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The Rise of the Early Christian Intellectual
 3110607557, 9783110607550

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction and Acknowledgments
Crazy Guy or Intellectual Leader?
Papias’s Appeal to the “Living and Lasting Voice” over Books
Tatian, Celsus, and Christianity as “Barbarian Philosophy” in the Late Second Century
Intellectual independence in Christian and medical discourse of the 2nd–3rd centuries
Clement and the Catechumenate in the Late Second Century
Platonism and Stoicism in Clement of Alexandria: “Becoming like God”
Irenaeus and the ‘Rule of Truth’: A Reconsideration
Christian, Jewish, and Pagan Authority and the Rise of the Christian Intellectual
Eusebius’ Gospel Questions and Aristarchus on Homer—Similar Strategies to Save Different ‘Sacred’ Texts
Bibliography
Index locorum
General Index

Citation preview

The Rise of the Early Christian Intellectual

Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte

Founded by Karl Holl † and Hans Lietzmann † Edited by Christian Albrecht, Christoph Markschies and Christopher Ocker

Volume 139

The Rise of the Early Christian Intellectual Edited by Lewis Ayres and H. Clifton Ward

ISBN 978-3-11-060755-0 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-060863-2 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-060800-7 ISSN 1861-5996 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number: 2019957103 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Printing: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Contents Christoph Markschies Preface VII Abbreviations

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Lewis Ayres and H. Clifton Ward III Introduction and Acknowledgments

1

Tobias Nicklas Crazy Guy or Intellectual Leader? The Seer of Revelation and his Role for the Communities of Asia 7 Minor Stephen C. Carlson Papias’s Appeal to the “Living and Lasting Voice” over Books

25

Matthew R. Crawford Tatian, Celsus, and Christianity as “Barbarian Philosophy” in the Late Second 45 Century Matyáš Havrda Intellectual independence in Christian and medical discourse of the 2nd – 3rd centuries 81 Benjamin A. Edsall Clement and the Catechumenate in the Late Second Century

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G. Reydams-Schils Platonism and Stoicism in Clement of Alexandria: “Becoming like God” 129 Lewis Ayres Irenaeus and the ‘Rule of Truth’: A Reconsideration

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VI

Contents

Azzan Yadin-Israel Christian, Jewish, and Pagan Authority and the Rise of the Christian 165 Intellectual Francesca Schironi Eusebius’ Gospel Questions and Aristarchus on Homer – Similar Strategies to Save Different ‘Sacred’ Texts 193 Bibliography

227

Index locorum

249

General Index

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Christoph Markschies

Preface This volume contains contributions to a seminar on ‘The Rise of the Christian Intellectual,’ and perhaps I was not only asked by the editors to write a preface because I took part in the meeting in 2016, but also because I wrote some years ago an article about ‘Intellectuals and Church Fathers.’ At that time I admittedly did not discuss groups of people in Rome during the early imperial period, but rather in the Holy Land during the third and fourth centuries.¹ Nevertheless, a simple repetition of my comments from that time would be unwarranted, not only for the reason that their focus was on late antiquity and the East of the Roman Empire. Moreover, it seems to me now, when I reread my remarks from that time, which were only belatedly published, that I had only just begun to identify the problem of the use of the term ‘intellectual’ in a history of ancient Christianity. I must therefore return to my comments at that time and develop them in more detail. At that time I said that the concept of Christianity as a religion characterised by ‘intellectuals’ can be traced back in the German case—as Hans Georg Kippenberg has shown²—ultimately to Max Weber, who, in around 1909, was probably the first scholar to attribute a certain role to the social class of intellectuals in the formation of the “new religion.” In defining this role and this social class, Weber used the term “intellectual,” which at the time was quite new. The term “intellectual” itself appears to have originated in France (to be precise, during the time of the Dreyfus affair) and was used for some time merely in a pejorative—or, at the

 C. Markschies, “Intellectuals and Church Fathers in the Third and Fourth Centuries,” in Chris tians and Christianity in the Holy Land: From the Origins to the Latin Kingdoms, ed. O. Limor and G. Stroumsa (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 239 56. I’ve finished the manuscript at the end of the year 1999.  H.G. Kippenberg, “Intellektuellen Religion,” in Die Religion von Oberschichten: Religion Pro fession Intellektualismus, ed. P. Antes and D. Pahnke (Marburg: Diagonal, 1989), 181 202. Con trary to the German case “Intellectual” in its original French conception is a deeply political con cept (cf. P. Ory and J. F. Sirinelli, Les intellectuels en France de l’affaire Dreyfus nos jours (Paris: Colin, 1986): “it designates the well educated author and thinker who is outside the government and of threatened delegitimation. Weber ‘germanised’ the concept by neutering its political con tent. Instead, he ‘hegelianizes’ it: the intellectuals form part of the world historical process by which, independently of their own personal intentions, the gradual rationalization of the world spirit is pushed onwards” (Glen W. Most, in a letter, 10.9. 2016). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110608632 001

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very best, ambivalent—sense.³ In contrast, Weber’s definition has recognizably positive connotations and is limited to the description of function: the “intellectual” is, according to Weber, responsible for the rationalization and systematization of the theory and practice of life conduct.⁴ The intellectual, according to Weber, sees the world as a meaningful cosmos and fashions his own account of that cosmos.⁵ With his ideas, the intellectual develops new views of the world, which Weber apostrophizes as “Weichensteller”—that is, “points men” on a railway line.⁶ So far, so good. This concept of “intellectual”, which is functional and concentrated on “rationalization,” is entirely suitable for examining particular traits of ancient Christian thought on the topic of religion in the imperial period, as well as for describing more precisely groups of early imperial philosophers. Yet the use of the term “intellectual” as developed by Weber is by no means unproblematic, at least for the purposes of analyzing early Christianity—and this problem was unfortunately only partially clear to me around twenty years ago. What are the potential problems here? First, it seems to me that Weber himself would not have apostrophized many of the people whom will be mentioned in this volume as “intellectuals” in the strict sense of the word. For Weber, ancient Christianity was essentially anti-intellectual and petty bourgeois,⁷ and we will shortly see why. Accordingly he speaks (for example, in the case of Paul) of “petty-bourgeois intellectualism” and claims that Paul’s works represent “logical fantasy” (instead of logically correct reasoning).⁸ According to Weber, this form

 D. Bering, Die Intellektuellen: Geschichte eines Schimpfwortes (Frankfurt/Main: Ullstein, 1982), 32 67.  R.M. Lepsius, “Über die Institutionalisierung von Kriterien der Rationalität und die Rolle der Intellektuellen,” in ibid., Interessen, Ideen und Institutionen, 2nd ed. (Wiesbaden: Springer, 2009), 44 52.  M. Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Die Wirtschaft und die gesellschaftlichen Ordnungen und Mächte. Nachlaß, Teilbd. 2: Religiöse Gemeinschaften, ed. H.G. Kippenberg, Max Weber Gesam tausgabe I/22 2 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 266 290, esp. G. Hübinger, “Intellektuelle, In tellektualismus,” in Max Webers ‚Religionssystematik’, ed. H.G. Kippenberg and M. Riesebrodt (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 297 314 and Peter Ghosh: Max Weber in Context: Essays in the History of German Ideas c. 1870 1930 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2016), 197 249 (Chapter 5: “Max Weber and the literati”).  M. Weber, Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen: Konfuzianismus und Taoismus. Schriften und Reden 1915 1920, ed. H. Schmidt Glintzer, Max Weber Gesamtausgabe I/19 (Tübingen: Mohr Sie beck, 1989), 101.  M. Weber, Letter to Elisabeth Knauck Kühne, 15.07.1909, in ibid., Briefe 1909 1910, ed. M.R. Lepsius and W.J. Mommsen, Max Weber Gesamtausgabe II/6 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,1994), 176 8.  Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 280.

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of “petty-bourgeois intellectualism” continued “in the charismatic teachers (διδάσκαλοι).”⁹ Admittedly, at this point Weber only mentions the Epistle to the Hebrews and refers (without footnotes and in a summary fashion) to Harnack’s interpretation of this now-canonical epistle. But his definition of course also is also relevant to particular kinds of Christian teachers in the second century. Nevertheless, Weber also seems to assume some development of less restricted forms of “intellectualism” in this century when he speaks of “the intellectualism of the apologists.” That “intellectualism of the apologists” is somehow greater than and different from the “petty-bourgeois intellectualism” of Paul. Weber does not, however, precisely describe this step from one degree of intellectualism to the other. In any case, however, Weber argues that the apologists were not “intellectuals” in the full sense of the word. He thought of ancient Christianity as a “religion of redemption”¹⁰ and as such, it is and will remain for him in its core anti-intellectual, especially as represented by the apologists, because here “the way to salvation does not [lead] via trained knowledge.”¹¹ Weber’s reasoning produces the converse argument: unlike the apologists, ancient Gnostics were “intellectuals” to a much greater extent and in a much more comprehensive fashion. Weber first speaks of “intellectuals” in the full sense of the word, necessarily distanced from the church and from Christianity, only when he turns to the European middle ages—and then of course in view of the modern transformation of Christianity and finally, in particular, in view of his own era.¹² He would presumably have considered the topic of this volume, Christian theologians of the imperial period, an “intellectual collapse” into inherently anti-intellectual Christianity.¹³ A second problem with following Max Weber in using the term “intellectuals” is that he adopted a view of imperial Christian theology of the second century that primarily originated from the German religious-historical school and that few people hold today. This is entirely evident when you look at his view of so-called Gnosticism. Weber refers to the Gnostics, as we have seen, very much as “intellectuals” of the second century but he does not especially consider them a characteristic group within ancient Christianity. In this sense, his view fundamentally differs from Harnack, who famously understood the “Gnostics” as

 Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 281.  E. Hanke, “Erlösungsreligionen,” in Max Webers ‚Religionssystematik’, 209 26.  Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 282.  Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 283 6.  Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 283.

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the first Christian theologians.¹⁴ In contrast, “Gnosticism” for Weber constituted in its core (as it does in the definition of Messina 1966¹⁵) a form of religion and a way of thinking about religion that are strictly divorced from Christianity.¹⁶ Thus we consider our second problem now somewhat more precisely: Weber’s understanding of ancient Gnosticism has very little to do with the understanding of the phenomenon that has been established in recent years, not only by David Brakke, Karen King or Michael Allen Williams.¹⁷ By this I mean not only Weber’s firm support of an understanding of Gnosticism as being conceived in its origins as non-Christian (and therefore also not Jewish), which stands in contrast to today’s common re-contextualisation of the relevant actors in a history of ancient Judaism and Christianity. These days we perceive as problematic Weber’s view that there exists in Gnosticism a strong separation between a magical religion on the one hand and the intellectual search for meaning on the other.¹⁸ In view of Weber’s conceptual framework one can, for example, only concur with Irenaeus and consider, for example, the Valentinian Gnostic Marcus Magus to be a particularly anti-intellectual charlatan, but given his framework one cannot describe him as genuinely engaging in “intellectual” consideration of religion and ancient rationalization sui generis. ¹⁹ Ultimately today we cannot assert the

 C. Markschies, Christian Theology and its Institutions in the Early Roman Empire: Prolegome na to a History of Early Christian Theology, transl. by W. Coppins (Waco, TX: Baylor / Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 5 20.  “Final Document,” in The Origins of Gnosticism / Le origini dello gnosticismo: Colloquium of Messina, 13 18 April 1966. Texts and Discussions, ed. H. Bianchi (Leiden: Brill, 1970), XXVI XXIX.  H.G. Kippenberg, “Versuch einer soziologischen Verortung des antiken Gnostizismus,” in Numen 17 (1970): 211 31; ibid., “Intellektualismus und antike Gnosis,” in Max Webers Studie über das antike Judentum. Interpretation und Kritik, ed. W. Schluchter (Frankfurt/Main: Suhr kamp, 1981), 201 18. I will deal with those matters in greater length in a larger book on Gnos ticism, which will appear in German language with Beck, Munich 2020, in English translation later. The presuppositions of Weber’s image (Bousset, Reitzenstein and Troeltsch) are highlight ed in Kippenberg, “Intellektuellen Religion,” 205.  D. Brakke, The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity (Cambridge, MA / London: Harvard University Press, 2010); K.L. King, What Is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, MA / Lon don: Harvard University Press, 2003); C. Markschies, Gnosis. An Introduction, transl. by J. Bow den (London/New York: T & T Clark, 2003); M.A. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).  C. Markschies, Heilige Texte als magische Texte, in Heilige Texte: Religion und Rationalität, ed. A. Kablitz and C. Markschies (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2013), 105 20.  N. Förster, Marcus Magus: Kult, Lehre und Gemeindeleben einer valentinianischen Gnostiker gruppe. Sammlung der Quellen und Kommentar (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999); concerning so called “Valentinian Gnosticism” cf. now Valentinianism: New Studies, ed. C. Markschies and E. Thomassen (Leiden: Brill, 2019).

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existence of the strong cleft that Weber described between Gnostic formation of systems on the one hand and the church’s formation of teaching practices on the other: “dogma formation”, which, for him, “portrays self-assertion against intellectualism in all its forms, is characteristic of Christianity itself.”²⁰ In view of these clear differences between the religious-historical understanding of ancient Christianity and ancient Gnosticism (I assume here that one may speak of such a phenomenon faute de mieux), that Weber assumed and the understanding subscribed to today, what remains from the concept of “intellectual” as Weber defined it? Should one ever use this concept and/or term in the context of ancient Christianity? I believe that one may refer to “intellectuals” as a category, even if one uses the term in a somewhat different fashion than Max Weber.²¹ On the one hand, it seems to me in any case, what remains from Weber until today’s attempts to redefine the concept and/or term is the functional definition of the activities of intellectuals as being the systematization and rationalization of knowledge.²² On the other hand, however, the provocative question remains from Weber not only for the usage of the term in German contexts as to whether those whom we call Christian intellectuals in the second century are not perhaps—especially by ancient standards—better characterised as “petty-bourgeois,” even if the lamentably flat sociological categorisation of early imperial Christianity as “petty-bourgeois” only captures the reality of the new religion in a limited fashion. And perhaps one could also discuss again critically Weber’s until now not mentioned idea of the de-politicised and thus apolitical intellectual.²³ Hans Georg Kippenberg contrasted the Epicureans and the Gnostics in an essay that explicitly invoked Weber: both are characterised by a distance from the political that is absent in the rest of ancient classical philoso-

 Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 282.  C. Charle, s.v. “Intellectuals, History of the Concept,” in International Encyclopedia of the So cial and Behavioral Sciences Vol. 11 (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2001), 7627 31 = Vol. 12, 2nd ed. (Am sterdam: Elsevier, 2015), 273 6; R.J. Brown, s.v. “Intellectuals, Sociology of,” in ibd., 277 82. Probably a non native German never ever would deal the history of the term with such a strong focus to Weber. But all approaches to Antiquity are always dominated by one’s one intellectual biography.  Concerning those terms “systematisation” and “rationalisation” cf. C. Markschies, “Introduc tion”, in: Rationalization in Religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, ed. Y. Friedmann and C. Markschies on behalf of the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2019), 1 4 and ibid., “Origen of Alexandria: The Bible and Philosophical Rationality, or: Problems of Traditional Dualisms,” in Rationalization in Religions, 63 73.  Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 269 74.

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phy.²⁴ Hubert Cancik posed some time ago the simple question of whether this description of Epicurean and Gnostic intellectuals—which we find for example in Hans Jonas, Kurt Rudolph and others—is really true.²⁵ This could be a reason enough to examine once again these classic theses concerning groups of imperial intellectuals. In my initial remarks I pointed to the problems that arise when we try to apply the concept of the “intellectual” to ancient Christian theologians during the early Roman Empire. To summarize here: we take up a whole slew of assumptions that are connected to the functionalist concept of the intellectual in Weber. Of course, one can use this functionalist concept to describe Christian theology in the second century, provided one is prepared to accept the reductionism of this approach as regards to content. Ekkehard Mühlenberg, some time ago, drew our attention to the costs of such an ontological reductionism, which has in fact since been thoroughly philosophically accepted.²⁶ The concept of the “intellectual” is like all concepts that do not originate in our sources, but are formed much later: we cannot get away from them, we see many things more clearly in their light, but we must not underestimate their problems and should in no case overestimate their power. This volume, The Rise of the Christian Intellectual, offers many excellent examples showing the power of this terminology!

 Kippenberg, “Versuch einer soziologischen Verortung des antiken Gnostizismus,” 215, con cerning Weber ibid. 223.  H. Cancik, “Gnostiker in Rom. Zur Religionsgeschichte der Stadt Rom im 2. Jahrhundert nach Christus,” in Gnosis und Politik. Religionstheorie und politische Theologie Vol. 2, ed. J. Taubes (München et al.: Wilhelm Fink, 1984), 163 84, esp. 183. For the political dimension cf. above fn. 2.  In a review of the German version of C. Markschies, Christian Theology and its Institutions in the Early Roman Empire, in Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen 262 (2010): 230 47; some remarks ibid., XIII V (Introduction to the English Edition).

Abbreviations (not found in l’année philologique)

AJT AKGWG AKSGW ANRW CBQ CMG HvTSt JJS JLA JOIE JSHJ JSNT LCL MTZ NedTT NGG PO ProEccl RAC RCatT SC SecCent StPatr SVTQ

Asia Journal of Theology Abhandlungen der Königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen Abhandlungen der Königlich Sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt Catholic Biblical Quarterly Corpus Medicorum Graecorum Hervormde teologiese studies Journal of Jewish Studies Journal of Late Antiquity Journal of Institutional Economics Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus Journal for the Study of the New Testament Loeb Classical Library Münchener theologische Zeitschrift Nederlands theologisch tijdschrift Nachrichten von der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen Patrologia Orientalis Pro Ecclesia Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum. Edited by T. Kluser. Stuttgart, 1950– Revista catalana de teologi´a Sources chre´tiennes. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1943– Second Century Studia Patristica St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110608632 002

Lewis Ayres and H. Clifton Ward III

Introduction and Acknowledgments While the term ‘intellectual’ had long been used occasionally to describe a person of academic attainment, or to describe the thoughts that (ideally) occupy the well-educated mind, it was in the nineteenth century that it began to be used with some frequency to describe a set or a caste of people (the appearance of a distinct ‘intellectual’ group as participants in the Dreyfus affair has often been treated as a key stimulant for this usage). Common usage of the term since the nineteenth century has often carried connotations of the intellectual as lacking interest in non-intellectuals, as perhaps prone to a certain snobbery about his or her education. Not surprisingly, throughout the twentieth century discussion of the intellectual was also a discussion of the intellectual’s political roles and even duties (Foucault, Gramsci and Bourdieu all contributing much to this discussion). Discussion of the intellectual’s social role has been deeply related to the manner in which one conceives intellectuals as a caste of their own, or as a group whose members may also represent their classes of origin. Do intellectuals have a duty to act ‘organically’ and undertake such a representation? Alongside these questions about the social role of intellectuals, questions about the relationship between intellectuals and traditions persist. One of the most frequent assumptions in post-enlightenment models of intellectual life has been that intellectuals are a priori those whose educational attainments enable them to rise above or beyond opinions transmitted by tradition to think in ‘new’ and ‘creative’ ways. Much writing over the last few decades has, however, explored how traditions form the necessary context within which (and sometimes against which) intellectual work is undertaken. So much, then, for the notion of the intellectual. The term cannot be used without recognition of its complexity and of the complex ways in which it has been used. As theoretical work on the value and indispensability of traditions has grown (e. g. Gadamer, MacIntyre), so it becomes possible to ask new questions about the nature of the intellectual. When we consider early Christianity, many of the same questions mutatis mutandis are pertinent. Questions about the relationship between the modes of inquiry and argument used by Christians of greater intellectual and literary attainment, and the character of the faith of those sometimes referred to as the simpliciores are of perennial interest. As many scholars have noted, while it is tempting to presume the tensions within early Christianity that are often perceived in modernity between intellectuals as a class and the rest of society, one https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110608632 003

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must be wary of anachronism—especially in the light of the foundational quality that the basic catechetical faith of Christianity is accorded by many of those one might think of as early Christian intellectuals. Seeing themselves as members of a community not defined by any necessary academic achievements, and as possessors of a truth revealed through the person of Jesus, early Christian intellectuals seem to have felt empowered both to engage ancient learning, and yet to reject its pretensions when necessary. Any account of early Christian intellectual life is thus presented with a significant challenge to understand the intellectual debts of early Christians and to attend to the ways their faith enabled particular adaptations that might have surprised their non-Christian peers. But even before we can ask these questions, it is vital to bear in mind one of the perennial questions of scholarship on the first centuries of Christianity: how and in what ways can we think of Christians as ‘drawing on’ or simply as a movement within the Hellenic tradition? And to consider those complex questions is to bring us to one of the most important points of tension between modern and ancient conceptions of intellectual achievement, which we may phrase as a question: how far was the production of new ideas and the breaking free of tradition seen or not seen as distinctive of the intellectual in the ancient world? Any answer must be a complex one; simplistic answers might, for example, underplay the extent to which the achievements of a Plotinus or an Origen or an Alexander of Aphrodisias were the result of surprising breaks with the past as well as newness wrought by skillful work re-articulation of existing traditions. Indeed, any assessment of such questions must also reckon with the very complexity and movement intrinsic to traditions of thought. Considering the development of early Christian intellectual life may thus draw on modern discussions of ‘the intellectual’ but must be rooted in awareness of the particular conditions of ancient intellectual traditions, and in the peculiarities of Christian belief. The papers in this volume resulted from a seminar hosted by the Australian Catholic University in Rome during the summer of 2016. The goal of the seminar was to explore the emergence of Christian intellectual life during the second century. The participants proceeded by considering, the early Christian intellectual not in the abstract, but by exploring different facets of Christian intellectual life over what we might consider a ‘long second century’, stretching from the writing of ‘John’s’ Apocalypse through to Clement of Alexandria in the early third century (and one paper looks even beyond this to Eusebius). A first group of papers explore the character of Christian intellectual life and performance in the first half of the second century. Tobias Nicklas examines the perhaps surprising case of the author of the Apocalypse. Nicklas argues that we should recognize that the writer shows all the signs of a high degree of educa-

Introduction and Acknowledgments

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tional sophistication, and yet seems indifferent to the norms of the educational cultures in which he may have been steeped. And yet we should not think him somehow less ‘open-minded’ or ‘tolerant’ than Paul or Ignatius. Azzan Yadin-Israel’s paper offers a new perspective on long-standing debates about the decline of prophetic authority in the Christian community. Comparison with the emergence of Rabbinic tradition and with some pagan contexts suggests that developments in Christianity took place against a broader background and need not be explained as primarily the result of internal concerns. Along the way Yadin-Israel suggests we rethink the close parallel between Papias’s interest in those who heard Jesus, and developments among the Tannaim. Stephen Carlson considers another aspect of Papias’s work, his preference for the ‘living and lasting voice.’ Carlson follows those scholars who have placed Papias’s account in the context of other ancient discussions of the relative priority of speech over writing, arguing that Papias is best understood as an intellectual following those ancients who assume that the interrogation of living witnesses provided appropriate supplementation to written records. A second set of papers focus on figures from the second half of the second century. Matthew Crawford explores the relationship between Tatian and Celsus. While, Crawford argues, we lack the evidence to show that one ancient author was responding to the other, the two do appear to be part of the same conversation in the second century. Both are engaged in philosophical programs that place front and center concerns with identifying the cultural genealogies and locations of ideas. Celsus rejects Christianity for its novelty and disgraceful origins; Tatian identifies the origin of Hellenic tradition with deception by fallen angels. Both authors are concerned not only with relative antiquity but also with the differing value and accomplishments of Hellenic and ‘Barbarian’ wisdom. Tatian must both use Hellenic paideia while claiming the superiority of ‘Barbarian’ Christian wisdom. Considering these two authors together highlights the extent to which these debates—which would remain at center-stage for centuries after— were still in their infancy. Ayres’s essay considers the use of the notion of the rule of truth, particularly by Irenaeus of Lyons. Irenaeus’s adapts to the purpose of defining belief language that had become traditional in the first two thirds of the second century for describing the boundaries of Christian practice. But as he did so, Irenaeus also invested this language with much drawn from ancient philosophical debates concerning the canon of truth. Thus, the term ‘rule of truth’ describes not so much a fixed statement of faith as a way of marking boundaries of belief and establishing an epistemological foundation for movement from the catechetical faith toward ‘appropriate’ non-Gnostic intellectual speculation. Ayres’s essay suggests that the controversies over the phenomenon

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(often now formally known as) Gnosticism had a significant effect on the selfperception of Christian intellectuals. Not surprisingly, Clement of Alexandria receives extended consideration. Gretchen Reydams-Schils paper considers the interplay of traditions in Clement of Alexandria’s account of ‘becoming like God,’ showing the difficulty of separating the Christian from the Stoic or Platonic. Clement was able to drawing eclectically and in a sophisticated manner on themes from Stoic and Platonic traditions, while adapting them in the light of his own particular Christian program. Ben Edsall’s paper considers Clement’s vision of the catechumenate. Edsall argues that whereas previous work has tended to look for a model within either contemporary philosophical developments, or in what we know of initiation practices into the ‘mysteries’, Clement’s vision (while containing some parallels to non-Christian contexts) seems to owe most to the internal dynamics of Alexandrian Christianity. Matyáš Havrda considers the fascinating topic of intellectual ‘independence’. Havrda notes that Origen and Clement see Christian faith as both suitable for shaping the life of those with few intellectual attainments, and as the possible foundation for the intellectual to advance to independent speculation. Interestingly, this position, while developed in the light of particular Christian concerns, finds close parallels in contemporary medical literature. Francesca Schironi’s paper considers the chronologically latest material in the volume, exploring the character of Eusebius of Caesarea’s commentarial work in his Gospel Problems. Schironi argues that Eusebius inherits the Alexandrian tradition of zetematic literature (possibly through Origen), but is no second-rate imitator. In some respects he is a successful innovator, revealing the extent to which Christians could be scholars of the highest caliber. Not surprisingly, no unified view of the emergence of the Christian ‘intellectual’ in this period emerges. Yet some common themes are apparent. First, Christian authors, throughout the period covered by this volume, show themselves to be imbued with aspects of the high literary culture of their pagan peers. Their visions of literary accomplishment, of good argument, even of the superiority of Christian faith are often articulated in terms adapted from debates that non-Christians should have easily recognized. Christian thought did not simply ‘draw on’ non-Christian traditions, those traditions were the matrix within which it was nurtured from the very beginning of the second century. Indeed, Christian were parasitic on these traditions even as they sometimes rejected the wisdom of the Hellenic world. Second, each of the papers here presents Christian authors as both clearly ‘intellectuals’ by ancient standards, and yet also adapting models of intellectual activity to Christian purposes and ends. Christian thinkers participated in these traditions in what seem to be consciously Christian ways, and this phenomenon opens a series of questions for scholars to

Introduction and Acknowledgments

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consider: what were those specifically Christian concerns, and how did working with them shape visions of Christian intellectual life? These essays offer some suggestions for taking those questions further, and if they do that well the volume has succeeded. The editors would like to acknowledge in particular the support of the Australian Catholic University, without whom this seminar would not have been possible. In particular the personal and enthusiastic support of Profs Wayne McKenna and James McLaren was indispensable. The team at ACU’s Rome Centre were admirably efficient and wonderfully welcoming. We would also like to thank Prof Christoph Markschies, who was a wonderful seminar participant and graciously accepted the resulting volume into this series.

Tobias Nicklas

Crazy Guy or Intellectual Leader? The Seer of Revelation and his Role for the Communities of Asia Minor If we want to talk about early Christian “intellectuals”, first and foremost figures like Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Tatian and other important writers come to mind. Perhaps we also think about ancient schools and their leaders like Justin, Valentinus, Basilides and others. We also tend to discuss matters of Paul’s education, his rhetorical skills and intellectual capacities¹ or the alleged Johannine “school”.² At the same time figures like the Seer of Revelation (but also the authors of texts like the Ascension of Isaiah, the Revelation of Peter or other early Christian apocalypses) are out of sight. This has certainly to do with both our prejudices against apocalyptic literature and our ideas about intellectuals. I would identify a person as intellectual if he/she is both well-educated and willing to learn and he/she is occupied with creative scholarly, literary, artistic or related activities which also allow him/her to take a critical stance towards situations and developments in the world he/she lives. At the same time our images of antique prophets and apocalyptic seers usually resemble more some of the crazy figures populating Monty Python’s “Life of Brian”. If we move to more scholarly arguments the main point to which everything else can be related is probably the idea that ancient apocalypticism was a phenomenon of decline, related to small marginal or marginalized groups who wanted to proclaim their (strange) ideas of the future and their (outsiders’) perspectives on this world. Very often and for a long time apocalypticism was related to images of a “late Judaism”.³ According to these images Judaism after the times of

 See, for example, J.S. Vos, Die Kunst der Argumentation bei Paulus: Studien zur antiken Rhetorik (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002); R.S. Schellenberg, Rethinking Paul’s Rhetorical Education. Com parative Rhetoric and 2 Cor 10 13 (Atlanta: Scholars, 2010); J.P. Sampley and P. Lampe, eds., Paul and Rhetoric (London: T&T Clark, 2010); M.R. Malcolm, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reversal in 1 Corinthians: The Impact of Paul’s Gospel on his Macro Rhetoric (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni versity Press, 2013) and many others. For a very brief overview see also U. Schnelle, Paulus. Leben und Denken (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2003), 56 70.  For a quite skeptical view, however, see, Th. Schmeller, Schulen im Neuen Testament? Zur Stel lung des Urchristentums in der Bildungswelt seiner Zeit (Freiburg: Herder, 2001).  In Germany this view has been revised since the groundbreaking work of Kh. Müller, Das Ju dentum in der religionsgeschichtlichen Arbeit am Neuen Testament. Eine kritische Rückschau auf https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110608632 004

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Ezra and Nehemiah did not find any direct relation to its God, lost its former prophetic power, and that’s why concentrated on Torah interpretation and the production of fanciful, theologically worthless apocalyptic writings. In other words: with such background ideas the authors of apocalyptic writings were more in danger to be associated with a few crazy crackpots than with intellectuals like the ones mentioned above.⁴ Even if today some of the views mentioned above have (in parts radically) changed, one would not immediately associate the authors of ancient Christian apocalypses with intellectuals. This has perhaps a few more reasons: (1) In most cases the authors of apocalypses remain hidden behind their (in most cases) pseudepigraphical writings. The only possible (or even probable) exception is John of Patmos who is usually understood as the “real author” behind the Book of Revelation (or parts of it), although even this assumption is not beyond doubt.⁵ (2) Apocalyptic writings are understood as texts related to concrete situations of crisis which usually do not allow the operating of schools of thought. (3) At least the most well-known apocalyptic writing—the Book of Revelation— has for a long time been understood as being chaotically organized and written by a person whose Greek was poor and full of Semitisms.⁶ Perhaps the main bias, however, is that we expect an intellectual as sitting in a library, having his students around, discussing philosophical, philological, historical and/or theological problems or—to say it in other words—being a mirror of ourselves and leading a life comparable to ours. But why should this be the case? In the following paper I want to develop the thesis that at least in some cases the authors of Christian apocalypses can be understood as intellectuals who formed an important part of the early movement of Jesus followers. I would like to develop this idea by focusing on one figure, the author of the canonical Book of Revelation (whom I will call “John” for the sake of convenience). I think, however, that comparable arguments could be made if we looked into

die Entwicklung einer Methodik bis zu den Qumranfunden (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1983), esp. 103 117.  The situation came to its extremes with some exegetes connected to Nazi ideology. For more details see T. Nicklas, “Apokalypse und Antisemitismus: Die Offenbarung des Johannes bei Aus legern im Umfeld des Nationalsozialismus,” in Die Johannesoffenbarung. Ihr Text und ihre Aus legung, ed. M. Labahn and M. Karrer (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2012), 352 70.  See the discussion of Revelation’s possible pseudepigraphy in J. Frey, “Das Corpus Johan neum und die Apokalypse des Johannes: Die Johanneslegende, die Probleme der johanneischen Verfasserschaft und die Frage der Pseudonymität der Apokalypse,” in Poetik und Intertextualität der Johannesapokalypse, ed. St. Alkier, Th. Hieke, and T. Nicklas (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015) 71 133, hier 118 133.  See below.

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other apocalyptic literature.⁷ After a first part where I argue that and how the seer of Revelation can be understood as an intellectual, a second part will address the question of his role within and in relation to his community. Here I will not only concentrate on the author of Revelation, but try to put him into a broader spectrum of ancient Christian authors.

1 The Seer of Revelation—an Intellectual? As soon as our definition of an “intellectual” does not involve that he/she comes close to our image of a scholar or a member of a philosophical school we can open ourselves for different types of intellectuals—and as long as our image of an apocalyptic is not just that of a “crazy guy” and/or a member of “social outcasts” at the fringes of society,⁸ we can start thinking whether the author of an apocalypse can be understood as an intellectual. As the authors of apocalypses (or the groups responsible for these texts) usually do not give us their names, and as their identities are usually hidden behind the pseudonym of a famous figure of the past, we have only their texts which can help us to answer the question of whether their authors can be labelled “intellectuals” and how they define their relation to the communities they address.⁹ Unlike with most other apocalypses it is well possible that the New Testament Book of Revelation was authored by a person whose name was indeed “John” (Rev 1.9) and that this John was on the island of Patmos when he produced his text. I would not even exclude that this “real” person behind the text had some mystical experiences. At the same time both the question of the real author’s name and the question whether he in fact experienced anything which he interpreted as a ‘revelation from/of Jesus Christ given to him by God’ (Rev 1.1) should not concern us here. The question whether “he” can be labelled

 See for example, my arguments regarding the background of the Greek/Ethiopic Apocalypse of Peter in T. Nicklas, “Jewish, Christian, Greek? The Apocalypse of Peter as a Witness of Second Century Christianity in Alexandria,” in Beyond Conflicts. Cultural and Religious Cohabitations in Alexandria and in Egypt between the 1st and the 6th century CE, ed. L. Arcari (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 27 46.  Recent research in apocalypticism has shown that it is usually a movement supported by dis appointed elites, not by people already born as social outcasts. For a broader discussion, see M. Tilly, Apokalyptik (Tübingen: Francke, 2012), 42 44.  Regarding questions of pseudepigraphy in apocalyptic writings and their function for the tex tual pragmatics see the proceedings of the 2016 Zurich conference on Apocalypticism: J. Frey, M. R. Jost and F. Tóth, eds., Autorschaft und Autorisierungsstrategien in apokalyptischen Texten (WUNT 426; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019).

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an “intellectual” can be solely related to my “definition” above. Of course, it is clear that Revelation wants to say something about its time and its world. But does this text show that its author was well-educated, perhaps even active in a scholarly manner? Is it a well-structured writing in good language and style, and does it mirror a broad “encyclopedia”¹⁰ of knowledge to create a vivid literary world useful for its purpose? An answer to each of these questions could fill a monograph (or more than a monograph). I would thus just like to give a few lines of argument: Even if it is highly difficult to describe the text’s structure properly in all its details,¹¹ there is a growing consensus that this does not necessarily mean that the final text has to be divided into several redactional layers which were more or less chaotically put together (as many 20th century authors still thought¹²). Of course, defining the text’s structure is notoriously difficult: How can we determine the relation of letters to the communities and visionary passages?¹³ Does the visionary part follow a certain linear movement or does it progress in circles?¹⁴ Should the text be labelled a “prophetic” or an “apocalyptic” writing and what is the concrete function of its epistolary elements?¹⁵ What is the mutual relation of the visions of the 144,000 in chapters 7 and 14 and how are they re I use the term “encyclopedia” following the definition given by S. Pellegrini, Elija Wegber eiter des Gottessohnes. Eine textsemiotische Untersuchung des Markusevangeliums (Freiburg: Herder, 2000), 431: “Enzyklopädie: Die Menge an Information zum Weltwissen, die durch Worte und Sprache fixiert ist” (see also, for a broader discussion, 106 117, following Umberto Eco).  For an overview of some of the main suggestions regarding Revelation’s structure see F. Tavo, Woman, Mother and Bride: An Exegetical Investigation into the ‘Ecclesial’ Notions of the Apoca lypse (Leuven: Peeters, 2007), 25 46.  An extreme example was J. Massyngberde Ford, Revelation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995).  For an at least partial solution see H. Ulland, Die Vision als Radikalisierung der Wirklichkeit in der Apokalypse des Johannes (Tübingen: Francke, 1996).  This has already been a problem for the first commentator of Revelation, Victorinus of Pet tau. Regarding this commentary and its hermeneutics, see K. Huber, “In Apocalypsin des Viktor in von Pettau Zu Geschichte, Form und Hermeneutik frühester Apokalypsekommentierung,” in Tot sacramenta quot verba. Zur Kommentierung der Apokalypse des Johannes von den Anfängen bis zum 12. Jahrhundert, ed. K. Huber, R. Klotz, and Chr. Winterer (Münster: Aschendorff, 2014).  Regarding the first question see, for example, B. Kowalski, “Prophetie und die Offenbarung des Johannes? Offb 22,6 21 als Testfall,” in Prophets and Prophecy in Jewish and Early Christian Literature, ed. J. Verheyden, K. Zamfir, and T. Nicklas (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 253 93, who stresses the prophetic aspects; regarding the second question see M. Karrer, Die Johannesof fenbarung als Brief. Studien zu ihrem literarischen, historischen und theologischen Ort (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986), and, more recently, H. G. Gradl, Buch und Offenbarung: Medien und Medialität der Johannesapokalypse (Freiburg: Herder, 2014), 149 219.

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lated to the vision(s) of the heavenly Jerusalem in Rev 21– 22.5? When do the events described in chapter 12 take place? What can be said about the text’s spatial structures?¹⁶ The number of questions seems to be endless …, but all this does not mean that the text is chaotic—it is, instead, the highly complex way of telling a story which, as Stefan Alkier has demonstrated, is both sophisticated and simple.¹⁷ After a series of instructions about how to read Revelation the text describes the initial situation. It departs from a situation of crisis (Rev 1.9 – 3.22). What may be understood as a crisis of persecution probably related to the emerging emperor cult¹⁸ and, connected to this, a crisis of divisions in the communities of Christ followers, is interpreted from an allegedly heavenly perspective as a crisis of the communities’ relation(s) to Christ (and to God). The long and complicated series of visions between chapters 4 and 20 can be understood as describing a transformation leading to the removal of the crisis which is now seen as part of a big cosmic drama between the poles of creation, judgment, new creation and the ultimate goal of creation. After that, chapters 4– 5 lead into heaven and show God’s throne as center of all power and describe Christ’s assignment and enthronization, chapters 6 – 11 can be interpreted as signs indicating the coming judgment, 12– 13 describe Satan’s expulsion from heaven and his operating on earth, while 14– 20 are concerned with the step by step execution of God’s judgment. After this, chapters 21– 22.5 depict the future situation after the destruction of evil, the new heaven and earth and life in new Jerusalem face to face with God and the Lamb. An epilogue, finally, again reflects on the

 See, for example, the discussion in St. Alkier and T. Nicklas, “Wenn sich Welten berühren. Beobachtungen zu zeitlichen und räumlichen Strukturen in der Apokalypse des Johannes,” in Poetik und Intertextualität in der Johannesapokalypse, ed. St. Alkier, Th. Hieke, and T. Nicklas (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 205 26.  My interpretation of the book of Revelation as a coherent whole follows the main lines of St. Alkier, “Die Johannesapokalypse als ‘ein zusammenhängendes und vollständiges Ganzes’,” in Die Johannesoffenbarung. Ihr Text und ihre Auslegung, ed. M. Labahn and M. Karrer (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2012), 147 72 (see esp. 151 152, which come very close to my fol lowing overview).  During the last decades the emerging Emperor Cult in Asia Minor has increasingly been seen as a key for the interpretation of Revelation. For a good overview see, for example, the essays in M. Ebner and E. Esch Wermeling, eds., Kaiserkult, Wirtschaft und spectacula. Zum politischen und gesellschaftlichen Umfeld der Offenbarung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011). I would, however, not go so far to see every scene in Revelation as (almost allegorically) mirroring events of the early second century and especially the reign of Hadrian , like Th. Witulski, Die Johannesoffenbarung und Kaiser Hadrian. Studien zur Datierung der neutestamentlichen Apoka lypse (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), tends to do.

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book’s function and meaning and gives instructions of how to read it.¹⁹ All this is, however, not told as a plain story—the different passages are, however, related to each other through a complex system of catchwords, repetitions and variations both in language and imagery, connections to important subtexts et al.²⁰ As we have already seen the book of Revelation does not just describe a series of events leading to God’s final judgment. Instead, Revelation shows a manner of self-reflection of its role and function as a book not to be found in any other New Testament writing (with the possible exception of the Gospel of John):²¹ the first prescript of Rev 1.1– 3 develops a highly sophisticated construction of the book’s alleged situation of communication. The text claims to be a “Jesus Christ revelation having been given to him by God himself” (Rev 1.1). This revelation must be shown to “his”, that is, Christ’s servants. But this is only part of the generated “chain of communication”. The revelation has been shown by “his angel” to John, Christ’s servant, who is witness of everything he has seen (Rev 1.2). After this the text seems to start anew and now takes over the form of a letter (even coming close to Pauline letter forms) to the seven communities in Asia Minor.²² In this way the text opens itself to a double readership: the explicit addressees in the communities of Jesus followers in Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamon, Thyatira, Sardes, Philadelphia and Laodicea who will be addressed a bit later in the epistles of chapters 2 – 3, but obviously also a broader group of readers and listeners who are not seen as being bound to these seven “churches”.²³ Otherwise Revelation 1.3, a makarism blessing every-

 This epilogue, however, also shows an extremely dense net of intertextual allusions to other Biblical writings, as Th. Hieke and T. Nicklas, “Die Worte der Prophetie dieses Buches”: Offenbar ung 22,6 21 als Schlussstein der christlichen Bibel Alten und Neuen Testaments gelesen (Neu kirchen Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2003), have shown.  A very good case for, e. g., Rev 6,12 17 is made by M. Sommer, Der Tag der Plagen: Studien zur Verbindung der Rezeption von Ex 7 11 in den Posaunen und Schalenvisionen der Johannesof fenbarung und der Tag des Herrn Tradition (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 65 94.  For a broad discussion of the motif of book and its role in Revelation see Gradl, Buch und Offenbarung, 221 508, and shorter P. von Möllendorff, “‘Nimm und verschling es!’ Elemente einer Poetik der Johannes Apokalypse,” in Poetik und Intertextualität der Johannesapokalypse, ed. St. Alkier, Th. Hieke, and T. Nicklas (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 155 76.  Regarding the impact of the letter form for Revelation see Karrer, Johannesoffenbarung als Brief. At the same time, it would be wrong to read Rev 2 3 as letters only referring to the con crete situation of the communities, and not also as paradigms for different ecclesiastical situa tions. For a more detailed argument see T. Nicklas, “Diesseits aus der Sicht des Jenseits: Die Sendschreiben der Offenbarung des Johannes (Offb 2 3),” in Other Worlds and their Relation to This World: Early Jewish and Ancient Christian Traditions, ed. T. Nicklas, J. Verheyden, E. Ey nikel, and F. García Martínez (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 247 80.  For this distinction see also Alkier, “Johannesapokalypse als Ganzes,” 151.

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body who reads, listens to and keeps “these words of prophecy”, would not make sense. This is, however, not the only reflection about the book as a book. Besides the epilogue, which again addresses the text’s impact plus its inherent relation of hearing, seeing and keeping written words (Rev 22.6 – 8) and curses everybody who changes its wording (Rev 22.18 – 19)²⁴, there are many more fascinating aspects of the text’s reflection of its being a “book”. It is perhaps enough to refer to two scenes wherein we read about the transfer of an obviously heavenly book. In chapter 5 we read about a sealed βιβλίον in the right hand of the one sitting on the throne (Rev 5.1). This book obviously has to be opened (Rev 5.2)—but only one is worthy to do this: Christ who can be called a Lion and described as a Lamb within one short passage (Rev 5.5 – 6). As soon as Christ, however, opens the seals, the visions virtually rise from the book.²⁵ In other words: the story told in the Book of Revelation is—at least in parts—described as being enclosed in a heavenly book, set free and again enclosed in a book—the book of Revelation. Something comparable happens in chapter 10 where we read about a giant angel—a Christ figure?—handing over an opened βιβλαρίδιον (Rev 10.2) to the Seer who not just takes, but eats it (Rev 10.8 – 10).²⁶ How are these books related to each other? And how are they related to the Book of Revelation itself? It looks at least as if both processes of transmission of the book— handed over from God to the Lamb and (in another form) handed over from the Angel to the Seer—parallel aspects of the process of communication reflected in Rev 1.1– 3. In other words, Revelation is not only a book about a book handed over from God to Christ and (in other form) from an Angel to the Seer who virtually absorbs it in himself. It is a book writing about a book which is an image of itself … a book writing about images of itself, the contents of which are “materially” set free by opening the book’s seals and caught up again in the writing process. The text’s language is certainly not fit into usual expectations of “good Greek style”.²⁷ But what is “good style”? If it has to come as close as possible

 This passage is usually labelled a “canon formula” while perhaps the description as a Text sicherungsformel (a formula ensuring the text’s integrity) as Hieke and Nicklas, Worte der Pro phetie, 70 82, label it, makes more sense.  Möllendorff, “Nimm,” 162 63, writes: “Sodann verlassen die apokalyptischen Reiter der Reihe nach das Buch und entfalten sogleich ihre zerstörerische Wirkung.”  This passage is closely related to Ezek 2.8 3.3.  See, for example, P. Pokorný and U. Heckel, Einleitung in das Neue Testament. Seine Literatur und Theologie im Überblick (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007) 593: “Die Sprache der Johannesof fenbarung ist ein semitisierendes Griechisch, das auf einen judenchristlichen Hintergrund hin

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to what we would call “classical Attic Greek” nothing in late antiquity fits. But is Revelation not a special case? For a long time scholars have recognized its violations of “usual” Greek grammar which have usually been understood as signs of the author’s Semitic origins and his only rudimentary control of the language. A somewhat closer view into the text, however, reveals that the text wherever it wants shows a clear awareness of “correct” syntax and that at the same time, wherever it wants to express something special, it feels free to cross the limits of usual use of language.²⁸ In a recent article Thomas Paulsen analyzed some of the most well-known of these linguistic border-crossings. He showed that all of them serve clear purposes and—at least in some cases—compares Revelation’s language to what we would call “correct Greek”. The probably clearest example is to be found in Rev 1.4 where we find the unexpected expression χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ ὁ ὢν καὶ ὁ ἧν καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος… Paulsen writes: Das prägende Element der Passage ist …, dass auf den so harmlos anmutenden Beginn ein sprachlicher Schockeffekt sondergleichen folgt, indem die Präposition ἀπό mit dem Nom inativ konstruiert wird. Nicht minder radikal ist der unmittelbar folgende Solözismus: Die Ewigkeit Gottes in Gegenwart, Vergangenheit und Zukunft soll in einem dreigliedrigen Kolon dargestellt werden. Johannes beginnt und endet mit einem Partizip (ὁ ὤν, ὁ ἐρχόμε νος), doch im Mittelglied erscheint anstelle eines grammatisch korrekten Partizips eine fi nite Verbform, die grammatisch unmöglich mit einem Artikel kombiniert wird: ὁ ἧν.²⁹

All this is impossible according to usual grammar—but as soon as Paulsen discusses what would have happened had the seer used correct grammar (χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ τοῦ ὄντος καὶ τοῦ γενομένου καὶ τοῦ ἐρχομένου or χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ τούτου ὅς ἔστι καὶ ἦν καὶ ἔρχεται) it becomes crystal

weist … Die Sprache scheint primitiv zu sein, besonders die Anwendung des Partizips ist oft feh lerhaft,” or H. Giesen, Die Offenbarung des Johannes (Regensburg: Pustet, 1997) 39: “Der Seher denkt zudem … offenkundig hebr., auch wenn er griech. schreibt. Dafür dürften nicht nur man gelnde Griechischkenntnisse verantwortlich sein. Denn der Vf läßt immer wieder erkennen, daß er die griech. Sprache ziemlich gut beherrscht.”  See T. Holtz, “Sprache als Metapher: Erwägungen zur Sprache der Johannesapokalypse,” in Studien zur Johannesoffenbarung und ihrer Auslegung. Festschrift Otto Böcher, ed. F.W. Horn and M. Wolter (Neukirchen Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2005), 10 19, where he writes (10): “[G]erade bei einigen besonders gewichtigen Aussagen finden sich die schwersten Verstöße gegen Regeln der Grammatik, die in anderen, gleichsam normalen Zusammenhängen bei den gleichen gram matischen Fügungen nicht begegnen.”  Th. Paulsen, “Zu Sprache und Stil der Johannes Apokalypse,” in Poetik und Intertextualität der Johannesapokalypse, ed. St. Alkier, Th. Hieke, and T. Nicklas (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 3 25, esp. 21 22.

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clear how much the phrase would lose. Paulsen closes referring to Rev 1.8: “Majestätischer wurde Gott wahrscheinlich nie bezeichnet.”³⁰ At the same time Revelation is created by playing with a whole network of intertexts. As it is well-known, the text does not quote any of the writings he uses, but is full of allusions to and echoes of the Scriptures of Israel and early Jewish literature—these go partly so far that the seer has even been called a “new Ezekiel” or “Daniel”³¹. In addition, we find structural parallels and allusions to texts from the Torah, prophets like Isaiah, Joel, Jeremiah, but also former prophets like the books of the Kings, the Psalter or even 1 Enoch.³² At the same time the question whether the author of Revelation used these texts in Greek or in their Hebrew (or Aramaic) originals cannot be answered for sure.³³ The most plausible answer is that we have it to do with a very well-trained author (perhaps with a Jewish scribal background?) who was at home in both the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. But this is not the whole of the story: scholarship of the last decades mainly concentrated on Revelation’s connections to Jewish literature— that does, however, not mean that the author was not a part of the GrecoRoman world of his time. In two recent contributions, Jan Willem van Henten and Michael Sommer have shown that Revelation can be seen as not just part of a “world” of Scriptural allusions, but also as connected to (or combinable with) a bulk of Greco-Roman texts:³⁴ it does not only show parallels to many dif-

 Th. Paulsen, “Sprache,” 24.  See, for example, Th. Hieke, “Der Seher Johannes als neuer Ezechiel. Die Offenbarung des Johannes vom Ezechielbuch her gelesen,” in Das Ezechielbuch in der Johannesoffenbarung, ed. D. Sänger (Neukirchen Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2006), 1 30, and Th. Hieke, “Die literarische und theologische Funktion des Alten Testaments in der Johannesoffenbarung,” in Poetik und In tertextualität der Johannesapokalypse, ed. St. Alkier, Th. Hieke, and T. Nicklas (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 271 90.  Regarding 1 Enoch see, however, the cautious discussion by L. Stuckenbruck and M.D. Math ews, “The Apocalypse of John, 1 Enoch, and the Question of Influence,” in Die Johannesapoka lypse: Kontexte Konzepte Rezeption, ed. J. Frey, J.A. Kelhoffer, and F. Tóth (Tübingen: Mohr Sie beck, 2012), 191 233.  For an overview of the research history see M. Labahn, “Die Septuaginta und die Johanne sapokalypse. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer Verhältnisbestimmung im Spiegel von kreativer Intertextualität und Textentwicklungen,” in Die Johannesapokalypse: Kontexte Konzepte Re zeption, ed. J. Frey, J.A. Kelhoffer, and F. Tóth (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 149 190, esp. 162 167 (plus the authors mentioned in 162n44).  See J.W. van Henten, “The Intertextual Nexus of Revelation and Graeco Roman Literature,” in Poetik und Intertextualität der Johannesapokalypse, ed. St. Alkier, Th. Hieke, and T. Nicklas (Tü bingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 395 422, and M. Sommer, “Die Jesusgeschichte und die Identitäts geschichte der Offenbarung des Johannes,” in The Christ of Sacred Stories, ed. P. Dragutinovic, T. Nicklas, and V. Tatalovic (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 201 219.

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ferent passages from partly very different writings (as the New Wettstein with his many parallels shows), it can (at least in parts) be understood as a prophetic reaction to the rise of the Roman Emperor cult in Asia Minor; its visions seem to play not just with Old Testament images but with aspects of Greco-Roman mythology;³⁵ its form can, besides the usual parallels in Jewish prophetic writings, be compared to Greek and Roman revelatory literature;³⁶ the text seems to react on aspects of Roman propaganda to be reconstructed via numismatic evidence³⁷ and plays with the Parthian title “king of kings” to describe its Christ (Rev 19.16).³⁸ Many more examples could be added. While we can, of course, not be sure whether and in how far the author behind Revelation was aware of the many opportunities of intertextual connections created by his text, it is, however, in any case clear that he cannot just have been a strange, worldly innocent guy, but must have been aware of much of the (not just literary) world wherein the communities he addressed lived. All this means that Revelation is not, as some early mid-20th century authors saw it, a backslide of early Christianity into what they called “late Judaism”, but a highly fascinating writing of an exciting theological profile, a text for which, however, our distinctions in categories like “Christianity” against “Judaism” do not matter in the way we would expect it. The text can be understood as putting together and developing an incredible amount of images of God found in the scriptures of Israel.³⁹ With the use of (partly contradictory) images, titles, its creative rewriting of intertexts, but also its intratextual structure, Revelation develops a very high Christology.⁴⁰ At the same time the text’s ideas of humanity, cre Regarding Rev 12 and the myth of Zeus’ battle with the dragon Typhon see, for example, J.W. Van Henten, “Typhon,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, ed. K. Van der Toorn, B. Becking, and P.W. Van der Horst, 2nd ed (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 879 881 [see also the bibliogra phy!]  See (the cautious overview of) J.W. van Henten, “Intertextual Nexus,” 400 405.  M. Sommer, “Jesusgeschichte” (showing, however, also the difficulties of a too quick ap proach).  For more information about parallels which relate Revelation to the world of Parthian myth ology, society and politics see M. Frenschkowski, “Parthica apocalyptica. Mythologie und Mili tärwesen iranischer Völker in ihrer Rezeption durch die Offenbarung des Johannes,” JbAC 47 (2004): 16 57.  See the different papers given at the December 2015 Halle conference on the image of God in Revelation and the collection of essays in M. Stowasser, ed., Das Gottesbild in der Offenbarung des Johannes (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015).  See, for example, K. Huber, “Jesus Christus der Erste und der Letzte: Zur Christologie der Johannesapokalypse,” in Die Johannesapokalypse: Kontexte Konzepte Rezeption, ed. J. Frey, J.A. Kelhoffer, and F. Tóth (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 435 472, and K. Huber, Einer gleich einem Menschensohn. Die Christusvisionen in Offb 1,9 20 und 14,14 20 und die Christologie der

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ation, and the end of times are not just repeating more or less traditional views but reveal that the author of Revelation must have been a highly creative theologian⁴¹—and certainly a leading figure among the “Christian” movement of his time.

2 The Seer—and his Relation to the Communities As far as I see, the author of Revelation can be labelled an intellectual—but does Revelation tell us about his relation to the communities he addresses? What can be said about his role as an intellectual? Why does he not found a school, write a philosophical tractate, an apologetic writing, a Gospel or apostolic letters like Paul did? It seems that he understood the crisis the communities of Asia Minor had to face during his time as going deeper and more far-ranging than any earlier crisis of the young movement. There must have been times of (local) persecutions already before John wrote down his text (probably around the turn of the first to the second century CE)⁴²—and there must always have been the dangers of division and partition within the young communities (see already 1 Cor 1:10 – 17). For John, however, the present crisis did not just come as a result of political changes or problems within the society wherein he lived, it was a sign of the final struggles in a battle between God and evil powers, a battle which God’s forces had won long ago and forever (see Rev 12.7– 12), but which in his eyes led into a crucial decision, a decision between life and death. In this situation John chose to go a radical way to put his opinion, his solution of the problem on stage. Hereby he also describes his relation to the communities he addresses. I want to discuss

Johannesoffenbarung (Münster: Aschendorff, 2007); for a more narrative approach R.B. Hays, “Faithful Witness, Alpha and Omega: the Identity of Jesus in the Apocalypse of John,” in Reve lation and the Politics of Apocalyptic Interpretation, ed. R.B. Hays and St. Alkier (Waco, TX: Bay lor University Press, 2012), 69 83.  See, for example, T. Nicklas, “Schöpfung und Vollendung in der Offenbarung des Johannes,” in Theologies of Creation in Early Judaism and Ancient Christianity: In Honour of Hans Klein, ed. T. Nicklas and K. Zamfir (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 389 414, and T. Nicklas, “Freiheit oder Prädes tination? Gedanken zum Menschenbild der Johannesapokalypse,” in New Perspoectives on the Book of Revelation, ed. A. Yarbro Collins (Leuven: Peeters, 2017), 205 30.  It seems to be undisputed that the Christ followers of Asia Minor in the times of John did not face systematic persecution like later, for example, in the times of Decius (249 251 CE).

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only a few aspects of his technique—and show that they are not totally unrelated to other early Christian authors’ techniques of authorization:

2.1 Self-description as a Prophet detached from the World:⁴³ First and foremost, John puts himself on stage as a prophet in a conflict against pseudo-prophets. According to Revelation 1.3 and 22.7,10,18 his book contains “words of prophecy”. John describes himself as a servant of God (Rev 1.1; 19.10 and 22.9) and sees himself as part of a bigger group of prophets (Rev 10.7; 11.18). Rev 1.9 – 20 tells the story of John’s vocation as a prophet by Christ who is described in terms of Daniel’s Son of Man and the Ancient of Days.⁴⁴ John does not only have to write letters from heaven (Rev 2– 3), but ascends to the heavenly throne room and there sees more or less what Ezekiel has seen long before (Rev 4).⁴⁵ All this gives him much more the chance to connect his perspective with Christ’s and even God’s (alleged) perspectives than if he claimed to be “just” an apostle or any other member of a Christian community. At the same time he is able to assess his enemies with images of negative figures from the Scriptures of Israel like Balaam (Rev 2.14)⁴⁶ and Izebel (Rev 2.20), whom he labels a pseudo-prophet (2.20), and to associate them with Satan (see, for example, Rev 2.9,13; 3.9). John goes a great risk: His argument would, of course, also be possible as part of a homily or a letter. Revelation’s genre—a mixture of prophetic writing and apocalypse⁴⁷—however, allows him to express it in a much more radical manner. John’s claim, however, is also in danger of not being accepted—his text leaves no choice: one can accept or reject, but certainly not simply ignore its claims or discuss the argument behind them. Although Revelation is the only apocalyptic writing which (on the long term and with many difficulties) finally made it into the New Testament and although —not being part of one of the collections of Gospels, or Epistles—it plays a spe-

 For even more details regarding this point see T. Nicklas, “Anti Urban Sentiments in Early Christianity?,” with the collaboration of Luigi Walt, in Early Christian Encounters with Town and Countryside, ed. M. Tiwald and J. Zangenberg (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, forth coming).  See Huber, Einer gleich einem Menschensohn.  For details see Hieke, “Seher.”  Regarding Rev 2.14 as a part of the negative reception of the Balaam figure see J.W. Van Hent en, “Balaam, in Revelation 2:14,” in The Prestige of the Pagan Prophet Balaam in Judaism, Early Christianity and Islam, ed. G.H. van Kooten and J. van Ruiten (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 247 64.  Regarding the book of Revelation as a prophetic writing see Kowalski, “Prophetie.”

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cial role there,⁴⁸ John’s claim to be a prophet called by a revelation of Christ himself and telling a truth which finds its roots in God’s word is not so far from what other ancient Christian authors did. While one is inclined to look for connections to other apocalyptic writings like the (almost contemporary) Ascension of Isaiah or the Greek/Ethiopic Apocalypse of Peter, I would like to point to a few parallels with Paul. Even if Paul never calls himself a prophet he can describe his apostolate in colors resembling prophetic figures of Israel’s past.⁴⁹ This is probably most clearly visible in Galatians—the letter facing perhaps the deepest crisis between Paul and one of his communities. Gal 1.10 – 24 obviously has to respond to the opponents’ accusations that Paul was not a real “apostle”, but something like a rotten apple, a person with a dark background as persecutor of “God’s ekklesia” (Gal 1.13). In this desperate situation, Paul does not neglect his past failures, but admits them (Gal 1.12– 14) to show how great the change of his life has been. This change of life is described as a “call from God” “who had set me apart from before I was born” (Gal 1.15)—a clear reference to the prophetic calls of Jeremiah and Deutero-Isaiah (Jer 1.5 LXX; Isa 49.1,6 LXX). According to Gal 1.16a this call was connected with an apokalypsis of “his Son in myself” which led Paul to preach the Gospel to the nations (Gal 1.16b), another parallel to both Jeremiah’s and Deutero-Isaiah’s mandates (Jer 1.5 LXX and Isa 49.6 LXX). Although this is not the only point in Paul’s letters where the Pauline idea of his apostleship comes close to images of prophets in the Scriptures of Israel the author of Revelation seems to be more radical than Paul: while Paul never calls himself a prophet, John never depicts himself as an apostle.⁵⁰ Both, however, can use comparable images describing their roles in a world which (in their eyes) seems to have come close to its end. This connection becomes even more meaningful if we look into how Revelation relates itself to Pauline literature. Although the main corpus of John’s Revelation seems not to come close to Pauline ideas and even if parts of the letters to the communities perhaps react against forms of libertinism which could be the heritage of a misunderstood Paul, Revelation’s frame—Rev 1.4 and 22.21—takes

 For more details see the essays collected in T.J. Kraus and M. Sommer, eds., Book of Seven Seals: The Peculiarity of Revelation, its Manuscripts, Attestation, and Transmission (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016).  For more details see K.O. Sandnes, Paul One of the Prophets? A Contribution to the Apostle’s Self Understanding (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1991), and T. Nicklas, “Paulus der Apostel als Prophet,” in Prophets and Prophecy in Jewish and Early Christian Literature, ed. J. Verheyden, K. Zamfir, and T. Nicklas (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 77 104.  This has, of course, nothing to do with the fact that John later was associated with the apos tle John the Zebedee.

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over elements of Pauline letters.⁵¹ If John understands himself as a prophet he does so not only in the heritage of Israel’s prophets, but also in succession to Paul, the apostle, who could describe his role in terms of prophecy. All this can be linked with literary techniques which help to create an image of the Seer who is detached from the world. This is not a contradiction to what we found out about the Seer as a highly educated and learned member of his society. In a situation wherein the influences from “the world” seem to be negative, where “the world” (even as God’s creation) is connected to “Satan” and his demonic powers (see, for example, John’s language of the “kings of the earth” or the “people of the earth”), a rule which will come to an end, it is crucial to describe oneself as detached from this world. This is made possible by different techniques, one of them being that John puts himself never on stage together with other human characters in his text.⁵². Although he describes himself as “your brother John”, we find him on the island of Patmos (while his explicit addressees live in different more or less big cities all over Asia Minor) (Rev 1.9) where he has to stay because of the “word of God” and his “witness for Jesus” (1.9). We do not even hear of any other Christ follower in Patmos—John seems to be alone, but talking to Christ, angels, figures in the heavenly throne room, and even listening to God’s voice. He seems to have no chance to speak personally to the communities in crisis. Instead, his use of the letter form creates the image that he is distanced from them. At the same time the attribute “of the world” is (at least before the text speaks about a “new heaven and a new earth” [Rev 21.1]) continuously used in negative terms—John seems to be not of this world any more.

2.2 Functioning as Christ’s voice and as a Witness of Jesus John’s self-depiction as a prophet writing down a “Jesus Christ-Revelation” (Rev 1.1) makes it possible to describe himself as representation of Christ’s voice. His Epistles to the communities thus do not just want to be letters like the letters written by Paul, James or other important figures—they want to be a written representation of the risen Christ’s view of the communities in this world and their situation. In other words, John stages his view of the situation not just as an ar See, M. Karrer, Johannesoffenbarung als Brief.  This does, of course, not mean that he relates himself to the community in many ways. For examples see T. Nicklas, “Gott und Identität: Das Gottesbild der Johannesoffenbarung und ihre Identitätskonstruktion,” in Der Gott der Apokalypse, ed. M. Sommer (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, forthcoming).

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gument beside other arguments—by putting it into Christ’s mouth, it wants to be accepted as the only and decisive argument alongside which nothing else counts. At the same time John describes his main role as “giving witness (ἐμαρτύρησεν) to the word of God and the witness (τὴν μαρτυρίαν) of Jesus Christ” (Rev 1.2). Only a bit later, his obviously unvoluntary stay in Patmos is connected with his “witness for Jesus” (μαρτυρία Ἰησοῦ; Rev 1.9). As such John understands himself not just as an intermediator between God’s word and the readers of his text. The words μαρτυρία and μάρτυς are key terms in John’s concept of being a follower of Jesus in the times of θλῖψις, John’s use of the term creates a chain of connections between Jesus and the believers—with John as a decisive link in between. According to Revelation, being a believer means to hold on the “witness for/of Jesus” (μαρτυρία Ἰησοῦ; 12.17; 19.10), a statement that has two coins: Both Jesus Christ is understood as the “true witness” (Rev 1.5; 3,14; cf. 19.11) and it is necessary to keep his witness. By keeping this witness a believer becomes a witness him/herself—like, for example, Antipas (2.13: ὁ μάρτυς μου ὁ πίστος μου). The concrete case of Antipas, in turn reminds that being a witness and giving witness to Jesus is dangerous and can lead to death (Rev 6.11; 12.11; 17.6; 18.24), a death which, however, will be overcome in the first Resurrection (Rev 20.4). As the one who gives witness about the word of God and the Jesus witness itself (Rev 1.2) John creates himself as a decisive link in a chain between Jesus’ witness and the believers. Even more, as one who is in Patmos because of (obviously) his witness of Jesus, he creates himself into an example of giving witness in a time of θλῖψις (Rev 1.9). There is even one more point wherein John (at least) indirectly emphasizes his special role: Rev 19.10b gives a quite surprising explanation (or even definition) of the words μαρτυρία Ἰησοῦ: ἡ γὰρ μαρτυρία Ιησοῦ ἐστιν τὸ πνεῦμα τῆς προφητείας. With these words the spirit of prophecy does not only give witness to Jesus: Jesus’ witness and anybody’s witness for Jesus are the spirit of prophecy. If John stages himself as a prophet and his book as “words of prophecy” everything he does is μαρτυρία Ἰησοῦ. Again, John’s claim is radical—it can, however, be connected with a problem faced by many communities of Christ followers: how is it possible to follow Christ if he can no longer be seen? How is it possible to hear his advice in difficult, perhaps even life-threatening situations? In how far is the community still connected to Christ—even before Parousia? Early Christian authors have developed different strategies to cope with these problems—and it is certainly not possible to discuss all of them here. While the community of Mark seems to suffer

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because of Jesus’ absence,⁵³ Matthew highlights that Christ is “among you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt 28.20). At the same time Luke and John emphasize the role of the Spirit or Paraclete in the communities and the author of 2 Thessalonians stresses his “faithful is the Lord” (2 Thess 3.3)—even now when he is still hidden. While the images of Revelation 1.20 show the heavenly Son of Man’s ongoing relation to the communities, the idea that a human figure—here the prophet—is a kind of a representative of and intermediator to Christ in the communities is not totally unparalleled in other Christian writings. One could mention Paul’s idea that his suffering which is visible in his body (2 Cor 6.1– 10; 11.21– 33) brings him—the apostle—closer to Christ; one could also point to his invitation to the Philippians to become συμμιμηταί μου (Phil 3.17), a phrase which is difficult to translate but probably wants to say that the Philippians should imitate Paul who imitates Christ in his life.⁵⁴ I would, however, like to have a closer look into a group of later writings which are (at least in part) directed to the same audience (perhaps even contemporary to Revelation): the (middle recension of the) Epistles of Ignatius of Antioch. I do not want to enter into the current discussion about these texts’ authenticity as this is not decisive for my argument.⁵⁵ Whatever we decide, Ignatius’ letters are not only concerned with the problem of the absence of his authority in Antioch (and his role for the churches he addresses), but also with the role of the episkopos in communities living long after Christ’s death.⁵⁶ Even if Ignatius writes as a bishop, at least some patterns of his argument are surprisingly close to John’s claims. While we would usually call a prophet more radical than a bishop, my impression is that Ignatius’ claims go even further than John’s. First Ignatius sees himself not just as a bishop—as a future martyr he is on his way to become a real “disciple” (Eph. 1.2; Rom. 4.2; 5.1,3), a “freedman of Jesus Christ” (Rom. 4.3), “an imitator of the suffering of my God” (Rom. 6.3) and “bound in Jesus Christ” (Phil. 5.1) whose own bodily suffering can be seen as a representation of the re-

 This is the main thesis of D. S. du Toit, Der abwesende Herr: Strategien im Markusevangelium zur Bewältigung der Abwesenheit des Auferstandenen (Neukirchen Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2006).  Regarding the idea of Mimesis in Paul’s Letter to the Philippians see P. Wick, “‘Ahmt Jesus Christus zusammen mit mir nach!’ (Phil 3,17). Imitatio Pauli und imitation Christi im Philipper brief,” in Der Philipperbrief des Paulus in der hellenistisch römischen Welt, ed. J. Frey and B. Schliesser (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 309 326.  The fullest argument against the authenticity of Ignatius’ Letters goes back to T. Lechner, Ig natius adversus Valentinianos? Chronologische und theologiegeschichtliche Studien zu den Briefen des Ignatius (Leiden: Brill, 1999).  Regarding the role of Ignatius in the development of early Christian offices see, for example, J. Wagner, Die Anfänge des Amtes in der Kirche. Presbyter und Episkopen in der frühchristlichen Literatur (Tübingen: Francke, 2011), 243 66.

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ality of Christ’s passion (Trall. 10; Smyrn. 4.2; see also 5.1). At the same time, for Ignatius, not just the concrete prophet who received a special vocation by God and/or Christ is a representation of Christ, but, much more, the “visible bishop” is a representation of the “invisible bishop”, that is, God (Eph. 3.1– 2); as “a model of the Father” (ὄντα τύπον τοῦ πατρός; Trall. 3.1) he presides the congregation “in the place of God” (Magn. 6.1) and the community should “be subject to the bishop … as Jesus Christ in the flesh was to the Father” (Magn. 13.2).⁵⁷ He is an “imitator of God” (while the community imitates Christ) (Phil. 7.2) can express his hope that, as long the church of Syria does not have a bishop, God himself will be “its shepherd in my place” and “Jesus Christ alone will be its bishop” (Rom. 9.1). For a real Christian “it is good to acknowledge God and the bishop. The one who honors the bishop has been honored by God; the one who does anything without the bishop’s knowledge serves the devil” (Smyrn. 9.1). And if he, finally, can call his own “loud voice” as speaking with “God’s voice” (θεοῦ φωνῇ) saying: “Pay attention to the bishop” (Phil. 7.1), this seems to go even further than John’s claim that the “words of the prophecy” of his own book find their roots in God’s Logos (Rev 1.1). All this is, of course, not exactly the same what we find in Revelation, but it makes clear that John’s claim to authority as representing Christ’s voice (which is going back to the word of God) is not as extraordinary as we would perhaps think at first sight. John’s voice is part of a bigger whole—he risks a lot, but finally, seems to have been at least as successful as a figure like Ignatius.

3 Conclusion Although it was not possible to give more than a little overview and draw a few lines, it seems to become clear that it is well possible to describe the author of Revelation as an early “Christian” intellectual. This is revealed by his fascinating, well-structured text, the language and style of which does not point to a person whose knowledge of Greek is just superficial, but to an extremely creative writer going to the limits of language (and partly beyond) to express what he wants to express. It points to an author who is not just at home in the scriptures of Israel, but is able to create a text which remains an original piece of work which at the same time can be seen as a tapestry of allusions and echoes. This author is not only aware of dangerous social and political changes, he

 Translations of Ignatius’ Epistles are adapted from M.W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers in English, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2006).

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seems to have at least some knowledge of important pieces of Greco-Roman literature. His work is thus not just an answer to a crisis, but the piece of a great theologian who gives a new synthesis of traditions, images and ideas about Israel’s God which integrates the Christ event without abandoning Israel’s heritage. There is, however, one point which makes it difficult to understand John as an “intellectual.” Even if he must have been well-educated and able to write an outstanding piece of literature, and even if he took a critical stance towards situations and developments in the world he lived, the form of his writing reveals that he was not interested in intellectual discourse. This may have to do with the crisis he faced: In a situation wherein he has to analyze critically the situation of the communities he addresses (and the society in which they live), he describes himself as detached from this world—and thus being able to offer an outsider’s perspective. At the same time his broad knowledge reveals that he is at least not what we would call a naïve “outsider.” In a conflict against (at least) one prophetic figure he attires himself as a prophet called by the heavenly Son of Man himself and writing letters in the name of Christ. Does this mean that he also faced a personal crisis of authority? At least in many cases apocalyptic writings seem not to go back to marginalized outsiders, but to disappointed members of former elites. Even if we should not speculate too much this is also possible for the seer of Revelation who strengthens his position by defining his role as representing Christ’s voice and who is the decisive martyr / witness. John describes himself as a witness and expects that everybody who follows Christ is a witness like him, a witness for Christ and at the same time a witness like Christ. Even if other ancient Christian authors used different forms of communication and different genres to deal with comparable situations, it, finally, became clear that John’s techniques of creating authority as a prophet, as Christ’s voice and representative of his will are not so far from what an apostle like Paul or even a bishop like Ignatius did. John’s text and his claims seem stranger to us than Paul or Ignatius—but neither Paul nor Ignatius seem to have been more “tolerant” or interested in open intellectual discourse than John.

Stephen C. Carlson

Papias’s Appeal to the “Living and Lasting Voice” over Books 1 Introduction If book-learning is the mark of an intellectual, then it may be unsettling to learn that the earliest commentator of the Jesus tradition in five volumes no less, Papias of Hierapolis, claimed that what comes from books is not as beneficial to him as what comes from a “living and lasting voice.” His seemingly anti-intellectual attitude has attracted considerable attention,¹ and even condemnation,² from scholars and theologians. Yet attitudes toward the written word were complex in Greco-Roman antiquity, even among the most educated. In line with scholars such as Heinrich Karpp,³ Loveday Alexander,⁴ and Jaap Mansfeld,⁵ I

 E. g., Winrich A. Löhr, “Kanongeschichtliche Beobachtungen zum Verhältnis von mündlicher und schriftlicher Tradition im zweiten Jahrhundert,” ZNTW 85 (1994): 234 258; Armin David Baum, “Papias, der Vorzug der viva vox und die Evangelienschriften,” NTS 44 (1998): 144 151; Richard Bauckham, “The Eyewitnesses and the Gospel Traditions,” JSHJ 1 (2003): 28 60; Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008).  E. g., E. F. Osborn, “Teaching and Writing in the First Chapter of the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria,” JThS 10 (1959): 335 343 at 335, calling Papias’s attitude a “prejudice against writ ing”; Marcus Bockmuehl, Simon Peter in Scripture and Memory (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2012), 14, for his “somewhat naïve and uncritical affirmation of this ‘living voice’ over against written documents”; and Karl Barth, The Doctrine of the Word of God, Church Dogmatics 1.1, trans. G. T. Thomson (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1936), 118 for a turn away from the apostolic scriptures.  Heinrich Karpp, “Viva vox,” in Mullus: Festschrift Theodor Klauser, ed. Alfred Stuiber and Alfred Hermann (Münster: Aschendorff, 1964), 190 198.  Loveday Alexander, “The Living Voice: Scepticism towards the Written Word in Early Christian and in Graeco Roman Texts,” in The Bible in Three Dimensions: Essays in Celebration of Forty Years of Biblical Studies in the University of Sheffield, ed. David J. A. Clines, Stephen E. Fowl, and Stanley E. Porter (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990), 221 247. P. J. J. Botha, “Living Voice and Life less Letters: Reserve Towards Writing in the Graeco Roman World,” HvTSt 49 (1993): 742 759, covers the same basic ground and even copies some of the wording of Alexander, “Living Voice,” though without attribution or original insight.  Jaap Mansfeld, Prolegomena: Questions to be Settled Before the Study of an Author, or a Text (Leiden: Brill, 1994); Jaap Mansfeld, “Papias over traditie,” NedTT 49 (1995): 140 153; and Jaap Mansfeld, “Galen, Papias, and Others on Teaching and Being Taught,” in Things Revealed: Studies in Early Jewish and Christian Literature in Honor of Michael E. Stone, ed. Esther G. Chazon, David Satran, and Ruth Clements (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 317 329. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110608632 005

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hold that the best way to make sense of Papias’s statement is to look at how the notion of the “living voice” functioned in antiquity. All of these scholars—and the considerable primary sources they cite—understand the “living voice” to refer to personal, oral instruction from a teacher, which was regarded as superior to mere book learning, and they hold that Papias extended the “living voice” concept to cover oral tradition. My position is somewhat more nuanced: the “living voice” in Papias retains its conventional meaning as direct, personal, oral instruction, and that it is his augmentation of the phrase with “lasting” that enables Papias to broaden its application to oral tradition, both direct and indirect, via respected teachers.

2 Greco-Roman Pagans on Writing In the modern world we take the benefits of literacy and written media for granted. In antiquity, however, literacy was much less widespread and attitudes toward the written word, even among educated elites, were more guarded. As the following survey will show, the term “living voice,” either in Greek as ζῶσα φωνή or in Latin as viva vox,⁶ is proverbially used in situations when oral instruction is felt to have an advantage over learning from written texts. A classical antecedent for this expression is Plato’s turn of phrase in Phaedrus 61, “the living and breathing word” (276a τὸν … λόγον … ζῶντα καὶ ἔμψυχον).⁷ In fact, Plato’s discussion of the value of writing in his dialogue is of seminal importance in antiquity. In Plato’s Phaedrus 59, Socrates tells the story of the invention of writing in Egypt by Theuth (274c–275b). According to this story, when Theuth came to present his invention to Thamus the king, he argued that writing “will make the Egyptians wiser and improve their memories” (LCL 36:563). The king responded with the opposite argument that writing “will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practise their memory” (LCL 36:563). A little later, in Phaedrus 60 (275d), Socrates condemns the ignorant if they think “written words are of any use except to remind him who knows the matter about which they are written.” This statement is justified by an analogy to painting, in which the models are alive but the painted figures are mute. Similarly, writing can only tell what has been written, nothing more (275d-e). Moreover, the written word cannot defend itself against those  The Latin term viva vox in proverbial expressions has been collected but not analyzed by A. Otto, Die Sprichwörter und sprichwörtlichen Redensarten der Römer (Leipzig: Teubner, 1890), 378.  Karpp, “Viva Vox,” 190, cites Passow’s lexicon to the effect that the classical term is ἀπὸ γλώσσης.

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who misunderstand or misuse it (275e).⁸ Thus, the written word is subordinate, as the mere image of the teacher’s “living and breathing word.”⁹ Nevertheless, Plato’s formulation remained relatively unexploited in ancient literature.¹⁰ Polybius has a passage in Book 12 of Histories that may be compared with Papias. In specific, Polybius criticizes another historian Timaeus for thinking himself qualified to write a history based solely on the works of his predecessors (25d.1). Polybius thinks this is a “great mistake,” analogizing history to medicine, particularly the professors of medicine in Alexandria, who only have book learning. These are just as incapable of treating a patient as a doctor who had never read anything all. These professors, says Polybius, “are just like pilots who steer by the book” (εἰσὶ γὰρ ἀληθῶς ὅμοιοι τοῖς ἐκ βυβλίου κυβερνῶσιν 25d.6).¹¹ Later, Polybius faults Timaeus for preferring the easier but inferior road to knowledge by relying on his eyes in the reading of books, rather than the difficult approach of interrogating witnesses (τὰς ἀνακρίσεις) and learning through the ears (27.1– 3).¹² The earliest actual attestation of the phrase ζῶσα φωνή I can find is Cicero,¹³ yet in such a way that indicates that the Greek phrase was already an established term. In letter 2.12.2, Cicero tells Atticus of a chance meeting with a young ac This does not seem to be a concern of Papias, though it is of Clement, Stromata 1.14.4. On the latter’s engagement with Plato on this point, see Denise Kimber Buell, Making Christians: Clem ent of Alexandria and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 70 78.  Phaedrus 276a: Τὸν τοῦ εἰδότος λόγον λέγεις ζῶντα καὶ ἔμψυχον, οὗ ὁ γεγραμμένος εἴδωλον ἄν τι λέγοιτο δικαίως. (Phaedrus: “You mean the living and breathing word of him who knows, of which the written word may justly be called the image.” LCL 36:567). So also Karpp, “Viva Vox,” 191 192; Alexander, “Living Voice,” 239; Baum, “Papias,” 145 146.  One allusion is Alcidamas, Against the Sophists, frag. 1, lines 172 173 λόγος … ἔμψυχός ἐστι καὶ ζῇ (ed. Guido Avezzù, Alcidamante: Orazioni e frammenti [Rome: Bretschneider, 1982]: 8 62 at 18). The New Testament notion of the “living word of God” seems to involve a different, life giving sense. See Acts 7:38 ὃς ἐδέξατο λόγια ζῶντα δοῦναι ἡμῖν; Heb 4:12 Ζῶν γὰρ ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ; 1 Pet 1:23 διὰ λόγου ζῶντος θεοῦ καὶ μένοντος. So also Karpp, “Viva Vox,” 196.  For more about this expression, see generally Boris Dunsch, “ἐκ βιβλίου κυβερνᾶν? Ein Topos in antiker Medizin, Philosophie und Historiographie und die Existenz verschrifteter κυβερνητικαὶ τέχναι,” AKAN 26 (2016): 67 96.  A similar recommendation is made by Plutarch, Demosthenes 2.1, to supplement what can be learned from books, even from well stocked libraries, by hearsay and inquiry (ὑπολαμβάνων ἀκοῇ καὶ διαπυνθανόμενος). So also Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 1.2, detailing the author’s use of both oral (τὰ δὲ ἐξ ὧν εἶπον ἕτεροι περὶ αὐτοῦ) and written (τὰ δὲ ἐκ τῶν έκείνου ἐπιστο λῶν) sources.  So also Karpp, “Viva Vox,” 190 n.2 and 192 3. There is a Latin instance of the phrase in De lege agraria 2.4 (sed vocem vivam prae vobis indicem vestrarum erga me voluntatum ac studiorum tulistis), but Karpp, “Viva Vox,” 192, properly calls it a false reading (“einer falschen Lesart”).

