Journal of Biblical Literature VOLUME 123, No. 1
Spring 2004
The Oxyrhynchus New Testament Papyri: “Not Without Honor Except in Their Hometown”? ELDON JAY EPP
5–55
Pilgrimage Imagery in the Returns in Ezra MELODY D. KNOWLES
57–74
Paul’s Argument from Nature for the Veil in 1 Corinthians 11:13–15: A Testicle Instead of a Head Covering TROY W. MARTIN
75–84
Paul’s Masculinity JENNIFER LARSON
85–97
Boasting of Beatings (2 Corinthians 11:23–25) JENNIFER A. GLANCY
A Pre-Deuteronomistic Bicolon in 1 Samuel 12:21? BILL T. ARNOLD
99–135
137–142
Book Reviews 143 — Index 200
US ISSN 0021–9231
JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE PUBLISHED QUARTERLY BY THE
SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE (Constituent Member of the American Council of Learned Societies) EDITORS OF THE JOURNAL General Editor: GAIL R. O’DAY, Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322 Book Review Editor: CHRISTINE ROY YODER, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, GA 30031 Associate Book Review Editor: TODD C. PENNER, Austin College, Sherman, TX 75090
EDITORIAL BOARD
Term Expiring 2004: JANICE CAPEL ANDERSON, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844 MOSHE BERNSTEIN, Yeshiva University, New York, NY 10033-3201 ROBERT KUGLER, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, OR 97219 BERNARD M. LEVINSON, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455-0125 THEODORE J. LEWIS, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218 TIMOTHY LIM, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH1 2LX Scotland STEPHEN PATTERSON, Eden Theological Seminary, St. Louis, MO 63119 ADELE REINHARTZ, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, OH N2L 3C5 Canada NAOMI A. STEINBERG, DePaul University, Chicago, IL 60614 SZE-KAR WAN, Andover Newton Theological School, Newton Centre, MA 02459 2005: BRIAN K. BLOUNT, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ 08542 TERENCE L. DONALDSON, Wycliffe College, Toronto, ON M5S 1H7 Canada PAMELA EISENBAUM, Iliff School of Theology, Denver, CO 80210 STEVEN FRIESEN, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211 A. KATHERINE GRIEB, Virginia Theological Seminary, Alexandria, VA 22304 JEFFREY KAH-JIN KUAN, Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, CA 94709 RICHARD D. NELSON, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275 DAVID L. PETERSEN, Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322 ALAN F. SEGAL, Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027 GREGORY E. STERLING, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556 PATRICIA K. TULL, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Louisville, KY 40205 2006: F. W. DOBBS-ALLSOPP, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ 08542 THOMAS B. DOZEMAN, United Theological Seminary, Dayton, OH 45406 PAUL B. DUFF, George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052 CAROLE R. FONTAINE, Andover Newton Theological School, Newton Centre, MA 02459 JUDITH LIEU, King’s College London, London WC2R 2LS United Kingdom MARTTI NISSINEN, University of Helsinki, FIN-00014 Finland KATHLEEN M. O’CONNOR, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, GA 30031 EUNG CHUN PARK, San Francisco Theological Seminary, San Anselmo, CA 94960 TURID KARLSEN SEIM, University of Oslo, N-0315 Oslo, Norway BENJAMIN D. SOMMER, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60645 VINCENT L. WIMBUSH, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA 91711 Editorial Assistant: Susan E. Haddox, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322 President of the Society: David L. Petersen, Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322; Vice President: Carolyn Osiek, Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX 76129; Chair, Research and Publications Committee: James C. VanderKam, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556; Executive Director: Kent H. Richards, Society of Biblical Literature, 825 Houston Mill Road, Suite 350, Atlanta, GA 30329. The Journal of Biblical Literature (ISSN 0021– 9231) is published quarterly. The annual subscription price is US$35.00 for members and US$75.00 for nonmembers. Institutional rates are also available. For information regarding subscriptions and membership, contact: Society of Biblical Literature, P.O. Box 2243, Williston, VT 05495-2243. Phone: 877-725-3334 (toll free) or 802-864-6185. FAX: 802-864-7626. E-mail:
[email protected]. For information concerning permission to quote, editorial and business matters, please see the Spring issue, p. 2. The JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE (ISSN 0021– 9231) is published quarterly by the Society of Biblical Literature, 825 Houston Mill Road, Suite 350, Atlanta, GA 30329. Periodical postage paid at Atlanta, Georgia, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Society of Biblical Literature, P.O. Box 2243, Williston, VT 05495-2243. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Journal of Biblical Literature Volume 123 2004
GENERAL EDITOR
GAIL R. O’DAY Candler School of Theology Emory University Atlanta, GA 30322 BOOK REVIEW EDITOR
CHRISTINE ROY YODER Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, GA 30031 ASSOCIATE BOOK REVIEW EDITOR
TODD C. PENNER Austin College, Sherman, TX 75090
A Quarterly Published by THE SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE
EDITORIAL BOARD Term Expiring 2004: JANICE CAPEL ANDERSON, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844 MOSHE BERNSTEIN, Yeshiva University, New York, NY 10033-3201 ROBERT KUGLER, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, OR 97219 BERNARD M. LEVINSON, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455-0125 THEODORE J. LEWIS, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218 TIMOTHY LIM, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH1 2LX Scotland STEPHEN PATTERSON, Eden Theological Seminary, St. Louis, MO 63119 ADELE REINHARTZ, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON N2L 3C5 Canada NAOMI A. STEINBERG, DePaul University, Chicago, IL 60614 SZE-KAR WAN, Andover Newton Theological School, Newton Centre, MA 92459 2005: BRIAN K. BLOUNT, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ 08542 TERENCE L. DONALDSON, Wycliffe College, Toronto, ON M5S 1H7 Canada PAMELA EISENBAUM, Iliff School of Theology, Denver, CO 80210 STEVEN FRIESEN, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211 A. KATHERINE GRIEB, Virginia Theological Seminary, Alexandria, VA 22304 JEFFREY KAH-JIN KUAN, Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, CA 94709 RICHARD D. NELSON, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275 DAVID L. PETERSEN, Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322 ALAN F. SEGAL, Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027 GREGORY E. STERLING, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556 PATRICIA K. TULL, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Louisville, KY 40205 2006: F. W. DOBBS-ALLSOPP, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ 08542 THOMAS B. DOZEMAN, United Theological Seminary, Dayton, OH 45406 PAUL B. DUFF, George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052 CAROLE R. FONTAINE, Andover Newton Theological School, Newton Centre, MA 02459 JUDITH LIEU, King’s College London, London WC2R 2LS United Kingdom MARTTI NISSINEN, University of Helsinki, FIN-00014 Finland KATHLEEN M. O’CONNOR, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, GA 30031 EUNG CHUN PARK, San Francisco Theological Seminary, San Anselmo, CA 94960 TURID KARLSEN SEIM, University of Oslo, N-0315 Oslo, Norway BENJAMIN D. SOMMER, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60645 VINCENT L. WIMBUSH, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA 91711 Editorial Assistant: Susan E. Haddox, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322 Articles are indexed in Religion Index One: Periodicals; book reviews in Index to Book Reviews in Religion, American Theological Library Association, Evanston, Illinois. Both indexes are also found in the ATLA Religion Database on CD-ROM.
EDITORIAL MATTERS OF THE JBL 1. Contributors should consult the Journal’s Instructions for Contributors (http://www.sbl-site.org/Publications/PublishingWithSBL/JBL_Instructions.pdf). 2. If a MS of an article, critical note, or book review is submitted in a form that departs in major ways from these instructions, it may be returned to the author for retyping, even before it is considered for publication. 3. Submit two hard copies of the MS of an article or critical note and, if their return is desired, include a stamped, self-addressed envelope. 4. Manuscripts and communications regarding the content of the Journal should be addressed to Gail R. O’Day at the address given on the preceding page (or correspondence only at the following e-mail address:
[email protected]). 5. Communications concerning book reviews should be addressed to Christine Roy Yoder at the address given on the preceding page. The editors do not guarantee to review or to return unsolicited books. 6. Permission to quote more than 500 words may be requested from the Rights and Permissions Department, Society of Biblical Literature, 825 Houston Mill Road, Suite 350, Atlanta, GA 30329, USA (E-mail:
[email protected]). Please specify volume, year, and inclusive page numbers.
BUSINESS MATTERS OF THE SBL (not handled by the editors of the Journal)
1. All correspondence regarding membership in the Society, subscriptions to the Journal, change of address, renewals, missing or defective issues of the Journal, and inquiries about other publications of the Society should be addressed to Society of Biblical Literature, P.O. Box 2243, Williston, VT 05495-2243. E-mail:
[email protected]. Toll-free U.S. Domestic phone: 877-725-3334. FAX: 802-864-7626. 2. All correspondence concerning the research and publications programs, the annual meeting of the Society, and other business should be addressed to the Executive Director, Society of Biblical Literature, The Luce Center, 825 Houston Mill Road, Atlanta, GA 30329. (E-mail:
[email protected]). 3. Second Class postage paid at Atlanta, Georgia, and at additional mailing offices. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Presidential Address by ELDON JAY EPP President of the Society of Biblical Literature 2003 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature November 22, 2003 Atlanta, Georgia Introduction given by David L. Petersen, Vice President, Society of Biblical Literature
Eldon Jay Epp received his Ph.D. degree from Harvard University and held faculty appointments at the University of Southern California and at Case Western Reserve University. In 1998, Epp retired from Case Western Reserve, where he is Harkness Professor of Biblical Literature emeritus and Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences emeritus. Most recently he was a visiting professor of New Testament at Harvard Divinity School. Epp has authored or edited four books and over forty articles. A volume of his collected essays is forthcoming. He currently sits on a number of editorial boards, including Hermeneia, the North American executive committee of the International Greek NT Project, the NT Language Project, and the Electronic NT Manuscript Project. In this and related ways, Epp has distinguished himself as a textual critic. His books and articles have done much to summarize and synthesize an enormous body of scholarship in a clear and cogent way. Moreover, he has recently, particularly in an article published in 1999, identified and described a subtle shift in recent textual studies. He has offered a proposal for a more honest and more self-conscious use of the term “original text,” one that opens up the field of NT text-critical studies in new ways. As one scholar recently put it, Eldon has the ability not only to contribute to the field; he is in the process of helping redefine and reinvent the field of NT text critical studies. Beyond his roles as teacher, author, editor, and administrator, Epp has contributed in vital ways to the life of this Society. For twenty years, he was NT book review editor of JBL and for four years he served as editor of the Critical Review of Books in Religion. He chaired the textual criticism section of the annual meeting for fourteen years and served for twelve years as a member of the editorial board for the SBL Centennial Publications Series. And he is not yet finished with us, since he currently serves as chair of Council’s Programs and Initiatives Committee. Here, as in so many other ways, Eldon has been the consummate colleague and scholar. Last, I cannot resist one brief biographic note. Early in his career, Eldon Epp was involved in consequential ways with the beginnings of the AAR. John
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Journal of Biblical Literature Priest and Eldon had been nominated to serve as president and vice-president of the AAR in 1966. There were, at that time, a number of complicated dynamics within the leadership of that young society. Recognizing the precarious state of that new organization, both Eldon and John withdrew their nominations, attempting to do their share to permit the AAR to develop. So, Eldon, we look back at your work over the past decades and thank you not only for what you did for SBL, but also for your contributions to the AAR.
JBL 123/1 (2004) 5–55
THE OXYRHYNCHUS NEW TESTAMENT PAPYRI: “NOT WITHOUT HONOR EXCEPT IN THEIR HOMETOWN”?
ELDON JAY EPP
[email protected] 10 Litchfield Road, Lexington, MA 02420
The papyri offer us the most direct access we have to the experience of ordinary people in antiquity. —E. A. Judge1
A year and a half ago I presented to a distinguished NT scholar an offprint of an article I had just published on the Junia/Junias variation in Rom 16:7.2 A few weeks later, in his presence, I handed a copy also to another NT scholar. At that point, the first colleague said to the second, “You must read this article. Can you imagine—something interesting written by a textual critic!” This was Presidential Address delivered on November 22, 2003, at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Atlanta, Georgia. This is an expanded version of the oral presentation. The text in the title is Mark 6:4 NRSV. Note: References to Oxyrhynchus papyri will be given as P.Oxy. + papyrus no.; discussions of a papyrus will be indicated by P.Oxy. + vol. no. + pp. All such references relate to The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (Greco-Roman Memoirs; London: British Academy for the Egypt Exploration Society) 1898– [67 vols. to date]. Oxyrhynchus papyri published elsewhere use the appropriate abbreviations, e.g., PSI + vol. + papyrus no. Basic data on papyri (contents, names, date, etc.) are taken from these sources without further acknowledgment. References to the papyri in Joseph van Haelst, Catalogue des papyrus littéraires juifs et chrétiens (Université de Paris IV, Papyrologie 1; Paris: Sorbonne, 1976), will be reported as van Haelst + no. 1 E. A. Judge, Rank and Status in the World of the Caesars and St Paul (Broadhead Memorial Lecture 1981; University of Canterbury Publications 29; Christchurch, NZ: University of Canterbury, 1982), 7. 2 Eldon Jay Epp, “Text-Critical, Exegetical, and Socio-Cultural Factors Affecting the Junia/Junias Variation in Romans 16,7,” in New Testament Textual Criticism and Exegesis: Festschrift J. Delobel (ed. A. Denaux; BETL 161; Leuven: Leuven University Press/Peeters, 2002), 227–91.
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meant to be a genuine compliment, yet it echoed a common and almost unconscious impression that biblical textual critics are dull creatures who spend their careers tediously adjudicating textual minutiae that only impede the exegete’s work. Of course, critical editions are considered essential and therefore welcome, but must we really be bothered by that complex apparatus at the foot of the page?
I. Introduction: Traditional and New Goals of Textual Criticism Naturally, textual critics will continue their tradition of establishing the earliest or most likely “original” text, though now we use such a term, if we use it at all, with caution and even with reluctance, recognizing that “original text” carries several dimensions of meaning.3 Indeed, ever since Westcott-Hort entitled their famous edition The New Testament in the Original Greek,4 we have learned that many a pitfall awaits those who, whether arrogantly or naively, rush headlong into that search for the Holy Grail. Yet the aim to produce better critical editions by refining the criteria for the priority of readings and by elucidating the history of the text will remain; at the same time, however, textual criticism’s other goals will be pursued in accord with significant changes that recent decades have brought to the discipline. For example, emphasis has fallen on scribal activity, especially the purposeful alteration of texts that reflect the theology and culture of their times. One dramatic presentation was Bart Ehrman’s Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, a work so well known that I need only summarize his main point: During the christological controversies of the first three centuries, “proto-orthodox scribes,” as he calls them, “sometimes changed their scriptural texts to make them say what they were already known to mean.”5 Hence, they “corrupted” their texts to maintain “correct” doctrine. Much earlier, textual critics had been willing to attribute such arrogance only to heretics, but Ehrman boldly and correctly turned this on its head. Though startling and unexpected, his thesis, as he recognized, issued quite naturally from text-critical developments of the preceding four decades.6 3 See Eldon Jay Epp, “The Multivalence of the Term ‘Original Text’ in New Testament Textual Criticism,” HTR 92 (1999): 245–81. 4 Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek (2 vols.; Cambridge/London: Macmillan, 1881–82; 2nd ed., 1896). 5 Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), xii (his italics); see also 24–31. 6 Ibid., 42 n. 94, but esp. his “The Text as Window: New Testament Manuscripts and the
Epp: The Oxyrhynchus NT Papyri
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A second phenomenon, long troubling to textual critics, concerns multiple readings in one variation-unit that defy resolution, and attention has turned to what these multiple—often competing—variants might tell us about crucial issues faced by the churches and how they dealt with them. David Parker, whose small volume is at risk of being overlooked owing to its simple yet significant title, The Living Text of the Gospels,7 confronted the problem head-on, with fascinating results. For instance, the six main variant forms of the so-called Lord’s Prayer in Matthew and Luke show the evolution of this pericope under liturgical influence. This is well known, but my description of it is much too detached. What obviously happened, of course, was that the fervent, dynamic worship environment in early churches at various times and places evoked appropriate expansions of the shorter and certainly earlier forms that we print in our Greek texts of Matthew and Luke, including additional clauses such as “Your Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse us,” but especially the lofty praise of the Almighty and Eternal God offered with grandeur and dignity and beauty in the famous doxology, “For the kingdom and the power and the glory are yours forever and ever. Amen” [additions to Matt 6:13]. Once hearing the variants of these six forms and reciting them again and again, “. . . they will be a part of the way in which we read and interpret the Lord’s Prayer,” says Parker, and “we shall not be able to erase them from our minds, and to read a single original text as though the others had never existed.”8 A second, more poignant example in its relevance to anguishing life situations concerns the twenty-some variants in the four passages on divorce/remarriage in the Synoptic Gospels. Parker’s analysis of this complex array shows that some variants concern Jewish, others Roman provisions for divorce; some condemn divorce but not remarriage, while others prohibit remarriage but not divorce; some variants describe adultery as remarriage, others as divorce and remarriage, and others as marrying a divorced man; and some variants portray Jesus as pointing to the cruelty of divorcing one’s wife—thereby treating her as if she were an adulteress, though she was not—perhaps with the outcome of establishing her right to remain single, yet without affirming that the divorcing man commits adultery. Some variants, therefore, are concerned with the man, others with the woman, and still others with both. Sometimes the divorcing man commits adultery, sometimes not; sometimes the divorced or divorcing Social History of Early Christianity,” in The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis (ed. Bart D. Ehrman and Michael W. Holmes; SD 46; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 363–65. 7 David C. Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 8 Ibid., 102.
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woman commits adultery, sometimes she is made an adulteress, sometimes she commits adultery if she remarries, and, finally, sometimes a man marrying a divorced woman commits adultery.9 “The main result of this survey,” says Parker, “is to show that the recovery of a single original saying of Jesus is impossible.” Nor can we say that one variant is more original than the others, he adds, for “what we have is a collection of interpretative rewritings of a tradition.”10 Indeed, in the early centuries of Christianity, the collection of writings that was to become or had become the NT was not a closed book, but—through textual variation—to quote Parker again, “it is open, and successive generations write on its pages.”11 What do multiple variants without resolution about originality mean for textual criticism and for us today? On the one hand, we are permitted to glimpse something of the creative dynamism and eloquent expansiveness of early Christian liturgy as new expressions evolved within the Lord’s Prayer, and, in the divorce/remarriage morass, a window is opened for us to observe and to experience with early Christians over wide areas and lengthy periods the pathos and the agonizing, intractable ethical dilemmas that they faced. On the other hand, multiple variants, with no single original or simple resolution within grasp, can show us the way for our own times: there is no one right path or answer, no single directive, but the multiple variants reveal an array of differing situations, leaving open multiple options for us as well. In such cases, to quote Parker a final time, “the People of God have to make up their own minds. There is no authoritative text to provide a short-cut.”12 Suddenly textual criticism comes alive and becomes relevant in ways that no one might have imagined. Why didn’t we see this sooner and how could we have missed it? One of the earliest reviews of my 1966 book on theological tendency in the so-called Western text of Acts13 contained this line: “. . . if the 9 Ibid., 77–89. For a graphic display of Parker’s analysis of these variants, see S. R. Pickering, “A Classified Survey of Some Recent Researches Relevant for New Testament Textual Studies,” New Testament Textual Research Update 8 (2000): 66–69. 10 Parker, Living Text of the Gospels, 92–93. 11 Ibid., 174. He was speaking of Luke, but it is clear from the larger context that he views the Gospels and, by extension, the entire NT in this fashion. Cf. the recent statement of Traianos Gagos, “The University of Michigan Papyrus Collection: Current Trends and Future Perspectives,” in Atti del XXII Congresso Internazionale di Papirologia, Firenze, 23–29 agosto 1998 (ed. Isabella Andorlini et al.; 2 vols. + 1 vol. of plates; Florence: Istituto Papirologico “G. Vitelli,” 2001), 1:515: “An edited text is no more a static, isolated object, but a growing and changeable amalgam: the image [a reference to electronic images of papyri] allows the user to look critically at the ‘established’ text and to challenge continuously the authoritative readings and interpretations of its first or subsequent editors.” 12 Parker, Living Text of the Gospels, 212. 13 E. J. Epp, The Theological Tendency of Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis in Acts (SNTSMS 3; Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1966; unchanged repr. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2001). By request, I presented an update of the issues in “Anti-Judaic Tendencies in the D-
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tendency were as clear as Epp suggests one wonders why generations of highly competent textual critics have missed it.”14 Well, the time was right forty years ago—though not a hundred years ago15—to observe that the NT text suffered alteration for ideological and theological purposes. And the time was right during the past decade to see the positive aspects of multiple variants. At last NT textual criticism has lost its innocence and has learned to tolerate ambiguity— one of the sure signs of maturity. And why was an earlier time not propitious? Perhaps because textual critics, often working in isolation, focusing resolutely on their traditional tasks and employing overly mechanical methods, could not see through to real-life situations. Recently David Parker, again, has called some of the newer approaches “narrative textual criticism,”16 which I understand to mean, simply and at a minimum, that textual variants have a story to tell—and that they allow new voices to be heard beyond the traditional call for “the original” text. This, for me, has energized textual criticism. Establishing the earliest text-forms provides one dimension; grasping the real-life contexts of variant readings adds richness by showing how Christians made meaning out of the living text as they nurtured and shaped it in worship and in life. Our discipline, to be sure, has its technical aspects, but it remains primarily an art, and therefore it is for neither the perfunctory, nor the inflexible, nor the unimaginative, nor the tender-minded; and above all it is not the safe harbor that for so long and by so many it has been perceived to be. And “this”—as the saying goes—“is not your father’s” textual criticism, but an entrance into a brave new world, with provocative challenges and captivating promises! Text of Acts: Forty Years of Conversation,” in The Book of Acts as Church History: Text, Textual Traditions and Ancient Interpretations/Apostelgeschichte als Kirchengeschichte: Text, Texttraditionen und antike Auslegungen (ed. Tobias Nicklas and Michael Tilly; BZNW 120; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2003), 111–46. 14 Leon Morris, ABR 15 (1967) 48. He introduces this comment by saying, “It is a learned and valuable study, and I think it could scarcely be denied that Professor Epp has demonstrated that the tendency of which he speaks exists.” 15 Except with respect to “heretics”: see, e.g., the often quoted statement of Hort (1882) in Westcott and Hort, New Testament in the Original Greek, 2:282–83: “Even among the numerous unquestionably spurious readings of the New Testament there are no signs of deliberate falsification of the text for dogmatic purposes. . . . It is true that dogmatic preferences to a great extent determined theologians, and probably scribes, in their choice between rival readings already in existence: . . . the temptation was strong to believe and assert that a reading used by theological opponents had also been invented by them. Accusations of wilful tampering with the text are accordingly not unfrequent in Christian antiquity: but, with a single exception [Marcion], wherever they can be verified they prove to be groundless, being in fact hasty and unjust inferences from mere diversities of inherited text.” 16 D. C. Parker, review of Bart Ehrman, Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, JTS 45 (1994): 704. He was referring to my Theological Tendency and to Ehrman’s book; I would include Parker’s Living Text in this category as well.
