Paul Transformed: Reception of the Person and Letters of Paul in Antiquity 9780300268508

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
1 The Transformation of Paul’s Apocalyptic Ideas
2 The Resurrection Body: The Reception of 1 Corinthians 1
3 Marriage and Celibacy: The Reception of 1 Corinthians 7
4 The Role of Women in the Church: The Reception of Paul’s Instructions and Practices regarding Women
5 Paul’s Transformation from Suffering Apostle to Saint and Martyr
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index of Ancient Sources
Index of Modern Authors
Index of Subjects

Citation preview

Paul Transformed

T he An ch or Y al e Bibl e R efe r e n c e L i b r a ry is a project of international and interfaith scope in which Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish scholars from many countries contribute individual volumes. The project is not sponsored by any ecclesiastical organization and is not intended to reflect any particular theological doctrine. The series is committed to producing volumes in the tradition established half a century ago by the founders of the Anchor Bible, William Foxwell Albright and David Noel Freedman. It aims to present the best contemporary scholarship in a way that is accessible not only to scholars but also to the educated nonspecialist. It is committed to work of sound philological and historical scholarship, supplemented by insight from modern methods, such as sociological and literary criticism. John J. Collins General Editor

The An ch or Y al e Bibl e R ef e r e n c e L i b r a ry

Paul Transformed Reception of the Person and Letters of Paul in Antiquity

Adela Yarbro Collins

New Haven and AY B R L

London

Anchor Yale Bible® and the Anchor Yale Bible logo are registered trademarks of Yale University. Copyright © 2022 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 email [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Set in Adobe Caslon and Bauer Bodoni types by Newgen North America. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Control Number: 2021953083 ISBN 978-0-300-19442-5 (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

Dedicated to the Faculty of Theology of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, in gratitude for the award in 2015 of the degree Doctor theologiae honoris causa

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Contents

Acknowledgments, ix List of Abbreviations,  xi

Introduction, 1 1. The Transformation of Paul’s Apocalyptic Ideas,  12 2. The Resurrection Body: The Reception of 1 Corinthians 15,  34 3. Marriage and Celibacy: The Reception of 1 Corinthians 7,  51 4. The Role of Women in the Church: The Reception of Paul’s Instructions and Practices regarding Women,  73 5. Paul’s Transformation from Suffering Apostle to Saint and Martyr,  104 Conclusion, 122 Notes, 133 Bibliography, 171 Index of Ancient Sources,  191 Index of Modern Authors,  201 Index of Subjects,  205

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to many colleagues and students for helpful conversations, suggestions, and advice. Among the colleagues Ismo Dunderberg, Candida Moss, and John J. Collins are especially noteworthy. Carolyn Osiek supplied me with a bibliography on the leadership of women in the early church. Judith Gundry read a draft of Chapter 1 (“The Transformation of Paul’s Apocalyptic Ideas”) and gave me helpful comments. My longtime friend Judith L. Kovacs, who passed away in December 2020, identified herself to me as a reader of the proposal for the press, read a draft of Chapter 2, and offered many helpful suggestions. Another longtime friend, Annetta Swan Ezelle, read a chapter to advise me on accessibility to the non­ specialist. Three anonymous reviewers of the manuscript for Yale University Press offered many helpful suggestions for improvement. The seminar I taught on Paul Transformed at the Yale Divinity School in the spring semester of 2014 was an opportunity to explore the method of reception history and the relevant texts from Paul’s letters, as well as their reception, with a group of talented and well-informed students. In June of the same year I taught a more compressed version of the seminar to a group of lively and insightful alumni/ae of the Yale Divinity School. Both courses were very enjoyable for me as well as helpful as I prepared to write this book. A number of educational institutions gave me the opportunity to try out in guest lectures the methods and ideas related to this work. In the Hall Lecture in 2011 at the University of South Carolina, “The Transformation of Paul’s Instructions about Sexuality and the Role of Women in the Church,” I explored issues related to Chapters 3 and 4. In the same year, I gave the three Newell Lectures at Anderson University, which explored issues related to Chapter 1 (“Paul’s Contribution to the Hope of the Church”), Chapter 2 ix

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(­“Interpretations of Paul’s ‘Resurrection Body’”), and Chapters 3 and 4 (“Paul’s Legacy for Sexuality and the Role of Women in the Church”). I also explored issues related to Chapter 2 in the Ray Apicella Lecture at St. Thomas University in 2013 and in the T. W. Manson Memorial Lecture at the University of Manchester in 2014. I spoke on Paul’s instructions for women and their reception in three Chuen King Lectures at the Divinity School of the Chinese University in Hong Kong in 2017. I explored the reception of 1 Corinthians 7 (related to Chapter 3) in the John Priest Lecture at Florida State University in 2018. I presented an earlier version of Chapter 5 on the suffering and martyrdom of Paul in the Frank Montalbano Lecture at the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio in 2020. I am also grateful that I had the opportunity to present my approach to colleagues at meetings of learned societies and to receive their comments. The Catholic Biblical Association sponsored my lecture “The Afterlife of Paul’s ‘Spiritual Body ’” (related to Chapter 2) at its annual meeting in 2012. I gave an invited lecture at the Southwest Regional Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in 2013 on the suffering and martyrdom of Paul, an earlier version of Chapter 5. On the occasion of being made an honorary president of the Chicago Society of Biblical Research in 2018, I addressed the members on the topic “Ancient Christians on Marriage and Celibacy,” an earlier version of Chapter 3. In the same year, I addressed members of the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry of the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne on the interpretation of 1 Corinthians 7 in the second and third centuries. Also in 2018, I gave an invited paper, “The Leadership of Women in Early Christianity,” at the State of Feminist Biblical Scholarship conference at the University of Divinity in Melbourne (an earlier version of Chapter 4). At a meeting of the Midwest Region of the Society of Biblical Literature in 2020, I presented an earlier version of Chapter 5: “Paul: From Suffering Apostle to Saint and Martyr.” Portions of this book first appeared, in substantially different form, in the following journals and volumes: Biblical Research; Common Ground and Diversity in Early Christian Thought and Study: Essays in Memory of Heikki Räisänen; Scripture and Social Justice: Catholic and Ecumenical Essays; Bodies, Borders, Believers: Ancient Texts and Present Conversations; Revealed Wisdom: Studies in Apocalyptic in Honour of Christopher Rowland; Paul, John, and Apocalyptic Eschatology: Studies in Honour of Martinus C. de Boer; Svensk exegetisk årsbok; and Offerings. A note to the reader: All the translations from the Greek of the New Testament (Nestle-Aland, 28th revised edition) are my own.

Abbreviations

AARTT AB ABD ACW ANF BDAG

BETL BZNW CIL FRLANT GCS HUT JBL JECS JSNTSup JTS LCL

American Academy of Religion Texts and Translations Anchor Bible Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by David Noel Freedman. 6 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1992 Ancient Christian Writers Ante-Nicene Fathers Bauer, Walter, Frederick W. Danker, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich. Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000 Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, Berlin, 1862– Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten [drei] Jahrhunderte Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Early Christian Studies Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series Journal of Theological Studies Loeb Classical Library xi

xii Abbreviations

LNTS NHC NovTSup NPNF1 NPNF2 NRSV NTOA NTS OCD OECS PG PGM PL RSV SBL SBLDS SBLSBS SBS SC SEÅ SUNT VC WGRWSup WUNT

The Library of New Testament Studies Nag Hammadi Codex Supplements to Novum Testamentum Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1 Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2 New Revised Standard Version Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus New Testament Studies Oxford Classical Dictionary. Edited by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012 Oxford Early Christian Studies Patrologia Graeca [ = Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Graeca]. Edited by Jacques-Paul Migne. 162 vols. Paris, 1857–1886 Papyri Graecae Magicae: Die griechischen Zauberpapyri. Edited by Karl Preisendanz. 2nd ed. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1973–1974 Patrologia Latina [ = Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina]. Edited by Jacques-Paul Migne. 217 vols. Paris, 1844–1864 Revised Standard Version Society of Biblical Literature Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series Society of Biblical Literature Sources for Biblical Study Stuttgarter Bibelstudien Sources chrétiennes. Paris: Cerf, 1943– Svensk exegetisk årsbok Studien zur Umwelt des Neuen Testaments Vigiliae Christianae Writings from the Greco-Roman World Supplement Series Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament

Paul Transformed

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Introduction

Paul was transformed many times, both during his life and after his death. One early and important transformation was from being a persecutor of a Jewish messianic sect to an adherent of that group, which he called, in retrospect, “the congregation of God” (1 Cor 15:9). He became one of its leaders, believing himself called to proclaim Christ to the Gentiles. He also presented himself as behaving as a Jew when he was among Jews, living under the law when among those under the law, living outside the law when with those outside the law, becoming weak when among the weak, in short, as becoming all things to all people; he does all this to win as many as possible over to the gospel he proclaims (1 Cor 9:20–23). His rhetoric varies from letter to letter, depending on the character of the community he addresses and the issues at hand. These transformations led the way for later readers and listeners to create further transformations as they adapted the letters to their own circumstances, thus presenting multiple images of Paul. Generally speaking, Paul’s early interpreters portrayed him “as the sole apostle to the Gentiles.” The creation of this portrait led to an emphasis on his gospel as “the basis of the unity of the church.” It also led to “the suppression of contingent situations” in the letters so that those who transmitted Paul’s legacy could hand on a coherent, catholic Paul to later heirs. This process constitutes one major type of the transformation of Paul and his letters. A specific source of transformation lay in changing attitudes to an imminent expectation of the return of Christ and all that would entail. Paul presupposed and elaborated an intensely imminent eschatology, expecting the return of Christ in his own lifetime, or at least in the lifetime of some of his addressees. This eschatology could not continue unchanged over the 1

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centuries. Many of Paul’s successors had less imminent expectations. This difference in eschatology led to major transformations of Paul’s message, which are explored in Chapter 1: “The Transformation of Paul’s Apocalyptic Ideas.” Another major source of transformations of Paul’s letters is their ambiguities, gaps, inconsistencies, and even contradictions. These features invited those who engaged with Paul’s letters in addressing their contemporaries to use their imaginations in articulating and transmitting Paul’s legacy. This happened in various ways. For example, Paul’s idea that the resurrection would result in a spiritual body was both ambiguous and paradoxical. Some transformed it in one direction: only the spirit survives death. Others rejected Paul’s principle that “flesh and blood are not able to inherit the kingdom of God, and the perishable will not inherit imperishability” (1 Cor 15:50). They instead affirmed the resurrection of the flesh. These transformations are discussed in Chapter 2: “The Resurrection Body.” A similar split among Paul’s successors occurred with regard to his teaching on marriage and celibacy in 1 Corinthians 7. Paul affirms both marriage and sexual continence. Different individuals have different gifts and callings. Instead of maintaining this nuanced judgment involving “both/ and,” some interpreters of Paul chose one and rejected the other. In addition to these choices regarding practices, the use of imagination in dealing with ambiguities and apparent inconsistencies in 1 Corinthians 7 played a role. These issues are explored in Chapter 3: “Marriage and Celibacy.” To illuminate the approaches taken in this book, I now offer some discussion of the nature and practice of the history of interpretation and the nature and practice of reception history. Since the study of the effects of texts is also relevant, I give some attention to that approach as well.

The History of Interpretation Those who contribute to the history of the interpretation of the Bible may have any number of aims. One is to understand the earlier text; another is to understand the later text; a third is to understand how individual interpreters and their communities stand in living continuity with the earlier text and its interpretation over time. Finally, one may be interested in the varieties of receptions themselves, in the interplay of text and new contexts as time goes on. The history of biblical interpretation is often viewed primarily as a theological enterprise. Interpretation is deeply embedded in Jewish and Chris-

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tian tradition. In Jewish Orthodox education, Jewish children are taught to read midrash and, later, Rashi, alongside the biblical text. Catholics hear Genesis 3 as the story of original sin, although the word “sin” does not occur in the biblical text. The church had an interpreted Bible right up to the Reformation. In other words, the Bible was read in light of the traditions that arose as the Bible was read and interpreted. The Reformers intentionally separated the New Testament from its history of interpretation. Protestants were exhorted to read the text in the vernacular and to await a direct experience of the word of God. The triumph of the historical-critical method in the nineteenth century completed the process by making the original historical context the touchstone of meaning. Two series that have attempted to collect material from the history of interpretation in the early church are the Church’s Bible and Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. The history of the interpretation of the Bible also includes modern histories of scholarship. David Lincicum addressed this topic in a paper at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in 2016. He discussed the problems involved in writing a history of interpretation that would combine local case studies into a greater whole. He also analyzed several significant histories of biblical interpretation—those by Stephen Neill, W. G. Kümmel, Henning Graf Reventlow, William Baird, and Magne Saebo—to see how they negotiated the issue of presentist or teleological bias. Lincicum concluded that there are various kinds of retrospection in these histories of interpretation. He described one kind as “unavoidable teleology of abridgement.” This means omitting aspects of the history of interpretation that do not contribute to the writer’s preferred process of development and its conclusion in the writer’s present. He also mentions a “genealogical self-understanding.” With this term he refers to the way in which a historian may construct the history of interpretation so that it depicts the emergence, growth, and flowering of the writer’s preferred interpretation of key biblical texts. Finally, he points to “progressive teleology.” This term also involves the construction of a history of interpretation that selects those elements that make a coherent story leading to a desired end. All of these terms refer to a biased history that subordinates past interpretations to the needs and interests of the present as viewed by the writer. While “some presentist concern or a desire for retrieval will arguably” always exist in such narratives, scholars should be self-critical in this regard. Seeing “presentism” as a problem is peculiar to the modern “objective” and scholarly type of the history of interpretation.

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The discussions in this book of early Christian writers who explicitly interpret passages in the letters of Paul are part of the history of the interpretation of those letters. Examples of such writers are Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen. These writers accepted more of the letters attributed to Paul as actually authored by Paul than many scholars today do. Virtually all critical New Testament scholars today accept Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon as written by the historical Paul. Ancient writers accepted these and also Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and usually Hebrews. They also did not see “presentism” as a problem. On the contrary, the goal of interpretation for them was not discovering the original meaning of Paul’s letters, that is, what moved him to write, what he intended to accomplish by writing, and how his addressees responded to what he wrote. Rather, they were concerned to make Paul’s letters useful in meeting the theological, liturgical, and pastoral needs of their own churches. These interpreters of Paul’s letters therefore may reveal more about their own times and current concerns than about Paul’s letters in their original context and about his concerns. There is, however, some overlap between Paul’s intentions and purposes and those of his later interpreters. For example, Paul founded communities of Gentiles who were quite recently pagans who worshiped the traditional Greek and Roman gods. Paul was concerned to transform them into monotheists who worshiped the God of Israel and accepted Jesus Christ as God’s delegate (Messiah and judge). He also wanted to transform their ethical practices, especially sexual mores, into practices more appropriate for worshipers of the God of Israel. Analogously, later writers were concerned to transform recent Gentile converts by forming them into new followers of Christ. In this book, the history of interpretation is expanded by including not only proto-orthodox writers but also those deemed by some of them as “heretics,” such as Marcion and the Gnostics (especially the Valentinians). I thus include some of the works found at Nag Hammadi and also some Christian apocryphal works. This broader use of source material reflects the realization that Christian theology and practice were diverse from the beginning.

Wirkungsgeschichte: History of the Effects of Texts In contrast to the history of interpretation, the notion of Wirkungsgeschichte has its origin not in a theological context but in the philosophical

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hermeneutics of Hans Georg Gadamer. He advocated this approach in opposition to the ideal of objectivity, which the humanities had taken from the natural sciences. That model, he argued, ignored what he called “the concretion of historical consciousness.” The objective model assumed that with goodwill and a disciplined and trained effort, one could actually share the worldview of Isaiah or Paul. Gadamer was troubled by the concept of time as a gulf that could be bridged, or leapt over, because that would mean that history had no effect on human consciousness. He argued that temporal distance is not a yawning abyss but a productive condition that enables understanding. The historical distance between us and Isaiah and Paul is not an abyss but the ground on which we are standing. In order to understand a text from the past, the interpreter must turn over the soil of that ground because it constitutes the interpreter’s own “pre-understanding” or “enabling prejudice.” This “enabling prejudice” defines our hermeneutical situation, our situatedness in a particular time and place. Gadamer also proposed that interpreting a text involves a fusion of horizons. Both the text and the interpreter are located in a particular historical tradition and language, for which he uses the metaphor “horizon.” In taking the horizon of the text seriously and bringing it into dialogue with their own horizon, interpreters achieve a fusion of horizons, which enables a valid and meaningful interpretation of the text. Wirkungsgeschichte is one of the theories that influenced the work of Elizabeth Clark in her book Reading Renunciation. In her introduction, she states that, in this work, she is not interested in “the ‘original settings’ of Biblical texts and the ‘intentions’ of their authors.” She is interested rather “in the history of the effects that Biblical texts produced in late ancient Christian communities, that is, in an asceticized Wirkungsgeschichte.” Throughout the book, she attempts to show how the rigorous ascetic agenda of many ancient Christian writers informed their interpretation of scriptural texts “and incited the production of ascetic meaning.” In the chapters that follow, the assumption is made, with Gadamer, that we cannot fully, or with certainty, enter into Paul’s worldview or claim to know his intentions and exact meaning. It will be recognized, however, that there are major differences between the intentions and meanings of the Paul revealed in his letters and those of later writers who interpret him, think with him, and sometimes wrestle with and transform him. Sympathetic understanding of these later writers will be attempted, but at the

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same time, it will be noted that “effects” are sometimes less effects of the text of Paul than of a later writer’s circumstances, theology, or ideology. These circumstances include the changing needs of the church.

Reception History The term “reception history” comes from the term Rezeptionsaesthetik, coined by Hans Robert Jauss in 1982 to explain his theory of reading. The German term means “an aesthetics of reception” and focuses on the reader rather than on the author of a text. Playing upon Gadamer’s image of the horizon of the present, Jauss described the criteria readers use to judge a literary text as a “horizon of expectations.” He argued that a text is not a timeless object, and the understanding of its first readers does not establish its meaning. This is so because later readers, with different horizons of expectations, will interpret it differently. An example is the reception of Shakespeare’s character Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare’s contemporaries found the character to be relatively realistic, whereas audiences and readers today find it offensively anti-Jewish in a post-Holocaust world. The series Blackwell Bible Commentaries is devoted to the reception history of individual books of the Bible of both the Old and the New Testaments. It emphasizes “the influence of the Bible on literature, art, music, and film, its role in the evolution of religious beliefs and practices, and its impact on social and political developments.” The Walter de Gruyter publishing company has also been encouraging studies in biblical reception history for some time and has established the series Studies in Reception History. It publishes as well a journal titled Journal of the Bible and Its Reception. In addition, its list includes the Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, published both in print and online, and Handbooks of the Bible and Its Reception. The Society of Biblical Literature has a series titled The Bible and Its Reception intended to foster the exploration of “the ways that religious traditions, popular culture, media, politics, literature, film, music and visual arts have adopted, adapted, and used biblical texts, themes, and figures throughout history.” A text is certainly not a timeless object, as the New Critics once seemed to assume. Practically speaking, the understanding of the first readers, not to mention the author’s intentions, has not in fact established the meaning of any text over time. Readers play a significant role in constructing meaning, yet the process of communication between the “author” (however

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defined) and the first readers (or first listeners) occupies a special place in the history of reception. Clarity about that process sheds light on later instances of communication involving Paul, his letters, and later readers. This is true both in cases of comparison and in those of contrast.

A Recent Challenge to Standard Practices of Reception History Brennan Breed has challenged the basic idea of what he calls “the borderline” in standard reception histories between original and reception. In the case of Job, for example, translations such as the Septuagint, Theodotion, the targumim, and the Peshitta, as versions of the text, all seem to be part of the book of Job itself and at the same time to participate in the history of reception. Furthermore, study of the “world behind the text,” that is, the “original” context of the text, involves modern scholarly research, so the world behind the text is “a complicated mix of things in and in front of the text.” Breed argues that “reception history, or the study of things other than the original text in its original context, may be all that has ever existed.” In other words, “a text is always, from the start, a recontextualization of other texts. That is, the elements of any specific text—the words, phrases, motifs, genre, gestures, formatting, and so on—are cited from other contexts previous to the ‘original’ context of enunciation . . . Texts are primarily acts of adaptive reuse, not pure invention.” In this statement Breed is taking the notion of “original” in an absolute sense. Of course he is right that no text is entirely original. Most historians of reception, however, take the term in a relative sense. A certain text, which recontextualizes its sources, motifs, and so forth, is original relative to those texts that interpret it, use it to think with, or seem to be influenced by it. Much of what Breed argues, however, can be granted. For example, there is some validity to the statement that “the phrase ‘the original text’ actually means ‘the text I have chosen to study for various contingent reasons.’” In the case of this book, I have chosen to take the twenty-eighth revised edition of the Nestle-Aland eclectic critical text of the letters of Paul as the original text of Paul’s letters. I take “original” here in a relative, not an absolute sense. This critical text, which is open to correction, represents a largely successful attempt to reconstruct the earliest recoverable form of the text of the letters attributed to Paul.

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Breed claims that “the true great divide—the divide between virtual potential and actual expression—runs through the middle of every text, asking ‘What can this text do?’” I agree to a certain point that such agency is evident in some receptions of Paul’s letters, cases in which the later writer partially discovers a new meaning of the text and partially creates it. There are other times, however, when later writers ignore a relevant Pauline text or, sometimes with great ingenuity, make it say something quite beyond or contrary to what can be inferred from the text’s “virtual semantic potentials.” Such moves are explicable by considering the later writers’ “situatedness” in a particular historical context.

Types of Reception History Lorna Hardwick and Christopher Stray have defined “receptions” in the following way: “By ‘receptions’ we mean the ways in which Greek and Roman material has been transmitted, excerpted, interpreted, rewritten, reimagined and represented.” Their approach is focused on showing that “the meaning of a text is not a transcendental object to be comprehended, but an ever changing construction based on the historical and cultural assumptions of its readers.” Such a model aims at constructing literary history. Another type of reception history is historiographical in a different way. Benjamin White’s goal is “a narration of Paul’s reception in the second century.” The regnant narrative for many years was that of F. C. Baur, who argued that only the Gnostics paid serious attention to Paul in the second century. White refers to this view as “the Pauline Captivity narrative.” Its hegemony was broken primarily by three comprehensive works— by Andreas Lindemann, Ernst Dassmann, and David Rensberger—that provided a new narrative: “Each argued that Paul’s legacy grew steadily among a variety of second-century Christian groups, ‘orthodox’ and ‘heretical’ alike, which competed over him as their apostle.” These three works also constitute compendia of “the full range of data on the use of Paul in the second century.” White also discusses the work of Donald Penny and a jointly edited book by Michael Bird and Joseph Dodson, each of which has contributed to the new narrative of Paul in the second century. White’s own contribution “is a thick description of the shared image of the Pauline tradition” that appears in 3 Corinthians and Irenaeus’s Against Heresies, by means of which he shows “elements of continuity with and change from

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the earlier layers of the Pauline tradition that they invoke.” Although Margaret M. Mitchell does not characterize her book on John Chrysostom as reception history, she also focuses on images of Paul. Her goal in this work is to discern “the range of portraits of Paul in a single author.” Another kind of reception history is theological. Jennifer Strawbridge has modeled this approach in The Pauline Effect. She began by creating a database from a collation of more than twenty-seven thousand references to the Pauline letters in ante-Nicene Christian writings. Four passages were cited most frequently by early Christian writers: 1 Cor 2:6–16, Eph 6:10–17, 1 Cor 15:50–58, and Col 1:15–20. Strawbridge investigated how a range of early Christian writers used these passages with Christian formation as their goal. By “Christian formation” she means “writings functioning formatively in a direct way as they purport to teach the basics of the faith and to define doctrine in the face of opposition.” These four texts also occur in the major theological debates in which Irenaeus, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian engaged. Unlike the work of Hardwick and Stray, this book, Paul Transformed, is not primarily focused on literary history, nor is it a phenomenology of reading, as is the work of Irene Peirano. It is also not primarily aimed at writing a narrative of the reception of Paul, as the work of Benjamin White and his predecessors is. Rather, it makes use of the history of interpretation, theological interpretation, and the history of reception more broadly conceived. Chapter 2 on resurrection and Chapter 3 on the choice between marriage and celibacy deal primarily with direct interpretation of particular texts in the letters of Paul. These chapters contribute to the history of interpretation and also draw upon theological debates about important teachings. They thus include instances of the theological type of the history of interpretation. Chapter 1 on apocalyptic ideas is grounded in some of Paul’s texts but works with a broader understanding of the reception of Paul’s ideas. The other chapters are more broadly conceived as the history of reception of some important aspects of the Pauline letters. Chapter 5, for example, on the transformation of Paul as suffering apostle to saint and martyr, compares and contrasts Paul’s portrayal of his suffering in 2 Corinthians with practices that revere Paul after his death. The widest-ranging chapter of this type is Chapter 4: “The Role of Women in the Church.” Debates raged in the centuries following Paul’s death about what roles and offices were appropriate for women and which were to be reserved for men alone. In these debates, the letters of Paul are not usually cited explicitly.

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The advocates for women as leaders, as well as those who opposed that option, were familiar with the letters of Paul and aware that he approved of women’s leadership in some passages and opposed it in others. I suggest that this state of affairs constitutes a contested reception of Paul. A crucial point here is that reception of Paul may be recognized in texts that do not specifically refer or even allude to Pauline texts. Brian Arnold, for example, demonstrates that Diognetus, the Odes of Solomon, and Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho are influenced by Paul even though they do not quote him directly. He uses the theory of secondary orality to support his argument that Justin knew and used Paul’s letters indirectly. The theory suggests that Paul’s letters had become part of the oral tradition of the church at least by the time of Justin. In exploring the production of Pauline images in the second century, Benjamin White draws upon “both modern as well as ancient theoretical works on orality, textuality, and mental imagery.” He focuses on a Pauline “tradition” and the formation of images of Paul and illuminates these studies by using theories about cultural and social memory. While I do not repeat these studies involving secondary orality and social memory, they provide a basis for the broader approach to reception history taken in Chapters 1, 4, and 5. I take a position similar to that of Jens Schröter, Simon Butticaz, and Andreas Dettwiler: “The term ‘reception’ is thereby used in a broader sense. It not only includes explicit references to the person of Paul or quotations from his letters, but also social effects of his missionary work and implicit treatments of topics that occur under new circumstances.” As an example of this broader sense of reception history, Chapter 4 addresses the topic of the role of women in the church by considering three areas Paul addressed: teaching, prophecy, and holding defined roles or offices. The tension on these issues within and among the received letters of Paul helps to explain the presence of women leaders in the early church as well as opposition to them. My premise is that Christians in the centuries following the life of Paul were aware that some passages in his letters affirmed the leadership and pastoral work of women in the church and that other passages forbade it. The conflict about the role of women arose because some emphasized the affirmations and others the prohibitions. Chapter 5, another example of the broader approach to reception history, traces the transformation of Paul’s self-image of suffering apostle to new images of him as saint and martyr. The last major section of the chap-

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Introduction

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ter treats the veneration of Paul after his death. This treatment is based on literary and material evidence. For the veneration of Paul in Rome, literary, architectural, and other material evidence is discussed, including the tomb of Paul and his relics. Other interesting and important topics could have been included in this book, but there was neither time nor space for them all. One of these is faith. The role of faith in the teaching of Paul has been masterfully articulated recently by Teresa Morgan in Roman Faith and Christian Faith. She has argued persuasively that, “Paul uses pistis language to locate Christ in the middle of the relationship between God and humanity. Christ is simultaneously faithful to and trusted by both God and humanity . . . and that location enables him to restore humanity to a relationship of dikaiosyne [righteousness or justice] with God.” While emphasizing that the significance of pistis expresses faithfulness and trust, Morgan observes that “trust and propositional belief are everywhere combined.” With regard to reception, she argues that 1 Clement and several of the letters of Ignatius are dependent on Paul in their discussion of faith. Both of these writers place more emphasis on propositional belief than Paul does. Ilaria L. E. Ramelli has also written on the reception of the notion of faith by early Christian writers. As we have seen, Strawbridge discusses the reception of the four most often cited passages from Paul’s letters, using the broader list recognized as Paul’s in antiquity. In my view, Paul himself used the metaphor of armor to describe the fight for salvation (1 Thess 5:8–10). The passage about putting on the armor of God in Eph 6:10–17 is a reception of Paul’s use of the metaphor. Ephesians 6:10–17, in turn, is received by many early Christian writers. Origen uses the passage in continuity with its significance in Ephesians by advocating the use of the “shield of faith” against the fiery darts of the devil. He elaborates this idea by saying that the wounds inflicted by the words of Celsus must be healed by Christian teachers so that those who have heard them may be helped to remain firm in the faith. This is an apologetic use of the propositional element in faith. Origen elaborates the metaphor in another way by affirming that the shield of faith also protects against succumbing to the passions and vices. This is a moral elaboration of Eph 6:11. Much work remains to be done on this topic; I hope that others will take up the question of the reception of Paul’s understanding of faith.

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1 The Transformation of Paul’s Apocalyptic Ideas Classic apocalypticism involves both the temporal dimension, eschatology, and the spatial dimension, heavenly revelation. This chapter begins with Paul’s apocalyptic ideas and practices, especially his apocalyptic eschatology (the temporal aspect) and his ascent to heaven in 2 Cor 12:1–10 (the spatial aspect). His apocalyptic eschatological teaching is characterized by imminent expectation and suggestive but ambiguous statements about the events of the last days. The account of his ascent to the third heaven is characterized by silence about the heavenly revelation that he received. Only his request regarding his “thorn in the flesh” and Christ’s response are narrated (2 Cor 12:7–9). With regard to the temporal dimension, some later writers, such as the authors of Colossians and Ephesians, transform Paul’s imminent expectation from temporal hope into cosmic exaltation. Another, the author of 2 Thessalonians, elaborates and updates Paul’s eschatological scenario. Others (Irenaeus and especially Origen) transform it into a long spiritual process following the departure from earthly life. With regard to the spatial dimension and heavenly revelation, two later writers, the author of the Coptic Gnostic Apocalypse of Paul and the author of the apocryphal Apocalypse of Paul, transform the account of Paul’s ascent into detailed descriptions of what he saw and heard in the complex heavenly world.

Paul’s Apocalyptic Ideas and Practices Paul’s apocalyptic ideas and practices fall into two main categories: eschatology and heavenly revelation. Classic apocalypses are typically composed of these two types of material.1 Paul’s eschatological ideas form a web

12

Transformation of Paul’s Apocalyptic Ideas  13

in which events involving the whole cosmos and those that affect individual human beings are closely related. The first series of apocalyptic events involves God’s sending his son in the flesh to condemn sin in the flesh (Rom 8:3). The next is the resurrection of Jesus whereby he was appointed Son of God, that is, Messiah (Rom 1:4).2 Paul was then commissioned to proclaim the gospel to the Gentiles, who through baptism received the Holy Spirit, which was to enable them to walk according to the spirit rather than according to the flesh.3 Paul expected the risen Christ to return from heaven during the lifetime of the present generation to rescue his followers “from the wrath that is coming” (1 Thess 1:10).4 Although this “wrath” is not explained, the language in its context suggests a public, cosmic event, the definitive divine visitation of the last days in which the righteous will be blessed and the wicked punished. In the same letter, Paul declared “by a word of the Lord” that at the coming of the Lord, the dead in Christ will rise, and those in Christ who are living will be “caught up with them [the risen dead] in clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (4:17). The implication is that they will all accompany Christ to the heavenly world.5 Thus the age to come, full salvation, is to take place in heaven.6 Paul’s imminent expectation endured, and its presence can still be seen in his later letters. The image of leaving the earthly tent that is the human body and inhabiting a building in heaven (2 Cor 5:1–5) does not imply that imminent expectation has waned. In the same context Paul states, “we all must appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Cor 5:10). This statement suggests an imminent return of Christ as judge over his own, whether still alive or recently dead. Similarly, Paul speaks in Phil 1:23 about his “desire to depart and be with Christ.” Here Paul considers the possibility that he will die before Christ’s return. This possibility does not imply, however, a weakening of imminent expectation. He refers repeatedly in this letter to the “day of Christ,” his return, as an event already on the horizon (1:6, 10; 2:16; 3:20–21). Finally, and most clearly, Paul informs the audience of Romans that now is the time to wake from sleep, for “now our salvation is closer than when we came to faith. The night is advanced, and the day is near” (Rom 13:11–12). Paul’s expectations about what will happen to the earth at the time of the end are not entirely clear. He urges his addressees to concentrate on serving the Lord in an undistracted way, “For the world in its present form is passing away” (1 Cor 7:31). This could mean that the earth itself will pass away. Alternatively, it could mean only that social institutions, like marriage

14  Transformation of Paul’s Apocalyptic Ideas

and slavery, will no longer exist in the new world. In another passage he contrasts “the glory that is about to be revealed to us” with the present time, in which creation “is subjected to futility.” The subjection to futility appears to be equivalent to subjection to transitoriness, since Paul speaks in the same context about creation as enduring “slavery to decay” (Rom 8:18–21). It is likely that the redemption of creation from this slavery means a dramatic transformation, equivalent to a new creation, at the coming of Christ. Just as the resurrected bodies of those “in Christ” will no longer be flesh and blood,7 the earth will no longer consist of matter that is subject to decay. As noted above, 1 Thess 1:10 implies that there will be a cosmic destruction at which time the wicked will be punished.8 It seems likely that from the time of this visitation, the wicked will cease to exist in any form. This hypothesis is supported by the observation that Paul never uses the word “Hades,” the Greek term for the underworld. Furthermore, he does not use the word “Gehenna,” the common Jewish term for a place of punishment after death.9 If the wicked are annihilated at the coming of Christ, there is no need for a special place of punishment after death. Paul’s ideas and practices related to heavenly revelation constitute the second type of apocalyptic material in his letters. Speaking in tongues involves heavenly revelation when it is interpreted. Paul qualifies his support for this practice probably because some Corinthians were overdoing it.10 When such speech is interpreted, it reveals mysteries or secrets as speech in the spirit.11 Prophecy from Paul’s point of view also seems to count as the mediation of heavenly or divine knowledge or wisdom. In the context in which he subordinates prophecy to love, he associates prophecy with knowledge of “mysteries” or “secrets.”12 He also says that the one who prophesies speaks to others to build them up, encourage them, and console them (1 Cor 14:3). Although the word group “prophecy” is not used, Paul’s revelation of a “mystery” to the grieving Thessalonians seems to qualify as an instance of prophecy. In this case the mystery is eschatological, that is, it is the revelation of events associated with the return of Christ.13 The ascent or “snatching up” of Paul to paradise in 2 Corinthians 12 is similar to the classic apocalypses of the ascent type.14 Paul associates his ascent with “visions and revelations of the Lord,” which he has apparently experienced.15 I agree with those who have argued that Paul speaks about his own ascent and that there is one journey involved, in other words, that “paradise” is in the “third heaven.”16 It is striking that Paul does not describe

Transformation of Paul’s Apocalyptic Ideas  15

what he sees in paradise but what he hears: auditions are as important as visions. He hears ἄρρητα ῥήματα (“words that cannot be expressed”). A common interpretation of this expression is that what Paul heard was ineffable: he was not able to articulate and report it. The clause that follows, however, puts the emphasis rather on what is permitted: no human being is permitted to speak those words (2 Cor 12:4).17 The account is paradoxical because the glorious experience Paul boasts of centers on a revelation or oracle from Christ affirming Paul’s weakness and suffering in spite of their close association with the power of Christ (2 Cor 12:8–10). The question of how all these apocalyptic phenomena related to Paul’s social and political context is a complex one, but a few remarks can be made. As one zealous for the traditions of his ancestors (Gal 1:14), Paul may have studied in Jerusalem, where he may have encountered anti-Roman views. Nevertheless, he was a Romanized diaspora Jew and not anti-Roman in principle (Rom 13:1–7).18 His view of the present age as “evil” has more to do with sinfulness than politics and with the suffering and death involved in the transitoriness and vulnerability of human bodies.19 Like many others in the Hellenized world, he viewed the spirit to be stronger and better than the flesh, and the heavenly world better than the earthly. The new age would allow human beings to become spiritual beings, free of earthly and bodily limitations. Eternal fellowship with Christ would then follow, the hoped-for culmination of being in Christ’s hands in the present.20

The Transformation of Paul’s Apocalyptic Eschatology The first type of reception involves the transformation of Paul’s imminent expectation in a variety of ways. Colossians and Ephesians shift the emphasis from future to present and from the temporal spectrum to the spatial. Second Thessalonians basically maintains Paul’s imminent expectation but elaborates his eschatological scenario and thus extends the time line somewhat. The Pastoral Epistles abandon imminent expectation in favor of a peaceful life as good citizens but maintain certain apocalyptic topics and themes as part of their living tradition. Justin Martyr maintains imminent expectation, seeing some prophecies of 2 Thessalonians as being fulfilled in his own time. Irenaeus and Origen replace imminent expectation with theories about a long spiritual journey after death leading to fulfillment in the presence of God.

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Colossians Although Colossians transforms Paul’s apocalyptic ideas so that the present, spatial dimension is more prominent than the future, temporal dimension, the author maintains Paul’s “eschatological reservation.” In other words, Colossians does not express the view that hopes for the future have already been fulfilled entirely in the present. Like the letters written by Paul, it contains exhortation to remain steadfast, both in faith and in deeds, so that the audience may experience the fulfillment of the promises yet to come.21 As we have seen, in an apocalyptic context Paul associated hope with the coming of Christ.22 The author of Colossians speaks of hope differently, as something “that is laid up in store for you in the heavens” (1:5).23 In this usage, the emphasis is shifted from the future to the present.24 The addressees do not yet actually possess the object of hope but are assured that it is awaiting them in heaven. The context has also changed from a temporal perspective to a spatial one. Spatial images appear again later in Colossians 1: “With joy give thanks to the father who has qualified you to share in the portion of the holy ones in the light, who has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (1:12–14). It is noteworthy that Paul and the author of Colossians use the idea of God or Christ rescuing the addressees in different ways. In an apocalyptic context, Paul uses the verb “rescue” to speak about a process that has begun but will be completed only in the future (1 Thess 1:10). In contrast the Colossian Paul uses it to refer to a past event: God has already rescued those who are faithful in Christ (Col 1:12) from the domain of darkness and transferred them into the kingdom of his son (1:13). We see then that the author of Colossians has shifted the language of Paul’s apocalyptic ideas from a temporal register to a spatial one and from a future perspective to a past or present one. This shift may be due to the lessening or loss of Paul’s intense imminent expectation. The two authors also formulate the significance of baptism differently. Paul declares, “We have been buried therefore with him [Christ] through baptism into death, in order that, as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the father, so also we may walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4), and “For if we have become conformed to the likeness of his death, we will indeed [become conformed to the likeness of his]

Transformation of Paul’s Apocalyptic Ideas  17

resurrection” (6:5). The author of Colossians, however, says, “you have been buried with him [Christ] in baptism, in which you were also raised with [him] through faith in the activity of God who raised him from the dead” (Col 2:12). Paul avoids saying that believers have risen from the dead. It is striking that the Colossian Paul, in contrast, states that very thing. Yet that author does not present salvation as a fully past or present event. Rather, he modifies Paul’s language to describe the change that his Gentile addressees have undergone. He does so by using the metaphors of “having been dead” and “having been raised with Christ.” The metaphorical aim of these claims is clearly expressed: “And you, being dead because of transgressions and because of the foreskin of your flesh—he made you alive with him, forgiving us all transgressions” (2:13). The Colossian Paul uses these metaphors rhetorically for the formation of his Gentile audience when he says, “If therefore you have been raised with Christ, seek the things above, where Christ is seated on the right hand of God” (3:1).25

Ephesians The seemingly small changes in imagery made in Colossians in relation to the undisputed letters of Paul had profound consequences for the reception of Paul’s apocalyptic ideas. Many scholars recognize that the author of the letter to the Ephesians used Colossians as a source.26 He may have believed that Paul wrote Colossians. In any case, Ephesians also lacks imminent expectation and places even more emphasis on the heavenly world than Colossians does. The Ephesian Paul tells how “He [God] raised him [Christ] from the dead and seated him on his right hand in the heavenly places high above every ruler and authority and power and bearer of ruling power and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come; and he has subordinated all things under his feet and made him head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of the one who fills all in all” (1:20–23). The historical Paul used the image of a body to speak about the church as an interdependent unity (1 Cor 12:12–31, Rom 12:5). The whole body is metaphorically Christ, not the head. In the passage from Ephesians just cited, Christ is portrayed as the head of his body, the church, and the cosmic ruler of all things.27 In 1 Cor 15:25–26, Paul states that Christ is reigning (as Messiah) and that God is in the process of placing all enemies under Christ’s feet, alluding to Ps 110:1. In contrast, the passage in Ephesians cited above implies that all

18  Transformation of Paul’s Apocalyptic Ideas

personal beings and all things were already subordinated to Christ at the time of his resurrection, which involved his exaltation to heaven and installation as cosmic ruler. This shift from future fulfillment to a present reality, as well as to a cosmic perspective, is evident also in chapter 2 of Ephesians: “God, who is rich in mercy, on account of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead because of our trespasses—by grace we are saved—and he raised us with him and seated us in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, in order that in the ages to come he might show the extraordinary richness of his grace in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus” (2:4–7). The idea that we are raised from the death that results from sin and seated in the heavenly places in Christ indicates that the present exaltation of Christ anticipates our own. As we have seen, Col 3:1 urges the audience to consider themselves raised with Christ and to set their minds on the things above. Ephesians here intensifies that image by implying that we are not only raised but also seated on the right hand of God “in Christ.” The reference to “the ages to come” in Eph 2:7 overlooks the moment mentioned in Colossians when Christ will be made manifest (Col 3:4). It is at that time that “we also will be made manifest with him in glory.” The new theology of Ephesians “has no need for Christ to return: the architectural wonder of the ekklesia stands forever.”28 Ephesians presents the high point of God’s plan as the recent inclusion of the Gentiles in the people of God, a plan revealed to Paul and carried out through him (3:1–13).29 Nevertheless, there are hints that God’s plan has not yet been fully implemented. The addressees are exhorted to “make the most of the time, for the days are evil” (5:16). The present time is characterized as a contest with the devil and with rulers and authorities that are not of flesh and blood. The addressees must fight with “the cosmic rulers of this darkness” and “the evil spiritual powers in the heavenly places” (6:11–12). This exhortation may be a reception and elaboration of Paul’s poetic claim that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ (Rom 8:37–39). The Ephesian Paul juxtaposes enthronement in heaven “with Christ” and the need to struggle with the cosmic evil powers, which are still active.30

2 Thessalonians The treatment of apocalyptic hopes in 2 Thessalonians differs greatly from those of Colossians and Ephesians. The author writes to warn the

Transformation of Paul’s Apocalyptic Ideas  19

addressees not to be deceived by those who say “the day of the Lord is about to come” (2:1–3).31 What historical situation gave rise to such an idea? Josephus provides evidence that there was intense expectation of a divine intervention during the first Jewish war with Rome. For example, while Titus was besieging the upper town of Jerusalem, the insurgents declared that the temple would be saved by the one who dwelled in it and that the outcome of the war depended on God.32 Most strikingly, Josephus tells how, while the temple was burning, women, children, and a mixed multitude took refuge on its outer portico. When the Roman soldiers set fire to the portico from below, they all perished. Josephus comments that they “owed their destruction to a false prophet, who had on that day proclaimed to the people in the city that God commanded them to go up to the temple court, to receive there the tokens of their deliverance.”33 Was there a Christian text that may have evoked a similar expectation, to which the author of 2 Thessalonians was moved to reply? The apocalyptic discourse attributed to Jesus in Mark 13 is a good candidate. The Markan Jesus predicts a period of tribulation that sounds a lot like the first Jewish war with Rome. This “predictive” description is followed by the phrase “but in those days after that tribulation” and then by the prediction of the Son of Man coming in clouds (Mark 13:24–27).34 Matthew intensified Mark’s association of the coming of Christ as Son of Man with the Jewish war. Matthew rewrote the phrase from Mark quoted above to “now immediately after the tribulation of those days” (Matt 24:29). It is not necessary to conclude that the author of 2 Thessalonians read Mark 13 or Matthew 24. These passages may have become widely known through the process of secondary orality. The tight link between the “day of the Lord,” that is, the coming of Christ, and the Jewish war may have spread from communal reading to word of mouth. Why does the author of 2 Thessalonians correct the view that the day of the Lord is about to come? It is more likely that he wrote after the destruction of the temple in 70 CE than during the war itself. The circulation of the rumor that the return of Christ was to follow soon after the end of the Jewish war may have led some to become excited about the nearness of the day of the Lord. The author of 2 Thessalonians rejects this excitement perhaps because a considerable amount of time had passed since the end of the war. In any case the author of 2 Thessalonians modifies the view that the coming of Christ was imminent by declaring that the day of the Lord will

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not come before “the rebellion” and the revelation of “the man of lawlessness, the son of destruction” (2:3). It would be inappropriate to argue that 2 Thessalonians is anti-apocalyptic or that the author wished to dampen imminent expectation. His teaching does not stray significantly from Paul’s own sense that the return was imminent. The mystery or secret of lawlessness was already at work in the author’s view (2:7). The eschatological adversary, “the man of lawlessness, the son of destruction,” was ready to burst on the scene. It was only the restraining force that prevented his appearance. The “one who restrains” is the one exercising the restraining force until he himself is removed from the scene. This restrainer is most likely an angel, acting as an agent of God.35 According to the scenario of 2 Thessalonians 2, when “the restrainer” is removed, the eschatological adversary will appear, “who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God” (2:4).36 This is the earliest text that states clearly that the eschatological adversary or antichrist will take his seat in the temple.37 The author, adapting earlier traditions, may well be the creator of this specific motif. Its presence is not proof that the letter was written before the temple was destroyed in 70 CE. Martin Dibelius has shown that the motif occurs in texts composed after the destruction of the temple.38 The “man of lawlessness” will be accepted by many who are destined to perish. This acceptance constitutes the “rebellion” or “apostasy” that must occur before the parousia.39 A similar theme occurs in Mark 13. False messiahs and false prophets will appear and deceive many immediately before the revelation of the Son of Man.40 The main difference between Mark 13 and 2 Thessalonians, however, seems to result from different interpretations of the “prophecy” of the “abomination of desolation” in Daniel.41 Whereas Mark expected the Romans to fulfill this prophecy by setting up a statue in the temple,42 the author of 2 Thessalonians expected the prophecy to be fulfilled by an evil man, resembling the veiled description of King Antiochus IV Epiphanes in Daniel 11, who would usurp God’s place in the temple.43 Second Thessalonians may also be hinting at other historical figures and texts, such as the Roman general Pompey, who, after capturing Jerusalem in 63 BCE, entered into the holy of holies of the temple. Psalms of Solomon 17:11–15 refers to him as “the lawless one” who “acted arrogantly.” The Roman emperor Gaius Caligula (37–41 CE) commanded the governor of Syria, Petronius, to set up statues of Caligula in the sanc-

Transformation of Paul’s Apocalyptic Ideas  21

tuary of the temple in Jerusalem. Josephus says of Caligula, “he wished to be considered a god and to be hailed as such.”44 Nero put to death a large number of Christians in Rome after the fire of 64 CE.45 Lawlessness could also be attributed to him because he had his mother put to death.46 After Nero’s suicide in 68 CE a pseudo-Nero arose in Asia and Achaea in 69 CE, anticipating Parthian aid, but he was caught and put to death. Literary influences on 2 Thessalonians 2 may include Ezekiel 28, which contains the following address to the king of Tyre: “Because your heart is proud, and you have said, ‘I am a god, I sit in the seat of the gods, in the heart of the seas,’ yet you are but a man and no god.” (Ezek 28:2 RSV)

Although we cannot be certain that the text of 2 Thessalonians alludes to all of these texts and historical figures, it is clear that the book of Daniel had significant influence on the description of the “man of lawlessness.” The apocalyptic instruction regarding the appearance of the “man of lawlessness” in 2 Thessalonians seems to have resulted from a creative exegetical combination of passages about the abomination of desolation with the summary of Antiochus’s activity in Dan 11:36–37. The text is not explicit about the social role of the lawless man. Whoever he may be, he will be destroyed by the Lord Jesus with the breath of his mouth at the time of his coming (2:8).47 Before he is destroyed, he will deceive many because Satan will be active in him, allowing him to perform many mighty deeds, signs, and wonders, but all of these will be false (2:9–12).48

The Pastoral Epistles It is likely that 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus were written as a group of letters to individuals in the first half of the second century by a single author.49 The loss or rejection of imminent expectation is clear in these letters. Such expectation is replaced by a desire to be at home in society and a concern about what outsiders will think about the communities and their members. The Pastoral Paul urges that several different kinds of prayers be made regularly for the emperor and all authorities so that his addressees may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. The practices and values promoted here may be defined as “good citizenship.”50

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Related to this ideal are the qualifications of the bishop. He must be irreproachable and without fault so that he will have a good reputation among outsiders (1 Tim 3:7). The conduct of the young women of the communities should conform to the traditional roles of wife and mother so that outsiders will not slander the word of God (Titus 2:5). The speech of the young men and the conduct of slaves should also be beyond reproach for analogous reasons (Titus 2:8, 10). In this context, it is understandable that the “mystery” or “secret” of godliness, the “core of the message of salvation,”51 does not include cosmic eschatology or mention the afterlife of the addressees. The mystery, once hidden but now revealed, concerns him “who was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, trusted throughout the world, taken up in glory” (1 Tim 3:16). When the topic of personal eschatology is taken up, the final state is described as “life” or “eternal life” rather than with the more typically apocalyptic language of resurrection or exaltation.52 At the same time, a number of apocalyptic terms and themes appear in these letters. Apocalyptic ideas seem to be part of the tradition that “is not interpreted but inculcated and established as the means of salvation for the present.”53 The number and frequency of these apocalyptic elements suggests that, although the emphasis has shifted to the present, aspects of apocalyptic eschatology are still part of the living tradition for the author and probably for his intended audience. One of these elements is the language of hope: 1 Tim 1:1 (“Christ Jesus our hope”), 1 Tim 4:10 (“we have set our hope on the living God”), and Titus 2:13 (“we wait for the blessed hope and manifestation of the great God and our savior Jesus Christ,” or “manifestation of our great God and savior Jesus Christ”). The theme of hope in 1 Timothy and Titus is different from that of the letters of the historical Paul and Colossians in that it involves God as well as Christ (1 Tim 4:10, Titus 2:13). In the latter passage, the focus may still be on Christ if the term “God” is applied to him. The theme in these two Pastoral Epistles is different from that of Colossians and like that of the historical Paul in being temporal rather than spatial and future rather than present. The theme of hope in 1 Timothy and Titus is different from that of the historical Paul in not being imminent. Another apocalyptic theme in the Pastorals is the notion that false teachers will arise near the end: 1 Tim 4:1 (later times) and 2 Tim 3:1 (last days). Heavenly beings are portrayed as having an active role in the pres-

Transformation of Paul’s Apocalyptic Ideas  23

ent, usually a negative one: 1 Tim 1:20 (“Paul” has turned false teachers over to Satan),54 1 Tim 4:1 (“spirits of error and demonic teachings”), 1 Tim 5:15 (“some have turned away to follow Satan”), and 2 Tim 2:25–26 (opponents are under the power of the devil). In 1 Tim 5:21 the active presence of the corresponding positive heavenly beings is evoked (God, Christ Jesus, and the chosen angels). The return of Christ is also a prominent theme, occurring in all three letters, usually in epiphanic language (“becoming manifest” or “appearing”).55 The motif of the two ages, this age or the present age and the new age or the age to come, also occurs in all three letters: 1 Tim 6:17 (“those who are rich in this age” implies that there is a new age to come) and 2 Tim 4:10 and Titus 2:12 (the present age). Second Timothy mentions the last judgment three times, at 1:18 (find mercy “on that day”), 4:1 (“Christ ­Jesus will judge the living and the dead”), and 4:8 (“the Lord, the righteous judge, on that day”). The latter passage also mentions another apocalyptic element, the crown of righteousness, which “Paul” expects that he and all the faithful will receive.56 Finally, the idea that the faithful who endure will reign with Christ also occurs, as it does in the book of Revelation.57 This theme is found in 2 Timothy at 2:12 (“we will reign with him”), 4:1 (“the kingdom of Christ Jesus”), and 4:18 (the Lord will save “Paul” for the heavenly kingdom of the Lord). The tension between the apparent desire to be at home in the surrounding society and the apocalyptic language that survives is challenging to explain. Some may conclude that “salvation in the future appears to be nothing but the shadow of this past epiphany” of Christ.58 It seems better to ask what purpose the apocalyptic language serves. The desire to live peacefully in the societies of the second century may not always have been enough to create that settled life and the respect of outsiders. Apocalyptic eschatology would serve at such times as consolation and encouragement for enduring in the faith. Even in peaceful times, members of the communities faced death. Images of personal afterlife also had a role to play of consolation and encouragement in that situation.