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quaintance Curio at which he learned about the tribuneship for Publius. When Cicero read a letter of Atticus he received on the same day, he learned much more about the candidacy of Publius from the letter. With some irony then, Cicero invokes the “living voice”: ubi sunt qui aiunt ζώσης φωνῆς? quanto magis vidi ex tuis litteris quam ex illius sermone quid ageretur (“Where are those who speak of the ‘living voice’? I saw much more of what was happening from your letters than from his talk!”). Cicero’s remark achieves its poignancy because it subverts the common expectation of getting a fuller picture from an oral report than from a letter, and he goes on to reaffirm the trope he just subverted by expressing his preference for an oral rather than written report from Atticus of a symposium: sed tamen facile patior te id ad me συμπόσιον non scribere; praesentem audire malo (“but nevertheless I am content with you not writing me about the symposium; I would rather hear in person”). In both cases, Cicero’s use of the expression “living voice’ presupposes the popular preference for orality in antiquity. Seneca has two instances of the Latin phrase viva vox in his moral letters to Licilius (6.5, 33.9). In Epistle 6, Seneca promises to send Licilius his philosophical books, already marked up with the most important passages. He goes on to warn his reader that “both the living voice (viva vox) and the living intimacy (convictus) are more beneficial for you than the lecture (oratio),” giving the example of Cleanthes who lived day-to-day with Zeno. In Epistle 33, Seneca writes on the futility of merely memorizing maxims. He argues that one should put them into practice, pointing that it is not enough to continue hearing about them, even despite the saying that “the living voice accomplishes much” (multum inquit viva vox facit).¹⁴ In both examples, Seneca presumes the superiority of oral instruction from a philosopher over his written material, but also in both cases commends the inculcation of this teaching through lived experience.¹⁵ Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 14.2.1, invokes the proverbial living voice as he recounted how he went about learning to be a judge. Being young, he admitted that he lacked the living voice but he sought to compensate for it by reading the books of the “mute masters”: quoniam “vocis,” ut dicitur, “vivae” penuria

 Attested also in Pliny, Letters 2.3: multo magis, ut vulgo dicitur, viva vox adficit (“the living voice, as people say, accomplishes much more”); and Quintilian, Inst. Orat. 2.2.8 tamen viva illa, ut dicitur, vox alit plenius (“yet the living voice, it is said, nourishes more”). See Karpp, “Viva Vox,” 192 3, as including both the speaker’s speaking and mannerisms; Alexander, “Liv ing Voice,” 227, as emphasizing live performance; Mansfeld, Prolegomena, 125 n.220; Baum, “Pa pias,” 145.  Cf. Karpp, “Viva Vox,” 192; Alexander, “Living Voice,” 232; Mansfeld, Prolegomena, 123 (re Letter 6); “Papias,” 142 n.12.

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erat, ex “mutis,” quod aiunt, “magistris” cognoscerem. ¹⁶ In the end, however, Gellius found the books to be of no use for the real cases that came up (14.2.2). An anonymous geographer of the first or second centuries used the phrase to mean “orally”: ὡς ἂν ἐπὶ μνήμης ἔχῃς, ὦ Φίλων ἄριστε, ὅσα καὶ διὰ ζώσης φωνῆς παρ’ ἡμῶν ἀκήκοας (“so that you may have a reminder, O most good Philo, of whatever you have heard from us also by a living voice”).¹⁷ Here the reminder (scil. the epitome itself) preserves the teaching conveyed by direct telling.¹⁸ Galen’s purpose in writing On the Powers of Foods is set forth at the very beginning of his introductory chapter (1.1).¹⁹ He says that many physicians have written about the powers of foods and that it would be unnecessary to write if they all were in agreement. But they were not, and he has to step in and clear the air. Galen favors a rigorous empirical approach, but he is cognizant that a properly comprehensive treatment will end up becoming very long (εἰ καὶ μακρότερος ὁ λόγος ἔσεσθαι). Yet if Galen provides a summary, it will only be beneficial to those who are already seasoned practitioners. In this context, Galen cites approvingly the trope that the living voice is better than books and combines it with another about navigating from a book:²⁰ “This is why I think that the majority are correct who say (καλῶς οἱ πολλοὶ λέγειν) that the best in-

 See also Karpp, “Viva Vox,” 193; Mansfeld, “Papias,” 142 n.10; “Galen,” 320.  K. Müller, Geographi Graeci minores 2 (1861; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1965), 488; cf. S. F. Wil helm Hoffmann, Arriani Periplus Ponti Euxini … (Leipzig: Fritzsch, 1842), 328, attributing the text to a certain Agathemerus. For what little is known of Agathemerus of Orthon, who wrote “prob ably in the first or second century,” see Aubrey Diller, “Agathemerus, Sketch of Geography,” GRBS 16 (1975): 59 76. Karpp, “Viva Vox,” 190 suggests that this may well be the oldest evidence of the phrase among Greek writers (with due allowance for the earlier Cicero). Alexander, “Liv ing Voice,” 234, however, follows a third century dating.  Alexander, “Living Voice,” 234. Similarly, Löhr, “Kanongeschichtliche Beobachtungen,” 234 suggests that Matt 28:20 has itself in view as the teaching of Jesus written down. Karpp, “Viva Vox,” 91 n.4 suggests that that the use of φωνή alone (i.e., without ζῶσα) would have permitted hearsay and is thus excluded by this example, even though the conceptual originality of what is personally conveyed may be considerably reduced.  Text edited by G. Helmreich, Galeni de alimentorum facultatibus libri iii, CMG 5.4.2 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1923): 201 386 (Kühn 6:454 ). Discussed by Mansfeld, Prolegomena, 125 n.220; “Pa pias,” 140 141; “Galen,” 318.  The expression about navigation from a book seems to be a favorite of Galen’s. It also ap pears in De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis ac facultatibus (Kühn 11:797), De compo sitione medicamentorum per genera (Kühn 13:605), and De libris propriis (Kühn 19:33). Alexander, “Living Voice,” 228 cites the first and third of these as examples of skilled craftsmen’s disdain of book learning but does not otherwise comment on the expression. Polybius is the only other one in TLG to use the expression, but Galen’s signal κατὰ τὴν παροιμίαν in De libris propriis indicates that its proverbial character is well established.

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struction is through personal contact (διδασκαλίαν τὴν παρὰ τῆς ζώσης φωνῆς γιγνομένην), and that it is impossible for anyone to become either a helmsman or an expert in any other craft from a book (ἐκ βιβλίου).”²¹ He explains that such books “are reminders (ὑπομνήματα) for those who have previously studied and understood, not complete instruction for the ignorant.”²² Nevertheless, Galen does commend his own detailed work to the self-instructed if they carefully study and reread it many times.²³ Similarly, at the beginning of his ninth book of On the Composition of Drugs According to Places,²⁴ Galen acknowledges the general truth of the maxim said by most technicians that learning by the living voice (παρὰ ζώσης φωνῆς μαθεῖν) is not the same as or like reading from a textbook.²⁵ Nevertheless, Galen goes on in the next sentence to qualify the maxim by stating that those who work hard and are smart by nature can often benefit (ἡ τυχοῦσα πολλάκις ὠφέλεια γίνεται) from clearly written books (βιβλίοις ἐντυγχάνουσι σαφῶς γεγραμμένοις).²⁶ The implication is that unclearly written books (by others) may well need the living voice to understand.²⁷ In On Phlebotomy 5, Galen discusses whether Erasistratus had recommended bloodletting for various ills, as do the contemporaneous Erasistrateans who claimed to follow the teaching of this physician from the third-century BCE. Galen makes the point that phlebotomy is not to be found recommended as a remedy in his books, and he goes on to argue the counterfactual that “even if no book of Erasistratus’ had survived, … I would rather trust his disciples when they spoke of their master than people who had never seen Erasistratus  Translation from Owen Powell, ed., Galen, On the Properties of Foodstuffs: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 39; cf. Mark Grant, Galen on Food and Diet (London: Routledge, 2000), 78: “For this reason I believe that most people are right in saying that the best teaching comes about through direct communica tion, because it is not possible to see a captain of a ship or a practitioner of another skill emerge from a book.”  Powell, Galen, 39; cf. Grant, Galen, 78; Helmreich, Galeni, 216 (Kühn 6:480).  Ibid. Cf. Galen, De ordine librorum 2 (Kühn 19:53), recommending a course of reading his books for those who are “naturally intelligent and friends of truth” (καὶ φύσει συνετοὶ καὶ ἀλη θείας ἑταῖροι). Mansfeld, Prolegomena, 123, also citing On the Best Sect and On Proof, consider Galen’s attitude “all the more remarkable” in light of the conventional attitude for the living voice.  Kühn 12:894.  Alexander, “Living Voice,” 224 225; Mansfeld, Prolegomena, 125 n.220; “Papias,” 141; “Galen,” 319.  Alexander, “Living Voice,” 230: “The proverb is thus quoted only that it may be rejected.”  This suggests to me that Papias may regard the gospels as not so clearly written and in need of exegesis.

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himself, nor a disciple of his, or of any of his fellow-students, or of those who had been their associates. Yet after so many ages they boldly pronounce on things that they have never seen, nor heard from anyone who had seen, nor read … .”²⁸ Galen’s argument is that his opponents are far removed from Erasistratus, not only from the books of the master but from his immediate disciples as well. Contrary to certain scholars who read Galen as favoring oral tradition,²⁹ I suggest instead that this shows the importance for Galen of the proximity of the tradent to the teaching. After all, Galen’s criticisms are of contemporary Erasistrateans, who diverge from the teaching of Erasistratus’ book and from the next generation of students after Erasistratus. Given the time depth of the traditions, these direct disciples’ views are accessible in writing as well. An extended oral tradition is not at play here, and even if it was Galen’s point is that contemporary Erasistrateans misrepresent their master as known from his book and those of this disciples. A comment on Homer (Δ 434) attributed to Porphyry gives a definition of the “living voice”: “as too in ordinary language [people] are accustomed to say that they have heard ‘from a living voice’ (παρὰ ζώσης φωνῆς) and that they heard neither through written words (μήτε διὰ γραπτῶν λόγων) nor from one man telling things that [he heard] from another (μήτε τὰ παρ’ ἄλλου ἄλλου διηγουμένου).”³⁰ Thus, this understanding of the notion excludes mediation through writing or hearsay.³¹

3 Jews and Christians on Writing Among Jews and Christians, writing takes on a particular saliency due to the fact that the sacred scriptures of their religious traditions record in writing the laws,

 Peter Brain, trans., Galen on Bloodletting: A Study of the Origins, Development and Validity of his Opinions, with a Translation of the Three Works (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 54. Cf. Kühn 11:221.  So Alexander, “Living Voice,” 233; Mansfeld, Prolegomena, 124 n.219; “Papias,” 149. The view of Mansfeld, “Galen,” 321 322, that “Galen does not speak here of a tradition which would con tain information not to be found in the books” is out of place with the idea that the oral instruc tion is more complete than the written.  John A. MacPhail, Jr., Porphyry’s Homeric Questions on the Iliad: Text, Translation, Commen tary (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 87.  Also discussed by Karpp, “Viva Vox,” 191; Mansfeld, Prolegomena, 125 n.220; “Galen,” 320.

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prophecies, and commandments relating to God.³² Nevertheless, their attitude to the written word is complex, recognizing its inherent limitations. The Letter of Aristeas 127 states that when Eleazar dispatched the translators to Alexandria, he explained that “living well consists of keeping the laws, and this is accomplished by hearing much more than by reading (διὰ τῆς ἀκροάσεως πολλῷ μᾶλλον ἢ διὰ τῆς ἀναγνώσεως).”³³ The contrast between hearing and reading here is curious, because these terms are usually not contrasted but conjoined as if mutually reinforcing,³⁴ and the term reading is employed positively elsewhere in the text.³⁵ Perhaps the hearing refers instead to obeying, rather than to a different method of learning.³⁶ The translators are eminently qualified because not only hear the Law but they obey it (cf. Jas 1:25). As such, this does not appear to be a good parallel with Papias. Philo’s Life of Moses begins with a brief prologue arguing for the necessity of a treatise of the greatest Jewish lawgiver, saying that too many historians knew too little about him or, if they did know about him, were too envious and failed to mention him at all. For this reason, Philo writes his treatise and commends his own expertise to be so accurate on the life of Moses (τὰ περὶ τὸν βίον ἀκριβῶσαι) from his reading of the sacred books of Moses (κάκ βίβλων τῶν ἱερῶν) and from this hearing about him from the elders of the people (καὶ παρά τινων ἀπὸ τοῦ ἔθνους πρεσβυτέρων). From a historiographical standpoint, it is difficult to know quite what to make of Philo’s claim of obtaining some material about the life of Moses from oral sources, for surely Philo’s contemporaries must be at an even further remove from the historical Moses than the Pentateuch by several centuries. Nevertheless, Philo perceives the advantage of making the claim  See generally Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), esp. pp. 1 16.  Benjamin G. Wright III, trans., The Letter of Aristeas: ‘Aristeas to Philocrates’ or ‘On the Trans lation of the Law of the Jews (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 236.  Philo, Quis rerum divinarum heres sit 253 ἡ ἀνάγνωσις, ἡ ἀκρόασις; Plutarch, Quomodo ado lescens poetas audire debeat 14 f, ἐν ταῖς ἀκροάσεσιν καὶ ἀναγνώσεσιν (contrasted with ἐν ταῖς περὶ ἐδωδὴν καὶ πόσιν ἡδοναῖς); Theon, Progymnasmata 65 τῇ δὲ ἀναγνώσει καὶ τῇ ἀκροάσει καὶ τῇ παραφράσει; John Chrysostom, In Genesim, PG 53:90 καὶ δι’ άναγνώσεως, καὶ δι’ ἀκρόσεως, καὶ διαλέξεως πνευματικῆς; ψChrysostom, In Psalmum, PG 55:676 Καὶ γὰρ διὰ τῆς ἀναγνώσεως καὶ διὰ τῆς ἀκροάσεως τῶν θείων Γραφῶν.  Aristeas 283 and 305; Wright, Aristeas, 242.  Cf. Wright, Aristeas, 242, referring to the translation of Hadas for hearing as hearkening. Wright, however, prefers to see this as an anticipation of §§ 305 and 308, where the scholars will read the word aloud and then the Jewish community will assent to what they have heard. Wright also cites Dries de Crom to the effect that reading and hearing are two modes of access to the authoritative text, respectively directly and indirectly. Neither suggestion how ever fits the context of commending the translators.

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that the study of the books of Moses—notwithstanding their sacred status that Philo in no way denigrates—are somehow not enough, according to contemporary standards, to present the full picture. One possibility is that the teaching of the elders refers mainly to the authoritative interpretation of Moses’s law in the second book.³⁷ At any rate, this claim offers Philo at least a rhetorical advantage over Greco-Roman historians who do not have access to this source of tradition. And it represents a development of Polybius’s commendation of interrogating witnesses in the writing of history: for Philo, the eyewitnesses of Moses are long dead, but there is something still to be learned from his followers. Mark 13:14 and Matt 24:15 insert the aside “let the reader understand” (ὁ ἀναγινώσκων νοείτω) in connection with Jesus’s prediction of the abomination of desolation.³⁸ This recognizes that texts can be unclear and require interpretation. Luke’s prologue recognizes two sources of information for his life of Jesus: a written account drawn up of the events fulfilled among Christians (1:1 ἀνατάξασθαι διήγησιν περὶ τῶν πεπληροφορημένων ἐν ἡμῖν πραγμάτων) and oral instruction from eye-witnesses and ministers of the word (1:2 παρέδοσαν ἡμῖν οἱ ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς αὐτόπται καὶ ὑπηρέται γενόμενοι τοῦ λόγου).³⁹ Luke’s is not explicitly derogatory about the written sources, though some possible sense of deficiency can be felt in his term ἐπεχείρησαν (“endeavored”). At any rate, it seemed good to Luke to also write about Jesus, having followed everything from the beginning. Luke’s sources are now known to the Mark and either Q or Matthew, depending on one’s solution to the Synoptic Problem, and his Gospel includes a substantial amount of additional material not found in either source. The Gospel of John refers to its purpose in writing three times. In John 19:35, it contains the testimony of the Beloved Disciple, written so that its readers would believe too. This is reiterated in John 20:31, but the previous verse acknowledges that “there are many other signs that Jesus did before his disciples, which are not written in this book” (v.30 πολλὰ μὲν οὖν καὶ ἄλλα σημεῖα ἐποίησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἔνώπιον τῶν μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ, ἃ οὐκ ἔστιν γεγραμμένα ἐν τῷ βιβλίῳ τούτῳ).⁴⁰ Finally, John 21:25 famously ends with the statement that “the world

 Cf. Spec. 1.8 regarding circumcision: “These considerations have come to our ears, having been discussed of old among men of divine spirit and wisdom, who have interpreted the writings of Moses in no superficial or careless manner.” See also Mansfeld, “Papias,” 144 n.17 and 147 n.28.  See Löhr, “Kanongeschichtliche Beobachtungen,” 234.  So also Löhr, “Kanongeschichtliche Beobachtungen,” 234 5, also suggesting that Matt 2:20 may have itself in view as a written deposit of Jesus’s teaching.  Löhr, “Kanongeschichtliche Beobachtungen,” 235 n.3 compares this to the statement that the risen Jesus did many convincing profs in Acts 1:2 3, none of which are set forth.

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itself could not contain the books written” about what Jesus did.⁴¹ These statements express an explicit acknowledgement that the material contained within the Fourth Gospel is necessarily limited in extent.⁴² This gospel, and presumably any gospel, is unable to convey all of what Jesus did and taught. As for Paul, he was concerned about the difference, at least in tone, between his letters and his speech. At 2 Cor 10:10 he acknowledges the criticism of his opponents that “his letters are weighty and powerful, but his bodily presence is work and his speech contemptible” (cf. v.1 contrasting his meekness when present with his boldness when absent), but Paul assures the Corinthians that there is no difference between what he says in his letters and what he does in their presence (v.11). Even in a case where the written word comes across as more powerful than the living voice, as we have here, this is not viewed positively, and Paul’s response is to reaffirm the primacy of the personal interaction over the impersonal letters.⁴³ Second Peter 3:16 illustrates another problem with Christian writings. Here, the writer admits that Paul’s letters contain things hard to understand, and that some people even twist their meaning “to their own destruction.”⁴⁴ Thus, writing per se is not self-evident, particularly about important theological issues; it needs interpretation. Second and Third John both close their letters with a statement that the writer has a lot of things to tell the recipient but would prefer to do so face-to-face rather than by letter (2 John 12, 3 John 14). As in the Johannine Gospel, these statements recognize writing’s limitations on the amount of content.⁴⁵ Revelation 22:18 – 19 brings up another limitation of writing: its susceptibility to adulteration. In particular, the seer pronounces a curse on anyone who adds to or takes away from the prophecies of the book. The seer is well aware that a written text has fixed perimeters of content that can nonetheless be transgressed when it is copied.

 Löhr, “Kanongeschichtliche Beobachtungen,” 235 also sees in the we statement about the Beloved disciple in 21:25 a conception of apostolic authorship emerging in John that is missing from Matthew.  Löhr, “Kanongeschichtliche Beobachtungen,” 235 “Die Schriftlichkeit bedeutet nicht materi ale Vollständigkeit”. Cf. Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 4.19, stating that the follower Damis did not record all (γράψαι δὲ οὐ πάσας) of the lectures of Apollonius in Athens.  Polycarp, Phil 3.2 alludes to this passage and affirms both Paul’s accuracy in his oral teach ing and his authoritativeness in his written epistles.  See also Löhr, “Kanongeschichtliche Beobachtungen,” 235.  Cf. Löhr, “Kanongeschichtliche Beobachtungen,” 235: “Der Brief als schwacher Ersatz für die persönliche, vollmächtige Anwesenheit”.

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A more positive view of writing is found in the Shepherd of Hermas 5.3, where Hermas comes across an elderly lady reading a book. She asks him to report its contents to God’s elect, but Hermas asks to copy the book because he could not remember so many things. He then copies the book, letter by letter, since he could not fit the syllables (5.4). A copy of this book is then to be given to Clement for sending to other cities (8.3). This example shows the limitation of memory and distance that writing can overcome, as well as Hermas’ quasi-literacy.

4 Post-Papian Christians Attitudes toward the “living voice” among Christians after Papias not only show continuity with the greater Greco-Roman world in commending personal, oral instruction but also development in the application of the notion to less direct oral tradition, perhaps under the influence of Papias. Theophilus of Antioch commends his own living voice of instruction to Autolycus (2.38): “Therefore try to meet with me more often, so that you will learn the truth more accurately by hearing the living voice too (καὶ ζώσης ἀκούσας φωνῆς).” Theophilus’s use of the expression is fully consistent with the common-place idea that personal instruction from a teacher is more effective than book learning. Irenaeus of Lyons is one of the few individuals we know to have read Papias’s Expositions, which lends importance to his only use of the term “living voice.” Curiously it is on the lips of heretics. In Against Heresies 3.2, Irenaeus is making the case that heretics do not respect scripture or tradition. Against scripture, these heretics argue that truth cannot be known by those ignorant of tradition, which is handed down “not by letters but by the living voice” (non enim per litteras traditam illa sed per vivam vocem). Following this statement is a citation to 1 Cor 2:6 suggestive of a distinction between esoteric and exoteric wisdom. Thus, such heretics privilege their private (esoteric) oral tradition over public (exoteric) scripture.⁴⁶ Their use of the term may reflect a development of the concept to encompass oral tradition generally, but it may mean merely that each link of their tradition was handed down by personal, oral instruction. Irenaeus’s counter-argument is not to dispute the principle of the living voice but instead to argue the invalidity of their application from the very diversity of their so-called wisdom. After all, Marcionites disagree with Valentinians and vice versa. Against tradition, the heretics claim they are

 So also Karpp, “Viva Vox,” 196.

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wiser than the apostles and elders, allegedly because these public disciples contaminated the pure teachings of Christ with other material. Irenaeus’s response is that their doctrines blaspheme their Maker. The heretics’ appeal to the living voice has obvious affinities with Papias, even to the extent that it pertains to instruction made long after the passing of the teacher. Both Papias and Irenaeus’s opponents exhibit selectivity over the oral sources, and Papias’s practice of examining only those tradents who followed the elders and disciples of the Lord matches closely with Irenaeus’s own valuation of apostolic succession. Clement of Alexandria begins his Stromata with a long justification for putting his thoughts into writing. He says that speaking and writing are two valid ways to preach the word (Strom. 1.4.1, 1.7.1, 1.14.2), but writing has its limitations, and here Plato’s discussion of writing in the Phaedrus looms large in Clement’s mind.⁴⁷ He characterizes his work as a remedy for forgetfulness (1.11.1 λήθης φάρμακον), which recalls the purpose for the invention of writing by the Egyptians conveyed by Plato. Moreover, Clement’s further characterization of his work as an “image … of those vivid and breathing words” (εἴδωλον … τῶν ἐναργῶν καὶ ἐμψύχων εκείων … λόγων) even picks up much of the language of Plato’s description (Phaedrus 276a λόγον … ζῶντα καὶ ἔμψυχον, οὗ ὁ γεγραμμένος εἴδωλον). Like the Socrates of the Phaedrus, Clement is concerned with the text getting into the wrong hands (1.14.3). Although Clement does not use the Hellenistic term “living voice” per se, he nonetheless plays with it by talking about the “written voice” (τῇ ἐγγράφῳ φωνῇ) which “needs help either from the writer or from another following in the same track” (δεῖται γὰρ ἐξ ἀνάγκης βοηθοῦ ἤτοι τοῦ συγγραψαμένου ἢ καὶ ἄλλου του εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ ἴχνος ἐμβεβηκότος). Help from the writer outside the text is the proverbial living voice. Clement’s allowance of the writer’s follower as an aid sides with the notion of succession already seen in Papias and Irenaeus. Tertullian is another witness to the role of the proverbial “living voice” in the apostolic succession of the Church’s teaching. In De praescriptione haereticorum 21.3, Tertullian talked about the doctrines of the churches which were founded by the apostles “preaching to them both by living voice, as they say, and by epistle later” (ipsi eis praedicando tam viva, quod aiunt, voce quam per epistolas postea). Both speaking and writing have their place in Tertullian’s explanation.⁴⁸ Origen’s allegorical exegesis of Hermas 8:3 identifies Grapte, Clement, and Hermas with different kinds of communication. The little book of Grapte, the ad-

 Pace Alexander, “Living Voice,” 221, connecting “the need to apologize for producing a book at all,” not with Plato but with second century Christian prejudices exemplified by Papias.  So also Karpp, “Viva Vox,” 194, also discussing De idolol. 23.5 (tacita vox).

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visor of widows and orphans, represents the “plain letter” (αὐτὸ ψιλόν ἐστι τὸ γράμμα), while Clement’s book has “departed from the letter” (ὁ ἤδη τοῦ γράμματος ἐξιστάμενος) because it was sent outside the city. Meanwhile, Hermas, under the influence of the Spirit and reporting to the presiding elders of the church is doing so “no longer through letters but through living words” (οὐκέτι δὲ διὰ γραμμάτων, ἀλλὰ διὰ ζώντων λόγων). Thus, Origen’s exegesis of this passage sees the “living word” as most superior. Though it has resonances with the conventional “living word,” his use of λόγος instead recalls Plato’s and Biblical formulations. Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.10.4, summarily describes Pantaenus as teaching “with the living voice and through polished writings” (ζώσῃ φωνῇ καὶ διὰ συγγραμμάτων). Eusebius’s characterization of Pantaenus should be seen as a conventional commendation of him as a respected philosophical teacher.⁴⁹ Also conventional is the use of the term by Cosmas Indicopleustes, Topographia Christiana 2.2, where he valorizes both scripture and the personal teaching of his “most divine” master Patricius by the “living voice.”⁵⁰ Jerome three times in his letters uses the set phrase viva, ut aiunt, voce to mean “orally” in manner that betrays its status as a common saying (29.7.1, 120.t, 126.1.3).⁵¹ Jerome’s Illustrious Men 18 and 36 follow the two instances of the phrase in Eusebius. Notably, however, Jerome’s translation of Papias’s phrase seem to transfer the referent from the traveling tradents that Papias had sought out to scripture itself, which is not a mere book but continues to speak with a living and resounding voice: Non enim tantum mihi libri ad legendum prosunt, quantum viva vox et usque hodie in suis auctoribus personans (“For books to be read are not so useful to me as a voice that is living and resounding in its authors until this day”).⁵²

 So also Mansfeld, Prolegomena, 125 n.220; “Galen,” 321.  ἀλλ’ ἐκ τῶν θείων Γραφῶν παιδευθείς, καὶ διὰ ζώσης δὲ φωνῆς παραλαβὼν ὑπὸ τοῦ θειο τάτου ἀνδρὸς καὶ μεγάλου διδασκάλου Πατρικίου. Discussed also by Mansfeld, “Galen,” 320 321.  Jerome, Letter 53.2.2 (CSEL 54:446), also uses the phrase without the disclaimer: habet nescio quid latentis ἐνεργείας uiua uox et in aures discipuli de auctoris ore transfusa fortius insonat. See further Karpp, “Viva Vox,” 194; Mansfeld, “Papias,” 149.  Cf. the freer rendering in the Ante Nicene Fathers: “not so much that I have their books to read, as that their living voice is heard until the present day in the authors themselves”

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5 General Synthesis As this survey brings to light, it was taken for granted throughout the GrecoRoman world that the “living voice” is superior to the written word. As Loveday Alexander explains, this concept is cashed out in various ways depending on the specific social context: in the forum, the ‘living voice’ is about the rhetor’s live performance of a speech; in the crafts, it is about hands-on learning from a teacher; and in the schools, it about primacy of personal, oral instruction.⁵³ Yet in all the these contexts the central notion is the vivid immediacy of orality in ways that written texts just cannot provide. The living voice is also about immediacy in a different way. As the exposition of the term attributed to Porphyry indicates, the notion did not encompass learning through hearsay. Within the educational setting, the reason for the preference of the living voice over the textbook is twofold. The living voice is broader than the book because the teacher simply knows more than what he can write. Books are necessarily finite and limited: they cannot say more than they already do. The living voice is also deeper than the book because the written word cannot effectively convey tone or practical experience. The conventional appeal to the living voice is thus that the best students are those who learn directly from the master, not merely from reading their books. The conventionality of the phrase is evident in the fact that the term “living voice” is usually cited with explicit signals as a piece of common-place wisdom.⁵⁴ A further indication of the phrase’s conventionality is that elite writers would find ways to subvert or otherwise qualify the trope. Thus, Cicero invokes the expression to disparage Curio as a source of information: one person’s living voice may not be as good as another’s written letter. Seneca commends the communal living with a philosopher as even more intimate way to learn from a philosopher. Galen hopes that his own comprehensive and detailed treatises can obviate the need for his own living voice to those sufficiently motivated to learn from them. To a certain extent, the tension between the commendation of the liv-

 Alexander, “Living Voice,” 242, summarizing her longer discussion on 226 237, and 243, ar guing that of these social contexts Papias best belongs to the school tradition. Cf. Baum, “Pa pias,” 145 146, for a somewhat different set of functions.  Cicero, Letters to Atticus 2.12.2 (qui aiunt); Seneca 33.9 (inquit); Pliny, Letters 2.3 (ut vulgo di citur); Quintilian, Inst. Orat. 2.2.8 (ut dicitur); Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 14.2.1 (ut dicitur); Galen, On the Powers of Foods 1.1 (καλῶς οἱ πολλοὶ λέγειν); Galen, On the Composition of Drug by Places 9.1 (ὁ λεγόμενος ὑπὸ τῶν πλείστων τεχνιτῶν); Tertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum 21.3 (quod aiunt); Jerome, Epistulae 29.7.1 (ut aiunt), 120.t (ut aiunt), 126.1.3 (ut aiunt).

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ing voice and their acts of writing is inevitable, and so the qualification of this piece of conventional wisdom, especially among the literate, is to be expected. Early Christians too recognized the limitations of writing. Written texts may not tell the full story (Luke, John), and letter writers have more to say face-to-face than what should go into a letter (2 John, 3 John). Writing also features differences of tone over speaking (Paul), it can be hard to understand (Mark, 2 Peter), and it can be subject to adulteration (Revelation). Nevertheless, writing is a good substitute for limitations of memory and distance (Hermas). With Papias and later Christians, we also see that the living voice is not quite enough. It has to be from the right instructor, and this feeds into concerns about the proper succession of teaching from Jesus to his disciples, from disciples to elders, and from apostles to bishops. Nevertheless, the term in general usage continued to emphasize the worth of personal, oral instruction.⁵⁵ Thus, the term puts the focus on how well the student has learned the teaching, not on the doctrinal correctness of the teachings themselves. For the latter purpose, books from authoritative sources are more useful.⁵⁶

6 Papias on the Living and Lasting Voice Papias appeal to the “living and lasting voice” comes at the end of an extract from the prologue to his work, Expositions of the Dominical Oracles, quoted more fully by Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.39.3 – 4: But I will not hesitate to include for you as many things from the elders that I had carefully committed to memory and carefully kept in memory (καὶ ὅσα ποτὲ παρὰ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων καλῶς ἔμαθον καὶ καλῶς ἐμνημόνευσα) along with the interpretations, so as to confirm the truth on their account. For it is not in those who say many things that I delight (as many do), but in those who teach the truth; nor is it in those who remember the foreign com mandments, but in those [who remember the commandments] given by the Lord to the faith and coming from truth itself. But if anyone who had followed the elders ever came along, I would examine the words of the elders what did Andrew or what Peter say, or what did Philip, or what did Thomas or James, or what did John or Matthew, or any other of the disciples of the Lord and what Aristion and the elder John, disciples of the Lord, were saying. For it is not what comes from books that I assumed would benefit me as much as what comes from a living and lasting voice (τὰ παρὰ ζώσης φωνῆς καὶ μενούσης).

 See generally Karpp, “Viva Vox,” 196 7.  Karpp, “Viva Vox,” 193, is interested in the role of authoritative scriptures in Christianity from its very beginnings, first with the Old Testament.

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Based on this extract, Papias announces and justifies his intention to include material that he himself carefully learned and remembered from the elders. He justifies this practice on the grounds that he is interested in the authentic teaching of Jesus himself, and upon his procedure for obtaining this teaching by interviewing those followers of the first generation of elders (or “disciples of the Lord”) as to what they said about Jesus. Less clear is his relationship to Aristion and the elder John: Irenaeus, Adv. haer. 5.33.4, and Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.39.7, understand Papias to have been a “hearer” of this John, but many modern scholars are skeptical.⁵⁷ Furthermore, we also learn from Eusebius that Papias had a “decided interest” in written forms of Jesus material, for example, in his remarks on the etiology of Mark’s gospel by a follower of Peter (Hist. eccl. 3.39.15).⁵⁸ Nevertheless, Papias declares that his practice of oral interrogation was appropriate on the ground that what he learned “from a living are lasting voice” is more useful to him than what comes from books. Even though Papias is the earliest surviving Greek writer to use the term “living voice,” there is considerable evidence that it was already a conventional term, due to its citation in Greek by Cicero and its numerous invocations in later Greco-Roman literature as a common saying. It is difficult then to escape the conclusion that Papias was well aware of its proverbial nature.⁵⁹ As a result, we can seek insight into what Papias meant from its conventional import that the “living voice” of an instructor is more efficacious than his own writings. As we have seen with medical and philosophical writers and with the opposite expression “to navigate from a book,” the focus of this folk wisdom is on the how well the student could have mastered the material. Those who learn from the living voice benefit much more from that mode of instruction than those who learn from a book, and Papias expressly applies this principle to himself (τοσοῦτόν με ὠφελεῖν). In other words, Papias presents himself as fully qualified to convey what he carefully learned from the elders.⁶⁰

 See the options set forth by William R. Schoedel, Polycarp, Martyrdom of Polycarp, Frag ments of Papias, vol. 5 of The Apostolic Fathers: A New Translation and Commentary, ed. Robert M. Grant (London: Nelson, 1967), 99 100.  Christoph Markschies, Kaiserzeitliche christliche Theologie und ihre Institutionen: Prolegome na zu einer Geschichte der antiken christlichen Theologie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 250.  Alexander, “Living Voice,” 243 suggests that the currency of the proverb among craftsmen may be linked to Papias due to the significant presence of that class of people in early Christian congregations.  See generally Loveday Alexander, The Preface to Luke’s Gospel: Literary Convention and So cial Context in Luke 1.1 4 and Acts 1.1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 78 87, not ing that literary prologue often contains a statement about an author’s qualifications and access to written sources, personal experience, and tradition.

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The Greco-Roman usage of the phrase emphasizes the personal and oral nature of the instruction and seems to exclude instruction even by hearsay. Porphyry’s explication of the term is particularly clear about this. Yet after a certain point in the chain of transmission, oral tradition becomes hearsay, and how Papias deals with this issue is instructive. He seems to take it for granted that no one who heard Jesus is still alive and so the question of the living voice must shift that to the next generation of teachers, the disciples of the Lord or the elders.⁶¹ And in fact Papias emphasizes his relationship to that generation. For example, at the beginning of the extract of his prologue, Papias states that he “carefully learned from the elders” (παρὰ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων καλῶς ἔμαθον). Papias’s procedure for learning from the elders is expounded later on and it is subdivided into two groups of disciples of the Lord. The first group, comprising Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, James, John, and Matthew, seem to have already been dead (aorist εἶπεν), while the second group, with Aristion and the elder John, seem to be still alive (present λέγουσιν).⁶² Somewhat unclear is whether Papias had direct access to the latter two individuals. If ἅ τε is construed as a conjoined object of ἀνέκρινον (i. e., ἀνέκρινον … ἅ τε … λέγουσιν “I would examine … and what … they were saying”), then he would have had direct access to them. At any rate, Irenaeus 5.33.4 calls Papias a “hearer of John,” and Eusebius 3.39.7 interprets this as his being the direct listener of these two elders. Moreover, Eusebius 3.39.14 states that Papias’s work contains various accounts of Aristion and traditions of the elder John on the words of the Lord.⁶³ Thus, Papias would have the benefit of the living voice of Aristion and the elder John, but as for the first group of disciples, merely the living voice of those who followed them and came to Hierapolis.

 He seems to use these terms interchangeably here, though it is conceivable that elders may include a larger group. I doubt that “elder” is a technical term for a second generation tradent in oral tradition, but rather a fairly high status Christian of some sort.  Azzan Yadin Israel, “‘For Mark was Peter’s Tannaʾ’: Tradition and Transmission in Papias and the Early Rabbis,” JECS 23 (2015): 345, looks to rabbinic parallels and prefers to interpret the tenses in an oral traditional relational sense, where the present tense λέγουσιν reflects direct contact on the part of Papias, while the aorist εἶπεν reflects indirect contact. If this is so, it would constitute a more direct route to my conclusions. Also appealing to rabbinic practices, though with less development, is Birger Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript: Oral Tradition and Writ ten Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity, trans. Eric J. Sharpe (Lund: C. W. L. Gleerup, 1961), 205 207.  See Löhr, “Kanongeschichtliche Beobachtungen,” 239 40.

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This is leaves the term “lasting” (μενούσης). The collocation of a “lasting voice” is found only in Papias and those who quote him,⁶⁴ and even so, Jerome and Rufinus resort to the dynamic translations of the term. One should take a moment to consider just how curious it is to augment the expression with “and lasting.”⁶⁵ The oddity of the phrase probably stems from the fact that a lasting voice is self-contradictory.⁶⁶ Spoken words are ephemeral things. They are fleeting, here for only a moment and then lost forever. Until the modern invention of recording equipment, they do not last, endure, or persist. They can only be remembered, imperfectly, and then later recorded, also imperfectly. What justifies Papias’s use of the addition “and lasting”? Given that Papias is aware of 1 Peter according to Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.39.17, it is of interest that a very similar phrase occurs in 1 Pet 1:23 ἀναγεγεννημένοι … διὰ λόγου ζῶντος θεοῦ καὶ μένοντος (“regenerated … through God’s living and lasting word”).⁶⁷ Heinrich Karpp argues that “living and lasting” refers to the continuing validity of its message, if the Petrine text is construed as referring to a word that the prophets had received through the spirit of Christ for the future and thus lives and endures as tradition.⁶⁸ Yet Karpp does not seem very con-

 Aside from an irrelevant example from grammarian Apollonius Dyscolus, De adverbiis 2.1.1 (Schneider 1878, Grammatici Graeci 2.1:164): φωναὶ μένουσαι ἐν συντάξει ἐπιρρήματα γίνονται (“sounds remaining in construction become adverbs”).  Eduard Schwartz, “Über den Tod der Söhne Zebedaei: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Johannesevangeliums,” AKGWG 7 (1904): 3 53, suggests that it is a subtle inversion of the com mon view verba volunt, scripta manent.  Löhr, “Kanongeschichtliche Beobachtungen,” 238 calls it an “oxymoron,” and cites Schwartz for the point and the trope verba volant, scripta manent. Bauckham, “Eyewitnesses,” 41 42, and Jesus, 27 29, argues that μένουσης means that Papias’s eyewitness sources were still alive, but this idea seems redundant in the actual term for being alive ζώσης. Against the grain of the meaning of this expression in antiquity, Bauckham, “Eyewitnesses,” 33 34, and Jesus, 19, does not think that Papias had directly heard from the two living eyewitnesses, but mediated from those who heard from them.  Mansfeld, “Papias,” 149. Karpp, “Viva Vox,” 195, arguing that Papias’s expression is in fact so reminiscent of 1 Pet 1:23 that one may think he had known and used the letter just from the expression. Alexander, “Living Voice,” 225, ventures that the curious word order stems from add ing the term καὶ μενούσης as a possible echo of 1 Pet 1:23 to the standard phrasing παρὰ ζώσης φωνῆς. On the other hand, Gerhard Maier, Die Johannesoffenbarung und die Kirche (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1981), 60 62, looks to 1 John, also known to Papias, to construe the terms “liv ing” and “abiding” with an anti heretical valence.  Karpp, “Viva Vox,” 195 196. This reading construes ζῶντος … καὶ μένοντος with λόγου rather than θεοῦ, a possibility favored by many exegetes, e. g. Eugene A. LaVerdiere, “A Gram matical Ambiguity in 1 Pet 1:23,” CBQ 36 (1974): 89 94. Mansfeld, “Papias,” 150, however, con strues the terms with θεοῦ, thereby breaking the parallel and leading him to look elsewhere for interpreting μενούσης, specifically, with appeal to the formula ζῶσα μένει in Scymnus, Orbis de

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vinced of this reading and concedes that the term may instead refer to the notion of God’s life-giving word, more clearly seen in Acts 7:38 (λόγια ζῶντα), a concept not to be found in Papias. In light of Papias’s preferred use of the term κύριος for Jesus, I submit that his eye fell on the supportive quotation of Isa 40:8 quoted in 1 Pet 1:25 τὸ δὲ ῥῆμα κυρίου μένει εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα· τοῦτο δὲ ἐστιν τὸ ῥῆμα τὸ εὐαγγελισθὲν εἰς ὑμᾶς (“but the word of the Lord lasts forever: this is the word proclaimed to us”).⁶⁹ The “word of the Lord” could thus been seen as not only the Old Testament oracles about Jesus but also the teaching of Jesus proclaimed by the Church, and it is this word that lasts forever. Therefore, I propose that Papias had augmented the proverbial “living voice” with “lasting” to overcome the inherent limitations of the conventional expression. Recall that the phrase “the living voice” generally refers to personal, oral instruction from a teacher, but for a large group of important disciples Papias was one level of hearsay removed from that. He did not get to hear Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, James, and Matthew; they were already dead. Rather, he could only hear from those traveling tradents who had followed these disciples. This then is the “lasting voice”: their voices persist—as does the word of the Lord —through the memories of their followers. Accordingly, Papias’s “living and lasting voice” covers his two sources of oral tradition: the living voice directly from his teachers, and the lasting voice indirectly through those who had followed the disciples of the Lord. Together they encompass oral tradition. The remaining question is why Papias would claim to derive more benefit from his oral tradition than from books. We do not the full extent of Papias’s library, but Eusebius tells us that he knew 1 John, 1 Peter, the Gospel of Mark, and perhaps a version of Matthew.⁷⁰ These books are by no means comprehensive of Jesus tradition, and even if Papias had access to all four canonical gospels, there is still much about Jesus left unwritten especially concerning eschatology, a topic of keen interest to Papias. These texts are fixed; they had their say and could tell Papias nothing more than what they already have. Moreover, the oracles of the Lord require explanation, the very purpose of his own five volumes. Following what looks like a Ciceronian exegetical strategy of interpreting an author’s

scriptio 17 18 to mean persisting in writing. But this reading seems to ignore the contrast with the “books” in Papias’s statement.  Cf. Mansfeld, “Papias,” 149.  Löhr, “Kanongeschichtliche Beobachtungen,” 239 240, also infers from Eusebius mention of accounts (διηγήσεις) from Aristion in contrast with the traditions (παραδόσεις) from the elder John that these may well be written. Cf. Baum, “Papias,” 149 151, also considering the Gospel of Thomas.

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work from the author’s life,⁷¹ Papias consulted the living voice for more information about what Jesus said and did than what these books can provide. Oral tradition is valued because it can supplement and explain the written tradition.⁷² When we consider Papias’s etiology of Mark as the written product of a follower of Peter (quoted by Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.39.15), its contents are at the same remove from Jesus as what is said any other follower of Peter who may have visited Hierapolis and met with Papias. In fact, it is at the same remove as Papias’s own traditions he learned from the living voice of the elder John. Accordingly, Papias, who had the benefit of the living and lasting voices of the earlier generation as his instructors, presents himself as properly instructed to produce a reliable work faithfully interpreting the oracles of the Lord. This is not an anti-intellectual attitude but rather one in line with that of suitably taught Greco-Roman intellectuals.

 Mansfeld, Prolegomena, 177 179; Mansfeld, “Papias,” 153.  Löhr, “Kanongeschichtliche Beobachtungen,” 241; Mansfeld, “Papias,” 149. Ironically, Pa pias’s diligence in recovering oral tradition by interviewing Christians passing through town may indicate what few resources the local community actually possessed in terms of traditions. To be sure, they had some books, perhaps a gospel or two, but the unwritten traditions of the local elders were tapped out, and thus necessitated the need to interrogate traveling tradents for more information.

Matthew R. Crawford

Tatian, Celsus, and Christianity as “Barbarian Philosophy” in the Late Second Century The figures of Tatian and Celsus have rarely been considered alongside one another. This is partly due to the fact that Tatian is easily overshadowed by Justin and Clement, those more well known philosophical figures on either side of him, while Celsus is most often associated with Origen, who did a great service to posterity by preserving the only surviving fragments of Celsus’ work in his rebuttal to the pagan’s attack. Nevertheless, I will argue in this chapter that a comparison of the two thinkers reveals a striking degree of overlap in their presuppositions and methodology, implying that they were both operating within the same philosophical framework, albeit coming to two diametrically opposed conclusions. The most prominent modern scholar who has considered these two alongside one another is Arthur Droge, whose 1989 monograph argued that Celsus’ polemical tract against Christianity was a response to Justin Martyr, and that Tatian’s Oration was in turn an answer to Celsus.¹ Droge was in fact building upon the earlier work of Carl Andresen, who had pointed to a number of parallels between Celsus and Justin and had used this evidence to argue that it was Justin who had inspired Celsus’ polemical tract.² In Droge’s account, not only was Celsus responding to Justin, but Justin’s own student was defending his teacher! One problem with Droge’s argument is his reliance upon an overly precise dating of both Celsus’ True Doctrine and Tatian’s Oration, putting the former in 175 – 176 and the latter in 177– 178.³ Another is the fact that he simply provided insufficient evidence to substantiate his claim that Tatian was responding to Cel-

 Arthur J. Droge, Homer or Moses? Early Christian Interpretations of the History of Culture (Tü bingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1989), 72 81, 97 101.  Carl Andresen, Logos und Nomos. die Polemik des Kelsos wider das Christentum (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1955). Andresen’s work won many followers but was not without its detractors. See es pecially Gary T. Burke, “Celsus and Justin: Carl Andresen Revisited,” ZNTW 76 (1985): 107 16, who dismantles many of Andresen’s supposed parallels. Various other attempts have been made to connect Celsus with other second and third century Christian apologetic works. For a discussion of the problems attendant to many of these, see Robert J. Hauck, “Omnes Contra Celsum,” SecCent 5 (1985/86): 211 25, who remains open to the idea that Celsus may have been responding to Justin. Hauck does not discuss a possible link between Celsus and Tatian.  Droge, Homer or Moses, 74 75, 99. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110608632 006

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sus’ True Doctrine. ⁴ A more thorough comparison of the two works does in fact turn up a number of intriguing parallels, and a detailed analysis of these might offer sufficient evidence to render Droge’s contention plausible, though this is beyond the scope of the present study. Here I want to focus solely on what I take to be the most significant of these parallels, namely the way in which each author understands philosophical and cultural history and the position of themselves and their opponents within that history. I will contend that the arguments of Tatian and Celsus are formally identical, with both presenting themselves as adhering to an ancient philosophical wisdom, while casting their opponents as the unfortunate victims of deceptive attempts to imitate that pure tradition. While the analysis of this theme in these two authors is an insufficient basis for making precise claims about one of them responding directly to the other, the similarity between them is, I suggest, close enough to conclude that both Tatian and Celsus were engaged in the same debate amongst Christians and pagans in the late second century over competing narratives of intellectual history that accorded to Hellenistic παιδεία very different positions vis-à-vis non-Greek, or “barbarian” nations. Moreover, in the final section of this chapter I will argue that the common philosophical background these authors shared, combined with Christianity’s marginalized status at this time, helps to account for one of the most unique aspects of Tatian’s treatise, namely his proud ownership of the label “barbarian,” which was without precedent in prior literature, whether pagan, Jewish, or Christian, and constituted a threat to the sort of universalizing Hellenism articulated by Celsus. Therefore, to apply this argument to the theme of the present volume, the comparison of Celsus and Tatian illustrates, first, that the emergence of the Christian intellectual in the second century was from the outset contested; second, that Christians like Tatian largely took the terms of the debate from their opponents; but, third, that this did not prevent them from making fundamental criticisms of the Greek culture of the second sophistic in which they operated. In fact, it gave them the means to do so. It is necessary first to begin with an examination of the origins of this notion of philosophical history among Stoics and Middle Platonists. Then I will offer a close reading of Celsus’ True Doctrine and Tatian’s Oration. Finally, I will conclude by highlighting the political and social consequences of their respective positions, which illuminates

 A similar assessment was reached in Peter Pilhofer, Presbyteron kreitton: der Altersbeweis der jüdischen und christlichen Apologeten und seine Vorgeschichte (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1990), 286 87.

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the challenge facing Tatian’s notion of “barbarian philosophy” in the late second century. To begin, however, a brief introduction to these two figures is in order. Tatian hailed from somewhere in Syria or Assyria, received a thorough education in Hellenistic παιδεία, and apparently had a career as a sophist in the mid-second century. At some point he converted to Christianity and became a student of Justin Martyr in Rome, eventually gathering to himself his own students, though the only one whose name is known to us is Rhodon.⁵ Tatian became infamous as the supposed founder of the heretical sect known as the Encratites, and though his role as leader of this group is unlikely, he did reject marriage as a “corruption.”⁶ He left behind two influential works, one a gospel version known as the Diatessaron, which survives in fragments and later daughter versions, and the other a short, highly polemical work known as ὁ λόγος πρὸς τοὺς Ἕλληνας (“Oration to the Greeks”), which will be the focus of the present chapter.⁷ Various attempts at a precise dating of the Oration have been offered, though none have won wide acceptance. The most that can be said is that, based on how Tatian refers to Justin in Or. 18.6, it likely came after the latter’s execution in 165.⁸ We know even less about Celsus. Because the older identification of him with the Epicurean Celsus, a friend of Lucian of Samosata, has been abandoned, all we know of him is what can be gleaned from the fragments of his work preserved in the refutation by Origen. These suggest that he was writing sometime between 160 and 240, though more likely during the reign of Marcus Aurelius given how he describes the persecution Christians are facing.⁹ The fragments cited by Origen came from a tract with the title ᾿Aληθὴς λόγος (True Account or True Doc For a longer introduction to Tatian’s life, see Jörg Trelenberg, Tatianos. Oratio ad Graecos. Rede an die Griechen (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 1 8.  On the reports of Tatian’s heretical tendencies, see Matthew R. Crawford, “The Problemata of Tatian: Recovering the Fragments of a Second Century Christian Intellectual,” JThS 67 (2016): 542 75.  On the title, see Josef Lössl, “Zwischen Christologie und Rhetorik: Zum Ausdruck ‘Kraft des Wortes’ (λόγου δύναμις) in Tatians ‘Rede an die Griechen’,” in Logos der Vernunft Logos des Glaubens: Festschrift Edgar Früchtel zum 80. Geburtstag, ed. F. R. Prostmeier and H. Lona (Ber lin: De Gruyter, 2010), 129nn.1 2. In this paper I will be using the edition of Trelenberg, Oratio ad Graecos. For an English translation, see Molly Whittaker, Tatian: Oratio ad Graecos and Frag ments, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982).  On the various dating attempts over the past 130 years, see the judicious survey in Trelenberg, Oratio ad Graecos, 8 15. In Or. 18.6, Tatian refers to Justin as θαυμασιώτατος, the same epithet used for Polycarp in Mart. Poly. 5.1; 16.2, a parallel first pointed out in the edition of Miroslav Marcovich, Tatiani oratio ad Graecos (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1995), 1 3.  On these issues, see Michael Frede, “Celsus philosophus Platonicus,” ANRW II.36.7 (1994): 5188 5193.

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trine) and represent the first attempt at a philosophical refutation of Christianity.¹⁰ Celsus, even more so than Tatian, was deeply indebted to a certain strand of Middle Platonism, which suggests that considering them together gives us a snapshot of what a debate between a Middle Platonist pagan and Middle Platonist Christian might have looked like in the late second century had they sat down to talk to one another.

1 The Development of a Philosophical Interest in Ancient, Barbarian Wisdom When one encounters claims in early Christian texts that Christian truth is older than Greek philosophy, it is tempting at first blush to dismiss them as merely the sort of cultural one-upmanship that had been used as a polemical tool for centuries.¹¹ However, by the time that Christians like Justin, Tatian, and Clement began making these assertions, they were drawing upon and interacting with a more specific, philosophically inflected version of this interest in cultural antiquity and primacy, one that took its inspiration from Posidonius and was instrumental in the creation of what is today called Middle Platonism. This process of development has found its most lucid explication in the 2001 monograph by G. R. Boys-Stones, to which the following survey is heavily indebted.¹² The roots of this tradition go back to the earliest strata of Greek literature, as seen, for example, in Hesiod’s myth of the first generation of humanity as a “golden race,” superior to the generations that followed, and his myth of humanity originally living under the bountiful and benevolent reign of Cronus (Works and Days 106 – 201). Plato drew upon this Hesiodic imagery in the Statesman 269C-274D,

 In what follows I will be citing Celsus from the Sources chrétiennes edition of Origen’s trea tise: M. Borret, Origène. Contre Celse, SC 132, 136, 147, 150, 227 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1967 1976). The attempted reconstruction and translation of R. Joseph Hoffman, On the True Doctrine: A Dis course Against the Christians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987) is best avoided. Much better is the older translation by Henry Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni versity Press, 1980). For a recent attempt to recover the original arrangement of Celsus’ frag ments, see Johannes Arnold, Der wahre Logos des Kelsos: eine Strukturanalyse (Münster: Aschen dorff Verlag, 2016).  The definitive account of the history of this theme remains Pilhofer, Presbyteron Kreitton.  G. R. Boys Stones, Post Hellenistic Philosophy: A Study of Its Development From the Stoics to Origen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). See also George Boys Stones, Platonist Philosophy 80 BC to AD 250: An Introduction and Collection of Sources in Translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

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describing history as a series of alternate cycles of rule by Cronos and Zeus, the former being a kind of golden age. In the Timaeus he explained that humanity was created with a predisposition to philosophy, the necessary condition for achieving happiness (47A–B, 72E–73A, 75E), and that primitive humanity lived in a pre-philosophical state in which vice was absent. Finally, in the Laws, Plato described a series of periodic catastrophes wiping out human culture, which are only survived by those uncivilized persons who live in the mountains (677A– D), such that history is constituted by cycles of primitive ages each requiring the redevelopment of human culture. Aristotle followed Plato on several of these points, though he significantly modified him in at least one respect. He too affirmed cycles of destruction, but denied Plato’s contention that no advanced culture survived these periodic cataclysms. The philosophers who reached the pinnacle of cultural achievement at the end of each stage, just before the coming destruction, would not themselves have survived, since they lived in cities, but fragments of their wisdom were preserved in mythic form among those uncivilized persons who did survive: Whether a ‘saying’ counts as something wise: Why not? Aristotle says about them that they are remnants of an ancient philosophy saved by their brevity and acuity when it was lost in the great destructions of mankind. εἰ δὲ καὶ ἡ παροιμία σοφόν· πῶς δ’ οὐχὶ σοφὸν περὶ ὧν ᾿Aριστοτέλης φησὶν ὅτι παλαιᾶς εἰσι φιλοσοφίας ἐν ταῖς μεγίσταις ἀνθρώπων φθοραῖς ἀπολομένης ἐγκαταλείμματα περισωθέντα διὰ συντομίαν καὶ δεξιότητα.¹³

And again: Fragments of the thought of the ancient, the very ancient thinkers have been handed down to us in the form of a myth, to the effect that these [planets] are gods, and that the divine embraces the whole of nature. The rest has been added later in a mythological form to in fluence the beliefs of the vulgar, for the benefit of the laws, and for pragmatic reasons. παραδέδοται δὲ παρὰ τῶν ἀρχαίων καὶ παμπαλαίων ἐν μύθου σχήματι καταλελειμμένα τοῖς ὕστερον ὅτι θεοί τέ εἰσιν οὗτοι καὶ περιέχει τὸ θεῖον τὴν ὅλην φύσιν. τὰ δὲ λοιπὰ μυθικῶς ἤδη προσῆκται πρὸς τὴν πειθὼ τῶν πολλῶν καὶ πρὸς τὴν εἰς τοὺς νόμους καὶ τὸ συμφέρον χρῆσιν·¹⁴

The early Stoics seemed to follow Plato in holding that earliest humanity lived in pre-philosophical bliss, but this position was altered by Posidonius in a small but significant manner when he insisted that philosophers were responsible  Aristotle, fr. 13 Rose. Translation from Boys Stones, Post Hellenistic Philosophy, 29 30.  Metaphysics 1074a b. Translation from Boys Stones, Post Hellenistic Philosophy, 28.

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for the invention of the various arts that constitute human culture.¹⁵ As summarized by Seneca, In that age, which they call “golden,” Posidonius thinks that the government was in the hands of sages. They were restrained in their actions, and protected the weaker from the stronger. They gave advice, both to do and not to do; they showed what was useful and what was useless. Illo ergo saeculo, quod aureum perhibent, penes sapientes fuisse regnum posidonius iudi cat. Hi continebant manus et infirmiorem a validioribus tuebantur, suadebant dissuade bant que et utilia atque inutilia monstrabant.¹⁶

The list of arts that philosophers were responsible for included architecture, mechanical tools, farming, and pottery, among others. Posidonius also seems to have held that there were three original philosophers in mythical times, one for each continent: Mochus the Phoenician, Atlas the Libyan, and Zalmoxis the Thracian, corresponding to Asia, Africa, and Europe.¹⁷ His inclusion of non-Greek sources of ancient wisdom set a decisive precedent for later philosophy. The next stage in the tradition I am tracing is represented by the first-century CE Stoic Cornutus, who held that the poets had not merely preserved corrupted nuggets of ancient philosophy in mythical form, but also that the ancient philosophers themselves had originally expressed their ideas in allegorical form, and that through a correspondingly allegorical exegesis of myth one could reconstruct this hidden tradition.¹⁸ A second significant innovation introduced by Cornutus was his realization that if Greek myth had preserved vestiges of the wis-

 Boys Stones argues that such was the early Stoic view on the basis that Seneca, in his refusal to go along with Posidonius’ revisionist account, represents the earlier Stoic position (Boys Stones, Post Hellenistic Philosophy, 18 26).  Seneca, Epistle 90.5. Translation from Boys Stones, Post Hellenistic Philosophy, 46, modified.  The attribution of this theory to Posidonius was made by O. Gigon, “Die Erneuerung der Phi losophie in der Zeit Ciceros,” in Recherches sur la tradition platonicienne, Entretiens de la foun dation Hardt 3 (Genève, 1955), based on a comparison of Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Phys. 1.363 and Diogenes Laertius, vit. 1.1, and has been followed by J.H. Waszink, “Some Observations on the Appreciation of ‘the Philosophy of the Barbarians’ in Early Christian Literature,” in Mélanges of ferts à Mademoiselle Christine Mohrmann, (Utrecht: Spectrum, 1963), 52; Droge, Homer or Moses, 15; Kendra Eshleman, The Social World of Intellectuals in the Roman Empire: Sophists, Philoso phers, and Christians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 193.  On Cornutus, see especially Boys Stones, Post Hellenistic Philosophy, 49 59. On Stoic exege sis more broadly, see Peter T. Struck, Birth of the Symbol: Ancient Readers At the Limits of Their Texts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), chapter 3.

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dom of the first philosophers in allegorical form, the same might be true for other cultural traditions as well: Many and varied myths about the gods were woven among the ancient Greeks, just as many arose among the Magi, many among the Phrygians, and again among the Egyptians, Celts, Libyans, and other races. Τοῦ δὲ πολλὰς καὶ ποικίλας περὶ θεῶν γεγονέναι παρὰ τοῖς παλαιοῖς Ἕλλησι μυθοποιΐας, ὡς ἄλλαι μὲν παρὰ Μάγοις γεγόνασιν, ἄλλαι δὲ παρὰ Φρυξὶ καὶ ἤδη παρ’ Αἰγυπτίοις τε καὶ Κελ τοῖς καὶ Λίβυσι καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἔθνεσι¹⁹

With these two changes Cornutus had provided the presuppositions necessary for a debate over which cultural traditions best preserved the primitive wisdom of the ancient philosophers. The older a cultural tradition could be shown to be, the more authoritative it might become, and, conversely, the more one culture could be shown to be derivative of another, the less useful it would be for the project of recovering the fragments of the earliest philosophy. It was against such a background that Apion and Josephus would square off against one another in the first century CE over the history of the Jewish people. In Apion’s charge that the Jews had left Egypt as fugitives, the more damning accusation was not the felonious nature of their origin as a people, but rather that they were a mere offshoot of a much more ancient culture.²⁰ If this claim were true, then Jewish culture and religion would lose all credibility as a legitimate expression of ancient wisdom. Against Apion, Josephus argued extensively both that the Jews were an ancient people and that they originated elsewhere before entering Egypt, thereby ensuring their independent status as an ancient nation. Moreover, he turned the tables on his opponent, paraphrasing Plato’s Laws 677D in asserting that it is not Jewish culture, but Greek culture that “will be found to be modern, and dating, so to speak, from yesterday or the day before” (τὰ μὲν γὰρ παρὰ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἅπαντα νέα καὶ χθὲς καὶ πρῴην, ὡς ἂν εἴποι τις,

 Cornutus, De natura deorum 17. Translation from Boys Stones, Post Hellenistic Philosophy, 56.  See Josephus, AA 2.8 32. On Apion and Josephus, see especially Droge, Homer or Moses, 35 47; Louis H. Feldman, “Origen’s Contra Celsum and Josephus’ Contra Apionem,” VChr 44 (1990): 105 135; Pilhofer, Presbyteron Kreitton, 193 206; Boys Stones, Post Hellenistic Philoso phy, 66 75, 85 90. Boys Stones argues for a shift in anti Semitic polemic in the first century CE. Whereas the earlier authors such as Hecataeus, Manetho, and Lysimachus had relied on charges of “misanthropy” and “cultural isolation,” the influence of Stoic philosophy upon later Greek historians such as Apion moved the debate to the question of antiquity and purity of tradition (p.75).

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εὕροι γεγονότα).²¹ According to Josephus, the wisest Greek philosophers such as Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Plato, and the Stoics had in fact derived their conception of the deity from Moses.²² The degree to which Josephus had imbibed the Stoic view can be seen in his assertion that the Jewish patriarchs were the inventors of technical arts like astronomy and geometry.²³ In other words, they fulfilled the role played by Posidonius’ ancient sages. Both he and Apion were, therefore, assuming the same Stoic-inspired conception of philosophical history, and within this framework the antiquity and independence of a people and its culture became the fundamental criteria for either asserting its superiority or rejecting its degeneracy. But this theme was not always put to such polemical ends. In the first century CE Philo argued that the number of the wise on earth is small but not nonexistent, and he claimed that “Greece and the land of the barbarians are witness of this” (μάρτυς δὲ ἡ Ἑλλὰς καὶ ἡ βάρβαρος), listing the seven sages of Greece along with the magi of the Persians, the Indian gymnosophists, and the Essenes from Palestinian Syria.²⁴ Moreover, unlike Josephus, Philo was willing to concede that traditional Greek theology and mythology contained vestiges of the ancient wisdom which could be recovered through allegorical exegesis, the same sort of exegesis that he applied extensively to the Jewish sacred scriptures.²⁵ A similar view can be found in the Middle Platonist Numenius, who exploited the Stoic view in a novel way. In his treatise On the Academics’ Dissension from Plato, he first sought to move back to the ‘real’ Plato by scraping away the barnacles that had grown upon his philosophy among the Peripatetics and Stoics, as well as the Skeptical Academy.²⁶ With this step accomplished he was then in a

 Josephus, AA 1.7. In the Laws passage Clinias states that the various arts and sciences were unknown for thousands of years and only revealed to persons ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν χθὲς καὶ πρῴην γεγονότα. The parallel between Josephus and Plato here was highlighted by Droge, Homer or Moses, 43.  Josephus, AA 2.167 68.  See JA 1.105 6; on which cf. Boys Stones, Post Hellenistic Philosophy, 88 90.  Philo, Quod omnis probus liber sit 73 75. Cf. Waszink, “Some Observations,” 46 47, who points out that Philo’s approving use of the term βάρβαρος is a feature not found in Josephus.  For Philo’s estimation of Greek mythology, see De opificio mundi 133; De providentia 2.40 41; on which see Boys Stones, Post Hellenistic Philosophy, 90 95.  On this aspect of Numenius’ thought, see Boys Stones, Post Hellenistic Philosophy, 138 142. On Numenius in general, see especially Michael Frede, “Numenius,” ANRW II.36.2 (1987): 1034 75; John M. Dillon, The Middle Platonists, 80 B.C. To A.D. 220, rev. ed. (Ithaca: Cornell Uni versity Press, 1996), 361 379. On the parallels between Numenius’ ideal of homodoxia within a philosophical school and the development of heresy within early Christianity, see Eshleman, The Social World of Intellectuals, 206 210.

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position to reach back even further to Plato’s sources, especially Pythagoras, to identify the sources upon which Plato drew to formulate his philosophy: On this point [the nature of the godhead] it will be necessary, having stated and drawn con clusions from Plato’s evidence, to go back to Pythagoras, and tie it in with his doctrines; then to call in the respected nations, comparing such of their mystery rites, doctrines, and institutions as the Brahmans, the Jews, the Magi, and the Egyptians have laid down, and as are conducted in conformity with Plato. Εἰς δὲ τοῦτο δεήσει εἰπόντα καὶ σημηνάμενον ταῖς μαρτυρίαις ταῖς Πλάτωνος ἀναχωρήσα σθαι καὶ συνδήσασθαι τοῖς λόγοις τοῦ Πυθαγόρου, ἐπικαλέσασθαι δὲ τὰ ἔθνη τὰ εὐδοκι μοῦντα, προσφερόμενον αὐτῶν τὰς τελετὰς καὶ τὰ δόγματα τάς τε ἱδρύσεις συντελουμένας Πλάτωνι ὁμολογουμένως, ὁπόσας Βραχμᾶνες καὶ Ἰουδαῖοι καὶ Μάγοι καὶ Αἰγύπτιοι διέθεντο.²⁷

As illustrated by this passage, the importance of Plato for Numenius and other Middle Platonists of his ilk, is not that he was at all innovative, but rather that he set forth the most successful and therefore authoritative reconstruction of this ancient wisdom drawn from a variety of sources, including barbarian ones.²⁸ Plato, therefore, serves as the standard against which the wisdom of the barbarians is compared, and, conversely, investigation of the ancient wisdom can confirm Plato’s authoritative genius in assembling or reconstructing that ancient wisdom.²⁹ Hence, what distinguishes Numenius’ interest in ancient and barbarian wisdom from general cultural arguments about antiquity and primacy is that for Numenius this has become an explicit philosophical methodology intended to produce dogmatic results. He does not merely concede the existence of occasional nuggets of wisdom among ancient traditions, but holds that central to the philosophical task is the sifting of the traditions of a variety of nations to explicate Plato’s thought. Among those barbarian nations listed by Numenius at the end of the preceding passage, the Jews held a special place, as seen, for example, in his rhetorical question, “For what is Plato, but Moses speaking in Attic

 Numenius, fr. 1a. Translation from Boys Stones, Post Hellenistic Philosophy, 116.  Cf. Boys Stones, Post Hellenistic Philosophy, 114 122. This openness to barbarian wisdom had its detractors. Diogenes Laertius particularly opposes “the notion that philosophy’s chief task is to recover a universal ancient wisdom first propounded and preserved by barbarians” (Eshleman, The Social World of Intellectuals, 199), though, as Eshleman argues, this stance puts him well outside the mainstream of his day (191 99).  Frede, “Celsus philosophus Platonicus,” 5194, lays emphasis on the attempts from Posido nius onwards to “reconstruct” the ancient account that was presumed to have existed.

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Greek?” (Τί γάρ ἐστι Πλάτων ἢ Μωσῆς ἀττικίζων).³⁰ Moreover, Origen reported that Numenius repeatedly quoted Moses and the prophets, providing them with an allegorical interpretation.³¹ Philo and Numenius, therefore, present a version of this Stoic theme that is less polemical and more open to deriving wisdom from a variety of cultures, though for each philosopher there is no question about where the final authority lies—in the Jewish scriptures for Philo and in Plato for Numenius. Nevertheless, the power of this idea to discredit one’s opponents, especially when they hailed from a culture other than oneself, was alluring and, as we shall see, proved central to the polemical projects of Celsus and Tatian.

2 Celsus’ Conception of Philosophical History and Christian Deviance Both Celsus and Tatian are best classified as Middle Platonists, and both represent the strand of Middle Platonism that incorporated the Stoic belief in an ancient philosophy and the corresponding methodology one could use to recover that past wisdom.³² Of the two, Celsus had probably received a better philosophical education. In his brief recounting of his past life in the Oration, Tatian mentions training in παιδεία (Or. 42.1), his practice as a sophist (Or. 35.1), and his initiation into mystery religions (Or. 29.1), but notably never alludes to formal philosophical training of the sort that Justin, in his Dialogue with Trypho, claims to have undertaken.³³ This raises the possibility that the only philosophical train-

 Numenius, fr. 8 (des Places). On this theme in Numenius, see Waszink, “Some Observa tions,” 54 55; Droge, Homer or Moses, 64 65, 70 72; Boys Stones, Post Hellenistic Philosophy, 113 116.  C. Cels. 4.51.  On Celsus as a Middle Platonist, see Frede, “Numenius,” 5191 5192. That Tatian was influ enced by Middle Platonism was the contention of M. Elze, Tatian und seine Theologie (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1960), and is now the consensus view. Cf. Emily J. Hunt, Christianity in the Second Century: The Case of Tatian (London: Routledge, 2003), 74 109.  On Tatian’s educational background, see Molly Whittaker, “Tatian’s Educational Back ground,” StPatr 13 (1975): 57 59; Robert M. Grant, Greek Apologists of the Second Century (Phil adelphia: Westminster Press, 1988), 130; Dimitrios Karadimas, Tatian’s Oratio Ad Graecos: Rhet oric and Philosophy/Theology (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2003); Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians At Rome in the First Two Centuries, trans. Michael Steinhauser (London: T&T Clark, 2003), 285 291; Lössl, “Zwischen Christologie und Rhetorik,”; Matthew R. Crawford, “‘Reordering the Confusion’: Tatian, the Second Sophistic, and the So Called Diates saron,” ZAC 19 (2015): 209 236.

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ing he received was what he learned from Justin in Rome, a hypothesis strengthened by the many points of similarity between the thought of these two figures.³⁴ Celsus, however, represents a more standard Middle Platonic version of the interest in “ancient wisdom,” in contrast to Tatian whose presentation reveals certain revisions and idiosyncrasies.

2.1 Celsus’ Understanding of Ancient Wisdom and Philosophy Aside from authoring the earliest surviving polemical tract against Christianity, Celsus is also significant for the fact that he, as Boys-Stones points out, “gives us the clearest evidence we have for the wholehearted adoption into Platonist thought of the Stoic theory of ancient wisdom and its preservation.”³⁵ Moreover, the theory of ancient wisdom is not merely incidental to the goals of his antiChristian treatise, but in fact serves as its most important theoretical principle, since Celsus goes on to define the ἀληθὴς λόγος of his title as the ἀρχαῖος λόγος.³⁶ Indeed, there is scarcely an element in Celsus’ True Account that does not presuppose the Posidonian understanding of an ancient tradition. Early in  See the comparison at Trelenberg, Oratio ad Graecos, 195 203. Though several important points of difference between them have been highlighted by R. Hanig, “Tatian und Justin. Ein Vergleich,” VChr 53 (1999): 31 73.  Boys Stones, Post Hellenistic Philosophy, 106. Cf. Frede, “Celsus philosophus Platonicus,” 5194: “Now there are two reasons why Celsus is of particular interest in this regard: (i) Celsus, apart from Numenius, seems to be the first Platonist for whom this [i. e., Posidonian] view, which later, in some version or other, would become commonplace among Platonists, is attested. (ii) In his case there is abundant material to reconstruct this view, at least in his particular version, in quite some detail.” Heinrich Dörrie, “Die Wertung der Barbaren im Urteil der Griechen. Knechts naturen? Oder Bewahrer und Künder heilbringender Weisheit?,” in Antike und Universalge schichte. Festschrift Hans Erich Stier, ed. Ruth Stiehl and Gustav Adolf Lehmann, (Münster: Aschendorff, 1972), 165 168, also recognized that the theme of “barbarian wisdom” entered a new phase in the late second century, exemplified especially by Celsus, who shows how deep an influence Posidonius had. In his estimation, this phase represented a departure from the ear lier antithesis between barbarian and Greek and was marked by “die Universalität ihrer Method ik” (173).  As also recognized by Boys Stones, Post Hellenistic Philosophy, 106: “For Celsus’ argument against Christianity that is to say, his primary argument (it is supplemented by many and var ious indictments) is precisely that Christianity is vitiated by the youth of its foundations.” Sim ilarly, Pilhofer, Presbyteron Kreitton, 289, observed that “sein ganzes Werk von seinem eigenen Altersbeweis durchzogen ist.” For a catalogue of Celsus’ various criticisms of Christianity, see John Granger Cook, The Interpretation of the New Testament in Greco Roman Paganism (Tübin gen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 17 102, who, however, does not seem to recognize the primacy of the chronological criticism in Celsus’ treatise.

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book one, Origen points out that Celsus “supposes that between many of the nations there is an affinity in that they hold the same doctrine” (Συγγένειαν παρὰ πολλοῖς τῶν ἐθνῶν νομίζων εἶναι ὁ Κέλσος τοῦ αὐτοῦ λόγου).³⁷ This is “an ancient doctrine which has existed from the beginning, which has always been maintained by the wisest nations and cities and wise men” (ἀρχαῖος ἄνωθεν λόγος, περὶ ὃν δὴ ἀεὶ καὶ τὰ ἔθνη τὰ σοφώτατα καὶ πόλεις καὶ ἄνδρες σοφοὶ κατεγένοντο).³⁸ Celsus names a particularly broad range of nations that are heir to this ancient wisdom, including the Egyptians, Assyrians, Indians, Persians, Odrysians, Samothracians, Eleusinians, Hyperboreans, the Galactophagi of Homer, the Druids of Gaul, and the Getae, but notably excluding the Jewish people.³⁹ In contrast to these ancient nations, Celsus held that the Greeks were comparatively young and without records of the ancient times due to “floods and conflagrations.”⁴⁰ Hence, even though he had a much more negative view of Judaism than Numenius, he agreed with him in acknowledging the important contributions made by non-Greeks: “the barbarians were capable of discovering doctrines” (ἱκανοὺς εὑρεῖν δόγματα τοὺς βαρβάρους).⁴¹ Nevertheless, this esteem for ancient barbarian wisdom in no way diminished in Celsus’ view the centrality of the Greeks in ancient philosophy. Rather, “the Greeks are better able to judge the value of what the barbarians have discovered, and to establish the doctrines and put them into practice by virtue” (κρῖναι καὶ βεβαιώσασθαι καὶ ἀσκῆσαι πρὸς ἀρετὴν τὰ ὑπὸ βαρβάρων εὑρεθέντα ἀμείνονές εἰσιν Ἕλληνες).⁴² Celsus therefore makes a distinction between the ancient wisdom and philosophy proper. Various δόγματα were discovered and preserved among the barbarians, but the Greeks uniquely excelled at the task of assessing what has been passed down, systematizing it and putting it into practice.⁴³ Like Numenius, Celsus thought that it was Plato who stands above the rest as the most authoritative of Greek philosophers, since he was the most successful at reconstructing the ancient wisdom and turning it into true philosophy.⁴⁴ Repeatedly he quotes Plato

 Cels. 1.14.  Cels. 1.14.  Cels. 1.14, 16. On this list see Frede, “Celsus philosophus Platonicus,” 5194 5195.  Cels. 1.20.  Cels. 1.2.  Cels. 1.2. On this point, cf. Guy G. Stroumsa, Barbarian Philosophy: The Religious Revolution of Early Christianity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 67.  Cf. Frede, “Celsus philosophus Platonicus,” 5197: “Celsus thinks of philosophy as the scien tific reconstruction and clarification of the true account, as its rational articulation and system atization.”  So Boys Stones, Post Hellenistic Philosophy, 117: “Plato’s genius, in other words, did not lie for his interpreters in the novelty of his system: it lay precisely in the unparalleled success of

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(Cels. 6.1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9), far more than any other philosophical source, and he may even have taken the title of his treatise from Plato’s Ep. 7.342A, which he quotes in Cels. 6.9.⁴⁵ Origen even complains that Celsus cites passages from Plato “as though they were inspired utterances” (ἐνθέως εἰρημένων).⁴⁶ Thus, in many respects Celsus’ view of the “ancient wisdom” appears as a fuller presentation of what can be gleaned from Numenius’ fragments. However, while Numenius was full of praise for Moses and thought he could uncover much wisdom in the Jewish scriptures, Celsus returned to the anti-Semitic stance that had characterized Apion’s attack a century and a half earlier. Like Apion, Celsus asserted that the Jews were “runaway slaves who escaped from Egypt; they never did anything important, nor have they ever been of any significance or prominence whatever” (Ἰουδαίους ἀπ’ Αἰγύπτου δραπέτας γεγονέναι, μηδὲν πώποτε ἀξιόλογον πράξαντας, οὔτ’ ἐν λόγῳ οὔτ’ ἐν ἀριθμῷ αὐτούς ποτε γεγενημένους).⁴⁷ Moreover, Celsus’ claim that “nothing about their history is to be found among the Greeks” (μὴ πάνυ τι τὴν περὶ αὐτῶν ἱστορίαν εὑρίσκεσθαι παρὰ τοῖς Ἕλλησι)⁴⁸ probably served the same purpose as it had for Apion—to demonstrate that the Jewish people had no separate, independent existence until they departed from Egypt. Furthermore, the intellectual history of the Jewish people corresponded to their social history, since the runaway slaves took with them elements of the ancient account that they pilfered from the Egyptians. Moses himself “heard of this doctrine which was current among the wise nations and distinguished men” (Cels. 1.21), but employed it to debased ends, such that

his reconstruction of what Celsus was calling the ‘true doctrine’.” For Boys Stones, it is this premise that the Middle Platonists added to the Stoic conception of ancient wisdom, which therefore brought Middle Platonism as such into existence (115). Frede, “Celsus philosophus Pla tonicus,” 5198 5199, similarly recognizes the importance of Plato for Celsus, though he suggests a different reason for it: “Plato’s authority, to start with, is the authority of an ancient who still has a firm grasp of the true doctrine.” So for Boys Stones, it is Plato’s reconstruction of the an cient wisdom that preeminently qualifies him as an authority, while according to Frede it is Pla to’s preservation of that ancient tradition that is central. Boys Stone’s view makes better sense of the parallels with Numenius, and with Celsus’ statement about the Greeks’ handling of barbar ian “doctrines” in Cels. 1.2.  Cels. 6.9, citing Plato, Ep. 7.342A: ἔστι γάρ τις λόγος ἀληθής, ἐναντίος τῷ τολμήσαντι γράφειν τῶν τοιούτων 〈καὶ〉 ὁτιοῦν, πολλάκις μὲν ὑπ’ ἐμοῦ καὶ πρότερον λεχθείς, ἔοικε δ’ οὖν εἶναι καὶ νῦν λεκτέος. Cf. Robert Bader, Der Alethes Logos des Kelsos (Berlin: Kohlhammer, 1940), 2 3; A. Wifstrand, “Die wahre Lehre des Kelsos,” Bulletin de la Sociéte Royale des Lettres de Lund 5 (1941/42): 391 431; Chadwick, Contra Celsum, xxi; Frede, “Celsus philosophus Platonicus,” 5192.  Cels. 6.17.  Cels. 4.31.  Cels. 4.31.

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the “goatherds and shepherds” who followed him “were deluded by clumsy deceits” (Cels. 1.23), which Celsus elsewhere terms “sorcery” (Cels. 1.26).

2.2 Celsus’ Deployment of the Ancient Wisdom against Christianity These two premises, that there existed an ancient wisdom best exemplified by the Greeks and that the Jews had no claim to such wisdom by virtue of their origin as runaway slaves from Egypt, form the presuppositions for the entirety of Celsus’ broadside against Christianity. Throughout his diatribe he refuses to consider Christianity on its own terms, so to speak, but instead consistently engages in a comparative analysis of Christianity alongside other traditions. He first compares Christianity with Judaism from which it sprang, using a Jewish critic to attack both Jesus himself (corresponding to book one of Origen’s Cels.) and those Christians who believed in Jesus (book two of Cels.).⁴⁹ The purpose of this exercise is to establish that the Christians’ relation to the Jews is analogous to the Jews’ relation to the Egyptians. Just as Moses was able to convince only “goatherds and shepherds” to follow him, so too Christianity is successful “only among the uneducated because of its vulgarity and utter illiteracy.”⁵⁰ Jesus, like Moses, learned magic in Egypt (Cels. 1.28), and used sorcery to deceive these foolish people so that they became convinced that he was the son of God (Cels. 1.68). Celsus’ Jew then directs his gaze at Christians themselves, asking “Why do you take your origin from our religion, and then, as if you are progressing in knowledge, despise these things, although you cannot name any other origin for your doctrine (τοῦ δόγματος) than our law?”⁵¹ This quotation highlights the likely reason behind Celsus’ literary fiction. If his imaginary Jew, who would be uniquely qualified to speak upon such matters, can demonstrate that Christianity has no other origin than Judaism, then, assuming Celsus’ own view of Judaism as debased Egyptian wisdom, Christianity must be regarded as nothing more than a corruption of a corruption. In other words, Celsus uses his Jewish

 On Celsus’ Jew, see the recent studies of Maren R. Niehoff, “A Jewish Critique of Christianity from Second Century Alexandria: Revisiting the Jew Mentioned in Contra Celsum,” JECS 21 (2013): 151 75; James N. Carleton Paget, “The Jew of Celsus and adversus Judaeos literature,” ZAC 21 (2017): 201 42.  Cels. 1.27. Celsus often denigrates the adherents of Christianity as uneducated fools: Cels. 3.50, 55, 75; 6.12, 14. In contrast, Tatian boasted in the fact that among the Christians all classes of people are admitted to the practice of philosophy (Or. 32.2).  Cels. 2.4.

