Women and Gender in Ancient Religions: Interdisciplinary Approaches 9783161515521, 9783161505799

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Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Herausgeber / Editor Jörg Frey (Zürich) Mitherausgeber / Associate Editors Friedrich Avemarie (Marburg) Markus Bockmuehl (Oxford) Hans-Josef Klauck (Chicago, IL)

263

Women and Gender in Ancient Religions Interdisciplinary Approaches

Edited by

Stephen P. Ahearne-Kroll, Paul A. Holloway and James A. Kelhoffer

Mohr Siebeck

Stephen P. Ahearne-Kroll is Associate Professor of New Testament, Methodist Theological School in Ohio, Delaware, Ohio, USA. Paul A. Holloway is Associate Professor of New Testament in the School of Theology at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. James A. Kelhoffer is Associate Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature, Saint Louis University.

e-ISBN PDF 978-3-16-151552-1 ISBN 978-3-16-150579-9 ISSN 0512-1604 (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament) Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. © 2010 by Mohr Siebeck Tübingen, Germany. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was printed by Gulde-Druck in Tübingen on non-aging paper and bound by Buchbinderei Spinner in Ottersweier. Printed in Germany.

 

Foreword The past twenty years or so has seen a healthy blossoming of work on ancient Mediterranean religions – and I especially wish to draw attention to the plural noun with which I ended that phrase: one important advance has been an enhanced appreciation of the fact that ancient Mediterranean religions must be studied in the same way as they were often practiced: in concert with one another. As Carin Green reminds us in her essay in this volume, to do otherwise is to institute a “divide that is utterly false to the subjects themselves.” Several new Program Units at the American Academy of Religion and the Society for Biblical Literature have explicitly set out to address ancient religions from a comparative perspective or to question traditionally acceptable divisions between Judaism and Christianity, Christianity and various paganisms, or within the paganisms (or Christianities and Judaisms for that matter) themselves. Established graduate programs have added comparative requirements to their curricula; newer graduate programs have been founded on the premise that no ancient Mediterranean religion can be studied in isolation from the others. At about the same time (although, notably, nowhere near as visibly at the AAR and SBL) the importance of understanding women’s religious experiences, in the ancient world and elsewhere, began to be more keenly appreciated. This brought a new awareness, however, of the difficulties of recreating female experience for any time prior to about the twentieth century. How can we properly dissect the comments of male writers and the artistic creations of male painters and sculptors in order to arrive at some approximation of what it was like to be a female participating in a religious system? How do we read the second-hand cues our texts and artifacts provide, and how do we expunge from ourselves the accumulation of androcentric impressions that we accrue from reading the scholarship of the past few centuries? Although the challenges inherent in these questions have not yet been fully met, certainly there has been progress in recent years, especially in conceptualizing the issues (as Patricia Ahearne-Kroll particularly demonstrates, in this volume, throughout her discussion of Joseph and Aseneth). Interestingly, however, there have been very few attempts to build on these developments by bringing these two areas of inquiry together: few scholars have set out to study the religious lives of ancient Mediterranean women within a comparative context. Thus, the present volume is all the more welcome. Classicists rub elbows with scholars of Judaism and Chris-



VI 

Foreword

tianity; the words of Greek curse tablets, Alexandrian grave epigrams and Roman philosophers are brought cheek to jowl with those of the apostles and church fathers. Many of the essays are comparative in their own right: Loveday Alexander, for instance, shows how in both the Greek novel and the New Testament, religious sites and festivals are the scenes for significant encounters between men and women – but also that the narrative of Acts begins to redefine sacred space so as to include the household, a predominantly female sphere in almost every society. Mary Rose D’Angelo studies the divorce dialogues in Mark 10:2–12 in the context of Julian divorce laws and, more generally, first century Roman political and moral discourse. In addition to this emphasis on cultural comparativism, we find attention to comparison amongst genres: Clare Rothschild, for instance, looks at the question of whether medical texts concerning the generation of embryos influenced the Fourth Gospel; in addition to analyzing that issue itself, she offers the important reminder that we must not privilege ancient scientific theories over theories provided by myth, theology or over narrative discourses – all are equally embedded in their cultures. Also welcome is the long overdue attention paid to several topics that engage issues that are vital to both the study of religion and the study of gender construction: Can we identify females in antiquity that can properly be called ‘witches’? asks Radcliffe Edmonds, and if we can, for what sorts of disasters are they blamed? On the same topic, Fritz Graf emphasizes that, whatever the ancient literary portraits of the witch may imply, seldom were such creatures actually identified and charged with crimes. The brief scope of a Foreword does not allow me to more fully praise the contributions that the authors included here have made to our understanding of ancient religions, ancient women, and the interface between them. But as a final note I must stress how appropriate it is that such a volume found its origin in a conference honoring Adela Yarbro Collins, a scholar who has contributed so much not only to these topics, but to the spirit of comparativism that I have sketched here. In my years of knowing Adela, I have become just as accustomed to meeting her at symposia sponsored by classics programs or ancient history departments, for example, as at conferences on Christianity. Her eagerness to learn more about ancient Mediterranean cultures that span from Bactria to Gibraltar (and for I know, beyond) is an admirable model for her many friends, colleagues, and students, as are her scholarly publications. Sarah Iles Johnston, August 2010



Table of Contents Sarah Iles Johnston Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

V

Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

VII

List of Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

XI

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

Part I: Narrative Loveday Alexander The Virgin and the Goddess. Women and Religion in the Greek Romance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

11

Patricia D. Ahearne-Kroll The Portrayal of Aseneth in Joseph and Aseneth. Women’s Religious Experience in Antiquity and the Limitations of Ancient Narratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

39

Mary Rose D’Angelo Roman Imperial Family Values and the Gospel of Mark. The Divorce Sayings (Mark 10:2–12) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

59

James A. Kelhoffer A Tale of Two Markan Characterizations. The Exemplary Woman Who Anointed Jesus’ Body for Burial (14:3–9) and the Silent Trio Who Fled the Empty Tomb (16:1–8) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

85

Turid Karlsen Seim Motherhood and the Making of Fathers in Antiquity. Contextualizing Genetics in the Gospel of John . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

99

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Table of Contents

Clare K. Rothschild Embryology, Plant Biology, and Divine Generation in the Fourth Gospel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

125

Jan Willem van Henten Blaming the Women. Women at Herod’s Court in Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities 15.23–231 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

153

Robert Doran To Bear or Not To Bear. The Argument for Abstinence in the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

177

Candida R. Moss Blood Ties. Martyrdom, Motherhood, and Family in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

189

Jeremy F. Hultin A New Web for Arachne and a New Veil for the Temple. Women and Weaving from Athena to the Virgin Mary . . . . . . . . . . .

209

Part II: Ritual Fritz Graf Victimology. Or, How to Blame Someone for an Untimely Death . . . . . . . . . . . . .

227

Radcliffe G. Edmonds III Blaming the Witch. Some Reflections upon Unexpected Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

241

Stephen J. Davis Forget Me Not. Memory and the Female Subject in Ancient Binding Spells . . . . . . .

255

Matt Jackson-McCabe Women and Eros in Greek Magic and the Acts of Paul and Thecla . . . . .

267

Table of Contents

Carin M. C. Green Holding the Line. Women, Ritual, and the Protection of Rome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

IX

279

Part III: Logos Paul A. Holloway Gender and Grief. Seneca’s Ad Marciam and Ad Helviam matrem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

299

Christopher N. Mount Religious Experience, the Religion of Paul, and Women in Pauline Churches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

323

Outi Lehtipuu The Example of Thecla and the Example(s) of Paul. Disputing Women’s Roles in Early Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

349

Annette Bourland Huizenga SǀphrosynƝ for Women in Pythagorean Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

379

Judith L. Kovacs Becoming the Perfect Man. Clement of Alexandria on the Philosophical Life of Women . . . . . .

401

Susan E. Myers The Spirit as Mother in Early Syriac-Speaking Christianity . . . . . . .

427

List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

463

Index of Ancient Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

465

Index of Modern Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

497

Index of Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

505

List of Abbreviations All abbreviations follow the abbreviation lists in chapter 8 and the appendices of SBL Handbook of Style (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999). Any abbreviations not found in this resource are listed in the particular essay where they are used.

Introduction The present volume stems from “Women in the Religious and Intellectual Activity of the Ancient Mediterranean World: An Interdisciplinary and International Conference in Honor of Adela Yarbro Collins,” held March 15– 17, 2009 at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio and The Ohio State University. The conference featured nineteen papers and eighteen responses from experts in Greek and Roman religion, ancient Judaism, the New Testament, and ancient Christianity from nine countries in North America and Europe, reflecting the laudable, interdisciplinary research program of the honoree. The essays in this volume are, by and large, revised versions of the papers given at the conference, plus a few additional invited essays.1 The study of women in the ancient world has made tremendous strides in recent decades. What was at first groundbreaking work in the (maledominated) world of scholarship has now become integral to a proper understanding of the social, political, economic, religious, and family life of ancient cultures. The study of women in the ancient world was initiated by feminist scholars; now it is embraced by scholars from a wide variety of methodological and hermeneutical perspectives. Thanks to much fine work in this area, we now understand much more thoroughly than in previous generations past the roles that gender constructions, more generally, and women, in particular, played in ancient religion. Earlier scholars passed over these issues for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was a biased view of the (un)importance of women in ancient (and modern) cultures. Taken as a whole, the present collection of essays makes a significant contribution to both expanding and focusing the scholarly community’s understanding of not only ancient women’s religious lives but also ancient religion as a whole. The book falls into three major sections: Part I: Narrative; Part II: Ritual; Part III: Logos. This delineation should in no way be understood to imply sharp boundaries between the sections. Indeed, the overlapping of certain topics reflects the interconnectedness of the evidence on women and gender in ancient religion. Although the book offers a snapshot of only certain themes and problems on women and gender in antiquity, it illustrates how fascinating and intertwined in-depth studies on the topic can be. 1 The original conference program can be found at www.mtso.edu/collinsconference (on 10 September 2010).

2

Stephen P. Ahearne-Kroll

Part I, “Narrative,” includes a collection of essays on various narratives that may or may not have women as their central focus but in some way concern issues of gender and women. Loveday Alexander and Patricia D. Ahearne-Kroll look at ancient Greek novels. Alexander’s essay, “The Virgin and the Goddess: Women and Religion in the Greek Romance,” examines Chariton’s Chareas and Callirhoe, offering a wide-ranging treatment of the ways that women and religion feature in Greek romances. After plumbing the depths of likely the earliest of the Greek and Roman novels, Alexander studies Luke-Acts, highlighting avenues for further inquiry into early Christian writings in parallel with ancient romances (for example, the way festivals and religious sites offer places of significant encounter between men and women, as well as opportunities for Luke’s redefinition of sacred space to include domestic space and the space around the person of Jesus). Patricia Ahearne-Kroll’s essay, “The Portrayal of Aseneth in Joseph and Aseneth: Women’s Religious Experience in Antiquity and the Limitations of Ancient Narratives,” also utilizes Chariton to examine the characterization tendencies of this genre. In particular, Ahearne-Kroll studies the characterization of the main protagonist, Aseneth, arguing that because Aseneth is an elite Egyptian convert to Judaism, she does not reflect “real” ancient Jewish women. Aseneth functions similarly to the way that Callirhoe functions in Chariton’s aforementioned novel, and the way that characters, in general, function in ancient fiction, namely to communicate the author’s favored cultural values and social structures. Aseneth’s conversion to worship God the Most High and her royal marriage to Joseph uphold the value of marriage between nobility, communicate that partners in a legitimate marriage must only worship God the Most High, and assert that devotion to God the Most High is the only context in which passion between these partners can flourish. These are not just individual values, but rather form the basis for the success of the civilization. Mary Rose D’Angelo and James A. Kelhoffer examine the Gospel of Mark. D’Angelo (“Roman Imperial Family Values and the Gospel of Mark: The Divorce Sayings [Mark 10:2–12]”) shows how Roman divorce laws and ‘family values’ illuminate Mark 10:2–12. She argues that Roman social legislation created an ideal of “original, indissoluble marriage comparable to the vision of origins articulated in Mark 10:2–9.” As a result, Mark 10:2–9 and 10:13–16 should be understood as “a defense against too radical an understanding of the call to discipleship in 10:17–31,” perhaps made even more unusual by the participation of women in the early Jesus movement. Kelhoffer (“A Tale of Two Markan Characterizations: The Exemplary Woman Who Anointed Jesus’ Body for Burial (14:3–9) and the Silent Trio Who Fled the Empty Tomb [16:1–8]”) examines two contrasting characterizations of women in Mark. First, he argues that the

Introduction

3

woman who anoints Jesus’ body for burial in 14:3–9 is an exemplary character in Mark, one to be emulated. Yet contrary to many feminist scholars, he argues that the three women at the empty tomb in 16:1–8 offer a negative example of discipleship not unlike that of the hapless Markan disciples. Turid Karlsen Seim and Clare K. Rothschild examine the birthing metaphor and fatherhood in the Gospel of John. Seim (“Motherhood and the Making of Fathers in Antiquity: Contextualizing Genetics in the Gospel of John”) argues that John, following ancient ideas of paternity, sees Jesus’ “only-begotten” (PRQRJHQKM) status as representing the birth of a child in the absence of a mother through the process of “epigenesis.” This process includes the notions that only the male is able generate seed and that this seed provides the active principle of movement and life, whereas the female role is to provide the passive material. In contrast to Seim, Rothschild (“Embryology, Plant Biology, and Divine Generation in the Fourth Gospel”) argues that “parthenogenesis” (à la ancient theories of plant generation) is more fitting than epigenesis as a model for John’s depiction of the origin and status of Jesus as PRQRJHQKM. Parthenogenesis holds that “a female gamete is activated spontaneously on its own without fusion with a male reproductive element or sperm.” Rothschild picks up on the language of the mechanisms of parthenogenesis in plants (seed blown by the wind as a possible step) to argue for a similarity of the way SQHX PD works to generate rebirth in John. From this she extends her argument to other passages in John to make her case for parthenogenesis over epigenesis as the most fitting theory of the generation of the PRQRJHQKMJesus. Four more essays round out Part I. Using a careful narratological approach to Josephus’s Antiquities, Jan Willem van Henten (“Blaming the Women: Women at Herod’s Court in Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities 15.23– 231”) argues that Josephus depicts negatively Alexandra and Salome, in order to portray Herod more favorably, even tragically, for Herod’s loss of Mariamme at the hands of Salome. Robert Doran (“To Bear or Not to Bear: The Argument for Abstinence in the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians”) presents the four sayings in the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians as Christian testimonia used by Julius Cassianus and reinterpreted by Clement of Alexandria. The sayings originate from an encratite group that advocates sexual continence but does not completely reject marriage. Doran goes on to argue for the way that the sayings present the status of women in contrast to prevailing cultural mores: “What is interesting is that the argument in the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians completely overturns the sense of subordination of women, and rather places them on an equal footing with men. . . . Such a . . . stance in the second century would thus be an argument for the equal status and function of women in early Christianity.”

4

Stephen P. Ahearne-Kroll

Candida R. Moss (“Blood Ties: Martyrdom, Motherhood, and Family in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas”) examines the presentation of family rejection in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas. She argues (a) that when placed in their larger martyrological context, Perpetua’s actions are quite commensurate with attitudes towards the family in martyrologies focusing on men; and (b) the martyrs’ acts do not “promote the rejection of the idea of family so much as they promote its reconfiguration.” Finally, Jeremy F. Hultin (“A New Web for Arachne and a New Veil for the Temple: Women and Weaving from Athena to the Virgin Mary”) notes the insights on weaving in ancient Greece as articulated in Sarah Iles Johnston’s analysis of the myth of Arachne, and he highlights narratives in early Christianity where weaving functions similarly. Hultin demonstrates that the presence of the main concerns of weaving in ancient Greece (“weaving as an activity connected to the transition from girlhood to womanhood; a skill showing female readiness for marriage and childbirth; a craft representing the joining together of disparate bodies so as to produce something new”) are also present in the depiction of Mary in the Protevangelium of James, symbolizing the new life built in weaving the chaste person asexually to Christ. Part II, “Ritual,” contains four essays on ancient magic and one on a little known Roman festival that involved women and goddesses in the protection of the city. Fritz Graf’s essay, “Victimology: Or, How to Blame Someone for an Untimely Death,” examines grave inscriptions that attribute untimely death to sorcery, which is a neglected category of evidence regarding magical practices in the ancient Mediterranean world. He finds that relatively few (about 1000) grave inscriptions describe the death of the deceased, but of these under 5% attribute the death to some sort of pharmakeia. Because the accusations “remained always on the level of suspicion, rumor, and gossip,” formal accusations of sorcery and witchcraft were actually quite rare. Also, the one accused of pharmakeia usually is not named and has no more frequent association with women than with men: “Compared to the stereotype of the female witch that we find in Greek and Roman literature, the reality ‘on the ground’ is much more complex.” Graf’s essay offers a point of departure for Radcliffe Edmonds’s contribution, “Blaming the Witch: Some Reflections on Unexpected Death.” Edmonds discusses the social dimensions of witchcraft in ancient Greek and Roman cultures and concludes that “within the range of possible causes [of untimely death], either the specification of one – a witch or a poison – or the emphasis on the uncertainty itself can serve as a strategy for dealing with the social situation.” In other words, the accusation of specific or general witchcraft is one way that ancient Greek and Roman societies coped with the tragedy and shock of untimely death.

Introduction

5

Stephen J. Davis (“Forget Me Not: Memory and the Female Subject in Ancient Binding Spells”) finds in the Greek Magical Papyri a group of spells related to memory and the manipulation of memory. He argues for the connection between memory and the spells’ ritual manipulations of the female body. Responding to Davis, Matt Jackson-McCabe questions the posited connection between memory and the female body. Instead, he suggests that “Greek love spells’ interest in the anatomy of their victims may be better understood in connection with their eroticism than with their references to memory.” He goes on to examine the common charge of magic in early Christian devotion and suggests a connection with the eroticism of magic as a possible reason for the accusation. This section’s final essay deals with an ancient Roman ritual designed to guard and secure the boundaries of the city. Carin M. C. Green (“Holding the Line: Women, Ritual, and the Protection of Rome”) investigates the Roman goddesses Sessia, Messia, and Tutilina, highlighting their role in protecting the sacred boundary (pomerium) of the city. She also looks at the link between Tutilina and the Festival of the Handmaidens, arguing that the festival, in part, honors the three goddesses who protect the boundaries of the city. She further argues that the festival can be characterized as a Roman combat myth, thus connecting the study of this ritual with Adela Yarbro Collins’s work on Revelation 12.2 If one thinks of the festival as a combat myth, “the women are warriors for the city. It is about enemies and possible disaster, and women as the champions who save Rome.” Part III, “Logos,” contains discursive presentations on a variety of issues around gender and women in ancient thinkers with respect to religion. Paul A. Holloway considers two of Seneca’s consolatory essays to women, Ad Marciam and Ad Helviam matrem, where Seneca “is forced to work out in practice the Stoic theory that woman are by nature equal to men in their capacity for virtue, although by training they are much their inferiors.” Despite the philosopher’s best efforts to present women as by nature equal to men in their capacity for virtue, “Seneca powerfully attests to elite Roman gender prejudice.” Next are two essays dealing with Paul and his legacy. First, Christopher N. Mount (“Religious Experience, the Religion of Paul, and Women in Pauline Churches”) discusses Paul’s letters with respect to the slippery category of religious experience. He argues that the criterion for ecclesial authority in the undisputed writings of Paul is based upon a person’s possession by the spirit of the crucified Jesus. Ecclesial authority is thus not based upon gender but upon one’s status as possessed by Christ crucified. 2 See Adela Yarbro Collins, The Combat Myth in the Book of Revelation (HDR 9; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1976).

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Stephen P. Ahearne-Kroll

Focusing on the social dimensions of this phenomenon, he argues, “‘Religious experience’ is an apologetic category for the essence of religion, a category that depends entirely on the mythology of those who believe.” Instead of focusing on religious experience, scholars of ancient religion should examine the discourses constructed about how deities interact with humans, including women. Second, Outi Lehtipuu (“The Example of Thecla and the Example(s) of Paul: Disputing Women’s Roles in Early Christianity”) examines the “competing views of how the legacy of Paul was understood and used in the second Christian century to justify the role and place of women.” In particular, Lehtipuu argues for a multiplicity of second-century perspectives regarding how Paul’s views of women are tied to arguments about marriage, opportunities for teaching and leadership, celibacy, and submission to male church leaders. In an essay entitled, “SǀphrosynƝ for Women in Pythagorean Texts,” Annette B. Huizenga builds on the work of Abraham Malherbe and Helen North with regard to how women were to embody sǀphrosynƝ in the ancient world. She analyzes two neo-Pythagorean texts, On the SǀphrosynƝ of a Woman and a short letter written by a certain Melissa to another woman named Kleareta. The most essential way women can embody sǀphrosynƝ is through sexual fidelity to her husband, but this is not just one quality among many that characterize a woman’s sǀphrosynƝ. Instead, “all other prescribed female displays of the virtue (in adornment, speech and silence, child-bearing and child-rearing, household management, and activities outside the house itself) manifest this one primary achievement: a woman’s uninterrupted practice of marital fidelity.” Judith L. Kovacs (“Becoming the Perfect Man: Clement of Alexandria on the Philosophical Life of Women”) studies in detail the fourth book of the Stromateis, particularly chapters 8 and 19–21, to flesh out precisely what he means when he advocates, “Women should philosophize the same as men” (Strom. 4.8.62.4). At first glance, this statement may seem straightforward enough, but in the context of the Stromateis, in dialogue with other philosophical writings, and as an integral part of Stromateis 4 as a piece of biblical interpretation, the statement shows Clement to be an even more complex thinker on the subject of women than previously acknowledged. Finally, Susan E. Myers (“The Spirit as Mother in Early Syriac-Speaking Christianity”) surveys the textual evidence for early Christian mother imagery in northern Mesopotamia. After reviewing the current state of scholarship, Myers focuses on the use of feminine imagery for the Spirit in the Acts of Thomas. In particular, she looks at how the Acts develops certain elements from its regional heritage and how Ephrem and Aphrahat develop this imagery further, even while some elements of the tradition simultaneously are condemned.

Introduction

7

The editors and contributors hope that this collection of essays adequately reflects the type of scholarship most valued and emulated by Adela Yarbro Collins, Buckingham Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale Divinity School and one of only three women presidents of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas. Inasmuch as Collins’s intellectual impact has reached far beyond that of her original training in New Testament studies, she offers an admirable model of interdisciplinary scholarship to this volume’s editors, who are all her Doktorkinder, and, indeed, to all its contributors. May this book honor her as an expression of what is possible with careful attention to detail and reasonable examination of the evidence – two qualities particularly valued by Prof. Collins. Stephen P. Ahearne-Kroll, on behalf of the editors, August 2010

Part I: Narrative

The Virgin and the Goddess Women and Religion in Greek Romance LOVEDAY ALEXANDER

Callirhoe wished to speak to Aphrodite herself. So first she took her son in her arms, and thus afforded a beautiful sight, the like of which no painter has yet portrayed, nor sculptor fashioned, nor poet described before now; for none of them has represented Artemis or Athena with a baby in her arms. On seeing her, Dionysius wept for very joy and quietly paid homage to Nemesis. Callirhoe then asked only Plangon to remain with her and sent the others on ahead to the house. When they had gone, she stood close to Aphrodite and, holding up the child in her arms, she prayed: “I beg you, Lady, from now on be reconciled to me, for I have suffered enough. I have died, and been resurrected; I have been kidnapped and taken into exile; I have been sold and made a slave. I add also my second marriage, even harder to bear. To make up for all this I ask one favour from you, and 1 through you from the other gods: save my orphan child!”

This scene comes from a Greek novel, probably written about the same time as most of our New Testament texts.2 It tells a story, essentially a simple story, of the kind that has retained its popularity down the centuries: boy meets girl; boy and girl (both improbably young and beautiful) fall in love; parents oppose the marriage; boy and girl fall into a decline; parents relent. (The Romeo and Juliet echoes are no coincidence: Shakespeare’s plots owe quite a lot to the Greek romance tradition.) But in Greek romance the wedding bells signal the beginning of the couple’s troubles, not the end. Jealousy rears its ugly head. Chaereas, the hero, kicks his pregnant wife Callirhoe in a rage. She falls down in a swoon, is taken up for dead, and is buried with much pomp and lamentation in a splendid tomb overlooking the sea – only to be rescued and abducted by a gang of pirates. And that’s just Book 1! The rest of the novel traces the journeys of the hapless couple, chasing each other around the Mediterranean, before the final reunion and triumphant homecoming in Book 8. En route, Callirhoe captures the heart of Dionysius, the Ionian nobleman to 1 2

Chaer. 3.8.6. All citations (unless otherwise stated) are from Goold, LCL. On the dating of the novels, see Goold, Callirhoe, pp. 1–2; E. L. Bowie, “The Greek Novel,” in Cambridge History of Classical Literature: The Hellenistic Period and the Empire (vol. 1; ed. P. E. Easterling and B. M. W. Knox; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 123–39.

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whom she is sold as a slave, and agrees to marry him when she discovers that she is pregnant by her first husband Chaereas. There is thus a poignant irony in this apparently idyllic ‘Madonna and child’ scene. This Madonna has been betrayed and abandoned by her first love, and her marriage is a smoke-screen accepted only to provide security and an honourable name for her child. At one level, the religious dimensions of this scene are obvious. It takes place in a temple: it shows us the heroine at prayer, addressing her patron goddess Aphrodite. It shows an intimate and close personal relationship between the female subject and the divine – though Callirhoe is not afraid to argue with the goddess. So it allows us to explore the role of women within the accepted parameters of ancient religion: sacred space, public cult, private prayer. Probe a little further, however, and something odd is happening. As Callirhoe poses for the cameras with her infant son in her arms, the narrator deliberately and explicitly invokes the visual representation of divinity in the religious artwork of antiquity: Callirhoe is compared (to their disadvantage) with the virgin goddesses Artemis and Athena as depicted by painters, sculptors, and poets. There is an apparent elision here of the boundaries between divine and human that makes us wonder what is going on here, theologically speaking, in terms of the self-understanding of ancient Greek religion. The irony of this scene deepens when we set it against the representational world of early Christian narrative. Despite her beauty and status, Callirhoe defines her own identity in terms of suffering. Here is a heroine who has endured a series of dramatic status reversals – including death and resurrection. Is there (as Glen Bowersock has argued) a deliberate parody of the Gospel narrative here? 3 Is Callirhoe being set up as a kind of female Christ-figure? And the irony intensifies when we consider that this scene was being written (and read) probably around the last quarter of the first century CE, around the same time that Luke was painting in words what was to become one of the dominant visual images of Christianity – the virgin Madonna holding her divine child. Chariton, the novel’s otherwise unknown author, describes himself as clerk to the rhetor Athenagoras in Aphrodisias, just up the Lycus valley in Asia Minor, not far from Colossae (Chaer. 1.1.1). His work is widely accepted as the first complete extant example of Greek romance, a genre that was to continue to flourish, with increasing sophistication and complexity, right through late antiquity until it (apparently) lost out to its nearest market rival with the growth of the Christian martyr-acts and apocryphal ta-

3 G. W. Bowersock, Fiction As History: Nero to Julian (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).

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les.4 Most scholars would agree that Chariton’s novel is not primarily a religious text; it is a romantic fiction. 5 But that does not mean (as van den Heever suggests) that we should not take it seriously. Even (perhaps especially) escapist fiction can reveal a society’s shabbiest secrets, or open windows into its profoundest hopes and dreams: as a reviewer of Stephen Spielberg’s work has said, “It is a truism that the movies that are most enlightening about a society's values and aspirations are those which have been gigantic successes in that society, rather than those purporting to address one or other of the major problems besetting it.”6 As Judith Perkins observes,7 The power of discourse inheres precisely in this remarkable ability it has to set its agenda and mask the fact that its representation both has an agenda and that there could be other representations and other agendas. Every representation is by its very nature partial and incomplete. A representation of “reality” must leave something out, even as it puts something in. A culture’s discourse represents not the “real” world, but rather a world mediated through the social categories, relations, and institutions operating in the specific culture. Another way of saying this is that every representation reflects some cultural “interest,” and, therefore, discourses in a society never just float free. They are informed by, and they help to constitute, the society’s particular preoccupations and intentions.

Whatever its original audience and purpose, Chariton’s romance merits our serious attention. It offers a significant first-century representation of women and religion in Hellenic culture and society: and as such, it pro-

4 For translated texts of the Greek novels, see B. P. Reardon, ed., Collected Ancient Greek Novels (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: Univ. of California Press, 1989). Tomas Hägg, The Novel in Antiquity (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983) is still a good introduction: cf. ch.6 (pp. 154–65) on the Christianization of the genre. Definitive collections of essays include J. R. Morgan and Richard Stoneman, eds., Greek Fiction: The Greek Novel in Context (London: Routledge 1994); Gareth Schmeling, ed., The Novel in the Ancient World (Leiden: Brill 1996); James Tatum, ed., The Search for the Ancient Novel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1994); Simon Swain, ed., Oxford Readings in the Greek Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). For the fragments, cf. Susan Stephens and John J. Winkler eds., Ancient Greek Novels: The Fragments (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 5 Merkelbach’s thesis that the Greek novels were “mystery texts” (R. Merkelbach, Roman und Mysterium in der Antike [Munich: Beck, 1962]) has not won wide acceptance. For an illuminating discussion, see Gerhard van den Heever, “Novel and Mystery: Discourse, Myth, and Society,” in Ancient Fiction: The Matrix of Early Christian and Jewish Narrative (ed. JoAnn Brant, Charles W. Hedrick, and Chris Shea; SBL Symposium 32; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005), 89–114. 6 Gilbert Adair, Illustrated London News 276 (1988), 74. Adair goes on: “While the earnest didacticism of the latter often tends to alienate the very section of the public for which they were designed, the former, by virtue of their broad-based appeal, are clearly far more in tune with the way their audiences view (or idealize) themselves at that particular phase of their social and cultural evolution.” 7 Judith Perkins, The Suffering Self (London: Routledge, 1995), 3.

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vides a valuable foil for reading the representation of women and religion in early Christian narrative.

A. Callirhoe as Reader and Heroine Hermocrates, ruler of Syracuse, victor over the Athenians, had a daughter named Callirhoe, a marvel of a girl and the idol of all Sicily. In fact her beauty was not so much human as divine, not that of a Nereid or mountain nymph, either, but of Aphrodite herself. (Chaer. 1.1.1–2)

In his opening sentence, Chariton simultaneously evokes the serious world of the classical Greek historians and blows it away. He begins with Hermocrates, an historical character from Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War. But by the end of his first paragraph it is clear that Chariton’s interest focuses not on the famous Syracusan general but on his daughter, Callirhoe (whom Thucydides never mentions). Chariton’s subject is love, not war, and we do not need to label the novels as women’s magazine literature in order to recognize that women and “women’s business,” ta gunaikeia, are foregrounded to an unusual extent in Greek romance.8 This is evident right away in the “sexual symmetry” (to use David Konstan’s felicitous phrase) that underlies the whole narrative structure of the novel.9 In plot terms, the heroine is just as important as the hero, if not more so; there are good reasons for thinking that Chariton’s original title for the novel was simply Callirhoe.10 And quite apart from the title, the equal billing accorded to hero and heroine in the plot of the Greek novel is enough to highlight the foregrounding of women in romance: it marks a subtle but effective subversion of the narrative patterns of primary myth. In romance, the erotic satisfaction of two young people becomes the central motive power of the plot. Judith Perkins points out that the elite status of the protagonists means that their erotic business is also the city’s business, but she misses the Swiftian irony in Chariton’s making this the sole business of the civic assemblies in which (improbably) women and men have an equal voice.11 This signals a profound reversal of epic values. In 8 Brigitte Egger, “The Role of Women in the Greek Novel: Woman as Heroine and Reader,” in Swain, Oxford Readings in the Greek Novel, 108–36. 9 David Konstan, Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 10 Goold, Chaer., 3–4. 11 Perkins, Suffering Self, 47–49. Cf. Chaer. 1.1.12: “Who could describe that assembly, at which Love was the spokesman?” The symbiosis of the erotic motif with the life of the city is underlined by the romantic fiction of the equal participation of women and men in civic assemblies (Chaer. 3.4.4; 8.7.1): Konstan, Sexual Symmetry, 77.

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Vergil’s Aeneid, Dido’s attempted seduction of Aeneas is a diversionary tactic on Aphrodite’s part, designed to deflect Aeneas from his proper business of founding Rome: only Aeneas’s pietas thwarts the goddess. In romance, Aphrodite gets her revenge: the love affair is the real business, war a poor diversion, and Aphrodite herself the unquestioned (indeed the unchallenged) recipient of pietas.12 There are of course limitations to the heroine’s capacity for independent adventure: Callirhoe is no liberated twentieth-century Miss. Travel itself is but the first of a series of pathe imposed on the couple by the goddess of love (8.1.3). In the process, Callirhoe loses her elite status – even her freedom – and is pushed over the edge of everything that defines her personal identity. In fact she begins her adventures by dying and being entombed, thus becoming a non-person, then a captive, then a slave – and always a potential object of predatory male lust. Even though her beauty ensures her a relatively cushioned time, Callirhoe conforms to an archaizing ideal of passive womanhood, with no control over her journeys or her own body.13 The heroines of other novels are not so lucky: they end up having to defend their chastity against a succession of pirates, robber bands, pimps, lustful Indian princes, and oriental eunuchs. In the represented world of romance, as Chariton himself sums it up, the sexual options for women are reduced to two: “honest love and lawful marriage” versus the unregulated perils of becoming a sexual object in conditions of “piracy or slavery or trials or fighting or suicide or war or captivity” (Chaer. 8.1.4). This stark duality is reflected in what Brigitte Egger calls the “splitting up of womanhood into two designs, the white and the scarlet woman”: “on the one side there is the erotically passive, chaste, faithful, ‘good’ protagonist, the Greek – and on the other side there is the erotically active, scheming, unrestrainedly raving antagonist, the Barbarian.”14 Is this representation of the heroine simply a projection of male fantasies? Chariton does at times allow us to see Callirhoe through the lens of a male gaze, as when the Great King is distracted from his hunting by a vision of Callirhoe as Artemis: “How wonderful it would be to see Callirhoe here, with her dress tucked up to her knees and her arms bared, with flushed face and heaving bosom!” (6.4.5–6). But (as Brigitte Egger rightly observes) the novel gives equal space to the admiring female gaze: not only servants and crowds, but high status women like Rhodogune and Statira fall prey to Callirhoe’s charms and embrace her as a sister. 15 It is perhaps 12 Cf. the description of Eros as ILORQHLNRM, “keen on winning”: Chaer. 1.1.4, 6, 12; cf. Xenophon of Ephesus, Ephesiaca 1.2.1; 1.2.9; 1.4.5. 13 Egger, “Woman as Heroine and Reader,” 130–34. 14 Egger, “Woman as Heroine and Reader,” 128. 15 Cf. Chaer. 7.5.5; 8.4.7–10.

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this – with the continual stress on the heroine’s chastity – that gives the depiction of Callirhoe in this novel its curiously asexual character.16 Moreover, Callirhoe is depicted – much more strongly than her male counterparts – as an “athlete of virtue,” victorious in the fight against pathos; and one of her chief weapons is her paideia. Far from being a dumb blonde, she is represented as an educated Greek woman, defeating oriental courtiers (and even the Great King) by her superior philosophia.17 Callirhoe is also depicted as a writer of letters and an initiator of clandestine correspondence. There is a wonderful scene late in the story where Callirhoe, now reunited with her first husband Chaereas, writes a very private letter to her abandoned second husband Dionysius and enlists the aid of the captured Persian queen Statira to deliver it: Callirhoe felt that it was proper to show her gratitude by writing to Dionysius. This was the only thing she did without telling Chaereas, for she was aware of his innate jealousy, and so took pains to keep it from him. Taking a writing tablet, she wrote the following: “Callirhoe greets Dionysius her benefactor (for you are the one who freed me from pirates and slavery). Please, do not be angry. Indeed, I am with you in spirit through the son we share, and I entrust him to you to bring up and to educate in a way worthy of us. Let him have no experience of a stepmother. You have not only a son, but a daughter as well: two children are enough. Marry them to each other when he becomes a man, and send him to Syracuse so that he may also see his grandfather. My greetings to you, Plangon. This I have written with my own hand. Farewell, good Dionysius, and remember your Callirhoe.” Sealing the letter, she hid it away in her bosom. . . . As she was about to leave the ship, she leaned unobtrusively towards Statira and, blushing, handed her the letter, saying, “Give this letter to poor Dionysius; I trust him to your care and the king’s. You must both comfort him. I fear that he may kill himself now that he has been parted from me.” The women might have gone on talking and weeping and embracing, had not the pilots given the signal for putting to sea. (Chaer. 8.4.4–9)

This novel tacitly presupposes a network of elite literate women, writing and exchanging their own letters – and letters of a sort they would most definitely not want their husbands to read. 18 I am reminded of Claudia Severa, the wife of the Roman governor on Hadrian’s Wall, whose letter inviting a friend to her birthday party (and signed in her own hand) survives as a lone voice of femininity among the residue of military official-

16 Brigitte Egger, “Looking at Chariton’s Callirhoe,” in Morgan and Stoneman, Greek Fiction, 31–48. Konstan notes the duality of Chariton’s implied audience: Sexual Symmetry, 78–79. Other novels are more ambivalent: cf. David Konstan again on the hero as voyeur in Achilles Tatius (Sexual Symmetry, 60–63). 17 Loveday Alexander, “The Passions in Galen and the novels of Chariton and Xenophon,” in Passions and Moral Progress in Greco-Roman Thought (ed., John T. Fitzgerald; London: Routledge, 2008), 175–97. 18 Konstan, Sexual Symmetry, 78–79.

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dom dug up in the Vindolanda tablets from 111 C.E.19 In Chariton’s novel, women’s literacy is an unsensational assumption, and not simply at the pragmatic level of letter-writing: Callirhoe is explicitly described (more than once) as SHSDLGHXPHQK, “educated.”20 She is depicted as a woman marked at a quite profound level by the cultural formation of Greek paideia, giving her the rhetorical resources to wrestle with her ethical dilemmas, and the philosophical VZIURVXQK to resist (with aristocratic contumely) the rather ham-fisted advances of the Persian eunuch Artaxates soliciting sexual favours for the king.21 Callirhoe is not the only fictional heroine to be represented as deploying the resources of a philosophical education. The fragmentary Parthenope (another early novel) depicts its heroine as taking part in a discussion on love with the philosopher Anaximenes.22 At the other end of the genre, Heliodorus’s Charicleia is presented as “a self-confident and, to a certain extent, emancipated intellectual” who “studies and discusses with the philosophers and theologians.”23 How does this fictional representation correspond to the realities of Chariton’s world? We could cite Callirhoe as an additional datum in the small but growing body of evidence for women’s literacy in Hellenistic Egypt and the Greek East.24 We might also ask whether the novel was a genre expressly aimed at a female readership. Greek prose romance has been a neglected feature of Greek literature until comparatively recently, and its earlier 20th-century scholars hailed it as a rare glimpse into late Greek ‘popular’ literature, evidence of a newly-prosperous middle-class 19

Tab.Vindol. II 291–292. Full text and translation (with photograph) in A. K. Bowman, Life and Letters on the Roman Frontier (London: British Museum, 1994), 127–28; 153. Cited in Hans-Josef Klauck, Ancient Letters and the New Testament: A Guide to Context and Exegesis (trans. Daniel P. Bailey; Waco: Baylor University Press, 2006), 107. 20 Ronald Hock, “The Educational Curriculum in Chariton’s Callirhoe,” in Brant, Hedrick, and Shea, Ancient Fiction, 15–36. 21 Note esp. 6.4.10 “As a eunuch, slave, and oriental (EDUEDURM), [Artaxates] reckoned the task would be easy, having no idea of the pride and nobility of a Greek, and especially of the chaste (VZIUZQ) and faithful Callirhoe”; 6.5.8 “Callirhoe’s first impulse was to puck out [his] eyes; but, as a polite (Gk. “educated,” SHSDLGHXPHQK) and intelligent woman, she quickly remembered where she was, who she was, and who was talking to her.” 22 For Parthenope, see Tomas Hägg, “Parthenope Decapitated?” in idem, Parthenope: Studies in Ancient Greek Fiction (ed. Lars B. Mortensen and Tormod Eide; Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2004), 233–61: 251–52; 239 n. 22. 23 See the nuanced discussion by Brigitte Egger, “The Role of Women in the Greek Novel,” 118; 135. Egger does not discuss Parthenope. 24 Raffaella Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), chapter 3 notes significant advances in women’s literacy in Hellenistic Egypt and the Greek East: see esp. 51; 74–101. The detailed evidence is set out in R. S. Bagnall and R. Cribiore, Women’s Letters from Ancient Egypt, 300 BC–AD 800 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006).

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reading public with distinctive emotional needs. However, the ‘popular’ label has been challenged by more recent studies of ancient literacy and book production.25 Before the invention of the printing press, there was no mass market for books, and recent estimates of the evidence for literacy in the ancient Mediterranean world rarely go higher than 15% of the population.26 Moreover, the numbers of novel fragments among the surviving papyri do not warrant the label ‘popular’ in any statistical sense. 27 As Simon Swain puts it, there is no real reason to dispute the current consensus that “the readership of the novels was to be found primarily among the establishment class…its quality and rank should not have been doubted.”28 Nonetheless, the label ‘popular’ does, I believe, convey something important about this literature. Northrop Frye’s definition of popular literature as “what people read without guidance from their betters” fits Greek romance very well: We finally come, at the bottom of the hierarchy, to popular literature, or what people read without guidance from their betters. Popular literature has been the object of a constant bombardment of social anxieties for over two thousand years, and nearly the whole of the established critical tradition has stood out against it. The greater part of the reading and listening public has ignored the critics and censors for exactly the same length of time....Any serious discussion of romance has to take into account its curiously proletarian status as a form generally disapproved of, in most ages, by the guardians of taste and learning, except when they use it for their own purposes. The close connection of the romantic and the popular runs all through literature. The formulas of New Comedy and Greek romance were demotic and popular formulas, like their counterparts now, treated with condescension by the highbrows, one form of condescension being the writing of 29 such tales themselves, as academics write detective stories today.

As Frye frames it, the question is not about numbers but about the relationship with the literary canon: “curiously proletarian” here is an index of literary taste, not of social class. Frye’s characterization (including the backhanded tribute paid to this kind of literature by elite writers) opens up the possibility of doing justice both to the facts of ancient literacy and to the

25

B. Wesseling, “The Audience of the Ancient Novels,” in Groningen Colloquia on the Novel (ed., H. Hofmann; vol. 1; Groningen: Forsten, 1988), 67–79; Susan Stephens, “Who Read Ancient Novels?” in Tatum, Search for the Ancient Novel, 405–18; Ewen Bowie, “The Readership of Greek Novels in the Ancient World,” in Tatum, Search for the Ancient Novel, 435–59. 26 The previous note refers to the full discussion; further, Consuelo Ruiz-Montero, “The Rise of the Greek Novel,” in Schmeling, Novel in the Ancient World, 29–85; here 80–85. 27 Stephens, “Who Read Ancient Novels?”; Bowie, “Readership of Greek Novels.” 28 Simon Swain, Hellenism and Empire: Language, Classicism and Power in the Greek World AD 50–250 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 104. 29 Northrop Frye, The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), 23.

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curiously ambivalent character of the genre itself.30 As a written text, Chariton’s story can only ever have circulated among the literate strata of society. But the ancient romance (unlike the modern novel) never achieved the literary status of a “school text.” Chariton was certainly not prescribed reading on any school syllabus: indeed, what little evidence we have suggests that such tales were frowned on by schoolmasters and despised by the self-appointed guardians of the literary canon. If the novels were read at all (and they would not have survived otherwise), they were read for pleasure.31 And this fact in itself subverts the statistical indications of popularity based on literacy levels and the distribution of papyrus fragments. For a text whose circulation was not “artificially boosted” (in Goold’s words) by the school curriculum, the distribution – based, like almost all our papyrus evidence, precisely on remains from the lesser metropoleis which could not sustain a rhetorical school – is in fact rather impressive.32 The mere existence of this body of literature, with its ambivalent relationship to the literary canon, pushes back the rather narrow window-frames through which we attempt to view the intellectual and emotional life of Greco-Roman antiquity, in much the same way as the domestic architecture and décor of Pompeii opens up new vistas of visual understanding. The relative simplicity of the early novels’ narrative style, the relative clarity of their paratactic prose – the closest Greco-Roman parallel I know to the narrative texture of the NT – gives us an insight into a world of leisured reading (extra-curricular reading) that we would never have guessed at from reading Lucian or Tacitus. And if (following Tomas Hägg) we are prepared to extend our definition of “readership” to the possibility of read-

30 Goold suggests “light fiction” as a less misleading term than “popular fiction”: “The broad category to which Callirhoe belongs is more appropriately termed light fiction than popular fiction (as though it were an ancient counterpart of today’s mass-produced paperback book). Popular it was, but it was a popularity restricted to the top stratum of society. Callirhoe cannot have circulated among the lower classes, who were illiterate, uneducated, and unable to afford the purchase of books. The Greek and Roman critics regarded this light fiction as beneath their professional notice, though for all we know they may have enjoyed it no less than some modern academics derive pleasure not only from reading detective stories but from writing them.” (Goold, Callirhoe, p. 8) 31 The evidence is summarized by Goold, Callirhoe, 8–10, and discussed more fully in Ruiz-Montero, “Rise of the Greek Novel” (sceptical, but not very helpful in detail); Bowie, “Readership of Greek Novels”; Swain, Hellenism and Empire. But the use of romance-type plots in school exercises is well attested: cf. Seneca, Suasoriae; Parthenius, Erotika Pathemata. 32 Goold, Callirhoe, 3. It is worth remembering that Oxyrhynchus, though it clearly boasted a number of inhabitants well-read in classical literature, did not rise to its own rhetor: for much of its history, parents had to send their children down-river to Alexandria for a full tertiary education (Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind, 18–19; 48–50; 56–59).

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ing aloud to a domestic audience, there is no obvious reason why women should not be included in such a definition.33 How do the women of early Christian narrative fit into this picture? It must be said that very few of the women named in the NT belongs to the social world of Callirhoe and Statira. The almost-mythical Candace, queen of Ethiopia, with her pious eunuch treasurer (Acts 8:27) has her novelistic counterpart in Statira, queen of Babylon, and the not-so-pious Artaxates, eunuch and adviser to the Great King of Persia. Berenice, wife of the Herodian Agrippa II, coming into the court “with great pomp” (Acts 25:13, 23) would also be at home there: eastern petty princes like the Herods belonged to the same social level as the novel’s Dionysius. Parasitic on this elite world is the retainer class, represented in the novel by Plangon, the quick-witted and resourceful wife of Dionysius’s steward Phocas – and in the NT by Joanna, wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward (Lk 8:1–3). But the majority of NT women belong to a class all-but-invisible in the rarefied social world of Greek fiction, but none the less real for that. Raffaella Cribiore’s studies in the papyri reveal that A striking type of woman emerges from some of the most eloquent letters, and particularly from those written or subscribed by the sender herself: a relatively independent person, who sometimes travelled to pursue her business interest or to maintain family relationships, took care of financial matters, often sent and received goods of some value, and did not shrink from occasionally addressing male relatives and dependents in a sharp, peremptory tone.…It is especially women’s letters that are part of archives that illuminate a woman’s place in family and society, her relationships with other women and her male relatives and subordinates, her upbringing, the level of education she had at34 tained, and her familiarity with writing.

Socially, this is probably where we should put the women of Acts and the Pauline epistles, Phoebe and Chloe, Tabitha and Sapphira, Lydia and Priscilla – and the independent and feisty women of the gospels like Mary Magdalene and Martha who support Jesus on his travels, entertain and argue with him. Below them again – at the bottom of the social scale – are the anonymous women of the Gospels and Acts: the prostitutes and slaves (Rhoda), the village women who come to be healed or bring their children for a blessing, women of no social import. In romance their world is evoked only as a foil for the beauty and nobility of the heroine, a shadow world from which she has to be rescued. In the Gospels and Acts, by contrast, they play a significant (though receptive) role in the narrative of salvation because their lives are transformed by their encounter with Jesus.

33

Tomas Hägg, “Orality, Literacy, and the ‘Readership’ of the Early Greek Novel,” in Hägg, Parthenope, 109–40. 34 Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind, 91; cf. 92–101.

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B. Callirhoe Patrona: Women in the Landscape of the Gods The “sexual symmetry” of romance is spatially actualized in the protagonists’ voyages across the Mediterranean landscape. Unlike Odysseus’s faithful wife Penelope, Callirhoe does not wait at home for her husband to return to her; her travels (albeit involuntary) and her husband’s search for her are central to the narrative structure of the novel. Callirhoe’s adventures are played out in a nostalgic, fantasy landscape carefully set in an idealized “Hellenic” past which simultaneously evokes and subverts the historical past of the classical orators and historians.35 For Callirhoe, the Mediterranean is the “Greek sea” which links her with Syracuse and from which a Greek ship may still come and save her (5.1.3). As an “island woman,” she laments that crossing the Euphrates means being “shut up in the depths of barbarian land where the sea is far away: What ship can I hope will come sailing after me from Sicily now?” (5.1.5–6). Babylon, the despotic capital of the Persian Great King, is described in technicolor terms which stress its foreignness, its distance from everything ‘Greek’ (5.2.2–9, 5.4.5–6). It is peopled with satraps and eunuchs kowtowing36 to the King, a ‘barbarian’ population which is naturally gunaimanes (5.2.6) – though Chariton slyly implies that barbarian and Greek reactions to female beauty are not essentially different, and takes delight in setting Callirhoe up as a victorious ‘Miss Ionia’ in a beauty contest with ‘Miss Asia’ (5.3.4– 9).37 We can see this imagined landscape as the fictional counterpart of Pausanias’s Description of Greece, a nostalgic evocation of a vanished world imprinted with the cultural memories of Greek mythology and history.38 We could see it as a form of Hellenistic wallpaper, evoking the idealized landscapes that decorate the walls and mosaics of the villas of the elite – of the novels’ readers, in other words – across the Greco-Roman world from Pompeii to Antioch. In Chariton’s landscape, the most sig-nificant visual markers are Greek temples and Greek monuments: tombs, temples, and 35 36

Swain, Hellenism and Empire, 109–13. Reardon’s apt equivalent for proskunƝsis (Reardon, Collected Ancient Greek Novels, 79 n. 79). The “orientalism” of the Babylonian court is carefully conveyed through the use of stock characters (the satraps, the eunuch, the queen and her ladies) and behavior (e.g., 5.9.1; 6.3.1–7.10) as well as by set-piece descriptions (5.4.5–6; 6.4). 37 For the geographical stereotyping of ‘East’ and ‘West’, cf. Loveday Alexander, “In Journeyings Often,” in Acts in its Ancient Literary Context (London: T & T Clark, 2005), 69– 96, esp. 83. 38 Well explored in Susan Alcock, Graecia Capta: The Landscapes of Roman Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Cf. also Susan Alcock, John Cherry, and Jas Elsner, eds., Pausanias: Travel and Memory in Roman Greece (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

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shrines are the visible elements that define both urban and rural space, imprinting the presence of the traditional Greek gods on both town and countryside.39 Shrines and sanctuaries function in this narrative world as the dominant locations for the interpenetration of the human and the divine, a place for personal encounter with the deity through public festival and personal prayer.40 Robin Lane Fox points out that in the Greco-Roman world the cults of the gods shaped both civic time and civic space, marking the public calendar with festivals and processions that brought the ‘silent women’ of antiquity out into the public spaces of the city, so that the encounter of men and women and the encounter with the gods happen in the same time and space.41 Similarly, religion (sacred space, sacred time) plays an essential role in the plot of romance, creating opportunities for wellborn women to escape the confines of the home and meet their lovers. It is at just such a festival that Chaereas and Callirhoe first set eyes on each other, falling headlong in love and precipitating the whole plot of the novel (1.1.4–6). The rural shrine of Aphrodite, close to Dionysius’s country estate, plays a pivotal role in the plot. This is the place where the goddess is accustomed to make her appearance, attracting visitors from the city to pay homage (2.2.5). It is here that Dionysius falls in love with Callirhoe (2.3.5–8, 2.5.1–12), and in the same shrine that Chaereas discovers that his wife is still alive (3.6.3–5). Sanctuary space provides precisely a place for the active presence of the gods in the human world, a place where human interactions are brought into the divine realm and acquire transcendent significance. The power to act on this landscape – to construct the monuments that give it its transcendent significance – is of course the prerogative of the elite: building temples and tombs is one of the prime ways the super-rich impose their own cultural dominance on the landscape.42 It is interesting, then, to find that in the novel Callirhoe herself is empowered by her husband to act upon this sacred landscape by assuming the role of patron, building and designing a magnificent tomb for Chaereas: [Callirhoe] went to look for a site on which to build the tomb. A place near the shrine of Aphrodite attracted her, so that posterity also might have a reminder of her love. But Dionysius begrudged Chaereas such proximity, wishing to reserve this site for himself…so he said, “My dear, let us go to the city, and there before the walls let us construct an im-

39 Alcock, Graecia Capta, 202–3. Cf. 1.6.5 “Hermocrates had a magnificent tomb by the shore, visible to people far out at sea.” “Visibility from the sea” is a recurrent motif: cf. 4.1.4– 5; 4.7.8. 40 Chaer. 1.1.6; 2.2.5–7; 2.3.5; 3.2.12–13; 8.2.8; 8.8.15–16. 41 Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World (Harmondsworth: Penguin Viking, 1986), chapter 3, esp. 81; cf. Alcock, Graecia Capta, 172–73. 42 Alcock, Graecia Capta.

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posing and conspicuous memorial that from afar it may be visible to men on the waters.” (4.1.4–5)

Callirhoe is very much the active patron here, choosing the site, commissioning “a vast labour force with no expense spared,” and orchestrating a lavish funeral procession with herself as the star performer (4.1.4–12). We may see here an echo of the real power exerted on the sacred landscape by elite women in the Greek East through patronage, whether of buildings or (less visibly) of cult associations.

C. Callirhoe Orans: Women as Religious Practitioners The ritual imprinting of the landscape of romance with temples and shrines marks a subtle but significant change from the modalities of primary myth. In epic, as in romance, the gods have shrines and are recipients of cult, prayer, and sacrifice.43 They are (as they continued to be in Hellenistic popular belief) the invisible agents of wind and weather, protectors of strangers, senders of portents, inspirers of courage or sleep. 44 Their anger is invoked as the root cause for human misfortune.45 But, over and above these enduring religious functions, the gods of epic play a much more active and visible role as characters in the narrative. You can expect to meet the gods anywhere – on the beach, boarding a ship, sitting beside you on the bench at a banquet. They readily adopt a variety of human forms, and can successfully disguise themselves as stranger, friend or family member.46 But you will always know when a god has been speaking to you – vera incessu patuit dea.47 This sense of the transparency of the physical world to the presence of the gods (what Judith Perkins calls “the elision between the divine and human”48) remains an essential component of romance, but its modalities have subtly shifted. In the landscape of secondary myth, you do not expect to meet the gods themselves walking casually on a beach. Neither do the 43

Though temples as such do not figure large in the Homeric landscape. Libation and sacrificial feast tend to happen elsewhere: on the beach (Od. 3.5–9); by the river (Od. 4.477– 479); in the hall of Nestor (Od. 3.418–469); and libations form part of every ceremonial occasion (e.g., Od. 2.430–435; 3.43–63; 3.330–341). For prayer, cf. e.g., Od. 2.261–267. 44 Wind and weather: Od. 3.286–292, 5.291–296; portents: Od. 2.146–154; sleep: Od. 1.363–364; courage: Od. 1.384, 3.75–78; protectors of strangers: Od. 3.346–351. 45 Anger of the gods: e.g., Aen. 1.8–33. 46 In the opening books of the Odyssey, Athene successively disguises herself as Mentes (1.104–318), Mentor (2.267–296, 399–419, 3.12ff), Telemachus (2.382–392), and (as a dream-like “phantom’) Penelope’s sister Iphthime (4.795–841). 47 Aen. 1.405. Cf. Od. 1.318–324; 3.371–384; 3.419–420; 4.653–656, 830–831. 48 Perkins, Suffering Self, 53.

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novelists exploit the privileged authorial viewpoint of the epic poets to peer beyond the barricades of the sensible world. The gods are to be encountered much more properly and decorously – though none the less really for that – in the sacred locations prescribed and sanctified by ancient custom. These temples and shrines provide space for women to act as religious practitioners – though the “priestess” of Aphrodite’s rural shrine outside Miletus is a low-status shrine attendant rather than a cultic official (zakoros, 3.6.4–6), treated with some condescension by Callirhoe and Plangon (3.9.1–2). More importantly, they provide space for women to pray (to be themselves) in private (cf. H UKPLDM 3.10.4).49 There are feasts and festivals in plenty in this story, and the gods are treated with appropriate public deference, but for individuals the normal mode of approach to the divine is in private prayer. This fact in itself represents a perceptible shift in religious sensibility, something that brings Chariton’s painted world indefinably closer to the world of the mystery cults and of early Christianity than to the world of epic. What does Callirhoe pray about? Unsurprisingly, “women’s business” ta gunaikeia, figure large in her religious world view: birth, copulation, and death. Callirhoe is no feminist: she is essentially a conventional daughter of the elite, her ambitions echoing those of her parents and their society – marriage, motherhood, security, good reputation. Thus her prayers (as women’s prayers tended to do in the ancient world) circle around these conventional female concerns.50 She prays for a husband (1.1.7). She prays for the safety of her child (3.2.12f; 3.8.7ff). She laments the dead (3.10.4–8; 4.1.2–24). She adopts the conventional ritual postures for women in Greek religion: in suppliance (LNHWHLD) she loosens her hair, falls at the feet of the goddess and kisses them (8.8.15; 1.1.7); in ritual lament, she adopts black clothing and throws dust on her head (3.10.4–8; 4.1.2–24). But circumstances, and the machinations of the goddess, drive her out of the comfortable cocoon of elite maidenhood; and it is as a traveller, entering the perilous zone of the sea,51 that Callirhoe becomes most vulnerable and develops a more mature and self-confident relationship with her personal despoina, Aphrodite.52 Her experience of apparently motiveless suffering moves her from a simple prayer-pattern of petition and thanks to blame and reproach at Aphrodite’s injustice (3.2.12f; 3.8.7ff.), from the 49 50

Cf. Chaer. 1.1.7; 2.2.5–8; 3.2.12–13; 3.8.7–9; 7.5.1–5; 8.4.10; 8.8.15–16. These romantic concerns are overlapping but not identical with the topics covered in real women’s letters: childbirth; rearing children; weaving and other textile-related activity; household management; public business (taxation; crime); travel (Bagnall and Cribiore, Women’s Letters, ch. 9). 51 E.g., Chaer. 3.5.9, 6.6, 10.8; 4.1.5–6, 7.8; and cf. 1.14.9, where Reardon accepts Hercher's conjecture SHODJHL. 52 Addressed as “Mistress,” Despoina: 1.1.7; 3.2.12; 3.8.7; 8.4.10.

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prostrate posture of the suppliant to standing in silent accusation before the goddess (7.5.2ff). The end of the narrative, however, brings her back to a child-like trust in Aphrodite: Just before she went on board, Callirhoe made an obeisance to Aphrodite. “I thank you, Lady,” she said, “for what is happening now. You are reconciled to me now; grant that I see Syracuse too! A great stretch of sea separates me from there; an ocean is waiting for me that is frightening to cross; but I am not frightened if you are sailing with me” (8.4.10).

Paradoxically, it is when she travels beyond the confines of the Greek landscape that the power of Callirhoe’s deity becomes most evident. As we have seen, Chariton places his characters in an imagined landscape whose most prominent features are visual signs of the presence and power of the Greek gods – especially Aphrodite. The gods of Babylon, by contrast, are anonymous and (apparently) impotent – or implicitly identified with the gods of the Greeks. When Callirhoe is about to appear in the king’s courtroom in Babylon, her trusted servant Plangon tells her to treat the courtroom as if it were the temple of Aphrodite herself (5.5.7); and Chariton effectively ensures that that is how we read this barbarian cityscape. On the human level, his Greek heroes have to contend with Persian and Egyptian competitors, but in the divine realm Aphrodite has no rivals. Even among the Greek gods, Aphrodite dominates the sacred landscape of the novel;53 the only other deity mentioned as the recipient of prayer is the quintessentially Hellenistic Tyche (Fortuna).54 And this spatial henotheism has its counterpart in the personal religion of Chariton’s characters. It is not that anyone makes a choice between Aphrodite and other gods: there is no contest between ‘false’ and ‘true’ conceptions of divinity, and no attempt to argue for a kind of ‘God behind the gods’ in the manner of pagan philosophical monotheism. It is simply that, within this narrative world, there is only one deity worth talking about – or talking to.

D. Callirhoe Epiphanes: Women as Sites of Divine Presence The interpenetration of divine and human worlds is further recognized in a perhaps more surprising way, through human beings who convey the likeness of divine presence to an extraordinary degree. The concept of epiph53 Ray Laurence notes a similar spatial dominance of the temples of Isis and Aphrodite on the cityscape of Pompeii (Roman Pompeii: Space and Society [London: Routledge: 1994], 26; 34–35). 54 Fortune invoked by characters: e.g., 1.10.2 (Theron); 1.13.4 (Leonas); 1.14.6–10 (Callirhoe); 8.3.5 (Statira). Invoked by narrator: e.g., 2.8.3–4; 8.3.6. The only other temple named is the temple of Concord in Miletus (3.2.16).

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any, in which Callirhoe’s beauty acts as a constant visual evocation of Aphrodite’s presence, plays a significant role in Chariton’s plot.55 This motif is especially associated with temples (particularly rural shrines) and other numinous places. Unveiling Callirhoe and loosening her hair, [Theron] opened the door and told her to go in first. Leonas and all in the room were struck with amazement at the sudden apparition, as if they had set eyes on a goddess; for rumor had it that Aphrodite could be seen (H SLIDLQ HVTDL) in the fields. (Chaer. 1.14.1) When the women had eaten, Plangon said to Callirhoe, “Come to Aphrodite’s shrine and offer up a prayer for yourself. The goddess makes her appearance here; and, beside our neighbors, people from the city come here to sacrifice to her. She listens especially to Dionysius, and he has never failed to stop at her shrine.” They then told her of the appearances of the goddess, and one of the peasant women said, “Lady, when you see Aphrodite you will think that you are looking at a picture of yourself.” (Chaer. 2.2.5–6)

Ever since the classical period, Greek religious art had shown a strong preference for an idealized naturalism in the depiction of the gods. The great images of classical antiquity were renowned for their lifelike appearance, and Hellenistic art developed this naturalism. Philostratus (Imagines 2.1), describing what purports to be an ancient painting of Aphrodite at Neapolis, sees an Aphrodite, made of ivory, [whom] delicate maidens are hymning in delicate myrtle groves. The chorister who leads them is skilled in her art, and not yet past her youth; for a certain beauty rests even on her first wrinkle, which, though it brings with it the gravity of age, yet tempers this with what remains of her prime. The type of the goddess is that of Aphrodite Aidos (goddess of modesty), unclothed and decorous, and the material is ivory, closely joined. However, the goddess is unwilling to seem painted, but she stands out as though one could take hold of her.

A fourth-century rhetor describes Praxiteles’s sculpture of Eros in similarly animated terms: The Eros, the workmanship of Praxiteles, was Eros himself, a boy in the bloom of youth with wings and bow. Bronze gave expression to him, and as though giving expression to Eros as a great and dominating god, it was itself subdued by Eros; for it could not endure to be only bronze, but it became Eros just as he was. You might have seen the bronze losing its hardness and becoming marvelously delicate in the direction of plumpness and, to put the matter briefly, the material proving equal to fulfilling all the obligations that were laid upon it. It was supple but without effeminacy; and while it had the proper color of bronze, it looked bright and fresh; and though it was quite devoid of actual motion, it was ready to display motion; for though it was fixed solidly on a pedestal, it deceived one into thinking that it possessed the power to fly. It was filled with joy even to laughter, the glance from the eyes was ardent and gentle, and one could see the bronze coming under the sway of passion and willingly receiving the representation of laughter.…And 55 Tomas Hägg, “Epiphany in the Greek Novels: The Emplotment of a Metaphor,” in Hägg, Parthenope, 141–55.

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what wonderful bronze it was! For as one looked a ruddy color shone out from the ends of the curls, and when one felt the hair it yielded as though soft to the touch. As I gazed on this work of art, the belief came over me that Daidalos had indeed wrought a dancing group in motion and had bestowed sensation upon gold, while Praxiteles had all but put intelligence into his image of Eros and had so contrived that it should cleave the air with 56 its wings.

This delight in naturalistic portraiture makes it easy for the novelists to make the same move in reverse: their heroines (less commonly, heroes) are described as animated statues, bringing the visual presence of the god to life. As she made her way from the shrine to the sea, the boatmen were overwhelmed with awe on seeing her, as though Aphrodite herself were coming to embark, and with one accord they hastened to kneel in homage. (3.2.14) Even strangers are paying you homage as a goddess. The other day two fine young men sailed by here, and one of them nearly expired at the sight of your statue, so like a goddess on earth has Aphrodite made you. (3.9.1)

Epiphany might seem to be a form of hubris, but oddly (perhaps because Callirhoe is much too modest to claim any special status for herself), Chariton treats it instead as a mode of divine presence. Callirhoe’s super-human beauty is the gift of Aphrodite herself, and, far from being jealous, the goddess takes it as a personal insult if humanity (both male and female) fails to acknowledge the fact. Despite her physical and emotional trials, then, Callirhoe’s journey is also a kind of triumphal progress for Aphrodite, winning acclaim and recognition for the goddess’s powers from West to East and back again (8.1.3). We do not need to read the novels as Mysterientexte to see that one of their underlying themes is to map the worldwide triumph of love’s divinity against even the most philosophical of opponents. But there is an important caveat. Greek romance is pervaded with thambos, awe and wonder as the appropriate response to thaumata, marvelous events. Yet there are no actual miracles: all the apparent resurrections and miraculous escapes turn out to be illusions.57 The real site of divine encounter is the human body; yet only the superstitious lower orders really see Callirhoe as Aphrodite herself rising from the waves: The humbler folk (to demodesteron) were persuaded that she was a Nereid who had risen from the sea or a goddess who had come from Dionysius’s estate: this was the gossip of the boatmen. (3.2.15)

56 57

Callistratus, Descriptions 3. Bowersock, Fiction as History; Loveday Alexander, “Fact, Fiction, and the Genre of Acts,” in Acts in its Ancient Literary Context, 133–63; here 153–56.

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Like the book’s elite characters, we (the author and readers) always know that the sense of epiphany is an illusion, albeit a beneficent one: Khariton, as we remember, let Dionysios recover quickly from his instantaneous belief that Kallirhoe really was Aphrodite, while the other people believing in epiphany are all simple minds, servants, peasants, boat-men, ‘humbler’ city-dwellers, or the temple staff ex officio, whom author and reader may join in regarding with a touch of good-humoured 58 irony.

When the well-meaning temple attendant describes the young man who “worships” (proskunein) Callirhoe “as a goddess” (3.9.1), we know – as Callirhoe does – that the stranger’s distress is caused by his recognition, not of Aphrodite but of his long-lost (and entirely human) wife. Callirhoe is always aware of the boundaries between mortal and immortal; in fact, Chariton goes out of his way to dramatize his heroine’s negative reactions to her celebrity status. Far from claiming divine honours, this teenage heroine is painfully conscious of the disparity between her divine re-putation and her actual status as a slave. The epiphany motif thus takes on an added piquancy from the central romance theme of status reversal. It is precisely in the pathos of her followers that the presence of the goddess is most powerfully exhibited. At the same time, Chariton subtly reinforces the elite status of his heroes and heroine by underlining their superior understanding of the limits of enchantment: we and they always know that the gods do not in fact walk upon the earth in human form.

E. Women in the Sacred Landscape of Early Christian Narrative Despite the explosion of work by New Testament scholars over the past two decades on this literature, we have yet to exhaust the potential illumination to be gained by reading early Christian narrative in parallel with Greek romance.59 Here I can do no more than to suggest briefly some fruitful avenues for fuller exploration, focusing on representations of women and religion in the double narrative of Luke’s Gospel and Acts, which together supply the largest single narrative block in the New Testament. First, the sacred landscape of the Greek novel throws into relief the subtle but significant changes Luke makes in the construction of sacred

58 Hägg, “Epiphany,” 147. 59 Notably in Richard Pervo,

Profit With Delight: The Literary Genre of the Acts of the Apostles (Philadelphia: Fortress 1987); and the ongoing work of the SBL Ancient Fiction group, a selection of which is published in the two Ancient Fiction volumes edited by Hock, Chance, and Perkins (1998); and by Brant, Hedrick, and Shea (2005).

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space.60 Chariton’s desire to impress the visual presence of the Greek gods on his narrative landscape is matched by Luke’s apparent reluctance to acknowledge it. “The Temple” for Luke means preeminently the Jerusalem temple: otherwise, the only temple in the landscape is the temple of Artemis at Ephesus (Acts 19:27).61 Like other Jewish apologists, Luke is prepared to quote the philosophical poet Aratus as testimony to the God behind the gods, the one who gives breath and being to all created life (Acts 17:24–28). But all other manifestations of pagan cult are treated as dangerous delusions (Acts 17:29–31; Acts 14:14–18) or loci of hostile power (Acts 19:24–40).62 And there is a parallel shift in the perception of civic space. Chariton’s hero and heroine belong to the civic elite and move freely and confidently between the public spaces of the city and the domestic luxury of the country villa; even as a slave, Callirhoe is cocooned by the protective status of her master, transported privately by boat and litter from villa to town house to palace.63 For Luke’s heroes, by contrast, the open spaces of the city are stress zones, and its civic assemblies are points of danger and hostility.64 The emissaries of the gospel move warily in the city’s streets, seeking safe houses (lodging with a tanner by the harbor; a third-floor tenement room in Troas65) and the protection of a migrant community association. This is a Greek world perceived from an outsider’s point of view – a viewpoint probably shared, as Swain points out, by many of the inhabitants of the cities of the Greek east who were effectively ‘outsiders’ to the effortless Hellenism of the novels.66 Where do women fit into this subtly but profoundly different religious landscape? In the New Testament, as in romance, religious sites and festivals provide the time and place for significant encounters between men and women. The Jerusalem temple provides a sacred space where women are able to act as religious practitioners (Mary and Anna in Luke 2:22–38) 60 Loveday Alexander, “Narrative Maps: Reflections on the Toponomy of Acts,” in Acts in its Ancient Literary Context, 97–131. 61 At Lystra, Luke mentions a sacrificial procession to “Zeus-outside-the-walls,” but no temple (Acts 14:13). In Athens, Paul sees no temples, only a city decorated with false images (NDWHLGZORQ Acts 17:16) and an altar “To the unknown God” – which serves him as the launch-pad for a philosophical denunciation of man-made shrines (Acts 17:24). The Ephesus incident exposes the commercial interests at stake in the creation of such shrines (Acts 19:24). 62 Though Luke is careful to note that Paul and his friends are not hierosuloi: Acts 19:37. 63 Chaer. 3.2.10–11. Interestingly, Paul slips into this fragile-but-protected status when he becomes a Roman prisoner: despite the hardships of the voyage to Rome, the prisoners have the protection of Julius the centurion, and find themselves being entertained in Publius’s country villa on Malta (Acts 28:7). 64 Alexander, “Narrative Maps,” 112–15. 65 Acts 9:43; 20:6–9. 66 Simon Swain, Hellenism and Empire, 421.

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or are exposed to the public gaze (the widow of Luke 21:1–4, or the adultera of John 8:1–11). In Acts, the synagogue provides a public sacred space where Paul is able to meet mixed groups that include “god-fearing” women (Acts 13:50; cf. 17:4, 12, 34) – though the Jewish women of Philippi have a more marginal sacred space “beside the river” (Acts 16:13). Within this Jewish-oriented religious world, women’s cultic roles are limited to the traditional biblical practices of prayer and prophecy. There are no priestesses in Luke’s narrative: the only pagan woman who adopts an active religious role in Acts is the Pythia of Acts 16:16–18, fitting a prophetic template perhaps easier to accommodate to the biblical pattern. For Luke and his readers, this is an exploitative relationship from which the woman is freed by Paul’s word of exorcism – though, with the customary ambivalence of such tales, she also supplies prophetic testimony to the religious credentials of Paul’s message of salvation. For Luke’s counterpart to the elderly temple attendant who recognizes Callirhoe in the temple of Aphrodite (Chaer. 3.5.4; 3.9.1), we might compare the prophetic figure of Anna who haunts the Jerusalem temple and recognises the coming of the Christ (Luke 2:36–38). Outside the Temple, too, the prophetic inspiration of the Holy Spirit gives women a religious voice: cf. Elizabeth (Luke 1:41–45); Mary (Luke 1:46–55); the daughters of Philip (Acts 21:9). And as in the novels, women’s ritual actions are linked with the conventional feminine concerns of birth and death: thanksgiving prayer at the birth of a child (Luke 2:22–24); the lament of the daughters of Jerusalem (Luke 23:27–28); the women at the cross and the tomb (Luke 23:49, 55–56; 24:1–3).67 But the narrative of Acts is also beginning to redefine Christian sacred space to include domestic space (Acts 2:46), and it is in this sphere that women begin to figure in the narrative both as travellers and as patrons to the new community. Thus Lydia, represented as an independent businesswoman (and by implication a traveller “from Thyatira”) offers hospitality to Paul in Philippi (Acts 16:40); Priscilla, with her husband Aquila, travels from Rome and hosts a house-church in Corinth and Ephesus (Acts 18:2, 26); Mary (John Mark’s mother) hosts the church in Jerusalem (Acts 12:12); Tabitha acts as benefactor to a Christian group in Joppa (Acts 9:36–41). And we should not forget Sapphira, singled out as of equal status with her husband in a flawed act of benefaction (Acts 5:1–10). What lies behind this – and what gives a distinctive religious significance to the women in New Testament narrative – is the new sacred space constructed around the person of Jesus. Luke 10:38–42 describes an argument between two sisters over hospitality for a visiting teacher. In any 67

21:5).

Cf. the women of Tyre who come down to the seashore to bid Paul farewell (Acts

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other narrative, this would be a domestic scene – there is nothing obviously ‘religious’ about it. But once we accept (as Luke and his readers obviously do) the religious status of the central character, then the whole interaction acquires potential religious significance, and in turn raises a further set of secondary questions about women’s ministry and discipleship. Similarly, John 4 describes a conversation between Jesus and a woman at a well. Is this a religious scene? Only for readers who accept the evangelist’s premise that a Jesus is a figure who in some sense embodies the divine presence. By redefining the concept of sacred space around the person of Jesus, in other words, early Christian discourse creates a whole new dynamic for the narrative representation of women as religious subjects. Thus the patronage and support offered to Jesus by the women of Luke 8:1–3 becomes by implication an act of religious patronage: Mary Magdalene and Joanna should be read alongside Lydia and Priscilla as Christian patrons and benefactors.68 What is interesting here is the way these autonomous and proactive women are reinterpreted by later Christian tradition. While Joanna disappears from view, the Magdalene is progressively assimilated to the “woman who was a sinner” of Luke 7:36–50.69 For whatever reason, these later Christian readers of the gospel narratives seem to have shared the stereoscopic worldview of romance, which has no room for such independent and financially active businesswomen and where the only roles open to women are the chaste wife and the sexually active and therefore dangerous “sinner.” The reconfigured sacred space created by the person of Christ opens up other dimensions of spirituality for women. The narrative of Acts highlights the participation of women with men as disciples in “the Way” (Acts 1:14; 5:14; 8:3, 12; 9:2). Tabitha, finding her own distinctively feminine mode of enacting the “community of goods” of Acts 4:32–35, is dignified with a neologism as a “female disciple,” PDTKWULD (9:36). In the gospel narrative, ordinary women, (village women, the women of the streets) play a surprisingly visible role – not in the limited roles assigned to them by traditional religion, but as recipients of divine grace through interaction with Jesus. The GLDNRQLD of Peter’s mother-in-law (Luke 4:38–39); the saving faith (KSLVWLMVRXVHVZNHQVH) of the “woman who was a sinner” 68 Cf. Esther de Boer, Mary Magdalene: Beyond the Myth (Harrisburg, Pa: Trinity Press International, 1997); Esther de Boer, The Gospel of Mary: Beyond a Gnostic and a Biblical Mary Magdalene (JSNTSS 260; London: T & T Clark, 2004). On Joanna, cf. Richard Bauckham, Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), ch. 5. 69 On the popular elaboration of the Magdalene, cf. Ingrid Maisch, Mary Magdalene: The Image of a Woman through the Centuries (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1998); Katherine L. Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the later Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

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(Luke 7:50) and of the woman with the flow of blood (Luke 8:48); the resurrection of Jairus’s daughter (Luke 8:55), and of the widow of Nain’s son (Luke 7:11–16);70 the blessing of the woman from the crowd (Luke 11:27); the “daughter of Abraham” who is released from Satan’s bonds on the Sabbath and enabled to praise God (Luke 13:11–13) – in the narrative world of the gospels, all of these show that women (and women’s bodies) have the potential to become religious subjects, i.e., sites of encounter with the divine. And this brings us, finally, to the motif of epiphany, which makes a vivid foil for understanding the grammar of divine presence in early Christian narrative. Robin Lane Fox rightly identifies the reaction of the Lycaonian crowd to Paul’s healing of the lame man at the gates of Lystra (Acts 14:8– 18) as significant for understanding the potential impact of Christian missionaries on a pagan audience – and even more, we might add, of stories like Luke’s on pagan readers.71 It is a story that wonderfully evokes the “casual interpenetration” of divine and human worlds that is so characteristic of romance; the healing of the lame man triggers the same kind of wonder and acclamation that greets Callirhoe’s beauty wherever she goes: When the crowds saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, “The gods have come down to us in human form!” Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes, because he was the chief speaker. The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates: he and the crowds wanted to offer sacrifice. (Acts 14:11–13, NRSV)

What’s happening here is precisely not what the Lycaonians think: Paul and Barnabas are not “gods in human form” (RPRLZTHQWHM D QTUZSRLM) but “mortals of like passions with yourselves” (RPRLRSDTHLaM XPLaQ D Q TUZSRL: Acts 14:15). As in the novels, it is only the outsiders – the rustics who speak Lycaonian rather than Greek, or the “barbarians” of Malta (Acts 28:6) – who make this kind of jump. Luke is much more reluctant than Chariton to allow any blurring of the boundaries between divine and human: the offering of divine honours to mortals is to be avoided at all costs, and is symptomatic of one of the basic errors of paganism (Acts 14:14–18). The dangers of this kind of acclamation are thrown into relief by the false epiphany of Herod in Acts 12:20–23: the king who fails to “give the glory to God” is immediately struck with divine punishment.72 Nevertheless, this programmatic rhetorical move should not distract us from the fact that, within the narrative, Paul and Barnabas have effectively become (just as Callirhoe has) loci of divine power – and as Strelan per70 Cf. Heb. 11.35, where “women received back their dead by resurrection” is treated as a mark of faith. 71 Fox, Pagans and Christians, 99–100. 72 Compare the parallel account at Jos. Ant. 19.343–350, which makes a similar point.

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suasively argues, aspects of the healing account (staring eyes, loud voice) would make that very clear to pagan readers.73 The Lycaonian acclamation is not so wide of the mark: Paul and Barnabas are divine messengers, and the healings accomplished by Paul and the other apostles are indeed signs of the divine presence. We can begin to see how Acts offers a counterpart to Chariton’s romance, an alternative myth of salvation: where Chariton depicts the triumph of Aphrodite, Luke describes the triumphal progress of Christ (Acts 17:18) across the Mediterranean world from East to West, accompanied by awe-inspiring “signs and wonders.” And whether Paul likes it or not, within the narrative these manifestations of epiphany link the divine presence very clearly with certain divinely-gifted human beings. The physicality of this form of spiritual presence in the popular imagination is highlighted by the fact that it is perceived to be “carried” by inanimate objects such as sweatbands, and even by the apostle’s shadow (Acts 5:15, 19:12). The association of divine power and individual arête is a prominent theme of Luke’s narrative, one that prefigures aspects of the cult of the saints in late antiquity. But the persistent controversy that swirls about these figures shows Luke’s keen awareness of the dangers inherent in the collocation of divine presence and human action. A series of warning narratives underline the message that spiritual power is dangerous: it cannot be bought for cash (8:18–23), or used as a magical formula (19.13–19), and it does not bring immunity from the vicissitudes of storm and shipwreck – though it may offer protection from snakebite (28:1–6). In the parallel myth of romance, the prerequisites of divinity are beauty and noble birth: only those who are in reality nobly-born (whatever their present circumstances) can possibly act as bearers of the divine presence.74 For readers of romance, it makes excellent sense that Paul’s ability to survive shipwreck and snakebite would evoke his status as theios aner (Acts 28:4–6).75 But Luke cannot allow his readers to draw this conclusion. The apostle is not a god: he is a human envoy, under orders from a very personal deity. His survival, and the survival of the whole ship’s company with him, is a vindication both of Paul’s personal integrity and of the power of the God “whose I am and whom I serve” (Acts 27:23). Starting from very different theological premises, then, Luke’s narrative effectively promulgates a form of henotheism that would be readily comprehensible to readers of Greek romance. Where Chariton describes the irresistible power of Aphrodite – and the havoc she wreaks in individual 73 Rick Strelan, “Recognizing the Gods (Acts 74 Cf. Perkins, Suffering Self, 53–54. 75 Compare the parallel conclusions related

shipwreck: Chaer. 3.3.9–4.18.

14.8–10),” NTS 46 (2000): 488–503. to the pirate Theron’s apparent survival of

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lives – across the Mediterranean landscape and reaching beyond the borders of the Greek world, Luke describes the inexorable progress of a new savior-god across the same territory, a savior who (like Aphrodite) is initially resisted but finally proves irresistible. Like Chariton and the readers of romance, Luke sees a continuous chain of divinity between earth and heaven – though he puts the breaks in the chain of being at rather different places. Like Chariton, Luke is interested in exploring the limits of enchantment, the distinction between vision and reality, between logos and muthos. And for Luke, as for Chariton, the paradox is that the “awe and wonder” of illiterate barbarians has actually – despite the careful critical distancing called for by elite post-rationalism – hit upon something not so far from the truth: for Luke, God has indeed come down in human likeness. And this brings us back to the scene with which we began, with Chariton’s lyrical description of Callirhoe posing with her baby in her arms, outshining the virgin goddesses in her beauty and purity. The obvious counterpart to this image in the Christian imagination is the figure of the Madonna, the virgin mother displaying her divine child to the world, the embodiment in Christian iconography of the ancient concept of epiphany. It is of course true that the wonder-workers of Luke’s narrative, as well as its hero, are all male: women figure as recipients of divine grace, and even as its heralds and prophets, but not (in the canonical gospels) as its physical agents in their own right. Female arête, in the world of post-biblical narration, can be expressed in terms of martyrdom,76 or of ascetic renunciation:77 but not of the easy elision of the boundaries between human beauty and divine presence that we see in Chariton’s novel. The mere idea of a female deity of visibly seductive form is almost impossible to accommodate into the symbolic world of biblical narration. The notable exception here, at least in Luke’s Gospel, is the Virgin Mary. She is the one female figure in early Christianity who becomes a site of divine presence in her own right (and ultimately an object of Christian devotion) – if only in virtue of her role as the mother of God’s son. Reading this story against the narrative world of Greek romance throws into relief the distinctiveness of Luke’s representation of women and religion – and also opens up some potential routes for exploring how and why the figure of the Virgin came 76 Cf. the mother of the 77 On the ascetic tenor

Maccabees: 2 Macc 7:24–41; 4 Maccabees 14–16. of Christian martyr-acts and saints’ lives, cf. Hägg, Novel in Antiquity, ch. 6; Richard Pervo, “Early Christian Fiction,” in Morgan & Stoneman, Greek Fiction, 239–54; idem, “The Ancient Novel Becomes Christian,” in Schmeling, Novel in the Ancient World, 685–711; Judith Perkins, “Representation in Greek Saints’ Lives,” in Morgan and Stoneman, Greek Fiction, 255–71; and, for a concrete example of the metamorphosis, Hägg, “Parthenope Decapitated?” in Parthenope, 233–61.

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to play such an important role in the development of early Christian devotion.

Works Cited Texts Chariton. Callirhoe. Translated by G. P. Goold. LCL. Harvard University Press, 1995. Reardon B. P., ed. Collected Ancient Greek Novels. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1989. Studies Alcock, Susan. Graecia Capta: The Landscapes of Roman Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Alcock, Susan, John Cherry, and Jas Elsner, eds. Pausanias: Travel and Memory in Roman Greece. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Alexander, Loveday. “Novels, Greek and Latin.” Pages 1137–39 in vol. 4 of Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by David Noel Freedman. 6 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1992. –. “‘In Journeyings Often’: Voyaging in the Acts of the Apostles and in Greek Romance.” Pages 69–96 in Acts in its Ancient Literary Context. New York: T & T Clark International, 2005. –. “Narrative Maps: Reflections on the Toponomy of Acts.” Pages 97–131 in Acts in Its Ancient Literary Context. New York: T & T Clark International, 2005. –. “Fact, Fiction, and the Genre of Acts.” Pages 133–63 in Acts in its Ancient Literary Context. New York: T & T Clark International, 2005. –. Acts in its Ancient Literary Context: A Classicist Looks at the Acts of the Apostles (London: T & T Clark International, 2005). –. “The Passions in Galen and the Novels of Chariton and Xenophon.” Pages 175–97 in Passions and Moral Progress in Greco-Roman Thought. Edited by John T. Fitzgerald. London: Routledge, 2008. Bagnall, R. S. and R. Cribiore. Women’s Letters from Ancient Egypt, 300 BC–AD 800. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006. Bauckham, Richard. Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002. de Boer, Esther. Mary Magdalene: Beyond the Myth. Harrisburg, Pa: Trinity Press International, 1997. –. The Gospel of Mary: Beyond a Gnostic and a Biblical Mary Magdalene. Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 260. London: T & T Clark, 2004. Bowersock, G. W. Fiction as History: Nero to Julian. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Bowie, E. L. “The Greek Novel.” Chapter 6 of Cambridge History of Classical Literature. Edited by P. E. Easterling and B. M. W. Knox. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993. –. “The Readership of Greek Novels in the Ancient World.” Pages 435–59 in Search for the Ancient Novel. Edited by James Tatum. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1994. –. “The Ancient Readers of the Greek Novels.” Pages 87–106 in Novel in the Ancient World. Edited by Gareth Schmeling. Leiden: Brill 1996. Bowman, A. K. Life and Letters on the Roman Frontier. London: British Museum, 1994.

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Brant, Jo-Ann, Charles W. Hedrick, and Chris Shea, eds. Ancient Fiction: The Matrix of Early Christian and Jewish Narrative. Society of Biblical Literature Symposium 32. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005. Cribiore, Raffaella. Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Egger, Brigitte. “Looking at Chariton’s Callirhoe.” Pages 31–48 in The Greek Novel in Context. Edited by J. R. Morgan and Richard Stoneman, Greek Fiction. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. –. “The Role of Women in the Greek Novel: Woman as Heroine and Reader.” Pages 108–36 in Oxford Readings in the Greek Novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Frye, Northrop. The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976. Hägg, Tomas. The Novel in Antiquity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983. –. Parthenope: Studies in Ancient Greek Fiction. Edited by Lars B. Mortensen and Tormod Eide. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2004. Heever, Gerhard van den. “Novel and Mystery: Discourse, Myth, and Society.” Pages 89–114 in Ancient Fiction: The Matrix of Early Christian and Jewish Narrative. Edited by Jo-Ann Brant, Charles W. Hedrick, and Chris Shea. Society of Biblical Literature Symposium 32. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005. Hock, Ronald J., Bradley Chance, and Judith Perkins, eds. Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative. Society of Biblical Literature Symposium 6. Atlanta: SBL 1998. Hock, Ronald. “The Educational Curriculum in Chariton’s Callirhoe.” Pages 15–36 in Ancient Fiction: The Matrix of Early Christian and Jewish Narrative. Edited by JoAnn Brant, Charles W. Hedrick, and Chris Shea. Society of Biblical Literature Symposium 32. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005. Jansen, Katherine L. The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Klauck, Hans-Josef. Ancient Letters and the New Testament: A Guide to Context and Exegesis. Translated and edited by Daniel P. Bailey. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2006. Konstan, David. Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Lane Fox, Robin. Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World. Harmondsworth: Penguin Viking, 1986. Laurence, Ray. Roman Pompeii: Space and Society. London: Routledge: 1994. Maisch, Ingrid. Mary Magdalene: The Image of a Woman through the Centuries. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1998. Merkelbach, R. Roman und Mysterium in der Antike. Munich: Beck, 1962. Morgan, J. R. and Richard Stoneman, eds. Greek Fiction: The Greek Novel in Context. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. Perkins, Judith. The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era. London: Routledge, 1995. Pervo, Richard I. Profit with Delight: The Literary Genre of the Acts of the Apostles. Philadelphia: Fortress 1987. Ruiz-Montero, Consuelo. “The Rise of the Greek Novel.” Pages 29–85 in Novel in the Ancient World. Edited by Gareth Schmeling. Leiden: Brill, 1996. Schmeling, Gareth. The Novel in the Ancient World. Leiden: Brill 1996.

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Stephens, Susan A. “Who Read Ancient Novels?” Pages 405–18 in Search for the Ancient Novel. Edited by James Tatum. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. Stephens, Susan and John J. Winkler, eds. Ancient Greek Novels: The Fragments. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Strelan, Rick. “Recognizing the Gods (Acts 14:8–10).” NTS 46 (2000): 488–503. Swain, Simon. Hellenism and Empire: Language, Classicism and Power in the Greek World AD 50–250. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. –, ed. Oxford Readings in the Greek Novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Tatum, James, ed. The Search for the Ancient Novel. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1994. Wesseling, B. “The Audience of the Ancient Novels.” Pages 67–79 in Groningen Colloquia on the Novel, vol I. Edited by H. Hofmann. 6 vols. Groningen: Forsten 1988.

The Portrayal of Aseneth in Joseph and Aseneth Women’s Religious Experience in Antiquity and the Limitations of Ancient Narratives PATRICIA D. AHEARNE-KROLL

In her book, The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity, Kate Cooper argues that the Christian ideal of virginity was persuasively presented to Roman urban elite in terms that shifted the dependence on marriage (and the benefits that this social agreement implied) to “a model of otherworldly allegiance”1 that dispensed with marriage. The Apocryphal Acts, for example, promoted this ideology in their portrayal of conflict between an apostle, who convinces a woman to live a life of Christian chastity, and the woman’s male partner, who opposes this decision. For the ancient audience, the woman’s choice posed a threat to the elemental institution of marriage that ensured the continuation of noble figures and their contribution to the urban environment.2 Hence, the female protagonists in these narratives do not so much reflect ‘actual’ women in late antiquity as they do present a “female point of identification” that undermined social structures upon which the male elite relied.3 At the heart of Cooper’s analysis lies the challenge of how to view literature like the Apocryphal Acts, especially when seeking to describe religious experiences of women in antiquity. When a literary work refers to women or presents itself from a female perspective, should it be read as a reflection of “real” women and their experiences, or should it be examined for “the ways in which ‘woman’ or ‘the female’ becomes a rhetorical code for other concerns?”4 Elizabeth Clark refers to the former approach as reading compositions as “documents” and the latter approach as analyzing

1

(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 19. Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride, 45–67. 3 Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride, 19. 4 Elizabeth Clark, “Engendering the Study of Religion,” in The Future of the Study of Religion: Proceedings of Congress 2000 (ed. Slavica Jakelic and Lori Pearson; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004), 241. 2

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compositions as “texts.”5 Identifying the literary genre can be helpful in determining how much, if at all, the work may reflect actual experiences of women (i.e., whether it should be understood as a “document” or not),6 but examining the evidence as a “text” does not necessarily detract from discussing the experiences of real women. Exploring the construction of the female in a literary text can contribute to our understanding of the social world within which women in antiquity lived.7 Especially concerning anonymous texts, the best we can glean from them is a reflection of and response to social conventions and structures (which include ideologies) that formed the worldview of women and men in antiquity. This “text” approach to examining the female in late antique Christian literature applies well to the study of Aseneth in the Jewish novel, Joseph and Aseneth.8 Instead of reflecting “real” Jewish women and their religious experiences, the character Aseneth mainly serves to confirm an ideology 5 Clark criticizes what she identifies as a predominance in scholarship of reading late antique Christian literature as “documents” when it pertains to studying women in antiquity. She concludes her argument as follows: “In part, this inattention [to reading the literature as “texts”] may stem from the fact that patristics is a highly traditional field of study, many of whose practioners reject theoretical incursions onto their scholarly turf, or indeed, even analyses that employ concepts now common to a modern scholarly vocabulary. Nonetheless, the slowness seems more surprising insofar as most ancient Christian writings – highly literary and rhetorical in their construction – fall squarely into the category of textually oriented intellectual history. Although some of us for a decade or two played that we were anthropologists, encountering ‘real natives’ in our texts, I would argue that we should now register more fully that the written materials surviving from late ancient Christianity are almost exclusively ‘texts,’ not ‘documents’” (“Engendering the Study of Religion,” 241). See also Amy Hollywood’s discussion of Clark’s remarks in, “Agency and Evidence in Feminist Studies of Religion: A Response to Elizabeth Clark,” in The Future of the Study of Religion, 243 and 248–49. 6 Clark addresses this point throughout her essay (“Engendering the Study of Religion”), as does Hollywood in hers (“Agency and Evidence in Feminist Studies of Religion,” 248–49). 7 Hollywood, “Agency and Evidence in Feminist Studies of Religion,” 249. 8 This essay assumes that Joseph and Aseneth was composed sometime between 100 B .C .E. and 100 C . E. Ross Shepard Kraemer has argued for a later date for the composition of Joseph and Aseneth, sometime between the late third and sixth centuries C.E. (When Aseneth Met Joseph: A Late Antique Tale of the Biblical Patriarch and His Egyptian Wife, Reconsidered [New York: Oxford University Press, 1998], 225–306), but the primary features of the narrative that she identifies as late antique (e.g., adjuration/mystical practices, Helios imagery, and Neoplatonic cosmology) can arguably be understood in early antique ways (e.g., the influence of biblical paradigms in the portrayal of Aseneth’s encounter with the angel, the perpetuation of Helios imagery associated with royalty during the Ptolemaic period, and the connection between bees and the divine realm). For a detailed discussion, see Patricia D. Ahearne-Kroll, “Joseph and Aseneth and Jewish Identity in Greco-Roman Egypt” (Ph.D. diss., The University of Chicago, 2005), 149–97.

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that Joseph and Aseneth promotes. The overall goal of this narrative is to present a particular picture of the couple, Joseph and Aseneth, and not simply a picture of Aseneth alone; even though Aseneth dominates the story, the narrative addresses both Jewish women and men in antiquity. In order to investigate these issues, let us first examine the rhetorical design of the protagonists in ancient Greek novels, the genre to which Joseph and Aseneth is best ascribed, and then explore the presentation of Aseneth in the narrative.

A. Rhetorical Design of the Protagonists in Greek Novels Building upon the observations of David Konstan, 9 Cooper understands Greek novels to be “a rhetorical echo chamber for the dynastic fears and hopes” of urban elite.10 The plot of Greek novels rises and falls in correlation to whether or not the noble protagonists join in marriage, and in fictional form, Greek novels play with the anxieties of urban elite that stem from the social significance of marriage in their lives.11 As Cooper displays well, the marital union of the protagonists fulfills and/or contributes to civic and public duties within a city-state culture,12 but this fictional confirmation coincides with the actual decline of the polis during the rise of the Roman Empire.13 These novels, then, may attempt to persuade the elite audience to maintain the social structures of the polis. Perhaps the greatest rhetorical tool applied in Greek novels, HUZMserves an important role when in its finest form it is shared between the protagonists.14 In this way, Greek novels present marriages among the elite as desirable; the passion displayed between the protagonists for each other is celebrated, and even VZIURVXQK is understood within the context of the sexual desires of the couple for each other. Self-moderation is depicted in terms of “wellmeasured enjoyment” in marriage and not in terms of “stark abstinence.”15 For Cooper, Greek novels present the female protagonist as “a point of identification” that refers to the specific concerns of a male urban audience. In particular, the Greek novel “establishes a bond of complicity between the (presumably male) author and the intended reader (also presum9

Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 10 Virgin and the Bride, 34. 11 Virgin and the Bride, 34–35. 12 Virgin and the Bride, 28–31. 13 Konstan, Sexual Symmetry, 218–31. Cooper repeats, Virgin and the Bride, 36. 14 Konstan, Sexual Symmetry, 33–36. 15 Cooper, Virgin and the Bride, 37.

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ably male)” through which the reader “identifies” with “the hero’s desire for the heroine.”16 By means of this bond, the novel “enlist[s] the male reader in the renewal of the social order both symbolically, through ideology of marriage as a ‘rampart for the city,’ and practically, by encouraging the generation of legitimate offspring.”17 I will return to Cooper’s argument about the supposedly male audience later in this essay; for now, I wish to emphasize where she assigns the location of persuasion in the Greek novel. The bond of influence is not with the reader identifying with the hero per se but with the reader identifying with the reasoning and actions of the hero. Although she does not discuss her interpretation in this way, Cooper’s reading of the Greek novel reflects Aristotelian notions about how the plot of tragedy and epic poetry works. According to Aristotle, characters are portrayed outwardly in ways that give rise to the plot; we are not meant to focus on their inner, psychological states of being so to identify personally with them (as is common in reading fiction today).18 Rather, the audience is meant to identify with the choices that the protagonists make; the protagonists act in ways that the audience deems to be “necessary or probable” given the constraints set by the story, and the choices that the protagonists consider are socially conditioned in ways that are quite realistic for the audience.19 For example, in Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe, Callirhoe’s dilemma of deciding between marrying Dionysius or raising by herself the child that she had conceived with Chaereas is convincing as a serious predicament precisely because the consequences of her decision are believable to the audience.20 Given the internal logic of the narrative (i.e., the likelihood in Callirhoe’s mind that she would never be reacquainted with Chaereas and the unbefitting notion that a son of nobility may be regarded as illegitimate and poor), the audience would see Callirhoe’s decision as “necessary or probable” given the social conditions that the audience shared with the world of Chariton’s novel. But, as with characters of tragedy and epic, the hero and the heroine of Greek novels are not de16

Virgin and the Bride, 21. Virgin and the Bride, 23–24. 18 Poet., especially chapters 5–15, and section 1459b 8–16. Aristotelis de Arte Poetica Liber (ed. Rudolf Kassel; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965). 19 Poet., chapters 15, 25. James M. Redfield, Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hector (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1994), 52–98. 20 In terms of genre, Chaereas and Callirhoe will be used as the main point of comparison with Joseph and Aseneth given the close proximity in time of its composition to that of Joseph and Aseneth. The proposed dates for the production of Chaereas and Callirhoe ranges between late first century B .C. E. and early second century C. E. (B.P. Reardon, “Chariton,” in The Novel in the Ancient World [ed. Gareth Schmeling; Leiden: Brill, 1996], 312). 17

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signed to be models for the audience in the sense that one should aspire to “be just like them” or even in the sense that the protagonists personify the ideal that one should try to achieve. How the protagonists respond to their situations is the point of contact for ancient audiences who were likely also of noble rank but who saw the protagonists to be far greater than they.21 Aristotle’s description of characters in tragedies and epics, however, does not fully align with the characterization of the protagonists in Greek novels. How the hero and heroine act does not accord with what Aristotle implies about proper characterization. According to Aristotle, it is not appropriate for a female character to be clever (GHLQK),22 but the heroines of these novels can be quite shrewd. So, too, the relationship between the hero and heroine does not resonate with depictions in the older genres. Traditional Greek classifications usually assigned active and passive roles to sexual partners, but the Greek novel presents a “symmetry of fidelity” and passion that is “mutual and equal” between the partners.23 In order to present this symmetrical relationship, Konstan argues that the heroine is portrayed in more “active and self-reliant” ways than what we find in the presentation of the female in other Greek compositions, but the hero is more passive and “feminized” so to reduce the male to match the portrait of the female.24 Konstan cites scenes in the Greek novels where the male protagonists are paralyzed by their situation and they submit to voicing or acting in ways that demonstrate their feelings of turmoil.25 Although these heroes have their moments of courageous action, they usually convey their affection for the heroine through their expressed grief in being separated from her. As Konstan puts it, “When a damsel is in distress in a Greek novel, her lover is no less so.”26 Konstan is not alone in his reading of the seemingly passive hero,27 but in very important ways, the heroes of Greek novels are quite similar to those of classical literature who exhibit much emotion as well as intelligence. In the Iliad, for example, Achilles’s inability to control his rage ([RORM) and the ways that it consumes him are essential features that shape the plot.28 For the modern reader (but not to this one), it may appear 21 According to Aristotle, this is a standard feature of the design of characters in tragedy and epic. Poet., chapter 15. 22 Poet., 1454a 23–24. 23 Konstan, Sexual Symmetry, 35–38. 24 Sexual Symmetry, 26,185, and elsewhere. 25 Sexual Symmetry, 15–25. 26 Sexual Symmetry, 20. 27 Gareth Schmeling, “Myths of Person and Place: The Search for a Model for the Ancient Greek Novel,” in The Ancient Novel and Beyond (ed. Stelios Panayotakis, Maaike Zimmerman, and Wyste Keulen; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 426. 28 Redfield, Nature and Culture in the Iliad, 11–19, 91–109.

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that Achilles’s emotional response to Agamemnon’s actions is more justified than Chaereas’s suicidal attempts in Chariton’s novel, but for the ancient audience, the function of these characters’ emotions in their respective stories is no different. The portrayal of these heroes who exhibit emotion as well as demonstrate their intellect and skill aids the unfolding of the plot, and the portraits of both Achilles and Chaereas emphasize particular social structures that their respective stories underline and confirm. Agamemnon’s terms of peace with Achilles (the gift of seven towns and Agamemnon’s daughter) is an offer to force Achilles to submit to the king, and this gesture on Agamemnon’s part leads to Achilles’s explosive response (Il. 9.308–429).29 Likewise, all the speeches and actions of Chaereas in Chariton’s novel relate to social relationships and structures that deal with family honor and the marriage of nobility. An ancient reader also may have found humor in Chaereas’s actions and words, but so too the ancient reader may have found Achilles’s pronouncement of love for Briseis humorous if not exaggerated (9.406–419).30 The male protagonist in Greek novels is not reduced to a more passive state, but he is significantly different than one who demonstrates HJNUDWHLD.31 In fact, male characters in Greek novels often fail to control their passions. In Chariton’s novel, Dionysius is portrayed as the “wealthiest, noblest, and most cultured man of Ionia,”32 but he repeatedly falls victim to his passions when dealing with Callirhoe.33 The difference between 29

Redfield, Nature and Culture in the Iliad, 15–17. Konstan also discusses the depiction of Chaereas in 7.1.6–11 and Chariton’s allusion to Hector in Book 22 of the Iliad. In both scenes, the male protagonists are faced with a conflict between their parents’ petitions to remain in their cities and the protagonists’ sense to fulfill their duties (for Chaereas, to seek out Callirhoe, and for Hector, to fight Achilles). Konstan points out that Chaereas chooses to attempt suicide (he jumps into the sea in hopes that he would drown) in response to this conflict, but Hector, “chooses the path of honor, against the wishes of his parents,” and he attempts to “[salvage] his honor for having encouraged the Trojans to engage the Achaeans after Achilles’s return to battle” (17). Yet Konstan fails to mention that right after Hector makes his decision, he realizes that while pondering his dilemma Achilles had begun to rush at him, and in response Hector trembles in fear and runs away from Achilles (Il. 22.156–199). Although Aristotle reasons that the pursuit of Hector generates a sense of the marvelous that is fitting in an epic (Poet. 1460a 11–18; 1460b 22–32), Hector does not respond as one would expect of an epic hero in battle. 31 Konstan refers to Foucault’s argument that HJ NUDWHLD was a guiding principle for Greeks in the classical polis, and he uses this social construct as a point of comparison with the characterization of the hero in Greek novels (Sexual Symmetry, 30–36). 32  SORXWZ_ NDL? JHQHL NDL? SDLGHLD_ WZaQ DOOZQ  , ZQZQ XS HUH[RQWD (Chaer. 1.12.6). 33 When Dionysius first meets Callirhoe, he is still mourning the loss of his first wife, but upon his encounter with Callirhoe, his body is flooded with passion (Chaer. 2.3, 2.8; 2.4.1–5). He grows physically weak when Callirhoe refuses to wed him (2.6–8; 3.1), and 30

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Dionysius and Chaereas is not in terms of who masters his passions better but in terms of who directs his passions in the most appropriate way (i.e., the young Chaereas, and not the older Dionysius, is meant to be with Callirhoe). To reiterate Cooper’s observation, Greek novels promote a different understanding of sexual passion, one that is located in noble marriage: the protagonists demonstrate their fidelity to each other by concentrating (not suppressing) their sexual urges only for each other. The hero, then, is not designed to be less than someone like Cyrus in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia; rather, the hero is designed in the image of Homer’s Achilles in the way that the presentation of his emotions and intellect points to fundamental social structures that the Greek novel promotes. The symmetrical presentation of the female protagonist, then, is not in proportion to a “weakened” male who fails to live up to the Greek ideal of self-mastery. The heroine is constructed in the paradigm of classical heroes, and for this reason, she is as emotional and discerning as the male protagonist. Certainly the heroine does not respond to her situations exactly as the hero responds to his; she does not engage in military combat, and more often than the hero, she must respond to situations acted upon her, whereas the hero initiates more of the action in the plot.34 There is also an emphasis on “the male gaze” upon the beauty of the heroine,35 but this does not necessarily mean that Greek novels were primarily meant for a male audience. Although less emphasized, the heroine gazes on the beauty of the hero, and as Brigitte Egger has demonstrated with Chariton’s novel, “the text encompasses indeterminacies which leave room for subversive female thoughts.”36 These novels present a more dynamic picture of the male in public spaces, but the portrait of the female that emerges is a herowhen she finally agrees to his proposal, Dionysius faints and becomes unconscious as result of his exhaustion (3.1.3–4). Even so, Dionysius’s jealousy for Callirhoe and fear of losing her continually haunt him (3.7; 3.9; 4.5; 4.7; 5.2; 5.9–10; 6.9; 7.5), and when she finally separates from him, he cries unceasingly (8.5). See also Konstan, Sexual Symmetry, 32–33. 34 In Chariton’s novel, Callirhoe consistently must respond to actions performed against her; she is incapacitated by Chaereas, stolen by thieves and sold into slavery, taken to Persia, and finally transported to the island Aradus. Chaereas, on the other hand, actively pursues Callirhoe once he knows she is alive, and he leads the Egyptian military in battle against the Persians so to win back Callirhoe. In Xenophon’s novel, An Ephesian Tale, even though the female protagonist, Anthia, slays Anchialus with a sword, she does so in self-defense (4.5). 35 Brigitte Egger, “Looking at Chariton’s Callirhoe,” in Greek Fiction: The Greek Novel in Context (ed. J.R. Morgan and Richard Stoneman; London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 36–39. 36 Egger, “Looking at Chariton’s Callirhoe,” 34. Callirhoe’s displays control over Dionysius and the Persian king (Chaer. 2, 4–6, 8), and she appears to have enjoyed parts of her marriage with Dionysius (in a way like a “second lover”) (Egger, 41).

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ine who actively responds to the challenges that she faces. The protagonists do not just display mutual sexual passion, but they also demonstrate equivalent levels of knowledge. So, at times the heroines are masterful rhetoricians; at other times, they are effective diplomats; and oftentimes, they respond courageously to the situations that they encounter.37 The Greek novel, then, does not just “enlist the male reader” as Cooper argues. It “enlists” male and female nobility to uphold the institution of marriage and all the social implications that come with this agreement. Greek novels not only depict marriage as sexually desirable but also envisage ways that the female participates in this union. Of course, these novels in no way propose an egalitarian understanding of wife and husband in ways that would satisfy modern sensibilities, 38 but these novels advocate for the female’s involvement. How the Greek novel enlists women may be the perception of a male writer, but it could also have appealed to urban elite women who shared a common worldview with that of the author. It is possible that for these women, the heroine was perceived as active and, at times, more powerful than men.

B. Aseneth in Joseph and Aseneth The Jewish novel, Joseph and Aseneth,39 is even more explicit about how it engages the ancient audience, and it is best understood as an ancient Greek 37 Callirhoe provides Chaereas military advice (7.2.4), but unlike Andromache in Iliad 6, she is not sent back to her weaving and her words are heeded; she “plays the part of Alexander, the noble conqueror who spares his Persian captives” (8.3), and she forms a diplomatic friendship with the Persian queen (8.3–5). Egger, “Looking at Chariton’s Callirhoe,” 42. 38 Here I would agree with Egger, who eloquently states that the portrayal of the heroine in Greek novels reveals “the strong [male] narcissistic fantasy of women’s emotional and erotic omnipotence, linked with their actual powerlessness and often archaizing social and legal limitations” (“Women and Marriage in the Greek Novels,” in The Search for the Ancient Novel [ed. James Tatum; Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994], 273). The erotic power that these women wield over men in these narratives is quite exaggerated, but Egger diminishes the significant actions that these women perform beyond their beautiful appearances (271–72). Egger correctly identifies, however, the likely scenario that ancient female (aural) “readers” found these heroines appealing (273). 39 References to the text of Joseph and Aseneth will be made according to both Christoph Burchard’s and Marc Philonenko’s versification of their respective, reconstructed texts. Burchard, Joseph und Aseneth (Assisted by Carsten Burfeind and Uta Barbara Fink; PVTG 5. Leiden: Brill, 2003), and Philonenko, Joseph et Aséneth: Introduction, texte critique, traduction et notes (StPB 13; Leiden: Brill, 1968). The abbreviation “Bu” will stand for Burchard’s text, “Ph” for Philonenko’s text, and “Bu/Ph” indicates that the two reconstructions provide the same versification of the particular passage in question.

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novel with all of the characteristics that this genre implies. It is a narrative in which two characters, a female and a male, fall in love, marry, and spend the rest of their lives in happiness after encountering a series of obstacles that prevent the success of this union. Joseph and Aseneth presents this plot in ways that we see in other Greek novels; the protagonists are portrayed as the best nobility has to offer, and the plot is driven by events that threaten the protagonists’ union. Much like the design of the protagonists in other Greek novels, the hero and heroine of Joseph and Aseneth are not models in the sense that the audience should aspire to “be just like them.” Rather, the point of contact for the audience is in the responses of Joseph and, primarily, Aseneth to the challenges that they face. Joseph and Aseneth also assumes the same characterization techniques of the other Greek novels. Aseneth displays many emotions, but she also exhibits a level of knowledge that is equivalent to that of Joseph. 40 This symmetry between Aseneth and Joseph’s extraordinary nature is best exemplified in the scene of Aseneth’s repentance and encounter with the angelic figure. In chapters 10–16, Joseph and Aseneth narrates the rise of Aseneth’s greatness as a Jewish convert who ultimately marries Joseph. After Joseph prays over Aseneth, she immediately proceeds to her private room where she rejects her Egyptian religious practices, repents, and for seven days fasts and sits in sackcloth and ashes. Near the end of these days of repentance, Aseneth prays to God the Most High, and soon afterwards, an angelic figure visits her, declares she will be given a divinely appointed position, and offers divine knowledge to her. When the angelic figure first arrives, his appearance is described in ways that are similar to the angel’s appearance in LXX Daniel 10:5–6.41 Both Joseph and Aseneth and the book of Daniel describe the angel’s face as “like lightning,” his eyes like flames, and his limbs or extremities like glowing metal:

40 Ahearne-Kroll, “Joseph and Aseneth and Jewish Identity in Greco-Roman Egypt,” 88–142. See also Catherine Hezser, “‘Joseph and Aseneth’ in the Context of Ancient Greek Novels,” Frankfurter judaistische Beiträge 24 (1997): 1–40. 41 Christoph Burchard, “Joseph and Aseneth,” OTP, 225, note q.; Gerhard Delling, “Einwirkungen der Sprache der Septuaginta in ‘Joseph und Aseneth,’” JSJ 9 (1978): 48; Kraemer, When Aseneth Met Joseph, 33–35; Angela Standhartinger, “From Fictional Text to Socio-Historical Context: Some Considerations from a Textcritical Perspective on Joseph and Aseneth,” in SBL Seminar Papers, 1996 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 306–7.

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Bu/Ph: 14:9  SOKBQ WRB SUR VZSRQ DX WRXa K`Q ZM D VWUDSKB  NDL? RL R ITDOPRL? DX WRXa ZM IHJ JRM KOLRX   NDL? DL WUL[HM WKaM NHIDOKaM DX W RXa ZMIORBFSXURBM   NDL? DL [HL UHM NDL? RL SR GHM DX W RXa ZVSHU VLGKURM HN SXUR M (Bu adds: DSRODPSZQ VSLQTK UHM DS HSKGZQDS R WHWZaQ[HLUZaQNDL? WZaQ SRGZaQ DXWRXa) 

OG (Th) Daniel 10:6 NDL? WR? SURVZSRQ DXWRXa ZV HL? RU DVLM DV WUDSKaM  NDL? RL RITDOPRL? DXWRXa ZVHL? ODPSDGHM SXURM

 NDL? RL EUD[LRQHM DXW RXa NDL? RL SRGHM ZV HL?[DONR?MHFDVWUDS WZQ  (Th: RL EUD[LRQHM DXWRXa NDL? WD? VNHOK ZMRUDVLM[DONRXaVWLOERQWRM)

Translations: . . . his face [was] like the appearance of lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, and his arms and feet like blazing bronze (Th: his arms and legs like the appearance of gleaming bronze). (Dan 10:5–6) But his face was like lightning and his eyes were like the light of the sun and the hair of his head like a flame of fire of a burning torch, and his hands and feet were like iron from the fire (Bu: (like iron) shining forth from a fire, and sparks shot from his hands and feet). (Jos. Asen. 14:9)

The agreement of vocabulary and word order is too similar to be coincidental;42 the angelic figure in Joseph and Aseneth is partially modeled on the description of the angelic figure, Gabriel, in the book of Daniel.43 The allusion to Daniel, however, extends beyond these verses.44 Aseneth’s repentance and prayer imitate Daniel’s behavior in Daniel 9, and Aseneth’s encounter with the angelic figure reflects Daniel’s encounter with Gabriel in Daniel 9–12.45 Let us look at the use of Daniel 10–12 in Joseph and Aseneth 10–16 as an example. 42

Delling, “Einwirkungen der Sprache der Septuaginta,” 48. The angelic figure in Daniel 10 is likely Gabriel. John J. Collins, Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 373. L. F. Hartman and A. A. Di Lella, The Book of Daniel (AB 23; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978), 279. 44 Gabriel is also in Daniel 8, which may have also influenced the construction of Aseneth’s encounter with the heavenly messenger. Gabriel could also be the attendant whom Daniel consults in chapter seven (v. 16) (Collins, Daniel, 311). 45 Angela Standhartinger notes the correspondence between Joseph and Aseneth 14 and Daniel 10 beyond the description of the angelic figure, but, in her opinion, the two 43

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In Daniel 10, we are told that Daniel had been mourning and fasting for three weeks when he encountered Gabriel. Daniel states that he lifted his eyes and “saw and beheld, a man”46 dressed in linen and standing before him (vv. 5–6). In this scene, Daniel is accompanied by other men who respond in fear47 and flee, but Daniel remains and is overwhelmed48 (v. 9). Gabriel helps him up, calls him by name, and declares, “Understand the words [OG: commands] that I am speaking49 to you and stand50 in your place, for now I have been sent to you” (v. 11). Daniel trembles51 at these words, and Gabriel consoles him saying, Do not fear, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart [OG: your face] to understand and to humble yourself before your God [OG: adds “the Lord”], your word(s) was/were heard, and I have come in response to your word(s). (v. 12) OG: PK? IRERXa 'DQLKO  RWL DSR? WK M KPHUDM WK M SUZWKM K>M H GZNDM WR? SURVZSRQ  VRX GLDQRKTK QDL NDL? WDSHLQZTKaQ DL HQDQWLRQ NXULR X WRX  THRX  VRX HLVKNRXV TKWR?UK PDVRXNDL?HJ ZHLVK OTRQHQ WZ_aUKPDWLVRX Th: PK? IRERXa 'DQLKO RWL DS R? WK M SUZWKMKPHU DM K>MH GZNDM WK?Q NDUGLDQVRX WRX  VXQLHQDL NDL? NDNZTK QDLHQDQWLRQ WRX  THRX  VRX KN RXV TKVDQ RL ORJRL VRXNDL? HJ Z?K@OTRQHQWRL MORJRLMVRX.

Gabriel encourages Daniel to be strong and reveals to him the future of Israel. He explains in detail the imperial rise of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid dynasties, the time of persecution under Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and the ultimate salvation for the righteous. At that time, Michael will appear, and “everyone who is found written in the book” will be delivered.52 Gabriel

scenes do not indicate a direct literary relationship between the two. Rather, the scenes display a set of motifs that are often portrayed in human encounters with the divine realm (such as in Ezek 1:26–2:2 and 2 Enoch 1:4–9). Das Frauenbild im Judentum der hellenistischen Zeit: Ein Beitrag anhand von “Joseph und Aseneth” (AGJU 26; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995), 113–15. When one closely compares the characterizations of Aseneth and Daniel, however, it is clear that the portrayal of Aseneth is closely aligned to that of Daniel. Ahearne-Kroll, “Joseph and Aseneth and Jewish Identity in Greco-Roman Egypt,” 226–39. 46 OG: HL@GRQ NDL? LGRX? DQ TUZSRM (Th: “I was stunned, and my face was on the ground” [KP KQNDWDQHQXJPHQ RMNDL?WR?SURVZSRQPRXHSL?WK?QJK Q].). 47 OG/Th: IRERM(v. 7). 48 OG: “I fell upon my face upon the ground” (HJ ZB KPKQSHSWZNZBMHSL?SURV ZSRQ PRXHSL?WK?QJKaQ]; Th: “I was stunned” [KPKQNDWDQHQXJPHQ RM). 49 OG/Th: ODOZa. 50 OG/Th: VWKaTL 51 OG: WUHPZQ; Th: HQWURPRM 52 Those who sleep in the ground will be raised, “some to everlasting life and some to reproach and everlasting disgrace,” and the wise (OG/Th: RL VXQLHQ WHM) will shine like the great lights of the heavens [OG: “like the luminaries of heaven”; Th: “like the splendor of the firmament.”].

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concludes his message by informing Daniel that this revelation must be kept secret and sealed until the time “of the end.” (10:14–12:4) Aseneth’s initial interaction with the angelic figure mimics Daniel’s interchange with Gabriel in Daniel 10. Not only is Joseph and Aseneth’s messenger modeled on Gabriel in appearance, but also the sequence of events in these two passages resembles each other. After the angelic figure appears in her room (standing before her), Aseneth raises her head (Bu)/eyes (Ph), and “sees and beholds, a man”53 dressed in royal garb like that of Joseph (Bu: 14:9; Ph: 14:8, cf. Dan 10:5). It is at this point that Joseph and Aseneth proceeds to imitate Dan 10:6 in its description of the messenger’s incredible appearance (Bu/Ph: 14:9). In response to this sight, Aseneth falls upon her face with great fear and trembling. 54 The angelic figure responds to her saying, “Courage, and do not be afraid,55 but rise56 and I will speak to you57 (Bu/Ph: 14:11; cf. Dan 10:11). 58 He then commands Aseneth that after she changes her attire and returns to him, he would tell her what he has to say (ODOKVZVRLWD? UKPDWD) (Bu: 14:13; Ph: 14:14; cf. Dan 10:11–12).59 When she returns, the angelic figure en Bu: NDL? HS K UH WK?Q  NHIDOK?Q DXWK M $VHQH?T NDL? HL@GH NDL? LGRX? DQKU (14:9); Ph: NDL? K@UHWRX?MRITDOPRX?MDXWKaMNDL? HL@GHNDL? LGRX? DQ KU(14:8). In other passages, the angelic figure also is described as DQTUZSRM (Bu: 14:3, 6, 8, 11–12; 15:1–2, 11, 12x, 14–16; 16:1, 3, 5, 7, 9–10, 12, 14–17x, 20, 22; 17:1–3, 5–8; Ph: 14:4, 6–7, 11–12: 15:1– 2, 12; 16:1, 3, 5, 7, 9–10, 12, 15, 17; 17:1–6). 54 Bu/Ph 14:10 both read HSHVHQHSL? SURVZSRQHSL? WRX?MSRGDMDXWRXa and forms of IRERMand WURPRM; cf. Dan 7–9. The full texts in Joseph and Aseneth read: NDL? HL@GHQ $VHQH?T NDL? HSHVHQ HSL? SUR VZSRQ  HSL? WRXBM SR GDM DX WRXa  NDL? HIREKTK $ VHQH?T IRE RQ PHJ DQ NDL? HWURPDFH SDQ WD WD? PHOK DXWKaM(Bu); NDL? HL@GHQ$VHQH?TNDL? HS HVHQHSL? SUR VZSRQHSL? WRXBMSR GDMDX W RXa HQ IR EZ_PHJD OZ_NDL?WUR PZ_(Ph). A similar scene occurs in Daniel 8. Here, Daniel seeks to understand an incomprehensible vision, and Gabriel, whom Daniel describes as one “like the appearance of a man” (OG/Th: ZMRUDVLMDQTUZSRX [Th: DQ GURM]), stands before him. In response, Daniel is overwhelmed and falls upon his face (OG/Th: HSHVD [Th: SLS WZ] HSL? SURV ZSRQ PRX[v. 17]). After falling upon his face a second time, Gabriel helps Daniel onto his feet, reveals the meaning of his vision, and forbids Daniel to reveal the meaning of the vision to others. 55 Bu: PK?IREKTK_aM; Ph: PK?IRERXa. 56 Bu/Ph: DQDVWKTL. 57 Bu/Ph: ODOKVZSUR?MVH 58 A few of the textual witnesses of Joseph and Aseneth read, “rise and stand,” (G [VWKaTL], Arm, L2), and some read “I will speak to you my words” (G [WD? UKPDWD VRX], Arm, L2, L1). Burchard, Joseph und Aseneth, 181 n. 14,11. 59 The witnesses differ as to which modifiers are used with WD? UKP DWD. FW Arm 436 and L1 read: WR? UKP DWD PRX (or its equivalent), and BD (Slav) read: WR? UKPDWD WD? SURM  VH DSRVWDOHQWD (B[Slav]: adds SDUD? NXULRX). Burchard, Joseph und Aseneth, 183 n. 14,13. 53

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courages Aseneth not to fear this encounter, he reports that her words of confession had been heard, and he assures her that her name is written in the book of life.60 Not only does Joseph and Aseneth model the angelic figure after Gabriel, but it also models the interaction between Aseneth and the angelic figure after the interchange between Daniel and Gabriel. In Daniel 10, Gabriel appears before Daniel revealing knowledge to him, and Gabriel clearly indicates that he comes as a response to Daniel’s words. Gabriel also mentions Daniel’s humbling of himself, and it is apparent that Daniel’s posture before God led the way to his encounter with Gabriel. Finally, Gabriel informs Daniel about a heavenly book with the names of the delivered inscribed in it, which arguably includes Daniel. Joseph and Aseneth replicates this sequence of events and similar content in narrating Aseneth’s encounter with the angelic figure. In response to Aseneth’s actions and words of confession, the angelic figure comes to reveal knowledge to her and promises Aseneth that her name is written in a heavenly book. Some textual witnesses also emphasize Aseneth’s humbling posture (referring to her as WDSHLQK), which is reminiscent of Gabriel’s words to Daniel 60 According to the two variations of this passage in the witnesses: 1. TDUVHL $VHQH?T K SDUTHQ RM DJQK  LGRX? DNKNRD SDQWZQ WZaQ  UKPDWZQ WKaM HFRPRORJKVHZMVRXNDL? WK MSURVHX[K MVRXLGRX? HZUDNDNDL? WK?QWDSHLQ ZVLQNDL? WK?Q TOL \LQ WZaQ  HSWD? KPHUZaQ  WKaM HQGHLDM VRX    TDUVHL  $VHQH?T K SDUTHQ RM DJQKLGRX? JD?UHJUDIKWR? RQRPD? VRXHQWK_ ELEOZ_ WZaQ ]ZQWZQHQ WZ_a RXUDQZ_a HQ DU[K_ WK MELEORXSUZaW RQSDQ WZQ WR? RQRPD VRX WZ_a GDNWXOZ_ PRXNDL? RXN  HFDOHLITKVHWDL HLM  WR?Q DLZaQD. (Courage, Aseneth, chaste SDUTHQRM. Behold, I have heard all the words of your confession and your prayer. Behold, I have seen the humiliation and the affliction of your seven days of your want. . . . Courage Aseneth, chaste SDUTHQRM. For behold your name was written in the book of the living in heaven; in the beginning of the book, as the first of all, your name was written by my finger and it will not be erased forever.) In particular, the following witnesses attest to the first person address (“I have heard . . . I have seen”): FW (G) c Arm L2, Burchard, Joseph und Aseneth, 187 n. 15,2. The quotation corresponds to Burchard’s reconstructed text, Joseph and Aseneth 15:2–4. 2. TDU VHL$VHQH?TK SDUTHQ RMDJ QKLGRX? JD?UKNRXVHNXULRMWZaQ UKPDW ZQWKaM HFRPRORJKVHZMVRXTDUVHL$VHQH?TLGRX? HJUDIKWR? RQRPD? VRXHQ ELEOZ_ ]ZK MNDL? RXN HFDOHLITKVHWDLHLMWR?Q DLZaQ D. (Courage, Aseneth, chaste SDUTHQ RM. For behold the Lord has heard the words of your confession. Courage, Aseneth. Behold your name was written in the book of life and it will not be erased forever.) The primary witnesses for Philonenko’s reconstruction differ on the beginning of the quotation; ms. D omits K SDUTHQRM DJQK but not mss. B and Slav (Burchard, Joseph und Aseneth, 187 n. 15,2). The following witnesses attest to the third person reference (“the Lord has heard”): L1 BD (Slav); and L1 and E attest to “the Lord has seen your humiliation” (the third-person form of “I have seen the humiliation” above) (Burchard, Joseph und Aseneth, 187 n. 15,2. and 188 n. 15,3). This quotation corresponds roughly to Philonenko’s reconstructed text, Joseph and Aseneth 15:2–3.

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(10:12). Joseph and Aseneth also shares vocabulary similar to or equivalent with what we find in Daniel 10 (DQKU, IRERM WURPRM PK? IREHRPDL, VWK TL ODOHZUKaPD(Th: ORJRL)andJUDIZHQELEOZ_). The characterization of the heroine in Greek novels helps us to understand why Aseneth is not depicted primarily in terms of a biblical heroine. Although Aseneth is likened to Sarah, Rebecca, and Rachel in appearance (Bu: 1:5; Ph: 1:8), she is not directly associated with any other woman in the biblical narratives.61 The choice of the Daniel paradigm is fitting if we think of the portrayal of Joseph in Genesis 37–50 and how he is recalled in Joseph and Aseneth;62 both Daniel and Joseph are heroic figures in a foreign court, and the particular skill they demonstrate is their wisdom. 63 As the female protagonist in a Greek novel, Aseneth would be expected to equal Joseph in noble qualities, and the biblical paradigm of Daniel is an effective source for depicting this correspondence. Aseneth imitates Daniel’s pious behavior and experiences an angelic visit that is reminiscent of Daniel’s encounters with Gabriel. She also receives extraordinary knowledge from the divine realm that can be likened to the kind of knowledge that is granted to Daniel. In Daniel 2, God reveals “the mystery” of king Nebuchadnezzar’s dream to Daniel,64 and Daniel praises God as one who “reveals deep and obscure/hidden things”65 and who “reveals mysteries.”66 In Joseph and Aseneth, the angelic figure not only reveals to Aseneth her new status (inscribed in the book of life, a city of refuge for the devout, and the wife of Joseph) but also declares that “the ineffable 61 This does not include female paradigms, however. On the possible connection between personified Wisdom and Aseneth, see Standhartinger, Das Frauenbild im Judentum der hellenistischen Zeit, 189–204; 211–16. Regarding the association between Aseneth and the biblical paradigm of the personified city as female, see Edith McEwan Humphrey, The Ladies and the Cities: Transformation and Apocalyptic Identity in Joseph and Aseneth, 4 Ezra, the Apocalypse and The Shepherd of Hermas (JSPSup 17; Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995). 62 That Joseph and Aseneth presumes knowledge of Genesis 37–50 is confirmed most explicitly by Pentephres’s rehearsal of Joseph’s skills and Aseneth’s initial response to the idea of marrying Joseph (Jos. Asen. [Bu/Ph] 4). Ahearne-Kroll, “Joseph and Aseneth and Jewish Identity in Greco-Roman Egypt,” 218–26; Susan Docherty, “Joseph and Aseneth: Rewritten Bible or Narrative Expansion?” JSJ 35 (2004): 27–48. 63 Collins, Daniel, 39–40, 45–46; Lawrence Wills, The Jew in the Court of the Foreign King: Ancient Jewish Court Legends (HDR 16; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990); Robert Gnuse, “The Jewish Dream Interpreter in a Foreign Court: The Recurring Use of a Theme in Jewish Literature,” JSP 7 (1990): 29–43. 64 OG: WR? PXVWKULRQWRXa EDVLOHZMHFHIDQTK; Th: WR? PXVWKULRQD SHNDOXITK (v. 19). 65 OG: DQDNDOXS WZQ WD? EDTHD NDL? VNRWHLQD?; Th: DXWR?M D SRNDOXSWHL EDTHD NDL?D S RN UXID (v. 22). 66 OG/Th: D OO’ [Th adds: K] HVWL THR?M  HQ  RXU DQZ_a D Q DNDOXSWZQ [Th: D S RNDOXS WZQ] PXVWKULD (v. 28).

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matters [or mysteries of God] have been revealed to you” (Bu/Ph: 16:14).67 The angelic figure associates “the ineffable matters or mysteries of God” with the miraculous honeycomb that Aseneth finds in her treasury (it is the food of angels), and he feeds her a piece of this honeycomb (Bu: 16:8–16; Ph: 16:4–9). Although these passages differ in terms of what is revealed, both Daniel and Aseneth receive extraordinary knowledge. The course of future events is revealed to Daniel, and not only is Aseneth’s future revealed to her (that she will marry Joseph), but she also is given access to the supernatural realm. So, what is the effect of portraying a heroine in the construct of a hero? The choice of a male paradigm to match Joseph in greatness suggests that Aseneth’s status is legitimated by her association with a male biblical figure.68 Before the angelic figure announces to Aseneth her new and elevated status in the eyes of God, he declares that her unveiled head is “like a young man’s” (Bu/Ph: 15:1), which indicates that her encounter with the angelic figure is unusual for a woman to experience.69 Yet, the construction of Aseneth as female is emphasized by the new name, and new role, that she is given by the angelic figure: “City of Refuge.” She will become a harbor for those seeking refuge in the name of God, and several textual witnesses of Joseph and Aseneth associate this metropolitan role with Ase-

67

The witnesses vary in terms of phrasing; for the different attestations, see Burchard, Joseph und Aseneth, 210 n. 16,14. Burchard’s reconstructed text provides the following: PDNDULDHL@ VX? $VHQH?TGLRWLDSHNDOXITKVRLWD? DSRUUKWDPXVWKULDWRXa X\LVWRX (16:14); and Philonenko’s reconstruction offers: PDNDULD HL@ VX? $ VHQH?T RWL DS HNDOXITKVRLWD?DS RUUKWDWRXaTHRXa (16:7). 68 Depending upon the textual witness, Aseneth’s encounter with the angelic figure also imitates Manoah’s and Jacob’s encounters with angelic figures. Compare Judges 13:3– 17 with Joseph and Aseneth (Bu/Ph) 14–17 and Genesis 32:27–29 with Joseph and Aseneth (Bu) 15:12x. Kraemer, When Aseneth Met Joseph, 33–34; 62–64. 69 Aseneth’s decision to wear the veil would not have surprised an ancient audience even though the angel had not commanded her to do so (all the angel commanded was that she change into a linen garment and gird herself with a girdle of her womanhood; Bu: 14:12; Ph: 14:13). Kraemer suggests that the male reference in this unveiling scene indicates Aseneth’s “transformation into neutral masculinity,” a stage through which an individual’s soul could reach salvation (such as referred to in Philo [Contempl. 68], Porphyry [Letter to Marcella 33], and 1 Cor 11:7) (When Aseneth Met Joseph, 196–98). The angel’s statement certainly implies that Aseneth’s status is as exulted as Joseph’s is, but her brief unveiling may also signify her liminal state between being a SDUTHQRM and a married woman (JXQK), which is the new status that the angel promises her (albeit, it is a married status unlike that of any other woman; Bu: 15:6; Ph: 15:5). On the signification of veiling, see Douglas L. Cairns, “The Meaning of the Veil in Ancient Greek Culture,” in Women’s Dress in the Ancient Greek World [ed. Lloyd Llewllyn-Jones; London and Oakville, Conn.: Gerald Duckworthy & Co. and The David Brown Book Co., 2002), 73– 94.

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neth’s protection of those who repent (Bu: 15:7; Ph: 15:6).70 The symbolic significance of Aseneth embodying a city echoes the personification of Zion as female in biblical literature,71 and Aseneth’s primary role as protectress also resonates with the image of Greek goddesses as guardians of cities (such as Athena). Contrary to how many scholars interpret this name for Aseneth, however, I do not think that she is being portrayed primarily as a model proselyte for the audience.72 As is the case in ancient Greek novels, the heroine is not meant to be identified with per se; the events of her repentance, her encounter with the angelic figure, and her new status depict more than what the average human being could expect in converting to Judaism.73 There are, however, explicit points of contact in the narrative that instruct the audience. Joseph and Aseneth prescribes two rules of conduct that are confirmed by Aseneth’s actions: (1) a polytheist must convert to the sole worship and allegiance to the God Most High before marrying a devotee of this deity, and (2) anyone who reveres this god should not “repay evil for evil.”74 Although Aseneth abides by these rules, she does not simply repre70

In the textual tradition, the Armenian witnesses and one group of Latin manuscripts (L2) attest to “in the name of repentance,” and Greek manuscripts B, D, and family a attest to “through repentance.” Burchard, Joseph und Aseneth, 191 n. 15,7. 71 Most notably in Isaiah 49–57 and in Lamentations. 72 Christoph Burchard, Untersuchungen zu Joseph und Aseneth: ÜberlieferungOrtsbestimmung (WUNT 8; Tübingen: Mohr, 1965), 119; G. W. E. Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah: A Historical and Literary Introduction (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), 261; Anathea E. Portier-Young, “Sweet Mercy Metropolis: Interpreting Aseneth’s Honeycomb,” JSP 14 (2005): 133–57. Gideon Bohak argues that the name “City of Refuge” implies Aseneth’s future role as “an eschatological Jerusalem” that protects both Jews and proselytes (“Joseph and Aseneth” and the Jewish Temple in Heliopolis [SBLEJL 10; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996], 76–80). Randall D. Chesnutt argues that, as a convert to Judaism, Aseneth signified for actual converts their legitimate status within the community (From Death to Life: Conversion in “Joseph and Aseneth” [JSPSup 16; Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995], especially, 118–50). 73 For example, although Joseph prays for Aseneth after she is visibly upset after he rejects her (Bu: 8:9; Ph: 8:9–11), the narrative never indicates that Joseph told her what she should do, nor are we told how Aseneth knew what to do (e.g., sit in sackcloth and ashes) and what to say (e.g., petitions in the language of the psalms of lament). By her extraordinary nature, she knew what to do all on her own. For a more detailed discussion, see Ahearne-Kroll, “Joseph and Aseneth and Jewish Identity in Greco-Roman Egypt,” 239–43. 74 These guidelines are clearly marked in the narrative by the introductory phrase, “it is not fitting [to do X] . . .” or by the reference to what “God-fearing” (THRVHEHL M) people do: Jewish religious practice as contingent upon legitimate marriage: Bu/Ph: 8:5–7; the dictum to “not repay evil for evil”: Bu: 23:9–12; 28:5; 29:3; Ph: 23:9–11; 29:3. Aseneth’s applies the latter rule by appealing to God’s justice: Bu/Ph: 28:10, 14.

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sent how “women should decide” on such matters, and she is not the only character who is judged by these principles. Joseph’s refusal to intimately embrace Aseneth is based on his application of the rule about intermarriage, and when he relates this prohibition to Aseneth, he clearly states that it applies to male polytheists as well (Bu/Ph: 8:5–7). In the second part of the narrative, Levi also abides by interpretations of when to refrain from retaliation, and the actions of other sons of Jacob are judged by this rule. When Aseneth convinces Levi and his brothers not to act against the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah,75 she expands how Levi had applied this rule in chapters 23–27, and so her actions challenge when retaliation is justified. This scene has nothing to do with conversion, but it does equate Aseneth with Joseph in her extraordinary gesture of forgiveness. Just before Aseneth grants the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah protection, these men had tried to kill her, but God destroyed their weapons in response to her prayer (Bu: 27:10–11; Ph: 27:8). After witnessing this event, the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah request the protection of Aseneth, who then persuades Levi and the other brothers to forgive their treacherous brothers (Bu: 28:14; Ph: 28:14). In this scene, Aseneth lives out what her new name, “City of Refuge,” signifies, and in doing so, her status is equated with that of Joseph. In Genesis 37–50, Joseph facilitates reconciliation between him and his brothers, and as recounted in both Genesis and Joseph and Aseneth, Joseph “saves” all of Egypt as well as the peoples of the surrounding nations (cf. Gen 41 and 47 with Jos. Asen. [Bu/Ph] 1 and 4). Likewise, Aseneth “saves” by becoming a city of refuge for those who repented (but who did not convert), and she facilitates the forgiveness of wrongful acts against her.

C. Aseneth and Women’s Religious Experience in Antiquity If we understand “religious experience” to refer to personal encounters with the transcendent realm, then the characterization of Aseneth offers little, if anything, about the religious experiences of “actual” women in antiquity. Aseneth’s encounter with the angelic figure equates her with Joseph in greatness and has little to do with reflecting real experiences of the audience. If we understand “religious experience” as the “committed participation in . . . institutions, rituals, values and worldview [that provide]

75 In chapter 28, the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah have failed in their mission to help Pharaoh’s son kidnap Aseneth and kill Joseph. When they come across Aseneth, they move to kill her, but she prays to God who immediately destroys the men’s weapons. In response, the men seek refuge in Aseneth’s protection. (Bu: 28:3–6; Ph: 28:3)

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participants with an overall structure of meaning,”76 then Joseph and Aseneth does prescribe guidelines for living out its vision of religious experience. Aseneth, however, is not the only character who follows these rules, and Joseph and Aseneth’s instructions are directed to both women and men. The only way that Aseneth serves as a model for the audience is precisely when she makes decisions according to these prescriptions. As is the case with how Greek novels portray their protagonists, Aseneth’s words and actions underline and confirm social structures that Joseph and Aseneth promotes. Certainly the heroine in Greek novels is more contained than the hero; she reacts more than she initiates action, and Aseneth’s need to have God destroy the weapons aimed at her is a case in point. Nevertheless, “actual” women from antiquity may have understood Aseneth as actively engaged in socially appropriate, yet extraordinary ways. I have argued elsewhere that Joseph and Aseneth depicts the couple, Joseph and Aseneth, in an “epic past” for Jewish audiences in Egypt, and in particular, Joseph and Aseneth portrays its protagonists in ways that are reminiscent of Ptolemaic representations of royalty.77 Joseph and Aseneth’s depiction of Aseneth’s greatness, then, may have been influenced by perceptions of the politically influential queens in Ptolemaic Egypt.78 But, even if I am right about the royal depiction of Aseneth, Joseph and Aseneth’s presentation of her may say more about the well-deserved union between Aseneth and Joseph and this couple’s contribution to the Egyptian past than it indicates anything about “actual” women. At best, Aseneth and Joseph may convey something similar to what the protagonists in Greek novels convey. Joseph and Aseneth confirms the value of marriage between nobility and enlists female and male audiences to invest in this worthy cause. For Joseph and Aseneth, the partners of a legitimate marriage must only revere the God Most High, and devotion to this deity also includes refraining from retaliatory actions against others, even one’s own kin. In other Greek novels, HUZM is a dominant element of persuasion for noble marriage, but in Joseph and Aseneth, devotion to the God Most High provides the only way for reciprocal passion to flourish. What is perhaps most interesting is that Joseph and Aseneth’s vision of marriage does not 76

Timothy Fitzgerald, “Experience,” in Guide to the Study of Religion (ed. Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon; London and New York: Continuum, 2000), 134. 77 “Joseph and Aseneth and Jewish Identity in Greco-Roman Egypt,” 189–94; 243–50. 78 For summaries about the Ptolemaic queens, see Sarah B. Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt: From Alexander to Cleopatra (New York: Schocken Books, 1984), 3–40; Jan Quaegebeur, “Cleopatra VII and the Cults of the Ptolemaic Queens,” in Cleopatra’s Egypt: Age of the Ptolemies (The Brooklyn Museum, 1988), 41–54. A helpful collection of material culture related to the Ptolemaic queens is provided in Jane Rowlandson’s Women & Society in Greek and Roman Egypt: A Sourcebook (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 24–41.

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simply preserve the social structure of the polis, but it is attributed to the success of a civilization.