Justin Martyr Justin Martyr was a philosopher who became a follower of Christ and an outstanding apologist for his new faith and way of life. He was born about 100 CE and martyred at some point between 162 and 168.59 He

24  Transformation of Paul’s Apocalyptic Ideas

e­ mphasized the hope for a bodily resurrection and a general judgment in his presentation of Christians as more moral and courageous in defense of their convictions than others.60 Like 1 Clement and the Letter of Barnabas, Justin refers more frequently and explicitly to the Jewish scriptures that were later included in the Christian Old Testament than to early Christian writings. Justin never mentions Paul and did not cite him explicitly. The reason may be that he did not view Paul’s letters as having the same authority as the Jewish scriptures or the memoirs of the apostles (the Gospels), so he did not use them as major proofs of his arguments.61 Justin’s way of alluding to Paul may not involve direct literary dependence. Rather, Paul’s letters, by way of secondary orality, may be part of the oral tradition that Justin draws upon in his works.62 In Dialogue with Trypho, he argues that the Jewish scriptures prophesy that there will be two advents of the Messiah. In the first, “He is set forth as suffering, inglorious, dishonored, and crucified; but the other, in which He shall come from heaven with glory, when the man of apostasy, who speaks strange things against the Most High, shall venture to do unlawful deeds on the earth against us the Christians.”63 This is a clear allusion to “the apostasy” or “rebellion” and “the man of lawlessness, the son of destruction” in 2 Thess 2:3. It is likely that Justin considered this material to have originated with Paul. The context makes clear that Justin sees this prophecy fulfilled, at least in an anticipatory way, in the sporadic but horrific persecutions of Christians in his time: “Now it is evident that no one can terrify or subdue us who have believed in Jesus all over the world. For it is plain that, though beheaded, and crucified, and thrown to wild beasts, and chains, and fire, and all other kinds of torture, we do not give up our confession; but the more such things happen, the more do others and in larger numbers become faithful, and worshippers of God through the name of Jesus.”64 This is the only clear apocalyptic allusion to Paul in the undisputed works of Justin. Elsewhere in his apocalyptic thinking, he follows the book of Revelation in expecting that those who believe in Christ would live for a thousand years in Jerusalem. Afterward there will be a general and eternal resurrection and general judgment of all human beings.65

Irenaeus Irenaeus lived from about 130 to about 200 CE and became bishop of Lyons in about 178.66 According to Henry Chadwick, he gave coher-

Transformation of Paul’s Apocalyptic Ideas  25

ence and stability to Christian theology.67 Irenaeus’s major surviving work, Against Heresies, was written in the second half of the second century to oppose various Christian theologians and teachers whom he believed to be “evil interpreters of the good word of revelation.”68 Like Justin he often cites the Jewish scriptures that eventually became the Christian Old Testament. He differs from Justin by citing Christian works he considered authoritative more frequently. This is especially true of book 5, in which his aim is “to exhibit proofs from the rest of the Lord’s doctrine and the apostolical epistles.”69 The most common schema for the history of salvation in Against Heresies is threefold: “the pre-Mosaic time of the fathers or ancestors,” the time of the old covenant, and the time of the new covenant.70 He also uses a Trinitarian structure of salvation history under the influence of 1 Cor 15:25– 28. This schema involves the time from the creation to the incarnation (the time of the prophetic work of the Spirit), the time from the incarnation to the end of the millennium (the time of the work of the Son), and the kingdom of heaven, in which God is active as Father. He argues that the Spirit prepared humanity for the Son, the Son led them to the Father, and the Father confers incorruption upon them by allowing them to see him.71 According to Irenaeus “the elders taught that the saved make progress from the new Jerusalem on earth to Paradise and from Paradise to heaven, that is, from the Spirit to the Son, and through the Son to the Father.” Thus human beings, as a group and as individuals, make progress through historical time and also after death.72 In book 5, which is the conclusion of the work, before discussing the kingdom of the Son and the kingdom of the Father, Irenaeus discusses “the time of Antichrist.”73 He considers the antichrist to be “an apostate and a robber.” The idea that he is an apostate comes from the connection of “the man of lawlessness” with “the apostasy” or “rebellion” in 2 Thess 2:3.74 He “is anxious to be adored as God.”75 This aspect of the portrait comes from 2 Thess 2:4, which says that the lawless man takes his seat in the temple of God, “proclaiming that he himself is God.”76 Irenaeus also portrays the antichrist as a king. The idea that the man of lawlessness wants to be proclaimed a king is not explicit in 2 Thess 2:1–12. It could have been inferred from that passage or its pre-text Dan 11:36–37, or it may have originated in the understanding that “Christ” means “messiah” or “anointed king.” Thus the antichrist also is or aspires to be a king. According to Irenaeus, he is “endued with all the power of the devil” (Haer. 5.25.1).77

26  Transformation of Paul’s Apocalyptic Ideas

­ imilarly, the coming of the man of lawlessness occurs “by the activity of S Satan” (2 Thess 2:9). Like Paul, Irenaeus was not anti-Roman. He accepted the current reading of Daniel, which interpreted the fourth kingdom as the Roman empire. However, he understood the ten horns and the ten kings they represent not to be individual Roman emperors but rather the ten last kings that divide up and succeed the Roman empire. It is after their time that the antichrist will come.78 Irenaeus uses imagery from Daniel (the little horn and the distinctive king it represents) and then concludes the description with a citation of the manifestation and destruction of the “man of lawlessness” in 2 Thess 2:8–12 (Haer. 5.25.3). In discussing the kingdom of the Son, the millennium, Irenaeus makes use of both the book of Revelation and Paul. He implies that the kingdom of the Son begins with the resurrection of the just. Their resurrection is to the kingdom in which those who are worthy gradually become accustomed to comprehending God.79 Another purpose of the millennium is to fulfill the divine promise to the ancestors of an inheritance. This inheritance is earthly but set in a creation (conditio) that has been renovated. The just will reign in this kingdom.80 For Irenaeus, the creation will be restored to its original condition, and it will serve the just without restraint. He supports this conclusion by citing Rom 8:19–21: “For the expectation of the creation81 waits for the revelation of the sons of God. For the creation has been subjected to transitoriness, not voluntarily, but on account of him who subjected it in hope; for this very creation will be set free from the slavery of corruption to the glorious freedom of the sons of God.”82 The next chapter of book 5 is a demonstration that the kingdom of the just will be earthly, involving eating and drinking, which, he argues, one can do only in the flesh.83 As we have seen, the passage he cites from Romans is the one from Paul most open to an interpretation involving the location of the new age, at least in part, on earth. Irenaeus’s intention in so arguing is to refute the way in which his rivals interpret the prophecies as pertaining to “supercelestial matters.”84 In the last chapter of book 5 and of the work as a whole, Irenaeus affirms that “neither is the substance nor the essence of the creation annihilated . . . but ‘the fashion of the world [passes] away,’ that is, those things among which transgression has occurred, since man has grown old in them.”85 In the new heaven and new earth, some of the just will go to heaven, others will dwell in paradise, and yet others will live in the city ( Jerusalem), “for

Transformation of Paul’s Apocalyptic Ideas  27

everywhere the Savior shall be seen according as they who see him are worthy.” He does not appear to imply, however, that these are final states. Rather, the presbyters, the disciples of the apostles, affirm that those who are saved advance through steps of this nature, that is, they “ascend through the Spirit to the Son, and through the Son to the Father, and that in due time the Son will yield up His work to the Father.” Irenaeus then cites 1 Cor 15:25–28, ending with the affirmation that God will be all in all.86 The last section of this concluding chapter links the resurrection of the just and the inheritance of the earth with the incarnation and affirms that the latter event allows human beings to ascend to God “and be made after the image and likeness of God.”87 Although Irenaeus transmits much of Paul’s eschatology realistically, as opposed to allegorically, it is clear that he does not share Paul’s imminent expectation. A considerable amount of time must pass before the coming of Christ. The Roman empire must be succeeded by ten kings who will divide the realm among themselves. The antichrist then appears and becomes king over the entire realm. Only then does Christ come to defeat the antichrist. Irenaeus also extends and elaborates the time after the coming of Christ, inspired by Revelation 20–21, 1 Cor 15:25–26, and Rom 8:19–23. The kingdom of the Son follows the resurrection of the just. It is the millennium, the earthly kingdom in which the curse on the creation will be lifted and Jerusalem will be rebuilt with precious stones. When the Son hands over the kingdom to the Father, the general resurrection and the general judgment will take place. The creation will be transformed into an incorruptible state, a new heaven and a new earth. The just are rewarded in accordance with the “fruit” that they have produced, but at the same time, they may progress, first in the kingdom of the Son, and then in the kingdom of the Father, becoming more perfectly conformed to the image of God.

Origen According to Henry Chadwick, Origen “stands out as a giant among the early Christian thinkers.”88 He lived from about 185 to about 254 CE and was active as a biblical critic, exegete, theologian, and spiritual writer.89 Among his main works is a commentary on Ephesians, which survives in fairly extensive fragments.90 His interpretation of Ephesians can best be understood in the context of his theological thought. He takes as a premise that “an end or consummation would seem to be an indication of the

28  Transformation of Paul’s Apocalyptic Ideas

perfection and completion of things.”91 He argues further, “The end of the world then, and the final consummation, will take place when every one shall be subjected to punishment for his sins; a time which God alone knows, when He will bestow on each one what he deserves.” Then comes Origen’s distinctive inference from this traditional idea: We think, indeed, that the goodness of God, through his Christ, may recall all his creatures to one end, even his enemies being conquered and subdued. For thus says holy Scripture, “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool” [Ps 110:1]. And if the meaning of the prophet’s language here be less clear, we may ascertain it from the Apostle Paul, who speaks more openly, thus, “For Christ must reign until he has put all enemies under his feet” [1 Cor 15:25].92

Origen then argues that the subjection of the enemies is the same kind of subjection by which the apostles and all those who are followers of Christ wish to be subject to him. In other words, those who are subject to Christ have the salvation that proceeds from him. Although he seems to have left the question open throughout his life, he entertained the idea that even Satan and other evil spirits would be redeemed and restored to union with God.93 Origen also comments on Paul’s statement that, at the end, God will be “all in all” or “all for all” (1 Cor 15:28): “God will ultimately be the totally satisfying object of every mind’s activity: ‘the measure of every motion,’ and so the personal, immediate basis for the unity of creation.”94 From this ending, which can be inferred from scripture, Origen then infers what the beginning must have been like, since “the end is always like the beginning.”95 The hypothesis foundational to all of Origen’s theological thought is that, before the creation of the material universe, God created a universe of rational beings in harmonious contemplation of the divine Being. This body of rational beings included those who would come to be known as the good angels, who did not turn away from this contemplation. It also included those who turned away, namely, the devil and his angels and those who became souls. The material universe was created for these souls, who became enclosed in physical bodies.96 Thus, when Origen says that the end will be like the beginning, he means that eventually all the rational beings who turned away from God will choose God again and return to their original condition. Such a return to the original state may require more than one lifetime for souls. Origen thus concludes “that there may be a series of worlds or ages through which souls will pass in their journey back to the beginning.”97

Transformation of Paul’s Apocalyptic Ideas  29

The main apocalyptic feature of the present and immediate future that Origen retains from tradition is the battle between the faithful, on the one hand, and the devil, his angels, and the opposing spiritual powers, on the other. In his work On First Principles, he explains the nature of this battle: This kind of struggle must be understood as follows; that when losses and dangers, insults and accusations are raised up against us, the opposing powers do not do this with the mere object of making us endure these sufferings, but of provoking us by means of them to fierce anger or excessive sorrow or the depths of despair, or indeed, what is more serious, of inducing us when wearied out and overcome by these annoyances to complain against God on the ground that he does not control human life fairly and righteously. Their aim is that by these efforts our faith may be weakened or that we may lose hope or be driven to abandon the true doctrines and persuaded to accept some impious belief about God.98

Similarly, in his commentary on Eph 6:11, Origen explained that one who has “girded himself with the truth” will not be dragged off to assent to persuasive and sophistical words of falsehood. One who has “put on justice” will not be wounded by the arrows of injustice, and such arrows will not make him unjust.99 Origen has transformed Paul’s intense, imminent expectations in two ways. First of all, the end for Origen is not near. Rather, it is the anticipated outcome of a long history of the gradual return of rational creatures back to union with and contemplation of their creator. Second, the intense struggles of Paul and his communities with Satan and other opposing forces were part of the turning point from the present, evil age to the impending age to come. They were the obstacles to a mission to the whole inhabited world. For Origen they are a constant feature of the life of the spiritual person and of ethical development.100 Yet Origen’s interpretation of Ephesians maintains the cosmic sense of struggle in two ways. His church is a persecuted one, and thus the struggle still has a worldwide and communal dimension. That church is also divided by differences of opinion as to its basic doctrines. Whereas some today would affirm and celebrate such diversity, Origen perceived it as a threat to unity and truth. Unfortunately, the legacy of Origen was limited by the Origenist controversy, which occurred in the 390s and the early fifth century. The basis for the dispute was the alleged deficiencies of Origen’s theology, especially on the Trinity, creation, and our topic in this chapter, eschatology. The

30  Transformation of Paul’s Apocalyptic Ideas

c­ ontroversy was marked by contemporary Origenist speculation, especially that of Evagrius Ponticus, that denigrated bodiliness, reproduction, and images. It also involved contested issues of the late fourth century. The controversy spread through networks of alliance and enmity.101 According to Elizabeth Clark, “In the West particularly, the broad cosmic vision that had pervaded Origen’s theology had shrunk: Christianity now clung more snugly to assertions of human sinfulness, ecclesiastical unity, and obedience to episcopal authority.”102 Although some “‘Westerners’ such as Jerome, Rufinus, and Pelagius were all deeply engaged with Origen’s spiritualizing exegesis and exploration of theological questions . . . the person who came to epitomize ‘Western’ theology was Augustine, whose mind was barely touched by the Origenist dispute at the time it erupted.”103

The Transformation of Paul’s Ascent to Heaven As noted in “Paul’s Apocalyptic Ideas and Practices” at the beginning of this chapter, the second type of apocalyptic material in Paul’s letters is descriptions of the reception of heavenly revelation. An important example of this second category is the narrative of Paul’s ascent to paradise in 2 ­Corinthians 12. This account belongs to a major subtype of ancient apocalypses, ascents to heaven. There are many examples of this subtype in both Second Temple Jewish and early Christian literature.104 Here, two early Christian ascent texts are discussed: the Coptic Gnostic Apocalypse of Paul105 and the Apocalypse of Paul.

The Coptic Gnostic Apocalypse of Paul (NHC V,2) The Coptic Gnostic Apocalypse of Paul dates from the mid-second to the beginning of the fourth century.106 It belongs to one of the thirteen papyrus books containing works in the Coptic language discovered in 1945 near the village of Nag Hammadi in Egypt. This work describes an ascent of Paul that differs significantly from that of 2 Corinthians 12 but perhaps nevertheless was inspired by it. The spirit carries him directly to the third heaven and immediately on to the fourth heaven. Godlike angels bring a soul from the land of the dead and place it at the gate of the fourth heaven and scourge it. The toll-collector of that heaven accuses the soul of lawless deeds. It defends itself but is condemned by three witnesses.107 Instead of being sent to a place of everlasting punishment, it enters a body prepared for it, apparently to live once again on earth.

Transformation of Paul’s Apocalyptic Ideas  31

Paul, along with the spirit and his fellow apostles, then passes through the gate of the fifth heaven. In that heaven angels are driving souls to judgment. They pass through the sixth heaven and enter the seventh. There Paul sees a figure like the ancient of days of Daniel 7, who is not, however, the high God. He tries to prevent Paul from entering the seventh heaven and is thus reminiscent of the Gnostic demiurge. With the encouragement of the spirit, Paul shows the old man the appropriate sign, passes out of that heaven, and enters the Ogdoad, a region above the seven heavens and comparable to the sphere of the fixed stars. In this place Paul sees the twelve apostles, who have somehow preceded him. Then “we” go to the ninth heaven,108 and Paul greets those who are there. Finally they enter the tenth heaven where Paul greets his “fellow-spirits.”109 The lack of interest in the most high God and Christ is striking. Ben Blackwell has suggested that the text is primarily a revelation of “cosmological realities.” There is also an interest, though not systematic, in what happens to individuals after death (individual eschatology). When the old man asks Paul where he is from, the overall context suggests that he should say “from the tenth heaven.” Instead he gives a cryptic allusion to Eph 4:8– 10, itself an obscure text. It is likely that when “Paul” says, “I will go down into the world of the dead, to take captivity captive—the one that was led captive in the captivity of Babylon,” he is referring to his return to earth to fulfill his commission to proclaim and teach.110

The Apocalypse of Paul The Apocalypse of Paul dates to the late fourth century in the form that has survived.111 It is an account of “the revelation of the holy apostle Paul: the things that were revealed to him when he went up even to the third heaven and was caught up into Paradise and heard unutterable words.”112 The Apocalypse of Paul provides a narrative solution to the problem raised by Paul’s remark that no human being was permitted to say what Paul heard in paradise. Chapter 19 introduces the angel who had caught Paul up to the third heaven to show him “the places of the righteous.”113 This angel sets Paul at the door of a gate, which is the gate to paradise. When Paul enters, he meets Enoch and Elijah. Then the angel says to Paul, “Whatever I now show you here and whatever you will hear, do not make it known to anyone on earth.” Paul, the narrator, then says, “And he brought me and showed me and I heard there words which it is not lawful for a man to speak.

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And again he said: Follow me further and I shall show you what you ought to tell openly and report.”114 According to the Apocalypse of Paul, sinners are judged and punished immediately after death.115 The great judgment day, however, is still expected.116 The angel also tells Paul, “When Christ whom you preach comes to reign, then . . . the first earth will be dissolved and this land of promise will be shown . . . and then the Lord Jesus Christ . . . will be revealed and he will come with all his saints to dwell in it and he will reign over them for a thousand years.”117 A general resurrection is also expected. Until then the righteous will rejoice in paradise or in the city of Christ.118 This work is a quite different elaboration and interpretation of the ascent of Paul in 2 Corinthians 12 from the Coptic Gnostic Apocalypse of Paul discussed above. The latter may have been used by educated Christians who formed schools and took Paul as a major authority, such as the Valentinians. The former was likely composed, read, and transmitted in a monastic context.

Conclusion Paul’s apocalyptic ideas were formed first of all by his Jewish heritage and his study, as a Pharisee, of the traditions of his ancestors as interpreted in his time. He reshaped and extended such ideas in light of his acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah of Israel and his understanding of Jesus’s death and resurrection as eschatological events. He revised them further in his attempts to present the gospel to Hellenized and Romanized Gentiles, for example, in his revision of teaching on the resurrection in response to objections and questions by educated Corinthians, as will be shown in Chapter 2. The authors of the works discussed above adapted Paul’s teaching to changed circumstances and convictions by writing in Paul’s name or rewriting his apocalyptic teaching. Each of the later writers treated here created a new eschatological scenario by creatively reinterpreting and synthesizing authoritative texts, including Paul’s letters, to address the increasing diversity and complexity of the early Christian movement. Irenaeus, for example, locates the final state in heaven and defines it as incorruptibility, but he nevertheless emphasizes the material and fleshly nature of the millennium, the kingdom of the Son. He did so probably to correct the almost exclusive emphasis of Gnostic teachers on the supraheavenly and spiritual nature of salvation. A major concern of Origen was

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to acquit God of the injustice that could be inferred from the inequality among embodied rational creatures.119 Each creature is responsible for its own work, including its turning away from God, yet they are given the encouragement and the time to move back toward God by moral transformation.120 Thus theodicy is the underlying reason for Origen’s extension of eschatology over a long period of redemptive time.

2 TThehe Resurrection Body: Reception of 1 Corinthians 15

Chapter 1 treated Paul’s apocalyptic ideas, which are scattered throughout his letters, and, as noted in the Introduction, exemplified the practice of a broad kind of reception history. This kind of reception history focuses on themes that Paul’s letters share with later writings rather than on how a particular passage is interpreted or used. The discussion of Paul’s views of resurrection in this chapter continues this approach in part by addressing texts such as the work on the resurrection by Pseudo-Justin and the Treatise on the Resurrection that are not overt interpretations of Pauline material. This chapter begins, however, with an example of the history of interpretation, focusing on the interpretation of a particular text, 1 Corinthians 15, especially 15:44 (spiritual body) and 15:50 (flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God), in the works of Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, and more briefly, Augustine.

Paul’s Rhetorical Purpose in Speaking about a “Spiritual Body” In his first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul offered simple and straightforward instruction. He expected that the resurrected and exalted Christ would come in the near future. When he comes, Paul taught, those believers who had died would rise from the dead. Together with them those who were still alive would be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord and be with him forever (1 Thess 4:13–18). He probably taught something similar when he founded the community in Corinth. Yet in Corinth this teaching provoked resistance. In chapter 15 of his first surviving letter to

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the Corinthians, Paul reviews his earlier proclamation. Then he addresses the problem at hand: “If then it is proclaimed that Christ has risen from the dead, how can some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” (1 Cor 15:12). Many Greeks and Romans, especially those aware of popular philosophy, did not accept the idea that an earthly body could ascend to heaven.1 Plutarch, for example, expresses such a view in Life of Romulus. He tells the story about Romulus being snatched up to heaven alive and refers to other Greek stories with the same theme.2 He comments on these as follows: At any rate, to reject entirely the divinity of human virtue, were impious and base; but to mix heaven with earth is foolish. Let us therefore take the safe course and grant, with Pindar, that “Our bodies all must follow death’s supreme behest, But something living still survives, an image of life, for this alone Comes from the gods.” Yes, it comes from them, and to them it returns, not with its body, but only when it is most completely separated and set free from the body, and becomes altogether pure, fleshless, and undefiled.3

Paul probably taught the Corinthians during his initial visit that Jesus had been raised from the dead and exalted to heaven. In the near future, he would come as Lord to gather the elect, both living and dead.4 Just as the body of Christ had been taken up into heaven, so too would the bodies of those who belong to Christ be transported to heaven. In writing 1 Corinthians 15, Paul revised his earlier teaching in order to accommodate it to the principle of polarity, that is, the conviction that heavenly bodies belong in heaven and earthly bodies belong on earth. At the same time, he corrects the conclusion of his interlocutors, that there is no resurrection of the dead.5 He affirms the principle of polarity by declaring, “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, and corruption does not inherit incorruptibility” (15:50). Yet he can affirm resurrection in terms of change: what is perishable will put on imperishability, and what is mortal will put on immortality.6 In particular, he compared the dead, earthly body to a bare seed sown in the ground. God gives to each kind of seed its own body, when the seed dies and the plant grows. In the same way, the animate body is “sown” or buried, and a spiritual body comes up or rises.7 Paul’s main concern in this context is to argue that there is little, if any, material continuity between the earthly body that dies and the body that

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rises. The earthly body is flesh; the resurrected body, as a heavenly body, is “glory,” presumably some sort of light made of very fine matter. The earthly body is a “living being,” animated by a (perishable) soul; the resurrected body is “spiritual,” animated by “spirit.”8 There is, however, personal continuity: “the dead will arise incorruptible and we will be changed” (v. 52). Paul does not, however, talk about a human soul or spirit that survives death. It has been argued that for “Paul, the current human body is made up of sarx [flesh], psyche [soul], and pneuma [spirit]. The resurrected body will shed the first two of these entities—like so much detritus—and retain the third, a stuff of a thinner, higher nature.”9 I agree that the contrast between the animate body and the spiritual body is not a contrast of “material” and “nonmaterial” or “physical” and “nonphysical.” It is rather a contrast between heavy, earthly elements like “flesh” and “blood” and finer elements like fire and air. The “spiritual body” of which Paul speaks in this context does not have the characteristic of incorporeality or immateriality but should be conceived of as an airy or fiery substance.10 The “spiritual body,” however, is not what is left when the human being has “shed” the flesh and the soul. This interpretation does not fit well with Paul’s imagery involving “God giving the seed a new body” and “what is perishable putting on imperishability.” This language seems to imply that the earthly body is replaced by or transformed into a heavenly body by means of a divine gift or activity.11 There is tension in Paul’s discussion of resurrection between the emphatic exclusion of “flesh” and “blood,” on the one hand, and the notion of change or transformation, on the other. It is therefore not surprising that Paul’s teaching on this topic was interpreted in various ways in the following centuries. Other reasons for the plurality of interpretations include different perspectives on anthropology, the influence of various philosophical ideas, and the need to address changing circumstances.

The Reception of the Idea of the Resurrection Body as a “Spiritual Body” In the second half of the second century, the topic of bodily resurrection was already controversial. A work on the resurrection falsely attributed to Justin Martyr defends the resurrection of the flesh.12 The author argues on the basis of Luke 24 and Acts 1 that Jesus rose in the flesh.13 He then defends the general resurrection of the flesh on the basis of that of Christ. The resurrection involves the flesh, the spirit, and the soul.14 The author of

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this work no doubt knows that Paul rejected the resurrection of flesh and blood; nevertheless, at least in the fragments that survive, he does not mention Paul’s declaration that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. It may be that the author deliberately refrains from citing Paul’s view and instead cites the more congenial passages in Luke 24 and Acts 1.

Irenaeus Like the work attributed to Justin, Irenaeus advocated the idea that the resurrection involves the flesh, not just the soul or spirit.15 After making the point that God’s handiwork (Adam) was made in God’s image as a whole, not just in part, he continues: “Now the soul and the spirit can be part of the human being, but not the human being; for the perfect human being consists in the commingling and the union of the soul receiving the spirit of the Father, and the admixture of that fleshly nature which was molded in accordance with the image of God.”16 He then argues on the basis of the Gospel of John that Christ rose in the flesh since he pointed out to the disciples the mark of the nails and the opening in his side.17 On this basis, he claims that the faithful will also be raised in the flesh, which is the only part of a human being that dies and decomposes. Irenaeus then refers to 1 Corinthians 15: “‘So also is the resurrection of the dead: it is sown in corruption, it rises in incorruption’ (1 Cor 15:42). For he [Paul] declares, ‘That which you sow cannot be made alive unless it dies . . . It is sown an animate body, it rises a spiritual body’” (15:36, 44).18 Such language was not used of the soul or spirit but of bodies that have become corpses.19 In discussing the question of resurrection, Irenaeus speaks about the human soul, (the divine) spirit, and flesh. As we have seen, Paul does not refer to the human soul or spirit in his discussion of resurrection in 1 Corin­ thians 15.20 The apostle does not refer to the human soul as immortal. Rather, he uses the word “soul” (ψυχή) simply to refer to an individual person21 or to a person’s mortal life (Rom 16:4). By contrast Justin Martyr and Irenaeus believed that, if the soul survives death, it does so “only because God wills it to do so and not because of its intrinsic nature.”22 Even though Irenaeus speaks about “soul” and “spirit,” he had a dualist, rather than a tripartite, anthropology.23 A little farther on, Irenaeus affirms Paul’s statement that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.”24 He claims, however, that “all

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the heretics” use this passage to argue that “the handiwork of God,” that is, the flesh, “is not saved.” Irenaeus explains that the complete human being is made up of flesh, soul, and (the divine) spirit. The spirit preserves and fashions the person. The flesh is joined to this spirit. The soul exists between these two. Sometimes it follows the spirit and is raised up by it. Sometimes it follows the flesh and falls into carnal lusts. Paul refers to those who do not have the spirit of God in them as “flesh and blood.” Those who are “flesh and blood” lack that which saves and forms people for life eternal.25 Irenaeus’s premise seems to be that only those who have faith, have been baptized, and live a virtuous life have the spirit of God. Later, Irenaeus returns to those who reject the resurrection of the flesh.26 They affirm instead that immediately after death they will pass beyond the heavens and the creator god and go to the Mother or Father of all. Irenaeus attempts to refute this view, arguing from the example of Christ.27

Treatise on the Resurrection (NHC I,4) Since 1945 we have possessed a work that represents something close to the particular view Irenaeus opposes here. It is the Coptic Gnostic Treatise on the Resurrection, discovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945.28 The Treatise on the Resurrection is also known as the Epistle to Rheginus. It may have been written as early as the late second century CE.29 It has been designated a Valentinian text, which means that its author was a student or spiritual descendant of the Christian theologian Valentinus,30 who was active in Alexandria from about 127 CE and then in Rome from about 138.31 Like Colossians (2:12, 3:1) and Ephesians (2:5–6), the Treatise on the Resurrection speaks about a metaphorical resurrection that can take place already in the present life on earth: “Therefore do not . . . O Rheginus . . . live according to (the dictates of ) this flesh . . . Rather, leave the state of dispersion and bondage, and then you already have resurrection . . . why do you (the intellect) not examine your own self and see that you have arisen? And you are rushing toward this outcome (that is, separation from the body) since you possess resurrection.”32 The work also describes resurrection that takes place after death.33 That resurrection is discussed in the rest of this section. Valentinians defined the human being as made up of three parts: the material body, the soul, and the intellect. The material body is made of dust and is destined to perish. The soul is the element that makes the body alive

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and may incline toward either spirit or matter. The intellect is the spiritual element or true self. It is destined for reunion and repose with God the Father.34 Since Valentinian teachers did not accept the view that the material body was capable of ultimate preservation, this premise led them to conclude that the terms “arise” and “resurrection” did not refer to a process of death and return to life. Rather, they signified an upward movement in a metaphorical sense in which the soul and intellect escape from material existence and “ascend” or change into another state of existence. This process is the subject of the Treatise on the Resurrection.35 According to this work, the savior was both human and divine.36 “The savior swallowed death. You must not be unperceptive: for I mean that laying aside the corruptible world [especially the body of flesh], he exchanged it for an incorruptible eternal realm. And he raised himself up, having ‘swallowed’ the visible by means of the invisible, and gave us the way to our immortality.”37 In other words, the resurrection of Jesus, interpreted in a Valentinian manner, made it possible for “us” to become immortal. Then the author cites Paul to introduce his interpretation of “our” resurrection: “So then, as the apostle said of him, we have suffered with him, and arisen with him, and ascended with him.”38 The affirmation that “we have suffered with him” occurs in Rom 8:17, where Paul indicates that we suffer with Christ in order that we may be glorified with him. The declaration that “we have arisen with him” occurs in Col 2:12 and Eph 2:6. None of the letters attributed to Paul speaks explicitly about our ascending with Christ, but this formulation could be based on the assertion in Ephesians that, after God raised us up with Christ, God also seated us with him in the heavenly places (Eph 2:5–6). The formula in the Treatise on the Resurrection, “we have suffered with him, and arisen with him, and ascended with him,” is then interpreted as follows: “Now, since we are manifestly present in this world, the world is what we wear (like a garment). From him (the savior) we radiate like rays; and being held fast by him until our sunset—that is, until our death in the present life—we are drawn upward by him as rays are drawn by the sun, restrained by nothing. This is the resurrection of the spirit, which ‘swallows’ resurrection of the soul along with resurrection of the flesh.”39 The statement that the resurrection of the spirit “swallows” resurrection of the soul along with resurrection of the flesh may mean that it eliminates them, supersedes them, or makes them irrelevant. The language of “swallowing” may have been inspired by 1 Cor 15:54, in which Paul alludes to Isa 25:8: death

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has been swallowed up in victory (compare also 2 Cor 5:4). Another section affirms that the intellects of those who are acquainted with the truth and believe it will not perish.40 Then the resurrection of the flesh is rejected, since the flesh is inferior to the soul. The flesh is “mere corruption” and thus not the real self.41 Later on “resurrection” is defined as “the uncovering” of the elements that have arisen.42 Earlier it was said, “the world is what we wear (like a garment).” Here that idea is clarified: the soul and spirit are what arise, and they leave the material world and the body behind. This view of resurrection is similar to, and may depend on, 1 Cor 15:50 (flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God).

The Gospel according to Philip (NHC II,3) This work is a Valentinian anthology consisting of excerpts taken from other works that do not survive.43 Bentley Layton dates it to before 350 CE, the approximate date of the only surviving manuscript of the work.44 Wesley Isenberg dates the probable Greek original version to “perhaps as late as the second half of the third century.”45 Thomas McGlothlin, among others, has shown that this work tightly connects “resurrection in this life to transformation into Christ through the sacraments.”46 An example is the description of someone who is fully initiated (sacramentally): “this one is no longer a [Christian], but a ‘Christ.’ ” 47 Hugo Lundhaug has shown how the Gospel of Philip “blends the death and resurrection of Christ with aspects of the sacramental life of the individual Christian in conformity with the overarching blend the christian is a christ.”48 The importance of resurrection in this life is shown first of all in terms of the life of Christ on earth: “Those who say that the lord died first and (then) rose up are in error, for he rose up first and (then) died. If one does not acquire the resurrection first he will not die.”49 Lundhaug explains, “Somewhat paradoxically, resurrection is presented as being necessary in order to die.”50 This passage is typical of the Gospel of Philip, in which the gaps between concepts and reality are emphasized and usually negative terms like “death” are used positively. Here death seems to mean salvation.51 The corresponding passage about Christians reads as follows: “Those who say they will die first and then rise are in error. If they do not first receive the resurrection while they live, when they die they will receive nothing. So also when speaking about baptism they say, ‘Baptism is a great thing,’ because if people receive it they will live.”52 Lundhaug infers that

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this passage argues for the importance of “the anointing with chrism in addition to baptism in water.” This argument is made against those who do not share the view of the Gospel of Philip that being so anointed brings about resurrection.53 The Gospel of Philip also speaks about a postmortem resurrection in a long polemical passage that opposes at least two viewpoints. The first is the expectation of the resurrection of the material body: “Some are afraid lest they rise naked. Because of this they wish to rise in the flesh, and [they] do not know that it is those who wear the [flesh] who are naked. [It is] those who [. . .] to unclothe themselves who are not naked.”54 The argument is that those who “wear the flesh” are naked “because they lack the proper clothing, while those who undress have it.”55 The argument against those who believe in a resurrection of the material body continues with an interpretation of 1 Cor 15:50 that draws upon John 6:53–54: “‘Flesh [and blood shall] not inherit the kingdom [of God]’ (1 Cor 15:50). What is this which will not inherit? This which is on us. But what is this, too, which will inherit? It is that which belongs to Jesus and his blood. Because of this he said, ‘He who shall not eat my flesh and drink my blood has not life in him’ ( John 6:53).”56 The saying that follows immediately defines the flesh of Jesus as the Logos and his blood as the Holy Spirit. So it is not the material flesh and blood that are “on us” that will inherit the kingdom of God but rather the flesh and blood of Jesus.57 The Gospel of Philip then turns to criticize the opposite view, namely, that it is the spirit alone that rises from the dead (Gos. Phil. 57,9–19). What is it, then, that will rise? Lundhaug argues that it is the flesh of Christ, rather than the material flesh, but asks what this might mean for the human constitution. He explains the Christian is a Christ blend as follows: the individual Christian soul is on the level of Christ’s Logos, while the [human] spirit is on the level of the Holy Spirit, and the material body is on the level of Christ’s material body. This also seems to imply that we may regard the Logos as Christ’s soul. Since it is Christ’s flesh, together with the Holy Spirit that rises in the resurrection, we may surmise that for the individual Christian it is the transformed soul that rises together with the Holy Spirit . . . So, it seems that in the system of the Gos. Phil. it is the combination of soul and spirit that rises, while the material body is left behind.58

Thus while the language used differs significantly, the practical effect of the basic understanding of the resurrection after physical death in the Gospel of Philip is similar to that of the Treatise on the Resurrection.

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Tertullian Tertullian belonged to the generation immediately following Irenaeus and drew heavily on his writings.59 The North African scholar attempted to refute an understanding of the resurrection similar to that expressed in the Treatise on the Resurrection.60 In his work On the Resurrection of the Flesh, Tertullian discusses various aspects of Paul’s letters. Then he states: “But ‘flesh and blood,’ you say, ‘cannot inherit the kingdom of God.’ We are quite aware that this too is written; but although our opponents place it in the front of the battle, we have intentionally reserved the objection until now, in order that we may in our last assault overthrow it.”61 Tertullian deals with his opponents’ favorite passage by making a distinction: “Flesh and blood are excluded from the kingdom of God in respect of their sin, not of their substance.”62 He goes on to say that flesh and blood, alone in themselves, cannot inherit the kingdom of God because the spirit is still needed to make them fit for it. All flesh will rise, but some for judgment.63 This is a case of Tertullian “undermining the apparent meaning of a passage through reference to the immediate context.”64 He undermines the apparent meaning of 1 Cor 15:50 by using 15:53 to develop “a positive argument for his case.”65 Those who may enter the kingdom of God are those who have “put on the power of an incorruptible and immortal life” through the works of the spirit. He goes on: “With good reason, then, flesh and blood . . . by themselves fail to obtain the kingdom of God . . . But inasmuch as ‘this corruptible (that is, the flesh) must put on incorruption, and this mortal (that is, the blood) must put on immortality,’ by the change which is to follow the resurrection . . . flesh and blood, after being swallowed up, will become able to inherit the kingdom of God—but not without resurrection.”66 Tertullian apparently means something quite different by “being swallowed up” from what the author of the Treatise on the Resurrection from Nag Hammadi means. In the latter work it means being destroyed or at least made irrelevant. For Tertullian, it seems to mean being transformed. Tertullian agreed with the Stoics that everything that exists is a body. Even God is a body, being at the same time a spirit.67 From a philosophical point of view, he would have no objection to Paul’s idea of a “spiritual body,” that is, a body made up of the airy or fiery material the Stoics called pneuma. That idea, however, was not compatible with his understanding of resurrection, namely, that the identical material body wears blessedness or damnation like a garment.68 Similarly, Irenaeus treated resurrection as

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a special case of bodily restoration, referring to Jesus healing and raising people from the dead.69 Because of these views, Paul’s statement “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” caused difficulties for them.

Origen Origen began to write “his voluminous works” between 215 and 220.70 His approach to resurrection was considerably different from that of Irenaeus and Tertullian, as he does not discuss the resurrection of the flesh.71 In his work On First Principles, he directs the discussion “to some of our own people, who either from poverty of intellect or from lack of instruction introduce an exceedingly low and mean idea of the resurrection of the body. We ask them in what manner they think that the ‘natural body’ will, by the grace of the resurrection, be changed and become ‘spiritual.’”72 He then offers his own explanation: So we must suppose that our bodies, like a seed, fall into the earth, but that implanted in them is the life-principle that contains the essence of the body; and although the bodies die and are corrupted and scattered, never­ the­less by the word of God that same life-principle, which has all along been preserved in the essence of the body, raises them up from the earth and restores and refashions them, just as the power that is in a seed of wheat refashions and restores the seed, after its corruption and death, into a body with stalk and ear.73

He goes on to say that, in the case of those worthy to inherit the kingdom of God, the “life-principle” refashions out of the earthly and “animate body” a “spiritual body” that can reside in heaven.74 Origen elaborates the last point in Against Celsus, who was apparently a critic of Christian beliefs who wrote in the second century. In that work Origen states: “We do not say that after the body has been corrupted it will return to its original nature, just as the ‘seed’ of ‘wheat’ that has been corrupted will not return to be a seed of wheat. For we hold that, as from the seed an ear rises up, so in the body there lies a certain principle [logos] that is not corrupted from which the body is raised ‘in incorruption.’”75 He continues this discussion later in the same work: Celsus did not understand the doctrine of the resurrection, which is deep and hard to explain, and needs a wise man of advanced skill more than any other doctrine in order to show that it is worthy of God and that the doctrine is a noble conception. It teaches that the “tent” of the soul, as it is called

44  The Resurrection Body in the scriptures [2 Cor 5:4], possesses a seminal principle [logos spermatikos] . . . We do not talk about the resurrection, as Celsus imagines, because we have misunderstood the doctrine of reincarnation, but because we know that when the soul, which in its own nature is incorporeal and invisible, is in any material place, it requires a body suited to the nature of that environment.76

He goes on to say that the earthly body is superfluous in heaven. In the latter environment, “it needs a better garment for the purer, ethereal, and heavenly regions.”77 This “better garment” is what Origen understands the “spiritual body” to be. Likewise, it is what Paul means by the “house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens [2 Cor 5:1].”78 Origen’s most extensive surviving discussion of the physical characteristics of the risen body occurs in a long fragment from his commentary on Ps 1:5.79 He “begins by rejecting the notion, which he ascribes to the ‘simpler members of the faithful,’ that our bodies will rise again ‘in their whole substance (οὐσία),’ just as they now are.”80 Philosophical objections had been raised against such an idea. Origen is not satisfied with appeals to the principle that “everything is possible with God,” and he finds inadequate proofs based on literal readings of texts, such as Ezekiel 37, or from the Gospels and Paul’s letters. “The skilled exegete, he implies, must do better.”81 In this long fragment, Origen also elaborates his understanding of the “spiritual body.”82 In his view, the earthly body is held together by assimilating nourishment from things outside of it and excreting some things. The body is like a river, and it is not the same for even two days.83 In spite of this, the real Paul or Peter (so to speak and for instance) is always the same with regard to both body and soul “because the form (eidos) characterizing the body” remains the same.84 So even though the body is always in a state of flux, it is recognizable as a particular person over time. In the present state, the soul has a material bodily form. It will not have this form in the higher state because it has to have a body appropriate to that state. He goes on: “And just as we would certainly need to have gills if we had to live in the sea, so those who are going to inherit the kingdom of heaven and be in superior places must have spiritual bodies. The previous form (eidos) does not disappear, even if its transition to the more glorious state occurs, just as the form of Jesus, Moses, and Elijah in the transfiguration was not a different one from what it had been.”85 Origen, however, then interprets 1 Corinthians 15 to imply that the apostle Paul teaches that “although the form (eidos) is saved, we are going to put away nearly every earthly quality

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in the resurrection . . . So for the saint there will indeed be a body preserved by him who once formed the flesh, but there will no longer be flesh; yet that very thing that was once characterized in the flesh will be characterized in the spiritual body.”86 In the concluding part of his argument, Origen claims that 1 Cor 15:35 proves that the earthly, material substratum of the body will not rise. He goes on: “Indeed, if we have understood the illustration correctly, the observation must be made that the generative principle (logos spermatikos), after it has taken hold of the available matter, permeated it throughout, and has taken hold of the very form of that matter (eidos), imposes its own powers on the previous earth, water, air, and fire; and it subdues and transforms their qualities into that future quality of which it is itself the creator.”  87 This interpretation is given explicitly with regard to the seed and the plant, but Origen clearly implies that it pertains to the earthly body and the spiritual body as well. Origen answered opponents and instructed his fellow Christians with regard to the resurrection by adapting philosophical ideas current in his time to his treatment of that complex topic. He affirms the continuity between the earthly body and the spiritual body by adapting the Greek philosophical term “form” (eidos) for his purposes. He uses the term to indicate “the body’s principle of unity, development, existence, and individuation.”88 It seems that a good analogy from our own time would be DNA. The body changes enormously in terms of appearance and abilities, but its genetic material provides continuity and establishes a unique identity. Analogously, Origen takes up the Stoic idea of the “generative principle” or “seminal principle” (logos spermatikos). Since this principle is “in the tent” and “in the seed of grain,” the idea seems to be that resurrection involves a continuity of matter but a massive change in that matter due to the activity of the “generative principle.”89 Origen uses this term in the singular but with reference to concrete changes from seeds to plants and earthly bodies to heavenly bodies. He seems, in his use of the singular, to allude to the Generative Principle of the Stoics, the rational, generative principle of the universe involved in the creation and transformation of all things. The singular also brings to mind the Jewish and Christian conception of the Logos, an emanation of God, which Christians identified with Christ.90 The application of this principle to concrete transformations alludes to the notion of many “generative principles,” through which the

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intelligent, designing fire (one of the Stoic conceptions of God) creates and maintains the world.91 Origen thus preserves and explicates Paul’s notion of “change” by means of the concept of “form,” as he defines it, and especially the “generative principle.” The massive degree of change does justice to Paul’s claim that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” He does justice to Paul’s language of God giving the “seed” a new body by declaring that the transformation takes place “by the word of God” (Princ. 2.10.3). In other words, the process of resurrection is a natural one, but it can actually take place only if God wills it. Origen took a moderate position on the resurrection body. On the one hand, he rejected the view of “simple” Christians that the resurrection body was identical with our physical body, accepting many of the philosophical objections to the idea of a physical resurrection. On the other hand, he also rejected the idea of the spiritual resurrection advocated by the Treatise on the Resurrection from Nag Hammadi. He could affirm “the resurrection of the body we now have,” since the spiritual body produced by the generative principle that inheres in the earthly body “would be the essence of all that our body truly is, lacking only that which is subject to growth or decay.”92 Celsus had pointed out “the difficulties entailed by the doctrine of the physical resurrection.”93 The philosophical critique of the notion of the bodies of the gods also played a role in debates about physical resurrection. Such debates began in the ancient philosophical schools in the second century BCE. Philodemus, an Epicurean philosopher who lived in the first century BCE, argued that the gods do not sleep, but they do have something analogous to rest. They breathe and converse with one another in Greek. Some gods are male, and some female.94 Sextus Empiricus, a physician and philosopher of the second century CE, objected “that if God has the power of speech, he must also have lungs and windpipe, tongue and mouth—‘but this is absurd and approaches the fantastic notions of Epicurus.’ ”95 In book 1 of his work On the Nature of the Gods, Cicero constructs a dialogue in which Velleius expounds and affirms the theology of Epicurus. Then Cotta replies to him and thoroughly refutes Epicurean theology. Cotta is presented as an Academic philosopher, that is, primarily a skeptical thinker, skilled at refutation. He is portrayed as stating: Did you think they [the philosophers from Thales of Miletus onward] were all out of their minds because they pronounced that god can exist without

The Resurrection Body  47 hands or feet? Does not even a consideration of the adaptation of the human being’s limbs to their functions convince you that the gods do not require human limbs? What need is there for feet without walking, or for hands if nothing has to be grasped, or for the rest of the . . . various parts of the body, in which nothing is useless, nothing without a reason, nothing superfluous, so that no art can imitate the cunning of nature’s handiwork? It seems then that god will have a tongue and not speak; teeth, a palate, a throat, for no use; the organs that nature has attached to the body for the purpose of procreation—these god will possess, but to no purpose; and not only the external but also the internal organs, the heart, lungs, liver and the rest, which if they are not useful are assuredly not beautiful—since your school holds that god possesses bodily parts because of their beauty.96

Origen used an argument similar to Cotta’s in his criticism of the popular conception of resurrection among Christians of his time: “If the flesh is to rise again in the same form, then what use is going to be found for its organs?”97 The inspiration for this kind of argument may be found in Plato’s Timaeus, a work about how the heaven and the earth arose out of formless matter. The maker of the world, the demiurge, made it a living being. Since it was intended to contain within itself all living creatures, it needed a perfect shape. So the demiurge made it a sphere, since it is the perfect form and since it had no need of eyes or any of the other physical organs.98

Augustine Augustine, who lived from 354 to 430, was a philosopher, theologian, and bishop of Hippo from 395 until his death. He wrote about two hundred years later than Origen and in very different cultural circumstances. The Christian faith and way of life had become legitimate and even dominant. In contrast to Origen, who sought a middle way between Gnostics and “simple” believers, Augustine opposed the Neoplatonists and the Manicheans in his treatments of the resurrection. He spoke and wrote about this doctrine “throughout his long ecclesiastical career” in pastoral and controversialist contexts.99 As it had been from the time of Paul onward, “the notion of resurrection . . . was a stumbling block for the mind of the time, offending the sentiment of the masses as well as the reflection of the learned.”100 The Manicheans based their views especially on 1 Cor 15:50, “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” which is a reason why Augustine often discusses the passage in his various works.101

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A striking characteristic of Augustine’s treatment of the resurrection is his lack of distinction among the terms resurrection “of the dead,” “of the body,” and “of the flesh.”102 One of his late treatments of the topic is in The City of God.103 In the last book of that work Augustine discusses the last things, including the resurrection body. Before discussing the resurrection, he mentions the major objection of those who reject its possibility. He cites a passage from Cicero similar to the one cited at the beginning of this chapter from Plutarch. In his Republic Cicero discusses the deification of Hercules and Romulus and states, “Whose bodies were not taken up into heaven; for nature would not permit a body of earth to exist anywhere except on earth.”104 Augustine replies to this argument by noting that God has joined incorporeal substances, souls or spirits, with earthly bodies. Such incorporeal substances are more excellent than all bodies, including heavenly bodies. Therefore, there is nothing to hinder the raising of an earthly body to a heavenly abode. Augustine grants that such an idea was once incredible but is no longer so. “But see,” he states, “the whole world has now come to believe that the earthly body of Christ has been taken up into heaven.”105 Later, Augustine takes up the question of whether the bodies of women shall retain their sex in the resurrection, citing Eph 4:13, “Until we reach the perfection of manhood, the stature of the full maturity of Christ,” and Rom 8:29, “Being shaped into the likeness of God’s Son.” He states that some have concluded from these passages that women will rise as men. Augustine, however, concludes: “For my part, I feel that theirs is the more sensible opinion who have no doubt that there will be both sexes in the resurrection. For in that life there will be no sexual lust, which is the cause of shame.” He also says, “Now a woman’s sex is not a defect; it is natural . . . the female organs will not subserve their former use; they will be part of a new beauty, which . . . shall arouse the praises of God for his wisdom and compassion.”106 Here we find a less misogynist and more Epicurean Augustine than we are used to hearing about.107

Conclusion When Paul wrote what became chapter 15 of his first letter to the Corinthians, he was attempting to solve a specific doctrinal and pastoral problem: the denial of some among his addressees of “the resurrection of the dead,” that is, the resurrection of those “in Christ.” Since Plutarch and

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Cicero explicitly denied that Romulus and others had ascended (bodily) into heaven, perhaps Paul’s interlocutors were challenging the proclamation about Christ as well as that of his followers. If so, Paul’s argument in verses 12–19 points out the dire consequences of denying the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul was willing to dispense with the idea that the resurrection of Christ and his followers involves the same earthly bodies they had before. This was the crucial objection of some in Corinth. Thus the concession, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor 15:50). In order not to concede too much, however, Paul balances the concession with the affirmation of continuity and transformation in the process. Paul leaves open and unresolved the question of the precise nature of the continuity, what is actually transformed, and how. Closely related to these open questions is the fact that Paul’s understanding of the makeup of the human person is not elaborated. In contrast to Paul, Pseudo-Justin, Irenaeus, and Tertullian all took the position that flesh was a necessary part of anything that could be called resurrection. All three also had a dualist anthropology, explicitly describing the human being as made up of soul and body. When Irenaeus and Tertullian spoke of “spirit,” they referred to the divine spirit, not a part of the natural human being. The same is probably true of the work attributed to Justin as well. Moreover, they were all practicing what Margaret Mitchell has called “agonistic interpretation.”108 Such interpretation is not objective, systematic, and without bias. It is rooted in ancient rhetorical practices, which had specific goals and strategies. Interpretation in such a context is also rooted in the idea that texts and situations have more than one meaning and thus are open to more than one interpretation. Irenaeus was responding to Gnostics, and Tertullian apparently addressed groups like the Marcionites and the Valentinians.109 The Gnostics are exemplified here by the Valentinians, whose views are illustrated by the discussions above of the Treatise on the Resurrection and the Gospel of Philip from Nag Hammadi.110 The authors of these works came from well-educated, philosophically sophisticated circles.111 The idea of the resurrection of the earthly body or the flesh was not compatible with the popular philosophy and science of the time. For this reason, they interpreted the language of resurrection metaphorically with respect to a new way of life in the present. Paul came close to doing the same, for example in Romans 6, but also affirmed a process of resurrection after death.112 The

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Treatise on the Resurrection and the Gospel of Philip also speak about death and what happens afterward but in a way that does not involve the flesh. A tripartite anthropology is assumed: the material body, the soul, and the intellect (mind or human spirit). The interpretation of resurrection in this work is less “agonistic” than those of Irenaeus and Tertullian. It has been identified as a basic, animated, philosophical lecture.113 As we have seen, Irenaeus and Tertullian did not accept Paul’s exclusion of flesh and blood from the resurrected body. The two Valentinian works took what might be called the opposite position, excluding any continuity of the elements that rise after death with the material body. Origen takes a mediating position, accepting Paul’s exclusion of flesh and blood but articulating philosophically acceptable forms of continuity between the earthly body and the resurrected, spiritual body. His role visà-vis his audiences is also mediating in the sense that he acts as a teacher for those Christians willing and able to think about resurrection in a philosophical way and at the same time seeks to correct critics on the outside of the church, like Celsus, as well as the “simple believers” who take too crude an approach. Augustine felt no need to distinguish between “resurrection of the body” and “resurrection of the flesh.” Instead he emphasized that human beings are “at one and the same time soul and body, flesh and spirit.” Thus salvation must embrace both in order that their whole being may be saved.114 Origen took a position on resurrection fully analogous to that of Paul. Others departed from his views, the Valentinians in one direction, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Augustine in another. Rather than judge the latter types of arguments as inadequate with respect to Paul, it seems more appropriate to admire their ingenuity in reconciling their deeply held views with those of Paul, whose letters were becoming authoritative texts.

3 MThe Reception arriage and Celibacy: of 1 Corinthians 7

Like Chapter 2 on the resurrection body, this chapter contributes both to the history of the interpretation of Paul’s letters and practices a broader type of reception history, comparing the treatment of the theme of marriage versus celibacy without reference to specific passages in Paul. The main focus of discussion is the interpretation and reception of 1 Corinthians 7, especially the passages concerning marriage, sexual relations, and sexual continence. The writers pertinent to the history of interpretation on this topic are Tatian, Origen, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria. Works such as the Acts of Paul and Thecla, Isidore and other followers of Basilides, and the author of 1 Timothy may well have been aware of 1 Corinthians 7 and are interacting with it as they express their own views on marriage and celibacy, although they do not cite it. Others, such as the author of the Gospel according to Luke, Marcion, Basilides, Valentinus, and the Valentinians, likely knew Paul’s teaching on these points but treat matters more independently. This chapter treats all of these works thematically according to their views on marriage and celibacy, using the following categories: (1) no marriage for believers; (2) marriage allowed for believers; (3) affirmation of marriage, but only one marriage allowed; and (4) marriage affirmed for the sake of procreation. The origins and history of Christian monasticism are beyond the scope of this chapter. It should be recognized, however, that “early Christian ascetic practices and their significance in the urban churches before the late third century” were foundational for the practices and ideas that were “carried out into the desert and the cloister” in the late third century.1 David 51

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Brakke offers a review of “key trends in the study of late ancient desert monks including: the decentering of Egypt and turning away from single founders; philosophy as the source of and background for monastic practices and literary forms; skepticism about the myth of the desert; the engagement of monks with wider society; rethinking the concept of the holy man; and attention to women and gender.”2 The chapter begins with a discussion of 1 Corinthians 7, noting the ambiguities and tensions in the teaching of Paul on marriage, sex, and sexual continence. These ambiguities and tensions left room for the use of imagination in the creative adaptation of what Paul says to the views of the various later writers.

