Divine Bodies Resurrecting Perfection in the New Testament and Early Christianity 2018956755

Table of contents :
Acknowledgments / ix
Introduction
The Missing Piece / 1
CHAPTER 1
Identity / 22
CHAPTER 2
Integrity / 41
CHAPTER 3
Functionality / 66
CHAPTER 4
Aesthetics / 89
Conclusion
Imagining Beauty and Remembering Ourselves / 114
List of Abbreviations / 123
Notes / 125
Index / 185

Citation preview

Divine Bodies

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D ivine Bodies

Resurrecting Perfection in the New Testament and Early Christianity C a n di da R . M o s s

New Haven and London

Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Calvin Chapin of the Class of 1788, Yale College. Copyright © 2019 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-­mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Set in Caslon type by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Control Number: 2018956755 ISBN 978-­0-­300-­17976-­7 (hardcover : alk. paper) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-­1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my beloved uncles James Clifford Fairbairn and Charles Marcus Clifford Fairbairn, in memoriam With gratitude for your love and enormous generosity

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Contents

Acknowledgments / ix Introduct ion

The Missing Piece / 1 C H A P TER 1

Identity / 22

C H A P TER 2

Integrity / 41 C H A P TER 3

Functionality / 66 C H A P TER 4

Aesthetics / 89 C onclusion

Imagining Beauty and Remembering Ourselves / 114 List of Abbreviations / 123 Notes / 125 Index / 185

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Acknowledgments

One of the great advantages of finishing a book is that it gives me the opportunity to thank the many individuals who helped bring this project to fruition. Jennifer Banks, Heather Gold, and Susan Laity at Yale University Press showed great patience in waiting for the manuscript and enormous sensitivity in editing and shaping its final form. Jessie Dolch was, as always, a peerless copy editor. I am fortunate to have had such remarkable women work on my writing. Without access to the libraries of the University of Notre Dame, the University of Birmingham UK, and the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, this book would be a series of smattered musings. Numerous academic colleagues and friends were generous enough to share unpublished material, send references, provide support, and read portions of this book before it was published: Harry Attridge, Jessica Baron, Sarah Bond, Jan Bremmer, Katherine Brown, Tony Burke, David Cheetham, Adela Yarbro Collins, Andrew Davies, Ismo Dunderberg, John Fitzgerald, Jörg Frey, Laura Gawlinski, Brad Gregory, Outi Lehtipuu, Blake Leyerle, David Lincicum, Christine Luckritz Marquis, Timothy Luckritz Marquis, John Meier, Shannon Monaghan, Taylor Petrey, and Michael Whitby. I had the opportunity to pre­sent some of the ideas in this book at lectures at Anderson University, Moravian Seminary, the University of the Incarnate Word, and Yale University. The majority of the contents of the book was subsequently delivered as the 2017 Cadbury Lectures at the University of Birmingham. ix

I am grateful to my now employer for the invitation that forced me to finish this ­project. I am grateful to my family not only for their support as I completed this project, but for knowingly and unknowingly helping with the research. My children—Max and Luke Foa—­ encouraged me to watch Coco, and my husband, Justin, pointed out the ways in which it was relevant to my ­project. I am thankful for the brilliant graduate students at the University of Notre Dame who participated in my seminars on the “Resurrection of the Body” and offered insights and readings that might not otherwise have occurred to me. Particular thanks go to Jeremiah Coogan, who worked as a research assistant on this project and saved me from numerous mistakes. Similarly, two anonymous readers for Yale University Press made generous and helpful suggestions that improved the final form of the manuscript. All remaining errors are my own. As always, I must reserve special thanks for those few close friends whose efforts surpassed what can be reasonably expected of other human beings: Christoph Markschies tracked down references and artwork for me and never failed to provide salient criticism and helpful insights. Meghan Henning read numerous pieces, supplied bibliography, and graciously shared her own work. And, as has been the case for the entirety of my career, Joel Baden, my “academic spouse,” read, reread, edited, and commented on various versions of the final form. I do not know what I have done to deserve such good friends. This book is dedicated to my uncles James and Charles Fairbairn. Though I already have two remarkable fathers, my uncles each unassumingly stepped in to care for and parent me when they saw that I needed their help. For each of them the subject matter of this book is relevant in particular ways. Charles taught me a great deal about how bodily integrity and happiness do not necessarily align and, from the time I was very x / Acknowledgments

young, shared with me his own journey with life-­threatening illness and helped me come to terms with my own. The idea for this book came as I recovered from a kidney transplant in 2007. There are no words to describe the debt I owe Jamie for this gift. In my opiate-­fueled postoperative state I wondered whether I would have to return my new kidney to him in the resurrection or whether, in some cosmic game of finders-­keepers, it was mine forever. Chronic, at times life-­threatening, illness is hard to live with, but I owe everything I have accomplished to these extraordinary men and their wonderful dearly departed sister. I only hope that I can be worthy of the gifts you have given me.

Acknowledgments / xi

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Introduction The Missing Piece In the twelfth century a new kind of relic entered the densely crowded marketplace of medieval religious paraphernalia. Almost overnight, but suddenly seemingly everywhere, the Holy Prepuce, or foreskin of Jesus, appeared in monastic and ecclesiastical centers throughout Europe. Christian doctrine held that Jesus had ascended to heaven in bodily form, but according to the Gospel of Luke and in keeping with Jewish tradition and practice, Jesus had been circumcised eight days after his birth. The story brimmed with commercial potential; was a discarded piece of holy flesh still present on earth and ripe for veneration and economic exploitation?1 It is easy to see why the holy foreskin was a valuable and potent relic, but whether by design or not, these scraps of desiccated leather made a grand theological statement about the nature of the resurrected body. The resurrected Jesus was missing a piece. According to the Gospels of Luke and John, Jesus ascended to heaven in the body in which he died, and, we might extrapolate, long abandoned bits and corporeal debris were left behind. Hair, baby teeth, foreskin, and sloughed-­off skin cells did not rise with the Savior. Even in their own day the foreskins and other fleshly relics of Jesus furrowed the brows of medieval theologians. Pope Innocent III, too, worried about the ramifications of stating that parts of Jesus’s body had been left behind, concluding, “Better to commit all things to God, than to dare to define something else.”2 The pope’s fears were well placed; what

1

would it mean for the preservation of the whole person in perpetuity if parts of the body were lost along the way? In the abstract, life after death raises a host of questions. In the first place, is it important to be “me” in the resurrection, or is simply being joined to a transcendent deity sufficient? If I lack consciousness in heaven, is it really “me” that continues to exist? If being “me” is important, then what essential elements of myself need to be preserved or reformed in order for the resurrected “me” to be the same “me” that exists now? These questions grow more specific, as we have already seen, as we move into the minutiae of real bodies. If the resurrection of my body is important, does it matter if my corpse was eaten by animals or buried? If God pieces my flesh back together from dispersed atoms, what will happen to all the skin cells, hair, nail clippings, and bodily secretions discarded over the duration of my life? If too much matter is supplied to the body, I might be monstrous, but if not enough is recaptured, would I even be myself ? If some matter escaped but I still resembled myself, would I still be myself, or would I just be a copy? What moment of my life would be the template for my resurrected body? Would my body be resurrected in the condition in which I breathed my final breath? Or would I be resurrected as a young girl at my most classically beautiful? If, during my lifetime, I had inhabited a body that I had wanted to change, would I be able to do so? Or even if I were ambivalent about the issue, would it be necessary that I change for the maintenance of some heavenly ideal? Or is it important that my body bear the marks of the psychophysical experiences that made me who I am—my skin tone, my race, my gender, my impairments? Is there any distinction between accidental attributes and essential markers of identity? Can I lose the freckles, but keep my gender? Will failing eyesight be restored in the eschatological field hospital? Does it matter if any of the parts of my body function 2 / Introduction

as they did when I was alive? And if they do not function, why would I have them at all? Finally, is the resurrection of me-­ness just a question of reanimating myself in splendid isolation, or will social relations also be restored? Will I be reunited with loved ones, and if so, will they recognize me? What about inanimate objects that were integral to my life? Let’s say that I used a prosthetic limb for the duration of my life—may I take it with me to heaven, or will I be fitted with some organic yet alien version? Now, imagine that I lost a limb at the age of fifty—is the answer the same? And while we are talking about age, which “me” will be resurrected— the me of today or the me of tomorrow morning? At stake, even in this truncated list of questions, is the very nature of identity and personhood. In asking these questions in this way, we have already assumed—although perhaps we should not—that there is a single, stable, coherent self that can be refashioned. When we write about the resurrection, we write about who we are, who we want to be, what we think is essential to our humanity, and the modes of annihilation that most terrify us. Anxieties About the Self What I have described so far are a succession of anxieties about the identity, nature, and continuity of the self. Some modern philosophers contest the idea that we even have a stable self. For very different reasons, speaking of a self among ancient philosophers is equally problematic. The problem is that the category of the self, as it is used in a post-­Cartesian world, implies a certain self-­reflective notion of the individual that is often anachronistically imported into the ancient world.3 The primary conversation partners in the ongoing debate about the nature of selfhood are classicists Richard Sorabji and Christopher Gill. The Introduction / 3

former defines the self as an “individual embodied owner of a body and of psychological states.”4 The latter sees the self in antiquity as something formed in relationship to a larger community: the “structured self ” is “the combination of psychological (and psychophysical) holism and naturalism with certain radical ethical claims that have their roots in Socratic thinking.”5 The goal of ancient philosophy, Gill writes, was “the development of complete wisdom [that] brings about both a unified and structured type of knowledge and a stable and coherent character.”6 It is certainly true that many of these authors do not have an individuated sense of self even though they do have a sense of identity.7 In the context of death, however, community members can often find themselves: funerary inscriptions and burial rituals often testify to an interest in the fate of the deceased.8 Moreover, there does appear to be extensive conversation about the nature of the “true self ” and anxieties about the continuity of me-­ness over time, bodily integrity, reassembly of atoms, loss of memory, punishment, and purpose. Their questions remain consistent despite the fact that they disagree on matters of epistemology, cosmology, and anthropology. The self of the Stoics is more holistic than that of Aristotle, but a Stoic and Aristotle would agree that a sense of self survives bodily change. These anxieties are, I would argue, integral not only for thinking about identity, but for thinking about the preservation of individual identity after death and the judgment of the person after death. When scholars have discussed the influence of Greco-­ Roman philosophy on ideas about the resurrection in Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity, they have by and large discussed the influence of metaphysics and cosmology and the problems that philosophy presented to the idea of the resurrection of the body. The relationship between anxieties about the self in general and the resurrection of the dead, however, is rarely ­mentioned.9 4 / Introduction

The Study of the Resurrection In both their scripture and their tradition, Christians ground their evidence for the resurrection in the Easter event: Jesus was crucified and, three days later, was raised from the dead in the same body as before and ascended to heaven. Following this template, Christians too will be raised from the dead to a new, immortal life. In the terms of the Apostles’ Creed, “[Christians] believe in . . . the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” In the first centuries of the Common Era, every aspect of the resurrection of Jesus and the general resurrection of the dead was debated. From the nature of the resurrected “body” to the literal or metaphorical nature of death, to the role of the flesh in the resurrection, to the number of resurrections, to the timing of the general resurrection both in the life of the individual and in the grand scheme of salvation history—every detail was open to contestation.10 Over time, a consensus emerged that, whatever other changes the Christian would undergo at the point of baptism, the resurrection of the body would take place at the end of time and would involve the reconstitution of the whole psychosomatic self—both body and soul. This sense of general consensus did not normalize the resurrection: the idea of reanimated corpses rising from the tombs in which they were laid called for and continues to call for scientific and philosophical explanation. How is such a thing possible? Why would it even be desirable? For historical-­critical scholarship, which grew out of the Enlightenment and alongside the rise of modern science, the resurrection of the body is the kind of idea that demands attention.11 One explanatory strategy has been to trace the history of the idea to pre-­Christian influences. Noting the prominence of belief in the immortality of the soul among ancient philosophers, Oscar Cullmann argued that the resurrection of the body has its Introduction / 5

roots in the apocalyptic worldview and broader cultural world of Second Temple Judaism.12 More recently, scholars have identified the relatively sudden appearance of apocalyptically styled discussions of resurrection in the Hellenistic period as the religious by-­product of either generalized or particular suffering. George Nickelsburg’s seminal work Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism and Early Christianity begins with three chapters on religious persecution. Similarly, Alan Segal sees an investment in the resurrection of the body as an act of resistance by a marginalized, disenfranchised group.13 It was under the shadow of political oppression and with diminished expectations of divine intervention in the present that ancient Jews began to pro­ject their hopes for justice, restitution, and revenge into the distant (often postmortem) future. Resurrection was the belief that rose from the flames of persecution. The perception that the resurrection of the body was the facile theological production of a beleaguered community has similarly affected understandings of resurrection among early Christians. When Christian writers insist on dragging the body into the eternal realm, their arguments are treated as part of the apocalyptic cultural and religious worldview that followers of Jesus had inherited from the Judaism(s) of their day.14 If, historically speaking, scholarship has traced the origins of the resurrection of the body to the historical experience of persecution, the competing idea of the immortality of the soul has been exclusively aligned with Greco-­Roman philosophy.15 In the view of most ancient philosophers, the Judeo-­Christian doctrine of inherently corrupt flesh being resurrected and teleported to the transcendent realm of an incorruptible deity is so metaphysically sticky that pristine dispassionate philosophical discourse could not possibly have generated it. As a result, when followers of Jesus deny the possibility of a resurrected body or 6 / Introduction

appeal to Stoic notions of a nonphysical “spiritual body,” they are often cast as more committed to the intellectual principles and scientific findings of their day. This perceived division between historically derived ideas about the resurrection of the body and intellectually reasoned arguments about the immortality of the soul ignores both the manifold evidence for notions of embodied afterlives in various ancient Greek and Roman literary traditions and the diversity of ancient Jewish views of the afterlife.16 It is not only scholars of Christianity who treat discussions of the afterlife as fundamentally irrational. Classicists have sometimes explained the increase in speculation about the afterlife in late antiquity as the by-­product of the increasingly turbulent political affairs of the period.17 As the Roman world collapsed, it is sometimes argued, the marginalized subject could hope only “to return to the world-­beyond-­this-­world which is his home, to the god-­beyond-­the-­god-­of-­this-­world which is the true god, to awaken part of himself which is from the beyond and to strip off his body which belongs to this world.”18 Even those who disagree with the idea that bodily resurrection is a by-­product of social and political alienation continue to position the development of this idea within the framework of Christianity’s path to power.19 But, perhaps, the more pertinent question is whether interest in the resurrection of the flesh was always merely a projection of a group’s sociopolitical status. In the history of scholarship, thinking about the resurrection has been a responsive mode of thought clouded by grief. It is a contingent doctrine. To be sure, increased interest in the afterlife often corresponds to the experience of political pressure, social marginalization, and outright persecution. In these contexts, the restitution of the body at the resurrection can function as a means of resisting efforts to control bodies through violence and torture.20 Desperation generates a concern about the end of Introduction / 7

the world, the fate of the individual, and the possibility of divine justice. But the historical impetus for thinking about resurrected bodies does not render those thoughts irrelevant or contingent. The distinction between dispassionate philosophical inquiry about the fate of the soul and a historically generated frenzy of speculation about the afterlife of the body not only ironically and self-­consciously imitates a Platonist cosmology, but also serves to discredit the work of those who think about bodies. Such a suggestion almost comically rehearses ancient philosophical binaries about reason and passion, philosophy and history, souls and bodies.21 Early Christian speculation about the resurrection of the flesh functions, in part, as a response to the experience of persecution and martyrdom, but martyrdom is not the impetus for belief in the resurrection of the flesh. Moreover, as we will see, those authors who scrutinize the mangled body of the martyr work within a broader conversation about bodily continuity and identity. Historical events provide a focusing lens, but they do not create the conversation.22 Alongside this genealogical pursuit, other scholarly treatments of the resurrection of the body in early Christianity have focused on its development among and eventual victory over a pantheon of early Christian hypotheses about the afterlife. The institutionalization of corporeal resurrection at the expense of other, more ethereal forms of postmortem subsistence has served both as a cipher for the triumph of “orthodoxy” over “heresy” and as an emblem of Christianity’s theological distinctiveness.23 For some, this distinctiveness has functioned as a kind of apologetic proof: that such an audacious and unique claim could be made about the corpse of Jesus is evidence of the truth of the Christian message. No small movement could sprout so quickly and spread so far on the back of such a parochial fallacy. If Christ was not raised from the dead, Paul would say, our faith 8 / Introduction

has been in vain. In the vacated space of the empty tomb Christianity self-­consciously laid its foundations, and, like intellectual pilgrims, theologians continue to return there to ground the faith.24 In tying resurrection to the world of ancient Judaism, Cullmann overlooked the relatively commonplace stories of reanimated heroes among ancient Greeks and Romans. Many thought that a god or a hero could rescue human beings from Hades and restore them to their mortal lives. More broadly speaking, funerary rituals assumed that the shadowy dead had human needs like thirst and hunger, and artwork portrayed the dead as they were during their lives. Though not images of resurrection, this complex of practices nurtured an understanding of the afterlife in which the deceased were no longer embodied in a fleshy container, but their shades or souls were described as if they were.25 As Drew Gilpin Faust has remarked about the development of ideas about the afterlife during the American Civil War, the distress that accompanies the experience of death intensifies Christian interest in the fate of the body. In the same way that technology and medicine rapidly advance during military conflict in ways that serve nations during peacetime, so too the theologies of death that were stretched and reshaped by political pressure continue to have enduring value to Christian communities after the smoke clears.26 This is not a book about either ontology or origins, but caricatures of resurrection are relevant because of the ways in which philosophy, science, art, medicine, drama, dirt, dress, and culture intersect in the conversation about the afterlife. The intra-­ Christian debate about the continued existence of the body in the immortal realm took place, as we will see, within broader philosophical discussions about anthropology, immortality, the purpose of existence, and theodicy. These debates included, in Introduction / 9

ways that would frame and anticipate Christian arguments, more specific controversies about where individual identity resides, the continuity of self, the integrity of the person, the nature of death, and the function of the parts of the body.27 It would be a mistake to position those Christians who advanced arguments for the immortality of the soul as being more sophisticated than those who defended the resurrection of the body, not only because second- and third-­century Christian conversations about bodily resurrection self-­consciously interacted with philosophical principles, but also because of the ways in which all genres of Christian thinking share the anxieties voiced in philosophical thinking about the self. These common concerns are as much the product of a world in which medical technology was unable to stabilize the body and preserve bodily functions as they were the result of abstract erudite thought. Even the natural process of aging set the body on an irrevocable path of change and functional disintegration: vision and hearing loss, challenges to mobility, and failing memory loom large in the imagination of the ancient world, as they do today. One did not have to be dying or intellectually elite to wrestle with existential questions of the self.28 Moreover, Christian views about the afterlife were more nuanced, complicated, and exploratory than heresiologists and early-­twentieth-­century scholarship lead us to believe. The resurrection of the body could mean many things; it did not always mean resurrection of the flesh.29 Aspects of the arguments of the so-­called gnostics at times overlap with those of the self-­ proclaimed orthodox.30 For notably different theological reasons, both the Treatise on the Resurrection from Nag Hammadi and Irenaeus’s Against the Heretics argue that gender difference would be preserved in the resurrection.31 We should imagine debates about the resurrection less as a duel between focused opponents and more as a lively discussion that is as much about 10 / Introduction

scriptural exegesis and reasoned speculation concerning the ideal self as it is a defense of some essential idea of what it means to be ­Christian. The Pauline Script If philosophers use classic examples like the Ship of Theseus, the Growing Problem, Dion and Theon, or, in modern discourse, the Trolley Car Problem as motifs to stimulate thinking, Christians use scriptural texts. Foremost among them when it comes to the resurrection of the body is 1 Corinthians 15. In response to the protests of others that there will be no general resurrection of the dead, Paul states quite directly that the eternal fate of the Jesus follower rests on the intimate relationship between the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of everyone else. “If Christ has not been raised,” he says, “then your faith has been in vain” (1 Cor 15:​14). Paul moves into a now canonical set of evocative images about the resurrected body to answer the questions “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” The first of these, the image of the seed that is buried in the ground and rises to new life, emphasizes the material continuity and formal discontinuity. But the varying kinds of flesh and differentiated glory of the heavenly bodies emphasize hierarchy. Throughout, there is a contrast between better and worse states: heavenly bodies are superior to earthly ones (15:​40); pneumatic bodies are superior to psychic ones (15:​44); the heavenly human is superior to the earthly one. The motif is polarity: dusty bodies belong on earth and celestial ones in heaven. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, and corruption does not inherit incorruptibility” (1 Cor 15:​50). At the same time, Paul continues to insist on transformation: what is perishable will put on imperishability, and what is mortal will put on immortality.32 Introduction / 11

Paul’s meaning is difficult to discern in large part because of the varying ways in which he uses the language of the “body” and “flesh” throughout his oeuvre. All the same, there does not seem to be much material continuity between the earthly and heavenly bodies. The former is made of flesh; the latter is a heavenly body made up of “glory.” The earthly body is a “soulish body” animated by a perishable soul, while the resurrected body is a “spiritual body” animated by pure spirit (pneuma). There is no resurrection of the flesh or resurrection of the earthly body. Neither the human spirit nor the human soul is said to survive death, and yet somehow, we are continuous with our earthly selves.33 Efforts to explain this process have appealed to the anthropology and metaphysics of Stoicism. A cluster of scholars has argued that it is only within Stoic cosmology that heavenly phenomena are described as bodies and can be said to consist of spirit.34 For Paul the body is made up of three kinds of material “stuff ”: flesh (sarx), psyche (psychē), and spirit (pneuma). For some, the resurrection is a process of “sloughing” in which the resurrected body sheds its heavier material elements as it rises, resulting in a pneumatic core.35 The difficulty with this reading, however, is the manner in which it fails to account for Paul’s language of transformation: Paul writes that we will all be changed from something into something else (1 Cor 15:​51). In response, Troels Engberg-­Pedersen has posited that the process described here is one of substantive alteration: what was previously a body made up of flesh and blood is now a pneumatic body.36 The model for this process of transformation, he argues, is the conflagration: the physical transformation of the entire world into a pneumatic state. Christians will be fully transformed into pure pneuma, and as a result of this change, they might lose the kind of individual embodied identity and self-­consciousness that they had before. 12 / Introduction

There is no doubt that 1 Corinthians 15 is the touchstone to which later generations of Christian thinkers return, but if Engberg-­Pedersen’s analysis of Paul is correct, then he is one of the few to understand him. Paul writes that the bodies with which we are raised are “glorified bodies,” but the long arc of Christian tradition has tended to read this less as a description of the stuff of which the bodies are made (Paul’s probable meaning) and more as a description of the body’s quality (they are glorious, not glorified).37 In this way the resurrected body has become an ideal type of a human body. If Paul intended us to think of the spiritual body as something fleshless, then it is safe to say that, paradoxically enough, for much of Christian history he lost the debate even as he supplied the scriptural vocabulary. For however one reads Paul, his forceful statement that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom” (1 Cor 15:​50) is flatly rejected by other canonical texts. The resurrected Jesus in the Gospel of Luke instructs the disciples, “Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (24:​39). Paul may not care about resurrecting people as their fleshly selves, but many other followers of Jesus did.38 The cleft between Paul and other Christian opinions creates something of an irony: Paul exhorts us to ground the idea of the resurrection of the dead in the resurrection of Jesus, but the earliest writers to ruminate on that resurrected body portray it in physical terms.39 In the Gospels of Luke and John, the only two gospels in which Jesus is subjected to narrative autopsy, there is an expectation that the body of Jesus is available and accessible to human touch. It is, in other words, physical and tangible. Christian tradition, however, produces an even more complicated narrative of the resurrection in which the metaphysics of the resurrected body are supplied by a reading of the passion narratives, but the terms for the description of that body are furIntroduction / 13

nished by Paul. We will be resurrected in our fleshly bodies like Jesus, but those bodies will be, as Paul wrote, “glorified.” Thus, even if Paul’s central point is ignored, his imagery is not. His insistence that the resurrected body is heavenly, that it is changed, that it is raised in power, and that it is imperishable and immortal has supplied the logic for later descriptions of the resurrection of the body. The resurrected body is assumed to sprout from the physical body that dies and decays, but the narratives about the resurrected body of Jesus do not form the paradigm for the resurrected bodies of everyone else. Instead, readers return to 1 Corinthians 15. Onto Paul’s assertion that the resurrected body will be heavenly, two thousand years of interpreters have mapped their own culturally informed values about bodily perfection. “The stories of our high tradition,” Caroline Walker Bynum has written, “are a significant component of what we think with. Hence our self-­ reflexivity, our tendency to study ourselves, is a mark of the self we carry with us as we [like Narcissus] bend over the pool.” It is perhaps for this reason that we have ended up here—­regularly espousing a hybrid vision of the resurrection that is neither Paul’s nor Luke’s, but wholly and unmistakably our own.40 The Work of the Resurrection Within Christianity, resurrection has played a very particular, pivotal role; it both refers back to the grounding events of Easter and gestures forward to the eventual fate of humankind. In the early church, it provided the material foundations for the construction of Christian identity, was used to create and police as-­yet-­unchartered doctrinal boundaries, and helped to ground ethical practice in expectations about the future. Paul and second-­century apologists and heresiologists use bodily 14 / Introduction

resurrection in their writings as a defining marker of Christian identity and a litmus test for orthodoxy.41 The rhetorical and sociological strategy of identifying and evaluating a group on the basis of its members’ views about the afterlife does not begin with Christian apologists. Long before self-­described “orthodox Christians” began to assert themselves, beliefs about the afterlife were a means by which one identified and caricatured others. In his description of the various “philosophical sects” that made up ancient Judaism, the historian Josephus includes a summary of the views of the Essenes, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees on the question of the immortality (or not) of the soul after death. The Essenes, we are told, subscribe to a complicated view of the afterlife, akin to that of “the Greeks.” They believe that bodies are corruptible but that the soul is immortal. The Pharisees, he adds, subscribe to the idea of the incorruptibility of the soul and that the souls of the good will receive new bodies in the future. The Sadducees, by contrast, deny the existence of any kind of afterlife.42 These summaries were as constructive as they were descriptive: Josephus assimilates each group to one of the major philosophical schools of his day—the Sadducees have become hedonistic Epicureans, the Essenes are dualistic Platonists, and the favored surviving group, the Pharisees, are ethically motivated Stoics. That Josephus can so succinctly bind the groups together illustrates both the centrality of views about the afterlife as shorthand for ethical and metaphysical commitments and the extent to which beliefs about the afterlife can become a means by which to identify members of a group. The tight association of ethics and cosmology was felt by early Christians as well. The resurrected body could provide an aspirational ideal for daily life. Some, like Tertullian, hypothesized that shaping the body through sexual and digestive restraint Introduction / 15

would enable it to rise more quickly. Others saw mimesis as a way to anticipate the heavenly life, to draw it to oneself and to live already like an angel. For others, the heavenly life did not obligate straightforward imitation but, rather, provided a kind of purpose. Virtuous behaviors like almsgiving, simple dress, bodily continence, and martyrdom were oriented toward a particular goal. The potential for resurrection endowed the body with an end, an ethical purpose. When it came to our intuiting the divine plan and our place in it, there was now both the body as it was created in the beginning and the body as it would be in eternity. The God who creates and re-­creates looms large in these conversations, but so does the God who destroys. Resurrection is not only a display of divine power; it is a promise of justice. In the visions of the apocalypses and acts of the martyrs, the resurrected body served as the locus for eschatological hopes for redemption and revenge. Resurrecting people in order to punish them is, for the third-­century Christian writer Athenagoras, the only way to ensure that justice is properly administered. In Origen, tortured body parts are persuasive evidence for the restoration of heavenly ones. It is not the case, as is often assumed, that bodies in hell are just the logical corollary of luxuriating bodies in heaven. It is, for some authors, the administration of justice in hell that necessitates the restitution of the body in heaven. When we read of shiny, clean, clothed bodies in heaven, we should also remember the mucky filth of hell.43 Texts and Contexts to Stimulate Thought I believe it is not a coincidence that ancient anxieties about the self return so frequently to the transformative nature of death. Among the first generations of Jesus followers and self-­described early Christians, there are arguably more points of disagreement 16 / Introduction

about what resurrection means than there are points of agreement. But agreement even on basic matters of anthropology is not a prerequisite for this study. What is most striking about resurrected bodies is neither that they are constructs nor that they are immortal and idealized, but rather that they are self-­ consciously hypothetical. Even in those writers for whom the resurrected body stands in continuity with the earthly body, it always lies out of grasp. In order to bridge the temporal gap between here and the eschaton, the reader has to gloss what it means to have a body made of “glory.”44 If we can assume that heaven is a place of holy perfection, what does it mean to be sanctified? This question can be answered only with historically derived commitments to notions of nature, personhood, and perfection. In this way, the resurrected body is a prime location in which to examine our commitments, both spoken and simply felt, to what makes us who we are. The abstraction of the resurrected body is an open secret; its hypothetical nature is evident in the laborious reasoned arguments that prefigure its description. It is here, in our imagined return to paradise, that our values are most nakedly displayed. This book is about the intersection of identity and the body. Even if we were to grant the absolute dislocation of bodies from souls in the resurrection, as some would, real bodies and the values placed on real bodies continue to remain relevant. Greek mythology, philosophy, and drama speak about the “shade” and “soul” in human terms. The shade preserves the wounds of death, preserves gender, and is recognizable to loved ones. Even in Plato there is a connection between the soul and the body, in the sense that the form of the body is connected to the soul’s ability to master its emotions. In his description in the Timaeus of the rebirth of souls who had lived unjust lives, Plato writes that they would be reborn first as women and subsequently as wild animals. A similar scene in the Phaedo shows polluted souls Introduction / 17

weighed down by and imprisoned in bodies related to the character they exhibited in life. The relationship is more tersely described by Sextus Empiricus, who remarks, “the body is a kind of expression of the soul.” The body, therefore, is not wholly distinct from and in fact visibly manifests the invisible deficiencies of the individual soul. In the words of one pseudo-­Aristotelian author, body and soul resemble each other.45 The metaphysical worldview that attempts to divorce our cloddy bodies from our psychic or pneumatic ones never fully succeeds. As long as the pneumatic body continues to be described in anthropomorphized terms, it is harnessed to the aesthetics of the material world. It is tempting to think that variations in wound healing, skin tone, bodily function, beauty, and so forth would be unimportant to authors influenced by Platonism. But wherever you find anthropomorphized bodies, you find aesthetics. This is true not only of Platonism, but of language in general: it is impossible to use the human form to represent anything, no matter how insubstantial, without invoking real bodies and the values placed on the characteristics of those bodies. Take, for example, the Christian apocryphal text known as the First Apocryphal Apocalypse of John. In it the Seer asks, “Lord, those who have died from Adam up until today and those who dwell in Hades since the age commenced and those who have died until the ends of the ages, what form (will they take) when they arise?” The voice responds, “Listen, righteous John. The whole of humanity will rise in the form of thirty-­year-­olds.” The reference to the age of thirty is both an allusion to the age at which Jesus was believed to have begun his ministry and a reference to the ideal age of the mature Roman man.46 A man of thirty was at the height of his intellectual and physical powers and thus was the cultural ideal. But John persists, requesting greater specificity: 18 / Introduction

And again, I said, “Lord, they die male and female. And others (die) old, and others (die) young, and others (die as) infants. In the resurrection, what form (will they take) when they arise?” And I heard a voice saying to me, “Listen, righteous John. For even as the bees are and are not different one from another, but are all one appearance and one stature, in the same way, even those in the resurrection will all be human. They will be neither fair of skin, nor red of skin, nor black of skin; neither will they be (like the) Ethiopian with different facial features; but all will rise in one appearance and one stature. The whole of humanity will rise bodiless, just as I told you: ‘In the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God.’ ” The image of the resurrected person here relies on ancient cultural stereotypes about beauty as the mean, on the idealization of uniformity, and on the xenophobic commonplaces that informed ancient constructions of identity. Simultaneously, the text is very clear: resurrected humans are without bodies, they are like “angels of God.” It does not matter, therefore, whether or not resurrected people have fleshy bodies; they resemble heavenly bodies. And, thus, the value judgments attached to earthly form are of enduring relevance.47 Between Paul and the apologists of the second and third centuries, there is something of an analytical lacuna. There are numerous texts, both canonical and noncanonical, that sketch the resurrected body, but they are often overlooked, because the images they contain seem—in “instinctive” ways that are never vocalized or justified—incompatible with notions of heavenly perfection. Each chapter of this book uses a passage of the New Testament to explore how ancient anxieties about identity, integIntroduction / 19

rity, functionality, and aesthetics are engaged by the followers of Jesus who wrote about the resurrection. Our goal is to disentangle Pauline-­fed hermeneutical assumptions about what a resurrected body must be like from our reading of other descriptions of the resurrection of the body in the New Testament. Chapter 1 begins with the fraught question of “Identity,” or “me-­ness,” and uses as its starting point the most burdened body in the New Testament: the resurrected body of Jesus. It uses the mark of the nails in the body of Jesus to ask: How is the continuous identity of Jesus established here?48 What parts or attributes of the body signify identity, and how can the body testify to identity in an authentic way? On a related note, why have readers of the resurrected body of Jesus failed to scrutinize its contours? How do scholarly examinations of the body of Jesus reveal our own biases? Chapters 2 and 3, “Integrity” and “Function,” take seriously two underutilized passages about integrity and the resurrection of deformity, and the purpose and discontinuation of bodily functions. Our readings here serve two purposes: first, to displace our assumptions about glorified bodies, and second, to dislocate modern constructions of wholeness and perfection from ancient constructions of wholeness and perfection. If chapters 1–3 request that we reread passages of the New Testament without our assumptions of perfection, chapter 4, “Aesthetics,” does not so much challenge how we translate or read the text, but rather confronts the ways in which we have divested notions of perfection and beauty from their gritty socioeconomic roots. By using the well-­worn image of the white robes of Revelation, it asks whether the ostensibly banal aesthetics of resurrection are as innocent as they seem. By rendering the strange celestial, and the celestial oddly mercantile, we see both the ways in which heavenly bodies reinscribe sinister 20 / Introduction

social hierarchies and the latent potential to displace those hierarchies with the preservation of the grotesque. The conclusion of this book takes us from the ancient to the twenty-­first-­century world, to our own commitments and fears. It discusses both the assumptions about class and ability etched into the fabric of recent portraits of the resurrected body, and the anxieties about loss of memory and identity that underpin modern hopes for the afterlife.

Introduction / 21

1 Identity In 1801 sculptor Thomas Banks and artists Benjamin West and Richard Cosway embarked on a truly unconventional and morbid experiment. They negotiated access to the corpse of a recently hanged pensioner, seventy-­three-­year-­old James Legg; hung the cadaver on a cross; flayed the skin from the rigid body; and made a cast.1 To this day, the cast remains the property of the Royal Academy of Arts. Banks’s intent was to produce an accurate image of the crucified body of Jesus, one that would represent the embodied nature of that moment with anatomical accuracy. Banks, West, and Cosway performed their experiment in a period of medical history notorious for its interest in corpses and dissection, but this was not the first time in history when this sort of thing was attempted. According to the surgeon who helped them gain access to Legg’s remains, they were inspired by the work of Michelangelo. In an apocryphal story that circulated in the nineteenth century, Michelangelo tied a model to a wooden cross and stabbed him in the side in order to produce the physical effects of the crucifixion. Making a cast of the body, too, had its own illustrious precedent. The important London surgeon William Hunter employed the same techniques when he wrote his magnum opus, The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus, in 1774. He would later explain that the purpose of these anatomical casts was “to preserve a very perfect likeness of such subjects as we but seldom can meet with, or cannot well preserve in a natural state.”2 What Hunter shares with Banks, West, and Cosway is the desire to capture, in visual form, something about the truth of 22

the body. Anatomy, dissection, and visual and literary description all aspire to pin down something concrete about humanity. When it came to the crucifixion, the most painted event in Western art, the import of the moment could be grasped only by accurate anatomical engagement with the crucified body. If we can understand the body in all of its details, we can understand the truth of a person. The tangible and describable can be a portal to the intangible and indescribable. The idea that the body is a conduit for authentic identity and real human experience underpins modern attempts to recapture the essence of who Jesus was. Scientific efforts to search for the DNA of Jesus and digitally reconstruct his facial features gesture to the fact that, in the twenty-­first century, genetic analysis is the gold standard for identification. Across time and place, identity is tied to specific body parts: facial features, genitals, and the tips of the fingers are distinguishing parts of our identity. Bodily modifications—“distinguishing marks” in legal and medical language—like scars and tattoos also serve as tools for identification. That both genetics and modifications are identifiers of individuality illustrates our dual commitment to the idea that our identity is natural and innate and to the practices by which our bodies are shaped by cultural and social forces. The body has not always been seen as the depository of personal identity. In the ancient world, certain bodily actions— characteristic gestures, mannerisms, and even our voices—were highlighted as identity markers precisely because of their association with the soul. How we recognize others is an index of our technology and our culture, and it is an index of those parts of ourselves that we think of as authentic, as truthful, and even as unique. Anxieties about accurate identification bubble to the surface of literary and cinematic representations of mistaken identity, yet no single case of identification can be said to carry as much weight as the resurrected body of Jesus.3 Identity / 23

Recognizing Jesus The resurrection is the founding narrative in the Christian story. It is thus not surprising that the stories about the resurrection have received so much attention. Not only the historicity of the events, but the origins of resurrection in the history of ideas, the supposed uniqueness and thus significance of the event, and the seemingly impossible metaphysics of resurrection have been pulled, prodded, and dissected. When it comes to talking about the resurrection, much is at stake. Yet for all the scrutiny of the process of resurrection, and despite the inflated interest in the contours of the crucified body, Jesus’s actual resurrected body receives a rather superficial scholarly examination. A preponderance of confusing language is used to describe Jesus’s body and its form: he is initially unrecognizable, being mistaken for a gardener by Mary Magdalene; he both resists touch before his ascent to the Father and invites human contact from Thomas; he can appear in locked rooms at an instant and vanish without a trace. And, in both Luke and John, there is something distinctive about Jesus’s hands and feet—although we should not necessarily be so sure about what that distinctive thing is. Yet despite the overwhelming references to Jesus’s body—there is arguably more here than for his premortem body—there is strikingly little close examination of his bodily characteristics. Expansive questions about metaphysics are regularly posed, but the aesthetics of Jesus’s actual body are less discussed than one might think.4 With that in mind, we focus here on a single aspect of the narratives about the resurrected body of Jesus: the marks of his execution on his hands and side in the Gospel of John. In the narrative, the marks identify Jesus and confirm the reality of the resurrection. Thomas’s moment of recognition provides the pretext for a brief but important excursus on the merits of the faith 24 / Identity

of those who did not have the opportunity to see the resurrected Jesus. Certainly, we should agree with John Ashton that belief is the point of this exchange, but given the numerous narrative tensions and metaphysical questions raised by the resurrected body of Jesus in John, it seems impossible that the palpability of Jesus’s body communicates nothing for the author.5 In scholarship, the presence of the marks has been seen as antidocetic polemic, resurrection apologetics, and—somewhat humorously—evidence that Jesus never really died but was taken down from the cross alive, to reappear a few days later. When extended discussions of these marks have taken place, the issue has often been the historicity of the use and placement of the nails in crucifixion. But the question of how or why Jesus continues after death to be marked by the nails of the crucifixion, and what difference this makes to our reading of the passage, is never addressed. Instead, and in keeping with an interpretive and artistic tradition that portrays Jesus with ragged puncture marks, it tends to be assumed that the resurrected body of Jesus that Thomas reaches out to touch is freshly wounded and porous.6 This subject is important not only because the resurrection has been and is a fundamental dogmatic claim for Christians, but also because, as Paul suggests, the manner in which everyone will be resurrected is patterned after the resurrection of Jesus. If Jesus is recognized by his wounds, then should we not imagine that the resurrection of everyone else will similarly preserve premortem marks, and by extension, all kinds of infirmities? With the exception of a few patristic authors like Augustine—who imagine that the martyrs will be resurrected with beautifying scars where their previously severed limbs were reattached—the dominant view has seen resurrection as a process of eschatological healing. By contrast, disability studies theologians have argued that if impairments are integral for identifying Jesus, then they are integral for everyone else. The eradication of these feaIdentity / 25

tures of our identity would amount to nothing other than a sort of heavenly eugenics.7 New Testament scholarship has made two logically related but sometimes independent arguments about the function of the marks of the nails. The first is that these wounds demonstrate that it really is the same Jesus who is appearing. In other words, they are about identification. The second is a question of metaphysics; the wounds prove that he is not an apparition, that he has what we would call a “real body”—a physical, material body. In other words, the purpose of these wounds is for providing either identification or tangible proof of a resurrected body, or both. Those who think Jesus’s resurrected body is not physical emphasize identification; others focus on the tangibility of the resurrected body. Most scholars make their arguments on the basis of the assumption that Jesus’s marks are open wounds. I argue, however, that whatever one claims about the function of the marks and the substance of Jesus’s body, the argument is vastly improved if the marks are read not as wounds, but as scars. Even for those scholars who think literal readings of the resurrection are naïve and who treat the resurrection scenes as symbols or metaphors, the symbolic function of the Doubting Thomas episode is sharpened when one reads Jesus’s body as scarred rather than wounded.8 Wounds or Scars? Before examining how critical arguments are improved by reading the marks as scars, it is necessary to show why scars are a more probable reading of the text. Of our canonical four gospels, only Luke and John include a narrative autopsy. In Luke, Jesus displays his “hands and feet” to the disciples, but there is no description of wounds. We are instructed to ruminate on the body, but instead of literary ekphrasis, we find a narrative silence that 26 / Identity

must be filled. Even if something is distinctive about Jesus’s extremities, we are not sure precisely what that is. Perhaps Jesus has been resurrected “without a scratch”; perhaps his wounds were exposed to view. Or perhaps they were somewhere between pristine new flesh and punctured old. We simply don’t know.9 In language similar to, and perhaps even dependent upon, that of Luke, John uses Thomas to linger over the contours of the resurrected body.10 Thomas was evidently missing at the earlier appearance and famously declares (according to the New Revised Standard Version), “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe” ( John 20:​25). The ambiguity of the language yields a variety of possible interpretations. What does the “mark of the nails” look like? Many commentators refer to the marks simply as marks—a rhetorical move that allows the scholar to remain noncommittal on the issue and avoid connotations of late-­medieval Catholic spirituality.11 Those few scholars who refer to Jesus as scarred do so without reflection on the significance of scarring for our understanding of the resurrection and use “scar” as a synonym for “wound.”12 Even in the case of Kasper Bro Larsen, who conceptually ties what he calls Jesus’s “wound marks” to scars in Greek poetry, the bodily form of these marks goes unexamined.13 The dominant interpretation of this scene, however, is one in which Jesus is still openly wounded and Thomas demands to insert his finger into Jesus’s hand and side.14 A significant proportion of scholars refer to the marks directly as “wounds.” Daniel Harrington, for example, writes that by “placing his finger into (balo) the wounds, and by placing his hand in (balo) his side,” Thomas will receive proof of the resurrection.15 But is this really what the Johannine author expects us to understand here? The situation is not helped by the fact that we are not told whether Thomas actually does touch Jesus. While some ancient Alexandrian exegetes, like Origen Identity / 27

and Cyril, assumed that Thomas did place his hand in Jesus’s side, others, like Augustine, are uncertain.16 The rich legacy of medieval artwork has led us to believe that we can see through the holes in Jesus’s hands, but the phrase “mark of the nails” is much more ambiguous and peculiar than that. Certainly, Thomas expects to touch the body of Jesus and see whether it yields to his hand, but nothing about the grammar insists that his touch will be penetrative rather than probative. He expresses a desire to put finger and hand into the marks of the nails and side. The preposition eis with the accusative case used here means, as every first-­year Greek student can tell you, either motion toward or location in. So there is good reason to follow the traditional interpretation of this passage; but, grammatically, it is equally acceptable to see Thomas as desiring to place his fingers on Jesus’s body rather than—more suggestively—in it.17 The curious turn of phrase “mark of the nails” hardly resolves the issue. John does not use the kind of military or medical language that would settle things. The word for “mark”—tupos (plural tupoi)—refers to a mold or shape on which other things were modeled, which in part explains why in ancient philosophy this was the term used for an archetype. It can also refer to the effect of a blow or pressure.18 The term was sometimes used to describe the impressions of images that imprinted themselves on the eye in the act of seeing, but it was commonly used of the impression left by a horse’s foot, the uneven surface produced by the stamping of a seal, the indentation produced in engraving, and the mint mark made by the process of striking a coin. In other words, tupoi could be either outlines to be copied or deep impressions left by the application of pressure. Thus, where tupoi are the result of pressure, they are uneven impressions on an otherwise smooth surface. This would seem to be a fine description of a scar: the bump you encounter as you move your finger 28 / Identity

over otherwise smooth skin. It is for this reason that the more usual term for scar—oulē—is sometimes used of things that are wrinkled. There is, however, an occasion in Philo’s Allegorical Interpretation where tupoi appears to describe the impressions left by old wounds. In arguing how foolish it is that those marked with physical wounds are prevented from participating in the priesthood, Philo writes that moral offenses also leave a mark: “the scars and impressions (oulai kai tupoi) of [these sinners’] old offences remain not the less in the souls of those who repent” (1.103). The semantic range of tupoi does not seem to include marks that penetrate an object entirely. To my knowledge there are no instances in which it is used of a through and through puncture. Even without necessarily agreeing that John knows Philo, as Wayne Meeks, Carsten Colpe, Gitte Buch Hansen, and others have contended, the philological evidence may well suggest that John, like Philo, could use the term tupoi to refer to scarring. When Thomas says he wants to place his finger into the marks of the nails, he might actually mean that he wants to place his finger on or in the creases of a healing or scarred wound, rather than into open holes.19 To this we can add ancient expectations about the body. Greco-­Roman medicine sheds some light on how an ancient audience might have understood this scene.20 Galen, a second-­ century doctor whose primary training involved tending to Roman gladiators, provides ample evidence about the rather public rehabilitation of those injured in the arena: “In fact it is in the ability of anyone who wishes to do so, to see, in a very large number of those who engage in single combat every day [gladiators], major wounds scabbing over without inflammation so that by the second or fourth day, they are totally out of danger.”21 This kind of healing was evidently not the result of Galen’s own techIdentity / 29

nological innovations but something that was fairly common in the medical world. He later notes in On Venesection that “it is possible for the vein to re-­unite without becoming inflamed, from what can happen in all other wounds. For we have frequently witnessed among the gladiators a whole thigh or arm which is cut open [and would] heal before displaying inflammation, and especially, as Hippocrates says, whenever there happens to be a profuse and immediate bleeding.”22 Some archeological evidence suggests that Galen is not overstating things. The 1993 discovery of a second-­century cemetery of Roman gladiators in Ephesus provided ample osteoarcheological evidence of the healing of severe injuries among gladiators.23 Arguably, the average ancient reader would expect that a living body that had sustained significant wounds several days earlier would already have healed to the point that the wounds were no longer open and bleeding. It may seem oddly literalist to think about the resurrected body in terms of ordinary healing; after all, it was resurrected from the dead. But if the point of the narrative is in part to demonstrate that this is the same body that was interred in the tomb, then the rules of ordinary human healing might in fact be just what was required for the purposes of establishing continuity and identification. Even assuming that the cold dead body of Jesus did not heal (because, in Galenic theory, hot blood was not available to heal the wound), Thomas and the audience might well expect that Jesus’s body would already be healed more than a week later when Jesus appears to Thomas—even if not on the second day, when Thomas “doubts.” The scarring process, or at least the scabbing process, would have begun. At risk of pressing this point too forcefully, it is worth noting that the healing process would, according to Galen at least, be different for the wound in Jesus’s side. Galen distinguishes between those wounds that require only the joining of flesh and 30 / Identity

those wounds that require the production of new flesh and sutures. If the wound in the side is larger, then it might fit the latter category. This explanation could account for the different ways Thomas describes Jesus’s hands and side. It could also explain the influential late antique Christian interpretation that assumes his side is an open wound but that his hands are scarred or even healed. The differential diagnosis here permitted the wound in Jesus’s side to symbolize the openness of the church, the collapsing of heavenly and earthly worlds, and salvation in general. We do not need to assume that the state of his hands and side are identical, nor does John’s language necessarily lead us to believe that they are.24 Interpreting the Scars Understanding the marks of the nails as scars yields a variety of potential interpretations that wounds do not. The first has to do with the question of identification that I have already mentioned. Scars were the ultimate form of identification in the ancient world. In private papyri individuals were frequently identified by their scars. In the context of narrative recognition, or anagnorisis, healed wounds—or scars—are more useful than fresh ones. This detail has been overlooked by New Testament scholars, but there are no examples of anagnorisis that involve fresh wounds. In the Odyssey, Odysseus is recognized by an old scar. Knowing that he will be recognized if the nurse sees the scar above his knee, Odysseus retreats into the shadows. He is unmasked, however, when the nurse washes his leg and feels the marks of his old hunting wound. The moment of recognition is tied to the experience of touching the crinkled skin on the surface of his body. Touch is important here, as it is in Jesus’s invitation to Thomas to touch the marks on his body. This episode is arguably one of the most famous in ancient literature—­ Identity / 31