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character to bring Christianity into the closest proximity to Judaism by declaring “Christians teach nothing new” (μηδὲν δὲ καινὸν ἐν τούτοις διδάσκεσθαι φάσκων Χριστιανοὺς).⁵² While Christians would like to draw a line between themselves and their Jewish interlocutors by asserting their belief in Jesus as the Son of God, Celsus tries to negate this distance by having his Jew remove all justification for regarding Jesus as divine (Cels. 2.9, 17, 23, 30, 31, 33, 44, 49, 55, 75), attributing this false notion to his seditious disciples (Cels. 2.26). Hence, throughout the entirety of this section of the treatise in which he deploys a Jewish critic against Jesus and the Christians, the force of Celsus’ argument derives from his assumption that Judaism began as debased Egyptian religion. Once Celsus has done all that he can with his imaginary Jew, he next turns to a comparison of Christian doctrine with a variety of other traditions. Some Christian notions, such as the punishment of the wicked and the reward of the righteous he is happy to affirm, but with these commendable ideas Christians “combine misunderstandings of the ancient tradition” (τὰ τοῦ παλαιοῦ λόγου παρακούσματα συμπλάττοντες τούτοις).⁵³ What follows is a series of case studies illustrating how pervasive this principle of “misunderstanding” is within Christian doctrine. For example, Christians use music to stir up their members into a frenzy like the priests of Cybele (Cels. 3.16). Moreover, unlike the Egyptians who set up images of animals like a monkey or a crocodile, but recognize that worship of these figures is in fact showing respect to “eternal ideas” (ἰδεῶν ἀϊδίων) rather than “ephemeral animals” (ζῴων ἐφημερίων), the Christians never move beyond the material reality to anything more profound.⁵⁴ Indeed they are even worse than this, because they reverence the flesh of Jesus which is “more corruptible” than the “gold, silver, and stone” out of which the images are made.⁵⁵ Furthermore, Jesus’ supposed healing power pales in comparison with the deeds of Asclepius (Cels. 3.24). Similarly, Christian worship of the man Jesus was no different than “the Getae who reverence Zamalxis, and the Cilicians who worship Mopsus, the Acarnanians Amphilochus, the Thebans Amphiaraus, and the Lebadians Trophonius.”⁵⁶ Christians also compare poorly against the mystery religions, which at least have moral standards that are required for membership (Cels. 3.59). Again, stories in the Christian scriptures may be shown to have resulted from Christians “misunderstanding what is said by the Greeks or barbarians” (παρα    

Cels. Cels. Cels. Cels. Cels.

2.5. 3.16. 3.17 19. 3.42. 3.34.

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κούσαντας τῶν παρ’ Ἕλλησιν ἢ βαρβάροις περὶ τούτων λεγομένων).⁵⁷ The Christian idea of a flood is merely a “debased and unscrupulous version” (παραχαράττοντες καὶ ῥᾳδιουργοῦντες) of the myth of Deucalion,⁵⁸ Moses “corrupted” (παραφθείροντα) the story of the sons of Aloeus when he wrote about the Tower of Babel, and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah was a debased version of the story of Phaethon.⁵⁹ Similarly, the story of Genesis about the creation of humanity from the earth cannot stand up in comparison with the similar stories among “the men who claimed antiquity, such as the Athenians, Egyptians, Arcadians, and Phrygians … each of whom produce evidence for these assertions.”⁶⁰ After refuting Christian claims for the authority of their teacher Jesus, leaving them with “no authority for their doctrine” (μηδεμίαν ἀρχὴν τοῦ δόγματος),⁶¹ Celsus next undertakes to examine the “actual teaching” of the Christians, in order to demonstrate that it is nothing more than “misunderstandings and corruptions of the truth which they have made through ignorance” (παρακηκοότες ὑπ’ ἀγνοίας διαφθείρουσιν).⁶² Here he has in mind the “fundamental principles” (ἀρχαί) which Christians discuss “in a vulgar manner” (οὐκ ἐμμελῶς),⁶³ and again he provides his readers with multiple examples of this misunderstanding and corruption, this time based upon a series of quotations from Plato intended to demonstrate that Christians “misunderstand Plato” (παρακούσαντες τοῦ Πλάτωνος).⁶⁴ Plato gives rational justification for his teaching (Cels. 6.10), unlike the Christians who are supposed to believe without argument what Jesus says, merely on the basis that he came down from heaven (Cels. 1.9). Moreover, specific Christian notions can be shown to be derivative of Greek wisdom. Paul’s denigration of worldly wisdom in 1 Corinthians 3:19 was “taken over from the Greek wise men,” such as Heraclitus and Socrates;⁶⁵ Christian teaching on humility is a corruption of Plato’s teaching in Laws 715E;⁶⁶ Jesus’ judgment upon the rich was “borrowed” from Plato’s Laws 743A;⁶⁷ the Christian notion of a deity higher

 Cels. 4.11.  Cels. 4.41.  Cels. 4.21.  Cels. 4.36.  Cels. 5.65.  Cels. 5.65.  Cels. 5.65.  Cels. 6.7.  Cels. 6.12. On Celsus’ interpretation of the New Testament, see Cook, The Interpretation of the New Testament in Greco Roman Paganism, 18 61.  Cels. 6.15.  Cels. 6.16.

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than the heavens resulted from a misunderstanding of Plato’s Phaedrus 247C;⁶⁸ and finally the rule of non-retaliation was taken from Plato’s Crito 49B–E.⁶⁹ Celsus’ general openness to the wisdom of other cultures can be seen in his positive appraisal of the “truths that are obscurely represented by the teaching of the Persians and by the mystery of Mithras,”⁷⁰ referring especially to their understanding of the heavens, from which Christians again have borrowed (Cels. 6.23). In this passage, he makes explicit the comparative method that he has been employing throughout the treatise: If one cares to study a mystery of the Christians side by side with that of the Persians which has been mentioned, contrasting them with one another and laying bare also the teaching of the Christians, one may then see the difference between them. τελετήν τινα Χριστιανῶν τελετῇ 〈τῇ〉 προειρημένῃ Περσῶν τὸν βουλόμενον συνεξετάσαι, ταῦτα ἀλλήλοις παραβαλόντα καὶ γυμνώσαντα καὶ τὰ Χριστιανῶν, οὕτω θεάσεσθαι τὴν δια φορὰν αὐτῶν.⁷¹

Here Celsus particularly has in mind an astrological diagram he obtained from some Christian source, which bears obvious similarities to Persian sources. He goes on to suggest that the Christian idea of Satan was a “misunderstanding” of the “divine war hinted at by the ancients,” such as Heraclitus and Pherecydes.⁷² Similarly, the idea of calling Jesus “Son of God” was a Christian corruption of the tendency among “men of olden times” to “call this world God’s child and a demigod on the ground that it originated from him,”⁷³ and the doctrine of the resurrection is a misunderstanding of the idea of reincarnation (Cels. 7.32). As Celsus acknowledges, this same method could be used in many other cases: What I have said on this point may be a sufficient example for all the other doctrines which they corrupt. And anyone who wishes to find further instances of this will recognize them. ᾿Aλλὰ τῶνδε μὲν πέρι καὶ τῶν ἄλλων, ὅσα παραφθείρουσιν, ἀρκείτω τὰ εἰρημένα· καὶ ὅτῳ φίλον ἐπὶ πλεῖόν τι αὐτῶν ζητεῖν, εἴσεται.⁷⁴

The passages cited above from Origen’s books two through seven suffice to demonstrate that, although Celsus’ discussion wanders over much territory including

      

Cels. 6.19. Cels. 7.58. Cels. 6.22. Cels. 6.24. Cels. 6.42. Cels. 6.47. Cels. 7.58.

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on occasion some positive explication of Platonic doctrine (cf. Cels. 7.36, 42),⁷⁵ the most consistent theme running throughout the fragments is the comparative method which he uses to prove that Christianity is both derivative and a corruption of various aspects of the ancient wisdom expressed most clearly and authoritatively by Greek philosophy, and especially Plato. Hence, it is not simply the case that this is “one of the leading themes of Celsus’ treatise.”⁷⁶ Rather, it is the most important theoretical principle that justifies the comparative method that he employs throughout to discredit Christianity.

3 Tatian’s Conception of Cultural History and Hellenistic Deviance If Celsus drew upon earlier anti-Jewish polemic in his attack on the Christians, Justin Martyr continued the line of defense represented by Josephus in arguing for the antiquity of Moses and the notion that Greek culture was derivative of Jewish wisdom. In his first apology, he claimed that Moses and the prophets are “older than all those who were writers,”⁷⁷ a thesis that he later elaborated at some length by suggesting that Greek mythology was dependent upon the Hebrew scriptures (1 apol. 54) and that Plato adopted Moses’ account of creation (1 apol. 58).⁷⁸ In fact, “everything whatever both the philosophers and poets said concerning the immortality of the soul or punishments after death or contemplation of heavenly things or similar teachings” were taken over from the prophets.⁷⁹ Justin’s position with respect to this issue is easily understood as a slight modification of the thought of Numenius, and the number of similarities between the two authors has led some to draw a direct line of influence from the Neo-Pythagorean to Justin or other early Christian authors who take a similar view.⁸⁰ Regardless of the source from which Justin derived this view, the notion

 On Celsus’ Platonic doctrine, see Frede, “Celsus philosophus Platonicus,” 5203 5212; Dil lon, The Middle Platonists, 400 401.  Droge, Homer or Moses, 80.  1 apol. 23.1.  For an elaboration of this theme in Justin, see Droge, Homer or Moses, 59 65, and for a wider discussion, drawing on Justin and other early Christian authors, see Boys Stones, Post Hel lenistic Philosophy, 151 202.  1 apol. 44.9.  Cf. Waszink, “Some Observations,” 54 56; Droge, Homer or Moses, 72. Stroumsa, Barbarian Philosophy, 75, claims that Christian interest in barbarian wisdom did not come from Numenius or others like him, but instead from “their own particular viewpoint and sensitivity as Christian

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of Greek dependency upon Hebrew wisdom would have a momentous impact upon Christian self-understanding and argumentation. Boys-Stones is surely correct in suggesting that as part of the model in whose terms Christian orthodoxy was defined and asserted as a philosophical tradition of unique standing in the history of thought, it played a vital role in establishing the Christian Church as, arguably, the most historically successful achieve ment of the Platonists’ model itself.⁸¹

Given that he was Justin’s student in Rome, it is hardly surprising to find this theme figuring prominently in Tatian’s thought as well. If Celsus shows the degree to which Middle Platonists had adopted the Stoic view of ancient wisdom, Tatian does the same for the Christians. For the theme of ancient wisdom and its supposed corruption is not merely one of the themes of his Oration, but is instead the dominant point that he argues throughout.⁸² Moreover, Tatian, to a much greater degree than Justin, demonstrates how effectively this idea can be weaponized and deployed against one’s philosophical opponents who hailed from a different culture. Finally, Tatian differs markedly from Justin in not just claiming to pass on ancient Jewish wisdom, but in going as far as claiming to be a contemporary “barbarian” sage representing an unbroken tradition of wisdom stretching back to the most ancient time. In these three ways Tatian develops the idea he learned from Justin: by making it central to his entire project, by putting it to overtly polemical ends, and by radicalizing it so that it formed the core of his self-identity and self-presentation to his audience.

3.1 The Centrality of the Dependence Theme in Tatian’s Oration Several scholars, myself included, have commented upon the lack of clear structure evident in Tatian’s sole surviving work, his Oration. Molly Whittaker speaks for many when she writes, “The incoherence of the work as a whole is on a par with his often confused and incoherent arguments and the obscurity of his

intellectuals,” in other words, “their Christian self fashioning.” Stroumsa’s contention seems to me implausible insofar as it separates Christians too far from contemporary intellectual devel opments in the second century.  Boys Stones, Post Hellenistic Philosophy, 202.  It is therefore unfortunate that in his otherwise excellent monograph Boys Stones deals with Tatian only in passing.

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style.”⁸³ I wonder, however, whether the incoherence of the work has been overstated. Tatian does, it is true, wander through a number of topics, throwing out allusions and references to an astonishingly diverse number of figures. However, the theme that unites the whole of the work is his claim to be presenting an ancient barbarian wisdom that surpasses everything he previously had learned in Greek παιδεία, which in contrast is in various ways corrupt. At the micro-level, a structure to the work is often indiscernible. However, when viewed at the macrolevel, Tatian’s Oration falls into two halves, each with a distinct, yet complementary thesis: 1. Greek παιδεία is a corruption of true wisdom derived from daemons who deceptively imitated the true Logos. (Or. 1– 28) 2. Barbarian wisdom, represented preeminently by Moses, antedates the earliest Greek culture. (Or. 31– 42) The hinge between the two halves of the discourse is Or. 29 – 30 wherein Tatian describes his own conversion, and at each stage of his diatribe, his argument only works if one assumes a Stoic-inspired view of ancient philosophical wisdom.⁸⁴ The first sentence of the treatise announces its theme: Do not maintain a totally hostile attitude to barbarians, men of Greece, nor resent their doc trines. For which of your own practices did not come from the barbarians?⁸⁵ Μὴ πάνυ φιλέχθρως διατίθεσθε πρὸς τοὺς βαρβάρους, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἕλληνες, μηδὲ φθονήσητε τοῖς τούτων δόγμασιν. ποῖον γὰρ ἐπιτήδευμα παρ’ ὑμῖν τὴν σύστασιν οὐκ ἀπὸ βαρβάρων ἐκτήσατο;

What follows is a list of the inventions the Greeks pilfered from other nations, including divination, sacrifices, astronomy, geometry, and the alphabet. The Greeks are therefore incorrect when they claim that these “imitations” (μιμήσεις) are in fact their own “inventions” (εὑρέσεις).⁸⁶ In the first half of the Oration, Ta-

 Whittaker, Tatian: Oratio ad Graecos and Fragments, xx. See my fuller discussion of this problem in “The Problemata of Tatian,” 563 66. Especially helpful is the analysis of Karadimas, Tatian’s Oratio ad Graecos, 9 24.  Pilhofer, Presbyteron Kreitton, 253 260, recognizes that the “Altersbeweis” is the dominant theme in the Oration but focuses almost exclusively on the latter half from Or. 31 onwards.  Tatian, Or. 1.1.  Tatian, Or. 1.2. For a comparison of Justin and Tatian’s understanding of “imitation” with that of Lucian of Samosata, see Nathanael J. Andrade, Syrian Identity in the Greco Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 277.

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tian goes on to condemn nearly all Greek learning and religious practice, from rhetoric (Or. 1), astrology (Or. 9), mythology (Or. 9; 21), sorcery (Or. 16), medicine (Or. 17– 18), philosophy (Or. 19; 25),⁸⁷ acting (Or. 22), dance (Or. 22), mime (Or. 22), gladiatorial shows (Or. 23), theatre (Or. 25), music (Or. 25), grammar (Or. 26), and finally legislation (Or. 28). To be sure, Tatian aims a number of criticisms against these various aspects of Greek παιδεία, some of which could stand on their own in the absence of a doctrine of the “ancient wisdom,” but the fact that he begins his diatribe with this assertion suggests that the force of his attack depends upon the errant origin of his opponents’ culture. After completing this seeming wholesale denunciation of Hellenistic learning, Tatian claims to have tried all that the Greeks have to offer and found it wanting (Or. 29). He states that when I was by myself I began to seek by what means I could discover the truth. While I was engaged in serious thought I happened to read some barbarian writings, older by compar ison with the doctrines of the Greeks, more divine by comparison with their errors. κατ’ ἐμαυτὸν γενόμενος ἐζήτουν ὅτῳ τρόπῳ τἀληθὲς ἐξευρεῖν δύνωμαι. περινοοῦντι δέ μοι τὰ σπουδαῖα συνέβη γραφαῖς τισιν ἐντυχεῖν βαρβαρικαῖς, πρεσβυτέραις μὲν ὡς πρὸς τὰ Ἑλλήνων δόγματα, θειοτέραις δὲ ὡς πρὸς τὴν ἐκείνων πλάνην·⁸⁸

Though he lists some other features of these “barbarian” writings that he found appealing, it is their antiquity that he highlights first and foremost, an assertion that derives its argumentative force from the sort of philosophical understanding of an ancient wisdom that I surveyed in part one of this paper. These were ancient writings containing humankind’s primitive wisdom, unsullied by later corruption. The fact that this is what Tatian has in mind is further evidenced by the final sentence of this paragraph, when he states that this new teaching he encountered was “not something we had never received, but what we had received but had been prevented from keeping by our error” (δίδωσι δὲ ἡμῖν οὐχ ὅπερ μὴ ἐλάβομεν, ἀλλ’ ὅπερ λαβόντες ὑπὸ τῆς πλάνης ἔχειν ἐκωλύθημεν.).⁸⁹ In other words, what he found in these barbarian writings was not something utterly new, but rather the pure truth that had been adopted and corrupted by Greek error.

 On Tatian’s attacks against philosophy, see Anne Marie Malingrey, “Philosophia.” Étude d’un groupe de mots dans la littérature grecque, des présocratiques au IVe siècle après J. C. (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1961), 110 115.  Or. 29.1 2.  Or. 29.3.

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Following his description of his conversion, Tatian announces a new subtheme in Or. 31: Now I think it is appropriate that I should prove that our philosophy is older than Greek practices. Moses and Homer will be set as our limits. Νῦν δὲ προσήκειν μοι νομίζω παραστῆσαι πρεσβυτέραν τὴν ἡμετέραν φιλοσοφίαν τῶν παρ’ Ἕλλησιν ἐπιτηδευμάτων· ὅροι δὲ ἡμῖν κείσονται Μωυσῆς καὶ Ὅμηρος.⁹⁰

This was a version of the same claim that Justin had already made, which went back to Josephus.⁹¹ However, as Droge has pointed out, Tatian goes far beyond Justin in the degree of research and education that inform his account of the antiquity of Moses, producing what Droge refers to as a “scientific” argument that relies on a comparative analysis of Hellenistic chronological works.⁹² As Tatian describes it, he is “resisting you [the Greeks] with your own weapons.”⁹³ Aside from a digression at Or. 32.1– 35.2, which Tatian himself acknowledges as such, the remainder of the Oration is resolutely focused on the argument for Moses’ antiquity. Moses, so he claims, was “the founder of all barbarian wisdom” (τὸν δὲ πάσης βαρβάρου σοφίας ἀρχηγόν),⁹⁴ and, since Tatian holds that the Greeks borrowed all their learning from the barbarians, Moses must have functioned as the origin of everything good about Greek culture as well. After he concludes his argument for Moses’ antiquity, Tatian reaffirms his initial education in Greek παιδεία, which was followed by his education in the philosophy that he preaches, and he finally calls for his audience to examine his doctrines (δόγματα).⁹⁵ But as noted in his account of his conversion, these two stages of Tatian’s education are not fundamentally at odds with one another since his conversion to Christianity was not strictly speaking something new but instead represented “what [he] had received but had been prevented from keeping by [Greek] error.” In other words, Tatian’s conversion did not require a wholesale repudiation of what he had learned from Greek παιδεία, but instead placed all of that learning upon its proper foundation by going back to its true source.

 Or. 31.1.  The continuity of this theme in Tatian with the tradition of Jewish apologetic is noted by Ma lingrey, Philosophia, 119; Pilhofer, Presbyteron Kreitton, 255 257.  Droge, Homer or Moses, 91 96. Similarly, Pilhofer, Presbyteron Kreitton, 254, 259 60, argues against the idea that Tatian’s presentation of this theme is “primitiv,” suggesting instead that that he is the first author “der den Alterbeweis methodisch anzugehen versucht” by taking Moses and Homer as the “Eckpunkten seiner chronologischen Überlegungen.”  Or. 31.2.  Or. 31.1.  Or. 42.1.

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Hence, from the outset of his treatise to the conclusion, the philosophical notion of an ancient wisdom that must be sought out and adhered to undergirds Tatian’s entire argument. Apart from this presupposition, his attack on Greek culture loses much of its force and his demonstration of Moses’ antiquity is largely pointless. In fact, if we were to ask what it would look like for a second-century Christian author to write a treatise on this theme from his distinctly Christian perspective, no better model could be given than what Tatian has offered us in this work. To be clear, the goal of the Oration is not to argue for the existence of an ancient wisdom. Tatian seemingly assumes that both he and his hearers are already committed to the existence of such, and so it is within this framework that he seeks to demolish his opponents’ cultural superiority and promote his own understanding of truth.

3.2 Tatian, the Daemons, and Greek Paideia The way in which the second half of Tatian’s argument rests upon the premise of an ancient wisdom is clear enough, but the first half would benefit from a fuller explication since I have left out a key component of his account of the transmission of this ancient wisdom, namely, the means by which the Greeks have “imitated” barbarian wisdom. In fact, his explanation of this point represents one of the most distinctive aspects of the Christian adaptation of the Middle Platonic theme I have been tracing, and highlights one of the most significant parallels between his scheme and that of Celsus. Tatian does not merely think that the Greeks borrowed directly from Moses and the prophets. Although his model would certainly allow for this, his primary emphasis is on a more metaphysical explanation. He implies that it was fallen angels, or daemons, who passed on to the Greeks a corrupted version of this ancient wisdom.⁹⁶ In Or. 7, in the middle of his denunciation of Greek culture, Tatian gives a summary of his doctrine of creation and the subsequent fall of some of the angels, as a result of which they became “daemons.”⁹⁷ As a consequence of this fall, these daemons turned

 On Tatian’s demonology, see especially Aimé Puech, Recherches sur le Discours aux Grecs de Tatien, suivies d’une traduction française du Discours avec notes (Paris: F. Alcan, 1903), 72 75; Hunt, Christianity in the Second Century, 133 136; Trelenberg, Oratio ad Graecos, 45 49; Andrei Timotin, “Gott und die Dämonen bei Tatian,” in Gegen falsche Götter und falsche Bildung. Tatian, Rede an die Griechen, ed. Heinz Günther Nesselrath (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 267 86.  Dale Basil Martin, “When Did Angels Become Demons,” JBL 129 (2010): 657 77, notes that Tatian was the first to make a “full identification” between fallen angels and daemons, two cat egories of beings that had been kept distinct in earlier Enochic traditions (676).

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their attention to humanity such that “humans became the subject of the daemons’ apostasy” (Ὑπόθεσις δὲ αὐτοῖς τῆς ἀποστασίας οἱ ἄνθρωποι γίνονται).⁹⁸ In a striking move, Tatian directly identified the traditional Greek pantheon as this army of fallen angels, with Zeus, or Satan, as their leader (Or. 8.2). This malevolent band of beings led humanity astray and plunged them into vice, all in an attempt to make themselves look like gods. Tatian specified two ways in which the daemons accomplished this malevolent rule over humanity: the idea of astrological fate and the practice of medicine or sorcery.⁹⁹ In the first instance, the daemons pretended to make the “irrational ordering of life on earth” appear “rational by the arrangements of the stars,”¹⁰⁰ as a pale imitation of the original “ordering” that God himself had carried out in the act of creation (Or. 5). Tatian goes on at length pointing out the absurdity of this notion of astrological fate invented by these daemons (Or. 9 – 11). Another domain wherein the daemons pretend to exercise authority is in medicine or sorcery. Tatian devotes any unexpectedly lengthy portion of his address to this topic (Or. 16 – 18), claiming that “pharmacy” (φαρμακεία) in all its forms is an “invention” (ἐπιτέχνησις) of the daemons.¹⁰¹ Notably here he uses the term φαρμακεία which could apply either to witchcraft and sorcery or to medicinal treatments, and Tatian seems to make no distinction between these two categories. He suggests that the daemons themselves are the ones who are responsible for causing diseases among humans, and that they do so in order that they can then bring healing and so be proclaimed as divine. The way they accomplish this is by concocting various kinds of medicine and then “producing effects in the areas where they have determined that each of these should be individually potent.”¹⁰² Thus, in Tatian’s view, both astrological fate and φαρμακεία are “hostile devices of deceiving daemons” (παραφόρων δαιμόνων … ἀντισοφιστεύματα).¹⁰³ It is true that Tatian stops short of a straightforward assertion that the Greeks learned all their τέχναι or παιδεία from daemonic sources, but only a decade or two later Clement of Alexandria makes this point explicitly, based on the same

 Or. 8.1.  These are two of the three examples of forbidden knowledge communicated by the Watchers to humanity in 1 Enoch 7 8, which must have served as Tatian’s source, whether directly or mediated by Justin. The claims in this paragraph are explored at greater length in Matthew R. Crawford, “‘The Hostile Devices of the Demented Demons’: Tatian on Astrology and Pharmacol ogy,” JECS 29 (2021): forthcoming.  Or. 9.1. τὴν ἄλογον ἐπὶ γῆς πολιτείαν εὔλογον διὰ τῆς ἀστροθεσίας ἀποδείξωσιν.  Or. 18.1.  Or. 17.4.  Or. 12.10.

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Enochic tradition upon which Tatian drew.¹⁰⁴ Hence, his discussions of fate and φαρμακεία are probably meant to be representative of the rest of the technical arts as well. Assuming this is what Tatian wants to communicate, then in the overall development of his argument, the deceiving daemons perform for him the same role played by the sorcerers Moses and Jesus in Celsus’ diatribe against the Christians. Both authors felt the need to provide some account of the source of their opponents’ corruption by positing a perfidious founder of their cultural tradition who took the ancient truth and twisted it in order to deceive the gullible. The fact that the daemons performed this function in Tatian’s account of the ancient wisdom theme also helps to explain why he launches into a lengthy discussion of demonology in the midst of his attack upon Greek culture. Clearly he regarded the two issues as intrinsically linked, which again suggests that there is more structural coherence to the Oration than might first be apparent. Moreover, the requirements of Tatian’s notion of ancient wisdom also help to explain why he takes the somewhat surprising position of arguing strenuously for the real existence of the traditional Greek pantheon and opposes their allegorical interpretation (Or. 21.5).¹⁰⁵ He needed some sort of way to account for the corruptness of Hellenism, just as Celsus did for the Christians, and the classical Greek deities, transformed into Jewish-Christian daemons, provided a ready-made solution.¹⁰⁶ Given the centrality of the Greek pantheon to Hellenistic cultural identity, Tatian’s identification of them with the fallen angels, or daemons, of the JewishChristian tradition cuts to the heart of Hellenistic claims to cultural supremacy.¹⁰⁷ Most of the features of Tatian’s account of demonology that I have just summarized can already be found in Justin (cf. 1 apol. 54.1– 7; 2 apol. 5.2– 5), who was himself likely drawing upon Enochic literature.¹⁰⁸ What sets Tatian

 Clement of Alexandria, ec. proph. 53.4: ἤδη δὲ καὶ Ἐνώχ φησιν τοὺς παραβάντας ἀγγέλους διδάξαι τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἀστρονομίαν καὶ μαντικὴν καὶ τὰς ἄλλας τέχνας; discussed in Richard Bauckham, “The Fall of the Angels as the Source of Philosophy in Hermias and Clement of Alex andria,” VChr 39 (1985): 313 330, at 320.  Cf. Trelenberg, Oratio ad Graecos, 47.  Trelenberg, Oratio ad Graecos, 47, comes to a similar conclusion though he does not focus on the notion of an ancient wisdom: “Seinen schärfsten Angriff auf das Heidentum kann Tatian, dies hat er genau gesehen, nur unter der Prämisse der realen Existenz der mythischen Götterwelt platzieren.”  Cf. Trelenberg, Oratio ad Graecos, 47: “Die Dämonisierung der griechischen Götterwelt ist ein zentrales Motiv der Apologie, sie gehört zu den Grundelementen der Taktik der Diffamier ung.”  See the summary of Justin’s demonology as it relates to this theme in Bauckham, “The Fall of the Angels,” 319; Droge, Homer or Moses, 54 59. Loren T. Stuckenbruck, “The Book of Enoch: Its Reception in Second Temple Jewish and in Christian Tradition,” Early Christianity 1 (2013): 18,

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apart is the vehemence of his rhetoric, which demonstrates how effectively the idea of an ancient wisdom could be used as a means of undermining one’s opponents’ claim to cultural and intellectual superiority.¹⁰⁹

3.3 Tatian, the “Barbarian” Philosopher The final way in which Tatian develops Justin’s understanding of an ancient wisdom is his valorization of “barbarian” identity. Indeed, this is one of the most striking differences between the teacher and student. In an insightful but largely overlooked chapter for a festschrift, J. H. Waszink pointed out that among Christian sources the “positive conception of a ‘Wisdom of the Barbarians’ … occurs explicitly for the first time in Tatian’s Oration.”¹¹⁰ The Apology of Aristides, likely predating Justin and Tatian, acknowledged that the barbarians have philosophers among them, but says nothing positive about the barbarian nations, instead simply condemning them for their worship of images (Apol. Aristides 3).¹¹¹ Justin’s usage of the label βάρβαρος is slightly different.¹¹² On one occasion he explicitly identifies the Jewish patriarchs as barbarians (1 apol. 46.3), and in three other passages he uses it simply as a contrast with “the Greeks” (1 apol. 5.4; 7.3; dial. 117.5).¹¹³ Most important is a passage in the Dialogue with Trypho where he states unequivocally, “we are not a contemptible people, nor a barbarian race, nor are we like the Carian and Phrygian nations” (οὐκ εὐκαταφρόνητος δῆμός ἐσμεν οὐδὲ βάρβαρον φῦλον οὐδὲ ὁποῖα Καρῶν ἢ Φρυγῶν ἔθνη).¹¹⁴ Thus, despite his insistence on the antiquity of Moses, Justin seemed to dislike the label “barbarian,” presumably because of the negative connotations the term carried among those educated in Greek παιδεία. In stark contrast to Justin, Tatian positively owns the label βάρβαρος and makes it central to his entire project. The word occurs thirteen times in the Oration, always with a positive connotation, at least from his perspective. In the first

considers the possibility that Justin drew upon 1 Enoch, but suggests that he might equally have been relying on Jubilees.  Cf. Pilhofer, Presbyteron Kreitton, 253, who notes that “Auch ihm [i. e., Justin] ist Polemik nicht fremd; was ihm im Vergleich zu Tatian fehlt, ist der aggressive Ton der Polemik.”  Waszink, “Some Observations,” 51. On this theme, see also Dörrie, “Die Wertung der Bar baren.”  Cf. Malingrey, Philosophia, 112.  Cf. Waszink, “Some Observations,” 48 49.  Cf. Stroumsa, Barbarian Philosophy, 65 66.  dial. 119.4.

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line of his discourse, cited earlier, he exhorts his audience not to despise τοὺς βαρβάρους, and in the second sentence he declares that all Greek “practices” came from the barbarians.¹¹⁵ Later on he points out that the Greeks should not be so arrogant as to refuse instruction from “those who follow a barbarian code of law” (μὴ ἀναξιοπαθήσητε παρὰ τοῖς βαρβαρικῇ νομοθεσίᾳ παρακολουθοῦσι παιδεύεσθαι), presumably a reference to the same texts he has in mind when he later attributes his conversion the “barbarian writings” (γραφαῖς … βαρβαρικαῖς).¹¹⁶ Acknowledging that some would use the label to refer to Christians, Tatian tells his hearers, “as for you Greeks what can I say except that you should not abuse your betters, nor, even if they are called barbarians, take this as an occasion for mockery.”¹¹⁷ Tatian’s own identification as a βάρβαρος becomes increasingly clearer in the second half of the Oration. He declares that he has “said farewell” to Rome and Athens, and has instead “laid claim to the philosophy you call barbarian” (τῆς καθ’ ὑμᾶς βαρβάρου φιλοσοφίας ἀντεποιησάμην),¹¹⁸ and he imagines his hearers objecting that he is “innovating with new barbarian doctrines” (καινοτομεῖ τὰ βαρβάρων δόγματα).¹¹⁹ Tatian, however, saves to the very end the explicit declaration of his origin. As he concludes his discourse, he finally reveals to his audience his true identity: “Tatian, one who practices philosophy like the barbarians, who was born in the land of the Assyrians” (ὁ κατὰ βαρβάρους φιλοσοφῶν Τατιανὸς … γεννηθεὶς μὲν ἐν τῇ τῶν ᾿Aσσυρίων γῇ).¹²⁰ That is, Tatian is not merely a convert to barbarian philosophy. Rather, as a native of the “land of the Assyrian” he himself is a “barbarian,” and as such is uniquely authorized to speak on behalf of the philosophical movement he has joined.¹²¹ The fact that this revelation of his identity follows on

 Or. 1.1.  Or. 12.10; 29.2.  Or. 30.3.  Or. 35.2. This passage illustrates the contention of Andrade, Syrian Identity, 263, that “Justin Martyr and Tatian conceived of Roman imperial power and the primacy of Greek classical per formance as so mutually constitutive that they often conflated them.”  Or. 35.2 3.  Or. 42.1. J. L. Lightfoot, Lucian: On the Syrian Goddess (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 534, juxtaposes Tatian’s decision to save his self identification for the end of the Oration with the authorial presentation in Lucian of Samosata’s On the Syrian Goddess, wherein the au thor, in the final paragraph, confesses that he as a youth partook of the rituals he has been de scribing, and that a lock of his hair remains in the temple up to the present time. Malingrey, Phi losophia, 120, recognizes that Tatian ends his discourse “par une sorte de provocation qui donne au verbe φιλοσοφεῖν des résonances de triomphe.”  There is admittedly slippage here in the argument of Tatian’s Oration insofar as the label “barbarian” papers over what might otherwise be regarded as important distinctions. Tatian

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from his proof of Moses’ antiquity as the “founder of barbarian wisdom” implies that Tatian himself is “the most recent in a long line of ‘barbarian’ sages of the Near East.”¹²² For a time it was conventional to suppose that the term βάρβαρος for Tatian simply meant “Christian.”¹²³ Martin Elze put forward a different interpretation, namely that the term meant “uncultured” in contrast to the οἱ πεπαιδευμένοι (Or. 25.5) whom he was addressing.¹²⁴ However, Waszink argued persuasively that this is a misreading. Tatian thinks of himself and his community as in possession of their own form of culture, or παιδεία (Or. 35.3), that is superior to that of the Greeks. Instead, as Waszink correctly observed, Tatian means to argue that “Christian doctrine is the newest form of the ‘wisdom of the Barbarians’.”¹²⁵ In other words, the label βάρβαρος, in Tatian’s argument, carries all the ethnic connotations the word would normally bear and is not simply synonymous with “Christian.” The recent work of Nathanael Andrade supports this view and extends it. He points out that in the first and second centuries one did not have to live beyond the boundaries of the Roman Empire to call oneself an “Assyrian,” and so the common view that Tatian originated from the Persian side of the eastern border needs to be abandoned. However, Andrade has perceptively demonstrated that in the late Hellenistic and Roman imperial periods “Greek-writing

himself was not Jewish (at least there is no reason to suppose he was), but identifies himself as coming from “the land of the Assyrians,” and so implicitly as a barbarian. In contrast, the “bar barian writings” that led to his conversion were of course the Jewish scriptures, and the barbar ian sage he identifies as ὁ πάσης βαρβάρου σοφίας ἀρχηγός was Moses, the lawgiver of the Jews. Yet Tatian studiously avoids the term “Jewish” in the Oration just as much as the label “Chris tian” or the name of “Jesus,” tendencies no doubt attributable to his rhetorical strategy. In other words, Tatian rebadges Moses as a “barbarian” rather than a Jew in order to be able to present himself, a fellow “barbarian,” as standing in continuity with his forebear. However, this sleight of hand is perhaps not as deceptive as it might first appear. In the fourth century BCE, the author Megasthenes said that the Jews are to “Syria” what the Brahmans are to India, in other words “philosophers” (see the fragment of his Indica cited in Clement, str. 1.72.4, on which see Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine During the Early Hellen istic Period, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM Press, 1981), 1.257; Stroumsa, Barbarian Philoso phy, 62). Since the designation of a region called “Syria” overlapped with the ancient “land of the Assyrians,” it is a short step to regard Moses as a barbarian sage from “Assyria.” Josephus, however, clearly distinguished “Assyrians” from “Syrians” in AJ 1.143 147, on which see Natha nael Andrade, “Assyrians, Syrians and the Greek Language in the Late Hellenistic and Roman Imperial Periods,” JNES 73 (2014): 304.  So Andrade, “Assyrians, Syrians and the Greek Language,” 313.  Cf. Malingrey, Philosophia, 120.  Elze, Tatian und seine Theologie, 25.  Waszink, “Some Observations,” 50 51.

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Syrians framed themselves as a certain type of Assyrian. They were socially distinct from other Assyrians, but they still shared a heritage as either descendants or heirs of an ancient Assyrian people.”¹²⁶ In other words, Tatian’s revelation of his identity at the climactic conclusion of the Oration is not just a geographical statement, but is instead a claim to continuity with the ancient “Assyrian” ἐθνός, distinct from the ethnic and cultural heritages represented by Greece and Rome. Hence, whatever misgivings Justin might have had over the term βάρβαρος, Tatian apparently did not share them. In fact, his valorization of his “barbarian” identity is a genuine novum in the history of Christian theology, and, indeed, in the history of post-Hellenistic philosophy. Philo’s acknowledgement that the barbarians had philosophers among their number falls short of the sort of self-identification and self-presentation as a “barbarian” philosopher that one finds in Tatian. Tatian’s contemporary Melito of Sardis forms a useful point of contrast. Addressing Marcus Aurelius in his lost Apology, Melito acknowledged that “our philosophy formerly bloomed among the barbarians,” but then quickly qualified this admission by pointing out that it “flowered among the nations under you, during the great rule of your ancestor Augustus.”¹²⁷ Melito’s mention of “barbarians” here is surely a euphemism for Judaism, and in this respect he resembles Tatian’s usage of the term.¹²⁸ However, he is careful to identify himself not with the “barbarians” among whom this movement began, but instead with the respectable peoples now ruled by the successors to Augustus, the Romans from whom he is seeking to win tolerance.¹²⁹ Writing around the same time as Melito, Tatian in contrast presents himself as standing in unbroken continuity with the “barbarian” origins of Christianity.

 Andrade, “Assyrians, Syrians and the Greek Language,” 300. See especially his analysis on pp.302 05 of the different connotations carried by the terms “Assyrian” and “Syrian” in the early imperial period, and his discussion of Tatian on 311 16.  Melito, apud Eusebius, HE 4.26.7: ἡ γὰρ καθ’ ἡμᾶς φιλοσοφία πρότερον μὲν ἐν βαρβάροις ἤκμασεν, ἐπανθήσασα δὲ τοῖς σοῖς ἔθνεσιν κατὰ τὴν Αὐγούστου τοῦ σοῦ προγόνου μεγάλην ἀρχήν.  Cf. Waszink, “Some Observations,” 49, who recognizes that, in contrast to Melito, “the term has a wider meaning in the Oration of Tatian.”  See also the fragment in Eusebius, HE 4.26.6 in which Melito implicitly expresses disdain for the barbarians when he asserts that not even “barbarian enemies” are worthy of being treat ed in the way the Christians in Asia are being persecuted as a result of the imperial decree. This statement suggests that he shared his opponents’ negative assessment of barbarian identity and was far from embracing it as did Tatian. Pace Malingrey, Philosophia, 120, who supposes that Melito uses the term “en toute objectivité” in contrast to the “nuance de mépris” evident in its usage by Greeks and Romans.

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The theoretical presuppositions for such a claim were already laid in Numenius, who believed that the barbarians were in possession of various δόγματα. Recall that even Celsus included the Assyrians in his list of ancient nations who had preserved humanity’s primitive wisdom. Yet a yawning chasm remained between conceding the existence of non-Greek wisdom, and claiming to speak as a representative of some such tradition over and against Hellenistic παιδεία. Numenius, despite being from Apamea in Syria, never in the surviving fragments claims to be “barbarian” and he likely would have agreed with Celsus that it took Greek philosophers like Pythagoras and Plato to sort through the wheat and the chaff of barbarian cultural traditions in order to discern the truth and systematize it into proper philosophy. Tatian, in contrast, leaves no role for the Greeks and their philosophy. As a contemporary representative of barbarian philosophy, he himself is fully equipped to discern the truth and instruct others in it. This was a strikingly bold and original position for an intellectual in the second century to take, and it likely resulted from the marginalized status of Tatian and his community, especially following Justin’s martyrdom. An instructive analogy here can be drawn with the history of the appellation Χριστιανός. Although it likely originated as an outsider term, used by Romans in hostile encounters with followers of Jesus, the word eventually came to be used by those within the movement as a badge of pride, a sociological phenomenon evident in analogous cases of marginalized groups up to the present day.¹³⁰ A parallel trajectory is evident in Tatian’s Oration. While it is clear that his unnamed opponents are attacking him for his adherence to “barbarian” philosophy (Or. 35.2– 3), he, rather than shunning the label, by the end of the discourse positively owns it (Or. 42.1).¹³¹ No doubt this stance partly derives from the fact that Tatian, if we take him at his word, was indeed from barbarian stock. However, it also likely reflects the changed situation from the time when Justin’s school was in operation. Justin hoped, and maybe even expected, to be treated fairly and respected as a philosopher, and so minimized the distance between his movement and its wider intellectual milieu. In contrast, Tatian seems to have given up hope of such a positive appraisal, perhaps due to the outcome of Justin’s attempt, and so recognized that the only stance left was one of bold opposition. Tatian’s novelty in this respect apparently set a precedent for later Christian authors. Following Waszink, I mention here just Clement of Alexandria, whose  See especially David G. Horrell, “The Label Χριστιανός: 1 Peter 4:16 and the Formation of Christian Identity,” JBL 126 (2007): 361 81.  The fact that the label originally came from opponents of Christianity, but was later adopt ed by the movement, was previously recognized by Malingrey, Philosophia, 120; Stroumsa, Bar barian Philosophy, 57.

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usage of the term βάρβαρος is much closer to Tatian’s usage than that of Justin.¹³² Clement refers frequently to the “barbarian philosophy” on behalf of which he advocates,¹³³ and at one point even uses the phrase “among us who are barbarians” (παρ’ ἡμῖν … τοῖς βαρβάροις).¹³⁴ Nevertheless, Clement’s self-presentation differs from that of Tatian, since Tatian justifies his claim to the title βάρβαρος on the basis of his origin in the “land of the Assyrians.” Clement never makes such a geographical claim, presumably because he had no grounds for doing so, implying that he speaks on behalf of a barbarian identity that he has adopted in addition to his native Hellenism. As a result, Clement’s usage of the term lacks the overt ethnic connotation present in Tatian’s Oration. It might even be the case that Tatian is completely unique among both Christian and post-Hellenistic philosophical sources in his explicit identification as a barbarian philosopher who stands ready to instruct the Greeks about their errors.¹³⁵ It must have required no small amount of courage to take such a counter-cultural stance.

4 Celsus’ Hellenistic Universalism versus Tatian’s Exclusive Barbarianism In the final section of this chapter I want to take the argument one step further to consider the political or social implications of the views that Celsus and Tatian present regarding an ancient wisdom. In an insightful study, Michael Frede has pointedly asked the question of why, if Celsus was a Platonist, did he so vociferously attack Christianity, which in many respects was so similar to Platonism?¹³⁶ After listing several specific doctrinal points, such as the incarnation and the resurrection, which clearly separated proto-orthodox Christianity from Platonism, Frede comes to what he takes to be the major stumbling block. Celsus’ Hellenism, including his understanding of “ancient wisdom,” was particu-

 Waszink, “Some Observations,” 53 56. Similarly, Daniel Ridings, The Attic Moses: The De pendency Theme in Some Early Christian Writers (Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 1995), 232 233, suggests that Clement drew directly on Tatian with respect to this theme. Cf. Stroumsa, Barbarian Philosophy, 70 71.  Clement of Alexandria, str. 5.8.51.1.  Clement of Alexandria, str. 6.17.151.2. Cf. Waszink, “Some Observations,” 53.  For a study of these themes in a later Christian author who was influenced by Tatian, see Aaron P. Johnson, Ethnicity and Argument in Eusebius’ Praeparatio Evangelica (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).  Michael Frede, “Celsus’ Attack on the Christians,” in Philosophia Togata II. Plato and Aris totle at Rome, ed. J. Barnes and M. Griffin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 227 228.

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larly well suited to the political situation of the second-century Roman Empire, since he was willing to affirm that the one highest God can be known under many names and that many nations preserve philosophical δόγματα among them. As a result, for Celsus “it is also a part of Hellenicity to respect that different nations of the Empire have their own traditional ways of revering this God and of respecting his order.”¹³⁷ Celsus in fact comments on this point explicitly, arguing that by worshipping Helios or Athena, or any of the other lesser divine beings, one is in fact “worshipping the great God,” since “the worship of God becomes more perfect by going through them all.”¹³⁸ Accordingly, he expresses a hope that all the inhabitants of “Asia, Europe, and Libya, both Greeks and barbarians” could be “united under one law.”¹³⁹ This is a goal that in his view is supported by the gods themselves, since, he claims, “the rulers and emperors among men … [do not] hold their position without the might of the daemons,” implying that to refuse to engage in the emperor’s cult is to provoke daemonic retribution.¹⁴⁰ In contrast to this vision of daemonically endorsed imperial toleration, Celsus asserts that if Christianity succeeded in converting the entire Empire, the existing social order would be completely overturned as “earthly things came into the power of the most lawless and savage barbarians.”¹⁴¹ Celsus, therefore, in the final fragment Origen preserves of his treatise, calls on the Christians to “accept public office in our country, if it is necessary to do this for the sake of the preservation of the laws and of piety.”¹⁴² In light of these passages, Frede is surely correct in discerning that Celsus regarded Christianity as “a threat to Hellenism in an obvious way,” and that for this reason “Christianity was also perceived as threatening the Empire.”¹⁴³  Frede, “Celsus’ Attack on the Christians,” 237. Cf. Stroumsa, Barbarian Philosophy, 45 46; Frede, “Celsus philosophus Platonicus,” 5201.  Cels. 8.66 (SC 150.326). Cf. Cels. 5.41 where he states that it makes no difference what name one uses to refer to Zeus.  Cels. 8.72 (SC 150.340).  Cels. 8.63 (SC 150.318).  Cels. 8.68 (SC 150.330).  Cels. 8.75 (SC 150.350). It is therefore not correct to say that “Celsus was interested not in excluding Jews or Christians from society but only in stressing that they were not intellectually respectable” (Feldman, “Origen’s Contra Celsum and Josephus’ Contra Apionem,” 113). On the contrary, Celsus is deeply concerned about the social consequences of Christianity and suggests that if Christians do not conform, they deserve to be punished and excluded.  Frede, “Celsus’ Attack on the Christians,” 237 238. On the challenge to imperial power rep resented by the apologists, see Elaine Pagels, “Christian Apologists and the Fall of the Angels: An Attack on Roman Imperial Power,” HThR 78 (1985): 301 25: “Had Marcus Aurelius and his colleagues bothered to read such impassioned diatribes, they might well have perceived at once the Christians’ essentially subversive message. While claiming to be exemplary citizens, Justin

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He does not consider whether Celsus was responding to a particular opponent, and it would be hazardous to claim without further evidence that Tatian was the target of his attack. However, Tatian does at least throw into the sharpest relief the sort of concern that Celsus had, since Tatian not only rejected Hellenism but in its place advocated for an exclusive barbarianism. Although Tatian himself never draws out the political implications of his self-presentation as a barbarian philosopher, it is not hard to see what they might be. His valorization of barbarian identity and lineage might easily translate into a political program that sought to resist the Roman imperium, the sort of usurpation that actually did occur in the following century with the Palmyrene uprising under Zenobia.¹⁴⁴ Hence, although Celsus may not have been responding directly to Tatian, the latter’s Oration represents the most extreme version of the political threat that the Platonist perceived in the upstart religion of Christianity.

5 Conclusion I began this chapter by posing the question of whether Tatian’s Oration to the Greeks was a riposte directed against Celsus’ True Account, or whether the direction of influence might have gone the other way. Although this investigation has not turned up sufficient evidence to claim that either author was responding directly to the other (future studies might however), the significant degree of overlap in their respective arguments at least indicates that they were a part of the

and his fellows attack the whole basis of Roman imperial power, denouncing its divine patrons as demons, and its rulers even those most distinguished for their wise and tolerant reigns as unwitting agents of demonic tyranny” (312).  See the suggestive interpretation of this event in Andrade, Syrian Identity, 313, 334 39, who argues that the presentation of Syrian identity in a number of first and second century authors, such as Justin, Tatian, and Lucian, “set important paradigms for how Zenobia and her court in tellectuals could place Palmyra and Syria at the center of legitimate Greekness, alongside au thentic Romanness. According to this logic, the Greeks of Syria did not imitate or deviate from the paradigms of ancient Greece. Instead, Greekness had originated in the Near East.” The parallels with Tatian’s reclamation of the label βάρβαρος are clear. See also the insightful analysis of the way in which Lucian’s On the Syrian Goddess deconstructs the accepted catego ries of the second sophistic on 288 313. Tatian, I would suggest, accomplishes something sim ilar, though in a much more overt fashion than Lucian. Andrade himself acknowledges the par allel between Lucian and Tatian on Syrian identity (264), but does not explore it extensively (cf. 272 73, 284 86).

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same conversation amongst Christians and pagans in the late second century.¹⁴⁵ Both authors assume that the cultural location, or more precisely the cultural genealogy of an idea has a direct bearing upon its claim to intellectual legitimacy. In fact, they suggest that consideration of that issue may be the most important factor in assessing a claim to wisdom or truth, with the result that they are both necessarily committed by their respective intellectual projects to engage in attempts at narrating history and locating oneself in it. Far from being a disembodied, ahistorical exercise, the philosophical programs espoused by both Celsus and Tatian have at their core the investigation of intellectual history. In other words, although Celsus and Tatian no doubt regarded philosophical knowledge as timelessly true, they also agreed that that knowledge was historically mediated, with the result that the process for discerning it was also inescapably historical. The centrality of the historical task is also evident in the fundamental role it plays in the polemical attempts of each author to discredit his opponent by locating him in the intellectual history each narrated. For Celsus, Christianity should be dismissed out of hand because it was started by the charlatan Jesus who used deceptive means to convince his followers that he was divine, as Moses had done to the Jews before, either misunderstanding or deliberately corrupting the truth to be found in ancient wisdom. Tatian’s presentation of the history of Greek culture is precisely the same in formal terms. It began when the fallen angels, or rather daemons, convinced the Greeks that they were in fact divine by engaging in a few cheap imitations of the one true God, implying that Hellenistic παιδεία is rotten to the core. Whatever wisdom is to be found in it consists simply of the distorted shards of truth the daemons had stolen and used for their own malicious purposes. In this respect, the preceding analysis of Celsus and Tatian suggests that at the heart of this debate was not simply the widespread cultural form of the “Altersbeweis” that was succinctly expressed by Peter Pilhofer’s four points: 1) “Was alt ist, ist gut”; 2) “Was älter ist, ist besser”; 3) “Was neu ist, ist schlecht”; and 4) “Was neuer ist, ist schlechter.”¹⁴⁶ According to this line of reasoning, if Moses is older than Homer, he is superior to the later upstart, a point that Tatian explicitly emphasizes. Yet the picture is more complicated than this insofar as the struggle between the likes of Celsus and Tatian was not simply over antiquity but also the role that should be according to Greek civilization over and against that of the barbarians in competing accounts of intellectual history. Yes, in one sense Celsus  Similarly, Eshleman, The Social World of Intellectuals, 199, suggests that Diogenes Laertius and Clement of Alexandria were not directly responding to one another, but were “participating in the same cultural debate” over the sources of Greek culture, and particularly philosophy.  Pilhofer, Presbyteron Kreitton, 8 9.

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thinks that “what is older is better,” yet he also holds that what is old is not always guaranteed to be true, and that the ancient δόγματα scattered amongst the nations still fall short of proper philosophy. The Greeks, as Celsus concedes, in fact were not one of the most ancient nations and, due to natural disasters, had few written records of ancient times, but they were nevertheless the ones who played the singular role of reconstructing and systematizing the scattered fragments of ancient wisdom into a coherent body of knowledge. In this way, Celsus’ conception of the philosophical task only grants a degree of respect to ancient non-Greek nations and maintains the superiority of specifically Greek intellectual life, especially Plato, despite the relatively speaking late emergence of philosophy. In contrast, Celsus’ pride in his Hellenized intellectual history is matched by Tatian’s bold self-presentation as an “Assyrian” practicing ancient “barbarian philosophy.” Indeed, Tatian likely formed his understanding of philosophical history in direct response to the sort of pride in Hellenism represented by Celsus, and he did so by exploiting a previously unnoticed weakness in the historical scheme to which Celsus and others like him were committed. If the barbarians were in possession of philosophical δόγματα why did they need the Greeks at all? What if all the Greeks had done was to pervert and distort the authentic wisdom that they arrogated to themselves from non-Greek cultures, under the likely influence of malevolent spiritual beings? Hence, the conception of philosophical history represented by a thinker like Numenius had prepared the way for someone to claim to be a contemporary instantiation of an ancient “barbarian philosophy,” but no one prior to Tatian, so far as we know, had been bold enough to take that option, and he was likely goaded into doing so by the taunts of his detractors. Yet Tatian’s claim to intellectual authority, the reason he expects his readers should listen to him, is actually more nuanced and subtle than a mere identification as “barbarian.” Rather, Tatian’s narrative of his own history is just as crucial. His authority is construed as a three-legged stool: first, he himself is nonGreek in terms of his own personal origins; second, he went through the same experience of ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία that his hearers had undergone; finally, he converted to Christianity, the “barbarian philosophy” he now claims to speak on behalf of.¹⁴⁷ Each of these stages serves to authenticate his message to his Greek

 Cf. Andrade, “Assyrians, Syrians and the Greek Language,” 313: “When Tatian reveals his Assyrian origins at the end of his text, it thereby authenticates his discourse on Greek and ‘bar barian’ wisdom that preceded it. But his Assyrian origins work in tandem with two other com ponents that substantiate his credibility: his mastery of Greek learning (paideia) and his conver sion to a ‘barbarian’ philosophy with which his Greek education was in many respects at odds. Together, these elements define Tatian as the most recent in a long line of ‘barbarian’ sages of

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hearers. It was his training in Greek παιδεία that enabled him to reject it not simply out of ignorance, but as one who knew it from the inside, and it was his barbarian origins that presumably made him adept at recognizing the insufficiency of the education he received in that παιδεία and the wisdom to be found in nonGreek sources. Tatian therefore speaks as someone who began as an outsider, became an insider, and then rejected it in order once more to become an outsider, though, as I emphasized earlier, this rejection is not an utter denial, since he describes his new philosophy as something that he had already known, but had been prevented from keeping. This element of personal history that is intrinsic to Tatian’s Oration finds no analogue in Celsus’ scheme and the degree of importance granted to such personal histories among Christian thinkers may be one of the more distinctive features of the emergence of the Christian intellectual in the second century. Yet Tatian’s stance vis-à-vis Hellenism and his self-presentation as a barbarian philosopher had their limitations. For one, only those who were, like him, from barbarian lands could make the same claim to authority. Not everyone could assert that their conversion to Christianity, the “barbarian philosophy,” was a return to their non-Hellenized roots. Moreover, Tatian’s overt rejection of Hellenistic παιδεία would, if followed through, have resulted in a Christianity that was completely at odds with the prevailing culture of the Roman Empire. It would, in other words, have consigned Christians to a permanent ‘outsider’ status, since such a defiant stance was in fact intrinsic to Tatian’s own conversion and his call for his hearers to follow his example. For these reasons, Tatian represents a particular moment in early Christian intellectual history, one that would pass, but would also be taken up and transformed. At the risk of overschematization, if Tatian is the antithesis to Justin’s openness to Greek philosophy and hesitancy over the label “barbarian,” a new synthesis would be forged in Clement of Alexandria, who acknowledged the “barbarian” origins of his philosophical school and continued to describe it in those terms, even while taking a more constructive approach by seeking to appropriate the best of the wisdom of the Greeks, rather than simply denouncing Hellenistic παιδεία as hopelessly corrupt.

the Near East qualified to assess philosophy’s cosmic genealogy and to recognize its most sub lime and pedestrian moments.”

Matyáš Havrda

Intellectual independence in Christian and medical discourse of the 2nd – 3rd centuries 1 ‘Incidental Knowledge’ and the Bonds of Loyalty In every process of learning, a certain degree of loyalty between the student and the teacher is involved and the willingness, on the part of the student, to accept certain truths at the face value even before he is capable of making his own judgement of whether they are true or not and understanding why. As Aristotle points out in the Nichomachean ethics, “those who have just begun to learn a science can string together its phrases, but do not yet know it; for it has to become part of themselves, and that takes time”.¹ “Stringing phrases together” is what Aristotle describes as “incidental knowledge”.² This is the kind of knowledge that says something true, even demonstrably true, without fully grasping the principles from which it follows or being capable of showing how it follows from them. In the process of learning, Aristotle seems to suggest, the ‘incidental’ kind of knowledge precedes knowledge proper, whose possessor is not only capable of saying what is true, but also of demonstrating it.³ We might describe the journey from incidental knowledge to knowledge proper as one towards intellectual independence in a particular field of study. There is no doubt that Aristotle’s ideal of a science involves the notion of intellectual independence in this sense;

My thanks are due to the participants of the Rome seminar, especially Lewis Ayres, Ben Edsall, Christoph Markschies and Gretchen Reydams-Schils, for useful comments. This study has benefited from the financial support of the Czech Science Foundation (GA17-05919S).  Aristotle, EN VII 3, 1147a20 f.: οἱ πρῶτον μαθόντες συνείρουσι μὲν τοὺς λόγους, ἴσασι δ’ οὔπω· δεῖ γὰρ συμφυῆναι, τοῦτο δὲ χρόνου δεῖται. See The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. David Ross (Ox ford: Oxford University Press, 2009).  Cf. e. g. Aristotle, An. Post. I 2, 71b9 12; I 9, 76a4 7; II 10, 93b32 37. As Aristotle points out, ‘to have science’ and ‘to know scientifically’ are two different things; cf. e. g. An. Post. I 6, 74b21 26; EN VI, 1139b31 35. ‘Having science’ is like having mastered “the proofs and verses of Empedo cles” (cf. EN VII 3, 1147a20) or the Iliad (cf. An. Post. II 10, 93b35 37).  Cf. the classic paper by Myles F. Burnyeat, “Aristotle on Understanding Knowledge,” in Aris totle on Science: Posterior Analytics, ed. E. Berti (Padova: Editrice Antenore, 1981), 129 f. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110608632 007

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but he seems to acknowledge that the stage of reaching this ideal in any scientific field is preceded by the stage of learning in which the student accepts certain truths pertaining to that field ‘incidentally’, i. e. without properly grasping their causes. Now there is something potentially embarrassing about this pre-scientific origin of knowledge. For if we admit that everything we claim to know has been handed down to us at first in an incidental way, a question arises, how much of that supposed knowledge is still due to these incidental beginnings. This question is not particularly pressing with regard to the fields of knowledge, like mathematics, in which a fundamental agreement about the first principles can be reached without difficulty across the board of experts. But it becomes almost inevitable in a situation where no such agreement seems possible, as with the first principles of physics or metaphysics among the Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic schools of thought, which seem to be mutually incongruent. This difficulty and potential embarrassment of any claim to knowledge did not escape the sharp wit of the Hellenistic sceptics. In his Academica, Cicero defends the Academic practice of arguing against every position as a way of keeping our capacity of judgement free from “any obligation to defend a set of views prescribed and practically imposed on us by someone else”. For, as he explains, other philosophers, after all, labour under two constraints. First, they are chained to one spot by bonds formed before they were able to judge what was best. Second, they make their judgements about subjects they don’t know at the weakest point in their lives under pressure from a friend or captivated by a single speech from someone they heard for the first time; and they hand on to the philosophical system they happened to adopt as their salvation from the storm that drove them into it. They claim, of course, to be en trusting themselves entirely to someone they judge to have been wise. This is a procedure I would approve if untaught novices had the capacity to make such judgments though de ciding who is wise seems to be a particular function of people who are already wise. Still, assuming they did have this capacity, they could only judge after they had heard all the issues and knew the views of the other philosophers as well. But they have made their judg ments at a single hearing and submitted themselves to one person’s authority. I don’t know how it is that most people would rather go wrong by defending to the hilt a view they have grown to love than work out without intransigence which view is most consistent.⁴

Cicero makes an important observation: Whatever we claim to know depends on what we have been taught; and what we have been taught depends on the accidental circumstances of our lives. Most importantly, the reasons why we came to

 Cicero, Academica II (= Lucullus) 8 9; for the translation here, see Cicero, On Academic Scep ticism, trans. Charles Brittain (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006).

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adopt certain views in the course of our education were circumstantial and, as we might put it, existential, but philosophically irrelevant—being at a weak point in our lives, we sought for salvation from the storm in which we had found ourselves and accepted the authority of someone who appeared to us to be wise. In effect, we have come to cherish their views even before we have developed a capacity to judge them or, for that matter, to recognize who is wise in the first place. Cicero seems to believe that this irrational bias, which, on purely accidental grounds, induces one to hold on to certain views uncritically, continues to inform the followers of all philosophical schools, keeping them captive, as it were, by the bonds of authority, which prevent them from making an independent judgement. It is neither surprising nor damaging for any school of thought to point out that it rests on some undemonstrated principles. This, after all, is true of any science, mathematics included. But it is an embarassing charge for any philosopher to suggest that he is bound to hold his views not by his own judgement or by the strength of the truth itself, but by the authority of someone else, moreover on purely personal, irrational and accidental grounds. Much like today’s varieties of the hermeneutic of suspicion, this sceptic critique of philosophy need not have been fair to philosophy as such, but it seems to have been sufficiently fair to the actual practice of doing philosophy, as to ring true to many people in and outside of this profession.⁵ Galen, for one, who had the first-hand acquaintance with some of the best philosophers of his time, sympathized with the sceptic critique to some extent. In his treatise On My Own Books he famously tells the story of the hope and disillusionment he experienced as a young student frequenting the lectures of the representatives of the main philosophical schools, from whom he had hoped but failed to learn a method by which one might arrive at secure knowledge: In disputes I have always observed how every man declares his own arguments to be dem onstrations, and seeks earnestly to find absolute refutations of his interlocutors. With this in mind I wished first of all things to learn the science of demonstration; and I desired the philosophers (who were reputed to be able to teach it) to put aside any other subject be longing to logic, if they could only ease the pain of my passion for proof. I wanted to learn of them the nature of that method which gives him who masters it the power to rec ognize whether a self proclaimed ‘demonstration’ really is one, or whether, like some coun terfeit coin, it appears similar to the genuine one while being in fact valueless; that method which, at the same time, enables its knower, in any field of inquiry, to find some way of arriving at the discovery of truth.

 The Stoics were particularly alert to this criticism; cf. Gretchen Reydams Schils, “Authority and Agency in Stoicism,” GRBS 51 (2011): 296 322.

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So I applied myself to all the best reputed Stoic and Peripatetic philosophers of the time; but while I learned many pieces of logical theory from them which in the fulness of time I found to be quite useless for establishing proofs, there were very few that they had researched in any useful manner likely to lead them to the goal set before them. I found, additionally, that these pieces of logical theory were actually in conflict with each other, while some were even in conflict with natural notions. Indeed, as far as these teachers were concerned, I might well have fallen into the Pyrrhonean puzzlement, if I had not had a firm grasp of the disciplines of geometry, arithmetic and computation, in which subjects I had excelled from the very first, through the schooling of my father, who had himself learned them from my grandfather and great grandfather.⁶

Galen’s story of a seeker for the truth who fails to find satisfaction by any of the major schools is of course paralleled in Justin Martyr.⁷ Whether or not both writers follow an earlier literary model (neither can conceivably be influenced by the other), the parallel shows how the nascent tradition of Christian thought resonates with more general concerns of its intellectual environment. We will get to this point in a short while, but before we do that, I would like to investigate, for the sake of comparison, Galen’s version of these concerns and his response to them.

2 Galen on the Best School Galen, as is well known, is one of the first Greek intellectuals who have taken the Christians seriously enough to criticize their views about God and their attitude to knowledge. He uses Christians as a model of people who obstinately hold to doctrines they have accepted without proof.⁸ In these polemics, Galen’s main concern are not the Christians themselves, but rather some opponents in Galen’s own field who, Galen suspects, behave like the Christians, when they simply pro-

 Galen, Lib. Prop. 11 (XIX,39 41 Kühn). I have modified the translation in Galen, Selected Works, trans. Peter N. Singer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).  Cf. Justin, Dial. 2, 2 6; the parallel is noted by Stephen Menn, “The Discourse on the Method and the Tradition of Intellectual Autobiography,” in Hellenistic and Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Jon Miller and Brad Inwood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 191.  Cf. the classic study by Richard Walzer, Galen on Jews and Christians (Oxford: Oxford Univer sity Press, 1949), 10 17, especially n1 and nn3 6. For recent discussion, cf. Jonathan Barnes, “Galen, Christians, Logic,” in Classics in Progress: Essays on Ancient Greece and Rome, ed. T. P. Wiseman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 402 404 (reprinted in Jonathan Barnes, Logical Matters: Essays in Ancient Philosophy II, ed. M. Bonelli [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012], 4 7); Philip van der Eijk, “Galen and Early Christians on the Role of the Divine in the Cau sation and Treatment of Health and Disease,” Early Christianity 5 (2014): 349 and n34.

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claim certain things and expect their followers to believe them without proof. But the same, Galen believes, is true of many followers of Greek philosophical schools. Like the sceptics, Galen questions the motives leading someone to join a particular school of thought: Doctors and philosophers form admirations for other doctors or philosophers without hav ing learned their doctrines, and without practising that science of demonstration which would enable them to sort false arguments from true ones. It is just that their father, or teacher, or friend or some person who gained a following in their city happened to be an Empirist, or Dogmatist, or Methodist. So too with the different philosophical schools: there used to be a variety of reasons why one man became a Platonist, another Peripatetic, or Stoic, or Epicurean; and now, since the time when even chairs of the schools have been established, many people have another motive to call themselves after the school in which they were brought up, especially when they have no other means of living.⁹

Much like the sceptics, Galen uses this suspicion as a pretext to undermine the authority of established schools. However, the aim of his polemic is not merely negative. Unlike the sceptics, he does not put in question the very adherence to doctrines, be it on the part of students or teachers of any school. Nor is he concerned with showing that different doctrines of different schools undermine one another on equally convincing grounds. The main point of his criticism is something else: in his view, traditional schools fail to provide a method to their followers, by means of which they could arrive at an independent judgement about the subject matter of teaching or even embark on their own inquiry. While raising this point he sets the ground for his own agenda of laying the foundations of the “best school” (ἀρίστη αἵρεσις), which is best not only because it teaches the best doctrines, but above all because it allows its students to develop a capacity of independent judgement and arrive at true knowledge on their own: For this reason I also felt compelled to write a book on The best school not the sort of book that many doctors and philosophers have written previously, in which they praise the name of their own school, but one in which I indicated the only way in which one may construct the best school in medicine, philosophy, or any other art. In that work I stated what I have said a while ago, namely that if one wants to know how to judge schools correctly, one must master the science of demonstration. This requirement, however, is not sufficient on its own: it is also necessary to free oneself from the sort of affection which frequently causes the blind love or hatred of a school; only one devoid of such affection, who is also willing to

 Galen, Ord.Lib.Prop. 1, 3 4 (XIX,50 Kühn), translation modified from Galen, Selected Works.

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employ the scientific method so as to find the truth for himself, or to judge the statements of others, will be in a position to discover the best school.¹⁰

Thus Galen not only diagnoses the ills of contemporary schools, but also offers a therapy. Part of it is psychological: one should get rid of the emotional attachment to a particular school, presumably by scrutinizing the motives that lead one into this bond of loyalty in the first place. The second, equally important part is methodological: If one is not to fall into the Pyrrhonean puzzlement (aporia), one must find a method of finding the truth for oneself. Over against the sceptics, Galen insists on the possibility of finding such a method; and indeed, throughout his career, particularly in its early years, he devoted much time and effort to this task. The main fruit of these efforts were the fifteen books of his treatise On Demonstration, a text of which only fragments remain. My aim here is not to speak about this treatise, or Galen’s method more generally.¹¹ But I would like to emphasize one point that seems to me particularly relevant to the topic of this workshop: Even though for Galen, the way of demonstration is a way of intellectual independence with regard to any teaching, nevertheless demonstration itself is an object of study that must be mastered before it can be successfully applied. In Galen’s view, it is wrong, of course, to deny the existence of demonstration; but it is equally wrong to claim that “everybody knows it by nature, and so it does not require any study or practice”.¹² Quite the contrary, Galen insists: demonstration is a science, an expert knowledge of sorts, and as such requires a considerable amount of training and study. It is possible, of course, for someone to follow this path by himself, helped only by books; this, at least, is how Galen portrays his own development. However, Galen clearly believes that demonstrative methods can and should be taught by experts, prior to, and alongside with, other doctrines relevant to their fields. In his books dealing with demonstration, for the most part lost, he seems to have set the example himself in view of the particular context of medicine.¹³

 Ord.Lib.Prop. 1, 6 8 (XIX,51 52 Kühn), translation modified from Galen, Selected Works.  See Matyáš Havrda, “The Purpose of Galen’s Treatise On Demonstration,” Early Science and Medicine 20 (2015): 265 287, with references.  Ord.Lib.Prop. 1, 9 (XIX,52 Kühn).  For Galen’s advertising himself as an expert in demonstration, cf. Menn, “The Discourse on the Method,” 156 f. Cf. also Galen, Opt.Doct. 4, 3 4 (104,6 15 Barigazzi), on ‘technical’ (as op posed to ‘natural’) criteria of truth, which can be taught by an expert (in this case, Galen him self). These criteria, presumably, are logical methods of inquiry and critical examination: “I un dertake to teach you some things that are analogous to the artisan’s instruments, by which you

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Thus, in spite of all reservations against the contemporary practice of sectarian teaching, Galen does not abandon the very idea of teaching at all. He is more aware than anyone else that it is crucial for any field of study to have its experts and teachers, indeed, its doctrines. As far as medicine is concerned, he even works somewhat towards creating a formal curriculum by giving recommendations about the order in which his medical writings should be perused.¹⁴ However, he insists that the best way of teaching these doctrines is one that allows students to reach methodological maturity sufficient for them to judge the worth of these doctrines on their own.¹⁵ What does this all have to do with Christianity? My point is that the notion of intellectual independence is of great concern to some early Christian thinkers and that their way of dealing with this concern is structurally similar to the one we have found in Galen. It would require much more space to establish this point in a way that would give justice to the complexity of the issue; but I will try at least to sketch the argument as follows.

3 Intellectual Independence in Early Christianity The notion that freedom with respect to received wisdom is essential to what it means to be a follower of Christ goes back to the Pauline letters. Paul, of course, is not concerned with philosophical schools, but rather with ritual obligations, prescriptions of the Mosaic law and also with what he refers to as “the wisdom of the world”.¹⁶ The freedom he preaches is not so much an intellectual independence, but rather what we might call a spiritual freedom: a freedom from the letter of the Law, from the wrath of God, from the cosmic powers, even

will discover the thing you are investigating, and others that are analogous to criteria, by which you will judge what appears to have been discovered” (from Galen, On the Best Kind of Teaching, trans. Stephen Menn, draft in manuscript). Galen sometimes refers to the expert in demonstra tion as ἀποδεικτικὸς ἀνήρ (‘man practised in demonstration’ vel sim.); cf. the references in Matyáš Havrda, The So Called Eighth Stromateus by Clement of Alexandria: Early Christian Recep tion of Greek Scientific Methodology (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 173 and n146. For Clement of Alexan dria’s use of the concept of the ‘technical criterion’ (in the sense of the ecclesiastical ‘rule of truth’), cf. Matyáš Havrda, “Demonstrative method in Stromateis VII: Context, Principles, and Purpose,” in The Seventh Book of the Stromateis, ed. M. Havrda, V. Hušek and J. Plátová (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 273 f.  Cf. Jaap Mansfeld, Prolegomena: Questions to be Settled Before the Study of an Author, or a Text (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 117 26.  Cf. Ord.Lib.Prop. 1, 12 13 (XIX,52 53 Kühn).  Cf. e. g. Gal 4:8 10; Rom 7:1 6; 1 Cor 1:20 22; 2:13; 3:18 21.

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from the power of death, a freedom brought about by the resurrected Christ and the spirit, and our participation in the spirit by means of faith.¹⁷ This was an important message of Pauline Christianity, whose subversive potential never ceased to create a tension within the Christian tradition.¹⁸ This tension is arguably present in the Pauline letters themselves; but it grew into an open conflict, threatening the legitimacy of the emergent Christian institutions and the integrity of the tradition as a whole, in the course of the heresiological disputes of the 2nd and 3rd centuries.¹⁹ The Valentinians and the other so-called gnostics have sometimes been described as Christian intellectuals.²⁰ Whether or not this is a correct description depends on our definition of the word ‘intellectual’. It is surely fair to say, I think, as other people have pointed out, that their concept of spiritual Christianity builds on the Pauline notion of freedom, insofar as it puts in doubt the soteriological relevance of institutional loyalty and ethics based on obedience, contrasting it with the notion of salvation based on the participation in the spirit.²¹ As opposed to Paul, the Valentinians even seem to make one step further

 Cf. e. g. Gal 2:4; 2:19 20; 5:1; Rom 5:9; 6:22; 7:; 8:2; 8:15; 8:20 21; 1 Cor 8:9; 9:1; 2 Cor 3:6. I do not separately mention the freedom from sin (cf. Rom 6) and bodily passions (cf. Gal 5:13 24), as it appears to be entailed in all the other sorts of freedom.  For modern interpretations of the Pauline notion of freedom, cf. Wayne Coppins, The Inter pretation of Freedom in the Letters of Paul (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009).  For the first major conflict of this kind, cf. Judith Lieu, Marcion and the Making of a Heretic: God and Scripture in the Second Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). For the dispute about Paul, see esp. 234 69. For the emergence of the heresiological genre cf. Alain Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie dans la literature grecque IIe IIIe siècles, I II (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1985).  Cf. Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1922), 293, speaking of the (2nd century) “gnostische Intellektuellenaristokratie”; cf. 323 24. Weber’s concept of the ‘in tellectual’ is broad enough to include Paul, however (292 f.). For a critical assessment of Weber’s view of the gnostics as urban intellectuals (with a special focus on the Valentinians in Rome), cf. Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries (Minneap olis: Fortress Press, 2003), 292 318.  For this aspect of Valentinian thought, cf. the classic Eranos lecture by Gilles Quispel, “La conception de l’homme dans la Gnose valentinienne,” in vol. 15/1947 of Eranos Jahrbuch, ed. O. Fröbe Kapteyn (Zürich: Rhein Verlag, 1948), 249 86; for ‘gnosticism’ more generally, cf. esp. Simone Pétrement, Le Dieu séparé. Les origines du gnosticisme (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1984), 259 97. For the Valentinian reception of Paul, see now Ismo Dunderberg, “Paul and Valentinian Morality,” in Gnostic Morality Revisited, ed. Ismo Dunderberg (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 149 168, with references. Cf. esp. Judith L. Kovacs, “The Language of Grace: Valentinian Reflection on New Testament Imagery,” in Radical Christian Voices and Prac tice, ed. Z. Bennett and D.B. Gowler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 69 85; Judith L. Ko vacs, “Grace and Works: Clement of Alexandria’s Response to Valentinian Exegesis of Paul,” in

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towards the concept of intellectual independence as outlined at the beginning of this paper, when they trace the origin of spiritual salvation to some sort of spiritual endowment of the soul.²² In the wake of institutions that take charge of the Christian message, the Valentinians are well aware that not all members of these institutions are capable of following that message to its spiritual core. Some of them have tried to salvage the integrity of the tradition by distinguishing two ways of being the Christ’s follower, the ‘psychic’ and the ‘spiritual’, and drawing a contrast between ‘faith’ or ‘belief’ on the one hand, and spiritual knowledge, on the other, as alternative ways of reaching salvation.²³ This is paralleled in the Pauline distinction between the weak and those who have knowledge within the Christian community or between those who are fed on milk and those who are

Ancient Perspectives on Paul, ed. T. Nicklas, A. Merkt, J. Verheyden (Tübingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 191 210.  For the concept of the spiritual nature, cf. e. g. Ismo Dunderberg, Beyond Gnosticism: Myth, Lifestyle and Society in the School of Valentinus (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 134 46. As for its origins, Ismo Dunderberg, “Stoic Traditions in the School of Valentinus,” in Stoicism in Early Christianity, ed. T. Rasimus, T. Engberg Pedersen and I. Dunderberg (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), 229 31, considers the Stoic background; however, some ver sion of the 2nd century Platonism seems to be a more likely influence; cf. esp. the conception of νοῦς as distinct from ψυχή in Plutarch, De facie 943 945 and other passages quoted by John M. Dillon, The Middle Platonists, 80 B.C. To A.D. 220, rev. ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 211 14; cf. also Dunderberg, Beyond Gnosticism, 252n40. The notion of the νοῦς θύραθεν (‘intellect from the outside’), going back to Aristotle (GA 736b28) and considered a commonplace by the doxographic tradition (cf. ‘Aetius’ IV 5, 11, 392 Diels), may have contributed to this con ception, loosely based on Plato’s Timaeus; cf. Dillon, The Middle Platonists, 213. Interestingly, Clement of Alexandria appears to suggest that the doctrine of the elected nature goes back to Plato’s narrative, in the Republic, of the “gold” that god “mixed into the origin” of “those who are fit to rule” (ὅσοι … ἱκανοὶ ἄρχειν, χρυσὸν ἐν τῇ γενέσει συνέμιξεν αὐτοῖς); Plato, Resp. III, 415a2 7; cf. Clement, Strom. V 14, 98, 4. Cf. also Irenaeus, Adv. haer. I 6, 2, on the spi ritual nature as gold. Cf. Matyáš Havrda, “Some Observations on Clement of Alexandria, Stroma ta, Book Five,” VChr 64 (2010): 24 f.  Cf. Clement of Alexandria, Strom. II 3, 10, 2: “The followers of Valentinus assign faith to us, the simple ones, while maintaining that they, who are to be saved by nature, have, in accordance with the advantage of a special seed, inherent knowledge, which is, as they say, far removed from faith, as much as the spiritual is removed from the psychic” (οἱ δὲ ἀπὸ Οὐαλεντίνου τὴν μὲν πίστιν τοῖς ἁπλοῖς ἀπονείμαντες ἡμῖν, αὑτοῖς δὲ τὴν γνῶσιν τοῖς φύσει σῳζομένοις κατὰ τὴν τοῦ διαφέροντος πλεονεξίαν σπέρματος ἐνυπάρχειν βούλονται, μακρῷ δὴ κεχωρισμένην πίσ τεως, ᾗ τὸ πνευματικὸν τοῦ ψυχικοῦ, λέγοντες). Cf. Irenaeus, Adv. haer. I 6, 1 2. For Valenti nianism as an attempt to salvage the integrity of the Christian tradition, cf. Christoph Marks chies, “Die valentinianische Gnosis und Marcion einige neue Perspektive,” in Marcion und seine kirchengeschichtliche Wirkung, ed. G. May and K. Greschat (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2002), 159 75, suggesting an anti Marcionite background to the Valentinian thought.

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capable of receiving solid food.²⁴ However, the idea that knowledge requires a special nature and the association of faith (pistis) with loyalty to an institution or a set of doctrines reminds us more closely of contemporary philosophical schools. In his Didaskalikos, Alcinous sets out the conditions for anyone to become a philosopher; the first of these conditions being that “he be naturally apt at those branches of learning (πεφυκέναι … πρὸς τὰ μαθήματα) which have the capacity to fit him for, and lead him towards, the knowledge of intelligible being, which is not subject to error or change.” Secondly, “he must be enamoured of the truth and in no way tolerate falsehood” (πρὸς τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἔχειν ἐρωτικῶς); thirdly, he must be “endowed with a temperate nature, and, in relation to the passionate part of the soul, he must be naturally restrained (φύσει πως σώφρονα εἶναι καὶ κατὰ τὸ παθητικὸν τῆς ψυχῆς φυσικῶς κατεσταλμένον)”.²⁵ It goes without saying that it requires a good deal of natural talent and decent upbringing to meet these three requirements. Galen seems to have a similar list in mind, when he distinguishes between two kinds of medical students: those who “are naturally intelligent and disciples of the truth (ὅσοι καὶ φύσει συνετοὶ καὶ ἀληθείας ἑταῖροι)”, capable of searching for the truth by means of a demonstrative method; and those who derive from his writings the benefit of correct opinion, basing themselves not on the force of proof, but rather on Galen’s moral reputation and the success of his medical practice.²⁶ It is surely better, in Galen’s eyes, to follow him in matters of medicine, rather than anyone else of his time. But it is also clear that the attitude of the less talented kind of students comes dangerously close to those who are willing to believe their masters without any proof, i. e. the blind followers of their tradition whom Galen disparagingly compares to the followers of Moses and Christ. In their case, it is more or less a matter of good luck that the opinion they have come to adopt happens to be correct. Galen is surely aware that the less talented kind of students will always be a ma-

 Cf. 1 Cor 8:1 13 and 1 Cor 3:2. For the Valentinian reception of the latter passage, cf. Judith L. Kovacs, “Echoes of Valentinian Exegesis in Clement of Alexandria and Origen: The Interpreta tion of 1 Cor 3, 1 3,” in Origeniana Octava: Origen and the Alexandrian Tradition, ed. L. Perrone (Leuven: Peeters, 2003), 317 329. For the Pauline context cf. Benjamin A. Edsall, Paul’s Witness to Formative Early Christian Instruction (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014).  Alcinous, Did. 1, 2; for the translation here, see John Dillon, Alcinous: The Handbook of Pla tonism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).  Galen, Ord.Lib.Prop. 2, 1 2 (XIX,53 Kühn), trans. modified from Galen, Selected Works. For other parallels cf. Mansfeld, Prolegomena, 165 71. For the two orders of study, cf. Mansfeld, Pro legomena, 117 26. Of particular interest are similarities between Galen and his teacher Albinus, Intr. Plat. chs. 5 6 (cf. Mansfeld, Prolegomena, 121 and 166 f.).