The Surprising Malleability of 1 Corinthians 7 In the opening of 1 Corinthians 7, Paul writes, “Now concerning the things about which you wrote.” Immediately following that remark, he states a principle: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.” This opening introduces an ambiguity: Does Paul cite a principle that the Corinthians who wrote to him have put forward themselves?3 Or is the statement of this principle the beginning of his response to a question in their letter about marriage? The introductory phrase, “Now concerning,” which also occurs in 8:1, 12:1, and 16:1, may indicate that Paul responds to issues raised by the Corinthians in all these passages. This observation slightly favors the first possibility. The closest analogy in the surrounding culture is the typical stance of philosophers called Cynics.4 Their position is best known from a collection of Cynic Epistles, most of which come from the Augustan age.5 For example, a letter in this collection attributed to Diogenes of Sinope, one of the earliest Cynics, states, “As for intemperate intercourse with women, which demands a lot of spare time, bid it farewell.”6 The first part of the principle, “It is good for a man,” reflects one important aim of the ancient philosophical enterprise: to formulate ethical principles.7 The second part, “not to touch a woman,” reflects the usage of both Hebrew and Greek, in which “to touch a woman” is a euphemism for sexual intercourse.8 The more educated leaders of the community would be familiar with the use of language concerning “what is good for a man” from their acquaintance with Greek popular philosophy. Two ambiguities within this principle should also be noted. One concerns the question of whether “it is good” is a strong moral judgment, im-

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plying that it is wrong for a man to touch a woman. An alternative interpretation is that not touching a woman is recommended as a better way of life than one including sexual intercourse. The other ambiguity is whether the advice not to touch a woman presupposes certain circumstances, such as being single, or whether it is absolute. Paul may be read as taking the principle as absolute and rejecting it in his first comment: “On account of various kinds of sexual immorality, however, let each man have his own wife and let each woman have her own husband” (7:2).9 “To have a wife” or “to have a husband” means “to be married.”10 This first comment, taken at face value, could imply that every adult should be married, but it is clear from Paul’s further discussion in this chapter that he does not mean that. Nevertheless, he does seem to present the married state as the normal one for men and women. Paul goes on to say, “Let the husband fulfill his obligation to the wife; and likewise the wife to the husband” (7:3). The discussion that follows clarifies that this obligation is the duty to have sexual relations with one’s spouse. In verse 4, Paul makes the point that the wife does not have the right of control over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, he says the husband does not have this right over his own body, but the wife does. This principle limits the freedom of individual married people to make decisions about sexual relations and sexual continence. Paul may be read as rejecting the position that married people ought to practice sexual continence. He does so because those whose spouses deprive them of their conjugal rights without their consent could easily fall into adultery or some other type of fornication, for example, the men going to prostitutes (compare 1 Cor 6:15–16). He therefore implores, “Do not deprive one another” in verse 5. He then adds an exception to this rule, “unless perhaps by agreement for a limited time, in order to have leisure for prayer,11 and be together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.” The argument of 7:2–5 may be understood as a refutation of the position that even married believers should abstain from sexual relations. The remark in verse 6, however, raises difficulties. Here Paul writes, “I say this, however, as a concession, not as a command.” The main ambiguity here is determining to what the term “concession” refers. There are four possibilities: “(a) marriage itself, (b) sexual intercourse within marriage, (c) abstaining from sexual intercourse to devote oneself to prayer, or (d) resuming sexual intercourse after a time of abstinence for prayer.”12 Although there is reason to choose (c)—Paul allows for temporary abstinence as a

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c­ oncession to those arguing that sexual relations should be avoided even within ­marriage—later writers could choose another option depending on their own ideologies and values.13 In verse 7 Paul declares, “I would like, however, all persons (in the community) to be as I am,” that is, practicing long-term sexual abstinence.14 This statement is also ambiguous. It may be understood as Paul’s actual, sincere preference. Or the rest of verse 7 may show that this statement “functions in a ‘diplomatic’ manner, enabling Paul to identify with the Corinthians and advise them.”15 The verse concludes: “but each man (and woman) has his own gift (charisma) from God, one of one kind, another of another kind.” Marriage itself for Paul is primarily a state in which some were called.16 In 7:8 Paul advises “the unmarried and the widows” to remain single (and sexually continent) as Paul is. Here, as elsewhere in the Corinthian correspondence, Paul presents himself as a model to be imitated. He also implicitly relies on the argument that the believers should remain in the state in which they were called.17 This verse is an important one for interpreters like Tertullian, who rejected the practice of marrying for a second time after being widowed or divorced. In the next verse, however, he qualifies this advice: “But if they are not exercising self-control, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn” (7:9). The image of burning is ambiguous. It could be taken metaphorically as the burning of desire or realistically as punishment by fire.18 In biblical and later Jewish texts the image of burning or fire is used of sexual desire, and it is portrayed as dangerous because it may lead to sin.19 The Greeks associated desire with an internal burning and with disease, but the connection with disease is made only with regard to excessive desire.20 After discussing divorce (7:10–16) and elaborating on the principle that believers should remain in the state in which they were called (7:17–24), Paul turns to the matter of whether believers who are virgins should marry (7:25–38). The introduction to this passage, “Now concerning the virgins,” suggests that the topic is one concerning which the Corinthians sought advice.21 Unlike the question of divorce, Paul admits that for this topic he has no command from the Lord but is willing to give his opinion “as one upon whom the Lord has had mercy,” that is, “one who is trustworthy.” His opinion is that “it is good for a man to be so,” that is, to be as one is (7:26), that is, to remain in the state in which he was called.22 As in 7:1b, the clause “it is good for a man” in verse 26 comes from philosophical teaching, probably Stoic.23 That which is good, however, is

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defined in accordance with the principle that one should remain as one was when called. For the first time in this chapter, Paul provides a reason for this principle (7:26): “in view of the impending crisis.” The crisis is likely an eschatological occurrence, but the precise translation is ambiguous. It could be translated “the present necessity” or “the impending necessity.”24 Paul will have more to say about this “necessity,” but it is already clear that his argument here is analogous to that of the Hellenistic moralists.25 The basic question the Stoics put to themselves was, “Should the intelligent, informed, morally upright man, in short, the wise man, take on” the responsibilities of marriage?26 These responsibilities involved accepting and performing well the roles of husband, father, householder, and citizen.27 One Stoic argument in favor of marriage was that the structure and future of the universe (kosmos) made marriage indispensable and thus a duty of all free men.28 Another type of argument was that acting in accordance with nature, that is, getting married, was advantageous, unless “performed in adverse circumstances,” which would make an otherwise “fitting” action disadvantageous.29 Paul’s argument about the “necessity” would be understandable to his audience, who may thereby be persuaded that the “necessity” constituted adverse circumstances that make marriage disadvantageous. His explicit argument is that believers should remain as they were when called with the qualification that if they marry they do not sin. What follows makes clear that, with regard to marriage, the underlying reason is the current adverse circumstances.30 In verses 29–31, Paul elaborates the “necessity” he mentioned in verse 26. He begins by saying that the time (kairos) has been shortened.31 From a rhetorical perspective this remark intensifies and adds urgency to the audience’s awareness that they are living in the last days and need to prepare for what comes afterward. Instructions follow for the time that remains. The Corinthians should be married as if they were not married, weep and rejoice as if they were not doing so, buy as if they did not possess what they buy; Paul sums up this advice by saying that they should make use of the world (kosmos) as if they were not making use of it (7:31). These instructions have the same effect as the shortness of the time. The meaning and importance of normal affairs are diminished when the time is short. Paul ends the section with another apocalyptic remark: “For the form of this world is passing away.” Activities similar to those mentioned here play a role in prophetic and apocalyptic discussions of the end time.32 The “as if not” sayings also bear some resemblance to Stoic teaching about calmness and detachment.33

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Of greatest importance for the immediate context is the advice “that those who have wives should have them as if they did not have them” (7:29). This cannot imply that sexual relations between spouses should cease because Paul has forcefully argued the contrary near the beginning of this chapter. The obligation to continue sexual relations excludes the possibility of long separation of the spouses for whatever reason. The implication of the saying then seems to be that husbands (and wives) should continue to fulfill all the obligations of marriage but in a way that does not give those obligations paramount importance. Paul then makes a related argument in 7:32–35 that the unmarried should remain so in order to be free of the cares of householders. To conclude this argument, Paul declares: “I say this for your own benefit, not to throw a noose on you, but for the sake of what is beneficial and for (your) constant attendance on the Lord without distraction.” The Stoic Hierocles advocated marriage as “beneficial,” whereas here Paul argues, like the Cynics, that avoiding marriage is beneficial.34 The image of the “noose” is sometimes found in Greek literature and philosophical writings as a metaphor for moral restraint.35 Most important, the use of the adverb signifying a lack of distraction from attending on the Lord is in the final, emphatic position, reinforcing the conclusion that Paul is drawing upon the Cynic view that marriage is a distraction from a more important calling.36 This discussion of 1 Corinthians 7 suggests that Paul was not practicing or advocating sexual continence for its own sake, in other words, that he was not an ascetic. Rather, he recommended the single state for practical reasons related to the imminence of the end.

The Afterlife of 1 Corinthians 7 In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul took a nuanced, complex position on marriage and virginity. He acknowledged that marriage was best for some, and virginity for others. In the centuries that followed, these issues were debated, and writers came to various conclusions. As we have seen, their opinions may be divided into four major positions, discussed below.

No Marriage for Believers Gospel of Luke

The oldest text that arguably forbids marriage is Luke 20:34–36: “And Jesus said to them, ‘the sons of this age marry and give their daughters in

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marriage, but those who are worthy to attain that age and the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they are no longer able to die but are like angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.’”37 This text is an edited form of Mark 12:24–25: “Jesus said to them, ‘Do you not err because you do not know 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.’” When Mark says that those who rise from the dead do not marry because they are like angels in heaven, he is speaking about the future, about the time when the dead actually rise. Luke has rewritten Mark’s saying of Jesus so that it refers to the present, earthly age. Those who belong entirely to this age marry and are given in marriage. Those who are worthy to inherit the age to come, however, do not marry even in this age in order that they may attain the age to come. The statement that such people are no longer able to die (v. 36) implicitly associates marriage with procreation and the need for procreation with death. If there is no need to produce a new generation, then marriage is unnecessary. The Lukan version of the saying also implies that becoming and remaining worthy of the resurrection entails being and living like angels, which in turn entails avoiding sexual relations. The Lukan form of the saying is related to Mark, not to Paul. First Corinthians 7, however, may have influenced Luke’s rewriting of the earlier Gospel. One or more of the following remarks may have played a role: 1 Cor 7:7, “I wish that all were as I am”; or 7:25–26, “Concerning the virgins, I have no command of the Lord, but I give my opinion as one who, by the mercy of the Lord, is faithful. I think that, on account of the impending necessity, this is good: that a man (and woman) remain as they are”; and the passage arguing that those who are unmarried are free from anxieties and distractions (7:32–35).

Marcion

Marcion was an influential teacher who was born around 85 CE and died around 160 CE. He was born in Pontus (modern Turkey) and went to Rome to teach. He distinguished the creator God of the Jews and their scriptures from the divine father of Jesus. The historical Marcion can best be reconstructed by placing “the most marked characteristics of the profiles that have been discovered . . . within the currents of the second century.”38 We know the ideas and practices of Marcion and his followers only from their enemies; nevertheless, we can draw some conclusions through

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careful and critical reading of what their opponents say. In general, it can be said, “it is beyond doubt . . . that Marcion himself denigrated marriage and procreation.”39 According to Tertullian, “The flesh is not, according to Marcion, immersed in the water of the sacrament unless it be in virginity, widowhood, or celibacy, or has purchased by divorce a title to baptism . . . Now such a scheme as this must no doubt involve the proscription of marriage.”40 Of his own position Tertullian remarks, “We do not reject marriage, but simply refrain from it.”41 He brings out a contrast between Marcion’s position and his own by commenting, “For this leads me to remark of Marcion’s god, that in reproaching marriage as an evil and unchaste thing, he is really prejudicing the cause of that very sanctity which he seems to serve. For he destroys the material on which it subsists; if there is to be no marriage, there is no sanctity. All proof of abstinence is lost when excess is impossible.”42 The rationale for Marcion’s prohibition of marriage is unclear.43 His interpretation of 1 Corinthians 7 is also unclear, at least in part because his position was so close to that of many of his critics.44 The writings that counted as authoritative for Marcion included only a version of the Gospel of Luke and the Pauline letters (without the Pastoral Epistles). A plausible explanation, therefore, is that he took Paul’s wish that all were like him (7:7), that is, single and sexually continent, and made it into a rule for all participants in his movement.

Tatian

Tatian flourished around 160 CE. He was educated in Greek rhetoric and philosophy and became a Christian in Rome between 150 and 165. He was a student of Justin Martyr but soon showed independent opinions. He is best known for his apology, Oratio ad Graecos, which defends Christianity and severely criticizes Greek civilization. He is also known for his Diatessaron, a unified account of the life of Jesus based on the four Gospels.45 Like Marcion, Tatian took a strong position against marriage. Clement of Alexandria has preserved the most telling passage from Tatian for the question of marriage and sexual relations. He introduces it by mentioning “godless men who attribute the invention of marriage directly to the devil, a notion which dangerously blasphemes the Lawgiver.” He goes on to say: I believe Tatian the Syrian made bold to teach these doctrines. At any rate he writes these words in his book On Perfection According to the Saviour . . . “While agreement to be continent makes prayer possible, intercourse of corruption destroys it. By the very disparaging way he allows it, he forbids it.

Marriage and Celibacy  59 For although he allowed them to come together again because of Satan and the temptation to incontinence, he [Paul] indicated that the man who takes advantage of this permission will be serving two masters, God if there is ‘agreement,’ but if there is no such agreement, incontinence, fornication, and the devil.”46

This fragment from a lost work by Tatian is one of the oldest comments on 1 Cor 7:5.47 It confirms Irenaeus’s remark that Tatian declared “that marriage was nothing else than corruption and fornication.”48 Tatian defines the sexual union of husband and wife as “a sharing of corruption” (κοινωνία φθορᾶς), where the word “sharing” is probably a euphemism for sexual intercourse. This expression makes clear Tatian’s profound aversion to sexual relations.49 For Paul, incontinence becomes a problem only during long periods of abstention from sexual relations. For Tatian, the return to marital sex is surrender to incontinence (ἀκρασία) and a culpable connivance with Satan.50 Ascetic practices, perhaps especially the avoidance of sexual relations, are explicable in the context of Tatian’s interpretation of the role of the divine spirit in the lives of believers.51 According to Peter Brown, “The joining of the existing, insufficient human being to the Holy Spirit formed the center of gravity of his [Tatian’s] thought. His insistence on sexual abstinence flowed from this overriding preoccupation.”52 Brown’s analysis is supported by Tatian’s Oration to the Greeks. For example, in arguing that the Greeks are wrong to think of the soul as immortal by nature, he remarks: “The ignorant soul is in darkness. Because of this if it lives alone it inclines down towards matter and dies with the flesh, but if it gains union with the divine spirit it is not unaided, but mounts to the realms above where the spirit leads it; for the spirit’s home is above, but the soul’s birth is below.”53 Paul took a pragmatic view of marriage as disadvantageous in the current adverse circumstances. Tatian, in contrast, took a more dogmatic view, a view that intimate union with the spirit and ascent to the realms above are incompatible with the physical and sexual bond of marriage.

Acts of Paul and Thecla

The Acts of Paul and Thecla was written in the latter half of the second century.54 It presents a narrative interpretation of Paul and his teaching, especially of 1 Corinthians 7. The narrative begins with Paul fleeing Antioch and traveling to Iconium. A man from Iconium, Onesiphorus, goes out to meet Paul and invites him to be his houseguest. After Paul enters the

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house and they break bread, Paul proclaims “the word of God concerning continence and the resurrection.”55 This proclamation is in the form of beatitudes. The first beatitude is similar to the sixth beatitude of Jesus in Matthew: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt 5:8).56 The other beatitudes announced by Paul are quite different: Blessed are they who have kept the flesh pure, for they shall become a temple of God. Blessed are the continent, for to them God will speak. Blessed are they who have renounced this world, for they shall be wellpleasing unto God. Blessed are they who have wives as if they had them not, for they shall be heirs to God . . . Blessed are they who have departed from the form of this world, for they shall judge angels and at the right hand of the Father they shall be blessed . . . Blessed are the bodies of the virgins, for they shall be well pleasing to God, and shall not lose the reward of their purity.57

The beatitude about having wives as if they had them not alludes to 1 Cor 7:29. Unlike the rhetorical force of this saying in the larger context of 1 Corin­thians 7, the impact of this beatitude in the context of the Acts of Paul and Thecla is that the blessed are those who do not have sexual relations with their wives (or husbands). The beatitude about departing from the form of this world alludes to 1 Cor 7:31b. The statement is ambiguous in the context of 1 Corinthians 7 as a whole, but here it seems to imply that those who are continent or virgins are those who have departed from the form of this world where marriage with sexual relations is the norm. The beatitudes present virginity as highly desirable, but they do not make it a requirement. Thecla nevertheless maintains her virginity until death. In the narrative that follows, however, Paul’s teaching is more sharply defined than it was in the beatitudes. When the governor asks Paul what he teaches, he says that God “has sent me since he desires the salvation of men (and women), that I may draw them away from corruption and impurity, all pleasure and death, that they may sin no more.”58 This account, like the fragment from Tatian discussed above, seems to equate sexual relations in marriage with “corruption” and “impurity” or “fornication.”59 To the degree that the Acts of Paul and Thecla can be seen as a reading of 1 Corinthians 7, it is a one-sided reading. As we will see, 1 Timothy provides an equally onesided reading, but in the opposite way.

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Marriage Allowed for Believers Basilides

Basilides was a Christian philosopher active in Alexandria in the first half of the second century.60 Fragments of his lost works have been preserved, as well as an account of his teaching by Irenaeus.61 Not much is said about sex and marriage, but one of the remarks of Irenaeus may reveal Basilides’s basic position: “Furthermore, one should consider use of the ­remaining kinds of behavior and all kinds of pleasure as matters of indifference.”62 Since Basilides made use of Stoic ethical philosophy, it is likely that this statement belongs to the theme of the ethical status of human actions. The Stoics defined certain activities as virtuous and others as vicious. All other actions were “matters of indifference,” that is, belonging neither to virtue nor to vice.63 Basilides’s classification of “all kinds of pleasure” as morally neutral is likely to include sexual pleasure, which, for the Stoics, and probably for Basilides, was to be pursued mainly in the context of marriage.

Isidore and Other Followers of Basilides

Irenaeus also includes some information about the followers of Basilides, but the topics of sex and marriage are not mentioned.64 Clement of Alexandria, however, describes some of their teaching in this regard. He begins with a discussion of their interpretation of the saying about eunuchs in Matt 19:11–12, which concludes with the following: “But those who for the sake of the eternal kingdom have made themselves eunuchs derive this idea, they say, from a wish to avoid the distractions involved in marriage, because they are afraid of having to waste time in providing for the necessities of life.”65 This argument against marriage is typically Cynic and one that Paul also makes use of in 7:32–35. Clement recounts their interpretation of the clause “it is better to marry than to burn” in 7:9. What Paul means is, “Do not cast your soul into the fire, so that you have to endure night and day and go in fear lest you should fall from continence. For a soul which has to concentrate upon endurance has lost hope.”66 Clement then quotes at length from On Ethics, a work by Isidore, the son of Basilides. The first part of the quotation advises, “Abstain, then, from a quarrelsome woman lest you are distracted from the grace of God.”67 Like Basilides and Paul, Isidore here uses a Cynic argument, but it is not clear whether the latter is advising against marrying a quarrelsome woman or staying away from one’s own quarrelsome wife.

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Once a man has abstained, Isidore recommends, “But when you have rejected the fire of the seed, then pray with an undisturbed conscience. And when your prayer of thanksgiving descends to a prayer of request, and your request is not that in future you may do right, but that you may do no wrong, then marry.”68 This passage may be seen as an elaboration of 1 Cor 7:8–9, if we take the “abstaining” to mean avoiding marriage. It is good for an unmarried man to remain unmarried. To this point Isidore and Paul agree. Isidore goes beyond Paul’s statement by going on to explain what it means “not to exercise self-control.” His diagnosis of the prayer of the unmarried man helps him decide whether to remain as he is or to marry. Isidore then provides a pastorally sensitive discussion of a man who theoretically should marry, but for whom doing so is not a viable, practical option. With the support of the community, and assuming that he wants to do what is right, “he will achieve his object.”69 Isidore’s nuanced discussion is different from Paul’s in detail but reflects the same pragmatic and pastoral qualities manifested in 1 Corinthians 7 as a whole. Finally, Isidore draws upon the teaching of Epicurus in the final remark quoted by Irenaeus: “Human nature has some wants which are necessary and natural, and others which are only natural. To be clothed is necessary and natural; sexual intercourse is natural but not necessary.”70 In his Letter to Menoeceus Epicurus wrote, “We must reckon that some desires are natural and others empty, and of the natural some are necessary, others natural only.”71 The quotations preserved by Clement make clear that Basilides and his followers considered sexual continence to be the ideal but allowed marriage depending on the circumstances. The motivation for continence is different from Paul’s reference to apocalyptic eschatology. The underlying rationale for Basilides and his followers may lie in their understanding of the mission of Christ and the salvation of humankind. Jesus was not incarnate and was not crucified; he returned to the heavenly world while Simon of Cyrene was being crucified. Christ came to “destroy the works of the craftsman of the world.” Only the soul is saved; the body is corruptible.72 Since marriage belongs to this world, those who set their sights on the heavenly world are better off avoiding it.

Origen

As Basilides probably did, Origen considered marriage to be morally neutral, in Stoic terms, adiaphoron.73 He favored sexual continence but was

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supportive of marriage. He argued against the Marcionites “that Christians can live in marriage ‘without reproach.’”74 With respect to Paul’s use of the word charisma (“gift”) in verse 7, Origen argued that both marriage and celibacy are divine gifts. For him, “the ‘gift’ of marriage is harmony (symphonia), that leads ‘not to confusion but to peace.’”75 On the other hand, he interpreted 7:1 “as Paul’s congratulations to more ‘perfect’ Christians who are able to sustain a high degree of abstinence.” He recognized, at the same time, that Paul “condescends to the ‘weakness’ of those unable to achieve this level of sexual restraint.”76 In keeping with that recognition, Origen concluded that 7:2–4 was “directed only to ‘infants,’ to spiritually immature Corinthians who could not compare to” more ascetically advanced Christians.77 He interpreted verse 5 as calling for complete purity “at the time of their prayers and fasts.” Citing a number of passages from the Old Testament, Origen attempted to show that “sexual separation for the sake of purity was a principle known to the Israelites and should also govern Christian behavior.” Furthermore, he extended “Paul’s words on sexual abstinence for the sake of prayer” to the Eucharist, and later writers followed suit.78 Origen did not recommend a second marriage after the death of a spouse but allowed it for those who “burn.”79 Origen understood the “fire” of that burning to be the lust of the flesh and took the concession of a second marriage as an example of Paul “becoming weak for the weak.”80 Origen linked Paul’s claim in 7:29 that “the time has been shortened” with the line in the Lord’s prayer “thy kingdom come” and explained, “that the temporal kingdom is passing away so that the eternal one may come.” He does not seem, however, to expect a divine intervention of a dramatic kind.81 On the whole, Origen viewed even married sexuality “as a darkened antithesis to the blazing, light-filled embrace of Christ in the spirit” made possible by the free choice of a virgin life.82

Affirmation of Marriage, but Only One Marriage Allowed The Shepherd of Hermas

This work was written in Rome by a layman named Hermas around 110–140 CE. The section of this work called the Mandates or Commandments is presented as dictated to Hermas by the Shepherd, the angel of ­repentance. The Shepherd does not forbid a second marriage, saying that the surviving spouse does not sin by remarrying. Anyone who does not remarry, however, “has provided a superior honor for himself and a great

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glory to the Lord.” The relevant passage is an adaptation of 1 Cor 7:28 and 39–40.83

1 Timothy

The first letter to Timothy does not explicitly require marriage but seems to present it as the normal state of men and women. Indeed, childbearing will save the collective “woman” from the guilt engendered by Eve’s sin (2:14–15). The author condemns teachings that forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods (4:1–5). One marriage in a lifetime is an ideal that bishops and deacons were required to meet (3:2–5, 12). “True” widows are those married only once (5:9). This principle is not an absolute rule, since the author recommends that young widows marry and bear children (5:11–14).84 The ideal of a single marriage in a lifetime owes something to Roman notions of sexual fidelity. Chastity of the wife was especially valued in the literary sources that refer to her castitas (chastity) and pudicitia (modesty). The chaste wife is often praised as univira, the wife of only one husband in her lifetime. Nevertheless, Roman women who had been widowed or divorced were normally expected to marry, unless they were beyond childbearing age. Furthermore, many of the women marked as univira on their tomb inscriptions died relatively young. According to Susan Treggiari, “Remarriage was not morally objectionable to pagan writers except when they wanted to take a particularly high moral line, although lifelong monogamy for women was morally better and luckier.”85 The value placed on lifelong monogamy for community leaders in 1 Timothy stands out against this cultural context as including an extension to men of a high moral standard typically expected of women. The condemnation of those who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods (and perhaps wine: 5:23) suggests that 1 Timothy was written in part to claim Paul’s authority for the traditional, nonascetic way of life. Given Paul’s stated preference for the single state and sexual continence in 1 Corinthians 7, it is clear that 1 Timothy is a one-sided reception of Paul like that of the Acts of Paul and Thecla but in the opposite direction.

Tertullian

The early Christian writer best known for arguing against a second marriage is Tertullian. With regard to the second marriages even of those who have been widowed, in his treatise To His Wife he takes a much stronger position, when discussing 1 Cor 7:8–9, than Paul does:

Marriage and Celibacy  65 The Apostle, however, teaches us what is better than this “good” (marriage), when he says that he permits marriage, but prefers celibacy—the former because of the snares of the flesh, the latter because the times are straitened. Hence, if we consider the reasons which he gives for each of these views, we shall have no difficulty in seeing that marriage is conceded to us on the principle that marry we may because marry we must. But what necessity proffers necessity cheapens. Scripture says that it is better to marry than to burn; but what sort of good, I ask you, can that be which is such only when it is compared to what is bad? Marriage is better because burning is worse! How much better it is neither to marry nor to burn! . . . The Apostle is nowhere so tolerant of marriage that he fails to point out his own preference, and this is that we strive to follow his example. Blessed is he who is like Paul!86

Tertullian’s talk about Paul “permitting” marriage “because of the snares of the flesh” probably derives from his assumption that the opening statement, “It is good for a man not to touch a woman,” is Paul’s own principle. “Permit,” however, is rather weak, given that Paul issues, in effect, a command to marry by using the imperative in 7:2. In Exhortation to Chastity and in On Monogamy, Tertullian goes so far as to refer to marriage as an evil.87 In Exhortation to Chastity, Tertullian describes three degrees of sanctification. The first is to remain a virgin from birth. The second is to live a life of virginity after one’s second birth, namely baptism, either by the mutual agreement of husband and wife or by the decision of a widow or widower not to remarry. The third is one and only one marriage, so that if the spouse dies the surviving partner “renounces all use of sex from that time on.”88 In the second type, Tertullian seems to advocate what Paul prohibited, namely, a permanent abstinence from sexual relations by a married couple (7:5). The first and third types are compatible with Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 7 for those who are able to live such a life. In 7:27–28 Paul asks, “Are you released from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you marry, you do not sin.” Tertullian reasonably infers that this passage concerns a second marriage. He comments on these verses in the following way: However, this statement is introduced as a matter of personal opinion (in verse 25) and is not based on any divine precept. There is a big difference between a commandment given by God and a counsel given by man . . . Neither in the Gospel nor in the epistles of Paul himself will you find any permission for second marriage based on a commandment of God’s. This fact, then, confirms the conclusion that marriage is to be contracted only

66  Marriage and Celibacy once, since we must acknowledge that a thing is forbidden by God when there is no evidence that He permits it.89

Tertullian undermines what Paul states in 7:28 (“If you marry [for the second time] you do not sin”) by applying a hermeneutical approach that overturns the view he opposes. He asks his audience “to choose between the advice of a mere man and the advice of the Holy Spirit,” implying that he does not consider Paul’s own opinion to be inspired. Later in this section of the Exhortation he allows that, when Paul says that a widow will be happier if she does not remarry (7:40), he speaks the advice of the Holy Spirit.90 Tertullian’s negative view of remarriage after the death of a spouse may reflect his admiration for the New Prophecy, later called Montanism, since one of its characteristic features was the prohibition of such marriages.91 The treatise On Purity is one of Tertullian’s later works.92 In it he discusses Paul’s attitude toward marriage. To demonstrate how opposed Paul is to lust, he quotes 7:1–3 to show “how eager he is that souls should abstain even from the legitimate fruit of nature, I mean the apple of marriage.”93 Tertullian understands the “concession” to which Paul refers in 7:6 to be permission to marry in the first place: “And yet he declares that he has allowed the use of marriage, not commanded it; for he wishes all to be like himself.”94 Tertullian then quotes verse 9, “it is good for the unmarried, also, and for the widows so to remain,” according to Paul’s example. But “if they are wanting in strength, let them marry, because it is better to marry than to burn.” He then interprets the latter clause, “With what fires, pray, is it worse to burn—those of concupiscence or of punishment? But if fornication is pardoned, then its concupiscence does not cause one to burn.” He then concludes that “it better accords, however, with the spirit of the Apostle that he should be on guard against the fires of punishment. And if it is the punishment which burns, then fornication is not pardoned, since punishment awaits it.” Here Tertullian puns on the word “fire” and proposes that marriage is preferable to fornication, which leads irreversibly to the fire of hell. Believers should struggle to control the “fire” of their desire.95 Tertullian lived his own life in accordance with his reading of 1 Corinthians 7. He was married once and did not remarry after his wife died. In the latter part of his life, he was attracted to the New Prophecy, as noted above. The New Prophets and their followers forbade second marriages. Tertullian respected prophets as people speaking for God. The New Prophets taught that in their movement the promise of Jesus was being fulfilled:

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after his departure, the Paraclete, that is, the Holy Spirit, would come and teach believers in Jesus “all things” ( John 14:26). This claim authorized their prophecies and teachings. Tertullian accepted the claim, as is evident in his work Monogamy.96

Marriage Affirmed for the Sake of Procreation 1 Timothy

First Timothy calls for younger widows to marry and have children (5:11–15) to prevent them from being carried away by their sensual desires. The issue does not seem to be porneia (“sexual immorality”), as in 1 Cor 7:2, but rather a concern that they may marry and thereby annul their commitment to remain sexually continent after being widowed. The author of 1 Timothy wants them to keep busy with their children and households so they will not become gossipy and meddlesome, “saying what they ought not.” The author may not be condemning gossip but rather trivializing female teaching here, evidently false teaching in his view, since he accuses some of them of having turned away to follow Satan (5:15). The denigration of “old wives’ tales” (4:7) is comparable. The view that “woman” will be saved by childbearing is based on a legend that Satan was the father of Eve’s son Cain (1 Tim 2:14–15). Eve’s sin in allowing herself to be seduced may be atoned by a process that involves legitimate sexual relations and childbearing. Since all women share Eve’s guilt, all women must go through this process. It is a necessary but not sufficient process, since the women must also remain in faithfulness, love, and holiness, with prudence (σωφροσύνη).97 Thus 1 Timothy represents two points of view about marriage. The first is that, for leaders of the community at least, Christians should contract only one marriage in their lifetime. The other is that younger widows should remarry for their own moral good and for that of the community. In both cases procreation plays a significant role.98

Valentinus and the Valentinians

Valentinus taught for a time in Alexandria; at some time between 136 and 140 he moved to Rome “where he assumed a role in ecclesiastical affairs.”99 Irenaeus had personal contact with the first generation of followers of Valentinus and “examined writings used in the Valentinian church.”100 Irenaeus reports that “Valentinus based his theological system in part on the gnostic myth.”101 The typical Gnostic myth begins with a monad, for

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example, the single parent of the entirety. By contrast, the system of Valentinus begins with a duality or dyad, that is, a pair of first principles, namely, the ineffable, ungendered parent and the silence. This pair emitted a second duality, the parent of the entirety and truth. This quartet yielded two more dualities, the word and life followed by the human being and the church. The original fullness also contained ten powers that came forth from the word and life and twelve powers from the human being and the church.102 The mythic system of Valentinus portrays divine couples producing offspring as a model for human marriage. Valentinus surely knew 1 Corinthians 7, since he alludes to 7:31 in fragment 4.103 Clement of Alexandria reports that “the Valentinians, who hold that the union of man and woman is derived from the divine emanation in heaven above, approve of marriage.”104 Michael Williams notes that “Clement does not actually mention intercourse or procreation, but the context of his remark suggests that he is in fact thinking of marital procreation.”105 This hypothesis is supported by another passage in a work by Clement, Excerpts from Theodotus. Theodotus was a member of the “Eastern” School of followers of Valentinus, located mostly in Alexandria, and lived in the second century.106 The passage in question “explicitly condones procreation, stating that the procreation of children is somehow necessary for the salvation of believers.”107 Peter Brown’s reading of the same passage is as follows: “Married believers were tolerated by the Valentinians. They provided the physical continuity that was necessary if the human race were to offer to Christ the full harvest of its spiritual ‘seed,’ in the form of many generations of believers, which would be gathered, in due time, into the Place of Fullness.”108

The Gospel of Philip

The treatment of marriage in the Valentinian work Gospel of Philip is complex. Marriage itself is a great mystery, “for [without] it the world would not exist.”109 The sentences that follow are fragmentary but they seem to say that the image of marriage (ordinary earthly marriage with sexual intercourse) consists of defilement or pollution.110 Only the marriage that takes place in the bridal chamber is presented in an entirely positive way.111 The polluted marriage of the world is contrasted with the unpolluted marriage, which is not concerned with the flesh but is pure (or sanctified). “It belongs not to desire but to the will. It belongs not to the darkness or the night but to the day and the light.”112

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The identity of the “unpolluted marriage” is ambiguous. One credible interpretation is that it refers to a marriage not of this world but of a higher, heavenly plane. A good candidate for this kind of marriage is “a spiritual marriage between the initiate and his or her heavenly double”; Lundhaug attributes this interpretation to Michael Williams.113 Evidence for this interpretation lies in discussion of the marriage that takes place in the bridal chamber: Among the shapes of unclean spirits there are male ones and female ones. It is male spirits that have sexual intercourse with souls who conduct their lives within a female shape, and female ones that mingle promiscuously with those within a male shape. And no one can escape if seized by them, unless by taking on a male or a female power, namely (one’s) bridegroom or bride. Now, one takes on this power from the imaged bridal chamber . . . when they [the unclean spirits] see a man and his wife sitting together, the female ones cannot make advances to the male, nor can the male ones make advances to the female. Just so, if the image and the angel join with one another, none can dare to make advances to the male or the female.114

Two other interpretations have been offered: (1) the “unpolluted marriage” may be an earthly marriage that is a type of a heavenly marriage, that is, a marriage in which the partners are sexually continent; and (2) “a sacramental act or acts that are understood in terms of the ICM [Idealized Cognitive Model of Marriage] . . . but without involving actual human marriage in a basic sense.”115 It is difficult to infer from this work what its actual teaching on human marriage is. Given what Clement of Alexandria says about the Valentinians, alongside statements about marriage in the Gospel of Philip itself, it seems likely that those who read and valued the work would tolerate ordinary marriage with sexual intercourse and procreation in order to maintain the existence of their group in particular and the human social world in general. At the same time, they would have held a single, sexually continent life as the ideal.

Clement of Alexandria

Clement of Alexandria was a Christian theologian who lived from about 150 to about 215. He was probably brought up in Athens and moved to Alexandria to study with Pantaenus.116 Like the Valentinians, Clement supported procreation within marriage. In the last chapter of book 2 of the Miscellanies, he gives reasons why marriage is a good thing. The first

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is, “Marriage is altogether necessary—for the sake of one’s country, for the succession of children, for the completion of the universe (in so far as this is up to us).”117 This is one of the typical arguments given by the Stoics in defense of marriage.118 In the same context, Clement takes the position that “married people are to practice continence and tame the passions” and that “within marriage, sexual intercourse is to be reserved for the purpose of procreation, which is a ‘gift of God,’ not indulged in for pleasure.”119 Turning to Clement’s comments on 1 Corinthians 7, we see that he uses the “reference to temptation by Satan in verse 5 to interpret verses 1–2”:120 “Again, when Paul says, ‘It is good for a man not to touch a woman, but because of the risk of immorality let each have his own wife’ he explains it, as it were, by the further words ‘lest Satan tempt you.’ In the phrase ‘because of incontinence’ he speaks not to those who chastely use marriage for procreation alone, but to those who were desiring to go beyond procreation, lest the adversary should raise a stormy blast and arouse desire for alien pleasures.”121 In his refutation of the fragment he preserves from Tatian quoted and discussed above Clement writes: “We too confess that incontinence and fornication are diabolical passions, but the agreement of a controlled marriage occupies a middle position. If the married couple agree to be continent, it helps them to pray; if they agree with reverence to have sexual relations it leads them to beget children.”122 He also comments elsewhere on the phrase “by agreement” in verse 5: “If by agreement marriage relations are suspended for a time to give opportunity for prayer, this teaches continence. He [Paul] adds the words ‘by agreement’ lest anyone should dissolve his marriage, and the words ‘for a time’ lest a married man, brought to continence by force, should then fall into sin; for if he spares his own wife he may fall into desire for another woman.”123 The Alexandrian also counters a strongly ascetic interpretation of verses 32–35, “where Paul contrasts the married person who must please the spouse with the single one who can give undivided attention to the Lord.”124 On this point he writes: “Yes, he [Paul] says, ‘the unmarried one cares for the things of the Lord, but he who is married how he can please his wife.’ What then? Is it not lawful also for those who wish to please their wives according to the will of God to give thanks to God? Is it not allowable for both the married man and his wife to care for things of the Lord together?”125 More constructively, Clement draws upon the idea of “being called by God” in verses 17–24 to affirm marriage as a calling: “Both celibacy and

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marriage have their own different forms of service and ministry to the Lord; I have in mind the caring for one’s wife and children . . . Let each man therefore fulfill his ministry by the work ‘in which he was called’ that he may be free in Christ and receive the proper reward of his ministry.”126 On the same topic he also writes: “Rather they [Paul’s letters] preserve the harmony of the law and the gospel and approve both the man who with thanks to God enters upon marriage with sobriety and the man who in accordance with the Lord’s will lives as a celibate even as ‘each individual is called,’ making his choice without blemish and in perfection.”127 Clement also exalts procreative sex as cooperation with the divine work of creation and the carnal father as a “servant of creation.”128 Paul, it is true, does not mention explicitly the reproductive purpose of marriage.129 One should note, however, that in the ancient world sexual relations in marriage almost always resulted in the birth of children,130 so Paul no doubt took that into account when encouraging those without the gift of sexual continence to marry.131 Unlike Clement, Paul did not celebrate that procreative effect, but the reason is the circumstances in which Paul wrote, as he saw them. The birth of children to believers at that time would lead to further obligations and responsibilities, and these would cause trouble and distractions for the parents.132

Conclusion The Cynics, Stoics, and Paul all took a pragmatic approach to marriage. The Stoics and Paul both argued that marriage was advantageous under some circumstances and disadvantageous under adverse circumstances. For Paul the apocalyptic factors of living in the last days, the need to proclaim and live the gospel, and the coming judgment constituted adverse circumstances. The Cynics and Paul argued that marriage was to be avoided in favor of devoting all one’s time and energy to a higher calling. Basilides and Origen used Stoic concepts and terminology to define marriage as morally neutral. Isidore and other followers of Basilides, like Paul, made use of the Cynic argument against marriage because it is a distraction from what is truly important in life. Clement of Alexandria openly adopted the Stoic notion of civic marriage: it is necessary for producing children to maintain society and the church. He valued marriage and selfcontrol within marriage as well. Some Valentinians apparently validated marriage on the basis of their myths of origin. Heavenly beings united in couples and produced offspring,

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providing a model for human beings. A transformation of the notion of civic marriage may be in the background here. For example, the Valentinians seem to have argued that marriage had the important purpose of producing many generations of believers so that the full harvest of the spiritual “seed” could be gathered up into the heavenly world. Like Paul, the Valentinians apparently tolerated marriage, but for very different reasons. Their concern for ongoing generations could not have been maintained if they still cherished Paul’s imminent expectation of the final apocalyptic events. What is new in the Christian exploration of marriage and celibacy is the role that virginity began to play in the lives of many believers.133 The saying about resurrection in Luke 20 already suggests that sexual continence is the way of life appropriate for those who would be worthy of the new age and the resurrection. Tatian’s strong opposition to sexual intercourse and marriage may derive from a similar source: the presence of the spirit of God in the bodies of believers was incompatible with the worldly “corruption” that characterizes sexual intercourse. The Acts of Paul and Thecla is similar in identifying marriage and the related pleasure as corruption, impurity, and sin. The peak of this development in the first three centuries is the more positive emphasis on virginity in Origen. Since the body was made to be a temple to the Lord, the human soul “should act as if it were a priest serving before the Holy Spirit that dwells in you.” He presented virginity “as a privileged link between heaven and earth.”134 Tertullian made a powerful case for “the belief that abstinence from sex was the most effective technique with which to achieve clarity of soul.” At the same time, “he did not allow the practice of continence to weaken in any way the basic structures of the household.”135 He reconciled the two by articulating a hierarchy of holiness, with lifelong virginity as the most holy, virginity after baptism as second, and lifelong monogamy as third.136 This hierarchy became commonplace in the church for centuries after him.

4 Tthe Church: he Role of Women in The Reception of Paul’s Instructions and Practices regarding Women Like Chapters 1 and 5, this chapter is an example of a broad, wide-ranging type of reception history. In the centuries after Paul, debates over the leadership of women in the church occurred repeatedly, but his letters were rarely cited explicitly in such debates. In this contested reception it is likely that all those involved were aware that some passages in his letters affirmed the leadership of women and others opposed it. These implicit agreements and disagreements with Paul justify defining these debates as part of the reception history of Paul and his letters. The agreements and disagreements with the early Pauline traditions may be viewed as positive and negative receptions of Paul. Later writers who affirmed the activities of women as teachers, prophets, and deacons engaged in the positive reception of 1 Corinthians, Romans, and other early letters implied by their agreement with Paul. Those who affirmed women teachers and celibate widows engaged at the same time in a negative reception of 1 Timothy 2 and 5. Those who rejected women teachers engaged in a positive reception of 1 Timothy 2. The historical Paul did not mention the function of presbyter, let alone foresee its development into an office of sacramental ministry (priesthood). Nevertheless, those who affirmed women presbyters were participating in a positive reception of Paul’s openness to the activity of women in virtually all leadership roles. Those who rejected women presbyters rejected, in effect, that openness on Paul’s part. They engaged in a positive reception of the denial to women of authority over men (1 Timothy 2). This chapter goes beyond the temporal limitation observed in the other chapters of this book to the fifth century because the evidence overall is 73

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sparse and later evidence suggests that the same kinds of controversies were still occurring. The nature of the evidence makes thick description difficult and sometimes impossible. For this reason, the chapter is not organized according to literary works or by writers but rather by century. Paul’s letters are ambiguous and self-contradictory with regard to the role of women. According to many passages he accepts women’s leadership, for example, praising a female apostle ( Junia) and a female deacon (Phoebe). He also affirms the work of women, describing their activities in the same language he uses to describe his own (Rom 16:6, 12). Elsewhere, however, he sets limits on women’s activities. He accepts women prophets but insists that they cover their heads while prophesying (1 Cor 11:5–6), arguing from Genesis 1–3 (1 Cor 11:7–9). In another passage he forbids women to speak in the gatherings of the community, presumably referring to nonprophetic speech (1 Cor 14:34–35).1 Ancient readers and listeners may have associated even more stringent measures with Paul, on the basis of 1 Timothy, which was seen as Pauline until the modern period. Drawing on Genesis 2 (1 Tim 2:13–14), 1 Timothy forbids women to teach or to have authority over men (2:11–12). The reception of Paul’s instructions and practices regarding women reflects the ambiguity and self-contradiction that emerged from the full corpus of writings that were accepted as Pauline in the premodern period. Some examples of reception history either assumed or advocated limitations on women’s leadership, while others affirmed the authority and work of women. Inscriptions and papyri also provide evidence for women who held office in the ancient church. This chapter focuses on the leadership of women in three areas: teaching, prophecy, and holding office.

The Role of Women in Teaching

Evidence from 1 Corinthians, the Pastorals, and Acts In 1 Cor 12:28, Paul states that God has appointed “teachers” in the church who rank in importance only after apostles and prophets.2 He knows that, when members of a community gather, each has something to contribute. A διδαχή (“teaching”) is one of the contributions listed (1 Cor 14:26). He says nothing to exclude women from the role of teacher. A possible exception is the statement that commands women to be silent in the assemblies (1 Cor 14:34–35). A number of modern scholars have argued that these two verses constitute a later addition, or part of one, to the text.3 Many ancient readers, however, took these words as those of Paul.4

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The Pastoral Epistles, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus, constitute a small collection written in Paul’s name by an anonymous author in the first half of the second century.5 They are first mentioned by Irenaeus, who wrote in the second half of that century and believed that Paul had written them, perhaps because they were helpful to him in combating “knowledge (gnosis) falsely so-called.”6 The “Paul” of 1 Timothy forbids women to teach or have authority over men (1 Tim 2:12).7 The “Paul” of Titus, however, instructs Titus to tell older women to be teachers of what is good (Titus 2:3–5). The context makes clear that the older women are expected to teach the younger women in the community how to behave in regard to their gender and stage in life. This teaching is explicitly related to norms in the cultural environment of the addressees (v. 5).8 In some circles at least, women were not expected to speak in public or have authority over men but were expected to teach younger women. In families they taught their daughters what they needed to know to be good wives and mothers. It may be that the injunction for women to be silent in church gatherings was added to 1 Corinthians to make that letter conform to these same cultural norms (see 1 Cor 14:34–35).9 In the Acts of the Apostles, Apollos, Paul’s rival in Corinth, is said to have “taught accurately concerning Jesus.” He is depicted as a native of Alexandria, schooled in rhetoric, and an expert in interpreting the scriptures (Acts 18:24–25). In spite of this high praise, the narrator reports that Priscilla (a form of the name Prisca) and Aquila “took Apollos aside and explained the Way to him more accurately” (18:26). The fact that Priscilla is named before her husband suggests that both she and Aquila were active in conveying this teaching. So the author of Acts, unlike that of 1 Timothy, has no problem with a woman teaching a man, in this case a highly educated and prominent man.

Second-Century Literature The Didache (the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) was composed, with the use of older sources, around 110 or 120 CE.10 The work shows that in the early second century, teaching was still viewed as a charismatic activity, although institutional teachers were emerging.11 Teachers were sometimes itinerant, like apostles and often prophets (Did. 11:1), who are typically seen as charismatic leaders. According to Alessandro Falcetta, there were women among the teachers in the audience of the Didache.12 The Shepherd of Hermas was written in central Italy, probably Rome, over a period of time from the end of the first century until the mid-second­

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century.13 The first section of this work describes Hermas’s vision of an elderly woman who gives him a small scroll or book.14 He is to make two copies and give one to Clement and one to Grapte, both, like Hermas, members of the church in Rome. Clement is to make more copies and send them to cities beyond the local community. Grapte is to use her copy to admonish the widows and orphans, and Hermas is to read his in the local community with the presbyters who lead it.15 “With the presbyters” probably means with their permission, or perhaps a presbyter will sometimes read the book to the congregation. Carolyn Osiek and Margaret Mac­Donald have argued that this passage shows that Grapte’s role has gone beyond the traditional practice of women teaching younger women and girls how to be good wives and mothers. She is probably in charge of widows and orphans who are not embedded in particular households; her teaching likely goes beyond household management to include “ongoing spiritual formation.”16 The Acts of Paul and Thecla circulated both independently and as part of a larger work, the Acts of Paul.17 Dennis MacDonald has suggested that underlying this book are oral legends told by celibate female storytellers in Asia Minor. He argues that the Pastoral Epistles (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus) were written in response to these legends.18 Kate Cooper, in contrast, has argued that apocryphal acts, including the Acts of Paul and ­Thecla, were created by men who present female characters symbolizing their own ideology.19 The hypothesis of oral legends is somewhat speculative, and the apocryphal acts are all later than the Pastoral Epistles. The apocryphal acts may helpfully be seen as proposing an alternative social system contrasting with the civic virtues of the ancient novels, as Cooper suggested, and also civic virtues as adapted by the Pastoral Epistles. The Acts of Paul and Thecla presents both Paul and Thecla as teaching. In Antioch, Thecla instructs her wealthy female patron, Tryphaena, and her maidservants with great success. When Thecla tells Paul that she is going to Iconium, he exhorts her to go and teach the word of God. She eventually goes to Seleucia, where “after enlightening many with the word of God she slept with a noble sleep.”20 The fourth-century church historian Eusebius provides evidence about a second-century virgin and prophet named Philomena who was the teacher of Apelles, a disciple of Marcion. She was remembered for p ­ ersuading Apelles that Marcion’s teaching of two Principles (or two Gods) was in error. Under her influence, he then argued that there is only one Principle.21

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In the late second century, Tatian indirectly contrasted the situation among the Greeks, where only the rich can pursue philosophy, with that among Christians, where “the poor enjoy instruction free of charge . . . we admit all who desire to hear, even old women and young men.”22 He challenged his audience “not to treat the women with scorn who among us pursue philosophy” and to believe “that among us there are wise women!”23

Third-Century Evidence Elizabeth Clark has argued that “throughout the second and third centuries, there was a decided curtailment of opportunities—aside from the fame accruing to martyrdom—for women within the Church.”24 Polemicists constructed a contrast between “mainstream Christianity’s injunction to decorous female behavior” in these centuries and “the ‘laxity’ of the sects’ regulation of women. Ecclesiastical leadership of women thus served as one of the boundary markers that was erected to separate orthodoxy from heterodoxy.”25 The special role of widows mentioned in 1 Tim 5:3–16, however, apparently continued and developed in the rest of the second century and into the third. As 1 Timothy hints by its opposition, widows were apparently already teaching at that time. They evidently continued to teach because of the office that they held and in the context of their participation in the ministry of converting pagans. A third-century work, Didascalia Apostolorum (Teaching of the Apostles), sheds light on the activities of the widows and the attempt by the bishops to limit their authority and the range of their activities:26 Let the widow care for nothing else, but to pray for those who give, and for the whole Church. When she is asked for an explanation by any one, let her not give an answer in haste, unless it be about righteousness alone, and about the faith of God, and let her send those who wish to be instructed to the authorities . . . it is not required nor necessary that women should be teachers . . . for women were not appointed to teach, especially not a widow, but that they should make prayer and supplication to the Lord God . . . But let the widow know that she is the Altar of God, and let her constantly sit in her house . . . But the widow who wishes to please God . . . sits in her house and works with wool and flax, that she may provide something for those who are straightened . . . It is therefore required of widows to be obedient to the Bishop . . . to reverence the Bishop as (they reverence) God . . . nor to do anything except what is commanded them by the Bishop.27

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This text is eloquent, though implicit, testimony to the respected authority widows exercised as teachers in the first few centuries at least. The opposition to their activity in this regard, and in other areas of ministry, arose from efforts “to consolidate the ministries of disciplining, evangelizing, catechizing, and baptizing in the hands of the bishop.”28 Another special role for women was that of giving instruction to other women in preparing them for baptism. This practice was institutionalized in the East in the third century in the office of deaconess (see more below, “Women as Officeholders”). Origen and Dionysius of Alexandria attest to the office of lay Christian teacher in the first third of the third century.29 As Ilaria Ramelli has pointed out, “Origen observes that women can surely teach, and in fact are able to teach ‘wonderful and holy things’; only, they should not teach men, at least not in church.” Origen’s remarks occur in the context of a discussion of 1 Cor 14:35.30

Fourth-Century Evidence The evidence for women teaching in the fourth century is more abundant than for the third. One of these teachers was Macrina, the sister of Gregory of Nyssa, who wrote her biography, the Life of Macrina. Macrina, said to be the “founder of women’s monasticism,” was a highly influential ascetic.31 Under her mother’s tutelage, she studied the book of Wisdom and the Psalms. At the age of twelve, she was betrothed to an honorable young man; but he died before the marriage, and she vowed to remain faithful to his memory and to be celibate for the rest of her life.32 Under Macrina’s guidance, her household gradually became an egalitarian ascetic community in which the distinction between mistress and slave was abolished.33 It was she who persuaded her mother and brothers to follow a “philosophical” way of life.34 In his account of her life, Gregory recounts a dream-vision experienced by his mother, in which someone “in suprahuman majesty of form and shape appeared to address the little child [Macrina the younger, about to be born] by the name of Thecla . . . And so that was Macrina’s secret name. In my view however, the figure who appeared declared this not so much to guide the mother in her choice of a name as to foretell the life of the child and to point out, by the identity of name, a similarity in their choice of life.”35

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Gregory’s treatise On the Soul and the Resurrection has the form of a dialogue in which Macrina takes a role analogous to that of Socrates in the dialogues of Plato. Throughout the dialogue Gregory refers to her simply as “the Teacher.”36 In this work she is portrayed as an expert in expounding scripture. Although Gregory was a notable representative of orthodoxy, he had no problem accepting a woman in the role of teacher. As Ute Eisen has concluded, “In his literary work, he clearly acknowledges Macrina’s theological superiority.”37 Also important was Marthana, a fourth-century deaconess. Marthana was in charge of some of the cells of women ascetics at the shrine of Holy Thecla in Isauria (south-central Turkey). When Egeria, a pilgrim from the West, visited, they read the whole of the Acts of Thecla at the shrine. As both deaconess and superior of women monastics, Marthana filled the roles of teacher, admonisher, and spiritual guide.38 Another major figure of the fourth century was Marcella, a Roman widow of senatorial rank. Jerome praised her “delight in the divine scriptures.”39 Marcella was one of the first women of such high social status “to embrace the ascetic life in her own house, which became not only a gathering place for theologians and students but also a training center for women ascetics.”40 She died in 410, as a result of scourging and beating by invading Goths.41 In his eulogy of her, Jerome mentions that Eustochium was trained in monasticism in her house. Eustochium was the daughter of Jerome’s friend Paula, whom she succeeded as superior of the women’s monastery next to Jerome’s monastery for men in Bethlehem.42 Eisen observes that scholars usually depict Marcella as a pupil of ­Jerome. She shows, however, that Marcella was already active as a theologian in Rome before Jerome arrived and that she was in dialogue with theologians other than Jerome. Furthermore, Jerome’s interaction with her and his dedication to her of his commentaries on Daniel and Ephesians suggest that a model of intellectual exchange is more appropriate for their relationship than one of master and pupil.43 Jerome says that, after his departure from Rome, “in case of a dispute arising as to the testimony of scripture on any subject, recourse was had to her to settle it.”44 A fragmentary papyrus letter has survived in which a certain Kyria, apparently a woman’s name, is identified as a “teacher.” It has been dated to the fourth century, and its provenance is probably Egypt. A male teacher, Philoxenos, is also mentioned in the letter.45

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The activity of the desert mothers Theodora and Synkletike is also noteworthy.46 They were active as teachers in Egypt. The sayings attributed to them in the Sayings of the Fathers (Apophthegmata Patrum) concern teaching. Mother Theodora speaks about the qualities a teacher must have; Mother Synkletike speaks about the preconditions of teaching.47 Synkletike was famous as a teacher also outside the tradition of the sayings of the fathers. In the Life and Deeds of the Holy and Blessed Teacher Synkletike, not only is she portrayed as a teacher, but much of her teaching is also preserved in chapters 22–103. She is also called a “true disciple of the blessed Thecla.” The Life also describes her teaching methods.48 Around the same time that Marcella was active in Rome, a married woman by the name of Theodora was also engaged in teaching. She is praised as a teacher in her tomb inscription, dedicated by her husband Evac[rius], who survived her. It dates to 382 and was found in the Constantinian basilica of St. Agnes in Rome.49 She is praised as “the best protector of the law (optima servatrix legis),” which suggests that she was knowledgeable about the scriptures.50 She is also lauded as “a teacher of the faith (fidei magistra).” The audience of her teaching were the believers (sancti) in Rome.51 Also in the fourth century in Rome, an aristocratic woman by the name of Faltonia Betitia Proba wrote the Cento vergilianus de laudibus Christi (A Virgilian Cento concerning the Glory of Christ), which retold the biblical stories of creation and redemption in verses taken from Virgil and re­ ordered.52 Anne Jensen considers her to be a theologian “among the most gifted and brilliant of her contemporaries” and describes her work as “a Christian epic of salvation.”53 Proba also interpreted Aeneas, the hero of Virgil’s Aeneid, as a man who prefigured Christ (typos). In this way she portrayed Christian piety as a new form of the traditional Roman ideal of p­ ietas (filial piety).54 The emperor Flavius Arcadius Augustus (r. 395–408 CE), the son and successor of Theodosius, had a copy of her “work made for himself and called it ‘Virgil improved in the divine sense.’”55 Jensen has pointed out that, about two hundred years later, Isidore of Seville (d. 636 CE) considered Proba to be the “only woman among the men of the church” and praised her work in his lexicon-like Etymologies. “As long as educated Christians spoke Latin, her work was read with enthusiasm and used as a school text.”56 In Elizabeth Clark’s words, Proba’s Cento “provides a pedagogic tool for young Christians: we know that her Cento was widely used for educational purposes in late antiquity and the Middle Ages.”57

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Following Virgil, Proba called herself a “prophet” (vates) in Cento 12.58 She was praised as an “incomparable wife (uxor inconparabilis)” by her husband in her grave inscription and was the mother of several sons.59 Melania the Elder (341–410 CE) was famous for her wide reading of the ancient Christian commentators on scripture.60 She, like Marcella, was engaged in the theological debates of her time. Unlike Marcella, however, she did not oppose the Origenism of the fourth century, “and this brought Jerome’s wrath upon her.61 At first he had called her the ‘second Thecla,’ but when she did not follow his turn away from Origen he referred to her as a ‘silly old woman.’”62 Melania the Elder was the first of a number of women to leave Rome and found monasteries in Palestine.63 Paula (347–404 CE) was another one of these women.64 Palladius wrote that he knew many women “to whom God granted struggles equal to those of men,” so that no one can say that “women are too weak to practice virtue successfully.” He goes on to say that among these was the Roman matron Paula, whom he describes as “a woman highly distinguished in the spiritual life.” He criticizes Jerome’s treatment of her: “A certain Jerome from Dalmatia stood in her way, for she was well able to pass everyone else, being a genius of a woman. He thwarted her with his jealousy and prevailed upon her to work to his own end and purpose.”65 Before Paula followed Jerome to Bethlehem, her house in Rome was a domestica ecclesia, that is, a gathering place for women, generally under the authority of Jerome, to study scripture.66 In Jerome’s letter to her daughter Eustochium, which he wrote to comfort her after Paula’s death, he describes how she organized the ascetic women in her charge into three companies or monasteries, according to their geographical origin and social level. Yet they all met together for psalm-singing and prayer. “No sister was allowed to be ignorant of the psalms, and all had every day to learn a certain portion of the holy scriptures.”67 He also tells how he has partially acquired the Hebrew language and continues to study it incessantly. Paula, however, decided, presumably at a later stage of life, that she would learn it as well. Jerome testifies that she “succeeded so well that she could chant the psalms in Hebrew and could speak the language without a trace of the pronunciation peculiar to Latin.”68 Melania the Younger (383–439 CE) was the granddaughter of Melania the Elder, discussed above.69 Kate Cooper points out that Melania’s husband, Pinian, was her ascetic partner.70 She founded monasteries in North Africa and on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. In his Life of Melania,

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Gerontius attests that she taught both women and men regularly.71 Her biographer reports that the virgins in her monastery called her “a good leader and a God-inspired teacher.”72 According to Arthur Fischer, she mastered both Latin and Greek so that each appeared to be her native tongue. She interpreted scripture and copied biblical texts for the use of others.73 Finally, one may mention the fact that, in his poem De vita sua (“On His Life”), Gregory Nazianzus called his mother (Nonna) “a great teacher,” portraying her “as a leader and director in questions of religious life.”74 In his Life of Constantine, Eusebius, accepting the propaganda of Constantine against his rival, accuses Licinius of interfering with the institutional practices of the church: “Accordingly he passed a second law, which enjoined that men should not appear in company with women in the houses of prayer, and forbade women to attend the sacred schools of virtue, or to receive instruction from the bishops, directing the appointment of women to be teachers of their own sex.”75 There is no other record of such a law. In any case, as Eisen has pointed out, it seems to rest on Eusebius’s assumption that “the authority to teach was entirely restricted to the bishops and that there was no ordinary practice of teaching by women.”76 As can be seen clearly from the evidence presented above, Eisen is justified in her comment on this assumption: “This opinion is an aspect of Eusebius’s literary tendency that is not identical with the complex reality of the ancient Church communities. In the first place it was not only bishops who taught, and in the second place women’s teaching was not an interim phase in history.”77

Conclusion The evidence for women teachers during the first four centuries CE is sparse. Nevertheless, we may conclude that in the earliest Christian communities, women were active in teaching their own children, especially their daughters, and younger women in the local community. First Corinthians, apart from the possibly interpolated passage in 14:34–35, Philippians, and Colossians suggest that women were teachers of both men and women in the communities. Paul mentions two women, Euodia and Syntyche, in Phil 4:2 and urges them to agree. It is likely that they were leaders and thus also teachers of the community as a whole. Colossians urges mutual teaching among members of the audience of the letter. First Timothy 2 forbids women to teach and have authority over men, which suggests that such

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activities were actually going on. Acts depicts Priscilla (Prisca), along with her husband, Aquila, not only teaching but also correcting a prominent male leader and teacher, Apollos. In the second century, it is likely that many women were teaching other women. Grapte (Shepherd of Hermas) seems to have gone beyond the traditional practice of this role by taking her place as a leader among Roman Christians. Philomena stands out as a highly educated woman who rivaled the more famous Marcion and corrected his teaching of two Principles or Gods. Tatian provides evidence that wise women who pursue “philosophy” were not uncommon in the church of his time. The legendary Thecla of course also stands out in this period and became a model for women teachers in the following centuries.78 In the third century, along with the teaching practiced by widows and female deacons, the office of lay teacher is also attested. Women may have taken this role, at least in teaching other women. In the fourth century, many highly educated women, like Philomena of the second century, are attested. One, Proba, was a noblewoman of a distinguished family who married and had two sons. When she became a Christian, her husband and sons followed her into the faith. She wrote the famous Cento discussed above. Two others, Macrina and Marcella, were ascetics whose activity was centered in their homes. Macrina never married, and Marcella became celibate when widowed after seven months of marriage.79 Paula was first a matron and then an ascetic. She married Toxotius, to whom she bore five children, four daughters and a son named after his father.80 She became celibate as a widow and founded a monastery for virgins in Bethlehem. She also funded Jerome and his monks.81 Others, like the desert mothers Theodora and Synkletike, seem to have been monastic celibates their entire adult lives. All these women were teachers: Proba through her famous Christian epic, and the others through face-to-face teaching. Theodora and especially Synkletike also taught through the literary preservation of their wise sayings and advice about teaching. Melania the Younger taught men as well as women. The evidence for women teachers in antiquity reminds us that 1 Timothy 2 and later restrictive texts like certain passages in Epiphanius and Eusebius were never simply “normative.” For at least some ancient readers, such texts were effectively transformed from prescriptions for how things must be to voices from antiquity that could be challenged. Such challenges,

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especially combined with the affirmation of women teachers, may be considered examples of the negative reception of 1 Timothy 2.