Aristotle cites it in the Poetics as one of the preeminent examples of recognition. Thus not only would Jesus’s scars be—as others have shown—the appropriate culmination of a succession of artful scenes throughout the gospel in which Jesus is made known, but the archetypal moment of recognition would amplify the contrast between Thomas and Mary Magdalene. In the garden, Jesus instructs Mary not to touch him; but with history’s emblematic doubter, he invites physical encounter.25 Simultaneously, the location of scars is a witness to character and manliness. In the words of Xenophon, scars borne by virtuous men are visible signs of virtue, “so that not by hearsay but by evidence of their own eyes men can judge what manner of man he is.” The baring of a military man’s breast—scarred from honorable military combat—was a commonplace in Roman rhetoric and a climactic moment in oratory. Scars were visible tokens of virtue and patriotism that rendered verbal defense unnecessary. Josephus describes how the scars of Antipater the Elder, in his wordless appearance before Julius Caesar, spoke for themselves: “his body, while he was silent, shouted [his loyalty] aloud.” Scars can be either marks of shame and degradation—the stigmata of a servile or criminal body—or markers of virtue. We might compare Livy’s language of “honorable scars, all received on the front” with the “foul scars of slavery” that were received on the back. If we hold with J. Louis Martyn that Paul’s stigmata are the marks on his back from literal beatings, it is significant that neither Luke nor John has Jesus reveal those typoi to Thomas. Jesus does not uncover the marks of his flogging for his audience. If, in Paul, these marks are what Stephen Moore has called “the map of Paul’s missionary journeys that has been cut into his back,” the marks on Jesus’s resurrected body are carefully curated. This is not a tale of bodily openness; it’s a performance of identity and virtue.26 The Johannine Jesus offers not hands and feet, as in Luke, but 32 / Identity

hands and side. The piercing of the side is delivered by a Roman soldier with a lance. It is, in other words, a martial wound. Were this a different gospel, it might almost be an ironic parody of a war injury, but we must take seriously the way in which John casts the crucifixion as the moment of exaltation. The crucifixion is not humbling for John, and thus, the piercing of the side is an honorable wound. Just as scars of virtue hearkened back to acts of triumph in Roman oratory, so too the display of Jesus’s side refers us to a climactic moment in John’s glorifying version of the crucifixion. Jesus is not scarred by vices as in Plato and Philo; instead, he bears marks of virtue. By mapping the sites of inspection onto his own crucifixion scene, John steers us even farther from the shameful wounds of flogging potentially alluded to by Paul and toward the more familiar and ennobling chest wounds of Roman speeches. And, in the process, he uses the cultural significance of scarring to knit together the resurrection scenes with the glorifying crucifixion.27 The second and more physicalized function of scars is that they communicate something important about, indeed absolutely central to, the very nature of Jesus’s resurrected body. As noted earlier, some scholars claim that the presence of wounds and the tangible physicality of Jesus’s body demonstrate that he is a person and not a phantasma or ghost. This argument is an ancient one. Cyril of Alexandria notes in his Commentary on John: “By showing his wounded side and the marks of the nails, he convinced us beyond a doubt that he had raised the temple of his body, the very body that had hung on the cross.” The patristic view is reiterated by modern scholars such as N. T. Wright, who remarks that “the evidence that Jesus himself rose with the same body as before is provided by the mark of the nails.”28 The essential incompatibility of ghostliness and physical tangibility is a common belief. Among ancient authors Homer describes Odysseus’s mother’s soul—the psychē—as a “shadow or Identity / 33

even a dream” that flies through his hands. This, we are told, is simply what happens when a mortal dies: “as soon as life leaves the white bones . . . the soul, like a dream, flies about and flies away.”29 The same idea appears in the Iliad, in which the psychē of the departed cannot be grasped but is instead “like vapor.” There is a “soul and an image, but there is no real heart of life in it.” The Homeric view unhelpfully coincides with our own cultural construction of ghosts. Under Homer’s influence commentators on both Luke and John regularly remark that ghosts were intangible entities, incapable of eating or being grasped—and thus that touching Jesus proves that he was, indeed, no ghost. This analysis is only partially affirmed in Luke 24:​39, in which Jesus says that ghosts do not have bones or flesh, but it is inadequate with respect to John.30 If we look beyond Homer, however, we see that there was a whole cast of apparitional characters in the ancient world, each bearing their own metaphysical and physical characteristics. From disembodied spirits like Odysseus’s mother, to revenants or reanimated corpses, to the spirits of heroes that were ritually and thus conceptually tied to their material remains, apparitions were a diverse group. Space does not permit a complete survey here, but I mention a couple of notable incidents—in particular, stories involving revenants that demonstrate that they were both palpable and capable of engaging in the activities of the living.31 In Phlegon’s second-­century Book of Marvels, a young girl, Philinnion, emerges at night from her family tomb in order to liaise with a male house guest. During her periods of reanimation, which last anywhere from minutes to days, she eats, drinks, and has sexual intercourse. A parallel may be found in the story of the Euripidean hero Admetus, who is cautious when he is reunited with his wife because he fears she is a phantom returned 34 / Identity

from the dead. Setting Homer aside we see that for many ancient authors and readers, while the intangibility of a form may be proof of ghostliness, the ability to touch a person is no assurance that he or she is actually alive.32 In the case of the preservation of bodily wounds, the issue is still more complicated. As any reader of ancient mythological tours of the underworld knows, the shade or psychē of a person preserves not only that person’s disabilities and—to ancient eyes—deformities, but also the wounds that caused his or her death. On the preservation of premortem form in the postmortem body, Plato’s Gorgias insists: If anyone’s body was large by nature or by feeding or by both when he was alive, his corpse will be large also when he is dead; and if he was fat, it will be fat too after his death, and so on for the rest; or again, if he used to follow the fashion of long hair, long-­haired also will be his corpse. Again, if anyone had been a sturdy rogue, and bore traces of his stripes in scars on his body, either from the whip or from other wounds, while yet alive, then after death too his body has these marks visible upon it; or if anyone’s limbs were broken or distorted in life, these same effects are manifest in death. In the Aeneid, Virgil describes Dido’s wounds as “still fresh” in the underworld. When Aeneas encounters Eriphyle, a victim of unhappy love, she is “in tears as she displayed the wounds her cruel son gave her.” By contrast, the heroes who played in the “home of the blest” proudly “bear the wounds they received while fighting for their native land.” All of which is to say that the presence and display of mortal wounds is not de facto proof of life. Moreover, as Gregory Riley has shown, later opponents of the idea of physical resurrection used exactly these same bibliIdentity / 35

cal proof texts in order to support their claims for spiritual resurrection. Wound healing is not possible in corpses, even ambulatory ones—Galen is clear that blood does not flow without heat and that both are required for new flesh to be supplied to serious wounds like these. Nor do physically touchable ghosts and ethereal shades exhibit signs of healing in the afterlife.33 As a rebuttal to the potential antiresurrection objection that what the disciples saw was a mere apparition, not a truly resurrected body, the presence of visible wounds is not, and would not have been, particularly convincing. In other words, the touchable wounds of Jesus do not necessarily do the rhetorical work that scholars and Christian apologists imagine they do. By contrast, the scarring of Jesus’s body proves, in ways that having open wounds does not, that the self-­same Jesus who was crucified is now actually alive.34 If Thomas is, as many have argued, the spokesperson for a contemporary skeptical position on bodily resurrection, then his desire to see scars rather than wounds is well made. Real bodies heal themselves. In asking for tangible scars, Thomas would be asking for proof of life rather than proof of mere animation. If, and I think the scene leads us to this conclusion, one aspect of the Johannine author’s agenda here is to communicate that Jesus is not part of the phantasmic world, then healing wounds—an indisputable proof of life—express this point and head off at the pass the potential objection that he is either a ghost or a revenant.35 There are thus significant rhetorical advantages to seeing the wounds of crucifixion as scars. Yet we might still feel that these rather base apologetic skirmishes are beneath John. It might seem as if I am dragging our normally philosophical Fourth Evangelist into the muddy specifics of material resurrection. To an extent, this is a problem one encounters regardless, merely from the act of reading John 19–20 as a single literary 36 / Identity

entity. If one wanted to argue, with Rudolf Bultmann and Ernst Haenchen, that the author of John does not think that Jesus has a physical resurrected body at all, then one would have to perform the same exegetical move of relegating the wounds of Jesus—open and scarred alike—to some primitive materialistic strata in the literary tradition. If one does not embrace Bultmann’s source-­critical divisions, then the fact that Jesus is described by John in corporal terms—indeed his body is more scrutinized and probed here than anywhere else—renders the characteristics of that body important.36 Moreover, whether or not an individual scholar finds the Fourth Evangelist too philosophical for the pragmatics of healing bodies, the fact of the matter is that John unambiguously depicts a body in transition. While Jesus might never have had an ordinary body to begin with—he is thirsty and hungry in John 4 yet never drinks the water drawn by the Samaritan woman nor eats the food brought to him by the disciples—the markers of his identity fragment after his death. Between his encounter with Mary in the garden and his appearance to Thomas and the disciples in the upper room, something—likely his ascent to the Father—has happened that has rendered him available to human touch. Even if there is no record of Thomas actually touching Jesus, the body of the resurrected Jesus is both changing and increasingly palpable. These aspects of the resurrected body in John 20 jar equally with notions of pneumatic resurrection derived from 1 Corinthians 15 or the Platonic dualism that informs so much of John whether one understands the marks of the nails as scars or as gaping wounds.37 The symbolism of healing, which had positive metaphorical value everywhere, can express something positive about the process of resurrection versus other forms of postmortem incorporeal existence. There is much to be said about Johannine metaphysics, eschatology, and resurrection. The point here is that Identity / 37

whether one thinks of the resurrected body in John as physical or not, a commitment to Platonic dualism or Stoic physics in no way precludes an interest in the symbolic value of the physical form of the resurrected body.38 Examining the marks on Jesus’s body more closely, and considering the possibility that he is scarred and not simply wounded, deeply affects our understanding of the resurrection. Whether one thinks of the marks primarily as a means of identification or as a key piece of evidence about the living substance of the resurrected body, scars do the rhetorical work that scholars have erroneously thought open wounds do. Scars add texture and depth to our reading of the scene. We should further note, although I have only alluded to it here, that there is a pronounced interpretive tradition from the patristic period onward that sees the marks of the nails as scars even as it continues to mull over the theological significance of the open wound in Jesus’s side. Interpretive traditions are not proof of authorial intent, but they do show that we are not alone in reading John in this way. Arguably, in positing a verbal and conceptual difference between the scars on Jesus’s hands and the wound in his side, patristic readers preserve something about John’s use of “mark” that modern interpreters have missed. For John, the marks emphasize continuity and stability; the naturalness of wound healing serves as a reassurance that it is the same Jesus and proof of either Jesus’s identity or the reality of his bodily resurrection, or both. In this way, John achieves a certain kind of theo-­rhetorical goal. But he also establishes a precedent that few have tended to follow—that bodily anomalies and imperfections can be transfigured without being obliterated. If the resurrected body of Jesus is the anatomical example from which we learn about the future of our own resurrected selves, then these scars must surely be important.39 It is not the case that, as in John, every early Christian located 38 / Identity

the identity of Jesus in the marks impressed onto his form. By contrast, other early Christian authors highlighted not the stability of Jesus’s resurrected body, but rather its amorphousness. Sometime after the composition of the Gospel of Mark, later editors composed additional endings to the story that were incorporated into the manuscripts of the text. In the resurrection appearance in one of these, the “Long Ending” now preserved in Mark 16:​12–13, Jesus is described as appearing “in another form” to two of his followers. The scene parallels the Emmaus scene of Luke 24:​13–35. On the road to Emmaus, however, Luke explains that the disciples were kept from recognizing him. It may be significant that in Mark 16:​12–13, when the disciples try to relay their experience with Jesus, no one believes them. The idea that Jesus can take multiple forms is attested elsewhere in early Christian tradition. At the transfiguration in Mark and Matthew, Jesus is described as changing form: his form or shape (morphē) is altered (Mark 9:2 // Matt 17:2). In Phil 2:6–7, too, Paul implies that Jesus has at least two forms: that of a God and that of a slave.40 It is in the apocryphal acts of the apostles that Jesus becomes truly polymorphic. He is sometimes young, other times old. He can become large or small. He can be beautiful or ugly. Most interesting of all: Jesus can appear in different forms to different people at the same time. Thus, to John he is a handsome and cheerful-­looking young man, and to James he is a child; later John sees him as “bald-­headed but with a thick flowing beard,” and James sees him as “a young man whose beard was just beginning.” On another occasion, a group of elderly, blind widows sees him simultaneously as “an old man . . . a growing lad . . . [and] a boy who gently touched our eyes, and so our eyes were opened.”41 Divine polymorphism is attested in the ancient world, but in modern scholarship it has largely been read as an unorthodox Identity / 39

Christological statement: polymorphic Christology is viewed as docetic or gnostic.42 What is interesting, for our purposes, is the ways in which these texts reject the idea that continuity of form is intrinsic to continued identity. Arguably, this decision is particular to the resurrection of Jesus and is connected to a notion of incorporeal resurrection. Nevertheless, the idea that identity is tied to the integrity of the form of the body was influential in the ancient world. Without it, many ancient philosophers would ask, Is there any such thing as a stable self ? It is to these pressing questions of bodily integrity and change that we now turn.

40 / Identity

2 Integrity A fifteenth-­century Spanish painting called A Verger’s Dream and attributed to the Master of Los Balbases hangs in the Wellcome Library in London. The painting depicts two saints— Cosmas and Damian—in the process of surgery. Attended by angels and dressed as doctors, the saints are posed, mid-­action, over the body of an obviously sick man. They have already removed the patient’s diseased leg and are in the process of replacing it with that of another, darker-­skinned man.1 The painting refers to a story found in Jacob de Voraigne’s Legenda aurea (1275). In de Voraigne’s version the man had an ulcer that consumed his flesh. As he slept, the saints appeared to him and transplanted the leg of a recently deceased African. When the man awoke and felt no pain, he saw the transplanted limb and jumped for joy that he had been healed. He shared his experience with others, and investigations at the cemetery soon revealed the source of the leg. It is a peculiar and troubling story. The discussion between Cosmas and Damian makes it clear that they cannot re-­create the man’s flesh out of nothing; they need a source. “Where shall we have flesh when we have cut away the rotten flesh to fill the void place?” says one. “Then that other said to him: ‘There is an Ethiopian that this day is buried in the churchyard of S. Peter ad Vincula, which is yet fresh, let us bear this thither, and take we out of that Morian’s flesh and fill this place withal.’ ” It is difficult to remain unaffected by the sight of the Ethiopian’s leg, clutched in the clawlike hand of the saint. Even in the fifteenth century, the reality of transplant surgery was some five hundred 41

years in the future. One worries what unsanctioned experimentation lay behind the fantastical healing of de Voraigne’s world. It is, in this context, reassuring to find anatomical inaccuracies in the painting: whatever the expertise of the tale’s author, the legs in the painting contain only one bone. The Master of Los Balbases, at least, had never tried to dissect a corpse. The exploitation of an Ethiopian corpse does not gesture to contemporary medical praxis but rather seems intended to explain how it is that when the patient awakens he knows that the healthy leg is not his own.2 The man’s delight at this discovery is equally interesting. He immediately recognizes that this is not his “own” flesh and springs out of bed. Though arguably only temporarily, both the form of the man’s flesh and its substance have been profoundly altered. The integrity of his body has been disrupted in a substantive way. This is but one of many stories of bodily restitution in medieval hagiography. In late-­medieval art, the martyrs sometimes appear clasping the severed body parts that were removed during their execution; Lucy and Agatha serenely carry their breasts or eyes on a platter. Bodily integrity is only partially restored. But what are the ramifications of this kind of corporal disruption for the person? Is the verger the same person now as he was before? To whom does the transplanted leg belong?3 The ancient conversations about identity and integrity started long before people worried about reconstituting bodies. Ancient philosophers worried about identity and change without ever thinking of reanimated corpses. The classic philosophical example is the Ship of Theseus. The Athenians, we are told, preserved the ship in which the heroic Theseus had sailed by removing the old planks and replacing them with new ones. They installed the new hardware in such a way that the structure of the original ship was retained. Was it the same ship? Is it the 42 / Integrity

shape of the ship (the form) or things that make it up (the matter) that provide the ship with its identity?4 What was theoretical for an agency-­less ship was of pressing importance for the human person: both the human body and its memories were mutable, ever changing, and unstable. The notion enters the written record by means of a joke by the fifth-­century BCE playwright Epicharmus. His character uses the argument that he has grown into an entirely new person and thus cannot be considered responsible for the debts incurred by a prior individual. The central idea, mulled over by later generations of philosophers, is that in the same way that a pile of pebbles is numerically distinct when more pebbles are added to it, a person also grows and is replaced by a new person as they change. The Growing Argument, as it came to be known, highlighted the fluidity of the human person over time. It is for this reason, Heraclitus wrote, that a person cannot step into the same river twice. Change is a process in which the self constantly dies and is replaced.5 The issue of material continuity and the preservation of identity should trouble us every day of our lives. We are all at every moment in a state of bodily flux: we start small and over the course of our lives grow taller, bigger, and eventually, as our skeletal structure compresses, shorter. In between, we expand and contract. We ingest foreign matter as nutriment, it forms part of our bodies, and it is “lost” to us when we expend it as energy and discard it in excretion. For Aristotle, the issue of growth and ingestion had serious implications. He took it as axiomatic that two bodies cannot coexist in the same space. If this is true, how do we explain digestion? The quandary led him to posit that continuity is connected not to matter, but to “form.” The nutritional matter does not accede to the matter of a person; it accedes to that person’s Integrity / 43

form, or eidos. By “form,” Aristotle means the defining characteristics of a thing; he compares the form of the body to a tube through which water is poured. The tube may grow larger when additional water is supplied, but it nevertheless supplies the structure and shape of the thing. In the same way, the body may grow larger when additional nutrition is added to it, but the fundamental structure and form remain the same. The integrity and continuity of matter, therefore, were less important than the form of the body.6 It was precisely to this theory of form as the guarantor of identity that the third-­century Christian writer Origen appeals in his defense of the resurrection of a “spiritual body.” Calling back to Heraclitus and Aristotle, he notes that a body may change, such that it is not the same for two consecutive days, but identity is guaranteed “because the form (eidos) characterizing the body” remains the same.7 In the history of discussions about both identity and the afterlife, amputation—a sudden and pronounced rupture in the volume and shape of the body—has played a particular role. In the ancient conversation about the Growing Argument, the reality of amputation furnished one of the other classic examples, the case of Dion and Theon. Theon was born without a foot. At some point (let’s say puberty), he grew a foot and became (according to the principles of the Growing Argument) an entirely new person. Let’s call this new person Dion. Yesterday, Dion’s foot was amputated. Given that two numerically different objects cannot occupy the same space with the same set of matter, who has survived? Dion or Theon? Has Dion become Theon again the way that a group of eight pebbles might suddenly change into a group of seven?8 This example was first discussed by the third-­century BCE Stoic Chrysippus as part of a treatise that responded to the Growing Argument. In answering his own puzzle, Chrysippus 44 / Integrity

stated that the person who survives is Dion (presumably because he imagined Dion hopping around on one foot declaring that he had lost a foot). The point of the puzzle was to reduce to absurdity the position of the Skeptics, who reasoned that the change in identity that accompanied the growth of the body resulted in the death of the person who had lived before. We are all, they would maintain, constantly dying. If Aristotle had argued that continuity of identity over time and despite change was guaranteed by form, Chrysippus and the Stoics posited instead that the “peculiarly qualified individual” survives the material change of the individual’s body or substrate. Regardless of their different philosophical grounds, both Chrysippus and Aristotle reveal a common commitment to bodily integrity as an aspect of continued personal identity. For Christians hypothesizing about the regrouping of decayed and dispersed flesh in the resurrection, the same difficulty with bodily change reared its putrefied head. Change itself was a form of death, and thus, the aging and mutability of the body presented a problem that could be solved only partially by strategies focused on shaping the body into an immutable idealized one. It is the potency of these ancient commitments to bodily continuity that make the Gospel of Mark’s insistence on resurrecting deformity all the more powerful.9 Amputating for Salvation In chapter 9 of his gospel, Mark offers one of his most concrete discussions of the afterlife. In a series of three parallel injunctions, we are warned that the consequences of sin are dire. Using a rather straightforward formula, Mark’s Jesus firmly states and restates that if a part of the body—the hand, the foot, or the eye—causes one to “stumble,” then one should cut it off: “For it would be better to enter eternal life impaired than to be thrown Integrity / 45

intact into Gehenna, into an unquenchable fire where the worm never dies” (9:47–48).10 A great deal of scholarly attention is devoted to the question of which sins in particular constitute “stumbling.” In this chapter, however, I focus instead on what this passage tells us about Mark’s views of amputation and the afterlife and, more specifically, about the continued existence of perceived deformities and disabilities in the Kingdom of God. Traditional scholarship on the nature of the heavenly body has neglected Mark 9. Instead, scholars have argued that Mark’s references to disability and amputation are fleshly metaphors that should be understood in the context of biblical and rabbinic injunctions about punishment. Almost no modern scholar reads this passage literally, and those few who do also agree that the amputation described here should be understood punitively.11 The impulse to read the passage that way is easy to understand. Even the most inattentive Sunday school student is familiar with the Pentateuchal axiom “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” The idea of amputation as punishment for misconduct is taken further in Deut 25:​11–12, which prescribes that a woman’s hand should be amputated for grabbing male genitalia in the context of a fight between her husband and a rival. Rabbinic interpretations debate the practicalities of these laws: while a minority takes them literally, the majority of rabbis transmuted the physical amputation into financial compensation. On the basis of these texts, a widespread scholarly consensus has interpreted the pericope in Mark 9 as a series of metaphorical injunctions that contrast the horrifying prospect of punitive amputation with the severity of postmortem annihilation. The repercussions of sin are so extreme, we are told, that we should eliminate any negative influences that might lead us astray. But is this how ancient listeners would have understood the reference to amputation? Most scholars have assumed that 46 / Integrity

amputation in the ancient world was a well-­recognized punishment meted out to an unwilling criminal. But was this the primary context in which amputation was performed? The practice of amputation was justified and made meaningful in the ancient world by the contexts in which it was performed. Those contexts were not only punitive, they were also military and medical. In considering this passage we should explore how these contexts shaped cultural expectations about amputees in the ancient world. Amputation as Punishment Readings of the passage as punitive begin by amassing transhistorical and geographically disparate evidence for punitive amputation in the ancient world. More often than not, they begin with the Code of Hammurabi, an eighteenth-­century BCE legal document, which stipulates that hand amputation should be performed with a bronze knife if a son strikes his father or if a physician performs either an operation that results in the death of the patient or an eye surgery that destroys the eye.12 We find analogues in the Pentateuch, but there is no evidence to suggest that the punitive amputation called for by the code was ever put into widespread practice. Mesopotamian law codes that preceded Hammurabi called for monetary compensation in parallel cases, while almost all postbiblical Jewish interpretation did the same. In grounding their case, scholars often move beyond literary archives to the seemingly solid evidence of archeological data. Material remains demonstrate that amputation was broadly practiced, but it is rarely clear why any given instance of amputation was performed. For example, excavations in the 1990s of an Early Bronze Age tomb in the Rephaim Valley in Israel uncovered the skeleton of a forty-­five-­year-­old man whose right Integrity / 47

hand was missing. The right radius and ulna were foreshortened and distally fused, indicating that the man’s arm had healed well after his hand was severed. This case is regularly cited as evidence for the widespread practice of punitive amputation in the region, but the scientists who conducted the original analysis were considerably less certain. They concluded that the appearance of the bones is consistent with either amputation of a healthy (presumably criminal) hand or the removal of a hand damaged by trauma. In other words, the cause of amputation was impossible to determine. In fact, logically enough, no archeological case of ancient amputation can be definitively identified as punitive. This is not to say that punitive amputation never happened, but that we should be wary of categorizing any given osteoarcheological example of limb loss in this way.13 In addition to the legal and archeological data, anecdotal evidence attests to punitive amputation in the first century of the Common Era. Josephus refers to several occasions when he personally ordered the amputation of hands for sedition or for forging documents. Suetonius, too, regales us with historically questionable stories of Roman emperors ordering the ad hoc removal of a transgressor’s hands. Spontaneous bursts of dismembering zeal can also be observed in the widespread mutilation of corpses and the disfigurement of defeated soldiers in wartime.14 Almost without exception, stories of ocular punishment— either by gods or by officials—involved the destruction of vision in both eyes. Gouging, as opposed to more straightforward techniques for blinding, seems to have been a particular feature of the Roman period, or at least—as Glenn Most has shown— of literature produced during the Roman period. References to the removal of one or both eyes are common in Roman comedies and imperial biographies. Octavius gouges out the eyes of a would-­be assassin. Nero uses ocular amputation to manufacture deformity in the world around him. Galen recalls that a contrite 48 / Integrity

Hadrian attempted to compensate a slave after removing his eye with a writing implement. The slave suggested that he would like his eye returned to him, but this was beyond Hadrian’s considerable power. Eye-­gouging as an impulsive act of anger may have been a lingering threat in the lives of slaves, but these instances of ocular excision speak more to a cultural interest in gouging and in controlling socially subordinate bodies than they do to amputation in general.15 With only the slightest pressure, then, the arguments for reading amputation in Mark 9 as unambiguously punitive start to give way. The evidence for the real-­world practice of punitive amputation is meager. Corporal punishment was a fact of life in the ancient world but was only one relatively rare context in which amputation was performed. Individuals were more likely to be parted from their hands by a doctor or an enemy than by a judge. For an ancient listener of Mark, military engagement and medical practice were the cultural contexts that shaped the amputated body. Amputation in War and Medicine Injuries in battle were common in the ancient world. Losing a limb was a well-­understood risk of military adventures for diverse reasons: from having one’s arm hacked off in combat to infection from a war wound to the frostbite sustained in the colder climes of the northern empire. Wealthier members of the military could afford attractive prostheses to adorn their injuries. Pliny narrates how M. Sergius Silus lost his right hand in battle and replaced it with an iron one before continuing with a glittering military career. At least one example of a prosthesis—a bronze and wooden leg from Capua—has survived from antiquity, but this was rare even in its own day. With the exception of the kind of “peg-­leg” mocked Integrity / 49

by Martial, it seems likely that functional prostheses were available only to the rich.16 Eye loss was a professional hazard for many. Blacksmiths were known to wear eye patches to protect one of their eyes, but helmets afforded the ancient soldier no such protection. The stories of glorious one-­eyed kings and generals such as Philip II of Macedon, Horatius Cocles, Hannibal, and Sertorius suggest that eye loss in battle was quite common; archeological excavations reveal the use of eye patches at military camps.17 There is some evidence that the loss of limbs and eyes in wartime was associated with valor. Plautus’s Curculio dresses in disabled drag, sporting a fake eye patch and boasting that he sustained his injury pro patria. Plutarch noted a number of important one-­eyed generals, elsewhere remarking, “you can tell a man fit for war by his body being covered in wounds.” It is difficult to know to what extent the courage of the military amputee affected attitudes toward amputees in general, but there were certainly some venues in which bodily mutilation was a sign of distinction.18 If wartime amputation in general was culturally coded as valiant, the heroism of the amputee was further elevated when the patient was also the surgeon. Herodotus tells the story of Hegesistratus of Elis, a diviner who found himself imprisoned by the Spartans for meddling in their affairs. Hegesistratus was shackled by one leg to the wall and escaped by slicing off half of his foot, burrowing through a wall, and fleeing to Tegea, where he fashioned a prosthetic foot out of wood.19 Hegesistratus seems to deserve his own Hollywood biopic, but others were also highly regarded for practicing self-­ mutilation in pursuit of virtue. In his Lives of the Philosophers, Diogenes Laertius relates the famous story of the philosopher Zeno of Elea, who bit off and spat out his own tongue in defiance of the tyrant Nearches. Diogenes tells a similar, likely 50 / Integrity

derivative, story about Anaxarchus. The only difference is that the target of Anaxarchus’s projectile tongue was Nicocreon, the king of Cyprus. The Zeno/Anaxarchus tradition left quite an imprint in the ancient imagination. It is twice mentioned by Cicero, discussed by Plutarch, and cited by the Roman historian Valerius Maximus. In the same vein, Philo of Alexandria commends those who bite off their own tongues rather than divulge their secrets. Even Seneca commends an unsuccessful would-­be assassin who was worthy of honor because he placed his own arm into the flames and “extracted his own penalty.” Although these examples refer to specific circumstances, they nonetheless demonstrate that certain bodily defects carried connotations of valor. Auto-­amputation in particular—which, we should remember, is the form of amputation endorsed by Mark—was an act of virtue and courage.20 Turning to medical literature we see that, by the first century CE, amputation was widely practiced as the treatment of last resort in cases of gangrene. Gangrene is a general term used to refer to any kind of infection or decay resulting from everything from bone fractures to infected cuts to diabetes to frostbite. The Hippocratic corpus only reluctantly provides directions for amputation, but by the time of the Roman encyclopaedist Celsus (25 BCE–50 CE), it was recognized that when all other options were exhausted, amputation was the only course of action: “When gangrene has developed between the nails and in the armpits or groins, and medicaments have failed to cure it, the limb, as I have stated elsewhere must be amputated. But even that involves very great risk; for patients often die under the operation. . . . It does not matter, however, whether the remedy is safe enough, since it is the only one.” Amputation may have had significant risks, but it was preferable to certain death.21 In the rich and detailed ancient descriptions of eye surgery, Integrity / 51

there were no protocols that called for the deliberate excision of the eye. But eye loss often resulted from botched eye surgeries, such as those treating cataracts. An epigram of Martial joked that the skills of an opthalmicus or eye doctor proved transferable when he switched careers and became a gladiator.22 More practically, doctors treated war wounds that necessitated the removal of an eye. Knowledge of the mechanics and necessity of amputation was not restricted to the professional medical sphere. Writing in the first century BCE, Lucretius recalls that those who survived the great plague of Athens sought amputations when gangrene set in. Lucretius may not have approved, but he offers evidence that, when life was on the line, eyes, hands, feet, and “manly parts” were all candidates for amateur surgery.23 Where amputation entered the metaphorical vocabulary of the ancient world, it was also predominantly therapeutic. Seneca invokes the prospect of amputation as he mounts his case for the character-­building properties of misfortune: “If you will reflect that for the sake of being cured . . . sometimes members are amputated which would not be left without causing destruction to the whole body, you will allow yourself to be convinced of this as well—that ills are sometimes for the good of those to whom they come.”24 Amputation, both here and in the medical authors, was a step that patients themselves elected to take as a means of self-­preservation. The proactive role played by patients in seeking amputation is also presupposed by Diotima’s statement in Plato’s Symposium that “human beings are prepared to have hands and feet cut off if they believe they are harmful.” Perhaps Plato was being hyperbolic, but five centuries later Plutarch could say quite directly that “when the foot or hand is mortified one pays to cut it off.”25 52 / Integrity

Reading Disfigurement in Mark The author of Mark uses precisely this logic. Amputation is a cost, but it yields a benefit. The alternative is worse. The therapeutic context of amputation seems especially relevant in a gospel that consistently correlates salvation and healing. Jesus is the “physician” who comes to heal the sick and sinners. Markan miracle stories use the multivalent language of “salvation” to refer to both physical and spiritual transformation. The prevalence of medical imagery as a metaphor for salvation in Mark makes medical praxis a proximate interpretative context for this passage. Yet rather than taking this imagery as referring to the work of real physicians, we often attempt to read it as almost anything else. Of the rabbinic sayings cited by New Testament scholars, the one most nearly parallel to Mark also uses therapeutic logic. In an extended discussion about protracted genital “self-­ examination,” Rabbi Tarfon argues that if a man is caught in the act, then his hand should be severed across his belly to prevent him doing it again. When others express the concern that the man’s abdomen might be ruptured, he responds by saying, “it is preferable that his belly should be split than that he should go down into the pit of destruction” (b. Nid. 13b). Here, as in Mark, we find the idea that amputation is a preventative measure; it is better that a person should lose a hand than be cast into Gehenna intact.26 The overwhelming majority of scholars have read amputation in Mark punitively. But if the injunction to self-­amputate is to be read figuratively, then perhaps it should be read therapeutically. Mark uses the medical practice of amputation to create a hierarchy of value in which the one-­time excision of sin, though painful and disfiguring, is preferable to letting the sin fester with eternal consequences for the entire body.27 Integrity / 53

If the injunction to self-­amputate is to be read figuratively, then this is how it should be read. But there is good reason to think that, in fact, Mark’s statement should not be read figuratively at all. Such a view is essentially unheard-­of in modern scholarship, to the point of near-­consensus. A number of scholarly commentaries cite Origen’s metaphorical interpretation of self-­blinding as the cutting off of friends, though they fail to note his awareness of those who take the passage straightforwardly. Helmut Koester points to Origen’s source—the rhetorician Quintilian—in order to abstract the meaning of the passage even further. Even Werner Zager, who carefully identifies a number of texts in which amputation is a punishment for sin, agrees that Jesus probably does not mean these injunctions to be taken literally.28 It is interesting that contemporary scholarship on this point has leaned so strongly toward a metaphorical reading, since the early history of interpretation provides numerous examples of quite literal understandings of this passage. Rabbi Tarfon is not the only enthusiastic promoter of amputation. Historically, readers of Mark, and of his interpreter Matthew, had no difficulty taking him literally on the question of severed members. The second-­century Sentences of Sextus twice refer to the idea that members of the body that weaken it and that threaten the exercise of moderation should be cut off. The Patriarch Theophilus mentions a monk who bit off his own tongue to prevent a loss of self-­control, and as I have already mentioned, Origen refers to others who read this passage literally. From Constantine onward a succession of Roman emperors legislated amputation as a punishment for theft, slander, forgery, and fraud. The formal use of mutilation as punishment was unknown in Roman law before the advent of Christianity, and interestingly, the justification for these punishments was often explicitly grounded in these gospel 54 / Integrity

verses. Certainly, it has been historically possible for a succession of Christians to interpret this passage literally.29 One reason it is tempting for us to read the injunction hyperbolically is that amputation is an extraordinary treatment in modern technologically advanced societies in which scholarship usually takes place. The use of amputation in the United States and Europe today is the rarest it has ever been, so we tend to assume that it is a horrendous procedure. Since the affluent imagine that amputation resulting from disease can be avoided, it is constructed as something violent that is done to us. But as we have seen, in the first century patients were proactive in seeking amputation when necessary. It was largely done not to them, but for them when they were in great pain and greater danger. It is certainly true that in the premodern world many deaths resulted from the fact that antibiotics had not yet been invented, such that every infection or surgical procedure had fatal potential. But it was precisely this lack of antibiotic technology, coupled with the absence of alternative treatment methods, that made amputation so common. In this context amputation was not shockingly hyperbolic but fairly standard medical practice. A second reason why scholars have not read Mark literally here is the assumption that the metaphor works punitively, an interpretation that goes back as far as Origen. But as previously discussed, amputation is not the punishment in these sayings; it is the thing the patient does to avoid the punishment and excise gangrenous sin. A third objection is lodged by Zager, who argues that the injunction to self-­amputate could not be meant literally, as only one of each paired member is to be amputated, even though presumably both eyes, hands, or feet are involved in the sin. We might wonder whether the same understanding of sin was current among Mark’s ancient audience members. The cultural Integrity / 55

valuation of right and left hands in the ancient world was not identical: left and right were assigned different social and ritual roles and could be responsible for different actions. In the cultural imagination that informs the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is able to tell people that the right and left hands should act independently, saying, “do not let your left hand know what your right is doing” (6:3).30 Additionally, we might inquire about the practicality of am‑ putating both hands. Oedipus demonstrates a cultural expectation that a man could remove both of his own eyes. But one wonders, in purely practical terms, whether it would be reasonable to expect that man to remove both of his own hands. The use of one hand does seem to be a necessary prerequisite for the removal of another. These points—plus the abundant archeological, medical, and literary evidence for the relatively common nature of amputation in the ancient world discussed above—make clear that it is and was quite possible to read Mark’s statements literally. What’s more: not only could Christians read Mark literally, but in many ways the logic of the passage demands that the reader do so. In any reading, this passage provides an eschatologically oriented commentary on the relative merits of disability and able-­ bodiedness for the salvation of the individual person. Sin is so corrupting, argues Mark, that it would be better to be disabled when you enter heaven than to continue as an able-­bodied person and be thrown into hell. The argument of the passage is both predictable and unexpected. Mark reproduces a traditional negative evaluation of disability. The undesirability of being disabled and the radical suggestion that one should make oneself disabled are what make the saying so powerful. Its efficacy hinges on the assumption that deformity—physical, real-­ life deformity—is demonstrably less desirable than wholeness. 56 / Integrity

The author harnesses the negativity associated with what Mary Douglas would call interstitial bodies in order to bring home to his audience the imperiled state in which they find themselves.31 The logic of this passage is that Gehenna can be avoided by amputating those limbs or removing those bodily organs that lead one to “stumble.” The physicality of the language of “stumbling” is ironic—it is not impairment that causes stumbling, but bodily wholeness. But the irony is displaced and the command to self-­amputate domesticated when we consider that gangrenous feet often cause people to stumble and that these infections often resulted in amputation. Mark utilizes the therapeutic logic of excision in order to pre­sent amputation not as the consequence of sin, but as its preventative. Implicit in this argument is the concept that corrupted wholeness can cause bodily destruction, and impairment and disfigurement are its panacea. In order for the passage to work we must envision literal self-­ amputation—not the more abstract rejection of sin. Ironically, it is at this juncture that the dominant scholarly reading performs a methodological bait and switch. Having rejected out of hand a literal reading of the injunction to amputate, scholars then attach to this text a notion of healing in heaven, a notion that is sensible only if one takes the references to amputation literally to begin with. The emerging recent scholarly consensus on this passage has argued both that the injunction to self-­amputate is metaphorical and that these infirmities are literally healed in heaven. With respect to the fate of the resurrected amputees, Second Temple Jewish and rabbinic materials have supplied evidence that the dead will rise with the same bodily defects that they possessed in life—only to be healed when they enter heaven. The scholarly introduction of these passages of heavenly catharsis into Mark 9 has led at least one distinguished scholar to argue both that Mark 9:43–47 Integrity / 57

should be read “in a nonliteral manner” and that the metaphorical amputees “will enter eternal life maimed, but they will not remain in that condition.”32 The fate of impairment in the afterlife seems like a reasonable topic for discussion if Mark means that we should really self-­amputate. Indeed, it becomes something of a pressing issue. But if amputation is nonliteral, why would it matter whether or not people are healed in heaven? Of what are they being healed? Moreover, if the amputated limbs are symbolic representations of sin, why would we want those sins back in the future? The metaphor and meaning of the passage, in this reading, hinge on not getting those body parts (sins) back. To fracture the injunction into two and insist that one half is a metaphor and the other is literal is incoherent. Mark describes amputees as entering “life” and the “Kingdom of God” as crooked, lame, and one-­eyed. It would seem that some forms of impairment—specifically self-­initiated forms of bodily disfigurement—are very much with us in the hereafter, at least for some period of time. To be sure, rabbinic parallels to this passage offer some food for thought. They provide evidence that many Jewish authors thought of disability as something that could not exist in the world to come. Reading canonically, some scholars have used the suggestive yet veiled imagery of incorruptibility and perfection in 1 Corinthians 15 as evidence that Mark too must envisage eventual healing.33 But Paul’s portrait of the resurrected body—if he means our leaden physical corpora at all—is lightly sketched. It is our assumption that glory, power, and imperishability mean bodily wholeness that prompts us to interpret this way. Pauline and rabbinic discussions of the afterlife do not necessarily hold the hermeneutical keys to Mark’s kingdom. Mark does not mention eschatological healing at all in this passage. 58 / Integrity

