Conceptual Blending in Early Christian Discourse: A Cognitive Linguistic Analysis of Pastoral Metaphors in Patristic Literature 9783110582970, 9783110580631, 9783110582048

Table of contents :
Acknowledgments
Contents
List of Tables
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. The aim and theoretical framework of this monograph
2. Conceptual blending in biblical exegesis
3. The cultural background of the image of the church as a flock
4. A taxonomy of blends which constitute the image of the church as a flock in early Christian discourse
5. THE FLOCK OF THE CHURCH IS THE FLOCK OF ISRAEL (FCFI)
6. SHEPHERDS ARE THE SHEPHERD (SAS)
7. The THE CHURCH IS GOD’S FLOCK (CGF) blend in the New Testament and shepherding imagery in The Shepherd of Hermas
8. The CGF blend as a conceptual instrument in early church life and practice
9. The THE CHURCH IS GOD’S FLOCK blend as a conceptual instrument in early church liturgy and theology
Conclusion
Appendix
Bibliography
Index of Subjects
Index of Ancient and Medieval Sources
Index of Biblical Sources and Pseudepigrapha

Citation preview

Aleksander Gomola Conceptual Blending in Early Christian Discourse

Aleksander Gomola

Conceptual Blending in Early Christian Discourse

A Cognitive Linguistic Analysis of Pastoral Metaphors in Patristic Literature

Produced with the support of Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland.

ISBN 978-3-11-058297-0 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-058063-1 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-058204-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliografic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliografic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: photograph by Petar Milošević. “The Good Shepherd”; Mosaic in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia. Used with permission. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Acknowledgments My sincere gratitude goes to the people at De Gruyter for their professional help in preparing this monograph. Sophie Wagenhofer took this project under her wings and provided assistance in its initial phase. Olena Gainulina and her team prepared the conceptual blend diagrams that are discussed in this monograph. And Aaron Sanborn-Overby provided excellent advice, constant support, meticulous revising of my footnotes and bibliography, and the idea for the cover design of this book. I would also like to thank Christopher Walker for a careful proofreading of my manuscript, my anonymous Reviewers for all comments and suggestions and Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, for financial support for this publication. My final and deepest thanks go to my family for their patience and support during my work on this monograph.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110582970-001

Contents List of Tables

X

List of Figures

X

Abbreviations

XI

Introduction

 . . .. .. ..

1 Overview

3

.

The aim and theoretical framework of this monograph The aim and scope of this monograph 6 10 Conceptual Blending Theory How blending works 11 Vital relations 16 17 Conceptual networks Mirror networks  Single-scope networks   Double-scope networks Conceptual integration beyond language 22 Material anchors  Blending in rituals  27 Folk models

 . . . .

Conceptual blending in biblical exegesis 31 Mirror networks 32 Single-scope networks 37 Double-scope networks 40 From conceptual networks to stable cultural metaphors

 . .

The cultural background of the image of the church as a flock 45 Conceptual blends for the church 45 The cultural-experiential basis of the image of the church as a flock 47 Shepherding experience and shepherding imagery in the 50 Bible The Hebrew Bible 51 The New Testament 53

..

. .. ..

6

43

VIII

. 

Contents

The folk model of shepherding

58

. . .

A taxonomy of blends which constitute the image of the church as a flock in early Christian discourse 60 the flock of the church is the flock of Israel 62 65 Shepherds are the shepherd The church is God’s flock 67



THE FLOCK OF THE CHURCH IS THE FLOCK OF ISRAEL

 .

SHEPHERDS ARE THE SHEPHERD

. .  . . . .  . .. .. .. .. . . .. .. . . .

(FCFI)

71

(SAS) 75 The SAS blend as the conceptual basis for the authority of members of the clergy 75 Members of the clergy, as good shepherds, should be ready to 80 die for their flocks “The true shepherd” vs “a hireling” 84

The THE CHURCH IS GOD’S FLOCK (CGF) blend in the New Testament and shepherding imagery in The Shepherd of Hermas 87 The CGF blend in Luke 12:32 and Eph 4:11. 87 89 The CGF blend in Acts 20:28 – 30 The CGF blend in 1 Peter 5:2 – 4 91 Shepherding imagery in The Shepherd of Hermas 94 The CGF blend as a conceptual instrument in early church life and practice 96 The clergy and laity as shepherds and sheep 97 The CGF blend as the conceptual basis of clerical authority 99 The CGF blend as the conceptual framework of John Chrysostom’s Six Books on the Priesthood. 103 The GCF blend in selected church orders: Didascalia Apostolorum, Apostolic Constitutions and The Apostolic Tradition 105 The bishops are rams blend 108 The teaching is feeding sheep blend 112 The the lost sheep and a straying sheep blends 121 123 The the lost sheep blend The a straying sheep blend 130 The beware of the wolf blend 132 The wolves are turned into sheep blend 140 The beware of dogs and the bishops are dogs blends 144

Contents

.  . .. .. .. .. . .

The a sick sheep blend

IX

150

The THE CHURCH IS GOD’S FLOCK blend as a conceptual instrument in early church liturgy and theology 157 The CGF blend as the conceptual basis for baptismal liturgy and 157 theology The baptism is branding sheep blend 157 168 The baptism is washing sheep blend Shorn sheep in Song 4:2 as Christians receiving baptism 169 Material anchors of the CGF blend in the context of 179 baptism God’s flock is one flock – the CGF blend as a conceptual instrument in propagating church unity 181 186 The the lost sheep is humanity blend

Conclusion Appendix

194 200

Bibliography 203 203 Primary Sources Secondary Sources 207 Index of Subjects

219

Index of Ancient and Medieval Sources

224

Index of Biblical Sources and Pseudepigrapha

228

List of Tables Table 1. The a snowflake kid Table 2. Variants of the church is a flock network in selected patristic texts discussed in this monograph

List of Figures Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure

1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: 7: 8: 9: 10: 11: 12: 13: 14:

the lord is my shepherd network Christ is Adam/Adam is Christ mirror network in Rom 5:12 – 19 Christ is Adam/Adam is Christ mirror network in Irenaeus and Tertullian Christ is Adam/Adam is Christ mirror network in Augustine the removed stone is resurrected Christ network in Gregory of Nyssa donatists are stubborn guests/lost sheep network in Augustine the flock of the church is the flock of Israel network shepherds are the shepherd network the church is God’s flock network bishops are rams network the lost sheep, a straying sheep, and a sick sheep networks beware of the wolf and wolves turned into sheep networks The BIBS network in Theodore of Mopsuestia The BIBS network in Basil of Caesarea, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Ephrem the Syrian Figure 15: shorn sheep network in Cyril of Jerusalem Figure 16: shorn sheep network in Ambrose Figure 17: shorn sheep network in Augustine Figure 18: The LSIH network in Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Cyril of Alexandria, and Pseudo-Macarius

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110582970-002

Abbreviations ANF

The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, 1885 – 1887 (Grand Rapids, MN: Eerdmans, 1951 – 1965) CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (Vienna: Tempsky, 1866 –) CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (Turnhout: Brepols, 1953 –) FC The Fathers of the Church. A New Translation (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press 1947 –) LSJ Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, rev. Henry S. Jones, 9th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) NPNF A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers in 2 series, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, 1886 – 1889 (Grand Rapids, MN: Eerdmans, 1969) PG Patrologiae graeca, ed. Jacques P. Migne (Paris, 1857 – 1886) PL Patrologiae latina, ed. Jacques P. Migne (Paris, 1844 – 1864) WSA The Works of Saint Augustine. A Translation for the 21st Century, ed. Boniface Ramsey and John E. Rotelle (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1990 –)

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110582970-003

Introduction At the end of Martin Scorsese’s Silence, a film that tells the story of the persecution of Christians in 17th-century Japan, the director’s dedication appears on the screen, reading: “For Japanese Christians and their pastors.” Scorsese’s depiction of the Christian community in shepherding terms seems so obvious to us that we barely notice it (and that is why I added italics to his dedication). Yet it should puzzle us, since out of all the major world religions only Christian communities are “flocks” led by “shepherds” or “pastors.” There are no “pastors” or “sheep” in Islam, Buddhism or modern Judaism. The fact that more than two billion people in the world (and especially more than a billion Catholics) perceive themselves as “sheep” led by their “shepherds” is a phenomenon worthy of closer examination, first of all by the cognitive linguist interested in how humans conceptualize and express in language various aspects of their experiences, including their religious identity and sense of belonging. Hence, this book is a cognitive linguistic exploration of the uniquely Christian metaphor of the church as a flock and it investigates how it was employed by Christian authors in the period of the most dynamic growth and development of Christian language and doctrine, namely in the patristic era. The main aim of the book is to demonstrate that the apparently simple metaphor of the church as a flock was in actuality a very sophisticated conceptual tool used by patristic authors to generate a number of novel meanings in Christian language. Utilizing the methodology of Conceptual Blending Theory as developed by Fauconnier and Turner, it shows how patristic authors, employing a set of stock elements taken from shepherding experience mediated through the Bible, were able to create a whole spectrum of variations on this metaphor, each with a novel meaning, much in the same way that chemists are able to create substances with diverse properties using a limited set of elements in different configurations. Due to the ubiquity of the metaphor of the church as a flock both within Christian language and without (one does not have to be a Christian to know and use this metaphor) we tend to forget that unlike many other uniquely Christian concepts (God as the father, Christ as God’s Son, baptism as a spiritual birth, and so forth) the image of the church as a flock is virtually absent from the earliest Christian texts. Paul never used it with reference to Christian communities (even though biblical scholars call some letters attributed to Paul his pastoral letters), and as a matter of fact, the image appears only once in a fully-fledged form, in Acts 20:28 – 30. Yet this very image of the church as a flock soon became a commonplace metaphor in Christian language. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110582970-004

2

Introduction

Contrary to what one might think, this metaphor was utilized not merely to distinguish between members of the clergy and members of the laity; its role was much more varied and complex. It is represented by a number of subcategories with specific functions in the patristic literature and used to conceptualize many ideas, from everyday church practice through baptismal theology to soteriology and Christology. For example, bishops’ teaching or the distribution of the sacraments is pictured as the feeding of sheep; sinners are conceptualized as “mangy sheep” that may infect other members of the flock; “false teachers” or adversaries in church polemics are regularly depicted as wolves scattering the flock; baptism is presented as washing or branding sheep; and humanity is seen as the lost sheep that is brought back by Christ to the fold of heaven. Other important functions of variants of the “church is a flock” metaphor include its role in the supersessionary claims of Christianity and in the divine authority of the clergy. In the first case, the metaphor facilitated the appropriation of the Jewish scripture as a Christian text by identifying “the flock of the church” with “the flock of Israel.” In the second case, it allowed members of the clergy, conceptualized as shepherds, to identify with Christ, the Johannine Shepherd, and to claim his authority. These and many other examples discussed in this book demonstrate the adaptability of the image of the church as a flock in patristic literature. By explaining this adaptability in cognitive-linguistic terms and exploring the mechanisms responsible for creating all of these new meanings, the book proves that the “church is a flock” metaphor played a crucial role in shaping a number of important elements of early Christian doctrine. The adoption of a cognitive linguistic perspective to study a specific conceptualization that systematically occurs in patristic literature means that the findings and conclusions of this book go beyond the interests of only one discipline. Biblical and patristic scholars, although they are undoubtedly familiar with “the church is a flock” metaphor, will learn from the book which mental processes were responsible for its varied and often ingenious use in patristic writings. To cognitive linguists this book should be interesting as it is one of the first (if not the first) comprehensive studies to demonstrate the role of conceptual integration in creating novel meanings in religious language. Last but not least, since early Christianity was a fertile breeding-ground for many novel ideas and their conceptualizations in language, this book might be interesting for anyone curious about the role of cognitive linguistic processes in the development of the Christian doctrine, from its modest beginnings as several relatively short texts in the second half of the 1st century CE, to the huge library of patristic literature four centuries later.

Overview

3

Overview The book consists of two parts. In the first part, comprised of chapters 1 through 3, I present the theoretical framework – Conceptual Blending Theory – preceded by a more detailed discussion of the aim and scope of my study. I also discuss the role of conceptual integration as a cognitive process responsible for creating novel meanings in the interpretation of the Bible, this being a prerequisite for further exploration of this process in the next part of the book, and the cultural-experiential basis of the image of the church as a flock. The second part, comprising chapters 4 to 9, is a detailed exploration of the “church is a flock” metaphor and its many variants in selected patristic writings, from the Apostolic Fathers to Gregory the Great. Chapter 1 presents in more detail the aim and the scope of the book with a brief overview of the literature on the role of conceptual integration in early Christian texts and in the Bible. This is followed by a presentation of the basic tenets and notions of Conceptual Blending Theory, of conceptual integration mechanisms, and of the different types of blends (conceptual networks). I also demonstrate how conceptual integration may manifest itself in material objects and rituals, as non-linguistic blends are also examined in my study. The chapter closes with a discussion of the folk model of shepherding that is the conceptual basis of all the networks examined in the book. Chapter 2 briefly discusses how conceptual integration is responsible for patristic authors creating novel meanings when they read the Bible. Three selected conceptual networks created by the church fathers as the result of their exegesis are examined, each representing a different category of conceptual integration. Such an examination of the role of conceptual blending in biblical interpretation is a necessary background for further analysis, since most blends explored in my study are derived from the Bible. Chapter 3 investigates the cultural-experiential basis of the image of the church as a flock by presenting the role of shepherding imagery in describing social and political relations in the Mediterranean in antiquity, as well as this imagery’s role in the Bible. Chapter 4 unravels the structures of the three specific conceptual networks identified in early Christian writings to be examined in detail in the book. I shall call them: the the flock of the church is the flock of Israel blend, shepherds are the shepherd blend, and the the church is God’s flock blends with its several subcategories. These are not the only variants of the metaphor of the church as a flock to be found in patristic literature, yet its analysis indicates that they are most popular with and most systematically used by Christian authors. I discuss constituent elements of each network, as well as their under-

4

Introduction

lying conceptual integration processes. This chapter is an introduction to the more detailed presentation of each of these networks in chapters 5 to 8, where their linguistic realizations in patristic writings and church documents are presented in connection with their roles in early Christian discourse. Chapter 5 discusses the linguistic realizations of the the flock of the church is the flock of Israel blend: a conceptual basis for perceiving the church as the new Israel and an important interpretative instrument allowing Christianity to appropriate the Hebrew Bible as its sacred text and to relate instructions addressed in the Hebrew Bible to the religious leaders of Israel as being addressed to Christian bishops. In chapter 6 the linguistic realizations of the shepherds are the shepherd blend are examined in detail. This blend, equating members of the clergy with Christ conceptualized as the shepherd in John, is the most important conceptual argument justifying their God-sanctioned authority in the church; but more than that, it also instructs the clergy on how to behave in the face of persecution, reminding them of the need to be ready to suffer and even to die for their flock, just as Christ had done. Chapters 7 and 8 explore the conceptualization most often associated with the image of the church as a flock, or the the church is God’s flock blend. In chapter 7 I discuss early instances of this blend in the New Testament and briefly mention shepherding imagery in The Shepherd of Hermas where, interestingly, the blend never occurs. Chapter 8 is devoted to the various usages of the the church is God’s flock blend in early Christian literature. I examine how the blend is used by patristic authors and in church documents to define the roles of the clergy and the laity, and to provide biblical arguments which support the mitigation of the rigours of penance in the early church. I also demonstrate the enormous conceptual potential of the blend, discussing examples of the specific cross-space mappings that underlie the new meanings created through the blend in early patristic texts. These include sheep’s grazing as a conceptualization for teaching the laity; wolves as a conceptualization of the various threats to a community; and how contagious disease operated as a conceptualization of believers’ heresy or immoral conduct. The linguistic realizations of the the church is God’s flock blend discussed in chapter 8 illustrate its role as a conceptual framework for the church’s self-identity, order, and practice; yet the blend also turns out to be responsible for shaping central aspects of Christian doctrine. Therefore, chapter 9 presents selected examples of how patristic authors use the blend as a conceptual tool to develop theological ideas related to baptism, church unity, Christology, and soteriology. I discuss how baptism is conceptualized as branding and washing sheep, and investigate the doctrinal meanings and moral instructions attached to these images in patristic literature as well as how they are reflected in early

Overview

5

Christian iconography. I also demonstrate how the blend is utilized in patristic texts to promote church unity. Finally, I show how the parable of the lost sheep becomes the conceptual basis of Gregory of Nyssa’s Christological antiArian argumentation and how it is used as an input space to create soteriological blends by many authors, from Irenaeus to Hilary. Like earlier sections of the monograph, this chapter shows that the image of the church as a flock is not a rhetorical figure or a disposable element in Christian thought but one of its conceptual cornerstones, indispensable, even if too often taken for granted.

1 The aim and theoretical framework of this monograph 1.1 The aim and scope of this monograph The patristic era is arguably the most prolific and creative period in the history of Christianity. While the patristic scholar and the theologian focus on the content of the ideas developed in that period, the cognitive linguist will be more interested in the processes underlying their formulations in language since “to some extent the debates of early Church were exercises in linguistic analysis.”¹ Yet first of all, he will seek to account for the stunning conceptual creativity of the patristic authors, who created plethora of images, metaphors or generally conceptualizations many of which have been essential elements of the Christian doctrine till today. The theory that explains creativity and novelty in language is Conceptual Blending Theory, proposed and developed by Fauconnier, Turner and other scholars (see below). According to conceptual blending or conceptual integration theory, new meanings are created in language by conceptual integration that is the creative process of combining elements grounded in our human and cultural experience. Conceptual integration is a universal cognitive-linguistic process responsible for creating novel meanings in all spheres of human experience, in everyday communication, in literature, science and politics, as well as in religion. As Christianity in the first four centuries of its history witnessed an unprecedented growth in new concepts, ideas and meanings, examining patristic literature through the lens of Conceptual Blending Theory may shed more light on how conceptual integration contributed to this process. In recent years both cognitive linguists and biblical and patristic scholars have been employing the methodology of conceptual integration theory or conceptual metaphor theory (as developed by Lakoff and Johnson²) to study Christian language and its imagery, and a number of studies have been published, some of which I mention below. I am not going to present an exhaustive examination of scholarly literature using cognitive linguistic methodology with reference to early Christian texts and will instead limit myself to some major or more recent works that will help locate this monograph within their context.  Norman Tanner, New Short History of the Catholic Church (London and New York: Burns and Oates, 2011), 60.  George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110582970-005

1.1 The aim and scope of this monograph

7

The role of conceptual integration with reference to particular Jewish, Gnostic and early Christian writings has been explored by the biblical scholars Bonnie Howe, Mary Therese DesCamp, and Hugo Lundhaug, among others. Howe has examined conceptual metaphors and conceptual integration in 1 Peter with respect to its moral teaching;³ DesCamp has demonstrated how conceptual integration was responsible for the reinterpretation and reshaping of biblical stories in Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum;⁴ Lundhaug has analyzed the role of conceptual blending in rituals on the basis of two gnostic texts – the Gospel of Philip and the Exegesis of the Soul. ⁵ All three researchers show how conceptual integration allowed the authors of the texts in question to create novel meanings and develop their ideas. Conceptual blending theory has also been for some time an important research perspective informing socio-rhetorical studies of the earliest Christian texts, as initiated by Vernon K Robbins.⁶ More recently, several scholars have examined the role of conceptual integration in creating novel meanings in biblical texts (Jewish and Christian alike) and in biblical translation.⁷ There have not been, however, any serious attempts to explore the role of conceptual integration in later (i. e. patristic) Christian texts.⁸ Cognitive linguists agree that Christian figurative language is an example of “pervasive aspect of human thought and language that is part and parcel of

 Bonnie Howe, Because You Bear This Name: Conceptual Metaphor And the Moral Meaning of 1 Peter (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2006).  Mary Therese DesCamp, Metaphor and Ideology. Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum and Literary Methods through a Cognitive Lens, Biblical Interpretation Series (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2007).  Hugo Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth: Cognitive Poetics and Transformational Soteriology in the Gospel of Philip and the Exegesis on the Soul (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2010).  See, e. g. Vernon K. Robbins, “Conceptual Blending and Early Christian Imagination,” in Explaining Christian Origins and Early Judaism: Contributions from Cognitive and Social Science, ed. Petri Luomannen, Ilkka Pyysiäinen, and Risto Uro (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2007), 161– 95; Robert H. von Jr Thaden, “A Cognitive Turn: Conceptual Blending within a Socio-Rhetorical Framework’, in Sex, Christ, and Embodied Cognition: Paul’s Wisdom for Corinth (Dorset: Deo Publishing, 2012), 37– 75. This approach has also been adopted in a series of Sociorhetorical Exploration Commentaries published by the Society of Biblical Literature Press.  Bonnie Howe and Joel B. Green, eds., Cognitive Linguistic Explorations in Biblical Studies (Berlin/Munich/Boston: De Gruyter, 2014).  Ronald Heine writes of “blends” in patristic texts, yet he uses this term in an ordinary sense not as a technical term belonging to the Conceptual Blending Theory, Ronald E. Heine, Reading the Old Testament with the Ancient Church: Exploring the Formation of Early Christian Thought, Evangelical Ressourcement: Ancient Sources for the Church’s Future, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007), 115, 134, 135, and passim.

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1 The aim and theoretical framework of this monograph

human rationality,”⁹ yet they seem to have devoted less attention to it and to its conceptual potential than have biblical scholars. Although they have explored metaphors for God and the concept of Trinity, elements of the biblical narrative, Jesus’ teaching in the gospels, the life-as-a-journey metaphor in the Judeo-Christian tradition or selected examples of typological exegesis,¹⁰ it seems that their interest in these undoubtedly fascinating linguistic phenomena has been limited. Even though they often emphasize the role of conceptual blending and related processes that lie behind a substantial part of Christian language, cognitive linguists prefer literature or political rhetoric as the object of their inquiry.¹¹

 Barbara Dancygier and Eve Sweetser, Figurative Language, Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2014), 209.  Antonio Barcelona, “The Metaphorical and Metonymic Understanding of the Trinitarian Dogma,”International Journal of English Studies 3, no. 1 (2003): 1– 27; Mary Therese DesCamp and Eve Sweetser, “Metaphors for God: Why and How Do Our Choices Matter for Humans? The Application of Contemporary Cognitive Linguistics Research to the Debate on God and Metaphor,” Pastoral Psychology 53, no. 3 (2005): 207– 38; Zoltán Kövecses, “The Biblical Story Retold,” in Cognitive Linguistics. Convergence and Expansion, ed. Milena Zic Fuchs, Stefan Th. Gries, and Mario Brdar (Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co, 2011), 325 – 54; Eve Sweetser, “An Eye for an Eye versus Turning the Other Cheek: Moral Accounting in the Gospel of Matthew,” 2005, https://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/Sweetser_Eye.pdf; George Lakoff and Mark Turner, More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), 7– 10; and Aleksander Gomola, “Conceptual Blending with moral accounting Metaphors in Christian Exegesis,” Cognitive Semantics 2, no. 2 (2016): 213 – 36. Most recently Kövecses refers very briefly to the metaphorical representation of Jesus as the good shepherd, Zoltán Kövecses, Where Metaphors Come from: Reconsidering Context in Metaphor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 56.  See, e. g. Lakoff and Turner, More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor; Mark Turner, The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Andreas Musolff, Metaphor and Political Discourse: Analogical Reasoning in Debates about Europe (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2004); and George Lakoff, The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist’s Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics (New York: Viking, 2008). Some researchers, however, turn to modern Christian rhetoric, see e. g. Seana Coulson, “Reasoning and Rhetoric: Conceptual Blending in Political and Religious Rhetoric,” in Research and Scholarship in Integration Processes, ed. Elżbieta Oleksy and Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (Łódź: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2003), 59 – 88; Seana Coulson, “Conceptual Blending in Thought, Rhetoric and Ideology’, in Cognitive Linguistics: Current Applications and Future Perspectives, ed. Gittie Kristiansen et al. (Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2006), 187– 208. It is important to remember, however, that cognitive linguistics made Christian theologians reconsider its ramifications for theology; see, e. g. Robert Massons, Without Metaphor, No Saving God: Theology after Cognitive Linguistics (Leuven: Peeters, 2014); John Sanders, Theology in the Flesh: How Embodiment and Culture Shape the Way We Think about Truth, Morality, and God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016).

1.1 The aim and scope of this monograph

9

As a result, there has so far been no wide-ranging study of early Christian language proposed by a cognitive linguist. From all of this it follows that cognitive linguistics has paid only lip service to Christian language while biblical scholarship, even though it has demonstrated the role of conceptual integration in this language, has focused only on isolated texts from the earliest decades of Christianity. Yet, if we wish to understand the global role of conceptual integration in the later decades and centuries of Christianity we need a bigger picture, one that will show the role of conceptual integration within the larger corpus of patristic literature, when the process of creating new meanings and ideas was most dynamic; and it is in this direction that the monograph goes. Instead of focusing on one text or one author, it examines, through the lens of Conceptual Blending Theory, the role of one specific conceptualization of the church as a flock in a wide spectrum of selected patristic writings: from the Apostolic Fathers to Augustine. I argue in the monograph that the image of the church as a flock should be perceived as a complex network of interrelated conceptual networks that, once created, were taken over and elaborated upon by subsequent Christian authors who modified them and adopted them to their doctrinal, pastoral or polemical needs. Such blends, in order to be meaningful and useful in the Christian discourse, were required to exhibit some novelty, yet at the same time they needed to be intrinsically consistent and to correspond with one another. The Conceptual Blending Theory provides both a theoretical background for the explanation of how this was achieved, as well as a methodology for their identification, classification and analysis. The main advantage of the broad approach taken in this study, focusing as it does not on one but on many texts, is that it allows us to see the regularity of specific cognitive-linguistic processes underlying the conceptualizations created by the patristic authors and to recognize that the same conceptual network – like the same chemical element found in various compounds – is responsible for producing a great number of novel meanings crucial for the development of many aspects of Christian doctrine: from ecclesiology, through baptismal theology and penitential practices, all the way to soteriology and Christology. In other words, it provides ample evidence that conceptual integration processes employing shepherding imagery played a central role in the development of a distinct and unique thought system that underpinned the Western civilization for almost two millennia and is still the system billions of people in the world identify with. The monograph is a study of conceptual integration as the meaning creation mechanism in patristic literature, and although I attempt to place the metaphors for the church as a flock in the broader context of early Christian doctrine and practice, my approach is that of a cognitive-linguist, not a biblical or patristic

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1 The aim and theoretical framework of this monograph

scholar. This means that many issues pertinent to a more thorough, biblical or patristic study of a particular author or text, are necessarily ignored in my analysis. For the same reason, many patristic texts that are rarely placed next to each other in patristic scholarship may be grouped together in this study if they exhibit similarity with regard to the conceptual networks they include. Since pastoral imagery with all its elements is generally faithfully rendered in English translation and since I wish to make this study more accessible to cognitive linguists and other non-biblical scholars, I refer to the original Greek or Latin versions of the patristic texts only when it is necessary.¹² There are – to paraphrase T.S. Eliot – “passage(s) not taken” in this monograph and at least two must be mentioned. First, I have not analyzed the conceptual networks identified in patristic texts in the context of rhetoric techniques employed by church fathers and in the context of rhetorical education of many of them, for the simple reason that this would demand a separate study based on the theory and categories of classical rhetoric. It must be said, however, that such a study would be a significant extension and completion of my monograph, and would show in more detail the role of conceptual integration in early church language. Second, I have not aimed at a more quantitative analysis of the metaphor of the church as a flock with regard to its frequency, distribution in patristic texts or its popularity with some authors. It is not, therefore, a corpus study of the presence of this metaphor in patristic texts, since it seeks first of all to demonstrate its role as a conceptual tool in early Christian literature. On the other hand, because my aim was to examine the presence of the image of the church as a flock in patristic literature as extensively as possible, I take into account all of its genres: (homilies, doctrinal and exegetical treatises, letters, polemical texts, church orders, and so on) and all major Eastern and Western authors.

1.2 Conceptual Blending Theory The methodological framework of this monograph is Conceptual Blending Theory or Conceptual Integration Theory. Since, as we have seen above, this theory is a well-established approach in biblical and early Christian studies, there is no need to provide a detailed presentation of the theory, and instead I will provide below only a brief overview of its most important tenets and claims, all of which are essential in the context of this monograph and which follow, first of all Fau-

 I focus mainly on Greek and Latin fathers with only occasional references to Syriac authors.

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connier’s, Turner’s, and Coulson’s theoretical approaches.¹³ First, I discuss the blending or the conceptual integration process and demonstrate its role in creating novel meanings in language. Then I examine how selected vital relations are compressed in blends and how in this way blends achieve human scale. Next I show how blending manifests itself in three types of blends or conceptual networks of increasing levels of complexity. Since conceptual blending is a cognitive process that goes beyond language I also briefly examine the material anchors of blending and its role in human rituals, as these nonlinguistic aspects of blending with shepherding imagery are also analyzed in this monograph. Finally, I discuss in more detail the folk model of shepherding that is the organizing frame of all the conceptual networks discussed in my study.

1.2.1 How blending works Conceptual Blending Theory informs us that one of the greatest mental capacities of humans is conceptual blending or the ability of creating new mental structures in our minds and thus constructing novel meanings in language and beyond. Ubiquitous to all domains of our lives, conceptual blending plays a crucial role in religious language, which, by its very nature, generates new

 The most exhaustive presentation of Conceptual Blending Theory is still the classic work by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities (New York: Basic Books, 2002). See also Seana Coulson, Semantic Leaps: Frame-Shifting and Conceptual Blending in Meaning Construction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). For more basic presentations, see e. g. G Fauconnier and Mark Turner, “Conceptual Integration Networks,” Cognitive Science 22, no. 2 (1998): 133 – 87; Joseph E. Grady, Todd Oakley, and Seana Coulson, “Blending and Metaphor,” in Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics: Selected Papers from the 5th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Amsterdam, 1997, ed. Raymond W. Gibbs Jr. and Gerard Steen (Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1999), 101– 24; and Seana Coulson and Todd Oakley, “Blending Basics,” Cognitive Linguistics 11, no. 3 – 4 (2001): 175 – 96. Furthermore, the works mentioned earlier provide presentations of Conceptual Blending Theory in the context of their specific research, and this is another reason why it does not seem necessary to repeat in detail many things other researchers have already said. See e. g. DesCamp, Metaphor and Ideology. Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum and Literary Methods through a Cognitive Lens, 24– 41; Howe, Because You Bear This Name: Conceptual Metaphor And the Moral Meaning of 1 Peter, 84– 98; Vernon K. Robbins, “Conceptual Blending and Early Christian Imagination,” in Explaining Christian Origins and Early Judaism: Contributions from Cognitive and Social Science, ed. Petri Luomannen, Ilkka Pyysiäinen, and Risto Uro (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2007), 161– 95; and Beth M. Stovell, Mapping Metaphorical Discourse in the Fourth Gospel: John’s Eternal King (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2012), 44– 48.

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meanings and conceptualizations resulting from the religious experiences of believers. Blending is a complex process involving a series of unconscious mental operations. Below I demonstrate how it works, following Fauconnier and Turner¹⁴ but using as an example a different blend from those discussed in their book, namely the the Lord is my shepherd network that opens Psalm 23 (Figure 1). First of all, we must note that blending or conceptual integration assumes that there are mental spaces in our minds or “domains that we set up as we talk or listen, and that we structure with elements, roles, strategies and relations.”¹⁵ Such mental spaces in our working memory are “conceptual packets”¹⁶ constructed continuously and providing cognitive structure as we think or use language. Most importantly, one of the most basic feature of human cognition is our ability to create cognitive connections between different mental spaces, and this ability underpins all conceptual integration processes.¹⁷ For blending to work there must be at least two mental spaces, and these are called input spaces. In my example one input space contains “the shepherd” and “a sheep” and its organizing frame is the relationship between “the shepherd”; the other input space contains God (“the Lord”) and “me” and its organizing frame is the relationship between these two elements. These two input spaces will always share some structure in the blend, a sort of lowest common (structural) denominator that is represented by a generic space. In the case of the blend in question, the generic space of the blend contains two elements that are in close relation to one another, with one dependent on the other. Conceptual integration presupposes cross-space mapping between input spaces, or in other words matching elements from both input spaces and creating counterpart connections between them. In our example there are counterpart connections between “the Lord” and “the shepherd” and between “me” and “a sheep” respectively. Then the organizing frames (or some aspect of the frame) either from one or from both input spaces are projected onto a new space known in the theory as the blend space. This process is always selective and knowing how the “the Lord is my shepherd” metaphor is used in the religious context, we can see that many elements from the “shepherd-sheep” frame are not projected onto the blend

 Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 44– 50.  Gilles Fauconnier, Mental Spaces: Aspects of Meaning Construction in Natural Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 1.  Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 40.  Eve Sweetser and Gilles Fauconnier, “Cognitive Links and Domains: Basic Aspects of Mental Space Theory,” in Spaces, Worlds, and Grammar, ed. Gilles Fauconnier and Eve Sweetser (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 1– 28.

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Generic space

• Entity A • Entity B dependent on A Input space 1

Input space 2

• The shepherd [protects and • takes care of a sheep] • A sheep [depends on and • trusts the shepherd]

ANALOGY ANALOGY

• The Lord • • Me •

• The Lord is my shepherd and I am his sheep. He takes care of me and protects me. [UNIQUENESS]

Blend Figure 1: the Lord is my shepherd network

space, for instance the fact that shepherds in reality sooner or later sell or kill their sheep. Since the aim of the “the Lord is my shepherd” metaphor is to evoke the positive image of God, what actually is projected is the shepherd’s care for a sheep and the sheep’s trust in the shepherd. More importantly, the structure of the blend space, or emergent structure, is different from the structures in the input spaces – or at least from one of them – and brings with it a novel meaning: in our example God, who was not a shepherd in the first input space, becomes “the shepherd” while “the sheep” from the other input space ceases to be a sheep and becomes a human being. Depend-

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ing on which organizing frame is projected onto the blend space from the input space(s), we can distinguish several types of blends or networks (see 1.2.3). The novel meaning that arises in the emergent structure is the result of a three-stage process of composition, completion, and elaboration. Composition is related to cross-space mapping and through this process counterpart elements from the input spaces may become one element in the blend; in our case “God” becomes “the shepherd.” But composition alone cannot account for the conceptual richness of blends; this is first of all the result of completion (often called pattern completion), wherein elements and structures are introduced to the blend that are derived from the background knowledge of those who are in the first place constructing the blends. (From this it follows that this background knowledge will also be to a great extent cultural knowledge, not necessarily shared by members of other cultures). Completion plays a key role in conceptual integration, transforming blends into flexible conceptual tools in our reasoning. In the “the Lord is my shepherd blend” the background/cultural knowledge of the prototypical relationship between the shepherd and his sheep that is represented by the folk model of shepherding (see 3.4) allows “me” to conceptualize God as someone who first of all protects and takes care of “me” and to perceive “me” as someone who trusts in God like a sheep trusts in its shepherd. This means that this blend, (as well as blends in general), is not a predicative, truth-conditional statement (like “God is omnipotent”). On the contrary, it activates the rich, evocative pattern of the shepherd-sheep relationship in the minds of those who use the blend. How rich it is and how many novel meanings patristic authors were able to create by means of this apparently simple metaphor I demonstrate later in this study. The final stage of conceptual integration is elaboration, or “running the blend”¹⁸ when language users elaborate a blend using their imagination, in accordance with its organizing frame. The author of Psalm 23 elaborates the “the Lord is my shepherd” blend in verses 2 through 4 writing that God makes him “lie down in green pastures,” leads him “beside quiet waters,” and guides and protects “with his rod and his staff.”¹⁹ Elaboration explains the conceptual power of blends since “there are always many different possible lines of elaboration and (…) we can run the blend in as many alternative directions as we choose.”²⁰ Indeed, as will be demonstrated later, patristic authors systematically elaborated blends with shepherding imagery, presenting for example Christians  Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 48.  All biblical quotations, unless marked differently, are taken from New Revised Standard Version.  Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 48 – 49.

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as sheep grazing on the pastures of the holy scriptures (8.2) or bishops as shepherds that must sometimes resort to the lash to force the wandering sheep back into the fold (8.3.1). In our presentation of blends we have to keep in mind that they are mental structures that manifest themselves mainly through language. In other words, all quotations from Psalm 23 presented above are – precisely speaking – linguistic manifestations or realizations of one specific blend, not blends themselves. Similarly, all excerpts from patristic writings that will be examined in this study are also linguistic realizations of blends created by patristic authors in their minds. Blends may also have non-linguistic forms and may manifest themselves through other semiotic channels like images, by material objects or by rituals (see 1.2.4). Discussing further aspects of blending as a cognitive process, Fauconnier and Turner draw our attention to its crucial role in integrating events.²¹ If somebody says that he “digested the book” this is not only the blend in which reading is conceptualized as eating and information as food but also an integration of a series of events: picking up the book, reading it, thinking about it, etc.²² This property of blending is also visible in the linguistic material examined in this study, for example in the baptism is branding sheep blend where the whole baptismal liturgy as a series of related but different events is encapsulated in the idea of “branding sheep” (9.1.1). Another important aspect of blends is the fact that although by definition they are novel conceptualizations, they may become in time entrenched conceptual structures that are shared and taken for granted by a whole community of language users.²³ Again, the blends examined in this monograph will illustrate this phenomenon. The novel way of conceptualizing the community of believers as sheep with their leaders as shepherds in the early decades of Christianity quickly became an entrenched conceptualization and – as Scorsese’s dedication of his film suggests – it remains a uniquely Christian metaphor not used by other religions.²⁴

 Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 49, Fauconnier and Turner, “Conceptual Integration Networks,” 133 – 87.  Fauconnier and Turner, “Conceptual Integration Networks,” 158.  Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 49, Fauconnier and Turner, “Conceptual Integration Networks,”161.  Although the metaphor is also present in Judaism it is not a primary metaphor in this religion and that is why I am ignoring it here.

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1.2.2 Vital relations Blends allow us not only to create novel meanings. They are also condensed conceptual structures that are easy to understand and control and this condensation is the result of the compression of what Fauconnier and Turner call “vital relations.” Vital relations are conceptual relations that exist in an “outer space” or the space between the inputs and are compressed into “inner space” relations within a blend.²⁵ Among many vital relations that get compressed in blends the most common are Representation, Time, Space, and Part-Whole. When compressed, they are easier to grasp mentally and in this way blends achieve what Fauconnier and Turner call human scale.²⁶ For example, there is an “outer space” vital relation of representation between an actor and a character from a play (an actor is a representation of a character, and are not themselves in reality the character), yet when the “actor” input space and “the character” input space are blended, i. e. when we see the actor on the stage, this relation is compressed into what Fauconnier and Turner call uniqueness²⁷ and we can say of the actor: “Hamlet is dying.”²⁸ Similarly, a traditional synecdoche is seen in this perspective as the “inner space” compression of the part-whole vital relation that exists in the “outer space.”²⁹ One compression common to all of the blends discussed in this study is the compression of the vital relation of representation between bishops and shepherds on the one hand and ordinary Christians and sheep on the other: whereas in the input spaces of blends with shepherding imagery bishops and shepherds as well as ordinary Christians and sheep are all distinctive entities, in the blend space this distinctiveness is compressed to uniqueness and the bishops are shepherds and likewise the lay people are sheep in the blend. Similarly, in the shepherds are the shepherd³⁰ blend (sections 4.2 and 6) that is the conceptual tool that justifies the authority of members of the clergy as Christ’s representatives, the “outer space” vital relation of representation is compressed into “inner space” uniqueness in the blend and members of the clergy are identified with Christ to such an extent that they are regarded as acting as Christ or – as the later Roman Catholic theology put it – in persona Christi. Another common compression in the blends discussed in this study concerns the part-whole vital re-

     

Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 92. Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 30, 92, 94, and passim. Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think , 92. Cf. Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 97. Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 97. Here and henceforth I denote blends with small caps.

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lation compressed into uniqueness: a given Christian community is frequently identified with the whole church. There are also other compressions typical of the specific categories of blends and I examine each separately later in this study.

1.2.3 Conceptual networks Depending on what organizing frames or related elements get projected into the blend space and which is dominant, one may distinguish four types of blends or networks of an increasing level of complexity: simplex networks, mirror networks, single-scope networks, and double-scope networks.³¹ Since the first category of blends is not taken into account in my analysis, I will not discuss it here and concentrate instead on the three other categories.

Mirror networks Mirror networks are blends with two input spaces that share the same organizing frame and this is also the organizing frame of the blend. An example of a mirror network discussed by Fauconnier and Turner is the regatta blend, where two sailing ships covering the same distance (from San Francisco to Boston) in different times (one in 1853, the other in 1993) are presented in the blend as racing with one another through the compression of the vital relation of time.³² The generic space of the blend contains two ships sailing from one port to another. The organizing frames of both input spaces are identical and have a ship sailing from San Francisco to Boston, thus resulting in a very close cross-space mapping in the composition of the blend (in other words, the mapping is not as selective as in the two other types of networks to be discussed below). Note that to this moment both ships are seen as sailing independently of one another and it is pattern completion or the notion of a race introduced to the blend, that changes the perspective and now they are racing with one another. This new perspective, achievable only through conceptual integration, allows us to say that “Great American II is four and a half days ahead of Northern Lights.”³³ Mirror networks played a key role as conceptualization tools in early Christian typological exegesis, allowing Christian authors to juxtapose characters and

 Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 120.  Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 63 – 65.  Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 63.

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episodes from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament and to interpret them as types and antitypes respectively (see 2.1). Similarly, in this monograph the typological interpretation of the church as the antitype of Israel or the flock of the church is the flock of Israel blend is a mirror network, although more complex than the regatta blend, because it is a “blend within a blend”: in both input spaces we have not actual human communities but communities conceptualized as sheep with their leaders as shepherds. The organizing frame of sheep under the care of shepherds is identical in both input spaces and as a result the church is equated with the people of Israel in the blend and becomes in this way “the New Israel.” As we will see later, this blend, by connecting the church with Israel in the minds of believers is not only one of a number of conceptual tools and strategies through which Christianity could appropriate the Hebrew Bible, but it also lent biblical authority to early Christian ecclesiology. Using the blend as an interpretative key, the church fathers were able to see in every mention of Israel conceptualized as a flock of sheep in the Hebrew Bible a reference to the church also conceptualized as a flock of sheep, as demonstrated in detail in chapter 5.

Single-scope networks Single-scope networks are blends with different organizing frames in each input space where only one of the frames is projected onto the blend space and becomes its organizing frame. One such single-scope network – the the lord is my shepherd blend – we have seen above. Another example of a single-scope blend, provided by Turner, is that of a cartoon showing presidential candidates in the USA as gunslingers at a shoot-out³⁴ where the organizing frame of the presidential campaign is replaced in the blend by the organizing frame of a duel. Although different, the frames from each input space must have something in common. This shared element(s) or – to use a term from classical rhetoric – tertium comparationis – may already be present in both frames but it is possible for it to be arbitrarily introduced into the blend, thus resulting in an unexpected comparison. The organizing frames in the an American presidential campaign is a duel blend, though different, exhibit a number of similarities: both candidates, like real gunslingers, are determined to eliminate the opponent; only one of them will prove to be the winner; often, although not necessarily, they are men, and so forth. Note also the cultural background presupposed in

 Mark Turner, “Frame Blending,” in Frames, Corpora, and Knowledge Representation, ed. Rema Rossini Favretti (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2008), 15.

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the blend: the candidates are gunslingers from the Wild West and are not, for example, presented as sumo wrestlers. On the other hand, consider John Donne’s blend from his famous Meditation XVII where he conceptualizes death as an act of translation and heaven as a library.³⁵ Donne’s single-scope network actually forces upon us a specific blending of two domains that we have previously regarded as unrelated and his tertium comparationis is highly arbitrary. An important ramification of the “clashing”³⁶ of organizing frames in a single-scope network is that the projection of elements from the dominant organizing frame onto the blend space is much more selective than in the case of mirror networks. As a result, certain elements of the folk model of shepherding that is the organizing frame of all of the blends discussed in this study are never mapped onto the church input space; thus we never find them in the blends (see 1.3). Single-scope networks illustrate arguably the most fascinating aspect of blending, namely the possibility of creating source-target metaphors or in other words the possibility of depicting one thing in terms of another thing.³⁷ In this way language users may create new meanings and develop new ideas, doctrines and religious systems. Most of the blends discussed in this study are single-scope networks and they illustrate how such novel meanings and ideas were created in Christianity; how patristic authors employed them not only to define the roles of the clergy and the laity but to conceptualize abstract elements of Christian doctrine from baptism to soteriology and Christology.

 “God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for that library where every book shall lie open to one another,” John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions: Together with Death’s Duel (New York: Andesite Press, 2017), 69. By the way, Turner’s identification of the Grim Reaper with Christ “harvesting” souls (Mark Turner, Reading Minds. The Study of English in the Age of Cognitive Science (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 222) is also highly arbitrary and does not seem to be confirmed by standard Christian imagery.  Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 113 – 39.  This means that conceptual metaphors as defined by Lakoff and Johnson (Metaphors We Live by) that are object of interest of biblical scholars mentioned earlier (e. g. Bonnie Howe, Because You Bear This Name: Conceptual Metaphor And the Moral Meaning of 1 Peter) should be understood as culturally stable single-scope networks and are classified as such by Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 127– 132.

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Double-scope networks Turner notes that “single-scope networks sit atop a very slippery slope and slide easily into double-scope structure,”³⁸ by which he means that in many if not most cases, when the organizing frames of the input spaces clash, it is difficult to speak of pure single-scope networks, as elements of all of the organizing frames may be projected onto the blend, even if one of these organizing frames dominates. An example of a double-scope network is a blend conceptualizing frozen human embryos as “snowflake kids,” a conceptual tool used by Christian organizations in pro-life rhetoric.³⁹ The a snowflake kid network has the following input spaces: the snowflake space, the past space and the present space (Table 1).

Table 1: The a snowflake kid⁴⁰ Snowflake space

Past Space

Blended Space

Present Space

Snowflake (s) Frozen (s) Unique (s)

Embryo (e) Frozen (e) Unique (e) Organism (e)

SnowflakeKid (sk) Frozen (sk) Unique (sk) Person (sk)

Kid (k) Unique (k) Person (k)

In the snowflake space two features of snowflakes are brought to the foreground: frozenness and uniqueness and the snowflake (s) from the snowflake input space is mapped onto the embryo (e) in the past input space via an analogy. At the same time the embryo (e) from the past space is linked to the kid (k) in the present space. (These mappings are marked by letters in brackets; a blank cell signifies the absence of a mapping). The two clashing frameworks are the past space framework that has a frozen embryo as a unique organism and the present space framework that has a kid conceptualized as a unique person. Elements of the frameworks from these input spaces are projected onto the blend: uniqueness from each input space; frozenness from the snowflake space and past space, and being a person from the present space; an emergent blend contains “a snowflake kid” that is frozen, unique and – most importantly – is a person.⁴¹ Thus, as a result of blending, frozen embryos cease to be merely clusters of

   

Turner, “Frame Blending,” 16. Coulson, “Conceptual Blending in Thought, Rhetoric and Ideology,” 190 – 191. Coulson, “Conceptual Blending in Thought, Rhetoric and Ideology,” 190. Coulson, “Conceptual Blending in Thought, Rhetoric and Ideology,” 190 – 91.

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cells and potential objects of scientific research and may be referred to as “tiny humans” or “siblings” kept in “frozen orphanages.”⁴² Also in the blends discussed in this study the organizing frame of the shepherding input space often clashes with the organizing frame(s) projected from other input space(s), which means that such blends are double-scope networks. This double perspective is well attested in the linguistic material analyzed in this study and its prime example may be the patristic authors’ depiction of Christians as “rational sheep” (logika probata) or “spiritual sheep” (pneumatika probata).⁴³ These illogical or at least oxymoronic terms, if one sees them in the perspective of truth-value statements, reveal their conceptual potential in a cognitive linguistic perspective, because depending on their needs (rhetorical, doctrinal, ideological, etc.) the church fathers may choose to highlight either the rationality of ordinary Christians (to emphasize, for example, that they are responsible for their deeds) or their being sheep (to remind them that they must follow their shepherds – or, rather, the members of the clergy). In the blends discussed in this study one often notices the sliding of singlescope networks into double-scope structures as noticed by Turner, sometimes even within the same sentence. For example, Leo the Great warns his audience that “[the devil] unwearied and ever watchful, if he should find any sheep carelessly wandering from the sacred flock, he would take them captive and lead them by the steep slopes of pleasure and the by-paths of luxury into the lodgings of death.”⁴⁴ While the first part of the sentence is a single-scope network with a sinning Christian separated from his community conceptualized as a sheep and thus becoming easy prey for a predator (the devil), “pleasure” and “luxury” in the second part of the sentence are taken from the organizing frame of human, not ovine experience.

 Coulson, “Conceptual Blending in Thought, Rhetoric and Ideology,” 191– 92.  Logika probata, e. g. Gregory of Nyssa, Homily on the Song of Songs, in Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies 15 on the Song of Songs, trans. Richard A. Norris (Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2012), 466, 467; Pneumatika probata, Gregory of Nyssa, The Making of Man PG 44:240D. Cf. “sheep of the logos” in Clement of Alexandria’s Hymn to Christ the Saviour, Annewies van den Hoek, “Hymn of the Holy Clement to Christ the Saviour: Clement of Alexandria, Pedagogue 3.12.101.4,” in Prayer from Alexander to Constantine. A Critical Anthology, ed. Mark Kiley (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 301; “rational sheep,” John Chrysostom, Homily on Genesis 57 33, in John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 46 – 67, trans. Robert C. Hill, FC 87 (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 149. See also Cyril of Alexandria’s, Commentary on the Twelve Prophets, cited in chapter 5.  Leo the Great, Sermon 40, 2, in Sermons, by Leo the Great, trans. Jane P. Freeland and Agnes J. Conway, FC 93 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 173.

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All the instances of blends with shepherding imagery discussed above were conceptual networks with two input spaces; however it is not always the case. An example of a double-scope network with three input spaces in the material collected in this study is found in Cyril of Alexandria’s interpretation of the parable of the lost sheep in soteriological terms or the the lost sheep is humanity blend where the biblical account of the Fall from input space 1 is combined in the blend with the scenario of the parable of the lost sheep from input space 2, which is in turn identified with humanity saved by Christ in input space 3 (see 9.3). We must emphasize again that blends, in order to be efficient generators of new meanings, must achieve a human scale; that is, they must present situations with familiar frames that are easily comprehended by humans.⁴⁵ The blends analyzed in this study meet this condition and this explains, among other things, why they were such useful conceptual tools for patristic authors.

1.2.4 Conceptual integration beyond language Fauconnier and Turner note that conceptual integration is not limited to language and may involve objects (“material anchors”)⁴⁶ and human rituals.⁴⁷ Since in the material examined later in this study we find both material anchors and rituals connected with blends with shepherding imagery, a brief presentation of the conceptual integration processes that go beyond language is in order.

Material anchors Discussing “material anchors” for blends, Fauconnier and Turner draw upon the work of Hutchins, who demonstrates the role of material objects in conceptual blending.⁴⁸ First of all, it is important to note that to Hutchins material anchors, whether objects from the natural world or manmade artifacts, are not blends themselves but material input spaces of blends. However, Fauconnier and Turner expand his perspective and identify such material anchors with any “objects that prompt for elaborate conceptual integration networks”;⁴⁹ in other words,

 Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 312.  Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 195 – 207.  Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 80 – 81.  Edwin Hutchins, “Material Anchors for Conceptual Blends,” Journal of Pragmatics 37, no. 10 (2005): 1555 – 77.  Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 214.

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it seems that material anchors are to them not only input spaces of blends but may also be material representations of whole blends.⁵⁰ While not rejecting this perspective, Hutchins prefers to distinguish between “material anchors” as material input spaces and material structures representing conceptual structures.⁵¹ I am adopting his approach and the “material anchors” discussed below are material input spaces of blends. An example provided by Hutchins of a blend with a material input space is a line of people queuing for something. Hutchins notices that people forming a line do not always constitute a queue: for example soldiers standing at attention in formation form a line but not a queue.⁵² To turn a line of people into a queue, a specific conceptual structure viz. a notion of a sequential order must be mapped onto this line and this directional ordering may be represented as a trajector in the Langackerian sense of the term.⁵³ By blending a line of people (a material input space) with a trajector, we get a queue: a line where one may distinguish its beginning, its end and its direction. Another classic example of a blend with a material anchor that Hutchins examined is a clockwork dial where the flow of time as an abstract notion is represented by the circular movements of the hands of the watch.⁵⁴ By the same token, a dial gauge is a blend with a dial as its material input space onto which one maps various abstract quantities, such as pressure, temperature, humidity etc. Needless to say that there may be two dials that look identical, yet

 Hutchins, “Material Anchors for Conceptual Blends,” 1572.  Hutchins, “Material Anchors for Conceptual Blends,” 1572.  Actually, Hutchins’ example does not seem most appropriate, since soldiers in a line stand next to each other, not one after another. A better example seems to be a line of people on a crowded underground train, that most often stand one after another, not forming a queue (they do not wait to “be served” in any way and it often happens – as many of us know too well – that passengers from the middle of such a line try to get off the vehicle while others remain at their places).  Ronald W. Langacker, Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, vol. 1, Theoretical Prerequisites, Foundations of Cognitive Grammar Theoretical Prerequisites (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), 131– 42.  Hutchins, “Material Anchors for Conceptual Blends,” 1571. Cf. Fauconnier and Turner’s discussion of “the blended cyclic day,” Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, “Rethinking Metaphor,” in The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought, ed. Raymond W. Gibbs Jr. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 53 – 66. To Augustine, who measured time with a water clepsydra, “hours [were] signaled and sub-divided by ‘drops of time’ (stillae temporum),” (emphasis added) David van Dusen, The Space of Time: A Sensualist Interpretation of Time in Augustine, Confessions X to XII (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2014), 257.

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they may measure different things (i. e. they are input spaces of different blends) depending on what quantities are mapped onto them.⁵⁵ Fauconnier and Turner in their discussion of mental anchors provide two examples of physical objects connected with religious beliefs and which involve blending: the grave and the cathedral;⁵⁶ in the material I discuss later in the study one may also find several material anchors for blends with shepherding imagery. One of these is undoubtedly the figure of Hermes Kriophoros (or “ram-bearer”) that came to be used to represent Christ, the Good Shepherd, in the earliest forms of Christian iconography (see 3.2). Mapping the notion of Christ as the Good Shepherd onto the pre-Christian image of Hermes resulted in an emergent structure: the image of Christ the Good Shepherd. Note that the figure of Hermes Kriophoros is a material input space, not a blend, since for a non-Christian it still represented Hermes and it becomes the representation of Christ the Good Shepherd only to Christians who map onto it the notion of Christ the Shepherd. In other words, if a Christian and a non-Christian were looking at the same figure of Hermes Kriophoros they would see different things precisely because of the different blending processes occurring in their minds.⁵⁷ Another material anchor referred to in patristic texts discussed later is baktēria, the shepherd’s crook. (see 6.1). Not every crook or staff is a shepherd’s crook or a pastoral staff (just as not every line is a queue). Yet when combined with specific functions like controlling or guarding sheep, it becomes an attribute of a shepherd and through further blending becomes a symbol of episcopal authority. An even more interesting material anchor is the cilicium or sackcloth made of goat’s hair that was used in the baptismal exorcism mentioned by Theodore of Mopsuestia in one of his mystagogical catecheses (see 9.1.4). Because it was made of goat’s hair, it is a physical representation of “being a goat” in the the church is God’s flock blend, or an individual that is separated from “sheep” and rejected by Christ in the last judgment. Arguably, the most sophisticated material anchors for the blends discussed in this study are the mosaics containing shepherding imagery found in early Christian baptisteries. One crucial difference between these and the figure of Hermes Kriophoros or the shepherd’s crook is that the latter were taken over by Christianity from the earlier, pagan culture and their original function had

 For more on gauges as material anchors for blends, see Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 198 – 203.  Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think:, 204– 8.  Fauconnier and Turner also note that to understand the cathedral as a material anchor one must possess “elaborate conceptual integration networks”; that is, one must have some knowledge of Christian doctrine and iconography Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 210.

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nothing to do with the new religion, while the mosaics represented a uniquely Christian conceptualization. Material anchors play an important role in culture (including religion) because they increase the stability of the conceptual representations of abstract elements of our experience.⁵⁸ The mosaics containing shepherding imagery and found in baptisteries are a good case in point because their primary role was to activate and to perpetuate the the church is God’s flock blend in the minds of the participants of the baptismal liturgy.⁵⁹ Neophytes participating in the rite of Christian initiation and surrounded by such iconography, when they saw themselves depicted as sheep, more readily embraced the the church is God’s flock blend as an integral part of the language through which their new religion expressed itself. To paraphrase McLuhan, “the blend was the message.”⁶⁰

Blending in rituals Rituals may also be interpreted as actions with meanings defined by conceptual blending, as illustrated by the frequently quoted example of the Baby’s Ascent ritual described by Sweetser and consisting in carrying a newly born infant up a flight of stairs, so that the child might socially ‘rise in the world’ in later life.⁶¹ In this ritual the conceptual integration involves two input spaces: in one input space there is the baby that is going to be carried up the stairs; in the other input space an individual that is going to live his/her life. Going up the stairs is mapped onto the “course of life” and the aim of the ritual is to climb the stairs smoothly all the way to the top since tripping on a step symbolizes some future trouble. Thus the blend space of the ritual is an omen of the future life of the baby.⁶² From this it follows that Christian rites and rituals should also be interpreted as actions whose meanings are the result of conceptual integration. This is especially true of the rite of baptism as it was practiced in the early church, as it involved a number of blending processes. The most obvious was the conceptual

 Hutchins, “Material Anchors for Conceptual Blends,” 1558.  We may be rather certain that the primary role of the mosaics was not to adorn the baptistery but to remind Christians in visual form that they are God’s flock.  Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), 7 ff.  Eve Sweetser, “Blended Spaces and Performativity,” Cognitive Linguistics 11, no. 3/4 (2001): 312.  Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 80 – 81.

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integration of being immersed in water with being cleansed of sins but not only that, since the material input space where one was being immersed in water by going down the steps into a baptismal pond and then coming up out of the water was also mapped on the input space in which one was buried (went down) and then brought back to life. As a result, baptism as a conceptual blend with material action as one of its input spaces was the spiritual death of the baptizand, who was buried with Christ and like Christ was brought back to life to begin a new, Christian existence. Seen in this way, baptism as an initiatory rite exemplifies the “imagistic” mode of religious transmission, resulting in “cognitive shock.”⁶³ Interestingly, “immersing in water” was the input space of many other blends that were created by patristic fathers developing baptismal theology, and thus baptism was seen as being saved from the flood, like in the case of Noah, or as crossing the Jordan.⁶⁴ One category of conceptualizations discussed in this study also employs the “immersing in water” input space and maps it onto the shepherd washing sheep, and we get as a result the emergent structure of the blend with Christians as sheep freed from the burden of sins and joining the flock of Christ (see 9.1.2).⁶⁵ Another ritual examined later is the baptismal exorcism of cilicium. As mentioned earlier, cilicium was a sackcloth made of goat’s hair that symbolized “being a goat.” Since “goats” cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, a catechumene had to reject his/her “goat” nature, which he did by trampling the cilicium. Only then could he become a sheep and join the flock of Christ (see 9.1.4).