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Journal of Biblical Literature II. New Testament Papyri in Their Cultural and Intellectual Context
During the past half-dozen years my research has emphasized the provenance of manuscripts, a factor much neglected in discussing fragmentary papyri. Provenance translates into context—the sociocultural and intellectual character of the communities where manuscripts resided and which left its mark on those manuscripts. But the manuscripts, as shaped by that context, in turn illuminate their own community contexts—not unlike the hermeneutical circle. Previously, manuscripts—when viewed as impersonal and perfunctory sources of data—were not seen as living and dynamic, with individual “personalities” that emerged out of the everyday life and exigencies of the churches, reflecting their faith and practice and the controversies of the time. Today, by placing NT manuscripts in their immediate contexts, we can more clearly understand their role as witnesses to the NT text. It is these issues, confined to the environment of the NT papyri at Oxyrhynchus and to the first three and a half centuries of Christianity in that locality, that I wish to explore on this occasion. After all, it is well known that the NT papyri found at Oxyrhynchus constitute the most numerous, the most geographically concentrated, and as a whole the oldest at any single location. It is natural then to ask, first, about the Christian environment of the city with this remarkable corpus of manuscripts and, second, whether their reception, use, and influence in their own time and place were proportionate to these superlatives—and whether they enjoyed a special place of honor there. At Oxyrhynchus, the context of its NT papyri must be recovered almost entirely from other papyri, and we face two frustrating barriers: the fragmentary nature of most evidence and the randomness of its survival, for at Oxyrhynchus the vast majority of papyri were recovered from rubbish heaps. Yet there is no scarcity of data, for the literary and documentary remains to date exceed five thousand published manuscripts—enormous riches compared to other sites. And there are more to come.17 The Provenance of New Testament Manuscripts The relevance of provenance. Those who consult the editio princeps of a manuscript inevitably will find a statement of its ascertained date and provenance (or often the confession that these are uncertain or unknown). Hence, 17 I recall the 1998 Oxford University centenary of the publication of Oxyrhynchus papyri, when the research team publicly thanked the British Academy for one hundred years of support— and promptly requested funding for the next hundred years!
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lengthy discussions of a manuscript’s place of origin and/or discovery and its travels and utilization as it made its way to its present location will be found for such grand codices as Sinaiticus (a), Vaticanus (B), and Bezae (D), though their places of origin—discussed for centuries—may have reached resolution just in the last several years.18 Only occasionally, however, is more than a minimal treatment offered for lesser manuscripts, particularly the fragmentary papyri. This was understandable over the long history of textual criticism, when manuscripts were viewed largely in isolation—as objective, detached repositories of readings useful in establishing the text, but all the while remaining impersonal and lifeless. To be sure, their dates and sometimes their geographical diversity were factors in assessing their value for establishing the text, but manuscripts and the texts they carried were not often seen as influences upon the liturgy, thought, and ethics of early Christian congregations, nor as reliquaries for past theological expressions or controversies—preserving for us the artifacts of both discarded and prevailing Christian faith and practice. Beyond Oxyrhynchus, a number of papyri of known provenance might be investigated in this fashion. For example, P4, consisting of six fragments of a double-column codex containing Luke and dated in the late second century, was actually found in situ at Coptos (just north of Thebes) in a jar walled up in a house. More precisely, it was used in the binding of a (presumably Christian) codex of Philo, but the house showed no evident connection to a church.19 Yet there is likely more to this story, for books are known to have been hidden in private homes during periods of persecution, and Diocletion sacked Coptos in 292. Hence, it might be surmised that the owner of this codex concealed it then or perhaps later during a further severe persecution, with the intention of retrieving it after the danger was past.20 Beyond this, though, we would move only deeper into speculation. One might also consider P92, found in 1969 at Medînet Mâdi in the Fayum in a rubble-filled structure near a racing course.21 Surely there is more to this story also, but no one knows what it might be.
18 On Sinaiticus and Vaticanus and their origin in Caesarea, see T. C. Skeat, “The Codex Sinaiticus, the Codex Vaticanus and Constantine,” JTS 50 (1999): 583–625, esp. 603– 4; on Bezae’s origin in Berytus (Beirut), see David C. Parker, Codex Bezae: An Early Christian Manuscript and Its Text (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 261–78, esp. 266–78. 19 Colin H. Roberts, Manuscript, Society, and Belief in Early Christian Egypt (Schweich Lectures 1977; London: British Academy by Oxford University Press, 1979), 8, 13. Roberts dates P4 in the later second century, as does T. C. Skeat in an extensive discussion: “The Oldest Manuscript of the Four Gospels?” NTS 43 (1997): 26–31. There is debate as to whether P4 was part of the same codex as P64 + P67; see Skeat, above. The definitive edition of P4 was by Jean Merell, “Nouveaux fragments du papyrus 4,” RB 47 (1938): 5–22 + 7 pls. 20 Roberts, Manuscript, Society, and Belief, 8. 21 Claudio Gallazzi, “Frammenti di un codice con le Epistole di Paoli,” ZPE 46 (1982): 117.
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The New Testament papyri at Oxyrhynchus. The most obvious candidates for study, however, are the NT papyri from Oxyrhynchus, for they number an astounding forty-seven, or 42 percent of the currently known 116 (but perhaps 112 different) papyri. More striking is their proportion among all early NT manuscripts (including four majuscules, one from Oxyrhynchus), for out of the sixty-one that date up to or around the turn of the third/fourth centuries,22 thirty-five or 57 percent were found at Oxyrhynchus.23 As a whole, NT papyri date from the second century to ca. 600, but we should include also eleven additional majuscules found at Oxyrhynchus, for they all date within the same range—from the third/fourth through the fifth/sixth centuries.24 All together, these papyri and majuscules, though mostly highly fragmentary, preserve portions of seventeen of the twenty-seven books that eventually formed the NT canon,25 and, as I have argued elsewhere, they may be viewed as a microcosm of the various textual clusters (text-types) that present themselves across the entire NT manuscript tradition.26 22 Or sixty-two if P4 is treated as a separate manuscript rather than part of P64 + 67 (see n. 19 above). K. Aland and B. Aland (The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism [rev. ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Leiden: Brill, 1989], 96, 159) treat it separately, though others speak of P64 + 67 + 4: T. C. Skeat, “The Oldest Manuscript of the Four Gospels?” NTS 43 (1997): 1–34, esp. 1–9; Graham N. Stanton, “The Fourfold Gospel,” NTS 43 (1997): 327–28. The figure sixty-one (or sixty-two) includes majuscules 0162 (P.Oxy. 847, 3rd/4th c.), as well as 0189 (2nd/3rd c.), 0220 (3rd c.), 0171 (3rd/4th c.) from other locations; 0212 (3rd c.) is usually omitted because it is a Diatessaron manuscript, and not strictly of the NT: see Aland and Aland, Text of the New Testament, 56, 95, 125. 23 This includes majuscule 0162 (see preceding note). 24 The twelve Oxyrhynchus majuscules, by century, are third/fourth: 0162 (P.Oxy. 847); fourth: 0169 (P.Oxy. 1080), 0206 (P.Oxy. 1353), 0308 (P.Oxy. 4500); fifth: 069 (P.Oxy. 3), 0163 (P.Oxy. 848), 0172 (PSI 1.4), 0173 (PSI 1.5), 0174 (PSI II.118), 0176 (PSI 3.251); fifth/sixth: 071 (P.Oxy. 401), 0170 (P.Oxy. 1169). On the possibility that P52 (P.Ryl. 457, 2nd c.) came from Oxyrhynchus, see C. H. Roberts, ed., Catalogue of the Greek and Latin Papyri in the John Rylands Library, Manchester, III: Theological and Literary Texts (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1938), 2. Roberts is more cautious in An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1935), 24–25. According to its editor, Oxyrhynchus is the likely provenance of the highly important fifthcentury Coptic manuscript G67, containing Acts 1:1–15:3 in the Middle Egyptian (or Oxyrhynchite) dialect: Hans-Martin Schenke, ed., Apostelgeschichte 1,1–15,3 im mittelägyptischen Dialekt des Koptischen (Codex Glazier) (TU 137; Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1991), 88, 249. 25 Oxyrhynchus papyri contain portions of fifteen books of the NT: Matthew, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1–2 Thessalonians, Hebrews, James, 1 John, Jude, Apocalypse of John. Hence, those missing are Mark, 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, Pastoral Epistles, Philemon, 1–2 Peter, 2–3 John. However, Mark (069 = P.Oxy. 847, 5th c.) and 1 Peter (0206 = P.Oxy.1353, 4th c.) are represented among the Oxyrhynchus majuscules, for a total of seventeen. 26 See E. J. Epp, “The New Testament Papyri at Oxyrhynchus: Their Significance for Understanding the Transmission of the Early New Testament Text,” in Oxyrhynchus: A City and Its Texts
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So, if provenance is central, no other group of papyri begins to match Oxyrhynchus, for no more than three or four NT papyri are known with certainty to have been found at any other single location, and even if one considers a region, such as all the cities of the Fayum (the Arsinoite nome), where thousands of papyri were recovered, only a dozen of the NT survived there.27 Noting that about thirty-eight NT papyri stem from unknown localities means that Oxyrhynchus has furnished 64 percent of all NT papyri of known provenance. Naturally, because of their early dating and extensive coverage of the text, the prominent Chester Beatty and Bodmer papyri are of greater importance for the various tasks of textual criticism than those of Oxyrhynchus, but the Egyptian provenance of the Beatty group (P45, P46, P47) cannot be more narrowly identified than the supposition that they came from the Fayum. As for the Bodmer papyri (P66, P72, P75), James M. Robinson has clearly located their place of discovery among the Dishna Papers (at Dishnaµ, some 220 miles upstream from Oxyrhynchus), which were part of the nearby Pachomian monastic library until they were buried in a large earthen jar in (probably) the seventh century. Yet the Bodmer New Testament papyri clearly originated at another uncertain place or places, for they all antedate the founding of the monastic order.28 Thus, we do not know their earlier or original provenance.
(ed. Peter Parsons et al.; London: Egypt Exploration Society, [forthcoming]); see section on “Oxyrhynchus as a microcosm for New Testament text-types”; see also idem, “The Significance of the Papyri for Determining the Nature of the New Testament Text in the Second Century: A Dynamic View of Textual Transmission,” in Gospel Traditions in the Second Century: Origins, Recensions, Text, and Transmission (ed. William L. Petersen; Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity 3; Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 89–90 [reprinted in E. J. Epp and Gordon D. Fee, Studies in the Theory and Method of New Testament Textual Criticism (SD 45; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 286–87]; idem, “Textual Criticism in the Exegesis of the New Testament, with an Excursus on Canon,” in Handbook to Exegesis of the New Testament (ed. Stanley E. Porter; NTTS 25; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 58. 27 Papyri known or thought to come from the Fayum (ca. forty miles east to west and ca. thirty miles north to south in area) are P3, P12, P33 + 58, P34, P45 (?), P46 (?), P53, P55, P56, P57, P79, and P92 (Medînet Mâdi). Sinai provided three: P11, P14, P68, as did Auja el-Hafir (Nessana): P59, P60, P61; the Dishna Papers, found near Dishnaµ, include P66, P72, P75, and P92 (see next note). 28 James M. Robinson, The Pacomian Monastic Library at the Chester Beatty Library and the Bibliothèque Bodmer (Occasional Papers 19; Claremont, CA: Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, 1990), esp. 4–6, 22–27. A shorter version: “The First Christian Monastic Library,” in Coptic Studies: Acts of the Third International Congress of Coptic Studies, Warsaw, 20-25 August, 1984 (ed. W. Godlewski; Centre d’archéologie méditerranéenne de l’Académie Polonaise des Sciences; Warsaw: Éditions scientifiques de Pologne, 1990), 371–78. See also idem, “Introduction,” in The Chester Beatty Codex AC. 1390: Mathematical School Exercises in Greek and John 10:7–13:38 in Subachmimic (ed. W. Brashear, W.-P. Funk, J. M. Robinson, and R. Smith; CBM 13; Leuven: Peeters, 1990), 3–29, esp. 3–7, 15–23. P99 is included in the Dishna Papers: see Alfons Wouters, The Chester Beatty Codex AC
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By way of contrast, the forty-seven papyri and twelve majuscules discovered and presumably utilized at Oxyrhynchus—with many of them, though not necessarily all, likely to have originated there29—provide a statistically significant sample for examining their specific local Christian context.30 “Canonical” and “Extracanonical” New Testament Manuscripts at Oxyrhynchus: An Environmental Scan Our first step is to provide an environmental scan of Christian literature in Oxyrhynchus to discover the extent to which the NT manuscripts there shared space with additional Christian writings, keeping the issue of canon formation in mind. Of course, any notion of “New Testament papyri” as a formed and isolated body of literature is anachronistic: I know of nothing at Oxyrhynchus informing us of the canonical process there during the first three centuries or so of Christianity, except the very telling presence of numerous and often early manuscripts of what we—again often anachronistically—call the “apocryphal New Testament.” Hence, for a clearer picture of “New Testament papyri” at Oxyrhynchus into the late fourth century, the following writings discovered there—or at least most of them—should be included. Many are fragmentary, yet each is a remnant of a more extensive copy that was present in the ancient city. Naturally, one copy is significant, though two or more copies of a writing portray a more expansive and richer context. There are: • Seven copies of the Shepherd of Hermas (P.Oxy. 404 [late 3rd/early 4th c.], 1172+3526 [Greek and Coptic, 4th c.], 1599 [4th c.], 1783 [vellum 1499: A Graeco-Latin Lexicon on the Pauline Epistles and a Greek Grammar (CBM 12; Leuven: Peeters, 1988), esp. xi–xii. In the editio princeps of P72, Michel Testuz argued that P72 was copied in Thebes by a Coptic scribe (Papyrus Bodmer VII–IX: VII: L’Epître de Jude, VIII: Les deux Epîtres de Pierre, IX: Les Psaumes 33 et 34 [Cologny-Geneva: Bibliothèque Bodmer, 1959], 10, 32–33); this is based on “the presence of a Coptic word in the margin of 2 Peter 2:22 . . . and the frequent confusion of its K and G, characteristic of Copts of Thebes” (p. 10). Cf. Kurt Aland, ed., Repertorium der griechischen christlichen Papyri, I: Biblische Papyri (PTS 18; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1975), 303. 29 See E. J. Epp, “New Testament Papyrus Manuscripts and Letter Carrying in GrecoRoman Times,” in The Future of Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Helmut Koester (ed. B. A. Pearson; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 35–56, esp. 52–56. 30 In earlier studies, I treated the NT papyri in their literary/intellectual context in Oxyrhynchus: “The New Testament Papyri at Oxyrhynchus in Their Social and Intellectual Context,” in Sayings of Jesus: Canonical and Non-Canonical: Essays in Honour of Tjitze Baarda (ed. W. L. Petersen et al.; NovTSup 89; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 47–68; “The Codex and Literacy in Early Christianity and at Oxyrhynchus: Issues Raised by Harry Y. Gamble’s Books and Readers in the Early Church,” CRBR 10 (1997): 15–37; and “New Testament Papyri at Oxyrhynchus: Their Significance for Understanding the Transmission of the Early New Testament Text.”
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palimpsest, early 4th c.], 1828 [vellum codex, 3rd c.],31 3527 [early 3rd c.], and 3528 [late 2nd/early 3rd c.]—note the exceptionally early date of the last one) • Three copies of the Gospel of Thomas (P.Oxy. 1; 654; and 655, all 3rd c.)—the only ones extant in Greek32 • Two copies of the Gospel of Mary (P.Oxy. 3525, 3rd c.; P.Ryl. III.463, early 3rd c.)33 • One copy of the Acts of Peter (P.Oxy. 849, parchment, early 4th c.) • One copy of the Acts of John (P.Oxy. 850, 4th c.) • One copy of the Acts of Paul (P.Oxy. 1602, parchment, 4th/5th c.)34 • One copy of the Didache (P.Oxy. 1782, late 4th c.)35 • One copy of the Sophia Jesu Christi (P.Oxy. 1081, 3rd/4th c.)36 • Two copies doubtless of the Gospel of Peter (P.Oxy. 2949 [not a codex], late 2nd/early 3rd c.; P.Oxy. 4009, 2nd c.)—again, extraordinarily early37 31 See van Haelst, no. 665, who noted that Silvio Giuseppe Mercati (“Passo del Pastore di Erma riconosciuto nel pap. Oxy. 1828,” Bib 6 [1925]: 336-38) identified the fragment as Hermas (Sim. 6.5.3 and 6.5.5); cf. Ulrich H. J. Körtner and Martin Leutzsch, Papiasfragmente, Hirt des Hermas (Schriften des Urchristentums 3; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1998) 117 and 360 n. 9. 32 For the latest critical edition, see Harold W. Attridge, “The Greek Fragments,” in Nag Hammadi Codex II.2-7, together with XIII.2*, Brit. Lib. Or.4926, and P. Oxy. 1, 654, 655: Volume One (Coptic Gnostic Library; NHS 20; ed. Bentley Layton; Leiden: Brill, 1989), 95–128. 33 These two fragments are not from the same manuscript: P.Oxy. L, p. 12. 34 A portion of “From Corinth to Italy”: see Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ed., New Testament Apocrypha (rev. ed.; Eng. trans. ed. by R. McL. Wilson; Cambridge: James Clarke; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991–92), 2:259. In P.Oxy. XIII, pp. 23-25, 1602 was unidentified, but see van Haelst, no. 606, and, for a revised text, Henry A. Sanders, “A Fragment of the Acta Pauli in the Michigan Collection,” HTR 31 (1938): 79 n. 2. 35 For the importance of P.Oxy. 1782 for the Didache text, see Kurt Niederwimmer, The Didache (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 21–23. 36 For a restoration of the Greek text of P.Oxy. 1081, see Harold W. Attridge, “P. Oxy. 1081 and the Sophia Jesu Christi,” Enchoria 5 (1975): 1–8. Aland (Repertorium, 1:373) dates it 3rd/4th c.; P.Oxy. VIII, p. 16, early 4th c. 37 See P.Oxy. 2949 and pl. II; P.Oxy. 4009 (by D. Lührmann and P. Parsons) and plates I–II. They report that 2949 and 4009 are not from the same manuscript; for the view that both are likely copies of the Gospel of Peter, see D. Lührmann, “POx 2949: EvPt 3–5 in einer Handschrift des 2./3. Jahrhunderts,” ZNW 72 (1981): 216–26; “POx 4009: Ein neues Fragment des Petrusevangeliums?” NovT 35 (1993): 390–410. Lührmann’s identification of P.Oxy. 2949 is accepted, e.g., by Schneemelcher (New Testament Apocrypha, 1:217–18 [though, curiously, the identification is dismissed on p. 93]); and by Helmut Koester (Introduction to the New Testament [2 vols.; 2nd ed.; New York/Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995, 2000], 1:167).
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Journal of Biblical Literature • Possibly a copy of the Apocalypse of Peter (P.Vind. G, 3rd/4th c.)38 • Single copies of three unknown Gospels/sayings of Jesus:39 – A narrative in which Jesus discusses the “good,” including the parable of the good and bad fruit, and makes direct claims to be in the image/form of God (P.Oxy. 210, 3rd c.)40 – A “Dispute between the Savior and a Priest in Jerusalem”41 (P.Oxy. 840, parchment, 4th c.) – Some sayings of Jesus (P.Oxy. 1224, 3rd/4th c.)42
Three more copies of well-known “apocryphal” writings were found, though in manuscripts later than our period: the Acts of Paul and Thecla (P.Oxy. 6, 5th c.), the Protevangelium of James (P.Oxy. 3524, 6th c.), and the Letter of Abgar to Jesus (P.Oxy. 4469, 5th c., amulet), as well as a tiny, unidentified fragment of “the Acts of some apostle or saint” (P.Oxy. 851, 5th/6th c.). What is not known is whether these were late imports or copies of earlier exemplars that were used in the city during the period of our concern. Some of these well-known writings were contenders for canonicity at various Christian localities—indeed, possibly most of them, since all except the Letter of Abgar certainly or plausibly stem from the second century.43 Or, if we 38 P.Vindob. G.[no number], from the Rainer collection, Vienna [no further identification appears to be available], a vellum leaf, 3rd/4th c. Provenance is described by van Haelst, no. 619, as “Oxyrhynchos (?).” Provenance is not discussed by any of the authors referred to by van Haelst, nor by Schneemelcher (New Testament Apocrypha, 2:620–21). 39 See also P.Oxy. 1384 (but 5th c.). Perhaps P.Egerton 2 (P.Lond. Christ. 1), with four gospel-like pericopes, is from Oxyrhynchus (van Haelst, no. 586). 40 I adopt the case for an apocryphal Gospel made by Stanley E. Porter, “P.Oxy. II 210 as an Apocryphal Gospel and the Development of Egyptian Christianity,” in Atti del XXII Congresso internazionale di papirologia, Firenze, 23-29 agosto 1998, ed. Andorlini et al., 2:1095–1108, esp. 1101–8. Cf. P.Oxy. II, pp. 9–10. 41 I use François Bovon’s description: see “Fragment Oxyrhynchus 840, Fragment of a Lost Gospel, Witness of an Early Christian Controversy over Purity,” JBL 119 (2000): 705–28. Bovon marshals voluminous evidence to show that it reflects an intra-Christian dispute: cf. 728. Although this writing is sometimes thought to be an amulet, Michael J. Kruger opted for a miniature codex: “P. Oxy. 840: Amulet or Miniature Codex?” JTS 53 (2002): 81–94. 42 Aland, Repertorium, 1:374. 43 Dates generally accepted: end of first or first half of second century: Shepherd of Hermas; early to mid-second century: Gospel of Thomas, Didache, Gospel of Peter, Sophia Jesu Christi; second century: Gospel of Mary, Acts of Paul (and Thecla); second half of second century: Acts of Peter, Protevangelium of James, Acts of John [or first half of third century]. For most, see Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, ad loc.; Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance [Oxford: Clarendon, 1987], ad loc. (see index); Helmut Koester, Introduction to the New Testament, vol. 1, ad loc. (see index). On the date of the Shepherd, see esp. Carolyn Osiek, Shepherd of Hermas: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Minneapolis:
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adopt the principle that canon contenders can be identified by their inclusion in a canon list or by discussion in a canon context—even if only as rejected books—or by being cited as authoritative by early Christian writers, nearly all would qualify under these criteria as potentially canonical.44 The collocation with our so-called “New Testament” papyri of such recognized or possible candidates for canonicity raises serious issues, such as the propriety of designating two categories of writings in this early period: “New Testament” and “apocryphal,” and whether we have given sufficient weight to the provenance of these “extracanonical” books and to their juxtaposition and utilization alongside our “New Testament” manuscripts. And where better might these canonical issues be investigated than at Oxyrhynchus—in a local, real-life context? For example, the seven surviving copies of the Shepherd of Hermas are spread evenly from the late second through the fourth centuries, which is striking evidence of an early and continuous textual tradition of a single writing in one locality—especially in a situation of random preservation. The extended rivalry, well documented elsewhere, among the Apocalypse of John, the Apocalypse of Peter, and the Shepherd of Hermas, for a place in the canon draws our attention also to the substantial textual tradition of the Apocalypse of John at Oxyrhynchus: six manuscripts from the turn of the third/fourth century (P18, P115) to the fourth (P24, 0308), then to the fifth century (0163), and to ca. 600 C.E. (P26). Too much must not be drawn from such comparative data, but it is clear by any measure available to us that the Shepherd of Hermas was very much a part of Christian literature in Oxyrhynchus at an early period.45 Furthermore, if—as is likely—the Gospel of Peter is represented in two Fortress, 1999), 19–20. The Letter of Abgar stems from the end of the third century (Schneemelcher, 1:496). 44 The exceptions appear to be the Gospel of Mary, Sophia Jesu Christi, and the Letter of Abgar. On Sophia, see “Eugnostos the Blessed and the Sophia of Jesus Christ,” in Coptic Encyclopedia (New York: Macmillan, 1991), 4:1069. For notice of the others in canon lists or discussions, see Metzger, Canon, esp. Appendix IV, 305–11, and ad loc.; Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, ad loc. For example, Hermas was included in Codex Sinaiticus (a, mid-4th c.) following the twenty-seven NT books; in the Muratorian Canon, though only to be read but not “publicly to the people in church”; and in the Latin canon inserted in Codex Claromontanus (Dp) of the sixth century, though the list is older. In the latter, Hermas, Barnabas, the Acts of Paul, and the Apocalypse of Peter are marked with a horizontal line in the left margin, doubtless to indicate less authority or the like (see Metzger, Canon, 230; for the Dp text and that of the Muratorian Canon, 310–11, 305–7). For patristic references to the Gospel of Thomas, see Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, 1:110–11; Marvin Meyer, The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSan Francisco, 1992), 6–7. 45 G. H. R. Horsley, NewDocs 2 (1977): 159–61, lists seventeen manuscripts of the Shepherd to that date, though this includes P.Oxy. 5—a citation not a text—but not P.Oxy. 3526 (same codex as 1172), 3527, or 3528.