While it is possible that Mark 12 describes eschatological transformation or to infer from Mark’s overarching interest in healing that the evangelist thinks the eschaton will be marked by bodily change, he does not give the slightest hint of it here in Mark 9. In fact, the logic of the passage turns on the contrast between deformed eternal life and normal-­bodied damnation. Into this contrast we could read a similar eschatological one: the damned descend into hell whole for the purposes of fragmentation and partition, while the blessed limp into heaven with the expectation of reassembly. But this argument has not been advanced by those surveyed here.34 Underlying scholarly assessments of Mark is the assumption that all ancient constructions of the resurrection and heaven imagined a place of perfection and healing. This idea is strongly supported by passages about the restoration of Israel in Isaiah and by the previously mentioned rabbinic examples. Yet there were those in the ancient world who were less certain that disability was eradicated in the afterlife. In Greco-­Roman mythology broadly defined, the shade in the underworld preserved all the characteristics of the individual’s body in life. Upon learning that he was guilty of patricide and incest, the tragic hero Oedipus famously blinds himself. He explains his actions by saying that if he still had eyesight, he would be unable to bear the sight of his father and mother when he went to the underworld. In other words, Oedipus believes that he has blinded himself for all time.35 The notion that in the afterlife the anthropomorphized shade preserves the contours of mortal corporeality is found in descriptions of the underworld in Virgil’s Aeneid and is at work in Pindar’s myth of the revivification of Pelops. In the latter, Pelops receives a prosthesis after his shoulder bone is accidentally consumed by a ravenous Demeter. These examples are not Integrity / 59

direct parallels to bodily resurrection, but they share in common the idea that a person’s infirmity persists in his or her afterlife, either in the body or in the personified shade.36 Certainly, ancient speculation about the afterlife was more varied than this and was complicated by philosophical anxieties about identity and the physical body. My point is that there were strains of thought that presupposed continuity between the body as it is now and the individual as he or she will exist or be represented after death. It is certainly possible, therefore, that Mark and his audiences believed that people would enter the afterlife as they left this world. Writing in the third century, Pseudo-­Justin appears to refer to just this when he criticizes those who say, “if then the flesh rises, it must rise the same as it falls; so that if it die with one eye, it must rise one-­eyed.”37 Again we can point to the rhetorical power of the injunction to support this—specifically, the lack of wholeness attributed by Mark to the heavenly newcomer. Zager, in his observation about asymmetrical amputation, rightly draws our attention to the lopsidedness of Mark’s eschatological bodies. The injunction to self-­amputate is disabling, but even more so it is disfiguring. As Aristotle notes, one-­eyed people can see, even if less well. As we saw above, soldiers were capable of heroic acts even absent a hand or foot. The technologies of a prosthesis—even if available only to the wealthy— meant that some of the disabling effects of self-­amputation could be mitigated. Aesthetic corruption, however, could not.38 Greek and Roman aesthetics emphasized bodily wholeness and symmetry. As Plotinus puts it, “Almost everyone declares . . . that the beautiful thing is symmetrical.” Ancient physiognomic treatises and popular bias linked bodily difference to character flaws and disobedience to the gods. Beauty and virtue were intertwined. We see an anxiety over disfigurement in Pliny’s comments on the eye injury of Philip II. Whereas earlier 60 / Integrity

authors wrote that Philip was left deeply scarred by the loss of his eye, Pliny credits the doctor Critobulos with extracting “an arrow from the eye of Philip the king” and healing the eyeball “without deforming his face.” Other authors go to great lengths to emphasize that Philip’s judgment and character were unaffected by the injury.39 Part of the rhetorical force of Mark’s injunction is the way in which the act of excising bodily members renders a person—in the opinion of ancient readers—unattractive and mutilated. The person with one hand is kullos—crooked or crushed; the person with one foot or eye lacks symmetry and beauty. Mark invokes and contorts the deeply interwoven discourses of beauty, wholeness, and symmetry. The idea of deformed bodies being able to enter the presumably perfect Kingdom of God contributes to the force of the injunctions. Mark’s insistence that deformity enters heaven while aesthetically pleasing wholeness is cast into hell communicates the severity of the situation: sin is so corrupting that aesthetics are set on their head. There is one final reason to think that Mark is nudging us toward the preservation of perceived disability in the afterlife. In verse 47, he uses the word monophthalmos to describe the state of the person who enters the Kingdom of God. The ubiquitous English translation “one-­eyed” is accurate as far as it goes, but it misses a critical aspect in the meaning of this word. In ancient use, monophthalmos is used to describe a person who is born with one eye. It does not refer to someone who loses an eye in the course of his or her life. The word for the latter is heterophthalmos, or “differently eyed,” a term that can also refer to differently colored eyes and is charmingly evocative of modern disability-­ speak. This definitional distinction is made by the first-­century grammarians Herennius Philo and Julius Pollux; second-­century writers Herodian, Phrynichus, and Ptolemy of Alexandria; and the great Ammonius. Some of these authors admittedly depend Integrity / 61

on others, but each makes the same distinction: monophthalmos is an impairment acquired by nature, whereas heterophthalmos is the condition acquired during one’s life.40 The quintessential example of a monophthalmos in antiquity was Polyphemus, the Cyclops of Homer’s Odyssey, for whom monophthalmos became an epithet synonymous with his hideousness and those unfortunate enough to resemble him. The Cyclops was not only a figure in epic poetry; he enjoyed a lengthy career as a comedic figure on stage. In these theatrical performances, moreover, his unusual ocular bone structure was parodied and prominently displayed. The Cyclops was not one of a kind, though. Herodotus refers to a popular tradition about a tribe of one-­eyed northern Europeans. In the view of those criticized by Herodotus, these men were not “blind in one eye from birth” but instead were one-­eyed by nature. Herodotus disapproves of the substance-­based distinction between them and in doing so offers us evidence of a popular ancient tradition in which people can be “naturally” one-­eyed.41 The difference between one-­eyed and differently eyed is maintained in ancient Greek literature in general. But our efforts at lexical dissection are frustrated by our inability to ascertain the particular meaning of monophthalmos unless the origins of the condition are mentioned, or unless, as in the grammarians, the term is contrasted with heterophthalmos. The situation is complicated by the predictable genius of playground epithets: anyone who lost an eye or had connected eyebrows was liable to be nicknamed “Cyclops.” But, in general, it is safe to say that a primary lexical definition of monophthalmos is one-­eyed at birth.42 It is, of course, possible that Mark does not know about the linguistic tradition that distinguished between monophthalmos and heterophthalmos. Mark is not known for his elevated vocabulary after all. Perhaps the subtleties of the term were lost on 62 / Integrity

him. Even so, an awareness of variegated congenital ocular deformities seems to have been shared by physicians from both the Greek and the Roman periods. Evidence even suggests that those with cyclopean deformity were particularly desirable as household slaves. All of this attests to a fairly widespread understanding that there was a categorical difference between being one-­eyed by nature and one-­eyed by accident. Assuming that Mark understands the nuances of monophthalmos, our reading of the (presumably resurrected) body that enters eternal life in chapter 9 changes. Not only does Mark explicitly refer to people entering life or the Kingdom of God with their deformities, he uses robust and naturalizing language to describe those impairments. The person who plucks out his or her eye enters life not as one who is disfigured, but rather as one who was one-­eyed since birth. If the resurrection has changed something for this person, it is not that he or she has been healed. Rather, it is that this person has shifted from someone who is heterophthalmos to someone who is monophthalmos. If anything, Mark doubles down on the imagery; the naturalization of the disfiguring impairment emphasizes its permanence and endurance in the world to come. Just as the one who enters this world with one eye is called monophthalmos, so too one who enters the world to come with one eye is called monophthalmos.43 In the context of Mark’s account, the use of monophthalmos strengthens the rhetorical power of the injunction to amputate, as it underscores the preservation of impairment in the afterlife. As a passage about eschatological bodies, it offers an example of the view that bodies will rise with their impairments. And as a resource for constructive theology, it makes the intriguing suggestion that self-­initiated acts of “unnatural” bodily alteration can be naturalized in the divine scheme. Attention to the construction of bodies in this text opens up a broad range of historically grounded interpretations. We have Integrity / 63

seen how therapeutic and heroic understandings of amputation would recast the auto-­amputee as a righteous surgeon willing to embrace pain for somatic self-­preservation. Amputation is both lifesaving and after-­lifesaving. This observation adds texture to an otherwise one-­dimensional portrait of Jesus as healer in Mark and complicates our understanding of the relationship between impairment and sin. Mark subverts the idea that able bodies are virtuous bodies. If impaired bodies can be signs of virtue and if impairment was a persistent detail in some ancient portraits of the postmortem self, then perhaps we should take Mark’s vision of the body more seriously. Rather than rushing to triage the newly awakened eschatological body, we should explore the interpretative possibilities latent in the image of righteous amputees. This is not to say, of course, that no other passages in the New Testament suggest that individuals will be healed in heaven. Or that Mark’s gospel does not pre­sent Jesus as something of a cathartic scourge who heals the faithful of their impairments.44 Yet here, in Mark, there is no suggestion that these particular impairments will be healed. Jesus never cures anyone who is “crooked,” one-­eyed, or lacking an appendage. The replacement of whole body parts might seem especially miraculous but no more surprising, in an ancient context, than the healing of the notoriously difficult-­to-­treat ailments of paralysis and congenital blindness. More than a thousand years later, Mark himself would be transfigured into the moral of his own tale. Of the two stories of saintly self-­mutilation in de Voraigne’s Legenda aurea, only one of the protagonists receives his mutilated body part back. The other is St. Mark. According to de Voraigne, Mark amputated his own thumb so that he would not be promoted to the priesthood. Mark goes on to become a healer of mangled hands, but de Voraigne’s point here is clear and transcends the more mun64 / Integrity

dane stories of miraculous reassemblage so common to hagiographical literature: the distorted and disfigured body is still acceptable and perfect before God. Mark is ordained despite his missing digit.45 Long before historical critics attempted to reclaim the authorial intent of the evangelists, Christian apologists had begun to exclude Mark 9:43–48 from their discussion of the resurrected body. As we will see, the issue was one of identity: if the substance of the flesh and form of the body were integral to one’s identity, then all of the flesh must be reassembled at the resurrection. Without continuity of identity, they argue, justice cannot be properly administered. These concerns, as we see in the next chapter, relate not just to philosophical conversations about identity, but also to the ethical role of the body in the practice of virtue.

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3 Functionality In 1996, the year before he died, noted Dutch Catholic priest and spiritual thinker Henri Nouwen started writing a book about the life and death of a friend. Titled Adam: God’s Beloved, the book chronicles the experiences of a severely disabled young man named Adam who suffered from frequent seizures and needed assistance in order to move or communicate. In the concluding chapter, Nouwen relays the dream of one of Adam’s friends, Elizabeth. She tells Nouwen, “In my dream I saw Adam running and dancing, jumping up and down, free as a bird. I saw him as a free spirit, laughing and talking and moving his head, arms and legs like a beautiful athlete. He was so jubilant, so radiant, doing all the things he had never been able to do while he was with us. When I woke up I was thrilled to have seen Adam dancing!”1 This vision of eschatological healing—the integrity not just of the body but of its function—is a pop-­theological commonplace. It is a poignant picture of the resurrection, sketched in the deep shadows of grief. What is revealing about such portraits of the afterlife is the manner in which the alteration of functional ability renders a person different to the point of strangeness. Another of Adam’s friends, Nouwen tells us, also imagined seeing Adam in heaven. In her mind’s eye, she arrives at heaven and sees a “radiant-­looking young man approaching her.” The woman was confused because “she did not recognize him.”2 In the dream and Nouwen’s narrative, the situation is easily resolved, but her confusion points not just to assumptions about 66

eschatological healing, but also to the manner in which bodily alteration renders a person profoundly different. In the past sixty years, feminist, civil rights, disability rights, and LGBTQIA advocacy groups have argued that gender, race, disability, and sexual orientation are intrinsic and defining facets of identity that should be fiercely respected and unequivocally defended. There is little doubt that Adam’s impairments were a facet of who he was, but for whatever well-­intentioned reasons, he is altered in the eschatological plan.3 Modern constructions of heaven that render immobile bodies mobile are motivated by compassion and idealism. How can a nonfunctioning body be “glorified”? Who would want a nonfunctioning body in heaven? In ancient terms, as we will see, impairments related to functionality offer challenges distinct from impairments related to integrity. Integrity of form raises questions of identity and continuity. Persistence of function introduces a number of ethically oriented philosophical conundrums. What is the purpose of a nonfunctioning body part? Celestial Celibacy In chapter 12 of the Gospel of Mark, the Sadducees, well known for their opposition to the idea of bodily resurrection, question Jesus about his opinions on the afterlife. Their inquiries pertain directly to the levirate law governing the remarriage of a woman after she is widowed: [The Sadducees asked him] Teacher, Moses wrote for us that “if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no child, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother.” There were seven brothers; the first married and, when he died, left no children; and the second married her Functionality / 67

and died, leaving no children; and the third likewise; none of the seven left children. Last of all the woman herself died. In the resurrection whose wife will she be? For the seven had married her. (Mark 12:​19–23) The question is reminiscent of the technical hypothetical quandaries in which we find ourselves immersed in casuistic texts like the Mishnah, but here it is likely to be spoken in jest. It is less a genuine question about adjudicating marital relations in the afterlife than a snide commentary on the theory of bodily resurrection in general.4 In contrast, Jesus’s confident response to the question asserts the fallacy of their belief in sexual relations in the afterlife. He states: “Is not this the reason you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (12:​24–25). He then proceeds to adduce biblical proof for the belief in the resurrection. But the social awkwardness of polyandry in the afterlife is moot, as Jesus is clear: the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. In the history of interpretation, the reference to being like angels in heaven has led many to argue that the resurrected body is a disembodied angelic “body” composed of fire.5 The lack of interest in eternal marriage and postmortem procreation fits well with the broadly ambivalent approach to marriage found elsewhere in the writings of the Jesus Movement. In a well-­known passage from 1 Corinthians 7, Paul expresses the opinion that while it would be better to marry than to burn, it would be more preferable still to remain unmarried as he himself was. Elsewhere in his gospel, the author of Mark laments the fate of those who would find themselves pregnant at the apocalypse. Traditional scholarship has tended to read these passages 68 / Functionality

as part of a hermeneutic of crisis: the subtle or explicit rejection of marriage and procreation is the product of a community that believed itself positioned on the cusp of the end of the world. This perspective is, in other words, the daughter of necessity.6 In Mark 12, the eschatological fortunes of the resurrected person are compared to the status and conduct of the angels, and the concern is usually assumed to be the continuation of sexual activity in the afterlife. Jesus did not advocate sex outside of marriage; thus, with the removal of marriage, the possibility of sexual relations was removed from the heavenly realm. In this respect, Mark’s Jesus is much like his contemporaries: marital relations in heaven do not feature in contemporary Jewish descriptions of eschatological resurrection. While bodily resurrection might be inferred from 1 Enoch 22–27, 2 Maccabees 6–7, 4 Ezra 7:28–44, and 2 Baruch 29, none of these accounts refers to marriage or family.7 Mark’s commentary on eschatological marital status is paralleled in Matthew and Luke, who modify the statement in their characteristic ways. To the initial statement that no one marries or is given in marriage in heaven, we can add another Synoptic passage about the non-­procreative destiny. In Matt 19:​12, Jesus tells his disciples that it is preferable not to marry, “For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.” When read together, these passages create an image of the afterlife unconcerned with the use or functionality of reproductive body parts. As the body rises, the genitalia will fall into disuse. Arguably, for Matthew, the form of the eunuch is to be preferred in the present to that of the more conventional reproductively competent person. Given the importance of fertility in the ancient world, this is Functionality / 69

a striking reversal of ancient valuations of fertile and infertile bodies. While the majority of modern commentators read the statement as a reference to the ethical life of the Matthean community, a number of ancient Christian theologians used this passage to connect sexual continence in the present age to the resurrected life at the eschaton.8 As thematically linked statements about gender, reproduction, and the resurrection, the Synoptic passages mentioned above have elicited a great deal of commentary, both ancient and modern, about the status of sexual difference and sexual practices in the afterlife. A number of second- and third-­century apologists engaged these texts as evidence for the continuation (or not) of gender difference in the afterlife. Even while agreeing about the preservation of sexual difference in eternity, these authors often diverged when it came to explaining why it would continue to exist. For the Christian apologist known as Pseudo-­ Justin, the continuation of gender was a matter of preserving the identity of the individual resurrected Christian. For Athenagoras, the putative author of a different treatise titled On the Resurrection, the preservation of bodily difference enabled the soul to master the body and, thus, produce virtue.9 At the same time, these passages about the preservation of sexual difference and sexual organs in the resurrection also tell us a great deal about the commitments of second- and third-­ century Christian thinkers to the principle of functioning bodies. For those ancient people familiar, even in a casual way, with philosophy, the notion that a functionless body part could be ideal was deeply ethically problematic. In his first book of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle famously argues that every human being has an individual telos (a “goal” or “purpose”). Every characteristic activity (ergon), he argues, has as its goal a specific telos. He provides, as examples, first a series of professions—the flute 70 / Functionality

player, the craftsman, and the leatherworker—and asks, “If a kind of person (say, a craftsman) has a telos, should not a human being qua human being also have a telos? ” The question is intensified by his second set of examples, parts of the body, out of which he draws the question: If the parts of the body (the eye, the hand, or the foot) have a telos, should not the whole body also have a telos?10 Aristotle’s concern is the ethical order that should undergird human conduct and the orientation of this conduct toward eudaimonia (human flourishing or happiness). He suggests at the very beginning of his treatise that human flourishing would be clearer if we could first identify the function (ergon) of a human being. He argues that because ‘‘all things that have a function or activity, the good and the ‘well’ is thought to reside in the function,’’ and because the human function is ‘‘an active life of the element that has a rational principle,’’ therefore the human good is the activity of the rational part of the soul performed well, which is to say, in accordance with virtue. His argument that eudaimonia resides in function develops a strain of earlier Platonic thought, but it also highlights an assumption that would become axiomatic for philosophy: parts of the body are oriented toward a specific purpose or goal. If the parts of the body are not oriented toward a goal, Aristotle’s whole philosophy—and indeed his whole justification for human flourishing—crumbles.11 The same interest in teleology and functionality reappears in Christian theories of the resurrection but is often overlooked because the theory and its primary source, the Nicomachean Ethics, are classified as ethics rather than metaphysics. Living the “good life” by following virtue is the chief concern of ancient philosophy. The idea that parts of one’s self are useless and fulfill no purpose raises questions about the value of those parts and one’s ability to truly flourish. Interestingly, for Aristotle, the Functionality / 71

childless could never be altogether happy. This raises questions for the heavenly body: why have genitals in heaven (or limbs or a digestive system) if they no longer have a purpose?12 Scholarly Commentary on the Function of Resurrected Parts Scholarship on this thread of early Christian thought has tended to contextualize it among controversies about the nature of the resurrected self and the broader discussion about the resurrection of flesh. While some historical critics argue that the idea of general resurrection goes back to the historical Jesus, most scholarship has been interested in later developments of this idea.13 In both ancient and modern commentary, the references to living like the angels easily turned into an investigation of the nature of the angelic body and its relevance for the resurrection of the dead. The phrase “like angels in heaven” in no way leads to the conclusion that the dead will be angels in heaven. And yet, a number of readers, both ancient and modern, have pursued the nature of the incorporeal angelic body. The opponents of Pseudo-­Justin read into this passage the idea that angels do not have flesh. Jerome would argue that the very fact that Jesus mentions that the resurrected dead will not marry is evidence that they would, in fact, be human.14 In parsing the back and forth between early thinkers, the formation of social boundaries, and the crafting of Christian identity, scholars have yet to interrogate why functionality was troublesome for the apologists. The scholarly uninterest in functionality has led some to wonder why ancient writers like Tertullian are interested in the function of body parts at all. Recent scholarship on the interpretation of celestial celibacy has lighted on the importance of eschatological marriage, asceticism, and 72 / Functionality

sexual difference. Attention to the preservation of sexual difference in heaven reveals something important about the ancient Christian conversation about gender. What is sometimes lost in this conversation, however, is the ancient philosophical concern about functionality and the preservation of bodily parts—and, in particular, the role that infertility plays in establishing a precedent for the heavenly body.15 If body parts must function in order to retain their utility or, in ancient Christian terms, to maintain the goodness of the created order, what does it mean that certain body parts do not function in heaven? Is it sensible to speak of a nonfunctioning resurrected body? Is it ethical? As the opponents of one of the authors we examine here puts it, “If the body will rise whole and will have all of its parts, it is necessary that the functions of those parts will also exist; the womb to get pregnant, the male part to impregnate, and all the rest likewise.”16 Ancient Commentary on the Function of Heavenly Parts In general, ancient discussions about or depictions of the resurrected body assumed that it would be restored to an ideal state of functionality. In Against Heresies, for example, Irenaeus, the late-­second-­century bishop of Lyon, used medical imagery to defend the corporeality of the resurrection and to characterize that resurrection in terms of eschatological healing: At his [ Jesus’s] coming “the lame man shall leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall [speak] plainly, and the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall hear,” and that “the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, shall be strengthened,” and that “the dead which are in the grave shall arise,” and that he himFunctionality / 73

self “shall take [upon him] our weaknesses, and bear our sorrows,”—[all these] proclaimed those works of healing which were accomplished by him. Irenaeus’s argument brings the images of healing into parallel with those of resurrection—the “lame” walking and the dead rising are, for Irenaeus, synonymous acts. Death and disability are essentially similar. Likewise, the mechanics of the resurrection of the dead are described using the terminology of healing and strengthening rather than metaphors of purification or refinement. Irenaeus’s language and scriptural proof texts stress the utility of the parts. The previously inanimate bodies and body parts are put to use: they leap, speak, hear, and arise.17 The characterization of the resurrection as a process of healing was grounded in the earthly ministry of Jesus, the telos part of which is the healing of the whole body: As, therefore, those who were healed [by Jesus] were made whole in those members [parts of the body] which had in times past been afflicted; and the dead rose in the identical bodies, their limbs and bodies receiving health, and that life which was granted by the Lord, who prefigures eternal things by temporal, and shows that it is he who is himself able to extend both healing and life to his handiwork, that his words concerning its [future] resurrection may also be believed.18 At stake here, of course, is the notion that the body that rises continues to be the same body that lived and died. It is not, as the Stoics might have said, indistinguishable; it is absolutely the same. The reference to the Lord’s “handiwork” uses the argument of 2 Maccabees 7 that the body created ex nihilo at the beginning of time can surely be restored at the eschaton. This 74 / Functionality

kind of argument is, by Irenaeus’s time, rather common. The God who created the world can surely restore broken bodies to their created state. Irenaeus’s arguments are reminiscent of a contemporaneous pseudepigraphal treatise, On the Resurrection, attributed to the second-­century Christian philosopher Justin Martyr. Pseudo-­ Justin directly engages the cultured despisers of bodily resurrection, who seem to argue for spiritual or astral immortality as a star or heavenly body. Drawing upon Pauline notions of continuity and discontinuity, Pseudo-­Justin argues that the same body will be resurrected, only perfectly. An emblematic example for Pseudo-­Justin is the role of infirmity in the resurrection. Against those who suppose that disabled bodies rise disabled, Pseudo-­Justin answers that resurrection eliminates these defects.19 In the back and forth, the nature of the angelic life and the interpretation of the pronouncement about angelic bodies are of crucial importance. Pseudo-­Justin’s opponents use the angelic body as a proof that the resurrection will be spiritual: “Clearly if the body will have all the parts and portions, how is it not absurd to say these things exist after the resurrection from the dead, since the Savior said: ‘They will neither marry nor will be given in marriage, but they will be as angels in heaven.’ They say, ‘The angels do not have flesh, nor do they eat, nor do they have sexual intercourse. Just so, neither will there be a fleshly resurrection.’ ”20 The argument presented here is that the resurrection of the “parts and portions” of the body is absurd if those body parts (here the genitals) are not used in heaven. The comparison to angelic bodies further leads Pseudo-­Justin’s opponents to conclude that the resurrection is not fleshly because the angels do not have flesh, eat, or have sex. The rhetoric of disgust (which they also utilize in their imagery of deformed and disfigured bodies in heaven) is an adornment to their central point: Functionality / 75

the resurrected self cannot include nonfunctioning, fleshly body parts. To refute these arguments and address the Aristotelian concern about the functionality of genitalia, Pseudo-­Justin makes three arguments. First, he argues, pregnancy is not the necessary consequence of having a womb: Now on one hand it seems clear that the parts doing these things do them here, but on the other that it is not necessary to do these things according to principle. In order that this might be clear, let us consider thus: The function of the womb is to get pregnant and the male part to sow seed. But just as, if these parts are destined to do these functions, so it is not necessary for them to do them on principle (at least we see many women who do not get pregnant, such as the sterile, even though they have wombs), thus it is not immediately necessary to both have a womb and get pregnant. Second, he goes on, many people exercise self-­restraint and practice virginity: “Some women who are not barren abolish sexual intercourse, being virgins from the beginning; and others from a certain time. And we see also men being virgins from the beginning, and some from a certain time.”21 Foremost among these virgins, Pseudo-­Justin adds, is Jesus himself, who “lived his life by the rest of the conduct of the flesh—I mean by food, drink, and clothing—[yet] this one thing alone, through sexual intercourse, he did not do.” If the conduct of Jesus alone was not enough, Jesus’s conception further deemphasizes the necessity of sexual relations. The virgin birth, Pseudo-­Justin tells us, exists “for no other reason except in order that [God] might destroy reproduction.” Just as Jesus’s earthly ministry became the reference point for the healing of the resurrected body in Irenaeus, so too for Pseudo-­Justin, Jesus’s earthly 76 / Functionality

body is used to define the behaviors that are, strictly speaking, necessary.22 In this respect, Pseudo-­Justin utilizes the philosophical distinction between necessary and unnecessary desires. Just as Epicurus distinguished between eating and sleeping, which he viewed as natural and necessary, and sexual appetites and gratification, which he described as natural and unnecessary, so too Pseudo-­Justin demotes the status of procreation.23 If the practice of virginity is not compelling enough, Justin adds a third proof from the animal kingdom, the example of the mule: “But we find that some animals do not give birth, indeed even those having wombs, as a mule; and the male mules do not beget, so that we see that sexual intercourse is destroyed both through humans [i.e., virgins] and through irrational animals, even before the coming age.” It is not by accident that Pseudo-­ Justin invokes the mule as a critical element of his argument. Aristotle, who provides the philosophical grounding for the objections of Pseudo-­Justin’s opponents, recognized the exceptionality of the mule in his treatment of the generation of animals. The existence of male and female mules that are incapable of reproducing established a precedent in nature that could not be attributed to bodily brokenness. If sexual desire was, in Epicurus’s terms, natural but unnecessary, the mule demonstrates that procreation itself could not always be said to be natural and necessary. The utilization of a known soft spot in Aristotle’s argument about the importance of functional parts in relation to the whole is a thinly veiled attack on the assumptions of Pseudo-­ Justin’s audience. His response dismisses the idea that reproduction is the necessary, natural, and immediate action corresponding to possessing genitalia.24 Pseudo-­Justin’s response is effective but does not displace or try to displace the fundamental assumption that parts must be oriented toward a specific purpose. As a result, Pseudo-­Justin Functionality / 77

never satisfactorily answers the question, “If reproduction is not the necessary consequence of having a womb, what are genitalia for? What is the telos?” Writing soon afterward, the North African Latin writer Tertullian addressed this point directly. Though Tertullian’s interest in the fleshiness of the resurrection is a feature of many of his books, the theme is most systematically addressed in In the Flesh, On the Resurrection of the Flesh, and On the Soul. Turning to these texts we quickly discover that functionality of the parts is a central concern: What, they ask, will then be the use of the cavity of our mouth, and its rows of teeth, and the passage of the throat, and the crossroads of the stomach, and the gulf of the belly, and the entangled tissue of the intestines, when there will no longer be a place for eating and drinking? . . . [In resurrection] why would we have loins, being conscious of semen, and the other genitals in both sexes, as well as the enclosures of conception, and the fountains of the breast, when sexual intercourse, and pregnancy, and the nurturing of infants shall cease? Ultimately, what will be the use of the entire body, when clearly the whole is free from use? Tertullian both dismisses the line of inquiry and simultaneously seeks to reassign the purpose of the named body parts. He flatly agrees with his opponents that the functions of the bodily parts will cease in the resurrection but does not grant that this invalidates the necessity of those parts. As a result, he develops a novel set of uses for the teeth and genitals. Teeth, he writes, not only chew food, they also guard the tongue. In a first gesture toward aesthetic purpose that we will discuss in the next chapter, he adds that the teeth are useful for the purposes of “adornment,” in order that the person not appear unseemly.25 The genitals, on the other hand, seem to stoop even lower in 78 / Functionality

the hierarchy of bodily processes. He redefines the nether regions in scatological terms: “There are holes in the lower regions of man and woman (inferna in viro et in femina), in which no doubt flow sexual pleasures; but why are they not rather regarded as filters for the discharge of natural fluids (excreta)? Women, moreover, have within them a place for semen to gather; but are they not for the secretion of those sanguineous tissues that their more sluggish sex is inadequate to disperse?” Tertullian’s logic here has caused some confusion. The excreta are the by-­products of digestion, which, in the ancient world, was defecation. In his commentary on this passage, Petrey notes the ancient medical commonplace that women’s bodies were cooler than those of men as a means of understanding why sanguineous tissue (menstruation or afterbirth) gather in the womb, but concludes with respect to the excreta: “It is not clear how defecation is meant to raise the status of the ‘lower regions’ for his readers, especially since these functions too would cease in the resurrection. The tension persists in trying to find a noble purpose for these parts.”26 The tension can be slightly eased by augmenting this reading with two other ancient medical conventions about women’s bodies: first, the general idea that menstruation was for women a means of evacuating accumulating nutrients; and second, the unusual idea that the womb has the potential to become a repository for filth and parasites. According to the Hippocratic On Diseases, tapeworms, which are associated with fecal matter, are formed in the fetus in utero. Although the association is complicated, there is some medical precedent for seeing the womb as a repository for fecal matter. The strange relationship between the life-­giving womb and the filthy detritus of the human condition that characterizes Tertullian’s tense and difficult relationship with bodies thus predates Tertullian himself. By supplanting human generation with the notional purposes Functionality / 79

of digestive filtration, Tertullian is able to redirect the functions of the genitals toward the morally and aesthetically complicated issue of eating.27 Like Pseudo-­ Justin, Tertullian sees the lived practice of earthly abstinence as a precursor to and evidence of the heavenly life: “Even in the present life there may be cessations of the function for intestines and shameful parts ( pudenda). For forty days Moses and Elias fasted, being nourished upon God alone. . . . We even, as we are able, excuse our mouths from food, and withdraw our sexes from intercourse. How many voluntary eunuchs there are! How many virgins married to Christ!” And again, like Pseudo-­Justin, Tertullian links the voluntary exercise of virginity to the involuntary state of God-­given sterility, adding, “How many, both of men and women, whom nature has made sterile, with a structure of infertile genitals!” The association of virtuous choice with natural biological state is not original to this particular conversation. While virginity and infertility are morally encoded in vastly different ways, ancient analyses sometimes focused on the functional identity between the two. Artemis, the goddess of the hunt and childbirth, also eschewed the company of men and thus was identified as both a virgin and sterile. When Plutarch discusses the origins of the cultural association of the moon with Artemis, he writes, “We shall say that she was thought to be Artemis on the ground that she is a virgin and sterile but is helpful and beneficial to other females.” Plutarch refers to the traditional understanding of the virgin goddess Artemis as the goddess of childbirth but also identifies sterility as a component of her identity. The modern diagnostic principles that would insist that a woman should not be called sterile unless she has attempted to have children has no place in the ancient world; sex is not a necessary prerequisite for sterility.28 Tertullian’s essential argument, however, finds its basis in 80 / Functionality

the unknowable plan of the omnipotent Aristotelian God. In a clear, almost dismissive, reference to the classic example of the Ship of Theseus, Tertullian dismantles the arguments of his opponents. He argues that if they concede that a reconstituted ship is, by virtue of its structure, the same ship as it originally was, surely they should allow the hypothetical benefactor of the ship’s restoration to retire the ship from service without also demanding that the ship be dismantled. If a rich and generous owner, while granting to his private sentiment or his public reputation the boon of the ship’s restoration and that alone, has expressed the wish for it to work no more, will you say that it has no need of its original structure, from now on to be inactive, since thus it beseems the bare salvation of a ship without work to do? . . . And you will have no right, on the ground that the members will in future be inactive, to deny the possibility of its existing anew: for it is feasible for a thing to exist anew and none the less be inactive. But it cannot be said even to be inactive, if it does not exist. Moreover, if it exists, it will be possible for it also not to be inactive: for in God’s presence nothing can be inactive.29 It might seem, after so much argumentation, that Tertullian reflexively collapses into the trite explanation that “all things are possible with God.” In fact, he uses Aristotelian metaphysics to prove that the parts of the body are not useless even if they do not function as they did before. For Aristotle, God is “the Unmoved Mover,” the one responsible for the locomotion of everything in the cosmos, including the eternal rotation of heavenly things closest to it. Granting that, Tertullian argues, would it even be possible for the resurrected bodies in the presence of God to be inactive? The slippage between activity and funcFunctionality / 81

tionality provides Tertullian with something of a solution to the problem of functionless bodies.30 Athenagoras, the putative author of the two Christian treatises On the Resurrection and A Plea for Christians, takes a different approach.31 Like Tertullian, he maintains that body parts are integral to providing continuity of identity. But in constructing his argument, Athenagoras greatly expands upon the theme, touched on in Tertullian, that the flesh and the individual parts of the body must be resurrected for the sake of justice. Earthly judgment, writes Athenagoras, is insufficient and incapable of meting out punishment in a just fashion. In the temporal courtroom, the most heinous criminal has only one life to give, but in the eternity of God’s justice, punishment can be more fairly distributed. In making this argument, Athenagoras appeals to an often-­overlooked feature of the early Christian conversation about immortality, namely, the necessity of a hell-­bound body for the distribution of justice.32 For Athenagoras, the human person, and thus human nature, is present in the psychosomatic relationship: For if there is no resurrection, the nature of humans as humans would not persist. And if the nature of humans does not persist, in vain has the soul been fit together with the needs of the body and its passions; and in vain has the body, yielding to the reins of the soul and being bridled, been shackled from obtaining what it yearns for. . . . It is absolutely necessary that the deathlessness of the soul should continue eternally with the permanence of the body according to their own appropriate nature. The motif of the body-­soul relationship as an unruly horse governed by a rider is undeniably Platonic. But Plato would likely 82 / Functionality

not agree that the soul is contingent on the body for the preservation of human nature. For that idea, we must turn to Aristotle and the Stoics, who hold that the soul is not separable from those parts of the body that it has by nature. The virtues that Athenagoras wishes to see implemented are an assortment of both classic Stoic virtues (courage, temperance, prudence, and justice) and other more popular ideals.33 On judgment day, the entirety of a person—all of his or her flesh—must be present before God for judgment, for reward or punishment. If they have no flesh, they are not a person, and if they do not have the same flesh, there is no continuity of personhood. It would be, as Tertullian says, “unjust” if one flesh, the earthly flesh, did the “work” of attaining resurrection through martyrdom, while a different flesh received its rewards. Tertullian asserts explicitly that continuity is guaranteed by the resurrection of the substance of the members of the body and denies that the functions of these members are important. But Athenagoras disagrees, writing, “The living being will be purely the same if everything is the same which serve as its parts.”34 The preservation of the material substance of the body is a concern, but the continuation of functions is equally important. Without them, the resurrected person cannot be said to be the same person who was alive. Moreover, Athenagoras is unwilling to give up integrity, of substance or function; he writes: “God knows the nature of human bodies both in their entirety and in every part and particle.”35 Athenagoras’s discussion of the importance of the body as the actor in the exercise of virtue goes much further than a mere eschatological evaluation of deeds. The embodied practice of virtue, what we might call the purpose of the whole body, has an eschatological orientation. Anticipating a much later caricature of atheism, he writes: Functionality / 83

For if there is never to be a judgment on the deeds of humans, then they will have nothing greater than irrational beasts; or rather, they will fare more miserably than these [beasts] in subordinating the passions and having given heed to piety, justice, and every other virtue. Then the life of beasts or savages is best, virtue is senseless, the threat of judgment a huge joke, to cultivate pleasure is the greatest good, and the common doctrine and law of all will be that which is beloved to the unbridled and lecherous, “Eat, drink and be merry” [1 Cor 15:​32]. For the end of such a life is not pleasure, according to some, but complete insensibility. The teleological goal of virtue is, quite clearly, the final judgment. But this orientation does not demand living like a resurrected body; it demands living in accordance with virtue. For Athenagoras only that flesh that “contributed to life and the labors in life according to nature” is integral to the soul. But for Athenagoras, as for Plato, reproduction (although not sexual desire) is necessary and natural. As natural parts of the person, the reproductive organs are inseparable from the soul and thus must be present in the resurrection.36 If we were to ask Athenagoras, “Why, if the reproductive parts are natural, is there no reproduction in heaven?,” his answer would be that unnatural sexual desire has been eliminated through the erasure of the humors. The elimination of the humors (which do not contribute to life and its labors, and thus are not integral to the self ) not only calcifies the otherwise unstable body into a fixed form, but eliminates those biological imbalances that necessitated the emission of semen, menstruation, and childbearing.37 He likens this eschatological moment of transformation to the changes produced in the body when it eats, drinks, and ages, describing the resurrection as the final 84 / Functionality

stage of bodily change. By describing the eschatological eradication of the humors in this way, Athenagoras appealed to the worn philosophical question of the Growing Problem. If the reader was willing to grant the continuation of bodily identity despite the flux elicited by ordinary bodily changes, why protest the resurrection’s erasure of those fluctuating elements of the flesh altogether? Some flesh was essential to the self, but those parts “without purpose” could “have no place among the things created by God.”38 In the writings of other apologists, however, the idea of resurrected celibacy creates a bodily ideal that glances backward beyond its eschatological starting point to the practices of the present age. For Tertullian and Pseudo-­Justin, the non-­procreative heavenly body had moral consequences for the Christian. Tertullian, with many later authors, argues both for the preservation of marriage in heaven and, elsewhere, for the adoption of ascetic practices as preparation for the resurrection.39 In a manner reminiscent of Plato’s language of ascent, Tertullian writes that the fasting body rises more quickly than the plump one because “more speedily will lighter flesh rise; longer in the sepulcher will drier flesh retain its firmness.” Similarly the “slenderer flesh” of the ascetic will slip through the gates of heaven with ease. In an analogous way, Tertullian advises his audience to focus their attention on martyrdom rather than sexual desire.40 For early Christian writers theorizing about the persistence of sexual difference in the resurrection, barrenness and celibacy in the heavenly world came to play twin roles as prefigurations of the heavenly state. In the ancient world, these conditions made the infertile vulnerable to social marginalization. But in a striking reversal of fortunes, second- and third-­century apologists begin to portray barren bodies as precursors to and prototypes of the idealized angelic body. Arguably, the same premise is enFunctionality / 85

coded in the Gospel of Mark and Acts of the Apostles. Synoptic statements about the elimination of marriage in heaven do not necessarily castrate the resurrected reader, but they do remove the practice of and even potential for procreation. Angels, as a strange story in Genesis 6 about human and angelic copulation illustrates, were more than capable of engaging in sexual congress. That they chose not to was a sign that reproduction was not a necessary function of the resurrected body. The same idealization of biological or functional sterility in the resurrection underpins narratives about the woman with the flow of blood in Mark 5, the nonhealing of the eunuch of Acts 8, and the story of Petronilla, the paralyzed daughter of the Apostle Peter, in the Acts of Peter. The views of the individual authors briefly analyzed in this chapter do not always turn on the same philosophical axis, but there is a striking trend in which nonfunctional genitals become the paradigm for the Kingdom of God.41 Some modern interpreters have used the preservation of barrenness in the afterlife to crack the ableistic celestial ceiling, but it is clear that for the ancient authors surveyed here, infertility is the exception, not the rule.42 The guiding principle that deformities will be healed in heaven is alive and well in the writings of Irenaeus and Pseudo-­Justin, and in wanting to piece together the fragmented bodies of the martyrs, Tertullian and Athenagoras insist on the contours of the “normal body.” Because of the ambivalence that surrounded sexual desire and the cultural characterization of childbearing as not good but necessary, these authors treat the function of the womb so differently.43 In modern theological contexts, we might extrapolate from these positive evaluations of nonfunctioning genitalia the claim that bodily ability is not of paramount importance in Christian constructions of divine interest. If we do so we should at least acknowledge that for the ancient authors we have examined here, these concerns are specific to the subject of functionality in gen86 / Functionality

eral, and the function of the genitals in particular.44 The internal machinations of the body—digestion and procreation—can be given up, but, as we have already seen, ancient theologians reach different conclusions when faced with disabilities that pertain to bodily integrity. Tertullian finds procreative bodily functions especially tiresome, but the resurrection of the non-­procreative body would not have been as problematic were it not for the issue of functionality.45 He articulates the same philosophical problem when he asks, “To what purpose the hands and the feet and all the muscles by which men work, when even thought for food is to cease?” Food is the implicit goal of work, just as ingestion is the goal of chewing, but his concern rests not on genitalia or intestines, but on their aborted functions. The ethical character of purpose and necessity in ancient philosophy means that while Tertullian will sacrifice continuity of function for continuity of substance, he cannot easily brush these questions aside. His ultimate answer is that, in the eschaton, the concept of purpose itself will be transfigured. Yet he does not deny that the functions of the members are important until that moment: “In short, to what purpose the whole body, when it is to be wholly inactive? . . . Those functions of the members do by the necessities of this life remain until, and only until . . . this mortal thing puts on immortality and this corruptible thing incorruption. But when life itself has been delivered from necessities, the members also will be delivered from their functions: but they will not for that reason be unnecessary.”46 It is the principle of functionality, along with its connection to ethical conduct and necessity, that is destroyed in the resurrection. Beneath the surface of this chapter a particular and occasionally named cultural commitment to beauty has bubbled. The removal of body parts is not only problematic because of issues of form; it is problematic because the results might be disfiguring. Functionality / 87

Tertullian’s insistence that we need teeth for “adornment,” as if appearance was itself a kind of purpose, is unexpected. That aesthetics rears its beautiful head in unexpected conversations about functionality suggests that attractiveness is itself a marker of the heavenly. It is thus to beauty that we now turn, not so much in an effort to displace the centrality of beauty to Christian authors, but rather to reveal the ways that even seemingly innocuous commitments to constructions of beauty reinforce socioeconomic hierarchies and privilege.

