlike the Eucharistic liturgy, where Christ was made present through the elements of the Eucharist, which was the culminating point, in the Dura-Europos initiation rite, Christ is made present under the image of the Good Shepherd in the lunette of the canopied font, the focus of the room’s ritual. Moreover, these scholars have not addressed the importance of the bridal chamber ritual evidence for the comprehension both of pre-Constantinian Christianity and of the later major developments in the liturgy of the East. I agree with the group of scholars who argue that the room is a baptistery and I also agree with Pallas’ interpretation of the Women at the Tomb fresco. The reading of the fresco in question as a visual rendering of a biblical narrative (whether canonical or not) appears inadequate, according to the above analysis. Furthermore, given the liturgical function of the room, it seems plausible to assume that the fresco reflects ritual practices, which are related to the room’s ritual. In addition to the contribution of the abovementioned scholars, I use the information that the physical evidence of the room releases as well as the ritual practices preserved in the Gospel of Philip, Acts of Thomas and the Symposium to bring into light the artistic dimension of this service. The ritual practices implied in these texts are similar to the ones narrated by the visual evidence of the baptistery. In this way, I hope to open a window to a fresh understanding of the room’s function. In order to comprehend better the ritual of the Dura baptistery, it is necessary to read the information that the physical evidence of the room Henry Maguire has studied the different ways fifth/sixth-century artists used images as symbols and representations of the physical world. See Henry Maguire, Earth and Ocean. The Terrestrial World in Early Byzantine Art (University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1987) 1–84. I thank Professor Gregory for indicating this source to me. 157 I need to mention the exception of Rewolinski’s book in which he deals extensively with the analysis of “image” in the Gospel of Philip as well as the dramatic dimension of the mysteries described in the text. See pages 76–78. 156

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releases in relation to the room’s function. I argue that the frescoes of the baptistery reflect liturgical practices related to the room’s ritual. In both ancient pagan and Christian religious spaces, there was a long tradition of processional scenes reflecting the ritual practices of the worship space (figs. 18 and 19). 158 Parthenon and Ara Pacis constitute luminous instances of depictions of ritual processions that are related to their worship space. 159 I mentioned already (and as I will discuss later) that the Catacomb paintings were used in the office of the dead and reflected ritual practices, such as, for instance the banquet scenes in the Catacombs of Priscilla, SS. Pietro e Marcellino and S. Callisto’s chapel of the sacraments (figs. 20, 21, 22). 160 In the Durene temples, we have instances of processional scenes reflecting ritual practices of the shrines, such as, for instance the paintings of the sacrificial processions in the Temple of Bel, and Temple of Zeus Theos (figs. 23 and 8). 161 Pallas argued that the lamplighting painted processions, such as the El-Bagawat and Dura reflected liturgical practices of the time. 162 Especially, in the case of the Women at the Tomb fresco, whose position and size make it of tremendous importance for the analysis of the room’s function, 163 it is quite tempting to make this hypothesis. Mathews notes, the fresco of the Women at the Tomb might have visually recorded a liturgical procession. 164 The figures of this fresco give the impression that they accompanied the participants of the service from the moment they entered the baptistery’s door leading to the courtyard until the end of their procession at the canopied structure. As Goranson observed, the figures of the fresco walked toward the sarcophagus and “toward the baptismal font.” 165 I may then suggest that a similar procession of the service’s participants culminating at the canopied structure occurred in the room’s service. The women’s figures of the procession fresco (Women at the Tomb) as well as the

Thomas F. Mathews, The Clash of Gods. A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993) 142–176. 159 See also, Mathews, Clash of Gods 151. 160 See pages 25 and 68. 161 Gates 169–170. Perkins 33–65. 162 Pallas, Synagoge meleton, vol. 1, 93. 163 For the importance of this fresco over the others of the baptistery see also the description of the baptistery’s visual evidence, page 36. 164 Mathews, Clash of Gods 153. 165 Goranson 31. 158

THIRD-CENTURY DURA-EUROPOS CHRISTIAN BAPTISTERY SERVICE 55 figures of the Woman at the Well and David and Goliath visualize the ritual practices performed by the participants of the service. 166 As far as the question of the figures’ sex in the Woman at the Tomb fresco, Grabar has posed already a problem, arguing that we cannot maintain that these figures were initiates since they were represented as women and thus, men were excluded from the painting. 167 Nevertheless, Kraeling argues that the figures of the procession are represented in a manner that their sex is not easy to discern. 168 Additionally, the old pagan tradition of representing the soul of both a man and woman as female also continued in Christianity. Men were also the beloved ones of Christ. The early Christian baptismal theology spoke of the initiates as Christ’s spouses. The neophyte and Christ developed a loving relationship with each other. 169 Finally, we know that in Christianity the veil, as a sign of both marriage and initiation, was conferred on the heads of both spouses. 170 Thus, the fact that the figures of the Woman at the Tomb and also of the Woman at the Well frescoes were rendered as females cannot impede us from including the representation of both male and female initiates. The texts I use as a lens to comprehend the ritual suggested by the Dura baptistery’s visual evidence are the Acts of Thomas, the Symposium, and the Gospel of Philip, already mentioned. Scholars assume that the Acts of Thomas have been composed during the third-century in Syria. It is agreed that the Acts of Thomas was originally written in Syriac, but scholars seem to prefer the Greek text since the Syriac version, although it has preserved a great deal of the original text, shows “a catholicising revision.” 171 The Gospel of Philip is a collection of statements about sacraments and ethics and it is assumed that it was written in Syria during the second half of the third-century CE. Originally composed in Greek, it has survived only incompletely in Coptic. The text is rich in information concerning sacra166 In the description of the baptistery’s visual evidence, I mentioned that the lower register of the baptistery’s walls was dedicated to the participant of the service. See pages 37–38. 167 Grabar, “La fresque,” 12. 168 Kraeling, Final Report 166. 169 Rush 90. The love relation between Christ and the initiate is also declared in the visual evidence of the room’s service as well as in the texts. See pages 89–94. 170 In the Coptic rite this veil was white. See, “Voile,” Dictionaire D’ Archéologie et de Liturgie, 1953 ed. See also pages 94–98. 171 Hennecke and Schneemelcher ed. 323–327. All Acts of Thomas quotations come from this edition.

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ments and it is especially known for its reference to the mystery of the bridal chamber. 172 Finally, Methodius of Olympus, a third-century Greek Christian writer, wrote the Symposium or Treatise on Chastity. Scholars place the writing of this treatise, his only work preserved in Greek completely, around the year 270/90 CE. 173 It has been described as an imitation of Plato’s dialogue but it is also a manual of Christian philosophy and theology centered on the concept of chastity and initiation to the mysteries of union with, or else, marriage to Christ. The work was dedicated to Methodius’ patroness Telmesiake. Besides the treatment of celibacy, Methodius discusses themes, such as the allegorical interpretation of the scriptures, the nature of the Millennium, the divinity of Christ, and the fallacy of astrology. 174 All three texts are of the same date (third-century) and location as the Dura-Europos baptistery (broader area of Syria and Mesopotamia). Kraeling used the Acts of Thomas to interpret a few elements of the Women at the Tomb fresco and as I mentioned, Pallas used the Symposium to read the same fresco (since he saw implications of liturgical practice of the time in this text). Nevertheless, no scholar has used the Acts of Thomas and the Symposium to interpret the baptistery’s service. Furthermore, no scholar has used the Gospel of Philip as a lens to analyse the Dura-Europos baptistery’s visual evidence and the service suggested by it. In addition to the Dura baptistery’s physical evidence, the textual sources reflect ritual practices that used images to reveal the divine knowledge to its participants. Christ was made present through His image, which was the culmination of these rituals. Pallas has already argued that Methodius in the Symposium, uses images from the Christian liturgical practice in his language following Plato who in Phaedrus makes use of mystery religion language. 175 As far as the use of non-canonical texts in the analysis of the baptistery’s service is concerned, it would suffice to say, that, although the decoration of the baptistery recalls themes from the canonical gospels (miracles, the Good Shepherd, Resurrection scene), the latter could not fully interpret

Bentley Layton ed., 131–139. St. Methodius, The Symposium. A Treatise on Chastity. Ancient Christian Writers, ed. Johannes Quasten, S.T.D. and Joseph C. Plumpe, Ph.D., translated and annotated by Herbert Musurillo, S.J., D.Phil. (Oxon.) (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1958. 27) 6, 10–12. All Symposium quotations come from this translation. 174 Methodius 12–37. 175 Pallas, Synagoge meleton, vol. 1, 73 and 91–97. 172

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THIRD-CENTURY DURA-EUROPOS CHRISTIAN BAPTISTERY SERVICE 57 the baptistery’s frescoes. The Acts of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip and the Symposium appear to be such texts. 176

176 See also the discussion of the religious beliefs of the Dura baptistery community in pages 122–123.

3 IMAGES AND WORSHIP IN ANTIQUITY Despite the Platonic arguments concerning the inadequacy of material images to reveal true knowledge, images of gods held a central position in the piety of antiquity. Divine images whether statues, panel paintings, or frescoes, were the main means through which the ancients comprehended and united with God. Images fulfilled the fervent desire of the people of antiquity to be in proximity with gods. In this chapter, I will explore the problem of God’s revelation in the phenomenal world during antiquity. As we will realize later in this chapter, the analysis of this problem is directly connected to the religious use of images, through which the people of antiquity (both pagans and Christians) thought that God was revealed to humans. In particular, I will examine the place of images in both pagan antiquity and preConstantinian Christianity. This chapter, in combination with chapter four, will enable us to comprehend the place of the Dura-Europos Christian House baptistery initiation service in ancient piety as well as in the preConstantinian Christian worship. Additionally, the analysis of this chapter, in relation to the next chapter, will help us understand the significance of the Dura baptistery service for the early Christian and Byzantine worship.

1. THE PLACE OF IMAGES IN THE PAGAN WORLD Platonic and Neo-Platonic thought expressed an interest in the relation between material images and the divine: the question focused upon the degree to which the visual and representational arts were capable of communicating divine knowledge. 177 Finney argues that in the Republic Plato distinguishes between the real world of cognition and mental perception (to noeton) and the less real world of the phenomenal material knowledge (to horaton). Finney’s reading of Plato maintains that the world of cognition is divided into two scales: a higher scale of knowledge dissociated from the phenomenal world (noesis) and a lower one of mathematical cognition, partly 177

Barasch, Icon 63–91.

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dependent on the physical world (dianoia). Finney continues his analysis of Plato and argues that the sensory world is also divided into a higher scale of the physical world of plants and animals (physis, nature) and a lower one of illusion (eikasia). This latter category includes the world of shadows (skiai) and pictures (eikones). Finney maintains that for Plato statues and pictures belong to illusion that stands at the lower scale of the hierarchy of knowledge and has the least participation in real truth. 178 Gerhart B. Ladner argues that Plato thought that if the natural world constituted an image of the ideal, true image, then art created images of images, and for that reason, stood in a lower scale. The artist copied objects of the natural world and also creations made by humans. Ladner maintains that true art for Plato should attempt to participate in the intellectual and intelligible world. Although ideas stood above all imagery, images could be valid as long as they were connected to the realm of ideas. Later on in the first century CE Philo of Alexandria identified the most sacred ideas with incorporeal images. Ladner thinks that the term eikon (icon) for Plato implied invisible, incorporeal images, not material, visual ones. Ladner argues that Platonic philosophy thought that humans reached the intelligible sphere of pure knowledge by leaving all material images behind. 179 One may say that Platonic theory rejected the achievement of pure knowledge through material, visual images: material images were incapable of communicating divine knowledge. The only way to grasp the intelligible world was through intellectual, invisible ideas. With Plotinus and the Neo-Platonic school, images began to be considered among the tools of cognition. Moshe Barasch maintains that in his Intelligible Beauty, Plotinus distinguished between mental images and works of art, that is, the painted images. Barasch argues that for Plotinus, the real images were the mental and not the “painted” ones. 180 Plotinus was not so much concerned with material images of gods. Nevertheless, he dealt with the question of why people make and erect images of gods and he attributed the phenomenon to the basic human need, that is, to be close to gods. Images made gods tangible to humans. 181 Barasch notes that Neoplatonic philosophers, such as Porphyry, Iamblichus and Proclus further elaborated

Finney, The Invisible God 60–61, notes 19–20. Ladner 6–7. 180 Barasch, Icon 74. 181 Barasch, Icon 76. 178 179

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Plotinus’ theory on images. Unlike Plotinus, these philosophers began to be concerned with the material images of gods. 182 The same issues arise in the philosophers’ views on anthropology. Jean Daniélou argues that a great part of the surrounding spiritual context of the third-century denied the identification of the earthly and resurrected body. For instance, the Pythagoreans suggested that humans received a different body after the resurrection. 183 The Life of Plotinus by Porphyry constitutes a textual instance that defines human perfection as the course that turns away from the form and material reality, and finally unites with the divine intellect, the One, the Nous. Richard Valantasis argued that in the text in question, Plotinus preferred to be remembered by his students noetically (in the words of his books) rather than visually (he refused to be painted by his student). 184 This tendency to spiritualise and idealize human form is also revealed in the shift towards abstraction that occurred in art during the end of the third-century as Hans Peter L’Orange observed. Abstraction was not interested in representing a lifelike individual confined in a specific moment, as third-century realism and impressionism did, but it was concentrated in the representation of the individual’s “inner life,” which was a life beyond space and time. This type of art rendered its portraits of individuals without expressions and the worries of daily life. Figures were idealized, without allowing wrinkles on faces, thus betraying dependence on senses and emotions. The portrait of an emperor made of porphyry (307–323 CE) constitutes a characteristic example of the abstract art of this time (fig. 24). 185 Turning to the spiritual context of Late Antiquity may help us comprehend this tension in art. According to the worldview of the time, beauty and perfection were not located in the proportionate body as in classical art, but in the inner, invisible part of humans, that is, the soul. Plotinus taught Barasch, Icon 78–86. Jean Daniélou, “La résurrection des corps chez Grégoire de Nysse,” Vigiliae Christianae 7 (1953): 154–170. 184 Richard Valantasis, Spiritual Guides of the Third Century: A Semiotic Study of the Guide-Disciple Relationship in Christianity, Neoplatonism, Hermetism, and Gnosticism. Harvard Dissertations in Religion 27 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991) 35–61. 185 Hans Peter L’Orange, Art Forms and Civic Life in the Late Roman Empire (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1972) 105–125. On the same topic, see also, Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, Rome. The Late Empire. Roman Art A.D. 200–400, trans. Peter Green (New York: George Braziller, 1971) 1–38, 83–86, and 277–282. 182 183

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the separation of the divine soul from the life in the body and its illusory senses. The soul must separate itself from matter and its deceitful sense perception. The perfect human being, therefore, should not depend upon his senses that perceive nature but rather upon ideas and conceptions that capture the eternal, invisible beauty. 186 Let us now explore the place of images in pagan piety. Today, art historians draw attention to the emotional impact that religious images can have on the viewer. In particular, Gary Vikan, discussing the sacred power of icons in Byzantium argues that the beholder’s encounter with an icon caused a tremendously dramatic and emotional experience that was impossible in a context without icons. The encounter with the icon of a sacred person was so powerful that looking at it could miraculously heal the beholder. 187 Barasch, examining the frontal icon as a genre in Christian art, relates the emotional reaction that the beholder experiences (which Barasch interprets as a “feeling of awe”) encountering a frontal icon, in specific that of Christ, with the cultic function of the icon. 188 The same scholar differentiates the aesthetic attitude towards images from the religious approach to an image. The latter, unlike the aesthetic attitude, requires the active involvement and identification of the beholder with the image. 189 Finally, H. G. Kippenberg argues that the relationship between the image and the beholder is not so much dependent on the beholder’s capabilities to read the image intellectually, but it is mostly dependent on the aura, the unique emotional impact that the image has on the spectator. 190 Thus, one may say that modern theory maintains that religious images lead the beholder to achieve divine knowledge mainly through vision and emotions. The emotional manner of understanding of the divine is peculiar to an epistemology that employs material images for the achievement of divine knowledge. 191 L’Orange 19–33. Bandinelli 1–22. Vikan, “Sacred Image,” 9–19. 188 Moshe Barasch, “The Frontal Icon: A Genre in Christian Art,” Visible Religion, Annual for Religious Iconography. Genres in Visual Representations VII (1990): 37–42. 189 Barasch, Icon 2–4. 190 H. G. Kippenberg, “Introduction,” Visible Religion, Annual for Religious Iconography. Genres in Visual Representations VII (1990): XI. 191 Iconoclasts in Byzantium excluded images and human emotions as the means for acquiring divine knowledge. Instead, they argued for an intellectual manner of knowing God. See Pelikan 116. Even in cases where they accepted images as tools of divine knowledge, they attributed to them a memorial function. For 186 187

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These theoretical considerations are also true for the function of religious images in the pagan piety of antiquity. Barasch argues that the ancient beholder felt the psychological need to be close to gods. It appears that the most common way of achieving this proximity was through images. Through contemplation of religious images, the beholder of antiquity was able to meet and see the gods in person. Several practices concerning statues, such as dressing or bathing a statue of a god implied that ancient piety perceived images of gods as living beings. 192 The erection of statues in temples and their worship had been a wellknown religious practice in antiquity. The temple as the house of the gods’ “anthropomorphic cult image” reflected a long tradition that went back to the beginnings of Greek religion, 193 and encouraged the intimate relation between the beholder and the god. Especially for the time period of our interest, the evidence of the third-century pagan religious practices indicated that the beholder, on the one hand, approached the divine not so much through the intellect but mainly through emotions, and, on the other, he/she united emotionally with the divine mainly through contemplation of a god’s image. 194 André-Jean Festugière thinks that the cult of Isis during the thirdcentury constituted a luminous instance of a “contemplative adoration” of a goddess. The entire religious formation of Lucius occurred through the development of an emotional attachment between himself and Isis, caused instance, Byzantine Iconoclasts responded to the challenge of the Iconophiles concerning the images of the two golden cherubim made by Moses after God’s command and maintained that these images were not adored as gods but they functioned as reminders of God. Pagan intellectuals, such as the emperor Julian attributed a memorial function to images also. See, Leslie W Barnard, “Theology of Images,” Iconoclasm: Papers Given at the Ninth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies. University of Birmingham. March 1975, ed. Anthony Bryer and Judith Herrin (Birmingham, England: Centre for Byzantine Studies, University of Birmingham, 1977) 7–9. It appears that both Christian and non-Christian Iconoclasts advocated an intellectual approach of achieving divine knowledge. 192 Barasch, Icon 23–43. 193 Burkert 88–92. 194 It appears that, during the third-century, the emotional approach to the divine was a cross-religious phenomenon. Richard A. Horsley discusses extensively the issue of marriage and development of the emotional bond between the individual and the divine in various religious groups in Late Antiquity (pagan, Jewish and Christian). See, Richard A. Horsley, “The Spiritual Marriage with Sophia,” Vigiliae Christianae 33 (1979): 30–54. See also, Rush 81–101.

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by the contemplation of her image. Lucius spent a great amount of time at the temple contemplating before Isis’ statue and becoming emotionally connected to the goddess through the image. 195 There was a love relationship that grew between the goddess and her devotee. The reason was that Lucius grasped divine knowledge, not through his intellect but mainly through his heart. When Isis commanded him to leave her, he burst into tears. In his prayer, which Festugière thinks was a type of liturgical hymn one may discern clearly the emotional manner by which Lucius comprehends the divine: “My intellect is not strong enough to tell thy praises; …So I shall try the only thing which a devotee, though poor in all else, can: I shall always keep Thy divine appearance and Thy most holy godhead locked in the privacy of my heart and shall conjure them up in my imagination.” 196

Here, on the one hand, one sees the emotional approach to the divine, and, on the other, a link between vision and emotion. Lucius was emotionally united with Isis by contemplating her image. 197 The emotional dimension of religion during this time is also testified by the two pagan panel icons of Suchos and Isis (fig. 25), and Heron and Anonymous Military God (fig. 26) that come from the area of Egypt and Syria respectively and date from 200 CE, as Mathews indicates. Additionally, he argues that the frontal posture of the figures, the “minimal attention to their anatomy or their spatial setting” as well as the intensive gaze of their eyes encouraged even more the development of an intimate, face to face relation between the devotee and god. 198 Nevertheless, the visual images of gods, such as statues and painted panels, were not the only material elements used in pagan worship. PreChristian Mediterranean and Near-Eastern religious culture widely used sensible means, such as lamps, incense, and vestments for their ceremonies. 199 For instance, the burning of votive lights in front of statues of the gods and heroes’ tombs was a well-known custom in the pagan world by André-Jean Festugière, Personal Religion among the Greeks (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1954) 80–84. 196 Festugière 81–82. 197 As we will see later in chapter four, the participants of the Dura-Europos baptistery service were emotionally united with Christ the Bridegroom through the vision of His image. 198 Mathews, Byzantium 46–47. 199 Dix 397–433. 195

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the time Christianity appeared. 200 Lighted torches were also used in initiation rites, such as the Eleusinian mysteries. 201 Finally, curtains were used to conceal and reveal statues. 202 One may say, that pagan religion used various forms of sensible means in worship and placed the image of god in its center. People of antiquity thought these religious images not as something false but as the real personification of gods themselves and for this reason religious images played a significant role in their everyday life.