Works Cited Ahearne-Kroll, Patricia D. “Joseph and Aseneth and Jewish Identity in Greco-Roman Egypt.” Ph.D. diss., The University of Chicago, 2005. Aristotelis de Arte Poetica Liber. Edited by Rudolf Kassel; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965. Bohak, Gideon. “Joseph and Aseneth” and the Jewish Temple in Heliopolis. SBLEJL 10. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1996. Burchard, Christoph. Joseph und Aseneth. Assisted by Carsten Burfeind and Uta Barbara Fink. PVTG 5. Leiden: Brill, 2003. –. “Joseph and Aseneth.” Pages 177–247 in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Edited by J. H. Charlesworth. Vol. 2. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983–85. –. Untersuchungen zu Joseph und Aseneth: Überlieferung-Ortsbestimmung. WUNT 8. Tübingen: Mohr, 1965. Cairns, Douglas L. “The Meaning of the Veil in Ancient Greek Culture.” Pages 73–94 in Women’s Dress in the Ancient Greek World. Edited by Lloyd Llewllyn-Jones. London and Oakville, Conn.: Gerald Duckworthy & Co. and The David Brown Book Co., 2002. Chesnutt, Randall D. From Death to Life: Conversion in “Joseph and Aseneth.” JSPSup 16. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995. Clark, Elizabeth. “Engendering the Study of Religion.” Pages 217–42 in The Future of the Study of Religion: Proceedings of Congress 2000. Edited by Slavica Jakelic and Lori Pearson. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004. Collins, John J. Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel. Hermeneia Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993. Cooper, Kate. The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996. Delling, Gerhard. “Einwirkungen der Sprache der Septuaginta in ‘Joseph und Aseneth.’” JSJ 9 (1978): 29–56. Docherty, Susan. “Joseph and Aseneth: Rewritten Bible or Narrative Expansion?” JSJ 35 (2004): 27–48. Egger, Brigitte. “Looking at Chariton’s Callirhoe.” Pages 31–48 in Greek Fiction: The Greek Novel in Context. Edited by J. R. Morgan and Richard Stoneman. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. –. “Women and Marriage in the Greek Novels.” Pages 260–80 in The Search for the Ancient Novel. Edited by James Tatum. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. Fitzgerald, Timothy. “Experience.” Pages 125–39 in A Study Guide of Religion. Edited by Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon. London and New York: Continuum, 2000. Hartman, L. F. and A. A. Di Lella. The Book of Daniel. AB 23. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978. Hezser, Catherine. “‘Joseph and Aseneth’ in the Context of Ancient Greek Novels.” Frankfurter judaistische Beiträge 24 (1997): 1–40.

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Hollywood, Amy. “Agency and Evidence in Feminist Studies of Religion: A Response to Elizabeth Clark.” Pages 243–49 in The Future of the Study of Religion: Proceedings of Congress 2000. Edited by Slavica Jakelic and Lori Pearson. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004. Humphrey, Edith McEwan. The Ladies and the Cities: Transformation and Apocalyptic Identity in Joseph and Aseneth, 4 Ezra, the Apocalypse and The Shepherd of Hermas. JSPSup 17. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995. Gnuse, Robert. “The Jewish Dream Interpreter in a Foreign Court: The Recurring Use of a Theme in Jewish Literature.” JSP 7 (1990): 29–43. Konstan, David. Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Kraemer, Ross Shepard. When Aseneth Met Joseph: A Late Antique Tale of the Biblical Patriarch and His Egyptian Wife, Reconsidered. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Nickelsburg, G. W. E. Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah: A Historical and Literary Introduction. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981. Philonenko, Marc. Joseph et Aséneth: Introduction, texte critique, traduction et notes. StPB 13. Leiden: Brill, 1968. Pomeroy, Sarah B. Women in Hellenistic Egypt: From Alexander to Cleopatra. New York: Schocken Books, 1984. Portier-Young, Anathea E. “Sweet Mercy Metropolis: Interpreting Aseneth’s Honeycomb.” JSP 14.2 (2005): 133–57. Quaegebeur, Jan. “Cleopatra VII and the Cults of the Ptolemaic Queens.” Pages 41–54 in Cleopatra’s Egypt: Age of the Ptolemies. The Brooklyn Museum, 1988. Reardon, B. P. “Chariton.” Pages 309–35 in The Novel in the Ancient World. Edited by Gareth Schmeling. Leiden: Brill, 1996. Redfield, James M. Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hector. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1994. Rowlandson, Jane, ed. Women & Society in Greek and Roman Egypt: A Sourcebook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Schmeling, Gareth. “Myths of Person and Place: The Search for a Model for the Ancient Greek Novel.” Pages 425–42 in The Ancient Novel and Beyond. Edited by Stelios Panayotakis, Maaike Zimmerman, and Wyste Keulen. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Standhartinger, Angela. Das Frauenbild im Judentum der hellenistischen Zeit: Ein Beitrag anhand von “Joseph und Aseneth.” AGJU 6. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995. –. “From Fictional Text to Socio-Historical Context: Some Considerations from a Textcritical Perspective on Joseph and Aseneth.” Pages 303–18 in SBL Seminar Papers, 1996. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996. Wills, Lawrence. The Jew in the Court of the Foreign King: Ancient Jewish Court Legends. HDR 16. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990.

Roman Imperial Family Values and the Gospel of Mark The Divorce Sayings (Mark 10:2–12)1 MARY ROSE D’ANGELO

Celebrating scholarly achievement is always a great pleasure. In a discipline in which women colleagues are still far too few, Adela Yarbro Collins’s extraordinary record of scholarly research and writing is deeply heartening. Her unique capacity for friendship of the intellect and affections is even more to be celebrated. I have been enriched by our shared delight in the opera, our dissections of national, academic, and institutional politics, and our many explorations of text and history. Her contributions to the study of Mark have been particularly helpful and engaging to me. I had long used her many scholarly articles, some twenty of which, in addition to the collection The Beginning of the Gospel, appeared on one of my 2003 course bibliographies.2 The recent appearance of her superb and comprehensive commentary has been a special boon.3 The pleasures of consulting the commentary have inspired me to return in this article to Mark, and specifically to the dialogues on divorce (10:2–12), a topic I have addressed before.4 This is a text that has been of crucial concern to women, but in which women are very nearly elided both in interpretation and in the narrative of Mark. 1 This essay draws on research done with the assistance of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for University Teachers (2004–2005) and a Henry Luce III Fellows in Theology (1999–2000), and research leaves from the University of Notre Dame. Thanks are also due to Dulcinea Boesenberg and Francine Cardman, who read and commented upon the manuscript. 2 The Beginning of the Gospel: Probings of Mark in Context (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992). 3 Mark: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007). 4 “Remarriage and the Divorce Sayings Attributed to Jesus,” in Divorce and Remarriage (ed. William G. Roberts; Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward, 1990), 78–106; excerpted and reprinted in Kevin T. Kelly, Divorce and Second Marriage: Facing the Challenge (rev. and enl. ed. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1996), 229–36. This article treats not only Mark but also Paul (1 Cor 7:10–11), Matthew, Luke, and Hermas Mandatum 4, and pays particular attention to historicity. Its minimal treatment of the Roman context preceded the proliferation of fine studies of Roman law, families and ideology that have appeared in the last twenty years.

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Jewish texts, particularly passages from the Damascus Document and the Temple Scroll, have usually been used to illuminate the contexts of these sayings. Collins thoroughly explores the complexities and ambiguities of these texts, exposing the importance of the discussion of marriage in the construction of identity in the Jewish world at the turn of the common era.5 Her review of these materials concludes with a brief treatment of marital norms in Greek and Roman cultural contexts, including the Augustan marriage laws, but she follows the lead of most NT and Classics scholars in finding little potential in the Roman marital ideology and practice for illuminating Mark’s sayings. 6 My goal in this essay is to supplement her brief treatment of the Roman cultural context by asking readers of Mark to reconsider the significance of the Julian laws in the context of a larger first-century Roman political and moral discourse, and to suggest that they do have something to tell us both about the divorce dialogues in Mark 10:2–12 and about the double dialogues’ connection with the anecdote that follows (Mark 10:13–16). Thus the focus will be the literary context of Mark rather than questions about the historical Jesus or the earliest Galilean communities.7 My argument is by no means that the “true” context of Mark 10:2–12 is Roman law and culture rather than Jewish law and culture. Nor do I wish to argue that the Markan text is the product of “influence,” reproducing what is to be found in either the Roman or Jewish practice or tradition. Rather Jews of the first century and the earliest Christians recast the tradition, negotiating fidelity to scripture under the exigencies of the Roman rule. The moral arena provided a venue for Roman imperial claims, and therefore a ground on which its subjects could meet them. At the emergence of the empire, Roman power was defended with claims of Roman moral superiority, particularly in the areas ruled by pietas, devotion and duties toward the deities and toward all to whom one is related – parents, children, spouse, siblings, down to clients, freedpersons and slaves and up to the emperor.8 The specifics of these claims were 5

Mark, 459–64. Mark, 465. 7 Collins likewise focuses on Mark, acknowledging that the sayings may have originnated from Jesus but also pointing out they may have arisen from the needs of the early communities; Mark, 468. 8 For moral superiority as a claim to imperium, see Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanae 1.5.2–3. For definitions of pietas from the mid first and early second century see Seneca, Ad Helviam 9.3: pietas, omnium officiorum recte dispensandorum ratio; cf. Epictetus, writing in Greek for a Roman audience: “I wish, as a pious (HX VHEKM) and philosophical and diligent person, to know what is my duty to gods, what to parents, what to siblings, what to my native country, what to strangers” (Discourses 2.17.31). 6

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determined in part by the culture wars of the very late republic, and played an important role in Augustus’s consolidation of power.9 The earliest Christians, whether they resisted the empire or sought to join it, found themselves both coerced and enabled to address their Roman overlords by a discourse of family values that conformed to, or better exceeded, the severe standards the Romans espoused. The same was true of Jews in Judea and Galilee as well as in the great cities of the diaspora.10 Ancient sexual politics has received some attention as the context of Mark 10:2–12 and 13–16. In 1983, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza suggested that the prohibition of divorce voiced in Mark 10:2–10 represents the “Jesus movement’s” abolition of patriarchal marriage. On the grounds of an original equality between male and female (Gen 1:27b and 2:23) the movement revoked the unequal provisions of patriarchal marriage. Schüssler Fiorenza used the anecdote in which Jesus insists upon allowing little children into his presence and embrace (Mark 10:13-16) as part of an argument that the movement devoted itself to the communal care of children.11 By contrast, Richard Horsley has argued that in Mark the divorce sayings were an attempt on the part of both Jesus and Mark to reassert the covenant by strengthening the family and perhaps by providing for orphans, as a response to the destructive effect of the Roman occupation of Galilee on family relations. He rejected the possibility that the marriage relations Jesus sought to reestablish were non-patriarchal.12 Gerd Theissen’s novel, The Shadow of the Galilean, takes a different view of Rome’s impact on Judea; in it Johanna, the wife of Chuza, speaks of her preference for Roman law, which allowed a woman to divorce, in contrast to what

9 On culture wars in the late republic and early empire, see Jane Evans, The Art of Persuasion: Political Propaganda from Aeneas to Brutus (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1992) and Catharine Edwards, The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1993). 10 For an expanded statement of this view, see Mary Rose D’Angelo, “Early Christian Sexual Politics and Roman Imperial Family Values: Rereading Christ and Culture,” in Papers of the Henry Luce III Fellows in Theology, Vol. 6 (ed. Christopher I. Wilkins; Pittsburgh, PA: Association of Theological Schools, 2003), 23–48; also “(XVHEHLD: Roman Imperial Family Values and the Sexual Politics of 4 Maccabees and the Pastorals,” Biblical Interpretation 11 (2003): 139–65. 11 In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 143–45. Ched Myers locates the passage entirely within the realm of Jewish law and also sees it as asserting the equality of women; see Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990), 264–68. 12 Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003) 121–23; Hearing the Whole Story: The Politics of Plot in Mark’s Gospel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 186–93.

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Theissen then supposed to be first-century Jewish law.13 But most accounts of Mark’s Roman context ignore Mark 10:2–12.14 This essay will explore the sexual politics of Mark 10:2–12 on a different level. It will first review the Julian laws and their Roman political context, next briefly delineate the operation of Roman politics in the work of Philo, a Greek speaking Jew of the first century, then examine the two short dialogues on divorce in Mark 10:2–12 and their context in Mark 10:2–31. It will argue that both Philo and Mark read biblical prescriptions through their experience of the Roman moral law, and they do so to both encourage and defend the superiority of their communities’ familial mores.

A. Rethinking the Roman Context I will focus on the historical and political context of the Roman rule and its claims to moral superiority, especially in the realm of sexuality. The effects of this moral propaganda on Mark and other early Christian writers can only be understood by rethinking the premises that have pushed the Roman order to the side in analysis of Christian texts. Among the most frequent observations about sex and marriage in the first century Roman order is that Julian laws on adultery and on the promotion of marriage and childrearing were (a) irrelevant to ancient Jews and Christians because they applied only to citizens and (b) unsuccessful in their aims. 15 The first of these is technically correct; the benefits and penalties of the marriage laws, which were for the most part financial and political, fell primarily upon citizens. But they also exerted a powerful force upon categories of persons which almost certainly included at least some ancient Jews and early Christians: non-citizen freedpersons and citizen freedpersons, each of whom were treated differently by the laws, and non-Romans who might wish to become citizens. The conclusion that the laws were unsuccessful is more problematic, since it requires a judgment about the aims of the laws. The laws apparently did not stop adultery, nor did they repopulate the army with citizen 13

Gerd Theissen, The Shadow of the Galilean: The Quest for the Historical Jesus in Narrative Form (trans. John Bowden; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 50–51; for Jewish practice in the first century see Collins, Mark, 463–64. 14 See e.g., Brian J. Incigneri, The Gospel to the Romans: The Setting and Rhetoric of Mark (BIS 65; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2003); Martin Ebner, “Evangelium contra Evangelium: das Markusevangelium und der Aufsteig der Flavier,” BN 116 (2003): 28–42; Tat-Siong Benny Liew, The Politics of Parousia: Reading Mark Inter(con)textually (Leiden: Brill, 1999). 15 Collins (Mark, 465) cites this observation from Suzanne Dixon, The Roman Family (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1992), 79–80.

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soldiers. But these are far too narrow constructions of their purposes, which appear to have been as much ideological and propagandistic as pragmatic. They played a significant role via “the power of images” in the imperial discourse described by Paul Zanker.16 The Augustan scholar Karl Galinsky analyzes the marriage laws as moral initiatives undertaken by Augustus in the role of “transformative” leader, but also identifies them as an intrusion into the life of every Roman that sought to make them live up to the moral claims by which imperial rule was justified.17 He observes that they attracted the most comment from the jurists of any body of laws.18 This observation should probably be emended to say that they attracted the most surviving comment. Even so, the observation is a striking one that helps to underline Beth Severy’s contextualization of the marriage laws. Severy delineates the ways the laws resonated with imperially sponsored literature and monuments and were celebrated in the ritual of the Secular Games to create a kind of focus on the family in the reign of Augustus.19 Nor did the laws fade quickly from the scene. Throughout the first century, the laws, with the vast fund of Augustan imagery, were a means by which successive emperors could claim to follow Augustus in renewing the res publica. Susan Treggiari observes, “The [Julian] law [on marriage] received continual attention from emperors, the Senate, administrators and jurists.”20 Claudius seems to have been especially active in tinkering with the laws and initiating prosecutions for adultery, demonstrating his concern for pietas and the family while also serving other political ends. Some of these cases, like that of Seneca, seem to have been conducted for manifestly political purposes.21 As Judith Evans Grubbs comments, 16 See especially his treatment of the laws and of the importance of childbearing and rearing in the rituals of the Saecular Games; The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Jerome Lectures 16; trans. Alan Shapiro; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1988), 156–59, 167–79. 17 Augustan Culture: An Interpretive Introduction (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1996), 128–40. Galinsky rejects the description propaganda, which he seems to define as persuasive discourse coming directly from a ruler to subjects, or explicitly ordered by him. He thus excludes materials which proceed from subjects or officials and echo the interests of the ruler. See his comments on coinage, 39–40. 18 Augustan Culture, 128. 19 Augustus and the Family at the Birth of the Roman Empire (New York: Routledge, 2003), especially 34–69. 20 Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges From the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 77. 21 Some diverse examples of demonstrations of pietas under Claudius: Seneca was exiled for adultery with Caius’s sister Iulia Livilla; SC Claudianum restored a dispensation for men over sixty who married women of less than fifty; Treggiari 78, see also Suetonius DC 23.1; a lex Claudia abolished tutela legitima (automatic tutela by an

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There was another reason why the legislation remained in force until the fourth century: Augustus and his successors were promoting an imperial ideology that stressed marriage and child-bearing as the foundation of the state. This ideology was promoted in imperial art (such as the Ara Pacis) and on coins, and probably had as much impact on Romans as the penalties and privileges. 22

Seen in this larger context, the laws show themselves to have had quite significant effects for a wide range of subjects of the empire. I. Rethinking the Laws In what follows, I will briefly review first the provisions and context of Augustus’s laws, then their effects. This review of the laws and their effects depends heavily on Susan Treggiari’s comprehensive and judicious Roman Marriage.23 For reference, I have provided a list of important provisions and effects in the appendix at the end of the essay. First, the lex Iulia de maritandis ordinibus (18 B.C.E.) prescribed penalties for the unmarried and rewards for marriage, penalties for the childless and rewards for child-bearing between fixed ages. These penalties and rewards were largely financial and political, and aimed at the classes that might be political players. What is less widely recognized is that they also bore heavily on freedpersons of property, and particularly heavily on freedwomen. A freedwoman could not divorce her patron against his will and, once divorced, she might be charged with adultery if she remarried without his permission. This law was revised by the lex Papia Poppaea (9 B.C. E.) which altered some of the lex Iulia’s provisions and may have included attempts to limit divorces (Suet. DA 34.2).24 The adultery law is known under a variety of names, most frequently lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis, or de adulteriis et pudicitia (18 B.C.E.).25 agnate) for all citizen women except freedwomen (Evans Grubbs, 13); Claudius assiduously demonstrated his pietas toward Augustus and family (DC 11.2); he introduced modifications of lex Papia and ius trium aut quattuor liberorum for builders of merchant ships for the annona (DC 19); he granted life to a gladiator at the plea of his four sons, and pointed to him as example (DC 21.5); he was assiduous in civil and military ritual (DC 22); he imitated Augustus in giving the Saecular Games (21.3); peregrini were forbidden to use the gentilicium DC 25.3; Ilium was remitted tribute in perpetuum (because it was the source of Rome through Aeneas; DC 25.3); he divorced Urgulanilla for proven libidinum and suspected homicidii (26.2). SC Velleianum, which prohibited women from acting as surety, may be from his reign or Nero’s; see Judith Evans Grubbs, Women and the Law in the Roman Empire: A Sourcebook on Marriage, Divorce and Widowhood (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 55–57. 22 Evans Grubbs, Women and the Law, 87. 23 The laws arise throughout the work, but see especially 60–80, 262–319. 24 Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 60–80, also excerpts and discussion in Evans Grubbs, Women and the Law, 83–87. 25 The second title is one used by Suetonius, DA 34.

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This law criminalized adultery and lending aid to adultery, including the tolerance of adultery by a husband, who could be charged with pimping (lenocinium). It also criminalized stuprum, that is, sex with a free unmarried girl or woman; it may have reiterated the lex Sca(n)tinia’s criminalization of stuprum with a free boy, or submission to penetration on the part of a free adult male.26 All of these offenses, including lending assistance to adulterers, could be charged pro adulterio and were tried in a special permanent court for adultery cases established by the law.27 The penalties were of a different order from those incurred by infractions of the marriage law; exile and confiscation were the punishment for citizens.28 Slaves accused of adultery were questioned under torture. Slaves belonging to a man or woman accused of adultery could also be interrogated under torture, and so a period was fixed during which they could not be manumitted. A woman was prohibited from freeing or alienating a slave for sixty days after a divorce, since she might be charged with adultery during that period. These two laws were accompanied by a coterie of laws that survived less well and so are even more difficult to reconstruct: sumptuary laws aimed at limiting conspicuous consumption, especially banquets, a theater law that separated the orders and the sexes in the theaters and allotted children a special and conspicuous place (DA 34.1). The Julian law also excluded the unmarried from the theatre.29 Of considerable importance for the lives of Jews and later Christians was a set of important but poorly attested laws aimed at the regulation of manumission and freedpersons: the leges Iunia, Aelia Sentia, and Fufia Caninia. Together with the Julian laws, they limited formal manumission to slaves over thirty and masters over twenty, but alleviated this regulation for men who wished to free a slave in order to marry her. They also created the category of Junian Latins: that is, supplied an official status to informally freed slaves, seen as “half-free,” who were accorded some of the rights formerly accorded to citizens of Latin cities in Italy. Junian Latins were offered the potential to become citizens if they married and produced one child who lived a year. The laws also necessitated the registration of births – including those of non-citizen freedpersons. The lex Minicia seems to have provided conubium (right to Roman marriage) for 26

The latter two provisions seem actually to have been a reiteration of the lex Scantinia of the (mid?) 2nd c. B .C.E.; Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 277; Eva Cantarella, Bisexuality in the Ancient World (trans. Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin; New Haven: Yale University, 1992), 106–19; Craig A. Williams, Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 119–24. 27 Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 262–98. 28 Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 290, 286–87. 29 Severy, Augustus and the Family, 50–51.

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some peregrini (resident aliens) while carefully excluding others.30 All of these drew attention to status, and so contributed to Augustus’s goal of restoration and demarcation of the orders. That the marriage and adultery laws had a broader influence than they are usually accorded also emerges in the provincial codes. Echoes of the laws appear in the codes most available to later inspection. The Egyptian code of the mid-second century B.C.E. (preserved in the Gnomon of the Idiologus) and the codes of the Spanish cities accorded Latin rights included regulation of marriages similar to the Julian laws.31 A word should perhaps be said about enforcement. It appears to be the case that these laws were erratically enforced, and the references in the literature strongly suggest that enforcement was dependent on the will of the emperors and the use of informers.32 The erratic and political character of enforcement and the insidious use of informers seem to have intensified fears of being accused of avoiding the marriage laws or violating the adultery law, and so, in a sense, served to advertise the legal stipulations. To add to the terror, slave evidence was often central to prosecutions; slaves were interrogated under torture, and manumission could be prohibited for five years if the slave might be needed for testimony. Seen in this larger context, the laws had quite significant effects. Although these effects are undoubtedly obscured by time, it is possible to delineate at least some of them. The most widely noted outcome of the adultery law was the criminalizing of sexual misbehavior: of adultery or stuprum with an unmarried girl or woman, and what was, perhaps, the reassertion of the criminal character of stuprum with a free boy or submission to penetration on the part of a free male. That the marriage law asserted imperial control over individual procreativity is less widely emphasized.33 But both laws brought the state into the bedroom, making the chastity and fertility of women, which had been the province of the paterfamilias and the family, a matter of state security and criminal prosecution. Not least of their political functions was to supply grounds on

30 Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 44–47; P. R. C. Weaver, “Children of Freedmen (and Freedwomen),” in Marriage, Divorce and Children in Ancient Rome (ed. Beryl Rawson; Canberra: Humanities Research Center; Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 166–90; Paul Weaver, “Children of Junian Latins,” in The Roman Family in Italy: Status, Sentiment, Space (ed. Beryl Rawson and Paul Weaver; Oxford: Oxford University, 1999), 55–72. 31 Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 67, 78–79; also Evans Grubbs, Women and the Law, 31–32, on relation of the lex Irnitanum to Roman law. 32 On enforcement, see Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 295–98; Tacitus claimed that the law subverted every household by the depredation of informers, and was inspired to offer a summary of the origins and corruption of moral legislation; Annales 3.25–28. 33 But see Galinsky, Augustan Culture, 128–29.

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which Augustus and succeeding emperors could choose either to show favor toward or to punish political supporters and opponents. In addition, the laws had, or contributed to, other ideological and social effects. First, the laws enhanced, focused, and propagated the ways in which the late republican culture wars made sexual and marital correctness a badge and obligation of citizenship, the measure of civic and political probity and a central topic of political discourse. Second, the laws on marriage and adultery interacted with Augustus’s laws on manumission so that they provided strong incentives to the “half-freedpersons” called Junian Latins to marry and bear children and in general to display lives of the strictest marital correctness. Similar pressure was exerted upon foreigners and provincials who might also aspire to citizenship. Third, since sexual crimes (adultery, stuprum, lenocinium) were prosecuted pro adulterio and in the adultery court, the adultery law contributed to the extension of the meaning of adultery to other sexual “crimes.”34 Fourth, the laws raised the stakes in making or ending a marriage, and especially in remarriage. Susan Treggiari has speculated about this effect of the law, suggesting that if a woman divorced one husband to marry another or to remain single, she might lay herself open to charges of adultery in the first marriage. The law must have made it considerably more dangerous than before for a woman to divorce a husband unilaterally and to form a successful new marriage.35

As she has pointed out, the laws seem likely to have created an atmosphere of spreading suspicion and anxiety around divorce, and especially around remarriage. “Augustus,” she concludes, “can hardly be said to have raised the tone of conjugal life. He merely made wife, husband, and their slaves and friends more insecure.”36 To summarize, then, two points should be underlined. First, the laws had more important pragmatic consequences for non-citizens such as the informally freed, peregrine, and provincials and for freedperson citizens than has been generally recognized – and so also for some first-century Jews and Christians. Second, a central effect of the laws and ideology was to make marriage and divorce, adultery and stuprum, childbearing and childrearing hot topics of civic and imperial discourse throughout the first and early second centuries. This, then, is where the Julian laws succeeded: they made marriage and childrearing, adultery and sexual misbehavior of every variety a touchstone of morality, civic status and politics. They drew a bright line of marital morality between citizens who possessed conubium, 34 On Papinian’s view that the law indiscriminately used the words adulterium and stuprum see Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 279. 35 Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 293–94. 36 Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 294.

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and the slaves, freedpersons, and foreigners who were driven to emulate it. There were certainly first-century Jews and Christians (including the audience of Mark), who fell on both sides of that bright line, and were acutely aware of their positions. II. Philo: Reading the Law of Moses in Roman Terms Philo was a particularly salient case of “hybridity,” a voice from the boundaries of the imperial culture and its subjects, engaged in the complex cultural negotiations needed to claim space in Roman Alexandria for the politeia and eusebeia of the Alexandrian Jews.37 Highly skilled in the Greek language that distinguished him and other Greek-speaking Jews from the “barbarians,” Philo found in Platonic metaphysics and Stoic ethics the best possible keys to the full meaning of the law of Moses. His Greek resources were the intellectual currency of the Roman empire. Maren Niehoff has argued that Philo was himself a Roman citizen.38 If that was the case, he would have been bound by the Julian laws. Whether or not he was a citizen, he was engaged at the highest level with the Roman order, at least during his ambassadorial efforts on behalf of the preservation of the Jewish politeia of Alexandria. Not surprisingly, when Philo explains Jewish laws on marriage they fulfill and exceed the moral demands of the Roman laws. Since this aspect of his exegesis is never explicit and he wrote in Greek, verbal influence cannot usually be detected. In one very specific instance, it is possible to make an argument for something approaching verbal influence from the adultery law to Philo’s treatment of biblical law. In Special Laws 3.30–31, Philo interprets Deut 24:1–4, the passage apparently summarized in Mark 10:3, as Moses’s permission to divorce. These verses prohibit a man who has divorced a wife to take her back should she lose a second husband through death or divorce. Deut 24:4 LXX describes such a remarriage as an abomination or sacrilege (EGHOXJPD), polluting the land (RX PLDQHLaWH WK?Q JKaQ). Philo’s presentation of this law involves several substantial reorientations of the commandment. Two are particularly significant. First, he begins with the woman, whom he describes as having been parted from her husband and as having “transgressed ancient bonds and chosen new love-charms over old” (3.30). He thus characterizes the woman in terms that suggest that she has violated the Roman ideal of the univira. 37 On hybridity as negotiation, see (somewhat differently) Susan Abraham, “What Does Mumbai Have To Do with Rome? Postcolonial Perspectives on Globalization and Theology,” TS 69 (2008): 381–83. 38 Maren R. Niehoff, Philo on Jewish Identity and Culture (TSAJ 86; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 8 and n. 25.

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Second, turning to the husband, he accuses him of “softness and unmanliness” and of marking himself with two crimes (D GLNKPDWZQ), adultery and procuring (PRL[HLDQWHNDL? SURDJZJHLDQ; 3.31). The word translated “procuring” here is a Greek equivalent of the Roman charge of lenocinium, the crime the Roman adultery law attaches to a husband who does not charge a suspect wife with adultery, or who takes back a wife he divorced for adultery.39 In coupling it with adultery, Philo interprets the prohibition of Deuteronomy as a version of the Julian law on adultery which charged a husband who tolerated his wife’s adultery pro adulterio. Philo’s overall treatment of the commandment against adultery likewise is formed in part by the way the Augustan legislation and ideology affected the meaning of adultery in his world. For Philo, the sixth commandment is “the first” of “the second pentad” (Dec. 121, 168; Spec. 3.8). This order is determined by the LXX of Exod 20:1–17 and Deut 5:6–21. But Philo also explains it as a moral order: adultery is “the worst of all injustices” (D GLNKPDWZQ; Dec. 121, 123–131), a judgment that is likely to be formed in part by the importance of adultery as a moral and political crime in the first century. As a summary of all the laws pertaining to sexual unions, the commandment inveighs “against corrupters, against pederasts, against those who live dissolutely and engage in lawless and unbridled practices and unions” (Dec. 168). As Spec. 3.3–31 interprets Deut 24:1–4 in Roman terms, so also Philo’s summary of the biblical stipulations summarizes the Roman legal prescriptions about sex. Special Laws 3.7–83 organizes most of the biblical prescriptions that touch upon sex under the heading of the sixth commandment, claiming that it comes first because of the extreme moral danger of pleasure (8–12 cf. Dec. 126 ). Thus in the Special Laws, the primacy of the prohibition of adultery is explained through Philo’s philosophical anthropology, while the interpretations of specific commandments grouped under the category of adultery often stress the social and political damage caused by violations and stress procreativity as the measure of moral sexuality (see e.g., 3.32–50.).40 But throughout 3.7–83, political context and philosophical concerns collaborate in Philo’s effort to bring all the stipulations regarding sex under the adultery law.41

LSJ, s.v. SURDJZJHLDQ, “pandering, procuring.” For an analysis of the philosophical context of Philo’s treatment of sexuality, see Kathy L. Gaca, The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity (Berkeley: University of California, 2003), 190–217. 41 For a more detailed and extensive treatment of Philo’s work in light of Roman moral propaganda, see D’Angelo, “Gender and Geopolitics in the Work of Philo of Alexandria: Jewish Piety and Imperial Family Values,” in Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Discourse (ed. Todd Penner and Caroline Von Stichele; Biblical Interpretation Series 84; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006), 63–88. 39 40

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B. Mark on Household Management: Excelling the Laws of Moses and of Caesar (Mark 10:2–12 within 10:2–31) Despite the great gap between Mark’s narrative and the cultural and philosophical sophistication of Philo’s writings, this Gospel also represents a process of negotiating Jewish tradition in the Greek language that was the medium of Roman rule. 42 While some scholars continue to support the theory that Mark was written in Rome, the evidence is no more weighty than the evidence for Syria or Galilee. No location can be established with any certainty.43 The Latin loan words that have been used to support the theory that the Gospel originated in Rome allude to the army, the monetary system, and other institutions that are required by the administration of provinces. If they cannot prove an urban provenance, they do testify to the pervasiveness of Roman rule. And despite the narrative focus on implicating the leaders of the Jews in the death of Jesus, the Gospel does not hide the fact that Jesus died under Pontius Pilate on a charge of sedition. Whether Mark is read as actively hostile or mildly apologetic toward the empire, there can be no doubt of the centrality of Roman rule to the Gospel’s context. It is by no means necessary to argue that Mark was a citizen (as has been argued of Philo) or that the Gospel’s audience included a significant number of Roman citizens who were subject to the laws. The propagandistic character of the laws and the incentives they provided for non-citizen freedpersons suggest their potential impact on early Christian audiences.44 Thus it seems a priori worthwhile to consider the imperial moral agenda as one element in the context of Mark 10:2–31. Collins delineates the topics of Mark 10:2–31 as divorce and remarriage, children, property, and family, houses and farms. This list is a detailed and more precise version of Jeremias’s more general suggestion that the passage derives from a pre-Markan collection on “marriage, children and property.”45 Whether the organization is Mark’s or that of an earlier hand, these two descriptions together suggest that the material in 42

See Collins: “The author of Mark has taken the model of biblical sacred history and transformed it, first by infusing it with an eschatological and apocalyptic perspective and, second, by adapting it to Hellenistic historiographical and biblical traditions.” Mark, 1. 43 See also Collins, Mark, 7–10, 96–102. 44 Peter Lampe’s analysis of Romans 16 found a high percentage of freedpersons and foreigners among the Roman communities. While his study cannot be generalized beyond the city itself, this analysis accords well with scholarly expectations of early Christian audiences. From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries (trans. Michael Steinhauser; ed. Marshall Johnson; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 69–84, 153–95, 237–40. 45 Collins, Mark, 458, citing Joachim Jeremias, Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries (London: SCM, 1960), 50.

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10:2–31 is organized on the pattern of the topos “household management.” At least from the point at which Cicero translated Xenophon’s Oikonomikos, household management was an important topic of Roman political philosophy.46 Interest in Aristotle’s political philosophy in the first century B. C. E. included attention to his “oikonomics.” An epitome of his writing on the household has been attributed to the first-century Stoic counselor of Augustus, Arius Didymus, and may have functioned in the constellation of laws, literary works, and monuments that comprised Augustus’s program of family values.47 But if Mark or a predecessor used household management as a pattern for the passage, the treatment is at best less than comprehensive. Indeed, Mark’s portrayal of Jesus’s public and private teaching about property (10:17–31) must be seen as a reversal of the “oikonomists’” advice. Mark 10:2–12 is formulated in the pattern of public debate followed by private teaching for the disciples. The Roman construction of sexual morality can be seen to have some part in the formulation of both. In the public debate, the Roman contribution to a general nostalgia for a stricter marital morality plays some role, while the verbal peculiarities of the saying in the private debate seem to emerge from the discourse fostered by the Roman laws. The two parts of the passage invite separate discussion. I. The Public Debate: Mark 10:2–9 The public debate opens with a question from the crowds, the question of whether a man is permitted to divorce his wife.48 Jesus responds by asking what Moses commanded. In response, they summarize Deut 24:1 LXX, characterizing this stipulation as what Moses permitted. Jesus then trumps this permission to divorce with a primordial commandment that reads Gen 1:27b and 2:24 together: “a man shall leave (NDWDOHL\HL) . . . and shall cleave (SURVNROOKTKVHWDL) to his wife . . . and the two shall be (H VRQWDL) one flesh.” Verses 8b–9 reiterate the consequences – that “they are one” – and reformulate the commandment: “what God has joined together, let a human being not separate.”49 46 See e.g., Pseudo-Aristotle, Oeconomica; the epitome of Aristotle attributed to Arius Didymus (Stobaeus 2.7, Wachsmuth 147–52); comments on the education of women in Musonius Rufus III, Columella De re Rustica XII Praefatio and Plutarch’s Praecepta Conjugalia. 47 For the dispute over this attribution, see Jan N. Bremmer, “Aëtius, Arius Didymus and the Transmission of Doxography,” Memnosyne 51 (1998): 154–60, arguing against the attribution; in support of it, see D. Brendan Nagle, “Aristotle and Arius Didymus on Household and 32/,6,” Rh. M. 145 (2002): 198–223. 48 On the textual problem and the insertion of the Pharisees, see Collins, Mark, 457, textual note b. 49 See slightly differently Collins, Mark, 467–68. “Human being” may refer to Moses,

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Both the debate format and the exegetical content strongly evoke the Jewish context of the passage. Particularly important to the debate has been a passage from the Damascus Document (CD iv:19–v:2) which condemns “the builders of the wall” for fornication (NQHT), including “taking two wives in their (masc.) lifetime.” In doing so they violate Gen 1:27b (“male and female [God] created them”) which is introduced as “the principle (foundation, >QMS) of creation,” a description which accords well with the function of Gen 1:27b in Mark 10:6–9. Collins has sorted through the relevant texts and resolves the multiple problems with the suggestion that the sectaries did not forbid divorce but did exclude remarriage.50 This solution is particularly attractive given its resemblance to Paul’s in 1 Cor 7:10–16 and to Hermas’s solution to a somewhat different question in Mand. 4.6. By contrast, in Mark the prohibition of divorce appears to be categorical (Mark 10:9), and remarriage is identified with adultery (11– 12). None of the words for either divorce or adultery appear in any of the Qumran texts.51 Important as is the material from the Dead Sea, it does not tell the whole story. Jews of Mark’s day as well as the first audience of Mark would have shared a Roman context with the author. As Collins remarks, divorce was a common feature of both Jewish and Roman life in the first century.52 Questioning divorce and/or remarriage would seem to put both the Qumran sectaries and the earliest Christians (or the reign of God movement) conspicuously at odds with their cultures. While this is undoubtedly the case on the level of practice, on the level of ideology, there is more to be said about first-century Roman views. Suetonius refers to an attempt on the part of Augustus to limit divorces, but in such vague terms that is not possible to clarify what he means.53 About ten years after the Julian laws were promulgated, Dionysius of Halicarnassus identified divorce as an un-Roman activity. Ascribing the stability of the Roman state to Romulus’s original legislation, “for the so that a contrast is drawn between Moses’s legislation and divine legislation. So Collins, Mark, 46. Alternatively, given that Moses is assumed to be the author of Genesis as well as the speaker in Deuteronomy, the contrast may be between “what Moses commanded” (H QHWHLO DWR, 3) “in the beginning of creation” (6) and what he later permitted (H QHWUH\HQ) on account of “your hardheartedness” (4–5). 50 Collins, Mark, 459–64, who also discusses the other two important texts, 11QT lvii, 10–15 and 4Q271 frg. iii, 10–15, as well as the extensive secondary literature. 51 The exception is the text of Mal 2:16 in the Scroll of Minor Prophets (4Q12a ii, 4– 7), which actually commands the divorce of a hated wife; see Collins, Mark, 460. 52 Collins, Mark, 465. 53 Lat .: divortiis modum imposuit. DA 34. This seems to envisage some sort of provision of the Papian law, but it is unclear what is meant. See Treggiari’s discussion of the complexities, Roman Marriage, 453–54.

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most part unwritten, but some laid down in writing” (Ant. Rom. 2.24.1), Dionysius fixed first upon a single law that obviated all other laws on marriage, divorce, and dowry: “that a woman joined to her husband by sacred marriage (NDWD? JDPRXM LHURXM) would be partner (NRLQZQRQ) of all his goods and rites” (2.25.2). Confarreate marriage “resulted in a necessary bond of indissoluble union and there was nothing that could destroy these marriages” (2.25.3).54 Romulus’s goal in all this was supposedly to ensure the good behavior of women by making them completely dependent on their husbands (2.25.4–5). Dionysius further distances divorce from the happy original state of Rome by placing the first Roman divorce in 231 B.C.E. and claiming that although the grounds were the barrenness of the wife, Spurius Carvilius, the husband who initiated the divorce was universally hated (2.25.7). Three other early imperial writers repeat the claim that divorce came late to Rome (though not as late as Dionysius claims).55 In juxtaposing Dionysius’s reconstruction of earliest Rome to Mark 10:2–9, I have no desire to claim that the historian influenced Mark; in fact, I think this highly unlikely. Rather, Dionysius’s reconstruction of Romulus’s single marriage law testifies to the political importance of nostalgia for the (supposed) mores of Roman antiquity, nostalgia that was both exploited and fostered by the Julian laws and the imperial ideology. Thus the claim of an original, indissoluble form of marriage that is made exegetically in Mark 10:2–9 is not unique or limited to “countercultural” communities like Qumran and the reign of God movement. During the early empire, Dionysius the Greek historian made this claim in Roman terms for ancient Rome. II. The Private Teaching: Mark 10:10–12 As is the case with the other private teaching scenes, Mark 10:10–12 amplifies the public teaching and probably represents the editorial work of Mark, who seems to have joined the preceding debate about whether a man may divorce his wife to a saying equating remarriage with adultery.56 This equation is by no means a natural one; its oddity is obscured for later interpreters by long familiarity. It is precisely in this identification that the Roman context seems to emerge. Although Mark 10:11–12 resembles some aspects of the command Paul Gk: VXQGHVPRQG  D QDJNDLaRQRL NHLRWKWRMH IHUHQDGLDOXWRXNDL? WR? GLDLUKaVRQ WRX?M JDPRXMWRXWRXMRX GH?QK aQ. 55 Valerius Maximus 2.1.4 (reign of Tiberius, 14–37); Plutarch, Thes. et Rom. 6 (early 2nd c.); and Aulus Gellius 4.3 (ca. 180). On the dubious character of Dionysius’s claims, see Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 441–43. 56 Collins, Mark, 469. 54

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attributes to “the Lord” in 1 Cor 7:10–11 and is frequently associated with it, there are significant formal differences, and the two sayings are applied very differently.57 Paul’s directive (SDUDJJHOOZ), which he identifies as from the Lord, is first “that a woman not be separated ([ZULVTKaQDL) from her husband” (7:10). Envisaging cases (or a specific case) in which women are separated, he adds, “but if she is separated, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband.” He then pronounces the reciprocal command: “and a husband should not divorce (D ILHQDL) his wife” (7:11). The disparate vocabulary for the initiative of the man and the woman is more or less equivalent to different verbs generally used in Latin: for a man who divorces, repudiare or dimittere; for a woman, divertere.58 Paul does not repeat the counsel against remarriage in the command to the husband, though the subsequent discussion may imply that he assumes it. Although Paul delivers this counsel as a command,59 he does not consider that it applies absolutely; in the case of an unbelieving partner who does not wish to continue the relationship, the “brother or sister is not bound” (7:15). The Markan saying differs in significant details. It is most closely parallel to Paul’s parenthetic rejection of remarriage for a woman who divorces her husband, but it begins (as might be expected for a reciprocal ruling) with the case of the divorcing husband. As in 1 Corinthians, the saying is reciprocal; it is assumed that a woman may take the initiative in divorce, an assumption that was once seen as reflecting a Roman context for Mark. As Collins notes, it now seems probable that at least some Jewish women were able to initiate divorce in this period. 60 Unlike 1 Cor 7:10–11, Mark 10:11–12 uses the same word, D SROXVK" for both husband and wife; this word may reflect common practice or may derive from Mark’s summary of Deut 24:1; the LXX uses H FDSRVWHOHLa which corresponds even more closely to dimittere.61 Most importantly Mark 10:11–12 does not just recommend or rule against remarriage. Nor does this text describe remarriage as an abomination (EGHOXJPD) or pollution (RX  PLDQHLaWH) as does Deut 24.4 LXX. Rather, Mark 10:11–12 equates remarriage with adultery (PRL[DaWDL). As I suggested above, the oddity of this equation is obscured for later interpret57

John Donahue and Daniel Harrington, for instance, treat the two as more or less equivalent; The Gospel of Mark (SP 2: Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002), 295. 58 Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 437–38. 59 A noteworthy number of examples of the usage of SDUDJJHOOZ seem to involve the transmission of orders or directives, especially in military contexts (LSJ s.v. SDUDJJHOOZ). 60 Mark, 470. 61 Collins refers to 1 Esdr 9:36 and to a divorce text from Murrabba‘at (Cave 2) for uses of this verb for men divorcing their wives (470 n. 105). Both are Roman period texts slightly later than Mark.

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ers by its familiarity. The LXX consistently uses the word family PRL[–to translate the Hebrew word-group * H, as in the sixth commandment (Exod 20:13; Deut 5:18). The more generic Greek word family SRUQ– translates the Hebrew word group BHT which refers to fornication or prostitution. When the Damascus Document speaks of the “unchastity” or “fornication” in which the builders of the wall were caught as “taking two wives in their lifetime,” the word used is NQHT (CD iv:19).62 Both of these features, the use verb DSROX- for divorce and the identification of remarriage as adultery (PRL[-), also appear not only in the revision of the saying in Matt 19:9, but also in the versions that appear in Matt 5:32 and Luke 16:18.63 Small verbal correspondences between the latter two verses have contributed to a longstanding attribution of another, independent version of the saying to Q.64 But the strong correspondences with Mark raise questions about the claim that this prohibition should be seen as “dually attested.”65 The version of the saying in Matthew’s third antithesis (Matt 5:32) appears to treat Deut 24:1 as subsidiary to the sixth commandment, “you shall not commit adultery” (RXPRL[HXVHLM).66 I suggest that Mark 10:11–12 stigmatizes remarriage as adultery because, as in Philo, the sixth commandment is read in terms of the Roman adultery law. It is worthwhile recalling Treggiari’s speculation that “if a woman divorced one husband to marry another or to remain single, she might open herself to charges of adultery in the first marriage.”67 Presumably, her new husband would be liable to the same charge. The scenario Treggiari proposes differs from the one presupposed in Mark 10:11–12. In Mark it appears to be the second marriage that is understood as adulterous, and it applies equally whether the woman or the man divorces.68 The equation of remarriage with adultery in the Markan saying is not a product of the direct influence of the specific provisions of the Julian law on adultery. Rather it responds to the general atmosphere of insecurity that 62 This infraction probably would not be seen as adultery, but the word used in CD 4:19–5:2 had to be broad enough to include sex with a menstruating woman (5:2). 63 Also in the prophetic command in Hermas Mand. 4.1.6: H D?Q DSROXV DM WK?Q  JXQDLaNDHWHUDQJDPKVK"NDL?DX W R?MPRL[DaWDL. 64 So for instance John Kloppenborg, The Formation of Q: Trajectories in Ancient Wisdom Literature (Harrisburg: Trinity International, 1999), 76, 79. 65 Collins sees Matt 5:32 as dependent on Mark 10:11–12 but accepts the attribution of Luke 16:18 to Q; Mark, 469 and n.98. 66 See also Barbara Reid, The Gospel according to Matthew (New Collegeville Bible Commentary; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2005), 38. The brevity of this commentary helps to underline the relationship. 67 Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 294. 68 The case postulated in Matt 5:32b and Luke 16:18b seems to correspond to Treggiari’s scenario.

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Treggiari suggests. In particular, two aspects of imperial ideology seem relevant: first, the status of adultery as a political topos throughout the first century, and second, the Julian law’s contribution to bringing all sexual topics under the heading of adultery. The Markan stipulation might be rephrased in Roman terms to say that remarriage is charged pro adulterio. To argue that the Roman context, and particularly the Julian laws, have had an impact on this saying is not to say that they explain it. The most conspicuous innovation from a legal point of view, whether Jewish or Roman, is that the husband is found liable of adultery, not apparently because he has taken another man’s wife (the legal definition of the crime), but because he has betrayed his first wife. The double standard that bound a married woman but not a married man to sex only with her partner did not go entirely unquestioned; Musonius Rufus, a contemporary of Mark, argued that a husband should apply the same standards of chastity to himself as to his wife (Discourses 12). But the catalysts that gave rise to Mark’s sayings (and caused them to be so frequently reformulated) should be sought in the exigencies of early Christian life. Two areas should be considered. The first is Justin’s widelycited anecdote of the woman who divorced her pagan husband, was denounced by him, and so aroused persecution against her teacher and others in the community (2 Apol. 2). This anecdote illustrates that dangers shadowed divorce beyond those deduced by Treggiari.69 As soon as persecution of whatever kind became a threat to Christians, as it clearly is in Mark, men who divorced a wife to marry another Christian might equally incur accusations and denunciation. Second, Adela Yarbro Collins suggests that the prohibition of divorce may have responded to the beginnings of early Christian interest in sexual abstinence. 70 It is certainly the case that Paul’s discussion of divorce is part of his attempt to regulate the desire for sexual self-control among the Corinthian Christians (1 Cor 7:1). In Justin’s anecdote also the pursuit of sexual asceticism plays a role. The woman’s adoption of Christianity inspires her distaste for the husband’s lack of sexual restraint, causing her to undertake the divorce, against the advice of her friends. The same collaboration of marital morality and Christian asceticism is even more prominent in Hermas Mand. 4.1, where the husband who finds his believing wife “in some adultery” (4.1.4) is counseled to divorce her, lest he become a partner in her adulterous passion (4.1.5). At the same time, he is to stay unmarried, 69 For discussion of this text, see Margaret Y. MacDonald, Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion: The Power of the Hysterical Woman (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1996), 205–13; Lampe, Paul to Valentinus, 237–40; also D’Angelo, “Divorce Sayings,” 94–95. 70 Collins, Mark, 468. See also D’Angelo, “Divorce Sayings,” 94–95.

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so as to avoid adultery on his own part (4.1.7). He must take her back if she repents (4.1.7–8).71 This solution, like those proposed by Paul and Mark, contravenes the Julian marriage law, which did its best to coerce remarriages. But for most people, the penalties of the marriage laws were either less likely to affect them or less devastating than the penalties for adultery. More importantly, the solutions of Paul, Mark, Hermas and Justin offered a way of more rigorous virtue, a more exemplary exercise of restraint (H JNUDWHLD) than that of Rome. III. Mark 10:2–12 in the Context of Mark 10:2–31: Rethinking Household Management As a pocket-sized treatment of household management, Mark 10:2–31 narrows its focus in striking ways. The issues of divorce and remarriage addressed in Mark 10:2–12 are a rather minimal approach to marriage. At best one might say that the treatment of marriage in the public debate supports the principle (central to the Roman legal discussions) that a stable marriage should not be disturbed, and its exegesis of Genesis excels the moral nostalgia of Dionysius of Halicarnassus’s vision of an original, indissoluble Roman form of marriage. The teaching for the inner circle of the disciples revised that principle to equate remarriage after divorce with an infraction of the sixth commandment – and the Roman adultery law. Mark 10:2–12 gives way immediately to an even narrower treatment of children. The disciples rebuke those who bring little children that Jesus might lay hands on them (14a). Jesus is angered at the disciples, commanding them, “let the children (SDLGLD) come to me, do not prevent them” and affirming the place of children in God’s reign (14–15). It is noteworthy that SDLGLD is used throughout this passage, rather than either WHNQD or SDLaGDThe word SDLGLRQ in particular stresses the age of the children; it is used especially (though not exclusively) for children under the age of seven.72 Thus the first two portions of Mark’s advice on “household management” can be reduced to the commands, “do not separate from spouses” and “allow the little children to come to me.” The third pericope is the oddest of all as a treatment of property: Mark 10:17–31 does not so much revise anything the manuals have to say about the management of property, as reverse it all: “do not gather, but scatter,” it says: “Sell what you have and give to the poor” and “with what difficulty will the rich enter God’s reign!” (10:21, 24). 71

On emerging Christian asceticism and the divorce sayings in the versions of Matthew and Luke, see D’Angelo, “Divorce Sayings,” 94–100. 72 LSJ s.v. SDLGLRQI.

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I suggest that the sequence of anecdotes in Mark 10:2–31 is constructed specifically as a prophylactic against too radical a reading of the call to leave all and follow Jesus (10:21, 29, 30).73 For Mark, the call is to leave households, brothers, sisters, mother, father, and offspring (WHN QD), as well as fields (10:29–30), and to find them again a hundredfold.74 But disciples are not to leave wives (as the version in Luke 18:29 envisages) or husbands, nor are they to abandon young children (SDLGLD). At the compositional level, this sequence of anecdotes protects the radical call to God’s reign against the charge of homewrecking. It not only asserts the continued importance of some human responsibilities despite the urgency of the call, but also testifies to the ideological importance of “family values” as a touchstone of morality. This apologetic by no means exhausts the meaning of Mark 10:13–16 or, for that matter, of Mark 10:2–12. But like the exemplary function of the little children of 10:16, it helps to define the requisites for those who respond to the call of God’s reign. As I suggested above, women tend to be elided in the interpretation of Mark 10:2–12. The narrative of Mark contributes to that elision. From the call of the first four disciples (1:16–20), the disciples who are named are all men, so that “those who were round him with the twelve” (4:10) could be construed to all be male. Only after the death of Jesus does the author name three famous women disciples and make clear that many women traveled with Jesus in Galilee and went up with him to Jerusalem (15:40– 41). It is noteworthy that none of the women witnesses who are said to have followed Jesus in Galilee and traveled with him to Jerusalem is named by a husband or father; one Mary appears to be distinguished by her hometown (as is Jesus), and the other by her sons. Not only Peter, then, and his male companions, but also the women could claim to have “left household or brothers or sisters or parents or children or fields” (10:28). That the famous women disciples named in Mark appear to be single women may have made it especially important to make clear that the gospel message did not create abandoned women and children, or encourage women to abandon their responsibilities to husbands and little children.

73 74

See also D’Angelo, “Divorce Sayings” 95. It is noteworthy that “father” is not in the list of what is returned a hundredfold.

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C. Conclusions This essay has suggested widening the cultural and political context in which Mark 10:2–12 is read so as to locate these dialogues as responses to an imperial sexual politics that formed the horizons of both Jews and Christians in the ancient world. Especially the following points require attention. •

• •

• • •

The Roman marriage laws and the moral propaganda that was their context deserve another look as part of the matrix that produced early Christian “family values” because they made marital morality an important topic of imperial discourse. These laws would have had a greater impact on first century Jews and Christians than has been recognized. By the first century, Roman moral nostalgia had produced and propagated an ideal of an original, indissoluble marriage comparable to the vision of origins articulated in Mark 10:2–9. The equation of remarriage with adultery in Mark 10:10–12 may have been suggested by the language and provisions of the Julian adultery law. The setting of Mark 10:2–12 and 13–16 in this Gospel should be seen as a defense against too radical an understanding of the call to discipleship in 10:17–31. The participation of women in the movement and mission may have made the need for this defense particularly acute.

This is not to say that early Christian mores should be seen as Roman rather than Jewish, or that the relationship with either context is simple and direct. Rather, I suggest that the author of Mark, and perhaps also the sources of Mark, along with other ancient Jews and the early followers of Jesus, were compelled to make clear (to themselves, as much as to the empire) that they practiced the Roman family values that Romans only talked about, as they worked out for themselves what was good, holy, and pleasing to God. When Schüssler Fiorenza proposed that the divorce sayings emerged from the Jesus movement’s attempt to restore original equality, she did so with the understanding that this was possible only within a radical reorientation of society. In Mark’s context, and in all later societies, both divorce and the unavailability of divorce generally left women at a disadvantage. The picture I have drawn is a less heartening one than Schüssler Fiorenza’s reconstruction of the Jesus movement. In my reading, Mark 10:2–31 emerges from early Christian attempts to meet the demands of the gospel while reading the biblical texts in a world whose political and moral exigencies were defined at least in part by the imperial order. Mark’s divorce sayings match and outdo Roman claims of a founder who protected morality with an originally indissoluble form of marriage, claiming as a protection for marriage the order of creation. The author of

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Mark, and perhaps the early communities behind the Gospel, were engaged in negotiating the moral discourse of their time for the sake of proclaiming a very near culmination of God’s reign. They sought to trump the permissions of Moses and the laws of Roman with a moral demand that outdid both. In so doing, the texts provided a defense of the early Christian movement, including the citizens and freedpersons, women and men who would read Mark. At the same time, they encouraged, indeed required, those readers to accept as God’s commandment restrictions that eased the potential for conflict with Caesar’s family values. This exploration of Mark 10:2–12 has been made easier and more rewarding for me by access to Adela Yarbo Collins’s research and analysis, and more pleasurable by the assurance that her lively and rigorous intellect is my first audience. For these, and for the many riches she has brought to our shared discipline, I give thanks.

Appendix: Roman Imperial Family Values and the Politics of Gender and Sexuality in Christian Origins (Based Largely on Susan Treggiari’s Roman Marriage) 1. Augustus’s Social Legislation • lex Iulia de maritandis ordinibus (18 B.C.E.) prescribed penalties for the unmarried and rewards for marriage, penalties for the childless and rewards for child-bearing between fixed ages. These penalties and rewards were largely financial and political, and aimed at the classes that might be political players. But they also bore heavily on freedpersons of property, and particularly heavily on freedwomen. A freedwoman could not divorce her patron against his will, and might be charged with adultery if she remarried without his permission. • lex Pappia Poppaea (9 B.C.E.) revised its provisions, and may have included attempts to limit divorces (Suet. DA 34). • lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis, or de adulteriis et pudicitia (18 B. C. E.) criminalized adultery, lending aid to adultery, or the tolerance of adultery by a husband, who could be charged with pimping (lenocinium), as well as stuprum, that is sex with an unmarried girl or woman, and appears also to have reasserted the lex Sca(n)tinia, a 2nd c. B. C. E. provision that criminalized stuprum with a boy and impudicitia – submission to penetration on the part of an adult male. All of these offenses, including lending assistance to adulterers, could be charged pro adulterio, and so shared in and furthered an

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•

• • •

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extension of its meaning. It also established a special permanent court for adultery cases. A series of laws aimed at the regulation of manumission and freedpersons: leges Iunia, Aelia Sentia, and Fufia Caninia (?) limited formal manumission to slaves over thirty and masters over 20, alleviated this regulation for men who wished to free a slave in order to marry her, and created the category of Junian Latins: that is, informally freed slaves were accorded some of the rights formerly accorded to Latin cities, and the potential to become citizens if they married and produced one child who lived a year. They also provided for the registration of births. A theater law separated the orders and the sexes in the theaters and allotted children a special place – the Julian law also excluded the unmarried from the theatre. Sumptuary laws aimed at limiting conspicuous consumption, especially banquets. The codes for Egypt acted in a similar manner, prohibiting crossethnos marriages. Codes of the Spanish cities accorded Latin rights included measures similar to the Julian laws.

2. Some Effects of the Laws The laws brought the state into the bedroom, making the chastity and fertility of women, which had been the province of the paterfamilias and the family, a matter of state security. • They furnished a quite startling number of billable hours for the jurists; according to Galinsky, they attracted the most (surviving?) comment of any of the body of laws. • They furnished grounds (pretexts) on which Augustus and succeeding emperors could choose either to show toward favor or to punish political supporters and opponents. • They provided strong incentives for those who wished to become citizens, and for disadvantaged citizens (freedpersons) to present lives of the strictest marital correctness. • They encouraged women to locate their own value in the bearing and raising of children. • They made a moral claim for Augustus, presenting him in the roles of pater patriae and censor, and constituted a kind of politics of distraction, focusing both accommodation and resistance on the Augustus’s programs not on his ongoing reorganization of the Roman “constitution” but on the neglect of the gods, the supposed deviance of wom-

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en, children and slaves of the household, and the disorder of society – the loss or blurring of distinctions among the orders.

Works Cited Abraham, Susan. “What Does Mumbai Have To Do with Rome? Postcolonial Perspectives on Globalization and Theology.” Theological Studies 69 (2008): 376–93. Bremmer, Jan N. “Aëtius, Arius Didymus and the Transmission of Doxography.” Memnosyne 51 (1998): 154–60. Cantarella, Eva. Bisexuality in the Ancient World. Translated by Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin. New Haven: Yale University, 1992. Collins, Adela Yarbro. The Beginning of the Gospel: Probings of Mark in Context. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992. –. Mark: A Commentary. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007. D’Angelo, Mary Rose. “Gender and Geopolitics in the Work of Philo of Alexandria: Jewish Piety and Imperial Family Values.” Pages 63–88 in Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Discourses. Edited by Todd Penner and Caroline Vander Stichele. Biblical Interpretation Series 84. Leiden: Brill, 2007. –. “Remarriage and the Divorce Sayings Attributed to Jesus.” Pages 78–106 in Divorce and Remarriage. Edited by William G. Roberts. Kansas City, Mo: Sheed & Ward, 1990), Excerpted and reprinted in pages 229–36 in Kevin T. Kelly, Divorce and Second Marriage: Facing the Challenge. Rev. and enl. ed. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1996. –. “Early Christian Sexual Politics and Roman Imperial Family Values: Rereading Christ and Culture.” Pages 23–48 in Papers of the Henry Luce III Fellows in Theology 6. Edited by Christopher I. Wilkins. Pittsburgh, PA: Association of Theological Schools, 2003. –. “(XVHEHLD: Roman Imperial Family Values and the Sexual Politics of 4 Maccabees and the Pastorals.” Biblical Interpretation 11 (2003): 139–65. Dixon, Suzanne. The Roman Family. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1992. Donahue, John R. and Daniel J. Harrington. The Gospel of Mark. SP 2. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002. Ebner, Martin. “Evangelium contra Evalgelium: das Markusevangelium und der Aufsteig der Flavier.” Biblische Notizen 116 (2003): 28–42. Edwards, Catharine. The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1993. Evans, Jane. The Art of Persuasion: Political Propaganda from Aeneas to Brutus. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1992. Evans Grubbs, Judith. Women and the Law in the Roman Empire: A Sourcebook on Marriage, Divorce and Widowhood. London: Routledge, 2002. Gaca, Kathy L. The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity. Berkeley: University of California, 2003. Galinsky, Karl. Augustan Culture: An Interpretive Introduction. Princeton: Princeton University, 1996. Horsley, Richard. Hearing the Whole Story: The Politics of Plot in Mark’s Gospel. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001. –. Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003.

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Incigneri, Brian J. The Gospel to the Romans: The Setting and Rhetoric of Mark. BIS 65; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2003. Jeremias, Joachim. Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries. London: SCM, 1960. Kloppenborg, John S. The Formation of Q: Trajectories in Ancient Wisdom Literature. Harrisburg: Trinity International, 1987. Lampe, Peter. From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries. Translated by Michael Steinhauser. Edited by Marshall D. Johnson. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003. Liew, Tat-Siong Benny. The Politics of Parousia: Reading Mark Inter(con)textually. Leiden: Brill, 1999. MacDonald, Margaret Y. Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion: The Power of the Hysterical Woman. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1996. Myers, Ched. Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990. Nagle, D. Brendan. “Aristotle and Arius Didymus on Household and POLIS.” Rh. M. 145 (2002): 198–223. Niehoff, Maren R. Philo on Jewish Identity and Culture. TSAJ 86. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001. Reid, Barbara. The Gospel according to Matthew. New Collegeville Bible Commentary. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2005. Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. New York: Crossroad, 1983. Severy, Beth. Augustus and the Family at the Birth of the Roman Empire. New York: Routledge, 2003. Theissen, Gerd. The Shadow of the Galilean: The Quest for the Historical Jesus in Narrative Form. Translated by John Bowden. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987. Treggiari, Susan. Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991. Weaver, Paul and Richard Carey. “Children of Freedmen (and Freedwomen).” Pages 166–90 in Marriage, Divorce, and Children in Ancient Rome. Edited by Beryl Rawson. Canberra: Humanities Research Center, 1991. –. “Children of Junian Latins.” Pages 55–72 in The Roman Family in Italy: Status, Sentiment, Space. Edited by Beryl Rawson and Paul Weaver. Oxford: Oxford University, 1999. Williams, Craig A. Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University, 1999. Zanker, Paul. The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus. Jerome Lectures 16. Translated by Alan Shapiro. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1988.

A Tale of Two Markan Characterizations The Exemplary Woman Who Anointed Jesus’s Body for Burial (14:3–9) and the Silent Trio Who Fled the Empty Tomb (16:1–8)1 JAMES A. KELHOFFER   DPK?QGH?OHJ ZXPL QRSRXHD?QNKUX[TK _WR?HXD QJJHOLRQHLM RO RQWR?QNRVPRQ NDL?RHS RLKVHQDXWKODOKTKVHWDLHLMPQKPRVXQRQDX WK M(Mark 14:9) NDL?RX G HQL?RX GH?QHL@S DQHIRERXaQWRJDU(Mark 16:8b)

A. Introduction As one honored to be among Adela Yarbro Collins’s first Doktorkinder, it is a great pleasure to contribute to a volume honoring her sixty-fifth birthday. I am deeply grateful for all she has taught me and the many ways she has helped me, both during our time together in Chicago and in the years since. She has also written such an engaging and thorough commentary on the Gospel of Mark, which scholarship will be digesting for many years to come.2 In the meantime, it will remain an open question whether there will be much “new” – or in any case, worthwhile – to say about Mark. Nevertheless, it is my hope that the present paper can explore a theme to which the genre of a commentary may not readily lend itself. This paper will develop two theses. The first is that the author of Mark offers the anonymous woman who anointed Jesus’s body for burial (14:3– 9) as a laudatory example of discipleship in contrast to the twelve apostles and, in particular, to Judas Iscariot. The second is that with the women who discover the empty tomb at the end of this Gospel (16:1–8) Mark offers a negative, rather than a positive, example of discipleship. In the latter 1 I am grateful for feedback from colleagues in Munich, especially Jörg Frey and David S. du Toit, where I was a visiting scholar while writing this essay. I would like to thank my friend and colleague Clare K. Rothschild for commenting on an earlier draft of this work. 2 A. Y. Collins, Mark: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007).

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passage the women’s failure to report the message of the resurrection offers a narrative continuation of the Twelve’s many failures earlier in Mark. Therefore, attempts by some scholars to construe the women at the end of Mark as a positive example of discipleship are mistaken.3 It will also be argued that with the negative examples of the Twelve and, at the end of Mark, these three women, Mark offers both encouragement and an implicit warning: his audience must (re)evaluate their commitment to following Jesus prior to the imminently anticipated Parousia.4 The title of this paper attempts to encapsulate these two main theses: “A Tale of Two Markan Characterizations: The Exemplary Woman Who Anointed Jesus’s Body for Burial (14:3–9) and the Silent Trio Who Fled the Empty Tomb (16:1–8).” I first studied these two Markan passages, among others, in the context of my current monograph project, which traces in the NT the theme of persecution and enduring suffering as a corroboration of apostolic authority and a believer’s standing as Jesus’s follower.5 In particular, I examine claims to suffering and persecution as a form of corroboration, which several NT authors, including Mark, use to confirm authority, standing, or legitimacy inasmuch as fidelity to Jesus is demonstrated by virtue of suffering with, or for, him. I bring to this study two prolegomena that I have argued elsewhere and cannot develop here.6 The first is that Mark’s depiction of Jesus’s twelve disciples is overwhelmingly negative, especially in the Gospel’s middle portion (8:27–10:52) and in the passion narrative.7 At the beginning of 3

E.g., Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (London: SCM, 1983), 320; Craig A. Evans, Mark 8:27–16:20 (WBC 34B; Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2001), 2:539. 4 Scholarship tends to emphasize the positive side of this Mark’s exhortation but to undervalue its negative implications to those who may not heed it. On this point see Kelhoffer, “Readiness To Suffer as Confirmation of Standing as Jesus’ Follower in the Gospel of Mark,” in idem Persecution, Persuasion and Power: Readiness to Withstand Hardship as a Corroboration of Legitimacy in the New Testament (WUNT; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, forthcoming); Mary Ann Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel: Mark’s World in Literary-historical Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 295–99 at 298–99 (emphasis original): “The problem posed . . . through the unfulfilled expectations raised by the named women is, If these followers will not go and tell, who will? In the end, Mark’s Gospel purposely leaves each reader or hearer with the urgent and disturbing question: Will I go and tell?” 5 Kelhoffer, “Readiness To Suffer.” 6 Kelhoffer, “Readiness To Suffer.” 7 See, e.g., Joseph B. Tyson, “The Blindness of the Disciples in Mark,” JBL 80 (1961): 261–68; Ernst Best, “The Role of the Disciples in Mark,” NTS 23 (1977): 377– 401; Robert C. Tannehill, “The Gospel of Mark as Narrative Christology,” Semeia 16 (1979): 57–95 at 70; Jack D. Kingsbury, Conflict in Mark: Jesus, Authorities, Disciples (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 95–112.

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Mark, however, several characterizations of the Twelve are quite positive: the Twelve accept Jesus’s call to follow him (1:16–20; 2:13–14; cf. 10:28), are designated apostles (3:14), ostensibly receive the secrets of the Kingdom (cf. 4:12–13), and carry out a successful mission in Jesus’s name (6:6b–13). Yet subsequent to Mark 6:30 when the Twelve return from their mission,8 Mark’s depiction of them is overwhelmingly negative. This shift from initially positive characterizations followed by negative depictions informs my analysis of the three women in this Gospel’s final pericopes, which likewise follow this pattern. The second prolegomenon is that in contrast to the Twelve’s usually negative example Mark highlights several minor – and usually anonymous – characters,9 who recognize the importance of Jesus’s death and identify with his suffering. The woman who anoints Jesus’s body for burial offers a prime example of such a positively depicted minor character and, at present, receives our attention.

B. An Unnamed Woman Anoints Jesus for Burial (14:3–9) The present section will highlight Mark’s contrasting characterizations of an unnamed woman (14:3–9) and Judas Iscariot (14:10–11). The discussion of this contrast builds on the inference that 14:3–9 is a redactional insertion between 14:1–2 and 10–11.10 That is to say, Mark’s source originally narrated without interruption Judas’s agreement to betray Jesus to the Jewish priests. In 14:3–4, subsequent to the woman’s tardy and presumably uninvited arrival at the meal,11 she is accused of wasting costly ointment on Jesus. Mark neither characterizes her as wealthy nor reveals the means by which she came to possess this ointment. What Mark does accentuate is that her

8

Indeed, the unflattering depictions of the Twelve begin already in Mark 4:40–41 and continue in passages, such as 6:45–52; 8:14–21, 31–33; 9:38–41; 10:28–31; and 10:35– 40, culminating in their abandonment of Jesus in Gethsemane (14:50). 9 Cf. Mark 8:34b; 9:39–41; 10:29–31, 35–40; 13:13b; 14:3–9, 47; 15:21, 39. 10 With A. Y. Collins, Mark, 640 (on 14:3–9); C. A. Evans, Mark, 2:358; Hisako Kinukawa, Women and Jesus in Mark: A Japanese Feminist Perspective (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994), 80. Indeed, Mark’s insertion of 14:3–9 invites the inference of an editorial contrast between an unnamed woman who valued Jesus’s suffering and Judas who did not. 11 So R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans/Carlisle: Paternoster, 2002), 551 (on 14:3), who notes that when she comes the meal has already begun (cf. Luke 7:37–38, 45; pace John 12:2–3).

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expending this valuable possession results in others becoming indignant (DJ DQDNWHZ) and censuring (HPEULPDRPDL) her action as inappropriate.12 Whereas the parallel passage in Matthew explicitly attributes this indignant response to Jesus’s disciples (LGRQWHM GH? RL PDTKWDL?, Matt 26:8), Mark 14:4 obliquely ascribes it to WLQHM (“some people”). The question thus arises whether in Mark the interpreter should distinguish the Twelve from WLQHMor identify (“some” of) them with those who became indignant. Craig Evans persuasively argues for the latter view, or that WLQHM pertaines to “some” of the Twelve.13 Furthermore, as Étienne Trocmé notes, Mark does not indicate who else besides the Twelve was present at the house of Simon the leper (cf. 14:3) to register such a complaint. 14 If the inference that Mark 14:4 points to “some” of the Twelve is persuasive, the characterization would be analogous to the Twelve’s hindering the work of an unnamed exorcist whom Jesus approved (9:38–41) and, later, their rebuking those who were bringing children to Jesus (10:13–14). Like these previous two instances, the(ir) mistake again concerns incorrectly denying Jesus’s favor toward those whose action he does indeed approve, whether exorcising demons in Jesus’s name (9:38–41), bringing children to him (10:13–14), or anointing his “body beforehand for its burial” (14:8). As compared with hindering a single exorcist or keeping parents from bringing their children to Jesus, in Mark this last instance is arguably the worst of the three, since objecting to the anointing of Jesus’s body implies a lack of recognition of Jesus’s approaching passion. Instead, those implicated as WLQHM DJDQDNWRXaQ WHM (“some who became indignant,” 14:4) – most likely the Twelve or at any rate “some” of them – unnecessarily cause suffering for this woman while discounting the value that she attaches to Jesus’s impending suffering and death. An additional parallel in Mark’s narrative to 14:3–9 is the meal scene in 2:15–17 at which “the scribes of the Pharisees” object to Jesus’s disciples 12 Mark 14:4–5; cf. 10:22. Collins, Mark, 642 (on 14:4–5) suggests plausibly that such a response may have been justified in light of Jesus’s teaching to the rich man (cf. Mark 10:21). 13 Evans, Mark, 2:360 (on Mark 14:4): “But the words of vv 6–9 make the most sense if they are addressed to the Twelve (Cranfield, 415–16). Earlier Jesus had been indignant at his disciples for discouraging the children to come to him (10:14), while later the disciples themselves had become indignant at James and John over their request to sit at Jesus’ right and left (10:41).” So also France, Mark, 553 (on 14:4–5) and (apparently) Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 321. Against Vincent Taylor, The Gospel according to St. Mark (London: Macmillan, 2 1966), 532; Joachim Gnilka, Das Evangelium nach Markus (EKK II.1.2; Neukirchen: Neikirchener, 4 1994), 2:224 (on 14:4–5). 14 Trocmé, L’Évangile selon Saint Marc (CNT 2.2; Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2000), 337 (on 14:4) notes the uncharacteristic complete absence of the Twelve in this pericope if they are not implicated in Mark 14:4.

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about the company Jesus was keeping.15 In the present pericope it is apparently the Twelve who make such an unwarranted judgment against this unnamed woman. In both instances Jesus defends those who are deemed unwelcome, whether the “many tax collectors and sinners” (2:15) or the woman (14:6–9). Moreover, in both pericopes the depictions of the accusers – “the scribes of the Pharisees” or, apparently here, “some” of the Twelve – are patently unflattering. Therefore, like other unnamed followers of Jesus depicted in this Gospel (cf. 8:34b; 9:38–41; 10:29–31, 40; 13:13b), the woman in 14:3–9 offers a positive example of discipleship in that she not only recognizes Jesus’s suffering but also suffers disdain from others for what she offered to Jesus. Her resolve to honor Jesus’s death despite objections from others is the reason why her deed will be remembered “wherever the good news (WR?HXDJJHOLRQ) is proclaimed” (14:9). Contrasting with this unnamed woman is the following pericope – or, as noted above, the continuation of the pre-Markan pericope of 14:1–2, 10–11 – concerning the disciple Judas who “betrayed” Jesus (14:10–11; cf. 3:19). Given Mark’s numerous depictions of the Twelve’s shortcomings and misunderstandings, accompanied by precious few successes subsequent to their return from a mission (6:30), it is not particularly surprising that one of them betrays Jesus.16 In Mark 14:1–11 both Judas and the unnamed woman are aware that Jesus will suffer. One of them prepares Jesus’s body for burial, and the other’s betrayal leads to Jesus’s arrest and passion.

C. The Women at the Empty Tomb as Continuation of the Persona and Failures of the Twelve (15:40–16:8) We now turn to another passage in Mark, also concerned with women, but as I shall argue, one that offers a strikingly contrasting characterization. After the crucifixion, with none of the Twelve to be found, Mark mentions for the first time at this very late point in his narrative women who observe from a distance Jesus’s suffering and place of burial and who later discover the empty tomb.17 Since ultimately their failure is every bit as spectacu15

Cf. Ernst Lohmeyer, Das Evangelium des Markus (KEK 1.2; ed. Gerhard Saß; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 8 1967), 292 (on 14:3). 16 With Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 319: “The misunderstanding and incomprehension of suffering discipleship exemplified by the twelve turns into betrayal and denial in the passion narrative.” 17 Mark 15:40–41, 47; 16:1–8. Concerning the possible historicity of the women’s visit, Evans, Mark, 2:531 invokes “the criterion of embarrassment,” maintaining that Mark 16:1–8 “reflects that the early church knew what actually happened.” Against this is the utter unavailability of the Twelve to perform this role and thus Mark’s need of a substitute to offer a link from the crucifixion to the resurrection. In this instance the criterion

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lar as those of the Twelve, I shall argue that, like the Twelve, these women are to be distinguished from the (usually) anonymous individuals whose examples the Gospel of Mark lauds.18 That is to say, different from the woman who anointed Jesus’s body for burial and Simon of Cyrene (14:3– 9; 15:20b–24), among others, Mark ultimately does not offer these three (named) women depicted in 15:40–16:8 as positive models of discipleship. At the start of this section, however, Mark does offer affirming characterizations of these women who had “followed” Jesus and “served” (DNRORXTHZ GLDNRQHZ, 15:41) as his benefactors in Galilee.19 Such initially positive attributes merit comparison with the Twelve, who likewise toward the beginning of Mark had received Jesus’s call to “follow” him (DNRORXTHZ, 1:17; 2:14; cf. 8:34; 10:21) prior to their numerous blunders. Yet at the end of Mark’s narrative the women entrusted with the message of Jesus’s resurrection and imminent appearance in Galilee20 fail to announce it (16:6–8), just as the Twelve had fallen short many times earlier in Mark. Terrified and amazed, the three women are silent (16:8b). This culmination of Mark’s narrative invites the inference that, at least in Mark’s account, these women cannot serve as a “bridge” from the risen Jesus to the Twelve,21 who stumbled only temporarily in Gethsemane before being quickly restored by Jesus shortly after the resurrection.22 Rather

of embarrassment is at best inconclusive. Cf. Collins, Mark, 779 (on 15:47), who regards 15:40–41, 47 as “composed by Mark in order to prepare for the empty tomb story.” 18 See Mark 8:34b; 9:38a, 39–41; 10:29–31, 40; 13:13b; 14:3–9; 14:47; 15:39. With Luise Schottroff, “Mary Magdalene and the Women at Jesus’ Tomb” (1982), in eadem Let the Oppressed Go Free: Feminist Perspectives on the New Testament (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993), 185, who notes that “Mark 16:1–8 is a last account of the disciples’ failure, which is of great importance in the Gospel of Mark.” 19 Additionally, two of the women see where Jesus’s body is laid (Mark 15:47), and the three of them visit the tomb to care for the body (16:1). 20 For an argument that Mark 16:7 refers to a post-resurrection appearance rather than the Parousia, see, e.g., Andrew T. Lincoln, “The Promise and the Failure: Mark 16:7, 8,” JBL 108 (1989): 285. 21 Concerning the need to roll away the stone (Mark 16:3), Evans, Mark, 2:539 notes, “It is ironic that not one of Jesus’ male disciples is available to offer this assistance.” 22 It is noteworthy that Matt 28:6–10, Luke 24:5b–12, John 20:1–3, 20:18, Mark’s Shorter Ending (it k) and Mark’s Longer Ending (Mark 16:9–11), each in their own way, employ one or more of these women for precisely this purpose. The distinctiveness of Mark 16:1–8 – with only a portion of such a “bridge” – over and against these five (among other) witnesses is therefore noteworthy. The origin of such accounts connecting the disciples to the resurrected Jesus thus most likely predates these other three NT Gospels, not to mention the two secondary endings to Mark. Moreover, although these other witnesses are later than Mark, the origin of a tradition in which one or more women serve as a “bridge” from Jesus to the reinstated disciples most likely also predates Mark. The hypothesis that Mark also knew such a tradition about the disciples’ reunion with Jesus

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than leading directly to a reunion with, let alone a reinstatement of, the Eleven, Mark’s empty tomb scene presents the angelic23 young man whom the women met there as distinguishing between the (now) ten disciples and Peter (XSDJ HWHHLTDWHWRLM PDTKWDLMDXWRX NDL? WZa_ 3HWUZ, 16:7a).24 This distinction in effect absolves Peter of his earlier calling to “follow” Jesus (1:16–17), unless at some future point he should start acting like a true disciple along the lines reported in 1 Cor 15:5 and John 21:15–19 but not in Mark. As Morna Hooker notes concerning Mark 16:7, “This is no mere rendezvous, but a call to the disciples to follow Jesus once again.”25 In such an ominous context, the prediction that Peter and the Ten will “see” the risen Jesus in the Galilee (16:7b) could just as easily bespeak the disciples’ judgment by Jesus, rather than their reconciliation with him, should they choose to meet him there. The earlier, and parallel, statement by Jesus himself (14:28; cf. 16:7) that after the resurrection he will be in Galilee does not denote that any of the Twelve will, in fact, actually “see” him.26 This initial prediction occurs before the disciples abandon Jesus in Gethsemane and Peter’s denials. Between 14:28 and 16:7, Mark has in effect taken the succession narrative of 1:14a – after John the Baptist’s arrest, Jesus arrives – and, when the time comes for Jesus to be succeeded, concluded instead with a rhetorical question mark. That is, Mark is silent about how a transition to the preaching of the apostles took place: after the resurrection the apostles do not necessarily immediately pick up where Jesus left off. Yet as Mark concludes his narrative, it is a moot point whether the Eleven’s could choose to face Jesus, since the women never convey to the after the resurrection stemming directly from these women’s report of the resurrection would correlate with the author’s desire to refute it in Mark 16:1–8. 23 With Collins, Mark, 795–96 at 795 (on 16:5–6): “the young man is a character in the narrative best defined as an angel.” So also Schottroff, “Mary Magdalene and the Women at Jesus’ Tomb,” 185–86; Carolyn Osiek, “The Women at the Tomb: What Are They Doing There?” Hervormde Teologiese Studies 53 (1997): 105. 24 Cf. already in Mark 8:33 for a subtle distinction between Peter and the other disciples, when Jesus, after receiving Peter’s rebuke (8:31–32), turns and looks at the other disciples (8:33). As Robert H. Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 433 (on 8:34–38) notes, “The turning around and seeing them [cf.LGZ?Q WRX?MPDTKWD?M DXWRX , 8:33] . . . was to differentiate Peter from the disciples.” 25 M. D. Hooker, A Commentary on the Gospel according to St. Mark, BNTC (London: Continuum, 2003 [1981]), 385 (on 16:7). 26 Cf. Kelhoffer, Miracle and Mission: The Authentication of Missionaries and Their Message in the Longer Ending of Mark, WUNT 2.112 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 114. Consider also the similar syntactical constructions in Mark 1:14a (PHWD? GH? WR? SDUDGRTK QDLWR?Q, ZDQ QKQK@OTHQR , KVRXaM HLMWK?Q*DOLODLDQ) and 14:28 (PHWD? WR? HJHUTK QDL?PHNWO).

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Eleven Jesus’s invitation and promise that they will “see” him.27 At Mark’s conclusion what endures from Jesus’s associations with the Twelve is an empty tomb, the women’s silence, and the imminent expectation of the Son of Man’s appearance (cf. 8:34–9:1; 13:26; 14:62). Until the manifestation of this anticipated end,28 the Markan community must be prepared to suffer as Jesus’s faithful followers (cf. 13:14–37).29 The present essay therefore calls into question Craig Evans’s conclusion that after 16:8 “the mission of the disciples, chosen and commissioned earlier in the ministry, may now continue with renewed vigor and vision.”30 At the very least, one would have to replace the word “continue” with “recommence” or something to signify the utter break in the disciples’ consistently inept behavior between Mark 6:30 (after they return from their mission; cf. 6:6b–13) and 14:50 (abandoning Jesus at his arrest). Yet as discussed further below, Mark 13:9–13a assumes that in a later postresurrection context at least four of the Twelve act as messengers of the good news.31 Mark’s concluding pericope (16:1–8) curiously offers neither a smooth nor a self-evident transition to such a recommencement, however. In addition to the fate of the Eleven following 16:8, Mark’s characterization of the three women toward the end of his narrative has likewise been the subject of considerable scholarly debate. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, for example, construes Mark 15:40 as indicating four,32 rather than three, women and draws a parallel to Jesus’s initial call of four male disciples in 1:16–20. On this basis, she states that these four women and four men are “preeminent,” respectively among Jesus’s female and male disci27

Cf. Werner H. Kelber, Mark’s Story of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 86–87. With Willi Marxsen, Mark the Evangelist: Studies on the Redaction History of the Gospel (Nashville: Abingdon 1969 [2 1959]), 111–16 at 113 (cf. 186) that Mark “all but eliminates the interval between the” resurrection and imminent Parousia and in 16:7 identifies the Parousia with Jesus’s predicted appearance in Galilee. 29 Although at one point Mark recognizes that two of the Twelve – James and John – will suffer like Jesus (10:39), their legacy as reported in Mark is the exception rather than the rule to the shoddy examples of Jesus’s earthly disciples, especially Peter. 30 Evans, Mark, 2:540. 31 Cf. Collins, Mark, 671 (on 14:29) concerning Jesus’s prediction that the Twelve will take offense and abandon him: “Their failure is not definitive, however. . . . The instruction given to the women by the ‘young man’ in Mark 16:7 implies that ‘the disciples and Peter’ will have a second chance.” Collins further refers to 10:38–40 and 13:9–13 to support the inference that (some of) the Twelve will eventually be in proper relation to Jesus in the post-Easter period. Cf. eadem, Mark, 797 (on 16:7). 32 Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 320. So also, e.g., Schottroff, “Mary Magdalene and the Women at Jesus’ Tomb,” 173–74. More persuasively, however, Osiek, “The Women at the Tomb,” 105 traces the construal of four women to Codex Vaticanus rather than the original author of Mark. 28

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ples.33 Moreover, Schüssler Fiorenza maintains that by virtue of their courage these four women disciples supercede their cowardly male counterparts.34 Craig Evans similarly construes the characters in 15:40 as “three brave women.”35 Evans also draws a contrast between Joseph of Arimathea, who buried Jesus and “is no devoted disciple” since he did this “with dispatch . . . but not with devotion,” and “[t]he women, who were devoted to Jesus [and] now hope to complete the process.”36 Yet even if one were to construe these women as initially “brave,” it is not at all clear that, for the author of Mark,37 they constituted unambiguously positive models of discipleship. It is likewise uncertain how positing such an unqualified characterization of their role as laudable could be reconciled with their later reaction of becoming overwhelmed with astonishment (HNTDPEHZ, 16:5b–6a) and ultimately remaining silent although commanded to report that Jesus is raised (16:8). Indeed, Victoria Philips in her essay for the volume, A Feminist Companion to Mark, calls attention to

33

Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 320. Already Martin Hengel, “Maria Magdalena und die Frauen als Zeugen,” in Abraham unser Vater: Juden und Christen im Gespräch über die Bibel, Arbeiten zur Geschichte des Spätjudentums und Urchristentums 5 (ed. Otto Betz et al.; FS Otto Michel; Leiden: Brill, 1963), 256 (cf. 250–51), who attributes to such women “eine gewisse Rangfolge” and compares Peter’s status with that of Mary Magdalene. Similarly Luise Schottroff, “Women as Followers of Jesus in New Testament Times: An Exercise in Social-historical Exegesis of the Bible,” in Bible and Liberation: Political and Social Hermeneutics (ed. Norman K. Gottwald; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis/London: SPCK, 21993), 418–27, esp. 419–23. 34 Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 320: “Though the twelve have forsaken Jesus, betrayed and denied him, the women disciples, by contrast, are found under the cross, risking their own lives and safety.” Similarly Joseph A. Grassi, “The Secret Heroine of Mark’s Drama,” BTB 18 (1988): 10–15, esp. 13–14. 35 Evans, Mark, 2:539. Yet even this positive construal of these women is open to question, since crucifixions were typically carried out in public places, and any number of people could witness an execution – especially “from a distance” (D S R? PDNURTHQ, 15:40) – without fear of reprisal. 36 Evans, Mark, 2:534 (on 16:1). This judgment too is uncompelling because it does not take into account gender specific patterns for burial in the ancient world. As Osiek, “Women at the Tomb,” 111 notes, “In many traditional societies including those of the eastern Mediterranean, it is women who prepare a body for burial, while men actually convey the body into the tomb.” Against Evans, therefore, it is highly questionable that Mark portrays these women as either “brave” or in any way more devout than Joseph of Arimathea (cf. 15:40–47). 37 The questions of Mark’s depictions and those of his source materials need to be distinguished. The present discussion focuses on Mark’s portrayals of these women and their similarities to the Twelve, leaving open the question to what extent Mark’s sources may have attested to prominent female disciples.

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this “blind spot” in what she nonetheless acknowledges as an “important feminist strategy” for interpreting Mark. 38 In Mark 16:5b–6a the verb HN TDPEHZ could portray a range of emotional reactions, including being overwhelmed, alarmed, distressed,39 troubled – or any combination of these. From these two occurrences of this verb (16:5b–6a) it is not clear that any one of these options should be taken to exclude the others. An analogy to Jesus in Gethsemane (KUFDWR HNTDPEHL VTDL NDL? DGKPRQHL Q, 14:33b; cf. 9:15) could suggest that the women despaired upon realizing something horrible had transpired – that is, not having found Jesus’s body and perhaps despairing over the possibility that it had not been buried properly or even had been stolen. In stating that “terror and amazement had seized them,” Mark 16:8b corroborates this construal of HNTDPEHZ in 16:5b–6a: the women were so distraught that they ignore not only the message of the resurrection (16:6b) but also the command to tell the remaining ten “disciples and Peter” about it.40 Attempting to mitigate this difficulty that Mark’s concluding verses pose to her interpretation,41 Schüssler Fiorenza differentiates between these women’s failure and those of Jesus’s male disciples because in her view “[t]he women’s fear was well founded.”42 This distinction, however, is arguably a case of special pleading, since the Twelve likewise had reason to fear, for example, when Jesus – and they – were approaching Jerusalem (cf. HTDPERXaQWR RL GH? DNRORXTRXaQWHM HIRERXaQWR, Mark 10:32).43 Nor is it persuasive to construe positively the women’s silence, as David R. Catchpole argues, in terms of an “awe-inspired reaction to a heavenly

38

Philips, “The Failure of the Women Who Followed Jesus in the Gospel of Mark,” in A Feminist Companion to Mark (ed. Amy-Jill Levine; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2001), 222. 39 Cf. BDAG, 303 (s.v. HNTDPEHZ). Cf. W. C. Allen, “St. Mark XVI. 8: ‘They were afraid.’ Why?” JTS 47 (1946): 47. 40 Mark 16:7, 8c. At 16:8c the double negative RXGHQL? RXGHQ accentuates their silence; cf. Evans, Mark, 2:538 (on 16:8). 41 Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 321–22. 42 Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 322; so also Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel, 292–3. This is not to deny, however, that upon being surprised by the angelic young man (Mark 16:5–6) “[t]he women’s fear was well founded” (Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 322). 43 See further Allen, “St. Mark XVI. 8,” 47–48, who makes a similar comparison between Mark 16:8 and the reaction of the Twelve in 9:2–16. Cf. idem, “‘Fear’ in St. Mark,” JTS 48 (1947): 202; Jean Delorme, “The Resurrection and Jesus’ Tomb: Mark 16,1–8 in the Gospel Tradition” (1969), in The Resurrection and Modern Biblical Thought (ed. P. de Surgy; New York/Cleveland: Corpus Books, 1970), 77; David R. Catchpole, “The Fearful Silence of the Women at the Tomb: A Study in Markan Theology,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 18 (1977): 8–10.

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epiphany.”44 A reaction that may be typically human but that nonetheless falls short of a divine command – in this case, delivered by the angelic young man to “go, tell his disciples and Peter” (16:7) – by no means corroborates a positive Markan characterization of these three women.45

D. Conclusion: Discipleship and Gender in Mark Whereas Schüssler Fiorenza draws a contrast between Jesus’s male disciples and the female disciples depicted in Mark 15:40–16:8, I have argued that the similarities between these characters are considerably more striking: both groups, despite initially favorable characterizations, ultimately fail.46 Mark leaves neither group with grounds for boasting their superior standing relative to each other or, for that matter, anyone else. Against Schüssler Fiorenza, therefore, I side rather with Elisabeth Struthers Malbon, who argues that Jesus’s “fallible followers” – both women and men – illustrate “a twofold message” that whereas “anyone can be a follower [of Jesus], no one finds it easy.”47 Up to a point one can also agree with Victoria Philips that the greater failure belongs to the Twelve, who had promised to Jesus their loyalty.48 Yet differing with both Schüssler Fiorenza (markedly) and Philips (slightly), I maintain that the failures of both

44 Catchpole, “Fearful Silence of the Women at the Tomb,” 3, in response to Theodore Weeden, Mark – Traditions in Conflict (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971), 48, 50. So also O’Collins, “Fearful Silence of Three Women,” 501–3. 45 With Osiek, “Women at the Tomb,” 113–14 (cf. 105), who argues that Mark takes away the women’s credibility by silencing them. So also A. T. Lincoln, “Promise and the Failure: Mark 16:7, 8,” 285–87 (cf. 290–91). See further Susan Miller, “‘They Said Nothing to Anyone’: The Fear and Silence of the Women at the Empty Tomb (Mk 16.1–8),” Feminist Theology 13 (2004): 77–90 at 89. Cf. Philips, “The Failure of the Women,” 234: “Thus, Mark presents a complex characterization of the women. Their emotions are understandable; their actions – flight and the decision to be silent – are wrong.” Offering an ideological critique of the author, moreover, Kinukawa, Women and Jesus in Mark, 142 takes issue with Mark’s negative depiction, unpersuasively alleging that Mark was unwilling to portray women more positively than Jesus’s male disciples and thus offers a witness to “repatriarchalization” in the emerging Jesus movement. 46 With Schottroff, “Mary Magdalene and the Women at Jesus’ Tomb,” 187, who compares the women’s flight from the empty tomb with the disciples’ flight from Gethsemane (cf. 14:50). 47 Struthers Malbon, “Fallible Followers: Women and Men in the Gospel of Mark,” Semeia 28 (1983): 29. Moreover, Malbon opposes the notion “that the female characters of Mark are to be viewed as models of discipleship” (32; cf. 40–46). Similarly Lincoln, “Promise and the Failure: Mark 16:7, 8,” 293–96. 48 Philips, “The Failure of the Women,” 223–96.

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groups are in proportion to their roles in Mark – whether as major or minor characters – and thus above all bind them together. It therefore does not stand to reason, as R. T. France argues, that the appearance of these three women in the narrative “marks a remarkable shift in the Gospel’s emphasis.”49 Really the only thing that has changed is the characters’ gender, since the Twelve and the women at the end of Mark belong to the same group of faithless disciples. Therefore, in 15:40–16:8 the question of their gender is, from the standpoint of exegesis, irrelevant. Since the result of failure remains the same, one could in a sense regard these women as the continuation of the persona of Jesus’s male disciples, who likewise fell short. What then shall we say about the interpretation of some scholars that these women offer a positive model of discipleship? As compared with the Twelve, the three women at the end of Mark are neither better nor worse. Like the Twelve, they are selected for a divinely sanctioned commission, and also like the Twelve they fail. I have argued elsewhere that, generally speaking, in Mark the Twelve do not constitute a positive model of discipleship.50 Instead, Mark tends to hail the faithfulness of minor, usually anonymous characters in contradistinction to the Twelve. This point holds concerning the three (named) women at the end of Mark, who should be distinguished from Mark’s laudatory examples, including the anonymous woman who had already51 prepared Jesus’s body for burial in 14:3–9.

Works Cited Allen, W. C. “St. Mark XVI. 8: ‘They were afraid.’ Why?” JTS 47 (1946): 46–49. –. “‘Fear’ in St. Mark.” JTS 48 (1947): 201–203. Best, Ernst. “The Role of the Disciples in Mark.” NTS 23 (1977): 377–401. Catchpole, David R. “The Fearful Silence of the Women at the Tomb: A Study in Markan Theology.” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 18 (1977): 3–10. Collins, A. Y. Mark: A Commentary. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007. Delorme, Jean “The Resurrection and Jesus’ Tomb: Mark 16,1–8 in the Gospel Tradition” (1969). Pages 74–106 in The Resurrection and Modern Biblical Thought. Edited by P. de Surgy; New York/Cleveland: Corpus Books, 1970. Evans, Craig A. Mark 8:27–16:20. WBC 34B. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2001. Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. London: SCM, 1983. 49

France, Mark, 661. Kelhoffer, “Readiness To Suffer.” 51 Cf. Osiek, “Women at the Tomb,” 111: “The reason for their return [in 16:1], the unfinished anointing of the body, is highly suspect. . . . In Mark, the end of the passion narrative offers no explanation why they could not finish the task on Friday, so that their reason for returning seems artificial.” See further Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel, 291. 50

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France, R. T. The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text. NIGTC. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans/Carlisle: Paternoster, 2002. Gnilka, Joachim. Das Evangelium nach Markus. EKK II.1.2. Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 4 1994. Grassi, Joseph A. “The Secret Heroine of Mark’s Drama.” BTB 18 (1988): 10–15. Gundry, Robert H. Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993. Hengel, Martin. “Maria Magdalena und die Frauen als Zeugen.” Pages 243–56 in Abraham unser Vater: Juden und Christen im Gespräch über die Bibel. Arbeiten zur Geschichte des Spätjudentums und Urchristentums 5. Edited by Otto Betz et al. Leiden: Brill, 1963. Hooker, M. D. A Commentary on the Gospel according to St. Mark. BNTC. London: Continuum, 2003 (1981). Kelber, Werner H. Mark’s Story of Jesus. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979. Kelhoffer, James A. Miracle and Mission: The Authentication of Missionaries and Their Message in the Longer Ending of Mark. WUNT 2.112. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000. –. “Readiness To Suffer as Confirmation of Standing as Jesus’ Follower in the Gospel of Mark.” In idem, Persecution, Persuasion and Power: Readiness To Withstand Hardship as a Corroboration of Legitimacy in the New Testament. WUNT. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, forthcoming. Kingsbury, Jack D. Conflict in Mark: Jesus, Authorities, Disciples. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989. Kinukawa, Hisako. Women and Jesus in Mark: A Japanese Feminist Perspective. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994. Malbon, Elizabeth Struthers. “Fallible Followers: Women and Men in the Gospel of Mark.” Semeia 28 (1983): 29–48. Marxsen, Willi. Mark the Evangelist: Studies on the Redaction History of the Gospel. Nashville: Abingdon 1969 (21959). Miller, Susan. “‘They Said Nothing to Anyone’: The Fear and Silence of the Women at the Empty Tomb (Mk 16.1–8).” Feminist Theology 13 (2004): 77–90. Lincoln, Andrew T. “The Promise and the Failure: Mark 16:7, 8.” JBL 108 (1989): 283– 300. Lohmeyer, Ernst. Das Evangelium des Markus. KEK 1.2. Edited by Gerhard Saß. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 8 1967. Osiek, Carolyn. “The Women at the Tomb: What Are They Doing There?” Hervormde Teologiese Studies 53 (1997): 103–18. Philips, Victoria. “The Failure of the Women Who Followed Jesus in the Gospel of Mark.” Pages 222–34 in A Feminist Companion to Mark. Edited by Amy-Jill Levine. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2001. Schottroff, Luise “Mary Magdalene and the Women at Jesus’ Tomb” (1982). Pages 168– 203 in eadem Let the Oppressed Go Free: Feminist Perspectives on the New Testament. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993. –. “Women as Followers of Jesus in New Testament Times: An Exercise in Socialhistorical Exegesis of the Bible.” Pages 418–27 in Bible and Liberation: Political and Social Hermeneutics. Edited by Norman K. Gottwald. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis/London: SPCK, 2 1993. Tannehill, Robert C. “The Gospel of Mark as Narrative Christology.” Semeia 16 (1979): 57–95. Taylor, Vincent. The Gospel according to St. Mark. London: Macmillan, 2 1966.

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Tolbert, Mary Ann. Sowing the Gospel: Mark’s World in Literary-historical Perspective. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989. Trocmé, Étienne. L’Évangile selon Saint Marc. CNT 2.2. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2000. Tyson, Joseph B. “The Blindness of the Disciples in Mark.” JBL 80 (1961): 261–68. Weeden, Theodore. Mark – Traditions in Conflict. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971.

Motherhood and the Making of Fathers in Antiquity Contextualizing Genetics in the Gospel of John TURID KARLSEN SEIM

We know surprisingly little about the role of women at childbirth in antiquity. Literary sources beyond the medical treatises are scarce, and the same applies to iconographical material. Pregnancy or childbirth is rarely depicted,1 and pregnant or women giving birth appear not to stand metonymically for reproduction or fecundity. Natalie Kampen has explored the few Roman artistic representations of reproduction and motherhood, and she concludes that there is no explicit iconography of pregnancy. This coincides with a remarkable lack of literary discussion (medical texts not included) of how pregnant women look and about their moods and states of mind. However, representation is not reality, and Kampen suggests that Roman art and writing refused a unified story about reproduction and motherhood. I would like to add that the unified story which was accepted concerned the making of fathers. In a patriarchal social universe, continuity and connection are defined through symbolic generative relations between men. The male ability of genesis provides the right of legitimate affiliation. The dilemma is that in the reality of human life as different from myth where parturition well might be within the powers of the supreme male deity, male incorporation can only occur by way of women. The irony is that whereas motherhood manifests itself bodily and unmistakably, fatherhood is not visible and evident in the same compelling manner; it is in fact fragile and vulnerable. Before the discovery of DNA and the technology of verification now available, it was difficult, even impossible, to observe and prove paternity beyond dispute. The obvious question might seem to be why indeed a woman required a man to produce children.2 It was evident that a man 1

Natalie B. Kampen, “Material Girl: Feminist Confrontations with Roman Art,” Arethusa 27 (1994): 111–37. There is far more abundant information available about women’s role in handling death; cf. Robert Garland, The Greek Way of Life from Conception to Old Age (London: Duckworth 1990), 104. 2 See Lesley Ann Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 179, who states that this question was never fully answered by the Hippocratics, only by Aristotle.

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needed a woman’s capability of nurturing a fetus until it was ready to leave the womb. It was, however, not equally evident why she needed him – but for the evidence from actual experience that neither could reproduce without the other. Parthenogenesis was indeed miraculous, and the dream of a world where women were superfluous was a utopian notion.3 The fragility and vulnerability of fatherhood in the patrilineal culture of the ancient Greco-Roman society made it all the more necessary to secure paternity discursively and ritually. Paternity was therefore not as much discovered as it was created or symbolically constructed. Bonds of belonging between father and child had to be established in ways that corresponded to and recognized paternal power, and a twofold strategy resolved the dilemma. On the one hand one would constantly seek to undercommunicate or in various ways disown the role of woman in procreation. On the other, paternity and the father’s potestas were reinforced by cosmological myths of origin, by medical (scientific) discourses, and by postnatal rites. Thus attitudes and values were voiced that also permeated the understanding of the conditions and processes as each human being was conceived, born, and incorporated into structures of viability. The father was ideally and ritually cast as the giver of life. In a famous strophe by Aeschylus, Apollo, in the presence of the presiding Athena, speaks in defence of Orestes: The mother of what is called her child is not its parent but only the nurse of the swelling new-sown seed. The man who mounts and impregnates, brings it into the world, whereas she, as a stranger for a stranger, does but keep the sprout alive unless god hurts its root. And I will offer you a sure proof of what I say: fatherhood there may be, when mother there is none. Here at hand is a witness, the child of Olympian Zeus – and not so much as 4 nursed in the darkness of the womb, but such a scion as no goddess could bring forth.

Thus in myth divine fathers might give birth: Athena emerged fully equipped from Zeus’s head and Dionysus, the twice-born, from his thigh. However, even if the two were born from a male parent alone, the myth still assumed that a female agent initially was needed. Zeus swallowed Metis so that he could bear Athena from his head, and in order to bear Dionysus he removed the embryo from Semele and implanted it into his

3 Nevertheless, a main stream in Greek tradition entertained such a dream; cf. Marilyn B. Arthur, “The Dream of a World without Women: Poetics and the Circles of Order in the Theogony Prooemium,” Arethusa 16 (1983): 97–110; Nicole Loureaux, The Children of Athena: Athenian Ideas about Citizenship and the Division Between the Sexes (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993); and Vigdis Songe-Møller, Philosophy Without Women: The Birth of Sexism in Western Thought (London: Continuum 2002), 3–20 – the expression being coined by J. P. Vernant. 4 Aeschylus, Eumenides 658–665, written 458 B.C.E.

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thigh.5 When females attempted to be equally self-sufficient and generate on their own, the result was somehow defect or monstrous. An example is the goddess Hera who in retaliation of Zeus’s “do-it-yourself procreation” attempted at single-handed generation, the result being the monstrous serpent Typhoeus – a story not dissimilar of the Sethian tradition about Sophia who in an attempt at conceiving by herself gave birth to Yaldabaoth. Hence, when a male was portrayed as giving birth, he is not necessarily bent towards a feminine quality or presented in androgynous terms; he might equally well express male completion and omnipotence having consumed or usurped the female.

A. Ancient Genetics: Observations and Paternal Claims In antiquity genetics was based on observation and theoretical assumptions, and there were several competing theories. The preformationism or homunculus theory claimed that the male sperm contained a ready-made miniature that was implanted in the womb where it grew until it was born. The theory of pangenesis regarded the role of the male and the female parent in the reproduction of a child as similar in that both parents produced seed. The Hippocratics, who lent towards this theory, still maintained male supremacy as they distinguished between stronger (male) and weaker (female) sperm. Both man and woman alike provided male and female seed but predominance of the stronger sperm produced male offspring while a greater quantity of the weaker sperm resulted in a weak form, namely the female.6 On the whole, the Hippocratic writings are permeated with the common view that the primary value of a married woman was her ability to bear children. A man acquired a wife in order to have a family, that is legitimate offspring, and the Hippocratics recommended tests which might decide whether or not a potential wife was capable of conceiving. Sex and pregnancy represented a cure from female bodily precondition, and the man had “a curative as well as therapeutic role as a bringer of both health 5

According to Mary R. Lefkowitz, Women in Greek Myth (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1986), 30–32, a patriarchal order thereby was established where both women and children were kept subordinate. 6 On the Seed 6. The relative combination between sort and quantity of sperm is thus decisive, even if it is not clear whether greater strength may compensate for a smaller quantity or how the variations may be explained. But it does seem that the male (strong) seed from the woman is qualitatively different from that of the man which is more likely to ensure brilliance and strength. On the whole, the many combinations possible of weak (female) and strong (male) seed from male and female parents as well as the significance attached to the quality of the surroundings in which conception took place, provide the possibility of explaining most cases – also the ambiguous ones.

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and sanity to the imperfect and pathological female organism.”7 At the same time the preoccupation with the reproductive function of women’s bodies meant that many of the illnesses a woman might suffer were traced to a malfunction in her reproductive system. 8 Aristotle, who wrote at the same time or perhaps a little later than the Hippocratic medical writers, developed yet another theory of long-lasting influence, called epigenesis because it confronted the preformational position by holding that the embryonic development was not just a matter of growth but of gradual formation. He contended, however, also against the Hippocratic theory of pangenesis that only males are able to generate seed. This paternal seed provides the active principle of movement and life, whereas the mother’s role is to provide passive matter.9 A woman is by nature impotent. Generation occurs when the active male semen comes in contact with and imparts form and function to the female raw material, the menstrual blood which represents the fabric of which the embryo is made and continues to be nurtured.10 Also the man’s semen is perceived as a residue of blood concocted to semen by the fiery heat in the male.11 The heat of the pneuma makes the warm blood concoct and produce the foam which is the semen. This theory that semen is blood concocted to emerge under pressure as foam was wide-spread in antiquity over several centuries. 7

Garland, Greek Way of Life, 17. Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 136. An example of this is the diagnosis of the restless, wandering or errant womb; see Sue Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece (British Museum Press, 1995), 100–101. 9 Gen. An. 716a; 727a –729b; 738b20–26; 765b; etc. This further entails that a woman does not more easily conceive if she feels pleasure, as taught by some of those who assumed a female emission of seed. Generally, women’s arousal and passion should be controlled as they were under constant suspicion of lasciviousness and considered to be insatious and incapable of containing their desires; cf. Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece, 104. G. E. R. Lloyd, Science, Folklore and Ideology: Studies in the Life Sciences in Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 94 holds that Aristotle’s “general prejudices in this area reflect . . . certain deep-seated attitudes that were widespread – among men – in Greek society and that found expression in a long line of writers from Hesiod, through Semonides to Plato and beyond.” Lloyd further observes that “in the confrontation between theory and observational data the complexity of the latter is not allowed seriously to undermine the former” (104). 10 To explain the effect of the male sperm on the female blood Aristotle employs analogies such as the work of a carpenter on wood or the effect of rennet in curdling milk; cf. Lloyd, Science, 368–70 and Adele Reinhartz, “‘And the Word Was Begotten’: Divine Epigenesis in the Gospel of John,” Semeia 85 (1999): 83–103; esp. 88–89. It is, however, Aristotle who is adamant that the semen does not contribute matter; it evaporates as soon as it has transferred the father’s form to the mother’s matter; see DeanJones, Women’s Bodies, 187. 11 Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 177, points to the fact that the appearance of semen in young men and menses in young women at puberty were taken to prove that the secretions were analogous. 8

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Clement of Alexandria (Paed. I.6.48 [I.119.2ST]) writes, quoting Diogenes of Apollonia: “The man’s blood, already warm, is whipped up in the embrace and expelled; it foams and is passed on to the seed arteries.” The idea is also found in Philo (Opif. 67) and in Talmudic texts almost as a proverbial truth: “Do not boil in the pot which your neighbour used for boiling.” (Pesa‫ۊ‬. 112a), or as marking the difference between a man and a boy: a man can boil and impregnate, a boy cannot (Sanh. 69a). Neither can women. Even independently of the position the ancient physiologists might hold as to whether also women produced some kind of sperm, it was generally agreed that the inherent coldness of a woman’s body meant that she could not cook blood. However, after she has given birth her menstrual blood is processed to milk. The relationship between male and female is therefore, according to Aristotle, an example of the relationship between form and matter. Integral to the form supplied by the male seed is the sentient soul. This is not a spiritual entity but represents all the functions that a body should be able to perform.12 It requires heat to unfold and resides in the pneuma, the life breath or spirit of the male. The pneuma, which serves as the vehicle of all faculties of the soul, thus carries the potential form of the offspring and is also charged with the movement that creates the sentient soul. Again it is the fiery heat in the man that enables him to concoct the residue to the degree where it can carry the soul.13 Given the right conditions and the proper material to work upon, the movement of the pneuma contained within the male semen will produce a being of the same kind as that from which the male semen came.14 The mother is the receptacle and the nurturer. The underlying notion is the ancient Greek image of woman as a vessel, whose internal space is unobstructed and available for occupation by the man’s seed – being kept and nurtured as it develops and eventually emerges into the world. In order to conceive, the woman’s body must be empty, unoccupied,15 and the early sign of pregnancy was that nothing leaked out; the jar had been sealed. Aristotle did refrain from defining woman as a separate eidos since this 12

Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 184. This was not possible until the age of 21, and in order to carry the sentient soul, the semen had to be concocted at the very last minute before ejaculation. A female would have sufficient heat in herself to possess and perform the faculties of the soul but never enough to carry and transfer the sentient soul; cf. Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 186–87. 14 Reinhartz, “‘Word Was Begotten,’” 89. These are crucial observations for her application of Aristotelean genetics to Johannine Christology. 15 Giulia Sissa, Greek Virginity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 159– 60, develops this and adds, “[I]t is immediately after the katharsis of menstruation that the uterus is ready to receive semen.” She further mentions the Danaides who were women tortured by an endless leak and represented the utmost possible incompleteness of the female body (171). 13

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would make it impossible for her to participate in the reproduction of the human form, eidos anthropos. Her eidos is, however, deemed to be imperfect, and she cannot pass it on to her offspring. Aristotle’s woman is a deformed, substandard male and “a completely different creature,” yet she is a regular and necessary deformity.16 It was, however, obvious that a child might resemble its mother equally well as its father. How was this explained? Resemblance of both parents was most easily accommodated by the pangenetic theory on the principle that the child would resemble in the majority of its characteristics that parent who had contributed a greater quantity of sperm or sperm from a greater number of bodily parts.17 The Aristotelian position had no problem explaining a child’s likeness to its father; in fact, a boy should, in normal circumstances, be his father’s image. It was more difficult to explain why a child, even a boy, might resemble the mother or maternal relatives. However, according to the Aristotelian view there is in the early stages of the development of the embryo a competition between the male ability to form and arrange and the female provision of matter.18 The male logos may fail in gaining its force, and the offspring will in some way or other be deformed in that it differs from the form of its father. A daughter was most likely a result of the imperfect generative force, and if she was like her mother, that was as it should be. Female offspring is a deficient male. However, if it so happened that a son resembled his mother’s side, or a daughter the father, one had somehow to assume that the female generative force had overcome the male.19 Soranus was active in Rome at the end of the first and beginning of the second century.20 He belonged to a medical school known as “Methodism” 16

Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 85 and 182. On the Seed 8. Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 155, 160 claims that female seed, which was not a visible secretion, was postulated and “championed by the Hippocratics because it was the most obvious explanation of a child’s resemblance to its maternal family.” 18 This encourages Dean-Jones (1994), 179 and 194 to hold the position that Aristotle’s theory lent itself “more readily to explaining resemblance to the mother and had to make some very contentious claims to preserve resemblance to the father as the normal outcome.” She maintains that the form provided in the semen is limited to the species form while the mother’s matter provides all individual differences. 19 Gen. An. 767–69. Sarah Pomeroy, Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece: Representations and Realities (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 97, who also indicates that since a child, especially a son was seen much more frequently with the father and other paternal relatives than with the mother and maternal relatives observers might therefore in most cases perceive the features that resembled the paternal side. 20 Only one work, his Gynaecology in four books, has survived. It seems to have been much used by midwives and those who treated women; cf. Dean-Jones Women’s Bodies, 24. Aline Rouselle, Porneia: On Desire and the Body in Antiquity (Oxford: Blackwell, 17

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that entailed a belief that all disorders are the result of one of three bodily states: constriction, relaxation, or a mixed condition. He seems to accept that various states of the soul of the mother, caused by what she sees during intercourse, may produce changes in the mould of the fetus. Soranus played down the necessity of menstruation and indeed of sexual intercourse in maintaining female health. However, he primarily belonged to the Aristotelian tradition concerning the role of the female in the conception of offspring.21 Galen, whose works have been preserved in more copies than any of the other medical writers in antiquity, tried to reconcile Hippocratic and Aristotelean views.22 He maintained the Hippocratic position that the woman, too, produces seed. In referring to Herophilus, who had identified the ovaries and described their general function drawing a positive analogy between them and the testes,23 Galen claimed that the female production of seed happened in the ovaries and was ejaculated into the womb preparing it for receiving the male sperm. The woman’s seed contributed to the formation of the embryo but being imperfect and less refined, it was not the exact equivalent of male sperm but weaker, scantier, and sickly so that it could not by itself generate another being.24 He thus endorsed the Aristotelian notion that the woman is less perfect than the man; she is colder and wetter and a deformed creature. Since nature does nothing in vain, Galen finally had to ask why nature made half the human race imperfect. His answer was that the existence of women served the purposes of reproduction; men simply cannot conceive on their own.

B. Post-natal Rituals: Viability and Paternal Potestas Birth happened when the embryo, as the active agent, began to require a different form of nourishment and made its way out, thereby causing the birth pangs the mother suffered.25 Birth took place in the home and was a 1988), 40 characterizes the gynaecological writings of Soranus as well as those of Rufus of Ephesus as “manuals on fertilisation written for husbands.” 21 Rouselle, Porneia, 32. 22 Rouselle, Porneia, 30 ironically comments that “the works of Soranus and even Galen shows the confusion caused by his (Aristotle’s) observations.” However, Rouselle’s own exposition depends heavily on Galen. 23 Helen King, Hippocrates’ Woman: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece (London: Routledge, 1998), 37–38 mentions that dissection and perhaps even vivisection was allowed in the Hellenistic era and Hellenistic anatomy demonstrated that the womb could not move around in the body and also showed the presence of the ovaries. The medical focus was moved from fluids and onto organs. 24 Rouselle, Porneia, 32. 25 Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 210–11.

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“women’s thing” – with a midwife in charge and several other women, relatives and neighbours, present. The father was not present, but it remains an open question whether male doctors attended even if this hardly was standard procedure.26 In relation to Roman practices, Beryl Rawson mentions that in situations where there might be legal dispute about the status of the child, the law stipulated who should be present to make sure that there could be no mistake and no attempt at cheating.27 A baby, who was born breathing and capable of survival, still had to have life conferred by the father or, in the Roman context, the pater familias. He may have been absent at the birth itself, but being born into life was an extended process where the paternal power reasserted itself. Only the father had the right to determine whether the newborn was to be counted as his and accepted into his family and household, the infrastructure of survival. He might choose not to accept a child if he suspected that the baby was not begotten by him; he might have another reason or no reason at all. If this happened the newborn baby was exposed. Exposure was not considered to be infanticide. It was a late abortion with the added advantage that the infant could first be viewed. However, the relative number of children who were exposed is much discussed, and Beryl Rawson claims that that according to Roman law, a child born in wedlock was considered legitimate and a husband had to initiate specific procedures to contest paternity.28 Most exposed children seem to have been clothed to help them survive, and there seem to have been particular places for foundlings. People expected that abandoned infants would be picked up and enslaved in various trades. Exposure thus served to supply various slave trades, including brothels, with labour, and one thinks that survival was most likely where and when the demand for slaves was high. This caused legal writers to be concerned about the status confusion of free-born children exposed by parents and reared as slaves or alumni, since exposure did not terminate patria potestas; it rendered it quiescent. Roman fathers could therefore reclaim 26

This is part of a broader discussion about medical writings and the experience (or lack of experience) on which they were built. Might a male doctor be assisting or in charge especially at difficult births in families that could afford it? Do the Hippocratic texts convey second-hand women’s experience and privileged knowledge on which the medical experts had to depend, or are the indications in the texts themselves that this might be the case only a part of an editorial strategy? Cf. King, Hippocrates’ Woman, 176–83. 27 Beryl Rawson, “Adult-Child Relationships in Roman Society,” in Marriage, Divorce, and Children in Ancient Rome (ed. Beryl Rawson; Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 7– 30, esp. 11–12. 28 Rawson, “Adult-Child Relationships,” 27 refers to the legal principle “pater est quem nuptiae demonstrant.”

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children at a later stage without compensation to those who had fostered them.29 As soon as the father had accepted an infant into the protection of the family and it had been given a name, it was considered to be a horrific act to kill or abandon it.30 The acceptance into the father’s house happened stepwise. In both Greece and Rome is it extremely difficult, probably impossible to determine with any certainty the distinctiveness of the different occasions as well as the precise procedures of each event.31 The confusion concerns when the rite took place, how and by whom it was performed, and how it related to the naming of the child. Since the brevity of this contribution does not allow me to walk through this maze, I will only mention that in ancient Greece there was a ceremony or rite called amphidromia whereby the infant was admitted to the domestic cult of the hearth. This happened shortly after birth when the newborn baby was carried in a run round the hearth of the house. Membership in the household or family preceded the individual identification by a specific name, which followed some time later on the seventh or tenth day. Apparently, the name giving was a formal and public event, but the actual role of the father at the ceremonies is not clear. However, if he did not himself take an active part such as performing the amphidromia it still depended on his consent and authority. The Romans practiced a similar stepwise ritual process that, even if it was different in many regards, seems to have served much of the same purposes. Apart from a prayer to the helping goddesses, there were strictly speaking no formal ritual practices at the delivery itself, whereas devices of magic protections against evil powers probably were abundant. The 29

See Rawson, “Adult-Child Relationships,” 17 and also “Children in the Roman Familia,” in The Family in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives (ed. Beryl Rawson; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 172. 30 Sarah Pomeroy, “Women’s Identity and the Family in the Classical Polis,” in Women in Antiquity: New Assessment (ed. Richard Hawley and Barbara Levick; London: Routledge, 1995), 111–21. 31 Robert Parker, MIASMA: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), 51 aptly comments that “the details of further rites that followed the birth are an unhappy tangle of conflicting and deficient lexicographical evidence.” Sarah Pomeroy follows suit in Families, 68 when she states that “contemporary sources doubtless considered the ceremony too banal to describe, and late lexicographers do not concur in their description.” In his own version of the Greek ritual, Parker depends, as do many others, on a highly influential article by Ludwig Deubner, “Die Gebräuche der Griechen nach der Geburt,” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 95 (1952): 374–77, who insists that the ceremony of the amphidromia should not be confused with the occasion of name-giving. This confusion is due to an ancient edition of Callimachos’s Iambus XII, which was Callimachos’ gift at the hebdoma (seventh day celebration) of his friend Leon’s infant daughter.

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midwife would receive the baby into her hands and lay it on the ground.32 Once the baby had been safely delivered, the midwife made a sign to indicate the sex of the child, and the birth was announced to the father and his pater familias. While the newborn was still attached to the mother the midwife would examine the child – accompanied by good or bad omens. If the midwife considered the newborn not fit to rear, it was deemed to be stillborn. If she affirmed viability, the father had still to lift the baby ceremonially from the ground as a sign of recognition (infantem tollere). Legal and literary sources refer to the tollere liberos as an act of the pater familias. Even if it came to have an extended meaning of “raising children,” the act of lifting or taking up seems to be at its root.33 If the father or his pater familias rejected the baby, it was not lifted but exposed and dead to the family. The pater familias had the ius vitae necisque, and the decision as to whether a child should be raised or exposed may have been its primary site of practice. A Roman citizen did not have a child, he took a child. A consequence of this was that the family name mattered more than blood relationship. Fre32

Her hands should be soft with short nails and a soft cloth over her hands should prevent the baby from slipping; cf. Rouselle, Porneia, 49 for this and what follows. 33 Susanne Dixon, The Roman Mother (London: Croom Helm, 1988; repr., London: Routledge, 1990), 238; and Rouselle, Porneia, 51. There are visual depictions that may indicate that a woman, perhaps the midwife, did the lifting, but this does not exclude that it happened at the father’s request and could not take place unless he allowed it. On some Roman pre-Constantinian biographical sarcophagi, the curriculum vitae begins with what may appear as a washing scene, often interpreted as the ritual washing (lustratio) some days after birth. Lazlo Berczely, “A Sepulchral Monument from the Via Portuense and the Origin of the Roman Biographical Cycle,” ACTA ad Archaeologiam et Artium Historiam Pertinentia 8 (1978): 49–75 has tried to show that they portray a ritual practice by which an infant is laid on the ground and then raised up, “the so-called birth from the earth.” The rite of birth from the earth as portrayed on the sarcophagi may also accommodate a reflection related to the deceased buried in the sarcophagus. “The deceased’s emergence from and his return to Mother earth became symbols of his birth and death. This aspect of the rite was highly suitable for determining the limits for the curriculum vitae of the deceased foreshadowing his death already in the first scene” (p. 63). Berczely interprets this as a Romanized version of the bath scenes in a Greek tradition of representations of birth, and he claims that the essence of the ritual act was to place the child on the bare soil in order to put it in contact with the maternal element. He therefore rejects the idea that the rite is connected with the legal acceptance of a child by the father. To him this represents a confusion of two different incidents: The birth from the earth that immediately succeeded the real birth and from which the father was absent, and the legal acceptance that followed with a lustratio on the ninth day for boys and on the eighth day for girls. In consequence, Berczely claims that the verbs tollere and suscipere, that is the technical terms for acceptance, never appear in conjunction with de terra in ancient literature, and this explains why the father is absent in the birth scenes of the sarcophagi. However, given the scattered information about the rituals in the ancient sources as well as the semantic connotation, especially of tollere, a sharp distinction between the two events, is not supportable.

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quent adoptions attest to this, and the Roman practice of adoption even of adults is therefore not surprising. It may well be right that the act of lifting/raising up the child in Rome did not necessarily indicated an avowal of paternity but, rather, represented willingness to rear and support the child, defining paternity less in biological and more in legal terms. If the father decided that the child be lifted and raised, mother and child were both bathed. The next ritual step was dies lustricus or nominalia, a festive ceremony of purification and name-giving that took place sometime during the first week after birth, most often on the eighth day. On this occasion the infant assumed the bulla, a protective pendant amulet.34 The name of a child was extremely significant as it conferred identity, and in legal terms the infant existed only when it had been given a name. In both Greece and Rome names indicated family membership and children were identified by an individual name and a patronymic.35 Also girls were given names from those in the patriline, often from a generation back. It is more difficult to identify women’s names, and Sarah Pomeroy indicates that “it is precisely the lack of explicit identity in her natal family that permits a bride to leave it and join another.”36 A daughter was a potential deserter; a bride remained a stranger. Within the limits of this article, I have chosen not to discuss prerabbinic Jewish practices beyond mentioning that Carol Exum discusses how circumcision, virility, and reproduction correlate in view of patriarchy’s fear of women’s reproductive power, its need to suppress it, and its equally strong desire to appropriate it. She understands circumcision as a ritual for separating the male child from the impurity of the mother. In referring to Howard Eilberg Schwartz, she claims that circumcision becomes “a rite that marks the passage from the impurity of being born by a woman to the purity of life in a community of men.” 37 Circumcision and sacrifice have overlapping functions in that they create and demonstrate patrilineal kinship ties.

34

Dixon, Roman Mother, 240; Rawson “Adult-Child Relationships,” 14. Pomeroy, Families, 72–73, who also discusses the use of the name of maternal ancestors. In the case of illegitimate children, Rawson, “Adult-Child Relationships,” 26–27 mentions that they took the mother’s nomen if she had one, and also her status, but since she could not exercise potestas, they were sui iuris, that is legally autonomous. The law discriminated surprisingly little against illegitimates who were Roman citizens. 36 Pomeroy, “Women’s Identity,” 119. 37 Fragmented Women: Feminist (Sub)versions of Biblical Narrative (JSOTSupp 163; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 127. 35

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C. Generation in the Gospel of John Terms referring to generation or procreative activity are relatively rare in the New Testament. Paul calls the believers in the congregations he has founded for his WHNQD, and twice he also applies the metaphor of generation/birth to his mission. In 1 Cor 4:15 he says that the Corinthian Christians have many guardians in Christ, but not many fathers, “indeed I fathered you (XPDaM HJHQQKVD) through the gospel.” In the more troubled letter to the Galatians he uses once in 4:19 the metaphor of being in labor with them. 38 However, when Paul expounds how it is possible to become children of God, he draws on ideas of adoption rather than generation and speaks of XLRTHVLD which was a juridical-technical term. Furthermore, the perfect state of sonship will only be reached in the eschaton (Rom 8:19). Interesting as these Pauline passages are, they are not comparable to the far more pervasive generational language in the Gospel of John, where the terminology does not represent exceptional instances of metaphorical usage but appears to be a feature profoundly embedded in the discourse itself. In the New Testament, the Johannine writings have by far the highest score with a total of sixteen occurrences of JHQQDZ. Six instances are found in the gospel (accumulated in 1:13 and 3:3–8) and ten in the First Letter of John (2:29; 3:6; 4:7; 5:1, 4 and 8). The Johannine literature is also alone in using the simple form of the verb JHQQDZ with God implicitly or explicitly as the agent. As already mentioned, Adele Reinhartz has interpreted the “father-son” language which is used to describe the relationship between what she calls “God and Jesus” in the Gospel of John, as being impregnated with the Aristotelian theory of epigenesis.39 She claims that traces of such elements also in Philo’s writings40 provide evidence that Hellenistic Jewish authors from approximately the same period as the Gospel of John applied the Aristotelean concepts and vocabulary to God as the creator of Wisdom, of Hebrews’ souls, of the virtues, and of happiness. Reinhartz further finds it conceivable that “the author of John was aware, at least in a general way, of Aristotelian views on conception and generation and of traditions in which divine creation was seen in analogous terms.”41 She identifies some terminological parallels between Aristotle’s account of epigenesis and the ways in which the Fourth Gospel describes Jesus’s origins, most of them 38

For this see Beverly Gaventa, “The Maternity of Paul: An Exegetical Study of Galatians 4:19,” in The Conversation Continues: Studies in Paul & John in Honor of J. Louis Martyn (ed. Robert T. Fortna and Beverly R. Gaventa; Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), 189–201. 39 For full reference, see above note 10. 40 Opif. 67; Mos. 1.279; Cher. 43–44; Det. 60. 41 “Word Was Begotten,” 91.

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clustered in the Prologue. Allusions to the text of Genesis thereby take on an ambiguity mediated perhaps through the wisdom theology also operative in the Prologue, rendering a fluctuating ambiguity also to the interplay between the verbs JLJQRPDL and JHQQDZ. As the one begotten by the divine VSHUPD, Jesus is the embodiment of the divine ORJRM and the divine SQHX PD. As such, the essence of the Father, and, perhaps in some fashion, the Father himself, dwells within him, and God is no longer perceived apart from his ORJ RM. In this case the ideal circumstance according to Aristotelean genetics is present indeed; the male principle has fathered a son who is identical to himself in all respects. The first mentions of God as Father in the Gospel of John are found in the Prologue in editorial discourse – which is unusual. In 1:14 the glory (GRFD) of the incarnated ORJRM is said to be “ZM PRQRJHQRX M SDUD? SDWURM.” The use of the comparative term ZM has encouraged a metaphorical reading,42 but ancient ideas of generation may provide a better access to understand how the connection between father and son as possessing the same glory is conceived. In 1:18: “No one has ever seen God; PRQRJHQK?M THR?M (which is lectio difficilior), R ZQ HLM WR?Q NROSRQ WRX SDWUR?M, has made him known.” The wording in this verse is unusual in that it combines God-language and Father-language. Contrary to what many interpreters assume, “God” and “Father” do not seem to be interchangeable terms in the Gospel of John.43 Again it is best explained in the perspective of generation, which in this case means that the son’s intimate likeness to his father includes divinity, of which GRFD is a feature. Jesus’s divine origin, his being from above, or his being sent is explained in terms of procreation and kinship. Jesus is the Son sent by the Father; he is the PRQRJHQRX M SDUD? SDWURM (1:14), PRQRJHQK?M THR?M R ZQ HLM WR?Q NROSRQ WRX  SDWURM (1:18), or later in 3:16 and 18 42

For Dorothy Lee, this is crucial since exclusively male imagery for God to her is idolatrous; see “The Symbol of Divine Fatherhood,” Semeia 85 (1999): 177–87. As also Adele Reinhartz aptly remarks, “Viewing the father-son language as metaphor grounded in ancient cultural constructions allows space both for reinterpretation of the cultural notion of fatherhood that is more compatible with more egalitarian ideals and for the inclusion of other motifs, such as God as mother, lover and friend” (“Word Was Begotten,” 85). 43 Gail O’Day, “Show,Us the Father, and We Will Be Satisfied (John 14:8),” Semeia 85 (1999): 12–14 and 16. She points to the fact that God as Father in John can only be interpreted in view of the relationship between the Son and the Father. God’s action as Father is focused on Jesus himself, and it is only Jesus who speaks of or to God as Father – even if there are some exceptions. This further means that the commonly accepted basis of the Christian usage of the address Father in the prayer language taught by the historical Jesus, does not sufficiently help explain that “Father” in John primarily belongs to the language of discourse and debate. It is the Father who sends the Son, and Jesus does not the will of God, but the will of the Father.

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PRQRJHQK?MXLRM. The possible connotations of PRQRJHQKM are hardly ever subject to discussion beyond a choice between “only begotten”44 and the less graphic “unique, un-exampled,” which increasingly has become the preferred translation. Most commentators tend to skate around sexual or genetic associations – keeping God clean and as far as possible dissociated from sexual indications.45 They appeal instead to a socio-cultural framework: The father is the head of the family – the ancestor who gives life and bequeaths inheritance unto his heirs – or the son is an apprentice to his father.46 In an essay some years ago I pursued the consequences of this monogenetic portrayal for the role and significance of the mother of Jesus in the Gospel of John.47 Her name is never mentioned; she is recognized only by the (traditional) epithet the Mother of Jesus. Her two appearances in the narrative represent an inclusio of Jesus’s earthly ministry and the kinship that was by the flesh. In John 19:25–27, as Jesus, exalted on the cross, transfers her motherhood to someone whose matter did not come from her blood and whom she never nurtured, and as he provides the beloved disciple with a mother of whose matter the disciple has none and by whose milk he was never nurtured, kinship is redefined and requalified. The episode makes use of kinship terms such as mother/son, but the act itself is not described in generational language;48 it rather features an adoption-like event.

44

Cf. Luke 7:12; 8:42, and Heb 11:17 where PRQRJHQKM seems to render or replace the DJ DSKWRM of Gen 22:12; cf. Wolfgang Schenk, Kommentiertes Lexikon zum vierten Evangelium: Seine Textkonstituenten in ihren Syntagmen und Wordfeldern (Lewiston: Mellen, 1993), 194. 45 Marianne Meye Thompson, “The Living Father,” Semeia 85 (1999): 19–31, esp. 26. Thompson tends to be vague and evasive with regard to the procreational language in John. 46 At the same time, however, the attribute PRQRJHQKM gives them reason to claim that since the privileged term Son is reserved for Jesus alone, believers do not attain sonship but may (only?) become God’s children (WHNQD) – whatever difference that may be made to entail but for the fact that differently from XLRMit is gender inclusive. Marianne Meye Thompson, The God in the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 58, 71–72, 78–80 explains the difference in terms of non-mediated and mediated life. I appreciate that this is a distinction in John, but I do have difficulties understanding why the term “Son” conveys this differently from the term WHNQD especially when generational ideas are avoided. The terminological difference is simply being reduced to a marker of any difference one might want to emphasize independently of their meaning. However, if one does apply an epigenetic perspective, it might yield results since the term WHNQD is gender inclusive and daughters could never completely be the image of the father. I would have liked have to pursue this further here, but it will take another article. 47 “Descent and Divine Paternity in the Gospel of John: Does the Mother Matter?” NTS 51 (2005): 361–75. 48 The water and blood issuing from Jesus’s pierced side in 19:34 will be discussed below.

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However, other passages where generational language is being used may indicate a framework within which also this scene gains further meaning. The term JHQQDZ occurs for the first time in the Prologue, in 1:13: RL HF DLPDWZQ RXGH? HN THOKPDWRM VDUNR?M RXGH? HN  THOKPDWRM DQGUR?M HJHQQKTKVDQ The preceding verse 12, which states that he (the Logos or the True Light) gave the right WHNQDTHRX JHQHVTDLto those who believe in him, does not involve generational ideas apart from the term WHNQD. It stays within a discourse well known from the Pauline literature which, like, John 19:26–27, draws on models of adoption rather than on generational physiology. However, in the following verse WHNQDTHRXJHQHVTDL is graphically explicated in physiological terms, and three elements necessary for the physiological process of human procreation are being listed: HF DLPDWZQ HN THOKPDWRM VDUNRM, and HN THOKPDWRM DQGURM. The constellation of terms is unusual; the precise meaning of each is not easy to determine, and it is not evident how they relate to one another. 49 However, they are all being negated as not being required in the divine process of generation, and a contradiction is implicitly established between divine and human conception and birth. The first element to be negated is blood, in a peculiar plural form HF DLPDWZQ, which may translate as “multiple blood.” As related earlier in this article, ancient physiology regarded the father’s and the mother’s blood, although differently, as being crucial to human generation. Generation occurred when the active male semen, a form of transformed or concocted blood, made contact with and imparted form and function to the female raw material, the woman’s menstrual blood. This may explain the odd plural form, which as Raymond Brown points out, would indicate rather bloodshed against a Hebrew background.50 The second element, HNTHOKPDWRMVDUNRM probably represents a shift from a physiological discourse to a moral discourse. Normally it is taken to refer to sexual desire even if the term used is THOKPD and not HSLTXPLD as might then have been expected. An element of human decision is involved, perhaps the mutual dependence between man and woman in conceiving a child. For human procreation both are necessary even if the contribution of each is significantly different and unequal. The third element, HN THOKPDWRM DQGURM, may seem to duplicate the second element or to represent only a minor variation, and it is omitted in the original version of Vaticanus. It represents, however, not a general 49

Dorothy Lee, Flesh and Glory: Symbolism, Gender, and Theology in the Gospel of John (New York: Herder and Herder/Crossroad, 2002), 143 sees this “somewhat ponderous phraseology” to be overlapping. 50 The Gospel According to John (2 vols.; AB 29–29A; Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1966–1970), 1:12.

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statement about the preconditions of human procreation like the previous element but more specifically the will of the male or the husband in generating offspring. Sjef van Tilborg suggested that in relation to the process of human procreation, the text of this verse runs “backwards chronologically.”51 The will of the man instigates sexual intercourse; he has the right and the duty to give form and substance to the “will of the flesh.” He determines the space and manner where the woman can play an active role; the mixing of the multiple bloods both from the mother and the father originates from this. Tilborg’s attempt at tracing the specific terminology of John 1:13a in contemporary sources is impressive, but the minutiae of his interpretation tend to overcharge the wording of 1:13. The verse simply seems to present a comprehensive list of factors involved in the process of human procreation, which by necessity includes both male and female elements. The ancients may have dreamed about male self-sufficiency in procreation, but in actual reality men continued to need women in order to conceive. Does the negation in John 1:13 entail that divine generation is different – a self-sufficient creative act by the divine Father who is able to generate monogenetically? The known textual evidence to John 1:13 in Greek unanimously supports a version with the verb and the relative pronoun at the beginning both in plural referring back to those mentioned in verse 12 who have been given the right to become children of God. However, there is some evidence of a textual tradition that had the verb in verse 13 as singular, thus referring back not to the grammatical object of verse 12 (children of God) but to the grammatical subject (Logos/Jesus). The singular version seems to be attested by some of the early fathers, most certainly in the West by Tertullian and Ireneaus. Tertullian uses it to refute as false the interpretations of the Valentinians who gladly assumed the plural form, and the role of 1:13 in such controversies has made it all the more difficult to discern which version may be primary. 52 51

Imaginative Love in John (Leiden: Brill 1993), 41–47. Tilborg refers to John 1:29; 3:13; 8:28; 21:18 as other examples of the same literary form. According to Leander E. Keck, “Derivation as Destiny: ‘Off-ness’ in Johannine Christology, Anthropology, and Soteriology,” in Exploring the Gospel of John: In Honor of D. Moody Smith (ed. R. Alan Culpepper and C. C. Black; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996), 285 n. 5. 52 This corresponds to the citations from Heracleon’s commentary on John, known from Origen; cf. Michael Mees, Die frühe Rezeptionsgeschichte des Johannesevangeliums. Am Beispiel von Textüberlieferung und Väterexegese (FB 72; Würzburg: Echter, 1994), 203. Mees himself still concludes by maintaining the plural, not denying the fact that the plural version easily lends itself to a Gnostic reading and the notion of fixed origins. It is therefore hardly surprising that Jeffrey Trumbower, Born from Above: The Anthropology of the Gospel of John (HUTh 29; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992), 68–69 prefers the plural reading and sees verse 12c–13 as an intrusion by “the principal evangelist.” The singular is, according to Trumbower, a later Christological change, whose pur-

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Positively, the fathers take the singular to attest the virgin birth: Jesus was begotten without the involvement of a human father. However, in defence of an original singular, Michael Theobald has explained the introduction of the plural as being due to problems the singular might cause precisely in respect of the virgin birth. The procreative factors which are listed in John 1:13 as not being required in this particular divine process of generation, that is blood, will of the flesh, and will of man, exclude not just a human father but any human participation or contribution – since the plural HFDLPDWZQ most likely includes also the blood of the mother. Furthermore, Theobald strongly suggests that the term PRQRJHQK?M XLRM may be taken to imply that the Son is not so much “only-begotten” as “begotten by one only.” The plural form was introduced fairly soon when the christological reading became untenable as it was exposed to docetic views. It was also seen to be in conflict with the gospel narrative, which repeatedly assumes that Jesus had a well-known biological family.53 Whichever version is original, it remains intriguing that a statement like the one in John 1:13 could be both christological and ecclesiological, mapping the one on the other; what is true of Jesus is also true of the believers: they are born/begotten of God alone.54 He who himself was born/begotten, not of blood(s) or of the will of flesh or of the will of man, but of God, is the one who empowers those who believe in him to become children of God. How might this happen? This question is addressed in Jesus’s exchange with Nicodemus in John 3. The conversation is initiated by Nicodemus who begins by a reference to the origin of Jesus: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these things unless God is with him.” Jesus’s retort in 3:3, HD?Q PK WLM JHQQKTK_  DQZTHQ RX GXQDWDL LGHL Q WK?Q ED VLOHLDQ WRX  THRX is rarely associated with the content of Nicodemus’s statement, but in fact it twists the understanding of origin implied in Nicodemus’s words.55 The evangelist has Nicodemus respond to Jesus by the pose is to connect the verse with Jesus’s virgin birth or “to take away a major weapon in the Valentinian arsenal.” 53 Fleischwerdung des Logos. Studien zum Corpus des Evangeliums und zu 1 Joh. (NTAbh NF 30; Münster: Aschendorff, 1988), 250–54. Wolfgang Schenk, Kommentiertes Lexikon, 194 appears to support this connotation seeing as its background “das alte Gottesepitheton aus sich selbst/allein existierend,” which is found in Plato (Tim. 31b, 91c) and also in the orphic hymns used of Demeter, Persephone, Artemis, and Athena, as well as by Catullus of divine siblings by one common parent. Monogenes is “Einziger seiner Art” but “einzigartig” in its modern usage is not an equivalent term. 54 Craig Koester sees this as a consistent symbolic strategy in the Gospel of John (Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel: Meaning, Mystery, Community [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995]). 55 Michael Theobald, Herrenworte im Johannesevangelium (Freiburg: Herder, 2002) indicates that the evangelist here may have changed a baptismal formula/saying which

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ridiculous proposition that a grown man cannot possibly return to his mother’s womb in order to be born again. Nicodemus has heard Jesus speak of rebirth, taking DQZTHQ to mean “again” and JHQQKTK_  to refer to birth from the mother’s NRLOLD. The impossibility of the proposition is already clear from the fact that the Greek presupposes a negative answer. In his second response to Nicodemus, Jesus advances his argumentation by a more lengthy and apparently explanatory statement in verses 5–8. The ambiguous term DQZTHQ, ridiculed by Nicodemus, is clarified by the juxtaposition HF XGDWRM NDL? SQHXPDWRM. It is clear that Nicodemus’s presumption that DQZTHQ is temporal is corrected and the idea of a second birth or rebirth seems also to be rejected as part of Nicodemus’s misunderstanding. The language is reminiscent of 1:13 and refers to the same generation that is from God, here expressed as “from above” – in keeping with how DQZTHQ is used in John 3:31 and 19:11. A passage by Philo of Alexandria has been mentioned as a possible sounding board for this part of John 3.56 Philo answers the question as to why Moses was called above on the seventh day: But the calling above of the prophet is a second birth (GHXWHUD JHQHVLM) better than the first. For the latter is mixed with a body and has corruptible parents, while the former is an unmixed and simple soul of the sovereign, being changed from a productive to an unproductive form, which has no mother but only a father, who is (the father) of all. Wherefore the calling above or, as we have said, the divine birth ( JHQHVLM) happened to come about for him in the ever-virginal nature of the hebdomad. For he is called on the seventh day, in this respect differing from the earth-born first moulded man, for the latter came into being from the earth and with body, while the former came from the ether and without a body. (QE 2.46). traditionally spoke of anagennethai (as in Justin’s quote), namely re-birth, to the present text, thereby moving towards a spatial understanding more fit for this Gospel’s dualistic cosmology. Cf. also E. Sjøberg, “Wiedergeburt und Neuschöpfung im palästinensischen Judentum,” STh 4 (1950): 44–85, esp. 44–49, who has shown that Jewish texts may compare a recent proselyte to an infant or even a newborn baby (b Jeb 22a) receiving a new name and a new identity so that previous kinship relations all are abolished. However, neither the rite of conversion nor circumcision, the first act of obedience, are understood as birth or interpreted in other generational terms. Dietrich Rusam, Die Gemeinschaft der Kinder Gottes: Das Motiv der Gotteskindschaft und die Gemeinden der johanneischen Briefe (BWANT 133; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1993), 65, states emphatically: “‘Wiedergeburt’ und ‘Gotteskindschaft’ muss man auseinanderhalten. Beide gehören nicht zwangsläufig zusammen.” 56 See Peder Borgen, “The Gospel of John and Hellenism. Some Observations,” in Exploring the Gospel of John: In Honor of D. Moody Smith (ed. R. Alan Culpepper and C. C. Black; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996), 98–112, esp. 104–6. Borgen, however, consistently renders JHQHVLM as birth. The text is extant only in Armenian, with fragments known in Greek and Old Latin. Parts of this particular passage are known in all three languages but far from all of it. This leaves some questions open since the precise terminology is important for the comparison.