The Role of Women in Prophecy Evidence for women prophets is most abundant in texts that later became part of the New Testament as well as in reports about the New Prophecy (Montanism).

Paul and the Prophets in Corinth First Corinthians is the oldest text referring to the phenomenon of prophecy among followers of Jesus. It reflects the practice of prophesying among the members of the community Paul founded in Corinth. In his discussion of spiritual gifts and the body of Christ, Paul makes the following remark: “You then are the body of Christ and individually members of it, whom God has appointed (to various roles) in the church: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers” (1 Cor 12:27–28). Although the main thrust of Paul’s overall argument here is intended to highlight mutuality and interdependence, it is clear that he presupposes a hierarchy of roles. Chapter 12 makes clear that, for Paul, the activity of prophesying is one of the higher gifts, granted by the divine spirit acting to fulfill the will of God. The importance of prophecy is then explicitly treated in chapter 14.82 These discussions are significant for understanding Paul’s treatment of men and women praying and prophesying in 1 Corinthians 11. At the end of this passage, Paul comments, “Even if someone is disposed to be contentious, (let such a person recognize that) we have no such custom, and the assemblies of God also do not” (1 Cor 11:16). This concluding statement makes clear that the praying and prophesying in the whole preceding discussion should be understood as taking place in communal meetings. Later on Paul instructs the community that, when they come together, “let everything happen with the goal of building up (the community and its members)” (14:26). Further, “Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others test (the spirits)” (14:29). This communal setting indicates that to speak as a prophet is to exercise authority and leadership in the community of a kind second only to that of the apostles. At the same time, the gift of “testing the spirits” (1 Cor 12:10) means deciding whether someone prophesying did so by a holy spirit or by a demon. Such testing is, in effect, the process of distinguishing between true and false prophecy.

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In any case, it is clear that in 1 Corinthians 11 Paul does not raise any question at all about the authority and legitimacy of women engaging in the activity of prophecy. On the contrary, it would be “quenching the spirit” to oppose the exercise of such a gift. Paul warns against such “quenching” in 1 Thess 5:19.83 Nevertheless, Paul sets limits on the activity of both men and women in prophesying. These limits, however, combine constraints with the ongoing acceptance of the legitimacy of the activity. Women must cover their heads; men must not. These practical instructions, furthermore, are undergirded by appeal to an interpretation of Genesis 1–2 that establishes a clear hierarchy from God to Christ to human men to human women. For the women involved, this is a striking example of a “double message.”84 Jill Marshall has examined Paul’s language about women’s prophecy in the context of her cross-cultural study of gender in prophecy and inspired speech in the ancient Mediterranean world.85 She attributes the conflicting messages to the typical ambivalence of ancient men to the inspired speech of women:86 “The tension in Paul’s instructions, seen as the apparent contradiction between 1 Cor 11:2–16 and 14:34–35, exhibits the dual and opposing tendency of ancient authors to limit women’s speech in public settings yet to view women as particularly adept in communicating with the gods.”87 She concludes that “the difficulties and ambiguities of 1 Cor 11:2–16 create a problem that Paul returns to and addresses more definitively in 14:34–35 . . . Paul comes to a conclusion that is latent in 11:2–16, given his concerns for propriety and shame: Women should not speak in the assembly.”88 Marshall’s work brings to mind not only the similarities between 11:3– 16 and 14:34–35 but also their differences. Unlike 11:3–16, the commands in 14:34 are very briefly warranted: “as the law says.” The allusion is probably to Gen 3:16, “your desire shall be for your husband, / and he shall rule over you” (NRSV). Paul cites the passages from Genesis that are part of his argument in 11:3–16 but not here. Another problem is heightened by Marshall’s argument that “praying” in 11:3–16 refers to praying in tongues (as in 14:13–15). It seems unlikely that Paul would quench the spirit by forbidding women to prophesy and speak in tongues in the assembly (cf. 1 Thess 5:19–20). This is a problem because the commands in 14:34 seem to forbid absolutely women’s speech in the assemblies of the community, as does the warrant in 14:35 that it is shameful for women to speak in the assembly. These differences support the theory that 14:34–35 constitutes an interpolation.89 Marshall’s work, nevertheless, has made significant contributions to the study of prophecy in 1 Corinthians by placing the letter in the local

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context of archaeological evidence from Corinth (chapter 2) and in relation to the ambivalence of male writers on women’s speech (chapter 3) and on women’s prophecy (chapter 4). The latter two chapters especially shed fresh light on 1 Cor 11:3–16 by suggesting, as she argues, that the tensions in Paul’s argument in this passage are due to such ambivalence.

Prophecy after Paul and before the New Prophecy First Corinthians was written in the 50s of the Common Era.90 The Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, in contrast to Mark and Matthew, give considerable evidence of the activity of prophets, including female prophets. The Gospel of Luke is often dated to 80–85 CE.91 Most think that Acts was composed immediately after Luke, but others date it later.92 It is not clear whether the prophets of Luke 1–3 primarily represent a continuation of earlier Jewish prophecy or an early expression of “the eschatological breakthrough,” that is, the emergence of the messianic movement focused on Jesus Christ and his return.93 In any case, all who prophesy in the early chapters of Luke are presented as Jews. In Anna’s case, she is a prophet, a Jew, and a widow. The connections of her portrayal with other widows who appear later in the narrative indicate her exemplary character.94 If Acts was written as late as 115 CE, this text shows a continuity of interest and perhaps practice of prophetic activity among followers of Jesus from the first to the second century.95 The account of Pentecost in Acts 2 is key to understanding prophecy in Acts, even though the narrative focuses on speaking in tongues. Indeed, the context suggests that prophecy and glossolalia are closely related.96 In any case, those who had gathered “in the same place” were “all filled with (the) Holy Spirit.” The reference to “all” implies that those filled with the Spirit were not just the newly reconstituted group of twelve apostles but also a number of female disciples, Mary the mother of Jesus, and his siblings.97 This interpretation is supported by the citation of Joel in Peter’s speech.98 Peter links the pouring out of the divine spirit, which has just occurred, with the fulfillment of the prophecy that “your sons and daughters will prophesy” and that both the male and the female servants of God will prophesy.99 During the journey to Jerusalem that leads to his arrest, Paul and his companions stop in Caesarea and stay at the house of “Philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven.”100 Philip is also said to have four vir-

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gin daughters who prophesied (Acts 21:9). The characterization of these women as Philip’s “daughters” may be an allusion to the prophecy of Joel cited in chapter 2.101 The history of the church by Eusebius shows that the four prophesying daughters of Philip were remembered in the fourth century. He also provides evidence that they died at an advanced age in Asia Minor and were buried in Hierapolis.102 Several ancient cities were called ­Hierapolis, one of which was in Phrygia, the place where the New Prophecy originated. The reference to Philip and his prophesying daughters in Acts 21 provided a model for later female prophets. The book of Revelation, probably written around 96 CE, provides evidence that prophecy was alive and well among followers of Jesus Christ toward the end of the first century CE.103 John, the author of the book, implies that he is a prophet, although he does not claim to be one directly. He also speaks about a female prophet active in the community of Thyatira (Rev 2:20).104 He denies her the name “prophet” by saying she “calls herself a prophet.” He also disagrees with her teaching, which apparently condoned the eating of meat sacrificed to idols. Whether this was an absolute acceptance of the practice or only under certain circumstances may be concealed by the polemical formulation. He accuses her of teaching “(Christ’s) servants” to commit sexual immorality. This could be a metaphor for participating in practices that had the appearance of idolatry, or it could refer to practices related to marriage that John rejected.105 He does not use her real name but refers to her with the nickname “Jezebel,” the Phoenician princess made notorious by 1–2 Kings. He issues a threat in the name of Christ if she does not repent (Rev 2:21–23). One can, however, read between the lines and infer that she was recognized as an authoritative prophet in her city. John reveals this by saying, “I hold against you that you permit” her, presumably, to exercise authority as a prophet. The Didache reflects the activity of itinerant prophets who sometimes settled down in a particular community. Prophets are to be tested in two ways: first, whether their teaching conforms to the teaching contained in the Didache, and second, by their behavior. The prophet who settles down deserves his food, as does a true teacher. The first portions of the wine vat, the threshing floor, cattle, and sheep go to the prophets, “for they are your high priests” (Did. 13:3). The communities addressed by this work apparently had both charismatic leaders, like apostles, prophets, and teachers, and more institutional leaders, such as bishops (or overseers) and deacons. They are urged to elect the latter type of leaders for themselves, “For these

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also conduct the ministry of the prophets and teachers among you.”106 No female prophets are attested, but at the same time nothing is said to exclude them. The eleventh Mandate or Commandment of the Shepherd of Hermas is “invaluable witness to the ongoing importance of prophecy in at least some churches in the early second century . . . the chapter is testimony to (the) vitality (of early Christian prophecy) and the ongoing search for viable criteria (for discerning true and false prophets).”107 As indicated above, the discernment of true and false spirits and thus of true and false prophecy was a concern of Paul (1 Cor 12:10). The Shepherd tells Hermas that only the double-minded are led astray by false prophets.108 The double-minded treat them like soothsayers, bringing questions concerning what will happen to them in the future and paying them money for their prophecies.109 Such a prophet sometimes says true things, “for the devil fills him with his own spirit so that he might be able to break down some of the just.”110 The true prophet “never gives an answer to anyone when asked, nor does he speak in private.”111 He goes on, “When, then, the person who has the divine spirit comes into a gathering of upright men . . . and a petition comes to God from the upright men who are gathered together, then the angel of the prophetic spirit lying upon that person fills him; and once he is filled that person speaks in the holy spirit to the congregation, just as the Lord desires.”112 According to this work the gift of prophecy is either not present or invalidated by practices involving individual consultation and payment. Its proper function is communal. There is no explicit mention of female prophets in Hermas. In the passage describing prophecy in a communal setting, however, a more genderneutral term (human being) is used for the prophet (anthropos), whereas the gender-specific term (men) is used for the rest of those who gather in the assembly (andres). The neutral term perhaps is used to allow for the possibility of female prophets.113

The New Prophecy The consensus is that the movement known as Montanism began in the mid-160s CE.114 Early members called it simply “prophecy” or the “new prophecy.” Two of the three leading prophets at the beginning were women: Priscilla and Maximilla. The third was a man named Montanus. In his account of the movement, Eusebius used a source written by a certain Apol-

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lonius forty years after Montanus began to prophesy.115 Apollonius says that Priscilla and Maximilla “left their husbands the moment they were filled with the spirit.”116 This remark calls to mind the apocryphal acts, which depict women converted by an apostle leaving their fiancés or husbands and adopting a life of sexual continence. After mentioning that “these first female prophets” had left their husbands, Apollonius asks, “Did they not lie, then, when they called Priscilla a virgin?”117 The acclamation of Priscilla as a virgin, however, was not necessarily intended in the sense of never having had sexual relations. It could have been used to praise her consistent sexual continence after separating from her husband.118 It is likely that Paul and his letters influenced the New Prophets.119 An oracle attributed to Maximilla states: “I am driven away like a wolf from the sheep. I am not a wolf, I am word (rema) and spirit and power.”120 The first part of this oracle echoes John 10:12. The second part alludes to 1 Cor 2:4, where Paul states, “And my word (logos) and my proclamation (were not expressed) in persuasive words of wisdom but with a demonstration of spirit and power.”121 Maximilla here does not merely claim to be a legitimate prophet on the basis of Paul’s acceptance of female prophets in 1 Corinthians 11. Rather, she claims to be a vessel of divine power just as Paul was.122 This claim was not widely accepted in spite of support in Carthage and Gaul.123 Several reasons have been identified for the emergence of opposition. One issue is that the revelations of the new prophets appeared to be a scandalous bypassing of Christ.124 It appears, however, that they interpreted their prophecy as a fulfillment of the promises of Jesus in the Gospel of John to send the Paraclete, another name for the Holy Spirit, after his departure. In this way they legitimated the novelty of their prophecy. Another disputed point was what types of ecstasy are legitimate and which are not.125 The author of the Anti-Phrygian126 source used by Epi­ phanius admits only two definitions of ecstasy: amazement and madness. He thus implies that the ecstasy of the New Prophets is madness, “an ­ecstasy of folly,” as Laura Nasrallah has put it.127 Another tactic of the opponents was to claim that the New Prophets were inspired by Satan or demons rather than by the spirit of God. As noted above in “Paul and the Prophets in Corinth,” he spoke, virtually in one breath, of “prophecy” and “distinguishing of spirits” (1 Cor 12:10). Paul, however, set the bar rather low: “No one speaking in a spirit of God says, ‘Let Jesus be cursed,’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in a holy

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spirit” (1 Cor 12:3). By that criterion, the New Prophets qualify as speaking in a holy spirit. The accusation of demonic possession led to attempts to examine, test, and refute the spirits by means of which the female New Prophets prophesied.128 Such attempts seem to have been efforts to exorcise those spirits. The anonymous writer quoted by Eusebius says that “eminent men and bishops” tried to refute “the spirit that speaks through Maximilla.”129 Christine Trevett describes this process as “war: male against female; prophet against prophet; cleric against laywoman.” She is right to say that in this and similar cases, “Exorcism here should be seen not least as an attempt at social control.”130 In the case of Maximilla, the attempt failed because of the support of her allies.131 It seems then that the opponents rejected women prophets largely because they were women.132 The goals of the opponents were associated with respectable behavior, for example, that women conform to cultural norms formulated by elite men. In their view, order and hierarchical authority would facilitate the achievement of these goals. Prophetic leadership, especially the leadership of female prophets, did not fit with that larger project.133

Women as Officeholders In the period reflected in the letters of Paul, individual members of the communities he founded exercised certain roles that contributed to the building up of the congregation. Their authority in doing so lay in their evident “gifts” (χαρίσματα) bestowed by the Holy Spirit. Gradually, social roles of a more fixed type evolved, “offices,” to which people were elected or appointed. The ekklesia (“assembly” or “church”), as spoken of by Paul, was not yet a social institution with an established structure and thus did not have “offices” in the sense just defined. There was fluidity and diversity, perhaps within each community, but certainly from one community to another. For these reasons, I speak about “functions,” “positions,” or “roles” when addressing the situations reflected in Paul’s letters and reserve the term “office” for the period in which some early Christian writers began to foster the development of institutions.134 The diversity among congregations with a different origin (not founded by Paul) and among those from different parts of the empire is likely to be even greater. As Ute Eisen has observed, the fact that we find evidence for a particular office or practice in

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one locality does not mean that it was characteristic of all Christian communities throughout the Mediterranean world.135

House Churches as the Context for Ministry Ministry in Paul’s time was carried out in the context of local households.136 Along with this setting came the social practices of patronage.137 Some of these households were under the authority of men, the heads of extended families and their slaves. Such men were wealthy and powerful patres familias, who could offer hospitality and administrative expertise. Such a leader could also have other roles in the community, such as prophet or teacher, depending on the individual case.138 As host, the head of the household probably presided over the thanksgiving meal, unless an honored guest was present.139 In some of the house churches referred to by Paul, the heads of the household were women. Given their wealth, status, and expertise, these women were probably also leaders of the communities that met in their homes. Since Prisca (Priscilla) is mentioned along with her husband, Aquila, it is likely that they both exercised leadership of the communities that met in their homes in Corinth, Ephesus, and Rome.140 The letter to the Colossians mentions a woman, Nympha, who was the head of a household and in whose house a community met. Later scribes did not accept the existence of such a woman, who likely exercised leadership in that community, and so modified the text to make her a man (Nymphas).141 A number of scholars have inferred that Phoebe, whom Paul commends to the congregations in Rome, was the head of a household and house church in Cenchreae, one of the ports of Corinth.142 In some cases this conclusion is based on the lexical meaning of prostatis, the term used of her in Rom 16:2.143 Others, however, interpret the term in its immediate literary context and conclude that it means “one who has given assistance or aid” to those in need, for example, offering hospitality and introductions to important contacts.144 Annette Merz, however, has made a persuasive case for the interpretation taking the term as “patron.”145 I discuss Phoebe’s ministry in more detail below in connection with the term diakonoi.

Apostles The most important function from Paul’s point of view is that of apostle. In texts that eventually became parts of the New Testament, two kinds of apostle appear. The risen Christ commissions those of one type; a local

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community commissions those of the second type.146 Paul presents himself as an apostle commissioned by the risen Lord147 and refers to Epaphroditus as “your apostle,” implying that the community in Philippi had commissioned him to travel to the imprisoned Paul to take him their financial gift.148 Paul sometimes speaks of apostles in the plural, for example, in 1 Thess 2:9. Since he has consistently used the first-person plural from the beginning of the letter to that point, it is likely that the other apostles to whom he refers, Silvanus and Timothy (1 Thess 1:1), are the co-senders of the letter. Paul may have considered Silvanus, also known as Silas, to be an apostle commissioned by Christ, since he was a prophet (according to Acts 15:22), or as an emissary of the Jerusalem community.149 Since Paul apparently refers to both Silvanus and Timothy, along with himself, as “apostles of Christ,” it seems likely that Paul considered their apostleship to be broader than that of someone like Epaphroditus.150 Paul also refers to “those who were apostles before me” in Jerusalem (Gal 1:17). This group included Cephas, also known as Peter, and James, the brother of the Lord. In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul refers to these two men and also to “the other apostles.” The fact that in the same context he asks, “Have I not seen the Lord?” suggests that he considered all of these apostles to have been commissioned by the risen Lord (1 Cor 9:1, 5). This inference fits with Paul’s statement later in the same letter that Christ “appeared to James and then to all the apostles” (15:7). Just before that he says that Christ appeared first to Cephas and then to the twelve. It is likely that Paul considered the twelve, including Peter, to be apostles commissioned by the risen Lord. It is noteworthy, however, that some itinerant teachers who called themselves apostles were not recognized by Paul as such.151 This discussion provides a context for considering the apostles of Rom 16:7. Paul asks his Roman addressees to greet two people who are his “kin,” Andronicus and Junia (also, improbably, translated as “Junias”). He here seems to use the Greek word translated “kin” to mean “fellow Jews,” since he uses it that way in Rom 9:3. They have also been fellow prisoners with him. Finally he describes them as “prominent” or “outstanding” among the apostles152 and as having become “in Christ” before him. Since they had been in prison, they were likely apostles of the first type, those commissioned by the risen Christ to travel from place to place proclaiming him. Their being imprisoned with Paul suggests that, like him, they were proclaiming Christ to Gentiles. Because they were apostles so early, they may

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have been among those apostles Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 15 to whom the Lord appeared. Since their names are Greek, they may have belonged to the Greek-speaking community in Jerusalem. One of these apostles, Andronicus, has a first name (praenomen) that appears in the Maccabean literature.153 For the first millennium at least, the second name, Ἰουνίαν, was taken as equivalent to the Latin name Junia and to represent a female apostle. John Chrysostom praised her as follows: “Indeed, how great the wisdom of this woman must have been that she was deemed worthy of the title of apostle.”154 Beginning in the late Middle Ages, however, the name was taken to be that of a man, Junias, even though such a name is unattested in antiquity. Prejudice against the idea of a female apostle probably played a significant role in that change of interpretation. That prejudice became widespread and standard in the following centuries. The Revised Standard Version of 1946, which described “Andronicus and Junias” as “men of note among the apostles,” is an egregious example.155 It is probable that, like Prisca and Aquila, Andronicus and Junia were a married couple who traveled, proclaimed, and taught together.156 Today many scholars accept that Junia was a female apostle.157 Paul’s acceptance of her authority is impressive, especially in light of what he says in 1 Corinthians, “God appointed in the church first apostles, then prophets” (12:28). His use of the word “first” has a temporal sense but also the sense of most authoritative. This authority was not that of a fixed office, but one that had to be acknowledged to be effective.158

Overseers and Bishops Paul addresses his letter to the Philippians also to the episkopoi and diakonoi of that community. Some scholars have argued that the function called episkopos here derived from the Jewish scriptures, the synagogue, or the office of the mebaqqer described in the Dead Sea Scrolls.159 Since both terms may be translated “overseer” or “inspector,” the office in the scrolls is a striking analogy. As we have seen, however, Paul did not establish a regular set of functions in each community, so it is likely that the members of the Philippian community established this function on the basis of practices familiar to them in their city.160 This means that the term probably came from Greek usage for supervisors in city governments or officials of voluntary associations. Such officers often had a variety of responsibilities, and the term was not yet a technical one.161

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It is inappropriate to translate the term episkopos in Phil 1:1 with “bishop” because the use of the plural indicates that the position is not yet an office involving oversight of all the believers in a particular city as a whole. It may be that this usage of the term originated in the context of a house church in Philippi. If the head of the household performed a variety of tasks, including financial stewardship and administrative leadership, the term episkopos would be appropriate for such a leader, whether male or female, whether pater or mater familias, aided by diakonoi.162 By the time the Pastoral Epistles were written in the first half of the second century,163 the function of “overseer” was on its way to becoming the office of bishop. These letters speak of the episkopos only in the singular.164 First Timothy also uses the noun, episkope, to refer to the office as such (3:1). This writer, however, does not portray the bishop as superior to the elders. It is they who are said to rule, to receive compensation, and to be ordained (literally, to have hands laid upon them).165 Like 1 Clement, Titus seems to merge the two offices, when “Paul” instructs Titus to appoint elders in every town.166 These should be blameless, etc., “For the bishop must be blameless, as God’s steward” (Titus 1:5–7). It seems likely, therefore, that the bishop was chosen from among the elders. The association of the bishop with the elders transformed the function of the episkopos as it was practiced in the house churches into a patriarchal office, at least as it is described in this work.167 The writer’s speaking of bishops and elders only as men may hide the fact that there were women bishops and elders in some congregations, whether he was aware of them or not. As we have seen in the discussion of the household as the context for early forms of ministry, it was likely that women who were heads of households and patrons sometimes took on the role of “overseer,” which was a practical administrative role. It could be that in the first half of the second century such women were still active in that role as it was being transformed into an office. Support for this conjecture lies in the letters of Ignatius, which provide evidence that some house churches were still headed by women. The modern consensus established by Theodor Zahn and J. B. Lightfoot has been that the seven letters of the middle recension were written between 100 and 118 CE.168 The most serious challenge to this consensus is that of Robert Joly, who argues that the middle recension is a forgery from about 160– 170 CE.169 In his letter to the Smyrneans, Ignatius greets the household

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of Tavia. The widow of Epitropus led another house church in Smyrna; Ignatius greets her and her children at the end of his letter to Polycarp.170 There is evidence for two female bishops in Italy. The first case involves an inscription that Ute Eisen identifies as from Umbria, which mentions a “venerable Lady Bishop” (uenerabilis fem[ina] episkopa), whose name unfortunately is not included in the surviving part of the inscription. The inscription dates to around 500. Scholars have regularly interpreted this inscription to mean that the woman was the wife of a bishop. Enough of the inscription has been preserved, however, to make clear that no husband is mentioned.171 The second case is even more striking. Two Latin inscriptions dating to the early ninth century were found in the Chapel of Saint Zeno in the church of Santa Prassede in Rome. A mosaic depicts the bust of a woman with the label Theodora episcopa. She was the mother of Pope Paschal I, who held that office from 817 to 824. It is clear that she was not a bishop’s wife because her husband, Bonosus, is listed, as the father of this pope, in the Liber Pontificalis without any official title.172 Theodora’s son dedicated the second inscription. The relevant part refers to the entrance of the basilica where “the body of his most gracious mother, the Lady Theodora, the bishop, rests.” Because the evidence for female bishops is so rare, scholars have come up with a variety of theories to explain how and why Theodora came to be called a bishop. The simplest explanation is that she was ordained as a Roman bishop.173 Brigid of Kildare, Ireland (about 451 to about 525 CE), was ordained a bishop and functioned as such according to the “ninth-century Celtic life of Brigid, the Bethu Brigte.”174 She “was described as deeply involved in the administration of the church in Ireland” as one of the “great Abbesses” of Irish history.175 Hildelburga was the wife of Segenfird, bishop of Le Mans in northwestern France from 963 to 996. “In the mid-eleventh century continuation of the Acts of the Bishops of Le Mans” she was called episcopissa (little female bishop). The term may be used disparagingly because the story of her husband’s death “was clearly meant to encourage continence.”176 Although Merovingian Gaul (481–751 CE) “witnessed a struggle to impose celibacy upon the higher clergy . . . [m]any clergy continued in an older tradition of dioceses constituted as noble households.” In some Gallic sees the episcopacy was a family inheritance. For married bishops, “wives were in effect partners. Equal in status and virtue, they formed an

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aristocratic team, ruling the family inheritance for the good of the church.” As coadministrators of church property, the wives of bishops merited the title episcopa.177 In light of the historical record, the question of whether a woman with this title was the wife of a bishop is not as important as one might think. Even the wife of a bishop in the West may well have played the role of a bishop alongside her husband. No Greek inscription has as yet been published testifying to a female bishop. Hans Achelis, however, has argued credibly that, in the church order called the Didascalia Apostolorum (Teaching of the Apostles), “the enrolled widows exercised episcopal functions and thus represented competition for the male bishop.”178 Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis on Cyprus in the fourth century, testifies that the Montanists ordained women as bishops, a practice of which he disapproved.179 If such women were prophets as well as bishops, Epiphanius provides evidence that women prophets may sometimes exercise other forms of power as well.

Diakonoi, Deacons, and Deaconesses Many readers of the New Testament have understood the term diakonos to mean “servant” and associated it with provision of food and waiting on tables. A major shift in the understanding of the word-group to which this term belongs began with Dieter Georgi’s treatment of the rivals of Paul in 2 Corinthians, who seem to have described themselves individually as diakonos theou. He argued on the basis of Greek texts outside the New Testament that diakonos sometimes means “messenger.” He considered it a small step from that usage to the meaning “envoy.” He concluded that more New Testament passages refer to a diakonos as proclaimer than as one waiting tables.180 The need for a change was thoroughly argued by John Neil Collins, who made a broad study of the word-group in non-Christian, non-Jewish Greek texts.181 He concluded that diakonoi sometimes speak for God, acting as mouthpieces, agents, and go-betweens.182 They may also be traveling emissaries, who act as delegates sometimes carrying letters or collections of money (Rom 15:25). He traces the development of the function of “deacon” from the simple assistant to the overseer (Phil 1:1) to the emerging office, at times involving a liturgical role. As with the function “apostle,” we find a woman explicitly named a diakonos by Paul, Phoebe, whom he commends to his Roman addressees

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for hospitality and whatever else she needs (Rom 16:1–2). There is widespread agreement that Phoebe was the person to whom Paul entrusted his letter to the Romans and that she delivered it. Given the ancient practices involved in sending and delivering letters, it is clear that Phoebe must have been able to clarify the contents of the letter and to answer questions about it posed by the addressees. Since Paul had not met most of the members of the communities in Rome and since they had received negative reports about his theology, she must have possessed both theological competence and diplomatic skill.183 There is no consensus concerning the further interpretation of these verses. In addition to saying that she is a diakonos, Paul also describes her as prostatis. The most important questions for grasping the sense of this passage as a whole are what each of these functions entails and how the two relate to each other. With regard to prostatis, the most persuasive interpretation begins with the observation that where Roman influence is present, this term is equivalent to the Latin patrona and thus evokes the practices related to the social institution of patronage.184 In the context of the early Christian mission, the meaning would be that Phoebe had provided material and legal assistance for Paul and others. If Phoebe was in a position to offer hospitality and protection from ill-disposed political authorities, she must have had a rather high social standing and most likely her own house. Thus the term prostatis suggests that she was the head of a house church in the eastern port of Corinth. This picture is supported by the fact that she is traveling alone and independently. She would have had, however, an entourage of slaves, servants, and perhaps clients traveling with her.185 Some scholars have argued that, in the phrase “diakonos of the church in Cenchreae,” diakonos signifies a function within the community that met in Phoebe’s house.186 If she were the head of a house church, however, it would make more sense for her to take the role of an episkopos with diakonoi as her assistants within the community. The other interpretation that fits the context in Romans is that she was a delegate or emissary of the community in Cenchreae, sent to Rome with a particular task to fulfill.187 Annette Merz has proposed a credible explanation of what that task was.188 In light of the way Paul speaks about other co-workers and their relations with their communities and with Paul, she concludes that Phoebe, as diakonos of Cenchreae, was given by her community a specific task to fulfill in the context of Paul’s missionary work. Taking the letter to the Romans must have been only a part of that task. Given the overall situation

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implied by Romans 15, the other part of Phoebe’s task was to prepare the logistics for Paul’s mission to Spain and perhaps to take part in it.189 The idea that a community would send its leader to Rome as their emissary is not a problem for this interpretation. Since the role of leader of a house church was a function, not a highly exalted office, the congregation still had agency and could very well have responded to Paul’s request, with Phoebe’s permission, by issuing such a commission. The function of “deacon” is on its way to becoming an office in 1 Timothy. In 1 Tim 3:8–13 the qualifications for the office of deacon are listed but not their duties.190 In verse 11 qualifications for “women” are given. Some scholars have argued that these women are the wives of the male deacons. There is, however, no possessive pronoun to indicate that the women are the deacons’ wives. Furthermore, there is no discussion of what is expected of the bishop’s wife, so it would be strange to give such a discussion for the deacons’ wives. Later church orders from the mid-third and the fourth centuries clearly speak about an office of female diakonoi and allude to this passage as the precedent for such an office.191 Later on, the office of female deacon or deaconess was much more common in the eastern Mediterranean region than in the western.192 According to Macy: “References to deaconesses first appear with certainty in the fifth century. The anonymous commentator on scripture known as Ambrosiaster and the Irish monk Pelagius both knew of deaconesses when they wrote at the end of the fourth century, but they refer to this institution as an Eastern practice.”193 In spite of the opposition of the Merovingian bishops, a number of women were deaconesses in the sixth century. Known deaconesses from that time are “Helaria, daughter of the bishop of Reims and Queen Radegund, who left the Merovingian King Clothar to become a deaconess and wore the robe of a monacha (nun).”194 In the sixth century deaconesses were often married. References to them continue in the seventh through ninth centuries. There is evidence from the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries that the marriage of a deaconess was forbidden by two popes and the false decrees attributed to Archbishop Isidore of Sevilla.195 In the earliest church, the function of diakonos was exercised by both men and women, such as Phoebe.196 According to Justin Martyr, deacons assisted the presider at the Eucharist by distributing bread and wine to the assembly and later to absent members.197 The new, separate office of female deacon in the East first appears in literature in the third century

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in the Didascalia Apostolorum (Teaching of the Apostles), which I have already mentioned in connection with widows and bishops.198 Inscriptions attesting to this office begin to appear only in the fourth century.199 In the literature and inscriptions, they appear in a variety of contexts: guardians of shrines, people of influence in ecclesiastical conflicts, female monks and superiors in monasteries, and choir leaders.200 In the church orders, the deacons are the personal agents of the bishop, analogously to Phil 1:1 and 1 Timothy 3.201 The bishop is like God, the male deacon like Christ, and the female deacon like the Holy Spirit. The female deacons, as part of the clergy, had a higher status than the official widows and virgins.202 They also had considerable mobility and responsibility for the women of the community.203

Presbyters and Priests The feminine word presbytera can refer simply to an older woman—the wife of a male elder, a presbyteros—or a woman who functioned as an elder or presbyter in her own right. Kevin Madigan and Carolyn Osiek, as well as Ute Eisen, have collected the ancient evidence for women who exercised the function or held the office of a presbyter.204 Although there is abundant evidence for women presbyters who were not married to men presbyters and women presbyters who were not married at all, there is also evidence that the wives of male presbyters were active in ministry alongside their husbands, including liturgical activities related to the Eucharist. It is likely that such women were ordained, as ordination was understood in the period prior to the twelfth century.205 For example, two priests from Brittany were scolded by three bishops of northern Gaul for traveling with women who assisted them at the altar by administering the blood of Christ to the people of God. The women were also living with the male priests. It is likely that they were the wives of the male priests and that they were priests themselves. Clearly, the male priests and the congregations they served accepted these women as co-ministers of the Eucharist.206 There is evidence for such women in both the eastern and the western Mediterranean regions, the evidence being more abundant for the western. Councils and synods of both the East and the West denounced the practice of women presbyters, but the inscriptional and literary evidence suggests that the practice continued at least until the sixth century.207

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In the East during the fourth century, the Council of Laodicea and the antiheretical work by Epiphanius condemn the practice of women presbyters. It should be recalled that councils and synods were generally reactive; therefore, their condemnation of women presbyters indicates that women were recognized as such in some areas. The same probably holds for the work of Epiphanius.208 In contrast, the Acts of Philip, from the late fourth or early fifth century, simply assumes the activity of women presbyters. A young man who has died and been brought back to life describes his visit to hell: I saw at the gate a man and a woman, and the great dog Cerberus with three mouths was tied to the gate with fiery chains. He was devouring the man and the woman and held their liver in his paws . . . I went to pull the dog away, but [my guide the angel] Michael told me: “Leave them, because they also blasphemed against the male presbyters (presbyteroi), female presbyters (presbytides), eunuchs, deacons, deaconesses, and virgins, by false accusations of impurity and adultery.”209

Four inscriptions from the East commemorate individual women who held the office of presbyter. These are Ammion, from the first half of the third century in Asia Minor; Artemidora, from the second or third century in Egypt; Epikto, from the second to the fourth century on the island of Thera; and Kale, from the fourth or fifth century in Sicily.210 In the West, Tertullian recognized the utterances of female prophets as authoritative. He placed the authority of an oracle spoken by a certain Prisca alongside the Hebrew scriptures and the writings of Paul.211 He forbade, however, women to teach, baptize, and celebrate the Eucharist, apparently on the basis of 1 Cor 14:34–35 and 1 Tim 2:11–12. He inferred from those passages that sacerdotal (priestly) tasks are proper to men alone.212 The most striking literary evidence comes from the correspondence of Cyprian, bishop of Carthage. Firmilian, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, was Cyprian’s ally in a controversy with Stephen, bishop of Rome. In around 256, Firmilian wrote Cyprian a letter that included the following remarks: There rose up suddenly then a certain woman who, in a state of ecstasy, presented herself as a prophet (propheten) and acted as if filled with the Holy Spirit . . . But that woman, who previously through the illusions and treacheries of the Demon in order to deceive the faithful . . . had also often dared this . . . to sanctify the bread and to pretend to confect the eucharist

Role of Women in the Church  101 and make the sacrifice to the Lord . . . and she also baptized many, usurping the usual and legitimate mode of questioning, so that nothing might seem to deviate from ecclesiastical rule.213

It is noteworthy that Firmilian does not label this woman as a member of a deviant group but as deviant within the church itself.214 This is a prime example of the power of a woman with the gift of prophecy to extend her ministry, in this case, to presbyteral or priestly functions. Furthermore, the letter shows that her presbyteral or priestly ministry was recognized by those to whom she ministered. Canons and personal letters from the West attest to a movement beginning in the late fourth century that called for greater leadership on the part of women.215 This movement seems to have been inspired by followers of Priscillian, bishop of Ávila in Spain, who exemplified and called for an ascetic way of life. Canon 2 of the Synod of Nîmes, which took place around 394, condemned the ordination of women to “levitical service.” Since “­levitical” and “sacerdotal” were used synonymously at this time, the issue in question is women priests or presbyters who celebrated the Eucharist.216 Pope Gelasius I wrote a letter to bishops in southern Italy in about 494 objecting to the encouragement given to women “to serve at the sacred altars and to perform all the other tasks that are assigned only to the service of men.” Madigan and Osiek conclude: “The functions exercised by women at the altars, therefore, can refer only to the administration of the sacraments, to the liturgical service, and to the public and official announcement of the [gospel] message, all of which comprise the duties of ministerial priesthood . . . Hence . . . Gelasius intended to stigmatize and condemn . . . [the service of ] true and proper presbyters who were performing all the duties traditionally reserved for men alone.”217 An inscription from southern Italy may provide supporting evidence that women presbyters were active around the same time and in the same place. In other words the condemnation by Gelasius was a response to actual practices approved by some male bishops and priests. In this inscription “Leta the presbyter[ess]” is commemorated by her husband, who apparently had no ecclesiastical office.218 Another inscription testifies that Flavia Vitalia was a presbyter in about 425 in the Roman province of Dalmatia on the Adriatic Sea, in modern Croatia. The only activity mentioned is her right to sell church property. Since her town was relatively near and similar to those addressed by ­Gelasius, she may be one of the women functioning as a full presbyter or priest.219

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Conclusion In the time of Paul women were moved by impulses—Paul called them gifts of the spirit—to teach, to prophesy, and to take up roles of leadership. Paul, and presumably others, accepted these activities of women for the most part. He issued rules about their prophesying and limited their speech in the gathered community, apparently to prophecy.220 Throughout the centuries of antiquity, women were moved by the same impulses or gifts. Women’s teaching, especially of other women, was the most widely accepted of the three activities, as recommended by the Pastoral Paul in the letter to Titus. Some female teachers, especially knowledgeable of the scriptures and insightful, also instructed men in spite of the prohibition in the first letter to Timothy. The main transformation of the Pauline tradition involved in the history of the reception of women’s teaching is that women move from the shadows and beyond the limitations placed on them to an open and valued role as teachers in the church, in some cases even of men. It is noteworthy, however, that this teaching does not seem to have taken place in church gatherings. While the prohibition of 1 Timothy 2 is thus ignored, a nod may be given to the limitation of 1 Cor 14:34–35. Women who prophesied were widespread, especially those affiliated with or influenced by the New Prophecy, a movement that began in the late second century. In Carthage, Tertullian recognized the authority of such women, which he considered to be greater than that of Paul. The Christconfessors of Lyons accepted the validity of the New Prophets, probably including women. Some male leaders of the church opposed the New Prophets Priscilla and Maximilla in Asia Minor during their lifetimes. Whereas Paul only sought to control women’s deportment while prophesying, these men challenged their validity as prophets, saying that the spirit of God was not the source of their prophecies. The causes of this opposition were no doubt many, including the threat to the emerging institutional order perceived in the new revelation expressed by charismatic leaders. It is hard to avoid the conclusion, however, that bias against women played a role, since women prophets were most clearly targeted. Although the activity, prophecy, and teaching of the New Prophets were proto-orthodox, they were labeled as heretics by the fourth century. In the history of the reception of the Pauline tradition, women’s prophecy became more controversial. The proto-orthodox church’s rejection of the New Prophecy, however, did not silence women prophets, at least not immediately. Glimpses of women

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prophesying are still visible in the late works of Tertullian, the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity, and Firmilian’s letter to Cyprian, all from the third century. In Paul’s time there were women who acted as apostles, deacons, and hosts of house churches, perhaps as overseers (the predecessors of bishops) and presbyters (the predecessors of priests). In later centuries literary, papyrological, and inscriptional evidence shows that women were active as deacons or deaconesses, as presbyters, and even as bishops. Deaconesses were widely accepted in the East, and evidence for female presbyters is more abundant in the West. This continuity with the activity of women in the time of Paul survived in spite of the opposition of some male leaders. Their opposition was based to some degree on conformity to the traditional expectations of women in society and perhaps also on the desire to protect male privilege. In any case, the condemnations and prohibitions of the official ministry of women by councils and synods and in the writings of early Christian male leaders are not absolute. Rather, they are evidence for the existence of practices they attempt to suppress. Finally, the surviving inscriptions provide confirming evidence that these practices not only were going on but were approved and recognized by some male leaders and by the people whom the women served. The flexible functions reflected in the early Pauline letters were transformed into institutional offices in the history of the reception of the early Pauline tradition. The participation of women in institutional types of leadership became more controversial in later centuries, but women continued to be active in them, even as their role as patrons grew. The condemnations and prohibitions of women holding office may be defined as positive receptions of 1 Timothy 2 and perhaps other passages that place restrictions on the leadership of women (1 Corinthians 11, 14:34–35). The evidence for the official ministry of women discussed in this chapter may be seen as positive receptions of Paul’s affirmation of women’s gifts and ministry.

5 Paul’s Transformation from Suffering Apostle to Saint and Martyr

This chapter deals with an autobiographical topic: the persecutions, hardships, and other types of suffering that Paul experienced during his lifetime. Paul recounts these experiences in his letters in order to teach about their significance and to instruct his audience about how they should think and behave when they suffer the same or similar things. This autobiographical material is transformed into biographical and hagiographical texts by later writers and into practices after Paul’s death that venerate him as a saint and martyr.

Paul’s Self-Presentation as Suffering Apostle Paul speaks about his own sufferings most often in 2 Corinthians and 1 Thessalonians.1 One main type of suffering includes insults, physical violence, and imprisonment in response to his proclamation of the gospel. Another type refers to the hardships that Paul suffers as a consequence of his itinerant lifestyle, which is necessary to fulfill his goal of proclaiming the gospel throughout the Mediterranean world. He uses a variety of terms for the various kinds of persecution and hardships he experienced.2

Opposition and Persecution: 1 Thessalonians Paul refers to his suffering already in 1 Thessalonians, his earliest letter. He reminds the members of the newly founded community that, even though he had suffered and been insulted in Philippi before he arrived in Thessalonica, God gave him the courage to proclaim the gospel to them. Furthermore, this God-given courage enabled him to proclaim the gos104

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pel in spite of the great opposition he faced in Thessalonica itself (2:2).3 Paul may be praising himself indirectly for overcoming the hardships of suffering, insult, and opposition, as ancient moral philosophers often did. Nevertheless, he attributes his courage and success to God. Furthermore, he does not suffer impassively but experiences God’s help in the depth of his suffering.4 In this letter Paul also speaks about suffering as characteristic of the experience of the apostles and their communities. He introduces this theme in the opening thanksgiving (1:6) and elaborates it in 2:13–16.5 The members of the community in Thessalonica suffered from their compatriots the same kind of persecution that Paul and the congregations of Judea suffered from theirs (2:14, 15a). This kind of persecution was likely the reason Paul sent Timothy, and it was probably the subject of the previous teaching Paul mentions in that context (3:2–4). When Paul states his concern that no one in the Thessalonian community be shaken “by these tribulations” (ἐν ταῖς θλίψεσιν in 3:3), he takes up the topic of persecution and opposition introduced earlier.6 Paul claims that in his previous teaching he informed the Thessalonians that this kind of tribulation, namely, persecution and opposition, is an inevitable aspect of the life of those who are “in Christ” (3:3b–4).7

The Thorn in Paul’s Flesh: 2 Corinthians In 2 Corinthians Paul refers, somewhat ambiguously, to a “thorn in his flesh.” This thorn is clearly a type of suffering, but it differs from the two main types mentioned above, that is, persecutions that arose in opposition to the proclaiming of the gospel and the hardships that relate to his constant traveling. The precise nature of this suffering cannot be determined, but the history of interpretation offers a variety of interesting possibilities. In the account of how “a man in Christ” (Paul himself ) was taken up to the third heaven, Paul mentions that a thorn in the flesh was given to him lest he exalt himself. This thorn is associated with a messenger or angel of Satan who “punches” (κολαφίζειν) Paul to keep him from being elated because of the many visions and revelations he has been granted (12:6–7). He does not reveal how he experienced this thorn in the flesh, and there has been much discussion of the question in the history of the interpretation of this passage.8 The oldest interpretation, first proposed by Irenaeus and Tertullian, is that the thorn in the flesh was a physical ailment or bodily suffering.9

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A widespread later interpretation, reflecting the Latin translation of the phrase, is that the thorn signified temptations of the flesh.10 Greek writers sometimes interpreted or used this term to signify a rival or opposing teacher or leader.11 John Chrysostom argued that the “thorn” referred to the opposition Paul faced throughout his ministry from outsiders and insiders.12 Jerome deals with Paul’s thorn in the flesh in relation to his interpretation of Gal 4:13–15: “You know that I first proclaimed the gospel to you on account of a bodily ailment.13 You did not show disdain or spit,14 although I presented you with a test in my flesh. Rather, you received me as a messenger from God, as Christ Jesus. Where then is your blessing? For I bear witness to you that, if possible, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me.” Jerome explains that Paul was suffering from a severe headache when he arrived in Galatia and explicitly links this passage to 2 Cor 12:7.15 The statement that the Galatians did Paul no wrong (4:12c) and especially that they did not spit (4:14a) supports one of many proposals made by historical critics, namely, that Paul had a disability that involved seizures, perhaps a form of epilepsy. Max Krenkel has shown that in the ancient world epilepsy was known as the illness that is “spit out” or “spit away.”16 The remark that the Galatians received Paul as a messenger from God (4:14b) may be connected with the popular idea in antiquity that a disease involving seizures, such as epilepsy, was the “sacred disease.” The oldest reference to this idea occurs in a treatise attributed to Hippocrates that tries to refute it and to give a natural explanation of the illness. The root of the popular idea is that the disease involved possession by a higher power.17 In spite of the interpretation of epilepsy as divine possession, the illness sometimes brought shame on the one suffering from it and fear upon those who observed the seizures. There is some support for each of these theories in the letters of Paul. The apostle concealed the exact nature of the ailment, probably because he wanted to make the rhetorical point that weakness must be accepted as a humbling experience but also as an opportunity to allow the power of Christ to be made perfect in weakness (2 Cor 12:9–10).