 Luther H. Martin, “The Promise Of Cognitive Science For The Study Of Early Christianity,” in Explaining Christian Origins and Early Judaism: Contributions from Cognitive and Social Science, ed. Petri Luomannen, Ilkka Pyysiäinen, and Rsto Uro (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2007), 48. Note that this conceptual integration is reflected by the semantic shift of the Greek baptizó whose preChristian meaning is “to dip, sink” or even to “be drunk,” Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 48 – 55) and only in the Christian context does it change its meaning and begin to denote a specific religious ritual, which is later reflected in many European languages, including English.  Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries, 403 – 4.  We must, however, keep in mind that there are always some conceptual frames that constrain any interpretation of rituals, including baptism. As Fauconnier and Turner note, “baptizing a baby by immersion is meant to make it eligible for spiritual salvation, not to protect it against drowning or make it good at having deep thoughts” Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 86.

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1.3 Folk models As mentioned earlier, the organizing frame of the blends discussed in this study is the folk model of shepherding. Folk models are “stable mental representations that represent theories about the world”⁶⁶ and assume a prototypical understanding of the categories by means of which we describe the world.⁶⁷ In other words, folk models will generally comprise prototypical features of elements of the world and human experience; thus we can say for example that a folk model of a human life is a relatively long life (“Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures” – Ps 90:10) that starts with a happy childhood followed by our youth full of hopes and dreams, then a happy marriage, having offspring, and finally a peaceful death, when one dies “full of years” (Job 42:17). Folk models are also culturally grounded, which may lead to misconceptions or may make some of them obscure to outsiders.⁶⁸ Consider the many divergent interpretations of Jesus’ words that his disciples must “become like little children” to enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt 18:3). To understand these words properly, one must know what the folk model of “a little child” in Jesus’ culture was (and not, for that matter, in the ancient GraecoRoman culture). Howe gives similar examples of misconceptions resulting from different folk models of the notions of “slave” and “father” in antiquity and the 21st century Western world.⁶⁹

 Vyvyan Evans and Melanie Green, Cognitive Linguistics. An Introduction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 270. Gibbs argues however that they should be understood not as “fixed, static structures, but as temporary representations that are dynamic and context-dependent” Raymond W. Gibbs Jr., “Prototypes in Dynamic Meaning Construal,” in Cognitive Poetics in Practice, ed. Joanna Gavins and Gerard Steen (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 33. Gibbs’ remark is an important correction here because, as we will see later, even if the folk model of shepherding discussed in 3.4 is “a stable mental representation” it is not by any means static. For more on folk models, see, Dorothy Holland and Naomi Quinn, Cultural Models in Language and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). My understanding of folk models corresponds to a large degree with Lakoff’s concept of the Idealized Cognitive Model, George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. What Categories Reveal about the Mind (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1990), 69 – 153.  Dirk Geeraerts, “Prototype Theory. Prospects and Problems of Prototype Theory,” in Cognitive Linguistics: Basic Readings, ed. Dirk Geeraerts (Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2006), 141– 66.  For more on the culture-specific prototypicality of folk models, see also Frank Polzenhagen and Xiaoyan Xia, “Language, Culture and Prototypicality,” in The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture, ed. Farzad Sharifian, 2014, 253 – 69.  Howe, Because You Bear This Name: Conceptual Metaphor And the Moral Meaning of 1 Peter, 63 – 66.

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Such misconceptions are also related to the role of “encyclopedic knowledge” of the world possessed by language users and stressed in cognitive linguistics⁷⁰ as opposed to apparently purely semantic knowledge identified with a mental lexicon of linguistic terms. Encyclopedic knowledge is organized into experiential domains⁷¹ and is activated in our minds whenever we hear linguistic terms, thus enabling us to grasp the meaning intended even though this is often not related directly with a narrow definition of the given term. These experiential domains include of course not only our direct experience but also, or even first of all, our cultural experience. Needless to say that most early Christians had no direct, personal experience of shepherding, yet they had a strong cultural experience of the relationship between the shepherd and sheep, even if this may be differently interpreted, as attested by Plato’s Republic (see 3.2). A fine example of the role of this cultural experience combined with encyclopedic knowledge are blends conceptualizing bishops not as shepherds but as rams (8.1.4); such blends indicate that patristic authors must have taken for granted the encyclopedic knowledge of their audiences concerning rams and must have presumed that “a ram” was to them not merely “an adult male sheep” but that this notion meant many other things: that rams are leaders of the flock, that there are usually fewer rams than ewes in a flock; that they may protect ewes against predators, and so forth. On the other hand, there may have been similar aspects of pastoral experience that were understandable to the original Jewish audience of the Hebrew Bible and not necessarily to Christians.⁷² Folk models may involve a “scenario,” or a sequence of events. Such a “scenario” presupposes some relations and interactions between the elements present in it and most often some kind of purpose.⁷³ For example, the “scenario” of shepherding might appear as follows: the shepherd leads his sheep out and takes them to the pastures so that they may graze. When the sheep are grazing, he protects them, and at the end of the day he brings them back safely to the sheep pen. One recognizes such a “scenario” in John 10 where Christ as the

 See, e. g., Geeraerts, “Prototype Theory. Prospects and Problems of Prototype Theory,” 142– 43, or Evans and Green, Cognitive Linguistics. An Introduction, 206 – 22.  William Croft, “Metonymy. The Role of Domains in the Interpretation of Metaphors and Metonymies,” in Cognitive Linguistics: Basic Readings, ed. Dirk Geeraerts (Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2006), 271.  Cf. for example the reference to shepherding sheep “in the open field” in Hos 4:16, Pierre van Hecke, “Conceptual Blending: A Recent Approach to Metaphor. Illustrated with the Pastoral Metaphor in Hos 4, 16,” in Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible (Leuven: Peeters, 2005), 225.  Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. What Categories Reveal about the Mind, 285 – 286.

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good shepherd “leads [the sheep] out” and “goes on ahead of them” (10:3 – 4). His purpose is to feed the sheep “to the full” (10:10) and the sheep “come in and go out, and find pasture” (10:9). He also protects them against a wolf. An important subcategory of this shepherding scenario is “the lost and found sheep scenario” that we find in the parable of the lost sheep (Matt 18:12– 14, Luke 15:3 – 7). Both scenarios play a key role in conceptual integration of blends discussed in this study as they help patristic authors to achieve an important goal of blending that is “coming up with a story.”⁷⁴ Since language users predict and explain events by narrative imagining,⁷⁵ folk model of shepherding may be understood as the conceptual basis of such narrative imagining. Since a folk model is a prototypical representation of specific aspects of our experience, it will include only the most salient aspects of this experience. Thus the folk model of shepherding does not contain many less prototypical activities associated with shepherding and consequently, in the blends discussed in this study we will not find the milking⁷⁶ or killing⁷⁷ sheep. There are, however, exceptions, and for instance the image of shorn sheep that are going out of the water plays an important role in blends run in the context of baptism (see 9.1.2).⁷⁸

 Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 312, 323, 346.  Turner, The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language, 20.  A significant exception is a shepherd-like figure milking sheep in The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity, one of the earliest Christian martyr texts, probably edited by Tertullian. Shortly before her death Perpetua “saw a wide open space, a garden, and in the middle of it a greyhaired man sitting down. He was dressed like a shepherd (in habitu pastoris), tall, milking some sheep [and] gave me a mouthful or so of the cheese that he was milking out. I cupped my hands and took and ate it. And the people standing around all said, ‘Amen’” (The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity 4.8, in Jan N. Bremmer and Marco Formisano, eds., Perpetua’s Passions: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 16.) According to some interpretations, milk may be an allusion to “heavenly milk, pressed from the sweet breasts of the bride” of which we read in Clement’s hymn to Christ, Robin M. Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art (London: Taylor & Francis, 2013), 39. For other interpretations, see Thomas J. Heffernan, ed. and trans., The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 181– 83. Cf. 1 Cor 9:4– 7 where Paul argues that as an apostle he has “the right to food and drink” and asks rhetorically: “who tends a flock and does not drink of the milk?” For more on suppressing elements of the shepherding experience in blends with shepherding imagery, see also DesCamp, Metaphor and Ideology, 222.  Christians are compared to “sheep to be slaughtered” (Rom 8:36) but it is not the shepherds that slaughter them, and therefore this comparison is not a part of the imagery discussed in this study.  Augustine also writes on one occasion that “[the] Lord came to shear his sheep, that is to free them from laborious burdens and on their account, in the Song of Songs, the teeth of the Church were praised like a flock of shorn sheep,” Answer to Faustus, a Manichean 22.85, in Augustine,

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Sometimes the prototypical knowledge suggested by the folk model of shepherding collides in patristic authors with their respect for the Bible, as exemplified by the role attributed to dogs in the blends with shepherding imagery. One might expect that as these are animals that help shepherds in the folk model of shepherding, they should play a positive role in such blends; however they are most often equated with predators. The only explanation seems to be the fact that Paul calls his Jewish opponents “dogs” in Phil 3:2 and Christian authors, following him, use this term in a derogatory sense, most often in polemical texts. This clearly shows that to church fathers the authority of the Bible took precedence over the cultural experience of shepherding (see 8.6).⁷⁹ One important conclusion from what has been said above is that the folk model of shepherding attributes two radically different roles to shepherds and sheep respectively, this having far-reaching consequences in the blends I analyze below. The shepherd’s role is to protect sheep and provide them with food and water; they dominate over their sheep because they “know better.” The sheep’s role is to trust the shepherds and to be obedient to them because only obedience guarantees their safety. Although in theory sheep in some circumstances may survive without a shepherd, the folk model of shepherding precludes this possibility; prototypical sheep must always belong to somebody and are branded with the mark of their owner.⁸⁰ The knowledge of the folk model of shepherding shared by patristic authors and their audiences, along with the inferences drawn from it are the “cognitive bridge” that enabled listeners or readers to reach the intended meaning whenever the church fathers included blends with shepherding imagery in their writings or homilies.

Answer to Faustus, a Manichean (Contra Faustum Manichaeum), ed. Boniface Ramsey, trans. Roland Teske, vol. I/20, WSA (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2007), 362– 63.  Yet, one should keep in mind here the decidedly negative image of dogs in Hebrew culture; Ilse Köhler-Rollefson, “Dogs,” in The Harper Collins Bible Dictionary, ed. Paul J. Achtemeier (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996), 244– 45. This image must undoubtedly have been a part of Paul’s cultural experience.  This element of the folk model of shepherding plays a central role in the baptism is branding sheep blend discussed in 9.1.1.

2 Conceptual blending in biblical exegesis Frances Young in her seminal work on the role of biblical exegesis in the formation of Christian culture notes that all forms of early Christian literature in some way interpreted scripture.¹ Indeed, virtually all of the blends discussed in this study, representing all the genres of Christian literature, emerged as a direct or indirect result of biblical interpretation: from expounding the Bible during homily to resorting to biblical arguments in church polemics. For that reason, before making a closer examination we should stop for a moment and look at biblical exegesis as a process in the creation of new meanings through conceptual integration. In this section I do not wish to attempt in any way to provide a detailed or even general treatment of patristic exegesis but merely to show that since biblical interpretation is basically reading and interpretative process, it involves conceptual integration.² Brown reminds us that the Bible was conceived by patristic authors as communication with something larger than our conscious awareness and the exegete would “listen for the single, hidden ‘will’ that had expressed itself in the deliberate selection of every word of the text: for in a sacred text ‘everything was said exactly as it needed to be said’.”³ Seen from a cognitive perspective, this “listening for” God’s will consisted in activating conceptual links or cross-space mappings between an input space with biblical contents and (an)other input space(s) with biblical or non-biblical subject matter. Depending on the organizing frames of the input spaces and depending on which of them were projected onto the blend space, all the types of conceptual networks discussed in the previous section could emerge in the process. Thus, without delving into the intricacies of patristic exegesis, my aim in the following is only to demonstrate how conceptual integration manifests itself in selected examples of the church fathers’ biblical interpretations. This brief discussion of three networks created in the process of biblical exegesis and taken from patristic writings should help us to better understand the cognitive processes behind the conceptual networks with shepherding imagery that are the main object of interest in this study.

 Frances M. Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2002), 219.  Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 210 – 11. On reading as mental space blending, see also Howe, Because You Bear This Name: Conceptual Metaphor And the Moral Meaning of 1 Peter, 94– 95.  Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), 250. Brown quotes Augustine’s Exposition of the Psalms 145 12. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110582970-006

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2.1 Mirror networks Conceptual integration lies at the heart of what came to be termed in early modern biblical criticism as typological exegesis (and what patristic authors understood as an allegorical interpretation of scripture).⁴ The cognitive basis for this specific interpretation of biblical texts was a uniquely Christian vision of history seen as “salvation history.” Salvation history may be graphically represented as a timeline – the representation of time typical of human cognition⁵ – except that in Christian “salvation history” Christ’s incarnation is the dividing point on this timeline. The typological interpretation consisted in looking for binary correspondences between elements taken from two opposite sides of the line: before and after the coming of Christ, (called “a type” and “an antitype” respectively), and seeing in the former the foreshadowing of the latter. A vital relation of time is compressed in each typological conceptual network blend, since a type and an antitype from two input spaces, one containing elements from the period before Christ, the other containing elements from Christ’s “salvific mission,” exist simultaneously in the network. Because these elements belong to “salvation history, the number of centuries does not matter, since God is in charge.”⁶ But there is more to it than that, because a typological blend is perceived in such exegesis as a part of sacred or liturgical time, as a “universal or eternal truth played out in time, time and again.”⁷ One of the first Christian typological conceptual networks can be found in Rom 5:12– 19 where Paul, presenting the foundational Christian idea that Christ

 Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture, 189 – 92.  Seana Coulson and Cristobal P. Cánovas, “Understanding Timelines: Conceptual Metaphor and Conceptual Integration,” Cognitive Semiotics 5, no. 1– 2 (2009): 198 – 219.  Ed P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin Books, 1995), 82– 83.  Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture, 154. Actually biblical scholars describe in terms of their discipline the same cognitive process I am discussing here. Young writes that in typology as a “heuristic tool” texts “are shaped or read, consciously or unconsciously, so that they are invested with meaning by correspondence with other texts of a “mimetic” or representational kind,” Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture, 193. In a similar vein, Longenecker, stating that the earliest Christian interpretation of Jewish scripture was pesher interpretation practiced in Judaism, adds that once Christ and his mission became to be seen as the fulfillment of the scripture “all that remained for the earliest believers in Jesus was to identify those biblical portions considered pertinent to the messianic age (at least as they understood it) and to explicate them in accordance with the tradition and principles of Christ,” Richard N Longenecker, “Early Church Interpretation,” in Dictionary of Biblical Criticism and Interpretation, ed. Stanley E. Porter (London: Routledge, 2007), 80 (emphasis added).

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redeemed humanity through his death, conceptualizes him as the second Adam through what might be called Christ is Adam/Adam is Christ mirror network: Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man [tou henos anthrōpos], and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned (…). Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern [typos] of the one to come. But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For just as through the disobedience of the one man [Adam] the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man [Christ] the many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:12– 19).

We can see in the passage a mirror network with the organizing frame comprising an individual, his actions and their consequences. Interestingly, this organizing frame (or the generic space of the blend) is not merely presupposed, as often happens in conceptual integration, but clearly invoked by Paul when he uses the phrases “one man” (tou henos anthrōpos) four times in this relatively short passage. There are two input spaces: one with Adam, the other with Christ. In the first input space Adam is the cause of sin, the consequence of which is that death affects all people. In the other input space Christ removes death and replaces it with “God’s grace and gift” to all people. These two actions are contrasted as “disobedience” and “obedience” to God respectively and through Christ’s “obedience” our status in the eyes of God changes. In other words, the outer-space vital relation of disanalogy between Adam and Christ is compressed into the inner-space vital relation of change in the blend. Christ is in every respect unlike Adam and with Christ all things changed for humankind. Thus, we can see that the revolutionary and uniquely Christian idea of the redemptive death of Christ is conceptualized by Paul by means of a simple mirror network with Christ’s death contrasted with Adam’s sin (Figure 2). Paul’s blend was the result of his typological exegesis of the Jewish Scripture, yet it soon became part of the Christian Scripture and as such was taken over and elaborated upon by patristic authors. They added new elements to its input spaces, taking from the Jewish Scripture and the Christian Scripture respectively and in this way creating novel meanings that played a key role in theological reasoning and the development of Christian doctrine. For instance, Irenaeus of Lyons employs the blend to argue for the virginal birth of Jesus (Figure 3): If then, the first Adam had had a man for father, and had been born of the seed of a man, the heretics could rightly say that the second Adam was generated by Joseph. But if the first

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Generic space

∙ An individual ∙ Action ∙ Its consequences Adam input space

∙ Disobedient Adam ∙ ∙ Sinned ∙ ∙ Death ∙

Christ input space

DISANALOGY DISANALOGY DISANALOGY

∙ Obedient Christ ∙ ∙ Saved ∙ ∙ “God’s grace ∙ & gift”

∙ Punished disobedience of Adam foreshadows rewarded obedience of Christ [CHANGE]

Blend Figure 2: The Christ is Adam/Adam is Christ mirror network in Rom 5:12 – 19 Adam was taken from the earth, and fashioned by the Word of God, it was necessary that the Word himself working in himself the recapitulation of Adam, possessed a like origin (…) with the likeness preserved.⁸

This time, instead of focusing on the disanalogy between Adam and Christ, Irenaeus strongly emphasizes the analogy or “likeness” between them, stressing

 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 21.10, in Robert M. Grant, Irenaeus of Lyons (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 139.

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Generic space

• An individual • Action • Adam input space

• Adam was not born • of a human father (I) • The tree of knowledge • (T) • “Profundity of error” • (T)

Its consequences

ANALOGY DISANALOGY DISANALOGY

Christ input space

• Christ was not born • of a human father (I) • The tree of the cross • (T) • Baptismal immersion • (T)

• Christ’s origin is like Adam’s, • which“proves” the virgin birth of the former [UNIQUENESS] • Christ’s death redeems Adam’s • sin [CHANGE] • Baptismal immersion frees • from profundity of error [CHANGE]

Blend Figure 3: The Christ is Adam/Adam is Christ mirror network in Irenaeus (I) and Tertullian (T)

that both were made directly by God, without a human father. In other words, the outer-space vital relation of analogy is compressed into the inner-space vital relation of uniqueness. Adam is Christ and Christ is Adam in the blend. In Tertullian’s elaboration of the same blend shown also in Figure 3 we can see again the relation of disanalogy compressed into the relation of change as a result of a cross-space mapping between the tree of knowledge from the Genesis story and the wood of Christ’s cross. In addition, Tertullian maps the “profundity

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of [Adam’s] error” onto being immersed in water during baptism. In this way he expands the original meaning of Paul’s blend and turns it into a theological argument, justifying the doctrine of baptism: What is more manifest than the mystery of this ‘wood’ [huius ligni] [the tree of knowledge] – that the obduracy of this world had been sunk (mersa) in the profundity of error (profundo erroris) and is freed in baptism by the ‘wood’ of Christ [ligno Christi], that is, of His passion; in order that what had formerly perished through ‘the tree’ in Adam [lignum in Adam], should be restored through ‘the tree’ in Christ [lignum Christi]?⁹

Finally, Augustine in his elaboration of Paul’s blend shown in Figure 4 turns it into a strong post-Nicaean Christological argument: Therefore, brothers, mark well two births, Adam and Christ. There are two men; but one of the men is a man, the other is God. [Duo sunt homines, sed unus ipsorum homo homo, alter ipsorum homo Deus]. Through the man-man we are sinners; through the man-God we are justified. [Per hominem hominem peccatores sumus; per hominem Deum iustificamur]. That birth casts down to death; this birth raised up to life. That birth draws sin with it; this birth sets free from sin. For Christ came as a man precisely in order that he might undo the sins of man [Ideo enimuenit Christus homo ut solueret peccata hominum].¹⁰

This time the vital relation of disanalogy in the blend does not concern only what Adam and Christ did but also who they were/are. While Adam is only a man (homo), Christ is both man and God (homo Deus). Adam casts humankind down to death, Christ raised it to life. Note that the “two births” do not refer to the birth of Adam (who was not born but created) and the virgin birth of Christ but to Christians’ births: the first into Adam (before baptism) and the second into Christ (after baptism). Note also the compression of the vital relation of time in the blend as signaled by the present tense (duo sunt homines). Because people are born constantly, Adam is constantly present, as so too Christ is present. Like in earlier examples, running Paul’s blend allows Augustine to create novel meanings and his primary objective is to present the theological argument that Christ who is both God and man, as it was affirmed in the Nicene creed, is ontologically capable of justifying and saving the fallen humanity (per hominem Deum iustificamur).¹¹

 Tertullian, An Answer to the Jews 13, in ANF 4:170.  Tractate 4 on the First Epistle of John 11, in Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 112 – 24; Tractates on the First Epistle of John, trans. John W. Rettig, FC 92 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1995), 184.  For more on Adam-Christ typology as the result of conceptual integration, see Aleksander Gomola, “Conceptual Blending with moral accounting Metaphors in Christian Exegesis,” Cog-

2.2 Single-scope networks

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Generic space

• An individual • Action • Its consequences

Adam input space

DISANALOGY

• Adam: man •

DISANALOGY

• Through him we are • sinners • Born in Adam = born • to death/slaves to sin

DISANALOGY

Christ input space

• Christ: (God and man) • • Through him we are • justified • Born in Christ = born • to life/free from sin

• Through Adam the man, we are sinners and die; Through Christ the God-man, we are • justified and live [CHANGE]

Blend Figure 4: The Christ is Adam/Adam is Christ mirror network in Augustine

2.2 Single-scope networks Single-scope networks seem to be most common blends created in early Christian exegesis. In creating these blends, patristic authors seek to reveal other nitive Semantics 2, no. 2 (2016): 213 – 36. Hugo Lundhaug discusses similar networks with input spaces of the paradise and the crucifixion respectively in the Gospel of Philip; Hugo Lundhaug, “The Fruit of the Tree of Life,” in Bonnie Howe and Joel B. Green, eds., Cognitive Linguistic Explorations in Biblical Studies: 73 – 98.

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senses of the Bible hidden under its literal meaning. The organizing frame of such networks is always the church input space, including the church’s liturgical practices, teaching, relationships between the clergy and the laity, and so on, or the Christian life (in the case of the moral sense derived from the text). In other words, the biblical text is seen through the prism of the church input space. Consider Gregory of Nyssa’s conceptual integration of the Genesis account of the meeting of Jacob and Rachel (Gen 29:1– 10) with baptism and Christ’s resurrection (Figure 5). According to the same force of the text, Jacob also, hastening to seek a bride, met Rachel unexpectedly at the well. And a great stone lay upon the well, which a multitude of shepherds were wont to roll away when they came together, and then gave water to themselves and to their flocks. But Jacob alone rolls away the stone, and waters the flocks of his spouse. The thing is, I think, a dark saying, a shadow of what should come. For what is the stone that is laid but Christ Himself? For of Him Isaiah says, “And I will lay in the foundations of Sion a costly stone, precious, elect”; and Daniel likewise: “A stone was cut out without hands,” that is, Christ was born without a man. For as it is a new and marvelous thing that a stone should be cut out of the rock without a hewer or stone-cutting tools, so it is a thing beyond all wonder that an offspring should appear from an unwedded Virgin. There was lying, then, upon the well the spiritual stone, Christ, concealing in the deep and in mystery the laver of regeneration. But he both draws up the water and gives drink to the sheep of Rachel; that is, he reveals the hidden mystery, and gives living water to the flock of the Church.¹²

It is not difficult to identify cross-space mappings in the network created by Gregory as he does this for us, informing us that the stone is Christ, the water in the well is the water of baptism and Rachel’s sheep are the flock of the Church. What is more notable from a cognitive linguistic perspective though, is the ease with which such conceptual links are activated in Gregory’s mind. Patristic authors knew the Bible virtually by heart (note how Gregory quotes Isaiah and Daniel) and it is hardly surprising that even the subtlest similarity between a biblical element and a certain aspect of the Christian experience could activate such links. A great stone that lay upon the well, blocking access to the water makes Gregory think of Christ lying in his troglodytic grave, the entrance to which was blocked with a great stone. Therefore, the stone on the well becomes Christ and removing the stone by Jacob represents Christ’s resurrection in the blend. This analogy is even stronger when one bears in mind that in Acts 3:15 or in 1 Cor 15:4 Christ – is passive and – is “raised from the dead” and that

 Gregory of Nyssa, On the Baptism of Christ, in NPNF II 5:521– 22.

2.2 Single-scope networks

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Generic space

• An action • Its consequences Church input space

Biblical input space

• Christ risen from • death

• The stone rolled away • by Jacob

• (Christ born of • a virgin)

• (The stone cut out • without hands)

• The flock of the church • gains access to the water of baptism

• Rachel’s flock gains • access to the well

• The removal of the stone means • that Christ is risen • Rachel’s flock signifies the flock of the • church; and access to the well means the access to the water of baptism

Blend Figure 5: The removed stone is resurrected Christ network in Gregory of Nyssa

both a well and a grave are dark places. Christ’s being raised – raising/removing the stone – gives the flock of the church access to the living water of baptism. As mentioned earlier, the organizing frame of the blend is the frame of the church input space, which means that only those elements from the biblical narrative that may be mapped onto elements in the church space are projected onto the blend. Yet the conceptual integration in patristic exegesis is a very dynamic process and cross-space mappings may change with each new verse in the text. Hence, in the same homily Gregory tells his audience, while interpreting a later part of the Genesis narrative, that Jacob, whose herds multiplied, represents

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Christ while Laban is Satan because “after the institution of Baptism Christ took away all the flock of Satan and Himself grew rich.”¹³

2.3 Double-scope networks Many conceptual networks created during patristic exegesis are double-scope networks. Let us briefly examine a passage from Augustine’s homily against the Donatists, whose Wirkungsgeschichte goes far beyond antiquity,¹⁴ where he interprets the parable of the great banquet (Luke 14:15 – 24) along with the parable of the lost sheep (Luke 15:1– 7), creating a complex double-scope network: From the squares and alleys came the Gentiles; let the heretics and schismatics come from the highroads and hedges. “Compel them to come in.” Here they can find peace, because those who put up hedges are seeking divisions. Let them be dragged from the hedges, wrenched from the thorns. They are stuck fast in the hedges, and they don’t want to be compelled. “Let us come in of our own free will,” they say. That wasn’t the order the Lord gave: “Compel them – he said – to come in.” Let necessity be experienced outwardly, and hence free willingness be born inwardly.¹⁵

Augustine’s blend, let us call it Donatists are stubborn guests/lost sheep network, has three input spaces. In the first input space we have the master, the servant, and the guests from the parable of the great banquet, and the scenario of the parable is the organizing frame of the space. In the second space we have the good shepherd and the lost sheep from the parable of the lost sheep, and its organizing frame is the scenario of this parable. In the third input space we have the Catholic hierarchy, the Donatists that do not want to join the Catholic church, and God (Figure 6). There is a cross-space mapping between the guests who have rejected the invitation to the banquet from the first input space, the lost sheep from the second

 Gregory of Nyssa, On the Baptism of Christ, in NPNF II 5:521– 22.  As is well known, the double-scope network created by Augustine had a great impact on the church’s policy towards heretics not only during the Donatist controversy but also in later centuries, thus proving that conceptual integration as a cognitive-linguistic process underlying the interpretation of the Bible may have serious social and political consequences. See, e. g. Maijastina Kahlos, Forbearance and Compulsion: The Rhetoric of Religious Tolerance and Intolerance in Late Antiquity (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013), 123 – 24, Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 43 – 4.  Sermon 112 8, in Augustine, Sermons (94 A – 147 A) on the New Testament, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Edmund Hill, vol. III/4, WSA (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1992), 152.

2.3 Double-scope networks

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Generic space ∙ A ∙ wants B ∙ To take an action with regard to C

The great banquet parable input space

The lost sheep parable input space

Church input space

∙ Servant ∙

∙ The shepherd ∙

∙ Catholic bishops ∙

∙ Guests ∙

∙ The lost sheep ∙

∙ Donatists ∙

∙ (To be found ∙ in saepes)

∙ (Stuck in saepes) ∙

∙ (Make saepes) ∙

∙ Master ∙

∙ God ∙

∙ Since Donatists are stubborn guests/lost sheep, God/Master sends his servant/bishop/the shepherd to bring them by force [coge intrare]

Blend Figure 6: Donatists are stubborn guests/lost sheep network in Augustine

input space, and the stubborn Donatists from the third input space. There is another cross-space mapping between the master from the first input space and God from the third input space. Finally there is a cross-space mapping between the shepherd from the second input space and the Catholic hierarchy from the third input space. All these elements are projected onto the blend space along

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with the organizing frames from each input space. As a result, in the blend we have 1) the stubborn Donatists/ lost sheep/ guests to be brought to the banquet that 2) got stuck/are in the hedges, yet 3) do not want to follow the good shepherd/servant/Catholic bishop, who 4) nevertheless is determined to bring them back/ to the banquet because his master/God makes him do so with the words “Compel him to come in” (coge intrare/compelle intrare).¹⁶ Augustine, by pattern completion, places in the foreground the parable of the lost sheep (the sheep must be dragged from the hedges, where they got stuck, and wrenched from the thorns), yet he changes its original meaning significantly and by identifying thse shepherd with the servant from the other parable he presents him as someone who demonstrates his care for the sheep by resorting to coercion! Note how combining the two parables allows Augustine to prove his point. He needs the authority of the Bible to present coercion towards the Donatists as God’s mandate and that is why he needs coge intrare/compelle intrare to be said by God himself or the master from the parable of the great banquet. These words must however be addressed to the lost Donatist sheep, which is why he introduces the organizing frame of the parable of the lost sheep to his blend. Thus the Donatists become the lost sheep while still remaining the stubborn guests. Because they are stubborn, they must be compelled to come back to the true flock of Christ, which is why the servant-turned-shepherd resorts to coercion. This intricate reasoning would not have been possible without the organizing frames of both parables in the blend and that is why Augustine needed a double-scope network. All of the examples discussed above exhibit the great creativity and ingenuity possessed by the patristic authors. Indeed, they were fully aware of the fact that they had engaged themselves in the process of creating new meanings, even if they saw this creativity as discovering/uncovering meanings hidden in the text or as deciphering “the Great Code” and not as inventing such meanings. They also seemed to find aesthetic pleasure in such conceptual integration of biblical elements with elements of their church experience, as attested by this famous quotation from Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana: Why is it that someone who says this [that there exist holy and perfect men in the church who inspire others to join it] gives less pleasure to an audience than by expounding in the same terms the passage from the Song of Songs where the church is addressed and praised

 We do not know the exact Latin translation Augustin was referring to in that particular case; “coge intrare” occurs, for example, in Codex Vercellensis: “Et dixit Dominus servo suo: Exi circa vias et saepes et coge intrare quoscumque inveneris, ut impleatur domus mea” Luke 14:23 – 24a; PL 12:627.

2.4 From conceptual networks to stable cultural metaphors

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like a beautiful woman: “Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes ascending from the pool, all of which give birth to twins, and there is not a sterile animal among them”?¹⁷

2.4 From conceptual networks to stable cultural metaphors In the context of this brief presentation of the conceptual networks that emerge in patristic exegesis, of particular importance is the fact that certain patristic authors, including Origen, John Chrysostom and Augustine, often delivered their homilies ex tempore,¹⁸ which suggests that some of their exegetical blends in such homilies were created on the fly; this is strong evidence of the role of conceptual integration in patristic exegesis and generally in creating new meanings in Christian language. Such homilies were written down by stenographers and subsequently copied and the conceptual networks contained in them were elaborated or simply re-used by later, often less talented or less ingenious members of the clergy. In this way, conceptual networks, including the networks representing the church as a flock discussed below, were transformed into stable cultural metaphors. Seen from this perspective, the conceptual networks discussed in the  Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana 2.2.7, in Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, ed. and trans. Roger P. Green (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 61.63. Cf. also Hill’s comment to Augustine’s allegorical interpretation of the five pairs of oxen from the parable of the great banquet (Luke 14:19) with the five senses: “Why not, for example the five books of the Law of Moses? Why not indeed? But that is the whole beauty of allegorical interpretation (…). The interpreter is not tied just to one allegorical significance (…). You are at liberty to choose whichever you think most apposite, either to the context of the parable or story or to your particular homiletic concern of the moment. It’s fun, it’s free,” Augustine, Sermons (94 A – 147 A) on the New Testament, 153.  Anthony Meredith, “The Three Cappadocians on Beneficence: A Key to Their Audience,” in Preacher and Audience. Studies in Early Christian and Byzantine Homilies, ed. Mary B. Cunningham and Pauline Allen (Leiden/Boston/Köln: Brill, 1998), 90. Origen almost always spoke ex tempore, Mary B. Cunningham and Pauline Allen, “Introduction,” in Preacher and Audience. Studies in Early Christian and Byzantine Homilies, 11. Augustine claimed that while preaching many of his homilies without preparation he relied on the inspiration coming to him from the Holy Spirit, (Michelle Pellegrino, “Introduction,” in Sermons (1 – 19) on the Old Testament, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Edmund Hill. Vol. III/1, WSA (Hyde, Park, NY: New City Press, 1990), 106), which is – one might say – conceptual integration in theological disguise. On Augustine delivering sermons ex tempore, see also Possidius, The Life of St. Augustine 7, in Early Christian Biographies. Lives of St. Cyprian, by Pontius; St. Ambrose, by Paulinus; St. Augustine, by Possidius; St. Anthony, by St. Athanasius; St. Paul the First Hermit, St. Hilarion, and Malchus, by St. Jerome; St. Epiphanius, by Ennodius; with a Sermon on the Life of St. Honoratus, by St. Hilary, ed. Roy J. Deferrari, trans. Roy J. Deferrari, John A. Lacy et al. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1952), 80 – 81.

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next part of this study are therefore but a small part of a much bigger cognitive effort by the patristic authors who, by means of conceptual integration, laid the foundations for the new conceptual system of Christian faith. This system provided believers with visualizations and metaphors that were to organize their individual and social lives, including politics, literature and arts for many centuries.

3 The cultural background of the image of the church as a flock 3.1 Conceptual blends for the church One of the basic presumptions of cognitive linguistics is that more abstract domains of meaning are expressed in language through vocabulary taken from more concrete domains, related to common human experiences.¹ This is true also with regard to our conceptualizations of social entities such as a religious community, a company or a nation that we often identify with even though this identification is largely mediated through language. Thus a company’s staff may be conceptualized as a sports team, which presupposes one common goal, mutual cooperation, and competition with other companies, while a nation is frequently conceptualized as a family with all the social and political ramifications of such an image.² Cognitive potential and the usability of such conceptualizations depend on the linguistic content of their input spaces. Hence, in the case of a company, conceptualizing its employees as a team is more convenient than conceptualizing them as a family because the “team” input space of a potential blend will contain such elements as a common goal, teamwork, competition leading to success or failure, and clear leadership, etc., while the “family” input space emphasizes emotional bonds or the intimacy of the relationship, something that is not always welcome in a company. Christian communities, as abstract socio-religious entities (as well as Christianity as a whole), also from the outset needed specific conceptualizations that differentiated them from a non-Christian (first Jewish and later Gentile) background and these conceptual processes of identity construction are clearly visible in early Christian rhetoric.³ Some of these conceptualizations may already be found in the New Testament and they include depicting the church as a body (Rom 12:5; 1 Cor 12:12, 27; Eph 4:12, 16); as the bride of Christ (Eph 5:23 – 32.

 Eve Sweetser, From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure, Cambridge Studies in Linguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 18.  Lakoff examines the consequences of this conceptualization in American political rhetoric in which the “strict father morality” of Republicans clashes with the “nurturant parent morality” of Democrats. G Lakoff, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, Second Edition (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2010).  Todd Penner and Caroline Vander Stichele, “Rhetorical Practice and Performance in Early Christianity,” in The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rhetoric, ed. Erik Gunderson (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 243. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110582970-007

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2 Cor 11:2, Rev 19:7, 8; 21:9); as the house of God or the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Pet 4:17, Eph 4:16, Heb 3:3, 6, 1 Tim 3:15), or as a vine/vineyard (John 15:1– 8). Yet the essential thing to realize in the context of this study is that the metaphor of the Christian community as God’s flock, which would become the most popular image of the church in Christian discourse in future centuries, is merely suggested in the New Testament (see 7) and nothing in the biblical text foreshadows its future popularity. The metaphors for the Church mentioned above may be classified basically as single scope blends with various elements of human experience in their source input spaces projected into the blended space to highlight specific aspects of the Christian community, interactions between its members, or its relation to God. As such, they are complementary to one another and their usability with regard to specific aspects of Christian doctrine, liturgy, or church order varies. the church is a vine blend with Christ conceptualized as a vine and the believers as its branches tells the latter that to flourish spiritually they must be united with Christ, yet at the same time communicates little more than this simple message, since the “vine” input frame of the blend does not offer very many interpretative possibilities or elaborations of the blend. the church is Christ’s body network is more promising conceptually, as its source input space, grounded in our bodily experience, is more dynamic and more complex, offering far more possibilities connected to serving the specific doctrinal and administrative needs of the church authorities. For example, the medieval image of the church as corpus mysticum was an important conceptual instrument employed by the hierarchy to test the credibility of believers’ mystical visions, since “the explicit condition for the possibility of spiritually sensuous perception of God was participation in this mystical body. Only if ‘made sensate by their Head’ (sensificentur a capite) could members of the ecclesia perceive the divine nature.”⁴ In other words, only the mystical visions of those believers who belonged to the Catholic church were approved of by church authorities, while the same or similar ideas, if they were disseminated by those with whom the Church denied any affiliation (viz. heretics), were rejected. Conversely, if some of the theological ideas held by members of the church were seen as potentially subversive, the church authorities could excommunicate these members and declare that since they were no longer members of the corpus mysticum, their ideas had to be rejected as well. Thus, a conceptualization of the church as a body with

 Boyd Taylor Coolman, “Alexander of Hales,” in The Spiritual Senses.Perceiving God in Western Christianity, ed. Paul L. Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 122.

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Christ as its head became a useful criterion in allowing the church authorities to validate the theological assertions of individual Christians, as well as becoming a measure of church discipline. As noted above, the image of the church as a flock, which is the object of my analysis in this study, is virtually absent from the oldest Christian texts and “only with difficulty can the images of the church as flock (…) be classified more precisely in terms of theological history, for they do not occur characteristically in a particular strain of early Christian theology.”⁵ Yet, it is precisely the image of the church as a flock, or actually the wide spectrum of interrelated conceptual blends based on shepherding imagery, that allowed Christian writers very early on to present various aspects of church discipline, doctrine, and liturgy through the lens of shepherding imagery. In the following chapters I will demonstrate how these blends are used by Christian authors for various purposes: to define the respective roles of the laity and the clergy; to develop the theologies of baptism, soteriology and Christology; to fight heresies; and to shape early practices of penance.

3.2 The cultural-experiential basis of the image of the church as a flock As mentioned earlier, those concepts which organize the individual and social lives of language users are rooted in their bodily as well as social and cultural experiences. Although the first Christians were mostly town dwellers, sheep and goats were a common feature of the Mediterranean landscape, since shepherding was the basis of the agricultural economy of the Mediterranean world along with the olive, the vine, and grain.⁶ First of all, however, we should keep in mind that “shepherd is one of the oldest appellations for kings in the ancient Near East, used already in ancient Sumer”⁷ and the shepherd-flock

 Walter Schmithals, The Theology of the First Christians, transl. O. C. Dean (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 166. Paul Trebilco in his recent study on self-designations and the group identity of Christians in the New Testament also ignores the notion of church as “a flock,” Paul Trebilco, Self-Designations and Group Identity in the New Testament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 14.  See, e. g. Philip F. Esler, “Introduction,” in The Early Christian World, ed. Philip F. Esler (Abingdon and New York: Taylor & Francis, 2004), 6; Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 82.  Marc Zvi Brettler, God Is King: Understanding an Israelite Metaphor (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989), 36 – 37.

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motif was an important metaphor for describing the relationships between the rulers and the ruled in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Levant region, and the wider Hellenistic world.⁸ Maximus of Tyre compared the Persian king Cyrus to a good shepherd warding off the wolves (other peoples),⁹ and a formulaic metaphor describing a political or a military leader as a “shepherd of the people” is an “epic cliché” in Homer.¹⁰ Interestingly, presenting rulers as shepherds – which implied that their subjects took a subservient position – was sometimes contrasted by Greek authors with the democracy of Greek city-states. For example, in Aeschylus’s tragedy The Persians, Atossa, the Persian queen, asks about the Athenians: “And who is the shepherd, master and commander over their host?,” to which the chorus replies: “They are not called slaves or subjects.”¹¹ Furthermore, in Plato’s Republic Socrates and Thrasymachus discuss how the metaphor of the ruler as a shepherd should be understood. Thrasymachus claims that the shepherd fattens the sheep for his own good, while Socrates argues that “the shepherd’s art surely cares for nothing but providing the best for what it has been set over” – in other words, the sheep.¹²

 An exhaustive presentation of this motif may be found in Bernard Aubert, The Shepherd-Flock Motif in the Miletus Discourse (Acts 20:17 – 38) Against Its Historical Background (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), 126 – 259. See also, Timothy Laniak, Shepherds After My Own Heart: Pastoral Traditions and Leadership in the Bible (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 42– 74; Nicholas Cachia, “I Am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd Lays down His Life for the Sheep”(John 10,11). The Image of the Good Shepherd as a Source for the Spirituality of the Ministerial Priesthood (Roma: Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1997), 30 – 37; Craig S. Keener, Acts:15:1 – 23:35, vol. 3, Acts:An Exegetical Commentary (Baker Publishing Group, 2014), 3041. It is worth noting that this motif survived until the early modern period in Europe outside the Christian context and may be found for example in J. S. Bach’s cantata, Schafe können sicher weiden which compares the ruler to a shepherd and his subjects to sheep.  Keener, Acts: 15:1 – 23:35, 3041.  Roger Brock, Greek Political Imagery from Homer to Aristotle (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 43.  Aeschylus, Persians, Seven against Thebes, Suppliants, Prometheus Bound, ed. and trans. Alan H. Sommerstein (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 42– 43. See more in Emma Bridges, Imagining Xerxes: Ancient Perspectives on a Persian King (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014), note 20.  345D, in Plato, The Republic of Plato, trans. Alan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1991), 23. See also Brock, Greek Political Imagery from Homer to Aristotle, 45. The argument between Socrates and Thrasymachus is a fine example of how the same conceptual blend may be interpreted differently depending on which elements of its input spaces are highlighted and which are ignored. The fact that in many cases blends are not used as “ready-made” packages of meaning and that speakers may use selectively and creatively elements of its input spaces explains the great variety of meanings and interpretations attributed to shepherding imagery by church fathers. It is also important to note here that Socrates’ interpretation of the blend corresponds

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It was not only human rulers who were seen as shepherds. For example, Philo of Alexandria extends the Hebrew image of God as the shepherd of Israel onto the whole universe, writing that “[E]arth, water, air, fire, all the plants and animals in them, both mortal and divine, as well as the disposition of the heaven, the revolutions of the sun and moon and the harmonious movements and choral dances of the other planets, they are all guided, just like a flock, by God the shepherd.”¹³ In the Greco-Roman milieu of early Christianity the cultural experience of shepherding also took the form of idealized country life such as was found in pastoral literature (for example in Virgil’s Eclogues) or in references to shepherds in Roman history. This experience did not inspire patristic authors in any significant manner, although there are some exceptions.¹⁴ Some Greek philosophers (for example Epictetus) perceive the sheep as being a symbol of living “for the sake of the belly,” existence focused on eating and reproduction,¹⁵ yet it would appear that this way of thinking did not affect patristic authors either. Historians observe that ancient shepherding imagery also left its trace in the earliest Christian art, in the form of the figure of Hermes Kriophoros (or “rambearer”) that came to be used to represent Christ, the Good Shepherd.¹⁶ Given

with the future understanding of the role of shepherd in the church is a flock blend. Also Clement of Alexandria quotes Plato’s Laws (VII 808D) on the need of sheep for a shepherd in his Hymn to Christ the Saviour in which he employs in several places shepherding imagery, Matthew E Gordley, Teaching Through Song in Antiquity: Didactic Hymnody Among Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Christians (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 377.  Philo of Alexandria, On Cultivation 51, in Philo of Alexandria, On Cultivation, trans. David T. Runia and Albert C. Geljon (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 54.  See, e. g. Gregory of Nyssa’s “shepherds’ rustic strains” in 8.3.2. Augustine mentions Romulus and Remus brought up by Faustulus, the shepherd (The City of God 18.21), while Lactantius in Divine Institutes writes of shepherds who constituted the first senate of Rome (II, 6.13). Due to the fact that shepherding imagery played a different part in Hebrew culture than in the GrecoRoman environment, gentile Christians may have distorted the meaning of what Jesus as a Jewish preacher was saying when he referred to sheep. Basser gives an example of such a misinterpretation in Matt 12:11– 12, where the author or editor of the Gospel may have been using an Aramaic source that in the Greek version no longer conveys what Jesus may have intended. Herbert Basser and Marsha B: Cohen, The Gospel of Matthew and Judaic Traditions: A Relevance-Based Commentary (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2015), 17– 18. Furthermore, Philo reinterprets biblical shepherding imagery in his allegorical exegesis of the Hebrew Bible in On Cultivation.  Karl O. Sandnes, Belly and Body in the Pauline Epistles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 51.  Christopher Dawson, The Formation of Christendom (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), 108. The image of Christ as the Good Shepherd appears eighty-four times in catacombs between

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that Christian iconography had no clear connection with any specific biblical narrative in the pre-Constantinian church,¹⁷ the fact that Greco-Roman culture offered Christians the figure of Hermes Kriophoros is even more significant. It seems that through this figure that symbolized a pre-Christian model of a good shepherd, Christianity was very early on able to find a graphic representation of one of its most important concepts, that of Christ as the Good Shepherd.¹⁸ The selected examples of shepherding imagery presented above prove that it was part of the cultural experience of the ancient Mediterranean world and certain aspects of this experience do appear in the blends explored in this study. A much more important reference source for depicting the church as a flock was, however, the biblical shepherding imagery that will be discussed in the next section.

3.3 Shepherding experience and shepherding imagery in the Bible Sheep are the most frequently-mentioned animals in the Bible with almost four hundred references (including individual animals and flocks).¹⁹ The aim of this section is to present a very general outline of the references and imagery

ca. 100 and 325 CE, Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, 180. On the Good Shepherd in funeral art, see Henri Leclercq, ‘Pasteur (Bon)’, Dictionnaire D’archéologie Chrétienne et de Liturgie 13, no. 2 (1938): 2272– 2390. On lamps carrying the shepherd-kriophoros pattern possibly popular among Roman Christians in the second century, see Paul C. Finney, The Invisible God: The Earliest Christians on Art (Oxford University Press, 1994), 116 – 30.  Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art, 32.  The presence of the figure of “a good shepherd” in pre-Christian mythology and religion makes it difficult in some cases to classify a specific text or image as Christian. Laurence Kant, commenting on the reference to “a holy shepherd” in the oldest existing Christian inscription, the second century poem Life of Avercius, notes that this expression “could suggest the Phrygian god Attis, who was often described as a shepherd, or it could refer to pagan shepherds who brought offerings of sheep for ritual sacrifices. Or it could simply refer to any shepherd, thereby conjuring up the bucolic atmosphere valued by so many Greek and Roman poets. It could refer to the respected virtue of philanthropy, as it did in Greco-Roman literature and art. Or it could refer to Jesus, the Good Shepherd,” Laurence Kant, “Earliest Christian Inscription,” Bible Review 12, no. 1 (2001): 18. This multiplicity of possible connotations proves that shepherding imagery was familiar to non-Jewish converts to Christianity (unlike, for example, such concepts as baptism) which means in turn that conceptualizations based on this imagery, taken from the Hebrew Bible, could be easily adapted by those embracing the new religion.  Leland Ryken, James C. Wilhoit, and Tremper Longman (eds.) Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010), 782.

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connected to sheep and shepherding in the Bible, focusing on those instances that occur in the blends discussed in this study. It is therefore not an exhaustive presentation and I omit references not related to my further analysis, especially images of Jesus as “the Lamb of God” or “sheep led to the slaughter” from John, Acts and Revelation.²⁰

3.3.1 The Hebrew Bible Due to the variety of references to shepherding experience and shepherding imagery in the Hebrew Bible I have divided them into three broad categories: a) stories depicting real shepherds; b) elements of cultural experience of shepherding present in the text; c) shepherding imagery proper, by which I mean any examples of figurative language referring to shepherds and/or sheep. a) Many biblical characters were shepherds or kept sheep, from Abel, “the keeper of sheep,” (Gen 4:2) through Abraham, Jacob and Moses, to David. These stories of real biblical shepherds and their profession hardly ever occur in the input spaces of the blends discussed below, although it should be kept in mind that they also found their way into early Christian discourse, like it was in the case of Laban discussed in the previous section. b) Since the Hebrew Bible originated in a nomadic-agrarian milieu, shepherding experience was an integral aspect of its authors’ cultural experience. The Hebrew Bible present shepherds generally as protectors of their flocks of sheep, leading them to water and pasture, and taking care of sick or injured animals, all of which mirrors the real experience of the Palestinian shepherd. Sheep in turn are pictured as submissive, trusting the shepherd, and helpless without him.²¹ Interestingly, the fact that the sheep are ultimately killed is virtually absent from such images, and when the slaughter of sheep is invoked, the shepherds are not mentioned, thus indicating that their general image in the  For more on the cognitive interpretation of Jesus as the Lamb of God, see Jesper Tang Nielsen, “The Lamb of God: The Cognitive Structure of a Johannine Metaphor,” in Imagery in the Gospel of John. Terms, Forms, Themes, and Theology of Johannine Figurative Language, ed. Jorg Frey, Jan G. Van der Watt, and Ruben Zimmerman (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 217– 58.  Joachim Jeremias, “Poimēn,” in Theological Dictionary of the NewTestament, ed. Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, trans. G. W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1968), 486 ff. Peter L. Garber, “Sheep,” The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 464. For other aspects of the shepherding experience in the world of the Bible, including the distinction between sheep as men’s animals and goats as women’s animals and the distinction’s subsequent cultural consequences, see John J. Pilch, The Cultural Dictionary of the Bible (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1999), 135– 41.

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Bible is a positive one.²² On some occasions a sheep may be presented as a pet rather than as livestock, as suggested by 2 Sam 12:3.²³ Scattered through the Bible are various details concerning the shepherd’s job, such as counting sheep (Lev 27:32, Jer 33:13) and using dogs to control the sheep (Job 30:1).²⁴ c) As is widely known, shepherding imagery is used in many places in the Hebrew Bible to depict the relationship between God and Israel.²⁵ Israelites are “the people of his pasture and the flock under his care” (Ps 95:7) and when they lost their political sovereignty, they were “a scattered flock that lions have chased away. The first to devour them was the king of Assyria; the last to crush their bones was Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon” (Jer 5:17).²⁶ The same imagery is also the conceptual basis of the messianic prophecies that had the future king of Israel as its shepherd: “I will save my flock, and they will no longer be plundered. I will judge between one sheep and another. I will place over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will tend them; he will tend them and be their shepherd” (Ezek 34:22– 23). In the same chapter of Ezekiel there is also a well-known passage portraying the political leaders of Israel as bad shepherds (34:1– 10) and the same images may be found in other prophets (Jer 23:1– 4, Isa 56:10 – 11; Zech 10:2– 3; 11:4– 17). In particular, shepherding imagery from Ezek 34:1– 10 and Jer 23:1– 4 is often recruited by patristic authors in the blends explored in this study and

 Is 53:12, Jer 12:3, Ps 44:12 and other pericopes present sheep being butchered without their shepherds being mentioned. Only in Ezek 34 does God accuse the shepherds with the words: “[you] slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock.” DesCamp also notes that “butchering [is not] referenced in the God/Israel metaphor,” DesCamp, Metaphor and Ideology. Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum and Literary Methods through a Cognitive Lens, 222.  Garber uses this passage to argue that the sheep was “a common household pet” Garber, ‘Sheep’, 463.  Gerald L. Mattingly, “Shepherd,” in Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible, ed. David N. Freedman and Allen C. Myers (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 1208; Ryken, Wilhoit, and Longman, Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, 783.  E. g. Gen 49:24; Ps 28:9; 74:1; 77:20; 78:52; 79:13; 80:1; 100:3; Isa 40:11; 49:9 – 10; Jer 13:17, 20; Ezek 34; Mic 2:12; 5:4; 7:14; Zech 10:2– 3; 11:7, 15 – 17; Sir 18:13. James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 511, note 107; see also Kirsten Nielsen, “Old Testament Metaphors in the New Testament,” in New Directions in Biblical Theology. Papers of the Aarhus Conference, 16 – 19 September 1992, ed. Sigfred Pedersen (Leiden – New York – Köln: Brill, 1994), 136 – 38.  For more on the image of Israel as “God’s flock” in Psalms, see, William P. Brown, Seeing the Psalms: A Theology of Metaphor (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 151– 52.

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we find it in the the flock of the church is the flock of israel (4.1) and the teaching is feeding sheep (8.2) blends.²⁷ Apart from the systematic use of shepherding imagery with reference to Israel there are numerous other examples of its presence in the Hebrew Bible, from the well-known metaphor of the relationship between God and the believer as that of the shepherd and his sheep (Ps 23), through the image of the suffering servant as “a sheep that is silent before its shearers” (Isa 53:6), to the shepherding imagery in Song of Songs. Not all of these metaphors occur in the blends discussed below and those that do occur sometimes play an unexpected role. Certain passages from Song of Songs are a case in point; “shepherds” and “flocks” from Song 1:7– 8 are used as a part of a doctrinal argument by Augustine in his texts against Rogatists (9.2) while “a flock of sheep just shorn” (4:2) is an important element within the baptism is washing sheep blend (9.1.2).

3.3.2 The New Testament Instances of shepherding imagery in the New Testament are less common than in the Hebrew Bible, yet virtually all of them may be found in the source input spaces of the blends discussed in later sections of this study. I have also divided these into three categories: a) references to real shepherds; b) shepherding imagery in John; c) examples of shepherding imagery in the synoptic gospels and other books of the New Testament. a) Luke mentions anonymous shepherds “staying out in the fields and keeping watch over their flock by night” in his account of Jesus’ birth (2:8 – 18). Modern Christians only associate this image with the nativity, yet several patristic authors identify Lukan shepherds with bishops.²⁸

 Shepherding imagery from Ezek 34 is the conceptual framework of Augustine’s two famous sermons: on “The Shepherds” (Sermon 46) and on “The Sheep”(Sermon 47), in Augustine, Sermons (20 – 50) on the Old Testament, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Edmund Hill, vol. III/2, WSA (New York: New City Press, 1990), 263 – 326.  For instance Ambrose, who, commenting on this passage in his Exposition on Luke, writes that “those shepherds, whom the Good Shepherd forms, watch [their flock] well. For the flock is the people, the night is the world, the shepherds are the priests,”: “Et bene pastores vigilant, quos bonus pastor informat. Grex igitur populous, nox saeculum, pastores sunt sacerdotes,” Cachia, I Am the Good Shepherd, 243. Cf. Leo the Great: “What the angel of the Lord announced to the shepherds as they stayed up to keep watch over their flocks has also filled our ears. As a result, we have charge over the Lord’s sheep because we heed the words spoken by God in the ears of our heart,” Sermon 29, in Leo the Great, Sermons, 121– 22. “Quod enim pastoribus pro gregum suorum custodia vigilantibus nuntiavit angelus Domini, etiam nostrum implevit audi-

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b) John 10:1– 21 and 21:15 – 18 are loci classici whenever one thinks of shepherding imagery in the New Testament. Indeed, these passages provide the conceptual framework and biblical authority for one of the most important networks examined in this study, namely the shepherds are the shepherd blend (see 6).²⁹ The passages most probably come from the pens of different authors/redactor³⁰, yet because Jesus presents himself as the shepherd in each of them, they were combined. John 10:1– 16 is richer conceptually than John 21:15 – 18 because Jesus describes himself first as the “gate for sheep” and then as “the good shepherd.”³¹ While some scholars regard the intertwining of such images as confusing,³² it is worth noting that most references to the shepherding activities Jesus performs throughout the passage reflect the real shepherding experience.³³ Both metaphors may be interpreted in various ways, making John tum; et ideo Dominicis ovibus praesumus, quia verba divinitus edita cordis aure servamus,” PL 54:227 A. These and similar blends found in patristic literature lie beyond the scope of this study.  John 10:1– 16 is the most explicit passage in which Jesus presents himself as “the shepherd,” yet scholars point to implicit conceptualizations of Jesus as the shepherd resulting from typological exegesis in which he is seen as the antitype of David the shepherd: Charles Kannengiesser, Handbook of Patristic Exegesis: The Bible in Ancient Christianity, The Bible in Ancient Christianity (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 292– 293; Young S. Chae, Jesus as the Eschatological Davidic Shepherd: Studies in the Old Testament, Second Temple Judaism, and in the Gospel of Matthew, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament 2/216 (Tübingen: Siebeck, Mohr, 2006).  Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel and Epistles of John. A Concise Commentary (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1988), 100 – 101.  Charles Hill remarks that since the title appears only in John 10:11, 14, references to it (including the SAS blend) help to assess the role of the Johannine corpus in the Early Church, Charles E. Hill, The Johannine Corpus in the Early Church (Oxford University Press, 2006), 163 – 64.  Stephen C. Barton, “Christian Community in the Light of the Gospel of John,” in Christology, Controversy, and Community: New Testament Essays in Honour Od David R. Catchpole, eds. David G. Horrell and Christopher M. Tuckett (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 292. As a digression – because presenting exegesis of John goes beyond my competences as a linguist – we might add that what seems confusing to Barton, John Chrysostom lucidly explains by referring to his encyclopedic knowledge of “gate”(“door”) and “shepherd.” He says that: “when He is conducting us to His Father, He calls himself a door, but, when He is caring for us Himself, he calls Himself a shepherd,” John Chrysostom, Homily 59 in John Chrysostom, Commentary on Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist, Homilies 48 – 88, trans. Thomas Aquinas Goggin, FC 33 (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 126.  Andreas J. Köstenberger, John. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Baker Publishing Group, 2004), 299 – 306. Köstenberger notes that this imagery was also known to later Hellenistic audiences of the text; John. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, 300, note 8. Rhetorical and discourse analysis of “Shepherd Discourse” and its pastoral metaphors, see Stovell, Mapping Metaphorical Discourse in the Fourth Gospel: John’s Eternal King, 221– 54.

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10:1– 16 a puzzle or “a real riddle,”³⁴ yet the shepherding experience outlined there is very suggestive, if not always realistic; it is true that sheep follow the shepherd’s voice, that a thief steals and destroys, and that a hireling often abandons his sheep on seeing the approaching wolf; yet laying down his life to save his animals is not necessarily an act expected of a shepherd in the real world.³⁵ Nevertheless, both in the early history of the church as well as in later centuries these images would become important conceptual material in Christian discourse, providing components for those blends on which they are based. Thus, members of the clergy would be expected to defend their communities by sacrificing their lives during periods of persecution, thus imitating Christ the good shepherd who died for his sheep (see 6.2). Jesus’ distinction between “the true shepherd” and a “hireling” would also be an important conceptual element of a variant of the shepherds are the shepherd blend (6.3). Similarly, Jesus’ reference to “one flock and one shepherd” would become a crucial biblical argument leveled by Catholic bishops against leaders of those communities they regarded as “schismatic” or “heretical”³⁶ (see 9.2).