2. THE PLACE OF IMAGES IN PRE-CONSTANTIAN CHRISTIANITY Christian apologists expressed a scepticism concerning material images’ ability to manifest invisible, divine knowledge. Finney thinks that the apologists joined ancient philosophers in criticizing Greek religion, which used material means, and above all, images in worship. The philosophers had supported a spiritual kind of religion. Finney mentions that the apologists praised Diagoras of Melos (fifth-century BCE philosopher) who rejected the Eleusinian mysteries and statues. 203 One may recall Athenagoras, who underlined the contrast between the sensual worship of paganism that included the smelling of fragrance and seeing the blood or fat of sacrifice, and the spiritual character of the Christian bloodless sacrifice or rational worship, (logike latreia). 204 Finney argues that Clement thought that artistic representation (the art of visual representation) was an error (plane). Finney thinks that Clement based this position on Plato’s division between the higher, spiritual world and the lower, phenomenal world of senses. According to Finney, here art was classified in the lower end of the phenomenal world, that is, the world of senses (ta aistheta) or what Plato called the world of illusions. In this way, Finney thinks that any type of imitation (mimesis) of this world was a lie and distorted the truth. Thus, Finney argues that in his Protrepticos (Book Four) Clement identified mimetic art with error. Finney thinks that Clement, using Middle Platonic ideas argued that mimetic art pertained to the lower world of logos doxastikos, or mere opinion; truth belonged to the upper world, the noetic, invisible realm of logos epistimikos, or true knowledge. 205 Dix 421. Burkert 285. 202 Belting, Likeness 80. 203 Finney, The Invisible God 48–49. 204 Pelikan 104. 205 Finney, The Invisible God 42–43. 200 201

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Additionally, Finney mentions that Clement referred to Psalm 135.13–18, which related an instance of Jewish polemical literature against idolatry, and he argued that idols and statues of gods were dead, lifeless things of earth. Images of gods were mortal things made by human artists. 206 Origen in his Contra Celsum, argued that to worship the visual imitation of God, that is, God’s image was inappropriate since God was incorporeal and invisible. Invisible divinity could not be reduced to matter (hyle), and worshipped through material images like those of the pagans: 207 What intelligent person would not laugh at a man who, after studying in philosophy the profoundest doctrines about God or gods, turns his eyes to images and either prays to them or, by means of the sight of these images, offers his prayer, indeed, to the God who is known spiritually, imagining that he must ascend to Him from that which is visible and external? 208

I would say that Origen’s position denies to material images the ability to lead humans to the acquisition of divine knowledge. Only the intellect can grasp the invisible nature of God. That is why Origen found the use of sensory images in worship absurd. Finney points to Origen’s Contra Celsum, a commentary on the intention of Deut. 4.16–18, to argue that Jews should move away from imitation to find the truth. Origen writes: We should say to this that all those who look at the evil productions of painters and sculptors and image-makers sit in darkness and are settled in it, since they do not wish to look up and ascend in their mind from all visible and sensible things to the Creator of all who is Light; 209

Thus, for ancient Christian intellectuals, the understanding of material images, as the means of visual representation of the invisible was complex. It appears that the anthropology of the ancient Christian intellectuals is permeated by scepticism concerning the inclusion of the human body in the divine knowledge. For instance, Origen argued that humans receive a similar body after the resurrection, as Daniélou indicates. 210 Additionally, Clement and Origen, according to Ladner, used the Platonic dichotomy between human body and soul and maintained that the image of God in humans Finney, The Invisible God 50–51. See also, Finney, The Invisible God 50. 208 Origen: Contra Celsum, translated with an introduction and notes by Henry Chadwick (Cambridge, London: Cambridge University Press, 1980) 432. 209 Origen 381. 210 Daniélou 154–170. 206 207

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included only the higher parts of the soul, that is, mind, reason, and free will. The body was excluded from that image. 211 They both implied that only the human intellect betrayed affinity to God, not the body and its senses. Finney attempted to explain the Christian intellectuals’ view concerning the use of images specifically in worship. He argued that the historical situation of the time forced the Christian apologists to present Christianity as a spiritual kind of religion that did not use material means, namely, temples, altars, statues, and pictures to worship God. Finney maintains that the apologists argued for the anti-superstitious character of Christian worship because they aimed to disconnect Christianity from any kind of pagan idolatry and superstition. 212 Finney offers an additional explanation for the apologists’ attitude towards religious images. He thinks that Clement and Origen intentionally ignored the old Greek tradition that interpreted images symbolically, and instead identified them with matter. Finney maintains that according to Porphyry, it was necessary for the beholder to know how to read images just as one needed to see beyond the material nature of words in a text. Finney’s reading of Porphyry argues that matter represented and symbolized an invisible reality that could not become known to humans otherwise. Letter and image were not mere matter, and one needed to know how to read them to comprehend their symbolic character. 213 The later impact of the Christian apologists’ discussion concerning religious images in Christianity indicates the significance of the issue. Kitzinger argued that early Christian criticism of religious images was the beginning of a continuous conflict that culminated with the outbreak of the Byzantine Iconoclasm in the eighth and ninth-centuries. 214 George Florovsky argued that Origen and Eusebius were possibly some of the early sources upon which later Iconoclasts based their arguments. 215 It appears though that limiting consideration to the Christian apologists’ rhetoric concerning religious images precludes a complete view of the Christian worship of the time. Ladner 11. Finney, “Idols,” 684–687. 213 Finney, The Invisible God 52. 214 Kitzinger 85–89. 215 George Florovsky, “Origen, Eusebius, and the Iconoclastic Controversy,” Church History 19 (1950): 77–96. 211

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Early Christian literature expressed a concern for a Christian worship that would include the entire human being into the knowledge of God using material means symbolically. The author of the Gospel of John (John, 3.5) argued for the double character of Christian worship, that is, the spiritual and material dimension, writing that the Christian is baptized through the spirit and water. From the second-century First Epistle to John (1 John, 1.1–2) we learn that Christians experienced knowledge of Christ through their mind and senses (hearing, touching, and sight) implying the inclusion of material elements and thus the entire human being in worship. 216 Furthermore the banquet scenes depicted on the walls of the Catacombs of Priscilla, SS. Peter and Marcellinus and S. Callisto’s chapel of the sacraments (figs. 20, 21, 22) as well as images of the Good Shepherd in the Catacombs of Domitilla, San Callisto, Priscilla and SS. Peter and Marcellinus (figs 10, 11, 12, 13) betray the use of images and material elements in preConstantinian Christian worship. 217 Additional to the Catacomb evidence where images were used symbolically for the office of the dead the physical evidence of the Dura-Europos Christian House Baptistery is a unique known evidence of a pre-Constantinian aboveground Christian edifice where images were used in an initiation service. 218 It is worth taking into consideration that although scholars, such as Gregory Dix and Robert Taft acknowledge the presence of elements of antiquity’s religious culture, such as lamps and incense during the first three centuries, they maintained that these elements were not used symbolically in the Eucharistic liturgy. 219 The latter was the “proper form of divine worship” for mainstream Christianity where Christ was made present through the elements (bread and wine), 220 the culminating point of this liturgy. Christianity of this time wished to keep the character of this liturgy simple and spiritual because Christianity desired to differentiate itself from pagan

See also, Pelikan 99–119. Grabar, The Beginnings 23–41 and 80–122. Grabar, Christian Iconography 5–30. Kallinikou 24. Nicolai, Bisconti, Mazzoleni 71–145. 218 See also Grabar, The Beginnings 23–26 and Grabar, Christian Iconography 19 and 22. 219 Dix 416–419 and 425–430. Taft, The Great Entrance 149–151. 220 Joseph Jungmann, S. J., The Mass of the Roman Rite, new revised and abridged edition in one volume ed., (New York: Benziger Brothers, Inc., 1959) 17 and 10. Hugh Wybrew, The Orthodox Liturgy. The Development of the Eucharistic Liturgy in the Byzantine Rite (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990) 13–20. 216 217

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sacrifice. 221 According to Dix and Taft, the ceremonial use of the lamp in the lamplighting service, which was a custom at Jewish meals and also at evening meals all around the Mediterranean, took place during the secondcentury in the Christian agape. By the end of the second-century, the agape meal became a technical term for a religious supper apart from the Eucharist. 222 Tertullian, in his Apology 39.18 that dates from 197 CE, and which according to Taft constitutes “our earliest evidence for the agape supper,” testifies that the evening lamp ritual was part of the agape meal; Taft considers this evening lamp service a “remote ancestor of the lucernarium of cathedral vespers.” 223 From the Ethiopic version of the Hippolytus’ Apostolic Tradition, we learn that a version of the hymn called the Phos Hilaron (Oh Gladsome Light), an ancient Christian hymn written at the end of the second, beginning of the third-century, accompanied the lamplighting service. 224 Dix argued that in the time of Cyril of Jerusalem during the fourthcentury, we first hear of the use of liturgical vestments, lights, and incense in the ceremony. 225 The light was used liturgically in the service of the lucernarium (the lamplighting service) in the fourth-century Jerusalem. From Egeria, we learn that this service included a lamplighting procession and was performed in the Anastasis rotunda, a building commemorating Christ’s death. Within this religious edifice, there was a light inside a cave that scholars think was surrounded by a baldacchino. 226 That light was burn-

221 Wybrew 17. As I discussed already in this chapter, the Christian apologists, such as Athenagoras and Origen advocated a spiritual type of Christian religion that would stand away from any allusion to pagan religion. It is interesting to note that later in the eighth-century, the Byzantine Iconoclasts under the emperor Constantine V, rejected images and argued for a spiritual, purified religion with the emperor at the center. See Belting, Likeness 36. 222 Dix 82–102, especially 96–102. Kallinikou 291–292. 223 Robert Taft, S.J., The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West. The Origins of the Divine Office and Its Meaning for Today (St. John’s Abbey, Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1986) 18. 224 Antonia Tripolitis, “ΦΩΣ ΙΛΑΡΟΝ. Ancient Hymn and Modern Enigma,” Vigiliae Christianae 24 (1970): 189–196. 225 Dix 350 and 397–433. 226 Baldachin (or baldacchino) is a canopy over an altar or a throne usually supported by columns. See, “Baldachin,” The Penguin Dictionary of Architecture, 1991 ed., and “Baldachin,” Illustrated Dictionary of Historic Architecture, 1977 ed.

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ing day and night. 227 Taft maintains that the Phos Hilaron hymn was also used in the fourth-century Jerusalem liturgy that Egeria described. 228 Dix continues arguing that the symbolic use of vestments, light, and incense in the Eucharistic liturgy occurred “after the fifth-century (at the very earliest).” 229 For instance, the introduction of the preliminary incensing of the altar and sanctuary was testified first by a Syriac source, that of Pseudo-Dionysius, only in the late fifth-century. 230 The introduction of the lighted candle and the white robe that were conferred to the initiate after baptism began to appear towards the end of the fourth-century. 231 In conclusion, I may say that with Neoplatonism, images of gods began to be considered in the ancient intellectuals’ discourse as tools of knowledge. Although later Byzantine Iconophiles had to work anew to construct their arguments defending the place of divine images in worship, they owe a great deal to Neoplatonism. 232 Additionally, despite the general scepticism towards the use of images in worship that one may observe among ancient Christian intellectuals, images were present in pre-Constantinian Christian piety as, for instance, the evidence of the Catacombs and DuraEuropos Christian baptistery initiation service (analysed in chapter four) indicate. As Arnaldo Momigliano observes, in the second half of the fourth and first half of the fifth-century, there is no such thing as popular religious beliefs in the Roman historians of this same period. Both non-Christian and Christian historians incorporated popular beliefs, such as legends of miraculous icons, in the writing of their proper history. 233 Moreover, the fifthcentury writings of the Christian Pseudo-Dionysius constitute an early evidence of overcoming ancient platonic Iconoclasm as well as a philosophic

227 John Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels (Warminster, England: Aris & Phillips Ltd, 2002) 66, 68–71 and especially 142–146. Kenneth John Conant, “The Original Buildings at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem,” Speculum 31.1 (January 1956): 3–5, 21–43 and 44–48. 228 Taft, Hours 286. See also, Wilkinson 51. 229 Dix 430. 230 Dix 425. 231 Dix 418. 232 Barasch, Icon 86. For the Plotinian contribution to the Byzantine aesthetics, see André Grabar, “Plotin et les origines de l’ esthétique médiévale,” Cahiers archéologiques 1 (1945): 15–34. 233 Arnaldo Momigliano, “Popular Religious Beliefs and the Late Roman Historians,” Studies in Church History 8 (1972): 1–18.

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basis for the use of images in the liturgy of the East and Byzantium. 234 As Brown argues, in Byzantium, both intellectuals and simple folk turned to images to fulfil a basic human psychological need, 235 which seems to have ignored ancient Platonic iconoclasm as well as the biblical prohibition against religious images. 236

234

Barasch, Icon 157–179; Kitzinger 137–138. Pelikan 109. See also pages 125–

235

Brown 14–18. Barnard 7–10.

127. 236

4 ΤHE BRIDAL INITIATION SERVICE OF THE DURA-EUROPOS CHRISTIAN HOUSE BAPTISTERY In this chapter, I will examine the ritual performed in the baptistery of the Dura-Europos Christian House. I will analyze the service of the room based on its visual evidence and by comparing its visual motifs and themes with the third-century textual sources, that is, Gospel of Philip, the Acts of Thomas, and the Symposium. The visual evidence of the Dura baptistery betrays liturgical practices similar to the synchronous liturgical traditions reflected in the texts in question. As we will realize later in this chapter, the service of the Dura baptistery included initiation, used material elements, such as incense, lamps, vestments and visual images (frescoes), and focused on the image of Christ the Good Shepherd. I suggest that the Dura-Europos Christian House Baptistery hosted an initiatory bridal service in which the real presence of Christ is signified by the image of Christ the Good Shepherd, and the initiates are emotionally united with Christ who also reveals Himself as Bridegroom through contemplation of His image. The room’s service prepares and transforms the participant ontologically in order for him/her to unite with the image of Christ the Good Shepherd and Bridegroom as an anticipation of his/her union with Christ Himself in the final coming. Second, I will argue that the Dura-Europos Christian baptistery service is a unique known instance of an initiation service in pre-Constantinian Christianity that used images as a means of divine revelation and thus, the earliest known instance of an eastern Iconophile service. Consequently, the Dura baptistery constitutes the earliest known precisely dated instance of an above ground Christian religious edifice that housed an artistic service. Let us now begin the reconstruction of the service itself.

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1. THE NATURE OF THE LITURGICAL SPACE OF THE DURAEUROPOS CHRISTIAN BAPTISTERY a. The Baptistery as a Space of Christ’s Epiphany As soon as the participant of the ritual enters the Dura baptistery, he/she finds him/herself in a space of divine epiphany. The realistic depiction of the sky on the room’s ceiling and canopy’s vault, and the canopied structure indicate to the participant that heaven is revealed in the natural world within the baptistery. 237 Christ is revealed to His devotees under the image of the Good Shepherd in the lunette of the canopied structure, which functions as the innermost sanctuary of the baptistery (figs. I and V). The canopied structure of the Dura Christian baptistery resembled the pagan aedicula of Dura, that is, freestanding constructions that were placed at the end of the cella or naos of pagan temples, where the cult image (whether cult relief or painting) of the god stood; an example of this is the Temple of Bel (fig. 27). 238 These semicircular constructions (aediculae) operated as the lens of the telescope, bringing into the sight of the devotees the otherwise inaccessible knowledge of the cosmic order: the god of the cult ruled this world. The aedicula in the Late Mithreum, where the cult relief of Mithras slaying the bull (tauroctonos) stood, offers a splendid instance of this kind of structure (fig. 28). 239 In the Jewish synagogue, the Torah niche where the scriptures were kept was placed in the rear west wall of the room and conformed to the typical aedicula used in the pagan temples and the Christian baptistery. Instead of the image of God, the niche was ornamented with sacred symbols, such as a scroll chest imitating the Temple, a menorah, a palm branch, and a citron of the New Year (fig. 29). 240 As previous scholarship has suggested, in order to comprehend the symbolic meaning of the canopy in the Dura Christian baptistery as well as of the Durene aedicula, we should look to the In addition to my interpretation, I also agree with Kraeling who argued that the realistic depiction of the sky in Dura gives us information concerning the time the ritual was performed (baptism in Mesopotamia was performed at night followed by the celebration of the Eucharist at dawn). See Kraeling, Final Report 197, note 3. The textual sources described the performance of the initiation ritual during the same time, that is, night until early in the morning. See, Acts of Thomas, 26–29. Gospel of Philip, 85.32–35. Symposium, Logos 6: Agathe, 3–5. 238 Kraeling, Final Report 148–149. 239 Matheson 19–22. 240 Gates 174. 237

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baldacchini 241 of the early Roman temples of Syria. These constructions functioned as symbolic representations of a heavenly structure whose content had cosmic significance. 242 According to the above analysis, the canopied structure of the DuraEuropos Christian baptistery resembled the form and function of the aedicula of Dura and especially of the pagan ones: it housed the image of the Christian God. Thus, we may say, that the canopied structure functioned as the innermost sanctuary of the baptistery where the image of Christ the Good Shepherd stood at its center. The decoration of the canopied structure (star-studded sky on the canopy’s ceiling, the fruit decoration on its face) and the existence of the font with its water under the canopy confirmed its cosmic meaning. 243 The canopied structure was an image of heaven. Contemplating the innermost sanctuary of the baptistery, the participants of the service could realize that heaven was revealed with the image of Christ the Good Shepherd at its center. The liturgical practices reflected in the textual sources, similarly to the archaeological evidence of the Dura-Europos baptistery, indicate that the liturgical space along with the initiation mysteries that are performed in it reveals the Kingdom to humans through the image of Christ. According to the author of the Gospel of Philip, the material world is full of error. True or divine knowledge lies beyond this transitory world. The world of immediate perception is deceptive and transitory: In this world those who put on garments are better than the garments. In the kingdom of heaven the garments are better than those who have put them on. (Gospel of Philip, 57.19–22) Light and darkness, life and death, right and left, are brothers of one another. They are inseparable. Because of this neither are the good good, nor the evil evil, nor is life life, nor death death. For this reason each one will dissolve into its earliest origin. But those who are exalted above the world are indissoluble, eternal. (Gospel of Philip, 53.14–23) The world came about through a mistake. For he who created it wanted to create it imperishable and immortal. He fell short of attaining his desire. For the world never was imperishable, nor, for that matter, was he See also page 69, note 226 and page 70, note 227. Kraeling, Final Report 198. 243 Kraeling, Final Report 145–151 and 197–200. Kraeling argues that the font’s water under the vault indicates the cosmic allusions of this type of architectural language. See, Kraeling, Final Report 198. 241 242

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TRACING THE BRIDEGROOM IN DURA who made the world. For things are not imperishable, but sons are. Nothing will be able to receive imperishability if it does not first become a son. But he who has not the ability to receive, how much more will he be unable to give? (Gospel of Philip, 75.2–14)

Rewolinski argues that the Gospel of Philip distinguishes between two realities: the world of the “kingdom of heaven,” and the world of sense and illusion. The kingdom is the real world and it is associated with the divine, whereas the phenomenal world was created through an error and is subject to corruption. 244 Although the world of immediate perception is for Philip corruptible, he considers the present time extremely important for humans, arguing that humans must achieve the knowledge of the kingdom in this present time otherwise they will never do so: If anyone becomes a son of the bridal chamber, he will receive the light. If anyone does not receive it while he is here, he will not be able to receive it in the other place. …And again when he leaves the world he has already received the truth in the images. (Gospel of Philip, 86.4–7, 86.11– 13)

The present time on earth, then, becomes extremely significant for humans because it is their only opportunity to receive the knowledge of the kingdom. Philip argues, that it is through images that humans receive the truth concerning the divine amidst the world in the present time: Truth did not come into the world naked, but it came in types and images. The world will not receive truth in any other way. There is a rebirth and an image of rebirth. It is certainly necessary to be born again through the image. Which one? Resurrection. The image must rise again through the image. The bridal chamber and the image must enter through the image into the truth: this is the restoration. (Gospel of Philip, 67.9–18) The lord [did] everything in a mystery, a baptism and a chrism and a eucharist and a redemption and a bridal chamber. [...] he said, “I came to make [the things below] like the things [above, and the things] outside like those [inside. I came to unite] them in the place [...] here through [types...]. (Gospel of Philip, 67.27–35) At the present time we have the manifest things of creation. …Contrast the manifest things of truth: they are weak and despised, while the hid244

Rewolinski 55–64.