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jority and he does try to provide guidance to them; nevertheless, he clearly holds the more talented kind in much higher regard. The same sort of inclusive condescension can be recognized in the attitude of some Valentinian thinkers towards their fellow Christians who ground their eschatological hopes on good faith and manners. However, it would be far-fetched to say that the Valentinians had promised to their followers anything resembling the intellectual independence gained by the demonstrative method. If there was any ‘method’ available to those aspiring at spiritual salvation, it probably consisted of some ritual acts and formulae, rather than any kind of intellectual discipline.²⁷ Nonetheless, in the second half of the 2nd century the concept of intellectual independence does start to take root in the Christian tradition, as a new project of intellectually attractive Christianity takes shape, replacing the Valentinian version of Paul with a new interpretative framework. One of the many tasks of this new framework is to present Christianity as a philosophy of sorts, a philosophy that surpasses all philosophical schools by its immediate access to the truth.²⁸ In the famous prologue to the Dialogue with Trypho, Justin presents Christianity as the answer to the quest for philosophy and truth, which cannot be satisfied by any of the traditional schools.²⁹ Clement also portrays Christianity as a ‘true phi-

 For the Valenitian rituals, cf. Einar Thomassen, The Spiritual Seed: The Church of the “Valen tinians” (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 333 414; Einar Thomassen, “Going to Church with the Valentini ans,” in Practicing Gnosis: Ritual, Magic, Theurgy and Liturgy in Nag Hammadi, Manichaean and Other Ancient Literature, ed. A.D. DeConick, G. Shaw and T.D. Turner (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 183 197; Bas van Os, “The Gospel of Philip as Gnostic Initiatory Discourse,” in Practicing Gnosis: Rit ual, Magic, Theurgy and Liturgy in Nag Hammadi, Manichaean and Other Ancient Literature, ed. A.D. DeConick, G. Shaw and T.D. Turner (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 91 112. For other references, cf. Dunderberg, Beyond Gnosticism, 210 11n38.  Cf. e. g. George Karamanolis, The Philosophy of Early Christianity (Durham: Acumen, 2013), 38 48.  Justin, Dial. Tryph. 2, 1: “Philosophy is indeed one’s greatest possession, and is most pre cious in the sight of God (…). But, many have failed to discover the nature of philosophy, and the reason why it was sent down to men; otherwise, there would not be Platonists, or Stoics, or Peripatetics, or Theoretics, or Pythagoreans, since this science is always one and the same.” At the end of his encounter with the ‘old man’, having lost all hope to find the truth by the Greek philosophers (“If truth is not to be found even among these men [scil. Plato and Pythagoras], then which teacher could one use or where could one get any benefit?”), Justin dis covers that the only trustworthy philosophy is Christian: “… my spirit was immediately set on fire, and an affection for the prophets, and for those who are friends of Christ, took hold of me; while pondering on his words, I discovered that this was the only sure and useful philoso phy” (Dial. Tryp. 7, 1; 8, 1); except for Dial. Tryp. 7, 1, trans. T.B. Falls, St. Justin Martyr: Dialogue with Trypho (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003). For Justin’s no

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losophy’, which integrates the best of all philosophical schools.³⁰ At the same time, he explores the relation between faith and knowledge, using the word ‘faith’ in a sense that includes the attitude of simple believers to the teaching of the Christian tradition.³¹ His portrait of the Christian gnostic, a person who has attained the level of moral perfection and understanding that allows him to expound the contents of the Christian faith and the meaning of Scripture by way of a Christian doctrine, embodies the idea of a Christian ‘intellectual’ as no other.³² However, Clement realizes that it requires a certain amount of skill to get beyond the basic truths of the shared faith towards knowledge. And he admits that not each and every one of Christ’s followers is up to the task. To account for this difference, he draws a distinction between two kinds of faith—a ‘common faith’ (ἡ κοινὴ πίστις), shared by all believers, and a ‘special faith’ (ἡ ἐξαίρετος, sc. πίστις), capable of evolving into knowledge. This is how he explains the relation between the two: The common faith is like an underlying foundation … the special faith, being built upon it, matures along with the believer, and the faith that arises from learning is perfected along with it.³³

tion of Christian philosophy cf. Arthur J. Droge, “Justin Martyr and the Restoration of Philoso phy,” ChHist 56 (1987): 303 19; Arthur J. Droge, Homer or Moses? Early Christian Interpretations of the History of Culture (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1989), 49 81.  Cf. esp. Strom. I 7, 37, 6. The concept of ‘true philosophy’, employed by Clement, inter alia, in the full title of his Stromateis (τῶν κατὰ τὴν ἀληθῆ φιλοσοφίαν γνωστικῶν ὑπομνημάτων στρω ματεῖς), goes back to Plato, Resp. VII, 521c7 8 (a passage quoted by Clement in Strom. V 14, 133, 5). Clement identifies it with the ‘barbarian philosophy’ based on Scripture and the teaching of Christ; cf. Alain Le Boulluec, “La rencontre de l’hellénisme et de la ‘philosophie barbare’ selon Clément d’Alexandrie,” in Alexandrie antique et chrétienne: Clément et Origène, ed. Alain Le Boulluec (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2006), 81 93. For the background of the no tion in Hellenistic Judaism and ‘Middle Platonism’ cf. esp. Salvatore R.C. Lilla, Clement of Alex andria: A Study in Christian Platonism and Gnosticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 9 59; Droge, Homer or Moses?  Cf. Lilla, Clement of Alexandria, 136 42.  For the importance of education and moral training in Clement’s depiction of the gnostic, cf. esp. Lilla, Clement of Alexandria, 163 73. Expounding the contents of the Christian faith (cf. e. g. Strom. I 6, 35, 2) and the meaning of Scripture (cf. e. g. Strom. VI 10, 82, 1 3; VI 15, 131, 3; VII, 16, 96, 1.4) belongs to the role of the gnostic as a teacher; for this aspect of Clement’s gnostic, cf. Judith L. Kovacs, “Divine Pedagogy and the Gnostic Teacher according to Clement of Alexan dria,” JECS 9 (2001): 3 25, with references.  Clement, Strom. V 1, 2, 5 6: ἡ μὲν γὰρ κοινὴ πίστις καθάπερ θεμέλιος ὑπόκειται … ἡ δὲ ἐξαί ρετος ἐποικοδομουμένη συντελειοῦται τῷ πιστῷ καὶ συναπαρτίζεται αὐτῇ ἡ ἐκ μαθήσεως περι γινομένη κτλ. For the construction of the sentence see Havrda, “Some Observations,” 4 f.

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It is important for Clement that this distinction between the two kinds of faith does not constitute any difference from the soteriological point of view.³⁴ However, it does constitute a difference between those who are capable (or willing) to attain some sort of intellectual independence with regard to their tradition, and those who are not.³⁵ This is not to say that those striving for knowledge can dispense with the shared beliefs of the Christian community. On the contrary: In Clement’s view, the common faith is a common ground for both types of attitude.³⁶ But the difference lies in what it is a ground of. Whereas in the case of simple believers, it is a ground of a good life and hope for salvation, in the case of the gnostic, it is additionally a foundation of a search for knowledge. What precisely is the function of faith in this search? Is faith merely a starting-point in the sense of a preliminary, confused understanding of matters requiring some sort of inquiry and discrimination in order to be understood? Or is it foundational in the sense that it sets out the conditions of a true or meaningful discourse? Apparently Clement tends to think of faith along both lines. In the passage quoted above, he submits that the “faith arising from learning”—by which expression he seems to mean the faith of the newly baptized, “arising” from the pre-baptismal catechetic instruction³⁷—is both an “underlying founda Cf. Lilla, Clement of Alexandria, 136 and 136n4. Quoting Plato’s saying “There are many of those who bear narthex, but few of those who are βάκχοι” (Phaedo 69c8 f.), Clement links it with Matt 22:14 (“…many are called but few are chosen”) and 1 Cor 8:7 (“not everyone possesses knowledge”); Strom. V 3, 17, 4. However, in these contexts, he does not refer to the distinction between faith and knowledge (or between different kinds of faith); rather, he indicates a differ ence between the followers of ‘true philosophy’, i. e. the Christians, on the one hand, and the rest on the other. Cf. Strom. I 19, 92, 3. This difference, in Clement’s view, is not a matter of na ture, but of a free choice (cf. Strom. V 14, 141, 3; and Havrda, “Some Observations,” 28 f.). Cf. also Dietmar Wyrwa, Die christliche Platonaneignung in den Stromateis des Clemens von Alexandrien (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1983), 264 f.  As far as I can see, Clement never attempts to explain these different attitudes either in terms of nature, upbringing or will. However, in Strom. VI 11, 89, 1 3, complaining that the majority of Christians (οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν τὸ ὄνομα ἐπιγραφομένων) reject Greek education, he calls on them “not to abstain from love of learning like irrational animals” (οὐκ ἀφεκτέον τῆς φιλομαθίας ἀλόγων δίκην ζῴων). In Strom. V 1, 11, 1, he argues that “faith should not be idle and alone, but it should progress along with inquiry” (τὴν πίστιν τοίνυν οὐκ ἀργὴν καὶ μόνην, ἀλλὰ σὺν ζητήσει δεῖν προβαίνειν φαμέν). These and similar formulations seem to suggest that he regards the Christian simpliciores as being simply lazy. For Clement’s reservations about the simpliciores, cf. also Strom. I 9, 43, 1, on those who demand “bare faith alone” (μόνην δὲ καὶ ψιλὴν τὴν πίστιν ἀπαιτοῦσιν); cf. Strom. I 18, 2 3.  Cf. Lilla, Clement of Alexandria, 137 f.  Cf. Pierre Th. Camelot, Foi et gnose (Paris: Vrin, 1945), 106; Laura Rizzerio, “Sulla nozione di “Fede” in Clemente Alessandrino: un esempio di sintesi tra cultura classica e pensiero cristia no,” Sandalion 8 9 (1985 86): 159n40; Havrda, “Some Observations,” 5.

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tion” and something to be “perfected”. The latter formulation implies that this kind of faith is not perfect; and it is plausible to believe, on the basis of other passages, that the way to its perfection is the way of inquiry culminating in knowledge.³⁸ Seen from this perspective, the ‘common faith’ is a preliminary stage of knowledge shared by everyone confessing as all Christians do, including the ‘simple’ believers. Clement repeatedly refers to this stage as valuable (sufficient for salvation), but inferior to knowledge itself.³⁹ On the other hand, when defending faith against its philosophical critics, Clement describes it as a condition of knowledge, a ground on which the possibility of true knowledge ultimately depends. In this connection, he often resorts to the language of demonstration, arguing that knowledge is based on faith in the same way that a demonstrative argument ultimately rests on some unproved principles.⁴⁰ Now, at first sight, this looks like a cunningly deceptive move. What, indeed, does faith have in common with the principles of demonstration? Aristotle’s principles include axioms, definitions and existential ‘hypotheses’ (e. g. “there is a unit”).⁴¹ Euclid, instead of ‘hypotheses’, speaks of αἰτήματα, ‘postulates’—literally ‘requirements’ (in fact, the first three postulates do have the form of a requirement to make an elementary construction, e. g. “to draw a straight line from any point to any point”); instead of ‘axioms’, he uses the term ‘common notions’; and he also includes definitions among the principles.⁴² Does Clement believe that ‘common faith’ could have a similar role for a Christian ‘gnostic’ as these principles do for a philosopher or mathematician?

 Cf. e. g. Strom. I 11, 51, 4; V 1, 11, 1; VI 15, 126, 1; VIII 1, 1, 2 2, 2; and Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie, 385 89. Cf. also Lilla, Clement of Alexandria, 137 41.  Cf. Lilla, Clement of Alexandria, 136 f. For the sufficiency of ‘common faith’ for salvation, cf. Strom. V 1, 2, 5 (quoting Matt 17:29); V 1, 9, 2; V 3, 18, 3; VI 14, 109, 2. For the superiority of knowl edge, cf. also Strom. VII 16, 95, 9, where Clement illustrates the relation of the gnostics to the sim ple believers with the example of “artists” who “have something more than laymen” and “pro duce a better shape in comparison with the common notions” (ἐπεί … ἔχουσί τι πλέον οἱ τεχνῖται τῶν ἰδιωτῶν καὶ παρὰ τὰς κοινὰς ἐννοίας ἐκτυποῦσι τὸ βέλτιον); here, the ‘common notions’ seem to be analogous to the ‘common faith’.  Cf. Lilla, Clement of Alexandria, 120 31.  Aristotle, An. Post. I 2, 72a14 24.  Euclid, Elem. I; for the postulates, cf. also Aristotle, An. Post. I 10, 76b23, who seems to use the word in a different sense, however. Nevertheless, Aristotle too appears to be acquainted with geometrical principles consisting in elementary constructions; cf. Top. I 1, 101a13 17; Fabio Acerbi, “Aristotle and Euclid’s Postulates,” CQ 63 (2013): 680 85.

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Clement never discusses mathematics from this perspective.⁴³ But he does suggest that Christian faith provides access to something akin to the unproved principles of philosophical arguments.⁴⁴ He seems to find support for this view in the idea that, in order to embrace these principles, the philosophers must find them ‘credible’ (pistos) and invest them with ‘credence’ (pistis) of sorts. As Clement puts it in the so-called eighth Stromateus, “every demonstration is based on undemonstrated credence”.⁴⁵ There is a full-fledged theory of demonstration behind these formulations, discovered by Clement in the source excerpted in the ‘eighth book’ and used throughout the Stromateis. ⁴⁶ According to this theory, demonstration is “an account that furnishes credence from something agreed to something disputed”, or, in another version, “an account that furnishes credence from something credible to something not credible yet”.⁴⁷ Since there cannot be a demonstration of everything (for otherwise we would end up in an infinite regress), every demonstration must ultimately rest on something undemonstrated, which is credible by itself: this, Clement reports, are the principles of demonstration.⁴⁸ Clement seems to be particularly intrigued by the idea that these principles are endowed with ‘credence’ (pistis), a view going back to Aristotle’s Topics, where the first premises of a proof are described as items that “have credence not from other items but from themselves”.⁴⁹ However, Clement is also aware that, according to Greek philosophers, this credibility of

 One apparent exception is Strom. V 11, 71, 2, where Clement describes an ascent towards an intelligible unit (νοεῖται μονάς) by way of removing bodily attributes from an object. However, this famous example of the via remotionis is not concerned with mathematics at all, as the μονάς to which it refers is none other than Christ, conceived as the object of understanding; cf. Annew ies van den Hoek, “God Beyond Knowing: Clement of Alexandria and the Discourse on God,” in God in Early Christian Thought: Essays in Memory of Lloyd G. Patterson, ed. A.B. McGowan et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 48: “Clement’s application of the Platonic model shows a surprising twist when he introduces Christ in this process of intellectual abstraction”; cf. also Havrda, “Some Ob servations,” 18 21; Joel Kalvesmaki, The Theology of Arithmetic: Number Symbolism in Platonism and Early Christianity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 127.  Cf. esp. Strom. II 6, 27, 4; cf. Jonathan Barnes, “Raison et foi: Critique païenne et réponses chrétiennes,” StudPhil 56 (1997): 204 208 (translated in Jonathan Barnes, Proof, Knowledge, and Scepticism: Essays in Ancient Philosophy III, ed. M. Bonelli (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2014), 55 58); cf. also Havrda, “Demonstrative method,” 266.  Strom. VIII 3, 7, 2.  For Clement’s source, cf. Havrda, So Called Eighth Stromateus, 29 50; for its use in the Stro mateis, see Havrda, So Called Eighth Stromateus, 56 73.  Strom. VIII 3, 5, 1 and 7, 6.  Strom. VIII 3, 6, 7 7, 1.  Aristotle, Top. I 1000b18 21: τὰ μὴ δι’ ἑτέρων ἀλλὰ δι’ αὑτῶν ἔχοντα τὴν πίστιν. Cf. Lilla, Clement of Alexandria, 121 f.

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the principles is due to the fact that they are plainly true.⁵⁰ There are two kinds of credence, Clement reports: one ‘epistemic’ (producing ‘scientific’ knowledge) and one merely ‘doxastic’ (producing opinion).⁵¹ Only an argument capable of furnishing credence from plainly true phenomena (“that which plainly appears to perception and thought”) to a disputed issue, is capable of producing knowledge about that issue. An argument drawing its credence from, say, reputable premises produces mere persuasion.⁵² Now Clement seems to be attracted by the notion that the ‘common faith’, as a point of agreement within the Christian community, could assume the role of a principle of arguments “furnishing credence from something agreed to something disputed”.⁵³ Like Galen in the field of medicine and some philosophers in their respective traditions, he is worried about disputes between various schools of Christian doctrine, as it gives the critics of Christianity an occasion to raise the objection from disagreement.⁵⁴ The double meaning of τὸ ὁμολογούμενον—’that which is agreed’ and ‘that which is confessed’—might have helped him recognize this potential of the ‘common faith’.⁵⁵ Yet if it were merely a matter of received opinion, which happens to be shared by the members of one religious community, it could hardly aspire for the status of a principle of knowledge. Clement’s project of Christianity as a true philosophy is much more ambitious, as it attempts to show that faith is ultimately based on something plain. This appears to be crucial for his understanding of the role of the Christian teacher, whose task it is, in Clement’s view, to present the tradition of the Church in such a way as to generate not only faith in the soul of a student, but also knowledge: “For the highest form of demonstration, which we have referred to as epistemic, by presenting Scriptures and opening them up, inserts credence (pistis) in the souls eager to learn, which is no other than knowledge.”⁵⁶ It would require more study to find out exactly how Clement imagines this to

 Cf. Strom. VIII 3, 7, 3.  Strom. VIII 3, 5, 2 3; cf. Strom. II 11, 48, 2 and 49, 3.  Cf. Strom. VIII 3, 7, 7 8.  Cf. Strom. II 11, 48, 1;  Cf. Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie, 365 f., 370n26; Havrda, “Demonstrative method,” 271. Cf. also Origen, Cels. III 12; Mansfeld, Prolegomena, 166. For Galen, see Havrda, “Purpose,” 273 75.  Cf. Strom. VII 15, 90, 1 2, on the foundational role of ὁμολογία; cf. Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie, 367 70. Cf. also Strom. V 11, 71, 2, where ὁμολογία probably refers to a baptismal con fession formula, whose trace seems to be reflected in Clement’s summary of faith concerning the Son in Strom. V 1, 1, 2 (ὅτι τε υἱὸς καὶ ὅτι ἦλθεν καὶ πῶς καὶ διὰ τί καὶ περὶ τοῦ πάθους); cf. Havr da, “Some Observations,” 4n9, with references to Alain Le Boulluec, Clément d’Alexandrie: Les Stromates. Stromate V, tome II (commentaire) (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1981).  Strom. II 11, 49, 3.

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work. For our purpose it is sufficient to note that, on Clement’s account, it is possible to reveal the evidential basis of faith by means of Scriptural exegesis.⁵⁷ Apparently the main source of this evidence is Scripture itself, insofar as it is “opened up” by correct interpretation, guided by some hermeneutical rules, such as ‘the rule of truth’ (defined as “the concord and harmony between the Law and the Prophets on the one hand, and the Testament transmitted by the advent of the Lord, on the other”) and the rule of explaining Scripture from Scripture itself.⁵⁸ The view that faith has some sort of evidential basis also explains why Clement sometimes describes faith as a matter of choice or “voluntary assent”. In the second book of the Stromateis, Clement rejects the notion of faith as a mere supposition (ὑπόληψις), arguing that it is a “voluntary assent preceding demonstration” (ἑκούσιος πρὸ ἀποδείξεως συγκατάθεσις); such an assent must be based on something “strong”, Clement maintains, implying that the grounds of a supposition would be weaker. In case of faith, the assent is based on something strong indeed, namely, on the power of God: “For what could be stronger than God?”⁵⁹ Here, Clement invokes the situation of someone who is struck by the power of God, as mediated by the tradition of the church, particularly Scripture. Elsewhere in the second book he compares the power of God, mediated by Scripture, to the charms of the Sirens, which make one accept, almost against one’s will, the “things said” (τὰ λεγόμενα); the latter expression seems to refer either to Scripture itself (taken as “the voice of God”), or, more likely perhaps, to “things said in faith” (τὰ ἐν τῇ πίστει λεγόμενα), i. e. to the confession formula.⁶⁰ Once again, in this context, Clement uses the language of demonstration, showing that, in his view, the powerful ‘voice’ of God in Scripture is the evidential basis of faith: According to Theophrastus, perception is the beginning of credence. For it is from there that the principles extend all the way to the reason in us and our thought. Thus, whoever has come to believe the divine Scriptures has got a firm judgement, as he takes the voice of God, who has given us the gift of Scriptures, as an indisputable proof. Therefore, faith need not be fortified by proof any further. “Blessed are those who have not seen but be

 For the evidential basis of faith, cf. Dragoş A. Giulea, “Apprehending ‘Demonstrations’ from the First Principle: Clement of Alexandria’s Phenomenology of Faith,” JR 89 (2009): 187 213, who, however, does not seem to distinguish between the evidential basis of faith and demon stration; as pointed out by Lilla, Clement of Alexandria, 138, demonstration in Clement’s view amounts to a particular sort of “study and interpretation of Scripture”.  For some aspects, see Havrda, “Demonstrative method,” 273 75.  Strom. II 6, 27, 4 28, 1.  Cf. Strom. I 6, 35, 2.

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lieved” (John 20:29). For the charms of the Sirens have manifested a superhuman power, which has struck by awe those who were present and made them ready, almost against their will, to receive the things said.⁶¹

Of course, Clement is aware that those who have come to believe in this manner, need not be able to give an account of their position.⁶² But if it is possible to give such an account in principle, the path is open, in his version of Christianity, towards ‘intellectual independence’ in the above-mentioned sense. The same dual role of faith, as a ground of a good life, which is “useful for the multitude”, and as a foundation of knowledge for those who are capable of taking it this way, is reflected in Origen’s polemic against Celsus. In response to Celsus’ critique of those Christians who “do not even want to give or to receive a reason for what they believe, and use such expressions as ‘Do not ask questions; just believe’, and ‘Thy faith will save thee’,” Origen defends the simpliciores as follows: As this matter of faith is so much talked of, I have to reply that we accept it as useful for the multitude, and that we admittedly teach those who cannot abandon everything and pursue a study of rational argument to believe without thinking out their reasons.⁶³

At the same time, in a polemical move that is already familiar to us, he turns the critique back on the Greek philosophers: But, even if they do not admit it, in practice others do the same. What man who is urged to study philosophy and throws himself into some school of philosophers at random or be cause he has met a philosopher of that school, comes to do this for any reason except that he has faith that this school is better? He does not wait to hear the arguments of all

 Strom. II 2, 9, 5 7: Θεόφραστος δὲ τὴν αἴσθησιν ἀρχὴν εἶναι πίστεώς φησιν· ἀπὸ γὰρ ταύτης αἱ ἀρχαὶ πρὸς τὸν λόγον τὸν ἐν ἡμῖν καὶ τὴν διάνοιαν ἐκτείνονται. ὁ πιστεύσας τοίνυν ταῖς γρα φαῖς ταῖς θείαις, τὴν κρίσιν βεβαίαν ἔχων, ἀπόδειξιν ἀναντίρρητον τὴν τοῦ τὰς γραφὰς δεδωρη μένου φωνὴν λαμβάνει θεοῦ· οὐκέτ’ οὖν πίστις γίνεται δι’ ἀποδείξεως ὠχυρωμένη. “μακάριοι τοίνυν οἱ μὴ ἰδόντες καὶ πιστεύσαντες.” αἱ γοῦν τῶν Σειρήνων ἐπικηλήσεις δύναμιν ὑπεράνθρω πον ἐνδεικνύμεναι ἐξέπληττον τοὺς παρατυγχάνοντας πρὸς τὴν τῶν λεγομένων παραδοχὴν σχε δὸν ἄκοντας εὐτρεπίζουσαι. For the (ambiguous) image of the Sirens, cf. Miroslav Šedina, “The Chant of the Sirens. An Allegorical Image of Greek Rhetoric and Philosophy in the Thought of Clement of Alexandria,” Focus Pragensis 2 (2002): 58 77.  Cf. Strom. I 6, 35, 2: ἀλλὰ καθάπερ καὶ ἄνευ γραμμάτων πιστὸν εἶναι δυνατόν φαμεν, οὕτως συ νιέναι τὰ ἐν τῇ πίστει λεγόμενα οὐχ οἷόν τε μὴ μαθόντα ὁμολογοῦμεν. Cf. also Strom. I 20, 99, 1.  Origen, Cels. I 10, trans. Henry Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953). For Origen’s view of the simpliciores (οἱ ἁπλούστεροι vel sim.), cf. Peter Martens, Origen and Scripture: The Contours of the Exegetical Life (Oxford: Oxford Univer sity Press, 2012), 27 f., with references.

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the philosophers and of the different schools, and the refutation of one and the proof of another, when in this way he chooses to be a Stoic, or a Platonist, or a Peripatetic, or an Epicurean, or a follower of some such philosophical school.⁶⁴

Having put the faith of the Christian simpliciores on the same level as a student’s loyalty to a philosophical school of thought, Origen argues for the superiority of the Christian faith on the grounds of its more reliable origin in the teaching of God himself: If, as my argument has shown, belief is inevitable in following a particular individual among those who have founded sects among the Greeks or the barbarians, why should we not far more believe in the supreme God and in Him who teaches that we ought to wor ship Him alone, but to pay no attention to the rest, either as being non existent, or, if they do exist, as being worthy of honour but certainly not of worship and adoration?⁶⁵

Finally, like Clement, Origen points out that, precisely because of its origin in the teaching of God, faith can become the starting-point of a rational inquiry and proof: In respect of these matters a man who not only believes, but also uses reason in considering these questions, will declare the proofs that suggest themselves to him which he may dis cover as the result of an exhaustive inquiry.⁶⁶

Thus, in this brief argument, Origen portrays Christianity much as Galen portrays his ‘best school’: a tradition that offers its followers not just a set of doctrines, but also the means of understanding its own as well as other positions against the backdrop of their evidential basis.⁶⁷ Of course, not everyone within that tradition can “abandon everything and pursue a study of rational argument”; many

 Cels. I 11, trans. Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum.  Cels. I 11, trans. Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum.  Cels. I 11, trans. Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum.  It should be mentioned, by the way, that Clement uses the expression ἀρίστη αἵρεσις more or less in this sense; cf. Strom. VII 15, 92, 3: ἀποδείξεως δ’ οὔσης ἀνάγκη συγκαταβαίνειν εἰς τὰς ζητήσεις καὶ δι’ αὐτῶν τῶν γραφῶν ἐκμανθάνειν ἀποδεικτικῶς, ὅπως μὲν ἀπεσφάλησαν αἱ αἱρ έσεις, ὅπως δὲ ἐν μόνῃ τῇ ἀληθείᾳ καὶ τῇ ἀρχαίᾳ ἐκκλησίᾳ ἥ τε ἀκριβεστάτη γνῶσις καὶ ἡ τῷ ὄντι ἀρίστη αἵρεσις. Cf. Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie, 370 f. The language of demonstration in the immediate context of this passage seems to be informed directly by Galen; cf. Havrda, So Called Eighth Stromateus, 68 72. It is sometimes surmised though, I believe, on much thinner grounds that Origen’s own response to the objection from disagreement (Cels. III 12) and his instructions regarding the study of philosophical schools was also influenced by Galen; cf. Ilaria Ramelli, “Origen, Greek Philosophy, and the Birth of the Trinitarian Meaning of Hypostasis,” HThR 105 (2012): 322; cf. Mansfeld, Prolegomena, 166.

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people will “simply believe without thinking out their reasons”. But Origen goes out of his way to keep the tradition open to those who have the talent, discipline and time needed for this luxury. His own work as an apologist, exegete and theologian testifies to the responsibility of a man capable of transcending the level of simple acceptance of received wisdom: To study and expound his tradition convincingly by means of a rational argument not only to those standing outside it, but also to those within.

Benjamin A. Edsall

Clement and the Catechumenate in the Late Second Century Despite the fact that many scholars still mistrust Eusebius’ account of Clement Alexandrinus leading a “catechetical school” (Hist. eccl. 5.10.4),¹ his own work nevertheless betrays a thorough knowledge of and concern for contemporary catechetical practices.² The writings of Clement, therefore, contain some of the earliest clear indicators that the catechumenate had developed into an institutional fact in the early church.³ Such a development entails that those participating in

 Beginning particularly with Gustave Bardy, “Aux origines de l’école d’Alexandrie,” RecSR 27 (1937): 65 90, scholars have increasingly abandoned Eusebius’ account of Clement’s work; cf. André Méhat, Étude sur les ‘Stromates’ de Clément d’Alexandrie (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1966), 302 and passim; Roelof van den Broek, “The Christian ‘School’ of Alexandria in the Second and Third Centuries,” in Centers of Learning: Learning and Location in Pre Modern Europe and the Near East, ed. Jan Willem Drijvers and Alasdair A. MacDonald (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 39 47; Clem ens Scholten, “Die alexandrinische Katechetenschule,” JbAC 38 (1995): 16 37; and Christoph Markschies, Christian Theology and its Institutions in the Early Roman Empire: Prolegomena to a History of Early Christian Theology, trans. Wayne Coppins (Waco: Baylor, 2015), 80 83. Schol ten and Markschies go beyond Bardy’s view, arguing that Origen’s school too should not be con sidered a “catechetical school,” in the sense of preparing new believers for baptism or offering basic doctrinal instruction.  See further below and esp. the recent discussion by Alain Le Boulluec, “Clément d’Alexan drie,” in Histoire de la littérature grecque chrétienne des origines à 451. Vol. 3: De Clément d’Alex andrie à Eusèbe de Césarée, ed. Bernard Pouderon (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2017), 65 72, who is drawing on the arguments in Annewies van den Hoek, “The ‘Catechetical’ School of Early Chris tian Alexandria and its Philonic Heritage,” HThR 90 (1997): 59 87 and Dietmar Wyrwa, “Reli giöses Lernen im zweiten Jahrhundert und die Anfänge der alexandrinischen Katecheten schule,” in Religiöses Lernen in der biblischen, frühjüdischen und frühchristlichen Überlieferung, ed. Beate Ego and Helmut Merkel (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 271 306; cf. also Adolf Knauber, “Ein frühchristliches Handbuch katechumenaler Glaubensinitiation: der Paidagogos des Clemens von Alexandrien,” MTZ 23 (1972): 318 320; Victor Saxer, Les rites de l’initiation chrétienne du IIe au VIe siècle: Esquisse historique et signification d’après leurs principaux té moins (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 1988), 101; Ulrich Neymeyr, Die chris tlichen Lehrer im zweiten Jahrhundert: ihre Lehrtä tigkeit, ihr Selbstverstä ndnis und ihre Geschichte (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 55.  Cf. the summary statement in Saxer, Les rites, 101. See the discussion of this terminology in John R. Searle, “What is an Institution,” JOIE 1 (2005): 1 22: “ An institution is any collectively accepted system of rules (procedures, practices) that enable us to create institutional facts.…The creation of an institutional fact is, thus, the collective assignment of a status function.” Note also the discussion of “institutions” in Markschies, Christian Theology, 20 29. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110608632 008

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the catechumenate—both catechumens and instructors—inhabited recognized roles with their attendant status and responsibilities. This fact raises two related questions. Put simply, the first question is “where did Clement get the catechumenate to which he refers in his writings?” and the second is “what did he do with it?” In more nuanced terms, the first question is directed towards illuminating the factors that contributed to Clement’s understanding of the catechumenate both in relation to previous or contemporaneous Christian developments and in relation to potential non-Christian institutional analogues. The second question, then seeks to identify how Clement frames the catechumenate within his larger intellectual and pedagogical program. The short answer to these questions, to be filled out in what follows, is that Clement inherited catechetical practices already current in early Christianity which served more or less simply as a gateway into the community, restricting access to worship and communal resources. This catechumenate was distinctively Christian in practice, if not distinctive in its various components taken individually. Clement’s larger pedagogical context, including his philosophical influences and opposing interlocutors, led him to formulate a paedagogical framework that covered Christian life from conversion to mystical contemplation. Clement integrated the catechumenate within that framework, in contradistinction to the Valentinians on one side and anti-philosophical traditionalists on the other.

1 The Catechumenate and Its Analogues 1.1 Clement’s Inherited Catechumenate The catechumenate flourished in the early Church in the fourth and fifth centuries, but it emerges as an institution at the turn of the second and third centuries. Its origins are, it seems, lost in the mist of the mist of the second century, though hints of proto-catechetical processes are seen as early as the Didache and the Shepherd of Hermas and there remain elements of continuity throughout its development. In particular, the catechumenate consists in a period of liminal communal membership—between conversion and baptism—devoted to moral evaluation and some foundational instruction.⁴

 I examine the development of the catechumenate in more detail in my work, The Reception of Paul and Early Christian Initiation: History and Hermeneutics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 20 65.

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By the end of the second century, the catechumenate appears in the extant documents as a wide-spread institutional fact. The vague penumbra of the interested-but-not-committed was organized into a group that had trans-locally recognized roles and responsibilities within the Christian community, even if their membership was marginal. Tertullian indicates further that baptism, and by implication the related catechumenate, was associated particularly closely with Pascha and the period of Pentecost, thereby providing it a place within the liturgical calendar.⁵ One entered the catechumenate when the initiand registered their desire to join the Christian community following some sort of conversion, an expression of “faith” that was directed towards baptism.⁶ This registration or enrollment took place among the local church leaders and in the company of sponsors, with possible variations depending on location. Clement mentions enrollment in passing in several places, discussed in more detail in the later Apostolic Tradition, while Tertullian notes the important role of sponsors.⁷ These newly enrol-

 Tertullian Bapt. 19.1 3. NB: all translations are mine unless otherwise noted.  The timing of the catechumenate appears to have differed between locales, based on individ ual circumstances and over time. Tertullian does not mention a set period (cf. E. Dekkers, Ter tullianus en de Geschiedenis der Liturgie (Brussels: Desclée de Brouwer, 1947), 165), while the Apostolic Tradition has a (minimum) three year period and the Synod of Elvira implies three years for men (or only for flamines?) and five years for women. See the discussion of these texts (sans the Elvira canons) in Saxer, Les rites. (See Eckhard Reichert, Die Canones der Synode von Elvira: Einleitung und Kommentar (Hamburg: Hamburg University, 1990) for an edition and analysis of the Canons of Elvira.) The tension between these may not be as great as Dekkers and others think, though, since as the Apostolic Tradition (TA) notes, even with a three year cate chumenate, “the time shall not be judged but rather it is the conduct that will be judged” (ⲙⲉⲩⲕⲣⲓⲛⲉ ⲙⲡⲉⲭⲣⲱⲛⲟⲥ ⲁⲗⲗⲁ ⲡⲉⲧⲣⲟⲡⲟⲥ ⲙⲙⲁⲧⲉ ⲡⲉⲧⲟⲩⲛⲁⲕⲣⲓⲛⲉ ⲙⲙⲟϥ ⲙⲙⲁⲧⲉ).  Enrollment for baptism is noted in Clement of Alexandria Str. 6.1.1.3 and TA 15 16, which also notes the presence of sponsors. Tertullian Bapt. 18.4 is the earliest notice about sponsors; cf. Dekkers, Tertullianus, 212. The date of the relevant material in the Apostolic Tradition (chs. 15 20) is difficult, but it’s presence in all branches (excepting the missing pages in the Latin witness) suggests that in some form it reaches back to the archetype sometime in the third century, perhaps even as early as the late second century, (though a connection with Hip polytus is nearly impossible to maintain; see Christoph Markschies, “Wer schrieb die sogenannte Traditio Apostolica? Neue Beobachtungen und Hypothesen zu einer kaum lösbaren Frage aus der altkirchlichen Literaturgeschichte,” in Tauffragen und Bekenntnis: Studien zur sogenannten “Traditio apostolica” zu den “Interrogationes de fide” und zum “Rö mischen Glaubensbekenntnis,” ed. Wolfram Kinzig, Christoph Markschies and Markus Vinzent (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1998), 1 74). Whether individual instructions can be so situated, however, is a matter of some debate. See the insightful discussion in Anders Ekenberg, “Initiation in the Apostolic Tradition,” in Ablution, In itiation, and Baptism: Late Antiquity, Early Judaism, and Early Christianity, vol. 2, ed. David Hell holm, Tor Vegge, Øyvind Norderval and Christer Hellholm (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 1011 1034

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led baptizands were entrusted to an instructor who bore the responsibility for imparting the confessional formulae and moral pre-requisites for baptism. The catechist was not necessarily ordained to an ecclesial office; they appear rather to have been limited only by the requirement that instructors should themselves be well instructed and baptized—that is, members of the community in good standing. In the Passion of Perpetua, for instance, Saturnus is evidently not a member of the clergy and yet is responsible for a cohort of catechumens.⁸ Similarly, Clement takes no account of ecclesial office in his insistence that the true Gnostic is the one who instructs those less advanced.⁹ This period of liminal community membership was oriented primarily around moral formation and evaluation.¹⁰ One was to be instructed in the proper way of life and then, once such a commitment was sufficiently demonstrated, baptism could be granted. As Justin Martyr put it, prospective Christians first had to promise they were able to live according to the truth (βιοῦν οὕτως δύνασθαι ὑπισχνῶνται) before pre-baptismal prayers and fasts could take place (1 Apol. 61.2). Tertullian argues for delaying baptism based on age and moral aptitude and the Apostolic Tradition also emphasizes the importance of moral eval-

(following on the work of Paul F. Bradshaw, et al., The Apostolic Tradition: A Commentary (Min neapolis: Fortress, 2002)), who nevertheless takes an overly negative view of the evidence for a pre Nicene 3 year catechetical period, which can be roughly correlated in Clement’s writings (Str. 2.18.96.1 2; pace Bradshaw et al., The Apostolic Tradition, 96 97 and Maxwell E. Johnson, The Rites of Christian Initiation: Their Evolution and Interpretation (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2007), 64 66). In any case, the presence of enrollment is not usually questioned, even when wrestling with the Apostolic Tradition as “living literature”; cf. Alistair Stewart Sykes, “Traditio apostolica: The Liturgy of Third Century Rome and the Hippolytean School or Quomodo historia liturgica conscribenda sit,” SVTQ 48 (2004): 241n21; and Johnson, Rites, 102.  Pace Carolyn Osiek, “Perpetua’s Husband,” JECS 10, no. 2 (2002): 287 290 and with Petr Kit zler, “Passio Perpetuae and Acta Perpetuae: Between Tradition and Innovation,” LF 130 (2007): 6; and Thomas J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 177; cf. the comments in the Ep. Clem. 13.1 3 “Let the catechists instruct, having first been instructed, because the work concerns human souls.…it is necessary that the catechist be learned and blameless and mature and fearless.”  The Gnostic is to “imitate the Lord” in their teaching (Str. 1.1.9.3); see also Str. 2.19.97.1 and the discussion of the Gnostic’s teaching role in Judith L. Kovacs, “Divine Pedagogy and the Gnostic Teacher according to Clement of Alexandria,” JECS 9 (2001): 5 6 (following Méhat, Étude, 60 61).  The earliest hints in the Didache (1 6, highlighted in 7.1) and Shepherd of Hermas (Vis. 3.2 7) both point in this direction, as do the passing comments of Justin Martyr 1 Apol. 61.1 2. The association with baptism and moral transformation was present among Marcionites as well; see Eve Marie Becker, “Taufe bei Marcion eine Spurensuche,” in Ablution, Initiation, and Baptism: Late Antiquity, Early Judaism, and Early Christianity, vol. 2, ed. David Hellholm, Tor Vegge, Øyvind Norderval, and Christer Hellholm (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 871 94.

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uation, highlighted particularly by the two pre-baptismal interviews.¹¹ According to Clement, the first stage of Christian teaching in catechesis, which leads to faith and baptism,¹² is a progressive improvement of the soul concerned with self-control rather than knowledge per se. ¹³ For Clement and Tertullian, among others, post-baptismal life was to be without sin, a life built on the moral groundwork associated with initial instruction.¹⁴ Indirect support for this point is also provided by Galen, who praises the ability of the Christian school to produce a “philosophical” lifestyle even among the great unwashed.¹⁵ The second principal feature of the catechumenate is also suggested by Galen: indoctrination.¹⁶ Tertullian refers to catechumens as “hearers”—a designation perhaps visible in Justin Martyr and Hermas as well—and is clear that baptism follows teaching.¹⁷ What the teaching involved is far from clear, unfortunately. Teaching on the Christian way of life is likely, given the moral emphasis of the catechumenate, but the baptismal confessions, renunciation of the devil, and subsequent celebration of the Eucharist would also require at least modest instruction in order to be intelligible.¹⁸ As Tertullian states (against the Valenti-

 Tertullian Bapt. 18.4; TA 15 20.  Paed. 1.6.30 “Catechesis leads to faith and faith is taught at baptism by the Holy Spirit.”  Paed. 1.1.1.4 1.1.2.1; see further below.  For Clement, see Paed. 1.6.28.1 2; Str. 2.13.56.1 and for Tertullian, see Bapt. 8.5 and cf. Cyp rian Test. 3.98.  From his Commentary on Plato’s Republic, only extant in Arabic; see Richard Walzer, Galen on Jews and Christians (London: Oxford University Press, 1949), “Reference 6,” and the discus sion in Robert Louis Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven: Yale Univer sity Press, 2003), 79 80.  “If I had in mind people who taught their pupils in the same way as the followers of Moses and Christ teach theirs for they order them to accept everything on faith I should not have given you a definition.” From the lost treatise, On the Primary Unmoved Mover. This statement alone is preserved in an Arabic life of Galen; see the text, translation and discussion in Walzer, Galen, “Reference 5.” Galen, of course, is probably not speaking specifically of catechesis, though “teaching” followers of Christ will have included it.  Tertullian Paen. 6.20; Bapt. 14.2; Justin Martyr Dial. 2.4 (cf. Irenaeus on Tatian as “hearer” of Justin; Haer. 1.28.1); Hermas Vis. 3.7 (οὗτοί εἰσιν οἱ τὸν λόγον ἀκούσαντες). Justin’s use may be more immediately related to the common designation of philosophical students as “hearers” of their teacher; on his school in Rome, see esp. Jörg Ulrich, “What Do We Know about Justin’s ‘School’ in Rome?,” ZAC 16 (2012): 62 74; and Tobias Georges, “Justin’s School in Rome Reflec tions on Early Christian ‘Schools,’” ZAC 16 (2012): 75 87.  On baptismal confessions, see Reinhart Staats, “Das Taufbekenntnis in der frühen Kirche,” in Ablution, Initiation, and Baptism: Late Antiquity, Early Judaism, and Early Christianity, vol. 2, ed. David Hellholm, Tor Vegge, Øyvind Norderval, and Christer Hellholm (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011) and on Tertullian’s witness to these liturgical events, Dekkers, Tertullianus, 174 208; who is followed generally by Saxer, Les rites, 125 132.

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nians), “truth persuades by teaching, it does not teach by persuading” (Adv. Val. 1.4). Justin Martyr puts it in similarly: those who convert are “persuaded by our teaching” (1 Apol. 61.2). Irenaeus’ account of the “rule of faith,” passed on “through baptism” (διὰ τοῦ βαπτίσματος),¹⁹ likely indicates in outline the sorts of things covered, though he does not describe catechetical instruction as such anywhere in his writings. For Clement, “believing is not possible without catechesis” and the “things said in faith” must be learned, as only the believer is able to repeat them.²⁰ Two important facets of the catechumenate are its communal orientation and the fact that its contents were not secret. The communal orientation follows from what was already said—the catechumens were (often) accompanied by sponsors, instructors were drawn from various parts of the congregation, without need for ordination. Moreover, the whole purpose was communal integration: the catechumenate was the gateway to an ongoing community life. According to Tertullian, for instance, full access to communal worship was to be restricted to the faithful, those who had already proven themselves and been baptized.²¹ Although there was undoubtedly some overlap between Christian communities and other groups, membership in the Christian community was exclusive, according to its leaders, because devotion to Christ was exclusive of all other devotional practice. The shift in favor of a pedagogical secrecy in the fourth century, seen in the warning at the end of Cyril of Jerusalem’s Procatechesis for instance, is not evident in widespread terms in the late second century.²² Justin Martyr, for instance, feels no compunction about describing conversion, baptism and the  Haer. 1.1.9 10; Dem. 3 6 (text and translation in Karapet Ter Mekerttchian and S. G. Wilson, “S. Irenaeus, Εἰς ἐπίδειξιν τοῦ ἀποστολικοῦ κηρύγματος, The Proof of the Apostolic Preaching with Seven Fragments, Armenian Version,” PO 12 (1919): 655 746).  See respectively Ecl. proph. 28.3; Str. 1.6.35.2. Moreover, catechesis is something later subject to rational recollection (perhaps on a model of recollection in rhetorical schools), see Paed. 3.11.76.1; pace Andrew C. Itter, Esoteric Teaching the the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria (Lei den: Brill, 2009), 131.  See his complaints against the “heretics” mixing catechumens and baptized indiscriminately in Prae. haer. 41.4. In the Apostolic Tradition the ritual kiss, in addition to the eucharist, was not available to catechumens because “their kiss is not yet pure”; TA 18.1 3.  Rather, the language of “mystery” that would later be attached to baptism and the eucharist and their respective theologies was applied almost exclusively in relation to scriptural mysteries, a hermeneutical category pertaining to inspiration and the understanding of salvation history rather than any secretive practices. See now esp. T. J. Lang, Mystery and the Making of a Christian Historical Consciousness: from Paul to the Second Century (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), whose anal ysis highlights the fact that Tertullian was the first to apply such language to specific Christian practices (227 28). The use of sacramentum in Pliny Ep. 10.96.7 is the typical Roman use mean ing “oath.”

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celebration of the Eucharist (1 Apol. 61– 67). Further, the Christians caught by Pliny in Bythinia appear to have spoken freely.²³ On the other hand, while Tertullian accuses the Valentinians of refusing to teach their converts openly,²⁴ Clement of Alexandria commends a pedagogically oriented dissimulation, only telling one’s charges as much as they could handle.²⁵ In this cases it would seem, however, that the secrecy in question was a question of esoteric knowledge rather than a secrecy tout court, including about catechetical instruction. Clement certainly envisioned communication of basic truths with aspiring converts.²⁶ In other words, while worship meetings or gathered teaching for the faithful may have been private, the continued success of early Christian mission rested on “declassifying” at least some teaching with which to prepare converts for initiation. On this point, the Valentinians and Marcionites do not appear to differ greatly from the proto-orthodox.²⁷ Celsus’ complaint that Christians only prey on the ignorant with secret teachings, then, may have had characterized the practice of some Christians but it does not appear to have been representative of standard practice. This sketch of the catechumenate appears widely spread at the end of the second century, with little by way of previous institutional preparation. It is in this context that Clement was educated as a Christian; the practices and character of the catechumenate, seen before and after him throughout the early Church,

 Pliny Ep. 10.96; cf. the various accounts of open speech in the various martyrdom Acts gath ered in Herbert Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs: Introduction Texts and Translations (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972).  Adv. Val. 1 and passim.  Cf. the discussion in Walther Völker, Der wahre Gnostiker nach Clemens Alexandrinus (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1952), 10 11 and passim; S. R. C. Lilla, Clement of Alexandria: A Study in Chris tian Platonism and Gnosticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 146; Judith L. Kovacs, “Concealment and Gnostic Exegesis: Clement of Alexandria’s Interpretation of the Tabernacle,” StPatr 31 (1997): 414 437; Kovacs, “Divine Pedagogy,” and now Piotr Ashwin Siejkowski, Clem ent of Alexandria: A Project of Christian Perfection (London: T&T Clark, 2008), passim.  The whole purpose of the Protrepticus is to act pro catechetically (or enable others to do so) in relation to pagan interlocutors. On the shape of Clement’s epistemology, see §2 below. For the public facing quality of Clement’s teaching in the Protrepticus and Paedagogus, see Marco Rizzi, “The Literary Problem in Clement of Alexandria: A Reconsideration,” Adamantius 17 (2011): 154 63.  See Exc. 78.2 on knowledge needed for baptism, and Exc. 83 on the need for previous spiri tual purification. Also instructive is Trip. tract. 127.25 128.5 on conversion, confession and bap tism. See especially the discussion of Valentinian initiation in Einar Thomassen, The Spiritual Seed: The Church of the “Valentinians” (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 398 405; cf. Saxer, Les rites, 67 68. On the Marcionites, see Becker, “Taufe bei Marcion,” who argues that there was nothing specifically Marcionite about Marcionite baptismal praxis.

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were the same practices and character that he presumes as a foundation for Christian instruction. Yet, despite the rather sudden flourishing of catechetical information, no writer defends its existence; they simply discuss its proper deployment. This fact suggests either that it was already fairly well established, out of view to the contemporary scholar, or that it was an easily borrowed structure from some other social institution. If the latter were the case, then it would also have been possible for such a closely analogous institution to help shape the way in which Clement incorporated the catechumenate into his larger pedagogical framework. Even apart from a genetic institutional development, however, the analogues discussed below offer several potential points of influence on Clement and his inherited catechumenate, though none of them map on to it without remainder. As will become clear, the catechumenate is best understood in terms of bricolage: a variety of institutional elements or patterns organized by the internal needs and traditions of the community, whose participants and leaders were steeped in an array of contemporary institutional frameworks.

1.2 Ancient Analogues There are four ancient analogues that need to be considered in this section for their similarity to the catechetical practice Clement inherited. These are mystery-cults, philosophical schools, voluntary associations and the Qumran sect. Each of these have been raised in the past as possible sources for the catechumenate and each continues to provide certain remarkable similarities. The key comparative point here, however, is not to examine any one of these entities as a whole, but rather the modes of initiation or entry into them and one’s status upon entry. Further, just as catechetical praxis was not entirely uniform in late second century, so also is there variation within these analogues.²⁸

 Some voluntary associations were focused as professional guilds, others related to mystery initiation, others focused on social/communal support, others were oriented ethnically, others philosophically oriented. Synagogues, for instance, included ethnic, religious and social ele ments, and at times also a professional focus. Philosophical schools also at times included ini tiatory and theurgic elements. Religions increasingly took on ethical/moral aspects formerly do minated by philosophy (so Martin P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1955 1961), 2:578 581). Philosophy and religion (including their presence in synagogues and associations) were both rooted dogmatically and operated in fundamentally exegetical mode (see further below, §1.2.2).

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1.2.1 Mystery Cults The emerging catechetical process shares certain similarities with some mystery cults—an emphasis on the initiation rites, a period of prior instruction, and an ongoing communal focus. The differences are also notable: occasionally gender-exclusive membership, fees for initiation, Christian “mysteries” of initiation not kept strictly secret and a single stage of initiation. Mystery cults themselves exhibit a mix of continuity and divergence between the various cults, with each instance inhabiting a sort of “native” logic. Still, Jan Bremmer has shown that many of the later mystery cults were loosely structured on the pattern of the Eleusinian mysteries.²⁹ While ritual purification—normally by washing—was part of the mysteries of Eleusis, Samothrace, Isis, Dionysius and Mithras, in none of these did washing constitute the initiation rites (the mysteries) themselves; it was preparatory.³⁰ Also preparatory was an evidently informal process of mystagogy, undertaken by one who was already initiated. The mysteries themselves were not particularly focused on doctrinal issues and the preceding mystagogy appears to have focused on teaching the relevant mythology in preparation for impending ritual reenactments.³¹ The context and values for mystery cults (where mentioned) were generically civic.³² The mysteries themselves were kept strictly secret, though.

 Particularly those located in Samothrace. The non geographically oriented mysteries like Isis, Dionysius and Mithras also display a certain Eleusinian influence, though they each have their own internal logic that relates to their origins and particular needs. See esp. Jan N. Bremmer, Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), passim; and cf. Franz Cumont, Lux Perpetua (Paris: Geuthner, 1949), 260. The earlier religionsgeschicht liche approach to the mysteries, represented particularly by Richard Reitzenstein, Hellenistic Mystery Religions: Their Basic Ideas and Significance, trans. John E. Steely (Pittsburgh: Pickwick Press, 1978) and Franz Cumont, Les religions orientales dans le paganisme romain (Paris: Geuth ner, 1929) has been largely refuted by more recent works such as Walter Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987) and Simon R. F. Price, Religions of the Ancient Greeks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).  Cf. the arguments in Fritz Graf, “Baptism and Graeco Roman Mystery Cults,” in Ablution, In itiation, and Baptism: Late Antiquity, Early Judaism, and Early Christianity, vol. 1, ed. David Hell holm, Tor Vegge, Øyvind Norderval and Christer Hellholm (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011).  So Bremmer, Initiation, 3 4 (“there was no esoteric wisdom to be found” in them), pace M. P. Foucart, Les grands mystères d’Éleusis: personnel cérémonies (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1900), 93 94 who tries to argue for a fixed mystagogical institution for the Eleusinian rites. In the case of Eleusis, there were also the “lesser mysteries” which took place in the spring and perhaps included the famous formula about the “basket” recorded by Clement of Alexan dria; Prot. 2.21.2; cf. Bremmer, Initiation, 3.

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The period of instruction was not formalized in most cases. For instance, the witness of Plutarch to the Eleusinian order of events (in Demetrius 26) indicates not a formalized instructional period for the mysteries but an order of initiation within a fixed liturgical calendar. Each rite was celebrated only once a year and each was a pre-requisite for the next such that one had to wait at least a year after the mystes initiation before the epopteia ceremony was celebrated.³³ There was no need ever to attain the level of epopteia, though, and one who wanted to advance could wait one year or ten. In terms of communal implications, the local civic orientation³⁴ of the Eleusinian mysteries did not extend to a wider “community” within which this instruction happened: that is to say, after initiation Cicero, for instance, was not a member of the Eleusinian society in Rome. In the Dionysius, Isis, Mithras and Asclepius cults, however, there was an ongoing communal element—the voluntary association—that stretched across civic boundaries.³⁵ In the case of the Mithras cult, the first three levels of initiation did not have access to the mysteries and were “servants” for the four more advanced levels; these “servants” have occasionally been compared with catechumens.³⁶ The initiation processes were quite different, though, with Mithraic initiation emphasizing the abasement (even abuse) of the initiands rather than an emphasis on moral transformation or instruction.³⁷ Moreover, women were not permitted as Mithraic initiates and the demographics appear to have focused on the middling economic group, with no representatives from among the very poor.³⁸ In fact, the very poor appear to have been absent from the Eleusinian, Samothracian and

 Celsus, for instance, emphasizes the need to have “clean hands, and a prudent tongue,” one “who is pure from all pollution, and whose soul is conscious of no evil, and who has lived well and justly.” Celsus apud Origen Cels. 3.59; see esp. the comments of Price, Religions, 122 and cf. Cumont, Lux, 240 241; Nilsson, Geschichte, 2:578 581.  For the dates and timeline of the Eleusinian mysteries, see Bremmer, Initiation, 3, 5, 11, pas sim; for the one year interval, cf. Foucart, Les grands mystères, 95.  Cf. the comments in Foucart, Les grands mystères, 75 who notes that the Eleusinian mysteries reflected the values of the state.  Cf. IDelphi I 12 = SEG 41 (1991), no. 500 on a traveling devotee of Asclepius.  Cf. Franz Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra (Chicago: Open Court, 1910), 155.  See Richard Gordon, “Ritual and Hierarchy in the Mysteries of Mithras,” in The Religious His tory of the Roman Empire, ed. Jonathan A. North and Simon R. F. Price (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); and Bremmer, Initiation, 135.  So Bremmer, Initiation, 131 132, contra Cumont, Mysteries, 142. Reevaluating the demo graphics of the Mithras cult relates to recent questioning of the intimate relationship between the Roman military and the Mithras cult.

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other mysteries as well and it has been suggested that this is due to the fact that one had to pay a fee for each level of initiation.³⁹

1.2.2 Philosophical Schools Turning to philosophical schools, certain elements bear obvious resemblance to early Christianity, and early teachers like Justin, Pantaenus and Clement maintained the philosophical life after conversion. In terms of initiation, however, the analogues are harder to find. For the most part, the pre-requisites to philosophical training were oriented around one’s education, namely, the completion of the enkyklia paideia. ⁴⁰ There were exceptions to this but, given the exegetical quality of philosophical training in the Roman Imperial period, a good primary education was crucial.⁴¹ There was not a widespread emphasis on initiation rituals, despite certain theurgic tendencies among some—say, Iamblichus or certain early Pythagoreans, the relevance of both falling outside our period of interest.⁴² There were nevertheless certain moral expectations, necessarily given that philosophy was primarily construed as a “way of life.”⁴³ While we know precious little about the institutional setting of philosophical schools,⁴⁴ it would seem to have been up to the discretion of the teacher whether the individual’s recommendations (assuming they had them), education and conduct permitted

 Cf. Bremmer, Initiation, 138 39 and passim.  On the different levels and structures of philosophical education, see Markschies, Christian Theology, 61 71, with further bibliography there.  On this point, see, among others, Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exer cises from Socrates to Foucault, ed. Arnold I. Davidson (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1995), 71 72 and Markschies, Christian Theology, 62 63, 70.  For a discussion of conversion to philsophy in Alexandria (with a focus on Origen and Her aklas), see Ilinca Tanaseanu Döbler, “Philosophie in Alexandria der Kreis um Ammonios Sak kas,” in Alexandria, ed. Tobias Georges, Felix Albrecht and Reinhard Feldmeier (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 109 126; and cf. her broader discussion of late antique conversion to philosophy in Ilinca Tanaseanu Döbler, Konversion zur Philosophie in der Spätantike: Kaiser Julian und Syn esios von Kyrene (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2008).  This is widely appreciated and argued famously by Pierre Hadot, Philosophy (building on the earlier work of Paul Rabbow and others); cf. Epictetus Diss. 1.15.3 who defines philosophy as ἡ περὶ βίον τέχνη.  So Markschies, Christian Theology, 71, on philosophical instruction in the imperial period.

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entry.⁴⁵ No doubt in at least some cases the instructor’s discretion included a consideration of whether the student could pay their fees. There was a concern for a proper course of instruction, beginning with fundamentals,⁴⁶ but there does not appear to have been a generally practiced liminal phase of membership. Pythagoras is reported to have enforced such a twotier community, with the probationary members being able to hear him obscured by a veil for five-years and only the “initiated” able to converse with him face to face.⁴⁷ Pythagoreanism was blended with Orphic mysteries early on, however, and by the Roman period elements of pythagoreanism had been absorbed into middle (and, later, neo) platonism.⁴⁸ So, while Clement, Galen, and others claimed the title “philosophy” for Christianity, the process of entry into each group was markedly different in focus and (probably) demographic. The potentially closer analogy in Pythagoras does not appear to be sustained by the imperial period and could perhaps just as easily be attributable to cognate sectarian tendencies. Clement of Alexandria certainly emphasizes the need for moral preparation before one can become a true Gnostic, an emphasis familiar from other (middle‐)Platonist writers.⁴⁹ But, for Clement, baptism is the true foundation for the Gnostic, which is in principle  Epictetus, for instance, wanted to know simply that his students wanted to benefit from phi losophy and that they understood that philosophy entailed a life commitment; cf. A. A. Long, Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002), 108.  E. g., the Enchiridion of Epictetus, Epicurus’ Kyriae doxai, or ordered reading of the Platonic or Aristotelian corpus to guide the student’s learning; see Hadot, Philosophy, 71 72. On the lat ter, cf. the ordering of Platonic dialogues by Thrasyllus (apud. Diog. Laert. 3.57), with the Euthy pro at the beginning to demonstrate the embodied philosophical life.  See Christoph Riedweg, Steven Rendall and Andreas Schatzmann, Pythagoras: His Life, Teaching, and Influence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), 101 02.  Commenting on Ammonius Saccas, for instance, John Dillon states, “On the whole it seems best to view Ammonius as little more than a charismatic purveyor of Numenian Neopythagor eanism” and “…The remarkable compact which three of his pupils, Plotinus, Origen and Here nnius, made (and afterwards broke) not to divulge any of the doctrines which their master had revealed to them…need be no more than a traditional Pythagorean attitude taken with unusual seriousness.” John M. Dillon, The Middle Platonists: A Study of Platonism, 80 B.C. to A.D. 220 (London: Duckworth, 1977), 381 82; cf. the comments on the reception of pythagoreanism in middle and neo platonism in Riedweg, Rendall and Schatzmann, Pythagoras, 124 127. Constan tinos Macris, “Charismatic Authority, Spiritual Guidance, and Way of Life in the Pythagorean Tradition,” in Philosophy as a Way of Life: Ancients and Moderns: Essays in Honor of Pierre Hadot, ed. Michael Chase (Hoboken: Wiley, 2013) does not mention any continuous pythagorean community/communities in the Roman period in his discussion of the reception of Pythagoras’ words (acousmata).  See the discussion in Lilla, Clement of Alexandria, 103 106, 117, and passim; cf. also Méhat, Étude, 89 90 and Völker, Der wahre Gnostiker, 75.

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open to all who undergo catechesis, irrespective of educational attainments (cf. Str. 1.6.35.2). In this case, then, initiation precedes philosophical instruction. Though, as we shall see, Clement reframes catechetical instruction within a larger philosophical-pedagogical framework in order to produce a unified vision of Christian development.

1.2.3 Voluntary Associations Voluntary associations have been suggested as the model for early Christian communities at least since Theodor Mommsen, and the case was made forcefully by Edwin Hatch.⁵⁰ This view is now championed by many to explain a variety of different early Christian phenomena, particularly meal praxis and communal organization.⁵¹ A difficulty with using voluntary associations as comparanda is that there was such a great variety of associations that it becomes something of a catchall category.⁵² This means that while some groups will have had initiation rituals with a previous period of instruction and evaluation—say, for the Isis devotees— others will not.⁵³ Scholars often point to the ubiquity of religious themes among associations, which were communally oriented by design, as an argument for their analogous character to Christianity.⁵⁴ But to say that religious observance

 Theodor Mommsen, De collegiis et sodaliciis Romanorum (Killiae: Schwersiana, 1843) and Edwin Hatch, The Organization of the Early Christian Churches: Eight Lectures Delivered before the University of Oxford (London: Rivingtons, 1881).  E. g., Matthias Klinghardt, Gemeinschaftsmahl und Mahlgemeinschaft: Soziologie und Liturgie frühchristlicher Mahlfeiern (Tü bingen: Francke Verlag, 1996); Anders Runesson, The Origins of the Synagogue: A Socio historical Study (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2001); James Constantine Hanges, Paul, Founder of Churches: A Study in Light of the Evidence for the Role of “Founder Fig ures” in the Hellenistic Roman Period (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012); Philip A. Harland, Asso ciations, Synagogues, and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society (Min neapolis: Fortress, 2013).  Some groups were philosophically oriented, while others were devoted to a particular deity, whether organized on familial, ethnic or professional lines, and some were mystery associations affiliated with Dionysius or Isis.  Importantly, the examples adduced by Moshe Weinfeld, The Organizational Pattern and the Penal Code of the Qumran Sect: A Comparison with Guilds and Religious Associations of the Hel lenistic Roman Period (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1986), 43 as parallels for the Qumran probationary period are restricted to cultic mystery associations affiliated with Serapis and Dio nysius (cf. Herbert Chayyim Youtie, “The Kline of Sarapis,” HThR 41 (1948): 15 21, whom Wein feld is following).  So Harland, Associations, 45 69.

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was everywhere is not to say that each instance was equally significant for those involved. There is no doubt that Greek and Roman civic life was shot through with the presence of the gods, in statues, inscriptions and invocations, but the ubiquity of the gods did not entail the ubiquity of real piety.⁵⁵ Voluntary associations, as (sometimes) legal gatherings of individuals for a variety of professional, familial, social and religious purposes, include synagogues and the Iobacchoi as well as fire-brigades (collegia fabrorum).⁵⁶ As for initiation, a search of association regulations turns up few examples of any concern with initiation.⁵⁷ For the most part, membership is a matter of availability of spots and willingness to pay the monthly fee. A very few will list a general moral concern for members in their charter—that a person be “pure, pious and good,” for instance, or less strictly “worthy and suitable”— but there is no evident period of liminal membership or (outside of mystery associations) any initiatory rite noted.⁵⁸ A family oriented association devoted to Dionysus had little by way of entry requirements, while a synagogue would have been (presumably) open to any Jew who wanted to join but Gentiles were only able to be god-fearers unless they went through the initiation rites for conversion.⁵⁹ Clement does not normally associate the Christian community  A notable example of such a recognition is found in m. Avod. Zar. 3.4, where Rabbi Gamaliel argues that his attendance at a bath house, over which a statue of Aphrodite presides, is not an idolatrous practice. Despite the fact that Aphrodite is there (and may have in fact been offered the occasional honor), he argues that the bath house is not for her but rather she is there for the bath. As he says “I did not go into her place; she came into my place.” He goes on to say that if someone were to offer a great amount of money to stand naked or urinate in the temple before the idol, his interlocutor would not do it, but Aphrodite stands in the bath house and everyone urinates in her presence.  As in the one approved for Claudiopolis by Trajan in his letter to Pliny (Ep. 10.96 97). Also, in view of Trajan’s letters to Pliny, the Romans were more concerned with the ubiquity of political elements among collegia than they were the religious ones.  A sizable number of these have been gathered online by Philip Harland (York University) as part of “Associations in the Greco Roman World: An Expanding Collection of Inscriptions, Pap yri and Other Sources” (http://philipharland.com/greco roman associations/; accessed 10.11. 2016).  The first is from AGRW 8 = GRA I 49 = IG II.2 1369 = Foucart 1873, no. 20 and the second is from IG II.2 1368. Weinfeld, Organizational Pattern, 30 notes that, in comparison with the Qum ran community (see below) the ethical standards of “pagan associations” were much more loose.  On the Dionysus devotees, see Hanges, Founder of Churches, 260 304; on synagogues and collegia, see Runesson, Origins, 467 472; on Jews, god fearers and Gentiles in the synagogues, see Bengt Holmberg, “The Life in the Diaspora Synagogues: An Evaluation,” in The Ancient Syn agogue: From its Origins until 200 C.E, ed. Birger Olsson and Magnus Zetterholm (Lund: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2003); Emil Schü rer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175

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with voluntary associations; the latter are criticized (via Plato) for their lack of philosophical commitment.⁶⁰

1.2.4 Qumran The Yaḥad at Qumran, and perhaps a broader Essene-like movement given the Cairo Geniza copy of the Damascus Document, supplies perhaps the closest analogue to the catechumenate, but the distance between the two—between Hebrew/Aramaic-speaking, rural Palestine in the middle of the first century and the Greek-speaking urban Roman west in the late second century—is so great as to make the analogue almost certainly non-contiguous at the historical level.⁶¹ Even so, the concerns and praxis for initiation outlined in the Community Rule (1QS) line up markedly with later catechetical concerns and praxis, though ritual washing does not constitute the initiation rite as such.⁶² The initiand first registers their interest in enrolling in the community and is interviewed by the community leader about his “understanding and works.”⁶³ He then repents of his sins and is interrogated by the rest of the community (1QS 6.14– 15). If he is approved for initiation, he spends a year in a liminal state—without adding

B.C. A.D. 135), ed. Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar, Matthew Black and Martin Goodman (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1973 1987), 3:150 76 and for recent discussion of the Aphrodisias inscription (which includes a list of god fearers), see Angelos Chaniotis, “The Jews of Aphrodisias: New Evi dence and Old Problems,” SCI 21 (2002): 209 42.  Str. 5.14.98.6 7, where he approvingly cites Plato’s view that the disputations of associations are antithetical to the philosophical life. However, in Prot. 12.119.2 3 Clement subversively ap propriates Bacchic imagery in his argument that the Christianity represents a superior way of life.  See further in §1.3 below.  For a discussion of the initiatory material in 1QS, see Daniel K. Falk, “Religious Life at Qum ran,” in Celebrating the Dead Sea Scrolls: A Canadian Collection, ed. Peter W. Flint, Jean Du haime, and Kyung S. Baek (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011), 269 281. There remains, of course, the problem of whether and how the Community rule was enforced within the Qum ran Yaḥad, on which see discussion in Sarianna Metso, “In Search of the Sitz im Leben of the Community Rule,” in The Provo International Conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls: Technological Innovations, New Texts, & Reformulated Issues, ed. Donald W. Parry and Eugene Ulrich (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 308 314.  1QS 6.13 14; Enrollment (‫)להוסיף על עצת היחד‬, understanding and works (‫ ;)לשכלו ולמעשיו‬cf. CD 13.12 14, though the material in the Damascus Document precedes the existence of the Qum ran community and is therefore not focused specifically on its sectarian initiation process; cf. Stephen Hultgren, From the Damascus Covenant to the Covenant of the Community: Literary, His torical, and Theological Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 227 32.

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his possessions to the common store or participating in the “pure food” (1QS 6.16 – 17). After that year there is a second interview about what the initiand has learned and a second year of liminal status, without access to the “drink” though now with access to the “pure food” and the contribution of his material possessions (1QS 6.18 – 21). After the second year there is another interview and only after passing that is the person fully incorporated into the Yaḥad.⁶⁴ Repentance and moral transformation were crucial parts of the initiation process, as central as the halakhic teaching about which the initiands were interviewed at the end of each year.⁶⁵ Given the lack of direct connection between Qumran initiation and the latesecond century catechumenate, what we appear to have are independently similar solutions to the problem of selective membership. The sectarian impulse present at Qumran also applies, mutatis mutandis, to other sectarian groups, including the Pythagorean/orphic groups and early Christians. Further, shared cultural assumptions no doubt shaped the way in which similar impulses were manifest.

1.3 Summary Comparison The similarities between the late-second century catechumenate and these institutional analogues are varied. The parallels between baptism and an initial ablution among most mystery cults, particularly associated with the mysteries of Eleusis and Mithras, were recognized by early Christians, who reacted differently depending on their theological and rhetorical position. Tertullian, for instance, thought the practice of Mithraic washing was close enough to Christian baptism that he needed to distance the two of them.⁶⁶ On the other hand, Clement of Alexandria found it useful to highlight the connection between washing and initiation in the well-respected Eleusinian mysteries as part of his argument that everyone agrees on the importance of initial purification.⁶⁷ In both cases, however, the fact of washings in mystery religions constitutes only one point of com-

 1QS 6.21 22; note also the importance of reading (at least Vorlesen if not Lesen) and under standing for the Yaḥad’s vision of halakhic/doctrinal catechesis in 1QSa; Daniel Stö kl Ben Ezra, “Bücherlesen im Jachad Qumrans: Himmlische Bücher zwischen Katechese, kollektivem Studi um und esoterischer Geheimschrift,” in Metatexte: Erzählungen von schrifttragenden Artefakten in der alttestamentlichen und mittelalterlichen Literatur, ed. Friedrich Emanuel Focken and Mi chael R. Ott (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 83 86.  This is clear particularly in 1QS 1 2, though it is present elsewhere in the document as well.  Bapt. 5.1 3.  Str. 5.11.70.7 71.2.

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parison; ritual washing was recognized as a broader phenomenon.⁶⁸ Pre-lustral instruction features in neither comparison. As noted in passing above, viewing early Christian communities in terms of a philosophical school is well established in Justin Martyr and Clement in addition to being the likely model for several early “gnostic” groups like the Valentinians.⁶⁹ Unlike philosophical training, however, Christian initiation did not depend on one’s level of education or affinity for philosophical pursuits. Indeed, as we shall see, one group of Clement’s interlocutors are characterized precisely by their rejection of such philosophical pursuits. The category of voluntary association supplies, in itself, little of specific value for understanding the development of the catechumenate. Taken in its variegated entirety, the system of voluntary associations did not, as a rule, require previous instruction, moral evaluation, restrictive religious beliefs or practices or rituals of initiation required for communal participation. Those collegia etc. which appear most similar in practice to the early Church fall more specifically under the mystery cult or philosophical school analogues. The Qumran community constitutes simultaneously the closest institutional/ structural analogue and probably the most distant social/geographical analogue.⁷⁰ The idea that this sectarian Jewish practice decisively influenced Christian initiation in its earliest phase and was quietly maintained from the beginning to the clear emergence of the catechumenate in the late second and early

 See the preceding notes in which the very breadth of ritual washings are in both cases the foundation either for censure (Tertullian) or positive comparison (Clement).  On the “philosophy school” model of the Valentinians, see Christoph Markschies, “Valenti nianische Gnosis in Alexandrien und Ägypten,” in Origeniana Octava: Origen and the Alexandri an Tradition, ed. L. Perrone (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003), 331 46, and Ismo Dunder berg, “Valentinus and his School,” RCatT 37, no. 1 (2012): 131 51, who agrees with Markschies’ earlier arguments concerning the characterization of Valentinus himself as a platonic biblical interpreter. See Christoph Markschies, Valentinus Gnosticus? Untersuchungen zur valentiniani schen Gnosis mit einem Kommentar zu den Fragmenten Valentins (Tü bingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992). See also the account Justin Martyr in Peter Lampe, Christians at Rome in the First Two Cen turies: From Paul to Valentinus, ed. Marshall D. Johnson, trans. Michael Steinhauser (London: Continuum, 2003), 257 84.  If one could link the Therapeutae, described by Philo of Alexandria in De contemplativa, with the Qumran movement then perhaps sectarian Jewish influence could be found in Clement by that route. Certain features of Qumran initiation seen in 1QS also appear in Philo’s descrip tion of the Therapeutae (such as the surrender of personal property; Contemp. 18 19) though many differences remain. Notably, Philo describes the Therapeutae in philosophical terms which would be quite amenable to Clement’s own project.

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third century has been attractive for some.⁷¹ Nevertheless, the direction of liturgical development and influence in the early Church does not move clearly or unilaterally from East to West.⁷² Further, it is not clear that the Qumran community itself was not already engaged with wider intellectual and social currents in the Greco-Roman world, even if their sectarian character led to a robust rejection of those who were not part of the community.⁷³ It is the variation among the formal similarities between the analogues and the catechumenate that lends strength to a “bricolage” model for its development is evident: the catechumenate arising from various communal and intellectual strategies organized by the particular needs of Christian communities and not only organized by these needs but also shaped by a developing tradition. From the very beginning of this tradition, conversion and initiation were related to hearing and accepting a foundational gospel message with “faith” (πίστις) and moral transformation, completed and/or accompanied by baptism.⁷⁴ Throughout its subsequent development in the second century and beyond, these elements (in elongated form) remain the main focus of the catechumenate.

 Arthur Vööbus, for one, made the argument that Syrian Christianity was a direct descendant from an Essene like sectarian Judaism; Arthur Vööbus, History of Asceticism in the Syrian Orient: A Contribution to the History of Culture in the Near East (Louvain: Secrétariat du Corpus SCO, 1958), 3 10 and passim.  For instance, Gerard Rouwhorst, “The Origins and Evolution of Early Christian Pentecost,” StPatr 35 (2001): 309 22, argues that the celebration of Pentecost was a later addition to the Sy rian East, which runs against the grain of an argument for a deeply Jewish and conservative Christianity in the east. On the difficulty of reconstructing and tracing liturgical developments, see Paul F. Bradshaw, “Ten Principles for Interpreting Early Christian Liturgical Evidence,” in The Making of Jewish and Christian Worship, ed. Paul F. Bradshaw and Lawrence A. Hoffman (Notre Dame; London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991) and the general treatment in Paul F. Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship: Sources and Methods for the Study of Early Liturgy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).  Weinfeld, Organizational Pattern, argued that there is a common communal patterning in Qumran and Greco Roman associations; though our comments on the variegated quality of as sociations undermines the clarity of such a general position. More specifically, Markus Bock muehl has noted potential influences of the Alexandrian commentary tradition at Qumran; Mar kus N. A. Bockmuehl, “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of Biblical Commentary,” in Text, Thought, and Practice in Qumran and Early Christianity: Proceedings of the Ninth International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literatur, ed. Ruth A. Clements and Daniel R. Schwartz (Leiden: Brill, 2009).  For a recent treatment of Christian teaching in the earliest period that highlights these ele ments, see Benjamin A. Edsall, Paul’s Witness to Formative Early Christian Instruction (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014).

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2 Clement and the Catechumenate Clement of Alexandria, then, inherited a catechetical process that was identifiably and self-consciously Christian, while also sharing a number of elements with various other groups. Clement himself notes an analogue between Christian pedagogy—manifested in the first instance during the catechumenate—and training in other spheres of life, philosophical, rhetorical and athletic training, in particular.⁷⁵ Further, the catechumenate of the late-second century was geared toward policing access to community support and worship more than addressing issues of pedagogical or philosophical development. The central concern, recurring across different writers, was moral evaluation and transformation. To the extent that this characterization applies, the catechumenate left the door open for various groups to argue that further learning was necessary to reach a higher level of divine knowledge. In Tertullian’s view, this was exactly what happened among the so-called “gnostic” groups. He complains, for instance, that the “heretics” do not focus on pagan conversion. Instead, they poach their members from the church, the simplices. ⁷⁶ The Valentinians, on Tertullian’s account, operated on an Eleusinian cultic pattern, with the believing Christian (implicitly) inhabiting the space of the μυστής and the Valentinians achieving the level of epopteia. ⁷⁷ Clement described the Valentinian distinction between faith and knowledge in terms structurally similar to the account given by Tertullian.⁷⁸ He states, “Now the Valentinians, assigning faith to us, the simpletons (τοῖς ἁπλοῖς), want knowledge to be inherent in them who are saved by nature according to the surpassing abundance of the seed, saying it [knowledge] is separated as far from faith as is the spiritual is from the physical” (Str. 2.3.10.2– 3). Elsewhere Clement notes that his “gnostic” interlocutors hold some to be naturally spiritual γνωστικοί and others to be ψυχικοί, less in knowledge and (presumably) salvation. Of course, Clement rejects such an account as indicating a determinism that undermines the whole of Christian theology and praxis (Str. 2.3.11.2). In contradistinction,

 Paed. 1.12.99.1 100.1.  Praes. haer. 42; Adv. Val. 2 3; cf. Clement of Alexandria Paed. 1.6; Str. 2.2 6.  Adv. Val. 1.1.  The question of the accuracy of Clement’s descriptions cannot be explored in detail here. For an illuminating discussion, which includes the recognition that Clement sometimes collapses differences between different “heresies” for the purpose of addressing problems synthetically, see Alain Le Boulluec, La notion d’he´re´sie dans la litte´rature grecque, IIe IIIe sie`cles (Paris: Etudes augustiniennes, 1985), 332 54. A detailed investigation of Clement’s Valentinian frag ments can be found in Markschies, Valentinus.

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Clement argues that “faith is the one universal human salvation…all who put off fleshly desires are equally spiritual with the Lord” (Paed. 1.6.30.2– 1.6.31.2). The problem of differentiation which Clement faced may have been exacerbated by the fact that the Valentinians were likely not institutionally distinguishable from proto-orthodox Christian groups in Alexandria. That is to say, Valentinians likely did not proselytize non-Christians as Valentinians—as a group distinct from “Christians” with their own initiation processes—but rather followed a wide-spread baptismal practice that was (perhaps later) interpreted in a Valentinian way.⁷⁹ On the other side, however, were those among the baptized who rejected philosophy entirely. This group is noted early in Book 1 of the Stromateis. The chattering of those ignorantly timid ones has not escaped me, saying that the faith must concern itself with the most essential and important matters but that we should pass over external and superfluous things, which delay and occupy us pointlessly concern ing things that do not contribute to the goal. Others even think that philosophy entered life from an evil source, some evil inventor, for the purpose human suffering. (Str. 1.1.18.3 4)

While the Valentinians relativized “faith” as something simplistic, something to be superseded, these traditionalists rejected any move beyond “bare faith” (ψιλὴ πίστις).⁸⁰ These interlocutors posed a two-front problem for Clement and the distinction between the two groups was not merely intellectual. The status and value of the catechumenate, elementary Christian instruction, and further philosophical learning were at stake. If faith and knowledge are matters of one’s “natural state,” as Clement constructs the Valentinian position, then the catechumenate does not really lead to faith and baptism and the majority of uneducated Christians are relegated to a second tier status within the community.⁸¹ Even so, Clem-

 This is argued particularly by Thomassen, Spiritual Seed, 398 405; see also Minna Heimola, Christian Identity in the Gospel of Philip (Helsinki: The Finnish Exegetical Society, 2011), 22 31 and passim and Saxer, Les rites, 68 (“La catéchèse gnostique des environs de 150 appelle et sup pose une catéchèse orthodoxe contemporaine.”) The Valentinian explanation can be seen in the repeated emphasis on the “bridal chamber” which is identified with baptism in Trip. tract. 128.34 35.  See Clement’s criticism of ψιλὴ πίστις in Str. 1.9.43.1.  It is disputed whether the Valentinians in fact held such an anthropologically based soter iological dualism. While it appears to be present in passages such as Trip. Tract. 118 119 and Clement’s Exc. 58 62 (to say nothing of the heresiological material in Irenaeus Haer. 1.6.1; Hip polytus Haer. 34 36 and Tertullian Praes. haer. 27), there may be a geographical distinction in Valentinian soteriologies. See particularly the survey in Thomassen, Spiritual Seed, 46 82. In any case, what matters for Clement’s argument is the portrayal of the Valentinians he provides.