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fragments that date from the second or early third centuries (P.Oxy. 2949 and 4009), and if the Apocalypse of Peter is extant from Oxyrhynchus (see above), we would have manuscripts of three unsuccessful canon contenders—the Shepherd of Hermas, and both the Gospel and the Apocalypse of Peter, with the first two dating in the range of our earliest ten NT papyri.46 If one were to play comparative statistical games—not well advised in this situation—it could be said that up to around 200 C.E. Oxyrhynchus yielded seven copies of the Shepherd and two of the Gospel of Peter alongside four of Matthew, three of John, two of Paul, and one each of Luke and Revelation.47 If we were to extend this playful approach to around 400 C.E., it could be claimed that, while Oxyrhynchus had forty “New Testament” papyri (plus four parchments) containing portions of sixteen48 of our NT books, there were present also twenty copies of nine known “apocrypha,” plus three unidentified Gospel-like writings, in the city. Moreover, the presumption—though not provable—would be that at least some of these writings that had originated in the second century, but are now preserved only in third- and fourth-century manuscripts, had earlier exemplars in Oxyrhynchus. When this broader definition of “New Testament papyri” is applied— bringing early so-called “apocrypha” under the same umbrella—it will be clear that any position of exclusive honor in ancient Oxyrhynchus that we might have assumed for the forty-seven papyri of our NT has been compromised, for that honor had to be shared with numerous other early Christian writings, of which some twenty-three manuscripts have survived, and there is no basis, therefore, to claim that the “New Testament” manuscripts stand out as a separate or separable group. The Jewish Bible in Oxyrhynchus A fragment of a third-century roll (P.Oxy. 1075) holds the final thirteen verses of Exodus, and later in the third or early in the fourth century someone else copied on the verso the Apocalypse of John (P18 = P.Oxy. 1079), though only 1:1–7 survive. Naturally, there is no context for a NT papyrus more intimate than having been written on the back of another document. This 46 Dates are from Aland and Aland, Text of the New Testament, 96–102, supplemented by Nestle-Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece (27th rev. ed, 8th cor. and exp. printing [with Papyri 99–116]; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2001) [card insert]. New Testament papyri dated to the second century are P52 (ca. 125), P90 (P.Oxy. 3523), P98, P104 (P.Oxy. 4404; ca. 200), P32, P46, P64 + 67 + 4[?], P66; second/third c.: P77 (P.Oxy. 2683), P103 (P.Oxy. 4403). 47 Matthew: P64 + 67, P77, P103, P104; John: P52, P66, P90; Paul: P32 (Titus), P46; Luke: P4 [part of P64 + 67?]; Revelation: P98. 48 Seventeen if majuscule 0206 (P.Oxy. 1353, 4th c.) of 1 Peter is added.
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manuscript, then, is an opisthograph, but with the writing of the Apocalypse (on the verso) running in the opposite direction of Exodus (on the recto), so that—when the end of the roll was reached and the roll was turned over—the conclusion of Exodus led directly to the beginning of the Apocalypse. Whether this was deliberate and, if so, what the motivation might have been are not obvious, though there are ready parallels between the end of Exodus and the opening of Revelation. Exodus, for example, concludes with the anointing and consecration of the tabernacle and of Aaron and his sons as priests (esp. Exod 39:32–40:33), followed by: . . . the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, before the eyes of all the house of Israel at each stage of their journey. (Exod 40:38)
And the opening doxology of the Apocalypse of John (1:6) refers to Christ who “made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father,” and then, reminiscent of Dan 7:13, it says, “Look! He is coming with the clouds. . . .” Whether this or another form of intertextuality was operative is a matter of speculation, but not without interest, for the collocation—on a single papyrus roll—of Jewish Scripture and an authoritative Christian writing49 opens an inquiry about the use of Jewish writings by Christians at Oxyrhynchus, and of the relation between Jews and Christians there. The discovery at Oxyrhynchus of some twenty-three Greek manuscripts of the Septuagint and one in the Old Latin dating up to the end of the fourth century further enlarge the body of “biblical” material with which our NT papyri had to share their space. The following copies, largely fragmentary, survive: Genesis (P.Oxy. 656, papyrus codex, early 3rd c.; 1007, vellum leaf, late 3rd c.; 1166, papyrus roll, 3rd c.; 1167, papyrus codex, 4th c.; 1073, Old Latin, vellum codex, 4th c.); Exodus (P.Oxy. 1074, papyrus codex, 3rd c.; 1075, papyrus roll, 3rd c.; 4442, papyrus codex, early 3rd c.;50 P.Mil.R.Univ. I.22 [van Haelst, no. 39], vellum codex, 4th c.); Leviticus (P.Oxy. 1225, papyrus roll, 1st half of 4th c.; 1351, vellum codex, 4th c.); Joshua (P.Oxy. 1168, vellum codex, 4th c.); Esther (P.Oxy. 4443, papyrus roll, late 1st/early 2nd c.); Job (P.Oxy. 3522, papyrus roll, 49 Another papyrus with Jewish Scripture/NT contents is P.Amh. 1.3b, with Gen 1:1–5 on the verso, and Heb 1:1 on the recto (= P12), suggesting that Hebrews was copied earlier! However, only Heb 1:1 is present, though the recto also contains a Christian letter written from Rome by someone important in the church, dating between 250 and 285: B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, The Amherst Papyri (2 vols.; London: H. Frowde, Oxford University Press, 1900–1901), 1:28–31. See Tobias Nicklas, “Zur historischen und theologischen Bedeutung der Erforschung neutestamentlicher Textgeschichte,” NTS 48 (2002): 154–55. Aland and Aland view the Heb 1:1 text as “occasional notes,” and not as a proper NT papyrus (Text of the New Testament, 85). 50 See Daniela Colomo, “Osservazioni intorno ad un nuovo papiro dell’Esodo (P.Oxy. 4442),” in Atti del XXII Congresso internazionale di papirologia, Firenze, 23-29 agosto 1998, ed. Andorlini et al., 1:269–77.
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1st c.; PSI X.1163, papyrus codex, 3rd/4th c.); Psalms (P.Oxy. 845, papyrus codex, late 4th/5th c.; 1226, papyrus codex, late 3rd/early 4th c.; 1352, vellum codex, early 4th c.; 1779, papyrus codex, 4th c.[van Haelst, no. 90 = 3rd c.]; P.Harr. 31, papyrus roll, 4th [Haelst no. 148, Oxyrhynchus?]; 2386, papyrus roll, 4th/5th c.); Wisdom of Solomon (P.Oxy. 4444, vellum codex, 4th c.); Tobit (P.Oxy. 1594, vellum codex, late 3rd c.); and Apocalypse of Baruch (P.Oxy. 403, papyrus codex, 4th/5th c.). There are in addition fragments of a papyrus codex of 1 Enoch (P.Oxy. 2069, late 4th c.).51 Five other LXX manuscripts and one Old Latin date in the fifth and sixth centuries.52 Incidentally, criteria for determining whether these texts were copied for Jewish or for Christian use have not been clearly defined, and certainly not agreed upon by all. Commonly, however, two principles are employed: (1) writings on rolls, especially if from the first or early second centuries, presumably are Jewish, with the likelihood that codices from the third century and later are Christian, though each case must be decided on its own merits; and (2) the employment of nomina sacra (contracted divine names and terms, but in this context “Lord” [kuvrio", k—w—] and “God” [qeov", q—w—, ]) has been taken as a sign of Christian origin and use53 (see further below). Though this is not the occasion to explore these issues, sorting out LXX manuscripts of Jewish origin from those copied by Christians would provide useful information both about the Jewish community at Oxyrhynchus and the Christian community there. Without belaboring the point, did our “New Testament” papyri hold a special, separable place of honor among all the related Christian and Jewish literature at Oxyrhynchus? Criteria for establishing such a position are not apparent. The second step in assessing our NT papyri in their local context is to take several “core samples” of the sociocultural soil of Oxyrhynchus, probing Christian letters, hymns, prayers, treatises, and petitions, and our first probe reveals a private letter already famous though published only in 1996.
51 See van Haelst, nos. 576 and 577: it was identified as 1 Enoch and republished by J. T. Milik, “Fragments grecs du livre d’Hénoch (P. Oxy. XVII 2069),” ChrEg 46 (1971): 321–43. 52 Genesis (in Old Latin): P.Oxy. 1007 (vellum leaf, 6th c.); Judges: PSI 2.127 (papyrus codex, early 3rd c.); Ecclesiastes: 2066 (papyrus codex, 5th or 6th c.); Amos: P.Oxy. 846 (papyrus codex, 6th c.); Ecclesiasticus: P.Oxy. 1595 (papyrus codex, 6th c.); Tobit: P.Oxy. 1076 (vellum codex, 6th c.). There are also two amulets with LXX Ps 90 (P.Oxy. 1928, roll, Christian, with 1–16; and P.Ryl. 3, with 5–16, both 5th/6th c.). On P.Oxy. 846, see Robert A. Kraft, “P.Oxy. VI 846 (Amos 2, Old Greek) Reconsidered,” BASP 16 (1979): 201– 4. 53 See, e.g., Roberts, Manuscript, Society, and Belief, 28–34, 74–78; E. A. Judge and S. R. Pickering, “Biblical Papyri prior to Constantine: Some Cultural Implications of Their Physical Form,” Prudentia 10 (1978): 2–3. See also n. 58 below.
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A Letter about Lending Books: Jewish-Christian Issues and Women’s Literacy and Leadership in Christianity at Oxyrhynchus An early-fourth-century private letter at Oxyrhynchus (P.Oxy. 4365) reads simply: To my dearest lady sister, greetings in the Lord. Lend the Ezra, since I lent you the little Genesis. Farewell in God from us.
This is the complete letter, twenty-one words written in six short lines on the back of a piece of papyrus cut from a roll that contained a petition written in the late third century—hence, the presumed early-fourth-century date for the letter. Its six lines elicit at least six significant questions: 1. Are the writer and recipient Jews or Christians, and how can we tell? 2. Why aren’t they named? 3. Is the writer a man or, like the recipient, a woman? 4. What books are being loaned? 5. Why would they be read? And 6. What might a woman’s voice tell us about female literacy, and does her interest in these books inform us about women’s leadership in the implied community? 1. Are the writer and recipient Christians? On the face of it, everything in our tiny letter could be Jewish, and the terms “Ezra” and “Genesis” confirm a biblical context. “Lord” and “God,” by themselves as singular terms, do not aid the decision between Jewish and Christian. It is of methodological interest, moreover, that, if “Ezra” and “Genesis” were not present, a context in GrecoRoman religions would be possible, for “god” in the singular occurs often in phrases such as “I pray to god” or “to the lord god” or “before the lord god”; “I thank god”; “god willing”; “god knows”; or “until god takes pity”;54 and nomina 54 Oxyrhynchus occurrences through the fourth century: “I pray to the god”: P.Oxy. 1680, line 3 (3rd/4th c.); 1773, line 4 (3rd c.); 3065, line 3 (3rd c.); 3816, line 3 (3rd/4th c.); “to the lord god”: P.Oxy. 1298, line 4 (4th c.); 1299, lines 3– 4 (4th c.); 1677, line 3 (3rd c.); 1678, line 3 (3rd c.); 1683, line 5 (late 4th c.); 2728, line 5 (3rd/4th c.); 3860, line 3 (later 4th c.); “ before the lord god”: P.Oxy. 3999, line 3 (4th c.); “in god”: P.Vindob.Sijp. XI.26, line 23 (3rd c.); “in the lord god”: P.Oxy. 2276, lines 29–30 (end 3rd c.); “I/we thank the god”: P.Oxy. 1299, lines 5–6 (4th c.); 3816, line 11 (3rd/4th c.); “god willing/with god’s help/by god’s grace”: su;n qew'/ as in P.Oxy. 1220, line 24 (3rd c.); 1763, line 11 (3rd c.); 3814, line 25 (3rd/4th c.), or tavca su;n qew'/ in P.Oxy. 4624, lines 3–4 (1st c.); “god knows”: P.Oxy. 3997, lines 8–9 (3rd/4th c.); 4628, line 3 (4th c.); “until the god takes pity”: P.Oxy. 120, line 16 (4th c.); “barring an act of god”: P.Oxy. 2721, line 24 (234 C.E.) [cf. 411, line 11].
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sacra55—contracted divine names, to which we turn in a moment—do not occur in several dozen examples from Oxyrhynchus. The singular is common also in the frequent formula, “I make obeisance every day before god,” or “the lord god,” often specifically “before god, the . . . lord Sarapis.”56 Nomina sacra do not occur in these cases either. Nomina sacra, however, do occur with virtual consistency through the fourth century in letters otherwise clearly Christian, and the instances are numerous.57 As is well known, this is a complex matter, though a criterion comOther occurrences of “god”or “lord” in singular: “(the) god”: P.Oxy. 112, line 4 (3rd/4th c.); cf. 2474, line 6 (3rd c.) [lacuna preceding]; 1680, line 3 (3rd/4th c.); 1682, line 6 (4th c.); 3356, lines 16–17 (76 C.E.); 3859, line 10 (4th c.); 3997, lines 4, 12; “the lord god”: P.Oxy. 3819, line 10 (early 4th c.); 3998, line 2 (4th c.); 4493, lines 3–5 (1st half of 4th c.); oJ despovth" qeov": 939, line 4 (4th c.) [cf. Christian use with nomen sacrum in P. Oxy. 2729, line 3]; “the great/est god, Sarapis”: P.Oxy. 1070, line 8 (3rd c.); 1453, line 5 (30–29 B.C.); “the great/est god, Apollo”: P.Oxy. 1449, line 4 (213–217 C.E.); 1435, lines 2–3 (147 C.E.); “Sarapis, the great god”: 2837, line 12 (50 C.E.); “the lord Sarapis”: P.Oxy. 110, lines 2–3 (2nd c.); 523, lines 2–3 (2nd c.); 1484, lines 3–4 (2nd/3rd c.); 1755, line 4 (2nd/3rd c.); 3693, lines 3– 4 (2nd c.); 4339, lines 2–3 (2nd/3rd c.); “O lord Sarapis Helios”: P.Oxy. 1148, line 1 (1st c.); “the greatest god, Ammon”: P.Oxy. 3275, lines 5–6 (early 1st c). “Goddess,” as in P.Oxy. 254, lines 2–3 (20 C.E.); 2722, lines 2, 6 (154 C.E.); 1449, line 11 (213–217 C.E.), is not relevant. Nomina sacra do not occur in the cases above. On “God knows,” see A. M. Nobbs, “Formulas of Belief in Greek Papyrus Letters of the Third and Fourth Centuries,” in Ancient History in a Modern University, volume 2, Early Christianity, Late Antiquity, and Beyond (ed. T. W. Hillard et al.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 235–36; on “I pray to god” as both Christian and nonChristian, 237. On “god willing,” etc., see B. R. Rees, “Popular Religion in Graeco-Roman Egypt, II: The Transition to Christianity,” JEA 36 (1950): 94–95; he provides fifty fifth- to seventh-century Oxyrhynchus examples (Christian and non-Christian) of su;n qew'/ on 94 nn. 14–16; 95 nn. 1–6 (though, curiously, only P.Oxy. vols. through XVI [1924] are used). Though disputed and often doubtful, a number of the expressions above have been taken as Christian (of course, not those with Sarapis), including P.Oxy. 120; 939; 1298; 1299; 1678; 1680; 1682; 1683; 1773; 2276; 2474; 3816; 3819; 3997; 3998; 3999. See Horsley, NewDocs 4 (1979): 57–63; cf. P.Oxy. XIV, p. 138. 55 See Aland, Repertorium, 1:420–28, for an index of nomina sacra in biblical and apocryphal manuscripts, showing their numerous formations. 56 Obeisance before “the god”: P.Oxy. 2682, lines 3–5 (3rd/4th c.); 3997, lines 9–11 (3rd/4th c.); “the lord god”: P.Oxy. 3998, lines 4–5 (4th c.); 4493, lines 3–5 (1st half of 4th c.); P.Alex. 30 (4th c.) from Oxyrhynchus; “the master god”: 1775, line 4 (4th c.); specifically “before the god, the . . . lord Sarapis”: P.Oxy. 3992, lines 13–16 (2nd c.); cf. 1670, lines 3–6 (3rd c.); 1769, lines 4–5 (3rd c.); 1677, line 3 (3rd c.); 2984, lines 4–7 (2nd/3rd c.). For an obeisance passage (nonChristian) without mention of a deity, see P.Oxy. 1482, lines 22–23 (2nd c.). “The obeisance formula is typically pagan” (P.Oxy. LIX, p. 148); cf. Horsley, NewDocs 4 (1987): 61–62. Some instances have been taken as Christian, e.g., P.Oxy. 1775; 3997; 3998. Nomina sacra do not occur in the preceding instances. See n. 59 below. 57 Oxyrhynchus evidence through the fourth century: letters clearly, likely, possibly, or alleged to be Christian; those clearly Christian are marked with an asterisk (*); those possibly Christian have a question mark (?): (1) Nomina sacra in clearly or likely Christian letters: 1161, line 7 (4th c.)*; 1162, lines 4, 12,
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monly taken as virtually decisive is that “god” and “lord” in the singular (when the latter refers to deity) are non-Christian when nomina sacra are absent and Christian when present.58 However, there are a fair number of ambiguous 14, and f—q— in 15 (4th c.)*; 2601, line 5 (early 4th c.) [complex case, see P.Oxy. XXXI, pp.167–71; it contains a bungled nomen sacrum and f—q— (line 34)]; 2729, line 3 (4th c.) [nomen sacrum: one of two]; 2785, lines. 1, 13 (4th c.)*; 3857, line 15, plus f—q— (4th c.)*; 3858, lines 3, 25 (4th c.)*; 3862, lines 4, 39, plus cmg bis, fq (4th/5th c.)*; PSI 3.208, lines 1, 12 (vellum, 4th c.); PSI 9.1041, lines 1, 16 (vellum, 3rd/4th c.)*. P.Oxy. 1592, lines 3, 5 (3rd/4th c.) is a special case, with nomina sacra, k—e— mou p—r— and p—h—r—, though all refer, not to deity, but to a high church official, and the nomina sacra obviously were used to show the greatest possible respect, further enhanced by the use of “exalted “ and “rejoiced” from the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–47): “. . . greetings. I received your letter, my lord father, and I was very much exalted and I rejoiced, that such a father of mine remembers me. For when I received it, I [worshiped?] your holy [face?]”—trans. and interpretation by AnneMarie Luijendijk, Harvard doctoral student, in a paper “What’s in a nomen?” at the SBL annual meeting, Atlanta, 2003 [italics added]. The Magnificat verbs are without context and doubtless came from liturgy. On the allusions, see B. F. Harris, “Biblical Echoes and Reminiscences in Christian Papyri,” in Proceedings of the XIV International Congress of Papyrologists, Oxford, 24–31 July 1974 (Graeco-Roman Memoirs, 61; London: British Academy, 1975), 156. On f—q— = 99, isopsephism of ajmhvn, see P.Oxy LVI, pp. 116 n. 13; 135–36 n. 1; P.Oxy. XXXI, p. 171; as “exclusive to Christians,” see E. A. Judge and S. R. Pickering, “Papyrus Documentation of Church and Community in Egypt to the Mid-Fourth Century,” JAC 20 (1977): 69; cf. 54: “the cryptogram for Amen . . . was coming into fashion at the beginning of the fourth century”; cf. S. R. Llewelyn, NewDocs 8 (1984–85): 171–72. On the enigmatic cmg, see Horsley, NewDocs 2 (1977): 177–80; esp. Llewelyn, NewDocs 8 (1984–85): 156–68; P.Oxy. LVI, pp. 135–36. It occurs also in a prayer: P.Oxy. 1058 (4th or 5th c.). (2) Nomina sacra in letters with virtually no other Christian identifiers: P.Oxy. 1493, lines 4–5 (3rd/4th c.): mixed: k—w— qew'/; 1495, lines 4–5 (4th c.); 1774, line 3 (early 4th c.); 2156, (4th/5th c.): mixed: line 6, “divine providence of God (no nomen sacrum), line 25, ejn kuriv[w/] q—w—; 2609, line 2 (4th c.) [may also contain a chi-rho monogram]; 2731, line 2 (4th/5th c.); 3858, lines 3, 25 (4th c.); 4127, line 4 (1st half 4th c.). PSI 8.972, line 3, probably from Oxyrhynchus (4th c.): line 4 refers to “the evil eye”; on the evidence that the letter is Christian, see Horsley, NewDocs 1 (1976): 134–36. (3) Nomina sacra lacking in letters clearly, likely, or alleged to be Christian: P.Oxy. 939, line 4 (4th c.)?: P.Oxy. VI, p. 307 assumes it is Christian due to its phraseology and sentiments in lines 3–10, 28–30; 1492, line 19 (3rd/4th c.)*; 1494, line 3 (early 4th c.); 1593, line 12[?] (4th c.)?; 3421, line 4 (4th c.): “I pray to the all-merciful god”; 3819, line 10 (early 4th c.): “the lord god”—basis for Christian origin is a rare word (dunatevw) found only in Philodemus, Epicurean philosopher of the first century B.C.E., and in the Pauline epistles; 4003, line 4 (4th/5th c.)*: Christian letter, but shaky grammar and vulgar spelling could account for lack of nomen sacrum. 58 On the basis of the discussion and evidence in Roberts (Manuscript, Society, and Belief, 26–34, 74–78), nomina sacra do not occur in clearly Jewish manuscripts; his one exception (van Haelst, no. 74, fragments of 1–2 Kings, 5th/6th c.) has four instances (k—u— once and i—s—l— [!Israhvl] three times), but all at the ends of lines, perhaps to save space, because no other divine terms are contracted (pp. 32–33). More recently Robert A. Kraft has noted two instances where k—u— has been inserted in an apparently blank space (by a later hand in P.Oxy. 656 of Genesis, ca. 200 C.E.; likely by a later hand in P.Oxy. 1075 of Exodus 40, 3rd c.): http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/rak/lxxjewpap/ kyrios.jpg; see his cautions on the identification of Christian manuscripts: http://ccat.sas .upenn.edu/rs/rak/jewishpap.htlm, “The Debated Features,” §4.