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den things are strong and held in high regard. The mysteries of truth are revealed, though in type and image. (Gospel of Philip, 84.14–15, 84.17–21) Those above opened to us the things below, in order that we may go in to the secret of the truth. This truly is what is held in high regard, (and) what is strong! But we shall go in there by means of lowly types and forms of weakness. They are lowly indeed when compared with the perfect glory. There is glory which surpasses glory. There is power which surpasses power. Therefore the perfect things have opened to us, together with the hidden things of truth. (Gospel of Philip, 85.10–19)

Rewolinski argues that “type” and “image” in the Gospel of Philip signify the means by which divinity manifests itself in the sensory world of humanity. Rewolinski thinks that “image” in Philip implies “only a sketch of the supernal reality” through which “communion is made possible between the divine and the human.” 245 Concerning the nature of images in the Gospel of Philip Rewolinski notes: “The images are likenesses present in sensory form but having their model not in the hereafter, but in the supernal, timeless realm of the divine.” 246 Furthermore, he argues that in the Gospel of Philip, the mysteries with their material elements reveal the noetic, invisible divine life to humans. 247 True, divine knowledge cannot be achieved through human senses that rely on the material world. Philip acknowledges the limits of human knowledge and its difficulty processing beyond the world of phenomena. Time and space raise an epistemological barrier for the world and impede it from knowing the truth that lies in the invisible kingdom. Knowledge in the world of senses can be communicated only through sensory means that conform to human reality. These sensory images are considered weak in comparison to the invisible kingdom since they consist of matter. Yet, Philip considers them necessary vessels for the world’s comprehension of the divine. On the one hand, the author acknowledges the superiority of the immaterial and “hidden” world over its material manifestation in the world. On the other, he argues that images are the “manifest things of truth,” the visible part of the invisible divine realm and they constitute the only manner for the kingdom and realm of truth to become known to the sensory world (Gospel of Philip, 84.14–21 and 67.9–18).

Rewolinski 122. Rewolinski 134. 247 Rewolinski 105–123, especially, 112–113, 115–117 and 134. 245 246

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Although by virtue of nature these images belong to the material reality, by virtue of likeness they belong to the divine kingdom. They are the visible likenesses of the invisible kingdom of heaven in the world of senses and phenomena. Through these images, the lower world of phenomena will enter the kingdom already in the present time. The upper and invisible, that is, the realm of the divine, is considered to be perfect and therefore, stands in a higher position than the lower and visible, meaning the world. The author of the Gospel of Philip argues that images manifest the knowledge of the perfect and hidden things of the kingdom to humans in the present time. The individuals enter the heavenly kingdom and acquire knowledge of the truth already in the present time by means of images. 248 For instance, baptism, chrism, Eucharist with their material, visible elements, such as water, oil and vestment, water and wine respectively, as well as incense and light (Gospel of Philip, 57.22–28, 58.10–17, 67.2–27, 69.8–14, 73.8–19, 77.35–36, and 85.32–35) become the mediating vehicles of divine knowledge. These images can be likened to a ladder, by which the material world ascends to the divine world. In these mysteries-images, that is, baptism, chrism, Eucharist, ransom, and bridal chamber, (Gospel of Philip, 67.27–30), Christ unites the phenomenal with the invisible, divine world, the outer with the inner, the lower with the upper. The union of these two worlds occurs by means of material images. The lower must join with and liken itself to the higher in order for the lower to become perfected. The Lord’s goal of coming to the world was to join the visible and invisible world through types. Perfection is considered the likeness of the visible world to the invisible kingdom. In the mysteries described in the Gospel of Philip (Gospel of Philip, 67.27–30), the likeness or ontological transformation of the participant to a divine being is made possible through the use of material images so that the participant can acquire divine knowledge in the world. Turning to the text of the Symposium, one may discover reflections of liturgical practices similar to the ones described in the Gospel of Philip and to the ones released by the physical evidence of the Dura baptistery. For Methodius, the Church is the symbol of heaven. Methodius notes that unlike the Jews, who saw in the Tabernacle the shadow of heaven, the Church can see a clear image of the heavenly reality until the revelation of the reality itself in the final coming: The Jews announced what was a shadow of an image, at a third remove from reality, whereas we ourselves clearly behold the image of the heav248

Rewolinski 133–134.

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enly dispensation. But the reality itself will be accurately revealed after the resurrection when we shall see the holy Tabernacle, the heavenly city, whose builder and maker is God, face to face, and not in a dark manner and only in part. Just as the Jews foretold our present dispensation, so too we foreshadow the celestial: the Tabernacle was a symbol of the Church, as the Church is a symbol of heaven. (Logos 5: Thallusa, 7–8)

The Church experiences the vision of the celestial reality in the present time: And the thousand two hundred sixty days we sojourn here, my dear maidens, signify the direct, clear and perfect knowledge of the Father, Son and Spirit, in which as she grows, our Mother rejoices and exults during this time until restoration of the new ages, when, entering into the heavenly assemblage, she will contemplate Being, now no longer through abstract knowledge, but with clear intuition, entering in with Christ. (Logos 8: Thecla, 11)

Therefore, the Church can clearly reveal the image of heaven in the present time. The initiated into the mysteries of virginity and continence have the ability to contemplate the divine reality already from this life: Those who thus lose their wings and fall into pleasure will have no end of grief and pain, until, because of the yearning of their passions, they fulfill their irresistible longing for incontinence, and thus they will remain outside the mysteries, uninitiated into the drama of truth, madly indulging the wild pleasures of love instead of living a chaste and temperate life as procreators of children. But those who are nimble and light of wing, soaring up into the supramundane regions above this life, see from afar things that no mortal has gazed upon, the very meadows of immortality bearing a profusion of flowers of incredible loveliness. And there they are ever and always contemplating the sights of that place. And hence they care nothing for the things which the world thinks good—riches and fame and family trees and marriage ties—and there is nothing they esteem higher than the things they see above. (Logos 8: Thecla, 2)

The virgins meet the Bridegroom in the bridal chamber “now”: …Go then, virgin band of the new dispensation, go fill your vessels with justice. For it is time now to rise and meet the Bridegroom. Go, and with light hearts turn from the charms and spells of this life, which confuse and bewitch the soul; for you will receive what was promised— I swear it by Him who has shown us the path of life. (Logos 6: Agathe, 5) (Refrain) Chastely I live for Thee,

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TRACING THE BRIDEGROOM IN DURA And holding my lighted lamps, My Spouse, I go forth to meet Thee. From on high, there has come, O virgins, the sound of the cry that wakes the dead, bidding us to go to meet the Bridegroom in the east with all speed in white robes and with our lamps. Awake, before the King enters within the gates! (Thecla’s Hymn, 1) For Thee, my King, have I refused a mortal marriage and a home rich in gold, and I have come to Thee in immaculate robes that I may enter with Thee Thy blessed bridal chamber. (Thecla’s Hymn, 3)

The literary description of the bridal chamber in the Acts of Thomas provides us with information concerning the nature of the space itself. According to the author of the Acts of Thomas, the bridal chamber becomes the architectural space of Christ’s epiphany. The text reads that the apostle Judas Thomas, during his mission in India, is invited to the marriage of the daughter of the king of Andrapolis. After everyone left the bridal chamber and its doors were shut, Christ in the likeness of Thomas appeared to the newly married couple and initiated them into his teaching: The king required the attendants to go out of the bridal chamber. And when all had gone out and the doors were shut, the bridegroom lifted up the veil of the bridal chamber, that he might bring the bride to himself. And he saw the Lord Jesus in the likeness of the apostle Judas Thomas, who shortly before had blessed them and departed from them, conversing with the bride, and he said to him: ‘Didst thou not go out before them all? How art thou now found here?’ But the Lord said to him: ‘I am not Judas who is also Thomas, I am his brother.’ And the Lord sat down upon the bed and bade them also to sit on the chairs, and began to say to them: ‘Remember, my children, what my brother said to you, and to whom he commended you; and know this, that if you abandon this filthy intercourse you become holy temples, pure and free from afflictions and pains both manifest and hidden, and you will not be girt about with cares for life and for children, the end of which is destruction. But if you get many children, then for their sakes you become robbers and avaricious, (people who) flay orphans and defraud widows, and by so doing you subject yourselves to the most grievous punishments. For the majority of children become unprofitable, possessed by demons, some openly and some in secret; for they become either lunatic or half-withered (consumptive) or crippled or deaf or dumb or paralytic or stupid. Even if they are healthy, again will they be unserviceable, performing useless and abominable deeds; for they are caught either in adultery or in murder or in theft or in unchastity, and by all these you will be afflicted. But if you obey, and keep your souls pure unto God,

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you shall have living children whom these hurts do not touch, and shall be without care, leading an undisturbed life without grief or anxiety, waiting to receive that incorruptible and true marriage (as befitting for you), and in it you shall be groomsmen entering into that bridal chamber immortality and light.’ But when the young people heard this, they believed the Lord and gave themselves entirely to him, and refrained from the filthy passion, and so remained throughout the night in that place. And the Lord departed from them, saying: ‘The grace of the Lord shall be with you!’ (Acts of Thomas, 11–13)

This excerpt from the Apocryphal Acts of Thomas provides a literary description of the bridal chamber, the room in which the newly married couple was about to spend their first night. It is a room in which the newly married were left alone in full intimacy and privacy after all the attendants had left and the doors were closed. In this space of intimacy, Jesus appeared to the couple in the likeness of the apostle Thomas to instruct them about the true marriage that initiates humans into their union with Christ. During the instruction, Christ uses bridal language and encourages the future converts to unite emotionally with Him through contemplation of His image. Christ promises the couple that the marriage with Him will grant them immortality. Through the couples’ words to the parents, we learn about the new marriage that they bound themselves and their emotional attachment to Christ: The bride in answer said: ‘Truly, father, I am in great love, and I pray to my Lord that the love which I experienced this night may remain with me, and I will ask for the husband of whom I have learned today. (is) because the mirror of shame is taken from me; and I am no longer ashamed or abashed, because the work of shame and bashfulness has been removed far from me. And that I am not alarmed, (is) because alarm did not remain with me. And that I am in cheerfulness and joy (is) because the day of joy was not disturbed. And that I have set at naught this man, and this marriage which passes away from before my eyes, (is) because I am bound in another marriage. And that I have had no intercourse with a short-lived husband, the end of which is of soul, (is) because I am yoked with true man.’ And while the bride was saying yet more than this, the bridegroom answered and said: ‘I thank thee, Lord, who through the stranger wast proclaimed and found in us; who hast removed me from corruption and sown in me life; who didst free me from this sickness, hard to heal and hard to cure and abiding for ever, and didst implant in me sober health; who didst show thyself to me and reveal to me all my condition in

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TRACING THE BRIDEGROOM IN DURA which I am; who didst redeem me from the fall and lead me to the better, and free me from things transitory but count me worthy of those that are immortal and everlasting; who didst humble thyself to me and my smallness, that setting me beside thy greatness thou mightest unite me with thyself; who didst not withhold thy mercy from me that was ready to perish, but didst show me to seek myself and to recognize who I was and who and how I now am, that I may become again what I was; whom I did not know, but thou thyself didst seek me out; of whom I was unaware, but thou thyself didst take me to thee; whom I have perceived and now cannot forget; whose love ferments within me, and of whom cannot speak as I ought, but what I can say about him is short and very little and does not correspond to his glory; but he does not blame me when I make bold to say to him even what I do not know; for it is for love of him that I say this.’ (Acts of Thomas, 14–15)

Thus, in the Acts of Thomas, the bridal chamber is turned to a space where the marriage of humans with Christ is initiated. In the Gospel of Philip, Jesus’ epiphany to the world coincided with His baptism: Jesus appeared [...] Jordan—the [fullness of the kingdom] of heaven. He who [was begotten] before everything was begotten anew. He [who was] once [anointed] was anointed anew. He who was redeemed in turn redeemed (others). (Gospel of Philip, 70.34–71.3)

Jesus appeared in the Jordan and in his person, the fullness of the kingdom was manifested. One may say that at the moment of Jesus’ epiphany, all the knowledge for the kingdom was revealed to the world through the person of Jesus. 249 Jesus now represented the invisible kingdom visually. Philip called the appearance of Jesus into the phenomenal world a mystery. Indeed, one must utter a mystery. The father of everything united with the virgin who came down, and a fire shone for him on that day. He appeared in the great bridal chamber. Therefore, his body came into being on that very day. It left the bridal chamber as one who came into being from the bridegroom and the bride. So Jesus established everything in it through these. It is fitting for each of the disciples to enter into his rest. (Gospel of Philip, 71.3–15)

R. McL. Wilson suggests, “Jesus revealed (to somebody) at the Jordan the fullness of the kingdom, which was before all things.” See, R. McL. Wilson, The Gospel of Philip. Translated from the Coptic text, with an Introduction and Commentary (New York and Evanston: Harper & Row, 1962) 144–145. 249

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It was in the bridal chamber that the historical Jesus appeared in a bodily form, that is, became visible to the world. It was the space where His Incarnation took place. 250 The author of the Gospel of Philip relates the time of Christ’s visual manifestation to the world with His baptism. 251 The historical bridal chamber where Jesus’ epiphany took place is also experienced in the liturgical space: There were three buildings specifically for sacrifice in Jerusalem. The one facing west was called “the holy.” Another facing south was called “the holy of the holy.” The third facing east was called “the holy of the holies,” the place where only the high priest enters. Baptism is the “holy” building. Redemption is the “holy of the holy.” “The holy of the holies” is the bridal chamber. (Gospel of Philip, 69.14–25)

The author of the Gospel of Philip, through a reference to the Temple of Jerusalem, relates the mysteries mentioned to a specific space and makes the bridal chamber the innermost sanctuary, the place where the divinity resides. 252 In the Temple of Jerusalem, the “holy of the holies” contained the Ark of the Covenant, that is, the visible manifestation of the invisible God through symbols. Although traditionally Jewish religion had forbidden the visual representation of God through images based on the Ten Commandments, the Ark of the Covenant constituted by itself an instance of the use of visible symbols to declare God’s presence on earth. Furthermore, the mid-third century (244/245CE) Jewish Synagogue in Dura-Europos provided an unusual case of a Jewish religious edifice where visual means (frescoes) were used in the worship space. 253 In pagan temples, the statue or image of the deity was kept in the naos, the inner part of the building. 254 One may say that in the Gospel of Philip, the space of the bridal chamber was Rewolinski 115. The connection of Jesus’ visual manifestation to the world with the episode of the Jordan is also found in Methodius’ Symposium. See, Methodius, Symposium Logos 8: Thecla, 9. 252 Rewolinski 137. 253 Matheson 25–28. 254 It is worth noticing that in all the religious sanctuaries discovered in the eastern Roman frontier of Dura-Europos visual images were used in the space of worship. The meeting point among the various religions represented in DuraEuropos was the use of sensory means to communicate divine knowledge. Even traditions that historically had opposed the use of visual means in worship, such as Judaism and, in part, Christianity, appeared in Dura to break that rule. Pagans, Christians, and Jews worshiped their gods by using visual images. See pages 74–75. 250 251

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connected to the image of god (Christ), it was related to a sanctuary and provided an epiphany to the devotees. According to Philip, Christ’s epiphany was connected to the element of water, an idea that is visualized in the Dura baptistery’s liturgical space since the image of Christ the Good Shepherd is placed over the waters of the font, in the lunette of the canopied structure. In the Symposium, Methodius, referring to the Jewish holy of the holies, implies a liturgical practice that presents the innermost sanctuary as the place where the virgins meet Christ. The golden altar represents the virgins who reside with God, the Light within the Holy of Holies: What is more, it has been a tradition that the community of those who are chaste is God’s unbloody altar: so great and glorious a thing is virginity. (Logos 5: Thallusa, 6) Just as the Jews foretold our present dispensation, so too we foreshadow the celestial: the Tabernacle was a symbol of the Church, as the Church is a symbol of heaven. And since this is so, and the Tabernacle, as I have said, is taken as a type of the Church, the altars too must represent something within the Church. Thus the brazen altar is to be compared with the enclosure and assembly of holy widows; for they indeed are a living altar of God, and to this we bring calves and tithes and free-will offerings as a sacrifice unto the Lord. And so the golden altar within the Holy of Holies that is placed before the testimony, on which it is forbidden to offer sacrifices and libation, should be applied to those who live in the state of chastity and have fortified their bodies with unalloyed gold, uncorrupted by intercourse. Now people commonly speak in praise of gold for two reasons: first, because it does not rust, and secondly, because its color seems in a way to resemble the rays of the sun. And thus it is a very appropriate symbol of virginity, which does not admit any stain or spot, but is ever brilliant with the light of the Word. For this reason it stands farther within the Holy of Holies, and before the veil, sending up prayers like incense to the Lord, with undefiled hands, acceptable for an odor of sweetness. So too did John teach us when he said that the incense in the vials of the twentyfour elders were the prayers of the saints. (Logos 5: Thallusa, 8)

As in the Gospel of Philip, so too in Methodius’ Symposium, the space where God is visually manifested to the virgins coincides with the innermost sanctuary, that is, the bridal chamber where the virgins meet Christ: (Refrain) Chastely I live for Thee, And holding my lighted lamps, My Spouse, I go forth to meet Thee.

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From on high, there has come, O virgins, the sound of the cry that wakes the dead, bidding us to go to meet the Bridegroom in the east with all speed in white robes and with our lamps. Awake, before the King enters within the gates! (Thecla’s Hymn, 1) For Thee, my King, have I refused a mortal marriage and a home rich in gold, and I have come to Thee in immaculate robes that I may enter with Thee Thy blessed bridal chamber. (Theclas’ Hymn, 3)

In particular, the Symposium provides us with an image of heaven that reminds us of the canopied structure with the font of the Dura baptistery. Those who will initiate themselves into the mysteries of virginity will enter heaven, which Methodius images with a vault that covers the divine waters of immortality: Marcella then, if I mistake not, directly began her discourse as follows: Virginity is something extraordinary great, wonderful and glorious. To speak frankly in the manner of the Scriptures, this most beautiful, noble way of life alone is the Church’s sustaining bosom, her flower, her first fruits. This is the reason, too, why Our Lord, in that passage in the Gospels in which He instructs us in the various ways in which men have become eunuchs, promises that all who make themselves virgins will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Chastity is rare indeed among humankind, and a goal difficult of attainment; it involves greater risks precisely because of its excellence and magnificence. Hence it demands strong and generous natures, that can completely divert the stream of sensuality and guide aloft the chariot of the soul, straight and up and up, never losing sight of their goal—until, leaping easily over the world with the lightning speed of thought, they stand upon the very vault of heaven and gaze directly upon Immortality itself as it wells up from the pure bosom of the Almighty. Such a draught cannot be produced on earth; it can issue only from the fountains of heaven. (Logos 1: Marcella, 1)

The initiated “into the drama of truth,” that according to Herbert Musurillo’s comment may be understood “to refer to the performance of the Liturgy,” 255 can “see from afar things that no mortal has gazed upon, the very meadows of immortality bearing a profusion of flowers of incredible loveliness” (Logos 8: Thecla, 2). The initiates may contemplate the “tree of essential Continence there, one of Love, and one of Understanding, just as truly as there are fruit trees in this world, such as the grape, the pome255

Methodius 220, note 9.