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Moses’s ascent on Sinai is here interpreted as a second JHQHVLM by the unmixed and simple soul of the Sovereign, that which is by the father (of all) alone – and explicitly without a mother. Whereas the DQZTHQ in John 3:3 is explained or replaced by other terms in verse 5, JHQQKTK is simply reiterated. Nicodemus seems to have taken it to refer to birth – a meaning retained by most modern translations and also most commentators. But is the meaning of JHQQKTK_ unambiguous and not open to misunderstanding? Leander Keck insists that JHQQKTK_ does not refer to the birthing process and should be translated by “begotten” because it refers to the procreative, engendering function of the father that represents the origin of life.57 In common Greek usage, JHQQDZ in fact usually denotes the male role in procreation, but it may also apply to both parents or to the mother alone. Whenever it is used without the agent being mentioned – which in the Gospel of John is most often the case – a decision with regard to its exact reference therefore will have to be made from context. Is it, however, at all possible to clarify its precise meaning in John 3 and other Johannine passages, where games are played with ambiguities and misunderstandings? Should it be left open so that the ambiguity may resonate? Jesus’s second response further introduces a binary opposition between VDUF and SQHX PD entailing that “what is born of flesh is flesh; what is born of spirit, is spirit” – apparently explaining JHQQKTK_DQZTHQ simply as JHQQKTK_ HNWRX SQHXPDWRM. This is repeated in the concluding statement in verse 8: “So is it with everyone who is born of the spirit.” Judith Lieu maintains that Johannine irony should not be seen as a form of dualism. Earthly experience is a sign that points to and enfleshes divine truth without encompassing it. In the case of John 3, this means that birth again/from above is not “alien to and contrasted to the mundane birth from a mother. On the contrary, the latter is a sign and carrier of the former.”58 However, the contrast VDUF versus SQHX PD does not correspond to the hendiadys HFXGDWRMNDL? SQHXPDWRM in 3:5, where the simple use of the preposition means that it governs both XGZU and SQHX PD which do not constitute a contrast but rather a close-knit pair. Since XGZU is left out in Jesus’s further explications in John 3, the emphasis nevertheless seems to be on the spirit. Some commentators have, however, noted occurrences where “water” is used of fluids involved in procreation and refers to sperm. Already in 1929 Hugo Odeberg drew attention to some Jewish texts where the Hebrew term 57 “Derivation as Destiny,” 275–76. Also Raymond Brown in his influential commentary claims that JHQQDZ here as also elsewhere has the male connotation of begetting rather than the female of giving birth (John, 1:29). 58 “The Mother of the Son in the Fourth Gospel,” JBL 117 (1998): 61–77, esp. 76.

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BJS, which he took to mean “water,” was used about sperm (Nid. 16b; ҴAbot 3.1). He therefore proposed that in John 3:5 XGZU might refer to male semen as a metonym for VDUF in 3:6 and in opposition to SQHX PD both in 3:5 and 3:6.59 Scrutinizing the evidence further, Sjef van Tilborg found that BJS does not mean water but a drop of whatever fluid it may be, and also that the rabbis were well aware that semen was not water. However, “the combination ‘water and spirit’ appears in (classical) physiology precisely as indicating the male sperm.”60 This would imply that water in conjunction with spirit as in John 3:5 signifies male sperm. At the same time, SQHX PD in the Gospel of John is a divine principle which in John 6:63 is said to be the WR? ]Z_RSRLRX Q. In the particular discourse of John 3, DQZTHQ JHQQKTK _ then would refer to origin from above, divine origin, and JHQQKTK_ HFXGDWRMNDL? SQHXPDWRM should be taken to mean “begotten by the divine sperm.” This is in fact the very term used in 1 John 3:9. 3D MR JHJHQQKPHQRMHN WRX THRX DPDUWLDQRX SRLHL RWLVSHUPD DXWRX HQDXWZa_ PHQHL (“Those who have been begotten by God do not sin, because the sperm of God abides in them”). However, another trail may be followed leading in the direction of water signifying the amniotic fluid on which the child flows out of the mother’s womb. In another nebulous passage, John 7:37–39, water and spirit are again brought together in an alleged scriptural reference which says that “out of his NRLOLD rivers of living water shall flow forth.” Depending on the punctuation, the person of whose NRLOLD rivers will flow may be Jesus himself or the believer – if not ambiguously both of them, as in an original textual rendering without punctuation. The term NRLOLD is in the context of 7:37–39 strange and suggestive.61 One is reminded of Nicodemus’s naïve misunderstanding in 3:4 when he states the impossible scenario for an old (hu)man to return to his mother’s NRLOLD for a second birth. Although NRLOLD is not a common word for womb in classical Greek, it is used in 59 The Fourth Gospel Interpreted in Its Relation to Contemporaneous Religious Currents in Palestine and the Hellenistic-Oriental World (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells, 1929), 48–69. According to Tilborg, Imaginative Love, 49, Odeberg was followed by Barrett in the commentary edition of 1967, but in his Essays on John of 1982 Barrett had changed his mind. 60 Imaginative Love, 49–52. A major source is Aristotle (Gen. An. II 735a–b), who explicitly states that “semen is a compound of spirit and water.” Further evidence covers the period from 4th century B.C.E. to 2nd century C. E., including Philo of Alexandria (Opif. 67) and Clement of Alexandria (Paed. I.6.49.1), and Tilborg convincingly concludes that despite differences in theoretical background and suppositions the common element is that pneuma is seen as the most important principle in male sperm. However, for Aristotle pneuma is the principle of movement; for the Stoics, it participates in the heavenly fire; Philo sees it as a participation in the divine breath; and the pneumatic medical school considers it the active principle which transforms and gives form. 61 Cf. the various attempts at translating it “nicely” with heart, inner being etc.

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this sense in the LXX (Gen 25:24; Deut 28:4; 11:1; Ruth 1:11) and elsewhere in the New Testament (Matt 19:12; Luke 11:27; Gal 1:15). Most frequent, as also in John 3:4, is the fuller expression “the mother’s womb.” The choice of words in 7:37–39 might thus be a spill over from 3:4, as well as preparing for or even predicting the water and blood coming forth from Jesus’s dead body through his pierced SOHXUD in 19:34. The lack of verbal correlation between 7:38 and 19:34 represents a difficulty but may depend on a different set of scriptural associations.62 Thus a middle ground might be that the term “water” is semantically fluid and open. By not being specific in either direction, there is an interweaving of male and female procreative allusions and a significant lack of precision in the terminological usage. The same applies also to the ambiguity of the verb JHQQKTK_ in John 3:3, 5–8. This is not necessarily a matter of gender balance, but rather of a divine Father subsuming in himself every procreative element and replacing a generation HF DLPDWZQ RXGH? HN THOKPDWRM VDUNR?M RXGH? HN THOKPDWRMDQGURM with one that is of spirit (and water). Throughout the first phase of Jesus dialogue with Nicodemus in John 3, the language stays generic or neutral, and hence endlessly applicable by the use of third person singular WLM until it is applied in verse 7c, to “you,” not in singular but in plural. Neither does Jesus address Nicodemus directly in the second person, nor does Nicodemus specifically apply it to himself. The statements become general, and from verse 12 Jesus enters into a monologue speaking of himself. Thus Jesus’s initial statement could equally well refer to himself as the one who has been DQZTHQJHQQKTK_ . Indeed, 62

Mary L. Coloe, God Dwells with Us: Temple Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2001), 208–9 makes much of this lack of verbal associations. Due to her fastidious ecclesiological reading of 7:37–39, she needs to see these passages as independent units. Deborah Sawyer, “John 19.34: From Crucifixion to Birth, Or Creation?” in A Feminist Companion to John (2 vols.; ed. Amy-Jill Levine; Sheffield Academic Press 2003), 2:130–39 discusses whether this verse does not refer to birth but to creation. This move is determined by her reading of the history of interpretation where the scene “has been understood as representing the moment of the birth of the church, reflecting in its imagery the ‘birth’ of Eve from Adam’s side. Thus the subjection of the church to Christ mirrors the subjection of female to male” (130). Accordingly, John does not create a counter–tradition in presenting a female Christ figure on the cross, rather Christ assumes female functions while remaining a man – as “does the male priesthood every time the Eucharist is celebrated.” Accordingly, “an experience unique to women was symbolically appropriated by a male priesthood through their sacramental actions” (134). Sawyer’s strategy is to doubt that the traditional identification of this icon of Christ from John’s Gospel with the act of birth is convincing. She turns to Paul in 1 Corinthians 11, who does not understand Adam to have “given birth” to Eve but rather claims that both were created by God. Since John and Paul both were “Diaspora Jews with many common interests and beliefs” she finds it not surprising that John also understood “the advent of Eve in terms of creation rather than birth.” Sawyer thus rescues John by way of Paul – claiming a proximity between the two that is far from persuasive.

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Jesus himself is the only one we know of at this stage in the gospel narrative who is DQZTHQJHQQKTK_ .63 John Ashton maintains that verses 31–36 represents the final addition in the composition of John 3. 64 It is made to connect with the previous part(s) as the phrase R DQZTHQ HU[RPHQRM, which in verse 31 is a christological designation, is made to interpret the earlier saying in 3:3 HD ?Q PK? WLM JHQQKTK_  DQZTHQ. From this, Ashton draws the conclusion that two themes, which in the previous tradition were originally distinct, namely new birth and the heavenly man, have been welded together. Thereby Jesus’s dialogue with Nicodemus became primarily concerned with Jesus’s own heavenly origin. Jesus responds by referring to his descending and ascending: He is himself JHQQKTK_ DQ ZTHQas well as the agent by whom it may apply to others. In Jesus’s conversation with the Samaritan woman in John 4, he points to himself as the source of the living water (4:10) and adds that in those who drink of this water, it will become a spring gushing up to eternal life (4:14). Thus in his uniqueness Jesus imparts something they would otherwise not be able to find and which transforms them in his image. Furthermore, in 7:39 it is made explicit that the living water refers to the spirit, which the believers are yet to receive. This happens in John 20:22 when the glorified Jesus breathes on the disciples so they may receive the spirit and become WHNQDWRX THRX,65 having been given the power to name God their Father. Sharing in the Father’s life-giving capacity, the Son, sent by the Father, fulfils his mission by generating and empowering further children of God through the spirit-sperm which shapes and forms them. The possibility that this was reenacted among the Johannine Christians through a (water) rite whereby the divine spirit-sperm was regarded as being impregnated/inseminated in the believers should not be dismissed.

D. Concluding Observations It is frequently assumed that when language of procreation and birth is applied to God, it helps transcend and even contradict any patriarchal limita63 The ambivalence concerning Jesus’s heavenly origin and his life in the flesh as son of Joseph of Nazareth is discussed in Seim, “Descent and Divine Paternity.” 64 Understanding the Fourth Gospel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 531–41. Ashton’s interpretation is marked by his overall source critical approach assuming a gradual process of composition by the same author adopting diverse traditional material. 65 Here, differently from in 19:24, the allusion to God’s creative activity in Genesis 2 is obvious. As in the Johannine Prologue, creational and procreational perspectives seem to converge.

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tion of God to maleness and fatherhood by introducing also maternal features. However, the discourse of birth and generation in the New Testament, in particular the Gospel of John where this discourse is of vital importance, cannot be interpreted without carefully considering the theories about human reproduction, the symbolic worlds of meaning, and the postnatal rituals that at the time provided the sounding board for such terms and notions. In antiquity giving birth was not necessarily giving life – not primarily because birth might almost as easily lead to death as to life, but because life was assured and ultimately provided by the father. Women evidently gave birth and nurtured the child, but the father was ideally, scientifically, and ritually cast as the formative provider and the giver of life. This essay has explored how the string and configuration of generational terms in the Gospel of John, which has had an immense impact on Christian theology, is deeply embedded in this antique discourse. The Son, who is monogenetically begotten by the Father, is one with the Father in his will and mission, and has by his Father been given the quality of having life in himself. Sharing in his Father’s life-giving capacity, the Son, sent by the Father, fulfils his mission by generating and empowering further children of God through the divine spirit-sperm which shapes and forms them. This may refer to a ritual of initiation whereby those who believe in him are begotten by God to become his children – and call him their Father.

Works Cited Arthur, Marilyn B. “The Dream of a World without Women: Poetics and the Circles of Order in the Theogony Prooemium.” Arethusa 16 (1983): 97–110. Ashton, John. Understanding the Fourth Gospel. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993. Berczely, Laszlo, “A Sepulchral Monument from the Via Portuense and the Origin of the Roman Biographical Cycle.” ACTA ad Archaeologiam et Artium Historiam Pertinentia 8 (1978): 49–75. Blundell, Sue. Women in Ancient Greece. British Museum Press, 1995. Borgen, Peder. “The Gospel of John and Hellenism: Some Observations.” Pages 98–112 in Exploring the Gospel of John. In Honor of D. Moody Smith. Edited by R. Alan Culpepper and C. Clifton Black. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996. Brown, Raymond. The Gospel According to John. 2 vols. Anchor Bible 29–29A. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966–1970. Coloe, Mary L. God Dwells with Us: Temple Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel. Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2001. Dean-Jones, Lesley Ann. Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994. Deubner, Ludwig. “Die Gebräuche der Griechen nach der Geburt.” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 95 (1952): 374–377.

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Dixon, Susanne. The Roman Mother. London: Croom Helm, 1988; repr., London: Routledge, 1990. Exum, Carol. Fragmented Women. Feminist (Sub)versions of Biblical Narrative. JSOT Supplemental Series 163 Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993. Garland, Robert. The Greek Way of Life from Conception to Old Age. London: Duckworth, 1990. Gaventa, Beverly. “The Maternity of Paul: An Exegetical Study of Galatians 4:19.” Pages 189–201 in The Conversation Continues. Studies in Paul & John in Honor of J. Louis Martyn. Edited by Robert T Fortna and Beverly R Gaventa. Nashville: Abingdon, 1990. Kampen, Natalie B. “Material Girl: Feminist Confrontations with Roman Art.” Arethusa 27 (1994): 111–137. Keck, Leander E. “Derivation as Destiny: ‘Off-ness’ in Johannine Christology, Anthropology, and Soteriology.” Pages 274–288 in Exploring the Gospel of John. In Honor of D. Moody Smith. Edited by R. Alan Culpepper and C. Clifton Black. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996. King, Helen. Hippocrates’ Woman: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece. London: Routledge 1998. Koester, Craig. Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel: Meaning, Mystery, Community. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995. Lee, Dorothy. Flesh and Glory: Symbolism, Gender and Theology in the Gospel of John. New York: Herder and Herder/Crossroad, 2002. –. “The Symbol of Divine Fatherhood.” Semeia 85 (1999): 177–187. Lefkowitz, Mary R. Women in Greek Myth. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1986. Lieu, Judith. “The Mother of the Son in the Fourth Gospel.” JBL 117 (1998): 61–77. Lloyd, G. E. R. Science, Folklore and Ideology: Studies in the Life Sciences in Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Loureaux, Nicole. Children of Athena. Athenian Ideas about Citizenship and the Division between the Sexes. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Mees, Michael. Die frühe Rezeptionsgeschichte des Johannesevangeliums. Am Beispiel von Textüberlieferung und Väterexegese. Forschung zur Bibel 72. Würzburg: Echter 1994. O’Day, Gail. “Show,Us the Father, and We Will Be Satisfied” (John 14:8).” Semeia 85 (1999): 11–17. Odeberg, Hugo. The Fourth Gospel Interpreted in Its Relation to Contemporaneous Religious Currents in Palestine and the Hellenistic-Oriental World. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells, 1929. Parker, Robert. MIASMA: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion. Oxford: Clarendon, 1983. Pomeroy, Sarah. “Women’s Identity and the Family in the Classical Polis.” Pages 111– 121 in Women in Antiquity: New Assessments. Edited by Richard Hawley and Barbara Levick. London/New York: Routledge, 1995. –. Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece. Representations and Realities. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998. Rawson, Beryl. “Children in the Roman Familia.” Pages 170–200 in The Family in Ancient Rome. New Perspectives. Edited by Beryl Rawson. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986. –. “Adult-Child Relationships in Roman Society.” Pages 7–30 in Marriage, Divorce, and Children in Ancient Rome. Edited by Beryl Rawson. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.

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Reinhartz, Adele. “‘And the Word Was Begotten’: Divine Epigenesis in the Gospel of John.” Semeia 85 (1999): 83–103. Rouselle, Aline. Porneia: On Desire and the Body in Antiquity. Oxford: Blackwell 1988. Rusam, Dietrich. Die Gemeinschaft der Kinder Gottes. Das Motiv der Gotteskindschaft und die Gemeinden der johanneischen Briefe. BWANT 133. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1993. Sawyer, Deborah. “John 19.34: From Crucifixion to Birth, Or Creation?” Pages 130–139 in A Feminist Companion to John. Vol 2. Edited by Amy-Jill Levine. Sheffield Academic Press, 2003. Schenk, Wolfgang. Kommentiertes Lexikon zum vierten Evangelium. Seine Textkonstituenten in ihren Syntagmen und Wordfeldern. Lewiston: Mellen, 1993. Sissa, Giulia. Greek Virginity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990. Sjøberg, E. “Wiedergeburt und Neuschöpfung im palästinensischen Judentum.” STh 4 (1950): 44–85. Songe-Møller, Vigdis. Philosophy without Women: The Birth of Sexism in Western Thought. London: Continuum, 2002. Theobald, Michael. Fleischwerdung des Logos: Studien zum Corpus des Evangeliums und zu 1 Joh. Neutestamentliche Abhandlungen NF 30. Münster: Aschendorff, 1988. –. Herrenworte im Johannesevangelium. Freiburg: Herder, 2002. Thompson, Marianne Meye. “The Living Father.” Semeia 85 (1999): 19–31. –. The God in the Gospel of John. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001. Trumbower, Jeffrey. Born from Above: The Anthropology of the Gospel of John. Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie 29. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992. van Tilborg, Sjef. Imaginative Love in John. Leiden: Brill, 1993.

Embryology, Plant Biology, and Divine Generation in the Fourth Gospel1 CLARE K. ROTHSCHILD

How many Flowers fail in Wood – Or perish from the Hill Without the privilege to know That they are Beautiful – How many cast a nameless Pod Upon the nearest Breeze – Unconscious of the Scarlet Freight – It bear to other eyes – Emily Dickinson, 1863

A. Introduction I would like to begin by thanking the Committee for the invitation to take part in this symposium. I am very grateful to be included in the wider circle of Adela Yarbro Collins’s legacy. Her impact on the field of NT Studies is profound. I tell my students that whereas they can read my work to find out what might have happened, they can count on Collins’s interpretations to preserve what actually happened.

B. History of Research Recently the thesis that generation theories in ancient so-called “medical” texts inform the Fourth Gospel has attracted the support of a few important scholars. Both Adele Reinhartz and Turid Karlsen Seim propose that “epi-

1 I wish to express gratitude to Benjamin T. Lynerd who, on reading an initial draft of this essay, encouraged me to go beyond epigenesis, pursuing other possible explanations. I also wish to thank Robert Matthew Calhoun, Arthur Droge, Jörg Frey, James A. Kelhoffer, Richard I. Pervo and Ruben Zimmermann who read drafts of the essay, offering very helpful critiques.

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genesis” lies behind Jesus’s descent in the Fourth Gospel.2 Reinhartz argues that the “Aristotelian theory of epigenesis”3 constitutes the background of father-son and other constructs in the Gospel of John.4 Seim has two articles treating this topic. In the first essay, she argues that Jesus and his disciples constitute a familia dei for which mothers are superfluous.5 The second essay, a seminar paper, the revised form of which appears in this volume, defends that in antiquity paternity – being impossible to prove – had to be constructed.6 Seim claims that “medical texts” and specifically 2

Theory of epigenesis presumes that “each embryo or organism is gradually produced from an undifferentiated mass by a series of steps and stages during which new parts are added” (Lois Magner, A History of the Life Sciences [New York: Marcel Dekker, 2002], 154). This theory is contrasted with preformationism which assumes that the mature organism is fully formed in the sperm or egg maturing only in size prior to birth. Thanks to the influence of Aristotle on Augustine and Aquinas, the Roman Catholic Church was “epigenetic” until 1859 (February 2) when Pope Pius IX (“Ubi Primum” encyclical) decreed that life begins at “conception.” Quickening was thought to occur around 40 days, and to be the point at which a mixture of material and fluids acquired a \X[K Both Reinhartz and Seim understand epigenesis as the dominant explanation for generation in the period during which the Gospel of John was written. Neither considers, however, that if epigenesis had common currency when the evangelist wrote, then Jesus’s birth – whether biological or divine (see discussion below) – becomes typical, a view the author could not have wished to promote. Adele Reinhartz, “‘And the Word Was Begotten’: Divine Epigenesis in the Gospel of John,” Semeia 85 (1999): 83–103; T. K. Seim, “Descent and Divine Paternity in the Gospel of John: Does the Mother Matter?” NTS 51 (2005): 361–75; eadem, “Motherhood and the Making of Fathers in Antiquity: Contextualizing Genetics in the Gospel of John,” in the present volume. 3 Epigenesis does not occur in any of Aristotle’s writings. It is not a Greek word. It first occurs in seventeenth-century writings in English to refer to theories, such as that of Aristotle and others both before and after him, emphasizing evolution as opposed to simply growth in embryonic development. More is said about these theories below. 4 For dismissal of Reinhartz’s claim (pp. 92 –93) that John’s use of DU [KORJ RM and forms of JLQRPDL in the prologue reflect Aristotelian embryology, see Yii-Jan Singh, “Semen, Philosophy, and Paul,” Journal of Philosophy and Scripture (2007): 32–45, here: 40. 5 T. K. Seim, “Descent and Divine Paternity.” 6 On this point, Seim writes eloquently: “The fragility and vulnerability of fatherhood in the patrilinear culture of the ancient Greco-Roman society made it all the more necessary to secure paternity discursively and ritually. Paternity was therefore not as much discovered as it was created or symbolically constructed” (“Motherhood and the Making of Fathers in Antiquity: Contextualizing Genetics in the Gospel of John,” 100). According to Seim, in ancient constructions of paternity two correlated trends are possible: (1) under-communication of a mother’s role; and/or (2) reinforcement of a father’s role. The latter, according to Seim, is typically accomplished in one of three ways, either by (1) cosmological myths of origin, (2) medical discourses, or (3) post-natal rites. She provides examples of each in turn. (1) Cosmological myths of origin, according to Seim, take two forms: (a) motherhood is denied or considered irrelevant; and/or (b) fathers give birth as an act that completes their maleness and omnipotence. (2) On Seim’s reading, medical

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epigenesis aid the author of the Fourth Gospel in his construction/identification of God’s paternity of Jesus.7 Favoring an “engendered”8 (so Adele Reinhartz) over a “socio-cultural” (so Thompson, Dodd) interpretation of the designation, Seim understands PRQRJHQKM in John 1:14, 18 (cf. John 3:16, 18; 1 John 3:16; Heb 11:17 [Abraham])9 as indicating birth in the absence of a mother.10 Her understanding of epigenesis supports this claim: “[According to Aristotle:] Only males are able to generate seed and discourses offer five variations on ancient theories of generation: (a) preformationism wherein a “male sperm contained a ready-made miniature that was implanted in the womb where it grew until it was born” [101]; (b) pangenesis for which both male and female parent produce seed required for child-bearing; (c) the Hippocratic writings which endorse pangenesis, although decreasing a woman’s value and emphasizing that sex cures the female body; (d) epigenesis (word is not attested in Greek), Aristotle’s theory (against pangenesis and preformationism) that only males generate seed providing the active principle of movement and life, whereas females offer passive matter; and (e) Galen’s attempt to reconcile the Hippocratic and Aristotelian theses by arguing that women too produce a seed (in the ovaries but ejaculated into the womb to receive male sperm) but one viewed as imperfect and less refined, that is, not the precise equivalent of male sperm. (3) Finally, post-natal rites involve: (a) a father’s conferral of “life” on a healthy newborn and (b) a multi-step procedure, whether in ancient Greece or Rome. 7 The three possible backgrounds: myth, medicine, and post-natal rites are not mutually exclusive. That medical texts are in the background does not preclude that myth might be also. Also, here Seim references an earlier article in which she argues, also on the basis of Reinhartz’s thesis, that Aristotelian epigenetics as applied to the Fourth Gospel implies no role in “birth” for Jesus’s mother. On a different but related topic see T. K. Seim, “Roles of Women in the Gospel of John,” in Aspects on the Johannine Literature (ed. L. Hartman, B. Olsson; ConBNT 18; Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1987), 56–73. 8 A connotation of “gender” of the English verb “to engender” is not noted in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary and seems, therefore, distinctive here. 9 In an interesting footnote, Seim points out that in Heb 11:17 monogenes replaces agapetos of Gen 22:12. This may imply that the individual is destined to die. 10 Here Reinhartz and Seim differ. Reinhartz is clear that Aristotle has a place for the female seed in epigenesis: “What, then, of Jesus’s mother? The theory of epigenesis requires not only male seed, which determines the form and characteristics of the offspring, but also female seed, as the material form which the offspring is to be formed” (93). That said, she goes on to argue that “relative absence of Jesus’s mother from the body of the Johannine narrative contrast starkly with the ever-presence of the father” (94). About this contrast she concludes: “This aspect of the Gospel serves to focus attention squarely on the importance of the father both in Jesus’s formation and also in Jesus’s ongoing mission in the world” (94). To augment her claim about John 3, Seim brings forward the variant reading of John 1:13 in which Jesus (as opposed to his followers) is “born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God” (RL RX N HF DLPD WZQ RX GH? HN THOK PDWRM VDUNRBM RX GH? HN THOK PDWRM D QGURBM D OO  HN  THRXa HJHQQK TKVDQ). About the variant Seim argues that Jesus is not so much “born of God” but “begotten by one,” that is, Jesus is begotten (verb for paternal “birth”) by a father alone and not by a mother (“Motherhood and the Making of Fathers in Antiquity,” 115). Additional discussion of this variant is offered below.

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this paternal seed provides the active principle of movement and life, whereas the mother’s role is to provide passive matter. A woman is by nature impotent.”11 According to Seim, Marianne Meye Thompson’s thesis that the “living Father” replaces the common Jewish epithet “living God” in the Gospel of John supports this position, as does the overall thoughtworld of this Gospel insofar as God is considered the source of all life.12 For Reinhartz, Jesus is literally begotten of God epigenetically because he receives God’s ORJRM and SQHX PD.13 As a result, his mission is to be the first exemplar of, and to perpetuate, a new species.14 John 20 is decisive for both Seim’s and Reinhartz’s theses because Jesus, begotten by only a father, begets his disciples (in the absence of a female counterpart) when he imparts SQHX PD to them in 20:22. The next section takes up both clarification and justification of these interpretations.

C. Three Prolegomena I. Presumed Priority of Scientific Treatises In what follows I explore the validity of the general thesis put forward by Reinhartz and Seim that “Aristotelian epigenesist” constitutes the background for “birth” in the Gospel of John. First, however, three prolegomena demand attention. Prolegomenon #1 is the presumed priority of scientific (so-called “medical”) treatises. If scientific theory is as culturally embedded as other ancient literary constructions of generation – for example, those provided by myth, “religion,” philosophy and/or theology, then it may be mistaken to privilege it as prior (i.e., background).15 Scientific 11

Seim speaks about male as “male” and “paternal,” whereas female is personified as “human,” “mother” and “woman” (“Motherhood and the Making of Fathers in Antiquity,” 99, 102, 103, 104, 105, 109, 113, 114 et al.). 12 Thompson’s article appears in the same volume of collected essays with Reinhartz’s article: “‘The Living Father,’” Semeia 85 (ed. A. Reinhartz) (1999): 19–31. 13 Reinhartz claims a literal interpretation at 92, 98. She never specifies Jesus’s biological existence (or its origin) in the Fourth Gospel. Her interpretation moves superficially between literal and metaphorical interpretations of Jesus’s biological and divine genesis without clear distinctions. She mainly exploits the detail in “Aristotelian epigenesis” that the male sperm is the “vehicle for the logos and pneuma of the father, which provide the form and essence of the offspring” (“‘And the Word Was Begotten,’” 83). However, Reinhartz does not mention that, according to Aristotle, the female also imparts pneuma to a fetation. See discussion below. 14 See Adele Reinhartz, “‘And the Word was Begotten,’” 98. According to Reinhartz, Bernard first made the suggestion in his 1928 commentary on the Fourth Gospel. 15 Medical texts do encode popular ideas; the arguments may be unique but the premises may be more widely accepted. In any case the relevance needs to be demonstrated.

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theory offers a possible context for myth, but its ontological priority to other ancient literature, including early Christian literature must be demonstrated rather than assumed. 16 II. The Role of “Female” in Epigenesis Prolegomenon #2, also crucial to the proposal, is a definition of terms. According to the theory of “pangenesis,”17 the female provides seed that con16 See Emily Martin, “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles,” Signs 16 (1991): 485–501. So also Denise Kimber Buell, Making Christians: Clement of Alexandria and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy (Princeton University Press, 1999), 21. Buell discusses Clement of Alexandria’s use of procreation as a metaphor in early Christian discourse. Oddly, however, Buell represents the seed (male) + soil (female) = progeny model as metaphor for animal generation (thus “procreation”) never once acknowledging that it also (more closely) symbolizes plant generation: wind or water + seed (= male + female) = flower (mature androgyne). Perhaps this interpretation is avoided because it does not support her argument that Clement used this model to unfairly silence early Christian women. It may also be avoided because it is less evident in Clement. Clement, however, reads the NT largely through the lens of Paul’s letters. Paul famously refers to discipleship in terms of animal generation in Gal 4:19–20. In plant generation (and, as Aristotle knew, some animals), female plants are not victims of male insemination, but possess the necessary components for generation (male and female, i.e., “fetation”) themselves. The plant generation model is however present in ancient sources – both “scientific” and “mythological.” Clement uses it metaphorically at Strom. 6.1: “Our knowledge, and our spiritual garden, is the Saviour Himself; into whom we are planted, being transferred and transplanted, from our old life, into the good land. And transplanting contributes to fruitfulness. The Lord, then, into whom we have been transplanted, is the Light and the true Knowledge.” In this case, as in parthenogenesis, the individual soul has both male and female gamete. It is never inseminated, but “planted” in the Lord. The Lord is male not female “soil.” Buell’s insistence that the latter begat the former is unnecessary. The point is that the former does not in every case give rise to the latter. 17 The concept is treated in Aristotle, Gen. an. 721b10; 722a–724a; 764a10 ff.; 766b10; 769a10. Although the concept is attested before even Aristotle, the word “pangenesis,” like “epigenesis,” is not attested in ancient Greek. Rather it is a neologism traceable to Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (2 vols.; London: John Murray, 1868), 2.vii, 2, 49, 57, 71, 94, 263, 357, 374, 377, 385, 387, 389, 392, 394, 396, 397, and 400. See also Joseph Needham, A History of Embryology (New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1959), 39, 40, 124, 127, and 217. Needham defines pangenesis as the view “that the semen takes its origin from all the parts of the body so as to be able to reproduce in the offspring the characteristics of the parent” (39). Of those scholars who have understood parts of the New Testament as reflecting pangenesis see esp. H. J. Cadbury, “The Ancient Physiological Notions Underlying John I.13 and Hebrews XI.11,” The Expositor 9/2 (1924): 430–39 and (subsequently) Pieter Willem Van Der Horst, “Sarah’s Seminal Emission: Hebrews 11:11 in the Light of Ancient Embryology,” in Greeks, Romans, and Christians: Essays in Honor of Abraham J. Malherbe (ed. David L. Balch, Everett Ferguson, and Wayne A. Meeks; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 287–302.

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tributes to generation in equal amount to the male.18 With “preformationism,”19 females contribute to generation seed containing miniature females, whereas males contribute seed containing miniature males.20 Although it might seem that these two theories depict females in a more proactive role than in epigenesis, this is an oversimplification. Three relevant presuppositions of Aristotelian epigenetic generation are: (1) males provide seed, females provide blood – without either one there is no life; (2) whereas males impart connate SQHX PD (as part of the sentient soul), females impart other types of SQHX PD to the fetation; and (3) females and males each contribute half to the human soul.21 A. L. Peck summarizes the contributions of male and female parts in Aristotelian epigenetic generation as follows: With regard to his famous doctrine that the male supplies the Form and the female the Matter of the embryo, some misunderstanding may easily arise. . . . Form is not found apart from matter, nor is matter found which is not to some extent “informed”; and Aris18 See G. E. R. Lloyd, Science, Folklore and Ideology: Studies in the Life Sciences in Ancient Greece (Cambridge University Press, 1983), 88–94. 19 The concept is treated in Aristotle, Gen. an. 733b25 ff. Although the concept is attested before even Aristotle, the expression “preformationism” (or the homunculus or animalcule theory), like “epigenesis” and “pangenesis,” has no ancient Greek equivalent. Rather it is a neologism traceable to the late seventeenth century. See Joseph Needham, A History of Embryology (NY: Abelard-Schuman, 1959), esp. 205–11. Needham describes the theory in this way: “By 1720 the theory of preformation was thoroughly established, not only on the erroneous grounds put forward by Malpighi and Swammerdam, but on the experiments of Andry, Dalenpatius and Gautier, who all asserted that they had seen exceedingly minute forms of men, with arms, heads and legs complete, inside the spermatozoa under the microscope. Gautier went so far as to say that he had seen a microscopic horse in the semen of a horse (he gave a plate of it) and a similar animalcule with very large ears in the semen of a donkey; finally, he described minute cocks in the semen of a cock” (205–6). 20 Aeschylus, Eum. 657ff.; Euripides, Orest. 552. Both utilize preformationism to defend Orestes’s matricide. Plato, Symp. and/or Tim. 91 may also subscribe to this view. Erna Lesky, Die Zeugungs- und Vererbungslehren der Antike und ihr Nachwirken (Abhandlungen der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse Jahrg. 1950/19; Mainz: Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur; Wiesbaden: in Kommission bei F. Steiner, 1951) argues that the Timaeus does not reflect preformationism because the animalcule undergoes a process of development. See J. S. Morrison, “Four Notes on Plato’s Symposium,” CQ 14 (1964): 42–55, apud Anthony Preus, “Science and Philosophy in Aristotle’s Generation of Animals,” Journal of the History of Biology 3/1 (Spring 1970): 6 n. 6; and “Galen’s Criticism of Aristotle’s Conception Theory,” Journal of the History of Biology 10/1 (1977): 67. 21 Aristotle writes that the soul consists of three types: sentient, rational, and nutritive, the latter supplied by the female (736b10–20). Contra Lynda Lange, “Woman Is Not a Rational Animal: On Aristotle’s Biology of Reproduction,” in Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science (ed. Sandra Harding and Merrill B. Hintikka; Dordrecht and Boston: Reidel, 1983), 11.

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totle can say (end of Met. H) that Matter in its ultimate stage is identical with Form. . . . Hence it is clear that fundamentally the contributions of both parents in generation are identical; both are potentially a living animal of a certain kind, and this involves that both possess the living animal’s Form, viz., its Soul, potentially; and the only difference between them is that the male’s contribution possesses also sentient Soul potentially (LCL, xiii–vi, emphasis original).22

Of course, Aristotle famously considers the male superior to the female sex.23 Both Seim and Reinhartz highlight his description of the male factor in generation (cf. 716a5) as THLZWHURM (“more god-like,” viz., “eternal” [732a1–12]) in its IXVLM because it contributes the principle of movement to generated things. Although Aristotle deems sexual differentiation “better” than its absence, he defines “female” in terms of incapacity, referring to it as a “natural deformity.” Nevertheless, the purpose of Aristotle’s comments is not to make a case for female subordination or inferiority – something he and his readers took for granted. His treatise On the Generation of Animals seeks to provide a “scientific” explanation for generation.24 Even if the question to what extent ideology determined, even compromised, Aristotle’s “scientific” observations is a valid one (ably treated by G. E. R. Lloyd in a chapter “on the female sex”), the fact remains that Aristotle does not promote generation in the absence of a female cause.25 In terms of overall potential contribution to generation, male (motive cause) and female (material cause) are equals in Aristotelian epigenesis. Aristotle contrasts each with the “Final Cause” as necessity is contrasted with the

22 Cf. “According to Aristotle, the female of the species produces the proximate matter for reproduction, a material which requires only some further source of movement and change to become a new individual; the male provides that source of movement and change, without providing any of the matter for that which is generated” (Preus, “Galen’s Criticism of Aristotle’s Conception Theory,” 78). Similarly: Daryl McGowan Tress, “The Metaphysical Science of Aristotle’s Generation of Animals and its Feminist Critics” in: Feminism and Ancient Philosophy (ed. Julie K. Ward; New York: Routledge, 1996), 30– 50. Van der Horst, too, comments on the Stagirite’s view of the female contribution to animal generation: “Even Aristotle, the most staunch opponent of the idea of female semen, did not deny that a woman contributed her katamenia to the embryogenesis and that this menstrual blood was in fact from the same origin as male semen, albeit that it had stopped halfway in its development into semen ‘pur sang’” (“Sarah’s Seminal Emission, 296). 23 Lloyd, Science, Folklore and Ideology, 94. 24 This reflects, in part, his scientific methods and GLDLUHVLM. 25 In his discussion of wind eggs (autoblasts), however, Aristotle does treat how the female is unable to generate an animal by itself. See Robert Mayhew, The Female in Aristotle’s Biology: Reason or Rationalization (University of Chicago, 2004), 45. Mayhew concurs with Peck referring to the female factor in generation as “rich” not “inert” (Female in Aristotle’s Biology, 45).

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good (Gen. an. 6, 7).26 If, therefore, the Fourth Gospel reflects no maternal contribution to generation, epigenesis is not in the background. III. Epigenesis as Embryological Development In general, the superiority of the male over the female factor is not an important theme among the various ancient generation theories. Rather, the advancement that Aristotelian so-called epigenesis makes over pangenesis and preformationism is the notion of embryonic development (Prolegomenon #3). The critical question for Aristotle is whether embryos exhibit, in the words of H. A. E. Driesch (1907), “a real production of visible manifoldness” or merely a “simple growth of visibly pre-existing manifoldness.”27 Aristotle argues, on the basis of his observations of oviparous animals, that at its earliest stage an egg is unformed, that is, possesses no obvious features (in miniature) of the adult animal. This observation is consistent with his conceptualizing embryonic development in terms of his cosmological beliefs (viz., four cause paradigm: matter, mover, form, and end), namely as real production.28 In the crucial passage, Aristotle acknowledges the import of the problem: And on this subject we are confronted by no small puzzle. How, we ask, is any plant formed out of the seed, or any animal out of the semen? That which is formed by means of a process (WR? JLJRPHQRQ) must of necessity be formed (a) out of something (b) by something (c) into something. (Gen. an. 733b20–30)

Aristotle goes on to speculate that female XOK is formed by a series of successive internal processes directed by a male-derived potential constituent of the fetation’s \X[K (733b30–735a26). Such an idea was not new with Aristotle, agreeing in large part with theories of Pythagoras more than a century and a half earlier.

D. Critical Analysis The preceding prolegomena, then, invite the question of whether epigenesis applies to a birth concept in the Gospel of John. Two types of generation are possible in the Fourth Gospel: biological and divine. If medical texts and specifically epigenesis constitute the background for birth in the 26

See excellent exposition of this theory in G. E. R. Lloyd, Science, Folklore and Ideology, 88–94, esp. 88. 27 Hans Alfred Eduard Driesch, “The Science and Philosophy of the Organism, vol. 1 1906–1908,” The Gifford Lectures, n.p. [cited 9 March 2009]. Online http://www. giffordlectures.org/Browse.asp?PubID=TPSAPO&Volume=0&Issue=0&ArticleID=3. 28 See Preus, “Galen’s Criticism of Aristotle’s Conception Theory,” 78.

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Gospel of John, then we must decide whether the allusion pertains to biological birth, divine birth or both, and whether the allusion is literal or figurative.29 On the one hand, if the interpretation is literal, as Reinhartz concludes,30 then the theory should either, in the case of biological birth, emphasize that Jesus was not preformed, but as an embryo developed (Prolegomenon #3). Alternatively, in the case of divine birth, a literal allusion to epigenesis might underscore some type of ethical or spiritual development of Jesus during earthly ministry, perhaps as related to messianic consciousness.31 On the other hand, if epigenesis provides metaphorical background, then in the case of biological birth it must emphasize evolution in what preceded Jesus’s incarnation or, in the case of divine birth, that Jesus progresses to a point at which he receives SQHX PD, not as sentience but conscience, as in, for example, an ability to recognize the “truth” (e.g., John 4:23). As a metaphor, for either biological or divine birth epigenesis might selectively (as metaphors often do) deemphasize that Jesus received elements necessary for “life” from a maternal side, even including the material necessary for the formation of his physical body, but logically it

29 Both biological and divine birth theories suffer the claim in John Chapter 1 of Jesus’s pre-existence. If Jesus exists prior to creation of the world: (QD U[K_a K`Q R OR J RM NDL? R OR J RM K`Q SURBM WRBQ THR Q  NDL? THRBM K`Q R OR J RM (1:1), then to what extent may we talk about his biological or divine “birth?” See discussion below. 30 Reinhartz writes, “I will argue that the Johannine use of generative language, while clearly metaphorical, also may be read as a claim that Jesus is quite literally the son of God”; “A reading of the generative language as metaphor would argue that the relationship between Jesus and God is like that of a son and father. But insofar as the Gospel imputes uniqueness to Jesus among humankind, as the one who is preexistent and the only son of his divine father, we are afforded a glimpse of a more literal understanding of generative language according to which Jesus’s uniqueness rests in the fact that he is the only one in the human or indeed divine realms who has come forth from, or been generated, directly by, the divine seed. This literal reading give substance to the claim that knowledge of the father can be had only through or by means of the son”; and, “I also became convinced that the power of this language lies not only in its metaphorical aspects but also in its literal meaning . . . It seems to me that from the Johannine perspective, Jesus’s special relationship with God as well as his revelatory function stem precisely from the claim that Jesus is literally and uniquely God’s son” (“‘And the Word was Begotten,’” 92, 94, 98 respectively). Reinhartz collapses two separate phenomenon: (1) Jesus’s birth as ORJ RM, an event that occurs in an implied cosmogonic myth; and (2) Jesus’s birth as DQTUZSRM, which necessarily involves normal methods of procreation. John emphasizes the former but the latter never falls out of view. 31 Judith Lieu brings forward interesting parallels to “Mother Zion” imagery in Isa 66:7, comparing 1QH 3:7–12 for which the allusion (Isa 9:4) is probably messianic (“The Mother of the Son in the Fourth Gospel,” JBL 117 [1998]: 73–74).

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could not rule out all female contributions.32 Whatever the case, it must feature epigenesis’s core attribute: development. Whereas Reinhartz does not specify which kind of birth (i.e., biological or divine) epigenesis backs, Seim argues that epigenesis provides the metaphorical background for Jesus’s divine birth.33 This option is certainly the most plausible of the four possibilities. Jesus’s biological birth is hardly a matter of debate in the Fourth Gospel insofar as the author mentions both of his parents (“mother”: John 2:1–5 [wedding at Cana], 12; 6:42; 19:25;34 Joseph: John 1:45; 6:42). The presence, even prominence, of mother (albeit never “Mary”) in the text35 rules out both literal and figurative biological birth options in the absence of a female gamete.36 It is thus impossible to say which generation theory lies behind Jesus’s biological birth in the Gospel of John. The author is not interested in the question. If the author subscribed to the same biological theory of generation as Philo, he may have accepted pangenesis. Three Philonic parallels Reinhartz brings forward as evidence of epigenesis’s popularity during the late Hellenistic and early Roman periods more likely feature pangenesis.37 Even for divine birth, however, whether literally, metaphorically or some more complex combination of the two,38 epigenesis as the background must not stake a claim on generation in the absence of the female factor and, conversely, must emphasize that Jesus’s born-from-above self was not in all aspects pre-formed, but developed – a difficult if not impossible postulate.39 32 Sallie McFague, Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982). 33 Reinhartz, “‘And the Word was Begotten,’” esp. 93–94. 34 NB. Mary is nowhere named in the Fourth Gospel. 35 Contra Reinhartz who argues that Mary’s role is downplayed (“‘And the Word was Begotten,’” 94). 36 I have already argued that this option is not possible for Aristotelian epigenesis. Jesus’s biological mother has importance in this text. Their relationship frames the wedding at Cana narrative (2:1–6, 12) and the Gospel overall: 2:1–12 and 19:26. Interestingly, wine also features in each of these narrative segments. 37 “Human seeds” (pl.) in Mos. 1.279 looks like pangenesis, “seed of generation from another” in Cher. 43–44 looks like metaphorical use of pangenesis, and “the seeds from heaven to cause her [Sarah] to be pregnant” in Det. 60 resembles pangenesis. 38 See Ruben Zimmermann, Christologie der Bilder im Johannesevangelium. Die Christopoetik des vierten Evangeliums unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Joh 10 (WUNT 171; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004); Jörg Frey, J. Van der Watt, and R. Zimmermann, eds., Imagery in the Gospel of John: Terms, Forms, Themes, and Theology of Johannine Figurative Language (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006). 39 7D? HSLJ HLD in John 3:12 (hapax legomenon) refer to the discussion of birth in vv. 3–8. According to Bultmann, this discussion is “earthly” or “terrestrial” insofar as “it records man’s judgment on his situation in the world, that being born of the VDU F, he is VDU F, that he is lost, that he has failed to reach the destination to which he has striven

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The passages treating divine birth in the Gospel may now be analyzed. Divine birth arises in at least the following places in the Fourth Gospel: John 1:12–13; 1:14 (cf. also 1:18; 3:16, 18) and 3:3–10, 31 (cf. 8:23). Beginning with the extended passage on divine birth ([a] 3:3–10), the analysis then treats brief passages touching on this theme: (b) 8:41–42; (c) 1:12– 13 (possible manuscript variant); (d) 1:14 (and 1 John 5:18); (e) 16:21; and (f) 2:1–12. I. John 3:3–10 John 3:3–10 offers the seminal account of Jesus’s teaching on divine generation. 1

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2 He came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’ 3 Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above (HDBQ PK WLM JHQQKTKa DQZTHQRX  GX QDWDLLGHL Q WKBQ  EDVLOHLDQ WRXa THRXa).’ 4Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’ 5Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.” 8 The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ 9 Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can these things be?’ 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?” (NRSV)40

Seim opts for the medical theory of epigenesis to explain generation in this passage (v. 3), interpreting JHQQKTK_ DQZTHQ as born in the absence of the female gamete.41 However, in advocating epigenesis, Seim does not make a positive case against other generation theories (discussed below).42 Preformationism, for example, may offer a closer match than epigenesis as metaphorical background for divine birth in this passage.43 and that his point of departure has lead him astray. Thus, as in the Gnostic myth, the HSLJHLD indicate the meaningless situation of man. Only by seeing himself in this way can man gain the prior understanding which is necessary in order to understand the revelation” (Gospel of John, 149). 40 Jesus’s final answer implies that this teacher, representing all Israel, misunderstands “birth.” 41 “Motherhood and the Making of Fathers in Antiquity,” 118-20. 42 Reinhartz also makes no positive case against other theories. Both authors are of course aware of other theories, although neither mentions parthenogenesis, the theory to be explored and advocated in this essay. 43 In his commentary on the Gospel of John’s prologue, Ptolemy discusses PRQRJHQKM in John: “John, the disciple of the Lord, intentionally spoke of the origination of the entirety, by which the Father emitted all things. And he assumes that the First Being engen-

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Preformationism is the theory that all organisms were created at the same time, and that succeeding generations grow from homunculi, animalcules, or other fully-formed but miniature versions of themselves that have existed since the beginning of creation.44

It is commonly assumed that John trumps Matthean and Lukan genealogies by tracing Jesus back farther than Abraham (Matt 1:2, 17) and Adam (Luke 3:38) to the foundation of the world (e.g., John 1:1–2).45 If preformationism were behind Jesus’s generation in the Gospel of John, then this Gospel would outdo the other accounts not just generally, by tracing Jesus to the world’s creation, but specifically, by arguing that Jesus began as the Father’s homunculus – a miniature version (imago Dei) of the Father existing since the creation of the world.46 Preformationism also, more easily than epigenesis, jettisons maternal participation for the generation of male children, possibly promoting Johannine unity of father and son, a wellknown feature of the Fourth Gospel.47 If, however, K NRLOLD WK M PKWURM DXWRX in John 3:4 represents VXQHNGR[K48 for all theories of physical generation involving a womb, divine birth is misunderstood if connected in any way with womb theories – epigenesis, pangenesis, or preformationism.49 Furthermore, if the expression HF DLPDWZQ HJHQQKTKVDQ (“born of blood”) is best explained as a reference to the Aristotelian katamenia (epigenesis) theory, as Pieter van der Horst argues, then the Gospel of John may explicitly reject epigenesis in 1:13.50 This being the case, we should seek elsewhere for a medical theory underlying divine generation in the Fourth Gospel. A theory of generadered by God is a kind of beginning; he has called it ‘Son’ and ‘Only-Begotten God.’ In this (the Only-Begotten) the Father emitted all things in a process involving posterity. By this (Son), he says, was emitted the Word, in which was the entire essence of the aions that the Word later personally formed” (ET: Bentley Layton). 44 Jane Maienschein, “Epigenesis and Preformationism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, n.p. [cited 9 March 2009]. Online http://plato.stanford.edu/entries /epigenesis. Preformationism is the belief that every human being originated as a homunculus in Adam’s testicles (spermism) or Eve’s ovaries (ovism). 45 See Martin Hengel, The Johannine Question (London: SCM/Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1989) for John’s knowledge of the Synoptics. 46 Genesis 1 describes the making of human beings (pl.) – male and female – in the image of God; Genesis 2 depicts God as fashioning a single man from the earth/dirt. The latter resembles epigenesis insofar as a male factor gradually imparts form to matter. It also, however, resembles parthenogenesis by its creation of human beings as earth-born, the male contribution imparting life by means of ruah, pneuma, breath, or wind (v. 7). Jesus, as a sui generis human being, identical to God, would not be formed but begotten by God. Preformationism helps to distinguish between the two. 47 Reinhartz claims that this feature commends the theory of epigenesis (“‘And the Word was Begotten,’” 95). 48 Rhet. Her. 4.44–45: intellectio = “whole for a part, or part for a whole.” 49 Cf. also HSLJ HLRM in 3:12. 50 P. W. Van Der Horst, “Sarah’s Seminal Emission,” 298.

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tion more common in plants (no womb) than animals poses an obvious choice. One such theory (not considered by Reinhartz or Seim) is parthenogenesis.51 According to parthenogenesis, a female gamete is activated spontaneously on its own without fusion with a male reproductive element or sperm.52 Aristotle’s discussion is found in Gen. an. 715a–b and 759a. Animal examples include bees and fish.53 Plants that reproduce in this manner accomplish pollination using wind (as in: “wind-pollinated”), water (e.g., tide or fish), or animals (e.g., insects and birds). For some, the wind is thought not only to distribute but to fertilize eggs considered infertile (i.e., “wind-eggs”). In most cases, the wind distributes seeds able to generate new plants “on their own” in contact with soil, water, and sun.  In John 3:8 birth “from above” is described on a model resembling parthenogenesis: WRB SQHXaPD RSRX THOHL SQHL  NDL? WKBQ IZQKBQ DX WRXa D NRX HLM D OO RX N RL@GDMSR THQ HU[HWDLNDL SRX XS D JHLRXWZMHVWL?Q SDaM R JHJHQQKPHQRM HN WRXa SQHX PDWRM The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everything born of the wind (3:8).54

Throughout this passage SQHX PD refers to both wind and spirit. Bultmann argues that the passage exploits the two meanings of SQHX PD as “spirit” and “wind” to suggest that the former possesses a key feature of the latter, namely, invisibility:

51 One also finds no discussion of the encephalo-myelogenic doctrine, epikrateia principle or the hematogenic doctrine. The latter expression denotes epigenesis. See R. B. Onians, The Origins of European Thought about the Body, the Mind, the Soul, World, Time and Fate (Cambridge University Press, 1951, repr. 1988). 52 No equivalent spontaneous activation of the male gamete is known. As Aristotle writes: “By a ‘male’ animal we mean one which generates in another, by ‘female’ one which generates in itself” (716a10–20). 53 According to Aristotle female animals of certain species possess a NXKPD – from the verb NXHZ , that is, the result of pregnancy. Parthenogenesis occurs naturally in most lower plants, some invertebrates (e.g., water fleas, aphids, some bees, some Phasmida, some scorpion species, and parasitic wasps) and some vertebrates (e.g., some reptiles, fish, and, very rarely, birds and sharks). Evidently, it can be artificially induced in some species. 54 Background material in this area is vast. Wind-eggs, according to Aristotle, are produced by hens alone without impregnation and are thus sterile, producing no chicken. Lucian speaks of Hera as having given birth to Hephaistos “a wind-child” (XS KQHPLRQ SDL GD), that is, in the absence of a male gamete (Arist. Hist. Anim. 6.2. 559b20; Luc. de sacrif. 6). See e.g., W. K. C. Guthrie, Orpheus and Greek Religion (Princeton University Press, 1993 [1952]), 94–95, esp, n. 17 (pp. 144–45). Papers have even been written on poetic parthenogenesis; see Elizabeth A. Spiller, “Poetic Parthenogenesis and Spencer’s Idea of Creation in the Faerie Queen,” Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 (Winter, 2000): 1–11. Pneuma here also reflects Gen 1:2.

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The miraculous operation of the spirit is bound by no discoverable law; its presence is revealed by its effect. Admittedly it is the ambiguity of the term SQHX PD that makes it possible for us to entertain this idea, as a hidden meaning lying behind the initial sense of the word. For in the first place the sentence is a comparison whose application is expressively given in the clause RX WZMNWO Just as the wind is incomprehensible, and no one knows whence it comes and whither it goes, its origin and its destination, yet none can deny its reality – WK?Q  IZQK?Q  DXWRXa DN RXHLM – so it is within him who is born of the Spirit.55

If SQHX PD is interpreted as “wind” consistently in this passage – which anarthrous noun56 suggests – then vv. 5 and 6 may be translated: 5

Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and wind. 6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the wind is wind.

This translation suggests that behind the passage lies the most elementary Aristotelian separation of animal and plant life. Animal generation requires water for its admixture of male and female constituents.57 Plants, for which male and female are not separate, may require merely wind for generation. Aristotle explains: In all animals which can move about, male and female are separate; one animal is male and another female, though they are identical in species, just as men and women are both human beings, and stallion and mare are both horses. In plants, however, these faculties are mingled together; the female is not separate from the male; and that is why they generate out themselves, and produce not semen but a fetation – what we call their “seeds.”58

If divine birth in the Gospel of John is interpreted according to this biological model, then to be born from above (cf. GHL XPDaMJHQQKTK QDLDQZTHQ) is to allow the mixed male and female components of the “soul” (or human aspect susceptible to truth) to be carried like a seed on the wind to a natural landing place in which it can be generate and grow. An individual is born of water to become animal, but born of wind to become (as plant) disciple (vv. 5–6). One can understand why a theory of self-generation would

55

The Gospel of John: A Commentary (trans. G. R. Beasley-Murray; gen. ed. R. W. N. Hoare, J. K. Riches; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971 [1964]), 142. 56 With or without DJ LRM, WR? SQHX PD usually implies the proper name: “the holy Spirit.” According to F. Bovon, when SQHX PD DJLRQ appears without the article it denotes the “creative power of God” (Luke 1 [Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002], 52). 57 Technically speaking, for Aristotle, the water is mixed with SQHX PD to form a foam-like substance. So the analogy is not perfect. Furthermore, water is viewed as stimulating procreativity. Rain is one example. Both brides and bridegrooms took baths as an omen of healthy generative capability. See Onians, Origins of European Thought, 229– 30. 58 Gen. an. 731a.

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be preferred to a theory involving offspring as an analogy for divine birth.59 To be sure, variations on parthenogenesis are applied to Jesus’s biological birth in Matthew and Luke.60 In Luke 1:35 and Matthew 1:18 Mary is impregnated not by (as in contributing the male gamete), but from the holy spirit (Matthew) or when (Luke) the holy spirit comes over her. Matt 1:18 7RXa GH? ,KVRX ;ULVWRX KJHQ HVLMRXW ZMK`QPQKVWHXTHLVKMWKaMPKWURBM DX WRX 0DULDM WZ_a ,ZVK I SUL?Q K VXQHOTHL Q DX WRXBM HXUHTK HQ JDVWUL 61 H[RXVDHNSQHX P DWRMDJLRX Luke 1:35 NDL? D SRNULTHL?M  R DJ JHORM HL@S HQ DX WK_a  3QHXaPD DJLRQ HSHOHX VHWDL HSL? VH NDL? GX Q DPLM X\LVWRX HSLVNLD VHL VRL GLRB NDL? WRB JHQQZPHQRQ DJLRQ NOKTK VHWDL XLRBM THRXa

In Matthew, Mary’s impregnation fulfills the prediction in Isa 7:14 (LXX).62 In Luke, her impregnation offers an etiological explanation for how Jesus becomes RXLR?MWRX THRX (“God’s son” or “Son of God”).63 The origin of the tradition of Jesus’s virgin birth in these texts is unknown. It may be a curious permutation (perhaps necessitated by SDUTHQRM in Isa 7:14 LXX) of the ancient Jewish literary convention that barren wives bear important sons.64 It is also possible that Paul knew the tradition, although 59

An obvious application is ritual. Analogies between plant and human generation were commonplace. On the Nature of the Child, for example, records: “You will find that from the beginning to end the process of growth in plants and in humans is thus exactly the same” (The Hippocratic Treatises “On Generation,” “On the Nature of the Child,” “Diseases IV” (trans. Iain M. Lonie [Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 1981], 18). 60 Contrast Jesus’s adoption at his baptism (Mark 1:9–11) or resurrection (Rom 1:4). Both ideas are conspicuously absent from the Fourth Gospel. 61 Cf. also v. 20. 62 It is not, however, clear that even Matthew meant to imply that “the Holy Spirit,” as a male, impregnated Mary. James Lagrand writes, “The answer to Waetjen’s question, ‘How does the evangelist want the origin of Jesus to be conceptualized?’ (op. cit., p. 221), may be, ‘Not at all,’ or at least, ‘not with the imagery of male and female.’ For whatever else can be said about the problem of accepting the idea of parthenogenesis HN SQHXPDWRMDJLRX (I 18b), it is doubtful whether a supporting idea of sexual activity by the Deity makes the fundamental idea any easier of acceptance by faith” (“How Was The Virgin Mary ‘Like a Man?’: A Note on Mt. 1 18b and Related Syriac Christian Texts,” NovT (1980): 98; emphasis original). Lagrand argues that Odes Sol. 19:10a informs Matt 1:16b and 20 such that the latter imply that Mary: “brought forth, as a man, by will HN SQHXPDWRMDJLRX” (107). 63 In Mark Jesus becomes God’s son completely apart from the mention of his birth, let alone, virgin birth, rather implying (Mark 5) that he was born as normal biological child (with others) of Mary. 64 Matthew connects the tradition to Mic 5:8 (LXX). It is not known whether Micah drove this interpretation or helped to explain it. Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1–7: A Commentary

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his reference to Jesus as JHQRPHQRQHNJXQDLNRM in Gal 4:4 seems to imply the opposite.65 As noted above, in a version of parthenogenesis, the wind – probably as life-instilling “air” or “breath” – was thought to both distribute and fertilize sterile eggs. However, neither the preposition HN in Matthew and the expression HSHOHXVHWDL HSL? VH in Luke, nor their interpretations in these texts (Luke: Jesus becomes God’s son; Matthew: Jesus fulfills virgin/“Emmanuel” prediction) suggest that God sexually inseminates Mary. The interest in seed (WR?VSHUPD) over egg (WR? Z _RQ) also suggests this interpretation.66 As François Bovon writes about Luke: Luke uses HS HU[RPDLHSL (“to come upon”) for the gift of the Holy Spirit in Acts 1:8 (cf. Isa 32:15). The expression does not indicate the future essence of Jesus, but rather God’s action with Mary. (SLVNLD]Z means to “throw his shadow” or “overshadow.” Neither verb possesses an inherent sexual nuance, but here they explain how divine power will replace masculine begetting.67

Bovon’s interpretation corresponds to the function of SQHX PD in Bultmann’s interpretation of birth from above in John 3. In both cases, the spirit – like the wind in parthenogenesis – does not fertilize but provides the invisible, activating impetus necessary for generation in lieu of copulation. John 1:13 describes the phenomenon succinctly: HFRXVLDQ WHNQD THRX JHQHVTDL (“power to become children of God”). II. John 8:41–42 A final point concerns the discussion of Jesus’s legitimacy versus that of his opponents in John 8. Vv. 41–42 state: [Jesus claims:] 41“You are indeed doing what your father does.” They said to him, “We are not illegitimate children; we have one father, God himself.” 42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now I am here (HJ Z? (trans. James E. Crouch; Augsburg Fortress, 2007), 92–94. G. Stroumsa points out that parthenogenesis is a common explanation for the birth of a savior with “conception by a prophet, a god, a virgin womb, a virgin raped by Solomon ‘and his army of demons,’ incestuous relations between a father and daughter . . . a ‘drop’ from heaven, the sun and the moon, or even a cloud” (Another Seed, 89–90). 65 H. D. Betz, Galatians (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 205–8. Cf. Matt 11:11: HQ JHQQKWRL MJXQDLNZaQ . For Paul on Jesus’s biological origin cf. Rom 1:3. Elsewhere in the NT (e.g., Luke 3:31) Davidic descent implies that Jesus descends (biologically) from Joseph. 66 Because the wind was sometimes thought not only to distribute self-sufficient seeds but to fertilize wind-eggs, and keeping in mind the durability, flexibility, and mixednature of metaphors, the metaphor of parthenogenesis need not exclude God’s sexual participation in divine birth. In these cases, however, it seems that seeds (self-sufficient for regeneration) rather than infertile female eggs are in view, ruling out the wind as fertilizer. 67 F. Bovon, Luke 1 (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), 52, emphasis added.

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JD?UHN WRX  THRX HFKaOTRQ GDL? KN Z). I did not come on my own, but he sent me (RXGH JD?UDS’HPDXWRX HOKOXTDDOO’HNHL QRMPHDSHVWHLOHQ) (NRSV).”

In this passage the phrase PHDSHVWHLOHQ reiterates and qualifies the earlier phrase HJZ? JD?UHNWRX THRX HFKaOTRQ such that, to come from God is to have been sent by God. The problem of the passage is patronymity – the question of how, prior to modern genetics, fatherhood could be verified.68  The verb D SRVWHOOHLQ commonly expresses God’s relationship to Jesus in the Fourth Gospel (e.g., 1:6; 3:17, 34; 5:36; 6:29, 57; 7:29, 32; 8:42; 10:36; 11:42; 17:3, 8, 18, 21, 23, 25; 20:21).69 John 8:42, however, creates a special correspondence between this verb and the Son’s generation: “to be sent by” is “to come from” God. Interestingly, as a reference to divine birth, DSRVWHOOHLQ illustrates parthenogenesis well. Rather than a method of generation involving the mixing of male and female gametes in watery spume, this verb summons the image of a self-sufficient seed sent by the wind to its destiny. Divine responsibility for the four winds is an almost universal history-of-religions concept. Within the Jewish tradition, the opening verses of the book of Jonah offer an example.70 The Lord sends a wind (the noun is likewise anarthrous) that threatens the ship with Jonah on board: NDL?NXULRXMHFKJHLUHQSQHX PDHLMWKaQTDODVVDQ.71 Finally, John 12:24 offers a saying involving parthenogenesis: “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Although seeds seem to die when they become buried in soil, they do not die, but simply implant underground temporarily so that the new plant can sprout. Eventually, the seeds of the new plant, with the help of the wind, will likewise individually regenerate.72 This comparison demonstrates not just the author’s familiarity with parthenogenesis but its direct application within the Gospel to his concept of Christian discipleship. 68

See Seim’s excellent discussion on pp. 100-101 of this volume. A Pauline concept: i.e., Rom 1:1; 1 Cor 1:1; 2 Cor 1:1; Gal 1:1; cf. Rom 10:15; 1 Cor 1:17; 2 Cor 12:17; et al. 70 Jewish tradition also uses the wind generally to represent the incomprehensibility of God: Qoh 11:5; Prov 30:4; Sir 16:21; 2 Esdr 4:5–11. See Bultmann, Gospel of John, 142 n. 3. 71 The notion of gods or goddesses traveling or appearing on the wind has a rich history-of-religions background. Biblical examples include Ezekiel 1; 2 Kgs 2:1; Job 38:1; 40:6; Ps 83:15; Jer 23:19; Zech 9:14. Among Gnostic texts, Paraphrase of Shem not only associates God with the wind, but explains in great detail the wind’s involvement in sexual reproduction. 72 Exc. ex Theod. 80.1: “He whom the Mother generates is led into death and into the world, but he whom Christ regenerates is transferred to life into the Ogdoad” (ET: Robert P. Casey, The Excerpta ex Theodoto of Clement of Alexandria [London: Christophers, 1934]). Cf. Dial. Sav. 40: “The Lord said, ‘Whatever is born of truth does not die. Whatever is born of woman dies’” (ET: Stephen Emmel). 69

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Summarizing John 3:3–10, the Fourth Gospel nowhere affirms Jesus’s virgin biological birth. However, it may be that the theory is not summarily denied but merely shifted to explain divine birth.73 This option dovetails nicely with Synoptic parables and other traditions borrowing from agriculture to explain discipleship (esp. seeds; e.g., Mark 4:1–20; 26–29; 30–32). In John’s Gospel the tradition explains discipleship’s moment of inception according to ancient understandings of plant life cycles. The metaphor is also extended to explain the moment of discipleship’s earthly (at least) end or climax (i.e., mortal death [John 12:24]). That parthenogenesis is characteristic of lower biological forms suggests an analogy from nature – an important biblical theme.74 Finally, divine birth by parthenogenesis does not conflict with Jesus’s preexistence in John since parthenogenesis’s chain of causation is infinitely regressive. III. John 1:12–13 As Seim notes, a manuscript variant links John 1:12–13 to Jesus’s divine birth.75 Rather than: But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man [i.e., husband], but of God,

the construction (RM HJHQQKTK, verb is singular) implies that the final phrase applies not to the WHNQDTHRX but to the subject of the sentence, the divine logos or Jesus:76 He, born not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man but of God, gave (HGZNHQ) power to become children of God, to all who received him, who believed in his name. 77

Tertullian uses the variant attested in many Latin editions (qui natus est) to support virgin birth. Of course, Tertullian may have known the variant as

73

In addition to occurrences of “mother” (noted above), Joseph is mentioned twice in John 1:45 and 6:42. However, these passages mention only Joseph’s name. As Bultmann observes, Mary’s name does not occur in the Fourth Gospel (Gospel of John, 116n.2) 74 Oded Borowski, “Agriculture,” ABD 1.95–98. See also Karina Martin Hogan, “Mother Earth as a Conceptual Metaphor in 4 Ezra,” CBQ (forthcoming). 75 Seim, “Given Birth and Given Life,” 13–14. 76 The modification entails other changes for the sentence to make grammatical sense (e.g., omission of RL). 77 Seim’s ET is open to question. The word RV RL is plural; HFDLPDWZQ, also plural. 7RL MSLVWHXVRXVLQHLMWR? RQ RPDDXWRX makes the sentence unnecessarily clumsy and may be a later gloss. See Arthur Droge, “Sabbath Work/Sabbath Rest: Genesis, Thomas, John,” HR 47/2 (2007): 124.

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the only and/or official reading in his North African context.78 Bultmann summarily rejects any originality of the option as wishful thinking.79 Whether or not this passage was originally intended to apply to Jesus or not, the principle is indirectly linked to him in the summary statement by which he and all future disciples are said to receive divine birth: “born not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.” Here again the preposition HN (“of”) indicates God’s power rather than his sexual contribution to generation. IV. John 1:14: PRQRJHQKM 0RQRJHQKM is a qualifier applied to both Jesus and God in the Fourth Gospel.80 Whether the adjective has any relationship to divine birth in the Fourth Gospel is in question. Epigenetic and “monogenetic” are not like terms. Whereas epigenesis connotes an entire theory of generation, the adjective PRQRJHQKM might imply this theory.81 It is Seim’s conviction that it does, referring to birth (or more properly: begetting) by a male (God) in the absence of a female gamete.82 As noted above, a problem for this theory is criticality of the female element to epigenesis. Also of concern is the blurring of distinctions between Father and Son in the Fourth Gospel (e.g., esp. 1:1; 10:30, 38; and 14:10). In some manuscript traditions of John 1:18, PRQRJHQKM is applied to the Father: PRQRJHQKM THR?M R HLM WR?Q NROSRQWRXSDWUR?MHNHL QRMHFKJKVDWR.83

78

However, it (=Itala or Old Latin Witnesses): sed ex Deo nati sunt. Jerusalem Bible (1966) adopts the singular reading, but not in later revisions. All Greek manuscripts witness plural reading. See Roger L. Omanson, A Textual Guide to the Greek New Testament (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2006), 164–65. 79 Bultmann, Gospel of John, 59–60 n. 5. 80 On the relationship between the prologue and the rest of the Fourth Gospel, see Bultmann, Gospel of John, 13–18. 81 As Seim rightly acknowledges, PRQRJHQKM probably should not be isolated from references to JHQQDaQ in the network of birth metaphors in the Gospel. See J. Van der Watt, Family of the King: Dynamics of Metaphor in the Gospel according to John (Biblical Interpretation Series; Leiden: Brill, 2000), 166–200. 82 Seim, “Given Birth and Given Life,” 10. Cf. Reinhartz, “‘And the Word Was Begotten,’” 93. 83 Better attested, the reading is nevertheless unlikely. So Bultmann, Gospel of John, 81–82 n. 2: “0RQRJHQK?M THRM is read by ʠBC*, and Greek texts up to and even later than the 3rd century (cf. Lagr., Zn. Excursus III; cp. Also v. Loewenich 77, 1); PRQRJ XLRM is read by most MSS, the Greek from the 4th century on, Latin, and syrc. Even though THRM may be considered better attested, and even if the predication of THRM of the Revealer is not in itself impossible for John (1.1; 20.28; 1 Jn. 5.20), nevertheless THRM cannot be defended here, for it neither fits in with the preceding THRQ  NWO, nor can it take the appositional phrase R Z#Q  NWO The latter must have XLRM, which is what the

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Most interpretations of PRQRJHQKM in John 1:14 understand the word as a reference to Jesus as God’s only son. According to F. Büchsel, PRQRJHQKM refers to “the only child of one’s parents, primarily in relation to them.”84 In John 1:14 (“And the Word became flesh and dwelled among us, and we have beheld his glory, glory as of a father’s only son [GRFDQ ZMPRQRJHQRX MSDUD? SDWUR?M], full of grace and truth”), it refers to Jesus as an only child, that is, Jesus has no siblings by his father, God.85 However, following John 1:13 (RL RXN HF DLPDWZQ RXGH? HN THOKPDWRM VDUNR?M RXGH? HN THOK?PDWRM DQGUR?M D OO’ HN THRX  HJ HQQKTKVDQ) and 1 John 5:18 (RJHQQKTHL?MHNWRX THRX ), the word may also govern God’s begetting. Begetting (verb denoting paternal generation) is used of the relationship of God to a messiah in Pss 2:7: VKPHURQJHJHQQKNDVH and 109:3: HN JDVWUR?M SUR? HZVSRURX HFHJHQQKVD VH (cf. also Prov 8:25: JHQQDa_ PH).86 If PRQRJHQKM in the Gospel of John suggests begetting, which I think is possible,87 then it remains to discover whether and which theory of generation lies behind the concept. In the past scholars have compared mythical occurrences of PRQRJHQKM to understand the word’s meaning in the Gospel of John. In a long footnote on the topic, Bultmann catalogues claims about its conceptual background. Hymni Orphici 32.1,88 for example, characterizes Athena as PRQRJHQKM clearly implying that she is “begotten by one (father) alone (without the assistance of the mother).”89 Rendel Harris once argued that this and other such mythical accounts inform the Gospel of John. Bultmann, however, dismisses Harris’s argument because in each example that Harris summons, PRQRJHQKMis an attribute of a female divinity. Bultmann also suggests the improbability of the argument (so Böcklen) that PRQRJHQKM means “begotten by a single person (i.e., without a mother)” in Gnostic traditions because the strongest evidence is reference to the Arabian God Dusares as ‘son of Kore’ and the Syrian Adonis as ‘only (son).’90 BultEvangelist always writes (3.16, 18; 1 Jn. 4.9). THRM is most likely the result of an error in dictation.” 84 TDNT 4.738. 85 Notable emphasis on PRQH- over -JHQKM. The word does not refer to the virgin birth because the pre-existent and the historical Jesus are both son of God. Contrast Jesus’s siblings in John 2:12. 86 Examples from Büchsel, “PRQRJHQKM,” TDNT 4.741 n. 20. Here, as Jörg Frey reminds me, we also have the mother Zion concept (mother of the Messiah), all but lost in early Christian texts, apart from perhaps Rev 12. Prov 8:25 may not reflect childbirth; it may, rather, be a bridal song; see R. Zimmermann, “Vom Hätschelkind zur Himmelsbraut,” BZ 44 (2000): 77–91. 87 The connection is “possible,” although not without difficulties. 88 Bultmann describes this text as “certainly very late” (Gospel of John, 72 n. 2). 89 Gospel of John: A Commentary, 72 n. 2. 90 Gospel of John, 73 n. 2.

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mann’s rejection of the mythic parallels as background for the Fourth Gospel supports a strategy of seeking resonance in medical texts even if, as noted above, medical texts do not automatically function as background, their ontological priority requiring proof. 91 Although Bultmann does not mention it, of note is the ancient notion of phoenix regeneration which occurs by means of the worm that emerges from the dead bird’s rotting carcass. This mode of generation is both mythical and parthenogenetic. Among early Christian witnesses, 1 Clem. 25 describes the process, referring to the phoenix as PRQRJHQHM (“unique”). The analogy in 1 Clement argues for the biological plausibility of Christian resurrection. In sum, if parthenogenesis lies behind the expression PRQRJHQKM in the Gospel of John then, in diametrical contrast to the theories of Reinhartz and Seim, Jesus’s divine birth this Gospel is described as “of only one parent”: the female without copulation and/or admixture with a male gamete, variously referred to as “blood,” “flesh” or “man.” Moreover, if parthenogenesis is behind PRQRJHQKM in the Gospel of John, then divine generation of Jesus and all subsequent followers takes place not in the absence of the female but of the male cause. Deliberate blurring of paternity and sonship in the Gospel supports this theory (esp. John 14:6–7; cf. 1:18; 6:46; 7:28– 29; 8:19; 12:44–45; 15:21; 16:3). V. John 16:21 A few brief observations close the discussion. First, it may also be relevant to consider the brief parable in John 16:21 in light of the present argument. When a woman is in labor, she has pain, because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world.

Judith Lieu points out the importance of the woman’s role in this brief parable.92 The parable is an allusion to Jesus’s death. In it, however, death is described on analogy with birth (JHQQKTK QDL). Jesus’s death will, like his “birth,” give him life. On this analogy, the disciples are like women in labor. They endure the pain of childbirth (or: on Lieu’s argument, the anguish of death)93 with the hopeful conviction that once they lay eyes on the resurrected Jesus (a “newborn”) the joy of having brought a human being (DQTUZSRM) “into the world” will diminish the memory of their anguish to nothing. Technically speaking, plants that regenerate through parthenogen91

And, as noted above, the two are not strictly separable. Lieu, “Mother of the Son in the Fourth Gospel,” 71–75. 93 Lieu points out that in antiquity birth and death were not as separate as modern medicine has thankfully made them today. See “Mother of the Son in the Fourth Gospel,” 73. 92

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esis are female, a point at least partially recognized by Aristotle who viewed self-regeneration as the distinctive feature of females.94 Characterization of disciples as female in this parable, thus, also corresponds to divine birth by parthenogenesis.95 VI. John 2:1–12 It is also possible that the miracle at Cana (John 2:1–12) anticipates our interpretation of John 3. Water, according to ancient thought, is the plant equivalent (i.e., sap) to blood.96 Wine frequently represents blood.97 The transformation of water into wine may thus operate as an analogue for the metamorphosis of plant (water, i.e., sap) into animal (wine, i.e., blood).98 Therefore, transforming water into wine, a uniquely Johannine miracle, may not only prefigure purification by Jesus’s blood (i.e., “six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification,” John 2:6; cf. 3:16), but may (1) suggest the well-known conceptual proximity between human beings (blood) and plants (water), enabling effortless metamorphoses from nondisciple to disciple; and (2) imply Jesus’s transformation (cf. “My hour is not yet come” 2:4) from plant-like disciple (coursing water) into God’s son (coursing and ultimately spilling blood). Subsequently, John 3 explains step one: how to become a plant-like son of God like Jesus.

94

Cf. Aristotle, Gen. an. 731a. (cited above). Presence of “mother” sans name (“Mary”) in the Fourth Gospel (see above) reinforces Mary’s purely biological role in Jesus’s life. Make no mistake: female generative capacity resulting in Jesus’s divine birth is reserved specially and exclusively for God. 96 Onians, Origins of European Thought, 217–26. 97 Onians, Origins of European Thought, 217–26. 98 Also, given that brain fluid was thought to contribute to human procreativity, wine’s known effect on the head suggesting that it enhanced sexual procreativity in animals. Vita vinum est (Petronius, Satir. 34, 7). “The brain with its fluid was the stuff, as the genius was the spirit, of life, of generation. Wine was apparently believed to go to the brain.” Wine was thought to enhance the brain’s procreative potential. See Onians, Origins of European Thought, 227. Of further interest, plants were sometimes thought to possess souls. Claiming to be a bush in a previous existence, Empedocles forbid chewing laurel leaves because such plants were the highest form of plant incarnation (Empedocles B 117, 127, 140 Diels/Kranz). See also Jan N. Bremmer, The Early Greek Concept of the Soul (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983), 125. 95

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E. Parthenogenesis among Nag Hammadi Texts Based primarily on the theme of invisible origin, Rudolf Bultmann argues that it is “clear” that John 3:8 is traceable to Gnostic tradition.99 Whether or not this claim can be sustained, it is nevertheless true that a concerted interest in creation and/or origins (e.g., Genesis 1 versus Genesis 2) makes generation an important theme among Nag Hammadi texts. If not the most prevalent means of generation, parthenogenesis commonly explains mythological origins in these texts. The Hypostasis of the Archons (II, 4) offers an example. G. Stroumsa summarizes as follows: Sophia herself was linked both to Pistis (below) and to the Pleroma (above). The “upper” (or “interior”) Sophia was the last and youngest of the twelve aeons. Instead of uniting with her misnamed consort 4HOKWRM (i.e., the “willed one”) in order to generate, she fell in love with the perfect Father. Since she did not succeed in her audacity (WROPK) and could not unite with the Father, she “experienced passion” (HS DTHSDTRM) without a consort. In other words – and here is a Valentinian reformulation of the original Gnostic myth – “she wished to comprehend the magnitude of the Father,” or to imitate him, since he who was uncreated, could procreate without a consort. This was Sophia’s tragic mistake or sin, since she herself was a created being, the fruit of her parthenogenesis was bound to be a shapeless and unformed substance (only her male consort could have given the fetus its “form”). This offspring – who was in some cases the demiurge or the world itself – is also said to be the “lower” Sophia (also called the “exterior” Sophia, K HFZ VRILD, i.e., outside of the Pleroma and prevented by the Limit from entering it). When Sophia understood that she could give birth only to an abortion (HN WUZPD is the term used by the Valentinians), she cried and mourned over, it, just as a non-Valentinian account of the myth reports that Barbelo wept when her son Yaldabaoth revolted.100

In this passage Sophia attempts to emulate the Father’s parthenogenetic generative capability. She does not fail (as some surmise), but succeeds. Sophia is impregnated and gives birth. The child, however, is aborted. Nevertheless, the passage exemplifies parthenogenesis as a natural function of God. God begets without a consort. Other examples show that, according to some so-called “gnostic” Christian texts,101 God does not give birth to children as a woman with a womb, rather God begets as a farmer with land and seeds, that is, asexually. On the Origin of the World (II,5) features three variations on this theme. The first excerpt narrates propagation of flowers by Psyche and other virgins. 99

Bultmann writes, “It ought then to be clear that Jn. 3.8 goes back to Gnostic tradition” (Gospel of John, 143 n. 1). 100 Gedaliahu A. G. Stroumsa, Another Seed: Studies in Gnostic Mythology (NHS 24; Leiden: Brill, 1984), 69–70. 101 See Michael Allen Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling A Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Ismo Dunderberg, Beyond Gnosticism: Myth, Lifestyle, and Society in the School of Valentinus (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).

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(1) And the first soul (Psyche) loved Eros, who was with her, and poured her blood upon him and upon the earth. And out of that blood the rose first sprouted up, out of the earth, out of the thorn bush, to be a source of joy for the light that was to appear in the bush. Moreover, after this the beautiful, good-smelling flowers sprouted up from the earth, different kinds, from every single virgin of the daughters of Pronoia. (Orig. World 111:9– 29; ET: Bethge/Layton) 102

The second excerpt is of particular interest insofar as a parallel is drawn between the parthenogenetic procreation of a phoenix and the new “self” that emerges from a person committed to justice. (2) And the worm that has been born out of the phoenix is a human being as well. It is written (Ps 91:13 LXX) concerning it, “the just man will blossom like a phoenix.”103 And the phoenix first appears in a living state, and dies, and rises again, being a sign of what has become apparent at the consummation of the age. It was only in Egypt that these great signs appeared – nowhere else – as an indication that it is like God’s Paradise. (Orig. World 122:25–35; Bethge/Layton)

Confluence of generation theories between the Gospel of John and various Nag Hammadi manuscripts is not surprising if, as Jeffrey Trumbower argues, these texts share complexes of anthropological ideas.104 Whether or not a full-blown myth of origins lies behind the Fourth Gospel (as one finds in the Gospel of Truth, for example), John 3:8 is probably more than a passing allusion.105 Interestingly, Gospel of Truth 36,35 too suggests parthenogenesis of disciples: “He [God] is good. He knows his plantings [followers], because it is he who planted them in his paradise.”106

F. Conclusion Adele Reinhartz and Turid Karlsen Seim propose that “Aristotelian epigenesis” constitutes the background for “birth” in the Gospel of John. In this essay I explore the validity of this thesis, arguing, rather, that the ancient scientific theory of plant generation known as parthenogenesis better explains the evidence. Medical theories attempting to explain animal and plant generation loom in the background of a wide range of ancient theological and philosophical texts. Although the argument must be made, not assumed, the latter often demonstrate reliance on the former. John 1:12–13 102

Stroumsa refers to this act as parthenogenesis: Another Seed, 93. Ps 91:13a: GLN DLRMZMIRL QLFDQ TKVHL. 104 Jeffrey A. Trumbower, Born from Above: The Anthropology of the Gospel of John (HUTh 29; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1988), 141. 105 Myths and medical theories are not mutually exclusive backgrounds for texts. Medical theories are in the background of myths as well. 106 ET: Harold W. Attridge and George W. MacRae. 103

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(sans variante) presents a principle of divine generation for Jesus and his followers that is built on a model of plant parthenogenesis. John 3:3–10 offers a pedagogical illustration of the generation theory and John 1:14, 3:16 and 18 feature an adjective (PRQRJHQKM) denoting it. In terms of the tradition’s origin, it may be possible to trace a connection to the Synoptic Gospels. That is, the Fourth Gospel may shift parthenogenesis from an explanation of Jesus’s biological birth (attested in Matthew and Luke) to an explanation of Jesus’s divine birth. Of note, for those seeking a theory supportive of feminist approaches,107 modern science demonstrates that the offspring of parthenogenesis are exclusively female.

Works Cited Betz, H.D. Galatians. Hermeneia. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979. Bovon, Francois. Luke 1:1–9:50. Hermeneia. Translated by Christine M. Thomas. Edited by Helmut Koester. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002. Bremmer, Jan N. The Early Greek Concept of the Soul. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. Bultmann, Rudolf K. The Gospel of John: A Commentary. Translated by G. R. BeasleyMurray. General Editors R. W. N. Hoare and J. K. Riches. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971 (1964). Buell, Denise Kimber. Making Christians: Clement of Alexandria and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Cadbury, H. J. “The Ancient Physiological Notions Underlying John I.13 and Hebrews XI.11.” The Expositor 9/2 (1924): 430–39. Darwin, Charles. The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. 2 vols. London: John Murray, 1868. Driesch, Hans Adolf Eduard. “The Science and Philosophy of the Organism, vol. 1 1906– 1908.” The Gifford Lectures. No pages. Cited 9 March 2009. Online http://www.giffordlectures.org/Browse.asp?PubID=TPSAPO&Volume=0&Issue=0& ArticleID=3. Droge, Arthur. “Sabbath Work/Sabbath Rest: Genesis, Thomas, John.” History of Religions 47 (2007): 112–41. Dunderberg, Ismo. Beyond Gnosticism: Myth, Lifestyle, and Society in the School of Valentinus. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Frey, Jörg, Jan Van der Watt, and Ruben Zimmermann, eds. Imagery in the Gospel of John: Terms, Forms, Themes, and Theology of Johannine Figurative Language. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 200. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006. Guthrie, W. K. C. Orpheus and Greek Religion. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993 (1952). Hengel, Martin. The Johannine Question. London: SCM and Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1989.

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The explicit aim of A. Reinhartz; see: “‘And the Word was Begotten,’” 83–86.

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Hogan, Karina Martin. “Mother Earth as a Conceptual Metaphor in 4 Ezra.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, forthcoming. Lagrand, James. “How Was The Virgin Mary ‘Like a Man?’: A Note on Mt. 1 18b and Related Syriac Christian Texts.” Novum Testamentum (1980): 97–107. Lange, Lynda. “Woman Is Not a Rational Animal: On Aristotle’s Biology of Reproduction.” Pages 1–15 in Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science. Edited by Sandra Harding and Merrill B. Hintikka. Dordrecht and Boston: Reidel, 1983. Lesky, Erna. Die Zeugungs- und Vererbungslehren der Antike und ihr Nachwirken. Abhandlungen der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse Jahrg.; Mainz: 1950. Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur; Wiesbaden: in Kommission bei F. Steiner, 1951. Lieu. Judith. “The Mother of the Son in the Fourth Gospel.” Journal of Biblical Literature 117 (1998): 61–77. Lloyd, G. E. R. Science, Folklore and Ideology: Studies in the Life Sciences in Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Luz, Ulrich Matthew 1–7: A Continental Commentary. Translated by Wilhelm C. Linss. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1992. Maienschein, Jane. “Epigenesis and Preformationism.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. No pages. Cited 29 March 2010. Online http://plato. stanford.edu/entries/ epigenesis/. Magner, Lois. A History of the Life Sciences. New York: Marcel Dekker, 2002. Martin, Emily. “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles.” Signs 16 (1991): 485–501. Mayhew, Robert. The Female in Aristotle’s Biology: Reason or Rationalization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. McFague, Sallie. Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982. Morrison, J. S. “Four Notes on Plato’s Symposium.” The Classical Quarterly 14 (1964): 42–55. Needham, Joseph. A History of Embryology. New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1959. Omanson, Roger L. A Textual Guide to the Greek New Testament. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2006. Onians, R. B. The Origins of European Thought about the Body, the Mind, the Soul, World, Time, and Fate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951. Preus, Anthony. “Science and Philosophy in Aristotle’s Generation of Animals.” Journal of the History of Biology 3/1 (Spring 1970): 1–52. –. “Galen’s Criticism of Aristotle’s Conception Theory.” Journal of the History of Biology 10/1 (1977): 65–85. Reinhartz, Adele. “‘And the Word Was Begotten’: Divine Epigenesis in the Gospel of John.” Semeia 85 (1999): 83–103. Seim, T. K. “Roles of Women in the Gospel of John.” Pages 56–73 in Aspects on the Johannine Literature. Edited by L. Hartman, B. Olsson. Coniectanea neotestamentica or Coniectanea biblica: New Testament Series 18. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1987. –. “Descent and Divine Paternity in the Gospel of John: Does the Mother Matter?” New Testament Studies 51 (2005): 361–75. –. “Motherhood and the Making of Fathers in Antiquity: Contextualizing Genetics in the Gospel of John.” Pages 99-123 in Women and Gender in Ancient Religion: Interdisciplinary Approaches. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010.

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Singh, Yii-Jan. “Semen, Philosophy, and Paul.” Journal of Philosophy and Scripture (2007): 32–45. Spiller, Elizabeth A. “Poetic Parthenogenesis and Spencer’s Idea of Creation in the Faerie Queen.” Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 (Winter, 2000): 1–11. Stroumsa, Gedaliahu A. G. Another Seed: Studies in Gnostic Mythology. NHS 24. Leiden: Brill, 1984. Thompson, Marianne Meye. “‘The Living Father.’” Semeia 85 (1999): 19–31. Tress, Daryl McGowan. “The Metaphysical Science of Aristotle’s Generation of Animals and its Feminist Critics.” Pages 30–50 in Feminism and Ancient Philosophy. Edited by Julie K. Ward. New York: Routledge, 1996. Trumbower, Jeffrey A. Born from Above: The Anthropology of the Gospel of John. Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie 29. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1988. Van der Horst, Pieter Willem. “Sarah’s Seminal Emission: Hebrews 11:11 in the Light of Ancient Embryology.” Pages 287–302 in Greeks, Romans, and Christians: Essays in Honor of Abraham J. Malherbe. Edited by David L. Balch, Everett Ferguson, Wayne A. Meeks. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990. Van der Watt, J. Family of the King: Dynamics of Metaphor in the Gospel according to John. Biblical Interpretation Series. Leiden: Brill, 2000. Williams, Michael Allen. Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Zimmermann, Ruben. “Vom Hätschelkind zur Himmelsbraut.” Biblische Zeitschrift 44 (2000): 77–91. –. Christologie der Bilder im Johannesevangelium. Die Christopoetik des vierten Evangeliums unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Joh 10. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 171. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004.

Blaming the Women Women at Herod’s Court in Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities 15.23–231 JAN WILLEM VAN HENTEN

Discussions of ongoing research with colleagues are crucial for sharpening one’s critical mind. I benefited many times from gracious comments by Adela Yarbro Collins on various draft studies and am very happy to express my gratitude with a contribution on Josephus in her honor. Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities 15–17 is the main source about women at Herod the Great’s court. Josephus’s information about these women is much more elaborate in comparison to what we find in The Jewish War. The sections about the women at Herod’s court in the Antiquities are dramatic. Together, they offer an ongoing story about love, sex, adultery, and, more than any thing else, dirty competition between several women factions. Mariamme and her mother Alexandra formed the core of one of those factions, and Herod’s sister Salome and his mother Cyprus the backbone of another, but there must have been several other women factions at the court. One could easily devote a monograph to the topic of the women at Herod’s court, so I have to be selective in this contribution.1 I will limit myself here to the more elaborate source of the Antiquities and will discuss three episodes in the narrative in which the women play an important role (Ant. 15.23–31, 15.57–87 and 15.183–231). In the main part of the paper, I will take a narratological perspective by focusing on how Josephus as narrator depicts these women.2 I will try to bring the main narrative threads about the women into the limelight. Only after having done that is it possible to address the question about the events themselves, because it is quite complicated to extrapolate from Josephus information about these women that is historically plausible. I will deal with this difficult question in the con1 I warmly thank Kiki Boomgaard, Erich Gruen, Emily Hemelrijk and Omert J. Schrier for their comments on earlier versions of this contribution. 2 I basically follow the narratological approach outlined in the Studies in Ancient Greek Narrative series edited by my colleague Irene J. F. de Jong and others; see I. J. F. de Jong, R. Nünlist, and A. Bowie, eds., Narrators, Narratees and Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature (Leiden: Brill, 2004); and I. J. F. de Jong and R. Nünlist, eds., Time in Ancient Greek Literature (Leiden: Brill, 2007).

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clusion at the end of my contribution. I will start my analysis of the narrative with the episode about the portraits of Mariamme and her brother Aristoboulus, which were sent to Mark Antony. Herod’s mother-in-law Alexandra plays a major role in this episode.

A. The Portraits of Mariamme and Aristoboulus (Ant. 15.23–31) After Herod had captured Jerusalem with the help of Sosius and his Hasmonean opponent Antigonus had been executed by Mark Antony, Herod put the things of the kingdom in order step by step. One of his measures concerned the appointment of a new high priest, called Ananel (Ant. 15.22).3 It is important to note that Josephus as narrator offers two comments at this point; he says: He also secretly arranged other things to the benefit of his rule, but the outcome for him was that disagreements also arose among persons within his household (WD? SHUL? WK?Q RLNLDQ HV WDVLDVTK). For, he avoided appointing one of the distinguished priests as high priest of God and sent for a rather obscure priest (LH UHD WZaQ DVKPRWHUZQ) from Babylon.

Here, at this early stage of the Herod narrative already, Josephus offers a combined general statement about the king’s reign that implies that he may have been efficient and successful as a ruler, but also that he was confronted with serious conflicts within his family. This motif will return time and again in the Antiquities narrative concerning Herod.4 The second comment concerns the status of Ananel’s family, which is formulated rather negatively here in comparison to Ant. 15.40, which simply states that Ananel came from a high priestly family (DU[LHUDWLNRX JHQRXM). Both comments prepare the reader for a series of conflicts between Herod and his motherin-law Alexandra (Ant. 15.23–87), whose son Aristoboulus was an obvious candidate for the high priesthood. In the next paragraph Josephus introduces Alexandra to the readers. She was furious about Ananel’s appointment according to Josephus. Josephus notes that she could not bear Herod’s insulting treatment of her (RXN KQHJNHQ WK?Q HSKUHLDQ; cf. 15.44). Alexandra (Alexandra II) was the daughter of Hyrcanus II.5 She is one of the main characters in Book 15 of Ananel ( $QD Q KORM) is mentioned again in Ant. 15.34, 40–41, 56. See especially Ant. 16.75–77. The Herod narrative in the Antiquities intermingles the events of Herod’s rule with the history of his family, but in the War this history is narrated in one coherent section (1.431–673). The War highlights Herod’s misfortune in connection with the disastrous fate of his sons (1.622, 646–647, 665; Ant. 17.94–95). 5 N. Kokkinos, The Herodian Dynasty: Origins, Role in Society and Eclipse (JSP Suppl 30; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 114–15. 3 4

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the Antiquities, until her execution told in Ant. 15.251.6 She acts as one of Herod’s major opponents at the court and is continuously scheming against the king.7 The episode (Ant. 15.23–31) shows how a mother at a royal court could act as broker of her son’s interests. The context implies that Alexandra felt insulted about Ananel’s appointment as high priest (15.24). Her son Aristoboulus III was the logical candidate for the succession of his grandfather Hyrcanus II as high priest, apart from the fact that he still was very young at this time (see below). Josephus reports that Alexandra made a bold move. She wrote a secret letter to Cleopatra in order to request from Antony the high priesthood for her son Aristoboulus (15.24).8 Cleopatra VII apparently functioned as a contact person for Alexandra in order to get access to Mark Antony.9 As a matter of fact, Josephus refers to three letters by Alexandra to Cleopatra (15.24, 32, 45–49, 62), which are all obvious attempts to go against Herod. These bold steps implied a very serious betrayal of her son-in-law. They were also very dangerous for Herod, because Cleopatra seems to have been his most powerful opponent. She could easily affect the crucial relationship with his patron Mark Antony during these years.10

6 Explicit references: Ant. 15.23, 25, 27, 31, 42, 47, 53, 58, 62, 63, 69, 72, 80, 87, 166, 169, 183, 185, 202, 232, 247, 249, 250, 251 (A. Schalit, A Complete Concordance to Flavius Josephus. Suppl. 1. Namenwörterbuch zu Flavius Josephus [ed. Karl Heinrich Rengstorf; Leiden: Brill, 1968], 7). She is not mentioned at all in the War (T. Ilan, Integrating Women into Second Temple History [TSAJ 76; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999], 108). 7 A. Schalit, König Herodes: der Mann und sein Werk (2d ed.; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2001), 131, considers her the most determined enemy of Herod within the Hasmonean family. 8 According to the context this is situated at the end of 36 or beginning of 35 B.C.E.. Antony’s presence in Egypt implies that Alexandra’s request was made at the end of 36 B .C .E. at the earliest; see H. Buchheim, Die Orientpolitik des Triumvirn M. Antonius: Ihre Voraussetzungen, Entwicklung und Zusammenhang mit den politischen Ereignissen in Italien (AHAW Phil.-hist. Klasse 1960 no. 3; Heidelberg: Carl Winter – Universitätsverlag, 1960), 84; E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Christ (175 B.C.–A.D. 135) (A New English Version; rev. and ed. Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar, Martin Goodman and Matthew Black; 3 vols.; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1973–1987), 1.252. 9 Ant. 15.256–258 describes how Costobar used a similar strategy when he defected from Herod; see E. G. Huzar, Mark Antony: A Biography (London: Croom Helm, 1978), 156–57. 10 J. W. van Henten, “Cleopatra in Josephus: From Herod’s Rival to the Wise Ruler’s Opposite,” in The Wisdom of Egypt: Jewish, Early Christian, and Gnostic Essays in Honour of Gerard P. Luttikhuizen (ed. A. Hilhorst and G. H. van Kooten; AGJU 59; Leiden: Brill, 2005), 113–32.

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The follow-up of this letter in Ant. 15.25–31 probably presupposes that the readers know about Mark Antony’s bad reputation concerning love affairs and sex.11 Josephus first notes that Antony responded rather indifferently to Alexandra’s letter, but somehow his representative Dellius arrived soon afterwards in Judea and met with Alexandra and her children (15.25).12 Josephus had noted at the beginning of this episode already that Mariamme and Aristoboulus were exceptionally beautiful (15.23), and this information is repeated in connection with Dellius’s visit: (when . . . Dellius) saw Aristoboulus, he was impressed by his youthful elegance (ZUD). He admired the tall stature and beauty of the boy (WR? PHJ HTRM NDL? NDOORM), and no less 13 the beauty of Mariamme, who was living in wedlock with the king. It was clear that he 14 believed Alexandra was somebody blessed with beautiful children (NDOOLSDLM).

Having seen the extraordinary beauty of Mariamme and Aristoboulus, Dellius devised a wicked plan: he proposed Alexandra to have the portraits of her children sent over to Antony, “For if he would see those, she would not fail to obtain anything she asked” (15.26). Alexandra apparently made no bones about having a portrait of her children produced for Antony.15 A fa11

Antony was famous for his fondness of love affairs with men and women, and also for drinking bouts, gambling, and having huge debts (Cicero, Philip. 2.18; 2.56; 2.58; 2.63; 2.67–68; 2.76–77; Plutarch, Ant. 2.3; 4.4; 29.1; 33.3; Dem. 1.7; Mor. 319F; Buchheim, Orientpolitik, 56 and 103; Huzar, Mark Antony, 1978, 24, 55–56, 65–66, 99, 154, 168, 190–91, 237, 246, 254; R. Langlands, Sexual Morality in Ancient Rome [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006], 305–15). 12 Dellius is mentioned in War 1.290 as Antony’s representative (parallel report in Ant. 14.394, where his name is given as Bdel(l)ius). Quintus Dellius fulfilled several confidential missions for Antony and delivered Antony’s invitation of Cleopatra to meet at Tarsus to the queen (41 B.C.E.). 13 This phrase repeats Josephus’s information about Herod’s marriage with Mariamme in Ant. 15.23. The repetition emphasizes that it would be problematic for Antony to start an affair with Mariamme, which anticipates Herod’s response to Dellius’s proposal in 15.28. 14 .DOOLS DLM “blessed with beautiful children” occurs just once in Josephus; the phrase links up with the exceptional beauty of Aristoboulus and Mariamme emphasized in Ant. 15.23, 27. Perhaps it also hints at the tragic fate of Alexandra and her children narrated afterwards in Ant. 15. Alexandra and her children all die because of Herod’s decision. Several other occurrences of NDOOLS DLM highlight the misfortune of a parent with beautiful children: Euripides dramatically depicts Heracles’s misfortune, who killed his own children (Heracl. 830–842). 4 Maccabees’s praise for the mother of the Maccabean martyrs who watches her seven sons dying during horrible tortures includes a passage that formulates what the mother could have thought in this situation: “Alas, I who had so many and beautiful children (Z` K SROX S DLM NDL? NDOOLS DLM HJ Z ) am a widow and alone, with many sorrows” (4 Macc. 16:10). 15 Interestingly, Josephus does not criticize her because of that, although he is highly critical about Herod transgressing the second commandment in the episodes about the festival in Jerusalem and the golden eagle (Ant. 15.271–291; 17.148–164); see J. W. van

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mous papyrus text from the second century C.E. implies that sending over portraits was rather common practice in antiquity.16 The implication of sending Mariamme and Aristoboulus’s portraits over to Mark Antony is fully clear; it would anticipate sexual relationships between Antony and Alexandra’s children. The exceptional beauty of Mariamme and Aristoboulus made them attractive as sexual partners.17 This is not only indicated by Josephus’s explicit description of Dellius’s motive (“This was undertaken by him in order to draw Antony into sexual pleasures.” [15.27]),18 but it also becomes obvious in Ant. 15.28, which describes Antony’s response to the proposal:19 But Antony feared summoning the girl, who was married to Herod, and he wanted to avoid that slander would be passed on to Cleopatra because of such an affair. So, he 20 commanded (Dellius) to send the son in a respectable way, adding: “if it is no burden.”

Antony’s response clearly presupposes that he knew at this stage of the exceptional beauty of Mariamme and Aristoboulus. The reasons mentioned for him not summoning Mariamme to Egypt have to do with Herod as Henten, “The Panegyris in Jerusalem: Responses to Herod’s Initiative (Josephus, Antiquities 15.268–291),” in Empsychoi Logoi – Religious Innovations in Antiquity: Studies in Honour of Pieter Willem van der Horst (ed. A. Houtman, A. de Jong and M. Misset-van de Weg; AGJU 73; Leiden: Brill, 2008), 151–73. 16 BGU 2 no. 423 contains a letter for the home front from an Egyptian sailor called Apion. He writes from Misenum (near Naples, Italy) to his father Epimachus in Philadelphia (Fayum, Egypt) and states “I have sent through Euctemon a portrait of myself” (lines 21–22). This also presupposes that artists who could make such a portrait were readily available at Misenum. For an English translation of this papyrus and references, see J. L. White, Light from Ancient Letters (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 159–60. 17 K. J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality (London: Duckworth, 1978), 69–70. 18 Josephus uses the verb SUDJPDWHXRPDL “undertake,” “bring about” frequently for bringing about something bad or objectionable: poisoning (War 1.583), rebellion (War 2.259, 283, 318; Ant. 11.27) and transgression of the Jewish laws (Ant. 17.151) (K. H. Rengstorf, A Complete Concordance to Flavius Josephus [4 vols; Leiden: Brill, 1973– 1983], 3.502–3). See also War 2.594 and Ant. 15.33. Josephus must have abhorred Dellius’s plan, because he was very much against extramarital sexual relationships, in line with biblical laws (e.g., Apion 2.199–204). 19 See also 15.29. Sexual relationships between high Roman officials and members of the family of a client king were a commonplace (D. C. Braund, Rome and the Friendly King: The Character of the Client Kingship [London: Croom Helm, 1984], 179 with references); cf. also Ant. 15.97 about Herod and Cleopatra. Josephus makes Dellius’s motive explicit here, although the benefit for Dellius himself is not indicated. It is plausible, though, that providing Antony with one or even two junior lovers brought some profit to Dellius. 20 This expression is almost comical; see for a close parallel Olympiodorus, In Platonis Alcibidiadem commentarii 61.23 (HL PKB HLK WRXaWR EDUX). The phrase hints, perhaps, at Dellius’s dependence on Antony as patronus, and ridicules this relationship, or, more plausibly, at Dellius’s delight in accompanying the handsome Aristoboulus to Egypt.

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much as with Cleopatra. Mariamme, a Hasmonean princess, was married to the current king of Judea; and Herod was one of Antony’s most important friends (cf. Ant. 15.77). The narrative suggests, therefore, that starting an affair with Mariamme would have taxed Herod’s loyalty, if not turned him into an enemy. Cleopatra’s response to Antony’s advances to Mariamme would have been rather predictable, as well; it is obvious that she surely would not have tolerated another lover of Antony as competitor. Moreover, other passages in Josephus suggest that slander transmitted to Cleopatra could become a powerful tool for eliminating an opponent of hers.21 Herod prevented a trip to Antony by Aristoboulus, as Ant. 15.29–30 indicates, by pointing to the political unrest that may have followed upon Aristoboulus’s departure (15.29). Once more it is obvious that the purpose of the trip would have been the sexual entertainment of Antony: “(he was) prepared to use him for erotic diversion” (WRL M HUZWLNRL M, 15.29). Aristoboulus’s age – he was merely sixteen (15.29) – was apparently an additional reason for Herod for not letting him go. Being still a “boy” (SDL M), Aristoboulus was all the more attractive for Antony as junior sexual partner.22 The narrative of this episode indicates that Alexandra recklessly appealed to Cleopatra, Herod’s major opponent, and that she was also prepared to use the beauty of her children to have her own way against Herod by offering them to Antony as temporary sexual partners. This suggests that Alexandra was extremely ambitious and unscrupulous, as well as wicked. It is hard to imagine a mother who offers her own children up for sexual pleasures to others, but this very negative image matches Josephus’s portrayal of Alexandra in subsequent passages. An additional motif in these passages is that Alexandra aimed at a coup and tried to restore the Hasmonean rule over Judea, which is still absent in the portraits episode.23 In any case, in Ant. 15.23–31, Alexandra, and not Herod, is clearly the villain. The narrative suggests that Herod was able to control the damage caused by Alexandra’s ruthless behavior in a prudent way. 21 Ant. 15.77 reports about a letter from Herod to his home front, in which he refers to Cleopatra’s accusations against him, which were motivated by her strategy to take over his kingdom. War 1.359–361, 365 suggests in more general terms that Cleopatra applied this strategy to high-ranking officials in Syria as well as to the kings of Judaea and Arabia. See also War 1.439–440 about Cleopatra’s involvement in the deaths of King Lysanias of Chalcis and the Nabataean King Malichus (cf. Ant. 15.92) and Ant. 15.48, 65, 97. 22 Dover, Homosexuality, 84–86. 3DL M “boy,” is the usual word for the “passive” partner in a homosexual relationship. Xenophon, Anab. 7.4.7 refers to such a “boy” who had just reached maturity (Dover 86). 23 As a matter of fact, the accusation comes already up in Herod’s accusation of Alexandra in Ant. 15.32–38 (15.32–33). See also Ant. 15.42, 44–45, 62, 73.

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B. The Order to Execute Mariamme (Ant. 15.57–87) In the Antiquities Josephus is explicit about Herod’s involvement in the dramatic death of the newly installed high priest Aristoboulus III, Mariamme’s brother, in one of the royal swimming pools at Jericho (Ant. 15.50–56).24 Josephus subsequently mentions the grief about the young man’s death by a group of anonymous women (15.57). These women can plausibly be identified with the Hasmonean women faction, especially Aristoboulus’s mother and sister, Alexandra and Mariamme. The continuation of the narrative focalizes Alexandra once more (Ant. 15.58–60, 62).25 In Ant. 15.58–59, the narrative concentrates on Alexandra’s intimate feelings about Aristoboulus’s death; she is said to have known how her son was murdered (15.58). In a dramatic way Josephus tells his readers that Alexandra was several times on the verge of killing herself, but decided to live on and secretly prepare for avenging her son’s death (15.59). This led to another serious situation for Herod. Once again Alexandra appealed to Cleopatra, Herod’s powerful adversary, who was most eager to help Alexandra (15.62–63). This time Herod’s rule was seriously threatened because Antony ordered the king to give account of Aristoboulus’s death (15.64), probably in Egypt. This happened before Antony took off for Laodicea on the Syrian coast in connection with a planned second campaign against the Parthians.26 Herod apparently took Antony’s order very seriously and realized that there was a serious danger of losing his kingdom or even his life.27 Josephus reports that he chose his uncle Joseph as the person who would take care of the administration of the kingdom and also keep an eye on Alexandra and Mariamme.28 Herod 24 See Ant. 15.53, 55. The parallel passage in War 1.437 is more vague about Aristoboulus’s death, but still implies that Herod was responsible for it. 25 It remains possible that “the women” in 15.57 refers to an anonymous group of keening women, who usually began their lamentations already at the house of the deceased. Keening over the deceased person took place in the presence of the body for one or two days according to Ben Sira 38:16–17, although the traditional period of mourning was seven days (D. Kraemer, The Meanings of Death in Rabbinic Judaism [London: Routledge, 2000], 15–16; R. Hachlili, Jewish Funerary Customs, Practices and Rites in the Second Temple Period [JSJSup 94, 1; Leiden: Brill, 2005], 481–82). 26 Other sources confirm this event, which can be dated in 35 B.C. E.; see Plutarch, Ant. 53.7; Cassius Dio 49.39.3; Buchheim, Orientpolitik, 71. 27 This is implied by the measures taken by Herod as well as by the end of Ant. 15.67: “After Herod had given these instructions, he left to meet Antony, having uncertain hopes about the entire affair.” 28 Other passages seem to contradict that Joseph was Herod’s uncle. War 1.441 and Ant. 15.81 note that Joseph was Salome’s husband. Ant. 15.169 implies that Josephus was unaware of Joseph being Herod’s uncle. Several scholars argue, therefore, that the Greek WR?Q THL RQ “his uncle” (cf. Ant. 11.261; 12.387; War 1.475, 483) is a mistake in

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also gave Joseph a secret order to kill Mariamme in case he would not return from his trip to Antony (15.65; likewise War 1.441). The chain of events summarized so far implies that the narrative suggests that Alexandra this time managed to seriously jeopardize Herod’s rule, but that the consequences of her bold initiative could also have a disastrous outcome for her daughter Mariamme. As a matter of fact, Herod’s cruel order to execute Mariamme connects this episode to the section about Mariamme and Aristoboulus’s portraits sent to Antony. Herod’s motivation for his decision anticipates a possible relationship between Antony and Mariamme: 29

For he [Antony], he [Herod] said, felt great affection for his wife [Mariamme] and feared the outrage (GHGRLNHQDL WK?Q XEULQ) that somebody else would court her30 after his death because of her delicate appearance (HXPRUILD). (67) All this indicated Antony’s desire for the woman, because he happened to have heard accidentally of her delicate appearance (HXPRUILD) long before. (Ant. 15.66–67)

The repetition of HXPRUILD “beauty of form, appearance” in this passage once more emphasizes Mariamme’s exceptional beauty and it also echoes the first reference to the queen in Book 15 of the Antiquities (15.23, see above). It is important to read this passage with Herod as focalizer; that is, Josephus presents the considerations in 15.66–67 from Herod’s perspective. Scholars have proposed emendations of Josephus’s text in Ant. 15.67 because this passage would contradict Josephus’s earlier report about Antony getting to know about the beautiful Mariamme (Ant. 15.23–28).31 The reading SDUDNKNRZ M . . . as “he [Antony] happened to have heard acciAnt. 15.65 and that the original text may have read WR?Q SHQTHUR Q “his brother-in-law” (R. Marcus and A. Wikgren, Josephus. VIII Jewish Antiquities, Books XV–XVII [LCL; Cambridge, Mass./London: Harvard University Press/ Heinemann, 1963], 33 note d; B. Mayer-Schärtel, Das Frauenbild des Josephus: Eine sozialgeschichtliche und kulturanthropologische Untersuchung [Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1995], 207). Schalit, König Herodes, 116, and L.-M. Günther, Herodes der Grosse (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2005), 112, suggest that Joseph was Herod’s uncle as well as his brother-in-law. 29 Josephus’s verbose Greek here is rare, but the phrase H[ HLQ ILORVWRUJZM SURM plus personal object “feeling great affection for. . .” is paralleled by Ant. 4.135 about the seduction of the Israelite youth by Midianite women; see L. H. Feldman, “Josephus’s Portrait of Balaam,” SPhilo 5 (1993): 48–83. See also Ant. 15.68, 70, 83, 222 referring to Herod’s affection (ILORVWRUJLD) for Mariamme. 30 The verb VSRXGD]Z in the passive form can mean “to be courted” (LSJ 1630 s.v. II.2; Rengstorf, Concordance, 4.33). 31 B. Niese, Flavii Josephi opera edidit et apparatu critico instruxit (7 vols; Berlin: Weidmann, 1885–1895), 3.344. Naber’s conjecture SURDNKNRZ M  “[Antony] had previously heard” as well as Niese’s own conjecture JD?U DNKNRZ M “for he had heard” are meant to solve the contradiction between Ant. 15.23–28 and 15.67, but they are unnecessary.

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dentally” in 15.67 makes sense if one reads the passage with Herod as focalizer.32 How Antony had heard about Mariamme was not important for Herod in this situation. Josephus puts Herod’s feelings into words about what Antony could do with Mariamme after Herod’s death, when there would no longer be restraints for Antony to approach her. Herod’s complicated motivation also refers to his passion for Mariamme, which is also emphasized elsewhere in the Antiquities (e.g., Ant. 15.82, 207, 222). Herod apparently was very jealous and could not stand the idea that Mariamme would have another lover.33 Roman readers could also have interpreted the king’s fear in the light of the univira ideal, which presupposed that a widow should never marry again.34 Josephus tells us that Joseph had many conversations with Mariamme about the matters of the kingdom, during which he also expressed Herod’s affection for her (15.68–69). Josephus also notes that Mariamme and Alexandra did not believe Joseph: “When they ridiculed his words35 in the way women usually do (JXQDLNHLZM), especially Alexandra.” In 15.68 Josephus mentions only Mariamme as Joseph’s conversation partner, but apparently mother and daughter again operated as a pair. The continuation of the sentence focuses upon Alexandra, suggesting that she took the lead in ridiculing Joseph. The phrase JXQDLNHLZM (literally “womanly”) suggests here that women are known for a typical female kind of sarcasm. It is one of Josephus’s parenthetical remarks that constructs a stereotypical and negative image of women. Another example is the adagium “women cannot be trusted,” of which Herod’s son Alexander accuses his wife Glaphyra in the latter’s dream (Ant. 17.352).36 It is important to note that Alexandra 32

This is the reading attested by the Greek manuscripts (Niese, Flavii Josephi opera, 3.344). 33 See also Ant. 15.82. 34 H. Funke, “Univira: ein Beispiel heidnischer Geschichtsapologetik,” JAC 8/9 (1965–1966): 183–88; B. Kötting, “‘Univira’ in Inschriften,” in Romanitas et Christianitas: studia Iano Henrico Waszink A.D.: VI Kal. Nov. A. MCMLXXIII, XIII lustra complenti oblata (ed. W. den Boer, P. G. van der Nat and C. M. J. Sicking; Amsterdam: North Holland Publ. Co, 1973), 195–206; M. Lightman and W. Zeisel, “Univira: An Example of Continuity and Change in Roman Society,” CH 46 (1977): 19–32; D. Kienast, Augustus: Prinzeps und Monarch (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1999), 167. 35 There is one other occurrence of the rare verb HFHLUZQHXRPDL “ridicule,” (LSJ 589) in Josephus, which concerns Mariamme (Ant. 15.219) (Rengstorf, Concordance, 2.118). 36 See J. Sievers, “The Role of Women in the Hasmonean Dynasty,” in Josephus, the Bible, and History (ed. L. H. Feldman and G. Hata; Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989), 132–46; Mayer-Schärtel, Frauenbild, 358–74; A. Brenner, “Are We Amused? Small and Big Differences in Josephus’s Re-Presentations of Biblical Female Figures in the Jewish Antiquities I–VIII,” in Humour about Women in the Biblical

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appears once more as the bad character in this passage. The outcome of the ridiculing of Joseph was that the poor man revealed Herod’s secret order to have Mariamme killed in case he would not return from his visit to Mark Antony (Ant. 15.69). This unwise revelation ultimately led to Joseph’s own death (see below). Josephus further notes that when a rumor circulated that Herod had been executed by Antony, Alexandra took the lead once more and tried to persuade Joseph to leave the palace with her and Mariamme and to flee to the Roman legion that was stationed near Jerusalem (Ant. 15.71–73). Her motivation, as presented by Josephus, refers to the possible danger of a rebellion but also to the possibility that the Hasmonean rule over Judea could be restored by this action: For because of this (plan), she [Alexandra] said, they would, in the first place, remain 37 safer because the Romans were friendly to them, in case some disturbance would occur in connection to the palace. In the second place they had firm hopes to get everything if Antony would see Mariamme, and through him they would receive the rule again and would not lack anything that is expected for persons of royal birth. (Ant. 15.73)

This passage and its continuation suggests once more that Alexandra had the ambition to end Herod’s rule and restore the Hasmonean house as ruling family of the Judean kingdom.38 The final part of Alexandra’s motivation links up with her repeated complaint that she and others of her family were not treated properly in accordance with their royal descent by Herod.39 This motif can be connected with remarks elsewhere in Josephus that Herod himself had been born as a commoner.40 Cleopatra’s accusation of Herod before Antony, which is presented in Ant. 15.63, seems to match Alexandra’s own reasoning well: “For it was not right that Herod, who was king thanks to him [i.e., Antony]41 over a territory that in no way belonged to him [i.e., Herod], displayed such unlawfulness to the ones who were re-

Worlds (ed. A. Brenner; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), 90–106; J. W. van Henten, “The Two Dreams at the End of Book 17 of Josephus’ Antiquities,” in Internationales Josephus-Kolloquium Dortmund 2002 (ed. J. U. Kalms and F. Siegert; Münsteraner Judaistische Studien 14; Münster: Lit, 2003), 78–93. 37 7DUD[K, “disturbance,” echoes the verb H W DU DFHQ, “troubled,” in Ant. 15.71. Josephus does not specify this disturbance, but it is plausible to relate it to Herod’s enemies who were responsible for spreading the rumor about Herod’s death (Ant. 15.71). 38 See also Ant. 15.32, 42, 47 and cf. 15.35. Joseph may have been involved in this coup, which would explain his execution well (Ant. 15.87). The passage also echoes Ant. 15.26. 39 See Ant. 15.23–24, 44–45, 62. 40 Ant. 15.2, 17; 16.78; 17.192. 41 Cleverly Cleopatra emphasizes Antony’s responsibility for Herod’s appointment as king (see Ant. 15.2).

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al kings.”42 Cleopatra argues here, according to Josephus, that Herod was not entitled to be king of Judea because of his descent. She hints at an opposition between Herod and the Hasmonean family, referring indirectly to the death of Aristoboulus III. The implication of her reasoning is that Herod was not of royal descent, as Aristoboulus was, and therefore was not entitled to act against the Hasmoneans. Importantly, Ant. 15.73 once again suggests that Alexandra was willing to use her daughter’s beauty as a tool to have her own way. For the readers, Alexandra’s proposal once more anticipates a sexual relationship between Mark Antony and Mariamme, if they would connect it with Dellius’s proposal to Alexandra to send portraits of Aristoboulus and Mariamme over to Antony (Ant. 15.26–28, see above).43 Read together, both episodes imply that Alexandra apparently did not have any scruples about an adulterous relationship between Antony and her daughter. The climax of the story about Herod’s secret order and Joseph highlights the adultery motif in another way. Herod’s visit to Mark Antony was a great success according to the narrative. Thanks to Herod’s gifts (Ant. 15.75), Antony kept supporting the king (15.74–79). When Herod returned to Jerusalem, Salome and Cyprus immediately revealed to Herod (Ant. 15.80) the plan of “Alexandra and her associates (RL SHUL? WK?Q $OHFDQGUDQ)” to flee to the Romans (Ant. 15.71–73, see above). This is one of the passages in the Antiquities where we see women factions being at one another’s throats. It is also important to note that this is the first time that Salome is mentioned in Book 15 of the Antiquities. The way Salome appears here in Antiquities 15 suggests that she let no one stand in her way, not even her own husband. There is a huge gap between the first reference to Salome in Ant. 14.122 and this passage in Book 15. The gap makes one wonder what had happened between Salome and Joseph in order to induce Salome to accuse her own husband of adultery, but Josephus does not inform us about that.44 The parallel passage in War 1.441–443 is slightly less negative about Salome’s role; it reports that she confirmed Herod’s suspicion that Joseph and Mariamme must have had an affair.45 In the Antiquities narrative, Josephus emphasizes that Salome accused her own husband in order to harm Mariamme. Josephus describes the motivation for her accusation as follows: 42

Cf. Josephus’s presentation of Antony’s view after Herod’s arrival in Ant. 15.76. Note the repetition of THDVDPHQRX “if he would see,” with Antony as subject in Ant. 15.26, 73. 44 Mayer-Schärtel, Frauenbild, 195–96 suggests that Salome’s accusation of Joseph served, in fact, Herod’s political interests: Joseph had to be sacrificed in order to formulate an accusation against Mariamme. 45 According to War 1.438–439 Salome and Cyprus accused Mariamme of adultery already after the death of her brother Aristoboulus (War 1.437). 43

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Salome also gave an account against her husband Joseph, accusing46 him of continuing to see Mariamme (NDL? WR? 0DULDPPK_ VXJJHQRPHQRQ GLDWHOHL Q). And she said these things because she was angry with her [Mariamme] for a long time ([DOHSZaM H[ RXVD SUR?M DXWK?Q HN SOHLR QRM), for (Mariamme) showed a great arrogance (IURQKP DWL [UZPHQK PHL]RQL) in their hostilities and kept reproaching their low birth (WK?Q HNHLQZQ HFZQHLGL]H 47 GXVJHQHLDQ). (Ant. 15.81)

The Greek verb VXJJLJQRPDL followed by the reference to a woman is ambiguous; it can simply mean “to see/converse with a woman,” but it can also have a sexual connotation meaning “have intercourse with.”48 The continuation of the narrative ending with Joseph’s execution supports the latter meaning (Ant. 15.86–87). Thus, Salome accused Joseph and Mariamme of having committed adultery, which is a capital crime according to biblical law, with stoning as the usual punishment.49 Salome’s motive as rendered by Josephus is that she wanted to hurt Mariamme as a revenge for her arrogant behavior towards Salome and her relatives. The reproach of Salome’s family’s low birth matches Alexandra’s view (see above) and also fits in with Josephus’s characterization of Mariamme elsewhere (Ant. 15.212, 236, 238).50 Josephus’s narrative of “the Joseph affair” suggests that Salome and Mariamme hated each other, and also that Salome apparently did not stop Other references to accusations by Salome with the noun GLDEROK, “slander, (false) accusation” (Rengstorf, Concordance, 1.444) or the verb GLDEDOOZ, “accuse, reproach, speak slanderously” (Rengstorf, Concordance, 1.442) can be found in War 1.443 and Ant. 15.213. See also Ant. 15.229. 47 As a matter of fact, Antipater, Herod and Salome’s father, was one of the most prominent persons in Judea. Their mother Cyprus descended from a distinguished Nabataean family, perhaps even the royal family (Josephus, War 1.181 and Ant. 14.121; Kokkinos, Herodian Dynasty, 95–96). Mariamme and her mother Alexandra’s attitude towards Herod’s relatives makes sense in connection with the fact that Herod and Salome were born as commoners (see Ant. 15.2), while Mariamme and Alexandra descended from the Hasmonaean royal family. This point could easily serve as one of Alexandra’s arguments for her strategy of replacing Herod by a Hasmonaean ruler (15.32, 42, 62–63, 73). Salome’s criticism of Mariamme is repeated in Ant. 15.219–220. 'XVJHQHLD, “low birth,” (Rengstorf, Concordance, 1.538) occurs one other time in Josephus, and this is Ant. 15.219–220, a passage that links up with 15.81. 48 LSJ 1660 s.v. II.1 and 3; Rengstorf 1973–1983 4.70. 49 Exod 20:14; Lev 20:10; Deut 5:28; 22:20–30. Stoning as punishment: Lev 20:10; Ezek 16:38–40; cf. John 8:5. 50 Josephus suggests that both Alexandra and her daughter Mariamme acted as arrogant women who allowed themselves great liberties and freedom of speech (SDUUKVLD), which was legitimated because of their Hasmonean descent (War 1.437; cf. Ant. 15.44, 85, 210, 212, 236, 238). Mariamme’s sons Alexander and Aristoboulus displayed similar behavior according to Josephus (War 1.445–449, 468, 522; Ant. 16.192, 399), see especially War 1.468: “They, however, given their high birth, said whatever was on their mind.” Alexander’s spouse Glaphyra, the daughter of King Archelaus of Cappadocia, measures up to Alexandra and Mariamme’s haughtiness (War 1.476; Ant. 16.193). 46

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at anything in her attempt to harm Mariamme (see also §3). Her accusation did not produce the desired result: Joseph was executed, but Mariamme came off fairly well. Herod first believed Mariamme that she had remained faithful to him (Ant. 15.82–85). When she mentioned the secret order to him (15.86), he cried out and tore his hair and said that “he had clear and damning evidence of Joseph’s sexual relationship with her (SHULIDQH?M IZULRQ H[HLQ WK M WRX   ,ZVKSRX SUR?M DXWK?Q NRLQZQLDM).”51 Herod apparently almost killed Mariamme, but Josephus notes that he controlled himself out of passion for her.52 Joseph was executed immediately and Alexandra put into custody, because Herod presumed that she was involved in all of this (15.87). According to the War narrative, however, Salome’s accusation is fully successful.53 In the War Salome confirmed Herod’s own suspicion that Joseph and Mariamme had had sex with each other. Being driven mad with jealousy, as Josephus notes, Herod decided to have them both executed immediately (War 1.443–444).

C. Salome Scheming for Mariamme’s Death (Ant. 15.183–186, 202–231) In the Antiquities, a series of events reminiscent of the story about Herod’s secret order ultimately leads to Mariamme’s death. Besides Mariamme, Alexandra is again a major character in these episodes and Salome plays a crucial role in them as well; she makes the final cut that brings about Mariamme’s execution. It is a highly dramatic story; Herod’s deep love for Mariamme is emphasized time and again, and Josephus’s narrative technique enhances the drama by continuously switching focalizers, highlighting in this way the feelings and emotions of the main characters of the narrative.54 The tragic developments in this section evoke the sympathy of the readers for Mariamme, the victim. 51 The phrase NRLQZQLD can mean “association” or “fellowship,” but also refers to sexual intercourse, as is implied here as well as in Ant. 15.228, also referring to Mariamme (LSJ 970 s.v. II; Rengstorf, Concordance, 2.511–12). 52 Herod’s great love for Mariamme is also emphasized in Ant. 15.66, 68, 83, 218. In 15.218 Josephus states that Herod’s passion (HU ZM) for Mariamme was greater than any love recorded. 53 In the Antiquities a later accusation of adultery by Salome brings about Mariamme’s execution (Ant. 15.223–231). 54 Schalit, König Herodes, 132, 575–88 characterizes the style of the narrative in Ant. 15.202–239 as tragic history (577). He also argues that this section derives from Nicolaus of Damascus, who had a great liking for rhetoric and a tragic-pathetic style of writing; cf. A. Kasher, King Herod: A Persecuted Persecutor. A Case Study in Psychohistory and Psychobiography (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007), 165.

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The point of departure of the story is that Herod was once more forced to make a journey abroad in order to secure his rule, to deputize someone, and to make arrangements for protecting his wife. Josephus emphasizes that Herod gave again a secret order that Mariamme had to be killed if he did not return from his trip. This time Herod had to meet Octavian, who had triumphed over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium (31 B.C. E.). Herod put his brother Pheroras in charge of everything and accommodated his mother Cyprus, his sister, and all his children in Masada (Ant. 15.184).55 Pheroras acted as caretaker of the kingdom, as Joseph had previously done during Herod’s journey to Mark Antony (Ant. 15.65).56 Herod accommodated Mariamme and Alexandra in Alexandreion,57 for, as Josephus formulates Herod’s motivation, “it was impossible to live in the same place, considering her hostile attitude towards his sister and his mother” (15.185). This statement links up with Salome’s motivation for accusing Joseph and Mariamme as given in Ant. 15.81.58 It also anticipates Ant. 15.213, which describes how Salome and Cyprus were spreading slander about Mariamme. Once again the readers get the impression that Mariamme and Alexandra were involved in a dirty life-and-death struggle with Salome and Cyprus. According to Josephus’s presentation, Herod left the administrator59 Joseph60 and the Iturean Soemus in charge of Mari55 JHQHD plus SD VD/DSDVD can indicate the entire family (War 2.38, 476; Ant. 2.173; 6.255; 7.328; 8.309), but sometimes it refers especially to the descendants, i.e., Herod’s children (cf. War 1.473) (Rengstorf, Concordance, 1.349). 56 Herod’s parents Antipater and Cyprus had five children, four sons (Herod, Phasael, Joseph, and Pheroras) and one daughter (Salome; War 1.181 and Ant. 14.121). Pheroras was the youngest son; he was born in ca. 65 B.C .E. and died in 7 B.C. E.. See references concerning Pheroras in Josephus Schalit, Namenwörterbuch, 123 and for a survey about him Kokkinos, Herodian Dynasty, 164–75, 186–89, 210–13. 57 Alexandreion was a Hasmonean fortress (War 1.134; Ant. 13.417; 14.49 etc.), which was expanded by Herod’s brother Pheroras (War 1.308; Ant. 14.419). It was located in the Acrabetene mountains (east Samaria), overlooking the Jordan valley, about 35 kilometers north of the Dead Sea. Remains of a peristyle court from the Herodian period suggest that the fortress was also used as a palace in Herod’s days; see C. Möller and G. Schmitt, Siedlungen Palästinas nach Flavius Josephus (Beihefte zum Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients 14: Series B. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1976), 12; Y. Tsafrir, L. De Segni and Green, Tabula Imperii Romani. Iudaea. Palaestina. Eretz Israel in the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Periods: Maps and Gazetteer (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1994), 60–61; E. Netzer, The Architecture of Herod, the Great Builder (TSAJ 117; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 204–6. 58 The phrase HQ GLDIRUD WK_“considering her hostile attitude,” in Ant. 15.185 may echo NDWD? WD?M GLDIRUDM“in their hostilities,” in 15.81, which also refers to Mariamme and Salome. 59 I follow the reading WDPLDQ “administrator, steward,” attested by MSS LAMW and read by Marcus and Wikgren, Josephus, 88. The manuscripts have transmitted various related readings. Niese, Flavii Josephi opera, 365 reads WDPLDLDQ with MSS P and

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amme and Alexandra at the fortress of Alexandreion (Ant. 15.185). Soemus reappears in the narrative in connection with his task to take care of Mariamme (Ant. 15.204–205, 216, 227–229; see below).61 Joseph and Soemus had to kill Mariamme and Alexandra immediately “if they would learn anything bad had happened to him [Herod]” (Ant. 15.186). Josephus reports that Herod’s meeting with Octavian at Rhodes was extremely successful (Ant. 15.187–196) and that the king was soon counted as one of Octavian’s most loyal friends (15.199). Once again Herod’s successful rule contrasts sharply with the severe problems in his family. 62 The section of Ant.15.202–251, which focuses upon the two Hasmonean women in Herod’s family, his wife Mariamme (202–239) and his mother-in-law Alexandra (202–251), starts as follows: Yet, when he came to the kingdom that time, he found on his arrival that his family was in disorder (WHWDUDJPHQKQWK?Q RLNLDQ) and his wife Mariamme and her mother Alexandra were angry ([DOHSZaM H[ RXVDM). For they believed, as was to be suspected, that they were brought under in that estate [i.e., Alexandreion] not for their personal safety, but for being held in custody, without having any authority over anybody, neither over 63 others nor over themselves, which they were taking badly ([DOHSZaM HIHURQ). (Ant. 15.202–203)

It is easily to imagine that such an isolated situation in the fortress of Alexandreion aggravated Mariamme and Alexandra, who were probably used V. He suggests that Joseph’s surname or father’s name lies hidden behind this Greek word; see also Schalit, Namenwörterbuch, 68, 118, and Schalit, König Herodes, 2001 135, who builds on Niese’s suggestion and considers WDPLDLDQ a corruption of *DOL ODL RQ, “the Galilean.” W. Otto, “Herodes,” PW Suppl. 2.1–205, takes WDPLDLDQ to be a case of dittography and considers WDPLDQ the original reading (c. 50). I did not find other occurrences of WDPLDLDQ, while the reading WDPLDQ, “administrator, steward,” (Rengstorf, Concordance, 4.156) makes sense. It is also attested elsewhere in Josephus (Ant. 2.120, 124; cf. War 1.627; 2.135; Ant. 14.198, 219, 221). Ant. 2.120 refers to the steward of the biblical Joseph. 60 This Joseph is not mentioned elsewhere by Josephus. His name derives, perhaps, from the Joseph mentioned in Ant. 15.65, who fulfills a similar role. It is striking that Joseph is not mentioned later on together with Soemus, see, for example, Ant. 15.205, 228. Otto, “Herodes,” 50 explains Joseph’s disappearance from the story by the assumption that he did not betray Herod like Soemus and that there was nothing more to tell about him. 61 Soemus may have been the army officer who was in charge of the fortress of Alexandreion (Ant. 15.204); see A. Kasher, Jews, Idumaeans, and Ancient Arabs: Relations of the Jews in Eretz-Israel with the Nations of the Frontier and the Desert during the Hellenistic and Roman Era (332 BCE–70 CE) (TSAJ 18; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1988), 151; cf. Kokkinos, Herodian Dynasty, 114. 62 See also Ant. 15.209–210. 63 Cf. Ant. 15.24 concerning Alexandra. Josephus uses the phrase [DOHSZaM IHUZ “take (it) badly,” three times in this section (Ant. 15.203 referring to both Mariamme and Alexandra; 15.210, referring to Mariamme, and 15.223 referring to Herod).

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to a prima donna role at Herod’s court. Their complaint that they thought they were basically held in custody (Ant. 15.203) is matched by the information in the context (Ant. 15.183–186).64 Josephus suggests in Ant. 15.186 that Herod’s underlying motive for his decision to keep the women in Alexandreion was that both women had to be killed after his death in order to secure the continuation of his rule by other Herodians.65 From Herod’s perspective, Alexandra and Mariamme were apparently a threat to the continuation of Herodian rule over Judea. This view is supported by other passages in the Antiquities narrative, which suggest that Alexandra aimed several times at a restoration of Hasmonean rule (e.g., Ant. 15.166, 183; cf. 15.206).66 Josephus depicts how Mariamme and her mother worked on winning Soemus over “in a rather slick way (OLSDUHVWHURQ),67 with words as well as gifts” (Ant. 15.205). Soemus yielded, and the motivation for doing that hints, in Josephus’s presentation, at a change to Hasmonean rule (15.205– 207). Like Joseph before him Soemus revealed Herod’s secret order to kill Mariamme as well as Alexandra (15.205). When Herod returned from his journey to Octavian (15.209–210), Mariamme openly confronted her husband with his secret command: When he reported to her about his success, she did not happen to be glad but rather took 68 it badly ([DOHSZaM IHUHLQ), nor could she conceal her feelings. On the contrary, she 69 groaned in response to his embrace out of disdain (DGRFLDM) and her superior nobility (HXJ HQHLDM). (Ant. 15.210)

64

That Herod had other reasons for keeping both women at a safe place separate from the others is also suggested by Ant. 15.185, which states that Herod had the women moved over to Alexandreion “under the pretext of honoring them (SURIDV HLWLPK M).” 65 According to 15.186, the instructions for Joseph and Soemus were “to kill both women immediately if they would learn anything bad had happened to him, and to do everything possible to secure the kingdom for his sons together with his brother Pheroras.” 66 Further discussion in Otto, “Herodes,” 50–51; Schalit, König Herodes, 133–35. Günther, Herodes, 113 argues that Mariamme and Alexandra’s stay at Alexandreion was meant as a punishment. Herod’s jealousy concerning Mariamme is not mentioned in Ant. 15.202–203 (cf. Ant. 15.66), but Schalit, König Herodes, 133–34 thinks it was an important motive during this episode as well. 67 Cf. OLSDUZaM in Ant. 15.31, also concerning Mariamme (above). The verb HN THUDSHXZ, “court someone,” occurs one other time in Josephus, referring to the Spartan Eurycles (Ant. 16.303, Rengstorf, Concordance, 2.54). 68 This phrase repeats HSLNUX\DPHQ K WRX  SDTRXM, “concealing (her) feelings,” in Ant. 15.208. 69 Josephus first notes that Mariamme held Herod in contempt because of his secret instruction, and subsequently refers to her feelings of superiority because of her royal descent. Most manuscripts read DGRFLDM “disdain, disgrace” (Niese, Flavii Josephi opera, 370; Rengstorf, Concordance, 1.26), but MS F reads HXGRFLDM “renown, es-

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Josephus next switches to Herod’s feelings and describes how the king was deeply grieved about his wife’s hatred, but also how he was not capable of punishing her. Herod was utterly confused, torn between extreme feelings of passion and the wish to punish Mariamme’s arrogant and unloving behavior (15.211–212; see also 15.214, 222–223). Salome and Cyprus, however, took advantage of this situation. They launched another slanderous campaign, which resulted in Mariamme’s downfall and execution. Three subsequent actions by Salome, the first time together with her mother Cyprus, brought Mariamme down (15.213, 223–226, 231). In this way, Josephus’s narrative suggests that Salome was the evil genius who was behind Mariamme’s death. Salome and Cyprus tried to provoke Herod and kept talking slanderous things about Mariamme in order to incite his hatred and jealousy (Ant. 15.213). Ant. 15.221 notes that this slander went on for a year, but Mariamme for her part reviled Salome and Cyprus and scorned their low birth.70 The jealousy motif in Ant. 15.213 reminds the readers of “the Joseph affair” and can easily be associated with accusations of adultery.71 The reference to Herod’s hatred (PL VRM) of Mariamme suggests that the relationship between Mariamme and him was deteriorating, as the continuation of the narrative shows more and more clearly.72 Nevertheless, Mariamme still managed to have Soemus appointed governor of a district by Herod (15.216–217). Interestingly, in the section according to which Salome and Cyprus were undermining Mariamme’s position by feeding Herod’s suspicion of Mariamme’s unfaithfulness with their slander, Josephus drops a narrative comment that states that Mariamme had remained faithful to Herod (15.219).73 teem,” which is in my opinion a case of homoioarkton (HX-, cf. the next noun: HXJHQHLDM). The reading DFLDM“dignity,” attested by MS M and E (Niese, Flavii Josephi opera, 370) is also secondary (-GR- erased). The noun DGRFLD occurs elsewhere in Josephus (Ant. 5.360; 15.36; 16.321; 18.47) and DGRFLDMis the lectio difficilior. Differently: Schalit, König Herodes, 576. 70 See above with n. 47. 71 Salome’s accusation of Joseph of having committed adultery with Mariamme (Ant. 15.81–82) triggered Herod’s jealousy. =KORWXSLD “jealousy,” (Rengstorf, Concordance, 2.274) also occurs in Ant. 15.82. See also the accusation of Salome and Cyprus against Mariamme in War 1.438. 72 See also Ant. 15.212. 73 3LVWK, “faithful,” in Ant. 15.219 probably has a sexual connotation (MayerSchärtel, Frauenbild, 230–31). This would imply that Salome’s accusations about Mariamme’s adulterous behavior were unwarranted. An interesting parallel, Alexander’s accusation of his (former) wife Glaphyra in a dream-appearance, supports a sexual interpretation of SLVWK here. Alexander accuses Glaphyra of unfaithfulness to him (referring to women who cannot be trusted, DSLVWD) by having entered into new relationships with men (Ant. 17.352).

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Josephus tells that Salome cooked up a wicked scheme that would make Mariamme’s assumed crimes obvious. She approached Herod’s cup-bearer and persuaded him to bring Herod a love potion that supposedly was prepared by Mariamme. The cup-bearer had to point out that he did not know the power of the potion, which could easily be taken as a hint that the potion was actually a poison (Ant. 15.223–225). Salome had the man go to Herod after Mariamme had refused to lie down with the king and had accused him of murdering her father and brother, which Herod took badly (15.223). Salome’s plan worked very well: Herod became even more angry and put Mariamme’s most faithful eunuch to torture. The eunuch said that he did not know anything about the potion, but he did confirm that Mariamme had become more hostile towards Herod “because of the stories that Soemus told her” (15.227). This statement led Herod to the conclusion that Soemus had become too intimate with Mariamme:74 The king cried out aloud and said that Soemus, who was at least at all other times most faithful to him and the monarchy, would never have utterly betrayed his orders if he had not advanced too far in his contact with Mariamme (SHUDLWHUZSURHOKOXTHLWK MSUR?M WK?Q0DULDPPKQNRLQZQLDM). (Ant. 15.228).