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cases,59 and the principle, I think, has been applied too loosely. But we can be more precise because our letter on exchanging books has more specific and evidentiary phrases, namely, “Greetings in the Lord” and “Farewell in God,” where both “Lord” (kurivw/) and “God” (qew'/) are in contracted forms (k—w— and q—w—). Moreover, these two phrases, when written as nomina sacra, appear to be virtually exclusive to Christian letters,60 although—as in the present instance—there is an occasional ambiguous case.61 To be sure, at least one clearly Christian letter, probably from Oxyrhynchus,62 employs “in
59 Ambiguous cases would include those listed in (2) and (3) in n. 57 above. Another criterion would be that the “obeisance” formula indicates a Greco-Roman religions context and not a Christian one. There is, however, an occurrence of this formula in a certainly Christian letter, though from Arsinoë (P.Mich.Inv. 346, 4th c.). Its identity as Christian is based on “characteristically Christian titles,” and the formula reads, “I make obeisance for you daily”; here, though, there is no deity specified, so we cannot test the nomen sacrum criterion: see Herbert C. Youtie, “P.Mich.Inv. 346: A Christian PROSKUNHMA,” ZPE 28 (1978): 265–68. Youtie dismisses other alleged Christian examples—where “god” in the singular occurs—as “inference which cannot be proved” (p. 265). See the earlier discussion in G. Geraci, “Ricerche sul Proskynema,” Aeg 51 (1971): 197–200, 207, which includes P.Oxy. 1775 (4th c.); 2682 (3rd/4th c.); and P.Alex. 30 (4th c.), found at Oxyrhynchus; and Horsley, NewDocs 4 (1979): 62, who accepts Youtie’s view. 60 For instances without nomina sacra and with no evidence of Christian or non-Christian religion, see (4) in the next note. 61 Ambiguous cases would be (2) and (4) below. Oxyrhynchus evidence through the fourth century for greetings/rejoice, etc. “in the Lord/God/Lord God”: (1) With nomina sacra and other Christian evidence: (a) “in the Lord”: P.Oxy. 1162, ter lines 4, 12, 14 (4th c.); 1774, line 3 (early 4th c.); 2609, line 2 (4th c.) + a defaced Christian monogram; 2785, bis lines 1, 13 (4th c.); 3857, line 15 (4th c.); 3858, bis lines 3, 25 (4th c.); PSI 3.208, bis lines 1, 12 (4th c.); 9.1041, bis lines 1, 16 (3rd/4th c.). (b) “in the Lord God”: P.Oxy. 1162, bis lines 4, 14 (4th c.); 3862, bis lines 4, 39, but not ejn Cristw'/ in line 7 (4th/5th c.). P.Oxy. 2156 (4th/5th c.) is mixed: line 6, qeov" (no nomen sacrum); line 25, ejn kuriv[w/] q—w—. P.Oxy. 2729 (4th c.) is complex: ejn kurivw/ in line 2 is not contracted (though the first two and last letters are obscure) but in the next line q—w— is. (2) With nomina sacra but no (or virtually no) other Christian evidence: “in the Lord”: P.Oxy. 4127, line 4 (1st half 4th c.); “in the Lord God”: 2731, line 2 (4th/5th c.). (3) Without nomina sacra but with evidence of non-Christian religion: (a) “in the lord god”: P.Oxy. 2276, lines 29–30 (late 3rd/4th c.); cf. lines 28–29: “I greet your children, those secure from enchantment (ta; ajbavskanta),” trans. “whom the evil eye shall not harm.” (4) Without nomina sacra and with no evidence of non-Christian religion: P.Vind.Sijp. 26, line 23 (3rd c.): “I pray for your good health . . . in god”; P.Oxy. 3998, lines 2–3 (4th c.): “very many greetings in the lord god,” followed (lines 4–5) by a statement of obeisance “before the lord god,” again without nomina sacra. Nothing else in these letters suggests they are Christian, and I would not view them as such; cf. P.Oxy. LIX, p. 148. Similar is P.Oxy. 182 (mid 4th c.), published by Dominic Montserrat, Georgina Fantoni, and Patrick Robinson, “Varia Descripta Oxyrhynchita,” BASP 31 (1994): 48–50: greetings “in the lord god” (lines 2–3), with reference in line 5 to “divine providence”; possibly connected with the archive of Papnuthis and Dorotheus (P.Oxy. 3384–3429). 62 Van Haelst, no. 1194.
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God” without the contracted nomen sacrum: the letter, from a young man to his mother (P.Harr. 107, beginning of 3rd c.), opens as follows: To my most precious mother Mary, from Besas, many greetings in God. Before all things I pray to the Father, the God of truth, and to the Spirit, the Comforter, that they may preserve you in both soul and body and spirit, and [give] to your body health, and to your spirit gladness, and to your soul eternal life.63
Nomina sacra do not appear in this clearly Christian letter, but the letter itself undoubtedly contains the explanation: in spite of a smooth translation into English (and the lofty sentiments expressed), the editor describes it as “an illiterate letter written . . . in a boyish hand.”64—which may explain the failure to execute the nomina sacra. Hence, the preceding evidence, here almost entirely from Oxyrhynchus— though similar throughout the papyri—permits us to claim with great assurance that a letter, dating through the fourth century, may be deemed Christian if it employs the phrase “in the Lord” or “in God” with nomina sacra present.65 Moreover, these two particular nomina sacra are frequent in Christian letters, while other forms are rare.66 Exceptions would be nomina sacra due not to the “writer” but to a scribe who had picked up the practice.67 In our letter about books, however, a scribe is unlikely to have been engaged for so brief a note— 63 Trans. slightly modified from J. Enoch Powell, ed., The Rendel Harris Papyri [I] (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936), 89–90. Later the letter refers to Easter (lines 20–21). Powell (p. 90, followed by Stanley K. Stowers, Letter Writing in Greco-Roman Antiquity [LEC; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986], 74) asserted that the trichotomy (soul, body, spirit) was “based on” 1 Thess 5:23, but then added that this order is “characteristic of Egyptian liturgies” rather than in the body, soul, spirit order in 1 Thessalonians. Hence, the boy’s phraseology undoubtedly stems from liturgy rather than directly from a text of 1 Thess 5:23, especially since the verbs are different: diafulavxwsin . . . sev in the letter and oJlovklhron . . . thrhqeivh in 1 Thessalonians. Stowers allows for this: “Besas has either studied the letters of Paul or picked up a local Christian tradition” (p. 74). On the theological orientation of the letter, see B. F. Harris, “Biblical Echoes and Reminiscences in Christian Papyri,” in Proceedings of the XIV International Congress of Papyrologists, 157. P.Oxy. 1161 (4th c.), a fragment of a clearly Christian letter, refers to “body, soul, and spirit” (lines 6–7). 64 Powell, Rendel Harris Papyri [I], 89. 65 This argument may border on being circular, for letters otherwise clearly Christian that contain one of these phrases are used, at times, as a basis for calling “Christian” letters that contain no other Christian evidence, whereas, if letters with one or both phrases, but without other Christian evidence, were designated “non-Christian,” then the phrases would have to be said to occur in both Christian and non-Christian letters. Hence, each case must be considered on its own merits. For an expanded list of criteria, see Nobbs, “Formulas of Belief,” 235. 66 J. R. Rea in P.Oxy LXIII, p. 45; cf. Judge and Pickering, “Papyrus Documentation of Church and Community in Egypt,” 69. 67 See Horsley, NewDocs 3 (1978): 143; idem, NewDocs 2 (1977): 70, though I find no relevant examples in his discussion.
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six very short lines—or to have omitted the writer’s and recipient’s names (see below). So our letter about exchanging books, which might at first blush seem Jewish, must be taken as Christian because the expressions “in the Lord,” and “in God” exhibit nomina sacra (kurivw/ > k—w— and qew'/ > q—w—), thus conforming to a pattern established elsewhere. We should pause here for a further methodological moment. Beginning about thirty years ago, identifying papyrus letters as Christian, unless unambiguous Christian references occurred, has been made with much more caution than earlier had been the practice.68 Yet two tendencies of the past have clouded our picture of early Christian documents, especially letters. First, too many have been called Christian that in reality reflect a context of GrecoRoman religions or may be of Jewish or even secular origin. Second, and more specifically, editors—at the mere sight of a word, phrase, or idea reminiscent of our NT—too often have exclaimed “citation” or “source,” seizing myopically on the “New Testament” as the virtually exclusive resource for tenuously related expressions. Such hyper-parallelism—such a rush to judgment—about the source for a document’s vocabulary, phraseology, or stream of consciousness, however, runs counter to our current views of intertextuality, for it ignores the wider range of available Christian literature or tradition—as well as Jewish and secular material. What we need is a microscope with less power of magnification so that our field of vision is broader. Hence, one or several similar words or partial parallelism in thought do not a citation make. Various editors’ notes in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri and elsewhere illustrate such faults, as do occasional recent articles.69 This is not to say that pointing out similarities to the NT is 68 Criteria for identifying Christian letters have been much discussed over time and especially recently; see Horsley, NewDocs 4 (1979): 58–63, for a critical assessment and comparison of significant earlier works by G. Ghedini (1923) and Mario Naldini (1968), and the more recent critiques by G. Tibiletti (1979), and by Ewa Wipszycka, “Remarques sur les lettres privées chrétiennes des siècles (a propos d’un livre de M. Naldini),” JJP 18 (1974): 203–21; cf. Naldini’s response, containing additional Christian letters, “In margine alle ‘lettere cristiane’ nei papiri,” CClCr 2 (1981): 167–76; “Nuove testimonianze cristiane nelle lettere dei papiri greco-egizi (sec. II–IV),” Aug 35 (1995): 831–46. See also NewDocs 2 (1977): 156–58; Nobbs, “Formulas of Belief,” 233–37. Commendable caution is displayed by Judge, Rank and Status, 20–31, where, correctly in my judgment, he declines to identify as Christian P.Oxy. 3057 (thought by some to be the earliest Christian letter extant), or P.Oxy. 3313, or 3069, or even 3314 (the letter of Judas, who, he says, “may be safely left a Jew” [p. 31]—a view with which I concur; cf. G. H. R. Horsley, “Name Change as an Indication of Religious Conversion in Antiquity,” Numen 34 [1987]: 8–12: “our Judas could perhaps be . . . a Jewish convert to Christianity” [p. 12]). 69 E.g., the very helpful article of B. F. Harris (“The Use of Scripture in Some Unidentified Theological Papyri,” in Ancient History in a Modern University, volume 2, Early Christianity, Late Antiquity, and Beyond, ed. Hillard et al., 228-32) refers, I think incautiously at times, to NT “citations,” “expressions,” “echoes,” “reflections,” etc., and states, in summary, that the OT and NT writ-
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inappropriate or unhelpful, but only to plead for caution in identifying material as Christian and for a more enlightened view of intertextuality. 2. Why do the writer and recipient lack names? Even in brief letters lack of names is uncommon. Our letter’s editor, John Rea, noting the possibility of an early-fourth-century date (that is, prior to 325, “when Constantine’s acquisition of Egypt finally made it safe to profess Christianity there”) speculated that this lack of names “denotes a degree of discretion” on the part of its author.70 I think it is easier, however, to account for the absence of names by reference to a well-known and partially parallel phenomenon: papyrus invitations, for example, to a wedding or dinner, which were very brief, small in size, and written in short lines. The following example from Oxyrhynchus (where two-thirds of all extant invitations have been found71) is typical:
ings “were employed, often with some liberty of citation and adaptation, in a great variety of contexts” (p. 232). Actually, options abound for “sources”: other Christian writings (including “apocryphal” and patristic), liturgy, oral tradition, etc.; cf. his discussion of P.Oxy. 2072, “echoing Acts 2 and 4” (p. 231), and our discussion below, questioning the connection with Acts; a connection with Heb 10:34 (ibid.) seems tenuous indeed. I would grant, however, that two verbs in P.Oxy. 1592, lines 3, 5 (3rd/4th c.) may well be an “echo” of Luke 1:46–47, even though there is no further context, because (a) their collocation in the Magnificat and (b) the context of the papyrus letter makes an allusion likely (see n. 57 above). Harris, in an earlier article (“Biblical Echoes and Reminiscences in Christian Papyri”), uses the classifications “citations, verbal echoes, and lesser verbal reminiscences” (p. 156). For him, e.g., in P.Oxy. 1161, lines 3–4 (4th c.) there is an “echo” of Mark 1:11 in “beloved son,” but so common a Christian expression cannot easily be linked to a specific text without fuller parallel contexts. Similarly tenuous is his link (p. 157) of “body, soul, and spirit” in lines 6–7 with 1 Thess 5:23—where the order is spirit, soul, and body (see n. 63 above). His possible “reminiscence” of Titus 2:11 and/or Titus 3:4 in lines 3–4 of P.Oxy. 939 (4th c.) points to one option (pp. 157–58), though I am not entirely convinced that this is a Christian letter (no nomen sacrum, though several Christiansounding phrases). P.Oxy. 1494 (early 4th c.) is similar: no nomina sacra (lines 3, 7), some common expressions, e.g., “god willing” (line 3), some less common, e.g., “sweetest brothers” (but this occurs also, in singular, e.g., in P.Oxy. 935, lines 22–23 [3rd c.], a non-Christian letter [note “ancestral gods,” line 10]); hence Harris’s “reminiscence” of Matt 3:3 or Acts 13:10 in “straight path” (oJdo;" eujqei'a, lines 8–9) is unlikely: it is a biblical phrase to be sure (e.g., LXX Hos 14:10), but found elsewhere, as in Diod. S. 14.116.9; 2 Clem. 7.3. A. L. Connolly agrees, though he provides further evidence for his claim that “the letter is almost certainly Christian” (“Miscellaneous NT Quotations,” NewDocs 4 [1979]: 193). Finally, Harris mentions a “general similarity” of the mirror passage that introduces P.Oxy. 2603, lines 3–19 (4th c.) to Jas 1:23, but mirror has the opposite effect in each passage: in the papyrus, it fully displays a person who can then “speak about his own likeness” (lines 8–9), while in James a person “observes himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like” (pp. 158–59). 70 J. R. Rea in P.Oxy LXIII, p. 44; cf. 43. 71 P.Oxy. 110–112, 181, 523, 524, 747, 926, 927, 1214, 1484–1487, 1579, 1580, 1755, 2147, 2592, 2678, 2791, 2792, 3202, 3501, 3693, 3694, 4339, 4539–4543; SB X.10496; P.Lond.Inv. 3078;
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Journal of Biblical Literature Eros invites you to a wedding tomorrow the 29th at the 9th hour. (P.Oxy. 927, 3rd c.)
The inviter was always mentioned, though almost never were the invited guests named, presumably because weddings, birthdays, and dinners were largely local events and the invitations were from known friends, delivered by the host’s servant or slave, who in turn would report back whether the invitation had been accepted or not.72 Similarly, the letter about lending “the Ezra” and “the little Genesis,” though not an invitation, was obviously a quick communication between close acquaintances, doubtless delivered locally by a personally connected messenger, rendering names superfluous. 3. The recipient of the letter was a woman, but was the writer male or female? Normally the reused side of a piece of papyrus would not be closely related in content to the side first written upon, but here again the most immediate context of the letter should not be ignored. The petition on the recto survives in only nine lines, which disclose little of its nature, but two subscriptions remain, the first in the petitioner’s own hand, stating her name, Aurelia Soteira, and certifying her submission of the request. The second, written now by the third hand, was the response to the petition—“the reply of a high Roman offiP. Köln VI.280 [probably Oxyrhynchus]; no. 7 in O. Giannini, Annali della Scuolo Normale di Pisa ser. 2, 35 (1966): 18–19. Most of these consist of four or five short lines. Other invitations found to date include BGU I.333, II.596; P.Apoll. 72; P.Fay. 132; P. Fouad III.76, VIII.7; P.Oslo III.157; P. Yale 85; P.Coll.Youtie I.51, 52; SB V. 7745, VIII. 11652, 12511, 12596, 13875. On the thirty invitations known in the mid-1970s, see Chan-Hie Kim, “The Papyrus Invitation,” JBL 94 (1975): 391–402; on Sarapis banquets, see Yale Papyri in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, I (ed. J. F. Oates, A. E. Samuel, and C. B. Welles; ASP 2; New Haven/Toronto: American Society of Papyrologists, 1967), 260–64; Horsley in NewDocs 1 (1976): 5–9; on wedding invitations, see Llewelyn and Hobbs, NewDocs 9 (1986–87): 62–65. 72 Of thirty-six Oxyrhynchus invitations to date (out of a total of about fifty-two), four have “today” with the date (P.Oxy. 1485, 1486, 4542, 4543); four say “tomorrow” (P.Oxy. 111, 1580, SB X.10496; Köln VI.280—probably Oxyrhynchus); ten have “tomorrow” plus the date (P.Oxy. 110, 524, 926, 927, 1487, 1597, 2791, 3202, 3693, 4540; thirteen give the date only (P.Oxy. 112, 523, 747, 1214, 1755, 2147, 2592, 2678, 2792, 3501, 3694, 4339, 4539); one provides no day or date (P.Oxy. 4541); and three have lacunae (P.Oxy. 181, 1484, P.Lond.Inv. 3078). The vast majority are from the second and third centuries, with a few earlier or later. The latest, 1214 (dated 5th c.), provides the name of the invited guest, as does 112 (late 3rd or early 4th c.), but the latter invitation went to someone who must travel, either by donkey or boat, and the invitation would have gone in the usual mail fashion rather than by local messenger. T. C. Skeat speculated that the very small size of invitations “might have formed a kind of ‘status symbol’ in the upper classes at Oxyrhynchus” and conjectured that “some means were found for displaying them to visitors in the house of the recipient, in much the same way as the bowl of visiting-cards in the hall of a Victorian residence” (“Another Dinner-Invitation from Oxyrhynchus [P.Lond.Inv. 3078],” JEA 61 [1975]: 251–54, here 254).
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cial.”73 John Rea concluded that, although different in size and using different pens, the writing of the petitioner’s own hand and that of the Christian letter on its reverse are “rather similar” in the formation of letters and “it is quite possible that the same person wrote both.”74 In view of Rea’s earlier explanation for the lack of names, this conclusion caused him to wonder why, if this were a preConstantinian environment, she would not make sure “that there was nothing on the sheet to identify her as the writer of the letter.”75 However, rather than invoking a persecution context, for which there is no other evidence in the letter, it is easier to say that the woman named Aurelia also wrote the letter about books and to explain, then, the absence of names by its nature as a very personal, local correspondence. So writer and recipient doubtless were both women.76 4. What books were these Christians exchanging? At first glance, both books might be taken not only as Jewish but as Jewish canonical writings. “Ezra” (#Esra") doubtless referred, however, not to the book of Ezra of the Jewish Bible but to one of several other works written under that name, most likely 4 Ezra (2 Esdras of the English Apocrypha).77 It so happens that a fourthcentury miniature codex of 6 Ezra78—an early Christian apocalypse added to and now constituting chs. 15–16 of 4 Ezra—was found at Oxyrhynchus (P.Oxy. 1010), though only the wildest speculation would identify that with the “Ezra” of our letter. As for “the little Genesis,” this, again, was not the Genesis of the Jewish Bible but the book of Jubilees,79 designated “the little Genesis,” e.g., by
73 P.Oxy
LXIII, pp. 42–43. 44; cf. 43. Cf. Rosa Otranto, Antiche liste di libri su papiro (Sussidi eruditi 49; Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2000), 128. 75 P.Oxy LXIII, p. 44. 76 Simon Franklin takes the same position (“A Note on a Pseudepigraphical Allusion in Oxyrhynchus Papyrus No. 4365,” VT 48 [1998]: 95). 77 On the identification with 4 Ezra, see the reference in P.Oxy. LXIII, p. 44, to a seventh/eighth century papyrus “Inventory of Church Property” that refers to Ezra: P.Leid.Inst. 13, line 36 = F. A. J. Hoogendijk and P. van Minnen, eds., Papyri, Ostraca, Parchments and Waxed Tablets in the Leiden Papyrological Institute (Pap.Lugd.Bat. XXV; Leiden: Brill, 1991), 51, 54, 70. See also Dieter Hagedorn, “Die ‘Kleine Genesis’ in P.Oxy. LXIII 4365,” ZPE 116 (1997): 147–48; Thomas J. Kraus, “Bücherleihe im 4. Jh. N. Chr.: P.Oxy. LXIII 4365—ein Brief auf Papyrus und die gegenseitige Leihe von apokryph gewordener Literatur,” Biblos 50 (2001): 287 and n. 14. 78 6 Ezra was written in the third century, probably by a Christian. The small Oxyrhynchus fragment “suggests that the sixth book of Ezra was originally current independently of the fourth” (P.Oxy. VII, p. 13); that 6 Ezra was not an integral part of 4 Ezra and is Christian is affirmed by Michael Stone, ABD 2:612. 79 Hagedorn, “Die ‘Kleine Genesis,’” 148; supported by Franklin in 1998 (“Note on a Pseudepigraphical Allusion,” 95–96), who states that lepthv here means not “little” but “detailed,” and there is no reference to the canonical Genesis. Then A. Hilhorst (“Erwähnt P.Oxy. LXIII 4365 74 Ibid.,
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Epiphanius80 (ca. 315–403) in the very time frame of our letter (and, by the way, of the 6 Ezra codex). Incidentally, P.Oxy. 4365 provides the oldest witness for the existence of the Greek version of Jubilees.81 5. Why these two Jewish deuterocanonical books? Certainly the two Christians were exchanging books to read them, and not merely for leisure but for knowledge through study. Why, then, in the early fourth century, were they engaging a second-century B.C.E. Jewish account of revelations to Moses on Mt. Sinai and a late-first-century C.E. Jewish apocalypse, especially when two or three prominent Christian apocalypses—in multiple copies—presumably were available in Oxyrhynchus at this time? And why were these Christians not reading one of the fourteen writings from what we call the “New Testament” that are extant from the period preceding the date of their letter? These papyri survive in thirty-four copies (plus one majuscule) from that period and include, for example, nine of the popular Gospel of John and seven of Matthew. Were our “New Testament” papyri without relevance, or, to offer an opposite—and more likely—spin on the situation, had the study of the “New Testament” and related Christian books advanced so far in the Oxyrhynchus churches of the third and fourth centuries that some of their inquisitive members had moved beyond—or behind—them to related interests in the Jewish Scriptures? For example, is a special interest in apocalyptic signaled by the dozen or more copies of the Revelation of John and the Shepherd of Hermas82 found there, along with an otherwise unknown Christian prophetic work that quotes the Shepherd (P.Oxy. 5),83 as well as copies of 6 Ezra and the Apocalypse das Jubiläenbuch?” ZPE 130 [2000]: 192) argued convincingly against the view of Rosa Otranto (Aeg 77 [1997]: 107–8; reprinted in her Antiche liste di libri su papiro, 128–29) that “little Genesis” referred to a miniature codex; cf. Kraus, “Bücherleihe,” 288 and n. 22. 80 Panarion 39.6.1 (GCS 31, p. 76, 16–17); Hagedorn refers to additional uses of “the little Genesis” (lepth; Gevnesi") for Jubilees (“Die ‘Kleine Genesis,’” 148); see also O. S. Wintermute, “Jubilees,” OTP 2:41. On “little books” in Coptic lists, see Otranto, Antiche liste di libri su papiro, 129; cf. 141. 81 Hagedorn, “Die ‘Kleine Genesis,’” 148; Franklin, “Note on a Pseudepigraphical Allusion,” 96; Kraus, “Bücherleihe,” 289. 82 On the Shepherd as an apocalypse, see Osiek, Shepherd of Hermas, 10–12; Helmut Koester, Introduction, 1:262–66. On its popularity, see Osiek: “No other noncanonical writing was as popular before the fourth century as the Shepherd of Hermas. It is the most frequently attested postcanonical text in the surviving Christian manuscripts of Egypt well into the fifth century” (p. 1). On its reception and canonicity, see pp. 5–8. Her list of manuscripts includes those with extensive text but also a fragment possibly of the early second century (P.Iand. 1.4), though not any Oxyrhynchus papyri (pp. 1–2). 83 The quotation is Mandate 11.9–10. The fragment dates in the third/fourth century (P.Oxy. I, p. 8) or fourth/fifth; see Körtner and Leutzsch, Papiasfragmente, Hirt des Hermas, 118 and 361 n. 15, which refers to E. G. Turner, The Typology of the Early Codex (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977), 131, no. 528.