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4 Aesthetics In Ravenna, Italy, the church of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo preserves a sixth-­century mosaic of saints in procession. The female saints stand alongside one another, holding crowns (alternating red and green), differences in their dress and hairstyle all but unnoticeable. The women gaze blankly toward the congregation, their identical expressions reflecting a characterless homogeneity otherwise understood as the blissful serenity of sainthood. Above their heads, the names of the martyrs—Justina, Perpetua, Felicity—serve as the only markers of their individual identities. (The exception is Agnes, who appears with a lamb.) Except for these ancient nametags, there is no way to distinguish among the martyrs; they are all pale, expressionless, and light-­haired. According to the traditional view, in life Perpetua was a Tunisian aristocrat turned ambiguously gendered gladiator, and Felicity was a slave girl. In death, they are memorialized as heavenly Stepford wives, their complexions washed out with Roman notions of pale aristocratic beauty.1 The iconographic representation of heavenly saints is a commonplace in ancient art. They are marked with crowns of wreaths and palm branches as athletic martyrs. Their near-­ identical clothing removes the markings of social status and class that accompanied them in life, endowing them instead with a shared identity of wealth and privilege. The uniformity and neatness of their revivified heavenly forms represent the perfection and order of heaven itself.2 The symmetry and proportionality of heavenly bodies is, in some ways, a banal instantiation of ancient artistic notions of beauty. After all, as early as 89

the fifth century BCE, the sculptor Polykleitos popularized the notion that the beauty of the body was based on symmetria and the harmony of the parts.3 We might optimistically interpret the scene theologically—these women are all the same because in Christ all other individuating markers are, in the style of Gal 3:28, stripped away. At the same time, however, the eradication of difference and the assimilation of a common ideal of beauty gestures toward an important theme in early Christian constructions of heaven: the nature of the aesthetically perfected heavenly body. Beauty in the Ancient World Technically speaking, the word “aesthetics” is inappropriate for the ancient world. The modern field of aesthetics, with its focus on art, did not exist in classical conversation, and the Platonic philosophical discourse that parses the relationship between Beauty and the Good is almost unintelligible in modern discourse. This chapter is about bodily aesthetics and the way that beauty, dress, and appearance are connected, in both ancient and modern thinking, to virtue and moral superiority. To put this in the terms of Stoicism: If virtue is an embodied state, what does that body look like? The ancient conversation about beauty in the ancient world is expansive and is complicated both by the fact that the field of aesthetics, of which beauty is considered to play a role, is a relatively modern invention, and also by the linguistic slippage between our use of “beauty” and ancient uses of terms like kalos (beautiful, good, noble) and agathos (good). Linguistically, kalos has a moral and ethical component, but it is not synonymous with agathos. Similarly, the difficulty of locating an ancient conceptual analogue to our modern concept of art makes it hard to seek out our modern conception of beauty 90 / Aesthetics

via modern categories. Modern aesthetics would find the description of virtue as beautiful galling, but ancient writers have no difficulty associating the two.4 Bodily aesthetics, and in particular the assumption that the ideal body—or even the soul, if it is anthropomorphized—must by its very nature be beautiful, is a common theme in modern discussions of the afterlife. This assumption was shared by many in the ancient world. Arguably the most famous passage of Plato’s Symposium is a statement attributed to Diotima, in which the contemplation of a single beautiful body could lead one on a journey toward the contemplation of ever purer forms of beauty: from one body to all bodies, to all beautiful souls, laws, knowledge, and finally (the Platonic form of ) Beauty itself.5 Beauty, therefore, has the power to transcend; it beckons one toward virtue and the divine. Beauty of body and beauty of soul were explicitly connected in some Stoic thinking by the common element of symmetry. An excerpt from Arius Didymus’s Epitome of Stoic Ethics states that “just as the beauty of a body is the proportionality of the limbs when they relate to each other and to the whole, so the beauty of the soul is the proportionality of the logos and its parts when they relate to the whole of the soul and to each other.” Cicero agrees, stating that according to the Stoics good proportion produces beauty of soul and body. That his comment appears in the context of a discussion of health and disease leads at least one scholar to conclude that proportionality “might just as well be called health as beauty.”6 The hallmarks of beauty were linked not solely to class and virtue, but also to health. As noted, symmetry and proportionality were of critical importance for the presence of beauty, but they were also central for beauty’s pathological cousin, good health. Stobaeus argues that beauty, health, and strength are Aesthetics / 91

structurally similar as each depends on training. His statements both connect health and beauty and exhibit a subtle awareness that beauty is something that can be cultivated.7 Physical beauty in the ancient world was equated not only with virtue, but also with ethnicity and class. Callirhoe, the aristocratic heroine of the Greek novel Chareas and Callirhoe, is regularly mistaken for Aphrodite. The idealized luminescent pale skin was a mark of membership in the leisure class. Likewise, the preference for even skin tone in women, and the idea that the skin would be uniformly colored and pale, was an indication that the subject had spent most of her time indoors. For ancient writers, uneven skin tone could have a pronounced effect upon participation in civic and religious life: Celsus may note that “freckles are ignored by most,” but Pliny the Elder asserts that freckled women might be prevented from making certain kinds of religious offerings because of the supposed impurity of their appearance.8 Even if the Stoic could nurture beauty via exercise of the proper virtues or by massaging the body of an infant, for most ancient Greeks bodily beauty, especially facial beauty, had a strong connection to nature. The young aristocratic woman was naturally beautiful, but others might resort to artifice in order to pre­sent themselves as beautiful. In general, cosmetics and perfume were enveloped by an odor of deceit. Theoretically, those aspiring to be beautiful through the application of cosmetics were in danger of falling into vice. Our sources distinguish between “the preservation of beauty” and the unnatural embellishment of looks.9 In Xenophon, the woman who symbolizes virtue is “beautiful and dignified, in appearance, her body adorned with purity, her eyes with shame, her body with modesty, and dressed in white.” Physical appearance and virtuous conduct are accessorized in equal measure. The woman who embodies vice, by contrast, is “fleshy and fat and so made up as to seem unnatu92 / Aesthetics

rally white and red, and also tries to appear taller than she really is.”10 She is extravagant, sensual, and unseemly. Statements like this are part of a long rhetorical tradition that casts cosmetics as aesthetically deceptive and associated with sexual immorality.11 Many ancient writers condemned the artifice and deceit involved in the whitening of skin. But whiteness of the skin, like, as we will see later in this chapter, whiteness of attire, was aspirational and performative—achievable through the costly and laborious practices of dyeing, laundering, grinding, applying, and robing. We might fear that forms of embodied vice that are rhetorically presented as artificial, overwrought, and deceitful might, in practice, have been well-­intentioned beautification, but the issue at hand is not the overuse of rouge or artificiality of skin tone. The interpretation of makeup and its ethical status is contextual: within the home and for the enjoyment of one’s husband, the toilette could serve a purpose. It is outside the home in the masculine arena of the public world that the interpretation of the female form shifts: it is in the streets that makeup becomes the hallmark of the prostitute.12 Our sources for ancient ideals and standards of beauty are both literary and material, with the former frequently being used to interpret the latter. Given that literary sources are always elite, but that our interests do not lie exclusively with elite Christians, it is worth voicing a note of caution about whether or not elite male authors adequately capture the lived performance of beauty in the ancient world. In his work, Emanuel Mayer warns us of the perils of the idea of “trickle down” aesthetics in antiquity. It is often assumed that nonelites aspired to the trappings of the aristocracy, an assumption that has sometimes led to the misidentification of richly decorated houses as aristocratic. Art and beauty are not the same in the ancient world, but we should not automatically assume that standards of beauty presented in elite literary sources passed seamlessly and without augmentation to Aesthetics / 93

those lower down the social pecking order. Roman standardization was inflected differently in different contexts, and the same image could take on a variety of meanings in a variety of contexts.13 At the same time certain conventions, lauded in writers like Homer, reappear in less illustrious writers. A second-­century CE poem composed by Aulus Allius in honor of his mistress Allia Potestas praises the “ivory gleam in her face” and her “snow white breasts,” and even as he, somewhat shockingly, alludes to a ménage a trois, strangely, he admires the same elitist bodily ideals: “she kept her limbs smooth and the hair was sought out everywhere.” The poet oddly mixes imagery of prostitution and domestic virtue in a manner one would not expect in elite writing about one’s beloved, but the aesthetic ideals of pale skin and hairlessness are reproduced, albeit without the pretense that hairlessness was natural. Thus, it seems that, when it comes to the body, at least some of the ideals and technologies that supported shaping the body crossed social and economic divides. Moreover, cosmetics can be and were cheaply manufactured in domestic settings.14 Interestingly, and despite the widespread concern for and interest in the subject, beauty is not a category explicitly employed by Paul in his discussion of the resurrected body. There is a rich philosophical tradition that aligns the beautiful and the divine, but this is not a tradition to which he appeals. The first hints of aesthetic interest come in Tertullian’s statement that in the resurrected the mouth would continue to have teeth for the sake of “adornment” so that they might not appear unseemly.15 It is truly only with Augustine that philosophical discourse about Beauty and the Good starts to shape eschatological aesthetics in a self-­conscious manner. Modern biblical commentary, however, as we have seen throughout this book, tellingly imports its own aesthetics into 94 / Aesthetics

the New Testament. What is glorified must be perfect, and what is perfect must be beautiful according to some presumed standard of beauty. Even though Jesus is portrayed as a cultural iconoclast who reverses hierarchies of wealth, social status, gender, and power, many interpreters assume that conventional standards of beauty, which were and continued to be tied to notions of health, virtue, or accomplishment, are still in place. There is an unspoken assumption here: even while we assume that the resurrected body will be beautiful, we ignore both the manner in which beauty, much like gender, is a negotiated performance, and also the existence of the sociological stuffing that plumps the contours of what is culturally pleasing. It is not only that we have been conditioned to think that youthful, hairless, toned bodies are beautiful; we are led to believe that this kind of beauty is naturally occurring. The performative nature of beauty is not obscured from our view by the scriptural texts: the mechanics of resurrection frequently employ motifs of dressing, crowning, and embellishing. We are continually reminded of ways in which the resurrected body is shaped. But this imagery is weighed down with socioeconomic baggage. One cannot speak even of “natural beauty” without invoking social status, class, wealth, profession, virtue, and origins. Dress in the Ancient World Until the 1960s, the philosophies of dress taught in home economics classes, espoused in the pages of women’s publications, and commercialized in mail-­order catalogues promoted the idea of investing in a single “basic” or “background” dress that could be subtly augmented with varying accessories—collars, pins, and belts. While the elite could always afford many items of clothing, the widespread (which is to say, economically diverse) practice of owning dozens or even hundreds of semidisposable Aesthetics / 95

outfits is remarkably recent. It was possible to find individuality by tweaking accessories, but changing the central element of one’s dress was less common. The perfect wardrobe, as outlined in McCall’s Pattern Book in 1936–1937, listed only eight items, including ski suit and coat. Our own tendency to see our attire as a reflection of our mood or as tied to our daily calendar is strikingly novel. Until relatively recently, the majority of people owned very few items of clothing, and those were rarely laundered.16 The situation was even more pronounced in the ancient world, especially among nonelites. As a collection of interlaced premodern societies, the Greco-­Roman world is treated as a “clothing society” rather than a “fashion society,” but even in ancient Greece there was an interest in dress as a signifier of change in social status or role. The lack of academic attention to the function of the robes is surprising given recent scholarship on the function of dress in art history, classics, and late antique Christianity. Dress is a system of communication. The encoded visual language of dress provided a “social skin” that represented part of human identity to particular audiences. A recent influential study by Mary Ellen Roach-­Higgins and Joanne Eicher has highlighted the ways in which the definition of dress often makes assumptions about the limits of the self. Regarding that study, Neville McFerrin comments, “Rather than conceptualizing clothing separately from the body, it is the act of wearing that gives the individual a form, a shape, a social function, a depth.” This idea, termed “deep wearing,” sees dress as something that fundamentally constitutes the wearer; it does not merely embellish or enhance him or her. This is something with which the Romans, the self-­described “people of the toga” (Virgil, Aeneid 1.282), might well have agreed. The fact that ancient Greek sometimes uses schema or “form” to describe clothing as well as 96 / Aesthetics

the structure of the body only highlights the blurred boundary between self and not-­self.17 For those who were fortunate enough to wear high-­status attire, especially of the sort that found its way into artwork, there was a consciousness about the way that dress formed the self and the body. Significant clothing, in the words of Neville McFerrin, “both signaled and reinforced [the] social position” of those wearing it.18 For Renaissance viewers, for example, clothing was as much a marker of identity as the color of one’s eyes or the shape of one’s nose. The importance of physiognomy in the classical world may render this too strong a statement for early Christian sources, but it is worth remembering that clothing was not ancillary to an essential embodied self. Moreover, clothing expresses and reinforces a complicated set of social hierarchies among those who view it. The crafting of identity via dress is not only a facet of human identity formation, but also a feature of the divine image. Although more obvious in the Neo-­Assyrian practices of dressing statues and thereby transforming them into deities, the literary depictions of a deity enthroned and enrobed in biblical (and other Ancient Near Eastern) texts, and the dynamic relationship between the attire of the deity and the attire of imperial authorities, helped shape both the image of God or God’s Son and the representation and reception of temporal leaders.19 It is with this in mind that we turn to the final book of the canonical New Testament. The White Robes of Heaven In the book of Revelation, at the opening of the fifth seal, the visionary sees a group of disgruntled souls positioned beneath an altar. These are those, we are told, “who had been slaughtered Aesthetics / 97

for the word of God and for the testimony they had given.” The souls cry out to their Sovereign Lord for vengeance: “How long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?” (6:10). The souls, it seems, are unhappy, but they are also numerically inadequate: “They were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until [their] number would be complete” (6:11).20 In the history of interpretation, the passage has been understood as a reference to martyrs, and as a result, it has invited scholarly questions about the identity of those slaughtered for their testimony, about the historical likelihood of being executed for being Christian in the first century, and about the location of the souls of these martyred dead and the notion of intermediate resurrection. More than one interpreter has been unsettled by the seemingly unchristian character of martyrs’ demands for vengeance from God.21 The prominence of these questions, together with the immediate context of the scene amid a succession of opened scrolls that elicit disaster and violence, has shaped the scholarly conversation. The “puzzling” timing of the investiture with the robes and the subsequent importance of the idea of a first resurrection and the intermediate salvation of the martyrs have provided the impetus for a number of important studies of eschatology and divine vengeance.22 But what about the robes? The scene is, as Middleton observes, a call for violence and restitution. Simultaneously, however, the effects of opening the fifth scroll are deferred into the future. We are in no doubt that vengeance will come eventually, but the scene before our eyes is one in which the restless, clamoring souls are placated with white robes. The effect of the breaking of the scroll is literal and figurative rest. The clamor of the dead abates.23 The shift in what we might call the “psychological state” of 98 / Aesthetics

the souls is only occasionally discussed. The implicit promise of future judgment and the transitory nature of the martyrs’ rest can easily distract us from the shift in the condition of the martyrs. There is nothing about the language of the scene that suggests that they were resting before this moment, but it is reminiscent of the concluding verse of the book of Daniel, in which Daniel is told to rest in anticipation of rising at the end of days (12:​13). Daniel was calmed by the promise of eschatological resurrection, and the martyrs are granted white robes. The significance of this scene for determining the state of the martyrs turns on our understanding of these white robes. What does it mean to clothe oneself with white robes at the resurrection?24 Scholarship is understandably ambivalent on this question. White robes are seen as a generic marker of elect status, an ambiguous marker of otherworldly identity, and an almost banal cipher for moral purity. White robes are generally seen as symbolizing a “range of positive meanings, that center on the concept of ritual and moral purity.” There is a biblical basis for this interpretive ennui: in the canonical Bible, white robes are the attire of angels, transfigured persons, deities, and other heavenly figures. The ubiquity of white robes as markers of supernatural identity domesticates them in the eyes of the scholarly reader. As a result, and coupled with the overriding sense that this scene is about judgment, it is easy to overlook the question of what the receipt of robes means.25 White robes play a striking role in identifying divine figures in the book of Revelation. The head and hair of the enthroned Son of Man resemble “snow” and “white wool” (1:14); the rewards of those who “conquer” like the Lamb and “walk” with God are a white stone inscribed with a new name (2:17) and white robes accompanied by immortality (3:4); the elders who sit enthroned in heaven are clad in white robes (4:4), as are the heavenly multitude of martyrs (7:9, 13); and, finally, the war-­ Aesthetics / 99

mongering horse of justice and the heavenly armies and their steeds are all identified by their white coloring and attire (19:​11, 14). It is worth noting that even the heavenly furniture is chalk-­ colored: the cloud upon which the Son of Man is seated and the great throne of judgment are both white. While we might be tempted to attribute the author’s fondness for white to his sources, particularly the description of the Ancient of Days and Son of Man in Daniel 7, it is noteworthy that Revelation inserts pale adjectives into the imagery it has taken up. In Daniel 7, the Son of Man “comes with” colorless clouds and the Ancient of Days sits on a throne of fiery flames. The pallid heavenly attire of the apocalyptic imagination is intensified in Revelation, in which it serves to identify those rewarded by God for martyrdom, those associated with divine judgment and retribution, and those who belong to the heavenly realm.26 Within the narrative arc of Revelation itself, the significance of the white robes is established before they are granted to the restless souls in chapter 6. As early as chapter 3, we learn that white robes are given to those who have not soiled their clothes. In the future, we discover, they will walk with Jesus dressed in white; they will wear “white robes” and will not be blotted out of the Book of Life because Jesus will confess their names before the Father and his angels (3:4–5). The language of the courtroom anticipates the eschatological judgment that occurs later in the book (20:​11–12). The basis for judgment fuses ethics and attire. The language of walking with Jesus echoes the fate of Enoch, who walked with God and was taken up into heaven (Gen 5:22, 24), and the faintly moralizing ethical descriptors of the Israelite kings who followed God’s statutes and thus “walked with God” (2 Chr 34:2). The imagery of soiled clothing implies ethical failings and disloyalty to God (Zech 3:1–5). By contrast “Teflon-­like clothing” is an attribute of Jesus in the First Apocalypse of James.27 100 / Aesthetics

The language of white robes in Revelation 6 is subtly different. To be sure, this is, by definition, clean and pure attire, and later in the book language of washing robes in the blood of the Lamb will be used to describe how martyrdom brings about salvation (7:14). But here the white robes are presented as heavenly garments, as rewards, and as identifiers not only that one is virtuous, but also that one has escaped damnation. The phrase “white robes,” we should remember, is only ever used of heavenly actors. Thus, while there is a connection between the robes and the unsoiled clothing, they are not the same. The unsoiled garments anticipate the white robes, as they do in Rev 3:5, but the latter are heavenly uniform and eternal reward. As Revelation is especially attentive to the fate of the martyred dead, we might reasonably wonder what the afterlife of these witnesses has to say about the resurrection of everyone else. More specifically, what do the white robes represent? Are they, as one nineteenth-­century editorial writer described them, mere “tokens of divine regard”? Are the robes of the martyrs new heavenly garments or clean earthly ones? And are they to be understood, as Wilhelm Bousset and Ernst Lohmeyer read them, as resurrected bodies; as David Aune sees them, as “polyvalent metaphor[s] for salvation”; or, as Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza reads them, as the appropriate attire for the marriage feast of the Lamb?28 What is striking in these varied interpretations is the extent to which white robes are sequestered in religious and celestial domains.29 It is certainly true that white is the “heavenly color” that signifies “purity,” “salvation,” and “morality,” but what does it mean outside of religious contexts?30 Aune explains the motif with reference to burial, and Richard Bauckham’s work draws on the military and later Christian interpretation to suggest that the robes are symbols of victory.31 But what is a white garment in pedestrian life? The symbol is intelligible only if it carries simiAesthetics / 101

lar cultural connotations to the thing toward which it gestures. These are live images, not dead ones. While we can be certain that white robes carry positive connotations, it is important to think about precisely how it is that these garments work beyond the lexicon of biblical experience and in the grammar of ancient life. What do white robes mean on earth as well as in heaven?32 The white robes of Revelation signal both membership and transformation. The issue of whether the robes are indicative of ontological change is not especially important. It is clear that they represent elevated status and participation in the heavenly realm. If dress is a means of crafting identity and “becoming,” we should ask, How would an ancient reader have read the white robes of Revelation? Who, in the present, dresses like a member of the heavenly host, and which earthly bodies serve as the models for the heavenly ideal? The ubiquity of white garments in the ancient world makes this a difficult question to answer.33 Studies of contemporary religious dress show that dress often functions as a physical expression of religious identity.34 Religious dress among the Amish or Mormons, for example, can communicate otherness and negotiate assimilation to or separation from the mainstream.35 Greek religion, as Laura Gawlinski has written, frustrates this approach. This is not only the case because what we call religion was embedded in premodern culture in a way that makes it difficult to distinguish between the religious and nonreligious, but also because of the relative homogeneity in religious beliefs.36 In general, as has been widely acknowledged, whitish garments carried connotations of membership: if the heavy woolen toga was the uniform of the Roman male, the toga pura, the off-­white undyed variety of the garment, identified the wearer as a freeborn citizen entitled to all of the legal and sociopolitical privileges that accompanied citizenship. The shining white of the toga candida, worn by candidates for Roman magistracies, 102 / Aesthetics

conveyed notions of eligibility. It symbolized not just membership in a class, but transition from one period of life (and one status in life) to another. Women wore a white wool tunica recta for their wedding ceremony, for example. White was the color in which the deceased were most often dressed for burial. White garments in general were a signal of religiosity: running across a crowd of people dressed in white one April, Ovid easily surmised that he had encountered a religious festival of some kind.37 Christians refer to white garments in baptismal and eschato­ logical contexts, but this does not distinguish them from others. Initiation rites in Roman antiquity tended to use gleaming white robes as the standard for entrance into a new state of being.38 The fabric itself was important; more expensive linen fabrics did not absorb dye well and thus were prized for their natural purity.39 As a conceptual synonym for cleanliness and ritual purity, whiteness ensured the suitability and uniformity of the group members and created a shared sense of identity based not on the color so much as on the virtue toward which it gestured.40 It is easy to see how banal white robes could become. Even in the case of the Essenes or the Pythagoreans, who always dressed in white, there would have been occasions when a lone member could have blended in with a crowd. The distinctiveness of their dress emerged only in particular social contexts.41 All of this might lead us to the conclusion that white robes are of no significance. But it is precisely here that the socioeconomics of textiles, whiteness, and garments becomes relevant. In the lived experience of the ancient world, not all white was the same. While bright and expensive colored garments in purple and blue were favored by the wealthy as markers of social status, white, despite its ritual ubiquity, presented its own challenges. The use of lead, chalk, sulfur, olive oil, and urine to whiten garments is well attested in ancient literature, but so is the difficulty in achieving good results. Like symmetry and Aesthetics / 103

duplication, whiteness was an aspirational ideal. It existed rarely, and naturally only in substances like milk, snow, lead, salt, flour, heated pure metals, marble, and the feathers, wool, and hides of animals, but it could not be perfectly recaptured by technologies of manufacture. The difficulties of manufacturing whiteness are the reason that descriptions of bright white in Jewish, Roman, and Christian sources take as their reference point natural or supra-­technological instances of whiteness.42 White body parts are compared to milk or snow, white hair to wool (Rev 1:14), and the white garments of the transfigured Jesus are explicitly identified as a radiant white, whiter than any fuller on earth could bleach them (Mark 9:3). Whiteness of all kinds carried socioeconomic connotations. Even white flour was viewed as superior, and thus privileged, being reserved in many cases for the social elite.43 As Sarah Bond has remarked, the “whiteness” of teeth was a synonym for cleanliness that not only was a marker of status, but was also connected to virtue: “Individuals with unsightly teeth opened themselves up to questioning on a moral level. A failure to participate in the accepted social system of cleanliness could be interpreted as a lack of engagement with the moral organization of society as a whole. While the elite had gleaming teeth, crafty old crones and courtesans were often depicted in poetry as having rotting, black teeth.”44 It is arguably for this reason that Tertullian insists that teeth are preserved for the purpose of adornment. He leverages the cultural disgust for those without teeth when he writes, “listen to and look at men without teeth, that you may find out the need for the adornment of the mouth and the instrumentality of the teeth.”45 Cleaning garments was itself a risky and arduous task that yielded unsatisfying results or even destroyed the clothing. In describing eternal punishment, the late antique Christian philosopher Synesius of Cyrene compares the work of punishing 104 / Aesthetics

spirits to that of the ancient laundry: “[they] exercise the same skills on souls that cleaners use on soiled garments,” such that the deeply stained garments might disintegrate. Meanwhile “the soul, being immortal, suffers immortal punishment, when its sins are so deeply dyed that they cannot be washed away” and the soul is not obliterated.46 Given its length, the (heavenly) stole would have been difficult to keep clean in day-­to-­day life. The unwieldy nature of the garment, coupled with the delicacy of the color of the fabric, suggests a life of leisure and wealth. White clothing, like white skin, was very much a privilege of the wealthy. The Pythagoreans were ridiculed because their all-­white uniform was always dirty. The second-­century Greek writer Artemidorus associates the brightness of white clothing with social status when he remarks that it is better to wear bright, clean, and well-­laundered clothes than dirty ones, with the exception of those individuals who earned a living in professions that invited dirt.47 In ancient technology and imagery, whiteness was associated with tests for purity. Pliny describes a test for the purity of silver that involved placing it on white-­hot iron: if the silver changes color, it is fraudulent, but if it burns brilliant white, it is pure. The idea of flammable whiteness as a test of purity is refined in Pliny’s reference to an especially rare form of linen known as “live” linen, which could not be destroyed by fire but instead glowed white in the flames. It was, to Pliny’s mind, the best in the world, and he notes that the funerary tunics of kings were constructed of this material.48 Thus, for many ancient authors, white was aspirational: it resisted fraud and deceit. In the writings of the poetically inclined, white body parts and skin are the frequent objects of romantic admiration. The milky breasts of women, the pale arms of Athena, and the unmarked whiter-­than-­snow complexion of one’s beloved are as common as modern epithets about shiny Aesthetics / 105

hair. For the more philosophically inclined, purity of color was its own ideal. According to Plato, certain odors, “smooth and bright” sounds, and colors—including pure white—have the capacity to elicit pure or unmixed pleasure. The pleasure produced by these kinds of things is characteristically their own; they possess a kind of pristine beauty.49 While the adjective leukos can be used of everything from pure snow to muddied dust, degrees of whiteness were well recognized, and the superiority of pure white seems to have been well established. Socrates’s statement that “a little pure white is whiter and more beautiful and truer than a great deal of mixed white” is an apt point of comparison for pure philosophy. Indeed, in his description of the vividness of the idyllic world above the hollows we now inhabit, Socrates describes the colors there as “brighter and purer” than the ones here. In a phrase reminiscent of the descriptions of the white-­haired Son of Man in Revelation, Socrates lauds the white as “whiter than chalk or snow.”50 The emphasis on whiteness as a marker of virtue and affluence meant that some tried to legislate the quality of whiteness used by initiates in religious rituals. The historian Diodorus Siculus notes that one should bring offerings to the gods in “bright” but not expensive clothes. In its detailed instructions about the attire of those being initiated in the mysteries of the Great Gods of Andania in the first century CE, the Andania inscription does not merely prescribe white clothing, but stipulates a limit on the amount that can be spent on the garment itself.51 Even here, however, the leveling effect of a ritual uniform breaks on the varying amounts that individuals from different social groups can spend on these items: “the free adult women must wear a linen chiton and himation worth in total no more than 100 drachmas,” but “the slaves a kalasiris or a sindonitis and a himation worth in total no more than 50 drachmas.”52 The prescription of the uniform has the appearance of level106 / Aesthetics

ing social difference, but does it work in this way? The relatively high spending limits that are set suggest that displays of wealth are being tacitly encouraged. Given that the only way to demonstrate wealth was in the purchasing of higher-­quality, and thus whiter, garments, we can imagine that in this social setting it was only the whiteness of attire that marked an initiate as high status. The idealization of simple white dress obscures the difficulty that most people would have had securing clothing that were high-­quality white to begin with and the further difficulty in keeping white clothes clean.53 The social stratification implicit in the strategies of dress in the Andania inscription is instructive for our reading of Revelation. The robing of the martyrs and the exhortation to Christians that they should “purchase” white robes to clothe their naked bodies appeal not only to the mechanics of ordinary dress and the economics of garment acquisition, but also to the particular significance of baptismal rituals. Ancient texts and artwork refer to baptismal candidates being baptized while nude. They removed their garments and were immersed in the waters without clothing, jewelry, or elaborate hairstyles. The practice of robing and disrobing might be seen as the removal of adornment and trappings of wealth and, consequently, might be read as an undercutting of traditional markers of social status and class. Robin Jensen has argued that it was more likely connected to the ritual requirement of full nudity, but to an extent, the removal of braided hairstyles and gold jewelry also suggests rejection of worldly vanity. After being immersed in the waters of baptism, candidates were redressed in white garments. The motions of redressing and the attire of the newly Christian body implicitly sublimate the person in a new, homogenous identity.54 If white robes were used in first-­century Christian rites of initiation, then arguably the variations in whiteness were still at play. The clothing of the wealthy initiate would already resemble Aesthetics / 107

the white robes of heaven. Just as a black suit is not just a black suit, a white robe is not just a white robe. Even apart from the ritual of baptism, the audience of Revelation was already accustomed to associating white clothing with wealth, affluence, leisure, and status. What would it mean to the nonelite listener, seated in a group and hearing Revelation read aloud, to compare her or his clothing—perhaps beige or off-­white and now likely dirtied at the hem or even stained from the events of the day, but more likely a darker color—with the brighter, cleaner, and more pristine attire of wealthier counterparts? Not everyone could afford the shiny white garments of the heavenly host. To this group, Revelation offers a solution: wash your robes in the “blood of the Lamb” and make them white (7:14). The notion of cleansing with blood is a biblical motif and an example of the way that religious ideas function counterintuitively.55 Here, martyrdom rather than wealth enables potential heavenly residents to purify themselves and gain access to the privileged group. The imagery harnesses the traditional association between virtue and wealth in a way that short-­circuits the conceptual hierarchy of wealth and power but does not dismantle the lived social hierarchy. Washing dirty, poor bodies and clothing them in the attire of wealthy ones does not dispense with the idea that the trappings of wealth are markers of virtue; it only works to give the underprivileged access to more expensive goods. The expensive heavenly garments were now accessible to all, but those already dressed in the garments of heaven and embodying the celestial standards of beauty were those who were affluent.56 Had the author of Revelation, like Paul, appealed to the washing of the body at baptism, rather than to the financially burdensome practice of purchasing and laundering white 108 / Aesthetics

clothing, associations of wealth and beauty could easily have been disrupted—although perhaps bodily cleansing is avoided here because of the moral ambiguity that clouded elite practices of bathing.57 The result for our vision of heaven, however, is that even though the social markers of slave, free, Jew, and Greek might fall away, in dressing for the resurrection the markers of social status and wealth reemerge. The clothing of Christ is unexpectedly pricey. Wounds and Smells Elsewhere in Revelation, the association of class and aesthetics bleeds into the medicinal, particularly in the contrasting portrayal of the effects of the mark of the beast and the seal of the blessed. In Rev 13:​16–17 everyone (“both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave”) was required to receive a mark that would enable him or her to participate in commerce. The majority of scholarship identifies those with the mark as merchants and traders, but in the world of the text anyone could prosper by colluding with the beast.58 At the pouring out of the first bowl, however, those who had accepted the mark of the beast now received a “painful and foul-­smelling wound” (16:2). Those who did not worship the beast are instead sealed by the angel with a kind of impression (sphragis). Even in English, there is a clear juxtaposition between the mark of the beast and the seal of the Lord, both of which serve as outward identifiers of allegiance, identity, and ethical nature. As the mark of the beast turns to a festering wound, the inner comportment of beast worshippers is made outwardly visible. The language of open wounds draws out a different, medically grounded, contrast with the seal. The term sphragis, used here for the impression of the Lord, refers in medical writers to poultices applied Aesthetics / 109

to an open wound. The mark of the beast leads to a festering disfiguring wound; the seal of the Lord, on the other hand, is a curative that seals the body.59 The wound that now afflicted those who had received the mark of the beast was not only painful, but also disfiguring in ways that could not easily be concealed. Some have hypothesized that the sores are related to leprosy or even plague, conditions that would have left the sufferer ostracized from society. More prosaically, we might assume that the wounds, like the marks, are found on the hand and head, two locations open to inspection and evaluation. Even if they were not, the “foul-­ smelling” odor alerted the potential viewer to the wound.60 In the social world of Revelation, there were medical treatments for these kinds of afflictions. Pliny remarks that sores on the head and face could be treated with myrrh, for example. According to a number of sources, medical patches or plasters were also commonly prescribed as a means of treatment. But efforts to conceal and treat open wounds could convey mixed social messages: freed slaves would sometimes use these patches, Pliny tells us, to cover branding marks that betrayed their origins. Thus, just as the blind in medieval England found their bodies criminalized when blinding became a punishment for theft, those who had received the mark of the beast found their social status elided by the wounds.61 In this way, Revelation positions the damned as both ugly and déclassé. Vile bodily odors that, in other rhetorical contexts, were associated with taboo liminal professions like tanning now seep from the bodies of the affluent damned. The mere mention of certain professions elicited disgust. These descriptions are supported by the literary and epigraphic evidence. The motif of the ill-­scented tradesman was a feature of literary invective that was used to distinguish elites from merchants.62 It was also a topos in descriptions of the poor; as Firmicus Maternus de110 / Aesthetics

scribed them in the fourth century, the “bodies and mouths [of the poor] are rendered vile by a foul stench.”63 The sores of Revelation necessarily impoverished and marginalized those who possessed them. The sins of those who received the mark of the beast cannot be concealed or hidden from view because their bodies, in their newly broken and opened state, testify to their moral corruption. Their fate is undesirable not only because it is painful and implies judgment, but also because it invokes elitist cultural standards about class. In invective, tanners were socially outcast and shunned, their economic importance overshadowed by their repulsive professional association with urine. Accusations that one was associated with malodorous professions were an effective form of slander in part because bad smells “in the air” were rumored to be the cause of disease. The author of Revelation here harnesses the traditional and elitist association of odor, health, and social disgust as a damning indictment about the disreputable fate of those engaged in trade and commerce. Just as the identities of the saved will be fashioned in the garb of the social elite, the fate of the sinful is articulated using the devalued bodies of the downtrodden.64 In the aesthetic world of Revelation, rhetoric and lived experience do not always coincide in the same ways; their meeting consistently privileges wealth and status. The lauding of simple white dress obscures the ways in which cleanliness involved work and expense. The discourse of virtuous simplicity and gluttonous extravagance used here works within the same sphere. Both in their positive rhetorical valence and also in their embodied performance, simplicity and extravagance are ideals accessible only to those with resources. In this way, the range of bodily ideals toward which Revelation’s construction of heaven gestures rehearses a wider understanding of beauty and virtue that is built on privilege and Aesthetics / 111

status. Even when ornate hairstyles, colorful garb, and jewelry are rejected, the ideal body is still the leisurely, cloistered, cocooned body of the rich. The depiction of damned bodies, too, aligns those who collaborate with the beast with social outcasts. Their bodies invoke social stigmas associated with the diseased, the poor, and the practitioners of lowly professions. As Carly Daniel-­Hughes, Kristi Upson-­Saia, and others have discussed, later generations of Christians would struggle with the ability of dress to convey class and wealth. Some of these would explicitly repudiate and reject ornate attire, and in some instances, embraced the aesthetics of the socially downtrodden and grotesque as a pathway to the divine. Writing at least eighty years after the author of Revelation, the author of the Martyrs of Vienne and Lyons, for example, rejected the focus on beauty and suggested that the ugly Blandina’s death reveals that “the things that seem worthless, ugly and contemptible before men are worthy of great glory before God, because of the love shown to him in power and not just boasted of in appearance (eidos).”65 Yet, even here, the recasting of ugliness does not utterly sever the connection between beauty and virtue. Instead, the author proposes that the appearance of virtue (that is, beauty) without the substance and praxis of virtue is mere boasting. In this respect, Christian complaints pick up on a concern in earlier literature about the misleading and deceptive disconnect that could exist between appearance and virtue. Martial comically expressed the anxiety when he described the paradox of a particular Roman man: “though no one’s duller in dress, his morals sport a different color . . . he devours ocularly the boys under the showers, and his lips twitch at the sight of a luscious member.”66 Appearances, as both Christian and non-­Christian Romans were aware, could be deceptive. Beauty could conceal vice; it could be the product of artifice; it could deceive. The outrage 112 / Aesthetics

about baseless beauty demonstrates a lingering commitment to the assumption that beauty speaks to substance. Many late antique Christians, indeed the majority, believed that in order to achieve salvation, the rich must give their money to help the poor.67 While for some, almsgiving functioned by securing the beneficial prayers of the poor, for others it was a form of celestial investment in which the donor would reap rewards in the hereafter. If wealth is invested in anticipation of eschatological dividends, adornment is similarly deferred and reinscribed. The rejection of, in particular, female embellishment in the lived present does not always successfully subvert the socially violent effects of dress. The resurrected body continues to be constructed using notions of beauty that cannot be divorced from their socioeconomic roots. Beauty may be skin deep, but aesthetics are never superficial. For ancient philosophers, the beautiful is conceptually intertwined with the good, but as we have seen, what is beautiful is almost always available only to those who can afford it. The literary depiction of heavenly bodies utilizes language and imagery that was commonly used to describe the bodies of youthful nobles. When the aesthetics of the resurrection correspond to the bodies and attire of the rich, salvation becomes a process of enrichment that never deconstructs the social hierarchy that it wants to challenge.

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Conclusion Imagining Beauty and Remembering Ourselves In September 2002, the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, California, opened and unveiled a set of tapestries depicting the saints in communion. Created over three years by artist John Nava, the tapestries show 135 “saints and blesseds”—men, women, and children of all ages, races, and social backgrounds. Most of the individuals are named, but a handful of them are anonymous, signifying those in our midst worthy of sainthood. The named saints are represented in attire appropriate to their day, and the race, gender, and age of the saints is preserved in the artist’s rendering. Nava’s method and attention to detail are striking. In his efforts to produce realistic renderings of the known saints, he commissioned costumes, used multiple studies, drafted the family members of known saints to serve as models, utilized photographs, employed the services of a Hollywood casting director in hiring for the roles of little-­known saints, and imitated Renaissance art and death masks. All of this was directed toward making the saints as true to life as possible. At first blush Nava’s tapestries have thrown off the oppressive shackles of yesteryear. Race, age, gender, and dress are all represented here: the artist has sincerely attempted to represent the saints as they really existed. In the tapestries are woven his and the wider culture’s investment in and valuation of racial diversity. Perpetua is a young girl with tanned skin; Augustine is a more distinguished and ancient version of Denzel Washington; 114

and his mother, Monica, appears with a covered head and luminescent coffee-­colored skin tone. The hypothetical saints interlaced with the ancient saints are similarly diverse. In the communion of saints, we are told, race, gender, age, social status, and class matter. These are depictions of the saints in heaven, and in the imagination of the twenty-­first-­century artist, their heavenly identities preserve those facets of their embodied earthly identities in which we are invested. At the same time, the tapestries are weighed down with the aesthetic and cultural ideals of our own time. As “diverse” as these images are, they preserve a very contemporary understanding of diversity. In the images of the hypothetical and ancient saints, we see an enduring interest in aesthetics. These are beautiful bodies. The extremes of human bodies are studiously avoided: neither the anorexic nor the obese appear; the elderly saints stand upright with hands in prayer, showing no hint of rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis, or fatigue; and all hair is neatly combed and shiny. Not only disability, but poverty is eradicated. The skin of the saints is scrubbed and luminescent. The creases that line the “weathered” faces of the homeless are not reproduced in the visages of those who took vows of poverty. Even the simple clothes of the poor are impractically and anachronistically clean. Lived poverty does not manifest itself so neatly. The bodies and clothes of these “poor” saints have only slightly more authenticity than Marie Antoinette’s porcelain milking bucket. They may be dressed humbly, but they do not radiate “lowly.” The only disfigurement in the tapestries are the faux markings of aging stone. The tapestries are designed to appear aged, but the models are uniformly appealing. Some figures are beautiful; others merely attractive; all appear healthy, glowing, and upright. This model of diversity is one in which extremes are still excluded, poverty is gentrified, and bodies are improved upon. Conclusion / 115

This is a lesson that is difficult to hear: diversity does not equal inclusivity. In our clean, shiny world some forms of embodiment are pushed to the side, marginalized, or “cured.” This is easily done because it is “instinctive” that those forms of embodiment are undesirable. In our current world, a world in which identity is acquisitive, the explanation that nobody would “choose” to be disabled or poor underpins our collective visions of the afterlife. This is the kind of cosmetic diversity that flatters our liberal sensibilities without threatening our hierarchies. Here are our values, staring up at us from Narcissus’s pool. This is one of the unnoted ways in which the dead create and re-­create social hierarchy.1 This is a complicating factor in the idea of choice. Much of our sense of what is desirable is derived from living in a consumer-­ based society flush with advertising. I’m a Mac user. Astonishingly, Apple has been able to persuade me to think of myself in terms of the brand of cell phone and laptop I own. What William James called the material me is only heightened in the case of material and materially accessed technological prosthetics in which one’s iPhone becomes a part of oneself and one’s social media profile functions as a performative shadow. The material and consumeristic commitments of the modern self are readily apparent in the Civil War–­era portraits of the afterlife, but they are no less identifiable in the logic that underpins the erasure of disability in Nava’s tapestries. Even as our cultural dictionary of desirable bodies has grown into a thesaurus, certain kinds of bodies are still excluded from our ideals.2 These judgments, so instinctive to us as readers and viewers, seep into constructions of the past. New Testament scholarship, both devotedly theological and dogmatically historical-­critical, is not immune to the ableistic assumptions that plague modern technologies of immortality. As I have argued throughout this book, but in particular in the analysis of the exhortation to 116 / Conclusion

self-­amputate in Mark 9:43–48 in chapter 2, assumptions about desirable bodies affect scholarship at the most granular level: in how we translate words and in how we select which words are deserving of our attention. It is not a coincidence that our scrutiny of the resurrected body of Jesus does not care to prod the interpretive possibilities latent in the mark of the nails. The scholarly and ecclesiastical erasure of bodily difference is not only due to the pervasive sense that disability and perfection are antithetical to one another; it is also a reflection of the ways in which the means by which we culturally construct our identity shifts over time. Only recently has disability joined the cluster of disciplinary and activist interests that constitute identity politics. Before the 1980s few would have argued either that bodily ability was constructed or that bodily ability is a facet of identity. As our sense of what makes identity shifts, so too do our impressions of the heavenly body. Just as the early Christian conversations about the preservation of sexual difference in the afterlife discussed in chapter 3 reflect the ambiguous status of the female body in ancient medical discourse and culture, so too the erasure of disability mirrors a pervasive sense that the frailties of the body can be dissociated from the person. Those parts of the body that we designate as especially stable and intrinsic are, quite understandably, viewed as holding particular significance for identification. As we saw in the analysis of scars in the first chapter, the marks of the nails in the hands of Jesus are of consequence not only because they prove that he is alive, but also because they prove that he is truly himself. The form of the body, the face, and even the voice could all serve to identify a person, but scars were, for ancient readers, the ultimate marker of individual identity. Technologies of modern wealth are another factor that affects our interpretation of texts about the heavenly body. The resistance to the idea that amputation is a life-­saving medical Conclusion / 117

procedure makes sense in the context of first-­world medicine. In less-­affluent communities and geographical regions, however, amputation is a more regular occurrence. The same phenomenon was at work in the final chapter on aesthetics. The banality and ubiquity of white clothing in the ancient world makes it difficult to see past modern technologies of laundering to the yellowed and stained garments that most people would have worn. Western wealth makes these passages difficult to read “historically,” in the same way that white privilege renders many people today oblivious to the racial undertones of shiny celestial skin tone. It is not surprising that the powerful should read this way, but it is striking when bias subverts methodology. Our portraits of heaven and our readings of biblical portraits of heaven reveal much about our values, our aesthetics, and the things we prize. But they also reveal a great deal about the things we fear. Theories of resurrection are not only registers of beauty and ideals; they are placeholders for our anxieties. In the writings of the apologists (as in Aristotle and the Stoics) the effects of change and alteration on the stability of the self are a perennial concern. Twenty-­first-­century discussions about identity and immortality are very differently executed, but they nevertheless reflect the same worries about the self, about the lives we value, and about the lives we never want to have. The past decade has seen a rise in interest in technologies of immortality among, in particular, the tech moguls of Silicon Valley. Google-­backed biotech company Calico, Oracle founder Larry Ellison’s medical foundation, and tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s sponsorship of parabiosis (blood transfusion) all function as putative life-­extension projects. The line between life extension, transhumanism, and immortality is a thin one. Many of these endeavors are financially or ideologically invested in and oriented toward transcending human nature altogether. If the wealth of the primary sponsors of these investments 118 / Conclusion

is the shiny point of commonality, the assumptions these ventures make about what it means to be human is the more potent and problematic. Much like Descartes, these ventures assume that the survival of the person after death involves only the continued preservation of consciousness and memory. The crassest example of Cartesian priorities can be observed in the logic of cryonics, which offers discounted rates to those who seek only to preserve their heads (neurocryopreservation) rather than their entire bodies. The beatific vision, in this work, involves the mapping and duplicating of the neural pathways of the subject and the preservation of that subject’s “consciousness” and memory in perpetuity. What is obscured in such attempts is the manner in which these “immortality” projects are, in practice, an exercise in digital cloning: they aim to produce copies of our consciousness that, once created, would become independent and distinct entities. Buried further still is the risk that the sheer existence of such copies would undermine the moral imperative to care for the frail blood-­bag versions that gave them life. And this is to say nothing of the dystopic potential for corporations to own these digital clones.3 With so much on the line one might wonder what makes the preservation of memories such a priority? It is certainly true that in various forms the frailty of human memory has always featured in conversations about the afterlife. The Neoplatonists and Augustine both worried that unity with the divine outside of time would inevitably involve the destruction of memory; Greek mythology regularly exchanged life for eternal renown; the Romans enforced the damnatio memoriae for those emperors whose crimes meant that they should be forgotten; and Enlightenment humanist William Godwin proposed the creation of a topographical atlas of where the dead had lived and died in order to preserve their memories.4 But the keen focus on memory in twenty-­first-­century techConclusion / 119

nologies of immortality is reflective of a broader cultural awareness of the effects of memory loss on personhood. The rise in the number of people with Alzheimer’s disease, increasingly well-­publicized research into brain injuries and memory loss, and fears about the inevitability of cognitive decline and dementia all bubble close to the surface of public consciousness. In 2011, evangelical televangelist Pat Robertson made waves for suggesting that a man whose wife was suffering from Alzheimer’s should divorce her and marry again. The advice cut against Robertson’s more usual counsel about the sanctity of marriage, but he justified his statement by describing Alzheimer’s as “a kind of death.”5 Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia have caused something of an existential crisis among those Christians who have equated the mind, memory, and mental faculties with the soul. It is hardly surprising, then, that a 2013 Pew Forum Poll revealed that the majority of Americans do not support radical life-­extension technology. That the cultural conversation about euthanasia has come to focus on Alzheimer’s is a register of the particular role that memory plays in our sense of who we are.6 While the importance of the faculty of memory in discussions of personhood is well documented, the memories of the bereaved become a central theme in pop culture ruminations on the afterlife. The 2017 animated Pixar movie Coco uses the traditions associated with Día de Muertos (the Day of the Dead) to set the stage for a young boy’s journey to the afterlife. Not only is being remembered by the living the only way in which the dead continue to exist in the hereafter, but deceased family members are shown as skeletal versions of their family photographs. Thus, Coco herself, who dies in old age, appears as a grandmother as she does in her photo. Her other family members appear to be mostly middle-­aged even though, narratively speaking, at least one of those individuals lived much longer. 120 / Conclusion

What is central is that the dead are represented in a manner that makes them recognizable to the living—that matches the photographs, the mnemonic visual devices, proudly displayed on the ofrendas of their family homes. To be sure these are not resurrected bodies per se, but they make a salient point for us: it is the memories and expectations of the living that ultimately shape our fantasies about the form of the dead. In this way, this latest cinematic rumination on the afterlife is emblematic of any age. Beliefs about the afterlife are the product of a complex knot of historically bound philosophical commitments about the nature of the self, scriptural interpretation, sociopolitical values, scientific discovery, and the raw emotions of those who still live. What I hope to have shown throughout this book is how cultural expectations about the perfect resurrected body have normalized the otherwise thought-­provoking uncanniness of the resurrection of the dead. It is only when we press against traditional readings of scriptural texts that the strangeness of the resurrection returns and forces us to think about why resurrected bodies matter and who we really are.