 Thomas L. Brodie, The Gospel According to John: A Literary and Theological Commentary (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 364. For an outline of the exegetical problems connected with John 10:1: ff., see for example Ulrich Busse, “Open Questions on John 10,” in The Shepherd Discourse of John 10 and Its Context, ed. Johannes Beutler and Robert T. Fortna (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 6 – 17.  According to mishnaic law, if one wolf attacked the flock, the hireling had to protect it. However, if there were two of them, the owner of the flock could not blame the hired man for any damage caused to the sheep, Köstenberger, John, 305 – 6 n. 40. Raymond Brown, quoted by Brodie, argues that the idea that a shepherd will die for his flock “appears rather abruptly” in the text (Brodie, The Gospel According to John: A Literary and Theological Commentary, 305) or – to put it in the cognitive linguistic terms – is not a part of the folk model of shepherding. Also Köstenberger notes that the phrase psychēn autou tithēsin typer tōn probatōn (“lays down his life for his sheep”) is rare in Greek; John. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, 305. Note finally that Jesus’ words declaring his readiness to die for his sheep are a linguistic realization of another conceptualization fundamental for the Christian soteriology, namely the the good shepherd is a sacrificial lamb blend. In Nielsen’s view this conceptualization is a “positive variation” of an Old Testament metaphor in which God is both a shepherd and a lion attacking the flock of Israel in Hos 5:12– 14, Nielsen, “Old Testament Metaphors in the New Testament,” 136 – 39.  There are many other occasional blends with shepherding imagery from John in their input spaces created by church fathers and invoked in their theological reasoning, yet discussing all or even part of them is not possible in this study. For example, Jesus’ distinction between “his sheep” and “not his sheep” is for Augustine a biblical argument for his doctrine of predestination. He maps Jesus’ words, “they shall not perish forever” (John 10:28), onto those who will be saved and “you are not my sheep” (John 10:26) onto those who “are predestined to destruction” and states: “«And they shall not perish forever». You hear the implication, as if he said to them.

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Finally, in John 21:15 – 18 Jesus presents himself as the shepherd who entrusts his “lambs” (arnia) or “sheep” (probata) to Peter, sanctioning in this way the image of lay Christians as sheep and their leaders as shepherds. This may be regarded as one of the few linguistic realizations of the the church is God’s flock blend in the New Testament, yet it must be added that it is atypical since it focuses the readers’ attention on Christ as the shepherd, whereas in most cases patristic authors use the blend to depict the relationship between the clergy and the laity. c) There are several passages in the synoptic gospels that depict Jesus’ listeners or his apostles as sheep³⁷ and that may also be regarded as less typical versions of the the church is God’s flock blend. As in the previous case, they can be regarded as less typical, because even if the believers are conceptualized as sheep and Christ is (implicitly) their shepherd, no members of the clergy are conceptualized as shepherds in the fully-fledged form of the blend. Nevertheless, as we shall see below, patristic authors regularly introduce such verses into the source input spaces of their blends since it is in this way that their conceptualizations are grounded in the Bible and may be presented as having a biblical sanction. For instance, Matt 7:15 (“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves”) is used in this way in the beware of the wolf blend that made for such a strong biblical argument, and at the same time was a popular invective employed in doctrinal disputes in the early church (see 8.4). Furthermore, the quotation from Zech 13:7 in Matt 26:31 and Mark 14:27– 28 presents Christ’s followers as sheep, which corresponds with the image of the good shepherd from John 10, as well as with Jesus’s words of a “little flock” (Luke 12:32).³⁸ We should also mention the shepherding imagery in the parable of the lost sheep (Matt 18:12– 14, Luke 15:3 – 7) that gained a new meaning in Christian discourse as the source input space of the the lost sheep blend, an important conceptual instrument in modifying the rigorous penitential discipline of the early church (8.3.1) and as the source input space of the soteriological conceptualization in which the lost sheep symbolizes a sinful humanity (9.3). In certain cases “sheep,” symbolizing righteous people in general in the synoptic Gospels, are identified only with Christians in a blend: “the sheep” separated from “the goats” on the day of the last judgment (Matt 25:33) become baptized Christians for Cyril of Jerusalem (9.1.1). The only metaphorical reference to You will perish forever because you are not of my sheep,” Lenka Karfíková, Grace and the Will According to Augustine, trans. Marketa Janebova (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2012), 252.  Matt 7:15; 9:36; 10:16; Mark 6:34; Luke 10:3; 12:32.  For more on how “little flock” was interpreted by the church fathers, see 7.1.

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sheep from the synoptic Gospels that does not occur in the blends discussed in this monograph is Matt 10:6 and 15:24 (the lost sheep of the house of Israel).³⁹ In Acts 20:28 – 30 Paul describes the Christian community in Ephesus as “the flock” (poimnion) and tells its “overseers” (episkopous) “to shepherd” (poimainein) it. The text also mentions “savage wolves” “not sparing the flock.” Since Acts is arguably an earlier text than John, this passage seems to be a first and at the same time a fairly rich linguistic realization of the church is God’s flock blend in Christian discourse and hence I discuss it separately in 7.2. More importantly, Paul never makes use of shepherding terminology in his letters when he deals with the organizational issues of the communities to whom he writes (with the exception of “shepherds” (poimenas) in Eph 4:11, used in a slightly different context, which I also discuss separately in 7.1).⁴⁰ Yet, when he describes the hardships and persecutions facing Christians, he quotes Ps 44:22 and compares them to “sheep to be slaughtered.” The shepherding imagery returns in Hebrews 13:20 where Christ is called “the great shepherd of the sheep” (poimena tōn probaton ton megan) and this image corresponds with his representation in John 10 and 21. Finally, there are two important instances of shepherding imagery in 1 Peter. 1 Pet 5:2– 4 is similar to Acts 20:28 – 30, and that is why it may be regarded as another linguistic realization of the the church is God’s flock blend in the New Testament. 1 Pet 2:25 (“for you were going astray like sheep”) takes the image of Israel as sheep (Isa 53:6) and projects it onto all Christians and therefore may be classified as a rudimentary linguistic realization of the flock of the church is the flock of Israel network discussed in chapter 5.⁴¹ While the first Christians undoubtedly had a general cultural experience of sheep and shepherds as presented in 1.1, it was the biblical shepherding imagery discussed in this section that became the conceptual basis of the blends explored in this study, with many passages mentioned above making their

 According to Tooley, “the shepherd/flock metaphor is not as strongly embedded in the synoptic tradition as is generally asserted,” yet “this must not detract from its significance.” Wilfred Tooley, “The Shepherd and Sheep Image in the Teaching of Jesus,” Novum Testamentum 7, no. 1 (1964): 23.  Paul uses shepherding imagery in 1 Cor 9:7, yet it occurs there along with other metaphors as an argument that the apostles are entitled to be supported materially by Christian communities, so it does not seem to be an intended church is a flock blend. Nevertheless, Augustine builds Paul’s argument into his variant of the FCFI blend in his Sermon 46 (see 5).  Shepherding imagery may also be found in the Midrash with stories similar to the New Testament parables. One of them depicts Moses looking for a lost sheep while he was tending the flock of Jethro. When he finally found it, “he carried it in his arms and brought it back,” Basser and Cohen, The Gospel of Matthew and Judaic Traditions: A Relevance-Based Commentary, 465.

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way into their input spaces. Both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament played key roles here, since in the Hebrew Bible one may find representations of the people of Israel as sheep and its leaders as shepherds (especially in the prophets), while in the New Testament we find occasional representations of believers as sheep in the synoptic gospels, a distinct concept of Christ as the shepherd in John, and well-formed linguistic representations of the the church is God’s flock blend in Acts and 1 Peter. Most importantly, the divine authority of the Bible meant that whenever these images were transferred into the input spaces of the blends employed by patristic authors, the blends themselves also gained divine authority and – in Nietzsche’s words – were “enhanced, transposed, embellished rhetorically and poetically, and (…) after long use seem[ed] firm, canonical, and obligatory.”⁴²

3.4 The folk model of shepherding Cognitively speaking, the cultural experience of shepherding in the early church may be understood as the folk model of shepherding shared by patristic writers and their audiences. This folk model of shepherding provides the organizing frame for shepherding input space that is mapped onto church input space in the blends. As the folk model of shepherding was discussed in 1.3, it suffices here to recall its most important features. Sheep are vulnerable and helpless animals and need shepherds to guard them and to control them. The sheep are also dumb, whereas the shepherds, being human, always “know better” what is good or bad for them. Most shepherds take proper care” of their sheep because they love them, yet there are occasionally bad shepherds. These are similar or identical to hirelings, who neglect their duties. The sheep are safe as long as they are with their shepherd(s). As separation from the flock is dangerous for them, a shepherd may take any protective measures he deems necessary to prevent their escape and if a sheep does go astray, he should do what is necessary to bring it back, even if this means resorting to coercion. A robber or a predator is an external threat to the sheep; sometimes, however, the danger lurks within, since some sheep may be wolves in sheep’s clothing. Attack by a predator is more likely when a sheep is separated from the flock, and that is why the animals should be kept together. When a sheep catches a

 Friedrich Nietzsche, “Truth and Lie in an Extra Moral Sense,” in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Penguin Books, 1977), 46 – 47.

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contagious disease it must be separated from the other sheep, so that they won’t in turn become infected. The folk model of shepherding is not static. On the contrary, the versatility of the image of the church as a flock in Christian discourse and its various linguistic realizations in patristic texts result from the fact that the shepherding experience, including the activities of the shepherd and the behavior of the sheep, manifest themselves through various scenarios in the input spaces of the blends discussed below that constituted the conceptual material in the pattern completion of the blends discussed in this study. Elements of the scenarios could be overtly introduced into a blend by patristic authors, as in the case of Augustine when he argued that “the shepherd sometimes calls the wandering sheep back to the fold by using the lash” (see 8.3.1), yet they were activated much more often implicitly in the minds of the readers or members of the audience listening to a homily, who knew in advance the normal course of events for a specific scenario and what action was expected of the shepherds or the sheep. For example, if a patristic author spoke of a sheep that contracted the contagious disease of a specific sin, his audience expected that the animal (taken to represent a member of the community) should be separated/removed from the community and that the shepherd was allowed to take all the necessary measures to protect the other sheep (the other members of this community). Similarly, when a Christian author labeled certain people, ideas or events as “wolves,” he activated in the minds of his audience a scenario of danger. In other words, it was not necessary for him to explicitly present the whole scenario to achieve the desired effect. It was enough for it to be signaled and the members of the audience would complete the pattern of the blend unconsciously in their minds.⁴³ The clarity of the folk model of shepherding and the various scenarios it implies mean that those blends which employ the model could easily be adapted to the rhetorical needs of the church fathers. In this manner they were able to create, modify, and justify the principles and rules pertaining to Church doctrine, liturgy, and discipline, conveying the rules in a persuasive and convincing way.

 See also DesCamp, who repeats after Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca that “the most effective arguments appeal to external or internal experience and calculation conforming to previously admitted rules,” explaining that this is the result of “the employment of frames and blends previously – and successfully – used by the reader, and/or licensed by the reader’s culture,” DesCamp, Metaphor and Ideology, 129.

4 A taxonomy of blends which constitute the image of the church as a flock in early Christian discourse A close examination of the image of the church as a flock in the corpus of early Christian literature reveals that it is constructed of a large number of interrelated blends, each of which recruits shepherding imagery. All of them may be regarded as subcategories of one, most general conceptual network or the the church is a flock blend. Of course, discussing all or even most of the subcategories of this blend goes beyond the scope of this study.¹ Nevertheless, having analyzed a wide spectrum of patristic texts, I have identified the blends which are used more systematically and regularly by their authors and here present in detail selected linguistic expressions of the following networks: the flock of the church is the flock of Israel, shepherds are the shepherd and the church is God’s flock (with the following subcategories: bishops are rams, teaching is feeding sheep, the lost sheep, a straying sheep, a sick sheep, beware of the wolf, baptism is branding sheep, baptism is washing sheep and the lost sheep is humanity blends). I wish to focus on these blends not only due to their frequent occurrence in patristic literature but primarily because they are mutually linked, and the ways and contexts in which they are used suggest that they are responsible – as specific conceptualizations creating meanings and organizing religious ideas – for shaping significant aspects of early church discipline, liturgy, and doctrine. The blends explored in this study include single-scope networks, mirror networks and double-scope networks, most often with two input spaces. In many cases the specific category identified above represents a specific network; for example the shepherds are the shepherd and the the flock of the church is the flock of Israel blends are mirror networks while subcategories of the the church is God’s flock blend are usually double-scope networks. As mentioned earlier, linguistic elements that relate to sheep, shepherds, and associated con-

 Many of these subcategories or variants are unique and appear in one text only, like for example John Chrysostom’s comparing death to a lion that was “putting terror into [good shepherd’s] lambs and was finally caught by the good shepherd or Christ who made it [viz. death conceptualized as a lion]”contemptible and ridiculous” and “put an end to its fear” John Chrysostom, A Homily on Pelagia, Virgin and Martyr 1, in Johan Leemans, Wendy Mayer et al., eds., ‘Let Us Die That We May Live’: Greek Homilies on Christian Martyrs from Asia Minor, Palestine, and Syria (c. AD 350 – AD 450) (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 148. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110582970-008

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cepts and that we find in the input spaces of the blends discussed below are taken most often from the Bible; less frequently they issue from real shepherding experience or from cultural experience (for example pastoral literature).² The process of composition involves the selective projections of these elements and elements from the church input space into the blend space; then these blends are completed by recruitment of the folk model of shepherding that is a part of the encyclopedic knowledge of sheep and shepherding shared by patristic authors and their audiences. Through different elaborations of the blends the church fathers conceptualize theological ideas or address problems concerning church discipline. All of the blends explored in this study – since they represent one broad category – share similar compressions of outer-space vital relations of Representation, Time, and Space. The most important compression is that of outer-space relation of representation into the inner-space vital relation of uniqueness. As a result, members of the clergy and ordinary Christians become, respectively, the shepherds and sheep in the blends discussed below. Actually, we should speak here of fusion or “the strongest possible form of compression”³ since to patristic authors believers are sheep. They are led to the pastures of God’s Word by bishops who are their shepherds; they go astray, cannot decide for themselves, and need to be under the shepherd’s/bishop’s constant control. Furthermore, the spatial and temporal distance between the biblical subject matter and Christians in their corresponding input spaces disappears in the blends, and biblical stories and events are perceived as happening “here and now” by patristic authors and their listeners/readers. In other words, the blends express “a universal or eternal truth played out in time, time and again.”⁴ Indeed, only in this way could they shape the attitudes and beliefs of whole generations of believers. Time may be either scaled or syncopated in blend spaces; in the the flock of the church is the flock of Israel blend we have scaling of time, with the entire history of Israel compressed into a much shorter history of the Catholic church, while in the the lost sheep and a straying sheep blends there is time compression by syncopation with selected elements of the biblical narrative present in the blend. Other compressions characteristic for the specific blends are discussed in later sections.

 For example, John Chrysostom employed the conventions of Greco-Roman pastoral literature in his Discourse Against Judaizing Christians 4 1.2 depicting shepherds as playing flutes and resting under oaks (see. 8.4).  Gilles Fauconnier, “Compression and Emergent Structure,” Language and Linguistics 6, no. 4 (2005): 527.  Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture, 154.

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Another feature of the blends that underlie the image of the church as a flock and indicate that they are not accidental linguistic utterances but systematic conceptual mechanisms used by patristic authors is that in most cases one specific category of the blend can be linked to one specific function in Christian discourse. Thus the the flock of the church is the flock of Israel blend serves patristic writers as an important conceptual instrument in appropriating the Hebrew Bible and interpreting it as God’s word addressed no longer to the national community of Jews but to the cosmopolitan Christian church; the shepherds are the shepherd blend on the other hand is systematically used to affirm or to justify the hierarchical status of members of the clergy as leaders.⁵ The the church is God’s flock blend is used to define and describe the roles of the clergy and the laity within a Christian community whereas its more sophisticated variants are used as significant conceptual frameworks in baptismal theology and liturgy as well as in soteriology and Christology. Though I have separated and divided the blends that underlie the image of the church as a flock into several distinguishable categories, clearly patristic authors did not divide them in this way. On the contrary, the blends from different categories often co-occur in the same argument or even in the same sentence in many patristic texts along with other blends that are not discussed or even identified in this study. Consequently, my analysis is in a way a freeze frame of a dynamic flow of patristic thought and in order to demonstrate specific blends I will have to ignore the other blends that are often closely intertwined. In a later part of this chapter I discuss in more detail the cognitive-linguistic structure of each of the blends identified above and then, in chapters 5 to 9, their linguistic realizations in selected patristic texts will be presented.

4.1

THE FLOCK OF THE CHURCH IS THE FLOCK OF ISRAEL

the flock of the church is the flock of Israel (FCFI) is a mirror network with two input spaces and a generic space containing (an) individual(s) in control of animals or humans (Figure 7). Note that each input space of this network is itself a blend. The first input space has Israel conceptualized as the flock and its political and spiritual leaders conceptualized as shepherds. This imagery is derived from the Hebrew Bible, most often from Jer 23:1– 4 or from Ezek 34. Sometimes other biblical images depicting Israel as the flock are invoked (Num 27:17;

 As we will see later (6.1), members of the clergy, even though they are shepherds, may be also conceptualized as sheep.

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1 Kings 22:17; Chron 18:16, etc.).⁶ The other input space represents the church and has the laity conceptualized as the flock and members of the clergy as shepherds. Since this is a mirror network, both input spaces possess the same organizing frame, consisting of a flock of sheep and shepherds. The outer-space vital relation of representation is compressed into uniqueness in the blend, equating the leaders of Israel with members of the Christian clergy and Israel with the church. This equation is fusion, which is clearly attested to in Didascalia Apostolorum: “the priests and Levites now are the presbyters and deacons (…) and high priest is the bishop.”⁷ To biblical scholars and theologians the FCFI blend is one of the many examples of typological exegesis characteristic of the early church, yet my analysis of this network reveals that the church fathers see in it something more than merely a type-antitype combination or Christian fulfillment of what God foreshadowed in the Hebrew Bible. As mentioned earlier, due to time compression in the blended space of the FCFI blend, events from the biblical history of Israel could take place “here and now” in Christian discourse and God’s words, once directed at the leaders of Israel, could be interpreted as now being directed at members of the clergy whenever the blend was used. Thus, the linguistic manifestations of the FCFI network explored in chapter 3 should not be seen as exemplifications of typological exegesis but more precisely as creative applications of the Hebrew Bible to meet the current needs of the church leaders. Seen in a broader perspective, the FCFI should be regarded as an important conceptual element which facilitates the promotion of the theological idea of supersessionism in the early church. Since the leaders of communities whose members were not Jews began to conceptualize themselves as shepherds relatively early on, it was easy for them to refer to themselves using the image of the spiritual leaders of Israel as shepherds taken from the Hebrew Bible. Historical

 For a more exhaustive presentation of shepherding imagery used with reference to the leaders of Israel in the Hebrew Bible, see e. g. Laniak, Shepherds After My Own Heart, 131– 68.  Didascalia Apostolorum 2.26 (here and later sections according to the Funk edition), in Richard H. Connolly, ed., Didascalia Apostolorum: The Syriac Version Translated and Accompanied by the Verona Latin Fragments, trans. Richard Hugh Connolly (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 86. Interestingly, Didache on which Didascalia are founded, equates the high priest of Israel with a Christian wandering prophet: “you will give the first fruits to the prophets; for they themselves are your high priests,” 13: 3; Aaron Milavec, The Didache: Faith, Hope, & Life of the Earliest Christian Communities, 50 – 70 C.E. (New York NY/Mahwah, NJ: Newman Press, 2003), 41. This suggests that other variants of mapping of the religious structure of biblical Israel onto the early church were also possible in early Christian discourse.

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Generic space

• (A) leader(s) • Those under his/their charge Israel input space

Church input space

• Leader(s) of israel (Target • domain)/shepherds (Source domain) • Israel (TD)/the flock • (SD)

REPRESENTATION

REPRESENTATION

• Bishop(s) (TD)/ • shepherd(s)(SD) • Laypeople (TD)/ • the flock (SD)

• The flock of the church is the flock of Israel/bishops are its shepherds [UNIQUENESS]

Blend Figure 7: the flock of the church is the flock of Israel network

events facilitated this conceptual shift, since after the destruction of the Jewish temple in 70 AD, the sacrificial form of Judaism was abruptly brought to an end, and with it the official priestly caste.⁸

 Robert Louis Wilken, The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 27.

4.2 Shepherds are the shepherd

4.2 SHEPHERDS

65

ARE THE SHEPHERD

The shepherds are the shepherd blend (SAS) equates members of the clergy with Christ, providing divine authority for their actions and the decisions they took concerning doctrine and discipline. Robert Wilken emphasizes the pivotal role of this blend in the institutional shaping of the church, claiming that “the internal life of the churches [is] (…) ‘ordered’ rather than ‘organized’ because in Christianity authority and governance are never simply a matter of function”; and “order implies a point of reference beyond itself.”⁹ It is precisely the SAS blend that provides this outer “point of reference,” which is summed up succinctly in Didascalia Apostolorum: “whatsoever the pastors with the deacons command you, and you obey them, you obey God.”¹⁰ The SAS blend is a mirror network with two input spaces sharing the same organizing frame: “the shepherd caring for his flock.” In the first input space we find elements from two biblical pericopes John 10:1– 14 and John 21:15 – 18. The other input space contains members of the clergy conceptualized as shepherds, with the laity conceptualized as sheep. Note that as with the case of the FCFI blend, both input spaces of the SAS network are also blends. Speaking precisely, each of these input spaces is a single scope network with an identical source domain containing at least two elements: shepherd and flock; and two target domains containing (1) Christ and his followers and (2) members of the clergy and members of the laity, conceptualized as sheep (Figure 8). Elements from both input spaces of the SAS network are selectively projected into the blend space. For example, Christ from John 10:1– 16 is only present in the blend as the good shepherd, and not as “the gate for sheep” or in his relation to the Father. Most importantly, the flock from the first input space representing the whole community of Christ’s followers is projected selectively without the members of the clergy who are identified with Christ in the blend. Other elements of John 10:1– 16 projected regularly into the blend space include: the sheep following the voice of the shepherd, the threat to the flock symbolized by a thief/robber or a wolf, a hireling as the antithesis of the true shepherd, the shepherd’s read-

 Wilken, The First Thousand Years, 30.  “Quod pastores vestri si quid vobis disposuerunt una cum diaconis suis et audieritis eos, Deo vos oboedistis,” Didascalia apostolorum 3.8 in Franciscus Xavierus Funk, ed., Didascalia et Constitutiones Apostolorum (Paderborn: Schö ningh, 1905), 198. English translation, Connolly, Didascalia Apostolorum: The Syriac Version Translated and Accompanied by the Verona Latin Fragments, 140. Although these words are directed at widows or “sisters,” the latter part of the sentence indicates that it is intended also for “every brother of the laity” – “omnis frater ex numero laicorum,” Funk, Didascalia et Constitutiones Apostolorum, 198.

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Generic space • A • Takes care of and protects/controls B • C is an opposite of A

Christ input space

• Christ (Target Domain)/ • the good shepherd (Source domain) • Christ’s followers • (TD)/Sheep(SD) • A hireling •

REPRESENTATION

REPRESENTATION REPRESENTATION

Church input space

• Bishop(s) (TD)/ • Shepherd(s) (SD) • Laypeople (TD)/ • Sheep (SD) • A bad bishop •

• Shepherds of the church are the (Good) Shepherd; a bad bishop is a hireling [UNIQUENESS]

Blend Figure 8: The shepherds are the shepherd network

iness to die for his flock, and finally, one flock. Not all of them occur simultaneously in the blend and some, (for example the contrast between a hireling and the shepherd, or dangers to the flock) are found more frequently than others. As with earlier blends, the compression of the vital relation of representation into the vital relation of uniqueness is very strong in the SAS blend, and members of the clergy became fused with Christ to such an extent that “the fathers believe, that, in actual fact, it is Jesus himself who is shepherding the flock

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through them.”¹¹ The conviction held by Christian leaders that they acted with divine authority is undoubtedly one of the reasons for the institutional success of the church in the early centuries of Christianity. This would not have been possible without the SAS blend as a conceptual basis for this conviction.

4.3 THE

CHURCH IS

GOD’S

FLOCK

Finally, we have come to arguably most common conceptualization in early Christian discourse to be examined in this monograph, namely the the church is God’s flock (CGF) blend (Figure 9). The CGF blend may be either a single or a double scope network. In the first case the organizing frame of its source or input space is projected into the blend to simply conceptualize lay Christians as sheep and their leaders as shepherds. Yet in many cases the organizing frames of both input spaces clash in the blend, which results in interesting and creative conceptualizations in which the sheep are presented as humble (see 8.1.1) or as being lured by “steep slopes of pleasure and the by-paths of luxury” (see 8.3.2). Yet even in the case of the double scope variant of the blend, the organizing frame of the “sheep” input space is always most prominent. It contains a shepherd(s) and sheep, and the relations between them shaped by the folk model of shepherding. Thus, we find shepherds leading sheep to pastures or to pens, sheep going astray or being sick or carrying contagious diseases, wolves attacking the flock, etc. Selective projections from this input space into the blend include: a) with regard to sheep: behavior typical for sheep, i. e. following the shepherd, grazing, drinking water, passivity, helplessness, keeping together, etc.; b) with regard to the shepherd(s): taking care of the animals, leading them to pasture or water, protecting them from predators or robbers, healing the injured ones, looking for those who went astray and bringing them back, separating ill animals from healthy ones, bringing them back into the sheepfold, and so on.¹²

The emergent structure of the blend comprises members of the clergy and laity with clear roles and expectations attributed to them: laypeople are conceptualized as sheep, while members of the clergy are the shepherds. Another signifi Cachia, I Am the Good Shepherd, 244.  It is important to note that some elements of real shepherding experience are absent from the CGF blend, e. g. mating, while other elements occur only in some specific contexts, for example the image of “shorn sheep” that may be found primarily in the baptismal context, see 9.1.3.

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Generic space

∙ (A) leader(s) ∙

Sheepfold input space ∙ Shepherd(s) ∙ [protecting and controlling animals] ∙ A flock [obedient and ∙ dependent on shepherds] ∙ A shepherd leads his sheep ∙

those under his/their charge

SIMILARITY

SIMILARITY

SIMILARITY

Church input space ∙ Bishop(s) ∙ [in charge, making decisions, caring for the community] ∙ A Christian community ∙ [seen en masse, obedient to and dependent on its bishop]

to pastures

∙ A bishop leads his community to∙ the nourishment of the Bible

∙ The church is God’s flock and ∙ bishops are its shepherds ∙ A bishop’s primary task as a shepherd is to ∙ feed his sheep/teach his community

[UNIQUENESS] Blend Figure 9: The the church is God’s flock network

cant consequence of the fact that the organizing frame of the blend comes predominantly from the experiential input space is that laypeople are presented generally en masse (as a flock), while the shepherd(s) as (an) individual(s). Laypeople are also represented as passive and whatever independent action they take, it is a recipe for trouble.¹³ The stress is constantly placed in the blend on  The CGF blend deprived the laity of any initiative so effectively that in later centuries the clergy finding themselves in a position of great strength, no more so than in the Catholic Church, attempted to rework this metaphor in order to force the laity into more activity. In 1946 Pius XII stated that “within the Church, there exist not an active and passive element, leadership and lay people. All members of the Church are called to work on the perfection of the body of Christ,”

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the responsibilities and prerogatives of the clergy and the subjugation of the laypeople. The most important outer-space relation of the CGF blend (apart from those discussed earlier) is the relation of Similarity of the roles and behavior of sheep and the shepherd(s) and the laity and the clergy respectively. This relation is compressed into uniqueness in the blend. The physical features of sheep and people in both input spaces are ignored, yet at the same time an interesting pattern in the CGF network may be observed, namely the transformation of the ‘physical’ of the experiential input space into the ‘spiritual’ in the blend. In other words, as we will see in later sections, physical aspects of the sheep and their behavior (being lost, injured or hungry, grazing, drinking etc.) when projected into the blended space, are systematically transformed into the spiritual condition of the believers such as being in sin, holding false beliefs, being deprived of the word of God or its proper teaching, reading the Bible, and the like.¹⁴ Another compression of vital relations is that of change into uniqueness, often found in variants of the CGF blend created by patristic authors in the baptismal context in which the ontological status of the humans/sheep changes after baptism – yet they remain the same sheep. There are also metonymical representations in some variants of the blend with part-whole outer-space vital relation compressed into uniqueness when a specific Christian community is seen the church as a whole or – on a regular basis – when a specific bishop presenting his opinion concerning various aspects of Christian doctrine and life takes it for granted that his opinion is the opinion of all church hierarchy. It is also worth noting that the semantic/pragmatic link between the notion of “shepherd” and the notion of “sheep” (i. e. the fact that “a shepherd” presupposes “sheep” semantically and “sheep” presupposes “a shepherd” pragmatically or as an element in the encyclopedic knowledge of language users) affects the way Christian authors think of the church whenever they use the blend. Because Amy Hereford, Religious Life at the Crossroads: A School for Mystics and Prophets (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), 155. Note that Pius XII had to resort in his statement to another conceptualization of the Church as the body of Christ because only in this way was he able to convince his readers that lay people may be active agents. In other words, whenever the CGF blend is used in Christian discourse, the members of laity will always be regarded as passive since they are the sheep.  As a matter of fact, the church fathers themselves were aware of such a transformation and refer to it as an exegetical principle. Jerome wrote that “whatever took place carnally among the former people is fulfilled spiritually in the church,” Jerome, Commentary on Jeremiah, ed. Christopher A. Hall, trans. Michael Graves, Ancient Christian Texts (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2012), 188.

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a bishop is always conceptualized as a shepherd he must always have some sheep under his control and similarly, sheep are also expected to have a shepherd.¹⁵ As mentioned above, elements of shepherding imagery in the FCFI and the SAS blends come from the Bible, while in the CGF network they may come either from the Bible or from the real world. Thus, we may distinguish two broad categories within the CGF network. The first, which has elements of real shepherding experience projected respectively onto the clergy and the laity, and the second, which is, precisely speaking, “a blend within a blend” and in which shepherding imagery is mediated through the Bible. Cyprian’s a sick sheep blend discussed in 8.7, and instructions on how members of the laity should take their places in the church building examined in 8.1.3, are examples of the former, while the beware of the wolf blend (8.4) exemplifies the latter. On the other hand, this is only a technical distinction, as in most cases the experiential input spaces of the variants of the CGF blend explored in chapters 6 and 7 recruit elements of shepherding experience both from real life and from the Bible. The presence of both reference sources in the source input space of the CGF blend explains its versatility and usefulness, since even if patristic authors could not find a suitable biblical passage which mentioned sheep, they could always resort to real shepherding experience to buttress their arguments. In this way variants of the CGF blend could easily be adapted to their pastoral, doctrinal, or polemical needs. In this chapter I have discussed a taxonomy of the major blends which constitute the image of the church as a flock in patristic literature, and I have presented their structures, input spaces, and the compression of vital relations. This has been an introduction to the main part of my study, comprising chapters 3 to 9, where I will examine each of these blends again, this time in more detail, to demonstrate their various linguistic manifestations in early Christian texts and the crucial role they play in shaping Christian doctrine and church discipline.

 This principle is visible even today in the Roman Catholic Church where a bishop who is not in charge of any particular diocese becomes a “titular bishop” with a titular see of an ancient diocese that no longer functions and exists only in Church documents. Concerning the necessity of a shepherd for the sheep, in one of the Pseudo-Ignatius letters a woman asks him for a bishop so that her community “not be deprived of those who preside over the divine word,” quoting the Book of Numbers that “the assembly of Lord will not be as sheep for whom there is no shepherd,” The Letter of Maria the Proselyte to Ignatius 1.1– 1.2, in Ross S. Kraemer, Women’s Religions in the Greco-Roman World: A Sourcebook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 376.

5

THE FLOCK OF THE CHURCH IS THE FLOCK OF ISRAEL

(FCFI)

As mentioned earlier, the FCFI blend is used in patristic writings first of all to define the bishops’ tasks as leaders of their communities. Since the church is now the flock of Israel, the responsibilities of Israel’s religious leaders are mapped onto the bishops. The blend underpins, for instance, the detailed presentation of what is expected of bishops found in Didascalia Apostolorum, quoting in extenso Ezek 34:1– 31, that is preceded with the statement that the Lord speaks through Ezekiel to the bishops.¹ In other words, the bishops are equated here with the leaders of Israel. The blend runs through a later part of Didascalia when several verses from Ezek 34 are presented as referring to bishops, with the systematic transformation of the physical into the spiritual in the blend: That which is weak strengthen [Ezek 34:4] that is, him that is tempted confirm with admonition. And that which is sick heal [Ezek 34:4] that is, him that is sick with doubting of his faith, heal with doctrine. And that which is broken bind up [Ezek 34:4, 16] that is, him that is stricken or buffeted or broken by his sins, and halts from the right way, bind up; that is, with the exhortation of admonition cure him, and lighten him of his transgressions, and comfort him and show him that there is hope for him; and bind him up and heal him and bring him into the Church.²

The FCFI blend was also used in patristic literature as a biblical argument in doctrinal disputes. After the Decian persecution, when bishops were split between those who were in favour of readmitting the lapsi to the church and those who were against it, Cyprian of Carthage, representing the former, wrote: On the day of judgment will it not be found written against our names that we were lazy and negligent or callous and cruel: as shepherds we would neither, in time of peace, tend the sheep entrusted and committed to our care nor, in time of battle, equip them with weapons? Will not the Lord heap upon us the reproach He makes crying out through the mouth of His prophet? [Cyprian is referring here to Ezek 34:3 – 6; 10 – 16] We wanted, therefore, to prevent the Lord from demanding back the sheep entrusted to us, delivering them from out of our mouths by which we refuse them reconciliation and by which we con-

 “Dixit enim dominus de episcopis populum neglegentibus sic per Ezechiel,” Funk, Didascalia et Constitutiones Apostolorum, 68.  Didascalia Apostolorum 2.19, in Connolly, Didascalia Apostolorum: The Syriac Version Translated and Accompanied by the Verona Latin Fragments, 62. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110582970-009

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front them with callousness and cruelty of man rather than with the goodness and gentleness of God our Father (…) we came to the decision (…) to grant reconciliation to the fallen.³

In his letter to Pope Stephen Cyprian employs the same blend alluding to Ezek 34:4– 6 and interpreting the prophet’s words as though they were addressed to the bishops: Thus does the Lord threaten such shepherds who allow His own sheep to be neglected and lost. What then dearly beloved brother, ought we to be doing but exercising every zeal in gathering in and nursing back to health the sheep of Christ, and applying the salve of His fatherly compassion for healing the wounds of the fallen?”⁴

Patristic authors also employ the FCFI blend to remind themselves and their audiences of what bishops must not do. Gregory of Nazianzus, in his oration delivered on the occasion of his episcopal consecration, also invokes Ezek 34:3 – 10, this time referring the passage to himself: Let me not prove a bad shepherd, feeding on the milk and clothing myself with the wool and slaughtering or selling off the fattest of the flock while abandoning the rest to cliffs and wild beasts, thus benefiting as a shepherd not the sheep but myself, the very behavior that the old leaders of Israel used to censure.⁵

The FCFI blend is also the main conceptual framework of Augustine’s sermon On the Shepherds. As the title suggests, Augustine, like Gregory, takes Ezek 34 as the input space of his blend, equating bad shepherds with bad bishops and enumerating their sins and negligences, among them profiting personally from being a bishop, here conceptualized as “drinking milk of sheep” (Ezek 34:3). Yet, running the blend, he introduces Paul’s words from 1 Cor 9:7⁶ into its input space to argue that bishops actually “had the right to receive the milk” since “the Lord had laid down that those who proclaim the Gospel might get their living from the Gos-

 Letter 57 4.3 – 5.1, in Cyprian of Carthage, Letters 55 – 66, trans. Graeme W. Clarke, vol. 3, The Letters of St. Cyprian of Carthage, Ancient Christian Writers 46 (New York N.Y./Mahwah, N. J.: Newman Press, 1986), 58 – 59.  Letter 68 4.2, in Cyprian of Carthage, Letters 67 – 82, trans. Graeme W. Clarke, vol. 4, The Letters of St. Cyprian of Carthage, Ancient Christian Writers 47 (New York N.Y./Ramsey, N. J.: Newman Press, 1989), 30 – 31.  Oration 9 6, in Gregory of Nazianzus, Select Orations, trans. Martha Vinson, FC 107 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 24– 25.  “Who tends a flock and does not drink the milk?”

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pel,” adding that it is “a right given them, not arrogated by them.”⁷ In other words, quoting Paul’s opinion that drinking milk from the sheep is what shepherds normally do, Augustine, like a modern spin-doctor, introduces a new perspective into Ezekiel’s admonitions and refutes the prophet’s argument that “drinking milk of sheep” is always wrong. Drinking milk would be unacceptable – claims Augustine – only if bishops “were neglecting the sheep (…) seeking their own advantage and not that of Jesus Christ.”⁸ Thus, the FCFI blend allows Augustine not only to integrate the two disparate biblical passages and to present them as elements of the same conceptual image, but also to modify the apparently obvious meaning of Ezek 34, interpreting it through the prism of 1 Cor 9:7.⁹ There are also linguistic manifestations of the FCFI blend with the image of Israel as sheep derived not from Ezek 34 but from other biblical passages. For example, Augustine, explaining the meaning of Ps 43:12 (“You have handed us over like sheep for butchering, and scattered us among the nations”) writes that the verse reflects the way the “Church mourns its own members that have been devoured by the pagans.”¹⁰ Similarly, Cyril of Alexandria interprets Zephaniah’s prophecy concerning “the rest of Israel” conceptualized as sheep that “shall graze and lie down and none shall make them afraid” (3:13), seeing in this image Christians gathered in churches, safe and no longer persecuted in the Roman empire: The shepherds [i. e. leaders of Israel] ruined the flocks of the rational sheep, therefore, not frightening off wild animals, but themselves imitating the wild animals. When Christ shone forth, however, the good shepherd who gave his life for the sheep, we grazed on gardens

 Sermon 46 4, in Augustine, Sermons (20 – 50) on the Old Testament, 265.  Sermon 46 5, in Augustine, Sermons (20 – 50) on the Old Testament, 265.  Actually, combining Ezek 34:3 with 1 Cor 9:7 would have been more difficult for Augustine, had he been using the original Hebrew text of Ezekiel where bad shepherds do not drink milk but eat cheese or curds, Daniel I. Block, The Book of Ezekiel, Chapters 25 – 48 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 283. On the other hand, patristic authors did not need any specific linguistic triggers to create blends with shepherding imagery since such blends were simply the conceptual basis of their reasoning. For example, Jerome in his commentary on Eph 4:11, remarks in passing that there are “false pastors in the churches who do not feed the sheep with instruction but, like mercenaries, take no thought at all for the salvation of the flock, neither turning back what has strayed nor seeking what is lost, but who only take milk and wool from the sheep, that is, of course, food and clothing,” Commentary on Ephesians 2. 615, in Ronald E. Heine, The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 176.  Exposition of Psalm 43 12, in Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 33 – 50, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Maria Boulding, vol. III/16, WSA (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000), 271.

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and were shepherded even among lilies, as Scripture says [cf. Song 6:2– 3]. We also lay down in folds, being lodged in churches and holy temples with no one to frighten or ravage us, no bounding wolf, no creeping lion, no burglar breaking in, no one else advancing on us “to seat, kill and destroy.”¹¹

 Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Zephaniah 3, in Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Twelve Prophets, Vol. 3, trans. C. Robert Hill (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 53.

6

SHEPHERDS ARE THE SHEPHERD

(SAS)

The SAS blend that equates bishops with Christ is one of the most important conceptual instruments used by patristic authors to perpetuate the divine authority attributed to the bishop’s office. As presented in detail in 4.2, one of its input spaces contains the subject matter from John 10:1– 14 and/or John 21:15 – 18; we may distinguish its three most popular elaborations depending on what elements of Jesus’ speech are projected into the blend space. In the first, often found in sermons or instructions directed at the laity, members of the clergy are identified with Christ as the good shepherd who controls the flock. The second variant evokes Christ’s readiness to die for his sheep and is used to remind members of the clergy that because of their Christ-like status, they should also be ready to suffer or even to die for their flocks in times of persecution. In the third variant, Christ’s distinction between the true shepherd and a hireling, this then being projected into the blend space, allows patristic authors to denounce the reprehensible attitudes of those members who ignore their pastoral duties. Below I discuss each of these elaborations separately.

6.1 The SAS blend as the conceptual basis for the authority of members of the clergy As mentioned earlier, the church fathers believed that it was Jesus himself who, through them, shepherded the flock. However, it seems that it took some time before the SAS blend became a commonplace in Christian discourse. It also appears that connecting the idea of the members of the clergy being shepherds with Christ the Shepherd was not obvious to all Apostolic Fathers, and only in the next decades and centuries did it become a standard conceptualization used to define the position and status of the clergy as different from that of other members of the Christian community. That this was the case is suggested by two early Christian texts, Ignatius of Antioch’s Letter to the Romans (c. 35 – c. 108), and The First Letter to the Corinthians traditionally ascribed to Clement of Rome (1 Clement). Ignatius of Antioch – when he had been forced to leave his community and was being transported to Rome to be martyred there – asked the Christians in Rome to pray for his church in Syria “which has God as its shepherd in my place.” In the next sentence, he

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110582970-010

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adds that Christ will be the bishop of his (Ignatius’) community.¹ This rhetorical device (God replaces Ignatius as shepherd; Christ replaces him as bishop), implies that in ordinary circumstances it is the bishop, as the shepherd of his community, that represents God and/or Christ, or in other words, that “the shepherd is the Shepherd.” Interestingly, another text from the same period, 1 Clement, does not use the SAS blend where one might expect. Its author defends the church leaders removed from office by lay members of the community in Corinth and argues: [it is not] right to remove from the ministry those who were appointed by them [i. e. apostles], or, afterwards by other reputable men, with the entire church giving its approval. For they have ministered over the flock of Christ blamelessly and with humility, gently and unselfishly, receiving a good witness by all many times over.²

Since 1 Clement speaks of “the flock of Christ,” this implies the conceptualization of those who ‘have ministered over’ it as shepherds. Yet when defending them, the author points to their apostolic succession and their virtues and merits but not even once does he mention that they must not be removed from office because they are identical with or represent Christ. It seems strange, since that would be the strongest possible argument in a letter to a community facing a schism caused most probably by members of the laity. We may agree that the deposed presbyters are presented as having been appointed by Christ through apostolic succession, yet this seems to be a weaker argument than conceptualizing them as identical with Christ by means of the SAS blend. According to Ehrman and others, 1 Clement is “the oldest Christian writing outside of the New Testament.”³ What is more, “it was likely known in the early years of the second century” to major Christian authors of that period, including Polycarp.⁴ Does this imply that its author does not use the SAS blend simply because it was not yet well-established? In later centuries the SAS blend became the standard conceptualization in patristic texts, often in combination with other elements of shepherding imagery. For example, Clement of Alexandria employs the SAS blend in Paedagogus, commenting on Paul’s words on milk given to the believers (1 Cor 3:2) and presenting bishops as “the shepherds who rule the churches in imitation of the Good Shep-

 Letter to the Romans 9.1, in Bart D. Ehrman, ed., The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1 Loeb Classical Library 24 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 281.  First Clement 45, in Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1.  Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1, 25.  Brian J. Arnold, Justification in the Second Century, (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2017), 22.

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herd.”⁵ Gregory of Nazianzus uses the same blend in another fashion speaking of Christ who “co-shepherds” [sympoimainōn] with bishops and saves the flock through them⁶ and, speaking of a newly-appointed bishop, that he will “take up his staff [bakteria] and with the true Shepherd [co‐]shepherd [sympoimaien] his spiritual flock.”⁷ In both instances the SAS blend manifests itself through a verb whose morphological form (the sym- prefix) and meaning suggest the existence of an intimate relation between the bishop and Christ. Note that while in the first instance Christ co-shepherds with the bishops, in the second instance the bishop co-shepherds with Christ, which presupposes equality of both. Note further that in the second instance equating the bishop with Christ is strengthened by baktēria that is the material anchor of the blend (see 1.2.4) and evokes both the bishop’s care and his authority. Baktēria occurs in the LXX version of Ps 23:4, depicting God as a shepherd, while in non-biblical Greek baktēria was “borne as a badge of office by dikastai” or jurymen.⁸ Some patristic texts suggest that the identification of bishops with Christ raised them ontologically above ordinary mortals. Ambrose of Milan’s biographer writes that Ambrose, having arrived in Sirmium (where the Catholic community faced strong Arian opposition), “seated himself on the tribunal” and then: one of the girls of the Arian sect, more impudent than the rest, mounting the tribunal and taking hold of the bishop’s vestment, since she wished to drag him to the group of women so that they might beat him and drive him from the church, heard him say (…): “Even if I am unworthy of so great a bishopric, it is not fitting that you or your kind lay hands on any bishop of whatever sort. Thus you ought to fear God’s judgment, lest something happen to you.” What happened, confirmed this warning, for on another day, he conducted her dead to her grave, repaying insult with kindness.⁹

 Paedagogus 1.6, in Clement of Alexandria, Christ the Educator, trans. Simon P. Wood, FC 23 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1954), 36.  Oration 11 7, in Cachia, I Am the Good Shepherd, 245. Vinson’s translation of the same oration is not precise here, since she writes of Christ who [is] “helping us in the task of tending and preserving the flock,” Gregory of Nazianzus, Select Orations, 35.  Oration 6 9, in Gregory of Nazianzus, Select Orations, 10.  LSJ.  Paulinus of Nola, Life of St. Ambrose 3.11, in Roy J. Deferrari, ed., Early Christian Biographies, trans. Roy J. Deferrari et al. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1952), 39. On social status of bishops, see also 8.1.

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A similar opinion concerning the different ontological status of the bishop may be found in Jerome: “He who is chosen to be shepherd of the church must be one compared with whom other men are rightly regarded as but a flock of sheep.”¹⁰ The SAS blend is also a constant motif in Augustine’s works.¹¹ In his famous sermon On the sheep he teaches his audience that Christ “is the one (…) who feeds his flock, and with all [i. e. members of the clergy], who feed it well he is the only one, because they are all in him.”¹² In another sermon he admonishes his congregation: “This is my express advice to you (…) my orders; it’s the bishop’s orders, it’s Christ’s orders through me.”¹³ The first quotation presents Christ as the true shepherd of the Christian flock; nevertheless it confirms the special status held by the members of the clergy, who are in Christ. Note also that to be identified with Christ, the bishops must feed their flocks well. By introducing this additional condition Augustine and other Christian authors could further use the same blend to denounce those members of the clergy who did not meet the standards of proper governance for their communities, by referring to the members as “hirelings” (see 6.3). In yet another sermon Augustine combines shepherding imagery with the organic vision of the church as the body of Christ, declaring that “pastoris membra pastores” (“the shepherds are members of the Shepherd”).¹⁴ This phrase illustrates how various blends may be used simultaneously by Christian authors and how different conceptual perspectives, when combined by a skillful rhetorician like Augustine, may result in an adage attractive both conceptually and phonically: “pastoris membra pastores.” The role of the SAS blend presented above does not preclude the possibility of also conceptualizing members of the clergy (or shepherds) as sheep in relation to Christ in patristic writings. Hence we may distinguish an interesting variant of

 Jerome, Letter 69 8, in NPNF II 6:147; “Futurus pastor ecclesiae talis eligitur, ad cuius comparationem recte grex ceteri nominentum,” Hieronymus, Epistulae 1 – 70, ed. Isidorus Hilberg, editio altera supplementis aucta curante M. Kamptner, CSEL 54 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschafte, 1996), 694– 95.  “Making present Christ as the one Shepherd who is present in his shepherds is a constant in the Augustinian theology of the ministry,” Cachia, I Am the Good Shepherd, 245 – 46.  Sermon 47 12, in Augustine, Sermons (20 – 50) on the Old Testament, 306 – 307.  Sermon 392 4, in Augustine, Sermons (341 – 400), ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Edmund Hill, vol. III/10, WSA (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1995), 423.  Sermo 135 6.7, PL 38:749. Yet it is worth remembering that in another sermon Augustine uses a similar rhetorical figure, writing that “the very sheep themselves are members of the shepherd,” Sermon 229N 1, in Augustine, Essential Sermons, ed. Boniface Ramsey, trans. Edmund Hill (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2007), 286.

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the SAS blend, something that we might call the shepherds are sheep network and that occurs several times in Augustine’s sermons: And consequently, with the example of his Passion preceding, who would not see that the shepherds ought to stick more closely to imitating the Shepherd if even many sheep have imitated him under whom, as the One Shepherd, in one flock even the shepherds themselves are sheep? For indeed he made all his sheep for all of whom he suffered, for even he himself, that he might suffer for all, was made a sheep.¹⁵

Leo the Great uses the same conceptualization to underline God’s constant assistance for members of the clergy: “What assurance could we have unless he were willing to be not only the guardian of the sheep, but the shepherd of their shepherds as well.”¹⁶ Yet in other places Leo, like many church fathers before him, also reminds his audience that the shepherds’ authority comes directly from Christ the shepherd, who governs the church with them: “We rightly and piously rejoice in his arrangement because, although he delegated (delegauit) the care of his sheep to many shepherds, he himself has not relinquished custody of his beloved flock.”¹⁷ Fauconnier and Turner, discussing Role as one of the Vital Relations in conceptual integration, illustrate their argument with the Pope blend “in which there is one unique Pope, who goes through many cycles.”¹⁸ The Roman Catholic doctrine goes further and identifies each pope with Peter through the the pope is Peter blend. Wilken notes that it was Leo the Great who was the first bishop of Rome to identify himself systematically with Peter.¹⁹ Therefore, from a cogni Augustine, Tractate 123 on the Gospel of John 5, in Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 112 – 24, 81. (emphasis added). Cf. also Augustine, Sermons (20 – 50) on the Old Testament, 299. “We act as your shepherds, but along with you we are sheep under the one shepherd,” Augustine, Exposition of Psalm 126 3, in Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 121 – 150, ed. Boniface Ramsey, trans. Maria Boulding, vol. III/20, WSA (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2004), 86.  Leo the Great, Sermon 5 2, in Leo the Great, Sermons, 30.  Leo the Great, Sermon 3 2, in Leo the Great, Sermons, 22.  Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 98.  “Leo displays an almost mystical identification with the person of Peter. This is quite new. The bishop of Rome, says Leo, should be received not simply as the successor of Peter but ‘as Peter’, and when he speaks, it is Peter who speaks and governs through him,” Wilken, The First Thousand Years, 169. Of course, Leo is not the first patristic author who stresses the unique status of Peter and many patristic authors did it before him, notably Augustine: “The one man Peter represents the unity of all the shepherds or pastors of the Church – but the good ones, who know how to feed Christ’s flock for Christ and not for themselves,” Augustine, Sermon 147 2, in Augustine, Sermons (94 A – 147 A) on the New Testament, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Edmund Hill, vol. III/4, WSA (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1992), 448. It is also worth noting that in the epitaphs of the popes of late antiquity we often find references to

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tive linguistic perspective, there is good reason to assume that it was Leo who created the the pope is Peter blend in which the vital outer-space vital relation of analogy (both Peter and Leo were bishops of Rome) becomes an inner-space vital relation of identity in the blend. The the pope is Peter network is closely linked with the SAS blend, since Leo equates himself not with Peter the fisher or Peter the martyr, but Peter the shepherd of Christ’s flock: Dearly beloved, the celebration of today’s feast involves a submission that conforms to reason. Regard him [Peter] as present in the lowliness of my person. Honor him. In him continues to reside the responsibility for all shepherds, along with the protection of those sheep entrusted to them. His dignity does not fade even in an unworthy heir.²⁰

This brief presentation of how the church fathers used the SAS blend as a conceptual framework of their identity with Christ shows that it is indeed a crucial element of the church order, providing “a point of reference” beyond the order itself. The other linguistic realizations of the blend discussed in the next two sections demonstrate that it was employed not only in forming the conceptual basis of the divine authority of the clergy but also as a reminder that like “the Good Shepherd” the clergy must be ready to sacrifice their lives for the “sheep” entrusted to them.

6.2 Members of the clergy, as good shepherds, should be ready to die for their flocks A significant element of the collective memory of Christianity are the accounts of bishops and/or presbyters who died for their faith and in defense of their

sheep under the care of the shepherd, John Moorhead, The Popes and the Church of Rome in Late Antiquity (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), 175.  Leo the Great, Sermon 3 4, in Leo the Great, Sermons, 23. In another sermon Leo speaks of Peter as the one who is “present” and who “never ceases to extend his pastoral watchfulness to the sheep entrusted to him by the Lord” (Sermon 16 7, Sermons, 63). In yet another, Peter “doubtlessly now does that. [i. e. feeds Christ’s sheep] As a dedicated shepherd, he carries out the mandate from the Lord” (Sermon 83 3, in Leo the Great, Sermons, 358). We may conclude therefore that while in the typical version of the SAS blend two shepherd figures are projected into the blended space, Christ and the bishop, the blended space of the SAS network employed by Leo contains three shepherds: Christ, Peter, and Leo. For more on the broader context of these conceptualizations in Leo’s sermons and writings, see, George E. Demacopoulos, The Invention of Peter: Apostolic Discourse and Papal Authority in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 39 – 72.

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flocks.²¹ Although a readiness to sacrifice their lives for such reasons was not restricted to the clergy (and nor was it a universality among members of the clergy), it must be stressed that it was precisely the SAS blend that imposed a specific moral imperative on members of the Christian clergy: since they identified themselves with Christ as the good shepherd, they were expected to also imitate him in his “laying down [his] life” for the flock of which he speaks in John 10. No wonder then that the SAS blend is often the basis of the argument that emphasizes the moral duty of the clergy not to abandon their flocks in times of persecution. A fine example of how the blend is used in this context is Tertullian’s De Fuga in Persecutione: Most assuredly a good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, according to the word of Moses, when the Lord Christ had not as yet been revealed, but was already shadowed forth in himself: “If you destroy this people,” he says, “destroy me also along with it.” [Exod 32:32] But Christ, confirming these foreshadowings Himself, adds: “The bad shepherd is he who, on seeing the wolf, flees, and leaves the sheep to be torn in pieces.” Why, a shepherd like this will be turned out from the farm (proicietur de villa pastor huiusmodi); the wages to have been given him at the time of his discharge will be kept from him as compensation (detinebuntur illi mercedes missionis suae in compensation); nay, even from his former savings a restoration of the master’s loss will be required; for “to him who hath shall be given, but from him who hath not shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have.” [Luke 8:18] Thus Zechariah threatens: “Arise, O sword, against the shepherds, and pluck ye out the sheep; and I will turn my hand against the shepherds.”[Zech 13:7] And against them both Ezekiel and Jeremiah declaim with kindred threatenings, for their not only wickedly eating of the sheep – they feeding themselves rather than those committed to their charge – but also scattering the flock, and giving it over, shepherdless, a prey to all the beasts of the field. And this never happens more than when in persecution the Church is abandoned by the clergy.²²

The first part of Tertullian’s argument activates the SAS blend, supported with quotation from Exodus (ignoring the different context of Moses’ words that were uttered with no pastoral references). Tertullian also elaborates the blend by introducing new elements into it. The salvation expected by members of the clergy, together with their merits, are conceptualized as shepherd’s earnings. Since a shepherd who has failed in his duty is removed, (or more precisely, “thrown out”²³ from the village), does not receive his payment and even has

 Elizabeth Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 10 – 33.  Tertullian, De Fuga in Persecutione 11.2, in ANF 4:116 – 125.  ANF’s translation is not precise here as Tertullian uses a very dynamic verbal form proicietur (proicio – throw) that evokes the day of judgment when the condemned ones will be “thrown”

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to compensate the owner for the death of the sheep, similarly, members of the clergy will be excluded from the community of the saved and their previous merits will be annulled. Note that by adding the shepherd’s wages to the conceptual space of the blend Tertullian is preparing in this manner the ground for another biblical quotation; this would have lacked a conceptual anchor if the blend had not first been expanded through reference to a measurable and qualitative element of pastoral experience. This illustrates another of the functions of blending processes. They not only provide Christian authors with the specific conceptualizations necessary to grasp the abstract realities of religious experience, but also often become a conceptual ground or a framework for the new elements to which they are linked. Finally, note that in the second part of his argument Tertullian introduces the FCFI blend, referring the words of the Hebrew prophets condemning the leaders of Israel on the one hand, to members of the Christian clergy fleeing from persecution and abandoning their flocks on the other. Tertullian’s complex cognitive-conceptual operation consists of three steps: 1) introducing the SAS blend that obliges members of the clergy to die for their flocks; 2) elaborating the blend by adding new elements that show the consequences of failing to perform this duty, and which are the conceptual ground for Luke 8:18; and 3) introducing the FCFI blend as another source of biblical authority, resulting in a very strong argument that is difficult to rebut for two reasons: first, because blends, as mentioned earlier, operate at an unconscious level (see chapter 3 note 43); second, because any rebuttal is possible only if one can put forward a counter-argument with a similar authoritative force, which necessitates radically reworking the blends employed by Tertullian, or using other blends grounded in the Bible that might suggest that fleeing persecution and leaving the lay people to their fate by members of the clergy is acceptable or advisable.²⁴

into fire or away (cf. Matt 5:19; 8:12; John 15:6). Similarly, missionis reflects the bishops’ being sent by God to be shepherds; see: Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, Ad Martyras; Ad Scapulam, De Fuga in Persecutione; De Monogamia; De Virginibus Velandis de Pallio, ed. Vincentius Bulhart, CSEL 76 (Vindibonae: Hö lder-Pichler-Tempsky 1957), 34.  It seems that creating such a counter-argument is virtually impossible. When Cyprian of Carthage writes to the clergy in Rome to explain why he fled the city in the wake of the Decian persecution, he calls the lay members of his community “brethen”: “Right at the very first onset of the troubles (…) I followed the directives and instructions of the Lord and withdrew for the time being. I was thinking not so much of my own safety as the general peace of our brethren,” Letter 20 1.2, in Cyprian of Carthage, Letters 1 – 27, trans. Graeme W. Clarke, vol. 1, The Letters of St. Cyprian of Carthage (New York N.Y./Ramsey, N. J.: Newman Press, 1984), 101. Indeed, calling them “sheep,” not “brethen” Cyprian would have accused himself of being “a hireling,” not a “true shepherd.”