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granate, and the apple” (Logos 8: Thecla, 3). One may conclude that the Symposium provides us with an image of the innermost sanctuary, which is very similar to the one found in the Dura-Europos Christian baptistery. b. The Unity of Space and Ritual in the Baptistery In this room the innermost sanctuary constitutes not a separate space but part of the one unified baptistery’s area. The canopied structure with the image of Christ the Good Shepherd in its lunette, that is, the innermost sanctuary of the baptistery, is not clearly separated from the space that the ritual of initiation takes place but it is unified with it. Furthermore, the font with its water (used in the initiation service, as we will see later) is placed in the same construction, that is, in the innermost sanctuary of the baptistery with the lunette’s painting. The structure of the baptistery implies the unity of space and relates initiation with Christ’s image, the culminating point of the baptistery’s ritual (figs. 3 and I). In the Mithraeum of Dura, we may see again a unity between initiation space and innermost sanctuary where Mithras’ image stood. In fact, the initiation of the new devotees of Mithra took place in front of the god’s image (fig. 30). 256 Likewise, in the Acts of Thomas, as we saw earlier in this chapter, the initiation of the young couple takes place in front of Christ who appeared in the likeness of Judas Thomas (Acts of Thomas 11). 257 The author of the Gospel of Philip and Methodius in the Symposium relate Jesus’ appearance in the world with His baptism. For both texts, the epiphany of Christ is related to the element of water (Gospel of Philip 70.34–71.15, Symposium, Logos 8: Thecla, 9). 258 In the Symposium, we read: And in especial agreement and accordance with what has been said would appear to be the words which were pronounced from above by the Father Himself to Christ when He came for the hallowing of water in the river Jordan: Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. Now it should be noted that He was declared to be His Son unconditionally and without regard to time. For He says, Thou art my son, and not ‘Thou hast become,’ emphasizing the fact that He had not recently attained to Sonship, and that having had a previous existence He would not ever after terminate it, but simply that, having been begotten before, He is and always will be the same. By the expression, This day have I begotten thee, He means that though His Son had already existed before in the heavens Gates 177. See pages 80–82. 258 See pages 82–86. 256 257

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before the ages, He desired that He should also be begotten for the world, that is, what was previously unknown should be made manifest. (Logos 8: Thecla, 9)

Furthermore, the author of the Gospel of Philip, links the mystery of the bridal chamber with that of baptism and thus, the innermost sanctuary with the space of initiation: “Baptism includes the resurrection [and the] redemption; the redemption (takes place) in the bridal chamber” (Gospel of Philip, 69.25–27). The mystery of baptism is related to the bridal chamber, since baptism includes resurrection and redemption, and redemption takes place in the bridal chamber. Redemption is common to both baptism and the bridal chamber. If we recall Gospel of Philip, 69.14–27, where Philip relates the mysteries to a specific space, 259 we may conclude that the space where redemption takes place (“the holy of the holy”) is common to both the space of baptism (“the holy”) and that of the bridal chamber (“the holies of the holies”). The space of baptism, or initiation is unified with and not clearly separated from the bridal chamber-innermost sanctuary. Through this architectural reference (Gospel of Philip, 69.14–27), the author implies the unity of the mysteries as well as their spaces. In the Symposium, the initiates reside in the innermost sanctuary where they meet with Christ (Logos 5: Thallusa, 6 and 8). There the initiates “stand upon the very vault of heaven and gaze directly upon Immortality itself as it wells up from the pure bosom of the Almighty. Such a draught cannot be produced on earth; it can issue only from the fountains of heaven” (Logos 1: Marcella, 1). c. The Eschata (End of Time) Experienced in the Service of the Baptistery As the Women at the Tomb implies, the participants of the baptistery’s initiation service process to meet Christ in the image of the Good Shepherd and also before His epiphany in the end of times (fig. I). 260 As the DuraEuropos Christian baptistery visual evidence, both the Gospel of Philip and the Symposium also refer to Christ’s epiphany in the present time as an anticipation of the future. In the Gospel of Philip we read: At the present time we have the manifest things of creation. We say, “The strong who are held in high regard are great people. And the weak who are despised are the obscure.” Contrast the manifest things of truth: they are weak and despised, while the hidden things are strong 259 260

See analysis in pages 83–84 and 87. Pallas, Synagoge meleton, vol. 1, 91–92.

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TRACING THE BRIDEGROOM IN DURA and held in high regard. The mysteries of truth are revealed, though in type and image. The bridal chamber, however, remains hidden. (Gospel of Philip, 84.14–23) Those above opened to us the things below, in order that we may go in to the secret of the truth. This truly is what is held in high regard, (and) what is strong! But we shall go in there by means of lowly types and forms of weakness. They are lowly indeed when compared with the perfect glory. There is glory which surpasses glory. There is power which surpasses power. Therefore the perfect things have opened to us, together with the hidden things of truth. The holies of the holies were revealed, and the bridal chamber invited us in. (Gospel of Philip, 85. 10–21).

The author of the Gospel of Philip acknowledges that the revelation of the divine truth in the bridal chamber-innermost sanctuary is experienced in the practice of the mysteries in the present time. Nevertheless, through a reference to the heavenly bridal chamber, 261 Philip clarifies that the participant experiences this truth only in part: “The bridal chamber, however, remains hidden” (Gospel of Philip, 84.21–22). The complete vision of the divine truth will take place in the revelation of the heavenly bridal chamber at end of time. According to the Symposium, in the present time, the initiated to the mysteries may see heaven only in part in the form of image until the time after the resurrection when Christians will see the heavenly reality itself: The Jews announced what was a shadow of an image, at a third remove from reality, whereas we ourselves clearly behold the image of the heavenly dispensation. But the reality itself will be accurately revealed after the resurrection when we shall see the holy Tabernacle, the heavenly city, whose builder and maker is God, face to face, and not in a dark manner and only in part. (Logos 5: Thallusa, 7)

d. The Baptistery as a Space of Divine Light The Dura-Europos baptistery is filled with light that is signified by the stars and the moon of the sky on the ceiling of the canopy and of the entire room. This light (used in the baptistery’s service, as we will see later) comes from heaven since the star decoration begins from the canopy’s vault (sym-

261

Bentley Layton ed., 136.

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bol of heaven) and extends to the entire room. 262 The nature of Christ is light also. The two stars on the acroteria of the white sarcophagus of the Women at the Tomb fresco are the symbols of the divinity. 263 The nature of the god who resides in the sarcophagus is light (figs. I and II). Likewise, in the Acts of Thomas, the bridal chamber, the space of Christ’s epiphany is described as a space “ of immortality and light” (Acts of Thomas, 12). 264 According to the author of the Gospel of Philip, the bridal chamber was the space where the perfect light that was used for the participants’ ontological regeneration was located (Gospel of Philip, 85.24–35). In the Symposium, we read that God “is Light itself in secret and unapproachable places…” (Logos 6: Agathe, 1). God who resides in the innermost sanctuary (Logos 5: Thallusa, 6 and 8) is understood as light in the innermost sanctuary: “Provider of life, O Christ, hail, Light that knowest no evening!” (Thecla’s Hymn, 6). Additionally, Methodius likens the divine light of the Church to the light of the moon and stars of the sky: “…For her robe, she is clothed in pure light; instead of jewels, her head is adorned with shining stars” (Logos 8: Thecla, 5). The light of the Church is compared to “the full light of the moon which is hers” (Logos 8: Thecla, 12). 265 As in the baptistery, in the Symposium the stars and the moon are symbols of the divine light. e. The Personal Character of the Participant’s Union with Christ in the Service of the Baptistery Christ is revealed to the participants of the baptistery’s ritual in a personal and intimate manner. Christ appears in the lunette’s fresco as the Good Shepherd and develops a special and intimate relation with his initiates (Good Shepherd-sheep). Christ the Good Shepherd protects his devotees (sheep) and places them in his pastures. 266 Additionally, as Johannes Quasten argued, the theme of the Good Shepherd, whose visual rendering in Dura is the oldest one found in a baptistery, is the most appropriate one for such a context. To early Christian mysticism and liturgy, the Good Shep262 Kraeling maintains that the decoration of the baptistery’s ceiling (starstudded sky with the moon) was an extension of that found on the canopied structure’s vault. See Kraeling, Final Report 197. 263 Pallas, Synagoge meleton, vol. 1, 91–92 and Villette 401. 264 See also pages 80–82. 265 See also pages 111–112. 266 Kraeling, Final Report 180–183.

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herd was the symbol of salvation, which began with baptism. In ancient Christian thought, Christ comes to the baptized as Shepherd and Bridegroom and saves him/her by placing him/her in His pastures. 267 The juxtaposition of the Good Shepherd and his sheep image with that of Adam and Eve indicate the new ontological state that Christ granted to His devotees, that is, immortality versus the mortality of the first born (fig. V). 268 The nature of Christ, that is, the One who protects his devotees is also manifested in the miracle scenes. 269 Like the pastures of the Good Shepherd image, the Garden scene indicated that Christ the Shepherd and miracle worker could lead the participant in the service into the garden of the future “Heavenly Paradise” 270 (figs. 9 and 15). The emotional bond between the initiates and Christ is also manifested in the white garments of the women in the procession scene who “are dressed as brides with white veils” 271 (fig. II). Thus, I may say that the procession of the Women at the Tomb represents the participants/brides who process to unite or marry Christ the Bridegroom. Both the lunette painting and the lower register of the north wall procession indicate the intimate and emotional character, with which Christ the Good Shepherd and the Bridegroom appear in this service (Shepherd-sheep, Bridegroom-brides). Similarly to Dura-Europos Christian House Baptistery physical evidence, in the Acts of Thomas, as we saw earlier in this chapter, Christ initiated the newly married, appearing in front of their eyes in the bridal chamber in an intimate and personal manner: The king required the attendants to go out of the bridal chamber. And when all had gone out and the doors were shut, the bridegroom lifted up the veil of the bridal chamber, that he might bring the bride to himself. And he saw the Lord Jesus in the likeness of the apostle Judas Thomas, who shortly before had blessed them and departed from them, conversing with the bride, and he said to him: ‘Didst thou not go out before them all? How art thou now found here?’ But the Lord said to him: ‘I am not Judas who is also Thomas, I am his brother.’ And the Lord sat down upon the bed and bade them also to sit on the chairs and began to say to them: ‘Remember, my children, what my brother said to you, and to whom he commended you; and know this, that if you abanQuasten 1–18. See also Perkins 53 and page 39. 269 Kraeling, Final Report 183–186. 270 Kraeling, Final Report 65–67, 180–183, 185–186 and 210. 271 Pijoan 595. 267 268

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don this filthy intercourse you become holy temples, pure and free from afflictions and pains both manifest and hidden, and you will not be girt about with cares for life and for children, the end of which is destruction. But if you get many children, then for their sakes you become robbers and avaricious, (people who) flay orphans and defraud widows, and by so doing you subject yourselves to the most grievous punishments. For the majority of children become unprofitable, possessed by demons, some openly and some in secret; for they become either lunatic or halfwithered (consumptive) or crippled or deaf or dumb or paralytic or stupid. Even if they are healthy, again will they be unserviceable, performing useless and abominable deeds; for they are caught either in adultery or in murder or in theft or in unchastity, and by all these you will be afflicted. But if you obey, and keep your souls pure unto God, you shall have living children whom these hurts do not touch, and shall be without care, leading an undisturbed life without grief or anxiety, waiting to receive that incorruptible and true marriage (as befitting for you), and in it you shall be groomsmen entering into that bridal chamber immortality and light.’ But when the young people heard this, they believed the Lord and gave themselves entirely to him, and refrained from the filthy passion, and so remained throughout the night in that place. And the Lord departed from them, saying: ‘The grace of the Lord shall be with you!’ (Acts of Thomas, 11–13)

Throughout the instruction, Christ redefined marriage and used bridal language to encourage the couple’s emotional union with Him (Acts of Thomas, 12–13). By uniting emotionally with Christ, the couple would “receive that incorruptible and true marriage” and enter “into that bridal chamber of immortality and light” (Acts of Thomas, 12). Marriage with Christ, according to the narrative, meant the emotional union of the couple with Christ: The bride in answer said: ‘Truly, father, I am in great love, and I pray to my Lord that the love which I experienced this night may remain with me, and I will ask for the husband of whom I have learned today. (is) because the mirror of shame is taken from me; and I am no longer ashamed or abashed, because the work of shame and bashfulness has been removed far from me. And that I am not alarmed, (is) because alarm did not remain with me. And that I am in cheerfulness and joy (is) because the day of joy was not disturbed. And that I have set at naught this man, and this marriage which passes away from before my eyes, (is) because I am bound in another marriage. And that I have had no intercourse with a short-lived husband, the end of which is of soul, (is) because I am yoked with true man.’ (Acts of Thomas, 14)

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TRACING THE BRIDEGROOM IN DURA And while the bride was saying yet more than this, the bridegroom answered and said: ‘I thank thee, Lord, who through the stranger wast proclaimed and found in us; who hast removed me from corruption and sown in me life; who didst free me from this sickness, hard to heal and hard to cure and abiding for ever, and didst implant in me sober health; who didst show thyself to me and reveal to me all my condition in which I am; who didst redeem me from the fall and lead me to the better, and free me from things transitory but count me worthy of those that are immortal and everlasting; who didst humble thyself to me and my smallness, that setting me beside thy greatness thou mightest unite me with thyself; who didst not withhold thy mercy from me that was ready to perish, but didst show me to seek myself and to recognize who I was and who and how I now am, that I may become again what I was; whom I did not know, but thou thyself didst seek me out; of whom I was unaware, but thou thyself didst take me to thee; whom I have perceived and now cannot forget; whose love ferments within me, and of whom cannot speak as I ought, but what I can say about him is short and very little and does not correspond to his glory; but he does not blame me when I make bold to say to him even what I do not know; for it is for love of him that I say this.’ (Acts of Thomas, 15)

This union was called a true marriage because humans united with the light of the bridal chamber and achieved immortality. 272 In the Gospel of Philip, the revelation of divine knowledge in the bridal chamber mystery takes on a private and emotional character. The author of the Gospel of Philip characterizes the stages through which the participant is initiated to his/her union with Christ and enters into the bridal chamber as mysteries of marriage: Every one who will [enter] the bridal chamber will kindle the [light], for […] just as in marriages which are […] happen at night. That fire […] only at night and is put out. But the mysteries of this marriage are perfected rather in the day and the light. (Gospel of Philip, 85.32–86.3)

In the Gospel of Philip, initiation was linked to marriage. This link can be understood better if we draw analogies between early Christian and pagan initiatory and marital rites. In both traditions initiation rites and marriage were closely connected. In the pagan world, for instance, the shining bath, the coronation of the spouses and the imposition of a veil on the young girl occurred in both initiation and marriage rites. 273 272 273

See also pages 80–82. “Voile,” Dictionnaire D’ Archéologie et de Liturgie, 1953 ed.

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In the bridal chamber mystery described in the Gospel of Philip, initiation led the participant to marriage with Christ. 274 As I will discuss later in this chapter, through the various mysteries, that is, baptism, chrism, Eucharist, ransom and bridal chamber (Gospel of Philip, 67.27–30) the participant is prepared ontologically for his/her union with Christ. In the Gospel of Philip, the revelation of divine knowledge took on a private quality. Discussing the truth of the kingdom that the initiate receives in images, Philip reads: “This is the way it is: it is revealed to him alone, not hidden in the darkness and the night, but hidden in a perfect day and a holy light” (Gospel of Philip, 86.15–18). Each of the participants experienced the knowledge of truth in these mysteries individually. The true knowledge that the participant acquired in the mysteries was the fruit of the emotional bond between the participant and Christ. The author of Gospel of Philip understood this knowledge as a “spiritual love”: “Knowledge” of the truth merely “makes such people arrogant” (1 Cor 8.1)… In fact, he who is really free through knowledge is a slave because of love for those who have not yet been able to attain to the freedom of knowledge. Knowledge makes them capable of becoming free. Love [never calls] something its own, […] it […] possess […]. It never [says “This is yours”] or “This is mine,” [but “All these] are yours.” Spiritual love is wine and fragrance. All those who anoint themselves with it take pleasure in it. While those who are anointed are present, those nearby also profit (from the fragrance). If those anointed with ointment withdraw from them and leave, then those not anointed, who merely stand nearby, still remain in their bad odor. The Samaritan gave nothing but wine and oil to the wounded man. It is nothing other than the ointment. It healed the wounds, for “love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Pet 4.8). (Gospel of Philip, 77.22–78.11)

According to the Symposium, the virgins have Christ as their spouse; they pray with him to unite with them individually in a personal manner. This is indicated by the use of the first person “I”: Chastely I live for Thee, And holding my lighted lamps, My Spouse, I go forth to meet Thee (Thecla’s Hymn, Refrain).