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ent does not want to abandon the continued quest for knowledge (γνῶσις) not only because he was himself a philosopher but also because the notion of “spiritual knowledge” is established by scripture.⁸² Moreover, the disagreement between his Valentinian and anti-philosophical interlocutors was a disagreement within Alexandrian (and wider) Christian churches about the shape of the Christian life and the formation of communities. Importantly, the catechetical traditions that Clement inherited provided no wide-spread or recognized model for integrating elementary instruction with further philosophical learning. Moreover, the potential institutional analogues surveyed earlier supplied no obvious solution for Clement’s problem. Faced with an institution that was part of his tradition and a philosophical approach to theology that had been current for most of the second century, Clement was forced to find resources internal to early Christianity with which to construct a framework that accounted for moral and intellectual development from the beginning to end or, as put by a crucial passage for his view, “from faith to faith” (Rom 1:17). Clement’s response to these two sides was to produce a differentiated account of faith.⁸³ “Bare faith” (ψιλὴ πίστις), of the kind valued by the traditionalists, is sufficient for salvation, in Clement’s view. It is attained at baptism following the standard catechetical process.⁸⁴ Even this kind of faith constitutes a sort of knowledge and perfection.⁸⁵ And yet, one who instructs in catechesis provides only “the beginning of faith…a trace of knowledge” because, according to Clement, bare faith is only the foundation for a more full, philosophically grounded faith, which is full knowledge.⁸⁶ Faith is the ground for knowledge, insofar as God is its true object, but faith also entails a certain knowledge itself that is sufficient.⁸⁷ There is to be no strict demarcation between the initial faith and the

 See particularly 1 Cor 1 3, 12 14 and see further below.  The fragmentary logic of demonstration presented in Str. 8.3, though it coheres generally with Clement’s discussions of πίστις elsewhere, is not principally focused on the maturation of believers nor on the pedagogical problems Clement faced from the Valentinian or anti phil osophical groups in the church; see esp. Matyáš Havrda, The So Called Eighth Stromateus by Clement of Alexandria: Early Christian Reception of Greek Scientific Methodology (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 134 74; cf. the short discussion in Lilla, Clement of Alexandria, 132 136.  Cf. Paed. 1.6.30, Str. 5.1.2.5 (discussing ἡ κοινὴ πίστις) and see above.  See Paed. 1.6.25.1 3 and Str. 7.10.57.3, among other places.  The quote is from Str. 1.1.4.3; see the discussion in Lilla, Clement of Alexandria, 129 135 and cf. the distinction between faith as preconception and faith as established proof in Str. 2.2.8.4 9.1; Str. 2.4.15.5 (drawing on the view of Aristotle) and Str. 2.4.17.1 (where a proleptic faith can become cataleptic).  See Peter Karavites, Evil Freedom and the Road to Perfection in Clement of Alexandria (Lei den: Brill, 1998), 142 and the still classic treatment in P. Th. Camelot, Foi et gnose: introduction a

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mature faith—between the beginning and the end of the Christian life—since it is simply a matter of different places on the same continuum. The catechetical institution and associated practices, then, have intrinsic value that is not superseded even as it is more firmly established. Similarly, philosophical learning is not ruled out of court but included within the life of Christian development. The warrant for this framework is provided principally by two passages from scripture: 1 Cor 3:1– 3 and Rom 1:17.⁸⁸ The first of these passages is taken up extensively in Paed. 1.6. In his winding and dense discussion, ranging from ancient biology to eucharistic theology and back again, Clement seeks to establish that the “milk” and “solid food” to which Paul appeals in 1 Cor 3:1– 3 in fact refer to two different states of same thing.⁸⁹ In other words, for Clement, “milk” and “meat”—catechesis and more advanced Christian instruction—are only quantitatively different; they are qualitatively the same. The fact that milk features in descriptions of eschatological hope indicates that even mature believers do not grow out of drinking the spiritual milk.⁹⁰ Insofar as the Christian message is “the milk of Christ,” it is in fact only the food of the spiritual believer while it has not yet been ingested by the non-baptized catechumen.⁹¹ Yet, the imagery of “milk” and “meat” also lends itself obviously to the imagery of child-rearing and maturation. Such an interpretation could lead one to the Valentinian dualism which Clement rejects and which has contributed in turning the traditionalist group against philosophy as a whole. Clement resists

l’étude de la connaissance mystique chez Clément d’Alexandrie (Paris: Vrin, 1945), 26 48, 64 67 and passim; cf. Alfredo Brontesi, La soteria in Clemente Alessandrino (Rome: Università Gregori ana, 1972), 537 40; Eric F. Osborn, Clement of Alexandria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 161 65.  Cf. the recent discussion of Clement’s Pauline interpretation in the context of multiple inter locutors in Judith L. Kovacs, “Reading the ‘Divinely Inspired’ Paul: Clement of Alexandria in Conversation with “Heterodox” Christians, Simple Believers, and Greek Philosophers,” in Clem ent’s Biblical Exegesis: Proceedings of the Second Colloquium on Clement of Alexandria (Olomouc, May 29 31, 2014), ed. Veronika Cernuskova, Judith L. Kovacs and Jana Plátová (Leiden: Brill, 2017). She does not, however, note the significance of Rom 1:17 for Clement’s structuring of the Christian life in response to both Valentinian and non philosophical challengers.  On Clement’s discussion here, see generally Anneweis van de Bunt, “Milk and Honey in the Theology of Clement of Alexandria,” in Fides Sacramenti Sacramentum Fidei: Studies in Honour of Pieter Smulders, ed. Hans Jorg auf der Maur et al. (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1981). For a more recent analysis, see John David Penniman, Raised on Christian Milk: Food and the Formation of the Soul in Early Christianity (New Haven: Yale, 2017), 102 05 and passim.  See Paed. 1.6.34.3 36.1, which cites Exod 3:8 (cf. Heb 4:7 11).  See the comments on mature consumption of milk in Paed. 1.6.36.3 4 and οἱ νεωστὶ κατη χούμενοι in 1.6.36.2.

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this implication with appeals to ancient biology. He argues that meat is merely a coagulation of milk. Pack in enough milk and one gets “meat.” “They have the same essence (ταὐτὸν δὲ τῇ οὐσίᾳ), for just so the same word (ὁ λόγος ὁ αὐτὸς) is mild and gentle like milk and firm and hardened like solid food” (Paed. 1.6.37.3 – 38.1). Just as flesh is nourished by blood, so blood is turned to milk by the infusion of “spirit” and nourishes infants in Christ.⁹² Milk, then, is not only for the simple, for those of “bare faith,” because in a different form it remains the food for all believers. The neophyte and the Gnostic both feed on the word of Christ, though at quantitatively differing magnitudes. Since faith is already a sort of knowledge, then further knowledge remains inextricably related to faith. As he says elsewhere, “knowledge, then, is characterized by faith (πιστὴ) and faith is characterized by knowledge (γνωστὴ) by some divine reciprocal relationship” (Str. 2.4.16.2– 3). The coherence of faith and knowledge, the view that the faith produced by catechesis and baptism is continuous with that of the Gnostic visionary, is made possible not only by the analogy of milk and meat but by the space provided within πίστις itself, in Paul’s statement that the righteousness of God is revealed “from faith to faith” (ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν; Rom 1:17). “The apostle manifestly announces a double faith, or rather a single faith which allows for growth and perfection. For the common faith lies underneath, like a foundation…while the special [faith], that is built on it is perfected with the believer and the [faith] that results from learning is brought to completion along with it [viz. the special faith]…”⁹³ This doubled character of faith developed by Clement in Str. 5.1 provides the answer to both his Valentinian and his traditionalist interlocutors. Clement explicitly returns back to his Valentinian interlocutors in this context to dispute their natural determinism on these grounds (Str. 5.1.3.2– 3). A faith that allows for growth and perfection is a faith that keeps the same essence throughout

 Paed 1.6.44.3. See Denise Kimber Buell, Making Christians: Clement of Alexandria and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 121 30 on the ancient dis course of breastfeeding in relation to Clement’s argument here. Note also the excellent contribu tion on this point in Dawn LaValle, “Divine Breastfeeding: Milk, Blood, and Pneuma in Clement of Alexandria’s Paedagogus,” JLA 8 (2015): 322 36, with whom I largely agree.  Str. 5.1.2.4 6. See the discussion of this passage in Matyáš Havrda, “Some Observations on Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, Book Five” VChr 64 (2010): 4 5 and Elizabeth A. Clark, Clem ent’s Use of Aristotle: The Aristotelian Contribution to Clement of Alexandria’s Refutation of Gnos ticism (New York: Edwin Mellen, 1977), 24; cf. 2.12.53.1. That πίστις is both foundation and build ing is related to Clement’s discussion of “faith” as the fundamental criterion of knowledge; see Str. 2.2.8.4 9.1 and cf. Dietmar Wyrwa, Die christliche Platonaneignung in den Stromateis des Clemens von Alexandrien (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1983), 152 62.

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the Christian life, irrespective of its development, a faith that supplies the foundation and the building itself (Str. 5.1.5.2– 3). Knowledge, then, can still be the “perfection of faith” that takes place “beyond catechesis” (περισσεύειν τῆς κατηχήσεως) without altering it at its core; both are still in line with the “ecclesiastical canon” (κατὰ…τὸν ἐκκλησιαστικὸν κανόνα).⁹⁴ For the traditionalists, who are only implicitly addressed in this section, finding a space within faith itself for further learning is crucial. As with the milk and meat analogy, Clement’s reading of Rom 1:17 demonstrates that “bare faith” is only one possible stage of faith in the Christian life. What follows is to be seen as an organic process of development rather than the intrusion of a foreign body of knowledge. Earlier in his Stromateis, Clement already gestured in this direction. “But just as we say that it is possible to be an unlearned believer (ἄνευ γραμμάτων πιστὸν εἶναι δυνατόν), so also do we confess that it is not possible for one who has not learned to understand the things said in faith (τὰ ἐν τῇ πίστει λεγόμενα)” (Str. 1.6.35.2– 3). Here Clement both affirms the sufficiency of a basic faith while affirming the value of working to understand what is “said in faith,” an allusion to confessional or liturgical formulae.⁹⁵ With this framework of differentiated faith in place, Clement is able to affirm hidden knowledge, a pedagogical use of secrecy, without anxiety over reinstating a Valentinian dualistic anthropology related to knowledge. In fact, Clement returns to the milk and meat imagery of 1 Cor 3, along with the wider context concerning wisdom, perfection and knowledge, and displays no concern about the distinction between the two stages of maturity. When Paul claims to “speak wisdom to the perfect” (1 Cor 2:6), Clement identifies it with what follows catechetical instruction, that which is “beyond it,” while retaining the essential continuity.⁹⁶ “If, then, the “milk” is nourishment for children and the ‘solid food’ is for the mature, as is said by the apostle, catechesis shall be considered ‘milk’ as the first nourishment of the soul and the mystical contemplation shall be considered ‘solid food.’“⁹⁷

 Str. 6.18.165.1. Pace Méhat, Étude, 303, the fact that the ecclesiastical canon is invoked does not mean that this passage does not refer to pre baptismal catechesis. Clement is simply saying that the gnosis that moves beyond catechesis is still in keeping with the Lord’s teaching and the ecclesial rule. This point is in keeping with Clement’s concern for continuity between basic cat echesis and further teaching, between “faith” and “knowledge”; see also Osborn, Clement, 174 175.  Cf. Havrda, Eighth Stromateus, 139 140.  See Str. 5.10.65.4 66.2 (linking 1 Cor 2:6 and the “milk”/“meat” distinction); cf. Völker, Der wahre Gnostiker, 370 371.  Str. 5.10.66.2, text cited above.

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At first blush this passage appears to be in tension with Clement’s discussion of 1 Cor 3:1– 3 in Paed. 1.6. John Penniman and Denise Buell, for instance, have argued that Clement is ultimately inconsistent in his interpretation of the milk/ meat imagery.⁹⁸ It is not quite that simple, however. Clement has already established in the Paedagogus the fundamental continuity between the two substances, an identification he reaffirms later in Str. 5.⁹⁹ Moreover, he has highlighted throughout the Stromateis that faith grows into knowledge without altering its essential content.¹⁰⁰ In the course of his arguments across the two works, the Paedagogus and the Stromateis, Clement has tried to establish the unity of Christian teaching from catechesis to esoteric Gnosis, the essential relation between faith imparted at baptism and the knowledge (and love) that characterize the mature Gnostic. It is on the scriptural pegs of 1 Cor 3:1– 3 and Rom 1:17 that he hangs his pedagogical framework; they supply the solution to the problems posed by his interlocutors. At this point we are able to see how Clement regulates and defends degrees of learning within the existing ecclesial and catechetical framework. Clement’s approach is linked with his arguments concerning the relation of faith and knowledge. The essential relation of milk and meat, functioning within the differentiated faith that admits the process of perfection within its already present perfection, means that the “first food” of catechesis is essentially the same thing as that which constitutes the “mystical contemplation.” The former is sufficient in itself, and leads naturally to the latter. There is no break between two levels of illumination or two types of Christian. Faith supplies the same foundation and fundamental orientation for both phases of teaching. Of course, in privileging πίστις in this way Clement was drawing on and working within contemporary epistemological discussions.¹⁰¹ But this was also a privileging that was warranted and shaped by Clement’s inherited institutional

 Penniman, Raised on Christian Milk, 104 105 and Buell, Making Christians, 128 129. Kovacs (“Reading,” 328 329) rightly acknowledges that a sharp distinction between the approach in the Paedagogus and the Stromateis should not be pressed.  Cf. also Str. 5.8.48.8 9 where the evidence of “milk” as “first instruction” that hardens into “meat” is found among Greek writers.  See the discussion in in van de Bunt, “Milk and Honey,” 38.  This point was made forcefully by Lilla, Clement of Alexandria, 118 142, among others; see the more recent discussion in Ashwin Siejkowski, Clement, 27 29, 35 36, 122 125, passim. The recent treatment of each individual work, provided in Le Boulluec Clément, 74 154, examines Clement’s relation with various aspects of contemporary philosophy in some detail throughout. In relation to the discussion of πίστις and demonstration in Str. 8.3, see esp. Havrda, Eighth Stro mateus, 134 174.

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commitments: one had always entered the Christian community by instruction, faith, and baptism.

3 Conclusion We return now to a few direct answers to the questions posed at the beginning: where did Clement get his catechumenate and what did he do with it? Clement received the catechumenate as part of the already existing Christian practice. Whether it had long had recognition as an institutional fact within the Christian communities or had only recently attained it is difficult to say. The various institutional analogues discussed in part 1.2 above indicated that there was no single model on which late-second century catechetical practice was shaped. Clement integrated the emerging catechumenate, concerned principally with access to worship and community, within a comprehensive pedagogical and philosophical account of the Christian life. He labored to affirm the value of each stage in the development of the Gnostic as an alternative to the differently restrictive visions provided by his interlocutors. The problem he faced and the solution he proposed arose from elements of the Christian community and features of early Christian thought that preceded him and within which he deliberately located himself. This is not simply to return to the view of Walther Völker, that Clement was actually a Christian who only dressed his theology in philosophical garb for practical purposes.¹⁰² It is simply to observe that Clement’s treatment of the catechumenate is principally shaped by inertia internal to the Christian community, irrespective of his otherwise extensive philosophical influences. Finally, when considering the development of Christian practice and institutions, it is good to remember Adolf von Harnack’s salutary comments on the relevance of collegia for the study of early Christian community formation. His observation applies mutatis mutandis to each of the institutional models discussed here. He stated, “We cannot discuss the influence which the Greek and Roman guilds may have exercised upon Christianity. In any case it can have borne merely on certain forms, not the essential fact itself or on its fixed nature.”¹⁰³ The elements of these analogous institutions explored above do not themselves explain or even address the fundamental impulse that led to the formation of the catechumenate at all. What led to it is a logic that is (nec-

 Cf. Völker, Der wahre Gnostiker, 9.  Adolf Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, trans. James Moffatt (New York: Harper, 1904), 2:47.

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essarily) internal to the development of early Christianity. Further, although Clement found various points of comparison useful—particularly with philosophy and somewhat less with the Eleusinian mysteries—neither of these offer structural parallels that are close enough to suggest that Clement intentionally shaped his integration of the catechumenate on one of those models. Clement’s own theological and philosophical program and his place within the Alexandrian Christian communities drove his transformation of the catechumenate from simple gateway to pedagogical stepping stone.

G. Reydams-Schils

Platonism and Stoicism in Clement of Alexandria: “Becoming like God” In the fifth book of his Stromateis Clement states: (1) ‘For the Saviour, in enjoining to love God and our neighbor, says that on these two com mandments hang the whole law and the prophets (Matthew 22, 37.39 40). Such are the ten ets promulgated by the Stoics; and before these, by Socrates …’ (5.97.1; trans. Wilson)¹.

This passage belongs with a long exposition on what the Greeks (philosophers and poets alike) borrowed from Scripture. That is, as in his Protrepticus and Books One and Six of his Stromateis, Clement presents parallels between these two cultural systems, and claims that the resemblances result from an actual dependence of the former on the latter. Although in this context Plato is clearly dominant in the parallels from the philosophical tradition, Clement is remarkably positive about the Stoics as well. Even their notion of god as a body and pneuma can be put to good use, so Clement avers, as long as one interprets it along allegorical lines. (And with this approach, Clement uses a technique which the Stoics themselves had applied to the traditional gods of Greek mythology). This paper focuses on two parallels that stand out. The first, that to be made ‘in the image and resemblance’ of God (κατ’ εἰκόνα καὶ ὁμοίωσιν, Gen. 1.26) and to follow his commandments are the equivalent both of the Stoic telos of ‘living according to nature’ (τὸ ἀκολούθως τῇ φύσει ζῆν) and the Platonic one of ‘becoming like god’ (ὁμοίωσιν θεῷ, Str. 5.94– 95).² The second parallel is present in the passage with which I started this paper, in which Clement claims that the Stoics and Socrates can be seen as endorsing the double commandment of love of God and love of neighbor. Though one could be forgiven for assuming that a reference to the famous line from Plato’s Theaetetus on ‘becoming like god as much as possible’ (ὁμοίωσις θεῷ κατὰ τὸ δυνατόν, 176b) could not be anything but Platonic, in reality philosophical accounts of the first two centuries AD that fall under so-called  φησὶ ταῖς δυσὶν ἐντολαῖς ὅλον τὸν νόμον καὶ τοὺς προφήτας κρέμασθαι. ταῦτα θρυλοῦσιν οἱ Στωϊκοὶ τὰ δόγματα καὶ πρὸ τούτων ὁ Σωκράτης …  For a recent succinct treatment of the topic of ‘becoming like God,’ with bibliography, see Matyáš Havrda, “Grace and Free Will According to Clement of Alexandria,” JECS 19 (2011): 35 39. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110608632 009

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Middle Platonism tend to combine Platonic with Stoic motifs in their interpretation of what this injunction entails.³ Plato’s Timaeus, which is the central Platonic text in this period, had bequeathed its readers an unresolved tension between a noetic aspect of the Demiurge, insofar as he turns his attention to the intelligible model of Being, and his relation to a world that becomes ordered through his actions.⁴ Which aspect of a god such as the Demiurge are human beings supposed to imitate, and which consequences does this choice have for the relation between contemplation and action in the world? In a Judeo-Christian context these questions become all the more poignant because of the belief in a creator God. Like Philo of Alexandria,⁵ Clement, I would argue, needs certain aspects of Stoicism both to underscore the divine’s role in the world and to strengthen the importance of sociability for human beings who are supposed to imitate God. As Therese Fuhrer has rendered this point succinctly, Early Christian authors often rely on Stoic concepts to explain God’s working in the world.⁶ Thus Clement’s attribution to the Stoics of the double injunction to love God and neighbor is far from a coincidence, and points to the significance of the Stoic influence on his thinking. In this paper I will examine first how Clement envisages the relation between contemplation and action in human beings’ assimilation to God, and then use this relation as a window into his treatment of social relations, especially marriage. Before we can turn to a more detailed analysis of the themes of ‘becoming like God’ and human sociability in Clement, however, we need to take a step back and address some broader methodological issues, given that this volume, is, after all, dedicated to the notion of the Christian intellectual in this era.  A more elaborated version of this claim can be found in Gretchen Reydams Schils, “‘Becom ing like God’ in Platonism and Stoicism,” in From Stoicism to Platonism: The Development of Phi losophy, 100 BCE 100 CE, ed. Troels Engberg Pedersen. (Cambridge University Press, 2017), 142 58.  See Gretchen Reydams Schils, Demiurge and Providence: Stoic and Platonist Readings of Pla to’s Timaeus (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999) and Nathan Powers, “Plato’s Demiurge as Precursor to the Stoic Providential God,” CQ 63 (2013): 713 22.  This paper forms a diptych together with one on Philo of Alexandria. See Gretchen Reydams Schils, “‘Unsocial Sociability’: Philo on the Active and the Contemplative Life,” in Pouvoir et puissances chez Philon d’Alexandrie, ed. Francesca Calabi, Olivier Munnich, Gretchen Rey dams Schils, and Emmanuele Vimercati (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 305 18. On the thesis of Philo’s increasing attraction to Stoicism during and after his embassy to Rome, see now Maren Niehoff, Philo of Alexandria: An Intellectual Biography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018).  Therese Fuhrer, “Stoa und Christentum,” in Der apokryphe Briefwechsel zwischen Seneca und Paulus. Zusammen mit dem Brief des Mordechai an Alexander und dem Brief des Annaeus Seneca über Hochmut und Götterbilder, ed. Alfons Fürst (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 115.

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1. The first obstacle to overcome in assessing the importance of Stoic elements in an author such as Clement of Alexandria is to get past the traditional ‘thin’ conceptions of syncretism and eclecticism (in contrast to the more sophisticated approach in evidence in more recent scholarship).⁷ These notions assume that someone with the intellectual background of Clement could be expected to combine as many elements from as many different sources as possible –a tendency that would be enhanced even more by the ‘collage’ technique of the Stromateis— without putting too much effort into harmonizing the heterogeneous material. A very common corollary assumption relies on the notion of ‘common property’ or a lingua franca, according to which certain terms and concepts became part of a common parlance without retaining much, if anything at all, of their original valence. (In this important respect, the assumption differs fundamentally from the manner in which a later Stoic such as Seneca would use it: in Seneca’s eyes to claim a philosophical expression or insight as ‘common property,’ Ep. 79.6 – 7, would not entail that its meaning is watered down.) Apart from the problem that such a conception of a lingua franca rests on dubious hermeneutical assumptions (as if one could strip terms from all connotations they carry in their original context), one can make much finer distinctions in how such material is put to use. First, one can assess the extent to which ‘borrowed’ material does real work in addressing crucial problems and shaping the overall direction of an account—even if this process can lead to unresolved tensions. In the seventh chapter of the Wisdom of Solomon, for instance, we find side by side some attributes of Wisdom that make it resemble the Stoic pneuma, which permeates all of reality (7.22– 24), and others that have a more transcendent valence (7.25 ff.). It would be a mistake, in this case, to argue away the first strand or simply to subjugate it to the second. Instead, this tension brings to light precisely the challenge of talking about the divine in its relation to the world, especially if that relation rests on a strong sense of creation. The similarity between the description of Wisdom as ‘spirit’ and Stoic views did not escape Clement of Alexandria’s notice (Strom. 5.89.2– 4). Second, behind seemingly random collections of elements from different origins often lies a deeper philosophical and theological motivation of saving the possibility of ‘truth’ from the primary line of attack of the skeptical tradition

 See Troels Engberg Pedersen, “Introduction: A Historiographical Essay,” in From Stoicism to Platonism: The Development of Philosophy, 100 BCE 100 CE, ed. Troels Engberg Pedersen (Cam bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 1 26.

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that plays out the different positions of the philosophical schools, the so-called diaphônia, against one another to argue for a suspension of judgment.⁸ Any attempt to establish common ground between different systems of thought counters this strategy, consciously or unconsciously (unconsciously if an author merely borrows his doxographical material from another source). Clement, for his part, has his version of a view of the history of philosophy which we also find attested for Atticus and Numenius:⁹ the different Greek and ‘barbarian’ truths are mere fragments of a body of knowledge that has been dismembered just as Pentheus’ body was torn apart by the Bacchae (Strom. 1.57.1– 6). For Clement the unity of truth is anchored in the Word (logos), and in so far as all true insights, including those of the pagans, reflect this truth they can be made to illuminate one another mutually. But the merging of Platonic and Stoic elements in the reception of Plato’s Timaeus, the pivotal text in this era, had occurred already long before it reached Clement, and it antedates even Antiochus of Ascalon’s attempt to combine Platonic, Peripatetic and Stoic ideas. When Plato’s Academy turned towards skepticism under Arcesilaus and Carneades, the Stoics, paradoxically, kept many ideas from the Timaeus alive in their own adaptation, in which a fully developed Providence is front and center (Reydams-Schils 1999). For ancient interpreters a work never stood in isolation but was commonly received together with at least some strands of previous interpretations. (Thus, Carlos Lévy (2003) has demonstrated that Cicero colored his Latin translation of the Timaeus with concepts derived from the Hellenistic schools of thought.) For instance, most readers of the Timaeus in this period replace Plato’s notion of the ‘receptacle’ (hupodochê) with ‘matter’ (hulê) as if the latter belonged with the original. And in his De opificio mundi, which leans heavily on this work of Plato’s, Philo of Alexandria inserts a Stoic version of the two principles of reality, the active cause or God, on the one hand, and the passive principle, or matter, on the other (Opif., 8). The realization that we cannot posit the reception of the Timaeus and Stoic influences simply as two separate strands in the tradition implies too that, for instance, some results of David Runia’s magisterial study on the importance of the Timaeus for Philo (1986) or some aspects of Mark Edwards’ assessment of the role of Platonism in Origen (2002) need to be revisited.

 On this issue, see now also Mauro Bonazzi, À la recherche des idées. Platonisme et philosophie hellénistique d’Antiochus à Plotin (Paris: Vrin, 2015).  For Atticus, see F1 des Places; for Numenius, see F24 28 des Places.

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2. To return to the main theme of this paper, we start with a definition of different types of knowledge which Clement attributes to the Academic Xenocrates: (2) Since also Xenocrates, in his book on Intelligence, says that wisdom is the knowledge of first causes and of intellectual essence. He considers reasoning as twofold, practical and theoretical, which latter is human wisdom. Consequently wisdom is reasoning, but all rea soning is not wisdom (Strom. 2.24.1 2, trans. Wilson, modified).¹⁰

This passage hinges on two terms, ‘wisdom’ (sophia) and another cognitive mode called phronêsis, which I here translate very broadly as ‘reasoning.’ Phronêsis, so the passage goes, is twofold, both ‘practical’ (πρακτική) and ‘theoretical’ (θεωρητική).¹¹ But as Clement parses the passage—and we should be cautious with attributing this view in it entirety to Xenocrates –, it also implies a distinction between human wisdom and a higher mode of access to first causes and intelligible reality. As the context of the passage indicates, for Clement the highest form of wisdom does not require mere knowledge from human beings, but faith. The definitions also invite reflection about what the exact relation is supposed to be between the theoretical and the practical forms of ‘thinking.’ Succinctly put, in Platonic-Peripatetic accounts of the period we tend to find a schema in which practical reasoning is not only clearly subjugated to theoretical reasoning, but often stands in tension with it, as a distraction from the contemplation of the higher realities and a necessity that follows from life in the body. The Stoics, by contrast, posit a very different relation between those two modes: the ‘rational’ (logikos) life embraces both the practical and the theoretical (D.L. 7.130). As Thomas Bénatouïl has shown (2009), one should interpret this view not in the sense of a mere juxtaposition, as in the ‘mixed life’ that can contain or alternate between both modes, but rather of a mutual implication and reinforcement. Moreover, the Stoics, who do not endorse a higher reality that tran-

 ἐπεὶ καὶ Ξενοκράτης ἐν τῷ Περὶ φρονήσεως τὴν σοφίαν ἐπιστήμην τῶν πρώτων αἰτίων καὶ τῆς νοητῆς οὐσίας εἶναί φησι, τὴν φρόνησιν ἡγούμενος διττήν, τὴν μὲν πρακτικήν, τὴν δὲ θεω ρητικήν, ἣν δὴ σοφίαν ὑπάρχειν ἀνθρωπίνην. Διόπερ ἡ μὲν σοφία φρόνησις, οὐ μὴν πᾶσα φρόνη σις σοφία.  So, unlike Aristotle in his NE Book Six, “Xenocrates” does not limit phronêsis to practical reasoning. For the Stoic preference of phronêsis to describe the activity of reason, see Jean Bap tiste Gourinat, “Les éclipses de la phronèsis dans le stoïcisme de Cléanthe à Marc Aurèle,” in Le jugement pratique. Autour de la notion de phronèsis, ed. Danielle Lories and Laura Rizzerio (Paris: Vrin, 2008), 167 97.

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scends the cosmos, tend to limit the range of ‘theory’ to philosophical teachings (rather like our sense of ‘theory’) and the contemplation of the order of the universe. This restriction of the role of theôria also helps to explain the emphasis on ethics as the correct way of leading one’s life in the Stoic accounts of the Roman imperial period. Given his heavily Platonist leanings, it is not difficult to detect in Clement the hierarchical version of the relation between contemplation and action (even if we factor in, as Pohlenz already noted, that Clement never quite got to the purely theoretical aspect of what he calls gnôsis or the gnostic).¹² It is especially in the sixth book of the Stromateis that Clement emphasizes the primacy of contemplation. Contemplation constitutes the telos for the gnostic (Strom. 6.61), who in his apatheia is beyond even the good emotions (eupatheiai, Strom. 6.71; on these see more below, section 3) and beyond the moral virtues (Strom. 6.76). The contexts in which he presents a different balance between contemplation and action, however, should not be overlooked. Let’s take a closer look at some of these. The first and most important context is, not surprisingly, provided by the notion of ‘the Logos having become flesh:’ (3) for the Word Himself also, having openly become flesh, exhibited the same virtue, both practical and contemplative (Paed. 1.9; trans. Wilson)¹³

In this incarnated Word or Logos one and the same virtue is both practical and contemplative. It is not too farfetched, I would argue, to detect in this formulation about the Logos an echo of the Stoic idea that the bios logikos embraces both the theoretical and the practical life (see above). And even though Clement, like Philo of Alexandria, endorses the idea that God is unknowable in his essence (see below), it is the relational aspect of God that is central to Clement’s extant

 Max Pohlenz, Klemens von Alexandreia und sein hellenisches Christentum (Göttingen: Van denhoeck & Ruprecht, 1943), 122; cf. Clement Str. 6, end and 7.59.7. On contemplation, see espe cially Salvatore Lilla, Clement of Alexandria: A Study in Christian Platonism and Gnosticism (Ox ford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 142 89; Walther Völker, Der wahre Gnostiker nach Clemens Alexandrinus (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1952), esp. 75 115, 188 219, 446 609. The methodology adopted in this paper differs from Völker’s in that I do not examine merely the combination of Platonic and Stoic elements in Clement’s writing, but focus rather on how these affect one an other. I also do not endorse the traditional opposition between philosophy and the specifically Christian components.  καὶ γὰρ ὁ λόγος αὐτὸς ἐναργῶς σὰρξ γενόμενος τὴν αὐτὴν ἀρετὴν πρακτικὴν ἅμα καὶ θεω ρητικὴν ἐπιδεικνύς.

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works: God as Providence in his ordering of the world,¹⁴ as love-agapê, and as philanthrôpos. In the incarnated Word that relational aspect finds its consummate expression. Clement carries over this point of view even to the incarnated human being: (4) For gnostic virtue is in every respect beautiful, meek, free from harm and pain, blessed and eminently suited to consort both with everything divine and with human beings. It is both theoretical and practical, and turns the human being into a divine statue and makes him love beauty through love. For the beautiful as it is there is to be contemplated and grasped with the intellect in wisdom, but here it is to be practiced in temperance and jus tice through faith, when one in the flesh carries out the angelical service and sanctifies one’s intellect as in a translucent place and an uncorrupted body (Ecl. 37.1).¹⁵

In discussing the virtue of the gnostic Clement emphasizes here too that it is both theoretical and practical. At first glance the passage hinges on a separation between a transcendental noetic realm of contemplation (the ‘there’) and an immanent (‘here’) sphere of action. But again, both the claims that ‘in the flesh’ a human being actually carries out the works of the angels and that in a pure body the mind becomes sanctified push against such a stark division (even if the highest level of angels are exempt of the office of care and engage in pure contemplation, Ecl. 56.7). The second crucial context is provided by the centrality of the notion of ‘love of neighbor’ (see also text 1): (5) Accordingly the soul must be prepared and variously exercised, if it would become in the highest degree good. For there is the gnostic and the practical element in truth; and the latter flows from the contemplative; and there is need of great practice, and exercise, and experience. But in contemplation, one element relates to one’s neighbors and another to one’s self. Wherefore also training ought to be so molded as to be adapted to both. He, then, who has acquired a competent acquaintance with the subjects that embrace the principles

 Silke Petra Bergjan, “Clement of Alexandria on God’s Providence and the Gnostic’s Life Choice: The Concept of Pronoia in the Stromateis, Book VII,” in The Seventh Book of the Stroma teis. Proceedings from the Colloquium on Clement of Alexandria (Olomouc, October 21 23, 2010), ed. Matyáš Havrda, Vít Hušek, and Jana Plátová (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 63 92.  Ἡ γὰρ ἀρετὴ ἡ γνωστικὴ πανταχοῦ καλὸν καὶ πρᾶον καὶ ἀβλαβὲς καὶ ἄλυπον καὶ μακάριον καὶ παρεσκευασμένον ἄριστα μὲν ὁμιλεῖν παντὶ τῷ θείῳ, ἄριστα δ’ἀνθρώποις, θεωρητικὸν ὁμοῦ καὶ πρακτικόν, ἄγαλμα θεῖον τὸν ἄνθρωπον κατασκευάζουσα καὶ φιλόκαλον ἀπεργαζομένη δι’ ἀγάπης· τὸ γὰρ καλὸν ὡς ἐκεῖ σοφίᾳ θεωρητὸν καὶ νοητόν, ἐνταῦθα σωφροσύνῃ καὶ δικαιο σύνῃ διὰ πίστεως πρακτόν, ἐν σαρκὶ μελετήσαντος ἀγγελικὴν ὑπουργίαν, ὥσπερ ἐν τόπῳ διαφα νεῖ καὶ ἀμιάντῳ τῷ σώματι τὸν νοῦν καθιερώσαντος.

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that conduce to gnosis, may stop and remain henceforth in quiet, directing his actions in conformity with his theory (Strom. 6.91.2 4; trans. Wilson modified).¹⁶

One could easily read the above passage along the lines of a Platonist inspired emphasis on contemplation (gnosis-theôria), underscored by the end goal of ‘henceforth remaining in quiet’ (ἐφ’ἡσυχίας τοῦ λοιποῦ μένειν). Yet the wording also highlights the very close connection between the theoretical and practical aspects of truth, with the latter flowing from the former, that is, without a suggestion of tension between the two. Moreover, Clement in this context has included under contemplation a distinction between a component that pertains to one’s neighbor and another that pertains to oneself (τὸ μέν τί ἐστι πρὸς τοὺς πέλας, τὸ δὲ ὡς πρὸς αὐτόν). In other words, the very notion of theôria has been inflected here so as to include sociability. This inflection implies that we need a concept of rationality as inextricably connected to sociability, and such a notion is to be found with the Stoics (see also Str. 7.69.2). For the Stoics, given the close connection between divine and human reason and the fact that the divine principle permeates all of reality, to be rational is to be social in the community of gods and men that is the cosmopolis (Reydams-Schils 2002 and 2005). In order to grasp fully what is at stake here, one would have to investigate more closely what contemplation, and especially contemplation of God, is for in Clement’s eyes, how it orients one both in this life and the next, and that question leads us right back to the kind of divinity one is supposed to emulate. In a nutshell a Christian, according to Clement, is meant not just to dwell on or in God, but also to imitate His relation to the world and human beings (see also Völker 1952: 487– 502). In the very same breath in which Clement indicates that God is remote in his essence (πόρρω μὲν κατ’ οὐσίαν), he goes on to state: (6) For the power of God is always present, fastened onto our power of inspection, of be neficence, of instruction (Strom. 2.5.5).¹⁷

 προπαρασκευασθῆναι τοίνυν τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ ποικίλως ἐργασθῆναι χρή, εἰ μέλλοι ἀρίστη, κατασκευάζεσθαι, ἐπεὶ τῆς ἀληθείας τὸ μέν ἐστι γνωστικόν, τὸ δὲ ποιητικόν, ἐρρύηκεν δὲ ἀπὸ τοῦ θεωρητικοῦ, δεῖται δὲ ἀσκήσεως καὶ συγγυμνασίας πολλῆς καὶ ἐμπειρίας. ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦ θεω ρητικοῦ τὸ μέν τί ἐστι πρὸς τοὺς πέλας, τὸ δὲ ὡς πρὸς αὐτόν. Διόπερ καὶ τὴν παιδείαν οὕτως χρὴ συνεσκευάσθαι, ὥστε ἀμφοτέροις ἐνηρμόσθαι. ἔνεστι μὲν οὖν αὐτάρκως τὰ συνεκτικὰ τῶν πρὸς γνῶσιν φερόντων ἐκμαθόντα ἐφ’ ἡσυχίας τοῦ λοιποῦ μένειν ἀναπεπαυμένον, κατευθύνοντα τὰς πράξεις πρὸς τὴν θεωρίαν·  καὶ δὴ πάρεστιν ἀεὶ τῇ τε ἐποπτικῇ τῇ τε εὐεργετικῇ τῇ τε παιδευτικῇ ἁπτομένη ἡμῶν δυ νάμει δύναμις τοῦ θεοῦ. Diverging from the traditional translation, I take ἁπτομένη here in the sense of ‘attached to/fastened’ (Pass.) and the dat. to be governed by πάρεστιν (or, alternatively but less likely it’s to go with the passive participle), and do not read ἡμῶν as a genitive after

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In acts of beneficence God’s power and ours are meant to complement one another. On the point that human beings should imitate the good actions of the divine, there are very strong parallels with both Philo of Alexandria and the Stoics Musonius Rufus and Epictetus. Philo, for instance, claims: (7) When then you have received strength from the most powerful, give of your strength to others and do to them as has been done to you, that you may imitate God by bestowing freely boons of the same kind. For the gifts of the Chief Ruler are of universal benefit, given to some, not to be hidden by them when received, nor misused to harm others, but thrown into the common stock so that as in a public banquet they may invite as many as they possibly can to use and enjoy them (Virt. 168 169).¹⁸

And in serving others through philanthrôpia the sage according to Philo demonstrates his piety towards God (eusebeia): (8) For the nature which is pious is also kindly, and the same person will contemplate (θεω ρεῖται) both qualities, holiness to God and justice to men (Abr. 208).¹⁹

The powers of God and the Logos are, of course, construed very differently in Philo and Clement, but the relational structure of the divine and implications for human beings are very similar (Runia 2004). And like Clement, Philo includes sociability, in the guise of justice, under the heading of theôria.

ἁπτομένη (Med.), but rather as a possessive genitive with δυνάμει. The traditional translation is based on parallels with Philo, as in Post. 20, but the translation proposed here, I would argue, would make better sense of the doubling of dunamis: ἡμῶν δυνάμει δύναμις τοῦ θεοῦ. I am grateful to Matyáš Havrda, who endorses the traditional translation, for providing the parallel in Philo and an in depth discussion of the implications of the different translations. See also Str. 6.158.1 2. Under this heading would also belong the cluster of passages that urge human beings to become like God in imitating His mercy and forgiveness: Str. 4.137.1 3; 6.104.1 3; 7.81.1 3; 7.88.4, as discussed by Veronika Černušková, “Divine and Human Mercy in the Stroma teis,” in The Seventh Book of the Stromateis. Proceedings from the Colloquium on Clement of Alex andria (Olomouc, October 21 23, 2010), eds. Matyáš Havrda, Vít Hušek, and Jana Plátová (Lei den: Brill, 2012), 167 70.  ἐπειδὴ τοίνυν, φησίν, ἔλαβες ἰσχὺν παρὰ τοῦ δυνατωτάτου, μετάδος ἄλλοις ἰσχύος διαθεὶς ὃ ἔπαθες, ἵνα μιμήσῃ θεὸν τῷ παραπλήσια χαρίζεσθαι κοινωφελεῖς γὰρ αἱ τοῦ πρώτου ἡγεμόνος δωρεαί, ἃς δίδωσιν ἐνίοις, οὐχ ἵν’ ἐκεῖνοι λαβόντες ἀποκρύψωσιν ἢ καταχρήσωνται πρὸς ζημίαν ἑτέρων, ἀλλ’ ἵν’ εἰς μέσον προενεγκόντες ὥσπερ ἐν δημοθοινίᾳ πάντας ὅσους οἷόν τε καλέσωσιν ἐπὶ τὴν χρῆσιν καὶ ἀπόλαυσιν αὐτῶν.  τῆς γὰρ αὐτῆς φύσεώς ἐστιν εὐσεβῆ τε εἶναι καὶ φιλάνθρωπον, καὶ περὶ τὸν αὐτὸν ἑκάτερον, ὁσιότης μὲν πρὸς θεόν, δικαιοσύνη δὲ πρὸς ἀνθρώπους, θεωρεῖται.

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Here is a parallel passage from Musonius Rufus (with whom we know Clement was familiar):²⁰ (9) In general, of all creatures on earth man alone resembles God (μίμημα θεοῦ) and has the same virtues that he has, since we can imagine nothing even in the gods better than pru dence, justice, courage, and temperance. Therefore, as God, through the possession of these virtues, is unconquered by pleasure or greed, is superior to desire, envy, and jealousy; is high minded, beneficent, and kind to mankind (μεγαλόφρων δὲ καὶ εὐεργετικὸς καὶ φιλάνθρωπος) for such is our conception of God , so also man as an imitation of Him (ἐκείνου μίμημα), when living in accord with nature, should be thought of as being like Him (ὁμοίως ἔχειν), and being like Him, being an object of emulation (ζηλωτόν), and being an object of emulation, he would forthwith be happy, for we feel emulation to none but the happy. Indeed it is not impossible for man to be such, for certainly when we encounter men whom people call godly and godlike (οἵους ὄντας αὐτοὺς θείους καὶ θεοειδεῖς ὠνόμαζον), we do not have to imagine that these virtues came from elsewhere than from man’s own nature (17, trans. Lutz, slightly modified).²¹

The Stoic material (including Cleanthes’ “Hymn to Zeus”) from which passages such as this one draw helps us understand why both Clement and Philo can combine the Platonic injunction of ‘becoming like God’ and the Stoic telos-formula of ‘living according to nature’ (see above):²² the Stoics have their own version of imitating God. This divinity, first, has all the virtues –i. e. is not above them—and, second, has the traits that highlight his relational identity, of being ‘high-minded, beneficent, and kind to mankind’ (μεγαλόφρων δὲ καὶ εὐεργετικὸς καὶ φιλάνθρωπος). The specific form of godlikeness of a human being in the Musonius passage and the claim that the virtues derive directly from a human beings’ nature would indeed be parsed differently in the Christian con-

 Paul Wendland, Quaestiones Musonianae, De Musonio Stoico Clementis Alexandrini aliorum que auctore (Berlin: Mayer & Mueller, 1886).  Καθόλου δὲ ἄνθρωπος μίμημα μὲν θεοῦ μόνον τῶν ἐπιγείων ἐστίν, ἐκείνῳ δὲ παραπλησία ςἔχει τὰς ἀρετάς· ἐπεὶ μηδ’ ἐν θεοῖς μηδὲν ὑπονοῆσαι κρεῖττον ἔχομεν φρονήσεως καὶ δικαιοσύ νης, ἔτι δὲ ἀνδρείας καὶ σωφροσύνης. ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ θεὸς διὰ τὴν παρουσίαν τούτων τῶν ἀρετῶν ἀήττητος μὲν ἡδονῆς, ἀήττητος δὲ πλεονεξίας, κρείττων δὲ ἐπιθυμίας, κρείττων δὲ φθόνου καὶ ζηλοτυπίας, μεγαλόφρων δὲ καὶ εὐεργετικὸς καὶ φιλάνθρωπος· τοιοῦτον γὰρ ἐπινοοῦμεν τὸν θεόν· οὕτω καὶ τὸ ἐκείνου μίμημα τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἡγητέον, ὅταν ἔχῃ κατὰ φύσιν, ὁμοίως ἔχειν, καὶ οὕτως ἔχοντα εἶναι ζηλωτόν· ὢν δὲ ζηλωτὸς εὐθὺς ἂν εἴη καὶ εὐδαίμων· οὐ γὰρ ἄλλους γέ τινας ἢ τοὺς εὐδαίμονας ζηλοῦμεν. καὶ μὴν οὐκ ἀδύνατον γενέσθαι τοιοῦτον ἄνθρωπον οὐ γὰρ ἑτέρωθέν ποθεν ταύτας ἐπινοῆσαι τὰς ἀρετὰς ἔχομεν ἢ ἀπ’ αὐτῆς τῆς ἀνθρωπείας φύσεως, ἐντυχόντες ἀνθρώποις τοιοῖσδέ τισιν, οἵους ὄντας αὐτοὺς θείους καὶ θεοειδεῖς ὠνόμαζον. See also Epictetus Diss. 2.14.11 13 and SVF 2.528, in Eusebius, attributed to Arius Didymus  For Philo, see for instance Migr. 127 131; Wendy E. Helleman, “Deification and Assimilation to God,” StudPhilon 2 (1990): 51 71.

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text of Clement, who emphasizes human beings’ dependence on God and the Logos, but this should not blind us to the importance of the Stoic mode of underscoring the divine’s relation to the world and to human beings for Clement’s worldview. Thus, in the second book of the Stromateis (as in the fifth) Clement combines ‘becoming like God’ with ‘living according to nature’ (Str. 2.97– 102) and with the notion of following the law, which he attributes to ‘Philo the Pythagorean’ (100.3 – 101.1), even if he does also criticize the Stoics as mistaking nature for God: (10) He is the Gnostic, who is after the image and likeness of God, who imitates God as far as possible, deficient in none of the things which contribute to the likeness as far as com patible, practicing self restraint and endurance, living righteously, reigning over the pas sions, bestowing of what he has as far as possible, and doing good both by word and deed. He is the greatest, it is said, in the kingdom who shall do and teach (Matthew 5:19) imitating God in conferring like benefits. For God’s gifts are for the common good (Str. 2.97.1 2; trans. Wilson).²³

3. Given that God and the Logos express their relation to the world and human beings in terms of love (agapê), what is the ideal form of the social dimension of action by the gnostic, and can we find connections with Stoicism here too? What kind of affectivity does agapê represent? As we have seen, the gnostic in his apatheia would be considered to be beyond even the ‘seemingly’ good emotions (τὰ δοκοῦντα ἀγαθὰ τῶν παθητικͅῶν κινήματων Str. 6.71.3 – 5). This version of apatheia would be distinctly un-Stoic. But if we take a closer look at the passage in question, a more complex picture emerges. First, the list of ‘good emotions’—steadfastness (θάρσος), the sense of emulation (ζῆλος), joy (χάρα), and good spirits (εὐθυμία)—as such does not correspond to anything we have attested for the Stoics. The main Stoic list of good emotions consists of joy (χάρα), as a good counterpart to the passion of excessive elation in the presence of a perceived good, caution (εὐλάβεια), as a good counterpart to the passion of fear of a future perceived evil (but with an alterna Οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ “κατ’ εἰκόνα καὶ ὁμοίωσιν”, ὁ γνωστικός, ὁ μιμούμενος τὸν θεὸν καθ’ ὅσον οἷόν τε, μηδὲν παραλιπὼν τῶν εἰς τὴν ἐνδεχομένην ὁμοίωσιν, ἐγκρατευόμενος, ὑπομένων, δι καίως βιούς, βασιλεύων τῶν παθῶν, μεταδιδοὺς ὧν ἔχει, ὡς οἷός τέ ἐστιν, εὐεργετῶν καὶ λόγῳ καὶ ἔργῳ. οὗτος “μέγιστος”, φησίν, “ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ ὃς ἂν ποιῇ καὶ διδάσκῃ” μιμούμενος τὸν θεὸν τῷ παραπλήσια χαρίζεσθαι· κοινωφελεῖς γὰρ αἱ τοῦ θεοῦ δωρεαί.

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tive tradition that does list θάρσος/θάρρος²⁴), and wish (βούλησις), as the counterpart to desire. In this list of good emotions, there is no good counterpart to grief in the presence of a perceived evil, because a Stoic sage is supposed no longer to have any grounds for grief in a well-ordered universe. ‘Rivalry’ (ζῆλος) from Clement’s list would for the Stoics be a subspecies of distress (Stobaeus Ecl. 2.7.10b-c, 90 – 92 ed. Wachsmuth.). Alternatively, even if, as in the passage quoted above from Musonius Rufus (9), ‘emulation’ might be useful to motivate progress towards godlikeness and happiness, neither the Stoic sage nor Clement’s gnostic would have any use for it because they would have reached the stage of perfection. Second, Clement says that the gnostic would have no need for euthumia because he does not experience distress in a world in which he believes everything to be ordered for the best. But neither does the Stoic sage have such a need. For the Stoics euthumia is a subspecies of joy, which in turn is the good emotion that is meant to replace excessive elation, not distress. It seems likely, then, that Clement could not really be targeting the Stoic good emotions, or that he is perhaps engaging in a polemical misrepresentation. But one could make a stronger claim that he could have found actual support for his notion of affectivity with the Stoics. All the forms of the good emotion ‘wish’ (βούλησις), unlike the sense of emulation which Clement mentions instead, are directed at the well-being of others: good intent (εὔνοια), goodwill (εὐμένεια), welcoming (ἀσπασμός), and cherishing (ἀγάπησις).²⁵ This view is quite compatible with Clement’s notion of agapê. And elsewhere in the same book he proposes another term for the joy of the gnostic: ἀγαλλίασις, exultation (Str. 6.99.4), so that the gnostic too would experience some type of ‘good emotion’ after all. Finally, in the same passage in which Clement rejects the notion of (certain) allegedly good emotions, he also presents us with a transformation of the Stoics’ notion of ‘appropriation’ (οἰκείωσις): instead of indicating the proper relation a human being is supposed to have with him- or herself and others, he transposes the concept onto an affinity with God and Christ (as do Philo and Origen).²⁶

 For the fullest discussion of the Stoic eupatheiai see Margaret Graver, Stoicism and Emotion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 53 60. For θάρσος/θάρρος, see Graver, Stoicism, 213 220; Cicero Tusculanae disputationes 4.66 (confidere, if one accepts that version of the text); Stobaeus Ecl. 2.7.5b and 5 g. See also Epictetus 2.1.1 7, on the connection between caution and steadfastness.  D. L. 7.116 and ps. Andronicus On Emotions 6 = SVF 3.432.  Str. 6.72.1; see also 102.1. On this topic cf. Ilaria Ramelli, “The Stoic Doctrine of Oikeiosis and Its Transformation in Christian Platonism,” Apeiron 47 (2014): 116 40.

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4. How do specific relations with others fit into Clement’s emphasis on agapê? The case of marriage is a good example, often addressed because of Clement’s apparent ambivalence towards this type of relationship. As with the emphasis on contemplation discussed above, there is a strong strand in Clement’s thinking that sees agapê as primarily community-oriented, with an emphasis on the relationships of brother and sister or teacher and pupil. Thus the community of gnostics is clearly modeled after the philosophical circle of hetairoi: (11) Now love turns out to be consent in what pertains to reason, life, and manners, or in brief, fellowship in life, or it is the intensity of friendship and of affection, with right reason, in the enjoyment of associates. And an associate (ἑταῖρος) is another self; just as we call those ‘brothers’ who are regenerated by the same word (Str. 2.41; trans. Wilson).²⁷

This passage could be a perfect description of life in a philosophical school. Only the last line, about being resurrected with Christ, adds a Christian dimension. In his Republic Plato famously rejects for his guardians in the kallipolis the closer ties of family relations because such ties create obstacles to the common good. He recommends instead that all children of the same generation consider one another siblings, and consider all members of the older generations their parents and grandparents (461d; cf. Str. 5.98). Similarly, Clement is aware of the Stoic notion of the friendship among the sages (Str. 5.95.2), which he claims the Stoics modeled after Plato’s views. The Stoics, however, and especially the later Stoics, had a very different view of the value of traditional relationships such as marriage and parenthood. The community of gods and rational human beings does not bypass such social bonds but, ideally, gets actualized through them (Reydams-Schils 2002 and 2005). We have recorded as the standard Stoic position that the sage will marry and take part in politics, and Musonius Rufus in particular attributes a high value to marriage for the good life as recommended by philosophy (XIIIA-B, XIV Hense). This Stoic positive view of marriage has also left its mark on Clement. In Clement’s assessment of marriage we can detect a similar tension as we noticed in his rendering of the relation between contemplation and action in

 ἀγάπη δὲ ὁμόνοια ἂν εἴη τῶν κατὰ τὸν λόγον καὶ τὸν βίον καὶ τὸν τρόπον ἢ συνελόντι φάναι κοινωνία βίου ἢ ἐκτένεια φιλίας καὶ φιλοστοργίας μετὰ λόγου ὀρθοῦ περὶ χρῆσιν ἑταίρων. ὁ δὲ ἑταῖρος ἕτερος ἐγώ· ᾗ καὶ ἀδελφοὺς τοὺς τῷ αὐτῷ λόγῳ ἀναγεννηθέντας προσαγορεύομεν.

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general (Reydams-Schils 2012). In the third book of his Stromateis he counters both promiscuity and extreme rejections of the body and human sexuality (3.40.1). Even though he ends us endorsing celibacy as ranking higher than marriage, ²⁸ Clement presents his most positive valorization of marriage when he defends the view that husband and wife can serve God together (as in Str. 3.88).²⁹ It is this perspective, I would submit, that owes a considerable debt to Stoicism. Clement presents two ways in which marriage in this life can overcome a potential tension with and be integrated into the dynamic of agapê. The first is through curtailing sexual desire (epithumia) by making it serve procreation governed by temperance, and replacing it with agapê within the marital relationship.³⁰ The second pertains to the stage when a marriage has lasted beyond the phase of procreation: (12) To such a one [the gnostic], his wife, after conception, is as a sister, and is judged as if of the same father; then only recollecting her husband when she looks on the children; as being destined to become a sister in reality after putting off the flesh, which separates and limits the knowledge of those who are spiritual by the peculiar characteristics of the sexes. For souls, themselves by themselves, are equal. Souls are neither male nor female, when they no longer marry nor are given in marriage. And is not woman translated into man, when she has become equally unfeminine, and manly, and perfect (Str. 6.100.3, trans. Wil son)?³¹

Once the childbearing years for the wife are over, the marital relationship dissolves into one between siblings—which is compatible with the broader agapê community—and in the eschatological dimension, ‘after putting off the flesh,’ that is as pure soul in the afterlife, a woman loses even her gender. Thus Clement presents marriage in a positive light while simultaneously restricting its scope and importance, thereby attempting to balance Stoic and Platonist views.

 Str. 3.4; 4.147 and 149.  As in Paed. 2.109; Str. 3.68, 3.79, 3.88; 3.108.1; 7.63.3 64.3.  Str. 3.58. Clement does leave room for a different type of desire, orexis, David Hunter, “The Language of Desire: Clement of Alexandria’s Transformation of Ascetic Discourse,” Semeia 57 (1992): 95 111.  ἀδελφὴ δὲ τούτῳ ἡ γυνὴ μετὰ τὴν παιδοποιίαν, ὡς καὶ ὁμοπατρία, κρίνεται, τότε μόνον τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἀναμιμνῃσκομένη, ὁπηνίκα ἂν τοῖς τέκνοις προσβλέπῃ, ὡς ἂν ἀδελφὴ τῷ ὄντι ἐσομένη καὶ μετὰ τὴν ἀπόθεσιν τῆς σαρκὸς τῆς διαχωριζούσης καὶ διοριζούσης τὴν γνῶσιν τῶν πνευμα τικῶν τῇ ἰδιότητι τῶν σχημάτων. αὐταὶ γὰρ καθ’ αὑτὰς ἐπ’ ἴσης εἰσὶ ψυχαὶ αἱ ψυχαὶ οὐθέτεραι, οὔτε ἄρρενες οὔτε θήλειαι, ἐπὰν μήτε γαμῶσι μήτε γαμίσκωνται· καὶ μή τι οὕτως μετατίθεται εἰς τὸν ἄνδρα ἡ γυνή, ἀθήλυντος ἐπ’ ἴσης καὶ ἀνδρικὴ καὶ τελεία γενομένη.

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If the examples provided in this paper are convincing, we cannot, in an author such as Clement of Alexandria, merely juxtapose the Platonic and Stoic aspects as separate elements of different origins. The very notion of ‘becoming like God’ and the relation between contemplation and action which such a notion entails have been infiltrated by Stoic ideas. Moreover, the centrality of agapê owes as much to Stoic views of affectivity, I would be prepared to argue—or perhaps even more so—than to Platonic erôs. It might be convenient for us to put Platonism and Stoicism in separate boxes, labeling them as fundamentally incompatible (which they are in specific and crucial respects), but that is clearly not how the works of this period, and Clement’s among them, saw the matter. While being aware of differences between Platonist and Stoic perspectives, and despite significant Platonist leanings, Clement did not hold back from coopting Stoic material for his Christian point of view.³²

 I would like to thank Matyáš Havrda, Maren Niehoff, and the participants in the Rome semi nar for their comments and suggestions.

Lewis Ayres

Irenaeus and the ‘Rule of Truth’: A Reconsideration 1 Introduction

The notion of the ‘Rule of Faith’ has captured the attention of many, far beyond those who are experts in the study of the second and third centuries.¹ Roman Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox scholars have seen in the ‘rule’ a common possession from the earliest period of the undivided Church; for Protestant the ‘Rule of Faith’ is a statement that defines, but one that escapes a perceived gulf between the text of scripture and the language of credal definition. For Catholic and Orthodox the ‘rule’ represents a pre-credal creed, an early example of the Church’s role as a bearer and definer of the Christian faith. This enthusiasm has perhaps prevented us from attending carefully enough to the complex ways in which the language of the ‘rule’ is actually used in the late second and early third centuries. I hope to show here that when we are a little more attentive to this use, appeal to the ‘rule’ reveals itself as part of the search for a vision of Christian intellectual activity that is anti-Gnostic in intent, a vision of Christian intellectual activity that can sustain a close relationship between the inherited faith of all the baptized and the work of the Christian speculative intellect. Irenaeus is one of the most important figures we must consider; he is the first writer from whom an extensive account of the ‘rule’ survives. Indeed, he may even be the source from which much of the subsequent usage flows, although there can be no certainty in this regard. It is also important to consider how use of ‘rule’ terminology develops; it is not at all clear that it remains static even in the period between Irenaeus and Tertullian. And thus, before we come to Irenaeus himself it will be helpful to consider the use of this language in the earlier decades of the second century. Although our evidence is slight, it seems that before c.180 a number of phrases incorporating the term κανὼν were used to designate inherited boundaries in Christian practice. The earliest of these outside the texts that were incor Versions of this paper were presented at the New Testament Research Seminar in Durham as well as at the conference ‘Saint Irenaeus of Lyons in the Theological Tradition of the East and the West,’ organized by the Saints Cyril and Methodius Institute of Postgraduate Studies of the Moscow Patriarchate, April 2018. I would like to thank Ilya Kaplan for translating the paper into Russian on that occasion. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110608632 010

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porated into the New Testament are to be found in the Clementine correspondence. 1Clement speaks of women running their households respectfully, ‘under the rule of submission.’ The same letter speaks also of those who avoid jealousy as following ‘the rule of our tradition.’² When Eusebius reports on the Quartodeciman controversy he quotes from a letter of Polycrates of Ephesus, probably from the 180s or early 190s in which Polycrates describes his observing Easter as ‘following the rule of faith.’³ Both of these uses seem to follow a pattern we find also in Gal 6:16 where Paul speaks of glorying in the cross of Christ as walking by a certain κανὼν. But Kanon language is rare in the New Testament and I do not think we need to envisage the author of 1Clement as consciously following the Apostle’s language. This manner of using the language is not at all uncommon in non-Christian contexts.⁴ Thus, in its earliest Christian usage, this language certainly indicates rule or boundary, as Heinz Ohme notes, and it occurs in the context of controversy and conflict; but it seems to be used with reference to conflict concerning aspects of Christian practice rather than belief.⁵ In the latter half of the second century we begin to see a new usage emerging. Eusebius reports that Dionysius of Corinth, probably writing in the 170s, wrote a letter to the Nicomedians ‘in which he attacks the heresy of Marcion, and stands fast by the “canon of the truth.”‘⁶ It is unclear whether Eusebius is reporting Dionysius’s own words or not, but we should note that this is the only time that Eusebius uses the specific phrase ‘rule of truth’ and thus it seems likely that Dionysius did so. Dionysius would then be the earlier surviving writer to use the phrase with reference to boundaries of Christian belief rather than practice. The next writer we know to have used this terminology is Irenaeus.

 1Clem. 1.3: ἔν τε τῷ κανόνι τῆς ὑποταγῆς, 7.2: τῆς παραδόσεως ἡμῶν κανόνα, cf. 41.1.  Eusebius h.e. 5.24.6: οὗτοι πάντες ἐτήρησαν τὴν ἡμέραν τῆς τεσσαρεσκαιδεκάτης τοῦ πάσχα κατὰ τὸ εὐαγγέλιον, μηδὲν παρεκβαίνοντες, ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὸν κανόνα τῆς πίστεως ἀκολουθοῦντες. For the text of Eusebius, see Gustave Bardy, Eusèbe de Césarée. Histoire ecclésiastique, Livres V VII, SC 41 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1955).  See the literature quoted below, n. 33.  Heinz Ohme, Kanon Ekkleistikos. Die Bedeutung des altkirchlichen Kanonbegriffs (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1998), 248.  Eusebius, h.e. 4.23.4: ἄλλη δ’ ἐπιστολή τις αὐτοῦ πρὸς Νικομηδέας φέρεται, ἐν ᾗ τὴν Μαρκί ωνος αἵρεσιν πολεμῶν τῷ τῆς ἀληθείας παρίσταται κανόνι. For book four of Eusebius’ history, see Gustave Bardy, Eusèbe de Césarée. Histoire ecclésiastique, Livres I IV, SC 31 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1951).

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2 The Rule of Truth: Habentes itaque regulam ipsam veritatem ⁷ The first thing we can say, then, about Irenaeus is that he offers us the earliest extensive surviving usage of kanon language to define Christian belief. He uses the term in a variety of ways, sometimes to state positively the orthodox Christian ‘rule,’ sometimes to describe the ‘rule’ of his opponents. Throughout, of course, we face a linguistic challenge; we possess only a small percentage of Irenaeus in Greek, and we know that both kanon and hypothesis are translated as regula in the Latin.⁸ We can say, however, that Irenaeus connects with ‘rule’ language two quite different types of statements that seem to define his faith. The first type occurs at 1.22.1 and 3.11.1. 1.22.1 follows a lengthy exposé of Marcosian teaching on a variety of topics, but concentrating on the creation: The rule of the truth that we hold is this: there is one God Almighty, who created all things through His Word; He both prepared and made all things out of nothing, just as Scripture says: ‘For, by the Word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the Breath of his Mouth.’ And again: ‘All things were made through him and without Him was made not a thing.’ From this ‘all’ nothing is exempt… If, therefore, we hold fast this rule, we shall easily prove they have strayed from the truth…⁹

With this passage we should link the discussion of the ‘rule’ at 3.11.1. This latter passage is part of Irenaeus’s extended attempt to show that the Scriptures only acknowledge the Father and the Son as ‘God’ or ‘Lord.’ Speaking of John’s gospel Irenaeus writes, The Lord’s disciple, therefore, wished to put an end to all such tenets, and to make firm the rule of truth in the Church, that there is one God almighty, who through His Word made all things, both the visible and the invisible. He indicated, too, that through the very Word through which God fashioned the creation, he bestowed in turn salvation on the people

 Haer. 2.28.1. See Adelin Rousseau and Louis Doutreleau, eds., Irénée de Lyon. Contre les hér ésies, livre 2, SC 293 94 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1982).  Reynders, B. Lexique comparé du texte grec et des versions latine, arménienne et syriaque de l’“Adversus haereses” de Saint Irénée (Louvain: Durbecq, 1954), II: 278.  Haer. 1.22.1. The translation used is that of D. J. Unger and J. J. Dillon, St. Irenaeus of Lyons Against The Heresies, vol. I (New York, NY: Newman Press, 1992), 80. For the text, see Adelin Rousseau and Louis Doutreleau, eds. Irénée de Lyon. Contre les hérésies, livre 1, SC 263 64 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1979).

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who are in this creation. That is how he began with the doctrine according to the Gospel: ‘In the beginning was the Word…’¹⁰

In both of these texts Irenaeus identifies the ‘rule of truth’ with a belief in the one God who made all things through his Word (and Spirit). The second texts’s mention of redemption does not so much introduce a second ‘article’ as emphasize that the same God who created through his Word, also saved through his Word. Thus in neither of these texts is there a developed narrative, nor a series of summary points. The rule is identified with belief in the oneness of the Creator, and the Creator’s activity and dominion. In both cases also the rule is simply taken to be taught by scripture. In both also, it is worth noting, the phrase ‘rule of truth’ is used, not ‘rule of faith’; while Irenaeus uses both, the former is more frequent, possibly reflecting some the functions he thinks the rule to serve (as discussed later in this paper). A rather different presentation occurs at 1.10.1: The Church, indeed, though disseminated throughout the world, even to the ends of the earth, received from the apostles and their disciples the faith in one God the Father Almigh ty, the creator of heaven and earth, and the seas and all things that are in them; and in the one Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was enfleshed for our salvation; and in the Holy Spi rit, who through the prophets preached the economies, the coming, the birth from a virgin, the passion, the resurrection from the dead, and the bodily ascension into heaven of the beloved Son, Christ Jesus our Lord, and his coming from heaven in the glory of the Father to recapitulate all things… the Church, as we have said before, though disseminated throughout the whole world, carefully guards this preaching and this faith which she has received…¹¹

The astute reader will note that while ‘truth’ as a term appears a number of times here, ‘rule’ does not. In the previous chapter, however, Irenaeus has stated that anyone who keeps ‘the rule of truth,’ which is received through baptism, will recognize the names and some of the statements in Gnostic rearrangements of scriptural narratives, but will not accept their ‘blasphemous hypothesis.’¹² Someone who possesses the rule will be able to put pieces back together into ‘the body of the truth.’ Irenaeus then tells us that the ‘fathers of this myth’ disagreed

 Haer. 3.11.1. The translation used is that of D. J. Unger and I.M.C. Steenberg, St. Irenaeus of Lyons Against The Heresies, vol. III (New York, NY: Newman Press, 2012), 52. For the text of book three, see Adelin Rousseau and Louis Doutreleau, eds., Irénée de Lyon. Contre les hérésies, livre 3, SC 210 11 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1974).  Haer. 1.10.1 2 (Unger 48 49).  Haer. 1.9.4.

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among themselves and that, consequently, the difference is obvious between their myths and the ‘truth preached by the Church.’ Irenaeus then begins the passage quoted above. He thus identifies the passage not specifically as the ‘rule of truth’ but as the ‘truth preached by the Church’—and it is this phrase that Irenaeus uses at the end of his summary as well. Anthony Briggman has recently argued, correctly I think, that Irenaeus sees this summary as expressing the true hypothesis of scripture, in opposition to the false hypotheses of his opponents that were exposed in the previous section.¹³ Briggman identifies the passage as a statement of the hypothesis rather than the rule, but the strict opposition is not necessary. To explain why, allow me to turn briefly to Against Heresies Book 4. At 4.35.4 Irenaeus opposes the claim of his opponents to possess knowledge that has come down to them from the Pleroma, while constantly disagreeing about the content of that knowledge: But as we follow for our teacher the one and only true God, and possess His words as the rule of truth (et regulam veritatis habentes eius sermones), we do all speak alike with regard to the same things, knowing but one God, the Creator of this universe, who sent the proph ets, who led forth the people from the land of Egypt, who in these last times manifested His own Son, that He might put the unbelievers to confusion, and search out the fruit of right eousness.¹⁴

Here the words of Scripture themselves are the rule. The clauses that follow this identification of ‘rule’ and Scripture offer something that might fairly be described as a version of the ‘rule,’ as a very short account of Scripture’s hypothesis, or as a short series of headings identifying some aspects of the divine ‘economy.’ In general, this passage suggests that the ‘rule’ is not to be identified with a particular statement but with the boundaries to belief that scripture (understood in Irenaeus’s fashion) presents. These boundaries can easily be presented via summary presentations, and there are a number of forms that such presentations might take. Thus while Briggman is quite right to distinguish hypothesis and rule, that distinction occurs in the context of a complex set of interrelated

 Anthony Briggman, “Literary and Rhetorical Theory in Irenaeus, Part I,” VChr 69 (2015): 500 27, here 505 ff. Briggman does not discuss whether Irenaeus incorporates into his summary of the hypothesis existing confessional traditions.  Haer. 4.35.4. The text of book four may be found in Adelin Rousseau, ed., Irénée de Lyon. Con tre les hérésies, livre 4, SC 100i 100ii (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1965).

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terms and possible forms of summary description, all of which relate to the text of Scripture understood itself as the ‘rule.’¹⁵ Turning back to Against Heresies 1.9 – 10, we can perhaps observe a slightly more complex but parallel set of relationships. The ‘truth’ is what is preached and handed down by the Church. That truth has a structure, a ‘body’ into which the various images and themes of scripture fit.¹⁶ The ‘rule of truth’ seems, here, synonymous with knowing the truth as a whole, the whole which may also be described as an appropriate union of the parts of scripture. ‘Appropriate’ is a key word here, for the union with which Irenaeus is concerned is a union in accord with the hypothesis of Scripture or of the Truth as preached by the Church. The ‘rule’ is not then a summary document but a collection of ways for speaking about the content of the Gospel. It is in this context that we can also understand passages such as 1.22.1 and 3.11.1, which offer us not part of a fundamentally more extended text, a fundamental rule that the truth contains—the rule perhaps most fundamental in the particular battle that is Irenaeus’s focus. A similar account may also be extracted from Irenaeus’s later Demonstration. If Rousseau is correct, Irenaeus identifies the Demonstration as a ‘summary memorandum’ or ‘summary in noteform’ (kefalaiodes hupomnema) of the ‘preaching of the truth.’ The summary also details the various parts of the

 In the course of his long discussion of theological method at haer. 2.27.1 Irenaeus speaks of the ‘truth loving mind’ attending to the clear statements of Scripture as a ‘daily exercise.’ Doing so enables such a person to place all of the styles of text in Scripture those parts that are clear, and the parables in their appropriate place, and thus ‘the body of Truth will continue entire.’ To do anything else would lead only to private judgements about Scripture’s meaning and ‘it would result in no one’s having a rule of truth.’ In the next paragraph we read that the entire Scriptures preach that there is one God who made all things through his Word, the same truth as we dis cover from observation of the creation. This argument reinforces that found in haer. 2.25.1 where Irenaeus emphasizes that the creation is ordered harmoniously by divine action and thus pos sesses a ‘system of truth’ (SC 294. 250 252). Because this is the structure of reality, the Gnostic exegete who treats the names and actions of Scripture as if they can be read allegorically in an ad hoc manner (referring back to 2.24), has missed the basic structure of both the Scriptures and reality. Finally, at haer. 2.28.1 (SC 294. 268; Unger, 87) we read, ‘Since, then, we possess the Rule of truth itself and the manifest testimony about God, we ought not to cast out the solid and true knowledge about God by running from one solution to another.’ Throughout these texts we see a complex set of terminological relationships and parallels in which the rule of truth and the body of truth are treated as virtually synonymous, the former coming into play when a specific point is being made about the possibility of moving toward warranted and appropriate belief.  On which theme see the classic study of F. Kattenbusch, “Das Somation tes aletheias bei Ire naus,” ZNTW 10 (1909): 331 32.

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‘body of the truth.’¹⁷ In the second chapter Irenaeus emphasizes both holiness of the body, and holiness of soul. The latter consists in keeping ‘faith in God whole,’ and thus in chapter three, in what seems to be a directly parallel phrase, ‘we must keep the rule of faith unswervingly.’¹⁸ Finally, in chapter six, three kephalaia or headings which provide the order (taxis) of faith are identified.¹⁹ the ‘rule’ here is again virtually synonymous with the truth and with the body of the truth. It can be articulated in summary form—and Irenaeus here uses a variety of literary terminologies to describe what he is doing—incorporating theological headings that were by his day traditional. We may be aided in understanding this complex set of interrelationships if we look briefly beyond Lyons to Alexandria. Irenaeus’s younger contemporary Clement speaks a number of times of ‘the rule of the Church’ or ‘the rule of truth.’ In the early books of the Stromateis we find this terminology twice used as it was in the early part of the second century, to mark the boundaries of Christian practice rather than belief.²⁰ In Book 4 ‘rule of truth’ is used to indicate a tradition of reasoning formed by the scriptures, and a pattern of interpreting those scriptures that leads us from cosmogony to theology.²¹ But Clement’s use of kanon terminology is most extensive in Books 6 and 7 of the Stromateis. In a key passage of Book 6, for example, Clement discusses how the true ‘Gnostic’ learns the truth. He or she does so by selecting testimonies from the divine oracles—that is, Scripture—in order to set out and explore the faith handed down in the Church.²² Clement castigates those who seem to

 Dem. 1. For the English translation, see John Behr, trans., St. Irenaeus of Lyons: On the Apos tolic Preaching (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), 39. For the text, see Adelin Rousseau, ed., Irénée de Lyon. Démonstration de la prédication apostolique, SC 406 (Paris: Édi tions du Cerf, 1995).  Dem. 3 (Behr, 41).  Dem. 6 (Behr, 43 4). Irenaeus speaks elsewhere of the “principles” of the rule. See haer. 2. pro. 2: et evertemus per magna capitula omnen ipsorum regulam… At haer. 2.1.2, he begins his exposition a primo et maximo capitulo… Cf. 2.19.8. Also cf. the use of principia evangelii at haer. 3.11.7. and dem. 3.  str. 1.19.96 (concerning the celebration of the eucharist): κατὰ τὸν κανόνα τῆς ἐκκλησίας; str. 3.9.66 (concerning the practice of marriage): εὐαγγελικῷ στοιχήσαντες κανόνι. For the text of book one, see Claude Mondésert, ed., Clément d’Alexandrie: Stromate I, trans. Marcel Caster, SC 30 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1951).  str. 4.1.3. For the text, see Annewies van den Hoek, ed., Clément d’Alexandrie: Stromate IV, trans. Claude Mondésert, SC 463 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2001).  On the character of Clement’s exegesis see now H. Clifton Ward, ‘“Symbolic Interpretation Is Most Useful”: Clement of Alexandria’s Scriptural Imagination,” JECS 25 (2017): 531 560.

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confess some of the ‘essentials’ of Christian faith, but actually believe in more than one God or Christ. Such people do not discuss or hand on the Scriptures appropriately. That can only happen among people who take seriously the mysterious nature of what is handed down and seek always to explain according to the ‘rule of truth’ (κατὰ τὸν τῆς ἀληθείας κανόνα) He continues: All things are right to those who understand” (Prov. 8.9), that is, those who receive and ob serve, according to the rule of the church (κανὼν δὲ ἐκκλησιαστικός), the exposition of the Scriptures given by [the Lord]. The rule of the church is the concord and harmony of the law and the prophets in the covenant delivered at the coming of the Lord.²³

The ‘ecclesiastical rule’ here is the ‘exposition of the Scriptures’ that one finds in Christ’s own preaching. This is then glossed as the unity of the law and prophets, understood from the perspective of Christ’s own fulfillment of their prophecy. Thus, when Clement speaks of the ‘rule,’ he speaks of a complex of teaching or preaching publicly handed down in the community. We do not find Clement offering a summary statement of the rule, though in Book 7 we do find him speaking of those who break their promises: …the good man must be true to his word… we ought in now way to transgress the rule of the Church. Above all the confession which deals with the essential articles of the faith (τὴν περὶ τῶν μεγίστων ὁμολογίαν) is observed by us, but disregarded by the heretics…²⁴

It is unclear whether, in the second half of this quotation, Clement refers to a specific confessional text, or to specific baptismal interrogations, or whether the phrase simply refers to the key principles of the faith that Clement takes to be handed down in the Church (perhaps alluding to such texts as 1Tim 6:12 and Heb 4:14). It is, however, clear that Clement mirrors some key elements of the manner in which Irenaeus uses ‘rule’ language within a complex matrix of terms describing Scripture, the Church’s inherited faith and summary forms of that faith. The terminology of the ‘rule of truth’ or ‘ecclesiastical rule’ is used as a way of describing the faith or public preaching of the Church in its function

 str. 6.15.125: κανὼν δὲ ἐκκλησιαστικὸς ἡ συνῳδία καὶ ἡ συμφωνία νόμου τε καὶ προφητῶν τῇ κατὰ τὴν τοῦ κυρίου παρουσίαν παραδιδομένῃ διαθήκῃ. For the text, see Patrick Descourtieux, ed., Clément d’Alexandrie: Stromate VI, SC 446 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1999).  str. 7.15.90: ἀλλ’ ὡς ἀψευδεῖν χρὴ τὸν ἐπιεικῆ καὶ μηδὲν ὧν ὑπέσχηται ἀκυροῦν, κἂν ἄλλοι τινὲς παραβαίνωσι συνθήκας, οὕτως καὶ ἡμᾶς κατὰ μηδένα τρόπον τὸν ἐκκλησιαστικὸν παραβαί νειν προσήκει κανόνα· καὶ μάλιστα τὴν περὶ τῶν μεγίστων ὁμολογίαν ἡμεῖς μὲν φυλάττομεν, οἳ δὲ παραβαίνουσι. See Alain Le Boulluec, ed., Clément d’Alexandrie: Stromate VII, SC 428 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1997).

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of marking doctrinal boundaries (and in this passage the ‘rule’ is not identical to the ‘confession’ he describes; the latter seems to be one way in which that ‘rule’ is expressed). Like Irenaeus, Clement sees the unity of testaments as key to that faith, and he is happy to speak of a series of principle articles of faith (although, obviously enough, he makes no clear use of summary statements). Indeed, I think it at least possible that Clement’s use of kanon language to mark boundaries of belief reflects Clement’s encounter with Irenaeus.²⁵ But even if this were the case, Clement sees no need to copy Irenaeus’s exact language or formulation, merely the web of interconnections between the concept of a rule of and for faith, the text of Scripture, and that which is handed down in the Church publicly. What he either copied from his predecessor, or developed himself, was a new language for describing one key function of the Christian attempts to preach and define their faith. There is nothing new in the basic point I am trying to make. Eighty-five years ago Damien van der Eynde wrote “Grammatically… rule of truth or rule of faith means ‘the rule that is the truth, that is given in the truth or the faith,’ not ‘the rule for the truth’; Irenaeus writes in effect that ‘we have for a rule the truth itself,’ attrubuting to the genitive ‘of the truth’ the value of a simple apposition.’²⁶ Fundamentally this comment seems to me correct, and it is one that had precedents in 1933 and has been followed by a number of scholars since.²⁷ Those who

 It is disputed whether Clement knew Irenaeus’s works. Circumstantially, there is good evi dence. The presence of the papyrus P. Oxy 405 (which contains a fragment of haer. 3 in an ele gant hand) in Egypt, possibly at the end of the second century, indicates the strong possibility that Irenaeus’s work was known in Egypt soon after composition. This claim, obviously enough, places much weight on papyrological dating, and that is no exact science. Tertullian’s knowl edge of Irenaeus in Carthage at the time Clement was writing also witnesses to the rapid spread of our bishop’s corpus. But, there is more than circumstantial evidence. At h.e. 6.13, commenting on Clement’s lost work on Easter, Eusebius notes that ‘he mentions in it Melito and Irenaeus and some others…’ This does not demonstrate knowledge of haer., but it adds weight to the case. It is against this background that parallels in thought between haer. (such as the one noted here) and the latter books of str. are intriguing.  Damien Van den Eynde, Les Normes d’Enseignment Chrétien dans la Littérature patristique des trois premiers siècles (Paris: J. Ducolot, 1933), 283: ‘Grammaticalement d’abord, κανὼν τῆς ἀληθείας ou κανὼν τῆς πίστεως signifie “règle qui est la vérité, qui est donnée dans la vérité ou la foi”, et non pas “règle pour la vérité”; Irénée écrit en effet que “nous avons pour règle la vérité elle même” attribuant ainsi au génitif τῆς ἀληθείας la valeur d’une simple apposition.’  See also Valdemar Ammundsen, ‘The Rule of Truth in Irenaeus,’ JThS 13 (1912): 574 80 (summarizing ‘“Sandhedens Regel” hos Irenæos og Novatian,’ Teologisk Tidsskrift for den danske Folkekirke 3 (1911 1912): 202 230 & 291 318); esp. Bengt Hägglund, “Die Bedeutung der ‘Regula Fidei’ als Grundlage theologischer Aussagen,” STh 12 (1958): 1 44; also Norbert Brox, Offenbar ung: Gnosis und gnostiker Mythos bei Irenäus von Lyon: Zur Charakteristik der Systeme (Munich:

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have followed this basic line have offered further specifications of various kinds. Van Den Eynde and Valdemar Ammundsen are, however, particularly insightful in keeping their definitions broad; the rule is that which the faith, whether expressed in Scripture or in the proclaimed faith of the Church, inherently provides. Virtually all the scholars who have followed this line of interpretation have also seen the ‘rule’ as providing both a core set of teachings and some basic hermeneutical principles. I would add only that Irenaeus feels able to describe as the ‘rule’ a part of the Gospel,²⁸ of one of its central tenets, or of the whole.²⁹ One of the reasons that scholars may have been persistently led to think of the rule as a text is that when Irenaeus (and his peers) set out statements of the rule they quite naturally utilize aspects of existing confessional phraseology or Pustet, 1966), 105 12. A number of other authors emphasize similar points, but focus on the close relationship between rule and scripture. E. g. A. Bengsch, Heilsegeschichte und Heilswissen. Eine Untersuchung zur Struktur und Entfaltung des theologischen Denkens in Werk ‘Adversus Haer eses’ des Hl Irenaus von Lyon (Leipzig: St Benno Verlag, 1957).  I use the term ‘Gospel’ here in light of Irenaeus’s virtual equation of ‘the true and living faith’ (sola vera et vivifica fide) and the power of the Gospel (potestatem Evangelii) at the beginning of haer. 3. pro. (SC 211.18 20, and then his statement that we know the dispensatio salutis through those who have handed down the Gospel, first in preaching and then in the Scriptures (haer. 3.1.1).  In English language scholarship one of the most interesting proposals has been that of Paul Blowers, “The Regula Fidei and the Narrative Character of Early Christian Faith,” ProEccl 6 (1997): 199 228. Blowers attempts to situate the ‘rule of faith’ in a broader vision of the narrative structure of early Christian faith: ‘…at bottom, the Rule of Faith (which was always associated with Scripture itself) served the primitive Christian hope of articulating and authenticating a world encompassing story or metanarrative of creation, incarnation, redemption, and consum mation. I will argue that in the crucial “proto canonical” era in the history of Christianity, the Rule, being a narrative construction, set forth the basic “dramatic” structure of a Christian vision of the world, posing as a hermeneutical frame of reference for the interpretation of Christian scripture and Christian experience, and educing the first principles of Christian theological dis course and of a doctrinal substantiation of Christian faith.’ Although Blowers is somewhat wary of treating the ‘rule’ as a text (he is not entirely clear on this point), he is insistent that the ‘rule’ is narrative in form (e. g. see also p. 206, ‘[the rule] provided… a basic digest of the Christian story…’ and p. 205 ‘[the rule possessed] essentially the authority of a story…’). As I hope I have shown, this is not a sufficient description of how Irenaeus uses his references to the rule. In actual usage an opposition between the acts of elucidating ‘the narrative of salvation in Scripture’ and dividing up ‘the biblical revelation [into] propositions’ (p. 218) is not helpful. I can, however, agree with the suggestive statement of Rowan Williams (quoted on p. 205) that ‘the very nature of the basic Christian narrative carries the notions of canon and orthodoxy with it…’ and with the general principle that second century Christians had a faith built around a nar rative. But Blowers over reaches in the ease with which he treats rule language as an expression of this narrative.