The Suffering Apostle: 1 and 2 Corinthians In the Corinthian correspondence, Paul emphasizes the hardships he has undergone as an apostle. In his study of this theme, John Fitzgerald concluded that in the popular philosophy of the time hardships were thought

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to reveal the deficiencies of people with little or no integrity. People making progress toward wisdom and virtue show greater strength of character, and their hardships reveal their progress, what they are becoming. The hardships of wise people or sages demonstrate that they are educated; they reveal what they have become, their strong character.18

1 Cor 4:8–13

In the first four chapters of 1 Corinthians, Paul instructs the community in Corinth why they should not form factions, one group claiming one apostle as eminent, another group another apostle.19 In 1 Cor 4:8–13 he ironically chastises them for thinking that they had already arrived at the end of their spiritual journey. He contrasts their exalted position with the weakness and lowliness of himself and the other apostles, who “are hungry and thirsty, poorly dressed, beaten up, and homeless” (4:11) and “worn out by hard labor with our own hands” (4:12a). This hard labor makes it possible for the apostles to proclaim the gospel without charge. Paul then continues with a description of the noble endurance of the apostles: “when we are criticized with insults, we bless; when we are harassed, we put up with it; when we are slandered, we speak in a friendly manner” (4:12b–13a). Finally, the passage summarizes the apostles’ low social status: “we are like the refuse of the world; we are what is sloughed off by all until now” (4:13b). The passage is one of profound irony. How could the Corinthians become so exalted if they received their privileges from the abased apostles?20

2 Cor 1:3–11

Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians is made up of two originally independent letters, chapters 1–9 and chapters 10–13.21 The first of these, referred to as Letter D by Victor Furnish,22 opens with a benediction following the epistolary preface, rather than a thanksgiving as in the typical Pauline letter (1:3–11).23 This benediction reveals recent experiences of the Corinthians and Paul. It is dominated by language of affliction and suffering.24 The passage is also filled with language of consolation and rescue.25 The joy at consolation after affliction in this benediction is a result of the reconciliation of Paul and the Corinthians following a dispute about an individual member of the community (7:5–16).26 Titus reported this reconciliation to Paul, a reconciliation that Titus may have been instrumental in bringing about (7:6, 13b–15). Another important factor in Paul’s relief and joy is the outcome of the affliction he had suffered recently in Asia that

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seems to have put his life at risk. This positive outcome is no doubt his acquittal and release from custody, which he describes in terms of a rescue effected by God (1:8–11).27

2 Cor 4:1–12

In 2 Cor 2:14–7:4, Paul constructs a defense of his apostolic ministry in relation to the ministry of others in Corinth, of which he disapproves.28 The Corinthians, perhaps under the influence of other teachers, have begun to view Paul as “presumptuous and brazen.” In the transition from chapter 3 to 4, Paul characterizes his behavior rather as “boldness,” a mode he has not adopted for his own advantage but because of the glory of the ministry he serves (3:8, 18; 4:1–6).29 In 2 Cor 4:7, the discussion shifts with the powerful paradox of treasure in clay jars. On a literal level, clay jars are lowly, easily broken and discarded. On the metaphorical level, they represent here the bodies of Paul and his associates. On the same level, the treasure represents “the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ,” a knowledge made known in the gospel. Like the Hellenistic moral philosophers, Paul emphasizes that hardships “provide the occasion for the exhibition of power,” which involves serenity in suffering and the failure of adversities to crush him.30 He elaborates this point with an account of the hardships he has endured and overcome: “afflicted in every way but not confined; perplexed but not at a loss; persecuted but not abandoned; struck down but not destroyed” (4:8–9).31 Paul differs from the moral philosophers by insisting that the power manifested in successfully enduring these hardships comes from God and not from the apostles themselves. The exceeding greatness of the power of God mentioned in 2 Cor 4:7 “is shown above all in the triumph of Paul and his cohorts over adversity.”32 Paul attributes his success to God rather than to himself. Such attribution is a way of praising oneself inoffensively, a device recommended in the popular philosophy of Paul’s time. The conclusion of this passage, in 2 Cor 4:10–12, shows that Paul is a suffering apostle because Jesus was a suffering Messiah. Precisely because Paul identifies with Jesus in his suffering, he sees God’s power to effect resurrection at work in himself.33

2 Cor 6:1–10

This passage is a classic example of a list of hardships. Margaret Thrall places it in the context of a “beginning of direct appeal and further defence

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of apostolic conduct.”34 As Fitzgerald has shown, the nine hardships that make up the first part of the catalogue in this passage are divided into three groups of three items each.35 The first group consists of the general afflictions, hardships, and calamities mentioned in verse 4; the second includes specific sufferings, namely, beatings, imprisonments, and riots in verse 5; and the third lists labors, sleepless nights, and hunger, also in verse 5. The second of these groups is illustrative of the first: they constitute a specific catalogue of the general types of suffering. The third group, the labors, sleepless nights, and hunger, consists of occupational hardships that Paul has endured both as an apostle and as an artisan. They suggest poverty.36 Paul’s suffering is voluntary in general but especially so in this third group. This means that he has not suffered out of avarice but with the purest of motives.37 In addition to hardships, Paul also mentions nine virtues and gifts in verse 4 (endurance) and in verses 6–7 (purity or sincerity, knowledge, patience, kindness, a holy spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God). This frame gives the hardships a qualitative character. Paul does not just endure his hardships but has endured with sincerity, out of knowledge, with patience and kindness. After the catalogues of hardships and virtues, Paul continues with a short list of vicissitudes, which is transitional (6:7b–8a).38 The final section consists of seven antithetical clauses, each beginning with “as” (ὡς). These clauses contrast the external impression he and his associates give with what they really are: genuine and known to God as sages or worthy servants of God (6:8b–10).39 The “punished but not killed” shows that Paul’s sufferings are part of God’s education of him. His sufferings are not due to God’s wrath but to God’s love. He is faithful and thus expects deliverance.40 The “sorrowful” points to the hardship of grief, but nothing can shake his joy, which is a sign of the sage.41 The last two items express the paradox of Paul being simultaneously poor and wealthy (6:10bc). As is typical of Stoic paradoxes, the resolution is left unstated. Here Paul imitates Christ: “He was rich yet became poor for your sake, that by his poverty you might become rich” (8:9).42 The paradox of having nothing and yet owning everything is based on the Cynic and Stoic idea that “all things belong to the wise.”43 Paul’s argument in this whole section is that God has sent him to the Corinthians as his messenger. Paul is a divine emissary, and he is much more than his physical appearance suggests.44

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2 Cor 11:21b–33

In this passage, the shift from “So am I” to “I am more so,” followed by adverbs of excess, “clearly implies that Paul is comparing his own sufferings to those of his opponents and using his greater number of hardships to declare himself superior to them.45 The logic is crude, and deliberately so.”46 Such open boasting and rivalry are characteristic of the “fool,” a role Paul is playing in this context.47 Fitzgerald rightly infers from this logic that the rivals of Paul referred to hardships in their self-commendation. He also argues that Paul interpreted his hardships differently from the way they did theirs. They claimed that the manifestation of divine power took place in their “signs, wonders, and mighty works,”48 whereas Paul “saw his weakness as the primary sphere for” that manifestation.49 This catalogue of hardships is the most detailed and specific and thus gives a striking picture of the hardships Paul endured in carrying out his mission to proclaim the gospel to the Gentiles.50

Reception: Paul Becomes a Saint and Martyr

The Interpretation of Paul’s Sufferings in Colossians and Ephesians Colossians

Paul’s many sufferings are interpreted in two ways in Colossians. First, he suffered for the audience of the letter, just as Christ did: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings (παθήματα) for you” (1:24). These sufferings are part of Paul’s activity as a servant (διάκονος) of the gospel (1:23). Diakonos of the gospel here has the sense of one sent to proclaim a message (cf. Col 1:25). As we have seen, this proclamation led to persecution and hardship for Paul. Suffering for the audience of the letter signifies for your benefit.51 Perhaps the sense is that Paul suffered in order to bring the gospel, which has benefited the Gentiles who have accepted it.52 Paul’s sufferings are also interpreted in the same verse (1:24) as “filling up what is lacking in the afflictions (θλίψεις) of Christ.” The order of phrases in the sentence suggests that “what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ” is not a lack in those afflictions with respect to Christ but with respect to Paul, specifically, with respect to his flesh. In 2 Cor 4:11 he wrote, “For as long as we [apostles] live, we are being handed over to death on account of Jesus in order that the life of Jesus may be made manifest in our

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mortal flesh.” So the fictional Paul of Colossians says here that his sufferings are filling up what is still lacking in his imitation of the sufferings of Jesus and will do so until his death. The historical Paul has probably already died at the time of writing, so this verse is also an interpretation of the death of Paul, implying that it is Christlike.

Ephesians

The interpretation of Paul’s suffering in Ephesians is similar to the first interpretation in Col 1:24, namely, that Paul’s sufferings are for the audience. In the immediately preceding context, the Ephesian Paul explains how he became a servant (διάκονος, as in Col 1:25) of the gospel. Through this gospel the “fathomless richness” of Christ has come to the Gentiles who have entered into a relationship of faith and trust with God through Christ (Eph 3:7–12). The conclusion of this long description is, “Therefore, I ask that you not be discouraged because of my sufferings (θλίψεις) for you, which is your glory” (3:13). The fictional Paul alludes generally to his sufferings, which are known from his letters, especially 1 Thessalonians and 2 Corinthians, as we have seen. The tension between the plural “sufferings” and the singular relative pronoun and verb in the last clause suggests that the author of Ephesians alludes here to Paul’s death as well as to the persecutions and hardships he suffered. These sufferings and Paul’s death are the glory of the Gentiles because the gospel Paul suffered and died for has transformed them and given them new life.53

The Presentation of Paul’s Suffering in Acts Much of the part of the book of Acts devoted to Paul’s ministry reads like a narrative illustrating the detailed list of hardships in 2 Corinthians 11.54 In that catalogue Paul mentions that he received “five times from the Jews the forty (lashes) minus one” (2 Cor 11:24).55 Related to this hardship is the theme in Acts describing the opposition to Paul on the part of Jews who did not accept Jesus as the Messiah.56 Paul also states that he was stoned on one occasion (2 Cor 11:25). According to Acts, Paul was stoned in Lystra by Jews from Antioch and Iconium (Acts 14:19–20).57 On two occasions opposition on the part of Gentiles is described (16:16–40, 19:23–41). This theme is related to the hardship of being beaten with rods.58 On one occasion, unspecified imprisonments and afflictions are mentioned (20:23–24). It is highly likely that Roman magistrates a­ uthorized

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all of Paul’s imprisonments.59 In Caesarea Paul was imprisoned (kept under guard) in the praetorium of Herod, which served as the Roman governor’s headquarters (23:33–35).60 In his farewell speech to the Ephesian elders, Paul foreshadows his death, and the grieving of the elders at this prospect is narrated (Acts 20).61 A large portion of Acts recounts his imprisonment by the Romans, first in Jerusalem and then in Caesarea. This imprisonment is followed by his journey to Rome in the custody of Roman agents to be tried before the emperor.62 During the journey he suffers a storm at sea and shipwreck (27:13–44). In the list of hardships in 2 Corinthians 11, Paul says that he suffered shipwreck three times and that at least once he was adrift on the sea in deep water for a night and a day (11:25). The account in Acts states that all the survivors jumped overboard and either swam to shore or were carried there holding on to pieces of the ship (27:43–44).63 Although Acts does not describe the death of Paul, most interpreters agree that Paul had died by the time Acts was written. A likely reason for the omission is Acts’ tendency to portray the Roman authorities as benevolent and tolerant. Because the author could not explain the death of the innocent Paul in a satisfactory way, he ended the narrative with Paul proclaiming the gospel in Rome.64

1 Clement 1–6 and 2 Timothy 4:6–8 Although it has the form of a letter, 1 Clement is a typical speech urging peace and harmony in a political entity experiencing internal strife and disruption, often involving factions.65 After giving ancient (biblical) examples of strife involving envy and jealousy, the author turns to recent ones, in particular, to those who “became athletic contenders” (literally “athletes”— ἀθληταί).66 The metaphorical contest in which Peter and Paul took part involved persecution and ended in death (1 Clem. 5.2). It also involved hardships (πόνοι) of various kinds (5.4, 5.6ab).67 Paul used language of engaging in an athletic competition (ἀγωνίζεσθαι) for the individual activities of those striving to be faithful to Christ (1 Cor 9:24–27). From a communal point of view, he described himself and the Philippians as competing side by side (συναθλεῖν in Phil 1:27, 4:3). In the anonymous letter to the Hebrews, the noun meaning “athletic contest” (ἄθλησις) is used to describe the difficult life of a new convert in a hostile social context (Heb 10:32).68

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In 2 Timothy, “Paul” urges Timothy to focus on right behavior by using the metaphor of an athlete competing according to the rules (2 Tim 2:5). Even more interesting for our present concern is what the Paul of 2 Timothy says about himself (4:6–7).69 Although this letter may be read as a farewell speech, it is likely that Paul was already dead when it was written. The audience may even have been aware of this fact. “Paul” says, “I am already being offered as a libation, and the time for my departure is imminent. I have competed well in the contest; I have completed the course; I have kept the faith.”70 According to 4:8, Paul will receive the victor’s crown (στέφανος) on “that day,” that is, the day of judgment.71 The letter attributed to Clement (1 Clement 5) and 2 Tim 4:6–8 share an emphasis on competing as a metaphorical athlete unto death that is not found elsewhere in the letters attributed to Paul. First Clement 5 makes clear that Paul and Peter have died. Both are said to have borne witness (μαρτυρήσας), and this act of bearing witness is closely connected with dying (1 Clem. 5.4, 7). This connection implies that the idea of martyrdom, death for bearing witness to Christ, is already present.72 We thus see that Paul (and Peter) is already portrayed as a martyr (witness) in this early text (toward the end of the first century).73 Paul is also portrayed as pointing “the way to the prize for endurance” (5.5). On the literal level, the word for “prize” (βραβεῖον) means something given to acknowledge victory in a competition in the games.74 One type of prize was a wreath made from plants such as laurel, ivy, and myrtle. Paul contrasts the perishable crown of athletic contests to the imperishable crown, ultimate salvation, for which he and his communities strive (1 Cor 9:25–27). The prize in 1 Clement, “the holy place,” is equivalent to ultimate salvation (5.5, 7).75 In addition to the witness that led to his death, Paul pointed the way to the prize by enduring hardships. The lists of hardships in the Corinthian correspondence probably inspired the short list of hardships in 1 Clement 5, although the only verbal overlap is being stoned.76 The author of 1 Clement may also have known the tradition of listing hardships from Greek literature more generally. A new element in 1 Clement is the notion of a noble death.77

The Martyrdom of Paul in the Acts of Paul The relationship of the Martyrdom of Paul to the larger work, the Acts of Paul, is contested. Wilhelm Schneemelcher argued that the Martyrdom was originally part of the Acts of Paul but was separated from it at an early

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date because it was read on Paul’s feast day.78 J. K. Elliott concluded that the Coptic manuscript P. Heidelberg makes clear that it was originally part of the Acts of Paul.79 Glenn Snyder has argued that the Martyrdom of Paul was composed as an independent unit around the time of the reign of ­Trajan, was based on sources, and was eventually expanded. He suggests that it may have been composed for the commemoration of Paul’s feast day.80 Alexander Kirk has argued that evidence for the compositional history of the work is scanty, so talk about its original form is unwarranted.81 At least four English translations are available.82 The date of the present form of the Martyrdom is also uncertain, but the second half of the second century is most likely.83 According to the Martyrdom of Paul, Luke and Titus were waiting for him when he arrived in Rome. Paul immediately rented a barn outside the city where he and other believers taught “the word of truth.”84 He became famous, and many came to him, including many from the household of the emperor. This introductory material may have been inspired by the last two verses of Acts. Acts ends with Paul teaching boldly and without hindrance, apparently in a dwelling he himself had hired (28:30–31). The reference to his being unhindered is stated in spite of his being guarded by a Roman soldier (28:16). The Martyrdom of Paul gives no indication that Paul was under guard, so this narrative thereby eliminates an element of suffering from the account of Acts, namely, being in Roman custody. The cupbearer of Nero, Patroclus, fell out of a window and died, like Eutychus in Troas (Acts 20:7–12). After Paul raised Patroclus from the dead, the boy reported to the emperor that he now fights for Christ Jesus the king who destroys all kingdoms and whose own kingdom alone will endure. Three of the chief men of Nero also declared that they now fight for Christ. This announcement led Nero to issue a decree that all soldiers of Christ should be executed.85 Paul is then brought before Nero bound.86 He announces to Nero that one day Christ will destroy the world, and Nero commands Paul to be beheaded. Paul declares that, if Nero beheads him, he will rise again and appear before the emperor to show that he is not dead “but alive to my Lord Christ Jesus.”87 He also predicts that Christ will come to judge the earth. Paul then teaches Longus, the prefect of Rome, and Cestus, a centurion, that Christ will come with fire to purge the earth. Paul himself will come with Christ in the glory of his Father.88

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When the executioner beheads Paul, milk splashes on the tunic of the soldier, rather than blood. Later, when many philosophers and the centurion were assembled with Nero, Paul appears and declares that he is not dead. He also foretells that Nero will be punished because of his slaughter of Christians. The narrative ends with the prefect and the centurion going to the grave of Paul, as Paul instructed them to do. There they meet Titus and Luke, who at first run away. When they hear that the two Romans had seen Paul praying with them at the grave, they agree to give them the seal of the Lord.89 The reference is to baptism, though indirect. This indirect use of the noun “seal” for “baptism” may be related to the indirect use of the verb “to seal” as a metaphor for “to baptize” in 2 Cor 1:21–22.90 The Martyrdom of Paul, in spite of the narrative of his execution, does not reflect the theme of Paul as a suffering apostle to whom God grants strength in the depth of his weakness. Rather, the narrative focuses on the power that will be manifested in Paul’s rising from the dead and in the eschatological coming of Christ to destroy all kingdoms and purge the earth by fire. The baptism at the tomb is analogous to Paul’s statement in Philippians that his imprisonment (and possible execution)91 is not to be mourned because it has resulted in the spread of the gospel: “it has become clear throughout the whole Imperial Guard and to all the rest that I am in chains because of Christ” (Phil 1:12–13).92 It is noteworthy that the Martyrdom of Paul preserves a traditional early Christian eschatology. It is striking, however, that Paul’s eschatological teaching is used to confront and threaten Nero. This behavior is very different from the portrayal of Paul in Acts, where he is diplomatic and defends his views as standard teaching among some Jews, especially the Pharisees. The author of the Martyrdom addresses the issue of persecution and the execution of Paul directly, unlike the author of Acts, who does not narrate Paul’s death.93 This difference supports the conclusion that the Martyrdom was written in the late second century after the execution of Christ-confessors had begun to take place.94 In this work Paul, the itinerant apostle of the letters who endured mistreatment and imprisonment for the sake of Christ and the gospel, is transformed into a defiant soldier of Christ, confronting the emperor and boldly meeting his death. There is continuity, however, between Paul’s teaching and practice of suffering and dying with Christ in the letters and the readiness for martyrdom in this part of the Acts of Paul. Indeed, as Paul wrote

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to the Philippians, he was hard-pressed to choose between dying and being with Christ and staying alive to aid the progress in faith of his communities. In the same passage Paul also expresses the hope that he will speak with boldness (παρρησία), presumably during his interrogation, so that he will not bring shame upon himself but rather exalt Christ (Phil 1:20–24).

The Veneration of Paul in Rome after His Death Literary Evidence

The evidence supports the conclusion that Paul died in Rome, that he was buried near the road between Rome and Ostia, and that, at least from the mid-second century, his death was interpreted as a martyrdom.95 The earliest literary evidence for Paul’s tomb comes from a citation of Gaius by Eusebius.96 The historian says that this Roman writer lived when Zephyrinus was bishop of Rome; that would place his activity in the period from 198 to 217 CE.97 According to Eusebius, Gaius wrote that in Nero’s time, Paul was beheaded in Rome itself and Peter likewise was crucified. In his introduction to the information from Gaius, Eusebius affirms that Nero was “the first of the emperors to be pointed out as a foe of divine religion.”98 Gaius’s dating of the apostle’s death during Nero’s reign agrees on this point with the Martyrdom of Paul, which, as we have seen, places the death of Paul in the same period. Eusebius also gives a direct quotation from a written dialogue99 of Gaius with Proclus, a so-called Montanist.100 He introduces this quotation with the remark that Gaius speaks about “the places where the sacred bodies of the apostles in question are deposited.”101 David Eastman, following C. F. Cruse, translates “the earthly tabernacles” rather than “sacred bodies.”102 “Earthly tabernacles” is a reasonable translation of the noun σκηνώματα, since Paul speaks about earthly bodies as “tents” (σκηναί) in 2 Cor 5:1–4. Cruse, however, fails to translate the adjective modifying this noun in the text of Eusebius, namely, ἱερά.103 The bodies are sacred, generally speaking, because the apostles are holy. This idea is the root of the veneration of relics; the bodies of the saints and martyrs are considered primary relics, while objects that had come in contact with their bodies were secondary relics.104 Eusebius then gives the quotation from Gaius as follows: “But I can point out the trophies of the Apostles, for if you will go to the Vatican or to the Ostian Way you will find the trophies of those who founded this Church.”105 Rather than interpret Cruse’s “earthly tabernacles” as the bodies

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of the apostles, Eastman interprets the phrase to mean “the places where their bodies lay.” He then understands “their trophies” to be “their tombs.”106 It seems clear, however, that σκήνωμα here has the meaning “body.”107 From the fourth century BCE onward, the Greeks established permanent monuments called τρόπαια to celebrate the defeat of an enemy and to honor the god who had “turned aside” or defeated the enemy. “Trophies became a common motif of art” in Hellenistic buildings and Roman triumphal art.108 Georg Rubel has argued that Eusebius and Gaius understood the τρόπαια to be the apostles’ places of burial, that is, their graves.109 Eusebius emphasized the places, but Gaius may well have emphasized the graves. It seems likely that these two graves were originally marked with the names of Paul and Peter, respectively, carved on a stele or some other type of modest monument.110 It would then probably be the monument in particular that was interpreted as a trophy.111 The idea of a grave’s monument being designated a τρόπαιον is ironic. The process of death and burial is marked as a victory. The book of Revelation is filled with language about the deaths of Jesus and his followers as victories.112 This imagery also fits Paul’s understanding of suffering. As power is made manifest in weakness, so victory is accomplished by a faithful death (Phil 1:18b–20, 2:16–18, 3:10–14). Further literary evidence for the burial of Paul is found in the Depositio Martyrum (The Burying of the Martyrs). This work is a list of feasts in honor of the martyrs and the locations in Rome where they were celebrated. According to Eastman, its surviving form dates to 336 CE, and it is the earliest festal calendar of its type.113 In the early church of the East, the joint feast of Peter and Paul was celebrated on December 28.114 In the West, it was observed on June 29. The entry for that day in the Depositio indicates that Peter’s feast was celebrated in the catacombs and Paul’s on the Ostian Road “when Tuscus and Bassus were consuls,” that is, in 258 CE. It is debated whether this is the date when those celebrations began or whether the reference is to feasts that were already being observed at this time.115

Architectural and Other Material Evidence

The history of the reception of Paul’s suffering and death includes architectural and other material evidence. The grave of Paul is mentioned twice in the Martyrdom of Paul (11.5, 7; 14.5, 7), although no details are given. The material remains reflect the increasing honor and veneration bestowed upon Paul.

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After the edict of toleration of Christianity, the emperor Constantine funded a basilica on the site of Paul’s tomb, thus providing a grander architectural context for the veneration of Paul.116 According to the Book of Pontiffs, it was Silvester, bishop of Rome, who suggested this project to the emperor.117 The building seems to have been relatively small compared with other churches built by Constantine.118 The reason may have been that Paul’s grave lay between the Ostian Road on the east and another road on the west, so the building may have been as large as it could be, given its location and the preferred orientation.119 Although the basilica memorializing Paul was built outside the city,120 it was on a major thoroughfare. Its location, therefore, kept Paul in the public memory and made it easy for pilgrims to find and visit it. In fewer than three hundred years, the significance of Paul’s burial site was transformed. It began as a modest monument that ironically expressed victory in death and burial, but it became a Roman basilica that expressed the idea that Paul’s life, death, and burial belonged to the process by which a Christian empire emerged. By the late fourth century, the Constantinian basilica had begun to seem inadequate. Paul had grown in popularity and more space was needed for more people to show their reverence for him.121 Three emperors destroyed the original church, removed the road to the west, and built a much larger basilica over the tomb of Paul.122 It was dedicated in 390 or 391 CE and completed under the emperor Honorius (395–423).123 Early in the fifth century, the Christian poet Prudentius described and praised the new church building in his work Crowns of Martyrdom. In the same work, he also drew upon the foundation myth of Rome, the story of Romulus and Remus as told in Virgil’s Aeneid, to portray Paul and Peter as the new founders of (Christian) Rome.124 The basilica of the three emperors survived until 1823, when a fire destroyed it. The current structure, the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, was dedicated in 1854.125 It maintains the structure of the Theodosian basilica.

Veneration at the Tomb Celebration of the Eucharist The tomb of Paul was probably in the apse of the Constantinian basilica, which was at the western end of the church. The church of the three emperors left the tomb in the same place, but because this church was larger

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and differently oriented, the tomb lay “beneath the main arch, where the nave and the transept met.”126 An inscription has been found on two marble slabs that are related to one another. When the two slabs are taken together, the resulting inscription reads, “To Paul, apostle and martyr.”127 It has been dated most recently to the late fourth or early fifth century. It was probably placed near the tomb in the later basilica (of the three emperors).128 It has been argued that these two marble slabs were part of a structure that surrounded the coffin of Paul and served as both a memorial shrine and an altar for the celebration of the Eucharist.129 On the anniversary of the martyrdom, this structure, also known as a mensa, a table for meals, may have been the focus of a refrigerium, a funerary banquet. Such meals could be combined with the Eucharist.130 The top of the mensa that covered the tomb probably had a round hole in it that lined up with a funnel-shaped stone in the lid of the sarcophagus in which Paul lay. This opening, given evidence for such practices elsewhere, probably had two functions: wine may have been poured into it to nourish Paul,131 and perfumes with a balsamic base may have been poured in to honor Paul.132 There may have been an overlap here with traditional Roman practices. The Romans deified their dead and made offerings to them on the last day of their nine-day funerals and regularly afterward, for example, at the annual festival for the dead called Parentalia.133 The Chronicle of 354 and Prudentius (Against Symmachus 2.1107–8) provide evidence that this festival, and thus the cult of the dead, was still observed in the fourth century.134 Structures similar to the funnel-shaped stone in Paul’s sarcophagus were used to make offerings to the dead, to honor and care for them in return for protection, for example, to extend the fated duration of an individual human life. Some visitors to Paul’s tomb may have made offerings to him as a divine being.135 Overlap of the Roman cult of the dead with Christian burial practices also occurs in the inscriptions used on tombstones. A very common inscription on Roman tombs was DM, which stands for Dis Manibus.136 Fuller inscriptions indicated that the person who paid for the inscription did so to honor the individual buried in the grave as a god. For example, Dis Manibus T. Aelio Aurelio (CIL, 6.10650) means “for the divine manes [spirit] T. ­Aelius Aurelius.”137 Some late Roman tombs combined the DM formula with clearly Christian elements, for example, with a fish, which represented an acronym meaning “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.”138

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Jerome, writing around 406 CE, provides evidence that the bishop of Rome celebrated the Eucharist upon the graves of the apostles.139 This practice linked the death of Paul as a martyr with the death of Christ. Christ’s death was seen in the late fourth and early fifth centuries as the foundational event of Christian faith and the church. Paul’s death, since Prudentius, was seen as the foundational event for the Roman church.140 Burial near Paul Many ancient Christians desired to be buried near the saints (ad sanc­ tos).141 The reasons include escape from hell and punishments “as sharers in holiness.”142 Several sarcophagi near Paul’s tomb have been discovered from the Theodosian level (the church of the three emperors). One of them has an inscription indicating that it is the tomb of the presbyter Gaudentius and his wife Severa, who were buried in 389 CE. Another has a sculptural relief portraying the moment just before Paul’s martyrdom. Paul’s hands are bound behind his back, and facing him is a Roman soldier with a knife about to behead him.143 Pilgrimage to the Basilica and Paul’s Tomb Motivations for pilgrimage to Paul’s tomb were no doubt varied and complex. One motive of course was to achieve holiness, and another, ultimately to be rewarded after death. The pilgrim would seek Paul’s intercession and spiritual aid. Help in this life was probably also a factor. The saint could accomplish exorcisms and healings since, though he had died, he was still living and powerful. Some pilgrimages were local and regional; other pilgrims came from great distances, apparently beginning in the fourth century.144 Veneration of Paul’s Relics As noted above in “Literary Evidence,” Paul’s body and its parts were primary relics. In them his holiness and power were most strongly present. Two versions of a legend about Paul’s shroud survive. Since it had Paul’s blood on it, it was considered to be as holy and powerful as his body itself.145 Paul was buried in this shroud, according to tradition. There was also a tradition about a cloth that was used to cover Paul’s eyes at the time he was decapitated. It was borrowed from and then returned to a woman named Plautilla.146

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The ancient basilica also had chains believed to have touched Paul’s body before he was executed. The current church has chains believed to be the same ones in a glass case above the sarcophagus. In 519 CE, Bishop Hormisdas of Rome sent holy objects (sanctuaria) that had touched the chains to Justinian before he became emperor.147 Bishop Gregory I (590– 604), known as Gregory the Great,148 sent fragments of the chains to empress Constantina and others.149 Gregory also made provision for the creation of secondary relics (brandea).150

Conclusion An element of transformation in the reception of Paul as a suffering apostle involves his self-description as a clay vessel containing a treasure (the gospel and the knowledge it provides). The weak, lowly body, like a clay vessel, makes clear that the power belongs to God and does not come from Paul himself (2 Cor 4:7). After his death Paul’s holy body becomes the treasure. When his burial is marked only by a simple grave and inscription, the analogy holds. There is discontinuity, however, between the clay vessel and the Constantinian basilica and even more so with the ornate Theodosian basilica. An element of discontinuity lies in Paul’s conviction that weakness is the primary sphere for the manifestation of divine power, rather than “signs, wonders, and mighty deeds.”151 The holy body of Paul is expected to perform mighty deeds, such as exorcisms and miraculous healing of ailments and disabilities, at the site of his tomb.152 These postmortem miracles are similar to those performed by God through items of Paul’s clothing that had touched his skin according to Acts 19:12. Another point of continuity begins with the self-portrayal of Paul as a suffering apostle conforming to Christ as suffering Messiah (2 Cor 4:10– 12). The continuity is expressed in the practice of celebrating the Eucharist, which commemorates the death of Christ, on the tomb of Paul, which is a memorial of his death as a martyr.



Conclusion

The five chapters of this book have traced the transformations of five passages or themes from the letters of Paul and explored the relation of later texts to Pauline texts, ideas, values, and practices. Sometimes such aspects of the Pauline letters play an explicit role. When they do not, their indirect influence has been taken as a premise, given the prominence of those letters in the canon and in early Christian writings. Paul’s thought and values have also been compared and contrasted with those of later writers, who were working in different cultural settings and with varying ideologies. In Chapter 1, Paul’s apocalypticism was shown to have two dimensions. One is his teaching about an eschatological series of events, some of which had already occurred, mainly the death and resurrection of Christ. Yet to come, and expected in the near future, was the coming of Christ and the resurrection or transformation of those “in Christ” whom he will “rescue from the wrath to come.” This language probably refers to the judgment that will take place after Christ’s return and the expectation that the faithful “in Christ” will be acquitted and rewarded. Romans 8:18–25 seems to imply the transformation of the earth so that it will become spiritual and no longer be in bondage to decay. The other dimension of Paul’s apocalypticism is heavenly revelation, which involves speaking in tongues and the interpretation of what is said, as well as the revelation of mysteries or secrets through prophecy. The parade example is Paul’s ascent to heaven in which he receives revelation about his “thorn in the flesh” and the connection between weakness and power. Paul’s apocalypticism is not anti-Roman, at least not in the way the book of Revelation is. The kingdom of Christ, followed by the kingdom of God, will replace Roman rule, but Paul’s main 122

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interest in apocalypticism is the overcoming of human sinfulness and vulnerability to decay and death. Paul’s apocalyptic ideas were received in a variety of ways. Some later writers took up Paul’s eschatological scenario as it was already elaborated in 2 Thessalonians. Justin Martyr interpreted the coming of the rebellion and the “man of lawlessness” in 2 Thess 2:3–10 as being fulfilled in his own time by the Roman persecution and execution of followers of Jesus. Irenaeus took up the same passage, interpreting it as a prophecy of the coming of the antichrist, still in the future from his point of view. Irenaeus also, like Paul in Romans 8, speaks about the restoration of creation. The authors of Colossians and Ephesians transformed Paul’s imminent eschatology into teaching that emphasizes its present partial fulfillment and gives more significance to the role of heaven both in the celebration of the present and in the hope for the future. Origen uses Eph 6:11 to characterize the ethical development of the spiritual person as an ongoing battle with contrary forces. Irenaeus introduces the idea of the gradual progress of the elect, ethically and spiritually speaking, in the time after the return of Christ, citing 1 Cor 15:25–28. He describes this progress as gradually ascending to God and being (re-)made into the image and likeness of God. Origen elaborates this idea, citing Ps 110:1 and 1 Cor 15:25, 28. Finally, the Coptic Gnostic Apocalypse of Paul and the apocryphal Apocalypse of Paul use Paul’s ascent to heaven in 2 Cor 12:1–10 as a means of revealing individual eschatology, the fate of souls after death. The apocryphal apocalypse maintains an expectation of judgment and transforms it into a general judgment. It also keeps the idea of the resurrection of the elect but elaborates it also into a general resurrection after the return of Christ. Chapter 2 explored the rhetorical exigence facing Paul in Corinth, that is, the problem that led him to write 1 Corinthians 15. That problem was the denial by some members of the community of “the resurrection of the dead.” The problem probably arose because Paul’s simple proclamation of bodies rising from the dead and ascending to heaven was offensive to those with some education and broad cultural awareness. Paul’s original teaching on the resurrection in Corinth was probably similar to what we find in 1 Thess 4:13–17. Nothing is said about transformation there. Those who denied the resurrection of the dead had been taught that earthly bodies belong on earth and heavenly bodies in heaven. No human earthly body could

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possibly ascend to heaven. Paul’s rhetorical purpose was to correct his earlier teaching to make it more acceptable and also to correct the Corinthians for denying the possibility of resurrection. His solution is the exclusion of flesh and blood from the resurrection body and the notion that the earthly body would be transformed into a spiritual body. Paul’s teaching on resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 was received in three main ways. Most prominent was the affirmation and defense of the resurrection of the flesh. Pseudo-Justin infers from Luke 24 and Acts 1 that Christ rose in the flesh. It follows for him that those in Christ will experience the same kind of resurrection. This author does not refer to Paul’s teaching on this point in the fragments that survive. It may be that he chose to deal with it by ignoring it. Irenaeus defends the resurrection of the flesh by referring to John 20. He tries to reconcile this passage with Paul’s teaching by arguing that “flesh and blood” in 1 Cor 15:50 means “people who do not have the spirit of God in them.” Tertullian has two main arguments of this type. He declares that flesh and blood are excluded from the kingdom of God with respect to their sin, not to their substance. He also affirms their transformation in his interpretation of 1 Cor 15:53: “this corruptible” that must put on incorruptibility is the flesh, and “this mortal” that must put on immortality is the blood. Augustine argues that God has joined incorporeal substances, human souls or spirits, to earthly bodies. Since these incorporeal substances are more excellent than any body, including heavenly bodies, there is no reason why an earthly body, joined to such a soul or spirit, cannot be raised to a heavenly abode. The second kind of reception goes in the opposite direction. The Treatise on the Resurrection from Nag Hammadi affirms that the human soul, spirit, or intellect is what rises after death. The earthly body and the flesh are simply left behind. This text bases its interpretation of resurrection on allusions to 1 Cor 15:54, including Paul’s quotation of Isa 25:8, Rom 8:17, Col 2:12, and Eph 2:5–6. Origen articulated a third type of interpretation by reflecting philosophically on the nature of resurrection. He argued that the human soul, when it is in any material place, requires a body suited to the nature of that environment. It needs the earthly body of flesh and blood when it is on earth. When it rises to a heavenly place it needs “a garment” that is ethereal, like the heavenly regions. This is what Paul meant by “a spiritual body.” The creation of this new body is a natural process but can take place only if God wills it.

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Chapter 3 begins with a discussion of Paul’s teaching on marriage in 1 Corinthians 7. His teaching is pragmatic, and he does not value continence or virginity for its own sake. Like the Cynics, he argues that marriage takes a lot of time and brings a good deal of trouble. Like the Stoics, he took the position that marriage is disadvantageous in adverse circumstances. He adapted these views to his apocalyptic system of thought, especially to the present “necessity” involving the form of this world passing away. This situation constituted adverse circumstances for marriage because the Corinthians needed to concentrate on preparing for the coming of the Lord. Those who could not remain continent, however, were free to marry without sin or blame. Those who were married should have regular sexual relations, except for short periods by agreement, thus avoiding temptations to sin. The reception of Paul’s teaching on marriage takes various forms. One type takes Paul’s preference for being single and sexually continent and makes it a general rule. Marcion, for example, apparently did not allow any married person to be baptized. It may be that Paul’s preference played a role in this practice, since the letters of Paul, along with a version of the Gospel of Luke, were the only authoritative texts for him and his followers. In Tatian’s teaching on sexual relations, he alludes clearly to Paul and infers that what Paul really meant was that having sexual relations in marriage is a step on a slippery slope leading to incontinence, fornication, and serving the devil as master. Tatian’s description of sexual relations as “intercourse of corruption” may also be read in an ethical sense. “Corruption” here may have, however, the connotation of transitoriness, perishability, and decay (cf. Rom 8:21). Sexual relations for Tatian belong to the present, outgoing age, whereas virginity is characteristic of the age to come and prepares people for it. In the Acts of Paul and Thecla, virginity is presented as a high value in the beatitudes Paul declares in his public teaching. When the proconsul of Iconium questions him, Paul goes further and proclaims a teaching similar to that of Tatian: Paul’s purpose in teaching is to draw people away from corruption and death; sexual intercourse belongs to the perishable world and is connected with impurity and sin because of the desire for pleasure. A second type of reception takes seriously Paul’s acceptance of the legitimacy of marriage and allows it for all believers. The Gnostic teacher Basilides took the position that marriage is morally neutral. His son Isidore and others who followed him argued that, though marriage was permissible, it should be avoided because it is a distraction from what really matters,

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the eternal kingdom. Origen also argued that marriage is morally neutral. For Christians it is a divine gift (charisma) creating harmony and peace. Perfected Christians, however, in Origen’s view are sexually continent. The first letter to Timothy presents Paul as affirming marriage but stipulating that leaders of the church, bishops, deacons, and “true” widows, should have only one marriage in their lifetimes. This trait, along with the ability of these leaders to manage their households well, apparently makes them fit to lead, worthy of authority, and appropriate models for the rest of the community. Tertullian’s understanding of 1 Corinthians 7 is that Paul tolerated marriage but preferred celibacy. Paul’s teaching on marriage apparently suggested to Tertullian a hierarchy of holiness: most holy are those who maintain lifelong virginity; the second rank of holiness comes to those who maintain virginity after baptism. Going beyond Paul, Tertullian concludes that married people may achieve this kind of virginity by abstaining from sexual relations during their marriage. A widowed man or woman who does not remarry may also achieve it. The third level of holiness pertains to those who marry only once in their entire lifetime. The third type of reception of Paul’s teaching on marriage and celibacy is affirmation of marriage for the sake of procreation. In addition to allowing only one marriage for leaders of the church, the Paul of 1 Timothy also indirectly advocates marriage for producing children. One example is the principle that women are saved by childbearing, along with faith, love, holiness, and modesty. Another example is the teaching that younger widows should remarry and keep busy by managing their households. The younger widows are advised to remarry for their own moral good and that of the community. Valentinus and the Valentinians had a myth of origins in which a heavenly pair emits another and so forth until the fullness of heavenly powers is reached. According to Clement, a contemporary of the Valentinians, this myth supported their practices of marriage and procreation. Valentinus and his followers apparently taught that marriage and procreation are necessary so that the full number of the elect may be harvested. Clement of Alexandria himself adopted the typically Stoic rationale for marriage: it is necessary for one’s country, the succession of children, and the completion of the universe. He argued that celibacy and marriage are each a calling. He also maintained that continence within marriage was an important value: the married couple should have sexual relations only for the purpose of procreation.

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Chapter 4 explores the role of women in teaching, in prophecy, and in holding important roles or functions and later offices. Each exploration begins with a discussion of Paul’s treatment of one of these topics, including his instructions for women. For Paul, teachers are third in importance among the leaders who are divinely appointed. The only passage in which he limits the role of women as teachers is 1 Cor 14:34–35. It is likely that a later editor added these verses, but most ancient readers received them as words of Paul. In Paul’s cultural context and throughout antiquity women were expected to teach their daughters what they needed to know to be good wives and mothers. In a passage echoing 1 Cor 14:34–35, the author of 1 Timothy forbids women to teach or to have authority over men (2:12). The letter to Titus, probably by the same author, presupposes that older women in the churches teach the younger women how to behave in regard to their gender and stage in life so that they do not offend outsiders. This reference to outsiders indicates that female members of the community did not always live in accordance with the norms of the surrounding culture. In spite of the prohibition of women teachers, there is evidence that women did teach and that many people accepted them as teachers. The evidence is primarily literary. The women teachers include Priscilla (Acts 18:26), Grapte (Herm. Vis. 8.3), Thecla (Acts of Paul and Thecla 39, 41, 43), Philomena (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.13), Macrina, Marthana, Marcella, the desert mothers Theodora and Synkletike, Faltonia Betitia Proba, Melania the Elder, Paula, and Melania the Younger. A papyrus letter mentions a woman named Kyria as a teacher, and an inscription commemorates Theodora also as a teacher. For Paul, prophets are second only to apostles in authority and importance. In 1 Cor 11:2–16 Paul does not question the appropriateness of women prophesying. He insists, however, that they cover their heads, perhaps by wearing a veil, and uses hierarchical arguments based on Genesis 1–2 to clarify why they must do so. The reason may simply be his sense of decorum, but it could be ambivalence about women prophesying, especially if ecstatic speech is involved. Such speech may have seemed sexualized and violent to ancient Mediterranean men. Women also prophesy in the early chapters of Luke and in Acts 21:​ 1 8–9. The latter passage depicts Paul visiting Philip, one of the seven of Acts ­6:1–6, in Caesarea. The narrator mentions that Philip had four virgin daughters who prophesied. Eusebius (Hist. eccl. 3.31) and other literary

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evidence s­ uggest that these women were models for later female prophets. The book of Revelation mentions a woman prophet in Thyatira, a city of the Roman province of Asia. Although John did not recognize her as a prophet, the people of her city did, since John criticizes them for doing so. The Didache and the Shepherd of Hermas reflect the continuing practice of prophecy but do not mention female prophets. In the second century, probably in the 160s, a movement began called the New Prophecy, later called Montanism after Montanus, one of the three founding prophets. The other two founders were women, Priscilla and Maximilla. In one of her oracles Maximilla says, “I am driven away like a wolf from the sheep; I am not a wolf, I am word and spirit and power.” The first part of this oracle alludes to John 10:12; the second part, to 1 Cor 2:4. It is striking that Maximilla does not appeal to 1 Cor 11:2–16 to justify her prophesying; rather, she claims to have the same kind of divinely gifted power that Paul had. The opponents of the New Prophecy opposed it for a variety of reasons. Some of them claimed that Maximilla prophesied because she was possessed by a demon and tried to exorcise her. They failed because of the support of her allies. Women also took important roles in the earliest church and later held office. The most important role in the earliest church in Paul’s view was to be an apostle commissioned by the risen Christ. At least one woman, Junia (Rom 16:7), was active in that role. A number of women exercised leadership as patrons and by hosting congregations in their homes (house churches). Among them were Prisca, who hosted along with her husband, Aquila (Rom 16:3–5), and Nympha (Col 4:15). This practice continued in the second century (Ignatius, Smyrn. 13.2, Pol. 8.2). In the earliest church, being a deacon (Greek diakonos) often meant being sent by someone to fulfill an important task. Phoebe performed such a role. She was commissioned by the congregation she hosted near Corinth to take Paul’s letter to the communities in Rome and probably to prepare things there for the journey to Spain he hoped to make (Rom 16:1–2; cf. Rom 15:22–33). From the third century in both the eastern and the western Mediterranean area there was an office that involved being a female deacon. These women performed a great variety of tasks and had a special responsibility for female members of the church. They belonged to the clergy of the church and thus had more authority than those who were officially enrolled as widows. There is also evidence in both the East and the West for women holding the office of presbyter, which was equivalent to being a priest with responsibilities for proclaiming the word and celebrating the Eucharist. The literary evidence

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shows that it was controversial for women to hold this office. At the same time the controversy shows that some women did hold it and that they had the support of their people and of some bishops. Inscriptions from East and West also survive commemorating women presbyters. There is some evidence that women also held the office of bishop. An inscription from Umbria in Italy attests to a female bishop. Two inscriptions from the early ninth century in the basilica of Santa Prassede (St. Praxedes) attest to a female bishop, Theodora, in Rome. This evidence shows that the condemnation of women teachers in 1 Tim 2:12 and the prohibition of women speaking in the congregations in 1 Cor 14:34–35 did not succeed in fully shaping the social and ecclesiastical reality of the churches in antiquity. Chapter 5 describes the transformations of the image of Paul as a suffering apostle. The historical Paul created two such images of himself. In 1 Thessalonians he spoke about suffering and being insulted in Philippi and facing opposition in Thessalonica. He also tells the Thessalonians that the apostles and those who join the movement will inevitably experience such persecution. In the Corinthian correspondence Paul presents himself as a suffering apostle who has experienced a variety of hardships but has endured them well and not been crushed by them. These accounts defend Paul’s apostleship by portraying his suffering as entailed by his faithful response to his commission to proclaim the gospel, rather than punishment for his misdeeds. They also provide a model for his audiences to imitate. The rest of the chapter discusses the reception of these early images of Paul and the creation of new ones in partial continuity with them. The part of the Acts of the Apostles that concerns Paul’s activity reads like an illustration of the hardships that Paul lists, especially in 2 Cor 11:21b–33. His death, however, is not narrated. Paul is presented as a martyr in 1 Clement 5, which was written toward the end of the first century. This work uses images from athletic competitions to describe his life and death, as well as the image of bearing witness, from which the term “martyr” comes. The passage also contains a list of hardships, drawing on the Corinthian correspondence and probably also from the Greek cultural use of hardships in popular philosophy. The idea of the noble death is also present. The gap left by Acts is filled by the narration of Paul’s death in the Acts of Paul, in a passage that may have been composed earlier as an independent work, the Martyrdom of Paul. Death is of course in continuity with suffering and hardship, but in the Martyrdom, the emphasis is on the power that will be manifested

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in Paul’s rising from the dead, rather than on the weakness that Paul had emphasized. The last section of the chapter discusses the literary and material evidence for the veneration of Paul after his death. This evidence points to Rome as the place where Paul was martyred, buried, and venerated. Paul’s grave was probably modest in the earliest period. It was likely marked with the name of Paul on a stele or some other simple monument. Literary evidence suggests that this monument was called “the trophy” of Paul, that is, a permanent monument of victory. This idea of death and burial as a victory is ironic and is in continuity with the ironic image of the suffering apostle created by Paul himself in light of the saying of Christ that he quotes from his ascent: “power is perfected in weakness.” In the fourth century, a basilica sponsored by the emperor Constantine was built on the site of Paul’s tomb. In the late fourth and early fifth centuries, a much larger basilica was built on the site by the emperor Theodosius and two other emperors. In this process the ironic character of Paul’s victory tomb was lost in the process of claiming Paul as a founder, along with Peter, of a new Christian empire. The two came to be revered as a new Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of classical Rome. The chapters of this book illuminate the reception of Paul with regard to the five selected topics, which range from theology (apocalypticism and resurrection) to ethics (marriage and celibacy) to church order (leadership of women) to popular religious practices (the veneration of Paul after his death). As we have seen, ambiguities and self-contradictions abound in the fourteen letters (usually including Hebrews) accepted by ancient readers and audiences. Sometimes the last and clearest statement on a particular topic became the key to interpret the others. The prohibition of women teaching and having authority over men in 1 Tim 2:12 dominated the literary reception of Paul’s teaching and practices concerning women. As noted in the Introduction, there are inconsistencies and even contradictions in Paul’s letters. These have given rise to the question of whether Paul was consistent or not, a question with a long history.2 Paul of course presents himself as variable in 1 Cor 9:20–22, a passage referred to in the first paragraph of the Introduction. John Chrysostom struggled with the issue of Paul’s inconsistency, which could have negative moral implications. He stated in a homily on 2 Cor 11:8–9 that “Paul was not variable, but uniform and clear.”3 In one of his speeches in praise of Paul, however, he

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says the exact opposite, not only admitting that Paul is variable but also celebrating that fact.4 This contradiction is explicable because Chrysostom recognized, among other explanations, that Paul “became everything which was needed for the preaching and the salvation of people.”5 The irony is nevertheless delicious, and Margaret Mitchell notes that “Chrysostom is himself inconsistent on the topic of Paul’s inconsistency” and suggests that this is an example of his imitation of Paul.6 Paul’s imminent expectation of the return of Christ and the massive changes it would entail for humanity and nature was not generally sustained in antiquity. His apocalyptic ideas were thus transformed in a variety of ways. This expectation was the main grounding of Paul’s preference for sexual continence. Many later writers, however, rejected the imminent expectation but maintained a strong preference for virginity on other grounds. The imminent consummation may have encouraged acceptance of the leadership of women in the early period. Marriage and procreation were no longer important because the form of this world was passing away. Women were thus free to lead, and many workers were needed to bring in the harvest. Since the end was near, what outsiders thought with regard to the behavior of women was no longer a concern. The experience of being endowed with the spirit, especially the extraordinary gifts, was also a major factor. The activity of the spirit was an eschatological gift, a sign of things to come. For this reason, Paul urged his communities not to quench the spirit (1 Thess 5:19). A social context in which the return of Christ was not imminent and charismatic gifts were less valued made the leadership of women, especially holding office, more difficult. That it survived so long is a tribute to the women who asserted themselves on the basis of their gifts and sense of calling and to the men and congregations who supported them. Although Paul’s chapter on resurrection (1 Corinthians 15) was widely read and discussed, his notion of a “spiritual body” is the idea that had the least effect. It made sense in terms of ancient Greek science and Stoic philosophy. It was weakened in part because of a theological preference among proto-orthodox writers for the idea of the resurrection of flesh. It also became less effective as more and more early Christian writers became Platonist and affirmed that the soul was immortal by its nature. The controversy over Origen’s teaching around the turn of the fifth century also played a role. Origen’s reception of the spiritual body, however, is an excellent example of continuity in elaboration and updating.

132 Conclusion

The topic with the most continuity is that of the suffering apostle. The paradox Paul accepted on the basis of a saying he attributed to the risen Christ was that strength is actualized through weakness.7 That saying fits the martyrdom of Paul because he expected to attain to the resurrection by sharing in the sufferings of Christ (Phil 3:10–11). Through his suffering and death as a martyr Paul received the glory of sainthood (being regarded as holy) and veneration after death.

Notes

Introduction 1. Beker, Heirs of Paul, 94. 2. Beker, Heirs of Paul, 95. 3. Gerber, “Paulus als Ökumeniker,” 350–52. 4. The reflections in this paragraph were inspired by Mary Callaway, “What’s the Use of Reception History?,” a paper given at the annual meeting of the SBL in San Antonio in 2004. Prof. Callaway kindly shared her paper with me. 5. The point that the church’s theology determined the history of interpretation in the first millennium of Christian history is emphasized by Robert L. Wilken in the Series Preface that appears in each volume of the series the Church’s Bible, published by Eerdmans. Volumes on 1 Corinthians, John, Matthew, Romans, Isaiah, and the Song of Songs have appeared. 6. On the Church’s Bible, see the previous note. The general editor of Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture is Thomas C. Oden; the publisher is InterVarsity Press. Twenty-nine volumes have appeared relating to both the New and Old Testaments. 7. David N. Lincicum, “Does the Present Threaten the Past?: Historiographical Reflections on the Problem of Teleology in Writing the History of Exegesis.” I am grateful to Dr. Lincicum for making his paper available to me. 8. Neill, Interpretation of the New Testament; Kümmel, New Testament; Reventlow, History of Biblical Interpretation; Baird, History of New Testament Research; and Saebo, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. 9. With the exception of Hebrews, the other letters have defenders of their authenticity. Relying upon the surveys by R. Collins, Letters That Paul Did Not Write, R. Brown (Introduction, 610) concluded that about 60 percent of critical New Testament scholars argued that Colossians was not written by Paul; a recent defender of its authenticity is Beale, Colossians and Philemon, 7–8. R. Brown’s number for Ephesians is 70 percent to 80 percent against authorship by Paul (Introduction, 629);

133

134  Notes to Pages 4–8 a recent defender of authenticity is Hoehner, Ephesians, 60–61; he argued that those who reject and those who accept authenticity are evenly divided, but he begins with Erasmus and the Reformers (9). R. Collins (Letters That Paul Did Not Write, 218) argued that scholarship at the time Collins wrote had turned toward the view that Paul did not write 2 Thessalonians; a recent defender of its authenticity is Malherbe, Letters to the Thessalonians, 373–74. R. Brown (Introduction, 668) points out that 80 percent to 90 percent of modern scholars conclude that the Pastoral Epistles were composed after Paul’s lifetime; Quinn takes the Pastoral Epistles as not by the historical Paul but “as a characterization of the great apostle Paul for a new generation” (Letter to Titus, 19); in his commentary, Johnson (First and Second Letters, 98) reads 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy as real letters written by Paul to his delegate Timothy. 10. On the ancient attribution of Hebrews to Paul, see R. Brown, Introduction, 693–97. 11. Some scholars assume, in principle, that the history of interpretation “can set forth grist for the exegesis of Paul’s letters” (Kirk, Departure of an Apostle, 16). 12. See Strawbridge, Pauline Effect, and Edsall, Reception of Paul. 13. Gadamer, Truth and Method. 14. E. Clark, Reading Renunciation, 4. 15. E. Clark, Reading Renunciation, 13. 16. Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. 17. From the Series Editors’ Preface in Kovacs and Rowland, Revelation, xi. 18. See the discussion of Strawbridge’s book below. 19. See https://www.sbl-site.org/publications/books_BibleandItsReception.aspx. 20. New Criticism emphasized the forms of literary works and the method of close reading to discern how a work functions as a self-contained aesthetic object; it flourished in the mid-twentieth century. See Ransom, New Criticism. 21. Breed, Nomadic Text, 2. 22. Breed, Nomadic Text, 6. 23. Breed, Nomadic Text, 100. 24. Breed, Nomadic Text, 102. 25. Breed, Nomadic Text, 13. 26. Affirmed by Breed as a legitimate goal (Nomadic Text, 206). 27. Breed, Nomadic Text, 206. 28. Cf. Breed, Nomadic Text, 205–6. 29. See the discussion of Gadamer and remarks of E. Clark above. 30. Hardwick and Stray, Companion to Classical Receptions. 31. Peirano, Rhetoric of the Roman Fake, 9 and n. 29. In n. 29 she cites an essay by Jauss as “a foundational study of reception as an approach to literary history”: “Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory,” in Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, 3–45. Peirano describes her own method as “a study of the ‘phenomenology of reading,’ the strategies by which meaning is produced” (10).

Notes to Pages 8–13  135 32. White, Remembering Paul, xiii. 33. Lindemann, Paulus im ältesten Christentum; Dassmann, Stachel im Fleisch; Rensberger, “As the Apostle Teaches.” 34. White, Remembering Paul, 10. 35. Penny, “Pseudo-Pauline Letters”; Bird and Dodson, Paul and the Second Century; White also discusses Pervo, Making of Paul. 36. White, Remembering Paul, 173. 37. Mitchell, Heavenly Trumpet, xx. 38. Strawbridge, Pauline Effect, 174. 39. Strawbridge, Pauline Effect, 1–2, quotation at 2. 40. Arnold, Justification, 157. Kirk (Departure of an Apostle, 29) argues that the concept of literary dependence should be complemented or even replaced by that of secondary orality. 41. White, Remembering Paul, 83. 42. White, Remembering Paul, 72–107. 43. Schröter, Butticaz, and Detwiler, “Introduction,” in Receptions of Paul, 4. 44. Morgan, Roman Faith and Christian Faith, 507. 45. Morgan, Roman Faith and Christian Faith, 508. 46. Morgan, Roman Faith and Christian Faith, 511, 513–14. 47. Morgan, Roman Faith and Christian Faith, 511, 513. 48. Ramelli, “Faith IV.A.” 49. Origen, Princ. 3.2.4; Strawbridge, Pauline Effect, 70. 50. Origen, Cels. 5.1; Strawbridge, Pauline Effect, 71. 51. Origen, Comm. Cant. 3.8; Strawbridge, Pauline Effect, 73.

Chapter 1. The Transformation of Paul’s Apocalyptic Ideas 1. J. J. Collins, “Introduction,” 9. See also J. J. Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination, 5. 2. Fredriksen (Paul, 5–6) shows that the followers of Jesus, including Paul, “lived, thought, and worked within a framework of apocalyptic expectations—or, rather, within two apocalyptic frameworks. The first was older and traditional, the second recent and particular . . . the resurrection of the dead had come to be anticipated as one of a number of God’s saving final acts. As such, resurrection was imagined as an event that would be both eschatological (that is, occurring at the End-time) and communal (see Ezek 38:7–11).” The second apocalyptic framework is Jesus’s teaching that the kingdom was coming very soon. 3. Gal 1:15–16, 1 Cor 12:13, Rom 8:4. 4. See also 1 Thess 2:19, 3:13 (“the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones”); 1 Cor 15:23. 5. Malherbe (Letters to the Thessalonians, 277) has argued rightly against the view that after meeting in the air they all return to earth for the messianic reign. 6. The “age to come” is implied by Paul’s reference to “the present evil age” (Gal 1:4). For a more detailed discussion of this issue, see Yarbro Collins, “Other World.”