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of Peter?84 And were they drawn also to Jewish apocalypses, not only 4 Ezra, but also the Apocalypse of Baruch (P.Oxy. 403), and 1 Enoch (P.Oxy. 2069)— copies of which were discovered at Oxyrhynchus?85 To be sure, statistics of surviving papyri may prove little, yet the abundance of apocalyptic material at this site, Jewish and Christian, is striking and may well suggest that this early Christian community ascribed canonical authority to these Jewish apocalyptic writings. Again, though, nothing at Oxyrhynchus provides any confirmation except the very presence of these many books and the stated or implied use of them—apparently an extensive use. 6. What might a woman’s voice—or better, two women’s voices—tell us about female literacy and about women’s likely leadership in Oxyrhynchus churches? Literacy is a vast topic that cannot be explored here, and discerning the existence and nature of leadership not only would be speculative but also is hampered by the scarcity of relevant material. It is worth noting, however, that while papyri in Roman Egypt reveal that families with literate men commonly had illiterate women, an Oxyrhynchus papyrus of the year 215 provides a striking exception: a literate Oxyrhynchite woman whose Alexandrian (!) husband and his brother were illiterate (P.Oxy. 1463).86 In addition, in 263 a woman petitions a prefect of Egypt for the right to carry out business transactions without a guardian, and she supports her argument by her ability to write (P.Oxy. 1467, see below). A further example is an application dated 201 for remarriage to her former husband by a woman who states, “I know how to write” (P.Oxy. 1473). Such pride in writing, however, ran counter to another source of pride: upperclass women—whether literate or not—may have felt it below their dignity to write when they had slaves or secretaries to do it for them.87 84
See n. 38 above. This supposition, however, would require that earlier copies of the Apocalypse of Baruch (P.Oxy. 403, 4th/5th c.) and 1 Enoch (P.Oxy. 2069, late 4th c.) had been present in Oxyrhynchus, for the surviving copies are later than the letter about lending books. 86 See William V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 279–80. On cautions in generalizing from papyri data, see T. J. Kraus, “(Il)literacy in NonLiterary Papyri from Graeco-Roman Egypt: Further Aspects of the Educational Ideal in Ancient Literary Sources and Modern Times,” Mnemosyne 53 (2000): 333, 338–41. 87 On the larger subject, see Catherine Hezser, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine (TSAJ 81; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2001), 474–75, 484–85; E. Randolph Richards, The Secretary in the Letters of Paul (WUNT 42; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1991), 18–23, esp. 22; Roger S. Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 230–60, esp. 246–47, 255–56, 258–59; idem, Reading Papyri, Writing Ancient History (Approaching the Ancient World; London/New York: Routledge, 1995), 24–25; Kim Haines-Eitzen, Guardians of Letters: Literacy, Power, and the Transmission of Early Christian Literature (Oxford/New York: Oxford University 85
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Further insight may be gained from a copy of a lease for property (P.Oxy. 1690, dated about 287) owned by a literate woman, Aurelia Ptolemais, that was found with fragments of two papyri containing the Iliad (P.Oxy. 1386, 1392) and portions of a much rarer History of Sikyon (P.Oxy. 1365), literary works that she owned and presumably read.88 Roger Bagnall argued that her father was Aurelius Hermogenes, a councillor at Oxyrhynchus, whose will named as heirs a daughter, Aurelia Ptolemais, along with another daughter, three sons, and his wife, Isidora (P.Oxy. 907, dated 276). Curiously the will was written on the verso of a papyrus that contained the Kestoi of the Christian writer Sextus Julius Africanus (P.Oxy. 412, mid-3rd c.), though this particular work is not specifically Christian in nature.89 E. A. Judge and S. R. Pickering, appealing to Julius Africanus’s Christian identity and to a phrase in Hermogenes’ will that conveys “an idea familiar to [NT] readers,” suggested that Hermogenes—and therefore perhaps his family, including Aurelia—were also Christians.90 If this plausible though tenuous thread of evidence is accepted, another literate woman of a prominent Oxyrhynchus family will have been identified as Christian. It remains unclear, however, whether these papyri are evidence that literate women in Oxyrhynchus were more numerous than elsewhere, or that literate women, like those in our short letter, were the exception, as has been the common view.91
Press, 2000), 7, 21. For speakers and writers in Egyptian, “illiteracy in Greek, the language of the alien and worldly bureaucracy, may have become a point of pride” (Herbert C. Youtie, “‘Because they do not know letters,’” ZPE 19 [1975]: 108). 88 Roger Bagnall, “An Owner of Literary Papyri,” CP 87 (1992): 137–40; reprinted in his Later Roman Egypt: Society, Religion, Economy, and Administration (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate; Burlington, VT: Variorum, 2003), no. VII. Her literacy is confirmed by her “fairly rapid cursive” signature, “Not the hand of someone who could barely sign, certainly” (p. 140 and n. 18), and by her presumed ownership of the literary papyri found with the lease. 89 Ibid., 138–39 and n. 16. 90 Judge and Pickering, “Papyrus Documentation,” 65; cf. Bagnall, “Owner of Literary Papyri,” 139 n. 16. The phrase in question (line 17) is prepov n tw" peri; th; n sumbiv w sin aj n astrafeivsh/ (“who has conducted herself becomingly in our married life”), which Judge and Pickering correctly characterize as “not a direct New Testament echo,” but nonetheless refer to it as “an idea familiar to its readers” (p. 65); Bagnall appropriately labels this argument for designating Hermogenes as Christian “less compelling” (p. 139 n. 16). Hermogenes’ wife, Isidora, was also called Prisca (lines 16, 21), though Judge and Pickering’s comment, “the name of a prominent collaborator of St Paul” (p. 65) is doubtless gratuitous. Current intertextuality views would broaden the search for “sources.” 91 Harris adopts the latter view—evidence that literacy was the exception even among affluent women (Ancient Literacy, 280). On literacy of women in Roman Egypt, see Susan G. Cole, “Could Greek Women Read and Write?” in Reflections of Women in Antiquity (ed. H. P. Foley; New York: Gordon & Breach, 1981), 233–38 and notes. Bagnall notes that “men of the bouleutic class were expected to be able to read and write,” as an edict seems to suggest (PSI 6.716, from Oxyrhynchus, ca. 306), and that most women of this class “could do little but sign their names”
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Equally difficult to determine is whether the letter about lending books implies that women held positions of leadership in the early churches at Oxyrhynchus, and if so, exactly what they might have been. One approach— though it might not apply directly or necessarily to churches—would be to assess the extent to which women in Oxyrhynchus acted without guardians, that is, were entitled to act independently of a male, for whom the standard term was kuvrio", or to ask what proportion of women (especially around the midthird century and later) claimed the ius liberorum, that is, an exemption from guardianship “by the right of children.”92 An instructive instance is P.Oxy. 1467, dated 263, in which Aurelia Thaïsous petitions for this status by appealing to laws: . . . which enable women who are honoured with the right of three children to be independent and act without a guardian in all business which they transact, especially those women who know how to write. Accordingly I too, fortunately possessing the honour of being blessed with children, and a writer who am able to write with the greatest ease, in the fulness of my security appeal to your highness by this my application with the object of being enabled to carry out without hindrance all business which I henceforth transact. . . .
Indeed, one of her subsequent, independent transactions survives, a sale of land (P.Oxy. 1475, dated 267). As Sarah Pomeroy points out, however, “illiteracy was not burdensome, since unless a woman enjoyed the ius iii liberorum . . . she was always accompanied by a kyrios,”93 so that “literacy had no effect upon legal capacity.”94 Yet, for those granted the ius liberorum, “only literacy enables women to make legally
(Egypt in Late Antiquity, 246–47; see also 230–60 on literacy in urban and rural areas, and in the church, esp. from the fourth century on). 92 See Antti Arjava, “The Guardianship of Women in Roman Egypt,” in Akten des 21. internationalen Papyrologenkongresses, Berlin, 13.–19.8.1995 (ed. B. Kramer et al.; 2 vols.; APF Beiheft 3; Stuttgart/Leipzig: Teubner, 1997), 1:25–30, esp. 25–27. Under the ius liberorum, decreed by Augustus, “all freeborn women who had borne three living children should be free from guardianship (freed-women needed four births after their manumission)” (p. 27). Many helpful details of Arjava’s discussion cannot be treated here. For a detailed treatment in the papyri, see Joëlle Beaucamp, Le statut de la femme à Byzance (4e–7e siècle) (2 vols.; Travaux et mémoires 5–6; Paris: de Boccard, 1990, 1992), 193–267; on the formula, 198–202 [though P.Oxy. 1467 is not mentioned]; see also R. S. Bagnall’s affirmative review: “Women, Law, and Social Realities in Late Antiquity: A Review Article,” BASP 32 (1995): 75–77; reprinted in his Later Roman Egypt, no. II; also Herbert C. Youtie, “AGRAMMATOS: An Aspect of Greek Society in Egypt,” HSCP 75 (1971): 166–68. See also Sarah B. Pomeroy, “Women in Roman Egypt: A Preliminary Study Based on Papyri,” in Reflections of Women in Antiquity, ed. Foley, 308–9, 313, 315–17. See P.Oxy. 2777, lines 10–11 (A.D. 212). 93 Pomeroy, “Women in Roman Egypt,” 313. 94 Ibid., 315.
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binding commitments without the assistance of men.”95 Hence, independence empowered women in Roman Egypt, and the more so for literate independent women. Jennifer Sheridan has brought up to date previous compilations of women functioning independently, showing that during the first six centuries (in data on papyri from at least fifteen cities) 123 women acted without guardians, and thirty-six of these (or 29 percent) were in Oxyrhynchus.96 If one restricts the data to our period of interest—through the fourth century—thirty-five out of 110 (or 32 percent) were in Oxyrhynchus. Sheridan’s main point, however, was that one-third of the third- and fourth-century women in the list (wherever status can be determined) were of the bouleutic class or otherwise wealthy and therefore more likely to act without a guardian.97 Using her data, out of twentytwo Oxyrhynchite women whose socioeconomic status can be determined, ten (or 46 percent) were of the wealthy class. Naturally, such statistics can be only suggestive at best owing to randomness in the survival of papyri; and of course the numbers are extremely small, yet the resultant broad strokes are of interest, pointing, for example, to the plausibility that Oxyrhynchus contained a fair number of literate women and women who could act independently, thereby raising the possibility that Christian women in these classes might have assumed leadership positions in the churches. To spin a slightly larger web of speculation, perhaps the literate Christian women identified earlier, whether with guardians or without, might have become leaders in their churches—but most likely the two who exchanged “biblical” books—though there is no direct evidence.98 95 Ibid., 316; see Herbert C. Youtie, “UPOGRAFEUS: The Social Impact of Illiteracy in Graeco-Roman Egypt,” ZPE 17 (1975): 221 n. 62. 96 Jennifer A. Sheridan, “Women without Guardians: An Updated List,” BASP 33 (1996): 117–25. She noted (p. 118 n. 4) that only seven women listed are definitely literate, and—perhaps surprisingly—only one was from Oxyrhynchus, Aurelia Thaïsous, mentioned above. Extensive lists of women with or without guardians are provided by Edgar Kutzner, Untersuchungen zur Stellung der Frau im römischen Oxyrhynchos (Europäische Hochschulschriften III/392; Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1989), 79–99; for women without guardians, see 90–97. See further Tina Saavedra, “Women as Property-Owners in Roman Spain and Roman Egypt: Some Points of Comparison,” in Le rôle et le statut de la femme en Égypte hellénistique, romaine et byzantine: Acts de colloque international, Bruxelles-Leuven 27–29 novembre 1997 (ed. H. Melaerts and L. Mooren; Leuven: Peeters, 2002), 302–3, 310–11. In the first to third centuries in papyri from Socnopaiou Nesos, women were “principals in about half of the 32 documents recording house ownership”; owners of about one-third of the village real estate attested, almost two-thirds of the slaves, and one-fifth of the camels (pp. 309–10). 97 Sheridan, “Women without Guardians,” 126–31. The percentages are based on her data. 98 The evidence for women in leadership positions who were not literate must also be recognized: e.g., even in 600, Maura, the (presumably Christian) female steward of an Oxyrhynchus hospital, was illiterate (P.Oxy. 4131).
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We have elicited from our six-line letter much information about identifying Christian letters, the use of Jewish writings, the issue of canon, and women’s literacy and leadership—all significant facets of the Oxyrhynchus environment for our NT papyri there. The likely identity of authorship between this Christian letter and the secular petition on the other side begs for discussion of how Christians interacted with their economic and political context of Roman Egypt, but this would carry us beyond the scope of the present paper. When we pause again to ask what position our group of “New Testament” papyri held in the situations described, silence reigns. We have no information about any role they might have played or any honor they enjoyed, but their impact is likely to be more evident in documents relevant to church and piety, and perhaps also in personal letters. The Role of “New Testament” Papyri in Christian Worship in Oxyrhynchus The extent to which our NT (and other Christian) texts were utilized by or had direct influence on worship and theology might best be discerned, at least to our way of thinking, by examining the remnants of hymns, prayers, sermons, and theological treatises in Oxyrhynchus into the late fourth century. Our core sample turns up no early examples—which appear not to exist—but several items stem from the third and fourth centuries, and naturally they increase as one moves beyond our period into the fifth and sixth centuries. That progression of church-related materials parallels the increase in known churches from two sometime after the year 295 (P.Oxy. 43),99 to fifteen in the fifth century (P.Oxy. 4617, 5th c.),100 to forty or more by 535,101 in a city that by Roman times had perhaps 20,000 residents, more or less.102
99 P.Oxy. 43 is a list of Oxyrhynchite watchmen on the verso of an account dated 295 C.E., recording streets and public buildings, including a north church (col. 1, line 10) and a south church (col. 3, line 19), with streets named after each ejkklhsiva. Bagnall reminds us that the date of the watchmen’s list could be closely after 295 or much later (Egypt in Late Antiquity, 53, 280 n. 118). 100 See G. Schmelz, P.Oxy. LXVII, pp. 241–45; P.Oxy. 4618 (6th c.) lists fifteen also, but not all are the same as in 4617; 4619 (early 6th c.), a fragment, names six: see N. Gonis, P.Oxy. LXVII, pp. 245–50. Rufinus reported twelve early in the fifth century: see P.Oxy. XI, p. 26. 101 P.Oxy. XI, p. 26. 102 Estimates are difficult; Itzhak F. Fichman [elsewhere Fikhman] suggests, on extensive relevant evidence, 15,000 to 25,000 (“Die Bevölkerungszahl von Oxyrhynchos in byzantinischer Zeit,” APF 21 [1971]: 111–20, esp. 120); cf. Julian Krüger, Oxyrhynchos in der Kaiserzeit: Studien zur Topographie und Literaturrezeption (Europäische Hochschulschriften III/441; Frankfurt am Main/New York: Peter Lang, 1990), 8 (about 30,000). Very recently Dirk Obbink speaks of “perhaps 20,000 inhabitants of the Greek-speaking settler class, Egyptian Greeks, and their later Roman counterparts” (“Imaging Oxyrhynchus,” Egyptian Archaeology 22 [Spring 2003]: 3).
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A Hymn to the Trinity. A hymn with musical notation (P.Oxy. 1786) was found on the verso of a corn account dated in the first half of the third century, placing the hymn later in that century. Undoubtedly it remains “the most ancient piece of Church music extant.”103 Portions of the last five lines survive, written on a narrow strip of papyrus about two by twelve inches, with corresponding vocal notes above each line.104 What remains of the text calls upon the light-giving stars to be silent and the rushing rivers to sing praises with all power to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen, Amen, and for dominion and praise to the giver of all good things, Amen, Amen.105 To be sure, the whole hymn is not extant, though nothing here could come from our NT papyri, except the reference to the Trinity. This, however, is not likely to be a direct citation of Matt 28:19, for there is no similarity of context in the two passages. Rather, the hymn’s Trinity undoubtedly was drawn from church liturgy. Prayers. Our core sample next contains P.Oxy. 4010, a single sheet from the fourth century containing the Pater Noster with a preliminary prayer. The ends of all lines are missing, but a few readable phrases remain from the prefatory prayer: “Have mercy . . . Master of all [something] . . . and God of all consolation, . . . and have mercy and lead . . . . Make us worthy [of something]. . . .”106 “Consolation” and “to console” occur a remarkable ten times in 2 Cor 1:3–7, including the uncommon phrase, “God of all consolation,” so—with all our caveats in mind—perhaps we have our first match with the NT,107 especially in view of God’s “mercy” in both immediate contexts and the fact that, as
103
P.Oxy. XV, p. 21. P.Oxy. XV, pp. 21–25 + pl. I; see Charles Wessely, ed., Les plus anciens monuments du Christianisme écrits sur papyrus (PO IV.2; Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1907), 506–7. For a critique of earlier reconstructions of the musical structure and other technical issues, see E. J. Wellesz, “The Earliest Example of Christian Hymnody,” CQ 39 (1945): 34–45, esp. 41–43; and A. W. J. Holleman, “The Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 1786 and the Relationship between Ancient Greek and Early Christian Music,” VC 26 (1972): 1–17. The music, with choral rendition, is available on a CD: Musique de la grèce antique (Atrium musicae de Madrid, Gregorio Paniaqua; Germany: Harmonia mundi [HMA 1951015, HM 31], 1979, 2000); it contains also P.Oxy 2436 (1st/2nd c.) and other music from papyri. 105 Cf. P.Oxy. XV, p. 22. Apparently the only other hymn from Oxyrhynchus is 4011 (6th c.), mostly derived from Ps 75; see pl. IV in P.Oxy. LX. On other papyri with musical notation, see William A. Johnson, “Musical Evenings in the Early Empire: New Evidence from a Greek Papyrus with Musical Notation,” JHS 120 (2000): 57–85, esp. 57–59. 106 Alan H. Cadwallader restores line 11, just before the Lord’s Prayer, to read: kataxivwson hv/ma'" e[u[cesqai], “Make us worthy to pray” (“An Embolism in the Lord’s Prayer?” New Testament Textual Research Update 4 [1996]: 86). 107 P.Oxy. LX, p. 6; so also Stuart R. Pickering, “A New Papyrus Text of the Lord’s Prayer,” New Testament Textual Research Update 2 (1994): 111. 104
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the editors of the papyrus propose, “father of mercies” would fit in the lacuna before “and God of all consolation”—as in 2 Cor 1:3, though our prayer has no further citation of that passage. The Lord’s Prayer follows immediately in the Matthean form (6:9–13) rather than the Lucan (11:2–4), and there is no added doxology present.108 However, after “. . . but rescue us from the evil one,” a second “rescue us” occurs just as the text breaks off. K. Treu, the editor, attributed this to the carelessness of the scribe, but Alan H. Cadwallader proposed that the repetition was deliberate—in the pattern of “numerous liturgies” that follow “rescue us” with various expansions or embolisms, such as that in St. Mark’s Liturgy: “Rescue us from all his works.”109 Embolism is most frequently used for such additional requests for deliverance, and they are inserted just at this point—before the doxology. The further implications for Cadwallader, therefore, are, first, that a doxology followed on a next page of P.Oxy. 4010, which for him is a roll rather than a single sheet—though this cannot be demonstrated from the surviving portion—and, second, that 4010 is a liturgical text, for which he makes a substantial case.110 Whether or not we concede that a doxology was present in 4010, it is well known that the doxology is a later accretion in the text of Matt 6:13, owing to liturgical influence.111 Oxyrhynchus has yielded fifteen manuscripts containing Matthew, but only one has the Lord’s Prayer, and it stems from around 500 C.E. (P.Oxy. 1169, 5th/6th c.),112 yet, even at that late date, no doxology is present. Initially this might favor a claim that our independent Pater Noster (4010)— which shows little if any direct evidence of a doxology—was derived from a Matthean manuscript, but the availability of the passage in only one out of fifteen manuscripts is insufficient evidence that the doxology was absent generally from Matthean manuscripts at Oxyrhynchus. More instructive, our text is one of some thirteen instances of the Lord’s Prayer circulating independent of any Matthean or Lucan context, either as an 108 Unless its text carried over into another column, something not ruled out by the editor, K. Treu (see P.Oxy. LX, pp. 5, 7, and pl. III). Hence, Cadwallader proposed that this papyrus was part of a roll, noting the possibility that remains of a letter of a prior column are visible, and also that extant Christian liturgical texts were often on rolls (“An Embolism in the Lord’s Prayer?” 83–84). 109 Ibid., 85. 110 See his further evidence, ibid., 83–86. “Designed for public recitation” (Pickering, “New Papyrus Text of the Lord’s Prayer,” 112). 111 On the text and liturgical influence, see Bruce M. Metzger [for the Editorial Committee], A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (2nd ed.; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft/United Bible Societies, 1994), 13–14; Hans Dieter Betz, The Sermon on the Mount (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 414–15. 112 New Testament majuscule 0170; the others are P1, P19, P21, P35, P70, P71, P77, P101, P102, P103, P104, P105, P110 + 24, 071. Papyri of Luke from Oxyrhynchus (P69, P111) do not have 11:2–4.