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existing short summaries of God’s activity in Christ. For the purposes of this argument we do not need to enter the complex debates about how much we might be able to say about the development of confessional formulae in the late second century, whether we refer to confessional material used in the baptismal context, in catechesis, or in other contexts. We need only to note that Irenaeus was heir to multiple practices of formulating summary confessions.³⁰ It was only natural that he would incorporate those traditional elements and structures when seeking to express the gospel as rule. At the same time, Irenaeus both possessed some rhetorical knowledge, and was engaged in the process of developing complex arguments for treating scripture as a unified text, all of which should be subject to detailed exegesis using grammatical and rhetorical tools. It is thus also no surprise that he would, alongside other styles of short definition, add accounts of scripture’s hypothesis and a range of ways of identifying the key points of Scripture or particularly of the events of Christ’s incarnate mission as a series of hupomnemata; while some of these may have been traditional, others may have been composed for the occasion.³¹ Thus, even while ‘rule’ language is used in ways that preclude us from considering it as a textual formula statement varying over time, it was likely expressed in terms that are partially drawn from existing confessional statements.

 Despite its age J.N.D Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 5th edn (London: Longman, 1972), chp. 2 & 3 remains a useful point of reference here. He probably speaks too easily of Irenaeus (at dem. 3) and Justin (esp. Apol. 1.61.3 & 10) revealing evidence of a three fold baptismal questioning, (see 70 77), but these texts do seem to speak of confession at baptism in some form see Alistair Stewart, “‘The Rule of Truth…Which he Received Through Baptism’ (Haer. I.9.4): Catechesis, Rit ual, and Exegesis in Irenaeus’s Gaul,” in Irenaeus: Life, Literature, Legacy, ed. Sara Parvis and Paul Foster (Minneapolis MN: Fortress Press, 2012), 151 158. Stewart and I disagree about Ire naeus’s basic understanding of ‘rule of truth’ language. A further selection of relevant texts is now available in the very helpful Wolfram Kinzig, ed., Faith in Formulae. A Collection of Early Christian Creeds and Creed related Texts, vol. I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), chps 5 & 6 (though I would interpret some of them rather differently). Although his ultimate concern is with the early forms of the Roman creed, there is also much useful discussion of recent schol arship on early credal, catechetical, and baptismal summary in Liuwe H. Westra, The Apostle’s Creed: Origin, History, and Some Early Commentaries (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002),  For some examples of earlier or contemporary summaries see Pre. Pet. frg 9, Ascen. Isa. 9.13 18, Ignatius, Smyrn. 1.1 2, Aristides, Apol. 15.1, Justin, 1Apol. 31.7 & 46.5, Melito, Pasch. 104.

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3 The Rule for Truth: inventionis disciplina I want now to deepen my account of the ‘rule of truth’ by examining another dimension of the origins of the phrase, and, hence, another dimension of its use. The particular phrase κανὼν τῆς ἀληθείας has significant non-Christian precedents. There was, first, a lively debate among Hellenistic schools about what should count as an acceptable κριτήριον (criterion) for plausible assertions.³² This seems to have begun in the third century BC with Epicurus, whose handbook on epistemological questions was called the ‘Kanon.’³³ The terms κανὼν and κριτήριον are not synonymous. Following Gisela Striker’s revision of Herbert Oppel’s work on the former term, we can say that while κριτήριον may have come into common philosophical use as a technical term with Epicurus, and certainly in Hellenistic philosophical debates, κανὼν was a term originally signifying a rule or straightedge which gradually took on a range of metaphorical uses in epistemological and ethical contexts.³⁴ Thus, it is not surprising that κριτήριον is the more common term in philosophical contexts. It is important to note, however, that while there was a serious and long-running dispute what might count as criteria, and what it even meant to have criteria for truth, this terminology was also fairly widely invoked in contexts where much less rigor is apparent.³⁵

 Beyond the examples given here, see also the texts collected in A.A. Long & D. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), §17 & 40. For Middle Pla tonic examples see Alcinous, Did. 4.2 8, Anon in Tht. 2.11 3.28, quoted in George Boys Stones, Platonist Philosophy 80BC to AD250 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 382 ff. For an excellent history of the phrase see Gisela Striker, “κριτήριον τῆς ἀληθείας,” Essays On Hellen istic Epistemology and Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 22 76.  Diogenes Laertius, vit. 10.27 On the term Κανών, see H. Oppel, Kanon: zur Bedeutungsge schichte des Wortes und seiner lateinischen Entsprechungen (regula norma) (Leipzig: Dieterich’ sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1937).  Striker, κριτήριον τῆς ἀληθείας, 31 3.  A nice example is provided by the Peri Kriterion of Ptolemy, the second century astrologer, geographer and mathematician. I have found especially helpful A.A. Long, ‘Ptolemy: Epistemol ogy for the Scientist,’ in The Criterion of Truth, ed. P. Huby and G. Neal (Liverpool: Liverpool Uni versity Press, 1989), 151 178. Commenting on Ptolemy’s Peri Kriterion he writes: ‘At the time of Ptolemy and Seneca it had become virtually de rigeur for any thinker to state his position on the ‘criterion of truth.’ … The Hellenistic debates between dogmatists and sceptics were conducted in terms which became permanent features of the intellectual tradition, and the common prop erty of all philosophers and scientists in the Roman Empire. Nothing about a writer’s school al legiance or sympathy can be inferred from his using such Epicurean terms as enargeia (‘self evi dence’), prolepsis (‘preconception’), epimarturesis (‘attestation’), or from his drawing from the much richer technical language of Stoicism such words as katalepsis (‘cognition’), synkatathesis

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The vibrancy of these debates well into the 2nd century AD is seen in Sextus Empiricus’s (fl. 180 – 210) rejection of the whole idea: ‘…if no clear criterion exists, truth likewise is rendered non-evident… so, too, if nothing true exists, the criterion of truth (τὸ τῆς ἀληθείας κριτήριον) also disappears.’³⁶ For a last example of the presence of these debates in the second century—and the pairing of our two terms -we can turn to the ancient city of Oenoanda in south western Turkey. Possibly in the time of Hadrian, one Diogenes set out the fundamentals of his Epicureanism on the inscribed walls of a portico. Much of this has survived and in one fragment he speaks of ‘the canon of truth, the criterion of truth.’³⁷ We have, then, good evidence for the continuing use of this terminology well into the period we are considering. This philosophical tradition is also invoked by Philo of Alexandria, who speaks once of the ‘rule of truth’ in the singular, and three further times of ‘rules of truth’ in the plural as that which make possible judgment and positive knowledge. Moreover, Philo also uses this terminology to present the Jewish Scriptures as providing rules of truth over against the plausible and the possible.³⁸ A few scholars have seen Philo as the source for Irenaeus’s own usage.³⁹ It is, however, unclear whether we have here a close parallel—a writer invoking a debate that would have been known to one with only a fairly basic knowledge of contemporary philosophical debates to deepen a presentation of the Scripture

(‘assent’), (koine) ennoia (‘(common) conception’).’ On the multiple ways in which the phrase ‘criterion of truth’ might be used see also Striker, ‘κριτήριον τῆς ἀληθείας,’ 24 5.  Adv. Math. 8.2 3 (= Adv. Dog. 2.2 3).  E. g. see the title of Democritus’s logical work at DL vit. 9. 47, & Diogenes of Oenoanda, Phil., frg. 9: ὁ γὰρ κανὼν / ⟦τῆς ἀληθείας⟧ καὶ τὸ / κριτήρ[ιον τῆς ἀληθείας] / πρὸς τ[οὺς ὀνείρους ἡμῶν] / μένει [ταῦτα. For an introduction, see Diskin Clay, ‘The Philosophical Inscription of Di ogenes of Oenoanda,’ Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Supplement 94, Greek and Roman Philosophy 100BC 200AD, Vol 1 (2007), 283 291. The inscription here is not complete, but the equation of kanon and kriterion is secure, see Martin F. Smith, The Philosophical Inscrip tion of Diogenes of Oinoanda (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaf tern, 1996), 62. I am grateful to Matyas Havrda for pointing out this text to me.  See esp. Philo, leg. all. 3.233 4: Σηὼν οὖν ὁ διαφθείρων τὸν ὑγιῆ κανόνα τῆς ἀληθείας καὶ τὸ σπέρμα αὐτοῦ ἀπολεῖται καὶ Ἐσεβὼν τὰ αἰνίγματα τὰ σοφιστικὰ ἕως Δεβών, ὃ καλεῖται δικασμός· πάνυ προσφυῶς· τὰ γὰρ εἰκότα καὶ πιθανὰ οὐκ ἔχει περὶ ἀληθείας ἐπιστήμην, ἀλλὰ δίκην καὶ ἀμφισβήτησιν καὶ ἐριστικὴν ἅμιλλαν καὶ φιλονεικίαν καὶ πάντα τὰ τοιαῦτα. See also det. 125, conf. 2 and Jos. 145 where the ‘rules of truth’ (in the plural) structure the power of God and the cosmos that God has created.  Emmanuel Lanne, “‘La Règle de le Vérité.’ Aux Sources d’une expression de saint Irénée.” In LEX ORANDI, LEX CREDENDI: Miscellanea in onore di P. Cipriano Vagaggini, ed. Gerardo J. Békés and Giustino Farnedi, Studia Anselmiana 79 (Roma: Editrice Anselmiana, 1980), 57 70. Lanne’s judgment is endorsed by Ohme, Kanon, 33 5, 74 6.

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as the basis for sound knowledge—or a source. Attempts to demonstrate other use of Philo by Irenaeus have failed, but the more we recognize Irenaeus’s own intellectual skill and range, the more probable it is that the Alexandrian may have been influential. Like Philo, Irenaeus invokes these debates against his opponents. At haer. 2.27, for example, he offers an extended discussion of how our knowledge of God must be based on that which is clear and before our eyes.⁴⁰ Only educated, exercised attention to these will lead to secure knowledge. For Irenaeus this attention must primarily be to the clear statements of Scripture, and the parables will be explained in the right context, and the ‘body of truth’ kept entire and harmonious—Irenaeus here taking us back to the discussion of Against Heresies 1.9 – 10. Without this certainty there will be endless division ‘as is the case with the questions of the pagan philosophers,’ without this no one will possess ‘a rule of truth.’⁴¹ Thus Irenaeus’s ‘heretics’ reject what he calls ‘the very method of investigation’ (quod ipsam inuentionis abiecerit disciplinam).⁴² Irenaeus thus makes use of a discussion originating in Hellenistic epistemological debates to deepen his account of the importance of attending to the letter of Scripture. Interestingly, Clement uses the phrase ‘rule of truth’ toward exactly the same ends in Stromateis Book 7. He argues, first, that pagan criticism of Christian division fails because Jews and Greeks likewise divide over intellectual matters. He the emphasizes the importance of staying true to the ‘rule of faith’ (in a passage we discussed earlier), and offers an extended account of how one stays on the strict path toward knowledge. As a central feature of this account Clement offers a brief summary of the different criteria discussed in the Hellenistic philosophical context, emphasizing the importance of humility in investigation, and the value of the scriptures as the only true source of criteria for progressing to knowledge of God.⁴³ Once again, we do not know if Clement owes to Irenaeus—in which case he recognizes and expands on Irenaeus’s allusions to the Hellenistic debates—or if this is a parallel development. In either case, both authors saw those debates as providing a range of language that would help them articulate the role of Scripture in their theologies, and what it meant for those scriptures

 On this passage see Anthony Briggman, “Irenaeus on Natural Knowledge,” in Church History and Religious Culture 95 (2015): 133 154 as an important corrective to William R. Schoedel “Theological Method in Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses 2.25 28),” JThS 35 (1984): 31 49. For the importance of the rhetoric of clarity in Irenaeus see my own “Irenaeus vs the Valentinians: To ward a Rethinking of Patristic Exegetical Origins,” JECS 23 (2015): 153 187.  Haer. 2.27.1.  Haer. 2.27.2. See also 2.28.1.  str. 7.15.91 16.96.

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interpreted in the context of the Church’s faith to be a ‘rule’ of, or for, seeking the truth. It is worth noting that, the Christian authors I have discussed speak of the ‘kanon of truth’ or the ‘ecclesiastical kanon’; kriterion is not the preferred term in such phrases. This probably stems from the fact that the broader usage of kanon was already common in Christian circles—used in its broad metaphorical sense of providing a rule or straightedge. When our authors extended this usage to questions of doctrinal boundaries and foundations, they continued to use a term already traditional for them.

4 The ‘Rule’ and the Shaping of Theology Irenaeus (and Clement) thus invoke, in polemical contexts, contemporary philosophical debates concerning the appropriate criteria for progress toward knowledge as they consider Scripture and the Church’s inherited faith. Their complex responses to this polemical need (at the least) added significant vigor to the development of Christian thinking about the character of appropriate argument and speculation. Invoking the shape of these philosophical debates necessarily involves Irenaeus (and Clement) in reflecting on the relationship between the basic terms and narratives of the faith as it is confessed by all, and the speculations of the intellectually gifted. In this sense, the emergence of the concept ‘rule of truth’ is part of the broader story of the development of Christian theology itself. In these final few pages I want to sketch some ways in which thinking about the ‘rule’ against that broader story should affect how we view its significance. Here there is time only to indicate some of the most basic lines in the picture that would probably emerge from such a consideration. An essential feature in that broader context is the close association between the rise of this ‘rule’ language and the developing status of the text of Scripture. During the careers of Irenaeus and Clement we see for the first time the notion that theological argument and speculation should be constantly founded on the text of a unified scripture, analyzed and explored by means of the the techniques taught by the grammarian, the techniques at the heart of ancient literary culture.⁴⁴ The ‘rule of truth’ could only function as it does for Irenaeus against the background of this development. The literal sense of scripture, for example, could only function as a kriterion for truth in the way Irenaeus suggests, once the whole text of scripture itself had come to be read in this manner. It seems unlikely that this relationship would have been possible as recently as the time of Justin Martyr,

 See my ‘Irenaeus vs the Valentinians.’

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only two to three decades before, simply because Justin does not subject the text of what will become the ‘New Testament’ to the same close treatment. When Irenaeus identifies the ‘rule’ as a criterion and claims that this criterion is (in part) available in the public, plain text of Scripture, we can see how much the emergence of ‘rule’ language was interwoven with his developing account of the authority accorded the scriptural text itself. At the same time, these developments witness also to developing modes of Christian intellectual expertise. Identifying attention to the ‘rule of truth’ as a criterion in argument with ‘heretics’ thrust forward into intellectual leadership those best able to read the text of scripture using ancient literary-critical techniques. Given the manner in which a wide range of Christian authors had already embraced the notion of Christianity as a philosophical enterprise, it is no surprise that, against the challenge of ‘Gnostic’ conceptions, it is in this generation that we can trace Christian writers articulating the relationship (and distinction) between the common public faith of the Church and the exploration of that faith by the intellectually gifted. Both Irenaeus and Clement (in rather different ways) witness to the importance of sustaining this relationship. Not surprisingly, for both writers the task is to articulate how the intellectually gifted can and must remain faithful to the literal sense of scripture read grammatically. The ‘rule of truth’—understood as a foundation that may lead to reliable knowledge—provides a key tool in articulating how this might be so. But as a further introduction to the manner in which this division between the Church’s confessed faith and a philosophically informed exploration of that faith is simply intrinsic to Irenaeus’s theology, allow me to turn again to Irenaeus’s description of the rule at Against Heresies 1.22.1 (given here at greater length): The rule of the truth that we hold is this: there is one God Almighty, who created all things through His Word; He both prepared and made all things out of nothing, just as Scripture says: ‘For, by the Word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the Breath of his Mouth. And again: All things were made through him and without him was made not a thing. From this all nothing is exempt. Now, it is the Father who made all things through him, whether visible or invisible, whether sensible or intelligible, whether temporal for the sake of some dispensation or eternal. These, he did not make through angels or some pow ers that were separated from his thought. For the God of all things needs nothing. No, he made all things by his Word and Spirit, disposing and governing them and giving all of them existence. This is the one who made the world, which indeed is made up of all things. This is the one who fashioned humanity. This is the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, above whom there is no other God, nor a beginning, nor a power, nor a fullness. This is the

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Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, as we shall demonstrate. If, therefore, we hold fast this rule, we shall easily prove they have strayed from the truth… .⁴⁵

The more precisely we attempt to answer the question ‘what does Irenaeus mean by “the rule” here?’, the more complex this passage appears. At one level Irenaeus takes Scripture to deliver a simple statement that ‘there is one God Almighty, who created all things through His Word; He both prepared and made all things out of nothing…’ the direct citation of Scripture further reinforces the link between rule and that text. But, notice how much Irenaeus takes it possible to include in the rule. That the Almighty created all things is taken to imply that no role may be accorded intermediate angels. The unity of the creator is, moreover, taken to imply close providential governance and that the creation of temporal reality has particular ‘economies’ in mind. Irenaeus has infused his own philosophical commitments into the rule—the distinction between sensible and intelligible—and a clear anti-Gnostic sense—‘above’ the one creator there can be nothing. It is this complex set of ideas that, at the end of the passage, Irenaeus identifies as the ‘rule.’ There is little here that is unique to Irenaeus: this same expansive quality is seen in a number of other authors from this period who make use of rule language.⁴⁶ We could certainly interpret such expansiveness using a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’; is Irenaeus simply expanding upon his inherited faith for polemical purposes? And this would not be entirely inaccurate; Irenaeus’s conception of the division between sensible and intellectual, most obviously, betrays philosophical commitments not shared by some other near contemporary defenders of orthodox Christianity. And yet, a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ may not be the most useful tool. Irenaeus’s attempts to draw out what it means for there to

 Haer. 1.22.1 (Unger 80 1).  One example may be found in Tertullian, Marc. 1.5 (Ernest Evans, Tertullian: Adversus Mar cionem, 2 vols [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972], 1:12 14): Denique apud nos vis rationis istius ipso termino plures deos credi non sinit, quod nec duos illa regula unum deum sistens, qua deum id esse oporteat cui nihil adaequetur, ut summo magno, unicum autem sit cui nihil adae quetur. The regula that insists there is only one God seems to be the rule of truth, as may be seen by noting Tertullian’s insistence at the beginning of 1.3 that this truth is proclaimed by the ver itas Christiana. Furthermore, at the end of 1.1 Tertullian says that he will first set forth his oppo nent’s regula, which he does in 1.2 by setting out something of Marcion’s basic belief in two Gods. The discussion which follows through to draws out a number of further principles or rules which may be deduced. This book has a clear quality for Tertullian; at 1.16 he tells us that he is working communibus… sensibus et argumentationibus iustis to prepare the way for an examination of scriptural evidence. This concern enables us to see with peculiar clarity the deductions Tertullian thinks can be drawn from the rule.

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be one Creator of all things show him struggling to draw out the implicit consequences of the letter of scripture and of his inherited faith. He is engaged in that process of speculation and doctrinal expansion that is simply intrinsic to what will become orthodox Christian thinking. In the Alexandrian world Clement and Origen both devote much space to articulating the relationship between the fundamental faith into which all are catechised, and the higher Christian knowledge that the intellectually gifted may attain. On first look, Against Heresies seems to provide us with little on the same lines, but this may be so because Irenaeus’s tactic is to present his theology as the public faith of the Church confessed over the generations. And yet, we have already seen that his very description of the ‘rule’ in Book I.22 offers some fairly sophisticated implications of his shortest accounts of the ‘rule’ as the ‘rule’ itself. looking beyond this passage, Irenaeus gives us plenty of indications of how he considers one should make use of philosophical resources in exploring the Scriptural text. At haer. 2.28.2– 3 makes use of a traditional list of questions that are difficult or impossible to answer in order to argue that it is appropriate both to try and investigate some and trust others to God.⁴⁷ The passage demonstrates Irenaeus’s willingness to countenance attention to questions of causality, as long as one is bound by the text of Scripture.⁴⁸ Haer. 2.28.4– 5 offers a nice example of Irenaeus criticizing his opponents’ supposed failure to use analogical reasoning appropriately, both because they apply terms to the divine as if the divine were material, and because they misunderstand, even in the human analogue the causal sequence between thought and speech. Elsewhere, if only in passing, Irenaeus shows himself to identify a fairly standard sequence of ‘liberal arts’ that are ‘concerned with rational argument,’⁴⁹ and emphasizes in the case of Scriptural study the importance of daily meditation on the text.⁵⁰ Finally here, we should recall the extended list at haer. 1.10.3 of questions that ‘those who know more’ investigate (whether or not Irenaeus here has in mind a particular set of questions debated, as he would see it, within the bounds of the Christian  The list is drawn from the Ps Plutarchan revision of Aetius. For the initial identification of this text in Irenaeus see Diels, Doxographi Graeci, 171 2. Then, for the importance of haer. 2.28.2 in particular see Robert M. Grant, “Irenaeus and Hellenistic Culture,” HTR 42 (1949), 41 51.  On the relationship between speculation and exegesis in Irenaeus see e. g. Anthony Brigg man, “Theological Speculation in Irenaeus: Perils and Possibilities,” VChr 71 (2017): 175 198, W.C. van Unnik, “Theological Speculation and its Limits,” in Early Christian Literature and the Classical Intellectual Tradition, ed. W.R. Schoedel and R.L. Wilken (Paris: Beauchesne, 1979), 33 45.  Haer. 2.32.2: …et universae quae in sermonum rationibus occupantur…  Haer. 2.27.1.

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community).⁵¹ Here I have been able only to indicate passages that might form the basis for a fuller discussion, but this is enough, I hope, to show that Irenaeus’s claim that he does little else than repeat the Church’s inherited faith and the plain sense of Scripture is best taken as a claim that his speculative activity is one that seeks to operate always within the bounds provided by that faith and that plain sense (even though we must recognize, of course, that those boundaries themselves often required argument and negotiation). Thus, identifying the ‘rule’ as a point of reference in the search for knowledge against the Gnostic alternative is of necessity also to begin the processing of outlining a continuing relationship and bond between the inherited faith of the community and the speculations and interpretations of those Christians with intellectual gifts. The rule was not, then, a text. It was a supple and complex language for identifying the standard for thought that the Church’s inherited faith provided. It was crafted in and for the battle that followed on the flowering of Valentinian and ‘Gnostic’ thought and intellectual life. Against that background, one in which Irenaeus saw his opponents as nurturing a speculative enterprise that saw consummation in a release from the narrative and cosmological structures of Scripture’s plain sense, it is not surprising that Against Heresies presents us with a vision of Christian intellectual activity that sees itself as always bound and generated by that plain sense. Articulating the principle that Scripture and the Church’s inherited faith provided a ‘rule’ that enabled progress toward knowledge was an integral part of the struggle to articulate the character of this knowledge.

 See e. g. W.C. Van Unnik, “An Interesting Document of Second Century Theological Discus sion (Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 1.10.13),” VChr 31 (1977): 196 228.

Azzan Yadin-Israel

Christian, Jewish, and Pagan Authority and the Rise of the Christian Intellectual Stefan Collini prefaces his study of the role of the intellectual in Britain with two complementary surveys: one traces the history of the word intellectual (whose first recorded mention, in 1813, we owe to Lord Byron), the other to the emergence of the concept as we now employ it.¹ As Collini demonstrates, intellectual earlier referred to individuals of advanced learning, but eventually took on a distinctly political sense, a development Collini traces to the Dreyfus Affair. Currently, Collini argues, intellectual has four distinguishing characteristics, the first of which is “[t]he attainment of a level of achievement in an activity which is esteemed for the non-instrumental, creative, analytical, or scholarly capacities it involves.”² The other three involve the formulation and promulgation of views on topics of public concern (political in the broad sense), and the establishment of a reputation as one who does so. In what follows, I set aside intellectual’s modern connotation of engagement politique, and focus on the notion of intellectual attainment. The present essay seeks to contextualize the rise of the Christian intellectual in two ways. First, I examine two models of Christian religious authority that are in tension, and perhaps incompatible, with that of the intellectual: a prophetic or revelatory authority, and an oral-traditional authority based on transmission of authorized traditions. While both held sway in certain early second-century Christian circles, they soon experienced a precipitous decline. Then, looking beyond the Christian dynamic, I argue that similar shifts can be discerned in contemporary second and third century rabbinic and pagan sources. This broad analytic approach seeks to contextualize the emergence of the Christian intellectual both within nascent Christianity, and as part of the broader cultural and religious landscape.

My thanks to Lewis Ayres who convened the conference that gave rise to this volume, to the conference participants for helpful feedback and lively debate, to the Australian Catholic University and to the staff of the ACU Rome Campus, who provided such a hospitable setting.  Stefan Collini, Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). The relevant surveys are chapters one (“The History of the Word”) and two (“A Matter of Defi nition”), pages 15 44 and 45 65, respectively.  Collini, Absent Minds, 52. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110608632 011

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1 Non-Intellectual Authority in the Early Church 1.1 Prophetic or Revelatory Authority Though obvious upon reflection, it is worth noting that the New Testament does not champion religious authority based on intellectual or scholarly attainment.³ The closest one comes to institutional intellectuals in first century Roman Palestine are the scribes, whose treatment varies widely between and within the gospels—but are not generally held up as exemplary religious figures. Jesus is, of course, well-versed in the Hebrew Bible, but this is never presented as an intellectual achievement. For example, while Jesus’ knowledge of Scripture helps him rebut the Devil’s temptation (Matt 4:1– 11), the Gospel account highlights Jesus’ fast loyalty to God rather than his textual acuity. Luke 2 recounts how Jesus remained in the Temple following the Passover pilgrimage, sitting, at the age of twelve, “among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions” (Lk 2:46). But Jesus’ ability to do so is not prefaced by an account of his diligent study, but rather by the fact that, as he grew he “became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him” (Lk 2:39). It is on account of this that Mary and Joseph, upon witnessing Jesus’ understanding, did not take pride in their son’s hard-earned scholarly achievement, but rather “were astonished” (Lk 2:48). Jesus’ knowledge is the result of God’s grace, not industrious study and intellectual ability.⁴ It is widely recognized that prophetic or revelatory authority was commonplace among the earliest followers of Jesus.⁵ The synoptic gospels relate that some of Jesus’ followers considered him a prophet “like one of the prophets of old” (Mk 6:15; and see Mk 8:27– 28); Jesus alludes to his prophetic status (in a

 Even when Jesus mentions the grammateis as religious models to be surpassed (Matt 5:20), he refers to their righteousness, not their erudition.  Without advocating for either position, the fact that Jesus’ literacy is a matter of debate is in dicative of the extent to which the earliest sources portray Jesus as minimally concerned with texts (the exceptions being Luke 4:16 22 and John 8:6 8, whose historical reliability has been the focal point of much of the debate on the subject). See Chris Keith, Jesus’ Literacy: Scri bal Culture and the Teacher from Galilee (New York: T&T Clark, 2011), who eschews historical re construction in favor of an analysis of the ways in which Jesus was remembered by his followers.  This phenomenon that has been addressed by earlier scholars and need only be presented in broad strokes. See David E. Aune, Prophecy in Early Christianity and the Mediterranean World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983), as well as more recent studies such as Christopher Forbes, Prophecy and Inspired Speech in Early Christianity and Its Hellenistic Environment (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995).

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passage unique to Luke) when he tells the Pharisees who have come to warn him of Herod’s plot to kill him that he must depart “because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem” (Lk 13:33); Paul speaks of having been set apart from the womb to proclaim Christ to the nations (Gal 1:15 – 16)— a clear allusion to the prophetic calls of Isaiah (Isa 49:1) and Jeremiah (Jer 1:5)⁶; Paul recognizes prophecy as an office of the church (“And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers” [1 Cor 12:28]), and the Book of Acts regularly refers to contemporary prophets.⁷ The continued vitality and self-evident legitimacy of prophecy is also apparent in the attempt of two early Christian texts to distinguish between true and false prophets. The Didache and Shepherd of Hermas, generally dated to the first and late-first or early-second centuries, respectively, offer similar guidance. The Didache teaches: “If any prophet teaching the truth does not do what he teaches, he is a false prophet,”⁸ while the angelic shepherd who instructs Hermas contrasts the authentic prophet who “is meek and tranquil and humble, and refrains from every evil and mad desire of this world” and the false prophet who “wants to take precedence, and is soon reckless, shameless, chattering, living in luxurious habits and may other deceitful ways.”⁹ In this regard, then, early followers of Jesus adopt a position congruent with that of many late Second Temple Jewish groups, as various sources attest to the continued relevance of prophecy including the Dead Sea Scrolls,¹⁰ Josephus,¹¹ and more.¹²

 For a discussion of Paul’s prophetic self presentation see James Dunn, “Paul: Apostate or Apostle of Israel,” ZNTW 89 (1998): 256 271.  Prophets travel from Jerusalem to Antioch in Acts 11:27 28, some of the members of the church at Antioch are recognized as prophets (Acts 13:1), Agabus prophesies to Paul in Caesar ea Maritima (Acts 21:10 11), and more.  Didache 11.3 10. Kurt Niederwimmer, The Didache: A Commentary, ed. Harold Attridge, trans. Linda M. Maloney (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 177 78.  Shepherd of Hermas, Eleventh Mandate, 7 12, in Carolyn Osiek, Shepherd of Hermas: A Com mentary, ed. Helmut Koester (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 139 40. In this passage, the medium and the message converse, as the criteria for discerning true prophecy from false are provided by an angelus interpres a prophetic or near prophetic communication.  See Alex P. Jassen, Mediating the Divine: Prophecy and Revelation in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Second Temple Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 2007).  Rebecca Gray, Prophetic Figures in Late Second Temple Jewish Palestine: The Evidence from Josephus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).  See the essays collected in Michael Floyd and Roberd D. Haak, eds., Prophets, Prophecy, and Prophetic Texts in Second Temple Judaism (New York: T&T Clark, 2006).

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1.2 Oral-Traditional Authority The second model of religious authority, oral-traditional authority, finds its fullest expression in the work of Papias of Hieropolis (present-day southwest Turkey), whose literary activity is generally dated to the final decade of the first century and the first decades of the second.¹³ Papias’s work is concerned, first and foremost, with the faithful transmission of Jesus’ sayings—the manner in which dicta whose authenticity has been certified are transferred from one generation to the next. Toward this end, Papias sets forth a mechanism aimed at securing the transmission process on both its ends.

1.2.1 Elders Papias identifies a group he calls “elders” (presbuteroi), for him a technical term designating the individuals who have received certified traditions, traditions they then transfer to others. The office of elders extends back to Jesus and his earliest disciples: “Thus the elders who saw John, the disciple of the Lord, remembered hearing him say how the Lord used to teach about those days.”¹⁴ These traditions are the primary source of knowledge about Jesus and his ministry, and Papias commits himself to collecting and ascertaining the traditions circulating in his environs. In practical terms, this meant questioning itinerant elders, as he writes, “whenever someone arrived who had been a companion of the elders, I would carefully inquire after their words,”¹⁵ and making reference to “all the things I carefully learned and have carefully recalled from the elders.”¹⁶ These statements testify to both the transmission of traditions and to the need for their meticulous examination. Indeed, Papias is himself a link in this chain of transmission, maintaining a relationship with two elders in particular: “[Papias] himself was the ear-witness (autēkoos) of Aristion and the elder

 Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006) offers indispensable discussions of Papias, his work, and the scholarship it has engendered. The discussion that follows draws on my work on Papias and tra dition in Azzan Yadin Israel, “For Mark Was Peter’s tanna: Tradition and Transmission in Papias and the Early Rabbis,” JECS 23 (2015): 337 62.  Fragment 1 (Ehrman, 2.92 93). Papias’s fragments are cited according to Bart D. Ehrman, ed., The Apostolic Fathers, LCL 25 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).  Fragment 3.4; Ehrman translates “a companion of one of the elders,” but see Yadin Israel, “For Mark was Peter’s tanna,” 351n55.  Fragment 3.3.

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John.”¹⁷ As Johannes Munck recognized long ago, then, the term elders here refers to “Christian bearers of Tradition.”¹⁸ The same oral-traditional sense of elders is found in reports about the Pharisees and in early rabbinic sources. The synoptic gospels portray the Pharisees and scribes accusing Jesus of failing to uphold the extra-scriptural “tradition of the elders” (paradosis tōn presbuterōn) (Mark 7.1– 23; Matt 15.1– 20), which Jesus then attacks as contrary to the scriptural word of God (“Moses said … but you say…”). Tannaitic sources employ the term in a similar fashion: “Rabbi Yose said: Abtolemos testified in the name of five elders that a shared Sabbath space (ʿeruv) whose status is in doubt is deemed valid” (m. ʿEruv. 3.4). The word testify is, here and throughout the Mishnah, a technical term for the transmission of an extra-scriptural tradition, and the Mishnah’s elders (zeqenim) are its source.¹⁹ The most robust statement of extra-scriptural transmission in the Mishnah, ʾAbot 1.1, cites elders as a link in the chain of oral law: “Moses received torah from Sinai and passed it down to Joshua, and Joshua passed it down to the elders …”²⁰

1.2.2 Hearing As a corollary to elders who transmit traditions, Papias designates the authorized recipients of these traditions as hearers, a group of which he is himself part. For he is, in Jerome’s words, “the hearer of John (Iohannis auditor),” or  Fragment 3.7. I have departed from Ehrman’s translation: “he himself had listened to Aristion and the elder John.” Bauckham argues that the title “John the elder” is based on the longevity of the John in question (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 420 37), but the oral traditional contexts in which John appears, and the existence of elders other than John, makes it unlikely that chrono logical age is the determining factor. It is more probable to my mind that John’s designation as elder is functionally tied to the characterization of Papias as John’s auditor “elder” designating the authorized transmitter of traditions, “hearer” their recipient (see below). Though Aristion is also an elder, there were likely no other Aristions in Papias’s immediate orbit and so no need to distinguish Aristion by means of that epithet.  Johannes Munck, “Presbyters and Disciples of the Lord in Papias,” HThR 52 (1959): 233. See also Ulrich H. J. Körtner, Papias von Hierapolis: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des frühen Christen tums (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983), 114 22.  See also t. Sheviʿit 4.21.  There is some debate among scholars as to whether this passage is original to the tractate (see M. Bialik Lerner, “The Tractate Avot,” in The Literature of the Sages, ed. S. Safrai, 2 vols. [Assen: Van Gorcum, 1987], 1.367 403). However, repeated mishnaic references to extra scriptur al chains of transmission (cited in “For Mark Was Peter’s Tanna,” 354 55) reduce the weight of any one passage.

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as Irenaeus calls him “the one who heard (akoustēs) John.”²¹ The standard meaning of hear will not do here. Over the course of his life, John was doubtless heard by many people—why would Papias be called the one who heard him? Because hear functions as a technical term that designates the receipt of oral traditions from an authorized source. Thus we find Papias emphasizing that he “neither heard nor saw in person any of the holy apostles … [rather] received the matters of faith from those known to them,”²² that is, he did not receive teachings from the apostles, but from others who had. As noted above, Papias “indicates that he himself was the ear-witness of Aristion and the elder John.”²³ The term autēkoos (“ear witness”) is a wonderful reversal of the concept of autoptēs (“eyewitness”), that plays an important role in Hellenistic historiography (including the prologue to Luke), a reversal well-suited to an author consistently concerned with ascertaining “what Andrew or Peter had said, or what Philip or what Thomas had said, or James or John or Matthew or any of the other disciples of the Lord, and what Aristion and the elder John, disciples of the Lord, are saying”—what they said, not what they saw.²⁴ The oral-traditional sense of hear is further evident in this important passage: When Mark was the hermēneutēs of Peter, he wrote down accurately everything that he re called of the Lord’s words and deeds but not in order. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied him; but later, as I indicated, he accompanied Peter, who used to adapt his teachings for the needs at hand, not arranging, as it were, an orderly composition of the Lord’s sayings. And so Mark did nothing wrong by writing some of the matters as he re membered them. For he was intent on just one purpose: to leave out nothing that he heard or to include any falsehood among them.²⁵

I will discuss this passage at greater length below. For now I wish merely to point out that Mark’s “hearing” refers to the reception of traditions. Papias defends Mark’s decision to record the words and deeds of the Lord without imposing order on them on the grounds that he did not hear the Lord, that is, did not receive traditions directly from Jesus, but rather from Peter, who recited them in a

 Fragments 5 and 1.4, respectively.  Fragment 3.2; emaphsis added.  Fragment 3.7.  Fragment 3.4. Of course, some of these individuals may have been eyewitnesses, and their status as eyewitnesses may have played a part in the standing they enjoyed as possessors of au thentic traditions. But Papias does not characterize them in these terms.  Fragment 3.15; emphasis added. I will discuss the term hermēneutēs below; Ehrman trans lates: “interpreter [Or: translator].”

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different order as determined by the needs at hand. In other words, Mark presents unordered traditions because he heard them in unordered sequence. Like elders, the oral-traditional sense of hear is attested in tannaitic sources. In the Mishnah, the phrase “we have not heard” means “we have not received a tradition on this matter,”²⁶ and m. ʾAbot 5.7 urges a sage to admit ignorance when he has received no tradition regarding a matter—“of what he has not heard he says ‘I have not heard.’” One Mishnah passage contains the word “hearer” in the same sense found in Papias: Any movable object conveys impurity if it is as thick as an ox goad. Rabbi Tarfon said: “May I lose my sons if this is not a perverted tradition that the hearer (ha shomeʿa) heard wrong ly.²⁷

The legal issue at hand is not germane to the present analysis; what is important is Rabbi Tarfon’s reference to the tradent of the extra-scriptural tradition as hashomeʿa, “the hearer,”²⁸ Which precisely parallels auditor/akoustēs in Papias. When Irenaeus and Jerome characterize Papias as the hearer of John, they are identifying him as an (or: the) authorized recipient of John’s extra-scriptural traditions.²⁹

1.2.3 Hermēneutēs In his above-referenced defense of Mark’s ordering of traditions, Papias writes that “When Mark was the hermēneutēs of Peter, he wrote down accurately everything that he recalled of the Lord’s words and deeds—but not in order.”³⁰ The

 See, e. g., m. Bek 6.8; Herbert Danby, trans., The Mishnah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933), renders the phrase “We have heard no tradition about these.”  m. ʾOhal 16.1; on this passage see Yadin Israel, Scripture and Tradition: Rabbi Akiva and the Triumph of Midrash (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 105 106.  This is clearly the sense of “hearer,” since the authority of the legal tradition does not de pend on an individual who chanced upon hearing it, but rather on its transmission by an au thorized tradent.  The identification of individuals as authorized recipients of traditions is characteristic of what Kenneth Bailey calls a formal controlled tradition. See K. E. Bailey, “Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels,” AJT 5 (1991): 34 51.  Fragment 3.15. This is also how Irenaeus describes Mark memorizing/recording the sayings of Peter in Adv. Haer. 3.10.5 and 11.8, cited in Annette Yoshiko Reed, “ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ”: Orality, Tex tuality, and the Christian Truth in Irenaeus’ Adversus Haereses,” VChr 56 (2002): 27.

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term hermēneutēs is generally rendered either “translator” or “interpreter.”³¹ But Papias does not praise Mark for his skills as either a translator or an interpreter, but rather as a verbatim preserver of Peter’s teachings—as one “intent on just one purpose: to leave out nothing that he heard or to include any falsehood among them.”³² That faithful recording and transmission are the exclusive focus of Papias’s praise is a decisive indication that the hermēneutēs is charged with accurately preserving and presenting the teachings of a master, once again locating Papias in the realm of oral-traditional transmission. The hermēneutēs, in other words, is a tanna—not in the chronological sense of “a sage from the period of the Mishnah,” but an individual who attends the sage and whose teachings he is entrusted to memorize and recall.³³

2 The Decline of Non-Intellectual Authority in Christian Sources Though not exhaustive, the above discussion of oral-traditional and revelatory authority testifies to the existence, indeed the prominence, of non-intellectual models of religious authority in early Christian sources. While certifying the authenticity of a received tradition might, under certain circumstances, require meaningful intellectual effort, this effort is not the basis for a claim to religious authority—authority is granted because one possesses authentic traditions, not because one excels in their authentication. All the more so prophetic authority, as revelation does not depend on the recipient’s intellectual powers. But these models of authority turn out to be short-lived, and both experience precipitous (and in the case of oral-traditional transmission, irreversible) decline.

2.1 Prophecy The disappearance of prophecy from the early Christian landscape is wellknown, but it is worth noting the speed and intensity of the shift, the parade ex-

 For a survey of the arguments for and against each see Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitness es, 205 210.  Fragment 3.15.  The term tanna occurs only in the Babylonian Talmud, but the office is known from earlier sources. The hermēneiai Papias mentions in Fragment 3.3 may also belong to this semantic field, see Yadin Israel, “For Mark Was Peter’s Tanna,” 348.

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ample for both being Montanism and the response it elicits. Montanus, a convert to Christianity who began to preach either in 150 or 170 ce,³⁴ presented himself and his two main disciples, Priscila and Maximilla, as prophetic figures. According to Epiphanius: For those called Cataphrygians[=Montanists] themselves also accept all the Scripture of the Old and the New Testament, and likewise say that there is resurrection of the dead. But they boast that they have a prophet named Montanus, and prophetesses named Priscilla and Maximilla. By giving attention to these, they have been diverted. Now they hold the same view of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit as the holy Catholic Church, but they have severed themselves, devoting themselves to spirits of error and teachings of demons when they say that he says we too must receive the spiritual gifts.³⁵

Epiphanius’s condemnation of Montanus and his followers is not doctrinal, as they accept core orthodox teachings: the authority of the Old and New Testament, the resurrection of the dead, and the Trinity.³⁶ Their inclusion in the Panarion is based solely on their claim that “we too must receive the spiritual gifts.” Eusebius quotes an anonymous source who describes how these spiritual gifts were received: “Montanus, in his soul’s immense ambitious desire, gave the adversary access to himself and was carried away as by the Spirit, and suddenly experienced some kind of possession and spurious ecstasy, he was inspired and began to speak and say strange things, prophesying, as he pretended, contrary to the custom related to the tradition and succession of the Church from the beginning.”³⁷ The censorious tone of this passage, like the notion that Montanus acts in opposition to the tradition of the Church, are surprising in light of the episode’s similarity to the spiritual possession and glossolalia of the apostles who had gathered for Pentecost and were “filled with the Holy Spirit” and so “began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability” (Acts 2:4). For Acts, such inspiration is a fulfillment of the eschatological vision of the Hebrew prophets, as Peter explains: “this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my spirit on all

 The date is a matter of dispute, since Epiphanius locates the beginning of Montanus’s activ ity at the midpoint of the second century, while Eusebius places it at roughly 171 CE. See Timothy Barnes, “The Chronology of Montanism,” JThS 21 (1970): 403 08.  Epiphanius, Panarion 48.3 4; English translation Ronald E. Heine, The Montanist Oracles and Testimonia (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1989), 26 29.  This point is clearly articulated in Walter J. Burghardt, “Primitive Montanism: Why Con demned?” in From Faith to Faith: Essay in Honor of Donald G. Miller on His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Dikran Y. Hadidian (Pittsburgh: Pickwick Press, 1979), 339 356.  Eusebius Eccl. Hist. 5.16.7; Heine, Montanist Oracles and Testimonia, 15 17.

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flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit’ (Joel 2:28 – 29).” The infusion of the Holy Spirit heralds the universalization of prophecy: no longer will the Holy Spirit suffuse only select individuals—it now resides in men and women alike, in the young and the old, in freemen and slaves. Yet less than a century after the composition of Acts, when Montanus claims the gift of prophecy and recognizes it in “men and women alike,” he is condemned as a heretic.³⁸

2.2 Oral-Traditional Authority The decline of Christian tradition is a more subtle matter. Oral-traditional authority never enjoyed the status and widespread acceptance of prophecy, so its decline was perforce less dramatic. Moreover, early Christian authors continued to invoke the category of tradition, especially apostolic tradition. Nonetheless, Papias portrays a first- and early second-century Christian collective actively engaged in the preservation and transmission of the words of Christ. Papias received traditions from John the Elder and Aristion, but also worked with a broad network of individuals who passed through the region, for “whenever someone arrived who had been a companion of the elders, I would carefully in-

 See also the exchange between James and Jesus in the Apocryphon of James. James asks “Lord, how shall we be able to prophesy?” and Jesus answers: “Do you not know that the head of prophecy was cut off with John?” Francis E. Williams, trans. Apocryphon of James 6, in The Nag Hammadi Library in English, ed. James M. Robinson (San Francisco: HarperSanFran cisco, 1988), 32. Prophetic motifs do find expression in descriptions of inspired interpretation. Philo describes writing “under the influence of the Divine possession,” and being “filled with corybantic frenzy” (The Migration of Abraham 35; F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker, trans., The Works of Philo, LCL 261 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 4.150 151), and see also On the Cherubim 27 (Colson 2.24 25) and On Dreams 2.252 (Colson 5.554 557). Early Christian authors express a similar sentiment: Justin Martyr asserts that one must be “endowed by God’s great grace to understand the words and deeds of the prophets” (Dialogue with Trypho, §92; translated by Thomas B. Falls, revised by Thomas P. Halton, and edited by Michael Slusser [Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003], 142), and Origen writes that who ever grasps the hidden meaning of Scripture “has in himself the soul and spirit of the prophet” (Origen, Commentary to Matthew 27, quoted in Karen Jo Torjesen, “The Alexandrian Tradition of the Inspired Interpreter,” Origeniana Octava: Origen and the Alexandrian Tradition, ed. L. Per rone [Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003], 293n18). Still, these authors never claim that they are themselves prophets, and their writings are firmly grounded in a philosophical and in tellectual approach to scriptural commentary.

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quire after their words.”³⁹ The secure standing of these practices is further reflected in the limited scope of Papias’ defense of Mark, Peter’s hermēneutēs, who wrote down Jesus’ sayings not in the order in which they were spoken. Papias does not defend the legitimacy of the enterprise itself, nor the veracity of the transmission from Jesus to Peter and subsequently to Mark, though he surely would do so if he felt such a defense were called for. Instead, it is the relatively minor issue of the ordering of the dicta that occupies him. Clearly, Papias assumes his audience is, like him, committed to oral-traditional authority. Indeed, Papias’s massive literary undertaking—collecting five volumes of Jesus’ sayings— bears witness to the perceived vitality of tradition as a source of authority.⁴⁰ After Papias, however, such tradition-based authority recedes and no subsequent author claims to write solely as a transmitter of received traditions. Of course, tradition remains a vital category, but one whose meaning is gradually divorced from the mechanisms of oral-traditional transmission, and instead invoked as an overarching claim to legitimacy.⁴¹ One early Christian genre that offers an interesting case in point is the church order, which explicitly claims apostolic authority. The most prominent church order, The Apostolic Tradition, traditionally attributed to Hippolytus of Rome,⁴² along with its later adaptations (the Apostolic Constitutions, Canons of Hippolytus, and Testamentum Domini),⁴³ claim to preserve apostolic teachings, yet they do not contain an oral-traditional account of their transmission and preservation. The Apostolic Tradition, for example, opens with a discussion of the ordination of a bishop, whose choice is approved by the congregation on the basis of his moral rectitude—he is to be “chosen by all the people” and recognized as being “without sin.”⁴⁴ Once or-

 Fragment 3.4.  See also the Apocryphon of James’ description of the apostles’ activity after the death of Jesus, which involves both the codification of oral teachings and the publication of some secret doctrines: “[T]he twelve disciples were all sitting together and recalling what the Savior had said to each one of them, whether in secret or openly, and putting it in books”; The Apocryphon of James 1, Robinson, Nag Hammadi Library, 30.  Irenaus still champions an oral tradition, and employs some of the terminology used by Pa pias (e. g. presbuteroi), on which see Reed, “ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ”, 11 46.  Recent scholarship has emphasized the complicated textual history of this work, character izing it as an accretion of teachings that originate in different locations and times “from perhaps as early as the mid second century to as late as the mid fourth century,” Paul F. Bradshaw, Max well E. Johnson, and L. Edward Phillips, The Apostolic Tradition: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), 14.  See Bradshaw, Johnson, and Phillips, The Apostolic Tradition, 1 13.  The phrase “chosen by all the people” is from the Latin version of Apostolic Tradition 2.1 “being without sin” from the Sahidic (Bradshaw, Johnson, and Phillips, The Apostolic Tradition,

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dained, the bishop leads the congregation in supplication: “And we ask that you would send your Holy Spirit in the oblation of [your] holy church, [that] gathering [them] into one you will give to all who partake of the holy things [to partake] in the fullness of the Holy Spirit, for the strengthening of faith in truth.”⁴⁵ It is the congregation and the Holy Spirit, then, that authorize the proceedings, not apostolic teachings. This pattern repeats with some variations in the ordination of the presbyter (Apostolic Tradition 7.1– 5), the deacon (Apostolic Tradition, 8.1– 11), and other offices and rituals discussed in the book. The claim of apostolic authority is invoked, but traditions handed down from the apostles never materialize. Oral-traditional claims are preserved in the context of esoteric knowledge and its transmission. Clement of Alexandria writes in the Hypotyposes: “After the resurrection, the Lord gave the tradition of knowledge to James the Just and John and Peter, these gave it to the other Apostles and the other Apostles to the seventy, of whom Barnabas also was one.”⁴⁶ Ptolemy, the disciple of Valentinus, writes along the same lines in his letter to Flora: “For, God permitting, you will next learn about both the first principle and the generation of these two other gods, if you are deemed worthy of the apostolic tradition, which even we have received by succession.”⁴⁷ Even as late as the fourth century, Basil the Great writes: “Of the dogmas and proclamations that are guarded in the Church, we hold some from the teaching of the Scriptures, and others we have received in mystery as the teachings of the tradition of the apostles.”⁴⁸ Such statements represent a modicum of continuity with the oral-traditional claims of Papias and certain passages in Irenaeus, but apostolic tradition is here limited to esoteric

24), but the same basic idea is expressed in all the versions and in their adaptations. The Tes tamentum Domini 1.20 adds that the bishop is to be “chosen by all the people according to the will of the Holy Spirit, being without fault” (Bradshaw, Johnson, and Philips, The Apostolic Tra dition, 25).  The Apostolic Tradition 4.12.  Clement’s Hypotyposes is not extant, but this passage has been preserved in Eusebius, Ec clesiastical History II, 1.4, trans. Kirsopp Lake, LCL 153 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926), 104 05.  Ptolemy, Epistle to Flora 33.7.9, in Bentley Layton, ed., The Gnostic Scriptures (New York: Dou bleday, 1987), 314. The two gods in question are that of the Hebrew Bible, who is just, and the Devil, who is evil. The heterodox nature of Ptolemy’s theology aside from the anachronism of this designation is moot for the present analysis: he understands himself to be the recipient of authentic apostolic traditions and frames his teaching in such terms.  St. Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit 27, translated by Stephen Hildebrand (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 104. These passages are discussed in Guy Stroumsa, Hidden Wisdom: Esoteric Traditions and the Roots of Christian Mysticism (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 27 45.

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doctrine and, absent a genealogy of transmission, appears to function more as an authorizing slogan than a living religious practice. Like prophetic authority, then, oral-traditional authority declines in the course of the second century CE, marking the effective disappearance of the two main non-intellectual modes of religious authority in early Christianity.

3 The Decline of Non-Intellectual Authority in Rabbinic Sources 3.1 Prophetic and Inspired Authority The claim that prophecy declined in rabbinic sources is uncontroversial, as the Rabbis address this decline explicitly. The most famous statement in this regard is t. Soṭah 13.3: “When the latter prophets died, that is, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, the Holy Spirit ceased in Israel.”⁴⁹ The degree to which this statement reflects the historical reality of the day is debated, but there is no question that early rabbinic sources deprecate or at least marginalize the notion of contemporary prophecy.⁵⁰ It is worth emphasizing that prophecy is only one of a number of practices based on divine inspiration that the early rabbis thus marginalize. Tannaitic sources are, for example, overtly hostile to the practice of dream interpretation. This practice is recorded only one time, in the tale of a man who seeks the aid of a dream interpreter⁵¹ in recovering the funds his deceased father set aside as a tithe. The interpreter directs him to the very location where the coins are buried, but the sages refuse to recognize them as a tithe: “The coins are profane, since dreams are moot.”⁵² Though neither the provenance and original purpose of the

 The Tosefta, ed. Saul Lieberman (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1955 73), Nashim, 230 231. The Tosefta continues: “Nonetheless, they made them heard through a bat qol (echo).” I will address this qualification below.  See the detailed survey of both the ancient sources and modern scholarly debate in L. Ste phen Cook, On the Question of “Cessation of Prophecy” in Ancient Judaism (Tübingen: Mohr Sie beck, 2011). In weighing the arguments and counterarguments, it is worth bearing in mind Ben Sommer’s insightful observation that much of the late Second Temple and post 70 prophetic ac tivity is self avowedly eschatological and so attests to a perceived renewal of prophecy, rather than its uninterrupted vitality. See Benjamin Sommer, “Did Prophecy Cease? Evaluating a Reevaluation,” JBL 115 (1996): 31 47.  Following the reading of Tosefta MS Erfurt.  t. Maʿaś. Š. 5.9.

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coins nor the integrity of the interpreter are questioned, the sages reject the coins as legitimate tithe because they were located through dream interpretation.⁵³ A similar tannaitic reticence is evident with regard to the bat qol, a term whose literal meaning is “echo” but can also refer to a heavenly voice.⁵⁴ The latter sense occurs three times in tannaitic sources, two of which are references to divine messages communicated in the past—at the death of Moses and during the Temple period.⁵⁵ The only reference to contemporary revelation occurs in Tosefta Soṭah’s addendum to the “cessation of prophecy” statement cited above: “When the latter prophets died, that is, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, the Holy Spirit ceased in Israel. Nonetheless, they made them heard through a bat qol.” And yet, even this apparent affirmation of continued divine revelation is immediately undercut: “It happened when the sages gathered together that the bat qol emerged and said to them: ‘There is a person here who is worthy of the Holy Spirit, but his generation is not worthy…’”⁵⁶ The bat qol’s one communication with the early Sages serves to deny the possibility of inspiration via the Holy Spirit. Tannaitic ambivalence toward inspired authority is further evident in the treatment of the group of charismatics knows as the Hasidim, who enjoy an intimate relationship with God and place less emphasis on strict ritual observance.⁵⁷ Two Hasidim are discussed at length in tannaitic sources, Hanina ben Dosa and Honi the Circle Drawer. The former, we are told, could foresee whether a sick person would live or die (m. Ber. 5.5), the latter successfully petitioned God

 There may be a second tannaitic reference to dream interpretation in Sifre Numbers §119, though it is likely a later interpolation based on Genesis Rabbah 68.12 (Theodor Albeck 2.785).  See Peter Kuhn, Offenbarungsstimmen im Antiken Judentum: Untersuchungen zur Bat Qol und verwandten Phänomenen (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1989), and see the comprehensive list of bat qol passages at 369 76. For an up to date assessment of the matter see José Costa, “Littérature apocalyptic et Judaisme rabbinique: le problem de la bat qol,” REJ 169 (2010): 57 96.  The sources are Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael Yitro 2 (Haim Shaul Horovitz and Israel Rabin, eds., Mekhilta de Rabbi Ishmael [Jerusalem: Bamberger and Wahrman, 1960], 200); and Sifre Deut. §357, Finkelstein 427 428. I exclude m. ʾAbot 6.2 (“Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: ‘Every day a bat qol goes forth from Mount Horeb proclaiming, Woe to mankind for their con tempt of the Torah.’”) as chapter six is a late addition to the tractate, as well as the references to bat qol in Midrash Tannaim and Avot de Rabbi Natan, on which see Costa, “Le problem de la bat qol,” 69 70.  t. Soṭah 13:4, Lieberman, Nashim, 230.  Shmuel Safrai discussed this group in “Hassidic Teaching in Mishnaic Literature,” JJS 16 (1956): 15 33, and returned to the Hasidim almost thirty years later in “Hasidim and Men of Deeds” (Hebrew), Zion 50 (1985): 133 54. See also the sources cited in Tzvi Novick, What is Good and What God Demands: Normative Structures in Tannaitic Literature (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 141 42n20.

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for rain employing a remarkably familiar, not to say impudent, tone (m. Taʿan. 3.8).⁵⁸ Yet despite—or precisely because of—these abilities, the Hasidim exist at the margins of the tannaitic world: neither Hanina ben Dosa nor Honi author a single legal dictum,⁵⁹ and their proximity to God draws rebuke. After Hanina ben Dosa prayer heals the son of Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, the latter’s wife asks: “Is Hanina greater than you?” and he responds: “He is like the servant of the king, while I am like a minister of the king” (b. Ber 34b). That is, though Hanina enjoys greater intimacy with God, his status is far inferior to that of Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai. While at the conclusion of the Honi story about the rains, Shimon ben Shetah (a Second Temple figure whom the rabbis identify as their precursor) informs Honi that: “Were you not Honi I would have pronounced a ban against you.”⁶⁰ More could be said on each of these topics, but I hope the overall thrust of my argument is clear. Prophetic authority, along with other cognate phenomena based on divine inspiration, are marginalized if not outright repudiated in early rabbinic sources.⁶¹

3.2 Oral-Traditional Authority The notion of a decline in oral-traditional authority in rabbinic sources is more problematic. Unlike the cessation of prophecy, rabbinic sources do not admit—to say nothing of celebrate—this development, and to this day the Oral Law is often held up as the defining feature of rabbinic theology. Be that as it may, the status of the Oral Law is much more precarious in rabbinic sources than most accounts

 See Geza Vermes, “Hanina ben Dosa,” JJS 23 (1972): 28 50; Shlomo Naeh, “‘Creates the Fruit of Lips’: A Phenomenological Study of Prayer According to Mishnah Berakot 4:3, 5:5” (Hebrew), Tarbiz 63 (1994): 185 218.  There is one saying attributed to Hanina ben Dosa in m. ʾAbot 3.9 [3.10], but it is ethical, not legal.  m. Taʿan. 3.8.  Other motifs that might be noted are the tannaitic rejection of the apocalyptic (Mireille Hadas Lebel, Jérusalem contre Rome, [Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1990], 453 and Lawrence Schiff man, “Messianism and Apocalypticism in Rabbinic Texts,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 4: The Late Roman Rabbinic Period, ed. Steven T. Katz [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006], 1053 72); a disinterest in miracles (Lidija Novakovic, “Miracles in Second Temple and Early Rabbinic Judaism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Miracles, ed. Graham H. Twelftree [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011], 95 112); and the tendency to avoid representing the biblical text as the source of secret or esoteric knowledge (Yadin Israel, Scripture and Tradi tion, 168 72I want to emphasize that this characterization applies to early rabbinic sources; the situation in the Babylonian Talmud is more complex.

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recognize. Already among the tannaitic sages there are substantive debates over the relative importance of extra-scriptural tradition. As I have shown in an earlier study, the midrashic works associated with the figure of Rabbi Ishmael present a thoroughly textualist ideology, in which Scripture is the source of rabbinic law in two senses. First, legal decisions are based on interpretation of biblical law. Second, Scripture is represented as the leading voice in its own (self‐)explication, so that the role of the rabbinic reader is primarily to attend to the hermeneutic instruction of Scripture and follow its interpretive precedents.⁶² This approach entails a radical marginalization of any non-scriptural claim to religious authority, a claim made explicit in Rabbi Ishmael’s saying: “In three places received tradition (halakhah) circumvents Scripture.”⁶³ As I have argued in detail elsewhere, Rabbi Ishmael’s claim is that there are only three instances in which halakhot—extra-scriptural traditions—circumvent Scripture.⁶⁴ Now, a halakhah functions as an independent source of authority only inasmuch as it does bypass Scripture, that is, only inasmuch as it provides information that is not stated in or derived from Scripture. As such, the statement radically marginalizes the role of extra-scriptural tradition in rabbinic law. But Rabbi Ishmael’s is not the only or even the dominant understanding of the relationship between midrash and extra-scriptural tradition. His contemporary, Rabbi Akiva is committed to extra-scriptural traditions, appearing as a tradent of legal dicta, and as an interpreter who regularly employs scripture to buttress and preserve these traditions. Rabbi Akiva’s practical commitment to halakhot is thematized in m. Kerithot 3.7– 10,⁶⁵ a series of mishnayot in which Rabbi Akiva poses questions to his teachers and they respond in each case loʾ shamaʿnu, “we have not heard,” or, in Danby’s precise translation, “we have heard no tradition about this.”⁶⁶ This response concludes the discussion, and no attempt is made to provide an answer via scriptural interpretation. Elsewhere, Rabbi Akiva retracts his legal rulings once he is informed that they contradict the

 See Azzan Yadin, Scripture as Logos: Rabbi Ishmael and the Origins of Midrash (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).  Sifre Deut. §122 (Finkelstein edition, 180).  Yadin, Scripture as Logos, 142 47.  Parallel at Sifra Ḥovah pereq 1.8, Weiss 16b.  See the discussion of “hear” above, 1.2.2. On Rabbi Akiva as a midrashist see Ishay Rosen Zvi, “Who Will Uncover the Dust from Your Eyes: Mishnah Soṭah 5 and Rabbi Akiva’s Midrash” (Hebrew), Tarbiz 75 (2005 06): 95 128.

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received tradition of more senior sages, but holds his ground if he does not esteem the tradent.⁶⁷ The dynamic between midrash and received tradition is cast in a fascinating light in an exchange between Rabbi Akiva and his elder contemporary Rabbi Tarfon. Interpreting Leviticus 1:5, Rabbi Akiva uses an analogy from the dashing of the blood to prove that the ritual collection of blood during sacrifice can only be performed by a ritually fit priest using a sacerdotal vessel. Rabbi Tarfon, however, criticizes this argument: “Akiva, how much longer will you pile up [verses] against us. May I lose my sons if I did not hear a clear distinction between the collection of the blood and its dashing, but I cannot explain it.”⁶⁸ In other words, since the collecting and the dashing of the blood are substantively different rites, Rabbi Akiva cannot use the one as the basis for an analogy with the other. But there is more at stake here, as Rabbi Tarfon’s response hints at a tension between two sources of authority. Rabbi Tarfon heard—that is, received an extra-scriptural, oral tradition—regarding a distinction between the collection and the dashing of the blood, and disparages Rabbi Akiva’s scriptural argument. Responding to Rabbi Tarfon’s rebuke, Rabbi Akiva does not call into question the assumptions that animate it, that is, he does not claim that Scripture is the ultimate source of rabbinic legal authority. Instead, he offers a deferential preface (“allow me to say before you a matter that you have taught me”), then explains why his argument does not, in fact, conflict with Rabbi Tarfon’s received tradition. The passage concludes with Rabbi Tarfon’s effusive comment: “May I lose my sons! You have not swerved to the right or the left. It was I who received the oral tradition but was unable to explain while you explicate (doresh) and agree with the oral tradition (shemuʿah). Indeed, to depart from you is to depart from life itself.” This is, to be sure, high praise for Rabbi Akiva’s interpretive prowess, but it is praise of a very particular sort. For what Rabbi Tarfon lauds is Rabbi Akiva’s ability to interpret Scripture in a manner that accords with oral tradition—the clear implication being that received tradition enjoys priority over midrash and serves as a (or: the) standard by which to gauge scriptural interpretation.

 For examples of the former, see m. Taʿan. 4.4, m. Ḥul. 4.2, t. Zav. 1.6, t. ʿUq. 3.2, and t. Šeb. 2.13. The latter occurs in t. Nid. 6.6: Rabbi Akiva is informed that “Ben Shalkut testified in Yavne” in a manner that contradicted his own position, but Rabbi Akiva responds “I do not know Ben Shal kut” and maintains his earlier position.  Sifra Nedava, parashah 4.4 5, Weiss 6b. Sifra citations are to H. Weiss, Sifra: Commentar zu Leviticus (Vienna: Schlossberg, 1862). On this passage see Yadin Israel, Scripture and Tradition, 121 23.

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But this exchange raises an obvious problem: if a teaching is known from received tradition, what need is there to arrive at the same conclusion midrashically? In the Sifra passage above, Rabbi Tarfon states that he was “unable to explain” that only a ritually fit priest can perform the collection of the blood, while Rabbi Akiva’s close reading of Scripture allowed him to do just that. In a similar passage, Rabbi Tarfon attacks Rabbi Akiva’s interpretation on the grounds that it conflicts with priestly behavior he had witnessed at the Temple. After Rabbi Akiva explains that the conflict does not exist, Rabbi Tarfon praises Rabbi Akiva: “Blessed are you our father Abraham that Akiva emerged from your loins. Tarfon saw but forgot; Akiva interprets (doresh) of his own accord and agrees with the oral tradition.”⁶⁹ Here too the praise focuses on Rabbi Akiva’s ability to interpret Scripture in a manner that agrees with tradition: Rabbi Tarfon cannot remember the details of the tradition, but Rabbi Akiva’s midrash recovers them. There is also a more generalized anxiety regarding the status of the Oral Law found in the famous passage in m. Soṭah 5.2.⁷⁰ Rabbi Akiva interprets Leviticus 11:33, “And if any of the impure dead creatures falls into an earthenware vessel everything inside it shall be impure,” such that the apodosis comes to mean “everything inside it shall transmit impurity.” Upon hearing this interpretation, Rabbi Yehoshua, one of Rabbi Akiva’s teachers, addresses his own deceased master and exclaims: Who will uncover the dust from your eyes, Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai? For you used to say that a future generation will declare the third level loaf pure since it is not scriptural (she loʾ min ha torah) but your disciple Rabbi Akiva adduced a scriptural prooftext for its impurity.

Rabbi Yehoshua here describes his teacher’s fear that the legal ruling concerning the transmission of third-level impurity would be forgotten, since “it is not scriptural.” It is important to note that the absence of scriptural justification was not inherently problematic for the rabbis involved. The ruling regarding the third level loaf—anchored in tradition alone—was known and accepted by Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, his only concern being that future generations would not abide by the ruling because of its lack of scriptural support. Here, Rabbi Akiva’s midrash adds nothing to the present rabbinic understanding of the ruling, as it was neither forgotten nor were its details in need of scriptural recovery. His contribution lies in providing scriptural authority for a time (“a future generation”)

 Sifre Num. §75, Menahem Kahana, Sifre on Numbers: An Annotated Edition, 4 vols (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2011 14), 1.178 179.  Parallel at Sifra Shemini parashah 7.12, Weiss 54b.

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when rulings anchored in tradition will not be accepted due to their lack of scriptural support. As it happens, the “future generation” appeared soon enough to shape one of the tannaitic sources. The widespread concern over the status of oral-traditional authority is evident in an intensive revisionary effort undertaken in the Sifra. This work, a commentary on Leviticus, is traditionally viewed as tannaitic, however Yonatan Sagiv has shown that the Sifra consists of two strata: derashot attributed to named tannaitic authorities (13 % of the total) are clustered around a number of key verses that were the focus of lively interpretive debate in Second Temple and post-70 Jewish literature, on the one hand, and evenly distributed anonymous derashot that interpret almost every verse of Leviticus, on the other. Through close analysis, Sagiv concludes that the Tannaim did not produce a systematic interpretation of the entire Book of Leviticus. Instead, clusters of tannaitic interpretation were incorporated into a post-tannaitic commentary.⁷¹ It is here, in the later strata, that the revisionist effort is evident. To better explain the nature of this revision, it is worth briefly examining an early, tannaitic derashah from the School of Rabbi Ishmael. Here is the relevant biblical passage, followed by the tannaitic commentary to it: This is the offering by fire that you shall offer to the Lord: two male lambs a year old with out blemish, daily, as a regular offering. One lamb you shall offer in the morning, and the second lamb you shall offer at twilight; also [specifies the accompanying grain offering and the libation] … The second lamb you shall offer at twilight with a grain offering and a li bation like the one in the morning (Numbers 28:3 8).

The Sifre Numbers comments: “The second lamb [you shall offer at twilight]” (Num 28:8): Why was this stated? Because it says “and all the assembled congregation of the Israelites shall slaughter it at twilight” (Exod 12:6). I do not know which comes first, the daily burnt offering or the paschal offer ing, thus [Scripture] teaches, saying: “second,” second to the daily burnt offering, not sec ond to the paschal offering.⁷²

The derashah calls attention to the awkward structure of Numbers 28, which states that the daily sacrifice consists of two male lambs to be offered in the morning and at twilight, then details the grain offerings and libations that accompany the morning sacrifice, and finally asserts that the same holds for the

 Yonatan Sagiv, “Studies in Early Rabbinic Hermeneutics” (Hebrew) (PhD diss., Hebrew Uni versity, 2009), and see especially his discussion at page 40.  Sifre Num. §143, Kahana, Sifre on Numbers, 1.191.

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twilight offering (“The second lamb you shall offer at twilight with a grain-offering and a libation like the one in the morning”). Why not simply state at the outset that the procedures apply to both the morning and the twilight sacrifice, thereby avoiding the awkward repetition of “the second lamb”? Because, the rabbinic derashah argues, Scripture is not merely communicating the laws of the daily sacrifice, it is also resolving an interpretive crux. For this is not the only twilight sacrifice God commands—the paschal offering, as detailed in the Book of Exodus, is also offered at twilight.⁷³ What, then, is the proper order of sacrifice at the twilight of Passover—does the paschal offering follow the daily sacrifice, or vice versa? Foreseeing this difficulty, Numbers 28 emphatically reiterates that the daily twilight offering is “the second lamb,” and so instructs the reader that the daily offering is always the second offering of the day—it is not pushed to third by the Passover sacrifice. The paschal offering, then, follows the daily twilight sacrifice, not vice versa. The argument is elegant and intertextual to the core: Numbers 28 appears redundant, but once we recognize that the Exodus paschal laws are the relevant intertext, the difficulty is resolved and Scripture’s full pedagogic intent revealed. Now consider a biblical passage from Leviticus, followed by an interpretation from the anonymous stratum of the Sifra: For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather in its produce; but in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath of complete rest for the land, a sabbath for the Lord: you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. (Lev 25:3 4)

These verses form the core of the sabbatical prohibition, according to which on the seventh year fields are to lie fallow, and it is prohibited to consume produce grown during that year. Here is the Sifra’s interpretation: Whence do we learn that rice, millet, poppyseed, and sesame that have taken root before a new year are tithed after the manner of the past year and they are permitted in the seventh year? Scripture teaches, saying “gather in its produce” (Lev 25:3) on the seventh year.⁷⁴

The commentary addresses the following problem: Leviticus presents the sabbatical laws in the context of the grain and grape harvests, but does not discuss the status of plants that take root before the beginning of the sabbatical year but are  “Your lamb shall be without blemish … You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight” (Exod 12:5 6).  Sifra Behar parashah 1.7, Weiss 105c.

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harvested during it—do they fall under the sabbatical prohibition (based on their time of harvest), or are they considered yield of the previous year (when they took root) and their consumption permitted? The answer is the latter, they are permitted: “Scripture teaches, saying ‘gather in its produce’ (Lev 25:3)—on the seventh year.” But this argument is fraught with interpretive difficulties. For one, the legal ruling the Sifra introduces, namely, that it is permitted to consume produce that took root on the year preceding the Sabbatical, is posited at the outset. The Sifra asks “whence do we learn that rice, millet … are permitted,” and the reader is left to wonder when it was established that “rice, millet … are permitted.” Moreover, the ruling is not anchored in or motivated by an engagement with Scripture: rice, millet, poppyseed, and sesame are never mentioned in the Bible so it is not clear on what grounds they are being introduced. The derashah is, furthermore, not intertextual. While the Sifre Numbers gleaned interpretive insights from the juxtaposition of Numbers 28 and Exodus 12, the Sifra does not introduce a second verse, so that Leviticus 25:3 is both the verse requiring interpretation, and the verse providing the explication. Finally, the derashah glosses the biblical command “gather in its produce” with the phrase “on the seventh year,” as though the biblical statement sanctioned sabbatical harvest of produce that took root during the preceding year. But even a cursory glance at Leviticus 25 shows that this reading has no scriptural basis whatsoever, as “gather in its produce” refers to the produce of the sixth year as such, and stands in contrast to the sabbatical prohibition (“For six years you shall sow … and prune … and gather in its produce; but in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath of complete rest for the land”). How are we to understand the Sifra’s convoluted interpretation, both on its own terms and in contrast to the Sifre Numbers’ derashah? In a word, as an attempt to address the fear discussed above, that received traditions will be rejected absent scriptural grounding. As it happens, the tradition that motivates this derashah is preserved in the Mishnah: Rice, millet, poppyseed, and sesame that have taken root before a new year are tithed after the manner of the past year and they are permitted in the seventh year.⁷⁵

It is my contention that this Mishnaic ruling—presented, as is typical of the Mishnah, without scriptural warrant—is the anonymous Sifra’s true (albeit unacknowledged) intertext, a claim that explains the Sifra’s problematic structure. For one, it is no surprise that the legal case under discussion is not grounded in Scripture, as it is imported into the Sifra from the Mishnah—along with the  m. Šeb. 2.7.

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list of grains (in the same order). Further, the incoherent claim that Leviticus 25:3’s “gather in its produce” authorizes the harvesting on the seventh year of grains that took root on the sixth, is simply an ex post facto affirmation of an already-established Mishnaic conclusion. Phrased differently, the derashah’s interpretive incoherence is due to the fact that it is not a genuine interpretation of Scripture, but rather an attempt to reframe the Mishnah’s oral-traditional teachings as though they were midrashically derived. Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai’s concern that “a future generation” will reject oral-traditional teachings because they have no basis in Scripture was shared by the Sifra’s later stratum.⁷⁶ And for good reason, as oral-traditional authority experienced a marked decline in certain rabbinic circles—a decline to which the Babylonian Talmud is the primary witness. Here is m. Menaḥ ot 7.1: “The Thanksgiving offering was brought by five seʾah [a measure of grain] of the Jerusalem measure.” This is a typical Mishnah statement—a received tradition here transmitted anonymously, with no reference to Scripture.⁷⁷ Yet when the Talmud cites this mishnah, it immediately asks “Whence do we know this (menaʾ hanei milei)?” and discusses the identity of the biblical prooftext that underlies the Mishnah’s ruling.⁷⁸ The details of the discussion are of no import to the present analysis. What matters is the Babylonian Talmud’s self-evident assumption that the rulings of the Mishnah are, au fond, based on a biblical verse, as though the Mishnah—the great repository of Oral Law—were based on Scripture rather than received traditions.

4 The Decline of Non-Intellectual Sources in Pagan Sources 4.1 Divination and Oracles As with early Christian and Rabbinic sources, the diminished standing of prophecy among some pagan authors is openly declared. In his study of early modern attitudes toward the pagan oracles, Anthony Ossa-Richardson writes that “[o]ne of the most important beliefs about the oracles, at least from the first century BCE, was that they were in the process of falling silent or degener-

 The later stratum of the Sifra employs a wide range of tools to accomplish this revision, as I discuss in detail in Scripture and Tradition.  To be sure, some Mishnah passages cite biblical prooftexts, but they are in the minority.  b. Menaḥ . 77a.

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ating in some way.”⁷⁹ It is important that this phenomenon not be conflated with the philosophical critique of oracles. True, the Cynic school enjoyed a renaissance during this period, and prominent Cynics wrote scathingly about divination.⁸⁰ But criticism of the oracles—and of the notion that the gods engage in human affairs—goes back at least as far as Epicurus. What changes in the period under discussion, is that even those who champion the oracles on theological grounds, admit they have fallen largely silent. This is the case in Cicero’s De divinatione, which pits the author, Marcus Cicero, against his brother Quintus. Marcus is the more critical of the two, denying the legitimacy of contemporary divination: “What wonder, then, if in auspices and in every kind of divination weak minds should adopt the superstitious practices which you have mentioned and should be unable to discern the truth?”⁸¹ Indeed, he goes as far as to claim that “superstition, which is widespread among the nations, has taken advantage of human weakness to cast its spell over the mind of almost every man” and that “dreams, as a means of divination, be rejected along with the rest.”⁸² But even Quintus, who defends the theological legitimacy of divination, admits that “at present its glory has waned,”⁸³ reflecting a sense of the diminished communication with the gods echoed by later writers, including Lucian, Juvenal, and, with great vigor, Plutarch in The Obsolescence of Oracles. ⁸⁴ The latter, a discourse on the nature of the divine and its relation to humanity, is framed as an attempt to understand why many oracles no longer function. When the narrator notes that “great was the ancient repute of the divine influence [in Delphi], but at the present time it seems to be somewhat evanescent,” another speaker, Demetrius, responds: “There is no need to make any inquiries nor to raise any ques Anthony Ossa Richardson, The Devil’s Tabernacle: the Pagan Oracles in Early Modern Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 21.  The most famous of these is Oenomaus of Gadara (floruit 2nd century CE), whose Charlatans Exposed (passages of which have been preserved in Eusebius’s Praeparatio Evangelica) consti tutes a frontal attack on the legitimacy of oracles and other forms of divination. Another Cynic, Demonax of Cyprus, known only from the testimony of Lucian, was tried for never having offered a sacrifice to the gods. On these philosophers, see Giovanni Reale, The Schools of the Im perial Age, trans. John R. Catan (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1990), 153 155.  Cicero, De divinatione 2.81, W. A. Falconer, trans., Cicero: On Old Age, On Friendship, On Div ination, LCL 154 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1923), 463.  Cicero, De divinatione 2.148.  Cicero, De divinatione 1.38.  For Lucian and Juvenal, see the sources cited in Ossa Richardson, The Devil’s Tabernacle, 21n32. Plutarch’s The Obsolescence of Oracles appears in Plutarch, Moralia, trans. Frank Cole Babbitt, LCL 306 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936), 347 501. See the discussion and additional sources cited in Gene L. Green, “‘As for Prophecies, They Will Come to an End’: 2 Peter, Paul and Plutarch on ‘The Obsolescence of Oracles’,” JSNT 82 (2001): 107 22.

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tions about the state of affairs there, when we see the evanescence of the oracles here, or rather the total disappearance of all but one or two.”⁸⁵

4.2 Oral Tradition The case for a similar decline in oral-traditional authority among pagan thinkers is trickier, but worth making, with necessary caveats. For while there is no precise analogue to rabbinic and early Christian religious oral-traditional authority, there is a discernible shift within the Greek philosophical schools away from genealogical authority and toward philosophical commentary.⁸⁶ For much of their existence, the principle philosophical schools were headed by thinkers who had been trained and often appointed by their predecessors, just as the predecessors had been by theirs. But over the course of the first century BCE, this model collapses: Philo of Larisssa (d. 84 BCE) was the last disciple of Plato to be connected to the Academy; Posidonius (d. 51 BCE), the last Stoic to have been trained by the head of the Stoa; and the Peripatetic school concluded with either Antiochus of Rhodes or his disciple, Boethius of Sidon (d. circa 10 BCE). Even the Epicureans, who championed a reverential transmission (paradosis) of Epicurus’s kyria doxa, a philosophical catechism of forty materialist dicta, turned away from the oraltraditional authority model. Lucretius is explicit in his praise of Epicurus, calling him the one “who first amid so great a darkness was able to raise aloft a light so clear, illuminating the blessings of life … O glory of the Grecian race … I yearn to copy you.”⁸⁷ Yet when Lucretius writes that “the very nature of divinity must necessarily enjoy immortal life in the deepest peace, far removed and separated from our affairs … neither propitiated with services nor touched by wrath,”⁸⁸ he nowhere indicates that this is the first Epicurean doxa: “A blessed and eternal being has no trouble himself and brings no trouble upon any other being; hence he is exempt from movements of anger and partiality, for every such movement implies weakness.”⁸⁹ And when Lucretius asserts that “Therefore death is nothing to us,” he is citing Epicurus’s second doxa (“Death is nothing to us; for the

 Plutarch, De defectu oraculorum 411D F.  On this phenomenon, see Han Baltussen, “From Polemic to Exegesis: The Ancient Philo sophical Commentary,” Poetics Today 28 (2007): 247 81.  Lucretius, De rerum natura 3.1 5, trans. W.H.D. Rouse, LCL 181 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 189.  Lucretius, De rerum natura 1.44 49; the passage is repeated verbatim at 2.646 651.  Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 10.139; see Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Volume II, trans. R. D. Hicks, LCL 185 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931), 663.