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Abbreviations

Titles and abbreviations for ancient and modern works follow the conventions of the SBL Handbook of Style, Second Edition (Atlanta: SBL, 2014). BETL

Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium

BZNW

Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft

BIS

CBQ CIL

CPL CQ

DACL

DK

FGrHist HTR

JAAR JBL

JECS JRS

JSJSup JSNT JTS

Biblical Interpretation Series

Catholic Biblical Quarterly

Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Berlin, 1862– .

Clavis Patrum Latinorum. Edited by Eligius Dekkers. 2nd ed. Steenbrugis: Abbatia Sancti Petri, 1961. Classical Quarterly

Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie. Edited by Fernand Cabrol. 15 vols. Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1907–1953. Diels, Hermann, and Walther Kranz, eds. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Griechisch und Deutsch. 3 vols. 6th ed. Hildesheim: Weidmann, 1951–1952. Reprint 2004. Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. Edited by Felix Jacoby et al. Weidmann: Berlin; Leiden: Brill, 1923– . Harvard Theological Review

Journal of the American Academy of Religion Journal of Biblical Literature

Journal of Early Christian Studies Journal of Roman Studies

Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism Journal for the Study of the New Testament Journal of Theological Studies

123

Kühn LCL

NETS

Kühn, Karl Gottlob. Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia. 20 vols. Leipzig: Cnobloch, 1821–1833. Loeb Classical Library

A New English Translation of the Septuagint. Edited by Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

NovTSup Supplements to Novum Testamentum

NPNF PG

SBLDS StPatr

TDNT

TUGAL WUNT ZNW

Nicene and Post-­Nicene Fathers

Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Graeca. Edited by J.-­P. Migne. 162 vols. Paris, 1857–1886. Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series Studia Patristica

Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Edited by Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich. Translated by ­Geoffrey W. Bromiley. 10 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964–1976.

Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament

Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche

124 / Abbreviations

Notes

Introduction 1. For a discussion of the relics and the stories that grew up around them, see Amy G. Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past: Monastic Foundation Legends in Medieval Southern France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 177–81. 2. Innocent III, De sacro altaris mysterio 4.30 (Patrologia Latina 217:​ 876–77), cited in Andrew S. Jacobs, Christ Circumcised: A Study in Early Christian History and Difference, Divinations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), ix. 3. Michel Foucault’s position that Greek and Roman philosophy was principally concerned with care for the self has received considerable criticism. See Pierre Hadot, What Is Ancient Philosophy? (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2002); and Christopher Gill, The Structured Self in Hellenistic and Roman Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). The problem of describing the autonomous self in antiquity was first explored in 1946, when Bruno Snell suggested, in his groundbreaking work Die Entdeckung des Geistes: Studien zur Entstehung des europäischen Denkens bei den Griechen (Hamburg: Classen & Goverts, 1946), that the Greeks did not have a coherent understanding of a united “self,” individualized consciousness, or personal identity that is in any way comparable to our own post-­Cartesian way of thinking. Scholarly responses to Snell’s work have softened his findings and shifted the terms of the debate; there is now a broad consensus that the ancient Greeks did have a sense of selfhood, but there continue to be strong disagreements about the elements and characteristics which define that selfhood. See Richard Gaskin, “Do Homeric Heroes Make Real Decisions?,” CQ 40 (1990): 1–15; R. W. Sharples, “ ‘But Why Has My Spirit Spoken with Me Thus?’: Homeric Decision-­Making,” Greece and Rome 30 (1983): 1–7; and Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 21–49. 4. Richard Sorabji, Self: Ancient and Modern Insights About Individuality, Life, and Death (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 13 n. 3.

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5. Christopher Gill, Personality in Greek Epic, Tragedy, and Philosophy: The Self in Dialogue (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996); Gill, The Structured Self. For the view that Sorabji and Gill are less far apart than they themselves believe, see M. J. O. Verheji, “Selves in Conflict: Gill vs. Sorabji on the Conception of Selfhood in Antiquity: A Reconcilatory Review,” Classical World 107 (2014): 169–97. 6. Gill, The Structured Self, 54. 7. A. A. Long, Stoic Studies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 266. 8. See Katharina Waldner, Richard Gordon, and Wolfgang Spickermann, eds., Burial Rituals, Ideas of the Afterlife, and the Individual in the Hellenistic World and the Roman Empire, Potsdamer Altertumswissenschaftliche Beiträge 57 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2016). 9. A notable exception is J. Albert Harrill, “Stoic Conflagration Physics and the Eschatological Destruction of the ‘Ignorant and Unstable’ in 2 Peter,” in Stoicism in Early Christianity, ed. Tuomas Rasimus, Troels Engberg-­Pedersen, and Ismo Dunderberg (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010), 115–40. 10. On the diversity of views about the afterlife, see Outi Lehtipuu, The Afterlife Imagery in Luke’s Story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, NovTSup 123 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 55–162. 11. Recent scholarly treatment of the resurrection includes Markus Vinzent, Christ’s Resurrection in Early Christianity and the Making of the New Testament (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011); Tobias Nicklas, Joseph Verheyden, Erik M. M. Eynikel, and Florentino García Martínez, eds., Other Worlds and Their Relation to This World: Early Jewish and Ancient Christian Traditions, JSJSup 143 (Leiden: Brill, 2010); Tobias Nicklas, Friedrich V. Reiterer, and Joseph Verheyden, eds., The Human Body in Death and Resurrection, Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature Yearbook (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009); Dag Øistein Endsjø, Greek Resurrection Beliefs and the Success of Christianity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Turid Karlsen Seim and Jorunn Økland, eds., Metamorphoses: Resurrection, Body and Transformative Practices in Early Christianity, Ekstasis 1 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009); Geza Vermes, The Resurrection (London: Penguin, 2008); James H. Charlesworth, Resurrection: The Origin and Future of a Biblical Doctrine (London: T&T Clark, 2006); Claudia Setzer, Resurrection of the Body in Early Judaism and Early Christianity: Doctrine, Community, and Self-­Definition (Leiden: Brill, 2004); Alan F. Segal, Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in the Religions of the West (New York: Doubleday, 2004); N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: For126 / Notes to Pages 4–5

tress, 2003); Reimund Bieringer, Veronica Koperski, and Bianca Lataire, eds., Resurrection in the New Testament, BETL 165 (Leuven: Peeters, 2002); Friedrich Avemarie and Hermann Lichtenberger, eds., Auferstehung = Resurrection: The Fourth Durham—Tübingen Research Symposium: Resurrection, Transfiguration and Exaltation in Old Testament, Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, WUNT 135 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001); Caroline W. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200 C.E.–1336 C.E. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995); Lehtipuu, Afterlife Imagery, 256–64; Outi Lehtipuu, Debates over the Resurrection of the Dead: Constructing Christian Identity, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); and Taylor Petrey, Resurrecting Parts: Early Christians on Desire, Reproduction, and Sexual Difference (London: Routledge, 2015). 12. For the view that the doctrine of the resurrection comes from a specifically Jewish milieu, see the influential works of Oscar Cullmann, Christ and Time: The Primitive Christian Conception of Time and History, trans. F. Filson, 3rd ed. (London: SCM, 1992); Cullmann, Unsterblichkeit der Seele oder Auferstehung der Toten (Stüttgart: Kreuz, 1962); Cullmann, “Immortality and Resurrection,” in Immortality and Resurrection: Four Essays, ed. Krister Stendahl (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 9–53; and Cullmann, “Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? The Witness of the New Testament,” in Immortality, ed. Terence Penelhum (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1973), 53–84. His thesis, straightforwardly stated, is that the “concept of death and resurrection is . . . incompatible with the Greek belief in immortality” (Cullmann, “Immortality and Resurrection,” 9). 13. George W. E. Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism and Early Christianity, Harvard Theological Studies 56 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 163–78. His chapter on resurrection, “Unrelated to Persecution, Oppression and Injustice,” traces the exceptions, not the rule. Segal, Life After Death, 394–95; cf. Setzer, Resurrection of the Body, 146. 14. In theology and religious studies, the bifurcation of Judaism and Hellenism in Christian circles can be traced at least to the work of Ferdinand Christian Baur, who bases this distinction on the narrative about the Hellenists and the Hebrews in Acts 6. See the excellent historiographical essay of Anders Gerdmar, “Baur and the Creation of the Judaism-­ Hellenism Dichotomy,” in Ferdinand Christian Baur and the History of Early Christianity, ed. Martin Bauspiess, Christof Landmesser, and David Lincicum (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 69–115; and Anders Notes to Page 6 / 127

Gerdmar, Rethinking the Judaism-­Hellenism Dichotomy: A Historiographical Case Study of Second Peter and Jude (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2001). Since the paradigm-­shifting work of Martin Hengel, the majority of scholars are hesitant to draw sharp distinctions between Jews and Greeks in the ancient world. Hengel provided a new paradigm for the Judaism of the Hellenistic period and beyond that denied the notion of a non-­ Hellenistic Judaism: “The whole of Judaism from about the middle of the third century BC must be described as ‘Hellenistic Judaism’ in the strict sense” ( Judentum und Hellenismus: Studien zu ihrer Begegnung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung Palästinas bis zur Mitte des 2. Jh.s v. Chr., 2nd ed., WUNT 10 [Tübingen: Mohr, 1973], 193). A more nuanced view of the relationship of aspects of the self to the Judaism-­Hellenism divide is taken by Daniel Boyarin, who argues, for example, that Jews could differ in the way that gender was ascribed to the body and soul: Paul “could declare that there is no Greek or Jew, no male or female [Gal 3:28]. No rabbinic Jew could do so, because people are bodies, not spirits, and precisely bodies are marked as male or female” (Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993], 10). For overviews of the development of apocalyptic literature during this period, see Christopher Rowland, The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (New York: Crossroad, 1982); and John J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998). 15. Segal, Life After Death, 394–95. For the view that Christianity bifurcated into two positions (proto-­)“orthodox” and “heretical,” see Elaine Pagels, “Visions, Appearances and Apostolic Authority: Gnostic and Orthodox Traditions,” in Gnosis: Festschrift für Hans Jonas, ed. Barbara Aland (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978), 415–30; Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979), 3–32. 16. For the distinction between resurrection of the body and immortality of the soul, see Segal, Life After Death, 394–95. Endsjø, Greek Resurrection Beliefs; Lehtipuu, Debates over the Resurrection of the Dead, 61–64. For the view that the resurrection of the flesh was only a minor theme in ancient Jewish understandings of the afterlife, see Pheme Perkins, Resurrection: New Testament Witness and Contemporary Reflection (London: Chapman, 1984), 37. 17. See, for example, the classic studies of Hans Jonas, Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, 3rd ed.

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(Boston: Beacon, 2001); and E. R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963). 18. Jonathan Z. Smith, Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 163–64. I borrow this observation from Ra’anan S. Boustan and Annette Yoshiko Reed, eds., Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 3. 19. John G. Gager (“Body-­Symbols,” Religion 12 [1982]: 345–63) argues that “as mainstream Christianity moved by stages from a small sectarian cult at the fringes of Roman society to an international religious institution of great social, political, and economic power, we would expect . . . a shift from symbols of alienation to symbols of integration” (348). Gager helpfully shows that resurrection is not always the eschatology of the oppressed, but the linear argument he develops is difficult to reconcile with either the diversity of ancient views or the enduring interest in more “spiritualized” ideas of the resurrection. Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 110; Lehtipuu, Debates over the Resurrection of the Dead, 5. 20. As Caroline Walker Bynum has written, martyrdom focused Christian concerns on the fragmentation of the body in the afterlife ­(Resurrection of the Body, 43–51); cf. Judith Perkins, The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era (London: Routledge, 1995), 117. On this function with respect to the Maccabean martyrs and their hopes for resurrection, see Candida R. Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions, Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 40–43. 21. If we were to do the same, we might note that the communication of any theory necessarily involves using the time-­bound conditions of human language and thus positions the resurrected self of the philosophers squarely within the realm of historical affairs. This is not mere sophistry: even if we do not think that philosophically influenced accounts of the resurrection of a “spirit” or “spiritual body” are burdened by cumbersome bags of flesh, the metaphors, imagery, and contours of real bodies are used to imagine these resurrected spiritual selves. It is impossible to use the language of real bodies without invoking the ideological construction of real bodies. 22. Here I disagree with Setzer (Resurrection of the Body, 4), who writes that it is difficult to imagine the same fierce conversations about resurrection in modern churches. This may be true, but—as we will see in the

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conclusion—it is possible to have these conversations in other arenas of society. As Lehtipuu puts it, “Cannot justice prevail even though only the spirits are judged?” (Debates over the Resurrection of the Dead, 6). 23. On resurrection as anti-­gnostic polemic, see Walter Schmithals, The Office of Apostle in the Early Church, trans. John E. Steely (Nashville: Abingdon, 1969), 272–86. On bodily resurrection as a response to Marcion, see Markus Vinzent, “Der Schluß des Lukasevangelium bei Marcion,” in Marcion und seine kirchengeschichtliche Wirkung / Marcion and His Impact on Church History: Vorträge der Internationalen Fachkonferenz zu Marcion, gehalten vom 15.–18. August 2001 in Mainz, ed. Gerhard May and Katharina Greschat, TUGAL 150 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002), 79–94. 24. Most notably, Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God. Wright repeatedly uses the term “unique” to describe both the resurrection of Jesus and divinity itself. This conversation is inevitably bound up in questions relating to the historical Jesus; see, inter alia, Robert B. Stewart, ed., The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N. T. Wright in Dialogue (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006); and Gerd Lüdemann, The Resurrection of Christ: A Historical Inquiry (Amherst: Prometheus, 2004). 25. Adela Yarbro Collins, “The Empty Tomb in the Gospel of Mark,” in Hermes and Athena: Biblical Exegesis and Philosophical Theology, ed. Eleonore Stump and Thomas P. Flint, University of Notre Dame Studies in the Philosophy of Religion 7 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), 113; Stanley Porter, “Resurrection, the Greeks and the New Testament,” in Resurrection, ed. Stanley E. Porter, Michael A. Hayes, and David Tombs, Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement 186 (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 52–81 (68–80); Endsjø, Greek Resurrection Beliefs, 47–99. For examples of rising heroes, see Euripides, Alcestis; and Apollodorus, Library 1.9.15 (Heracles brings Alcestis back from Hades and returns her to her husband Admetus). Lucian, Lover of Lies 24; Lucian, On Funerals 7–9. See also discussion in Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 109–10; Lehtipuu, Afterlife Imagery, 81–117. 26. Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, Vintage Civil War Library (New York: Knopf, 2008), 187. 27. The groundwork for much of my analysis here is laid in the work of Richard Sorabji (Self, 57–82), who traces a conversation about the continuity of personal identity that includes, for example, Christian authors like Origen. One of the strengths of Sorabji’s work that is overlooked, however, is the ways in which he brings different commitments—to con-

130 / Notes to Pages 8–10

tinuity, individual identity, integrity, and functionality—into dialogue with one another. It enables him to capture the tensions and trace the path of the debate in a nuanced fashion. 28. On the ways in which lack of health care and the prevalence of deformity and disability affected the ancient world, see Hector Avalos, Sarah Melcher, and Jeremy Schipper, eds., This Abled Body: Rethinking Disability and Biblical Studies, Semeia Studies (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007); Saul Olyan, Disability in the Hebrew Bible: Interpreting Mental and Physical Differences (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); and Christian Laes, ed., Disability in Antiquity (London: Routledge, 2017). 29. Lehtipuu, Debates over Resurrection, 109–58. 30. Valentinus is not criticized by “orthodox” thinkers for his views of the resurrection; see Ismo Dunderberg, Beyond Gnosticism: Myth, Lifestyle, and Society in the School of Valentinus (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 8. 31. This point, among many other insightful observations about gender and the resurrection, is advanced by Taylor Petrey, who writes that second-­century Christians remained attached to the body in part “because sexual difference was seen as an essential component of human identity” (Resurrecting Parts, 10). 32. On the importance of hierarchy in Pauline notions of the resurrection, see in particular Martin, Corinthian Body, 123–29. 33. On Paul’s anthropological language, see Robert Jewett, Paul’s Anthropological Terms: A Study of Their Use in Conflict Settings (Leiden: Brill, 1971), 49–166, 201–304; and Udo Schnelle, Neutestamentliche Anthropologie: Jesus—Paulus—Johannes (Neukirchen-­Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1991), 66–75. On the “soulish body,” see M. David Litwa, We Are Being Transformed: Deification in Paul’s Soteriology, BZNW 187 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012), 119–25. The translation of psychikos as “soulish” follows James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 60, and Heikki Räisänen, The Rise of Christian Beliefs: The Thought World of Early Christians (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010), 127, 131. Alexander J. M. Wedderburn, Beyond Resurrection (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999), 119–20; Lehtipuu, Debates About Resurrection, 46–47, 53–61. 34. See Martin, Corinthian Body, 128; Troels Engberg-­Petersen, “A Stoic Understanding of Pneuma in Paul,” in Philosophy at the Roots of Christianity, ed. Troels Engberg-­Petersen and Henrik Tronier, Working

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Papers 2 (Copenhagen: Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, 2006), 101–23; Troels Engberg-­Pedersen, Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul: The Material Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 104–5. 35. Martin, Corinthian Body, 128. This appears to be Marcion’s reading; see Vinzent, “Der Schluß des Lukasevangeliums,” 86. 36. Troels Engberg-­Pedersen, “Complete and Incomplete Transformation in Paul: A Philosophical Reading of Paul on Body and Spirit,” in Metamorphoses: Resurrection, Body and Transformative Practices in Early Christianity, ed. Turid Karlsen Seim and Jorunn Økland, Ekstasis 1 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009), 123–46 (127–29). 37. See discussion in Martin, Corinthian Body, 117–20, which refers to Platonic, popular Greek “folkloric,” Stoic, and ancient Jewish ideas of resurrected bodies as light-­filled fiery entities. 38. There is some debate about whether Luke expects the fleshly resurrection to be permanent or whether he thinks that postascension, Jesus becomes a nonbodily figure. For the view that Luke distinguishes resurrection and exaltation, see Turid Karlsen Seim, “In Heaven as on Earth? Resurrection, Body, Gender and Heavenly Rehearsals in Luke-­Acts,” in Christian and Islamic Gender Models in Formative Traditions, ed. Kari E. Børresen, Studi e testi tardoantichi 2 (Rome: Herder, 2004), 35–39. See discussion in Lehtipuu (Debates About Resurrection, 46), where she draws attention to Marcion’s apparent reading of Luke 24:​39, in which Jesus does not have bones. Cf. Endsjø, “that the [Lukan] resurrected Jesus at any point should discard his flesh and bones or be so radically transformed that he no longer consisted of flesh and bones therefore seems highly improbable” (Greek Resurrection Beliefs, 172). For the view that Luke’s references to resurrection do not “represent (proto)orthodoxy’s incipient battle with heresy over the nature of the resurrection of Jesus,” see Shelly Matthews, “Fleshly Resurrection, Authority Claims and the Scriptural Practices of Lukan Christianity,” JBL 136 (2017): 163–83, in which she argues that Luke is neither heretical nor orthodox (183). 39. So George W. E. Nickelsburg, “Resurrection (Early Judaism and Christianity),” Anchor Bible Dictionary 4:684–91 (691); cf. the argument of Vinzent that the resurrection of Jesus draws less attention in the second and third centuries than the resurrection of the dead in general (Christ’s Resurrection, 27–76). Vinzent is generally correct; when I use the term “tradition,” I refer to a longer period of interpretation that begins within the New Testament and continues to the ­present. 40. Caroline Walker Bynum, Metamorphosis and Identity (New York: Zone, 2001), 188–89. 132 / Notes to Pages 12–14

41. Of the vast secondary literature on resurrection in the early church and its role in early Christian polemics see, particularly, Vinzent, Christ’s Resurrection, who argues that after Paul there was less of a bifurcation than is ordinarily thought; cf. Setzer, Resurrection of the Body; Bynum, Resurrection of the Body; Outi Lehtipuu, “Flesh and Blood Cannot Inherit the Kingdom of God: The Transformation of the Flesh in Early Christian Debates Concerning Resurrection,” in Metamorphoses, ed. Seim and Økland, 147–68; and Lehtipuu, Debates over the Resurrection of the Dead, 67–108. 42. Jewish War 2.156. That Josephus’s summary of the various views shifts slightly in his parallel set of descriptions highlights another peculiar feature of ancient theories about the afterlife: shifting commitments to some of the elements of the afterlife. While the Pharisees of Jewish War believe that the soul will receive interim punishment and reward before receiving another body, the Pharisees of Jewish Antiquities are convinced that these punishments take place “under the earth” (18.4). On the Essenes, see Jewish War 2.156. On the Sadducees, see Jewish War 2.165 and Acts 23:8: “the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, or angel, or spirit.” Joseph Sievers, “Aussagen des Josephus zu Unsterblichkeit und Leben nach dem Tod,” in Internationales Josephus-­Kolloquium Münster 1997, ed. Folker Siegert and Jürgen U. Kalms, Münsteraner Judaistische Studien 2 (Münster: Lit Verlag, 1998), 78–92. For a survey of various scholarly interpretations of these new bodies, see Jonathan Klawans, Josephus and the Theologies of Ancient Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 107–8. 43. Athenagoras, On the Resurrection 19.7. For issues relating to the authorship and dating of this text, see chapter 3, “Functionality”; Origen in Methodius, On the Resurrection 3.7.1–7. 44. Petrey makes a similar point when he writes, “Because there is no ‘real’ body to compare it to, a resurrected body therefore provides even more access than usual to early Christians’ cultural frameworks on gender, sexual difference, and sexuality” (Resurrecting Parts, 2). 45. For a discussion of the soul-­body relationship in Plato, see Gill, Structured Self, 12–13. Plato, Timaeus 41d–42d; Plato, Phaedo 81a–­e; Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1.85 (trans. and ed. R. H. Bury, LCL 273 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933], 51). Gill cites as evidence the “science of physiognomy.” Physiognomy, the assessment of character through an analysis of the body, was a systematic field of thought in the ancient world that influenced ancient rhetoric, philosophy, and narrative. On physiognomy in the ancient world, see Mladen Popovič, Notes to Pages 15–18 / 133

Reading the Human Body: Physiognomics and Astrology in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Hellenistic–­Early Roman Period Judaism, Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 67 (Leiden: Brill, 2007); Maud W. Gleason, “The Semiotics of Gender: Physiognomy and Self-­Fashioning in the Second Century CE,” in Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, ed. Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 389–416; Simon Swain, Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul: Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); and Pseudo-­Aristotle, Physiognomics 805b in Aristotle: The Minor Works, trans. and ed. W. S. Hett, LCL 307 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936), 89. 46. In answering a question about the resurrection of infants, Augustine also refers to the age of thirty (City of God 22.15.1143). 47. First Apocryphal Apocalypse of John 10.1–7 (trans. Rick Brennan, New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, ed. Tony Burke and Brent Landau [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, forthcoming]). I am grateful to Tony Burke for this reference. 48. In recent scholarship, interest in the body has been accompanied by an increasing skepticism about human subjectivity. Landmark studies in poststructuralism questioned the idea that the human subject is an autonomous, presocial, transhistorical entity that can serve as the source of truth and identity. Whereas during the Enlightenment, reason was mythologized as the reasonable sovereign subject, recent work has emphasized that there is no preexistent identity that serves as a resource for humanity. Identity is a dialogical concept, identity is invented. See Michel Foucault, “What Is Enlightenment?,” in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1985), 32–50; and Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 1 Identity 1. The surgeon Joseph Constantine Carpue described their methods in a note that was published in his obituary in Lancet 1 (1846). 2. The origins of the story involving Michelangelo are unknown; it appears in print in The Morning Chronicle, no. 9806, 25 October 1800. William Hunter, An Anatomical Description of the Human Gravid Uterus, and Its Contents (London: Johnson and Nichol, 1794); Hunter, Two Introductory Lectures Delivered by Dr. William Hunter, to His Last Course of Ana134 / Notes to Pages 18–22

tomical Lectures, at His Theatre in Windmill-­Street (London, 1784), 56. See discussion in Meredith Gamer, “Criminal and Martyr: The Case of James Legg’s Anatomical Crucifixion,” in Sensational Religion: Sensory Cultures in Material Practice, ed. Sally M. Promey (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 495–513 (499–500); and N. A. McCulloch, D. Russell, and S. W. McDonald, “William Hunter’s Casts of the Gravid Uterus at the University of Glasgow,” Clinical Anatomy 14 (2001): 210–17. 3. Plotinus postulated that disembodied souls would recognize one another by characteristic mannerisms (Enneads 4.4 [28] 5 [1.1–22]); Pythagoreans claimed that a reincarnated soul could be recognized by its voice (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 8.36); Proclus suggested that there might be incorporeal knowledge. Recognition, in discussions of the afterlife, is not always about sentimental attachment. In 2 Bar. 47–52, the ability to recognize the dead is tied to vindication and authority; see Liv Ingeborg Lied, “Recognizing the Righteous ­Remnant? Resurrection, Recognition and Eschatological Reversals in 2 Baruch 47– 52,” in Metamorphoses: Resurrection, Body and Transformative Practices in Early Christianity, ed. Turid Karlsen Seim and Jorunn Økland, Ekstasis 1 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009), 311–36. The same argument can be made for the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity 17.2: “Take careful note of our faces, so that you may recognize us on that day.” 4. Stephen D. Moore, God’s Gym: Divine Male Bodies of the Bible (London, 1996), 60–63. We might compare older and somewhat fringe medical efforts to understand the New Testament description of the crucifixion. See Pierre Barbet, A Doctor at Calvary: The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ as Described by a Surgeon, trans. the Earl of Wicklow (New York: Image Books, 1963); William Stroud, A Treatise on the Physical Cause of the Death of Christ and Its Relations to the Principles and Practice of Christianity (London: Hamilton, Adams, 1847); Raymond Schmittlein, Circonstances et cause de la mort du Christ (Baden: Verlag für Kunst und Wissenschaft, 1950); René Gilly, Passion de Jésus: Les conclusions d’un médicin (Paris: Fayard, 1985); and, particularly, A. F. Sava, “The Wounds of Christ,” CBQ 16 (1954): 438–43; Sava, “The Wound in the Side of Christ,” CBQ 19 (1957): 343–46; and Sava, “The Blood and Water from the Side of Christ,” American Ecclesiastical Review 138 (1958): 341–45. 5. John Ashton, Understanding the Fourth Gospel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991): “If John invented this story, as there is every reason to believe, it was not surely, to stimulate his readers to reflect upon the tangibility of risen bodies, but to impress upon them the need for faith” (514). Ashton here agrees with Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 2.4.2; Origen, Notes to Pages 23–25 / 135

Commentary on John 10.27; Gregory of Nyssa, Oration on Holy Baptism 40.38 and Second Oration on Easter 45.24; and Leo the Great, Sermon on Our Lord’s Ascension 2.74.1. 6. Antidocetic polemic: Georg Richter, “Die Fleischwerdung des Logos im Johannesevangelium,” Novum Testamentum 13 (1971): 81–126, and Novum Testamentum 14 (1972): 257–76. Thyen connects a number of passages with the Thomas episode; see John 6:48–58, 19:​34–35, 20:​20, and discussion in Hartwig Thyen, “Entwicklungen innerhalbder johannischen Theologie und Kirche im Spiegel von Joh. 21 und der Lieblingsjühertexte des Evangeliums,” in L’Évangile de Jean: Sources, rédaction, théologie, ed. M. De Jonge (Louvain: Peeters, 1977), 261, 277. Cf. Tertullian, On the Soul 17. The primary difficulty here is that there is little evidence for docetism in the first century. Even the evidence supplied by 1 John is problematic and should not be read through the lens of the Ignatian corpus. Of course, the first-­century dating of John is by no means assured; see Brent Nongbri, “The Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel,” HTR 98 (2005): 23–48. Resurrection apologetics: Rudolf Bultmann, History of the Synoptic Tradition, trans. John Marsh, rev. ed. (New York: Scribner, 1976), 288–89; Gerhard Delling, “The Significance of the Resurrection of Jesus for Faith in Jesus Christ,” in The Significance of the Message of the Resurrection for Faith in Jesus Christ, ed. C. F. D. Moule, Studies in Biblical Theology 2.8 (London: SCM, 1968), 77–104 (92); Howard M. Teeple, “The Historical Beginnings of the Resurrection Faith,” in Studies in New Testament and Early Christian Literature: Essays in Honor of Allen P. Wikgren, ed. David E. Aune, NovTSup 33 (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 107–20 (113). Evidence that Jesus never died: Margaret Lloyd Davies and Trevor A. Lloyd Davies, “Resurrection or Resuscitation?,” Journal of the Royal College of Physicians 25 (1991): 167–70. Numerous scholars have cast doubt on the custom of nailing feet to crosses during crucifixion. Second-­century Christian thinking about Jesus’s crucifixion maintains that he was nailed ( Justin, Trypho 47.3; Tertullian, Against the Jews 13 [Patrologia Latina 2:635A]) and relates this event to Ps 22:​17 (16): “They have pierced my hands and feet.” The 1968 discovery of a first-­century ossuary containing the remains of a man whose feet had been pierced through the heel bone by a nail has supplied counterevidence on this point. An additional problem is the placement of the nails. Crucifixion usually involved the nailing and binding of wrists, not hands. Perhaps the detail has been augmented under the influence of

136 / Notes to Page 25

Ps 22, but, as J. W. Hewitt argued in “The Use of Nails in Crucifixion,” HTR 25 (1932): 29–45, the palms of the hand might be unable to sustain the weight of the body. The issue may simply be, as Raymond Brown observes, literalism. The language of “hand” can sometimes include the arms. Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John XIII–­XXI, Anchor Yale Bible 29A (1970; repr.: New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 1022. 7. Augustine, City of God 22.19.1149–50. See discussion in Beth Felker Jones, Marks of His Wounds: Gender Politics and Bodily Resurrection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 29; Kristi Upson-­Saia, “Resurrecting Deformity: Augustine on Wounded and Scarred Bodies in the Heavenly Realm,” in Disability in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Sacred Texts, Historical Traditions, and Social Analysis, ed. Darla Schumm and Michael Stoltzfus (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 93–122; Nancy Eiseland, The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), 100–101; Kimberly Ann Willis, “Claiming the ‘Fearsome Possibility’: Toward a Contextual Christology of Disability,” in Gender, Ethnicity, and Religion: Views from the Other Side, ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), 215–29; and Candida R. Moss, “Heavenly Healing: Eschatological Cleansing and the Resurrection of the Dead in the Early Church,” JAAR 79 (2011): 991–1017. From the perspective of trauma studies, see Shelly Rambo, Resurrecting Wounds: Living in the Aftermath of Trauma (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2017). 8. For the view that the marks are about identification, see Anton Dauer, Johannes und Lukas: Untersuchungen zu den johanneisch-­lukanischen Parallelperikopen Joh 4, 46–54/Lk 7, 1–10, Joh 12, 1–8/Lk 7, 36–50, 10, 38–42, Joh 20, 19–29/Lk 24, 36–49, Forschung zur Bibel 50 (Würzburg: Echterverlag, 1984), 293. For tangibility, see Gregory Riley, Resurrection Recon­ sidered: Thomas and John in Controversy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995). A number of scholars see literal explorations of the physics of resurrection and ascension as naïve, literalist, and fundamentally irrelevant. See Brown, Gospel According to John, 1015; and Klaus Wengst, Das Johannesevangelium, Theologischer Handkommentar zum Neuen Testament 4.2 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2001), 2:286. Various terms have been used to describe the theological (i.e., nonhistorical) significance and function of the resurrection narratives: “symbolic signs” (Rudolph Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. George R. Beasley-­Murray et al. [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971], 696); projections onto history of eternal realities

Notes to Page 26 / 137

“sub specie aeternitatis” (C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953], 262, 442); “vehicle for this reinterpretative dramatization of the resurrection” (Brown, Gospel According to John, 1014); and “symbolic narratives” (Sandra M. Schneiders, “The Resurrection [of the Body] in the Fourth Gospel: A Key to Johannine Spirituality,” in Life in Abundance: Studies of John’s Gospel in Tribute to Raymond E. Brown, ed. John R. Donahue [Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2005], 180). These symbolic interpretations still operate with the assumption that the marks on Jesus’s body are wounds. 9. Michal Beth Dinkler, Silent Statements: Narrative Representations of Speech and Silence in the Gospel of Luke, BZNW 191 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), 23; on the resurrection, see 203–4. Dinkler does not discuss the appearance to the disciples. 10. John 20:​24–29 is related, either directly or indirectly, to Luke’s account of the appearance to the disciples on Easter evening in Luke 24:​ 36–49. The Western noninterpolation of Luke 24:​20 has the almost identical reading “hands and feet.” It is possible and has been argued that John preserves an earlier form of the story, which has been expanded to include the other disciples. See Pierre Benoit, Passion et résurrection du Seigneur (Paris: Cerf, 1966), 284. It seems more likely that John, who frequently highlights interactions between Jesus and a single individual, would have done the same here. It also seems likely that both John and Luke pre­sent developments of earlier traditions. See G. Hartmann, “Die Vorlage der Osterberichte in Joh 20,” ZNW 55 (1964): 197–220 (213). 11. Andreas J. Köstenberger: “on the nail marks and into Jesus’ side” ( John, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004], 576). 12. Ismo Dunderberg rightly notes that Jesus has “scars.” Like DeConick, he does not reflect further on the significance of scars beyond identification and follows DeConick’s erroneous statements about ghosts and scarring. A discussion on scars does lie outside the purview of his study. See Dunderberg, The Beloved Disciple in Conflict? Revisiting the Gospels of John and Thomas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 63–64. See also April D. DeConick, “Blessed Are Those Who Have Not Seen ( Jn 20:​ 29): Johannine Dramatization of an Early Christian Discourse,” in The Nag Hammadi Library After Fifty Years: Proceedings of the 1995 Society, ed. John D. Turner and Anne Marie McGuire (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 381–400. For further expansion of DeConick’s argument, see note 35 below. 13. Kasper Bro Larsen, Recognizing the Stranger: Recognition Scenes in the Gospel of John, BIS 93 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 185–86. Larsen’s thesis is 138 / Notes to Page 27

otherwise convincing. It is strange that he treats wound marks as conceptually distinctive from scars and synonymous with actual wounds. 14. The mark is frequently just a sign of physicality. See, for example, the statement of Benoit (Passion et résurrection), “[Thomas wants to prove] the physical reality of Christ’s body, into whose wounds Thomas can put his finger” (286). 15. Daniel J. Harrington, The Gospel of John, Sacra Pagina (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1989), 537. See also C. K. Barrett, “The Sight of Jesus, Whose Wounds Are Still Visible,” The Gospel According to Saint John, 2nd ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1978), 567–69 (567); Adela Yarbro Collins, “Ancient Notions of Transferal and Apotheosis,” in Metamorphoses, ed. Seim and Økland, 41–58 (47); Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered, 115; Moore, God’s Gym, 60–63; Gitte Buch Hansen, “It Is the Spirit That Gives Life”: A Stoic Understanding of Pneuma in John’s Gospel, BZNW 173 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), 399–402; and Charles M. Stang, Our Divine Double (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 69. See the almost aggressive description of the scene provided by theologian Graham G. Ward, who writes of “Thomas’ reaching beyond the boundaries of his own body to penetrate (pherao) and thrust (balo) himself into the body of Christ” (Christ and Culture, Challenges in Contemporary Culture [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], 121). More traditional historical-­critical exegetes do not pursue the significance of the wounds. 16. Origen: Commentary on John 13.30.180. The episode on Thomas is no longer extant, but here Origen contrasts Mary Magdalene and Thomas. The assumption that Thomas could in fact touch Jesus is integral to his rebuttal of Celsus’s position that Jesus just emitted a mere image of his wounds (Against Celsus 2.61). Cyril of Alexandria: Commentary on John (PG 74.728). Augustine: Treatise on John 121.5 (“sed sive adspiciendo tantum, sive etiam tangendo viderit” [Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina 36.668.30–31]). Of course, these interpretations correspond with their views of the marks as wounds and scars, respectively. 17. David L. Parker, “ ‘In’ or ‘On’ in John 20.25,27?,” Bible Translator 63 (2012): 207–8. Interestingly, the Vulgate translates verses 25 and 27 as in latus eius/meum (in/into his/my side)—again using the accusative and the preposition—but with a somewhat narrower sense than as the verse was translated into European languages. Luther reads “in sene Seite” (in/into his side), the King James Version and Revised Version have “into.” Louis Segond (LSG) and Traduction œcuménique de la Bible (TOB) both read “dans son côté” (in his side), and the Diodati Italian version has “nel suo costato” (in his side/ribs). Of modern versions, only the Italian Notes to Pages 27–28 / 139

Parola del Signore dissents, saying, “se non tocco con man oil suo fianco” (if I do not touch with hands his side) in verse 25 and “tocca il mio fianco” (touch my side) in verse 27. 18. See τύπος in Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, and Henry Stuart Jones, A Greek-­English Lexicon, 9th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 1589. 19. See Wayne Meeks, “The Divine Agent and Its Counterfeit in Philo and the Fourth Gospel,” in Aspects of Religious Propaganda in Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976), 43–67; Carsten Colpe, “Von der Logoslehre des Philo zu der des Clemens von Alexandrien,” in Kerygma und Logos: Beiträge zu den geistesgeschichtlichen Beziehungen zwischen Antike und Christentum, ed. A. M. Ritter (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979), 89–107, repr. in Colpe, Der Siegel der Propheten: Historische Beziehungen zwischen Judentum, Judenchristentum, Heidentum und frühen Islam (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990), 141–64; F. G. Downing, “Ontological Asymmetry in Philo and Christological Realism in Paul, Hebrews and John,” JTS 41 (1990): 423–40; Calum M. Carmichael, The Story of Creation: Its Origin and Interpretation in Philo and the Fourth Gospel (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996); Kåre Sigvald Fuglseth, Johannine Sectarianism in Perspective: A Sociological, Historical and Comparative Analysis of Temple and Social Relationships in the Gospel of John, Philo and Qumran, NovTSup 119 (Leiden: Brill, 2005); Jutta Leonhardt-­Balzer, “Der Logos und die Schöpfung: Streiflichter bei Philo (Op 20–25) und im Johannesprolog ( Joh 1,1–18),” in Kontexte des Johannesevangeliums: Das vierte Evangelium in religions- und traditionsgeschichtlicher Perspektive, ed. Jörg Frey and Udo Schnelle, WUNT 175 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 295–320; and Hansen, “It Is the Spirit That Gives Life.” See also Volker Rabens, “Johannine Perspectives on Ethical Enabling in the Context of Stoic and Philonic Ethics,” in Rethinking the Ethics of John: “Implicit Ethics” in the Johannine Writings, ed. Jan van der Watt and Ruben Zimmermann, WUNT 291 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 111–39. 20. On wound healing in ancient medicine, see Guido Majno, The Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975). 21. Galen, Method of Medicine 5.15, trans. modified from Ian Johnston and G. H. R. Horsley, eds., Method of Medicine, LCL 517 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 2:109. 22. Galen, On Venesection Against the Erasistrateans at Rome 7 (Kühn XI, 227). See John Scarborough, “Galen and the Gladiators,” Episteme 140 / Notes to Pages 28–30