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independent unit or as one member of a compilation of separate biblical citations, using, for example, the first verse of one or more Gospels, or a verse or more of a Psalm, and so on. Of the five earliest survivors of these out-of-context Lord’s Prayers (up to around 400),113 only the three from Oxyrhynchus have sufficient text to decide whether or not they contained doxologies. Two of them do, while our subject, 4010, appears not to have contained one, though four of the seven later examples have the doxology.114 Normally, the presence of doxologies would indicate, I think, that these Lord’s Prayers were drawn from church liturgy rather than from Gospel texts, and more so in view of their independent circulation. In addition, virtually all of the manuscripts of this type were written on one side only and were either amulets or were used for magical purposes, indicating that these independent Lord’s Prayers had developed into a separate tradition of their own as charms or for magical use. This is confirmed by the repeated use of several accompanying texts, especially Matt 1:1; Mark 1:1; Luke 1:1; John 1:1 (along with Ps 91:1 [LXX Ps. 90:1]). Of course, these NT texts ultimately derive from NT manuscripts, but soon they, like the Lord’s Prayer, became standard elements in a fixed genre.115 Yet P.Oxy. 4010 is likely too large to have been an amulet and evidences no folding; nonetheless, the verso is blank, and the double prayer appears either to have occupied all of a single sheet with wide margins116 or possibly to have been part of a scroll. In either event, it most likely is a liturgical text, and, especially in view of its fourth-century date, was likely drawn from liturgical tradition, with the numerous papyri of Matthew at Oxyrhynchus playing no direct role. Incidentally, Christian amulets and other manuscripts that contain short passages of our NT present a peculiar problem: those, for example, that quote 113 They are P.Ant. II.54 (miniature codex, 3rd c.); P.Princ. 2.107 (4th/5th c.); P.Oslo inv. 1644 (late 4th c., Oxyrhynchus); PSI 6.719 (4th/5th c., probably Oxyrhynchus); and P.Oxy. 4010. A clay tablet, inscribed with the Lord’s Prayer and then fired (O.Athens inv. 12227 = van Haelst 348, 4th c.), has no doxology, nor is it a true ostracon: see A. Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East: The New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World (New York: Harper, 1927), 56 n. 3. See the helpful survey of these texts by G. H. R. Horsley, NewDocs 3 (1978): 103–5 (where he also discusses an inscription containing a line from the Prayer). His inclusion of P.Oxy. 407, which has only a doxology and no (other) remnant of the Lord’s Prayer, is probably unwarranted. 114 See G. H. R. Horsley, NewDocs 3 (1978): 104–5. 115 On the use of the Lord’s Prayer in magic, with additional examples, see Leiv Amundsen, “Christian Papyri from the Oslo Collection,” SO 24 (1945): 143–44. I was pleased to discover that he had already espoused the view I formulated on the use of the Prayer “for magical purposes, alone or with other texts” (p. 142), followed by a reference to “a strong tradition that manifests itself also in the fixed group of texts with which the Lord’s Prayer is coupled” (p. 143). Cf. his comments on the similar but even more popular use of Ps 91 (90 LXX), with thirty examples (pp. 144–47). 116 P.Oxy. LX, p. 5 and pl. III.
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the first verse of each Gospel, such as PSI 6.719 (4th/5th c.), or the many that circulated the Lord’s Prayer separately are said to pick up their citations from church liturgy (and rightly so), although P.Oxy. 209 (early 4th c.), with Rom 1:1–7 in a similar continuous text form, is placed among the NT papyri as P10.117 This papyrus was at first taken to be a school exercise, though Adolf Deissmann later argued that it was an amulet, because of its obvious folds.118 Placing it among the official NT papyri seemed justified, of course, for, as a school exercise it undoubtedly would have been copied from a manuscript containing Romans. Yet, if it had not been placed among our forty-seven Oxyrhynchus NT papyri, it would have been treated as an amulet made for religious or magical purposes or as a product of education at Oxyrhynchus that—in either case—showed the utilization of our [other] NT texts present in the city. So, we get caught in a circular argument when attempting to find cases where our NT text was employed in Christian practice. Other prayers within our period are not common. A short, intriguing one reads simply, “O God (q—"—) of the crosses that are laid upon us, help your servant Apphouas. Amen” (P.Oxy. 1058, 4th or 5th c.): God, who is responsible for the burdens, is asked to relieve them. Another, an amulet (P.Oxy. 407, 3rd/4th c.), quotes a phrase from LXX Ps 145:6, followed by a prayer for mercy and salvation “through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” with a concluding doxology,119 and one of the few pre–fifth-century Christian charms that survive (P.Oxy. 924, 4th c.) aims to ward off fever for a woman named Apia. There is no close reflection of NT texts in these or in later extant Oxyrhynchus prayers.120 117 See P.Oxy. II, p. 8 and pl. II. Aland and Aland doubt the validity of placing these among the NT papyri (Text of the New Testament, 85). 118 Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, 239–40 and n. 1+ fig. 46. The folds are more visible here than in P.Oxy. II, pl. II. 119 There are no nomina sacra. The doxology contains only “the glory and the power,” a form appropriate to Egypt (Giuseppe Ghedini, “Frammenti liturgici in un papiro milanese,” Aeg 13 [1933]: 672–73). 120 Later prayers, oracular prayers, charms, often amulets, from Oxyrhynchus, with no citations of NT texts, but with nomina sacra include P.Oxy. 1059 (5th c.); 925 (5th or 6th c.); or without nomina sacra, 1060 (6th c.); 1150 (6th c.; van Haelst, no. 957, says 4th c.) to ward off reptiles; 1152 (5th or 6th c.); 1926 (6th c.); P.Amst. Inv. 173 (probably Oxyrhynchus, 4th/5th c.) (see P. J. Sijpesteijn, “Ein christliches Amulett aus der Amsterdamer Papyrussammlung,” ZPE 5 [1970]: 57–59 + pl.); with mixed nomina sacra, P.Harr. I.54 (Oxyrhynchus, 6th c.); or without divine names, P.Oxy. 2063 (6th c., van Haelst, no. 965). Amulets or charms that contain a freestanding, continuous-text, out-of-context portion of the NT are a separate issue: some are treated as NT papyri: P.Oxy. 209 (early 4th c.) = P10, with Rom 1:1–7; 2684 (3rd/4th c.) = P78, preserving portions of Jude; and P50 (3rd, 4th, 5th c., provenance unknown) containing portions of Acts 8–10. Others with portions of NT text are P.Oxy. 1151 (5th c.), with John 1:1–3 (nomina sacra); P.Osl. Inv. 1644 (perhaps Oxyrhynchus, end 4th c.) (van Haelst, no. 345), with the Lord’s Prayer (nomina sacra) (edition by Amundsen, “Christian Papyri from the Oslo Collection, 141–47); PSI
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Local homilies and theological treatises. Oxyrhynchus has yielded copies of well-known theological writings made in the second, third, and fourth centuries, including the Apology of Aristides (P.Oxy. 1778, 4th c.), the Didache (P.Oxy. 1782, late 4th c.), Against Heresies, by Irenaeus (P.Oxy. 405, 2nd/3rd c.),121 the Passion of Dioscurus (P.Oxy. 3529, 4th c.), a homily perhaps by Origen (P.Oxy. 1601, late 4th or 5th c.),122 and possibly On Prophecy by Melito of Sardis (P.Oxy. 5, 3rd/4th c.).123 These, however, are not relevant, for we wish to assess local treatises that might inform us of the use of our NT texts or their influence on worship and faith in Oxyrhynchus. Relevant materials are scarce indeed, though our probe brings forth one highly certain candidate, and possibly two others through the fourth century.124 First, P.Oxy 2070 from the late third century meets and exceeds our primary criterion—it is virtually without doubt a local document, and, in addition, is the autograph itself: This is suggested by the frequent alterations which have been made in the text, apparently by the original hand, and are difficult to explain except on the hypothesis that we here have a fragment of the author’s own manuscript.125
6.719 (perhaps Oxyrhynchus, 4th/5th c.) [van Haelst, no. 423], with the first verse of John, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and LXX Ps 90, plus John 1:23 and Matt 6:9 with doxology. P.Oxy. 1928 (5th/6th c.), a Christian amulet, contains LXX Ps 90 replete with nomina sacra and concluding with mention of John, Luke, Mark, and Matthew. 121 Initially unidentified in P.Oxy. III, p. 10, but soon shown to be from Irenaeus by J. Armitage Robinson (see P.Oxy. IV, pp. 264–65, with revised text). See Andreas Schmidt, “Der mögliche Text von P. Oxy. III 405, Z. 39-45,” NTS 37 (1991): 160. 122 Unidentified in P.Oxy. XIII, pp. 21–23; see van Haelst, no. 692, p. 249, who stated that R. Reitzenstein attributed it to Origen. P.Oxy. 406 has also been attributed to Origen according to Roberts (Manuscript, Society, and Belief, 24 and n. 8), crediting Giovanni Ausenda, “Contributo allo studio dell’omiletica cristiana nei papiri greci dell’Egitto,” Aeg 20 (1940): 46, for the identification, though Ausenda’s evidence is not apparent to me. 123 Unidentified in P.Oxy. I, pp. 8–9; see van Haelst, no. 682, who reported that A. Harnack suggested that the fragment was from Melito. Two later fragments are possibly from works by Melito: P.Oxy. 1600 (end of 4th or 5th c.), unidentified there, but see van Haelst, no. 679, who reports that C. Bonner identified it as Homily on the Passion; and P.Oxy. 2074 (5th c.), again unidentified; see van Haelst, no. 680: possibly Melito’s On Truth. 124 As to other possible “local” treatises, P.Oxy. 4 (early 4th c., nomen sacrum) may be “from the school of Valentinus” (van Haelst, no. 1070, pp. 332–33); P.Oxy. 406 (3rd c.) is a Christian text (as indicated by nomina sacra, including C—"— and a contraction for the preceding “crucified”) that quotes LXX Isa 6:10, though in a form found in Matt 13:15 and Acts 28:27 that differs from the LXX. Beyond this, there is insufficient text to speculate on its nature. P.Oxy. 210 is a narrative and very likely from an apocryphal Gospel: see n. 40 above. 125 P.Oxy. XVII, p. 9. Roberts ventures that the presence of this dialogue in autograph form suggests that “Oxyrhynchus in the third century may have been something of a Christian intellectual centre” (Manuscript, Society, and Belief, 24 n. 5).
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That it is a Christian document is clear from the name “Jesus” (line 10), written in the usual abbreviated fashion (I—h—). Portions of eighty-eight lines survive of this seriously deteriorated papyrus roll, though only some fifty lines contain one or more complete words, permitting almost nothing beyond its general character to be discerned. Even that is possible only because citations from two Psalms and Isaiah can be restored.126 Their identification, in turn, clinches the nature of this treatise, for these very passages from the Jewish Scripture occur, for instance, in Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, in either anti-Jewish contexts or as proof-texts for the messiahship of Jesus.127 In col. 1 of our document, for example, Ps 18:43–44 (LXX Ps 17:44–45) is cited: “People whom I had not known served me; as soon as they heard of me they obeyed me” (lines 5–7). We may reasonably surmise that this is used somewhat as it was in Justin, Dial. 28, where explicitly Gentiles were shown to be receptive to Christ when (in Justin’s view) Israel should have been. Following this citation, our document speaks “concerning Jesus” and that “many more . . . believed his word” (lines 10–12). Shortly thereafter—continuing the argument—Isa 29:13 is cited, stating that the people of Israel “honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me” (lines 24–27), again undoubtedly utilized as it was in Dial. 27 and 78, that is, specifically to stress that Gentiles are the recipients of God’s grace instead of a hardhearted Israel. Later, col. 2 of our document quotes Ps 22:15–22 (LXX Ps 21:16–23), though no context has been preserved, but once again we may presume that it was employed as in Dial. 98, in which Justin quoted the entire Psalm not only as predictive of Jesus’ sufferings but (as Justin explicitly affirmed) as a disclosure of “who they are that rise up against him.” This makes for some nasty assertions when we get to the Psalm portion that survived in the Oxyrhynchus fragment: “You lay me in the dust of death. For dogs are all around me: a company of evildoers encircles me. . . . They divide my clothes among themselves. . . . Deliver my soul from the sword, my life from the power of the dog!” (lines 46–59). Minor details in our document confirm that it is both a dialogue and antiJewish: twice it reports, “then he said” (line 4) and “he said to him” (line 18), undoubtedly the Christian interlocutor, and once, using an abbreviation for a 126 Lines 5–7, 19–22 = Ps 18:43–45 (LXX Ps 17:44–46) = 2 Sam 22:44–46; lines 46–59 = Ps 22:15–22 (LXX Ps 21:16–23); lines 24–27 = Isa 29:13. 127 P.Oxy. XVII, p. 9: the Oxyrhynchus treatise is not from Justin, since it does not match and is an autograph. Isaiah 29:13–14 occurs in Justin, Dial. 27 and 78, in the context of prophecies being fulfilled in Christ and of the unfaithfulness of Israel; Ps 18:43–44 (LXX Ps 17:44–45) = 2 Sam 22:44–45 occurs in Dial. 28 in contexts of the rejection of Israel and their replacement by Gentiles; and Ps 22:15–22 (LXX Ps 21:16–23) is found in Dial. 98 not only as a prophecy of Christ’s suffering, but showing his opponents.
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personal name or descriptive term, kai; oJ f— ei\pe occurs, with a horizontal superscript line over f (line 30), plausibly standing for “and the Pharisee said,” an interpretation the more likely because this character speaks just after the antiJewish use of Isa 29:13,128 though we cannot tell what he said. So, we have the unpleasant presence in Oxyrhynchus of an anti-Jewish dialogue, clearly in the polemical tradition of Justin.129 On the basis of this papyrus, it would be rash, of course, to assert that Christian polemic in Oxyrhynchus relied only on Jewish Scripture and not on NT texts, for only a small portion of the dialogue has survived. Yet, as we shall see, Jewish Scripture (i.e., the LXX) appears to take the lead time and again. Two other possibly local treatises are still less forthcoming about their exact nature. The first, P.Oxy. 2073 (late fourth century), however, may yield its secret in the same manner as P.Oxy. 2070 above, that is, by the reconstruction of two clear citations from the Wisdom of Solomon and the Wisdom of Jesus Son of Sirach.130 Though only a sentence of each was taken over, Wis 11:19, whose immediate context spoke of wild beasts, including specifically “bold lions,” is quoted: “Not only could the harm they did destroy people, but the mere sight of them could kill by fright” (lines 11–12). Then our document immediately cites Sir 25:16, “I would rather live with a lion and a dragon than live with an evil woman” (lines 14–15). This contextual sequence, the first citation introducing the second, is strong confirmation that our papyrus—surely in part and perhaps in whole—was a diatribe or homily against women. Little else left can be pieced together meaningfully, though the sentence following the two citations includes “. . . the righteous and mighty God. . .”— with qeov" written as q—"—, the usual nomen sacrum and a strong signal for a Christian document. Is it more than coincidence that this “evil woman” quotation (Sir 25:16) occurs also at the outset of a brief Ps.-Chrysostom treatise (PG 59:486–87)131 and that a portion of it—beginning just two dozen lines farther down—turned up at Oxyrhynchus (P.Oxy. 1603, roll, 5th or 6th c.), namely, a twenty-one line catalogue of evil deeds by women in Hebrew Scripture and in the John the Baptist episode, concluding with “A wicked woman is the worst of all [ills] . . . and if she also has wealth as her ally in wickedness, the evil is double” (lines 17–20)?132 128
P.Oxy, XVII, p. 9. Ibid. 130 P.Oxy. XVII, pp. 16-17. 131 In decollationem præcursoris et Baptistæ Joannis. In PG 59:487, Sir 25:16 is quoted in lines 38–40; the P.Oxy. 1603 portion on p. 487, lines 56–70. P.Oxy. 1603 was unidentified by the editors, but soon was shown to be from Ps.-Chrysostom (cf. van Haelst, no. 634). It is reminiscent in form of the litany of faith heroes in Heb 11, though the papyrus refers to evil women. 132 P.Oxy. XIII, pp. 25–26. 129
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Once again, our fourth-century diatribe (P.Oxy. 2073) made its case on the basis of Septuagint writings and not using the NT—although, of course, this must remain partly (and perhaps largely) an argument from silence, since the entire document has not survived. Though beyond our period, it is striking that four other theological treatises or homilies from Oxyrhynchus employ, in their fairly extensive surviving portions, themes from the Jewish Bible and—even in the fifth and sixth centuries—with only an occasional reminiscence of NT events or language.133 So, our early local treatises have revealed an anti-Jewish dialogue and a diatribe against women. Was there anything positive in Christian exhortation at Oxyrhynchus? P.Oxy. 2072 (late third century) in its sparse remains (thirty-two lines, all broken off on both sides, with indeterminate line lengths) appears to have dealt with two issues, a community matter and one more theological, though what the preceding fifty or more pages held is unknown.134 The recto uses words such as “opinion,” “truth,” and “brother,” but no reconstruction seems possible; then follows a statement about having “both good things and bad things in common” (lines 11–13). The editor’s notes refer to Acts 2:44 and 4:32, and he avers that “the recto apparently commends the communistic society of [Christ’s] followers,”135 but the only significant word the papyrus shares with the Acts passages is koinav (line 13), precluding, I think, any clear decision about a communal life, and perhaps speaking only of “sharing both the good and bad,” in some fashion. The verso in lines 21–26 refers to something that happened “absolutely,” though it was “not he himself but . . . Jesus Christ, who was appointed” to do something “to/for Israel and to/for all . . . those who believe,” accomplishing something through/of “him to/with God.” This was reconstructed by the editor, accommodating the likely length of lines, as “[God saved us] absolutely . . . not he himself, but [his son] Jesus Christ, who was set apart [in glory and who became a savior] to Israel and to all [the Gentiles] who believe [and who have been reconciled] through? him to God,”136 though the reconstructed portion exceeds the surviving text and the result must be considered tentative, since there is no obvious intertext. Finally, 133 P.Oxy. 1600 (5th c., 58 lines) refers to Abel, Joseph, Moses, and cites Ps 2:1, etc. 1601 (late 4th/5th c., 34 lines) cites and interprets Joel 1:6, speaks of “our battle/wrestling is spiritual” (a possible but not necessary allusion to Eph 6:12), and quite clearly alludes to 1 Pet 5:8: the devil as a lion seeking to devour. In 1602 (late 4th/5th c., 40 lines) events of Israelite history lead to Christ Jesus; 1603 (5th or 6th c., 21 lines), as noted above, lists evil deeds by women in the Bible, including the beheading of John the Baptist. 134 P.Oxy. XVII, p. 15. Pagination indicates the presence of lost preceding pages. Van Haelst’s characterization of P.Oxy. 2072 (no. 1156, p. 351) as “a question of the parousia” is puzzling. 135 Ibid. 136 P.Oxy. XVII, p. 16, where the proposed Greek text is provided.