The word NRLQZQLD (“fellowship,” “contact”) sometimes presupposes a sexual relationship.75 The word also occurs in the episode about Joseph and Mariamme (Ant. 15.87), where the sexual connotation is obvious because of Salome’s accusation of Joseph’s adultery with Mariamme (15.81). In Ant. 15.228 the sexual connotation is also highly plausible because of the context. Herod had Soemus immediately executed and decided to give Mariamme a trial (15.229). Josephus elsewhere suggests that such a trial was mostly a means to execute someone whom Herod wanted to eliminate legitimately.76 Here, Josephus notes that Herod zealously pursued Mariamme’s accusation and came to the decision that she had to be executed, being too angry to control himself (15.229), but also that he changed his mind after the court had advised him to execute Mariamme and considered transferring her to one of his fortresses (15.230).77 At this stage of the narrative Josephus writes:

74

Cf. War 1.443, where Herod draws a similar conclusion concerning Joseph. Rengstorf, Concordance, 2.511–12. 76 See Ant. 15.173 about the execution of Hyrcanus II, War 1.538 about the trial of his sons Aristoboulus and Alexander in Beiruth (cf. Ant. 16.356, 361), and War 1.654; Ant. 17.160–164 about the persons responsible for the demolition of the golden eagle on the Temple. 77 Josephus adds that some members of the court supported this proposal. 75

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Salome and her female associates (WDL MSHUL?WK?Q6DOZPKQ)” zealously endeavored to 79 get the poor woman out of the way and more and more prevailed upon the king, advising him to be on his guard against disturbances of the masses if she happened to remain alive. So Mariamme was led to her execution in this way. (Ant. 15.231)

Apparently, there was a discussion at Mariamme’s trial, during which Salome and her associates prevailed and ultimately persuaded Herod that Mariamme had to be executed. Their motive, the danger of political disturbances if Mariamme would stay alive, has not been mentioned explicitly before in connection with Mariamme. However, such a danger is obvious in connection with what Josephus writes about other members of the Hasmonean family, especially Alexandra and her son Aristoboulus III.80 Josephus seems to hint at Salome’s faction’s fear that Mariamme’s detention would arouse the protest of many Judeans because she was a member of the Hasmonean house. Readers may also conclude on the basis of other information about Salome in the Antiquities that she aimed at the execution of Mariamme as part of a strategy to eliminate all remaining members of the Hasmonean family.81 The final note in 15.231 (“So Mariamme was led to her execution in this way”) suggests that the narrative about Mariamme’s death comes to a conclusion here, but, as a matter of fact, Josephus continues with a diptych (15.232–239) in which he contrasts Alexandra’s histrionic attempt to save herself at the expense of her daughter with a description of Mariamme’s calm and dignified death and a short characterization of the queen. MSS LAMW read WRL M instead of WDL M, which implies that Salome’s associates were males. Niese, Flavii Josephi opera, 373 considers this reading as being probably right, but the reading WDL Mshould be preferred as the lectio difficilior. A correction from WDL M into WRL M is logical, but the alternative change is not, which implies that WDL M is the more original reading. Josephus also hints at female factions elsewhere, which means that the female article does make sense here. 79 Here K DQTUZSRM“the woman,” probably expresses pity, like the male equivalent RDQTUZSRM sometimes does (“the poor fellow”); see Ant. 15.227 and cf. 18.112; 19.34. 80 See above and concerning Aristoboulus III Herod’s excuse for not sending the young man to Antony as described in Ant. 15.30: “So he wrote in reply that in the event that the young man would merely leave the country, everything would become filled with war and disorder (DSDQWDSROHPRXNDL? WDUD[K MDQ DSOKVTKVHWDL), because the Jews had hoped for a change of government and a new regime with a different king.” T. Ilan, Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Palestine: An Inquiry into Image and Status (TSAJ 44; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995), 175; also Integrating Women, 115, argues that Herod decided to have Mariamme executed because he considered her a threat to his rule but also because there was the precedent of Salome Alexandra as a female ruler from the Hasmonean house. 81 Günther, Herodes, 115 argues that the political aspect of Mariamme’s downfall tends to be overlooked because of Josephus’s emphasis on the tragic end of Herod’s relationship with Mariamme. 78

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D. Conclusion My discussion of the women at King Herod’s court in the first part of Josephus’s Antiquities 15 has a narratological focus and deals, therefore, mainly with Josephus’s presentation of these women. The women discussed all belonged to Herod’s family. In the Antiquities Josephus emphasizes time and again that the events within Herod’s family were full of conflicts and disasters, which strongly contrasts with the obvious success of the king’s rule in this part of the narrative. The Herod narrative in the Antiquities refers to several competing factions of women. In the sections discussed there is a faction from Herod’s own family with Salome and Cyprus as leaders, as well as a Hasmonean faction with Mariamme and Alexandra as main protagonists.82 There are two important narrative threads in Antiquities 15 concerning these women. Salome is presented as the woman who, supported by her mother, wickedly and persistently plans the downfall of Mariamme. The section that leads up to Mariamme’s execution suggests, contrary to the depiction in the War, that Herod several times became very angry with Mariamme, because of her frankness and arrogant behavior. Nevertheless, Herod apparently could not bring himself to have Mariamme killed. Salome and Cyprus prepared the queen’s fall by their slander about adultery, Salome set the trap with the cup-bearer, and Salome and her associates made the final cut when Herod still wanted to postpone Mariamme’s execution. Salome let no one stand in her way, not even her own husband Joseph, who was executed because of her accusation. Alexandra is the other evil female character in this section. Time and again, she undertook actions that undermined Herod’s rule and smacked of treason and rebellion. She is presented as an extremely egocentric person, who had no scruples in using her own daughter’s beauty for realizing her plans to restore Hasmonean rule, although this could ultimately have led to Mark Antony having sex with Mariamme. Josephus’s narrative about the women is filled with allusions to sex and adultery anyway. The extremely negative portrayals of Salome and Alexandra have the effect on the readers that Herod’s role turns out relatively well. It is difficult, for example, to blame Herod for the death of Mariamme if the readers see Salome working so consistently at bringing the queen down. Herod becomes a tragic character in this way. He was madly in love with Mariamme, but lost her tragically, as a result of Mariamme’s

82

There were definitely more factions in the narrative; subsequent sections focus on Doris with her son Antipater as another important faction (Ant. 16.61–77, 79, 85, 191; 17.7–9, 35, 52, 117, 121).

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own arrogant behavior, but mainly because of the slander and wicked manipulations of Herod’s sister and his mother. How plausible is all of this? The picture of several competing women factions at Herod’s court seems plausible enough, but the two factions that are important in this part of the Antiquities appear far less prominently in the parallel narrative of the War. Cyprus, Salome’s mother, is only mentioned once by name in the War in a reference to Antipater’s family (War 1.181). Salome’s involvement in Mariamme’s death is partly confirmed by the War, but the War is less negative about her in this connection. Alexandra is entirely absent in the War. There is a serious problem with her long list of wicked and treacherous deeds in the Antiquities: why did Herod wait so long to execute Alexandra (Ant. 15.251) if she had really committed so many things that undermined his rule? There is indirect proof that one of her wicked deeds, sending the portraits of her children over to Antony, actually did not happen.83 The War narrative does mention a portrait of Mariamme, but in a very different way. War 1.438–439 reports that Herod’s mother and sister accused Mariamme of adultery by fabricating, among other things, the stories that she had sent her portrait to Antony in Egypt. In short, it seems likely that Josephus has expanded the role of women factions and also magnified the ruthlessness of Salome and the wickedness of Alexandra. The implication of this narrative strategy seems to be that if one focuses upon the chain of events, Herod appears in a rather favorable light compared to Salome and Alexandra. This reading of the Antiquities implies that Salome had to be blamed for Mariamme’s death much more than Herod himself, which raises the question whether Josephus himself left Salome (and Alexandra) to carry the can, or he derived this interpretation from a source. The latter assumption seems plausible, because by putting the blame on the women instead of Herod, Josephus may have done, at least to a certain extent, what he blames Nicolaus of Damascus for elsewhere. In one of Josephus’s references to Nicolaus he states: “Indeed, he even wants to elevate Mariamme and her sons’ death, so savagely arranged by the king, to dignity.” (Ant. 16.185).84

83 Schalit, König Herodes, 104–7 argues that the Antiquities’s version of the “portrait story” is highly improbable. 84 Several scholars argue that Nicolaus was a major source for this part of the Antiquities, e.g., Huzar, Mark Antony, 244; Schalit, König Herodes, 567–71; Ilan, Integrating Women, 109–11.

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Works Cited Braund, D. C. Rome and the Friendly King: The Character of the Client Kingship. London: Croom Helm, 1984. Brenner, A. “Are we Amused? Small and Big Differences in Josephus’ Re-Presentations of Biblical Female Figures in the Jewish Antiquities I–VIII.” Pages 90–106 in Humour about Women in the Biblical Worlds. Edited by A. Brenner; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003. Buchheim, H. Die Orientpolitik des Triumvirn M. Antonius: Ihre Voraussetzungen, Entwicklung und Zusammenhang mit den politischen Ereignissen in Italien. AHAW Phil.-hist. Klasse 1960 no. 3. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1960. de Jong, I. J. F., R. Nünlist, and A. Bowie, eds. Narrators, Narratees and Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature. Leiden: Brill, 2004. de Jong, I. J. F. and R. Nünlist, eds., Time in Ancient Greek Literature. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Dover, K. J. Greek Homosexuality. London: Duckworth, 1978. Feldman, L. H. “Josephus’ Portrait of Balaam.” SPhilo 5 (1993): 48–83. Funke, H. “Univira: ein Beispiel heidnischer Geschichtsapologetik.” JAC 8/9 (1965– 1966): 183–88. Günther, L.-M. Herodes der Grosse. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2005. Hachlili, R. Jewish Funerary Customs, Practices and Rites in the Second Temple Period. JSJSup 94, 1. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Huzar, E. G. Mark Antony: A Biography. London: Croom Helm, 1978. Ilan, T. Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Palestine: An Inquiry into Image and Status. TSAJ 44; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995. –. Integrating Women into Second Temple History. TSAJ 76. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999. Kasher, A. Jews, Idumaeans, and Ancient Arabs: Relations of the Jews in Eretz-Israel with the Nations of the Frontier and the Desert during the Hellenistic and Roman Era (332 BCE–70 CE). TSAJ 18. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1988. –. King Herod: A Persecuted Persecutor. A Case Study in Psychohistory and Psychobiography. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007. Kienast, D. Augustus: Prinzeps und Monarch. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1999. Kokkinos, N. The Herodian Dynasty: Origins, Role in Society and Eclipse. JSP Suppl 30. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998. Kötting, B. “‘Univira’ in Inschriften.” Pages 195–206 in Romanitas et Christianitas: studia Iano Henrico Waszink A.D.: VI Kal. Nov. A. MCMLXXIII, XIII lustra complenti oblate. Edited by W. den Boer, P. G. van der Nat and C. M. J. Sicking. Amsterdam: North Holland Publ. Co, 1973. Kraemer, D. The Meanings of Death in Rabbinic Judaism. London: Routledge, 2000. Langlands, R. Sexual Morality in Ancient Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Lightman, M. and W. Zeisel. “Univira: An Example of Continuity and Change in Roman Society.” Church History 46 (1977): 19–32. Marcus, R. and A. Wikgren, Josephus. VIII Jewish Antiquities, Books XV–XVII. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass./London: Harvard University Press/ Heinemann, 1963.

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Mayer-Schärtel, B. Das Frauenbild des Josephus: Eine sozialgeschichtliche und kulturanthropologische Untersuchung. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1995. Möller, C. and G. Schmitt. Siedlungen Palästinas nach Flavius Josephus. Beihefte zum Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients 14: Series B. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1976. Netzer, E. The Architecture of Herod, the Great Builder. TSAJ 117. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006. Niese, B. Flavii Josephi opera edidit et apparatu critico instruxit. 7 vols. Berlin: Weidmann, 1885–95. Rengstorf, K. H. A Complete Concordance to Flavius Josephus. 4 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1973–1983. Schalit, A. A Complete Concordance to Flavius Josephus. Suppl. 1. Namenwörterbuch zu Flavius Josephus. Edited by Karl Heinrich Rengstorf; Leiden: Brill, 1968. –. König Herodes: der Mann und sein Werk. 2d ed.; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2001. Schürer, E. The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Christ (175 B.C.–A.D. 135). A New English Version. Rev. and edited by Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar, Martin Goodman and Matthew Black. 3 vols. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1973–1987. Sievers, J. “The Role of Women in the Hasmonean Dynasty.” Pages 132–46 in Josephus, the Bible, and History. Edited by L. H. Feldman and G. Hata; Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989. Tsafrir, Y., L. De Segni and Green. Tabula Imperii Romani. Iudaea. Palaestina. Eretz Israel in the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Periods: Maps and Gazetteer. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1994. van Henten, J. W. “The Two Dreams at the End of Book 17 of Josephus’ Antiquities.” Pages 78–93 in Internationales Josephus-Kolloquium Dortmund 2002. Edited by J. U. Kalms and F. Siegert. Münsteraner Judaistische Studien 14. Münster: Lit, 2003. –. “Cleopatra in Josephus: From Herod’s Rival to the Wise Ruler’s Opposite.” Pages 113–32 in The Wisdom of Egypt: Jewish, Early Christian, and Gnostic Essays in Honour of Gerard P. Luttikhuizen. Edited by A. Hilhorst and G. H. van Kooten; AGJU 59; Leiden: Brill, 2005. –. “The Panegyris in Jerusalem: Responses to Herod’s Initiative (Josephus, Antiquities 15.268–291).” Pages 151–73 in Empsychoi Logoi – Religious Innovations in Antiquity: Studies in Honour of Pieter Willem van der Horst. Edited by A. Houtman, A. de Jong, and M. Misset-van de Weg. AGJU 73. Leiden: Brill, 2008. White, J. L. Light from Ancient Letters. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986.

To Bear or Not to Bear The Argument for Abstinence in the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians ROBERT DORAN

The sayings of the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians are found scattered in the third book of the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria.1 The pioneering work done on the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians, synthesized by Wilhelm Schneemelcher,2 has shown the number and extent of the fragments that can securely be assigned to this Gospel. Building on this effort, Silke Petersen correctly ordered the four fragments, although she chose different variants for the first question of Salome and Jesus’s answer.3 (1) Jesus said: “I have come to bring female works to an end.” (2) Salome said: “How long will men die?” Jesus said: “As long as women give birth.” (3) Salome said: “I have done well then in not bearing a child?” Jesus said: “Eat every plant, but do not eat one that has bitterness.” (4) Salome said: “[When will this happen?]” Jesus said: “When you trample the shameful garment, And when the two become one, And the male and the female Neither male nor female.”

A. The Order of the Sayings Saying 3 is connected to Saying 2 both through the connecting particle RX@Q and by an explicit statement of Clement. In introducing Saying 3, he objects to those who quote Saying 2 but not what comes after: But why do those, who [prefer] anything rather than follow the genuine gospel, not go on to quote the words after those spoken by Salome?” (Strom. 3.66.1) 1

Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 3.45.3; 3.63.1–2; 3.64.1; 3.66.1–2. Wilhelm Schneemelcher, “The Gospel of the Egyptians,” in NTApocrypha (trans. R. McL.Wilson; Westminster/John Knox: Louisville, 1991), 1:209–15. 3 Silke Petersen, “Zerstört die Werke der Weiblichkeit!” Maria Magdalena, Salome und andere Jüngerinnen Jesu in christlich-gnostischen Schriften (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 208–9. 2

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Saying 2 also follows on Saying 1. This connection is often missed because of the ambivalence surrounding the translation of ORJRM in the introductory phrase (Strom 3.64.1). In R. McL. Wilson’s translation of Wilhlem Schneemelcher, followed by Ron Cameron,4 ORJ RM is taken to mean Jesus, the Word of God: “Since then the Word has alluded to the consummation, Salome saith rightly.” However, there is no reason why ORJRM in this context should refer to the Word of God. Henry Chadwick translated in this way: “It is probably therefore with reference to the consummation that Salome says.”5 The verb PKQXZ means “to hint at, to intimate” and is often used to show a deeper meaning behind an expression, For example, at Strom. 7.104.6, Clement argues that the ex-pression (IZQK) of the apostle Paul hints at a deeper meaning. I would translate the introductory saying: “Whence, as the saying reasonably alludes to an ending, Salome says.” Clement is showing how Saying 2 was connected to Saying 1. As for the place of Saying 4, Clement says that Julius Cassianus introduced the saying with a phrase: “When Salome asked when what she had asked about would be known.” The verb JLQZVNZ is used in an eschatological setting in the discourse of Jesus over the destruction of the temple (Matt 24:32, 33, 39, 43, 50) and it seems to have the same resonance here. When will the end of the world as we know it, i.e., no more death, be known? Saying 4 thus coheres with the previous fragments in its concern about the end time.

B. The Rhetoric of the Dialogue Saying 1 The dialogue begins with “I have come to bring female works to an end,”6 The form is one well known in the Gospel tradition: “I have come + infinitive.” Luke 12:48: “I have come to throw fire on the earth”; Matt 10:34– 35: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth: I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” See also Mark 10:45||Matt 20:28; Mark 2:17||Luke 5:32. That this was an easy form to model a saying on can be seen in the addition in some manuscripts at Luke 9:56: “For the Son of Man did not come to destroy but to save the souls of humans.” The closest 4 Schneemelcher, NT Apocrypha, 1:210; Ron Cameron, The Other Gospels: NonCanonical Gospel Texts (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1982), 51. 5 In John Ernest, Leonard Oulton and Henry Chadwick, Alexandrian Christianity (London: SCM, 1954), 70. 6 The substantivized adjective should not be taken as a personification, as Theodotus suggests (Exc. Ex Theod. 67.4), but as a genitive of quality, as in Luke 16:8 (“the unjust steward”).

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parallel is that at Matt 5:17: “Do not think that I have come to bring to an end (K@OTRQ NDWDOX VDL) the law or the prophets; I have not come to destroy but to fulfill.” In the Gospel of the Egyptians, Jesus announces his mission: “I have come to bring female works to an end (K@OTRQ NDWD OX VDL).” What are “female works”? If one recalls Proverbs 31, the strong woman there manages the household. Female works are household chores. 7 But female works could also refer to base and ignoble actions that are often called womanish. When the tyrant Aristotimus was on the point of killing Megisto for her brave words, he was counseled not to do so as such an action (WR? HUJRQ) was ignoble and womanish (DJHQQH?M    NDL? JXQDLNZ GHM [Plutarch, Mor. 252 D–E]). One could therefore use this saying about bringing female actions to an end in the context of acting nobly.8 Given that Saying 2 speaks of death and dying, one might also recall the prominent role of women in rituals of mourning and lamentation. The same saying is found within a complex in Dial. Sav. III. 5. 144.14– 24. In this passage surfaces the problem for early Christians of how to interpret the saying. The dialogue begins with a question of Judas: “When we pray, how should we pray?” Jesus’s answer is “Pray in the place where there is no woman.” This appears to be a self-contained unit – Judas poses a question and Jesus answers it. Taken at face value, Jesus’s answer could suggest a liturgical rubric whereby men and women are to pray in separate areas as, for example, segregating men and women in churches.9 7 Note what Eurykleia (Od. 22.422–423) says about the female servants: W’ HUJD GLGDFDPHQHUJD]HVTDLHLULD WHFDLQHLQNDL? GRXORVXQKQDQH[HVTDL (“we have taught to do the works, to card wool and to bear slavery”). At Od. 20.72, Athena is said to have taught the daughters of Pandareus HUJD. . . NOXWD (skillful works). 8 Recall what Shakespeare has Cleopatra say just before her death: “My resolution’s placed, and I have nothing of woman in me: now from head to foot I am marbleconstant.” (Antony and Cleopatra 5.2.238–240). 9 The ascetics of the fourth century would insist on a more distant separation. Aphrahat strongly condemned the cohabitation of men and women ihidaye: “Any man, a bar qyama, or a consecrated holy one who loves ihidayuta, but wants a woman, a bat qyama like himself, to live with him, it were better for him to take a woman openly and not be captivated in lust. And a woman too, it is also fitting for her, if she cannot separate from the man, the ihidaya, to belong to the man openly.” [Demonstration 6. For the text, see Parisot Aphraatis Demonstrationes 1.260, and the excellent discussion in Sidney H. Griffith, “Asceticism in the Church of Syria: The Hermeneutics of Early Syrian Monasticism,” in Asceticism (ed. Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis eds.; New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 220–45]. When Abba Sisoes was counseled by a younger monk, “Father, you are growing old. Let us now move back nearer to inhabited places,” his reply was, “Let us go to a place where there are no women (RS RXRXNHQLJXQK).” His disciple replied, “Where is there a place where there are no women except in the desert?” So the old man replied, “Take me to the desert” (PG 65.392; Benedicta Ward, The Desert Christian: Sayings of the Desert

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But in The Dialogue of the Savior a series of interpretative comments on this saying follow. First, Matthew interprets the answer of the Lord by the saying found in The Greek Gospel of the Egyptians, where the Coptic is a translation of the Greek but in the imperative: “Bring the female works to an end (!#$ [] $ ##" ).”10 But Matthew feels that this interpretative saying itself needs to be explained, namely “there is not another way of bringing forth, but that they will cease indeed giving birth.” Female works thus signify child-bearing, the woman is primarily a baby-producer, and the command to end such works explained as a command to stop becoming pregnant. But even Matthew’s interpretation requires further clarification according to Mary, as she further interprets the meaning of NDWDOXZ “bring to an end.” She says, “They will never be wiped out.” Mary insists that, though women might stop giving birth, women will not be done away with. Or is this a question that Mary poses? The text has been interpreted and translated both ways.11 Jesus then reenters the discussion, but at this point the manuscript has suffered damage, and the further continuation is lost. The discussion between Matthew and Mary places the saying in the context of sexual renunciation. Mary appears to insist that women will remain, only they will no longer give birth. To bring the works of femaleness to an end is to stop having sex. Clement of Alexandria would approve of this interpretation of the saying insofar as it does not disparage the present arrangement of the world (Clement Strom. 3.63.2–4). The imperative form of the saying used here makes it into a command for the disciples to follow: they have to bring female works to an end, i.e., stop child-bearing. Such a command is very different from the form used in the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians, where Jesus announces his own mission: “I have come to bring female works to an end.”12 But what is this mission? Is Jesus some early Betty Friedan, calling women to throw off the chains of household chores, to become a wanderer Fathers. The Alphabetical Collection [New York: MacMillan, 1975], Sisoes 3). John of Lycopolis, who had not seen a woman for forty years, said, “It is not in our interest to have our dwellings near inhabited places, or to associate with women” (Norman Russell, The Lives of the Desert Fathers [Oxford: Mowbrat, 1980], 36). For John, this avoidance of women was linked to their ability to distract. 10 The Coptic appears to be a translation of the Greek saying. As for the term # " : “# is used to form feminine abstract nouns from adjectives or other nouns.” [Thomas O. Lambdin, Introduction to Sahidic Coptic (Macon, GA: Mercer University, 1983), 117, #27.2] It would thus seem to be a translation of the sub-stantivized adjective WK MTKOHLDM. 11 Stephen Emmel (The Coptic Gnostic Library [Leiden: Brill, 1984]) translates it as a statement, while Ron Cameron (The Other Gospels, 47) construes it as a question. 12 See the appendix for further information on this point.

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like himself, as in Matt 8:20? Or is he calling on people not to be cowardly? Or is it to stop child-bearing? Or their role of lament at death rituals? Perhaps closer attention to the relationship of this saying to the other materials from the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians will help resolve the ambiguity. Saying 2 In response to this mission to end female works, a woman, Salome, is described as posing a question. Rather than focusing on “female” she asks about the verb “bring to an end” NDWDOXZ, and appears to steer the discussion to women’s roles in mourning rituals. The connection between dying and the verb NDWDOXZ is found in 2 Cor 5:1: “If the earthly tent we live in is destroyed.” Saying 2 is found in three formulations: 1. Strom. 3.64.1: How long will men die? As long as women give birth. 2. Strom. 3.45.3: How long will Death be potent? As long as you women give birth. 3. Exc. ex Theod. 67: Up to that point of time is death, as long as women give birth.

There is a slight variation between formulations 2 and 3: formulation 2 is in a dialogue form with the first part spoken by Salome, whereas formulation 3 is spoken completely by Jesus. However, formulation 2 has been fitted to its context. Clement states that the Encratites “teach that one must not reject marriage and begetting of children, and should not bring other unfortunates in their place to live in the world, nor give sustenance to Death (PKGH? HSL[RUKJHL QWZ_ TDQDWZ_ WURIKQ)” (Strom. 3.45.1). Such a mythological view of Death as eating humans draws on a long tradition, found in the ancient Baal and Anat cycle, in Isaiah and in Proverbs,13 and in the battle between Jesus and Death in 1 Cor 15:26. Since LV[XZ is a verb that takes on the nuances of its context, here it would have the meaning of the power/potency of the cosmic force, Death. This myth-ological setting of the saying in formulation 2 appears linked to that of Theodotus. Clement’s rejection of the Encratitic interpretation [Strom. 3.45.3: “not as if life were evil (RX[ZMNDNRX WRX ELRXRQWRM)”] resonates with that of Theodotus: “By this saying, the Savior is not speaking evil (NDNL]ZQ) of generation.” One suspects that an Encratitic formulation was rejected by Theodotus in the context of his mythological system, and that, in formulation 2, he was followed in this by Clement. Formulation 1 of Saying 2 has no personification of Death, just as there is no personification, as in Theodotus, of the genitive of the previous saying WK MTKOHLDM into the Woman from on high K DQZJXQK (Exc. ex Theod. 67.1). Taken in itself, the question-and-answer could be an example of 13 See the translation in M. D. Coogan, Stories from Ancient Canaan (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978), 107; cf. Isa 5:14; Prov 1:12; 27:29; 30:15–16.

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a witty non-response, similar to the answer Jesus gave about whether to pay taxes or not (Mark 12:13–17). Jesus’s answer here does not really answer the eschatological question Salome posed but deftly avoids it. There appears to be a play on words: DQTUZSRL can have the general meaning “humans” but also the restricted meaning of “men.” Where Salome asks about the fate of humans, Jesus places all the blame on women. The saying thus advances the interpretation of “female works” by classifying them as procreation. Silke Petersen chose formulation 2 in her reconstruction of the text of the Gospel.14 Her reasons were that formulation 2 is close to that of formulation 3 and so is evidenced twice, and that formulation 1 was formulated to allow for an excursus over the meaning of DQTUZSRM However, Saying 3 follows closely on formulation 1 of Saying 2 in Clement’s work where Saying 1 occurs at 3.63.2, formulation 1 of Saying 2 at 3.64.1, and Saying 3 at 3.66.2. Saying 1 is explicitly said to be in the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians, and the closeness of the citation would suggest that Clement is working from this Gospel. On the other hand, formulations 2 and 3 of Saying 2 are not explicitly said to be from this Gospel. I suggest, therefore, that formulation 1 of Saying 2 is more likely to reflect the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians. However, whatever one chooses, the saying picks up on the theme of end and associates it with death, to which Jesus responds with a reference to procreation. The saying thus advances the interpretation of “female works” by classifying them as procreation. Saying 3 This emphasis is continued in the following saying: Salome has done well not to procreate. Jesus’s answer resonates with the command of God to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.15 That the eating in the Eden story involved bitterness is found in Ap.John III.1.21.17–35: And the archons took him and placed him in paradise. And they said to him, “Eat, that is, at leisure,” for their luxury is bitter and their beauty is depraved. And their luxury is deception and their trees are godlessness and their fruit is deadly poison and their promise is death. And the tree of their life they had placed in the middle of paradise. And I shall teach you what is the mystery of their life, which is the plan they made together, which is the likeness of their spirit. The root of this tree is bitter and its branches are

14

Petersen, “Zerstört die Werke,” 209. Gen 2:16–17: “You may freely eat of every tree in the garden, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” See also Gen 3:1–3, 5–6, 14, 17–18. The use of %RWDQ KQ rather than FXORQ may refer to Gen 1:11–12:29. 15

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death, its shadow is hate and deception is in its leaves, and its blossom is the ointment of evil, and its fruit is death and desire its seed, and it sprouts in darkness. 16

Through this echoing of Eden, Salome should see herself in the same condition as Adam and Eve confronting the tree. For her, the tree represents sexual procreation and is to be avoided. Saying 4 Thanks to the similarity to 2 Clem. 12:2 and Gos. Thom. ##22, 37, as well as Gal 3:28, the content of this saying has been thoroughly explored and there is no need here to go into detail.17 Suffice it to say that echoes of Genesis have been found – Gen 2:25: “the two were naked and were not ashamed (K_V[XQRQWR)”; 3:21: “the Lord made for Adam and Eve garments of skin and clothed (HQHGXVHQ) them”; 2:24: when a man cleaves to his wife, “the two will be one flesh”; 1:27: “God made the human, he made him according to the image of God, male and female he made them” – and well noted. The sense of gender separation leading to death is clear in Gospel of Philip: In the days when Eve was [in] Adam, death did not exist. When she was separated from him, death came into existence. If he [reenters] and takes it unto himself death will not exist. (Gos.Phil. II. 3. 68.24–26) If the female had not separated from the male, she and the male would not die. That being’s separation became the source of death. The anointed (Christ) came to rectify the separation that had been present from the beginning and join the two (components); and to give life unto those who had died by separation and join them together. 18

So the content of the saying connects again ending with beginning. The discussion about the specific formulation of the saying in the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians has tended to center around its “late” character, as the Gospel of Thomas has one saying about treading on garments and another, 16

See also Gos.Phil. II.3.71.22–30. In the Apoc.Mos. 24:2, the punishment of Adam is described as “be afflicted with bitterness and not taste sweetness.” 17 See Jonathan Z. Smith, “The Garments of Shame,” HR (1988): 217–38; Wayne A. Meeks, “The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity,” HR (1974): 165–208; Karl Donfried, The Setting of Second Clement in Early Christianity (Leiden: Brill, 1974); Sebastian Brock, “Clothing Metaphors as a Means of Theological Expression in Syriac Tradition,” in Typus, Symbol, Allegorie bei den östlichen Vätern und ihren Parallelen im Mittelalter (ed. Margot Schmidt; Eichstätter Beiträge 4; Regensburg: Pustet, 1981), 15–26; Tjitze Baarda, “2 Clement 12 and the Sayings of Jesus,” BETL 59 (1982): 529–56; Dennis Ronald MacDonald, There Is No Male and Female: The Fate of a Dominical Saying in Paul and Gnosticism (HDR 20; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987); Terrence Callan, “The Saying of Jesus in Gos. Thom 22/2Clem.12/ Gos.Eg.5,” JRelS 16 (1990): 46–64. 18 Gos.Phil. II. 3. 70.10–17. ET: Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures (New York: Doubleday, 1987), 342 (#63), 343 (#70).

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quite separate saying about making the two one. The assumption lying behind such divisions of early and late is that a version which contains only one content element must necessarily precede a formulation which combines different content elements. Within an oral culture, such an assumption is suspect. Authors can draw upon a stock of traditionally known sayings and combine and reformulate them as seems best to them and to their audience. In the saying before us, it is interesting how scholars have latched onto the difference between the second person plural of the first verb (“you trample”) and the third person singular second verb (“become”), and so concluded that something is amiss, a bungled mixing of two originally independent sayings. But one could also read the contrast of the two verbs another way: The plural verb highlights the notion of multiplicity, while the singular verb stresses unity. Salome is not being wrongly addressed with a plural verb; rather, through her all humans are addressed, and the plural verb resonates with the plurals in Saying 2. Only when the many trample will the oneness appear. Read in this way, the author has patterned verb usage to content issues in a highly sophisticated way. Another consideration is the way the formulation in the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians differs from those in 2 Clem. 12:2 and Gos.Thom. 22. 2 Clem. 12:2 reads: “When the two will be one and the outside as the inside and the male and the female neither male nor female.” Here the author has heightened the contrast between the two – the outside and the inside are contradictory in a way that male and female are not. Contrary perhaps but not contradictory. Gos.Thom. 22 goes much further: When you make the two one, and when you make the inside as the outside and the outside as the inside and the upper side as the lower side, and when you make the male and the female into a single one so that the male will not be male nor the female be female; when you make eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in the place of a hand, and a foot in the place of a foot, and an image in the place of an image, then you shall enter [the kingdom].

In both 2 Clem. 12:2 and Gos.Thom. 22, the opposition between the two elements is heightened. In the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians, the focus remains squarely on the male-female relationship, on overcoming the divisions of Genesis and returning to primordial unity. Such a focus is significantly different from that in another motif found in the Gospel of Thomas, that of “becoming male”: “Jesus said, ‘See, I am going to attract her to make her male so that she too might become a living spirit that resembles you males. For every female (element) that makes itself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.’”19 That motif privileges the category “male.” Howev19 Gos.Thom. 114. See further Marvin W. Meyer, “Making Mary Male: The Categories of ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ in the Gospel of Thomas,” NTS 31 (1985): 554–70; K. Vogt,

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er, the saying in the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians suggests that both categories will be set aside, or rather, that somehow they will be combined. A similar sense of an androgyne is found in the opening section of the Apocalypse of Adam: After God had made me of earth, along with your mother Eve, I used to go about with her in glory.... And we resembled the great eternal angels. For, we were superior to the god that had made us, and to the powers that are with him, which we had not (yet) become acquainted with. Next, god the ruler of the aeons and the powers angrily gave us a command. Next, we became two aeons, and the glory that was in our hearts – your mother Eve’s and mine – left us. (Apoc.Adam V. 5. 64: 6–27)

Here the two elements coexist, not quite in the comic form described by Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium. By using such a motif, rather than the male-privileged one, the Gospel of the Egyptians reverses the misogynism of the first saying.

C. Conclusion In the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians, originally independently existing sayings20 have been combined to form a single argument about the end time. This is true for the question of Salome in Saying 4 about when she would know. The reference to the destruction of female works in Saying 1 is reprised in Saying 4 with the statement about the abolition of the categories male/female. I would thus argue that this collection of sayings forms another example of Christian testimonia.21 It is this complex that Julius Cassianus used and that Clement then attempted to interpret differently. The complex begins with an enigmatic statement ascribed to Jesus and then, as in the Dialogue of the Savior, attempts to interpret it. The originally misogynistic attack on women moves in the first interaction to an attack on procreation and then changes by the second interaction into a yearning to imitate Eden. The final summative statement given by Jesus holds that gender categories are to be eliminated at the end time when Eden will return. This complex of the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians would thus be mitigating a tendency among male Christians to shun women. It is a clear exhortation to sexual continence, but “‘Becoming Male’: One Aspect of an Early Christian Anthropology,” Concilium (1985): 95–107. 20 Particularly sayings 1 and 4 and possibly saying 2 as well. 21 See the study of Martin C. Albi, And Scripture Cannot Be Broken: The Form and Function of the Early Christian Testimonia Collections (Leiden: Brill, 1999). Perhaps it is more an example of Albi’s “extract collections” rather than “testimonia collections” (65).

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does not outrightly reject marriage. It would thus emanate from that group of Christians whom Giulia Sfameni Gasparro characterizes as praising enkrateia for its doctrine of sexual abstinence and who suggested it as a condition of becoming the perfect Christian. However, they did not condemn marriage, as did some other Christians.22 Julius Cassianus would attempt to move the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians in this more radical direction, but Clement would counter-interpret the document allegorically to retain marriage as a viable option for Christians. What is interesting is that the argument in the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians completely overturns the sense of subordination of women, and rather places them on an equal footing with men. Baptized Christian women are in a pre-lapsarian state, as held in Gal 3:28. Such a state would seem to be implied also in OdesSol. 25:8: “I was covered with the covering of your spirit, and you removed from me the garments of skins.” Such a protological stance in the second century would thus be an argument for the equal status and function of women in early Christianity. Should one compare it with the role of Thecla?

Appendix The saying, “I have come to bring female works to an end,” has also been used in a different formulation in the Paschal Homily attributed to Hippolytus, which has been dated to the 2nd century C.E.23 As the preacher speaks about how Jesus on the cross undid what the transgression of Adam brought, he notes how the crown of thorns Jesus wore took away the curse on the ground (Gen 3:18), how, by drinking the bitter gall of the Dragon (Matt 27:34), Jesus mingles for us in its place sweet wells. 24 The preacher continues: “For wishing WR? HUJRQ WKM TKOHLDM OX VDL and to hold back 22 Giulia Sfameni Gasparro, “Asceticism and Anthropology: Enkrateia and ‘Double Creation’ in Early Christianity,” in Asceticism (eds. Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis; New York: Oxford, 1995), 129–30. See her much larger contribution to the question: “Le Motivazioni Protologiche dell’ENKRATEIA nel Cristianesimo dei Primi Secoli e nello Gnosticismo,” in La Tradizione dell’Enkrateia. Motivazzioni Ontologiche e protologiche (ed. Ugo Bianchi; Rome: Ateneo, 1985), 149–252. 23 ET: Pierre Nautin, ed., Homélies Pascales I (SC 27; Paris: Cerf, 1950). As reported by Giulia Sfameni Gasparro [“Le Motivazioni Protologiche, 155 n. 19], Raniero Cantalamessa proposed a date in the 2nd century C. E. [L’Omelia ‘In S.Pascha’ dello pseudoIppolito di Roma. Ricerche sull teologia dell’Asia Minore nella seconda metà del II secolo (Milan: Vita e pensiero, 1967), 13–24]. 24 Possibly referring to John 4:14. Turning bitter into sweet recalls the story at Exod 15:22–25, where Moses throws a piece of wood (or ‘tree’) into the bitter water and makes it sweet.

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the death-dealing [femaleness] flowing from the rib, already he opened the holy rib in himself from which flowed the holy blood and water, the perfect signs of the spiritual, mystical marriages and adoption and new birth” (53:3). Commenting of the water and blood, the homilist refers to baptism in spirit and in fire (Matt 3:11, where the water refers to baptism in spirit, the blood to baptism in fire.) Here the preacher has used the singular, and contrasted the new life/birth (SDOLJJHQHVLD) with the production of Eve, described as death-dealing. Here the saying should be translated: “the product which is femaleness.” The production of Eve, standing for femaleness is contrasted with Jesus’s reversal of the action, returning baptized Christians to the primordial unity.

Works Cited Albi, Martin C. And Scripture Cannot Be Broken: The Form and Function of the Early Christian Testimonia Collections. Leiden: Brill, 1999. Baarda, Tjitze. “2 Clement 12 and the Sayings of Jesus.” BETL 59 (1982): 529–56. Brock, Sebastian. “Clothing Metaphors as a Means of Theological Expression in Syriac Tradition.” Pages 15–26 in Typus, Symbol, Allegorie bei den östlichen Vätern und ihren Parallelen im Mittelalter. Edited by Margot Schmidt. Eichstätter Beiträge 4; Regensburg: Pustet, 1981. Callan, Terrence. “The Saying of Jesus in Gos. Thom 22/2Clem.12/Gos.Eg.5.” JRelS 16 (1990): 46–64. Cameron, Ron. The Other Gospels: Non-Canonical Gospel Texts. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1982. Cantalamessa, Raniero. L’Omelia ‘In S.Pascha’ dello pseudo-Ippolito di Roma. Ricerche sull teologia dell’Asia Minore nella seconda metà del II secolo. Milan: Vita e pensiero, 1967. Coogan, M. D. Stories from Ancient Canaan. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978. Donfried, Karl. The Setting of Second Clement in Early Christianity. Leiden: Brill, 1974. Emmel, Stephen. The Coptic Gnostic Library. Leiden: Brill, 1984. Ernest, John, Leonard Oulton, and Henry Chadwick. Alexandrian Christianity. London: SCM, 1954. Gasparro, Giulia Sfameni. “Le Motivazioni Protologiche dell’ENKRATEIA nel Cristianesimo dei Primi Secoli e nello Gnosticismo.” Pages 149–252 in La Tradizione dell’Enkrateia. Motivazzioni Ontologiche e protologiche. Edited by Ugo Bianchi; Rome: Ateneo, 1985. –. “Asceticism and Anthropology: Enkrateia and ‘Double Creation’ in Early Christianity.” Pages 127–46 in Asceticism. Edited by Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis. New York: Oxford, 1995. Griffith, Sidney H. “Asceticism in the Church of Syria: The Hermeneutics of Early Syrian Monasticism.” Pages 220–45 in Asceticism. Edited by Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Lambdin, Thomas O. Introduction to Sahidic Coptic. Macon, GA: Mercer University, 1983. Layton, Bentley. The Gnostic Scriptures. New York: Doubleday, 1987.

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MacDonald, Dennis Ronald. There Is No Male and Female: The Fate of a Dominical Saying in Paul and Gnosticism. HDR 20; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987. Meeks, Wayne A. “The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity.” HR (1974): 165–208. Meyer, Marvin W. “Making Mary Male: The Categories of ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ in the Gospel of Thomas.” NTS 31 (1985): 554–70. Nautin, Pierre ed. Homélies Pascales I. SC 27. Paris: Cerf, 1950. Petersen, Silke. “Zerstört die Werke der Weiblichkeit!” Maria Magdalena, Salome und andere Jüngerinnen Jesu in christlich-gnostischen Schriften. Brill: Leiden, 1999. Russell, Norman. The Lives of the Desert Fathers. Oxford: Mowbrat, 1980. Schneemelcher, Wilhelm. “The Gospel of the Egyptians.” Pages 209–15 in volume 1 of New Testament Apocrypha. Translated by R. McL.Wilson. Westminster/John Knox: Louisville, 1991. Smith, Jonathan Z. “The Garments of Shame.” HR (1988): 217–38. Vogt, K. “‘Becoming Male’: One Aspect of an Early Christian Anthropology.” Concilium (1985): 95–107. Ward, Benedicta. The Desert Christian: Sayings of the Desert Fathers. The Alphabetical Collection. New York: MacMillan, 1975.

Blood Ties Martyrdom, Motherhood, and Family in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity1 CANDIDA R. MOSS

A. Introduction The rejection of family is a rather common feature of early Christian literature. From the Pauline epistles onwards, marriage, especially, was abandoned in favor of participation in the Jesus movement with new Christian siblings. In the early Christian martyr acts, this rejection of family is concretely realized in the martyr’s dramatic exit from the world. In dying, martyrs leave behind worldly possessions, earthly status, and biological family. The pathos of the martyr’s death is further amplified by a literary trope in which the martyrs reject the advice of their parents, the cries of their wives, and even their own children. Within both the literary conventions of the martyrdom account and the ideology of martyrdom, the female martyr’s death is often tied to the idea of rejecting one’s family. Rejecting one’s own husband and children – the defining roles of the ancient Roman woman – is in many ways a rejection of both family and self. It symbolizes the rejection of worldly concerns for heavenly ones. The female martyr, therefore, has become the example sine qua non of Christian rejection of family. This paper will use the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity (henceforth, Perpetua) to re-examine the motif of familial abandonment in early martyr acts. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it will argue that scholarly treatment of women martyrs fails to consider the broader theme of the re1 This paper is the result of a conversation I have been engaged in with Adela Yarbro Collins about motherhood in the early church. I am honored to present it to her now with my love and gratitude for a decade of instruction, mentorship, and friendship. I am grateful to Joel Baden, Jan Bremmer, Meghan Henning, and the editors of this volume for their suggestions and comments. English translations of biblical texts are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Citations from the Greek follow the 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graecae. Except where indicated, texts and translations from the acts of the martyrs follow Herbert Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972).

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jection of the family in martyrdom literature. Placed within this wider context, it becomes clear that the choices facing Perpetua and the actions she takes as a result are consonant with attitudes to the family in martyrdom literature focusing on men. The rejection of family motif, therefore, is part of the presentation of both male and female martyrs. While the rejection of family motif may serve to masculinize female martyrs, it is explicitly related to scriptural instructions and the example of Socrates. Second, the motif of familial rejection should not be read in isolation from the related idea of the Christian family. Upon closer examination, we will see that the martyr acts do not necessarily promote the rejection of the idea of family so much as they promote its reconfiguration. The biological family is rejected only so it may be replaced by a spiritual family of Christians.

B. Families Rejected In early Christian martyrdom literature, Perpetua stands both as one of the most discussed and beloved accounts of Christian martyrdom and as the quintessential example of family abandonment. The account is extant in two versions, Greek and Latin – the latter being preserved as both a short acta and longer passio.2 The earliest account was written in Latin in three parts, each of which can be attributed to Perpetua, Saturus, and an editor.3 Perpetua’s relationship with her father, mother, brothers, and child dominate the beginning of her “diary,” which makes up the first half of the ac2 The priority of the Latin version was established (to my mind, concretely) by Pio Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Scritti agiografici (Rome: Tipografia Vaticana, 1962), I.41–155. Latin priority is assumed by most scholars, with the exception of Louis Robert, “Une visione Perpétue martyre à Carthage en 203,” Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1982): 229–76; reprinted in Louis Robert, Opera minora selecta V (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1989), 791–839. See also Åke Fridh, Le problème de la Passion des Saintes Perpétue et Félicité (Gothenburg: Acta Universitatis Gothenburgensis, 1968); A. A. R. Bastiaensen, “Heeft Perpetua haar dagboek in het Latijn of in het Grieks geschreven?” in De heiligenverering in de eerste twee eeuwen van het Christendom (ed. A. Hilhorst; Nijmegen: Dekker & Van de Vegt, 1988), 130–35; and Jacqueline Amat, Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité, suivi des Actes (SC 417; Paris: Cerf, 1996), 51–66. Even if it is later, the Greek version appeared early, perhaps by 260 C .E., since it becomes the basis for the Martyrdom of Marian and James and the Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius. 3 Tertullian has been suggested as the editor of the martyrdom. René Braun’s criticisms of this position have demonstrated the difficulties with this argument (See René Braun, Approches de Tertullien [Paris: Institut d’études augustiniennes, 1992], 287–99). For a succinct summary of the discussion of this question in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries see Rex D. Butler, The New Prophecy and ‘New Visions,’ Evidence of Montanism (Washington: Catholic University of America, 2006), 49–52.

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count. The aristocratic Perpetua not only shuns the advice of her father, but in dying leaves her infant son behind. Throughout the narrative, Perpetua is unusually concerned for the fate of her family members. Her father repeatedly attempts to persuade her to renounce Christianity, first with aggression, then with appeals to emotion and familial duty (3.1–3, 5.1–6, 6.2). He implores her, saying, “think of your brothers, think of your mother, think of your aunt, think of your child, who will not be able to live once you are gone” (5.2). As she ascended to the dock to be tried he implored her twice more to take pity (supplicare) on her baby and his old age (6.2– 3). In his economy of familial responsibility the old and the young carried extra weight. It is noteworthy that Perpetua did feel pity for her father, but only when he is beaten at the instructions of Hilarianus. She declared that she feels as if she herself has been beaten. Perpetua’s relationship to her family and her son, especially, has been the subject of exhaustive debate and dissection.4 Her ambiguous relationship with her child, in particular, has garnered considerable attention. At times Perpetua expresses anxiety about her son (6.7). After initially giving her child into the care of her family (3.8), she asks for her child to stay with her in prison. Once he has arrived her anxiety is eased and her prison 4

Mary R. Lefkowitz, “Motivations for St. Perpetua’s Martyrdom,” JAAR 44 (1976): 417–21; W. H. C. Frend, “Blandina and Perpetua: Two Early Christian Heroines,” in Women in Early Christianity (ed. D. M. Scholer; New York: Garland, 1993), 87–97; Francine Cardman, “Acts of the Women Martyrs,” in Women in Early Christianity (ed. D. M. Scholer; New York: Garland, 1993), 98–104; Anne Jensen, God’s Self-Confident Daughters: Early Christianity and the Liberation of Women (Louisville: Westminster John Knox), 90–95; Joyce Salisbury, Perpetua’s Passion: The Death and Memory of a Young Roman Woman (New York: Routledge, 1997), 87–88; Gail Corrington Streete, “Of Martyrs and Men: Perpetua, Thecla, and the Ambiguity of Female Heroism in Early Christianity,” in The Subjective Eye: Essays in Culture, Religion, and Gender in Honor of Margaret R. Miles (ed. Richard Valantasis; Princeton Theological Monographs 59; Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2006), 254–64; Judith Perkins, “The Rhetoric of the Maternal Body in the Passion of Perpetua,” in Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Discourses (ed. Todd C. Penner and Caroline Vander Stichele; Leiden: Brill, 2007), 313–32; L. Stephanie Cobb, Dying To Be Men: Gender and Language in Early Christian Martyr Texts (Gender, Theory, and Religion; New York: Columbia University, 2008), 102–5, 108–9, 112–13, 115, 119, 120–22; William Farina, Perpetua of Carthage: Portrait of a Third Century Martyr (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co, 2009). Interestingly, Jan N. Bremmer, in his otherwise distinguished article, does not discuss Perpetua’s son except with respect to Perpetua’s relationship with her mother. For a balanced discussion of Perpetua’s relationship with the other members of her family see Jan N. Bremmer, “Perpetua and her Diary: Authenticity, Family and Visions,” in Märtyrer und Märtyrerakten (ed. Walter Ameling; Altertumwissenschaftliches Kolloquium 6; Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2002), 77–120. In general see also Keith Bradley, “Sacrificing the Family: Christian Martyrs and Their Kin,” Ancient Narrative 3 (2003): 150–80, who cites many of the examples used in this article.

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becomes a “palace, so that I wanted to be there rather than anywhere else” (3.9). At the same time, however, Perpetua is not persuaded by her father’s appeals to her maternal impulses (5.2) or the presence of the child at her trial. By the end of the diary God weans the child from Perpetua’s breast, an action that symbolically distances the child from the martyr and the martyr from the world. In the words of Elizabeth Castelli, “The physical and psychological bonds between mother and infant are divinely severed, and Perpetua’s renunciation of the world is complete.”5 The ambiguous presentation of Perpetua as mother demands interpretation: what is its purpose? One possible solution is that it serves to connect Perpetua to biblical models of motherhood. At the opening of the account, the author of Perpetua explicitly links the deaths of its protagonists to the heroes of the past whose deeds were recounted “through the written word” (1.1). The reference to written authoritative traditions suggests that the author of Perpetua intends to link Perpetua’s martyrs to biblical heroes, endowing these later own martyrs with authority and drawing the Carthaginian church into the scriptural world.6 Indeed, within scriptural tradition, Perpetua’s actions have some antecedents. As in Perpetua, the story of the deaths of the seven Maccabean brothers, relayed in 2 and 4 Maccabees and considered by many scholars to be the earliest example of martyrdom within the Judeo-Christian tradition, also revolves around a martyred mother.7 According to 4 Maccabees (first century C.E.), the mother dies following the deaths of her seven sons. Rather than attempting to persuade her sons to eat forbidden food, the mother is instrumental in facilitating their martyrdom. She “urged them on, each child singly and all together, to death for the sake of religion” (4 Macc 15:12). While we cannot say with any certainty that the author of Perpetua was familiar with the stories about the Maccabees, there is some evidence to suggest that this was the case. 8 The Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius and the Martyrdom of Marian and James, two North African martyrdom accounts composed in the aftermath of the Decian persecution (c. 250 C.E.) and literarily dependent upon Per5

Elizabeth A. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University, 2004), 89. 6 For the importance of biblical models in North African martyr traditions see Maureen A. Tilley, The Bible in Christian North Africa (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997). 7 So W. H. C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church: A Study of Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965). Frend argues that the Maccabean accounts influenced the development of the practice of martyrdom in the ancient world. His argument assumes a homogenous quality to Christian martyrdom literature and practice that cannot be assumed, but his argument for the influence of the Maccabees on specific communities deserves consideration. 8 Thomas Heffernan argues that the thoughts of the Maccabean mother are ‘echoed’ in the diary of Perpetua. See Heffernan, Sacred Biography, 201.

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petua, both refer to the mother of the Maccabees as a positive model of motherhood.9 Both accounts compare Christian mothers who encourage their sons to be martyred to the mother of the Maccabees and to Mary the mother of Jesus. The clear implication of these references is that the mother of the Maccabees was highly regarded as an example of motherhood. If the community that produced Perpetua was, like the authors of Montanus and Lucius and Marian and James, familiar with the Maccabean traditions it seems likely that Perpetua’s portrayal places her in line with a scriptural model of motherhood. The allusion would serve to further ground the death of Perpetua and the life of the Carthaginian church in the biblical world. It draws together scripture and society in such a way that the scriptural narrative flowed continuously into the life of the church. At the same time, however, the allusion to the Maccabees and Perpetua’s preference for martyrdom over motherhood serves an exhortatory function. As many have discussed, the presentation of the female martyr serves to create for the audience an image of the ideal Christian woman. Recent studies focusing on gender in the ancient world have demonstrated the extent to which Perpetua’s abandonment of her family was typical of female martyrs and ascetics. Mary Lefkowitz notes that there are a number of women in these sources who stand “in noticeable isolation from their families, in defiance of, rather than loyalty to, their husbands and fathers.”10 Lefkowitz psychologically interprets the female martyr’s rejection of her family as a subversion of the norms of Roman society and a rejection of traditional roles and sexual relations. Perpetua’s desire to foster asexual “fraternal” relationships in the apparent absence of her husband is, for Lefkowitz, a political act against her environment.11 Lefkowitz’s argument may be criticized for its somewhat naive approach to the historical character and representation of Perpetua herself. Her psycho-historical reading of Perpetua’s motivations seems grounded in the assumption that a historical Perpetua can be retrieved from this account and invited to the psychoanalyst’s couch. Despite the shortcomings in her argument, however, Lefkowitz can be credited with drawing scholarly attention to a literary topos in early Christian literature – the female Christian’s abandonment of her family as rejection of societal values. Perpetua’s perceived lack of interest in her family is amplified or – for some – explained by her masculine presentation. On the day that Perpetua 9

For the resonances of Perpetua in Marian and James, see Pio Franchi de’ Cavalieri, La Passio SS. Mariani et Iacobi (Studi e Testi 3; Rome: Tipografia Vaticana, 1900), 13 n. 1. 10 Lefkowitz, “Motivations for St. Perpetua’s Martyrdom,” 418. She cites Agape, Irene, and Chione as examples. 11 Lefkowitz, “Motivations,” 420–21.

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is scheduled to be “thrown to the lions,” she has a final dream-vision of fighting an Egyptian in the arena.12 She describes the removal of her clothes and her transformation into a man (et expoliata sum et facta sum masculus 10.7). It is in this guise that she defeats the Egyptian, a thinly disguised body double for the Devil. Even as she is masculinized, however, Perpetua is also ambiguously feminized. She is careful to retie her hair when it comes down, covering her nakedness (20.4), and she is addressed as a woman of power – domina (4.1; 5.5) – by her father and brother. The elevated position that domina would seem to indicate should not be read as a permanent status marker. As the narrative progresses, Perpetua and Felicitas are demoted to puellae (20.1), stripped of their clothing and exposed as delicate young girls, and spend their time in the arena focused on their modesty. Before her death, with her scream, Perpetua is refeminized, and the narrative remains, in the words of Maureen A. Tilley, “a story about women and their bodies.”13 Perpetua exhibits both elements of “motherly” or “daughterly” concern and elements of rejection and indifference. The former is seen by many as embodying the appropriate womanly response and the latter as part of a trope in which female martyrs reject their families.14 Stephanie Cobb locates these two seemingly contradictory elements within separate authorial traditions. Perpetua’s rejection of family is connected to the masculinization of the female martyr, a literary and ideological topos clearly anticipated in the Maccabean mother. Perpetua’s concern for her family is connected to the editor’s attempt to “feminize” the masculine Perpetua and present her as a model of female chastity. This attempt is clearly seen elsewhere in the account, when Perpetua ties up her loosened hair and attempts to cover her naked body – an appropriate womanly concern with modesty. In these instances Perpetua exemplifies the good quiet womanly virtue of modesty. The feminization of Perpetua and Felicity is, in Cobb’s deftly handled argument, an attempt to domesticate and regulate the otherwise threatening images of these powerful, masculine women.15 12

On Perpetua’s dream visions see Joyce Salisbury, Perpetua’s Passion, 85–118 and Patricia Cox Miller, Dreams in Late Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University, 1997), 148–83. 13 Maureen A. Tilley, “The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity,” in Searching the Scriptures: A Feminist Commentary (ed. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza; 2 vols; New York: Crossroad, 1994), 2:829. See also L. Stephanie Cobb, Dying To Be Men. Cobb’s argument is anticipated by Gail Corrington Streete, “Of Martyrs and Men,” 256–59. 14 On the topos of women martyrs rejecting their families see Lefkowitz, “Motivations.” 15 Unlike many others, Cobb’s argument draws together seemingly dissonant aspects of Perpetua’s behavior. Perpetua’s body becomes a locus where competing ideologies of the “male virtues” of the martyrs and the modesty of the good Christian woman are nego-

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The socially transgressive act of abandoning one’s family – usually a fiancé or husband – is also explored in articles by Gail Corrington Streete and Gillian Cloke. Streete examines the parallel example of Thecla, the disciple of Paul who abandoned her fiancé and family to follow the Apostle.16 Cloke’s argument focuses on Pre-Constantinian examples of willful women. She discusses the female martyrs of the Martyrdom of Agape, Irene, and Chione and the Spanish martyr Eulalia who rejects the governor’s appeals to “think of her family,” spitting in his eyes and overturning the sacrificial altar.17 For both these authors the rejection of family and the futile efforts of a Roman governor to appeal to the martyr’s duty to her family is linked to the masculinization of the female martyr. An extraordinary aspect of scholarly debate surrounding Perpetua is the tendency to psychoanalyze Perpetua and to discuss – with no sense of irony – the extent to which she loves or is emotionally detached from her relations.18 The mere act of summarizing the events in her “diary” that pertain to her father and son has proven difficult. She is variously portrayed as “clinical [and] almost cold blooded,”19 heroic, pained to leave her father and child, and as an adolescent striving to carve out an individual identity for herself.20 Even in the case of those scholars who have a sense of their own historical distance from the world of ancient female martyrs, there is still a difficulty in suspending judgment of Perpetua. Lefkowitz writes, “To celibate male scholars this behavior [abandoning one’s child] may appear less remarkable (or perhaps more commendable) than it does to us.” While it’s not especially clear who the “us” is in Lefkowitz’s statement,

tiated. This negotiation, however, is ultimately redactional. For Cobb, it is the patriarchal redactor who feminizes the tomboy Perpetua; the multi-dimensional Perpetua is an editorial compromise. 16 For a discussion of Thecla see Stephen J. Davis, The Cult of Thecla in Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University, 2001). 17 Prudentius, Peristephanon 3. 18 While this is the subject of Lefkowitz’s article, elements of this idea resurface in Frend, “Blandina and Perpetua,” when he writes: “Perpetua was obviously an adored only daughter who grew up into a spoilt and willful young woman, but in her case, her frustrations drove her into fanatical adherence to an apocalyptic form of Christianity and hostility to the society in which she had been raised” (175). Jensen is correct to call this “anti-feminist cynicism” (Jensen, God’s Self-Confident Daughters, 281 n. 91), but it also appears that Frend would have benefitted from Adela Collins’s work on apocalyptic literature (see Adela Yarbro Collins, Crisis and Catharsis: The Power of the Apocalypse [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1984]). 19 Gillian Cloke, “Mater or Martyr?” 45. 20 Marie Louise von Franz, “Die Passio Perpetuae,” in Aion: Untersuchungen zur Symbolgeschichte (ed. Carl Gustav Jung; Psychologische Abhandlungen 8; Zurich: Rascher, 1951), 389–495.

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we may reasonably infer she means mothers.21 Her statement discloses the widespread discomfort that Perpetua’s behavior elicits in modern readers.22 The scandal of Perpetua’s rejection of her child, like the perceived callousness of the mother of Maccabees, is a particularly gendered affair. Conversations about whether or not Socrates loves his children do not take place in scholarly analyses of his trial and death. His philosophical, not his parenting, skills are the issue. His abandonment of his biological and pedagogical children is hardly important. The mother of Maccabees and the figure of Mary offer strong literary precedents for a mother preferring death (albeit that of her children) to a sustained earthly relationship with her child. Given the impact and status of these exempla in the early church, it is interesting that Perpetua’s behavior is viewed as extraordinary. Perpetua’s own salvation is at stake, yet her treatment of her child continues to be dissected and measured against modern standards of motherhood.23

21 A careful reader will instantly note that – strictly speaking within traditional binaries – a sexually active female would be the more likely candidate for the “opposite” of a celibate male. There is something particularly troublesome to me about the apparent overlap between woman and mother inherent in Lefokowitz’s statement, although I am aware that I myself am identifying it. Lefkowitz’s larger argument certainly leans towards contextualizing Perpetua within ancient constructions of motherhood; I merely object to the invocation here of womanhood as coterminous with motherhood. 22 The abandonment motif is greatly amplified in revisions and interpretations of the account in the late antique period. A fourth century version of the account depicts Perpetua as pushing her child aside and denouncing her parents as “workers of evil.” See Brent Shaw, “The Passion of Perpetua,” Past and Present 139 (1993): 35. 23 This point is made in Jakob Balling, “Martyrdom as Apocalypse” in In the Last Days. On Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic and its Period (ed. Knud Jeppesen, Kirsten Nielsen, and Bent Rosendal; Aarhus: Aarhus University, 1994), 41–48. In reacting to Perpetua’s actions we should be clear to what we are reacting. In my opinion, Perpetua herself as historical figure does not exist in this text. The Perpetua we encounter in the text – the only Perpetua that we can encounter – is not the Perpetua of history. To discuss whether or not, as modern mothers, we can understand or validate Perpetua’s actions and motivations is to assume that we are engaging with an actual person. At the very least, the diary of Perpetua has been, in the words of Jan Bremmer “discursively reshaped to make [it] as effective as possible” (Bremmer, “Perpetua and her Diary,” 77–120). Perpetua herself is not actually there. For a discussion of the way in which women’s stories, in particular, evaporate from early Christian history see Elizabeth A. Clark, “The Lady Vanishes: Dilemmas of a Feminist Historian after the ‘Linguistic Turn,’” CH 67 (1998): 1– 31; and idem., "Women, Gender, and the Study of Christian History," CH 70 (2001): 395–426. Even if we were convinced that Perpetua’s diary was truly written by her own hand, we would still do well to be wary of Margaret R. Miles’s observation that religious symbols used by historical women were not created by women themselves. See Margaret R. Miles, Image as Insight: Visual Understanding in Western Christianity and Secular Culture (Boston: Beacon, 1985), 64, cited in Gail Corrington Streete, “Of Martyrs and Men,” 255.

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This scandal highlights the importance of gender in scholarly readings of Perpetua. Gender, rather than class, ethnicity, nationality, citizenship, or ecclesiastical rank, is perceived to be the defining aspect of Perpetua’s identity. With respect to family, Stephanie Cobb summarizes the difference in the following way: We saw in the Martyrdom of Polycarp, as well as in some of the other martyrologies, that men are usually asked to have pity on themselves and to save their lives. Christians must not be persuaded by the offers of life given by their persecutors. . . . In the stories of female martyrs, it is not persuasion by Jews or pagans that is central, rather, persuasion by and in reference to family poses the most significant risk for Christian women. 24

The contrast drawn by Cobb is highly nuanced. Her conclusion, however, should be tested against more than just the Martyrdom of Polycarp. The presentation of female martyrs is correctly assumed to be fundamentally different from these writings’ presentation of men. This does not mean, however, that there are not elements shared by the presentations of both male and female martyrs. Perhaps, in addition to evaluating Perpetua’s presentation against the standards of mother and woman, we should consider the manner in which her behavior is part of a larger trope.

C. Absentee Fathers Looking beyond the stories of female martyrs who reject their families, it becomes clear that the rejection of family is not an especially feminine concern.25 Perpetua’s actions inaugurate a trend in later martyr acts in which male martyrs frequently disavow knowledge of their wives and children. In an ironic twist the masculinized female martyr serves as the model for the conventionally male martyr. In the Diocletian account the Martyrdom of Irenaeus, Irenaeus, the Bishop of Sirmium, is tried and executed in Pannonia, modern-day Serbia. According to the related account the Martyrdom of Pollion, the Roman praeses Probus enforced Diocletian’s fourth edict against the clergy and this led the bishop’s arrest. On numerous occasions in the account, the martyr repeatedly rejects his family. In a manner similar to Perpetua’s father, the Roman prefect Probus attempts to appeal to Irenaeus’s sense of familial duty. He asks Irenaeus if he has a wife or 24

Cobb, Dying To Be Men, 122. The presence (and rejection) of family members is noted in accounts of both men and women by Giuliana Lanata, Gli atti dei martiri come documenti processuali (Milan: Giuffrè, 1973), 239; and, following Lanata, A. A. R. Bastiaensen, Atti e Passioni dei Martiri (Milan: Mondadori, 1987), 534. They cite Agathonike in the Acts of Carpus, Papylus and Agathonike Greek 28 and Latin 29; Perpetua 6.3; and the Martyrdom of Irenaeus 3–5. 25

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children, to which Irenaeus replies in the negative. Probus then asks Irenaeus who – if he has no family – the people weeping at Irenaeus’s trial are. Irenaeus offers the following response by way of explanation: “We have a law (praeceptum) from our Lord Jesus Christ,” replied Irenaeus who said, “He who loves his father or his mother or his wife or his siblings or his parents more than me, is not worthy with me.” For this reason, looking to God in the heavens and bearing in mind his promises and despising all else, Irenaeus insisted that he neither had nor knew any other kin. 26

Irenaeus’s rejection of his family is grounded in scripture and biblical exegesis. The scriptural precept is taken from Matt 10:37||Luke 14:25 and its citation starkly sets family against martyrdom. Just as the martyr Euplius interprets the command to take up the cross as “law,” Irenaeus interprets the words of Jesus as a precept, a command.27 The use of the legal term praeceptum here alludes to the Diocletian edict and juxtaposes it with the command of God. Irenaeus ignores his family and instead physically and symbolically focuses his gaze on heaven. Irenaeus’s depiction may owe much to the depictions of Socrates or the Maccabees, but he grounds his rejection of family in scripture. The same motif reappears in the fifth century Latin version of the Acts of Phileas.28 Early in the account, Phileas’s treatment of his family is foreshadowed by his reference to Socrates who, as Phileas notes, “when he was being led to his death, even with his wife and children present, he did not turn back but eagerly embraced death.”29 In his interrogation by the prefect Culcianus, the prefect refers to the presence of Phileas’s wife, in an attempt to appeal to his emotions and sense of familial duty. The martyr 26

Emended translation. Musurillo uses the more religious term “commandment” which, while accurate, does not sufficiently draw out the comparison between the laws of God and the edict of Diocletian. Martyrdom of Irenaeus, Bishop of Sirmium 4.6–7: Irenaeus respondit: Praeceptum est domini mei Iesu Christi dicentis, Qui diligit patrem aut matrem aut uxorem aut filios aut fraters aut parentes super me, non est me dignus. Itaque ad Deum in caelum adspiciens et ad eius promissiones intendens, omnia despiciens nullum parentem absque eo se nosse atque habere fatebatur. 27 Acts of Eulpus Recension B 1.5. 28 The Acts of Phileas, Bishop of Thmuis is extant in both Greek and Latin, the text of the Greek being especially difficult. The Greek is preserved primarily in P. Chester Beatty XV and P. Bodmer XX. The Latin edition should likely be dated much later than the Greek (possibly as late as the fifth century C .E.). The Latin cited here is based on Halkin, “L’apologie du martyr Philéas de Thmuis (Papyrus Bodmer XX) et les Acts latins de Philéas et Philoromus,” Analecta Bollandiana 81 (1963): 101–8 reproduced in Musurillo. 29 Acts of Phileas Latin 4.2: cum ad mortem duceretur, adstante ei conigue et filis, non est reuersus sed promptissime casum suscepit. For a discussion of the Socrates motif in the Acts of Phileas see Klaus Döring, Exemplum Socratis: Studien zur Sokratesnachwirkung in der kynisch-stoischen Popularphilosophie der frühen Kaiserzeit und im frühen Christentum (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1979), 147–48.

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responds in the nonchalant tone typical of martyrs, stating his concern for salvation: “The Lord Jesus Christ is the redeemer of the souls of us all. It is he whom I serve in chains. And he who has called me to the inheritance of his glory can also call her.”30 It is unclear whether Phileas’s wife is herself a Christian, as the reference to “being called” could refer either to conversion or martyrdom. The second possibility is supported by the subsequent use of inheritance language in the account. As he goes out to the place of execution, one of Phileas’s brothers requests a stay of execution on his behalf. Phileas is irritated by his family’s unsolicited efforts on his behalf. He states that he “owes a great thanks to the emperors and prefect that [he] has been made a coheir of Christ Jesus.”31 In this instance the language of inheritance clearly refers to his imminent execution. Once again there is a symbolic contrast, only this time it is between earthly and divine siblings. Whereas previously Phileas was a co-heir with his biological earthly brother now shares an inheritance with his new brother, Christ. This new familial status is acquired through death for Christ. Phileas’s rejection of his family is more complicated than a symbolic refusal of worldly concerns. His biological family is abandoned in preference for a new family of super-Christians: The lawyers, the clerks, together with the curator and all of Phileas’s relatives, embraced his feet and begged him to have regard for his wife and concern for his children. But it was like water wearing away at a rock. He rejected what they said, claiming that the apostles and martyrs were his kin. 32

The image of Phileas’s family clutching his feet and the appeal to his emotions and sense of familial duty is similar to the depiction of the father in Perpetua. Just as with Socrates, Perpetua, and Irenaeus, Phileas is immune to such emotional manipulation. From these two brief examples, it is clear that the rejection of children theme in the martyr acts is not peculiar to the presentation of female martyrs. To be sure the account of Perpetua giving up her child is more emotive and descriptive, but this observation can be

30 Acts of Phileas Latin 6.1: Omnium spirituum nostrorum salutator est dominus Iesus Christus, cui ego uinctus seruio. Potens est ipse qui me uocauit in hereditatem gloriae suae et hanc uocare. 31 Acts of Phileas 8.2 Latin: ego autem magnam ago gratiam regibus et praesidautui quoniam coheres factus sum Christi Iesu. 32 Acts of Phileas 6.4 Latin: Aduocati et officium una cum curatore et cum omnibus propinquis eius pedes ipsius complectebantur rogantes eum ut respectum haberet uxoris et curam susciperet liberorum. ille uelut si saxo immobili unda adilderetur, garrientium dicta respuere, Deum in oculis habere, parentes et propinquos apostolos et martyres ducere. The textual history of this particular section is especially difficult and comes from Rufinus, Hist. eccl. 8.9.8.

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made of any part of Perpetua, which is longer and more elaborate than most other martyr acts.33 The appeal to the martyr’s emotions and love of family does not dissuade him. The act of supplication and the appeal to recall his wife and children is reminiscent of both Socrates and iconic episodes in Greek myth and history. Hermes advises Priam to persuade Achilles to return Hector’s body by supplicating him on his knees and invoking the memory of his father, mother, and child.34 Appeals to remember one’s family, therefore, have proven effective on Greek heroes. It is with Socrates that we see a shift towards the rejection of family. As Phileas explains, Socrates eschews family for the good death. Familial abandonment in these later martyrdom accounts is tied both to the interpretation of Matt 10:37||Luke 14:25 and to the example of Socrates. In the case of the former, the scriptural proof texts are used to subvert the conventional Roman ideas of familial responsibility. The cultural conventions that required Irenaeus to tend to his family are undermined by the precepts and demands of God. This kind of rhetoric is common in the martyrdom accounts. The obligations of citizenship and military allegiance are cast off in favor of the more important allegiances to God.35 The differentiation distances Christians from the affairs of the world. In holding themselves accountable only to God, they remove themselves from ordinary society and government. The reference to Socrates provides a more conciliatory rationale. Rather than contrasting the laws of God with the practice of the world, the appeal to Socrates serves to ground the behavior of the martyrs in the well-respected tradition of the noble death. Despite the different rhetorical posture of these references, they both serve to ground the martyr’s rejection of his or her family within tradition. An interesting aspect of Phileas’s rejection of his family is that he identifies the martyrs and apostles as his kin. This notion is similar to – although more elitist than – the idea of the “Christian family” so common in the early church. Through the shedding of blood Phileas believes that he will acquire a new family, a family of apostles, martyrs, and Christ. Phileas’s statement gestures towards a previously overlooked aspect of the martyrological attitudes to family – martyr acts deconstruct the notion of family in order to reconstruct it. It is to an exploration of this new family that we now turn. 33

With the exceptions, of course, of the equally famous Martyrdom of Polycarp and the Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne. 34 Homer, Il. 24.555. 35 This contrast is particularly acute in the accounts of the martyrdom of soldiers who prefer Christ to military service. See for example the Martyrdom of Julian and the Martyrdom of Maximillian.

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D. Families Reconstituted The rejection of legal and biological ties should not be understood as an absolute rejection of family altogether. As I have argued elsewhere, the replacement of the rejected biological family with an adopted Christian family is prevalent in the acts of the martyrs.36 Elements of this can be seen in the beginning of the Testament of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, which expands the concept of family: For the invisible God is revered in our brothers whom we see;37 and though this saying refers to our biological siblings, the meaning is extended to all those who love Christ. For our God and holy Saviour declared to be brothers not those who shared a common nature, but rather those who were bound together in the faith by good deeds and who fulfill the will of our Father who is in heaven.38

This passage in the Testament of the Forty Martyrs is in some ways rather pedestrian. It extends the familial relationship to members of the Christian congregation. While the Testament of the Forty Martyrs seems happy to construct the Christian family as a “brotherhood of all believers,”39 other martyr acts attempt to restrict membership even further. The Latin version of the Acts of Phileas, as we have already seen, places the martyrs within a special family of martyrs and apostles. Phileas’s rejection of his family follows the pattern of Socrates and grounds itself in a particular kind of biblical interpretation. There is also, however, the acquisition of a new family of martyrs and apostles to which, through martyrdom, Phileas will be joined. 36 Candida R. Moss, The Other Christs: Imitating Jesus in Ancient Christian Ideologies of Martyrdom (New York: Oxford University, 2010), 156–63. 37 1 John 4:20. 38 Testament of the Forty Martyrs 2.4: NDL? JD?U GLD? WRX  RUZPHQRX DGHOIRX R DRUDWRMWLPD WDLTHRMNDL? SUR?MPH?Q WRX?MRPRPKWULR XMDGHOIRX?M R ORJRMSUR?M GH? SDQ WDM WRX?M ILOR[ULVWRXM K JQZPK NDL? JD?U R DJLRM KPZaQ  VZWK?U NDL? THR?M HNHLQ RXM HIDVNHQ DGHOIRX?M HL@Q DL WRX?M RX[L? WK _ IX?VHL NRLQZQRX QWDM DOOKORLM DOOD? WK _ DULVWK_ SUDFHL SUR?M WK?Q  SLVWLQ VXQDSWRPHQ RXM NDL? WR? THOPD HNSOKURX QWDMWRX SDWUR?MKPZaQWRX HQ WRL MRXUDQRL MEmended translation. 39 The gendered nature of participation in the Christian family is debated. For the view that the Christian family is predicated upon patriarchal notions of fathers and sons see Lone Fatum, “Brotherhood in Christ: A Gender Hermeneutical Reading of 1 Thessalonians,” in Constructing Early Christian Families: Family as Social Reality and Metaphor (ed. Halvor Moxnes; London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 183–97. For a broader discussion of gender in early Christianity, see Ross Shepard Kraemer and Mary Rose D'Angelo, Women and Christian Origins (New York: Oxford University, 1999); Patricia Cox Miller, Women in Early Christianity: Translations from Greek Texts (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 2005); Dale B. Martin and Patricia Cox Miller, The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography (Durham: Duke University, 2005).

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Phileas is not alone in narrowing the martyrs’ family to a select few. Origen, in his Exhortation to Martyrdom, tentatively reinterprets Matt 10:29– 30 so that the martyrs become heads of their own families of believers: And if there are fathers about whom it was said to Abraham, “You shall go to your fathers in peace when you have been buried in a good old age,” someone might say (though I do not know whether he would be speaking the truth) that perhaps those fathers are those who were once martyrs and left children behind, in return for whom they have become fathers of the fathers, the patriarch Abraham and the other patriarchs. For in all likelihood those who have left children behind and become martyrs are fathers not of infants but of fathers.40

Origen’s vision of the martyr’s family offers an interesting interpretation of the rejection of family motif.41 The rejection of children is a strategic affair: earthly children are given up in favor of mature patriarchal offspring. Once again, we see the creation of a better kind of family, this time of patriarchs and martyrs, in which the martyrs head up the super-family in the heavens.42 Given the patriarchal structure of the Roman household, the promotion to the head of a family of patriarchs underscores the elevated position of the martyr in the Christian hierarchy. Whereas ordinarily God would serve as the father of the Christian family, the martyr is repositioned as “father of fathers.” The evidence for the widespread rejection and reconstruction of family in the Christian martyr acts suggests that the rejection motif in Perpetua (and also Agape, Irene, and Chione and Carpus, Papylus and Agathonike) is not just a question of gender.43 Both men and women abandon their family to pursue martyrdom. While the rejection of family theme serves to masculinize female martyrs, it is not, as some have argued, exclusive to the presentation of women.44 The masculinization of female martyrs overlaps and intersects with the broader construction of the Christian family in the martyr acts. 40

Origen, Exhortation to Martyrdom 14, trans. Rowan A. Greer, Origen (Classics of Western Spirituality; New York: Paulist, 1979), 53–54. 41 We cannot be sure which martyrs Origen has in mind and – despite the parallels – it would be a mistake to assume that Origen is referring to Perpetua. After all, Origen himself is the child of martyrs. 42 Robin Darling Young sees the family of martyrs as part of the blessings of martyrdom. See Robin Darling Young, In Procession Before the World: Martyrdom as Public Liturgy in Early Christianity (Milwaukee: Marquette University, 2001), 58. 43 A similar argument is made with respect to the Gospel of Mark by Stephen P. Ahearne-Kroll, “‘Who Are My Mother and My Brothers?’ Family Relations and Family Language in the Gospel of Mark,” JR 81 (2001): 1–25. 44 It is interesting to note that examples of male martyrs leaving their family are later than the example of Perpetua. This presents us with the intriguing possibility that Perpetua is so well masculinized that comes to serve as the exemplar of the male Christian martyr.

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Given the ways in which martyr acts deconstruct and reconstruct the idea of family, it is worth reconsidering the case of Perpetua and Felicity and the ways in which the heroines relate to their families. How does this model of rejection and acquisition alter our interpretation of Perpetua? In the case of Perpetua, attitudes to family are more complicated than they first appear. She is, as is frequently noted, close to the Christian members of her family.45 Perpetua has two brothers (excluding Dinocrates who died young) but only mentions contact with her Christian brother, who was also a catechumen (2.2). He visits her in prison and advises her to ask for visions (4.1). When she does leave her child, she entrusts him to the care of her Christian mother and brother (3.8). Of her biological family, only Perpetua’s father seems distressed and unhappy with her predicament (5.4) and her rebellious side only emerges in discussions with her non-Christian father. All of this points to a sustained relationship between Perpetua and the Christian members of her family. It is her non-Christian family that she rejects. In contrast to Perpetua, the author sketches Felicitas’s separation from her child in only the vaguest terms. Pregnant when arrested, Felicitas’s only concern is that her pregnancy will prevent her from being executed with her fellow Christians. Her premature delivery is met with joy, and her child is summarily dispatched to live with a Christian woman: ita enixa est puellam, quam sibi quaedam soror in filiam educauit (15.7). The use of the term soror for a fellow Christian once again invokes the idea of the Christian family.46 It also generates a subtle double entendre: Felicitas’s child will be raised as if she were part of the woman’s “family,” i.e., as a Christian child. Like Perpetua, Felicitas passes her child to her family, one formed by Christianity rather than biology. Felicitas does not discard her child, she entrusts her to her Christian sister safe in the knowledge that she will be raised appropriately as a spiritual child.

45 For a discussion of Perpetua’s family, see Bremmer, “Perpetua and her Diary,” 88– 89. I follow Joyce Salisbury in understanding Perpetua’s statement that only her father would be sad to see her suffer (5.6) to mean that the rest of Perpetua’s family are Christian (Salisbury, Perpetua’s Passion, 90). 46 It is fascinating that scholars consistently translate this as a reference to a metaphorical sister “in Christ” rather than even entertain the possibility that this is Felicitas’s biological sibling. This assumption may, in part, be due to the widespread assumption that Felicitas is Perpetua’s slave and that – technically – slaves were not allowed to marry or have families. In practice, however, slaves did use marital and familial language and imagery to describe their relationships, most especially in funerary inscriptions. See Dale B. Martin, “Slave Families and Slaves in Families,” in Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue (ed. David L. Balch and Carolyn Osiek; Grand Rapids, Mich: Wiliam B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), 207–30.

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The question of Perpetua’s husband is repeatedly raised by scholars curious about the absence of such a notable figure in her life.47 In a recent article, Carolyn Osiek has argued that Perpetua’s absentee husband may in fact be Saturus, one of the other martyrs mentioned in the account. Osiek’s argument, while controversial, can be further supported by the recognition that in other, albeit later, martyrdom accounts, married martyrs refer to one another as brother and sister. The Diocletian Coptic Martyrdom of Timothy and Maura portrays the joint crucifixion of a newlywed deacon and his wife. In exhorting his bride to courage and perseverance, Timothy addresses her as “sister.”48 This particular account takes great pains to emphasize the short time that the protagonists have been married, so there is no doubt that Maura is Timothy’s wife. We might be tempted to read this account, and the language of siblinghood, as reiterating the martyrological topos of “martyrdom over marriage,” but this is not necessarily the case. In the Song of Songs, the author addresses his wife as “my sister, my bride” (Song 4:12, 5:1).49 Given that Timothy and Maura are newlyweds, it is possible that the use of sibling imagery serves multiple purposes. On the one hand it is a reference to a conventional Christian practice that privileges membership in the Christian family over other kinds of familial unions, on the other it is an allusion to the romantic marital language of the Song of Songs and serves, therefore, to characterize the event as a tragic romance. Given the tendency to reconfigure familial relationships in the martyr acts, it seems possible that Saturus is Perpetua’s husband. Regardless of whether or not they are married, the account still follows the broader convention of replacing biological family with a spiritual Christian family. 50 47

Brent Shaw argues that Perpetua’s husband was present but not named in the account. Against this position Jan Bremmer argues that, as Perpetua does not give her child to her husband in 3.8 and is absent from her father’s list of those to whom Perpetua is bound (5.3), she is a widow. Perpetua is called a nupta (bride) not a vidua (widow). It seems to me that Bremmer’s argument can only be supported if the title nupta in 2.1 is taken to refer, in advance, to Perpetua’s status as ‘wife of Christ’ (18.2). The idea of reading Perpetua’s status in 2 as a description of her high social status in Christianity rather than – as it is usually read – in North African society intrigues me. After all, is she not a noblewoman raised well in the good Christian family? This kind of reading, however, is just playful speculation, and without it we are still left with the question, where is Perpetua’s husband? For an elegant discussion of Perpetua as “bride of Christ” and Christ as the bridegroom, see Thomas J. Heffernan, Sacred Biography: Saints and Their Biographers in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University, 1988), 190. 48 Acta Sanctorum (Belgium: Société des Bollandistes, 1686–) Mai I. Col. 0471A. 49 I am grateful to Theresa Civantos for drawing my attention to this passage. 50 This contrast between legal/biological/earthly family and the spiritual/Christian/ heavenly family follows the traditional formulation of Christian binaries. The idea of spiritual kinship is hardly unique to early Christian martyr acts. To return once again to Socrates, in the Phaedo, Plato describes the response of Plato’s disciples who “all felt as

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E. Conclusion In the course of this paper we have traced the theme of familial abandonment in the early Christian martyr acts. It is clear that the rejection motif is more widespread than the scholarly focus on Perpetua might lead us to believe. The recognition that the deconstruction and reconstruction of family ties in the martyr acts is more than simply an issue in the history of women in antiquity is significant. The rejection of family motif becomes a topos in the acts of the martyrs that is used in the depiction of both male and female martyrs. While this topos serves to masculinize female martyrs and may well reflect the realities of the social world of early Christian women, it is framed by the broader construction of the Christian family. Set within this context, Perpetua and Felicity do not so much abandon their infants as they entrust them to their families. To portray the martyr acts as advocating an absolute “rejection of family,” of husbands, wives, children, and parents, is to present only part of the picture. Perpetua’s disengagement from her family is a narration of the passage of the catechumen into the Christian family. It is not that the account rejects all family; it reconfigures the family to accentuate the spiritual bond of Christianity and the blood ties of martyrdom. In many ways the reconfiguration of a particular aspect of the Christian’s identity – nationality, ethnicity, race, gender, social status – is the hallmark of martyrological writing. The martyr acts serve not only to construct an ideal martyr but also an ideal Christian. In these accounts traditional structures of power are subverted and obligations to particular groups are severed or reinforced. The deconstruction and reconstruction of “the family” in the martyr acts serves a larger rhetorical purpose: to focus the Christian’s gaze on their obligation to Christ.

if they had lost a father and would be orphaned for the rest of their lives” (116A–B). Among some Stoic philosophers, the motif of spiritual kinship was accentuated and used to describe the close relationship between philosopher and disciples. Similarly, in a letter to his wife Marcella, the Neoplatonist Porphyry describes his students as “children of those who are lovers of the true wisdom.” (Ad Marcellam 1.5–8). For a discussion of affection in the Roman Stoics see Gretchen Reydams-Schills, The Roman Stoics: Self, Responsibility, and Affection (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2005), Chapters 4–5.

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Works Cited Acta Sanctorum. Belgium: Société des Bollandistes, 1686–. Ahearne-Kroll, Stephen P. “‘Who Are My Mother and My Brothers?’ Family Relations and Family Language in the Gospel of Mark.” Journal of Religion 81 (2001): 1–25. Amat, Jacqueline. Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité, suivi des Actes. Sources chrétiennes 417. Paris: du Cerf, 1996. Balling, Jakob. “Martyrdom as Apocalypse.” Pages 41–48 in In the Last Days. On Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic and its Period. Edited by Knud Jeppesen, Kirsten Nielsen and Bent Rosendal. Aarhus: Aarhus University, 1994. Bastiaensen, A. A. R. “Heeft Perpetua haar dagboek in het Latijn of in het Grieks geschreven?” Pages 130–35 in De heiligenverering in de eerste twee eeuwen van het Christendom. Edited by A. Hilhorst. Nijmegen: Dekker & Van de Vegt, 1988. Bastiaensen, A. A. R. Atti e Passioni dei Martiri. Milan: Mondadori, 1987. Bradley, Keith. “Sacrificing the Family: Christian Martyrs and Their Kin.” Ancient Narrative 3 (2003): 150–80. Braun, René Approches de Tertullien. Paris: Institut d’études augustiniennes, 1992. Bremmer, Jan N. “Perpetua and Her Diary: Authenticity, Family, and Visions” Pages 77– 120 in Märtyrer und Märtyrerakten. Edited by Walter Ameling. Altertumwissenschaftliches Kolloquium 6; Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2002. Butler, Rex D. The New Prophecy and ‘New Visions,’ Evidence of Montanism. Washington: Catholic University of America, 2006. Cardman, Francine. “Acts of the Women Martyrs,” Pages 98–104 in Women in Early Christianity. Edited by D. M. Scholer. New York: Garland, 1993. Castelli, Elizabeth A. Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making. New York: Columbia University, 2004. de’Cavalieri, Pio Franchi. Scritti agiografici. Rome: Tipografia Vaticana, 1962. –. La Passio SS. Mariani et Iacobi. Studi e Testi 3. Rome: Tipografia Vaticana, 1900. Clark, Elizabeth A. “The Lady Vanishes: Dilemmas of a Feminist Historian after the ‘Linguistic Turn.’” Church History 67 (1998): 1–31. –. “Women, Gender, and the Study of Christian History.” Church History 70 (2001): 395–426. Cobb, L. Stephanie. Dying To Be Men: Gender and Language in Early Christian Martyr Texts. Gender, Theory, and Religion Series. New York: Columbia University, 2008. Collins, Adela Yarbro. Crisis and Catharsis: The Power of the Apocalypse. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1984. Cox Miller, Patricia. Dreams in Late Antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University, 1997. –. Women in Early Christianity: Translations from Greek Texts. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2005. Davis, Stephen J. The Cult of Thecla in Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University, 2001. Döring, Klaus. Exemplum Socratis Studien: Zur Sokratesnachwirkung in der kynischstoischen Popularphilosophie der frühen Kaiserzeit und im frühen Christentum. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1979. Farina, William. Perpetua of Carthage: Portrait of a Third Century Martyr. Jefferson: McFarland, 2009. Fatum, Lone. “Brotherhood in Christ: A Gender Hermeneutical Reading of 1 Thessalonians.” Pages 183–97 in Constructing Early Christian Families: Family as Social Reality and Metaphor. Edited by Halvor Moxnes. London and New York: Routledge, 1997.

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von Franz, Marie Louise. “Die Passio Perpetuae.” Pages 389–495 in Aion: Untersuchungen zur Symbolgeschichte. Edited by Carl Gustav Jung. Psychologische Abhandlungen 8. Zurich: Rascher, 1951. Frend, W. H. C. “Blandina and Perpetua: Two Early Christian Heroines.” Pages 87–97 in Women in Early Christianity. Edited by D. M. Scholer. New York: Garland, 1993. –. Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church: A Study of Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus. Oxford: Clarendon, 1965. Fridh, Åke. Le problème de la Passion des Saintes Perpétue et Félicité. Gothenburg: Acta Universitatis Gothenburgensis, 1968. Halkin, F. “L’apologie du martyr Philéas de Thmuis (Papyrus Bodmer XX) et les Acts latins de Philéas et Philoromus.” Analecta Bollandiana 81 (1963): 101–8. Heffernan, Thomas J. Sacred Biography: Saints and their Biographers in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford University, 1988. Jensen, Anne. God’s Self-Confident Daughters: Early Christianity and the Liberation of Women. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996. Kraemer, Ross Shephard and Mary Rose D’Angelo. Women and Christian Origins. New York: Oxford University, 1999. Lanata, Giuliana. Gli atti dei martiri come documenti processuali. Milan: Giuffrè, 1973. Lefkowitz, Mary R. “Motivations for St. Perpetua’s Martyrdom.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 44 (1976): 417–21. Martin, Dale B. and Patricia Cox Miller. The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography. Durham: Duke University, 2005. Martin, Dale B. “Slave Families and Slaves in Families.” Pages 207–30 in Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue. Edited by David L. Balch and Carolyn Osiek. Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 2003. Miles, Margaret R. Image as Insight: Visual Understanding in Western Christianity and Secular Culture. Boston: Beacon, 1985. Moss, Candida R. The Other Christs: Imitating Jesus in Ancient Christian Ideologies of Martyrdom. New York: Oxford University, 2010. Musurillo, Herbert. The Acts of the Christian Martyrs. Oxford: Clarendon, 1972. Perkins, Judith. “The Rhetoric of the Maternal Body in the Passion of Perpetua.” Pages 313–32 in Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Discourses. Edited by Todd C. Penner and Caroline Vander Stichele. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Reydams-Schills, Gretchen. The Roman Stoics: Self, Responsibility, and Affection. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2005. Robert, Louis. “Une visione Perpétue martyre à Carthage en 203.” Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1982): 229–76. –. Opera minora selecta V. Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1989. Salisbury, Joyce. Perpetua’s Passion: The Death and Memory of a Young Roman Woman. New York: Routledge, 1997. Shaw, Brent D. “The Passion of Perpetua.” Past and Present 139 (1993): 3–45. Streete, Gail. “Of Martyrs and Men: Perpetua, Thecla, and the Ambiguity of Female Heroism in Early Christianity.” Pages 254–64 in The Subjective Eye: Essays in Culture, Religion, and Gender in Honor of Margaret R. Miles. Edited by Richard Valantasis. Princeton Theological Monographs 59. Eugene, Or: Pickwick Publications, 2006. –. Redeemed Bodies: Women Martyrs in Early Christianity. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009.

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Tilley, Maureen A. The Bible in Christian North Africa. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997. –. “The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity.” Page 829 in Searching the Scriptures: A Feminist Commentary. Edited by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. Vol. 2. New York: Crossroad, 1994. Young, Robin Darling. In Procession Before the World: Martyrdom as Public Liturgy in Early Christianity. Milwaukee: Marquette University, 2001.

A New Web for Arachne and a New Veil for the Temple Women and Weaving from Athena to the Virgin Mary1 JEREMY F. HULTIN In her elegant and erudite paper, “A New Web for Arachne,”2 Sarah Iles Johnston has teased out an extraordinary web of significations from a brief epitome of the story of Arachne and Phalanx. Johnston begins with a scholion to Nicander’s Theriaca, a didactic poem about dangerous animals and cures for their stings and bites. In commenting on Nicander’s use of the word IDODJJLD (venomous spiders), the scholiast recounts a story told by Theophilus of the School of Zenodotus. Johnston’s translation of the scholion is as follows: And Theophilus, of the School of Zenodotus, relates that there once were two siblings in Attica: Phalanx, the man, and the woman, named Arachne. While Phalanx learned the art of fighting in arms from Athena, Arachne learned the art of weaving. They came to be hated by the goddess, however, because they had sex with each other – and their fate was to be changed into creeping creatures that are eaten by their own children.3

Before commencing her interpretation of this story, Johnston explains the term “affordance,” which is critical to her analysis.4 Central to the idea of an affordance is the observation that the raw characteristics of any object or behavior only acquire meanings in their relationship to the perceptions and capacities of particular agents. For instance, a stick has certain physical characteristics – its straightness, its particular length, its tapering tip, etc. – but it may only be understood as “good to dig ants out of a hole with” by an actor with the requisite motor skills and the cognitive capacity 1

It was an honor to participate in a conference honoring my colleague, Adela Yarbro Collins, a model scholar and mentor. 2 Sarah Iles Johnston, “A New Web for Arachne,” in Antike Mythen: Medien, Transformationen und Konstruktionen (ed. Ueli Dill and Christine Walde; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009), 1–22. Because the paper Professor Johnston read for the conference is published as part of this Festschrift for Fritz Graf, it has not been included in the present volume. Hence, the editors have asked me to summarize Johnston’s paper before including my own response. 3 Johnston, “New Web,” 1. 4 Johnston, “New Web,” 3–6.

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to conceive such an activity. The same stick could simultaneously be perceived as a scepter or a weapon, depending on the actor in question. The term “affordance,” coined by the perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson, was adapted by classicist Maurizio Bettini for studying cultural phenomena in general and, in particular, for analyzing human reactions to animal characteristics.5 So, for instance, the fact that weasels carry their young in their mouths “is an affordance that gave rise to the ancient belief that weasels gave birth through their mouths.” And weasels’ ability to slip through narrow spaces was an affordance that led to their reputation as helpers of women in labor. “Neither characteristic of the weasel compelled ancient thought in a particular direction; rather they afforded opportunities that could lead in any number of directions, depending on the cultural backgrounds of the observers – arguably, in another culture, the weasel’s carrying of her pups in her mouth might be interpreted to mean that weasels ate some or all of their young.”6 The usefulness of the concept of “affordance,” for Bettini and for Johnston, lies in the fact that, whereas symbols tend to have a static meaning (the lily, having become associated with purity in Christian thought, symbolizes Mary), affordances may include a range of meanings – even meanings that appear quite dissimilar. This capacity is critical for considering the spider and its web: “Whereas our usual understanding of the word ‘symbol’ makes it hard to say that the spider ‘symbolizes’ both vicious predation and helpfulness, the concept of affordances allows the possibility that both meanings might be evoked within a single cultural production.”7 What, then, were the affordances of spiders in the ancient world? And what meanings were ascribed to them? Johnston notes three affordances of the spider widely attested among ancient authors. First, the most frequently noted affordance of the spider was its ability to spin fiber and weave webs. The spider’s capacity to weave was frequently taken as an image of industriousness;8 but the spider web itself was also an image of neglect (i.e., the absence of human attention), transience, and decay. Second, as Theophilus’s story attests (the fate of Arachne and Phalanx is to be eaten by their own children), spiders were believed to kill – and sometimes to eat – their 5 James Jerome Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979); Maurizio Bettini, Nascere. Storie di donne, donnole, madri ed eroi (Torino: G. Einaudi, 1998). 6 Johnston, “New Web,” 4. 7 Johnston, “New Web,” 5. 8 From a rather different period, Jonathan Edwards opened his sermon “Of Insects” with the statement: “Of all insects, no one is more wonderful than the spider, especially with respect to their sagacity and admirable way of working.” Cf. Robert Lowell’s darker ruminations (“Mr. Edwards and the Spider”).

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parents. Naturally, this perceived tendency toward parricide was not liable to such diverse interpretations as the weaving of webs: it was unambiguously negative. What should be noted, though, is that there are other ancient connections between parricide, incest, and cannibalism. (Johnston mentions the House of Atreus and the House of Laius.) Thus, as Johnston puts it, “It is mythically ‘logical,’ in other words, for incestuous siblings such as Arachne and Phalanx to end up as the victims of cannibalistic parricide.”9 Finally, several ancient authors observed that the bite of the phalangion could induce priapism. This was understood as proof that spiders were themselves lustful. The ancient association of spiders and lustiness can even be perceived in the fact that the so-called “chaste tree” (agnus castus) was used both for sexual ailments – including, in men, priapism – and for protecting houses from spiders (and treating the wounds resulting from their bites). In short, “spider-induced priapism was interpretatively extended so as to present spiders as creatures of excessive lust – whose bites, in turn, undermined chastity and proper reproduction by exciting improper lust in their victims.” 10 Returning to Theophilus’s story with these three affordances in mind (the ability to spin and weave; the habit of parricide and cannibalism; a lustful nature), Johnston notes that the ability to weave, in particular, urges us to press beyond simply reading the episode as one in which the punishment fits the crime (sexual transgression in the family followed by the transformation of the transgressors into hyper-sexual creatures who will be devoured by their own children). Building on the study of John Scheid and Jesper Svenbro,11 Johnston notes that weaving – characteristically women’s work – was a common metaphor for two institutions central to the maintenance of society, namely, marriage and civic coalitions of potentially disparate families. The very mechanics of human weaving encouraged such a metaphor: the ostensibly opposite vertical (warp) and horizontal (woof) threads are brought together into something useful, sturdy, and new. Plato himself had developed weaving as a metaphor for crafting a city in the Statesman (279b1–283b), and he claimed that the fabric of society should begin by weaving together men and women whose disparate characteristics would yield the best citizens. Plato’s metaphor reflected and invoked concrete civic occasions in which weaving played a part in the celebration of unity. When sixteen women of Elis persuaded their husbands to forego their warring and to return to civic unity, they were granted the honor of weaving a new peplos 9

Johnston, “New Web,” 8. Johnston, “New Web,” 10. 11 John Scheid and Jesper Svenbro, The Craft of Zeus: Myths of Weaving and Fabric (trans. Carol Volk; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996). 10

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for Hera and of holding the Heraea.12 Similarly in Athens (recall that Theophilus’s tale is set in Attica and Athena is the siblings’ teacher13), at the culmination of the Panathenaia, a new peplos was dedicated to Athena. This peplos, woven by women and girls, depicted the victory of Athena and the other Olympians over the giants. Furthermore, the Panathenaia was allegedly founded by Theseus to commemorate the unification of the villages of Attica. So yet again, we find weaving and the triumph of order over chaos brought into close connection. Weaving represents civilization. Johnston makes a further observation, namely that weaving was associated with the transition from girlhood to womanhood; it marks a readiness for marriage. At the domestic level, “a bride took cloth that she had woven to her new home, to serve as the bed cover under which she would lie with her husband. . . .”14 In the case of the women of Elis, Johnston notes that the Heraea honored Hera, the goddess of marriage; and the girls who participated in the games of the Heraea showed thereby their readiness for marriage. In Athens, girls called Arrhephoroi played a ritual role in the weaving of the peplos for Athena. Some of what we know about these Arrephoroi would seem to confirm the connection of weaving to the transition to sexuality and marriage. On a night at the end of their year-long service as Arrhephoroi, these girls were to carry a package from the priestess of Athena to the temple of Aphrodite; then the priestess of Aphrodite gave them a package to carry back. In the myth associated with this ritual, three daughters of Cecrops were told by Athena to guard a basket and not to peer into it. Disobeying the goddess, they looked in and saw Athena’s monstrous foster child, Erichthonius. Driven mad with fear, they leaped from the Acropolis to their deaths. Walter Burkert interprets this myth as an account of premature introduction to motherhood and sexuality. In contrast to the myth, in the ritual the Arrhephoroi enact a proper introduction: they transverse the distance from virginity (Athena) to sexuality (Aphrodite) and then return back again to Athena, “whose duties also included receiving, at her temple on the Acropolis, each and every Athenian bride on the eve of her marriage.”15 Not only were the daughters of Cecrops introduced (prematurely) to sexuality, but they were also associated with weaving: Aglauros and Pandrosus were known as the first wool-workers, and their sister Herse es12 Pausanius 5.16.2–7. For “weaving” together fibers as women’s work and as a metaphor for establishing peace, cf. Aristophanes, Lysistrata 568–586 (Johnston, “New Web,” 12). 13 Johnston notes other evidence that associates this author and his account with Athens (“New Web,” 3). 14 Johnston, “New Web,” 12. 15 Johnston, “New Web,” 14.

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tablished the festivals at which the statue of Athena and its clothing were cleaned. Johnston ties these various threads together: The most central Athenian festival and its accompanying myths, then, explore in depth some ideas that are more briefly articulated in the myth of Arachne and Phalanx as we have it from Theophilus: a young Athenian virgin (Arachne), whose tutelage by Athena implicitly makes her the representative of all Athenian virgins, embarks on learning one of the most important skills that she will need as a wife – weaving – but spoils her transition by trying to acquire the other prerequisite of the wife – an introduction to sexuality – preemptively and with the wrong partner. The story of Arachne and Phalanx takes things a step further than the story of Cecrops’s daughters, however. The actions of Arachne and Phalanx contravene not only the rules of proper behavior for virgins but also the rules of proper civic behavior: a “marriage” that weaves together brother and sister completely subverts the institution’s purposes as ancient sources articulated them: if a strong city is built upon the union of diversified families and a strong family is built upon the union of diversified spouses, then the union of siblings, by definition, weakens the fabric of both. 16

— It was not immediately clear how best to compose a “response” to Johnston’s essay. I knew little about Nicander’s Theriaca and had never even heard the tale of Theophilus that the scholiast summarizes. Nor had I previously devoted much contemplation to arachnids (ancient or modern). Furthermore, the concept of “affordance” was clearly explained and ably deployed. So in light of the fact that the honoree of these essays works on ancient Christianity and Judaism, it seemed that a good starting point might be to consider the treatment of this concatenation of images and rituals among ancient Christians and Jews. Some initial searches for references to spiders turned up a dispiritingly exiguous set of results. There are only two biblical references to spider webs, neither particularly interesting.17 I found on-

16

Johnston, “New Web,” 14. Isaiah 59:5: Z_ D? D VSLGZQHUUKFDQNDL?LV WR?QD U D[ QKMXIDLQRXVLQ, “They broke the eggs of asps and weave the web of a spider” (NETS); the Hebrew is similar: “They hatch adders’ eggs, and weave the spider’s web [STH NH? HQTD[GHNL VTHELRQOLSRQ WHM]| [SROXNKG]HDELZTDQDWRLHLWHFHQRLLWHHQWRSLRLLWH [DSR] | [URLWDI]K MLWHDSR? WK MDGUHDMWZaQDVWUZQIHUHVTHHLWH[HQ]| [DH ULSR]X SODV]HVTHNH?VX?RZ^GHNDWZNLPHQRMSDUD[ODEHWHWD?M]| [IZ]QD?MWZaQ DQ WLGLNZQ HP RX 16 Cp. Antiphon 4.1.3–4; Robert Parker, Miasma: Pollution and Purity in Early Greek Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 108–9 notes the overlap in meaning for such words as aliteros, prostropaios, palamnaios, and even Erinyes, which can all refer to demonic spirits who bring vengeance or to something about the perpetrator (a miasma) that brings about the vengeance. 17 Homer Od. 11.71–76. HQ TD V  HSHLWD DQ DF NHO RPDL PQK V DVTDL HPHL R PK  P  DNODXWRQ DTDSWRQ LZBQ  RS LTHQ NDWDOHLS HLQ QRVILVTHLM PK  WRL WL THZaQ PK QLPD

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While the Erinyes can represent just retribution, there is, however, no reason to see them here as indicating that Thermis’s illness comes in revenge for something wrong she did, for Simalos explicitly concludes his poem with the claim that “blameless were the ways of your life.” Again, we can see such a protestation as a strategy against potential blame from the community. Some of the confession stelae show that one possible community response to an unexpected death was to attribute it to the will of a god. A stele recording the death of the woman from Knidos who was accused of using a pharmakon against her son-in-law evokes a whole complicated narrative of accusations of witchcraft and divine vengeance. The 241st year, the month of Panemos, the 2nd day. Great Artemis Anaetis and Mên of Tiamos. Because Ioukoundos fell into a condition of insanity and it was noised abroad by all that he had been put under a spell by his mother-in-law Tatia, she set up a scepter and placed curses in the temple in order to defend herself against what was being said about her, having suffered such a state of conscience. The gods sent punishment on her which she did not escape. Likewise, her son Sokrates was passing the entrance that leads down to the sacred grove and carrying a vine-dressing sickle and it dropped on his foot and thus destruction came upon him in a single day’s punishment. Therefore great are the gods of Axiottenos! They set about to have removed the scepter and the curses that were in the temple, the ones the estate of Ioukoundos and Moschios had sought to undo. The descendants of Tatia, Sokrateia and Moschas, along with Ioukoundos and Menekrates, constantly propitiate the gods and praise them from now on, having inscribed on this stele the deeds of the gods.18

Tatia, it seems, was accused of having bewitched her son-in-law, but her protestations of innocence, which included a public oath in the temple, JHQZPDLD OOD PHNDNNKaDLVXBQWHX [ HVLQDVVDPRL HVWLVKaPD  WH PRL[HXaDLSROLKaM HSL? TLQL? TDOD VVKM D QGURBM GXVWK Q RLR NDL? HVVRPHQRLVL SXTHV TDL (“My lord, remember me, I beg you! Don’t sail off and desert me, left behind, unwept, unburied, don’t, or I may draw the gods’ fury upon your head. No, burn me in full armor, all my harness, heap my mound by the churning gray surf – a man whose luck ran out – so even men to come will learn my story.”) 18 Confession Stele from Knidos 156/7 C.E. TAM V,1 318. HWRXM VPD  PK(QR?M) 3DQKPRX E   | 0HJDO K  $ UWHPLM  $ QDHL |WLM NDL? 0HL?M 7LDPRX HSL? |  , RXNRX QGRM HJ HQHWR HQ | GLDTHVL PDQLNK  NDL? XSR? SDQ |WZQ GLHIKPLVTK ZM  XSR? | 7DWLDM WK M SHQTHUD M DX|WRX  IDUPDNRQ DXWZ_a GHGRV |TDL K GH? 7DWLDM HSHVWKVHQ | VNK SWURQ NDL? DUD?M  HTKNHQ | HQ  WZ_a QDZ_a ZM LNDQRSRLRX |VD SHUL? WRX  SHIKPLVTDL DXWK?Q HQ VXQHLGKVLWRLDXWK_| RL THRL? DXW K?QHS RLK VDQHQ |NRODVHLKQRX GLHIXJHQR|PRLZM NDL? 6ZNUDW KMR XLR?M|DXWK MSDUDJZQWK?Q LVRGRQ|WK?Q LMWR? DO VRMD S DJ RXVDQ |GUHS DQRQNUDWZaQDPSHORWR|PRQHNWK M[HLUR?MHS HVHQ|DXW Za_ HSL? WR?Q SRGDQNDL? RX|WZM PRQKPHUZ_ NRODVHL D|SKOODJK PHJDORL RX@Q RL TH|RL? RL HQ   $]LWWRLM HSH]KWKVDQ| OXTK QDLWR? VNK SWURQNDL? WD?M|DUD?MWD?M JHQRPHQ DMHQ WZ _ |QDZa_D HO XVDQ WD?  , RXNRXQGRX | NDL? 0RV[LRX HJ JRQRL GH? WK M | 7DWLDM 6ZNUDWHLD NDL? 0RV[DM|NDL? , RXNRX QGRMNDL?0HQHNUD|WKMNDWD?SDQWDHFHLODVDPHQRL|WRX?MTHRX?M NDL? DS R? QRL Q HXO RJRX |PHQ VWKOORJUDIKVDQWHM WD?M GX|QDPLM WZ Q THZaQ See the discussion in Gordon, “Imagining Greek and Roman Magic,” 247.

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were proved false in the eyes of the community when both she and her son suffered some unexpected misfortunes that were understood by the community as the vengeance of the god. Another confession stele from Maionia was published by a mother who claims her 13 year old son was killed by the god because she had failed to properly honor the god. And the god took revenge for this, because Syntyche had not publicized and exalted the god. Therefore he made her set up in his sanctuary this account of the revenge he took on her child of thirteen years, Heraclides, because Syntyche held the things of man in higher account than the things of the god. It is Syntyche the daughter of Apollonius and Meltine who has published this act of vengeance.19

The unexpected death of the young Heraclides was attributed to the vengeance of the dishonored god, and his mother, Syntyche, publicly blames herself instead of putting the blame upon some malevolent witch figure, specific or unspecified. There may well have been factors in the tangled social situation that preceded this public declaration that made the mother of Heraclides feel it was indeed her fault or that made the blaming of an alien witch impossible, but, for the Greeks, the gods always remain a possible cause of the unexpected, with their personal whims and angers, their unfathomable motivations, and their endless desire for honor.20 Ultimately, in the story of Euthynoos, too, it is the will of the god, not some jealous rival employing witchcraft, that brings about the untimely death of the youth. When his father consults the oracle of the dead, he sees the shades of his son and his own father, who inform him that the son’s early death was not caused by malice, but by the favor of the gods. Being in perplexity as to how he might put his suspicions to the test, he visited a place where the spirits of the dead are conjured up, and having offered the preliminary sacrifice 19 SEG 37:1001.17–25. Confession stele from Maionia c.150–250 C. E. NDL? R THR?M WRX |WR HQHPHVKVH RWL RXN HFHIDQWHX|VH RXGH? X\ZVH WR?Q THR?Q K 6XQWX[K GLR|WL HSRLKVHQ DXWK?Q  H SL? WHN QRX  +UDNOHL|GRX HWZaQ LJ  QHPHVLQ HSL? WR?Q  WRS RQ DXWRX  | VWK VDL RWL WR? WZaQ  DQ TUZSZQ PDaOORQ HS R|KVHQ K WRX  THRX  v 6XQWX[ K  $ SROOZQLRX|TXJDWKUNDL?0HOWLQ KMKSURJHJUDIRX |VDWK?Q QHPHVLQ 20 Daniel Ogden, Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 244 suggests a hidden back-story to this stele, that Heraclides had stolen a jewel of Syntyche’s so that her friend’s daughter, who had become pregnant (by him?), could use it to try to end her pregnancy magically. When the theft was discovered, Syntyche set up a prayer for justice to Mên for its recovery, but when the stone was recovered (put back in its usual place but burned – perhaps from a magical ritual), she did not publicize the god’s deed in recovering the stone. Therefore, she proclaims in this stele, Mên made her friend’s daughter pregnant and took vengeance on her son. Ogden’s speculation is plausible, accounting for why the stone was returned after being burned as well as for the unexpected pregnancy, but ultimately Syntyche’s motivations remain unclear.

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prescribed by custom, he lay down to sleep in the place, and had this vision. It seemed that his own father came to him, and that on seeing his father he related to him what had happened touching his son, and begged and besought his help to discover the man who was responsible for his son’s death. And his father said, “It is for this that I am come. Take from this person here what he brings for you, and from this you will learn about everything over which you are now grieving.” The person whom he indicated was a young man who followed him, resembling his son Euthynoos and close to him in years and stature. So Elysios asked who he was; and he said, “I am the daimon of your son,” and with these words he handed him a paper. This Elysios opened and saw written there these three lines: Verily somehow the minds of men in ignorance wander; Dead now Euthynoos lies; destiny so has decreed. Not for himself was it good that he live, nor yet for his parents. Such, you observe, is the purport of the tales recorded in ancient writers.21

The minds of men wander in folly, says the oracle; the gods know an early death to be the best thing for a good man. Plutarch includes this anecdote within his consolation speech to a father whose son has died young, transforming the uncertainty of the cause of death into a philosophical sermon on the limitations of mortal perspective. Don’t blame a witch; trust instead that the gods provide what is best for mortals. The place of the witch, then, of the horrific scare-figure who piles up levels of alterity – female, foreign, and superhumanly powerful – is more in the imaginary of the Greco-Roman world than in its reality.22 While a variety of individuals may have engaged in practices that they or others

Plutarch, Consolation for Apollonius 109cd. D S RURXaQWDG RWZ_ WUR S Z_ ED V DQRQ OD ERL WRX W ZQ D ILNHV TDL HSL WL \X[RPDQWHL RQ SURTXVD PHQRQ G  ZM QR PRM HJ NRLPDaV TDLNDL? LGHL QR\LQWRLD QGHGR FDLSDUDJHQHVTDLWRBQ SDWHUDWRBQ HDXWRXa LGR Q WD GH? GLHFHU[HVTDL SURBM DX WRBQ  SHUL? WKaM WX [KM WKaM NDWDB WRBQ XLR Q NDL? D Q WLEROHL Q WH NDL? GHL VTDL VXQHFHXUHL Q WRBQ DLWLRQ WRXa TDQD WRX NDL? WRBQ “HSL? WRX W Z_ ” ID QDL “KNZ D OODB GHFDL SDUDB WRXaG  D VRL IHUHL HN JDBU WRX WZQ DS DQW HLVK_ Z^QSHULOXSK_a ”HL@QDLG RQ HVK PKQHQHDQLVNRQ  HS R PHQRQDX WZ_aHP IHUKa WHWZ_aXLZ_aNDL?WDB WRXa[UR Q RXWHNDL?WDBWKaMKOLNLDMHJ JX MHUHV TDLRX`QRVWLMHLK NDL? WRBQ  ID Q DL “GDLPZQ WRXa XLHRM VRX” NDL? RXWZ GKB R UHFDL RL JUDPPDWHLGLRQ D Q HLOK V DQWDRX`Q DX W RBLGHL QHJ JHJUDPPHQDWULDWDXaWD K` SRXQKSLHK_VLQD OX RXVLQ IUHQHM D QGUZaQ | (X TX QRRM NHL WDL PRLULGLZ_ TDQD WZ_ | RX N K`Q JDBU ]Z HLQ NDORBQ DX WZ_a RX GH? JRQHXaVL” 7RLDXaWD GK  VRL NDL? WDB WZaQ GLKJKPD WZQ WZaQ SDUDB WRL M D U[DLRLMD Q DJHJUDPPHQZQ (Translation from the Loeb). 22 Cp. Gordon, “Imagining Greek and Roman Magic,” 167. “In my view, it is much too easy to be distracted by the archaeological survival of curse- and vindictive-tablets, and the remains of Graeco-Egyptian magical receptaries (grimoires), from the essential point, which is that the true home of magic is a body of narrative, what Cicero calls ‘old women's tales,’ which construct the social knowledge to which any event, real or supposed, fearful or peculiar, may be referred and in terms of which, if need be, explained” (emphasis mine). On pages 204–10, Gordon explores the development of the ‘nightwitch’ figure in the literary imagination, linking the changes to various social shifts. 21

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might have labeled “magic,”23 including curse tablets and pharmaka intended to bring harm upon others, the kinds of witches we meet in literature, from Medea to Erichtho, do not, from the evidence of the epitaphs or from contemporary historical accounts, seem to have been regularly identified as the figures responsible for particular misfortunes, such as the untimely death of a young wife or the promising young heir to his father’s estate. Rather than fastening the blame on a specific individual and identifying her as the witch or engaging in widespread witch hunts, those afflicted with misfortunes seem more likely to express their uncertainty over the precise cause – it might have been a witch, but then again it might have been something else. Thus, we see that, within the range of possible causes, either the specification of one – a witch or a poison – or the emphasis on the uncertainty itself can serve as a strategy for dealing with the social situation. This corpus of epitaphs can help illuminate the complex social situations that surrounded the phenomenon of untimely death in Greek and Roman societies, giving us insight into the structures of the society and the ways people negotiated within them. At the same time, these epitaphs, with their range of attributed causes for death, can help us understand the multiple ways in which magical forms of harming were thought to work in the ancient world, particularly with the insight that one mode need not exclude others in an explanation. These epitaphs supplement the literary accounts and the evidence of the curse tablets, providing new light on this murky, yet fascinating, aspect of the ancient world.

Works Cited Behringer, Wolfgang. Witches and Witch-hunts: A Global History. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2004. Edmonds, Radcliffe. “Extra-ordinary People: Mystai and Magoi, Magicians and Orphics in the Derveni Papyrus.” Classical Philology 103 (2008): 16–39. Evans-Pritchard, E. E. Witchcraft: Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937. Gordon, Richard. “Imagining Greek and Roman Magic.” Pages 159–276 in Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Greece and Rome. Edited by B. Ankarloo and S. Clark. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. Graf, Fritz. “Medea, the Enchantress from Afar: Remarks on a Well-Known Myth.” Pages 21–43 in Medea: Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy, and Art. Edited by James J. Clauss and Sarah Iles Johnston. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997. 23

On the difference between other-labeling and self-labeling, see Radcliffe Edmonds, “Extraordinary People: Mystai and Magoi, Magicians and Orphics in the Derveni Papyrus,” Classical Philology 103 (2008): 16–39.

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–. “Untimely Death, Witchcraft, and Divine Vengeance: A Reasoned Epigraphical Catalog.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 206 (2007): 136–50. Kotansky, Roy. Greek Magical Amulets the Inscribed Gold, Silver, Copper, and Bronze “Lamellae.” Abhandlungen der Rheinisch-Westfälischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Sonderreihe Papyrologica Coloniensia 22. Westdeutscher Verlag: Opladen, 1994. Ogden, Daniel. Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Parker, Robert. Miasma: Pollution and Purity in Early Greek Religion. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1983. Stratton, Kimberly. Naming the Witch: Magic, Ideology, and Stereotype in the Ancient World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.

Forget Me Not Memory and the Female Subject in Ancient Binding Spells STEPHEN J. DAVIS

A. A Case of Unrequited Desire: Hermeias and Tigerous Somewhere in Egypt in the fourth century C.E., a young woman named Tigerous attracted the amorous attention of a male suitor named Hermeias. That’s when the trouble started. About these two persons we actually know quite little. Tigerous was the daughter of a woman named Sophia (a common enough name in antiquity), and Hermeias’ mother was called Hermione. Apart from these maternal ties, nothing is known about their families. What we know about their (apparently quite dysfunctional) relationship must be gleaned from a mere twenty-five lines of text in a single papyrus.1 Such a meager source is not exactly fodder for a full biography, but it is enough to confirm a couple of salient facts: first, that Hermeias’s attraction to Tigerous was frustratingly 1 PGM XVIIa.1–25; ed. Karl Preisendanz, Papyri Graecae Magicae: Die griechischen Zauberpapyri, volume 2 (2d ed.; Stuttgart: Teubner, 1974), 138–39; trans. E. N. O’Neill, in H. D. Betz, The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells (2d ed.; Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992). (Henceforth, all references to Preisendanz, Papyri Graecae Magicae: Die griechischen Zauberpapyri will be indicated with “PGM [Betz].”) The woman’s name actually appears in two different forms in the papyrus: she is first identified as “Tigerous,” but later is identified as “Titerous” (compare line 5 to line 24). According to Fritz Graf (per litt. August 27, 2009), the letter gamma in Tigerous may be a later paleographical corruption of the Greek tau. In that case, the name Titerous would have been the originally spelling. However, the absence of the name Titerous from the Sammelbuch griechischer Urkunden aus Ägypten leaves this question in doubt; by contrast, the collection does attest one Roman-era grave inscription with the name of Tigeros, the male cognate form of Tigerous. See Friedrich Presigke, ed., Sammelbuch griechischer Urkunden aus Ägypten (vol. 1; Strassburg: Karl J. Trübner, 1915), 72 (#76); see also Gustave Lefebvre, “Inscriptions grecques de Tehnéh (Égypte),” Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 27 (1903): 358 (#50). While the problem of this woman’s name remains unresolved, due to the relatively sparse data available to us, for the purposes of this article I opt for the name Tigerous on a provisional basis.

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unrequited – he complains about her shameful “arrogance” (XSHUKIDQHLD) and “calculation” (ORJLVPRM)2 – and, second, that her rejection of him, far from dissuading him, only served to make him all the more determined to have her. The papyrus itself stands as proof of that determination: it is a love spell of attraction, commissioned by Hermeias personally, addressed to the dog-headed god Anubis (he addresses him thrice as “dog, dog, dog”),3 and designed (from the perspective of the spell-giver) to attract her (sc. Tigerous) to me, beneath my feet, melting with passionate desire, at every hour of the day and night, always remembering me (D HL PRXPLPQKVNRXPHQKQ) while she is eating, drinking, working, conversing, sleeping, dreaming, having an orgasm in her dreams, until she is scourged by you and comes desiring me, with her hands full, with a generous soul and graciously giving me both herself and her possessions and fulfilling what is appropriate for women in regards to men, serving both my desire and her own unhesitatingly and unabashedly, joining thigh to thigh and belly to belly and her black to 4 my black most pleasantly.

Whether this spell did the trick for Hermeias – whether it had its intended effect on Tigerous and she ended up succumbing to his less-than-subtle wiles – is unknown to us. While we might hope that Tigerous remained unaffected by Hermeias’ coercive attempts at seduction, such spells unfortunately do not grant us access to this kind of historical information. Students on the trail of juicy ancient gossip will just have to be satisfied with innuendo and conjecture. And yet, while this particular spell fails to give us much to go on in our search for “the historical Tigerous,” it does, in fact, provide us with some valuable data about gender dynamics in antiquity as they pertained to the performance of such ritual acts. In this paper, I want to raise some questions about the construction of the female subject in the so-called Papyri Graecae Magicae, and (more specifically) about the role that memory played in the scripted manipulation of women’s sexual desire.

B. The Malleability of Memory: From Modernity to Antiquity Before exploring specifically how memory language functions in the magical papyri, let me first make some brief, unifying observations about how memory has been theorized and practiced in modernity and antiquity. Beginning with the state of the question in the contemporary social and phys-

2

PGM XVIIa.6–7 (Betz). PGM XVIIa.4 (Betz). 4 PGM XVIIa.8–23 (Betz) (my italics). 3

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ical sciences, I will then draw cogent connections with perspectives held in Graeco-Roman philosophy and rhetoric. If there is one thing that sociologists, psychologists, and biologists studying human memory agree on today, it is that memory is malleable. In her disciplinary survey of memory studies, sociologist Astrid Erll has defined Gedächtnis as a “changeable” cognitive structure. 5 For psychologists, it is this very changeability that facilitates therapeutic forms of healing: as Marcia Cavell explains, self-discovery in psychoanalysis is painful due to the very fact that emotional memory has to be relived and thereby “modified.”6 Finally, biological study of brain function has confirmed the plasticity of the memory faculty in animals. In the mid-twentieth century, one Swedish researcher, Holger Hydén, conducted neurological studies on rats and rabbits that demonstrated how learned experience brought about “functional changes in the biochemistry of the nerve cells”; he concluded that “memory was stored in the brain in the form of such changed molecular structures.”7 Biologist Steven Rose has followed up on these insights in his laboratory study of baby chicks, and his findings have reaffirmed the “plasticity” of memory mechanisms. The capacity of animals “to adapt and modify . . . in the face of repeated experience” is intricately related to alterations occurring at the synaptic and hormonal level – in other words, to the way that brains and bodies are wired for change.8 Such modern scientific insights into the malleability of memory would not have come as too much of a surprise to ancient Greeks and Romans. In certain quarters of the philosophical and rhetorical disciplines, there was a shared recognition that bodies and practices played determinative roles in the shaping of cognitive memory. Aristotle speaks of how human memory could be adversely affected by certain physiological conditions deemed illsuited to mental retention. Thus, he attributes some people’s difficulties in recollection to the movement of fluid around their perceptive region, a condition of instability that, according to him, prevents perceptions from stamping themselves clearly upon a person’s psyche.9 In a similar fashion, bodily movement associated with rapid physical growth in the very young, and with physical deterioration in the very old, acted as an inhibitor to 5

Astrid Erll, Kollektives Gedächtnis und Erinnerungskulturen (Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 2005), 7. 6 Marcia Cavell, Becoming a Subject: Reflections in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), 22. 7 Steven Rose, The Making of Memory: From Molecules to Mind (rev. ed.; London: Vintage, 2003), 60; on Hydén’s work, see also idem, “Holger Hydén and the Biochemistry of Memory,” Brain Research Bulletin 50 (1999): 443. 8 Rose, The Making of Memory, 159–63 (quote at 159). 9 Aristotle, De Memoria et Reminiscentia 453a14: trans. R. Sorabji, Aristotle on Memory (2d ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 59.

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proper memory function.10 On this subject, Aristotle also mentions the case of dwarves, whose large heads, he believed, exerted an excessive weight upon their perceptive faculties: for him, this physical condition explained their cultural reputation for having poorer memories.11 However, at the same time that memory could be inhibited or suppressed by certain physiological conditions, it also could be cultivated – exercised and enhanced – through diligent repetition and practice. Examples abound in the field of Latin rhetoric where writers such as Cicero and Quintillian counsel those who would be great orators to train themselves in the ars memoriae.12 This training was seen as a means by which a speaker could call forth and develop his or her natural memory faculties. Thus, in his Institutio Oratoria, Quintillian argues (against Plato) that “the natural gift can be helped by reason, since training enables us to do things which we cannot do before we have had any training or practice.”13 For Aristotle and for Quintillian, then, memory was a faculty eminently subject to alteration, whether inhibited due to one’s bodily condition or enhanced due to disciplined training.

C. Ancient Spells Designed to Enhance One’s Own Memory (MnƝmonikai) Ancient practitioners of the so-called “magical” arts – producers and consumers of spells, charms, and amulets – participated in these same cultural assumptions about the malleability of memory. Scattered among the Papyri Graecae Magicae one finds examples of spells called mnƝmonikai, spells designed to cultivate or enhance the memory capacity of the one performing specified ritual actions and incantations. In one case, the spellgiver is instructed to write a series of mysterious names on hieratic papyrus with myrrh ink, to wash those names off into water from seven springs, and to “drink the water on an empty stomach for seven days while the moon is in the east.”14 This sequence of ritual actions – including not only 10

Aristotle, Mem. rem. 453a31 (Sorabji). Aristotle, Mem. rem. 453a31 (Sorabji). 12 See, e.g., Jocelyn Penny Small, “Memory and the Roman Orator,” in A Companion to Roman Rhetoric (ed. W. Dominik and J. Hall; Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 195–206. 13 Quintillian, Inst. XI.2.9 (Butler, LCL). Cicero takes a slightly more conservative position regarding the transformative potential of the memory arts: while he says that “memory can not be entirely formed by this practice, if there is none given by nature,” he nonetheless affirms that such practice has a crucial role in calling forth one’s “latent natural faculty” (Cicero, De or. II.88: trans. J. S. Watson, Cicero on Oratory and Orators [Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 1970], 189). 14 PGM I.232–247 (Betz). 11

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the acts of writing and drinking, but also the initial preparation of the ink from a recipe of ingredients (including myrrh, figs, date pits, dried pinecones, wormwood, ibis wings, and spring water) and the burning of those ingredients over fire – constitutes a particular memory “technology” related to worship of the Egyptian god Hermes Thoth. At least three other examples of such mnƝmonikai survive in the Papyri Graecae Magicae, and each demonstrates a similar set of temporally marked ritual actions – most notably, inscription, incantation, and ingestion. However, one also finds a diverse array of new implements and material ingredients. The first of these mnƝmonikai involves the creation of an amulet by engraving a silver tablet with a petition to Selene, the moon goddess, to “enter . . . into my mind, and grant me memory (PQKPKQ).”15 The wearer of the amulet is instructed to recite this formula while facing the moon on the first day of every month while prostrating him- or herself before the goddess and while eating twelve rolls of barley meal bread molded “in the shape of female figures.”16 A similar but slightly elaborated incantation is recited in another memory spell, in this case directed to the sun god Helios: “[Enter, . . .] upon my heart, [having granted] memory (PQK[PKQ]) to my soul, to my eyes . . . in order that, whatever I hear once, [I might remember it throughout] my lifetime.”17 A third and final mnƝmonikƝ is prescribed for cultivation of both memory and foreknowledge.18 Despite its fragmentary state, enough material survives to indicate a complex procedure involving the ingestion of ground bird’s heart with honey and the recitation of divine names on the first fourteen nights of the lunar month. Taken from “a copy from a holy book,” 19 the spell enacts devotion to a range of divine and/or heroic figures, including not only Selene and Helios, but also Osiris, Mithras, Moses, and the Hebrew deity Iaǀ Sabaǀ[th]. In each of these cases, the successful completion of the spell was thought to grant the spell-giver a renewed or enhanced capacity to remember, a capacity particularly endowed with divine power and linked to specifically delineated ritual actions.

15 PGM III.410–423, quote at lines 415–416 (Betz). While this spell does not bear mnƝmonikƝ as a title, its invocation of Selene as the giver of memory conforms to the pattern of other spells in this category. 16 PGM III.412 (Betz). 17 PGM III.468–478 (Betz). 18 PGM III.424–466 (Betz). 19 PGM III.424 (Betz).

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D. Ancient Binding Spells (Agǀgai) Designed to Manipulate the Memory of Another Having briefly surveyed this evidence for the production of memory spells (mnƝmonikai) in antiquity, let us now return to our friends Tigerous and Hermeias. In the binding spell of attraction commissioned by Hermeias, the ritual manipulation of memory is again on display. Here, however, the aim of the rite is not to enhance the mnemonic prowess of the one performing it; rather, the spell practitioner targets the memory of an uncooperative object of sexual attraction. Hermeias seeks to make himself the exclusive object of Tigerous’s remembrance, regardless of whether she is awake or asleep. Other binding spells in the corpus of Papyri Graecae Magicae underscore the way that such ritual agents sought to conscript, delimit, and redirect the memory of their unsuspecting targets. In one instance, a man named Theon conjures both daimons and “boys who have died prematurely” to search for a woman named Euphemia and to take sleep away from her until she “comes before his feet and loves him with mad love and affection and intercourse.” The spell is designed to bind her bodily members (“her brain and her hand, and her intestines and her genitals, and her heart”), thereby causing her to “forget” all other rivals.20 In the case of Hermeias and Tigerous, and of Theon and Euphemia, we have examples of spells commissioned by and for specific people, and therefore we are supplied with the names of the principals. However, the majority of binding spells that survive still have blank spaces in the text where the relevant names could be filled in later. As such, they give evidence of a standardized spell script involving both the suppression and cultivation of memory – a script that ritual experts (i.e., “magicians”) would have adapted and made available to local clientele for purchase and personalization. Characteristic of this script is an attempt by a male ritual agent to effect a state of forgetfulness or oblivion in a female victim with respect to all other social ties, and/or to cultivate memory in that subject only with respect to the spell-giver himself. Here I want to highlight two papyri that perhaps best conform to this particular subset of binding charms (agǀgai), a type that I will refer to as “Forget Me Not” spells. The first example is a “Commendable love charm” that enjoins the preparation of a jarred mixture containing olive oil, a beet plant, and olive branches and the recitation of an incantation, to be repeated on seven dif-

20 PGM CI.1–53 (Betz). On rituals related to the untimely dead (aǀroi) in ancient Greek culture, see Sarah Iles Johnston, Restless Dead: Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), esp. 161–249.

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ferent occasions while facing the moon.21 The final words of the incantation epitomize the primary goal of this kind of “Forget Me Not” spell: the spell-giver intones the words expressly so “that she (i.e., the target) may love me and do whatever I wish [and] so that she may forget (HSLODTKWDL) her father and mother, brothers, husband, friend, so that, except for me alone, she may forget (HSLODTKWDL) them all.”22 The second example, a “Wondrous spell for binding a lover,” makes this theme even more explicit. It begins by instructing the ritual agent to “take wax [or clay] from the potter’s wheel and make two figures, a male and a female.”23 The male figurine is to be modeled after the war god Ares, armed with a sword that is poised to plunge into the female figure’s neck. By contrast with this modeled posture of power, the female figure is depicted in a position of humiliation and bondage, on her knees “with her arms behind her back.”24 After a series of mysterious names are inscribed on different body parts,25 thirteen copper needles are stuck in the figure’s brain, ears, eyes, mouth, midriff (2), hands, genitalia (2), and soles of the feet. While performing this action, the practitioner recites, “I am piercing such and such a member of her, (insert name here), so that she may remember (RSZMPKKVTK_) no one but me, (insert name here), alone.”26 This evidence for the manufacture and use of dolls or figurines in ancient magical spells is not an isolated case. A whole cycle of binding charms making use of this ritual technology has been documented by David Martinez, and quite a number of actual figurines have been recovered from Greek and Egyptian gravesites, sometimes with texts that offer close variations on this same spell.27 One well-known example, probably from the 21

This spell survives in both Demotic Egyptian and Greek: see PDM lxi.159–196 (preserved in Pap. Brit. Mus. 10588); and PGM LXI.1–38 (Betz). 22 PGM LXI.28–30 (Betz). Another Demotic example (PDM xiv.636–669 [Betz]) prescribes a recipe of ingredients ranging from a scarab in a cup of wine, milk from a black cow, and olive wood, to nails and potsherds, apple seeds, and human urine or sweat, cooked at intervals timed in accordance with the rising of the sun. The invocation – addressed to the scarab steeping in the wine – concludes with an appeal that it might cause the female victim to forget who and where she is until she runs headlong and in great desire to the spell-giver. 23 PGM IV.296–466 (quotation at lines 296–298) (Betz). 24 PGM IV.301–302 (Betz). 25 PGM IV.304–321 (Betz). 26 PGM IV.321–328 (quotation at lines 326–328) (Betz). 27 David Martinez, P.Michigan XVI: A Greek Love Charm from Egypt (P.Mich. 757) (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1991); Robert K. Ritner, The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization, 54; Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1993), esp. 113–36, 159–62; Geraldine Pinch, Magic in Ancient Egypt (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995), 90–103; Christopher A. Faraone, “Binding and Burying the Forces of Evil: The Defensive Use of ‘Voodoo

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area around Antinoopolis and preserved at the Musée du Louvre in Paris, comes replete with thirteen needles strategically placed in the figure’s head, eyes, mouth, ears, chest, hands, feet, vagina, and anus. This statuette was notably found in a terracotta vase along with a small sheet of lead inscribed with an incantation that repeats the PGM IV spell almost verbatim.28 While such figurines often have been likened to Afro-Caribbean “voodoo dolls,” in the context of the ancient Mediterranean world this set of paraphernalia had its own distinctive ritualized function – that of binding the agency and autonomy of a female victim. In the case of this “Wondrous spell for binding a lover,” one sees the close link this spell technology forged between the controlled (female) body and the manipulation of memory.

E. An Incorporating Practice: Memory, the Body, and the Female Subject in Ancient Binding Spells This memory-body link found in the “Forget Me Not” spells divulges something significant about the construction of a particular kind of female subject in ancient binding spells of attraction. Christopher Faraone has observed that the vast majority of “spells for inducing uncontrollable passion” – which he calls Erǀs spells – feature men as users (i.e., spell agents) and women as victims (i.e., spell targets). Where women appear as spell users in these ritual scripts, they usually occupy sexually aggressive (i.e., masculinized) social roles, such as that of the courtesan or prostitute. Correspondingly, when men appear as spell victims, they typically are located in feminized social settings, such as a household or natal home. In almost all cases, the desired effect of the spell is to induce an erotic reaction of such intensity that it destroys all existing social ties.29 These patterns are Dolls’ in Ancient Greece,” Classical Antiquity 10.2 (1991): 165–220; and idem, “The Ethnic Origins of a Roman-era Philtrokatadesmos (PGM IV.296–434),” in Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World (ed. P. Mirecki and M. Meyer; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 319–43. 28 Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. E 27145: P. du Bourguet, “Ensemble magique de la période romaine en Égypt,” Revue du Louvre 25 (1975): 255–57; and idem, “Une ancêtre des figurines d’envoutement percées d’aiguilles, avec ses compléments magiques, au Musée du Louvre,” Mémoires de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale 104 (1980): 225–38; S. Kambitsis, “Une nouvelle tablette magique d’Égypte, Musée du Louvre, Inv. E 27145, 3e/4e siècle,” BIFAO 76 (1976): 213–23 (and plates); R. W. Daniel and F. Maltomini, eds., Supplementum Magicum (vol. 1; Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1990), 179–83 (#47). 29 Christopher A. Faraone, Ancient Love Magic (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), see especially the table on page 28, where he contrasts this corpus of Erǀs spells to a smaller group of “spells for inducing affection” (which he calls Philia

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borne out in all of the binding spells featuring memory in the Papyri Graecae Magicae, including a single example in which a woman is identified as the spell-user.30 In that case, the woman (a certain Capitolina) performs the rite of inserting the papyrus spell into a grave in order that her victim, a man named Nilos, might “forget (HSLOKVK_) parents, children, and friends,” and attend only to her.31 In all the other cases I have cited, however, it is a woman who is placed in the role of victim and whose body, memory, and social ties are (all together) claimed and redirected by a male spell user. Yet, with regard to the spell commissioned by the woman Capitolina, it is noteworthy that the body of her male victim, Nilos, is never mentioned. Instead Capitolina calls upon the daimons to “take away the mind (QRXaM) of Nilos.”32 By stark contrast, the binding memory spells directed by men against women focus almost obsessively on parts and pieces of the female body – eyelids that should not be glued together in sleep;33 lungs, livers, spleens, and intestines aflame with desire;34 thighs, bellies, and pubic areas primed for pleasurable contact;35 brains, genitals, and hearts bound up in love.36 This ritual “biopsy” of the female body finds fullest expression in spells), where women (usually wives) engage in such ritual practice to induce a love or affection that reinforces, rather than disrupts, social bonds. 30 PGM XV.1–21 (Betz). 31 PGM XV.4–5 (Betz). 32 PGM XV.11 (Betz) (my emphasis). 33 PGM IV.2737–2738 (Betz). 34 PDM xiv.636–661 (Betz); see also PGM CI.1–53 (Betz). 35 PGM XVIIa.22 (Betz). 36 PGM CI.1–53 (Betz). Terry Wilfong (“Reading the Disjointed Body in Coptic: From Physical Modification to Textual Fragmentation,” in Changing Bodies, Changing Meanings: Studies on the Human Body in Antiquity [ed. D. Montserrat; London and New York: Routledge, 1998], 116–36, esp. 120–21) has also noted a similar “disjointedness” and “fragmentation” in the treatment of women’s bodies in Coptic medical and “medicomagical” texts, in contrast to the tendency in the same corpus to view male bodies as “complete” and “unitary” in the same corpus. A few exceptions to this pattern may be noted, including three late antique Coptic sexual curses that bind the sexual members of their male victims in order to make them impotent and unable to have intercourse with women (Meyer and Smith, Ancient Christian Magic, 178–81 [#85–87]), as well as an early Greek binding spell from Nemea (fourth century B.C. E.) in which a male suitor named EubolƝs is turned away from the face, eyes, mouth, breasts, soul, belly, penis, and anus of a male lover named Aineas (Stephen G. Miller, “Excavations at Nemea,” Hesperia 49.2 (1980): 196–97 (= SEG 30.353); for a translation and brief discussion, see John Gager, ed., Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 92 [#25]). In each of these cases, however, the spells seem to have the function of emasculating or feminizing the men involved. For a broader investigation into the function of lists in magical texts, including the listing of body parts, see Richard Gordon, “‘What’s in a list?’ Listing in Greek and Graeco-Roman Malign Magical Texts,” in The World of Ancient Magic: Papers from the First International Samson

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the use of the clay figurine, where each part is separately labeled and then pierced through, like a butterfly pinned to a corkboard in an entomologist’s lab. Similarly, the woman’s gaze of memory is also to be immobilized, fixated only on the spell user himself.37 In his book, How Societies Remember, Paul Connerton has described the social production of memory in terms of “incorporating practices,” ritual actions that habituate participants in and through their own bodies.38 This sociological category of analysis may be fruitfully applied, I think, to the performance of “Forget Me Not” spells in antiquity. For both the male ritual agent and his (constructed) female subject, memory came to be “sedimented in the body” to such an extent that to control the latter (i.e., the body) was to manipulate the former (i.e., the memory). 39 On the one hand, for the ritual agent – whether it was a professional who prescribed and performed the rites, or a love-smitten layman who commissioned and then carried them out – such spells supplied a set of tools and practices, a technology, designed to cultivate and constrain memory via bodily means and mechanisms. Cutting up and mixing the ingredients of a recipe, standing and reciting an incantation aloud while facing the moon, molding clay figures with one’s hands – all of these were physical actions through which the practitioner’s body was trained, and through which that body in fact came to remember, how to exert control over the body and memory of another. On the other hand, the very identity of that other – the female subject viewed as a nexus of body and memory – was produced (and continually reproduced) with each ritual performance. The prescribed actions and objects employed in the spell were designed to conscript and retrain – to redirect – the targeted woman’s bodily and mnemonic orientation, in the process redefining her as a mute product of these faculties. Such were the attempts to create a compliant woman. In the end, however, I suspect that this constructed female subject would have proven to be a profoundly elusive creation. As an avatar or surrogate for her real-life Tigerous, she would have remained a haunting absence in the rite, fleetingly glimpsed at the intersection of totemic clay figures and fragmentary body parts, forev-

Eitrem Seminar at the Norwegian Institute at Athens, 4–8 May 1997 (ed. D. R. Jordan, H. Montgomery, and E. Thomassen; Bergen: Norwegian Institute at Athens, 1999), 239–77. 37 At the same time, Richard Gordon (“‘What’s in a list?’” 268) has recognized how, in such spells, the act of “breaking up the victim’s body into its butcher-parts signals the triumph of the objective gaze” (i.e. the controlling gaze of the spell agent). 38 Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 72. 39 Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember, 70, 73.

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er hesitating – just out of reach – in the ritualized gap between acts of remembering and forgetting.40

Works Cited Betz, H. D. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells. 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Cavell, Marcia. Becoming a Subject: Reflections in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006. Connerton, Paul. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Daniel, R. W. and F. Maltomini, eds. Supplementum Magicum. Vol. 1. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1990. du Bourguet, P. “Ensemble magique de la période romaine en Égypt.” Revue du Louvre 25 (1975): 255–57. –.“Une ancêtre des figurines d’envoutement percées d’aiguilles, avec ses compléments magiques, au Musée du Louvre.” Mémoires de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale 104 (1980): 225–38. Erll, Astrid. Kollektives Gedächtnis und Erinnerungskulturen. Stuttgart and Weimar: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 2005. Faraone, Christopher A. “Binding and Burying the Forces of Evil: The Defensive Use of ‘Voodoo Dolls’ in Ancient Greece.” Classical Antiquity 10.2 (1991): 165–220. –. Ancient Love Magic (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999). –. “The Ethnic Origins of a Roman-era Philtrokatadesmos (PGM IV.296–434).” Pages 319–43 in Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World. Edited by P. Mirecki and M. Meyer; Leiden: Brill, 2002. Gager, John, ed., Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Gordon, Richard. “‘What’s in a List?’ Listing in Greek and Graeco-Roman Malign Magical Texts.” Pages 239–77 in The World of Ancient Magic: Papers from the first International Samson Eitrem Seminar at the Norwegian Institute at Athens, 4–8 May 1997. Edited by D. R. Jordan, H. Montgomery, and E. Thomassen. Bergen: Norwegian Institute at Athens, 1999. Johnston, Sarah Iles. Restless Dead: Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Kambitsis, S. “Une nouvelle tablette magique d’Égypte, Musée du Louvre, Inv. E 27145, 3e /4e siècle.” BIFAO 76 (1976): 213–23 (and plates). Lefebvre, Gustave. “Inscriptions grecques de Tehnéh (Égypte)” Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 27 (1903): 341–90. Martinez, David. P.Michigan XVI: A Greek Love Charm from Egypt (P.Mich. 757). Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1991. Miller, Stephen G. “Excavations at Nemea.” Hesperia 49.2 (1980): 178–205. 40 The ritual creation of the female subject in these ancient spells may be compared to memorial spaces and sites of memory “created by individuals and social groups to give shape to felt absences, fears, and desires that haunt contemporary society” (Karen E. Till, The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005], 9).