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In a letter written during the Decian persecution, Cyprian and other bishops combine the SAS blend with military imagery: We are left no choice but to be obedient to reliable signs and warnings; by them shepherds are directed not to abandon their sheep to danger, but rather to muster their entire flock together – the army of the Lord is to be armed ready for engagement on the spiritual battlefield.²⁵

Augustine contrasts the demand posed by the SAS blend on members of the clergy with the natural human fear of death: “And the love of him [i. e. Christ] in that man who feeds his sheep ought to grow to so great a spiritual ardor that it conquers even the natural fear of death.”²⁶ Further he adds: “But if the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for his sheep has made so many martyrs for himself from these sheep, how much more ought they to strive for truth even to death and even to blood against sin, they to whom he entrusts his sheep to be fed!”²⁷ Notice how by a simple elaboration of the blend Augustine is able to convincingly prove his point: it stands to reason that a shepherd is more akin to another shepherd than a sheep is similar to a shepherd; therefore the logical conclusion is that shepherds [the clergy] are expected to be similar to Christ [the Shepherd] more than the sheep are. Since in many cases even the sheep [lay Christians] imitate the Shepherd [Christ], so it follows that the shepherds are even more obliged to imitate the Shepherd. Basil of Caesarea argues that the bishops “as shepherds of the sheep of Christ [are] not refusing to lay down their life for them if occasion require it.”²⁸ And once again Augustine in a rhetorical tour de force, concludes in one of his sermons: “We shepherd you, we are shepherded with you (pascimus vos, pascimur vobiscum). May the Lord give us the strength to love you so much that we may also die for you, either in fact or in desire (aut effectu aut affectu).”²⁹

 Cyprian of Carthage, Letter 57 2.1, in Cyprian of Carthage, Letters 55 – 66, 56.  Tractate 123 on the Gospel of John 5, in Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 112 – 24, 79.  Tractate 123 on the Gospel of John 5, in Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 112 – 24, 80.  Basil of Caesarea, The Morals 80.15, in Basil of Caesarea, Ascetical Works, trans. Monica M. Wagner, FC 9 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1962), 201.  Sermon 296 5, in Cachia, I Am the Good Shepherd, 255.

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6.3 “The true shepherd” vs “a hireling” Since Christ in John 10 contrasts his attitude of the good shepherd with that of a hireling, patristic authors sometimes create elaborations of the blend in which they focus not on Christ but on a hireling and use them either to criticize the reprehensible behaviour of their fellow clergymen or to remind them of their pastoral duties. Around 250 CE, after the death of Pope Fabian at the beginning of the Decian persecution, the lower clergy of Rome wrote a letter to the leaders of the church in Carthage in which the SAS blend with reference to hirelings forms, along with the FCFI blend, the basis of an argument reminding both the addressees and the addressers that they must be ready as shepherds to protect their flocks: Now we are clearly the church leaders and it is accordingly our duty to keep watch over the flock, acting in the place of our shepherds and so if it is found that we are neglectful the same words will be said to us as were spoken to our predecessors, namely that “the lost we have not sought, the strayed we did not bring back, the lame we have not bound, but their milk we have drunk and with their wool we have been clothed.”³⁰

Then the letter quotes John 10:11– 12, followed by John 21:15, concluding that Peter’s declaration of love to his master from John 21:15 was confirmed by his death for the flock and that other disciples proved their love to Christ in the same way: “These words were fulfilled by the very manner of his death and the rest of the disciples acted likewise.” Finally, the contrast between hirelings and good shepherds is invoked, to remind the Carthaginian clergy of what is expected of them as church leaders: “And so dearly beloved brothers, our desire is that you are found to be not hirelings but good shepherds.”³¹ Given the historical context of the text mentioned above – the Decian persecution that had serious consequences for the church – the SAS blend activated by the opposition of “hirelings” and “good shepherds” suggests that the authors of the letter must have regarded this conceptualization as a strong argument capable of encouraging the addressees to persevere in their faith. The letter is also a good illustration of how various blends belonging to a broader category of the church as a flock co-occur in early Christian discourse. The argument’s point of departure is the FCFI blend: the members of the clergy are identified with the religious leaders of Israel. Then, the composite image of Christ as the good shep-

 Cyprian of Carthage, Letter 8 1.1, in Cyprian of Carthage, Letters 1 – 27, 68.  Letter 8 2.1, in Cyprian of Carthage, Letters 1 – 27, 68.

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herd derived from the two combined passages from John is presented; in other words, the first input space of the SAS blend is present explicitly in the text. Finally, the members of the Carthaginian clergy are reminded to be good shepherds and not hirelings, which presupposes their identification with Christ in every possible respect, including their readiness to lay down their lives for their flock, as this is what distinguishes a hireling from the true shepherd. When Christianity became the recognized religion of the Roman empire and the lives of the church leaders were no longer threatened by persecution, the function of the blend changed. Now “hirelings” were not those members of the clergy who abandoned their flocks but those who neglected their pastoral duties or sought their own advantage. Augustine calls a bishop a “hireling” if he “sees someone distorting the truth or holding opinions that would lead to the ruin of his soul or doing something wicked and disgraceful, and yet (…) doesn’t say to him ‘you’re sinning’ [or] doesn’t rebuke him.”³² Similarly, Gregory the Great sees a hireling in a bishop, who “seeks only the outward advantages and carelessly allows the inward injury to his flock.”³³ In the same vein, Basil of Caesarea regards as “hirelings” presbyters seeking their own material profit.³⁴ Calling a bishop “a hireling” could also be an invective, like in Celestine’s letter to Cyril of Alexandria: “Just as you [Cyril] are a good shepherd, so he [Nestorius] is not even worthy of being denounced as a bad hireling who is accused, not because he abandoned his own sheep, but because he himself was discovered rending them in pieces.”³⁵ When the historical circumstances changed, the blend could revert to its earlier role. Thus in the early fifth century, when the Vandal army had invaded North Africa, Augustine in his letters to Honoratus, the bishop of Thave, condemns those members of the clergy who left their communities for fear of the approaching Vandals with the following words: “One, who flees so that the nourishment by which Christ’s flock lives its spiritual life is taken from it, it is that hireling who sees the wolf coming and flees because he has no care for the sheep.”³⁶ Note the presence of the teaching is feeding sheep blend in this passage, by means of which Augustine conceptualizes the doctrinal and sacramental min-

 Augustine, Sermon 137 12, in Augustine, Sermons (94 A–147 A) on the New Testament, 380.  Gregory the Great, Homily 15 3, in Gregory the Great, Forty Gospel Homilies, trans. David Hurst (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2009), 109.  Cachia, I Am the Good Shepherd, 283.  Cyril of Alexandria, Letter 12 3, in Cyril of Alexandria, Letters 1 – 110, vol. 1, trans. John I McEnerney, FC 76 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 68.  Augustine, Letter 228 14, in Augustine, Letters 211 – 270, 1*-29*, ed. Boniface Ramsey, trans. Roland Teske, vol. II/4, WSA (New York: New City Press, 2005), 112.

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istry of the clergy as providing sheep with spiritual nourishment; this is discussed in detail in 8.2. This necessarily selective survey of the linguistic manifestations of the SAS blend in patristic texts shows its important role in shaping the self-identity of the clergy in the early church. Most importantly, unlike the conceptualizations in the discourses of other religions that establish and safeguard a special status of spiritual leaders (for example that of a priest as somebody “sacred” and in direct contact with the divine), the SAS blend – due to the fact that Christ as the good shepherd both controls the sheep and dies for them – was for early Christian leaders not only the basis of their religious authority but also a challenge. Paradoxically, in certain circumstances the best expression of this authority was readiness to die for their sheep. Closing this section, it is worth noting that two crucial outcomes of the SAS blend as the basis of the relationships between the clergy and the laity, that is exercising power over people combined with providing them with safety and protection, have found its way into modern political theory as the framework of the notion of “pastoral power” defined and developed by Foucault. According to the French thinker, “the real history of the pastorate as the source of a specific type of power over men, as a model and matrix of procedures for the government of men, really only begins with Christianity”³⁷ and it was the Christian pastorate that was the background of the process of birth of the modern, democratic state with governmentality as its calculated and reflected practice.³⁸

 Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at College de France 1977 – 1978, ed. Arnold I. Davidson and Graham Burchell, trans. Graham Burchell (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2009), 147.  Foucault, Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at College de France 1977 – 1978, 165. For more on Foucault’s notion of “pastoral power,” see Jeremy Carette, ‘Foucault, Religion, and Pastoral Power’, in A Companion to Foucault, ed. Christopher Alzon, Timothy O’Leary, and Jana Sawicki (Oxford: Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 368 – 84.

7 The THE CHURCH IS GOD’S FLOCK (CGF) blend in the New Testament and shepherding imagery in The Shepherd of Hermas As mentioned earlier, the the church is God’s flock blend is the most important and the most prolific of the blends examined in this study. In fact, when one thinks of the church as a flock one most often thinks in terms of this blend, although, as we have seen in previous chapters, it is not the only conceptualization underlying this image. Still, it is the most prominent and as we shall see below, its many variants are to be found in patristic texts covering all aspects of the practice and theology of the early church: from church discipline and doctrinal polemics through conceptualizations of the sacraments of baptism, the Eucharist and penance to soteriology and Christology. I examine the linguistic manifestations of the the church is God’s flock blend in three chapters. Chapter 7 discusses its earliest instances in the New Testament period, chapter 8 presents a wide spectrum of subcategories of the blend as it occurs systematically in patristic texts, and chapter 9 discusses its role in shaping crucial elements of Christian doctrine: theology of baptism, unity of the church and soteriology along with elements of Christology.

7.1 The CGF blend in Luke 12:32 and Eph 4:11. Paradoxically, the images of the church as a flock that have been an integral element in the self-understanding of Christianity for centuries are virtually absent from the oldest Christian texts, and “they do not occur characteristically in a particular strain of early Christian theology.”¹ This is especially true with regard to the New Testament books where, among the various examples of shepherding imagery discussed in 3.2.2, one can find only four expressions that may be classified, in my opinion, as more or less explicit linguistic realizations of the the church is God’s flock blend.² These are: Luke 12:32, Acts 20:28 – 30, 1 Pet 5:2– 4, and Eph 4:11. In the first three of these pericopes the community of Christ’s believers is pictured as poimnion (a flocklet), while in Eph 4:11 we read of the “shepherds” (poimenas) that Christ gave to his people. Additionally,

 Schmithals, The Theology of the First Christians, 166.  John 10:10 – 21; 21:15 – 18 do not belong to the CGF category and that is why I am not discussing them. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110582970-011

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in Acts and 1 Peter the verb “to act as a shepherd” (poimanein) is used. This means that only Acts 20:28 – 30 and 1 Pet 5:2– 4 may be regarded as fully-fledged linguistic manifestations of the the church is God’s flock blend. That is why I examine these manifestations in detail in the next two sections, focusing here only on Luke 12:32 and Eph 4:11.³ Regarding Luke 12:32, the passage depicts the believers as “a flocklet” but does not presuppose that there is a separate group of “shepherds” governing them, and therefore it is hard to see it as a clear linguistic realization of the CGF blend. Nevertheless, the blend will often be found later on in Christian discourse, and sometimes patristic authors would interpret “a flocklet” with reference to the church in radically different ways, depending on their rhetorical objectives. For example, Gregory of Nazianzus, in his oration against the Arians who outnumbered the Catholic community in Constantinople, proudly describes his community as the “little flock,”⁴ while Augustine, twenty years later in the opposite corner of the empire, in his letter to Vincent, the Rogatist bishop of Cartenna, despises the “little flock” and the “few adherents” of the latter suggesting in this way, exactly contrary to what Gregory claimed, that the flock of the true Church is large and prosperous.⁵ Eph 4:11, unlike Luke 12:32, does mention “shepherds,” yet it cannot be regarded as a clear linguistic expression of the CGF blend either, at least for two reasons. First, its author,⁶ enumerating the various functions/offices established by Christ in the primitive church, conflates shepherds with teachers, writing of tous de poimenas kai didaskalous. The fact that didaskalous is not preceded by the definite article (tous) suggests that these two roles are closely associated, although they do not necessarily denote one single group within the church community⁷ while in the case of the CGF blend being a shepherd implies being a teacher.⁸ Secondly, the verse suggests that “pastors and teachers” seem to be less important to Paul than the apostles, the prophets, and the evangelists.⁹

 There is also Matt 7:15 where Jesus warns against wolves in sheep’s clothing, but I discuss this separately as a subcategory of the CGF blend in 8.4.  Oration 33: Against the Arians and Concerning Himself 1, in NPNF II 7:329.  Letter 93 11, in Augustine, Letters 83 – 130, trans. Wilfrid Parsons, vol. 2, Letters, FC 18 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1953), 103.  Not necessarily Paul: James D. G. Dunn and John W. Rogerson, Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 1386.  Stephen E. Fowl, Ephesians: A Commentary, The New Testament Library (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 141.  Which is attested to by the teaching is feeding sheep blend discussed in 8.2.

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Seen from a socio-historical perspective, the absence of the CGF blend from the earliest Christian texts seems to reflect the changing character of Christian communities in the first century C.E. In the earliest, apocalyptic period, during Paul’s lifetime, the blend was not used, since the first believers were awaiting Parousia and were ruled by the Spirit that “himself institutes the structures of order.”¹⁰ Paul prefers the term koinonia (fellowship) for referring to a Christian community and also in pseudo-Pauline pastoral epistles, (1Tm, 2Tm, Ti), their author(s) speak(s) of episcopoi and presbyteroi as community leaders, not shepherds (poimenas). The blend comes to light later on, along with the recognition that the world would not end within a month or a year and that the new communal experience would be continued. When “the charismatic period” is over, the “church order” emerges. Seen in this perspective, the the church is God’s flock blend is a crucial conceptual trigger of institutionalization (Berger and Luckmann) or “routinization of charisma” (Weber) in Christianity.¹¹

7.2 The CGF blend in Acts 20:28 – 30 In Acts 20:28 – 30 Paul urges on the elders of the church in Ephesus with the following words: Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock (poimnion) of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds (poimanate)¹² of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not

 Yet, it is worth noticing that in view of some modern scholars Paul “understood his relationship with the communities he established in terms of a pastoral authority,” Sophie Fuggle, Foucault/Paul: Subjects of Power, Radical Theologies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 163.  Schmithals, The Theology of the First Christians, 170.  Margaret Y. MacDonald, The Pauline Churches: A Socio-Historical Study of Institutionalization in the Pauline and Deutero-Pauline Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 12– 13. For more on the development of Christian ministry as reflected in the early Christian texts, see e. g. Francis A. Sullivan, From Apostles to Bishops: The Development of the Episcopacy in the Early Church (New York N.Y./Mahwah, N. J.: Newman Press, 2001).  The original Greek term here is the verb poimainein (to shepherd) in the imperative mood. The existence of the single, separate Greek verb poimainein – “to tend like a shepherd” – indicates that the concept of “being a shepherd” was more strongly present in the lexis of this language as well as in the minds of its users, than it is in modern English. This suggests also that the concept was more available to the speakers of Greek.

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spare the flock (poimnion). Even from your own number some will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them.¹³

Even if some scholars regard this passage as vaticinium ex eventu,¹⁴ it seems to represent the earliest instance of a fully-fledged blend being used to conceptualize the Christian community in terms of flock, with its leaders as “the shepherds.” It is a single-scope network with the shepherding organizing frame mapped onto the church in Ephesus. Note that as in the case of Luke 12:32, the exact translation of poimnion should be “flocklet,” which suggests that to the author of Acts the Christian community in Ephesus was small in comparison with the rest of the population of the city. Note that although the elders are presented as shepherds, the flock does not belong to them but is “God’s flock.” The presence of wolves in the passage is a fine example of blend completion through the recruitment of elements of the folk model of shepherding (1.3 and 3.3). In view of some scholars wolves signify former shepherds who turned into wolves and are now false teachers¹⁵ and even if modern readers are aware that these animals symbolize a threat the sense of this metaphor is partially lost due to culturalhistorical distance. According to the encyclopedic knowledge of the ancients, wolves were regarded as deceitful animals, and sheep as gullible ones.¹⁶ Such characteristics of each species made them even better candidates for representing false teachers and naïve believers respectively. The image of the church as a flock in Acts 20:28 – 30 may be easily overlooked in the context of the whole book, especially that it occurs only once; however some historians see in it strong evidence of the struggles within the young Christian community. In Lampe’s view the blend represents pessimistic forecasts of some kind of “counter-evangelism” bringing about apostasy and disruption in the Christian community, reflecting one of the most serious challenges facing the early Church, that of separating itself from Judaism.¹⁷ Wolves or false teachers in this interpretation were preachers trying to persuade Christian disciples to deny  The shepherd-flock motif in Acts 20:28 – 30 is thoroughly discussed by Aubert, The ShepherdFlock Motif in the Miletus Discourse (Acts 20:17 – 38) Against Its Historical Background, who adopts in his analysis Kittay and Lehrer’s view of metaphor (Eve Kittay and Adrienne Lehrer, “Semantic Fields and the Structure of Metaphors,” Studies in Language 5, no. 1 (1981): 31– 63.  Mikael Tellbe, Christ-Believers in Ephesus: A Textual Analysis of Early Christian Identity Formation in a Local Perspective (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 137.  Keener, Acts: 15:1 – 23:35, 3043. For more on wolves, see 8.4.  Keener, Acts: 15:1 – 23:35, 3042.  Geoffrey W. H. Lampe, “Grevious Wolves,” in Christ and Spirit in the New Testament Studies in Honour of Charles Francis Digby Moule, ed. Barnabas Lindars and Stephen S. Smalley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 253 – 68.

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that Jesus is the Christ or Messiah.¹⁸ Smith sees in the blend “the words not of the historical Paul but of Paul the prophetic polemicist, who foresees the rise of false teachers and urges ecclesiastical leaders to be on guard.”¹⁹ Lüdemann goes even further, claiming that Acts 20:28 – 30 suggests that “a Christian community with a Pauline stamp in Asia Minor had fallen apart,” and that “wolves” are Christians in conflict with the author of Acts.²⁰ In the context and methodology of this study it does not matter which of them is right; what does matter is that from a cognitive linguistic perspective the blend in question is not an accidental metaphor but a serious conceptual weapon in an ideological battle decisive for the future of Christianity. The persuasive power of this and similar blends used in early Christian discourse helped the early Church to define and protect its newly-gained identity.²¹

7.3 The CGF blend in 1 Peter 5:2 – 4 Another linguistic realization of CGF blend occurs in 1 Peter 5:2– 4. The letter’s author exhorts the leaders of early Christian communities: Now as an elder myself (sympresbyteros) and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as one who shares in the glory to be revealed, I exhort the elders (presbyteroi) among you to tend (poimanate) the flock (poimnion i. e. flocklet) of God that is in your charge, exercising the oversight, not under compulsion but willingly, as God would have you do it – not for sordid gain but eagerly. Do not lord it over those in your charge, but be examples to the flock (poimnion). And when the chief shepherd [or Arch-shepherd: archipoimenos] appears, you will win the crown of glory that never fades away.

This conceptualization of the church is also a single-scope network but it is more complex than the blend in Acts, since apart from a depiction of the members of the clergy as shepherds, we see Christ portrayed as the chief shepherd. At the  Lampe, “Grevious Wolves,” 255.  Geoffrey S. Smith, Guilt by Association: Heresy Catalogues in Early Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 3.  Gerd Ludemann, Heretics: The Other Side of Early Christianity, trans. John Bowden (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 105.  It is worth noting that the the church is God’s flock blend also appears in the apocrypha (pseudepigrapha), often with apocalyptic overtones, for example in Ascension of Isaiah 3:24 whose author warns that “many elders will be lawless and violent shepherds to their sheep and will become ravages [of the sheep], since they have no holy shepherd,” Wilhelm Schneemelcher and Robert McLachlan Wilson, eds., New Testament Apocrypha: Writings Relating to the Apostles; Apocalypses and Related Subjects (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 608.

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same time there is mapping of sheep onto members of the clergy in the blend, resulting in an interesting conceptual clash or tension in the suggestion that shepherds must be somehow ontologically identical to sheep, or else they could not “be examples (typoi) to the flock.” This tension reverberates through many patristic texts and we find it, for example, in Augustine’s words to his congregation that “we act as your shepherds, but along with you we are sheep under the one shepherd.”²² The blend in 1 Peter reminds the church leaders that they should tend their sheep with love and gentleness. This reminder would prove to be a constant thread in Christian discourse and its frequent occurrence may be interpreted two ways: it may indicate the church leaders’ actual sensitivity and responsibility, yet at the same time it may suggest that the abuse of pastoral power was not a rare phenomenon in early Christian communities. Hence those in charge had to be controlled or admonished and the CGF blend was a useful conceptual and rhetorical instrument with which to effect that control. For centuries Christian writers identified the author of 1 Peter with Peter the Apostle, to whom Christ entrusted his flock in John 21:15 – 17. It may therefore be interesting to observe how the blend was interpreted by later Christian authors who often combined these two passages in their exegesis. Out of the large number of glosses and comments to 1 Peter 5:2– 4 two must suffice. Hilary of Arles, in his commentary on the epistle, remarks that “here Peter is telling the leaders of the church exactly what the Lord told him: ‘Feed my sheep’,”²³ while Bede the Venerable writes that “just as the Lord ordered blessed Peter to take care of his entire flock, that is the Church, so Peter justifiably commands the succeeding pastors of the Church to protect with careful government that flock that each has with him.”²⁴ These two comments, the first from the 5th, the other from the 7th century, show how interpretation of the blend changed over time. While Hilary

 Augustine, Exposition of Psalm 126 3, in Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 121 – 150, 86. It is also worth noting in this context that in early Christian iconography (e. g. on mosaics in Santa Maria Maggiore and in Santi Cosma et Damiano) the Apostles are depicted as being sheep led by Christ, the Lamb.  Gerald L. Bray and Thomas C. Oden, eds., James, 1 – 2 Peter, 1 – 3 John, Jude, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 122.  Bede the Venerable, Commentary on the Seven Catholic Epistles, trans. David Hurst, Cistercian Studies Series 82 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1985), 114. “Sicut Dominus beato Petro totius gregis ejus, hoc est Ecclesiae curam habere jussit, ita ipse Petrus sequentibus Ecclesiae pastoribus jure mandat ut eum quisque qui secum est, gregem Dei sollicita gubernatione tutetur” Beda Venerabilis, Super Epistolas Catholicas Expositio, PL 93:64. Bray and Oden (James, 1 – 2 Peter, 1 – 3 John, Jude) also quote Bede’s commentary, but Hurst’s translation is more precise.

7.3 The CGF blend in 1 Peter 5:2 – 4

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merely presupposes the blend, mentioning “the leaders of the church” (and not “shepherds”) and simply referring to Jesus’ words, Bede elaborates on the blend, and in a far more detailed way. First, he gives priority to the conceptualization of the church as a flock (“his entire flock, that is the Church” – totius gregis ejus, hoc est Ecclesiae); second, he does not speak of “leaders of the Church” but “pastors” (pastoribus); third, the term “flock” occurs twice in the same sentence, the second time to denote separate communities under the care of specific members of the clergy; such a double meaning of “flock” along with the adjective “entire” (totus), which precedes the first occurrence of “flock” in the sentence, indicates that the blend now describes the whole structure of the Catholic Church; finally, terms like “commands” (mandat) and “succeeding” (sequentibus) point to the legal aspect of this structure and the stability of its power maintained through the succession of its ordained leaders. This much more complex version of the blend that Bede proposes therefore reflects the structure and role of the Catholic church in the 7th century, notably different from its role two centuries earlier. Acts 20:28 – 30 and 1 Peter 5:2– 4 are the only linguistic expressions of the CGF blend in the New Testament to be used as a conceptual framework for defining the relationships between the leaders of a Christian community and ordinary believers. Yet, as mentioned earlier, this blend would become in time the predominant conceptualization for describing these relations in the writings of the church fathers, as will be discussed in detail in later sections of this study. Interestingly, it would also be used retrospectively to present Jesus’ New Testament followers as shepherds. According to Augustine, “Peter too was a shepherd, and Paul was a shepherd, and the rest of the Apostles were shepherds.”²⁵ On another occasion, commenting on Gal 2:11 (in which Paul accuses Peter of duplicity), Augustine remarks that Peter “was entirely willing to endure this rebuke from a junior shepherd for the salvation of the flock.”²⁶

 Augustine, Tractate 47 on the Gospel of John 3.4, in Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 28 – 54, trans. John W. Rettig, FC 88 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 215.  Augustine, Commentary on Galatians 15, in Augustine, Augustine’s Commentary on Galatians, trans. Eric Plumer, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 52. It is worth adding here that although none of the apostles was a shepherd, quite a few of them, as we know, were fishermen. The experience of being a fisherman also provides an input space for an interesting blend recorded in the Bible and depicting apostles as “fishers of humans,” (Blake E. Wassell and Stephen R. Llewelyn, “‘Fishers of Humans,’ the Contemporary Theory of Metaphor and Conceptual Blending Theory,” Journal of Biblical Literature 133, no. 3 (2014): 627– 646,) yet this experience does not offer as many possibilities for conceptualizing the inner relations within a community as the shepherding experience can. Still, even in the case of “fishers”

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7.4 Shepherding imagery in The Shepherd of Hermas One might assume from its title that The Shepherd of Hermas would provide us with many blends based on pastoral imagery. Indeed, one can find quite a few references to sheep and shepherds in the text, but these are, however, of a peculiar, perhaps even bizarre, character. Yet, due to the fact that The Shepherd of Hermas is one of the earliest Christian texts, we must discuss it briefly even though the shepherding imagery it contains cannot be related in any simple way to the conceptual networks examined in this study. Although Hermas mentions “presbyters” and “bishops,” they are not depicted as shepherds. Instead, the “shepherds” symbolize angels in the text; the Shepherd that gives instruction to Hermas is “the angel of repentance”²⁷ while the other shepherds represent “the angel of luxury and deceit”²⁸ and “the angel of punishment.”²⁹ Furthermore, the metaphorical representation of Christians as sheep has little in common with the blends examined in this study. For example, the sheep that are “extremely cheerful and leaping about” are not happy because they belong to God’s flock. On the contrary, Hermas informs us that they have “fallen away from God and have delivered themselves to the desires of this age.”³⁰ The behaviour of the angel of punishment also stands in stark contrast to the folk model of shepherding discussed earlier, since he drives sheep “into an area that was steep and filled with thorns and thistles. And the sheep could not extricate themselves from the thorns and thistles but became entangled in them. And so they had to graze while being entangled among the thorns and thistles; and they were being miserably beaten by the shepherd. He was forcing them to move here and there, giving them no rest at all, so that those sheep were not at all tranquil.”³¹ In short, the shepherding imagery present in The Shepherd of Hermas bears no resemblance to the blends discussed in this study.

one can come across fascinating examples of conceptual integration in patristic literature, for instance in one of Pseudo-Chrysostom’s homilies where the author presents the apostles as fishermen sent like sheep amongst wolves to transmute the wolves into sheep, Martin Meiser, “Pentecost Homilies and Late-Antique Christian Exegesis, “ in Preaching after Easter: Mid-Pentecost, Ascension, and Pentecost in Late Antiquity, eds. Richard W. Bishop, John Leemans, and Hajnalka Tamas (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2016), 261, note 158.  Parable 9.33, in Bart D. Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 2, Loeb Classical Library 25 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 465  Parable 6.2, in Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 2, 341.  Parable 6.3, in Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 2, 345.  Parable 6.2, in Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 2, 341.  Parable 6.2, in Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 2, 343.

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The question of why The Shepherd of Hermas differs so radically from other early Christian writings in terms of shepherding imagery should be addressed to a historian or a theologian, not to a linguist. In Ehrman’s view the peculiar character of The Shepherd may suggest Hermas’ lack of education, since “most interpreters suspect that he was not among the intellectual elite in the church.”³² As the blends discussed in this study are based on a thorough knowledge of the Bible, often acquired through education, it may be one of the reasons why we do not find such blends in a text written by somebody with what might be considered a poor educational background.

 Bart D. Ehrman, Introduction, in Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 2, 167.

8 The CGF blend as a conceptual instrument in early church life and practice The CGF blend, which occurs only sporadically in the New Testament writings, would become in later decades and centuries the most popular conceptualization of the church in all its aspects (organizational, doctrinal, sacramental, liturgical, etc.) in patristic texts. Depending on which items of shepherding imagery were recruited and how they were subsequently elaborated on in the blend, Christian writers were able to create and convey a wide range of meanings: from instructions concerning church discipline, through arguments in church polemics, to theological insights. Of equal importance was the fact that in most cases the elements which constituted the organizing frame of the blend were taken from the Bible, thus giving biblical authority to any arguments based on CGF blends. And even if sometimes they did not come from the Bible (as was the case, for example with the blends that presented immoral behavior or heresy as a contagious disease, discussed in 8.7), their semantic proximity to the biblical imagery as well as their being a part of the folk model of shepherding guaranteed that the conceptual networks based on the blends were also convincing to believers. The CGF blend is not a homogenous network and consists of a number of subcategories. A detailed presentation of all of these is of course not possible within the scope of this study, and therefore in this chapter I have elected to examine the linguistic realizations of a representative selection, focusing on those that often form clearly delineated patterns of thought and argumentation that should be seen as important building blocks in Christian doctrine and the self-identification of the church. All of the variants of the CGF blend discussed in this chapter are used by patristic fathers to deal with various issues of church life and practice¹ and I have divided these into seven subcategories, depending on their functions in early Christian discourse. These are: 1) Elaborations of the CGF blend that emphasize the opposition between shepherds and sheep and which function as arguments to justify the hierarchical structure of a Christian community and clerical authority in the church. (A separate subcategory of the CGF blend representing members of the clergy as leaders and protectors of the flock is the bishops are rams network.)

 Variants of the CGF blend used as the conceptual frameworks of Christian theology and liturgy are discussed in the next chapter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110582970-012

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2) The teaching is feeding sheep network that conceptualizes the moral and doctrinal teaching delivered to the laity by members of the clergy as ‘grazing sheep’. 3) The the lost sheep network and its variant the a straying sheep network with the parable of the lost sheep mapped onto various aspects of church life, which plays a number of important doctrinal and disciplinary roles in patristic texts from the shaping of penitential discipline through moral admonition to being a conceptual instrument justifying coercion in dealing with the Donatists in Augustine’s writings. 4) The beware of the wolf network that conceptualizes the proponents of heresies whose teachings undermine the unity of the church as ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’. 5) The wolves are turned into sheep network with wolves transformed into sheep, this blend illustrating the power of God’s grace by turning enemies of the church into Christians or even into members of the clergy. 6) Blends with dogs as fierce animals attacking sheep and that symbolize the various dangers to Christians; or less frequently, with shepherd dogs working to protect God’s flock. 7) The a sick sheep network through which heresies or the immoral behavior of believers are presented as a contagious disease that calls for decisive action on the part of the members of the clergy.

In the following sections I examine each of these variants, discussing selected examples of their linguistic realizations and the roles they play in patristic texts.

8.1 The clergy and laity as shepherds and sheep Although egalitarian in principle, Christianity has been from its very beginnings a hierarchical religion, dividing its members into two distinct categories: the clergy (bishops) and the laity.² After its recognition as an official religion of the Roman Empire, the gap between these two groups widened, as the bishops became members of the social elite with privileges that “dramatically expanded the power and influence that a bishop could wield.”³ Thus, a bishop became a

 As the real power over Christian communities in the patristic period belonged to bishops and the lower clergy did not emerge until the late second and early third centuries – see Joseph T. Lienhard, “Clergy,” in Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, ed. Everett Ferguson, Michael P. McHugh, Frederick W. Norris (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 1998), 266 – all blends discussed in this monograph reflect the role of bishops as leaders of those communities.  David M. Gwynn, “Episcopal Leadership,” in The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, ed. Scott Fitzgerald Johnson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 883. Also Brown remarks “widening division between bishop and congregation” in later Roman history, Peter Brown, Religion and Society in the Age of St. Augustine, Studies in Augustine (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2007), 313. Ammianus Marcellinus describes bishops as being “enriched by offerings from matrons, riding in carriages, dressing splendidly, and feasting luxuriously, so that their entertainments surpass even royal banquets,” Roman History 27. 3.14, in Ammianus Marcellinus, History:

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significant element of the state structure and a part of the system of patronage, and “language picturing him as the ‘shepherd’ who cared for his ‘flock’ enhanced the prestige and authority of his office.”⁴ Yet regarding the Christian bishops as merely religious counterparts of secular officials of the empire would be misleading, since, as we have seen it examining the SAS blend, their role was very different from secular patronage of the Roman elite. As Shaw observes: the bishop exercised a different quality of patronal power over their flocks than did their secular peers, the notables of the municipalities, over their clientele. The image of its consistent, pervasive goodness and beneficence set this new social role quite apart from any other comparable kind of political power in antiquity. The bishop was guardian and shepherd, the pastor of his sheep.⁵

Of equal importance is the fact that the bishops’ pastoral power in early Christianity was first of all an ideological power, not a power based on coercion. They had to rely primarily on their words when they were defining and exercising their power. This explains why the CGF blend was such an important rhetorical device in Christian communities, in the way that it attributed different qualities (and hence status) to members of the clergy and members of the laity respectively. The former were shepherds: active, knowledgeable, the decision-makers. The latter were sheep and were expected to be obedient in matters of doctrine and discipline as well as to be dependent on the bishops for various mundane issues.⁶

Books 27 – 31. Excerpta Valesiana, trans. John C. Rolfe, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA/ London: Harvard University Press, 1939), 21.  Harold A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 106. Brown remarks that they were “the courtiers par excellence,” Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 424.  Brent D. Shaw, Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 408. See also Gwynn, “Episcopal Leadership,” 884– 86. The unique character of the authority of a bishop is also reflected in the noun poimniarchia or “ruling of the flock,” to be found only in Patristic Greek, see Geoffrey H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 1110.  Jerome succinctly expresses this dependence claiming that “sheep have nothing save a shepherd,” Homily 12, in Jerome, The Homilies of Saint Jerome, trans. Marie L. Ewald, vol. 1, FC 48 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 92.

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8.1.1 The CGF blend as the conceptual basis of clerical authority Ignatius of Antioch as early as the beginning of the second century, writes to the Christians of Philadelphia: Therefore, children of the light of truth, flee divisions and evil teachings. Where the shepherd is, there you should follow as sheep. For many seemingly trustworthy wolves use wicked pleasure to capture those who run in God’s race; but they will have no place in your unity.⁷

Letter to the Philadelphians is arguably one of the earliest Christian texts outside the New Testament in which the CGF blend occurs. Unlike Acts 20:28 – 30 or 1 Peter 5:2– 4, it is not directed at shepherds but the sheep. The bishop is presented by Ignatius as the ultimate source of authority to be followed. At the same time, in a way similar to Acts, the danger of divisions is signaled by the image of wolves, although this time the blend is more complex; the wolves’ strategy is depicted as “wicked pleasure,” which indicates that Ignatius’ blend is a double-scope network, since “wicked pleasure” connotes human rather than ovine experience. Note furthermore that sheep are also “runners in God’s race,” which is a clear reference to 2 Tim 4:7– 8. Although, as mentioned earlier, rhetorical classification of blends investigated here goes beyond the scope of this study, yet it is worth noticing that Ignatius’ blend is a clear example of an enthymeme or a “statement followed by a supporting reason.” In this case the exhortation, “where the shepherd is, there follow like sheep” is supported by an argument which refers to wolves as threatening sheep, and both these elements point to the CGF network that underlies Ignatius’ command.⁸ Cyprian of Carthage also employs the CGF blend to stress the episcopal authority of the church: “The church consists of the people who remain united with their bishop, it is the flock that stays by its shepherd. By that you realize that the bishop is in the church and the church is in the bishop, and whoever is not with the bishop is not in the church.”⁹ In his blend Cyprian ignores real-life shepherding experience, according to which sheep may exist without shepherds while being a shepherd always pre Letter to the Philadelphians 3.2, in Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1, 285.  For more on Ignatius’ rhetorical strategies, see also Michael Isacson, “Follow Your Bishop! Rhetorical Strategies in the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch,” in The Formation of the Early Church (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 317– 40.  Letter 66 8.3, in Cyprian of Carthage, Letters 55 – 66, 121. “Illi sunt Ecclesia plebs sacerdoti adunata et pastori suo grex adhaerens. Unde scire debes episcopum in Ecclesia esse et Ecclesiam in episcopo, et si quis cum episcopo non sit, in Ecclesia non esse,” PL 4:406 A – 406B.

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supposes there being some sheep under the shepherd’s care. To put it bluntly, sheep make sense without a shepherd but if there are no sheep there can be no shepherd either. Cyprian reverses this logic, seeing the essence of the church in the bishop, not in those who are under his care, and one can see in his argument the first symptoms of the clerical vision of a church in which the clergy is metonymically identified with the whole Christian community.¹⁰ In one of his treatises Cyprian uses the CGF blend as a conceptual instrument in moral instruction, attributing – rather arbitrarily, one should say – innocence and simplicity to sheep; these qualities he maps onto his audience, presenting them as Christian virtues: “We ought to remember by what name Christ calls His people, by what title He names His flock. He calls them sheep, that Christian innocence may be equated with sheep; He calls them lambs, so that their simplicity of mind may imitate the simple nature of lambs.”¹¹ While Ignatius’ and Cyprian’s versions of the CGF blend are relatively simple, Augustine and Gregory of Nazianzus elaborate in a much more sophisticated way, providing their audiences with a richer, deeper, and more multi-faceted understanding of the roles of the clergy and the laity. Gregory of Nazianzus, who uses the CGF blend to conceptualize clerical authority, sometimes acknowledges its inadequacy. Shepherding real sheep, Gregory points out, is not difficult since “it is sufficient to render the herd or flock as stout and fat as possible.” But – he adds immediately – “no one ever has thought of the virtue of flocks or herds; for indeed of what virtue are they capable?”¹² This statement provides an interesting insight into Gregory of Nazianzus’ mind, suggesting that he was aware of the metaphorical character of his pastoral language. Yet he regards it as entirely adequate since in the same oration he claims that the task of a bishop as the good shepherd is “to know properly the souls of his flock, and to guide them according to the methods of a pastoral care which is right and just, and worthy of our true Shepherd.”¹³ Further on in

 This clerical vision was characteristic first and foremost within the Roman Catholic Church until the first half of the 20th century. John Henry Newman, on his conversion to Catholicism, famously remarked that, “the church would look foolish without them [the laity],” (Ian Ker, Newman on Vatican II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 24) yet it took nearly a century before this remark found its way into the minds of the Roman Catholic clergy during the Second Vatican Council.  Cyprian of Carthage, Jealousy and Envy 12, in Cyprian of Carthage, Treatises, trans. Mary Hannan Mahoney et al., FC 36 (New York: Catholic University of America Press, 1958), 302.  Oration 2: In Defence to His Flight to Pontus 10, in NPNF II 7:207.  Oration 2 34, in NPNF II 7:212.

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his text he presents bishops as shepherds guarding “the holy flock, worthy of Christ, the Chief Shepherd”¹⁴ and introduces the FCFI blend to his argument when he refers to the church leaders’ words addressed by God to the bad shepherds of Israel.¹⁵ Interestingly, the CGF blend is also the basis of Gregory’s eschatological vision of the church as Christ’s “flock resplendent and spotless and worthy of the fold on high.” What is even more interesting is that this new eschatological order does not cancel out God’s ordained difference between the clergy and the laity since – according to Gregory – “in His temple everyone, both flock and shepherds together may say, Glory, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to Whom be all glory for ever and ever.”¹⁶ The fact that even in the afterlife Christians will be divided – according to Gregory – into shepherds and sheep indicates how deeply the CGF blend was ingrained in the minds of patristic authors. In another oration, delivered in Nazianzus in the presence of the imperial prefect after a series of natural disasters had hit the city, Gregory referred to his episcopal authority to admonish the official: Will you listen to my remarks with an open mind? Mark what I have to say: the law of Christ puts you under my jurisdiction and authority, for we too are rulers ourselves; and, I might add, our rule is of a more important and perfect nature; else the Spirit must yield to the flesh and the things of heaven to the things of earth. You will, I know, accept the candor of my observation, because you are a sheep in my flock. ¹⁷

Gregory’s words suggest that the CGF blend (along with the SAS blend) could be the basis of the claim that the bishops’ ecclesiastical power overrode secular imperial power (see italics). As a digression we may note that a century later Pope Gelasius, in his famous letter to Emperor Anastasius I Dicorus, would write of the “sacred authority” (auctoritas sacrata) of clerics, contrasting it with the “royal power (regalis potestas)” of the emperor, arguing that “of these, that of the priests is weightier.”¹⁸ “Auctoritas sacrata” is nothing other than the pastoral rule of the clergy sanctioned by God, and although the pope’s aim in his letter was to instruct the emperor on the limits of the latter’s

 Oration 2 116, in NPNF II 7:227.  Oration 2 64– 65, in NPNF II 7:218 – 219.  Oration 2 117, in NPNF II 7:227. It is also worth stressing that Gregory of Nazianzus combines the CGF blend with the church is Christ’s body blend in his oration and that he utilizes the labelling found in Greek anthropology to present shepherds as “the soul in the body, and of the intellect in the soul.”  Oration 17 8, in Gregory of Nazianzsus, Select Orations, 91 (emphasis added).  Hugo Rahner, Church and State in Early Christianity (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), 173.

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authority in religious (or, exactly speaking, Christological) issues, “the letter would shape papal thinking on the relation of church and state throughout the Middle Ages.”¹⁹ Augustine further uses the CGF blend to divide believers into shepherds and sheep and, combining it with the SAS blend, reminds his congregation that because they are sheep, they should be humble and obedient to their bishop So brothers and sisters, receive it in a spirit of obedience, when you hear that you are Christ’s sheep; because we bishops too are filled with fear and trembling when we hear, ‘Feed My sheep’? If we pastors feed the sheep with fear, and also fear for the sheep, how much should the sheep be fearing for themselves? So then, let ours be responsibility of pastoral concern; ours the duty of pastoral vigilance, yours the humility of the flock.²⁰

Augustine’s elaboration of the blend is a double-scope network: the obedience of the sheep comes from the shepherding input space while humility is a human feature and is projected into the blend from the other input space. Other patristic authors also placed emphasis on obedience as an important quality of sheep in their elaborations of the blend. John Chrysostom, complimenting his audience, praised them precisely for being obedient sheep: What is this I see? The shepherd [i. e. Flavian, the bishop of Antioch] is not here and still his sheep show a well-disciplined attitude. And this marks the pastoral success and virtue of the shepherd when, whether he is present or away, his flocks display complete earnestness and attention. Dumb sheep must remain in their pens when no one is there to lead them to pasture. If they put their heads out of the fold when no one is tending them, there must be a risk that they may roam far away. Here, however, we have no dumb sheep. Even if your shepherd is away, because of your well-disciplined attitude, you have met together in your usual pastures.²¹

 Wilken, The First Thousand Years, 170.  Augustine, Sermon 146 on the New Testament 1, in Augustine, Sermons (94 A – 147 A) on the New Testament, 445. It must be added, however, that in the very next line Augustine implicitly introduces the FCFI blend and speaks of bishops’ responsibility before God: “Though, as a matter of fact, we appear to you to be speaking from a position of superiority, we are really prostrate with fear under your feet, because we all know how perilously strict is the account that has to rendered from this apparently exalted bishop’s throne,” Augustine, Sermons (94 A – 147 A) on the New Testament, 445.  On the Incomprehensible Nature of God 1.1, in John Chrysostom, On the Incomprehensible Nature of God, trans. Paul W. Harkins, FC 72 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1984), 51. Note that in Chrysostom’s elaboration of the CGF blend the pasture is mapped onto the church building.

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The CGF blend could be also used to conceptualize the obedience of the laypeople in matters of doctrine, as exemplified by Cyril of Alexandria’s condemnation of the teachings of Theodore of Mopsuestia: “They [the bishops in the East] so convinced those in the East that outcries occurred in the churches on the part or the people, ‘Let the faith of Theodore increase. As Theodore believed, so we believe’. (…) But as the teacher desires so the flock thinks.”²² Finally it is worth mentioning that the CGF blend in the function discussed in this section found its way into Canon 64 of the Council in Trullo that forbade the laypeople to claim for themselves the prerogatives of the bishops: It does not befit a layman to dispute or teach publicly, thus claiming for himself authority to teach, but he should yield to the order appointed by the Lord, and to open his ears to those who have received the grace to teach, and be taught by them divine things. (…) Why do you make yourself a shepherd when you are a sheep? ²³

Closing this section we may add that seen from the broader perspective of sociology of religion, all linguistic realizations of the CGF blend discussed above are “linguistic objectifications” of Christian experience and constitute a part of legitimation process of the institutional order of the church essential for its survival.²⁴

8.1.2 The CGF blend as the conceptual framework of John Chrysostom’s Six Books on the Priesthood. Systematic writings on the episcopal leadership of church fathers like John Chrysostom and Gregory the Great became “practical manuals for spiritual shep-

 Letter 69 3, in Cyril of Alexandria, Letters 1 – 110, vol. 2, trans. John I. McEnerney, FC 77 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 67 (emphasis added).  NPNF II 14:394 (emphasis added). The question in the citation is taken from Gregory of Nazianzus, who uses the blend in a slightly different context, focusing not so much on the hierarchical division in the church community but stressing, after Paul, the different functions and roles attributed to its members: “Let us not all try to serve as a tongue, that most facile medium; let us not all try to be apostles, all prophets, all interpreters. (…) Do you think teaching important? Yet learning carries no danger. Why do you make yourself a shepherd when you are a sheep? Why do you assume the role of the head when it is your lot to be a foot?” Oration 32 12, in Gregory of Nazianzus, Select Orations, 200.  Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (London: Penguin Books, 1991), 110 – 11.

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herds on how to tend their flocks.”²⁵ The CGF blend played a pivotal role in such texts, allowing their authors to define the tasks and responsibilities of Christian bishops. John Chrysostom’s Six Books on the Priesthood is a good case in point here. John Chrysostom, in a similar manner to Gregory of Nazianzus, first of all contrasts elements of both input spaces of the blend to show the difficulty of pastoral care and argues that bishops, unlike real shepherds, cannot force their “sheep” to be obedient (note that once again obedience is the most desirable attitude of sheep/laypeople): The shepherd of the sheep has the flock following him wherever he leads; or if some turn aside from the direct path (…) it is enough for him to call more loudly, drive them back again, and restore to the flock those which were separated. (…) But if a man wanders away from the right faith, (…) [the shepherd] cannot drag by force or constrain by fear, but must by persuasion lead him back to the true beginning from which he has fallen away.²⁶

Chrysostom’s observation that the bishop’s role is in certain respects different from that of a shepherd does not change the fact that the CGF blend remains the framework of his concept of church leadership. Even in the quotation above he assumes that there is such a thing as the path of the right faith which believers should follow like sheep, and that “wandering away” is unacceptable. In other places in his treatise other subcategories of the CGF blend appear, among them the a sick sheep network (see 8.7). Presenting the moral misconduct of Christians as though they were ovine diseases, he argues that it is sometimes necessary “to bind and to forbid food and to apply cautery and the knife” even if “the decision to receive the treatment does not lie with the man who administers the medicine but actually with the patient.”²⁷ To detect diseases afflicting the flock, spiritual surveillance is needed and “the shepherd needs great wisdom and a thousand eyes, to examine the soul’s condition from every angle.”²⁸ Note the metonymy in the blend identifying sheep this time not with Christians per se but rather with their souls.²⁹

 Claudia Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition, (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2013), 42.  On the Priesthood 2.4, in John Chrysostom, Six Books on the Priesthood, trans. Graham Neville (Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1977), 58.  On the Priesthood 2.2, in John Chrysostom, Six Books on the Priesthood, 56.  On the Priesthood 2.4, in John Chrysostom, Six Books on the Priesthood, 58.  This metonymy was recorded in some modern Western languages in the form of a compound noun, e. g. in German (“Seelsorger”) or in Polish (“duszpasterz” literally: “soul-shepherd”)

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There are also many other elaborations of the blend in Chrysostom’s treatise; for example the flock of Christian sheep is depicted as having been bought by Christ, who paid for them with his own blood: What gift, then, will he give as a reward to those who shepherd his flock, which he purchased not for money or any such thing, but by his own death, when he gave his blood for his flock’s ransom? (…) Why did he shed his blood? It was to purchase the sheep which he entrusted to Peter and his successors.³⁰

Chrysostom also introduces the beware of the wolf blend (see 8.4) into his argument, presenting Greeks, Jews, Manicheans, and Stoics as wolves, and further modifying the blend to present the bishop both as a shepherd and a soldier defending a besieged city, whose task is to prevent a breach of its walls, or else “the wolf can enter the single one and devour most of the sheep.”³¹ Finally, Chrysostom, as with Ambrose and Jerome, stresses the ontological difference between a bishop and ordinary believers: When someone has to preside over the Church and be entrusted with the care of so many souls (…) let the difference between the shepherd and the sheep be as great as the distinction between rational and irrational creatures, not to say even more, since matters of much greater moment are at stake.³²

8.1.3 The GCF blend in selected church orders: Didascalia Apostolorum, Apostolic Constitutions and The Apostolic Tradition One can find a number of linguistic realizations of the CGF blend in the church orders that define the roles and responsibilities of the clergy and the laity in the early church. Selected instances of these occurrences in Didascalia Apostolorum and Apostolic Constitutions are discussed briefly below. We have seen earlier how Didascalia presents bishops as shepherds by employing the FCFI blend (see chapter 5). Yet a close analysis of the same passage

 On the Priesthood 2.1, in John Chrysostom, Six Books on the Priesthood, 51– 52. Other writers also introduce Christ’s payment for the flock into the CGF blend, e. g. Augustine: “He feeds his sheep and has both paid a price and drawn up a bill of sale such as nobody ever does for mere sheep. Inquire about the price, it is his blood,” Augustine, Sermon 147 A 2, in Augustine, Sermons (94 A – 147 A) on the New Testament, 452.  On the Priesthood 4.4, in John Chrysostom, Six Books on the Priesthood, 117. For more on wolves in the CGF blend see 8.4.  On the Priesthood 2.2, in John Chrysostom, Six Books on the Priesthood, 54.

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shows that the FCFI blend co-occurs throughout it with the CGF blend marked below in italics: That which is whole preserve: that is, him that is established in the faith guard watchfully; and shepherd the whole people in peace. And that which is weak strengthen: that is, him that is tempted confirm with admonition. And that which is sick heal: that is, him that is sick with doubting of his faith, heal with doctrine. And that which is broken bind up: that is, him that is stricken or buffeted or broken by his sins, and halts from the right way, bind up; that is, with the exhortation of admonition cure him, and lighten him of his transgressions, and comfort him and show him that there is hope for him.³³

As discussed in chapter 3 the passage utilizes imagery from Ezek 34, yet at the same time expands the meaning by introducing the responsibilities of shepherds and the condition of the sheep, both of which are absent from the biblical text (for example the shepherds’ healing “with doctrine” or the sheep’s being “broken by sins”). While references to Ezekiel that equate bishops with the leaders of Israel are linguistic manifestations of the FCFI blend, the italicized instructions in the passage represent the CGF blend with bishops as shepherds and ordinary Christians as their sheep. Note further that aspects of the sheep’s physical condition are mapped systematically onto the spiritual condition of lay Christians. Thus, doubts in faith are presented as a disease that must be healed with doctrine, sins are conceptualized as physical injury, and so forth. This is an example of the “physical into spiritual” conceptual transformation characteristic of the CGF network mentioned in chapter 5. Surprisingly, the CGF blend is never employed in Didascalia to describe the duties of ordinary Christians, who are instead instructed to “love the bishop as a father, and fear him as a king, and honour him as God”³⁴ and not expected to be obedient to him as sheep might be, as was the case in several of the texts discussed earlier. An interesting elaboration of the CGF blend in Didascalia is its use to solve the practical problem of how members of the congregation should take their seats in church: If anyone be found sitting out of his place, let the deacon who is within reprove him and make him rise up and sit in a place that is meet for him. For our Lord likened the Church to a fold; for as we see the dumb animals, oxen and sheep and goats, lie down and rise up,

 Didascalia Apostolorum 2.19, in Connolly, Didascalia Apostolorum: The Syriac Version Translated and Accompanied by the Verona Latin Fragments, 62.  Didascalia Apostolorum 2.34, in Connolly, Didascalia Apostolorum: The Syriac Version Translated and Accompanied by the Verona Latin Fragments, 96.

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and feed and chew the cud, according to their families, and none of them separate itself from its kind (…) so likewise in the Church ought those who are young to sit apart, if there be room, and if not to stand up; and those who are advanced in years to sit apart.³⁵

Apostolic Constitutions is a fourth century collection of materials on church order consisting of eight books, with books one to six depending heavily on Didascalia,³⁶ which means that one may also find in it occurrences of the blend discussed above. Interestingly, however, one section of Apostolic Constitutions makes use of the CGF blend (italicized below) where the parallel section in Didascalia does not. Hear, O you bishops; and hear, O you of the laity, how God speaks: I will judge between ram and ram, and between sheep and sheep. And He says to the shepherds: You shall be judged for your unskillfulness, and for destroying the sheep. That is, I will judge between one bishop and another, and between one lay person and another, and between one ruler and another (for these sheep and these rams are not irrational, but rational creatures): lest at any time a lay person should say, I am a sheep and not a shepherd, and I am not concerned for myself; let the shepherd look to that, for he alone will be required to give an account for me. For as that sheep that will not follow its good shepherd is exposed to the wolves, to its destruction; so that which follows a bad shepherd is also exposed to unavoidable death, since his shepherd will devour him. Wherefore care must be had to avoid destructive shepherds. ³⁷

Unlike the examples discussed earlier where the sheep’s obedience to shepherds in general was mapped onto the laypeople, this variant of the CGF blend distinguishes between good and bad shepherds, in this way reminding the laypeople that they must follow only the former, never the latter. Note also that being “sheep” in the blend does not preclude being held accountable for one’s actions. This is a very telling detail from a cognitive linguistic point of view since it indicates that the compiler of Apostolic Constitutions must have been aware that conceptualizing laymen as sheep had its limits, and that is why he insisted that even if they were “sheep,” they were still responsible for their moral deeds. Book eight of Apostolic Constitutions contains an earlier church order, The Apostolic Tradition, in which the CGF blend occurs in the prayer that accompanies the ordination of the bishop: “Father, who knows the hearts of all grant

 Didascalia Apostolorum 2.57, in Connolly, Didascalia Apostolorum: The Syriac Version Translated and Accompanied by the Verona Latin Fragments, 120.  George D. Dragas, “Apostolic Constitutions,” in Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, 92.  Apostolic constitutions 2.19, in ANF 7:404. See the parallel section in Didascalia Apostolorum 2.19, in Connolly, Didascalia Apostolorum: The Syriac Version Translated and Accompanied by the Verona Latin Fragments, 60. On conceptualizing bishops as rams, see the next section.

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upon this Thy servant whom Thou hast chosen for the episcopate to feed Thy holy flock (…) that he may minister blamelessly by night and day.”³⁸ From the prayer we learn that the flock of the church belongs to God not to the bishop, which suggests the image of the church as the flock derived from Acts 20:28 – 30 and 1 Peter 5:2– 4. Yet it is not the same image because in these biblical passages bishops are either told to keep watch over the flock (Acts) or to tend it (1 Peter) whereas here the bishop’s role is to feed the flock, which implies doctrinal teaching. Mapping the physical process of feeding animals onto the mental process of teaching the laity is another instance of the “physical into spiritual/ mental” transformation mentioned above and illustrates how the CGF blend may be modified to serve the changing conceptual needs of church communities as they grew and evolved. It probably won’t be a mistaken assumption to say that in the first decades of Christianity, when the church was really “a flocklet” without a well-formed body of doctrine, doctrinal teaching was not seen as a bishop’s separate prerogative and did not need to be distinguished in any special way, remaining a part of the general concept of tending the flock. In time, however, this prerogative became increasingly important and had to be stressed in a special way, and that is why it came to be represented as “feeding sheep” in the blend. This is yet another example of the conceptual potential of the CGF blend, something that decided its popularity in early Christian discourse. I shall come back to the linguistic realizations of the CGF blend where the feeding or grazing of sheep is mapped onto the laity in section 8.2, though before that I will focus briefly on an interesting elaboration of the CGF blend in which members of the clergy are conceptualized not as shepherd but as… rams.

8.1.4 The

BISHOPS ARE RAMS

blend

The bishops are rams blend (Figure 10) appears for perhaps the first time in Didascalia Apostolorum and is later used by some patristic authors like Augustine and Basil of Caesarea. Since the members of the clergy are not shepherds in this blend, it does not belong to the same subcategory as the networks discussed above in this section, yet it is worth exploring because it also contrasts the members of the clergy and the laity using pastoral imagery, albeit in a different way. At the same time it illustrates the conceptual ingenuity of Christian authors forced to attribute some meaning to specific elements of the biblical text.

 The Apostolic Tradition 3.4, in Gregory Dix and Henry Chadwick, eds., The Treatise on the Apostolic Tradition of St Hippolytus of Rome, Bishop and Martyr (London: Routledge, 2006), 5.

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Generic space

• (A) leader(s) • Those under his/their charge Sheep input space

• Ram(s) [male leaders of • the flock; fewer rams than ewes; they have dominion over ewes] • A flock (of sheep) • [the ewes follow the rams]

Church input space

SIMILARITY

SIMILARITY

• Bishop(s) [male leaders; • fewer bishops than Christians; they have dominion over lay Christians] • A Christian community [its • members follow their bishop]

• Bishops are rams that lead ewes/Christians [UNIQUENESS]

Blend Figure 10: The bishops are rams network

In Didascalia the blend serves its author in interpreting a (mis)quotation of Ezek 34:17:³⁹ “Hear then ye bishops and hear, ye laymen, how the Lord saith: I will judge between ram and ram and between ewe and ewe; that is between bishop and bishop, and between layman and layman.”⁴⁰

 It seems to be a misquotation as both in the Hebrew text and in the LXX there are “rams and goats” not “ram and ram.”  Didascalia Apostolorum 2.19, in Connolly, Didascalia Apostolorum: The Syriac Version Translated and Accompanied by the Verona Latin Fragments, 60.