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there is a second reference to “Christ” (line 28).137 Two points stand out: the nature of this treatise is likely beyond reach, and nothing here reflects direct influence from NT texts.138 The Role of “New Testament” Papyri in Everyday Christian Life in Oxyrhynchus Our penultimate core sample runs through the rich stratum of private letters to explore everyday Christian life in Oxyrhynchus, yielding some two dozen clearly or likely Christian letters from the late third century and the fourth that are relevant to our assessment. First, a NT papyrus, P10 (P.Oxy. 209, mentioned above), containing Rom 1:1–7 and written in the early fourth century, was “found tied up with a contract dated 316 A.D. and other documents of the same period.”139 Written “in a large rude uncial,” the Romans papyrus was likely a school pupil’s exercise,140 or, recognizing its folds, an amulet.141 Either way, this manuscript’s juxtaposition with a business document and others of an ordinary nature opens the issue of how our “New Testament” papyri were related to the everyday life of Christians in Oxyrhynchus. The most obvious path of exploration is to examine private letters and official records. Private letters. Private letters are numerous from Oxyrhynchus, and those that may be Christian include family correspondence, business matters, letters of recommendation and condolence, and others, such as the one about lending books. Letters from the early third century are rare, so we must be content with those dating in the later third and in the fourth centuries. A number of Christian letters, such as P.Oxy. 4127 (1st half of 4th c.), after a quick Christian greeting and the customary wish for good health (though here “in soul and body”), move directly to business: “Ptolemaeus to Thonius, his beloved brother, greetings in the Lord (k—w/—). Before all things I pray that you be in good health in soul and body” (lines 1–10), but then speaks immediately of linen yarn, “a pair of girl’s full-sized shoes made of hair,” and (perhaps) a garment. That is the full burden of the letter.142
137
“Christ” (lines 23, 28), “God” (line 26), and “Israel” (line 24) occur as nomina sacra. Even less can be said about the nature of P.Oxy. 2068 (4th c.), which has common nomina sacra (lines 18, 33, 43), but also b—"— (lines 7, 14), possibly for basileuv". Whether a liturgical piece or homily, it has “several allusions to, or reminiscences of, the Greek of the Old Testament” (P.Oxy. XVII, pp. 5–6). 139 P.Oxy. II, p. 8. 140 Ibid. See pl. II. 141 See n. 118, above. 142 Similar, e.g., are P.Oxy. 1774 (early 4th c.); 2729 (4th c.); 2731 (4th/5th c.); cf. 2156 (late 4th/5th c.). 138
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Letters of introduction or recommendation might be expected to show more extensive use of our NT papyri, though quickly we discover that they follow regular patterns143 that largely exclude the use of alternate or creative phraseology. Among several surviving Christian examples, P.Oxy 3857 (4th c.) is typical: the opening, which is lacking, would have given the sender’s name and doubtless, “Greetings in the Lord,”144 as in the majority of such Christian letters: . . . to my beloved brothers and fellow ministers in every locality. Receive in peace our daughter Germania, who is coming to you, because she needs your help. Through her I and those with me greet you and those with you. Emmanuel. Amen. I pray for your health in the Lord, beloved brothers.145
Other Christian letters from Oxyrhynchus request that the one introduced be received “according to custom” (PSI 3.208, 4th c.), or “as is proper” (PSI 9.1041, 3rd/4th c.),146 and two refer to catechumens, one being instructed “in the beginning of the gospel” (PSI 9.1401, line 11) and another “in Genesis” (P.Oxy. 2785, line 8, 4th c.). New Testament language may be reflected in P.Oxy. 2603 (4th c.), where the writer, Paul, when referring to the “acquaintances” he introduces, says, “if you do anything for them, you have done it for me” (lines 28–29), reminiscent of Matt 25:40: “. . . just as you did it to one of the least of these. . . , you did it to me,” though the allusion, while possible, lies “more in the realms of conjecture,”147 because some earlier non-Christian 143 M. G. Sirivianou, P.Oxy. LVI, p.111; cf. Chan-Hie Kim, Form and Structure of the Familiar Greek Letter of Recommendation (SBLDS 4; Missoula, MT: Society of Biblical Literature, 1972), passim, though Kim argues that the Christian letters available to him followed the general pattern only in the opening and closing, and not in the body (p. 117). 144 It is said that caivrein is omitted in contrast to all other letters of recommendation (P.Oxy. LVI, p. 114; cf. 112–15; see S. R. Llewelyn, NewDocs 8 [1984–85]: 170–71), but the first line has only remote traces. 145 Nomina sacra in line 15: k—w—, and line 13: e—m—l— (!Emmanouhvl), followed by f—q— [see n. 57 above]. 146 “Receive in peace”: P.Oxy. 1162 (4th c.), 2785 (4th c.), P.Alex. 29 (3rd c.); P.Berol. 8508 (APF 28, p. 54; 3rd/4th c.); “Receive in accordance with custom”: SB III.7269 (4th/5th c.); SB X.10255 (3rd/4th c.), phrases, along with “Receive as is proper,” that are found only in Christian letters of recommendation (Kim, Form and Structure, 108–13). P.NagHamm. 78 (4th c.), a Christian letter, has “Receive our brother Herakleios . . . ,” but the text following cannot be reconstructed. For the distinction between letters of peace and of recommendation, see the enlightening discussion by Timothy M. Teeter, “Letters of Recommendation or Letters of Peace?” in Akten des 21. Internationale Papyrologenkongresses, Berlin, 13.–19. 8 1995, 2:954–60, esp. 956–58. Stowers calls them letters of mediation (Letter Writing in Greco-Roman Antiquity, 153–65). For general analysis, see Sirivianou, P.Oxy. LVI, pp. 111–16; cf. Llewelyn, NewDocs 8 (1984–85): 171–72, and the older study by Clinton W. Keyes, “The Greek Letter of Introduction,” AJP 56 (1935): 28–44. 147 Harris, “Biblical Echoes and Reminiscences in Christian Papyri,” 157; the link to Matt 25:40 is suggested, e.g., by J. H. Harrop (“A Christian Letter of Recommendation,” JEA 48 [1962]:
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Oxyrhynchus letters of commendation read, “Look upon him as if he were myself,” followed at the conclusion by “When you read this letter, imagine that I am speaking to you” (P.Oxy 32 [Latin], lines 6–9, 31–33, 2nd c.)148 and “. . . receive him as if he were I” (P.Osl. 55, lines 8–9, 2nd/3rd c.),149 but especially P.Oxy 3646 (3rd/4th c.), “And whatever you do for the propheµteµs, you do for me” (lines 21–22), where profhvth" refers to a priest at an Egyptian oracle or the like.150 A second sample turns up letters of condolence to the bereaved, which— we might suppose—would be an even more natural locale for NT quotations and allusions or at least for Christian sentiments, and the latter do occur in the sixth/seventh-century P.Oxy. 1874, though even then explicit NT passages are not evident (see below). Actually, among some two thousand private papyrus letters, only about a dozen qualify as letters of sympathy and comfort following a death.151 They range from the first/second to the sixth/seventh centuries, with ten written during the first four centuries. Five indicate no religious context; three give clear or implied reference to Roman religions; two are clearly Christian (P.Princ. II,102, 4th c.; P.Oxy. 1874, 6th/7th c.);152 two others are probably or possibly Christian (P.Oxy. 4004, 5th c., and 3819, early 4th c.)—and these four are the latest among the twelve. Altogether five are from Oxyrhynchus (those just noted plus P.Oxy. 115, 2nd c.; PSI 12.1248, ca. 235 C.E.). Finally, eight are complete, while four are lacunose at the beginning and/or the end.153
136), but then he proceeds to point out several examples of “a favour to the bearer is a favour to the sender.” 148 For lines 22–34, see P.Oxy. II, pp. 318–19; see also Stowers, Letter Writing in GrecoRoman Antiquity, 157. 149 From Oxyrhynchus: see S. Eitrem and Leiv Amundsen, Papyri Osloenses, Fasc. II (Oslo: Norske Videnskaps-Akademi I Oslo, 1931), xi, 132–35. 150 See John Rea, P.Oxy. LI, p. 129, who suggests further that there may be a “connection with the worship of Hermes Trismegistus.” 151 See the superb analysis by Juan Chapa, Letters of Condolence in Greek Papyri (Pap. Flor. 29; Florence: Gonnelli, 1998). He mentions four others, but excludes them because “condolence is included in the body of the letter, as one among other topics, treated with what seems to us heartless speed” (p. 16). 152 On P.Princ. II. 102, see n. 166 below. 153 Chapa, Letters of Condolence, 15–18, 23–24. No religious content: P.Oxy. I.115 (2nd c., complete); BGU III.801 (2nd c., complete); P.Wisc. II.84 (2nd/3rd c., complete); P.Rainer Cent. 70 (2nd/3rd c., incomplete); SB XVIII.13946 (3rd/4th c., complete); Roman religions: SB XIV.11646 (1st/2nd c., complete); PSI 12.1248 (from Oxyrhynchus; 235 or later; complete); P.Ross.Georg. III.2 (3rd c., complete); clearly Christian: P.Princ. II.102 (4th c., incomplete: lacking end); P.Oxy. XVI.1874 (6th/7th c., incomplete: lacking beginning and end); and probably/possibly Christian: P.Oxy. LV.3819 (1st half 4th c., incomplete: lacking end); P.Oxy. LIX.4004 (5th c., complete).
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In all these letters, Christian or not, condolence is expressed with close consistency through one or more common elements, including (1) nothing can be done about mortality, it is the human condition, (2) death is common to all, and (3) bear it bravely and/or comfort yourselves.154 The second-century example from Oxyrhynchus (P.Oxy. 115) is brusque: Eirene to Taonnophris and Philo, take heart. I grieved and wept over the departed as much as I wept over Didymas. I and all mine, Epaphroditus, Thermuthion, Philion, Apollonius and Plantas, did all that was due. However, one can do nothing against such things. So comfort yourselves. Farewell.155
Another Oxyrhynchus letter (P.Oxy. 3819, early 4th c.) has been thought by some to be Christian,156 based first of all on the following portion: For when I heard about my mother Sarapias, I was greatly grieved. Well, the lord god has the power for the future to give us good health. So do not be grieved. For these things are (part of being) human. Indeed, for all of us this is laid down.
The phrase, “lord god,” as noted earlier, is hardly a Christian indicator by itself (especially uncontracted, as here), and the Christian origin of this letter comes to rest, then, on the rare word, dunatevw, found only in the first-century B.C.E. Epicurean philosopher Philodemus and in Paul.157 The editor focuses on this “Pauline” word, indicating that “the reminiscence suggests that [the author of the letter] is Christian.”158 To be sure, Oxyrhynchus preserves five Pauline letters dating prior to the condolence letter, but Philodemus also had a presence in the city, for a first-century list of epigrams found there is totally dominated 154 SB XVIII. 13946 (3rd/4th c.) claims that those who die escape the sufferings of this life: see Chapa, Letters of Condolence, 115–18. 155 The same day, whether earlier or later, Eirene, a business woman of some kind, wrote a matter-of-fact business letter to the same addressees (P.Oxy. 116), with no mention of the bereavement: on the dates, see Chapa, Letters of Condolence, 64. On self-consolation, see ibid., 62, 64, 144; cf. Deissmann (Light from the Ancient East, 176–78) and John L. White (Light from Ancient Letters [FF; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986] 184–85), who translate “comfort one another”; Chapa (p. 64) to the contrary and against a Pauline parallel in 1 Thess 4:18. PSI 12.1248 (ca. 235), from Oxyrhynchus, says, in part, “But bear it bravely! For this is something which lies in store even for the gods.” See Chapa, Letters of Condolence, 96–97. 156 John Rea, its editor in P.Oxy. LV, pp. 219–20; cf. Chapa, Letters of Condolence, 128–29. 157 See the references in BDAG ad loc., and P.Oxy. LV, p. 220. See the latter for other speculative evidence of Christian origin; cf. Chapa, Letters of Condolence, 128–29. 158 See P.Oxy. LV, p. 219. The five Pauline papyri dating to the turn of the third/fourth centuries are P.Oxy. 1355 = P27 and 4497 = P113 of Romans; 1008 = P 15 of 1 Corinthians; 1009 = P16 of Philippians; and 1598 = P30 of 1–2 Thessalonians. dunatevw occurs in Rom 14:4; 2 Cor 13:3; 9:8, but none of these passages is preserved in the Oxyrhynchus papyri, nor in the later P.Oxy. 209 = P10 of Romans; or 2157 = P51 of Galatians.
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by those of Philodemus (Oxy. 3724),159 and there is no compelling reason to link the verb usage in our letter to Paul rather than Philodemus—or to either one for that matter. More probably Christian is a fifth-century Oxyrhynchus letter (P.Oxy. LIX. 4004), though the thoughts expressed reveal no such origin, for the customary pattern of condolence appears: We were very much grieved when we heard about your blessed wife [or about your wife, Macaria]. . . . But what can we do against mortality? So please console yourself and brave the journey and come to me. . . .160
Though this letter is beyond our period,161 it is instructive if it is Christian, for its identity is based on names later in the text, especially Neson, a location in the Heracleopolite nome, probably on the west bank of the Nile across from Oxyrhynchite territory, where an archive attests to a monastery, and two personal names: a biblical name, Nathanael (also a Coptic saint), and an unusual name, Syncletice, the name of an Egyptian nun who became a saint.162 Yet if this letter is Christian, there is nothing of Christian sentiment, let alone any reflection of NT texts; rather, traditional formulaic statements of condolence reign. An Oxyrhynchus letter from around 600 C.E (P.Oxy. 1874) shows us, however, language that we might have expected much earlier: But let us glorify God, because he gave and he took away; and pray that the Lord may give them rest and may He allow you to see them in paradise, when the souls of people are judged; for they have gone to the bosom of Abraham, and of Isaac and of Jacob,163
and . . . pray that the Lord may send upon you his blessing, for the Lord has many good things and gives courage to those in sorrow who seek a blessing from him, and we hope to God that through this sorrow the Lord sends you joy. . . .164 159
See P.Oxy. LIV, pp. 65–67. Letters of Condolence, 141, cf. 139–47. 161 Though its hand most resembles those of two papyri from about the first third of the fifth century (ibid., 140). 162 For details, see P.Oxy. LIX, pp. 171–75; Chapa, Letters of Condolence, 139–47, who remarks that Neson and these names, in relation to Theodorus, the writer, “might tempt one to identify them as monks or as otherwise connected with the monastery of Hathor . . , perhaps a Meletian monastery during the schism” (pp. 139–40, cf. 145). 163 See Horsley, “The Bosom of Abraham,” NewDocs 3 (1978): 106. 164 Chapa, Letters of Condolence, 152, cf. 149–59. P.Oxy 1874, like other fifth- to seventhcentury Christian letters, prayers, and other documents, has no nomina sacra (e.g., P.Oxy. 1830; 1832; 1926; 3864–3865; 3870; 3872–3873; 3932; 3936–3943; 3945; 3946–3959; 3961; 4535–4536; P.Wisc. I.11. To the contrary, e.g., P.Oxy. 1927–1928; 2067 [Nicene Creed]; 2071; 2074; 3863; 4394, line 11; 4397, lines 226, 239. 160 Chapa,
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But this is two centuries (!) beyond the period we are exploring, though even then nothing reminds us specifically of NT texts. 165 If we move beyond Oxyrhynchus, one fourth-century letter (P.Princ. II.102) reads “nobody among humans is immortal, but only God, and remember the promise of the blessed Paul, as . . . ,” where, regrettably, the text breaks off.166 Undoubtedly an appropriate Pauline text followed, though we cannot know what it was. But Oxyrhynchus, where the majority of condolence letters were found, has no such explicit reference to our NT, regardless of date. Although conclusions on the basis of a dozen or fewer letters are risky, within the first four centuries of Christianity there was very little difference between letters of condolence written by Christians and those written by nonChristians, for they all consist mainly in an array of the shared formulaic phrases, with the exception of the one non-Oxyrhynchus letter just noted. The surprises are not only that so few letters of condolence are extant, but that they are so terse and blunt, almost lacking in feeling (except for the latest Christian example, P.Oxy. 1874). Two, in fact, after a brief expression of grief, a statement that death is common to all, and advice to console oneself, proceed immediately to matter-of-fact discussions of business or other events. For example, P.Oxy 1248, partly quoted above, has seven lines of condolence and thirty-nine additional lines describing someone acting inhumanly and causing trouble, and so on.167 Official records. Our exploration necessarily encompasses but a small portion of what might be explored of the Christian environment at Oxyrhynchus through the fourth century, but we must be content with a final core sample from official documents relevant to the city’s Christian terrain. As we place the samples on our laboratory table, we find, first, an order from February 256 to arrest a certain “Petosorapis, son of Horus, Christian” (P.Oxy. 3035). Parentage is a common identifier in official records, as is a professional designation, such as “weavers” (P.Oxy. 2575) or “wine-merchant” (P.Oxy. 2576), but “Christian” is unusual, leading to the notion that religion was the critical factor in his summons, but this order was issued “more than a year before legal mea-
165 See Horsley, “Bosom of Abraham,” 106, for evidence that the formula “derives from liturgy rather than directly from the NT.” 166 The provenance of P.Princ. II.102 is unknown; I accept Chapa’s argument that, in line 17, “blessed Paul” is to be restored, assuring its Christian origin (Letters of Condolence, 136–37, cf. 132–33). 167 Ibid., 96–98. P.Oxy. 3819 has eighteen lines of consolation (quoted above), but then begins to discuss a dalmatic—a wide-sleeved overgarment, though the text breaks off at this point (ibid., 127, 130).
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sures were taken against the Christians” in the Valerian persecution.168 Hence, “Christian” is likely just an identifier,169 and we have no clue to the occasion for the summons. Further items, however, do take us into the context of persecution. P.Oxy. 3119 (259/260 in reign of Valerian170), in what can be deciphered, reads “concerning an investigation,” followed in the next line by Crhstianoiv (line 14), “Christians,” allowing for the possibility of an inquiry in time of persecution, though this cannot be confirmed. About forty years later, in February 303, an edict from Diocletian required all litigants to sacrifice,171 and Copres, a Christian,172 who was preparing a lawsuit in another town, confirms such a requirement when he writes back to Oxyrhynchus (P.Oxy. 2601, early 4th c.): “It became known to us that those who present themselves in court are being made to sacrifice.” And how does he handle this? “I made a power-of-attorney in favor of my brother” (lines 8–13). Such casual treatment may suggest either that this requirement was routinely circumvented by assigning it to someone else (perhaps—by Christians—to a nonChristian?) or that the procedure was new enough that Copres and others had not yet realized that “a serious crisis of conscience was posed.”173 Then in 304, Ammonius, an illiterate lector,174 declares to the authorities 168 P. J. Parsons in P.Oxy. XLII, p. 100: the text reads crhsianovn (see pl. X), but no alternative to “Christian” is apparent. A similar spelling occurs in PSI 14.1412, also from Oxyrhynchus (2nd/3rd c.): see P.Oxy. XXXVI, p. 84 n. 2; cf. Horsley, NewDocs 2 (1977): 173. “Arrest orders” are more properly summonses, though often a guard was involved: see Traianos Gagos in P.Oxy. LXI, pp. 90–91; T. Gagos and P. J. Sijpesteijn, “Towards an Explanation of the Typology of the So-Called ‘Orders to Arrest,’” BASP 33 (1996): 77–97, esp. 78–79. For a list up to 1986, including some twenty-seven involving Oxyrhynchus, see Adam Bülow-Jacobsen, “Orders to Arrest,” ZPE 66 (1986): 95–98. 169 Parsons in P.Oxy. XLII, p. 100. At the time (1974), Parsons considered this “by far the earliest use of the word ‘Christian’ in the papyrus documents.” 170 Dating is complex; the reference is to a “seventh year,” including (among seven possibilities in the third century) “7 Valerian and Gallienus,” i.e. 259/260, viewed by John Rae as a standout, but still doubtful (P.Oxy. XLIII, pp. 77–78 + pl. VI); J. E. G. Whitehorne confirms the 259/260 date by careful argumentation (“P.OXY. XLIII 3119: A Document of Valerian’s Persecution,” ZPE 24 [1977]: 187–96, esp. 196). 171 Judge and Pickering, “Papyrus Documentation,” 53. 172 This is clear enough from the attempted nomina sacra in line 5 and from f— q — , the isopsephism of ajmhvn in the address (line 34): see P.Oxy. XXXI, pp. 170–71; cf. n. 57 above. 173 Judge and Pickering, “Papyrus Documentation,” 53, based on P.Oxy. XXXI, pp. 167–68. The person given the power of attorney “was certainly pagan” (Ewa Wipszycka, “Un lecteur qui ne sait pas ecrire ou un chrétien qui ne veut pas se souiller? [P.Oxy.XXXIII 2673],” ZPE 50 [1983]: 121). 174 See P.Oxy. XXXIII, pp. 105, 108, where it is suggested that the lector read in Coptic services but was illiterate in Greek; Wipszycka (“Un lecteur,” esp. 121) sees his illiteracy as a “subterfuge”: reluctant to be a hero and defy the authorities, yet unwilling to sign a document handing
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“concerning the surrender of all the goods” in his “former church”—apparently in accord with Diocletian’s edict—that nothing remains except “the bronze objects”175 which had been handed over for shipment to Alexandria (P.Oxy. 2673, 5 February 304, lines 14–24). The very next year, 305, an official report affirms that a certain “Paul from the Oxyrhynchite nome” had been sentenced and that no property was currently registered in his name (P.Oxy. 2665, lines 16–20)—presumably because it was confiscated. Though there is no direct evidence, the presumption is that he was a Christian who suffered under persecution—the more likely because the document states that the sentencing agent (lines 14–15) was “Satrius Arrianus, the governor of the Thebaid, who appears so frequently in the martyrologies.”176 Though details are lacking, these papyri disclose Oxyrhynchus Christians who were objects of persecution under Valerian and Diocletian. A further probe reveals trouble in two Christian homes. In P.Oxy. 903 (4th c.), a woman files a thirty-seven line accusation, narrating the abusive behavior of her husband toward her, her foster daughters, and her slaves, as well as toward his foster son and his own slaves over an extended period. We know the couple were Christians because on one occasion he took an oath before the bishops, affirming, “I will stop and not insult her” (lines 15–17)— though he abused her again—and because of references to “the church” (lines
over the church’s goods to persecutors of the faithful, thereby defiling himself, he took an ambiguous action “consistent with declaring himself illiterate” and did not sign the declaration himself. In response, G. W. Clarke presents cases, including five-year-old (!) lectors and others who allegedly did not “know letters,” to suggest that the possibility of illiterate lectors “cannot be rejected outright” (“An Illiterate Lector?” ZPE 57 [1984]: 103–4, esp. 104). See also Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity, 256 n. 142; Kraus, “(Il)literacy in Non-Literary Papyri,” 330–31 and n. 27. HainesEitzen (Guardians of Letters, 27–29) and Kraus ([Il]literacy in Non-Literary Papyri,” 329, 334–38), at greater length, discuss the striking case of two village scribes in the Fayum near Karanis who could neither read nor write, except for writing their own signatures (P.Petaus, an archive of 127 items); see also Robert A. Kaster, Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity (Transformation of the Classical Heritage 11; Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988; repr. 1997), 42–43, esp. nn. 41, 44; Harris, Ancient Literacy, 278–79; 320 and n. 169. 175 John Rea, the editor, corrected puvlh in line 22 to read u{lh; hence “bronze material” rather than “bronze gate” (“P.Oxy. XXXIII 2673: puvlhn to u{lhn!” ZPE 35 [1979]: 128); cf. P.Oxy. XLVIII, p. xvii; Horsley, NewDocs 2 (1977): 169; Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity, 289–90. 176 P.Oxy. XXXIII, p. 89; see E. A. Judge, “Fourth-Century Monasticism in the Papyri,” in Proceedings of the Sixteenth International Congress of Papyrology, New York, 24–31 July 1980 (ed. Roger S. Bagnall et al.; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981), 614–15; Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity, 280 n. 117. I see no reason to think, as some have, that P.Oxy. 1464 (250 C.E.), a libellus or certificate of sacrifice in the Decian persecution, is that of a Christian. On the subject, see P.Oxy. LVIII, p. 39. Other libelli at Oxyrhynchus are P.Oxy. 658, 2990, and 3929.