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Pinch, Geraldine. Magic in Ancient Egypt. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995. Preisendanz, Karl. Papyri Graecae Magicae: Die Griechischen Zauberpapyri. 2 Vols. 2d ed. Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner, 1973–1974. Presigke, Friedrich, ed. Sammelbuch griechischer Urkunden aus Ägypten. Vol. 1. Strassburg: Karl J. Trübner, 1915. Quintillian. Institutio Oratoria. Edited and translated by H. E. Butler. Loeb Classical Library. London: William Heinemann; New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1922. Ritner, Robert K. The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization, 54. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1993. Rose, Steven. “Holger Hydén and the Biochemistry of Memory,” Brain Research Bulletin 50 (1999): 443. –. The Making of Memory: From Molecules to Mind. Rev. ed. London: Vintage, 2003. Small, Jocelyn Penny. “Memory and the Roman Orator.” Pages 195–206 in A Companion to Roman Rhetoric. Edited by W. Dominik and J. Hall. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007. Sorabji, R. Aristotle on Memory. 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Till, Karen E. The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. Watson, J. S. Cicero on Oratory and Orators. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 1970. Wilfong, Terry. “Reading the Disjointed Body in Coptic: From Physical Modification to Textual Fragmentation.” Pages 116–36 in Changing Bodies, Changing Meanings: Studies on the Human Body in Antiquity. Edited by D. Montserrat. London and New York: Routledge, 1998.

Women and Eros in Greek Magic and the Acts of Paul and Thecla MATT JACKSON-MCCABE

Stephen Davis finds a significant intersection between memory, body, and gender in the magical papyri of Greco-Roman Egypt. He begins by contextualizing this finding within ancient cultural assumptions about “the malleability of memory.” This is illustrated on one hand by Aristotle’s correlation of memory with physiology, and on the other by ancient rhetoricians’ assumptions that memory can be enhanced by engaging in particular practices. He proceeds to show that these broad assumptions are also reflected in the ancient magical papyri, where mnƝmonikai spells prescribe a variety of practices designed to enhance the memory – practices that routinely include taking ritually generated substances into the body.1 With this broad cultural context established, Davis turns to his primary interest: a group of spells he assembles and identifies, somewhat playfully, as “forget-me-not” spells. What interests Davis in these spells is their aim “to effect a state of forgetfulness or oblivion in a female victim with respect to all other social ties, and/or to cultivate memory in that subject only with respect to the spell-giver himself.”2 Viewing these spells in light of broader Greco-Roman assumptions about memory and the body, he says, “tells us something significant about the construction of a particular kind of female subject” in them.3 Specifically, Davis argues that here it is “the female subject” in particular – that is, in some contrast to the male – that is understood to be “a nexus of body and memory.”4 Davis has assembled a fascinating set of ancient ritual texts, and no doubt there is a certain logic to his interpretation of them. The link be-

1 For another example of an intersection between memory and the ingestion of ritually generated – and thus especially powerful and even potentially dangerous – substances, see Paul’s understanding of the Lord’s Supper in 1 Cor 11:23–30 and 10:3–4, 14–21; cf. Luke 22:14–20. 2 Stephen J. Davis, “Forget Me Not: Memory and the Female Subject in Ancient Binding Spells,” in the present volume, 260. 3 Davis, 262. 4 Davis, 264.

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tween memory and the body in the ancient world seems clear enough.5 A special correlation between the female and the body too is not without attestation in the Greco-Roman era; elsewhere in Egypt, for example, Philo’s dualistic anthropology associated the mind (QRXaM) and rationality with the male, while the body and sensual experience (DLVTKVLM) were linked to the female.6 A further correlation of memory with the female body in particular might thus seem a short and somewhat natural step for the cultural discourse to take. And yet in the interest of exegetical clarity with respect to the spells themselves I would like to press just a bit. Is a special correlation of the memory with the female body in particular really at work in these spells? To what extent is their anatomical focus actually related to the discourse of remembering and forgetting? Additional investigation suggests that the Greek love spells’ interest in the anatomy of their victims may be better understood in connection with their eroticism than with their references to memory. After a brief exploration of the issue, I will suggest that spells of this kind in any event greatly illuminate the charge of magic raised against Paul in the Acts of Paul and Thecla, and even against early practitioners of Christ devotion more generally.

A. Gender and the Body in Greek Love Magic The spells collected by Davis belong to a wider class of Greek magic the ancient handbooks sometimes called agǀgai, or “leading” spells. According to Christopher Faraone, this type of magic sought “to bind a female victim and force her to come and make love to the practitioner” and, more specifically, “to force young women from their homes” to that end.7 As is clear from Davis’s analysis, a discourse of “remembering” and “forgetting” reminiscent of the mnƝmonikai had become part of a “standardized spell script”8 in at least some agǀgƝ-spells, specifically in connection with a victim “forgetting” present familial relationships in favor of a singular, totalizing relationship to the spell-giver. If the interpretation of J. C. B.

5 One might also explore in this connection the materialist theories of concept formation and memory formulated by the Epicureans and the Stoics; for some of the basic evidence see A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers (2 vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), §15 (Epicureans) and §39 (Stoics). 6 Richard A. Baer, Jr., Philo’s Use of the Categories Male and Female (ALGHJ 3; Leiden: Brill, 1970), 14–44. 7 Christopher Faraone, Ancient Greek Love Magic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 13–14, 25. 8 Davis, “Forget Me Not,” 260.

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Petropoulos is correct, such a discourse had in fact a long history in erotic magic prior to the formulation of these particular spells.9 Rather less clear, though, is whether the use of such language necessarily connotes attempts, analogous to the mnƝmonikai, to manipulate memory per se. Were these spells actually intended to make the victims literally forget that they had parents, children, and lovers? Or is the language of “remembering” and “forgetting” used here in a more a more colloquial sense, as expressions of relative regard and disregard? For his part, Petropolous highlights Sappho’s account of how Helen left her husband for Troy, stating that the passage “treats of the consequences of passion on the memory.”10 But the fragment says only that Helen left “with never a thought for her daughter and dear parents” (NZXG[H? SD]L GRMRXGH? ILOZQ WR[N]KZQ SD[PSDQ] HPQDVTK) – a characterization that is perhaps better taken as an expression of single-mindedness than actual memory loss.11 Similarly, in the case of at least one of the spells cited by Davis, “forget” (HSLODQTDQRPDL) seems to connote something more or less synonymous with “hate” or even simply “leave behind” rather than a literal failure of memory: Seize Euphemia and fetch her for me, Theon, to love me with mad love, and bind her with indissoluble, strong adamantine fetters to love me, Theon; and do not let her eat, or drink, or find sleep, or have fun, or laugh; but make her run away from every place and from every house, and leave father, mother, brothers, sisters, until she comes to me. . . . But if she has another one at her bosom, move her to push him away and forget him and 12 hate him [XSHUTHVTZNDL?{NDL?}HSLODTHVTZNDL?PLVKVK_].

It is difficult at any rate to see how the victim could hate a person she has literally forgotten. Still less clear is a significant correlation between this discourse and the sometimes detailed anatomical interests of these spells, let alone any as9 J. C. B. Petropoulos, “The Erotic Magical Papyri,” Proceedings of the XVIII International Congress of Papyrology. Athens, 25–31 May 1986 2 (1988): 215–22, esp. 218– 20. 10 Petropoulos, “Erotic Magical Papyri,” 219, citing Sappho fr. 16. 11 For the text, see Edgar Lobel and Denys Page, Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 14-15. I cite the translation in Denys Page, Sappho and Alcaeus: An Introduction to the Study of Ancient Lesbian Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon, 1959), 53. Compare in this regard the example of Thecla in the Acts of Paul and Thecla, discussed below. 12 SM 45.44–50 (Betz). For the Greek text see Robert W. Daniel and Franco Maltomini, Supplementum Magicum [2 vols.; Papyrologica Coloniensia XVI.1–2; Opladen: Westdeutscher, 1990–1992), 1:165; this volume is referred to hereafter simply as SM. Cf. PGM IV.2756–27564 (Betz): “In frenzy may she (NN) come fast to my doors / Forgetting children and her life with her parents / And loathing all the race of men / and women except me (NN), but may she hold me alone / And come subdued in heart by love’s great force.”

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sumption of a special link between memory and the female body in particular. The central basis for the latter conclusion would seem to be the contrast Davis observes between the attention typically given to female bodies in the spells cast by men and the reference to the mind (QRXaM) of the male victim in the lone example of a spell cast by a woman.13 The contrast is no doubt interesting; but the sample is small. And consideration of additional spells makes it plain at any rate that such interest in the female body also occurs in agǀgƝ-spells quite apart from any discourse about “forgetting,” as in this spell cast against one Allous: Burn, torch the soul [or: genitals, WK?Q  \X[KQ]14 of Allous, her female body [WR? JXQDLNL RQ VZaPD], her limbs [WD? PHOK], until she leaves the household of Apollonius. 15 Lay Allous low with fever, unceasing sickness, incomprehensible sickness.

That such anatomical focus need not correlate either with memory or even with the female body at all is also clear from an ancient curse that seeks not to bind a female to a male, but to separate one male from another: I turn away Euboles / from Aineas, from his / face, from his eyes, / from his mouth, / from his breasts, / from his soul / from his belly, from / his penis, from / his anus, / from 16 his entire body.

Perhaps more significant than ancient assumptions about the intersection of body and memory for understanding these spells, then, is simply the ancient understanding of erotic desire itself. In his analysis of Greek love magic, Faraone has highlighted the fact the Greeks generally perceived erotic passion “as the onset of a pathological disease” – a disease, indeed, that could be described not only as an affliction of the mental faculties of heart and mind, but in quite physical terms of a loosening of one’s limbs, burning fever, and buzzing ears.17 Faraone goes on to make the intriguing 13

I.e., PGM XV.1–21 (Betz), here 11. The term \X[K, particularly preceding the reference to WR? JXQDLNL RQVZaP D, is ambiguous in this context since it is sometimes used with reference to female genitals in magical texts and elsewhere; see Betz, Greek Magical Papyri, 339 (s.v. Soul); also Faraone, Ancient Greek Love Magic, 177 (s.v. psychƝ). 15 PGM Ostrakon 2.27–31, following the translation in Faraone, Ancient Greek Love Magic, 3. Cf. the reference to WK?Q JXQHNLDQ IXVLQ in SM 48.35–36; further the references to the hair and innards (WZaQVSODJ[QZQ) of the victim in SM 46.22–23; the heart and liver, as well as \X[K and SQHXaPD of the victim in SM 40.15; 42.11–12, 15–17, 35– 39, 44–46, 54–56, 59–60. Note also an Aramaic spell that singles out the victim’s kidney in addition to his or her heart and mind, on which see Joseph Naveh and Shaul Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1985), 87–89 (Amulet 10) (= John G. Gager, ed., Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World [New York: Oxford University Press, 1992], 94 (§26); also the much more exacting anatomical interest in PGM IV.1496–1595, esp. 1504–1533 (Betz). 16 Gager, Curse Tablets, 92 (§25). 17 Faraone, Ancient Greek Love Magic, 43–44. 14

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observation that “on a strictly formal basis . . . the techniques of many forms of erotic magic are quite indistinguishable” from ancient curses – the main exception being that the latter “torture their victims with fever or pain until they die” while the former “do so only until they yield.”18 Users of agǀgƝ-spells, in other words, attempted to inflict on their victims an unbearable physical discomfort, a sickness whose only remedy would be sexual contact with the spell-giver. Faraone points out that one magical handbook identifies “a special subset of agǀgƝ-spells” as “in-the-fire” (empuron) spells designed specifically “to burn the victim and thereby force her from her home.”19 It is particularly noteworthy, then, that a discourse of sickness in general and of burning in particular is found repeatedly in these spells. It is quite explicit, for example, in the case of the above-cited spell against Allous, whose “female body” (WR? JXQDLNLRQ VZaPD), “limbs” (WD? PHOK), and perhaps especially genitals (WK?Q \X[KQ) were to “burn” (NDXaVRQ SXUZVRQ) while she suffered from sickness (QRVZ_) and fever (SXUHWZa_).20 Indeed this language frequently occurs, as here, precisely as particular parts of a victim’s anatomy are enumerated with the specific intention of making them “burn” until she should submit herself to the spell-giver. In one homoerotic spell, an underworld “spirit-driver” (SQHXPDWKODWD) is asked to come “with the Erinyes, savage with their stinging whips” in order to conjure a “firebreathing daemon” (SXUVRSQHXVWRQGDLPZQ[D]) to this end: Burn, set on fire, inflame the soul [genitals?], the heart, the liver, the spirit [NDXaVRQ SRLUZ IOHFRQ WK?Q \X[KQ WK?Q NDUGLDQ WR? K^SDU WR? SQHXaPD] of Gorgonia, whom Nilogenia bore, with love and affection for Sophia, whom Isara bore; drive Gorgonia herself, torment her body [EDVDQLV DWHDXWK MWR? VZaPD] night and day; force her 21 to rush forth from every place and every house, loving Sophia.

18

Faraone, Ancient Greek Love Magic, 55. Faraone, Ancient Greek Love Magic, 26. 20 PGM Ostrakon 2.27–31. 21 SM 42.6–7, 35–39. The command to “burn” the relevant body parts is actually repeated seven times in the spell; cf. SM 42.11–12, 15–17, 44–45, 45–46, 54–56, 59–60. Compare also SM 40.15–20: “Inflame [SXUZVRQ] the liver and the spirit and the heart and the soul [\[KQ: genitals?] of this woman until she rushes forth and comes, Ptolemais, whom Helene bore, to Ptolemaios, whom Didyme bore”; SM 48.32–37: “go into every place, into every quarter, into every house, and drive Kopria, whom her mother Taesis bore, whose hairs you have, to Ailourion, whom his mother named Kopria bore, inflamed, burning, melting in her soul, her spirit, her female genitals [SXURXPHQKQND RPHQKQ WKNRPHQKQ WK?Q  \X[KQ WR? SQHXaPD WK?Q  JXQHNLDQ IXVLQ].” Daniel and Maltomini (Supplementum Magicum, 127) point out that “A lock of hair (the ousia of the beloved) was originally attached to the papyrus, and some of it still remains on the verso.” 19

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Also to be included in this category are some of those identified as “forgetme-not” spells by Davis, such as the one cast by Theon against Euphemia, which again makes specific reference to WR? JXQHNL RQ VZaPD in this connection: Burn her members, her liver, her female parts, until she comes to me (NDXVDWH DXWK M WD? PHOKWR? K^S DU WR? JXQHNL RQVZaPDHZMHOTK_ SUR?M HPH), longing for me and not disobeying me. 22

Such listing of body parts can in fact become quite extensive in this connection. In another spell – one, notably, that once again has no interest in the memory of its victim – a spell-giver, making an offering of myrrh over coals, invokes a personified Myrrh as both “Flesh-eater” (VDUNRIDJRQ) and “Inflamer of the heart” (IORJLNK?QWKaMNDUGLDM), as follows: I am sending you to her NN, whose mother is NN . . . so that you may attract her to me . . . Do not enter through her eyes or through her side or through her nails or even through 23 her navel or through her frame, but rather through her ‘soul.’

The spell continues: And remain in her heart and burn her guts, her breast, her liver, her breath, her bones, her marrow, until she comes to me NN, loving me, and until she fulfills all my wishes. . . . As I burn you up and you are potent, so burn the brain of her, NN, whom I love. Inflame her and turn her guts inside out, suck out her blood drop by drop, until she comes to me [NDL? HPPHLQRQDXWKaMHQWKa_ NDUGLDNDL? NDXVRQDXWKaMWD? VSODJ[QDWR? VWKaTRMWR? K^SDUWR? SQHXP DWD? RVWDaWRX?MPXHORXMHZMHOTK_ SUR?M HPHWR?Q GHLaQDILORXaVD PH NDL? SRLKVK_ SDQ WD WD? THOKPDWD PRX . . . ZM HJZ VH NDWDNDZ NDL? GXQDWK? HL@ RXWZ K>M ILOZa WKaM GHLaQ D NDWDN DXVRQ WR?Q  HJNHIDORQ HNNDXVRQ NDL? HN VWUH\RQ 24 DXWKaMWD?VSODJ[QDHNVWDFRQDXW KaMWR?DL^P DHZMHOTK_SUR?MHPH]. 

22

PGM CI.33 (Greek text in Dierk Wortmann, “Neue magische Texte,” Bonner Jahrbücher des Rheinischen Landesmuseum in Bonn und des Vereins von Altertumsfreunden im Rheinlande 168 [1968] 56–111, here 88; [Betz]); cf. also PGM LXI.23, Betz 291: “inflame her heart” (SXUZVK"M[W]K?QNDUGLDQ); PGM IV.2767 (Betz): “set her soul/genitals ablaze with unresting fire” (IOHFRQ DNRLPKWZ_ SXUL? WK?Q  \X[KQ), noting that the spell is to be accompanied by a ritual burning of specified substances. Cf. in this connection also the above-mentioned Aramaic spell in Naveh and Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls, 85–89 (Amulet 10): “just as [this sherd] [burns, so shall] burn the heart of R[ . . . son/daughter of] [Mar]ian after me, I [ . . . and you should turn] [his/her heart and mi]nd and kidney, so [that he/she will do] my desire in this . . . ” On the use of such “persuasive analogy” (i.e., what earlier studies called “sympathetic magic”) in this context, see Faraone, Ancient Greek Magic, 26; cf. also PDM xiv.636–669, which, like several other erotic spells, requires myrrh in particular to be burnt. 23 PGM IV.1496–1595, here 1504–1510, 1522–1526 (Betz). The translator’s obvious ambivalence regarding the meaning of \X[K (‘soul’) is evidently a reflection of the ambiguity of the term in this context; see above n. 10. 24 PGM IV.1527–1533, 1540–1546 (Betz).

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A Demotic spell, whose complex ritual process also includes putting myrrh on a flame, enters into still more detailed parsing of the victim’s anatomy in this context: You [i.e., a ritually manipulated scarab] should go . . . on account of NN, whom NN bore, until fire is put after her heart, the flame after her flesh, until she goes to NN, whom NN bore, at every place in which he is . . . I am casting fury against you today . . . in order that every burning, every heat, every fire in which you are today, will make them in the heart, the lungs, the liver, the spleen, the womb, the large intestine, the small intestine, the ribs, the flesh, the bones, in every limb, in the skin of NN, whom NN bore, until she goes to NN, whom NN bore, at every place in which he is . . . make a flame in her 25 body, flame in her intestines. Put madness after her heart, fever after her flesh.

The lack of anatomical interest in the spell cast by the woman Capitolina takes on quite a different significance when seen in this context. Interestingly, what makes this spell stand out from the others Davis has collected is not merely its lack of attention to its victim’s body, but also its relative lack of interest in sex. While it does seek, to be sure, to inspire a “divine passion” (THLaRQ HUZWD) in its victim, the sexual dimension of the spell remains entirely undeveloped; it is, at any rate, nowhere near so emphatic as in the male spells, which are routinely quite explicit about their pursuit of carnal stimulation.26 Indeed, the primary “love” that Capitolina is after when she takes aim at the nous of Nilos seems more a singular, unswerving obedience than physical gratification: You will love me . . . with a divine passion, and in every way you will be for me an escort, as long as I want, that you might do for me what I wish and nothing for anyone else, 25

PDM xiv.636–669. Among those Davis calls “forget-me-not” spells, compare PGM XVIIa.6–23 (Betz): “Make her cease from her arrogance . . . and attract her to me, beneath my feet, melting with passionate desire at every hour of the day and night, always remembering me . . . having an orgasm in her dreams until she is scourged by you [Anubis] and comes desiring me . . . serving both my desire and her own unhesitatingly and unabashedly, joining thigh to thigh and belly to belly and her black to my black, most pleasantly”; PGM CI.6– 9, 29–33 (Greek text in Wortmann, “Neue magische Texte,” 88–90) Bonner Jahrbücher 168 [1968]: 85–102 [Betz]): “During the whole night let her not find sleep, but fetch her until she comes before his feet and loves him with mad love and affection and intercourse. For I have bound her brain and her hands and her intestines and her genitals, and her love to me, Theon . . . Fetch Euphemia . . . to love me with love and longing and affection and intercourse, with mad love. Burn her members, her liver, her female parts, until she comes to me, longing for me and not disobeying me,” noting with Betz (ibid., 309) that the papyrus containing this spell was folded around “two wax figurines in erotic embrace”; PGM IV.2740–2745 (Betz): “And if she lies with someone else in her / Embrace, let her thrust him away and take / Me in her heart. Let her abandon him / At once and stand before my door subdued / In soul longing for my bed of love.” The spell in PDM xiv.636–669 (Betz) actually requires sexual contact between the spell-giver and the victim (644). 26

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and that you might obey no one save only me . . . and that you might forget your parents, 27 children and friends.

In fact, of all the so-called “forget-me-not spells” cast by men that Davis cites, the one that makes no explicit reference to sex also turns out to be the least interested in its female victim’s anatomy.28 Conversely, the one with the most obsessive attention to the female body – that which requires the ritual insertion of needles in strategic places on a female figurine – is also the one with the most sustained and graphic sexual references.29 If anything, then, one might suggest that the relative focus of a given spell on the body of its victim correlates primarily with the extent of the spellgiver’s erotic intentions; that is, it simply reflects the extent of the spellgiver’s interest in the victim’s actual body. The fact that this also happens to correlate with gender may thus tell us more about the social aims typical of ancient male and female spell-givers respectively than about some broad cultural construction of memory relative to the female body in particular.30 Indeed, to the extent that a discourse of remembering and forgetting can be further correlated with anatomical interest at all – and assuming, of course, that literal memory loss is actually in view when such language does occur – it may be considered simply another (if in context particularly useful) symptom of erotic “illness.” 31

27

PGM XV.1–21, here 1–5 (Betz). PGM LXI.1–38 (Betz), where the only anatomical reference occurs in a request that the god “inflame her heart” (22: SXUZVK_MWK?QNDUGLDQ) – which, if clearly an example of an empuron spell, seems no more obsessively anatomical than the “take away the mind” phrase in the lone “forget-me-not” spell cast by the woman. 29 PGM IV.351–354, 374–375, 400–406 (Betz): “Let her be in love with me, NN whom she, NN bore. Let her not be had in any promiscuous way, let her not be had in her ass, nor let her do anything with another man for pleasure, just with me alone . . . [D]o not allow her, NN, to accept for pleasure the attempt of another man, not even that of her own husband, just that of mine . . . [A]ttract her, NN, to me and join head to head and fasten lip to lip and join belly to belly and draw thigh close to thigh and fit black together with black, and let her, NN, carry out her own sex acts with me, NN, for all eternity.” 30 Cf. Christopher Faraone’s observation that Greek “love spells generally fall into two very distinct categories: those rituals used mainly by men to instill erôs (erotic passion) in women and those mainly used by women to maintain or increase philia (affection or friendship) in men” (“Agents and Victims: Constructions of Gender and Desire in Ancient Greek Love Magic,” in The Sleep of Reason: Erotic Experience and Sexual Ethics in Ancient Greece and Rome [ed. Martha C. Nussbaum and Juha Sihvola; Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002], 400–426, esp. 400–403 [here 400]); see further idem, Ancient Greek Love Magic, 27–30 and passim. 31 Note that when language of forgetting is employed at all, it typically occurs along with other hoped-for symptoms, including the most often-mentioned ones of insomnia and loss of appetite. 28

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B. AgǀgƝ Spells, Thecla, and the Interpretation of Christ Devotion as Magic As a last point I would like to make a brief suggestion as to how these agǀgƝ-spells might in any case illuminate the construction of another malefemale relationship from antiquity – albeit a fictional one between Paul and Thecla – and how that, in turn, may shed further light on the ancient interpretation, by some in antiquity, of Jesus veneration itself as a form of magic. One need only skim the ancient narratives about Jesus and his apostles to recognize the emphasis placed on wonder-working by early practitioners of Christ devotion. It is rather less than surprising, then, when one also periodically finds evidence that charges of magic were sometimes raised against the group. One particularly clear example of this is found in the Acts of Paul and Thecla. The historical Paul was himself not shy about claiming abilities as a wonder-worker,32 and tales of such deeds – healings, raising the dead, striking a competing wonder-worker blind – play a significant role in early narrative accounts of his praxeis, both canonical and extra-canonical. Interestingly, though, when the crowd in Iconium repeatedly denounces Paul as a magos in the Acts of Paul and Thecla, it is not in response to any such arresting display of overt power; Paul has performed no signs and wonders in Iconium. The crowd’s identification of Paul as magos, rather, is an interpretation of the effect that his preaching has had on the women of the city, and above all Thecla.33 One could in fact scarcely imagine a better narrative illustration of the effect that agǀgƝ-spells were intended to produce than the story of Thecla’s reaction to Paul. Hearing Paul from the window of her house, she is suddenly and obsessively consumed by a desire to be near him. She remains transfixed at the window “for three days and three nights,” neither eating nor drinking34 – gripped, as her mother says, with a “new desire and a fearful passion (9, HSLTXPLD_ NDLQK_a NDL? SDTHLGHLQZa_),” “taken captive” (9, HDOZWDL) by the “strange man” (8, DQGUL? FHQZ_) who has come into 32

E.g., Rom 15:18–19; 1 Cor 2:1–5; 2 Cor 12:12; 1 Thess 1:5. Acts Paul 15; cf. 20. In what follows I rely on the Greek text of the Acts of Paul and Thecla in Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha (ed. R. A. Lipsius and M. Bonnet; 2 vols; Hildesheim and New York: Georg Olms, 1972), 1:235–72. Translations, unless otherwise noted, are taken from Edgar Hennecke and Wilhelm Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha (trans. R. McL. Wilson; 2 vols.; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1965), 2:353–64. 34 Acts Paul 8. Both inability to sleep and a failure to eat and drink are symptoms regularly sought in the agǀgƝ-spells. They occur together, as here, e.g., in PGM CI.6–9, 45– 46; PGM IV.354–356, 373; PGM IV.1515–1519; PGM XXXVI.147–154; PDM xiv.665– 619; SM 43.8–10; SM 46.10–11, 20–21; SM 47.10–11, 20–21; SM 48.9, 23; SM 50.55–57. 33

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their town. While it is clear that Thecla has not literally forgotten that she has a mother and a fiancé,35 her singular obsession with Paul translates no less into an immediate and utter disregard for them: And those who were in the house wept bitterly, Thamyris for the loss of a wife, Theocleia for that of a daughter, the maidservants for that of a mistress. So there was great confusion of mourning in the house. And while this was going on, Thecla did not turn away, but gave her whole attention to Paul’s word (10).

Indeed, simply hearing Paul’s words is not enough for Thecla. Desiring from the first to be in his presence (7), she is finally compelled to escape her household by night, bribing the doorkeeper to let her leave the house so that she can see him (18).36 And while her relationship to the ascetic Paul of this tale is not, of course, consummated sexually, her submissive and rather dramatic reaction to Paul’s physical presence – sitting at his feet,37 kissing his fetters (18), later “rolling on the ground” where Paul himself had been sitting (20; cf. 42) – is not without a certain sublimated eroticism. The sudden intensity of Thecla’s (and others’) devotion to this stranger, and the broken social structure left in its wake, was in any event sufficient evidence for the crowds in Iconium to conclude that a magician was in their midst: “the whole crowd shouted: ‘Away with the sorcerer! For he has corrupted all our wives.’” 38 Fundamental to the agǀgƝ-spells is the attempt to lead someone to a radical disregard for her existing social network in favor of a singular, totalizing devotion to a spell-giver. Consequently, as this episode from the Acts of Paul and Thecla suggests, any unexpected disruption in the normal family structure – as much as any overt display of wondrous power – could be taken as evidence of magic in ancient society.39 Seen in this light, practi35 Note that Thecla will recount to a subsequent suitor/attacker her betrothal to Thamyris (Acts Paul 26) and, at the end of the tale, return to Iconium to preach to the family she had left behind (43). 36 The extrication of a woman from her household lies at the very heart of the agǀgƝspells; see above. 37 Acts Paul 18, NDTLVDVD SDUD? WRX?M  SRGDM DXWRXa. While this image of submission is of course suitable for the student-teacher relationship (e.g., Acts 22:3), note also its repeated use in agǀgƝ-spells in the context of a quite different type of relationship: PGM CI.6–7: DO OD? DFDWH DXWKQ HZM HO TK_ HLM  SRGDM DXWRXa HU ZaVD HUZWD PDQLZGKNDL? VWRUJL?QNDL? VXQRXVLD‹Q› (Betz: “but fetch her until she comes before his feet and loves him with mad love and affection and intercourse”); cf. PGM XVIIa.8–10: DFRQ G[H P]RL DXWK?Q  XS R WRX?M HPRX?M  SRGDM [HU]ZWLNK_ HSLTXPLD_ WKNRPHQ KQ (“and bring her to me, beneath my feet, consumed with erotic desire” [my translation]). 38 Acts Paul 15: NDL? SDaM R R[ORM HOHJHQ $SDJ DJH WR?Q PDJ RQ GLHITHLUHQ JD?U KPZaQSDVDMWD?MJXQDLaN DMCf. 20:R GH? R[ORMSURVD[THQWRMSDOLQWRXa 3DXORX SHULVVRWHU ZMHERD0DJ RMHVWLQDL@UHDXWRQ 39 See further on this, in the present volume, Fritz Graf, “Victimology, Or: How to Blame Someone for an Untimely Death.” In our story, while Thecla does not actually die,

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tioners of Christ devotion were potentially vulnerable to charges of magic on two fronts. For if the latter kind of display was clearly and even emphatically claimed for both Jesus and at least some of those that followed him,40 such totalizing devotion, even to the point of radical disregard for one’s familial ties, was just as clearly the ideal presented to the group’s rank and file.41 As the teller of Thecla’s tale seems to have recognized, what looked like ideal devotion to Christ and his followers from the point of view of the group’s insiders could look rather like magic to family members on the outside – perhaps particularly where women were concerned.

Works Cited Baer, Richard A., Jr. Philo’s Use of the Categories Male and Female. ALGHJ 3. Leiden: Brill, 1970. Betz, Hans Dieter, ed. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation. 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Collins, Adela Yarbro. Mark: A Commentary. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007. Daniel, Robert W., and Franco Maltomini. Supplementum Magicum. 2 vols. Papyrologica Coloniensia XVI.1–2. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1990–1992. Faraone, Christopher. Ancient Greek Love Magic. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999. –. “Agents and Victims: Constructions of Gender and Desire in Ancient Greek Love Magic.” Pages 400–26 in The Sleep of Reason: Erotic Experience and Sexual Ethics in Ancient Greece and Rome. Edited by Martha C. Nussbaum and Juha Sihvola. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Gager, John G., ed. Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Hennecke, Edgar and Wilhelm Schneemelcher, eds. New Testament Apocrypha. Translated by R. Mcl. Wilson. 2 vols. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1965. Lipsius, R. A., and M. Bonnet, eds. Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha. 2 vols. New York: Georg Olms, 1972. Lobel, Edgar, and Denys Page. Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997. Long, A. A., and D. N. Sedley. The Hellenistic Philosophers. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. her family experiences her sudden devotion to Paul as an analogous sort of loss; see esp. Acts Paul 10. 40 See, e.g., the longer ending of Mark, 16:17–20, with the discussion by Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary (Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 811–18. 41 E.g., Luke 14:25–26 (par. Matt 10:37); 12:51–53 (par. Matt 10:34–36); Luke 9:59– 60 (par. Matt 8:21–22); cf. Mark 10:28–31 and the comments in Collins, Mark, 481–83. Note more generally in this connection the group’s common use of fictive kinship language, which suggests a new family replacing the old one; see, e.g., Mark 3:21–35 and pars., and in the letters of Paul 1 Cor 4:14–15 and passim.

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Naveh, Joseph and Shaul Shaked. Amulets and Magic Bowls: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1985. Page, Denys. Sappho and Alcaeus: An Introduction to the Study of Ancient Lesbian Poetry. Oxford: Clarendon, 1959. Petropoulos, J. C. B. “The Erotic Magical Papyri.” Proceedings of the XVIII International Congress of Papyrology. Athens, 25–31 May 1986 2 (1988): 215–22. Preisendanz, Karl and Albert Henrichs, eds. Papyri Graecae Magicae: Die griechischen Zaberpapyri. 2d ed. 2 vols. Leipzig: Saur, 2001. Wortmann, Dierk. “Neue magische Texte.” Bonner Jahrbücher des Rheinischen Landesmuseum in Bonn und des Vereins von Altertumsfreunden im Rheinlande 168 (1968): 56–111.

Holding the Line Women, Ritual and the Protection of Rome1 CARIN M. C. GREEN

The focus of this paper is the character of three archaic female deities whose shrines were located in the Circus Maximus at Rome. They are known by variants of the names Tutelina, Sessia, and Messia, and heretofore have been catalogued and then largely ignored. I was inspired to look at them in a new way by reading Adela Collins’s first book, The Combat Myth in the Book of Revelation (1976), si parva licet componere magnis (“if one may compare small things with great,” Vergil, Geo. 4.176). In no way will this – could this – diminish Collins’s greater subject. Yet, in enlarging on what is thought to be a relatively minor topic in Roman religion, I hope to demonstrate that thinking about both Roman and Christian religion at the same time is a useful corrective to the great divide between the disciplines of Classics and Early Christian studies, a divide that is utterly false to the subjects themselves. We can understand neither as well as we should if we continue to be constrained by that divide. The three goddesses, Sessia, Messia, and Tutilina, were honored with columns in the Circus Maximus, and statues were set on top of those columns. Their existence is confirmed by Livy (40.2.2) and Pliny (NH 18.8), and the names come to us from Pliny (NH 18.8), Tertullian (Spect. 8), and Augustine (CD 4.24), whose source may well be the late republican scholar Marcus Terentius Varro. Christian polemicists relish the etymological game the ancients played, and they take these names as what we call nomina agentis, names that define function at the lowest level. So Sessia, whose name could be construed as coming from the verb for sowing (sero), they said must be the goddess of sowing crops. Messia, whose name could be construed as coming from the word for the harvested crop (messis), must be a harvest goddess, and Tutilina, whose name means “guardian,” must – since she is associated with them – mean that she guards the crops. Wissowa, the great scholar of Roman religion, followed their lead.2  1 2

n. 9.

It is my pleasure to present this, honoris causa, to Adela Yarbro Collins. G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer (Munich: Beck, 1912, repr. 1971), 201

280 Carin M. C. Green  However, in our sources quot capita tot nomina. There are almost as many variants of their names (which are clearly epithets) as authors who report them. All variants of the first two consistently reflect a concern with crops, or with marked and bounded land; the third name, Tutelina, is an epithet meaning “Guardian.” The use of epithets should not be surprising. Pliny, when speaking of very old rituals associated with Numa, the second king of Rome, and traditional founder of Rome’s religious practices,3 clearly refers to these three goddesses on columns in the Circus, though he calls them Segesta and Seia; while the third, he says, had profound religious restrictions on being named at all “indoors” – presumably where he was when he dictated the passage, and where he had reasonable expectations his readers would be when they read or heard the name. Macrobius, on the other hand, tells us that naming any of them directly was a transgression serious enough to require expiation.4 An epithet such as “Seia” would be the protection against impiety, an escape clause, since deities must be called upon to be worshipped effectively. One addressed them by way of some function or characteristic, just as Juno and Diana were “Lucina,” “the midwife,” and Juno could be “Caprotina,” (“of the wild fig-tree”). It can be difficult for us to determine when an epithet belongs to one deity only, or could be used for more than one, but in any case that does not affect my argument regarding the nature of these goddesses. Epithets were a way of addressing a divinity, and epithets could, of course, change as time and the circumstances of the worshippers changed. It is likely that our Sessia has become Pliny’s Segesta and Messia his Seia – though it could be the other way round. In any case, the crop or field reference in each epithet remains. When direct naming was hedged about with powerful prohibitions, changeable epithets are the best protection against religious error. For clarity’s sake, I will continue to call them Sessia, Messia, and Tutelina. 

3 NH 18.8: Is [Numa] et Fornacalia instituit farris torrendi ferias et aeque religiosas Terminis agrorum. Hos enim deos tum maxime noverant, Seiamque a serendo, Segestam a segetibus appellabant, quarum simulacra in circo videmus – tertiam ex his nominare sub tecto religio est – ac ne degustabant quidem nouas fruges aut uina antequam sacerdotes primitias libassent. (It was also Numa who established the Feast of Ovens, the holiday when emmer is roasted, and the equally solemn holiday dedicated to the Boundarymarks of fields, these bounds being in those days particularly recognized as gods, with the goddesses Seia named from serendo [i.e., sero, serere] and Segesta from segetibus [i.e., seges, segetis], whose statues we see in the Circus – the third of these divinities it is irreverent even to mention by name indoors – and people used not even to taste the produce of a new harvest or vintage before the priests had offered a libation of the first fruits.) (Text and translation of Pliny throughout are those of H. Rackham, Pliny: Natural History [Cambridge: Harvard University, 1950].) 4 Macr., Sat. 1.16.8.

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However, presumably because it did not accord with the character of these goddesses as agricultural functionaries, Wissowa overlooked Pliny’s identification of these three as boundary goddesses. Yet Pliny was a Roman familiar with Roman religious practices, and must in any case be preferred as a reporter of Roman religious thought over two much later, nonRoman, and very polemical Christian sources whose whole purpose was to ridicule Roman religion. Supporting evidence exists which makes it virtually certain that they were boundary goddesses – for they were located on the most important sacred boundary in Rome, the pomerium. Tertullian5 indicates that their columns in the Circus were on the spina, the spine of the racecourse, and Livy supports this.6 Pliny does not specifically state that the boundary they guarded in the Circus was the pomerium,7 but this is a virtually certain conclusion.8 The only stretch of the pomerium we actually know9 happens to be the particular portion that ran through the Circus from the bronze bull in the Forum Boarium to Consus’s altar, which was, as Tertullian says, at the meta, the turning point, of the Circus. 10 It follows that the line of the pomerium had to run directly through the Circus Maximus; indeed, that this part of the pomerium must also have been aligned with the spina, because the spina channeled the brook that drained the valley in which the Circus was set,11 and running water was one of the more powerful natural religious boundaries for the Romans as for others.12 It could be crossed only with the most rigorous ritual preparation. The act of binding running water in any way, especially by covering it or even bridging it, had to be approached with careful religious preparation. When the first permanent structure of the Circus was built, probably in the sixth century B.C.E., the stream may have been regulated but left

 5

Tertullian, De Spect. 8. Livy, 40.2.2. 7 This is no small point. Pliny, if he is not speaking from personal knowledge, is probably reflecting Varro much more accurately than either Tertullian or Augustine (Wissowa’s preferred sources). 8 Tertullian either did not know, or (more likely) decided that his polemical purposes were better served by suppression of these details. 9 Tac., Ann. 12.24; L. Richardson, Jr., A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1992), 293–96. 10 Tertullian, de Spect. 94. 11 “The spina must originally have been simply the channeled brook.” (Richardson, Topographical Dictionary, 84). 12 Agrimensores “Ordines Finitionum,” Campbell, 256. L. A. Holland discusses in particular the importance of running water as the barrier and as the crossing between life and death (Janus and the Bridge [American Academy in Rome Papers and Monographs 21; American Academy in Rome, 1961], 11–12). 6

282 Carin M. C. Green  open.13 This was where the altar of Consus was, and the shrines of our goddesses Sessia, Messia, and Tutelina.14 As the Circus became more elaborate, the necessity of respecting the water came into conflict with the desire to organize and monumentalize the spina. To do this, the Romans developed the euripus, a channel of water down the spine of the racetrack.15 So Sessia, Messia, and Tutelina were boundary goddesses. Their shrines were columns set up beside (over? in?) the Circus watercourse that defined a portion of the sacred boundary of Rome. The importance to the city of a boundary like the pomerium was enormous. As the Romans understood it, the divine punishment for moving a boundary stone began with pestilence, and proceeded through the destruction of the crops, tempests and whirlwinds, earthquakes, and ultimately to the kind of social discord that destroyed states.16 The boundaries protected the fertility, productivity, and 

13 J. H. Humphrey, Roman Circuses: Arenas for Chariot Racing (Berkeley: University of California, 1986), 67; Holland, Janus and the Bridge, 34, 343; Richardson, Topographical Dictionary, s.v. “Circus Maximus.” 14 Livy 40.2.2; Tert., de Spect. 93. 15 This became a fixed feature of virtually every circus built afterward in the Roman empire. 16 Agrimensores “Ordines Finitionum” (the section known as “The prophesy of Vegoia,” Campbell 256–57). Sciens hominum auaritiam uel terrenum cupidinem, terminis omnia scita esse uoluit. Quos quandoque quis ob auaritiam prope nouissimi octaui saeculi data sibi hominess malo dolo uiolabunt contingentque atque mouebunt. Sed qui contigerit moueritque, possessionem promouendo suam, alterius minuendo, ob hoc scelus damnabitur a diis. si serui faciant, dominio mutabuntur in deterius. sed si conscientia dominica fiet, caelerius* domus extirpabitur, gensque eius omnis interiet. Motores autem pessimis morbis et uulneribus efficientur membrisque suis debilitabuntur. tum etiam terra a tempestatibus uel turbinibus pleumque labe mouebitur. Fructus sepe laedentur decutienturque imbribus atque grandine, caniculis interient, robigine occidentur. multae dissensiones in populo. fieri haec scitote, cum talia scelera committuntur. propterea neque fallax neque bilinguis sis. Disciplinam pone in corde tuo. (Knowing the greed of men and their earthly covetousness, he [Jupiter] desired that everything should be defined by boundary stones. Through malice aforethought, and exhibiting the license afforded them, by the greed of this well nigh final eighth saeculum, men will violate and appropriate and displace any boundary mark [set] by anyone at any time. But the one who has appropriated or displaced [a boundary mark] for the sake of improving his own property and diminishing that of another, will be condemned for this crime by the gods. If slaves should do this, they shall be brought into an even lower state of servitude. But if it should be done with the master’s complicity, his house will be all too soon eradicated and his race perish utterly. Those who actually move [the boundary marker] shall be stricken by the most terrible sicknesses and injuries, and they will be wasted in their limbs. Then too shall the earth be shaken by tempests and whirlwinds, often disastrously. Often the harvest shall be damaged and shaken by rain and hail, and shall dry up in the days of the dogstar and laid low by mildew. There will be much discord among the people. Know that these things will happen when such crimes are com-

Holding the Line 283  well-being of the land, and that in turn meant security for the people. This is why the variant names of Sessia and Messia were so closely identified with the fruits of the land17 – not because they were concerned particularly with any crops or harvests, but because the security of the boundary was the literal and the metaphorical security for the fertility and productivity of the city. Their companion, Tutelina, the Guardian, watched over the city, protecting it by special emphasis on its boundary. These goddesses marked the line dividing civilization from wildness; they fixed the distinction between the productive orderliness of the city and the unregulated chaos of everything else; they separated the place of law from the territory without law. They established the boundary of the land the Romans had defended, and the boundary stood as evidence of their defense.18 Sessia and Messia, as far as we know, had no other shrines. Tutilina, however, had a sacred grove near the far end of the Circus Maximus.19 Not surprisingly, she was readily associated with Hercules as one who protected Romans,20 perhaps because she kept guard from one end of the Circus valley, and he from the other. Boundary stones were celebrated at the Terminalia, on February 23. Moveable feasts known as the Compitalia in late December and early January honored a slightly different kind of boundary, the crossroads. It may be that Sessia, Messia, and Tutilina shared in those celebrations. However, their position in the Circus suggests a different ritual recognition. The key to identifying it is, I suggest, to be found in Tutilina’s name. As we have seen, it means no more than “Guardian,” and is the diminutive form of Tutela, an epithet applied to persons, both human and divine, and meaning “a source of safety, a defence, protection” (OLD s.v. tutela 2). It is regularly used to describe both gods and goddesses (which are, thus, called “tutelary deities”).21 As a name, Tutela appears in the myth that gives the aetiology for the Feriae Ancillarum, the Festival of the Handmaidens, which oc-

 mitted. Therefore be not deceitful or duplicitous. Fix this teaching in your heart.) (The translation is my own, following B. Campbell, The Writings of the Roman Land Surveyors: Introduction, Text, Translation and Commentary, Journal of Roman Studies [London: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, 2000]). 17 Pliny’s etymological analysis of the names is probably faulty. Nevertheless, it was no doubt a popular etymology. It is not surprising that the Christian polemicists Augustine and Tertullian took these names as simple nomina agentis, and deduced that each deity was a kind of nanny over crops. 18 Cf. Hyginus, Constitutio Limitum, lines 16–22 (Campbell, The Writings of the Roman Land Surveyors, 82). 19 Varro, LL 5.163. 20 Varro, “Hercules Tuam Fidem,” Men, Buechler 216. 21 OLD s.v. tutela 2b, including Priapus and Vulcan. Grattius, Cyn. 496, of Diana.

284 Carin M. C. Green  curred on the seventh of July in Rome. Tutela is the leader of the ancillae, the eponymous handmaidens of the Festival. 22 The same day also honored Juno Caprotina.23 The narratives for the Festival of the Handmaidens do not connect our boundary goddesses to the ritual, or place the ritual anywhere in particular, much less in the Circus. Nevertheless, there is good circumstantial evidence beyond the similarity of the name to support the identification. Part of that evidence, I believe, is the nature of the Festival of the Handmaidens. So, keeping in mind not only the presence of Sessia, Messia, and Tutelina in the Circus on the pomerium, and remembering the goddess Tutilina’s grove near the Circus, let us look at the narrative of the Handmaidens. You may decide for yourself whether or not this is a Festival that would rightly be celebrated in honor of goddesses who guard and secure the boundary of the city. The most elaborate narrative of the festival is found in Plutarch’s biographies of two early Roman leaders, Romulus and Camillus.24 His narrative is a mixture of the aetiological myth explaining the Festival, and a description of what the participants do during the ritual reenactment of the myth. The first thing to note is that the Festival arose from a crisis; and in Plutarch’s sources, this crisis was assigned to two different events: one mythological, immediately after the death of Romulus, the other historical, during the sack of Rome by the Gauls in the first decade of the fourth century B.C.E. In both cases, the crisis was a sudden and devastating revelation of the inability of Roman men to defend their city. The social context of the myth belongs to a period when the taking of women (or cattle, or other possessions) was a demonstration of military prowess. The Homeric epics are the loci classici for such social conditions,25 but Livy presents early Latium as equally a place where raids on any people who seemed vulnerable were the norm;26 and that is how ar-

 22

Plut., Rom. 29; Cam. 33–36. Macr., Sat. 1.11.36–40; Varro, LL 6.18; Plut., Rom. 29, Camil. 33–36. 24 Rom. 29, Cam. 33–36. 25 Consider the case of Chryses’s daughter and Briseis, who are the immediate cause of Achilles’s rage in the opening of the Iliad (1.1–445), when he must give Briseis up to Agamemnon. Calchas, the seer, wants Chryses’s daughter given back to her father; but no one, not a god, king, hero or priest, questions the right of a warrior to take any woman as his prize. Helen is the most famous woman taken in this fashion, but the opening chapters of Herodotus (1.1–5) remind us, if we needed to be reminded, that (whether or not it was widely practiced) woman-stealing was culturally accepted in archaic societies. 26 E.g., Livy 1.4.9–5.4. 23

Holding the Line 285  chaeologists and anthropologists see Latium of the ninth through seventh centuries.27 Moreover, the Camillus narrative requires a most curious disjunction, since here the enemy demanding the women are not the Gauls, but rather a group of Latins allegedly capable of besieging Rome – even though the Romans are able to field a substantial army, and ultimately surround the Latin and Volscian forces, which otherwise never get anywhere near Rome.28 The Romans of the period were, as a matter of historical fact, not so weak that they could not muster an army sufficient to defend the walls of their city. Even Plutarch thinks the Tutela narrative is a fable.29 Fable it is, ritual fable, and it belongs to the period of the mythical foundation of Rome, that is to the time of Romulus. The Festival in all probability originated in the archaic period, centuries before Camillus appeared.30 The version in which the death of Romulus is the cause of the crisis thus must be the older version, and the Camillus narrative an adaptation of it, no doubt occasioned by the spectacular importance of the ritual after the departure of the Gauls. Taking the death of Romulus as the cause of the crisis, then, the narrative of the Festival of the Handmaidens is as follows: In the crisis after the death of Romulus, the Sabines realized the Romans were vulnerable, and so brought their army to an encampment outside Rome. They then demanded that the Romans hand over their women. The Romans were at a loss to know how to protect themselves without their leader and were afraid that they would have to yield. In this crisis, a woman named Tutela came forward and proposed a stratagem to the male elders, which they accepted. In the narratives as we have them, both Tutela and her companions are slaves. I have reservations about this, to which I will return. In the ruse as described, she and some other maid-servants (ancillae) plan to offer themselves to the enemy, as though they were truly 

27 C. Smith, Early Rome and Latium: Economy and Society c. 1000 to 500 BC (Oxford: Oxford University, 1996), 77–105. 28 Cam. 34. It would seem that one reason it was attached to the history of Camillus was that the ritual took on new meaning and vitality at the moment when Rome’s boundaries had been violated and her treasures looted by the Gauls. 29 Cam. 33.2. 30 As V. L. Johnson argues, the name of the third king of Rome, Ancus Marcius, means “servant of Mars,” from whom, according to Festus, came the term “ancilla” applied to the great number of women whom he captured (18L) (“Natalis urbis and principium anni,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 91 [1960]: 109–20). Festus also knows both the masculine form “anculus” and the feminine “ancilla,” to mean a servant of a particular deity. Camillus/Camilla is another term for “servant,” and girls who took part in rituals were also known as “camillae.” If this etymological relationship has no deeper meaning for this ritual, it nevertheless offers the bridge by which the original narrative of the servant-girls and Camillus, “the servant,” could be connected by the Romans.

286 Carin M. C. Green  being surrendered by the Romans. They come out of the city, followed by grieving mourners, to maintain the appearance of authentic surrender by the Romans. Once the women are in the enemy camp they persuade the Sabines to celebrate their victory with a feast. Tutela and her fellow handmaidens then ply the enemy warriors with wine. When the Sabines are thoroughly drunk and have fallen asleep,31 Tutela climbs a wild fig tree and sends a pre-arranged signal (using a torch and hiding it with her cloak), at which point the Roman men burst out of the city, calling to each other and shouting the names most common among them: Gaius, Marcius, and Lucius, and so forth. The women join in the attack, and together they storm the Sabine camp and drive the Sabines away. Then they have a feast and celebrate their victory. That is the myth. At the Festival, according to Plutarch, the men ran out of the city shouting the traditional names, and the women, who were slaves dressed as matrons, met them, jesting and joking, and there was a mock battle (which implies that the women took part in the fighting) followed by a feast.32 There were huts built, in whose shade the celebrants feasted. I suspect as well that the ritual must have been opened with a mock funeral procession for the women supposedly being handed over to the enemy, but Plutarch does not record it. That is the Festival of the Handmaidens. In order that you can judge my contention that this is a Roman combat myth, let me summarize now, briefly, the structure of the combat myth as defined by Collins, Fontenrose, and others. The Enemy brings strife, whatever is bad, destabilizing, productive of chaos. He (the Enemy being usually, but not always, a he) is powerful and predatory, often sexually predatory. Opposed to him is a Champion, who is not as powerful, who needs help, and who is nearly defeated. In the end however, the Champion outwits the Enemy through deceit, disguise or bewitchment, and the means of deceit frequently involves food or sex. The Champion’s victory signals the renewal of fertility, civilization, and success for the Champion’s people, and is marked by a religious celebration or festival.33 

31 Plutarch also says that the women “took away their swords.” Very probably this is a sophisticated reader’s elaboration, alluding to, among no doubt many other instances, to Homer’s description of Circe “unmanning” Odysseus (Od. 10.333–344). However, it could also be a genuine remnant of the archaic narrative. The symbolic connection between the phallus and the sword was made long before Freud. 32 According to Varro, on this day “the women” were awarded a toga in honor of their virtue (LL 6.18). Both male and female children wore togas, but – at least in the republican period – grown women did not. The toga, of course, was an honor and a symbol of citizen status. 33 Adela Yarbro Collins, The Combat Myth and the Book of Revelation (Harvard Dissertations in Religion 9; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1976), 83; Fontenrose 9–11;

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There is no doubt the tale of the Handmaidens lacks the high drama of the combat myth as it appears in the story, say, of Zeus and Typhon, or in Near Eastern texts, or in the book of Revelation. Nevertheless, the Festival of the Handmaidens follows the pattern with quite exceptional fidelity. “The Sabines” are the archenemy, who take advantage of a period of vulnerability of the Romans to encamp on their doorstep and demand women. This demand represents sexual predation of quite a straightforward sort, which, if successful, would destroy the fertility of the city of Rome (again in both a literal and a metaphorical sense) and eventually the city itself. One part of the stratagem may be that slave women dress up as their mistresses (probably a later adaptation), but that is less significant than the fact that all the Romans pretend to yield, and the women are actually going out as “secret agents” to infiltrate the enemy camp. This, it seems to me, is the principal, functional, deceit. The women then use their sexuality and their traditional function as preparers and providers of food to weaken the Enemy. They are the Champions, and when the Enemy is weak, their leader, Tutela, signals the Roman men, who rush out, and together they defeat the Sabines. The myth is confirmed annually with the Festival. In the only previous extensive analysis of this Festival, Jan Bremmer,34 working on a suggestion by Fritz Graf, argued that it was a rite of reversal, like the Saturnalia, in which slaves were allowed to take the place of their masters. Bremmer’s analysis is formidable, and he is correct that there is a great deal of reversal in the rite, but there are points about it that he neglects which I think are significant. It existed as a regular part of the annual calendar of festivals under the protection of Juno Caprotina, about whom little is known except that she was a warrior goddess. Although slaves did fight, this fact was a matter of embarrassment to the ruling classes, particularly in the ideological world of republican Rome. The most powerful argument against this rite being a reversal ritual for slave women is that patently it is a combat myth, and the women are warriors for the city. It is about enemies and possible disaster, and women as the champions who save Rome.  Neil Forsyth, The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth (Princeton: Princeton University, 1987), 446–52. The combat myth is widely treated, and can be traced from W. Robertson Smith, precursor of the Cambridge Ritualists, in Religion of the Semites (repr. New York: Meridian, 1957) through not only Collins’s work but, for instance, Paul Ricoeur, Symbolism of Evil (trans. Emerson Buchanan; New York: Harper & Rowe, 1967); Pierre Vidal-Naquet, “The Black Hunter,” in The Black Hunter (rev. ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1986); and Forsyth, The Old Enemy. 34 “Myth and Ritual in Ancient Rome: the Nonae Capratinae,” in Roman Myth and Mythography (University of London Institute of Classical Studies Bulletin Supplement 52; ed. J. N. Bremmer and N. M. Horsfall; London: University of London, Institute of Classical Studies, 1987), 76–88.

288 Carin M. C. Green  The accounts of the festival in Varro35 and Macrobius36 make it clear that this is how the Romans themselves saw it. Varro says that at the Games of Apollo, celebrated a few days after the Festival of the Handmaidens, “the women” were given a bordered toga for their service, as an enlightenment for the people (toga praetextata data eis Apollinaribus Ludis docuit populum).37 The Games were Roman, not Latin, and the women so honored must also have been Roman. Macrobius, while acknowledging the confusion about the origin of the festival, says that the celebration was in honor of the generous courage of the women's spirit in saving the people’s honor (in memoriam benignae virtutis quae in ancillarum animis pro conservatione publicae dignitatis). It is most unlikely that, to begin with, slave women were awarded a toga, a symbol of citizenship and Romanness, at a public festival, or that slave women’s virtus (courage) and animus (spirit), both terms profoundly associated with the masculine realm of elite social behavior, would be the cause of an important festival or an occasion for enlightening the public. It is significant that the Festival of the Handmaidens and its myth do not share any other characteristic with that other well-known festival of reversal, the Saturnalia. In the Festival of the Handmaidens, ritual is a means to a specific, ritually identified end, the security of the city. It is surprising enough that women are the Champions; it would be quite extraordinary if in the original myth and Festival, slave women were given ritual credit for saving Rome. It is an additional difficulty that only the women are said to be slaves. It seems unlikely a ritual would have arisen for slave women in which they were the partners and fellow fighters with male citizens. In fact, the word “ancilla,” with its masculine form “ancillus,” originally meant not a slave, but a male or a female servant or minister of a god – not quite a priest but certainly not a slave or even “servant” in the social  35

LL 6.18. Sat. 1.11.36–40; 3.2.14. 37 His account introduces some slight confusion, for he says that the festival of Juno Caprotina was so called because Latin women made sacrifices to Juno under a wild fig tree (caprificus). But the Handmaidens, the Games of Apollo, and the presentation of the toga, are specifically Roman. It is extremely unlikely that a toga was presented to “Latin women.” In fact, Varro the etymologist is saying something perfectly sensible. The Handmaidens celebrated Juno at Rome on the Nones of July, and the wild fig tree was an important part of that celebration. The Lanuvian Juno Sospita (Juno the Savior) was distinguished by her goats’-head helmet, and it is very possible that similar festivities (either in honor of Rome, or for the protection of Lanuvium) were held in Latium in July. The name “caprotina” which united both the fig tree and one of the most famous kinds of Juno in her form as protector, were the sources of a common identification of that the day as “Nonae Caprotinae.” We should not assume cult identification beyond a common reference. 36

Holding the Line 289  sense.38 The comparable terms in classical Latin are camillus and Camilla. It must be considered a possibility that the Feriae Ancillarum was originally the “Festival of the God’s Women Servants.” There is a high probability that the social changes occurring between the archaic period and, say, the fourth century (when the same rite was assigned to the military hero Camillus), made Romans highly sensitive to allowing respectable women to perform in so sexually ambiguous a role. Archaic rituals did preserve archaic social values, and that could be embarrassing. There were many different ways of dealing with this uncomfortable reality. Turning the performance over to slave women, and using that as part of the stratagem, is one way of preserving both the ritual and the reputation of respectable women.39 Once the term “ancilla” came to have the general meaning of a slave who was a lady’s maid, the transformation was further validated. Thus it is much more likely, it seems to me, that the use of slave women was a later adaptation,40 one that was not felt necessary for the men in the ritual.41 However that may be, we must not lose sight of the fact that this is a Combat Myth, and a rather delightful one in its archaic joie de vivre. The festival’s celebratory conclusion is the total reversal of the crisis. The Enemy, who hoped to separate the women from the men, has been defeated; the women and the men fight together and then they celebrate together; the city is safe, and so is its future.42  38

Festus 18L. That suggests an additional reason for the use of slave women. The development of Roman law clearly established the principle that any captive of the enemy became a slave. (Digest 1.5.4.2; Gaius, Institutes 1.129; Amirante, 25). To return within the city boundaries and regain one’s civic status was a complex religious and ritual procedure. Again, archaic ritual precedes organized legal truths; free women could be protected from a taint of the loss of civic status (once law made the loss of that status possible) by using women who were already slaves to perform the ritual. 40 We might even suspect that in the Roman religious tradition Tutela was once a woman, just as Romulus and his wife Hersilia (Livy 1.11) were thought to have once been human also, but taken among the gods at the end of their lives. The Circus would be the perfect arena in which selected parts of the Festival could be performed, and be seen to be performed. The building of huts that Plutarch records in the Camillus narrative may well be a ritual means of confirming that the community was safe and homes could be erected. 41 In the cult of Hercules, slaves were put in when the original families had died out, a quite different, but comparable, instance where slaves replaced citizens (Livy 1.7.14). 42 And perhaps, to acknowledge the contribution of the men, we should also recognize that the shouting of names by the men as they burst out of the city is yet another stratagem: by shouting many names and making a huge hullabaloo, they sound as though their numbers are far greater. But the making of noise, and the making of fun, and all kinds of mockery, subversion, and frolic, are very traditional, and very stylized forms of defeating the enemy and his chaos. 39

290 Carin M. C. Green  Is it possible, then, that Tutela, the woman who devises the stratagem to save Rome, and Tutilina the Guardian and boundary goddess, are one and the same? In his analysis of the ritual of the Black Hunter, Vidal-Naquet discusses the importance of the organization of symbolic space, as well as the significance of the eschatia, the “end-places” of a city, where the community’s vigilance against the incursions of its neighbors must be focused.43 For the Athenian ephebia, which is what he was analyzing, the “end-places” were out in the mountains far from the city. But, as VidalNaquet also points out, the symbolic or religious organization of space is what matters in such rituals, not the details of geography. The essence of the pomerium is that it is the ritual edge, the frontier, of the city. This is the appropriate place for the Handmaidens and the men of Rome to relive the moment when a crisis of weakness in the city is overcome and the enemy defeated. The narrative says that the original event happened looking out toward the enemy encampment. The ritual reenactment would then define that place, which is not identified. We are hampered by the fact that our most complete source is a Greek author, Plutarch. The only extended account we have in Latin, that of Macrobius,44 first emphasizes how well-known the festival is (tam vulgo notum est, “so well-known everywhere”)45 and then reiterates the lesson of the ritual: the courage of the women in their protection of the state. Like Plutarch, he sees the historical cause of the festival as a response to the sack of Rome by the Gauls in the 390s or 380s B.C.E. When Macrobius was a young man, the Goths had inflicted a staggering defeat on the Romans at the battle of Adrianople (378 C. E.),46 and in the next half century the Goths, Alans, and Huns carried out their dismemberment of the empire – a process which included the sack of Rome in 410 C. E. In such a world, the narrative of the Handmaidens, with the Gauls as the enemy, may have seemed far more relevant. Like Plutarch, Macrobius tells of the city in danger, the men helpless, the brave offer of Tutela (since  43

Vidal-Naquet, “The Black Hunter,” 107–9. Sat. 1.11.36–40. 45 For many years scholars have dated Macrobius’s Saturnalia to the early 380s. The Christian church, beginning in the 370s, began to work seriously to outlaw all rites and practices of traditional religion. Macrobius’s claim to the wide recognition of the Handmaidens indicates that the festival had not declined in importance in the face of such pressure. 46 Cameron has challenged the 380s date for the composition of the Saturnalia and has argued for a date later than the sack of Rome in 410. However, for the purpose of this paper I accept the 380s date. There can be no question that Macrobius – as a man who held one of the highest ranks in the later empire – knew about Adrianople, and knew it for what it was: the moment when the empire began to collapse before the barbarian onslaught. 44

Holding the Line 291  he, like Plutarch, offers the alternative Greek name Philotis for her, he may be using the same source), the tricking of the Latins, and the signal to those in the city. He does not mention the men or their running out of the city, nor does he indicate a place for the ritual, and these must have been the parts that were best known, tam vulgo, everywhere. The essential geographical elements are a gate, or gates, from which the men burst out with their shouting of names, and a nearby, ritually identified “eschatia,” liminal area, which must be a section of the pomerium. There are city gates near the pomerium in the Forum Boarium, and the Porta Mugonia on the Forum side would be a possible site for the men to burst out of the city shouting. It is curious that the gate, or gates, were not specifically named, for the action of the men must have depended upon some signal commemorating that given by the woman portraying Tutela. It is this, above all, that argues for a single gate, since multiple signals given at multiple gates around the city are contrary to the sense of the myth. Our central problem may be our Greek texts – not that they are wrong, but that they are translating Latin without at the same time being perfectly clear about the specific meaning of words peculiarly associated with this ritual. Plutarch consistently uses pulai, gates, as the place out of which the men erupt.47 Pulai most commonly means city gates, but they can also be the gates of the carceres, the starting gates for chariots, in the Circus.48 However, the men are bursting out of the city, not into the Circus. And yet, there is a curious citation in Paulus’s epitome of Festus’s dictionary, in which he says, “the place in the circus from where the quadrigae start out, is called ‘oppidum,’ i.e. ‘the town.’”49 To a non-Latin speaker who did not



47 ZM RX`Q  HSHL GRQ HX TXBM  HFK_ H VDQ HSHLJR PHQRL NDL? GLDB WKBQ  HS HLFLQ D OOK ORXM SHUL? WDBM SX ODM D QDNDORXaQ WHM SROOD NLM. (When, accordingly, they beheld it [the light] they sallied forth at once in great haste, and because of their haste calling upon one another many times at the gates [Rom. 29.6].) GL’R NDL? TRUXEZ GK JHQHV TDL WKBQ WZaQ VWUDWLZWZaQ  HFRGRQ ZM NDWK SHLJRQ RL DU[RQWHM D OOK ORXM D QDNDORX QWZQ NDL? PR OLM HLM WKBQ WD FLQ NDTLVWDPHQZQ HSHOTR QWDM GH? WZ_a [D UDNL WZaQ SROHPLZQ RX  SURVGH[RPHQZQ NDL? NDTHXGR Q WZQ HOHL Q WRB VWUDWR SHGRQ NDL? GLDITHL UDL WRXBM SOHLV WRXMWRXaWRGH?JHQHVTDLWDL MQXaQ, RXOLDLMWR W HGH? .XLQWLOLDLMQZ QDLMNDL? WKBQ D JRPHQKQ HRUWKBQ  XSR PQKPD WKaM SUD FHZM HNHLQ KM HL@QDL SUZaWRQ PH?Q  JDBU HFLR Q WHM D TUR RLGLDB WKaM SX OKMSROODB WZaQHSL[ZULZQNDL? NRLQZaQR QRPD WZQERK_a ITHJJRQWDL*D L RQ0DaU NRQ/RX NLRQNDL? WDB WRX WRLMRP RLD. (Hence it was that the soldiers sallied out of the city tumultuously, as the magistrates urged them on, calling out one another’s names, and with much ado getting into rank and file. . . . For, to begin with, they ran out of the city gate in throngs, calling out loudly many local and common names, such as Gaius, Marcus, Lucius, and the like [Cam. 33.4–5].) (The text and translation are those of B. Perrin, Plutarch Lives: Themistocles and Camillus; Aristides and Cato Major; Cimon and Lucullus [Cambridge: Harvard University, 1914. Repr. 2006].) 48 LSJ s.v. SXOK IIb “the carceres of the Circus,” citing Aristeides 1.124J. 49 Festus 201 L: oppidum dicitur et locus in circo, unde quadrigae emittuntur.

292 Carin M. C. Green  know the ritual first hand, “bursting out of the gates of the town (oppidum)” would be readily equated with “bursting out of the gates of the city,” especially when the story is about early Rome which might once have been understood to have been a “town” (oppidum) rather than a city (urbs). Calling the carceres the “oppidum” is part of early republican practice, as evidence from the mid-third century B. C. E. indicates, for the poet Naevius (quoted by Varro, LL 5.153) mocked a Dictator (a magistrate) who rode his chariot “all the way to town.” Varro makes the quotation to remind Romans that the Circus carceres were once called the “oppidum.” So it is possible, though not demonstrable beyond doubt, that in the ritual of the Festival of the Handmaidens, the men raced out of “the gates” of “the town” of the Circus – that is, the starting gates – at a signal to engage in a mock battle with the help of the women who had deceived the enemy. There is also the fact that other gods in and around the Circus have similar protective and defensive significance. Consus, the god who advised Romulus, had his altar on the spina at the turning point.50 His most famous advice involved the trick that led to the taking of the Sabine women,51 which was also performed each year in the Circus at Consus’s August Festival.52 Our ancient sources universally identify the taking of the Sabine women as the means by which Romulus assured Rome’s future fertility and wealth. And, as has often been noted, the Sabine Women of the Consualia provide the pattern for which the Festival of the Handmaidens is a most distinct reverse.53 In the Consualia, the Romans capture Sabine women, but in the Festival of the Handmaidens, the Sabines/Latins try to take Romen women. This makes it even more probable that the two rituals were performed in the same space. There is a generally accepted image of Roman religion as a public ritual for male citizens. The women celebrated decorously at home, or in a few female-oriented public cults of only limited importance. In fact, in Roman religion, the women could hold the line against disaster and destruction. Just as the Sabine women, once Romulus’s men had captured them, be

50 See C. M. C. Green, “The Gods in the Circus,” in New Perspectives on Etruria and Early Rome, in Honor of R. D. De Puma (ed. S. Bell and H. Nagy; Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin, 2009), 65–78. 51 Livy 1.9; DH, Ant. rom. 2.31. 52 Varro, LL 6.20: Consualia dicta a Conso, quod tum feriae publicae ei deo et in Circo ad aram eius ab sacerdotibus ludi illi, quibus virgins Sabinae raptae. (The Consualia was called from Consus, because then there was the state festival to that god, and in the Circus at his altar those games were enacted by the priests in which the Sabine maidens were carried off.) (Text and translation are those of R. G. Kent, Varro on the Latin Language [Cambridge: Harvard University, 1938. Repr. 1993]). 53 Bremmer, “Myth and Ritual in Ancient Rome.”

Holding the Line 293  came founders of the city with the men, the Handmaidens and the men together defended their threatened city. Sessia, Messia, and Tutilina were the guardians, along with Jupiter and a whole host of other male and female deities. And every year in the Circus the whole city sat and watched this demonstrated in the regular procession of rituals and festivals that marked out the year. One last word on the Combat Myth. It may seem that there is only a tenuous connection between Collins’s brilliant first monograph on the book of Revelation and this modest paper. Yet the contrast illustrates a great deal that is of significance to both our disciplines, which have too long been isolated from each other. The book of Revelation is a profound and complete text, whereas the Festival of the Handmaidens must be recovered, piecemeal, from sources centuries later than its probable origins and its religious vocabulary (Tutela, Sessia, Messia, camillus, oppidum) must be teased out from scattered entries in ancient dictionaries. The book of Revelation has a rich and well-documented theological reception; the Handmaidens were barely understood by Plutarch, and heartily and effectively mocked and misinterpreted by Tertullian and Augustine. Yet Plutarch was writing at about the time of the author of Revelation, and Tertullian and Augustine are no insignificant link between the two traditions. In the book of Revelation, as Collins has demonstrated, the Combat Myth has a structural and symbolic function. In the Festival of the Handmaidens, the Combat Myth – the defeat of the enemy and the protection of the city – is the solemn purpose underlying the rather jolly celebration. We are reminded here that, distinct as they may be, the book of Revelation and the Handmaidens belonged to the same world, and were equally a part of the experience of many Romans who were also Christians or were familiar with Christian texts. Indeed, if we take Plutarch – Greek intellectual and Delphic priest – as an example of a Roman citizen whose knowledge of Rome was largely dependent on books and the accounts of others, it is striking that the Handmaidens were still known to him, even if not understood. In 410, Alaric sacked Rome. Augustine54 and Orosius55 record with dismay that the Romans ran to the Circus for aid in such a crisis. In 442, Pope Leo was still lamenting that in such a disaster the Romans trusted the “pagan idols” in the Circus more than they trusted the martyrs.56 Among those “pagan idols” were the boundary goddesses in the Circus, Tutela, Sessia, and Messia, the ancient defenders of Rome. Even if the Saturnalia was written in the 380s, Macrobius, a contemporary of theirs, thought that

 54

Sermo 296.7.8. Contra Paganos 1.6.4. 56 Sermo 84.1. Cf. Heid’s discussion, 422–24. 55

294 Carin M. C. Green  the Festival of the Handmaidens (tam vulgo notum est – “known by everyone”) was still part of a vital religious reality in Rome. Every society must find new ways of meeting the Enemy in combat. Here in microcosm, in Rome, we see what was happening in thousands of different ways throughout the Mediterranean world. For several centuries the book of Revelation as part of the Christian Bible, in a great sense, and the Festival of the Handmaidens in a smaller (yet significant) way, both promised to show the way to security and safety, and they were both part of the great market bazaar of religions kept open by believers throughout the ancient Mediterranean world.

Works Cited Amirante, L. Captivitas e postliminium. Naples, 1950. Bremmer, J. N. “Myth and Ritual in Ancient Rome: The Nonae Capratinae.” Pages 76–88 in Roman Myth and Mythography. University of London Institute of Classical Studies Bulletin Supplement 52. Edited by J. N. Bremmer and N. M. Horsfall. London: University of London, Institute of Classical Studies, 1987. Cameron, A. “The Date and Identity of Macrobius.” Journal of Roman Studies 56.1 (1966): 25–38. Campbell, B. The Writings of the Roman Land Surveyors: Introduction, Text, Translation and Commentary, Journal of Roman Studies. London: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, 2000. Collins, Adela Yarbro. The Combat Myth and the Book of Revelation. Harvard Dissertations in Religion 9. Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1976. Fontenrose, Joseph. Python: A Study of Delphic Myth and its Origins, Berkeley, 1959. Forsyth, Neil. The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth. Princeton: Princeton University, 1987. Green, C. M. C. “The Gods in the Circus.” Pages 65–78 in New Perspectives on Etruria and Early Rome, in Honor of R. D. De Puma. Edited by S. Bell and H. Nagy. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin, 2009. Heid, Stefan. “The Romanness of Roman Christianity.” Pages 406–26 in A Companion to Roman Religion. Edited by Jörg Rüpke. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2007. Holland, L. A. Janus and the Bridge. American Academy in Rome Papers and Monographs 21; American Academy in Rome, 1961. Humphrey, J. H. Roman Circuses: Arenas for Chariot Racing. Berkeley: University of California, 1986. Johnson, V. L. “Natalis urbis and principium anni.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 91 (1960): 109–20. Kent, R. G. Varro on the Latin Language. Cambridge: Harvard University, 1938. Repr. 1993. Perrin, B., Plutarch Lives: Themistocles and Camillus; Aristides and Cato Major; Cimon and Lucullus. Cambridge: Harvard University, 1914. Repr. 2006. Rackham, H. Pliny: Natural History. Cambridge: Harvard University, 1950. Richardson, L. Jr. A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.

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Ricoeur, P. Symbolism of Evil. Translated by Emerson Buchanan. New York: Harper & Rowe, 1967. Smith, C. Early Rome and Latium: Economy and Society c. 1000 to 500 BC. Oxford: Oxford University, 1996. Smith, W. R. Religion of the Semites. Repr. New York: Meridian, 1957. Vidal-Naquet, P. “The Black Hunter.” In The Black Hunter. Revised edition. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1986. Wissowa, G. Religion und Kultus der Römer. Munich: Beck, 1912. Repr. 1971.

Part III: Logos

Gender and Grief Seneca’s Ad Marciam and Ad Helviam matrem PAUL A. HOLLOWAY

You are expecting words of comfort? Here’s a scolding instead: “You are taking your son’s death like a woman!” Seneca, Ep. 99.2

In Reading Roman Women, Suzanne Dixon reminds us that one of the principal considerations in the study of gender in ancient Greek and Latin literature is the genre of the text being analyzed.1 As she puts it, the “excellent mothers, pious daughters and faithful freedwomen on tombstones,” are not the “scheming trollops in history, biography and law-court speeches,” are not the “desirable mistresses in elegiac poetry,” are not the “witches in satire,” are not the “prostitutes in comedy and graffiti,” and so on.2 In this essay I wish to consider the treatment of women in the literary consolatio, a genre that Dixon does not discuss in any detail, but which provides a rich resource for the study of the ideology of gender in the early Roman Empire. I will limit my comments to Seneca’s two consolatory essays to women, the Ad Marciam and the Ad Helviam matrem, where he is forced to work out in practice the Stoic theory that woman are by nature equal to men in their capacity for virtue although by training they are much their inferiors.3 I will begin by briefly describing ancient consolation in general, noting in particular those aspects most relevant to our theme.

1 Suzanne Dixon, Reading Roman Women (London: Duckworth, 2001), esp. chapter 1, “Reading the genre.” 2 Dixon, Reading Roman Women, 16. 3 Other consolations of women that I will not consider are: Plutarch’s consolation to this wife after the death of their two-year old daughter, the Ad uxorem; Statius’s consolatory genethliacon or birthday poem composed in honor of the dead poet Lucan and in part at least for the consolation of Lucan’s widow Polla Argentaria, Silvae 2.7; and the pseudo-Ovidian Consolatio ad Liviam or Epicedium Drusi, an elegaic poem of nearly 475 lines on the death of Drusus.

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A. On the Nature of Ancient Consolation Consolation was widely practiced in the ancient world and could in principle be offered for any misfortune.4 It had as its objective the alleviation of grief, a passion broadly conceived as any form of mental pain or distress (OXSK, aegritudo),5 which was to be replaced with the opposite disposition of joy ([DUD, gaudium).6 To reach these ends consolers employed a range of therapeutic methods,7 the most common of which was rational persuasion bolstered by frank exhortation and, if need be, the occasional rebuke.8 Common misfortunes eventually received stock treatment in the rhetorical handbooks.9 At Tusc. 3.34.81, Cicero mentions handbook discussions of death, poverty, exile, life without honors, the destruction of one’s country, slavery, illness, and blindness. Dio Chrysostom gives a similar list at Or. 16.3. Whether philosophically inclined or not, ancient consolers were keen to distinguish between sympathy and consolation. We see this already in Thucydides, who has Pericles introduce the peroration of his famous funeral oration with just this distinction: “I am not here to lament with you, but to console you.”10 Aelianus preserves a similar dictum of Aristippus’s: “I have not come to share your grief (VXOOXSRXPHQRM) but to stop it.”11 Plutarch is even more pointed, dismissing sympathy as tantamount to the “weeping and wailing [of a] tragic chorus,” while recommending consolation as manly “frank exhortation and rational instruction.”12

4 The literary sources are collected by Carl Buresch, “Consolationum a Graecis Romanisque scriptarum historia critica,” Leipziger Studien zur classischen Philologie 9 (1886): 1–170; the most thorough and insightful analysis remains Rudolf Kassel, Untersuchungen zur griechischen und römischen Konsolationsliteratur (Zetemata 18; München: Beck, 1958); cf. J. Hani, “La Consolation Antique,” REA 75 (1973): 103–10. 5 Cic., Tusc. 3.31.75. 6 E.g., Sen., Ad Helv. 4.2–5.1; Ad Marc. 3.4; Ad Poly. 10.6; Ep. 99.3; Plut., De tran. an. 469D. It is no accident that the apostle Paul uses “joy” ([DUD) and “consolation” (SDUDNOKVLM) as synonyms (2 Cor 7:4, 13; cf. Rom 12:15). 7 Paul Rabbow, Seelenführung: Methodik der Exerzitien in der Antike (Munich, 1954), 16–71. 8 E.g., Sen., Ep. 99.32; cf. Cic., Ad Brut. 1.9.1; Greg. Naz., Ep. 165; Jer., Ep. 39.3–4; Ambr., Ep. 39; John Chrys., Ep. ad Olymp. 8.3.11–13; 17.4.32–43 (Malingrey). 9 Kassel, Untersuchungen zur griechischen und römischen Konsolationsliteratur, 40–48; Constanine Grollios, 7H[QKD OXSLDMNRQRL? WRSRLWRX3UR?M3ROXELRQWRXM6HQHNDNDL? SKJDL?DXWZaQ ( (OOKQLNDSDUDUWKPD 10; Thessaloniki/Athens: Christou & Son, 1956). 10 2.44; cf. Pl., Menex. 247C–D; Epicur., SV 66. 11 Var. hist. 7.3. 12 De ex. 599B; cf. Ps.-Plut., Ad Apoll. 117F–18A; Bion apud Cic., Tusc. 3.26.62; Epict., Ench. 16.

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Given this emphasis on reason – which will produce unique challenges to ancient consolers of women, as we shall see – it is no surprise that each of the major philosophical schools developed its own theory of consolation based on such things as its view of the soul, its doctrine of good and evil, and its theory of the passions (SDTK).13 Cicero surveys these theories in Tusculanae Disputationes books 1 and 3, summarizing them at 3.31.76: Some, like Cleanthes, believe that the consoler’s only task is to convince the person afflicted with grief that the alleged “evil” is not an evil at all. Others, like the Peripatetics, argue that the evil in question is not great. Others, like the Epicureans, try to avert our attention away from evil things to good things. Others, like the Cyrenaics, think that it is sufficient to show that nothing unexpected has happened. Chrysippus, however, believes that the most important thing in consoling another is to disabuse the mourner of his opinion, lest he imagine that he is fulfilling a just and obligatory duty.

This may be to put too fine a point on it, however, since in times of intense grief comfort was sought wherever it could be found and school lines were frequently crossed. Indeed, Cicero himself goes on to say: “and still others favor employing all these types of consolation . . . much as I in my Consolation tossed them all into one attempt to find comfort, since my soul was infected and swollen and I was trying to heal it by every means.”14 As we shall see, Seneca is anything but a philosophical purist when it comes to consoling Marcia and his mother Helvia, but that rather he tailors his arguments to what he imagines will be most effective to them in their particular sorrow, and as grief-stricken women.15 The first view Cicero lists is that of the Stoic scholarch Cleanthes, according to which “the consoler’s only task is to convince the person afflicted with grief that the alleged ‘evil’ is not an evil at all” and that grief is therefore unwarranted. This is the Stoic ideal of D SDTHLD (“apathy”) applied to the SDTRMof grief.16 Three suppositions underlie the Stoic theory of the passions in general and Cleanthes’s theory of grief in particular: (1) that the soul is unitary and is therefore wholly rational,17 (2) that the only real good is virtue, the only real evil vice, and that everything else is mor-

13 Grief (OXSK) was of course one of the four cardinal passions, the other three being “desire” (HSLTXPLD), “pleasure” (KGRQK), and “fear” (IRERM). 14 Tusc. 3.31.76; cf. Ad Att. 12.14.3; J. E. Atkinson, “Seneca’s ‘Consolatio ad Polybium,’” ANRW 2.32.870–872. 15 For this principle more generally expressed, cf. Sen., Ep. 64.8: Animi remedia inventa sun tab antiquis; guomodo autem admoveantur aut quando nostri operis est quaerere (cited by C. E. Manning, On Seneca’s “Ad Marciam,” [Leiden: Brill, 1981], 51; cf. A. Guillemin, “Sénèque, Directeur d’âmes,” REL 32 [1954]: 252). 16 Like most ancient intellectuals, the Stoics recognized the four principal “passions” of desire (HSLTXPLD), pleasure (KGRQK), fear (IRERM), and mental pain or grief (OXSK). 17 E.g., Chrysippus apud Gal., De plac. 4.4 (p. 115.22–25 DeLacy = SVF 3.462).

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ally “indifferent” (D GLDIRURQ),18 and (3) that the passions (including grief), derive from incorrect judgments of good and evil and are therefore always wrong and have no place in the rational soul.19 On this account grief always originates in a false judgment of the form “X is an evil” (where X stands for some present state of affairs), when the correct judgment would have been “X is neither good nor evil but a matter of indifference.”20 Cleanthes’s method was regularly employed in consolations treating lesser forms of misfortune such as poverty and exile, and we will have occasion to return to it below in our discussion of the exiled Seneca’s letter to his mother Helvia.21 Cicero next mentions Peripatetic theory,22 according to which the consoler’s task is to convince the person afflicted with grief that “the evil in question is not great” and that he or she should therefore show moderation in their grief. Like the Stoics, the Peripatetics derived their theory of consolation from their doctrines of the soul, good and evil, and the passions. However, they differed from the Stoics in their interpretation of each of these central doctrines.23 First, they held that the soul was not unitary and rational, but partite with both rational and irrational elements. Second, they did not limit good and evil to virtue and vice but, in general, accepted conventional notions of good and evil, provided that the objects thus encompassed were not overvalued. And third, they held that grief, when based on an accurate assessment of value, was a proper and reasonable expression of 18 E.g., Sen., Ep. 13.4; cf. Maximilian Forschner, Die stoische Ethik: Über den Zusammenhang von Natur-, Sprach- und Moralphilosophie im altstoischen System (Stuttgart: KlettCotta, 1981), 160–82. 19 E.g., Stob., Ecl. 2.88.10 Wachsmuth (= SVF 3.378). 20 E.g., M. Ant. 8.47: “If you are grieved by anything external to yourself, it is not that thing that troubles you, but your judgment about it.” 21 Sen., Ad Helv. 5.1; other examples include: Teles, frag. 3.22.1f. Hense (citing Stilpo); 29.2f. Hense; Muson., frag. 9.42.6 Hense, cf. 50.9f. Hense; Plut., De ex. 599D; Philiscus apud Cass. Dio 38.26.2; Dio Chrys., Or. 13.8; Favorin., frag. 22.22.44–48 Barigazzi. For the topos in John Chrysostom, see Malunowiczowna, “Les éléments stoïciens dan la consolation grecque chrétienne,” in Studia Patristica 13/2, (ed. E. A. Livingston; TU 116; Berlin: AkademieVerlag, 1975), 35. 22 Platonism is passed over because it never developed its own theory of consolation: Antiochus of Ascalon, followed by Plutarch and Calvenus Tarsus, sided with the Peripatetics, while Eudorus of Alexandria, followed by Albinus and Atticus, and to a lesser degree Philo, sided with the Stoics. For discussion, see John M. Dillon, The Middle Platonists: A Study in Platonism, 80 B.C. to A.D. 220 (London: Duckworth, 1977), 44, 123–24, 146–48, 251–52, 299. 23 John M. Dillon, “Metriopatheia and Apatheia: Some Reflections on a Controversy in Later Greek Ethics,” in Essays in Ancient Philosophy II (ed. John P. Anton and Anthony Preus; Albany: SUNY, 1983), 508–17; Robert Gregg, Consolation Philosophy: Greek and Christian Paideia in Basil and the Two Gregories (Patristic Monograph Series 3; Cambridge: Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1975), 81–123.

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the irrational part of the soul. Thus Peripatetic consolation had as its goal not the complete erasure of grief, the Stoic ideal of D SDTHLD, but its moderation, an ideal they expressed with the term PHWULRSDTHLD, “measured passion.”24 It will be no surprise that Peripatetic PHWULRSDTHLD was judged gentler and more humane than Stoic D SDTHLD.25 The third view Cicero mentions is that of Epicurus. Unlike Stoic and Peripatetic theorists, Epicurus was constrained by his philosophical hedonism to take most conventional forms of evil at face value. For Epicurus, therefore, the consoler’s task was to distract the grieving person from his or her current misfortune to other more pleasurable memories. Cicero explains:26 He [Epicurus] places the alleviation of distress in two activities: calling the mind away from thinking about things that disturb us (avocatione a cogitanda molestia) and calling the mind back to the contemplation of pleasure (et revocatione ad contemplandas voluptates).

Epicurus’s technique was simple and versatile and proved popular with a broad range of intellectuals, who often modified its basic strategy of selfdistraction to fit their own ideological preferences.27 Even Cicero, who with characteristic moral exhibitionism rejected the technique’s focus on pleasure (voluptas),28 proposed a modified version that called for the contemplation of virtue.29 Along with the Peripatetic ideal of PHWULRSDTHLD, 24 The Peripatetic mean lay between D SDTHLD, the inhumana duritia of the Stoics, and GXVSDTHLD, the infinitus dolor of the unphilosophical masses; Ps.-Plut., Ad Apoll. 102C–E; cf. Sen., Ad Helv. 16.1. The metriopathic ideal is articulated, among other places, at Pl., Menex. 247C–248C; Cic., Ad Att. 12.10; Ad fam. 5.18.2; Sen., Ad Marc. 7.1–2; Ad Poly. 18.5–6; Ep. 63.1; 99.14–16. The motif became common in late antique Christianity: Ambr., Ep. 39.8; Ex. Sat. 2.11; Paul. Nol., Ep. 13.10; Aug., Ep. 263.3; Bas., Ep. 28.1.62; Greg. Naz., Ep. 165.2; John Chrys., Ep. 197; Jer., Ep. 39.5.2, 6.4; 60.7.3 (cited by J. H. D. Scourfield, Consoling Heliodorus: A Commentary on Jerome “Letter 60” [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993], 130–32). 25 Crantor apud Cic., Tusc. 3.6.12–13; Sen., Ad Poly. 2.1; 4.2; 18.5; Ad Marc. 6.1–2; Ep. 63.1; 77.12; but see Teles, frag. 7.56–57 Hense; Epict., Ench. 16. 26 Tusc. 3.15.33 (frag. 444 Usener); cf. 3.31.76; 5.26.73–74; Epicur., SV 55; Philod., 3HUL? THZaQ 3 col. d (2) 23; 3HUL?TDQDWRX 38.21. 27 Ps.-Ovid, Cons. ad Liv. 377–400 and 411–416; Sen., Ad Poly. 5–8 and 12–13; Ad Helv. 18–19; Ad Marc. 2.3–4; 4.3–5.6; 24.1–4; Ep 63.4, 99.3–5; De ira 3.39.4; De brev. vit. 10.2; De vit. beat. 6.1–2; De ben. 3.4.1; Plut., De tran. an. 468F–469D; De ex. 600D; Ad ux. 608A– B; 610E; Ps.-Plut., Ad Apoll. 116A–B; Pliny, Ep. 8.5.2; Jul., Or. 8.246C–E. In early Christian literature: Ambr., Ex. Sat. 1.3; Jer., Ep 60.7.3, 108.1.2, 118.4.2; Bas., Ep 5.2, 269.2; and Paul. Nol., Ep. 13.6. The so-called “apocalyptic cure” of 4 Ezra 7:16; 2 Bar. 81.4 also resembles this technique. 28 Tusc. 3.17.37. 29 Tusc. 3.17.37: “But if, Epicurus, you call me back (revocas) to the above goods [of courage, self-control, justice, and prudence], I will obey, I will follow, I will make you my

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the Epicurean technique of distraction or avocatio was considered a humane and accessible approach. Cicero next mentions Cyrenaic theory, according to which grief is caused not by misfortune as such but by misfortune that is unexpected (inopinatus).30 Like the surprise attack of an enemy or a sudden storm at sea – two popular Cyrenaic analogies31 – misfortune overwhelms us when it catches us off guard. But when misfortune is foreseen, or when we have adequately prepared ourselves for it, this is not the case. 32 The Cyrenaics offered two practical remedies to grief, the first to be applied prophylactically before the advent of grievous circumstances, and the second after the fact. For those not currently experiencing misfortune they recommended the contemplation of future evil (praemeditatio futuri mali) as a preparation for its eventuality.33 For those already afflicted with grief they sought leader, I will even ‘forget evil,’ as you urge.” Cicero will apply his modified method at Ad fam. 4.13. Cicero’s modified version itself gained currency with subsequent consolers: Seneca employs it at Ad Poly. 1:18 and Jerome at Ep. 60.7.3; Charles Favez, La consolation latine chrétienne (Paris: J. Vrin, 1937), 106–26; Manning, On Seneca’s “Ad Marciam,” 47–48, 71– 72. 30 Like Epicurus, the Cyrenaics were philosophical hedonists, but Cyrenaic hedonism differed from Epicurean hedonism in at least two significant ways. First, whereas Epicurean theory focused on “katastematic pleasure,” that is, pleasure as a state of being (Diog. Laert. 10.136 = frag. 1 Usener; 2.87 = frag. 450 Usener) the Cyrenaics understood both pleasure and pain to be types of motion, pleasure being a “smooth” motion (OHLDNLQKVLM) and pain being a “rough” one (WUD[HLDNLQKVLM; Diog. Laert. 2.86–87; cf. Athen., Deip. 12.546E; Cic., De fin. 2.6.18; Sext. Emp., Pyrrh. 1.215; Suid. 2.553.4). And second, whereas Epicurus held that pleasure and pain were contradictories, so that the absence of pain necessarily implied the presence of pleasure (Cic., De fin. 1.11.38), the Cyrenaics taught that pleasure and pain were mere contraries, there being a “middle state” (PHVK NDWDVWDVLM) between the two that is “neither pleasant nor painful” (D KGRQLDNDL? D SRQLD; Diog. Laert. 2.90; cf. 2.89). From this general theory of pleasure and pain the Cyrenaics derived their special theory of consolation, which stated that “grief is not caused by every misfortune, but by misfortune that is unexpected and unanticipated” (Cic., Tusc. 3.13.28). In other words, not all misfortunes produce the “rough” motion of grief, but only those that come about unexpectedly. See further Constantine Grollios, Ad Marciam: Tradition and Originality (Athens: Christou, 1956), 44–51; J. C. B. Gosling and C. C. W. Taylor, The Greeks on Pleasure (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982), 365– 86. 31 Cic., Tusc.3.52; Sen., Ad Helv. 5.3; Ep. 47.4; De prov. 4.6, 13; De clem. 1.7.3; Ps.-Plut., Ad Apoll. 112D; Chrys., Ep. ad Olymp. 15.1 Malingrey (cf. Malunowiczowna, “Les éléments stoïciens,” 39). 32 To be sure, such experiences are not pleasant, that is, they do not produce the smooth motion that is pleasure, but neither are they grievous in the proper sense of the term. Rather, they fall in the third “middle state” between pleasure and pain. 33 Kassel, Untersuchungen zur griechischen und römischen Konsolationsliteratur, 66; Horst-Theodor Johann, Trauer und Trost: Eine quellen- und strukturanalytische Untersuchung der philosophischen Trostschriften über den Tod (Studia et Testamonia Antiqua 5; Munich: Fink, 1968), 63–84; Rabbow, Seelenführung, 160–79. As a practical technique the

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to stop the pain, that is, to calm the violent motion caused by unexpected calamity, with the reminder that “nothing unexpected has happened.” We have already seen Cicero’s summary of this technique at Tusc. 3.31.76. He describes the method again at Tusc. 3.23.55, this time in the words of a Cyrenaic interlocutor: What need is there of arguments or of all the consolation that we so routinely offer when we want to lighten the grief of mourners? For in all but the most extreme circumstances we have ready to hand the words “Nothing should seem unexpected (nihil oportere inopinatum videri).”

Cyrenaic theory was obviously better suited to preventing grief than alleviating it.34 Nevertheless, the assumption that grief is due, at least in part, to the fact that it was unexpected is found in a broad range of consolatory texts.35 The fifth and final theory Cicero identifies is that of Cleanthes’s successor Chrysippus. Chrysippus agreed with Cleanthes that grief is traceable to false conventional judgments regarding the nature of evil, and that as such it has no place in the rational soul.36 However, he located the proximate or immediate cause of grief in the additional opinion (opinio) that, given a particular misfortune, grief is an obligatory response: “grief is an opinion about some present misfortune in which is contained the [further judgment] that it is right to feel grief.”37 Grief thus has its origin in a kind of praemediatio futuri mali extended well beyond Cyrenaic consolation theory. Diogenes of Sinope taught it (Diog. Laert. 6.63), as did Chrysippus (Cic., Tusc. 3.22.52), Panaetius (Plut., De coh. ir. 463D), Posidonius (Gal., De plac. 372.14), Carneades (Plut., De tran. an. 474E), Epictetus (Diss. 3.10.1ff.; Ench. 21), Seneca (Ad Helv. 5.3; De tran. an. 11.6); Plutarch (De tran. an. 465B); cf. Vir., Aen. 6.103–105. 34 Kassel, Untersuchungen zur griechischen und römischen Konsolationsliteratur, 66–67; cf. Epict., Diss. 3.24.115. 35 Ps.-Pl., Ax. 370A (cf. 364B); Ps.-Ovid, Cons. ad Liv. 397–400; Sen., Ad Marc. 9.2; Ep. 63.14, 107.5–9; De vit. beat. 8.6; De brev. vit. 9.4.; Ep. 107.5; cf. Ad Marc. 2.1–5.6; Ad Poly. 14.1–17.6; Plut., De vir. mor. 449E; De tran. an. 476A–D; Ps.-Plut., Ad Apoll. 112D; Marc. Aur., Med. 8.45; cf. Thomas Kurth, Senecas Trostschrift an Polybius. Dialogue 11: Ein Kommentar (Beiträge zur Altertumskunde 59; Stuttgart: Teubner, 1994), 26–34, 167–216. 36 Chrysippus treated the passions in his On the Passions in four books, the last of which was “therapeutic” (this book was known to Galen variously as WR? 4HULSHXWLNRQ or WR? +TLNRQ). The fragments of the 3HUL? SDTZaQ, most of which are from books 4 and 5 of De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, are collected by von Arnim at SVF 3.456–490; cf. Phillip De Lacy, Galen. On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato. Third Part: Commentary and Indexes (Corpus Medicorum Graecorum V 4,1,2; Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1984) Index s.v. THUDSHXWLNRMKTLNRM. 37 Tusc. 3. 31.74; cf. 3.11.25; 4.7.14; Stob., Ecl. 2.90.14–16; SVF 3.391 (= Ps.-Andron., De pass. 1). See further Brad Inwood, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 148–51; Adolf F. Bonhöffer, Epictet und die Stoa: Untersuchungen zur stoischen Philosophie (Stuttgart: Enke, 1890), 281–82.

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double misjudgment: 1) that a misfortune has indeed occurred, and 2) that grief is the appropriate response. Only when one holds the second opinion as well as the first does grief occur:38 But when, to the opinion that some great evil has occurred, the further opinion is added that it is appropriate, that it is right, that it is a matter of duty to be distressed at what has happened, then, and only then, does the passion of deep distress occur.

In as much as Seneca accepted the Stoic doctrine that women are by nature as capable as men of virtue, including the virtue of bravely facing loss, he is forced to account for the fact, as he and most of his contemporaries saw it, that women are more prone to excessive grief than men by the thesis that they have been habituated to this weakness by false opinio. We will return to this diagnosis of women’s grief in our discussion of the Ad Marciam in the second part of this essay. In addition to these more technical philosophical strategies for consolation, it is possible to identify a number of popular consolatory arguments and techniques. These grew up independently of specialized philosophical reflection and were used by philosophers and non-philosophers alike, though they too, of course, continued to emphasize reason over emotion. Some of the more common of these arguments were: (1) time heals all grief; (2) grief is unhealthy; (3) grief accomplishes nothing; and (4) others have suffered similar things. Three popular arguments specific to death were: (5) grief does not benefit the dead; (6) the dead do not want the living to grieve, and (7) death is gain.39 A popular consolatory technique particularly prominent in treating the grief of women was the semi-Epicurean consolation of employing some sort of substitute to take the place of a lost or absent loved one.40 Ideally, this substitute would be a person, typically a child or grandchild, but sometimes another close friend or relative could be used. A famous example of this is Dido’s attempt to console herself after the departure of Aeneas:41 38

Tusc. 3.26.61; cf. 3.11.25, 3.27.64; cf. Posidonius’s criticism at Gal., De plac. 370.7. Representative texts may be found in Mary Evaristas, The Consolations of Death in Ancient Greek Literature (Washington: Catholic University Press, 1917), and Mary E. Fern, The Latin Consolatio Mortis as a Literary Type (Saint Louis: Saint Louis University, 1941). 40 The topos could also be employed in the consolation of men: Eur., Alc. 328–329; Sen., Ep. 62:11–12; Stat., Silv. 2.6.103–104 (cf. John 14:16; 16:7; NB. Friedrich Vollmer, P. Papinii Statii Silvarum Libri [Leipzig: Teubner, 1898] 372: “Die Vorstellung, dass der Tote selbt einen Ersatz für sich auf die Erde sendet, kann ich, abgesehen vom christlichen 3D UDNOKWRM, sonst nicht belegen. Der Knabe, den Philetos sendet, wird von ihm selbst ihm gleichgemacht werden”!). I have argued elsewhere that Paul exploits this topos when he offers Timothy to the Philippians as a substitute for himself at Phil 2:19–22 (Paul A. Holloway, “Alius Paulus: Paul’s Promise to Send Timothy at Philippians 2.19–24,” NTS 54 [2008]: 542– 56). 41 Vir., Aen. 4.327–330. 39

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If only I had conceived a child of yours before your flight; if only there were a little Aeneas (parvulus Aeneas) to play here in my halls, who might bring you back to me in the features of his face (qui te tamen ore referret) – then I would not feel so entirely vanquished and abandoned.

The early Greek novelist Chariton has his heroine Callirhoë console herself with a similar thought after the supposed death of Chaereas: “Nevertheless you have given to me [in this child] an image of a most beloved man, so that I am not completely bereft of my Chaereas.”42 Tacitus exploits the topos at Ann. 12.68, where after the death of Germanicus he has Agrippina, “as if overcome by grief and seeking consolation (solacia),” wrap Britannicus in her arms and call him “a true portrait of his father” (veram paterni oris effigiem).”43 In early Christian literature the strategy is deployed by Jerome in his letter of consolation (Ep. 79.7) to the recently widowed Salvina: You have, therefore, Salvina, those whom you nurse, in whom you can imagine yourself to hold your absent husband. . . . Indeed, you have in the place of one man gained two sons, increased in number by love.

Basil similarly deploys the strategy in Ep. 302 when he urges Briso’s widow to embrace her children as “living images” of their father. Sometimes it was not possible to find a person to take the place of an absent loved one. In such cases a portrait or some other realistic image could be used. Apuleius at Met. 8.7 tells how Charite in her search for consolation (solacium) commissioned numerous imagines of Tlepolemus after his death. Similarly, Statius tells how Polla Argentaria slept beneath a portrait of her dead husband the poet Lucan.44 The practice received canonical form in the often repeated legend of Laodamia, the wife of Protesilaus, the first Greek killed at Troy,45 who was said to have commissioned a statue of

42 Chaer. 3.8.7; spoken to Dionysius, Callirhoë’s husband, who thinks that the child is his, while Callirhoë knows that it is Chaereas’s. 43 Cf. Tac., Agr. 46.4. 44 Silv. 2.7. Libanios reports at Ep. 143.1–2 that he studied the writings of Aristides beneath a portrait of a sophist and that he often found himself speaking to the portrait. Similarly, Libanios’s student John Chrysostom was said to have kept in his cubiculum a portrait of Paul, beneath which he also studied and to which he often spoke (Geo. Al. v. Chrys. 27 [147.1–6 Halkin]; cf. Leo VI Phil. Or. 18.15 [PG 107.256D–257D]; Sym. Metaphr. v. Chrys. 23 [PG 114.1104B–1108B]). This scene is represented in two beautiful polychrome manuscript illuminations at Vatican Cod. gr. 766, fol. 2v, and Athen. 7, fol. 2, for which see, Paul A. Holloway, “Portrait and Presence: A Note on the Visio Procli (George of Alexandria, Vita Chrysostomi 27),” ByzZ 100.1 (2007): 71–83, figures 2 and 3. According to legend, Paul would visit Chysostom at night and explain his letters to him. 45 Il. 2.698–702.

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her dead spouse that she kept in her bedroom.46 According to version of the legend known to Ps.-Apollodorus, the statue was extremely realistic and Laodamia consorted with it regularly.47 According to Hyginus, Laodamia’s devotion to the statue became so extreme that her father had the image burned, at which point Laodamia killed herself.48 Ovid presses the conceit even further and claims that Laodamia had a realistic portrait of Protesilaus crafted immediately after his departure for Troy, as her letter to him at Aulis reports:49 While you, a soldier, are bearing arms in a far-off land, I keep for myself an image in wax that brings back your face. I say to it sweet words which I would otherwise say to you; it receives my embraces. Believe me, that image is more than it seems: give the wax a voice, and it would be Protesilaus! I gaze upon it and press it to my breast in place of my true husband.

Cornelia Galla describes her husband’s funerary monument in similar terms:50 Here lies Varius Frontonianus, interred by his dear wife, Cornelia Galla. In order to restore to life the sweet consolations of the past (dulcia restituens veteris solacia vitae), she placed this face in marble, so that her eyes and soul could yet sate themselves with the sight of his dear features.

B. Seneca’s Ad Marciam and Ad Helviam matrem I. The Ad Marciam The Ad Marciam is generally reckoned to be Seneca’s earliest extant writing (ca. 40 C. E.).51 It was for his friend Marcia, the daughter of the Stoic historian Cremutius Cordus, regarding the death of her son Metelius, 46 Euripides also wrote a tragedy about Laodamia; TGF frags. 645–657 (Nauck); see comments in A. M. Dale, Euripides’ Alcestis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), 79; cf. Carlo Franco, “Una statua per Admeto (a proposito di Eur. Alc. 348–54),” Materiali e Discussioni per l’Analisi dei Testi Classici 13 (1984): 131–36. 47 Ps.-Apollod. Epitom. 3.30. On sexual relations with statues, see Maurizio Bettini, The Portrait of the Lover (Berkeley: University of California, 1999), 59–74. 48 Fab. 104. 49 Her. 13.151–158. The Laodamia legend also appears on the side panel a late antique sarcophagus now in the Vatican, which shows Laodamia asleep in her bed with festooned portrait of Portesilaus on the wall over her head. C. Robert, Die antiken Sarkophag-Reliefs (3/3; Rome: Bretschneider, 1969), plate 423; reproduced in Bettini, Portrait, 139 with discussion; cf. B. Andreae, Studien zur römischen Grabkunst (Heidelberg: Kerle, 1963), 39–41. 50 CIL 8.434 (cited by Bettini, Portrait, 28). 51 Manning, On Seneca’s “Ad Marciam,” 1–4; for an even earlier possible dating to the end of the reign of Tiberius, see Jane Bellemore, “The Dating of Seneca’s Ad Marciam de consolatione,” CQ 42 (1992): 219–34.

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whom Marcia has been mourning going on three years (1.7). Seneca’s conversational style makes all of his so-called dialogi challenging to outline, but the Ad Marciam has proven more challenging than most. Even so there are a few basic clues within the text to help the reader discern a general plan.52 The first occurs at 2:1, immediately after the exordium of ch. 1. We read: “those who wish to admonish someone typically begin with praecepta and end with exempla.” In Marcia’s case, however, Seneca proposes to reverse this, beginning with exempla and then proceeding to praecepta. This indicates the basic structure of the treatise: exordium in ch. 1, exempla in chs. 2–6, praecepta in chs. 7–25, and peroratio in ch. 26. A further division in the work is indicated in 12.1 when Seneca asks: “Now your grief . . . is it due to your own afflictions or those of the departed?” This is a standard division of consolatory topoi,53 and upon reading further we can see that it anticipates a collection of praecepta (and additional exempla illustrating these) pertaining to Marcia’s own situation in chs. 12– 19.3, followed by a collection of praecepta pertaining to the dead Metelius in 19.3–ch. 25.54 This leaves the praecepta in chs. 7–11 to be accounted for, but Seneca probably intended these to be a collection of very general consolatory precepts offered in advance of the more specifically targeted precepts in chs. 12–25.55 This leaves following outline of the Ad Marciam: exordium (ch. 1), exempla (chs. 2–6), general praecepta (chs. 7–11), praecepta pertaining to Marcia’s own situation (chs. 12–19.2), praecepta pertaining to Metelius in death (ch. 19.3–ch. 25), and peroratio (26).56 The rather thin egalitarianism of Stoic virtue theory is well known: women, so the theory goes, possess in principle the same capacity for virtue as men, though in point of fact, due to bad habit and the inculcation of false opinion, they are almost universally given to vice. 57 Seneca applies 52

Manning On Seneca’s “Ad Marciam,” 8–11. E.g., Ps. Plut., Ad Apoll. 111E. 54 Ad Marc. 19.3: Scio quid dicas: “Non movent me detrimenta mea; etenim non est dignus solacio, qui filium sibi decessisse sicut mancipium moleste fert, cui quicquam in filio respicere praeter ipsum vacat.” 55 For a similar division of consolatory topics between general and specific, see Cic., Tusc. 4.27.59 (cited by Manning, On Seneca’s “Ad Marciam,” 9). 56 Manning, On Seneca’s “Ad Marciam,” 9. 57 For Stoic egalitarianism, see: W. Klassen, “Musonius Rufus, Jesus and Paul: Three First-Century Feminists,” in From Jesus to Paul: Studies in Honour of Francis Wright Beare (ed. P. Richardson and J. Hurd; Waterloo, CA: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1984), 185– 204; Malcolm Schofield, The Stoic Ideal of the City (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 43; Martha Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 322–24; Elizabeth Asmis, “The Stoics on Women,” in Feminism and Ancient Philosophy (ed. Julie Ward; London: Routledge, 1996), 68–94. Scholars less confident of Stoic gender egalitarianism include: C. E. Manning, “Seneca and the Stoics on the Equality of the Sexes,” Mnemosyne 26 (1973): 170–77; David 53

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this theory rather generously to Marcia in the first lines of his exordium. “If I did not know,” he writes, “that you, Marcia, were as far removed from womanish weakness of mind (ab infirmitate muliebris animi) as from all other vices . . . I should not dare to assail your grief.” Marcia is able to hear his consolation because she is not a typical woman. Indeed, as he goes on to say, she possesses a “strength of mind and virtue” characteristic of the strongest man.58 To put it bluntly, Seneca is able to console Marcia because she is in heart not a woman but a man, and a manly man at that!59 He says this despite the fact that Marcia is in her third year of mourning. Having identified Marcia’s manly qualities, Seneca immediately proclaims that he is free to offer her traditional philosophical consolation, which is to say, rational arguments fit for a rational mind: “Let others treat you like a woman (molliter) . . . I will battle (confligere) with your grief” (1.5). But no sooner does he set forth this alleged agenda than he makes immediate concession to her sex in chs. 2–6, first in not beginning directly with praecepta but with exempla: mutari hunc interim morem expedit (2.1), and then in offering examples not of men but of two women: duo tibi ponam ante oculos maxima et sexus et saeculi tui exempla (2.2). The first example is that of Octavia, the sister of Augustus, whose promising son Marcellus died in 23 B. C. E. According to Seneca, she is an example of what not to do, since she spent the remainder of her life in mourning.60 She refused even the most accessible form of consolation, the Epicurean avocatio: ne avocari quidem se passa est (2.4). Indeed, whereas virtually all other women who lose children console themselves with portraits of those children, Octavia permitted no portraits of Marcellus to be displayed: nullam habere imaginem filii carissimi voluit (2.4). Neither did she find comfort, as other women also often do, in her surviving children or grandchildren: adsidentibus liberis, nepotibus lugubrem vestem non deposuit (2.4). The second example, however, is one which Marcia should follow. It is that of Livia, the wife of Augustus, who lost her son Drusus in Germany in 9 B. C. E. Livia mourned for Drusus an appropriate amount of time and then stopped. Unlike Octavia, she took great comfort in Drusus’s memory and therefore had his picture displayed everywhere: ubique illum sibi privatim publiceque repraesentare (3.2). Most importantly, she listened to the phiM. Engel, “Women’s Role in the Home and the State: Stoic Theory Reconsidered,” HSCP 101 (2003): 267–88. 58 Ad Marc. 1.1; cf. 1.5: Haec magnitudo animi tui vetuit me ad sexum tuum respicere. 59 The manly woman is a topos much discussed in recent studies of ancient gender ideologies. See here especially, David Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 182–212, with bibliography. 60 Cf. Ad Helv. 16.2; on Seneca’s use of negative examples, see De ira 3.16.3–25; cf. Ep. 63.14, where he offers himself as an example not to be followed!

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losopher Areus, the friend of her husband, who: (1) offered her a variety of technical consolatory arguments,61 and (2) then as a practical measure directed her find comfort in her surviving son and in her grandchildren by Drusus.62 Seneca urges Marcia to listen to his (Seneca’s) consolation as though he were her Areus (6.1). At this point Seneca moves from exempla to a series of general praecepta (chs. 7–11). That he has selected these specifically for Marcia is clear from the way he prefaces them in 7:3–4. The somewhat argument is technical, but it is worth quoting at length: That you may know that it is not by the will of nature that we are crushed by sorrow, observe, first, that though they suffer the same bereavement, women are wounded more deeply than men, savage people more deeply than the peaceful and civilized, the uneducated more deeply than the educated. But the sufferings that derive their force from nature have the same effect on all, so that sufferings that vary from person to person are not natural. So for example fire will burn all people alike. . . . Similarly, iron will exhibit its cutting force on all flesh equally. . . . But poverty, bereavement, and so on63 are experienced differently by different people as they have been shaped by habit (consuetudo) and false opinion (opinio).

Seneca finds it helpful to recover at this point his more strict Stoic sensibilities, arguing that by nature women have the same capacity for reason and virtue as men, but that it is only by bad habit (consuetudo) and false opinion (opinio) that they fall short. Not surprisingly, the general praecepta he deploys in chs. 7–11 to remedy Marica’s grief build on Chrysippus’s Stoic theory that grief is a false opinio: sed plus est quod opinio adicit quam quod natura imperavit (7.1) Even so he does not insist, as a Stoic might, that grief is always irrational and must be thoroughly suppressed. Instead, he follows the more gentle theory of the Peripatetics and allows that grief is an appropriate response to death, provided it is moderate (chs. 7–8).64 He also gently reprimands Marcia for not having cultivated the habit, prescribed by the Cyrenaics, of anticipating grief and loss (chs. 9– 11).65 61 In this way Seneca subtly begins to introduce philosophical praecepta into his consolation while still recounting the exemplum of Livia: an Epicurean argument at 5.3–4, a Cyrenaic argument at 5.5–6. 62 Ad Marc. 5.6: ostendit illi filium incolumem, ostendit ex amisso nepotes. 63 The text which reads ambitionem is obviously corrupt at this point. 64 7.1: At enim [dicas] naturale desiderium suorum est. Quis negat, quam diu modicum est? In addition in Cic., Tusc. 3.31.76 cited above, the Peripatetic view of grief is described at Tusc. 3.10.22 and 4.17.38: Peripateticorum ratio et oratio qui perturbari animos necesse dicunt esse, sed adhibent modum quendam quem ultra progredi non oporteat. See the general discussion in C. E. Manning, “The Consolatory Tradition and Seneca’s Attitude to the Emotions,” G&R 21 (1974): 71–81. 65 Marcia’s need as a woman to remain vigilant against habit and false opinion is reiterated at 11.1: Moderandum est itaque vobis maxime, quae immoderate fertis.

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The final division of the letter comes at 12.1: Dolor tuus . . . utrum sua spectat imcommoda an eius qui decessit? Seneca will console Marcia from the perspective of her own loss until 19.3, after which he consoles her regarding the misfortune that has befallen Metelius. The praecepta adduced here are not tightly organized by theme, but Seneca’s basic strategy will again stop short of a rigorous Stoicism. Rather, following this time the milder technique of the Epicureans, he urges Marcia to distract herself with fond memories from Metelius’s youth (12.2).66 He also deploys the topos, common in the consolation of women,67 that Marcia seek a substitute for Metelius in the latter’s children: habes ex illo duas filias . . . has nunc Metilii tui filias in eius vicem substitue et vacantem locum expel et unum dolorem geminato solacio leva!68 And in her own two surviving daughters: respice tot nepotes, duas filias (16.8). At 16.1 he reiterates his Stoic principle that women are just as equipped for virtue by nature as men, provided they have cultivated the right habits: Now who says that nature has dealt grudgingly with women’s natures and has narrowly restricted their virtues? Believe me, they have just as much ability, just as much capacity, if they like, for virtuous action as men; they are just as able to endure suffering and hardship, provided they have become habituated (si consuevere) to them.

He supports this with examples of four women: Lucretia, Cloelia, Cornelia the mother of the Gracchi, and Cornelia the wife of M. Livius Drusus (cos. 112 B. C. E.) whose son was mysteriously murdered in his home (16.2–4). At 19.3 Seneca turns to Metelius’s own misfortune as a possible basis for Marcia’s grief: Scio quid dicas: non movent me detrimenta mea: etenim non est dignus solacio qui filium sibi decessisse sicut mancipium moleste fert, cui quicquam in filio respicere praeter ipsum vacat. He divides this section into two parts: utrum quod filius tuus decessit an quod non diu vixit (19.4). As we might expect, the fact that Marcia is a woman does little to affect Seneca’s consolation here, since strictly speaking he is now focused on Metelius own fate. He simply repeats at length the common topoi on the fate of the departed (either they cease to exist or they are in bliss; cf. Pl., Ap. 40C), and on the much discussed problem of premature death (e.g., life

66 That the pleasant things in life generally outweigh the good is further suggested by the catalogue of pluses and minuses for a trip to Syracuse (17.2–6) and for life itself (18.1–8). The Epicurean topos is explicitly repeated at 19.1 under the rubric not of self-distraction but self-deception: In nostra potestate remedium habemus. Iudicemus illos abesse et nosmet ipse fallamus, dimisimus illos, immo consecuturi praemisimus. Seneca equates the Epicurean avocatio with self-deception elsewhere at Ad Helv. 17.2. 67 In addition to my discussion of it above in the first part of this paper, recall that Seneca noted this topos already in the exempla of Octavia and Livia in chs. 2–6. 68 Jerome will employ precisely this conceit at Ep. 79.9.

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is not measured by length but quality; death delivers the young from lives many temptations and pains, etc.).69 The peroratio of ch. 26 takes the form of a moving SURVZSRSRLLD of Marcia’s father Cremutius Cordus (ch. 26). This is an elegant conclusion since it recalls the description of Cremutius’s fate in the exordium of ch. 1. II. The Ad Helviam matrem Let me turn now to the Ad Helviam matrem, Seneca’s letter of consolation to his mother Helvia written on the occasion of his exile.70 Seneca was relegated to the island of Corsica in 41 C. E. on the charge of adultery with Caligula’s sister Julia Livilla.71 Since in 1.1–3 he apologizes for not writing immediately, his letter may be tentatively dated to 42. Unlike the Ad Marciam, the Ad Helviam is clearly structured and may be analyzed as a straightforward piece of Latin deliberative rhetoric, consisting (1) of a longish exordium (chs. 1–3), (2) a propositio or thesis statement in two parts, treating first Seneca’s own situation in Corsica and then his mother’s situation in Rome (4.1),72 (3) a well-developed probatio, also in two parts or headings corresponding to the two parts of the thesis statement (4.2–ch. 19), and (4) a brief peroratio (ch. 20).73 I will comment on these in order. The exordium is taken up for the most part with the traditional topos of whether or not to write.74 Unlike the Ad Marciam, in which he begins by making repeated reference to Marcia’s sex, Seneca makes only passing 69 For the problems posed by mors immatura, see Kassel, Untersuchungen, 82–84; A.-M. Vérilhac, 3DLGHMDZURL. Poésie funébaire (2 vols.; Athens: Academy Press, 1978, 1982). 70 For text and translation, I have been guided by C. D. N. Costa, Seneca: Four Dialogues (Warminster, England: Aris and Phillips, 1994). 71 Dio 60.8; cf. Tac., Ann. 12.8.3. He was not recalled until 49 at the urging of Agrippina. Contra Arther Ferrill (“Seneca’s Exile and the Ad Helviam: A Reinterpretation,” CP 61 [1966]: 253–57), the Ad Helviam does not smack of the insincerity of the Ad Polybium, written several years later to try to effect the author’s recall from exile; it is rather a sincere attempt to console his mother; cf. Janine Fillion-Lahille, “La production littéraire de Sénèque sous les règnes de Caligula et de Claud, sens philosophique et porté politique: Les Consolations et le De ira,” ANRW 2.36.3 (1989): 1606–38. 72 Because the propositio of 4.1 is complex (i.e., in two parts), some ancient critics would have called it a partitio (cf. Quint., Inst. 4.4.7). It not only states the thesis to be argued, but effectively outlines the division of the letter. 73 Peter Meinel, Seneca über seine Verbannung. Trostschrift an die Mutter Helvia (Bonn: Habelt, 1972), 30–36; Karlhans Abel, Bauformen in Senecas Dialogen. Fünf Strukturanalysen: dial. 6, 11, 12, 1 und 2 (Bibliothek der klassischen Altertumswissenschaften n.F., 2. Reihe, Bd. 18; Heidelberg: Winter, 1967), 58; Charles Favez, L. Annaei Senecae Dialogorum liber XII Ad Helviam matrem de consolatione, texte latin publié avec une introduction et un commentaire explicatif (Lausanne and Paris: Payot, 1918), xlii–iii, 10. 74 For this topos in its various forms, see Heinrich Lausberg, Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik (2 vols.; Munich: Max Hueber, 1960), paragraphs 776–78.

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reference to his mother’s sex: Lamentationes quidem et eiulatus et alia per quae muliebris dolor tumultuatur amove (3.2). Even more unlike the Ad Marciam, Seneca promises a much more rigorous Stoic approach to his mother’s grief, eschewing in particular the Epicurean technique of distraction (caricatured as “deception”): Ecquid videor non timide tecum egisse? . . . constitui enim vincere dolorem tuum, non circumscribere (4.1).75 Turning to the propositio or thesis statement in 4.1,76 Seneca proposes that he will be able to alleviate his mother’s grief if he approaches her predicament from two directions. He writes: And conquer your grief I shall, if first of all I show that I am suffering nothing for which I could be called miserable, let along make my relations miserable; then if I turn to you and show that your fortune, which depends so much on my own, is also not grievous.

Seneca’s strategy is commonsensical: his mother is grieved by his exile and so he takes as his primary objective to prove to her that his exile is not an occasion for grief, either for himself or for her.77 An additional concern is that his exile might be creating hardships for his mother back in Rome, and so he adds as a second objective to show that his mother’s own situation has not been rendered particularly difficult by his exile. He will address these concerns in order in the probatio in 4.2–19.7. The probatio (4.2–19.7) is in two parts or headings corresponding to the two elements of the thesis statement. The first heading is in 4.2–13.8. Seneca begins by restating more fully, and with considerably more bravado,78 the first element of his propositio, namely, that his mother has no reason to be grieved for his sake since nothing bad has happened to him, and he is himself not grieved by his present circumstances:79 First, then, I shall proceed to prove what your love is eager to hear: namely, that nothing bad has happened to me (nihil mihi mali esse). . . . I am happy (beatus) in circumstances that usually make others miserable. . . . [Indeed] it is not even possible to make me unhappy (ne fieri quidem me posse miserum)! 75 Cf. 17.1–2: Ludis interim aut gladiatoribus animus occupamus; at illum inter ipsa, quibus avocatur, spectacula levis aliqua desiderii nota subruit. Ideo melius est vincere illum quam fallere; nam qui delusus et voluptatibus aut occupationibus abductus est, resurgit et ipsa quiete impetum ad saeviendum conligit. 76 Abel, Bauformen in Senecas Dialogen, 48, following Quintilian 4.4.1ff., calls Ad Helv. 4.1 a partitio and 4.2 (the beginning of the first proof) a propositio, a second propositio (or in this case transitio) coming at 14.1 (the beginning of the second proof). 77 This division is similar to the division discussed above between Marcia’s own situation and Metelius’s at Ad Marc. 12.1. 78 Further showing off for his mother (e.g., “it is not even possible to make me unhappy!”). 79 4.2–3. Abel, Bauformen in Senecas Dialogen, 54: “Er is nicht nur ihr consolator, sondern ihr solacium”; cf. Ad Helv. 1.4. Seneca urges the same strategy at Ad Poly. 5.5: et solacium debes esse illorum et consolator.

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He supports this claim with two arguments. The first argument outlines his response to misfortune in general (5.1–6), while the second is more to the point, treating the specific misfortune of exile (6.1–13.8). With regard to misfortune in general Seneca reports that he has protected himself against grief by two means. His first line of defense is the Stoic distinction between the things that do and do not matter: leve momentum in adventiciis rebus est et quod in neutram partem magnas vires habeat: nec secunda sapientem evehunt nec adversademittunt. 80 The reason for this, he goes on to explain, is that the wise man endeavors always “to rely entirely upon himself and to derive from himself all of his joy.”81 Seneca, of course, cannot lay claim to having actually become a Stoic sage, so while retaining the Stoic position as his ideal, he flees to “another camp” (aliena castra), that of the Cyrenaics, where he finds a second more realistic defense against grief in their practice of the praemeditatio futuri mali: illis gravis [fortuna] est quibus repentina est; facile eam sustinet qui semper expectat (5.3).82 Seneca assures his mother that, because he has been careful to distinguish between the things that do and do not matter, and because in addition he has always kept himself prepared for reversals of Fortune, his present trials have not been inordinately hard to bear.83 This leads to his second and more specific argument regarding exile, which in good Stoic fashion he will insist is a matter of indifference (6.1– 13.8). To be sure, common opinion judges exile to be one of the most extreme forms of hardship imaginable, involving loss of homeland (patria), enforced poverty (paupertas), and personal disgrace and scorn (ignominia et contemptus). Seneca goes to great length to refute this judgment.84 He treats in order each of its alleged evils: (1) the loss of homeland (6.2–9.8), (2) the imposition of poverty (10.1–12.7), and (3) the experience of disgrace and scorn (13.1–8).85 He concludes that whether viewed separately or taken together these alleged evils are all matters of indifference. All that matters for the happiness of a wise man is “his own virtue” (propria virtus) and his access to the goods of “nature broadly conceived” (natura communis). Since neither of these is taken away in exile, exile is by definition a matter of indifference to the wise man. At several points Seneca remarks 80

5.1; Meinel, Seneca über seine Verbannung, 22–25, 58. 5.1; cf. 13.4; De const. 5.4. 82 Seneca takes a similar two-fold approach in chs. 16–19, first spelling out the ideal remedy in 16–17, and then the more realistic one in 18–19; e.g., 18:1: sed quia, dum in illum portum quem tibi studia promittunt pervenis, adminiculis quibus innitaris opus est. 83 Meinel, Seneca über seine Verbannung, 61. On surprise, see Ad Marc. 9.1–2 (cf. C. E. Manning, On Seneca’s “Ad Marciam,” 59–70; Grollios, Seneca’s Ad Maricam, 44–51). 84 Meinel, Seneca über seine Verbannung, 73–75. 85 Meinel, Seneca über seine Verbannung, 75; cf. De const. 8.3; Thyest. 923–925. 81

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that for those such as himself still making progress in virtue, exile and its hardships can actually work for good, as when, for instance, poverty removes the distractions of riches.86 The second heading of the probatio is in 14.1–19.7. Here Seneca takes up the second element in the thesis statement of 4.1: namely, that nothing bad has happened to his mother either: quoniam meo nomine nihil habes, mater carissima, quod te in infinitas lacrimas agat, sequitur ut causae tuae te stimulent (14.1).87 Seneca will attempt to maintain his essentially Stoic approach to consolation, even as he turns to his mother. But since his concern at this point is not to establish his own equanimity but the consolation of his mother per se, he must by necessity take into account her sex, even while attempting to maintain the Stoic line. Seneca can imagine two possible sources of grief for his mother: (1) that with his exile she feels that she has “lost some protection,” and (2) that she deeply misses her him. He dismisses the first out of hand as unworthy of his mother, who has never fretted inordinately for herself (14.2– 3). He therefore focuses his consolation exclusively on the second possible source for grief, the fact that his mother misses him: Illo omnis consolatio mihi vertenda est unde vera vis materni doloris oritur: “ergo complexu fili carissimi careo; non conspectus eius, non sermone possum frui” (15.1). Seneca’s efforts to comfort his mother in 15.1–19.7 may be divided into two pieces of consolation (chs. 16–17 and 18–19), prefaced by brief words of sympathy (ch. 15).88 In the first of these (chs. 16–17), Seneca insists that his mother make no compromises with her grief but soundly defeat it: sentire desiderium et opprimere. She can do this, he is confident, because she has to date shunned all characteristically female faults, which he lists at length: unchastity, the desire for jewels, greed, abortions designed to preserve her girlish figure, the use of makeup, and wearing lewd and revealing garments. Free from such stereotypical womanly vices, she should now also be free from womanly grief: tantum debes a feminarum lacrimis abesse quantum a vitiis (16.5).89

86 E.g., 9.2: et hoc cogitandum est, ista veris bonis per falsa et prave credita obstare; and 10.3: ista si quis despicit, quid illi paupertas nocet? si quis concupiscit, illi paupertas etiam prodest! 87 Abel, Bauformen in Senecas Dialogen, 48. 88 As we have already noted, ancient consolers were anxious to distinguish between sympathy and consolation. Even so, initial words of sympathy were common. 89 He underscores this important claim with two exempla: that of Cornelia the mother of the Gracchi, and Rutilia the mother of Cotta who bravely followed her son into exile (16.6– 7). Surely Seneca is not suggesting with the latter example that his mother do the same, and yet he concludes: et usque eo fuit indulgentia constricta ut mallet exilium pati quam desiderium!

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There are, however, two hindrances to Helvia’s full consolation. The first is the practice common among grieving women to distract themselves along Epicurean lines with travels and various entertainments. Seneca likens this to self-deception, and urges Helvia to reject it as offering at best a partial and temporary cure.90 The second hindrance is more substantial: it is that Seneca’s father, despite his son’s obvious interest in philosophy, never allowed Helvia to engage in philosophical studies (liberalia studia) herself. This “traditionalism” has unquestionably harmed Helvia, for had she been allowed to study philosophy along with her son, she would now be a position to calm her grief completely as he has done. All is not lost, however. Given her quickness of mind, and the fact that she has already learned a few principles from Seneca himself, she can still achieve a level of philosophical insight that will allow her to overcome her grief. But this will take time, and so Seneca advises that his mother undertake such studies immediately. This brings us to the second piece of consolation that Seneca offers his mother. Since she cannot immediately console herself with the doctrines of the philosophers – something Seneca has earlier assured her that he himself has done91 – she must find some temporary measure to heal her grief while she undertakes her studies: sed quia, dum in illum portum quem tibi studia promittunt pervenis, adminiculis quibus innitaris opus est (18.1). At this point, despite all his bluster, Seneca’s realism92 forces him to fall back on a stock consolation of women: Helvia is to find a replacement for him in her other sons (18.1–3), her grandchildren (1.4–8), and especially in her sister, who not only was a kind of second mother to Seneca during a former protracted illness, but who, despite the fact that she too is a woman, has bravely suffered loss herself and therefore offers Helvia a noble example to follow (19.1–7).93 Seneca concludes his letter of consolation to his mother with a very short peroratio (20.1–2), in which he reiterates his initial Stoic arguments that nothing bad has happened to him, that he is “happy and cheerful as in the best of circumstances,” and that in fact he is actually being benefited by his hardships.

90 I discuss this and related texts at some length in “‘Deceive your soul’ (Sir XIV:16; XXX:23): An Epicurean Theme in Ben Sira,” VT 58 (2008): 1–16. 91 Recall chapters 5–14, esp. 5. 92 “Realism” calculated from the perspective of his own social prejudices. 93 Cf. Ad Marc. 16.8.

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C. Conclusion As a matter of principle Seneca tailored his arguments to what he understood to be the specific needs and circumstances of his readers. In the Ad Marciam and the Ad Helviam matrem this included the fact that his readers were women. Here we see in action the Stoic thesis that women share with men an equal potential for virtue. In both of these works Seneca distinguishes between nature and culture, repeatedly affirming that by nature women are equal to men in their capacity for virtue, but holding firm also to his conviction that because women have been formed by bad habits and false opinions they are in fact much more susceptible than men to vice, including the passion of grief. He constructs his consolation of Marcia and his mother accordingly. At several points in each work he reminds his reader that by nature she is equal to a man in virtue, and he can even venture the claim that she is free of bad habits and false opinions that to his mind typically corrupt women, though one senses, at least in the case of Marcia, that this is hyperbole. Despite his best efforts Seneca powerfully attests to elite Roman gender prejudice. But when it comes to actual advice, Seneca treats his reader’s natural potential as a distant ideal. In the case of Marcia, he is never quite able to bring himself to console her along Stoic lines. He argues instead for the Peripatetic ideal of moderate grieving, and he recommends without qualification the Epicurean tactic of distracting oneself from grief with competing pleasures and positive thoughts. He also recommends that Marcia invest herself in her grandchildren. In the case of his mother, he is a bit more stringent, praising the Stoic ideal and eschewing in particular the Epicurean tactic of distraction, which he likens to a reprehensible and ineffective self-deception. But even here he must admit that she is not actually capable of finding consolation along Stoic lines – though he claims himself to practice Stoic consolation, however imperfectly. Instead she must rely on a more immediate and characteristically womanly consolation, namely, seeking a replacement for him in her children, grandchildren, and her sister. It is to his credit, however, that Seneca criticizes his father for not allowing his mother to pursue “liberal” studies, and that he himself recommends that she take these up immediately. Typically unsparing in his criticism of women in general, at least this once Seneca lays the blame for their perceived shortcomings on the traditionalism of a Roman man.

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Works Cited Abel, Karlhans. Bauformen in Senecas Dialogen. Fünf Strukturanalysen: dial. 6, 11, 12, 1 und 2. Bibliothek der klassischen Altertumswissenschaften n.F. 2d Series 18. Heidelberg: Winter, 1967. Andreae, B. Studien zur römischen Grabkunst. Heidelberg: Kerle, 1963. Asmis, Elizabeth. “The Stoics on Women.” Pages 68–94 in Feminism and Ancient Philosophy. Edited by Julie Ward. London: Routledge, 1996. Atkinson, J. E. “Seneca’s ‘Consolatio ad Polybium’.” ANRW 32.2:860–84. Part 2, Principat, 32.2. Edited by H. Temporini and W. Haase. New York: de Gruyter, 1985. Bellemore, Jane. “The Dating of Seneca’s Ad Marciam de consolatione.” Classical Quarterly 42 (1992): 219–34. Bettini, Maurizio. The Portrait of the Lover. Berkeley: University of California, 1999. Bonhöffer, Adolf F. Epictet und die Stoa: Untersuchungen zur stoischen Philosophie. Stuttgart: Enke, 1890. Brakke, David. Demons and the Making of the Monk. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006. Buresch, Carl. “Consolationum a Graecis Romanisque scriptarum historia critica.” Leipziger Studien zur classischen Philologie 9 (1886): 1–170. Costa, C. N. D. Seneca: Four Dialogues. Warminster, England: Aris and Phillips, 1994. Dale, A. M. Euripides’ Alcestis. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954. De Lacy, Phillip. Galen. On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato. Third Part: Commentary and Indexes. Corpus Medicorum Graecorum V 4,1,2. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1984. Dillon, John M. The Middle Platonists: A Study in Platonism, 80 B.C. to A.D. 220. London: Duckworth, 1977. –. “Metriopatheia and Apatheia: Some Reflections on a Controversy in Later Greek Ethics.” Pages 508–17 in Essays in Ancient Philosophy II. Edited by John P. Anton and Anthony Preus. Albany: SUNY Press, 1983. Dixon, Suzanne. Reading Roman Women. London: Duckworth, 2001. Engel, David M. “Women’s Role in the Home and the State: Stoic Theory Reconsidered.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 101 (2003): 267–88. Epicurea. Edited by Hermann Usener. Leipzig: Teubner, 1887. Evaristas, Mary. The Consolations of Death in Ancient Greek Literature. Washington: Catholic University Press, 1917. Favez, Charles. L. Annaei Senecae Dialogorum liber XII Ad Helviam matrem de consolatione, texte latin publié avec une introduction et un commentaire explicatif. Lausanne and Paris: Payot, 1918. –. La consolation latine chrétienne. Paris: J. Vrin, 1937. Favorino di Arelate. Opere: Introduzione, Testo Critico e Commento. Edited and translated with comment by Adelmo Barigazzi. Florence: Monnier, 1966. Fern, Mary E. The Latin Consolatio Mortis as a Literary Type. Saint Louis: University of Saint Louis, 1941. Ferrill, Arther. “Seneca’s Exile and the Ad Helviam: A Reinterpretation.” Classical Philology 61 (1966): 253–57. Fillion-Lahille, Janine. “La production littéraire de Sénèque sous les règnes de Caligula et de Claud, sens philosophique et porté politique: Les Consolations et le De ira.” ANRW 36.3:1606–38. Part 2, Principat, 36.3. Edited by H. Temporini and W. Haase. New York: de Gruyter, 1989. Forschner, Maximilian. Die stoische Ethik: Über den Zusammenhang von Natur-, Sprachund Moralphilosophie im altstoischen System. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981.

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Franco, Carlo. “Una statua per Admeto (a proposito di Eur. Alc. 348–54).” Materiali e Discussioni per l’Analisi dei Testi Classici 13 (1984): 131–36. Gosling, J. C. B., and C. C. W. Taylor. The Greeks on Pleasure. Oxford: Clarendon, 1982. Gregg, Robert. Consolation Philosophy: Greek and Christian Paideia in Basil and the Two Gregories. Patristic Monograph Series 3. Cambridge: Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1975. Grollios, Constantine. 7HNQKDOXSLDMNRQRL? WRSRLWRX3UR?M3ROXELRQWRX6HQHNDNDL? SKJDL? DX WZaQ. Hellenika Supplement 10. Thessaloniki and Athens: Christou & Son, 1956. –. Seneca’s Ad Marciam: Tradition and Originality. Athens: Christou, 1956. Guillemin, Anne-Marie. “Sénèque, Directeur d’âmes III: Les théories littéraires.” Revue des études latines 32 (1954): 250–74. Halkin, François, ed. Douze récits byzantins sur Saint Jean Chrysostome. Subsidia hagiographica 60. Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1977. Hani, J. “La Consolation Antique.” Revue des études anciennes 75 (1973): 103–10. Holloway, Paul A. “Portrait and Presence: A Note on the Visio Procli (George of Alexandria, Vita Chrysostomi 27).” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 100 (2007): 71–83. –. “‘Deceive your soul’ (Sir XIV:16; XXX:23): An Epicurean Theme in Ben Sira,” Vetus Testamentum 58 (2008): 1–16. –. “Alius Paulus: Paul’s Promise to Send Timothy at Philippians 2.19–24.” New Testament Studies 54 (2008): 542–56. Inwood, Brad. Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism. Oxford: Clarendon, 1985. Jean Chrysostome: Lettres à Olympias; vie d’Olympias. Edited and Translated by AnneMarie Malingrey. 2d ed. Sources chrétiennes 13. Paris: Cerf, 1968. Johann, Horst-Theodor. Trauer und Trost: Eine quellen- und strukturanalytische Untersuchung der philosophischen Trostschriften über den Tod. Studia et Testimonia Antiqua 5. Munich: Fink, 1968. Kassel, Rudolf. Untersuchungen zur griechischen und römischen Konsolationsliteratur. Zetemata 18. Munich: Beck, 1958. Klassen, W. “Musonius Rufus, Jesus and Paul: Three First-Century Feminists.” Pages 185– 204 in From Jesus to Paul: Studies in Honour of Francis Wright Beare. Edited by P. Richardson and J. Hurd. Waterloo, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1984. Kurth, Thomas. Senecas Trostschrift an Polybius. Dialogue 11: Ein Kommentar. Beiträge zur Altertumskunde 59. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1994. Lausberg, Heinrich. Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik. 2 vol. Munich: Max Hueber, 1960. Malunowiczowna, Leokadia. “Les éléments stoïciens dan la consolation grecque chrétienne.” Pages 35–45 in Studia Patristica 13/2: Papers presented to the Sixth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 1971. Texte und Untersuchungen 116. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1975. Manning, C. E. “Seneca and the Stoics on the Equality of the Sexes.” Mnemosyne 26 (1973): 170–77. –. “The Consolatory Tradition and Seneca’s Attitude to the Emotions.” Greece and Rome 21 (1974): 71–81. –. On Seneca’s “Ad Marciam,” Mnemosyne Supplement 56. Leiden: Brill, 1981. Meinel, Peter. Seneca über seine Verbannung. Trostschrift an die Mutter Helvia. Bonn: Habelt, 1972. C. Musonius Rufus. Reliquiae. Edited by Otto Hense. Leipzig: Teubner, 1905. Nussbaum, Martha. The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Rabbow, Paul. Seelenführung: Methodik der Exerzitien in der Antike. Munich: Kösel Verlag, 1954. Robert, C. Die antiken Sarkophag-Reliefs. Vol. 3/3. Rome: Bretschneider, 1969.

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Schofield, Malcolm. The Stoic Ideal of the City. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Scourfield, J. H. D. Consoling Heliodorus: A Commentary on Jerome “Letter 60.” Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta. Edited by Hans F. A. von Arnim. 4 vols. Leipzig: Teubner, 1905–24. Teletis Reliquiae. Edited by Otto Hense. 2d ed. Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck), 1909. Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta. Edited by August Nauck. 2d ed. Leipzig: Teubner, 1889. Vérilhac, A.-M. 3DLGHMDZURL. Poésie funébaire 2 vols. Athens: Academy Press, 1978 and 1982. Vollmer, Friedrich. P. Papinii Statii Silvarum Libri. Leipzig: Teubner, 1898.

Religious Experience, the Religion of Paul, and Women in Pauline Churches CHRISTOPHER N. MOUNT According to Paul in 1 Cor 12:3, RXGHL?M GXQDWDL HLSHL Q .XULRM ,KVRXMHL PK? HQSQHXPDWLDJLZ_ (“No one is able to say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ unless possessed by the holy spirit”).1 The acclamation .XULRM,KVRX M was a performative utterance that constructed a new deity in the social world and religious imagination of the Roman Empire. In this discourse about physical bodies possessed by a spirit, those who believed exhibited SQHXPDWLND (spiritual gifts, 1 Cor 12:1) characterized by what would be judged to be possession phenomenon in the Roman Empire: RXN HURX VLQ RWL PDLQHVTH (“Will they not say that you are being driven mad?” 1 Cor 14:23; of those speaking in tongues HQ SQHXPDWL DJLZ_; compare 14:26– 32; John 10:20).2 The declaration .XULRM ,KVRX M stands in contrast to what Paul in 1 Cor 12:2 characterizes as possession phenomena in pagan cults: RLGDWH RWL RWH HTQK K@WH SUR?M WD? HLGZOD WD? DIZQD ZM DQ

1 For speech of an individual possessed by a spirit compare Mark 1:23: NDL? HXTX?MK@QHQ WK_ VXQDJZJK_ DXWZQDQTUZSRMHQSQHXPDWLDNDTDUWZ_NDL? DQHNUDFHQ (“and then there was in their synagogue a man possessed by an unclean spirit, and he cried out”). On the construction HQ + dative in 1 Cor 12:3 and Mark 1:23 see BDAG s.v. HQ 4c. According to BDAG this construction designates “a close personal relation in which the referent of the HQ-term is viewed as the controlling influence: under the control of, under the influence of, in close association with”; BDAG translates 1 Cor 12:3 as under divine inspiration, but possessed by is a better English equivalent to express the idea of a human under the control of a spirit. There is, of course, a long tradition of interpretation of Paul that obscures comparisons of spirit possession in Paul’s communities to spirit possession in the history of religions. For example, Joseph Fitzmyer translates 1 Cor 12:3, “and no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ save by the Holy Spirit” and then comments, “I.e., no one can utter the fundamental and traditional Christian confession of faith unless graced by God’s Spirit” (First Corinthians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [Anchor Yale Bible 32; New Haven: Yale University, 2008], 459–60). No understanding of Paul’s Christ-cults in the history of religions is possible with such theological apologetics. See below on the theological phenomenology of religious experience. On spirit possession in the churches of Paul see Christopher Mount, “1 Corinthians 11:3–16: Spirit Possession and Authority in a Non-Pauline Interpolation,” JBL 124 (2005): 316–30. 2 On PDLQRPDL as by a god see LSJ and BDAG s.v.