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The biblical text distinguishes between a ram and a ewe. To create a robust blend conveying the new meaning with Ezek 34:17 as its input space, this distinction must be retained in the blend space, and “ram” and “ewe” should be linked with separate elements in the other input space. Since the prototypical sheep is a ewe, not a ram, it is more natural to metonymically identify the ewe with the sheep and to map this identification onto the typical Christian. This also corresponds with equating Ezekiel’s sheep with the laity in the other parts of Didascalia. In this way however, the author of Didascalia is left with a ram. To create a convincing blend, he must find a conceptual equivalent for a ram in the other input space. To do so, he makes use of the encyclopedic knowledge of his audience concerning sheep. Since: 1) rams are leaders of the flock; 2) there are fewer of them than ewes; and 3) they dominate over them, a ram may be mapped onto a member of the clergy who functions as a leader of a Christian community. In this way a biblical passage that at first sight may seem to have no application in early church discourse becomes yet another conceptual instrument in describing the relationships between the clergy and the laity. In a similar vein, Basil of Caesarea interprets Ps 28:1, which reads (in the LXX): “Bring to the Lord, o ye children of God; bring to the Lord the offspring of rams.” First, Basil reminds his audience that everything in Scripture has a symbolic meaning and therefore, “according to our mind which contemplates the sublime and makes the law familiar to us through a meaning which is noble and fitted to the divine Scripture, this occurs to us: the ram [in Ps 28] does not mean the male among the sheep.”⁴¹ Then he identifies rams with members of the clergy, also referring to the encyclopedic knowledge concerning sheep: The ram is an animal capable of leading, one which guides the sheep to nourishing pastures and refreshing waters, and back again to the pens and farmhouses. Such are those who are set over the flock of Christ, since they lead them forth to the flowery and fragrant nourishment of spiritual doctrine, water them with living water, the gift of the Spirit, raise them up and nourish them to produce fruit, but guide them to rest and to safety from those who lay snares for them.⁴²

 Homily 13 1, in Basil of Caesarea, Exegetic Homilies, trans. Agnes C. Way, FC 46 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 193.  Homily 13 2, in Basil of Caesarea, Exegetic Homilies, 195. Jerome also interprets rams as leaders of the church in his Commentary on Ezekiel 11.34, in Hieronymus, Commentariorum in Hezechielem Libri XIV, ed. Franciscus Glorie, CCSL 75 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1964), 487. A subcategory of the bishops are rams blend is the the apostles are rams blend in Augustine, Letter 231 6, in Augustine, Letters 211 – 270, 1* – 29*, 122 and Exposition of Psalm 64 18, in Augustine, Expositions

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Note a number of important functions Basil attributes to rams that are typically attributed to shepherds in the CGF blend. It turns out that by a detailed presentation of the significance of rams, based on the encyclopedic knowledge of his audience – Basil’s typical strategy⁴³ – he is able to effectively highlight the role of the members of the clergy as leaders, even if he has no shepherds, biblical or otherwise, “at hand” that might be mapped onto the clergy in his homily. Note furthermore how leading sheep “to nourishing pastures and refreshing waters” is equated in the blend with members of the clergy giving the laity “nourishment of spiritual doctrine” and “living water and the gift of Spirit.” This activates another blend, namely the teaching is feeding sheep network, discussed more extensively in the next section. Finally, it is worth noting that Basil, like Augustine, preached his homilies extemporaneously,⁴⁴ and therefore we may presume that his conceptualization is the linguistic realization of an actual blending process that occurred in his mind while commenting on the opening lines of Psalm 28. Basil’s homilies, with this and other blends, were written down and copied, influencing other Christian authors including Jerome and Ambrose.⁴⁵ This clearly demonstrates the fundamental role of conceptual integration in shaping Christian doctrine. In this section I have shown how patristic authors were able to define and present the different roles of the clergy and the laity by means of various elaborations of the CGF blend, many of which were conceptually rich and carried with them a profusion of meanings. Yet sometimes, (albeit rarely, it seems) even the rich shepherding input space of the blend was not able to convey certain of the intended ideas or concepts. Nevertheless, even then the church fathers used the CGF blend, as it were, out of force of habit. A fine example of this may be Cyprian of Carthage’s praise of virgins: Now our discourse is directed to virgins, for whom our solicitude is even the greater inasmuch as their glory is the more exalted. They are the flower of the tree that is the Church (Flos est ille ecclesiastici germinis), the beauty and adornment of spiritual grace, the image of God reflecting the holiness of the Lord, the more illustrious part of Christ’s flock (illustrior portio gregis Christi).⁴⁶

of the Psalms 51 – 72, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Maria Boulding, vol. III/17, WSA (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2001), 283.  Basil of Caesarea, Exegetic Homilies, xi–xiv.  Exegetic Homilies, 9.  Exegetic Homilies, viii.  Cyprian of Carthage, The Dress of Virgins 3, in Cyprian of Carthage, Treatises, 33; PL 4:443 A.

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Four blends are activated by Cyprian in this passage, each a single scope network with two input spaces. I will ignore the two in the middle of the passage and concentrate instead on the first and last ones. In the first a tree is equated with the church in the blended space while its flower, as the more beautiful and more attractive part of the tree, is equated with virgins. The network is conceptually plausible and quite convincing. The last conceptualization is the CGF blend, yet because the sheep in a flock are similar to one another and often undistinguishable, Cyprian is not able to select and highlight any part of the flock that might be mapped onto virgins as a special group of Christians within the church; instead he decides to write simply of the “more illustrious part”( illustrior portio) of Christ’s flock, which results in a network much less attractive than the conceptualization of the church as a tree. This shows that on some rare occasions even the CGF blend appears to be too poor to provide Christian authors with suitable conceptual material for their arguments.

8.2 The

TEACHING IS FEEDING SHEEP

blend

In previous sections of this chapter I have shown how the CGF blend is used to represent the relationships between the clergy and the laity. Here I will discuss its variants in which “feeding sheep” from the source input space of the blend serves patristic authors in conceptualizing the teaching of the laity by members of the clergy, as marked in Figure 9.⁴⁷ I will call this conceptualization the teaching is feeding sheep (TFS) network and demonstrate how patristic authors use it in reference to doctrinal teaching, moral instruction, and explaining the Bible to laypeople. Examples of sheep feeding or grazing in the source input space of the TFS blend are often derived from the Bible, especially from John 21:15 – 17 (“Feed my sheep”). In this and similar cases, variants of the TFS network are “blends within blends” since the “sheep” in John are not real animals but already conceptualizations themselves. References to real sheep which graze, drink water, etc., that also occur in the input space of the blend may come either from

 I am discussing here only those networks which belong to the CGF category and I do not take into account the numerous blends with input spaces in which Christ himself as the good shepherd feeds or leads his sheep to pastures, blends that are created by patristic authors in their exegesis. For example, Augustine, interpreting John 10:9, equates the pasture found by sheep with the eternal life: Tractate 47 1, in Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 28 – 54, 213.

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other biblical passages that refer to real sheep, or from outside the Bible, belonging in both cases to the folk model of shepherding.⁴⁸ A number of compressions may be observed in the blend. For example, while real sheep are to some extent active when they are consuming grass and moving around without the assistance of the shepherd, in the blended space they are most often presented as passive, as if they were fed directly by the shepherd. This mirrors the most important form of “feeding sheep” in the church, namely preaching, which is a one-way means of communication between the clergy and the laity. There are numerous elaborations of the TFS network with various elements introduced into the source input space and mapped onto the target input space (for example the healthy or poisonous herbs that sheep eat, good and bad pastures, pure water, etc.) and therefore their systematic presentation and categorization is not possible here due to space constraints. The TFS network also co-occurs with other blends like the SAS and the FCFI blends and with the bishops are rams conceptualization discussed above. Hence, as in earlier sections, I will briefly discuss only selected instances of its linguistic realizations, focusing on those which exemplify the role of conceptual integration in creating new meanings or consolidating elements of doctrine. How this new meaning is construed may be seen in Didascalia Apostolorum where the commonsensical advice for real shepherds and/or farmers written in the Book of Proverbs is presented as God’s advice for bishops conceptualized as shepherds: Be diligent therefore and attentive to the word, O bishop, so that, if thou canst, thou explain every saying: that with much doctrine thou mayest abundantly nourish and give drink to thy people; for it is written in Wisdom: ’Be careful of the herb of the field, that thou mayest shear thy flock: and gather the grass of summer, that thou mayest have sheep for thy clothing: give attention and care to thy pasture, that thou mayest have lambs’ [Prov 27:25 – 6].⁴⁹

It is difficult to say exactly which elements of the farmer’s or shepherd’s work are mapped onto the bishop’s activities as shepherd of the Christian flock;

 “Grazing is much talked of in scripture (…) and it can often serve as shorthand for the entire range of pastoral activities: leading the flock to a safe place, protecting it from predators, finding good grass for it, watering it, and so on. To “graze” (pascere) is something that “pastors” (pastores) do.” Paul J. Griffiths, Song of Songs, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2011), 27.  Didascalia Apostolorum 2.5, in Connolly, Didascalia Apostolorum: The Syriac Version Translated and Accompanied by the Verona Latin Fragments, 34– 35.

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what is certain is that a bishop must work with all his might to feed his sheep with God’s word and to explain the word to them. Like a shepherd who gathers grass and does not neglect his pastures, a bishop must be “diligent and attentive to the word.” In some elaborations of the TFS blend we find Paul’s distinction from 1 Cor 3:2 between milk and the solid food of Christian doctrine given to believers. In his instruction to widows Ambrose borrows this distinction and transforms it in the blend so that it is sheep, not humans, that are given either milk or solid food: But as I exhort widows to keep the grace of their gift, so, too, I incite women to observe ecclesiastical discipline, for the Church is made up of all. Though it be the flock of Christ, yet some are fed on strong food, others are still nourished with milk, who must be on their guard against those wolves who are hidden in sheep’s clothing, pretending to all appearance of continence, but inciting to the foulness of incontinence.⁵⁰

Augustine equates the feeding of sheep with absorbing God’s word from the Bible, and the “mountains of Israel” where God will feed his sheep (Ezek 34:13) with the authors of the Bible, and then he elaborates the blend by enriching it with a number of details: He established the mountains of Israel, the authors of the divine scriptures. Feed there without a qualm. Whatever you hear from that source, let that taste good to you; anything from outside spit out. (…) Gather yourselves to the mountains of holy scripture. There you will find your heart’s desire, there is nothing poisonous there, nothing unsuitable; they are the richest pastures.⁵¹

A fine example of how conceptual integration generated meanings in patristic writings is the fact, that Augustine elaborates the same blend in the same sermon to create an opposite meaning; this time the concept of the mountain is mapped onto the holy scriptures to dissuade his audience from the Donatist church and their texts. The mountain ceases to be “a rich pasture” and becomes dangerous place where sheep may get lost. “Sometimes the sheep do find pastures there “ says Augustine, since “after all they [i. e. Donatists] too have the scriptures,” yet “it is bad to stay in the mountains because by straying among the mountains and the hills they [i. e. the sheep] are deserting the flock.”⁵²

 Ambrose, On Widows 11.70, NPNF II 10:403. Note the presence of the beware of the wolf blend discussed in 9.4.  Augustine, Sermon 46 24, in Augustine, Sermons (20 – 50) on the Old Testament, 279.  Sermon 46 20, in Augustine, Sermons (20 – 50) on the Old Testament, 273 – 274.

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In yet another sermon Augustine identifies God’s word with water and states that “it is part of shepherd’s duties to open up the covered springs, and to provide pure harmless water for the thirsty sheep.”⁵³ This image is also a good example of Augustine’s systematic presentation of the spiritual/mental process of the absorption of God’s word in the physical (physiological?) categories of eating or drinking: the Bible tastes good; believers must spit out anything that does not come from it; God’s word is not poisonous; sheep are thirsty, and so forth. These expressions may be regarded as rhetorical ornamentations characteristic of Augustine, yet cognitively speaking one must say that their persuasive power lies precisely in their physicality and their rooting in our embodied mind. They are exemplifications of the Mind-as-Body Metaphor that conceptualizes the embracing of ideas as the eating of food.⁵⁴ A late church father, Caesarius of Arles, in his homily addressed to his fellow bishops, creates a simple version of the TSF blend. By drawing an association between Jesus’ words to Peter from John 21 (“feed my sheep”) and preaching, that is, the serving of “food of life to Christ’s sheep”,⁵⁵ the blend is created. He reminds his audience that “if we truly are shepherds, we ought to provide spiritual pastures for the Lord’s flock”⁵⁶ and “minister to the Lord’s sheep the salt of truth.”⁵⁷ Caesarius does not elaborate his blend like Augustine, and does not define precisely what “spiritual pastures” are; note however the presence of “salt” from Mark 9:49,50 and Matt 5:13 in his blend. The enigmatic “salt” from the gospels becomes the “salt of truth” in the blend, allowing Caesarius to express in this way the unique and definitive character of the Christian doctrine. In another sermon Caesarius makes the laypeople drink milk (like Ambrose does) and presents the books of the Bible as mountains (most probably borrowing this image from Augustine) yet, surprisingly, he does not speak of shepherds feeding sheep but compares members of the clergy to cows and the laypeople to calves.  Sermon 128 7, in Augustine, Sermons (94 A – 147 A) on the New Testament, 296. The organizing frame of the blend in this passage is Gen 29:10, where Jacob rolls the stone from the mouth of the well for Rachel. This is another conceptual integration of the input space of Gen 29:10 that I have discussed in 2.2.  Eve Sweetser, From Etymology to Pragmatics, 28 – 31.  Caesarius of Arles, Sermon 1 11– 12, in Caesarius of Arles, Sermons 1 – 80, trans. Mary M. Müller, vol. 1, Sermons, FC 31 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2004), 12. In a later part of his sermon (15) he equates preaching with serving “food of life to Christ’s sheep,” Caesarius of Arles, Sermons 1 – 80, 16.  Sermon 1 19, in Caesarius of Arles, Sermons1 – 80, 21.  Sermon 1 3, in Caesarius of Arles, Sermons 1 – 80, 5.

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Cows run about through the fields and meadows (…) to prepare the food of milk for their calves by eating grasses and leaves. In like manner, priests, by continually reading the word of God, ought to pluck flowers from the varied mountains of holy Scripture. As a result of this they will be able to offer spiritual milk to their children. (…) Just as a cow has two udders to nurse her calf, so also priests ought to feed the Christian people with the two udders of the Old and New Testaments. (…) Just as calves go after the udders of their mothers with a strong attack in order to be able to draw the necessary food from deep down in them, so too should Christian people continually appeal to their priests, as the udders of the holy Church, with devout questions. Thus they may acquire the food of salvation and provide for themselves the necessary nourishment of their souls.⁵⁸

This complex linguistic realization of the TFS blend (even though it is not sheep but calves who are taught doctrine here) enables Caesarius to convey several important ideas concerning the relations between the clergy and the laity. First of all, only the former have direct access to the Bible. While in Augustine’s version of the blend laypeople were encouraged to feed themselves on the Scripture, in Caesarius’ blend only members of the clergy may do so, and laypeople may only learn God’s word through the clergy; whereas priests “pluck flowers” from the “mountains of holy Scripture,” laypeople must rely on their milk. Moreover, only through priests may laypeople acquire “the food of salvation” and they should appeal to the clergy like calves to cows to receive it. Note furthermore the conceptual shifts with regard to udders in the blend. First, the two udders symbolize the Old and the New Testament, but a few lines further they metonymically signify the priests as those whose main role is to give milk to the calves. The whole blend carries the clear message that the members of the clergy are necessary intermediaries in the salvation of the laypeople. All of the linguistic realizations of the TFS blend discussed above employ the biblical images of grazing sheep in their input spaces, yet there are many other variants of the blend where the idea of grazing sheep is taken from real life, not from the Bible. The various details of this scenario may be mapped onto elements of Christian experience for a better rhetorical or pastoral effect, as in this passage from one of John Chrysostom’s homilies: Wherever shepherds see dense grass, they lead the sheep there; they do not lead them away prematurely, before the flocks have sheared close all of the grass. We, too, imitate the sheep. Presently this is the fourth day that we have put this flock to graze in the way of

 Sermon 4 4, in Caesarius of Arles, Sermons 1 – 80, 31– 32.

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repentance. Yet, not even today are we prepared to take it away from here. For we realize that there is still abundant grazing coupled with much delight and benefit.⁵⁹

The references in John Chrysostom’s blend to real shepherding experience at once presuppose and strengthen the image of the laity being taught by members of the clergy. It is John Chrysostom as the shepherd who decides where his “sheep” will graze and in this specific case he announces to his audience that he has decided to stay longer in one place because there is still enough “grass” or doctrinal teaching for the sheep. In another homily he compares the procession of his community to the martyrium of Drosis, an Antiochene martyr, located outside the city walls, to sheep released from the sheepfold after long winter. Sheep that are outside shear off the grass; they: both breathe in pure air and gaze at the sun’s clear, bright rays, gamboling beside pools and springs and rivers. The earth too provides them a certain enjoyment, decorated as it is in every direction with flowers. Not just in their case, but in our case too does this hold a great deal of benefit. For although we actually have a table full of spiritual dishes ready for us inside [in the church], nonetheless the exodus, to these saints, holds both a certain spiritual guidance and a reward of no lesser value than the spiritual guidance, not because we breathe in pure air, but because we gaze at the achievements of these noble men and women, gamboling not beside rivers of water, but beside rivers of spiritual gifts. Not bending down and shearing off the grass with our teeth, but recounting the martyrs’ virtues. Not viewing an earth decorated with flowers, but gazing at bodies bursting into bud with spiritual gifts.⁶⁰

This vividly realized version of the TFS blend both equates and contrasts the procession to the martyrium with a flock of sheep grazing in the open air for the first time after winter, mapping elements of the experience of sheep onto the corresponding elements of the experience of those participating in the procession. Chrysostom’s audience is outside, like sheep, yet unlike sheep they should enjoy not the fresh air and sunshine but the experience of being with the martyrs. While the sheep gambol beside the river, the Christians are joyful because they may drink from the river of spiritual gifts. The shearing of grass

 John Chrysostom, Homily 4 (On Repentance and Prayer) 1, in John Chrysostom, On Repentance and Almsgiving, trans. Gus G. Christo, FC 96 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 43.  John Chrysostom, Homily on Saint Drosis 1, John Chrysostom, The Cult of the Saints: Select Homilies and Letters, trans. Wendy Mayer and Bronwen Neil (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2006), 193.

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is mapped onto the recounting of the martyrs’ virtues while their bodies, like earth, give birth to spiritual gifts.⁶¹ The feeding of sheep may be mapped not only onto the teaching of doctrine but also onto the distribution of sacraments, especially the Eucharist, as one may observe in Theodore of Mopsuestia’s elaboration of the blend. Since sheep need food to live, so too must Christians, born as Christ’s sheep through baptism, be nourished by the Eucharist: Every animal is born of its like and feeds on its like. A sheep is born of a sheep and feeds by nature of a sheep. (…) You too have been born in baptism by the grace of the Holy Spirit and his coming and received this sanctification; accordingly you need to receive food of the same kind by the grace and the coming of the Holy Spirit, so that this sanctification you have been given may be strengthened and grow, and the promised blessings may be fulfilled in the world to come where we shall all enjoy complete holiness. (…) With these dispositions, with this profession of faith, with this eagerness, we approach this sublime communion; we must receive this holy, immortal food in fear combined with love.⁶²

Gregory of Elvira also uses the TFS blend to conceptualize the Eucharist, yet he does so in a very peculiar way; from the fact that Christ was found in a manger when he was born (Luke 2:7), he concludes that in this way he became “the very nourishment for us, who were once sheep.”⁶³ In other words, Jesus being placed in the same manger from which sheep eat their food is mapped onto Christ’s body, or the holy communion received by believers. The TFS blend turns out also to be a useful conceptual tool to distinguish orthodoxy (fit food for the sheep) from heresy (poisonous food). In Gregory of Nazianzus’ oration such an elaboration of the blend with the Catholic doctrine

 For more on the rhetorical structure of this passage, see Robert Louis Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late 4th Century (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2004), 107– 108. For a modern reader Chrysostom’s rhetorical likening of the martyrs’ bodies giving birth to spiritual gifts on the one hand, to the earth on which flowers grow on the other hand, may sound a bit gruesome, but it is less shocking if one keeps in mind that in one of his homilies the Antiochene Church father exclaims with wonder at one aspect of Christ: “What shepherd feeds his sheep with his own limbs?,” which also might be regarded as a radically reworked variant of the TFS blend. Chrysostom Homily 82 on Matthew 26:26 – 28 5, in NPNF I 10:495.  Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer and on the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist 6, in Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary of Theodore of Mopsuestia on the Lord’s Prayer and on the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, trans. Alphonse Mingana (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2009), 109. In later centuries Thomas Aquinas’ “panis angelicus” will become the predominant blend for conceptualizing holy communion in the Catholic Church.  Karl Shuve, The Song of Songs and the Fashioning of Identity in Early Latin Christianity (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 103.

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as “water of refreshment” and the Arian teaching as a “poisoned and deadly pasture” is intertwined with other elements of shepherding imagery: Do you on your side offer to God and to us obedience to your pastors, dwelling in a place of herbage, and being fed by water of refreshment; knowing your Shepherd well, and being known by him; and following when he calls you as a Shepherd frankly through the door; but not following a stranger climbing up into the fold like a robber and a traitor; nor listening to a strange voice when such would take you away by stealth and scatter you from the truth on mountains, and in deserts, and pitfalls, and places which the Lord does not visit; From which may we all be kept, Shepherd and flock, as from a poisoned and deadly pasture.⁶⁴

While Gregory speaks of the “poisoned pasture,” Cyril of Alexandria equates Nestorius’s heretical teachings with the image of sheep drinking dirty water: Yet he should have remembered God’s words by the mouth of Ezekiel to those who have charge of spiritual flocks: ‘You fed on the good pasture, and drank the clear water, and disturbed the residue with your feet, and my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet, and drink the water disturbed by your feet’. For when we apply our minds to the inspired Scriptures we feed on the good pasture, as the Bible says, and we drink the clear water, that is to say, the word of the Spirit that is utterly pure and translucent and uncontaminated with falsehood. But when we defile it and mix in the dreariness of our own speculations, as if muddying the water, we conspire against the flocks of the Saviour.⁶⁵

 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 1 7, in NPNF II 7:204. Note how contextually rich is Gregory’s blend and how he introduces into it shepherding imagery from John 10 and Ezek 34:6 (sheep scattered on mountains). Seen through a cognitive linguistic lens, this fine rhetoric, intertwined with biblical allusions, is a coherent and convincing conceptualization that supports Nicene orthodoxy.  Cyril of Alexandria, Against Nestorius 2.7, in Norman Russell, Cyril of Alexandria (London: Routledge, 2000), 151– 152. Augustine employs the same phrase from Ezekiel to remind another bishop that a member of the clergy should take care not to scandalize ordinary Christians: “We certainly ought to exercise foresight for what is good not only in the eyes of God but also in the eyes of human beings, so that, while drinking clear waters in our conscience, we are not proven guilty of acting carelessly with our feet with the result that the Lord’s sheep drink muddied waters,” Letter 125 (To Alypius) 2, in Augustine, Letters, 100 – 155, ed. Boniface Ramsey, trans. Roland Teske, vol. II/2, WSA (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2003), 158. Gregory the Great in his Regula Pastoralis creates another blend with dirty water from Ezek 34 mapping it onto shepherds’ evil life. “Obviously, the sheep drink that which was muddied by feet, when, as subjects, they do not attend to the words that they hear but imitate only the depraved examples that they observe,” Regula pastoralis 1.2, in Gregory the Great, The Book of Pastoral Rule, trans. George E. Demacopoulos (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2007), 31. These examples illustrate how patristic authors may create various meanings from the same elements in input spaces of the CGF blend depending on how they choose to elaborate on the blend.

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The TFS blend may also play other, sometimes unexpected, roles in patristic literature. Augustine for example uses the blend to present God’s grace as a free gift with which God attracts people to come to him. To illustrate his point, Augustine says: “Isn’t a sheep dragged, or drawn irresistibly, when it’s hungry and grass is shown to it? And I presume it is not being moved by bodily force, but pulled by desire.”⁶⁶ Augustine might have referred to any other animal or, for that matter, to a hungry man or woman in his argument, yet it seems that he decided to invoke the image of a hungry sheep precisely because his audience knew that they were also “sheep.” Before closing this section, it is worth noting that patristic authors very rarely, to my knowledge, use the concept of ruminating in the TFS blend while addressing their lay audiences.⁶⁷ This is even more striking given that sheep are ruminants and the monastic ruminatio is derived from rumination. It seems that there may be two reasons for this. First, the absence of this term may mirror the increasingly massive character of Christianity in which direct access to God’s word and reflection upon the word were the exclusive domain of the clergy. Since other believers did not study the Bible in this way, there was no need to conceptualize it through the TFS blend. Second, as Leclercq observes, ruminatio was closely tied with reading a biblical text in a low voice and since most lay Christians were illiterate they could not “ruminate” the Bible.⁶⁸

 Augustine, Sermon 131 2, in Augustine, Sermons (94 A – 147 A) on the New Testament, 317. Augustine uses a similar conceptualization with the same function in another sermon: “This revelation itself is what draws. You show a green branch to a sheep and you draw her,” Tractate 26 on the Gospel of John 5, in Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 11 – 27, trans. John W. Rettig, FC 79 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 264. For more on the role of the image of sheep in Augustine’s reasoning, see Anthony Dupont, Gratia in Augustine’s Sermones Ad Populum During the Pelagian Controversy: Do Different Contexts Furnish Different Insights, trans. Brian Doyle (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 140.  Augustine mentions ruminating, though without explicitly conceptualizing his audience as sheep in one of his homilies: “What I intended today you see was to leave you all chewing the cud [ruminatione permittere] in quiet meditation, knowing how abundantly you have feasted on the word of God,” Sermon 352 1, in Augustine, Sermons (341 – 400), 137; PL 39:1550.  Leclercq’s presentation of ruminatio illustrates well one of the basic tenets of cognitive linguistics, that our conceptualizations are always “embodied.” He writes: “In the Middle Ages the reader usually pronounced the words with his lips, at least in a low tone, and consequently he hears the sentence seen by the eyes. (…) This results in more than a visual memory of the written words. What results is a muscular memory of the words pronounced and an aural memory of the words heard. This repeated mastication of the divine words is sometimes described by use of the theme of spiritual nutrition. In this case the vocabulary is borrowed from eating, from digestion, and from the particular form of digestion belonging to ruminants. For this reason, reading and meditation are sometimes described by the very expressive word ruminatio.” Jean Le-

8.3 The the lost sheep and a straying sheep blends

8.3 The

THE LOST SHEEP

and

A STRAYING SHEEP

121

blends

Being a Christian is coterminous with being a member of a community – that is another reason why sheep, those famously gregarious animals, are a suitable source domain for the blends discussed in this monograph – and being held accountable before that same community. Those who have sinned are regarded as excluded from their communities and may be readmitted again through penance. This process of being excluded and later readmitted through penance is often conceptualized in patristic literature by means of the the lost sheep blend and its variant, the a straying sheep blend (Figure 11).⁶⁹ Both variants are most often single scope networks (though they are occasionally double scope networks), with the parable of the lost sheep (Mat 18:12– 14, Luke 15:3 – 7) expressing God’s love for the sinner as their only or main organizing frame.⁷⁰ This biblical account is mapped onto the church input space, and in the

clercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catharine Misrahi (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982), 73 (emphasis added). Although Leclercq writes of medieval monasticism, we should remember that the term ruminatio goes back at least to John Cassian who speaks of the mind’s “guts” and the “holy, unceasing rumination of the Law of the Lord (diuinae legis sancta et incessabilis ruminatio),” Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400 – 1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 90, 305.  More precisely, the blends might be labelled as a sinning Christian is the lost sheep and a sinning Christian is a straying sheep to indicate the conceptual integration underlying them, but here and below, in other sections, I use such shorter labels to emphasize how they were interpreted by Christians (i. e. once you are “a sheep,” try not to be “the lost sheep” or “a straying sheep” and beware of “the wolf”). Also Fauconnier and Turner use such succinct labels when they speak of “Regatta” and “The Debate with Kant”, The Way We Think, 59 – 75.  This is a Christian interpretation of the notion of “the lost sheep.” As William L. Petersen observes, a first-century Jewish audience of Jesus’ associated “the lost sheep” with Israel, and the consistent pattern with which this term is used in the Hebrew Bible “highlights how exceptional – indeed, how bizarre – the associations made by the Matthean and Lucan versions of the “Parable of the Lost Sheep” are,” William L. Petersen, Jan Krans, and Joseph Verheyden, Patristic and Text-Critical Studies: The Collected Essays of William L. Petersen, New Testament Tools, Studies and Documents (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2012), 369. Petersen also discusses the different meanings of “the lost sheep” and the different functions of this parable in Matthew and Luke, William L. Petersen, Jan Krans, and Joseph Verheyden, Patristic and Text-Critical Studies: The Collected Essays of William L. Petersen, 367– 68. This demonstrates again the basic property of single scope networks, namely that the same input space (in this case the image of the lost sheep) may be mapped onto different target input spaces and therefore, depending on historical, cultural or social contexts, single scope networks with identical source input spaces may generate different meanings. It is also worth mentioning here that in the parable of the lost sheep recorded in The Gospel of Thomas the relationship between the shepherd and the lost/found sheep

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Generic space

• A leader • Those under his charge

Sheepfold input space • A shepherd • • A sheep • • The lost sheep• must be found • A straying sheep • must be called back • A contagious sheep • must be separated

Church input space SIMILARITY SIMILARITY SIMILARITY SIMILARITY

• A bishop • • An individual Christian • • A sinner must be brought • back the community • A potential sinner must be • admonished • A heretic/sinner must • be separated from the community

• Christians/sheep misbehave and bishops as shepherds must respond and take steps to resolve/prevent the problem [UNIQUENESS]

Blend Figure 11: the lost sheep, a straying sheep, and a sick sheep networks

seems to be more intimate than that found in Matthew and Luke since the shepherd “after he had toiled said to the sheep ‘I love you more than the ninety-nine’,” Gospel of Thomas 107, in Richard Valantasis, The Gospel of Thomas (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 186 (emphasis added). For more on the differences between these versions of the parable, see also, Ron Cameron, “Ancient Myths and Modern Theories of the Gospel of Thomas and Christian Origins,” in Redescribing Christian Origins, ed. Ron Cameron and Merrill P. Miller (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2004), 106. In 9.3 I discuss extensively how “the lost sheep” input space is used to generate soteriological and Christological meanings in patristic texts.

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blend space the bishop is equated with the shepherd from the parable, he who is looking for “the lost sheep” or a member of his community that had separated himself/herself from it through sin. Note that even though the parable has a happy ending, its scenario is very general and hence it may be interpreted and elaborated in many ways: did the sheep get lost accidentally or was it the sheep’s own fault? To what dangers was it exposed after it had separated itself from the flock? Could the shepherd use coercion to bring it back? What precautions could the shepherd take to prevent the sheep from going astray in the future? All these scenarios may be read into the biblical text and sanctioned by it, and that is why pattern completion is a regular element of conceptual integration in the case of the blends discussed in this section. Below I examine selected linguistic realizations of the the lost sheep network, and then selected examples of the a straying sheep blend.

8.3.1 The

THE LOST SHEEP

blend

The role of the the lost sheep (TLS) blend as a conceptual instrument in providing instructions for bishops on how to take care of those who “went astray” is well attested to by Didascalia Apostolorum. And that [sheep] which is gone astray bring back: that is, him that was left in sin and was put forth for reproof, leave not without, but teach and admonish him, and bring him back and receive him into thy flock, that is, into the people of the Church. (…) For when he shall be without the fold and removed from the flock, wolves will devour him while he is astray, and he will perish utterly. But do thou seek him out, and admonish and teach him, and bring him back; and visit him, and encourage him to be wakeful, and let him know that there is hope for him. (….) Do thou therefore as a compassionate shepherd, full of love and mercy and careful of his flock, visit and count thy flock, and seek that which is gone astray; as said the Lord God, Jesus Christ our good Teacher and Saviour: “Leave the ninety and nine upon the mountains, and go seek that one which is gone astray. And when thou hast found it, bear it upon thy shoulders, rejoicing because thou hast found that which was gone astray; and bring it and let it mix with the flock”’. So be thou also obedient, O bishop, and search out him that is lost, and seek him that is gone astray, and bring back him that is holding aloof. For thou has authority to forgive sins to him that offendeth; for thou has put on the person of Christ.⁷¹

 Didascalia Apostolorum, 2.19, in Connolly, Didascalia Apostolorum: The Syriac Version Translated and Accompanied by the Verona Latin Fragments, 63 – 64. Note that the the lost sheep blend is intertwined here with the FCFI blend.

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Interestingly, further on in the text the sinner is again presented as a sheep that has to leave a community so that the flock may remain pure. [If a sinner] comes to the Church in his arrogance, and he is reproved and rebuked by the bishop, and looking upon all (present) finds no offence in any of them, neither in the bishop nor in those who are with him he will then be put to confusion, and will go forth quietly, in great shame, weeping and in remorse of soul; and so shall the flock remain pure (et manebit mundatus grex). Moreover, when he is gone out he will repent of his sin and weep and sigh before God, and there shall be hope for him. And the whole flock itself also, when it sees the weeping and tears of that man, will fear, knowing and understanding that everyone who sins perishes (quoniam qui peccat, perit).⁷²

Both passages show the great conceptual potential of the TLS blend and at the same time some interesting modifications of the parable of the lost sheep. Note, first of all, that the second passage is a double-scope network with human and ovine properties clashing in the blend: “the lost sheep” weeps and “the whole flock” sees its (his) “tears.” Note also the pattern completion at work in both passages. While the parable does not go into detail concerning the dangers awaiting the lost sheep, Didascalia Apostolorum tells us that a sheep removed from the flock will be devoured by wolves, animals that may symbolize the devil or heretical communities or the fact that the sheep simply “perishes.” Note also that in the parable when “the lost sheep” is being brought back by the shepherd, the blend may be employed – as the second passage suggests – to make somebody first “the lost sheep” and then to show him the way back to the community. The sinner leaves the community to “repent of his sin and weep and sigh before God” with the assurance that “there shall be hope for him.” The parable of the lost sheep stresses the shepherd’s immediate action and sacrifice mapping this attitude onto the ecclesial shepherds in the TLS blend and in this way the conceptualization, grounded in the Bible, requires from them two things: “seeking the lost sheep,” and “bringing him/her back.” In other words, “seeking the lost sheep” expresses in the blend not only the shepherd’s care but the act becomes his duty. This sense of duty and determination can be seen in John Chrysostom’s elaboration of the blend: I do not wish many to be saved but all. And if but one be left in a perishing condition, I perish also, and deem that the Shepherd should be imitated who had ninety-nine sheep, and yet hastened after the one which had gone astray.⁷³

 Didascalia Apostolorum 2.10, in Connolly, Didascalia Apostolorum: The Syriac Version Translated and Accompanied by the Verona Latin Fragments, 40. Insisting that the flock must remain pure activates the a sick sheep blend discussed in 8.7.  John Chrysostom, Second Homily on Eutropius 5, in NPNF I 9:255.

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The conviction that a sheep must not be left for itself, communicated through the TLS blend, implies the constant possibility of re-admittance for the sinner. It seems therefore that the blend played an important role in the gradual change to the rigorous penitential discipline of the early church, providing a biblical basis for the possibility of readmitting those Christians who have committed venial sins. A fine example of how this was used as a conceptual argument in shaping church doctrine is Tertullian’s treatise On Purity. We learn from his work that a certain bishop⁷⁴ issued an edict in which he declared that sins of adultery and fornication, previously regarded as “leading to death” (cf. 1 John 5:16) and thus resulting in permanent exclusion from the Christian community, could now be repented for and those who committed them could be received back into the church. Proponents of this change used the TLS blend in their argumentation, claiming that “a [lost] ‘sheep’ is a Christian and the ‘flock’ of the Lord is the congregation of the church and the good shepherd is Christ, and therefore in the sheep, we are to see a Christian who has wandered from the flock of the church.”⁷⁵ Tertullian, writing from the Montanist position, rejects this point of view. Most interestingly, in his counterargument he uses the same blend but elaborates on it differently. He admits that a bishop, representing Christ (note the SAS blend here), should look for and call back a lost sheep, by which he means a Christian who has sinned by going to see a wildly exciting chariot race, a bloody gladiatorial combat, a filthy play, a frivolous exhibition of athleticism; or if he has made use of any magic rites at play or at banquets on pagan festivals or in the performance of public office or while cooperating in another’s idolatry; or if, perhaps, with some equivocal expression, he has recanted or blasphemed. For some such cause as this he has been put outside the flock. Or, it may be that he himself has left it out of anger, pride, jealousy or, finally, as often happens, because he refuses chastisement. He must be sought out and brought back.⁷⁶ In such cases – remarks Tertullian – a bishop restores “a sinner who is still living.” But then he adds immediately: “but who will not say that the adulterer and fornicator is dead just as soon as he has sinned? How can you presume to restore to the flock someone who is dead, on the authority of that parable which restores a sheep which is not dead?”⁷⁷

 Probably Agrippinus, a bishop of Carthage, David Wright, “Tertullian,” in The Early Christian World, ed. Philip F. Esler (Abingdon and New York: Taylor & Francis, 2004), 1042.  Tertullian, On Purity 7, in Tertullian, Treatises on Penance: On Penitence and On Purity, trans. William P. Le Saint (New York N.Y./Ramsey, N. J.: Newman Press, 1959), 69.  On Purity 7, in Tertullian, Treatises on Penance, 71.  On Purity 7, in Tertullian, Treatises on Penance, 71.

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According to Tertullian, a Christian who has committed sins resulting in his/ her spiritual death must be regarded, by definition, as dead. Because in the parable of the lost sheep the shepherd does not bring back a dead sheep to the flock, therefore, if a Christian is “dead,” there is no element in the source input space of the TLS blend with which such a Christian could be equated. In other words, the the lost sheep blend is used by Tertullian as part of a reductio ad absurdum argument, since no shepherd brings a dead animal back to the flock. Tertullian’s interpretation of the TLS blend is a fine example of the cognitive potential of conceptual integration, for it demonstrates that a simple distinction between a dead and a living sheep, combined with common sense knowledge and introduced into a blend, allows a patristic author to formulate and defend important theological ideas concerning penance. Nevertheless, despite his ingenuity, Tertullian lost the conceptual battle concerning readmitting serious sinners and TLS blend in its traditional interpretation became the standard conceptualization for expressing the possibility of coming back to the church, open to every sinner, as attested to by John Chrysostom: Now that sheep which had become separated from the ninety and nine, and then was brought back again, represents to us nothing else than the fall and return of the faithful; for it was a sheep not of some alien flock, but belonging to the same number as the rest, and was formerly pastured by the same shepherd, and it strayed on no common straying, but wandered away to the mountains and in valleys, that is to say some long journey, far distant from the right path.⁷⁸

This passage is a typical instantiation of the TLS blend as a biblical argument in support of the attitude of the church leaders towards sinners. One may find, however, in early Christian discourse less typical linguistic realizations of the same blend used to justify the right of a bishop to take any measures to bring back those who have “gone astray.” These could range from exhortation, as in the case of John Chrysostom reminding the members of his community not to take oaths, to the physical coercion recommended by Augustine towards Donatists. John Chrysostom in one of his Homilies on the Statues declares: Hence, I feel more ready to try again the same exhortation. Let no one tell me that many have succeeded in correcting this habit [of taking oaths], for I did not ask that some but that all succeed. Until I see all corrected, I cannot rest. That shepherd had one hundred sheep but, when one was lost, he took no delight in the safety of the ninety-nine until

 John Chrysostom, An Exhortation to Theodore after his fall. Letter 1 9, in NPNF I 9:96.

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he found the one that was lost and restored it to the flock. Do you not see that this happens in the case of the body? If we strike and bend back even one fingernail, the whole body feels pain with its fellow member. Therefore, do not tell me that there are a few left who have failed to correct the habit, but consider that these few uncorrected ones may corrupt many others. Among the Corinthians there was one adulterous man, but St. Paul grieved as if the whole city were lost. And he was right, for he knew that if that man did not abandon his impurity, the disease would make its way along and assail all the others.⁷⁹

Strikingly, in Chrysostom’s elaboration of the blend those whom he wants to bring back are conceptualized not as “lost sheep” but rather as “black sheep,” or in other words animals that set a bad example for the rest of the flock and are seen as sick sheep infectious to other animals. (I discuss this last conceptualization separately in 8.7). It suggests that in this case the bishop, as the good shepherd, does not look for the “lost sheep” for the sake of the sheep itself but for the sake of the ninety-nine others, which is a reversal of the original message found in the gospels! Nevertheless, one must say that such an interpretation of the parable supports Chrysostom’s main argument and provides him with the necessary biblical authority for his approach, which he presents in terms of shepherding activity: “Until I see all corrected, I cannot rest. That shepherd had one hundred sheep but, when one was lost, he took no delight in the safety of the ninety-nine until he found the one that was lost and restored it to the flock.” As we have seen in 2.3, also Augustine distorts the original meaning of the parable of the lost sheep. He does it more than once in his anti-Donatist rhetoric, as it is illustrated by the following quotation: Is it no part of the shepherd’s care when he has found those [lost] sheep, also, which have not been rudely snatched away but have been gently coaxed and led astray from the flock, and have begun to be claimed by others, to call them back to the Lord’s sheepfold, by threats or pain of blows if they try to resist (si resistere voluerint, flagellorum terroribus, vel etiam doloribus revocare ⁸⁰)? And especially if their numbers are increased by fruitful generation in the midst of runaway slaves and bandits, has he not more authority over them because he recognizes on them the brand mark of the Lord which is not tampered with in those whom we receive back without rebaptism? The wandering of the sheep is to be remedied without destroying in it the mark of the Redeemer. But, if anyone is branded with the royal mark by a deserter who has himself been branded, and if they both find mercy and the one returns to his service, while the other begins a service which he had

 John Chrysostom, Homily on the Statues 13.12, in John Chrysostom, Baptismal Instructions, trans. Paul W. Harkins (New York: Paulist Press, 1963), 305, note 17.  Augustine, Epistulae. Pars IV (ep. 185 – 270), ed. Alois Goldbacher, CSEL 57 (Wien: Tempsky, 1911), 22.

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not yet undertaken, the mark is not erased in either of them. In fact, is it not rather recognized in both of them and accorded due honor since it is the king’s mark?⁸¹

Augustine’s elaboration of the TLS blend, like that of Chrysostom’s, focuses first of all on “the happy ending” of the parable. At the same time he introduces through pattern completion a number of details to the source input space to map them onto the historical events and circumstances of the Donatist schism in Africa in the target input space. Hence in his version of the blend the sheep were not lost (or stolen) but “have been gently coaxed and led astray from the flock, and have begun to be claimed by others,” namely by the Donatist communities who not infrequently took over from the Catholics. From this it follows that in Augustine’s view the shepherd does not set out to look for the lost sheep but to reclaim his possession. Moreover, the number of lost sheep increased “by fruitful generation” because the schism lasted for around a century and the Donatist church had a very strong position in Africa with its own dioceses and bishops. Anyway, these additional elements to the input space of the blend are merely an introduction to the most significant modification (or, to put it bluntly, distortion) of the parable of the lost sheep. Since the shepherd in the parable ultimately returns the lost sheep to the flock, Augustine argues that it is a part of the shepherd’s (i. e. the bishop’s) care to “call them back to the Lord’s sheepfold, by threats or pain of blows if they try to resist.” Note furthermore that Augustine expands his argument and adds that the shepherd has the right to coerce the sheep to come back because “he recognizes on them the brand mark of the Lord,” namely the sign of baptism. In this way he introduces two other blends to his conceptualization: baptism is branding sheep and baptism is a soldier’s tattoo (see 9.1.1). These blends allow him to further develop his argument and to assert that: 1) like a brand on a sheep or a soldier’s tattoo, baptism cannot be erased; 2) even if someone is branded (baptized) by a deserter who was already branded (a Donatist), the royal mark makes both of them soldiers of Christ forever. In this way Augustine proves that the Catholic Church has the divine authority to use physical coercion towards the Donatists and rejects their practice of rebaptising Catholics.

 Letter 185 (De Correctione Donatistarum) 23, in Augustine, Letters 165 – 203, trans. Wilfrid Parsons, vol. 4, Letters, FC 30 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1981), 164. We should keep in mind, however, that the parable of the lost sheep is not the only – and not even the most important – biblical argument Augustine resorts to in this letter to justify coercion towards the Donatists; see Jennifer Ebbeler, Disciplining Christians: Correction and Community in Augustine’s Letters, Oxford Studies in Late Antiquity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 184– 89.

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On another occasion Augustine justifies physical coercion towards schismatic communities by equipping the shepherd in the input space of the blend with a whip. In his letter to the Rogatist bishop Vincent, Augustine writes: “You know that (…) the shepherd sometimes calls the wandering sheep back to the fold by using the lash.”⁸² Both examples of Augustine’s elaborations of the TLS blend demonstrate that this conceptualization, grounded in a biblical parable that symbolizes God’s care for sinners, when used by a skillful orator like Augustine may become, paradoxically, a dangerous conceptual weapon that sanctions the use of coercion in solving religious conflicts.⁸³ Another interesting linguistic realization of the lost sheep blend may be found in Cyprian of Carthage’s letter concerning lapsi wishing to come back to the church after the Decian persecution (250 – 251). Whereas many bishops were divided on whether to readmit such Christians and on what conditions, Cyprian was convinced that lapsi should be allowed to reunite with the church: If we are to reject the repentance of such people (who remain in some degree confident, and not overburdened, in their consciences), they will promptly follow the devil’s invitation and dash off into heresy and schism, taking along their wives and their children whom they had preserved in safety. And as for us, on the day of judgment there will be found written down against our names that we failed to look after the sheep that was wounded, and for the sake of one wounded we lost many that were unharmed and that whereas the Lord left the ninety-nine sheep that were sound and went in search of the one which had strayed and was weary and having found it, He carried it Himself on His shoulders, we not only fail to seek out those that are weary, but we even drive them away, when they approached us. It will be charged to us that precisely at the present time when false prophets are running amok in the flock of Christ, tearing it to pieces, we are presenting an opening to dogs and wolves to do their worst; those who were not destroyed through the attacks of the persecution we are now destroying ourselves through our own callousness and inhumanity.⁸⁴

 Letter 93, in Augustine, Letters, 83 – 130, 61.  This is of course not to say that Augustine regularly distorts the parable of the lost sheep as these examples may suggest. On the contrary, it remains to him the reflection of God’s love to sinners, as confirmed for instance in his account of the conversion of Marius Victorinus: “Even you, O merciful Father, rejoice more upon one sinner doing penance than upon ninety and nine just who need no penance. It is with special joy that we hear how the lost sheep is brought home upon the exultant shoulders of the shepherd,” Confessions 8.3, in Augustine, Confessions, trans. Frank J. Sheed (Indianapolis-Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2006), 145. My aim is only to show that the the lost sheep blend allows Augustine to present his point as biblically supported, even though his running of the blend differs significantly from the biblical account.  Letter to Antonianus (55) 15.1, in Cyprian of Carthage, Letters 55 – 66, 42.

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Cyprian lays out an intricate argument here, based on the Bible, and the logic and framework of his reasoning are yet another elaboration of the TLS blend. He argues that the improper handling of the lapsi problem (which he conceptualizes as not taking proper care of the wounded or lost sheep) may result in the loss of the rest of the flock (or those who persevered during persecution).⁸⁵ He opens his argument with the FIFC network⁸⁶ followed by the TLS blend, in which he identifies the shepherd from the parable with Jesus.⁸⁷ Cyprian not only argues that a bishop should imitate Jesus (introducing in this way the SAS blend into his argument), but adds that since the lost sheep have come back on their own initiative and are waiting to be readmitted, the bishop should welcome them (a logical argument). Finally Cyprian – customarily, one may say – warns against the dangers to the communities in question, dangers such as the devil and false prophets, conceptualizing them by means of the beware of the wolf blend (see 8.4). The whole passage shows that by using the TLS blend as the conceptual framework for his reasoning, and supporting it with the other blends discussed in this study, Cyprian was able to create a strong doctrinal argument aimed at solving a serious crisis in the North African church.⁸⁸

8.3.2 The

A STRAYING SHEEP

blend

On many occasions patristic authors speak not of “the lost sheep” and its return to the flock but of a “straying sheep,” to stress in this way the spiritual dangers Christians are exposed to when they “go astray.” This conceptualization is also a single-scope network with the images of (a) straying sheep in the input space taken most often from the Bible (Ps 119:176, Isa 53:6, Jer 50:6, Ezek 34:5, etc.) and mapped onto (a) believer(s).

 After the persecution of Decius ended, “confessors” upon the request of lapsi, and not waiting for the decisions of their bishops or presbyters, started to act as intercessors for lapsi, issuing letters in which they recommended admitting them back into the community. This led to the struggle for control of the church, John Patout Burns Jr., Cyprian the Bishop (Routledge, 2002), 22. If the bishops had been too rigorous with lapsi this might have resulted in a schism.  “You have not bound up the injured [sheep]” – Ezek 34:4.  Jesus did not go to seek any lost sheep and did not carry “it back on His shoulders.” He was only talking about the good shepherd doing these things.  Cyprian employs a similar argument in his letter to Cornelius, bishop of Rome: Letter 57 5, in Cyprian of Carthage, Letters 1 – 81, trans. Rose B. Donna, FC 51 (Washington D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1981), 161.

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Gregory of Nyssa employs this conceptualization, embedding it into the wider context of the CGF blend, to admonish members of his community for missing the Sunday mass: Now I recognize my own flock [and] confess that I feel a shepherd’s affections, and I wish, when I am set upon this watchtower, to see the flock gathered round about the mountain’s foot: and when it so happens to me, I am filled with wonderful earnestness, and work with pleasure at my sermon, as the shepherds do at their rustic strains. But when things are otherwise, and you are straying in distant wanderings, as you did but lately, the last Lord’s Day, I am much troubled, and glad to be silent.⁸⁹

For Gregory his cathedra is a watchtower – a convenient location that allows the shepherd both to keep control of his sheep and to spot any danger on the horizon. Note, however, that in the same sentence the cathedra turns into a mountain with the people/sheep gathered at its foot, evoking the image of the mountain where Jesus taught the crowds in Matt 5. Thus Gregory, seeing himself as the shepherd, identifies with Jesus, thus activating the SAS blend. At the same time he borrows shepherding imagery from the bucolic tradition, comparing his preaching to shepherds singing “rustic strains.” He closes this series of metaphors with the a straying sheep blend and depicts those who did not come to the church on the previous Sunday as “straying sheep.” This specific conceptualization may reflect a Constantinian shift in the history of Christianity and its increasingly massive character in the fourth century. Since controlling the moral conduct of individuals was now more difficult, more visible ways were necessary to assess which sheep were on the right path and which “are straying in distant wanderings,” and church attendance could be considered one of them. Leo the Great also employs the a straying sheep blend in one of his sermons, emphasizing the perils a sheep is exposed to when it goes astray: The wicked fury of the plundered enemy [the devil] rages and seeks a new advantage, for he has lost his ancient rights. Unwearied and ever watchful, if he should find any sheep carelessly wandering from the sacred flock, he would take them captive and lead them by the steep slopes of pleasure and the by-paths of luxury into the lodgings of death.⁹⁰

In the first sentence of this passage Leo depicts the devil as a predator, borrowing this image from 1 Peter 5:8. By combining it with the image of the lost sheep he creates the vivid metaphor of a sinning Christian as the prey of the devil. At the same time an important conceptual shift occurs in the second sentence  On the Baptism of Christ, NPNF II 5:518.  Sermon 40 2, in Leo the Great, Sermons, 173.

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of the passage, starting as a single scope network and turning into a double scope network, with two different organizing frames present in the blended space: “a lost sheep” is led by “the steep slopes of pleasure” and “the bypaths of luxury” into “the lodgings of death.” “Steep slopes,” “by-paths” and “lodgings” are physical locations known to real sheep while “pleasure,” “luxury” and “death” belong to the organizing frame of the Christian life (see Figure 4).⁹¹ Augustine makes use of the same blend in a similar way in his sermons against the Donatists, referring to the dangers awaiting the “straying sheep” that decided to leave the Catholic Church. Commenting on Ezekiel 34:5 he warns his audience: “Treacherous wolves are there to snatch them, roaring lions to grab them, when the sheep don’t stick to the shepherd. For the shepherd is present, but those who behave badly don’t regard him as the shepherd.” ⁹² In Peter Brown’s view, by resorting to language that connotes the dangers awaiting Catholics leaving the Catholic community, Augustine is attempting to justify the pasturing of his sheep “with discipline” that included “a large measure of identification with the ‘terror’ of the Imperial laws against heresy.”⁹³ This again confirms that the blends examined in this study were important conceptual instruments in church discourse. Finally, it is worth mentioning that not only sheep but sometimes shepherds too could be conceptualized as “straying” in patristic texts. After restoring peace between the patriarchs Cyril of Alexandria and John of Antioch in 433 – their conflict had divided the Eastern church and led to the Council of Ephesus in 431– Sixtus III, the bishop of Rome wrote to Cyril: “we read about how much joy the return of a single sheep furnished, and accordingly we should understand how much praise the recalling of so many shepherds should have.”⁹⁴

8.4 The

BEWARE OF THE WOLF

blend

In earlier sections I have examined several blends that carry images of wolves as the natural enemies of sheep, these blends being used to warn Christians against

 A similar version of this double scope network may be found in Caesarius of Arles, who maps traditional human vices onto the sheep’s physical condition: “We very frequently see the sheep of our Lord struck by the poison of envy, suffocated in the slough of dissipation, or immersed in the sewer of drunkenness,” Sermon 1 13, in Caesarius of Arles, Sermons, 1 – 80, 15.  Augustine, Sermon 46 16, in Augustine, Sermons (20 – 50) on the Old Testament, 273.  Brown, Religion and Society in the Age of St. Augustine, 315.  Letter 51 5, in Cyril of Alexandria, Letters 1 – 110, vol. 2, 5.

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a multitude of dangers. We have seen wolves in Acts 20:28 – 30 (7.2); in Ignatius of Antioch’s Epistle to the Philadelphians (8.1.1) and in Leo the Great’s blend as discussed in the previous section. A close analysis of the linguistic realizations of the CGF network in patristic literature shows that in many cases wolves are their most important or even their only element, constituting a separate subcategory of the CGF network that may be labeled as beware of the wolf (BOW) blend as shown in Figure 12. Generic space

• A • Warns/protects B Sheepfold input space

• Shepherd • • The flock • • Wolves/dogs • • Wolves •

• defenseless against C

SIMILARITY SIMILARITY SIMILARITY DISSIMILARITY

Church input space

• Bishop • • The Christian • community • False teachers • • Sheep •

• False teachers are wolves/dogs • that destroy the church’s flock. the shepherd must protect his sheep against them[UNIQUENESS] • Persecutors of the church who turned • into Christians exemplify God’s power [CHANGE]

Blend Figure 12: beware of the wolf and wolves turned into sheep networks

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This conceptualization is undoubtedly deeply rooted in Western cultural experience; in antiquity, like today, wolves were prototypically dangerous animals and their presence in the source input space of the CGF blend as the attackers of sheep immediately changed the blend’s scenario from a peaceful and serene one into something violent and bloody. Through conceptual integration patristic authors mapped wolves onto various individuals or groups perceived as a threat to the “sheep,” thereby creating conceptual instruments that could be used in various contexts, some of which I discuss below. As mentioned above, wolves appear in the earliest linguistic realizations of the CGF blend and we encounter them twice in the New Testament: in Matt 7:15 and Acts 20:28 – 30.⁹⁵ From Acts we learn that savage wolves (lykoi bareis) will come “not sparing the flock,” while Matthew warns believers against ravenous wolves (lykoi harpages) in sheep’s clothing. Both passages identify wolves with false teachers (see 7.2) and they would be invoked incessantly in early Christian discourse.⁹⁶ More importantly, by invoking these wolves, patristic authors would be able to anchor their linguistic realizations of the BOW blend in the Bible, making it a strong doctrinal argument in fighting off heretical or schismatic ideas. The wolves found in Acts and Matthew symbolize false teachers, and this image must have caught on quickly in primitive Christianity. It occurs in Ignatius of Antioch’s Letter to the Philadelphians 2,1 and in Didache 16,3; Irenaeus also speaks of Christians deceived by Gnostic teaching as being “snatched away (…) like sheep by wolves.”⁹⁷ It is also popular in later decades and centuries. Cyprian of Carthage warns against “wolves who separate the sheep from the

 I am ignoring here Matt 10:16 (“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves”) because this passage does not occur in the blends explored in this section. The blends I discuss here are used by the church fathers to conceptualize the dangers within a community or attacks from outside, whereas Matt 10:16 refers to threats related to the missionary activity of Christians that I do not discuss here due to space constraints. Of course, the “wolves” of Matt10:16 are also mapped onto the enemies of Christians and, for example, Augustine expands Jesus’ metaphor from Matthew 10:16 onto the next verse of the Gospel, writing that “the wolves will seize you and hand you over, and deliver you to the authorities for the sake of my name.” Exposition 3 of Psalm 32 8, in Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 1 – 32, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Maria Boulding, vol. III/15, WSA (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000), 410.  “Concern over misrepresentation, deception, and deviance – captured in the image of wolves in sheep’s clothing – runs as a constant theme through early Christian discourse,” Theresa M. Shaw, “Wolves in Sheeps’ Clothing: The Appearance of True and False Piety,” in Studia Patristica, vol. XXIX. Papers Presented at the Twelfth International Conference in Patristic Studies Held in Oxford in 1995. Historica, Theologica et Philosophica, Critica et Philologica, ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 132.  Against Heresies, Preface to Books I and II 2, in Grant, Irenaeus of Lyons, 57.

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shepherd”;⁹⁸ Celestine, in his letter to Cyril of Alexandria, calls Nestorius a shepherd that “turned himself into the rapacity of a wolf desiring to destroy the flock.”⁹⁹ Eusebius of Caesarea employs the BOW blend in his Ecclesiastical History calling Marcion of Sinope, one of the first heresiarchs, “the wolf of Pontus,”¹⁰⁰ and Basil of Caesarea laments in his letter to the bishops in the West that due to the conflict in the church of Antioch “the shepherds are driven away, and in their places are introduced troublesome wolves who tear asunder the flock of Christ.”¹⁰¹ In another of his letters to the church of Neo-Caesarea, having praised the virtues of the late bishop Musonius, he warns his addressees against the “fierce wolves” who scatter the flock of Christ guised as sheep.¹⁰² In his letter to Ceretius Augustine employs the same conceptual-rhetorical technique of presenting the proponents and/or followers of heretical ideas as wolves, and writes with reference to the Priscillianists: “You do very well to beware vigilantly of the wolves. But also with the help of the Lord of shepherds, work with a shepherd’s care for healing the sheep, if these wolves have perhaps attacked some or have already wounded some.”¹⁰³ Note Augustine’s elaboration of the BOW blend in presenting those who followed the Priscillianists as “wounded sheep” that need healing. In other words, wolves have not killed these sheep yet and they may be rescued by shepherds (bishops). Note also the implicit presence of the SAS blend since Christ is called the “Lord of shepherds,” which seems to suggest his more intimate relationship with members of the clergy than with the laity. The BOW blend plays an important role in Augustine’s anti-Donatist writings. In his letter to the Donatist bishop Eusebius, he makes use of the blend to create a hypothetical and improbable situation in which a shepherd does

 Letter 43 6, in Cyprian of Carthage, Letters 28 – 54, trans. Graeme W. Clarke, vol. 2, The Letters of St. Cyprian of Carthage, Ancient Christian Writers 44 (New York N.Y./Ramsey, N. J.: Paulist Press, 1984), 66.  Celestine’s letter to Cyril 4, Cyril of Alexandria, Letters 1 – 110, vol. 1, 69.  Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 5.13, in Eusebius Pamphili, Ecclesiastical History, Books 1 – 5, trans. Roy J. Deferrari, FC 19 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 308. In the same work the BOW blend constitutes the conceptual framework of the dramatic depiction of Maximilla, a Montanist prophetess, who supposedly spoke of herself: “I am driven away from the sheep, like a wolf. I am not a wolf. I am word and spirit of power,” 5.16, in Eusebius Pamphili, Ecclesiastical History, Books 1 – 5, 318.  Letter 90 2, in Basil of Caesarea, Letters 59 – 185, trans. Roy J. Deferrari, vol. 2, Letters, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 2001), 125.  For more on Basil’s blend in this letter, see 8.6  Letter 237 9, in Augustine, Letters 211 – 270, 1* – 29*, 141.