Rush thinks that the early Christian sources of bridal mysticism and baptismal theology located the roots of bridal theology “in the sacramental, baptismal order.” See Rush 83–87. 274

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The virgins become brides of Christ, spouses of the Word and develop an emotional bond with Christ (Logos 4: Theopatra, 5–6). The text reads: These, my fair maidens, are the secret rites of our mysteries, the mystical rites of initiation into virginity; these are the rewards of undefiled conflicts of chastity. I am espoused to the Word, and as my dowry I receive the eternal wealth and crown of incorruptibility from my Father, and I walk in triumph crowned forever with the bright unfading flowers of wisdom. (Logos 6: Agathe, 5)

Elsewhere in the same text, Methodius writes that the initiates sanctify their heart “as well as consecrate all its thoughts to the Lord” (Logos 5: Thallusa, 4). Let us now see how the gates, which constitute an integral part of the Dura-Europos baptistery’s ritual, as seen in the Women at the Tomb, add to the artistic and dramatic character of this space. f. The Gates in the Service of the Baptistery: Meaning and Function Discussing the use of the curtain in emperor worship, Belting offers an exemplary articulation of its function in antiquity. He thinks that the curtain “could create a special aura and change a mere appearance into an epiphany, the ritualised act of appearance.” 275 In pagan religious shrines the veil was placed in front of the god’s statue in the temple to dramatize the appearance of the god to his/her devotees as for instance, in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, where we saw the statue of the goddess Isis standing behind the white curtains, which were pulled every morning. 276 Furthermore, we are informed that each morning, the curtain that concealed the statue of Artemis of Ephesus was drawn aside in the adytum 277 of the temple where the sculpture stood. 278 In ancient Christian literature, the tearing of the Temple’s veil symbolized the opening of the heaven and the revelation of heavenly knowledge on earth. For instance, as David Ulansey argued, Mark referred to the opening of the heaven and the tearing of the Temple’s veil in relation to Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan and death to indicate the revelation of heavenly wisdom on earth through the person of Christ (Mark 1.9–11 and Mark 15.36– 39). Ulansey maintained that in ancient Judaism and early Christianity as Belting, Likeness 80–82. Festugière 81. See also pages 63–64. 277 Adyton was the inner shrine of a temple, the most sacred part of a place of worship. See, “Adyton,” Illustrated Dictionary of Historic Architecture, 1977 ed. 278 Belting, Likeness 56. 275 276

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well as in Greco-Roman and other Near Eastern traditions, there was a widespread notion that the earthly temple was a manifestation of heaven, and thus, the tearing of heaven and the tearing of the Temple’s veil were symbolically connected. Ulansey concluded that, in Mark’s imagination, the opening (tearing) of heaven and the tearing of the Temple’s veil were linked. 279 In the Dura-Europos baptistery, the gates appear in the second element of the fresco of the Women at the Tomb depicted in a position that face one of the actual doorways of the baptistery that lead from the courtyard. 280 Based on the description of the baptistery’s physical evidence as well as from the later analysis of the baptistery’s ritual itself, one may say that the half-opened gates depicted in the Women at the Tomb are not a decorative element merely but they constitute an integral part of the room’s ritual. The half-opened gates conceal and reveal to the participant heaven imaged by the physical evidence of the baptistery. Additionally, the gates dramatize the entrance of the initiates’ bridal procession that process towards the innermost sanctuary, that is, the canopied structure with the image of the Good Shepherd in the lunette over the font’s waters and the white sarcophagus. In the Acts of Thomas and Gospel of Philip and Symposium, the gate, or the veil were used alternatively to conceal and reveal dramatically the space where the secret truth of the kingdom personified by Christ resided. In the same texts, the gate or the veil was used to dramatize the meeting of the initiates with Christ in the space of His epiphany. In the Acts of Thomas, the veil revealed the person of Christ in the bedroom of the newly married couple. Christ who stood behind the veil of the bridal chamber became visible and revealed the truth concerning the Kingdom once “…the bridegroom lifted up the veil of the bridal chamber… And he saw the Lord Jesus in the likeness of the apostle Judas Thomas…” (Acts of Thomas, 11). In the Gospel of Philip also, the veil appeared to define the space of the innermost sanctuary. It constituted the threshold between the world and the place of divinity’s dwelling in the world, that is, the innermost sanctuary. R. McL. Wilson comments that in the Gospel of Philip, the veil “is identified with the firmament, which separates the material world from the higher realms.” 281 During his description of the sacrificial buildings in Jerusalem, David Ulansey, “The Heavenly Veil Torn: Mark’s Cosmic Inclusio,” Journal of Biblical Literature, (Spring 1991): 123–125. 280 See description of the Dura-Europos Christian baptistery, pages 36–40. 281 Wilson 191. 279

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the author of the Gospel of Philip attributed to the veil the function of being the sanctuary curtain: 282 There were three buildings specifically for sacrifice in Jerusalem. The one facing west was called “the holy.” Another facing south was called “the holy of the holy.” The third facing east was called “the holy of the holies,” the place where only the high priest enters. Baptism is the “holy” building. Redemption is the “holy of the holy.” “The holy of the holies” is the bridal chamber. Baptism includes the resurrection [and the] redemption; the redemption (takes place) in the bridal chamber. But the bridal chamber is in that which is superior to […] you (sg.) will not find […] are those who pray […] Jerusalem. […] Jerusalem who [...] Jerusalem, [...] those called “the holy of the holies” [...the] veil was rent [...] bridal chamber except the image [...] above. Because of this its veil was rent from top to bottom. For it was fitting for some from below to go upward. (Gospel of Philip, 69.14–70.4)

The veil was the curtain that hid the bridal chamber-innermost sanctuary. The veil was rent from top to bottom so the participants (“some from below”) of the mysteries could enter the space of the bridal chamberinnermost sanctuary: At the present time we have the manifest things of creation. We say, “The strong who are held in high regard are great people. And the weak who are despised are the obscure.” Contrast the manifest things of truth: they are weak and despised, while the hidden things are strong and held in high regard. The mysteries of truth are revealed, though in type and image. The bridal chamber, however, remains hidden. It is the holy in the holy. The veil at first concealed how God controlled the creation, but when the veil is rent and the things inside are revealed, this house will be left desolate, or rather will be [destroyed]. And the whole (inferior) godhead will flee [from] here but not into the holies [of the] holies, for it will not be able to mix with the unmixed [light] and the [flawless] fullness, but will be under the wings of the cross [and under] its arms. This ark will be [their] salvation when the flood of water surges over them. If some belong to the order of the priesthood they will be able to go within the veil with the high priest. For this reason the veil was not rent at the top only, since it would have been open only to those above; nor was it rent at the bottom only, since it would have been revealed only to those below. But it was rent from top to bottom. Those above opened to us the things below, in order that we may go in to the secret of the 282

Rewolinski 137.

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truth. This truly is what is held in high regard, (and) what is strong! But we shall go in there by means of lowly types and forms of weakness. They are lowly indeed when compared with the perfect glory. There is glory which surpasses glory. There is power which surpasses power. Therefore the perfect things have opened to us, together with the hidden things of truth. The holies of the holies were revealed and the bridal chamber invited us in. (Gospel of Philip, 84.14–85.21)

Now that the veil of the sanctuary was rent from top to bottom, the participants of the mysteries were able to “go in to the secret of the truth,” that is, to enter the bridal chamber-innermost sanctuary and see the knowledge of the kingdom that resided in it. Within the bridal chamber, which Philip defines as the space of Christ’s epiphany, the perfect and hidden things were now visible in the person of Christ. The opening of the veil from top to bottom signified and dramatized the revelation of this knowledge. 283 In the Symposium, finally, the veil appeared to have had the same function: it simultaneously concealed and revealed the innermost sanctuary where the virgins saw Christ in the mysteries. The veil stood in front of the Holy of Holies, that is, the bridal chamber-innermost sanctuary: “For this reason it stands farther within the Holy of Holies, and before the veil…” (Logos 5: Thallusa, 8). According to the same text, the gates were used alternatively with the veil to define the space of the bridal chamber-innermost sanctuary. During the hymn, the virgins prayed that they might enter through the “Gates of Life” into the bridal chamber: “Receive us too, O Father, with Thy Servant, within the Gates of Life” (Thecla’s Hymn, 24). It is interesting to mention that in Syrian churches the veil was used liturgically to hide and reveal the innermost sanctuary as well as to cover the altar. See G. Khouri-Sarkis, “Notes sur l’anaphore Syriaque de Saint Jacques. Note 14; Priére du Voile, 426. 1. Le voile-rideau extérieur,” Orient Syrien 5 (1960): 369. Mathews argues “references to veils enclosing the sanctuary are numerous in Egypt, Syria and Pontus from an early date.” See Mathews, Early Churches 169. The late fourthcentury Testamentum Domini and the Apostolic Constitution read that veil and doors were used to cover the area of the innermost sanctuary. In the Testamentum Domini is mentioned that the “house of baptism” should be covered with a veil. See, Grant Sperry-White, trans., The Testamentum Domini (Nottingham: Grove Books Limited, 1991) 14–15, 46 and Les Constitution Apostoliques. Tome III. Sources Chrétiennes, 336 (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1987) 174–178, especially 176. Additionally, it has been argued that the veil functioned also as a symbol of the Incarnation in Byzantine iconography. See, Hélène Papastavrou, “Le voile, symbole de l’Incarnation. Contribution à une étude sémantique,” Cahiers archéologiques 41 (1993): 141–168. 283

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In conclusion, we may say that the element of the doors in the DuraEuropos baptistery dramatizes the entrance of the initiates into the baptistery, adding to the aura that they experience through their encounter with Christ’s image. Now that the participants of the service entered the baptistery through the gates and the innermost sanctuary was revealed “the perfect light will flow out on every one” (Gospel of Philip, 85.25–27).

2. THE INITIATION BRIDAL SERVICE OF THE DURA-EUROPOS CHRISTIAN HOUSE BAPTISTERY a. The Epistemology of the Dura-Europos Baptistery Service Given the rich decoration of the room, it appears that the sense of sight is the main means through which the Dura-Europos baptistery ritual communicates its knowledge to its participants. As I argued earlier, the object of knowledge in the service is the image of Christ the Good Shepherd, which is also the culminating point of the ritual. The participants in the ritual perceive this knowledge through their eyes. Yet, this visual union of the participant with the image of Christ the Good Shepherd presupposes his/her conformity and likeness to Christ. Visual meeting and union of the participants with Christ require the ontological change of the participant in the initiation service of the baptistery. The intimate relation between vision and likeness is brilliantly depicted in the processional motif that the artist chose to represent the figures of the Women at the Tomb painting as well as in the figure of the Woman at the Well fresco. Triumphal processions constituted one of the most characteristic expressions of public life in antiquity and later in Byzantium. They were formal public ceremonies of welcoming the arrival (adventus) of emperors, bishops, saints (or their images), or saints’ relics. 284 This type of public expression signalled the acknowledgement of a person’s presence and authority on the lives of the people who went up to meet him/her. During the procession, people held various types of material symbols, such as censers, lamps, candles, palm branches or crosses, and sung hymns and psalms to greet the honoured person, or his/her image. In this way, the populace of a city demonstrated its submission and trust to the person they formally wel-

284 Sabine G. MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981) 17–89.

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comed. 285 For instance, during festivals in honour of the emperor’s epiphany, the citizens formed processions bearing lamps and censers as they were heading to meet the emperor-god. 286 The symbols they held during the procession were the external expression of this person’s authority and nature. Processional motifs were also used in the religious vocabulary of antiquity and were intimately related to worship. Processions, as Mathews notes, are “one of the oldest and commonest forms of worship”; 287 instances of visual representations of such processions abound in antiquity beginning from the two most known ones, such as the one depicted on the frieze of Parthenon and in Ara Pacis. In a fresco from a villa in Carthage around 400 CE, six hundred hunters converged on the temple of Apollo and Diana. The worshippers had sacrificed a crane on an altar before the temple (fig. 18). Furthermore, a fresco found in a Bacchic cult hall in Spain represented a procession of cupbearer servants who brought wine and napkins (fig. 19). 288 Finally, in the Dura-Europos pagan shrines we have processional scenes that represent the devotees holding symbols relevant to the deity and processing to meet their god (figs. 8 and 23). The identity of the participants of these religious processions conformed to the nature of the deity for instance, hunting in the case of Diana and wine in the case of Bacchus. The devotees held elements that indicated their conformity with the nature of the deity, or its image that went to meet visually at the end of the procession. Worship and likeness were intimately related. A window to understand the relation between worship and likeness is found in Psalm 115.4–8: “Our god is in heavens; their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. …Those who make them are like them. So are all who trust in them.” The excerpt from the psalm that expressed the Jewish polemic against idolatry 289 connected likeness and worship; to worship a god, or to see a god through his/her image means to become like a god. The ritual procession depicted in the Women at the Tomb fresco of the Christian baptistery represents the participants of the Dura-Europos baptis“Adventus” and “Triumph,” The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, 1991 ed. Burkert 99–101. Kenneth G. Holum and Gary Vikan, “The Trier Ivory, Adventus Ceremonial, and the Relics of St. Stephen,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 33 (1979): 115– 117. 286 MacCormack 17–89. Pallas, Synagoge meleton, vol. 1, 92. 287 Mathews, The Clash of Gods 151. 288 Mathews, The Clash of Gods 152. 289 Finney, The Invisible God 50–51. 285

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tery initiation ritual being conformed to the nature of the deity they process to meet and worship. The participants of the ritual are shown in the fresco procession wearing white dresses, which I argued earlier are bridal ones indicating their intimate relation (brides) to Christ who is understood as Bridegroom. Besides being the Bridegroom and the Good Shepherd, I argued that Christ is also understood as light in the baptistery’s ritual. The white bridal garments worn by the figures of the procession indicate their special relation with Christ the Light and therefore, they can be understood as garments of light (fig. II). This is also evident in the Woman at the Well fresco where the female figure is shown with a star on her white garment likening the stars both on the acroteria of the white sarcophagus of the Women at the Tomb fresco and the room’s ceiling (fig. 14a-b, II and I). It appears that the participants of the Dura-Europos baptistery ritual wear the light of Christ as they process to meet Him. Additionally, they use this light to see Christ. The participants of the ritual are shown in the Women at the Tomb fresco bearing lamps as they process before Christ’s epiphany. In this way, the participants of the ritual betray their conformity with the nature of the deity they process to meet and worship (figs. II and 7). Similarly to the Dura baptistery fresco, in the Acts of Thomas, the ritual procession towards Christ’s epiphany indicated the initiates’ ontological conformity to Christ as a prerequisite in order for them to meet and unite with Him visually. The apostle Thomas, responding to King Gundaphorus and his brother Gad’s demand, granted them with the “seal of the word”: Being now well disposed to the apostle, King Gundaphorus and his brother Gad followed him, departing from him not at all and themselves supplying those who were in need, giving to all and refreshing all. And they besought him that they also might now receive the seal of the word, saying to him: ‘Since our souls are at leisure and we are zealous for God, give us the seal! For we have heard thee say that the God whom thou dost preach knows his own sheep by his seal.’ But the apostle said to them: ‘I also rejoice and pray you to receive this seal, and to share with me in this eucharist and (feast of) blessing of the Lord, and be made perfect in it. For this is the Lord and God of all, Jesus Christ whom I preach, and he is the Father of truth in whom I have taught you to believe.’ And he commanded them to bring oil, that through the oil they might receive the seal. So they brought the oil, and lit many lamps; for it was night. And the apostle rose up and sealed them. But the Lord was revealed to them by a voice, saying: ‘Peace be with you, brethren!’ But they only heard his voice, but his form they did not see; for they had not yet received the additional sealing of the seal. And the apostle took the oil and pouring it on their heads anointed and chrismed them, and be-

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gan to say… And when they had been sealed there appeared to them a young man carrying a blazing torch, so that the very lamps were darkened at the onset of its light. And going out he vanished from their sight. But the apostle said to the Lord: ‘Beyond our comprehension, Lord, is thy light, and we are not able to bear it; for it is greater than our sight.’ But when the dawn came and it was light, he broke bread and made them partakers in the eucharist of Christ. And they rejoiced and were glad. And many others also, believing, were added (to the faithful) and came into the refuge of the Saviour. (Acts of Thomas, 26–27)

Here, the ontological change of the initiates in the mysteries was a prerequisite for the vision and knowledge of Christ. Those initiated in the mysteries by Judas Thomas, carrying lamps, were able to experience Christ’s visual presence as “a young man carrying a blazing torch,” only when they had the additional sealing and initiation was completed. Only then was the form of Christ seen by the participants of the initiation. In the Gospel of Philip, likeness is a prerequisite of knowledge. The latter is identified with vision. In the Gospel of Philip one may discover a quite interesting theory of knowledge. “No one shall be able to see the bridegroom with the bride unless [he become] such a one” (Gospel of Philip, 82.24–26). According to the author of the Gospel of Philip, the acquisition of knowledge that occurs through the sense of vision requires likeness of the subject to the object of knowledge. Philip develops an explicit theory of the manner by which knowledge is communicated to participants in the mysteries: It is not possible for anyone to see anything of the things that actually exist unless he becomes like them. This is not the way with man in the world: he sees the sun without being a sun; and he sees the heaven and the earth and all other things, but he is not these things. This is quite in keeping with the truth. But you (sg.) saw something of that place, and you became those things. You saw the spirit, you became spirit. You saw Christ, you became Christ. You saw [the father, you] shall become father. So [in this place] you see everything and [do] not [see] yourself, but [in that place] you do see yourself—and what you see you shall [become]. (Gospel of Philip, 61.20–36)

Greek antiquity emphasized the primacy of sight over the other senses. 290 Jaroslav Pelikan indicates that the sense of sight was the most important of all senses according to ancient Greek and later Byzantine tradition and it was identified with knowledge. For one to see there must be 290

Barasch, Icon 67.

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light. Pelikan argues that to Plato, light was of divine origin. 291 Nevertheless, according to Plato, the world of immediate perception or that of illusion, to which material images belong, is alienated from true knowledge 292 and thus, what the human senses and especially the eye perceive is an illusion and not true knowledge. Philip continues the ancient Greek tradition that emphasized the importance of sight for knowledge. Yet, unlike Plato, Philip acknowledged to humans the possibility to acquire true knowledge in this world by means of their ontological transformation. Acquisition of true knowledge in the Gospel of Philip requires vision and vision requires likeness. In this way, Philip paves the way for the transition from ancient Greek to Byzantine epistemology. Here we have an ontological vision, as I call it. The only way for one to see the truth of the invisible kingdom is to liken him/herself to this truth. For one to see Christ, one has to become like Christ. This identification between the subject and object of knowledge takes place only in the mysteries offered in the bridal chamber and not in the ordinary world. 293 Philip thinks that in the natural world, visual knowledge does not require the likening of the subject to the object of knowledge. Humans see the sun but do not become a sun. In the mysteries of the bridal chamber, likeness is a prerequisite of vision and acquisition of knowledge. The more the participant of these mysteries likens him/herself to Christ, the more he/she sees, knows and unites with Christ. Unlike the natural world, the mystery of the bridal chamber offers the participant the opportunity for self-knowledge through an ontological change and likeness to Christ. 294 Philip suggested the mysteries of the bridal chamber as the only niche in the sensory world whereby humans were capable of contemplating the absolute truth of the invisible kingdom personified in Christ already in the present time. 295 The

Pelikan 103. See pages 59–61, 65–66. 293 J.-Buckley 570–573. 294 Plotinus, in his treatise on Beauty (I.6.9), developed an epistemological theory that linked vision and likeness also: “To any vision must be brought an eye adapted to what is to be seen, and having some likeness to it. Never did eye see the sun unless it has first become sunlike, and never can the Soul have vision of the First Beauty unless it itself be beautiful.” I used Barasch’s translation of the text. See, Moshe Barasch, Theories of Art. From Plato to Winckelmann (New York and London: New York University Press, 1985) 41. 295 See pages 74–78. 291 292

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question now is why the author of the Gospel of Philip regards likeness as a prerequisite for vision of the true knowledge in the mysteries he describes. Philip considered the revelation of Christ in the world as a two-way process: on the one hand, God descended to the world by taking on a human form, and, on the other, humans ascended into a divinelike state in order to see God: Jesus took them all by stealth, for he did not appear as he was, but in the manner in which [they would] be able to see him. He appeared to [them all. He appeared] to the great as great. He [appeared] to the small as small. He [appeared to the] angels as an angel, and to men as a man. Because of this his word hid itself from everyone. Some indeed saw him, thinking that they were seeing themselves, but when he appeared to his disciples in glory on the mount he was not small. He became great, but he made the disciples great, that they might be able to see him in his greatness. (Gospel of Philip, 57.29–58.10)

The degree to which one saw and knew Christ depended on the degree of one’s ontological likeness to Christ. Christ’s appearances conformed to the beholders’ state of being. Additionally, his disciples were able to see Him in glory by likening their state of being to Christ’s glory. Valantasis opens a window for us to understand the relation between ontology and vision. Valantasis analyses the image theology developed in saying 83 of the Gospel of Thomas. The saying reads: Jesus said, “Images are visible to people, but the light within them is hidden in the image of the Father’s light. He will be disclosed, but his image is hidden by his light.”

Valantasis asserts that the beholder sees in portrait icons the physical representation of a person. Light makes this representation in the icon possible and visible to people. The source of light in the images does not come from the physical representation but it derives from the Father’s light. Concerning the theology of the text Valantasis concludes that all light is strictly located in the Father and “all icons or images must use that light both for representation and as a medium of viewing.” 296 A similar affinity between ontology and vision is also found in the mysteries described in the Gospel of Philip: “Do not despise the lamb, for without it it is not possible to see the king. No one will be able to go in to 296 Richard Valantasis, The Gospel of Thomas, New Testament Readings (London and New York: Routledge, 1997): 162–163.

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the king if he is naked.” (Gospel of Philip, 58.14–17). The participant of the mysteries can see Christ as long as he/she is clothed in the garment of light. The light becomes the new form or “garment” of the regenerated being. 297 The participant receives the light necessary to see and unite with Christ in the mysteries offered in the bridal chamber: “The powers do not see those who are clothed in the perfect light, and consequently are not able to detain them. One will clothe himself in this light sacramentally in the union” (Gospel of Philip, 70.5–9). The light of Christ that the participants receive in the bridal chamber, they also use it to see Christ: “Do not despise the lamb, for without it it is not possible to see the king” (Gospel of Philip, 58.14–15). In the Symposium, Methodius offers a description of the Christians’ future meeting with Christ on the resurrection day, which is rehearsed in the present time similar to that found in the Dura baptistery Women at the Tomb fresco: Indeed, our body is truly, as it were, a lamp with five lights, which the soul carries as a torch to meet Christ her Bridegroom on the day of the resurrection, thus manifesting her faith, which leaps up brightly through her every sense. (Logos 6: Agathe, 3)

The bodies are likened to trimmed lamps “like stars reflecting a full glow of heavenly splendor” (Logos 6: Agathe, 4). Based on the above analysis, it appears that in the service of the Dura-Europos baptistery, vision of Christ through His image requires the ontological regeneration of the participant of this ritual. b. The Anthropology of the Dura-Europos Baptistery Service Based on the above analysis of the room’s visual evidence as well as on the later analysis of the process of the ontological transformation of the initiates, the Dura-Europos baptistery service encourages an inclusive anthropology. In this service, the divine knowledge is communicated to the entire human being. The frescoes of Women at the Tomb and the Woman at the Well indicate that the participants of the baptistery’s service receive the knowledge of the kingdom not in an abstract manner that pertains only to the human intellect but in the form of the bridal garments of light embracing in this way, the entire human being (intellect and body along with its senses and emotions). According to the fresco of the Women at the Tomb, the new 297 See also the discussion of the Dura-Europos service’s anthropology on pages 104–108.