5 (1971): 98–111; cf. Peter Brain, trans. with commentary, Galen on Bloodletting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 57. 23. Fabian Kanz and Karl Grossschmidt, “Head Injuries of Roman Gladiators,” Forensic Science International 160 (2006): 207–16, and “Stand der anthropologischen Forschungen zum Gladiatorenfriedhof in Ephesos,” Jahreshefte des Österreichischen Archäologischen Instituts in Wien 74 (2005): 103–23. 24. Galen, Drugs by Kind 3.2; Ps-­Athanasius, Four Discourses Against the Arians 4.35 (NPNF 4.447); Aquinas, 3 q. 54, who uses scar (cicatrix) and wounds (vulnera) and cites Augustine, The Creed: For Catechumens 2, who does the same, using “wound” only of the marking on Jesus’s side: “sciebat Christus quare cicatrices in suo corpore servaret. Sicut enim demonstravit Thomae non credenti nisi tangeret et videret, ita etiam inimicis vulnera demonstraturus est sua, ut convincens eos veritas dicat, ecce hominem quem crucifixistis. Videtis vulnera quae infixistis. Agnoscitis latus quod pupugistis. Quoniam per vos, et propter vos apertum est, nec tamen intrare voluistis” (“Augustine” here is actually Quodvultdeus, Sermo 1 de Symbolo I [CPL 0401], 8): Fortasse, dilectissimi, quoniam ueritas euangelica non tacuit eum cum cicatricibus resurrexisse, qui posset si uellet de corpore suscitato et clarificato omnem maculam cuiuslibet cicatricis abstergere (sed sciebat quare cicatrices in corpore suo seruaret, ut uulnera dubitationis in cordibus discipulorum sanaret): fortasse ergo, ut dixi, sicut demonstrauit Thomae, non credenti nisi tangeret et uideret, ita etiam inimicis suis uulnera demonstraturus est sua. In other words, Thomas is wrong (unde, sicut Augustinus dicit, in libro de symbolo, sciebat Christus quare cicatrices in suo corpore servaret). 25. Pace Riley (Resurrection Reconsidered), who suggests: “Surely a shake of Jesus’ hand or touch of his arm would have sufficed for even the most hardened Philistine to ascertain that the appearance was more than visionary. But John has Thomas demand what no cultured or sane person, ancient or modern, would consider acceptable behavior” (115). Riley goes on to dull the accusations of crassness when placing them in the context of resurrection polemics. He does not note the cultural significance of scars. Homer, Odyssey 19.431; Aristotle, Poetics 16. For discussion of the importance of the scar, see Erich Auerbach, “Odysseus’ Scar,” in Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Late Antiquity, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 3–23. In Roman oratory scars trump other marks of identity, such as speech, as proofs of class, honor, and virtue. We might conclude that the recognition of Notes to Pages 30–32 / 141

Jesus by scars outstrips his recognition by his voice in the garden. See Caius Marius, On Being Accused of Low Origin, in which the scars are a sign (praeterea cicatrices advorso corpora) and indicate that he has made his own noble experiences while aristocracy have only the experiences of their family tradition (Sallust, Bellum Iugurtinum 85.1–50 [30]). See also Matthew Leigh’s argument that the display of war wounds was often the climax of an argument in Rome (“Wounding and Popular Rhetoric in Rome,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 40 [1995]: 195–215 [198]). Whether we see this moment in John in the context of Roman oratory or Greek anagnorisis, the display of wounds was a climactic moment. On anagnorisis as a structuring device in the Gospel of John, see F. R. M. Hitchcock, “It the Fourth Gospel a Drama?,” Theology 7 (1923): 307–17 (316); Klaus Berger, Formgeschichte des Neuen Testaments (Heidelberg: Quelle and Meyer, 1984), 325–26; R. Alan Culpepper, “The Plot of John’s Story of Jesus,” Interpretation 49 (1995): 347–58 (356); Culpepper, The Gospel and Letters of John, Interpreting Biblical Texts (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1998), 85; Mark W. G. Stibbe, John’s Gospel, New Testament Readings (London: Routledge, 1994), 36; Sjef van Tilborg, Imaginative Love in John, BIS 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 199–208; Stan Harstine, “Un-­Doubting Thomas: Recognition Scenes in the Ancient World,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 33 (2006): 435–47; and Kasper Bro Larsen, Recognizing the Stranger: Recognition Scenes in the Gospel of John, BIS 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2008). On the structure of these recognition scenes, see Harold W. Attridge, “The Principle in Johannine Imagery: John and the Reading of Images in Contemporary Platonism,” in Imagery in the Gospel of John: Terms, Forms, Themes and Theology of Figurative Language, ed. Jörg Frey, Jan G. van der Watt, and Ruben Zimmermann, WUNT 200 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 47–60. On the contrast between Mary and Thomas, see Sandra Schneiders, “Touching the Risen Jesus: Mary Magdalene and Thomas the Twin in John 20,” CTSA Proceedings 60 (2005): 13–35. For a survey of recent scholarship on the encounter with Mary, see Harold W. Attridge, “Don’t Be Touching Me,” in A Feminist Companion to John, ed. Amy-­Jill Levine (London: Sheffield Academic, 2003), 2:140–66. 26. Xenophon, Agesilaus 6.2. There are, of course, some exceptions. A counterexample to the standard scars as a mark of bravery is from an Athenian contemporary of Agesilaus, the general Iphicrates; when he was facing the general Chabrias in court, the latter displayed his numerous scars as evidence of his patriotism and bravery, whereas Iphicrates boasted that his unmarked body demonstrated the intelligence of his leadership. 142 / Notes to Page 32

I am grateful to Michael Whitby for this example; Josephus, Jewish War 1.197; Susanna Elm, “Pierced by Bronze Needles,” JECS 4 (1996): 409–39; Livy, Histories 2.23, 6.14, 45.39 (honorable scars), cf. 39.37 (dishonorable scars). And see the story in Aelian of how Spartan mothers arranged for the honorable burial of only sons whose wounds were on the front (12.21). J. Louis Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Yale Bible 33A (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 568. The idea that Paul’s stigmata are the marks of whipping on his back appears in Jerome, Commentary on Galatians 3.6.17. See Moore, God’s Gym, 28. For further discussion on scars and virtue, see John T. Fitzgerald, Cracks in an Earthen Vessel: An Examination of the Catalogues of Hardships in the Corinthian Correspondence, SBLDS 99 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1988), 42; and Jennifer B. Glancy, “Boasting of Beatings (2 Corinthians 11:​23–25),” JBL 123 (2004): 99–135. Marks of flogging symbolized servile liability, humiliation, subservience, and subjugation. Dishonorable bodies were whippable. See Richard Saller, “Corporal Punishment, Authority, and Obedience in the Roman Household,” in Marriage, Divorce and Children in Ancient Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 133–65 (151), and Glancy, “Boasting of Beatings,” 107–13. See also Maud Gleason, “Mutilated Messengers: Body Language in Josephus,” in Being Greek Under Rome: Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic, and the Development of Empire, ed. Simon Goldhill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 50–85 (59–60). 27. The wound in the side was likely fatal. Galen, Method of Medicine 6.4 (Kühn X, 410–23), s.v. Verletzungen: “Penetrierende Verletzungen des Brustkorbes und des Bauchraumes durch Schwertstreich, Lanze, Speer oder Pfeil endeten häufig tödlich,” in Antike Medizin: Ein Lexikon, ed. Karl-­Heinz Leven (Munich: Beck, 2005), 898. 28. Jerome Neyrey, The Resurrection Stories (Wilmington, DE: Glazier, 1988), 50–51; Robert C. Tannehill, Luke, Abingdon New Testament Commentaries (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 359; N. T. Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God 3 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 657–58 n. 23. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel of John 12.1. Theodore of Mopsuestia agrees with Cyril that the scene confirms the identicality of the resurrected body with the crucified one; see Commentary on the Gospel of John, trans. Marco Conti (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2010): “wounds on his body where the nails had been” (162–63). On the fleshliness of the resurrected body in general, see Ignatius, Letter to the Smyrnaeans 22; Tertullian, On the Soul 17.129; Augustine, Against Faustus the Manichaean 16.33, 29.2; Augustine, EnarraNotes to Page 33 / 143

tions on the Psalms 50.5; Theodoret, Letters 83, 145; Jerome, Letters 108.24; Cyril, Catechetical Lectures 13.39; and Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity 3.20. 29. “Then I pondered in my mind and wanted to embrace my dead mother’s soul. Three times I rushed, and my heart urged me to hold her, and three times she flew from my hands like a shadow or even a dream, and the pain became sharper in my heart. . . . Oh my, my child, ill-­fated beyond all men, Zeus’s daughter Persephone is in no way tricking you, but this is the way of mortals when one dies. For sinews no longer hold flesh and bones together, but the mighty fury of blazing fire consumes them, as soon as life leaves the white bones, and the soul, like a dream, flies about and flies away’ ” (Odyssey 11.204–8, 216–22). 30. Iliad 23.99–104; see Charles Talbert, “The Place of Resurrection in the Theology of Luke,” in Reading Luke Acts in Its Mediterranean Milieu, ed. Charles Talbert, NovTSup 107 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 126–29; and John E. Alsup, The Post-­Resurrection Appearance Stories of the Gospel Tradition (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1975), 164–72. More nuanced discussions of Jesus’s physical appearances appear in Craig F. Evans, Saint Luke, TPI New Testament Commentaries (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1990), 919; and Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 405. 31. Fuller studies of this subject can be found in surveys by Arthur Stanley Pease, “Some Aspects of Invisibility,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 53 (1942): 1–36; E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957); Erwin Rohde, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality Among the Greeks (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1925); and D. Felton, Haunted Greece and Rome: Ghost Stories from Classical Antiquity (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999). 32. Discussions of this particular event for the significance of “ghosts” can be found in Felton, Haunted Greece, 25–26. The dating of Phlegon here follows the traditional ascription of the text to Phlegon, a figure who flourished in the second century, but strong arguments can be advanced for either a first- or third-­century dating for this text. I’m grateful to Jeremiah Coogan for this observation. Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered, 51–58; April D. DeConick, “Blessed Are Those Who Have Not Seen ( Jn 20:​ 29): Johannine Dramatization of an Early Christian Discourse,” in The Nag Hammadi Library After Fifty Years: Proceedings of the 1995 Society, ed. John D. Turner and Anne Marie McGuire (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 381–400 (395).

144 / Notes to Pages 34–35

33. Plato, Gorgias 524c; Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered, 63–68. For a survey of the various forms of phantasmic beings, see the arguments in the appendix to Deborah Prince, “The ‘Ghost’ of Jesus: Luke 24 in Light of Post-­Mortem Apparitions,” JSNT 29 (2007): 287–301 (298–99); cf. Jason Combs, “A Ghost on the Water? Understanding an Absurdity in Mark 6:49–50,” JBL 127 (2008): 345–58. 34. Of course, one might argue that John does not have this kind of a supernatural lexicon to hand. The Dictionaries of Deities and Demons is a relatively recent publication, and while it had ancient parallels like Phlegon’s Book of Marvels, there is no proof that John was familiar with or gave much thought to this kind of literature. That said, we are not restricted to John’s particular phantasmic repertoire. If there was one conversation among followers of Jesus in which cultural vocabulary was shared and critically brought to bear upon an issue, it was surely that of the resurrection. In the future (or present, depending on the date of composition) second-­century Christians would not only wrestle with the counter-­explanations of outsiders like Celsus, but also the objections of those inside the community (“gnostics,” “Thomasines,” or docetics) who challenged material understandings of the resurrection entirely. We can imagine that in the high-­stakes conversation that surrounded the resurrection of Jesus, potential criticisms were pooled and authors responded to every imaginable concern, sometimes preemptively. Where the wounds are explicitly invoked in patristic discourse, for example, citations by Cyril and Theodore, the question is not the reality of the resurrection but the human nature of Christ. The focus of the debate changes in antiquity. 35. See Ulrich Wilckens, Resurrection: Biblical Testimony to the Resurrection: An Historical Examination and Explanation, trans. A. M. Stewart (Atlanta: John Knox, 1978), 53; Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered. The view that John preserves a textualized version of a multistage intercommunal debate is in part grounded in arguments about John’s place of composition and physical contact with a presumably Syrian Thomasine community. Here the arguments of J. Louis Martyn about John as a “drama on two levels” and Rudolf Schnackenburg about the geography of the account’s composition have been particularly influential; see Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (Nashville: Abingdon, 1979), 59–62; and Schnackenburg, The Gospel According to St. John, 3 vols. (New York: Crossroad, 1968), 1:152: “the Johannine tradition, originating in Palestine, was subjected to Syrian influences before it reached Asia Minor (Ephesus), where it was fixed and edited.” We would do well here to note

Notes to Page 36 / 145

the objection of April DeConick that Thomasine Christians did not seem especially interested in spiritual resurrection, but whether or not John’s implied interlocutors are actually Thomasine does not matter a great deal for this argument. Both Riley and DeConick see John and Thomas as texts produced by communities in crisis and direct contact with one another. This view has been effectively challenged by Dunderberg, The Beloved Disciple in Conflict. Here, Dunderberg effectively demonstrates that Thomas was not necessarily a “false hero” (pace DeConick) and that the theological positions ascribed to the Thomasine community are far from evident. John Chrysostom, Homilies on John 87 (NPNF 14.327). In the background of Chrysostom is the typical Antiochene question (in the framework of the Christological debate): Why does an incorruptible body have wounds? See Homilies on John 87.1 (PG 59.474.17–19). The Pauline answer supplied by Chrysostom is clear: because he humiliated himself, that people can believe in resurrection. 36. Bultmann, Gospel of John. We should note that Bultmann’s exegesis is grounded in his understanding of the cross as exaltation for John. In Theology of the New Testament he writes: “If Jesus’ death on the cross is already his exaltation and glorification, his resurrection cannot be an event of special significance. No resurrection is needed to destroy the triumph which death might be supposed to have gained in the crucifixion” (trans. Kendrick Grobel [New York: Scribner, 1955], 2:56). See also Bultmann on the encounter with Mary in the garden, which he takes to be an outright rejection of the physical resurrection (Gospel of John, 687–88), and Ernst Haenchen, on the same passage, who remarks: “In reality, the Evangelist presupposes a demythologized concept of the resurrection, in which Jesus returns as a spirit. Mary appears to encounter Jesus in a state in which the transition from his earthly form to a state of spirituality has not yet taken place (this is told in reliance on a crude tradition); the Evangelist also felt this state, which is impossible to our way of thinking, to be inappropriate” (Haenvchen’s Hermeneia Commentary: Ernst Haenchen, John 7–21, Hermeneia, trans. Robert W. Funk [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984], 209–10). 37. The questions of whether or not Thomas does touch Jesus and how we should understand the figure of Thomas are open ones. While tradition has tended to affirm that Thomas probed Jesus’s body and that he was an antitype for faith, this has not always been the case. See Jörg Frey, “ ‘Ich habe den Herrn gesehen’ ( Joh 20,18): Entstehung, Inhalt, und Vermittlung des Osterglaubens nach Johannes 20,” in Studien zu Matthäus und Johannes, ed. Andreas Dettwiler and Uta Poplutz (Zürich: TVZ, 2009), 146 / Notes to Page 37

267–84; Glenn W. Most, Doubting Thomas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 57; and Stang, Our Divine Double, 69. 38. The finest statement on this topic is Jörg Frey’s unparalleled Die johanneische Eschatologie, 3 vols., WUNT (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997–2000). 39. The same notion of preservation and transfiguration is at work in Augustine’s understanding that wounds received in the pursuit of virtue are preserved in the resurrection (City of God, 22.19.1149–50). See discussion in Moss, “Heavenly Healing,” 20; and Kimberly Ann Willis, “Claiming the ‘Fearsome Possibility’: Toward a Contextual Christology of Disability,” in Gender, Ethnicity, and Religion: Views from the Other Side, ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), 215–29. 40. On this “Long Ending,” see discussion in Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 803–18; and James A. Kelhoffer, Miracle and Mission: The Authentication of Missionaries and Their Message in the Longer Ending of Mark, WUNT 2.112 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000). See discussion in B. D. Bucur, “Blinded by Invisible Light: Revisiting the Emmaus Story (Luke 24,13–35),” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 90 (2014): 685–707. 41. Changing age: Acts of Peter 20–21; Acts of John 89. Changing size: Acts of Peter 20. Changing standards of beauty: Acts of Peter 20. Changing tone of Jesus’s body: Acts of John 89. Walking without footprints: Acts of John 93, Acts of John 88–90, and Acts of Peter 21. 42. Pieter J. Lalleman, “Polymorphy of Christ,” in The Apocryphal Acts of John, ed. Jan N. Bremmer, Studies on the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles 1 (Kampen: Pharos, 1995), 99. See Paul Foster, “Polymorphic Christology: Its Origins and Development in Early Christianity,” JTS 58 (2007): 66–99; and Hans-­Josef Klauck, The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008), 95. Cf. Judith Perkins (The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era [London: Routledge, 1995]), who sees the shape-­shifting Christ as a representation of the whole community: “the ‘polymorphic’ Christ embodies in himself a utopian community, a mingling of classes diverging almost totally from the reality of the second century where . . . contempt for the common people by the wellborn was nearly universal” (135). The idea that the resurrection of Jesus serves as a prototype for the resurrection of everyone else is, of course, derived from Paul. But, as Joost Holleman has argued, it is possible that many saw Jesus’s resurrection as a noneschatological event that is divorced from eschatological resurrection altogether (“Jesus’ Resurrection as the Beginning of the EschatoNotes to Pages 38–40 / 147

logical Resurrection [1 Cor. 15,20],” in The Corinthian Correspondence, ed. Reimund Bieringer, BETL 125 [Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1996], 653–60 [655]). 2 Integrity 1. A Verger’s Dream: Saints Cosmas and Damian Performing a Miraculous Cure by Transplantation of a Leg. Oil painting attributed to the Master of Los Balbases, ca. 1495; https://wellcomelibrary.org/item/b12038210#?c =0&m=0&s=0&cv=0, page last updated 30 April 2018. 2. F. S. Ellis, ed., The Golden Legend; or, Lives of the Saints as Englished by William Caxton (London: Dent and Sons, 1900), 5:82. The misconception that the leg contained only one bone may originate in the use of the word “tibia” to denote both the bone in the leg and the leg itself. For a discussion of this and medical issues related to “phantom limbs” in the medieval period, see Douglas B. Price, “Miraculous Restoration of Lost Body Parts: Relationship to the Phantom Limb Phenomenon and to Limb-­ Burial Superstitions and Practices,” in American Folk Medicine: A Symposium, ed. Wayland Debs Hand (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 49–71. 3. For examples and analysis, see Caroline W. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200 C.E.–1336 C.E. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 314 n. 129. 4. Plutarch, Life of Theseus 23. 5. Epicharmus’s example is preserved in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 3.11 (DK, frag. 2). A standard version of the Platonic Growing Problem is rehearsed in Plutarch, On Common Conception 1083B–­C. The imagery of the sea flowing and changing used in Plato’s Theaetetus captures the fluidity of identity (152E). The same imagery is picked up in Seneca, Letters 58.22–23. On stepping into the river twice: DK, frag. 12. For Heraclitus this was actually a double problem because both the river and the person were constantly changing. I am grateful to Jeremiah Coogan for this observation. 6. Aristotle, Physics 5.4; Aristotle, Generation and Corruption 1.5 (321a18–22, 322a28–33, 321b27–28): “This form, like a tube (aulos), is a force (dunamis) in matter. If some matter comes in which is potentially tube, with its quantity potential too, these [combined] tubes will be larger. But if the matter can no longer act, but is like water mixed with wine in ever greater amount, which eventually makes the wine watery or water, 148 / Notes to Pages 41–44

then it will produce a wasting away. The form, however, persists” (322a28– 33). The preeminence of form as the locus of continuity ran into difficulty when it came to permanent bodily modifications, like scars. Scars led Alexander to argue that some bodily matter must persist without being replaced. (The scars argument is attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias by Averroës, Epitome of Aristotle on Generation and Corruption, trans. Kurland, Corpus Commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem 4.1.117.) 7. Epiphanius, Panarion 64.14.3–4. Origen might have appealed to a different notion of continuity—the Stoic idea that continuity of a “peculiarly qualified individual” does survive the material change of the individual’s body or substrate. 8. See discussion in J. Bowin, “Chrysippus’ Puzzle About Identity,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 24 (2003): 239–51; M. B. Burke, “Dion and Theon: An Essentialist Solution to an Ancient Puzzle,” Journal of Philosophy 91 (1995): 129–39; Burke, “Tibbles the Cat: A Modern ‘Sophisma,’ ” Philosophical Studies 84 (1996): 63–74; Burke, “Dion, Theon, and the Many-­Thinkers Problem,” Analysis 64 (2004): 242–50; and A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 1:166–76. 9. Karen King writes, “Christians shared the ancient conviction that fleshly bodies are subject to the same conditions of mutability and instability that applies to all matter . . . bodies were constantly metamorphosing throughout people’s lives” (“ ‘In Your Midst as a Child’—‘In the Form of an Old Man’: Images of Aging and Immortality in Ancient Christianity,” in Metamorphoses: Resurrection, Body and Transformative Practices in Early Christianity, ed. Turid Karlsen Seim and Jorunn Økland, Ekstasis 1 [Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009], 59–82 [60]). For the philosophical argument that we die every moment of our lives and that change itself is a kind of death, see Seneca, Letters 24.19–21; and Plutarch, On the E at Delphi, 392C–­E. The strategies were inevitably ascetic and (replicating the methods of ancient medical efforts to balance the humors) focused on drying and hardening the body. The most “paradigmatic example” of this “was the body of the saint, purified in life by denying those natural processes (especially nutrition and procreation) that threaten stability” (Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 113; cf. Teresa M. Shaw, The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998], 161–83; and King, “Images of Aging and Immortality,” 61–62). 10. While the formal similarities between these statements indicate that they are a discrete unit, they are linked by catchwords to the sayNotes to Pages 44–46 / 149

ing about causing children to sin in verse 42 and the statement about salt in verses 49–50. See Harry Fleddermann, “The Discipleship Discourse (Mark 9:33–50),” CBQ 43 (1981): 57–75 (57); Ian H. Henderson, “ ‘Salted with Fire’ (Mark 9.42–50): Style, Oracles and (Socio)Rhetorical Gospel Criticism,” JSNT 23 (2001): 44–65 (49); Joel Marcus, Mark 8–16, Anchor Yale Bible 27A (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 694; and Vincent Taylor, The Gospel According to St. Mark (London: Macmillan, 1952), 408–9. This does not mean, however, that the sayings were linked in pre-­Markan tradition (Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007], 443) or that all elements of this larger section depend upon one another. The structural parallelism of verses 43–48 links these verses in a manner that the catchword connections with verses 42 and 50 do not. 11. W. Deming (“Mark 9.41–10:​12, Matthew 5.27–32, and b. Nid. 13b: A First Century Discussion of Male Sexuality,” New Testament Studies 36 [1990]: 130–41) has speculated that the nature of the sins in verses 42–50 is primarily sexual; this opinion has been adopted by R. H. Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 524; and Dale C. Allison, Jr., Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 178–82. Marcus, Mark 1–8, 696–97, correctly notes that this metaphorical understanding of body parts is undercut by the fact that the sinner who amputates his “hand” or “foot” does not enter the Kingdom of God as a eunuch but rather lame or maimed. 12. Code of Hammurabi 195, 218. 13. The original analysis was reported in Allan I. Bloom, Ronald A. Bloom, Gila Kahila, Emmanuel Eisenberg, and Patricia Smith, “Amputation of the Hand in the 3600-­Year-­Old Skeletal Remains of an Adult Male: The First Case Reported from Israel,” International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 5 (1995): 188–91. On determining the causes of amputation, see D. R. Brothwell and V. Moller-­Christiansen, “Medico-­Historical Aspects of a Very Early Case of Mutilation,” Danish Medical Bulletin 10 (1963): 21–25; and D. R. Brothwell and V. Moller-­Christiansen, “A Possible Case of Amputation, Dated to Circa 2000,” Man 244 (1963): 192–94; cf. comments in C. Aldred, “A Possible Case of Amputation,” Man 245 (1964): 56–64. 14. Josephus, The Life 34, Jewish War 2.21.10; Suetonius, Gaius Caligula 32.2. There is reason to think that these are polemical; cf. Aloys Winterling, Caligula: Eine Biographie (Munich: Beck, 2003). 15. Interestingly, literary and cultural awareness of amputation—both 150 / Notes to Pages 46–49

of the extremities and of the eyes—seems to have heightened during the Roman period. The vast majority of wounds recorded in Homeric epic involve puncturing the body, not dismembering it. But as we transition from Greek to Latin poetry, references to severed limbs and gouged eyes increase by a factor of fifteen. Classicists attribute this shift in the awareness of mutilation in war to the new interest in gladiatorial combat. On the evidence and its significance, see discussion in Glenn Most, “Disiecti membra poetae: The Rhetoric of Dismemberment in Roman Poetry,” in Innovations of Antiquity, ed. Daniel L. Selden and Ralph Hexter (London: Routledge, 1992), 391–419 (399). On deliberate eye injury, see H. C. Nutting, “Oculos Effodere,” Classical Philology 17 (1922): 313–18. For an excellent overview, see Lisa Trentin, “Exploring Visual Impairment in Ancient Rome,” in Disabilities in Roman Antiquity: Disparate Bodies, A Capite ad Calcem, ed. Christian Laes, C. E. Goodey, and M. Lynn Rose, Mnemosyne Supplements (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 89–114 (101). 16. Pliny, Natural History 8.105–6; crutches or sticks, however, were much more common. The walking stick featured in the Sphinx’s famous riddle. Hippocrates mentions those who use one or two crutches in his rich and textured discussion of the varieties of irregular gaits (On Fractures 9). Martial, Epigrams 10.100. 17. Philip of Macedon: Demosthenes, On the Crown (ca. 330 BCE); Didymus, 12.43 (FGrHist 2b 115F, frag. 52) ad Theopompus of Chios; Diodorus Siculus, Library 16.34.5; Strabo, Geography 8.6.15; Justin, Historiarum epitome 7.6. Most reports of Philip’s injury use language of striking and cutting. Pliny claims that the doctor Critobulos treated Philip and “cured the eyeball” without deforming his face (Natural History 7.124). Cf. Hippocrates, Epidemics 5.49, which reports a similar accident in which the eye was not lost. Horatius Cocles lost his eye either during or before the battle against the Etruscans (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates romanae 5.23.2–25). Plutarch, Publicola 16.4–7, suggests that he may have lost an eye in battle or may have simply had a cyclopean appearance. According to Livy, Hannibal’s loss of sight was due to an untreated eye infection (History of Rome 22.230; cf. Polybius, History 3.79.12; and Nepos, Hannibal 23.4.3). Plutarch notes that Sertorius lost his eye from a blow during the Marsic War (Sertorius 4.2A). Full discussion of heroic one-­eyed men can be found in T. W. Africa, “The One-­Eyed Man Against Rome: An Exercise in Euhemerism,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte geschichte 19 (1970): 528–38. A list of one-­eyed soldiers can be found in A. Esser, “Weitere Einäugige der Antike,” Klinische Monatsblätter für Augenheilkunde 92 (1934): 237–41. See discussion below in the text of being one-­eyed. Notes to Page 50 / 151

The issue of eye patches is complicated. Excavations at Vindolanda have revealed at least one and possible fragments of others. We cannot assume, however, that eye patches were only for those who had lost eyes. A wellness report from Vindolanda indicates that of the thirty-­one incapacitated men, ten were suffering from “blear eye” (lippientes). Such lippi were common in Rome, as they were unable to work and were viewed as notorious gossips. For a discussion of the perception of the lippi, see A. R. Birley, “A Case of Eye Disease (Lippitudo) on the Roman Frontier in Britain,” Documenta Ophthamologica 81 (1992): 111–19, esp. 117, fig. 5. For the wellness report itself, see A. K. Bowman and J. D. Thomas, “A Military Strength Report from Vindolanda,” JRS 81 (1991): 62–73. 18. Plautus, Cuculio 394 (catapulta hoc ictum est mihi apud Sicyonem). We should note that his interlocutor is unimpressed by the injury; Plutarch, Sertorius 1; Plutarch, On the Fortune of Alexander 339C–­D. Note also that Sallust recalls how Sertorius took great pride in his eye wound because it showed “how gloriously he had preserved the rest of his body” (Historiae 1.88). There was, as Évelyne Samama has shown, a shift in the interpretation of mutilated bodies from the classical to the Hellenistic world, but it is difficult to gauge its reach; see Samama, “On the Textual and Iconographical Images of Philip II and Other Wounded Kings,” in Disabilities in Roman Antiquity, ed. Laes, Goodey, and Rose, 231–48 (245–46). Eye injuries sustained in personal encounters were fairly common. Juvenal mocks a man who lost an eye at the hands of a veteran and did not dare retaliate (Oration 45). See Benjamin Isaac, “Army and Power in the Roman World: A Response to Brian Campbell,” in Army and Power in the Ancient World, ed. Angelos Chanoitis and Pierre Ducrey (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2002), 181–92 (185–86). 19. Herodotus, Histories 9.37–38. 20. For examples and discussions of amputation in antiquity, see James E. McCallum, “Amputation,” in Military Medicine: From Ancient Times to the 21st Century (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-­CLIO, 2008), 17–18; and Garret G. Fagan, The Lure of the Arena: Social Psychology and the Crowd at the Roman Games (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). For a survey of the causes of blindness in antiquity, see Martha L. Rose, The Staff of Oedipus: Transforming Disability in Ancient Greece (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 79–94. On mythic representations of blinding, see R. G. A. Buxton, “Blindness and Limits: Sophokles and the Logic of Myth,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 100 (1980): 22–37. The medicus ocularius (eye specialist) was trained in the administration of ointments and often removed ingrown eyelashes; surgery itself was less common. 152 / Notes to Pages 50–51

Celsus (On Medicine) gives a description of the treatment of cataracts that involved only the breaking up of the cataracts, not their removal; Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 9.26–28 and 9.59; cf. Pliny, Natural History 7.23: “in viris Anaxarchi, qui simili de causa cum torqueretur pracrosam dentibus linguam unamque spem indici in tyranny os expuit”; Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings 3.3; Zeno in Plutarch, On Talkativeness 505D; Tertullian, Apology 50.8; Polyaenos, Stratagem 8.45; Pliny, Natural History, 34.19.72–73; Epictetus, Discourses 3.24.71; and Philo, That the Worse Attacks the Better 176. Seneca cites the example of a certain soldier Mucius who placed his own hand in enemy flames. Seneca extols the courage and valor of the soldier, who has, Seneca remarks, “extracted his own penalty.” This is an interesting example because Seneca sees the amputation as clearly punitive, but the fact that the soldier performs it himself is deserving of admiration: “Mucius put his hand on the fire. It is painful to be burned; how much more painful to suffer this when you are yourself the agent! You may see a man, lacking education and equipped with no philosophy against death and pain, armed only with his military valour, extracting from himself the penalty for his failed undertaking. He stood watching his own hand as it dripped into the enemy’s brazier” (Letters 24.5). 21. Lucian, The Ignorant Book-­Collector 6. Lucian tells a story of a man who lost both of his feet from what seems to have been frostbite and procured wooden ones to replace them; Hippocrates, On Joints 68–69; Celsus, On Medicine 7.33.1. 22. Martial, Epigrams 8.74. Here he plays with the imagery of doctors using needles to puncture cataracts (Celsus, On Medicine 7.7) and gladiatorial spears. 23. “And some with the strong fear they had for the threshold of death went on living after they had severed the manly part with a knife, some without hands or feet remained in life for all that, some lost their eyes: so deeply had the keen fear of death possessed them” (Lucretius, On the Nature of Things 6.1207–15). Certainly, Lucretius uses auto-­amputation to illustrate the horror of the plague and its aftermath, but he seems to assume that people in general knew about the mechanics of amputation and were willing to perform it on themselves. 24. Seneca, On Providence 3.2. 25. Plato, Symposium 205e; Plutarch, Moralia 831d. Not every patient sought amputation immediately. Financial problems or concerns about the outcome of the surgery led some to wait as their wounds grew worse. This reality made amputation even more of a relief. Notes to Pages 51–52 / 153

26. Cf. the story of Nachum of Gimzo (b. Ta’an. 21a), who asked that he be blinded after failing to give sufficiently to the poor. 27. The rhetoric of amputation is also employed in discussions of literary style. Seneca criticizes authors who have an amputatus or abruptus style (Letters 114.17). Others use the term abscius. Seneca himself employed this style and is criticized by Quintilian (Institutes of the Orator 8.3.75) for it. 28. Virtually no one thinks that we should take Mark’s encouragement to self-­amputate at face value: C. F. D. Moule, The Gospel According to Mark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 75; Collins, Mark, 452; M. Eugene Boring: “the command is not meant literally” (Mark: A Commentary, New Testament Library [Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2014], 283). The exception is J. Duncan M. Derrett, who, ­perhaps unsurprisingly, still sees the amputation as punishment for sin ( Jesus’s Audience: The Social and Psychological Environment in Which He Worked. Prolegomena to a Restatement of the Teaching of Jesus [New York: Seabury, 1974], 201–4). Origen, Homilies on Matthew 17.3. H. B. Swete, The Gospel According to St. Mark: The Greek Text with Introduction, Notes, and Indices (London: Macmillan, 1909), 210; Helmut Koester, “Mark 9.43–47 and Quintilian 8.3.75,” HTR 71 (1978): 151–53. It is noteworthy that Koester does not pursue any other idiomatic or metaphorical uses of amputation logic or discuss the therapeutic logic of the image. Werner Zager, Gottesherrschaft und Endgericht in der Verkündigung Jesu: Eine Untersuchung zur markinischen Jesusüberlieferung einschließlich der Q-­Parallelen, BZNW 82 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1996), 217–18. Finally, Pheme Perkins is sure that “Jesus is not making a rule that directs Christians to amputate parts of their body” and points out that Jesus is “less radical” than his Jewish contemporaries because he calls for the amputation of only one guilty body part (“Mark,” in New Interpreter’s Bible, ed. Leander Keck [Nashville: Abingdon, 1995], 8:640). 29. Sentences of Sextus 273. Constantine ordered that runaway slaves be punished by the amputation of a foot, and on one occasion he instructed that the tongue of an informant be torn out (Codex Theodosianus 6.1.3, 10.10.2). Constantine’s punishments should be set in the context of both the lex talonis and the marked increase in brutal punishments that took place during his reign. On the latter, see A. H. M. Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978); Ramsay MacMullen, Constantine (London: Croom Helm, 1987); and Peter J. Leithart, Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2010). It is tempting to include among this evidence Origen’s alleged self-­castration 154 / Notes to Pages 53–55

(as relayed in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 6.8). Given how uncertain the evidence for this event is, I have elected not to include it here. By the medieval period, stories associated with Peter the Martyr (Peter of Verona) emphasized that while limbs deserved to be cut off, other penance should suffice. See discussion in Augustine Thompson, Revival Preachers and Politics in Thirteenth Century Italy: The Great Devotion of 1233 (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 131–32. In the sixth century CE, mutilation became quite common in Christian contexts as a form of punishment. Justinian legislation recognizes that amputation of the hands is a legal punishment for heretical scribes and fraudulent tax collectors. Blinding became a common punishment for thieves under the Normans (Edward Wheatley, Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010]). 30. Zager, Gottesherrschaft und Endgericht, 217–18. 31. The shock value of the extreme punishments is emphasized by Collins, Mark, 452, and Henderson, “ ‘Salted with Fire,’ ” 63–64, who note that the imagery of cutting off limbs and plucking out eyes has the rhetorical effect of strongly discouraging sinful behavior; Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 2003), 103–6. 32. Marcus, Mark 8–16, 690. 33. Pace Marcus, Mark 8–16, 690–98. 34. In many ways, the Gospel of Mark is an account of divine healing. Every impaired person who faithfully encounters Jesus is healed, and the healing of the sick is aligned with notions of salvation from sin and the in-­breaking of the Kingdom of God; see Candida R. Moss, “The Man with the Flow of Power: Porous Bodies in Mark 5:25–34,” JBL 129 (2010): 507–19. The idea that the damned will be ripped apart in hell is suggested, however, by Corie Louie in an unpublished paper (“Bodies in ‘Hell’: Recovering the Forgotten Body in Gehenna in Mark 9:43–48”). For a similar argument, with respect to Dante, see Bynum, Resurrection of the Body: “the damned are reassembled only for perpetual partition, mutilation, and mastication; in heaven, the blessed rise beautiful and whole” (305). 35. Outi Lehtipuu, The Afterlife Imagery in Luke’s Story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, NovTSup 123 (Leiden: Brill, 2007); Dag Øistein Endsjø, “Immortal Bodies, Before Christ: Bodily Continuity in Ancient Greece and 1 Corinthians,” JSNT 30 (2008): 417–36; Sophocles, Oedipus Rex 1305–7. Notes to Pages 56–59 / 155

36. Virgil, Aeneid 6.445–46, and Pindar, Olympian Odes 1.26; Ps-­Apollodorus, Letters 2.3. Cf. similar stories in Scholiast to Euripides, Eq. 1321, and Aristophanes, Knights 1321, 1336. 37. Pseudo-­Justin, On the Resurrection 4. 38. See Endsjø, “Immortal Bodies,” 434. Around 400 CE, Apocalypse of Paul 14 assumes the same thing when it tells the dead souls to make sure they keep track of their bodies because they will not get a new one at the resurrection. While recognizing that the loss of one eye was considerable, Aristotle still states in Metaphysics that “it is not the one-­eyed man (heterophthalmos), but the man who lacks sight in both eyes, who is called blind” (5.1023a). 39. Plotinus, Enneades 1.6.6; Pliny, Natural History 7.124: “Magna et Critobulo fama est extracta Philippi regis oculo sagittal et citra deformitatem oris cuata orbitate luminis.” 40. Pseudo-­Herodian, Philetaerus 279.2; Julius Pollux, Onomasticon 2.62.1; Ptolemy, On Synonyms 391.11; Ammonius, Differences of Synonymous Expressions 197.1. 41. Herodotus, Histories 3.116.2. 42. The utility of the term is impressive. It finds its way into the writings of the mathematician Nicomachus of Gerasa (On Deficient Number 1.15.5), who remarks that “the deficient number is one which has qualities the opposite of those pointed out and whose factors added together are less in comparison than the number itself. It is as if some animal should fall short of the natural number of limbs or parts or as if someone should have one eye (monophthalmos) as in the poem, ‘And one round orb was fixed in his brow.’ ” Perhaps the most famous example is Antigonus the One-­Eyed (monophthalmos), who lost an eye while defending Phrygia. Since he was rather tall and large, his impairment earned him the nickname “monophthalmos” because he looked like a Cyclops. Unlike Sertorius, Antigonus experienced social alienation because of his deformity. A number of stories re­cord how people referred to him as a Cyclops (Elegy and Imabus 2.18.1; cf. Claudius Aelianus, Historia Varia 12.43.11). 43. Even if the evidence for the philological tradition of monophthalmos is not conclusive, it is certainly worthy of discussion. It is significant that not a single New Testament scholar mentions the philological background of this term. Scholars do not usually proceed by assuming that our authors are ignorant. If anything, we usually assume that ancient authors knew too much. We discuss their language as if they had comprehensive vocabularies and their intellectual context as if they had access to libraries that rival our own. And yet the meaning of monophthalmos has received 156 / Notes to Pages 60–63

no treatment in any commentaries on this passage, and it is worth asking why. Why read into Mark a context of heavenly healing that the evangelist does not mention in this passage when we are not even reflecting upon the meaning of the words he does use? The answer rests on assumptions about bodily wholeness that form a substitute for the text itself. The result is that Mark 9:43–48 does not feature in scholarly discussions of the heavenly resurrected body at all. For example, it is mentioned only dismissively in N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003) (cf. Wright’s extended discussion of Mark 12), and is not mentioned at all in the recent sophisticated treatments of resurrection by Lehtipuu, Setzer, Petrey, Vinzent, and Bynum. The last of these is especially interesting as Bynum includes two stories of self-­mutilation in her book Resurrection of the Body (314 n. 132). 44. The language of cathartic scourge is borrowed from Moss, “Man with the Flow of Power,” 507. 45. Legenda aurea 266; Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 314. 3 Functionality 1. Henri J. M. Nouwen, Adam: God’s Beloved (New York: Orbis, 1997), 118. 2. Nouwen, Adam, 118. 3. On this question, see Kimberly Ann Willis, “Claiming the ‘Fearsome Possibility’: Toward a Contextual Christology of Disability,” in Gender, Ethnicity, and Religion: Views from the Other Side, ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), 215–29; Nancy Eiesland, The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994); Candida R. Moss, “Heavenly Healing: Eschatological Cleansing and the Resurrection of the Dead in the Early Church,” JAAR 79 (2011): 991–1017; and Sharon Betcher, “Disability and the Terror of the Miracle Tradition,” in Miracles Revisited: New Testament Miracle Stories and Their Concepts of Reality, ed. Stefan Alkier and Annette Weissenrieder (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), 161–82. Nouwen is, of course, narrating the facts of the dream, and we might assume that dreams stand apart from cultural expectations. The point here is that Nouwen’s relation of the dream does not challenge the ableistic fantasy but rather rehearses and cements it. The dream takes on a prophetic quality in which it serves as an adequate description of our eschatological hopes. 4. Cf. b. Nid. 69b, 70b in which the “Alexandrians” ask Rabbi Joshua Notes to Pages 64–68 / 157

ben Hananiah whether the resurrected dead would need to be purified on the third and seventh days to avoid ritual impurity (as those impure by contact with corpses were required to be by rabbinic law). He responded, “When they will be resurrected we shall go into the matter.” The reply communicates both the belief that in the resurrection all things would be revealed and the fundamental lack of knowledge that people have about the world to come (cited in Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007], 560–61). 5. See, for example, 1 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John 10.1–7: “The whole of humanity will rise bodiless, just as I told you: ‘In the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God.’ ” Cf. the opponents of Pseudo-­Justin in On Resurrection 2.8–12. 6. For a discussion of this passage and marriage and celibacy in early Christianity in general, see John Barclay, “Apocalyptic Allegiance and Disinvestment in the World: A Reading of 1 Corinthians 7:25–35,” in Paul and the Apocalyptic Imagination, ed. Ben C. Blackwell, John K. Goodrich, and Jason Matson (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016), 257–74. Pregnant women and nursing mothers occasionally feature in biblical oracles about judgment; 4 Ezra 16:​44–46 specifically warns against having children during a period of eschatological unrest. See, for example, Joel Marcus, Mark 8–16, Anchor Yale Bible 27A (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 895–96. War was a great hardship on new mothers. Josephus relays a potentially apocryphal story of a young mother cannibalizing her own child ( Jewish War 6.201–19, cited in Marcus, Mark 8–16, 892). 7. On the basis of the famous scene of the revivification of dry bones in Ezek 37, at least one scholar has argued that many Jews living at the time of Jesus assumed that marital relations would continue in the resurrection; see H. L. Strack and Paul Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch, 6 vols. (Munich: Beck, 1924–1956), 1:593. Some rabbis would later interpret Ezek 37 as a foreshadowing of the eschatological resurrection; ibid., 1:895; see also Collins, Mark, 561 n. 120. 8. This passage, quite naturally, is compared in content to 1 Cor 7. Traditionally, Matt 19:​12 has been understood either as a metaphorical reference to general self-­denial or as a reference to celibacy. For the former approach, see A. E. Harvey, “Eunuchs for the Sake of the Kingdom,” Heythrop Journal 48 (2007): 1–17 (12–15). For the latter, see J. D. Hester, “Eunuchs and the Postgender Jesus: Matthew 19.12 and Transgressive Sexualities,” JSNT 28 (2005): 13–40 (17 nn. 4–6). Recent scholarship has challenged both the assumption that the passage is metaphorical, direct-