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KJHVTHDSDJRPHQRL.3 Those possessed by the spirit of Jesus in these early Christ-cults declared, “ABBA,” in a ritual of apotheosis that collapsed the separation between mortals and gods (Rom 8:12–39; Gal 4:1–7). With the confession .XULRM,KVRX Mthese communities imagined the cosmic defeat of death and a new social order in which the identity of one possessed by the spirit of Jesus was no longer determined by social dichotomies that defined physical bodies in the Roman Empire: Jew-Gentile, free-slave, malefemale (Gal 3:28; 1 Cor 12:13). In short, the communal utterance .XULRM,KVRX M constructed a discourse about spirit possession that sustained the plausibility of belief in a salvation from cosmic and social forces of oppression felt by at least some, if not many, inhabitants of the early Roman Empire. Since the 19th century, history-of-religions approaches to the study of these Christ-cults in the early Roman Empire have been entangled in a discourse about comparison, religious experience, and an apology for Christianity. In the preface to the 1899 reprinting of his book Die Wirkungen des heiligen Geistes nach der populären Anschauung der apostolischen Zeit und der Lehre des Apostels Paulus, Hermann Gunkel commented on pneumatic phenomena in early Christianity: There is scarcely a people or a religion where similar phenomena could not be found. So there is a vast, almost incalculable, and extremely multiform material that must all the more be taken into account in order to understand the New Testament phenomena. We should not be afraid that this will obscure the originality of the New Testament pneumatic phenomena or of the great bearers of the Spirit throughout history. It will not obscure this, only illumine it. All the history of religion, when pursued in a suitably comprehensive and wise fashion, will serve only to demonstrate the originality and marvelous grandeur of primitive Christianity, particularly of the gospel.4

For Gunkel, “Pneumatic experiences are to be differentiated sharply from the doctrine of or speculation on the Spirit, where complex religious3

See for example Hans Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians (Hermeneia; ed. George W. MacRae, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 205–6. 4 “[Es] giebt kaum ein Volk und eine Religion, wo nicht ähnliche Erscheinungen zu finden wären. Also ein ungeheures, fast unübersehbares, höchst vielgestaltiges Material. Dies Material gilt es noch viel mehr in Bewegung zu setzen, um die N.T.lichen Erscheinungen zu verstehen. Man fürchte nicht, daß dadurch die Originalität der N.T.lichen pneumatischen und der grossen Erscheinungen geschichtlichen Pneumatiker verdunkelt werde. Nicht verdunkelt, sondern im Gegenteil ins Licht gestellt. Alle Religionsgeschichte, wenn sie recht umfassend und weise betrieben wird, wird nur dazu dienen, die Originalität und die wunderbare Hoheit des Urchristentums und besonders des Evangeliums zu erweisen” (Hermann Gunkel, Die Wirkungen des heiligen Geistes nach der populären Anschauung der apostolischen Zeit und der Lehre des Apostels Paulus: Eine biblisch-theologische Studie [2d ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1899], viii; ET: The Influence of the Holy Spirit: The Popular View of the Apostolic Age and the Teaching of the Apostle Paul [trans. Roy A. Harrisville and Philip A. Quanbeck II; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979], 4).

S.J.;

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historical constructs may be involved. Even Paul’s speculation regarding the Spirit poses a very difficult problem.”5 There has been a resurgence of interest in such experiences to explain Paul’s gospel of Jesus as a deity, and what Gunkel called pneumatic experiences as distinct from complex religious-historical constructs have now been repackaged under the category religious experience. John Ashton in The Religion of Paul the Apostle locates the essence of Paul’s religion in his religious experiences.6 Luke Timothy Johnson in Religious Experience in Earliest Christianity uses the category of religious experience to recover a phenomenological understanding of early Christianity.7 Larry Hurtado in Lord Jesus Christ and elsewhere argues that the emergence of the worship of Jesus cannot be understood apart from revelatory religious experiences of early believers.8 For these scholars the category of religious experience creates a contrast with theology, texts, institutional correctness, or ideological bias toward empirical causes.9 As such, religious experience locates explanations of the early Christ-cults in inner subjective or transcendent causes and mystifies the social dynamics of spirit possession as a public discourse about physical bodies in the history of religions.

A. The Religion of Paul Religious experience is a modern category that internalizes the essence of religion.10 Or as John Ashton comments, “[I]f our primary concern is with 5 “Von den pneumatischen Erlebnissen scharf zu unterscheiden ist die Lehre oder die Spekulation vom Geist. Hier liegen eventuell complizierte religionsgeschichtliche Gebilde vor. Auch die Spekulation des Paulus vom Geist bietet ein sehr schwieriges Problem” (Die Wirkungen des heiligen Geistes, xi; English translation: The Influence of the Holy Spirit, 8). 6 John Ashton, The Religion of Paul the Apostle (New Haven: Yale University, 2000). 7 Luke Timothy Johnson, Religious Experience in Earliest Christianity: A Missing Dimension in New Testament Studies (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998). 8 Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003); idem, “Religious Experience and Religious Innovation in the New Testament,” JR 80 (2000): 183–205. 9 Ashton defines Paul’s religion in terms of his experience in contrast to theology (The Religion of Paul, 26). Johnson begins his book with the observation, “At the front of the church, religion is much concerned with correctness: of doctrine, morality, authority, procedure. Back in the vestibule, religion is much more about the experience of transforming power in any available form” (Religious Experience, 1–2). Hurtado comments, “I contend that it is either ideological bias or insufficiently examined assumptions that prevent some scholars from taking seriously the view that revelatory religious experiences can directly contribute to religious innovations” (Lord Jesus Christ, 70). 10 See Robert H. Sharf, “Experience,” in Critical Terms for Religious Studies (ed. Mark C. Taylor; Chicago: University of Chicago, 1998), 94–96.

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Paul’s religion we should focus our attention not upon his published thoughts but upon the much less accessible experiences that underlie them. The bulk of what is generally thought of as his theology may be usefully regarded as his own interpretation of his religious experiences.”11 He argues, “[Paul] starts out as a religious thinker in the more primitive sense: the subject matter of his reflections, above all the experience of his conversion, belongs not to theology but to religion.”12 Ashton’s understanding of religion is a response to, among others, J. Louis Martyn. J. Louis Martyn’s commentary on Galatians may appear to be an unlikely point of departure for a discussion of religious experience and the religion of Paul. For Martyn, Paul’s gospel of Jesus as Lord is best understood not as an example of the category religion – but instead as revelation (what Martyn calls apocalypse) in opposition to religion. In the context of commenting on Paul’s statements about spirit possession and belief in Gal 3:1– 5, Martyn states: “The generative context in which the Spirit fell upon the Galatians was not their act of commencing observance of the Law [which for Martyn is an example of religion]; it was God’s act in the revelatory proclamation of Jesus Christ suffering crucifixion, the act by which God kindled their faith [which for Martyn is not religion but apocalypse].”13 Martyn defines religion as “the various communal, cultic means – always involving the distinction of sacred from profane – by which human beings seek to know and to be happily related to the gods or God.”14 In contrast to religion as a human enterprise stands the revelation (apocalypse) of God in Christ. Human actions (religion) and God’s actions (apocalypse) are fundamentally incommensurate such that religion becomes an unhelpful category for understanding Paul’s gospel. The actions of Paul’s God are not an example of religion.15 11

The Religion of Paul, 27 (emphasis original). The Religion of Paul, 26 (emphasis original). See pp. 103–4: “[W]e must surely accept what the sources tell us about the immediacy of that vocation when it came.” 13 J. Louis Martyn, Galatians (AB 33A; New York: Doubleday, 1997), 289. See Ashton, The Religion of Paul, 24–25. 14 Galatians, 37 n. 67. After motivating his definition of religion by connecting it to what he takes to be the meaning of the Greek and Latin ideas connoted by the words HXVHEHLD and religio, he goes on to say, “[R]eligion is a human enterprise” (Galatians, 37 n. 67). 15 Martyn is developing Ernst Käsemann’s ideas about religion. Käsemann comments, “In fact, religion always provides man with his most thorough-going possibility of confusing an illusion with God. Paul sees this possibility realized in the devout Jew” (New Testament Questions of Today [London: S.C.M., 1969], 184). Martyn quotes the first sentence (Galatians, 37 n. 67) but distances himself from the anti-Semitic overtones of the second sentence. Käsemann argues, “[T]he apostle’s real adversary is the devout Jew, not only as the mirrorimage of his own past – though that, too – but as the reality of the religious man” (New Testament Questions, 184; see also 188–95; Martyn, Galatians, 37 n. 68). Commenting on what is often taken to be the anti-Judaic intention of Paul in the letter of Galatians, Martyn ob12

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Martyn’s analysis confuses Paul’s view that the reality of God in Christ is true (and, for example, pagan gods are not – an apologetic viewpoint of religious polemics expressed by Paul in 1 Cor 12:1–3) with the comparative implications of the modern category of religion (in the singular) as an analytical tool to understand Paul’s gospel in the context of the religions of late antiquity. Martyn’s contrast between religion and Paul’s gospel is simply rhetorical sleight of hand that exempts Paul’s view that the reality of God in Christ is true from the history of religions, in which gods are socially constructed.16 Martyn has adopted Paul’s theology of transcendent realities as though such theology can function analytically to understand the confession of NXULRM  ,KVRX M in opposition to religion as human activity manifested in the religions of late antiquity.17 Ashton’s response to Martyn is terse: “This is surely nonsense.”18 He goes on to say, “To allow one’s reading of a text not only to be coloured by one’s theological prejudices but to be determined and dictated by them is to abandon any pretence of scholarly objectivity.”19 Ashton replaces Martyn’s theology of God’s revelation in Christ with interior religious experience as the foundation for understanding Paul’s gospel.20 For Ashton the category religion refers to “Paul’s religious experiences, and of his gut reactions to them.”21 Ashton cites Adolf Deissmann’s characterization of Paul as a “religious genius” and quotes approvingly Deissmann’s contrast between Paul’s “original sphere of vital religion” and the secondary sphere of theology.22 Ashton sees himself as pursuing an understanding of the enigma of Paul as laid out by Hermann Gunkel: “To the apostle [i.e., Paul] serves: “[T]he ruling polarity is not that of Christianity versus Judaism, church versus synagogue. As we will see repeatedly, that ruling polarity is rather the cosmic antinomy of God’s apocalyptic act in Christ versus religion, and thus the gospel versus religious tradition” (Galatians, 37). After quoting Käsemann’s understanding of religion approvingly, Martyn goes on to say, “For Paul religion is the human being’s superstitious effort to come to know and to influence God, rather than the faith that is elicited by God’s invasive grace and that is active in the love of neighbor” (Galatians, 37 n. 67). 16 Compare Martyn’s discussion of the limitations of rhetorical analysis in relation to Paul’s gospel (Galatians, 21–23). Scholars confuse Martyn’s analysis of the relation of the gospel to rhetoric because he grants an ontological status to the reality created by Paul’s rhetoric. 17 See Bruce Lincoln, “Theses on Method,” in The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion (ed. Russell T. McCutcheon; London: Cassell, 1999), 395–98. 18 The Religion of Paul, 25. 19 The Religion of Paul, 25. Martyn’s distinction between religion as human and apocalypse as divine also misconstrues Paul’s understanding of pagan gods as voiceless idols (1 Cor 12:2). According to Paul pagan cults are in reality cults to demons (1 Cor 10:20). 20 See especially The Religion of Paul, 60–61. 21 The Religion of Paul, 26 (emphasis original). 22 The Religion of Paul, 26.

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his life was an enigma whose solution lay for him in his teaching regarding the SQHX PD[spirit]: to us the apostle’s teaching regarding the SQHX PD is an enigma whose solution is to be found in his life and only in his life.”23 It is difficult to determine what Ashton thinks he is identifying with the category religious experience because he never explains it other than that he regards it as more fundamental than theology. 24 Ashton can leave the precise meaning of religious experience unexplained because religious experience has come to be something of a technical term, if lacking precision of definition, in the Western construction of religion as an area of academic study.25 Far from being neglected, its reality is taken for granted. Ashton interprets Paul’s religious experience as an example of the cross-cultural phenomenon of shamanism – what Ashton calls the religion of shamanism.26 Yet, despite the sensational aspects associated with shamanism, shamanism is not a religion of personal, inner experience. To be sure, shamanism is a category used by scholars to identify a particular type of discourse about spirits and spirit possession, often in relation to performances and rituals identified as produced by or creating a link between an individual and a world of spirits. As such, it is a category that compares certain types of publicly constructed interactions with an unseen world, an unseen world accessible through the performances of the shaman in the context of the believing community. The analysis of shamanism by I. M. Lewis, whom Ashton cites favorably, is a study in social anthropology just 23

As quoted by Ashton, The Religion of Paul, 31. Ashton, The Religion of Paul, 26. 25 See Scharf, “Experience,” 94–116. 26 Pondering whether Paul can be characterized as a shaman, Ashton comments (The Religion of Paul, 60): “How then should we proceed when we are dealing with individual human beings, in this case with the apostle Paul? Since the whole point of this chapter has been to assert the essential comparability of Paul’s experiences with those of men and women representing an astonishing variety of human societies throughout the ages, I would obviously want to resist J. Louis Martyn’s efforts to insulate Paul against what he would regard as the impertinent and inappropriate intrusions of historians of religion. By placing Paul in the company of other Christian shamans [e.g., Theodore of Sykeon, Oral Roberts] who, like him, professed allegiance to Christ and had a career structure very like his own, we can overcome the awkwardness of having to compare the experiences of a single individual with the vast array of phenomena that emanate from and characterize a whole religion – in this case the religion of shamanism.” But what is the religion of shamanism? To speak of a Christian shaman is to combine a self-designation (Theodore of Sykeon and Oral Roberts, if not Paul, would certainly have labeled themselves Christians) with a comparative category created by scholars. In what sense is shamanism, then, a “whole religion,” presumably in relation to other “whole religions”? Ashton’s quote of Michel Perrin’s comparison of “Christianity” to “shamanism” as religions is unhelpful. Perrin’s characterization of “the Christian religion” and “shamanism” does not explain what Ashton might mean by a “Christian shaman” or “a whole religion.” See The Religion of Paul, 47–48. 24

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because shamanism and spirit possession are socially constructed.27 As such, shamanism is not about the inner, hard to access, religious experiences of individuals, but about certain types of publicly identified and choreographed interactions with the gods. A shaman exists only to the extent that a community recognizes the shaman according to publicly negotiated, if not always explicitly defined, criteria for interacting with the gods. Ashton’s misleading comparison of Paul’s religion to shamanism in terms of the interior religious experiences of individuals simply replaces Martyn’s theology of revelation (apocalypse) with a theology of experience, so that Ashton’s religious experience now stands in for Martyn’s more prosaic, though no more theological, apocalypse of God.28 For Ashton, Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus is a paradigmatic example of religious experience. “[W]e must surely accept what the sources tell us about the immediacy of that vocation when it came.” Nevertheless, “the full explanation of his calling, sudden and overwhelming though it must have been, is to be sought in his whole career, before, during and after the event on the Damascus road.”29 Ashton’s analysis of Paul’s Damascus road experience illustrates how interchangeable are Martyn’s theology of apocalypse and Ashton’s religious experience, for Ashton has simply assumed the theological framework of early Christians that creates the religious experiences of Paul as narrated in the New Testament. Paul’s encounter with the deity Jesus as narrated in Acts 9 and Galatians 1 is itself a construct of early Christian theology, and for Ashton to take Paul’s sudden and overwhelming call (Acts 9) as the starting point for an analysis of Paul’s religious experience is simply to adopt the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles (there is no Damascus road in Gal 1:15–16), along with its theology, as the interpretive key to Paul. Theology and socalled religious experiences cannot be as easily untangled as Ashton would have us think. Conversion narratives are political, social, and economic. The narrative of Paul’s vision in Acts portrays a sudden, dramatic change and supplies a conversation between Paul and Jesus that draws the reader into the dynamics of ecclesiastical authority (“Get up and enter into the city, and you will be told what to do,” Jesus tells Paul in Acts 9:6), and Ananias as representative of the church at Damascus mediates Paul’s reception of the spirit (Acts 9:17). On the other hand, the rhetoric of Paul’s account in Gal 1:11– 24 constructs an experience of Jesus as self-interpreting. The authority of Paul as an apostle possessed by the spirit of Jesus (Gal 2:20) is unmediated 27 I. M. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession (3rd ed.; London: Routledge: 2003). 28 See Ashton, The Religion of Paul, 61. 29 The Religion of Paul, 103–4.

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by human agency – that is, unmediated by the politics of physical bodies: “I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me” (Gal 1:16–17 – DSRNDOX\DLWR?QXLR?QDXWRX HQHPRL in Gal 1:16 should be taken to refer to Paul’s discourse about possession by Christ crucified).30 Nevertheless, Paul’s own narrative in Galatians is no more evidence of an irreducibly religious experience that exists prior to its interpretation by Paul as a religious thinker, to use Ashton’s terms, than is the narrative of Acts.31 Paul’s interaction with Jesus is not a phenomenological reality that needs to be taken seriously independent of the discourse that constructs the experience as religious (and in this case, pneumatic) in the context of ecclesiastical politics – specifically, Paul’s relationship to authorities at Jerusalem and opponents in Galatia. Paul’s account of his encounter with Jesus in Galatians 1 constructs his experience and thereby his authority in relation to Judaism (1:13; compare 2:14) and in relation to the communities worshipping Jesus in Galatia (1:6–9). Galatians 1:11–24 draws us into the social construction of religious experience by a shaman (in Ashton’s terms) negotiating his authority with a community. To suggest that so-called religious experiences are explanatory is simply to accept at face value the apologetic construction of Paul’s authority (in either Galatians 1 or Acts 9) and to mystify early Christian discourse about spirit possession, a discourse that redefines physical bodies embedded in political, social, and economic interests. It is, to be sure, in the interest of a spirit-possessed intermediary to mystify the social basis for his or her authority: “Those who are spiritual discern all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else’s scrutiny,” Paul writes in 1 Cor 2:15 (NRSV). Not surprisingly, religious intermediaries in the Roman Empire who claimed to mediate between the seen and unseen world were involved in a discourse about fraud as well. In Gal 1:20 Paul takes an oath that he is telling the truth: “Before God I am not lying” – to distinguish himself from false apostles and false teachers who proclaim another message from God (Gal 1:6–9).32 In Acts 23:1 the Paul of Acts announces, “Brothers, I have conducted myself with a clear conscious before God to this day.”

30

Compare Hans Dieter Betz, Galatians (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 70–

72. 31 On Paul’s conversion see Arthur J. Droge, “Conversion as a Native Category,” in Ancient and Modern Perspectives on the Bible and Culture: Essays in Honor of Hans Dieter Betz (ed. Adela Yarbro Collins; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 392–97. 32 Compare 2 Cor 11:13–15; Phil 3:2; 1 Thess 2:1–10.

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B. Apostles, Prophets, and Shamans What Paul and the Acts of the Apostles narrate as a call of God belongs to a long tradition of religious intermediaries and their communities embedded in Jewish history. This Jewish tradition includes the elaborate performances of the prophet Ezekiel, who traveled in the spirit and performed the word of God in a way similar to Paul.33 Robert Wilson in Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel analyzes the social drama of the making of a religious intermediary.34 To illustrate the dialectical relationship between intermediary and group belief, between prophet and community in ancient Israel, he cites the example of Qaselid, a Kwakiutl healer and paradigmatic shaman. Claude Lévi-Strauss in his article “The Sorcerer and His Magic” also tells the story of Qaselid (or Quesalid).35 Both Wilson and LéviStrauss rely on the work of anthropologist Franz Boas, who began his research among the Kwakiutl of Vancouver Island at the end of the 19th century. The case of Qaselid is useful for thinking about Paul, shamanism, and the social construction of religious experience. As applied to the story of Qaselid, a shaman is one who through access to spiritual powers is able to manipulate sickness to produce cures. The healing process involves a carefully choreographed performance by the shaman, patient, and audience to ritualize actions of unseen powers in the extraction of the sickness from the patient. This healing process is a publicly constructed “religious experience.” In some cases the patient recovers, in others the sickness proves intransigent. According to Qaselid’s narration in “I desired to learn the ways of the Shaman” reported by Boas, he began on the path toward becoming a shaman to prove that shamans were frauds and the healing performance was a sham.36 As he progressed in his initiation, he reports that he was able to effect cures not because shamanism was real but because patients believed in his power as a shaman. All the while, other shamans revealed to him their tricks of the trade and unmasked themselves as frauds interested only in the money of their patients. Qaselid’s account suggests the role belief plays in the ability of shamans to perpetrate fraud and create experiences of unseen agents.

33

Alan F. Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New Haven: Yale University, 1990), 34–71; Ashton, The Religion of Paul, 105–12. 34 Robert R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980). 35 Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf; New York: Basic Books, 1963), 167–85. 36 Franz Boas, The Religion of the Kwakiutl Indians (New York: Columbia University, 1930), 2:1–41.

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Because the interests of the believer and the religious intermediary are intimately linked in a social drama that creates the authority of the shaman and experiences of “transformative power,” fraud is a long-standing category for the analysis of the religious experiences associated with shamans. Fraud depends on the willingness of the believer to go along with the religious intermediary. Although there is evidence elsewhere in the material collected by Boas to suggest Qaselid had a career as a shaman, nowhere in the account “I desired to learn the ways of the Shaman” does Qaselid claim to be a genuine shaman.37 Instead, the report reads very much as an exposé of religious fraud perpetrated on those who believe by those who claim to mediate unseen powers. Qaselid presents his own cures as further evidence that shamans only pretend. His cures are not effected by anything he does but simply by the belief of the patient. The only criterion that Qaselid offers for a possibly true shaman is one who does not accept money for healing services (compare Paul, 1 Thess 2:1–10; 2 Cor 8:16–24).38 Similar analysis of true and false prophets can be found in the writings associated with the ancient Israelite prophets to whom Wilson compares Qaselid as well as religious intermediaries roughly contemporaneous to Paul (Lucian’s account of Alexander the False Prophet is a good example).39 Indeed, Luke Timothy Johnson dismisses certain religious experiences as fraudulent: “[O]f course, charlatanism is possible, as the ancient case of Alexan37

In contrast, according to Wilson, Qaselid’s career is an example of how group belief converts a skeptic of shamanistic practices among the Kwakiutl into one who believes that he truly is a shaman. Wilson concludes his summary of Qaselid’s account: “The Kwakiutl now saw Qaselid as a great shaman, and he himself became convinced that he had genuine supernatural powers. He continued to believe that other shamans were frauds, and he delighted in exposing them, but he accepted the people’s evaluation of his own skills. The mounting pressure of group belief finally convinced him that he was a genuine shaman” (Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel, 55; emphasis original). Lévi-Strauss similarly concludes: “And Quesalid, rich in secrets, pursued his career, exposing the impostors and full of contempt for the profession. ‘Only one shaman was seen by me, who sucked at a sick man and I never found out whether he was a real shaman or only made up. Only for this reason I believe that he is a shaman; he does not allow those who are made well to pay him. I truly never once saw him laugh.’ [Boas, Religion of the Kwakiutl, 2:40–41] Thus his original attitude has changed considerably. The radical negativism of the free thinker has given way to more moderate feelings. Real shamans do exist. And what about him? At the end of the narrative we cannot tell, but it is evident that he carries on his craft conscientiously, takes pride in his achievements, and warmly defends the technique of the bloody down against all rival schools. He seems to have completely lost sight of the fallaciousness of the technique which he had so disparaged at the beginning” (Structural Anthropology, 178). 38 Boas, Religion of the Kwakiutl, 2:40–41. 39 See, for example, 1 Kings 22 – the confrontation between Jehoshaphat and the prophet Micaiah. According to a common refrain among the “true” prophets of YHWH, those who believe the false prophets do so because they choose to believe that which reinforces what they want to believe. See 1 Kgs 22:8.

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der of Abunoteichos (see Lucian of Samosata, Alexander the False Prophet) and recent cases displayed regularly on television remind us. But counterfeit coinage thrives when genuine currency exists.”40 Although the narrative “I desired to learn the ways of the Shaman” obscures the identity of the informant, the shaman Qaselid was George Hunt.41 Hunt had multiple identities in relation to the Kwakiutl, about whom he played such an important role as an informant for Boas. Born to an English father and a Tlingit mother, raised in Fort Rupert, he nonetheless was involved in Kwakiutl ceremonies from the age of nine, and he married into the community at the age of eighteen.42 Hunt gave more than one account of his path into shamanism. The narrative of fraud, belief, and skepticism was written decades after he received his shamanistic name Qaselid around the age of sixteen, and he had long since adopted his role as an ethnographic informant about Kwakiutl culture when he narrated “I desired to learn the ways of the Shaman.” In another version of his path to shamanism, however, he stressed physical afflictions that began when he was young and led to his being recognized as a shaman (for example, paralysis, after which he felt he had been on a journey out of his body, and falling into fire). 43 Such a narrative of physical suffering being transformed into a religious experience is common in the literature on shamanism (compare 2 Cor 12:2–10 – Paul’s thorn in the flesh), and such physical symptoms provided a context for belief in the power of this young outsider become insider that led to his first healing, the healing of the son of the chief from whom Qaselid received his shamanistic name. Both accounts are equally embedded in social relationships, and the basis for either account is not to be sought in an inner, personal, religious experience of Hunt but in the social context presupposed by the accounts. The narration of affliction as a path to shamanistic power is a narrative that constructs a shamanistic identity in relation to a community of believers; 40

Religious Experience, 65 n. 53. Harry Whitehead, “The Hunt for Quesalid: Tracking Lévi-Strauss’ Shaman,” Anthropology & Medicine 7 (2000): 153–56. The following discussion draws heavily from this article. 42 See Whitehead, “The Hunt for Quesalid,” 149–68. The crisis in the authenticity of shamanistic practices presupposed by “I desired to learn the ways of the Shaman” may reflect the increasing dependence of the Kwakiutl upon Fort Rupert, around which they had settled for their economic well-being. In this context the introduction of new rituals of healing of the kind attested by Hunt in his narrative of different shamanistic healing practices perhaps reflects a loss of confidence in the old and a search for better and more effective techniques. In any case, this search for new ways that are better than the old is a subtext of the narrative of his career as a shaman in “I desired to learn the ways of the Shaman.” His patients were apparently willing to believe in the power of the unfamiliar healing rituals that he introduced to them. 43 See Whitehead, “The Hunt for Quesalid,” 149–68. 41

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the narration of fraud, belief, and unbelief is a narrative that constructs a shamanistic identity in relation to a community of skeptics. Hunt’s role as participant as well as an informant of Kwakiutl culture leads to the construction of different shamanistic realities. There is no need to posit a prior religious experience that lies behind and antecedent to these reports. The so-called phenomenology of shamanistic experiences is public, not private; readily accessible to social analysis, not less accessible; a construction of the individual interacting with the group, not an individual interacting with interior causes as the basis for Ashton’s religion of shamanism. The experiences of a shaman are constructed out of a public discourse about physical bodies possessed by spirits. As such, shamanism is not about the inner, hard to access, religious experiences of individuals but about certain types of publicly identified and choreographed experiences of the gods. A shaman exists only to the extent that a community recognizes the spirit mediated in the body of the shaman according to socially negotiated criteria. Paul reflects such criteria in Gal 4:13–14: “You know that it was because of a physical infirmity [GL’DVTHQHLDQWK MVDUNRM] that I first announced the gospel to you; though my condition put you to the test, you did not scorn or despise me [HFHSWXVDWH – an apotropaic action], but welcomed me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus” (NRSV). Compare Gal 3:1: “It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified” (NRSV).

C. The Apologetics of Religious Experience Ashton’s interior causes become explicitly transcendent for Larry Hurtado and Luke Timothy Johnson – “acts of God” as a possibility suggested by Hurtado;44 or as Johnson comments, “Like any religious activity, glossalalia can be either sincere or phoney (or a complex mixture of both). Like other religious experiences, it can involve human and transcendental causes simultaneously.”45 Like Ashton, Johnson and Hurtado also look to Paul’s conversion as the paradigm for religious experience, but for Johnson and Hurtado religious experience functions in a way similar to Martyn’s construal of Paul’s gospel as an apocalypse of God: an intervention of the transcendent in the world of human affairs. Johnson writes, “[T]he experience that turned Saul the persecutor into Paul the Apostle is one of the classic examples of religious experience in the full sense of the

44 45

“Religious Experience,” 196. Religious Experience, 109.

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definition.”46 This focus on Paul’s conversion allows religious experience to be conceived as an encounter with a religious reality that creates observable effects: religious experiences become irreducibly real and transformative in themselves. Hurtado comments, “The important and undeniable thing is that Paul’s embrace of Christian faith, his rather sudden transformation in religious convictions, was generated by a powerful religious experience that he took to be a divine revelation.”47 For scholars such as Johnson and Hurtado, the Damascus road experience (Acts 9 used to frame Galatians 1) provides a useful model of so-called religious experience because it creates a powerful image of the religious intervening in the secular, an image of quotidian experience interrupted by experience of the ultimate, the numinous, the sacred. Paul’s conversion has been phenomenologically repackaged in the history of religions as a religious experience that brought Paul into contact with a transcendent reality. According to Hurtado, [D]evotion to Jesus was exhibited in an unparalleled intensity and diversity of expression, for which we have no true analogy in the religious environment of the time. There is simply no precedent or parallel for the level of energy invested by early Christians in expressing the significance of Jesus for them in their religious thought and practice. The full pattern of devotion to Jesus that we examine in this book is not one example of a class of analogous religious phenomena in comparable groups, but is instead truly remarkable in the history of religions, justifying (indeed, requiring) a special effort to understand it in historical terms.”48

Hurtado suggests that revelatory religious experiences were one of the crucial causative factors in this unprecedented cultic veneration of Jesus Christ. “If we are to consider the resurrection appearances as crucial in generating earliest Christian claims, these experiences must have involved unusual and specific elements that helped shape the unprecedented convictions that mark the early Christian proclamation. That is, these experiences likely involved the sense of being encountered by a figure recognized as Jesus but exhibiting features that manifested to the recipients of the experiences the conviction that he had been clothed with divine-like glory and given heavenly exaltation.”49 He goes on to say, “Whether one chooses to 46

Religious Experience, 65. See also pp. 66–67: “But what the accounts [in Galatians 1 and Acts 9] and all of Paul’s activities do make clear is that whether sudden or slow, whether spectacular or subtle, this encounter completely restructured his life and, for that matter, the life of much of the world.” Johnson adapts the definition of religious experience suggested by Joachim Wach, for whom religious experience is “the inner aspect of the intercourse of man and the human mind with God” (The Comparative Study of Religions [ed. Joseph M. Kitagawa; New York: Columbia University, 1958], 41). 47 “Religious Experience,” 197. 48 Lord Jesus Christ, 2–3. 49 “Religious Experience,” 195–96.

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consider these experiences as hallucinatory, projections of mental processes of the recipients, or the acts of God, there is every reason to see them as the ignition points for the christological convictions linked to them.”50 The extent to which Hurtado has simply adopted the interpretive schema of early Christian sources is evident in his comment on Paul’s “rather sudden transformation in religious convictions.”51 This narrative of sudden transformation is the story of Acts 9. Hurtado has equated the theology of a mythological narrative with an ill-defined, yet essentialized religious experience. Such religious experience is not an explanation for a historian of religions but simply an acceptance of the theological construction of encounters with the resurrected Jesus in early Christian narratives. It is, then, not what Hurtado calls “ideological bias or insufficiently examined assumptions that prevent some scholars from taking seriously the view that revelatory religious experiences can directly contribute to religious innovations.”52 Historical analysis of early Christianity certainly requires recognizing that discourse about and performance of visions, heavenly journeys, and spirit possession were quite important in the religious innovation of Paul and others associated with early Christ-cults. The historian of religions is not required to take the mythological reality created by such discourse and performance at face value as a historical explanation of the beginnings of Christianity. Hurtado’s confusion of theological myths with history simply serves to establish Christianity as a singularity in the history of religions. Hurtado employs a dichotomy between religion and magic that has often characterized discourse about encounters with gods. Hurtado describes “full cultic devotion” of Christ as an unprecedented innovation for any Jew, an innovation that could only be produced by the experience of a revelation. By “full cultic devotion” he means “public, corporate devotional practices that are intended as adoration and/or that engage the figure in ways otherwise reserved for God (e.g., prayers, hymns, and so on).”53 In contrast to such full cultic devotion to a deity stands “the more secretive and private invocations of various names and beings that characterize ‘magical’ materials such as amulets, among which there are, of course, Jewish examples.”54 Prayers versus invocations; public versus secret; adoration of God versus adjuration of various names and beings. Such analysis is to have already adopted an apologetic discourse in favor of one social context for constructing an experience of a deity over against another so50

“Religious Experience,” 196. “Religious Experience,” 197. 52 Lord Jesus Christ, 70. 53 “Religious Experience,” 199 n. 51. 54 “Religious Experience,” 199 n. 51. 51

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cial context. Despite Hurtado’s suggestion to the contrary, the deity that Paul and his followers adored as NXULRM belonged to what some inhabitants of the Roman Empire identified not as religion but as superstition and magic.55 The veneration of Jesus as Lord in early Christ-cults was on the periphery of established religious cults in the Roman Empire. This social context, however, was not determined by any essential characteristic of religion or religious experience in relation to magic but rather in socially constructed discourses about the gods. Paul’s discourse about possession by NXULRM,KVRX M was on the margins of Jewish and Greco-Roman society of the first century. This marginality was the social location of magic as identified in the ancient world.56 Hurtado’s revelatory religious experiences mystify the social and political dynamics of the early Christ-cults. Luke Timothy Johnson, to whom Hurtado appeals for support for his own project to understand religious experience in early Christianity, suggests that what is missing from scholarly accounts of Christian origins is an adequate grasp of Christian experience that a phenomenological approach to the study of religion can provide. “Our inability to deal with this register of language [that is, statements that have to do with religious experience and power], I suggest, has complex causes within scholarship, including a bias in favor of theology against religion, and the lack of an epistemology specifically calibrated to the religious dimensions of human existence.”57 Johnson’s phenomenology reifies early Christian discourse about spirit and power – what he calls the “transformative energy-field spoken of in these texts”58 – so that the spirit becomes a linguistic symbol for the experience of transcendent power not only within the religious discourse of the community but also within the analytical discourse of the scholar.59 Consequently, Johnson judges to be reductionistic in a bad sense any analysis of Paul’s discourse about spirit possession and power simply in terms of social and political realities rather than in terms of a transcendent reality encountered as Other.60 Instead of adding any insights into the history of early Christianity, Johnson’s phenomenology serves to insulate the myth of the resurrected Christ in his own analysis of early Christianity from what he regards as the 55

See Tacitus, Ann. 15.44; Suetonius, Nero 16.2; Pliny, Letters 10.96; Josephus, Ant. 18:63–64; Mark 3:22; and Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician (New York: Harper & Row, 1978). 56 See David E. Aune, “Magic in Early Christianity,” ANRW II.23.2.1507–57. 57 Religious Experience, 4. Johnson does recognize, though, that the religionsgeschichtliche Schule attempted to capture the significance of early Christian claims about religious experience (Religious Experience, 39). 58 Religious Experience, 8. 59 See Religious Experience, 9. 60 Religious Experience, 24–26.

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reductive analysis of anyone for whom the myth of the resurrected Christ has no reality outside of its social construction.61 Johnson claims that an interpretation of the formative texts of a world religion must take seriously the possibility that in fact early Christians were encountering an Other that exists independent of the religious discourse of the community. For example, in prefacing his phenomenological analysis of the experience of the resurrected Jesus in Christian meals, Johnson comments, “Whether we ourselves want to declare in favor of transcendence, we can entertain the notion that participants at such meals considered themselves engaged by a power that was truly Other.”62 No one as far as I know, whatever method they adopt to study early Christianity, denies that at least some early Christians believed that in ritual meals they were engaged with an unseen world inhabited by the resurrected Christ. Johnson’s phenomenologicaltheological language of “truly Other” and “transcendence” is not required to achieve this insight about early Christian ritual and myth associated with meals – or spirits. Rather, the language of “truly Other” and “transcendence” allows a slippage between a phenomenological bracketing of the reality of the mythological claims made by early Christians and a theological defense of the reality of such claims for a historian of religions. Despite Johnson’s assertion that the category religious experience is necessary to understand important forms of human discourse and behavior, the analysis Johnson pursues in his three test cases – baptism, glossolalia, and meals – does little more than describe how to go about understanding the social construction of experiences of Christ crucified and resurrected as a deity in early Christ-cults in the Roman Empire.63 Johnson’s category of religious experience is apologetic for Paul’s deity. 61 Jonathan Z. Smith is Johnson’s exempli gratia of such a reductionist, whose rejection of Eliade’s phenomenology has, according to Johnson, led him into a serious misapprehension of religion, in general, and early Christianity, in particular. With reference to Smith, Johnson comments, “Any theoretical starting point that disables engagement with the classic and formative literature of a world religion in its own terms might well be regarded as deficient” (Religious Experience, 41; see also p. 42 n. 8). Yet, nothing in Johnson’s actual analysis of early Christianity suggests any reason to reify the claims of believers about an encounter with another reality, beyond, of course, an apologetic defense of that reality by the interpreter. Johnson acknowledges the “elusive” nature of religious experience (Religious Experience, 54–55). 62 Religious Experience, 164. 63 For example, Johnson lists six steps toward a phenomenological approach to meals in early Christianity (Religious Experience, 164–79): (1) a phenomenology of meals, especially those celebrated by intentional communities (“Phenomenological analysis shows meals in such intentional communities truly to have a magical quality” [p. 166]); (2) a phenomenology of meals in a Greco-Roman context; (3) a phenomenology of Jewish meals; (4) analysis of meals in the New Testament (“The overwhelming impression given is that these meals involve a fellowship, not with dead kinfolk, but with the risen and living Lord Jesus” [p. 171]);

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Johnson easily moves from the so-called phenomenologically bracketed reality of the early Christians to transcendent causes invoked as explanatory by the historian of religions. Despite Johnson’s protests to the contrary, these supposed transcendent causes to which he appeals for explanation of, for example, the phenomenon of glossolalia among those possessed by a spirit – these supposed transcendent causes are simply the reified remains of Christian theology. “Religious experience” as an object of investigation has been defined by Johnson’s theology.64 To be sure, Johnson protests otherwise: “The case studies carried out here should demonstrate, however, that a phenomenological approach to earliest Christianity is not a surreptitious form of theology. Indeed, it makes as vigorous a use of historical, sociological, psychological, and anthropological perspectives as any reductionistic approach. The difference is that the phenomenon is not itself eliminated in the process but remains the steady focus of attention.” 65 Johnson’s apology for Paul’s deity is evident in the definition of religious experience that Johnson offers: religious experience is a response to what is perceived as ultimate by the whole person with a peculiar intensity that issues in action.66 The narrative of Paul’s Damascus road conversion is offered as a classic example of religious experience “in the full sense of the definition.”67 In contrast to Paul’s example of a real religious experi(5) analysis of the multiple meals in apocryphal writings; (6) analysis of the archeological evidence. On the sixth step, Johnson comments, “Finally, the archeological evidence can be read, now not simply within a complex code of cultural meanings given by Greco-Roman myths and symbols, but as well within the increasingly complex world of specifically Christian symbols” (p. 179). Apart from the interesting contrast between “Greco-Roman myths and symbols” and simply “Christian symbols” (one would think the word “myth” would be particularly appropriate for a meal celebrated in the presence of a resurrected deity), Johnson’s six steps do little more than describe how to go about understanding the construction of the plausibility of the presence of NXULRM,KVRXM in early Christian meals. 64 On the supposed scientific empiricism of phenomenology see, for example, Religious Experience, 60. According to Johnson the phenomenological investigation of religion is like the responsible clinician who investigates reports of pains suffered by patients. The duty of the responsible clinician apparently ends, however, when the phenomenology of religious experience is applied to other examples of spirit possession in the Roman Empire. See below on Johnson’s analysis of Alexander and the cult of Glycon. 65 Religious Experience, 183. 66 Religious Experience, 60. He explicitly connects this definition to the theorizing of Mircea Eliade and Rudolf Otto. 67 Religious Experience, 65. Elsewhere, though, concerning reports of religious experiences that Johnson views less favorably, he comments (in the context of his argument that tongues are not real languages), “The stereotypical character of the reports of real languages being heard by native speakers, and the impossibility of verifying such reports, suggests that they are essentially folkloric and legitimizing in character” (Religious Experience, 112–13). For examples of glossolalia as real languages see Mai Lan Gustafsson, War and Shadows: The Haunting of Vietnam (Ithaca: Cornell University, 2009), esp. 47–48, 147–67.

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ence, Johnson points to the example of Alexander of Abonoteichus, the second-century religious innovator now made infamous by Lucian’s Alexander the False Prophet, as the paradigmatic example of religious charlatanism, who takes his place alongside “recent cases displayed regularly on television.”68 Johnson accepts at face value Lucian’s reductionistic analysis of Alexander’s religious innovation as fraud (a religious innovation introduced by an elaborate performance by Alexander of being possessed by a god), yet rejects any reductionistic analysis of the new god proclaimed by Paul. Johnson asks no phenomenological questions about Alexander and his followers. Apparently, Johnson the theologian qua phenomenologist has less difficulty “bracketing” the reality of possession by a crucified and resurrected deity than “bracketing” the reality of Glycon, the talking snake, and Glycon’s possessed prophet who put on a dramatic possession performance upon his arrival in the city.69 According to Lucian’s account Alexander duped his audience into believing in the arrival of a new god through performances associated with spirit possession. Oracles had prophesied this arrival, and Alexander presented appropriate displays of the power of the god. Religious fraud of the sort allegedly perpetrated by Alexander and of which Paul was also accused is only possible to the extent that an experience of a deity can be constructed out of a relatively stable set of culturally specific expectations for recognizing the presence of a god.70 Although Lucian’s account relies on stereotypes and lacks theoretical sophistication, it suggests such expectations. After an apprenticeship in which Alexander was introduced to the magic associated with Apollonius of Tyana, he made ready his plan to present himself as a prophet of a new deity. This deity was a new incarnation of the older deities Apollo and Asclepius. The discovery of an oracle (forged, according to Lucian) in an established temple of Apollo at Chalcedon announced the imminent arrival of Asclepius, the son of Apollo, in a new form at Abonoteichus (Alex. 10). Another oracle attributed to the Sibyl predicted the arrival of Alexander as the prophet of this new god (Alex. 11). Alexander arrived and put on a performance of being possessed by the deity – a performance that Lucian accuses Alexander of faking by chewing root of soapwort (Alex. 12). On the appointed day for the physical appearance of the deity, Alexander ran through the marketplace naked – a theatri68

Religious Experience, 65 n. 53. Compare Johnson’s discussion of the ambiguous character of glossolalia, in which the ecstatic “babbling” of the Corinthians merits only the label “religious experience” in quotation marks (Religious Experience, 124). 70 See 1 Thess 2:1–12 for the rhetoric of accusations of fraud: K JD?USDUDNOKVLMKPZaQ RXNHNSODQKMRXGH? HFDNDTDUVLDMRXGH? HQGROZ_ [v. 3]; RXWHJD?USRWHHQORJZ_ NRODNHLDM HJHQKTKPHQ NDTZ?M RLGDWH RXWH HQ SURIDVHL SOHRQHFLDM THR?M PDUWXM RXWH ]KWRXQWHMHFDQTUZSZQGRFDQRXWHDIXPZaQRXWHDSDOOZQ [vv. 5–6]. 69

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cal display Lucian compares to that put on by the devotees of the Mother Goddess in a frenzy of possession (Alex. 13).71 Alexander then addressed the people, uttered a few meaningless words in Hebrew or Phoenician, and miraculously produced the new god in the form of a snake from an egg buried (beforehand by Alexander, according to Lucian) in the foundations of the future temple of the god (Alex. 13–14). “I hold Asclepius,” he proclaimed (.DL? ODEZ?QDXWR? HLM WD?M [HL UDM H[HLQ HIDVNHQKGK WR?Q $VNOKSLRQ, Alex. 14).72 As a result of this spirit-inspired performance, the audience believed a god had appeared in the form of the snake held before them by Alexander: as Lucian reports, “The assembly – for almost the whole city, including women, old men, and boys had come running – marveled, prayed, and made obeisance. . . . They at once raised a shout, welcomed the god, congratulated their city, and began each of them to sate himself greedily with prayers, craving treasures, riches, health, and every other blessing from him” (Alex. 13–14).73 Glycon, the new Asclepius, son of Apollo, had arrived in the city, and the newborn god quickly grew into a large, talking serpent. Sacred rituals were instituted, and Alexander announced, “Let those who believe in the god [RL SLVWHXRQWHM WZ_ THZ _] perform the mysteries under the blessing of Heaven” (Alex. 38). According to Lucian, RL SLVWHXRQWHMWZa_ THZa_ are those willing to construct the authority of the prophet through socially negotiated norms for the presence of a god.

D. Spirit Possession and Women in Pauline Churches When Paul arrived in a city, he put on a performance of spirit and power: Because our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction (1 Thess 1:5, NRSV). My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God (1 Cor 2:4–5, NRSV).

71

See also Alex. 9 for a comparison between the performance of Alexander and the devotees of the Mother Goddess. On the Mother Goddess see Susan Elliott, Cutting Too Close for Comfort: Paul’s Letter to the Galatians in Its Anatolian Cultic Context (JSNTSup 248; London: T & T Clark, 2003). 72 Greek text from M. D. Macleod, Luciani Opera (Scriptorum classicorum bibliotheca Oxoniensis; Oxford: Oxford University, 1972–1987), 2:331–59. 73 Translations by A. M. Harmon, Lucian. Vol. IV (LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University/London: W. Heinemann, 1925).

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For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to win obedience from the Gentiles, by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God (Rom 15:18–19, NRSV) It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified! The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard? (Gal 3:1–2, NRSV).

Possession by the crucified and resurrected Jesus was the central myth of the discourse about physical bodies constructed in the cultic proclamation .XULRM ,KVRX M in the Christ-cult formed in response to Paul’s performances of spirit and power.74 This discourse about physical bodies possessed by a crucified and resurrected deity challenged other discourses about physical bodies in the early Roman Empire. For example, in the texts about Paul in what has become the New Testament the discourse about bodies possessed by Jesus is in tension with bodies marked as male and female in the Roman Empire. Paul in Gal 3:28 writes: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (NRSV). Those who confessed this liturgy were those who were possessed by Jesus (Gal 3:2; see 2:20) and experienced an apotheosis as children of God (Gal 4:6). Physical bodies as male or female and embedded in a web of political, social, and economic interests no longer defined the subjectivity of those who were possessed by the spirit, so that, for example, Paul’s hierarchy in 1 Cor 12:28–31 of those possessed by the spirit is not marked for gender: “And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues” (1 Cor 12:28, NRSV). In contrast, the Paul of 1 Timothy articulates a gender hierarchy embedded in ecclesiastical authority that controls access to the deity: I desire, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or argument; also that the women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes, but with good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be

74 On Paul as a miracle worker see James A. Kelhoffer, “The Apostle Paul and Justin Martyr on the Miraculous: A Comparison of Appeals to Authority,” GRBS 42 (2001): 163–84; Stefan Alkier, Wunder und Wirklichkeit in den Briefen des Apostels Paulus: Ein Beitrag zu einem Wunderverständnis jenseits von Entmythologisierung und Rehistorisierung (WUNT 134; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001).

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saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty (1 Tim 2:8–15; NRSV).

In the church as the “pillar and bulwark of truth” (1 Tim 3:15), physical bodies as male or female define the subjectivity of those under the authority of a male hierarchy, a male hierarchy whose laying on of hands controls the gifts of the spirit (1 Tim 4:14). In the ecclesiastical apologetics of the narrative of Acts, a male hierarchy through whom the voice of tradition speaks supplants Paul’s spirit-possession cults (compare the descriptions of a gathering of the community in 1 Cor 14:26–33a with 1 Tim 4:13–14). The qualification for leadership in the church is no longer defined by SQHXPDWLND (1 Corinthians 12) but by gender (1 Tim 2:12). These two poles are evident in two disputed passages about women in 1 Corinthians, 1 Cor 14:33b–36 and 1 Cor 11:3–16. 75 In 11:3–16 possessed women are not silenced but their performance of spirit possession (praying in tongues and prophesying, compare 14:13–40) is constrained by gender distinctions enforced by an ecclesiastical consensus. Authority resides in the practice of churches (v. 16) construed as a bulwark for the divine order of this world (v. 3). First Corinthians 11:3–16 ends with the authority of the churches (DL HNNOKVLDLWRX THRX – churches defined by a gender hierarchy, v. 3, and having an obligation to enforce a knowledge of nature, v. 14) to control the physical bodies of women possessed by the spirit. “Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered?” (SUHSRQ HVWL?Q JXQDL ND DNDWDNDOXSWRQ WZa_ THZa_ SURVHX[HVTDL, v. 13). Paul’s argument about prophesying and speaking in tongues in chapters 12 and 14 culminates with the possessed “I” who speaks the commands of the Lord (14:37); the argument of 11:3–16 culminates with the “we” who speaks for the consensus of the churches.76 75

I have discussed 1 Cor 11:3–16 in more detail in “1 Cor 11:3–16: Spirit Possession and Authority in a Non-Pauline Interpolation,” 313–40. 76 Gordon Fee comments at the end of his discussion of 11:2–16: “Indeed, there is nothing quite like this in [Paul’s] extant letters, where he argues for maintaining a custom, let alone predicating a large part of the argument on shame, propriety, and custom” (The First Epistle to the Corinthians [NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987], 530). Yet, against those who have suggested that 1 Cor 11:3–16 is an interpolation, Fee passes a harsh rhetorical judgment (p. 492 n. 3): “This [excising the passage altogether as a non–Pauline interpolation] is a counsel of despair and is predicated not on grammatical and linguistic difficulties (pace Walker), but on the alleged non–Pauline character of the passage. But there is a certain danger in assuming that one knows so well what Paul could or could not have written that one can perform such radical surgery on a text, especially when nothing in the language or style is nonPauline!” Leaving aside the rhetoric of “danger,” “radical surgery,” “counsel of despair,” and the final exclamation point that seems to be out of place given Fee’s concluding comments on p. 530, the issue is simply one of understanding the collection and editing of the Pauline letters in the context of the development of early Christ-cults. No clear understanding of this development can be achieved by imposing what amounts to almost an a priori assumption

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On the other hand, in 1 Cor 14:33b–36 a consensus of all the churches silences possessed women. As a gloss commenting on Paul’s discussion of prophecy in chapter 14 (especially in vv. 26–40), 14:33b–36 excludes the voice of women prophets from the church.77 Many more scholars have recognized 14:33b–36 as a non-Pauline interpolation, though usually the arguments focus narrowly on the role of women in Paul’s churches.78 In 14:33b–36 as in 11:3–16 the underlying issue is the authority of the spiritpossessed “I.” This concern to establish ecclesiastical authority over physical bodies possessed by a spirit delimits the boundaries of this interpolation. The consensus of all the churches of the saints (ZMHQSDVDLMWDL M HNNOKVLD LM WZaQ DJLZQ, v. 33b) contrasts with the knowledge mediated by those possessed by the spirit (K DI’XPZQR ORJRMWRX THRX HFKOTHQ K HLM XPD M PRQRXM NDWKQWKVHQ, v. 36) to determine proper behavior HQ HNNOKVLD _79 This gloss asserts the authority of the church to enforce a hierarchy of physical bodies as male or female to silence women in the church over against those possessed by the spirit who speak the word of God free from the boundaries of a physical body (1 Cor 14:26–33a, 37–40). Verses 33b–36 introduce a distinction between men (who presumably speak for the spirit and establish the consensus of the churches) and women (who do not speak for the spirit and do not participate in the consensus of the churches), a distinction otherwise absent in chapters 12 and 14. Paul’s hierarchy of spiritual gifts in 12:28–31a is not marked for gender. Verses 33a–36 gloss Paul’s comment in 14:31–33a that all may prophesy in order. Of course, this added commentary asserts, Paul did not mean to include women. that Paul’s correspondence was not subject to editing to produce the archetype or archetypes of 1 and 2 Corinthians that are the basis of the manuscript tradition. See Mount, “1 Corinthians 11:3–16,” 313–40. 77 The reconstruction of Paul’s rhetoric in 1 Corinthians by Antoinette Clark Wire depends in part on taking 11:3–16 and 14:33b–36 as from Paul himself (The Corinthian Women Prophets: A Reconstruction through Paul’s Rhetoric [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990], 116–58). Her judgment that these passages are authentically Pauline does not take into account the tension between the construction of authority in Paul’s spirit-possession cults and the construction of authority imposed on the spirit-possessed “I” by the consensus of the churches in these passages. Nevertheless, her analysis of the rhetoric of 1 Corinthians 11–14 is suggestive of the dynamics that lead to the inclusion of these interpretive glosses in what became the canonical version of Paul’s discourse about physical bodies possessed by a spirit. 78 For a recent discussion of the issues see Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 528–35. 79 For a discussion of the construction of ritual space in 1 Corinthians 11–14 see Jorunn Økland, Women in Their Place: Paul and the Corinthian Discourse of Gender and Sanctuary Space (JSNTSup 269; London: T & T Clark, 2004). Because spirit possession is too much in the background of her analysis, she does not give sufficient attention to the possibility that the ritual space constructed by Paul (1 Cor 14:26–33a) and the ritual space constructed by the glosses in 11:3–16 and 14:33b–36 are different.

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The two versions of Paul’s conversion preserved in the New Testament are embedded in these two competing constructions of physical bodies possessed by spirits. Paul’s own version in Galatians 1 locates authority in the one possessed by the crucified and resurrected Lord: “When God was pleased to reveal his son in me, I did not consult with flesh and blood” (Gal 1:16–17). Paul’s authority is not determined by relationships to other physical bodies but by the resurrected deity that possessed him. On the other hand, the narrative in Acts subordinates the individual possessed by the spirit to the church, so that Jesus says to Saul, “Get up and enter into the city, and you will be told what to do” (Acts 9:6). Saul then receives the spirit through the laying on of hands of Ananias (9:17–19) and soon visits the apostles in Jerusalem (9:26–30). The hierarchy of the church in Acts is entirely male. Spirit possession is a discourse about physical bodies. “Religious experience” as a mystification of this discourse should be retired by the historian of religions in general and the historian of early Christianity in particular. History of religions is not a history of so-called religious experiences. History of religions is a history of the ever changing discourses about the presence of deities constructed in relation to specific social, political, and economic contexts. “Religious experience” is an apologetic category for the essence of religion, a category that depends entirely on the mythology of those who believe. As such, “religious experience” obscures the interests served by discourses about deities who possess both male and female bodies.80

Works Cited Alkier, Stefan. Wunder und Wirklichkeit in den Briefen des Apostels Paulus: Ein Beitrag zu einem Wunderverständnis jenseits von Entmythologisierung und Rehistorisierung. WUNT 134. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001. Ashton, John. The Religion of Paul the Apostle. New Haven: Yale University, 2000. Aune, David E. “Magic in Early Christianity.” ANRW II.23.2.1507–57. Betz, Hans Dieter. Galatians. Hermeneia. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979. Boas, Franz. The Religion of the Kwakiutl Indians. 2 volumes. New York: Columbia University, 1930. Conzelmann, Hans. 1 Corinthians. Hermeneia. Edited by George W. MacRae, S.J. Translated by James W. Leitch. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975. 80

See also my review in the Journal of Religion (forthcoming) of Colleen Shantz’s Paul in Ecstasy: The Neurobiology of the Apostle’s Life and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). I appreciate the support of a grant from the Faculty Research and Development Program, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, DePaul University, for research for this essay. This essay is an expansion of a paper presented in 2008 in the Bible, Myth, and Myth Theory consultation of the Society of Biblical Literature.

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Droge, Arthur J. “Conversion as a Native Category.” Pages 392–97 in Ancient and Modern Perspectives on the Bible and Culture: Essays in Honor of Hans Dieter Betz. Edited by Adela Yarbro Collins. Atlanta: Scholars, 1998. Elliott, Susan. Cutting Too Close for Comfort: Paul’s Letter to the Galatians in Its Anatolian Cultic Context. JSNTSup 248. London: T & T Clark, 2003. Fee, Gordon. The First Epistle to the Corinthians. NICNT. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987. Fitzmyer, Joseph A. First Corinthians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. Anchor Yale Bible 32. New Haven: Yale University, 2008. Gunkel, Hermann. The Influence of the Holy Spirit: The Popular View of the Apostolic Age and the Teaching of the Apostle Paul. Translated by Roy A. Harrisville and Philip A. Quanbeck II. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979. Gunkel, Hermann. Die Wirkungen des heiligen Geistes nach der populären Anschauung der apostolischen Zeit und der Lehre des Apostels Paulus: Eine biblisch-theologische Studie. 2nd ed. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1899. Gustafsson, Mai Lan. War and Shadows: The Haunting of Vietnam. Ithaca: Cornell University, 2009. Hurtado, Larry W. Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. Hurtado, Larry W. “Religious Experience and Religious Innovation in the New Testament.” JR 80 (2000): 183–205. Johnson, Luke Timothy. Religious Experience in Earliest Christianity: A Missing Dimension in New Testament Studies. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998. Käsemann, Ernst. New Testament Questions of Today. London: S.C.M., 1969. Kelhoffer, James A. “The Apostle Paul and Justin Martyr on the Miraculous: A Comparison of Appeals to Authority.” GRBS 42 (2001): 163–84. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Structural Anthropology. Translated by Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf. New York: Basic Books, 1963. Lewis, I. M. Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession. 3d ed. London: Routledge: 2003. Lincoln, Bruce. “Theses on Method.” Pages 395–98 in The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion. Edited by Russell T. McCutcheon. London: Cassell, 1999. Martyn, J. Louis. Galatians. AB 33A. New York: Doubleday, 1997. Mount, Christopher. “1 Corinthians 11:3–16: Spirit Possession and Authority in a NonPauline Interpolation.” JBL 124 (2005): 313–40. Økland, Jorunn. Women in Their Place: Paul and the Corinthian Discourse of Gender and Sanctuary Space. JSNTSup 269. London: T & T Clark, 2004. Segal, Alan F. Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee. New Haven: Yale University, 1990. Shantz, Colleen. Paul in Ecstasy: The Neurobiology of the Apostle’s Life and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Sharf, Robert H. “Experience.” Pages 94–116 in Critical Terms for Religious Studies. Edited by Mark C. Taylor. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1998. Smith, Morton. Jesus the Magician. New York: Harper & Row, 1978. Wach, Joachim. The Comparative Study of Religions. Edited by Joseph M. Kitagawa. New York: Columbia University, 1958. Whitehead, Harry. “The Hunt for Quesalid: Tracking Lévi-Strauss’ Shaman.” Anthropology & Medicine 7 (2000): 149–68.

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Wilson, Robert R. Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980. Wire, Antoinette Clark. The Corinthian Women Prophets: A Reconstruction through Paul’s Rhetoric. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990.

The Example of Thecla and the Example(s) of Paul Disputing Women’s Role in Early Christianity OUTI LEHTIPUU

Around the year 200 C.E., Tertullian of Carthage ran into difficulties with a certain, otherwise unknown woman, a visiting teacher in the city. Tertullian especially disapproved of her teaching on baptism and was disturbed to see how many were attracted to it. To fight this “female viper from the Cainite sect” – as he calls her – he wrote a treatise On Baptism1 and claimed that the woman had no authority behind her. Tertullian writes, But if the writings, which wrongly go under Paul’s name, claim the example of Thecla for allowing women to teach and to baptize, let them know that in Asia the presbyter who compiled that document, thinking to add to Paul’s reputation, was found out, and though he confessed he had done it for love of Paul, resigned from his position. How could we believe that Paul should give a female power to teach and to baptize, when he did not allow a woman even to learn in her own right? Let them keep silent, he says, and ask their husbands at home. 2

This quotation reveals two competing views of how the legacy of Paul was understood and used in the second Christian century to justify the role and place of women. On the one hand, there were those who, like Tertullian, referred to Paul’s instruction on silencing women in the Christian gatherings (cf. 1 Cor 14:33–36) and used their authority to fight against women’s leadership in the church.3 This Pauline passage was frequently cited by those who wanted to underline women’s subordination, on par only with the prohibition of women to teach (1 Tim 2:12). On the other hand, there were others who recalled how Paul had commissioned his female compan1 See the Latin text with an English translation in Ernest Evans, Tertullian’s Homily on Baptism (London: SPCK, 1964). The characterization of the woman is found in On Baptism 1. 2 On Baptism 17.5. The translation is modified from that of Evans. For the many problems concerning the translation of the passage, see A. Hilhorst, “Tertullian and the Acts of Paul,” in The Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla (ed. Jan N. Bremmer; Kampen: Pharos, 1996), 150–63 and the appendix in Dietrich Schleyer, Tertullian De Baptismo, De Oratione – Von der Taufe, Vom Gebet (Fontes Christiani 76; Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 280–87. 3 Cf. Tertullian’s other treatises, On the Veiling of Virgins 9.1 and On the Prescription of Heretics 41.5.

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ion Thecla to act as a preacher and leaned on her example in defending their own right to teach and to baptize. The story of Thecla has survived both independently4 and as a part of a larger narrative known as the Acts of Paul.5 In the story, Paul is Thecla’s teacher and lends his authority to her as she becomes an itinerant teacher on her own. As we can see, Tertullian downplays the significance of this work by claiming its origin spurious,6 but there were other Christian teachers who valued it. 7 There were several debates among early Christians over the legacy of Paul. The question of women, in particular their role and conduct, was not the least among these. In this essay, I give some examples of how different early Christian writers used Paul, his heritage, and his authority, to legitimize what they understood to be the proper role for women. By a woman’s role I mean, on the one hand, her opportunities for teaching and performing leadership roles in Christian communities and, on the other hand, her position in the family within the framework of marriage – particularly the question of whether a woman should marry or stay celibate. In many ancient discussions, these two aspects were inseparably intertwined. Paul and his teaching were used as guarantors of quite different views: celibacy, monogamy, in some cases even sexual liberalism, as well as women’s active role in the Christian gatherings and their submission to male officeholders.

4 The writing is extraordinarily well preserved. Geerard lists 46 Greek manuscripts, which makes it possible to reconstruct the whole text; Mauritius Geerard, Clavis Apocryphorum Novi Testamentum (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992), 119–22. In addition, there are translations in, e.g., Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Geez, and Old Slavonic. Even though the title Acts of Paul and Thecla appears in only one of the manuscripts, this is the customary name for the writing in scholarship. Some scholars prefer the name Acts of Thecla since she is clearly the protagonist in the story while Paul only appears as a minor character. In this essay, I refer to the writing, by force of habit, as the Acts of Paul and Thecla. 5 Scholars are not unanimous over the question whether the Acts of Paul and Thecla was originally an independent narrative later incorporated into the larger Acts of Paul or whether it was an original part of the Acts of Paul that was later also circulated independently. The first position is maintained, e.g., by Anne Jensen, Thekla – Die Apostolin: Ein apokrypher Text neu entdeckt (Gütersloh: Kaiser, 1999); the latter, e.g., by Willy Rordorf, “Tradition and Composition in the Acts of Thecla: The State of the Question,” Semeia 38 (1986): 43–52. 6 The manuscript tradition of On Baptism poses some uncertainties as to the original wording of the passage but it is fairly certain that Tertullian refers to the Acts of Paul and Thecla; Hilhorst, “Tertullian and the Acts of Paul.” 7 E.g., Hippolytus, Commentary on Daniel 3.29; Origen, On First Principles 1.2.3 and Commentary on John 20.12. On the other hand, later writers such as Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History 3.3.5; 3.25.4) and Jerome (Lives of Illustrious Men 7) count it among apocryphal works.

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A. Paul and Women – An Ambiguous Legacy Such competing judgments on what Paul thought about women and their social role is due to the ambiguous legacy of the apostle. On the one hand, he mentions several women and refers to them as his coworkers with equal roles, tasks, and titles. On the other hand, he seems to take different gender roles as the natural order and value men more highly than women. Paul’s letters testify to women’s significant role in the church of his day. Phoebe is a GLDNRQRM of the church at Cenchreae (Rom 16:1–2) – Paul uses the same title of himself, Timothy, and many others (Phil 1:1). Prisca together with her husband Aquila are called Paul’s coworkers (VXQHUJRL) in Rome (Rom 16:3–4), and Euodia and Syntyche are the called the same in Philippi (Phil 4:2–3). An otherwise unknown Mary together with Tryphaena, Tryphosa, and Persis are called “hard-working” for the Lord (Rom 16:6,12). Junia receives the title “apostle,” the title Paul perhaps valued higher than any other (Rom 16:7).8 In Corinth, women prophesied and prayed openly in Christian gatherings (1 Cor 11:5–6). Moreover, Paul declares all earthly distinctions abolished “in Christ”: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). 9 Despite all this, however, Paul does not dispense with the patriarchal gender roles and ideological structures behind them. Even though some of the passages that most explicitly subordinate women belong to the pseudoPauline letters,10 there is ample evidence of a similar attitude in Paul’s genuine letters. According to Paul, “Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of the woman”11 (1 Cor 11:3); man “is the image and reflection of God; but woman is the reflection of man” (1 Cor 11:7); and man was not “created for the sake of woman, but woman for the sake of man” (1 Cor 11:9) – to say nothing of the aforementioned passage quoted by Tertullian where Paul claims that women are not permitted to speak in the Christian gatherings but should be subordinate and ask their husbands at home if they desire to know something (1 Cor 14:33–36). Most scholars take this last passage to be an interpolation to Paul’s text12 but, interesting8

See Bernadette Brooten, “Junia . . . Outstanding among the Apostles,” in Women Priests (ed. A. Swidler and L. Swidler; Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1977), 141–44; Eldon Jay Epp, Junia: The First Woman Apostle (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005). 9 All Biblical quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), if not otherwise noted. 10 See further below. 11 I diverge here from the NRSV which translates the word D QKU as “husband,” and JXQK as “wife.” 12 E.g., Dennis R. MacDonald, The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983), 86–89; Gordon D. Fee, The First

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ly, many scholars who read Paul from a feminist perspective consider it authentic.13 These kinds of tensions in Paul’s gender-related teachings have been solved in various ways in scholarship. For example, it is assumed that the order for women to keep silent only pertains to married women – after all, they are the only women who have husbands whom they can ask at home – while celibate women could speak publicly.14 Others have pointed out that Paul did not necessarily have any special “view of women” at all.15 In accordance with the androcentric ancient gender model that did not regard women as equal partners to men, he remained mainly indifferent towards women. Whatever Paul had in mind when writing about women in these passages, his teachings were read in various competing ways. The available sources attest a variety of readings, some of which have only been preserved in polemical contexts in the writings of those who opposed these readings. At first glance, there seem to be two opposing positions: first, there were those who forbade women to hold any leadership roles and who favored marriage and the submission of wives to their husbands as the natural order. Second, there were those who allowed women more freedom, entrusted them with similar tasks as men and favored asceticism.16 This kind of categorization, however, is too generalized. A closer look at the sources shows that the lines were not always clear cut. Moreover, the freedom of women in their social roles was limited and could only be enacted within the bounds of patriarchal structures.

Epistle to the Corinthians (The New International Commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 699–705; Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (San Francisco: Harper, 2005), 183–84; Epp, Junia, 15–20. 13 E.g., Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 230; Antoinette Clark Wire, The Corinthian Women Prophets: A Reconstruction through Paul’s Rhetoric (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 230–31; Jorunn Økland, Women in Their Place: Paul and the Corinthian Discourse of Gender and Sanctuary Place (JSNT Supp 269; London and New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 149–51. Cf. Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation (Boston: Beacon, 1985), 5. 14 E.g., Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 231–33. 15 Økland, Women in Their Place, 20–22. She follows Luce Irigaray in arguing that within Paul’s “phallogocentric framework,” the whole concept of “Paul’s view of women” is misleading. In Paul’s letters, “gender issues do not necessarily have to be linked to any ‘real’ women.” 16 Cf. Ross S. Kraemer, Her Share of the Blessings: Women’s Religions among Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 154.

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B. The Pastoral Epistles: Silencing Women with Male Authority The dispute over the legacy of Paul began early and is already traceable within the New Testament writings. After the death of the apostle, some of his followers wrote letters in his name, thus borrowing his authority to secure the acceptance of their writings.17 When these letters were copied and circulated in Paul’s name, they were established as Paul’s letters and the subsequent Christian writers made no distinction between the genuine letters and those ascribed to Paul. When the pseudo-Pauline letters are compared with the authentic ones, as far as women are concerned, there is a discernible shift towards emphasizing marriage and the woman’s proper role as an obedient wife. The household codes in Ephesians and Colossians (Eph 5:22–33; Col 3:18–19), for example, put the woman firmly in her place vis-à-vis the man in full subordination to him. The writer of Colossians imitates Paul’s ideas in declaring all Christians equal but, strikingly, the writer leaves out the gender dichotomy from his list of distinctions that are no longer valid: “There is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all” (Col 3:11). This understanding of women’s role is also shared by the writer(s) of the pastoral epistles (1–2 Timothy and Titus). Their ideal woman loves her husband and children, is self-controlled, chaste, a good manager of the household, kind, and submissive to her husband (Titus 2:4–5). The writer of 1 Timothy prohibits women from all public activities outside the house: Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty (1 Tim 2:11–15).

The proper conduct of a woman is described as silence, repeated twice in the text. Verses 11 and 12 form a chiastic structure that puts emphasis on the prohibition against teaching:18

17 Scholars give different reasons for pseudepigraphy; according to some, it is motivated by reverence for a former teacher, but others call it “forgery” that aims at adding prestige and authority to the views of the writer. Be that as it may – and these two do not have to be mutually exclusive – borrowing the name means also borrowing the authority of the teacher. 18 Elisabeth Esch-Wermeling, Thekla – Paulusschülerin wider Willen? Strategien der Leserlenkung in den Theklaakten (Münster: Aschendorff, 2008), 36.

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Outi Lehtipuu a woman must learn in silence (H QKVX[LD_; A) in all subjection (H Q SDVK_XS RWDJK _; B); she is not allowed to teach (C) or to have authority (DX THQWHL Q; B’) but must be in silence (H QKVX[LD_; A’).

A woman should not act as a teacher or a leader but remain silent and passively listen to the male teacher. The writer refers to the Genesis story of creation and fall as a basis for asserting the passivity of women. The woman is doubly under male authority for, first, she was created only after the man and, second, it was she, not he, who was deceived by the serpent. As we have seen, Paul used a similar kind of argument in his letter to the Corinthians to justify the command to have women cover their heads in Christian gatherings (and men have their heads uncovered): “Man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for the sake of woman, but woman for the sake of man” (1 Cor 11:8–9). Silence not only characterizes the proper conduct of a woman in relation to public life but also in relation to man in the private sphere. She is fully subordinate to him and finds her proper place at home, bearing and bringing up children. Connecting a woman’s salvation to childbearing totally ignores the experiences of those women who are not able to have children. It obliges all women capable of conceiving to produce children. Families are of utmost importance for the writer and family loyalty is a vital virtue for him. Those who are disobedient to their parents are godless and worse than unbelievers (1 Tim 5:8; 2 Tim 3:2). Young people must honor their elders, slaves must be obedient to their masters, and everyone must be subject to rulers and authorities (1 Tim 5:1,17; 6:1–2; Titus 2:11; 3:1). The family forms a solid basis for both the society and the church. This emphasis on family marks a clear difference from the teachings of the authentic Paul. Whereas Paul favored celibacy and recommended marriage only for those too weak to exercise self-control (1 Cor 7:7–9), the pastoral epistles (and other pseudo-Pauline letters) take it for granted that all Christians are married. The only exception are widows – but real widows are those who are over sixty years old (1 Tim 5:9); younger widows are urged to remarry and bear children (1 Tim 5:13–14). Instead, the authentic Paul believed that a widow is “more blessed if she remains as she is” (1 Cor 7:40). Moreover, while Paul reasons that, in contrast to those who have a spouse, the unmarried can devote themselves wholeheartedly to “the affairs of the Lord” (1 Cor 7:33–34), pseudo-Paul argues the opposite: only those who have shown they can manage their own household can act as overseers of the H NNOKVLD (1 Tim 3:5). For him, family and the Christian church are not opposites but the same.

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C. The Acts of Paul and Thecla: Empowering Women to Act The later canonical status of these pseudo-Pauline texts has often hidden the fact that the view they represent is not the only way Paul was remembered in the second century.19 Although their writers claim to be the only rightful heirs of the Pauline legacy, there were other, competing views that allowed women more freedom. The most striking example of these is in the previously mentioned Acts of Paul and Thecla. It presents a Paul who praises virginity, even makes it a precondition for salvation (ch. 12)20 and who commissions his female follower to continue his mission as an independent teacher (ch. 41). As we have seen, Tertullian accepted the claim of the pastoral epistles but rejected the Acts of Paul and Thecla as a forgery. The story of Thecla is unique among early Christian writings in that it has a woman protagonist. She is a “high society girl” who hears Paul’s preaching on continence, converts and becomes a devout virgin, rejects her fiancé, incurs the dismay of her mother, and upsets the whole city. She is condemned to death twice but miraculously escapes each time. When she is facing death for the second time in the arena, she performs self-baptism. She becomes an independent apostle who proclaims her message publicly in front of the governor (ch. 37), teaches and converts other women (ch. 39) and becomes an itinerant evangelist dressed in a man’s clothing (ch. 40.) The narrative ends with Paul’s commissioning her to preach and she is said to “enlighten many with the word of God” until she “sleeps with a noble sleep” (ch. 43).21 Even though this is all that is reported of Thecla’s activities, it implies that she continued her work as an independent teacher.22 The Greek verb IZWL]HLQ (to illuminate or enlighten) was also used as a term for baptizing and teaching in early Christianity. 23 19

Cf. McDonald, Legend and the Apostle, 15. In the text, it is actually Paul’s adversaries Demas and Hermogenes who claim that Paul teaches that “there is no resurrection for you, if you do not remain chaste, and do not defile the flesh, but keep it pure.” Some scholars have suggested that this actually does not represent Paul’s view but is a malevolent counterfeit of it. However, the statement accords well with Paul’s overall preaching on celibacy in chapters 5–6. 21 According to a later tradition, Thecla left Iconium at eighteen and lived as a virgin for seventy-two years before she dies at the age of ninety. Cornelia Horn goes against this ancient tradition when she argues that Thecla was a child “nearing marriageable age” when she encounters Paul; Cornelia B. Horn, “Suffering Children, Parental Authority and the Quest for Liberation?: A Tale of Three Girls in the Acts of Paul (and Thecla), the Act(s) of Peter, the Acts of Nerseus and Achilleus and the Epistle of Pseudo-Titus,” in A Feminist Companion to the New Testament Apocrypha (ed. Amy-Jill Levine; Feminist Companion to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings 11; London and New York: T&T Clark, 2006), 122–30. 22 The subsequent tradition knew several miracles performed by Thecla. A collection of them together with a version of the Acts of Paul and Thecla was compiled in the fifth 20

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Paul’s attitude toward women, their marital status and public role in the Acts of Paul and Thecla seems to be a diametrical opposite of his view in the pastoral letters, as several scholars have noted.24 The pastoral Paul prohibits women from teaching; Paul the companion of Thecla appoints her to teach. The pastoral Paul urges all women (and men) to marry; Paul the companion of Thecla rejects marriage altogether. The pastoral Paul promises salvation for those women who bear children; Paul the companion of Thecla claims that only those who have renounced sexual relations will be resurrected. The pastoral Paul equates obedience to parents and authorities with obedience to God and understands Christianity as strengthening social ties; Paul the companion of Thecla challenges her loyalty to her mother and fiancé, commands his followers to obey only God, and shakes the whole foundation of society with his preaching in favor of asceticism. century as De vita et miraculis sanctae Theclae (The Life and Miracles of Saint Thecla); see Gilbert Dagron, Vie et miracles de sainte Thècle: Texte grec, traduction et commentaire (Subsidia Hagiographica 62; Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1978). 23 Ruth Albrecht, Das Leben der heiligen Makrina auf dem Hintergrund der TheklaTraditionen: Studien zu den Ursprüngen des weiblichen Mönchtums im 4. Jahrhundert in Kleinasien (Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte 38; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986), 270–71. The noun IZWLVPRM was used for baptism; cf. Justin Martyr, 1 Apol 61.12: “And this washing is called illumination (IZWLVPRM), because they who learn these things are illuminated (IZWL]RPHQ ZQ) in their understandings.” Similarly, Methodius, Symposium 8.8: “. . . the enlightened (RL IZWL]RPHQRL) receive the features, and the image, and the manliness of Christ, the likeness of the form of the Word being stamped upon them, and begotten in them by a true knowledge and faith, so that in each one Christ is spiritually born” (trans. Roberts and Donaldson in ANF 6). 24 E.g., J. Rohde, “Pastoralbriefe und Acta Pauli,” in Studia Evangelica 5 (ed. Frank L. Cross; Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1968), 303–10; Willy Rordorf, “In welchem Verhältnis stehen die apokryphen Paulusakten zur kanonischen Apostelgeschichte und zu den Pastoralbriefen?” and “Nochmals: Paulusakten und Pastoralbriefe,” in Lex Orandi Lex Credendi: Gesammelte Aufsätze zum 60. Geburtstag (Paradosis 36; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1993), 449–65 and 466–74; MacDonald, Legend and the Apostle. Peter W. Dunn expresses a dissenting opinion and claims that there is no real conflict between the pastoral epistles and the Acts of Paul; The Acts of Paul and the Pauline Legacy in the Second Century (Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, 1996), 47–100. In his view, the writings share several attitudes concerning Christian life, and their relationship is amicable. The differences are only apparent and due to different emphasis: while the pastoral epistles prohibit excessive asceticism, the Acts of Paul and Thecla “proves the positive side of asceticism but remains within the boundaries of the Great Church.” Similarly, the pastoral epistles only prohibit women teaching men but encourage older women to teach younger ones (cf. Titus 2:4–5). This is what Thecla does: she only instructs women in Tryphaena’s house and converts many of them (ch. 39). Dunn’s reading however, is extremely harmonizing and does not appreciate the many details of the texts. For example, when Thecla goes again to seek Paul (ch. 40) she is followed by both men and women. Are we to believe that she restricted her teaching only to her female companions?

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Several scholars have suggested that these opposing views are not a coincidence but either the pastorals were written to overcome the “false” image of Paul and his teaching on women in the Acts of Paul and Thecla, or vice versa. There is no unanimity, however, on which way the influence goes. Since the pastoral epistles are undoubtedly older than the Acts of Paul and Thecla in its existing forms, many scholars assume that the compiler of the Acts of Paul and Thecla knew the pastoral epistles and intentionally presented Paul in a different light. Others follow the influential thesis of Dennis MacDonald who claims that the writer(s) of the pastoral epistles are fighting against oral legends that lie behind the Acts of Paul and Thecla. These legends that, in his view, originated among celibate female storytellers who lived outside the established oikia-system, promoted freedom for women to teach in the church and called for strict celibacy.25 It was the pastoral letters, then, that were written specifically to counteract these legends and the image of Paul in them and to “depict a more domestic, quiescent, and respectable Paul.”26 MacDonald’s thesis is attractive since the forceful prohibition against women teachers and leaders in 1 Timothy seems to imply that there actually were women who acted in teaching and leadership roles. Why would the writer attack women who do not understand their proper place in the home so vigorously had there been none? It is questionable, however, whether the writer was directly reacting against traditions about Thecla and Paul. The relationship between the pastoral letters and the Acts of Paul and Thecla seems to be more complicated than MacDonald’s thesis implies. There are several indicators of common tradition, most obviously the geographical names Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra (2 Tim 3:11; cf. Acts Paul 1–3)27 and the personal names Onesiphorus, Demas, and Hermogenes, otherwise not widely known (2 Tim 1:15–16; 4:10,19; cf. Acts Paul 1–2; 4– 5).28 However, it is noteworthy that all these names occur in 2 Timothy while the pastoral teaching concerning women is found in 1 Timothy and Titus. Even if we assume that all three letters were written by the same author,29 it would be difficult to explain why he would so split the oral 25

MacDonald, Legend and the Apostle, 14, 34–53. MacDonald, Legend and the Apostle, 34. 27 2 Tim 3:11 reads: “. . . my persecutions, and my suffering the things that happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions I endured! Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them.” Curiously, there is a later textual variant that adds: “. . . my suffering the things that happened to me in Antioch that I suffered for Thecla’s sake.” 28 Rordorf, “In welchem Verhältnis,” 462. 29 This is the standard scholarly opinion, especially concerning 1 Timothy and Titus. Most scholars would take 2 Timothy as coming from the same hand, too. See Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (Second Edition; New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 357. 26

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traditions that contained both the names and the portrayal of Paul who encourages women to act.30 No matter how the relationship of these writings is explained, it is indisputable that many views in the Acts of Paul and Thecla concerning women come close to the position that is polemicized in the pastorals.31

D. Acts of Paul and Thecla and the Social Reality of Early Christian Women The rise of feminist scholarship in the 1980s and onward has resulted in an ongoing interest in the apocryphal acts in general and in the Acts of Paul and Thecla in particular. The first stage was characterized by enthusiasm: the story of Thecla appeared to offer an access to the everyday life of early Christian women. If anywhere then here, it was said, was a writing reflecting “sensitivity to women,”32 communicating women’s experiences and sentiments, and originating from among female storytellers,33 perhaps even

30 Annette Merz, Die fiktive Selbstauslegung des Paulus: Intertextuelle Studien zur Intention und Rezeption der Pastoralbriefe (NTOA 52; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht/Fribourg: Academic Press, 2004), 215, n. 64. 31 Many scholars who otherwise criticize MacDonald agree with him that the Acts of Paul and Thecla contains traditions that are polemicized in the pastorals. For Merz, the oldest layer of tradition in Acts Paul is found in Paul’s beatitudes (chs. 5–6) that praise celibacy and continence; Selbstauslegung, 321–23. For Esch-Wermeling, it is the Antioch episode (chs. 26–39); Thekla, 304–8. In her view, the compiler of the Acts fights a war on two fronts: on the one hand, he opposes views reflected in the pastorals that restrict the role of women solely to procreation but on the other hand, he has domesticated the representation of Thecla as an independent preacher in the Antioch episode by incorporating it between the Iconium episode where Thecla is totally dependant on Paul, and the epilogue where she, again, submits herself to Paul’s authority. The result is an ambiguous portrait, as if Thecla in Iconium and Thecla in Antioch “were two different persons who happen to share the same name,” as Richard I. Pervo summarizes it in his review of Esch-Wermeling’s book in the Review of Biblical Literature. In this solution, Esch-Wermeling follows Anne Jensen who, likewise, considers the Antioch episode the oldest part of the legend. In Jensen’s view, Thecla – whom she takes to be a historical figure – had originally nothing to do with Paul. The integration of her story into the Acts of Paul did not help her fame; on the contrary, it “has derogated her reputation, decreased her fame and eventually led to her disappearance from the memory of the western church”; Thekla – Die Apostolin, 43 (my translation). 32 MacDonald, Legend and the Apostle, 35. 33 Virginia Burrus, “Chastity as Autonomy: Women in the Stories of the Apocryphal Acts,” Semeia 38 (1986): 101–17; Chastity as Autonomy: Women in the Stories of Apocryphal Acts (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1987), 77; MacDonald, Legend and the Apostle, 34–53.

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from a female author.34 One argument for this was the narrative’s disproportionate characterization along gender lines; women are portrayed in a sympathetic light showing solidarity with Thecla – her mother being a noteworthy exception – while men are constantly shown in a negative light.35 This female solidarity extends itself to the animal world: a lioness protects Thecla in the arena and fights other beasts until her own death. Even though the story contains many fanciful features, it shows that celibacy gave women a new kind of autonomy – rejecting marriage meant moving outside the conventional social and sexual roles – and gave selfdetermination and an escape from male control.36 Not everyone has been as enthusiastic.37 The second stage of scholarship noted that the path leading from a textual representation to social reality is a complex one. The Acts of Paul and Thecla and other apocryphal acts should not be read as evidence of real women’s lives.38 According to Kate Cooper, these stories describe “essentially a conflict between men. The challenge posed here by Christianity is not really about women, or even about sexual continence, but about authority and the social order.”39 Women in these texts serve a purely rhetorical function in a male struggle over power. The Acts of Paul and Thecla offers no good news for women. At a closer look, the character of Thecla reveals no signs of resisting the patriarchal models of her day; especially in the first part of the story, she remains an ideal woman, silent and exaggeratingly obedient to Paul. Instead of playing the role of an autonomous subject, she remains an object – whether that of Paul’s apostolic authority, of men’s sexual desire, or of public gaze in the arena – and in order to gain an independent position, she must act and dress up as a man, become “one of the guys,” and fulfill masculine standards.40 34

Stevan L. Davies, The Revolt of the Widows: The Social World of the Apocryphal Acts (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press/London: Feffer & Simons, 1980), 105–9. 35 Davies, Revolt, 10–11; Burrus, Chastity as Autonomy, 111–12. 36 E.g., Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Mothers of the Church: Ascetic Women in the Late Patristic Age,” in Women of Spirit: Female Leadership in the Jewish and Christian Traditions (ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether and Eleanor McLaughlin; New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), 71–98; Burrus, Chastity as Autonomy. 37 See Shelly Matthews, “Thinking of Thecla: Issues in Feminist Historiography.” JFSR 17 (2001): 39–55. 38 Kate Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Antiquity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 45–67; Judith Lieu, “The ‘Attraction of Women’ in/to Early Judaism and Christianity: Gender and the Politics of Conversion,” JSNT 72 (1998): 5–22. 39 Cooper, Virgin, 55, emphasis original; cf. Lieu, “Attraction,” 18–19. 40 Cf. Susan A. Calef, “Thecla ‘Tried and True’ and the Inversion of Romance,” 183– 85.

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Both these positions seem to contain some truth but, as such, they are both one-sided. A text is always a literary artifact, not a one-to-one reproduction of the world outside of the text. The move from the textual world to social reality, from rhetoric to social experience is not straightforward.41 Claiming anything else only produces “naïve historical readings.”42 A female protagonist does not necessitate a female storyteller. Whatever “feminine sensitivities” a modern scholar reads from the text, they do not necessarily correspond to the sensitivities of ancient women. Moreover, the benevolence of women and the evilness of men in the story have often been exaggerated.43 Onesiphorus, for example, is a male character that is viewed in a thoroughly positive light. Most other male figures do act against Thecla, but they are rather ambiguous characters. Thecla’s fiancé, Thamyris, for example, clearly loves her44 and only after the advice of Paul’s deceitful companions Demas and Hermogenes does he bring charges against Paul. Similarly, the two governors are hesitant to condemn Thecla (and Paul), weep when they see her in the arena and listen to Thecla’s (and Paul’s) preaching willingly. Furthermore, women are not unequivocally positive characters. Even though the anonymous women are mostly described as feeling sympathy and solidarity toward Thecla, in the arena they are divided: some weep for Thecla, others are against her.45 The animals are not divided along gender lines, either; the lioness protects Thecla against a she-bear (WK?QD UNRQ).46 However, to say that the story “is not really about women” is equally misleading. As critics of this view have pointed out, the Acts of Paul and Thecla (and other apocryphal acts) describe circumstances that had a counterpart in the real life of early Christian women: there existed ascetic communities; mixed marriages between Christian women and nonChristian men were common; there were wealthy women who acted as patronesses of different cult associations; etc.47 Moreover, questions concerning power, authority, and social order were also women’s questions in the early Christian movement, which was never exclusively male, as

41

Lieu, “Attraction,” 20. Carolyn Osiek and Margaret Y. MacDonald with Janet H. Tulloch, A Woman’s Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006), 241. 43 Jensen, Thekla – Die Apostolin, 89. 44 When he hears about her devotion to Paul, he comes to her “at one and the same time loving her and yet afraid of her distraction” and when Thecla does not even turn to him and listen to his pleading he “wept bitterly for the loss of a wife” (10, cf. 13). 45 Chapters 27–28, 32. In the Iconium episode, those who bring straw and wood to build the pyre in the arena include both males and females (ch. 22). 46 Chapter 33. Cf. Albrecht, Leben der heiligen Makrina, 276. 47 Osiek and MacDonald, Woman’s Place, 241. 42

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Shelly Matthews has aptly noted.48 Whatever the rhetorical function of the women characters in the apocryphal acts may originally have been, there were real women who heard and read these texts and could have been inspired and encouraged by them to act beyond the cultural expectations.49 The Acts of Paul and Thecla is a profoundly ambiguous text that resists any simple solution. On the one hand, Thecla is characterized as “Paul’s lamb-like model disciple”50 who is ready to follow him blindly wherever he goes. The first part of the narrative resembles other apocryphal acts where the young and extraordinarily beautiful heroine becomes an involuntary party in a triangular drama with herself, the apostle and a leading man of the city. But as the narrative unfolds, this male power struggle breaks down: Paul disappears from the scene and leaves Thecla to act on her own. In the latter part of the story, there is no apostle and thus, no male combat; rather, Thecla has to fight the lustful Alexander alone. Now she takes initiative and acts independently, making choices without Paul’s consent – both baptism and dressing up as a man are something Paul previously refused her. This description of Thecla as an independent actor allows her to partly escape the submissive rhetoric.

E. Asceticism and Autonomy? Virginity and asceticism were part of Christian life from early on. Paul’s exhortation “let even those who have wives be as though they had none” (1 Cor 7:29) gave an important scriptural support for ascetic practices. The Paul of the Acts of Paul and Thecla repeats this instruction verbatim in one of his beatitudes: “Blessed are they who have wives as if they had them not, for they shall be heirs to God” (ch. 5). Renouncing the world, refusing marriage, and remaining celibate became attractive for many women.51 It is 48

Matthews, “Thinking of Thecla,” 50. According to Cooper (Virgin, 64–65), those women whom Tertullian confronts read the text against its intentions – either due to “a lack of cultural sophistication or a deliberate, self-interested blind eye” – and saw Thecla “not as an icon of obedience to the apostolic word” – as would be the “correct” reading – “but as a precedent for women’s clerical authority.” However, it is not possible to define an original ideological function of a text that can lend itself to the service of competing ideologies. Each text allows for several interpretations that are partly dependant on the position of the reader, and partly due to the ambiguities, intentional as well as unintentional, of the text. 50 Esch-Wermeling, Thekla, 44. 51 Elizabeth A. Castelli, “Virginity and its Meaning for Women’s Sexuality in Early Christianity,” in A Feminist Companion to Patristic Literature (ed. Amy-Jill Levine; Feminist Companion to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings, 12; London and New York: T&T Clark, 2008), 72. 49

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probable that, to some extent, freedom from the male-controlled societal system enhanced the attraction of asceticism for some of them. After all, marriage usually meant bearing children, and giving birth was often lifethreatening.52 Married women had no way of denying access to their bodies to their husbands53 – and very few means of birth control. From this perspective, asceticism offered women some control over their bodies and sexuality. This freedom, however, was relative and should not be overestimated. First of all, we need to be wary not to uncritically credit rising Christianity for liberating women oppressed by Roman society and culture. Upper class women had a certain amount of freedom in the Roman Empire – but they had it even without Christianity and stories like that of Thecla.54 Less privileged women had much less freedom – regardless of the rise of Christianity and stories like that of Thecla. Secondly, being able to step outside of the male control should not be seen as the only reason for choosing celibacy. Asceticism was also popular among men in late antiquity; in their case, the argument of “celibacy as autonomy” does not hold. Thirdly, asceticism was not always the result of an individual choice. On the contrary, it was usually the parents who made the choice of celibacy for their children, in much the same way as they were responsible for choosing a suitable spouse for them.55 Choosing celibacy seldom incurred conflict between the children and their parents. Only in the case of an elite widow might asceticism have been an autonomous choice.56 Rejecting marriage or choosing continence within marriage was not an option for every woman; most of the lower class women and all slave women would have had no say in the matter.57 Thecla and practically all other protagonists in the Acts of Paul and Thecla belong to the top elite of their cities. Many of the decisions of such a high class woman would have 52 Interestingly, many male authors praise the advantages of virginity by warning about the pains a married woman must endure, e.g., through childbirth and breastfeeding. In addition to physical pain, they recall the mental distress caused by the loss of a child and the shame and humiliation of infertility; Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (Lectures on the History of Religions 13. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 25. 53 Castelli, “Virginity,” 93. 54 Jan N. Bremmer, “Magic, Martyrdom and Women’s Liberation in the Acts of Paul and Thecla,” in The Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla (ed. Jan N. Bremmer; Kampen: Pharos, 1996), 58; Brown, Body and Society, 15; Lieu, “Attraction,” 20–21. 55 Ville Vuolanto, “Choosing Asceticism: Children and Parents, Vows and Conflicts,” in Children in Late Ancient Christianity (ed. Cornelia Horn and Robert Phenix; Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 58; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 288–91. 56 Cf. Brown, Body and Society, 6. 57 Brown, Body and Society, 23; Jennifer A. Glancy, Slavery in Early Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006), 21–24.

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been unattainable in the social reality of less privileged women. A female slave was under double submission, both to her husband (usually a fellow slave) and to her (male) master.58 Her submission included being sexually available to both of them. Would a slave woman have had any realistic possibility of staying celibate and rejecting access to her body? Had she refused the approaches of the men who had a lawful right to her body, the outcome would probably not have been a noble martyr’s death but rather recurrent rape. The unequal options of a female slave and a noble woman become evident in the Acts of Andrew. The heroine of the story, Maximilla, is the wife of the proconsul of Patras. She converts to Andrew’s ascetic Christianity that denounces all sexual relationships as pollution. To preserve her purity from the advances of her husband, she uses her female slave Euclia as a surrogate body and sends her to sleep with him.59 What would have happened if the slave girl had heard Andrew and wanted to follow his teaching? How could she have guarded her bodily integrity? According to the teaching of the Acts of Paul and Thecla, the consequences would have been severe, for “there is no resurrection for you, if you do not remain chaste, and do not defile the flesh, but keep it pure” (ch. 12). If virginity and continence are preconditions for salvation, Maximilla clearly sacrifices her slave girl and denies her salvation. Yet the author of the Acts of Andrew takes no notice of this; for him, Euclia is just an insignificant pagan slave, a useful instrument for Maximilla in her pursuit of a virtuous and pure life. Admittedly, in the story, Euclia takes delight in her special position and tries to benefit from it – with disastrous consequences. She boasts of her important status to her fellow slaves who betray her to Maximilla’s husband. He becomes furious and punishes her brutally by mutilating her body and throwing it out to be eaten by dogs. Her vulnerable position shows how difficult, even impossible, it would have been for a slave woman to even try to live according to the ideals obtainable for elite women like Maximilla or Thecla. It is intriguing to wonder how a female slave would have reacted to this story or the story of Thecla. In the latter case, Thecla runs into situations that were probably familiar to slaves, such as public humiliation or the blatant advances on a street by the rich and prominent Alexander. Thecla is saved from all her trials and troubles through divine interventions. Would this be empowering or depressing to the ears of a slave woman? Susan 58 In Roman society, slave marriages had no legal status but were possible if permitted by the slave owner. Presumably most slaves lived in a marriage-like relationship. Glancy, Slavery, 28, 45–46. 59 Acts of Andrew 17–22. See the original text in Jean-Marc Prieur, Acta Andreae (Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum 6; Turnhout: Brepols, 1989), 463–69.

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Calef states that Thecla does not really challenge the predominant social order – she retreats from it to another world, attainable only by an elite few.60 Her example does not help those women who cannot make the same choice as she did and remain untouched. On the other hand, even though Thecla’s example depicts an unobtainable ideal for most women, such ideals can be potentially empowering since “figures of fantasy . . . can also inspire,” to use Amy-Jill Levine’s phrasing.61 All in all, choosing celibacy did not eliminate other aspects of the patriarchal structures. As several scholars have pointed out, celibate women were considered autonomous persons as little as any women in a culture where to be a person was to be a man.62 Virgins were similarly defined through and perceived in association with a man as were married women. A woman did not exist without a connection to a man – if not to a husband of flesh and blood then to the heavenly Christ.63 In practical terms, they were closely connected to (male) bishops who acted as their spiritual guides but also bore responsibility for their material and physical welfare.64 It is noteworthy that the several male authors who praise virginity and (female) virgins show no anxiety about the “danger” that asceticism might result in emancipated women.65 This indicates that they did not conceive of virginity as allowing women to be out of the reach of male control. Tertullian offers a revealing example. In his treatise On the Veiling of Virgins, he argues that unmarried women should veil themselves in the same way as married women in Christian gatherings. He justifies his claim by citing Paul and concludes: “If ‘the man is head of the woman,’ [as Paul says in 1 Cor 11:3] of course (he is) of the virgin too, from whom comes the woman who has married; unless the virgin is a third generic class,

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Calef, “Thecla,” 184–85. Amy-Jill Levine, “Introduction,” in Feminist Companion to the New Testament Apocrypha (ed. Amy-Jill Levine; Feminist Companion to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings 11; London and New York: T&T Clark, 2006), 6. 62 Cf. Johannes N. Vorster, “Construction of Culture through the Construction of Person: The Construction of Thecla in the Acts of Thecla,” in Feminist Companion to the New Testament Apocrypha, 106–11. He argues that this also explains why Paul is needed in the Acts of Paul and Thecla; he acts as a necessary “donor” to construct her personality. 63 Castelli, “Virginity,” 81–83. 64 Susanna Elm, “Virgins of God:” The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1994), 160, 165. 65 Several texts were devoted to virginity in the third and fourth centuries; e.g., Cyprian, On the Dress of Virgins; Methodius, Symposium (on Virginity); John Chrysostom, On Virginity; Gregory of Nyssa, On Virginity; Athanasius, Letter to Virgins and On Virginity; Ambrose, On Virginity and Exhortation to Virginity; Augustine, On Holy Virginity. 61

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some monstrosity with a head of its own.”66 No woman could escape being under a “head,” not even a virgin. Nor could she escape the dominant sexual ideology that “constructed women’s sexuality as an object of value to be traded,” as Elizabeth Castelli puts it.67 The same Pauline argument was readily used by those who wanted to restrict women’s role in Christian communities. In the fourth century church order the Apostolic Constitutions, baptizing by women is called “dangerous,” “wicked,” and “impious” (Apos. Con. 3.9).68 It is contrary to the order of creation and nature for a woman to perform priestly duties because the “man is the head of the woman” (1 Cor 11:3). The man is the head, and the woman is “the body of the man, taken from his side, and subject to him.” The writer refers to the creation story and claims that the woman was separated from the man for the procreation of children. But the man remains the principal part and shall rule over the woman (Gen 3:16). The metaphor that extends the headship of the man to the woman and equates her with the body is already in use in the pseudo-Pauline letters (Eph 5:23, 28)69 and became influential in several early Christian discourses about women.

F. Celibacy vs. Married Life The teaching of the ascetic Paul in the Acts of Paul and Thecla is summarized as “the word of God concerning continence (H JNUDWHLD) and the resurrection” (ch. 5). This is not the only writing that portrays Paul as a preacher of asceticism combined with an eschatological message; in the canonical Acts, Paul is said to discuss “justice, self-control (H JNUDWHLD), and the coming judgment” with the Roman governor Felix (Acts 24:24– 25). Surely both asceticism and eschatology belonged to Paul’s teaching, seen especially in his discussion concerning marriage, virgins, and widows in 1 Corinthians. The series of beatitudes in the Acts of Paul and Thecla (chs. 5–6) that emphasize celibacy and promise eschatological rewards for those who stay celibate – be they married or not – echo Paul’s teaching in

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On the Veiling of Virgins 7.2. Translation by Thelwall in the ANF. Castelli, “Virginity,” 95. 68 This part of the Apostolic Constitutions goes back to the Greek third-century work Didascalia Apostolorum. The Greek original is lost but the text is known in a Syriac translation. However, the Didascalia does not refer to 1 Cor 11:3. 69 “The husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior. . . . In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies.” 67

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several ways.70 But in his insistence on a total renunciation of marriage the author goes well beyond Paul who advises married couples not to abandon their sexual relations except by common agreement for a certain period of time (1 Cor 7:2–5). This, however, is more of a concession on his part (v. 6); he does not conceal his wish that everyone would stay unmarried like he is (v. 7). This ambivalence gave space not only to the preachers of asceticism to promote it in Paul’s name but also to the straightforward assumption of the pastoral letters that every Christian should have a family. In early Christian discussions about marriage and celibacy, Paul’s discussion in 1 Corinthians 7 was often taken to mean that marriage as such was good but celibacy was even better.71 Marriage was understood as one marriage, only without permission to remarry if widowed. Second marriage was largely condemned, even though presumably widely practiced.72 For example, Justin Martyr writes in his 1 Apology: “So that all who, by human law, are twice married are in the eye of our Master sinners, and those who look upon a woman to lust after her” (1 Apol. 15:5).73 According to him, marriage is permitted but sexual intercourse is only appropriate for procreation. Remaining unmarried is an even better option; Justin boasts that he knows both men and women in their 60s and 70s who have been celibate from childhood on (1 Apol. 15:6). Both the married and the unmarried Christian share the same ideal, to stay continent (H QHJNUDWHXRPDL). Justin declares: “But whether we marry, it is only that we may bring up children; or whether we decline marriage, we live continently” (1 Apol. 29:1). No matter how ascetically inclined, most early Christian writers did not want to dispense with marriage altogether. After all, Christian communities were based on households, and too rigorous asceticism would erode the social order.74 Justification for abandoning excessive ascetic behavior was also found in the Pauline teaching. The author of 1 Timothy, then believed to have been Paul himself, warns against evil teachers who “forbid marriage and demand abstinence from foods” (1 Tim 4:3). But the common explanation was to assign marriage to “ordinary” Christians while sexual abstinence was the ideal for those who wanted to strive for perfec70

Merz, Selbstauslegung, 326–30. In addition to the direct quotation of 1 Cor 7:29 (cf. above), the beatitudes contain Pauline formulations such as becoming “a temple of God” (Cf. 1 Cor 6:19; 2 Cor 6:16) and renouncing “the form of this world” (cf. 1 Cor 7:31). 71 For an extensive treatment of patristic readings of 1 Corinthians 7, see Elizabeth A. Clark, Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 259–329. 72 Elm, “Virgins of God,” 27. 73 Quotations of Justin are according to the Roberts-Donaldson translation in ANF 1. 74 Brown, Body and Society, 90.

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tion. Some writers, however, valued marriage more highly. Clement of Alexandria, for example, stresses that both “celibacy and marriage have their distinctive services of the Lord” (Strom. 3.12.79.5; cf. 3.12.88.3) and that “the choice of celibacy or wedlock is in our power” (Strom. 3.9.66.3).75 For him, monogamy is the proper mean between the extremes of too strict celibacy and promiscuity.76 He comments with disgust how the followers of Carpocrates and Epiphanes interpret Paul’s words “no male and female” (Gal 3:28) as giving license for having women in common and extend sexual relations beyond marriage (Strom. 3.2.5–10). In advocating monogamous marriage, Clement cites the instructions in 1 Timothy that only a married man who has shown he can take care of his household is qualified for church offices (Strom. 3.12.79.5–6). Paul’s discussion of marriage as a concession, according to Clement, is really about second marriage (Strom. 3.14.3; cf. 12.82.4); he has no objections to first marriage.77 Furthermore, he backs up his argument by claiming that Paul himself was married (Strom. 3.6.53.1). Clement finds a basis for this view in his reading of Philippians where Paul speaks about his companion (VX]XJRM; Phil 4:3), a word that often – but not exclusively – means “wife.” Most commentators, both ancient and modern, take the word as a reference to one of Paul’s coworkers in Philippi or to the community as a whole. Another example of a writer who vacillates between celibacy and marriage is Clement’s contemporary Tertullian. He deals with the issue in several of his works (To My Wife, Exhortation to Chastity, On Monogamy).78 On the one hand, he demonstrates a clear preference for abstinence (To My Wife 1.3.2; On Monogamy 3.1–4), noting that when Paul gives his concession to marry he speaks in his own name (“I say”; 1 Cor 7:8–9) but when he instructs widows to stay celibate, he speaks in the name of the Spirit (“I too have the Spirit of God”, 1 Cor 7:40). On the other hand, he praises monogamy as the happy medium between immorality and excessive celibacy: 75 Quotations of Clement are taken from The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation. Vol. 85: Stromateis Books One to Three. (Trans. John Ferguson; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1991). 76 See Denise Buell, “Ambiguous Legacy: A Feminist Commentary on Clement of Alexandria’s Works” in A Feminist Companion to Patristic Literature (ed. Amy-Jill Levine; Feminist Companion to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings 12; London and New York: T&T Clark, 2006), 26–55. 77 Similarly, Clement interprets Jesus’s words of “becoming eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 19:12) as a rejection of second marriage; Strom. 3.6.50.1– 3. 78 The last one of these, On Monogamy, is usually labeled a Montanist work. Its attack against the “laxity” of allowing remarriage in the church is perhaps harsher than in the other two texts, but it is noteworthy that the view on marriage is consistent in all three of them.

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“Heretics do away with marriages; psychics accumulate them. The former marry not even once; the latter not only once” (On Monogamy 1.1). This may be due to the fact that it is expressly the practice of second marriage that he wants to fight against. A difficult verse for him is Paul’s allowance of widows to remarry (“A wife is bound as long as her husband lives. But if the husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, only in the Lord;” 1 Cor 7:39). Tertullian insists that Paul cannot contradict himself and that is why the statement cannot mean what it seems to mean and how it is understood by those Christians he calls “psychics.” In his reading, Paul’s teaching only applies to those Christian women who have been married to a non-Christian and widowed prior to their conversion to Christianity (On Monogamy 11.15–19). Despite these champions of monogamy, several early Christian authors write to demonstrate that virginity was the highest calling of a Christian. Cyprian, for example, who was active in Carthage a generation after Tertullian, barely mentions marriage in his writings.79 Instead, he praises virgins and continence and devotes a whole treatise, On the Dress of Virgins, to consecrated virgins. Another admirer of virginity is Methodius, writing in the end of third century in Olympus (Asia Minor). His treatise entitled Symposium, modeled after Plato’s renowned work, describes a symposium of ten virgins. They gather in the garden of Arete where each gives a speech in praise of virginity.80 One of the ten virgins is Thecla. Paul plays a prominent role in the work and each of the ten speeches either alludes to or explicitly quotes his letters.81 Even though virginity is praised as something “supernaturally great, wonderful, and glorious” (Symposium 1.1), it does not belie marriage; “for although the moon may be greater than the stars, the light of the other stars is not destroyed by the moonlight” (Symposium 2.1; cf. 2.7). After all, virginity is a gift of God, not suitable for everyone (Symposium 3.14). At the end of the day, Arete announces Thecla the winner of the contest for the most eloquent talk on virginity and she may lead the other virgins in singing in praise of the bridegroom. 79

One of the rare references is the prohibition against marrying pagans; To Quirinus (Three Books of Testimonies) 3.62 where he quotes 1 Cor 7:39–40 and 1 Cor 6:15–17; see Michael A. Fahey, Cyprian and the Bible: A Study in Third-Century Exegesis (Beiträge zur Geschichte der biblischen Hermeneutik 9; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1971), 448–49. 80 The ascetic ideal does not extend to other areas of life, such as eating, for the virgins are served “all kinds of food and a variety of festivities, so that no delight was wanting” (Methodius, Symposium, Introduction). 81 Albrecht, Das Leben der heiligen Makrina, 285. Surprisingly, however, Thecla’s speech is built upon an examination of the passage about the heavenly woman with her child and the dragon in Revelation (Rev 12:1–6) and only rarely alludes to Paul even though she is explicitly called the one who has been instructed by Paul (Symposium 7.9).

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On the whole, it is hard to estimate how widespread celibacy was among early Christian women. Certainly, there were ascetics who adhered to celibacy even before the rise of monasticism82 but it is fair to assume that most early Christian women did get married and lived a domestic life83 – and bore children, new members for the Christian communities. Most women who were active in Christian gatherings were wives and mothers. Moreover, no category was entirely fixed in the sense that most women were both virgins and wives at some period in their life. In theory at least, the rules and ideals of virginity applied to every woman until she got married. But the change of status also worked the other way around since many women adopted an ascetic way of life by taking a vow of chastity after they were widowed.84

G. Women as Leaders Even though most women, married and celibate alike, were subject to male authority, here and there early Christian writings show glimpses of groups that allowed women to have a public role in the Christian community as teachers and, later, as officeholders. These glimpses mostly come from writers who vehemently oppose such conduct. For them, women’s active role in the church was a true sign of heresy. One indication of the fact that not all women kept silent in Christian gatherings is the prohibition against women teaching already found in the pastoral letters (1 Tim 2:12). Why would there be a need for such a prohibition had there been no women who taught and who did not submit themselves to male authority? In the third century church order, the Didascalia Apostolorum, there is a lengthy discussion concerning the proper conduct of widows (ch. 15). Their main task is to pray for the church’s welfare, but they should restrain themselves from talking about the Christian faith, “for when they speak without the knowledge of doctrine, they will bring blasphemy upon the word”85 (Didascalia 15.3.5). If outsiders ask them about their faith, they – like all laypersons – should lead the questioners to the clerical officials. Women should not teach since Christ only commissioned 82

Castelli, Virginity, 88. Brown, Body and Society, 138; Osiek and MacDonald, Woman’s Place, 4–6. 84 Brown, Body and Society, 93; Elm, “Virgins of God,” 181–82. For example, Basil of Cesarea refers to a family where the mother, grandmother and two daughters all pursued an ascetic life; Letter 46, cf. Elm, “Virgins of God,” 142–43. 85 Translation by R. Hugh Connolly, Didascalia Apostolorum: The Syriac Version Translated and Accompanied by the Verona Latin Fragments (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929). 83

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his twelve male disciples to teach, even though he also had women disciples, such as Mary Magdalene and Mary the daughter of James and the other Mary (Didascalia 15.3.6). Likewise, women ought not to perform baptism, for Jesus himself was baptized by John and not by his mother – surely the latter would have been the case if baptism was to be performed by women (Didascalia 15.3.9).86 The author reminds widows that they must at all times be obedient to the bishops and the deacons and to “reverence and respect and fear the bishop as God.” Obviously, not all did, since he accuses them of wishing “to be wiser and to know better, not only than the men, but even than the presbyters and the bishops” (Didascalia 15.3.8). With his lengthy discussion and outspoken demand for submission to (male) church officials, the author wants to bring these women back into line. The clearest reference to women occupying leadership roles comes from Epiphanius’s report about a Montanist group that he calls Quintillianists.87 He writes: They use the Old and the New Testaments, and likewise affirm the resurrection of the dead. Their founder is Quintilla, along with Priscilla who was also a Phrygian prophetess. They cite many texts which have no relevance, and give thanks to Eve because she was the first to eat from the tree of wisdom. And as scriptural support for their ordination of women as clergy, they say that Moses’ sister was a prophetess. What is more, they say, Philip had four daughters who prophesied. . . . They have women bishops, presbyters and the rest; they say that none of this makes any difference because “In Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female.”88 (Panarion 49.2.1–2, 5)

According to Epiphanius’s report, this group of Christians finds support in the scriptures for allowing women to act in leadership roles. Not only do they give preference to Eve as the first to have acquired wisdom (cf. Gen 3:6)89 and refer to female prophets mentioned in both the Old and the New

86

Cf. Cyprian, Letter 75.10–11. He condemns a woman prophet who celebrates the Eucharist and baptizes. In Cyprian’s view, it was through the power of a demon that she performed these rituals. 87 Epiphanius also calls the group Pepuzians, Artotyrites, and Priscillians and claims that they “are the same as the Phrygians and derive from them, but in a certain way are different” (Panarion 49.1.1). These names imply that the group belonged to the Montanist Christian movement whose center in Asia Minor was Pepuza in Phrygia. The woman prophet Priscilla was one of its three originators together with Montanus and Maximilla. The name Artotyrites derives from the custom of celebrating Eucharist with bread and cheese (D UWRM, bread; WXURM, cheese); cf. Panarion 49.2.6. 88 Translation by Frank Williams in The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis Books II and III (Sects 47–80) (Nag Hammadi and Manichean Studies 36; Leiden: Brill, 1994). 89 Eve is similarly hailed as “the female instructor of life” who gives Adam life in some Nag Hammadi writings, e.g., On the Origin of the World 113.30–34; 115.11–14; 115.30–116.8; cf. Hypostasis of the Archons 89.11–17.

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Testament, such as Miriam, Moses’s sister (Exod 15:20–21)90 and the four daughters of Philip (Acts 21:8–9), but most importantly, they read Paul as approving female clerics since “there is no male and female.” Interestingly, Epiphanius does not question their doctrine as such; they are good Christians according to his standards since they acknowledge the authority of both the Old and the New Testament and confess the resurrection of the dead. However, it is their practice that is, in his view, against nature, and ultimately, this practice is a sign that they have deserted the right faith, as well (Panarion 49.3.1.) What roles did women have in this group? Epiphanius remains somewhat vague, listing bishops (H SLVNRSRL), presbyters (SUHVEXWHURL) and “the rest” (NDL? WD? D OOD). The “rest” has often been taken to mean either prophets or deacons. There were certainly female prophets in the Quintillian movement, which belonged to the “New Prophecy” or the Phrygians, as Epiphanius calls them. Epiphanius refers to their rite where seven virgins come in with lamps and prophesy (Panarion 49.2.3–4). On the other hand, Epiphanius may have wanted to avoid listing deacons in this context since there were female deacons in the church, something of which he approved (Panarion 79.3.6), as long as they did not perform any liturgical functions.91 In Epiphanius’s church, the female deacons assisted women at their baptism when they were undressed. It is not easy to assess the reliability of Epiphanius’s account. On the whole, scholars discount the accuracy of his report, especially concerning the origins of the different groups he discusses, since much of his information seems to be based on hearsay and historical conjecture. 92 There is a significant temporal distance between Epiphanius, who wrote in the fourth century, and the prophets Priscilla and Quintilla, who were active in the second century.93 However, Epiphanius claims to write about the followers of these prophets who might be more or less contemporary with him. The very fact that he talks about church offices indicates a later period than the second century and probably reflects a situation when the original prophet-

90

Miriam enjoyed a prominent role as a prophet in subsequent Jewish tradition; see Hanna Tervanotko, “‘The Hope of the Enemy Has Perished’: The Figure of Miriam in the Qumran Library,” in From Qumran to Aleppo (ed. Armin Lange, Matthias Weigold and József Zsengellér; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009), 156–75. 91 William Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy and Polluted Sacraments: Ecclesiastical and Imperial Reactions to Montanism (Supp. Vigiliae Christianae 84; Leiden: Brill, 2007), 370. 92 Cf. Willliams, “Introduction” in The Panarion of Epiphanius, xix. 93 It is difficult to date Quintilla since Epiphanius is the only source we have for her activity. He seems to treat Quintilla as more or less of a contemporary to Priscilla.

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ic movement and its charismatic leaders have been clericalized.94 On the other hand, Epiphanius’s information seems to be incoherent from the start; he admits that he is not certain whether it was Quintilla or Priscilla who experienced the group’s founding vision of Christ in female form and whether it is this group or the Phrygians or both that has female prophets (Panarion 42.1.2–5). All in all, scholars tend to trust Epiphanius’s testimony of the prominent position of women in the Montanist movement.95 Ambrosiaster, the anonymous fourth-century commentator on Paul’s epistles, also asserts that there were Montanist women who acted as bishops, presbyters, and in other leading roles (Commentary on 1 Timothy 3:2). Moreover, some early Christian inscriptions refer to women with titles such as H SLVNRSD, SUHV EXWHUD, or SUHVEX WLM.96 The epigraphical data, however, is hard to evaluate, not least due to its fragmentary nature. Earlier scholarship interpreted the female titles as referring to wives and mothers of bishops and presbyters. This is certainly a possibility but it also reflects the scholarly presupposition that women could not have held office in the early church – at least, not in any “mainstream” or “orthodox” church.97 More recent scholars have pointed out that in some funerary inscriptions, the feminine titles occur without a mention of a husband (or a son) and that the epigraphical evidence conforms to the few literary mentions of women clergy. It may well be that there were more women practicing leadership roles in the early Christian movement than often acknowledged. One reason for the fact that only a few mentions of them survive is that the views allowing women’s leadership were marginalized and deemed heretical.98 On the other hand, it

94 Christine Trevett, Montanism: Gender, Authority and the New Prophecy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996), 185–95. 95 Trevett, Montanism, 185; Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy, 375. 96 Karen Jo Torjesen, When Women Were Priests: Women’s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of Their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1995), 9–10, 19–20; Ute E. Eisen, Amtsträgerinnen im frühen Christentum: epigraphische und literarische Studien (Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte 61; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996), 112–37, 193–202. 97 The difficulties inherent in terminology such as “orthodox,” “heretic,” or “mainstream” are now generally well known. They all involve partiality, taking someone’s perspective for an “objective” view, and not a small amount of hindsight. For a brief discussion, see David Brakke, “Self-Differentiation among Christian Groups: The Gnostics and their Opponents,” in The Cambridge History of Christianity Vol. 1: Origins to Constantine (ed. Margaret M. Mitchell and Frances M. Young; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 245–60. 98 Antti Marjanen, “Montanism: Egalitarian Ecstatic ‘New Prophecy,’” in A Companion to Second-Century Christian “Heretics” (ed. Antti Marjanen and Petri Luomanen; Supp VigChrist 76; Leiden: Brill, 2005), 185–212.

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might also be proof that not many women acted in leading positions.99 Even though women might have opted for celibacy and freedom from the traditional domestic role, spiritually they were still subordinate to male bishops and priests.

H. Conclusion: Contending for the Legacy of Paul and Thecla All in all, Paul’s teaching concerning marriage, celibacy, women, and their place was ambiguous enough to allow room for a variety of readings that lent support to quite different practices. The most frequently cited Pauline passages were those that ordered women to keep silent (1 Cor 14:33–36), prohibited them from teaching, and subjected them to male authority (1 Tim 2:11–15). In spite of these direct scriptural commands, there were women who did not follow them and who had to be constantly reminded of women’s proper conduct – proper from the point of view of those who excluded women from all public activity in the church. But not all early Christians shared this opinion. Some groups let women teach, baptize, and occupy leadership roles as bishops and deacons in their communities. Whether they simply ignored Paul’s words about silencing women or whether they developed alternative exegetical traditions to overcome these words is something the sources do not clarify. They based their practices on other scriptural proofs, such as Paul’s abolition of distinctions between men and women; “In Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female” (Gal 3:28). Those who opposed women’s public role insisted that these words must be read in light of other Pauline passages. Generally speaking, the ancient commentators believed that Paul must have had a clear and consistent view – if one passage seemed to contradict others, it must be interpreted in a way that made it compatible.100 They had no difficulties reading Paul’s statement about unity in Christ in a way that did not discredit the cultural conventions of female subordination to men. These conventions proved to be strong enough to trample other practices underfoot. In the course of history, those groups that allowed women to have a prominent role were marginalized and deemed heretical. In discussions about marriage and celibacy, Paul’s advice to the Corinthian community (1 Corinthians 7) offered the most obvious scriptural basis. However, one and the same text opened up several options that ranged 99 Karen Jo Torjesen’s claim that “among ancient mosaics, paintings, statuary, dedicatory inscriptions, and funerary epitaphs, scholars have found numerous pieces of evidence for women’s leadership” is clearly an overstatement; When Women Were Priests, 13. 100 Clark, Reading Renunciation, 262.

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from rigorous asceticism that idealized virginity and rejected all sexual activity, including sex within marriage, to more moderate views. Chastity and self-control were commonly held Christian virtues, but whereas some understood them to mean a total renunciation of sex, others thought they were best practiced within marriage, not to be repeated – i.e., no remarriage. According to some polemical accounts, there were also Christian groups that extended sexual relations beyond monogamous marriages. For example, Clement of Alexandria accuses the followers of Carpocrates and Epiphanes of understanding Christian unity (cf. Gal 3:28) as a license to share wives. He describes how they gather for dinner and after eating “they knock over the lamps, put out the light that would expose their fornicating righteousness, and couple as they will with any woman they fancy.”101 However, accusing one’s rivals of sexual immorality is such a common rhetorical device that it is reasonable to doubt the reliability of this account. This does not have to exclude the possibility that there were early Christian groups that did not condemn all extramarital sex. As these illustrations show, Paul provided an important role model and example for many early Christian writers and his teaching concerning women was taken to support a variety of practices. The example of Thecla was likewise ambivalent. Her early reputation as Paul’s independent disciple and as a self-confident teacher that empowered women to teach and to baptize was tamed and she was remembered and venerated first and foremost as a martyr102 and a virgin, an ascetic role model for women.103 This ideal virginity by far overshadows her role as a teacher and apostle in the subsequent tradition. The domestication of Thecla and the softening of her uncompromising asceticism into a more acceptable form began early. In the fifth century work the Life and Miracles of Saint Thecla, marriage is not totally rejected. According to this text that freely elaborates the earlier Acts of Paul and Thecla, when Paul defends himself in front of the gover101

Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 3.2.5.1–10.2. Cf. Epiphanius, Panarion 26.4.2–5.8. Even though Thecla does not die for her faith, in subsequent ancient sources she is routinely called a martyr. Like other martyrs, she faces torture, bears testimony to her faith, and is ready to sacrifice her life for it. This reflects the original meaning of the word martyr (PDUWXM) as “witness,” which does not have to imply the idea of a violent death. 103 Stephen J. Davis, The Cult of Saint Thecla: A Tradition of Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Elizabeth A. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 134–71. See also Dennis R. MacDonald and Andrew D. Scrimgeour, “PseudoChrysostom’s Panegyric to Thecla: The Heroine of the Acts of Paul in Homily and Art,” Semeia 38 (1986): 151–59; Willy Rordorf, Liturgie, foi et vie des premiers Chrétiens (Paris: Beauchesne, 1986); Léonie Hayne, “Thecla and the Church Fathers,” VigChris 48 (1994), 209–18; Monika Pesthy, “Thecla among the Fathers of the Church” in The Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla, 164–78. 102

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nor, he does not condemn marriage altogether. Celibacy is no longer a prerequisite for salvation; even though it is praiseworthy, marriage has its place as “a remedy and a rescue (IDUPDNRQ NDL? ERKTHLD) for the whole human race.” It provides both an “antidote to fornication” (SRUQHLDM D OHFLIDUPDNRQ) and a source for the continuation of human life.104 Even though Thecla was immensely popular in the ancient church and well into the Middle Ages, she gradually became one exemplary ascetic among many and her more active role was forgotten.

Works Cited Albrecht, Ruth. Das Leben der heiligen Makrina auf dem Hintergrund der TheklaTraditionen: Studien zu den Ursprüngen des weiblichen Mönchtums im 4. Jahrhundert in Kleinasien. Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte 38. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986. Brakke, David. “Self-Differentiation among Christian Groups: The Gnostics and their Opponents.” Pages 245–60 in The Cambridge History of Christianity Vol. 1: Origins to Constantine. Edited by Margaret M. Mitchell and Frances M. Young. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Bremmer, Jan N. “Magic, Martyrdom and Women’s Liberation in the Acts of Paul and Thecla.” Pages 36–59 in The Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla. Edited by Jan N. Bremmer. Kampen: Pharos, 1996. Brooten, Bernadette. “Junia . . . Outstanding among the Apostles.” Pages 141–44 in Women Priests. Edited by A. Swidler and L. Swidler. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1977. Brown, Peter. The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. Lectures on the History of Religions 13. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. Buell, Denise. “Ambiguous Legacy: A Feminist Commentary on Clement of Alexandria’s Works.” Pages 26–55 in A Feminist Companion to Patristic Literature. Edited by Amy-Jill Levine with Maria Mayo Robbins. Feminist Companion to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings 12. London and New York: T&T Clark, 2008. Burrus, Virginia. “Chastity as Autonomy: Women in the Stories of the Apocryphal Acts.” Semeia 38 (1986): 101–17. –. Chastity as Autonomy: Women in the Stories of Apocryphal Acts. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1987. Calef, Susan A. “Thecla ‘Tried and True’ and the Inversion of Romance.” Pages 163–85 in Feminist Companion to the New Testament Apocrypha. Edited by Amy-Jill Levine with Maria Mayo Robbins. Feminist Companion to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings 11. London and New York: T&T Clark, 2006. Castelli, Elizabeth A. Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. –. “Virginity and Its Meaning for Women’s Sexuality in Early Christianity.” Pages 72– 100 in A Feminist Companion to Patristic Literature. Edited by Amy-Jill Levine with

104

Vita 7,65–69 (my translation). Cf. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 151.

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Maria Mayo Robbins. Feminist Companion to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings 12. London and New York: T&T Clark, 2008. Clark, Elizabeth A. Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Connolly, R. Hugh. Didascalia Apostolorum: The Syriac Version Translated and Accompanied by the Verona Latin Fragments. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929. Cooper, Kate. The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Antiquity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996. Dagron, Gilbert. Vie et miracles de sainte Thècle: Texte grec, traduction et commentaire. Subsidia Hagiographica 62. Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1978. Daly, Mary. Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation. Boston: Beacon, 1985. Davies, Stevan L. The Revolt of the Widows: The Social World of the Apocryphal Acts. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press/London: Feffer & Simons, 1980. Davis, Stephen J. The Cult of Saint Thecla: A Tradition of Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Dunn, Peter W. The Acts of Paul and the Pauline Legacy in the Second Century. Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, 1996. Ehrman, Bart D. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. Second Edition. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. –. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. San Francisco: Harper, 2005. Eisen, Ute E. Amtsträgerinnen im frühen Christentum: epigraphische und literarische Studien. Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte 61. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996. Elm, Susanna. “Virgins of God:” The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1994. Epp, Eldon Jay. Junia: The First Woman Apostle. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005. Esch-Wermeling, Elisabeth. Thekla – Paulusschülerin wider Willen? Strategien der Leserlenkung in den Theklaakten. Münster: Aschendorff, 2008. Evans, Ernest. Tertullian’s Homily on Baptism. London: SPCK, 1964. Fahey, Michael A. Cyprian and the Bible: A Study in Third-Century Exegesis. Beiträge zur Geschichte der biblischen Hermeneutik 9. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1971. Fee, Gordon D. The First Epistle to the Corinthians. The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987. Geerard, Mauritius. Clavis Apocryphorum Novi Testamentum. Turnhout: Brepols, 1992. Glancy, Jennifer A. Slavery in Early Christianity. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006. Hayne, Léonie. “Thecla and the Church Fathers.” Vigiliae Christianae 48 (1994): 209– 18. Hilhorst, Anthony. “Tertullian and the Acts of Paul.” Pages 150–63 in The Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla. Edited by Jan N. Bremmer. Kampen: Pharos, 1996. Horn, Cornelia B. “Suffering Children, Parental Authority and the Quest for Liberation?: A Tale of Three Girls in the Acts of Paul (and Thecla), the Act(s) of Peter, the Acts of Nerseus and Achilleus and the Epistle of Pseudo-Titus.” Pages 118–45 in A Feminist Companion to the New Testament Apocrypha. Edited by Amy-Jill Levine with Maria Mayo Robbins. Feminist Companion to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings 11. London and New York: T&T Clark, 2006. Jensen, Anne. Thekla – Die Apostolin: Ein apokrypher Text neu entdeckt. Gütersloh: Kaiser, 1999.

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Kraemer, Ross S. Her Share of the Blessings: Women’s Religions among Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Levine, Amy-Jill, ed. with Maria Mayo Robbins. A Feminist Companion to the New Testament. Feminist Companion to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings 11. London and New York: T&T Clark, 2006. –. A Feminist Companion to Patristic Literature. Feminist Companion to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings 12. London and New York: T&T Clark, 2008. Lieu, Judith. “The ‘Attraction of Women’ in/to Early Judaism and Christianity: Gender and the Politics of Conversion.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 72 (1998): 5–22. MacDonald, Dennis R. The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983. MacDonald, Dennis R. and Andrew D. Scrimgeour. “Pseudo-Chrysostom’s Panegyric to Thecla: The Heroine of the Acts of Paul in Homily and Art.” Semeia 38 (1986): 151– 59. Marjanen, Antti. “Montanism: Egalitarian Ecstatic ‘New Prophecy.’” Pages 185–212 in A Companion to Second-Century Christian “Heretics.” Edited by Antti Marjanen and Petri Luomanen. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 76. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Matthews, Shelly. “Thinking of Thecla: Issues in Feminist Historiography.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 17 (2001): 39–55. Merz, Annette. Die fiktive Selbstauslegung des Paulus: Intertextuelle Studien zur Intention und Rezeption der Pastoralbriefe. Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus 52; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht/Fribourg: Academic Press, 2004. Økland, Jorunn. Women in Their Place: Paul and the Corinthian Discourse of Gender and Sanctuary Place. Journal for the Study of the New Testament: Supplement Series 269. London & New York: T&T Clark, 2004. Osiek, Carolyn and Margaret Y. MacDonald with Janet H. Tulloch. A Woman’s Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006. Pervo, Richard I. Review of Elizabeth Esch-Wermeling, Thekla – Paulusschülerin wider Willen? Strategien der Leserlenkung in den Theklaakten. Review of Biblical Literature May 2009. (http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/7042_7645.pdf) Pesthy, Monika. “Thecla among the Fathers of the Church.” Pages 164–78 in The Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla. Edited by Jan N. Bremmer. Kampen: Pharos, 1996. Prieur, Jean-Marc. Acta Andreae. Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum 6. Turnhout: Brepols, 1989. Rohde, J. “Pastoralbriefe und Acta Pauli.” Pages 303–10 in Studia Evangelica 5. Edited by Frank L. Cross. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1968. Rordorf, Willy. Liturgie, foi et vie des premiers Chrétiens. Paris: Beauchesne, 1986. –. “Tradition and Composition in the Acts of Thecla: The State of the Question.” Semeia 38 (1986): 43–52. –. “In welchem Verhältnis stehen die apokryphen Paulusakten zur kanonischen Apostelgeschichte und zu den Pastoralbriefen?” Pages 449–65 in Lex Orandi Lex Credendi: Gesammelte Aufsätze zum 60. Geburtstag. Paradosis 36. Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1993. –. “Nochmals: Paulusakten und Pastoralbriefe,” Pages 466–74 in Lex Orandi Lex Credendi: Gesammelte Aufsätze zum 60. Geburtstag. Paradosis 36. Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1993. Ruether, Rosemary Radford. “Mothers of the Church: Ascetic Women in the Late Patristic Age.” Pages 71–98 in Women of Spirit: Female Leadership in the Jewish and

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Christian Traditions. Edited by Rosemary Radford Ruether and Eleanor McLaughlin. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979. Schleyer, Dietrich. Tertullian De Baptismo, De Oratione – Von der Taufe, Vom Gebet. Fontes Christiani 76. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006. Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. New York: Crossroad, 1983. Tabbernee, William. Fake Prophecy and Polluted Sacraments: Ecclesiastical and Imperial Reactions to Montanism. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 84. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Tervanotko, Hanna. “‘The Hope of the Enemy Has Perished:’ The Figure of Miriam in the Qumran Library.” Pages 156–75 in From Qumran to Aleppo. Edited by Armin Lange, Matthias Weigold, and József Zsengellér. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009. Torjesen, Karen Jo. When Women Were Priests: Women’s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of Their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1995. Trevett, Christine. Montanism: Gender, Authority and the New Prophecy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996. Vorster, Johannes N. “Construction of Culture through the Construction of Person: The Construction of Thecla in the Acts of Thecla.” Pages 98–117 in Feminist Companion to the New Testament Apocrypha. Edited by Amy-Jill Levine with Maria Mayo Robbins. Feminist Companion to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings 11. London and New York: T&T Clark, 2006. Vuolanto, Ville. “Choosing Asceticism: Children and Parents, Vows and Conflicts.” Pages 255–91 in Children in Late Ancient Christianity. Edited by Cornelia Horn and Robert Phenix. Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 58. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009. Williams, Frank. The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis Books II and III (Sects 47–80). Nag Hammadi and Manichean Studies 36. Leiden: Brill, 1994. Wire, Antoinette Clark. The Corinthian Women Prophets: A Reconstruction through Paul’s Rhetoric. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990.

SǀphrosynƝ for Women in Pythagorean Texts ANNETTE BOURLAND H UIZENGA

A. Introduction “Can woman cultivate moral excellence?” “Who is a good woman?” “How can she become good?” Questions like these are frequently considered in Greek and Roman philosophical literature,1 with the discourse becoming so standard that a topos (WR SRM) developed,2 one which I call “the good woman” topos. My concept draws on Johan C. Thom’s description of a topos as a sort of mental landscape: “The moral universe in the GraecoRoman world is . . . divided into regions or topoi, each with its own internal structure, based on the questions it is meant to answer.”3 In such a way, treatments of “the good woman” together illustrate a “feminine moral topography,” a map of the ideological contours of the virtue, moral development, and resulting social responsibilities specific to women. 4 One feature of the topical map of “the good woman” is especially prominent, and that is the concept of sǀphrosynƝ, a Greek virtue that combines the prefix *sǀ(s)-, denoting “health” and “salvation,” with variations of phren, meaning “mind or heart.” According to Jerome D. Quinn, this explains why Philo “remarks that the term used for the health (hygeia) of the 1

A similar question is asked in Proverbs 31:10: “A capable woman who can find?” (LXX: *XQDLNDD QGUHLDQWLMHXUK VHL). 2 Johan C. Thom explains: “A topos may be distinguished from another topic by its traditional subject matter, evidenced by the fact that it recurs in the writings of different authors, and by the conventional treatment it receives” (“‘The Mind Is Its Own Place’: Defining the Topos,” in Early Christianity and Classical Culture, Comparative Studies in Honor of Abraham J. Malherbe [NovTSup 110; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003)], 567). 3 Thom, “The Mind,” 569. 4 While to some extent the literature offers slightly differing answers to the question of what constitutes moral virtue for women, still the topos itself continued to catch the attention of philosophers for many centuries. Writings from Platonists, Aristotelians, Stoics, Cynics, and others reveal an ideological context based on gender-differentiation, even at times gender “opposition.” Definitions of women’s “goodness” are repeatedly linked to their biological sex; that is, compared with men, women are held to different standards for virtue and moral behavior. Stated more succinctly: goodness has been gendered. Although “feminine goodness” is defined in relationship to “masculine goodness,” like many Greek and Roman writers, I am slicing “women’s morality” off from the major philosophical topic of ethics.

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soul is sǀphrosynƝ . . . ‘the virtue that makes one’s thinking sane.’”5 Thus Quinn proposes the translation “sanity,” because it connotes the mental “balance” found in the Greek. Other possible translations include “soundness of mind,” “discretion,” “moderation,” “temperance,” “self-control,” “chastity,” and “restraint,” and the choice made usually depends on context. Since the word is difficult to capture in one English equivalent,6 and because I want to emphasize where and how it is being used in the texts, I have chosen to transliterate this word throughout. As early as 1966, Helen North traced the varied demonstrations and discussions of this virtue through Greek (and some Latin) literature. In a footnote on her first page she states this conclusion: “Feminine sophrosyne (chastity, modesty, obedience, inconspicuous behavior) remains the same throughout Greek history.”7 About a decade later, North began to delineate the outline of a particularly female sǀphrosynƝ, stating: “. . . sophrosyne is the most multifaceted of all the Greek virtues, and some of its aspects belong exclusively to men. What is the sophrosyne of women?”8 Her thesis attaches sǀphrosynƝ to both the “chastity” and “domesticity” of “the good woman.”9 She then shifts her focus from the “chastity” aspect of female sǀphrosynƝ and onto its “domesticity,” in order to consider the strong relationship of both masculine and feminine sǀphrosynƝ to household management (oikonomia). 5

The Letter to Titus (AB 35; New York: Doubleday, 1990, 314); citing Philo, Virt. 14. From this connection, Quinn argues that “the health bestowed by salvation [sǀteria] is linked to the internal moral character [sǀphrosynƝ] that emanates from that healing” (313). 6 According to Helen North, Latin authors likewise encountered difficulty translating the word, in part because “in its origins – social and political, as well as temperamental – it was entirely foreign to Rome” (Sophrosyne: Self-Knowledge and Self-Restraint in Greek Literature [Cornell Studies in Classical Philology 35; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966], 258). See also Abraham J. Malherbe, “The Virtus Feminarum in 1 Timothy 2:9–15,” in Renewing Tradition: Studies in Texts and Contexts in Honor of James W. Thompson (ed. Mark. W. Hamilton, Thomas H. Olbricht, Jeffrey Peterson; Princeton Theological Monograph Series; Eugene, OR: Pickwick [Wipf and Stock], 2006), 53–54. 7 North, Sophrosyne, 1 n. 2; my italics. North uses the Latin term virtus feminarum in her preface, and then in reference to patristic literature (Sophrosyne, viii, and 314). She cites Ambrose’s characterization of Judith’s temperentia as the “virtus feminarum” in De Vid. 7.40 (Sophrosyne, 363). In her later article she states that by ca. 355 C.E., “. . . sophrosyne had long been accepted as the principal virtus feminarum and as such was mentioned in numberless epitaphs, celebrated in rhetorical topoi concerned with feminine arete, and ascribed to various mythical exemplars . . .” (“The Mare, the Vixen, and the Bee: Sophrosyne as the Virtue of Women in Antiquity,” Illinois Classical Studies 2, [ed. Miroslav Marcovich; Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1977]: 35–48). Abraham J. Malherbe puts the term in the title of his essay “The Virtus Feminarum in 1 Timothy 2:9–15.” 8 “The Mare, the Vixen, and the Bee,” 35–36. 9 North, “The Mare, the Vixen, and the Bee,” 45. In this essay, North does not analyze the Neopythagorean texts that I examine here.

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Similarly, in his recent essay on 1 Timothy 2:9–15, Abraham J. Malherbe cites much ancient literature on feminine expressions of sǀphrosynƝ, highlighting the ideas of Cicero, Musonius Rufus, 10 Plutarch, Sophocles, Euripides, Antiphanes, and Crates, among others. Malherbe notes the clear conceptual links made between women’s sǀphrosynƝ and their overall selfcontrol, purity in orderliness, sexual behavior, moderate adornment, modesty, silence, and orderliness, all elements of the instructions for women found in the Pastoral Letters.11 But he does not examine how these items might be positioned in relation with each other, saying that the evidence he presents is only the first step.12 How can we conceive of sǀphrosynƝ as a key feature on a mental map of women’s morality? Is sǀphrosynƝ akin to the peak of a high mountain, that she might reach at the end of an arduous climb? Is it like a spreading river delta where waters finally flow into the sea? No, the moralphilosophical writings testify that this virtue is more like a woman’s homebase, functioning as both the beginning and the ending of her life-journey. In fact, since her sǀphrosynƝ is to be demonstrated primarily within the social context of the household,13 a woman never travels far – both literally and metaphorically – from this particular place. 10

For example, Fragment 3 of Musonius Rufus states: “But above all a woman must be sǀphrǀn [Lutz: “chaste and self-controlled”]; she must, I mean, be pure in respect of unlawful love, exercise restraint in other pleasures, not be a slave to desire, not be contentious, not lavish in expense, nor extravagant in dress. Such are the works of the sǀphrǀn [Lutz: virtuous] woman . . .” (trans. Cora Lutz, “Musonius Rufus: The Roman Socrates,” Yale Classical Studies 10 [1947]: 1–47). 11 Malherbe simply makes a list of the “details” of sǀphrǀn behaviors for women found in 1 Tim 2:9–15: “. . . order/adornment, quietness/silence, self-respect/modesty, appropriateness of behavior, marital relations and having children” (“The Virtus Feminarum,” 64). 12 In his conclusion, Malherbe also moves toward the idea of a topos as a mental map by using the image of a mosaic: “The individual details are like the tesserae in a mosaic: they contribute to the whole picture, but their functions in doing so are determined by the design or pattern to which they contribute” (“The Virtus Feminarum,” 64). 13 The topos of “the good woman” can be subdivided into smaller parts, as well as extended to touch upon other related topoi (or sub-topoi) such as self-control, marriage, childrearing, household management, and bodily adornment, among other subjects. The fact of this conceptual interconnectedness provides an author with an excellent communicative tool, since, “Once the moral world has been mapped out in terms of topoi, an author can use these topoi as points of reference: he does not have to describe the topic in detail; a few reminders are sufficient. By using topoi, an author at the same time embeds his own text in the moral and cultural discourse of his time and evokes a wider sphere of resonance than can be explicated in a particular text. A topos may thus also provide an underlying coherence to a text that is not immediately obvious on the surface” (Thom, “The Mind,” 569–70). From this conclusion, it is apparent that the subject matter itself, conveyed by even just a few customarily topical words or phrases or a title, acts like a mental magnet, attracting other ideas and assumptions relevant to the topos.

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In order to clarify and to extend the work of North and Malherbe on feminine sǀphrosynƝ, this paper analyzes the topos as found in two examples of (neo-)Pythagorean literature14 that have also been briefly examined by Malherbe:15 (1) a treatise entitled On the Sophrosyne of a Woman, and ascribed to “Phintys, the Pythagorean daughter of Kallikratos” and (2) a short letter attributed to a certain “Melissa” and addressed to another woman named “Kleareta,” known as Melissa to Kleareta.16 Following the obvious lead of these texts themselves, I argue that the first and most essential demonstration of sǀphrosynƝ for a woman is to remain sexually faithful to her husband. Furthermore, all other prescribed female displays of the virtue (in adornment, speech and silence, child-bearing and childrearing, household management, and activities outside the house itself) manifest this one primary achievement: a woman’s uninterrupted practice of marital fidelity. To conclude, I consider the audience for whom these texts might have been produced in order to demonstrate the spread of sǀphrosynƝ as a moral virtue for women of differing social levels.

14 There is some debate about how to label the grouping of texts related to the later Pythagorean movement. Thom reviews the situation: “Neopythagoreanism does not constitute a conceptually homogeneous philosophical tradition, nor does it have very definite chronological boundaries. The notion of a Neopythagorean movement distinct from the earlier tradition inaugurated by Pythagoras is based on two ancient sources, namely, Aristoxenus of Tarentum and Cicero. . . . The term ‘Neopythagorean’ in the title of this essay is used merely as a matter of convenience and should not be take to imply either a late date or to denote a homogeneous movement. . . . The writings to be considered indeed derive from diverse literary and ideological traditions” (“The Passions in Neopythagorean Writings,” in Passions and Moral Progress in Greco-Roman Thought [ed. John T. Fitzgerald; Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies; London and New York: Routledge, 2008], 68–69). I use the adjective “Pythagorean” because the female authorial pseudonyms are rooted in early Pythagoreanism, and because these two texts are composed in the Doric Greek peculiar to a variety of Pythagorean writings. The author of On the SǀphrosynƝ of a Woman is clearly identified as Pythagorean, and her father is also a known Pythagorean. The letter Melissa to Kleareta is more precisely pseudo-Pythagorean, but the name “Melissa” has strong links to Pythagoreanism, as I show below. 15 North refers to the treatise by “Phintys” in her first work, but not in the later essay. 16 The treatises attributed to the Pythagorean women Periktione (On the Harmony of a Woman and On Wisdom) and Phintys (On the SǀphrosynƝ of a Woman) have an entirely separate text history from the letters, being transmitted in the Anthologium of Stobaeus, which contains none of the letters by Pythagorean women. Conversely, the history of the letters shows no connection with these Neopythagorean treatises.