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not defend his sheep against wolves, demonstrating in this way the absurdity of the Donatists’ claims concerning the issue of orthodoxy and rebaptism: If I were to say: “Let us see who are or were traitors or persecutors,” I would get this answer: “We do not wish to enter into any controversy and we do wish to rebaptize; let us prey upon the sheep of your flock with the treacherous fangs of wolves, but you, if you are good shepherds, keep silence.”¹⁰⁴

In another letter addressed to the laypeople in the Donatist church he suggests that by being obedient to their bishops they are like sheep taking refuge with wolves: “If the wolves [the Donatist bishops] called a council so as not to have to answer to the shepherds [the Catholic bishops], why did the sheep disband the council so as to take refuge in the dens of the wolves?”¹⁰⁵ In another text directed against the Donatists Augustine creates another elaboration of the BOW blend, this time presenting “wolves” as animals that are baptized and that baptize sheep! This elaboration stands in sharp contrast with the baptism is branding sheep blend (discussed in 9.1.1): The mark [of baptism] is often impressed both by wolves and on wolves, who seem indeed to be within the fold, but yet are proved by the fruits of their conduct, in which they persevere even to the end, not to belong to that sheep which is one in many; because, according to the foreknowledge of God, as many sheep wander outside, so many wolves lurk treacherously within.¹⁰⁶

The wolves in Augustine’s blend “lurk treacherously” and therefore we may assume that they are “wolves in sheep’s clothing.” However, this time they do not attack or scatter the flock but illustrate the truth that the church community consists of those who will be saved as well as of those who will be condemned, an

 Letter 35 4, in Augustine, Letters, 1 – 82, trans. Wilfrid Parsons, vol. 1, Letters, FC 12 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 138.  Letter 76 4, in Augustine, Letters 1 – 82, 372. In one of his homilies Augustine creates an ingenious combination of the BOW blend and the SAS blend (yet with Christ depicted – for a stronger rhetorical effect – not as the Shepherd but as the Lamb), addressing the Donatists: “O wolves, I do what I do by the authority of the Lamb,” Tractate 5 on the Gospel of John 14, in Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 1 – 10, transl. John W. Rettig, FC 78 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2002), 121.  Augustine, On Baptism 6.1.1, in NPNF I 4:479. Gregory the Great uses the same image of “wolves” to condemn the reprehensible conduct of corrupt members of the clergy: “Consider what will become of the flock when wolves become shepherds! They undertake to guard the flock and are not afraid to waylay the Lord’s flock,” Homily 19, in Gregory the Great, Forty Gospel Homilies, 145.

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argument Augustine often puts forward in his polemics with the Donatists. It follows that the BOW blend may play a role in Christian discourse similar to that of the gospel parable of wheat and chaff. The opposition between “wolves” and “sheep” may also be the conceptual basis for the arguments developed both by the Catholics and the Donatists in the Donatist controversy, with each party seeking to prove – through reference to the Bible – that their opponents are wolves. When the Donatist bishop, Petilian, called the Catholics “wolves,” Augustine put forward a counter-argument based on the BOW blend with Jesus’ words from John 10:27 in its source input space: What was required was that you should show that we were wolves and that you were sheep, not by the emptiest of evil-speaking, but by some distinct proofs. For when I too have said, “We are sheep, and you are wolves,” do you think that there is any difference caused by the fact that you express the idea in swelling words? But listen while I prove what I assert. For the Lord says in the gospel, as you know full well, whether you please it or not, “My sheep hear my voice, and follow me [John 10:27].”¹⁰⁷

Note how simple yet convincing is Augustine’s reasoning in referring to the Bible and to our experiential knowledge concerning sheep and wolves, and it is this which allows him to prove his point. Invectives are not arguments, says Augustine, and some objective proofs are necessary to distinguish who is who. Since sheep are animals that listen to a shepherd, it is this community which follows Jesus the shepherd that is the community of sheep.¹⁰⁸ While Augustine uses the BOW blend against the Donatists, Leo the Great elaborates it in yet another way in his text against the Pelagians. Commenting

 Answer to the Letters of Petilian the Donatist 74.164, in NPNF I 4:568. Scholars point to the key role of the image of wolves (or, in other words, to the BOW blend) in the doctrinal battle between the Donatists and the Catholics in Northern Africa, since “to maintain its integrity in this long cold war, each community [i.e. both the Catholics and the Donatists] had to be constantly vigilant for signs that any of its own might defect to the other side. Such vigilance could be systematically inculcated in the members of the congregation by images of predators, mainly wolves, against whom they had to be on guard,” Shaw, Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine, 105 (emphasis added). As Shaw notices, “the threatening animalism was just as appealing and just as powerful” in the “attacking rhetoric” of both communities, Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine, 333.  Also Optatus of Mileve uses the sheep/wolves opposition to distinguish between the Catholics and the Donatists in his treatise Against the Donatists 6.8, where he writes that the sheep whom the Donatists “seduce[d] by factious or devious talk have suddenly become wolves,” Optatus, Against the Donatists, ed. and trans. Mark J. Edwards (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1997), 125.

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on the fact that some members of the clergy, former adherents of Pelagianism, were readmitted to the church without having been required to officially condemn this heresy, he remarks: “whilst the shepherds set to watch were fast asleep, wolves clothed in sheep-skins but without laying aside their bestial minds have entered into the Lord’s sheep-fold.”¹⁰⁹ This and earlier elaborations of the BOW blend show that it was a versatile conceptual tool that allowed patristic authors to express a wide spectrum of different and nuanced meanings. Usually the wolves in linguistic realizations of the BOW blend are not depicted in detail and are presented stereotypically as “fierce” or “rapacious.” Sometimes, however, their image may be more elaborate as in Ambrose’s invective against Auxentius Mercurinus, a Goth, and his Arian opponent in Milan. According to Ambrose, Auxentius Mercurinus: has a sheep’s clothing, but a bandit’s deeds: outside a sheep, inside a wolf; is the one (…) who wanders around by night, limbs stiffened by the Scythian frost, and mouth bloodied. He circles, looking for someone to devour. Does he not seem to you like a wolf, since, unsated with merciless human slaughter, he desires to satiate his madness with the deaths of the faithful? He wails, rather than using rational discourse; he denies the one who gave him speech and growls out sacrilegious words in a bestial roar rather than confessing the lord Jesus as the leader to eternal life. We have heard his inarticulate wails, when he sent his sword against the world. Preferring harsh teeth and a mouth swollen with pride, he thought he had taken away the voice of all, though he alone had lost his.¹¹⁰

Ambrose describes Auxentius by means of the BOW blend not only because the latter is a false teacher; the bestiality of the wolf allows him to depict Auxentius as a barbarian: a man coming from Scythia, associated with barbarism in Greek and Roman literature, and not able to engage in civilized Latin discourse.¹¹¹ As in the case of the “rustic strains” of Gregory’s shepherd discussed in the previous section, we can see here that patristic authors with a classical educational background were able to enrich their conceptualizations by borrowing elements from the classical tradition.

 Letter 1 to the Bishop of Aquileia 1, in Leo the Great, Letters, trans. Edmund Hunt, FC 34 (New York: Fathers of the Church, Incorporated, 2004), 19.  Ambrose, Exposition of the Gospel According to Luke 7.52; in Maura K. Lafferty, “Translating Faith from Greek to Latin: Romanitas and Christianitas in Late Fourth-Century Rome and Milan,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 11, no. 1 (2003): 59.  Lafferty, “Translating Faith from Greek to Latin: Romanitas and Christianitas in Late Fourth-Century Rome and Milan,” 49 – 59.

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In a similar vein, John Chrysostom invokes images from bucolic literature in his oration against Judaizing Christians, creating the suggestive image of Jews as wolves who threaten the Christian flock: Again the Jews, the most miserable and wretched of all men, are going too fast, and again we must make secure the flock of Christ. As long as no wild beast disturbs the flock, shepherds, as they stretch out under an oak or pine tree and play their flutes, let their sheep go on to graze with full freedom. But when the shepherds feel that the wolves will raid, they are quick to throw down the flute and pick up their slingshots (…). I too in the past frolicked about in explicating the Scriptures, as if I were sporting in some meadow; I took no part in polemics because there was no one causing me concern. But today the Jews, who are more dangerous than any wolves, are bent on surrounding my sheep; so I must spar with them and fight with them so that no sheep of mine fall victim to those wolves.¹¹²

The BOW blend in Chrysostom’s tirade serves two purposes. First, it is part of pastoral instruction, because, as Wilken observes, “the comparison of the Jews with ravenous wolves is not intended to provide a description of Jewish behavior; it is intended to picture the Jews in the worst possible light to frighten Christians so that they will not attend the synagogue.”¹¹³ Second, it is an instrument of a “spatial rhetoric” whose aim was not only to shape the behavior of the Christians in Antioch “but also the very definition and political success of Christian ‘orthodoxy’,” since “fourth-century Antioch was the site of significant religious and political struggles to define and control civic space.”¹¹⁴ Occasionally Roman emperors, as representatives of ideologies threatening the church, are represented as wolves. Thus Hilary of Poitiers calls Constantius II, a semi-Arian, a “rapacious wolf” who turned his armies against the “sheep of Christ”¹¹⁵ while Gregory of Nazianzus sees a wolf in sheep’s clothing in Julian the Apostate.¹¹⁶

 Discourse Against Judaizing Christians 4 1.2, in John Chrysostom, Discourses Against Judaizing Christians, trans. Paul W. Harkins, FC 68 (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1979), 71– 72. Susanna Elm notices the same pastoral imagery in Gregory of Nazianzus’ Second Oration, Susanna Elm, Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church: Emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Vision of Rome (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2012), 165.  Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late 4th Century, 119.  Christine Shepardson, “Controlling Contested Places: John Chrysostom’s Adversus Iudaeos Homilies and the Spatial Politics of Religious Controversy,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 15, no. 4 (2007): 484– 85.  Carl L. Beckwith, “The Condemnation and Exile of Hilary of Poitiers at the Synod of Beziers (356 C.E.),” Journal of Early Christian Studies 13, no. 1 (2005): 35. In section 8.1 I showed that the image of wolves attacking the flock of Christ was part of the eschatological imagery of the very

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Finally, it is worth mentioning that the BOW blend may sometimes be used by the church fathers in unexpected contexts, for example to insist that Christians should dress modestly: “Just as sheep ought not to change their skin even though wolves sometimes hide themselves beneath it, so neither ought a Christian try to delight the eyes of men by needless adornment,” says Augustine in one his sermons.¹¹⁷ By alluding to “wolves in sheep’s clothing” Augustine attempts to make his argument more convincing, even if there are no conceptual reasons to discuss sartorial matters in ovine-lupine terms.

8.5 The

WOLVES ARE TURNED INTO SHEEP

blend

Interestingly, the “wolves” in the CGF network may not only symbolize the threats Christians face, but also demonstrate the transformative power of God’s grace that is able to turn even “wolves” into “sheep.” The transformation of wolves into sheep or even shepherds, marked in Figure 12, is a popular motif found in patristic literature. Gregory of Nazianzus believes that Arian “wolves” will become “sheep” when they embrace orthodox Christianity: And many of those who are now wolves, I must reckon among my sheep, and perhaps even among the shepherds. This is the glad tidings brought me by the Good Shepherd, for whose sake I lay down my life for the sheep.¹¹⁸

early church. Richard Flower is therefore right remarking in his study of church invective against non-Catholic emperors that Hilary’s language was a combination of “classical rhetorical techniques with the terminology of the eschatological opposition literature,” Richard Flower, Emperors and Bishops in Late Roman Invective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 113.  Shaw, “Wolves in Sheeps’ Clothing: The Appearance of True and False Piety.” Ephrem the Syrian presents Julian in his hymns as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, Kathleen E. McVey, “Ephrem the Syrian,” in The Early Christian World. vol. II, ed. Philip F. Esler (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 465.  Commentary on the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount 2.12, in Augustine, Commentary on the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount with Seventeen Related Sermons, trans. Denis J. Kavanagh, FC 11 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 150. Cf. Tertullian’s argument that since God did not create sheep with a purple or blue fleece, Christians should not wear colourful garments in On the Apparel of Women 1.8.  Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 33: Against the Arians and Concerning Himself 15, in NPNF II 7:333.

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Augustine also illustrates in this way the power of God’s grace: “Let him [the wolf] turn into a sheep; the Lord, you see, can even do that.”¹¹⁹ The persuasive power of this statement lies in the fact that it contradicts our knowledge and experience. A wolf cannot turn into a sheep, unless God makes it miraculously happen. And because both these animals are present as radical opposites in the source input space of the CGF blend, turning one into the other will always connote God’s initiative and action behind such a radical change. In Ambrose’s view all Christians before baptism were wolves or more generally wild beasts, “but now through the Holy Spirit, the madness of lions, the spots of leopards, the craftiness of foxes, the rapacity of wolves have passed away from our affections.”¹²⁰ Yet this image of transformation from one animal into another may also be used to warn the believers that they may lose their status of sheep and become wolves if they do not, as Paul says, “work out [their] salvation with fear and trembling.” Augustine again: Not all heard [Jesus’ voice as the shepherd]. But what do we think? Were those who heard, sheep? Look, Judas heard, and he was a wolf. He was following, but covered with a sheep’s skin; he lay in ambush for the shepherd. Indeed some of those who crucified Christ did not hear and yet were sheep; for he saw them in the crowd when he said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I am.” Now how is this question resolved? Those who are not sheep hear, and those who are sheep do not hear. Some wolves follow the voice of the shepherd and some sheep gainsay it. Finally, sheep kill the shepherd. The question is resolved; for someone answers and says, But when they were not hearing, they were not yet sheep, then they were wolves. The voice was heard and changed them and from wolves made them sheep. Therefore when they were made sheep, they heard and they found the shepherd and followed the shepherd; they hoped for the promises of the shepherd because they carried out his orders.¹²¹

This long passage, with its rhetorical questions and paradoxes so typical of Augustine, (“sheep kill the shepherd”), serves him among other things to show that the categories of “sheep” and “wolves” are not attributed to believers once and for ever: “a wolf” may become “a sheep” and “a sheep” must remem-

 Augustine, Sermon 169 8, in Augustine, Sermons (148 – 183) on the New Testament, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Edmund Hill, vol. III/5, WSA (Hyde Park: New City Press of the Focolare, 1992), 227.  Ambrose, The Holy Spirit 2.109, in Ambrose, Theological and Dogmatic Works, trans. Roy J. Deferrari, FC 44 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1963), 134.  Augustine, Tractate 45 on the Gospel of John 10, in Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 28 – 54, 195.

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ber that it risks becoming “a wolf” if it ceases to listen to the voice of the Shepherd. In this way Augustine conveys an important truth to his audience: that being a Christian consists in listening constantly to the Shepherd and not simply in being labeled as a Christian. The transformation of wolves into sheep or even shepherds is often exemplified in patristic literature with reference to the apostle Paul. Although he never presents himself as a wolf become shepherd, the church fathers often do so on his behalf, Ambrose among them: The devil has very many wolves that he sends against the sheep of Christ. And therefore He whom Joseph prefigured, in order to protect His own sheep, seized the very enemy that was coming to plunder the sheep, the wolf Paul, and from a persecutor turned him into a teacher. Of him Jacob says, just as it is written, “Benjamin is a ravenous wolf, in the morning he shall still be eating and for the evening he shall distribute food among the chiefs.” [Gen 49: 27] He was a wolf when he scattered and devoured the sheep of the Church; but he who had been a wolf became a shepherd. He was a wolf when he was Saul, when he would go into houses and drag men and women off to prison. (…). Jesus blinded him with an outpouring of light, as if he were a wolf roaming abroad in the darkness of night. And so, when Rachel gave birth to Benjamin, she called his name ‘son of my sorrow’ as a prophecy that from that tribe Paul would come, to afflict the sons of the Church in the time of his persecution and to trouble their mother with a grievous sorrow. But nonetheless, at a later time, the same Paul distributed food among the chiefs, when he preached the word of God to the Gentiles and stirred very many to faith, for they received the grace of the Lord through his preaching, as did the deputy of the proconsul Paulus, and the chief Publius.¹²²

This long passage demonstrates a key role of the BOW blend in Ambrose’s typological exegesis, that it allows him to extract the desired meaning from just a single verse: Gen 49:27. Let us examine it in more detail to see the mechanisms of conceptual integration underpinning it. The point of departure for Ambrose is Paul’s origin from the tribe of Benjamin (Rom 11:1, Phil 3:5). This outer-space vital relation of metonymy (Paul is part of Benjamin’s tribe) turns into the inner-space vital relation of identity in the blend (Benjamin foreshadows Paul and therefore, according to typological exegesis, Benjamin is Paul). Jacob, blessing his sons, calls him “a ravenous wolf” while Rachel calls him “son of my sorrow.” Interpreting Jacob’s and Rachel’s words through the lens of the BOW blend, Ambrose further develops his typological interpretation. If Benjamin/Paul is a wolf, then the sheep he turns on are Christians. Benjamin/Paul attacks them “in the morning” persecuting them,  Ambrose, The Patriarchs 12.57, in Ambrose, Seven Exegetical Works, trans. Michael P. McHugh, FC 65 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 274– 75.

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but after his conversion – “in the evening” – he will be distributing food viz. preaching the word of God (note the presence of the TFS blend here). Note also the elements of real life experience introduced into the blend, namely that wild animals are blinded when exposed to a strong source of light in darkness. Evoking this experience, Ambrose is able to conceptualize Paul as a wolf on his road to Damascus. As I have said, this long passage is Ambrose’s interpretation of just one verse of Genesis and it shows that his typological exegesis of this verse would not have been possible without the CGF blend.¹²³ Augustine, as it might be expected, pictures Paul as an “ex-wolf” that became a shepherd, addressing his audience with, “you are paying attention to Paul, you’ve forgotten Saul; you’re paying attention to the shepherd, you’ve forgotten the wolf,” and creating further on in the same sermon “dialogue lines” between Ananias and Christ, with Ananias asking Christ: “Lord, where are you sending me? A sheep to a wolf?” to which Christ replies: “If sheep have been sent into the midst of wolves, why are you dreading to go, Ananias, to one who is no longer a wolf? You were afraid of the wolf; but the Lord your God can answer you, ‘I have made a wolf into a sheep; I am making the sheep into a shepherd’.”¹²⁴ In another account of Paul’s conversion, Augustine also pictures him as a wolf, and to achieve a better rhetorical effect, contrasts him even more strongly with Ananias, claiming wrongly and “quite brazenly”¹²⁵ that “Ananias” means “sheep”: [Paul] is taken to Ananias and Ananias means sheep. Why, look! The ravenous wolf is brought to the sheep in order to follow it, not ravage it. But in case the sheep should be

 It seems that conceptualizing Paul as a wolf turned into a sheep or a shepherd must have been firmly grounded in Ambrose’s mind since it sometimes appears in his exegesis where one does not expect it. Commenting on the verse “Rebuke the wild beasts of the wood” (Ps 67:32) he interprets the “wood” as “that wood which Paul indeed entered as a ravening wolf, but came out as a shepherd,” The Holy Spirit 2.108, in Ambrose, Theological and Dogmatic Works, 134. This in turn shows that certain of the patristic writers’ conceptualizations or patterns of thought, once created, became a lens for further biblical interpretations and spread among other believers.  Sermon 175 8, in Augustine, Sermons (148 – 183) on the New Testament, 268 – 69.  Augustine, Sermons (273 – 305 A) on the Saints III/8, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Edmund Hill, vol. III/8, WSA (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1994), 69, note 8. The same meaning of “Ananias” is suggested by Augustine in Sermon 175 8, in Augustine, Sermons (148 – 183) on the New Testament, 269. Once again it must be stressed that Augustine’s presentation of Paul as a wolf turned into a sheep is not merely a rhetorical figure; the blend constitutes part of a broader perspective of “predestined grace” crucial in his theology, Philip Cary, Inner Grace: Augustine in the Traditions of Plato and Paul (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 105.

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frightened out of its wits at the sudden appearance of the wolf, the shepherd in heaven, who was arranging all this, told the sheep that the wolf was going to come, but not going to ravage. (…) A great and wonderful thing is being enacted. The wolf is forbidden to rage and rave, the wolf is led captive to the sheep. But such terrible reports about the wolf as ravager had preceded him, that when the sheep heard his name, he was seized with fear, even under the hand of the shepherd. He is encouraged, told he needn’t think of him any longer as raging, nor fear him as throwing his weight about. The lamb who died for the sheep reassures the sheep about the wolf.¹²⁶

Note that in his elaboration of the blend, Augustine not only contrasts Paul and Ananias as a wolf and a sheep respectively, but refers to Christ as “the shepherd in heaven,” identifying Him in the last sentence with “the lamb who died for the sheep.” In this way he adds two other linguistic elements that belong to shepherding imagery into his picture. All of these elements invoked by Augustine, and their interaction in his depiction of Paul’s conversion, demonstrate again the conceptual and rhetorical potential of the GCF blend in the mouth or – to put it better, if one adopts a cognitive linguistic perspective – in the mind of a skilled orator.

8.6 The

BEWARE OF DOGS

and the

BISHOPS ARE DOGS

blends

The linguistic realizations of the CGF blend examined in previous sections of this chapter show how a wide range of elements from shepherding experience are mapped onto the church input space: false teachers or heresiarchs are equated with wolves in the blend, moral and doctrinal teaching is pictured as sheep grazing, and so forth. There is however one common element of this experience that occurs only sporadically in the CGF blend, namely shepherd dogs. The Bible mentions shepherd dogs on several occasions (for example Job 30:1; Isa 56:10) and among patristic authors Origen, for example, remarks that people “need dogs for guarding flocks or herds of cattle or goats.”¹²⁷ Yet dogs are not found particularly often in the CGF blend and if they do occur, they may, paradoxically, conceptualize threats to the Christian flock. In what follows I will briefly discuss selected linguistic realizations of the BEWARE OF DOGS blend in which dogs attack sheep (and then those in which dogs play a positive role).

 Sermon 279 2, in Augustine, Sermons (273 – 305 A) on the Saints, 60.  Origen, Contra Celsum 4.78, in Origen, Contra Celsum, trans. Henry Chadwick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 246.

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As early as Ignatius of Antioch false teachers are pictured not only as wolves but also as “raving dogs who bite when no one is looking,” and therefore Christians “must guard against them, for they are hard to tame.”¹²⁸ During the Novatian controversy Cyprian, in a similar vein, lists dogs along with wolves as enemies of the church.¹²⁹ The negative role patristic writers attribute to dogs when they equate them with wolves seems to have its roots in Phil 3:2, where Paul warns believers against his Judaizing opponents who insist on the necessity of circumcision: “Watch out for those dogs, those evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh.”¹³⁰ As a result, patristic authors began to present dogs in their blends – contrary to the folk model of shepherding! – as the enemies of sheep. This conceptual connection between Paul’s image and the CGF blend comes to light in an anonymous text against the schismatic bishop Novatian, in which he is depicted simultaneously as the dog Paul speaks of and as a predator attacking Christ’s sheep: Although it is written that the dogs should remain without, and the apostle has taught that these same dogs must be shunned, as we read, for he says, “Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers,” he [Novatian] does not cease stirring up his frenzy with barkings, after the manner of wolves seeking the gloomy darkness, where with his brutal cruelty he may easily rend in his dark caves the sheep snatched away from the Shepherd.¹³¹

Note how Paul’s invective is transformed in the blend. Novatian barks, his cruelty matches that of wolves, he snatches sheep and tears them into pieces in a cave under cover of darkness. Such an interpretation – very distant from what Paul meant in Phil 3:2 in speaking of “dogs” – clearly illustrates the process of conceptual integration in early Christian discourse. Reconstructing this proc-

 Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Ephesians 7, in Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1, 227. Researchers propose different answers to the question of whom exactly Ignatius had in mind, and “strictly speaking, there is no agreement on anything” on this issue, Matti Myllykoski, “Wild Beasts and Rabid Dogs: The Riddle of the Heretics in the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch,” in The Formation of the Early Church, ed. Jostein Adna (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 351.  Letter to Antonianus (55) 15.1, in Cyprian of Carthage, Letters 55 – 66, 42.  There are also many other biblical passages both in the Jewish Scripture and the New Testament that present dogs in a negative light, e. g. Prov 26:11 (quoted by 2 Peter 2:22), Matt 7:6 and Matt 15:21 as well as drastic images of dogs licking blood of Naboth and Ahab and eating Jezebel (1 Kings 21:19,23). The fact that dogs play negative roles in the CGF blends created by patristic (Greek) authors clearly indicates that the Hebrew stereotype of a dog preserved in the Jewish Scripture was to them ultimately more important than their own folk model of shepherding implicitly present, for example, in Origen.  A Treatise Against the Heretic Novatian by an anonymous bishop, in ANF 5:657.

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ess, we may say that a patristic writer has spontaneously reached for a convenient biblical quotation to use it as an element in his blend that will allow him to anchor that blend in the Scripture. Then he elaborates this quotation in accordance with the dynamics of conceptual integration, adapting it to his needs. As a result, the quotation is given a new meaning. In the passage quoted above Paul’s “dog” has come to life: it has started barking and attacking sheep. It – or actually Novatian – has become an enemy to the flock. Note furthermore that presenting Novatian in this way is only possible through the CGF blend that presupposes the presence of “dog” as an element of shepherding experience, albeit this time not as an animal that protects sheep but attacks them. Most importantly however, this linguistic realization of the CGF blend, with the quotation from Phil 3:2 introduced into its source input space, makes readers believe that it is not a patristic author who regards Novatian as an enemy of the church, but Paul himself. In the passage above, Novatian as a dog was only compared to wolves, but there are versions of the CGF blend in which patristic authors – in order to harmonize the different biblical passages with which they buttressed their arguments – equate dogs with wolves. In a letter of condolence to the laypeople of the church of Neo-Caesarea mourning the death of their bishop Musonius, quoted in section 8.4, Basil of Caesarea writes: Now, in the present circumstances, be mindful of his [Musonius’] words who always, when he had called you to assembly, gave express orders to you, saying: “Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers.” The dogs are many. Why do I say dogs? Of a truth, they are fierce wolves, concealing their deception under the appearance of sheep, and scattering the flock of Christ throughout the whole world. Against these you, under the care of a watchful shepherd, must be on your guard.¹³²

Basil juxtaposes several biblical references in his letter. First, he quotes Phil 3:2 and by taking advantage of the similarities between dogs and wolves immediately links the fragment with Matt 7:15 (wolves in sheep’s clothing) invoking en route Jer 23:1 and Ezek 34 (scattered sheep). What binds these different biblical references together is precisely the image of the church as a flock since only within that image does their combination make sense. This image is the conceptual framework both of Basil’s exegesis and of his argument and consists of the following blends: 1) the FCFI network (scattered sheep from Jeremiah and Ezekiel

 Basil of Caesarea, A Letter of Condolence to the Church of Neo-Caesarea, in Basil of Caesarea, Letters 1 – 185, trans. Agnes C. Way, vol. 1, Letters, FC 13 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1951), 71.

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are the flock of Christ); 2) the BOW blend (wolves in sheep’s clothing); and 3) the basic variant of the CGF blend (believers pictured as sheep “under the care of a watchful shepherd” or bishop). A fine example of the idea that, for patristic authors using the CGF blend, dogs were often identical with wolves is the correspondence between Pope Siricius and Ambrose regarding Jovinianus, jointly condemned as a heretic at their synods in Rome and Milan, respectively. Siricius in his letter calls Jovinianus and his followers “dogs” whose barking “harasses the mystery of the church”¹³³ while Ambrose in his reply calls them wolves who may “scatter the Lord’s fold with the bites of their treachery and their deadly bark.”¹³⁴ References to “dogs” in the CGF blend may also exemplify the rhetorical skills of patristic authors who combine shepherding imagery mapped onto the church with allusions to classical Greek philosophy. Gregory of Nazianzus describes his ecclesial opponent Maximus who presented himself as a Cynic philosopher and was attempting to usurp Gregory’s patriarchal see in Constantinople: I fear also the dogs who force their way into the pastorate and in their absurdity contribute nothing to the office than a tonsure of the hair upon which they once lavished their vile attentions. They have neither remained dogs nor become shepherds, except to ravage, scatter, and destroy the labor of others.¹³⁵

In both sentences Gregory puns on the meaning of a “dog,” first as an animal that wants to replace its shepherd, and secondly as a Cynic philosopher. In the second sentence, however, he ingeniously separates these meanings, concluding that Maximus no longer deserves to be called a Cynic philosopher, yet he still remains the “dog” from the CGF blend, one that does not help the shepherd but scatters Christ’s sheep. As mentioned previously, in the input space of the CGF network dogs are also (albeit less frequently) pictured as shepherd dogs and contrasted with wolves in that regard. Jerome makes use of the positive image of a dog in one of his letters arguing that church leaders, in order to maintain unity within a community, may not rely solely on quiet conversation with their opponents  Ambrose of Milan, Letter of Pope Siricius 4, in Ambrose of Milan, Political Letters and Speeches, trans. Wolf J. H. G. Liebeschuetz (Liverpool University Press, 2005), 338.  Epistula Extra Collectionem 15 1, in Ambrose of Milan, Political Letters and Speeches, 340. Actually, Ambrose is consistent in his use of imagery and presents wolves as howling, not barking, writing to Siricius: “et ideo quia nosti oviculas Christi, lupos facile deprehendes, et occurres quasi providus pastor, ne isti moribus perfidiae suae feralique ululatu Dominicum ovile dispergant,” PL 16:1124A (emphasis added).  Gregory of Nazianzus Oration 26 3, in Gregory of Nazianzus, Select Orations, 177.

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since, “an innocent and unobtrusive conversation does as much harm by its silence as it does good by its example. If the ravening wolves are to be frightened away it must be by the barking of dogs and by the staff of the shepherd.”¹³⁶ Note that in Jerome’s elaboration of the network both the shepherd and dogs are mapped onto the church leaders (thus, we may call this blend the bishops are dogs network). Since his intention is to emphasize that a church leader must not be silent and since generally it is dogs that deter wolves with their barking, a church leader is equated both with the shepherd and his dogs in the blend. Jerome’s conceptualization has an interesting Wirkungsgeschichte. It was plagiarized by Pseudo-Isidore in Decretals and we find it in the Second Epistle of Pope Fabian. ¹³⁷ Also Luther and Calvin referred to it many centuries later.¹³⁸ Such reinterpreting and copying of particular linguistic realizations of particular blends supports my hypothesis that conceptual integration played a key role in shaping Christian doctrine with blends as its building blocks. Another blend that sees dogs protecting the sheep may be found in Augustine’s letter to other Catholic bishops during his polemic with the Donatist bishop Petilian in which the bishop of Hippo presents himself as a dog defending the flock of the only Shepherd, Christ. He writes that so long as the Catholic Church is: one sure flock of the one Shepherd, I am not too much concerned with the abuse that any enemy [such as Petilian] may lavish on me, your partner in the flock, or, at any rate, your watch-dog (quod mihi uel congregali uestro uel certe cani uestro), so long as he compels me to bark rather in your defense than in my own.¹³⁹

Augustine – undoubtedly to underline his humility and to contrast it with the arrogance of his adversary – does not resort to the SAS blend in his argument and instead of identifying with Christ as the Shepherd, he decides to present

 Jerome, Epistle 69 8, in NPNF II 6:147.  Second Epistle of Pope Fabian, in ANF 8:633.  Jay Twomey, The Pastoral Epistles Through the Centuries (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 194.  The Answer to the Letters of Petilian, the Donatist 3.10.11, in NPNF I 4:601; Augustine, Scripta contra Donatistas, Pars II: Contra litteras Petiliani libri tres, Epistula ad Catholicos de Secta Donatistarum, Contra Cresconium libri quattuor, ed. Michael Petschenig, CSEL 52 (Wien: F. Tempsky, 1909), 172.

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himself as Christ’s tool. He therefore maps his role in the flock of the Church onto that belonging to the sheep-dog, or simply a dog.¹⁴⁰ Gregory of Nazianzus creates a blend in which he presents himself and Basil of Caesarea as dogs set loose by his father, Gregory the Elder, also bishop of Nazianzus, to “fight against the heretics when they came against us.” In his elaboration of the blend, he presents Gregory the Elder as “cheer[ing] us on, loosing us like thoroughbred hounds against those wild beasts.”¹⁴¹ The blends employed by Jerome, Augustine and Gregory are exceptions, since the inherent logic of the conceptual integration underlying the CGF blend basically precludes the possibility of identifying members of the clergy with sheepdogs; bishops and presbyters are first of all shepherds. Yet in the case of some prominent Christians that were not members of the higher clergy and who contributed to defending Christian doctrine, the same logic invited patristic authors to present them as sheepdogs. Hence Jacob of Serugh pictures Ephrem the Syrian, who was only a deacon, as a sheepdog guarding the flock of the church and scattering heresies with his poems and hymns.¹⁴² Nevertheless, elaborations of the CGF blends that recruit sheepdogs are not very common in early Christian literature since there were no distinct church functions that could be identified with sheepdogs in the blend in that period. Such blends become more frequent several centuries later, in the High Middle Ages, along with the emergence of the Dominican order. The Dominicans would be pictured (and would picture themselves) as “Domini canes” (“dogs of the Lord”) and their role as inquisitors who combatted medieval heretics would be systematically conceptualized as that of sheepdogs protecting the flock of the church.¹⁴³ The most fa-

 In one of his letters Augustine also notices this double – positive and negative – connotation of dogs in Christian discourse, when he writes that “dogs should not always be taken in an evil sense, otherwise the Prophet would not blame “dogs not able to bark and loving to dream”: doubtless they would be praiseworthy dogs if they both knew how to bark and loved to watch. (…) Good dogs watch and bark to protect their house and their master, their flock and their shepherd,” Letter 149, in Augustine, Letters 131 – 164, trans. Wilfrid Parsons, vol. 3, Letters, FC 20 (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 247.  Oration 18 47, in John A. McGuckin, St. Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 182.  Frances M. Young and Andrew Teal, From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and Its Background (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), 177.  In Vita of Peter of Verona, Peter of Verona, as well as other Dominican inquisitors, are described as “dogs who keep the wolves from the flocks,” Christine C. Ames, Righteous Persecution: Inquisition, Dominicans, and Christianity in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 68. Pope Gregory IX praised another Dominican inquisitor, Conrad of Marburg: “did the tongue of this dog of the Lord not terrorize grave wolves with his great bark-

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mous visual representation of the CGF blend with the Dominicans as Domini canes is Andrea da Firenze’s fresco Way of Salvation, where the artist painted the laypeople as sheep lying at the feet of the pope, who is holding a pastoral staff, and with the Dominicans presented as black and white dogs attacking other dogs (i. e. heretics).

8.7 The

A SICK SHEEP

blend

Another common variant of the CGF blend that carries elements of shepherding experience mapped onto certain aspects of church life and discipline is the a sick sheep blend (Figure 11). This blend serves the church fathers to conceptualize the schismatic/heretical beliefs or immoral behavior of the believers as a contagious disease that may spread and affect the rest of the flock. Unlike many earlier variants, the a sick sheep blend recruits the concept of a contagious disease from real shepherding experience or from the everyday experience of believers,¹⁴⁴ not from the Bible. At the same time it may also be understood as a specific category of a more general conceptualization of an immoral pattern of behavior as a contagious disease, which could occur outside religious contexts.¹⁴⁵ A number of early Christian texts show that the image of “the mangy sheep” was a useful conceptual instrument that allowed bishops to condemn

ing?,” Karen Sullivan, The Inner Lives of Medieval Inquisitors (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 96. It is worth quoting here an interesting example of how the CGF blend was used in a polemic between Bishop Fulk of Toulouse and a heretic in the context of the medieval inquisition. “When Bishop Fulk of Toulouse once preached that heretics were wolves and faithful Catholics sheep, he was interrupted by a heretic who had been blinded and whose nose had been cut off by Count Simon of Montfort during the Albigensian Crusade. When the maimed heretic asked when it had become customary for the sheep to bite the wolf, Fulk responded that every community needed dogs to attack its wolves.” Ames, Righteous Persecution: Inquisition, Dominicans, and Christianity in the Middle Ages, 23.  Majority of population in overcrowded Greco-Roman cities “lived in filth beyond our imagining” and such places “were rife with infectious diseases,” John Behr, “Social and Historical Setting,” in The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature, ed. Frances M. Young, Lewis Ayres, and Andrew Louth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 62.  A fine example of this metaphor that underlies our modern thinking may be the film rating system in the USA and other countries that limits the distribution of films containing acts of violence or sexual content regarded as “contagiously influential for children and adolescents’ behaviors,” Chen-Bo Zhong and Julian House, “Dirt, Pollution, and Purity: A Metaphorical Perspective on Morality,” in The Power of Metaphor. Examining Its Influence on Social Life, ed. Mark J. Landau, Michael D. Robinson, and Brian P. Meier (Washington D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2014), 125.

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or warn against those believers whose conduct or beliefs they regarded as dangerous for the rest of their communities.¹⁴⁶ Paul’s epistles attest that Christianity from the very beginning struggled with maintaining moral and doctrinal discipline in its ranks. It seems to have been an even bigger problem when the religion’s popularity grew and its many converts were not able to live up to the declared high moral standards of the church, resulting in the church itself being rent asunder by a series of heresies. Paul conceptualizes the contagious effects of Christians’ immoral behavior by means of the ‘Parable of Leaven’ (leaven was old, fermented dough; a pinch added to a batch of flour could corrupt the whole overnight); condemning the Corinthians for tolerating such behavior in their community he writes: “Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough?” (1 Cor 5:6).¹⁴⁷ He uses the same metaphor to warn Galatians against people spreading false doctrines.¹⁴⁸ Yet the growing significance of the CGF blend in early Christian discourse seems to explain the fact that patristic authors – as a close analysis of their writings suggests – began to prefer the image of (a) sick sheep to the Pauline metaphor of leaven, while stigmatizing the immoral behavior they deemed as dangerous to the Christian community as a whole. This is yet another example of the conceptual potential of the CGF blend that is capable of replacing or at least overshadowing other conceptualizations, even if they were grounded in the Bible, while the CGF blend was not. Origen uses the image of a sick sheep along with the metaphor of leaven in his Homily on Joshua, writing that, “just as from one sick sheep the whole flock is infected, so also by one fornicator – or perpetrator of whatever other wickedness – the whole people are polluted.”¹⁴⁹ Although the image of the sick sheep serves

 Margaret A. Schatkin and Paul W. Harkins, “Introduction,” in Saint John Chrysostom Apologist (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 52.  The metaphorical meaning of leaven in the Bible is an interesting example for a cognitive linguist of the “bipolarity” of certain source domains that allow speakers to conceptualize both positive and negative notions. Paul uses leaven as a “negative” source domain and his metaphor reflects the general, negative meaning of leaven in the Hebrew Bible (cf. Exod 12:15 – 19; 13:7; 34:25). Jesus also warns the disciples against the “leaven of Pharisees” (Matt 16:6– 12), yet on another occasion he uses the same domain in a positive sense when he compares the kingdom of God to leaven (Matt 13:33; Luke 13:21).  “You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth? That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” Gal 5:7– 9.  Origen, Homily on Joshua 7 6, in Origen, Homilies on Joshua, ed. Cynthia White, trans. Barbara J. Bruce, FC 105 (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2002), 81. The

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Origen as a comparison and is not part of the conceptualization of the church, nevertheless it was soon incorporated in the CGF network becoming one of its variants as the a sick sheep blend and its versatility ranged from criticizing virgins for using cosmetics, through condemning misbehaving Christians, to denouncing heresies and heretics. Cyprian of Carthage speaks disapprovingly of women’s tendency to make themselves look more attractive, seeing in it a contagious disease that may affect “the holy flock of virgins”: Virgins (…) who have adorned themselves by devices of this sort [using cosmetics, dying their hair, etc.], should not be numbered among virgins, in my opinion, but, like tainted sheep and diseased cattle, they should be kept apart from the pure and holy flock of virgins, lest while they are together they corrupt others by their contact, lest they who have themselves perished ruin others.¹⁵⁰

Cyprian also uses the a sick sheep blend in doctrinal arguments, speaking against lapsed bishops wishing to be readmitted to the community of the church in Africa after the Decian persecution.¹⁵¹ In his letter to Cornelius, the bishop of Rome, he argues that such bishops cannot be “let in without causing scandal and peril. Indeed, we have no right to gather in that which is putrid¹⁵² so as to harm those parts which remain sound and healthy. Nor is he a useful or prudent shepherd who lets in among his flock sheep that are sickly or diseased so as to infest his entire flock by exposure to the disease they bring with them.”¹⁵³ The a sick sheep blend, along with the other blends examined above, may also be found in Cyprian’s treatise on the unity of the church. He begins his argument by drawing a comparison between the faithful members of the church and the doves and sheep whose “gentleness and tenderness” Christians should imitate, and then concludes that heretics who have “the savagery of wolves” in their breasts and “the madness of dogs and the lethal poison of snakes and the bloody

reference to “a little leaven [that] spoils the whole lump” appears in Homily on Joshua 74, in Origen, Homilies on Joshua, 79.  Cyprian of Carthage, The Dress of Virgins 17 in Cyprian of Carthage, Treatises, 46. For more on the other conceptualizations Cyprian uses in this treatise, see Geoffrey D. Dunn, “Infected Sheep and Diseased Cattle, or the Pure and Holy Flock: Cyprian’s Pastoral Care of Virgins,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 11, no. 1 (2003): 1– 20.  Burns, Cyprian the Bishop, 89 – 90.  “Putrid” and “putrefaction” may be seen here as more specific conceptualizations of the immoral behavior generally conceptualized as “pollution,” see Mark Johnson, Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1997).  Letter 59 15.2, in Cyprian of Carthage, Letters 55 – 66, 83.

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cruelties of beasts” should be separated from the church “lest they prey upon the doves and sheep with their cruel and venomous contagion.”¹⁵⁴ Note the two different organizing frameworks from two different source input spaces of the blend that clash in the blend: wolves are savage and cruel beasts that prey upon sheep (the source input space of the BOW blend), yet they actually do not kill the sheep but infect them (the source input space of the a sick sheep blend). Apostolic Constitutions also employs the a sick sheep blend along with other similar metaphors to instruct bishops that they should react immediately and decisively against the reprehensible behavior of any member of their communities, since “one scabbed sheep, if not separated from those that are whole, infects the rest with the same distemper; and a man infected with the plague is to be avoided by all men; and a mad dog is dangerous to every one that he touches.”¹⁵⁵ The same blend is used to depict heretics as those that “were incurable” and therefore “cast out from the flock, [so] that they might not infect the lambs, which were found with their scabby disease, but might continue before the Lord God pure and undefiled, sound and unspotted.”¹⁵⁶ Since contagious diseases may sometimes be transferred from humans to animals we may find elaborations of the blend in which it is the shepherd who is the source of infection, not the sheep! In Theodoret of Cyrrhus’ letter to John, patriarch of Antioch, Theodoret creates a blend in which the sheep are sound and it is Johannes as the shepherd who infects them with the disease of heresy (i. e. Nestorian teaching): I have been distressed at the thought that one appointed to the shepherd’s office, entrusted with the charge of so great a flock and appointed to heal the sick among his sheep, is both himself unsound, and that to a terrible degree, and is endeavoring to infect his lambs with his disease and treats the sheep of his folds with greater cruelty than that of wild beasts. They, indeed, tear and rend the sheep that are dispersed and separated from the flock; but he in its very midst, and while thought to be its savior and its guardian introduces a secret error among the victims of their confidence in him. Against an open assault it is possible to

 The Unity of the Church 9, in Cyprian of Carthage, Treatises, 104. “Haec est in Ecclesia noscenda simplicitas, haec charitas obtinenda, ut columbas dilectio fraternitatis imitetur, ut mansuetudo et lenitas agnis et ovibus aequetur. Quid facit in pectore christiano luporum feritas et canum rabies et venenum lethale serpentum et cruenta saevitia bestiarum? Gratulandum est cum tales de Ecclesia separantur, ne columbas, ne oves Christi saeva sua et venenata contagione praedentur,” PL 4:506 – 507. I discuss in more detail the role of conceptual blending in promoting church unity in 9.2.  Apostolic Constitutions 2.17, in ANF 7:403.  Apostolic Constitutions 6.18, in ANF 7:458.

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take precautions, but when an attack is made in the guise of friendship, its victim is found off his guard and hurt is easily done him.¹⁵⁷

Note how the other variants of the CGF blend discussed earlier are intertwined in this relatively short passage with the a sick sheep blend and how John is conceptualized simultaneously as a bad shepherd and as a wolf in sheep’s clothing attacking the flock. In Theodore’s composite image of the patriarch of Antioch various versions of the CGF blend are used simultaneously to highlight the fact that in each case it is the sheep who are the victims: led astray by the bad shepherd, poisoned, or attacked by him. Ambrose also combines the a sick sheep blend with another variant of the CGF blend, yet he does so in another way, using the former as a counterweight for the image of a good and caring shepherd. Commenting on Titus 3:10, regarded by church fathers as a Pauline text, he writes: Yet he [Paul], being so great a man, and chosen by Christ for the care of His flock, so as to strengthen the weak and to heal the sick, he, I say, rejects forthwith after one admonition [Titus 3:10] a heretic from the fold entrusted to him, for fear that the taint of one erring sheep might infect the whole flock with a spreading sore.¹⁵⁸

Ambrose’s argument clearly indicates that the CGF blend obliged bishops to take care of those entrusted to them and at the same time to take radical steps against those members of the flock whom they regarded as a threat to the whole community. This suggests that the role of the bishop as a shepherd was dynamic and there was always a tension between excessive tolerance and too strict a rigor towards sinners. As we might expect, Augustine also uses the a sick sheep blend to illustrate the responsibilities of the bishop. Interestingly, in Augustine’s elaboration of the blend the sheep’s “quarantine” is for the sheep a time of healing, even if it is separated from the flock: Nevertheless, lest dangerous contagions should spread any farther, it is a matter of pastoral necessity to separate the ailing sheep from the healthy; perhaps He, to whom nothing is impossible, will heal the ailing by virtue of the very separation.¹⁵⁹

 Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Letter 150, in NPNF II 3:324.  Ambrose, Exposition of the Christian Faith 5; Prologue against Arians 4, in NPNF II 10:284.  Augustine, Admonition and Grace 15, in Augustine, Christian Instruction; Admonition and Grace; The Christian Combat; Faith, Hope and Charity, ed. Roy J. Deferrari, trans. John Courtney Murray, FC 2 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1992), 301.

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While Ambrose makes use of the a sick sheep blend in his commentary on Titus, Jerome introduces the blend in his exegesis of Gal 5:9 by alluding to the Arian controversy: Similarly, perverse doctrine begins with one person and at first finds a favorable audience of barely two or three people. But the cancer gradually festers in the body and, according to the familiar proverb, one sheep’s disease pollutes the entire flock. Therefore, the ember must be extinguished as soon as it appears so that the house does not burn down. Yeast must be kept far from the batch [of flour] so that it does not spoil. Putrid flesh must be amputated so that the body does not rot. And the diseased animal must be sequestered from the sheepfolds so that the flocks do not die. Arius was one ember in Alexandria, but because he was not extinguished at once, his flame destroyed the entire city.¹⁶⁰

A number of images taken from everyday experience appear in Jerome’s argument, including the metaphor of leaven repeated from Paul, the reference to an ember and the a sick sheep blend. These last two images are more important than the others to Jerome since each of them is invoked twice in the passage. Furthermore, to Jerome a sick sheep seems to be a much greater danger for the flock than it would have been in earlier versions of the blend since the other animals will not simply become infected but will die if it is not separated from them. Thus the separation of heretics or evil-doers is to a bishop not merely a problem of moral hygiene or the condition of his flock but a matter of its life or death. This study focuses on the role of conceptual integration as the mechanism responsible for creating meaning in early church discourse, yet Jerome’s elaboration of the a sick sheep network is also a fine example of how patristic conceptualizations were taken over by later Christian thinkers, who used them as a basis for their reasoning, and this reasoning was in turn used to support the decisions of the church authorities. It goes without saying that these decisions would have profound consequences for whole societies. The Wirkungsgeschichte of Jerome’s blend is indeed very impressive since it has been transmitted through the centuries and across manuscripts to resurface in Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica where it buttresses his argument for executing heretics: [i]f the heretic is found to be pertinacious still, the Church, no longer hoping for his conversion, looks to the salvation of others by separating him from the Church through the sentence of excommunication; and, further, she hands him over to the secular tribunal to be removed from the world by death. For Jerome, on Galatians 5: 9 ‘A little leaven,” says: ‘Cut away the rotten flesh, expel the diseased sheep from the fold, lest the whole house, the whole dough, the whole body, the whole flock, burn, perish, rot, die. Arius was but a little

 Jerome, Commentary on Galatians 3.5.8, in Jerome, Commentary on Galatians, trans. Andrew Cain, FC 121 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 210 – 211.

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spark in Alexandria; but because that spark was not quenched forthwith, the whole world was laid waste by its flame.¹⁶¹

In this chapter we have examined a large number of linguistic realizations of selected variants of the CGF blend that occur in Christian texts dealing with church life and practice. All of them show the great potential of the blend as a conceptual tool for patristic writers, by means of which these writers are capable of constructing and conveying to their audiences an incredibly large number of meanings related to the relationships between the clergy and the laity, moral instructions directed to the laity, issues concerning church discipline including penance, external and internal threats to Christian communities, and so forth. Moreover, the blends in question occur in virtually all genres of patristic literature: sermons, letters, polemical writings, exegetical texts, and church documents, and provide church fathers with conceptual frameworks for their reasoning. Although diverse, they are at the same time coherent, belonging to a more basic conceptualization of the church as God’s flock. This coherence and versatility explain why they were taken for granted by the early Christians who saw in them the most natural way of expressing so many concepts and ideas pertaining to their Christian experience. Even if the role of the CGF blend were to be limited to the conceptualizations discussed above, its significance in early Christian discourse would be hard to overestimate. Yet in patristic literature one may find its other elaborations occurring systematically in certain liturgical-doctrinal contexts such as baptismal theology, the unity of the church, soteriology and Christology. Since these elaborations are used to conceptualize specific aspects of Christian liturgy and doctrine and not church life or practice, I discuss them separately in the next chapter.

 Summa Theologica II – II, q. 11 a. 3, Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae vol. 32, trans. Thomas Gilby, vol. 32 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 89 – 90.

9 The THE CHURCH IS GOD’S FLOCK blend as a conceptual instrument in early church liturgy and theology In this chapter I examine three subcategories of the CGF blend that are frequently used in patristic baptismal theology, doctrinal disputes on the unity of the church, and soteriology with elements of Christology. They share several structural elements: each is a single scope network (occasionally a double scope network); shepherding imagery in their source input spaces is taken most often from the Bible; each is the conceptual basis for significant theological ideas that play a central role in Christian doctrine, such as baptismal initiation and its spiritual consequences, the unity of the church, and Christ’s incarnation as a part of God’s plan for saving fallen humanity.

9.1 The CGF blend as the conceptual basis for baptismal liturgy and theology One becomes a Christian through baptism, an act that incorporates the baptizand into the community of the church. Baptism, next to the Eucharist, is the most important Christian ritual. There are a number of references to the practice in the New Testament, yet these occur in the absence of any shepherding imagery. Nevertheless, as in the case of the various texts concerning church life and practice discussed in the previous chapter, the CGF blend began to be used quite early on by patristic authors when they wrote or preached on baptism. They primarily make use of the blend to express two effects of baptism: incorporating a baptizand into the church community and erasing his/her sins. Incorporation into the church community is conceptualized as branding sheep, whereas the cleansing of sins is pictured as washing and/or shearing sheep.

9.1.1 The

BAPTISM IS BRANDING SHEEP

blend

By the end of the second century the liturgy of baptism had already been well established in the church. As a rite of initiation it was preceded by a long period of preparation and instruction and took place most often early in the morning on Easter Sunday. On that day the catechumens proceeded to the baptismal font, while the congregation was singing Psalm 42 or Psalm 23, with shepherding imhttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110582970-013

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agery in the first four verses.¹ They were immersed naked and baptized and after coming out from the water, the bishop anointed them with chrism and they were clothed in a white garment.² Anointing with chrism consisted in the imposition of the sign of the cross on the forehead of the baptizand, which was interpreted as imprinting a seal or, in Greek, sphragis. Very early on the term sphragis became a metonym for baptism and “the commonest baptismal designation in the second century.”³ Cyril of Jerusalem calls baptism an “ineradicable seal” and Gregory of Nazianzus simply “the seal” (sphragis). Other church fathers use similar terms.⁴ Sphragis should be seen as an element of the broader concepts of “the seal of the Holy Spirit,” “the seal of Christ,” and “being sealed in Christ,” imprinted on the newly-baptized by the act of anointing. These concepts, especially “the seal of the Holy Spirit,” may be found in the New Testament (Eph 1:13, 4:30; 2 Cor 1:22) and as such had no direct reference to pastoral imagery.⁵ Yet sphragis was a polysemous term and had several other meanings in the Greco-Roman world. The most important ones in the context of baptism are the mark of ownership and the soldier’s tattoo or tessera. Marking animals or slaves by branding or by means of a seal attached to a cord was a common practice in antiquity also

 Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries, 128, 441.  Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 37– 39. In some early Christian baptismal rites anointment, symbolizing the imparting of the Holy Spirit, followed immersion in water, in others (e. g. in Syria) it preceded it: Kilian McDonnell and George T. Montague, Christian Initiation and Baptism in the Holy Spirit: Evidence from the First Eight Centuries (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1991), 263 – 64.  Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries, 8.  Jean Daniélou, The Bible and the Liturgy (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966), 54– 55. For a more systematic presentation of the various usages of sphragis with reference to baptism and the connotations of this term, see Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries, 218 – 220, passim, Joseph Ysebaert, Greek Baptismal Terminology: Its Origins and Early Development (Nijmegen: Dekker & Van de Vegt, 1962), 204– 25, 245 – 253 – 288, 390 – 421. Geoffrey H. Lampe, The Seal of the Spirit: A Study in the Doctrine of Baptism and Confirmation in the New Testament and the Fathers (London: Longmans, 1951). See also Joachim Jeremias, “Poimēn.”  However, this imagery could be read into it in later centuries as, for example, Severian of Gabala does in his commentary to 2 Cor 1:22, writing that “shepherds brand their sheep so as to distinguish the ones which belong to them from others. This is what Christ has done to us” (by setting his seal of ownership), Gerald L. Bray and Thomas C. Oden, eds., 1 – 2 Corinthians, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 200.

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to be found in the Bible (cf. Rev 7:3) and it is this meaning of sphragis that is the most frequent element of the variant of the CGF blend in the baptismal context.⁶ Conceptualizing baptism as branding sheep played an important mystagogical role in early Christian discourse, turning an abstract theological idea into a concrete and vivid image. This strategy also allowed patristic authors to present a momentary imposition of the sign of the cross on a baptizand’s forehead as an indelible brand on an animal’s body, or – thanks to the blends discussed below – as a permanent mark distinguishing Christians from other people.⁷ The baptism is branding sheep blend (BIBS) is a single scope network with two input spaces. The source input space contains sheep that have been branded or are to be branded and as a result they are owned by a new shepherd and belong to a new flock, while the target input space contains the catechumens who have been baptized or are to be baptized and in this way incorporated into the church. The organizing frame of the blend comes from the source input space and the baptizands are conceptualized as branded sheep. Cross-space mapping is selective, ignoring, for instance, the pain connected with branding, yet one mapping is of great theological importance, namely that concerning the previous and the new owner of the sheep. If the new owner from the source input space is mapped onto Christ in the target input space, is there any cross-spacemapping between the previous owners in both spaces? In other words, to whom do future Christians belong before they are baptized? Patristic authors are clear about this: those who are not baptized belong to the devil. We have learnt this from Gregory of Nyssa’s blend (see 2.2); we learn this also from Jerome who warns his audience that Christians should expect that the devil will attack most particularly when a community is preparing for the sacrament of baptism because “as soon as the devil is aware that his sheep are determined to withdraw from his flock, he rages in madness, and in fury gathers all his forces against them, reckoning

 Ysebaert, Greek Baptismal Terminology: Its Origins and Early Development, 196 – 225.  A military tattoo or a lead tessera that indicated that somebody was a soldier in the service of the emperor are also invoked by patristic authors and compared or contrasted with the “seal” of baptism, among others by Tertullian, Cyprian of Carthage, Cyril of Jerusalem or Gregory of Nazianzus, Ysebaert, Greek Baptismal Terminology: Its Origins and Early Development, 422; Everett Ferguson, “Gregory’s Baptismal Theology and the Alexandrian Tradition,” in Re-Reading Gregory of Nazianzus. Essays on History, Theology, and Culture, ed. Christopher A. Beeley (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 72. Also Theodore of Mopsuestia compares the “seal” both with a military tattoo and branding sheep, see his homily below and Juliette Day, The Baptismal Liturgy of Jerusalem: Fourth- and Fifth-Century Evidence from Palestine, Syria and Egypt (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 73.

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that whatever is saved for Christ is lost to him.”⁸ The BIBS blend highlights therefore the dualistic perspective of patristic authors convinced that one either belongs to Christ or to the devil. Early examples of the BIBS blend may be found in apocryphal literature, for example in the Acts of Thomas, where the Indo-Parthian king Gundaphorus and his brother Gad ask for baptism with the following words: “Give us the seal; for we have heard you say that the God whom you preach knows his own sheep by his seal.”⁹ In the same text another man asks Thomas to be baptized, requesting of him in a similar way: “I pray thee, give us the seal that we may become servants to the true God, and be numbered among his sheep and lambs.”¹⁰ A double occurrence of the same blend in the Acts of Thomas suggests that such a conceptualization of baptism was not accidental.¹¹ In the Syriac version of Acts of John, one finds a more complex elaboration of the blend with additional elements of shepherding experience mapped onto the elements and participants of the baptismal liturgy: St John said to him [Tyrannus, the Procurator of Ephesus]: “Descend my brother, who is to become a new firstling, who enters in at the head of the flock into the fold of the owner of the sheep. Descend my brother, for the lambs are looking at you, and running that they may go down, and become white and get a new fair fleece, instead of that which is rent by ravening wolves.”¹²

Instead of a single sheep we can see now a whole flock entering the fold of Christ, its new owner, with the procurator of Ephesus as the first in a long procession of those to be baptized after him; the white garment they will receive is identified in the blend with the white fleece. Additionally, the previously sinful state of baptizands is equated in the blend with a fleece torn by wolves. Thus the blend conveyed to the Christian audience two important doctrinal truths about the effects of baptism: 1) that through baptism one is incorporated into the

 Jerome, Homily 90, in Jerome, The Homilies of Saint Jerome, trans. Marie L. Ewald, vol. 2, FC 57 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 233.  Acts of Thomas 26, in James K. Elliott, ed., The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation, trans. Montague R. James (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 457.  Acts of Thomas 131, in Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament, 497.  A similar version of the blend may be found in a Narsai’s homily on baptism: “He [the priest] makes him [the baptizand] stand as a sheep in the door of the sheepfold; and he signs his body and lets him mix with the flock,” Edward C. Whitaker and Maxwell E. Johnson, Documents of the Baptismal Liturgy (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2003), 56.  The History of John the Son of Zebedee, in Whitaker and Johnson, Documents of the Baptismal Liturgy, 24– 25.