158 / Notes to Pages 68–70

ing our attention to instances of self-­castration in the ancient world, and the stereotype that eunuchs were asexual. For self-­castration, see Daniel Caner, “The Practice and Prohibition of Self-­Castration in Early Christianity,” Vigiliae Christianae 51 (1997): 396–415 (396–407), and the discussion of bodily integrity in chapter 2. For the sexual identity of the eunuch, see R. F. Talbott, “Imagining the Matthean Eunuch Community: Kyriarchy on the Chopping Block,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 22 (2006): 21–43; and Matthew Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 96–102. Tertullian condemns the voluntary eunuch, portraying him as lusting after the celestial kingdom (To His Wife 1.6). Augustine (On the Trinity 23) explicitly connects the practice of virginity to the expectation of celibacy in heaven. Connecting Matthew to a passage in Isaiah, Sulpitius Severus describes the deservedly vast heavenly rewards of perpetual virginity to his sister (Letter of Sulpitius Severus to His Sister Claudia Concerning Virginity 2.2). 9. See discussion in Taylor Petrey, Resurrecting Parts: Early Christians on Desire, Reproduction, and Sexual Difference (London: Routledge, 2015), 13–14. 10. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.7 (1097b 29–30, 1098a 30–31). 11. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.7 (1097b24, 1097b26–27, 1098a3–4, 1098a15–17). The translation of ergon as “purpose” has been contested because it introduces a sense of conscious agency into the conversation. In the arena of body parts, “purpose” may therefore be overly determined; see C. F. Thomas, “Aristotle and Aquinas on the Teleology of Parts and Wholes,” Tópicos 27 (2004): 61–72 (61 n. 1). On the importance of the concept of functionality in Plato, see Republic (352d–54b). 12. For reasons relating to “other goods,” Aristotle writes that the childless can never be completely happy (Nicomachean Ethics 1.8 [1099b4– 7]). The recognition that function is important for early Christian discussions of the resurrection by no means implies that the authors explored in the following discussion in the text are either Aristotelians or responding directly to Aristotle. Many of them have been much more profoundly influenced by the contemporary Platonic and Stoic traditions, but Aristotelian ethics are relevant here precisely because of the way that they both capture and influence the importance of human purpose in second- and third-­century CE philosophy. Christopher Gill (The Structured Self in Hellenistic and Roman Thought [New York: Oxford University Press, 2006]), a noted skeptic of the concept of the self in the ancient world, thinks of

Notes to Pages 70–72 / 159

the goal of philosophy as “the development of complete wisdom [that] brings about both a unified and structured type of knowledge and a stable and coherent character” (54). 13. John Meier argues that this passage (Mark 12:​25) goes back to the historical Jesus, writing that “the historical Jesus did at times speak in passing or allude to the general resurrection of the dead on the last day, though it was not usual for him to make this subject the direct object of his preaching” (“The Debate on the Resurrection of the Dead: An Incident from the Ministry of the Historical Jesus?,” JSNT 77 [2000]: 3–24 [21]). 14. So N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 416–18; Candida R. Moss, The Other Christs: Imitating Jesus in Ancient Christian Ideologies of Martyrdom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 161–63; and Outi Lehtipuu, Debates over the Resurrection of the Dead: Constructing Christian Identity, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 50–51. For the idea that angels do not have flesh, see Pseudo-­Justin, On the Resurrection 2; and Jerome, Letters 108 (To Eustochium) 23. 15. See the important work of Outi Lehtipuu, “How to Expose a Deviant? Resurrection Belief and Boundary Creation in Early Christianity,” in “Others” and the Construction of Early Christian Identities, ed. Raimo Hakola, Nina Nikki, and Ulla Tervahauta, Publications of the Finnish Exegetical Society 106 (Helsinki: Finnish Exegetical Society, 2013), 165–94. Even Lehtipuu (Debates), however, wonders why Tertullian bothers to provide new functions for parts of the body: “All these functions may be in line with ancient medical understanding, but one wonders whether they really further the argument for the resurrection of the flesh. If angels, and those like them, do not eat, do they need to defecate?” (135). What Lehtipuu overlooks here is the importance of functionality itself; angels who do not eat were not created with functioning digestive systems. On gender, see Antii Marjanen, “Male Women Martyrs: The Function of Gender Transformation Language in Early Christian Martyrdom Accounts,” in Metamorphoses: Resurrection, Body and Transformative Practices in Early Christianity, ed. Turid Karlsen Seim and Jorunn Økland, Ekstasis 1 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009), 231–48; Beth Felker Jones, Marks of His Wounds: Gender Politics and Bodily Resurrection (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Turid Karlsen Seim, “In Heaven as on Earth? Resurrection, Body, Gender and Heavenly Rehearsals in Luke–­Acts,” in Christian and Islamic Gender Models in Formative Traditions, ed. Kari Elisa160 / Notes to Pages 72–73

beth Børresen, Studi e testi tardoantichi 2 (Rome: Herder, 2004), 17–42; Emanuela Priizivalli, “Early Christian Anthropology: Gender Models in Creation and Resurrection,” in Christian and Islamic Gender Models, ed. Børresen, 43–66; and Petrey, Resurrecting Parts. On gender, resurrection, and asceticism, see Teresa M. Shaw, The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 161–83; and Samuel Rubenson, “ ‘As Already Translated to the Kingdom While Still in the Body’: The Transformation of the Ascetic in Early Egyptian Monasticism,” in Metamorphoses, ed. Seim and Økland, 271–90. 16. Pseudo-­Justin, On the Resurrection 3.1–2, translated in Petrey, Resurrecting Parts, 21. 17. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 2.14. On Irenaeus’s view of the resurrection, see Anders-­Christian Jacobsen, “The Philosophical Argument in the Teaching of Irenaeus on the Resurrection of the Flesh,” StPatr 36 (2001): 256–62; and M. C. Steenberg, “Children in Paradise: Adam and Eve as ‘Infants’ in Irenaeus of Lyons,” JECS 12 (2004): 1–22 (16). On function­ ality and childlessness in Irenaeus, see Candida R. Moss and Joel S. Baden, Reconceiving Infertility: Biblical Perspectives of Procreation and Childlessness (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 200–228. 18. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.539. 19. Some have defended Justin Martyr as the author of the text, whereas others have rejected the idea. Alberto d’Anna posits a via media reminiscent of arguments about the authorship of the deutero-­Paulines, in which the author of On the Resurrection was a student or close collaborator of Justin’s (Pseudo-­Giustino: Sulla resurrezione: Discorso cristiano del II secolo, Letteratura cristiana antica [Brescia: Morcelliana, 2001], 285–87). In a bolder identification, Martin Heimgartner argues that the true author of On the Resurrection is Athenagoras (Pseudojustin: Über die Auferstehung: Text und Studie, Patristische Texte und Studien 54 [Berlin: de Gruyter, 2001], 203–32). While scholars agree that there is a literary relationship between Irenaeus and Pseudo-­Justin, the lines of influence are contested. Early studies suggested either a shared source (Friedrich Loofs, Theophilus von Antiochien: Adversus Marcionem und die anderen theologischen Quellen bei Irenaeus, TUGAL 46.2 [Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1930], 211–32) or that Pseudo-­Justin used the writings of Irenaeus (F. R. Montgomery Hitchcock, “Loofs’ Asiatic Source [Iqa] and the Ps-­Justin De Resurrectione,” ZNW 37 [1936]: 35–60). More recent scholarship, following Harnack and Zahn, has leaned heavily toward the idea that Irenaeus depends on Pseudo-­Justin (d’Anna, Pseudo-­Giustino, 100–106; Zahn, “Studien zu Justinus Martyr,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 8 (1886): 1–84 (31–34); Notes to Pages 73–75 / 161

Harnack, Die Überlieferung der griechischen Apologeten des zweiten Jahrhunderts in der alten Kirche und im Mittelalter [Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1882], 163; Heimgartner, Pseudojustin, 82; Pierre Prigent, Justin et l’Ancien Testament: L’argumentation scripturaire du traité de Justin contre toutes les hérésies comme source principale du Dialogue avec Tryphon et de la première apologie [Paris: Gabalda, 1964], 43–50, 65–68). On the identity of Pseudo-­Justin’s opponents, see Bernard Pouderon, “Le contexte polémique du de Resurrectione attribué à Justin: Destinataires et adversaries,” StPatr 31 (1997): 143–66 (144–45, 163–66). It is worth noting (with Loofs) that Irenaeus and Pseudo-­Justin share common ideas and arguments, but not vocabulary. For a discussion of the relationship between Pseudo-­Justin and other texts, see Heimgartner, Pseudojustin, 83–86, 134–38. Pseudo-­Justin, On the Resurrection 4: “For if on earth [ Jesus] healed the sicknesses of the flesh, and made the body whole, much more will he do this in the resurrection, so that the flesh shall rise perfect and entire. In this manner, then, shall those dreaded difficulties of theirs be healed.” 20. Pseudo-­Justin, On the Resurrection 2.8–12, translated in Petrey, Resurrecting Parts, 22. 21. Pseudo-­Justin, On the Resurrection 3.3–7, translated in Petrey, Resurrecting Parts, 29; Pseudo-­Justin, On the Resurrection 3.8–10. Pseudo-­Justin supports his argument by referencing elements of Luke’s version about marriage in heaven. While his opponents cite the Markan/  Matthean version of the saying, Luke’s Jesus contrasts the “children belonging to this age,” who marry, and the “children belonging to the coming age,” who do not marry. Petrey argues that the distinction for Pseudo-­Justin is a moral one (Resurrecting Parts, 26–27). For a thorough discussion of the function of body parts, see Lehtipuu, Debates, 110–57. 22. Pseudo-­Justin, On the Resurrection 3.14–15. A similar argument is posited in Testimony of Truth (Nag Hammadi Codices IX), 3.30.18–31.3; 40.2–7 (see Petrey, Resurrecting Parts, 27); cf. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.21.10 (Sources chrétiennes 211:​428–30) and Demonstration 32 (Sources chrétiennes 406:​128). See discussion in Benjamin Dunning, “Virgin Earth, Virgin Birth: Creation, Sexual Difference, and Recapitulation in Irenaeus of Lyons,” Journal of Religion 89 (2008): 57–88. Pseudo-­Justin, On the Resurrection 3.13. 23. Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus 131–32. In total, Epicurus identified three classes of desire: the natural and necessary, the natural and unnecessary, and the groundless. Cf. Plato, on the other hand, who classified sexual desire as necessary and even beneficial (Republic 559c3–7, Phaedo 64e4–6). For an evaluation of sexual desire within ancient hierarchies of 162 / Notes to Pages 75–77

needs, see Kathy L. Gaca, The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics, and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 26–41. 24. Pseudo-­Justin, On the Resurrection 3.11–12, translated in Petrey, Resurrecting Parts, 25–26; Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals 726b10f, 728b10, 747a20–48b30. 25. Tertullian, On the Resurrection 60.5; 64. On the consistence of Tertullian’s thought, see M. C. Steenberg, Of God and Man: Theology as Anthropology from Irenaeus to Athanasius (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 59. For a discussion of teeth, beauty, and wealth, see the discussion in chapter 4, “Aesthetics.” 26. Tertullian, On the Resurrection 61.3, translated in Petrey, Resurrecting Parts, 92; see discussion in Petrey, Resurrecting Parts, 9. Petrey notes menstruation but not the production of afterbirth. I am grateful to Meghan Henning for the latter suggestion. On the coolness of women’s bodies, see Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals 728a17, 767b7, 775a15; Aristotle, History of Animals 588b4–589a9; Aristotle, Metaphysics 1058a29; and Aristotle, Parts of Animals 681a12–28. The notable exception to this line of thinking is Hippocrates, Female Diseases 1.1, where women’s blood is presumed to be hotter than men’s. The excess of blood in the female body is one reason that menstruation was seen as important for women’s health. Ann Hanson argues that the importance of purging the female body through menstruation was seen as critical for female health: “if she becomes pregnant she is healthy,” in “Medical Writers’ Woman,” in Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, ed. David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler, and Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 309–38 (318). Galen emphasizes the importance of menstruation (On Affected Parts 5.7, On Venesection Against Erasistratus 5). On the centrality of childbearing and menstruation to Hippocrates and Galen, see Lesley Dean-­Jones, Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 136–46; Rebecca Flemming, Medicine and the Making of Roman Women: Gender, Nature, and Authority from Celsus to Galen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 331–43; and Helen King, Hippocrates’ Woman: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece (London: Routledge, 1998), 75–98. 27. See Hippocrates, Glands 16.8.572.13; Hippocrates, Female Diseases 1.1.8.12.6–21; Aristotle, Generation of Animals 726b31–727a19; cf. Lesley Dean-­Jones, Women’s Bodies, 55–65. Hippocrates explains his argument in the following way: “it is not possible in the time after the fetus leaves the uterus for the feces in the cavity to stay and decompose long enough to Notes to Pages 77–80 / 163

form so large a living being” (On Diseases 4.23). In general, parasites were associated with female bodies. See Jennifer Glancy, Corporal Knowledge: Early Christian Bodies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 120; and Petrey, Resurrecting Parts, 86–87. 28. Tertullian, On the Resurrection 61.5–7, translated in Petrey, Resurrecting Parts, 92; cf. Carly Daniel-­Hughes, “ ‘We Are Called to Monogamy’: Marriage, Virginity, and the Resurrection of the Fleshly Body in Tertullian of Carthage,” in Coming Back to Life: The Permeability of Past and Present, Mortality and Immortality, Death and Life in the Ancient Mediterranean, ed. Frederick S. Tappenden and Carly Daniel-­Hughes (Montreal: McGill University Library, 2017), 239–65. Plutarch, Face of the Moon 938F; Plato, Theaetetus 149b; Plato, Cornutus 34. Scholarly analysis of the virginity of Artemis has argued, quite vociferously, that she represents not cold sterility but, rather, fertility. The connection is evocative of the tension that makes martyrs the healers of infirmity, and polar opposites the cures of illness. At the same time, the intricate linkage of fertility and sterility pushes back against modern notions. They are not bifurcated: like attracts opposite. See King, Hippocrates’ Woman, 85–88. The same interplay is evident in the work of the Greek playwright Sophocles. Toward the end of Oedipus the King, the famous story of the ill-­fated prince who kills his father and marries his mother, the protagonist bemoans the fate that awaits his young daughters. He recognizes the ignominious reputation that will follow them and says, “But who will marry you? There is no one, my children, but you are destined to perish barren without husbands” (Oedipus the King 1502). The implication is that his daughters will remain virgins and therefore sterile. The observation made by both authors is that, practically speaking, virgins are barren. They are without offspring, and thus the ramification of virginity is functional childlessness. 29. Tertullian, On the Resurrection 60, translated in Ernest Evans, Tertullian: De Resurrectione Carnis (London: SPCK, 1960), 180. Tertullian discards the importance of form and function in the preservation of identity, continuing: “For God’s judgment-­seat demands a man in full being: in full being however he cannot be without the members, for of their substances, though not their functions, he consists—unless perchance you are going to affirm that a ship is in full being without keel, without stem, without stern, without the integrity of its whole structure. Yet even a ship, broken by storm or fallen to pieces by decay, we have often seen, when all its members have been replaced and rehabilitated, boasting of its sameness

164 / Notes to Pages 80–81

even by the inscription ‘restored’: are we to be anxious about God’s craftsmanship and authority and rights?” 30. Aristotle, Physics 8.254b5–6. For Aristotle, there are three classes of things with respect to movement: (1) sublunar things that are sometimes at rest and sometimes moving, (2) the unmoved mover, which is always at rest, and (3) the first heaven, which is in perpetual motion. Unlike Plato, who can envision the soul’s absorption into Intellect, Aristotle’s metaphysics would not have permitted an eternal thing to become part of the unmoved mover. The language of inactivity implies notions of rest and respite, a critical component of Aristotle’s fraught philosophizing about the prime mover. “Nec potest autem dici vacare si non sit. Atenim si sit, poterit et non vacare: nihil enim apud deum vacabit” (Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh 60.9). 31. Later tradition associated with the Plea identifies Athenagoras as a “philosophical Christian” from Athens, but it is difficult to pinpoint his origins or to concretely identify this figure with On the Resurrection. This brief biography is found in the inscriptio of the version of A Plea for the Christians preserved in Parisinus gr. 451 (copied ca. 913–914 CE) and is written by Baanes, secretary to Arethas, the archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia. We are told that Arethas himself wrote the corrections and scholia on the manuscript, but it is Baanes’s inscriptio that attributes the text to Athenagoras. For a more detailed discussion of the history of the transmission of the text, see Miroslav Marcovich, Athenagorae qui Fertur: De Resurrectione Mortuorum (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 6–12. The text has been situated within second-­century Athenian philosophy (David Rankin, Athenagoras: Philosopher and Theologian [Farnham: Ashgate, 2009], 70–71), third-­century apologetics (Robert M. Grant, “Athenagoras or Pseudo-­Athenagoras,” HTR 47 [1954]: 121–29; William R. Schoedel, Athenagoras: Legatio and De Resurrectione [Oxford: Clarendon, 1972]), and fourth-­century apologetics (Horacio Lona, “Die dem Apologeten Athenagoras zugeschriebene Schrift ‘De Resurrectione Mortuorum’ und die altchristliche Auferstehungsapologetik,” Salesianum 52 [1990]: 525–78). In addition, Rankin argues for shared authorship of On the Resurrection and A Plea for Christians (Athenagoras, 154). 32. We might compare Athenagoras’s argument to that of Lucretius, a first-­century BCE reader of Epicurus, that the atoms dispersed at our death might be reunited in the fullness of time for the sake of justice and concomitant punishment. For Lucretius, the fact that we would have no memory of the crimes committed in a previous “life” (assembly of atoms)

Notes to Page 82 / 165

means that we should have no fear of punishment (On the Nature of Things 3.843–64). Athenagoras, On the Resurrection 19.7. Cf. Origen in Methodius, On the Resurrection 3.7.1–7. Referencing the frequent descriptions of “wailing and gnashing of teeth” in hell, Origen asks: “What need of teeth is there for those who are being punished? For they will not eat when situated in Gehenna and the Creator fashioned every part of the body for some purpose,” and “it is not possible that we should be resurrected with the same quality, possessed of legs and hands again and suchlike”; translated in Richard Sorabji, Self: Ancient and Modern Insights About Individuality, Life, and Death (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 75. 33. Athenagoras, On the Resurrection 15.7–8, translated in Petrey, Resurrecting Parts, 54. On the relationship between the soul and the body, see Aristotle’s statement: “So it is clear that the soul is not separable from the body, or certain parts of it, if it has parts by nature; for the actuality of some of the parts belongs to themselves. Nevertheless, nothing prevents some parts from being separable, since they are not the actuality of any body” (On the Soul 413a4–7). On virtue: Plutarch, On Stoic Self-­ Contradictions 1034C; Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philoso‑ phers 7.126. Cf. Petrey, Resurrecting Parts, 56–57. 34. Tertullian, On the Resurrection 56.1. This argument leads him to assert elsewhere that all flesh must rise regardless of its state (On the Soul 51–57); Athenagoras, On the Resurrection 15.3. The preservation of the material substance of the body can be inferred from Athenagoras, On the Resurrection 2.3. The necessity of purpose for the continued existence of elements of the body in the resurrection is explicit in 12.7. 35. Athenagoras, On the Resurrection 2.5. I follow here the reconstruction of Miroslav Marcovich, “On the Text of Athenagoras, De Resurrectione,” Vigiliae Christianae 33 (1977): 375–82 (377). 36. Athenagoras, On the Resurrection 19.3, translated in Petrey, Resurrecting Parts, 55–56. Athenagoras writes that in general, humanity was created by God so that “after his creation [the human] should live and endure in accordance with the nature with which he was created” (On the Resurrection 12.1). Rankin interprets the idea of unstable and ever-­ changing identity in relation to Platonic notions of being and becoming (Athenagoras, 51–53). To these conceptual intertexts, we can add both the Stoic notion of a life lived in accordance with nature and Alexander’s modification of Aristotle’s solution to the Growing Problem. Aristotle, as noted in the introduction, argued that the form of the body operated like a tube to dynamically shape the matter that came into the body, thus guaranteeing continuity of self despite fluctuating matter. Alexander, 166 / Notes to Pages 83–84

however, noticed the manner in which scars could permanently augment the form of the body and argued, as a result, that some flesh could adhere to the form of the person. The language, we should note, is not classic Aristotelian language. Athenagoras uses the philosophical commonplace of the “human person” when discussing the reunification of the same body and the same soul (On the Resurrection 10.2, 11.1, 25.3). 37. In his influential study Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 25–28, Thomas Laquer posited that the eighteenth century marked a profound shift in the way that people thought about sexual difference. Before this point, Laquer argued, men and women were thought to share a “one-­sex body”—an anatomically identical body, the differences between which were connected to the way that heat or lack of heat determined the location of the genitals (either inside the cold body of the female or outside the hot body of the male). On this reading of sexual difference, the elimination of humors and humoral qualities (heat, cold, moisture, and dryness) would eliminate sexual difference in the resurrection. By insisting on sexual difference despite the elimination of the humors, Athenagoras concretely locates sexual difference in the parts (so Petrey, Resurrecting Parts, 61–62). Athenagoras may not be the innovator here. In her careful and important response to Laquer, Helen King traces the evidence for the two-­sex body in classical antiquity. She points out passages in Galen that insist that the entirety of a woman’s body is qualitatively different from that of a man’s (On Seed 2.5.12). She also notes the story of obstetrix Agnodice, who dressed as a man in order to learn medicine. Not only do her own body parts serve as the exclusive markers of her sex, everything about Hygenius’s portrayal of Agnodice emphasizes the absolute difference between male and female bodies. See Helen King, The One-­Sex Body on Trial: The Classical and Early Modern Evidence (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). Athenagoras signals his uninterest in these “first principles” questions about the substance of the flesh when he writes, “there is no damage done to our argument whether [some] suppose that the first principle arises from matter or that human bodies have the elements as first principles or that they are made up of seed” (On the Resurrection 3.2). 38. Athenagoras, On the Resurrection 12.7–8. 39. On celibacy in Christianity in general, see Kate Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); and Virginia Burrus, Chastity as Autonomy: Women in the Stories of Apocryphal Acts, Studies in Women and Religion 23 (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1987). On the cultural environs for Notes to Pages 84–85 / 167

Christian disavowal of marriage, see Bernhard Kotting, Die Bewertung der Wiederverheiratung (der zweiten Ehe) in der Antike und in der frühen Kirche, Rheinisch-­westfalische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vortrage Reihe G, Band 292 (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1988); Shaw, Burden of the Flesh, 161–83. 40. Plato, Phaedo 81a–­e; Petrey, Resurrecting Parts, 117. Tertullian’s statements are less strident than those of Pseudo-­Justin, who leans unambiguously toward celibacy for all. Tertullian is willing to rehabilitate sexual desire for procreation (Petrey, Resurrecting Parts, 107). 41. In Gen 6 angelic figures take human women as wives and procreate with them. In Second Temple Jewish tradition these angels are known as the Watchers and are punished in perpetuity for their disobedience. This is not to say that there were no traditions of celibate angelic beings, merely that we should not assume that angels are incapable of procreating. On infertility and eschatology in these passages, see Candida R. Moss, “The Man with the Flow of Power: Porous Bodies in Mark 5:25–34,” JBL 129 (2010): 507–19; Moss and Baden, Reconceiving Infertility, 193–96, 200–206; and Meghan R. Henning, “Paralysis and Sexuality in Medical Literature and the Acts of Peter,” Journal of Late Antiquity 8 (2015): 306–21. 42. For a discussion of this well-­intentioned approach, see Moss and Baden, Reconceiving Infertility, 209–10. 43. Moreover, even if apologetic discourse and narrative constructions of infertility portray it in a neutral or positive light, there is evidence that the virtuous mantle that fell on the shoulders of the voluntarily celibate did not always extend to those who were biologically childless. According to the fifth-­century Christian historian Sozomen, for example, the emperor Theodosius did not permit childless women to be admitted to the order of the diaconate (Ecclesiastical History 7.16). 44. What the differing treatment of infertility in ancient and modern constructions reveals is that ability itself is a social construct. That being the case, it hardly seems possible to define or determine what is and is not disability in the context of heaven. 45. Pace Petrey (Resurrecting Parts, 91), I maintain that when Tertullian negates the importance of any bodily function, his issue is with the philosophical problem of functionless parts, not exclusively with the fate of sexuality and gender. I agree, however, that there is something particular for him about reproduction and digestion. Those parts of the body for which he supplies additional “functions” (the teeth and genitals) are parts of the body that can be associated with sex and digestion. Even the work

168 / Notes to Pages 85–87

of the limbs is seen as unnecessary because the limbs do not need to work in order to obtain food. 46. Tertullian, On the Resurrection 59.3–5, translated in Evans, Tertullian, 178–79. 4 Aesthetics 1. The first two paragraphs of this chapter replicate, with some modifications and additions, the opening to my article “Heavenly Healing: Eschatological Cleansing of the Dead in the Early Church,” JAAR 79 (2011): 1–27. In the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas, Perpetua is described as well born (honesta nata), liberally educated (liberaliter instituta), and well married (matronaliter nupta), while Felicitas is described as a slave (Passio 2). Perpetua’s transformation into a masculine gladiator takes place in Passio 8. On the way in which martyrs are shaped and function in social reproduction and memory, see Elizabeth A. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making, Gender, Theory, and Religion (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). The elevation of paleness in Roman society is evidenced, for example, in Catullus, Poem 13.4. That only aristocratic women were confined indoors implicitly equates pallid beauty with socioeconomic privilege. 2. While we can account for the uniformity of the saints’ presentation through appeals to the pragmatic use of a single female model, this does not exhaust the significance of their uniformity. An Aristotelian preoccupation with uniformity, symmetry, and proportion traces the contours of the saints’ images; see Aristotle’s definition of beauty in Poetics 7.34–38. Idealist aesthetics are by no means limited to the classical age, either; see Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953). For an alternative study of disability in aesthetics, see Tobin Siebers, “Disability Aesthetics,” Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 7 (2006): 63–73. 3. Polykleitos’s canon is largely reconstructed from Pliny, Natural History 35.79–80, 35.128. For a discussion of the corpus, see Gregory V. Leftwich, “Polykleitos and Hippokratic Medicine,” in Polykleitos, the Doryphoros, and Tradition, ed. Barbara Hughes Fowler and Warren G. Moon, Wisconsin Studies in Classics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,

Notes to Pages 87–90 / 169

1995), 38–51. On the importance of ability and beauty, and the manner in which they coalesce in Greco-­Roman art, see Lennard J. Davis, Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body (London: Verso, 1995), 24. Davis argues that ancient societies (he seems to mean Greco-­Roman societies) posited an ideal body type that no human could attain. This certainly seems to be the lingering interest in the creation and depiction of the resurrected body. 4. See L. Aryeh Kosman, “Beauty and the Good: Situating the Kalon,” Classical Philology 105 (2010): 341–57. 5. Plato, Symposium 209. 6. Arius Didymus 5b4–5, preserved in Stobaeus, Eclogae 2.62.15 (trans. Aiste Celkyte, “The Stoic Definition of Summetria,” CQ 67 [2017]: 88–105 [89]); Richard Bett, “Beauty and Its Relation to Goodness in Stoicism,” in Ancient Models of Mind: Studies in Human and Divine Rationality, ed. Andrea Nightingale and David Sedley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 136. The conceptual association between health and beauty in Stoic philosophy is complicated; although they function and dysfunction similarly (as the result of balance and proportion), the Roman physician Galen argues that they are not equivalent (so Celkyte, “Stoic Definition,” 90 n. 12). 7. Bett, “Beauty and Its Relation to Goodness,” 136; Stobaeus, Eclogae 2.62.15. 8. On beauty and race/ethnicity, see Stephen D. Moore, God’s Beauty Parlor and Other Queer Spaces In and Around the Bible, Contraversions (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 65–66. Moore is not especially interested in the way that the intersection of wealth and class creates notions of beauty. Chariton, Chareas and Callirhoe 5.9; see also Xenophon of Ephesus, Ephesian Tale 1.1, 2; Heliodorus, Ethiopian Story 1.2, 7, 19–20; 2.19; 7.12, 19; Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon 1.4. Pale skin: Sextus Propertius, Elegies 2.22.5–6, 8; 2.29.30; Ovid, Loves 1.7.51–52, 2.4.41, 2.5.37–40, 2.16.29, 3.2.42, 3.3.5–6, 3.7.7; Ovid, Art of Love 3.309; Pliny, Natural History 48.4; CIL 6.37965; Martial, Epigrams 4.62. See discussion in A. R. Sharrock, “Womanufacture,” JRS 81 (1991): 36–49; Celsus, On Medicine 6.5; and Pliny, Natural History 28.188. 9. Galen 12.43–44; cf. Roy K. Gibson, ed., Ovid: Ars Amatoria Book 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 186. 10. Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.1.22. 11. Bernard Grillet, Les femmes et les fards dans l’antiquité grecque (Lyon: CNRS, 1975), 97–114; Gibson, Ovid, 21–25, 174–94. 12. On the deceit involved in whitening the skin: Lucian, Greek Anthol­ 170 / Notes to Pages 91–93

ogy 11.408; on the naturalness of women’s place in the home: Xenophon, Oeconomicus 7.21–26, 33. Elite women’s activity in the home was a life of leisure, but not necessarily sitting “like a slave” (Oeconomicus 10). The frenetic work of overseeing a household was regarded as the counterpart to male forms of exercise (Oeconomicus 7.2, 9.15). 13. New Testament texts that discuss the use of cosmetics are an example of ancient literature that, as Suzanne Dixon has reminded us, provides insight into male perspectives on women’s lives rather than insights into their actual lived experiences; see Dixon, Reading Roman Women: Sources, Genres, and Real Life (London: Duckworth, 2001), 12, 21. Arguably the most nuanced example of “trickle down” aesthetics is that of Andrew Wallace-­Hadrill, who argued that nonelites used the markers of social status to set themselves apart from those beneath them; see Wallace-­Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 313–55. As Emanuel Mayer (The Ancient Middle Classes: Urban Life and Aesthetics in the Roman Empire, 100 BCE–250 CE [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012]) argues, “there were differences between aristocratic and middle-­class image use. Those lower down the social scale did not simply ape their betters, even though, at first glance, aristocratic and middle-­class domestic art seem to be mapped along a cultural continuum” (187); note, for example, the Casa dell’Ara Massima in Pompeii, which was identified as the home of wealthy intellectual elites because of its wall paintings but was subsequently revealed to have been inhabited by a businessman or artisan; cf. Mayer, Ancient Middle Classes, 189. 14. CIL 6.37695, lines 22–34 (translated in N. Horsfall, “CIL VI 37965 = CLE 1988 (Epitaph of Allia Potestas): A Commentary,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie un Epigraphik 61 [1985]: 251–72 [256]). The poet’s willingness to acknowledge the process of depilation contrasts with the horror with which other male authors refer to it. Even Ovid thought women should not apply cosmetics in the presence of a lover: “These things will give beauty, but they are unseemly to look upon: many things, ugly in the doing, please having been done.” He went so far as to advise women to keep the cosmetic substances themselves hidden from men (Art of Love 3.209–18). Gibson notes a theme in Latin literature in which men burst into the chambers of a high-­status woman and are repulsed by her natural or semienhanced appearance (see Lucretius, On the Nature of Things 4.1174–91; cf. Gibson, Ovid, 182). For an excellent overview of the use of cosmetics in the Roman world, see Kelly Olson, “Cosmetics in Roman Antiquity: Substance, Remedy, Notes to Page 94 / 171

Poison,” Classical World 102 (2009): 291–310. Kathy Peiss has argued that the aura of makeup was one of “exclusivity and social status” (“Making Faces: The Cosmetics Industry and the Cultural Construction of Gender, 1890–1930,” Genders 7 [1990]: 143–69 [144]), but we should also be wary, as ancient writers were, of the ways in which cosmetics could seem morally suspicious and were easily associated with prostitution. 15. Tertullian, On the Resurrection 64. 16. Linda Przybyszewski, The Lost Art of Dress: The Women Who Once Made America Stylish (New York: Basic, 2014), 161–63, 166. 17. On the applicability of the category of “fashion” to the classical world, see Nickolas Pappas, The Philosopher’s New Clothes: The Theaetetus, the Academy, and Philosophy’s Turn Against Fashion (London: Routledge, 2016), 155–76. Pappas argues that as certain garments or combinations of garments began to change, others remained the same or fossilized. When a “fossilized” outfit was worn, it marked an event as special or unusual and signified continuity with the past. In the same way, the seemingly medieval clerical garb of Roman Catholic priests signifies tradition and continuity. This point is beautifully made in Laura Gawlinski, “Theorizing Religious Dress,” in What Shall I Say of Clothes?, ed. Cifarelli and Gawlinski, 161–78 (164–65). In the field of early Christianity, important recent work by Kristi Upson-­Saia and Carly Daniel-­Hughes has discussed the significance of dress in the third century and beyond; see Daniel-­Hughes, The Salvation of the Flesh in Tertullian of Carthage (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); and Upson-­Saia, Early Christian Dress: Gender, Virtue, and Authority, Routledge Studies in Ancient History (New York: R ­ outledge, 2014). Given the chronological scope of their work, neither author engages the book of Revelation. The language of “social skin” comes from Terence S. Turner, “The Social Skin,” in Not Work Alone: A Cross-­Cultural View of Activities Superfluous to Survival, ed. J. Cherfas and R. Lewin (London: Temple Smith, 1980), 112–40, which draws on and develops the work of Roland Barthes, The Fashion System, trans. M. Ward and R. Howard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). Mary Ellen Roach-­Higgins and Joanne Eicher, “Dress and Identity,” Clothing and Textiles Research Journal 10 (1992): 1–8. They encourage others to view dress more broadly as a collection of bodily modifications and amendments. This broader categorization and the notion of bodily modification captures the ambiguous augmentation of the self that takes place when Christians dress themselves in Christ. The language of Christian dress in many ways blurs the distinction between 172 / Notes to Pages 94–97

dress and dresser. Neville McFerrin, “Fabrics of Inclusion: Deep Wearing and the Potentials of Materiality on the Apadana Reliefs,” in What Shall I Say of Clothes? Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to the Study of Dress in Antiquity, ed. Megan Cifarelli and Laura Gawlinski, Selected Papers on Ancient Art and Architecture 3 (Boston: Archaeological Institute of America, 2017), 154. The phrase “deep wearing” and the interpretive framework to which it refers was coined by A. R. Jones and P. Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory, Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture 38 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 2. 18. McFerrin, “Fabrics of Inclusion,” 154; Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 25, make a similar point. 19. Kierstan Neumann, “Gods Among Men: Fashioning the Divine Image in Assyria,” in What Shall I Say of Clothes?, ed. Cifarelli and Gawlinski, 3–24 (4). The importance of dress in the Neo-­Assyrian period was first noted in A. Leo Oppenheim, “The Golden Garments of the Gods,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 8 (1949): 172–93. For a more theoretically savvy approach, see Neumann, “Gods Among Men.” Neumann’s theoretical study echoes David Aune’s more historically grounded understanding of the complicated intersection of the imperial and divine courts in Revelation. Contrasting dress is, according to Aune, a means by which the author of Revelation both gestures to the imperial court and supplants it with his own heavenly version. The enthroned Son of Man, attired with a golden girdle and holding seven stars (1:12–16) is reminiscent of Claudius’s and Nero’s golden star–­adorned robes (Aune, “The Influence of the Roman Imperial Court Ceremonial on the Apocalypse of John,” Papers of the Chicago Society for Biblical Research 28 [1983]: 5–26 [12]). 20. As a series of images of the end of the world and its aftermath, the book of Revelation is brimming with imagery about the materiality of the world beyond the end of the world. The materiality of heavenly Jerusalem, gaudily overaccessorized with every kind of jewel and precious metal, fits both an apocalyptic tradition that bedazzled the throne of God and a philosophical tradition that used large jewels to express the perfection of other realms. Throughout the text, there is a complicated relationship between wealth and salvation—the saved are those who refused access to prosperity, but the eschatological heaven offers hope to those who had “purchased” their salvation. For our purposes, the question is not “What is the relationship between wealth and salvation?” but rather “How are heavenly bodies constructed in this context?” 21. For the idea that the souls under the altar are a pre-­Christian group, Notes to Pages 97–98 / 173

see H. Kraft, Die Offenbarung des Johannes, Handbuch zum Neuen Testament 16A (Tübingen: Mohr, 1974), 119–20; A. Feuillet, “Les martyrs de l’humanité et l’Agneau égorgé: Une interpretation nouvelle de la prière des égorgés en Ap 6,9–11,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique 99 (1977): 189–207. For the view that they are a mix of non-­Christian and Christian dead, see Gregory K. Beale, The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 390; Paul Middleton argues that the souls are representative of all Christians in The Violence of the Lamb: Martyrs as Agents of Divine Judgment in the Book of Revelation (London: T&T Clark, 2018). The likelihood that the audience of Revelation was being persecuted in part hinges on the date of the text. For the view that the hostility experienced by the community came from Jews, see Adela Yarbro Collins, Crisis and Catharsis: The Power of the Apocalypse (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984), 85–86; Colin J. Hemer, The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia in Their Local Setting (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1986), 65–70; Adela Yarbro Collins, “Vilification and Self-­Definition in the Book of Revelation,” HTR 79, no. 1/3 (1986): 308–20; and Jean Lambrecht, ‘“Synagogues of Satan’ (Rev. 2.9 and 3.9): Anti-­Judaism in the Book of Revelation,” in Anti-­Judaism and the Fourth Gospel, ed. Reimund Bieringer, Didier Pollefeyt, and Frederique Vandecasteele-­Vanneuville (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 279–92. For the view that Christians did not experience sustained persecution in the first century CE, see Timothy D. Barnes, “Legislation Against the Christians,” JRS 58 (1968): 32–50; Geoffrey E. M. de Ste Croix, “Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?,” Past and Present 26 (1963): 5–23; Adrian N. Sherwin-­ White, Roman Law in the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963); Candida R. Moss, The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented the Story of Martyrdom (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2013), 129; Keith Hopkins, “Christian Number and Its Implications,” JECS 6 (1998): 185–226 (198); and Paul Middleton, “Were the Early Christians Really Persecuted?,” in Models of (In)Tolerance in the Early Christian Age: Encountering Others in Early Judaism and Christianity, ed. Outi Lehtipuu and Michael Labahn (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, forthcoming). See David E. Aune, Revelation 6–16, Word Biblical Commentary 52B (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998), 410–11. On the timing of the resurrection in subsequent Christian conversation, see Outi Lehtipuu, Debates over the Resurrection of the Dead: Constructing Christian Identity, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015),

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159–202. On the afterlife of these martyrs, see Candida R. Moss, The Other Christs: Imitating Jesus in Ancient Christian Ideologies of Martyrdom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 118–24. Tina Pippin is among those disturbed by the violence in Revelation: Death and Desire: Rhetoric of Gender in the Apocalypse of John (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox, 1992); and Apocalyptic Bodies: The Biblical End of the World in Text and Image (London: Routledge, 1999), 85, 92. Strategies for explaining the call for revenge include resituating it as something other than violence (e.g., David L. Barr, “Doing Violence: Moral Issues in Reading John’s Apocalypse,” in Reading Revelation: A Resource for Students, ed. David L. Barr [Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003], 97–108), explaining it as a facet of persecution (e.g., Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Revelation: Vision of a Just World [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993], 124–29), presenting it as a desire for justice (e.g., Stephen S. Smalley, The Revelation to John: A Commentary on the Greek Text [London: SPCK, 2005], 160–61; Brian Blount, Revelation: A Commentary, New Testament Library [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009], 1), and presenting it as a gesture of catharsis or a kind of revenge fantasy (e.g., Collins, Crisis and Catharsis, 141–63; David Frankfurter, “The Legacy of Sectarian Rage: Vengeance Fantasies in the New Testament,” in Religion and Violence: The Biblical Heritage, ed. David A. Bernat and Jonathan Klawans [Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2007], 114–28; John W. Marshall, “Collateral Damage: Jesus and Jezebel in the Jewish War,” in Violence in the New Testament, ed. Shelley Matthews and E. Leigh Gibson [London: T&T Clark, 2005], 35–50 [35]; and Paul Duff, Who Rides the Beast? Prophetic Rivalry and the Rhetoric of Crisis in the Churches of the Apocalypse [New York: Oxford University Press, 2001], 111–12). For an astute analysis of these positions, see Middleton, Violence of the Lamb. 22. See discussion in Aune, Revelation 6–16, 410. 23. Paul Middleton, Radical Martyrdom and Cosmic Conflict in Early Christianity, Library of New Testament Studies 306 (London: T&T Clark, 2006), 159. 24. Daniel 12:​13 (New Revised Standard Version): “But you, go your way, and rest; you shall rise for your reward at the end of the days.” Both the Old Greek and Theodotion version of Daniel (Septuagint) use the same language of rest (“And you, come, and rest, and you will rise for your allotment at the consummation of the days” [Theodotion LXX, trans. R. Timothy McLay in NETS]). 25. David E. Aune, Revelation 1–5, Word Biblical Commentary 52A

Notes to Pages 98–99 / 175

(Waco, TX: Word, 1997), 223; Dan 7:9; 1 En. 14:​20; 2 Macc. 11:8; Matt 28:3; Mark 17:5; John 20:​12; Acts 1:10; Rev 4:4, 19:​14; Hermas, Vision 4.2.1; Testament of Levi 8:2. 26. As Paul Middleton argues in The Violence of the Lamb, the groups envisioned in white robes throughout the account may be the same group. The basis for the identification of the armies of heaven with the martyrs of chapters 6 and 7 is in part grounded in their attire: all three groups wear white robes. The argument is similar to the results of a corpus-­linguistic study of Oliver Twist, in which the fate of the unnamed “gentleman in the white waistcoat” can be tracked through the novel by virtue of his distinctive clothing (see Michaela Mahlberg, “Clusters, Key Clusters and Local Textual Functions in Dickens,” Corpora 2 [2007]: 1–31). The identification of the group in chapter 7 as martyrs is contested; here Middleton follows Wilhelm Bousset, Die Offenbarung Johannis, Kritisch-­Exegetischer Kommentar über das Neue Testament 16 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1906), 288; George B. Caird, A Commentary on the Revelation of St. John the Divine, Black’s New Testament Commentaries (London: A&C Black, 1966), 95; Richard Bauckham, Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation (London: T&T Clark, 1993), 225–26. 27. For the connection between white garments and ethics, see D. A. McIlraith, “For the Fine Linen Is the Righteous Deeds of the Saints: Works and White in Revelation 19:8,” CBQ 61 (1999): 514–29 (525–28); and 1 Apocalypse of James 28.16–17, cited in Aune, Revelation 1–5, 222. 28. Editorial Review, “Recognition of Friends in Another World,” Christian Review 7, no. 25 (1842): 47; Bousset, Offenbarung Johannis, 271; R. H. Charles, The Revelation of St. John, 2 vols., International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1920), 1:176, 184–88; Ernst Lohmeyer, Die Offenbarung des Johannes, Handbuch zum Neuen Testament 16 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1953), 64; George B. Caird, A Commentary on the Revelation of St. John the Divine, Harper’s New Testament Commentaries (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 86. Gregory K. Beale (Revelation: A Shorter Commentary [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015], 394) argues that robes in general can symbolize bodies but that white ones do not serve this role; Aune, Revelation 6–16, 410. For the idea that the robes symbolize salvation, cf. Austen Farrer, The Revelation of St. John the Divine: Commentary on the English Text (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964), 102; Robert H. Mounce, The Book of Revelation, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), 160; Jürgen Roloff, Revelation, trans. J. E. Alsup, Continental Commentaries (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 90; and Schüssler Fiorenza, Revelation, 64. 176 / Notes to Pages 100–101