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B. SǀphrosynƝ in the Texts Ascribed to Pythagorean Women I. A Treatise by Phintys, On the SǀphrosynƝ of a Woman17 In its introduction, the treatise On the SǀphrosynƝ of a Woman explicitly takes up the moral-philosophical topos of “the good woman”: “In sum, it is necessary for a good woman also to be well-behaved [NRVPLDQ]; for without virtue she might never become such.”18 Abiding by the title of this treatise, which may or may not be original, the author then defines the primary virtue of “the good woman” in this thesis statement:19 “And the supreme virtue [PD OLVWD D UHWD ] of a woman is sǀphrosynƝ; for by this [virtue] she will be able both to honor and to love her own husband.”20 With this assertion, the author positions the inseparable connection between feminine sǀphrosynƝ and the marriage relationship as the governing principle for all other manifestations of womanly virtue. The words of the treatise reaffirm this one fundamental declaration, as the author methodically enumerates21 the ways in which this virtue is to be literally embodied by a woman: 17 My translations of portions of this text are from the Wachsmuth-Hense edition of Johannes Stobaeus, Anthologium, 4.23.61, 61a, in a section entitled: *$0,.$ 3$5$**(/ 0$7$, “Marriage Instructions.” References are made to the page, and line numbers of this volume. Although the text appears in two fragments, there are compelling reasons for reading them as a unity. 18 7RB PH?Q RORQ D JDTDBQ GHL K`PHQ NDL? NRVPLDQ DQHX JDBU D UHWDaM RX GHSRND JHQRLWR  WLMWRLDX WD, Anth. 61 (588, 19–20). All translations from the Greek are my own, unless otherwise noted. 19 Although this text has paraenetic features and functions (along with a few diatribal elements), it also exhibits many of the characteristics of deliberative rhetoric. Its very structure reveals the author’s knowledge of ancient rhetorical forms and features, and I have analyzed its composition as a piece of deliberative rhetoric in my unpublished work. Whoever the author was, she or he was thoroughly immersed in the moral-philosophical-rhetoricaleducational context. Thus, the text was written by an educated person, who was “herself” an educator, communicating moral-philosophical ideas and arguing for their validity founded on the understanding of rhetoric as a persuasive tool. Rhetoric, then, becomes an element of methodology, of pedagogy. The thoughts and tone of the treatise have much in common with Fragment 3 of Musonius Rufus, “That Women Too Should Study Philosophy,” and these parallels have been examined by A. C. van Geytenbeek, who seems to believe that the name Phintys itself is male (Musonius Rufus and Greek Diatribe [rev. ed., trans. B. L. Hijmans, Jr.; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1963], 59). 20 JXQDLNRBM GH? PD OLVWD D UHWDB VZIURVX QD GLDB JDBU WDX WDM WRBQ LGLRQ DQGUD NDL? WLPKaQNDL? D JDSKaQGXQDVHLWDL, Anth. 61 (589, 1–3). The author goes on to explain the differences between male and female virtues, as discussed below. 21 This rhetorical strategy looks very similar to what Rhet. Her. describes as the Distributio: “The Distribution has two parts: the Enumeration and the Exposition. We shall be using the Enumeration when we tell by number how many points we are going to discuss. The

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Therefore, it is necessary for a woman who is being educated to gain knowledge about sǀphrosynƝ: from how many and what kinds of things does this good thing come to [maturity in] a woman. So then I say [it comes] from these five: first, from the sanctity and piety with respect to the marriage bed; second, from the adornment of her body; third, from the expeditions from her own house; fourth, from not engaging in secret orgiastic rites and great mother celebrations; and fifth, in being discreet and moderate in the sacrifice to the deity. But of these the greatest and most essential cause of sǀphrosynƝ is to be uncorrupted with respect to the marriage bed, and not to have intercourse with a strange man. 22

To reiterate, for a woman to acquire the “supreme virtue” of sǀphrosynƝ, she must first and foremost remain sexually faithful to her husband. In this text, threats of divine and legal punishments are inscribed in order to dissuade a woman from extra-marital sex: she is warned especially not to disavow her marital promise to join her husband “in a life partnership and in the procreation of children according to the law.”23 In order to persuade a woman toward sǀphrosynƝ in this pre-DNA-testing society, the hoped-for consequence of her wifely faithfulness is promised: “But the best adornment and foremost glory of a married woman is that her sǀphrosynƝ toward her husband is testified to through her own children, if they bear the image of the likeness of the father who begot them.”24 Indeed, such a result would be noticeably apparent evidence of a woman’s sexual fidelity to her husband. number ought not to exceed three; for otherwise, besides the danger that we may at some time include in the speech more or fewer points than we enumerated, it instills in the hearer the suspicion of premeditation and artifice, and this robs the speech of conviction. The Exposition consists in setting forth, briefly and completely, the points we intend to discuss” (1.10.17, LCL; trans. H. Caplan). On the SǀphrosynƝ seems to follow a similar pattern of enumeration first, then exposition. Oddly enough, five points are enumerated (more than Rhet. Her. recommends), but in the exposition numbers four and five appear to be collapsed into one exposition. Perhaps the original number was forgotten, as Rhet. Her. warned, yet the last two points simply express the same idea first in a negative, then a positive way. 22 GLRB GHL SHUL? VZIURVX QDM SDLGHXRPHQDQ JQZUL]HQ HN SR VZQ WLQZaQ NDL? SRLZQ WRXaWR WD JDTRBQ WD_a JXQDLNL? SDUDJLQHWDL IDPL? GKB HN SHQWH WRX WZQ SUDaWRQ PH?Q HN WDaMSHUL?WDBQHX QDBQRVLR WDWR MWHNDL?HX VHEHLDMGHX WHURQGH?HNWZaNR VPZWZaSHUL?WRB VZaPD WULWRQ G’ HN WZaQ HFR GZQ WZaQ HN WDaM LGLDM RLNLDM WHWDUWRQ G’ HN WZa PKB [UHHVTDL WRLM R UJLDVPRLM NDL? PDWUZ_DVPRLM SHPSWRQ G’ HQ WD_a TXVLD_ WD_a SURBM WRB THLRQHX ODEHDK`PHQNDL? PHWULDQWRX WZQGH? PHJLVWRQDLWLRQNDL? VXQHNWLNZ WDWRQWDaM VZIURVX QDMWRBSHUL?WDBQHX QDBQK`PHQD GLD ITRURQ NDL?DPLNWRQTXUDLZD QGUR M, Anth. 61 (590, 1–11). 23 HSL? NRLQZQLD_ ELZNDL? WHNQZQJHQHVHLWD_a NDWDB QR PRQ, Anth. 61 (690, 15–16). Note that the procreation is intended to produce “legitimate” heirs. 24 ND OOLVWRM GH? NR VPRM JXQDLNRBM HOHXTHUDM SUDaWR Q WH NXaGRM WRB GLDB WZaQ DXWDaM WHNQZQHSLPDUWX UDVTDLWDBQVZIURVX QDQ WDBQSRWL? WRBQDQGUDDLNDWRBQWX SRQ WDaM RPRLR WDWRM HSLIHUZQWL WZa NDWDVSHLUDQWRM DX WZBM SDWUR M, Anth. 61a (591, 11–15). DXWDaM is a contraction of RDXWDaMNote that the word HOHXTHUDQ may mean “free [woman]” or “married woman, LSJ, s.v. HOHX THURM.

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Here I suggest a modification of Malherbe’s assessment of this treatise’s concept of sophrosyne. Twice he states that On the SǀphrosynƝ of a Woman views the purpose of marital sex as “procreation.”25 While On the SǀphrosynƝ does point out that a woman’s marriage vow is for “a life partnership and for the procreation of children according to the law,” and although this may very well be the implicit viewpoint of the discourse, still it does not explicitly state that having children is the first or only purpose of sexual intercourse within a marriage. Certainly bearing children who resemble their legitimate father signals a woman’s sǀphrosynƝ, but again that does not mean that marital sex has procreation as its only objective. What lies beneath this particular aspect of the topos is whether a virtuous woman was expected to gain any other benefit, such as physical enjoyment or companionship from marital sex.26 But On the SǀphrosynƝ does not address female sexuality in this context, although it does emphasize the “life partnership” of a marriage. The four other enactments of the woman’s sǀphrosynƝ – her modest adornment, “expeditions” from her house, not participating in “women’s rituals,” and proper sacrifices to the gods – radiate out from the central source of marital faithfulness, and are meant to reinforce the public, social perception that this wife is indeed not sexually “mixed up” (to translate the word DPLNWRQ) with any man other than her husband.27 In this culture, as in others, clothing, jewelry, and cosmetics signify social position but also a woman’s sexual availability or inaccessibility. Her modest adornment ensures that “she will provide honor both for her life-partner and for her25 “Among the ways by which a woman learns this virtue are, most important, the holiness and godliness (RVLR WKWR MWHNDL HX VHEHLDM) of the marriage bed [152, 20–21, 25], for procreation (WHNQZQJHQHVHL; 153, 1–2)” (“The Virtus Feminarum,” 62); then, “Phintys connects sophrosyne to marriage for the sake of procreation” (63). 26 The issue of the goal of marital sexual intercourse is considered by many philosophers, among them the (pseudo)Pythagorean Ocellus Lucanus, who asserts that procreation of legitimate children gives reason to sex: “So it is first necessary to observe this one thing, that sexual intercourse is not for the sake of pleasure. . . . For those who have intercourse not at all for the sake of having children do injustice to the most revered systems of partnership,” HQRX`Q WRXaWRSUZaWRQGHLTHZUHLQRWLRX [KGRQKaMHQHNDK PLFLMRL JDBUNDTD SDFPKB GLDB SDLGRSRLLDQVXQDSWR PHQRLD GLNK VRXVLWDB WLPLZ WDWDWKaMNRLQZQLDMVXVWK PDWD (On the Nature of the Universe 45; trans. Will Deming, Paul on Marriage and Celibacy: The Hellenistic Background of 1 Corinthians 7 [2d ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004], 232–33). I would note further that this text and many others considered by Deming and Malherbe address the issue of men’s sexual behavior (whether it is good for men to marry and beget children), not that of women, as does On the SǀphrosynƝ of a Woman. The Pythagorean letter Theano to Nikostrate refers to intimacy, partnership, and companionship between wife and husband, again without an explicit link to procreation. 27 The term TXUDLZD QGUR M, “a man outside the doors,” is an interesting way to refer to sexual trespassers.

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self.”28 Similarly, going out of her house requires a woman to behave with reserve, not drawing attention to herself by leaving during the shadowy hours29 which might suggest a sexual assignation, but to go out only “in order to perform public sacrifices to the founding-god of the city on behalf of herself and her husband and her whole house,”30 or for an approved social event, or to purchase a household necessity. The wording of these instructions remind the reader that the very fashion in which a woman makes “expeditions” from the house could intimate that she is not sǀphrǀn because she is not being faithful to “her husband.” Adding the admonition “to abstain from orgiastic rites and great mother celebrations,”31 the author cites the illegality of these events, along with the negative examples that women might become drunk and/or subject to ecstatic experiences, so that once again, a woman’s control of her sexual desires is linked to her manifestation of sǀphrosynƝ. The treatise ends succinctly with this statement: “But it is necessary for the one who is the mistress of the house and who presides over the house to be sǀphrǀn and untouched in all respects.”32 II. The Letter Melissa to Kleareta The epistolary occasion of the letter Melissa to Kleareta33 sets the stage for the author to give the recipient advice on how she might acquire WRBQVXPELZaQWDNDL?DXWDBQHQWLPRQSDUHFHWDL, Anth. 61a (592, 14). The treatise advises this time-frame for a woman to leave her house: “Therefore not at early dawn nor at evening, but [she must] make the expedition when she is in plain sight after the marketplace is teeming” (HSHLWD PK WH RUIQDM D QLVWDPHQDM PK WH HVSHUDM D OODB SODTXRX VDMD JRUDaMNDWDIDQHDJLQRPHQDQWDBQHFRGRQ, Anth. 61a 592, 17–593, 2). 30 WDBM GDPRWHOHDM TXKSRORX VDM WZ_a D U[DJHWD_ THZ_a WDaM SR OLRM XSH?U DXWDaM NDL? WZaD QGURBMNDL?WZaSDQWRBMRLNZ, Anth. 61a (592, 15–17). 31 R UJLDVPZaQGH?NDL?PDWUZ_DVPZaQWZaQNDW’RL@NRQD SH[HVTDL,Anth. 61a (593, 6–7). 32 WDBQG’RLNRGHVSRLQDQNDL?SURNDTH]RPHQDQRLNZGHLVZ IURQDNDL?D QHSDIRQSRWL? SD QWDK`PHQ, Anth. 61a (593, 9–11). The word D QHSDIRQ seems to have a literal meaning: “not being touched,” in which case, the woman’s body as a sexual entity could be referred to again. 33 The best critical edition of this letter appears in Alfons Städele, Die Briefe des Pythagoras under der Pythagoreer (Beiträge zur Klassischen Philologie 115; Meisenheim am Glan: Verlag Anton Hain, 1980), 160–62 (with a German translation there). Städele points out that because Holger Thesleff’s collection of “Pseudopythagorica” (The Pythagorean Texts of the Hellenistic Period. [Acta Academiae Aboensis, Ser. A, Humaniora 30/1; Åbo, Finland: Åbo Akademi, 1965]) arranges all the texts in alphabetical order by author’s name, the textual history of these Pythagorean letters (and other writings) is obscured (Die Briefe, 30). An English translation of Melissa to Kleareta is found in Abraham J. Malherbe, Moral Exhortation, A Greco-Roman Sourcebook (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986), 83. A Koiné version of the Doric composition has been more recently published as Papyrus Hauniensis II.13, in Adam Bülow-Jacobsen, ed. and trans., Papyri Graecae Haunienesis, Vol. 2: Letters and mummy labels from Roman Egypt (Bonn: Habelt, 1981). The two documents are compared and discussed in E. A. Judge, “A Woman’s Behaviour” (in New Documents Illustrating Early Chris28 29

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sǀphrosynƝ, and the contents of the letter adhere to the contours of the topos of “the good woman.” Melissa to Kleareta. Greetings. It appears to me that of yourself34 you have most good attributes. For your earnest wishing to hear about a wife’s decorous behavior gives a good hope that you are going to grow old 35 in accordance with virtue. Therefore, the sǀphron and married woman36 must belong to her lawful husband, being adorned with silence but not very craftily, and [she must] be dressed in clothing that is whitened and clean and simple, but not very expensive or excessive; for she ought to avoid garments of purple cloth, and that shot through with purple and gold, since this sort is useful to the hetairai for their hunting of more men. But the adornment that belongs to the woman who is well pleasing to her very own [husband] is her way of life, and not her robes. For the married woman must appear fair of form to her own husband, but not to the neighbors. On the one hand, you should have a blush as a sign of modesty on your face instead of rouge, and, on the other, goodness and the height of decorum and instead of gold and emeralds, for the woman who strives for sǀphrosynƝ should not be enthusiastic for the extravagance of clothing, but for the management of her household. And she should please her own husband by making his wishes complete, for the wishes of her husband ought to be an unwritten law for the decorous woman, according to which she must live. And she must consider that, along with herself, her orderly behavior has been offered as her best and greatest dowry-gift, for she must trust in the beauty and wealth of her soul rather than in that of her looks and possessions; for jealousy and sickness take away from the latter, but the former are present in good order even to death. 37 tianity 6 [1992]: 18–23). My translation and citations here are from Städele’s edition, but also take Bülow-Jacobsen’s comments into account. 34 The adverb DX WR PDWZM means “of itself,” and the adjective has several connotations: “acting of one’s own will” (of persons); “spontaneous” (of inanimate things); and “happening of themselves, without external agency” (of events), LSJ, s.v. DX WR PDWRM. With respect to “Melissa’s” statement to Kleareta, it seems ambiguous to me whether Kleareta has played an active or passive role in acquiring the “good attributes.” 35 Lit: “turn gray.” 36 Once again, HOHXTHUDQ may mean “free [woman]” or “married woman”; see n. 24. 37 0HOLVVD.OHDUHWD_[DLUHLQ$X WRPD WZMHPL?QIDLQK_SOHRQD WZaQNDOZaQH[HQWRB JDBUHVSRXGDVPHQZMHTHOHQWXB D NRXaVDLSHUL? JXQDLNRBMHX NRVPLDMNDODBQHOSLGDGLGRL RWL PHOOHLM SROLRXaVTDL NDW’ D UHWK Q [UKB Z`Q WDBQ VZ IURQD NDL? HOHXTHUDQ WZ_a NDWDB QR PRQ D QGUL? SRWKaPHQ DVX[LD_ NHNDOOZSLVPHQDQ [D OODB PKB SROXWHUGZaM] K`PHQ GH? WD_a HVTDaWL OHXNRHLPRQD NDL? NDTD ULRQ NDL? D IHOKa D OODB PKB SROXWHOKa NDL? SHULVVD Q SDUDLWKWHRQ JDBU DX WD_a WDBQ D ORXUJKa NDL? GLDSR UIXURQ NDL? WDB [UXVR SDVWD WZaQ HQGXPD WZQ WDLM HWDLUDLM JDBU WD GH [UK VLPD SRWWDBQ WZaQ SOHR QZQ TK UDQ WDaM GH? SRT’HQDWRBQLGLRQHX DUHVWRX VDMJXQDLNRBMNR VPRMR WUR SRMSHOHLNDL? RX [DLVWRODL HXPRUIRQJDBUWDBQHOHXTHUDQLGHVTDLWZ_aDXWDaMD QGULD OO’RX WRLMSODVLRQH[RLMDQ HSL? WDaM R\LRM HUX TDPD PH?Q VDPHLRQ DLGRXaM D QWL? IX NLRM NDORNDJDTLDQ GH? NDL? NRV PLR WDWD NDL? VZIURVX QDQ D QWL? [UXVZa NDL? VPDUD JGZ RX  JDBU HM WDBQ WDaM HVTDaWRM SROXWHOHLDQ ILORNDOHLQ GHL WDBQ JOL[RPHQDQ WDaM VZIURVX QDM D OO’ HM WDBQ RLNRQRPLDQ WZa RLNZ D UHVNHQ GH? DX WDBQ WZ_a DXWDaM D QGUL? HSLWHOHDM SRLHXaVDQ WDBM HNHLQZ THOK VLDM DL JDBU WZa D QGURBM THOK VHLM QR PRM R IHLOHL DJUDIRM HL@QDL NRVPLD_ JXQDLNL SRT’ RQ [UKB ELZaQ DX WD Q QRPL]HQ GH? SURLND SRWHQKQH[TDL DPD DXWD_a NDO OLVWDQ NDL? PHJLVWDQ WDBQ HX WDFLDQ SLVWHX HQ JDBU [UKB WZ_a WDaM \X[DaM ND OOHL WH NDL?

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The first word encountered in “Melissa’s” letter is the sender’s name in the nominative case, and this authorial pseudonym prepares the reader to interpret the epistolary contents. While there are no known female Pythagoreans named “Melissa,” the name carries strong positive associations in many ancient sources. The word PHOLVVD, meaning “bee,” and applied to either wild-bees or honey-bees, 38 is quite common, and is extended metaphorically to describe those who are prophetically inspired (making utterances in an out-of-mind state),39 and also used as a metaphor for poetry as a divinely-inspired activity.40 Furthermore, bees were particularly associated with human women in mystical and religious contexts.41 Alfons Städele links bees to women in the Neopythagorean theorizing about the transmigration of souls, citing Porphyry’s analogy between bees and righteous human souls yearning to return to their JHQHVLM.42 The aspect of bee-behavior especially pertinent to the content of Melissa to Kleareta is that bees were thought to model sǀphrosynƝ. As Sarah B. Pomeroy states: “The bee was famous for purity and abstinence. Ancient entomologists did not understand the sexual reproduction of bees; therefore, they associated this insect with chastity.”43 Aelian explicitly links the bee to sǀphrosynƝ as well as to the Pythagorean way of life: But a bee lives a pure life, and would not at any time eat a living thing. It does not need Pythagoras as a counselor, not at all; it is enough for the flowers to be food for it. And it has the highest rank when it comes to sǀphrosynƝ. At any rate, it hates luxury and delicacy. And the evidence is that it pursues the man anointed with perfume and strikes as if SORX WZ_ PDaOORQK WZ_a WDaMR\LRMNDL? WZaQ[UKPD WZQWDB PH?QJDBUITR QRMNDL? QRXaVRM SDUDLUHHWDLWDBGH?PH[ULTDQD WZSD UHQWLHNWHWDPHQD 38 The root PHOL- connotes honey or sweetness. 39 These are examined by Susan Scheinberg, “The Bee Maidens of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 83 (1979): 19. 40 Scheinberg, “The Bee Maidens,” 22. The label was also applied to the (female) Muses, Anthologia Palatina 7.13; cited in LSJ, s.v. PHOLVVD. 41 A summary of sources may be found in volume 8 of Brill’s New Pauly: Encyclopedia of the Ancient World (ed. Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider; English ed. Christine F. Salazar; Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2006). For more on bees in Greek religions, see G. W. Elderkin, “The Bee of Artemis,” The American Journal of Philology 60 (1939): 203–13. Priestesses of Apollo at Delphi, of Artemis, the Magna Mater, and Demeter were all called by the name 0HOLVVD (Elderkin, “The Bee of Artemis,” 203, 204, 206, 212). 42 Städele states, “Neupythagoreische Philosophen bezeichnen so jede reine, keusche Seele (vgl. etwa Porphyr.antr.19) oder auch den jungfräulichen Mond (l.c. 18)” (Die Briefe, 253 n. 7). Malherbe appears to echo Städele’s statement in his comments about the author of this letter: “Melissa was the name used by Neopythagoreans of chaste persons and beings, and its use in the letter written in her name . . . may therefore be symbolic” (Moral Exhortation, 20). 43 Xenophon “Oeconomicus”: A Social and Historical Commentary (ed. Sarah B. Pomeroy; Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 279; citing here Pliny, NH 11.46, who notes that no one has ever observed the coitus of bees.

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making a fatal battle. It recognizes the man that comes from licentious intercourse, and indeed pursues that man as its worst enemy. 44

These elements of Aelian’s depiction of bee-nature are quite apt for interpreting Melissa to Kleareta: both his evocation of Pythagorean practices as well as the perception of apian sǀphrosynƝ, which denounced luxury and delicacy, while opposing adultery, correspond to the worldview of Melissa’s epistolary advice. As in the treatise ascribed to Phintys, in this short letter female sǀphrosynƝ is enacted first of all by a woman’s marital faithfulness: she ought “to belong to her lawful husband,” a thought which is later developed as “she should please her own husband by making his wishes complete.” The author also introduces the issue of wifely adornment, which relies on some of the same logic as On the SǀphrosynƝ. Both texts advocate “shame” (DLV[XQK) or “modesty” (DLGZ M) as the proper adornment for women,45 while decrying any display of luxury in clothing, jewelry,46 or cosmetics. However, Melissa to Kleareta overtly asserts that the wife’s choice of modest adornment shows that she is sexually active only with her husband, and that she is not, as are the hetairai, on the hunt for “more men.” The justification offered to support this paraenesis regarding adornment is an appeal to social convention: only one man has the right to view a woman’s fair-form (HXPRUIRQ),47 and that is her husband, because her body should not be revealed to “the neighbors.” The paraenetic instruc44 ELRQ GH? NDTDURBQ ]K_a PHOLWWD NDL? ]Z_R X RX N DQ RX GHQRBM SD VDLWR  SRWH NDL? RX  GHLWDL3XTDJR URXVXPERX ORXRX GH? HQD SR [UKGH? DUDVLWRQDX WK_a HL@QDLWDB DQTKHVWL GH? NDL? VZIURVX QKQ D NURWD WK [OLGKBQ JRXaQ NDL? TUX \LQ PHPLVKNH NDL? WRB PDUWX ULRQ WRBQ[ULVD PHQRQPX UZ_ GLZ NHLWHNDL? HODX QHLZMSROHPLRQD QK NHVWDGUD VDQWDRL@GHGH? NDL?WRBQHOTR QWDHFD NROD VWRXRPLOLDMNDL?GLZ NHLNDL?HNHLQRQRL>DGK SRXH[TLVWRQNA 5.11.30–38. Aelian had previously mentioned the bee’s avoidance of anointings, and likened it to the proper behavior of “sǀphrǀn young girls”: “After all, the bees stay away from every bad smell and likewise from myrrh, not enduring stench nor embracing the emasculation of perfume, such as, I presume, refined and sǀphrǀn young girls are sickened by the former and despise the latter,” $SH[TD QRQWDLGH?DUDDLPHOLWWDLNDNRVPLD_SD VK_ NDL?PX UZ_RPRLZM RXWH WRB GXVZaGHM XSRPHQRXVDL RXWH D VSD]R PHQDL WKaM HX ZGLDM WRB WHTUXPPHQRQ RL>D GK SRX NR UDL D VWHLDL WH NDL? VZ IURQHM WRB PH?Q EGHOXWWR PHQDL WKaM GH? XSHUIURQRXaVDL, NA 1.58. This perception of bees also appears in Plutarch’s Advice to the Bride and Groom 144D. 45 On the SǀphrosynƝ states: “she should adorn herself rather with a sense of shame,” NRVPH?QGH?PDaOORQDXWDBQDLV[X QD_(Anth. 61a [592, 13]). Melissa to Kleareta places it in the realm of facial make-up: “you should have a blush as a sign of modesty on your face instead of rouge” (Städele, line 15). 46 Both reject “gold and emeralds” (On the Sophrosyne 592, 5–6; Melissa to Kleareta line 17). 47 HXPRUIRQappears to be a euphemistic term for the woman’s (nude?) body, or perhaps refers to “form-fitting” clothing that reveals as much as it hides.

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tion reinforces a high sexual standard for the wife, while providing some sly humor about the potential exposure of her body to unspecified other men. If this is a teasing remark, addressed to a newly-married, and thus presumably newly-sexually active, young woman, then the advice that immediately follows – “you should have a blush as a sign of modesty on your face instead of rouge” – could continue the bantering tone of sexual innuendo.48 In Melissa to Kleareta, the feminine virtue of sǀphrosynƝ applies to a woman’s larger domestic context in that “the woman who strives for sǀphrosynƝ should not be enthusiastic for the extravagance of clothing, but for the management of her household.” While the main focus of the wife’s sǀphrǀn behavior is her husband, this bit of advice evokes her role as despoina, so that the virtue of sǀphrosynƝ is strongly linked to that aspect of a wife’s occupation. Since the Roman household also included children, we might infer that a woman’s mothering role is also being evoked. However, in this letter there is no obvious connection made between sǀphrosynƝ and procreation as the supposed purpose of marital sex; there are no references to child-bearing or child-rearing. The letter comes to a graceful close with a renewed urging to focus on inner moral beauty rather than on externals, since the “beauty and wealth of her ‘soul’” will endure until death, while the beauty and wealth of “her looks and her possessions” are only temporary, being easily affected by “jealousy and illness.” While this expresses the ancient philosophical commonplace that one’s inner virtuous character is demonstrated in modest outer adornment, at the same time the antithesis makes another link between the woman’s virtue and her role as wife: “her orderly behavior has been offered as her best and greatest dowry-gift.” In summary, the letter’s advocacy of a feminine kind of sǀphrosynƝ is cleverly supported by the authorial pseudonym: 0HOLVVD. First, there is the connection of honey-bees, melissai, with Pythagoreans, so that whatever advice is given here aspires to the stamp of approval of that esteemed philosophical movement. Then, the reports of the sexual purity of bees, their chastity and their hatred of luxury and of licentious intercourse correspond to the paraenesis of this letter, and remind the reader that for a woman to exhibit sǀphrosynƝ she absolutely must remain sexually faithful to her own husband. 48

Donald Lateiner’s study, “Blushes and Pallor in Ancient Fictions,” provides a helpful context for this reference to blush (HUX TDPD) in Melissa to Kleareta (Helios 25 [1998]: 163– 89). Lateiner connects blushing with the terms DLV[X QK and DLGZ M(164–65), and he finds that blushing often has a sexual connotation: “Blushes in [ancient] literature usually communicate involuntarily the shyness, modesty, embarrassment, or shame of a man or woman entering into first amatory awareness or of one caught in infidelity” (166).

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C. SǀphrosynƝ for Men and Women As seen in North’s far-ranging compilation, many ancient texts discuss men’s practice of sǀphrosynƝ, and one occasional component of that practice is that a husband also ought to restrain himself from extramarital sex. In his On the Pythagorean Life, Iamblichus repeats the view that sǀphrosynƝ is an essential virtue for both males and females, and that selfcontrol of sexual lust is one element of this virtue (31.195.8; 31.210.15; 31.211.4). In fact, Iamblichus’s report of the speech of Pythagoras to the men of Kroton urges: They should also be resolved that they would know only their wives, and that their wives should not adulterate the line because their partners neglect or injure them. A man should think that his wife was brought to him in the sight of the gods, like a suppliant, taken with libations from the hearth. He should set an example of discipline and sǀphrosynƝ both to the household of which he is head and to those in the city. 49

However, based on a survey of the evidence, in most other texts sǀphrosynƝ is not so inextricably tied to the husband’s marital fidelity as it is to the wife’s.50 Phintys’s treatise On the SǀphrosynƝ of a Woman clearly expresses this exact gender-perspective: But I think that some things are characteristic for a man, and some for a woman, and some are common to man and woman, and some are more for a man than for a woman, and some more for a woman than for a man. On the one hand, characteristic activities for a man are to serve as a general, and to take part in government, and to speak in the assembly. On the other hand, characteristic activities for a woman are to keep the house and to stay indoors and to wait for and to take care of her husband. And I say common 49 VSRXGD ]HLQGH? NDL? WRXaWRRSZMDX WRL WHPR QDMHNHLQDMHLGK VZVLQDL WHJXQ DLNHMPKB QRTHX ZVLWRB JHQRMR OLJZULD_ NDL? NDNLD_ WZaQVXQRLNRX QWZQHWLGH? WKBQJXQ DLNDQRPL]HLQD SRB WKaMHVWLDMHLOKIR WDPHWDB VSRQGZaQNDTD SHULNHWLQHQDQWLRQWZaQ THZaQ HLVKa[TDL SURBM DXWR Q NDL? WK_a WD FHL NDL? WK_a VZIURVX QK_ SDUD GHLJPD JHQHVTDL WRLMWHNDWDBWKBQRLNLDQKQRLNHLNDL?WRLMNDWDBWKBQSR OLQ VP 9.48; trans. Gillian Clark (Iamblichus: On the Pythagorean Life [Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1989]). 50 For example, VZIUR cognates appears eleven times Plutarch’s Advice to the Bride and Groom: once applied to the husband, once to the entire household, and nine times as a description of the good wife. In Antipater’s On Marriage, none of these terms are applied to a man’s role in the marriage. On the other hand, Ocellus Lucanus’s On the Nature does link male sǀphrosynƝ with marital sex-for-procreation, indicating perhaps, that men need to keep themselves under control from participating in illicit sex, and Musonius Rufus argues strongly that the virtue applies to both partners in marriage (Frag. 4). But the Neopythagorean letter Theano to Nikostrate, which gives paraenesis to a wife whose husband has formed a liaison with a hetaira, nowhere calls his behavior a lack of sǀphrosynƝ. He is described as committing an “injustice” (K D GLNLD) against his wife, but not of acting “un-sǀphrǀn-ly.” According to Pomeroy, “In the Hellenistic period there was slightly less tolerance of a husband’s philandering. Plutarch advises both husband and wife to abstain from extramarital intercourse, but in case the husband does indulge, he recommends discretion” (Plutarch’s Advice, 37).

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things are courage [D Q GUHLDQ], and justice [GLNDLRVX QDQ], and practical wisdom [IUR Q DVLQ]. For also it is fitting for both a man and a woman to have virtues of the body and likewise those of the soul. And just as it is beneficial for both to be healthy in body, thus [it is beneficial for both to be] healthy in soul. The virtues of the body are health, strength, keen perception, beauty. Some [virtues] are more suitable for a man to train in and to possess, and some more for a woman. For courageous deeds and practical wisdom are more [suitable] for a man, both on account of the state of his body and on account of the power of his soul, but sǀphrosynƝ [is more suitable] for the woman. 51

Here it is the wife who needs to act sǀphrǀn-ly in regard to household management,52 while the husband is expected to move and to act in public arenas – military and political – from which women are supposedly restricted. This socially conventional thinking gives a partial rationale for why female sǀphrosynƝ is primarily shown in a wife’s sexual loyalty to her “one and only” husband: marriage is the chief relationship of her adult life. Thus, sǀphrosynƝ is more for a woman than for a man,53 and, to extrapolate the logic of the treatise, this appears to be true “on account of the state of the woman’s body and the power of her soul.” Here the author does not explain what differentiates the bodies and souls of males and females; the difference is simply left unsaid. But the implication is that women as females need to possess more self-control in the realm of sexuality. 54

D. Additional Evidence and Implications In these discussions of women’s morality from the Greco-Roman world, it is not enough for the topos of “the good woman” merely to be described; HJZB GH? WDB PHQ WLQD QRPL]Z D QGURBM K`PHQ LGLD WDB GH? JXQDLNR M WDB GH? NRLQDB D QGURBM NDL? JXQDLNR M WDB GH? PDaOORQ D QGURBM K JXQDLNR M WDB GH? PDaOORQ JXQDLNRBM K D QGUR M LGLD PH?Q D QGURBM WRB VWUDWDJH?Q NDL? SROLWHX HVTDL NDL? GDPDJRUHQ LGLD GH? JXQDLNRBMWRB RLNRXUH?QNDL? HQGRQPHQHQNDL? HNGH[HVTDLNDL? THUDSHX HQ WRBQDQGUDNRLQDB GH? IDPL? D QGUHLDQ NDL? GLNDLRVX QDQ NDL? IUR QDVLQ NDL? JDBU WDBM WZa VZ PDWRM D UHWDBM H[HQ SUHSRQ NDL? D QGUL? NDL? JXQDLNL? NDL? WDaM \X[DaM RPRLZM NDL? ZM XJLDLQHQ WZ_a VZ PDWL D PIRWHURLM Z IHOLPRQ RXWZM XJLDLQHQ WD_a \X[D_a VZ PDWRM GH? K`PHQ D UHWDBM XJHLDQLV[XBQHX DLVTKVLDQND OORMWDB GH? PDaOORQD QGUL? NDL? D VNH?QNDL? H[HQRLNHLR QHQWL WDB GH? PDaOORQ JXQDLNL D QGUR WDWD PH?Q JDBU NDL? IUR QDVLQ PDaOORQ D QGUL? NDL? GLDB WDBQ HFLQWRXa VZ PDWRMNDL? GLDB WDBQGX QDPLQWDaM\X[DaMVZIURVX QDQGH? JXQDLNL, Anth. 61 (589, 5–590, 1). A similar set of arguments is made by Musonius Rufus: women and men should strive for (or be taught) the same virtues, but these will be enacted differently based on one’s gender (Frag. 3, “That Women Too Should Study Philosophy,” and Frag. 4, “Should Daughters Receive the Same Education as Sons?”). 52 This connection of sǀphrosynƝ to RLNRQRPLD is North’s main point in “The Mare, the Vixen, and the Bee.” 53 There is yet sǀphrosynƝ for a man, but the treatise does not address this issue. 54 This may also mean that, by modest adornment and behavior, women avoid inciting the sexual lust of men other than their husbands. 51

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such a woman must also be formed. Many of the texts have this twofold objective: to present the audience (composed of both females and males) with a certain point of view regarding “good women,” and then to motivate women to behave in line with that paradigm.55 As a result, an educational goal stimulates the production and perpetuation of such literature because the authors are not content to postulate ideas; they also want to shape the way real women live. But what kinds of “real woman” are envisioned as among the auditors (or learners) of the Pythagorean women’s texts? The main social marker given is that of the “free woman,” one who is lawfully competent to marry.56 That the word HOHXTHURM, when applied to a woman, can mean either “free” or “married”57 indicates the cultural perception that the two social states are nearly synonymous. These two Pythagorean texts articulate straightforwardly that their intended audiences are free women. However, much other evidence shows that sǀphrosynƝ is also encouraged for women who do not possess this elite social status. For instance, in the Renaissance manuscripts of the epistolary collection of Pythagorean women, Melissa to Kleareta is followed by Myia to Phyllis, a letter that advises a new mother on hiring a wet-nurse and on the care of infants. The wet-nurse’s personal characteristics become part of the job qualification: Choose for yourself a wet-nurse who is most well-disposed and clean, and, what is more, modest and not predisposed toward sleep and nor indeed toward strong drink. For this is the kind of woman who might be judged best for raising free children,58 if that is, she has nutritious milk and is not an easy conquest when it comes to bedding with men. . . . Let her be orderly and sǀphrǀn; if it is possible, let her not be a barbarian, but a Greek.59

Conspicuously similar advice on the hiring of a wet-nurse is provided by Soranus, who provides a list of traits that should be exhibited: “one must 55

This is the case for both On the SǀphrosynƝ of a Woman and Melissa to Kleareta. These texts adopt the rhetorical-educational strategies known from other moral-philosophical writings, among others: writing in the letter-genre; diatribal elements, such as direct address and considering objections; and the use of antitheses, including warnings and promises, vices and virtues, immoral and moral examples. 56 JXQDLNRBMHOHXTHUDM On the SǀphrosynƝ; HOHXTHUDQ, Melissa to Kleareta. This deduction is supported by the various appeals to the legality of the wife’s marriage vows in On the Sophrosyne (Anth. 61 [590, 11–591, 4]) and by the phrase “to her husband according to the law” (WZ_aNDWDBQR PRQD QGUL?, lines 5–6) in Melissa to Kleareta. 57 LSJ, s.v. HOHXTHURM 58 The Doric form HOHXTHUZM appears to be the accusative, masculine, plural adjective, not the later adverb. Städele likewise translates this “freigeborene Kinder” (Die Briefe, 163). 59 WLWTDQPH?QHNOHFDVTDLWDBQHSLWDGHLRWD WDQNDL?NDTD ULRQHWLGH? DLGK PRQDNDL?PKB XSQZ_ SURVRLNHLRXPHQDQ PKGH? PKBQ PHTD_ D WRLD GH JDBU DQ NULQRLWR NUDWLVWD SRWWRB HNWUHIHQ HOHXTHUZM SDLGDM HD Q JH GKB JD OD WUR ILPRQ H[K_ NDL? PKB WDLM SURBM DQGUD NRLWDLM HX QLNDWRM SHOK_    WHWDJPHQD NDL? VZ IUZQ GXQDWZaQ GH? RQWZQ PKB ED UEDURMD OODB(OOKQLM (Städele, lines 2–7, 17–18).

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select a wet-nurse who is . . . sǀphrǀn, sympathetic and not bad-tempered, Greek, clean.”60 According to Soranus, being sǀphrǀn has two components: the wet-nurse should refrain from sexual intercourse as well as from drinking alcohol.61 What is striking in these two sources on selecting a good wet-nurse is that such “working women” are expected to demonstrate the same feminine virtues as those women whose wealth would allow them to hire a surrogate nurse. Certainly, wet-nurses are not considered to be of high social status,62 as shown by a few extant papyri that record legal arrangements for this service.63 Jennifer A. Glancy cogently remarks: “Human milk was a valuable (NOHNWHRQ GH? WKBQ WLWTKBQ    VZ IURQD VXPSDTKa NDL? D RU JLVWRQ (OOKQLGD NDTD ULRQ, Gyn. 19.1. What I have ellipsed is a physical description of the best wet-nurse: neither too young nor too old, a healthy woman, having symmetrical breasts (PDVWRXBM H[RXVDQ VXPPHWURXM), etc. The five character traits are placed at the end of this list. For Städele, the near parallels of Myia to Phyllis to the medical texts suggest a date of sometime in the (late?) second c. C.E. (Die Briefe, 269). 61 “And sǀphrǀn: refraining from sexual intercourse, drinking, lust, and any other pleasure and lack of self-control. For, on the one hand, sex acts cool her affection for the nursing child by causing a distraction of the sexual pleasures, while also ruining the milk and decreasing or making it disappear completely, through provoking the mother’s cleansing or accomplishing conception. And in turn, with regard to drinking, first the one producing milk is harmed both in soul and in body, and for this reason the milk is spoiled. Second, being controlled by a sleep which is difficult to wake from, the infant is left uncared for or she even falls on it in a dangerous way. Third, too much wine is transferred into the milk, and because of this the nursing infant becomes sluggish and drowsy, even trembling and apoplectic and spasmodic,” VZ IURQD GH SURBM WRB VXQRXVLDM D SH[HVTDL NDL? PHTKM NDL? ODJQHLDM NDL? WKaM DOOKM KGRQKaM NDL? D NUDVLDM DL VXQRXVLDL PH?Q JDBU PHWDB WRXa WKBQ SURBM WR WUHIR PHQRQ ILORVWRUJLDQ D SR\X [HLQ SHULVSDVPZ_a WKaM HN WZaQ D IURGLVLZQ KGRQKaM HWL NDL? ITHLURXVL WRB JD OD NDL? PHLRXaVLQ K WHOHLZM D IDQL]RXVLQ WDBM GLDB WKaM PK WUDM HUHTL]RXVDL NDTD UVHLM K VXOOK \HLM D SRWHORXaVDL GLDB GH? WDBM PHTDM SUZaWRQ PH?QK JDORX[RXaVDEOD SWHWDLNDL? WK_a \X[K_a NDL? WZ_a VZ PDWLGLDB WRXaWRGH? NDL? WRB JD OD GLDITHLUHL GHX WHURQ GH? XSQZ_ GXVGLHJHUWZ_ NDWH[RPHQK NDWDOHLSHL WRB EUHIRM D QHSLPHOKWRQK NDL? NLQGXQZGZaMHS’DX WZ_a NDWDSLSWHLWULWRQK WRXa SOHLRQRMRLQRX SRLR WKMVXQDQDGLGRWDL WZ_a JD ODNWLNDL? GLDB WRXaWR QZTUDB NDL? NDUZ GKSRWH? GH? NDL? HQWURPD NDL? D SR SOKNWD NDL? VSDVPZ GKWDB WUHIR PHQDJLQRQWDLEUHIK, Gyn. 2.19.11– 12. 62 Myia to Phyllis seems to contrast these women with “free children,” HOHXTHUZM SDLGDM, in lines 5–6. 63 To my knowledge, five such documents mentioning wet-nurses have been published. Three are found in P.W. Pestman, New Papyrological Primer: (1) B.G.U. 4.1107 (dated 13 B.C.E.) involves an agreement for the services of a wet-nurse for an exposed baby (a 16month commitment); (2) P.Oxy. 1.37 (49 C.E.) reports a trial of a wet-nurse whose charge died while in her care; (3) P.Mich. 3.202 (105 C.E.) is a letter where one Valeria writes to persuade another woman to serve as a wet-nurse. Volume 1 of Select Papyri: Private Affairs (LCL) includes B.G.U. 1107, along with P.Oxy. 91 (187 C.E.), a receipt of wages signed by a slave-owner whose female slave nursed a baby girl for another woman. Bagnall and Cribiore translate and discuss P.Mich. 3.202 as well as P.Lond. 3.951 verso (250–300 C.E.), a letter 60

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commodity in the ancient world,”64 so that a lactating woman of any social position would be an economic asset to the household. One such contract even stipulates sexual abstention on the part of the wet-nurse: while under contract to nurse a foundling, a certain Didyma will “take care of both herself and the child, not spoiling her milk nor sleeping with a man nor becoming pregnant again.”65 In fact, many wet-nurses were slaves, as is the case in P.Oxy. 91, in which a slave-owner acknowledges receiving wages for the services of his female slave who served as a wet-nurse. Evaluating the moral qualifications of a slave wet-nurse would have been difficult, given that, as Glancy states, “Sexual access to slave bodies was a pervasive dimension of ancient systems of slavery. Both female and male slaves were available for their owners’ pleasure.”66 If a female slave could not legally marry, and indeed was perceived to be a sort of sexual instrument, how could she ever be sǀphrǀn? Yet that is precisely the trait that Soranus and Myia to Phyllis advise for their readers. Widespread inscriptional evidence also shows that the virtue was taken up by a diverse population of what North calls “ordinary people.”67 She finds that “Sophrosyne is the primary virtue of women in Greek inscriptions, often the only one mentioned, or the only moral virtue amid a list of physical qualities, social attributes, and domestic accomplishments.”68 Thus, it seems that any woman could potentially display sǀphrosynƝ especially in the form of sexual faithfulness to one man. Any woman could learn self-control, and could refrain from drinking alcohol, from too much

from a woman urging her son-in-law to hire a wet-nurse for her daughter who has just given birth (Women’s Letters, 76–77, 265–66, 359–60). Lefkowitz and Fant include an excerpt from P.Lond. 3.951 verso in Women’s Life in Greece and Rome, 188 (#252). 64 Slavery in Early Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006), 18. 65 WKQ WH HDWKaM NDL? WRXa SDLGLRX HSLPHOKVDQ PKB ITHLURXVDQ WRB JD OD PKG’ D QGURNRLWRXaVDQPKG’HSLNX RXVDQ, B.G.U. 1107. 66 Slavery in Early Christianity, 21. Carolyn Osiek and Margaret Y. MacDonald concur with Glancy: “To the female slave therefore, honor, whether of character or of behavior, cannot be ascribed. The female slave can lay no claim to chastity or shame, both of which have no meaning. In the official view, she cannot have sensitivity toward chastity” (A Woman’s Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006], 97). 67 Sophrosyne, 252. This evidence of social expectations filtering down from elite to lower-status people corresponds to the analysis of inscriptions by Dale B. Martin about the complicated realities of slave families, where “slaves in antiquity were sometimes able to maintain familial structures of their own – even though slaves could not legally marry and the children of slaves were legally the property of the parents’ owners” (“Slave Families and Slaves in Families,” in Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue [ed. David L. Balch and Carolyn Osiek; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003], 207). 68 Sophrosyne, 253.

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talking, and from angry emotional outbursts.69 Perhaps there was some lesser grade of sǀphrosynƝ that was recognized as more appropriate for freed or slave women, a possibility that these texts do not clarify for us. For example, if a woman could not even be legally married, what standard should be used to evaluate her sexual virtue? Obviously, a wet-nurse was sexually active with a man at one time, since she needs to be lactating from a pregnancy of her own. But these texts instruct that the wet-nurse should “abstain from sexual intercourse,” or, as Myia to Phyllis has it, “is not easily overcome by bedding with a man.”70 It is apparent that the intense cultural defense of feminine sǀphrosynƝ as sexual propriety toward one’s husband extends to women of lower social levels, perhaps especially to women taking on various child-minding roles. The author of the New Testament Pastoral Letters evidently believed that the “ordinary people” in his reading-communities also could model sǀphrosynƝ, and his are the earliest extant Christian texts to espouse the virtue in its gender-differentiated forms.71 The Pastorals were intended to provide moral instruction to a “co-educational” Christian community, so that they express the conventional Greco-Roman ideology that both sexes need to obtain this virtue. However, a literary analysis of the “male” and “female” versions of sǀphrosynƝ shows that it is positioned as one of several good qualities for men,72 while for women, the virtue takes the highest priority. And, as with the Pythagorean texts, Christian women are expected to manifest sǀphrosynƝ in their proper relationship to one’s husband, in this case, by their wifely “subordination.”73 Even though in the Pastorals a 69 To change her “dialect” from barbarian to Greek would be more difficult, as Myia to Phyllis seems to acknowledge. 70 Would this apply even to the husband of a wet-nurse? Or is it meant to imply that a low-status woman would have loose sexual morals? 71 Four instances of sǀphro- cognates specifically apply to women and four more to men. SǀphrosynƝ is urged for: all women, 1 Tim 2:9, 15; older women, Titus 2:4; younger women, Titus 2:5; and for: male overseers, 1 Tim 3:2 and Titus 1:8; for older men, Titus 2:2; for younger men, Titus 2:6. It is twice applied to the entire audience: in 2 Tim 1:7 and in Titus 2:11–12. In fact, I believe that the consistent emphasis on sǀphrosynƝ within the context of such a gendered ideology is a significant piece of evidence for the position that the Pastorals were written by one author who was not Paul himself. I engage this line of argument more fully in my dissertation. 72 The adjective appears three times as part of “virtue lists”: 1 Tim 3:2; Titus 1:8; 2:2. 73 As many have noted, 1 Timothy 2:9 reprises the element of a woman’s modesty, stating that sǀphrosynƝ itself ought to be one of her adornments. Likewise, the acts of bearing and raising children properly are associated with a woman’s marriage relationship and her virtue, particularly tightly in the case of Titus 2:4–5: “the younger women to be husband-loving, children-loving, sophron, holy, house-workers, good, subordinated to their own husbands,” WDBM QHDM ILOD QGURXM HL@QDL ILORWHNQRXM VZ IURQDM DJQD M RLNRXUJRX M D JDTD M XSRWDVVRPHQDM WRLM LGLRLM D QGUD VLQ. Marriage and children are urged together for the

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single moral standard of marital faithfulness is advocated for all,74 only women, and not men, are instructed to get married, to raise children, and to take up household management. Only women are directed to adorn themselves and to speak modestly. Only women are exhorted to be subordinate to their spouses. These are the ways in which Christian women too can demonstrate sǀphrosynƝ. Although in the early decades of the second century, sǀphrosynƝ for Christians began to be associated with abstaining from sexual acts, yet in the “marriage-friendly context”75 of the Pastorals, the virtue continues to carry the more traditional connotation of a woman’s sexual faithfulness in marriage.

E. Conclusion The results of my investigation have described the topos of “the good woman” in a more complex way: it is not simply the case that women as women are expected to exhibit certain kinds of sǀphrǀn behavior. Rather a map of the topos places sǀphrosynƝ at the moral epicenter of a woman’s life, with the closest and most important element of that virtue being her continued sexual fidelity to her husband. Extending out from this core concept are: (1) the belief that a woman’s faithfulness will enable her to bear legitimate children; (2) the instructions for quietness and modest bodily adornment that signal her sexual unavailability; (3) the warnings for circumspect interactions in arenas outside her household,76 which also ensure that she will not engage in extra-marital sex; and (4) the idea that a woman’s responsibility for the household management demonstrates her sǀphrosynƝ toward her husband-partner, bringing honor to both of them, while preserving the resources of the entire household. The texts I have examined furnish their readers with the necessary keys to understanding this “feminine moral topography,” promoting the ideology that sǀphrosynƝ is in every respect a woman’s home-base. younger widows: “Therefore, I want the younger [widows] to marry, to bear children, to rule a household,”ERX ORPDLRX`QQHZWHUDMJDPHLQWHNQRJRQHLQRLNRGHVSRWHLQ, 1 Tim 5:14a. 74 For the episkopos, 1 Tim 3:2; male deacons, 1 Tim 3:12; widows to be enrolled, 1 Tim 5:9; elders, Titus 1:6. Here the author appears to adapt for Christian men the Roman paradigm of “the highly praised state of being univira – having only one husband within one’s lifetime” (Osiek and MacDonald, A Woman’s Place, 21). 75 My translation of Ulrike Wagener’s term “ehefreundlichen Kontext” (Die Ordnung des “Hauses Gottes”: Der Ort von Frauen in der Ekklesiologie und Ethik der Pastoralbriefe [WUNT 2/65. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994], 176). 76 These would include the paraenesis regarding silence found in Melissa to Kleareta and 1 Tim 2:11–12, as well as the warnings in On the SǀphrosynƝ about how to go out from one’s house and how to participate in religious rites.

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Works Cited Ancient Sources Aelian. Claudii Aeliani de natura animalium libri xvii, varia historia, epistolae, fragmenta. Edited byRudolf Hercher. 2 vols. Leipzig: Teubner, 1864 (repr. 1971). [Cicero]. Rhetorica ad Herennium. Translated by H. Caplan. LCL. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954. Iamblichus. On the Pythagorean Way of Life. Translation and introduction by Gillian Clark. Liverpool University Press, 1989. “Musonius Rufus: ‘The Roman Socrates.’” Edited by and translated by C. E. Lutz. Yale Classical Studies 10 (1947): 1–147. Papyri Graecae Haunienesis. Edited and translated by A. Bülow-Jacobsen. Vol. 2: Letters and mummy labels from Roman Egypt. Bonn: Habelt, 1981. Pestman, P.W. The New Papyrological Primer. 2d ed. Leiden: Brill, 1994. Plutarch’s “Advice to the Bride and Groom” and “A Consolation to His Wife”: English Translations, Commentary, Interpretive Essays, and Bibliography. Edited by Sarah B. Pomeroy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Select Papyri. Translated by A. S. Hunt and C. C. Edgar. 2 vols. LCL. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1932–1934. Soranus. Gynaeciorum. Edited by J. Ilberg. 4 vols. Leipzig: Teubner, 1927. Städele, Alfons. Die Briefe des Pythagoras und der Pythagoreer. Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie, vol. 115. Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain, 1980. Stobaeus, Ioannis. Anthologium. Edited by Curtis Wachsmuth and Otto Hense. 5 vols. Berlin: Weidmann, 1909. Xenophon, “Oeconomicus”: A Social and Historical Commentary. With a new English translation. Sarah B. Pomeroy. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994. Secondary Sources Bagnall, Roger S. and Raffaella Cribiore, with contributions by Evie Ahtaridis. Women’s Letters from Ancient Egypt, 300 BC–AD 800. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2006. Deming, Will. Paul on Marriage and Celibacy: The Hellenistic Background of 1 Corinthians 7. 2d ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004. Elderkin, G. W. “The Bee of Artemis.” The American Journal of Philology 60 (1939): 203–13. Glancy, Jennifer A. Slavery in Early Christianity. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006. Judge, E. A. “A Woman’s Behaviour.” New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity 6 (1992): 18–23. Lateiner, Donald. “Blushes and Pallor in Ancient Fictions.” Helios 25 (1998): 163–89. Lefkowitz, Mary R. and Maureen B. Fant. Women’s Life in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook in Translation. 2d ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. Malherbe, Abraham J. “The Virtus Feminarum in 1 Timothy 2:9–15.” Pages 45–65 in Renewing Tradition: Studies in Texts and Contexts in Honor of James W. Thompson. Edited by Mark. W. Hamilton, Thomas H. Olbricht, and Jeffrey Peterson. Princeton Theological Monograph Series. Eugene, OR: Pickwick (Wipf and Stock), 2006. –. Moral Exhortation: A Greco-Roman Sourcebook. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986.

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Martin, Dale B. “Slave Families and Slaves in Families.” Pages 207–30 in Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue. Edited by David L. Balch and Carolyn Osiek. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. North, Helen F. Sophrosyne: Self-Knowledge and Self-Restraint in Greek Literature. Cornell Studies in Classical Philology 35. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966. –. “The Mare, the Vixen, and the Bee: Sophrosyne as the Virtue of Women in Antiquity.” Illinois Classical Studies 2. Edited by Miroslav Marcovich. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1977: 35–48. Osiek, Carolyn and Margaret Y. MacDonald. A Woman’s Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity. With Janet H. Tulloch. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006. Quinn, Jerome D. The Letter to Titus. AB 35. New York: Doubleday, 1990. Scheinberg, Susan. “The Bee Maidens of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 83 (1979): 1–28. Thesleff, Holger. An Introduction to the Pythagorean Writings of the Hellenistic Period. Acta Academiae Aboensis, Humaniora 24/3. Åbo, Finland: Åbo Akademi, 1961. Thom, Johan C. “‘The Mind Is Its Own Place’: Defining the Topos.” Pages 555–73 in Early Christianity and Classical Culture, Comparative Studies in Honor of Abraham J. Malherbe. Edited by John T. Fitzgerald, Thomas H. Olbricht, and L. Michael White. NovTSup 110. Leiden: Brill, 2003. –. “The Passions in Neopythagorean Writings.” Pages 67–78 in Passions and Moral Progress in Greco-Roman Thought. Edited by John T. Fitzgerald. Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies. New York; London: Routledge, 2008. van Geytenbeek, A. C. Musonius Rufus and Greek Diatribe. Rev. ed. Translated by B. L. Hijmans, Jr. Assen, The Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1962. Wagener, Ulrike. Die Ordnung des “Hauses Gottes”: Der Ort von Frauen in der Ekklesiologie und Ethik der Pastoralbriefe. WUNT 2/65. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994.

Becoming the Perfect Man Clement of Alexandria on the Philosophical Life of Women1 JUDITH L. KOVACS

A. Introduction: Clement on Women Clement of Alexandria – polymath, philosopher, biblical exegete, and apologist for Christianity – was a pioneer in interpreting the Bible in light of Greek learning. Readers of his most important work of theology and exegesis, the Stromateis or Miscellanies, are faced with a great variety of information, with quotations from Proverbs and Paul following on the heels of maxims of Plato or snippets from Homer and Euripides, a great mass of information that resists being brought into a neat system. Texts that relate to women are no exception; the variety of the material makes it difficult to generalize. Best known are passages in which Clement uses feminine imagery to speak of God, as when he says: Consider the mysteries of love, and then you will behold the bosom of the Father, which the only-begotten God alone declared (John 1:18). God is himself love, and for love’s sake he became visible to us. And while that which is ineffable in him is Father, in his sympathy with us he became Mother. In his love the Father became feminine (HTKOXTK), a supreme proof of which is the Son he begot from himself; the fruit born of love is also love. (Who is the Rich Man Who will be Saved? 37.1–2)2

Also of interest are passages in Clement’s Paidagogos, in which he gives detailed directions about how Christian women should behave, telling them for example that they must not belch like men or go barefoot, and that they should veil their faces.3 This essay considers a different part of 1

I am grateful to Michael Peppard and Candida Moss for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. 2 All texts from Clement’s writings are cited from the edition of Otto Stählin et al. (4 vols.; GCS; Berlin: Akademie, 1970–1985). Translations are my own. The first word of the quoted paragraph (“Consider”) reflects Seegar’s emendation, followed by Stählin. For a discussion of similar imagery in Paed, 1.6.34.3–52.1, see Verna Harrison, “The Carebanishing Breast of the Father: Feminine Images of the Divine in Clement of Alexandria's Paedagogus 1,” StPat 31 (1997): 401–5. 3 Paed. 2.2.33; 2.11.117; 2.10.114. For discussion of these and other references to the behavior of women in the Paidagogos see Donald Kinder, “Clement of Alexandria: Con-

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the picture. It will focus on four chapters in the fourth book of the Stromateis 8 and 19–21, in which Clement discusses the nature and life of women. I am particularly interested in chapter 8, which contains a pointed saying that reads in the Ante-Nicene Fathers translation: “Women should philosophize the same as men” (Strom. 4.8.62.4).4 This dictum is the centerpiece of a complicated discussion of virtue in women, in which Clement uses Platonic and Stoic teaching, quotes Euripides, the Odyssey, and Greek folklore, and makes use of several texts from Scripture. In attempting to clarify the chapter’s argument, I shall consider four main questions: (1) Why does Clement bring up this topic, and how does it relate to the more general themes of Stromateis, book 4? (2) What does he mean by the verb ILORVRIHZ? (3) On what philosophical sources does he draw? (4) What biblical texts are important for Clement’s discussion, and how does this chapter read as a work of biblical interpretation?

B. Stromateis, Book 4 as Context of the Four Chapters on Women I begin with context. Each book of the Stromateis treats a few main themes through a series of self-contained chapters that are often quite loosely connected to each other. For example, book 3 is a critique of Marcion and various gnostic teachers that focuses on the themes of marriage, the body, and creation; book 5 considers symbolic speech, Scriptural exegesis, and the knowledge of God; and book 7 provides a picture of the perfect Christian, whom Clement calls the “true Gnostic.” In the first sentence of Stromateis 4, Clement announces two main topics for this book: Now it is time, I think, to discuss martyrdom/witness (SHUL WH PDUWXULRX)5 and also who is the perfect one (R WHOHLRM), along with related points that will have to be considflicting Views on Women,” SecCent 7 (1989/90): 213–20; M. Eleanor Irwin, “Clement of Alexandria: Instructions on How Women Should Live,” in Hellenization Revisited: Shaping a Christian Response within the Greco-Roman World (ed. Wendy E. Helleman; Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1994), 395–407; Michael Desjardins, “Why Women Should Cover their Heads and Veil their Faces: Clement of Alexandria’s Understanding of the Body and his Rhetorical Strategies in the Paedagogus,” Scriptura 90 (2005): 700–708. 4 Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2. (ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Cox; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994; reprint of original published by Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885), 402b. 5 The words PDUWXULRQ and PDUWXULD can mean both “witness” and “martyrdom.” The latter meaning becomes dominant in Christian writings after Clement’s time. In Stromateis 4 the meaning of these words is often ambiguous, and Clement passes from one sense to the other, according to the context.

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ered, and likewise how both slave and free are to cultivate the philosophical life (ILORVRIKWHRQ),6 whether they be men or women. (Strom. 4.1.1.1).

As the book proceeds, it becomes evident how the two topics of martyrdom and Christian perfection relate to each other. Clement’s observations about martyrdom are directed against two extreme positions: on the one hand the view that Christians are to seek out a martyr’s death and on the other what Clement calls the “sophisms of cowardice,” by which some had rationalized their refusal to suffer as martyrs (4.4.16.3–17.1). While he praises those who are clearly called to die for their faith (4.4.13.1–14.3), he opposes those who court martyrdom7 and insists that one can be a true martyr/witness for God in other ways: Thus we call martyrdom (WR? PDUWXULRQ) perfection (WHOHLZVLM), not because a person comes to the end (WHO RM) of his life just like the rest, but because he has displayed the perfect work of love. . . . If confession to God is martyrdom/witness(PDUWXULD), every soul that has lived purely in the knowledge of God and has obeyed the commandments is a witness (PDUWXM) both by life and word, in whatever way it is released from the body. (Strom. 4.4.14.3–15.3)8

In other words, as Clement will go on to argue, willingness to die a martyr’s death is only one aspect of a life devoted to the pursuit of perfection. If the connection between the themes of martyrdom and perfection is fairly easy to see, it is less obvious why Clement mentions woman and slaves in the opening words of Stromateis 4, or why he devotes four chapters in this book to the life of women. The presence of pairs of opposites – slave and free, women and men – suggests a Scriptural connection, in particular Gal 3:28 where Paul says that in Christ Jesus “[t]here is neither Jew or Greek, there is neither slave or free, there is no male and female; for all

6 ANF translates “how both bond and free must equally philosophize, whether male or female in sex.” On the translation of ILORVRIKWHRQ in this text and in Strom. 4.8.62.4 see below. 7 Adolf von Harnack, Marcion. The Gospel of the Alien God (trans. John E. Steely and Lyle D. Bierma; Durham, NC: Labyrinth, 1990; trans. of Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1924), 164, n. 23, suggests that Clement has Marcionites in mind when he speaks of those who “rush into death.” He compares reports in Tertullian, Marc. 1.24.7; Irenaeus, Haer. 4.33.9; Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.16.21 and Pionius, Acts of the Martyrs. For a critical treatment of patristic reports about those who seek out martyrdom, see Christel Butterweck, ‘Martyriumssucht’ in der Alten Kirche? (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1995). She argues that presentations of this position combine history and fiction, in service of various literary ends. 8 See also Strom. 4.6.43.4–5. For a general discussion of Clement’s treatment of martyrdom, see Annewies van den Hoek, “Clement of Alexandria on Martyrdom,” StPat 26 (1993): 324–41, and also the Introduction and Notes in her edition, Clément d’Alexandrie, Stromate 4 (SC 463; Paris: Du Cerf, 2001).

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of you are one in Christ Jesus”9 – a text that Clement had cited a few chapters before in Strom. 3.13.93.2.

C. Stromateis 4, Chapter 8 and the Interpretation of Galatians 3:28 How this verse informs the argument of Stromateis 4 does not become apparent until chapter 8, when Clement turns to the subject of women. After listing a number of pagan philosophers and other courageous men celebrated in Greek literature, he asserts: The whole church is full of those who throughout their lives practice the death into Christ, a death that makes alive (WZaQ PHOHWKVDQWZQ WR?Q ]ZRSRLR?Q TDQDWRQ HLM ;ULVWRQ) – women who exhibit self-control (VZIURVXQ K) as well as men. For the person who follows the Christian way of life – whether barbarian or Greek, slave, old man, child, or woman – can cultivate philosophy even without study. (4.8.58.2–3)

Here and in the rest of chapter 8, Clement moves back and forth between the philosophical tradition and the Bible. The biblical component of his argument is drawn especially from the letters of Paul.10 Many verses are quoted; others are indicated only by a word or a phrase. “Practicing death” derives from Phaed. 67e where Socrates defines philosophy as the “practice of death” (PHOHWK TDQDWRX).11 Clement’s references to women, men, and slaves indicate that once again, as in the introduction to Stromateis 4, he has in mind the contrasting pairs of Gal 3:28. The word “barbarian” suggests that he has conflated the Galatians text with the similar passage in Col 3:11: “where there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all.” Contemporary biblical scholars generally assume that Gal 3:28 and Col 3:11 reflect an early Christian baptismal formula,12 but there have been widely divergent interpretations of the meaning and implications of the phrase “no male and female” in Gal 3:28. Dale Martin traces three main

9

My translation; all other quotations from the Bible are cited after the NRSV. For Clement and other patristic authors, this was a corpus of fourteen letters. 11 See allusion to Phaed. 67e in Strom. 5.11.67.2 and allusions to Phaed. 67d in Strom. 3.9.64.2; 4.3.12.5; 5.14.106.1; 7.12.71.3. 12 On Gal 3:28, see, e.g., J. Louis Martyn. Galatians (AB 33A; New York: Doubleday, 1997), 373–83. On Col 3:11 see, e.g., Douglas Moo, The Letters to the Colossians and to Philemon (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008), 270. A similar formula is found in 1 Cor 12:13. 10

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types of interpretation.13 The traditional hierarchical reading, common through the ages and represented in the twentieth century by some conservative, evangelical scholars, takes the text to mean that the sexual distinction has no importance in matters of salvation (“in Christ”) but holds that it says nothing about redefining male and female roles in the church or in society.14 On the second, liberationist interpretation, Gal 3:28 teaches the full equality of women, in social spheres inside and outside the church as well as in regard to salvation.15 Martin advocates a third alternative, which he calls the radical feminist view.16 This builds on an argument by Wayne Meeks that the phrase “no male and female” is based on an exegesis of Gen 1:26–7 as referring to an original androgyny, a state that is to be fully restored in the eschaton but is anticipated now in baptism.17 Martin argues that the verse is not about equality at all but rather about overcoming sexual division, in such a way that “the lower female aspects of all human beings would be subsumed into the superior, perfected, and (as it seems to us) male body.”18 As surprising allies in this third way of interpreting Gal 3:28, Martin claims early Christian interpreters such as John Chrysostom, the author of the Acts of Thomas, and Julius Cassian (as quoted by Clement in Strom. 3.13.92–93). All these authors, Martin argues, reflect a particular under13 Dale B. Martin, Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 77–90. 14 Among examples Martin cites of this type of interpretation are Donald Guthrie, Galatians (London: Nelson, 1969), 116, and John Jefferson Davis, “Some Reflections on Galatians 3:28, Sexual Roles, and Biblical Hermeneutics,” JETS 19 (1976): 201–8. 15 Krister Stendahl. The Bible and the Role of Women: A Case Study in Hermeneutics (Philadelphia, Pa.: Fortress, 1966). Stendahl portrays the verse as a “Pauline breakthrough” in the early Christian treatment of women (p. 33). Another influential representative of this position is Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her. A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 199, 205–36. She differs from Stendahl in arguing that the verse reflects a broad practice in the pre-Pauline church, not an innovation by Paul. 16 Martin, Sex, 84. Among others, he cites as representatives of this interpretation Kari Vogt, “‘Becoming Male’: A Gnostic and Early Christian Metaphor,” in The Image of God: Gender Models in Judaeo-Christian Tradition (ed. Kari Elisabeth Borresen; Mineapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 1995), 170–86, and Lone Fatum, “Image of God and Glory of Man: Women in the Pauline Congregations,” in Image of God, 50–133. 17 Wayne Meeks, “The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity,” HR 13 (1973): 165–208. 18 Martin, Sex, 87. Martin here presupposes a thesis of Thomas Laqueur, in Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1990); Laqueur argues that in the Greco-Roman world there did not exist a radical dichotomy of male and female, but instead a “one sex” model, a hierarchical spectrum with the female at the low end and male at the high end, with all persons having both male and female aspects.

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standing of androgyny that he claims was dominant in early Christianity, in which the unification of male and female is envisioned as a “swallowing up” of the female in the perfected male.19 For these three patristic authors the vision of androgyny supports an ascetic ethic. Julius Cassianus, for example, cites the following verse from the Gospel of the Egyptians as justification for sexual asceticism: When Salome asked when the answer to the questions she raised would be revealed, the Lord said, “When you trample on the garment of shame and when the two become one, and the male is one with the female and there is neither male nor female.” (quoted in Strom. 3.13.92.2)

Clement rejects the dominant ascetic interpretation of the text Julius quotes and of the similar verse in Gal 3:28, which he introduces into the discussion (Strom. 3.3.93.1–3). “Nonetheless,” Martin argues, “Clement’s reading also assumes the abolition of sexual difference and can in no way be read as raising the status of the female.”20 This passage in Stromateis 3 concludes with Clement’s own brief suggestions about several different ways of understanding what “male” and “female” mean in Gal 3:28 and the Gospel of the Egyptians: (1) they refer respectively to anger and desire, both of which need to be eliminated; (2) they symbolize spirit and soul which are united under the Word; (3) they point to the time when the soul leaves the physical world, in which female is distinguished from the male, and becomes a unity that is neither male nor female. Martin does not discuss the interpretation of Gal 3:28 in chapter 8 of the Stromateis, presumably because Clement does not quote the text here but only alludes to it. Nonetheless, I would argue that the Pauline verse has informed the argument of this chapter in a significant way. To some extent this chapter confirms the generalizations Martin makes about patristic interpretation of the Galatians text, in that Clement, like the Fathers Martin cites, and like radical feminist interpreters, picks up on the androgyny implied in the Galatians text. But Clement also emphasizes the equality of male and female – if not in the social sphere, then in the areas he considers most important: the pursuit of virtue in the present life and the soul’s status in the future, heavenly life with God. As already noted, Clement states in paragraph 58 of this chapter: The whole church is full of those who throughout their lives practice the death into Christ, a death that makes alive – women who exhibit self-control (VZIUZVXQK) as well 19

Martin, Sex, 85–87. Page 87. Martin argues further: “Indeed, for Clement the female represents the lowest part of the soul, desire, which must be swallowed up in the final triumph of the rational logos.” Although this is true, it should be noted that in Clement’s view the “male” element, anger, is also eliminated when the soul reaches a state of perfection. 20

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as men. For the person who follows the Christian way of life – whether barbarian or Greek, slave, old man, child, or woman – can cultivate philosophy even without study. (4.8.58.2–3)

In the paragraphs that follow, Clement focuses on the pair “male and female” from Gal 3:28. He makes three interrelated points: (1) as human beings (DQTUZSRL), women and men share one common nature, even though their specific nature as males or females differs (59.1); (2) virtue is the same for both women and men (59.1–3); and (3) the souls of men and women are the same,21 even though their bodies are different and they have different activities (60.1). These points are reinforced through quotations of other Pauline texts. First Clement cites three verses from Paul’s discussion of women prophets in 1 Corinthians 11: v. 3) But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the husband is the head of his wife, and God is the head of Christ. v. 8) Indeed, man was not made from woman, but woman from man. v. 11) Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man or man independent of woman. (Strom. 4.8.60.2)

It is not surprising that Clement quotes verse 3, which suggests a sexual hierarchy, or verse 8, which grounds this hierarchy in the order of creation described in Genesis 2. But it is interesting that he also quotes verse 11, which emphasizes the interdependence of the sexes. Apparently he sees this verse as support for his argument that both sexes are called to the life of virtue, for he adds the comment: “For just as we claim that a man must exercise self-control (VZIURQDHL@QDL) and be master over the pleasures, in the same way we would say that a woman should be self-controlled and practiced in battling against pleasures” (60.3). To give further Scriptural support to this point, Clement quotes Paul’s description of the battle between flesh and spirit in Galatians 5:16–23 (60.4–61.1). The list of virtuous qualities mentioned in Gal 5 include selfcontrol (HJNUDWHLD),22 kindness, faith, and love. To these Clement adds 21

Clement makes the same point in Strom. 3.13.93.3. A further difference of Clement’s interpretation of Gal 3:28 from that of Martin is that Clement interprets the verse as referring only to the souls of women and men and not their bodies. Contrast Martin’s statement about early Christian belief on p. 87: “that the lower female aspects of all human beings would be subsumed into the superior, perfected, and (as it seems to us) male body.” 22 Aristotle distinguishes between VZIURVXQK, the virtue of “temperance,” which is the secure habit of desiring the right things in the right amount at the right time, and HJNUDWHLD “continence,” which means fighting a battle against excessive desires and acting in the right way, but doing so at least partly against one’s inclination. Both refer to abstinence from excessive pleasures but “temperance” means doing so without excessive pain (see Eth. nic. 1104b 5–8; 1117b 24–27; 1128b 34; 1145a 1–37; 1150b 8–15). Clem-

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DQGUHLD, courage or fortitude, etymologically a male virtue and one of the four cardinal virtues in Greek philosophical tradition.23 To show that the Bible, too, demands DQGUHLD, he quotes Jesus’s command: “To the one who strikes you on the cheek, offer also the other cheek” (Luke 6:29). Clement stresses that the virtue of DQGUHLD takes a particular form for Christians, who do not train their women to demonstrate courage in war, like the Amazons, but hold that even men should cultivate peace (61.2–3).

D. The Meaning of ILORVRIHZ: Cultivating the Philosophical Life In the next paragraph Clement turns from the Bible to Greek sources, first quoting traditional lore about the warrior women of the Sarmatians and the women of Iberia who toil alongside men, even in the last stages of pregnancy (62.1–2).24 Next he notes that female dogs share with male dogs the work of guarding and chasing (62.3), an argument used already by Plato in book five of the Republic (451d) to support his contention that women of the guardian class should be educated along with the guardian men. This brings us to the assertion quoted at the beginning of this paper, which reads in fuller form: Women should cultivate the philosophical life (ILORVRIKWHRQ) the same as men, even if the males are better and in fact win the first prizes in everything, unless they become effeminate (or “soft”, NDWDPDODNLVTHL HQ). Thus education (SDLGHLD) and virtue are necessary to all human beings, if they seek happiness. (4.8.62.4–63.1)

Now that we have examined the preparation for this paragraph in the first half of chapter 8, it is clear that the verb ILORVRIHZshould be translated in a more specific sense than the “philosophize” of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, and also that its primary meaning is not “to study philosophy” in the sense of intellectual training. At least in this context, Clement uses the verb ILORVRIHZto mean “to cultivate the philosophical life,” that is, the

ent seems to use the two words interchangeably; in quoting from his works I render both words with “self-control.” 23 The traditional list of four principal virtues–justice (GLNDLRVXQK), practical wisdom or prudence (IURQKVLM), temperance or self-control (VZIURVXQK), and courage (DQ GUHLD) is attested, e.g., in Chrysippus, Fr. Mor. 262 (Von Arnim 3), Philo, Leg. 1.63, and Musonius Rufus, Discourse 4, Hense, 15:4–15. This list goes back to Plato, Resp. (book 4) 428e–432b, except that Plato’s list has VRILD in place of IURQKVLM Clement lists all four virtues in Strom. 1.20.97.3 and 2.18.78.1. 24 As parallels Stählin ad loc cites Stobaeus, Ecl. 3.1.200, p. 152, 10f. Hense; Strabo III 4, 17, p. 165, and Diodorus Siculus IV 20, among others.

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life of virtue.25 Presumably this would involve some training of the mind, some knowledge of what constitutes virtuous conduct, but the emphasis is on the practice of virtue. Throughout this chapter Clement argues that women, like men, must exhibit the virtues of self-control, courage, and justice.26

E. Clement and the Language of Gender in the Greco-Roman World In this section Clement draws heavily on the classical philosophical tradition, on Plato and especially the Roman Stoic Musonius Rufus. There is a general similarity of theme with the discussion in book 5 of Plato’s Republic (451c–455a), in which Socrates argues that women of the guardian class should receive the same education as men in music, poetry, gymnastics, and warfare. The stated purpose of this training is so that the state can take full advantage of women’s potential contributions, not the benefit of the women themselves.27 One point of Clement’s argument that is especially close to what Plato says is his immediate qualification of the claim that women should “cultivate the philosophical life” by pointing out “that men are better at everything.” Plato reports that Socrates, although he advocates the education of female guardians, concedes: “Do you know of anything practiced by human beings in which the male sex isn’t superior to the female in all these ways?” (Repub. 455c)28 According to Clement, males are superior in all things “unless they become effeminate” (or “soft”, NDWDPDODNLVTHL HQ). Such use of gendered language to express moral judgments is common in ancient authors. Diana Swancutt argues that this “gender ideology” was pervasive in the Roman world during the republic and the early empire, especially among medical

25 Clement uses the word ILORVRIHZ and related words in several senses; for a survey of his usage see Anne-Marie Malingrey, “Philosophia,” Étude d’un groupe de mots dans la littérature grecque, des Présocratiques au IVe siècle après J.-C. (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1961), 129–57. 26 Thus in this chapter Clement refers to all four cardinal virtues except for IURQKVLM, a virtue he discusses in other contexts, e.g., Strom. 1.20.97.3; 2.18.78.1; 6.17.160.2–3. 27 For discussion of this section of the Republic see Julia Annas, An Introduction to Plato’s Republic (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981), 181–85. She argues on p. 181: “Plato’s interest is neither in women’s rights nor in their preferences as they see them, but rather with production of the common good, and a state where all contribute the best they can according to their aptitude.” 28 Plato, Republic (trans. G. M. A. Grube and C. D. C. Reeve; Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992), 129.

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writers, Stoic philosophers, and their critics.29 Ancient authors envisioned a cosmic hierarchy, a continuum with masculinity at the top of the scale and femininity at the bottom. Males were seen as naturally superior, but there was a constant threat of their falling into feminine weakness. Various activities such as style of dress or walk, shaving the hair, or pederasty could emasculate them. Greek and Roman males/men were consequently described with cultural superlatives that reflected their perfect “natural” state: physical and political strength, rationality, spirituality, superiority, activity, dryness, and penetration. Females/women, on the other hand, were said to embody humanity’s negative qualities (physical and political weakness, irrationality, fleshliness, inferiority, passivity, wetness, and being penetrated).30

On this view, each person had both more perfect “male” elements and inferior “female” elements, and movement from one end of the spectrum to the other was possible.31 In Dying to Be Men Stephanie Cobb shows the influence of such gender ideology on one body of early Christian literature, the martyr acts. She argues that authors of these works appropriate Greco-Roman constructions of sex and gender in order to model a set of acceptable Christian identities. She focuses especially on how the martyrologies seek to show that Christian martyrs, women as well as men, “exceed all others in manliness.”32 An obvious illustration of this tendency is the fourth vision account in the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity, which climaxes in Perpetua’s statement, “I became a man” (4.1). Cobb shows other ways in which this work as well as the Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne 33 and the Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonike emphasize the masculine strength, resolve, and self-control displayed by women martyrs.34 Narrative techniques that reinforce this image include portraying female and male martyrs as athletes, soldiers, and triumphant gladiators. 29

Diana Swancutt, “The Disease of Effeminacy and the Verdict of God,” in New Testament Masculinities (SemeiaSt 45; ed. Stephen Moore and Janice Capel Anderson; Leiden: Brill and Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), 197. She quotes from a wide range of authors including Plutarch, Galen, Lucian, Seneca, Epictetus, Juvenal, and Philo. 30 Swancutt, “Disease,” 197–98. 31 Swancutt, “Disease,” 199; see also Martin, Sex, 84. Both draw on Laqueur, Making Sex. 32 Stephanie Cobb, Dying to Be Men: Gender and Language in Early Christian Martyr Texts (New York: Columbia University, 2008). Cobb, 107–11; 121–23, points out how the martyr acts, in an apparent paradox, also stress the femininity of women martyrs. 33 Also referred to as the Martyrium Lugdunensium; the text is preserved in Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.1.3–2.8. 34 See the critical edition of these texts in A. A. R. Bastiaensen, Atti e Passioni dei Martiri (Milan: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla 1987) and the text and English translations in Herbert Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972).

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Clement’s familiarity with such gender symbolism is clear from his use of gendered language in other parts of the Stromateis as well as in the Paidagogos. The verb NDWDPDODNL]RPDL (“to become effeminate or soft”) used in Strom. 4.8.62.4 also appears in Strom. 4.3.14.4, where Clement reports the Greek view that those who die in battle are superior to those who die emasculated35 by illness. In Strom. 7.7.36.4 he describes the Gnostic (i.e., the ideal Christian) as a royal priest, who avoids the theatre, perfume, luxurious food and drink, and fragrant wreaths that “make the soul effeminate” (HN\KOXQRXVDM). In a text we have already examined from Stromateis 3, however, he rejects the assertion of the radical ascetic Julius Cassian that the soul was originally divine and fell into this corrupt world after it became effeminate (TKOXTHL VDQ) through desire – a view Clement calls “rather Platonic” (Strom. 3.13.93.3).36 In Strom. 2.18.81.3–4 he follows Philo in interpreting a law about clothing in Deut 22:5 as designed to encourage male virtue: Why does the law forbid a male to wear female clothes (Deut 22.6)? Is it not that it wants us to be masculine/courageous (DQGUHL]HVTDL) and not to become effeminate (HN \KOXQRPHQRXM), in our bodily appearance, our actions, and our thoughts and reasoning? It wants the one who is devoted to truth to be manly (KUUHQZaVTDL) in patience and endurance in his life, manner, thought and discipline.37

Such language also appears in the Paidagogos. In 2.8.66.2, for example, Clement says that soft oils such as myrrh emasculate (HNTKOXQHLQ) noble character.38 The same verb is used in 2.1.3.2 to criticize gourmands who “emasculate” common bread, apparently referring to eating white bread that does not incorporate the rougher and more nourishing parts of the 35

Or “weakened”; SC ad loc translates “devirilisés”; ANF renders as “enfeebled.” On the fall of the soul, see Plato, Phaedr. 248c; Phaed. 81c, although these texts do not speak of the soul’s becoming “effeminate.” 37 Clement here draws on Philo, Virt. 4.18, where the language is even stronger: “So earnestly and carefully does the law desire to train and exercise the soul to manly courage that it lays down rules even about the kind of garment which should be worn. It strictly forbids a man to assume a woman’s garb, in order that no trace, no merest shadow of the female, should attach to him to spoil his masculinity.” (trans. F. H. Colson; LCL 341; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1968), 173. In Virt. 4.19–20 Philo goes on to speak of maintaining separate spheres of male and female activity and regulating women’s dress in order to prevent the emergence of “masculine women” (DQGURJXQRXM) and “feminized men” (JXQDQGURXM)”. On Philo’s views on women, see Richard Baer, Philo’s Use of the Categories Male and Female (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1970) and Dorothy Sly, “The Plight of Woman: Philo’s Blind Spot,” in Hellenization Revisited: Shaping a Christian Response within the Greco-Roman World (ed. Wendy E. Helleman; Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1994), 173–87. 38 See also Paed. 2.8.65.1, where Clement criticizes women who make excessive use of such oils and then describes the oils as “feminizing (or weakening) virility” (WK?Q DQGUZQL WLQHN TKOXQRXVLQ). 36

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wheat. In another context the verb characterizes Athenians and Ionians as “effeminate” because of their lavish dress (2.10.105.3), and in 2.10.99.1 Clement quotes from Sibylline Oracle 5.166–168 a criticism of “unlawful consorting with men and wicked effeminacy” (DQGUZaQ PLFLM DTHVPRM TKOXJHQK?MDGLNRMWH). In chapter 8 from Stromateis 4 the phrase “unless they become effeminate” (62.4) is the only clear reference to this gender ideology, though Clement does assume the traditional division of gender roles (58.4–60.1) and the “headship” of the husband over the wife (60.2; 63.5–65). His primary concern in this chapter, however, is the cultivation of virtue and the pursuit of perfection, and in these matters he stresses the equality of women.

F. Stoic Household Theory and Clement’s Citations from Colossians 3 and Ephesians 5 We have seen how Clement’s dictum that “women are to cultivate the philosophical life the same as men” echoes a passages in Plato’s Republic. An even closer parallel is found in the first century C.E. Roman Stoic Musonius Rufus. Two of his surviving discourses are devoted to this subject. Discourse 3 gives the following report: When someone asked [Musonius] if women too should study philosophy (ILORVRI KWHRQ) he began to discourse on the theme that they should. . . . Women as well as men, he said, have received from the gods the gift of reason . . . by which we judge whether a thing is good or bad, right or wrong. . . . Moreover, not men alone, but women too, have a natural inclination toward virtue and the capacity for acquiring it, and it is the nature of women no less than men to be pleased by good and just acts and to reject the opposite of these. If this is true, by what reasoning would it ever be appropriate for men to search out and consider how they may lead good lives, which is exactly the study of philosophy, but inappropriate for women? (Discourse 3, Hense 8:15–9:16)39

In an article entitled “Transformation of the Household Theory between Roman Stoics, Middle Platonism, and Early Christianity,” Ilara Ramelli sets this text in the context of changes in Stoic ideas about the family that begin with Middle Stoics such as Albinus and are evident especially in the Roman Stoics Musonius and Hierocles.40 She argues that the view of these Stoics that the philosophical life, i.e., the life of virtue, is important for 39 Cora Lutz, trans., Yale Classical Studies 10 (1947), 32–129, here 39–41. Lutz follows the critical edition of O. Hense, C. Musonii Rufi reliquiae (Leipzig: Teubner, 1990, originally published in 1905). 40 Rivista di Filosofia Neoscolastica 100 (2008): 369–96. Musonius treats the education of women in Discourses 3–4 and marriage and adultery in Discourses 12–14.

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women as well as men is related to a change in the evaluation of marriage. The common life of spouses no longer belongs to the DGLDIRUD (“indifferent things”), as for the Old Stoics, but comes closer to the category of “the goods of the soul,” which was formerly restricted to virtue. Wives approach the status previously reserved for philosophical friends, and the primary aim of marriage is now described as fellowship.41 In short, marriage comes to be understood as a school for the common pursuit of virtue.42 Clement’s indebtedness to Musonius in our passage is suggested most obviously by his use of the same verbal adjective ILORVRIKWHRQ to describe the virtuous activity of women. In addition, he agrees with Musonius on several other points: in presenting philosophy as primarily a matter of ethics,43 in his emphatic claim that virtue is the same for men and women,44 and in his assertion that women can share in all the virtues, even the typically male virtue of DQGUHLD, courage.45 Both Musonius and Clement also point out that philosophy enables women to endure hardship and not fear death.46 At the end of his first discourse on the philosophical life of women, Musonius takes up a possible objection: Yes, but I assure you, some will say that women who associate with philosophers are bound to be arrogant for the most part and presumptuous, in that abandoning their own households and turning to the company of men they practice speeches, talk like sophists, and analyze syllogisms, when they ought to be sitting at home spinning. I should not expect the women who study philosophy to shirk their appointed tasks for mere talk any more than men, but I maintain that their discussions should be conducted for the sake of their practical application.47

To put this worry to rest, Musonius goes to great lengths to argue that philosophy helps women better perform their assigned tasks of running the household, working with their hands, and serving their husbands. 48 41

Ramelli, “Transformation,” 372. The other purpose given for marriage is procreation, but this is mentioned second. 42 Ramelli, “Transformation,” 378. She cites on this point, R. Laurenti, “La virtù in Musonio,” Sophia 35 (1967): 300–317. 43 Musonius defines the study of philosophy as “the search of how one may lead a good life,” Discourse 3, Hense 9:13–15. For Clement’s use of the word ILORVRILD in other contexts, see Malingrey, “Philosophia,” 129–57. 44 Musonius says that women, like men, “have a natural inclination toward virtue and the capacity for acquiring it,” Discourse 3, Hense 9:8–10; see also Discourse 4, Hense 15:19–16:2. 45 Musonius, Discourse 3, Hense 11:11–13; Discourse 4, Hense, 15:4–15; compare Clement, Strom. 4.8.61.2. 46 Musonius, Discourse 3, Hense 11:13–20; Clement, Strom. 4.8.58.2, 67.1–4, 68.2. 47 Discourse 3, Hense 12:5–15; trans. Cora Lutz, Yale Classical Studies 10 (1947): 43. 48 Discourse 3, Hense 12:15–13:3; Discourse 4, Hense 14:4–15:15.

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Clement does not argue this point; instead he turns to the biblical witness, citing once again from 1 Corinthians 11, this time verse 3 (“the Lord is head of the man and the man is head of the women”) and verse 7 (the man is the “image and glory of God”). He goes on to quote the household codes from Eph 5:21–29 and Col 3:18–4:1, which also call the husband the “head” of the wife.49 Clement explains that “head” means “the ruling faculty” (63.5). He implies but does not say explicitly that the clear statement of sexual hierarchy in these texts obviates the problem of uppity women in the church. But there is more in these biblical texts than traditional hierarchy, and it is worth noting that Clement includes in his quotation a conflation of Ephesians 5 verses 25 and 28 that reads: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.”50 He also quotes the similar command in Col 3:19.51 Although he does not comment on these texts, it seems likely that he quotes them not only to support sexual hierarchy within marriage but also to underscore what men and women have in common, their cooperation in the life of virtue.52 Clement’s way of citing from Colossians 3 also suggests that he sees more in this text than a reinforcement of traditional societal roles. It is worth noting that he quotes Col 3:11 (“where there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free”) after the household code from Col 3:18–4:1, thus giving it an emphatic position. This verse parallels Gal 3:28 in its claim that in Christ such fundamental divisions of human society have no meaning. The exact referent and significance of the word RSRX (“where”), with which the verse begins, is not clear; it is explained in various ways by modern interpreters. The NRSV interprets it in light of Col 3:10 (“and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image 49

Strom. 4.8.63.5–65.3. Clement omits from his citation of Ephesians 5 the christological verses 25b–27, thus bringing the two verses about the husband’s love together. 51 Also included in his quotation from Colossians 3–4 are directions to children, fathers, slaves and masters. 52 That Clement intends both these messages is also suggested by a puzzling section in 63.2–4 that serves as a preface for the quotations from the Bible. Here he quotes two snippets from Euripides’s lost play Oedipus which say: (1) that all wives are inferior to their husbands; and (2) that while the temperate (VRIUZQ) wife is a servant to her husband, the wife who is intemperate surpasses her husband in folly. These patriarchal sentiments are then balanced out by a quotation from Od. VI 182–184: “For nothing is better and finer than when man and wife keep house together, their minds in full agreement.” Clement does not indicate the source of this third quotation, and he cites it as if it were part of the second passage from Euripides. He introduces all three quotations: “And it is not I suppose without reason that Euripides writes varied things” (63.2). 50

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of its creator”), translating “in that renewal.” Others explain the referent as the “new self” or the “new humanity”53 or the church.54 Sumney translates “in this new creation” and explains: The adverbial particle [RS RX] refers back to the new self that believers have put on (v. 10) and implies that believers have been brought into an existing reality. Such a way of speaking fits with the other spatial language that Colossians uses for eschatological realities. . . . Believers have been incorporated into a reality in which the normal distinctions made in the world no longer have primary significance.55

While contemporary scholars generally argue that “where” in Col 3:11 refers to a present reality, a new mode of existence brought about by Christ, Clement suggests a different interpretation of RSRX, when he combines the verse with the last verse of the household code, Col 4:1: Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, for you know that you also have a Master in heaven (Col 4:1), where there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all (Col 3:11). (Strom. 4.8.65.3–4)

In what follows Clement goes on to quote the catalogue of Christian virtues from Col 3:12–15. But first he makes an observation that clarifies his interpretation of Col 3:11: “The earthly church is the image of the heavenly church, as we pray ‘May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ (Matt 6:10).”56 What this seems to mean is that in the future life the divisions and hierarchies of this life will be overcome, and that knowledge of this should inform Christians’ attitudes in the present, if not their social hierarchies.57

53 Moo, Colossians and Philemon, 270; Marianne Meye Thompson, Colossians and Philemon (Grand Rapids. Mich.: Eerdmans, 2005), 79. 54 James D. G. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1996), 223: “The thought is clearly that Christ makes irrelevant ethnic, cultural, and social distinctions, that is, in practical terms, in the church.” 55 Jerry L. Sumney, Colossians. A Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2008), 204. 56 Strom. 4.8.66.1. 57 This is not to say that there are no hierarchies in the future life, but rather that they are based solely on moral and spiritual differences, not sexual or social ones. See, e.g., Strom. 6.13.107.2–3, where Clement interprets the offices of deacon, presbyter, and bishop as symbols of the different levels of progress of souls in the future life.

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G. Becoming “Equal to the Angels” (Luke 20:34–36) and the “Perfect Man” (Eph 4:13) In a chapter from his Paidagogos that offers a close parallel to Strom. 4.8, Clement suggests a further Scriptural basis for this view: Let us recognize also that the virtue of man and woman is the same. For if the God of both is One, and there is one Tutor (SDLGDJZJRM), one church, one virtue of selfcontrol, one modesty, a common food, marriage in common. . . . Those who possess life in common, grace in common, and salvation in common also have virtue in common, and thus a common training as well. Scripture says, “Those who belong to this world58 marry and are given in marriage” – for it is only in this world that the female is distinguished from the male – “but in that world” no longer (Luke 20:34–35). There the rewards of this common, holy life of wedlock are stored up not for male or female, but for the human being (DQTUZSRM) who has been freed from the desire that divides them (Paid. 1.4.10.1– 3).59

The biblical text Clement cites, a saying of Jesus recorded in Luke 20:34– 36, reads in full: Those who belong to this age [world] marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age [world] and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels (LVDJ JHORL) and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.

It is probable that Clement also has this text in mind in Stromateis 4, chapter 8, and that his comparison of the earthly and heavenly churches means that the removal of distinctions promised in Gal 3:28 and Col 3:11 will be realized in the future life, when souls living in the divine realm will be “equal to the angels” who know no sexual division.60 The argument in Strom. 4.8 continues with a list of virtues quoted from Col 3:12–15, which includes a command to “put on love, the bond of perfection” (66.2–4). Clement then sums up his interpretation of the various Pauline texts he has adduced: “From these texts it has become clear to us what is the ‘unity that comes from faith’ (K HN SLVWHZM HQRWKM), and it has been shown who is ‘the perfect one’” (67.1). This is an allusion to another Pauline text, Eph 4:13, which describes the building up of the body 58

Here and in the next verse NRSV translates “this age.” On first reading this sounds rather like the view of Julius Cassian that the soul “became feminine because of desire” – a view Clement rejects in Strom. 3.12.93.3, but the passage in the Paidagogos does not speak of a fall of the soul from a divine state. 60 Clement’s frequent use of the word LVDJ JHORM indicates that this verse was important in his thinking about spiritual progress and the future life. See, e.g., Strom. 6.13.105.1; 7.12.78.6; 7.14.84.2 and the discussion of this theme in Piotr AshwinSiejkowski, Clement of Alexandria. A Project of Christian Perfection (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2008), 74–75. 59

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of Christ “until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man (HLMDQGUDWHOHLRQ), to the measure of the stature of the fullness (WRX  SOKUZPDWRM) of Christ.” Clement is particularly fond of this verse, and he discerns more than one meaning in it. In different contexts he interprets the phrase “unity of the faith” to mean: (1) the “one ancient and universal church” in contrast to divisive groups such as Marcionites and Valentinians; (2) the unity of the two testaments; (3) the final goal of the individual Christian, which is coming close to God in the “divinity of love.”61 In our context he takes the phrase “unity of faith” to mean the inclusion of all Christians – wives and servants as well as husbands and masters – in the quest for perfection. “Even in face of outright opposition, and even if their husbands or masters threaten them with punishment,” he argues, “women and servants are to cultivate the philosophical life.” If it is a noble thing for a man to die for the sake of virtue, Clement goes on to say, the same is true for a woman (67.4).

H. Stromateis 4, Chapters 19–21: Virtuous Women and the Meaning of PDUWXULD Clement’s remark that his discussion has shown “who is the perfect one” (R WHOHLRM) refers back to the first paragraph of Stromateis 4 quoted earlier in this essay, where he announces this as one of the two main topics of this book, along with martyrdom/witness (PDUWXULRQ). It is now clear that “who is the perfect one?” is, among other things, an exegetical question, that is a question of what Paul means by the phrase WHOHLRMDQKU in Eph 4:13. This text from Ephesians also figures in a later section of Strom. 4.19–21, where Clement returns to the subject of women and the philosophical life. In chapter 19 he adduces a wide-ranging catalogue of virtuous women to illustrate the thesis that woman can share equally with men in perfection (118.1). From the Bible he celebrates Judith, who was like Moses in “despising all danger for her country’s sake,” and commends Esther for her faith, the “sister of Moses” for her wisdom, and Susanna, whom he calls a “martyr for chastity” (118.2–119.3).62 He then turns to a 61 The first two interpretations are given in Strom. 7.17.107.3–5, the third in Strom. 6.9.73.3–5 and 6.11.87.3; see also 6.13.107.3 and 6.14.114.4, among other passages. For further discussion of Clement’s exegesis of Eph 4:13 see Judith L. Kovacs, “Clement of Alexandria and Valentinian Exegesis in the Excerpts from Theodotus,” StPat 41 (2006): 198–99. 62 In citing Judith and Esther, Clement follows 1 Clem. 55.4–6, where the two are included in a list of examples of great love; he adds to 1 Clement’s list of biblical heroines

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fascinating list of exemplary women from the Greek tradition taken from poetic, doxographical, and philosophical writings (120.1–123.1). These include Telesilla, an Argolid poetess who put Spartan opponents to flight by persuading women to act with courage, the self-sacrificing Alcestis from Euripides’ play, Theano, a Pythagorean praised for her “progress in philosophy,” Themisto of Lampsacus, who studied Epicurean philosophy, Myia, another Pythagorean, Hipparchia the wife of the Cynic Crates, and two female pupils of Plato, Lastheneia of Arcadia and Axiothea of Phlius (122.2).63 One group that is notably absent from Clement’s list of exemplary women, especially given the main themes of Stromateis 4, is the women celebrated in the Christian martyr acts, such as Charito from the Acts of Justin and Companions, Blandina, whose martyrdom is described in the Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne,64 Agathonice depicted in The Acts of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonice, and Perpetua and Felicity from the Acts that bear their names.65 To be sure, none of these works can be dated with confidence prior to the composition of Clement’s Stromateis; the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity describes events that in all likehood happened after it was written.66 But the martyr deaths described in the first two works occurred before the Stromateis were composed,67 and it is possible that Clement had heard oral reports of them. Further, the following paragraph from chapter 8 suggests that he knew of specific female martyrs: But just as to die on behalf of virtue, freedom, and oneself is creditable for a man, so also for a woman. For this is not a special characteristic of the male nature but rather belongs to all those who are good. . . . At any rate we know that children and servants and women, acting against the wishes of their fathers, masters, and husbands, have often achieved the highest degree of perfection (EHOWLV WRXMJHJRQHQDL). (Strom. 4.8.67.4–68.2) Susanna and the sister of Moses. In #123.1 he also mentions “the blessed Sarah,” who prepared cakes for the angels. 63 On Clement’s sources in this section and the identity of the many women he names, see notes by Annewies van den Hoek, ed., in Clément d’Alexandrie. Stromate IV, 254– 63. For further information about many of these women, see Jane McIntosh Snyder, The Woman and the Lyre: Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University, 1989), especially chapter 4: “Women Philosophers of the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds,” 99–121. 64 Quoted in Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.1.3–2.8. 65 For texts, see Bastiaensen, Atti, and Musurillo, Acts. 66 On the difficult problem of dating these works see Bastiaensen, Atti, xxviii–xxxvi; Musurillo, Acts, xvii–xxii. 67 The generally accepted dates for the deaths of Charito and Blandina are 165 C.E. and 177–178 C.E. respectively. André Méhat, Étude sur les ‘Stromates’ de Clément d’Alexandrie (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1966), 16, estimates the time of Clement’s floruit around 190.

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The last sentence may be deliberately ambiguous, referring both to those who achieve perfection in the life of virtue and those who die as martyrs, exhibiting “the perfect work of love.”68 Clement’s failure to name specific Christians who died for their faith is not confined to women; he also makes no mention of male martyrs such as Ignatius, Justin, or Polycarp, or even the biblical Stephen. If he knew of specific martyr deaths, why does he not celebrate these heroes and heroines of the faith by name? One possible reason is that his main concern in Stromateis 4 is not to celebrate or encourage martyr deaths but rather to extend the understanding of the words PDUWXULD, PDUWXULRQ, and PDUWXM so that they apply to all faithful Christians. He wants to encourage all to seek perfect obedience to God, in everything they do. Clement says this explicitly in a passage quoted at the beginning of this paper: Thus we call martyrdom (WR? PDUWXULRQ) perfection (WHOHL ZVLM), not because a person comes to the end (WHO RM) of his life just like the rest, but because he has displayed the perfect work of love. . . . If then confession to God is bearing witness (PDUWXULD), each soul that has lived purely in the knowledge of God and obeyed the commandments is a witness (PDUWXM), in life as well as word, no matter how it is released from the body. (Strom. 4.4.14.3–15.3)

This broader definition of PDUWXULRQ/PDUWXULD is also promoted in a section of chapter 8 cited above: “The whole church is full of those who throughout their lives practice the death into Christ, a death that makes alive – women who exhibit self-control as well as men” (Strom. 4.8.58.2). Greek philosophical ideas help Clement argue this point. For example, in this passage Plato’s definition of philosophy as the “practice of death” (Phaed. 67c) enables him to redefine martyrdom as a life-long devotion to God, that includes, but is not limited to, a willingness to die for the faith. It is interesting to note, parenthetically, that Clement’s use of philosophical ideas to shed light on Christian PDUWXULD has parallels in some of the martyr acts, for example the Acts of Apollonius.69 Apollonius, in a defense to the Roman proconsul of Asia – which the author points out was made in the presence of Greek philosophers – compares the unjust condemnation of Socrates with that of Christ and his followers,70 and he paraphrases a passage from Plato’s Republic that predicts the torture and killing of the just man.71 Like Clement, this author uses philosophical language about virtue, especially the virtue of self-control, to praise the Chris68

As Clement calls it in Strom. 4.4.14.3, probably drawing on Jas 1:4. Text from an eleventh century Greek codex, in Musurillo, Acts, 90–105; discussed on xxiii–xxv. There is also a version in Armenian and a reference to the work in Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.21. Apollonius was martyred ca. 183 C. E. 70 Sect. 36, Musurillo, Acts, 100, ll. 23–26. 71 Resp. ii.5.361e cited in Sect. 36, Musurillo, Acts, 100, ll. 20–23. 69

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tian martyrs: “The disciples of the Logos who has come amongst us die daily to pleasure, curbing their desire by continence (HJNUDWHLD) in their wish to live according to the divine commandments.”72 A more general way that Christian martyrologies draw on classical philosophy has been suggested by Nicole Kelley. She argues that, while for some Christians these works might serve as a template for how to behave when put on trial, for a broader group of readers and hearers they functioned as spiritual exercises, similar to those in philosophical works such as the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. These exercises were designed to solidify Christian identity by providing a clearer perception of reality, especially the over-arching providence of God, and to give the audience practice in controlling the passions.73

I. Conclusion: Saint Paul, the Language of Gender, and the Philosophical Life of Women To return to Strom. 4.19–21: after Clement’s catalogue of remarkable women, chapter 19 concludes with advice for both men and women: women must encourage their husbands to join them in living the virtuous life, and men must not prevent their wives from pursuing virtue (123.2–124.1). Whereas in chapter 8 Clement had pointed out that it was possible to lead the philosophical life without “studies” (4.8.58.3), here he observes: “It is not possible for a man or a woman to become distinguished in anything whatsoever if they do not apply learning (PDTKVHL) and practice (PHOHWK_) and discipline (DVNKVHL) (124.1).”74 In chapter 20, as if to balance out the long catalogue of active women in the previous chapter, Clement reminds wives that they must defer to their husbands. Commending holy marriage, he claims that the chief 72 Sect. 26, Musurillo, Acts, 97 (translation), Greek text: 96, ll. 26–28; see also Sect. 36, 100.1–5. 73 Nicole Kelley, “Philosophy as Training for Death: Reading the Ancient Christian Martyr Acts as Spiritual Exercises,” CH 75, no. 4 (2006): 723–47, especially 727–29. Kelley draws on Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life (ed. Arnold I. Davidson; trans. Michael Chase; Oxford: Blackwell, 1995). On the use of philosophical ideas in Clement and Origen’s discussions of martyrdom, see Robin Darling Young, In Procession before the World: Martyrdom as Public Liturgy in Early Christianity (Milwaukee, Wisc.: Marquette University Press, 2001). 74 This comment, together with the list of female students of Greek philosophers in Strom. 4.19.121.2–122.3, suggests as one possible reason why Clement devotes so much attention to the subject of women in Stromateis 4 is that he wants to defend the presence of women among his circle of learners. Since we have no direct information about Clement’s teaching practices or his pupils, there is no way to test this hypothesis.

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source of marital happiness lies in shared virtue.75 He counsels women to seek virtue, even if it puts their lives in danger, and repeats what he had said in chapter 8: men and women have the same goal in life, viz. achieving perfection (127.2; 129:2). The discussion of women and perfection concludes in chapter 21 with a series of quotations from Paul (Titus 2:3–5; Heb 13:14–16, 4; 2 Cor 11.23; 4:8–9; 6:3–7; 7:1; 6:16–18; 7:1–11; Rom 10:4; Eph 4:11–13; 1 Cor 12:7– 11; 7:7). These climax with the citation of Eph 4:11–13, on which Clement comments: We must seek to reach manhood (D SDQGURX VTDL) in the Gnostic sense (JQZVWLNZaM)76 and be perfected as far as possible while still in the flesh, taking care through our perfect assent during this life to collaborate with the will of God, aiming for the restoration of perfect nobility and kinship [with God], the “fullness of Christ” (WRX  SOUKP DWRM WRX  ;ULVWRX ), which is completed perfectly through our becoming perfect (HN NDWDUWLV PRX ). Now we see where, and how, and when the divine apostle mentions the perfect one (WR?Q WHO HLRQ) and how he exhibits differences among the perfect. (Strom. 4.21.132.1–2)

This passage confirms the impression that Eph 4:13, with its reference to the “perfect man,” is an important part of the background for all four chapters of Stromateis 4 that discuss women and their equal share in the philosophical life.77 Here in chapter 21 Clement alludes to several other motifs from the biblical verse: the different gifts exhibited by the members of the “body of Christ,”78 the “unity of faith,” and the “fullness of Christ.” As an exegete, Clement pays close attention to the words of Scripture. To cite just one example, he spends two chapters of Paidagogos book 1 discussing what Scripture means when it speaks of “children.”79 It cannot have escaped his notice that Paul in Eph 4:13 speaks of becoming the perfect DQKU, not the perfect DQTUZSRM. We saw earlier how Clement uses the language of gender – in particular verbs meaning “to become effeminate” (HNTKOXQZ and NDWDPD 75 Strom. 4.20.125.1–129.5. Clement supports these points by citing several passages from Euripides and also Titus 2:3–5; Heb 13:4, 14–16; and 1 Pet 1:6–9. 76 The adverb JQZVWLNZaM apparently serves to define the verb “to become a man” in a special, non-literal sense, as referring to the Gnostic or perfect Christian. 77 The phrase WHOHLRMDQKU is also found in Jas 3:2. Other New Testament texts that speak of the “perfect one(s)” (using the substantized adjective WH OHLRM, without an accompanying noun) are: Matt 5:48, 19:21; 1 Cor 2:6, 14:20; Phil 3:15; Col 1:28, 4:12; Heb 5:14; and Jas 1:4. For other influences on Clement’s “project of perfection” see AshwinSiejkowski, Clement of Alexandria, especially pages 39–144. 78 An interpretation of Eph 4:11: “The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers.” 79 See Judith L. Kovacs, “Echoes of Valentinian Exegesis in Clement of Alexandria and Origen: The Interpretation of 1 Cor 3.1–3,” in Origeniana Octava (ed. Lorenzo Perrone; Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 317–29.

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ODNL]RPDL) – to describe the souls of both men and women in a state of weakness. In this passage and several others he uses the verb DSDQGURZ, “to become a man” (or “to become an adult”) to describe the opposite state, when the soul becomes perfect.80 In Strom. 6.12.100.3, Clement makes a similar point, using a phrase borrowed from followers of Valentinus: For souls are neither male nor female when they “neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Luke 20:35). And perhaps this is the way in which “the woman is made into a man” (PHWDWLTHWDLHLMDQGUDK JXQK),81 when, equally with him, she has become unfeminine (DTKO XQWRM) and male (DQGULNK) and perfect.82

Clement finds such imagery in Scripture not only in “the perfect man” of Eph 4:13 but also in 1 Cor 13:11, where Paul says: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, when I became a man (JHJRQD D QKU)83 I put an end to childish ways.” He discerns a similar point in Gal 4:1–7, where Paul contrasts “babes” who are under the law with “sons” who have faith in Christ.84 Clement sees no contradiction between these texts and Paul’s statement in Gal 3:28 that in Christ “there is no male and female.” When he takes up the subjects of martyrdom/witness and perfection in Stromateis 4 he brings these different Pauline texts together, suggesting that virtue knows no gender and that women can “become men,” i.e., become mature in the Christian life, by learning courage, self-control, and the other virtues. Philosophers such as Plato and Musonius Rufus have influenced his thinking, but so has the New Testament. So he concludes this section of Stromateis 4: “Now we see where, and how, and when the divine apostle mentions the perfect one (WR?QWHOHLRQ) and how he exhibits differences among the perfect” (Strom. 4.21.132.2). A woman may have a different role in the present age, but both her soul and her ultimate goal are the same as the man’s. Women, too, are called to cultivate the philosophical life, the life of perfect virtue.

80

See also Strom. 4.23.150.3; 7.14.88.3; 1.11.53.1–2; Paed. 1.6.34.1. In the Excerpts from Theodotus, Clement’s collection of Valentinian texts, similar phrases are found in paragraphs 79 and 21.2; see also the gender imagery in paragraphs 67–68. 82 On early Christian use of sexual imagery to describe the soul’s transformation, see Verna Harrison, “The Feminine Man in Late Antique Ascetic Piety,” USQR 48 (1994): 49–71. 83 NRSV: “when I became an adult.” 84 In Paed. 1.6.34.1 and Strom. 1.11.53.1–2 Clement uses the verb DS DQGURZ to describe the transformation expressed in this passage. 81

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Works Cited Primary Texts: Editions The Acts of the Christian Martyrs. Edited and translated by Herbert Musurillo. Oxford: Clarendon, 1972. Atti e Passioni dei Martiri. Edited by A. A. R. Bastiaensen. Milan: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 1987. Clemens Alexandrinus: Works. Edited by Otto Stählin et al. 4 vols. Die griechische christliche Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte. Berlin: Akademie, 1970–1985. Clément d’Alexandrie, Stromate 4. Sources Chrétiennes 463. Edited by Annewies Van den Hoek. Paris: Du Cerf, 2001. C. Musonii Rufi reliquiae. Edited by Otto Hense. Leipzig: Teubner, 1990. Original edition in 1905. Primary Texts: Translations Clement of Alexandria. Works. Ante-Nicene Fathers. Edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Cox. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994. Reprint of original published by Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885. Volume 2:165–587. Musonius Rufus. Translated by Cora Lutz. Yale Classical Studies 10 (1947): 32–129. Philo of Alexandria. On the Virtues. Translated by F. H. Colson; Loeb Classical Library 341; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1968. Plato, Republic. Translated by G. M. A. Grube and C. D. C. Reeve. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992. Secondary Works: Annas, Julia. An Introduction to Plato’s Republic. Oxford: Clarendon, 1981. Ashwin-Siejkowski, Piotr. Clement of Alexandria. A Project of Christian Perfection. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2008. Baer, Richard. Philo’s Use of the Categories Male and Female. Leiden: Brill, 1970. Butterweck, Christel. ‘Martyriumssucht’ in der Alten Kirche? Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1995. Cobb, Stephanie. Dying to Be Men: Gender and Language in Early Christian Martyr Texts. New York: Columbia University, 2008. Desjardins, Michael. “Why Women Should Cover their Heads and Veil their Faces: Clement of Alexandria’s Understanding of the Body and his Rhetorical Strategies in the Paedagogus.” Scriptura 90 (2005): 700–708. Dunn, James D. G. The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon. A Commentary on the Greek Text. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1996. Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. New York: Crossroad, 1983. Harnack, Adolf von. Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God. Translated by John E. Steely and Lyle D. Bierma. Durham, N. C.: Labyrinth, 1990. Translation of Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott. Leipzig: J. D. Hinrichs, 1924.

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Harrison, Verna. “The Care-banishing Breast of the Father: Feminine Images of the Divine in Clement of Alexandria’s Paedagogus 1.” Studia Patristica 31 (1997): 401–5. Harrison, Verna. “The Feminine Man in Late Antique Ascetic Piety.” USQR 48 (1994): 49–71. Irwin, M. Eleanor. “Clement of Alexandria: Instructions on How Women Should Live.” Pages 395–407 in Hellenization Revisited. Shaping a Christian Response within the Greco-Roman World. Edited by Wendy E. Helleman. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1994. Kelley, Nicole. “Philosophy as Training for Death: Reading the Ancient Christian Martyr Acts as Spiritual Exercises.” Church History 75, no. 4 (2006): 723–47. Kinder, Donald. “Clement of Alexandria: Conflicting Views on Women.” Second Century 7 (1989/90): 213–20. Kovacs, Judith L. “Clement of Alexandria and Valentinian Exegesis in the Excerpts from Theodotus.” Studia Patristica 41 (2006): 187–200. Kovacs, Judith L. “Echoes of Valentinian Exegesis in Clement of Alexandria and Origen: The Interpretation of 1 Cor 3.1–3.” Pages 317–29 in Origeniana Octava. Edited by Lorenzo Perrone. Leuven: Peeters, 2004. Laqueur, Thomas. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1990. Malingrey, Anne-Marie. “Philosophia.” Étude d’un groupe de mots dans la littérature grecque, des Présocratiques au IVe siècle après J.-C. Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1961. Martin, Dale B. Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2006. Martyn, J. Louis. Galatians. Anchor Bible 33A. New York: Doubleday, 1997. Meeks, Wayne A. “The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity.” History of Religions 13 (1973): 165–208. Méhat, André. Étude sur les ‘Stromates’ de Clément d’Alexandrie. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1966. Moo, Douglas. The Letters to the Colossians and to Philemon. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008. Ramelli, Ilaria. “Transformation of the Household Theory between Roman Stoics, Middle Platonism, and Early Christianity.” Rivista di Filosofia Neoscolastica 100 (2008): 369–96. Sly, Dorothy. “The Plight of Woman: Philo’s Blind Spot.” Pages 173–87 in Hellenization Revisited. Shaping a Christian Response within the Greco-Roman World. Edited by Wendy E. Helleman. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1994. Snyder, Jane McIntosh. The Woman and the Lyre: Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University, 1989. Stendahl, Krister. The Bible and the Role of Women: A Case Study in Hermeneutics. Philadelphia, Pa.: Fortress, 1966. Sumney, Jerry L. Colossians: A Commentary. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2008. Swancutt, Diana. “The Disease of Effeminacy and the Verdict of God.” Pages 193–233 in New Testament Masculinities. Semeia Studies 45. Edited by Stephen Moore and Janice Capel Anderson. Leiden: Brill and Society of Biblical Literature, 2003. Thompson, Marianne Meye. Colossians and Philemon. Grand Rapids. Mich.: Eerdmans, 2005. Van den Hoek, Annewies. “Clement of Alexandria on Martyrdom.” Studia Patristica 26 (1993): 324–41.

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Young, Robin Darling. In Procession before the World. Martyrdom as Public Liturgy in Early Christianity. Milwaukee, Wisc.: Marquette University Press, 2001.

The Spirit as Mother in Early Syriac-Speaking Christianity SUSAN E. MYERS

Early Christian authors from the richly expressive religious environment of northern Mesopotamia were comfortable appropriating images of the feminine spirit of God known from the Hebrew tradition and developing their own language and images for her. Syriac-speaking Christians, reading the Old Syriac or Peshitta translations of the Hebrew scriptures, had the advantage of examining the biblical texts in a Semitic language and from a Semitic culture, similar to the environment in which the earliest texts had originated. In this milieu, Syriac-speaking Christians developed an understanding of the Spirit that was distinctive, replete with colorful images and language. Among those images is the metaphor of God’s spirit as a mother; although striking to western readers, it is a concept that grows naturally out of the feminine character of spirit in Semitic languages. The goal of this essay is to examine the use of feminine imagery for spirit, especially this designation of “mother,”1 in writings from Syriacspeaking Christian authors of the first several centuries of the Common Era. Because the use of feminine images and language is to be expected in a Semitic milieu and has been examined by other scholars,2 I do not at1

The idea of the Christian church as mother, a concept that developed in Greek- and Latin-speaking Christianity from the second century onward, is almost unknown in the earliest Christian writers of the Syrian tradition; it is found only in the Liber graduum, dating from the late fourth or early fifth century. The lack of interest in this concept in Syriac-speaking Christianity seems to result from the fact that it is the Spirit who bears the characteristics of a mother in this region. See the discussion in Robert Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom: A Study in Early Syriac Tradition (Cambridge: University Press, 1975; rev. ed. Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias, 2004), 142–50 and 312–20. 2 See especially Susan Ashbrook Harvey, “Feminine Imagery for the Divine: The Holy Spirit, the Odes of Solomon, and Early Syriac Tradition,” SVTQ 37 (1993): 111–39 and Sebastian Brock, “The Holy Spirit as Feminine in Early Syriac Literature,” in After Eve (ed. Janet Martin Soskice; Women and Religion Series; London: Marshall Pickering, 1990), 73–88. Brock points out that comfort with feminine imagery for God among Christians in this region extends beyond such use for the Spirit to Father and Son, or to the Godhead without specification, also. See “‘Come, Compassionate Mother . . . , Come Holy Spirit’: A Forgotten Aspect of Early Eastern Christian Imagery,” reprinted as essay VI in Fire From Heaven: Studies in Syriac Theology and Liturgy (Aldershot, England; Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2006), 251.

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tempt to repeat the work of others. Instead, I outline the history of such use in northern Mesopotamia, including the discomfort with such images that developed, probably out of influence from the west, and the eventual shift to masculine terminology for the Spirit. I then turn to the principal contribution of this essay to the subject: the examination of mother imagery for the Spirit, especially as found in very early Christian literature from the region. The few representatives of Christian thought that survive from the region range in genre and outlook, but include references and allusions to the feminine Spirit. In particular, I analyze the development of the imagery in prayers contained within the first Christian novel to survive in complete form, the Acts of Thomas, a work whose principal witnesses are in Greek as well as in the Syriac language of the region. The prayers in question build on elements found in earlier works in addressing the Spirit as a revealer figure and as a mother, conceiving of her as a font of wisdom, and providing an image of her as a dove. In this way, the Acts of Thomas develops elements from the rich heritage of the region, and its elements are developed by others (Ephrem, Aphrahat), even while some aspects of the tradition are condemned (Ephrem).

A. Feminine Language for Spirit: A Survey of Sources Writers in the Hebrew tradition were comfortable speaking of feminine aspects of God, whether the divine shekinah (dwelling, presence; found in rabbinic sources3), the co-creator h"okhmah (wisdom), or God’s ruah" (breath, wind, spirit), present at creation and variously falling upon or removed from prophets and kings. Because each of these words is grammatically feminine in Semitic languages, it is not surprising that feminine terminology and images accompanied descriptions of divine activity. Syriacspeaking Christianity, at least initially, assumed the feminine character of God’s ruah". In early Syriac writings, including translations of biblical texts, ruh"a d-qudsha or ruh"a qaddishta appear regularly to indicate “Spirit of holiness” or “holy Spirit” and are construed as grammatically feminine, in the latter instance by use of a feminine adjective. Interestingly, the phrase “Spirit of holiness,” the preferred terminology of Syriac Christian authors, is not commonly used in the Hebrew Scriptures, although it is not unknown there. It does appear often, however, in the Palestinian Targumim and other Jewish literature. The Hebrew usage of ruah" indicates an imper-

3

And, interestingly, in the Syriac translation of Chronicles.

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sonal force, although Christian writers regularly ignored this reality and conceived of “spirit” in personal terms.4 I. Biblical Texts In the Old Syriac translation of the gospels,5 from perhaps the late second or early third centuries, the Spirit is clearly grammatically feminine. 6 In the early fifth-century Peshitta New Testament, the Spirit continues to appear as feminine, but also sometimes as masculine.7 This trend of rendering the Spirit as masculine continued, so that in the Harklean version from the early seventh century, there is regularly a masculine verb (or adjective) employed with the Syriac noun ruh"a.8 The transgendering of the Spirit occurs in non-biblical writers as well, in much the same manner. The early writings are unafraid to speak of a feminine Spirit, complete with vibrant images, while later authors shy away from some of the images. By the sixth century, the feminine Spirit is regularly treated as if grammatically masculine, although occasional later authors will continue to speak of the Spirit “like a mother,”9 and as a grammatically feminine entity. Traces of the transgendering of the Spirit can be found especially in the verbal language employed, language that 4 A significant exception is Theodore of Mopsuestia (Commentary on Haggai; PG 66, col. 486), who claims that the Hebrew concept of “spirit” is not of a distinct person. 5 In the early centuries of Christianity, there were three different versions of the gospels in Syriac. The earliest, the Diatessaron of Tatian, survives only in fragments found in Ephrem and Aphrahat, and in translation. The Old Syriac, an early translation of the separated gospels, is extant in two manuscripts. Finally, the Peshitta translation became the official version of the New Testament in Syriac from the fifth century. Later Syriac versions, such as the Philoxenian and Harklean, are less valuable (indeed, the Philoxenian survives only in fragments). The Philoxenian, produced by Polycarp at the behest of the sixth-century bishop Philoxenos of Mabbug, was intended to be a corrective to perceived Nestorian tendencies of the Peshitta, while the Harklean, produced by Thomas of Harkel in the seventh century, is a wooden word-for-word translation of the Greek into less than intelligible Syriac. There has been, in recent years, a resurgence of scholarly interest in the Syriac gospels. 6 See the discussion in Sebastian Brock, “The Holy Spirit as Feminine in Early Syriac Literature,” 75. 7 Brock, “The Holy Spirit as Feminine in Early Syriac Literature,” 75. Luke 12:12 and John 14:26 are the only two places in the Peshitta of the gospels in which the Spirit is treated as masculine. As Brock points out, these are both passages in which the Spirit is said to teach. Although Brock does not offer a reason for this, the discomfort with the use of a feminine in a context of teaching suggests the possibility that the Syriac translator was influenced by the restrictions on women teaching in 1 Tim 2:12. Most examples in the Peshitta of the use of a masculine form for the Spirit are found in Acts (nine of sixteen instances); the epistles use only the feminine. See Brock, 75–76. 8 Brock, “The Holy Spirit as Feminine in Early Syriac Literature,” 73–87, esp. 76. 9 To quote Martyrius, Book of Perfection I.3.13.

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indicates the Spirit’s activities and sheds light on the epithets applied to her. In the Peshitta translation of the scriptures,10 two Syriac verbs used of the activity of the Spirit stand out. Rah"h"eph is used in the first verses of Genesis, and became the verb most commonly used by Syriac writers for the Spirit’s action. Rah"h"eph (and the noun ruh"h"apha) has a range of meaning, from the hovering of a bird to having mercy or compassion, and was, therefore, especially meaningful to apply to the spirit of God. Indeed, Peshitta Zech 12:10 mentions a “spirit of ruh"h"apha (compassion or pity) and mercy.”11 In the Peshitta New Testament, the most significant verb for the Spirit is ’aggen (to rest on or cover over), used of the Spirit at the annunciation in Luke 1:35 as well as in several places in Acts.12 In later Syriac texts, biblical and non-biblical, ruh"a – and the feminine term melta, used to translate the Greek logos – comes to be understood as masculine, although a feminine verb with ruh"a is retained longer than the feminine adjective. While some Syriac authors continue to construe the Spirit as feminine – and speak of her as a “mother” – even into the tenth century, it is in the early texts written in or surviving in Syriac, that the language is most commonly used and on which this study concentrates. II. Mother Language for Spirit Although the Spirit can be understood as feminine without use of the mother image, as in the Gospel of Philip discussed below (and even while explicitly rejecting that image; so Ephrem), it is the idea of the Spirit as Mother that most appealed to many of the Syriac-speaking Christians during the early centuries of Christianity. The idea survives especially in authors from this region, familiar as they were with feminine associations with spirit, but it is found elsewhere as well. 10

The Peshitta of the New Testament was in use by the early fifth century. It is often associated with the bishop Rabbula, though certainly not produced by him, although he was most likely instrumental in its widespread adoption. 11 Brock, The Holy Spirit in the Syrian Baptismal Tradition (The Syrian Churches Series 9; Poona: Anita Printers, 1979), 6. 12 Acts 10:45 and 11:15. The verb is difficult to translate, but indicates “divine intervention of a salvific nature” (quote from Brock, “Passover, Annunciation and Epiclesis: Some Remarks on the Term aggen in the Syriac Versions of Lk. 1:35,” NovT 24 [1982], 232). It is used in Luke 1:35 in all Syriac versions of the gospel, including the Diatessaron (as known from Ephrem’s commentary), although one would expect ’at "t "el (overshadow) instead of ’aggen. The Old Syriac is missing this verse, but see Brock, “The Lost Old Syriac at Luke 1:35 and the Earliest Syriac Terms for the Incarnation,” in Gospel Traditions in the Second Century (ed. William L. Petersen; Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 117–31. For an excellent summary of Diatessaronic studies, see William E. Petersen, Tatian’s Diatessaron: Its Creation, Dissemination, Significance, and History in Scholarship (VCSup 25; Leiden: Brill, 1994).

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Both Irenaeus13 and Epiphanius14 claim familiarity with Gnostic groups that know of a primal Mother or a “Mother on high”; Irenaeus claims that she is also called “holy spirit.”15 Mother goddesses are, of course, present in many ancient pantheons, but among those who claim to be Christian, including Christian Gnostics, it is in association with the Spirit that the language of mother can be seen. The Apocryphon of John, for example, speaks of the “first thought . . . the Mother-Father, the first man, the holy Spirit.”16 It would be a grave mistake, however, to claim that the concept of Spirit as Mother is limited to Gnostic thought. Jerome quotes a passage from the lost Gospel of the Hebrews in which Jesus declares, “Even so did my mother, the Holy Spirit, carry me away.”17 After citing this passage, Jerome discusses the reality that Spirit is gendered differently in the languages with which he was familiar, thus indicating that God has no gender; he states that it should not be surprising to find a reference to the Holy Spirit as Mother, since the term is feminine in Hebrew. Employing allegorical interpretation, Hippolytus sees “trinity” in the patriarchal stories. In particular, Isaac is the Father, while Jacob corresponds with Christ; Rebecca is an image of the Holy Spirit.18 Similarly, Methodius sees Adam, in his innocence, as the Father, while Adam’s son (Abel?) represents the “Son and Word of God” and Eve signifies the Holy Spirit.19 Although not directly conceiving of the Spirit as feminine, Clement of Alexandria discusses the love of God, saying that “the Father, by loving, became feminine”; indeed, in relating to humans in compassion, God has become mother.20 Fi-

13

Writing on the Valentinians; Haer. 1.4 and 1.5. On the Sethians (Pan. 39.2,1–4) and the Archontici (Pan. 40.2,3). For a convenient English translation, see Frank Williams, trans., The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis (2 vols.; Nag Hammadi Studies 35; Leiden: Brill, 1987–1994), 1.256 and 1.263. The Archontics, Epiphanius claims, conceive of a “shining mother at the very top in the eighth heaven – like the other sects.” 15 Haer. 1.5.3; see also 1.4.1. 16 Ap. John 5.4–7. Translation by Frederik Wisse in The Nag Hammadi Library in English (ed. James M. Robinson; rev. ed.; San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), 104–23. 17 Comm. Isa. 40:9–11 (PL 405; CCSL 73, p. 459). Jerome is probably dependent on Origen, who preserves the quotation in full: “Even so did my mother, the Holy Spirit, take me by one of my hairs and carry me away on to the great mountain Tabor” (Origen, Commentary on John II.12 [SC 120, p. 262]). See also Origen, Homily on Jeremiah XV.4 (SC 238, p. 122). In addition, see Jerome, Commentary on Micah (CCSL 76, p. 513); and Commentary on Ezekiel (CCSL 75, p. 178). 18 See the discussion in Brock, “The Holy Spirit as Feminine in Early Syriac Literature,” 81. 19 For this fragment from Methodius, see ANF 6, p. 402. 20 Quis div. 37. 14

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nally, the early fifth-century Synesios of Cyrene speaks of the Holy Spirit as the mother, the sister, the daughter.21 Evidence from the northern Mesopotamian region also reveals a feminine triad worshipped among non-Christians. Several inscriptions from Hatra mention “our Lord and our Lady and the Son of our Lord and Lady.”22 It is not entirely clear if or how this concept affected Christian development in the region, but there is no question that mother language, applied to a divine figure, was familiar in northern Mesopotamia. But the richest examples of feminine imagery for the Spirit, and especially images of the Spirit as Mother, can be found in those Christian authors hailing from the east, beginning with the early Odes of Solomon and continuing through the Acts of Thomas, to which particular attention is paid here, to Aphrahat and others.

B. Earliest Sources Precisely how and when Christianity arrived in northern Mesopotamia is unknown. Because of the prominence of the city of Edessa in the fourth century, together with legends connecting that city with figures, including Jesus, from the first century, it has often been assumed that Edessa was the staging point for a Christian mission in the region. The correspondence between Jesus and king Abgar of Edessa is first recounted in the early fourth century;23 the legend of Addai/Thaddeus, sent by the apostle Thomas to the city of Edessa, appears during this time as well,24 and by the late fourth century, travelers to the city of Edessa could visit the tomb of the apostle Thomas.25 Some scholars26 have argued, however, that Christianity must 21 Hymn 2. The hymn also associates the Spirit with the procreative force (the father) and with the son. For Synesios, see Samuel Vollenweider, Neuplatonische und christliche Theologie bei Synesios von Kyrene (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985), 76 (see also the excursus entitled “Mutter Heiliger Geist”). 22 Brock, “‘Come, Compassionate Mother . . .,’” 249. For the transliterated inscriptions and Italian translation, see Francesco Vattioni, Le iscrizioni di H "atra (Istituto Orientale di Napoli Annali 41, Supp. 28; Naples, 1981), inscriptions 25, 26, 29, 30, 50, 52, and passim. 23 Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 1.13. Egeria, in the late fourth century, receives a copy of the Jesus/Abgar correspondence from the Edessene archives; Itin. Eger. 19.19. 24 Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 1.13.11–22. The story is preserved also in the fifth-century Syriac Doctrina Addai. 25 Itin. Eger. 19.2. 26 Notably J. B. Segal, Edessa, “The Blessed City” (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970), esp. 81; see also his “When did Christianity come to Edessa?” in Middle East Studies and Libraries: A Felicitation Volume for Professor J. D. Pearson (ed. Barry Bloomfield; London: Mansell, 1980), 179–91, esp. 189. On completely different grounds, Jeffrey Paul

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have arrived in the area from the east, particularly the region of Adiabene, and that it was through the Jewish community there that the Jesus movement first gained a foothold. The earliest solid evidence for Christianity in the region points both to the city of Edessa and away from it. The late second century saw the appointment of the philosopher Bardais"an to the royal court of Edessa. Bardais"a n’s brand of Christian thought caused later Christians, notably Ephrem, to seethe with anger, but it appears to have been influential in the city. The late but reliable Chronicle of Edessa records a flooding of the city in the year 201 and makes mention of damage to the “church of the Christians,” the earliest mention of a building designated as such. Also in the late second century, though, the bishop Abercius from Phrygia traveled to Christian lands in the east and left an inscription of his travels for his epitaph. While Abercius explicitly mentions a visit to Christians in the city of Nisibis, on the border between Roman and Parthian lands, he is completely silent regarding the city of Edessa.27 Evidence of a Christian presence in the region dates, then, from at least the late second century, although how and where it first arrived remains a mystery. Early texts from the region also reveal some complexity; although they may survive in Syriac, the native language of the Osrhoene, of which Edessa is the capital, the written language was not finalized until the fourth century.28 Early writings that survive in Syriac, while certainly reflecting native ideas and expressions, may have had their language adjusted to conform to later norms. For this reason, texts from the region that survive in Greek sometimes reflect earlier traditions than extant Syriac versions of the same works. The writings of greatest import to our study are the Odes of Solomon, which survives principally in Greek and Syriac; the writings of the Valentinian school, which reflect traditions from this region; the writings and thoughts of Bardaisan, as those can be reconstructed;29 and the thirdcentury Acts of Thomas, the last of the five early Christian novels and the only one that survives complete. These writings employ allusions to the Lyon (Syriac Gospel Translations: A Comparison Of The Language and Translation Method Used In The Old Syriac, The Diatessaron, and The Peshitto [CSCO 548; CSCO Subs. 88; Louvain: Peeters, 1994]) comes to a similar conclusion. 27 In the third quarter of the fourth century, when Nisibis was ceded to the Persian Shapur II by Jovian and the Christian population moved westward to areas under Roman control, Ephrem laments the loss of his beloved Nisibis, which he claims was primarily Christian, in contrast with the polytheistic city of Edessa. 28 Brock, “Eusebius and Syriac Christianity,” in Eusebius, Christianity, and Judaism (ed. Harold W. Attridge and Gohei Hata; Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992), 226. 29 Especially from his detractors. Bardais"a n wrote a Dialogue on Fate, although this survives only in fragments.

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feminine Spirit, and sometimes make explicit mention of the Spirit as Mother, language that was completely at home in this region of early Semitic Christianity.30 This study proceeds through these materials in the order given above, culminating in an analysis of the prayer language in the Acts of Thomas, in which the various elements from other traditions are drawn together and developed. The epicletic prayers in the Acts of Thomas, in particular, are addressed to a revealer figure who resembles the biblical portrait of personified Wisdom as well as the hovering bird of Genesis, who shares in ritual action with her adherents, and who can be addressed with the appellation “Mother.” The beautiful and enigmatic Odes of Solomon have long been known by name (together with the Psalms of Solomon),31 but their contents have been revealed only through various manuscript discoveries over the past two hundred years. The Odes are represented in two Syriac manuscripts,32 although Ode 11 survives in Greek,33 and part of Ode 19 in Latin (translated from Greek). The Odes are notoriously difficult to date, but were probably written in the second century;34 their original language – Greek or Syriac – is even more uncertain. While the place of composition of the Odes is equally unclear, the most likely locale of origin is the region of Syria.35 The earthy language and graphic imagery of the Odes are certainly at home in this region. The Odes clearly conceive of God’s spirit as a feminine entity.36 Since the main witnesses to the Odes are in Syriac, it is not surprising to find a 30

It should be noted that in these early works the idea of God’s spirit as a hypostasis (as the fourth-century Greek thinkers would define it) is simply unknown. In the early writings, the Spirit remains closely linked with the biblical life-giving breath of God, the active presence of God at creation and beyond. 31 Most notably in a list compiled by the ninth-century Nicephorus of Constantinople; part of Ode 19 is also quoted in the fourth century by Lactantius. 32 For the Syriac of the Odes, see James H. Charlesworth, The Odes of Solomon (SBLTT 13; SBL Pseudepigrapha Series 7; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1977). 33 In Bodmer papyrus XI. Ode 11 in the Greek is more extensive than the same Ode in Syriac. 34 See Michael Lattke, The Odes of Solomon (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), 6–10. After considering various possibilities for dating the Odes, Lattke concludes that the Odes probably stem from the first quarter of the second century, “in the overlap of early Judaism, early Gnosticism, and early Christianity” (10). He also cautions, however (14), against any attempt to place the Odes too early. 35 See Lattke, The Odes of Solomon, 11. 36 See the thorough treatment of this topic in Harvey, “Feminine Imagery for the Divine.” While Harvey appreciates the imagery of the Odes of Solomon and of Ephrem, she too hastily rejects some language, including mother language for the Spirit, as characterizing “pagan religions” or “Gnostic traditions” (114–15) and therefore positing a “distinct female entity.” Such language is therefore not included in her analysis of the early Syriac tradition even when it occurs in Syriac works (such as the Acts of Thomas or Aphrahat’s Demonstrations).

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feminine noun and feminine verbs referring to her activity. But the images used, as well, especially those recalling the actions of a mother bird, suggest that the Spirit is understood as feminine. There are many images used of the Spirit in the Odes. She moves, like air through a stringed instrument, through the odist’s members (6:1–2) in order to speak; in love she communicates, offering praise (16:5) and correct teachings (3:10). In this latter aspect she resembles Wisdom, with whom the Spirit is often likened in the Hebrew tradition. The association of the Spirit with praise is found in several Odes; she is praised (6:7, 13:2), but she also leads the odist to praise the Lord (14:8; here again reference is made to a musical instrument). She is associated with salvation, as one who is used to circumcise the heart37 (11:2; cf. language of circumcision of the heart in Deut 10:16 and 30:6 and especially its association with the Holy Spirit in Jub. 1:23). The Spirit rests upon the odist (36:1),38 and the odist declares that she “lifted me up to the height and set me on my feet,” an image that recalls the words of Ezekiel (2:2 and 3:24), before bringing the odist before God. The Spirit also provides protection and covering (25:8), a claim that is similarly made of the “wings of the Spirit” in Ode 28. This idea of the Spirit as a bird, developing the image of the bird over the waters of creation in Genesis, seems to be present in two Odes. Ode 24 opens with the statement that “The dove flew onto the head of the Lord Messiah,39 because he was her head. And she cooed over him and her voice was heard.” The dove appears here as “servant and messenger,”40 a role played by doves in antiquity, and perhaps recalls the presence of the Spirit as a dove at the baptism of Jesus. The resemblance to the dove of the gospels ends, however, with mention of the dove’s cooing, a vocalization to be expected of doves and perhaps part of the delivery of a message. At any rate, the dove’s communication is heard, a claim that inaugurates a period of fear and destruction for those who lack wisdom. If indeed the dove of Ode 24 is understood as the Spirit and reference is made to the baptism of Jesus, then the destruction apparently refers to a sentence of judgment brought by the Messiah. If this is correct, the Ode 37

The language linking the Spirit with metaphorical circumcision, and associated with anointing, is later developed in Syriac-speaking Christianity especially in the writings of the hymnist Narsai. 38 The similarity between this language and Isa 11:2 and 61:1 provide support for the contention that this reading, found in manuscript H of the Odes, is correct. Marginal notes in H, as well as manuscript N, however, suggest that the odist is actually resting upon the Spirit. 39 This is the reading of manuscript N; manuscript H eliminates the phrase “head of the Lord” and has the dove flying “onto the Messiah.” Lattke wonders if pious sensibilities and knowledge of the gospel traditions of Jesus’s baptism led to excision of mention of the “head.” See Lattke, The Odes of Solomon, 343. 40 Lattke, The Odes of Solomon, 342.

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here moves well beyond the baptismal story. This is not unlikely, since neither the Messiah (after the first verse, the authoritative figure is always called “the Lord”) nor the dove reappears in the Ode. Only the first verse could be understood to recall the gospel accounts of Jesus’s baptism; if an identification of the dove with the Spirit is intended, there is also a clear subordination of the Spirit to the Messiah. There is no question that bird imagery is applied to the Spirit in Ode 28, an ode that begins in joy and delight before giving way to darker images of victimization. The ode begins with the declaration, “Like the wings of doves over their nestlings . . . so also are the wings of the Spirit over my heart.” The dove is not said to “hover” as in Genesis, but the dove instead is caring for young, providing protection, comfort, or warmth. The speaker compares this activity with that of the Spirit, thus recalling the covering provided by the Spirit in Ode 25.41 If the speaker is understood as Jesus,42 then the Ode reflects the Lukan birth narrative; Michael Lattke suggests43 that the nestlings reflect the “two young pigeons” of Luke 2:24, while the babe in its mother’s womb (Ode 28:2b) would clearly refer to Luke 1:44 and Elizabeth’s declaration that the child in her womb leaped for joy. While this identification is consistent with the language of the Ode, it does not seem to be required. Rather, the speaker may simply describe the comfort and protection of the Spirit’s “wings” and the resultant joy that ensues. What is clear is that the use of dove imagery applied to God’s spirit in Genesis is here developed more fully in the idea of the Spirit as a mother dove caring for her offspring. This image will reappear in the epicleses in the Acts of Thomas as well. The fascinating Ode 19, with its feminine imagery for God, has received much attention from scholars.44 The Father has breasts that produce sweet milk and the odist drinks from the proffered cup; the Son is explicitly designated as the cup.45 For our purposes, what is most interesting is the role 41

In the Syriac; the Coptic of Ode 25:8 declares that the covering is made by “mer-

cy.” 42

Lattke seems certain of this, but I am not completely convinced. Lattke, The Odes of Solomon, 386–87. 44 The content of the attention has varied. The ode was called “grotesque” by J. Rendel Harris and A. Mingana, The Odes and Psalms of Solomon (Manchester: University Press, 1920), apparently because of the explicit imagery. Harris declares that the ode was perhaps added to the others at a later date, although there is no concrete evidence for such an assertion. See the discussion of this ode in H. J. W. Drijvers, “The 19th Ode of Solomon: Its Interpretation and Place in Syrian Christianity,” JTS n.s. 31 (1980): 337–55; reprinted in East of Antioch: Studies in Early Syriac Christianity (London: Variorum Reprints, 1984). 45 In both this ode and in Ode 23:22, one encounters a triadic concept (the phrase “triadic formula” could perhaps be applied to the section in Ode 23, but is too strong here) that is still far from a dogmatic statement of trinity. 43

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of the Spirit in this ode; she milks the Father’s breasts and later opens her own bosom46 in order to mix the milk produced by the Father’s breasts. The Spirit then, in phrases that recall the prologue to the Gospel of John, offers the mixture to the world, which does not know it.47 The ode begins by alluding to the Son who is the cup that is drunk, but the image changes when the Spirit mixes the milk from the Father’s breasts. A virgin conceives and later gives birth. Although the Syriac seems to suggest that the virgin catches the “mixture” (reflecting gospel infancy narratives), Lattke argues convincingly, based on the quotation of this section by Lactantius, that this is not the original reading. Rather, as the Latin suggests, the virgin’s womb was weakened and she conceived. The virgin’s role as mother and her painless childbearing constitute the next sections of the ode. While not made explicit, the virgin may in fact refer to the Spirit of holiness, who therefore brings the child into the world. 48 If the child is understood to be the “Son” (the name of Jesus appears nowhere in the Odes), this would correspond with other images that we have seen in which the Spirit is designated as Mother and is even referred to as the mother of “the Savior.”49 The imagery of Ode 19 is thus relatively consistent, but striking. The Father in this ode appears with breasts that offer nourishment; elsewhere (Ode 8:14) it is the odist, or perhaps Christ,50 who offers breasts full of holy milk. In Ode 14:2–3, the breasts of the odist are linked with an appeal for mercy and kindness, gifts associated with the cup of milk and the presence of God in Ode 19. The bosom of the Father appears also in a work stemming from Valentinan Christianity, the Gospel of Truth.51 Written in the middle of the second century,52 the Gospel of Truth shares several themes with the Odes of 46 The Syriac manuscripts clearly indicate that the bosom is that of a feminine entity and therefore of the Spirit, but Lattke argues for an emendation, based on a possible Greek original. The emendation would make the bosom belong to the Father and the entire statement would be comparable to the Spirit “milking” the Father’s breasts. 47 Oddly, however, and in a departure from John 1:10–11, the unknowing world does receive the mixture. 48 See Lattke, The Odes of Solomon, 276 n. 123: “The difficulty in 4a might be made easier if the ‘virgin’ were an embodiment of the ‘spirit of holiness.’” 49 As in the Gospel of the Hebrews. For discussion of this concept, see Lattke, The Odes of Solomon, 275–77. 50 Charlesworth often identifies sections of odes as coming from the mouth of Christ. It seems more likely that the odist sometimes takes on the exalted character of Christ and rapturously identifies with the heavenly Messiah. 51 The Gospel of Truth has often been thought to be not only a representative of Valentinian thought but a text actually stemming from the pen of Valentinus. For a challenge to this view, see Christoph Markschies, Valentinus Gnosticus?: Untersuchungen zur valentinianischen Gnosis mit einem Kommentar zu den Fragmenten Valentins (WUNT 65; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1992), esp. 339–56. 52 Presuming that this is the same work referred to by Irenaeus (Haer. 3.11.9).