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church of Christ, “the fold of the owner of the sheep”; 2) that baptism is an act of renewal with a torn fleece replaced by a new fleece. The BIBS blend may co-occur with other baptismal metaphors in patristic texts. The Syrian church father, Theodore of Mopsuestia, conceptualizes baptism both as branding sheep and joining the army of Christ: The sign with which you are signed means that you have been stamped as a lamb of Christ and as a soldier of the heavenly King. Indeed, immediately we possess a lamb we stamp it with a stamp which shows to which master it belongs, so that it may graze the same grass as that which the rest of the lambs of the owner graze, and be in the same fold as that in which they are. A soldier who has enlisted for military service, and been found worthy of this service of the State because of his stature and the structure of his body, is first stamped on his hand with a stamp which shows to which king he will henceforth offer his service; in this same way you also, who have been chosen for the Kingdom of Heaven, and after examination been appointed a soldier to the heavenly King, are first stamped on your forehead, that part of your head which is higher than the rest of your body, which is placed above all your body and above your face, and with which we usually draw near to one another and look at one another when we speak. You are stamped at that place so that you may be seen to possess great confidence.¹³

The very first sentence of Theodore’s argument activates two related blends (Figure 13). In one, sphragis is a mark of ownership, in the other, it is a soldier’s tattoo. In both conceptualizations newly baptized Christians become members of a specific community with one owner/leader, yet, interestingly, in each of these communities their situation and responsibilities are radically different. Christians as sheep are assured that Christ as their Shepherd will protect them and take care of them. They may therefore be passive or even timid as this is natural for sheep, and they will never be expected to die for their shepherd. On the other hand, Christians as soldiers are obliged to be ready to fight for Christ, their king, and even to sacrifice their lives for him. They should be active and courageous. Note furthermore how Theodore develops each metaphor. Christ’s sheep may graze with the other sheep from his flock, which suggests they have access to the sacraments and teaching of the church and activates the teaching is feeding sheep blend.¹⁴ The other metaphor is based on the UP-DOWN image schema

 Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer and on the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist 13.17, in Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary of Theodore of Mopsuestia on the Lord’s Prayer and on the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, 46.  The conceptualization of baptizands as sheep led to pastures also appears in the Acts of Thomas where the apostle prays to God for King Gundaphorus and his brother: “unite them with your flock” and “protect them also from the wolves and bring them into your meadows,” Acts

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which reflects the embodied character of our cognition and conceptualizations: a baptizand is stamped with the seal on his/her forehead “which is higher than the rest of” one’s body and “with which we usually draw near to one another and look at one another when we speak,” which guarantees “great confidence.” The people of antiquity were superstitious, believing that “behind the pieties of the pagan world (…) lurked forces of great cruelty and guile: demons, malign elemental spirits, occult agencies masquerading as divinities.”¹⁵ Thus patristic writers often employ the BIBS blend to assure Christian converts that in this way they were protected from such evil forces; being a branded sheep in the safe fold of the Good Shepherd safeguarded both their physical and spiritual existence. John Chrysostom voices this conviction in his Baptismal Instruction, teaching that “the catechumen is a sheep without a seal; he is a deserted inn and a hostel without a door, which lies open to all without distinction; he is a lair for robbers, a refuge for wild beasts, a dwelling place for demons.”¹⁶ Gregory of Nazianzus, in a similar vein, claims that Christians who belonged to the flock of Christ the Lord do not have to be afraid of the “prince of this world”: But if you would fortify yourself beforehand with the seal [of baptism], and secure yourself for the future with the best and strongest of all aids (…) what then can happen to you, and what has been wrought out for you? (…) Listen to David giving thee the good news, “Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, for mischance or noonday demon.” This, even while you live, will greatly contribute to your sense of safety (for a sheep that is sealed is not easily snared, but that which is unmarked is an easy prey to thieves).¹⁷

of Thomas, 25, Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament, 457. On the Eucharist as a pasture for sheep see also 8.2.  David B. Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (Yale University Press, 2014), 113 – 14. Then he adds that “the life of faith was, for the early church, before all else, spiritual warfare, waged between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of this fallen world, and every Christian on the day of his or her baptism had been conscripted into that struggle on the side of Christ,” Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies, 114.  John Chrysostom, Baptismal Instruction 10.16, in John Chrysostom, Baptismal Instructions, trans. Paul W. Harkins (New York: Paulist Press, 1963), 155. Cf. Ephrem the Syrian’s hymn: “Descend my brothers, put on from the water of baptism the Holy Spirit. (…) He (…) seals his flock by the Three Spiritual Names, wherein the Evil One is put to flight,” Hymns of Epiphany 5.1– 2, in Whitaker Johnson, Documents of the Baptismal Liturgy, 53.  Gregory of Nazianzus, The Oration on Holy Baptism 15, in NPNF II 7:364.

• A soldier serves • the king

• A soldier’s tattoo •

• A recruit •

Military input space

Figure 13: The BIBS network in Theodore of Mopsuestia • A branded sheep • may graze with other branded sheep

• A brand/seal •

• A sheep to be branded •

Blend

• A newly-baptized Christian is a sheep in Christ’s flock and a soldier who serves Christ [UNIQUENESS]

SIMILARITY

SIMILARITY

Sheepfold input space

Changes into B

•

A

•

Generic space

SIMILARITY

SIMILARITY

SIMILARITY

• A Christian has • access to sacraments

• Sphragis •

• A catechumen •

Church input space

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Another Cappadocian father, Basil of Caesarea, also uses the BIBS blend in his exhortation to baptism, combining the baptismal seal with the mark of blood from Exod 12:13: Do you not know that the destroying angel passed by the houses that were marked with blood, while he slew the first born in those that were not marked? A treasure unsealed is easily laid hold of by robbers; a sheep without a mark is carried away with impunity.¹⁸

In Basil’s argument the BIBS blend is preceded by an allusion to Exodus, suggesting that those who fail to be baptized will be condemned and destroyed by God like the Egyptians whose houses were not marked with blood. This in turn signals a theological perspective most often associated with Augustine’s theology of baptism and with the dualistic perspective of the church fathers mentioned above. “A treasure,” on the other hand, may be an allusion to Matt 6:21 and 13:44– 46. The final reference to an unmarked sheep activates the BIBS blend. It is the closing argument in the passage and its aim is to convince Basil’s audience that as branded sheep they are protected not only from the evil forces of the world but from the wrath of God on the day of judgment. In Cyril of Jerusalem’s elaboration of the BIBS blend, God’s judgment is introduced by an allusion to the parable of the last judgment from Matt 25:31– 46: “Come forward for the mystical seal so that you may be recognizable by the Lord. Be numbered in the holy spiritual flock of Christ, so that you may be set apart on his right hand and inherit the life prepared for you.”¹⁹

 Basil of Caesarea, Exhortation to Baptism, in Basil of Caesarea, A Treatise on Baptism: With an Exhortation to Receive It, Translated from the Works of St. Basil the Great, to Which Is Added a Treatise on Confirmation (Philadelphia: M. Fithian, 1843), 233. Ferguson remarks that all three Cappadocian fathers use the image of “’sealed’ or ‘marked’ sheep as an illustration of the identification and security of the baptized person,” Everett Ferguson, Catechesis, Baptism, Eschatology, and Martyrdom, vol. 2, The Early Church at Work and Worship (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014), 108. Gregory of Nazianzus uses the BIBS blend in his funeral oration on Basil of Caesarea, seeing in him the biblical Jacob and praising “his pastoral skill by which he enriched himself, gaining a greater number of marked than unmarked sheep.” Funeral Oration on St. Basil 71, in Gregory Nazianzen and Ambrose, Funeral Orations, trans. Leo P. McCauley et al., FC 22 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2004), 90.  Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 1 2, in Cyril of Jerusalem, The Works of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, vol. 1, trans. Leo P. McCauley and Anthony A. Stephenson, FC 61 (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1969), 92. Pseudo-Macarius uses a similar blend: “Let us, then, strive above all to have the brand and seal of the Lord in us, because in the day of judgment (…) the Shepherd will summon his flock, then whoever will possess the brand will recognize their own Shepherd. And the Shepherd recognizes those who carry his own seal,” Homily 12 13, in

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Unlike in Basil’s blend, where the reference to Exodus merely illustrated the positive effects of marking and had nothing to do with sheep, in Cyril’s elaboration of the blend the parable of the last judgment is an integral part of his conceptualization, since the branded sheep are at the same time the sheep on the right hand of Jesus. In this way Cyril’s blend communicates much more than the simple fact that by baptism one becomes a member of the flock of Christ. By equating baptized Christians with the sheep from the last judgment, Cyril assures the baptizands that the sacrament they received may be a guarantee of their salvation. While Cyril equates the baptized with sheep from the parable of the last judgment, Ephrem the Syrian elaborates the blend in yet another way, alluding to the lost sheep found by the shepherd in Luke 15:3 – 7: “The sheep leapt with joy to see the hand in readiness to baptize. O lambs, receive your marking, enter in and mingle with the flock; today the angels rejoice in you more than in all the rest of the sheep.”²⁰ These three related blends are shown in Figure 14. Most of the examples of the BIBS blend examined above come from a period of dynamic growth in Christianity when the converts that started to flock to churches were not always ready or able to grasp the full meaning of the doctrinal truths linked with baptism. The notion of the “seal” was therefore an important conceptual element in patristic theology of baptism, as Lampe explains: The theologians of the age of the Fathers tended to think of the seal imprinted upon the believer as the impress or stamp of the image of Christ set upon his soul by the agency of the indwelling Spirit of God. To the great mass of ordinary Christians, however, this conception was too profound to be properly understood. Yet it was precisely in the religion of the man in the street that the idea of the seal was strongest. The common believer looked for some plain token that he was really sealed for a day of redemption, branded as one of Christ’s flock, marked with a sign of his membership of God’s people, assured of a talisman against the powers of darkness, and given a password, as it were, which would ensure his reception by the angels into the gates of Paradise and his acceptance among the “sheep” at the right hand of the heavenly Judge. (…) The New Testament idea of the inward seal of the Spirit was scarcely adequate to meet his need. It was too refined and too deeply spiritual a conception to satisfy the superstitious and literal-minded convert from Hellenistic paganism, who wanted a tangible sign of his election and a quasi-magical talisman to protect him from the demons of Satan. Baptism in itself would hardly suffice. (….) They needed a sign which could directly and unmistakably symbolize the fact that they had become

Pseudo-Macarius, The Fifty Spiritual Homilies and The Great Letter, trans. George A. Maloney (Mahwah, NY: Paulist Press, 1992), 102.  Robin Jensen, Living Water: Images, Symbols, and Settings of Early Christian Baptism (Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2010), 258.

Sheepfold input space

Matt 25:31–46 input space

∙ Branded sheep ∙ owned by a new owner

∙ Brand/seal∙

∙ A sheep without brand: ∙ a prey for thieves

∙ Sheep to be branded ∙ belonging to an old owner

∙ Sheep to the right of ∙ Christ on the day of judgment (Cyril of Jerusalem)

Luke 15:3–7 input space

∙ (Ephrem the Syrian) ∙

∙ The lost sheep is found ∙

Ex 12:13 input space

∙ The mark of blood ∙ (Basil of Caesarea)

Blend

∙ Sphragis ∙

∙ A non-baptized person: ∙ a prey to Satan

∙ Catechumens still ∙ in the possession of devil

Church input space

∙ The church owned by Christ ∙

∙ Baptized Christians are branded sheep that are no longer owned by Satan but belong to the flock of Christ [UNIQUENESS]

SIMILARITY

SIMILARITY

SIMILARITY

SIMILARITY

Changes into B

∙

(A)

∙

Generic space

166 9 The the church is God’s flock blend as a conceptual instrument

Figure 14: The BIBS network in Basil of Caesarea, Cyril of Jerusalem and Ephrem the Syrian

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the property of Christ. There was one such signaculum which lay ready to hand, the sign of the Cross.²¹

Lampe identifies this “quasi-magical talisman” with the sign of the cross, yet the examples presented above indicate that the BIBS blend was also a popular conceptualization employed by church fathers to dispel the fears of those embracing the new religion and to assure them that they would be protected by God. Furthermore, we find mentions of sphragis as a probable reference to baptism in epitaphs on several sepulchral monuments, which also suggests the strong presence of this blend in the minds of early Christians.²² Sometimes those receiving baptism are conceptualized simply as new sheep entering the flock of Christ without reference to their being sealed (branded). Augustine uses such a conceptualization as part of his argument for the baptism of infants, combining it with John 10:27– 28: And the Lord says of himself, “Those who belong to my sheep hear my voice; I know them and they follow me. And I give them eternal life, and they will not perish for eternity.” Since little ones begin to belong to his sheep by baptism, they will certainly perish if they do not receive it, for they will not have the eternal life, which he will give to his sheep.²³

Paulinus of Nola, in his epistle praising the blessings of baptism, does not refer to “the seal” and simply describes “novice lambs” gathered around the altar and “the fold” that “bleat along in their new chorus ‘Alleluia’.”²⁴

 Lampe, The Seal of the Spirit: A Study in the Doctrine of Baptism and Confirmation in the New Testament and the Fathers, 261– 62.  The Life of Avercius (see Chapter 3, note 18) concludes with a poem that was used as an inscription on several graves and from which we learn that in Rome, there is “a people who had a radiant seal” (lampran sphrageidan), Kant, “Earliest Christian Inscription,” 15. See also Allen Brent, Cyprian and Roman Carthage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 233 – 35.  Augustine, The Punishment and Forgiveness of Sins and the Baptism of Little Ones 1.40, in Augustine, Selected Writings on Grace and Pelagianism, ed. Boniface Ramsey, trans. Roland Teske (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2011), 121.  Paulinus of Nola, Epistle 32 5, in Jensen, Living Water, 210. Note however, that to be consistent in his conceptualization Paulinus equates the liturgical hymns sung by the congregation with the bleating of sheep, which may have an unintended comic effect.

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9.1.2 The

BAPTISM IS WASHING SHEEP

blend

The blends discussed above illustrate the conceptual strategies of patristic authors who emphasize the new-found belonging of Christians to the flock of Christ by presenting them as “branded/sealed sheep.” Yet baptism, as the original, preChristian meaning of the Greek baptizo suggests, means first of all the washing away of sins. One might ask therefore, whether we might combine this meaning with shepherding imagery. It seems possible, given the fact that livestock animals are occasionally washed, which suggests that this element of shepherding experience might be mapped onto the rite of baptism, understood as the cleansing of sin in the target input space. The network resulting from such a mapping, which I will call the baptism is washing sheep (BIWS) blend, does occur in patristic texts and is very similar to the BIBS blend with the only difference being that the organizing frame of the BIWS blend is not branding but the washing of sheep. Cyril of Jerusalem uses such a network in his pre-baptismal catecheses quoted above, likewise in the context of the parable of the last judgment. He concentrates on the effect of washing, telling his audience that Christ as the shepherd will recognize his sheep not only by sphragis but also by their pure wool: How does the shepherd do this [separate sheep from goats]? Does he seek from a book which is a sheep and which is a goat? or does he decide from the evident facts? Does not the wool manifest the sheep, and the hairy and rough skin the goat? So with you too, once you have been cleansed of your sins, your deeds will be as pure wool. (…) By your vesture (peribolēs) you will be recognized as a sheep. But if you shall be found hairy, like Esau, who was shaggy of body and wicked of mind, who lost his birthright for food, and sold his prerogative, you will be among those on the left hand.²⁵

Note how the conceptualization of baptizands as sheep is tightly intertwined with other images in this passage and how Cyril moves smoothly from one image to another. The hairy goats from the blend are replaced with the hairy

 Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 15 25, in Cyril of Jerusalem, The Works of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, vol. 2, trans. Leo P. McCauley and Anthony A. Stephenson (Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 71. McCauley and Stephenson translate peribolēs as “vesture” while Juliette Day proposes “external appearance,” which corresponds better with the image of sheep. Juliette Day, “The Catechetical Lectures of Cyril of Jerusalem A Source for the Baptismal Liturgy of Mid-Fourth Century Jerusalem,” in Ablution, Initiation, and Baptism: Late Antiquity, Early Judaism, and Early Christianity = Waschungen, Initiation Und Taufe: Spä tantike, Frü hes Judentum Und Frü hes Christentum, ed. David Hellholm (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 1199. Augustine tells his audience that the flock of God “is a mixture of sheep and goats,” Sermon 164 11, in Augustine, Sermons (148 – 183) on the New Testament, 193.

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Esau, which allows Cyril to introduce a well-defined, negative biblical character into his argument. This shows again that the CGF blend and the other blends discussed in this study very rarely occur alone and are most frequently combined with other conceptualizations or biblical references, often not related to pastoral imagery. All of these mental images strengthen one another, allowing patristic authors to intensify and to enrich the way they convey the concepts they feel are most important to them. Examples of the BIWS network may also be found in early Christian poetry and hymns, and although their occurrences in such texts might be regarded as “poetic language,” they do not differ linguistically from realizations of the same blend discussed above. Thus Venantius Fortunatus describes baptism in one of his poems as Christ washing away Adam’s sins and speaks of “the flock [that] is plunged in the pure waves by the Shepherd God as long as the sheep’s wool still shows stains.”²⁶ Similarly, in a hymn for Easter matins in the Roman Breviary we find the invocation: “Thou Eternal Shepherd, cleansest thy flock with the waters of baptism/here is the bath for souls, here is the tomb for sins.”²⁷ Note that in both cases Christ himself, as the shepherd, appears in the blend and washes his sheep. In the Easter hymn, as in Cyril’s catechesis, the image of baptism as washing sheep is immediately followed by a metaphor for baptism as death and rebirth in Christ. Most importantly, the “pure wool” in Cyril’s catechesis, the removal of stains from wool in Fortunatus’ poem, and the cleansing of the flock by the Shepherd in the Easter hymn, provide Christians with concrete representations of the abstract idea of “removing sins” through baptism.²⁸

9.1.3 Shorn sheep in Song 4:2 as Christians receiving baptism Among the variants of the CGF blends used in the baptismal context in patristic texts one should distinguish another interesting subcategory with networks in which the image of Christians receiving baptism is mapped onto the image of shorn sheep from Song 4:2; 6:6 (“Your teeth are like a flock of sheep just shorn, coming up from the washing. Each has its twin, not one of them is missing.”). Song of Songs occupies a special place in Jewish and Christian exegesis

 Jensen, Living Water, 256.  Harriet M. Sonne de Torrens and Miguel A. Torrens, The Visual Culture of Baptism in the Middle Ages: Essays on Medieval Fonts, Settings and Beliefs (London: Routledge, 2013), 162.  Several centuries later Geoffrey Chaucer will use the same image – of the clean wool of sheep – in his description of the corrupt clergymen of medieval England, contrasting in The Canterbury Tales “a shiten shepherde and a clene sheep,” Prologue, verse 504.

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and examining it goes beyond my competences as a linguist. Nevertheless, limiting my approach purely to cognitive linguistic analysis it is worth noting that the CGF blend allowed patristic authors on many occasions to read specific meanings into some passages of the book. Below I explore another conceptual operation involving Song of Songs, namely baptismal interpretations of Song 4:2 by three prominent church fathers: Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose, and Augustine. Their conceptualization may be called the shorn sheep ascending from the pool are baptizands ascending from the baptismal font blend, or in short the shorn sheep blend. It is a single scope network, similar to the blend discussed in 2.2, since the church domain is now its source input space while Song 4:2 is the target input space. In other words, the church domain provides an organizing frame for the blend, by means of which patristic authors carry out the exegesis of the passage. Each of the three authors mentioned links different elements of both input spaces, according to his exegetical needs, which results in different elaborations of the blend emerging from the same biblical material.²⁹ Cyril of Jerusalem employs the shorn sheep blend in the pre-baptismal catechesis quoted earlier: For the soul that was formerly a slave has now accounted her Lord as her kinsman, and He, acknowledging her sincere purpose, will answer: ‘Ah, you are beautiful my beloved, ah, you are beautiful! (…) Your teeth are like a flock of ewes to be shorn’ – a sincere confession is a spiritual shearing; and further: ‘all of them big with twins’ signifying the twofold grace, either that perfected by water and the Spirit, or that announced in the Old and in the New Testament.³⁰

Cyril’s catechesis is the first from a series of his pre-baptismal instructions directed to catechumens³¹ in which he quotes or alludes to various biblical passages to elucidate the mysteries of this rite. The passage is a fine example of how, by means of conceptual integration, Cyril is able to read a specific meaning into the biblical text in order to use it as a scriptural illustration and to justify selected aspects of the doctrine. First of all, we should bear in mind that Song 4:2 actually describes bride’s teeth and the flock of sheep is entirely “virtual” in this verse, being a part of a simile, or – in a cognitive linguistic perspective –

 Of course, all of them (as well as all other Christian authors) assume that their audiences know that “the beloved one” or the bride from the Song of Songs is the church and that the bridegroom is Christ, for without this background knowledge the shorn sheep blend would be incomprehensible.  Catechesis 3 16, in Cyril of Jerusalem, The Works of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, vol. 1, 118.  Not counting his Procatechesis, see more: Young and Teal, From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and Its Background, 189.

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a blend, in which the image of a row of white teeth is equated in the blend space with white sheep.³² Yet it is this reference to sheep that activates the shorn sheep blend. Had the simile in Song 4:2 been different and the bride’s teeth not been compared to sheep coming up from being washed, Cyril and the other church fathers most probably could not have been able to use this verse to develop their baptismal theology. Let us examine the structure of Cyril’s network in more detail (Figure 15). Notice, first of all, that since he employs the blend in his pre-baptismal catechesis, the sheep are not yet shorn in his view but are going to be shorn and he equates the shearing of sheep with the cleansing of sins through baptism.³³ This corresponds with what he says earlier in the same catechesis reminding his audience: “you go down into the water bearing your sins.”³⁴ This means that there is a cross-space mapping in his elaboration of the blend, linking the sheep’s fleece and human sins, and the tertium comparationis is ‘weight’ or ‘burden’: a sheep’s fleece is an unnecessary weight for this animal just as sins are a burden for the soul. Presenting sins as a burden, Cyril reaches for the most productive metaphor of sin in Judaism, one that appears 108 times in the Hebrew Bible, including the famous passage in Leviticus where the scapegoat bears away all the iniquities of Israel to the desert (16:22),³⁵ which in turn may be derived from a difficulties are burdens primary metaphor grounded in our bodily experience.³⁶

 Interestingly, Gregory of Nyssa finds this blend unconvincing, since “teeth stand together in a row, joined to one another harmoniously, while flocks are scattered about, separated because of their need of pasture. Furthermore, it makes no sense to compare something that bears wool to a tooth, which is naturally naked,” Homily 7 on the Song of Songs, in Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on the Song of Songs, 237. Gregory’s remark shows that in some cases a blend may not be convincing to everyone. Actually there is only one outer-space relationship of similarity that becomes the inner-space relationship of identity in the blend, namely the whiteness of both the teeth and the sheep. If we, however, focus on the dissimilarities suppressed in the blend that Gregory of Nyssa puts in the foreground, then of course the blend is questionable.  It should be noted that because Cyril directs his catechesis to catechumens, he alters the Greek translation of Song 4:2 and instead of sheep that have been shorn, he speaks of sheep to be shorn. Yet in this way he in a sense comes back to the original Hebrew text in which qesûbôt (“shorn”) may be interpreted also in this context as “to be shorn.” Gianni Barbiero and Michael Tait, Song of Songs: A Close Reading (Boston: Brill, 2011), 179.  Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 3 12, in Cyril of Jerusalem, The Works of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, vol. 1, 115.  Gary A. Anderson, Sin: A History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010), 16. For a more detailed presentation of the metaphor of sin as burden, see Joseph Lam, Patterns of Sin in the Hebrew Bible: Metaphor, Culture, and the Making of a Religious Concept (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 16 – 86.

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Another cross-space mapping in Cyril’s blend links “twins” with “the twofold grace” of water and the Spirit as the two essential elements of baptism. Whereas the earlier mapping between the shearing of sheep and the throwing off of the burden of sins seems cognitively plausible, this one is much less convincing. We may agree that newly-baptized Christians have received and have in themselves – like sheep bearing twins – the grace of water washing away their sins and the grace of the Spirit they were anointed with, yet the conceptual correlation between “twins” and “the twofold grace” is not as strong as in the case of fleece being interpreted as a burden (of sins). Moreover, the fact that Cyril himself suggests two interpretations (or two different cross-space mappings) concerning “twins” suggests that even to him his proposal seems unobvious. However, following the logic of patristic exegesis he knows that no detail of the text must be ignored and this is why he attempts to match “twins” with a specific element in Christian teaching. Cognitively speaking, introducing “twins” into the blend should be regarded as an attempt to maximize the vital relations of Identity in the blend, even if finding concepts that correspond with this item of the text, and that at the same time are well-grounded in human experience, is difficult. (Indeed, one might even argue that in the patristic exegesis of “twins” in Song 4:2 anything goes as long as it may be somehow related to some double element of Christian teaching or practice; Augustine’s interpretation of “twins,” presented below, seems to confirm this observation.³⁷) One may wonder why there is no cross-space mapping in Cyril’s blend between washing sheep and baptizands coming up from the baptismal font, something that seems to be most obvious from a cognitive perspective. We do find such a link, however, in Ambrose’s elaboration of the same blend in his mystagogical catechesis On the Mysteries in which he explains the doctrinal significance of Christian mysteries or sacraments, including baptism (Figure 16). Because Ambrose’s interpretation of Song 4:2 is similar in some respects to Cyril’s, one cannot preclude that the bishop of Milan knew the catecheses of the patriarch of Alexandria:³⁸

 Joseph Grady, “Primary Metaphors as Inputs to Conceptual Integration,” Journal of Pragmatics 37, no. 10 (2005): 1600 – 1601.  The arbitrariness of the exegetical interpretation of “twins” in Song 4:2 may also be explained by the fact that Christian authors are helpless with regard to this term, since it appears only three times in the Bible and hence is difficult to combine intertextually with other occurrences in Scripture, Edme´e Kingsmill, The Song of Songs and the Eros of God: A Study in Biblical Intertextuality, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 254.  See Young and Teal, From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and Its Background, 190, note 98.

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Generic space ∙ Entities with some characteristics Church input space

Song 4:2 input space

SIMILARITY

∙ Catechumens ∙

SIMILARITY

∙ Without sin ∙ ∙ Grace of water and Spirit ∙

SIMILARITY

∙The Old and the New ∙ Testament

SIMILARITY

∙ Shorn sheep ∙ ∙ Without the burden of fleece ∙ ∙ “Each has its twin” ∙

∙ The shorn sheep are Christians to be baptized; a “twin” is twofold grace of water and Spirit and the Old and the New Testament [UNIQUENESS] Blend Figure 15: The shorn sheep network in Cyril of Jerusalem “Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes that have come up from the washing. They all bear twins and none of them is barren. Your lips are like a scarlet cord.” This is no small praise – first of all by reason of the delightful comparison to shorn ewes. For we know that she-goats pasture unthreatened upon the heights and that they feed safely in rugged places and finally, that when they are shorn they are unburdened of what is superfluous. The Church is compared to a flock of these. She has in herself the many virtues of the souls that put off the superfluity of their sins by the washing, that bring to Christ their mystic faith and the grace of their conduct, and that proclaim the cross of the Lord Jesus.³⁹

In Ambrose’s blend, as in Cyril’s, there is a cross-space mapping between shearing sheep and removing sins through baptism, yet in his version of the blend the ewes have already been shorn and are not waiting to be shorn. Ambrose, unlike

 Ambrose, On the Mysteries 7.38 in, Boniface Ramsey, Ambrose (Abingdon: Routledge, 1997), 154.

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Cyril, did not have to alter Song 4:2 because his catechesis was preached not to catechumens but to the newly baptized.⁴⁰ Since their sins have been washed away, they may be compared to shorn ewes. In the next sentence the shorn ewes are replaced by pasturing goats, because Ambrose refers implicitly to the previous verse in Song of Songs: “Your hair is like a flock of goats descending from the hills of Gilead” (Song 4:1b). Yet, Ambrose does not stop there but comes back immediately to shearing being understood as the throwing off of sins.⁴¹ Another difference between Cyril’s and Ambrose’s elaborations is the latter’s conceptualization of sins not as a burden but as something “superfluous” (superflua peccata).⁴² This image also closely corresponds with shepherding experience: too much fleece on a sheep is indeed something superfluous that a shepherd should get rid of by shearing. Note also that by quoting the whole verse from Song of Songs in the beginning of his paragraph Ambrose can introduce not only shearing but also washing sheep to his network and with it the cross-space mappings absent from Cyril’s blend. In Ambrose’s elaboration newly-baptized Christians are ewes/she-goats that “are unburdened of what is superfluous” (sins) and simultaneously they “put off the superfluity of their sins by the washing” (of baptism). This new conceptual element results from mapping the image of sheep that “have come up from the washing” onto the baptizands coming out from the baptismal font and is the missing link in Cyril’s blend mentioned above.⁴³ As a result, Ambrose’s elaboration of the shorn sheep blend – since it contains more cross-space mappings between theology and the liturgy of baptism with the image of sheep from Song 4:2 – seems to be more appealing to the audience than Cyril’s network. Finally, note that while Cyril seeks to conceptually combine “twins” with “twofold grace,” Ambrose does not propose any specific

 Ramsey, Ambrose, 145.  Ambrose’s not commenting on the behavior of goats “descending from the hills of Gilead” seems to be an exception here, because this expression almost always “evoked much exegetical ingenuity,” Richard Norris, The Song of Songs: Interpreted by Early Christian and Medieval Commentators (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 155. Norris’ statement supports the central thesis of my study that the development of Christian doctrine in general and biblical exegesis in particular may be seen basically as a process of conceptual integration that by its nature is characterized by creativity and ingenuity.  PL 16:401A.  Ambrose invokes the image of immersion during baptism more explicitly in the next paragraph of his catechesis, conceptualizing sin this time as a fault or blame not to be found in the newly baptized, because it was removed through baptism: “In these [souls] the Church is beautiful. Hence God speaks this word to her: ‘You are most beautiful, my beloved, and there is no fault in you’ (Song 4:7), because her sinfulness has been submerged (quia culpa demersa est – PL 16:401B)”; On the Mysteries 7.38, in Ramsey, Ambrose, 154.

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interpretation of “twins,” ignoring it in his interpretation. Instead, he enumerates the other attitudes that characterize Christians, apart from washing their sins through baptism, that are not a part of the blend, such as faith, proper conduct, and proclaiming the cross. Generic space ∙ Entities with some characteristics Church input space

∙ The newly baptized ∙ ∙ Superflua peccata ∙ ∙ Baptism ∙

Song 4:2 input space

SIMILARITY SIMILARITY SIMILARITY

∙ Shorn sheep ∙ ∙ The superfluity of fleece ∙ ∙ Washing of sheep ∙

∙ After being washed, the shorn sheep are newly baptized Christians without the superfluity of sins [UNIQUENESS]

Blend Figure 16: The shorn sheep network in Ambrose

Augustine, himself baptized by Ambrose in 387 in Milan, also maps the image of ewes from Song 4:2 onto newly baptized Christians in his elaboration of the shorn sheep blend in De Doctrina Christiana. This work is a manual of biblical interpretation and the blend is presented in it as part of the canonical interpretation of Song 4:2. This verse is important to Augustine for another reason since he refers to it to demonstrate that apparently obscure biblical passages contain hidden truths and that their obscurity is “divinely predetermined, so that pride may be subdued by hard work and intellects which tend to despise things

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that are easily discovered may be rescued from boredom and reinvigorated.”⁴⁴ Translating Augustine’s exegetical idiom into the language of cognitive linguistics one may say that he encourages his readers to conceptually integrate the subject matter of Song 4:2 with their Christian experiences and presents the effect of such a cognitive operation. His argument is a fine example of an “inspired” interpretation of the Bible resulting from a specific conceptual integration and for this reason it is worth quoting at full length: Suppose someone were to make the following statements: that there exist holy and perfect men by whose lives and conduct the church of Christ tears away those who come to it from their various superstitions, and somehow, by inspiring them to imitate their goodness, incorporates them into itself; and that there exist servants of the true God, good and faithful men who, putting aside the burdens of this life, have come to the holy font of baptism, arise from it born again with the Holy Spirit, and then produce the fruit of a double love, that is love of God and love of their neighbor. Why is it, I wonder, that putting it like this gives less pleasure to an audience than by expounding in the same terms this passage from the Song of Songs [i.e. Songs 4:2], where the church is addressed and praised like a beautiful woman: “Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes ascending from the pool [lavacro], all of which give birth to twins, and there is not a sterile animal among them”? Surely one learns the same lesson as when one hears it in plain words without the support of the imagery? And yet somehow it gives me more pleasure to contemplate holy men when I see them as the teeth of the church tearing men away from their errors and transferring them into its body, breaking down their rawness by biting and chewing. And it is with the greatest of pleasure that I visualize [agnosco] the shorn ewes, their worldly burdens [oneribus saecularibus] set aside like fleeces, ascending from the pool (baptism) and all giving birth to twins (the two commandments of love), with none of them failing to produce this holy fruit.⁴⁵

First of all, note that the shorn sheep blend is preceded in Augustine’s interpretation of Song 4:2 by another conceptual network, in which the bride’s teeth are mapped onto selected members of the church (holy men).⁴⁶ Then Augustine in-

 De Doctrina Christiana 2.2.10, in Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, 61.  De Doctrina Christiana 2.2.10, in Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, 63. For more on this passage in the context of Augustine’s exegesis, see Robert P. Kennedy, “A Text with Teeth: Augustine’s Exegesis of Song of Songs 4:2 as Paradigm of His Hermeneutics,” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 39, no. 3 (2010): 421– 34.  Gregory of Nyssa, in his Homily 7 on the Song of Songs, proposes a similar blend, seeing in the teeth of the bride, “those who grind the divine mysteries up small by interpreting them more lucidly, so that this spiritual nourishment can the more easily be taken in by the church’s body,” Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on the Song of Songs, 237. The Cappadocian father borrowed this figure from Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on the Song of Songs, 237, note 22. It is unlikely that Augustine knew any of Gregory of Nyssa’s texts (Anthony Meredith, “Augustine,” in The Brill Dictionary of Gregory of Nyssa, ed. Lucas F. Mateo-Seco and Gulio Maspero, Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2010), 88) or, for that matter, any of Origen’s works (Mark Edwards, “Augustine and His Christian

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troduces the shorn sheep blend (Figure 17). In the same way as Cyril, he interprets the fleece as a burden, but unlike in Cyril’s network it is not a burden of sins but more generally “burdens of this life,” which are then contrasted with the freedom found in the new life with Christ. Next, like Ambrose, he maps sheep coming up from washing onto the baptizands, using the phrase from Song 4:2 (“ascending from the pool [lavacro]”) with reference to the newly-baptized Christians. Recall that Ambrose speaks in his version of the blend of “the souls that put off the superfluity of their sins by the washing,” which does not evoke a clear image of baptizands ascending from the baptismal font and resembling sheep “ascending from the pool,” as in Augustine’s elaboration. However, the most explicit element in Augustine’s blend, through which he convincingly equates ewes and baptizands in the blend space, is lavacro, a common metonym for baptism in the writings of the Latin church fathers, including Augustine himself.⁴⁷ Note finally that Augustine, unlike Cyril, sees in the “twins” not “the twofold grace” but the two commandments of love (of God and one’s neighbor), which confirms my earlier observation that due to the fact that the concept of “twins” is loosely connected with shepherding imagery, Christian authors may propose in this case different conceptual links.⁴⁸ Predecessors,” in A Companion to Augustine, ed. Mark Vessey and Shelley Reid (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015), 223 – 224). Because his words seem to indicate that his reading of Song 4:2 was known to his audience one cannot preclude that the teeth of the bride are teachers/holy men of the church blend emerged relatively early on in patristic exegesis and may have become a popular interpretation of teeth in Song 4:2 both in Latin and Greek Christianity. Some modern scholars find Augustine’s conceptualization “gruesome” arguing that “readers are drawn into the image by virtue of their very bodies and are forced by the text to imagine saints as teeth in a presumably very large mouth, where the wayward are bitten, chewed, and digested into the body of the church,” Patricia Cox Miller, “Visceral Seeing: The Holy Body in Late Ancient Christianity,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 12, no. 4 (2004): 392. To the cognitive linguist, on the contrary, Augustine’s conceptualization is a fine example of embodiment as the basis of all human experience.  See, for example, Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries, 336, 445, 468 on usage of lavacro in Tertullian and Lactantius. Augustine uses the term on many occasions; for example, in his On Marriage and Concupiscence, the phrase “lavacro regenerationis” appears more than ten times (PL 44:413 – 474).  The shorn sheep blend also occurs in Augustine’s Sermon 313b and Letter 149 (see Robert J. Wright and Thomas C. Oden, eds., Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL InterVarsity Press, 2005), 333) and in Exposition of Psalm 3 7 where he combines it with the interpretation of “bride’s teeth” as “people who teach correctly and live in accordance with what they teach.” These people – says Augustine – are “shorn sheep, because they have set aside the burdens of earth-bound cares. Rising from the sheep-dip, from washing away the filth of the world through the sacrament of baptism, all give birth to twins, for they fulfill the twin commandments [of love of God and one’s neighbor],”

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Generic space ∙ Entities with some characteristics Church input space

Song 4:2 input space

∙ The newly baptized ∙ ∙ Oneribus saecularibus ∙ ∙ Lavacro (baptistery) ∙ ∙Two commandments ∙ of love

SIMILARITY SIMILARITY SIMILARITY SIMILARITY

∙ Shorn sheep ∙ ∙ The burden of fleece ∙ ∙ The pool ∙ ∙ “Each has its twin” ∙

∙ The shorn sheep coming up from the pool are newly baptized Christians freed from the burdens of life and coming up from the baptismal font [UNIQUENESS] Blend Figure 17: The shorn sheep network in Augustine

I have examined above three linguistic realizations of the shorn sheep ascending from the pool are baptizands ascending from the baptismal font blend created by Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose, and Augustine. Since Ambrose probably knew Cyril’s catecheses and Augustine knew Ambrose’s works, one cannot preclude that Ambrose was reworking Cyril’s blend, while Augustine Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 1 – 32, 80. The blend also occurs in his interpretations of Psalms 78 and 94. Whenever Augustine uses the blend, he sees in “twins” the two commandments of love. In Gerald Bonner’s view, Augustine’s interpretation of Song 4:2 “appears to be mere fantasy”(Gerald Bonner, “Augustine as Biblical Scholar,” in From the Beginnings to Jerome, vol. 1, The Cambridge History of the Bible, eds. Peter R. Ackroyd and Christopher F. Evans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 547, yet from a cognitive linguistic perspective the opposite is true: Augustine’s interpretation reveals the power of generating new meanings through conceptual integration.

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was elaborating on Ambrose’s blend. Although different from one another, these three variants of the same blend were intended to reveal the “true meaning” of Song 4:2 and to demonstrate that it does not praise the physical beauty of a woman but is a foreshadowing of baptism. Once again it must be stressed that had the author of Song of Songs not compared the teeth of the bride to the flock of sheep coming up from washing, the shorn sheep blend could not have been possible. Still, the analysis above shows that even if some patristic blends owe their origin to accidental circumstances, their conceptual potential allows the church fathers to turn apparently insignificant biblical details into scriptural evidence for crucial elements in Christian doctrine.

9.1.4 Material anchors of the CGF blend in the context of baptism As mentioned in 1.2.4, conceptual blends may often have input spaces with “material anchors” which provide tangible support for our conceptualizations of abstract elements of the world we live in and in the case of the blends discussed in this chapter such material anchors are mosaics found in baptisteries and the exorcism of cilicium that accompanied early Christian baptismal liturgy. I will briefly discuss both of these. In most cases the frescoes and mosaics adorning early baptisteries may be regarded as material anchors activating the CGF blend in the minds of participants of the baptismal liturgy. In the earliest extant purpose-built baptistery at Dura Europos there was an image of a shepherd with his sheep, and we can find similar images with a shepherd leading his flock to a stream or in a pasture in many other ancient baptisteries.⁴⁹ Seeing these images, early Christians learnt through another semiotic channel the two most important effects of baptism as conceptualized by the blends discussed above: that it removes sins, and that it incorporates the catechumens into the flock of Christ. Similarly, the presence of a shepherd as a central figure in such mosaics evoked a sense of spiritual safety and nourishment, which corresponded with the earliest representations of Christ as the Good Shepherd (see note 15). In short, “the iconography of a Good Shepherd with his sheep” reflected the “self-identity [of Christians] as members of a sacred flock protected by a caretaking shepherd.”⁵⁰ In addition, the fact that baptism was expressed through pastoral imagery meant that it was only natural to expect on the  Jensen, Living Water, 184, 254– 258. Chadwick, however, remarks that the Good Shepherd depicted in Dura Europos is caring for goats rather than sheep, Henry Chadwick, The Church in Ancient Society: From Galilee to Gregory the Great (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 676.  Jensen, Living Water, 280.

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part of neophytes that other doctrinal and liturgical truths as well as instructions concerning discipline would be conveyed in a similar form; in other words, through the the church is God’s flock blend and its variants. The exorcism of cilicium (a sackcloth made of goat’s hair), already mentioned in the first part of this study, (see 1.2.4), was a part of the baptismal liturgy in the Eastern Church, in Spain, and in Africa. It was referred to for the first time by Theodore of Mopsuestia, who wrote in his mystagogical catecheses of a catechumen standing barefooted on sackcloth made of goat’s hair and trampling it, with his arms outstretched and looking downwards. Sackcloth symbolized the sins a catechumen should repent for. Its penitential character was derived from the Old Testament custom of people repenting their sins by girding the loins with sackcloth, which is reflected in Ps 30:11: “You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.” The posture of a catechumen symbolized the captivity from which one would be delivered through baptism.⁵¹ In what sense is the exorcism of cilicium a material anchor of the CGF blend? The key is that sackcloth is made of goat’s hair. The skins of animals symbolized a state of sinfulness and impurity both for Christian and pagan writers⁵² and since the sackcloth was made of goat’s hair it could be contrasted in the minds of the participants of the baptismal liturgy with a sheep’s fleece, or metonymically with sheep in general. In other words, trampling upon sackcloth symbolized rejecting “being a goat” from the parable of the last judgment invoked in the baptismal context, as we could see Cyril of Jerusalem’s catechesis examined earlier.⁵³

 Johannes Quasten, “Theodore of Mopsuestia on the Exorcism of the Cilicium,” The Harvard Theological Review 35, no. 3 (1942): 209 – 219. On the varied symbolic meaning of the exorcism, see also, Edward Yarnold, The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation: The Origins of the RCIA (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1994), 10 – 11.  Quasten, “Theodore of Mopsuestia on the Exorcism of the Cilicium,” 218 – 19.  Quasten writes that “the Roman Liturgy has even today on the first Monday of Lent the gospel of separation of the goats from the sheep” because “this Monday was the day on which penitents or sinners received the cilicium and were ejected from the community of believers,” Theodore of Mopsuestia on the Exorcism of the Cilicium,” 218. Although written in 1942, before the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council, Quasten’s observation is still valid, since today this parable is read on the first Monday of Lent in the Catholic Church, cf. George Weigel, Roman Pilgrimage: The Station Churches (New York: Basic Books, 2013), 61.

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9.2 God’s flock is one flock – the CGF blend as a conceptual instrument in propagating church unity Christianity has never been a monolith and from the outset has experienced various dissenting tendencies to such an extent that some scholars prefer to speak of the “multiplicity of ‘Christianities’ in the two first centuries.”⁵⁴ Even the Catholic or orthodox church itself was not united in its early history and local communities in various parts of the empire differed on such important issues as dating of the Pasch and its celebration.⁵⁵ However, once it was recognized as the official religion of the state, the unity of Christianity became a political issue with ecumenical councils summoned to solve the specific theological controversies that tore apart the Church, thus threatening the political stability and order of the empire.⁵⁶ Maintaining the doctrinal unity of the church was a constant concern of the church fathers, as reflected in various texts from Cyprian’s The Unity of the Church to Augustine’s polemics against the Donatists, and one can find in patristic literature a number of examples that demonstrate the usefulness of the CGF blend in supporting the idea of church unity. The source input spaces of the CGF blend in such texts contain biblical passages that refer to unity or to the scattering of the flock of sheep. These include: John 10:16 (“there shall be one flock and one shepherd”); John 10:12 (“the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it”); Jer 23:1 (“Woe to the shepherds who are destroying and scattering the sheep of my pasture!”), and others. These biblical images are mapped onto the church as understood as God’s flock. Below I discuss selected linguistic realizations of the CGF blend used as a conceptual tool to defend the unity of the church in Cyprian and Augustine. In his treatise The Unity of the Church, Cyprian introduces a quotation from John 10:16 and elements of (supposedly) real shepherding experience into the source input space of the blend, thus building an argument for the autonomy of each bishop in his city (diocese): “He Himself warns us in His Gospel, and teaches

 Ludemann and Bowden, Heretics: The Other Side of Early Christianity, 11. “A much greater trial than that created by the dying influence of paganism was the hydra of schism among the Christians themselves, a monster that was continually growing new heads. Eighty-eight heresies were numbered by Augustine in his book on this subject,” Frits van der Meer, Augustine the Bishop: The Life and Work of a Father of the Church, trans. Brian Battershaw (London: Sheed and Ward, 1961), 79.  Wilken, The First Thousand Years, 37– 47.  Constantine, having decided to gather the bishops in Nicaea in 325 to put an end to the violent conflicts in the Church in the wake of the Arian heresy, wrote to Alexander, bishop of Alexandria: “My design then was, first, to bring the diverse judgments formed by all nations respecting the Deity to a condition, as it were, of settled uniformity and, secondly, to restore to health the system of the world, then suffering under the malignant power of a grievous distemper,” Vitae Constantini 65, in NPNF II 1:516.

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saying: ‘And there shall be one flock and one shepherd.” And does anyone think that there can be either many shepherds or many flocks in one place?”⁵⁷ In reality, there may be more shepherds and more flocks in one pasture, yet Cyprian ignores this fact as it would contradict his argument. Interestingly, when arguing elsewhere for the episcopal unity of the church as a whole, Cyprian allows this time for the possibility that there may be many shepherds responsible for one flock, because without this assumption he would not be able to make his point in his letter to Pope Stephen: “For although we shepherds are many, yet we feed one flock; and all of the sheep whom Christ sought by His Blood and Passion we ought to collect and to cherish.”⁵⁸ In the same letter to Pope Stephen, Cyprian, speaking explicitly of episcopal unity, uses the CGF blend to present heresy as scattering the flock and to stress that bishops as shepherds are responsible for one another: For that reason, therefore dearly beloved Brother, is the large body of bishops joined by the bond of mutual concord and the chain of unity so that, if anyone of our college should attempt to engage in heresy and wound and lay waste the flock of Christ, the others, as useful and merciful shepherds, should assist and assemble the sheep of the Lord into the flock.⁵⁹

Augustine uses the CGF blend intertwined with the SAS blend, as a conceptual framework in his argument for the unity of the church: “The one man Peter represents the unity of all the shepherds or pastors of the Church – but the good ones, who know how to feed Christ’s flock for Christ and not for themselves.”⁶⁰ The CGF blend may also be the conceptual basis for more complex theological reasoning aimed at distinguishing between the true flock of the church and a heretical non-flock. Here is Cyprian denying the validity of Novatian baptism by means of the CGF blend: But if there is one flock, how can he who is not in the number of the flock be numbered in the flock who is not in the number of the flock? Or when the true shepherd remains and presides in the Church of God after a valid ordination, how can he [i. e. Novatian] be considered as a shepherd who succeeding no one but beginning from himself, has become foreign and strange, an enemy of the peace of the lord and of divine unity.⁶¹

 The Unity of the Church 8, in Cyprian of Carthage, Treatises, 102.  Letter to Pope Stephen 4, in Cyprian of Carthage, Letters 1 – 81, 242  Letter to Pope Stephen 3, in Cyprian of Carthage, Letters 1 – 81, 241. For more on the role of shepherding imagery in defending the unity of church by Cyprian, see, Burns, Cyprian the Bishop, 151– 166.  Sermon 147 2, in Augustine, Sermons (94 A–147 A) on the New Testament, 448.  Letter to Magnus 5, in Cyprian of Carthage, Letters 1 – 81, 247.

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The basis of Cyprian’s argument is the CGF blend supported by the SAS blend. Using the first blend Cyprian argues that since God has ordained that there should only be one flock, one is either its member or one does not belong to it. The next argument is based on the SAS blend and questions the validity of Novatian’s ordination. As all “shepherds are the Shepherd,” they should be ordained by their predecessors going back to the apostles, because only in this way may they be identified with Christ the Shepherd. Since, according to Cyprian, Novatian was not properly ordained, he is “succeeding no one but beginning from himself” and therefore he is not the shepherd of the flock. Notice however, that while in the first part of Cyprian’s argument Novatian is a sheep, in the other part he becomes a shepherd. Such a sudden conceptual change is characteristic of many blends in early Christian discourse and here they strengthen Cyprian’s argument. The CGF blend is also the conceptual basis for Cyprian’s theology of baptism, according to which heretics should be rebaptized: We still practice this today, that it is sufficient to impose hands in penance upon those who, it is evident, have been baptized and have gone from us to the heretics, if afterward, having recognized their sin and put aside their error, they return to truth and to their mother, that, because he had once been a sheep, the shepherd receives this wandering and straying sheep back into his sheepfold. But if he who comes from the heretics was not first baptized in the Church (…) he must be baptized, that he may become a sheep, because there is one water in the Holy Church which makes sheep.⁶²

Note again the key role of the CGF blend in Cyprian’s argument. When someone baptized in the Catholic church leaves it, deceived by a heresy, such a person is “a straying sheep.” Yet someone baptized by a heretic community is not even a sheep! Cyprian’s stance was ultimately rejected by the Catholic church, yet, paradoxically, some arguments against his position were based on exactly the same blend, albeit elaborated differently. Let us recall Augustine’s blend with the lost sheep examined in 8.3.1: The wandering of the sheep is to be remedied without destroying in it the mark of the Redeemer. But, if anyone is branded with the royal mark by a deserter who has himself been branded, and if they both find mercy and the one returns to his service, while the other begins a service which he had not yet undertaken, the mark is not erased in either of them. In

 Letter to Quintus 2, in Cyprian of Carthage, Letters 1 – 81, 263.

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fact, is it not rather recognized in both of them and accorded due honor since it is the king’s mark?⁶³

While Cyprian stresses that heretical baptism is not valid because those who conferred it were not united with the Catholic church, Augustine, by means of the baptism is branding sheep blend and soldier’s tattoo imagery, highlights its indelible character, even if it was conferred by communities not united with the Catholic church, and concludes that rebaptism is not necessary. It turns out therefore, that the GCF blend may be used as the conceptual framework for two entirely different doctrinal perspectives, depending only on how the blend is elaborated. On another occasion Augustine, constructing his argument for the unity of the church, combines the CGF blend with the SAS blend: So why is it that you draw the attention of good shepherds to the idea of one shepherd? For what other reason could it be, but that in the one shepherd you are teaching the lesson of unity? And the Lord explains the matter more clearly through my ministry, as he reminds your graces from the gospel and says, “Listen to what I have drawn attention to: I am the good shepherd, I said; because all the others, all the good shepherds are my members, parts of me; one head, one body, one Christ. So both the shepherd of the shepherds, and the shepherds of the shepherd, and the sheep with the shepherds under the shepherd, are one.” [Unum caput, unum corpus, unus Christus. Ergo et pastor pastorum, et pastores pastoris, et oves cum pastoribus sub pastore].⁶⁴

 Letter 185 (De Correctione Donatistarum) 23, in Augustine, Letters 165 – 203, trans. Wilfrid Parsons, vol. 4, Letters (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1981), 164.  Sermon 138 5, in Augustine, Sermons (94 A–147 A) on the New Testament, 387; PL 38:765. Augustine creates another interesting conceptualization based on shepherding experience and imagery and combining John 10:9 with 1 Cor 1:10 – 16 presents schismatic tendencies in the church as “putting up other gates” by “unruly sheep”: “Indeed, Paul the Apostle fulfilled the function of a good shepherd when he preached Christ, because he was going in through the gate. But when unruly sheep began to make schisms and to put up other gates for themselves, not by which they might go in to be assembled but by which they might wander to be separated, saying, some of them, ‘I belong to Paul,’ others, ‘I belong to Cephas,’ others, ‘I to Apollos,’ and others, ‘I to Christ,’ he was very much afraid for those who said, ‘I belong to Paul,’ and, as if shouting to the sheep: Wretches, where are you going? I am not the gate, he said, ‘Was it Paul who was crucified for you? Or was it in Paul’s name that you were baptized?’ But those who were saying, ‘I belong to Christ,’ had found the gate,” Tractate 47 on the Gospel of John 3, in Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 28 – 54, 216. An image of Paul as the shepherd shouting to the sheep is so suggestive because it is, cognitively speaking, an example of a creatively-run blend, a strategy typical of Augustine.

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In another sermon Augustine creates a similar blend, with “one flock and one shepherd” from John 10:16 in its input space mapped onto the Catholic clergy: So let them all be in the one shepherd, and speak with the one voice of the shepherd, which the sheep may hear and follow their shepherd, not this or that shepherd, but the one shepherd. And in him let them all speak with one voice, not with conflicting voices. “I beseech you, brothers, that you should all say the same thing, and that there should be no schism among you (1 Cor 1:10).” Let the sheep hear this voice strained of all schisms, purged of all heresy, and follow their shepherd who says, ‘Those that are my sheep hear my voice and follow me’ (John 10:27).⁶⁵

In his letter to Vincent, the Rogatist bishop of Cartenna, Augustine, to prove that the Rogatists are schismatic communities, creates an interesting biblical argument by means of the CGF blend, with the bridegroom’s words to the bride from Song 1:8 in one input space and the Rogatist and Catholic communities in the other input space: “If thou know not thyself, O fair among women, go forth and follow after the steps of the flocks, and feed thy kids [goats] in the tents of the shepherds” [Song 1:8] (…). Go forth in the footsteps of the flocks, not in my footsteps, but in the footsteps of the flocks, not of one flock, but of the scattered and straying flocks. And feed thy kids, not as Peter, to whom it is said: “Feed my sheep,” but feed thy kids in the tents of the shepherds; not in the tent of the shepherd, where there is “one fold and one shepherd.”⁶⁶

Since in Christian exegesis of the Song of Songs the bridegroom symbolizes Christ and the bride the church, Augustine, following this tradition, creates an elaboration of the CGF blend which first underlines the difference between the many flocks (and therefore many shepherds) and one flock (with one shepherd or the bridegroom) and the difference between kids (goats) and sheep in the biblical input space of the blend. Then he maps these distinctions onto the Rogatist communities and the Catholic church respectively in the church input space. He also introduces Peter to his argument, activating in this way the SAS blend. As a result, the reader learns that the Rogatist communities are “that part of the church that has not recognized its true characters from the Scriptures.”⁶⁷ This is the reason why they follow many schismatic shepherds with many flocks and not the Catholic church that is one flock with one shepherd, or Christ rep Sermon 46 30, in Augustine, Sermons (20 – 50) on the Old Testament, 283.  Letter 93 9, in Augustine, Augustine, Letters 83 – 130, 85.  Michael Cameron, “Augustine’s Use of the Song of Songs against the Donatists,” in Augustine: Biblical Exegete, ed. Frederick Van Fleteren and Joseph C. Schnaubelt (New York: Peter Lang, 2004), 113.

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resented by Peter.⁶⁸ Augustine’s reasoning is yet further proof of the conceptual potential of the CGF blend, by means of which an apparently insignificant biblical passage can be turned into a strong scriptural argument for the unity of the church.

9.3 The

THE LOST SHEEP IS HUMANITY

blend

In section 8.3.1 we saw how the the lost sheep blend is used by patristic authors as the conceptual basis for developing the theology of repentance that gradually emerged in early church doctrine. Yet in many patristic texts the same parable occurs in another subcategory of the CGF blend, one of great theological import that I will call the the lost sheep is humanity (LSIH) network and in which the lost sheep represents the whole of humanity lost through Adam’s sin and rescued by Christ through his incarnation, death, and resurrection.⁶⁹ As such, the LSIH blend may be understood as a conceptualization – in a narrative form – of the constitutive idea of Christianity that Jesus Christ, God incarnated, descended from heaven to bring back to God humanity separated from him through sin. The pivotal role of this blend in early Christian doctrine is emphasized, among others, by De Lubac, who points out that for Irenaeus, as indeed for Origen, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, for Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus, Hilary and others, the lost sheep of Gospel that the Good Shepherd brings back to the fold is no other than the whole of human nature; its sorry state so moves the Word of God that he leaves the great flock of the angels, as it were to their own devices, in order to go to its help.⁷⁰

 Note how much doctrinal meaning Augustine “discovers” or, actually, reads through conceptual integration in just one biblical verse. One should keep in mind that Augustine’s exegesis is not theological art for art’s sake but an important biblical argument in a serious ecclesiological dispute concerning the unity of the church in North Africa, and at the same time the social and political stability of that area during Augustine’s lifetime.  Augustine maps the parable of the lost sheep onto Adam who also becomes the lost sheep to him: “But Adam, what has become of your flight of God (…). You ran away and you were lost. But he comes to look for you, and you are not abandoned; it is the ninety-nine sheep on the mountains who are left, while the one lost sheep is sought,” Exposition 1 of Psalm 70 5, in Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 51 – 72, 417.  Henry de Lubac, Catholicism: A Study of Dogma in Relation to the Corporate Destiny of Mankind, trans. Lancelot C. Sheppard (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1958), 3. For a more detailed list of authors that refer to humanity as “lost sheep” with the exact locations of this conceptualization in their works, see, Anthony Meredith, Gregory of Nyssa (London: Routledge, 1999), 148, note 53. Needless to say that in the parable of the lost sheep, as it is presented in the New Testa-

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The LSIH, unlike most of the blends discussed earlier, is a double scope network with two different narratives in its input spaces: the parable of the lost sheep and the account of Christ’s salvation of humanity in the other input space (Figure 18). Through a selective projection of elements of both narratives into the blended space and through a series of compressions, patristic authors activate a conceptualization that allows them to convey a number of abstract and complex ideas concerning humanity, its ontological and moral condition, its relation to God, and so forth, by means of a language familiar to their audiences as part of a broader range of shepherding imagery so natural in early church discourse. As such, the blend is a fine example of the “come up with a story” principle proposed by Fauconnier and Turner, since, through a simple story, fundamental notions of the Christian message are conveyed to believers.⁷¹ If so, it may be classified as a “pastoral” version of the same double-scope narrative of Christ dying for the sins of humanity, as discussed by Turner.⁷² Moreover, the idea of a “lost” humanity/sheep that was “found” by Christ may also be perceived as a modification of Paul’s depiction of the redemption of humankind in financial terms.⁷³ Paul’s indebted humanity is presented in the LSIH blend as “lost” and the act of its redemption or ransom payment, is conceptualized as being “found” by Christ and “brought back” to the fold. Since the scenario of the parable of the lost sheep is rather uncomplicated, one might expect that the blends based on it should also be simple narratives. On the contrary, they are often rich in doctrinally significant details introduced by patristic authors who elaborate such blends and adapt them to their needs. A detailed presentation of the various functions of the LSIH blend in early Christian discourse goes beyond the scope of this section and, therefore, I will discuss below only selected examples.

ment, there is “no Christological interest, no interest in Jesus,” Birger Gerhardsson, “The Earthly Jesus in the Synoptic Parables,” in Christology, Controversy & Community: New Testament Essays in Honour of David R. Catchpole, eds. David G. Horrell and Christopher M. Tuckett (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 55.  Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 312, 323, 346.  Mark Turner, “Double-Scope Stories,” in Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences, ed. David Herman (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 129 ff.  Apolýtrōsis and lýtron – two Greek terms for redemption in the New Testament, denote financial transactions in nonbiblical Greek: “ransom payment” and “money paid to ransom prisoners of war, to release slaves, to redeem a bond” respectively, Friedrich Buchsel and Otto Procksch, “Lyo*,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, eds. Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, vol. IV (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 340.