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body, when it has been resolved into its elements, has no feeling, and that which has no feeling is nothing to us”) without attribution.⁹⁰ Other parallels could be adduced,⁹¹ but the point should be clear: Lucretius, like contemporary Platonist, Aristotelian, and Stoic thinkers, acknowledges that his philosophy is indebted to a founding thinker, but does not try to anchor himself to the thinker via a chain of philosophical transmission: De rerum natura elevates Epicurus above all thinkers, but does not predicate Lucretian authority on privileged access to the teachings of the master. Writing circa 65 CE, Seneca summarizes the situation thus: And so the many schools of philosophy are dying without a successor. The Academy, both the Old and the New, has no professor left. Who is then to teach the precepts of Pyrrho? That famous school of Pythagoras, hated by the rabble, has not found a teacher.⁹²

For Seneca, the collapse of the traditional schools of philosophy reflects the marginality of the discipline,⁹³ but with the benefit of historical hindsight we can see that philosophical genealogy was giving way to philosophical commentary. The transition is most thorough among the Peripatetics, where the commentary tradition begins to take root in the first century BCE with works by Boethus of Sidon and Nicolaus of Damascus, continues through the first and second centuries CE (e. g., Ariston of Alexandria, Herminus, Adrastus, and Aspasius), and reaches its apex in the early third century with the prodigious Alexander of Aphrodisias.⁹⁴ So dominant was this form of philosophical engagement that, in Giovanni Reale’s words, “to philosophize for the Peripatetics of this epoch, is almost entirely to interpret and comment on the texts of Aristotle … almost all the Peripatetics of this epoch are remembered as authors of exegetical work and commentaries.”⁹⁵

 Lucretius, De rerum natura 3.830; Diogenes Laertius, Lives, 10.139.  Lucretius, De rerum natura 5.1151 60, is a close paraphrase of doxa 35 (Lives 10.155), and the superiority of the senses as criteria for truth appears in De rerum natura 1.690 700 and in doxa 23 (Lives 10.146). See Pamela Gordon, Epicurus in Lycia: The Second Century World of Diogenes of Oenoanda (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 65n102.  Seneca, Naturales quaestiones 7.32.2; see Natural Questions, Volume II, trans. Thomas H. Cor coran, LCL 457 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), 297.  Seneca contrasts the truncated lineage of the Platonic Academy with the enduring popular ity of comic actors: “But how much worry is suffered lest the name of some pantomime actor be lost forever! The House of Pylades and of Bathyllus continues through a long line of successors. For their arts there are many students and many teachers,” Naturales quaestiones 7.32.3.  See Miira Tuominen, The Ancient Commentators on Plato and Aristotle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 18 19; Reale, Schools of the Imperial Age, 21 22.  Reale, Schools of the Imperial Age, 21.

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Though early commentaries on Plato are less common, many Platonists wrote introductions to and epitomes of the dialogues, including Albinus, Alcinous, and Apuleius (all second century CE). None of this is to suggest that individuals no longer studied with revered teachers and were part of de facto philosophical genealogies. Only that these genealogies were no longer paraded by the philosophers as a (or: the) source of their authority. Plotinus is instructive in this regard. Though he had studied philosophy with the best teachers in Alexandria, he was dissatisfied until a friend directed him to Ammonius, whose teachings so compelled the young Plotinus that he said, “This is the man I was looking for.”⁹⁶ Plotinus’s philosophical education is firmly in the mold of the master and disciple paradigm—Plotinus finds a teacher and spends the next decade listening to Ammonius’s lectures, until he is ready to set off on his own. But, critically, Plotinus never mentions his teacher in writing and never adduces his discipleship as a source of authority, presenting his doctrines as philosophical investigations anchored first and foremost in Plato’s dialogues. The absence of Ammonius from Plotinus’s writings may have played a critical role in the later reception of his philosophy, which sometimes appears to use Plato’s dialogues in an arbitrary or forced manner. At least, this is the impression one gets working under the assumption that Plotinus seeks to explicate Plato in a straightforward manner. But Plotinus may be employing the dialogues in the service of philosophical assumptions not derived directly from these texts. Lloyd Gerson examines one of Plotinus’ challenging hermeneutic practices, his willingness to cite isolated passages from a variety of dialogues in a single argument, and concludes: “It is not that Plotinus is oblivious to the dramatic unity of each of the dialogues. Rather, he denies that the dramatic unity in any one case points us to a doctrinal or systematic unity. Where, then, does that unity come from? We may, I think, infer from Porphyry’s account that it comes principally from the oral tradition to which Plotinus adhered.”⁹⁷ While the differences are evident—Plotinus does not, sensu strictu, write commentaries on Plato, and Ammonius is not a link in an oral-traditional chain—Gerson’s insight points to a fascinating similarity between Plotinus and the forced rabbinic commentary on Leviticus: both present themselves as anchored in an ancient text, while their deep engagement is with an oral tradition that goes unacknowl Porphyry, The Life of Plotinus 3, in Plotinus, trans. A. H. Armstrong, LCL 440 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), 9.  Lloyd Gerson, “Plotinus and Platonism,” in The Brill Companion for the Reception of Plato in Antiquity, ed. Harold Tarrant, Dirk Baltzly, Danielle Layne, and François Renaud (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 317, emphasis added.

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edged. In this sense, Plotinus too bears witness to the new dominance of textual commentary, and the decline of oral-traditional authority.

5 Conclusion: Against Institutionalization Addressing the decline of prophecy among early Christians, David Aune writes: “Prophets and their revelations played an integral role within early Christianity until the beginning of the second century A.D. Thereafter the inevitable forces of institutionalization banished prophets from their role as leaders and marginalized the revelatory significance of their proclamations.”⁹⁸ Aune is, of course, correct about the historical trajectory of prophetic authority, but the oft-invoked concept of institutionalization is for a number of reasons wanting. One problem is conceptual. The decline of prophetic authority is a constitutive element—perhaps the constitutive element—of the concept of early Christian institutionalization. As a result, positing institutionalization as a cause of the decline of prophecy is perforce circular: prophetic authority declined due to a process largely defined by the decline of prophetic authority. More important to the present essay is the implicit assumption that the decline of prophecy can be accounted for in internal-Christian terms. As I have argued here, the decline of both prophetic and oral-traditional Christian authority takes place against the backdrop of similar dynamics within rabbinic and pagan sources. Recognizing the relevance of these sources can offer us a richer analytic framework for the diminution of these non-intellectual modes of religious authority, and for the concomitant rise of the Christian intellectual.

 Aune, Prophecy, 189; emphasis added.

Francesca Schironi

Eusebius’ Gospel Questions and Aristarchus on Homer—Similar Strategies to Save Different ‘Sacred’ Texts Posing questions and providing answers on difficult passages of the Old and New Testaments was quite popular among Jewish and Christian writers. This method, however, was not invented to discuss the Bible and the Gospels. Questions and responses on difficult topics or texts in fact had a long tradition in the Graeco-Roman world, both in the teaching practice as well as in more learned exegesis.¹ In particular, since the first centuries of the classical period, the Homeric text, with its inconsistencies and ethical issues, raised problems to many readers, who tried to solve them in different ways. The first treatise on the topic we know of was put together by Aristotle in his Homeric Problems ² but questions and solutions (zetemata and lyseis) on Homer remained popular through the Hellenistic and Imperial periods.³ In the Christian world, eratopokriseis (as this genre is called by Biblical scholars and scholars of early Christianity) became even more widespread. While Philo of Alexandria used this method to comment on the Bible, this practice became particularly popular with the Christians, among whom were Eusebius, Ambrosiaster, Jerome, and Au-

I would like to thank Lewis Ayres, who first suggested that I should read Eusebius’ Gospel Ques tions and then gave useful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. A special thanks goes to Matt Crawford, who exchanged many emails with me, shared bibliography, and gave very useful suggestions for improving this paper.  On the practice of questions and answers in Greek antiquity, see H. Dörrie, “Erotapokriseis,” RAC 6 (1966): 342 70; C. Jacob, “Questions sur les questions: archéologie d’une pratique intel lectuelle et d’une forme discursive,” in Erotapokriseis: Early Christian Question and Answer Lit erature in Context, ed. A. Volgers and C. Zamagni (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 25 54.  Frs. 142 179 Rose. See H. Hintenlang, Untersuchungen zu den Homer Aporien des Aristoteles (PhD diss., Heidelberg, 1961); R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship, vol. 1: From the Begin nings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 69 71; N. J. Ri chardson, “Aristotle’s Reading of Homer and Its Background,” in Homer’s Ancient Readers: the Hermeneutics of Greek Epic’s Earliest Exegetes, ed. R. Lamberton and J. J. Keaney (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 30 40, at 36 37.  On Homeric zetemata and lyseis, see A. Gudeman, “λύσεις,” in Paulys Real Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, vol. 13, ed. G. Wissowa (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1927), 2511 29, at 2511 19; F. M. Combellack, “The λύσις ἐκ τῆς λέξεως,” AJPh 108 (1987): 202 19. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110608632 012

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gustine.⁴ Recent discussions especially center on the status of this type of literature, whether this is a ‘real’ genre and which works belong to it.⁵ I will focus here on Eusebius’ Questions and Answers on the Gospels, which is the most ancient text of this type among Christian writers that has reached us. The work is not extant in its original form, but is transmitted in excerpts in various languages; the main version is a Greek epitome, which is divided into two parts, Questions to Stephanus and Questions to Marinus. There are also fragments in Latin, Syriac, Coptic, and Arabic. Without discussing the genre in relation to Eusebius⁶ and without offering an in-depth study of Eusebius’ Questions,⁷ I will

 The most detailed survey of this genre among Christian and Jewish authors is still the two ar ticles of G. Bardy, “La littérature patristique des ‘Quaestiones et responsiones’ sur l’Écriture Sainte,” RBi 41 (1932): 210 36, 341 69, 515 37; and G. Bardy, “La littérature patristique des ‘Quaestiones et responsiones’ sur l’Écriture Sainte,” RBi 42 (1933): 14 30, 211 29, 328 52. More recent and yet good is C. Zamagni, “Is the Question and Answer Literary Genre in Early Christian Literature a Homogeneous Group?”, in La littérature des questions et réponses dans l’Antiquité profane et chrétienne: de l’enseignement à l’exégèse. Actes du séminaire sur le genre des questions et réponses tenu à Ottawa les 27 et 28 septembre 2009, ed. M. P. Brussières (Turnh out: Brepols, 2013), 241 67. Cf. also C. F. G. Heinrici, “Zur patristischen Aporienliteratur,” AKSGW 27 (1909): 842 60 (with a list at 848 49); Dörrie, “Erotapokriseis”; A. Garzya, “Appunti sulle erotapocriseis,” VetChr 29 (1992): 305 14 (a more cursory overview); and the articles collected in M. P. Brussières, ed., La littérature des questions et réponses dans l’Antiquité profane et chré tienne: de l’enseignement à l’exégèse. Actes du séminaire sur le genre des questions et réponses tenu à Ottawa les 27 et 28 septembre 2009 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013).  See L. Perrone, “Sulla preistoria delle ‘quaestiones’ nella letteratura patristica. Presupposti e sviluppi del genere letterario fino al IV sec.,” AnnSE 8 (1991): 485 505; the collection of articles in A. Volgers and C. Zamagni, eds., Erotapokriseis: Early Christian Question and Answer Litera ture in Context (Leuven: Peeters, 2004); Y. Papadoyannakis, “Instruction by Question and An swer: The Case of Late Antique and Byzantine Erotapokriseis,” in Greek Literature in Late Antiq uity: Dynamism, Didacticism, Classicism, ed. S. F. Johnson (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006), 91 105.  For this, see L. Perrone, “Le Quaestiones evangelicae di Eusebio di Cesarea. Alle origini di un genere letterario,” AnnSE 7 (1990): 417 35; and C. Zamagni, “Une introduction méthodologique à la litérature patristique des questions et réponses: le cas d’Eusèbe de Césarée’,” in Erotapok riseis: Early Christian Question and Answer Literature in Context, ed. A. Volgers and C. Zamagni (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 7 24 (with a good survey of the different answers offered by scholars). Cf. also Bardy, “La littérature patristique” (1932), 228 36.  For a detailed philological commentary of the epitome, with list of parallel passages, see C. Zamagni, L’extrait des Questions et Réponses sur les Évangiles d’Eusèbe de Césarée: un Com mentaire (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016). Zamagni has also curated the most recent critical edition of the epitome, which I will follow in this article; see C. Zamagni, Eusèbe de Césarée, Questions évangéliques. Introduction, texte critique, traduction et notes, SC 523 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2008). For a text with all the fragments (beyond the Greek epitome) and English translations, see Eusebius, Gospel Problems and Solutions = Quaestiones ad Stephanum et Marinum (CPG

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here look at this text from a ‘comparative’ point of view—as a classicist who has worked on Alexandrian scholarship. In fact, while it is generally acknowledged that Eusebius takes his method and approach from classical predecessors,⁸ to my knowledge there is no study that tries to compare Eusebius’ modus operandi to that of the Hellenistic philologists. In what follows, then, I will look at the exegetic strategies employed by Eusebius (ca. 260/4– 337/40 CE) and compare them to those employed by Aristarchus of Samothrace, the most famous Alexandrian grammarian (ca. 216 – 144 BCE), in discussing Homer. The striking similarities as well as a few telling differences in how these two scholars approach ‘problems’ in two auctoritates (Homer and the Gospels) will at least shed some light in the continuity (and development) of exegetical practices between the classical and Christian worlds.

1 In Aristarchus’ Path I will here limit my analysis to the Greek epitome of the Gospel Questions. The longer, sixteen Questions to Stephanus discuss problems at the beginning of the Gospels, especially concerning the genealogies of Jesus; the Questions to Marinus, on the other hand, are only four and focus on the ending of the Gospels, especially the resurrection. In many of these questions Eusebius employs strategies which recall those used by Aristarchus in commenting on Homer. I will survey them here, dividing them according to the method adopted to ‘solve’ each question.

1.1 Clarifying an Author from the Author Himself: Linguistic Analysis Backed up by Textual References to Other Passages The most obvious way to solve a textual problem is to reinterpret the passage at issue and show that if the text is correctly understood, there is in fact no problem

3470), ed. R. Pearse, trans. D. J. D. Miller (Greek, Latin), A. C. McCollum (Syriac, Arabic), C. Downer (Coptic) and others (Ipswich, UK: Chieftain, 2010).  See Heinrici, “Aporienliteratur,” 854; and A. E. Johnson, “Rhetorical Criticism in Eusebius’ Gospel Questions,” StPatr 18 (1986): 33 39 (on which, see below); Perrone, “Le Quaestiones evangelicae di Eusebio di Cesarea,” 419; cf. also Heinrici, “Aporienliteratur,” 851 53; Dörrie, “Erotapokriseis,” 366; Zamagni, “Question and Answer Literary Genre,” 265 67.

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at all. This often entails a different, non-standard interpretation of a word or phrase in the problematic passage. Such a procedure often occurs in the Aristarchean scholia. For example, scholars found it problematic when Homer introduces Pandarus as the one, ‘to whom Apollo himself gave the bow (τόξον… ἔδωκεν)’ (Il. 2.827) because at Il. 4.105 – 111 Homer claims that an artisan built Pandarus’ bow, which could not then be a gift from the god. Aristarchus solves the apparent contradiction by suggesting that τόξον in Il. 2.827 does not mean the object, but is to be understood in an abstract way as ‘the art of archery’, which Pandarus learnt from Apollo (Sch. Il. 2.827a: ὅτι οὐ τὸ τόξον λέγει, ἀλλὰ τὴν τοξικὴν ἐμπειρίαν).⁹ In addition, the Aristarchean scholia often back up specific linguistic interpretations by a reference to other Homeric passages where the same expression is used and has the meaning which Aristarchus also wants to apply to the debated passage. This is what is generally understood to be the Aristarchean principle of ‘clarifying Homer from Homer’. While in his fragments we never find this principle formulated in this way,¹⁰ it certainly describes Aristarchus’ approach to Homer very well, in his constant effort to seek answers within the text itself ¹¹—starting with linguistic problems, which are solved by looking at other similar usages in the Homeric poems. An example of this practice occurs in Iliad 1, when Apollo shoots arrows against the Greek camp to spread the plague and Homer says that first he attacked οὐρῆας…καὶ κύνας (Il. 1.50). While κύνας are obviously ‘dogs’, the ancients were in doubt about the meaning of οὐρῆας. Aristotle discussed the question and suggested that οὐρῆας were ‘sentinels’ (Poet. 1461a9 – 11). According to Aristarchus, however, the word meant ‘mules’. He found the proof in a later book of the Iliad, at

 In Homer τόξον can indeed sometimes indicate ‘bow’ in a more abstract sense, for example in Il. 2.718: τόξων ἐῢ εἰδώς, ‘skilled with the bow’ (of Philoctetes), in the sense of ‘skilled in arch ery’. Yet in Il. 2.718 the primary meaning is still present, which is not the case in Il. 2.827 accord ing to Aristarchus’ ‘solution’. Furthermore, in Sch. Il. 2.827a Aristarchus does not recall any par allel use of τόξον in a more abstract sense in Homer of course, this could also be due to a loss in the original note, but we enter the realm of speculation. In fact, the same interpretation for a very similar line (τόξον, ὅ τοι πόρε Φοῖβος ᾿Aπόλλων, said by Ajax to Teucer) is given in Sch. Il. 15.441a (ὅτι ‘τόξον’ λέγει οὐ τὸ σκεῦος τὸ πολεμικόν, ἀλλὰ τὴν τοξικὴν τέχνην).  The phrase ‘to clarify Homer from Homer’ (Ὅμηρον ἐξ Ὁμήρου σαφηνίζειν) is rather found in Porphyry, QH I, 56.3 6 Sodano (see below footnote 49). On the origin of this maxim, see Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship, 226 27; N. G. Wilson, “An Aristarchean Maxim,” CR 21 (1971): 172; G. Lee, “An Aristarchean Maxim?” PCPhS 21 (1975): 63 64; N. G. Wilson, “Aris tarchus or a Sophist?” PCPhS 22 (1976): 123; C. Schäublin, “Homerum ex Homero,” MH 34 (1977): 221 27.  See F. Schironi, The Best of the Grammarians: Aristarchus of Samothrace on the Iliad (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2018).

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Il. 23.111, where Agamemnon sends οὐρῆας…καὶ ἀνέρας to the mountains to fetch the wood for Patroclus’ funeral pyre. Since ‘men’ (ἀνέρες) are opposed to οὐρῆες, it is clear that the latter are animals, especially those who carry loads and which are called ἡμίονοι, ‘mules’, at Il. 11.121.¹² The specific reference in Sch. Il. 23.111a to the problem in Il. 1.50 (ὅτι σαφῶς οὐρῆες οἱ ἡμίονοι, πρὸς τὸ ‘οὐρῆας μὲν πρῶτον ἐπῴχετο’ (Il. 1.50)) shows that indeed Aristarchus is here applying the principle of clarifying Homer from Homer to solve the zetema of Il. 1.50. Eusebius, too, delves into linguistic analysis to solve problems in the Gospels. In particular, QESt 15 gives a good example of linguistic analysis backed up by a reference to another work within the same ‘author’, just like Aristarchus does.¹³ The question concerns the meaning that we must attribute to the archangel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary that the son who would be born from her would sit ‘on the throne of David’ (Luke 1.32). Eusebius starts by saying that the phrase ‘to sit on a throne’ has three meanings: it can have a literal sense, indicating that someone is sitting on the throne, made of ivory and wood; it can be used to mean ‘to have power’ (i. e., in metaphorical sense, even if Eusebius does not use this expression); and—Eusebius goes on (at QESt 15.1.8 – 12)— ‘to these two mentioned meanings a third one could be added, according to which the throne promised by God to David could be called ‘his’: it is not [the throne] on which he sat, but [the one] which the divine scriptures mean in the prophecies to him’.¹⁴ Eusebius then quotes Psalm 88 and explains that the promises of a throne to David in that Psalm ‘were not about the kingship on the sensible world (οὐ περὶ τῆς βασιλείας τῆς αἰσθητῆς), nor about a throne conceived

 In fact, in a similar way, οὐρῆας and κύνας at Il. 1.50 are opposed to αὐτοῖσι at Il. 1.51 the ‘men’, whom Apollo shot after the animals (Il. 1.50 52): οὐρῆας μὲν πρῶτον ἐπῴχετο καὶ κύνας ἀργούς,/ αὐτὰρ ἔπειτ’ αὐτοῖσι βέλος ἐχεπευκὲς ἐφιεὶς / βάλλ’(ε) [he first attacked the mules and the swift dogs, but then, shooting a sharp arrow against the men themselves (αὐτοῖσι), he hit them]. As a consequence, οὐρῆας are animals like κύνας: Sch. Il. 1.50a 〈οὐρῆας:〉 ὅτι οὐκ ὀρθῶς τινες ‘οὐρῆας’ τοὺς φύλακας· ἀντιδιαστέλλει γὰρ διὰ τοῦ αὐτοῖσι (Il. 1.51) οὐρῆας: be cause some [take] οὐρῆας to mean ‘the sentinels’, not correctly; for [Homer] opposes them [to the men] through αὐτοῖσι (Il. 1.51).  While for Aristarchus the author is only Homer, when discussing problems in the Bible or in the Gospels, by ‘author’ we must assume the entire sacred corpus of OT and NT.  With ‘prophecies’ I follow the suggestion θεοπρόπων of D. J. D. Miller, “The Greek Abridged Selection (Ecloge in Epitome) from Vatican manuscript Palatinus Graecus 220,” in Eusebius, Gos pel Problems and Solutions = Quaestiones ad Stephanum et Marinum (CPG 3470), ed. R. Pearse, trans. D. J. D. Miller (Greek, Latin), A. C. McCollum (Syriac, Arabic), C. Downer (Coptic) and oth ers (Ipswich, UK: Chieftain, 2010), 1 129, at 83 n. 57 (rather than θεοπρεπῶν in Zamagni, Eusèbe de Césarée, Questions évangéliques, which hardly makes sense).

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in a more physical sense. For they were about some eternal throne’ (QESt 15.3.43 – 46). Eusebius then concludes (QESt 15.4) that the throne promised by Gabriel to Mary is the same throne that God swore to give David in Psalm 88. Reinterpreting difficult words or phrases in order to make their sense acceptable in a context is a very obvious way to solve perceived contradictions or other textual obscurities. Yet both Aristarchus and Eusebius also back up their analysis with other passages within the same ‘text’ (Homer / OT and NT); in this way, by applying the principle of clarifying an author from the author himself, they ‘prove’ that their not-so-straightforward interpretations are indeed possible as they respect the author’s usage.¹⁵

1.2 Clarifying an Author from the Author Himself: Content-related Parallels in the Same Author Recalling other passages in Homer to explain a line is one of the most common strategies in Aristarchus and it goes beyond linguistic analysis. For example, it can also be used to analyze two different episodes in the poem and show that they work in the same way, as happens with one of the most famous zetemata in antiquity, concerning Achilles’ shield. During the combat between Achilles and Aeneas, Homer says that the latter’s spear reaches the golden plate of Achilles’ shield (Ιl. 20.267– 268), having pierced the two plates, one of bronze and the other of tin, while the other three remain undamaged (Il. 20.269 – 272¹⁶). This description implies that the shield has the golden layer underneath, hidden by those of bronze and tin—which sounded very odd. Aristarchus gives two solutions (Sch. Il. 20.269 – 72a). The first is the athetesis of ll. 269 – 272, so that Aeneas’ spear is described only as hitting the (first) golden layer.¹⁷ However, Aristarchus also proposes another interpretation in order not to be accused to be at loss of a better solution and simply get rid of the problematic lines (Sch.

 Linguistic analysis is used in QESt 3.1 and QESt 12.2.  Il. 20.267 272: οὐδὲ τότ’ Αἰνείαο δαΐφρονος ὄβριμον ἔγχος / ῥῆξε σάκος· χρυσὸς γὰρ ἐρύ κακε, δῶρα θεοῖο· / ἀλλὰ δύω μὲν ἔλασσε διὰ πτύχας, αἳ δ’ ἄρ’ ἔτι τρεῖς / ἦσαν, ἐπεὶ πέντε πτύχας ἤλασε κυλλοποδίων, / τὰς δύο χαλκείας, δύο δ’ ἔνδοθι κασσιτέροιο, / τὴν δὲ μίαν χρυσῆν, τῇ ῥ’ ἔσχετο μείλινον ἔγχος [Nor did the mighty spear of wise hearted Aeneas then break through the shield, because the gold stopped it, the gift of the god. He drove it through two folds, but there were still three, since the crooked foot god had laid five layers, two of bronze, and two of tin, and one of gold, in which the spear of ash was stayed].  As the text now sounds: ‘Nor did the mighty spear of wise hearted Aeneas then break through the shield, because the gold stopped it, the gift of the god’.

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Il. 20.269 – 72a: ἵνα δὲ μὴ δοκῇ λύσεως ἠπορηκέναι καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἠθετηκέναι, φησὶν ὅτι…). He thus suggests understanding the passage in the sense that the first external layer of gold has stopped the force of the spear, but also that the shield has been pierced until the third layer (of tin). To prove his interpretation he recalls the wounding of Menelaus in Book 4,¹⁸ where the metal guard around his waist (μίτρη), although pierced, protects Menelaus from a major wound (Il. 4.138). In fact, Aristarchus recalls the zetema of Achilles’ shield when discussing this episode in Book 4 (Sch. Il. 4.138a: ἡ διπλῆ πρὸς τὸ ζητούμενον ἐπὶ τῆς ᾿Aχιλλέως ἀσπίδος) exactly because the wounding of Menelaus explains it. Eusebius, too, refers to similar examples in the Bible to ‘solve’ issues in the Gospels. For example, the first question to Stephanus concerns the fact that the evangelists trace Joseph’s descent, not Mary’s, as they say that Jesus was son of David (who is connected to Joseph). The problem arose because Jesus in fact was not the son of Joseph; so, if the evangelists wanted to trace his descent, they should have focused on Mary’s family, not Joseph’s.¹⁹ At QESt 1.8 Eusebius maintains that it was necessary to present Joseph as the father of Jesus and so keep a secret of Mary’s divine conception because Jesus was believed to be a mortal, and so a father was ‘expected’. In fact, even if Jesus accomplished miracles, this was not enough to make onlookers think that he was of divine birth—the same, in fact, happened with Moses, Elijah, and Elisha and the other prophets, who did accomplish miracles but were mortals. ‘Therefore—Eusebius concludes at QESt 1.8.141– 143 out of these biblical parallels—the fact that he performed miraculous acts did not contribute to make people believe that Jesus was not born from a man’.²⁰ Along the same way, in QESt 2 Eusebius solves the supposed contradiction between the genealogies in Matthew and Luke by recalling similar, different ways to trace genealogies in other books of the Bible (Ruth works like Matthew, the first book of Kingdoms (= 1 Samuel) like Luke, Chronicles has examples both similar to Matthew and to Luke).²¹

 See Schironi, Best of the Grammarians, 288 89.  On this question (QESt 1) and the sources of Eusebius, see C. Zamagni, “Eusebius’ Exegesis between Alexandria and Antioch: Being a Scholar in Caesarea (a Text Case from Questions to Stephanos I),” in Reconsidering Eusebius: Collected Papers on Literary, Historical, and Theological Issues, ed. S. Inowlocki and C. Zamagni (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 151 76.  In the following of the same chapter Eusebius also quotes passages from Matthew and Luke to show the necessity for Jesus to have a father. On this question, see also § 1.4  QESt 12 also proceeds by referring to parallels passages in the OT and in Matthew. QESt 8 solves a problem (why does Matthew 1.6 mention Uriah’s wife in the genealogy?) by using the Psalms. Another example of this procedure is discussed in the following footnote.

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1.3 Solution Justified with the Intention of the Author (or of the Character) A variation of clarifying the author from the author himself is to ‘save’ a passage by focusing on the specific intention of the author. By closely scrutinizing the context, the exegete can thus show that as much as the specific details may seem odd, unfitting or contradictory, they are in fact required by the specific goal the author had in mind. QESt 12 and 13 discuss Matthew’s goal in solving two similar problems concerning the distinction between generations and successions. QESt 12 asks why Matthew (1.17) speaks of fourteen generations between David and the Babylonian captivity when 1 Chron. 3.10 – 16 lists seventeen kings from David to Jeconiah (who was dethroned by Nebuchadnezzar II). For Eusebius the answer is straightforward: ‘he [i. e., Matthew] did not care for succession in his histories, but in his genealogy he includes only as many people as they were necessary to him to complete fourteen generations’ (QESt 12.3.48 – 51). QESt 13, on the other hand, asks why Matthew first lists twelve names in the genealogies from Jeconiah to Joseph (1.12– 16) but then he says that ‘from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations’ (1.17). For Eusebius, this is ‘for the same reason: for, as I said, he wanted to record generations, not successions’ (QESt 13.1.4– 5)—indeed, there can be more generations than successions in a time span since some individuals can live long; hence ‘in this case fourteen generations would be completed in twelve successions’ (QESt 13.1.12– 14).²² While the Aristarchean scholia to the Iliad do not really mention Homer’s intentions, a similar solution occurs when Aristarchus focuses on the intention of the characters. While characters ‘speak’ and ‘think’ through the author’s mind (so their ‘intentions’ are in fact the author’s), looking at ‘intentions’ implies close reading and close scrutiny of the context—which is another way of ‘clarifying an author from the author himself’. One problem discussed by Aristarchus concerns Il. 14.84, when Odysseus addresses Agamemnon as ‘you wretch (οὐλόμενε)’, which sounded disrespectful. While some scholars adopted the solution discussed at § 1.1 and thus gave an ‘unusual’ interpretation of the epithet, considering it to mean ‘mighty’ (Sch. Il. 14.84a: τινὲς ἀποδεδώκασιν ‘οὐλόμενε’ δεινέ) to ‘save’ Agamemnon’s honor, Aristarchus claims that in that specific context  QESt 13.2 3 gives another solution: the two different numbers can be harmonized by assum ing that in 1.17 Matthew also includes Jesus in the generations and also counted two Joachim/ Jeconiah (on this double name, see below § 2.3), bringing the number to fourteen compared to the twelve successions in 1.12 16. To ‘prove’ his solution, Eusebius refers to the Book of Kings, which shows that indeed there were two Joachim/ Jeconiah (QESt 13.3).

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Odysseus’ intention is indeed that of reproaching Agamemnon. Hence a strong, even offensive address is in order and in fact in line with Odysseus’ intentions. Despite the slight differences in the problem treated, Eusebius and Aristarchus show that the specific, contextual circumstances as well the intention of the author or of a character are paramount to approach correctly a text.²³

1.4 Plausibility (εἰκός), Opportunity (καιρός), and Inappropriateness (ἀπρέπεια) In their effort to find solutions to textual problems both Aristarchus and Eusebius share the unflinching belief that their texts of reference are blameless and proceed according to probability and appropriateness, both in terms of respecting the ‘right moment’ and in avoiding details that sound (morally or logically) unfitting. These assumptions of course are necessary for an exegete who deals with a ‘sacred’ text, such as Homer was for the Greeks and the Gospels were for the Christians.²⁴ For this reason, Aristarchus often rejects lines (i. e., athetizes them) because they miss what is required in the specific narrative moment (καιρός) or they lack believability or logical plausibility (εἰκός)—and Homer would have never committed such mistakes.²⁵ Aristarchus also invokes these principles to defend lines from other scholar’s doubts, by stating that a passage is in fact believable, or logical, or fit for the specific situation. One example concerns Il. 10.447 when Diomedes, upon meeting the Trojan Dolon, addresses him by name: ‘Do not, Dolon (Δόλων), put in your mind any thought of escape’. This line caused difficulties to some exegetes who found it odd that the Greek hero knows Dolon’s name, as they never met before. So they suggested reading δολῶν, the participle of δολόω, ‘to deceive’: ‘Do not put in your mind any

 In fact, Eusebius too uses the principle of a character’s intention in QESt 7.1, discussed at § 1.7.  Needless to say, the ‘sacredness’ of Homer is different from the ‘sacredness’ of the Bible and the Gospels; here I am mostly using the adjective ‘sacred’ as a synonym of ‘authoritative’. Yet, while the Greeks never had a ‘real’ sacred text as the Jews and the Christians had with the OT and NT respectively, it is also true that Homer, just like the Bible and the Gospels, was consid ered a foundational text, at the basis of Greek education and culture. In addition, as Herodotus famously states (2.53.2), Homer, together with Hesiod, was considered the founder of Greek re ligion. Cf. also Heinrici, “Aporienliteratur,” 843 44.  See Schironi, Best of the Grammarians, 456 61 (suitability and appropriateness to the mo ment) and 461 63 (believability). On the Aristotelian imprint of these criteria, see F. Schironi, “Theory into Practice: Aristotelian Principles in Aristarchean Philology,” CPh 104 (2009): 279 316; Schironi, Best of the Grammarians, 413 48.

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thought of escape, trying to deceive (δολῶν) [me]’. Aristarchus, however, defends the text: there is nothing wrong with it, as it is plausible (εἰκός) that the Greeks knew certain enemies’ names after ten years of war around Troy (Sch. Il. 10.447a). Eusebius, too, adopts the same criteria to defend the Gospels. We have already encountered QESt 1, where he explains why the evangelists do not trace Mary’s descent, but Joseph’s—which is properly false, since Joseph is not related to Jesus in any way. Eusebius suggests two solutions. The first is carried out with a logical argumentation: Eusebius argues that it is possible to understand by reason (QESt 1.3.42– 43: Ἔστι δὲ καὶ λογισμῷ λαβεῖν) that his contemporaries, seeing Jesus living as a ordinary person among them, would have had problems in accepting that he was born without a father from an unmarried girl; hence it was convenient (λυσιτελὲς ἦν) to depict Jesus as a descendant of Joseph’s family— also because otherwise Mary would have incurred punishment according to Moses’ law (QESt 1.3 – 4.42– 51). On the other hand—Eusebius continues at QESt 1.8—it was even more difficult to believe in the divine birth of Jesus;²⁶ so Eusebius concludes: QESt 1.9.167 171: Οὐκοῦν ἀποδέδεικται ὅτι χρησίμως κατ’ ἐκεῖνο καιροῦ, ἡ μὲν ἐξ ἁγίου πνεύματος τοῦ Ἰησοῦ γένεσις παρὰ τοῖς πολλοῖς ἀπεσιωπᾶτο, ὁ δὲ Ἰωσὴφ ἐν χώρᾳ πατρὸς παρελαμβάνετο· εἰκότως οὖν ὁ πατὴρ τοῦ παιδὸς ἐγενεαλογεῖτο· Therefore it has been demonstrated that it was useful in that occasion that the generation of Jesus through the Holy Spirit was kept hidden to the public and that Joseph was taken to be his father. Thus, plausibly, the father of the son was listed in the genealogy.

Eusebius claims that this detail was ‘useful in that [specific] occasion’ (χρησίμως κατ’ ἐκεῖνο καιροῦ) and, like Aristarchus, concludes that it is thus plausible (εἰκότως) for the evangelist to list Josephus in the genealogy of Jesus. He then continues: QESt 1.10.197 208: Τοῖς γοῦν καθ’ ἡμᾶς ταῦτα παραδεξαμένοις καὶ τὴν ὑπὲρ ἄνθρωπον αὐτοῦ φύσιν ἐπεγνωκόσιν, εἰκότως τά τε λοιπὰ καὶ τὰ τῆς γενέσεως πιστὰ εἶναι ὁμολογεῖ ται· πλὴν ἀλλ’ οἱ θαυμάσιοι εὐαγγελισταὶ ἀναγκαίως τότε παρὰ Ἰουδαίοις τὸν Ἰωσὴφ ἐγε νεαλόγουν αὐτὸν ἐκεῖνον τὸν παρὰ πᾶσι βοώμενον τοῦ Ἰησοῦ πατέρα· εἰ γὰρ τοῦτο παρελ θόντες μητρόθεν αὐτὸν ἐγενεαλόγουν, πρὸς τῷ καὶ ἀπρεπὲς εἶναι τοῦτο, καὶ τῆς τῶν θείων γραφῶν εὐηθείας ἀλλότριον, ὅτι μηδεὶς τὸ πρότερον ἐκ γυναικὸς γενεαλογηθεὶς ἱστορεῖται, ἔδοξεν ἂν ἀπάτωρ τις εἶναι καὶ δυσγενὴς ὁ γενεαλογούμενος· τοῦτο δὲ, ὡς ἔφην, οὐ μικρᾶς ἦν δυσφημίας ὁμοῦ καὶ κατηγορίας· Our contemporary fellows, who have heard these [facts] and who have accepted his super human nature, plausibly accept the rest, including the facts concerning the birth, as trust

 This point has been discussed above, at § 1.2.

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worthy. However, among Jewish people, the excellent evangelists by necessity listed Joseph in the genealogy, since he was universally proclaimed to be the father of Jesus. For if they have avoided this and listed instead his genealogy from his mother’s side, this would have been inappropriate and extraneous to the simplicity of the holy scriptures, because no one is recorded in the past to have had his genealogy listed from the women’s side; moreover, the subject of the genealogy would have appeared to be someone without a father and of low birth. As I said, this could be the origin of no little slender and blame.

At the end, the reason behind the evangelists’ choice is to avoid inappropriateness (ἀπρέπεια). This criterion of ἀπρεπές is very common among Alexandrian critics and it has been much discussed by modern scholars. On the one hand, it can certainly indicate lines perceived as ‘unfitting’ in terms of morality. On the other, it indicates more generally details or facts unfitting within the situation and the characters to which they are attributed.²⁷ In the latter case, then, the idea of πρέπον, ‘appropriateness’, is closely connected to that of respecting the καιρός, the ‘right moment’, as in the following example in which these two criteria are combined to support an athetesis: Sch. Il. 24.130 2a οὔτ’ εὐνῆς; ἀγαθὸν δὲ 〈γυναικὶ κραταιή〉: ἀθετοῦνται στίχοι τρεῖς, ὅτι ἀπρεπὲς μητέρα υἱῷ λέγειν ‘ἀγαθόν ἐστι γυναικὶ μίσγεσθαι’ (cf. ll. 130 1). ἔτι δὲ καὶ ἁπάν των ἀσυμφορώτατόν ἐστι καὶ μάλιστα τοῖς εἰς πόλεμον ἐξιοῦσι· χρεία γὰρ εὐτονίας καὶ πνεύματος. καὶ τὸ λέγειν ὅτι ‘ὁ θάνατός σου ἐγγύς ἐστιν’, ἄκαιρον. διεσκεύακε δέ τις αὐ τούς, οἰηθεὶς ἀποκρέμασθαι 〈τὸ〉 ‘οὐδέ τι σίτου’ (Il. 24.129). πλῆρες δέ ἐστι, ‘σὴν ἔδεαι κρα δίην, οὐδὲ τὸ τυχὸν σίτου μεμνημένος’. ‘Nor [taking heed] of bed? It is good [even to have sexual intercourse] with a woman [death and] a strong [fate are close to you]’: three lines are athetized because it is inappro priate for a mother to say to her son: ‘it is good to have intercourse with a woman’ (cf. ll. 130 131). And it is the most unsuitable of all and in particular for those going to war, for [in this situation] there is necessity of vigor and spirit. And to say ‘death is close to you’ is out of place. Someone wrote these [lines] thinking that ‘not [taking heed] of food’ (Il. 24.129) was incomplete, but it is complete: ‘you will devour your heart, not remembering any food at all’.

Thetis’ advice to Achilles, distraught by the sorrow for Patroclus, is considered suspicious by Aristarchus for several reasons: it is inappropriate (ἀπρεπές) for a mother to suggest to her son to have sex and out of place (ἄκαιρον) to remind

 On the idea of πρέπον in ancient literary criticism (namely, ‘fitting with a context’, which can also imply, but is not limited to, a moral judgment), see M. Pohlenz, “Τὸ πρέπον. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des griechischen Geistes,” in Kleine Schriften, vol. 1, ed. Heinrich Dörrie (Hildesheim: George Olms, 1965), 100 39; and D. M. Schenkeveld, “Aristarchus and Ὅμηρος φιλότεχνος: Some Fundamental Ideas of Aristarchus on Homer as a Poet,” Mnemosyne 23 (1970): 162 78, at 167 70.

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him of his approaching death. Aristarchus’ condemnation of a comment as ‘out of place’ echoes, and in fact is the polar opposite of, Eusebius’ appeal to what is ‘useful in that occasion’ (χρησίμως κατ’ ἐκεῖνο καιροῦ). The two concepts (inappropriateness and lack of opportunity) are exactly those on which Eusebius builds up his defense of the genealogy of David for Jesus. Aristarchus uses them to reject a passage while Eusebius uses them to solve a problem—their goals are different but the strategies are the same.²⁸

1.5 Invoking ‘Ancient Usages’ Within a Self-consistent (Fictional or Historical) World Another possibility to clarify an obscure passage is to recall the ancient usages of the people described in the ‘sacred’ text. This principle is also closely connected to, and in fact derives from, the assumption that the authors of ‘sacred’ texts are flawless and never contradict themselves; hence they must describe a self-consistent society within their entire production. Of course, the supposed ‘ancient usages’ should belong to the world beyond and outside the text itself; in fact, Christian authors often appeal to Josephus or even contemporary Jews to explain an unusual or ‘ancient’ practice or tradition.²⁹ This is not the case, however, with Aristarchus, when he speaks of the custom of the Homeric society. This difference might be simply due to the fact that unlike the Christians, who did have records about Jewish traditions outside the Bible, Aristarchus did not have any other source on the Homeric society except the Homeric poems themselves. Therefore, to find out ‘ancient Homeric usages’ he could only refer to other lines in Homer where the same usages occurred. For example, Aristarchus concludes that it is typical of Homeric society to carry a staff when speaking in public, as this is what happens both in the Iliad (Sch. Il. 10.321a; Sch. Il. 23.568a), in the city at peace depicted on Achilles’ shield (Sch. Il. 18.505a), and in the Odyssey (Sch. Od. 2.37b: ὅτι δι’ ἑκατέρας τῆς ποιήσεως Ὁμηρικὸν ὂν τὸ ἔθος τετήρηται). As is clear, this is another application of the idea of clarifying an author from the author himself. Interestingly, in the Gospel Questions Eusebius follows Aristarchus’ method, as he simply invokes ancient usages without recalling any external evidence, as some of his Christian colleagues do. For example, QESt 4.2  The principle of εἰκός/εἰκότως occurs also at QESt 9.2, QESt 10.1, QESt 11.1; QESt 16.2. The principle of καιρός is invoked at QESt 10.2.  For example, in the Letter to Africanus (§§ 11 12 De Lange) Origen says to have consulted some Hebrews concerning traditions alluded to in the story of Susanna; see R. E. Heine, Origen: Scholarship in the Service of the Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 56 57, 71 72.

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(derived from Iulius Africanus) Eusebius explains the problem of the different genealogies in the Gospels by recalling Israel’s ancient usages. Israel had both ‘natural’ descent (i. e., succession by legitimate birth) and legal descent (i. e., succession from a different father: when someone dies without children and his brother marries the wife of the deceased, the first child born from this marriage is considered the legal heir of the deceased) and this usage can thus explain the genealogical discrepancies in the evangelists: for example, Matthew normally gives the natural descent, Luke legal descent. Eusebius here does not go beyond his ‘sacred text’ to prove these ancient usages with some external testimony.³⁰ Aristarchus, too, explains difficult lines by referring to the ancient usages, i. e. those of the Homeric society. For example, in the archery contest in Book 23, ancient readers found it odd that Meriones, one contestant, takes the bow from Teucer, the other contestant, as soon the latter has shot (Il. 23.870 – 871). While some scholars tried to fix the text by suggesting emendations (see Didymus in Sch. Il. 23.870 – 1a1), Aristarchus keeps the text and simply says that as much as this sounds odd, it is indeed correct: the ancient custom in archery contests was to have one bow only shared by all contenders in order not to favor any contender who might have had a different and better bow (Sch. Il. 23.870 – 1a1);³¹ still, no external source is quoted to prove this point about the heroic society. In solving textual issues by simply invoking ‘ancient usages’ without any reference to external evidence, Aristarchus and Eusebius seem thus to have once again made the principle of clarifying an author from the author himself the leading criterion of their exegesis. They might have thought that being a rational, almost ‘scientific’, method in itself, it did not require additional external support.

1.6 Different Timing Another strategy to ‘save’ a set of texts that seem to offer contradictory accounts of the same episode is to say that these in fact do not concern the same episode

 This law is mentioned in Deut. 25.5 6, even if Eusebius does not openly refer to this pas sage. Yet, even admitting that he had this passage in mind, it is still an ‘internal’ piece of evi dence, as it is within the OT (see footnote 13). This is very different from enquiring among ‘living Hebrews’ as Origen does (see above footnote 29). Another example of Eusebius invoking ancient usages to solve a question is QESt 7.1, discussed at § 1.7.  See also Sch. Il. 23.870 1a2 and Sch. Il. 23.870. This was an ancient zetema, discussed also by Porph., QH Il. 266.8 30 Schrader. Cf. N. J. Richardson, The Iliad: A Commentary. Volume VI: Books 21 24 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 268 69.

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but rather different events happening at different times. While at first sight this can sound as a most extreme application of the idea of a ‘sacred’ text’s flawlessness, both Eusebius and Aristarchus apply this strategy quite skillfully, so that their ‘solutions’ sound credible. QEMar 4 discusses the question of the different accounts in the four evangelists regarding what happens at the tomb: ‘How is it that in Matthew Mary of Magdala, with the other Mary, has seen one angel outside the tomb, sitting on the stone of the tomb, and according to John Mary of Magdala sees two angels, sitting inside the tomb, but according to Luke two men appeared to the women and according to Mark a young man sitting to the right of the tomb was seen by them, that is, Mary of Magdala, Jacob’s Mary, and Salome?’. The first solution proposed by Eusebius is that indeed these are different episodes; first, there is the incident in Matthew, then the one in John, and they concern the appearance of angels; the stories told by Luke and Mark, on the other hand, concern human beings and are different episodes completely. So Eusebius concludes: QEMar 4.2.30 35: Ἔστιν οὖν εἰπεῖν οὕτως, ὅτι τεσσάρων ὄντων τῶν εὐαγγελιστῶν, ἰσάριθ μοι τούτοις καὶ αἱ παρ’ αὐτῶν ἀναγραφεῖσαι φαίνονται ὀπτασίαι· οἵ τε καιροὶ τέσσαρες, καὶ οἱ καθ’ ἕκαστον καιρὸν ὀφθέντες ἰδιαζόντως· ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ αἱ θεώμεναι τῶν γυναικῶν διάφοροι, καὶ οἱ παρὰ τῶν ὀφθέντων λόγοι λεγόμενοι πρὸς αὐτὰς παραλλάττοντες. Thus we can say that the evangelists are four and so are the visions which appear to have been written by them; the occasions are four, and those who were seen in each occasion are different. Similarly, also the women who had the visions are different and the words spoken to them by those who were seen are dissimilar.

Indeed the episodes have so many discrepancies that the solution holds.³² Aristarchus uses the same idea for a rather more mundane episode in Homer. He argues against the Chorizontes, a group of scholars who maintained that the Iliad and the Odyssey were by different authors and, to prove their point, they pointed out to several inconsistencies between them:³³

 A similar explanation (different timing in John and Matthew) occurs in QEMar 3.3. In QESt 16 Eusebius solves the possible contradiction between Matthew and Luke (according to Matthew, Jesus was taken from Bethlehem to Egypt, but Luke says that he was taken to Jerusalem, and then to Nazareth) with the same principle: they recount different events happened at different times. As Matthew Crawford pointed out to me, a similar strategy is employed by Eusebius also in HE 3.24.8 13, where he argues the Gospels are not discordant if one recognizes that they have different chronologies, with the three synoptic ones recording only one year of Jesus’ life, after the arrest of John the Baptist, and the gospel of John recording the time before John’s arrest.  On Aristarchus and the Chorizontes, see Schironi, Best of the Grammarians, 623 51.

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Sch. Il. 21.416a τὸν δ’ ἄγε χειρὸς ἑλοῦσα 〈Διὸς θυγάτηρ ᾿Aφροδίτη〉: ὅτι οἱ Χωρίζοντες (fr. 8 Kohl) φασὶ τὸν τῆς Ἰλιάδος ποιητὴν εἰδέναι συνοῦσαν τῷ Ἄρει τὴν ᾿Aφροδίτην, τὸν δὲ τῆς Ὀδυσσείας διαφώνως Ἡφαίστῳ. λέγειν δὲ δεῖ ὅτι οὐχ οἱ αὐτοὶ χρόνοι ἦσαν τῆς συμβιώσεως. ‘Aphrodite, Zeus’ daughter, taking him [i. e., Ares] by the hand, led him away’: because the Chorizontes (fr. 8 Kohl) say that the poet of the Iliad knows that Aphrodite lives with Ares, while in disagreement [with this view] the poet of the Odyssey [knows that she lives] with Hephaestus. It is necessary to state that the times of the relationship are not the same.

The episode of the Odyssey in question is the account by Demodocus in Od. 8.266 – 366 of the love affair between Ares and Aphrodite: in that occasion Aphrodite is married to the lame Hephaestus. In the Iliad, on the other hand, when Ares is wounded by Athena in the battle of the gods, Aphrodite saves him (Il. 21.416 – 422). From this episode, the Chorizontes concluded that Aphrodite was married to Ares in the Iliad, and then pointed out that this was in contradiction with her being the wife of Hephaestus in the Odyssey. Aristarchus solves the issue by stating that Aphrodite may have been married to (or lived with) both Hephaestus and Ares, but at different times. In particular, Aphrodite first lived with Hephaestus and then, after the affair with Ares and the harsh punishment of Hephaestus, she broke her marriage and started a new liaison with Ares. Demodocus’ song, therefore, refers to the past, while during the war of Troy and Odysseus’ wanderings Aphrodite is married to Ares.³⁴ Even if in this case the two episodes are much hazier in terms of details, Aristarchus’ solution is indeed credible because the two narratives can be logically envisaged as successive and closely linked. So even if this strategy seems at first less convincing than other, more text-based solutions, the cases in which both Aristarchus and Eusebius apply it are plausible enough.

1.7 Etymology and Allegory In QESt 7 Eusebius has to explain why Matthew mentions Tamar, a less than honorable woman. Since Tamar is a prostitute the problem of ‘propriety’ is lurking. The first solution (QESt 7.1– 2) is to refer to Genesis where it is stated that when Tamar acted as prostitute, she was setting a trap to Judah to have a son from him, as she was childless (Gen. 38:11– 27). Having a child was very important ‘at that time’ (explanation on the basis of ancient customs) and moreover she had a noble purpose: to have a child from the family Abraham and Isaac, who  Cf. J. W. Kohl, De Chorizontibus (PhD diss., Darmstadt, 1917), 31 34 (fr. 8).

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were Judah’s ancestors (explanation on the basis of the character’s intentions). On the contrary, Judah had deceived Tamar and was unable to control himself because, when his wife died, he took up a prostitute (i. e., Tamar in disguise)—while Tamar did wait for Judah’s wife to die before carrying on her plans (QESt 7.2). So at the end Tamar turns out to be wise and chaste, compared to Judah. So far, Eusebius has followed the Aristarchean principles outlined above, especially those of logical appropriateness and opportunity, backed up by references within the same author (Genesis). Yet at this point Eusebius speaks of ‘riddles’ (αἰνίγματα) that were not passed in silence by the evangelist (QESt 7.3.78 – 79: ὧν ἕνεκα ἡγοῦμαι μὴ παρασεσιωπῆσθαι τὰ παρὰ τῷ θαυμασίῳ εὐαγγελιστῇ τὰ ἐν τούτοις αἰνίγματα).³⁵ He then embarks in a rather complex allegorical interpretation, supporting it both with etymology and references to other passages in Genesis and Eph. 2.14– 16. Etymology and allegory were often employed simultaneously by Greek exegetes, especially the Stoics, who famously reinterpreted Homeric divine epithets to make them square with their view of the cosmos.³⁶ Aristarchus, too, used etymological analysis.³⁷ On the other hand, while rejecting allegoresis (i.e., allegorical interpretation) because it went beyond the author’s intentions (as the Stoics, for example, applied it), he actually accepted the trope called ‘allegory’ (Sch. Il. 8.195a and 13.359a).³⁸ The latter for the ancients was the use of images and figurative language by the poet himself, and so was a legitimate way of reading a text because it was ‘internal’ to it.³⁹ In this sense, by recalling

 On the importance of ‘riddles’ (αἰνίγματα) for allegorical readings in classical antiquity, see P. T. Struck, Birth of the Symbol. Ancient Readers at the Limits of Their Texts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), who has aptly coined the phrase ‘poetics of the enigma/of the riddle’ (39 and 71).  E. g., Zeno, SVF 1, fr. 103; Cleanthes, SVF 1, frs. 526, 535; Chrysippus, SVF 2, frs. 1021, 1062 1063. The same approach was adopted by Cornutus in his Compedium of the Tradition of Greek Theology (first century CE). Cf. A. A. Long, “Stoic Readings of Homer,” in Homer’s Ancient Read ers: the Hermeneutics of Greek Epic’s Earliest Exegetes, ed. R. Lamberton and J. J. Keaney (Prince ton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 41 66, at 53 57.  See Schironi, Best of the Grammarians, 340 76.  Even if the ancient term for ‘allegory’ is ὑπόνοια and Plut. De aud. poet. 19e f says that ἀλλη γορία is a modern term (ταῖς πάλαι μὲν ὑπονοίαις ἀλληγορίαις δὲ νῦν λεγομέναις), the term ἀλλη γορία is in fact used by Tryphon’s De Tropis (see next footnote) and in these Aristonicus scholia (καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν ἀλληγορία in Sch. Il. 8.195a and ἡ διπλῆ, ὅτι παραλληγορεῖ in Sch. Il. 13.359a) and Tryphon and Aristonicus are dated between the first century BCE and the early first century CE.  Cf. Tryph. ii, Trop. § 1 West: ἀλληγορία ἐστὶ φράσις ἕτερον μέν τι 〈κυρίως〉 δηλοῦσα, ἑτέρου δὲ ἔννοιαν παριστῶσα [allegory is an expression which literally indicates one thing but suggests the idea of another]. Eustathius best describes Aristarchus’ attitude in this regard, commenting the episode of Apollo shooting dogs, mules, and men in Iliad 1 (Eust. 40.25 34, ad Il. 1.46): ‘The story without making too much of this says in a fairly concrete way that Apollo touches the quiv

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other references in the OT and NT to prove his etymological/allegorical analysis, Eusebius follows the same principle: allegory here is not external. In other words, Eusebius is not diving into allegoresis, a forced reading of a text beyond the intention of the original author; rather, he presents his etymological allegory as required by the text itself because the same imagery occurs elsewhere in the ‘sacred text’. This procedure is thus closer to the allegory-trope accepted by Aristarchus; still, this is certainly the solution that sounds the least Aristarchean among those presented in the Gospel Questions. As also noted by Perrone,⁴⁰ this is the only instance of allegorical interpretation in a work that seems in fact to purposely avoid allegory, while using other (Aristarchean) ways to solve problems in the text.⁴¹

2 Beyond Aristarchus? In the solutions surveyed above Eusebius seems to follow Aristarchus mainly with regard to the principle of ‘clarifying an author from the author himself’, variously applied, and the assumption that a sacred text follows by default principles of ‘appropriateness’, ‘logical opportunity’ and ‘plausibility’/’believability’. Yet in some other solutions, especially contained in the Questions to Marinus, Eu-

er, handles the bow, shoots an arrow and strikes, and that those who have been struck fall and many pyres burn for them. And this is what also Aristarchus accepts, as the ancients say. For, as has already been said, he did not want to interpret allegorically anything of what is to be found in Homer, for example, to reduce Zeus to sky, sun, air, or mind; or [to reduce] Athena to wisdom, earth, or aether, or Hera to air or monarchy, or Ares to courage or war, or Hephaestus to fire, and the other [gods] to other [abstract ideas]. But he understood everything according to what has been already shown and said beforehand in the story. And even though allegory is a poetic trope, he [only] considered rhetorical allegory, that is: the rhetorical figure called ‘allegory’ about which we will discuss below’. On Aristarchus’ use of allegory see A. Cucchiarelli, “‘Alle goria retorica’ e filologia alessandrina.” SIFC 15 (1997): 210 30; Schironi, Best of the Grammar ians, 138 42.  Perrone, “Le Quaestiones evangelicae di Eusebio di Cesarea,” 421 with footnote 12.  As Matthew Crawford has rightly pointed out to me, it is probably also significant that Eu sebius doesn’t simply give an ‘allegorical’ reading but first gives a more Aristarchean explana tion (in QESt 7.1 2) and then goes on to allegory (in QESt 7.3), perhaps recognizing that the two strategies had differing persuasive values. On Eusebius’ limited use of allegory and his ‘lit eral exegesis’, see M. J. Hollerich, Eusebius of Caesarea’s Commentary on Isaiah. Christian Exe gesis in the Age of Costantine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 67 102; M. J. Hollerich, “Eusebius,” in The New Cambridge History of the Bible, Volume 1: From the Beginnings to 600, ed. J. C. Paget and J. Schaper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 629 52, at 639 40 (on this specific question on Tamar) and at 649.

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sebius adopts other, more specific Aristarchean strategies and seems in fact even to go beyond Aristarchus in applying philological standards with rigor.

2.1 Athetesis, Manuscript Evidence, Punctuation The first question to Marinus concerns an apparent contradiction between Matthew and Mark, since the former says that the Savior’s resurrection took place ‘late on Sabbaths’ (ὀψὲ Σαββάτων), but in Mark it was ‘early in the morning on the first day of the Sabbaths’ (πρωῒ τῇ μιᾷ τῶν Σαββάτων).⁴² For Eusebius, there are two possible solutions (QEMar 1.1.4: τούτου διττὴ ἂν εἴη ἡ λύσις). The first is the athetesis, since the pericope ‘early in the morning on the first day of the Sabbaths’ is not found in all the copies of Mark. In the best manuscripts of Mark (QEMar 1.1.7: τὰ γοῦν ἀκριβῆ τῶν ἀντιγράφων)—in fact in most manuscripts of Mark (QEMar 1.1.12 – 13: ἐν τούτῳ γὰρ σχεδὸν ἐν ἅπασι τοῖς ἀντιγράφοις τοῦ κατὰ Μάρκον Εὐαγγελίου)—the paragraph ends without it (QEMar 1.1.14: περιγέγραπται τὸ τέλος). So this temporal comment, which is contradictory with the other Gospels, is extraneous to the text of Mark. Hence Eusebius concludes (QEMar 1.1.14– 16): ‘what follows in some rare copies, but not in all, may be superfluous (περιττὰ ἂν εἴη) and especially if it contained a contradiction (εἴπερ ἔχοιεν ἀντιλογίαν) to the evidence of the other evangelists’. Aristarchus famously used athetesis to reject passages that were in contradiction with other passages in Homer⁴³ or that were syntactically or semantically superfluous (στιχοὶ περισσοί).⁴⁴ Yet, while Eusebius invokes the same critical principles, he also explicitly says that the problematic pericope was not well attested in the manuscript tradition—in other words, his athetesis is ‘philologically’ justified. In contrast, there is no case in the Aristarchean scholia to the Iliad where Aristarchus supports an athetesis by claiming that the suspicious lines are missing in some manuscripts. Perhaps this was in fact also the case, but this piece of information got lost in the course of tradition. This possibility cannot be excluded; yet, on the basis of our sources, we can only note that his scholia

 Expressions such as τῇ μιᾷ τῶν Σαββάτων/Σαββάτου or ὀψὲ Σαββάτων are notoriously dif ficult to translate, as σάββατον can mean both ‘week’ or ‘7th day of the week’ (i. e., Sabbath) both in the singular and in the plural; see BDAG, s.v. I have kept my translation as close as pos sible to the original Greek, using the plural ‘Sabbaths’ for Σαββάτων and Sabbath for Σαββάτου.  See Schironi, “Theory into Practice,” 288 90; Schironi, Best of the Grammarians, 453 56.  See D. Lührs, Untersuchungen zu den Athetesen Aristarchs in der Ilias und zu ihrer Behand lung im Corpus der exegetischen Scholien (Hildesheim: Olms Weidmann, 1992), 18 148; Schironi, Best of the Grammarians, 463 68.

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discussing atheteseis never mention manuscript evidence when rejecting a line. As our evidence goes, therefore, all Aristarchus’ atheteseis are based on internal reasons only.⁴⁵ On the other hand, Eusebius backs up his subjective judgment (contradiction with other passages and superfluity) with more objective data (manuscript evidence). In addition to the athetesis, however, Eusebius also suggests another solution, more suitable to those who are resistant to athetizing anything in the Gospels (QEMar 1.2.19 – 21: ἄλλος δέ τις οὐδ’ ὁτιοῦν τολμῶν ἀθετεῖν τῶν ὁπωσοῦν ἐν τῇ τῶν εὐαγγελίων γραφῇ φερομένων, διπλὴν εἶναί φησι τὴν ἀνάγνωσιν, ὡς καὶ ἐν ἑτέροις πολλοῖς,): QEMar 1.3.29 37: τὸ γὰρ ‘ἀναστὰς δὲ πρωῒ τῇ μιᾷ τοῦ Σαββάτου’ κατὰ τὸν Μάρκον, μετὰ διαστολῆς ἀναγνωσόμεθα· καὶ μετὰ τὸ ‘ἀναστὰς δέ’, ὑποστίξομεν· καὶ τὴν διάνοιαν ἀφορί σομεν τῶν ἑξῆς ἐπιλεγομένων· εἶτα τὸ μὲν ‘ἀναστάς’ ἂν, ἐπὶ τὴν παρὰ τῷ Ματθαίῳ ‘ὀψὲ Σαββάτων’· τότε γὰρ ἐγήγερτο· τὸ δὲ ἑξῆς ἑτέρας ὂν διανοίας ὑποστατικόν, συνάψωμεν τοῖς ἐπιλεγομένοις· ‘πρωῒ γὰρ τῇ μιᾷ τοῦ Σαββάτου ἐφάνη Μαρίᾳ τῇ Μαγδαληνῇ·’. We shall read what is in Mark: ‘having risen again early in the morning in the first day of the Sabbath’ with a pause; and we shall punctuate after ‘having risen again’; and we will separate this idea from what follows. Then ‘having risen again’ would [correspond] to Mat thew’s ‘late on Sabbaths’, for this is when he resurrected. The following part, which gener ates a different idea, let us connect it with what follows: ‘for early in the morning in the first day of the Sabbath he appeared to Mary of Magdala’.

By reading the same text with a different punctuation (which implies a different syntactic articulation of the text), there is no contradiction between Mark and Matthew. The resurrection now takes place in both of them ‘late on Sabbaths’ but then Christ appeared to Mary Magdalene ‘early in the morning’. Solutions based on a different punctuation were common in Alexandrian scholarship and Aristarchus adopted this strategy to solve one of the most famous zetemata in the Iliad. It concerned the meaning of the proem, when Homer said that the ‘will of Zeus was brought to fulfillment’ (Il. 1.5). Aristarchus (Sch. Il. 1.5 – 6) connects this phrase with lines 6 – 7: ‘from when (ἐξ οὗ) first Atreus’ son, lord of men, and the noble Achilles stood apart quarreling’.⁴⁶ In this way, then, Zeus’

 See Schironi, Best of the Grammarians, 448 52.  Il. 1.1 7: Μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω ᾿Aχιλῆος / οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί’ ᾿Aχαιοῖς ἄλγε’ ἔθηκε, / πολλὰς δ’ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν / ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν / οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι, Διὸς δ’ ἐτελείετο βουλή, / ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε / ᾿Aτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος ᾿Aχιλλεύς [The wrath sing, goddess, of Peleus’ son Achilles, a deadly wrath, which caused countless toils to the Achaeans and sent many valiant souls of heroes to Hades and made the men themselves pray for dogs and every bird, and the will of Zeus was brought

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will is closely linked with the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon and refers specifically to his will to honor Achilles, offended by Agamemnon, as Zeus promises to Thetis at Il. 1.503 – 530. Others, however, connected the temporal clause in lines 6 – 7 not to line 5, but backwards to line 1: ‘The wrath sing, goddess, of Peleus’ son Achilles… from when (ἐξ οὗ) first Atreus’ son, lord of men, and the noble Achilles stood apart quarreling’. In this way, the second hemistich of line 5 (‘and thus the will of Zeus was fulfilled’) remained isolated and could then only refer to the entire war of Troy. This reading would have thus supported the later tradition that Zeus caused the Trojan War to solve the problem of overpopulation, as the Cypria recounted (Sch. D Il. 1.5). Aristarchus totally rejected this interpretation as it was based on a non-Homeric mythical tradition; so he found a syntactic solution to read the proem differently. This approach to zetemata is definitely sophisticated and presupposes a rather refined taste for syntactic fineries. While this is not surprising for Aristarchus, Eusebius too shows to be very skilled in this area. Having worked extensively as corrector and editor of the Bible, where punctuation was of course a recurrent problem, he reapplied these skills to the exegesis of the Gospels.⁴⁷

2.2 The Author as Exegete of Himself, Homonymy, and Scribal Mistakes QEMar 2 offers some interesting parallels with Alexandrian practice as well as some important points of departure from it, so it is worth discussing it in more detail. The problem concerns a supposed contradiction between Matthew and John: according to Matthew, Mary Magdalene had witnessed the resurrection ‘late on Sabbaths’ (ὀψὲ Σαββάτων) but in John she stands at the tomb in tears ‘on the first day of the Sabbath’ (τῇ μιᾷ τοῦ Σαββάτου). In this case, too, Eusebius offers two solutions. The first is linguistic: QEMar 2.1.4 11: Οὐδὲν ἂν ζητηθείη κατὰ τοὺς τόπους, εἰ τὸ ‘ὀψὲ Σαββάτων’ μὴ τὴν ἑσπε ρινὴν ὥραν τὴν μετὰ τὴν ἡμέραν τοῦ Σαββάτου λέγεσθαι ὑπολάβοιμεν, ὥς τινες ὑπειλήφα σιν, ἀλλὰ τὸ βραδὺ καὶ ὀψὲ τῆς νυκτὸς τῆς μετὰ τὸ Σάββατον· οὕτω γὰρ καὶ ὀψὲ τῆς ὥρας

to fulfillment, from when first Atreus’ son, lord of men, and the noble Achilles stood apart quarreling].  Origen, too, explains problems by arguing for a different punctuation; see B. Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe (Basel: F. Reinhardt, 1987), 214. Another example brought to my attention by Matthew Crawford is offered by the many discussions involving the punctuation of John 1.3 4 (see Aug. Gen. 13.30 14.31; Chr. Hom. Jo. 5; Theod. Mop. In Jo. 1.3 4).

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εἰώθαμεν λέγειν, καὶ ὀψὲ τοῦ καιροῦ, καὶ ὀψὲ τῆς χρείας· οὐ τὴν ἑσπέραν δηλοῦντες, οὐδὲ τὸν μετὰ ἡλίου δυσμὰς χρόνον, τὸ δὲ σφόδρα βράδιον τούτῳ σημαίνοντες τῷ τρόπῳ· In these passages there would be no problem at all if we took ‘late on Sabbaths’ to mean not the evening time after the day of Sabbath, as some have taken it, but late and into the night after the Sabbath. For in the same way, we also use to say ‘late in the day’, ‘late in time’, and ‘late in business’, not talking about the evening or the time after sunset, but meaning, in this way, ‘very late’.

Eusebius anchors his analysis to modern linguistic usage (οὕτω … εἰώθαμεν λέγειν), which is exactly what Aristarchus does in the following scholium: Sch. Il. 13.493a πιόμεν’ ἐκ βοτάνης: ὅτι ‘ἐκ βοτάνης’ ἐστὶ μετὰ τὴν βόσκησιν, ὡς λέγομεν ‘ἐξ ἀρίστου παρέσομαι’ ἀντὶ τοῦ μετὰ τὸ ἄριστον ‘From the pasture to drink’: because ‘from the pasture’ (ἐκ βοτάνης) is ‘after the pasture’ (μετὰ τὴν βόσκησιν), just as we say ‘I will be there away from lunch (ἐξ ἀρίστου)’ instead of ‘after lunch (μετὰ τὸ ἄριστον)’.

The specific question is different (Aristarchus is here focusing on the Homeric use of different prepositions compared to koine) but the method is the same. Both Aristarchus and Eusebius clarify an odd use in an author by recalling similar uses in daily contemporary language. Rather than clarifying an author from the author himself, they draw parallels with the spoken usage known to the readers, which is also a rather obvious and straightforward exegetical strategy —in fact, it is an easier way to make points clear to contemporary audiences, who might not be expert of all the linguistic usages of the text they are studying but who are certainly at ease with their own daily language. Eusebius, however, also supports his interpretation by calling attention to a linguistic usage in the Gospels and to the very text of Matthew, who has acted as exegete of himself: QEMar 2.1.11 15: ὅθεν ὥσπερ διερμηνεύων αὐτὸς ἑαυτόν, ὁ Ματθαῖος μετὰ τὸ ‘ὀψὲ Σαββάτων’, ἐπήγαγε ‘τῇ ἐπιφωσκούσῃ’, φησί· δηλαδὴ ὥρᾳ τῇ λοιπὸν ἤδη ὑποφαινούσῃ, καὶ ἐπιφωσκούσῃ εἰς τὴν Κυριακὴν ἡμέραν. … 2.2.38 42: Ἔθος δὲ ὅλην τὴν ἑβδομάδα Σάβ βατον καλεῖν, καὶ πάσας τὰς ἡμέρας οὕτως ὀνομάζειν. Λέγεται γοῦν παρὰ τοῖς εὐαγγελισταῖς ‘τῇ μιᾷ τῶν Σαββάτων’· ἐν δὲ τῇ συνηθείᾳ, δευτέρα Σαββάτων, καὶ τρίτη Σαβ βάτων, καὶ τετάρτη Σαββάτων· … 2.2.51 56: ὥστε καὶ ἐξ αὐτοῦ τοῦ πράγματος, καὶ ἐκ τῆς κεκρατηκυίας ἐν ταῖς Ἐκκλησίαις τοῦ Θεοῦ συνηθείας, τὸν διὰ τοῦ ‘ὀψὲ Σαββάτων’ δηλού μενον καιρόν, μὴ τὴν ἑσπερινὴν ὥραν εἶναι, ἀλλὰ ταύτην, ἣν Ματθαῖος αὐτὸς παρέστησεν εἰπὼν ‘τῇ ἐπιφωσκούσῃ εἰς μίαν Σαββάτων’. Hence, as if he wanted to be exegete of himself, after ‘late on Sabbaths’ Matthew added ‘at dawning’, that is, clearly ‘at the time when the day is already started and at dawning towards the Lord’s day’ …The custom was to call the whole week ‘Sabbath’ and all the days also in this way. Thus in the evangelists it is said ‘on the first one day

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of Sabbaths’; and, in normal usage, ‘the second of Sabbaths’, and ‘the third of Sabbaths’, and ‘the fourth of Sabbaths’. …so that from actual practice and the custom that has pre vailed among the churches of God, the moment expressed by ‘late on Sabbaths’ is not the evening time, but the time which Matthew himself has presented saying ‘at dawning towards the first day of Sabbaths’.

Here Sabbath does not mean the day called ‘Sabbath’ but indicates the entire week, and this is typical of the evangelists (e. g., Mark 16.2; Luke 24.1; John 20.1, 19). In this way, Eusebius clarifies an author from the author himself. He, however, also further ‘proves’ his point by pointing out that Matthew has added an additional detail that clarifies what he means, when he says ‘at dawning’, which shows that he does not mean the night of Saturday but in fact the early morning of Sunday, just like John. Aristarchus, too, often points out that Homer is exegete of himself. For example, unlike the Neoteroi (i. e., the poets after Homer), who use the word μῆλα for all the quadrupeds, in Homer the word means only sheep and goats. This becomes clear from Il. 10.485 – 486 (‘just as a lion rushes on flocks [μήλοισιν] without their shepherd / on goats or sheep [αἴγεσιν ἢ ὀΐεσσι], and leaps upon them with evil purpose’), in which Homer explains what μῆλα mean by adding the apposition ‘goats or sheep’ (Sch. Il. 10.486: αἴγεσιν ἢ ὀΐεσσιν: ὅτι ἐπεξηγεῖται, τίνα τὰ μῆλα).⁴⁸ The idea that an author is exegete of himself is not the same as the principle of clarifying an author from the author himself, even though, of course, the two ideas are connected.⁴⁹ In fact, the former is a subdivision of the latter, more general principle: while normally it is the scholar’s task to find the key to explain his author in the text itself, sometimes the explanation is offered by the author himself, who acts as his own exegete offering a ready-made explanation to the scholar. It is thus interesting to note that both Aristarchus and Eusebius comply with both principles in their exegesis. In this question in particular, Eusebius com-

 Indeed, the same self explanation of what μῆλα are in Homer occurs in a line from the Odys sey (Od. 9.184: μῆλ’, ὄϊές τε καὶ αἶγες) quoted in Sch. Il. 10.485b: ὅτι μῆλα οἱ νεώτεροι πάντα τὰ τετράποδα, Ὅμηρος δὲ αἶγας καὶ ὄϊς· ‘μῆλ’, ὄϊές τε καὶ αἶγες’ (Od. 9.184) [because the Neoteroi [call] μῆλα all the quadrupeds, but Homer [calls so] goats and sheep [only]; e. g., μῆλ’, ὄϊές τε καὶ αἶγες’ (Od. 9.184)]. For other examples of this approach in Aristarchus, see R. Nünlist, The An cient Critic at Work: Terms and Concepts of Literary Criticism in Greek Scholia (Cambridge: Cam bridge University Press, 2009), 202 and 203; Schironi, Best of the Grammarians, 220 21.  In fact, Porphyry clearly connects them in QH I, 56.3 6 Sodano: ἀξιῶν δὲ ἐγὼ Ὅμηρον ἐξ Ὁμήρου σαφηνίζειν αὐτὸν ἐξηγούμενον ἑαυτὸν ὑπεδείκνυον, ποτὲ μὲν παρακειμένως, ἄλλοτε δ’ ἐν ἄλλοις [considering it right to clarify Homer from Homer, I have shown that Homer inter prets himself sometimes in passages which are nearby, sometimes in other [more remote] pas sages].

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bines the two strategies, the use in the Gospels and the self-exegesis of Matthew, and concludes that there is agreement between the two Gospels (QEMar 2.3.73 – 74: οὕτω γὰρ ἡ συμφωνία συνδράμοι ἂν τῶν εὐαγγελικῶν φωνῶν) and that ‘in this way the same Mary of Magdala saw both what is in Matthew and what is in John (QEMar 2.4.94– 96). The same idea of ‘accord’ (συμφωνία) among different passages in Homer often recurs in the scholia by Aristarchus (Sch. Il. 2.107a; 3.230a; 7.330b1; 8.19), who has the same agenda: to show that Homer is self-consistent and never contradicts himself. Eusebius then suggests another solution: QEMar 2.6.125 129: Λυθείη δ’ ἂν καὶ ἄλλως τὰ προκείμενα, εἰ ἑτέρας μὲν τὰς παρὰ τῷ Ματ θαίῳ Μαρίας ὑπολάβοις εἶναι, ἑτέραν δὲ τὴν παρὰ τῷ Ἰωάννῃ· τέσσαρας γοῦν τὰς πάσας Μαρίας παρούσας τῷ πάθει τοῦ Σωτῆρος μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων γυναικῶν εὑρίσκομεν· … 2.7.147 154: Τούτων οὖν τῶν τεσσάρων Μαριῶν, εἰ τὰς δύο τὰς παρὰ τῷ Ματθαίῳ ‘ὀψὲ Σαβ βάτων τῇ ἐπιφωσκούσῃ εἰς μίαν Σαββάτων’ ἐλθούσας ἐπὶ τὸ μνημεῖον, καὶ τὸν ἄγγελον θεα σαμένας, ἑτέρας εἶναι ἐκλάβοις παρὰ τὴν ‘πρωῒ τῇ μιᾷ τῶν Σαββάτων, ἔτι σκοτίας οὔσης’ ἀφικομένην μόνην κατὰ τὸν Ἰωάννην, ἀγνοοῦσαν τὸ ἐπὶ τὴν ἀνάστασιν, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο κλαί ουσαν, οὐδὲν ἂν σκολιὸν ἀπαντήσεται, πάσης ἀπορίας καὶ ζητήσεως ἐκποδὼν ἀρθείσης· The [problem] at hand could also be solved in a different way, if you assumed that the Marys in Matthew were different from the one in John. For we find four Marys in total among the other women present at the Saviour’s passion [i. e., Mary the mother of Jesus; her sister, Mary the wife of Clopas; Mary Magdalene; Mary the mother of James and Joseph]. … Of these four Marys, if you were to take the two in Matthew, who came to the tomb ‘late on Sabbaths, at dawning towards the first day of Sabbaths’ and who saw the angel, as dif ferent from the one who in John came alone ‘early in the morning, on the first day of the Sabbaths, while it was still dark’ and who did not know about the resurrection (and this is why she was crying), no obscurity would surface, because every difficulty and question would have been completely removed.

According to this solution, the Marys in Matthew are different from the Mary in John, so the evangelists are describing different episodes with different characters who have however the same name—hence the confusion. Homonymy is an ‘excuse’ often invoked by Aristarchus for similar problems involving a possible contradiction within Homer.⁵⁰ The most famous cases concern ‘resurrected heroes’, that is, those heroes that die and then appear again alive later on in the poem. This is typical of oral poetry, in which minor characters are many (and dispensable); because these are not central figures, an oral poet can sometimes forget that they had been already killed, and reuse their names while recomposing in performance—hence the ‘resurrections’. But for Aristarchus, who did not know that these slips in memory are to be accepted in oral poetry, this  See Schironi, Best of the Grammarians, 267 72.

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was a problem, as the poet was openly contradicting himself. His solution was to assume homonymy, that is, there was more than one hero with the same name. The most famous case is that of Pylaemenes, leader of the Paphlagonians (Il. 2.851), killed by Menelaus at Il. 5.576 – 579. However, in Book 13 he appears again, crying after the funeral chariot of his son Harpalion, who has just been killed by Meriones (Il. 13.658 – 659). Like Eusebius, Aristarchus proposes two solutions: Sch. Il. 13.658 9a ἀχνύμενοι· μετὰ δέ σφι 〈πατὴρ κίε δάκρυα λείβων, /〉 ποινὴ δ’ οὔ τις παιδὸς 〈ἐγίνετο τεθνηῶτος〉: ἀθετοῦνται ἀμφότεροι, ὅτι πλανηθείς τις ἐκ τοῦ ‘ὅ ῥα πατρὶ φίλῳ ἕπετο’ (Il. 13.644) ἔταξεν αὐτούς, ἵνα καὶ ὁ πατὴρ τὸν υἱὸν ὀδύρηται. οὐ λέγει δὲ ‘νῦν ἕπετο’, ἀλλ’ ὅτε τὸ πρῶτον ἐκ τῆς πατρίδος παρεγίνετο· διὸ καὶ πρόσκειται τὸ ‘ἐς Τροίην, οὐδ’ αὖτις ἀφίκετο’ (Il. 13.645). εἰ δὲ μένοιεν οἱ στίχοι οὗτοι, νοητέον ὁμωνυμίαν εἶναι. ‘Grieving; and with them went his father, shedding tears; but there was no blood price for his dead son’: both lines are athetized because someone misled by ‘[Harpalion,] who fol lowed his dear father’ (Il. 13.644) added them, so that the father, too, could mourn the son. But [the poet] does not say: ‘[who] then followed’, but when first he came from his country: therefore, the line ‘to Troy, but he did not come back’ (Il. 13.645) is also added. But if these two lines remain, we must consider it a case of homonymy.

The first option is the athetesis. Aristarchus supports it by stating that an interpolator misunderstood the meaning of Il. 13.644 (by ‘[Harpalion,] who followed his dear father’), thinking that it meant that Harpalion followed his father Pylaemenes on that very day to fight the Greeks, rather than that Harpalion simply followed his father to the war, when it first started (which is the correct meaning). As a consequence of his misunderstanding that both father and son were present in this specific episode, the interpolator added lines 658 – 659, so that the father, Pylaemenes, could mourn his son after he had been killed. Since this was an addition due to a misunderstanding, for Aristarchus these lines could be dispensed of. He, however, also provides an alternative lysis which avoids the athetesis: homonymy, that is, in Homer there are two Pylaemenes, one killed by Menelaus in Book 5, and the other, father of Harpalion, in Book 13. In comparing Eusebius and Aristarchus in these cases we might say that Eusebius seems to have refined Alexandrian philological techniques. First, as we saw in the previous section, in QEMar 1.1 Eusebius supports an athetesis by stating that the pericope at issue is not well attested in the manuscripts of Mark. This is in striking contrast with Aristarchus, who in this case speaks of an interpolation but without substantiating his claim by data from the manuscript tradition— that is, that the line was for example missing in some of the copies he inspected. He simply assumes the action of some ‘interpolators’ but does not have any ex-

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ternal evidence to support his claim.⁵¹ So, as already noted above at § 2.1, Aristarchus does not seem to be preoccupied to give ‘external’ support to his subjective judgments. As for homonymy, here too Eusebius seems to employ the criterion a bit more skillfully than Aristarchus. Pylaemenes in the Iliad can hardly be a homonym: he is always said to be from Paphlagonia and the name is not common.⁵² On the other hand, Mary is a very common name and there are actually many Marys in the Gospels, so Eusebius can carry out his ‘solution’ more persuasively. In fact, Eusebius goes a step further in addressing a possible objection to his ‘solution’: that in both Matthew and John this Mary is said to be ‘of Magdala’, which would definitely problematize the homonymy argument: QEMar 2.8.162 171: Εἰ δὲ τὸ τῆς Μαγδαληνῆς προσκείμενον ἐν ἀμφοτέροις τοῖς εὐαγγελι σταῖς ὄνομα τὴν διάνοιαν ταράττει, ἀλλ’ οὐ προσήκει τὴν θείαν συγχεῖν γραφὴν λέξεως μιᾶς ἢ ὀνόματος ἕνεκεν, ὃ πολλάκις συμβαίνει καὶ κατὰ γραφικὸν προσκεῖσθαι σφάλμα· ἢ γὰρ δύο καὶ ταύτας ἀπὸ μιᾶς πόλεως ἢ κώμης τῆς Μαγδαληνῆς ὁρμᾶσθαι ἡγητέον· ἢ ἐπὶ μιᾶς αὐτῶν προσκεῖσθαι τὸ τῆς Μαγδαληνῆς ἐπώνυμον, ἅπαξ τοῦ γραφέως κατὰ τὴν ἀρχὴν σφαλέντος, ὅτι ἐξ ἐκείνου τῶν μετ’ αὐτὸν πρώτῳ ἐπηκολουθηκότων σφάλματι· But if the name ‘of Magdala’, which is present in both evangelists, causes confusion in the sense, one should not tamper with the divine scripture because of one word or name, which often happens to be due to a scribal mistake. We must either suppose that these two women came both from the same city or village, that of Magdala; or that the appellative ‘of Mag dala’ was given only to one of them and that, once a scribe made a mistake early on, the scribes after him followed this first mistake.