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garment of divine light that the participants receive in the baptistery service images the resurrected body of the end of times. Likewise, the textual sources of the Dura-Europos initiation service support the inclusive anthropology that the visual evidence of the room in question reveals. The author of the Gospel of Philip maintains that the human form is not excluded from knowing the divine and reaching perfection but is regenerated through an imaged resurrection: “There is a rebirth and an image of rebirth. It is certainly necessary to be born again through the image. Which one? Resurrection” (Gospel of Philip, 67.12–15). Philip specifies that the imaged regeneration of the mortal flesh during lifetime that presupposes the final one is a liturgical one related to the mysteries of baptism and chrism: Those who say they will die first and then rise are in error. If they do not first receive the resurrection while they live, when they die they will receive nothing. So also when speaking about baptism they say, “Baptism is a great thing,” because if people receive it they will live. …However, it is from the olive tree that we get the chrism, and from the chrism, the resurrection. (Gospel of Philip, 73.1–8 and 73.17–19)

This liturgical resurrection is a necessary preparation in order for humans to experience the final resurrection in the end of times and to be accepted in the kingdom. The author of the Gospel of Philip condemns those who think that the flesh will not rise and declares the necessity of including it in the final resurrection: I find fault with the others who say that it will not rise. Then both of them are at fault. You (sg.) say that the flesh will not rise. But tell me what will rise, that we may honor you (sg.). You (sg.) say the spirit in the flesh, and it is also this light in the flesh. (But) this too is a matter which is in the flesh, for whatever you (sg.) shall say, you (sg.) say nothing outside the flesh. It is necessary to rise in this flesh, since everything exists in it. In this world those who put on garments are better than the garments. In the kingdom of heaven the garments are better than those who have put them on. (Gospel of Philip, 57.9–22)

The flesh or the form contains both the visible and the invisible part of a human being. All aspects of humans exist in this flesh, even the spirit and the light. The author thinks that the exclusion of the flesh from the resurrection may jeopardize the rising of the spiritual parts of humans. At the same time, though, the flesh by itself appears problematic for the Gospel of Philip since it carries the sign of death in it. Although Philip sympathizes with the human’s need to deal with the kingdom of God in bodily manner, he acknowledges the tragedy of humanity:

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TRACING THE BRIDEGROOM IN DURA Some are afraid lest they rise naked. Because of this they wish to rise in the flesh, and [they] do not know that it is those who wear the flesh who are naked… “Flesh [and blood shall] not inherit the kingdom [of God]” (1 Cor 15.50). What is this which will not inherit? This which is on us. (Gospel of Philip, 56.26–57.1)

The issue of clothing appears to be very significant for the author. The preservation of a form in the resurrection is important but mortal flesh is not adequate and cannot become part of the kingdom. Although humans “wear the flesh,” in reality they lack a body appropriate for the kingdom. “In this world those who put on garments are better than the garments. In the kingdom of heaven the garments are better than those who put them on” (Gospel of Philip, 57.19–22). The flesh of the human beings does not do justice to them and cannot inherit the kingdom. Humans need to acquire an appropriate form or garment in order to be accepted in the kingdom. Philip does not leave the reader without a solution to the question of what kind of being will inherit the kingdom. But what is this, too, which will inherit? It is that which belongs to Jesus and his blood. Because of this he said, “He who shall not eat my flesh and drink my blood has not life in him” (John 6.53). What is it? His flesh is the word, and his blood is the holy spirit. He who has received these has food and he has drink and clothing. (Gospel of Philip, 57.1–8)

Humans are guaranteed resurrection at the end of time as long as they have been liturgically regenerated through their union with Christ, while on earth. The new body of Christ acquired by the participant while on earth inherits the kingdom, and not the mortal flesh. 298 The Acts of Thomas provides us with an instance of bodily resurrection. The king’s brother, Gad, was miraculously brought back to life after he had died and seen the heavenly palace that the apostle Thomas built for the king. Fascinated by that palace, Gad besought angels allow him to return to life so that he could buy the palace from his brother: And as they conversed the soul of Gad his brother departed. The king mourned Gad deeply, for he loved him greatly, and commanded him to be buried in royal and costly apparel. But when this happened, angels took the soul of Gad the king’s brother and carried it up into heaven, showing him the places there and the dwellings and asking him: ‘In what kind of place wouldst thou live?’ But when they drew near to the building of Thomas the apostle, which he built for the king, Gad when he 298

See also Wilson 87–89.

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saw it said to the angels: ‘I pray you, sirs, allow me to live in one of these lower apartments.’ But they said to him: ‘Thou canst not live in this building.’ And he said: ‘Why?’ They said to him: ‘This palace is the one which that Christian built for thy brother.’ But he said: ‘I pray you, sirs, allow me to go to my brother, that I may buy this palace from him…’ Then the angels let Gad’s soul go. And while they were putting the grave clothes on him, his soul entered into him; and he said to those who stood around him: ‘Call to me my brother, that I may ask of him one request.’ So at once they brought the good news to the king, saying: ‘Thy brother is alive again!’ (Acts of Thomas, 22–23)

Gad was miraculously brought to life to buy the palace from his brother. More importantly, what Gad also did was to assure the king about Thomas’s heavenly palace. Since the king could see this palace only after his death, he doubted its existence and put Thomas in prison (Acts of Thomas, 20–21). Gad was resurrected and confirmed for the king the reality of the kingdom of heaven, which he saw with his eyes. Its “eternal goods which were more excellent,” compared to those of the earthly kingdom, and these goods the king was to receive after death (Acts of Thomas, 24). As soon as the king learned about the existence of this heavenly palace that Thomas had built, he and his brother along with others who also believed were converted to and initiated into Thomas’ teaching (Acts of Thomas, 24–27). Although the narrative of Gad’s resurrection functions as a means of the king’s and his brother’s conversion to Thomas’ teaching and to the revelation of Christ’s truth (Acts of Thomas, 25), it also provides evidence of the author’s belief in the bodily resurrection. The initiation of the king and his brother while on earth was a necessary preparation for their acceptance in the heavenly palace after death. We find a similar concern about the inclusion of the body in the resurrection of humans in Methodius of Olympus’ Symposium. Ladner thinks that, unlike the third-century Fathers, Methodius supported the resurrection of humans according to the body or flesh. In line with the views of Paul, Methodius thought that resurrected humans would have a spiritual body, not an incorporeal substance as Origen argued. 299 Daniélou argues that Methodius maintained that the resurrected body was the same as the earthly one and that there was no intermediate body or idol between death and resurrection. 300 The new body that Christians received through liturgical Ladner 10–11. Daniélou 154–170. In this article, Daniélou argued that St. Gregory Nyssa based his ideas on the resurrection on the ideas of Methodius of Olympus. 299 300

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regeneration while on earth was an image of the resurrected one in the end of times. One may say that for Methodius, divine knowledge does not only pertain to the intellect but it also reaches and transforms the body. This is also evident, as Ladner thinks, in the fact that Methodius emphasized the Incarnation of the Word in the flesh, that is, that Christ was revealed visibly so humans might imitate him better. 301 Let us now see how the participant of the Dura-Europos service goes through the necessary transformation, attaining the imaged resurrection in order to unite finally with Christ the Good Shepherd and the Bridegroom through His image. c. Reconstructing the Initiation Bridal Service of the Dura Baptistery An integral part of the service constitutes the element of water that has a heavenly origin. In the baptistery, the water is placed in the font of the canopied structure, that is, the innermost sanctuary, which is a symbol of heaven (fig. I). Furthermore, this heavenly water is used in the service to initiate the participants. The existence of the font and the fresco of the Woman at the Well that presents the participant drawing water from the well testify to this practice (figs. I, VI and 14a-b). 302 Besides water, the service uses light for the ontological transformation of its participants. The participants of the service receive the divine light of Christ that comes from the innermost sanctuary (stars on the acroteria of the white sarcophagus, the star-studded sky on the canopy’s vault, which continues on the ceiling of the room) in the form of white vestments. Unlike the mortals Adam and Eve, the participants of the Dura service are shown dressed in white garments, which, as I argued earlier, are garments of light indicating their bridal relation with Christ the Bridegroom and Light. The new state of the participants’ being, that is, immortality is visualized by this contradiction between the naked first-born (Adam and Eve) and the participants of the service who are placed in the pastures along with the Good Shepherd as shown in the fresco in question 303 and in the figures of the Woman at the Well and the Women at the Tomb frescoes that are dressed in the white garments (figs. I, II and 14a-b). The latter are symbols of immortality.

Ladner 10–11. Kraeling reads the Woman at the Well fresco as symbolizing the participant drawing eternal knowledge in the form of waters. See Kraeling, Final Report 186– 188. 303 See Perkins 53 and page 39. 301

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The author of the Gospel of Philip writes that in the initiation mysteries, the individual is reborn or created anew: It is from water and fire that the soul and the spirit came into being. It is from water and fire and light that the son of the bridal chamber (came into being). The fire is the chrism, the light is the fire. (Gospel of Philip, 67.2–6)

The new being of these mysteries or, the “son of the bridal chamber,” is created by water, fire and light. The author identifies light with fire and chrism: None can see himself either in water or in a mirror without light. Nor again can you (sg.) see in light without water or mirror. For this reason it is fitting to baptize in the two, in the light and the water. Now the light is the chrism. (Gospel of Philip, 69.8–14)

The elements of water and light are essential for the realization and vision of self-identity of the new being. The creation of the son of the bridal chamber takes place in the mysteries of baptism and chrism that consist of water and light respectively. Chrism and baptism are intimately related since they perform the same act of ontological regeneration in the participant. 304 Both mysteries are related with the imaged or liturgical resurrection that the participant goes through while on earth as a prerequisite for the future resurrection in the end of times (Gospel of Philip, 73.1–19). 305 Baptism is the first step of this change. The participant dips into the water of life that was purified by Christ: By perfecting the water of baptism, Jesus emptied it of death. Thus we do go down into the water, but we do not go down into death in order that we may not be poured out into the spirit of the world. When that spirit blows, it brings the winter. When the holy spirit breathes, the summer comes. (Gospel of Philip, 77.7–15)

The element of water is used in baptism symbolically to visualize the purgation and removal of death from the initiate. The latter leaves his old identity by taking off the old garment: “Therefore, when he is about to go down into the water, he unclothes himself, in order that he may put on the living man” (Gospel of Philip, 75.23–24). In the act of baptism, the initiate gives up the old, mortal body and receives the new immortal one of the living man. Rewolinski 111–113. See the analysis of the Gospel of Philip’s ideas on the resurrection in pages 104–106 and Rewolinski 105–117. 304 305

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In the Symposium, the perfect nature and divine origin of the water is also testified. Like in the Dura baptistery, in the Symposium, the water is placed in the innermost sanctuary (Logos 1: Marcella, 1). In like manner to the Dura baptistery visual evidence, the Gospel of Philip reads that when the bridal chamber-innermost sanctuary is revealed, “the perfect light will flow out on every one” (Gospel of Philip, 85.26–27). The divine light of Christ that comes from the innermost sanctuary is granted to the sons of the bridal chamber in chrism. Chrism continues this process of regeneration by granting to the participant the new clothing of light. For this reason, the author of the Gospel of Philip considers chrism superior to baptism: The chrism is superior to baptism, for it is from the word “chrism” that we have been called “Christians,” certainly not because of the word “baptism.” And it is because of the chrism that “the Christ” has his name. For the father anointed the son, and the son anointed the apostles, and the apostles anointed us. (Gospel of Philip, 74.12–18)

The author in this excerpt defines Christian as the one who has received the light in the chrism. According to the author, the name “Christian,” means someone who bears the light that came from the Father through the Son and finally through the apostles. Christians are defined as those who possess the divine light. Chrism is highly valued by the author for the reason that it transfers this light to the newly initiated and enables him/her to liken him/herself to Christ. The one who has acquired the light in the chrism and is called Christian is, for this reason, fully united with Christ: “For this person is no longer a Christian but a Christ” (Gospel of Philip, 67.26–27). This new state of the initiate’s being, that is, bearer of light, is visualized on a material level: I am not referring to that fire which has no form, but to the other fire whose form is white, which is bright and beautiful, and which gives beauty. (Gospel of Philip, 67.6–9)

Light here is not an abstract reality but a specific one that has a material form and external appearance. The new form of light that the initiate receives in chrism is white, bright and beautiful. The son of the bridal chamber or the Dura baptistery service’s initiate is fortunate to be dressed in a beautiful and bright garment. 306 Through the symbolic use of the vest306 Segelberg does not exclude the possibility of the use of a real liturgical dress. See, Segelberg, “The Baptismal Rite,” 125–126.

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ment, the initiate realizes the acquisition of the divine knowledge in the form of clothing. Additionally, the knowledge concerning restoration and the creation of the new body of light in chrism is rendered externally in the mysteries through the symbolic use of olive oil: “However, it is from the olive tree that we get the chrism, and from the chrism, the resurrection” (Gospel of Philip, 73.17–19). The text indicates the liturgical use of oil at the chrism. 307 In the Symposium, we read that the divine light, which comes from the innermost sanctuary, 308 is granted to the virgins in a material, visual form though fire and oil: Indeed, our body is truly, as it were, a lamp with five lights, which the soul carries as a torch to meet Christ her Bridegroom on the day of the resurrection, thus manifesting her faith, which leaps up brightly through her every sense. …For the oil represents wisdom and righteousness: when the soul rains and pours this generously upon the body, the inextinguishable light of virtue flares up high, making its good works shine before men so as to glorify our Father who is in heaven. (Logos 6: Agathe, 3)

The initiates of the mysteries sustain this divine light “by passing on the light from one to another, bringing the fire of incorruption to the world from above” (Logos 6: Agathe, 4). Commenting on the scriptures, Methodius writes that the moonlight, which is the light of the Church, is like lukewarm water, with which the Church washes, regenerates and enlightens its members: It is the Church whose children by baptism will swiftly come running to her from all sides after the resurrection. She it is who rejoices to receive the light which knows no evening, clothed as she is in the brightness of the Word as with a robe. Surely, having light for her garment, what was there more precious or more honorable for her to be clothed in as befitted a queen, to be led as a bride to the Lord, and thus, to be called on by the Spirit? Continuing therefore, I beg you to consider this great Woman as representing virgins prepared for marriage, as she gleams in pure and wholly unsullied and abiding beauty, emulating the brilliance of the lights. For her robe, she is clothed in pure light; instead of jewels, her head is adorned with shinning stars. For this light is for her what clothing is for us. And she uses the stars as we do gold and brilliant gems; but

307 308

Segelberg, “The Coptic-Gnostic Gospel,” 193. Wilson 154. Rewolinski 113. See page 89.

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TRACING THE BRIDEGROOM IN DURA her stars are not like those visible to us on earth, but finer and brighter ones, such that our own are merely their copies and representations. And her standing on the moon, I think, refers by way of allegory to the faith of those who have been purified from corruption by baptism; for moonlight is rather like lukewarm water, and all moist substance depends upon the moon. Thus the Church stands upon our faith and our adoption—signified here by the moon—until the fullness of the Gentiles shall come in, laboring and bringing forth natural men as spiritual men, and under this aspect is she indeed their mother. For just as a woman receives the unformed seed of her husband and after a period of time brings forth a perfect human being, so too the Church, one might say, constantly conceiving those who take refuge in the Word, and shaping them according to the likeness and form of Christ, after certain time makes them citizens of that blessed age. Hence it is necessary that she should stand upon the laver as the mother of those who are washed. So too, the function she exercises over the laver is called the moon because those who are thus reborn and renewed whine with a new glow, that is, with a new light; and hence too they are designed by the expression ‘the newly enlightened’ and she continues to reveal to them the spiritual full moon in her periodic representation of His Passion, until the full glow and light of the great day shall appear. (Logos, 8: Thecla, 5–6)

In the Acts of Thomas, the initiates are granted the divine light in the mystery of chrism (Acts of Thomas, 26–27). 309 Through the symbolic use of water in baptism, vestment and oil in chrism, the initiate of the Dura baptistery service acquires divine knowledge through the sense of touch. The Eucharist takes care of taste. Although the visual evidence of the Dura baptistery does not give any direct information, we cannot exclude the possibility that the celebration of the Eucharist was part of the baptistery’s service, as other scholars have previously suggested. 310 We also know that generally, early Christian initiation included a variety of inter-related mysteries, such as baptism, chrism, Eucharist. The latter appears to have been part of the Mesopotamian initiation rite also. 311 In the Gospel of Philip mysteries, the Eucharist provides the food of the perfect human. Through the material means of the Eucharist, that is, the cup of wine and water, the individual acquires divine knowledge:

See also pages 100–101. See, Kraeling, Final Report 150–151. Clark Hopkins, The Discovery of DuraEuropos (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979) 115. Deanesly 9. 311 See Kraeling, Final Report 197, note 3. See also Acts of Thomas, 26–27. 309 310

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The cup of prayer contains wine and water, since it is appointed as the type of the blood for which thanks is given. And it is full of the holy spirit, and it belongs to the wholly perfect man. When we drink this, we shall receive for ourselves the perfect man. (Gospel of Philip, 75.14–21)

Eucharist that is identified with Jesus (Gospel of Philip, 63.21) 312 is another means for the participant to unite with Christ, the Perfect Man. Through the Eucharist, real life is communicated to humans: “He who shall not eat my flesh and drink my blood has not life in him (John 6.53)” (Gospel of Philip, 57.4–5). In the Acts of Thomas, the Eucharist is used as part of the initiation ritual (Acts of Thomas, 26–27). The service in question that has communicated divine knowledge to the initiate through the senses of touch and taste does not leave the sense of smell unsatisfied. The service of the Dura baptistery uses incense to transform its participants to immortal beings. The open bowls of incense that the figures of the Women at the Tomb carry testify to the use of incense in this service (figs. II and 7). 313 In the mysteries described in the Gospel of Philip, divine knowledge can be also experienced through its fragrance: Knowledge makes them capable of becoming free. Love [never calls] something its own, […] it […] possess […]. It never [says “This is yours”] or “This is mine,” [but “All these] are yours.” Spiritual love is wine and fragrance. All those who anoint themselves with it take pleasure in it. (Gospel of Philip, 77.29–78.1)

The ones who have been initiated into the mysteries bear the fragrance of Christ’s knowledge, which is called “spiritual love.” Thus, the initiates experience this knowledge through the sense of smell also. Even the uninitiated may experience a glance of this knowledge by merely smelling the fragrance coming from the sons of the bridal chamber: “While those who are anointed are present, those nearby also profit (from the fragrance)” (Gospel of Philip, 78.2–3). In addition to the Gospel of Philip, the Acts of Thomas and the Symposium testify to the liturgical use of fragrance. In the Acts of Thomas, the wedding hymn that Thomas sings in the honor of the King of Andrapolis’ daughter serves as an allegory of the marriage between the faithful and Christ. 314 This

Rewolinski 120. See also page 37, note 73. 314 Hennecke and Schneemelcher ed. 330. Robert Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom. A Study in Early Syriac Tradition, reprinted with corrections (Cam312 313

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hymn testifies once more to the fact that divine knowledge, coming forth out of the bridal chamber, is expressed through fragrance and experienced by the participants through smell: The maiden is the daughter of light, Upon her stands and rests the majestic effulgence of kings, Delightful is the sight of her, Radiant with shining beauty. Her garments are like spring flowers, And a scent of sweet fragrance is diffused from them. …Her chamber is full of light, Breathing a scent of balsam and all sweet herbs, And giving out a sweet smell of myrrh and (aromatic) leaves. Within are strewn myrtle branches and … (Acts of Thomas, 6)

Finally in the Symposium, we learn that the virgins who are likened to the golden altar communicate with the Lord in the sanctuary (bridal chamber) through incense: Now the people commonly speak in praise of gold for two reasons: first, because it does not rust, and secondly, because its color seems in a way to resemble the rays of the sun. And thus it is a very appropriate symbol of virginity, which does not admit any stain or spot, but is ever brilliant with the light of the Word. For this reason it stands farther within the Holy of the Holies, and before the veil, sending up prayers like incense to the Lord, with undefiled hands, acceptable for an odor of sweetness. So too did John teach us when he said that the incense in the vials of the twenty-four elders were the prayers of the saints. (Logos 5: Thallusa, 8)

After having been regenerated in baptism and chrism, eaten the food of the perfect man and smelled the divine odor of true love, ontologically changed into a state identical to Christ, the participant in the service is capable of winning the powers that supersede his/her natural power as the fresco of David and Goliath indicates. 315 Here the initiate is represented as David wearing the shepherd’s exomis, which is also worn by Christ the bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) 133–135. K. Mitsakis, Byzantine Hymnographia (Thessalonike: 1971) 147–150. 315 Kraeling’s interpretation of this fresco is line with mine. See Kraeling, Final Report 188–190.