136  Notes to Pages 14–16 See also Davies, “Two Ages.” Paul’s understanding of the nature of the human resurrected body is discussed in Chapter 2 below. 7. See Chapter 2 below. 8. See also 1 Thess 5:3; 1 Cor 3:10–15, 5:5; Rom 2:5–11. 9. I agree with Campbell (Pauline Dogmatics, 424) that evildoers (presumably those who have not repented and reformed their lives before the day of the coming of Christ) will be destroyed on that day. That the “day” of 1 Cor 3:13 refers to the return of Christ is supported by 1 Cor 1:7–8. I disagree with Campbell’s claim that, in Paul’s view, God will leave the evildoers unresurrected “on the last day,” the day of the last judgment. If, as seems likely, Paul’s language implies that both the soul and the body of these evildoers will be destroyed on the day of Christ’s return, the question of their resurrection is of no practical significance (Campbell, 424). Paul’s understanding of the fate of evildoers was probably similar to that expressed in Ascen. Isa. 4:18: “The Beloved [Christ] will cause fire to go forth from himself, and it will consume all the impious and they will be as if they had not been created” (trans. C. D. G. Müller, “Ascension of ­Isaiah,” 610). 10. Paul downplays this gift in 1 Cor 14:4, 6–12, 14–19, 22–25. 11. 1 Cor 14:2; cf. 12:30; 14:5, 13, 26–27, 39. 12. 1 Cor 13:2; it may also involve perception of the secrets hidden in the hearts of unbelievers (14:24–25). 13. 1 Thess 4:13–18; 1 Cor 15:50–53 is a similar case, though in a context of instruction. 14. J. J. Collins, “Introduction,” 14–15; J. J. Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination, 7–8; Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven. 15. For discussion of the role of “visions and revelations” in the thought and practices of Paul, see Yarbro Collins, “Paul, Jewish Mysticism,” 97–99. 16. Peerbolte, “Paul’s Rapture,” 162–64. 17. Peerbolte (“Paul’s Rapture,” 164–67) emphasizes the ineffability of what Paul hears. 18. Harrill, Paul the Apostle, 76–94. Goodrich (“After Destroying Every Rule”) has argued that Paul does not single out the Romans but did write a few passages that qualify as “discursive resistance” against governing authorities more generally. 19. De Boer, “Apocalyptic,” 53–54. For Paul the scale of evil is both smaller than the realm of the Roman empire, in his focus on individual human suffering and death, and larger, in his conception of the world as under the control of demonic powers. He goes so far as to speak of “the god of this world” (probably Satan) in 2 Cor 4:4; Meeks, First Urban Christians, 184–85. 20. Morgan, Being “in Christ,” 244–45. 21. For further discussion, see Yarbro Collins, “Reception.” 22. 1 Thess 2:19, 4:13–17, 5:2–10. 23. Cf. Ascen. Isa. 9:17–18, where crowns and thrones await the righteous in the seventh heaven (C. D. G. Müller, “Ascension of Isaiah,” 2.615).

Notes to Pages 16–20  137 24. In Col 1:27 the author uses the phrase “the hope of glory,” but it is identified with “Christ in you.” 25. The exhortation is elaborated in 3:5–7. 26. E.g., Lincoln and Wedderburn, Theology, 84; Merklein, “Eph 4,1–5, 20.” See the discussion in Hoehner, Ephesians, 30–38; although he argues that both Colossians and Ephesians were written by Paul, Hoehner recognizes the literary relationship between them as “evident” (37). 27. Harrill (“Shaping Buildings into Stories,” 224) points out that this ecclesiastical concept, the body of Christ, is a metaphor mixing biology and architecture. He explains this mixture in terms of the tradition in Greek and Roman thought of seeing a “deep reciprocity between the human body and architecture,” which he illustrates with the work of Vitruvius (235–38). 28. Harrill, “Shaping Buildings into Stories,” 225. 29. Here Ephesians presents the mission to the Gentiles as already completed, whereas for Paul it was an ongoing process; see, e.g., Rom 15:14–24. 30. For a discussion of the use of Eph 6:10–17 by later writers, see Strawbridge, Pauline Effect, 57–96. 31. My translation reflects agreement with Ehrman (Forgery and Counterforgery, 163) that the verb ἐνέστηκεν in 2 Thess 2:2 expresses intense imminence (“is about to come”). I disagree with Malherbe’s opinion that it means “has come” (Letters to the Thessalonians, 430). 32. Josephus, J.W. 5.459. See also 5.306 and 6.98. 33. Josephus, J.W. 283–85 (Thackeray, LCL). 34. 1 Thess 4:17, Mark 13:27, and Matt 24:31 all speak about the gathering of the elect or faithful to Christ at his coming, an event to which the author of 2 Thessalonians also refers (2:1). 35. Cf. 2 Bar. 6–8; Rev 7:1–3, 9:14–15. See also Dibelius, An die Thessalonicher, 47–51, who cites Rev 20:2–3, 7–10; PGM IV.994–95; PGM IV.2769–70. 36. Although 2 Thessalonians does not use the Greek term for “antichrist,” it plays a major role in the development of the antichrist tradition. The same is true for the book of Revelation, in which the beast from the sea, and to some degree the beast from the land (the false prophet), is portrayed as antithetically similar to Christ the slaughtered lamb who returns to life. 37. On the origins and early history of the antichrist tradition, see Kusio, Antichrist Tradition in Antiquity; he discusses 2 Thessalonians on pp. 119–25. Taking his seat in the temple is a motif probably inspired by the account of Antiochus IV Epiphanes in Daniel (Kusio, 81). 38. Dibelius, An die Thessalonicher, 45. 39. Cf. 2 Thess 2:9–12 with 2:3. 40. Mark 13:21–22 and 13:24–27. 41. Cf. Mark 13:14 and 2 Thess 2:4 with Dan 9:27, 11:31, 12:11. 42. See Yarbro Collins, Mark, 610. 43. Cf. 2 Thess 2:4 with Dan 11:36–37.

138  Notes to Pages 21–25 44. Josephus, J.W. 2.184 (Thackeray, LCL). 45. Tacitus, Annals 15.44; cf. Suetonius, Nero 16.2. 46. Suetonius, Nero 34. 47. Cf. 2 Esdras/4 Ezra 13:4, 10–11. 48. Cf. Deut 13:1–6, Mark 13:22, Matt 24:24, Rev 13:13–14. 49. Although these conclusions are disputed, see the discussion by Taylor, DeuteroPauline Letters, 60–72; he opts for the hypothesis of a pseudonymous author for all three letters (72). On the dating of at least 1 Timothy to the first half of the second century, see Herzer, “Juden—Christen—Gnostiker,” 161, 165, 167. Tsuji (“Persönliche Korrespondenz des Paulus”) has argued credibly that all three letters are pseudepigraphic. 50. 1 Tim 2:1–2; Dibelius and Conzelmann, Pastoral Epistles, 39–41. Titus 3:1 calls for subjection to rulers and authorities, echoing Rom 13:1. 51. Dibelius and Conzelmann, Pastoral Epistles, 61. 52. 1 Tim 1:16; 4:8; 6:12, 19; 2 Tim 1:1, 9b–10; 2:10; Titus 1:1–2, 3:7. Resurrection language occurs only in 2 Tim 2:18, condemning those who say that the resurrection has already occurred. 53. Dibelius and Conzelmann, Pastoral Epistles, 9. 54. In this regard 1 Tim 1:20 echoes 1 Cor 5:5. 55. 1 Tim 6:14–15; 2 Tim 4:1–2, 8; Titus 2:13. 56. A crown awaiting the righteous is a prominent image in the Ascension of ­Isaiah: 7:22; 8:26; 9:10–12, 18, 24–25; 11:40; C. D. G. Müller, “Ascension of ­Isaiah,” 2.613–16, 619. This work is usually dated to the second century CE (Müller, 2.604). 57. Rev 5:10; 20:4, 6; 22:5. 58. Dibelius and Conzelmann, Pastoral Epistles, 10. 59. Chadwick, Early Church, 29. 60. Daley, Hope of the Early Church, 20–21. 61. This explanation is one of three discussed by Foster, “Justin and Paul,” 124. 62. On secondary orality in the reception of Paul generally, see Kirk, Departure of an Apostle, 29. 63. Justin, Dial. 110.2.7; trans. ANF, 1.253–54. 64. Justin, Dial. 110.4.1–8; trans. ANF, 1.254. 65. Justin, Dial. 81.4.1–6; ANF, 1.240. McGlothlin (Resurrection as Salvation, 13–16) has argued that, in a number of early Christian writers of the second and third centuries, the purpose of the general resurrection is to allow for the general judgment. 66. Cross and Livingstone, Oxford Dictionary, 713. 67. Chadwick, Early Church, 80. 68. Irenaeus, Haer. Preface 1–2; ANF, 1.315. Blackwell (“Paul and Irenaeus,” 191) dates the work to around 180 CE. 69. Irenaeus, Haer. Preface 5; trans. ANF, 1.526.

Notes to Pages 25–28  139 70. Yarbro Collins, “Paul in Irenaeus,” 255. 71. Yarbro Collins, “Paul in Irenaeus,” 257. 72. Yarbro Collins, “Paul in Irenaeus,” 258. 73. Irenaeus, Haer. 5.25.1; trans. ANF, 1.553. On Irenaeus’s treatment of the antichrist, see Kusio, Antichrist Tradition, 184–88. 74. This hypothesis is supported by the designation of the antichrist as a “lawless one” in the same context and especially by the explicit citation of 2 Thess 2:3–4 a little further on (5.25.1). Irenaeus no doubt accepted 2 Thessalonians as a letter of Paul. 75. In the same context, Irenaeus says that the antichrist sets “aside idols in an attempt to persuade [people] that he himself is God, raising up himself as the only idol” (5.25.1; trans. ANF, 1.553). 76. The source is clear from the explicit quotation of 2 Thess 2:3–4 later in the same section (5.25.1). 77. This remark may derive from a combination of Rev 13:2b, 4 with the references to 2 Thess 2:3–4. 78. Friesen, “Useful Apocalypse,” 85–87. 79. Irenaeus, Haer. 5.32.1; I follow here Brox’s translation of capere Deum (“to comprehend God”); Brox, Epideixis; Adversus haereses. Rousseau’s translation is similar: saisir Dieu (“to grasp God intellectually)”; Rousseau, Contre les hérésies. 80. Minns (Irenaeus, 145) argues that the kingdom of the just will be a social and political reality, not just a physical one. 81. I follow Brox and Rousseau in translating creatura with “creation,” rather than with “creature,” as in ANF, 1.561. 82. Irenaeus, Haer. 5.32.1; I translate from the Latin, consulting the translation of Brox, Irenäus von Lyon, 5.236–39. Cf. Rousseau, Irénée de Lyon, 398–99. 83. Irenaeus, Haer. 5.33.1–2. He cites Matt 26:27–29 (with “new” modifying “covenant”) and Matt 19:29 in section 1 and Luke 14:12–14 in section 2. 84. Irenaeus, Haer. 5.35.2; trans. ANF, 1.565. 85. Irenaeus, Haer. 5.36.1; trans. ANF, 1.566, citing 1 Cor 7:31. 86. Irenaeus, Haer. 5.36.2; trans. ANF, 1.567. 87. Irenaeus, Haer. 5.36.3; trans. ANF, 1.567. Blackwell (“Paul and Irenaeus,” 203) has argued that “being formed into the image and likeness of God” means “becoming immortal and incorruptible,” citing Haer. 4.36.7, 4.38.3–4. 88. Chadwick, Early Church, 100. 89. Cross and Livingstone, Oxford Dictionary, 1008. 90. Heine, Commentaries, vii. Jerome made extensive use of Origen’s commentary in writing his own. 91. Origen, Princ. 1.6.1; trans. ANF, 4.260 (slightly modified). 92. Origen, Princ. 1.6.1; trans. ANF, 4.260. 93. Daley, Hope of the Early Church, 58–59.

140  Notes to Pages 28–32 94. Daley, Hope of the Early Church, 51. He cites Origen, Princ. 3.6.3; cf. Jerome, Epist. 124 ad Avitum 9–10. 95. Origen, Princ. 1.6.2; ANF, 4.260. 96. Heine, Commentaries, 48. 97. Heine, Commentaries, 49. See also Daley, Hope of the Early Church, 49. 98. Origen, Princ. 3.2.6; trans. Butterworth, Origen on First Principles, 220; cited by Heine, Commentaries, 68. 99. Heine, Commentaries, 252. 100. For further discussion of Origen’s interpretation of Eph 6:10–17, see Strawbridge, Pauline Effect, 66–68, 70–71, 76–77, 79–82, 86. 101. E. Clark, Origenist Controversy, 3. 102. E. Clark, Origenist Controversy, 245–46. 103. E. Clark, Origenist Controversy, 246–47. 104. J. J. Collins, “Introduction,” 14–15; J. J. Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination, 7–8; Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven. 105. For an interpretation of this work as a Valentinian version of Paul’s ascent to the third heaven (2 Cor 12:1–6), see Perrin, “Paul and Valentinian Interpretation,” 137–39. 106. Funk, “Coptic Gnostic Apocalypse,” 2.696. Blackwell (“Second Century Perspectives,” 179) dates it to the late second century. MacRae, Murdock, and Parrott conclude that “nothing in Apoc. Paul demands any later date than the second century for its composition” (“Apocalypse of Paul,” 257). 107. These witnesses seem to be angels who enter the world to lead humans astray (Funk, “Coptic Gnostic Apocalypse,” 698–99; Blackwell, “Second Century Perspectives,” 184). 108. Perrin (“Paul and Valentinian Interpretation,” 138–39) argues that the firstperson plural does not include the apostles. The Twelve ascend as far as the Ogdoad; only Paul reaches the highest heaven. 109. Funk, “Coptic Gnostic Apocalypse,” 699. 110. For further discussion of this work, see Blackwell, “Second Century Perspectives,” 179–85. 111. The work known simply as the Apocalypse of Paul is usually classified among the Christian or New Testament apocrypha. It was probably composed in Greek, but the manuscripts that best represent the earliest recoverable form of the work are in Latin. See Silverstein and Hilhorst, Apocalypse of Paul. 112. The preface of the Greek version of the Apocalypse of Paul describes the work in this way; trans. Duensing and de Santos Otero, “Apocalypse of Paul,” 2.716. 113. Duensing and de Santos Otero, “Apocalypse of Paul,” 724. 114. Apoc. Paul 21; Duensing and de Santos Otero, “Apocalypse of Paul,” 725. 115. Apoc. Paul 15–18, 31–42; Duensing and de Santos Otero, “Apocalypse of Paul,” 722–24, 730–35. 116. The “future judgment” is mentioned in Apoc. Paul 15 and “the great day of judgment” at the end of section 16.

Notes to Pages 32–37  141  117. Apoc. Paul 21; Duensing and de Santos Otero, “Apocalypse of Paul,” 725–26. The coming of the Lord with all his saints echoes 2 Thess 1:10. The thousand-year reign of course comes from Rev 20:4–6.  118. Apoc. Paul 14–15, 23–29; Duensing and de Santos Otero, “Apocalypse of Paul,” 720–22, 727–29.   119. McGlothlin, Resurrection as Salvation, 164–66. 120. McGlothlin, Resurrection as Salvation, 167–70.

Chapter 2. The Resurrection Body 1. Asher, Polarity and Change, 117–29; Martin, Corinthian Body, 113–14. 2. Plutarch, Rom. 27.3–28.6–8. 3. Plutarch, Rom. 28.6–7 (Perrin, LCL); cited in part by Martin, Corinthian Body, 113–14. Plutarch cites a dirge by Pindar. See fragment 131 (96) in The Odes of Pindar (Sandys, LCL, 588–89). 4. 1 Thess 1:10, 4:16; cf. 1 Cor 15:23. 5. Asher, Polarity and Change, 81–88. 6. 1 Cor 15:51–53. Cf. Phil 3:20–21. See also Rom 6:5, where Paul says, “If we have been united (with him) in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also (be united with him in the likeness) of his resurrection.” 7. 1 Cor 15:36–38, 44. The “animate body” is the body enlivened by a perishable human soul. 8. 1 Cor 15:39–41, 45. 9. Martin, Corinthian Body, 128. 10. Aristotle taught that the pneuma (spirit) in human sperm is analogous to the substance of the stars; see Scott, Origen, 26, 34. The Old Stoics, however, taught that the stars were made of ether (Scott, 46). The issue was confused in the time of Philo (Scott, 67, 77). 11. The interpretation of Engberg-Pedersen does more justice to the notion of transformation in 1 Corinthians 15 but he does so by comparing it to the “conflagration” (ἐκπύρωσις) of the Stoics, which involves “a total, physical transformation of the present world as a whole into a pneumatic state” (“Complete and Incomplete Transformation,” 128). See the discussion of Engberg-Pedersen’s interpretation in Moss, Divine Bodies, 13. 12. For the Greek text, a German translation, and a thorough discussion, see Heimgartner, Pseudojustin; see also Petrey, “Carnal Resurrection.” For an English translation, see ANF, 1.294–99. 13. Pseudo-Justin 9; ANF, 1.298. 14. Pseudo-Justin 10; ANF, 1.298. 15. For Irenaeus’s interpretation of 1 Cor 15:50–53, see Kovacs, 1 Corinthians, 274–76. On his reception of 1 Cor 15:50–58, see Strawbridge, Pauline Effect, 108–14. For a discussion on why the resurrection of the flesh was important to him, see McGlothlin, Resurrection as Salvation, 48.

142  Notes to Pages 37–38 16. Irenaeus, Haer. 5.6.1; trans. ANF, 1.531 (modified in light of the Latin text, the Greek fragment, and the translation of Rousseau) (emphasis is the translator’s). Rousseau, Irénée de Lyon, 72–73. Although Irenaeus wrote in Greek, much of his work survives only in Latin translation. For a Latin text and a German translation of this passage, see Brox, Irenäus von Lyon, 56–57. Both Rousseau and Brox include the Greek fragments. See also Bingham, “Irenaeus Reads Romans 8,” 120, where he refers to Rom 8:11 with regard to the resurrection of the flesh. 17. John 20:20, 25, 27; Irenaeus, Haer. 5.7.1; ANF, 1.532. Strawbridge has shown that Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Augustine used John 11 “to subvert the claim of 1 Cor 15:50 and develop their argument for fleshly resurrection” (“How the Body of Lazarus Helps,” 588). See also Moss, Divine Bodies, 22–40, for a discussion of how the mark of the nails in John 20 can shed light on identity and recognition in the resurrection. 18. Irenaeus, Haer. 5.7.1–2; trans. ANF, 1.533 (modified); cf. Brox, Irenäus von Lyon, 66–67; Rousseau, Irénée de Lyon, 88–91. 19. Irenaeus, Haer. 5.7.1–2. 20. Irenaeus interprets the “spirit” in 1 Thess 5:23 as the spirit of God in Haer. 5.6.1. 21. Rom 2:9, 13:1; 2 Cor 1:23, 12:15. 22. Norris, “Soul,” 862. 23. Norris, “Soul,” 863; Bynum (Resurrection of the Body, 57) states that, unlike Paul, Irenaeus and other second-century Christian writers had a dualist anthropology. 24. 1 Cor 15:50; Irenaeus, Haer. 5.9.1; ANF, 1.534. 25. Irenaeus, Haer. 5.9.1; ANF, 1.534–35; Brox, Irenäus von Lyon, 74–75; Rousseau, Irénée de Lyon, 108–9. 26. On Irenaeus’s treatment of those who reject the resurrection of the flesh, see Norris, “Irenaeus’ Use of Paul,” 81–84. 27. Irenaeus, Haer. 5.31. 28. For discussion of Valentinian use of 1 Corinthians 15 more broadly, see Strawbridge, Pauline Effect, 102–3, 105–7. On the Treatise on the Resurrection, see Pauline Effect, 103–5. 29. Peel, “Treatise on the Resurrection,” 52. Cf. the introduction by Thomassen and the translation by Meyer in Nag Hammadi Scriptures, 49–55. See also van ­Unnik, “Newly Discovered.” 30. For an argument that Valentinus should be regarded as a Christian theologian rather than a heretic, see Markschies, Valentinus Gnosticus? Brakke (Gnostics, 111) points out the similarities in the theologies of Valentinus and Justin Martyr. On the Valentinian school, see Brakke, 115–19. 31. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 217. 32. Treat. Res. 49,9–23; trans. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 324. The following notes referring to Treat. Res. also refer to this translation. 33. McGlothlin, Resurrection as Salvation, 135–45.

Notes to Pages 39–42  143 34. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 316–17; Dunderberg, Beyond Gnosticism, 134, 145; cf. Irenaeus, Haer. 1.1.1–1.8.5. On the Gnostic understanding of the intellect and its significance, see also Brakke, Gnostics, 52–53, 78–79. 35. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 317. 36. Treat. Res. 44,13–33; trans. Layton, 320; cf. Peel, “Treatise on the Resurrection,” 54 (referred to in the following notes as “Peel”). 37. Treat. Res. 45,14–23; trans. Layton, 321; cf. Peel, 54–55. The phrase in brackets comes from Layton, 321, note f to manuscript page 45. 38. Treat. Res. 45,23–28; trans. Layton, 321; cf. Peel, 55. 39. Treat. Res. 45,28–46,2; trans. Layton, 321; cf. Peel, 55. 40. Treat. Res. 46,19–32; trans. Layton, 322; cf. Peel, 55. 41. Treat. Res. 47,1–30; trans. Layton, 322–23; cf. Peel, 55–56. 42. Treat. Res. 48,3–5; trans. Layton, 323; cf. Peel, 56. 43. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 325. 44. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 326. 45. Isenberg, “Gospel of Philip,” 141. 46. McGlothlin, Resurrection as Salvation, 135. 47. Citation from Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth, 165. 48. Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth, 212. 49. Gos. Phil. 56,15–19; trans. Isenberg from Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex, 1.153 (following notes to Gos. Phil. also refer to this translation). 50. Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth, 229. 51. Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth, 229. 52. Gos. Phil. 73,1–8; trans. Isenberg, 1.189. 53. Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth, 234. 54. Gos. Phil. 56,26–32; trans. Isenberg, 1.153. The inference of van Eijk seems unwarranted by the context that “flesh” in this passage refers to “the sphere marked by human weakness and sin” (“Gospel of Philip,” 95). 55. Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth, 237. 56. Gos. Phil. 56,32–57,5; trans. Isenberg, 1.153, 155. 57. Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth, 238–39. 58. Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth, 240. This credible argument calls into question van Eijk’s conclusion that “against [the view of the immortality of the soul or spirit] the author [of the Gospel of Philip] defends the resurrection of the flesh and in the flesh” (“Gospel of Philip,” 98). He cites Treat. Res. 47,4–8 in support, as speaking “of a resurrection (conceived as an ascension) in the flesh” (98). But the latter passage is probably not to be translated in such a way; see Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 322–23, and Peel, “Treatise on the Resurrection,” 58. I also disagree with the conclusion of Jacobi (“‘This Is the Spiritual Resurrection,’” 374–75) that both the Treatise on the Resurrection and the Gospel of Philip describe becoming like Christ as a fleshly process. 59. Chadwick, Early Church, 83. He lived from about 160 to about 225. He was brought up in Carthage as a pagan and became a Christian before 197; Cross

144  Notes to Pages 42–43 and Livingstone, Oxford Dictionary, 1352. For an overview of Tertullian’s use of Paul, see Bain, “Tertullian.” 60. For Tertullian’s interpretation of 1 Cor 15:50–53, see Kovacs, 1 Corinthians, 272– 74; for his reception of 1 Cor 15:50–58, see Strawbridge, Pauline Effect, 114–19. 61. 1 Cor 15:50; Tertullian, Res. 48; ANF, 3.581. For a Latin text and another English translation, see E. Evans, Tertullian’s Treatise, 136–37. 62. Tertullian, Res. 50.3; ANF, 3.583; E. Evans, Tertullian’s Treatise, 146–47. A key point in Tertullian’s argument is the logical connection of 1 Cor 15:50 with his ethical reading of vv. 45–49. This connection, however, relies on the Greek reading γάρ (Latin enim; English “for”) in v. 50, which implies a logical consequence but is not the earliest recoverable reading. He also ignores v. 44b, which is the introduction to vv. 45–49. See Tertullian, Res. 49; ANF, 3.582–83; E. Evans, Tertullian’s Treatise, 144–45. In any case, Tertullian supports his interpretation by noting that Paul declares of living people that they “are not in the flesh” (Rom 8:9), “meaning that they are not living in the works of the flesh.” He notes also that Paul indicates that the works of the flesh alienate people from the kingdom of God (Gal 5:21) (Res. 49; ANF, 3.583). 63. McGlothlin argues that “Tertullian began with the purpose of resurrection as a prerequisite for judgment and severed the connections in the Pauline resurrection schema that did not fit with this view” (Resurrection as Salvation, 96). 64. Bain, “Tertullian,” 221, with reference to Tertullian’s treatment of the question of remarriage in relation to 1 Corinthians 7. 65. Bain, “Tertullian,” 221. 66. 1 Cor 15:53; Tertullian, Res. 50; trans. ANF, 3.583–84 (modified in light of E. ­Evans’s Latin text and translation [Tertullian’s Treatise, 146–49]). The parenthetical remarks regarding the “flesh” and the “blood” are Tertullian’s. 67. Colish, Stoicism, 22; cf. 20. See also Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 35. On the complexity of Tertullian’s anthropology of continuity, see Gonzalez, “Anthropologies of Continuity,” 483–91. 68. Tertullian, Res. 41–42, citing 2 Cor 5:1–3 and 1 Cor 15:51–53. For discussion, see Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 36. 69. Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 34. Irenaeus refers to Jesus’s healing blind men by restoring their sight and his restoration of the withered hand (Haer. 5.12.5; ANF, 1.539) and Jesus’s restoring to life those who had died (5.13.1; ANF, 1.539), alluding to Mark 5 ( Jairus’s daughter), Luke 7 (son of the widow in Nain), and John 11 (Lazarus). 70. Crouzel, Origen, 13. 71. For Origen’s interpretation of 1 Cor 15:35–41, see Kovacs, 1 Corinthians, 263–65; and of vv. 42–44, see 269–71. For his reception of 1 Cor 15:50–58, see Strawbridge, Pauline Effect, 119–24. 72. Origen, Princ. 2.10.3; trans. Butterworth, Origen on First Principles, 140 (slightly modified).

Notes to Pages 43–47  145 73. Origen, Princ. 2.10.3; trans. Butterworth, Origen on First Principles, 141, modified in light of the Latin text in Koetschau, De Principiis, 176, and the discussion by Markschies, “Response.” The term translated “life-principle of the (bodily) essence” is ratio substantiae, which probably translates λόγος τῆς οὐσίας (“principle of being”), a term used often by Aristotle. Markschies translates the term “the formular (of ) the being (of the body).” 74. Origen, Princ. 2.10.3. Here Origen alludes to 1 Cor 15:44. 75. Origen, Cels. 5.23; trans. Chadwick, Origen Contra Celsum, 281 (slightly modified). Origen cites 1 Cor 15:37 and 42. For the Greek text, see Koetschau, Buch V–VIII, 24. 76. Origen, Cels. 7.32; Chadwick, Origen Contra Celsum, 420; Koetschau, Buch V– VIII, 182–83. The italics are Chadwick’s. 77. Origen, Cels. 7.32; Koetschau, Buch V–VIII, 183. 78. Origen, Cels. 7.32; Chadwick, Origen Contra Celsum, 420–21; Koetschau, Buch V–VIII, 183. 79. See the discussion in Daley, Hope of the Early Church, 53–54. See also Chadwick, “Origen, Celsus,” 85–91; and Grant, “Resurrection,” 191–92. 80. Daley, Hope of the Early Church, 53. 81. Daley, Hope of the Early Church, 53. On Celsus’s rejection of the use of the argument of divine omnipotence and its use by Christians other than Origen, see Chadwick, “Origen, Celsus,” 83–86. See also Grant, “Resurrection,” 191. 82. Preserved by Epiphanius, Medicine Chest (Against Heresies) = Panarion haer. 64.14.2–16.7; English translation in Dechow, Dogma and Mysticism, 373–76. On the ways in which Epiphanius disagrees with Origen, see Stefaniw, “Straight Reading.” See also Jacobs, “Epiphanius of Salamis,” 445, n. 41. 83. Epiphanius, Pan. 64.14.2–3; trans. Dechow, Dogma and Mysticism, 373–74. The following notes refer to this translation. 84. Epiphanius, Pan. 64.14.3–4; Dechow, 374 (modified). 85. Epiphanius, Pan. 64.14.4–9; Dechow, 374–75 (slightly modified). 86. Epiphanius, Pan. 64.15.2–4; Dechow, 375 (modified). 87. Epiphanius, Pan. 64.16.6–7; Dechow, 376 (modified). 88. Crouzel, Origen, 255. 89. See the discussion of the philosophical topic of matter and its qualities in Crouzel, Origen, 251–57, and in Dechow, Dogma and Mysticism, 376–80. 90. Winston, Logos and Mystical Theology; Attridge, “Philo and John.” 91. Aetius (first century CE) 1.7.33; for an English translation and a Greek text, see Long and Sedley, Hellenistic Philosophers, 46A: 1.274–75, 2.271–72. 92. Scott, Origen, 152. 93. Origen, Cels. 5.14; Koetschau, Buch V–VIII, 2.14.4–7; Scott, Origen, 151. 94. Chadwick, “Origen, Celsus,” 91–93. 95. Chadwick, “Origen, Celsus,” 93. 96. Cicero, Nat. d. 92 (Rackham, LCL). Chadwick (“Origen, Celsus,” 94) cites the Latin text.

146  Notes to Pages 47–51 97. Chadwick, “Origen, Celsus,” 90, 94. Cf. Grant, “Resurrection,” 192, on teeth. 98. Plato, Timaeus 33 (Bury, LCL). For discussion, see Chadwick, “Origen, Celsus,” 94–95. 99. Marrou, Resurrection, 3–6, quotation at 3–4. 100. Marrou, Resurrection, 6–7. 101. Marrou, Resurrection, 41, n. 20. For an example of Augustine’s interpretation of 1 Cor 15:50–53, see Kovacs, 1 Corinthians, 276–79. 102. Marrou, Resurrection, 14–15. So also Mourant, Augustine on Immortality, 35 and 133, n. 72. 103. Augustine, Civ. 13 (on death), 20 (on judgment), and 22 (most of this book concerns the resurrection). 104. Augustine, Civ. 22.4; trans. NPNF1, 2.481. See also G. R. Evans and Bettenson, City of God, 1026. 105. Augustine, Civ. 22.5; G. R. Evans and Bettenson, City of God, 1026; cf. NPNF1, 481. 106. Augustine, Civ. 22.17; G. R. Evans and Bettenson, City of God, 1057; cf. NPNF1, 495–96. 107. Stark, Feminist Interpretations of Augustine; cf. Ruether, “Misogynism and Virginal Feminism,” 156–69; the primary philosophical influence on Augustine is Neoplatonism: Christian Tornau, “Saint Augustine,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, summer 2020 ed., ed. Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford​ .edu/archives/sum2020/entries/augustine/, section 4, “The Philosophical Tradition; Augustine’s Platonism.” 108. Mitchell, Paul, the Corinthians, 11, 21. 109. McGlothlin, Resurrection as Salvation, 96. 110. For an argument that we should not simply or too quickly follow Irenaeus’s depiction of the Gnostics as “heretics,” see Brakke, Gnostics, 3–5. 111. A work that takes a position similar to that of the Treatise on the Resurrection is the Testimony of Truth; see Giversen and Pearson, “Testimony of Truth.” 112. Or a transformation of those alive at the time of Christ’s return; 1 Cor 15:52; cf. Phil 3:21. McGlothlin argued that “Paul injected into the tradition something new, namely, a rich theological account of resurrection tied tightly to Christ and the Spirit,” and an “outworking of salvation” that begins during the earthly lives of followers of Christ (Resurrection as Salvation, 265, 268). 113. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 318. 114. Marrou, Resurrection, 16.

Chapter 3. Marriage and Celibacy 1. Finn, “Asceticism before Monasticism,” 20. He discusses sexual renunciation on pp. 22, 25–26.

Notes to Pages 52–54  147 2. Brakke, “Holy Men and Women,” 35. 3. Mitchell referred to “the marvelous malleability” of Paul in The Heavenly Trumpet, 20. In this context she does not begin with the ambiguities in Paul’s letters but with the variety of John Chrysostom’s portraits of Paul. 4. This conclusion has been argued persuasively by Deming, Paul on Marriage, e.g., 109–10. 5. Malherbe, Cynic Epistles, 2; cf. Deming, Paul on Marriage, 67–68. 6. “The Epistles of Diogenes, 44: To Metrocles” (trans. Benjamin Fiore, S.J.) in Malherbe, Cynic Epistles, 175. 7. Deming, Paul on Marriage, 110–12. 8. See Gen 20:6 and Prov 6:29; in both cases the Hebrew ng’ (“touch”) is translated with ἅπτομαι (“touch”) in the Septuagint; cited by Yarbrough, Not Like the Gentiles, 94 and n. 17. On the Greek side, he cites Plato, Laws 840a (an athlete who never touched a woman during his training); and Aristotle, Politics 1335b, 40 (husbands should not touch women other than their wives). 9. My translation takes seriously the use of the plural, πορνείαι (literally, “sexual immoralities”). On the idea that marriage prevents sexual immorality, see T. Levi 9:9–10; quoted by Yarbrough, Not Like the Gentiles, 69; cf. Deming, Paul on Marriage, 113, n. 25. 10. BDAG, s.v. ἔχω, 2.a; Yarbrough, Not Like the Gentiles, 97. 11. Compare the Cynic argument that “sexual relations take up time” that “otherwise could be devoted to philosophical studies and progress toward virtue” (Deming, Paul on Marriage, 110). 12. Cf. Yarbrough, Not Like the Gentiles, 98. 13. Yarbrough, Not Like the Gentiles, 98–100. I disagree with Yarbrough’s assumption that purity is an issue for Paul in the alleged link between purity and prayer (100). E. Clark (Reading Renunciation, 217–18) assumes that Tatian’s view of the incompatibility of prayer and marital intercourse includes the idea that intercourse involved pollution. Some later writers avoided implying that notion, whereas others adopt it. 14. Yarbrough, Not Like the Gentiles, 100. 15. Deming, Paul on Marriage, 125–26. 16. On the argument that marriage is a charisma, see Deming, Paul on Marriage, 124–25. On remaining in the state in which one was called, see Yarbrough, Not Like the Gentiles, 94. 17. Paul introduces this argument in 7:17, elaborates it in 7:18–23, and states it explicitly in 7:24. 18. See the discussion by Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 284–85. See also the discussion of Tertullian below. 19. Prov 6:27–29; Sir 9:8, 23:16; T. Jos. 2:1–3. Deming (Paul on Marriage, 128 and n. 88) cites these passages but does not mention the element of danger. T. Jos. is Christian in its present form.

148  Notes to Pages 54–59 20. Padel associates disease with “erotic obsession” (In and Out of the Mind, 54); quoted by Martin, Corinthian Body, 213. 21. On the beginning of a new topic with v. 25, see Deming, Paul on Marriage, 170, n. 260. 22. See the discussion of the Greek of v. 26 in Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 315. 23. Deming, Paul on Marriage, 110–11. 24. See the discussion in Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 315. 25. For discussion, see Deming, Paul on Marriage, 172–73. 26. Deming, Paul on Marriage, 49. 27. Deming, Paul on Marriage, 51. 28. Deming, Paul on Marriage, 51–53. 29. Deming, Paul on Marriage, 53–54. 30. I disagree with Deming’s view that “the necessity” refers to “some immediate economic or political crisis so apparent to the Corinthians that it requires no further explanation” (Paul on Marriage, 183). Paul has no doubt instructed them regarding the eschatological scenario and its apocalyptic context. 31. Cf. Mark 13:20, where the agent of the shortening is the Lord, and the shortening is for the benefit of the elect. On the whole clause, see Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 316–17. 32. Deming, Paul on Marriage, 175–76; Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 317–18. 33. Deming, Paul on Marriage, 186–93. 34. Deming, Paul on Marriage, 199. 35. Deming, Paul on Marriage, 202–3 and n. 391. 36. See Epictetus’s discussion of the true Cynic in Discourses 3.22.47–48; for discussion, see Deming, Paul on Marriage, 83, 195–98; Yarbrough, Not Like the Gentiles, 105–7. 37. The Gospel of Luke is difficult to date; Fitzmyer (Gospel according to Luke, 57) opts for 80–85 CE; Bovon (Luke 1, 9), for 80–90. 38. Lieu, Marcion, 11. 39. Lieu, Marcion, 83. 40. Tertullian, Marc. 1.29.1. Williams takes Marc. 4.11.8 to refer to “deathbed baptism” (Rethinking “Gnosticism,” 26, 270, n. 39). The phrase is, however, “until death or divorce does he reserve baptism.” Tertullian’s point must be that those who are already married may not receive baptism, according to Marcion, until a spouse dies or until a divorce occurs. 41. Tertullian, Marc. 1.29.1. 42. Tertullian, Marc. 1.29.5; Lieu, Marcion, 62. 43. Lieu, Marcion, 388–95. 44. Lieu, Marcion, 108 (Epiphanius); 142 (Origen); 236, 268, 390 (Tertullian). 45. Cross and Livingstone, Oxford Dictionary, 1341. 46. Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 3.12.81; trans. Oulton and Chadwick, Alexandrian Christianity, 77–78.

Notes to Pages 59–62  149 47. See the treatment of this fragment by Crawford, “Problemata of Tatian,” 559–62. 48. Irenaeus, Haer. 1.28.1. 49. Pevarello, “Ricezione e influenza,” 268. On Tatian’s view of marriage as fornication, see E. Clark, Reading Renunciation, 31–32, 277. 50. Pevarello, “Ricezione e influenza,” 269. 51. Tatian was also a vegetarian; see Kelhoffer, Diet of John the Baptist, 141–48. 52. P. Brown, Body and Society, 90. 53. Tatian, Or. Graec. 13.2; trans. Whittaker, Tatian, 27. 54. Two different numbering systems are used in referring to the Acts of Paul and Thecla. In the second volume of The New Testament Apocrypha, edited first by Edgar Hennecke, then by Wilhelm Schneemelcher, and translated by R. McL. Wilson, the Acts of Paul and Thecla is divided into forty-three sections (Schneemelcher, “Acts of Paul,” 2.239–46). A critical edition of the Acts of Paul for the Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum (CCSA) is in progress under the direction of Willy Rordorf, who is proposing a new numbering system. The first portion of the work, set in Iconium, is numbered as section 3.1– 26; the second part, set in Antioch, is numbered 4.1–18. This numbering system is used by Snyder, Acts of Paul, and Pervo, Acts of Paul. Regarding when the Acts of Paul and Thecla was written, see Edsall, Reception of Paul, 67–70. Pervo, Acts of Paul, 41, proposes a date of 170–175; Schneemelcher, “Acts of Paul,” 2.213–37, of 185–195. 55. Acts of Paul and Thecla 5 (3.5); trans. Schneemelcher, “Acts of Paul,” 2.239. The following notes refer to this translation. 56. Acts of Paul and Thecla 5 (3.5); Schneemelcher, 2.239. 57. Acts of Paul and Thecla 5–6 (3.5–6); Schneemelcher, 2.239–40. 58. Acts of Paul and Thecla 17 (3.17); Schneemelcher, 2.242. 59. For a different interpretation, see Hylen, Modest Apostle, 85–86. 60. According to Layton (Gnostic Scriptures, 417), Basilides was active from 132 to 135 and also before that time. 61. Translations of the fragments of his works may be found in Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 427–44, and of Irenaeus’s account, 420–25. For a discussion of the nature of Basilides’s writings, see Kelhoffer, “Basilides’s Gospel.” 62. Irenaeus, Haer. 5.24.5; trans. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 424. 63. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 424, n. i. 64. Irenaeus, Haer. 1.24.5–7; Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 424–25. 65. Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 3.1; trans. Oulton and Chadwick, Alexandrian Christianity, 40. The following notes refer to this translation. 66. Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 3.2; Oulton and Chadwick, 40–41. 67. Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 3.2; Oulton and Chadwick, 41. 68. Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 3.2; Oulton and Chadwick, 41. 69. Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 3.2; Oulton and Chadwick, 41. 70. Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 3.1.3; Oulton and Chadwick, 41.

150  Notes to Pages 62–67 71. Letter to Menoeceus 127; Long and Sedley, Hellenistic Philosophers, 1.113, 2.115; cited by Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism,” 296, n. 42. 72. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 423. 73. Lieu, Marcion, 142. She cites frag. 37 of Origen’s commentary on 1 Corinthians; it treats 7:18–22. For the Greek text, see Jenkins, “Origen on I Corinthians,” 506–7. 74. E. Clark, Reading Renunciation, 301, citing frag. 37 of Origen’s commentary on 1 Cor 7:18–20; Jenkins, “Origen on I Corinthians,” 506–7. 75. E. Clark, Reading Renunciation, 283, citing frag. 34 of Origen’s commentary on 1 Cor 7:7; Jenkins, “Origen on I Corinthians,” 503. Origen here connects 1 Cor 7:7 with 14:33. 76. E. Clark, Reading Renunciation, 265–66, citing frag. 33 of Origen’s commentary on 1 Cor 7:1–4; Jenkins, “Origen on I Corinthians,” 500. 77. E. Clark, Reading Renunciation, 270, citing Origen’s Hom. 7 Ezech. 10 (SC 352). 78. In support of this move, Origen cited 1 Sam 21:4–6 and 1 Cor 11:27–29; E. Clark, Reading Renunciation, 279–80, citing frag. 34 of Origen’s commentary on 1 Cor 7:5; Jenkins, “Origen on I Corinthians,” 502, and Hom. 23 Num. 3. 79. 1 Cor 7:9; E. Clark, Reading Renunciation, 172. 80. E. Clark, Reading Renunciation, 288, citing frag. 43 of Origen’s commentary on 1 Cor 9:22 (where he mentions 7:9 as an example); Jenkins, “Origen on I Corinthians,” 513–14. 81. E. Clark, Reading Renunciation, 309. 82. P. Brown, Body and Society, 174. Methodius wrote a dialogue in praise of virginity, The Symposium, modeled on Plato’s, in which Thecla takes the place of Socrates. In this work, marriage fades into the background, “permitted as a concession to human frailty, much as invalids were excused from taking part in the solemn collective fast that preceded the festival of Easter” (P. Brown, 185). 83. Herm. Mand. 32 (4.4) (Ehrman LCL); Soyars, Shepherd of Hermas, 109–15. 84. For a helpful discussion of the advice on widows, see Bassler, “Widow’s Tale,” 23–41; Bassler, 1 Timothy, 92–98. 85. Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 232–37, quotation at 236. 86. Tertullian, Ux. 1.3; trans. Le Saint, Treatises on Marriage, 12–14. 87. Tertullian, Exh. cast. 3; Mon. 3; Bain, “Tertullian,” 221. 88. Tertullian, Exh. cast. 1; Le Saint, Treatises on Marriage, 42. 89. Tertullian, Exh. cast. 4; Le Saint, Treatises on Marriage, 48–49. 90. Bain, “Tertullian,” 221. 91. Pevarello, “Ricezione e influenza,” 275. 92. Pevarello dates it to 210 CE (“Ricezione e influenza,” 275); Le Saint to some time after 212 or 213 CE (Treatises on Penance, 52). 93. Tertullian, Pud. 16; Le Saint, Treatises on Penance, 100. 94. Tertullian, Pud. 16; Le Saint, Treatises on Penance, 100. 95. Tertullian, Pud. 16; Le Saint, Treatises on Penance, 101. 96. Tertullian, Mon. 3; Le Saint, Treatises on Marriage, 75–76.

Notes to Pages 67–71  151 97. For an argument that σωφροσύνη should be understood as a virtue “at the moral epicenter of a woman’s life, with the closest and most important element of that virtue being her continued sexual fidelity to her husband,” see Huizenga, “Sophrosyne for Women.” 98. 1 Tim 3:4–5, 12; 5:10, 14; Titus 1:6, 2:4. 99. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 217. 100. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 223. 101. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 217. 102. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 223–24. 103. Markschies, Valentinus Gnosticus?, 143–45. 104. Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 3.1; Kovacs, “Was Paul an Antinomian?,” 187. 105. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism,” 152. 106. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 267–69. 107. Clement, Exc. 67.2–3; Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism,” 152. 108. P. Brown, Body and Society, 117. 109. Lundhaug (Images of Rebirth, 275–76) sees an allusion in Gos. Phil. 64,31 to Eph 5:31–32. 110. Gos. Phil. 64,31–65,1; Isenberg in Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex, 1.171; Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 339. 111. Gos. Phil. 70,9–22; Isenberg in Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex, 1.183; Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 343. 112. Gos. Phil. 81,34–82,10; trans. Isenberg in Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex, 1.205, 207; cf. trans. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 351. 113. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism,” 144; Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth, 278 and n. 427. 114. Gos. Phil. 65,1–26; trans. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 340. 115. Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth, 278–79. 116. Cross and Livingstone, Oxford Dictionary, 303; Chadwick, Early Church, 95. 117. Clement, Strom. 2.23.140.1; trans. Kovacs, “Was Paul an Antinomian?,” 187. 118. Deming, Paul on Marriage, 51. 119. Clement, Strom. 2.23.143.1–144.3 and 142.1–2, 137.1; Kovacs, “Was Paul an Antinomian?,” 188. 120. Kovacs, “Was Paul an Antinomian?,” 195. 121. Clement, Strom. 3.15.96.1; Oulton and Chadwick, Alexandrian Christianity, 85. The following notes refer to this translation. 122. Clement, Strom. 3.12.81.4; Oulton and Chadwick, 78; quoted by Kovacs, “Is Paul an Antinomian?,” 194. 123. Clement, Strom. 3.12.79.1; Oulton and Chadwick, 76. 124. Kovacs, “Was Paul an Antinomian?,” 195. 125. Clement, Strom. 3.12.88.2–3; Oulton and Chadwick, 81–82. 126. Clement, Strom. 3.12.79.7; Oulton and Chadwick, 76–77. 127. Clement, Strom. 3.12.86.1; Oulton and Chadwick, 80.

152  Notes to Pages 71–74 128. Pevarello, “Ricezione e influenza,” 274, citing Strom. 3.9.66.3 and 3.12.87.4; ­O ulton and Chadwick, 71 and 81. 129. Pevarello, “Ricezione e influenza,” 274. 130. Deming, Paul on Marriage, 49–51. 131. Gillian Clark comments: “There is very little evidence on the actual size of families and the frequency of births. Maternal and infant mortality, a high valuation of celibacy, and financial constraints on marriage must all have limited the number of children born, even without resort to deliberate family limitation” (Women in Late Antiquity, 47). There would not yet be, however, a widespread high valuation of celibacy in Paul’s time. In the same context Clark (47 and n. 1) mentions Riddle’s article (“Oral Contraceptives”) arguing for the effectiveness of ancient oral contraceptives. See also the comprehensive study by Hopkins, “Contraception in the Roman Empire.” In spite of the indirect limitation of families Clark mentions, she emphasizes that “exposure was a widespread social problem in a society that lacked effective birth control and welfare provision . . . There probably were far more babies abandoned than there were would-be adoptive parents” (G. Clark, 49). See also Clark’s discussion of the perils of fertility (81–88). Finally, Clark comments that contraception was necessary for prostitutes. If a husband used, or required his wife to use, contraceptive methods, including oral and anal intercourse, he could be accused of treating his wife like a prostitute (82). 132. It is likely that slaves did most of the child care in ancient families (Harrill, Manumission of Slaves, 51–53). The parents, however, had the ultimate responsibility for the children and for supervising the slaves in their work of child care. Hylen argued that “women who worked as wet nurses included slave, freed, and free born women” (Women in the New Testament World, 117). For detailed discussion, see Bradley, “Wet-Nursing at Rome”; he emphasizes the wet nurse in Roman society as an exploited commodity (220). 133. This perspective is clear in the early reception of Gal 3:28. The declaration that in Christ there is “no male and female” is most often interpreted as calling for a single life of sexual continence: Yarbro Collins, “No Longer ‘Male and Female.’” 134. P. Brown, Body and Society, 175, citing frag. 29 of Origen’s commentary on 1 Cor 6:13–14; Jenkins, “Origen on I Corinthians,” 370. 135. P. Brown, Body and Society, 78. 136. Tertullian, Exh. cast. 1; Le Saint, Treatises on Marriage, 42.

Chapter 4. The Role of Women in the Church 1. Ancient writers understood Paul to forbid women to speak in the assembly in 1 Cor 14:34–35. Many modern scholars believe that these verses are a later addition to the letter. See the discussion on this point in “The Role of Women in Teaching” below.

Notes to Pages 74–76  153 2. See the discussion of 1 Cor 12:28–29 by Falcetta, Early Christian Teachers, 59–65. 3. Conzelmann (1 Corinthians, 246), e.g., has argued that a later editor added 14:33b–36. Fitzmyer (First Corinthians, 530–33) argues that 14:34–36 were written by Paul, but in vv. 34–35 he quotes some Corinthian men who have been objecting to women speaking in the assemblies; v. 36 is Paul’s response, which is vague but egalitarian and does not contradict 11:5 or Gal 3:28; he also gives a review of scholarship on whether the passage is or contains an interpolation (529–30). Lavinovica (“1 Cor 14.34–5”) has shown, contra some exegetes and translations, that v. 33b is not taken with v. 34 by ancient scribes. Thus, if vv. 34–45 were interpolated, v. 33b was evidently not part of the interpolation. Neutel (“Women’s Silence”) has studied the origin and history of the original hypothesis and pointed out problems. 4. An exception is the scribe who penned the New Testament in Codex Vaticanus; see Payne, “Vaticanus Distigme-obelos Symbols.” 5. See Herzer, “Juden—Christen—Gnostiker,” 161, 165, 167, on the date of 1 Timothy; Tsuji, “Persönliche Korrespondenz des Paulus,” 253–72, on the collection as the pseudepigraphic work of a single author. 6. 1 Tim 6:20, cited in Irenaeus, Haer. Preface. 7. For a different approach to 1 Tim 2:11–12, see Hylen, Modest Apostle, 58–60. See also Malherbe, “Virtus Feminarum.” 8. Osiek and Balch, Families, 167; Osiek and MacDonald, Woman’s Place, 90–92. 9. If Paul wrote these sentences, it seems likely that he did so under the influence of gender roles in his social environment; on those roles in theory and practice, see Torjesen, When Women Were Priests, 11–13. Plutarch’s advice to the bride and groom is similar to 1 Cor 14:34–35 (Conj. praec. 142 C–D [31–32]) (Babbitt, LCL). Torjesen (40–41) follows Wire, Corinthian Women Prophets, in accepting Paul as the author of 1 Cor 14:34–35. 10. Niederwimmer, Didache, 53. Falcetta (Early Christian Teachers, 135) concluded that this work was composed by a teacher. On prophets in the Didache, see Aune, Prophecy, 208–9, 225–26. For a discussion of Paul’s influence upon the behavior of Christian women in the second century, see Hogan, “Paul and Women.” 11. Falcetta (Early Christian Teachers, 18–19) has argued that the relationship between “charisma” and “office” has not yet been satisfactorily described. Edsall (Reception of Paul, 26) has identified Did. 1–6 as “an aide-memoire for a leader” of the community. 12. Falcetta, Early Christian Teachers, 134–35. 13. Osiek, Shepherd of Hermas, 18–20; Ehrman (LCL) opts for a period from 110 to 140 CE. On prophecy in Hermas, see Aune, Prophecy, 299–310. 14. Herm. Vis. 5–8 (Ehrman, LCL; Vis. 2 in other editions). 15. Herm. Vis. 8.3 (Ehrman, LCL; Vis. 2.4.3 in other editions).

154  Notes to Pages 76–79 16. Osiek and MacDonald, Woman’s Place, 92. See also Osiek and Balch, Families, 170. Herm. Vis. 11–15 (Ehrman, LCL; Vis. 3.3–7 in other editions) gives us a glimpse of prebaptismal moral instruction but not of the instructors: Edsall, Reception of Paul, 28–29. 17. For an attempt to write a critical and historical study of the formation and reception of the traditions ascribed to the Acts of Paul, see Snyder, Acts of Paul. 18. D. MacDonald, Legend and the Apostle. 19. Cooper, Virgin and the Bride. 20. Acts of Paul and Thecla 39 (4.14), 41 (4.16), 43 (4.18); trans. Schneemelcher, “Acts of Paul,” 2.246. 21. See the testimony of Rhodo, a disciple of Tatian, preserved by Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.13. For discussion, see Jensen, God’s Self-Confident Daughters, 195–225. 22. Tatian, Or. Graec. 32; trans. ANF, 2.78 (modified). Cf. the text and translation in Whittaker, Tatian, 38–39. 23. Tatian, Or. Graec. 33; ANF, 2.78–79; Whittaker, Tatian, 60–63. Osiek and MacDonald (Woman’s Place) cite this passage in connection with their discussion of Grapte (see above on the Didache). 24. E. Clark, “Patrons, Not Priests,” 253. Famous female martyrs include Perpetua and Blandina, whose faithful deaths are described in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity in Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 106–31. 25. E. Clark, “Patrons, Not Priests,” 254. See the discussion of female prophets among the Montanists in “The Role of Women in Prophecy” below. 26. This work belongs to the genre of church order and was probably originally written in Greek. It survives in Syriac and, in large part, in Latin: Cross and Livingstone, Oxford Dictionary, 401. 27. Didascalia Apostolorum 15; trans. Gibson, Didascalia apostolorum in English, 71–74; see also Torjesen, When Women Were Priests, 145–49. 28. Torjesen, When Women Were Priests, 146, 151–52, n. 21. 29. Eisen, Women Officeholders, 91. She thinks it likely that women were among such lay teachers (91–92). 30. Ramelli, “Tit 2:2–4,” 282. She also provides evidence that women did teach as presbyters in Origen’s day (282–83). 31. Osiek and MacDonald, Woman’s Place, 61; on Macrina’s family, her life, and her death, see Cooper, Band of Angels, 163–90. 32. Osiek and MacDonald, Woman’s Place, 89–90. 33. Jensen, God’s Self-Confident Daughters, 228; cf. 50. 34. Jensen, God’s Self-Confident Daughters, 228. 35. Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Macrina, trans. Corrigan, “Saint Macrina.” 36. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection, trans. NPNF2, rev. and ed. for New Advent by Kevin Knight, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2915.htm. 37. Eisen, Women Officeholders, 99.