Eusebius here demonstrates to be a rather skillful philologist in realizing the possible objection to his argument—a self-critical attitude which is often lacking in Aristarchus’ fragments.⁵³ On the other hand, here Eusebius falls in the same pitfalls that we have highlighted for Aristarchus in the Pylaemenes question: the supposition of a scribal mistake without any external proof.⁵⁴ In fact, he himself

 For this problem in Aristarchus, see Schironi, Best of the Grammarians, 484 90.  Indeed, modern scholars still discuss the ‘Pylaemenes problem’; cf. G. M. Bolling, The Athe tized Lines of the Iliad (Baltimore: Waverly Press, 1944), 134 35; O. Tsagarakis, “Pylaimenes’ Tod und Auferstehung: Ein Widerspruch in der Ilias?” Hermes 104 (1976): 1 12; R. Janko, The Iliad: A Commentary. Volume IV: Books 13 16, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 126; H. Erbse, Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem (scholia vetera), 7 vols. (Berlin: DeGruyter, 1969 1988), ad Sch. Il. 13.658 9a (with bibliography).  Not always, however. For example, Aristarchus is aware that his athetesis may cause prob lems to some scholars or readers in Sch. Il. 20.269 72a (discussed at § 1.2).  Origen, too, assumes a scribal mistake to solve a problem in Matthew in his homily to Psalm 77; see discussion in M. M. Mitchell, “‘Problems and Solutions’ in Early Christian Biblical Inter

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realizes that this is not the best course of action and so ultimately decides that it is indeed better to consider the existence of two Marys, both from Magdala, rather than supposing a scribal mistake: QEMar 2.9.186 190: Κάλλιον δὲ τὸ μὴ δὲ σφάλμα αἰτιάσασθαι κατὰ τοὺς τόπους, δύο δὲ ἀληθῶς γεγονέναι τὰς Μαγδαληνὰς φάσκειν, ὡς καὶ τέτταρας ἀπεδείξαμεν τὰς Μαρίας· ὧν οὐδὲν ἄτοπον ἀπὸ τῆς αὐτῆς Μαγδαληνῆς δύο Μαρίας ὁρμᾶσθαι λέγειν, μηδέν τε λοιπὸν ἀπορεῖν. But it is better not to invoke a mistake in these passages and to say that indeed there were two [women] from Magdala since we also demonstrated that there were four Marys. It would not be strange, then, to say that of these [four Marys] two Marys came from the same city of Magdala, and not to worry further.

We might not be satisfied with this double homonymy (i. e., same name and same place of origin) but it at least shows that Eusebius was well aware of the basics of philological methodology: it is not legitimate to suppose external interpolations or scribal errors if manuscript evidence does not support such an assumption.⁵⁵

2.3 Double Names Another Aristarchean principle to solve possible inconsistencies, and in fact one that is the reverse of the homonymy principle, is to claim that a character can have two different yet related names. This helps to address cases in which different names are used for what is considered to be the same person.⁵⁶ For example, a Myrmidon called Alcimedon is first introduced at Il. 16.197; in Book 17 he appears again in the battle for Patroclus’ body with his companion Automedon (Il. 17.467, 475, 481, 500, 501). Alcimedon never again appears in the Iliad, but at Il. 19.392, 24.474, 574 we find Alcimus, another Myrmidon, who is always in in company of Automedon; hence Aristarchus concludes that this is the same hero for whom Homer has used an abbreviated form of the name (Sch. Il. 19.392a1.2; 24.574: ὅτι συγκέκοφε τὸν ᾿Aλκιμέδοντα Ἄλκιμον εἰπών). Similarly,

pretation: A Telling Case from Origen’s Newly Discovered Greek Homilies on the Psalms (Codex Monacensis Graecus 314),” Adamantius 22 (2016): 40 55, at 46 47.  QEMar 3.4 also invokes homonymy (i. e., they are different Marys) to solve the following question: ‘How is it that the same Magdalene, who has touched the Savior’s feet with the other Mary ‘late on Sabbaths’ according to Matthew, is told ‘not to touch me’ ‘early in the morn ing on the first day of the Sabbath’ according to John?’.  See Schironi, Best of the Grammarians, 272 73.

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in QESt 10, Eusebius addresses the question of why Matthew 1.11 calls Jehoiachim ‘Jeconiah’ and solves it by stating that he had two names (διώνυμος οὗτος ἦν). Both scholars make the same point, yet here Eusebius is able to support this claim on a stronger basis than Aristarchus. The latter, in fact, had no further evidence except that the names at issue are quite similar and that this person is a Myrmidon and is always accompanied by the same companion Automedon. Eusebius, on the contrary, is able to find another passage in the OT where the name Jeconiah rather than Jehoiachim occurs: Jer 22.28 (QESt 10.3.53 – 55). This evidence gives additional strength on the argument, which is lacking in Aristarchus. In both Eusebius and Aristarchus the starting point is that the names at issue are quite similar, so that it is easy to assume a variation; yet Eusebius is able to find a proof for it, while Aristarchus is stuck with an ‘educated guess’ based on a logical inference.

3 Conclusions This survey has shown that beyond a generic imprint of Alexandrian scholarship on Eusebius’ Questions, there are very specific strategies, which occur similarly or even identically in the Questions as well as in the Homeric commentaries of Aristarchus. Among the strategies most commonly used by Eusebius and Aristarchus we have isolated the following: 1. Linguistic analysis/reinterpretation: i. referring to other passages in the same text/author ii. referring to similar modern linguistic usages 2. Looking for explanations given by the author himself (i. e., the author is his own exegete) 3. Looking for the author’s/character’s intention 4. Etymology 5. ‘Internal’ allegory 6. Recalling ‘ancient usages’ 7. Plausibility/believability (εἰκός) 8. Opportunity (καιρός) 9. Avoidance of inappropriateness (ἀπρέπεια) 10. Homonymy 11. Double names 12. Different timing 13. Choosing a different punctuation 14. Athetesis 15. Assuming scribal mistakes/interpolations

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Many of these strategies (1– 6) are based on the general principle of explaining an author from the author himself, which becomes the golden rule for Alexandrianoriented philology.⁵⁷ In addition, because both Homer and the Gospels have a ‘sacred’ status in the society of Aristarchus and Eusebius respectively, the two scholars need to assume that their authors have composed them flawlessly; hence the aesthetic principles invoking plausibility/believability (εἰκός), opportunity (καιρός), and avoidance of inappropriateness (ἀπρέπεια) (7– 9)—principles which ultimately stem from an Aristotelian approach to literary texts.⁵⁸ The assumed lack of flaws in sacred texts is also at the basis of more ad-hoc solutions invoking homonymy, double names, or different timing (10 – 12), even if these lyseis often also require some specific textual analysis to prove that identical names are used for more than one character, or, on the contrary, that similar but not identical names refer to the same character, or that episodes which seem similar are in fact different and happening at different times. Finally, both scholars can also act upon the text by rejecting lines or invoking scribal mistakes or a different punctuation (13 – 15)—emendation and editorial techniques are here employed to ‘save’ the text. Already Johnson has suggested a link between Eusebius’ method and literary criticism in the Graeco-Roman world.⁵⁹ However, he limited his analysis mostly to Eusebius and to cursory references to the manuals of rhetoric of Theon, Aphthonios and Hermogenes as well as to the six parts of grammar as described by the first chapters of Dionysius Thrax’s Techne Grammatike. By showing specific parallels between Eusebius’ Questions and fragments of Aristarchus’ Homeric commentaries, the present analysis has further proven that Eusebius uses methods and strategies employed by the most famous of the Homeric commentators, Aristarchus. While the six parts of grammar later defined by Dionysius Thrax are already present in Aristarchus’ philology,⁶⁰ the points of contact between Eusebius and Aristarchus are specifically the strategies employed to solve zetemata. Greek scholars first developed those strategies in order to ‘save’ Homer, a fundamental text in Greek paideia, which could however elicit accusations of internal contradictions, unsoundness, and even immorality. More specifically, Aristarchus developed some of these strategies in a very rational way, excluding for example allegoresis. We have found some of these

 This category, of course, excludes the reference to similar modern linguistic usages (1.ii), which however is a very basic form of linguistic explanation, not necessarily linked with Alex andrian or Aristarchean scholarship.  See Schironi, “Theory into Practice.”  Johnson, “Rhetorical Criticism.”  See Schironi, Best of the Grammarians, 93 544.

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very strategies in the Gospel Questions. Therefore, rather than taking inspiration from rhetorical schools, as suggested by Johnson, Eusebius seems to follow the Alexandrian, more specifically Aristarchean, method in discussing textual problems.⁶¹ In addition, Johnson interpreted this method as ‘a method of attack and defense, not of analysis; refutation seeks to discredit, not to understand’.⁶² On the contrary, in my view Eusebius does analyze his text, albeit to ‘save’ it, as does Aristarchus with Homer. Their object of analysis was a text that for various reasons was considered sacred—Homer for the Greeks and the Gospels for the Christians—hence they necessarily had an apologetic goal when discussing zetemata; yet this attitude did not entail open attacks aimed at discrediting ‘academic opponents’. In fact, I think that both Aristarchus and Eusebius were convinced that even if they had sometimes a polemical target (the detractors of Homer or Zenodotus for Aristarchus and especially Porphyry for Eusebius), their exegetical method was a correct and ‘scientific’ way to comment on and clarify texts that presented what, at a superficial reading, seemed problematic points. A separate question concerns the interpretation of these similarities between Aristarchus and Eusebius. We can think of ‘exegetical universals’: the way commentators work on a text would follow standard and obvious methods, which are always the same independently from the texts, without any connection among different exegetical traditions. This is certainly a possibility, especially in the field of technical/philological exegesis, as carried out by both Aristarchus and Eusebius, who proceed by logical steps—and logical steps are by definition limited and quite predictable (insanity is much more inventive). However, the number of these exegetic similarities and above all the specificity of some of these strategies (such as homonymy or different timings) as well as the use of the same technical terminology (e. g., ἀθετεῖν, εἰκός, ἀπρεπές) seem to suggest a

 While rhetoric and grammar/philology share many common strategies and technical vocabu lary, they are not the same discipline, even if the boundaries are often fuzzy to define. For ex ample, in the discussion of tropes and schemata, rhetorical handbooks are different from more grammatically oriented ones; see D. M. Schenkeveld, “Figures and Tropes: A Border Case be tween Grammar and Rhetoric,” in Rhetorik zwischen den Wissenschaften. Geschichte, System, Praxis als Probleme des ‘Historischen Wörterbuchs der Rhetorik, ed. G. Ueding (Tübingen: Nie meyer, 1991), 149 57; Schironi, Best of the Grammarians, 125 26. On the other hand, my claim is limited only to Eusebius’ Gospel Questions. Since the ‘genre’ of erotapokriseis is so di verse, other texts that belong to it might have a much more ‘rhetorical’ stance; for instance, the examples discussed by Papadoyannakis, “Instruction by Question and Answer,” 94 100, have a more pedagogical/performative attitude rather than scholarly aim.  Johnson, “Rhetorical Criticism,” 37.

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more direct influence of the Alexandrian method on Eusebius. If so, how did Eusebius learn about Alexandrian scholarship and their approach to zetemata? No doubt, Eusebius had had a good education and was acquainted with classical culture, from philosophy to grammatike. So he had probably encountered the system of posing questions and answer in his own education. However, when we look at the specific and highly distinct strategies which he employs to discuss the Gospels, we need to assume his acquaintance with Alexandrian and in particular Aristarchean scholarship. Eusebius might have even read the very Aristarchus’ commentaries, if they were still available at that time.⁶³ More likely, however, the link between Aristarchus and Eusebius was mediated by indirect knowledge, since we have no evidence that Aristarchus’ commentaries or similar type of technical literature became part of the school curriculum, especially in the third or fourth century CE; nor do we have evidence of a direct reading of Aristarchus by Eusebius.⁶⁴ The ‘genre’ of questions and answers was not initiated by Eusebius among Christian writers. We know that already in the second century CE Tatian compiled a list of Problemata in the Bible, but it is uncertain whether or not these ‘problems’ were also followed by their solutions.⁶⁵ Since there is no evidence of solutions offered by Tatian and since, even though he knows their existence, the way Eusebius refers to Tatian’s Problemata in HE 5.13.8 suggests that he probably never saw the text,⁶⁶ we need to look elsewhere. Philo of Alexandria and Origen are the other, most obvious candidates for inspiring Eusebius’ solutions.⁶⁷ Philo of Alexandria is considered the forerunner of the genre among Jews and Christians with his Questions on Genesis and Questions on Exodus, which are

 We do not know until what time Aristarchus’ work could be consulted. In the second century CE, Herodian most likely knows them first hand; around the same time, Galen tells us (PA 13) that the libraries on the Palatine possessed very old and important originals, such as the Ari starcheia, which we understand to be his editions or commentaries of Homer.  A. J. Carriker, The Library of Eusebius of Caesarea (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 75 154, 299 303, does not list Aristarchus or any other grammatikos among the pagan authors which Eusebius knew first hand.  Cf. Perrone, “Sulla preistoria delle ‘quaestiones’ nella letteratura patristica,” 499; M. R. Crawford, “The Problemata of Tatian: Recovering the Fragments of a Second Century Christian Intellectual,” JThS 67 (2016) , 542 75, at 543. On the problems in reconstructing Tatian’s work and personality, see Crawford, “The Problemata of Tatian.”  Eusebius is simply passing on the report of Tatian’s Problemata from Rhodon, who was a disciple of Tatian and tells about his teacher’s work; see Crawford, “The Problemata of Tatian,” 543. As Carriker, Library of Eusebius, 56, notes, Tatian’s Problemata are absent from the catalogue of Tatian’s works which Eusebius possessed and listed in HE 4.29.6 7.  So also Perrone, “Sulla preistoria delle ‘quaestiones’ nella letteratura patristica,” 492.

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quoted by Eusebius in the Historia Ecclesiatica (HE 2.18.1: Τῶν ἐν Γενέσει καὶ τῶν ἐν Ἐξαγωγῇ ζητημάτων καὶ λύσεων).⁶⁸ Yet there are some significant differences. First, Philo does not proceed by questions, but his is a continuous commentary on Genesis and Exodus; in addition and more importantly for us, his ‘solutions’ do not really fit the Aristotelian/Alexandrian model of zetemata/lyseis, since he is almost always prone to allegorical interpretation, which is in fact the opposite of the Alexandrian ‘solutions’⁶⁹—and allegoresis is also almost ignored by Eusebius in his Questions. If Philo is not a good link between Alexandrian philology and Eusebius, Origen seems to offer more interesting parallels. Even if he never wrote a real collection of questions on the sacred texts, in his homilies and commentaries Origen often adopts a zetematic approach, proceeding by questions and answers.⁷⁰ As Bernhard Neuschäfer has demonstrated,⁷¹ in his editorial and exegetic work on the OT and NT Origen adopts many principles and methods from the Alexandrians. In particular, Origen follows the idea of clarifying an author from the author himself when he uses passages from the Bible or the Gospels to solve problems in either one of these works.⁷² In addition, he used Alexandrian editorial principles when working on the Hexapla.⁷³

 Cf. Perrone, “Sulla preistoria delle ‘quaestiones’ nella letteratura patristica,” 492 98. On Philo’s questions, see Bardy, “ La littérature patristique” (1932), 212 17; Garzya, “Appunti sulle erotapocriseis,” 308 09; P. W. van der Horst, “Philo and the Rabbis on Genesis: Similar Questions, Different Answers,” in Erotapokriseis: Early Christian Question and Answer Literature in Context, ed. A. Volgers and C. Zamagni (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 55 70; Zamagni, “Question and Answer Literary Genre,” 245.  See Perrone, “Sulla preistoria delle ‘quaestiones’ nella letteratura patristica,” 493 96; cf. also Zamagni, “Une introduction méthodologique,” 13; Zamagni, “Question and Answer Literary Genre,” 245; M. R. Niehoff, Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 152 68. On the other hand, M. R. Niehoff, “Questions and Answers in Philo and Genesis Rabbah,” JSJ 39 (2008): 337 66 is less convincing in her attempt to ‘prove’ Philo’s dependence from Homeric scholarship in this work.  On Origen’s ‘questions’ and examples of his method, see Heinrici, “Aporienliteratur,” 853; Bardy, “La littérature patristique” (1932), 224 28; Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe, 41 and 339 42; Perrone, “Sulla preistoria delle ‘quaestiones’ nella letteratura patristica,” 500 05; Mitchell, “‘Problems and Solutions’.”  Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe.  See Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe, 276 85; Mitchell, “‘Problems and Solutions’,” 45 and 49 50.  See F. Schironi, “The Ambiguity of Signs: Critical Σημεῖα from Zenodotus to Origen,” in Homer and the Bible in the Eyes of Ancient Interpreters, ed. M. R. Niehoff (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 87 112; F. Schironi, “P.Grenf. 1.5, Origen, and the Scriptorium of Caesarea,” BASP 52 (2015): 181 223.

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It is not difficult to find a link between the bishop of Caesarea and Origen. As is well known, in Caesarea Pamphilus organized a library/scriptorium, which probably incorporated also the library of Origen, who brought his books to Caesarea when he moved there in 232 CE.⁷⁴ In his scriptorium Pamphilus trained many scribes, among them Eusebius, to copy Origen’s works, which were also collected there.⁷⁵ After Pamphilus’ martyrdom in 310 CE and after becoming bishop of Caesarea in 315 CE, Eusebius himself developed the library and kept working on Origen.⁷⁶ Aside from knowing Origen’s works from his activity as a copyist, Eusebius also knew Origen’s exegetical methods and used them in his own writings, as Claudio Zamagni has shown with reference to QESt 1.⁷⁷ Similarly, the other solutions in the Gospel Questions could have been inspired by Origen’s ‘Alexandrian’ philological approach to zetemata. ⁷⁸ Whatever is the origin of Eusebius’ acquaintance with Alexandrian scholarship (either direct knowledge or filtrated through Origen’s writings), Eusebius seems to have developed a specific sensitivity for such an approach and, with time, even improved on it. Our analysis has in fact shown that while in both the Questions to Stephanus and the Questions to Marinus Eusebius employs Aristarchean strategies, in the latter work the Aristarchean method seems much more sophisticated, both in his use of more complex Aristarchean strategies and in their further development. This could mean that the Questions to Marinus are successive to the Questions to Stephanus, as already suggested by Zamagni,⁷⁹ and that in the years Eusebius became more and more of an Alexandrian philologist. More importantly, in the second group of examples we have seen that Eusebius seems to improve on Aristarchus’ methodology: he shows to be more

 See Carriker, Library of Eusebius, 3 12.  On Pamphilus’ activity and library, see Carriker, Library of Eusebius, 12 17; A. Grafton and M. Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 178 94. Cf. also L. I. Levine, Caesa rea Under Roman Rule (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 124 25.  On the work of Eusebius in connection with Origen, see Grafton and Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book. Cf. also Levine, Caesarea, 125 27. On Eusebius’ library and the authors and texts he had and consulted, see Carriker, Library of Eusebius.  Zamagni, “Eusebius’ Exegesis”.  By ‘Alexandrian philology’ I mean ‘technical’ and ‘literalist’ philology, on the model of Ar istarchus. The Hellenistic Alexandrian school of philology is very different from the later Jewish and Christian school of interpretation which develops at Alexandria and which often adopts al legory, as rightly noted by Hollerich, Eusebius of Caesarea’s Commentary, 94 102 (who opposes this later Alexandrian school to the Antiochene school of Eusebius). In fact, in his very good and clear survey, Hollerich, “Eusebius” stresses Eusebius’ text based, history oriented scholarship.  Cf. Zamagni, L’extrait, 20 26.

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aware of certain possible pitfalls and above all he applies some philological methods more soundly. For example, he is aware that his homonymy solution might have some weaknesses and strengthens the argument of the double names by finding the supposed ‘second’ name attested in another sacred text (Jer.) beyond Matthew. He also improves on Aristarchus’ method in his attention to manuscript evidence, as we noted when discussing the athetesis he proposes in Mark on the basis of manuscript evidence. This is not to say that Aristarchus disregarded manuscripts when working on Homer. Of course he did look at them, especially when he first had to put together what modern scholars now consider a ‘preliminary edition’, which was his working text of Homer, in which he had eliminated lines that were not well attested in his manuscripts.⁸⁰ However when discussing an athetesis, Aristarchus hardly considers manuscript evidence in the fragments that we have. These details might have been lost in the course of the tradition, and the same might have also happened with other comments by Aristarchus on Homer. Yet when we compare the method followed by Aristarchus in the scholia to the Iliad with Eusebius’ epitome on the Gospel Questions, the latter turns out to be not only a very good pupil of the Hellenistic Alexandrian school but also able to improve on Aristarchus’ methods while being aware of its limits.⁸¹ Matthew Crawford has demonstrated Eusebius’ dependence on and refinement of Alexandrian scholarship in working on the Canon Tables, in which he continues but also improves upon the work of Ammonius of Alexandria’s Diatessaron-Gospel. ⁸² I would like to suggest a similar trajectory in Eusebius’ approach to zetematic literature: he took it (probably via Origen) from classical Alexandrian scholarship but also improved upon its methodology. If this analysis is correct, then in Eusebius we can detect not only how Christianity adopted Alexandrian scholarship but also that it was not mere servile adoption. Origen, Eusebius, and their colleagues were scholars of the first rank, who not only learned their lesson well but were also able to surpass their masters—Aris-

 See H. Erbse, “Über Aristarchs Iliasausgaben,” Hermes 87 (1959), 275 303, at 301 03; M. Haslam, “Homeric Papyri and Transmission of the Text,” in A New Companion to Homer, ed. I. Morris and B. Powell (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 55 100, at 84 87; Schironi, Best of the Grammar ians, 35 45. On Aristarchus’ use of manuscript evidence, see Schironi, Best of the Grammarians, 63 75 (with bibliography).  A similar methodological awareness emerges in Origen when he criticizes Marcion, who is much more prone to emendation based on personal judgment; see Mitchell, “‘Problems and Sol utions’,” 48.  M. R. Crawford, “Ammonius of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea and the Origins of Gospels Scholarship,” NTS 61 (2015): 1 29.

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tarchus would have been happy of his legacy and proud of how these late pupils of his had improved on it.

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Index locorum Bible Old Testament Genesis 38:11 – 27 Exodus 3:8 12 12:5 – 6 Leviticus 1:5 11:33 25 25:3 25:3 – 4 Numbers 28 28:3 – 8 28:8 Deuteronomy 25:5 – 6 1 Chronicles 3:10 – 16 Psalm 88 Proverbs 8:9 Wisdom of Solomon 7:22 – 24 7:25 ff: Isaiah 40:8 49:1 49:1, 6 LXX 49:6 LXX Jeremiah 1:5 1:5 LXX 22:28 Joel 2:28 – 29

207 122n90 185 184n73 181 182 185 184 – 186 184 183 – 185 183 183 205n30 200 197 – 198 152 131 131 43 167 19 19 167 19 219 174

New Testament Mark 6:15 7:1 – 23 8:27 – 28 13:14 16:2 Matthew 1:11 1:12 – 16 1:17 4:1 – 11 5:20 15:1 – 20 17:29 22 22:14 24:15 28:20 28:30 37:39 – 40 Luke 1:1 1:2 1:32 2 2:39 2:46 2:48 4:16 – 22 13:33 24:1 John 1:3 – 4 8:6 – 8 19:35 20:1, 19 20:29 20:30 20:31 21:25

166 169 166 33 214 219 200 200 166 166n3 169 94n39 129 93n34 33 22 29n18 129 33 33 197 166 166 166 166 166n4 167 214 212n47 166n4 33 214 98 33 33 33 – 34

250

Index locorum

Acts 2:4 173 7:38 27n10, 43 11:27 – 28 167n7 13:1 167n7 21:10 – 11 167n7 Romans 1:17 122 – 125 5:9; 6:22; 7:; 8:2; 8:15; 8:20 – 21 88n17 6 88n17 7:1 – 6 87n16 1 Corinthians 1 – 3, 12 – 14 121n82 1:10 – 17 17 1:20 – 22 87n16 2:6 35, 124 2:13 87n16 3 124 3:1 – 2 125 3:1 – 3 122 3:2 90n24 3:18 – 21 87n16 3:19 59 8:1 – 13 90n24 8:9; 9:1 88n17 12:28 167 2 Corinthians 3:6 88n17 6:1 – 10 22 10:10 34 10:11 34 11:21 – 33 22 Galatians 1:10 – 24 19 1:12 – 14 19 1:13 19 1:15 19 1:15 – 16 167 1:16a 19 1:16b 19 2:4; 2:19 – 20; 5:1 88n17 4:8 – 10 87n16 5:13 – 24 88n17 6:16 146 Ephesians 2:14 – 16 208

Philippians 3:17 2 Thessalonians 3:3 1 Timothy 6:12 Hebrews 4:7 – 11 4:14 James 1:25 1 Peter 1:23 1:25 2 Peter 3:16 2 John 12 3 John 14 Revelation 1:1 1:1 – 3 1:2 1:3 1:4 1:5 1:8 1:9 1:9 – 3:22 1:9 – 20 1:20 2–3 2:9, 13 2:13 2:14 2:20 3:9 3:14 4 4–5 4 – 20 5 5:1 5:2 5:5 – 6 6 – 11

22 22 152 122n90 152 32 27n10, 42 43 34 34 34 9, 12, 18, 20, 23 12, 13 12, 21 12 – 13, 18 14, 19 21 15 9, 20, 21 11 18 22 12, 18 18 21 18 18 18 21 18 11 11 13 13 13 13 11

Index locorum

6:11 6:12 – 17 10 10:2 10:7 11:18 12 12 – 13 12:7 – 12 12:11 12:17 14 – 20 17:6

21 12n20 13 13 18 18 11, 16n35 11 17 21 21 11 21

18:24 19:10 19:10b 19:11 19:16 21 – 22:5 21:1 22:6 – 8 22:7, 10, 18 22:9 22:18 – 19 22:21

21 18, 21 21 21 16 11 20 13 18 18 13, 34 19

Classical Non-Christian Texts Aelius Theon Progymnasmata 65

32n34

Alcidamas Against the Sophists 1.172 – 173

27n10

Alcinous Didaskalikos 1.2 4.2 – 8

90n25 156n32

Apollonius Dyscolus De adverbiis 2.1.1

42n64

Apology of Aristides 3 70 Aristarchus, Scholia Iliadum and Scholia Odysseum (See specific entries under Homer) Aristotle De generatione animalium 736b28 89n22 fr. 13 49n13 Metaphysics 1074a–b 49n14 Nicomachean Ethics VI 133n11

VI, 1139b31 – 35 . VII 3, 1146a20 f. VII 3, 1147a20 Posterior Analytics I 2, 71b9 – 12 I 2, 72a14 – 24 I 6, 74b21 – 26 I 9, 76a4 – 7 I 20, 76b23 II 10, 93b32 – 37 II 10, 93b35 – 37 Topics I 1, 101a13 – 17 I 1000b18 – 21

81n2 81n1 81n2 81n2 94n41 81n2 81n2 94n42 81n2 81n2 94n42 95n49

Aulus Gellius Attic Nights 14.2.1 14.2.2

28 – 29, 38n54 29

Chorizontes fr. 8 Kohl

207

Chrysippus SVF 2, frs. 1021, 1062 – 1063 208n36 Cicero Academica II 8 – 9 De divinatione 1.38

82n4 187n83

251

252

Index locorum

2.81 187n81 2.148 187n82 Letters to Atticus 2.12.2 27 – 28, 38n54 Tusculanae disputationes 4.66 140n24 Cleanthes SVF 1, frs. 526, 535

208n36

Cornutus De natura deorum 17

51n19

De lege agraria 2.4

27n13

Diogenes Laertius Lives of Eminent Philosophers 3.57 112n46 7.116 140n25 7.130 133 9.47 157n37 10.27 156n33 10.139 188n89, 189n90 10.155 189n91 Diogenes of Oenoanda frg. 9 157n37 Epictetus Discourses 1.15.3 2.1.1 – 7

111n43 140n24

Epicurus Kyriae doxai 1 2 23 35

188 188 – 189 189n91 189n91

Euclid Elements 1

94n42

Galen De compositione medicamentorum per gene ra 12:894 30 13:605 29n20 De libris propriis 19:33 29n20 19:39 – 41 83 – 84 De ordine librorum 19:53 30n23 De simplicium medicamentorum tempera mentis ac facultatibus 11:797 29n20 Opt. Doct. 104:6 – 15 86n13 Ord. Lib. Prop. 19:50 85n9 19:51 – 52 86n10 19:52 86n12 19:52 – 53 87n15 19:53 90n26 On Phlebotomy 5 30 – 31 On the Powers of Foods 1.1 29 – 30, 38n54 Herodotus 2.53.2

201n24

Hesiod Works and Days 106 – 201

48

Homer Iliad 1 1.1 – 7 1.5 1.5 – 6 1.6 – 7 1.46 1.50 1.50 – 52 1.50a 1.51 1.130 – 131 1.503 – 530

196, 208n39 211 – 212n46 211, 212 211 – 212 211 – 212 208n39 196, 197 197n12 197n12 197n12 202 212

Index locorum

2.107a 2.718 2.827 2.827a 2.851 3.230a 4.105 – 11 4.138 4.138a 5.576 – 579 7.33b1 8.19 8.195a 10.47 10.321a 10.392a1.2 10.447a 10.485 – 486 10.485b 11.121 13 13.359a 13.395a 13.493a 13.644 13.645 13.658 – 659 13.658 – 659a 14.82 14.82a 15.441a 16.197 17 17.467 17.475 17.481 17.500 17.501 18.505a 19.392 20.267 – 268 20.269 – 272 20.269 – 272a 21.416 – 422 21.416a 23 23.111

215 196n9 196 196 216 215 196 199 199 216 215 215 208, 208n38 201 204 218 202 214 214n48 197 216 208 208n38 213 216 216 216 216 200 200 196n9 218 218 218 218 218 218 218 204 218 198 198 199, 217n53 207 207 205 197

23.111a 23.568a 23.870 23.870 – 871 23.870 – 871a 24.130 – 132a 24.474 24.564 24.574 Odyssey 2.37b 7.266 – 366 9.184 Poet. 1461a9 – 11

197 204 205n31 205 205 202 218 218 218 204 207 214n48 196

Johannes Stobaeus Eclogues 2.7.5b and 5 g 2.7.10b–c, 90 – 92

140n24 140

Lucretius De rerum natura 1.44 – 49 1.690 – 700 3.1 – 5 3.830 5.1151 – 60

188n88 189n91 188n87 189n90 189n91

Musonius Rufus 13a–b 17

141 138, 140

Numenius On the Academics’ Dissension from Plato fr.1a 52 – 54 P. Oxy 405

153n25

Philostratus Life of Apollonius 1.2

27n12

Plato Crito 49b–e

61

253

254

Index locorum

Ep. 7.342a Laws 677a–d 715e 743a Phaedo 69c8 f. Phaedrus 59.274c–275b 60.275d 60.275d–e 60.275e 61.276a 247c Respublica 415a2 – 7 461d 521c7 – 8 Statesman 269c–274d Theaetetus 2.11 – 3.28 176b Timaeus 47a–b, 72e–73a, 75 f Pliny the Younger Epistulae 2.3 10.96 10.96 – 97 10.96.7

57 49 60 60 93n34 26 26 26 27 26, 27n9, 36 61 89n22 141 92n30 48 – 49 156n32 129

Polybius Histories 12.25d.1 12.25d.6 12.27.1 – 3 Porphyry comment on Homer (Δ 434) Life of Plotinus 3 QH I 56.3 – 6 II 266.8 – 30

27 27 27

31 190n96 196n10, 214n49 205n31

ps.–Andronicus On Emotions 6 = SVF 3.432

140n25

Quintilian Institutio Oratoria 2.2.8

28n14, 38n54

Scholia Iliadum and Scholia Odysseum (See specific entries under Homer)

49 Scymnus of Chios Orbis descriptio 17 – 18 28n14, 38n54 107n23 114n56 107n22

Plutarch de aud. poet 19e–f 208n38 De defectu oraculorum 411D–F 188n85 De facie 943 – 945 89n22 Demetrius 26 110 Demosthenes 2.1 27n12 Quomodo adolescens poetas audire debeat 14 f 32n34

43 – 44n68

Seneca Epistles 6.5 33.9 90.5 Naturales quaestiones 7.32.2 7.32.3

189n92 189n93

Sextus Empiricus Adv. Math. 8.2 – 3

157n36

Tryphon De Tropis 1

208nn38 – 39

28 28, 38n54 50n16

Index locorum

Voluntary Associations (collegia) AGRW 8 = GRA I 49 = IG II.2 1369 115n58 IDelphi I 12 = SEG 41 (1991) 110n35 IG II.2 1368 115n58

Zeno SVF 1, fr. 103

208n36

Early Christian Texts Apocryphon of James 6

174n38

Apostolic Tradition 2.1 4.12 7.1 – 5 8.1 – 11 15 – 16 15 – 20 18.1 – 3

175n44 176n45 176 176 103n7 103n7, 105n11 107n21

Augustine of Hippo De Genesi ad litteram 13.30 – 14.31

212n47

Basil the Great On the Holy Spirit 27

176n48

1 Clement 1.3 12.1 – 3 41.1

136 104n8 136n2

Clement of Alexandria Eclogae Propheticae 28.3 37.1 53.4 56.7 Excerpta ad Theodoto 58 – 62 78.2 83 Paedagogus 1.1.1.4 – 1.1.2.1 1.6 1.6.20

106n20 135 69n104 135 120n81 107n27 107n27 105n13 119n76, 122, 125 105n12

1.6.25.1 – 3 1.6.28.1 – 2 1.6.30 1.6.30.2 – 1.6.31.2 1.6.34.3 – 36.1 1.6.36.2 1.6.36.3 – 4 1.6.37.3 – 28.1 1.6.44.3 1.12.99.1 – 100.1 2.109 3.11.76.1 Protrepticus 2.21.2 12.119.2 – 3 Stromateis 1.1.4.3 1.1.9.3 1.1.18.3 – 4 1.4.1 1.6.35.2 1.6.35.2 – 3 1.7.1 1.7.37.6 1.9.43.1 1.11.1 1.11.51.4 1.14.2 1.14.3 1.14.4 1.18.2 – 3 1.19.96 1.57.1 – 6 1.72.4 2.2 – 6 2.2.8.4 – 9.1 2.2.9.5 – 7 2.3.10.2

121n85 105n14 121n84 120 122n90 122n91 122n91 123 123n92 119n75 142n29 106n20 109n31 115n60 121n86 104n9 120 36 96n60, 97n62, 106n20, 113 124 36 92n30 93n35, 120n80 36 94n38 36 36 27n8 93n35 151n20 132 72n121 119n76 121n86, 123n93 97n61 89n23

255

256

Index locorum

2.3.10.2 – 3 2.3.11.2 2.4.5.5 2.4.16.2 – 3 2.4.17.1 2.5.5 2.6.27.4 2.6.27.4 – 28.1 2.11.48.1 2.11.48.2 2.11.49.3 2.12.53.1 2.13.56.1 2.18.86.1 – 2 2.19.97.1 2.24.1 – 2 2.41 2.97 – 102 2.97.1 – 2 3.4 3.9.66 3.40.1 3.58 3.68 3.79 3.88 3.108.1 4.1.3 4.137.1 – 3 4.147 4.149 5 5.1 5.1.1.2 5.1.2.4 – 6 5.1.2.5 5.1.2.5 – 6 5.1.3.2 – 3 5.1.5.2 – 3 5.1.9.2 5.1.11.1 5.3.17.4 5.3.18.3 5.8.48.8 – 9 5.8.51.1 5.10.65.4 – 66.2 5.10.66.2

119 119 121n86 123 121n86 136 95n44 96n59 96n53 96n51 96n51, 96n56 123n93 105n14 104n7 104n9 133 141 139 139 142n28 151n20 142 142n30 142n29 142n29 142, 142n29 142n29 151n21 137n17 142n28 142n28 125 123 96n55 123n93 94n39, 121n84 92n33 123 124 94n39 93n35, 94n38 93n34 94n39 125n99 75n133 124n96 124n97

5.11.70.7 – 71.2 5.11.71.2 5.14.98.4 5.14.98.6 – 7 5.14.133.5 5.14.141.3 5.89.2 – 4 5.91.2 – 4 5.95.2 5.97.1 5.98 6.1.1.3 6.10.82.1 – 3 6.11.89.1 – 3 6.14.109.2 6.15.125 6.15.126.1 6.15.131.3 6.17.151.2 6.18.165.1 6.61 6.71 6.71.3 – 5 6.72.1 6.76 6.99.4 6.100.3 6.102.1 6.104.1 – 3 6.158.1 – 2 7.10.57.3 7.15.90 7.15.90.1 – 2 7.15.91 – 16.96 7.15.92.3 7.16.95.9 7.16.96.14 7.63 – 3 – 64.3 7.69.2 7.81.1 – 3 7.88.4 8 8.1.1.2 8.3 8.3.5.1 8.3.5.2 – 3 8.3.7.2

116n67 95n43, 96n55 89n22 115n60 92n30 93n34 131 135 – 136 141 129 141 103n7 92n32 93n35 94n39 152n23 94n38 92n32 75n134 124n94 134 134 139 140n26 134 140 142 140n26 137n17 137n17 121n85 152n24 96n55 158n43 98n67 94n39 92n32 142n29 136 137n17 137n17 95 94n38 121n83 95n45 96n51 95n45

Index locorum

8.3.7.3 8.3.7.6 8.3.7.7 – 8 100.3 – 100.1 Quis dives salvatur? 118 – 119 127.25 – 128.5

96n50 95n45 96n52 139 120n81 107n27

Cosmas Indicopleustes Topographia Christiana 2.2 37 Cyprian Testimonia ad Quirinum 3.98 105n14 Didache 1–6 7.1 11.3 – 10

104n10 104n10 167n8

Epiphanius of Salamis Panarion 48.3 – 4 173n35 Eusebius of Caesarea Historia ecclesiastica 2.1.4 176n46 2.18.1 223 3.24.8 – 13 206n32 3.29.6 – 7 222n66 3.39.3 – 4 39 3.39.7 40, 41 3.39.14 40, 41 3.39.15 40, 44 3.39.17 42 4.23.4 146n6 4.26.6 73n129 4.26.7 73n127 5.10.4 37, 101 5.13.8 222 5.16.7 173n37 5.24.6 146n3 6.13 153n25 QEMar (= Gospel Problems, Quaestiones ad Marinun) 1.1 216

257

1.1.4 210 1.1.7 210 1.1.12 – 13 210 1.1.14 210 1.1.14 – 16 210 1.2.19 – 21 211 1.3.29 – 37 211 2 212 2.1.4 – 11 212 – 213 2.1.11 – 15 213 2.2.38 – 42 213 2.2.51 – 56 213 2.3.73 – 74 215 2.4.94 – 96 215 2.6.125 – 129 215 2.8.162 – 171 217 2.9.186 – 190 218 3.3 206n32 3.4 218n55 4 206 4.230 – 35 206 QESt (= Gospel Problems, Quaestiones ad Stephanum) 1 202, 224 1.3 – 3.42 – 51 202 1.3.42 – 43 202 1.8 199, 202 1.8.141 – 143 199 1.9.167 – 171 202 1.10.197 – 208 202 – 203 2 199 4.2 204 – 205 7 207 7.1 201n23, 205n30 7.1 – 2 209n41 7.2 208 7.3 209n41 7.3.78 – 79 208 8 199n21 9.2 204n28 10 219 10.1 204n28 10.2 204n28 10.3.53 – 55 219 11.1 204n28 12 199n21, 200 12.3.48 – 51 200

258

Index locorum

13 13.1.4 – 5 13.1.12 – 14 13.2 – 3 13.3 15 15.1.8 – 12 15.3.43 – 46 15.4 16 16.2

200 200 200 200n22 200n22 197 197 198 198 206n32 204n28

Eustathius 40.25 – 34, ad. Il. 1.46 208n39 Hippolytus Refutatio omnium haeresium 34 – 36 120n81 Ignatius of Antioch Epistle to the Ephesians 1.2 22 3.1 – 2 23 Epistle to the Magnesians 6.1 23 Epistle to the Philadelphians 5.1 22 7.1 23 7.2 23 Epistle to the Romans 4.2 22 4.3 22 5.1, 3 22 6.3 22 9.1 23 Epistle to the Smyrnaeans 4.2 23 5.1 23 9.1 23 Epistle to the Trallians 3.1 23 10 23 Irenaeus of Lyons Adversus haereses 1.1.9 – 10 1.6.1

106n19 120n81

1.6.1 – 2 1.6.2 1.9 – 10 1.9.4 1.10.1 1.10.1 – 2 1.10.3 1.22 1.22.1 1.28.1 2.24 2.25.1 2.27 2.27.1 2.27.2 2.28.1 2.28.2 – 3 2.28.4 – 5 2.32.2 3 3. pro 3.2 3.10.5 3.11.1 4.35.4 5.33.4 11.8 Demonstration 1 2 3 3–6 6 Jerome Epistulae 29.7.1 53.2.2 120.t 126.1.3 Illustrious Men 18 36

89n23 89n22 150, 158 148n12 148 148n11 162 162 147, 150, 160 – 161 105n17 150n15 150n15 158 150n15, 158n41, 162n50 158n42 147n7, 150n15, 158n42 162 162 162n49 153n25 154n28 35 – 36 171n30 147, 148n10, 150 149 40, 41 171n30 151n17 151 151n18, 155n30 106n19 151

37, 38n54 37n51 37, 38n54 37, 38n54 37 37

Index locorum

John Chrysostom In Genesim PG 53:90 32n34 Homilies on the Gospel of John 5 212n47 In Psalmum PG 55:676 32n34 Justin Martyr Dialogue with Trypho 2.1 2.2 – 6 2.4 7.1 8.1 92 117.5 119.4 First Apology 1.61.3, 10 5.4 7.3 23.1 46.3 54 54.1 – 7 58 61 – 67 61.2 Second Apology 5.2 – 5 Letter of Aristeas 127

91n29 84n7 105n17 91n29 91n29 174n38 70 70n114 155n30 70 70 62n77 70 62 69 62 107 106 69

32

Martyrdom of Polycarp 5.1 47n8 Origen Commentary on Matthew 27 174n38 Contra Celsum 1 58 1.2 56n41 1.9 59 1.10 97n63 1.11 98nn64 – 66

259

1.14 56nn37 – 39 1.16 56n39 1.20 56n40 1.23 58 1.26 58 1.27 58n50 1.28 58 1.68 58 2 58 2.5 59n52 2.9, 17, 23, 30, 31, 33, 44, 49, 55, 75 59 2.26 59 3.12 98n67 3.16 59, 59n53 3.17 – 19 59n54 3.24 59 3.34 59n56 3.42 59n55 3.50, 55, 75 58n50 3.59 59, 110n32 4.11 60n57 4.21 60n59 4.31 57nn47 – 48 4.36 60n60 4.41 60n58 5.41 76n138 5.65 60nn61 – 63 6.1, 3, 6 – 9 57 6.7 60n64 6.9 57 6.10 59 6.12 60n65 6.12, 14 58n50 6.15 60n66 6.16 60n67 6.17 57n46 6.19 61n68 6.22 61n70 6.23 61 6.24 61n71 6.42 61n72 6.47 61n73 7.32 61 7.36, 42 62 7.58 61n69, 61n74 8.63 76n140 8.66 76n138

260

Index locorum

8.68 8.72 8.75 Letter to Africanus 11 – 12 Papias fr. 1 fr. 1.4 fr. 3.2 fr. 3.3 fr. 3.4 fr. 3.7 fr. 3.15 fr. 5

76n141 76n139 76n142 204n29

168n14 170n21 170n22 168n16, 172n33 168n15, 170n24, 175n39 169n17, 170n23 170n25, 171n30, 172n32 170n21

Ptolemy Epistle to Flora 33.7.9

176n47

Shepherd of Hermas 3.2 – 7 3.7 5.3 5.4 7 – 12 8.3

104n10 105n17 35 35 167n9 35

Tatian, Oration 1 1 – 28 1.1 1.2 5 7 8.2 9 9 – 11 9.1 12.10 16 16 – 18 17 – 18 17.4 18.1

65 64 64n85, 71n115 64n86 68 67 68 65 68 68n100 68n103, 71n116 65 68 65 68n102 68n101

18.6 21 21.5 22 23 25 25.5 26 28 29 29 – 30 29.1 29.1 – 2 29.2 29.3 30.3 31 31 – 42 31.1 31.2 32.1 – 35.2 35.1 35.2 35.2 – 3 35.3 42.1

Tertullian Adversus Marcionem 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.5 1.16 Adversus Valentinianos 1 1.1 1.4 2–3 De baptismo 5.1 – 3 8.5 14.2 18.4 19.1 – 3

47 65 69 65 65 65 72 65 65 65 64 54 65n88 71n116 65n89 71n117 66 64 66n90, 66n94 66n93 66 54 71n118 71n119, 74 72 54, 66n95, 71n120, 74

161n46 161n46 161n46 161n46 161n46 107n24 107n77 106 107n76 116n66 105n14 105n17 103n7, 105n11 103n5

Index locorum

De paenitentia 6.20 105n17 De praescriptione haereticorum 21.3 36, 38n54 27 120n81 41.4 107n21 42 119n76 Testamentum Domini 1.20

Theodore of Mopsuestia In Jo. 1.3 – 4 212n47 Theophilus of Antioch instruction to Autocylus 2.38 35

176n44

Jewish Writings Babylonian Talmud b. Ber. 34b b. Menaḥot 77a

179 186n78

1 Enoch 7–8

68n99

Genesis Rabbah 68.12

178n53

Josephus Against Apion 1.7 2.8 – 32 2.167 – 168 Jewish Antiquities 1.105 – 106 1.143 – 147

52n21 51n20 52n22 52n23 72n121

Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael Yitro 2 178n55 Mishnah m. Avod. Zar. 3.4 m. Bek 6.8 m. Ber. 5.5 m. Ḥul. 4.2

114n55 171n26 178 181n67

m. Kerithot 3.7 – 10 m. Menaḥot 7.1 m. Šeb. 2.7 m. Soṭah 5.2 m. Taʿan. 3.8 4.4 m. ʾAbot 1.1 3.9 [3.10] 5.7 6.2 m. ʾOhal 16.1 m. ʿEruv. 3.4

180 186 185n75 182 179 181n67 169 179n58 171 178n55 171n27 169

Philo of Alexandria On the Cherubim 27 174n38 De confusione linguarum 2 157n38 De contemplativa 18 – 19 117n70 De Josepho 145 157n38 De opificio mundi 8 132 133 52n25

261

262

Index locorum

De posteritate Caini 20 137n17 De providentia 240 – 241 52n25 De specialibus legibus 1.8 33n37 de virtutibus 168 – 169 137 On Dreams 2.252 174n38 Legum allegoriae 3.233 – 234 157n38 Life of Moses 32 – 33 Migration of Abraham 35 174n38 208 137 Quis rerum divinarum heres sit 253 32n34 Quod deterius potiori insidari soleat 125 157n38 Quod omnis probus liber sit 73 – 75 52n24 Qumran texts Community Rule (1QS) 1–2 116n65 6.13 – 14 115n63 6.14 – 15 115 6.16 – 17 116 6.18 – 21 116 6.21 – 22 116n64 Damascus Document (CD) 13.12 – 14 115n63

Sifra Behar parashah 1.7, Weiss 105c

184n74

Sifra Ḥovah, pereq 1.8,Weiss 16b.

180n65

Sifra Nedava, parashah 4.4 – 5,Weiss 6b. 181n68 Sifra Shemini parasha 7.12, Weiss 54b 182n70 Sifre Deuteronomy 122 357

180n63 178n55

Sifre Numbers 75 119 143

182n69 178n53 183n72

Tosefta t. Nid. 6.6 t. Šeb. 2.13 t. Sheviʿit 4.21. t. Soṭah 13.3 13.4 t. Zav. 1.6 t. ʿUq. 3.2

181n67 181n67 169n19 177 178n56 181n67 181n67

General Index Adrastus, 189 Aetius, ps.-Plutarchian revision of, 162n47 Agathemerus of Orthon, 29n17 Akiva (Rabbi), 180 – 182 Albinus, 190 Alcinous, 90, 156n32, 190 Alexander, Loveday, 25, 29n20, 36n47, 38, 40nn59 – 60, 42n67 Alexander of Aphrodisias, 2, 189 Alexandrian method of zemata/lyseis, 219 – 224 Alkier, Stefan, 11 allegorical and etymological argumentation, 207 – 209 Ambrosiaster, 193 Ammonius of Alexandria, 225 Ammonius Saccas, 112n48, 191 Ammundsen, Valdemar, 154 Anaxagoras, 52 Andrade, N., 71n118, 72 – 73, 79 – 80n147 Andresen, Carl, 45n2 Antiochus of Ascalon, 132 Antiochus of Rhodes, 188 Antipas, 21 apatheia, 134, 139 Aphrodisias Inscription, 115n59 Aphthonios, 220 Apion, 51 – 52, 57 Apocalypse of Peter, 9n7, 19 apocalyptic literature, 7 – 9. See also Seer of Revelation Apocryphon of James, 174n38, 175n40 Apology (Melito of Sardis), 73 Apostolic Constitutions, 175 Apostolic Tradition. See also Index Locorum – on catechumenate, 103, 104 – 105 – on oral-traditional authority, 175 – 176 Apuleius, 190 Aristarchus of Samothrace. See Eusebius of Caesarea’s Gospel Problems and Aristarchus on Homer Aristion and the elder John, Papias as direct witness to, 39 – 41, 43n70, 168 – 171, 174

Ariston of Alexandria, 189 Aristonicus, 208n38 Aristotle. See also Index Locorum – ancient/barbarian wisdom, development of interest in, 49 – Clement on faith and, 12n86 – Homeric Problems, 193 – on incidental knowledge, 81 – philosophy devolving into commentary on, 189 – principles of, 94 Ascension of Isaiah, 7, 19 Asclepius cult, 110 Aspasius, 189 athetesis, 210 – 211, 216 – 217, 225 Atlas the Libyan, 50 Atticus, 27 – 28, 38n54, 132 Augustine of Hippo, 193 – 194 Aulus Gellius, 28 – 29 Aune, David, 191 authority, 3, 165 – 191 – Christian sources, decline of non-intellectual authority in, 172 – 177 – Christian sources, early, role of non-intellectual authority in, 165, 166 – 172 – of elders, 168 – 169 – of hearers, 169 – 171 – of hermēneutēs, 170, 171 – 172, 175 – institutionalization, decline of prophetic authority and concept of, 191 – intellectual versus non-intellectual, 166 – Jewish/Rabbinic sources, decline of non-intellectual authority in, 177 – 186 – Jewish/Rabbinic sources, role of oral-traditional authority in, 169, 171, 172 – oral-traditional, 165, 168 – 172, 174 – 177, 179 – 186, 188 – 191 (See also „living voice“ versus writing) – pagan sources, decline of non-intellectual authority in, 186 – 191 – prophetic or revelatory, 165, 166 – 167, 172 – 174, 177 – 179, 186 – 188, 191 Ayres, Lewis, 1, 3 – 4, 145

264

General Index

Bailey, Kenneth, 171n29 barbarian wisdom. See under Tatian and Celsus Barth, Karl, 25n2 Basil the Great, 176 Basilides, 7 bat qol, 178 Bauckham, R., 42n66, 169n17 Becker, E. M., 107n27 Ben Shalkut, 181n67 Bénatouïl, Thomas, 133 Blowers, Paul, 154n29 Bockmuehl, Marcus, 25n2 Boethius of Sidon, 188, 189 book motif, Seer of Revelation’s use of, 12, 13 Bourdieu, Pierre, 1 Boys-Stones, G. R., 48, 51n20, 53n28, 55, 56 – 57n44, 63 Bradshaw, Paul F., 104n7 Brakke, David, x breastfeeding, 123n92 Bremmer, Jan, 109 Briggman, Anthony, 149 Buell, Denise Kimber, 123n92, 125 Burke, Gary T., 45n2 Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 165 Cancik, Hubert, xii Canon Tables (Eusebius), 225 Canons of Hippolytus, 175 Carlson, Stephen C., 3, 25 catechumenate. See Clement of Alexandria, on the catechumenate Celsus. See Tatian and Celsus Charlatans Exposed (Oenomaus of Gadara), 187n80 Chorizontes, 207 Christian intellectuals. See early Christian intellectual life Cicero. See also Index Locorum – on divination, 187 – Eleusinian mysteries and, 110 – on judgment and knowledge, 82 – 83 – on „living voice“ versus writing, 27 – 28, 38, 40 – Timaeus, Latin translation of, 132 Cleanthes, 138

Clement of Alexandria. See also Index Locorum – βάρβαρος, use of, 74 – 75 – collage technique of Stromateis, 131 – on Gnosticism, 104, 112 – 113 – Hypotyposes, 176 – as intellectual, 7 – on intellectual independence, 4, 89n22, 91 – 98 – Irenaeus, knowledge of works of, 153, 158 – kanon termonology and rule of truth, 151 – 153, 158 – 159, 160, 162 – on marriage, 141 – 142 – Megasthenes’ Indica cited by, 72n121 – on oral-traditional authority, 176 – Origen on, 37 – philosophical life maintained after conversion by, 111 – Tatian overshadowed by, 45 – on the „technical criterion,“ 87n13 – on writing versus „living voice,“ 27n8, 36 – 37 Clement of Alexandria, on the catechumenate, 4, 101 – 127 – ancient analogues for catechumenate, 108 – 118 – catechists and sponsors, 103 – 104 – communal orientation of, 106, 119 – framed within Clement’s overall intellectual and pedagogical program, 119 – 126 – inherited catechetical practices from within early church, 102 – 108 – institutional fact of early church, catechumenate as, 101 – 102, 103 – milk/meat imagery, 122 – 125 – mystery religions compared, 109 – 111, 113n53 – philosophical schools compared, 108n28, 111 – 113, 117 – Qumran sect compared, 113n53, 115 – 116, 117 – 118 – secrecy of, 106 – 107 – timing and liturgical environment, 103 – voluntary associations (collegia) compared, 108n28, 113 – 115, 117, 126

General Index

Clement of Alexandria, Platonism and Stoicism in, 4, 129 – 143 – „becoming like God,“ Platonic notion of, 129, 130, 138 – 139, 143 – on contemplation and action, 133 – 139, 143 – „good emotions“ of Stoics, 134, 139 – 140 – image and likeness of God, being made in, 129 – 130, 136 – 137 – „living according to nature,“ Stoic telos of, 129, 138 – 139 – Love Commandment and, 129, 130, 135 – 136, 139 – 143 – social relations and, 130, 136, 139, 141 – 142 – syncretism/eclecticism, moving beyond, 131 – 132 Clineas, 52n21 collegia (voluntary associations) in ancient world, 108n28, 113 – 115, 117, 126 Collini, Stefan, 165 commentaries, critical techniques in. See Eusebius of Caesarea’s Gospel Problems and Aristarchus on Homer Community Rule (Qumran text), 115 – 116 Cornutus, 50 – 51 Cosmas Indicopleustes, 37 Crawford, Matthew R., 3, 45, 206n32, 209n41 Crom, Dries de, 32n36 Cynics, 187 Cyril of Jerusalem, 106 Daitessaron Gospel (Ammonius of Alexandria), 225 Damascus Document (Qumran text), 115, 115n63 Danby, H., 180 Demiurge, 130 Democritus, 157n37 Demonax of Cyprus, 187n80 demonology of Tatian, 67 – 70 diaphônia, 132 Diatessaron (Tatian), 47 Didache, 102, 104n10, 167 Didaskalikos (Alcinous), 90, 156n32 Didymus, 205 Diogenes of Oenoanda, 157 Dionysius of Corinth, 146

265

Dionysius Thrax, 220 Dionysus cult, 109, 110, 113n53 divination. See prophetic or revelatory authority Dörrie, Heinrich, 55n35 double names, 218 – 219, 225 Dreyfus Affair, 165 Droge, Arthur, 45, 66 Dunderberg, Ismo, 89n22, 117n69 early Christian intellectual life, 1 – 5. See also specific Christian intellectuals – anti-intellectualism of early Christianity, Weber on, viii–ix – authority in, 3, 165 – 191 (See also authority) – common themes of, 4 – 5 – Gnosticism, historical understanding of, ix– xi – „intellectual,“ concept and historical use of, 165, vii–xii – intellectual independence in, 4, 81 – 100 (See also intellectual independence) – „living voice“ versus writing in, 3, 25 – 44 (See also „living voice“ versus writing) Edsall, Benjamin A., 4, 101 Edwards, Mark, 132 Egyptian religion, Celsus on, 59 elders, authority of, 168 – 169 Eleusinian mysteries, 109, 110, 116, 119 Elvira, Synod of, 103n6 Elze, Martin, 72 Emperor Cult in Asia Minor, 11n18, 16 Enchiridion (Epictetus), 112n46 Encratites, 47 1 Enoch and Enochian literature, 15, 67n97, 68n99, 69, 70n108 Epictetus, 112nn45 – 46, 137 Epicurus and Epicureans, 47, 156, 187, 188 – 189 Epiphanius, 173 epopteia, 110, 119 Erasistratus and Erasistrateans, 30 – 31 eratopokriseis (question-and-answer texts), 193 – 194, 222 – 224 Eshleman, K., 53n28, 78n145 Essenes, 115, 118n71

266

General Index

etymological and allegorical argumentation, 207 – 209 Euclid, postulates of, 94 Eusebius of Caesarea. See also Index Locorum – Canon Tables, 225 – on „living voice“ versus writing, 37, 39 – 40 – on Montanus, 173 – Praeparatio Evangelica, 187n80 Eusebius of Caesarea’s Gospel Problems and Aristarchus on Homer, 4, 193 – 226 – Alexandrian method, Eusebius’s adaptation of, 219 – 226 – ancient usages within self-consistent world, invoking, 204 – 205 – athetesis, 210 – 211, 216 – 217, 225 – authorial self-exegesis, 213215 – clarifying author from author himself, 195 – 199 – contemporary linguistic usage, reference to, 212 – 213 – content-related parallels in same author, 198 – 199 – different timing posited for contradictory accounts of same event, 205 – 207 – direct link between, lack of evidence for, 222 – double names for same character, 218 – 219, 225 – etymological and allegorical arguments, 207 – 209 – homonymy, 215 – 218, 225 – intention of author/character, solution justified with, 200 – 201 – linguistic analysis backed up by textual references to other passages, 195 – 198 – manuscript evidence, citing, 210 – plausibility, opportunity, and inappropriateness, consideration of, 201 – 204 – punctuation, changing, 211 – 212 – question-and-answer texts (eratopokriseis), Graeco-Roman tradition of, 193 – 194, 222 – 224 – Questions to Marinus, in Eusebius, 194, 195, 209 – 210, 224 – Questions to Stephanus, in Eusebius, 194, 195, 199, 224

– „sacred“ texts, assumed authorship and flawlessness of, 197n13, 201, 204, 205, 206, 209, 220, 221, 223, 225 – strategies of Aristarchus followed and expanded by Eusebius, 209 – 219 – strategies of Aristarchus followed by Eusebius, 195 – 209 Euthypro, 112n46 exegesis, critical techniques in. See Eusebius of Caesarea’s Gospel Problems and Aristarchus on Homer van der Eynde, Damien, 153 – 154 faith, rule of, 106, 145, 146, 148, 151, 154n29, 158 Feldman, L. H., 76n142 Fillon, John, 112n48 Flora, letter of Ptolemy (disciple of Valentinus) to, 176 Foucart, M. P., 109n31 Foucault, Michel, 1 Frede, Michael, 53n29, 56n43, 57n44, 75 – 77 Fuhrer, Therese, 130 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 1 Galen. See also Index Locorum – on Aristarchus, 222n63 – On the Best Kind of Teaching, 87 – 87n13 – on Christianity, 84 – 87, 105, 112 – commentary on Plato’s Republic, 105n15 – On Demonstration, 86 – on intellectual independence, 83 – 87, 90 – 91, 96, 98n67 – on „living voice“ versus writing, 29 – 31, 38 – On the Primary Unmoved Mover, 105n16 Gamaliel (Rabbi), 114n55 Gerson, Lloyd, 190 Giulea, Dragon A., 97n57 Gnostics and Gnosticism – catechumenate and, 104, 119 – as Christian intellectuals, 88 – Clement of Alexandria on, 92, 94, 104, 112 – 113, 134 – 135, 140, 141 – historical understanding of, ix–xi Gramsci, Antonio, 1 Grapte, 36 – 37

General Index

Hadrian (emperor), 11n18, 157 Hanina ben Dosa, 178 Harnack, Adolf von, 126, ix–x Hasidim, 178 Hauck, Robert J., 45n2 Havrda, Matyáš, 4, 81, 137n17 hearers – authority of, 169 – 171, 181 – catechumens as, 105 – of „living voice,“ 40, 41, 67 – Tatian on, 71, 79 – 80 Hecataeus, 51n20 van Henten, Jan Willem, 15 Heraclites, 59, 61 Herennius, 112n48 hermēneutēs, authority of, 170, 171 – 172, 175 hermeneutic of suspicion, 83 Herminus, 189 Hermogenes, 220 Herodian, 222n63 Hesiod, 48, 201n24 Hexapla (Origen), 223 Hippolytus of Rome, 103 – 104n7, 175 van den Hoek, Annewies, 95n43 Hollerich, M. J., 224n78 Homer. See also Eusebius of Caesarea’s Gos pel Problems and Aristarchus on Homer; Index Locorum – Aristotle, Homeric Problems, 193 – Chorizontes on, 207 – as founder of Greek religion, 201n24 – Porphyry on, 31 – „sacredness“ of texts of, 201, 220 homodoxia, 53n26 homonymy, 215 – 218, 225 Honi the Circle Drawer, 178 – 179 „Hymn to Zeus“ (Cleanthes), 138 Hypotyposes (Clement of Alexandria), 176 Ignatius of Antioch, 3, 22 – 23, 24 incidental knowledge, concept of, 81 – 82 Indica (Megasthenes), 72n121 intellectual independence, 4, 81 – 100 – in Christianity, 87 – 100 – Clement on, 91 – 98 – faith, evidential basis of, 96 – 101

267

– Galen and medical discourse on, 83 – 87, 90 – 91, 96, 98n67 – Justin Martyr on, 91 – loyalty to teachers/schools and, 81 – 84 – Origen on, 98 – 100 – Paul versus Valentinians on, 87 – 91 intellectuals and intellectual life. See early Christian intellectual life intertextuality, Seer of Revelation’s use of, 15 Iobacchoi, 114 Irenaeus of Lyons. See also Index Locorum – on catechumenate, 106 – Clement’s knowledge of works of, 153 – on „living voice“ versus writing, 35 – 36 – on oral-traditional authority, 175n41 – Papias and, 35, 170, 171, 175n41 Irenaeus of Lyons, on the rule of truth, 3 – 4, 145 – 163 – in Adversus haereses, 147 – 150, 162 – Christian authors’ concepts of, 147 – 155 – as creed, 145, 155n30 – in Demonstration, 150 – 151 – kanon language in early church, 145 – 146, 147, 151 – 152, 158 – 159 – in non-Christian philosophical discourse, 156 – 159 – Philo and, 157 – 158 – rule of faith and, 106, 145, 146, 148, 151, 154n29, 158 – theology shaped by, 159 – 163 Ishmael (Rabbi), 180, 183 Isis, mystery religion of, 109, 110 Jerome, 37 – 38, 169, 171, 193 Jews and Judaism. See also Tannaim – anti-Semitism, classical, 51n20, 57 – 59 – Christianity compared by Celsus to, 58 – 60 – decline of non-intellectual authority in, 177 – 186 – Hasidim, 178 – 179 – on „living voice“ versus writing, 31 – 35 – on oral-traditional authority, 169, 171, 172, 179 – 186 – prophetic authority, decline of, 177 – 179 – Seer of Revelation’s familiarity with Jewish literature, 15 – 16 – synagogues, 108n28, 114

268

General Index

– Tatian’s treatment of, 71 – 72n121 John the Elder and Aristion, Papias as direct witness to, 39 – 41, 43n70, 168 – 170, 174 John of Patmos. See Seer of Revelation John the Zebedee, associated with Seer of Revelation, 19n50 Johnson, A. E., 220 – 221 Jonas, Hans, xii Josephus. See also Index Locorum – ancient/barbarian wisdom, development of interest in, 51 – 52, 66 – on prophetic authority, 167 – on Syrians and Assyrians, 72n121 Judaism. See Jews and Judaism Justin Martyr. See also Index Locorum – βάρβαρος, use of, 70, 73 – on catechumenate, 104, 105, 106 – 107 – Celsus and, 45 – education and training of, 54 – as intellectual, 7 – on intellectual independence, 84, 91 – on Jewish wisdom and Greek culture, 62 – 63, 66 – martyrdom of, 74 – philosophical school, Christian community viewed as, 111, 117 – rule of truth and, 159 – 160 – Tatian as student of, 45, 47, 54 – 55, 63 Juvenal, 187 Karpp, Heinrich, 25, 29n18, 39n56, 42 – 43 Kelly, J. N. D., 155n30 King, Karen, x Kinzig, Wolfram, 155n30 Kippenberg, Hans Georg, xi Kovacs, Judith L., 122n88, 125n98 Kyriae doxai (Epicurus), 112n46, 188 – 189 Lang, T. J., 107n22 LaValle, Dawn, 123n92 letter form, Seer of Revelation’s use of, 12, 20 Lévy, Carlos, 132 Lightfoot, J. I., 71n120 Lilla, S. R. C., 97n57 „living voice“ versus writing, 3, 25 – 44. See also „oral-traditional,“ under authority – Christians after Papias on, 35 – 37

– definition of „living voice,“ in classical/ early Christian world, 26 – 27, 41 – general preference for orality, 38 – 39 – gospel books, view of, 30n27 – Greco-Roman pagans on, 26 – 31 – Jews and Christians before Papias on, 31 – 35 – Pappias’s preference for „living and lasting voice“ over books, 25 – 26 Löhr, W. A., 29n18, 33n40, 42n66, 43n70 Long, A. A., 156 – 157n35 Love Commandment, Clement of Alexandria on, 129, 130, 135 – 136, 139 – 143 Lucian of Samosata, 47, 64n86, 71n120, 187 Lucretius, 188 – 189 Lysimachus, 51n20 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 1 Macris, Constantinos, 112n48 Malingrey, A.-M., 71n120, 73n129, 74n131 Manetho, 51n20 Mansfield, Jaap, 25, 31n29 Marcion and Marcionites, 35, 89n23, 104n10, 107, 161n46, 225n81 Marcus Aurelius (emperor), 73 Marcus Magus, x Mark. See also Index Locorum – Papias on etiology of gospel of, 40, 44 Markschies, Christoph, 89n23, 117n69, vii, xn16 marriage, Clement of Alexandria/Stoicism on, 141 – 142 Martin, Dale Basil, 67n97 Martyrdom of Polycarp, 47n8 Maximilla, 173 medicine and medical discourse. See also Galen – intellectual independence and, 83 – 87, 90 – 91, 96, 98n67 – Polybius on, 27 – Tatian on daemonic exercise of medical authority, 68 Megasthenes, 72n121 Melito of Sardis, 73, 153n25 Menn, Stephen, 87 – 87n13 Middle Platonism, 48, 52, 53, 54, 55, 57n44, 63, 67, 112, 130

General Index

milk/meat imagery used by Clement of Alexandria, 122 – 125 Mithras cult, 61, 109, 110, 116 Mochus the Phoenician, 50 Mommsen, Theodor, 113 Montanus and Montanism, 173 – 174 Mühlenberg, Ekkehard, xii Munck, Johannes, 169 Musonius Rufus, 137, 138, 140, 141 mystery religions, 59, 109 – 111, 113n53 Nazis and Nazism, 8n4 Neopythagoreanism, 112n48 Neoteroi, 214 Neuschäfer, Bernhard, 223 Nicklas, Tobias, 2 – 3, 7 Nicolaus of Damascus, 189 Niehoff, M. R., 223n69 Numenius – On the Academics’ Dissension from Plato, 52 – 54 – Ammonius Saccas and, 112n48 – ancient/barbarian wisdom, development of interest in, 52 – 54, 55n35, 57, 74, 132 – Justin Martyr and, 62 – Origen on, 54 Obsolescence of Oracles (Plutarch), 187 – 188 Oenomaus of Gadara, 187n80 On Demonstration (Galen), 86 On the Academics’ Dissension from Plato (Numenius), 52 – 54 On the Best Kind of Teaching (Galen), 87 – 87n13 On the Primary Unmoved Mover (Galen), 105n16 Oppel, Herbert, 156 oracles. See prophetic or revelatory authority orality versus writing. See „living voice“ versus writing oral-traditional authority, 165 – decline of, in early Christian sources, 174 – 177 – decline of, in Jewish/Rabbinic sources, 179 – 186 – decline of, in pagan sources, 188 – 191 – use in early Christian sources, 168 – 172

269

Origen. See also Index Locorum – Ammonius Saccas and, 112n48 – athetesis/scribal error used by, 217 – 218n54 – Celsus, preserving works of, 45, 47 – eratopokriseis genre used by, 222, 223 – 224 – Hexapla, 223 – independence, intellectual, 4 – as intellectual, 2, 7 – on intellectual independence, 98 – 100 – on „living voice“ versus writing, 36 – 37 – methodological awareness of, 225n81 – on Numenius, 54 – Platonism in, 132, 140 – punctuation, changing, 212n47 – rule of truth and, 162 – zetematic literature, Alexandrian tradition of, 4 Orphic mysteries, 112 Ory, P., viin2 Osborn, E. F., 25n2 Ossa-Richardson, Anthony, 186 – 187 Pagels, Elaine, 76 – 77 paideia, 3, 38 – 39, 65, 66, 67 – 70, 74, 79n147, 111, 220 Palmyrene uprising under Zenobia, 77 Pamphilus, 224 Panarion (Epiphanius), 173 Pantaenus, 37, 111 Papias of Hieropolis. See also Index Locorum – access to gospels, 43, 44n72 – Aristion and the elder John, as direct witness to, 39 – 41, 43n70, 168 – 171, 174 – Expositions of the Dominical Oracles, 35, 39 – 44 – Irenaeus and, 35, 170, 171, 175n41 – Mark, on etiology of gospel of, 40, 44 – oral-traditional authority in work of, 168 – 172, 174 – 176 – preference for „living and lasting voice“ over books, 25 – 26, 39 – 44 (See also „living voice“ versus writing) – Tannaim and rabbinic parallels, 3, 41n62, 169, 172 Passion of Perpetua, 104

270

General Index

Paul. See also specific Pauline writings, in Index Locorum – as intellectual, 7 – on intellectual independence, 87 – 91 – kanon language of, 146 – on „living voice“ versus writing, 34 – on prophetic authority, 167 – Seer of Revelation compared, 3, 19 – 20, 22 – Weber on „petty-bourgeois intellectualism“ of, viii–ix Paulsen, Thomas, 14 Penniman, John, 125 Peri Kriterion (Ptolemy), 156 – 157n35 Peripatetics, 52, 84, 132, 188, 189 Perrone, L., 209 Pharisees, 169 Phercydes, 61 Philo of Alexandria. See also Index Locorum – ancient/barbarian wisdom, development of interest in, 52, 54, 73 – eratopokriseis genre used by, 193, 222 – 223 – on „living voice“ versus writing, 32 – 33 – Questions on Exodus, 222 – Questions on Genesis, 222 – on rule of truth, 157 – 158 – Stoicism and, 130, 132 – on Therapeutae, 117n70 – on unknowability of God, 134 Philo of Larissa, 180 Philo the Pythagorean, 139 philosophy/philosophical schools. See also specific schools, e. g. Stoics and Stoicism – ancient/barbarian wisdom (See under Tatian and Celsus) – catechumenate compared to schools, 108n28, 111 – 113, 117 – Christian groups rejecting, 120 – 121, 122n88 – Clement on social relations and, 141 – common ground or lingua franca of, 131 – 132 – oral tradition, collapse of, 188 – 191 – on rule of truth, 156 – 159 phronêsis, 133 Pilhofer, Peter, 64n84, 66n92, 70n109, 78

Plato and Platonism. See also Clement of Alexandria, Platonism and Stoicism in; Index Locorum – ancient/barbarian wisdom, development of interest in, 48 – 49, 52 – 53, 55, 56 – 57, 74 – Celsus on, 60 – 62, 79 – Christianity and, 75 – 77 – Galen’s commentary on Republic, 105n15 – on intellectual independence, 89n22 – later commentaries on, 190 – on „living voice“ versus writing, 26 – 27, 36 – Middle Platonism, 48, 52, 53, 54, 55, 57n44, 63, 67, 112, 130 – Numenius, On the Academics’ Dissension from Plato, 52 – 54 – Origen and, 132, 140 – Timaeus, 49, 89n22, 130, 132 Pliny the Younger, 107. See also Index Locorum Plotinus, 2, 112n48, 190 – 191 Plutarch, 110, 187 – 188. See also Index Locorum Pohlenz, Max, 134 Polybius, 27, 29n20 Polycarp, 47n8 Polycrates of Ephesus, 146 Porphyry, 31, 190. See also Index Locorum Praeparatio Evangelica (Eusebius), 187n80 Priscilla, 173 Procatechesis (Cyril of Jerusalem), 106 prophetic or revelatory authority, 165 – decline of, in Christian sources, 172 – 174 – decline of, in Jewish/Rabbinic sources, 176 – 179 – decline of, in pagan sources, 186 – 188 – institutionalization, decline of prophetic authority and concept of, 191 – use of, in early Christian sources, 166 – 167 ps.-Plutarchian revision of Aetius, 162n47 Ptolemy (disciple of Valentinus), 176 Ptolemy (mathematician), 156 – 157n35 punctuation of texts, suggesting changes in, 211 – 212 Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism, 52, 53, 74, 112

General Index

Quartodeciman controversy, 146 question-and-answer texts (eratopokriseis), 193 – 194, 222 – 224 Questions on Exodus (Philo), 222 Questions on Genesis (Philo), 222 Qumran sect and texts, 113n53, 115 – 116, 117 – 118, 167 rabbinic Judaism. See Jews and Judaism Reale, Giovanni, 189 Republic (Plato). See also Index Locorum – Galen’s commentary on, 105n15 Revelation. See Seer of Revelation Revelation of Peter, 7 revelatory authority. See prophetic or revelatory authority Reydams-Schils, Gretchen, 4, 129 Rhodon (student of Tatian), 47 Rousseau, A., 150 Rouwhorst, Gerard, 118n72 Rudolph, Kurt, xii rule of faith, 106, 145, 146, 148, 151, 154n29, 158 rule of truth. See Irenaeus of Lyons, on the rule of truth Runia, David, 132 „sacred“ texts, assumed authorship and flawlessness of, 197n13, 201, 204, 205, 206, 209, 220, 221, 223, 225 Sagiv, Yonatan, 183 Samothracian mystery cult, 109, 110 Saxer, V., 120n79 Sceptics, 52, 82 – 83, 85 Schironi, Francesca, 4, 193 Schwartz, Eduard, 42n65 Searle, John R., 101n3 Seer of Revelation, 2 – 3, 7 – 24 – apocalyptic literature, view of, 7 – 9 – book motif, use of, 12, 13 – Christ’s voice/witness of Jesus, functioning as, 20 – 24 – communities and churches of Asia, relationship to, 17 – 24 – Greek style and grammar of, 13 – 15 – identity and authorship issues, 8 – 9 – Ignatius of Antioch compared, 3, 22 – 23, 24

271

– as intellectual, 9 – 17, 23 – 24 – intertextuality, use of, 15 – Jewish literature, familiarity with, 15 – 16 – John the Zebedee, association with, 19n50 – letter form in, 12, 20 – Paul compared, 3, 19 – 20, 22 – prophet detached from world, self-description as, 18 – 20, 24 self-exegesis, 213 – 215 Seneca, 28, 38, 50, 189 Serapis cult, 113n53 Sextus Empiricus, 157 Shepherd of Hermas, 35, 102, 104n10, 105, 167 Sirinelli, J.-F., viin2 Socrates, 26, 36, 60, 129 Sommer, Ben, 177n50 Sommer, Michael, 15 Stewart, Alistair, 155n30 Stoics and Stoicism. See also Clement of Alexandria, Platonism and Stoicism in – ancient/barbarian wisdom, development of interest in, 49 – 54, 55, 57n44, 64 – Christian dependence on, 130 – etymology and allegory, use of, 208n – on intellectual independence, 83n5, 84, 89n22 Striker, Gisela, 156 Stromateis (Clement of Alexandria). See also Index Locorum – collage technique of, 131 Stroumsa, G. G., 62 – 63n80 Stuckenbruck, Loren T., 69 – 70n108 synagogues, 108n28, 114 Tanaseanu-Döbler, Ilinca, 111n42 Tannaim – decline of non-intellectual authority and, 177 – 186 – oral-traditional authority in, 169, 171, 172, 174 – 177 – Papias, parallels to, 3, 41n62, 169, 172 Tarfon (Rabbi), 171, 181 – 182 Tatian and Celsus, 3, 45 – 80. See also Index Locorum – ancient/barbarian wisdom, development of interest in, 48 – 54

272

General Index

– βάρβαρος, Tatian’s philosophical identity with, 70 – 75, 79 – 80 – biographical information, 47 – 48, 54 – 55, 72n121 – conversion of Tatian, 64 – 66 – cultural history and Hellenic deviance, Tatian on, 62 – 75 – daemons as passers-on of faulty Greek wisdom, Tatian on, 67 – 70 – dating of Celsus’ True Doctrine and Tatian’s Oration, 45 – 46, 47 – Diatessaron (Tatian), 47 – education of Christians and, 58n50, 107 – Greek corruption and barbarian purity, Tatian on, 64 – 67 – incoherence of Tatian’s Oration, 63 – 64 – intellectual, Tatian as, 7 – intellectual history, engaged in debate over competing narratives of, 46 – 47, 77 – 80 – Middle Platonism of, 48, 54, 55, 63, 67 – mystery religions, Celsus on, 110n32 – Origen preserving works of Celsus, 45, 47 – philosophical history and Christian deviance, Celsus on, 54 – 62 – Problemata of Tatian, 222 – relationship between Celsus’ True Doctrine and Tatian’s Oration, 45 – 46, 77 – 78 – universalism, Hellenic, versus Christian exclusivism, 75 – 77 Techne Grammatike (Dionysius Thrax), 220 Tertullian. See also Index Locorum – on catechumenate, 103, 105 – 106, 107, 119 – on Gnostic groups, 119 – on „living voice“ versus writing, 35 – 36 – on Mithras cult, 116 – on rule of truth, 161n46 Testamentum Domini, 175, 176n44 Theon, 220 Theophilus of Antioch, 35 Therapeutae, 117n70 Thrasyllus, 112n46 Timaeus (historian), 27 Timaeus (Plato), 49, 89n22, 130, 132

Trajan (emperor), 114n56 Trelenberg, J., 69nn105 – 106 truth, rule of. See Irenaeus of Lyons, on the rule of truth universalism, Hellenic, versus Christian exclusivism, 75 – 77 Valentinus and Valentinians, 7, 35, 87 – 91, 105 – 106, 107, 117, 119 – 121, 122n88 via remotionis, 95n43 Victorinus of Petau, 10n14 Völker, Walther, 134n12 voluntary associations (collegia) in ancient world, 108n28, 113 – 115, 117, 126 Vööbus, Arthur, 118n71 Ward, H. Clifton, III, 1 Waszink, J. H., 52n24, 70, 72, 73n128, 74 Weber, Max, 88n20, vii–xii Weinfeld, M., 118n73 Whittaker, Molly, 63 – 64 Williams, Michael Allen, x Williams, Rowan, 154n29 Wright, B. G., III, 32n36 writing versus orality. See „living voice“ versus writing Xenocrates, 133 Yadin-Israel, Azzan, 3, 41n62, 165 Yehoshua (Rabbi), 182 Yehoshua ben Levi, 178n55 Yohannan ben Zakkai, 179, 182, 186 Zalmoxis the Thracian, 50 Zamagni, Claudio, 224 zemata and lyseis (question-and-answer texts), 193 – 194 Zenobia, Palmyrene uprising under, 77 zetematic literature, Alexandrian tradition of, 4