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Good Shepherd, defeating giant Goliath (figs. V and VIIa-b). Likewise, the Gospel of Philip reads that after being ontologically transformed in the mysteries, the initiate “is no longer a Christian but a Christ” (Gospel of Philip, 67.26–27), released from death and untouchable by the powers of evil: Then the slaves will be free [and] the captives ransomed. …He who will receive that light will not be seen, nor can he be detained. And none shall be able to torment a person like this even while he dwells in the world. (Gospel of Philip, 85.28–29, 86.7–11)

The redemption of the initiate is directly related to regeneration and nourishment in the mysteries previously mentioned. 316 The Symposium affirms that these initiated into Christ’s faith become Christ themselves untouchable by the evil powers: Now I think that the Church is here said to bring forth a man child simply because the enlightened spiritually receive the features and image and manliness of Christ; the likeness of the Word is stamped on them and is begotten within them by perfect knowledge and faith, and thus Christ is spiritually begotten in each one. And so it is that the Church is with child and labors until Christ is formed and born within us, so that each of the saints by sharing in Christ is born again as Christ. This is the meaning of a passage of Scripture that says: Touch ye not my anointed; and do no evil to my prophets: those who are baptized in Christ become, as it were, other Christs by a communication of the Spirit, and here it is the Church that effects this transformation into a clear image of the Word. (Logos 8: Thecla, 8)

According to the above analysis, the Dura baptistery initiation service regenerated its participant ontologically by using various material elements that appealed to the entire being of participant (intellect, senses, and emotions). The participants experienced the future resurrection in the liturgical regeneration, that is, their ontological transformation in the present time of this service. This regeneration is necessary in order for the participants to meet Christ both in the present (His image) and in the end of times (Christ Himself). The fresco of the Women at the Tomb relates initiation with the end of times (figures processing before Christ’s epiphany at His tomb). The same fresco indicates that the participants experience the eschatological meeting with Christ the Bridegroom and the final resurrection in the baptistery’s service. The participants go through a liturgical resurrection by becoming brides of Christ. In this new regenerated state of being, they experi316

Segelberg, “The Coptic-Gnostic Gospel,” 195–197.

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ence the future resurrection and meeting with Christ through their union with the image of Christ the Good Shepherd (figs. I and II). The idea that the career of a Christian began in his/her union with Christ in baptism and was consummated in eternity, the resurrection of the end of times was widespread in early Christianity. 317 Resurrection in baptism through regeneration was a necessary preparation of the initiate for the final resurrection in Christ’s Parousia. 318 Earlier in this chapter, we saw Philip arguing that the participant experienced an imaged, liturgical regeneration in anticipation of the future resurrection in the end of times. This regeneration was necessary in order for the participant to meet Christ in initiation ritual and in the end of times. 319 In this regenerated state of being, the participants of the DuraEuropos service process toward the culmination of the ritual, that is, the vision of Christ’s image in the innermost sanctuary of the baptistery. With the culmination of the service in the innermost sanctuary (canopied structure), the participants may gaze upon immortality itself symbolized by the font’s water and contemplate heaven imaged by the innermost sanctuary with Christ’s image at its center. The Women at the Tomb fresco indicates that the initiates, wearing white wedding garments and bearing lamps and bowls of incense enter through the half-opened gates in the baptistery and process toward the innermost sanctuary (the canopied structure) to unite with the image of Christ the Good Shepherd (figs. 4, IIIa-b, 5, 6 and I). The light that the participants wear symbolized by their white, bridal garments, they also use to see Christ the Good Shepherd. The union of the participants with the image of Christ the Good Shepherd and the Bridegroom in this service is a rehearsal of the future meeting with Christ Himself in the end of times as the procession of the women to the white sarcophagus reminds us (fig. II). The participants process both toward the image of the Good Shepherd in the canopied structure’s lunette and the white sarcophagus (fig. I). 320 Rush 83–90. Early Christian funerary art expressed this idea by rendering together the scenes of the miraculous striking of the water by Moses or Peter and the resurrection of Lazarus. See, E. Stommel, Beiträge zur Ikonographie der konstantinischen Sarkophagplastik (Theophaneia 10; Bonn 1954) 82. 318 St Basil, in his homily on baptism, argued that baptism was the power that enabled the final resurrection. See, St. Basil, Homily 13 in sancto baptisma 4 (PG 31, 424). 319 See pages 104–106. 320 See also page 54. 317

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Facing the baptistery’s innermost sanctuary, the brides of Christ contemplate heaven with the image of the Good Shepherd at its center and gaze upon the waters of immortality in the font. Contemplating the fresco at the lunette of the canopied structure, they identify themselves with the rams that the Good Shepherd placed in his pastures (figs. I and V). The initiates know that the emotional bond they developed with Christ in the service of Dura baptistery placed them in heaven already from the present. The pastures of the Garden fresco similar to the ones of the lunette painting indicate that the Dura baptistery is an image of heaven (figs. 15, V). In the Acts of Thomas, initiation, which is a prerequisite for the participants to see Christ, ends with a procession towards Christ’s epiphany. The initiates holding lights and wearing the light of chrism gain full knowledge of Christ only when they see His form. The initiation ritual culminated with the participants’ vision of Christ in the form of “a young man carrying a blazing torch” (Acts of Thomas, 26–27). Contemplating their Lord enlightens the participants of initiation rite. The author of the Acts of Thomas affirms once more in the text that the participants of this ritual gain knowledge or they are enlightened by visually contemplating their Lord: Having their gaze and look toward the bridegroom, That by the sight of him they may be enlightened; And for ever shall they be with him in that eternal joy, And they shall be at that marriage For which the princes assemble together, And shall linger over the feasting Of which the eternal ones are accounted worthy, And they shall put on royal robes And be arrayed in splendid raiment, And both shall be in joy and exultation And they shall glorify the Father of all, Whose proud light they received And were enlightened by the vision of their Lord, Whose ambrosial food they received, Which has no deficiency at all, And they drank too of this wine Which gives them neither thirst nor desire; And they glorified and praised, with the living Spirit, The Father of Truth and the Mother of Wisdom. (Acts of Thomas, 7)

The mysteries narrated in the Gospel of Philip conclude in a manner similar to the one released by the visual evidence of the Dura-Europos baptistery. The author of the Gospel of Philip affirms that through initiation by

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means of sensory elements, the participants are able to enter the space of the bridal chamber and see the truth: Those above opened to us the things below, in order that we may go in to the secret of the truth. This truly is what is held in high regard, (and) what is strong! But we shall go in there by means of lowly types and forms of weakness. They are lowly indeed when compared with the perfect glory. There is glory which surpasses glory. There is power which surpasses power. Therefore the perfect things have opened to us, together with the hidden things of truth. (Gospel of Philip, 85.10–20)

The Gospel of Philip invites the participant to process into the space of the bridal chamber: “The holies of the holies were revealed, and the bridal chamber invited us in” (Gospel of Philip, 85.19–21). The initiate knows that he/she has entered the sanctuary/bridal chamber, the space of Christ’s epiphany because his/her light is lit: “Every one who will [enter] the bridal chamber will kindle the [light], for [...] just as in the marriages which are […] happen at night” (Gospel of Philip, 85.32–35). The light of the sanctuarybridal chamber that the participant received during his/her initiation (white robe), he/she uses it to see Christ the King who resides in the innermost sanctuary-bridal chamber: “Do not despise the lamb, for without it it is not possible to see the king. No one will be able to go into the king if he is naked” (Gospel of Philip, 58.14–17). The bridal chamber mystery is the culmination of the five step initiatory ritual as described in Philip (Gospel of Philip, 67.27–30). The ritual concludes with the entrance of the initiates into the bridal chamber (space of Christ’s epiphany), which means the liturgical regeneration of the participants (likeness to Christ) and vision of the kingdom in the person of Christ. The end of this marriage finds the participants espoused to Christ. The revelation of the bridal chamber mystery happens in anticipation of the revelation of the heavenly bridal chamber in the end of times (Gospel of Philip, 84.20–22). Once more, similarly to the Dura-Europos physical evidence, in the Symposium, the procession of the participants (virgins) culminates with the meeting of Christ in the bridal chamber-innermost sanctuary. The virgins pray that they might enter through the gates in the bridal chamber: “Receive us too, O Father, with Thy Servant, within the Gates of Life” (Thecla’s Hymn 24). The virgins experience the eschatological meeting with Christ the Bridegroom in the present time: “Go then, virgin band of the new dispensation, go fill your vessels with justice. For it is time now to rise and meet the Bridegroom” (Logos 6: Agathe, 5). The virgins, dressed in white robes and holding lamps, process to meet Christ:

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From on high, there has come, O virgins, the sound of the cry that wakes the dead, bidding us to go to meet the Bridegroom in the east with all speed in white robes and with our lamps. Awake, before the King enters within the gates. (Thecla’s Hymn, 1)

The meeting with Christ takes place in the bridal chamber: For Thee, my King, have I refused a mortal marriage and a home rich in gold, and I have come to Thee in immaculate robes that I may enter with Thee Thy blessed bridal chamber. (Thecla’s Hymn, 3)

The procession on earth unites with that in heaven rehearsing in this way the future eschatological experience: I am in the choral band in heaven with Christ my Rewarder, around the King who always was and ever shall be. I am the lamp-bearer of unapproachable lights, and I sing the new song in the company of the archangels, announcing the Church’s new grace. For the Scriptures proclaim that the band of virgins ever follows the Lord and forms his train wherever He may be. (Logos 6: Agathe, 5)

In the refrain of Thecla’s hymn, Methodius refers again to the procession of the virgins towards Christ: “Chastely I live for Thee, And holding my lighted lamps, My Spouse, I go forth to meet Thee” (Refrain, Thecla’s Hymn). The virgins of the procession are able to fulfill their desire to unite with Christ and contemplate Him uninterruptedly, which signifies the completion of this marriage: Flying from the riches of mortals that brings only wealth of sorrow, from love, from the delights and pleasures of this life, I desire to be sheltered in Thy life-giving arms and to gaze forever on Thy beauty, Blessed One.” (Thecla’s Hymn, 2)

In the end, the band of the virgins who trust in Christ and liken themselves to Him are the ones who will see Christ: Eubulion. Are we then to call pure those souls who lead lives of calm, unruffled by concupiscence? Gregorion. Indeed we are. For these are the ones whom the Lord calls divine in the Beatitudes, declaring plainly that those who trust in Him without question shall see God; for they introduce nothing into their souls which might darken or disturb the eye of the soul in its divine contemplation. And they not only keep, as I said, their flesh pure of carnal knowledge, dwelling as they do beyond the reach of worldly desires, but in addition they make their hearts inaccessible to all impure thoughts;

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5 CONCLUSION In this book I examined the sources of the Byzantine Matins of Christ the Bridegroom as these may be traced in the initiation bridal service of the Dura-Europos Christian House Baptistery. I analysed the Dura baptistery service through the aid of the archaeological evidence of the room and the textual sources of the Gospel of Philip, Acts of Thomas, and the Symposium. I argued that the Dura baptistery initiation bridal service aimed at transforming the participants into brides of Christ and uniting them with Christ the Good Shepherd and the Bridegroom through His image, which was the center of this ritual. The knowledge concerning the kingdom is revealed in the baptistery’s sacred space personified by Christ who appears by means of His image. Images along with elements of the ceremonial are used in this service to communicate the knowledge concerning the kingdom revealed in the person of Christ to the entire being of the participant (mind, senses, emotions) at a time that the artistic dimension of worship was treated with scepticism by ancient Christian intellectuals and its presence in the preConstantinian Christian liturgy questioned by scholars. The Dura baptistery ritual is the earliest known instance of an eastern Iconophile service. The texts of the Gospel of Philip, Acts of Thomas and Symposium provided us with a unique lens for the reconstruction of the Dura-Europos Christian baptistery initiation service as well as the substantiation of the aesthetic dimension of this service, which was previously impossible due to the lack of appropriate textual sources. The texts in question reflected liturgical practices analogous to that testified by the visual language of the Dura baptistery. Particularly in the Gospel of Philip and the Symposium we found definitions and arrangements of the liturgical space as well as liturgical practices (description of the innermost sanctuary, procession to Christ’s image, liturgical use of images and elements of the ceremonial, presence of Christ through His image) exactly parallel to those found in Dura. Thus, we were able to comprehend further the service that took place in the Dura baptistery. The latter proved a unique religious edifice prior to the peace of the Church that incorporated images in its ritual. We may then classify this baptistery as the earliest known and precisely dated instance of an above ground Christian religious edifice that hosted an Iconophile service. Finally, I will note that the implementation of these texts to the analysis of the 121

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Dura-Europos Christian baptistery service enabled us to discover and realize the artistic and dramatic dimension of the rituals preserved in these texts, a dimension that proves extremely important for their further comprehension as well as for the religious traditions they preserve. The question of the religious beliefs of the Dura Christian community is a topic that, although it cannot be exhaustibly studied within the scope of this book, one cannot avoid expressing several thoughts on it. We know that early Christian communities in Syria and Mesopotamia made less use of the New Testament scripture and preferred texts, such as Tatian’s Diatessaron, and the Acts of Thomas, a fact which is also true for the Christian community of Dura. 321 The inadequacy of the canonical sources for a comprehensive interpretation of the service of the Dura baptistery is a solid proof of the use of non-canonical sources by the members of this community. Based on the above and given the implementation of texts that can be characterized as Gnostic, such as the Acts of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip for the analysis of the Dura baptistery service, I may argue the influence of Gnosticism on the religion of the Dura baptistery community. Nevertheless, scholarship has indicated the risk of attributing labels (for instance Gnostic) to communal beliefs and practices. Furthermore, the intension to characterize religious beliefs and practices that do not fully conform to canonical sources heretical and exclude them from the mainstream Church tradition has been proved to be misleading for the historian. 322 For instance, scholars have acknowledged the affect that the Gnostic movement had on Christian worship. 323 In the Gnostic Gospel of Philip one may recognize ritual practices that betray a sacramental theology comKraeling, Final Report 114–121. Investigating the religious beliefs of the Dura-Europos Christian community, although Kraeling acknowledges its Gnostic tendencies among others, he prefers to avoid specific characterizations for the religion of this community and argues for a regional Christianity, typical of the area of Mesopotamia. See, Kraeling, Final Report 102–126 and also 119–121. Pagels, “Ritual in the Gospel of Philip,” 280– 281 and 282–291. For issues of orthodoxy and heresy in pre-Constantinian Christianity, see the innovative study of Walter Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, second German edition, with added appendices, by Georg Strecker, trans. by a team from the Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins and ed. by Robert A. Kraft and Gerhard Krodel (Mifflintown, PA: Sigler Press, 1996). 323 D. H. Tripp, “Gnosticism,” The Study of Liturgy, revised edition, ed. C. Jones, G. Wainwright, E. Yarnold SJ, P. Bradshaw (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) 82. 321 322

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mon to the majority of its contemporary Christianity, such as the Didache, Justin’s Apology as well as the Johannine and Pauline theological tradition. 324 Moreover, the extensive use of the bridal, mystical imagery in the Gospel of Philip is shared by the early church fathers, such as Methodius as we saw in the analysis of the Dura baptistery service as well as by later ones, such as Cyril of Jerusalem (as I indicate later in this chapter) and St. John Chrysostom. 325 The analysis of the Dura baptistery service indicated that early Christian mystical writers, such as Methodius shared common liturgical and theological ideas with texts that have been characterized Gnostic, such as the Gospel of Philip and Acts of Thomas. Methodius’ ideas were adopted later by the eastern Church Fathers, such as Gregory Nyssa. 326 As we will realize later in this chapter, the author of the Gospel of Philip shares similar ideas on the use of images in the liturgy with those developed in the writings of the fifth-century Pseudo-Dionysius. Additionally, Pallas has indicated parallels between the hymn found in the apocryphal text of the Acts of John and the patristic literature. 327 Wellesz has argued the preservation of Gnostic, Neo-Pythagorean and Neoplatonic elements in Byzantine musical theory. 328 On the basis of the above and the evidence of the baptistery service analysis, although the world-view of Dura-Europos Christian baptistery community may be characterized as influenced by Gnosticism, I consider the religious beliefs and practices of this community as part of the broad and rich Christian tradition (canonical and non-canonical) that contributed to the creation of the early Christian identity, pieces of which can be traced even after its codification in the fourth-century up until Byzantine times (as this study also proves). As Hans Jonas observes in his study of the Gnostic movement, one should rather look for general principles present in the traditions that influenced the formation of Christianity, such as the idea of “the unknown God,” found both in a Gnostic hymn and in a hymn by Gregory the Theologian. 329

Pagels, “Ritual in the Gospel of Philip,” 280–291. Rush 83. 326 Daniélou 154–170. See also page 107, note 300. 327 Pallas, Synagoge meleton, vol. 2, 337–380 and especially 357–358. 328 Wellesz 97. 329 Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion. The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, second edition revised (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991) 3–27 and 288– 289. 324 325

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By developing this inclusive epistemology and anthropology at this early stage of Christian spirituality, the Dura baptistery service anticipated many of the later developments in the liturgical tradition of the East and of Byzantium. It stands at the beginnings of the tradition of a type of worship that used images symbolically and that was continued in the East. 330 I will refer to several instances that testify to the continuity of this tradition in the East as well as indicate the affinity of the Dura-Europos Christian baptistery service with the later Byzantine tradition. In chapter three, we saw that the Anastasis rotunda was related to the service of the Lychnikon that included a lamplighting procession culminating at the cave inside the Anastasis where the Holy Fire was burning day and night. 331 It is interesting to see that, as in Dura-Europos Christian baptistery, here initiation was related to Christ’s revelation by means of material symbols and images. Egeria informed us that during the paschal vigil, the bishop led the newly baptized to the Anastasis Rotunda. 332 Additionally, in the fourth-century writings of Cyril of Jerusalem we found the mention of the liturgical use of elements of the ceremonial. 333 Like in the Dura baptistery service, Cyril of Jerusalem, in his Mystagogical Catecheses, additionally to the implementation of the elements of the ceremonial into Christian worship, makes extensive use of bridal imagery in relation to the rite of baptism. The initiates are likened to brides processing to meet Christ the Bridegroom in the bridal chamber-font. 334

330 The liturgical use of images is peculiar to the Eastern Christian spirituality. In the West, although images were worshipped, they were always dissociated from the Eucharistic liturgy and office. See, Dix 424. Unlike Byzantium, in the West, medieval popular culture and devotion remained dissociated from the official liturgy and spirituality of the Church. See, Camille 197–241. Additionally, the emergence of the popular liturgical drama in the Western Middle Ages demonstrated that the emotional and dramatic element developed outside the High Mass of the Western Medieval Church. On the issue of liturgy and theater in the West, see the work of John Wesley Harris, The Medieval Theater in Context. An Introduction (London and New York: Routledge, 1992). 331 See pages 69–70. 332 Wilkinson 57–59, 72–73, 77, 157–158, 161–163. 333 See page 69. 334 Leo P. McCauley, S.J. & A. A. Stephenson, trans., The Works of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem. The Fathers of the Church. A New Translation (Washington, D. C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1969. 1) 109.