29. As fraught as questions about resurrected bodies are for theologians and exegetes, few modern interpreters have brought the metaphysical solutions of Revelation into debates about ontology. The reason for this is that, as a visionary text filled with multiheaded horned beasts, dragons, and angelic wars, Revelation is rarely understood by modern scholars as a piece of constructive theology. For those who treat the book as a prophetic timetable for the end of the world, the focus has traditionally lighted not on the aesthetics of the apocalypse, but rather on its chronology. That Revelation is an apocalyptically styled text does not render questions about anthropology and metaphysics inappropriate, however. Moreover, the explanation that white robes are mere symbols of something else does not mean that the tangibility of the robes is unimportant. Just as the aesthetics of the monstrous are harnessed in the descriptions of Revelation’s beasts, so too the attire of the sanctified evokes broader conceptions and valuations of beauty, appearance, and physical form. We might ask, with Gregory Carey, how it is that Revelation uses the “flexible resources” of apocalyptic discourse and employs them for persuasive ends (Carey, “Introduction: Apocalyptic Discourse, Apocalyptic Rhetoric,” in Vision and Persuasion: Rhetorical Dimensions of Apocalyptic Discourse, ed. Gregory Carey and L. Gregory Bloomquist [St. Louis: Chalice, 1999], 10). 30. Wilhelm Michaelis, “λευκός,” TDNT 4:241–50 (246). 31. Aune, Revelation 1–5, 223; Bauckham, Climax, 225–29, drawing on Tertullian, Antidote for the Scorpion’s Sting 12; 2 Macc. 11:8. 32. As an ekphrastic collection of textual images, the depictions of resurrection (and, indeed, afterlife judgment) in the book of Revelation are often read not just symbolically but semiotically. The radically materialistic images are dematerialized and divorced from the lived world. This tendency is, as Webb Keane has shown, one of the legacies of Saussure’s idea that as we dematerialize signs, we privilege meaning over action and potential; Keane describes this as the “radical separation of the sign from the material world” (Keane, “Signs Are Not the Garb of Meaning: On the Social Analysis of Material Things,” in Materiality, ed. David Miller [Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005], 182–205 [183], cited in McFerrin, “Fabrics of Inclusion,” 150). Here I follow the work of Neville McFerrin, who makes this link in her essay “Fabrics of Inclusion.” The notion of Revelation as a text that deliberately conjures up spectacles using the device of ekphrasis has been persuasively argued by Christopher Frilingos, Spectacles of Empire: Monsters, Martyrs, and the Book of Revelation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997); and Meghan R. Henning, Educating Christians Through the Rhetoric of Hell: “Weeping and Notes to Pages 101–2 / 177

Gnashing of Teeth” as Paideia in Matthew and the Early Church, WUNT 2/382 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014). For a robust and intelligent criticism of the distinction between live and dead metaphors, see J. Albert Harrill, “ ‘Exegetical Torture’ in Early Christian Biblical Interpretation: The Case of Origen of Alexandria,” Biblical Interpretation 25 (2017): 39– 57 (41–42). 33. On the difficulty of pinning down the significance of “whiteness” in Revelation (with respect to the throne), see Laszio Gallusz, The Throne Motif in the Book of Revelation, Library of New Testament Studies 487 (London: T&T Clark, 2014), 137. 34. “Religious dress is a visible signifier of difference. The message communicated is that the wearers choose to follow a certain set of ideological or religious principles and practices” (Lynne Hume, The Religious Life of Dress: Global Fashion and Faith [London: Bloomsbury, 2013], 1). 35. Linda B. Arthur, ed., Religion, Dress and the Body (Oxford: Berg, 1999). 36. Gawlinski, “Theorizing Religious Dress.” 37. On dress in the ancient world, see Mirielle M. Lee, Body, Dress, and Identity in Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); and Lloyd Llewellyn-­Jones, ed., Women’s Dress in the Ancient Greek World (London: Duckworth, 2002). More broadly, see Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (New York: Knopf, 1987), 66–67. See also Plato, Laws 12.956a; and Cicero, Laws 2.18. On white garments in religious festivals, see Ovid, Fasti 4.905–32. Similarly, revelers in Petronius, Satyricon 65, can be identified by the fact that they are dressed in white. See also the resplendent white garments of the procession of Isis in Apuleius, Metamorphoses 11.9–10. Plutarch (Life of Aemilius Paulus 32–34) notes that at the Roman triumph people dressed in clean white clothes to watch the spectacle, a detail that also alludes to the ordinarily grimy nature of clothing in the ancient world. 38. Karl Mayer, “Die Bedeutung der weissen Farbe im Kultus der Griechen und Römer” (Freiburg: Henn, 1927); Lee, Body, Dress and Identity, 228; J. Neils, “ ‘Women Are White’: White Ground and the Attic Funeral,” in Papers on Special Techniques in Athenian Vases, ed. Kenneth D. S. Lapatin (Los Angeles: Paul Getty Museum, 2008), 68–69 and fig. 8. 39. Christopher Jones has tentatively argued that the underlying logic for the connection of linen garments with purity is their “organic” origin (“Processional Colors,” in The Art of Ancient Spectacle, ed. Bettina Bergmann and Christine Kondoleon, Studies in the History of Art 56 [Wash178 / Notes to Pages 102–3

ington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1999], 247–57). This argument underscores the traditional connection of purity and beauty with a culturally constructed notion of what is natural. The high regard in which linen was held can more basely be accounted for with reference to the rarity of the best types and the ideological trappings of “whiteness.” 40. Laura Gawlinski, The Sacred Law of Andania: A New Text with Commentary, Sozomena 2 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012), 117–18; Laura Gawlinski, “ ‘Fashioning’ Initiates: Dress at the Mysteries,” in Reading a Dynamic Canvas: Adornment in the Ancient Mediterranean World, ed. Cynthia S. Colburn and Maura K. Heyn (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), 161; Eleanor Irwin, Color Terms in Greek Poetry (Toronto: Dundurn, 1974), 178–82. 41. A comparison of the two groups grounded in their affinity for white can be found in Eibert J. C. Tighelaar, “The White Dress of the Essenes,” in Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Rome: Studies in Ancient Cultural Interaction in Honour of A. Hilhorst, ed. F. García Martínez and G. P. Luttikhuizen, JSJSup 82 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 301–23. 42. The sheer number of techniques described by Pliny and others, and the evaluation of these techniques based upon degrees of whiteness, demonstrates this point. Vespasian apparently went so far as to tax the collection of urine (Suetonius, Vespasian 2), which was useful both as a detergent in the dyeing of garments and for removing other substances like ink from papyrus (Pliny, Natural History 28.66, 91); cf. Theophrastus, On Stones 56, for white lead used in the production of white pigments. The range of uses is also noteworthy: chalk dust (creta) was used in antiquity for cleansing garments, making seals, and polishing. It could also be used on the face to whiten it and was considered somewhat safer than white lead, which ancient authors knew to be destructive and poisonous. 43. Juvenal: “a soft and snowy white [loaf ] molded with the finest flour is reserved for the master of the household” (Satires 5.67–75). 44. Sarah Bond (Trade and Taboo: Disreputable Professions in the Roman Mediterranean [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016]) writes: “In antiquity, systems of cleanliness and morality were intertwined, and, as the British anthropologist Mary Douglas observed, it is the body that serves as a symbol in these various systems” (12); Bond references Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (New York: Pantheon, 1970), 71. 45. Tertullian, On the Resurrection 61.2, translated in Evans, Tertullian, 181. See also Pliny, Natural History 28.49; 31.46; 32.21, 26; Martial, Epigrams 14.22; Horace, Epodes 8.3. See Roy K. Gibson, Ovid: Ars Amatoria, Notes to Pages 103–4 / 179

Book 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 173. Also note a slave named Croesus with badly discolored teeth in Petronius, Satyricon 64. 46. Synesius, Letter 4 [To John] (PG 66.1369a11f, 1386d1f ) (cited in Brian E. Daley, The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook in Patristic Eschatology, 2nd ed. [Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001], 91). The fifth-­century Coptic writer Shenoute writes in Discourses 82.3 that the saints in heaven have “rosy faces shining like the light . . . and their garments shone like snow.” In the Coptic Life of Pachomius (Bo 82), the righteous soul is transported to heaven on a large white cloth. 47. Cf. A. G. Geddes’s arguments about the chitōn (“Rags and Riches: The Costume of Athenian Men in the Fifth Century,” CQ 37 [1987]: 307–31 [311]); Aristophanes, fr. 12. It is important to note that threadbare cloaks were identity markers for the Cynics; Artemidorus Daldianus, Dream Interpretation 2.3.49. 48. Pliny, Natural History 33.127; Pliny, Natural History 19.19–20. On the symbolism of the color white in the classical world, see Gerhard Radke, Die Bedeutung der weissen und der schwarzen Farbe im Kult und Brauch der Griechen und Römer ( Jena: Raeck, 1936), 38–44. 49. On brilliance and purity of colors as aspirational, see Plutarch, Alexander 36.1–2. On white body parts and skin, see Lucan, Pharsalia 10.141; Catullus, Poems 68b, 80; and Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.365. Plato, Philebus 51d, 53a–­b, 52a–­b (unmixed pleasure), 51c (pristine beauty). 50. Homer, Iliad 5.503; Plato, Philebus 53a–­b; Plato, Philebus 53b; Plato, Phaedo 110c. 51. There are comparable efforts to control dress in the stipulations about the width of the bands on the Roman toga praetexta; see discussion in Shelley Stone, “The Toga: From National to Ceremonial Costume,” in The World of Roman Costume, ed. Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 13–45 (13–15); Diodorus Siculus, History 10.9.6. 52. Lines 18–19, adapted from Gawlinski, Sacred Law of Andania, 68–71; commentary: 107–33; also published in Gawlinski, “ ‘Fashioning’ Initiates,” 157–58. 53. As Gawlinski (“Theorizing Religious Dress”) puts it, “Differentiation is made among the participants by using price and types of garment, as well as accessories, in order to create outward manifestations of gender, age, free status, religious roles, and religious authority” (163). 54. Conceptually, the nudity of the baptismal candidate was tied both to the depiction of Jesus as small and nude at his baptism and to 180 / Notes to Pages 105–7

the nakedness of Jesus during the crucifixion. On the symbol of nakedness, see also Hugh M. Riley, Christian Initiation: A Comparative Study of the Interpretation of the Baptismal Liturgy in the Mystagogical Writings of Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia and Ambrose of Milan, Catholic University of America Studies in Christian Antiquity 17 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1974), 159–89; Henri Leclercq, “Nu dans l’art chrétien,” DACL 12 (1936): 1782–1808; Henri Leclercq, “Nudité baptismale,” DACL 12 (1936): 543–70; and Robin S. Jensen, Baptismal Imagery: Ritual, Visual and Theological Dimensions (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), 168. Jensen compares this requirement to the rabbinic logic governing full nudity in ritual washing in the mikvaoth. See m. Miqw. 9 and b. Pesaḥ 107a: “Nothing must interpose between flesh and water.” 55. Pascal Boyer, The Naturalness of Religious Ideas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 56–57, in which Boyer explains that minimally counterintuitive concepts are more memorable than maximally counterintuitive events. I am grateful to one of the anonymous reviewers of this manuscript for this observation. 56. Revelation distinguishes between the wealthy and those who are rich but only “seem wealthy” (see 3:17). My argument is that while endeavoring to short-­circuit a social hierarchy predicated on wealth and class, Revelation uses the motifs of wealth and thus unwittingly reproduces the hierarchy itself. 57. The baths were a social space for the affluent and the leisure classes in which the body could be positively shaped, but they could also represent sexual immorality, inappropriate performances of gender, and drunken lasciviousness. See Fikret Yegül, Bathing in the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 22–39. On bathing in general, see Janet DeLaine’s opening discussion, “Historiography: Origins, Evolution, and Convergence,” in Bains curatifs et bains hygiéniques en Italie de l’Antiquité au Moyen Âge, ed. Marie Guérin-­Beauvois and Jean-­ Marie Martin, Collection de l’École Française (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2007), 21–35. 58. The prohibition on buying and selling has been a source of confusion for scholars. Ramsay argued that the prohibition refers to an otherwise unknown “Flavian persecution” in which Christians were prohibited from participating in commerce akin to the fourth-­century regulations under Diocletian. The mention of the mark or brand could, in this way, be understood in light of Decius’s command that all sacrifice to the genius of the emperor. See William M. Ramsay, Letters to the Seven Churches of Notes to Pages 108–9 / 181

Asia and Their Place in the Plan of the Apocalypse (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1904), 105–8, 126–27. The difficulty with this argument is that there is no evidence to support such a persecution, and Pliny-­Trajan correspondence presupposes that no such legislation was in place. Ramsay equivocates about whether or not this was official legislation or a kind of informal boycott. A number of scholars argue that the “mark” was willingness to use Roman coins to buy and sell; see Ethelbert Stauffer, Christus und die Caesaren: Historische Skizzen, 5th ed. (Hamburg: Wittig, 1960), 126, 179; and Adela Yarbro Collins, “The Political Perspective of the Revelation of John,” JBL 96 (1977): 241–56 (253–54). Exclusion from commerce might have been linked to an unwillingness on the part of Christians to participate in trade guilds or voluntary associations; see Collins, Crisis and Catharsis, 124; and Aune, Revelation 6–16, 767–68. 59. Several medical writers refer to the pastille of Polyides (Galen 13.834; Paul of Aegina, Pragmateia 7.12; Celsus, On Medicine 5.20.2), but there were a number of famous salves in the ancient world, for example, those of Pacchius (Galen 12.751) and Andron (Celsus, On Medicine 5.20.4). 60. For a recent study of infectious diseases in the Roman Empire, see Kyle Harper, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017). 61. Pliny, Natural History 29.126, 30.104; Martial, Epigrams 8.33.22, 10.22.1 (talia lunata splenia fronte sedent); Edward Wheatley, Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 20. 62. Artemidorus Daldianus (Dream Interpretation 1.51) refers to the “vile odor [that points out the tanner] even when hiding”; Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination, Transformation of the Classical Heritage 42 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 32. 63. Firmicus Maternus, Mathesis 3.13.13 (ed. W. Kroll and F. Skutsch [Stuttgart: Teubner, 1968], 1:191). 64. In reality, tanneries seem to have been located within the city walls. The conversation about the foul smell of tanneries in Juvenal presupposes as much. Cf. Juvenal, Satires 14.202; discussion in Bond, Trade and Taboo, 113. On the tanning industry in general, see Martine Leguilloux, Le cuir et la pelleterie à l’époque romaine (Paris: Errance, 2004). Michael B. Charles, “Unseemly Professions and Recruitment in Late Antiquity: Piscatores and Vegetius Epitoma 1.7.1–2,” American Journal of Philology 131 (2010): 101–20. 182 / Notes to Pages 110–11

65. Daniel-­Hughes, Salvation of the Flesh; Upson-­Saia, Early Christian Dress; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 5.1.17. 66. Martial, Epigrams 1.94. 67. Gary A. Anderson, Charity: The Place of the Poor in the Biblical Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013); Peter Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014); Peter Brown, The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Christianity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). Conclusion 1. I follow here Thomas Laqueur, “The Deep Time of the Dead,” Social Research 78, no. 3 (2011): 799–822 (802). 2. The roots of the idea of identity as fundamentally consumeristic can be traced to the Reformation. For discussions of identity construction and consumerism, see the seminal work of William James, Principles of Psychology (New York: Henry Holt, 1890), and subsequent contributions by E. Prelinger, “Extension and the Structure of the Self,” Journal of Social Psychology 47 (1959): 13–23; and Philip Cushman, Constructing the Self, Constructing America: A Cultural History of Psychotherapy (Reading, MA: Addison-­Wesley, 1995). James, Principles of Psychology, 4. 3. On cryopreservation, see Alcor Life Extension Foundation, http:// www.alcor.org/BecomeMember/scheduleA.html. 4. William Godwin, An Essay on Sepulchres, or, a proposal for erecting some memorial of the illustrious dead in all ages on the spot their remains have been interred (London: W. Miller, 1809). 5. Robertson’s remarks were met with hostility by a number of his peers. See, for instance, Aliyah Shahid, “Pat Robertson’s Remarks on Divorce, Alzheimer’s on ‘700 Club’ Spark Outrage Among Christian Leaders,” 16 September 2011, http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national /pat-­robertson-­remarks-­divorce-­alzheimer-­700-­club-­spark-­outrage -­christian-­leaders-­article-­1.957244. 6. “Living to 120 and Beyond: Americans’ Views on Aging, Medical Advances and Radical Life Extension,” Pew Research Center, 6 August 2013, http://www.pewforum.org/2013/08/06/living-­to-­120-­and-­beyond -­americans-­views-­on-­aging-­medical-­advances-­and-­radical-­life-­exten sion/. Interestingly, Americans did not support radical life extension even in those cases where the effects of aging could be delayed. In his analysis of the data, William Saletan argued that those polled could not envision Notes to Pages 112–20 / 183

life as a 120-­year-­old without the ravages of age (Saletan, “Fear of Immortality,” Slate, 6 August 2013, http://www.slate.com/articles/technology /future_tense/2013/08/aging_polls_and_life_extension_why_don_t_ameri cans_want_to_live_longer.html). Wealth is a factor here, too. We are only dimly aware of the privilege that allows us to pathologize the aging process. But attempts to protect our memories in propositional form inevitably come at the expense of real flesh-­and-­blood bodies. It is for this reason that Laurie Zoloth and Bill Gates have both voiced concern about the financial repercussions of transhumanist movements. In an interview in 2015, Zoloth said: “It’s incredibly exciting and wonderful to be part of a species that dreams in a big way. . . . But I also want to be part of a species that takes care of the poor and the dying, and I’m worried that our attention is being drawn away to a glittery future world that is fantasy and not the world we live in”; Ariana Eunjung Cha, “Tech Titans’ Latest Project: Defy Death,” Washington Post, 4 April 2015, http://www.washingtonpost .com/sf/national/2015/04/04/tech-­titans-­latest-­project-­defy-­death/?utm _term=.37c835551d03. Gates remarked on Reddit: “It seems pretty egocentric while we still have malaria and TB for rich people to fund things so they can live longer”; I Am a . . . Ask Me Anything, Reddit, https:// www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2tzjp7/hi_reddit_im_bill_gates _and_im_back_for_my_third/.

184 / Notes to Page 120

Index

ableism, 86, 116, 157n3 abstinence, 72, 80, 85, 149n9. See also asceticism; celibacy Adam: God’s Beloved (Nouwen), 66–67 adornment: body parts for, 78; deferred, 113; prostheses and, 49; removal of, 107; teeth and, 78, 88, 94, 104 Aeneid (Virgil), 35, 59–60 aesthetics, 19–20, 90; bodily, 60– 61, 90; modern, 91, 94–95; in Nava’s tapestries, 115; trickledown, 93, 171n13 afterlife, 2–3, 7–10; beliefs about, 120–21; depictions of, 116; disability in, 61–62; embodied, 7, 35; healing in, 36; identity and beliefs about, 15; impairment in, 57–60; irrationality of, 6–7; justice in, 16; memory and, 119; reproductive body parts in, 69– 70; sex in, 68–70, 72–73; sexual difference in, 70; sin and, 45– 46. See also heaven; Kingdom of God Against Heresies (Irenaeus), 10, 73– 75 aging, process of, 10 Allegorical Interpretation (Philo), 29 almsgiving, 113 Ammonius, 61–62

amputation, 44–45; ancient world context for, 47; asymmetrical, 60; cultural awareness of, in Roman period, 150–51n15; figurative readings of, 53–57, 150n11, 154n28; and the Kingdom of God, 58; literal readings of, 54–58; as medical treatment, 51–52, 53, 55; modern perspectives on, 55, 117–18; practicality of, 56; proactive approach to, 52; as punishment, 46–49, 53–55, 154n29; reasons for, 47–48; rhetoric of, 154n27; salvation and, 45–46; self-, 50–58, 60, 63, 153n23; sin and, 53, 55–56, 57; unattractiveness of, 61; in war, 49–50 anagnorisis, 31–32, 141–42n25 Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus (Hunter), 22 Anaxarchus, 51 Andania, inscription at, 106–7 angelic bodies, 72, 75, 85 Antipater the Elder, 32 anxiety: about the body, 60; about identity, 19–20, 21, 23, 60; over memory loss, 21; resurrection and, 118; about the self, 3–4, 10 Apostles’ Creed, 5 appearance, virtue and, 90. See also beauty

185

Aristotle, 4, 32, 43–44, 45, 60, 70–72, 77, 81, 83, 118, 148–49n6, 156n38, 159n12, 160n2, 165n30, 166n33, 166n36 Arius Didymus, 91 art, 83, 90–91 Artemidorus, 105 Artemis, 80, 164n28 asceticism, 72–73, 85. See also ­celibacy Ashton, John, 25, 135n5 Athenagoras, 16, 70, 82–86, 165n31, 165n32, 166n34, 166n36, 167n37 Augustine, 25, 28, 94, 119, 139n16, 141n24, 147n39, 158–59n8 Aulus Allius, 94 Aune, David, 101, 173n19 Banks, Thomas, 22–23 baptism, 107, 180–81n54 bathing, 109, 181n57 Bauckham, Richard, 101 beast, mark of. See mark of the beast beauty, 20; in the ancient world, 90, 93; art distinct from, 83; artifice and, 92–95, 112–13; artistic notions of, 89–90; class and, 88, 92, 113; contemplation of, 91; cultural commitment to, 87–88; the divine and, 91, 94; ethnicity and, 92; health and, 91–92, 170n6; ideal of, 90; modern conception of, 90–91; nature and, 92; performance of, 95; physical, 92; standards for, 91–92, 108, 169n2; stereotypes of, 19; virtue and, 60, 90–93, 112, 113; wholeness and, 61 blinding, 48–49, 54, 154–55n29

blindness, treatment of, 152–53n20, 153n22 blood, cleansing with, 108 bodies, human: aesthetics of, 60– 61, 90; beauty of, 91; binary approach to, 7; connected to souls (see body-soul relationship); continuity of, 11–12, 30, 38, 43, 44, 82; damned, 112; dress and, 97; expectations of, ancient, 29– 30; form of, 1–3, 44, 65; God’s restoration of, 75; hierarchies of, 11; ideal, associated with wealth, 111–12; identity and, 8, 17, 23, 45; instability of, 43; integrity of, 42, 66; investigation of, 22–23; modification of, 23, 67, 172–73n18 (see also amputation); nonfunctioning, glorification of, 67; Paul on, 12–14; perfection of, 14; resurrection of, Sadducees’ opposition to, 67– 68; stability of, 38, 39; use of, in the resurrection, 78; values placed on, 17, 18–19. See also adornment; bodily function; body parts bodily function, 168n45; discontinuation of, 20; integrity of, 66 body parts: for adornment, 78, 88, 94, 104; continuity and, 82; functionality of, 10, 72–74, 78; functionless, 70, 71; preservation of, 1–2, 72; purposes for, 71, 77–80 body-soul relationship, 17–18, 82– 83, 166n33 Bond, Sarah, 104 Book of Marvels (Phlegon), 34, 145n34

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Bousset, Wilhelm, 101 Bultmann, Rudolf, 37, 146n36 burial, 101 Bynum, Caroline Walker, 14, 129n20, 155n34 Calico (biotech company), 118 Carey, Gregory, 177 Cathedral of Our Lady of the ­Angels (Los Angeles), 114–15 celibacy, 67–72, 85, 158–59n8 Celsus, 51, 92, 152–53n20 change, 43, 45, 149n9 Chareas and Callirhoe, 92 Christology, polymorphic, 39–40 Chrysippus, 44–45 Cicero, 51, 91 class, beauty and, 92 clothing. See garments; robes Coco (dir. Unkrich and Molina), 120–21 Code of Hammurabi, 47 Colpe, Carsten, 29 Commentary on John (Cyril of Alexandria), 33 consciousness, preservation of, 119 Constantine, 54, 154n29 continuity, form and, 43–44, 67 corpses: mutilation of, 48; re­animated, 5, 34 cosmetics, 92–94, 171n13, 171– 72n14 cosmology, 7, 15–16 Cosway, Richard, 22–23 Critobulos, 61, 151n17 crucifixion, 22–23, 33, 136–37n6 cryonics, 119 Cullman, Oscar, 5–6, 9, 127n12 Cyclops, 62 Cyril, 28, 33, 139n16, 143n28

damnatio memoriae, 119 Daniel-Hughes, Carly, 112 dead, the, 135n3; form of, 121; healed in heaven, 57–58; human needs of, 9; portrayal of, 9; recreating social hierarchies, 116 death: change as form of, 45, 149n9; disability and, 74; experiencing of, and interest in the body’s fate, 9; identity and, 4; judgment after, 4; nature of, 10; theologies of, 9; transformative nature of, 16–17. See also afterlife deep wearing, 96, 172–73n17 deformities: in heaven, 61, 63, 86; resurrection of, 20, 45, 46; undesirability of, 56–57 dementia, 120 Descartes, René, 119 desire, 77, 162n23 de Voraigne, Jacob, 41–42, 64–65 difference, erasure of, 117 digestion, 43–44, 79–80, 87, 168– 69n45 digital cloning, 119 Diodorus Siculus, 106 Diogenes Laertius, 50–51, 148n5 Dion and Theon, 44–45 disability: in the afterlife, 46, 61– 62; bodily integrity and, 87; death and, 74; erasure of, 115– 17; eschatology and, 56; perfection and, 117; punishment and, 46; source of, 35 disfigurement, 52 diversity, 115, 116 divine, the: beauty and, 94; dress of, 97, 99–100; unity with, outside time, 119 docetism, 40, 136n6, 145n34

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Douglas, Mary, 57 dress. See garments; robes dualism, Platonic, 38 Easter, 5 Eicher, Joanne, 96, 172n17 ekphrasis, 26, 177n32 Ellison, Larry, 118 embodiment, undesirable, 116 Engberg-Pedersen, Troels, 12–13 Epicharmus, 43 Epicurus, 77, 162n23 Epitome of Stoic Ethics (Didymus), 91 eschatological healing, 66–67, 73– 74 eschatological marriage, 72–73 eschatology, 56, 58–59, 68–69 Essenes, 15, 103 ethics, 15–16, 71 ethnicity, beauty and, 92 eudaimonia, 71 eunuchs, 69–70, 158–59n8 Euripides, 34–35 eyes: blinding of, 48–49, 54, 154– 55n29; medically related loss of, 51–52; patches for, 50, 151– 52n17; treating blindness in, 152–53n20, 153n22; work-related loss of, 50 fabric, significance of, 103 Faust, Drew Gilpin, 9 Firmicus Maternus, 110–11 First Apocryphal Apocalypse of John, 18–19 form, bodily: continuity and, 43– 45, 148–49n6; dress and, 97; identity and, 44, 45, 164n29; ­integrity of, 67

functionality, bodily: 19–20, 71, 86–87, 164n29; activity and, 81–82, 87; apologists’ difficulty with, 72; beauty and, 88; continuity and, 67, 83; impairments in, 67; scholarly uninterest in, 72–73; virtue and, 71 funerary rituals, 4, 9, 105 Galen, 29–31, 36, 48–49, 163n26, 167n37, 170n6 gangrene, 51, 52 garments, 172n17; in the ancient world, 96–97; components of, 95–96; in the divine, images of, 97; embodied performance of, 111; identity and, 97, 102–3, 180n47; language of, 96–97; purity and, 99; self and, 96–97; socioeconomic status and, 97, 108–9, 112; spending on, 106–7; strategies of, 107; virtue and, 90; washing of, 104–5, 108–9, 118; white, significance of, 98– 107. See also robes Gawlinski, Laura, 102 gender, 70, 95. See also sexual ­difference genetics, 23 genitalia: functionality of, 76, 86– 87; in hierarchy of bodily processes, 78–80; presence of, in the resurrection, 84; telos of, 77–78 ghosts, 33–35 Gill, Christopher, 3–4, 133n45, 159–60n12 glorification. See resurrection glorified bodies, 13, 14, 17 glory, meaning of, 17

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gnostics, 10, 40, 130n23, 145n34 Godwin, William, 119 Gorgias (Plato), 35 Greco-Roman medicine, 29–31 Greco-Roman philosophy, on immortality of the soul, 6 Gregory of Nyssa, 135–36n5 Growing Argument (Growing Problem), 43, 44–45, 85, 148n5, 166n36 Hadrian, 49 Haenchen, Ernst, 37, 146n36 hagiographies, bodily restitution in, 42, 64–65 hair, removal of, 94, 95, 171n14 hands, cultural significance of, 55– 56 Hannibal, 50, 151n17 Hansen, Gitte Buch, 29 Harrington, Daniel, 27 healing, 110; eschatological, 66–67, 73–74; by Jesus, 64, 74, 155n34; symbolism of, 37; whole-body, 74 health, beauty and, 91–92, 170n6 heaven: bodily ideals in, 111–12; garments of, 108–9; healing in, 59, 64, 66–67; life in, 3, 11, 16; marriage in, 69, 85–86; nonfunctional body parts in, 71; order in, 89; perfection in, 19, 59; sex in, 69, 72, 84, 85. See also afterlife; Kingdom of God heavenly bodies: beauty and, 89– 90; imagery for, 113; infertility and, 73; nature of, 46, 90. See also resurrected bodies Hegesistratus of Elis, 50 hell, fragmentation in, 59

Heraclitus, 148n5, 43, 44 Herennius Philo, 61–62 Herodian, 61–62 Herodotus, 50, 62 heroes, 9, 34 heterophthalmos (differently eyed), 61–63 Hippocrates, 30, 51, 79, 151n16, 151n17, 163n26, 163–64n27 Holy Prepuce ( Jesus’s foreskin), 1–2 Homer, 33–34, 62, 94 Horatius Cocles, 50 human subject: function of, 71; goal of, 70–71; nature of, 82–83, 118; subjectivity of, skepticism about, 134n48 humors, 84, 85, 167n37 Hunter, William, 22–23 identity, 2–3, 20, 65, 131n31, 164n29; ability and, 117; anxieties about, 19–20, 23; bodies and, 23, 42, 45; consumeristic nature of, 183n2; continuity of, 8, 44, 45, 65, 83; death and, 4; dress and, 97; facets of, 67; fluidity of, 148n5; form and, 44, 67, 164n29; gender and, 70; impairments and, 25–26; loss of, 21; metaphors for, 111; preservation of, 43; scars and, 31, 117; source of, 4, 10, 42–43, 116, 117, 134n48; and stability of self, 40; whiteness and, 103; xenophobia and, 19 Iliad (Homer), 34 immortality, 116, 118–20 impairments, identity and, 25–26. See also disability

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individuality, 23 infertility, 73, 80, 85, 86, 164n28, 168n43, 168n44 initiation, whiteness and, 103, 107–8 Innocent III, 1–2 integrity, 19–20, 67, 83 interstitial bodies, 57 In the Flesh (Tertullian), 78 Irenaeus, 10, 73–75, 161–62n19

in, 24, 26; Jesus’s marks from crucifixion in, 27–29, 32, 36–39; Jesus’s narrative autopsy in, 13, 26; Jesus’s side wound in, 24, 33, 38; Platonic dualism of, 37–38 Josephus, 15, 32, 48, 133n42, 158n6 judgment, 83, 84 Julius Caesar, 32 Julius Pollux, 61–62 justice, 16, 82, 83

James, William, 116 Jensen, Robin, 107 Jerome, 72 Jesus, 132n38; on the afterlife, 67– 68; amorphism of, 39; artistic portrayals of, 23, 25; bodily resurrection of, 1–2, 13–14; crucifixion of, 25, 136n6; DNA of, 23; execution marks on, 20, 24–31, 33; feet of, 24, 26, 138n10; foreskin of, 1–2; hands of, 24, 26, 28, 31, 32–33, 38, 138n10; as healer, 53, 64, 74, 155n34; identification of, 26, 37; polymorphism of, 39–40, 147n42; recognition of, after resurrection, 32, 141–42n25; resurrected body of, 20, 22, 24–31, 33, 36, 37, 39, 117; as resurrection prototype, 25–26, 147n42; scars of, 26–31, 36, 38, 138n12; side wound of, 24, 27, 28, 30–33, 38, 143n27; taken alive from the cross, 25; transfiguration of, 39; transitional status of, 37; virginity of, 76 John, Gospel of: on the crucifixion, 33; on ghosts, 34; Jesus’s ascension in, 1; Jesus’s hands and feet

Kingdom of God: amputation and, 58; deformity in, 61, 63; disability in, 46; nonfunctional genitalia as paradigm for, 86. See also heaven Larsen, Kasper Bro, 37, 138–39n13 Legenda aurea (de Voraigne), 41– 42, 64–65 life, extension of, 118–19, 120, 183– 84n6 life after death. See afterlife; heaven Lives of the Philosophers (Diogenes Laertius), 50 Livy, 32, 151n17 Lohmeyer, Ernst, 101 Lucretius, 52, 153n23, 165–66n32 Luke, Gospel of: eschatological marital status in, 69, 162n21; on ghosts, 34; Jesus’s ascension in, 1; on Jesus’s fleshly resurrection, permanence of, 132n38; Jesus’s hands and feet in, 24; Jesus’s narrative autopsy in, 13, 26 Mark, Gospel of: afterlife in, 45– 46, 59; on amputation, 46, 49, 51, 53–58, 117; on disability, 46,

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56, 61; eschatological marital status in, 68–69, 85–86; Jesus as healer in, 64; Jesus’s transfiguration in, 39; “Long Ending” of, 39; monophthalmos in, 61–63 mark of the beast, 109–12, 181– 82n58 mark of the nails, 28–29, 117 marriage, 68–69, 72–73, 85–86 Martial, 49–50, 52, 112, 153n22 Martyn, J. Louis, 32, 145n35 martyrdom, 8, 85, 100, 108, 125n20 martyrs, 25, 42, 98–101 Martyrs of Vienne and Lyons, 112 Mary Magdalene, 24, 32, 37, 139n16, 141–42n25, 146n36 Master of Los Balbases, 41, 42 materialism, 116 Matthew, Gospel of, 158–59n8; on amputation, 54, 56; on eschatological marital status, 69; Jesus’s transfiguration in, 39 Mayer, Emanuel, 93, 171n13 McFerrin, Neville, 96, 97 medical technology, 10 Meeks, Wayne, 29 membership, whiteness and, 102–3 memory, 21, 119–20, 183–84n6 Mesopotamian law codes, 47 Michelangelo, 22 Middleton, Paul, 98–99, 176n26 mimesis, 16 monophthalmos (one-eyed), 61–63, 156n42, 156n43 Moore, Stephen, 32 moral offenses, leaving marks, 29 Most, Glenn, 48 mules, exceptionality of, 77

nature, beauty and, 92 Nava, John, 114–15, 116 Neoplatonists, 119 Nero, 48 Nickelsburg, George, 6 Nicocreon, 51 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 70– 71, 158–59n8 Nouwen, Henri, 66–67, 157n3 Octavius, 48 ocular punishment, 48–49 odors, significance of, 110–11 Odyssey (Homer), 31–34, 62, 144n29 Oedipus, 56, 59 On Diseases (Hippocratic Corpus), 79 On the Resurrection (Athenagoras), 70, 82 On the Resurrection (Pseudo-­ Justin), 75–78 On the Resurrection of the Flesh (Tertullian), 78 On the Soul (Tertullian), 78 On Vivisection (Galen), 30 Origen, 16, 27–28, 44, 54, 55, 135n5, 139n16, 149n7, 154–55n29, 165–66n32 orthodox, on the resurrection, 10 Ovid, 103, 171n14 paleness, 89, 92, 94, 100, 169n1. See also whiteness passion narratives, 13–14 Paul (apostle), 11–14, 32, 142– 43n26 perfection, 14, 17, 19, 20, 58, 59, 89, 117 persecution, resurrection as response to, 6, 8

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person, integrity of, 10 personhood, 3, 120 Petrey, Taylor, 79, 131n31, 133n45, 162n21 Phaedo (Plato), 17–18 Pharisees, 15, 133n42 Philip II of Macedon, 50, 60–61, 151n17 Philo of Alexandria, 29, 33, 51 philosophy, ancient, goal of, 4, 159–60n12 Phlegon, 34, 144n32, 145n34 Phrynichus, 61–62 physical appearance, 92–93 Pindar, 59–60 Plato, 17, 33, 35, 52, 82–85, 91, 106, 148n5, 162n23, 165n30 Platonism, 18, 71 Plea for Christians (Athenagoras), 82, 165n31 Pliny the Elder, 49, 60–61, 92, 105, 109, 151n17, 179n42, 181–82n58 Plotinus, 60, 135n3 Plutarch, 50, 51, 52, 80, 148n5, 151n17 pneumatic body. See spiritual body pneumatic resurrection, 37 Poetics (Aristotle), 32 Polykleitos, 90 polymorphism, divine, 39–40 poor, the, 110–11, 113 procreation, 77, 87. See also sex prostheses, 3, 49–50, 60, 116, 153n21 Pseudo-Justin, 60, 70, 72, 75–78, 80, 85, 161–62n19, 162n21, 168n40 psychē, after death, 33–35 Ptolemy of Alexandria, 61–62 punishment: amputation as, 46–

49, 53–55, 154n29; compared to laundry, 104–5; God’s distribution of, 82, 83; ocular, 48–49; after the resurrection, 16 purity, whiteness and, 105 purpose, 78, 87 Pythagoreans, 103, 105, 135n3 Quintilian, 54, 154n27 reanimated heroes, 9 relics, 1 resurrected bodies: abstraction of, 17; activity of, 81–82; amorphousness of, 39; angels’ similarity with, 19, 68, 69; as aspirational ideal, 15–16; beauty and, 94, 95; form of, 18–19; functionality of, 73; healing of, 30; as hypothetical, 1; perfection in, 58; reproduction unnecessary for, 86; symbolic value of, 37–38. See also heavenly bodies resurrection, 137–38n8, 147n39, 147n42; aesthetics of, 20; ancient Judaism and, 4, 5–6, 9; apocalyptically styled discussions of, 6; bodily, 1–2; as bodily change, final stage of, 84–85; body and soul reconstituted in, 5; caricatures of, 9; Christian tradition on, 13–14; conceptual history of, 5–6, 24; as contingent doctrine, 7; corporeality of, 73–76; debates over, 5, 6–7, 10–11, 16–17, 145n34, 145n35; distinctiveness of, 8–9, 24, 121; eliminating bodily defects, 75; flesh reassembled at, 65; functionality and, 71, 87;

192 / Index

Greco-Roman philosophy and, 4; healing and, 25–26, 37–38; historicity of, 24; and human nature, 82; identity and, 2–3, 15; justice and, 16, 82; of martyrs, 25; metaphysics of, 24; nonfunctioning body parts and, 75–76; patterned after Jesus’s, 25–26, 147n42; perfection and, 95; permanence of, 132n38; proof of, 5, 26, 27, 38; as resistance, 6; role of, in Christianity, 10–11, 14–16, 24; sexual difference in, 10, 85; skepticism about, 36; as sloughing process, 12; social relations in, 3; spiritual, 36–37, 75; of spiritual bodies, 44; symbolic nature of, 26; as test for orthodoxy, 15; theories about, anxiety and, 118 Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism and Early Christianity (Nickelsburg), 6 Revelation, book of, 173n20, 173– 75n21, 177n29, 177n32, 181n56; aesthetic world of, 111; bodily ideals in, 111–12; clothing in, 97–109, 173n19; medical treatment in, 109–10; odors in, 109– 11 revenants, 34–35 Riley, Gregory, 35, 141n25, 145– 46n35 Roach-Higgins, Mary Ellen, 96, 172n17 Robertson, Pat, 120 robes: baptism and, 107; function of, 96; washed in the Lamb’s blood, 108; white, significance

of, 98–103, 176n26. See also ­garments Sadducees, 15, 67–68, 133n42 saints, 89, 114–15, 116, 160n2 salvation, 45–46, 53, 56–57, 113, 173n20 sanctification, meaning of, 17 Sant’Apollinaire Nuovo, church of (Ravenna, Italy), 89 scars: in Greek poetry, 27; identity and, 117; Jesus’s wounds as, 26–31, 33; significance of, 32–33, 38, 141–42n25, 142–43n26; as signs of virtue, 32, 33; use of, for identification, 31 Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth, 101 seal of the Lord, 109–10 Second Temple Judaism, influence of, on resurrection, 6, 9 Segal, Alan, 6 self, 125n3; in antiquity, 3–4; anxieties about, 3–4, 10, 16–17; continuity of, 10; dress and, 96–97; existential questions about, 10; fashioning of, in resurrection, 1–3; individual and, 3–4; Judaism-Hellenism divide and, 127–28n14; mutilation of, 50–51, 54, 158; nature of, 3–4; stability of, 40, 118; study of, 14 Seneca, 51, 52, 148n5, 152–53n20, 154n27 Sentences (Sextus), 54 Sertorius, 50, 151n17, 151n18 sex: in the afterlife, 68–70, 72–73, 84, 85; deemphasizing of, 76; desire for, within a hierarchy of needs, 162–63n23 Sextus Empiricus, 18, 54

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sexual difference, 167n37; in the afterlife, 70, 72–73; in the resurrection, 85 shade, 17, 35, 59 Ship of Theseus, 42–43, 81 sin, 155n31; aesthetics and, 61; and the afterlife, 45–46; disability and, 56–58; excision of, 53, 55– 56 Skeptics, 45 skin tone, 92–93 Socrates, 106 Son of Man, imagery of, 100 Sorabji, Richard, 3–4, 130–31n27 soul, 135n3; anthropomorphized, 91; beauty of, 91; bodily actions associated with, 23; immortality of, 5, 6, 10; linked with mental faculties, 120; rebirth of, 17–18 spirits, disembodied, 34 spiritual body, 7, 12–13, 18, 44 spiritual resurrection, 36, 75 sterility. See infertility Stobaeus, 91–92 Stoicism, 12, 90, 170n6 Stoics, 4, 38, 45, 74, 83, 91, 118, 149n7 structured self, 4 stumbling, sin and, 46, 57 Suetonius, 48 symmetry, 60–61, 90 Symposium (Plato), 52, 91 Synesius of Cyrene, 104–5 Tarfon (rabbi), 53, 54 teeth, 78, 88, 94, 104 teleology, 71 telos (goal/purpose), for humans, 70–71 Tertullian, 15–16, 72, 78–83, 85–88,

94, 104, 158–59n8, 164–65n29, 166n34, 168n40 Theophilus, 54 Thiel, Peter, 118 Thomas (apostle), 24–32, 36, 37, 139n15, 139n16, 141–42n25, 145– 46n35, 146n37 Timaeus (Plato), 17 togas, 102–3 transfiguration, 39, 87 transformation, 84–85; eschatology and, 58–59; Paul’s language for, 11, 12; white robes and, 102 transhumanism, 118, 183–84n6 transition, whiteness and, 103 Treatise on the Resurrection, 10 uniformity, idealization of, 19 Upson-Saia, Kristi, 112 Valerius Maximus, 51 valor, 50 Verger’s Dream (Master of Los Balbases [attr.]), 41, 42 vice, physical appearance and, 92– 93 Virgil, 35, 59–60 virgin birth, 76 virginity, 76, 77, 80, 158–59n8, 164n28 virtue, 83; beauty and, 60, 90–93, 112; embodied, 83–84, 90; function and, 71; production of, in the afterlife, 70; signs as scars of, 32, 33; teleological goal of, 84; wealth and, 108, 113 war, 33, 49–50, 141–42n25, 142– 43n26, 150–51n15 wealth, 113, 117–18, 173n20

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West, Benjamin, 22–23 whiteness, 103–8 women: activity of, 170–71n12; bodies of, 73, 76–79, 86, 117, 163n26, 163–64n27, 167n37 wounds, 33, 36, 109–10. See also scars

Wright, N. T., 33, 130n24, 156– 57n43 Xenophon, 32, 92 Zager, Werner, 54, 55, 60 Zeno of Elea, 50–51

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