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Solomon, including the emphasis on knowledge and the truth that is revealed, allusions to crowning, the joy that results from union with God, as well as this mention of the Father’s bosom. Like Ode 19, the Gospel of Truth makes an association between the Father’s bosom and the Holy Spirit: “The Father reveals his bosom. --- Now his bosom is the Holy Spirit. --He reveals what is hidden of him --- what is hidden of him is his Son” (24.9–14). Apparently, the Holy Spirit is that which allows the Son, hidden in the Father, to be revealed. This is supported by another passage in the Gospel of Truth, in which “truth” is said to be the “mouth of the Father” while the Father’s “tongue is the Holy Spirit.” Indeed, whoever is “joined to the truth is joined to the Father’s mouth by his tongue, whenever he is to receive the Holy Spirit, since this is the manifestation of the Father and his revelation to his aeons” (26.28–27.7). The way to receive truth is to be joined to the Father by the Holy Spirit, and reception of the Spirit is required for receiving revelation. The idea of the Spirit as revealer of hidden truths will reappear in spirit epicleses of the Acts of Thomas. Like the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel of Philip also stems from Valentinian Christianity53 and shares with the Odes of Solomon an affinity with the traditions of northern Mesopotamia.54 Valentinus and Valentinian Christians were apparently familiar with some early form of the Thomas traditions, and joined a system of thought emphasizing gnosis with Mesopotamian Christianity. Some elements of the Gospel of Philip are especially striking when compared with the traditions seen in other works from the region; the understanding of Spirit as feminine is one aspect of agreement. Although not grammatically feminine in the Coptic of the Gospel of Philip,55 the Spirit is clearly conceived as feminine: “Some said, ‘Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit.’ They are in error. They do not know what they are saying. When did a woman ever conceive by a woman?” (55.24– 26). Yet the Spirit is not called “Mother”; indeed, “mother” appearing alone is used for the “Hebrew, orphaned” phase of existence (52.21–24). The Gospel of Philip has a strong emphasis on rituals through which the Spirit is present and active. The Spirit is associated with warmth and light, but is also present in the ritual bread and cup; the Spirit provides protection and also bestows the name “Christian.” 53 For a more nuanced understanding of this question, including reflection on the composite nature of the work, the varieties of Valentinianism, and the origin of some parts of the work outside Valentinian Christianity proper, see Martha Turner, The Gospel according to Philip: The Sources and Coherence of an Early Christian Collection (Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies; Leiden: Brill, 1996). 54 For the idea that the Thomas traditions affected Valentinus and Valentinian Christianity, see the general introduction in Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1987). 55 Or in the Greek that is presumed to underlie the Coptic.

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The intriguing rituals mentioned in the Gospel of Philip have received much attention from scholars, since some of the rituals are familiar from other areas of Christianity in the second and third centuries, while others appear to be unique.56 In particular, especially in the areas of the work with greatest affinity to Syriac-speaking Christianity,57 baptism and anointing feature prominently and are often linked, both associated with the Holy Spirit: “Through the holy spirit we are indeed begotten again, but we are begotten through Christ in the two. We are anointed through the spirit. When we were begotten we were united. None can see himself either in water or in a mirror without light. Nor again can you 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” (69.4–14). 58 This light is also fire (67.26) which is found in chrism (57.27–28), but the chrism is explicitly identified as being 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. He who has been anointed possesses everything. He possesses the resurrection, the light, the cross, the holy spirit. (74.12–21)

The Holy Spirit shares in the life of the Christian through these rituals, but is especially associated with the anointing. The anointing brings light, a light that is donned by the believer, resulting in the person being able to see as well as becoming “perfect light” (76.26–27), able to flow out to all. To be clothed in the light is to be protected from the powers (70.57). The chrism is that from which comes the resurrection (73.18–19). The Spirit is also associated with the ritual cup in the Gospel of Philip: “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” (75.14–21). Sharing in the rituals of chrismation and of the cup brings the Spirit into the individual’s life, thus transforming and protecting the person. The association of the Spirit with oil is also clear in the prayer in chapter 27 of the Acts of Thomas, a prayer to the Spirit as Mother that is set within the context of an anointing ritual. In the Acts of Thomas the Spirit is 56 Page 67 of the Gospel of Philip declares that “The Lord [did] all things by means of a mystery: baptism, chrism, eucharist, ransom, and bridal chamber” (translation M. Turner, The Gospel According to Philip, 213). 57 See the discussion of Thomas traditions in the Gospel of Philip in M. Turner, The Gospel According to Philip, 206–26. 58 Translation of this passage (and subsequent ones) is that of Wesley W. Isenberg, in The Nag Hammadi Library in English (ed. James M. Robinson; 4th rev. ed.; San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1996), 151.

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also called upon to be present with the believers in the ritual of Eucharist (chapter 50), a ritual that is mentioned in the Gospel of Philip. As we shall see, the themes that appear in this earlier work with ties to Syriac-speaking Christianity are developed and expanded in the Acts of Thomas. The literature of the Valentinian Gnostic school of thought, then, also includes several elements common to Syriac-speaking Christianity, including feminine imagery for God. Hidden truths are revealed precisely through feminine qualities given to God and identified with the Spirit. The Spirit is not explicitly called Mother, however, nor is the language grammatically feminine. With the person of Bardais"an, we have an identifiable figure who was prominent in the royal court of Edessa late in the second century. Bardais"a n’s theological claims are known primarily from his detractors, most notably the fourth-century Ephrem.59 It is unclear how much Ephrem is reflecting the thought of Bardais"an himself and how much of his anger is actually directed to contemporary Bardesanites. For example, Bardais"an claims to accept the idea of a single God,60 but Ephrem clearly ascribes to Bardais"a n himself the idea of a divine pair of Mother and Father. In his Hymns against Heresies, Ephrem declares that Bardais"an “considered Sun and Moon; with the Sun he compared the Father, with the Moon he compared the Mother, male and female Gods and their children.”61 Ephrem’s 59 Ephrem’s writings against Bardais"a n are found primarily in his Hymns against Heresies (see Des heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Hymnen contra Haereses [ed. Edmund Beck; 2 vols.; CSCO 169, 170; CSCO Scriptores Syri 76, 77; Louvain: Durbecq, 1957]) and his Prose Refutations (C. W. Mitchell, S. Ephraim’s Prose Refutations of Mani, Marcion, and Bardaisan [completed by A. A. Bevan and F. C. Burkitt; 2 vols.; London: Williams and Norgate, 1912–1921]), although his Carmina Nisibena contain anti-Bardais"a n materials as well. The question of sources for Ephrem’s thought is a thorny one, and the answers provided by scholars have determined their judgments of Bardais"an. Bardais"a n himself wrote a Dialogue on Fate, known only through quotations in other works (principally the Preparatio Evangelica of Eusebius, with similar material appearing in the Ps. Clementine Recognitions and a dialogue of Ps. Caesarius). A work known as the Book of the Laws of the Countries, a dialogue in which Bardais"an is the principal figure, was written by Philippus, a pupil of Bardais"a n, and has sometimes been thought to contain much the same information as the lost Dialogue on Fate, although judgment on this matter varies. For the Syriac of the BLC, with an English translation, see H. J. W. Drijvers, The Book of the Laws of the Countries: Dialogue on Fate of Bardais"an of Edessa (Assen: van Gorcum, 1965). For a discussion of the issues and a survey of scholarship on Bardais"a n, see Drijvers, Bardais"an of Edessa (Assen: van Gorcum, 1966). 60 The Book of the Laws of the Countries opens with a discussion among Bardais"an’s disciples, in which Bardais"an joins. Among the questions at hand is the oneness of God, which Bardais"a n had previously affirmed. At BLC 567, Bardais"a n claims that there is one alone who has power over everything. Ephrem also notes Bardais"an’s rejection of Marcion’s doctrine of two Gods (HcHaer 3.4). 61 HcHaer. 55.10. Translation is that of Drijvers, Bardais"a n of Edessa, 148.

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understanding of Bardais"an includes the idea that the Father and Mother, while spiritual, are united sexually,62 and thus create a “paradise of shame”: “The Father with the Mother, by their sexual union they founded it, they planted it with their descendants.”63 This paradise is both the Garden of Life and, “at the same time, the Bridal chamber of light to which the souls return.”64 The union of the Father and Mother also produces a son. Ephrem declares that Bardais"an “called our Lord the child that was produced by two, through sexual union.”65 When actually quoting the Bardesanites, however, Ephrem’s evidence regarding sexual union is less clear. He reaches the above conclusion because the Bardesanites sing, “Something flowed down from the Father of Life and the mother became pregnant with the mystery of the fish and bore him. And he was called the Son of Life.”66 The hymn could indeed suggest sexual activity but does not explicitly claim it. What is clear is that it recognizes a complexity to the divine, a complexity that includes the idea of a “Mother.” It is not entirely clear if Bardais"an’s idea of the Mother is to be equated with the Spirit. But Ephrem seems to draw a connection between the two. In the midst of a discussion about the Father and Mother in Bardais"an’s thought, Ephrem notes the Bardesanite claim that the Holy Spirit “bore two daughters.” These two are apparently twins and are called “the blush of the earth and the image of the water.”67 This language recalls the presence of the Spirit in the creation story in Genesis, in which the Spirit, hovering over the waters, takes on characteristics of a mother bird over her nest. We have seen that the Syriac term rah"h"e ph, used of the Spirit’s activity in Syr-

62 It is certainly possible that Ephrem takes Bardais"an’s sexual imagery entirely too seriously. In his Against Bardais"an’s ‘Domnus,’ Ephrem ridicules Bardais"an’s claim that “Light, like a male, sows perception in the eye.” Ephrem acknowledges that Bardais"an is playing on the gender of the terms in Aramaic, but cannot contain his offense at the sexual imagery, although Bardais"a n was clearly not suggesting actual sexual activity. The passage can be found in Mitchell, Prose Refutations, 2.xxii. 63 HcHaer. 55.8. Translation is that of Drijvers, Bardais"an of Edessa, 147. 64 Drijvers, Bardais"a n of Edessa, 151. In this respect, the ideas of Bardais"an and the Bardesanites may reflect some familiarity with elements of the sacramental system known from the Gospel of Philip. 65 HcHaer. 55.2. Ephrem’s disgust is palpable. 66 HcHaer. 55.1. Translation from D. Bundy, “The Pseudo-Ephremian Commentary on Third Corinthians: A Study in Exegesis and Anti-Bardaisanite Polemic,” in After Bardaisan: Studies on Continuity and Change in Syriac Christianity in Honour of Professor Han J. W. Drijvers (ed. G. J. Reinink and A. C. Klugkist; Orientalia Lovaniensa Analecta 89; Leuven: Peeters, 1999), 61. 67 HcHaer. 55.2–3.

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iac translations of Genesis 1, is precisely the term that indicates the “hovering” of a mother bird.68 Ephrem himself completely rejects the idea that the ruah"/ ruh"a hovering over the waters in Gen 1:2 is to be understood as God’s spirit.69 His rejection of this idea of the hovering Spirit at creation may stem from his dislike for a perceived sexual interpretation on the part of the Bardesanites and his attempts to defend monotheism. In his Commentary on Genesis, Ephrem claims that the hovering does not produce anything (only on the fifth day are creatures brought forth from the water),70 but it is the possibility of an “incubating spirit” in Gen 1:2, apparently understood in sexual terms by the Bardensanites, that especially offends Ephrem. In addition, against Bardais"an’s recognition of primordial elements in the world and his affirmation of spiritual guides, Ephrem argues that God alone is creator.71 Ephrem seems to know that Bardais"an’s guides were planets and were themselves created by God, but he is apparently reacting to later Bardesanite readings of the Genesis creation story that he understood to threaten the omnipotence of God.72

C. Development of the Images in the Acts of Thomas We have seen that literature from the earliest years of Christianity in northern Mesopotamia contains intriguing language of the Spirit, language that, in many cases, is most fully developed in the Acts of Thomas. In the Odes of Solomon, the Spirit communicates wisdom and is associated with the biblical figure of that name; she is also represented as a bird caring for her young. Gnostic Christian texts speak of the Holy Spirit as a revealer, one associated with warmth and light and present in ritual actions. In Bardais"a n’s thought, mother language is deemed appropriate for the Spirit; she is a mother of twins, and there is again perhaps an allusion to the spirit of God in the Genesis creation story. We shall now turn to the prayers found 68 See Drijvers, Bardais"an of Edessa, 145, for a discussion of the connection between spirit and creation in Bardais"an’s thought. 69 Within the Syrian Christian tradition, the ruah" of Gen 1:2 was understood in two primary ways: as the divine Spirit (so the Acts of Thomas), or simply as wind or air. Ephrem insists on this latter understanding. See Brock, “The Ruah" Elohim of Gen 1,2 and its Reception History in the Syriac Tradition,” reprinted as essay XIV in Fire From Heaven: Studies in Syriac Theology and Liturgy (Aldershot, England; Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2006). 70 Brock, “The Ruah" Elohim of Gen 1,2 and its Reception History in the Syriac Tradition,” 331. 71 HcHaer 55. 72 See Bundy, “The Pseudo-Ephremian Commentary on Third Corinthians,” 62.

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in the Acts of Thomas, in order to trace the use of the earlier language and images in this early Christian novel. The Spirit is presented as a feminine figure in several prayers within the Acts of Thomas, the latest of the five apocryphal acts of apostles produced in the second and third centuries of the Common Era. 73 Several of these prayers are epicleses, calling on the Spirit to be present with the community in ritual action. Although the work was most likely written in Syriac,74 the extant Greek of the Acts of Thomas is, in many ways, superior to the extant Syriac, which has undergone revision in order to bring it in line with an understanding of orthodoxy that was gaining momentum in the fourth century and later. Indeed, precisely in the areas of most interest to this essay, the Syriac Acts of Thomas has been made to conform with western sensibilities regarding the Spirit; some of the native flavor of early Semitic Christianity has been lost. It is to the Greek Acts of Thomas that we will give most of our attention, treating corresponding passages in the Syriac when necessary. Within the Acts of Thomas are two hymnic compositions that probably originated independently of the rest of the work,75 and both speak in dif73 The Acts of Thomas is the most developed of these early Christian novels and usually considered to be later than, and perhaps dependent upon, the Acts of Paul, Peter, John, and Andrew. External witnesses to the Acts of Thomas appear relatively late when compared with witnesses to the other apocryphal acts of apostles; Epiphanius is the first to mention the Acts of Thomas by name, while some of the others were known in the late second and early third centuries. The work is usually dated to the early third century; see, among others, the first edition of the commentary by A. F. J. Klijn, The Acts of Thomas: Introduction-Text-Commentary (NovTSup 5; Leiden: Brill, 1962), 26 (see also p. 15 in the second edition, dated 2003; the introductory material in the second edition of Klijn is less helpful than that in the first edition); Han J. W. Drijvers, “The Acts of Thomas,” in New Testament Apocrypha (ed. W. Schneemelcher; 2 vols.; Rev. ed.; ET ed. R. McL. Wilson; Cambridge: James Clark & Co.; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox, 1991– 1992), 2:323; Paul-Hubert Poirier and Yves Tissot, “Actes de Thomas,” in Écrits apocryphes chrétiens (ed. François Bovon and Pierre Geoltrain; Paris: Gallimard, 1997), 1323. But see my arguments that the work cannot be dated with confidence earlier than the middle of the third century: “Revisiting Preliminary Issues in the Acts of Thomas,” Apocrypha 17 (2006): 106–12. 74 The work survives in several languages, the most significant of which are Syriac and Greek. The oldest manuscript, the Sinai palimpsest, is in Syriac, but there are noticeable revisions in both Syriac and Greek witnesses to the work, leading to extensive debate about the original language. For a discussion of the debate and a convincing argument that the work was written in Syriac, although the extant Syriac is inferior to the extant Greek, see Harold W. Attridge, “The Original Language of the Acts of Thomas,” in Of Scribes and Scrolls: Studies on the Hebrew Bible, Intertestamental Judaism, and Christian Origins (ed. Harold W. Attridge, John J. Collins, and Thomas H. Tobin; College Theology Society Resources in Religion 5; Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1990), 241–50. 75 Because the Acts of Thomas is a composite of tales and prayers that originated independently, this claim could be made for much of the work. These two hymns are most

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ferent ways of a threefold “family.” The Hymn of the Bride, set within a tale of a wedding ceremony, speaks of the anticipated arrival of the bridegroom and the joys of knowing him; it closes with the declaration that the participants in the wedding banquet “have given praise and glory, with the Spirit that is living, to the Father ever truthful and the Mother ever wise” (Greek, chapter 7).76 The Hymn of the Pearl tells the story of the son of royal parents, who travels to Egypt to retrieve a pearl but who, in the process, forgets his identity and his purpose. Only when his parents send him a letter does he recall who he is and is able to complete his mission. As Paul-Hubert Poirier has pointed out, the hymn can be read on many levels, but the parents are usually understood as heavenly figures. Early Christian readers of the poem saw the king and queen as the Father and the Spirit; the son can be identified both as the First Adam and the Second Adam, Christ. 77 The brief Act 4 of the Acts of Thomas tells the story of the apostle’s encounter with a talking ass (a descendant of Balaam’s ass), who provides Thomas with a ride as the apostle journeys toward a city. Responding to the ass’s declaration that the apostle is the “twin of Christ,”78 the apostle offers a prayer that closes in the Greek with praise to Jesus, as well as to “your unseen Father, and your Holy Spirit and the Mother of all creation” (chapter 39). A redactor has cleansed the doxology in the Syriac so that it is offered to the good shepherd and “through you the father most high, who is unseen, and the Holy Spirit who hovers over all creatures.” Both Greek and Syriac versions of the prayer show signs of alteration, leading to confusion of the mother image. The presence of the conjunction in the Greek renders unclear the original identification of the Spirit as Mother of all creation; at first glance the doxology appears to be addressed to a fourfold entity. The doxology was probably originally addressed to Father and Mother, and the reference to Spirit added later, perhaps to clarify the identity of noticeably distinct, and there can be no doubt that the Hymn of the Pearl, in particular, had an independent origin. For a discussion of the Hymn of the Bride (chapters 6–7), see Michael LaFargue, Language and Gnosis: The Opening Scenes of the Acts of Thomas (Harvard Dissertations in Religion 18; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985). Paul-Hubert Poirier’s L’Hymne de la Perle des Actes de Thomas: Introduction, Text-Traduction, Commentaire (Homo Religiosus 8; Louvain-la-Neuve: Poirier, 1981) is certainly the authority on the Hymn of the Pearl (chapters 108–113 of the Acts of Thomas). 76 In the Syriac, the reference to the Mother has been removed; the participants in the banquet have given glory to the Father and to the Son, and have offered “praise to the Spirit, his Wisdom.” 77 See the discussion in Brock, “The Holy Spirit as Feminine in Early Syriac Literature,” 79. 78 The Acts of Thomas presents Thomas as the twin of Jesus, one who so resembles Jesus that the two can be mistaken for one another, and one whose life and ministry often parallel those of Jesus.

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the Mother. The neuter SQHX PDinterferes with the balance between masculine and feminine in the passage while the stray NDL actually obscures the identification of the Mother and the Spirit. The Syriac of this passage lacks the conjunction, thus clarifying the identification of the Spirit as the one last described, but the language of “mother” is noticeably absent. Instead, the Spirit is one who “hovers over all creatures.” Although explicit mother language is lacking, this image clarifies that a feminine figure is indicated. Alluding to the Genesis creation story, the language of hovering (rah"h"eph) recalls the behavior of a mother bird over her nest. The term “mother” has been excised from the Syriac but the idea that the Spirit functions as a mother is unmistakable. The prayer seems to have been altered in both Greek and Syriac, yet the association of the Spirit with a mother figure can still be seen. All of the remaining prayers in the Acts of Thomas that use mother language are found in liturgical settings. In each, the Syriac has been altered, apparently to remove any language that could be considered objectionable, including reference to the Spirit as Mother. The Greek of these prayers is clearly more primitive and will be the focus of discussion. The epicletic language of the prayers and the declaration that the one invoked is “hidden,” together with similarities in the language used, including the appellation “Mother,” all suggest that a common figure is adjured in these prayers. When asked by the general Siphor (a figure who appears in and unites the two originally disjointed halves of the work) to administer “the seal,” the apostle complies and a ritual involving baptism, anointing with oil, and Eucharist is described.79 Over each element used in the initiatory ritual, a prayer is spoken, and it is in the prayer offered to the “bread of life” (chapter 133) that mention is made of “the Mother.” The Eucharistic bread is directly addressed and is said to bring incorruptibility, remission of sins, and immortality. Still addressing the bread, the apostle declares, “We pronounce over you the name of the Mother,80 of an ineffable mystery, and of hidden authorities and powers. We pronounce over you your name, Jesus.” 79

The order here is unusual among representative texts from the region. Usually, an anointing precedes baptism, and some texts indicate that there were two pre-baptismal anointings, the first of the head only and the second usually understood to cover the entire body. Eventually, a post-baptismal anointing developed as well. The anointing is always associated with the presence of the Spirit and was long a more significant element in the initiation ritual than was baptism. Indeed, it appears that an anointing with oil was initially the primary ritual that constituted Christian initiation in this region. See my “Initiation by Anointing in Early Syriac-Speaking Christianity,” Studia Liturgica 31 (2001): 150–70, in which I suggest that, at an early date in northern Mesopotamia, anointing (without the presence of water baptism), followed by Eucharist, sufficed for initiation. 80 In the Syriac, it is the name of the father that is pronounced and the prayer is a standard triadic doxology.

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Although later Eucharistic prayers contain an address to “Father” to send the Spirit, we see here a direct appeal to the Mother,81 who seems to be equated with hidden realities. 82 At the same time, the prayer addresses Jesus with the same language that was used of the Mother: “the name” (of Jesus, of the Mother) is spoken over the bread.83 Indeed, the name of Jesus seems to be precisely that of the Mother. Although the Mother here is never explicitly identified as the Spirit, similar language elsewhere suggests that this is precisely how the mention of mother is to be understood. It is in two prayers in initiatory settings in the Acts of Thomas that the identification of the Spirit as Mother is expressed in exceptionally colorful language: P RAYER IN ACTS OF THOMAS 27 Come, holy name of the Anointed, which is above every name; Come, power of the Most High and perfect compassion; Come, highest charism; Come, compassionate mother; Come, fellowship of the male; Come, revealer of hidden mysteries; Come, mother of the seven houses, so that your rest might be in the eighth house; Come, one who is older than the five members – mind, conception, thought, reflection, reason – commune with these youths; Come, holy spirit and cleanse their kidneys and heart, and seal them in the name of the Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit.

PRAYER IN ACTS OF THOMAS 50 Come, perfect compassion; Come, fellowship of the male; Come, one who understands the mysteries of the chosen one; Come, one who communes in all the contests of the noble athlete; Come, rest which reveals the great things of every greatness; Come, revealer of secrets and make visible what is hidden; Holy dove which bears twin nestlings; Come, hidden mother; Come, the one visible in her actions, and the one who gives joy and rest to those who cling to her; Come and join us in this eucharist which we make in your name, and in the love in which we are united at your calling.

The epicleses in chapters 27 and 50 of the Acts of Thomas are strikingly similar to one another. Both contain appeals to the invoked figure to 81 See Brock’s study of eastern eucharistic liturgies, in which he concludes that “requests to ‘send the Holy Spirit’ are a comparatively late introduction in consecratory epikleses,” while use of the verb “come” is of great antiquity. Brock, “The Epiklesis in the Antiochene Baptismal Ordines,” in Symposium Syriacum 1972 (OrChrAn 197; Rome: Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1974), 183–218. 82 This is the case also in the epicleses in chapters 27 and 50, treated below. 83 The confusion between (or identification of) the Spirit and Jesus is also evident in the prayer in chapter 27 of the Acts of Thomas, in which the “holy name of Christ” is invoked, only to give way to a series of adjurations to a feminine figure, culminating in direct appeal to the Holy Spirit. In this prayer in chapter 27, the Spirit is also directly addressed as “mother.”

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“come,” both repeatedly use feminine participles to describe this figure’s activity, and both include a direct appeal to a “mother.”84 The prayer in chapter 27 closes by addressing this figure as the “Holy Spirit.” Since the prayer in chapter 27 closes with an explicit appeal to the Spirit, there can be no doubt with whom the “compassionate mother” in the prayer is identified. Although the prayer in chapter 50 lacks mention of the Spirit, its use of images and terms similar to those in chapter 27 and the closing appeal to the addressee to “come and share with us in this Eucharist” leave little doubt that the Spirit is intended. Both prayers contain other language that points to God’s spirit as well. Precisely in the language used to describe the figure addressed, as well as in the rituals within which the prayers are spoken, the epicleses build upon elements of Hebrew tradition and earlier Christian traditions of northern Mesopotamia. These earlier materials, already examined, are often widely divergent in theology and in origin, but the traditions are drawn together in the prayers of this early novel, in which the images find full explication. The Spirit in the epicleses is one who communicates mysteries, offers compassion, and brings joy; she is a mother dove and explicitly addressed as “Mother” – all set in the context of initiatory rituals. In all of these ways, the traditions of earliest Christianity in the region are gathered together and articulated in coherent fashion. Several lines within these epicletic prayers identify the feminine addressee as “Mother.” In chapter 27, the figure is invoked by the phrase, “Come, compassionate Mother,” while the prayer in chapter 50 (in the Greek) includes the appeal, “Come, hidden Mother.” In addition, the prayer in chapter 27 includes the line “Mother of the seven houses,” while the familiar image of a dove appears in the epiclesis in chapter 50. Chapter 27, in both Greek and Syriac, contains an appeal to the “Mother of seven houses.” The Mother, who provides rest (D QD SDXVLM) and is even called “respite” (KVX[LD) in the prayer in chapter 50, finds her own rest in the eighth house, according to the epiclesis in chapter 27. The mention of seven houses brings to mind the seven pillars of the house built by Wisdom in Prov 9:1.85 Wisdom also looks for a resting place in Sir 24:4–8, although her abode is earthly, while the Mother of chapter 27 apparently finds rest even beyond the perfection of the seventh heaven. The idea of seven heavens can be found in several apocalyptic texts;86 in the Apocalypse of Abraham there are seven heavens, beyond which is an eighth lev-

84

The Syriac of the prayer in chapter 50 lacks explicit mother language. Interestingly, Philo refers to Wisdom as “Mother” (Alleg. Interp. 2.49). 86 Including 2 Enoch, the Testament of Levi, the Ascension of Isaiah, and the Apocalypse of Paul. 85

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el, probably representing a “highest heaven.”87 The resemblance between these two feminine divine entities, the Mother in the Acts of Thomas and the figure of Wisdom in Hebrew wisdom literature, is striking.88 Just as the Odes of Solomon spoke of the Spirit in language reminiscent of Wisdom, so also here in an epiclesis in the Acts of Thomas is there an allusion to Wisdom. In Gnostic Christian literature also, it is not unusual to find an identification between the figure of Wisdom and the Spirit.89 Some have looked for the meaning of the seven houses in descriptions of Gnostic thought, and suggest that the reference is to the concept of heavenly spheres filled with hostile rulers.90 Indeed, both Clement of Alexandria and Epiphanius speak of Gnostic groups that conceive of an “eighth heaven.”91 Epiphanius even knows of the idea that a “shining Mother” dwells at the top of the eighth heaven,92 while Irenaeus speaks of the Ophites who conceived of a mother (who is also called Spirit) who resides in an “eighth place” beyond the initial seven heavenly realms.93 Yet the idea of seven heavens, with a distant eighth heaven that forms the dwelling place of God, is not limited to Christian Gnostic thought; in fact, it was not uncommon among both Christians and non-Christians. The concept appears also in Jewish texts, but apparently finds its origin in Babylonian thought. It is not surprising to find Babylonian traditions, with an interest in the seven planets and speculation on numbers, influencing the Christianity of northern Mesopotamia. While the ancient heresiologists claimed that the idea of seven heavens was related to cosmic speculation on the seven planets, it may also stem from Babylonian magical traditions.94 Echoes of language associated with wisdom can be found elsewhere in the epicleses also. The knowledge embodied by the personified Wisdom in 87 Adela Yarbro Collins, “Numerical Symbolism in Jewish and Early Christian Apocalyptic Literature,” ANRW II.21.2 (1984): 1265. 88 See Drijvers, “The Acts of Thomas,” 2:334. 89 Antonio Orbe, La Teologia del Espiritu Santo: Estudios Valentinianos Vol. IV (Analecta Gregoriana 158; Rome: Libreria Editrice dell’Università Gregoriana, 1966), chaps. 6, 8, 11, 13, and especially Excursus VIII. 90 While the Acts of Thomas shares some motifs with more developed Gnostic thought, I am unconvinced that it can, in any strict sense, be identified as Gnostic. That claim for the work as a whole applies to these prayers as well. 91 Clement, Strom. 7.57.1; Epiphanius, Pan. 25.2,2 (on the Nicolaitans) and Pan. 40.2,3 (on the Archontics). 92 Pan. 40.2,3 93 Irenaeus, Haer. 1.30.1–4. 94 This is the conclusion of Yarbro Collins in her “The Seven Heavens in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses” (in Death, Ecstasy, and Other Worldly Journeys [ed. John J. Collins and Michael Fishbane; Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1995]), 59–93.

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the Hebrew wisdom literature is something attributed to the Spirit in the prayer in chapter 27 of the Acts of Thomas. In a list of five “members,” each indicating an intellectual property, the Spirit is associated with attributes that are in the purview of Wisdom’s expertise. While Wisdom is prior to creation in Prov 8 and Sir 24, here the Spirit is “older” than the five members.95 We have already seen that several Christian texts with ties to northern Mesopotamia describe the activity of the Spirit through the imagery of a mother dove. Such language will become especially popular for many writers during the classical period of Syriac-speaking Christianity. The concept of the Spirit as a “dove” clearly develops the image of the spirit hovering over the waters in Genesis. The only instance in these epicleses of bird imagery for the Spirit occurs in a puzzling line in the epiclesis in chapter 50 of the Acts of Thomas, a line that has long frustrated commentators.96 This line is the only one lacking the anaphoral “come” that orders these epicletic prayers. I have suggested elsewhere97 that the designation of the “dove” may in fact have originally followed the appellation “Mother” in the epiclesis in chapter 50, but even if that was the case, the background and meaning of the phrase remain confusing. Earlier attempts to understand this figure of a dove include the association of the image with eastern mythology,98 and the explicit identification of the dove as one of the attributes of the Syrian Mother goddess.99 In a relatively sustained treatment of the Spirit epicleses in chapters 27 and 50 95 This list of five intellectual elements is found also in the Manichaean Kephalaia, and was once thought to be a Manichaean interpolation into the Acts of Thomas. See Wilhelm Bousset, “Manichäisches in den Thomasakten,” ZNW 18 (1917–1918): 1–39. This list of five noetic qualities is found in Kephalaia 85.1–2. Since the Manichaeans knew and valued the Thomas tradition, it is equally likely that the Manichaean list is dependent upon this one. For a discussion (with largely negative judgment) of possible Manichaean interpolations into the Acts of Thomas, see Paul-Hubert Poirier, “Les Actes de Thomas et le Manichéisme,” Apocrypha 9 (1998): 263–89. 96 Günther Bornkamm, “The Acts of Thomas,” in New Testament Apocrypha (ed. Wilhelm Schneemelcher [following Edgar Hennecke]; ET ed. R. McL. Wilson; 2 vols.; London: Lutterworth; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963–1965), 2:438–39: “Titles like ‘holy dove, thou who givest birth to twin boys’ cannot be explained with any confidence.” 97 See my Spirit Epicleses in the Acts of Thomas (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 27. 98 So Klijn, Acts of Thomas (1962), 245. 99 Bornkamm, Mythos und Legende in den apokryphen Thomas-Akten: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Gnosis und zur Vorgeschichte des Manichäismus (FRLANT 49; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1933), 91. Bornkamm argues that the epicleses were originally addressed to a mother goddess and the most likely candidate, he argues, is the Dea Syria. Brock comments (Holy Spirit in the Syrian Baptismal Tradition, 14) that the dove, because of its appearance in another cult in the region, did not develop as an image of the Spirit in Syriac authors to the same extent as in other Christian writers.

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of the Acts of Thomas, Heinz Kruse100 maintains that the dove originally represented a bride, only later becoming associated with the Spirit in Christian tradition. Kruse believes that the dove in Syriac-speaking Christianity, and especially in the epiclesis in question, symbolizes the Christian church as the daughter of the Holy Spirit and also the bride of Christ; indeed there are two “daughters” – Israel and the Gentiles. The nestlings in the prayer in chapter 50, then, are Israel and the Gentiles, the offspring of God’s Spirit who is represented by the figure of a dove. It seems to me, however, that the most promising explanation for the dove imagery is to be found in the Syriac-speaking Christian tradition itself, in which the dove, rather than being a daughter, is itself a beneficent mother. Within this tradition, as we have seen, the concept of the Spirit as a dove is found and developed. Just as the Spirit “hovers” (rah"h"eph) over the waters of creation in the Peshitta of Gen 1:2, it also descends in the form of a dove at Jesus’s baptism.101 The concept of the Spirit as a hovering bird102 becomes integral to reflections on the Spirit in this region. In liturgical texts, the Spirit’s presence is likened to a mother bird; she “hovers” over the waters of the font, as well as over the bread and wine at Eucharist.103 The verb for hovering used in the liturgical texts is the verb rah"h"eph from Genesis, used of the Spirit’s presence at creation. The language of the dove in chapter 50 in the Acts of Thomas also reminds one of the Spirit as a dove in Odes 24 and 28. The dove of Ode 28 also cares for nestlings, and the dove’s wings are likened to the wings of the Spirit. But not only does the idea of a mother dove caring for her nestlings antedate the appearance of this image in the epiclesis, the idea of twins is found earlier in the region as well. According to Ephrem,104 Bardais"a n claimed that the Holy Spirit, who is, as we have seen, likened to a Mother in Bardais"an’s thought, gave birth to twin daughters. The idea of twinning is especially developed in the Acts of Thomas, in which Jesus and Judas Thomas appear as twins. Building on John 20:24, in which the name of Thomas, which means “twin” in Aramaic, is explained to the Greek reader, several texts that are associated with the person of Thomas present the apostle as Jesus’s twin. The Coptic Gospel of Thomas declares that the work gives the teachings of Jesus as spoken to and written down by “Didymos Judas Thomas.” The Book of Thomas the Contender 100

“Zwei Geist-Epiklesen der syrischen Thomasakten,” OrChr 69 (1985): 33–53. On the origins of the image of a dove at Jesus’s baptism, see Leander E. Keck, “The Spirit and the Dove,” NTS 17 (1971): 41–67. 102 The dove is not the only hovering bird in this region. Apparently building on the image of the hovering eagle of Exod 32:11, Syriac-speaking Christians liked to speak of Jesus as an eagle. 103 See Brock, “The Holy Spirit as Feminine in Early Syriac Literature,” 82. 104 HcHaer. 55:3–4. 101

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also employs “twin” in naming the apostle, and Jesus declares that his “Brother Thomas” is his “twin and true companion.”105 Although the relationship between these texts, and the possibility that they represent a “Thomas community” is debated,106 the literature associated with the name of Thomas does reflect the notion, inherent in the name itself, that Thomas was the twin of Jesus. The idea is most clearly developed in the Acts of Thomas. The Acts of Thomas opens with a scene in which Jesus sells his slave, Thomas,107 to a king, perhaps reminiscent of the Philippians 2 Christ hymn, in which Jesus takes the form of a slave. The apostle addresses crowds with the same words that Jesus used, offers numerous allusions to the gospels in his teachings, and prays as Jesus did (“Let your will be done” in chapters 3 and 30).108 Even more striking, confusion between Jesus and Thomas occurs after Thomas attends the wedding of the king’s daughter. The apostle is asked to pray over the wedding couple in their bridal chamber. After complying, he and the other attendants leave, but the bride is later found talking to Jesus, in the likeness of the apostle. The groom initially believes it is indeed the apostle, but Jesus clarifies that they 105

See Thom. Cont. 138.8 and 138.4. For the idea that there is a literary development that flows through the works bearing the name of Thomas, see John D. Turner, The Book of Thomas the Contender from Codex II of the Cairo Gnostic Library from Nag Hammadi (CG II,7) (SBLDS 23; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1975), 234. Gregory Riley (Resurrection Reconsidered: Thomas and John in Controversy [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995]) builds on the idea that there is a common tradition between these writings and argues that the Gospel of John responds to claims from a Thomas community that produced the Thomas texts, itself antedating the Fourth Gospel. For a negative judgment on the issues raised, see Ismo Dunderberg, “John and Thomas in Conflict?” in The Nag Hammadi Library After Fifty Years (ed. John D. Turner and Anne McGuire; Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 44; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 361–80. Others have challenged the notion that there is a coherent community or even common tradition that underlies the Thomas literature; see Philip Sellew, “Thomas Christianity: Scholars in Quest of a Community,” in The Apocryphal Acts of Thomas (ed. Jan N. Bremmer; Studies on Early Christian Apocrypha 6; Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 11–35, and Paul-Hubert Poirier, “The Writings Ascribed to Thomas and the Thomas Tradition,” in The Nag Hammadi Library After Fifty Years (ed. John D. Turner and Anne McGuire; Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 44; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 295–307. 107 The Syriac manuscripts of the novel almost always call the apostle “Judas” while the name “Thomas” or “Judas Thomas” appears in the Greek. Both versions of the work often speak simply of “the apostle.” 108 For other examples of similarities between Jesus and Thomas in the Acts of Thomas, see Harold W. Attridge, “Intertextuality in the Acts of Thomas,” in The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles in Intertextual Perspectives (ed. Robert F. Stoops; Semeia 80; Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1997), 87–124, and Monika Pesthy, “Thomas, the Slave of the Lord,” in The Apocryphal Acts of Thomas (ed. Jan N. Bremmer; Studies on Early Christian Apocrypha 6; Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 65–73. 106

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are brothers. In addition, the talking ass of chapter 39 addresses the apostle as the “Twin of Christ,” while in chapter 57 a woman, after a tour a hell, announces that she saw “one who was like you” (the apostle) who delivered her out of the place of punishment. Finally, in the Martyrdom (chapter 160), Thomas must declare, “I am not Jesus, but a servant of Jesus. I am not Christ, but one who ministers before him.” In the Acts of Thomas, Jesus and the apostle are twins. It is, therefore, not surprising to have a prayer in which twins appear.109 The prayer addresses a feminine figure who is to be identified with the Spirit, and speaks of a dove caring for twins. She is called “Mother” and her twins, then, are the figures of Jesus and Thomas.110 We have already seen that “Father” and “Mother” are elsewhere paired in this work (chapters 7 and 133, as well as the royal parents of the Hymn of the Pearl). Based on this evidence, Drijvers concludes that there is a trinitarian concept of sorts in the Acts of Thomas, in which there is a Father and a Mother (the Spirit) who gives birth to the Son and to his twin brother.111 The feminine addressee of the epicleses is also a revealer figure. She reveals “hidden mysteries,” “secrets,” and “great things.” Despite the fact that Jesus is not mentioned by name in the epicleses, the hidden realities are associated with him; the prayer in chapter 27 opens with an appeal to the “holy name of the Anointed.” Although the prayer is clearly addressed to the Spirit, the Spirit and Jesus here seem to be equated. We have seen that, in the prayer in chapter 133 of the Acts of Thomas, the same language can be used of the Mother/Spirit as is used of Jesus. The same holds true in the epicleses, especially in calling on the “name of the Anointed.” The mention of anointing, especially in a narrative setting that involves a ritual anointing, draws attention to the oil, which is always associated with the Spirit in this region. To explain this apparent double address, Gabriele Winkler initially argued that the addressee of the prayer oscillates between the Messiah and the Spirit, but she later concludes that the opening line 109

The epicleses most likely had an independent existence prior to their insertion into the Acts of Thomas. It is possible that the imagery of a dove with twins had another meaning in the original context of this prayer. In its present form, however, the motif of the mother dove points to the Spirit, and the twins must be those who appear throughout the work, namely Jesus and Thomas. 110 Bornkamm, however, considers the suggestion that these twins are Thomas and Jesus to be “ganz unrichtig” (Mythos und Legende, 96). 111 Drijvers, “The Acts of Thomas,” 2:333–34. Although the idea of the Mother giving birth is not explicitly stated in the Acts of Thomas, Bardais"an apparently did hold this notion, as Ephrem indicates. The idea that these are twin sons of the Mother Spirit is followed also by Caroline Johnson, “Ritual Epicleses in the Greek Acts of Thomas,” in The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles: Harvard Divinity School Studies (ed. François Bovon, Ann Graham Brock, and Christopher R. Matthews; Religions of the World; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 203.

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indicates that the prayer is directed toward “the Spirit, the Mother, who reveals herself and is made present by calling down the Name of the Anointed.”112 Indeed, this addressee, explicitly identified as Spirit, is the one who reveals mysteries and is called the power of the Most High. The prayer’s language for the Spirit corresponds with the idea that calling on the “holy name” of one who is anointed with the Spirit is in itself appealing for the presence of the Spirit,113 and Winkler is correct that the Spirit is the power hidden in the name and that the name itself is a revelation of the one named. This assertion corresponds with the notion, found in Philo and elsewhere, that the name of God can be identified as an entity in its own right.114 Here, in the midst of an anointing ritual, to call on the name of one who is anointed in the Spirit is to reveal hidden mysteries; these mysteries include both the revelation of Jesus and the rituals described. As is indicated by the symbolism in the concluding narrative of chapter 27, in which “the Lord” appears as a youth carrying an exceedingly bright light, it is precisely in the ritual of the oil that the revelation of Jesus can be found.115 This language of the Spirit as a revealer, and in particular as one who reveals Jesus (or the Anointed) recalls the language in the Valentinian Gospel of Truth, in which the Son is hidden in the bosom of the Father, and the bosom is explicitly identified with the Spirit. We have seen that, in the Odes, the Spirit communicates the correct teachings; so also in the Gospel of Truth, the revelation of truth is offered through the Spirit, and in the Gospel of Philip, the Spirit, who is one who reveals hidden truths, is also present in the ritual bread and cup. This concept is made especially clear in the address to the figure in the epicleses as one who “make[s] manifest what is secret and render[s] visible what is hidden.” In the Valentinian school, as in the epicleses, the means to revelation is precisely the 112 Gabriele Winkler, “Further Observations in Connection with the Early Form of the Epiklesis,” in Le Sacrement de l’Initiation Origines et Prospective: Patrimoine Syriaque Actes du colloque III (Antelias, Lebanon: Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Pastorales, 1996), 79. 113 In the same way, the fact that the epiclesis in chapter 50 is embedded in a prayer to Jesus, who is asked to “come and partake with us” and whose “holy name” is invoked, does not negate the idea that the Spirit is addressed in the epiclesis proper. Instead, as in the prayer in chapter 27, calling upon the holy name of Jesus makes present the Spirit who is invoked in the epiclesis and asked to share in the Eucharist. 114 See the discussion of the “Name” in Jarl E. Fossum, The Name of God and the Angel of the Lord: Samaritan and Jewish Concepts of Intermediation and the Origin of Gnosticism (WUNT 36; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1985), especially the section on “The Hypostasized Name.” 115 The oil is often associated with light and also with fire. See the quotations from the Gospel of Philip above and the two initiation accounts in the Syriac History of John, Son of Zebedee (in William Wright, Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles [2 vols.; London and Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate, 1871; Repr. in one vol. Amsterdam: Philo, 1968]).

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presence of the Spirit. The Acts of Thomas has taken up the language and concepts of earlier materials from the region and placed them into a direct address to the Spirit, who is present in the ritual action and who makes present the Anointed one, Jesus, in whose body and blood the new initiates will share.116 The varied elements of the Hebrew and Christian traditions are, therefore, brought together in these prayers in the Acts of Thomas, a fully developed fictional account of the ministry of an apostle of Jesus preaching in a new land. The epicleses in chapters 27 and 50 of the Acts of Thomas demonstrate how earlier traditions of the region were gathered and developed in this early Christian novel. Following is a summary of the main influences that we have noted. The epicleses address the Spirit as a revealer figure and one whose existence precedes several named noetic qualities, just as the Spirit in the Odes of Solomon is able to communicate correct teachings. Both the Odes and the epiclesis in chapter 27 of the Acts of Thomas use language that hints at a likeness between the Spirit and the personified Wisdom of the Hebrew tradition. The Spirit is one who circumcises the heart in Odes of Solomon 11, a concept that is associated with initiatory anointing later in the Syriac tradition; in an intermediate position is the epiclesis in chapter 27, prayed over the oil of anointing, in which the Spirit is asked to be present in the ritual of anointing. Although the anointing is not explicitly associated with circumcision in the epicleses, it is central to becoming Christian in this work and is linked with the Spirit’s presence. The most notable similarity between the portraits of the Spirit in the Odes of Solomon and in the Acts of Thomas is the mention in both of the Spirit as a dove, developing the image of God’s spirit hovering over the waters in Gen 1:2. In both the Odes and the epiclesis in chapter 50, the Spirit is understood as a mother bird, caring for – or giving birth to – her nestlings. In the Acts of Thomas, these nestlings are twins, recalling the developed presentation in this work of Thomas as the twin of Christ. In both the image of the Spirit as a mother dove and in the presentation of a virgin (perhaps to be identified with the Spirit) who bears “the Son,” the concept of the Spirit as Mother becomes evident, a claim that is explicitly made in both epicleses in the Acts of Thomas. Gnostic Christian literature with ties to Syriac-speaking Christianity also has similarities with the epicleses in the presentation of the Spirit. Again, the Spirit is a revealer figure in both the Gnostic texts and the epicleses; in particular, she is, in the Gospel of Truth, that which allows the 116

Interestingly, in the description of the rite in chapter 50, only the bread is distributed to the new initiates, although the prayer to Jesus has indicated that they are sharing a Eucharist of the “sacred body and blood.”

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Son to be revealed. The epiclesis in chapter 27 appeals to the “holy name of the Anointed,” while the prayer in chapter 50 immediately follows a prayer to Jesus that also calls upon his “holy name.” In the epicleses, the Spirit can be revealed precisely by calling on the name of Jesus, and the Spirit is the one who “understands the mysteries of the chosen one” (chapter 50) and reveals that which is hidden. Reflection on the “mysteries,” which later comes to be a technical term for sacramental rituals in Syriac-speaking Christianity, is an important part of another Gnostic Christian work that reflects knowledge of Thomas traditions. The Gospel of Philip associates the Spirit with anointing, but also speaks of the Spirit’s presence in the ritual bread and cup. The epicleses are set in liturgical contexts of an anointing, clearly the most significant initiation ritual in the Acts of Thomas, and Eucharist. Again, the Spirit reveals hidden truths in the Gospel of Philip, as in the epicleses, although identifying her as “mother” is explicitly denied. Explicit identification of a mother figure, probably equated with the Spirit, is, however, found in the best known Christian individual hailing from the region of northern Mesopotamia in the first centuries of Christianity: Bardais"a n. The Christian court philosopher in late second-century Edessa, although known primarily from Ephrem’s unsympathetic presentation of him, speaks of the Spirit bearing two daughters in an apparent reference to the hovering spirit of God in the Genesis creation story. Ephrem’s denial that Gen 1:2 refers to the Holy Spirit, and his horror with Bardais"a n’s Father/Mother language, appears only to confirm Bardais"an’s identification of the Spirit with the hovering figure in Genesis. We have already noted that the epicleses, which clearly call the Spirit Mother, also contain in chapter 50 a reference to the dove giving birth to twins. It is impossible to claim a direct literary relationship between the Acts of Thomas – or the epicleses in particular – and the earlier writings from the region. It is, however, clear that the images and understanding of the feminine Spirit found in these works were present in the region and influenced the development of the language used in prayers to the Spirit found in the Acts of Thomas. The idea of the Spirit as a mother dove, the association of the Spirit with Wisdom, and the explicit use of “Mother” language for Spirit are all here combined in colorful appeals to the Spirit to be present with the community in initiatory rituals. This creative melding of traditions in the Acts of Thomas continues in the writings of later authors from the region, although not all of the early traditions are embraced fully.

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D. Syrian Authors from the Classical Period Although the fourth-century Ephrem is aware of and reveres the traditions about Thomas known from the Acts of Thomas,117 he refrains from using mother language of the Spirit. Uncomfortable with Bardais"an’s language of a mother figure, Ephrem most likely wanted to avoid any associations with that thought world. As a result, Ephrem rejects identification of the spirit of Gen 1:2 with a mother dove. He knows the tradition, as his Commentary on Genesis makes clear, that others refer to the hovering ruh"a as the Holy Spirit118 but says that those who are “faithful” look elsewhere for references to God’s spirit. Ephrem explicitly argues against views of the Marcionites and Bardesanites that suggest a Father-Mother-Son triad, fearing that it stems from local polytheistic systems. This does not, however, prevent him from using feminine imagery for God in striking ways. Ephrem regularly identifies the Spirit as feminine, although he does not dwell on or develop this concept.119 He is not afraid to use nursing imagery to speak of the way in which Christ gives life: “He is the living breast; from his life the dead have sucked living breath – and come to life.”120 Even the image of God as a bird comes into play in Ephrem’s many references to God’s “wings,” despite his rejection of the idea that the Spirit “hovers” in Genesis. Most salient is Ephrem’s use of the image of the womb of God. Syriacspeaking Christianity developed the idea of three “wombs” in Jesus’s life: the womb of Mary, from which he was born, the womb of the Jordan in which he was baptized (the font then becomes a “womb” for the newly baptized), and the womb of Sheol, into which Jesus descended. But Ephrem, building on language of birthing known from the Odes of Solomon, envisions the womb of God: “If anyone seeks Your [i.e., the infant Jesus’s] hidden nature behold it is in heaven in the great womb of Divini-

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Carmina Nisibena 42.1; Hymni dispersi 5, 6, and 7; in 7.2, he reflects awareness of the story in Act 2 of the Acts of Thomas in which Thomas built a heavenly building: “Who was seen formerly building earthly (buildings) which he built on high, and while he was down (on earth) all this time, he even built houses in heaven? Was it not Thomas, apostle of the son?” 118 Interesting, Ephrem does seem to see the Spirit active in creation as the “breath of the Lord’s mouth,” but this is expressed in the context of quarrels against Jewish antitrinitarian arguments. See Tryggve Kronholm, Motifs from Genesis 1–11 in the Genuine Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian: with Particular Reference to the Influence of Jewish Exegetical Tradition (Lund, Sweden: CWK Gleerup, 1978), 44. 119 See the discussion in Harvey, “Feminine Imagery for the Divine,” 135. 120 HNat. 4.150.

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ty.”121 Of all the wombs in the world, only one, that of the “Great One,” truly sufficed.122 Although Ephrem rejects use of mother language for the Spirit, his younger contemporary Aphrahat has no such hesitations. Aphrahat addresses the “sons and daughters of the covenant” who had renounced marriage in order to lead ascetic lives with a creative exegesis of the Adam and Eve story. In a discussion of Gen 2:24 and the need for a man to leave his father and mother in order to marry, Aphrahat declares, “The meaning is this. As long as a man has not taken a wife, he loves and reveres God his father and the Holy Spirit his mother, and he has no other love.”123 Aphrahat is also familiar with and comfortable using the language of the Spirit “hovering” like a mother bird: “From baptism we receive the Spirit of Christ, and in the same hour that the priests invoke the Spirit, she opens the heavens and descends, and hovers over the waters, and those who are baptized put her on.”124 The Spirit’s hovering over the waters also allows her presence to be bestowed, for “from baptism we receive the Spirit of Christ.”125 Just as Aphrahat commented on Gen 2:24, so also the Macarian homilies, which come from approximately the same time and region, also speak of the Spirit as Mother: It is right and fitting, my children, for you to have left behind all that is temporal and to have set off for God: instead of an earthly father, you are seeking the heavenly Father, and instead of a mother who is subject to decay, you have as Mother the excellent Spirit of God, and the heavenly Jerusalem.126

The image of a hovering divine spirit at creation that we have seen before, alluding as it does to the activity of a mother bird over her nest, gave rise to further reflection by these Syrian authors, who commonly employ the verb rah"h"eph (“hover,” “brood”) to describe the activity of the Holy Spirit, combining the action of a bird with the designation of the Spirit as “Mother.” The seventh-century Martyrius speaks of the “all-holy Spirit, who, like a mother, hovers over us as she gives sanctification,”127 while the medieval Moshe bar Kepha says that the Holy Spirit “hovered over John the Baptist and brought him up like a compassionate mother.” Liturgical texts speak of 121 HNat. 13.7. Translation of Kathleen McVey, Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns (CWS; New York: Paulist, 1989), 138. 122 HNat. 21.7–8 and 27.15. 123 Dem. 18.10. 124 Dem. 6.14. 125 Dem. 6.14. 126 Homily 54.4.5. Translation from Brock, “‘Come, Compassionate Mother . . .,’” 251. Although the homilies were written in Greek and were associated with the name of Macarius, the author is in fact anonymous. 127 Book of Perfection I.3.13.

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the Spirit “hovering” both over the waters of the baptismal font and over the bread and wine of the Eucharist. Just as the biblical texts began to construe ruh"a as grammatically masculine, so also Syriac-speaking authors gradually shifted away from use of feminine adjectives and images for the Spirit. Treatment of ruh"a as masculine begins in the early fifth century and becomes more common over time, but even this does not completely eliminate identifying the Spirit as Mother. The eighth-century John the Elder, while treating the Spirit grammatically as masculine, can still declare that the Spirit “is called by the feminine term ‘Mother.’”128

E. Conclusion The idea of God’s spirit – who hovers as a bird over the waters of creation, who overshadows the baptismal water and the Eucharistic bread – as “Mother” was a concept that enlivened Christian reflection in northern Mesopotamia for several centuries of early Christianity. Directly or indirectly present in earlier writings, an address to the Mother Spirit is most clearly visible in the images and appellations of epicletic prayers in the Act of Thomas. Rejected by such a prominent writer as Ephrem, the idea continued to be found among some Syriac writers for centuries. Ephrem himself regularly uses feminine imagery for the Spirit, although references to the grammatically feminine Spirit will gradually be replaced over the centuries by a grammatically masculine Spirit. Other writers of the time, including Aphrahat, do not shy away from the mother language. Aphrahat and others build on the images used in the Odes of Solomon or the Acts of Thomas, which themselves build on the biblical language used of God’s spirit. It is in these early, expressive and colorful writings stemming from the region that the most intriguing language for the Spirit can be found.

Works Cited Attridge, Harold W. “Intertextuality in the Acts of Thomas.” Pages 87–124 in The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles in Intertextual Perspectives. Edited by Robert F. Stoops. Semeia 80. Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1997. –. “The Original Language of the Acts of Thomas.” Pages 241–50 in Of Scribes and Scrolls: Studies on the Hebrew Bible, Intertestamental Judaism, and Christian Origins. Edited by Harold W. Attridge, John J. Collins, and Thomas H. Tobin. College

128

Quoted in Brock, “‘Come, Compassionate Mother . . .,’” 255.

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Theology Society Resources in Religion 5. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1990. Beck, Edmund, ed. Des heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Hymnen contra Haereses. 2 vols. Corpus scriptorum christianorum orientalium 169, 170. Corpus scriptorum christianorum orientalium, Scriptores Syri 76, 77. Louvain: Durbecq, 1957. Bornkamm, Günther, “The Acts of Thomas.” Pages 2:425–531 in New Testament Apocrypha. Edited by Wilhelm Schneemelcher (following Edgar Hennecke). English translation edited by R. McL. Wilson. 2 vols. London: Lutterworth; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963–1965. –. Mythos und Legende in den apokryphen Thomas-Akten: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Gnosis und zur Vorgeschichte des Manichäismus. Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments 49. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1933. Bousset, Wilhelm. “Manichäisches in den Thomasakten.” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche 18 (1917–1918): 1–39. Brock, “‘Come, Compassionate Mother . . . , Come Holy Spirit’: A Forgotten Aspect of Early Eastern Christian Imagery.” Reprinted as essay VI (pages 249–57) in Fire From Heaven: Studies in Syriac Theology and Liturgy. Aldershot, England; Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2006. –. “The Epiklesis in the Antiochene Baptismal Ordines.” Pages 183–218 in Symposium Syriacum 1972. Orientalia christiana analecta 197. Rome: Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1974. –. “Eusebius and Syriac Christianity.” Pages 212–34 in Eusebius, Christianity, and Judaism. Edited by Harold W. Attridge and Gohei Hata. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992. –. “The Holy Spirit as Feminine in Early Syriac Literature.” Pages 73–87 in After Eve. Edited by Janet Martin Soskice. Women and Religion Series. London: Marshall Pickering, 1990. –. The Holy Spirit in the Syrian Baptismal Tradition. The Syrian Churches Series 9. Poona: Anita Printers, 1979. –. “The Lost Old Syriac at Luke 1:35 and the Earliest Syriac Terms for the Incarnation.” Pages 117–31 in Gospel Traditions in the Second Century. Edited by William L. Petersen. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989. –. “Passover, Annunciation and Epiclesis: Some Remarks on the Term aggen in the Syriac Versions of Lk. 1:35.” Novum Testamentum 24 (1982): 222–33. –. “The Ruah" Elohim of Gen 1,2 and its Reception History in the Syriac Tradition.” Reprinted as essay XIV (pages 327–49) in Fire From Heaven: Studies in Syriac Theology and Liturgy. Aldershot, England; Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2006. Bundy, D. “The Pseudo-Ephremian Commentary on Third Corinthians: A Study in Exegesis and Anti-Bardaisanite Polemic.” Pages 51–63 in After Bardaisan: Studies on Continuity and Change in Syriac Christianity iin Honour of Professor Han J. W. Drijvers. Edited by G. J. Reinink and A. C. Klugkist. Orientalia Lovaniensa Analecta 89. Leuven: Peeters, 1999. Charlesworth, James H., ed. and trans. The Odes of Solomon. Society of Biblical Literature Texts and Translations 13. Society of Biblical Literature Pseudepigrapha Series 7. Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1977. Drijvers, Han J. W. “The Acts of Thomas.” Pages 2:322–411 in New Testament Apocrypha. Edited by W. Schneemelcher. 2 vols. Rev. ed. English translation edited by R. McL. Wilson. Cambridge: James Clark & Co.; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox, 1991–1992.

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–. Bardais"an of Edessa. Assen: van Gorcum, 1966. –, ed. and trans. The Book of the Laws of the Countries: Dialogue on Fate of Bardais"an of Edessa. Assen: van Gorcum, 1965. –. “The 19th Ode of Solomon: Its Interpretation and Place in Syrian Christianity.” Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 31 (1980): 337–55. Reprinted in East of Antioch: Studies in Early Syriac Christianity. London: Variorum Reprints, 1984. Dunderberg, Ismo. “John and Thomas in Conflict?” Pages 361–80 in The Nag Hammadi Library After Fifty Years. Edited by John D. Turner and Anne McGuire. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 44. Leiden: Brill, 1997. Fossum, Jarl E. The Name of God and the Angel of the Lord: Samaritan and Jewish Concepts of Intermediation and the Origin of Gnosticism. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 36. Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1985. Harris, J. Rendel, and Alphonse Mingana, eds. and trans. The Odes and Psalms of Solomon. Manchester: University Press, 1920. Harvey, Susan Ashbrook. “Feminine Imagery for the Divine: The Holy Spirit, the Odes of Solomon, and Early Syriac Tradition.” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 37 (1993): 111–39. Johnson, Caroline. “Ritual Epicleses in the Greek Acts of Thomas.” Pages 171–204 in The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles: Harvard Divinity School Studies. Edited by François Bovon, Ann Graham Brock, and Christopher R. Matthews. Religions of the World. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999. Keck, Leander E. “The Spirit and the Dove.” New Testament Studies 17 (1971): 41–67. Klijn, A. F. J. The Acts of Thomas: Introduction-Text-Commentary. Supplements to Novum Testamentum 5. Leiden: Brill, 1962. –. The Acts of Thomas: Introduction, Text, and Commentary. 2d rev. ed. Supplements to Novum Testamentum 108. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Kronholm, Tryggve. Motifs from Genesis 1–11 in the Genuine Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian: with Particular Reference to the Influence of Jewish Exegetical Tradition. Lund, Sweden: CWK Gleerup, 1978. Kruse, Heinz Kruse. “Zwei Geist-Epiklesen der syrischen Thomasakten.” Oriens christianus 69 (1985): 33–53. LaFargue, Michael. Language and Gnosis: The Opening Scenes of the Acts of Thomas. Harvard Dissertations in Religion 18. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985. Lattke, Michael. The Odes of Solomon. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009. Layton, Bentley. The Gnostic Scriptures. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1987. Lyon, Jeffrey Paul. Syriac Gospel Translations: A Comparison of The Language and Translation Method Used In The Old Syriac, The Diatessaron, and The Peshitto. Corpus scriptorum christianorum orientalium 548. Corpus scriptorum christianorum orientalium, subsidia 88. Louvain: Peeters, 1994. Markschies, Christoph. Valentinus Gnosticus?: Untersuchungen zur valentinianischen Gnosis mit einem Kommentar zu den Fragmenten Valentins. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 65. Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1992. McVey, Kathleen, ed. and trans. Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns. Classics of Western Spirituality. New York: Paulist, 1989. Mitchell, C. W. S. Ephraim’s Prose Refutations of Mani, Marcion, and Bardaisan. Completed by A. A. Bevan and F. C. Burkitt. 2 vols. London: Williams and Norgate, 1912–1921. Murray, Robert. Symbols of Church and Kingdom: A Study in Early Syriac Tradition. Cambridge: University Press, 1975. Rev. ed. Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias Press, 2004.

The Spirit as Mother in Early Syriac-Speaking Christianity

461

Myers, Susan E. “Initiation by Anointing in Early Syriac-Speaking Christianity.” Studia Liturgica 31 (2001): 150–70. –. “Revisiting Preliminary Issues in the Acts of Thomas.” Apocrypha 17 (2006): 95–112. –. Spirit Epicleses in the Acts of Thomas. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010. Orbe, Antonio. La Teologia del Espiritu Santo: Estudios Valentinianos Vol. IV. Analecta Gregoriana 158. Rome: Libreria Editrice dell’Università Gregoriana, 1966. Pesthy, Monika. “Thomas, the Slave of the Lord.” Pages 65–73 in The Apocryphal Acts of Thomas. Edited by Jan N. Bremmer. Studies on Early Christian Apocrypha 6. Leuven: Peeters, 2001. Petersen, William E. Tatian’s Diatessaron: Its Creation, Dissemination, Significance, and History in Scholarship. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 25. Leiden: Brill, 1994. Poirier, Paul-Hubert. “Les Actes de Thomas et le Manichéisme.” Apocrypha 9 (1998): 263–89. –. L’Hymne de la Perle des Actes de Thomas: Introduction, Text-Traduction, Commentaire. Homo Religiosus 8. Louvain-la-Neuve: Poirier, 1981. –. “The Writings Ascribed to Thomas and the Thomas Tradition.” Pages 295–307 in The Nag Hammadi Library After Fifty Years. Edited by John D. Turner and Anne McGuire. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 44. Leiden: Brill, 1997. Poirier, Paul-Hubert and Yves Tissot. “Actes de Thomas.” Pages 1321–1470 in Écrits apocryphes chrétiens. Edited by François Bovon and Pierre Geoltrain. Paris: Gallimard, 1997. Riley, Gregory. Resurrection Reconsidered: Thomas and John in Controversy. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995. Segal, Judah B. Edessa, “The Blessed City.” Oxford: Clarendon, 1970. –. “When did Christianity come to Edessa?” Pages 179–91 in Middle East Studies and Libraries: A Felicitation Volume for Professor J. D. Pearson. Edited by Barry Bloomfield. London: Mansell, 1980. Sellew, Philip. “Thomas Christianity: Scholars in Quest of a Community.” Pages 11–35 in The Apocryphal Acts of Thomas. Edited by Jan N. Bremmer. Studies on Early Christian Apocrypha 6. Leuven: Peeters, 2001. Turner, John D. The Book of Thomas the Contender from Codex II of the Cairo Gnostic Library from Nag Hammadi (CG II,7). Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 23. Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1975. Turner, Martha. The Gospel according to Philip: The Sources and Coherence of an Early Christian Collection. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies. Leiden: Brill, 1996. Vattioni, Francesco. Le iscrizioni di H"atra. Istituto Orientale di Napoli Annali 41, Supp. 28. Naples, 1981. Vollenweider, Samuel. Neuplatonische und christliche Theologie bei Synesios von Kyrene. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985. Williams, Frank, trans. The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis. 2 vols. Nag Hammadi Studies 35. Leiden: Brill, 1987–1994. Winkler, Gabriele. “Further Observations in Connection with the Early Form of the Epiklesis.” Pages 66–80 in Le Sacrement de l’Initiation Origines et Prospective: Patrimoine Syriaque Actes du colloque III. Antelias, Lebanon: Centre d’Études et de Recherches Pastorales, 1996. Wisse, Frederik. “The Apocryphon of John (II,1, III,1, IV,1, and BG 8502,2).” Pages 104–23 in The Nag Hammadi Library in English. Edited by James M. Robinson. Rev. ed. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988.

462

Susan E. Myers

Wright, William. Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. 2 vols. London and Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate, 1871. Reprinted in one vol. Amsterdam: Philo, 1968. Yarbro Collins, Adela. “Numerical Symbolism in Jewish and Early Christian Apocalyptic Literature.” Aufstieg und niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung II.21,2 (1984): 1222–87. –. “The Seven Heavens in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses.” Pages 59–93 in Death, Ecstasy, and Other Worldly Journeys. Edited by John J. Collins and Michael Fishbane. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1995.

List of Contributors Patricia D. Ahearne-Kroll, Assistant Professor of Religion, Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, OH, USA. Stephen P. Ahearne-Kroll, Associate Professor of New Testament, Methodist Theological School in Ohio, Delaware, OH, USA. Loveday Alexander, Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK. Mary Rose D’Angelo, Associate Professor of New Testament, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN, USA. Stephen J. Davis, Professor of Religious Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA. Robert Doran, Samuel Williston Professor of Greek and Hebrew, Amherst College, Amherst, MA, USA. Radcliffe G. Edmonds III, Associate Professor in the Greek, Latin, and Classics Department, Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA, USA. Fritz Graf, Professor of Greek and Latin and Department Chair, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA. Carin M. Green, Professor of Classics and Department Chair, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA Jan Wilhelm van Henten, Professor of New Testament Interpretation, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Paul A. Holloway, Associate Professor of New Testament, School of Theology, Sewanee: The University of the South, Sewanee, TN, USA. Jeremy F. Hultin, Assistant Professor of New Testament, Yale University Divinity School, New Haven, CT, USA.

464

List of Contributors

Annette Bourland Huizenga, Assistant Professor of New Testament, University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, Dubuque, IA, USA. Matt A. Jackson-McCabe, Associate Professor and Chair of the Religious Studies Department, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, USA. Sarah Iles Johnston, Professor of Greek and Latin, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA. James A. Kelhoffer, Associate Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO, USA. Judith L. Kovacs, Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA USA. Outi Lehtipuu, Faculty of Theology in Biblical Studies, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland. Candida R. Moss, Assistant Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN, USA. Christopher N. Mount, Associate Professor of New Testament in the Religious Studies Department, DePaul University, Chicago, IL, USA. Susan E. Myers, Associate Professor of Theology, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN, USA. Clare K. Rothschild, Associate Professor of Theology, Lewis University, Romeoville, IL, USA. Turid Karlsen Seim, Professor, Faculty of Humanities, Norwegian Institute in Rome, Rome, Italy.



Index of Ancient Texts 1. Ancient Greek and Latin Literature Aelianus Varia Historia 7.3

453a31

300

258

Historia animalium (History of Animals) 6.2.559b20 137

Aeschylus Eumenides 658–665

100, 130

Agrimensores (Campell) Ordines Finitionum 256 281 256–257 282 Antipater On Marriage

391

Antiphon 4.1.3–4

248

Apuleius Apologia 2

230

Metamorphoses 8.7

307

Aristeides 1.124J

291

Aristotle De memoria et reminiscentia (Memory and Reminiscence) 453a14 257



Ethica Nicomachea (Nichomachean Ethics) 1104b5–1104b8 407 1117b24–117b27 407 1128b34 407 1145a1–1145a37 407 1150b8–1150b15 407 De Generatione Animalium (On the Generation of Animals) 130ff 715a–b 137 716a 102 716a10–716a20 137 721b10 129 722a–724a 129 727a–729b 102 731a 138, 146 732a1–12 131 733b20–30 132 733b25 130 733b30–735a26 132 736b10–20 130 738b20–26 102 759a 137 764a10ff 129 765b 102 766b10 129 767–769 104 769a10 129

Index of Ancient Texts

466



Poetica (Poetics) 5–15 15 25 1454a 23–24 1459b 8–16 1460a 11–18 1460b 22–32

42 42, 43 42 43 42 44 44

Aristophanes Lysistrata 568–586

212

Athenaeus Deipnosophistae 12.546E

304

Aulus Gellius 4.3

73

Callistratus Descriptions 3

26–27

Cassius Dio 38.26.2

302

Chariton De Chaerea et Callirhoe (Chaereas and Callirhoe) 11–28, 42 1 11 1.1.1 12 1.1.1–2 14 1.1.4 15 1.1.4–6 22 1.1.6 15, 22 1.1.7 24 1.1.12 14, 15 1.6.5 22 1.10.2 25 1.12.6 44 1.13.4 25 1.14.1 26 1.14.6–10 25 1.14.9 24 2 45



2.2.5 2.2.5–7 2.3 2.3.5 2.3.5–8 2.4.1–5 2.5.1–12 2.6–8 2.8 2.8.3–4 3.1 3.1.3–4 3.2.10–11 3.2.12–13 3.2.14 3.2.15 3.2.16 3.3.9–4.18 3.5.4 3.5.9 3.6.3–5 3.6.4–6 3.7 3.8.6 3.8.7 3.9 3.9.1–2 3.10.4 3.10.4–8 4–6 4.1.2–24 4.1.4–5 4.1.4–12 4.1.5–6 4.5 4.7 4.7.8 5.1.3 5.1.5–6 5.2 5.2.2–9 5.2.6 5.3.4–9 5.4.5–6 5.5.7 5.9–10 5.9.1 6.3.1–7.10 6.4 6.4.5–6

22, 26 22, 24 44 22 22 44 22 44 44 25 44 45 29 22, 24 27 27 25 33 30 24 22 24 45 11 24, 307 45 24, 27, 30 24 24 45 24 22–23 23 24 45 45 22 21 21 45 21 21 21 21 25 45 21 21 21 15

467

Index of Ancient Texts

 6.4.10 6.5.8 6.6 6.9 7.1.6–11 7.2.4 7.5 7.5.1–5 7.5.2 7.5.5 7.8 8 8.1.3 8.1.4 8.2.8 8.3 8.3–5 8.3.5–6 8.4.4–9 8.4.7–10 8.4.10 8.5 8.8.15–16

 17 17 24 45 44 46 45 24 25 15 24 11, 45 15, 27 15 22 46 46 25 16 15 24, 25 44 22,24

Chronicle of Edessa 433 Chrysippus Fragment 262

408

Cicero De finibus 1.11.58 2.16.18 De oratore II.88

 Orationes phillipicae 2.18 156 2.56 156 2.58 156 2.63 156 2.67–68 156 2.76–77 156

Tusculanae disputationes 3.6.12–13 303 3.10.22 311 3.11.25 305, 306 3.13.28 304 3.15.33 303 3.17.37 303 3.22.52 304 3.25.55 305 3.26.61 306 3.26.62 300 3.27.64 306 3.31.74 305 3.31.75 300 3.31.76 301, 303, 305, 311 3.34.81 300 3.52 304 4.7.14 305 4.17.38 311 4.27.59 309 5.26.73–74 303 Columella

304 304

De re rustica XII

71

Digesta 1.5.4.2

289

258 Dio Chrysostom

Epistulae ad Atticum 1.14.3 301 12.10 303 Epistulae ad Brutum 1.9.1 300 Epistulae ad Familiaris 4.13 303 5.18.12 303



Orationes 13.8 16.3 60.8

302 300 313

Diodorus Siculus IV 20

408

Index of Ancient Texts

468



Diogenes Laertius 2.86–87 2.89 2.90 6.63 10.136

Gaius 304 304 304 304 304

Dionysius of Halicarnassus Antiquitates Romanae 1.5.2–3 60 2.24.1 72–73 2.25.2–7 73 Epictetus Enchiridion 16 21 Dissertationes 2.17.31 3.24.115 3.10.1ff

Institutiones (Institutes) 1.129 289 Galen De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis 4.4 301 370.7 306 372.14 304 Heliodorus Aethiopica (An Ethiopian Story) 17

300, 303 305

60 305 305

Hippocrates De Semine (On the Seed) 6 101 8 104 II 735a–b 118 Homer

Epicurus Vatican Sayings 55 66

303 300

Euripides Alcestis 328–329

306

Heracles 830–842

156

Orestes 552

130

Favorinus 22.22.44–48

302

Festus 18L 201L

289 291



Iliad 1.1–445 2.698–702 6 9.308–429 9.406–419 22 22.156–199 24.555

45 284 307 46 44 44 44 44 200

Odyssey 1.104–318 1.318–324 1.363–364 1.384 2.146–154 2.261–267 2.267–296 2.382–392 2.399–419 2.430–435 3.5–9 3.12 3.43–63

21 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 23

469

Index of Ancient Texts

 3.75–78 3.286–292 3.330–341 3.346–351 3.371–384 3.418–469 3.419–420 4.477–479 4.653–656 4.795–841 4.830–831 5.291–296 10.333–344 11.71–76 20.72 22.422–423

 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 286 248 179 179

Constitutio Limitum (Campbell) 16–22 283 Fabulae 104

308

Hymni Orphici 32.1

144

Iamblichus Vita Pythogorae (On the Pythagorean Life) 31.195.8 391 31.210.15 391 31.211.4 391 Julian

289 279, 281, 282

Lucian Alexander (Alexander the False Prophet) 332, 339–41 9 341 10 340 11 340 12 340 13 340ʹ41 13–14 341 14 341 38 341

Macrobius Saturnalia 1.11.36–40 1.16.8 3.2.14

284, 288, 290 280 288

Marcus Aurelius Meditations 8.45 8.47

420 305 302

Melissa to Kleareta 381, 386–90, 393, 397 Metiochus and Parthenope 17

303

Libanios Epistulae 143.1–2

1.11 40.2.2

De Sacrificii (Sacrifices) 6 137

Hyginus

Orationes 8.246C–E



Musonius Rufus III IV

76 71, 392 392

Myia to Phyllis

393–96

307 Nicander

Livy 1.4.9–5.4 1.7.14 1.9



284 289 292

Theriaca

209, 213

Index of Ancient Texts

470



Ocellus Lucanus  3HUL?WKaMWRXaSDQWRM(On the Nature of the Universe) 4 391 45 385

Phintys  3HUL?JXQDLNRBMVZIURVX QDM(On the Sophrosyne of a Woman) 351, 393, 395, 397 Plato

Olympiodoros In Platonis Alcibidiadem commentarii 61.23 157 Ovid Consolatio ad Liviam (Ps.-Ovid) 377–400 303, 305 411–416 303 Heroides 13.151–158

308

Pausanias 5.16.2–7

21 212

Periktione  3HUL?JXQDLNRBMDUPRQLDM(On the Harmony of a Woman) 381 3HUL?VRILDM(On Wisdom) 381

Philodemus  3HUL?TDQDWRX 38.21  3HUL?THZaQ 3 col. D (2) 23



303 300

Phaedo 116A–B

205

Phaedrus 67c 67d 67e 81c 248c

419 404 404 411 411

Respublica 428c–432b 451c–455a 451d 455c

408 409 408 409

Symposium

130, 185

Timaeus 31b 91c

115 115, 130

146

303

303

Philostratus Imagines 2.1

Menexenus 247C–248C 247C–D

Politicus (Statesman) 279b1–283b 211

Petronius Satyrica 34, 7

Axiochus (Ps.-Plato) 364B 305 370A 305

26

Pliny the Elder Naturalis Historia 1.58 5.11.30–38 7.16–18 11.46 18.8

389 389 242 388 279–80

471

Index of Ancient Texts





Pliny the Younger Epistulae 8.5.2 10.96

303 336

Plutarch Antonius 2.3 4.4 29.1 33.3 53.7

156 156 156 156 159

Camillus 33–36 33.2 33.4–5 34

284 285 291 285

Consolatio ad Apollonium (Ps.Plutarch) 102C–E 303 109B 241 109C–D 251 111E 309 112D 304, 305 116A–B 303 117F–118A 300 Consolatio ad Uxorem 608A–B 303 De cohibenda ira 463D De exilio 599B 599D 600D Demosthenes 1.7

476A–D

305

De virtute morali 449E

305

Moralia 252 D–E

179

Praecepta conjugalia (Advice to the Bride and Groom) 71, 391 144D 389 Romulus 29 29.6

284 291

Symposiacs (Table Talk) 7.680c–683b 242 Thesius et Romulus 6 73 Porphyry Letter to Marcella 1.5–8

53 205

Pseudo Apollodorus Epitome 3.30

308

Pseudo Aristotle Oeconomica

71

304 Rhetorica ad Herennium 1.10.17 383–84 300 302 303

156

De tranqillitate animi 465B 305 468F–469D 303 469D 300 474E 304





Quintillian Institutio Oratoria IV.4.7 XI.2.9

313 258

Seneca Ad Helviam 1.4 1.4–8

299, 313–17 314 317

Index of Ancient Texts

472



3.2 4.1 4.2 4.2–3 4.2–5.1 4.2–19.7 5–14 5.1 5.1–6 5.3 6.1–13.8 6.2–9.8 9.2 9.3 10.1–12.7 13.1–18 13.4 14.1 14.1–19.7 14.2–3 15.1 15.1–19.7 16–19 16.1 16.5 16.6–17 17.1–2 17.2 18–19 18.1 18.1–3 19.1–7 20.1–2

314 314, 314 314 300 314 317 302, 315 304, 315 315 316 60 315 315 315 314, 316 316 316 316 315 303 316 316 314 312 303, 315, 317 317 317

Ad Marciam 1.1 1.5 1.7 2–6 2.1 2.1–5.6 2.2 2.3–4 2.4 3.2 3.4 4.3–5.6 5.3–4 5.5–6 5.6

299, 308–13 310 310 309 312 310 305 310 303 310 310 300 303 311 311 311



316

315 305

316

315 317

6.1 6.1–2 7–8 7–11 7.1 7.1–2 7.3–4 9–11 9.1–2 9.2 11.1 12.1 12.7 16.2 16.2–4 16.8 17.2–6 18.1–8 19.1 19.3 19.4 24.1–4 26

311 303 311 311 311 303 311 311 315 305 311 312 309 310 312 312, 317 312 312 312 309, 312 312 303 313

Ad Polybium 1.18 2.1 4.2 5–8 5.5 10.6 12–13 14.1–17.6 18.5 18.5–6

304 303 303 303 314 300 303 305 303 303

De beneficii 3.4.1

303

De brevitate vitae 9.4 10.2

305 303

De clementia 1.7.3

304

De constantia sapientis 5.4 315 8.3 315

473

Index of Ancient Texts

 De ira 3.16.3–25 3.39.4



 Statius

310 303

De providentia 4.6 4.13

304 304

De vita beata 6.1–2 8.6

303 305

Epistulae 13.4 47.4 62.11–12 63.1 63.4 63.14 64.8 77.12 99.2 99.3 99.3–5 99.14–16 99.32 107.5 107.5–9

301 304 306 303 303, 305 310 301 303 299 300 303 303 300 305 305

Thyestes 923–925

315

Silvae 2.6.103–104 2.7

306 307

Stobaeus (Wachsmuth–Hense edition) Anthologium 588, 19–20 589, 1–3 589, 5–590, 1 590, 1–11 590, 11–591, 4 591, 11–15 592, 5–6 592, 14 592, 15–17 592, 17–593, 2 593, 6–7 593, 9–11 690, 15–16

381–86 383 383 392 384 393 384 389 385 386 386 386 386 384

Eclogues 3.1.200 4.507.6–512.7

408 215

Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta 3.378 302 3.456–490 305 3.462 301 3.391 305

Sextus Empiricus Pyrrhoniae hypotyposes 1.215 304

Strabo III 4, 17

408

Suetonius Sibylline Oracle 5.166–168

412

Sonarus Gynaecology 2.19.11–12 19.1



104 394 393–94

Divus Augustus 34 34.1 34.2

64, 72, 80 65 64

Divus Claudius 11.2 23.1 19 21.3 21.5 22

64 63 64 64 64 64

Index of Ancient Texts

474



25.3 26.2 Nero 16.2

64 64

Varro De Lingua Latina 5.163 6.18 6.20

336

283 284, 286, 288 292

Tacitus Agricola 46.4

Saturae Menippeae 216 283 307 Virgil

Annales 2.53–61 2.69–74 2.74 3.12–19 3.25–28 12.8.3 12.24 12.68 15.44

230 230 239 230 66 313 281 307 336

Teles Frag 3.22.1f Frag. 7.56–57 Frag. 29.2f

302 303 302

Aeneid 1.8–33 1.405 4.327–330

15 23 23 306

Vindolanda Tablets II 291–292 17 Xenophon

Theano to Nikostrate

Anabasis 7.4.7

158

Cyropaedia

45

Oikonomikos

71

385, 391 Xenophon of Ephesus Thucydides 2.44

14 300

Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta Frags. 645–657 308 Valerius Maximus 2.1.4

Ephesiaca 1.2.1 1.2.9 1.4.5 4.5

15 15 15 45

73

2. Biblical Literature Genesis 1 1:2 1:11–12:29 1:26–27 1:27 2



436 136, 147, 442 442, 450, 454–56 182 405 61, 71, 72 120, 136, 147, 407

2:7 2:23 2:24 3:1–3 3:5–6 3:6 3:14

136 61 71, 437 182 182 371 182

475

Index of Ancient Texts





3:16 3:17–18 3:18 22:12 25:24 37–50 41 47

365 182 186 127 119 52, 55 55 55

Exodus 15:20–21 15:22–25 20:1–17 20:13 20:14 26:31

371 186 69 75 164 220

Leviticus 15:19–33 20:10

218 164

Numbers 5:11–31

219

Deuteronomy 5:6–21 5:18 5:28 10:16 11:1 22.5 22:20–30 24:1 24:1–4 24:4 28:4 30:6

69 75 164 435 119 411 164 71, 74, 75 68, 69 68, 74 119 435

Ruth 1:11

119

1 Samuel 1–2 1:11

218 218

1 Kings 22 22:8

332 332



 2 Kings 2:1

141

Job 8:14 27:18 38:1 40:6

213 214 141 141

Psalms 2:7 38:12 (LXX) 83:15 89:9 (LXX) 91:13 109:3

144 213 141 214 148 144

Proverbs 8 8:25 9.1 27:29 30:4 30:15–16 31 31.10

449 144 447 181 141 181 179 379

Qoheleth 11:5

141

Song of Songs 4:12 5:1

204 204

Isaiah 5:14 7:14 11.2 49–57 59:5 61.1 66:7

181 139 435 54 213 435 133

Jeremiah 23:19

141

Lamentations

54

Ezekiel 1 1:26–2:2

141 49

Index of Ancient Texts

476



2.2 3.24 16:38–40

435 435 164

4 Maccabees 14–16 15:12 16:10

192 34 192 156

Daniel 2 2:19 2:22 2:28 2:34 8 9 9–12 10 10–12 10:5–6 10:9 10:11 10:12 10:14–12:4 10:17

52 52 52 52 221 48, 50 48 48 48, 50, 51 48 47–50 49 49, 50 49, 50, 52 50 50

Micah 5:8

139

Zechariah 9:14 12.10

141 430

Malachi 2:16

72

1 Esdras 9:36

74

2 Esdras 4:5–11

Matthew 1:2 1:17 1:11 1:18 3:11 5:17 5:32 5:48 6:10 6:28 8:20 8:21–22 10:29–30 10:34–35 10:34–36 10:37 13:55 19:9 19:12 19:21 20:28 24:32 24:33 24:39 24:43 24:50 26:8 27:34 28:6–10

136 136 140 139 187 179 75 421 415 214 181 277 202 178 277 198, 200, 277 218 75 119, 367 421 178 178 178 178 178 178 88 186 90

141

Mark 1:9–11 1:14 1:16–17 1:16–20 1:17 1:23 2:13–14 2:14

139 91 91 78, 87, 92 90 323 87 90

Sirach (Ben Sira) 16:21 24 24:4–8 38:16–17

141 449 447 159

2 Maccabees 7:24–41

192 34



Index of Ancient Texts

 2:15 2:17 3:14 3:19 3:21–35 3:22 4:1–20 4:10 4:12–13 4:26–29 4:30–32 4:40–41 5 6:3 6:6–13 6:30 6:45–52 8:14–21 8:27–10:52 8:31–32 8:31–33 8:33 8:34 8:34–9:1 9:15 9:38 9:38–41 9:39–41 10:2–12 10:2–31 10:2–9 10:3 10:4–5 10:6 10:6–9 10:9 10:10–12 10:13–14 10:13–16 10:14–15 10:16 10:17–31 10:21 10:24 10:28



 89 178 87 89 277 336 142 78 87 142 142 87 139 218 92 87, 89, 92 87 87 86 91 87 91 87, 89, 90 92 94 90 87, 88, 89 87, 90 59–82 62, 77–78 71–73 68, 72 72 72 72 72 73–77 88 60, 78 77 78 71, 77 78, 90 78 78, 87

 10:28–31 10:29–30 10:29–31 10:32 10:35–40 10:38–40 10:39 10:40 10:45 12:13–17 13:9–13 13:13 13:14–27 13:26 14:1–2 14:1–11 14:3 14:3–9 14:4 14:6–9 14:8 14:9 14:10–11 14:28 14:29 14:33 14:47 14:50 14:62 15:20–24 15:21 15:39 15:40 15:40–41 15:40–16:8 15:41 15:47 16:1 16:1–8 16:3 16:5–6 16:6 16:7 16:8 16:9–11

477 87, 90, 277 78 87, 89 94 87 92 92 89, 90 178 182 92 87, 89, 90 92 92 89 89 88 85–89, 90, 96 88 89 88 89 87, 89 91 92 94 87, 90 92 92 90 87 87, 90 90 78, 89 90, 95, 96 90 89, 90 90, 93 89–96 90 93, 94, 94 94 90, 91, 92, 94, 95 90, 92, 93, 94 90

Index of Ancient Texts

478



16:17–20

277

Luke 1:28 1:35 1:41–45 1:42 1:44 1:46–55 2:22–24 2.24 2:36–38 3:38 3:31 4:38–39 5:32 6.29 7:11–16 7:12 7:36–50 7:50 8:1–3 8:42 8:48 8:55 9:56 9:59–60 10:38–42 11:27 12:12 12:27 12:48 12:51–53 14:25 14:25–26 16:8 16:18 18:29 20:35 21:1–4 23:27–28 23:49 23:55–56 24:5–12

28–35 220 139, 430 30 220 436 30 30 436 30 136 140 31 178 408 32 112 31 32 20, 31 112 32 32 178 277 30 32, 119 429 214 178 277 198, 200 277 178 75 78 422 30 30 30 30 90



John 1:1 1:1–2 1:6 1:10–11 1:12 1:12–13 1:13 1:14 1:18 1:29 1:45 2:1–5 2:1–12 2:6 2:12 3 3:3 3:3–8 3:3–10 3:4 3:5 3:5–6 3:5–8 3:8 3:6 3:12 3:13 3:16 3:17 3:18 3:31 3:31–36 3:34 4 4:10 4:14 4:23 5:18 5:36 6:29 6:42 6:46

133, 143 136 141 437 113, 114 135, 142–33 110, 113–16, 127, 136, 140, 144 111, 135, 143–45 111, 135, 145 114 134, 142 134 134, 146 146 134 115–17, 127 115, 117, 119, 120, 135 110, 134 135–40, 142, 149 119, 136 117, 118 138 116, 119 137, 146 118 120, 134, 136 114 111, 135, 143, 145 141 111, 135 116, 120, 135 120 141 31, 120 120 120, 186 133 144 141 141 134, 142 145

479

Index of Ancient Texts

 6:57 6:63 7:3 7:28–29 7:29 7:32 7:37–39 7:38 7:39 8:1–11 8:5 8:19 8:23 8:28 8:41–42 8:42 10:20 10:30 10:36 10:38 11:42 12:24 12:44–45 14:6–7 14:10 14:16 14:26 15:21 16:3 16:7 16:21 17:3 17:8 17:18 17:21 17:23 17:25 19:11 19:23 19:24 19:25 19:25–27 19:26 19:34 20



 141 118 218 145 141 141 118–19 119 120 30 164 145 135 114 140–42 141 232 143 141 143 141 141, 142 145 145 143 306 429 145 145 306 145–46 141 141 141 141 141 141 116 220 120 134 112, 113 134 112, 119 128

 20:1–3 20:18 20:21 20:22 20:24 20:28 20:34–36 21:15–19

90 90, 114 141 120, 128 450 143 416 91

Acts 1:14 2:22–38 2:46 4:32–35 5:1–10 5:14 5:15 8:3 8:12 8:18–23 8:27 9 9:2 9:6 9:17 9:17–19 9:26–30 9:36 9:36–41 9:43 10:45 11:15 12:12 12:20–23 13:50 14:8–18 14:11–13 14:13 14:14–18 14:15 16:13 16:16–18 16:40 17:4 17:12

28–35, 429 31 29 30 31 30 31 33 31 31 33 20 329, 330, 335, 336 31 329, 345 329 345 345 31 30 29 430 430 30 32 30 32 32 29 29, 32 32 30 30 30 30 30

Index of Ancient Texts

480



17:16 17:18 17:24–28 17:29–31 17:34 18:2 18:26 19:12 19:13–19 19:24–40 19:27 20:6–9 21:5 21:8–9 21:9 24:24–25 25:13 27:23 28:1–6 28:6 28:7

29 33 29 29 30 30 30 33 33 29 29 29 30 371 30 365 20 33 33 32 29

Romans 1:3 1:4 8:19 8:12–13 10:4 12:15 15:18–19 16:1–2 16:3–4 16:6,12 16:7

140 139 110 324 421 300 341 451 451 451 451

1 Corinthians 2:4–5 2:6 2:15 4:4–15 4:15 6:15–17 6:19 7 7:1

341 421 330 277 110 368 366 215, 374 76



7:2–5 7:6 7:7 7:7–9 7:10–11 7:10–16 7:15 7:29 7:33–34 7:39 7:39–40 7:40 9:5 10:20 11 11:3 11:3–16 11:5–6 11:7 11:8 11:8–9 11:9 11:11 11:13–15 12 12:1 12:1–3 12:2 12:3 12:7–11 12:13 12:28 12:28–31 13:11 14 14:3 14:13 14:13–40 14:14 14:16 14:20 14:23 14:26–32 14:26–33 14:26–40

366 366 421, 366 354 59, 74 72 74 366 354 368 368 354, 367 218 327 119 351, 365, 407, 414 343, 344 451 53, 351, 414 407 354 351 407 330 343 323 327 323, 327 323 421 324 342 342, 344 422 343 343 343 343 343 343 421 232 232 343, 344 344

481

Index of Ancient Texts





14:31–33 14:33 14:33–36 14:36 14:37 14:37–40 15:5 15:26

344 344 344, 349, 373, 351 344 343 344 91 181

2 Corinthians 4:8–9 5:1 6:3–7 6:16 6:16–18 7:1 7:1–11 7:4 7:13 8:16–24 11:23 12:2–10

421 181 421 466 421 421 421 300 300 332 421 333

Galatians 1 1:6–9 1:11–24 1:13 1:15 1:15–16 1:16 1:16–17 1:20 2:14 2:20 3:1 3:1–2 3:1–5 3:2 3:28

4:1–7 4:4 4:6



330, 335 330 330 330 119 330 330 330, 344 330 330 330, 342 334 341 326 342 324, 342, 351, 367, 373–74, 403– 78, 414, 415, 422 422, 324 140 342

 4:13–14 4:14–15 4:19 4:19–20 5:16–23

334 277 110 129 407

Ephesians 4:11–13 4:13 5:21–29 5:22–33 5:23 5:28

421 416–17, 421–22 414 352 365 365

Philippians 1:1 2 3:2 3:15 4:2–3 4:3

351 451 330 421 351 367

Colossians 1:28 3–4 3:10 3:11 3:12–15 3:18–19 3:18–4:1 3:19 4:1 4:12

421 414 414 352, 404, 414–6 415 352 414 414 415 421

1 Thessalonians 1:5 2:1–10 2:1–12

341 330, 332 340

1 Timothy 2:8–15 2:9–15 2:11–12 2:11–15 2:12 3:2

342 343 381, 397 352, 343, 396,

396 373 349, 429 397

Index of Ancient Texts

482



3:5 3:12 3:15 4:3 4:13–14 4:14 5:1 5:8 5:9 5:13–14 5:14 5:17 6:1–2

354 397 343 367 343 343 354 354 354 354 397 354 354

2 Timothy 1:7 1:15–16 3:2 3:11 4:10 4:19

396 357 354 357 357 357

Titus 1:6 1:8 2:2 2:3–5 2:4 2:4–5 2:11

397 396 396 421 396 352, 356, 396 354

2:11–12 3:1

396 354

Hebrews 5:14 11:17 11:35 13:4 13:14–16

421 112, 127 32 421 421

James 1:4 3:2

419, 421 421

1 Peter 1.6–9

421

1 John 2:29 3:6 3:9 4:7 4:9 5:1 5:4 5:8 5:20

110 110 118 110 143 110 110 110 143

Revelation 12:1–6

293–94 368

3. Ancient Jewish Literature Apocalypse of Abraham 447–48 Apocalypse of Adam V.5.64:6–27 185

Ascension of Isaiah 11.2–15 219 2 Baruch 81.4 303 Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature

Apocalypse of Moses 24:2 183



1QH 3:7–12

133

483

Index of Ancient Texts





4Q12a 2:4–7

72

4Q271 Frg. 3:10–15

72

11Q19 (Temple Scroll) 70 57:10–15 72 CD (Damascus Document) 60 4:19–5:2 72 4:19 75 Murraba‘at Cave 2

16:8–16 16:14 23–27 23:9–12 27:10–11 28 28:3–6 28:5 28:10 28:14 29:3

53 53 55 54 55 55 55 54 54 54 54

Josephus Against Apion 2.199–204

157

Jewish Antiquities 2.120 2.124 2.173 4.135 5.360 6.255 7.328 8.309 11.27 11.261 12.287 13.417 14.49 14.121 14.122 14.198 14.219 14.221 14.394 14.419 15.2 15.17 15.23 15.23–24 15.23–28 15.23–31 15.23–87

167 167 166 160 169 166 166 166 157 159 159 166 166 164, 163 167 167 167 156 166 162, 162 155, 162 160 153, 154

74

2 Enoch 1:4–9

49

4 Ezra 7:16

303

Joseph and Aseneth 39–56 1 55 1:5 52 1:8 52 4 52, 55 8:5–7 55 8:9 54 10–16 47–50 14 48 14–17 53 14:8 50 14:9 48, 50 14:10 50 14:11 50 14:12 53 14:13 50 15:1 53 15:2–4 51 15:6 53 15:7 53 15:12 53 16:7 53





166

164 156, 160

154–58

484



15.23–231 15.24 15.25 15.26 15.26–28 15.27 15.28 15.29 15.29–30 15.30 15.31 15.32 15.32–38 15.33 15.34 15.35 15.36 15.40 15.40–41 15.42 15.44 15.44–45 15.45–49 15.47 15.48 15.50–56 15.53 15.55 15.56 15.57 15.57–87 15.58 15.58–59 15.58–60 15.59 15.62 15.62–63 15.63 15.64 15.65 15.66 15.66–67 15.67 15.68 15.68–69



Index of Ancient Texts 153–73 155, 167 155, 156 156, 162, 163 163 155, 157 157 157, 158 158 171 155, 168 155, 162, 164 158 157 154 162 169 154 154 155, 158, 162, 164 154, 164 158, 162 155 155, 162 158 159 155, 159 159 154 159 153, 159–65 155, 159 159 159 159 155, 158, 159, 162 164 155, 159, 162 159 158, 160, 166, 167 165 160 160, 161 160, 161, 165 161

15.69 15.70 15.71–73 15.72 15.73 15.74–79 15.75 15.76 15.77 15.80 15.81 15.81–82 15.82 15.82–85 15.83 15.85 15.86 15.87 15.92 15.97 15.166 15.169 15.173 15.183 15.183–231 15.183–186 15.184 15.185 15.186 15.187–196 15.199 15.202 15.202–203 15.202–239 15.202–251 15.203 15.204 15.204–205 15.205 15.205–207 15.206 15.207 15.208 15.209–210 15.210

155, 160 162, 155 158, 163 163 163 158 155, 159, 169 161, 165 160, 164 165 155, 158 157, 155, 155, 170 155, 153, 168 166 166, 167, 167 167 155 167 165, 167 167, 167 167 167, 168 168 161 168 167, 164,

162 163 162, 163, 164

163 164, 166, 170 169 165

162, 165, 170 158 168 159 168 165–71

167, 168 168

167 168

168

168 167, 168

485

Index of Ancient Texts

 15.211–212 15.212 15.213 15.214 15.216 15.216–217 15.218 15.219 15.219–220 15.221 15.222 15.222–223 15.223 15.223–225 15.223–226 15.223–231 15.227 15.227–229 15.228 15.229 15.230 15.231 15.232 15.232–239 15.236 15.238 15.247 15.249 15.250 15.251 15.271–291 16.61–77 16.78 16.79 16.85 16.185 16.191 16.192 16.193 16.303 16.321 16.356 16.361 16.399 17.7–9



 169 164, 164, 169 167 169 165 161, 164 169 160, 169 167, 170 169 165 170, 167 165, 164, 170 169, 155 171 164 164 155 155 155 155, 156 172 162 172 172 173 172 164 164 168 169 170 170 164 172

169 166, 169

169

161 170

171 170 170 171

173

 17.35 17.52 17.94–95 17.117 17.121 17.148–164 17.151 17.160–164 17.192 17.352 18.47 18.63–64 18.112 19.34

172 172 154 172 172 156 157 170 162 161, 169 169 336 171 171

Jewish War 1.134 1.181 1.290 1.308 1.359–361 1.365 1.431–673 1.437 1.438 1.438–439 1.439–440 1.441 1.441–443 1.443 1.443–444 1.445–449 1.468 1.475 1.476 1.483 1.522 1.538 1.583 1.622 1.627 1.646–647 1.654 1.665 2.38

166 164, 156 166 158 158 154 159, 169 163, 158 159, 163 164, 165 164 164 159 164 159 164 170 157 154 167 154 170 154 166

166

163, 164 173 160 170

Index of Ancient Texts

486



2.135 2.259 2.283 2.318 2.476 2.594

167 157 157 157 166 157

On the Creation of the World 67 103, 110, 118

Jubilees 1:23

435

On the Life of Moses 1.279 110, 134

On the Decalogue 121 126 168

69 69 69

Mishnah Avot 3.1

118

On the Virtues 4.18-20 14

Niddah 16b

118

Questions and Answers on Exodus 2.46 116–17

Pesahim 112a

103

Sanhedrin 69a

103

Philo of Alexandria On the Embassy to Gaius 1.63 408 On the Cherubim 43–44

110, 134

Special Laws 3.8 3.3–31 3.7–83 3.8–12 3.30–31 3.31 3.32–50

411 380

69 69 69 69 68 69 69

That the Worse Attacks the Better 60 110, 134 Psalms of Solomon 8:12

218

On the Contemplative Life 68 53

4. Other Early Christian Literature 1 Clement 25 55.4–6

145 417

2 Clement 12:2

183, 184

Acts of Andrew

363, 443



17–22

363

Acts of Apollonius 36

419

Acts of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonike 28 (Gr)/29 (Lat) 197

487

Index of Ancient Texts





Acts of Eulpus Rec. B 1.5

198

Acts of John

443

Acts of Justin and Companions 418 Acts of Paul

443

Acts of Paul and Thecla 195, 350, 75 1–3 357 4–5 357 5 361, 5–6 216, 7 276 9 216 10 276, 12 355, 13 360 15 216, 18 217, 19 217 20 217, 22 360 26 276 27–28 360 32 360 33 360 37 355 39 355 40 355 41 355 42 276 43 276, Acts of Peter

216, 268, 355–66, 374–

365 355, 358, 366

277, 360 363 276 276

199

Acts of Thomas

405, 428, 432–34, 438, 442–58 451 444 444 452 216 446–55 451 439, 452 440, 446–55 452 444 216 445, 452 452

3 6 6–7 7 11–13 27 30 39 50 57 108–113 115–116 133 160

Ambrose De excessu fratris sui Satyri 1.3 303 2.11 303 De Viduis 7.40

380

Epistulae 39 39.8

300 303

276

De virginibus (Exhortation to Virginity) 364 De virginitate (On Virginity) 364 355

443

Acts of Phileas, Bishop of Thmuis 198, 201 4.2 (Lat) 198 6.1 (Lat) 199 6.4 (Lat) 199



8.2 (Lat)

Ambrosiaster Commentary on I Timothy 3:2 372 Aphrahat Demonstrations 6

434, 457–58 179

Index of Ancient Texts

488



6.14 18.10

457 457

Apocryphon of John 5:4–7 431 21:17–35 182 Apostolic Constitutions 3.9 365 Athanasius Letter to Virgins

364

On Virginity

364

Augustine City of God 4.24

279

Epistles 263.3

303

On Holy Virginity

364

Sermons 84.1 296.7.8

293 293

Basil Epistulae 5.2 28.1.62 269.2 302

303 303 303 307

Bardaisan Dialogue on Fate

433, 440

Book of Thomas the Contender 450–51 138.4 451 138.8 451



Clement of Alexandria Excerpta ex Theodoto (Excerpts from Theodotus) 67 181 67.1 181 67.4 178 80:1 141 Paedagogus 1 1.4.10.1–3 1.6.34.3–52.1 1.6.48 1.6.49.1 2.1.3.2 2.2.33 2.8.65.1 2.8.66.2 2.10.99.1 2.10.105.3 2.10.114 2.11.117

421 416 401 103 118 411 401 411 411 412 412 401 401

Quis dives salvetur (Salvation of the Rich) 37 431 37.1–2 401 Stromateis 1.20.97.3 2.18.78.1 2.18.81.3–4 3.2.5–10 3.6.50.1–3 3.6.53.1 3.9.64.2 3.9.66.3 3.12.79.5 3.12.79.5–6 3.12.88.3 3.12.93.3 3.13.92–3 3.13.92.2 3.13.93.1–3 3.13.93.2 3.13.93.3 3.14.3

401 409 409 411 367, 374 367 367 404 367 367 367 367 416 405 406 406 404 407, 411 367

489

Index of Ancient Texts

 3.45.1 3.45.3 3.63.1–2 3.63.2 3.63.2–4 3.64.1 3.66.1 3.66.1–2 3.66.2 4.1.1.1 4.3.12.5 4.3.14.4 4.4.13.1–14.3 4.4.14.3 4.4.14.3–15.3 4.4.16.3–17.1 4.6.43.4–5 4.8 4.8.58.4–60.1 4.8.58.2 4.8.58.2–3 4.8.58.3 4.8.59.1 4.8.59.1–3 4.8.60.1 4.8.60.2 4.8.60.3 4.8.60.4–61.1 4.8.61.2–3 4.8.62.1–2 4.8.62.3 4.8.62.4 4.8.62.4–63.1 4.8.63.2–4 4.8.63.5 4.8.63.5–65 4.8.63.5–65.3 4.8.65.3–4 4.8.66.1 4.8.66.2–4 4.8.67.1 4.8.67.4 4.8.67.4–68.2 4.19.118.1 4.19.118.1–119.3 4.19.120.1–123.1 4.19.121.2–122.3 4.19.122.2 4.19.123.1 4.19.123.2–124.1 4.19.124.1 4.20.125.1–129.5



 181 177, 181 177 182 180 177, 178, 181, 182 177 177 182 402–3 404 411 403 419 403, 419 403 403 404–17 412 419 404, 406–7 420 407 407 407 407, 412 407 407 408 408 408 402, 403, 411, 412 408 414 414 412 414 415 415 416 416 417 418 417 417 418 420 418 418 420 420 421

4.20.127.2 4.20.129.2 4.21.132.1–2 4.21.132.2 5.11.67.2 5.14.106.1 6 6.1 6.9.73.3–5 6.11.87.3 6.12.100.3 6.13.105.1 6.13.107.2–3 6.13.107.3 6.14.114.4 6.17.160.2–3 7.7.36.4 7.12.71.3 7.12.78.6 7.14.84.2 7.17.107.3–5 7.57.1 7.104.6 12.82.4 30.45.3

421 421 421 422 404 404 214 129 417 417 422 416 415 417 417 409 411 404 416 416 417 448 178 367 177

Cyprian Letter 75 10–11

370

On the Dress of Virgins 364, 368 Dialogue of the Savior 180, 185 40 141 144:14–24 179 Didascalia Apostolorum 15 369–70 15.3.5 370 15.3.6 370 15.3.8 370 15.3.9 370 Doctrina Addai

432

Index of Ancient Texts

490



Egeria

Eusebius

Itinerarius Egeriae 19.2 19.19

432 432

Ephrem

440–42, 456–58

Carmina Nisibena 42.1

440 456

History of the Church 1.13 432 1.13.11–22 432 3.3.5 350 3.25.4 350 5.1.3–2.8 410, 418 5.16.21 403 5.21 419 George of Alexandria

Hymn of the Nativity 4.150 456 13.7 457 21.7–8 457 27.15 457 Hymni Dispersi 5–7

456

Hymns against Heresies 440–42 3.4 440 55 442 55.1 441 55.2 441 55:2–3 441 55:3–4 450 55.8 441 55.10 441 Prose Refutations

440

Epiphanius Panarion 25.2.2 26.4.2–5.8 39.1–4 40.2–3 42.1.2–5 49.1.1 49.2.1–2 49.2.3–4 49.2.6 49.3.1 79.3.6



448 474 431 431, 448 372 370 370 371 370 371 371

Vita Chrysostom 27 Gospel of Philip 52:21–24 55: 24–26 57:27–28 67 67:26 68.24–26 69:4–14 70:10–17 70:57 71:22–30 73:18–19 75:14–21 76:26–27

307 430, 438–41, 453, 455 438 438 439 439 439 183 439 183 439 183 439 439 439

Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew 13.3 219 13.4 219 Gospel of Thomas 22 37 114

183, 184 183 184

Gospel of Truth 24:9–14 26:28–27:7 36:35

148, 437, 453–55 438 438 148

Greek Gospel of the Egyptians 177–87 Saying 1 177–81 Saying 2 177–78, 179, 181– 82

491

Index of Ancient Texts

 Saying 3 Saying 4

 177, 182–83 177, 178

Gregory of Nazianzus Epistulae 165 165.2

300 303

39.6.4 60.7.3 79.7 79.9 108.1.2 118.4.2

303 303, 304 307 312 303 303

Lives of Illustrious Men 7 350

Gregory of Nyssa John Chrysostom On Virginity

364

Hippolytus Paschal Homily

186–87

Epistulae ad Olympiadem 8.3.11–13 300 15.1 304 17.4.32–43 300

Refutation of All Heresies 7.22.2 216

De Virginitate (On Virginity) 364

History of John, Son of Zebedee 453

Justin

Hypostasis of the Archons II, 4 147 89.11–17 371

First Apology 15:5 15:6 29:1 61:12

366 366 366 356

Second Apology 2

76

Irenaeus Against Heresies 1.4–5 1.4.1 1.5.3 1.30.1–4 3.11.9 4.33.9

431 431 431 448 437 403

Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne 200, 410, 418 Life and Miracles of Saint Thecla 375

Jerome

Macarius

Commentary on Ezekiel 431

Homily 54.4.5

Commentary on Isaiah 40:9–11 431

Martyrdom of Agape, Irene, and Chione 195, 202

Commentary on Micah 431

Martyrdom of Carpus, Papyius, and Agathonike 202, 409, 418

Epistles 39.3–4 39.5.2

Martyrdom of Irenaeus, Bishop of Sirmium 197 3–5 197



300 303

457

Index of Ancient Texts

492



Martyrdom of Julian 200 Martyrdom of Marian and James 192–93 Martyrdom of Maximillian 200 Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius 192–93 Martyrdom of Polycarp 197, 200 Martyrdom of Timothy and Maura 204 Martyrius Book of Perfection 1.3.13

429, 457

Methodius 431

6:7 8:13 11 11.1 12 13.2 14:2–3 14:8 16:1–5 19 19.8 23.22 24 25 25.8 28 28.2 36.1

435 437 454 435 434 435 436 435 435 434, 436–37 219 436 435, 450 436 186, 435–36 435–36, 450 436 435

On the Origin of the 111:9–29 113.30–34 115.11–14 115.30–116.8 122:25–35

World 148 371 371 371 148

Symposium 1.1 2.1 2.7 3.14 7.9 8.8

364 368 369 369 369 368 356

Origen Commentary on John 11:12 431 20.12 350 Exhortation to Martyrdom 14 202

Musonius Rufus Homily on Jeremiah XV.4 431

Discourses 3 3–4 4 12–14 14

412–14 412 408, 413–14 412 215

Fragments 3 9.42.6

381 302

On First Principles 1.2.3 350 Orosius Contra Paganos 1.6.4

293

Paulinus of Nola Odes of Solomon 3:10 6:1–2



432–38, 442, 453– 54, 456, 458 435 435

Epistulae 13.10

303

493

Index of Ancient Texts

 Patrologia Graeca 23.1137 65.392 107.256D–257D 114.1104B–1108B

 214 179 307 307

Perpetua and Felicitas 189–205, 417 1.1 192 2.1 204 2.2 203 3.1–3 191 3.8 191, 203 3.9 192 4.1 194, 203, 410 5.1–6 191 5.2 191, 192 5.4 203 5.5 194 6.2 191 6.2–3 191 6.3 197 6.7 191 10.7 194 15.7 203 18.2 204 20.1 194 20.4 194

10:2 11:1 11:2 12:1 13–16 19–20 19:3 20:1

220 220 220 220 219 219 219 219

Shepherd of Hermas Mandate 4 4.1 4.1.4 4.1.5 4.1.6 4.1.7–8 4.6

59 76 77 77 75 77 72

Synesios of Cyrene Hymn 2

431

Tertullian Against Marcion 1.24.7

403

Pionius Acts of the Martyrs 403 Proclus Homily 1 I, 21–25

220–21

Homily 4 I, 17–18

221

Protevangelium of James 217–21 1 218 4:1 218 4:2 218 4:4 218 7 218 8 218 8:1 218 8:3 218 9:2 219



Exhortation to Chastity 367 On Baptism 1 17.5

350 349 349

On Monogamy 1.1 3.1–4 11.15–19

368 368 368

On the Prescription of Heretics 41.5 349 On the Veiling of Virgins 7.2 365 9.1 349

Index of Ancient Texts

494



To My Wife 1.3.2

367–68

The Spectacles 8 93 94

279, 281 282 281

Testament of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste 2.4 201 Theodore of Mopsuesita Commentary on Haggai 429

6. Inscriptions and Papyri G. E. Bean Inscriptions of Side No. 152 231 Berliner Griechische Urkunden 4.1107 394, 395 E. Bernard Inscriptions métriques de l’Egypte gréco-romaine 209 no. 46 228, 243 V. Beševliev Spätgriechische und spätlateinische Inschriften aus Bulgarien 135 no. 2 232 209 no. 46 243 G. Björk Der Fluch des Christen Sabinus 29 no. 11 231, 234 29f. no. 13 238 29, no. 15 238 W. Blümel Die Inschriften von Knidos No. 150 233 Carmina Latina Epigraphica 95 237 987 232, 246 1604 232 1948 236



Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaicarum 1 no. 725 234 Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 1, 3358a 233 VI 3, 19747 232, 246 VI 3, 20905 237, 247 VIII, 434 308 VIII 2756 232 IX 3030 233 Inscriptions de Délos 2531 234 2532 234 Inscriptiones Graecae 12:5 no. 764 231, 246 XI 1296 234 R. Kotansky Greek Magical Amulets 46 248 Notizie degli Scavi di Antichità 1900, 578 no. 35 236 Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones selectee 697 236 P. London 3.951

394, 395

495

Index of Ancient Texts





P. Michigan 3.202

394, 395

P. Oxyrhynchus 1.37 91 655

394 395 214

Papyri Demoticae Magicae xiv.636–661 263 xiv.636–669 261, 272, 273 xiv.665–669 275 lxi.159–196 261 Papyri Graecae Magicae I.232–247 258 III.410–423 259 III.412 259 III.424 259 III.424–466 259 III.468–478 259 IV.296–434 262 IV.296–466 261 IV.301–302 261 IV.304–321 261 IV.321–328 261 IV.351–354 274 IV.354–356 275 IV.373 275 IV.374–375 274 IV.400–406 274 IV.1496–1595 270, 272 IV.1515–1519 275 IV.1527–1533 272 IV.1540–1546 272 IV.2737–2738 263 IV.2740–2745 273 IV.2756–2764 269 IV.2767 272 XV.1–21 263, 270, 274 XV.4–5 263 XV.11 263 XVIIa.1–25 255 XVIIa.4 256 XVIIa.6–7 256



XVIIa.6–23 XVIIa.8–10 XVIIa.8–23 XVIIa.22 XXXVI.147–154 LXI.1–38 LXI.23 LXI.28–30 CI.33 CI.1–53 CI.6–7 CI.6–9 CI.29–33 CI.45–46 Ostricon 2.27–31

273 276 256 263 275 261, 272 261 272 260, 276 273, 273 275 270,

274

263 275

271

G. Petzl “Die Beichtinschriften Westkleinasiens” 88 no. 69 234 L. Robert Inscriptions grecques 122 no. 77 228 Steinschriften aus dem Griechischen Osten 07.05.04 236 Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 6, 786 238 7, 1239 236 30, 353 263 37, 1001.17–25 250 Supplementum Magicum 40.15 270 42.6–7 271 42.11–12 270, 271 42.15–17 270, 271 42.35–39 270, 271 42.44–45 271 42.44–46 270 42.45–46 271 42.54–56 270, 271 42.59–60 270, 271

496

Index of Ancient Texts



43.8–10 45.44–50 46.10–11 46.20–21 46.22–23 47.10–11 47.20–21 48.9 48.23 48.32–37



275 269 275 275 270 275 275 275 275 271

48.35–36 50.55–57

270 275

Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecorum, 3d edition 1181 234 Tituli Asiae Minoris V,1 318 249

Index of Modern Authors Abel, K. 313, 314, 316 Abraham, S. 68 Adair, G. 13 Ahearne-Kroll, P. D. 40, 47, 48, 52, 54, 56 Ahearne-Kroll, S. P. 202 Albi, M. C. 185 Albrecht, R. 356, 360, 368 Alcock, S. 21, 22 Alcock, S., J. Cherry, and J. Elsner 21 Alexander, L. 16, 21, 27, 29 Alkier, S. 342 Allen, W. C. 94 Amann, É. 218, 219 Amat, J. 190 Amirante, L. 289 Annas, J. 409 Andreae, B. 308 Arthur, M. B. 100 Ashton, J. 120, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 334 Ashwin-Siejkowski, P. 416, 421 Asmis, E. 309 Atkinson, J. E. 301 Attridge, H. W. 214, 443 Aune, D. E. 337 Baarda, T. 183 Baer, R. A. 268, 270, 441 Bagnall, R. S. and R. Cribiore 17, 24, 394 Balling, J. 196 Bastiaensen, A. A. R. 190, 197 Bauckham, R. 31, 219 Bean, G. E. 231 Beck, E. 440 Behringer, W. 242 Bellemore, J. 308 Berczely, L. 108 Bernard, É. 228 Beševliev, V. 232 Best, E. 86

Bettini, M. 210, 308 Betz, H. D. 140, 255, 256, 258, 259, 260, 261, 263, 269, 272, 273, 274, 330 Björck, G. 231, 234, 238 Blümel, W. 233, 234 Blundell, S. 102 Boas, F. 331, 332 Boer, E. de 31 Bohak, G. 54 Bonhöffer, A. F. 305 Borgen, P. 116 Bornkamm, G. 215, 449, 452 Bousset, W. 449 Bovon, F. 138, 140 Bowersock, G. W. 12, 27 Bowie, E. L. 11, 18 Bowman, A. K. 17 Bradley, K. 191 Brakke, D. 310, 372 Brant, J.-A., C. W. Hedrick, and C. Shea 13, 28 Braun, R. 190 Braund, D. C. 157 Bremmer, J. N. 71, 146, 191, 196, 203, 204, 287, 292, 362 Brenner, A. 161 Brock, S. 183, 427, 429, 430, 432, 433, 442, 444, 446, 449, 450, 457, 458 Brooten, B. 351 Brown, P. 214, 216, 362, 363, 366, 369 Brown, R. 113 Brunner, K. 214 Buchleim, H. 155, 156, 159 Buell, D. K. 129, 367 Bultmann, R. K. 134, 135, 137, 138, 142, 143, 144, 146 Bundy, D. 441, 442 Burchard, C. 46, 47, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54 Buresch, C. 300 Burrus, V. 216, 358 Butler, R. D. 190

498

Index of Modern Authors

Butterweck, C. 403 Cadbury, H. J. 129 Cairns, D. L. 53 Calef S. A. 359, 364 Callan, T. 183 Camelot, P. T. 221 Cameron, A. 290 Cameron, R. 180 Campbell, B. 281, 283 Cantalamessa, R. 186 Cantarella, E. 65 Cardman, F. 191 Cartlidge, D. R. and J. K. Elliot 220 Castelli, E. A. 192, 362, 364, 365, 369, 374, 375 Catchpole, D. R. 94, 95 Cavalieri, P. F. de’ 191, 193 Cavell, M. 257 Charlesworth, J. H. 434 Chesnutt, R. D. 54 Clark, E. A. 39, 40, 196, 366, 373 Collins, J. J. 48 Cobb, L. S. 191, 194, 197 Cobb, S. 410 Collins, A. Y. 59, 60, 62, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76, 80, 85, 87, 88, 90, 91, 92, 195, 277, 279, 286, 448 Collins, D. 239 Coloe, M. L. 119 Connerton, P. 264 Connolly, R. H. 369, 370 Constas, J. 220 Conzelmann, H. 323 Coogan, M. D. 181 Cooper, K. 39, 41, 42, 359, 361 Costa, C. N. D. 313 Cox Miller, P. 201 Cribiore, R. 17, 19, 20 Cumont, F. 231 Dagron, G. 356 Dale, A. M. 308 Daly, M. 352 D’Angelo, M. R. 59, 61, 69, 76, 77, 78 Daniel, R. W. and F. Maltomini 262, 269, 271 Darwin, C. 129 Davis, S. J. 195, 374 Davies, S. L. 359

Dean-Jones, L. A. 99, 103, 104, 105 De Jong, I. J. F. and R. Nünlist 153 De Lacy, P. 305 Delling, G. 47, 48 Delorme, J. 94 Deming, W. 215, 385 Desjardins, M. 402 Deubner, L. 107 Dillon, J. M. 302 Dixon, S. 62, 108, 109, 299 Docherty, S. 52 Donahue, J. R. and D. J. Harrington 74 Donfried, K. 183 Döring, K. 197 Dover, K. J. 157, 158 Driesch, H. A. E. 132 Drijvers, H. J. W. 436, 440, 441, 442, 443, 448, 452 Droge, A. 142, 330 du Bourguet, P. 262 Dunderberg, I. 147, 451 Dunn, J. D. G. 415 Dunn, P. W. 356 Ebner, M. 62, 217 Eck, W., A. Caballos, and F. Fernández 230 Edmonds, R. 252 Edwards, C. 61 Egger, B. 14, 15, 16, 17, 45 Ehrman, B. D. 352, 357 Eisen, U. E. 372 Eisenstein, J. D. 214 Elderkin, G. W. 388 Elliott, J. K. 217, 219 Elliott, S. 341 Elm, S. 364, 366, 369 Emmel, S. 180 Engel, D. M. 310 Epp, E. J. 351, 352 Erll, A. 257 Ernst, J., L. Oulton, and H. Chadwick 178 Esch, E. 217 Esch-Wermeling, E. 353, 358, 361 Evans, C. A. 86, 88, 89, 90, 92, 93, 94 Evans, E. 349 Evans, J. 61 Evans Grubbs, J. 63, 64, 66 Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 229, 241

Index of Modern Authors Evaristas, M. 306 Exum, C. 109 Fahey, M. A. 368 Faraone, C. A. 261, 262, 268, 270, 271, 272, 274 Farina, W. 191 Fatum, L. 201 Favez, C. 304, 313 Favret-Saada, J. 229 Fee, G. D. 343, 351 Feldman, L. H. 160 Fern, M. E. 306 Ferrill, A. 313 Fillion-Lahille, J. 313 Fitzgerald, T. 55 Fitzmyer, J. A. 214, 323 Fontenrose, J. 286 Forschner, M. 302 Forsyth, N. 287 Foskett, M. F. 218 Fossum, J. E. 453 Foucault, M. 215 Fox, R. L. 22, 32 France, R. T. 87, 88, 96 Franco, C. 308 Franz, M. L. von 195 Frend, W. H. C. 191, 192, 195 Frey, J., J. Van der Watt, and R. Zimmermann 134 Fridh, Å. 190 Frye, N. 18 Funke, H. 161 Gaca, K. L. 69 Gager, J. G. 263, 270 Garland, R. 99, 102, 313 Galinsky, K. 63, 66, 81 Gasparra, G. S. 186 Gaventa, B. 110 Geerard, M. 350 Gibson, J. J. 210 Glancy, J. A. 363, 395 Gnilka, J. 88 Gnuse, R. 52 Goold, G. P. 11, 14, 19 Gordon, R. 242, 245, 249, 251, 263, 264 Gosling, J. C. B. and C. C. W. Taylor 304 Graf, F. 227, 244

499

Grassi, J. A. 93 Green, C. M. C. 292 Gregg, R. 302 Griffith, S. H. 179 Grollios, C. 300, 304, 315 Grubbs, J. E. 237 Guillemin, A.-M. 301 Gundry, R. H. 91 Gunkel, H. 324, 325 Günther, L.-M. 160, 171 Gustafsson, M. L. 339 Guthrie, W. C. K. 137 Hachlili, R. 159 Hägg, T. 13, 17, 20, 26, 28, 34 Halkin, F. 198, 307 Hani, J. 300 Harnack, A. von 403 Harris, J. R. 436 Harrison, V. 401 Hartman, L. F. and A. A. Di Lella 48 Harvey, S. A. 427, 434, 456 Hayne, L. 374 Heever, G. van den 13 Heffernan, T. J. 192, 204 Heid, S. 293 Hengel, M. 93, 136 Hennecke, E. and W. Schneemelcher 216, 275 Heszer, C. 47 Hilhorst, A. 349, 350 Hock, R. F. 17, 217 Hock, R. F., J. B. Chance, and J. Perkins 28 Hogan, K. M. 142 Holland, L. A. 281, 282 Holloway, P. A. 306, 307, 317 Hollywood, A. 40 Hooker, M. D. 91 Horn, C. B. 355 Horsley, R. 61 Humphrey, E. McE. 52 Humphry, J. H. 282 Hurtado, L. W. 325, 334, 335, 336 Huzar, E. G. 155, 156, 173 Ilan, T. 155, 171, 173 Incigneri, G. J. 62 Inwood, B. 305 Irwin, M. E. 402

500

Index of Modern Authors

Jansen, K. L. 31 Jeffery, L. H. 235 Jensen, A. 191, 195, 350, 358, 360 Jeremias, J. 70 Johann, H.-T. 304 Johnson, C. 452 Johnson, L. T. 325, 332, 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 339, 340 Johnson, V. L. 285 Johnston, S. I. 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 260 Judge, E. A. 386 Kaibel, G. 236 Kambitsis, S. 262 Kampen, N. B. 99 Käsemann, E. 326 Kasher, A. 165, 167 Kassel, R. 300, 304, 305, 313 Keck, L. E. 114, 117, 450 Kelber, W. H. 92 Kelhoffer, J. A. 86, 91, 96, 342 Kelley, N. 420 Kent, R. G. 292 Kienast, D. 161 Kinder, D. 401, 402 King, H. 105, 106 Kingsbury, J. D. 86 Kinukawa, H. 87, 95 Klassen, W. 309 Klauck, H.-J. 17 Klijn, A. F. J. 443, 449 Kloppenborg, J. S. 75 Koester, C. 115 Kokkinos, N. 154, 164, 166, 167 Konstan, D. 14, 16, 41, 43, 44, 45 Kotansky, R. 248 Kötting, B. 161 Kovacs, J. L. 417, 421 Kraemer, D. 159 Kraemer, R. S. 40, 47, 53, 216, 352 Kraemer, R. S. and M. R. D’Angelo 201 Kronholm, T. 456 Kruse, H. K. 450 Kurth, T. 305 LaFargue, M. 444 Lagrand, J. 139 Lambdin, T. O. 180 Lampe, P. 70, 76

Lanata, G. 197 Lange, L. 130 Langlands, R. 156 Laqueur, T. 405 Lateiner, D. 390 Lattke, M. 434, 435, 436, 437 Laurence, R. 25 Lausberg, H. 313 Layton, B. 183, 438, 439 Le Bas, P. and W. H. Waddington 238 Lee, D. 111, 113 Lefebvre, G. 255 Lefkowitz, M. R. 101, 191, 193, 194, 195, 196 Lefkowitz, M. R. and M. B. Fant 395 Lesky, E. 130 Levine, A.-J. 364 Lévi-Strauss, C. 331 Lewis, I. M. 328, 329 Lieu, J. 117, 133, 145, 359, 360 Liew, T.-S. B. 62 Lightman, M. and W. Zeisel 161 Lincoln, A. T. 90, 95 Lincoln, B. 327 Lipsius, R. A. and M. Bonnet 216, 275 Lloyd, G. E. R. 102, 130, 131, 132 Lobel, E. and D. Page 269 Lohmeyer, E. 89 Long, A. A. and D. N. Sedley 268 Loureaux, N. 100 Lutz, C. E. 215 Luz, U. 139 Lyon, J. P. 433 MacDonald, D. R. 183, 351, 355, 356, 357, 358 MacDonald, D. R. and A. D. Scrimgouer 374 MacDonald, M. Y. 76 Magner, L. 126 Maienschein, J. 136 Maisch, I. 31 Malbon, E. S. 95 Malherbe, A. J. 380, 381, 382, 385, 386, 388 Malingrey, A.-M. 409, 413 Malunowiczowna, L. 302, 304 Manning, C. E. 301, 304, 308, 309, 311, 315 Marcovich, M. 216

Index of Modern Authors Marcus, R. and A. Wikgren 160, 166 Marganen, A. 373 Markschies, C. 437 Martin, D. B. 203, 395, 405, 410 Martin, E. 129 Martinez, D. 261 Martyn, J. L. 326, 327, 328, 404 Marxsen, W. 92 Matthews, S. 359, 361 Mayer-Schärtel, B. 160, 163 Mayhew, R. 131 McFague, S. 134 McVey, K. 457 Mees, M. 114 Meeks, W. A. 183, 405, 406, 407 Méhat, A. 418 Meinel, P. 313, 315 Merkelbach, R. 13 Merz, A. 358, 366 Metz, R. 221 Meuli, K. 229 Meyer, M. W. 184 Miles, M. R. 194, 196 Miller, S. 95 Miller, S. G. 263 Mitchell, C. W. S. 440, 441 Mitchell, M. M. 215 Möller, C. and G. Schmitt 166 Moo, D. 404, 415 Morgan. J. R. and R. Stoneman 13, 16 Morrison, J. S. 130 Moss, C. R. 201 Mount, C. 323, 344 Murray, R. 427 Musurillo, H. 189, 198 Myers, C. 61 Myers, S. E. 445, 449 Nagle, D. B. 71 Nautin, P. 186 Naveh, J. and S. Shaked 270 Needham, J. 129, 130 Netzer, E. 166 Nickelsburg, G. W. E. 54 Niehoff, M. R. 68 Niese, B. 160, 161, 166, 168, 171 Nollé, J. 231 North, H. F. 380, 382, 392 Nussbaum, M. 309

501

O’Day, G. 111 Odeberg, H. 118 Ogden, D. 250 Økland, J. 352 Omanson, R. L. 143 Onians, R. B. 137, 138, 146 Orbe, A. 344, 448 Osiek, C. 91, 92, 93, 95, 96 Osiek, C. and M. Y. MacDonald 360, 369, 395 Otto, W. 167, 168 Page, D. 269 Parker, R. 107, 248 Peek, W. 228 Perkins, J. 13, 14, 23, 33, 34, 191 Perrin, B. 291 Pervo, R. I. 28, 34, 358 Pesthy, M. 374 Petersen, S. 177, 182 Petersen, W. E. 430 Petropoulos, J. C. B. 269 Petzl, G. 234 Philips, V. 94, 95 Philonenko, M. 46, 51 Pinch, G. 261 Poirier, P.-H. 444, 449, 451 Poirier, P.-H. and Y. Tissot 443 Pomeroy, S. B. 56, 104, 107, 109 Portier-Young, A. E. 54 Presigke, F. 255 Preus, A. 130, 132 Prieur, J.-M. 363 Quaegebeur, J. 56 Quinn, J. D. 380 Rabbow, P. 300, 304 Rackham, H. 280 Ramelli, I. 412, 413 Rawson, B. 106, 107 Reardon, B. P. 13, 21 Redfield, J. M. 42, 43, 44 Reid, B. 75 Reinhartz, A. 102, 103, 110, 111, 125, 126, 127, 128, 131, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 143, 145, 149 Rengstorf, K. H. 155, 157, 160, 161, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169 Reydams-Schills, G. 205

502

Index of Modern Authors

Richardson, L. Jr. 281, 282 Ricl, M. 236 Ricoeur, P. 287 Riley, G. 451 Ritner, R. K. 261 Robert, C. 308 Robert, L. 190, 228 Robinson, J. M. and C. Heil 214 Rohde, J. 356 Rordorf, W. 217, 350, 356, 357, 374 Rose, S. 257 Rouselle, A. 105, 108 Rowlandson, J. 56 Ruether, R. R. 359 Ruiz-Montero, C. 18, 19 Rusam, D. 116 Russell, N. 180 Salisbury, J. 191, 194, 203 Sawyer, D. 119 Schalit, A. 155, 160, 165, 166, 167, 168, 173 Scheid, J. and J. Svenbro 211 Scheinberg, S. 388 Schenk, W. 112 Schleyer, D. 349 Schmeling, G. 13, 18, 43 Schneemelcher, W. 177, 178 Schofield, M. 309 Schottroff, L. 90, 91, 92, 93 Schürer, E. (G. Vermes, et al.) 155 Schüssler Fiorenza, E. 61, 79, 86, 89, 92, 93, 94, 352, 405 Scourfield, J. H. D. 303 Segal, A. F. 331 Segal, J. B. 432 Seim, T. K. 125, 126, 127, 128, 131, 135, 137, 141, 142, 143, 145 Sellew, P. 451 Severy, B. 63, 65 Shantz, C. 345 Sharf, R. H. 325, 328 Shaw, B. D. 196, 204 Sievers, J. 161 Singh, Y.-J. 126 Sissa, G. 103 Sjøberg, E. 116 Sly, D. 411 Small, J. P. 258 Smith, C. 285

Smith, J. Z. 183 Smith, M. 337, 338 Smith, W. R. 287 Snyder, J. M. 418 Solin, H. 233 Songe-Møller, V. 100 Sorabji, R. 257, 258 Spiller, E. A. 137 Spittler, J. E. 217 Städele, A. 386, 388, 393, 394 Standhartinger, A. 47, 48, 52 Stendahl, K. 405 Stephen, M. 230 Stephens, S. and J. J. Winkler 13 Stephens, S. A. 18 Stratton, K. 245 Streete, G. C. 191, 194, 197 Strelan, R. 33 Stroumsa, G. A. G. 140, 147 Strycher, E. de 218 Sumney, J. L. 415 Swain, S. 13, 18, 19, 21, 29 Swancutt, D. 410 Tabbernee, W. 371 Tannehill, R. C. 86 Tatum, J. 13, 18 Taylor, V. 88 Terian, A. 220 Tervanotko, H. 371 Testuz, M. 217 Theissen, G. 61, 62 Theobald, M. 115, 116 Thesleff, H. 386 Thompson, M. M. 112, 128, 415 Thom, J. C. 379, 381, 382 Till, K. E. 265 Tilley, M. 192, 194 Tolbert, M. A. 86, 94 Torjesen, K. J. 372, 373 Treggiari, S. 63, 64, 65, 67, 72, 75 Tress, D. M. 131 Trevett, C. 372 Trocmé, É. 88 Trumbower, J. 148, 438 Tsafrir, Y., L. De Segni, and J. Green 166 Tupet, A.-M. 230 Turner, J. D. 451 Turner, M. 438

Index of Modern Authors Tyson, J. B. 86 Van den Hoek, A. 403 Van der Horst, P. W. 129, 136 Van der Watt, J. 143 van Geytenbeek, A. C. 383 van Henten, J. W. 155, 153, 162 Van Tilborg, S. 114, 118 Vattioni, F. 432 Vérilhac, A.-M. 313 Vidal-Naquet, P. 287, 290 Vogt, K. 185 Vollenweider, S. 432 Vollmer, F. 306 Vorster, J. N. 364 Vouaux, L. 217 Vuolanto, V. 362 Wach, J. 335 Wagener, U. 397 Ward, B. 179 Ward, R. B. 215 Watson, J. S. 258 Weaver, P. and R. Carey 66 Weeden, T. 95

Wesseling, B. 18 White, J. L. 157 Whitehead, H. 333 Wilfong, T. 263 Williams, C. A. 65 Williams, F. 370, 371, 431 Williams, M. A. 147 Wills, L. 52 Wilson, R. R. 331, 332 Wimbush, V. L. 215 Winkler, G. 453 Winkler, J. J. 219 Wire, A. C. 344, 352 Wisse, F. 431 Wissowa, G. 279 Wortmann, D. 272, 273 Wright, W. 453 Yarbrough, O. L. 215 Yorke, V. W. 238 Young, R. D. 202, 420 Zanker, P. 63 Zimmermann, R. 134 Zingerle, J. 238

503

Index of Subjects Adam (in the Garden of Eden) 182–83, 186–87, 444 Adoption of children 108–9, 110 Aeneas 15 Agrippina (wife of Germanicus) 307 Alexander (son of Herod the Great) 161 Alexandra II (wife of Herod the Great and daughter of Hyrcanus II) 153, 154–58, 161, 162, 163, 165, 166–68, 171, 172–73 Amphidromia 107 Antiochus IV Epiphanes 49 Aphrodite 11, 12, 15, 22, 24–28, 33–34, 212 Apollo 100, 340 Apuleius (philosopher, friend of Pontianus) 230, 232–33, 239 Arachne and Phalanx 209–13 Ares (god) 261 Arete (goddess) 368–69 Aristippus 300 Aristoboulus III (son of Alexandra, the mother-in-law of Herod the Great) 154, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 163, 171 Aristophanes 185 Aristotimus 179 Arius Didymus 71 Artaxates 17, 20 Artemis 11, 12, 15 Asceticism 185–86, 356, 361–65, 366, 374 Asclepius 340–41 Athena 11, 12, 100, 144, 212 Athenagoras 12 Augustus (emperor) 62–68, 71, 72, 166, 167 Baptism 338, 349–50, 355, 365, 373, 436, 458 Bernice (wife of Herod Agrippa II) 20 Blandina (martyr) 418

Bulgaria 232 Callirhoe 11–12, 14–28, 42, 44, 307 Camillus 284–85 Celibacy 362–68, 374 Chaereas 11–35, 42–44 Charite 307 Chios (island) 235 Chrysippus 305–6, 311 Circe 245, 286 n. 31 City of Refuge (epithet for Aseneth) 53–55 Claudia Severa 16 Cleanthes 301–2 Cleopatra 155, 157–58, 162, 163, 166 Cloelia 312 Codex Vaticanus 92, 113 Cornelia (mother of the Gracchi) 312 Cornelia (wife of M. Livius Drusus) 312 Cornelia Galla 308 Cyprus (mother of Herod the Great) 153, 163, 166, 169, 172–73 Cyrenaic philosophers (Cyrenaics) 304– 5, 311, 315 damnatio memoriae 237 Daniel (from the book of Daniel) 47–53 Decian persecution of Christians 193 Delos 235 Demeter 233–34 Diana 280, 283 n. 21 Dickinson, Emily 126 Dido 306–7 Diocletian (emperor) 197–98 Diogenes of Apollonia 103 Dionysius 11, 12, 16, 22, 27, 28, 44 Dionysus 100 Edessa 432–33, 455 Elizabeth (mother of John the Baptist) 30

506

Index of Subjects

Epicureans 312, 318, 418 Epicurus 303–4 Epigenesis 102–3, 110–11, 126–28, 130–31, 132, 134, 135, 136 Eros (god) 26–27, 147 Eucharist 441, 445–46, 453, 458 Eulalia (martyr) 195 Euplius (martyr) 198 Eve (in the Garden of Eden) 182–83, 186–87, 370–71 Feminist hermeneutics 86, 93–95, 358– 61 Fiction (characterization in ancient) 13, 41–46 Furies 248 Gabriel (archangel) 48, 49, 51, 52 Germanicus of Carthage 230, 232–33, 239, 307 Glossolalia 323, 338 God Most High (epithet from Joseph and Aseneth) 47, 54, 56 Greek novel 11–35, 41–46 Helios (god) 259 Helvia (mother of Seneca) 313–17, 318 Hera (goddess) 101, 212 Hermes Thoth (Egyptian god) 259 Hermocrates 14 Herod the Great (74–4 B.C. E.) 153, 157, 158, 160, 161, 163, 167, 169–71, 172 Herophilus 105 Hilarianus (father of Perpetua) 191 Hippocratic writings 101 Iaǀ Sabaǀth (Hebrew god) 259 Irenaeus of Sirmium (martyr) 197–98 Jerusalem Temple 29, 30 Joanna (wife of Herod’s steward Chuza) 20, 31 Joseph (patriarch in Genesis) 52 Julia Livilla (sister of Caligula) 313 Julius Cassianus 178, 185–86, 405–6 Junia (apostle) 351 Juno Caprotina (warrior goddess) 280, 284, 287, 288 n. 37 Jupiter 293

Kore 233–34 Laodamia 307–8 Literacy in antiquity 18–20 Livia (wife of Augustus) 310–11 Lucretia 312 Lydia (cf. Acts 16:40) 30, 31 Marcia (the daughter of Cremutius Cordus) 308–313 Marcion of Sinope 403, 417 Mark Antony 154, 155–56, 158, 160– 63, 166, 173 Mary (mother of Jesus) 29, 34–35, 193, 196, 210, 217–21, 437 Mary (mother of John Mark) 30 Mary Magdalene 20, 31, 370 Megisto (wife of Aristotimus) 179 Men (Lydian god) 234 Messia (goddess) 279–84, 293 Metis 100 Michael (archangel) 49 Miriamme (daughter of Alexandra, the mother-in-law of Herod the Great) 153, 154, 156, 157–58, 160–71, 172– 73 Mithras 259 Montanists 370–72 Moses 259 Muses 228 243 Nag Hammadi literature 146–48 Octavia (sister of Augustus) 310 Octavian: see Augustus (emperor) Odysseus 248, 286 n. 31 Orestes 100 Osiris 259 Pangenesis 102, 104, 129–30, 134 Parthenogenesis 137, 139, 140, 142, 145, 146–48, 149 Pater familias 106, 108 Penelope 21 Pericles 300 Peripatetic philosophers 302–3 Persephone (or Persephassa; goddess and daughter of Demeter) 229, 243

Index of Subjects Pheroras (brother of Herod the Great) 166 Phileas (martyr) 198–99, 200, 201–2 Polla Argentaria (wife of the poet Lucan) 307 Pompeii 19 Pope Leo (I) 293 Prayer 22, 23, 25 Preformationism (homunculus theory) 101–2, 135–36 Priscilla 31 Pythagoreans 389, 393, 418 Roman (Julian) law 60, 61, 62–68, 75– 76, 80–82, 106, 108 Romulus 284, 292 Sabines 285–87, 292–93 Salome (sister of Herod the Great) 153, 163–66, 169–73 Sapphira (cf. Acts 5:1–10) 30 Sarapis (god) 236 Saturnalia 287, 288, 293–94 Selene (moon goddess) 259 Semele 100 Sessia (goddess) 279–84, 293 Shamanism 328–34

507

Socrates 196, 198, 200, 409, 419 SǀphrosynƝ 17, 41, 379–97 Sorcery (witchcraft) 227, 229, 230–34, 237–38, 239, 241–252, 255–65, 267, 268–274, 275–76, 336 Speaking in tongues: see glossolalia Spirit possession 323, 329, 330, 334, 341–45 Spurius Carvilius 73 Stephen (martyr) 419 Tabitha (cf. Acts 9:36–41) 30, 31 Thecla (martyr) 186, 195, 216–17, 355, 359–61 Theodotus (church father) 181 Tutelina (goddess) 279–86, 290–92, 293 Typhoeus 101 Valentinians 147, 417, 422, 438, 453– 54 Virginity 39, 361, 368, 375 Witchcraft: see “sorcery” Yaldabaoth 101 Zeus 100–101, 236, 287