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In the writings of the fifth-century Pseudo-Dionysius one may find theoretical considerations on the liturgical use of images 335 similar to the ones that permeated the service of the Dura-Europos Christian baptistery, especially as these principles were theoretically articulated by the author of the Gospel of Philip. Although Dionysius thought that God’s revelation in the world of senses was always limited and relative, humans could glimpse the vision of divine knowledge through perceptible means used in the liturgy, sacred symbols, and images: “Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” But there is something more. Inspired by the Father, each procession of the Light spreads itself generously toward us, and, in its power to unify, it stirs us by lifting us up. It returns us back to the oneness and deifying simplicity of the Father who gathers us in. For, as the sacred Word says, “from him and to him are all things.” Let us, then, call upon Jesus, the Light of the Father, the “true light enlightening every man coming into the world,” “through whom we have obtained access” to the Father, the light which is the source of all light. …We must lift up the immaterial and steady eyes of our minds to that outpouring of Light which is so primal, indeed much more so, and which comes from that source of divinity, I mean the Father. This is the Light which, by way of representative symbols, makes known to us the most blessed hierarchies among the angels. But we need to rise from this outpouring of illumination so as to come to the simple ray of Light itself. Of course this ray never abandons its own proper nature, or its own interior unity. …However, this divine ray can enlighten us only by being upliftingly concealed in a variety of sacred veils which the Providence of the Father adapts to our nature as humans beings. …For it is quite impossible that we humans should, in any immaterial way, rise up to imitate and to contemplate the heavenly hierarchies without the aid of those material means capable of guiding us as our nature requires. Hence, any thinking person realizes that the appearances of beauty are signs of an invisible loveliness. The beautiful odors which

335 The use of “image” in Pseudo-Dionysius cannot be taken as alluding to the later, technical term for image or picture. See, Paul Rorem, Biblical and Liturgical Symbols within the Pseudo-Dionysian Synthesis (Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984) 56, note 27, and 27–131. See also Barasch, Icon 158–160 and Henry Maguire, Art and Eloquence in Byzantium (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981) 10.

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Dionysius emphasized the sacred character of perceptible images, and thought that they led the faithful to the contemplation of the divine hierarchies, and finally to union with God. The function of these images was to bridge the gap between the visible and invisible world, earth and heaven. These “sacred shapes” were the vessels that led humans from the sensory world to that of the invisible kingdom of God. They functioned as a ladder to heaven. 337 As Barasch notes, Dionysius argued that the revelation of God in the sacraments was “not a mere optical illusion” of our senses but expressed true knowledge of God. Barasch maintains that the idea of similarity that was crucial to Dionysian thought overcame the limits of sensory knowledge and guaranteed the reality of that knowledge. A thing was similar to another because it shared the nature of the other being. Thus, knowledge of that being through similarity was objective since those two beings were ontologically connected. God revealed Himself in the sacred sensory mysteries, and in this way He revealed Himself to the sensory world. The symbols and images used in the mysteries partook in the nature of Christ and humans could know Christ by partaking also into those mysteries. The vision of God by humans depended on the degree of their ontological affinity (likeness) to God. 338 For Dionysius humans knew truly only what they were likened to It is while there are placed on the divine altar the reverend symbols by which Christ is signalled and partaken that one immediately reads out

Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid (New York: Paulist Press, 1987) 145–147. 337 Barasch, Icon 179. Rorem 99–105. See also, Pelikan 109. 338 Barasch, Icon 168–179. 336

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the names of the saints. It is made clear in this way that they are unshakably bound to him in a sacred and transcendent union. 339

The participants of the mysteries knew Christ as long as they could become sanctified by their participation in the divine sacred symbols used in the mysteries. Once humans had become perfect through conformity to God, they had true knowledge and they were able to read immediately the visible signs of God they saw in the liturgy since they were similar (alike) to God and them. Vision, knowledge, and likeness were interrelated in Dionysius’ thought. At this point, Pseudo-Dionysius’ theory of knowledge reminds us of the one found in the service of the Dura-Europos baptistery, a theory systematically developed by the author of the Gospel of Philip. For both authors, sensory images that are used liturgically revealed the invisible kingdom, effected the ontological transformation of the participant, and led him/her to the vision of the divine knowledge while on earth. Vision of true knowledge, that is, Christ was possible only by means of the participant’s likeness to Christ. Likeness was a prerequisite of vision. For the author of the Gospel of Philip as well as for Dionysius, images were the vessels through which the material world was elevated to the immaterial, divine one. Perfection for both writers was considered the passage from the world of senses to the invisible kingdom. Sensory images were the only means for that transition. 340 The Byzantine Iconophiles also expressed liturgical principles found already in the third-century initiation service of the Dura-Europos Christian baptistery. The Iconophiles maintained that liturgy ought to have a double character, an invisible and a visible one appealing thus, to both the human intellect and senses. John of Damascus in the seventh and eighth-centuries explained the process by which knowledge was communicated to human beings: A certain perception takes place in the brain, prompted by the bodily senses, which is then transmitted to the faculties of discernment, and adds to the treasury of knowledge something that was not there before. 341 Pseudo-Dionysius 219. See pages 75–78. 341 St. John of Damascus, On the Divine Images. Three Apologies Against Those Who Attack the Divine Images, trans. David Anderson (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000) 20. 339 340

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To John, the intellect and the senses collaborated for the transmission of knowledge to humans. Unlike the Iconoclasts who argued for a purely intellectual worship, John of Damascus claimed that as a human being occupying a body he wished to know God both through the intellect and senses. 342 The Greek word graphe meant writing and painting, as well as narrative, so that a historia could be either a written history or a painting. 343 The Byzantines adopted this tradition and used both writing and painting to represent a historical event. St. Basil of Caesaria, in his liturgical homily on the Forty Martyrs of Sebasteia, explained that events of wars could be recorded either in writing or painting. 344 When John of Damascus discussed the different types of images, he referred to those that served to record events and these recorded images were both “in the form of speech that is written in books…and in the form of visual contemplation….” 345 In his oration On the Divine Images, the same author argued that the Incarnate God gives one the right to depict Him in both writing and painting: It is obvious that when you contemplate God becoming man, then you may depict Him clothed in human form. When the invisible One becomes visible to flesh, you may then draw His likeness. When He who is bodiless and without form, immeasurable in the boundlessness of His own nature, existing in the form of God, empties Himself and takes the form of a servant in substance and in stature and is found in a body of flesh, then you may draw His image and show it to anyone willing to gaze upon it. …Use every kind of drawing, word, or color. 346

It seems that in the Byzantine tradition, writing and painting were two correlative means of representation that appealed to the sense of hearing and seeing respectively. As Pelikan notes, according to the Byzantine Iconophiles, material reality along with the human senses had now been sanctified through the Incarnation of the Logos, and therefore could be used to worship Christ. The various senses were not only part of the liturgy, but they were assigned a particular liturgical function. For instance, the sense of smell was related to the incense used in the liturgy, the sense of 342 Pelikan

107–119. Maguire, Eloquence 9. 344 Homilia XIX. In sanctos quadraginta martyres, para. 2, PG, 31, cols. 508C– 509A. I used Maguire’s translation of the text. See, Maguire, Eloquence 9. 345 Cyril Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire. 312–1453. Sources and Documents (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997) 172. 346 St. John of Damascus 18. 343

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touch to chrism, the sense of taste to the Eucharist, the sense of hearing to the spoken word, and finally, the sense of sight to the contemplation of the divine images. 347 John of Damascus argued that “we use all our senses to produce worthy images of Him, and we sanctify the noblest of the senses, which is that of sight.” 348 The sense of sight was highly respected in the ancient Greek and Byzantine tradition and it was identified with knowledge. 349 The sanctification of the senses through the various mysteries in the liturgy aimed at the transformation of the faithful and his/her union with Christ. In the space of the liturgy, the invisible secrets of the Kingdom became visible in the eyes of the congregation through the use of arts. The emotional union of the beholder with the divine through sacred images that we saw in the Dura-Europos baptistery service was also preserved in the Iconophile tradition of Byzantium. The images that were used in the liturgy aimed at uniting the beholder with the divine by triggering his/her emotions. Gregory Nyssa, in his Encomium of St. Theodore illustrated very clearly the belief of the Byzantines in the unique quality of images to orient the beholder’s senses and emotions towards the divine. Gregory described the faithful as being emotionally involved in the visual contemplation of the martyr’s bones that contained the visual element of an icon: “Those who behold them embrace, as it were, the living body itself in its full flower, they bring eye, mouth, ear, all their senses into play, and then, shedding tears of reverence and passion, they address to the martyr their prayer of intercession as though he were hale and present.” 350

From Egeria we learn that the participants were involved in the service of the divine pathos by means of arts and emotions: There are a great many people and they have been crowed together, tired by their vigil, and weakened by their daily fasting—and they have had a very big hill to come down—so they go very slowly on their way to Gesthemane. So that they can all see, they are provided with hundreds of church candles. When everyone arrives at Gesthemane, they have an appropriate prayer, a hymn, and then a reading from the Gospel about the Lord’s arrest. By the time it has been read everyone is groanPelikan 106–113. St. John of Damascus 25. 349 Barasch, Icon 67 and Pelikan 103. See also pages 101–102. 350 Kitzinger 116. 347 348

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TRACING THE BRIDEGROOM IN DURA ing and lamenting and weeping so loud that people even across in the city can probably hear it all. 351

Another instance of employment of emotions in the artistic liturgical environment comes from the description of the painting of St. Euphemia’s martyrdom by bishop Asterius of Amasea who saw the painting in the church dedicated to the martyr. Asterius was so moved by the painting that he could hardly speak: But now I am shedding tears and my emotion impedes my speech: for the artist has so clearly painted the drops of blood that you would say that they are really pouring from her lips, and you would go away weeping. 352

Asterius considered the painter successful for the reason that he managed to move his emotions. Asterius like other Christian writers of his time who were trained in classical paideia, such as the Cappadocians, employed rhetorical figures to trigger his audience’s emotions. The same author informs us that this “sacred picture” was placed by saint’s fellow-citizens close to her tomb where the clergy “celebrate her memory in speech and act, and they studiously expound to the assembled crowds how it was that she accomplished her contest of endurance.” 353 The painting of St. Euphemia was considered sacred and it was used to communicate knowledge to the congregation concerning the life of the saint. The best manner for the people to learn about the saint was to emotionally identify with her and imitate her in the liturgy. A similar use of a saint’s icons in the liturgy comes from the PseudoChrysostom’s homily on St. Thecla. The relation between Christ and Thecla is described as that of Bridegroom and bride. Throughout her martyrdom, the saint developed a love relation with Christ the Bridegroom. The icon of the saint was placed in front of the altar and was the main means through which the priest communicated the story to the congregation. The latter was called to imitate the saint by becoming brides of Christ. The icon was placed in the church during the liturgy and was available for private meditation by each member of the congregation. 354 Wilkinson 154. Maguire, Eloquence 35. 353 Mango 38. 354 Dennis R. MacDonald and Andrew D. Scrimgeour, “Pseudo-Chrysostom’s Panegyric to Thecla: The Heroine of the Acts of Paul in Homily and Art,” Semeia 38 351 352

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The emotional approach of the divine was emphasized by the postIconoclastic art. Scholars generally characterize the art after Iconoclasm as an emotional one. 355 The tradition that was preserved in an Iconophile milieu finally began to establish itself in the official Byzantine culture. Mathews pointed to the psychological dimension of the art of Eastern Christendom and the emphasis that this art put on the emotions to communicate its message. 356 It is worth quoting Nicholas Mesarites, a twelfthcentury writer, who describes Christ the Pantocrator on the dome of the Church of the Holy Apostles, to see that Christ (as in the Dura baptistery service) was made present though His image and understood mainly through the heart of the faithful: This dome, starting at its very base, exhibits an image of the God-man Christ looking down, as it were, from the rim of heaven towards the floor of the church and everything that is in it. …Wherefore He may be seen, to quote her who sings [in the Canticle], looking forth through the windows, leaning out down to his navel through the lattice which is near the summit of the dome, after the manner of irresistibly ardent lovers.357

In particular, the tenth and eleventh-centuries were the time that art and poetry took on an emotional character. The rhetorical tradition of antiquity that remained vivid in Byzantium was employed in the eleventhcentury poetry and painting with the purpose of arousing the emotions of the beholder. 358 The “icons in new style” or the “living painting” as art historians call the art of this time, conveyed high theological meaning through emotions. The eleventh-century art aimed at touching the beholder’s heart. Both word and painting aimed at bringing in the liturgical space events of the past or future as vivid as possible through emotions. 359 Moreover, the Byzantine art of the same time, and until the end of the Byzantine State wished to cause the beholder to break into tears and (1986): 151–159. I thank Professor Richard Valantasis for bringing this article to my attention. 355 Cormack 153. 356 Thomas F. Mathews, “Psychological Dimensions in the Art of Eastern Christendom,” Art and Religion: Faith, Form and Reform. 1984 Paine Lectures in Religion, ed. Osmund Overby (University of Missouri-Columbia, 1986) 1–21. 357 Mango 232. 358 For an extensive treatment of the influence of ancient Greek rhetoric on Byzantine poetry and painting as well as the interdependence of the two see, Maguire, Eloquence. 359 Belting, Likeness 261–296.

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through this emotional transformation to enable the beholder’s complete union with God. The lamentation of the Virgin over the dead Christ was a very popular theme in both the poetry and in iconography of this period. Motifs from the classical Greek mythology and art were applied to MiddleByzantine art to express this time the pathos of Christ. 360 Lament and tears were considered a human expression of divine quality by the postIconoclasm Byzantine society. The Matins of Christ the Bridegroom of the Greek Orthodox Holy Week whose origins I studied in this book is a luminous instance of a service that prepares the participant emotionally to unite ontologically with Christ the Bridegroom through contemplation of His Icon. After the end of Iconoclasm, elements of the tradition of Palestine, such as lamps, icons as well as the custom of concealing the gifts of the Eucharist by the erection of the Iconostasis, previously unknown to Constantinople, became part of the liturgy of the Byzantine capital. 361 The Iconophile liturgical tradition at whose origins lay the Dura-Europos Christian House baptistery service was well established in the official culture of Byzantium toward the end of the empire. 362

Kurt Weitzmann, “The Origin of the Threnos,” De artibus opuscula XL. Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofski, ed. M. Meiss (New York, 1961) 476–490. Kurt Weitzmann, “The Survival of Mythological Representations in Early Christian and Byzantine Art and their Impact on Christian Iconography,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 14 (1960): 45–68. Henry Maguire, “The Depiction of Sorrow in Middle Byzantine Art,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 31 (1977): 125–174. 361 Bertonière 123. Taft, Great Entrance 405–416. Mathews, Early Churches 162– 171. Belting, Likeness 164–183 and 228–230. We saw that the covering of the innermost sanctuary was an early custom in Eastern Christianity. See pages 26–27 and page 97, note 283. Unlike the East, in the West, the Host became an image to be seen and an object for veneration after the fourth Lateran Council. This explains the lack of the Iconostasis, as well as the absence of the liturgical use of images in the Western mass. See, Camille 215–220. Julian Walter, “The Origins of the Iconostasis,” Eastern Churches Review 3.3 (1971): 251–267. 362 See also, Belting, Likeness 228–230. 360

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Taft observes that in the Byzantine Office, liturgy is understood as “the place of theophany” and the celebration of the Eucharist is performed together with the liturgical use of light. 363 It appears that the two traditions, that is, the Constantinopolitan and that of Palestine have finally come together in the Byzantine office, which is still a living and valid tradition for the Greek as well as for other Orthodox Churches of today.

363

Taft, Hours 285–288.

APPENDIX

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Fig. 1. Άκρα Ταπείνωση (Imago Pietatis) (mosaic icon), c. 1300. Santa Croce in Gerusalemme.

APPENDIX

Fig. 2. Icon of Christ the Nymhios by Ilias Moschos, 1684.

137

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Fig. 3. The Christian Building. Simplified ground plan.

Fig. 4. Women at the Tomb, hypothetical reconstruction of the sequence of scenes.

APPENDIX 139

Fig. 5. East Wall, Lower Register. Women at the Tomb, first element.

140 TRACING THE BRIDEGROOM IN DURA

Fig. 6. North wall, lower register, east end, Women at the Tomb, second and third elements.

APPENDIX 141

Fig. 7. Women at the Tomb, third element, north wall, west end, tracing and Women at the Tomb, third element, north wall, west end, diagram of space used.

142 TRACING THE BRIDEGROOM IN DURA

Fig. 8. Painted decoration of the cella of the temple of Zeus Theos (Restoration by F. Brown).

APPENDIX 143

144

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Fig. 9. Diagram of the decorations of the baptistery. North and south walls.

APPENDIX

Fig. 10. Rome, Catacomb of Domitilla. Ceiling painting.

145

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Fig. 11. Rome, Catacomb of San Callisto, Crypt of Lucina. The Good Shepherd.

Fig. 12. Rome, Catacomb of Priscilla. The Good Shepherd; Isaiah (or Balaam pointing to the Star) with the Virgin and Child.

APPENDIX 147

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Fig. 13. Ceiling painting, catacombs of SS. Peter and Marcellinus, Rome. Center: The Good Shepherd. Four quarters: The story of Jonah.

Fig. 14a. The Woman at the Well. Excavation photograph.

b. The Woman at the Well. Tracing.

APPENDIX 149

Fig. 15. Garden Scene. Excavation photograph.

150 TRACING THE BRIDEGROOM IN DURA

APPENDIX

151

Fig. 16. The Holy Women at the Tomb of Christ. Palestinian ampulla, abbey of St. Columban, Bobbio, prov. Piacenza [124].

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Fig. 17. Mausoleum of El-Bagawat.

152

Fig. 18. Procession of Hunters to the Temple of Apollo and Diana, mosaic in a villa at Kheredinne in Carthage, c. 400.

APPENDIX 153

Fig. 19. Procession of Bacchic Cupbearers, floor mosaic from Alcada de Henares, c. 400, Madrid.

154 TRACING THE BRIDEGROOM IN DURA

Fig. 20. Rome, Catacomb of Priscilla, “Capella Greca.” Eucharistic Meal: “Fractio panis.”

APPENDIX 155

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Fig. 21. Rome, Catacomb of SS. Pietro e Marcellino, Hall of the Tricliniarch. Celestial Banquet.

Fig. 22. Rome, Catacomb of San Callisto, Chapel of the Sacraments. Eucharistic Meal.

APPENDIX 157

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Fig. 23. Temple of Bel, sacrifice of Konon-National Museum, Damascus.

APPENDIX

159

Fig. 24. Porphyry portrait bust of an emperor, probably Licinius, A.D. 307-323, Museum of Cairo.

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Fig. 25. Suchos and Isis, c.200. Tempera on board. Ägyptishe Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin.

APPENDIX

161

Fig. 26. Heron and Anonymous Military God, c.200. Tempera on board. Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire Brussels.

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Fig. 27 Aedicula in the naos of the Temple of Bel.

APPENDIX

Fig. 28. Excavation photograph of the late sanctuary of the mithraeum.

163

Fig. 29. Synagogue as reconstructed by H. Pearson in the Museum of Damascus (northern half of the back wall and a part of the northern side wall).

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Fig. 30. Isometric drawing by Henry Pearson of the last redecoration of the mithraeum which took place around 240 A.D. The area of the niche is shaded.

APPENDIX 165

Fig. I. Dura-Europos. ‘Christian House,’ Baptistery: Overall View. Yale, University Art Gallery.

APPENDIX 167

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Fig. II. The Women at the Tomb, third element, north wall, west end.

b. The Women at the Tomb, second element, north wall, east end.

Fig. III. a. The Women at the Tomb, first element, west wall.

APPENDIX 169

Fig. IV. The Healing of the Paralytic and the Walking on the Water.

170 TRACING THE BRIDEGROOM IN DURA

Fig. V. Dura-Europos. ‘Christian House,’ Baptistery: The Good Shepherd and his Flock. Yale, University Art Gallery.

APPENDIX 171

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Fig. VI. The Woman at the Well. South wall.

APPENDIX

Fig. VIIa. David and Goliath. South Wall.

b. David and Goliath. Tracing.

173

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