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Generic space • A Ready and able to help B • B Needs A’s help

The lost sheep parable input space

The paradise input space

Church input space

• The good shepherd •

• Christ •

• The lost sheep • • The first couple • (CoA) • Expelled from the paradise • exposed to sin and death (CoA)

• One among 99 others; • brought back to the sheepfold (O) • Left the sheepfold; two wolves • killed by the shepherd who dies (CoA) • The shepherd brings back • the whole sheep (GoN)

Luke 17:11–19 input space • Christ heals • lepers

• Fallen humanity • • A small part of the rational • creation; brought back to heaven • Through his death Christ • defeated death and sin • The whole human nature • is saved

• The sheep is still being • sought; Shepherd torn by Jewish thorns (A) • The shepherd heals the • scabby sheep infected with leprosy (PsM)

• Not all nations saved • yet including donatists; crown of thorns • Christ removes sin •

• Humanity is brought back to the angelic community • by Christ (Origen) • The lost humanity was exposed to sin and death, defeated by Christ • (Cyril of Alexandria) • The whole human nature is saved by Christ, not only soul • (Gregory of Nyssa) • Christ’s saving process continues (Augustine) • • Christ removes humanity’s sins (Pseudo-Macarius) •

Blend Figure : The LSIH network in Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Cyril of Alexandria and Pseudo-Macarius⁷⁴

 This time I present different elaborations of the same blend in one diagram to show its conceptual and doctrinal richness and to better exemplify the main thesis of my monograph that

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The blend is often associated with Origen, who indeed uses it several times, seeing in it biblical evidence for the doctrine of apokatastasis. ⁷⁵ His version may be regarded as “the archetypical” one in the sense that he allegorically interprets the parable that identifies Christ with the shepherd and the lost sheep with humanity, and generally does not elaborate on it too much. Thus, with reference to Christ he writes that: the good shepherd had, necessarily, the ninety and nine having been left on the heights, to descend to the lands and seek the one sheep which was lost and when it was found and carried back on his shoulders, to recall it to the sheepfold of perfection on high.⁷⁶

In an earlier homily Origen expresses the same idea, yet he additionally equates the number of sheep with the symbol of perfection of all rational creation. In other words, humankind is a small part of rational creation and Christ saving it unites it back with the angels who did not need redemption: Now the number one hundred is shown to be full and perfect in everything and to contain the mystery of the whole of rational creation, as we read in the Gospels where it says that “a certain man having a hundred sheep, when he lost one of them, left the ninety-nine in the mountains and descended to seek that one which he had lost and when it was found he carried it back on his shoulders and placed it with those ninety-nine which had not been lost.”⁷⁷

conceptual integration was indeed the generator of theological meanings and ideas in early Christian language.  Ilaria Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis: A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena, Vigiliae Christianae, Supplements (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2013), 218, 410.  Origen, Homily on Genesis 9, in Origen, Homilies on Genesis and Exodus, trans. Ronald E. Heine, FC 71 (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1982), 155. Note the UPDOWN image schema in the blend with God being “up” and humanity being “down,” often found in Christian representations of incarnation. The Matthean “mountains” where the shepherd left the ninety-nine sheep are mapped onto heaven and therefore Christ as God-incarnated “descends” from it.  Origen, Homily on Genesis 2, in Origen, Homilies on Genesis and Exodus, 82. Augustine repeats Origen’s reasoning in his exegesis of Ps 8: “For as we understand Adam to be the one lost sheep (because Eve, of course, was made from his side), we are left with the conclusion that the ninety-nine left on the mountains must not be human but angelic spirits,” Exposition of Psalm 8 12, in Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 1 – 32, 136. For more on the symbolic meaning of “one hundred” in the parable as referring to the number of heavenly elect citizens, including humans and angels, from Origen to Gregory the Great, see, Vojtech Novotny, Cur Homo? A History of the Thesis Concerning Man as a Replacement for Fallen Angels (Prague: Karolinum, 2014), 35 – 39.

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While for Origen the LSIH blend symbolizes redemption and the restoration of humankind, Gregory of Nyssa employs it several times to defend key elements of Catholic doctrine, including Christology and anthropology.⁷⁸ Note the theological density and depth of Gregory’s blend that is for him the biblically-grounded conceptual framework for complex theological reasoning in his polemic with Apolinarius: Who does not know that divine mystery that the “pioneer of our salvation” goes after the lost sheep as a shepherd. We human beings are that sheep, we who have strayed through sin from the one hundred rational sheep. Christ lays the whole sheep on his own shoulders. The sheep did not stray just in one of its parts; since it went away as a whole, it is brought back as a whole. The hide is not taken and the innards are left behind as Apolinarius would have it. Once the sheep is on the shepherds’ shoulders, that is in the divinity of the Lord, it becomes one with him through this taking-up. So, wanting to seek out and save what had been lost, once the Lord had found what he was looking for, he took up upon himself what he had found. This sheep, which had once erred, did not walk on its own feet; instead, it is carried along by the divinity. So what appears is the sheep, that is, humanity, but, as it is written, God’s “footprints were unseen” [Ps 76:20]. He, who bears the sheep upon himself is marked with no “footprint” of sin or going astray as regards human life; the “footprints” that are impressed upon him throughout his life’s journey are those which are appropriate to God, such as teachings, cures, restoring the dead to life, and other such miracles. When the shepherd takes his sheep upon himself, he becomes one with it and speaks with the voice of the sheep to his flocks. How could our human weakness be adequate to comprehend an address by the divine voice? He speaks to us in a human way, that is, as one might put it, in a “sheep-like” way, saying: “My sheep hear my voice” [John 10:27]. So the shepherd who has taken the sheep upon himself and speaks to us through it is both sheep and a shepherd. He is the sheep in that he has been taken up and a shepherd in that it is he who has done the taking up.⁷⁹

 Peter Bouteneff, “Soteriological Imagery in Gregory of Nyssa’s Antirrheticus,” in Studia Patristica. Vol. XXXII. Athanasius and His Opponents, Cappadocian Fathers, Other Greek Writers after Nicea (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 81– 86.  Gregory of Nyssa, Antirrheticus 151.14– 152. 29, in Gregory of Nyssa, Anti-Apollinarian Writings, trans. Robin Orton, FC 131 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2015), 127. For another translation of this passage, see Johannes Zachhuber, Human Nature in Gregory of Nyssa: Philosophical Background and Theological Significance (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2000), 221. For more on the role of the LSIH blend in Gregory’s eschatology, see Lucas F. Mateo-Seco, “Eschatology,” in The Brill Dictionary of Gregory of Nyssa, eds. Lucas F. MateoSeco and Gulio Maspero (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2010), 284. Gregory uses the same blend in Against Eunomius: “It was therefore because the chief feature of our calamity was that humanity had lost its kinship with the good Father and come to be outside the divine supervision and care, that the Shepherd of the whole rational creation, leaving on the heights the unerring and supernal flock, for love of humanity pursued the lost sheep, I mean, our race; for the human race is the last and least fraction, the race which in the figure of the parable was the only one of the rational hundred that went astray through evil,” Against Eunomius 3.10.7, in

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This passage has deserved to be quoted at length not only to show again the usefulness of the CGF network in theological constructions, but also to demonstrate how intricate these theological concepts may be. Gregory’s elaboration of the LSIH blend allows him to convey through it significant aspects of the Nicene orthodoxy. By remarking that the shepherd takes up “the whole sheep” on his shoulders, not the skin without entrails, Gregory maps this seemingly trivial detail onto incarnation as an element of the Christian soteriological framework, thus creating an important theological argument: Christ came to save the entire human nature, that is, body and soul.⁸⁰ Gregory’s further elaboration of the blend is even more conceptually interesting because the shepherd finding the sheep and taking it upon his shoulders is mapped simultaneously onto an assumption of human nature by the divine nature of the Second Person of the Trinity. In this way Gregory defends, in the context of the Eunomian controversy, the necessity of the two natures of Christ.⁸¹ But that is not all, since he immediately activates a blend within a blend, equating the shepherd with the sheep and arguing that “when the shepherd takes his sheep upon himself, he becomes one with it.” To make his argument even stronger, he reads John 10:27 in a rather peculiar way, making the shepherd speak in a sheep-like way or “ovinely”! Finally, note how “taking up” a lost sheep is used by Gregory to express the crucial Christian notion of incarnation and how – still within the same blend – he uses the difference between a sheep and a shepherd as the conceptual basis for the difference between the two natures of Christ: “So the shepherd who has taken the sheep upon himself and speaks to us through it is both sheep and a shepherd. He is the sheep in that he has been taken up and a shepherd in that it is he who has done the taking up.”⁸²

Johan Leemans and Matthieu Cassin, eds., Gregory of Nyssa: Contra Eunomium III. An English Translation with Commentary and Supporting Studies: Proceedings of the 12th International Colloquium on Gregory of Nyssa (Leuven, 14 – 17 September 2010) (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2014), 222.  Zachhuber, Human Nature in Gregory of Nyssa, 222.  Zachhuber, Human Nature in Gregory of Nyssa, 222.  Zachhuber, Human Nature in Gregory of Nyssa, 222. Not being a patristic scholar, I am not qualified to present the nuances of Gregory’s theology and hence have been reliant on Zachhuber. Yet as a cognitive linguist I must stress that it is precisely the LSIH blend that is the conceptual basis for Gregory’s theological reasoning. Cf. Brian E. Daley’s remark that the parable of the lost sheep with humanity “as the strayed sheep ‘taken up’ by the word” is one of the texts Gregory “repeatedly uses (…) to construct his theory of the continuing identity of the Word within the saving transformation of the human being he assumed,” Brian E. Daley, “Divine Transcendence and Human Transformation: Gregory of Nyssa’s Anti-Apollinarian Christology,” in Re-Thinking Gregory of Nyssa, ed. Sarah Coakley (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 74, note 11.

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It is worth noting here that Cyril of Jerusalem also uses the same sheep/ shepherd dichotomy to teach catechumens on the two natures of Christ: “[Christ is] a Sheep because of His human nature, a Shepherd because of the loving-kindness of His Godhead.”⁸³ Augustine uses the LSIH blend in his doctrinal battle with the Donatists, mentioned several times in this study. In his elaboration of the LSIH blend he presents the Donatists as “partly found” sheep: For the sake of this one sheep the shepherd left the ninety-nine in the mountains and was torn by Jewish thorns as he looked for it. But it is still being sought; even though partly found, let it be sought still. (…) Through the work of those who choose God’s commandments, weigh them mentally, and love them, the sheep is still being sought; and through the blood of its shepherd, poured out and spread abroad, the sheep is being found among all nations.⁸⁴

What strikes us first is that Augustine substantially modifies the scenario of the parable, presenting the sheep – rather illogically – as “partly found” and “still being sought.” This allows him to present the Donatists as both belonging to Christ and at the same time still outside his church. He also equates Jesus’ crown of thorns from one input space with the thorns that sometimes do injure the real shepherd who might be looking for a lost sheep in thorny bushes from the other input space, undoubtedly making his blend more suggestive to his audience. Note furthermore the anti-Semitic tone of Augustine’s argument, when he presents the thorns as “Jewish,” thus making the Jews responsible for Christ’s passion part of the blend. Note finally that he separates seeking the sheep from finding it at the end of the passage: while Christians, whenever they “choose God’s commandments, weigh them mentally, and love them” participate in seeking the lost sheep, only Christ through his blood is able to find it. Origen’s, Gregory’s, and Augustine’s variants of the LSIH blend have two input spaces; Cyril of Alexandria’s elaboration of the same blend is more complex and it has an additional input space containing elements of the biblical account of the Fall mapped onto elements of the parable of the lost sheep. Additionally, he expands “the lost sheep scenario” by introducing wolves into his network: The human race had wandered off from love for God and inclined toward sin. They were therefore banished from the sacred divine sheep pen, I mean the precincts of paradise. Fall-

 Catechesis 10 3, in Cyril of Jerusalem, The Works of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, vol. 1, 196.  Exposition 32 of Psalm 118 7, in Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 99 – 120, ed. Boniface Ramsey, trans. Maria Boulding, vol. III/19, WSA (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2003), 495.

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ing ill because of the calamity wrought by the devil (who tricked them into sin) and death (which sprouted from sin), they fell prey to wolves that were truly bitter and implacable. But when Christ was shown to be the good shepherd of all, he laid down his life for us in the struggle against this pair of wild beasts.⁸⁵

One can find a number of deep soteriological truths in Cyril’s blend. He tells his audience that humanity, conceptualized as sheep, wandered off from God (“the lost sheep scenario”) and as a result was banished from paradise, pictured as the “divine sheep pen.” Being the lost sheep outside the sheep pen, it fell prey to two wolves: sin and death. Christ’s task as the good shepherd was not merely to find the lost humanity; in order to rescue it and bring it back he had to kill the two wolves. He managed to do so, yet he had to lay down his life. Again, we must stress that Cyril’s words are not a rhetorical show-off and the metaphorical language underlying this passage is not merely an ornament in his argument. On the contrary, it is the LSIH blend that allows him to carry out the complex theological reasoning that results in what might be considered a brief, yet doctrinally-rich, mini-treatise. Finally, let us look at Pseudo-Macarius’ elaboration of the LSIH blend in which humanity is both “the lost sheep” and “a sick sheep”: As a shepherd is able to heal the scabby sheep and to protect it from wolves, so the real Shepherd, Christ, came and alone was able to heal and to convert the lost and scabby sheep, namely, humanity, from the scab and leprosy of sin.⁸⁶

In Pseudo-Macarius’ passage the parable of the lost sheep is embedded into real shepherding experience. Additionally, the sinful state of humanity is mapped simultaneously onto two separate elements in the other input space: illness and being lost. We have seen earlier how “a sick sheep” is presented by some patristic authors as being contagious to other members of the flock. Here however, the dramatic condition of the sheep, rendered by an expression employing the conceptual frameworks of both input spaces, namely the “leprosy of sin,” allows Pseudo-Macarius to introduce the image of the lepers healed by Christ in the gospels (Luke 17:11– 19). “The intellectual sheep, humanity,” healed in a similar way by Christ, may join other rational creatures and “enter into the heavenly Church of the Lord.”⁸⁷  Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John 10.11– 13, in Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, ed. Joel C. Elowsky, trans. David R. Maxwell, vol. 2, Ancient Christian Texts (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015), 63.  Homily 44 3, in Pseudo-Macarius, The Fifty Spiritual Homilies and The Great Letter, 223.  Homily 44 4, in Pseudo-Macarius, The Fifty Spiritual Homilies and The Great Letter, 224.

Conclusion In this study we have examined the metaphor of the church as a flock and its role in the shaping and development of early Christian doctrine. We have seen that despite it being virtually absent from the New Testament writings, this metaphor quickly became one of the most important conceptualizations of the church as a socio-religious community to be utilized by patristic authors. We examined its three main subcategories: the the flock of the church is the flock of Israel blend, the shepherds are the shepherd blend and the the church is God’s flock blend and their respective roles in early Christian thought. Our analysis revealed that the conceptualization of the church as a flock was not used merely to distinguish members of the clergy from ordinary Christians. On the contrary, it was an important conceptual instrument that enabled patristic authors to create a number of novel meanings and to develop and shape Christian doctrine in the period of its most dynamic growth. This detailed presentation of the ubiquity and versatility of the conceptualization of the church as a flock in patristic literature would not have been possible without Conceptual Blending Theory and its methodology. The explanatory power of this theory allowed us to demonstrate that all instances of shepherding imagery in the patristic texts discussed in this study, however varied and sometimes apparently disparate, are actually products of the same cognitive process of conceptual integration, this involving the projection of various aspects of the religious experience of early Christians onto the domain of shepherding experience. In other words, they are variants or subcategories of the same, basic blend. The diversity of these subcategories implies that we could find them in virtually every genre of patristic literature: first of all in homilies, but also in church orders, exegetical or doctrinal treatises, letters and polemics. This diversity is related to what might be called – to borrow an analogy from chemistry – the “reactivity” of all the blends discussed in this study and especially the the church is God’s flock blend: they easily “react” with other concepts and fit into various contexts of church teaching and experience. That is why we could follow how the church fathers used them not only to define the respective roles of the laity and the clergy but also to shape early practices of penance; to develop the theologies of baptism and soteriology including post-Nicene Christology; to fight heresies; and to promote the unity of the church. How might we explain in cognitive linguistic terms the great popularity of the blends with shepherding imagery in patristic thought? It seems that there are at least two reasons for the phenomenon. Firstly, all of the blends discussed in this study meet the two important requirements for successful conceptual https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110582970-014

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integration, these being the “human scale” and “coming up with a story.”¹ Although they convey the patristic authors’ intended meanings through the prism of “ovine” and not human experience, they nevertheless achieve “human scale” as they are grounded in the cultural, background knowledge of shepherding. We could also see that many take a more or less explicit narrative form; for example the blends with the organizing frame of the lost sheep parable such as the the lost sheep blend or the a straying sheep blend, but also the beware of the wolf blend, the baptism is branding sheep blend or the the lost sheep is humanity blend. This narrative form facilitates their elaborations and the creation of new meanings. Secondly, and more importantly, virtually all of the blends we have discussed in this study take their shepherding elements from the Bible, which implies that by utilizing such blends patristic authors could claim divine authority for their arguments. In this way the blends were to a large extent God’s word addressed to patristic audiences adapted to specific conditions and circumstances. From this it follows that the blends with shepherding imagery we have investigated must be regarded as something more than merely “interpretative keys” to the biblical text. Seen from the cognitive-linguistic perspective, they turn out to be indispensable conceptual tools that enabled patristic authors to extract their intended meanings from the Bible, itself understood as God’s word. Since Christians were “sheep,” every reference to sheep in the biblical text could be utilized – through conceptual integration – to create a specific meaning depending on the context of the reference and its interpretation or – to put it in cognitive linguistic terms – depending on how a patristic author ran a particular blend. Recall how Tertullian proves in 8.3.1, by means of the the lost sheep blend, that because Christ did not bring back a dead sheep to the fold, Christians who committed mortal sins could not be – for this very reason – restored to the community of believers. Or recall how an apparently trivial element of real shepherding experience, that is branding sheep, when it becomes the basis of the organizing frame of the baptism is branding sheep blend, generates – through conceptual integration – significant doctrinal meanings like belonging to Christ’s flock not to Satan’s flock (9.1.1). Finally, recall how by emphasizing that Christ/the shepherd takes up “the whole sheep” on his shoulders, not the skin without entrails, Gregory of Nyssa communicates to his readers the fundamental soteriological truth, that God has saved the entire human nature (9.3). I am not suggesting that patristic authors created new theological meanings or addressed practical issues of early church life solely by means of the blends

 Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 312, 323, 346.

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with shepherding imagery, since even in this book we could see how conceptual integration allowed them to doctrinally develop the Adam-Christ typology by means of other blends. Yet my study provides reams of evidence that blends with shepherding imagery occur systematically in all genres of patristic literature, are utilized by major patristic authors, and are so deeply ingrained in the minds of the church fathers that they treat conceptualizing the church as a flock as the most natural, if not the only possible, way of speaking about this socio-religious community. This leads to several conclusions, important both to biblical and patristic scholars and to cognitive linguists. Beyond those that concern cognitive linguists, there are some conclusions to be drawn which might be of some importance to biblical and patristic scholars. The examination of patristic literature in this study – necessarily selective – has shown the usefulness of the cognitive-linguistic approach and more specifically, the usefulness of the conceptual integration perspective in exploring patristic thought, revealing those of its aspects that had previously been hidden from us. Deploying cognitive linguistic analytical instruments allowed us to see that numerous and varied instances of utilizing shepherding imagery in patristic texts are in actuality linguistic realizations of the same conceptual network. Thus, cognitive linguistic analysis provides significant insight into patristic thought, showing that the same cognitive process was responsible for the church fathers’ creation of novel meanings in many areas of Christian thought. In this way, the conceptualization of the church as a flock turns out to be a unifying perspective in patristic thought and its presence in such disparate domains of Christian doctrine as church discipline, baptismal theology, soteriology and Christology makes the whole doctrine much more coherent and compelling to believers. No less importantly, the cognitive linguistic approach helps biblical scholars to see better how biblical shepherding imagery is utilized by patristic authors and thus to follow the Wirkungsgeschichte of particular biblical passages (see 8.7). What is more, this approach helps us understand why many of the passages examined in detail in the previous chapters were so original and imaginative: it turns out that there is one cognitive-linguistic mechanism underlying these and many other metaphors investigated in this study, and this explains the presence of such stunningly rich patristic imagery. This singular device is, of course, conceptual integration. Interestingly, we could also see that conceptual integration allowed patristic authors in many cases to present to their audiences interpretations of a biblical text that clearly contradicted its original meaning, for example when in John Chrysostom’s elaboration of the the lost sheep blend the lost sheep became “the black sheep” or when Augustine, while interpreting the same parable, suggested that the good shepherd should sometimes resort to a lash (8.3.1). Last but not least, our analysis has also

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shown that depicting the church as a socio-religious community in shepherding terms was an original Christian invention, not taken over from the ancient GrecoRoman culture (as was the case with the cathedra as the symbol of the bishop’s authority, the basilica, or the territorial division of the church into dioceses). Therefore, we may say that cognitive linguistics provides a valuable contribution to patristic scholarship with regard to the study of the origins of the conceptualizations used by the church fathers. Returning to cognitive linguistics, there are some conclusions ready to be drawn that could point the way towards further research of this topic area. As mentioned at the outset of this book, cognitive linguists seem so far to have devoted little attention to conceptual blending in religious language. In addition, there has been (it seems) no systematic study of conceptual networks as “meaning generators” in a major religious system. This monograph fills this gap by providing ample evidence for the key role of conceptual integration in creating novel meanings in Christianity. The analysis of patristic texts has shown that their authors, deploying stock elements from the folk model of shepherding, were able to create a wide range of variants of the the church is a flock conceptual network and used them systematically as efficient conceptual tools in their argumentation and reasoning. The network was used not only to form a simple conceptualization of the hierarchical structure of a typical Christian community; on the contrary, we find its linguistic manifestations in many Christian concepts and contexts, not only ecclesial but also exegetical and doctrinal. One of the most important findings of this study is the demonstration of how the Shepherds are the shepherd network was used to legitimize the divine authority of members of the clergy as leaders of a religious community. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how patristic authors, virtually all of them bishops, could have been able to claim this authority without having this specific conceptual tool at their disposal. Equally important is the demonstration of the versatility of the church is God’s flock network with its many subcategories. Some of them strengthen the hierarchical conceptualization of a Christian community (for example the bishops are rams or the teaching is feeding sheep), yet a lot of them are employed by patristic authors to conceptualize highly abstract theological concepts like baptism, Christ’s saving mission, or Nicene Christology and thus must be regarded as the “building blocks” of Christian doctrine. This study has also corroborated another axiom of cognitive linguistics, namely the creativity and ingenuity of language users in creating and running blends. We could see in patristic texts wolves turned into sheep, how the shepherd (Augustine) speaks to wolves with the authority of the Lamb, we could see how newly baptized Christians become branded or shorn sheep, sinners are mangy sheep, the whole of humanity is the lost sheep, and members of the cler-

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gy turn out to be cows offering spiritual milk to laypeople from the two udders of the Old and the New Testament! Given these and other ingenious (bizarre?) elaborations of the blends discussed in this study we can risk saying that – if necessary – conceptual integration with shepherding imagery could have allowed patristic authors to create virtually any meaning they wished and to justify it biblically. We could also observe how conceptual integration may manifest itself in nonlinguistic forms in a religious system in the form of material anchors such as cilicium, bishop’s staff, or the mosaics with shepherding imagery found in early Christian baptisteries. As mentioned in 2.4, many of the conceptualizations examined above were created on the fly, especially during the act of preaching, yet we could also see how such networks created by one patristic author were taken over by other authors who then elaborated upon them – like the shorn sheep blend that we find in Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose and Augustine – or simply reused them as in the case of the network defining the roles of the members of the clergy and the members of the laity in 8.1. Thus, this study allowed us to follow the process by which the the church is a flock network was transformed into a well-established conceptualization, one that would soon become the most important metaphor for the Christian community, completely overshadowing earlier conceptualizations such as the metaphor of the church as the body found in the Pauline letters. This fact is another piece of evidence that highlights the key role of conceptual integration in the construction of religious systems and the mental representations of believers’ religious identity. Finally, it is worth noting that we could follow this process practically from its beginnings. Whereas the origin of many conceptualizations used by Westerners literally “since time immemorial” may be reconstructed only hypothetically,² we could see the church is a flock metaphor – to borrow once again an analogy from chemistry – in statu nascendi, observing its growing significance in patristic literature. It is said that those objects that apparently seem to be the most obvious are often the most fascinating objects to study and the image of the church as a flock seems to be a fine example. This monograph has revealed its hidden complexity and conceptual potential. It has shown how the early Christian authors, employing a limited stock of shepherding imagery, were able to create a wide array of concepts, all of which pertained to the experiences of members of a new religious community, one that emerged from the belly of Judaism in the first century CE but that would soon become its very own beast. It also allowed us to see how

 See, for example, the Mind-as-Body-Metaphor and its origin in Proto-Indo-European language, Sweetser, From Etymology to Pragmatics, 23 ff.

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conceptual integration was, in the patristic era, the catalyzer of novel meanings essential in the development of Christianity as a major world religion, with the image of the church as a flock as its hallmark.

Appendix Table 2: Variants of the church is a flock network in selected patristic texts discussed in the monograph



NETWORK

AUTHOR & WORK

Donatists are stubborn guests/lost sheep

Augustine, Sermon  

 the flock of the church is the flock of Israel

Didascalia Apostolorum .; Cyprian of Cathage, Letter  ., Letter to Stephen , Letter . – ., Letter  .; Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio  ; Augustine, Sermon , Sermon  ; Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Twelve Prophets.

 shepherds are the Shepherd Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Romans .; Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus .; Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration  ; Tertullian, De Fuga in Persecutione .; Leo the Great, Sermon  ; Cyprian of Carthage, Letter  ., Letter  ; Basil of Cesarea The Morals  ; Augustine, Sermon  , Sermon  , Letter , .  the Pope is Peter

Leo the Great, Sermon  .

 shepherds are sheep

Augustine, Tractate  on the Gospel of John , Exposition on the Psalms  ; Leo the Great, Sermon  .

 bishops are rams

Didascalia Apostolorum ; Basil of Caesarea, Homily  .

 the apostles are rams

Augustine: Letter  , Exposition of Psalm  .

 the church is God’s flock

Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Philadelphians ,; Cyprian of Carthage: Letter  ., Letter  , Letter to Magnus , Letter to Quintus , The Unity of the Church, , Jealousy and Envy ; Didascalia Apostolorum .; Apostolic Constitutions .; Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration : In Defence to His Flight to Pontus ., Oration  ; Augustine, Sermon  , Sermon  , Sermon  , Letter  , Exposition  of Psalm ; John Chrysostom, Six Books on the Priesthood, On the Incomprehensible Nature of God .; Theodore of Mopsuestia, Letter  .

 teaching is feeding sheep

Didascalia Apostolorum, .; Basil of Caesarea, Homily  ; Cyril of Alexandria, Against Nestorius .; Ambrose, On Widows .; Augustine, Sermon  , Sermon  , Sermon  , Letter  (To Alypius) ; Caesarius of Arles, Sermon  ., Sermon  ; John Chrysostom, Homily  (On Repentance and Prayer) , Homily on Saint

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Table : Variants of the church is a flock network in selected patristic texts discussed in the monograph (Continued) NETWORK

AUTHOR & WORK Drosis ; Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, Baptism and the Eucharist ; Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration  ; Gregory the Great, Regula Pastoralis .; Gregory of Elvira, Tractatus de epithalamio in Cantica Canticorum ..

 the lost sheep

Didascalia Apostolorum .; Tertullian, On Purity ; Cyprian of Carthage, Letter to Antonianus () .; John Chrysostom, Second Homily on Eutropius , An Exhortation to Theodore after his fall ., Homily on the Statues .; Augustine, Letter  (De Correctione Donatistarum) , Letter .

 a straying sheep

Gregory of Nyssa, On the Baptism of Christ; Augustine, Sermon  ; Leo the Great, Sermon  .

 a sick sheep

Apostolic Constitutions ., .; Origen, Homily on Joshua .; Cyprian of Carthage, The Dress of Virgins , Letter  ., The Unity of the Church ; Ambrose, Exposition of the Christian Faith , Prologue against Arians ; Augustine, Admonition and Grace ; Jerome, Commentary on Galatians ..; Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Letter .

 beware of the wolf

Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Philadelphians .; Didache .; Cyprian of Carthage, Letter  ; Ambrose, Exposition of the Gospel According to Luke ., On Widows .; Basil of Caesarea, Letter  ; Augustine, Letter  , Letter  , Letter  , On Baptism .., Answer to the Letters of Petilian the Donatist ., Commentary on the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount .; Optatus of Mileve, Against the Donatists .; John Chrysostom, Discourse Against Judaizing Christians ,  – ; Leo the Great, Letter , to the Bishop of Aquileia 

 beware of dogs

Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Ephesians ; Cyprian of Carthage Letter  .; Anonymous, A Treatise Against the Heretic Novatian; Basil of Caesarea, A Letter of Condolence to the Church of Neo-Caesarea; Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration  .

 bishops are dogs

Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration  ; Jerome, Epistle  ; Augustine, The Answer to the Letters of Petilian, the Donatist ..

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Table : Variants of the church is a flock network in selected patristic texts discussed in the monograph (Continued) NETWORK

AUTHOR & WORK

 wolves are turned into sheep

Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration  Against the Arians and Concerning Himself ; Ambrose, The Patriarchs ., The Holy Spirit .; Augustine, Sermon  , Sermon  , Sermon  , Tractate  On the Gospel of John .

 baptism is branding sheep

Acts of Thomas, ., The History of John the Son of Zebedee; Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer and on the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist ,; John Chrysostom, Bapitsmal Instruction  ; Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns of Epiphany . – ; Gregory of Nazianzus, The Oration on Holy Baptism ; Basil of Caesarea, Exhortation to Baptism; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis  ; Pseudo-Macarius, Homily  .

 baptism is washing sheep

Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis  .

 shorn sheep

Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis  ; Ambrose, On the Mysteries .; Augustine, On Christian Teaching . .

 baptism is a soldier’s tatoo Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer and on the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist ..  God’s flock is one flock

Cyprian of Carthage, The Unity of the Church , Letter to Pope Stephen  – , Letter to Magnus , Letter to Quintus ; Augustine, Sermon  , Letter , Sermon  , Tractate  on the Gospel of John , Sermon  , Letter  .

 the lost sheep is humanity

Origen, Homily on Genesis . ; Augustine, Exposition of Psalm .; Gregory of Nyssa, Antirrheticus . – ., Against Eunomius ..; Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John . – ; Pseudo-Macarius Homily  .

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Wilken, Robert L. The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012. Wilken, Robert L. The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. Wright, David. “Tertullian.” In The Early Christian World, vol. I – II, edited by Philip F. Esler. London and New York: Routledge, 2004, 1037 – 47. Yarnold, Edward. The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation: The Origins of the RCIA. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1994. Young, Frances M. Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2002. Young, Frances M., and Andrew Teal. From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and Its Background. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010. Ysebaert, Joseph. Greek Baptismal Terminology: Its Origins and Early Development. Nijmegen: Dekker & Van de Vegt, 1962. Zachhuber, Johannes. Human Nature in Gregory of Nyssa: Philosophical Background and Theological Significance. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2000. Zhong, Chen-Bo, and Julian House. “Dirt, Pollution, and Purity: A Metaphorical Perspective on Morality.” In The Power of Metaphor. Examining Its Influence on Social Life, edited by Mark J. Landau, Michael D. Robinson, and Brian P. Meier. Washington D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2014, 109 – 31.

Index of Subjects Adam 33 – 37, 169, 186, 189 Adam-Christ typology 33 – 36, 196 Adam is Christ/Christ is Adam 33 – 36 Albigensian Crusade 150 Ambrose of Milan 53, 77, 105, 111, 115, 138, 141 – 143, 154, 170 – 175, 177 – 179, 198, 200 – 202 Ammianus Marcellinus 97 Anastasius I Dicorus 101 Andrea da Firenze 150 Apokatastasis 189 apostles are rams 110, 200 arianism 119, 77, 140, 138, 88, 5 Arius as a sick sheep 155 Augustine 23, 29, 31, 36 – 37, 40 – 43, 49, 53, 55 – 57, 59, 72 – 73, 78 – 79, 83, 85, 97 – 102, 105, 108, 110 – 112, 114 – 116, 119 – 120, 126 – 129, 134 – 137, 140 – 141, 143 – 144, 149, 167 – 168, 175 – 177, 184 – 186, 188, 192, 196, 200 – 201 – Augustine vs Donatists 40, 127, 132, 136, 137, 148, 181, 185, 201 Auxentius Mercurinus (an Arian bishop) as a wolf 138 Bach, Johann Sebastian 48 Baktēria (bishop’s staff) 24, 77 Basil of Caesarea 83, 85, 108, 111, 135, 146, 149, 164 – 166, 197, 200 – 201 Baptism 1, 2, 4, 9, 19, 24, 25, 26, 29, 30, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 47, 50, 62, 67, 69, 87, 118, 127, 128, 131, 136, 141 157 – 184, 194, 196 baptism is branding sheep. See conceptual blends baptism is washing sheep. See conceptual blends Bede the Venerable 92 – 93 Benjamin 142 beware of dogs. See conceptual blends beware of the wolf. See conceptual blends bishops are dogs. See conceptual blends bishops are rams. See conceptual blends

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110582970-017

Caesarius of Arles 115 – 116, 132, 200 Ceretius (bishop) 135 Chaucer, Geoffrey 169 Christian iconography 5, 24 – 25, 50, 92, 179 Christology 2, 4, 9, 19, 47, 62, 87, 156, 190, 196 – post-Nicene christology 194, 197 church is a vine 46 church is Christ’s body. See conceptual blends church is God’s flock. See conceptual blends church unity 4, 5, 79, 87, 97, 152, 156, 157, 181 – 186 cilicium 24, 26, 179 – 180, 198 clashing of the input spaces in the blend 20, 67, 92, 153 Clement of Alexandria 21, 49, 76, 77, 200 Clement of Rome 75 composition of the blend 14, 17, 61 Conceptual Blending Theory 10 – 25, 194 conceptual blends – Adam is Christ/Christ is Adam 33 – 36 – apostles are rams 110, 200 – baptism is branding sheep 15, 30, 60, 128, 136, 157 – 167, 184, 195, 202 – baptism is washing sheep 53, 60 168 – 169, 202 – beware of dogs 144 – 147, 201 – beware of the wolf 56, 60, 70, 97, 105, 114, 130, 132 – 140, 195 – bishops are dogs 147 – 149, 201 – bishops are rams 108 – 112 (see also rams) – church is a flock 3, 49, 57, 60, 197 – church is a vine 46 – church is Christ’s body 46 – 47 – church is God’s flock 3, 4, 24, 25, 56 – 58, 60, 62, 87 – 93, 96 – 108 – Donatists are stubborn guests/lost sheep 40 – 42 – flock of the church is the flock of Israel 3, 4, 18, 53, 57, 60, 61, 62 – 65, 71 – 74, 194, 200

220

Index of Subjects

– lost sheep 56, 97, 121 – 130, 186, 195 – lost sheep is humanity 22, 60, 186 – 193 – removed stone is resurrected Christ 38 – 39 – shepherds are the Shepherd 3, 65 – 67, 75 – 86 – shorn sheep 170 – 178 – sick sheep 70, 97, 104, 122, 124, 150 – 156 – straying sheep 60, 61, 97, 121, 122, 130 – 132, 195 – teaching is feeding sheep 53, 60, 85, 88, 97, 112 – 120, 161, 197 – the good shepherd is a sacrificial lamb 55 – the pope is Peter 79, 80 – wolves turned into sheep 97, 140 – 143 Conceptual Integration Theory 10 – 25, 194 Constantius II 138 Cornelius (pope) 130, 152 Council in Trullo 103 cross-space mapping in the blend 12, 14, 17, 35, 40, 41, 159, 171 – 173 cultural experience of shepherding 28, 30, 49, 51, 58, 61 – in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean 47 – 50 – in the Greco-Roman world 49 – 50 – in the Hebrew Bible 51 – 52 – in the New Testament 53 – 58 Cyprian of Carthage 71, 72, 82 – 84, 99 – 100, 111 – 112, 129 – 130, 134, 135, 145, 152, 153, 159, 167, 181 – 184, 200, 201 Cyril of Alexandria 73, 74, 85, 103, 119, 132, 135, 186, 188, 193, 200, 202 Cyril of Jerusalem 56, 158, 159, 164, 166, 168, 170 – 173, 178, 192, 198, 202 Cyrus, the Persian king 48 David 51, 52, 53, 162 Decian persecution 71, 82, 83 – 84, 129, 152 Devil 21, 40 124, 130, 131, 142, 165, 166, 193 – devil’s flock 159, 160, 166

Disease (contagious) of sheep as a metaphor – for heresy 4, 67, 96 – 97 – for moral misconduct 4, 59, 67, 96 – 97, 122, 150 – 153, 193 Dogs 145 – 149 – shepherd dogs 52, 149 domains 11, 12, 19, 28, 45 – source 64, 65, 66, 121, 151, 170 – target 64, 65, 66 Dominicans 149 – 150 Donatists 40, 42, 114; see also Augustine vs Donatists Donatists are stubborn guests/lost sheep 40 – 42 Donne, John 19 double-scope networks 20, 22, 40, 42, 99, 102, 124 Dura Europos baptistery 179 Eclogues (Virgil) 49 elaboration of the blend 14, 35, 36, 83, 102, 106, 108, 118, 124, 127 – 130, 135, 136, 144, 148, 149, 154, 155, 160, 164, 165, 171 – 175, 177, 185, 191 – 193, 196 emergent structure of the blend 13, 14, 24, 26, 67 encyclopedic knowledge 28, 54, 61, 69, 90, 110, 111 Ephrem the Syrian 140, 149, 162, 165, 166, 202 Epictetus 49 Esau 168 – 169 Eusebius (a Donatist bishop) 135 Eusebius of Caesarea 135 Eve 189 Fabian (pope) 84 false teachers as wolves 2, 90, 91, 133, 134, 144, 145 folk model of shepherding 3, 11, 14, 19, 27, 29 – 30, 58 – 60, 67, 90, 94, 96, 113, 145, 197 flock of the church is the flock of Israel. See conceptual blends Foucault’s notion of “pastoral power” 86 fusion in the blend 61, 63

Index of Subjects

Gelasius (pope) 101 generic space of the blend 12, 17, 33, 62 goats 24, 26, 168, 180 – goat’s hair 24, 26, 180 good shepherd 8, 29, 40, 42, 50, 56, 60, 65, 66, 73, 75, 81, 84, 100, 107, 112, 125, 127, 130, 196 – Christ as the Good Shepherd 24, 49, 50, 53 – 55, 80 – 83, 140, 162, 179, 184, 186 – 189, 193 Gregory of Elvira 118 Gregory of Nazianzus 72, 77, 88, 100 – 104, 118, 119, 139, 140, 147, 149, 158, 159, 162, 164, 200 – 202 Gregory of Nyssa 21, 38, 39, 40, 131, 171, 176, 186, 188, 190, 191, 195, 201, 202 Gregory the Great 3, 85, 103, 119, 136, 179, 189 Heretics 122, 147, 150, 154, 155, 183 Hermes Kriophoros 24, 49, 50 Hilary of Arles 92 Hilary of Poitiers 139 Homer 48 Honoratus of Thave 85 human scale of the blend 11, 16, 22, 195 Idealized Cognitive Model 27 Ignatius of Antioch 75, 99, 145, 200, 201 input space(s) 5, 12 – 14, 16 – 26, 31 – 35, 37 – 42, 45 – 48, 51, 53, 55, 56, 58 – 70, 72, 75, 85, 93, 104, 109 – 113, 115, 116, 119 – 122, 126, 128 – 130, 134, 137, 141, 144 – 147, 153, 157, 159, 168, 170, 178 – 181, 192, 193 – biblical 39, 185 – church 19, 38, 39, 41, 58, 61, 64, 66, 68, 109, 121, 122, 133, 144, 163, 166, 173, 175, 178, 185, 188 – shepherding 21, 58, 102, 111 Irenaeus of Lyons 34, 134 Jacob 38, 39, 51, 115, 142, 164 Jacob of Serugh, 149 Jerome 69, 73, 78, 98, 105, 110, 111, 147 – 149, 155, 159, 160, 178, 201

221

John Chrysostom 21, 43, 54, 60, 61, 102 – 105, 117, 118, 124 – 127, 139, 151, 162, 200, 201 John Henry Newman 100 John of Antioch 132, 153, 154 Jovinianus 147 Julian the Apostate 139 Laban 40, 51 Lactantius 49, 177 Lapsi 71, 129, 130 lavacro 176 – 178 Leo the Great 21, 53, 79, 80, 131, 137, 138, 200, 201 lost sheep as a metaphor – for a sinner 123 – 131 – for Donatists 40 – 42, 183 lost sheep. See conceptual blends lost sheep is humanity. See conceptual blends Marcion of Sinope as a wolf 135 material anchors for blends 22 – 25, 77, 180 Maximilla (a Montanist prophetess) as a wolf 135 Maximus of Tyre 48 Maximus the Confessor 186 Maximus the Cynic 147 mental spaces 12, 31 Midrash 57 mirror networks 17 – 18, 32 – 36, 37, 60, 62, 63, 65 mosaics with shepherding imagery 24, 25, 92, 179, 198 Musonius (bishop) 135, 146 Narsai 160 Nestorius 85, 110, 119, 135 Nietzsche, Friedrich 58 Novatian 182, 183 – as a dog and a wolf 145 – 146 Optatus of Mileve 137 organizing frame of the blend 11, 12, 14, 17 – 21, 27, 31, 33, 38 – 40, 42, 58, 63,

222

Index of Subjects

65 – 68, 90, 96, 115, 121, 132, 153, 159, 168, 170, 195 Origen 43, 73, 144, 145, 151, 152, 176, 186, 188 – 190, 192, 201 parables – the Last Judgment 56, 164, 165, 168, 180 – the Lost Sheep 5 22 29, 40 – 43, 56, 57, 97, 121 – 130, 186, 187, 188 – 194 pattern completion in the blend 14, 17, 42, 59, 123, 124, 128 pastoral literature 49, 61 Paul 1, 29 – 33, 36, 57, 72, 73, 76, 88 – 91, 103, 114, 127, 141, 145, 146, 151, 154, 155, 184, 187, 198 – as a shepherd for Augustine 93 – as a wolf turned into a sheep for Ambrose 142 – 143 – as a wolf turned into a sheep for Augustine 143 – 144 Paulinus of Nola 77, 167 Pelagians 137 penance 4, 47, 87, 121, 126, 129, 156, 183, 194 Perpetua 29 pesher interpretation of the Bible 32 Peter 79, 80, 84, 92, 105, 115, 182, 185 – as a shepherd to Augustine 93 Petilian 137 Philo of Alexandria 49 Pius XII 68 Plato 28, 48, 49 poimainein 57, 89 poimenas 57, 87, 89 poimnion 57, 87, 89, 90, 91 Polycarp 76 Possidius 43 predator(s) 21, 28, 30, 58, 67, 113, 131, 145. See also wolves Priscillianists 135 Pseudo-Macarius 164, 188, 193, 202 Rachel 38, 39, 115, 142 rams 28, 107, 109, 110 regatta blend 17 – 19 removed stone is resurrected Christ. See conceptual blends

Republic (Plato); two visions of shepherd’s role in 28, 48, 49 Romulus and Remus as brought up by a shepherd 49 rumination 120 – 121 Schafe können sicher (Bach’s cantata) 48 Severian of Gabala 158 shepherds are the Shepherd. See conceptual blends Simon of Montfort 150 shorn sheep. See conceptual blends sick sheep. See conceptual blends sin as sheep’s fleece 27, 171 single-scope networks 18 – 20, 37 – 40, 60, 90, 91 130 Siricius (pope) 147 Snowflake kid 20 – 22 soteriology 2, 4, 9, 19, 55, 62, 87, 156, 157, 194, 196 sphragis 158 – 161, 166 – 168 Stephen (pope) 72, 182 straying sheep. See conceptual blends supersessionism 63 syncopation of time in the blend 61 teaching is feeding sheep. See conceptual blends Tertullian 29, 35, 36, 81, 82, 125, 126, 159, 177, 195, 200, 201 tessera (soldier’s tattoo) 158 – 159 the good shepherd is a sacrificial lamb 55 The Lord is my Shepherd blend 12 – 14, 18 The Persians (Aeschylus’s tragedy) 48 the pope is Peter 79, 80 Theodore of Mopsuestia 103, 118, 159, 161, 163, 180, 200, 202 Theodoret of Cyrrhus 154 Thomas Aquinas 156 typological exegesis 8, 17, 32, 54, 63 – in Ambrose 142 – 143 – in Paul 33 Vandals 85 Venantius Fortunatus

169

Index of Subjects

Vincent (the Rogatist bishop of Cartenna) 88, 129, 185 vital relations – inner-space 16, 33, 35, 61, 80, 142, 171 – outer-space 16, 33, 35, 61, 63, 69, 80, 142, 171 Way of Salvation (Andrea da Firenze’s fresco) 150 wolves 2, 4, 48, 59, 67, 90, 94, 107, 132 – 150, 161, 193

223

– in sheep’s clothing 58, 88, 97, 99, 114, 123, 124, 129, 147 – turned into sheep 94, 97, 140 – 143, 197 – death and sin as two wolves 188, 192 – 193 – false teachers as wolves 90, 91, 145 – Donatists as wolves 132, 136, 137 – non-Christians as wolves 105 – ravenous 56, 134, 148, 160 – savage 57, 89, 134, 152, 153 wolves turned into sheep. See conceptual blends

Index of Ancient and Medieval Sources Ancient Sources Ambrose Epistula Extra Collectionem 15, 1 147 Exposition of the Christian Faith 5 154 Exposition of the Gospel According to Luke 7.52 138 Letter of Pope Siricius 4 147 On the Mysteries 7.38 173, 174 On Widows 11.70 114 The Holy Spirit – 2.109 141 – 2.108 143 The Patriarchs 12.7 142 Ammianus Marcellinus Roman History 27.3.14

97

Apostolic Constitutions – 2.17 – 2.19 – 6.18

153 107 153

Apostolic Fathers Clement of Rome – The First Letter to the Corinthians 45 Didache – 13.3 – 16.3 Ignatius of Antioch – Letter to the Ephesians 7 – Letter to the Philadelphians – 2.1 – 3.2 – Letter to the Romans 9.1 Shepherd of Hermas – Parable 6.2 – Parable 6.3 – Parable 9.33 Augustine Admonition and Grace 15 Answer to Faustus, a Manichean 22.85 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110582970-018

76 63 134 145 134 99 75 94 94 94

154 29

Answer to the Letters of Petilian the Donatist – 3.10.11 148 – 74.164 137 Commentary on Galatians 15 93 Commentary on the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount 2.12 140 Confessions 8.3 129 De Doctrina Christiana – 2.2.7 43 – 2.2.10 176 Exposition of Psalm 3, 7 177 Exposition of Psalm 8, 12 189 Exposition 3 of Psalm 32, 8 134 Exposition of Psalm 43, 12 73 Exposition of Psalm 64, 18 110 Exposition 1 of Psalm 70, 5 186 Exposition 32 of Psalm 118, 7 192 Exposition of Psalm 126, 3 79, 92 Exposition of Psalm 145, 12 31 Letter 35, 4 136 Letter 76, 4 136 Letter 93 129 –9 185 – 11 88 Letter 125, 2 119 Letter 149 177 Letter 185, 23 127, 128, 184 Letter 228, 14 85 Letter 231, 6 110 Letter 237, 9 135 On Baptism 6.1.1 136 On Marriage and Concupiscence 177 Sermon 46 –4 73 –5 73 – 16 132 – 20 114 – 24 114 – 30 185 Sermon 47, 12 78 Sermon 112, 8 40

Index of Ancient and Medieval Sources

Sermon 128, 7 115 Sermon 131, 2 120 Sermon 135, 6.7 78 Sermon 137, 12 85 Sermon 138, 5 184 Sermon 146, 1 102 Sermon 147, 2 79, 182 Sermon 164, 11 168 Sermon 169, 8 141 Sermon 175, 8 143 Sermon 279, 2 144 Sermon 296, 5 83 Sermon 313b, 177 Sermon 352, 1 120 Sermon 392, 4 78 The Punishment and Forgiveness of Sins and the Baptism of Little Ones 1.40 167 The City of God 18.21 49 Tractate 5 on the Gospel of John 14 136 Tractate 13 on the Gospel of John 5 79, 83 Tractate 26 on the Gospel of John 5 120 Tractate 45 on the Gospel of John 10 141 Tractate 47 on the Gospel of John –1 112 –3 93, 184 Tractate 4 on the First Epistle of John 11 36 Basil of Caesarea Exhortation to Baptism 164 Homily 13 –1 110 –2 110 A Letter of Condolence to the Church of NeoCaesarea 146 Letter 90, 2 135 The Morals 80.15 83 Caesarius of Arles Sermon 1 –3 – 11 – 12 – 13 – 19 Sermon 4, 4 Clement of Alexandria Paedagogus

115 115 132 115 116

– 1.6 – 3.12 Council in Trullo Canon 64 Cyprian of Carthage Jealousy and Envy 12 Letter 8 – 1.1 – 2.1 Letter 20, 1.2 Letter 43, 6 Letter 51, 5 Letter 55, 15.1 Letter 57 – 2.1 – 4.3 – 5.1 –5 Letter 59, 15.2 Letter 66, 8.3 Letter 68, 4.2 Letter 149 Letter to Magnus 5 Letter to Pope Stephen 4 Letter to Quintus 2 The Dress of Virgins –3 – 17 The Unity of the Church –8 –9 Cyril of Alexandria Against Nestorius 2.7 Commentary on John 10.11 – 13 Commentary on Zephaniah 3 Letter 12, 3 Letter 69, 3 Celestine’s letter to Cyril 4 Cyril of Jerusalem Catechesis 1, 21 Catechesis 3 – 12 – 16

225

77 21

103

100 84 84 82 135 132 129,145 83 72 130 152 99 72 149 182 182 183 111 152 182 153

119 193 74 85 103 136

164 171 170

226

Index of Ancient and Medieval Sources

Catechesis 10, 3 Catechesis 15, 25

190 168

On the Baptism of Christ The Making of Man

38, 40, 131 21

Didascalia Apostolorum (sections according to the Funk edition) – 2.10 124 – 2.19 71, 106, 107, 109, 123 – 2.26 63 – 2.34 106 – 2.5 113 – 2.57 107 – 3.8 65

Gregory the Great Homily 15, 3 Homily 19 Regula pastoralis 1.2

85 136 119

Irenaeus of Lyons Against Heresies – Preface to Books I and II 2 – 21.10

134 34

Ephrem the Syrian Hymns of Epiphany 5.1 – 2

162

Eusebius of Caesarea Ecclesiastical History 5.13 Vitae Constantini 65

135 181

Jerome Commentary Commentary Commentary Commentary Homily 12 Homily 90 Letter 69, 8

Gregory of Nazianzus Oration 1, 7 Oration 2 – 10 – 34 – 116 – 64 – 65 – 117 Oration 6, 9 Oration 9, 6 Oration 11, 7 Oration 17, 8 Oration 18, 47 Oration 26, 3 Oration 32, 12 Oration 33 –1 – 15 Funeral Oration on St. Basil 71 The Oration on Holy Baptism 15 Gregory of Nyssa Against Eunomius 3.10.7 Antirrheticus 151.14 – 152.29 Homily 7 on the Song of Songs Homily 15 on the Song of Songs

on on on on

Ephesians 2.615 Ezekiel 11.34 Galatians 3.5.8 Jeremiah

73 110 155 69 98 160 78, 148

119 100 100 101 101 101 77 72 77 101 149 147 103 88 140 164 162

190 190 171, 176 21

John Chrysostom Baptismal Instruction 10.16 162 Discourse Against Judaizing Christians 4, 1.2 61, 139 An Exhortation to Theodore after his fall. Letter 1, 9 125 Homily 4, 1 116 – 117 Homily 59 54 Homily 82, 5 118 Homily on Genesis 57, 33 21 Homily on Pelagia, Virgin and Martyr 1 60 Homily on Saint Drosis 1 117 Homily on the Statues 13.12 126 – 127 On the Incomprehensible Nature of God 1.1 102 On the Priesthood – 2.1 105 – 2.2 104 – 2.4 104, 105 – 4.4 105 Second Homily on Eutropius 5 124 Lactantius Divine Institutes II, 6.13

49

Index of Ancient and Medieval Sources

Leo the Great Letter 1 to the Bishop of Aquileia 1 Sermon 3 –2 –4 Sermon 5, 2 Sermon 16, 7 Sermon 29 Sermon 40, 2 Sermon 83, 3

138 79 80 79 80 53 21, 131 80

Optatus of Mileve Against the Donatists 6.8 Origen Contra Celsum 4.78 Homily on Genesis –2 –9 Homily on Joshua 7 –4 –6 Paulinus of Nola Epistle 32, 5 Life of St. Ambrose 3.11 Possidius The Life of St. Augustine 7

137

227

The Letter of Maria the Proselyte to Ignatius 1.1 – 1.2 70 Pseudo-Macarius Homily 12, 13 Homily 44 –3 –4

164 193 193

Tertullian An Answer to the Jews 13 36 De Fuga in Persecutione 11.2 81 On Purity 7 125 The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity 4.8 29

144 189 189 152 151

167 77

The Apostolic Tradition – 3.4

108

Theodore of Mopsuestia Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer and on the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist –6 118 – 13.17 161 Theodoret of Cyrrhus Letter 150

154

A Treatise Against the Heretic Novatian

145

Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals Second Epistle of Pope Fabian

148

Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica II – II, q. 11 a. 3

156

43

Pseudo-Ignatian writinga

Medieval Sources Bede the Venerable Commentary on the Seven Catholic Epistles

92

Index of Biblical Sources and Pseudepigrapha Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Genesis 4:2 29:1 – 10 29:10 49:24 49:27

51 38 115 52 142

Exodus 12:13 12:15 – 19 13:7 32:32 34:25

164 151 151 81 151

Leviticus 27:32

52

Numbers 27:17

62

1 Kings 21:19, 23145 22:17

63

Job 30:1 42:17 Psalms 8 23 23:4 28:1 28:9 30:11 42 43:12 44:12 44:22 67:32 74:1 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110582970-019

52 27

189 53, 157 77 110 52 180 157 73 52 57 143 52

76:20 77:20 78:52 79:13 80:1 90:10 95:7 119:176

191 52 52 52 52 27 52 130

Proverbs 26:11 27:25 – 6

145 113

Song of Songs 1:7 – 8 53 1:8 185 4:1b 174 4:2 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174,175, 176, 177, 178, 179 4:7 174 6:2 – 3 74 6:6 169 Isaiah 40:11 49:9 – 1052 53:6 56:10 56:10 – 11 Jeremiah 5:17 12:3 13:17, 20 23:1 23:1 – 4 33:13 50:6

52 53, 57, 130 144 52

52 52 52 146, 181 52, 62 52 130

Index of Biblical Sources and Pseudepigrapha

Ezekiel 34 52, 53, 62, 71, 72, 73, 106, 119, 146 34:1 – 10 52 34:1 – 31 71 34:3 72, 73 34:3 – 6 71 34:3 – 10 72 34:4 71, 130 34:4 – 6 72 34:4, 16 71 34:5 130 34:6 119 34:10 – 16 71 34:13 114 34:17 109, 110 34:22 – 23 52

229

Hosea 4:16 5:12 – 14

28 55

Micah 2:12 5:4

52 52

Zechariach 10:2 – 3 11:4 – 17 11:7 11:15 – 17 13:7

52 52 52 52 56

Sirach 18:13

52

New Testament Matthew 5 5:13 6:21 7:6 7:15 8:12 10:6 10:16 12:11 – 12 13:33 13:44 – 46 15:21 15:24 16:6 – 12 18:12 – 14 25:31 – 46 25:33 26:31

131 115 164 145 56, 88, 134, 145 82 57 134 49 151 164 145 57 151 29, 56 164, 166 56 56

Mark 6:34 9:49, 50 14:27 – 28

56 115 56

Luke 2:7 2:8 – 18 8:18 10:3 12:32 13:21 14:15 – 24 14:19 14:23 – 24a 15:1 – 7 15:3 – 7 17:11 – 19 John 10 10:1 – 14 10:1 – 16 10:1 – 21 10:9 10:10 – 21 10:11 – 12 10:11, 14 10:12 10:16

118 53 81, 82 56 56, 87, 88, 90 151 40 43 42 40 29, 56, 121, 165, 166 188, 193

28, 56, 57, 81, 84, 119 55, 65, 75 54, 55, 65 54 112, 184 54, 87 84 54 181 181, 185

230

Index of Biblical Sources and Pseudepigrapha

10:26 10:27 10:27 – 28 10:28 15:1 – 8 15:6 21 21:15 21:15 – 17 21:15 – 18

55 137, 185, 190, 191 167 55 46 82 57, 115 84 92, 112 54, 56, 65, 75, 87

Acts 3:15 20:28 – 30 134

38 57, 87, 88, 90, 93, 99, 108, 133,

Romans 5:12 – 19 8:36 11:1 12:5 1 Corinthians 1:10 1:10 – 16 3:2 5:6 9:4 – 7 9:7 12:12, 27 15:4

32, 34 29 142 45

Ephesians 1:13 4:11 4:12, 16 4:16 4:30 5:23 – 32 Philippians 3:2 3:5

30, 145, 146 142

1 Timothy 3:15

46

2 Timothy 4:7 – 8

99

Titus 3:10 Hebrews 3:3, 6

185 184 76, 114 151 29 57, 72, 73 45 38

158 57, 73, 87, 88 45 46 158 45

154

46

1 Peter 2:25 4:17 5:2 – 4 5:8

57 46 57, 87, 88 131

2 Peter 2:22

145

2 Corinthians 1:22 11:2

158 46

1 John 5:16

125

Galatians 2:11 5:7 – 9 5:9

93 151 155

Revelation 7:3 19:7, 8 21:9

159 46 46

26 131

160 160

Pseudepigrapha Acts of Thomas 25

161 – 162

Index of Biblical Sources and Pseudepigrapha

231

Ascension of Isaiah 3:24

91

Gospel of Thomas 107

122

Gospel of Philip

37

The History of John the Son of Zebedee

160