Notes to Pages 79–81  155 38. Osiek and Balch, Families, 172. Cf. Eisen, Women Officeholders, 163. 39. Jerome, Epist. 127.4; trans. NPNF2, 6.254; Eisen, Women Officeholders, 94. 40. Osiek and Balch, Families, 172; see also Cooper, Band of Angels, 193–98. 41. Jerome, Epist. 127.13. 42. Osiek and Balch, Families, 172. 43. Eisen, Women Officeholders, 96. Support for this conclusion may be found, e.g., in Jerome, Epist. 127.7, where he speaks about his dialogues with Marcella concerning the interpretation of particular points in scripture. 44. Jerome, Epist. 127.7; trans. NPNF2, 6.255. 45. Eisen, Women Officeholders, 89–93. 46. On “holy women in the desert,” see Brakke, “Holy Men and Women,” 43–45; see also Cooper, Band of Angels, 237–46. 47. Apophthegmata Patrum, Theodora 5; Synkletike 12; Eisen, Women Officeholders, 92. 48. The Life of Synkletike was written around 400 by someone in the circle of Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria; Eisen, Women Officeholders, 92. 49. Eisen, Women Officeholders, 93–97. 50. Eisen, Women Officeholders, 94. 51. [De]didit egregiam sanctis per secula mentem (line 5): “She devoted her superior spirit through all time to the saints”; Eisen, Women Officeholders, 93 (text); 94 (trans. modified); 95 (discussion). 52. Eisen, Women Officeholders, 96; Cooper, Band of Angels, 140–46. On the genre “cento,” see Jensen, God’s Self-Confident Daughters, 272, n. 256. The Latin text with an English translation has been published by Clark and Hatch, Golden Bough. Clark and Hatch note that this work provides “a glimpse of ‘orthodoxy in the making’ as perceived” by an educated layperson (8). 53. Jensen, God’s Self-Confident Daughters, 53. For further bibliography, see Jensen, 272–73, n. 262, and Eisen, Women Officeholders, 109, nn. 79–82. 54. Jensen, God’s Self-Confident Daughters, 53. Clark and Hatch (Golden Bough, 171– 81) speak of her Christianization of the classical notion of the Golden Age. 55. Jensen, God’s Self-Confident Daughters, 53. 56. Jensen, God’s Self-Confident Daughters, 53. 57. E. Clark, “Faltonia Betitia Proba,” 124–52, quotation from 129; quoted by Eisen, Women Officeholders, 96. 58. Virgil, Aen. 7.47. Cf. Jensen, God’s Self-Confident Daughters, 53, 273, n. 263. 59. Jensen, God’s Self-Confident Daughters, 53, 273, n. 264; 228. 60. Eisen, Women Officeholders, 96, 110, n. 84. For ancient and modern bibliography on Melania the Elder, see Eisen, Women Officeholders, 109–10, n. 83. See also Cooper, Band of Angels, 221. 61. On the controversy over Origen and his followers, especially Evagrius Ponticus, see E. Clark, Origenist Controversy; on Evagrius Ponticus, see also Cooper, Band of Angels, 221–22.

156  Notes to Pages 81–84 62. Eisen, Women Officeholders, 96–97. On “Jerome’s ambivalent relationships to women” (Eisen, 109, n. 78), see E. Clark, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Friends. 63. Eisen, Women Officeholders, 97. She was followed by Paula, Paula’s daughter Eustochium, and Melania the Younger, her granddaughter (Eisen, Women Officeholders, 97). 64. On Paula, see also Cooper, Band of Angels, 197–212. 65. Meyer, Palladius, 117–18; cited by Jensen, God’s Self-Confident Daughters, 39. 66. Eisen, Women Officeholders, 97. Eisen takes the term domestica ecclesia from Jerome, Epist. 30 (to Paula). The explanation above of the significance of this term comes from a personal communication of Carolyn Osiek. In Epist. 30.14, Jerome asks Paula to greet her daughters, Blesilla and Eustochium, and a certain Feliciane (or Felicianes), a virgin in both flesh and spirit. He also asks her to greet the rest of the band of chastity “and your domestica ecclesia.” It may be that the two, the band and the ecclesia, are the same group, consisting of women. 67. Jerome, Epist. 108.20; trans. NPNF2, 6.206. 68. Jerome, Epist. 108.27; trans. NPNF2, 6.210. The letter was probably written between 450 and 455 CE. 69. For bibliography, see E. Clark, “Claims on the Bones,” 97–111, 114–23, nn. 21–111; Jensen, God’s Self-Confident Daughters, 270, n. 205; Eisen, Women Officeholders, 111, n. 93. 70. Cooper, Band of Angels, 247–53. 71. Gerontius, Vita Melaniae 32, 42, 54; Eisen, Women Officeholders, 97. 72. Gerontius, Vita Melaniae 64; Eisen, Women Officeholders, 97, 111, n. 98. 73. Fischer, “Women and Gender,” 34; cited by Eisen, Women Officeholders, 97. 74. Eisen, Women Officeholders, 99, 112, n. 125, quoting Albrecht, Leben der heiligen Makrina, 222. 75. Eusebius, Vit. Const. 53; trans. NPNF2, 1.497. 76. Eisen, Women Officeholders, 91. 77. Eisen, Women Officeholders, 91. 78. On the reception of Thecla in the early church, see Hylen, Modest Apostle, 91–113. On the veneration of Thecla in Asia Minor and Egypt, see Davis, Cult of Saint Thecla. 79. Jerome, Epist. 127.2. 80. Jerome, Epist. 108.4. 81. Jerome, Epist. 108.20; E. Clark, “Patrons, Not Priests,” 260. 82. On 1 Corinthians 12–14 as a rhetorical unit in which Paul deals with issues of identity, authority, and epistemology, see Nasrallah, “Ecstasy of Folly,” 61–94. Marshall, in contrast (Women Praying and Prophesying, 1–2), defines the rhetorical unit as chapters 11–14, which deal with gatherings of the ekklesia. The opening phrase of 1 Cor 12:1, περὶ δὲ τῶν πνευματικῶν (“but now concerning spiri­ efinition tual gifts”), indicates a change of subject and supports Nasrallah’s d

Notes to Pages 85–88  157 of the rhetorical unit. Marshall is right, however, that 11:2–16 and 14:34–35 are related in that both deal with women’s speech. 83. In the same context, Paul instructs the Thessalonians, “Do not reject prophecies disdainfully” (1 Thess 5:20). See Aune, Prophecy, 190–91, 219–20. 84. The term comes from Seim, Double Message. For a reconstruction of the selfunderstanding and practices of the women-prophets in Corinth, see Wire, Corinthian Women Prophets. 85. Marshall, Women Praying and Prophesying, 216. 86. Marshall, Women Praying and Prophesying, 178–79. 87. Marshall, Women Praying and Prophesying, 1. 88. Marshall, Women Praying and Prophesying, 7; cf. 107–8. 89. On the view that 1 Cor 14:34–35 is an interpolation, or part of one, see “The Role of Women in Teaching” above. For a comprehensive argument in favor of interpolation, see Pervo, Making of Paul, 46–48. 90. Conzelmann dates 1 Corinthians to A.D. 55 (1 Corinthians, 4, n. 31); Fitzmyer to A.D. 56 or 57 (First Corinthians, 48). 91. E.g., Fitzmyer, Gospel according to Luke, 57. 92. E.g., Pervo (Acts, 5), who dates it to about 115 CE. 93. Seim, Double Message, 177. See her n. 37 (pp. 177–78) for a discussion of scholarship on this question. On a “period without prophets,” see 168–69. 94. Seim, Double Message, 244–48. 95. Pervo, Acts, 5, 60–63; on prophecy in Acts, see also Aune, Prophecy, 262–70. 96. The two phenomena are also linked in Acts 19:6. Pervo (Acts, 63) has argued that the author of Acts deliberately identified the two. 97. Pervo, Acts, 40, and note i, 46–47. 98. Joel 2:28–32, cited in Acts 2:17–21. 99. Acts 2:17–18. Seim, Double Message, 164–71. The term translated “servants” literally refers to “slaves.” 100. Acts 21:8; cf. 6:1–6. 101. Seim, Double Message, 180. 102. Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.31; Seim, Double Message, 181. 103. On dating Revelation to about 95–96 CE, see Yarbro Collins, Crisis and Catharsis, 54–83. Witulski (Johannesoffenbarung und Kaiser Hadrian, 350) dates it to the reign of Hadrian (117–138), specifically to 132–135 CE. On prophecy in Revelation, see Stewart Lester, Prophetic Rivalry, 31–140. See also Aune, Prophecy, 274–88. 104. On the conflict between John and “Jezebel,” see Aune, Prophecy, 218–19; Stewart Lester, Prophetic Rivalry, 31–71. 105. Compare Meier’s interpretation of “sexual immorality” (the same Greek word that John uses) in Matt 19:9 (Vision of Matthew, 248–57). 106. Did. 15:1 (Ehrman, LCL). 107. Osiek, Shepherd of Hermas, 140–41; see also Aune, Prophecy, 226–28.

158  Notes to Pages 88–90 1 08. Herm. Mand. 43 (11:1). 109. Herm. Mand. 43 (11:2, 12). 110. Herm. Mand. 43 (11:3); trans. Osiek, Shepherd of Hermas, 139. 111. Herm. Mand. 43 (11:7–8); trans. Ehrman, LCL. 112. Herm. Mand. 43 (11:9); trans. Ehrman, LCL. 113. Osiek finds this usage “puzzling” (Shepherd of Hermas, 144). 114. Seim, “Johannine Echoes,” 346. Powell (“Tertullianists and Cataphrygians,” 41) prefers a date of 172 CE. For discussion, see Trevett, Montanism, 26–45; she argues for the 160s. 115. Heine, Montanist Oracles, #24, pp. 22–27. See #12 regarding the date when Apollonius wrote (pp. 24–25). This testimonium is taken from Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.18. 116. Heine, Montanist Oracles, #3, pp. 22–23. Marjanen (“Montanism,” 189) takes this information as reliable and infers that either they divorced their husbands or their husbands divorced them. Another possibility is that Montanus annulled their marriages; see Trevett, Montanism, 109–10. 117. Heine, Montanist Oracles, #24.3, pp. 22–23. 118. Cf. Marjanen, “Montanism,” 189. 119. The interpretation of Paul was a major factor in the debate between “Montanists” and their opponents in the fourth century. See Trevett, Montanism, 131–32; Heine, Montanist Oracles, #89: “Debate of a Montanist and an Orthodox Christian,” pp. 112–27. 120. Quoted by Eusebius from an anonymous source; Hist. eccl. 5.16.17 (Lake, LCL). Heine regards this oracle as authentic (Montanist Oracles, #5, pp. 2–3). 121. Or “but in proofs involving spirit and power.” 122. On the allusion to 1 Cor 2:4 in this oracle, see Groh, “Utterance and Exegesis,” 78–79. For another (set of ) allusion(s) to Paul on the part of Maximilla, see Trevett, Montanism, 164. 123. On the attitude of Eleutherus, bishop in Rome from 174 to 189 CE, who received a letter from Gaul brought by Irenaeus, see Trevett, Montanism, 56. On early supporters of the New Prophecy, see Marjanen, “Montanism,” 192–93. 124. Groh, “Utterance and Exegesis,” 90–91. 125. Marjanen, “Montanism,” 197; cf. Aune, Prophecy, 19–21. 126. “Phrygian” was another term used by their opponents to identify the New Prophecy; Trevett, Montanism, 2. 127. Nasrallah, “Ecstasy of Folly,” 48–50. See also Marjanen, “Montanism,” 196–97; Trevett, Montanism, 86–89. 128. Trevett (Montanism, 156) notes that there is no evidence that the opponents attempted to exorcise an allegedly demonic spirit from a male New Prophet. 129. Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.16.16 (Lake, LCL). See also the reference to this event by Apollonius, cited by Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.18.13; Heine, Montanist Oracles, 24–25. As noted above, Apollonius wrote “forty years after Montanus took it

Notes to Pages 90–93  159 upon himself to prophesy,” that is, between about 196 and 212 CE; Trevett, Montanism, 30–31. 130. Trevett, Montanism, 156, 157. 131. Cf. Marjanen, “Montanism,” 199. 132. Trevett, Montanism, 196. 133. For a more detailed discussion of the New Prophets and their opponents, see Yarbro Collins, “Opportunities and Limits,” 215–24. 134. Gielen uses the term “functions” in “Wahrnehmung,” 129–65; M. MacDonald uses the term “roles” in Pauline Churches, 59–60. 135. Eisen, Women Officeholders, 6. See also Bradshaw, Search for the Origins, 193–95; M. MacDonald, Pauline Churches, 59–60. 136. Torjesen, When Women Were Priests, 52–87; Filson, “Significance,” 106; Klauck, Hausgemeinde und Hauskirche, 21–44; Reumann, “Church Office in Paul,” 86– 87; Reumann, “Contributions,” 447 (c); Bradshaw, Search for the Origins, 194. 137. Osiek, “Patronage of Women,” 173–92; E. Clark, “Patrons, Not Priests,” 253–61; Torjesen, When Women Were Priests, 88–109. 138. Maier, Social Setting, 4, 39; Bradshaw, Search for the Origins, 194; Berger, Gender Differences, 132. See also Reumann, “Church Office in Paul,” 87. 139. Klauck, Hausgemeinde und Hauskirche, 43. 140. 1 Cor 16:19, Rom 16:3–5; cf. Acts 18:1–3, 18–19; C. G. Müller, Frühchristliche Ehepaare, 27–29, 31; Klauck, Hausgemeinde und Hauskirche, 21–26. It is not clear whether Chloe, mentioned in 1 Cor 1:11, was Christian or not; “those of Chloe” may refer to slaves in her household who were “in Christ” (28–29). 141. Col 4:15; Klauck, Hausgemeinde und Hauskirche, 44–45. Scribes read the accusative “Nymphan” as having a circumflex accent on the last syllable, rather than an acute on the first. They also changed the feminine genitive singular possessive pronoun to the masculine (Klauck, 44). 142. Reumann, “Church Office in Paul,” 87. 143. Klauck, Hausgemeinde und Hauskirche, 30–31, interprets the term to mean “patron” (patrona); Nicklas discusses this possibility but leaves the question open (“Offices?,” 32–34, 36 and n. 45). 144. Gielen, “Wahrnehmung,” 140. 145. Merz, “Phöbe,” 125–40. 146. Reumann, “Church Office in Paul,” 84. 147. Gal 1:1; cf. 1 Cor 1:1, 9:1; 2 Cor 1:1; Rom 1:1, 11:13. 148. Phil 2:25; cf. 2 Cor 8:23. 149. Gillman, “Silas,” 22. 150. Gillman refers to “the divine origin of his [Timothy’s] call” (“Timothy,” 559). 151. 2 Cor 11:5, 13; 12:11. 152. Nicklas, “Offices?,” 35 and n. 40. 153. P. Lampe, “Andronicus 3,” 247. 154. John Chrysostom, Hom. Rom. 31.2; cited by Epp, Junia, 32.

160  Notes to Pages 93–96 155. Epp, Junia, 39; for more examples of English translations of this type, see Epp, 97, n. 30. 156. C. G. Müller, Frühchristliche Ehepaare, 37–40. 157. Lin (“Junia”) has shown recently that, in addition to arguments that had already been made, the role of the allusion to Andronicus and Junia in the rhetorical purpose of Romans as a whole firmly confirms the hypothesis that Junia was an apostle. 158. Nicklas, “Offices?,” 27. 159. Reumann, “Contributions,” 447 (e); Reumann, “Church Office in Paul,” 88. 160. Reumann, “Contributions,” 449 (g). 161. Reumann, “Contributions,” 447–48 (e); Reumann, “Church Office in Paul,” 88; Lietzmann, “Zur altchristlichen Verfassungsgeschichte,” 96–101; Dibelius, “‘Bischöfe’ und ‘Diakonen,’” 414. 162. Reumann, “Contributions,” 449–50. 163. Herzer, “Juden—Christen—Gnostiker,” 161, 165, 167. As noted in “The Role of Women in Teaching,” he argues for a second-century date for 1 Timothy and Tsuji (“Persönliche Korrespondenz des Paulus,” 255–56, 263–72) has argued credibly that all three were written as a small collection at the same time by the same author. 164. 1 Tim 3:2, Titus 1:7. The term does not occur in 2 Timothy. 165. 1 Tim 5:17–18, 22. 166. According to 1 Clem. 42.1–2 Christ sent the apostles out to proclaim the gospel; the apostles then appointed overseers (or bishops) and deacons in the countryside and the cities (42.4–5). In the discussion of the orderly succession of bishops, there seems to be an equivalence, or at least an overlap, between the offices of bishop and presbyter (44.1–5). 167. Von Campenhausen, Ecclesiastical Authority, 116–17. 168. See the discussion in Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 3–5. 169. Joly, Dossier d’Ignace d’Antioche; Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 6–7. 170. Ignatius, Smyrn. 13.2, Pol. 8.2; these passages are cited by Eisen, Women Officeholders, 206. 171. Eisen, Women Officeholders, 199–200; Macy quotes this inscription as reading “to the venerable woman, episcopa Q” and as “dating sometime between the fourth and sixth century” (Hidden History, 53). He notes that Madigan and Osiek (Ordained Women, 193) locate the inscription in Rome, suggest a date of 390, and identify “Q” as the mother or wife of Pope Siricius (384–399). 172. Eisen, Women Officeholders, 202–3. 173. Cf. Eisen, Women Officeholders, 203–4; Macy, Hidden History, 53. 174. Ó hAodha, Bethu Brigte; cited by Macy, Hidden History, 54 and n. 12. 175. Macy, Hidden History, 54. 176. Macy, Hidden History, 54. 177. Macy, Hidden History, 57–58.

Notes to Pages 96–99  161 178. See the discussion of the Didascalia in “The Role of Women in Teaching” above under the heading “Third-Century Evidence.” See also Eisen, Women Officeholders, 207; cf. 150–51. On the Didascalia and two other church orders in relation to the ministry of women, see also Cardman, “Women, Ministry,” 305–18. 179. Epiphanius, Pan. 49.2.5; Eisen, Women Officeholders, 207; cf. 118. 180. Georgi, Opponents of Paul, 27–32. 181. J. N. Collins, Diakonia; see the reviews by Neyrey and Grayston. 182. 1 Cor 3:5; 2 Cor 3:6, 11:23. 183. Gielen, “Wahrnehmung,” 139–40. For an imaginative narrative elaboration of these conclusions about Phoebe, see Gooder, Phoebe. 184. See the discussion in “House Churches as the Context for Ministry” above. See also Meeks, First Urban Christians, 13, 27, 60, 217, n. 62; Merz, “Phöbe,” 131–32 and 131, n. 8. Mowczko (“What Did Phoebe’s Position?”) has concluded that Phoebe delivered Paul’s letter to the Romans with all that entails, hosted a house church in her home, and provided patronage and hospitality.” 185. Merz, “Phöbe,” 132. Gooder also takes prostatis as patron (Phoebe, 231–32). 186. E.g., Gielen, “Wahrnehmung,” 141, 157. See the critical discussion of this kind of hypothesis by Merz, “Phöbe,” 132–36. 187. See the discussion of J. N. Collins’s book above. 188. In contrast, Hentschel (Diakonia, 172) leaves open whether diakonos here refers to the fulfillment of a task beyond the community or a function within the community. 189. Merz, “Phöbe,” 136–40. Gooder takes a similar position (Phoebe, 41–42, 203, 206–19). 190. Thurén (“Divine Headhunting?”) has argued that the qualifications represent standard virtues that are intended to support the authority of the deacons; thus their qualifications were more important than their duties. 191. Zamfir, Men and Women, 350–51. 192. Madigan and Osiek, Ordained Women, 25; Eisen, Women Officeholders, 158–98. 193. Macy, Hidden History, 67. 194. Macy, Hidden History, 68. Other deaconesses from the sixth century are known from inscriptions (69). 195. Macy, Hidden History, 69–70. 196. J. N. Collins (“Διακον- and Deacons”) has called attention to the value that Clement of Alexandria placed on women deacons. 197. Foster, “Deacons (Διάκονοι) and Διακονία,” 215–26. 198. See the sections “Third-Century Evidence” and “Overseers and Bishops” above. 199. Madigan and Osiek, Ordained Women, 25; Eisen, Women Officeholders, 158–85. 200. Madigan and Osiek, Ordained Women, 96; Seppälä (“Deacons”) has argued that in the Christian East, a deacon was a liturgical assistant.

162  Notes to Pages 99–102 201. Madigan and Osiek, Ordained Women, 107. According to Laato (“Tertullian and the Deacons”), North African deacons were regarded as clergy. 202. Madigan and Osiek, Ordained Women, 111. 203. Madigan and Osiek, Ordained Women, 112. 204. Madigan and Osiek, Ordained Women, 163–202; Eisen, Women Officeholders, 116–42. 205. Macy, Hidden History, 60–61. 206. Macy, Hidden History, 61. 207. Macy presents evidence for presbyterae (“presbyters” or “priests”) from the eighth through the eleventh centuries (Hidden History, 59). 208. For the Council of Laodicea, see Madigan and Osiek, Ordained Women, 163– 64; on Epiphanius, 164–66. 209. Acts Phil. 1.12.8–9; trans. Madigan and Osiek, Ordained Women, 166–67. They argue that the term presbytides here refers to women with a liturgical role (167). 210. Although Sicily may be considered part of the West, the inscription is in Greek so it may also be counted as representing the East. See the discussion of the letter of Pope Gelasius below. 211. Tertullian, Exh. cast. 10.5; An. 9.4; Madigan and Osiek, Ordained Women, 179. 212. Tertullian, Virg. 9.1; Madigan and Osiek, Ordained Women, 178. 213. Cyprian of Carthage, Letter 75: quotation from Madigan and Osiek, Ordained Women, 182. Murphy (Bishop and the Apostle, 90) discusses this letter, but not this part of it. 214. As noted by Madigan and Osiek, Ordained Women, 182. 215. On canons and decrees related to women ministers more generally (including the letter of Pope Gelasius), see Cardman, “Women, Ministry,” 318–20. 216. Madigan and Osiek, Ordained Women, 184–85; cf. Macy, Hidden History, 61. 217. Pope Gelasius I, Letter 14; translation of the relevant part given on p. 186 of ­Madigan and Osiek, Ordained Women; their interpretation of the letter (186– 87) follows, in part, Giorgio Otranto (quotation from 187). Macy has pointed to evidence that women were still ministering at the altar in the late eighth century (Hidden History, 61). 218. Madigan and Osiek, Ordained Women, 193–95; Macy, Hidden History, 60. Although Madigan and Osiek connect another inscription, which is from Sicily, with the East, since it is in Greek (171), Eisen connects it with the West and the letter of Gelasius (Women Officeholders, 128–29). This inscription is from the tomb of the presbytera Kale (Macy, 60). 219. Madigan and Osiek, Ordained Women, 196. Another inscription from the same place mentions a “priestess.” Since the inscription includes a cross, it is clearly Christian (197). On the inscription mentioning Flavia Vitalia, see also Macy, Hidden History, 60. 220. Paul may be said to have limited the speech of women in the gathered community to prophecy (in Corinth at least) only if 1 Cor 14:34–35 is not an inter-

Notes to Pages 104–107  163 polation and from the point of view of many modern scholars. Even if these verses do not go back to Paul himself, most ancient writers accepted them as his words.

Chapter 5. Paul’s Transformation from Suffering Apostle to Saint and Martyr 1. For a discussion of suffering as an important part of Paul’s self-presentation, see Kelhoffer, Persecution, 61–65. 2. Most commonly θλῖψις (“tribulation” or “affliction”) but also ἀνάγκη (“necessity” or “distress”) and πάσχειν (“to suffer”), προπάσχειν (“to suffer beforehand”) in 1 Thess 2:2. 3. Paul uses the first-person plural in speaking of his experiences, probably to include his companions Silvanus (also known as Silas) and Timothy (1:1). The term translated “suffered” is προπαθόντες; “been insulted” is ὑβρισθέντες, and “great opposition” is ἐν πολλῷ ἀγῶνι. 4. Malherbe, Letters to the Thessalonians, 136–38, 157–58. 5. Kelhoffer, Persecution, 33–36. Some scholars have argued that 1 Thess 2:14–16 (or 13–16) is a later interpolation; e.g., Pervo, Making of Paul, 48–49. 6. Cf. 1 Thess 2:14, 15a with 3:3. 7. I find the interpretation given above to be more persuasive than Malherbe’s thesis that Paul is concerned that the Thessalonians may be shaken by Paul’s distress (Letters to the Thessalonians, 192–93, 196–97). 8. Yarbro Collins, “Paul’s Disability.” 9. Irenaeus, Haer. 5.2.3; Tertullian, Pud. 13, Fug. 2; Yarbro Collins, “Paul’s Disability,” 166–67. 10. The Greek word translated with “thorn” is σκόλοψ (“stake” or “thorn”); Latin translations of 2 Cor 12:7 frequently used the phrase stimulus carnis meae (“sting” or “incitement in my flesh”); Yarbro Collins, “Paul’s Disability,” 167. 11. Basil, Letter 248; Asketikon Longer Response 55.4; Yarbro Collins, “Paul’s Disability,” 168. 12. John Chrysostom, Hom. 2 Cor. 2, 9, 26; Hom. 2 Tim. 10; Yarbro Collins, “Paul’s Disability,” 169. 13. δι᾽ ἀσθένειαν τῆς σαρκός (Gal 4:13). 14. οὐδὲ ἐξεπτύσατε (Gal 4:14a). 15. Jerome, Comm. Gal. on this passage; see Scheck, St. Jerome’s Commentaries, 172; Yarbro Collins, “Paul’s Disability,” 170. 16. Krenkel, Beiträge, 70–84; he cites Plautus, Capt. act 3, scene 3, line 18; Pliny, Nat. 10.33.69, 28.7.35; Celsus, De medicina 3.23; Aulus Gellius, Noct. Att. 19.2.8; see also Yarbro Collins, “Paul’s Disability,” 172–74. 17. Hippocrates, Morb. sacr. ( Jones, LCL); see also Temkin, Falling Sickness, 3–27; Plato, Tim. 85a–b; Yarbro Collins, “Paul’s Disability,” 174. 18. Fitzgerald, Cracks, 114–16.

164  Notes to Pages 107–110 19. Mitchell (Rhetoric of Reconciliation, 1) has argued that 1 Corinthians was written to persuade the Corinthian community to become reunified rather than to disintegrate into factions. 20. Fitzgerald, Cracks, 148. 21. This is the view of Furnish, II Corinthians, 30–54. Thrall (Second Epistle, 1.77) concluded that 2 Corinthians is made up of three separate letters, chapters 1–8, chapter 9, and chapters 10–13. Blanton (Constructing a New Covenant, 108) argued that 2 Corinthians is made up of four originally independent letters and one letter fragment. 22. In Furnish’s view (II Corinthians, 41–44), letter D is the fourth letter written by Paul to the Corinthians, not all of which are extant. 23. Furnish, II Corinthians, 108, 116–25. 24. Affliction: θλίψις in vv. 4, 8; θλίβεσθαι in v. 6. Suffering: παθήματα in vv. 5, 6, 7 and πάσχειν in v. 6. 25. Consolation: παράκλησις in vv. 3, 4, 5, 6 (twice); παρακαλεῖν in v. 4 (twice); παρακαλεῖσθαι in vv. 4, 6; rescue: ῥύεσθαι in v. 10 (twice). 26. The individual in question is mentioned anonymously in 7:12. 27. Furnish, II Corinthians, 117. Kirk (Departure of an Apostle, 171) inappropriately takes “the sentence of death” in v. 9 as lasting beyond the deliverance spoken of in v. 10. 28. Thrall, Second Epistle, 1.xiii; Furnish, II Corinthians, 225. 29. Furnish, II Corinthians, 245. 30. Fitzgerald, Cracks, 166. 31. Kirk (Departure of an Apostle, 168) argues that 2 Cor 4:7 is the insight that Paul gained from the death sentence in 1:9. This hypothesis is possible, but it seems better to interpret the image of clay jars in its immediate context, the hardships that Paul faced (2 Cor 4:8–9). 32. Fitzgerald, Cracks, 166. 33. For discussion of dying and death in these verses, see Fitzgerald, Cracks, 176–80. 34. Thrall, Second Epistle, 1.449. 35. Fitzgerald, Cracks, 192. 36. Fitzgerald, Cracks, 193. 37. Fitzgerald, Cracks, 194. 38. Fitzgerald, Cracks, 195. 39. Fitzgerald, Cracks, 195–97. 40. Cf. Pss 117 (118); 94:12–15; 66:9–10, 17–19; Fitzgerald, Cracks, 197–98. 41. Fitzgerald, Cracks, 199. 42. Fitzgerald, Cracks, 199–200. 43. Fitzgerald, Cracks, 200. 44. Fitzgerald, Cracks, 201. On Paul’s role as God’s messenger and mouthpiece, see Hentschel, “Paul’s Apostleship.” 45. On this topic, see Kelhoffer, Persecution, 53–61.

Notes to Pages 110–112  165 46. Fitzgerald, Cracks, 25, n. 95 (italics his). 47. On the role of the “fool,” see Welborn, Paul, the Fool of Christ. 48. Cf. 2 Cor 12:11–12, where Paul claims that such manifestations occurred through him as well. 49. Fitzgerald, Cracks, 25, n. 95. 50. Andrews (“Too Weak”) has offered a study of the form and function of this catalogue. See the criticism of his thesis by Lambrecht, “Strength in Weakness.” 51. Cf. Beale, Colossians and Philemon, 136. 52. This point is made explicitly in 2 Tim 1:11–12. 53. Cf. the interpretation of Eph 3:13 by Hoehner, Ephesians, 467–70. 54. Aejmelaeus (“Pauline Letters,” 67) has argued that the incident in Damascus as narrated in Acts 9:32–35 has 2 Cor 11:32–33 as its only source. On the theme of the presentation of Paul’s sufferings in Acts generally, see Kelhoffer, Persecution, 307–44. 55. Cf. the Mishnah tractate Makkoth (“Stripes” or “Lashes”). 56. Acts 13:45, 50; 14:2–7, 19–20; 17:5–9, 13–14; 18:6, 12–17; 19:8–10; 20:1–6, 19; 21:11–14, 27–36; 22:22; 23:2–5, 12–22; 24:1–9; 25:1–7; 28:18–19. 57. Acts 14:5 also mentions that a group of both Jews and Gentiles attempted to stone Paul in Iconium. 58. 2 Cor 11:25; Acts 16:22–23, cf. 22:24. 59. 2 Cor 11:23, Acts 16:23–40. See also Acts 24:23, 28:16. 60. Keener, Acts, 3.3346–48. 61. The speech is presented in Acts 20:18b–25; the grief of the elders in 20:25, 38. Kirk (Departure of an Apostle, 50) has argued that 20:24 is Luke’s expression of Paul’s reflections on his life, death, and ministry. 62. Acts 22:23–29; 23:10, 23–35; 24:22–27; 25:8–12; 27:1–28:16. On Paul’s captivity in Acts 28, see Tajra, Martyrdom of St. Paul, 39–51. 63. There is no mention of how long any of them were adrift in this way. 64. Holloway, “Inconvenient Truths.” Kirk argues that the final scene in Acts (28:30– 31) “offers a model for Christian proclamation and teaching” (Departure of an Apostle, 54). 65. Ehrman, “First Letter of Clement.” 66. γενομένους ἀθλητάς; 1 Clem. 5.1 (Ehrman, LCL). Kirk (Departure of an Apostle, 62–66) discusses the athletic imagery in 1 Clem. 5.1–7.1 in relation to 1 Cor 9:​ 24–27. On athletic competitions in the imperial period, their ubiquity, and the literary appropriation of the games, especially by Paul, see Cadwallader, “Paul and the Games.” 67. Cf. the hardships (πόνοι) of 1 Clem. 5.4–6 with the hardships (κόποι) of 2 Cor 11:​23–27. On 1 Clem. 5 and on the relation of Paul’s death to that of Peter in Christian tradition, see Eastman, Many Deaths, 11–37. 68. The phrase is “a contest of sufferings” (ἄθλησις παθημάτων); for discussion, see Attridge, Epistle to the Hebrews, 297–98.

166  Notes to Pages 113–114 69. Kirk is inclined to accept Paul as the author of 2 Timothy and describes his “self-portrait” as the victor standing “at the turning point from his earthly life to his postmortem journey and enduring legacy” (Departure of an Apostle, 219, 238). 70. The term translated “contest” in v. 7 is ἀγών; on this term for an ancient athletic contest, see Cadwallader, “Paul and the Games,” 370–71. The word translated “course” in the same verse is δρομός; on the use of this term for a racecourse, see Cadwallader, “Paul and the Games,” 371. 71. Cf. 2 Tim 1:12, 18. 72. Contra Callahan, “Dead Paul,” 77. 73. See also Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 2.25.8, a citation of Dionysius, who was bishop of Corinth around 170 CE. He wrote that Peter and Paul both taught in Italy and were martyred there at the same time; literally, “they bore witness at the same time” (ἐμαρτύρησαν κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν καιρόν) (Lake, LCL). Ehrman (“First Letter of Clement,” 25) dates 1 Clement to the mid-nineties of the first century. 74. Cf. 1 Cor 9:24, Phil 3:14. On these passages, see Cadwallader, “Paul and the Games,” 376–79. 75. “The holy place” is contrasted with “the world” and is gained by being “taken up” (5.7). 76. Cf. 1 Clem. 5.6 with 2 Cor 11:25b. 77. “The noble examples” (τὰ γενναῖα ὑποδείγματα) in 1 Clem. 5.1; “he received a noble reputation for his faith” (τὸ γενναῖον τῆς πίστεως αὐτοῦ κλέος ἔλαβεν) in 1 Clem. 5.6. Moss (“Nailing Down,” 135) has pointed out that a later author may be working, not only with earlier Christian texts, but also with cultural tropes. In 1 Clem. 5, the cultural trope is the notion of the noble death. The list of hardships inspired by Paul may be at the same time another cultural trope. 78. Schneemelcher, “Acts of Paul,” 230. 79. Elliott, “Acts of Paul,” 352, 354. 80. Snyder, Acts of Paul, 63–64. Eastman (Many Deaths, 12) adopts Snyder’s position. 81. See the discussion in Kirk, Departure of an Apostle, 100–101. 82. Schneemelcher, “Acts of Paul,” 260–63; Elliott, “Acts of Paul,” 385–88; Pervo, Acts of Paul, 307–9, 317–19. Eastman (Ancient Martyrdom Accounts, 126–37) provides both a Greek text and an English translation. 83. Pervo (Acts of Paul, 304) argues that it dates to 190 CE at the latest since its use is reflected in the Acts of Peter. 84. Mart. Paul 1 (14.1). So Schneemelcher, “Acts of Paul,” 260, and Elliott, “Acts of Paul,” 385. Pervo translates “the message that introduces truth” (Acts of Paul, 307). The Greek is ὁ λόγος τῆς ἀληθείας; Lipsius and Bonnet, Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha, 1.106. 85. Mart. Paul 1–2 (14.1–2). 86. Mart. Paul 3 (14.3); cf. Phil 1:12–13, Acts 21:33, 1 Clem. 5.6. 87. Mart. Paul 4 (14.4); trans. Schneemelcher, “Acts of Paul,” 262.

Notes to Pages 114–117  167 88. Mart. Paul 4 (14.4). Paul’s communicating the word to Longinus and Cestus is already mentioned in Mart. Paul 3 (14.3), immediately after Nero decrees the beheading of Paul. 89. Mart. Paul 5, 7 (14.5, 7). 90. The Greek term translated “seal” is σφραγίς. Paul uses this noun for circumcision in Rom 4:11; he may use the related verb “to seal” (σφραγίζειν) to refer to baptism in 2 Cor 1:22 but not explicitly. The use of the verb in Eph 1:13 and 4:30 is also indirect. 91. τὰ κατ᾽ἐμέ (“my situation”). 92. Translation of v. 13 from Holloway, Philippians, 84. 93. Gregory, “Acts of Paul,” 187. See also Tajra, Martyrdom of St. Paul, 121; Rhee, Early Christian Literature, 179; Kirk, Departure of an Apostle, 103–4. 94. The martyrs of Scilli were executed in 180 CE (Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom, 125); the martyrs of Vienne and Lyons, around 177 (Moss, 103). Kirk (Departure of an Apostle, 115) argues that Jesus is the model for the approach to death of the Paul of the Martyrdom. The Jesus of the Gospels, however, does not confront or threaten Pilate. In 2 Maccabees, the fourth brother threatens Antiochus by affirming that the king will not share in the resurrection of the dead (7:14). The fifth predicts that divine power will torture Antiochus and his descendants (7:17; cf. 7:19; 7:31, 34–36). 95. Paul’s depiction as a martyr is earlier, if we accept 1 Clement as a witness for this interpretation of his death. On the location of Paul’s death and the place of his burial, see the review of scholarship in Rubel, Paulus und Rom, 3–11. See also the results of his own study of the evidence in Rubel, 215–25. 96. Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 2.25.5–7. 97. Hist. eccl. 2.25.5–6; Chadwick, Early Church, 87. 98. Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 2.25.3 (Lake, LCL). The phrase translated “divine religion” by Lake is ἡ εἰς τὸ θεῖον εὐσέβεια. 99. Eusebius refers to this work as a dialogue in Hist. eccl. 6.20.3 (Lake, LCL). 100. The movement called the New Prophecy by its members is discussed in Chapter 4; see, e.g., Trevett, Montanism. 101. Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 2.25.6 (Lake, LCL). 102. Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 21–22. 103. Cruse, Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, 63. 104. Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 7–8. 105. Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 2.25.7 (Lake, LCL). 106. Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 22. 107. Cf. G. W. H. Lampe, Patristic Greek Lexicon, s.v. σκήνωμα, 2. 108. OCD, s.v. “trophies.” 109. Rubel, Paulus und Rom, 191–92, 211. 110. Eusebius (Hist. eccl. 2.25.5) refers to the “naming” (πρόσρησις) of Peter and Paul in the relevant cemeteries, which has endured to his own time.

168  Notes to Pages 117–119 111. G. W. H. Lampe, Patristic Greek Lexicon, s.v. τρόπαιον, B. 112. E.g., Rev 3:21; 5:5 as interpreted by 5:6; 12:11. Cf. 2:7, 11, 17, 26–28; 3:5, 12; 15:2–3; 21:7. 113. Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 22–23. 114. According to Lietzmann, Petrus und Paulus in Rome, 127–28, cited by Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 23, n. 20. 115. Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 23, 76–77, 97. Callahan (“Dead Paul,” 81) takes the position that these observances began in 258 during the Valerian persecution. 116. The Edict of Milan was promulgated in 313 CE (Chadwick, Early Church, 122); on the basilica form, see Kilde, Sacred Power, Sacred Space, 46–49. 117. Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 24. 118. For literature on the Constantinian building, see MacMullen, Second Church, 137, #(10). See also his discussion of this church (p. 80). 119. Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 25–26. 120. The dead were not allowed within the city walls throughout the ancient world (MacMullen, Second Church, 9; Toynbee, Death and Burial, 48–49; Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 24 and n. 22). According to King (Ancient Roman Afterlife, 172), the Romans built their city walls in the fourth century BCE, and by the late Republic, housing had spread beyond the city walls. Yasin (Saints and Church Spaces) has shown that Christians began by burying their dead outside the walls but later, gradually and for a variety of reasons, buried them in churchyards within the city; cited by King, 171–72. 121. For this and other likely reasons for the construction of a new basilica, see Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 27–28. 122. For further literature on the church of the three emperors, see MacMullen, Second Church, 137 #(10). 123. The three emperors were Theodosius I, Valentinian II, and Arcadius; over time Theodosius came to be remembered as the founder of the new basilica (Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 27–29 and n. 36). 124. Prudentius, Peristephanon (De coronis martyrum) 12.45–56 (Thomson, LCL); Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 29–34. 125. Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 29. 126. Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 38; see fig. 1.7 on the following page. 127. PAULO APOSTOLOMAR(TYRI); Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 39, fig. 1.8. 128. Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 38, 40. 129. Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 40; the Eucharist was celebrated on the martyrs’ mensae on the anniversary of their deaths (MacMullen, Second Church, 48). On the term mensa, see above. 130. On the refrigerium, see MacMullen, Second Church, 29; cf. 24–25, 29, 46, 85; on its relation to the Eucharist, 23. 131. On the practice of pouring wine into a grave, see MacMullen, Second Church, 59. He argued elsewhere (“Christian Ancestor Worship,” 601–3) that Chris-

Notes to Pages 119–121  169 tian worship of the saints was grafted on to Roman worship of the family’s dead. The Romans typically offered food to the dead and poured wine into a pipe leading down to the head-end of the sarcophagus. There was such a pipe (libation tube) in the sarcophagus of the Constantinian basilica dedicated to Paul. 132. Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 40–41. 133. MacMullen, “Christian Ancestor Worship,” 602. 134. The Chronicle was written by Filocalus, the calligrapher of Pope Damasus I (366–384): OCD, s.v. “Filocalus.” On the Chronicle and Prudentius (Against Symmachus) as evidence for the Parentalia, see King, Ancient Roman Afterlife, 151. 135. On the deification of virtually all of the Roman dead, see King, Ancient Roman Afterlife, 15–29; on the use of tubes for liquid offerings to the dead, see 142–43; on the Parentalia, see 149–60. On the bishops’ discomfort with the people’s making the martyrs too godlike, see MacMullen, Second Church, 59. 136. Although the noun manes always has a plural form, it can have a singular meaning. The context determines which it is (King, Ancient Roman Afterlife, 15–20). Manes means “the deified spirit[s] of the dead” (King, 2). Di manes is best translated “the divine manes” (King, 3), or perhaps “the divine deified spirit(s) of the dead.” 137. King, Ancient Roman Afterlife, 28. 138. On these Christian inscriptions with DM, see King, Ancient Roman Afterlife, 215, n. 82, who refers to the tombstone of Licinia Amias, where DM precedes an image of a fish, and the photo published by Friggeri, Epigraphic Collection, 164. 139. Jerome, Vigil. 8 (PL 23:337–52); Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 42. 140. Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 42. 141. Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 42; MacMullen, Second Church, 28, who emphasizes that the hierarchy controlled the space and that donors to the building or restoration of a memorial church hoped to be granted the privilege of being buried near the saint. See also his discussion of this topic on 42–44, 64–65, 82. 142. Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 43, quoting Maximus of Turin, Sermon 12. 143. Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 43–45 and fig. 1.10. 144. Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 52–55; MacMullen, Second Church, 29, 44, 49–50, 108, 193; OCD, s.v. “Pilgrimage (Christian).” 145. Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 57–59. 146. Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 58; Eastman, Many Deaths, 16. 147. Hormisdas, Epistles 77–78, 81; Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 59 and n. 100; cf. 50–51, n. 85. 148. Chadwick, Early Church, 299. 149. Gregory I, Epistles 4.30, 13.43; for further references, see Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 60, n. 102.

170  Notes to Pages 121–132 150. Eastman describes the process (Paul the Martyr, 60–61). On the veneration of martyrs’ relics more generally, see MacMullen, Second Church, 29–30, 33–34, 46, 49, 57, 91, 93, 106–7. 151. Contrast 2 Cor 12:12 (quoted above) with 2 Cor 11:23–30 and 12:8–10. 152. For the kinds of miracles performed by martyrs from their tombs or through their relics, see MacMullen, Second Church, 29, 65, 90, 93, 108.

Conclusion 1. In Luke, Elizabeth (1:41–45) and Anna (2:36–38). 2. Mitchell, “‘Variable and Many-sorted Man,’” 93–97. 3. John Chrysostom, Hom. 2 Cor. 21.4 (PG 61.545); Mitchell, “‘Variable and Manysorted Man,’” 104. 4. John Chrysostom, Laud. Paul. 5.4, 5 (SC 300.238, 242); Mitchell, “‘Variable and Many-sorted Man,’” 104. 5. John Chrysostom, Laud. Paul. 5.4 (SC 300.228); Mitchell, “‘Variable and Manysorted Man,’” 106. 6. Mitchell, “‘Variable and Many-sorted Man,’” 109. 7. I owe the translation of τελεῖται in 2 Cor 12:9 to Teresa Morgan.

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Bibliography  175 Collins, John J. “Introduction: Towards the Morphology of a Genre.” Pages 1–20 in Apocalypse: The Morphology of a Genre. Edited by John J. Collins. Semeia 14 (1979): 1–20. Collins, John Neil. “Διακον- and Deacons in Clement of Alexandria.” Pages 165–76 in Deacons and Diakonia in Early Christianity: The First Two Centuries. Edited by Bart J. Koet, Edwina Murphy, and Esko Ryökäs. WUNT 2.479. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018. Collins, John Neil. Diakonia: Re-interpreting the Ancient Sources. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Collins, Raymond F. The Letters That Paul Did Not Write: The Epistle to the Hebrews and the Pauline Pseudepigrapha. Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1988. Conzelmann, Hans. 1 Corinthians: A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians. Hermeneia. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975. Cooper, Kate [Catherine Fales Cooper]. Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women. London: Atlantic Books, 2013. Cooper, Kate [Catherine Fales Cooper]. The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. Corrigan, Kevin. “Saint Macrina: The Hidden Face behind the Tradition.” Vox Benedictina: A Journal of Translations from Monastic Sources 5 (1988): 13–43. Crawford, Matthew R. “The Problemata of Tatian: Recovering the Fragments of a Second Century Christian Intellectual.” JTS n.s. 67 (2016): 542–75. Cross, F. L., and E. A. Livingstone, eds. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974. Crouzel, Henri. Origen. Translated by A. S. Worrall. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989. Cruse, C. F., trans. Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History: Complete and Unabridged. Updated ed. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1998. Daley, Brian E. The Hope of the Early Church. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Dassmann, Ernst. Der Stachel im Fleisch: Paulus in der frühchristlichen Literatur bis Irenaeus. Münster: Aschendorff, 1979. Davies, J. P. “The Two Ages and Salvation History in Paul’s Apocalyptic Imagination: A Comparison of 4 Ezra and Galatians.” Pages 339–59 in Paul and the Apocalyptic Imagination. Edited by Ben C. Blackwell, John K. Goodrich, and Jason Maston. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016. Davis, Stephen J. The Cult of Saint Thecla: A Tradition of Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity. OECS. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Dechow, John F. Dogma and Mysticism in Early Christianity: Epiphanius of Cyprus and the Legacy of Origen. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1988. Deming, Will. Paul on Marriage and Celibacy: The Hellenistic Background of 1 Corinthians 7. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004.

176 Bibliography Dibelius, Martin. An die Thessalonicher I, II: An die Philipper. Handbuch zum Neuen Testament 11. 3rd ed. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1937. Dibelius, Martin. “‘Bischöfe’ und ‘Diakonen’ in Philippi.” Pages 413–17 in Das kirchliche Amt im Neuen Testament. Edited by Karl Kertelge. Wege der Forschung 439. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1977. Dibelius, Martin, and Hans Conzelmann. The Pastoral Epistles. Hermeneia. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972. Duensing, Hugo, and Aurelio de Santos Otero. “Apocalypse of Paul.” Pages 2.712–48 in New Testament Apocrypha. Edited by Wilhelm Schneemelcher. 2 vols. Rev. ed. Translated by R. McL. Wilson. Louisville: Westminster / John Knox, 1991–1992. Dunderberg, Ismo. Beyond Gnosticism: Myth, Lifestyle, and Society in the School of Valentinus. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Eastman, David L. The Ancient Martyrdom Accounts of Peter and Paul. Writings from the Greco-Roman World 39. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2015. Eastman, David L. The Many Deaths of Peter and Paul. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Eastman, David L. Paul the Martyr: The Cult of the Apostle in the Latin West. WGRWSup 4. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011. Edsall, Benjamin A. Paul’s Witness to Formative Early Christian Instruction. WUNT 2.365. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014. Edsall, Benjamin A. The Reception of Paul and Early Christian Initiation: History and Hermeneutics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Ehrman, Bart D. “First Letter of Clement to the Corinthians: Introduction.” Pages 1.19–20 in The Apostolic Fathers. Edited by Bart D. Ehrman. 2 vols. LCL. Ehrman, Bart D. Forgery and Counterforgery. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Eijk, A. H. C. van. “The Gospel of Philip and Clement of Alexandria: Gnostic and Ecclesiastical Theology on the Resurrection and the Eucharist.” VC 25 (1971): 94–120. Eisen, Ute E. Women Officeholders in Early Christianity: Epigraphical and Literary Studies. Translated by Linda Maloney. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000. Elliott, J. K. “The Acts of Paul.” Pages 350–88 in The Apocryphal New Testament. Edited by J. K. Elliott. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993. Engberg-Pedersen, Troels. “Complete and Incomplete Transformation in Paul: A Philosophical Reading of Paul on Body and Spirit.” Pages 123–46 in Metamorphoses: Resurrection, Body, and Transformative Practices in Early Christianity. Edited by Turid Karlsen Seim and Jorunn Økland. Ekstasis 1. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009. Epp, Eldon Jay. Junia: The First Woman Apostle. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005. Evans, Ernest. Tertullian’s Treatise on the Resurrection. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1960.

Bibliography  177 Evans, G. R., ed., Henry Bettenson, trans. Concerning the City of God against the Pagans, by Augustine of Hippo. New York: Penguin, 1972. Falcetta, Alessandro. Early Christian Teachers: The “Didaskaloi” from Their Origins to the Middle of the Second Century. WUNT 2.516. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020. Filson, Floyd V. “The Significance of the Early House Churches.” JBL 58 (1939): 105–12. Finn, Richard. “Asceticism before Monasticism: What the First Monks Owed to the Early Christian Churches.” Pages 19–20 in The Oxford Handbook of Christian Monasticism. Edited by Bernice M. Kaczynski. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Fiore, Benjamin. “The Epistles of Diogenes, 44: To Metrocles.” Pages 174–75 in Abraham Malherbe, The Cynic Epistles: A Study Edition. SBLSBS 12. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1977. Fischer, Arthur L. “Women and Gender in Lausiac History.” Studia Monastica 33 (1991): 25–50. Fitzgerald, John T. Cracks in an Earthen Vessel: An Examination of the Catalogues of Hardships in the Corinthian Correspondence. SBLDS 99. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998. Fitzmyer, Joseph A. First Corinthians. Anchor Yale Bible 32. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. Fitzmyer, Joseph A. The Gospel according to Luke (I–IX). AB 28. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981. Foster, Paul. “Deacons (Διάκονοι) and Διακονία in the Writings of Justin and Irenaeus.” Pages 215–26 in Deacons and Diakonia in Early Christianity: The First Two Centuries. Edited by Bart J. Koet, Edwina Murphy, and Esko Ryökäs. WUNT 2.479. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018. Foster, Paul. “Justin and Paul.” Pages 108–25 in Paul and the Second Century. Edited by Michael F. Bird and Joseph R. Dodson. LNTS 412. New York: T&T Clark, 2011. Fredriksen, Paula. Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. Friesen, Steven J. “A Useful Apocalypse: Domestication and Destabilization in the Second Century.” Pages 79–104 in New Perspectives on the Book of Revelation. Edited by Adela Yarbro Collins. BETL 291. Leuven: Peeters, 2017. Friggeri, Rosanna. The Epigraphic Collection of the Museo Nazionale Romano at the Baths of Diocletian. Milan: Electa, 2001. Funk, Wolf-Peter. “The Coptic Gnostic Apocalypse of Paul.” Pages 2.695–700 in New Testament Apocrypha. Edited by Wilhelm Schneemelcher. 2 vols. Rev. ed. Translated by R. McL. Wilson. Louisville: Westminster / John Knox, 1991–1992. Furnish, Victor Paul. II Corinthians. AB 32A. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984. Gadamer, Hans Georg. Truth and Method. Translated by Garrett Barden and John Cumming. London: Sheed & Ward, 1975.

178 Bibliography Georgi, Dieter. The Opponents of Paul in Second Corinthians. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986. Gerber, Christine. “Paulus als Ökumeniker: Die Interpretation der paulinischen Theologie durch den Epheserbrief.” Pages 317–54 in Receptions of Paul in Early Christianity. Edited by Jens Schröter, Simon Butticaz, and Andreas Dettweiler. BZNW 234. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018. Gibson, Margaret Dunlop, trans. The Didascalia apostolorum in English. London: C. J. Clay and Sons, 1903. Gielen, Marlis. “Die Wahrnehmung gemeindlicher Leitungsfunktionen durch Frauen im Spiegel der Pastoralbriefe.” Pages 129–65 in Neutestamentliche Ämtermodelle im Kontext. Edited by Thomas Schmeller, Martin Ebner, and Rudolf Hoppe. Quaestiones Disputatae 239. Freiburg: Herder, 2010. Gillman, John. “Silas.” ABD. Pages 22–23 in vol. 6. Gillman, John. “Timothy.” ABD. Pages 558–60 in vol. 6. Ginzberg, Louis. The Legends of the Jews. 7 vols. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1909. Giversen, Søren, and Birger A. Pearson. “The Testimony of Truth (IX,3).” Pages 448–59 in The Nag Hammadi Library in English. Edited by James M. Robinson. 3rd rev. ed. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988. Gonzalez, Eliezer. “Anthropologies of Continuity: The Body and Soul in Tertullian, Perpetua, and Early Christianity.” JECS 21 (2013): 479–502. Gooder, Paula. Phoebe, a Story: Pauline Christianity in Narrative Form. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2018. Goodrich, John K. “After Destroying Every Rule, Authority, and Power: Paul, Apocalyptic, and Politics in 1 Corinthians.” Pages 275–95 in Paul and the Apocalyptic Imagination. Edited by Ben C. Blackwell, John K. Goodrich, and Jason Maston. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016. Grant, Robert M. “The Resurrection of the Body.” Journal of Religion 28 (1948): 120–30, 188–208. Grayston, K. Review of Diakonia: Re-interpreting the Ancient Sources, by John Neil Collins. JTS n.s. 43 (1992): 198–200. Gregory, Andrew. “The Acts of Paul and the Legacy of Paul.” Pages 169–89 in Paul and the Second Century. Edited by Michael F. Bird and Joseph R. Dodson. LNTS 412. London: T&T Clark, 2011. Groh, Dennis E. “Utterance and Exegesis: Biblical Interpretation in the Montanist Crisis.” Pages 73–95 in The Living Text: Essays in Honor of Ernest W. Saunders. Edited by Dennis E. Groh and Robert Jewett. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985. Hardwick, Lorna, and Christopher Stray, eds. A Companion to Classical Receptions. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. Harrill, J. Albert. The Manumission of Slaves in Early Christianity. HUT 32. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995.

Bibliography  179 Harrill, J. Albert. Paul the Apostle: His Life and Legacy in Their Roman Context. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Harrill, J. Albert. “Shaping Buildings into Stories: Architectural Ekphrasis and the Epistle to the Ephesians in Roman Literary Culture.” Pages 223–46 in Literature and Culture in the Roman Empire 96–235: Cross-Cultural Interactions. Edited by Alice König, Rebecca Langlands, and James Uden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Heimgartner, Martin. Pseudojustin—Über die Auferstehung: Text und Studie. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2001. Heine, Ronald E. The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians. OECS. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Heine, Ronald E. The Montanist Oracles and Testimonia. Patristic Monograph Series 14. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1989. Hentschel, Anni. Diakonia im Neuen Testament. WUNT 2.226. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007. Hentschel, Anni. “Paul’s Apostleship and the Concept of Diakonia in 2 Corinthians.” Pages 103–15 in Deacons and Diakonia in Early Christianity: The First Two Centuries. Edited by Bart J. Koet, Edwina Murphy, and Esko Ryökäs. WUNT 479. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018. Herzer, Jens. “Juden—Christen—Gnostiker: Zur Gegnerproblematik der Pastoralbriefe.” Pages 143–68 in Die Entstehung des Christentums aus dem Judentum = Berliner Theologische Zeitschrift 25 (2008). Himmelfarb, Martha. Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Hoehner, Harold W. Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002. Hogan, Pauline Nigh. “Paul and Women in Second-Century Christianity.” Pages 226–43 in Paul and the Second Century. Edited by Michael F. Bird and Joseph R. Dodson. LNTS 412. New York: T&T Clark, 2011. Holloway, Paul A. “Inconvenient Truths: Ancient Jewish and Christian History Writing and the Ending of Luke-Acts.” Pages 418–33 in Die Apostelgeschichte im Rahmen der antiken und frühchristlichen Historiographie. Edited by Jörg Frey, Clare Rothschild, and Jens Schröter. BZNW 162. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009. Holloway, Paul A. Philippians: A Commentary. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017. Hopkins, Keith. “Contraception in the Roman Empire.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 8 (1965): 124–51. Huizenga, Annette Bourland. “Sophrosyne for Women in Pythagorean Texts.” Pages 379–97 in Women and Gender in Ancient Religions: Interdisciplinary Approaches. Edited by Stephen P. Ahearne-Kroll, Paul A. Holloway, and James A. Kelhoffer. WUNT 263. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010.

180 Bibliography Hylen, Susan E. A Modest Apostle: Thecla and the History of Women in the Early Church. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Hylen, Susan E. Women in the New Testament World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Isenberg, Wesley W. “The Gospel of Philip (II,3).” Pages 139–60 in The Nag Hammadi Library in English. Edited by James M. Robinson. 3rd rev. ed. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988. Jacobi, Christine. “‘This Is the Spiritual Resurrection’: The Reception of Paul in the Letter to Rheginus and in the Gospel of Philip.” Pages 355–75 in Receptions of Paul in Early Christianity. Edited by Jens Schröter, Simon Butticaz, and Andreas Dettwiler. BZNW 234. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018. Jacobs, Andrew S. “Epiphanius of Salamis and the Antiquarian’s Bible.” JECS 21 (2013): 437–64. Jauss, Hans Robert. Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Translated by Timothy Bahti. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982. Jenkins, Claude. “Origen on I Corinthians.” JTS 9 (1908): 231–47, 353–72, 500–514; 10 (1908): 29–51. Jensen, Anne. God’s Self-Confident Daughters. Translated by O. C. Dean. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996. Johnson, Luke Timothy. The First and Second Letters to Timothy. AB 35A. New York: Doubleday, 2001. Joly, Robert. Le dossier d’Ignace d’Antioche. Université Libre de Bruxelles 69. Brussels: Éditions de la université, 1979. Keener, Craig S. Acts: An Exegetical Commentary. 4 vols. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2012–2015. Kelhoffer, James A. “Basilides’s Gospel and Exegetica (Treatises).” VC 59 (2005): 115–34. Kelhoffer, James A. The Diet of John the Baptist: “Locusts and Wild Honey” in Synoptic and Patristic Interpretation. WUNT 176. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005. Kelhoffer, James A. Persecution, Persuasion, and Power: Readiness to Withstand Hardship as a Corroboration of Legitimacy in the New Testament. WUNT 270. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010. Kilde, Jeanne Halgren. Sacred Power, Sacred Space: An Introduction to Christian Architecture and Worship. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. King, Charles W. The Ancient Roman Afterlife: Di Manes, Belief, and the Cult of the Dead. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2020. Kirk, Alexander N. The Departure of an Apostle: Paul’s Death Anticipated and Remembered. WUNT 2.406. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015. Klauck, Hans-Josef. Hausgemeinde und Hauskirche im frühen Christentum. SBS 103. Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1981. Koet, Bart J., Edwina Murphy, and Esko Ryökäs, eds. Deacons and Diakonia in Early Christianity: The First Two Centuries. WUNT 2.479. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018.

Bibliography  181 Koetschau, Paul, ed. Buch V–VIII Gegen Celsus. Vol. 2 of Origenes Werke. GCS. Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1899–1976. Koetschau, Paul, ed. De Principiis. Vol. 5 of Origenes Werke. GCS. Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1899–1976. Kovacs, Judith L., trans. and ed. 1 Corinthians Interpreted by Early Christian Commentators. The Church’s Bible. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005. Kovacs, Judith L. “Was Paul an Antinomian, a Radical Ascetic, or a Sober Married Man? Debates in Clement of Alexandria’s Stromateis 3.” Pages 186–202 in Asceticism and Exegesis in Early Christianity: The Reception of New Testament Texts in Ancient Ascetic Discourses. Edited by Hans-Ulrich Weidemann. NTOA 101. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013. Kovacs, Judith, and Christopher Rowland. Revelation: The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ. Blackwell Bible Commentaries. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004. Krenkel, Max. Beiträge zur Aufhellung der Geschichte und der Briefe des Apostels Paulus. 2nd ed. Braunschweig: Schwetschke, 1895. Kümmel, Werner Georg. The New Testament: The History of the Investigation of Its Problems. Translated by S. McLean Gilmour and Howard C. Kee. Nashville: Abingdon, 1972. Kusio, Mateusz. The Antichrist Tradition in Antiquity: Antimessianism in Second Temple and Early Christian Literature. WUNT 2.532. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020. Laato, Anni Maria. “Tertullian and the Deacons.” Pages 245–53 in Deacons and Diakonia in Early Christianity: The First Two Centuries. Edited by Bart J. Koet, Edwina Murphy, and Esko Ryökäs. WUNT 2.479. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018. Lambrecht, Jan. “Strength in Weakness: A Reply to Scott B. Andrews’ Exegesis of 2 Cor 11.23b–33.” NTS 43 (1997): 285–90. Lampe, G. W. H. A Patristic Greek Lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon, 1961. Lampe, Peter. “Andronicus 3.” ABD. Pages 247–48 in vol. 1. Lavinovica, Aleja. “1 Cor 14.34–5 without ‘in All the Churches of the Saints’: External Evidence.” NTS 63 (2017): 370–89. Layton, Bentley. Gnostic Scriptures. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987. Layton, Bentley, ed. Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7. 2 vols. Coptic Gnostic Library. Nag Hammadi Studies 20. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Lehtipuu, Outi. The Afterlife Imagery in Luke’s Story of the Rich Man and Lazarus. NovTSup 123. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Le Saint, William P. Tertullian: Treatises on Marriage and Remarriage: To His Wife; An Exhortation to Chastity; Monogamy. ACW 13. Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1951. Le Saint, William P. Tertullian: Treatises on Penance: On Penitence and On Purity. ACW 28. Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1959. Lewis, Charlton T. (Lewis and Short). A Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon, 1879. Lietzmann, Hans. Petrus und Paulus in Rome. 2nd ed. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1927.

182 Bibliography Lietzmann, Hans. “Zur altchristlichen Vefassungsgeschichte.” Pages 93–143 in Das kirchliche Amt im Neuen Testament. Edited by Karl Kertelge. Wege der Forschung 439. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1977. Lieu, Judith M. Marcion and the Making of a Heretic: God and Scripture in the Second Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Lin, Yii-Jan. “Junia: An Apostle before Paul.” JBL 139 (2020): 191–209. Lincoln, Andrew T., and A. J. M. Wedderburn. The Theology of the Later Pauline Letters. New Testament Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Lindemann, Andreas. Paulus im ältesten Christentum: Das Bild des Apostels und die Rezeption der paulinischen Theologie in der frühchristlichen Literatur bis Marcion. Beiträge zur historischen Theologie 58. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1979. Lipsius, Ricardus A., and Maximilianus Bonnet. Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha. 3 vols. Lipsiae: apud Hermannum Mendelssohn, 1891. Long, A. A., and D. N. Sedley. The Hellenistic Philosophers. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Lundhaug, Hugo. Images of Rebirth: Cognitive Poetics and Transformational Soteriology in the Gospel of Philip and the Exegesis of the Soul. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 73. Leiden: Brill, 2010. MacDonald, Dennis R. The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983. MacDonald, Margaret Y. The Pauline Churches: A Socio-Historical Study of Institutionalization in the Pauline and Deutero-Pauline Writings. Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 60. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. MacMullen, Ramsay. “Christian Ancestor Worship in Rome.” JBL 129 (2010): 597–613. MacMullen, Ramsay. The Second Church: Popular Christianity A.D. 200–400. WGRWSup 1. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009. MacRae, George W., William R. Murdock, and Douglas M. Parrott. “The Apocalypse of Paul (V,2).” Pages 256–59 in The Nag Hammadi Library in English. Edited by James M. Robinson. 3rd rev. ed. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988. Macy, Gary. The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination: Female Clergy in the Medieval West. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Madigan, Kevin, and Carolyn Osiek, eds. Ordained Women in the Early Church: A Documentary History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. Maier, Harry O. The Social Setting of the Ministry as Reflected in the Writings of Hermas, Clement, and Ignatius. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1991. Malherbe, Abraham J. The Cynic Epistles: A Study Edition. SBLSBS 12. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1977. Malherbe, Abraham J. The Letters to the Thessalonians. AB 32B. New York: Doubleday, 2000.

Bibliography  183 Malherbe, Abraham J. “The Virtus Feminarum in 1 Timothy 2:9–15.” Pages 459–77 in Light from the Gentiles: Hellenistic Philosophy and Early Christianity: Collected Essays, 1959–2012. 2 vols. Edited by Carl J. Holladay, John T. Fitzgerald, Gregory E. Sterling, and James W. Thompson. NovTSup 150. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Marjanen, Antti. “Montanism: Egalitarian, Ecstatic ‘New Prophecy.’” Pages 185–212 in A Companion to Second Century “Heretics.” Edited by Antti Marjanen and Petri Luomanen. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Markschies, Christoph. “A Response to Jeffrey Bingham and Susan Graham.” Pages 154–55 in Early Patristic Readings of Romans. Edited by Kathy Gaca and Laurence L. Welborn. New York: T&T Clark, 2005. Markschies, Christoph. Valentinus Gnosticus? Untersuchungen zur valentinianischen Gnosis mit einem Kommentar zu den Fragmenten Valentins. WUNT 65. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992. Marrou, Henri I. The Resurrection and Saint Augustine’s Theology of Human Values. Saint Augustine Lecture 1965. Villanova, PA: Villanova University Press, 1966. Marshall, Jill E. Women Praying and Prophesying in Corinth: Gender and Inspired Speech in First Corinthians. WUNT 2.448. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017. Martin, Dale B. The Corinthian Body. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. McGlothlin, Thomas D. Resurrection as Salvation: Development and Conflict in PreNicene Paulinism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Meeks, Wayne A. The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. Meier, John P. Vision of Matthew: Christ, Church, and Morality. New York: Paulist Press, 1979. Merklein, Helmut. “Eph 4,1–5, 20 als Rezeption von Kol 3,1–17.” Pages 194–210 in Kontinuität und Einheit. Edited by Paul-Gerhard Müller and Werner Stenger. Freiburg: Herder, 1981. Merz, Annette. “Phöbe: Diakon(in) der Gemeinde von Kenchreä—eine wichtige Mitstreiterin des Paulus neu entdeckt.” Pages 125–40 in Frauen gestalten Diakonie I: Von der biblischen Zeit bis zum Pietismus. Edited by Adelheid M. von Hauff. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2007. Meyer, Robert T., trans. Palladius: The Lausiac History. ACW 34. Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1965. Minns, Denis. Irenaeus: An Introduction. New York: T&T Clark, 2010. Mitchell, Margaret M. The Heavenly Trumpet: John Chrysostom and the Art of Pauline Interpretation. HUT 40. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000. Mitchell, Margaret M. Paul, the Corinthians, and the Birth of Christian Hermeneutics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Mitchell, Margaret M. Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation. Louisville: ­Westminster / John Knox, 1991. Mitchell, Margaret M. “‘A Variable and Many-sorted Man’: John Chrysostom’s Treatment of Pauline Inconsistency.” JECS 6, no. 1 (1998): 93–111.

184 Bibliography Morgan, Teresa J. Being “in Christ” in the Letters of Paul: Saved through Christ and in His Hands. WUNT 449. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020. Morgan, Teresa J. Roman Faith and Christian Faith: Pistis and Fides in the Early Roman Empire and Early Churches. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Moss, Candida R. Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions. Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. Moss, Candida R. Divine Bodies: Resurrecting Perfection in the New Testament and Early Christianity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. Moss, Candida R. “Nailing Down and Tying Up: Lessons in Intertextual Impossibility from the Martyrdom of Polycarp.” VC 67 (2013): 117–36. Mourant, John A. Augustine on Immortality. Saint Augustine Lecture 1968. Villanova, PA: Villanova University Press, 1969. Mowczko, Margaret. “What Did Phoebe’s Position and Ministry as Diakonos of the Church at Cenchrea Involve?” Pages 91–102 in Deacons and Diakonia in Early Christianity: The First Two Centuries. Edited by Bart J. Koet, Edwina Murphy, and Esko Ryökäs. WUNT 2.479. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018. Müller, C. Detlef G. “The Ascension of Isaiah.” Pages 2.603–20 in New Testament Apocrypha. Edited by Wilhelm Schneemelcher. 2 vols. Rev. ed. Translated by R. McL. Wilson. Louisville: Westminster / John Knox, 1991–1992. Müller, Christoph G. Frühchristliche Ehepaare und paulinische Mission. SBS 215. Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2008. Murphy, Edwina. The Bishop and the Apostle: Cyprian’s Pastoral Exegesis of Paul. Studies of the Bible and Its Reception 13. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018. Musurillo, Herbert. The Acts of the Christian Martyrs. Oxford: Clarendon, 1972. Nasrallah, Laura Salah. “An Ecstasy of Folly”: Prophecy and Authority in Early Christianity. Harvard Theological Studies 52. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. Neill, Stephen. The Interpretation of the New Testament, 1861–1961. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964. Neutel, Karin B. “Women’s Silence and Jewish Influence: The Problematic Origins of the Conjectural Emendation on 1 Cor 14.33b–35.” NTS 65 (2019): 477–95. Neyrey, Jerome H. Review of Diakonia: Re-interpreting the Ancient Sources, by John Neil Collins. Biblical Theology Bulletin 21 (1991): 166–67. Nicklas, Tobias. “Offices? Roles, Functions, Authorities and the Ethos in Earliest Christianity: A Look into the World of Pauline Communities.” Pages 24–40 in Rabbi—Pastor—Priest: Their Roles and Profiles through the Ages. Edited by Walter Homolka and Heinz-Günther Schöttler. Studia Judaica 64. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013. Niederwimmer, Kurt. The Didache: A Commentary. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998.

Bibliography  185 Norris, Richard A. “Irenaeus’ Use of Paul in His Polemic against the Gnostics.” Pages 79–98 in Paul and the Legacies of Paul. Edited by William S. Babcock. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1990. Norris, Richard A. “Soul.” Pages 861–64 in Encyclopedia of Early Christianity. Edited by Everett Ferguson. New York: Garland, 1990. Ó hAodha, Donncha, ed. Bethu Brigte (Vita Brigitae: English and Irish). Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1978. Osiek, Carolyn. “The Patronage of Women in Early Christianity.” Pages 173–92 in A Feminist Companion to Patristic Literature. Edited by Amy-Jill Levine. New York: T&T Clark, 2008. Osiek, Carolyn. Shepherd of Hermas: A Commentary. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999. Osiek, Carolyn, and David L. Balch. Families in the New Testament World: Households and Household Churches. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997. Osiek, Carolyn, and Margaret Y. MacDonald. A Woman’s Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006. Oulton, John E. L., and Henry Chadwick. Alexandrian Christianity. Library of Christian Classics 2. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1954. Padel, Ruth. In and Out of the Mind: Greek Images of the Tragic Self. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Payne, Philip B. “Vaticanus Distigme-obelos Symbols Marking Added Text, Including 1 Corinthians 14.34–5.” NTS 63 (2017): 604–25. Peel, Malcolm L. “The Treatise on the Resurrection (I,4).” Pages 52–57 in The Nag Hammadi Library in English. Edited by James M. Robinson. 3rd rev. ed. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988. Peerbolte, Bert Jan Lietaert. “Paul’s Rapture: 2 Corinthians 12:2–4 and the Language of the Mystics.” Pages 159–76 in Experientia, vol. 1: Inquiry into Religious Experience in Early Judaism and Christianity. Edited by Frances Flannery, Colleen Shantz, and Rodney A. Werline. SBL Symposium Series 40. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008. Peirano, Irene. The Rhetoric of the Roman Fake. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Penny, Donald N. “The Pseudo-Pauline Letters of the First Two Centuries.” PhD diss., Emory University, 1979. Perrin, Nicholas. “Paul and Valentinian Interpretation.” Pages 126–39 in Paul and the Second Century. Edited by Michael Bird and Joseph R. Dodson. LNTS 412. New York: T&T Clark, 2005. Pervo, Richard I. Acts: A Commentary. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009. Pervo, Richard I. The Acts of Paul: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014. Pervo, Richard I. The Making of Paul: Constructions of the Apostle in Early Christianity. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010.

186 Bibliography Petrey, Taylor Grant. “Carnal Resurrection: Sexuality and Sexual Difference in Early Christianity.” ThD diss., Harvard University, 2010. Pevarello, Daniele. “Ricezione e influenza di I Corinzi 7 sul primo ascetismo cristiano: l’esempio di Taziano, Clemente Alessandrino e Tertulliano.” Protestantesimo 64 (2009): 265–79. Powell, Douglas. “Tertullianists and Cataphrygians.” VC 29 (1975): 33–54. Quinn, Jerome D. The Letter to Titus. AB 35. New York: Doubleday, 1990. Ramelli, Ilaria. “Tit 2:2–4 and a Patristic Interpretation.” Pages 281–99 in Greeks, Jews, and Christians: Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies in Honor of Jesús Peláez del Rosal. Edited by Lautaro Roig Lanzillotta and Israel Muñoz Gallarte. Estudios de filología neotestamentaria 10. Córdoba: Ediciones el Almendro, 2013. Ramelli, Ilaria L. E. “Faith IV.A: Greek and Latin Patristics and Orthodox Churches.” Pages 711–14 in vol. 8 of Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception. Edited by Dale C. Allison, Jr., Christine Helmer, Volker Leppin, Choon-Leong Seow, Hermann Spieckermann, Barry Dov Walfish, and Eric J. Ziolkowski. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014. Ransom, John Crowe. The New Criticism. Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1941. Rensberger, David K. “As the Apostle Teaches: The Development of the Use of Paul’s Letters in Second-Century Christianity.” PhD diss., Yale University, 1979. Reumann, John. “Church Office in Paul, Especially in Philippians.” Pages 82–91 in Origins and Method: Towards a New Understanding of Judaism and Christianity. Edited by B. H. McLean. JSNTSup 86. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993. Reumann, John. “Contributions of the Philippian Community to Paul and Earliest Christianity.” NTS 39 (1993): 438–57. Reventlow, Henning Graf. The History of Biblical Interpretation. 4 vols. Translated by Leo G. Purdue. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010. Rhee, Helen. Early Christian Literature: Christ and Culture in the Second and Third Centuries. London: Routledge, 2005. Riddle, J. M. “Oral Contraceptives and Short-Term Abortifacients during Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages.” Past and Present 132 (1991): 3–32. Rousseau, Adeline, trans. Contre les hérésies: denonciation et réfutation de la gnose au nom menteur: Irénée de Lyon. 2nd ed. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1985. Rousseau, Adeline. Irénée de Lyon, Contre les hérésies, Livre 5. Sources Chrétiennes 155. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1969. Rubel, Georg. Paulus und Rom: Historische, rezeptionsgeschichtliche und archäologische Aspekte zum letzten Lebensabschnitt der Völkerapostels. Neutestamentliche Abhandlungen, neue Folge 57. Münster: Aschendorff, 2014. Ruether, Rosemary Radford. “Misogynism and Virginal Feminism in the Fathers of the Church.” Pages 150–83 in Religion and Sexism: Images of Woman in the Jewish and Christian Traditions. Edited by Rosemary Radford Ruether. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1998.

Bibliography  187 Saebo, Magne, ed. Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation. 3 vols. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015. Scheck, Thomas P. St. Jerome’s Commentaries on Galatians, Titus, and Philemon. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010. Schneemelcher, Wilhelm. “The Acts of Paul.” Pages 2.213–70 in New Testament Apocrypha. Edited by Wilhelm Schneemelcher. 2 vols. Rev. ed. Translated by R. McL. Wilson. Louisville: Westminster / John Knox, 1991–1992. Schoedel, William R. Ignatius of Antioch: A Commentary on the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch. Hermeneia. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985. Schröter, Jens, Simon Butticaz, and Andreas Dettwiler, eds. Receptions of Paul in Early Christianity: The Person of Paul and His Writings through the Eyes of His Early Interpreters. BZNW 234. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018. Scott, Alan. Origen and the Life of the Stars: A History of an Idea. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991. Seim, Turid Karlsen. The Double Message: Patterns of Gender in Luke-Acts. Studies of the New Testament and Its World. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994. Seim, Turid Karlsen. “Johannine Echoes in Early Montanism.” Pages 345–64 in The Legacy of John: Second-Century Reception of the Fourth Gospel. Edited by Tuomas Rasimus. NovTSup 132. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Seppälä, Serafim. “Deacons in the Acts of Thomas and Related Syriac Literature.” Pages 227–44 in Deacons and Diakonia in Early Christianity: The First Two Centuries. Edited by Bart J. Koet, Edwina Murphy, and Esko Ryökäs. WUNT 2.479. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018. Silverstein, Theodore, and Anthony Hilhorst. Apocalypse of Paul: A New Critical Edition of Three Long Latin Versions. Cahiers d’Orientalisme 21. Geneva: Patrick Cramer Éditeur, 1997. Snyder, Glenn E. Acts of Paul: The Formation of a Pauline Corpus. WUNT 2.352. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013. Soyars, Jonathan E. The Shepherd of Hermas and the Pauline Legacy. NovTSup 176. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Stark, Judith Chelius, ed. Feminist Interpretations of Augustine. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. Stefaniw, Blossom. “Straight Reading: Shame and the Normal in Epiphanius’s Polemic against Origen.” JECS 21 (2013): 428–31. Stewart Lester, Olivia. Prophetic Rivalry, Gender, and Economics: A Study in Revelation and Sibylline Oracles 4–5. WUNT 2.466. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018. Strawbridge, Jennifer R. “How the Body of Lazarus Helps to Solve a Pauline Problem.” NTS 63 (2017): 588–603. Strawbridge, Jennifer R. The Pauline Effect: The Use of the Pauline Epistles in Early Christian Writers. Studies of the Bible and Its Reception 5. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015. Tajra, H. W. The Martyrdom of St. Paul: Historical and Judicial Context, Traditions, and Legends. WUNT 2.67. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994.

188 Bibliography Taylor, Walter F., Jr. The Deutero-Pauline Letters: Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1–2 Timothy, Titus. Rev. ed. by Gerhard Krodel. Proclamation Commentaries. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993. Temkin, Owsei. The Falling Sickness: A History from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology. 2nd rev. ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971. Thomassen, Einar, and Marvin Meyer. “Treatise on the Resurrection.” Pages 49–55 in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures. Edited by Marvin Meyer. New York: HarperOne, 2007. Thrall, Margaret E. The Second Epistle to the Corinthians. 2 vols. International Critical Commentary. London: T&T Clark, 1994–2000. Thurén, Lauri. “Divine Headhunting? The Function of the Qualifications of Deacons in 1 Tim 3:8–13.” Pages 117–30 in Deacons and Diakonia in Early Christianity: The First Two Centuries. Edited by Bart J. Koet, Edwina Murphy, and Esko Ryökäs. WUNT 2.479. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018. Torjesen, Karen Jo. When Women Were Priests. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993. Tornau, Christian. “Saint Augustine.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Archive. Summer 2020 ed. First published September 25, 2019. https://plato.stan​ ford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/augustine/. Toynbee, J. M. C. Death and Burial in the Roman World. Aspects of Greek and Roman Life. London: Thames & Hudson, 1971. Treggiari, Susan. Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991. Trevett, Christine. Montanism: Gender, Authority, and the New Prophecy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Tsuji, Manabu. “Persönliche Korrespondenz des Paulus: Zur Strategie der Pastoralbriefe als Pseudepigrapha.” NTS 56 (2010): 253–72. Unnik, Willem C. van. “The Newly Discovered Gnostic ‘Epistle to Rheginos’ on the Resurrection.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 15 (1964): 141–67. Welborn, L. L. [Laurence L.]. Paul, the Fool of Christ: A Study of 1 Corinthians 1–4 in the Comic-Philosophic Tradition. JSNTSup 293. London: T&T Clark International, 2005. White, Benjamin L. Remembering Paul: Ancient and Modern Contests over the Image of the Apostle. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Whittaker, Molly, ed. and trans. Tatian: Oratio ad Graecos and Fragments. Oxford Early Christian Texts. Oxford: Clarendon, 1982. Williams, Michael A. Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Winston, David. Logos and Mystical Theology in Philo of Alexandria. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1985. Winston, David. “Philo and the Rabbis on Sex and the Body.” Poetics Today 19 (1998): 41–62.

Bibliography  189 Wire, Antoinette Clark. The Corinthian Women Prophets: A Reconstruction through Paul’s Rhetoric. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990. Wisse, Frederik. “The Apocryphon of John.” Pages 104–23 in The Nag Hammadi Library in English. 3rd rev. ed. Edited by James M. Robinson. San Francisco: Harper, 1988. Witulski, Thomas. Die Johannesoffenbarung und Kaiser Hadrian: Studien zur Datierung der neutestamentlichen Apokalypse. FRLANT 221. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007. Yarbrough, O. Larry. Not Like the Gentiles: Marriage Rules in the Letters of Paul. SBLDS 80. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985. Yasin, Ann Marie. Saints and Church Spaces in the Late Antique Mediterranean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Zamfir, Korinna. Men and Women in the Household of God: A Contextual Approach to Roles and Ministries in the Pastoral Epistles. NTOA/SUNT 103. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013.

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Index of Ancient Sources

Old Testament Genesis 1–2 85 1–3 74 2 74 3 3 3:16 85 20:6 147n8

1 Samuel 21:4–6 150n78

1 Kings

87

2 Kings

87

Job

7

Psalms 1:5 44 17, 28, 123 110:1

Proverbs 6:27–29 147n19 6:29 147n8

Ancient Jewish Literature Dead Sea Scrolls 93 2 Maccabees 7:14 167n94 7:17 167n94 7:19 167n94 7:31, 34–36 167n94

Odes of Solomon 10 Psalms of Solomon 17:11–15 20

Sirach 9.8 147n19 23.16 147n19

New Testament

Isaiah 25:8

7 31 11 20 11:36–37 21, 25

39, 124

28:2 21 37 44 38:7–11 135n2

Matthew 86 5:8 60 19:9 157n105 24:29 19 24:31 137n34

Daniel  20–21, 26,   137n37

Mark 86 5 144n69

Ezekiel

191

192  Index of Ancient Sources Mark (continued ) 12:24–25 57 13 20 13:20 148n31 13:24–27 19 13:27 137n34

Luke

5 1, 58, 86, 125,   127, 148n37 1–3 86 7 144n69 20 72 20:34–36 56–57 24 36–37, 124

John

89 6:53 41 6:53–54 41 10:12 89, 128 11 144n69 14:26 67 20 124 20:20, 25, 27 142n17

Acts of the 1, 36–37, 75, 83,  Apostles   86, 111–12, 129 1 124 2 86–87 6:16 127 9:32–35 165n54 14:5 165n57 14:19–20 111 15:22 92 16:16–40 111 17:17–18 157n99 18:24–25 75 18:26 75, 127 19:12 121 19:23–41 111 20 112 20:7–12 114 20:18b–25 165n61 20:23–24 111 20:24 165n61

20:25, 38 165n61 21 87 21:8–9 127 21:9 87 23:33–35 112 27:13–44 112 27:43–44 112 28:16 114 28:30–31 114, 165n64

Romans

4, 73 1:4 13 4:11 167n90 6 49 6:4 16 6:5 17, 141n6 8:3 13 8:17 39, 124 8:18–21 14 8:18–25 122 8:19–23 27 8:21 125 8:29 48 8:37–39 18 9:3 92 9:19–21 26 12:5 17 13:1 138n50 13:1–7 15 13:11–12 13 15 98 15:14–24 137n29 15:22–33 128 15:25 96 16:1–2 97, 128 16:2 91 16:3–5 128, 159n150 16:4 37 16:6, 12 74 16:7 92, 128

1 Corinthians

4 , 73, 75, 84,   85–86, 106–7,  157n90

Index of Ancient Sources  193 1:7–8 136n9 2 86 67 2:2 2:4 89, 128, 158n122 2:6–16 9 3 86 3:13 136n9 4 86 4:8–13 107 4:11 107 4:12a 107 4:12b–13a 107 4:13b 107 5:5 138n54 6:15–16 53 7 2, 51–60, 62, 64,   66, 68, 70, 125,   126, 144n64 7:1 63 7:1–2 70 7:1–3 66 7:1b 54 7:2 53, 65 7:2–4 63 7:2–5 53 7:3 53 7:4 53 7:5 53, 59, 70 7:6 66 7:7 54, 57, 58, 63 7:8 54 7:8–9 62, 64 54, 61, 66 7:9 7:10–16 54 7:17 147n17 54, 70–71 7:17–24 7:18–23 147n17 7:24 147n17 7:25 65 7:25–26 57 7:25–38 54 7:26 54–55

7:27–28 65 7:28 64, 66 7:29 60, 63 7:29–31 55, 56 7:31 13, 55, 68 7:31b 60 7:32–35 56, 57, 61, 70 7:39–40 64 7:40 66 8:1 52 9 92 9:1, 5 92 9:20–22 130 9:20–23 1 112, 165n66 9:24–27 9:25–27 113 11 84, 85, 89, 103 11–14 156–57n82 11:2–16 85, 127, 128 85, 86 11:3–16 11:5 153n3 11:5–6 74 11:6 84 11:7–9 74 12 84 12–14 156–57n82 12:1 52, 156–57n82 12:3 90 12:10 84, 88, 89 12:12–31 17 12:27–28 84 12:28 74, 93 13:2 136n12 14 84 14:3 14 14:4, 6–12, 14–19, 136n10  22–25 14:13–15 85 14:24–25 136n12 14:26 74, 84 14:29 84 14:33b 153n3

194  Index of Ancient Sources 1 Corinthians (continued ) 14:34 85, 153n3 14:34–35 74, 75, 82, 85, 100,   102, 103, 127, 129,   152n1, 153n3,   153n9, 157n89,  162–63n220 14:34–36 153n3 14:35 78, 85 14:36 153n3 15 34–35, 44, 48, 93,   123–24, 131,   141n11, 142n28 15:7 92 15:9 1 15:12 35 15:12–19 49 15:25 28, 123 15:25–26 17, 27 15:25–28 25, 27, 123 15:28 28 15:35 45 15:36, 44 37 15:36–38, 44 141n7 15:42 37 15:44 34 15:50 2, 34, 35, 40, 41, 42,   47, 49 15:50–53 136n13, 141n15 15:50–58 9, 141n15 15:51–53 141n6 36, 146n112 15:52 15:53 42, 124 15:54 39, 124 16:1 52

2 Corinthians

4 , 96, 104,  105–10 1:3–11 107–8 1:8–11 108 1–8 164n21 1–9 107 1:21–22 115

1:22 167n90 2:14–7:4 108 3:8, 18 108 4:1–6 108 4:1–12 108 4:4 136n19 4:7 108, 121 4:8–9 108, 164n31 4:10–12 108, 121 4:11 110 5:1 44 5:1–5 13 5:4 40 5:10 13 6:1–10 108–9 6:4 109 6:5 109 6:6–7 109 6:7b–8a 109 6:8b–10 109 6:10bc 109 7:5–16 107 7:6, 13b–15 107 8:9 109 9 164n21 10–13 107, 164n21 11 111, 112 11:8–9 130 11:21b–33 110, 129 11:23–27 165n67 11:23–30 170n151 11:24 111 11:25 111, 112 11:32–33 165n54 12 14, 30, 32 12:1–6 140n105 12:1–10 12, 123 12:4 15 12:6–7 105 12:7 106 12:7–9 12 12:8–10 15 12:9 170n7

Index of Ancient Sources  195 12:9–10 106 12:11–12 165n48

Galatians 4 1:4 135n6 1:14 15 1:17 92 3:28 152n133, 153n3 4:12c 106 4:13–15 106 4:14a 106 4:14b 106 5:21 144n62 Ephesians

4 , 15, 17–18, 27,   29, 111, 123,  133–34n9,  137n26 1:13 167n90 1:20–23 17 2:4–7 18 2:5–6 38, 39, 124 2:6 39 2:7 18 3:1–13 18 3:7–12 111 3:13 111, 165n53 4:13–18 48 4:30 167n90 5:16 18 5:31–32 151n109 6:10–17 9, 11, 137n30,  140n100 6:11 11, 29, 123 6:11–12 18

Philippians 4, 82, 93 1:1 94, 96, 98 1:6, 10 13 1:12–13 115 1:18b–20 117 1:20–24 116 1:23 13 1:27 112

2:16 13 2:16–18 117 3:10–11 132 3:10–14 117 3:20–21 13, 141n6 3:21 146n112 4:2 82 4:3 112

Colossians

4 , 15, 16–17, 82,   110–11, 123,  133–34n9,  137n26 1:5 16 1:12 16 1:12–14 16 1:13 16 1:15–20 9 1:23 110 1:24 110, 111 110, 111 1:25 1:27 137n24 2:12 17, 38, 39, 124 2:13 17 3:1 17, 18, 38 3:4 18 3:5–7 137n25 4:15 128, 159n141

1 Thessalonians 4, 104–5, 129 1:1 92, 163n1 1:6 105 13, 14, 16 1:10 2:2 105, 163n2 2:9 92 2:13–16 105 2:14, 15a 105 3:2–4 105 3:3 105 3:3b–4 105 4:13–17 123 4:13–18 34, 136n13 4:17 13, 137n34

196  Index of Ancient Sources 1 Thessalonians (continued ) 5:8–10 11 5:19 85, 131 5:19–20 85 5:20 157n83 5:23 142n20

2 Thessalonians

4 , 12, 15, 18–21,   123, 133–34n9,  137n36 1:10 141n117 2:1 137n34 2:1–3 19 2:1–12 25 2:2 137n31 2:3 20, 24, 25 2:3–4 139n74, 139n76,  1139n77 2:3–10 123 2:4 20, 25 2:7 20 2:8 21 2:8–12 26 2:9 26 2:9–12 21

1 Timothy

4 , 21, 51, 60, 64,   67, 75, 76, 102,   126, 133–34n9 1:1 22 1:20 23, 138n54 2 73, 82, 83–84, 102,  103 2:11–12 74, 100, 153n7 2:12 75, 127, 129, 130 2:13–14 74 64, 67 2:14–15 3 98 3:1 94 3:2–5 2, 64 3:7 22 3:8–13 98 3:11 98 3:16 22

4:1 22, 23 4:1–5 64 4:7 67 4:10 22 5 73 5:3–16 77 5:9 64 5:11–14 64 5:11–15 67 23, 67 5:15 5:21 23 5:23 64 6:17 23

2 Timothy

4 , 21, 75, 76, 133–   34n9, 166n69 1:11–12 165n52 1:18 23 2:5 113 2:12 23 2:18 138n52 2:25–26 23 3:1 22 4:1 23 4:6–7 113 4:6–8 112–13 4:8 23, 113 4:10 23 4:18 23

Titus  4, 21, 75, 76, 102,   133–34n9 1:5–7 94 2:3–5 75 22, 75 2:5 2:8, 10 22 2:12 23 2:13 22 3:1 138n50

Philemon Hebrews

4

4 , 130, 133–34n9,  134n10 10:32 112

Index of Ancient Sources  197 Revelation 23, 24, 87, 128 2:20 87 2:21–23 87 13:2b, 4 139n77 20:4–6 141n117 20–21 27 Early Christian Literature Acts of Paul 76, 113–16, 129 307 166n84 Acts of Paul and 51, 59–60, 72,   Thecla   76, 125, 149n54 39 127 41 127 43 127

Acts of Philip 100 1.12.8–9 162n209 Acts of Thecla

79

Ambrosiaster

98

Apocalypse of 12, 31–32, 123,  Paul  140n111 12 31–32 21 141n117

Ascension of Isaiah 4:18 136n9 7:22 138n56 8:26 138n56 9:10–12, 18, 24–25 138n56 9:17–18 136n23 11:40 138n56

Augustine Civ.

3 0, 34, 47–48,   50, 124 48

Basilides

51, 61, 62, 71, 125

Book of Pontiffs

118

Chronicle of 354

119

Clement of 9, 51, 58, 61–62,  Alexandria   68, 69–71, 126 Excerpts from   Theodotus Miscellanies

68 69

1 Clement 11, 24, 94, 167n95 1–6 112–13 5 113, 129, 166n77 5.1 165n66, 166n77 5.1–7.1 165n66 5.2 112 5.4 7, 112, 113 5.4–6 165n67 7, 113 5.5 5.6 166n77 5.6ab 112 42.1–2 160n166 42.4–5 160n166 44.1–5 160n166 Coptic Gnostic 12, 30–31, 38–40,  Apocalypse   123   of Paul 3 Corinthians

8

Crowns of  Martyrdom

118

Cyprian of  Carthage

100–101, 103

Letter 75

162n213

Depositio   Martyrum

117

Didache 75, 87, 128 1–6 153n11 11:1 75 13:3 87 Didascalia  Apostolorum

77–78, 99

Diognetus

10

198  Index of Ancient Sources Dionysius of  Alexandria

78

Epiphanius

83, 89, 96, 100

Epistle to  Rheginus

 ee Treatise on S the Resurrection

Eusebius

7 6, 83, 87, 88,   90, 116, 117

Hist. eccl.  2.25.3  2.25.5  2.25.8  3.31   5.13  5.16.17  5:18  6.20.3 Vit. Const.

167n98 167n110 166n73 127 127, 154n21 158n120 158n115 167n99 82

Gaius

116

Gerontius Vita Melania 81–82

Gospel of Philip 40–41, 49–50,   68–69 56,26–32 143n54 57,9–19 41

Gregory Nazianzus De vita sua 82

Gregory of Nyssa Life of Macrina 78 On the Soul and 79   Resurrection

Ignatius Pol. 8.2 Smyrn. 13.2

Irenaeus

11, 94–95 128 128 4 , 9, 12, 15,   24–27, 32, 34,   37–38, 49, 50,   59, 75, 105,

Haer  4.36.7  4.38.3–4   5.6.1  5.7.1  5.12.5  5.13.1   5.25.1  5.25.3  5.32.1  5.33.1–2  5.36.3

  123, 124,  139n74 8, 25–27 139n87 139n87 142n16, 142n20 142n17 144n69 144n69 25, 139n75, 139n76 26 139n79 139n83 139n87

Isidore of Seville 51, 61–62, 71, 98,  125 Etymologies 80

Jerome

3 0, 79, 81, 106,  120 ad Avitum 9–10 140n94 Epist.  108.27 156n68  124 140n94  127.7 155n43

John Chrysostom 93, 106, 130–31 Justin Martyr Dialogue with   Trypho

Letter of  Barnabas

1 5, 23–24, 98,   123, 142n30 10, 24 24

Life and Deeds of the Holy and Blessed Teacher Synkletike chapters 22–103

80

Marcion

4 , 51, 57–58, 76,   83, 125

Martyrdom of  Paul

113–16, 129

Index of Ancient Sources  199 3 (14.3) 167n88 4 (14.4) 167n88 11.5,7 117 14.5,7 117

Diatessaron 58 Oratio ad Graecos 58–59 On Perfection 58

Tertullian

Methodius The Symposium

150n82

Origen

4 , 9, 11, 12, 15,   27–30, 32–33,   34, 43–47, 50,   51, 62–63, 71,   72, 78, 123,   124, 126, 131 Against Celsus 43 Comm. Cor.   frag. 33 150n76   frag. 34 150n75, 150n78   frag. 37 150nn73–74   frag. 43 150n80 Hom.7 Ezech. 10 150n77 Hom. 23 Num. 3 150n78 On First Principles 29, 43   2.10.3 46, 145n73, 145n74

Proba, Faltonia Betitia Cento vergilianus  12

4 , 9, 34, 42–43,   49, 50, 51, 58,   64–67, 72,   100, 102–3,   105, 124, 126 65–66

Exh. cast. Marc.  1.29.1 148n40  4.11.8 148n40 65, 67 Mon. On Purity 66 Res. 42  49 144n62  50 144n66  50.3 144n62 Ux. 64–65

Testament of Joseph 2:1–3

147n19

Treatise on the 3 4, 46, 49–50,  Resurrection   124, 142n28

80–81, 83 81

47,4–8 143n58

119

Greco-Roman Literature

Pseudo–Justin

3 4, 36–37, 49,  124

Aristotle

Shepherd of  Hermas

63–64, 75–76,   83, 88, 128

Aulus Gellius

Herm. Vis.  8.3  11–15

127 154n16

Celsus

Sayings of the  Fathers

80

Tatian

5 1, 58–59, 70, 72,   77, 83, 125

Cicero 49 Nat. d 46–47 Republic 48

Valentinus

Prudentius Against Symmachus  2.1107–8

Politics 1335b Noct. Att 19.2.8

3 8, 51, 67–68,   126, 142n30

147n8 163n16

De medicina 3.23 163n16

Cynic Epistles

52

200  Index of Ancient Sources Diogenes of  Sinope

52

Nat.  10.33.69  28.7.35

Epictetus Discourses  3.22.47–48

148n36

Epicurus Letters to Menoeceus 62

Plato Laws 840a 147n8 Timaeus 47

Plautus Capt. act 3,   scene 3, l.18

Pliny

163n16

163n16 163n16

Plutarch 48 Conj. praec. 142 C–D 153n9 Life of Romulus 35 Rom.  28.6–7 151n3 Virgil Aeneid

80, 118

Index of Modern Authors

Achelis, Hans, 96 Aejmelaeus, Lars, 165n54 Andrews, Scott B., 165n50 Arnold, Brian, 10, 135n40 Attridge, Harold W., 165n68 Aune, David E., 153n10, 153n13, 157nn103–4 Baird, William, 3 Bassler, Jouette M., 150n84 Baur, F. C., 8 Beker, Johan Christiaan, 133nn1–2 Bird, Michael, 8 Blackwell, Ben, 31, 139n87, 140n106, 140n107 Blanton, Thomas R., 164n21 Bradley, Keith R., 152n132 Brakke, David, 51–52, 142n30, 146n110 Breed, Brennan, 7–8 Brown, Peter, 59, 68 Brown, Raymond E., 133–34n9 Brox, Norbert, 139n79, 139n81 Butticaz, Simon, 10 Bynum, Carolyn Walker, 142n23 Cadwallader, Alan H., 165n66, 166n70 Callahan, Allen Dwight, 168n115 Callaway, Mary, 133n4 Campbell, Douglas A., 136n9 Cardman, Francine, 161n178, 162n215 Chadwick, Henry, 24, 27

Clark, Elizabeth, 5, 30, 77, 147n13, 149n49, 155n52, 155n54, 155n57, 155n61, 156n62 Clark, Gillian, 152, 152n131 Collins, John Neil, 96, 161n196 Collins, Raymond F., 133–34n9 Conzelmann, Hans, 153n3, 157n90 Cooper, Kate, 76, 81, 155n61 Crawford, Matthew R., 149n47 Cruse, C. F., 116 Dassmann, Ernst, 8 Davies, J. P., 135–36n6 Davis, Stephen J., 156n78 Deming, Will, 147n4, 147n16, 147n19, 148n21, 148n30 Dettwiler, Andreas, 10 Dibelius, Martin, 20 Dodson, Joseph, 8 Eastman, David L., 116, 117, 165n67, 166n80, 168n121, 170n150 Edsall, Benjamin A., 153n11, 154n16 Ehrman, Bart D., 137n31, 153n13, 166n73 Eijk, A. H. C. van, 143n54 Eisen, Ute, 79, 90, 95, 99, 154n29, 155n43, 156n66, 161n178, 162n218 Elliott, J. K., 114 Engberg-Pedersen, Troels, 141n11 Falcetta, Alexandra, 75, 153nn10–11 Finn, Richard, 146n1

201

202  Index of Modern Authors Fischer, Arthur, 82 Fitzgerald, John, 106, 109, 110, 148n37, 164n33 Fitzmyer, Joseph A., 147n18, 148n2, 148n31, 153n3, 157n90 Fredriksen, Paula, 135n2 Funk, Wolf-Peter, 140n107 Furnish, Victor, 107, 164nn21–22 Gadamer, Hans Georg, 5 Georgi, Dieter, 96 Gerber, Christine, 133n3 Gielen, Marlis, 159n134 Gillman, John, 159n150 Giverson, Søren, 146n111 Gooder, Paula, 161n183, 161n185, 161n189 Hardwick, Lorna, 8 Harrill, J. Albert, 136n18, 137n27, 152n132 Hatch, Diane F., 155n52, 155n54 Heidelberg, P., 114 Heine, Ronald E., 158nn119–20 Hennecke, Edgar, 149n54 Hentschel, Anni, 161n188, 164n44 Herzer, Jens, 153n5, 160n163 Hoehner, Harold W., 137n26 Hogan, Pauline Nigh, 153n10 Hopkins, Keith, 152n131 Huizenga, Annette Bourland, 151n97 Hylen, Susan E., 152n132, 153n7, 156n78 Isenberg, Wesley, 40 Jacobi, Christine, 143n58 Jauss, Hans Robert, 6 Jensen, Anne, 80 Joly, Robert, 94 Kelhoffer, James A., 149n51, 149n61, 163n1, 165n54 King, Charles W., 168n120, 169nn134–36, 169n138 Kirk, Alexander, 114, 164n27, 164n31, 165n64, 165n66, 166n69, 167n94

Klauck, Hans-Josef, 159n141, 159n143 Krenkel, Max, 106 Kümmel, W. G., 3 Laato, Anni Maria, 162n201 Lavinovica, Aleja, 153n3 Layton, Bentley, 40, 149nn60–61 Le Saint, William P., 150n92 Lightfoot, J. B., 94 Lin, Yii-Jan, 160n157 Lincicum, David, 3, 133n7 Lindemann, Andreas, 8 Lundhaug, Hugo, 40, 41, 69, 143n58, 151n109 MacDonald, Dennis, 76 MacDonald, Margaret Y., 76, 154n23, 159n134 MacMullen, Ramsay, 168n122, 168nn129–30, 168–69n131, 169n135, 169n141, 170n150, 170n152 MacRae, George W., 140n106 Macy, Gary, 98, 160n171, 162n207, 162n217, 162n219 Madigan, Kevin, 99, 101, 162n209, 162nn218–19 Malherbe, Abraham J., 135n5, 137n31, l53n7, 163n7 Marjanen, Antti, 158n116, 158n123 Markschies, Christoph, 142h30, 145n73 Marshall, Jill, 85, 156–57n82 Martin, Dale B., 148n20 McGlothlin, Thomas, 40, 138n65, 144n63, 146n112 Meeks, Wayne A., 136n19 Meier, John P., 157n105 Merz, Annette, 91, 97, 161n186 Mitchell, Margaret M., 9, 49, 131, 147n3, 164n19 Morgan, Teresa, 11, 170n7 Moss, Candida R., 166n77 Mowczko, Margaret, 161n184 Müller, C. D. G., 138n56

Index of Modern Authors  203 Murdoch, William R., 140n106 Murphy, Edwina, 162n213 Nasrallah, Laura, 89, 156–57n82 Neill, Stephen, 3 Neutel, Karin B., 153n3 Niederwimmer, Kurt, 153n10 Osiek, Carolyn, 76, 99, 101, 154n23, 156n66, 162n209, 162nn218–19 Otranto, Giorgio, 162n217 Parrott, Douglas M., 140n106 Payne, Philip B., 153n4 Pearson, Birger A., 146n111 Peirano, Irene, 9, 134–35n31 Penny, Donald, 8 Perrin, Nicholas, 140n105, 140n108 Pervo, Richard I., 149n54, 157n89, 157n96, 163n5, 166nn83–84 Pevarello, Daniele, 150n92 Powell, Douglas, 158n114 Ramelli, Ilaria L. E., 11, 154n30 Rensberger, David, 8 Reventlow, Henning Graf, 3 Rordorf, Willy, 149n54 Rousseau, Adeline, 139n79, 139n81 Rubel, Georg, 117, 167n95 Saebo, Magne, 3 Schneemelcher, Wilhelm, 113, 149n54

Schröter, Jens, 10 Seim, Turid Karlsen, 157n84, 157n93 Seppälä, Serafim, 161n200 Snyder, Glenn, 114, 154n17 Stewart Lester, Olivia, 157n103 Strawbridge, Jennifer, 9, 11, 142n17 Stray, Christopher, 8 Taylor, Walter F. Jr., 138n49 Thrall, Margaret, 108, 164n21 Thurén, Lauri, 161n190 Torjesen, Karen Jo, 153n9 Trevett, Christine, 90, 158n114, 158n116, 158n119, 158nn122–23, 158n126, 158n128 Tsuji, Manabu, 138n49, 153n5 White, Benjamin, 8, 9, 10 Wilken, Robert, 133n5 Williams, Michael A., 68, 69, 148n40 Wire, Antoinette Clark, 153n9, 157n84 Witulski, Thomas, 157n103 Yarbro-Collins, Adela, 135–36n6, 147n9, 152n132, 157n103, 159n133, 163n10 Yarbrough, O. Larry, 147nn8–9, 147n13, 147n16 Zahn, Theodor, 94

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Index of Subjects

Ammion (presbyter), 100 Andronicus, 92–93 Anna (prophet), 80 antichrist/Antichrist, 25, 27, 137n36, 139n74 apocalypticism: in 2 Thessalonians, 18–20; in Colossians, 16–17; in Ephesians, 17–18; frameworks for, 135n2; in the Pastoral Epistles, 20–23; of Paul, 12–15, 122–23, 131; two advents of the Messiah, 24; in the writings of Irenaeus, 24–27; in the writings of Justin Martyr, 23–24; in the writings of Origen, 27–30. See also eschatology apostles, 91–93 Aquila, 75, 83, 91 armor as metaphor, 11 Artemidora (presbyter), 100 baptism, 16–17, 40–41, 148n40 bishops: duties of, 93–94, 99, 160n166; married, 95–96; qualifications of, 22, 94; standard of marriage for, 64, 67; women as, 94–96, 129 Blackwell Bible Commentaries, 6 Body of Christ, 137n27 Brigid of Kildare, 95 celibacy, 2, 51, 59, 62, 63, 70–71, 125–26, 152n131; ambiguity in 1 Corinthians, 52–56 Chloe, 159n140

Christ: body of, 35, 48, 84, 137n27; coming of, with holy ones, 32, 141n117 Council of Laodicea, 100 crown of righteousness, 23, 113, 136n23, 138n56 deaconesses, 78, 79, 98, 103 deacons: marriage for, 64, 126; role of, 87, 96, 98–99, 128, 160n166, 161n200; women as, 73, 74, 83, 98–99, 103, 128 demonic possession, 90, 100–101 diakonoi, 96–99 divorce, 54, 158n116 Egeria, 79 Epikto (presbyter), 100 eschatology, 1–2, 29, 123; apocalyptic, 12, 23; individual, 31. See also apocalypticism Eucharist: distribution of, 98–99, 100–101, 128; and the veneration of Paul, 118–20 Euodia, 82 Eustochium, 79, 81 evildoers, 136n9 false teachers, 22–23 Felicity, 103 Flavia Vitalia (presbyter), 101 Gaius Caligula, 20–21 Generative Principle of the Stoics, 45–46

205

206  Index of Subjects Grapte, 76, 83, 127, 128 Helaria, 98 Hildeburga, 95 house churches, 91, 94–95, 97, 102, 128 interpretation, history of, 2–4 “Jezebel,” 87 Junia, 92–93, 128 Kale (presbyter), 100 Kyria, 79 last judgment, 23, 136n9 Leta (presbyter), 101 literary dependence, 24, 135n40 Macrina, 78–79, 83, 127 “man of lawlessness,” 20–21, 25–26, 139n74 Marcella, 79, 83, 127 marriage: affirmation of, 2; affirmation of, but only one, 51, 63–67; affirmation of, for procreation, 51, 67–71, 126, 152n131; allowed for believers, 51, 61–63, 125–26; as a calling, 70–71; and caring for children, 152n132; as morally neutral, 61, 62, 71, 72, 126; “necessity” of, 55; no marriage for believers, 51, 56–60, 125, 148n40; second marriages, 63–66, 126; sexual continence in, 53–54, 64; Stoic argument in favor of, 55; “unpolluted,” 68–69; for virgins, 54, 56, 57, 60. See also celibacy Marthana, 79, 127 Maximilla, 88–90, 128 Melania the Elder, 81, 127 Melania the Younger, 81–82, 83, 127 monasticism, 51–52, 78, 79, 83 Montanus, 88–89 New Criticism/New Critics, 6, 134n20 New Prophecy, 88–90, 101, 128

Nonna (mother of Gregory Nazianzus), 82 Nympha, 91, 128, 159n141 Ogdoad, 31, 140n108 Origenist controversy, 29–30 Paul: apocalyptic views of, 14–23; ascent to heaven, 30–32; desire for burial near, 120; on prophecy, 84–86; relics of, 120–21; on the resurrection, 34–36; as saint and martyr, 110–16, 129–30; as suffering apostle, 104–10, 129, 132; “thorn in the flesh,” 12, 105–6; veneration of, 116–21, 130 Paula, 79, 81, 127, 156n66 Pauline Captivity narrative, 8 Perpetua, 102 Philomena, 75, 83, 127 Philoxenos, 79 Phoebe, 91, 96–98, 128 presbyters, 99–101 presentism, 3–4 Priscilla (Prisca), 75, 83, 88–89, 91, 127, 128 Priscillian, 101 Proba, Faltonia Betitia, 80–81, 83, 127 prophecy: Paul’s view of, 14; and the role of women, 74, 84–90, 100, 101, 127–28 prostatis, 97 reception history, 6–7; historiographical, 8–9; recent challenge to, 7–8; theological, 9–10; types of, 8–11 resurrection: baptism as, 40–41; of the body, 2; of the flesh, 37–38, 42, 46–50, 123–24, 143n58, 144n62; Paul’s teachings on, 34–36; physical vs. spiritual body, 36; of the spirit, 2, 39–41, 124; of “spiritual body,” 43–45, 50, 124, 131; in the writings of Augustine, 47–48; in the writings of Irenaeus, 37–38; in the writings of Origen, 43–47; in the writings of

Index of Subjects  207 Tertullian, 42–43; in the writings of the Valentinians, 38–41 secondary orality, 10, 19, 24, 135n40 Silvanus (Silas), 92 slaves, 22, 91, 97, 152n132 Society of Biblical Literature, 6 Studies in Reception History, 6 Synkletike, 80, 83, 127 Synod of Nîmes, 101 Syntyche, 82 teleology, 3 Thecla, 76, 127 theodicy, 32 Theodora (desert mother), 80, 83, 127 Theodora (in Rome), 80, 95, 127 “thorn in the flesh,” 12, 105–6 Wirkungsgeschichte, 4–6 women: as apostles, 91–93, 102, 128; as bishops and overseers, 93–96, 129;

daughters of Philip, 86–87, 127–28; as deaconesses, 78, 79, 98, 103; as (female) deacons, 73, 74, 83, 98–99, 103, 128; distributing the Eucharist, 98–99, 100–101, 128; forbidden to teach, 74, 75, 82, 127, 129, 130; gifts of the spirit, 102–3; in leadership roles, 74, 90–101, 131; leading house churches, 91, 94–95, 97, 102, 128; as monastics, 79, 80–81, 83; as presbyters and priests, 99–101, 102, 128–29; as prophets, 74, 84–90, 100, 101, 127–28; as prostatis, 97; resurrected bodies of, 48; roles of, 10, 22, 73–74; as teachers, 74–84, 101, 127; as widows, 64, 66, 67, 73, 76, 77–78, 83, 95, 99, 126, 128