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19–21), including her statement, “I departed and went into the church on the Sabbath” [sic!] (line 19).177 In P.Oxy. 3581 (the dating is complex: late fourth or fifth century), another woman submits a detailed petition seeking charges against Paul, her husband, who left her and her infant daughter to live with another woman, but then, she says, “Again he beguiled [me] through presbyters” (line 8) to return, presumably ecclesiastical elders; this time she was wiser and secured an agreement for two ounces of gold, with written surety from his father, if he were to “indulge in the same vile behavior” (lines 10–11). Well, matters were worse than before and, she says, “I endured insults and punishments to within an inch of my life” (lines 14–15). So she asks the tribune to exact the gold and to punish Paul “for his outrages against me” (lines 21–23). The results, of course, are unknown. Two additional samples reveal troubling situations in the churches. In P.Oxy. 2344 (ca. 336) Dionysius, bishop of the [local] “catholic church” in Oxyrhynchus, petitions the strategus apparently to be relieved of the administration of an estate and the guardianship of some children, though the matter is not further clarified.178 In another (P.Wash.Univ. I.20, 4th c., found at Oxyrhynchus), two brothers, upon returning to Oxyrhynchus, file a complaint against “the presbyter of the catholic church” of a nearby village because he had taken possession of their houses and lands and refuses to turn them back. Again, we do not know the other sides of these stories or their outcomes.179 Finally, Christians were doing some good—or at least interesting—things in Oxyrhynchus. An athlete, presumably a professional, sent money to his 177 The editio princeps read Sambaqwv (as if a location), but was revised to sabbvavtw/: see M. David, B. A. Van Groningen, and E. Kiessling, Berichtigungsliste der Griechischen Papyrusurkunden aus Ägypten, vol. 3 (Leiden: Brill, 1958), 133. There is also an apparent attempt at a nomen sacrum at the very end (line 37): q(eov") in “God knows these things.” On both P.Oxy. 903 and 3581 (treated below), see Roger S. Bagnall, “Church, State, and Divorce in Late Roman Egypt,” in Florilegium Columbianum: Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller (ed. Karl-Ludwig Selig; New York: Italica, 1987) 41–42, 58–59 [reprinted in Bagnall, Later Roman Egypt, no. IV]; and idem, Egypt in Late Antiquity, 194–95. 178 This may be in the context of seeking relief or exemption from a mandatory liturgical appointment—public service: see Royce L. B. Morris, “Reflections of Citizen Attitudes in Petitions from Late Roman and Byzantine Oxyrhynchus,” in Akten des 21. Internationale Papyrologenkongresses, Berlin, 13.–19. 8 1995, ed. Kramer et al., 2:746–47. 179 See also the reprimand of a Christian for some unknown action in P. Laur. 42 recto (4th/5th, Oxyrhynchite nome): “I was very pained and we are exceedingly pained that you dared to do such a thing to Atheas, since you are a Christian, because she also is a laywoman, and she has never been discovered (doing) worldly business” (text and tr. in Horsley, NewDocs 2 [1977]: 172– 73; cf. Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity, 282 and n. 126). P.Oxy. 3311 (373–374 C.E.) is a petition from two sisters to recover property that had been used/controlled (?) by a monk, Ammonius; upon his death, Ammon—perhaps a fellow monk—refuses to turn back the property (see Judge, “Fourth-Century Monasticism,” 618–19).
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mother “via Sotas the Christian” (PSI XIV.1412, line 10, 2nd/3rd c.).180 A certain Barus requests a fellow Christian, Diogenes, to grant Horus a four-month leave or an extension of time—it is hard to tell which—“because he is of moderate means” and will be obligated for public service (P.Oxy. 3858, 4th c.).181 We assume that he granted the favor. And two anchorite nuns agree to rent rooms to “Aurelius Jose son of Judas, Jew” (P.Oxy. 3203, 400 C.E., line 7).182 Besides these random acts of kindness, there is little else, and our NT texts— though perhaps not to be expected in these contexts—make no appearance.
III. Conclusion As we look back, much was happening in Christian circles in Oxyrhynchus, giving us a glimpse of the good, the bad, and even the ugly. Of course, these events did not take place in the course of a decade or even a lifetime, but over several lifetimes. Yet what we witness is instructive. First, • We find individual Christians, including women specifically, reading and studying biblical books and exploring Jewish and doubtless Christian apocalyptic, and likely teaching or exercising leadership in other ways. • We discover catechumens at various stages of instruction, and individuals who pray for help or carry amulets for protection. And • We hear of Christians writing letters of comfort—such as they are—in times of grief. Second, • We observe churches, with their majestic hymns, lofty prayers, and liturgical texts. • We witness ministers asking other Christians to help a woman in need, and bishops trying to assist a battered woman, who later sought refuge in the church. And • We hear of churches dismantled and of Christians whose property had been confiscated under persecution, though with no details, but also of 180 The text preserves only crhsia[. . . .] (line 10), restored to crhstianou' in P.Oxy. XXXVI, p. 84 n. 2, by analogy with the restoration in P.Oxy. 3035 (see n. 168 above). 181 See P.Oxy. LVI, pp. 117–20; nomina sacra occur in lines 3 and 25. 182 P.Oxy. XLIV, pp. 182–84; cf. Horsley, NewDocs 1 (1976): 126–30.
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Third, • At the same time, we uncover an anti-Jewish dialogue and a diatribe against women, both theologically motivated, indicating—to put them in the best possible light—that the churches were wrestling with ideas that we find uncongenial. And • We hear of a bishop recusing himself from a legal responsibility for children, and of church presbyters who, allegedly, convince a woman to take back her husband only to be further abused, and of another presbyter who, allegedly, took houses and land illicitly and declined to make amends. Our goal from the outset has been to disclose the local context of our fiftynine NT manuscripts from Oxyrhynchus, and, indeed, the Christian community there has come alive for us, if only in a partial and random fashion—but alive nonetheless. Yet the anomaly is that any overt influence from our NT texts remains largely undocumented.183 Would a different picture have emerged if Christian letters and documents from the second and early third centuries were as abundant as those from the late third and early fourth? Probably not, because forty-one of the fifty-nine Oxyrhynchus NT manuscripts issued from the third and fourth centuries, and apparently they were imported or copied and available184 in the very same time frame as most of our letters and documents, supporting the reliability of our findings. The churches at Oxyrhynchus by this later period, therefore, appear to have moved well beyond the direct use of NT texts to a reliance on the liturgical forms that had developed and on the abiding Septuagint texts for much of their worship and polemic. Liturgy, of course, was drawn mainly from Jewish Scripture and from texts that were becoming the New Testament, but by our period the liturgical formulations have overshadowed their Christian sources. Yet the Greek Jewish Bible—as understood and used by Christians—shows considerable direct influence on the Christian hymns, prayers, and theological treatises. All of this could be the uneven result of randomness in the survival of papyrus documents, yet sometimes silence is itself a loud voice that demands our attention. Moreover, as we assess this abundance of early Christian writings at 183 See Horsley, NewDocs 2 (1977): 157–58, who refers to “less than two dozen Biblical citations and verbal echoes” among some one hundred (alleged) Christian letters through the fourth century, though only half that many would remain if “reminiscences of Biblical wording which are less than certain” were excluded. 184 On speed of transfer of letters—and books—in the Mediterranean area, see Epp, “New Testament Papyrus Manuscripts and Letter Carrying,” 35–56, esp. 52–56.
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Oxyrhynchus through the fourth century, including those we call “New Testament” and those we designate “apocrypha,” there is no basis for assigning preference to one group over the other, or even for claiming that they were separable groups, nor—with available evidence—can we discern varying degrees of canonical authority among the writings. Because these books as a whole show precious little direct impact on worship or teaching in the Oxyrhynchus churches or on the daily lives of Christians in Oxyrhynchus, one is tempted to remark, “Why should the third and fourth centuries be any different from the twentieth and the twenty-first? After all, in any modern liturgical service, are not the hymnals and prayer books used more heavily than the Bibles in the pews?” Beyond the lessons latent in these remarks, however, what is significant for us is that we have been able to expose something of the sociocultural and intellectual context of one locality—one real-life situation in which more than 40 percent of our NT papyri lived and were shaped in the company of numerous other Jewish and early Christian writings. To disclose and to illuminate that context, after all, was the main point—though now it remains for textual critics and others to fill out the picture and to find ways to exploit the results.
JBL 123/1 (2004) 57–74
PILGRIMAGE IMAGERY IN THE RETURNS IN EZRA
MELODY D. KNOWLES
[email protected] McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago, IL 60615
There are two different returns from Babylon recorded in the book of Ezra, one led by Zerubbabel and Jeshua (Ezra 1–2) and the other led by Ezra (Ezra 7–8). Many scholars have argued that these returns (or Ezra 1 at least) are deliberately modeled on the exodus from Egypt. The stories all recount a journey out of a foreign land and employ some similar motifs in the recounting. Probably the most frequently adduced parallels are the plundered Egyptians in Ezra 1 and the dates of Ezra’s return in Ezra 7–8. But how strong are these parallels? Does the exodus motif fully realize the imagery of these journeys in Ezra? After examining some of the exodus parallels, I will argue that the accounts of the returns in Ezra also include the imagery of pilgrimage. Although the motif of the exodus is still present, the motif of pilgrimage may be a more comprehensive heuristic device by which to interpret the accounts. The returns in Ezra emphasize Jerusalem as the destination of the journey (and not the larger geographic region of the promised land); they are explicitly cultic (with priests, sacrifice, and cultic vessels specifically highlighted); and they involve several journeys of the nation (not one constitutive trip made by the people together). I. The Parallels to the Exodus Scholars often point out that the silver and gold mentioned in Ezra 1:4 and 6 are reminiscent of the silver and gold given to the Israelites by the Egyptians An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah Section of the Society of Biblical Literature in November 2000, under the title “The Returns as Pilgrimage in Ezra.” In addition to the helpful comments of the members of this section, this paper was greatly enriched by the additional comments of Choon-Leong Seow (who read a version of the paper as part of my dissertation), Ralph W. Klein, Mark Throntveit, John Allan Knight, Jr., and the anonymous JBL reviewers.
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when they left Egypt (Exod 3:21–22; 11:2; 12:35–36).1 Nonetheless, while some scholars read Ezra 1:4 and 6 to indicate that all of the givers were Gentiles,2 it is more likely that Ezra 1:4 designates the givers as Jews.3 The verse specifies that ravnhAlk (“all the rest/those who remained”) are to “help” the returnees with silver and gold and goods and livestock and freewill offerings for the house of God in Jerusalem.4 These “remaining ones” are those of the Jewish community who would be left to stay in Babylon once those who were willing to go to Jerusalem had designated themselves as such (Ezra 1:3). A similar ethnic mix of gift-givers is found in the second return in Ezra 7:15–16, where gifts from the king and “the whole province of Babylonia” are brought along with those of “people and the priests . . . for the house of their God in Jerusalem.” The designation of Jews along with Gentiles as those who gave gifts to returnees contrasts with the exodus narratives, where only the Egyptians gave items of value.5 The accounts in Exodus and Ezra 1–2 differ not only in the ethnicity of the gift-givers but also in the rhetorical point of the accounts. While the original purpose of the account in Exodus might have been etiological, perhaps related to a seasonal children’s game or carnival holiday,6 its immediate purpose in the present narrative is indicated by the editor’s summarizing trope of the event: 1 The connection is made by, among others, Jacob M. Myers, Ezra, Nehemiah: Introduction, Translation, and Notes (AB 14; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), 9; Johanna W. H. van WijkBos, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther (Westminster Bible Companion; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998), 20–21; and Mark Throntveit, Ezra-Nehemiah (IBC; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992), 16. For an account of this motif in the exodus narratives themselves, see G. W. Coats, “Despoiling the Egyptians,” VT 18 (1968): 450–57; and Julian Morgenstern, “The Despoiling of the Egyptians,” JBL 68 (1949): 1–28. 2 D. J. A. Clines, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther (NCBC; Grand Rapids; Eerdmans, 1984), 38–39; and Ralph W. Klein, “The Books of Ezra & Nehemiah,” NIB 3:661–851, esp. 678–79. 3 Scholars who maintain this reading (namely, that Ezra 1:4 designates the givers as Jews and 1:6 designates the givers as Gentiles) include Myers, Ezra, Nehemiah, 8–9; and H. G. M. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah (WBC 16; Waco: Word, 1985), 5, 14–16. 4 Here I am reading “wmqm yvna” (“the men of his place”) in Ezra 1:4 not as the subject of the verb whwacny but rather as an explanatory gloss on the awkward and confusing preceding phrase (!vArg awh rva twmqmhAlkm ravnhAlk, “and all who remained, from all of the places where he sojourns”). This reading is supported by the smoother and shorter reading of 1 Esdr 2:6, which stipulates the givers simply as “oiJ perikuvklw/ aujtw'n.” This reading is also followed by H. G. M. Williamson, “The Composition of Ezra i–iv,” JTS n.s. 34 (1983): 1–30, esp. 9–11. 5 While C. F. Keil also includes Jews as part of those who gave gifts to the returnees, he does so by including Jews and Gentiles as part of the !hytbybs in Ezra 1:6 (The Books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther [trans. Sophia Taylor; Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament 3; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1879; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983], 25). 6 So J. B. Segal, The Hebrew Passover, from Earliest Times to A.D. 70 (London: Oxford University, 1963), 148–49, 260; and William H. C. Propp, Exodus 1–18: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 2; New York: Doubleday, 1998), 208, 412–13.
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“Thus [the Israelites] will plunder (D of lxn) the Egyptians.” As emphasis, the trope is said in prospect by God in Exod 3:22 (“will plunder”) and in retrospect by the narrator in Exod 12:36 (“plundered”). The D form of lxn points to some measure of ill treatment—in addition to the two uses in the Exodus accounts, it appears in 2 Chr 20:25 in the context of taking booty after a military victory. According to William H. C. Propp, “The author’s Schadenfreude at the exploitation of Israel’s imperialist neighbor is palpable.”7 This sense is absent from the Ezra narrative. While the gifts are given at the command of Cyrus (whose spirit has been “stirred” by God), there is no sense that the givers have been exploited. The explicit purpose of the gifts is “to assist” (D of acn; Ezra 1:4) and “to support” (literally “they strengthened their hands,” !hydyb wqzj [Ezra 1:6]), and the narrator does not betray any sense of mistreatment. The accounts of the exodus and the returns in Ezra differ in two other respects: the source of compunction for the gifts and the actual content of the gifts. In Exodus, the Egyptians give their goods as a result of the personal entreaties of the Israelites: “each woman shall ask (hlavw) her neighbor . . . for silver vessels” (Exod 3:22); “every man is to ask (wlavyw) his neighbor and every woman her neighbor for silver vessels” (Exod 11:2); “The Israelites . . . had asked (wlavyw) the Egyptians for silver vessels” (Exod 12:35). The texts give no notice that Pharaoh had any knowledge or involvement in the process. In marked contrast, the gift-giving in Ezra 1 is at the direct command of Cyrus: “Thus says King Cyrus of Persia . . . those who remain behind . . . shall assist him [i.e., the returnees; whwacny] . . . with silver” (Ezra 1:2, 4). When the command is fulfilled, Cyrus himself “brought out” (ayxwh) the cultic vessels and had them given to the returnees (Ezra 1:7–8). Thus, God’s command that the Israelites “ask” the Egyptians for precious objects and clothing is replaced by Cyrus’s command that those in Babylon “assist” the returnees. In place of the antagonism between Israel and Pharaoh, the Persian political power is obliging in the extreme. According to Klein, the whole of Ezra 1–6 expresses a “political stance of collaboration with the Persian Empire.”8 In Ezra 1–2, Cyrus is neither absent nor antagonistic—the giving of gifts occurs with the explicit direction and participation (under the guidance of God) of the political ruler. In addition, the Exodus accounts list the items as “vessels of silver, and vessels of gold, and clothing” (tlmcw bhz ylkw #sk ylk [Exod 3:22, 12:35], with the final item missing in the Leningrad Codex of Exod 11:2). Although “vessels of silver and gold” are likewise mentioned in the Ezra narrative, the list of gifts expands to include other goods and valuable gifts and beasts and freewill offerings for the Jerusalem temple: 7 8
Propp, Exodus 1–18, 208. Klein, “Ezra & Nehemiah,” 675.
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Journal of Biblical Literature “. . . silver and gold and goods and beasts . . . besides freewill offerings for the house of God . . .” (tybl hbdnhA![ hmhbbw vwkrbw bhzbw #skb !yhlah [Ezra 1:4]) “. . . with silver vessels, with gold, with goods, with beasts, and with valuable gifts, besides all that was freely offered” (bhzb #skAylkb bdnthAlkAl[ dbl twndgmbw hmhbbw vwkrb [Ezra 1:6])
There is an additional notice that King Cyrus sent the basins, bowls, and vessels taken from the Jerusalem temple by Nebuchadnezzar (Ezra 1:7–11). If a strict parallel between the Exodus account was intended by the author/redactor of Ezra 1, one wonders both why the “clothing” was left out and why beasts and goods and valuable gifts were included. In the second return recounted in the book of Ezra (chs. 7–8), the author specifies several dates for the journey. Ezra and his group departed from Babylon on the first day of the new year (“the first day of the first month” [Ezra 7:9], although Ezra 8:31 gives the day of departure as the twelfth day of the first month, a result of the search for Levites in 8:15–20). They arrived in the city on the first day of the fifth month (Ezra 7:9) and rested three days before they handed over the temple vessels (Ezra 8:32–33). While the text itself is silent about the explicit significance of the dates, scholars have proposed that these reflect the deliberate mirroring of the exodus and entry into the land. The exodus also took place in the first month of the year (Exod 12:2; Num 33:3),9 and Joshua and his followers rested three days after they had crossed the Jordan River (Josh 3:1–2).10 The exodus may not be the only active symbol to motivate these dates, however. It is possible that the dates also relate to pilgrimage festivals. Immediately prior to the notice of Ezra’s return is the account of the first celebration of Passover and Unleavened Bread in the new temple (Ezra 6:19–22). When the focus of the narrative returns again to Babylon in Ezra 7 (even years later), the reader knows that the pilgrimage feasts are again being celebrated in Jerusalem. When Ezra arranges to set out for Jerusalem in the first month, the immediate textual referent of the “first month” is not the exodus but rather the just-mentioned Passover celebration: “The exiles kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month” (Ezra 6:19). Further, their arrival in the city in the fifth month corresponds to the month when the first temple had been burned (2 Kgs 25:8–9).11 Given that the text is not forthcoming with the significance of the dates, it is impossible to know the referent with certainty. 9 K. Koch, “Ezra and the Origins of Judaism,” JSS 19 (1974): 173–97, esp. 186; Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, 93. 10 Klein, “Ezra & Nehemiah,” 730. 11 Ibid.
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Nonetheless, it is possible that the author/editor of the account manipulates or emphasizes the dates of Ezra’s journey so that they relate to the restoration of the pilgrimage feasts in the temple. Once the first Passover feast has been celebrated in the new temple, Ezra brings another group of pilgrims from Babylon and arranges the timing of their entrance to coincide with the very month that worship in the first temple was destroyed by fire.12 The triumphal march is now not into the new land, but into the new temple, and the second group of returnees marks the new beginning of the pilgrimage cult. Additional parallels between the exodus and the returns in Ezra have been drawn, but scholars who themselves highlight exodus imagery in Ezra also make certain distinctions. In his commentary on Ezra and Nehemiah, for example, Mark Throntveit remarks that while the exodus describes the construction of a people, the book of Ezra recounts the reconstruction of the temple. In addition, he notes that the exodus account has to do with the deliverance of slaves from oppression, while Ezra includes the support of Persian kings, who had themselves conquered the nation’s enemy.13 Johanna W. H. van WijkBos, who likewise draws the parallels, eloquently encapsulates the distinctions: the exodus involves liberation from a “house of bondage” in Egypt (which Pharaoh tries to prevent) while Ezra details deliverance from Babylon “to rebuild a destroyed home” (which in Ezra 1 Cyrus encourages and makes possible).14
II. Distinguishing Different Types of Journeys The sometimes imperfect parallels and the need to articulate the differences between the accounts of the exodus and the returns call for distinguishing different types of journeys: What makes an exodus an exodus, and how is an exodus different from a pilgrimage? These distinctions are important precisely because the categories are so slippery.15 In his recent book The Pilgrimage Pattern in Exodus, Mark Smith argues that the redactor of Exodus shaped the story of the journey out of Egypt itself into a pilgrimage. According to Smith, 12 This proposed scenario still allows Koch’s syntatical explanation of the force of yk in Ezra 7:10 to stand (Koch, “Ezra and the Origins of Judaism,” 186). If Ezra calculated the date of the departure based on his study of the Torah (“For Ezra had set his heart to consult YHWH’s Torah [for the departure date] and to do so”), then he might have chosen the first month to relate to the Passover festival (though not the exodus, as Koch would have it). 13 Throntveit, Ezra-Nehemiah, 18. 14 Van Wijk-Bos, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, 18–19. 15 In another study of pilgrimage as a literary motif in the Bible, William G. Johnsson highlights the critical need to distinguish between different types of journeys, namely, wanderings and pilgrimages (“The Pilgrimage Motif in the Book of Hebrews,” JBL 97 [1978]: 239–51).
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the story of Moses’ two journeys to Sinai (his solitary one first, and then the one that he took with the Israelites) draws on a “wider reservoir” of imagery than an exodus event. The religious content of the book is fuller than that of the exodus alone and includes an emphasis on the cultic experience, the destination of a cult center (specifically, the “land of the divine mountain”), and divine revelation (specifically, several theophanies).16 Smith’s book highlights the complexity of handling similar metaphors of travel, and this complexity is increased by the mixing of metaphors by the biblical authors themselves. For example, in Isa 51:9–11, the prophet first calls to mind YHWH’s great deeds in the exodus (“Was it not you . . . who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to cross over?”), and then directly depicts the return as a pilgrimage (“So the ransomed of YHWH shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads . . .”).17 Eugene H. Merrill discusses this example and several others throughout the prophetic texts in the Hebrew Bible to show how the authors shaped the accounts of the restoration using both exodus and pilgrimage imagery.18 With the fluidity of metaphor, precise definitions are paramount. I use “exodus” to refer to an event in which an oppressed group leaves a place of bondage as a single group and enters into a land of freedom (a promised land). It is a political journey, sometimes with religious aspects, that emphasizes the leave taking of the journey. When the destination of the exodus group is named in the biblical accounts, it is not a specific cultic location but rather the larger land area in which they will dwell. YHWH informs Moses from the burning bush that the destination is “the place/land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites” (Exod 3:8, 17);19 the destina16 Mark S. Smith, The Pilgrimage Pattern in Exodus (with contributions by Elizabeth M. Bloch-Smith; JSOTSup 239; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 128–29, 264. 17 See also Ezek 20:33–44, where YHWH speaks of the future restoration of Israel as a second exodus that culminates in a pilgrimage. YHWH promises to bring the nation “out from the peoples . . . with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm” and bring them into the wilderness for judgment: “As I entered into judgment with your ancestors in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so I will enter into judgment with you” (Ezek 20:22–37). After YHWH has purged the nation, they will serve YHWH on YHWH’s “holy mountain,” and they are required to offer their contributions, the choicest of the gifts, and all their sacred things (Ezek 20:28–44). The examples of Isa 51:9–11 and Ezek 20:33–44 were helpfully suggested to me by Ralph Klein. 18 Eugene H. Merrill, “Pilgrimage and Procession: Motifs of Israel’s Return,” in Israel’s Apostasy and Restoration: Essays in Honor of Roland K. Harrison (ed. Avraham Gileadi; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988), 261–72. According to Merrill, “The exodus as type cannot be denied [in the portrayal of the returns in the prophets], but by itself it is obviously inadequate to provide a satisfying hermeneutic by which to understand the full dimension of Israel’s return. . . . In short, my thesis is that pilgrimage and procession are as much typical antecedents to the historical and eschatological acts of YHWH in the restoration of his people as the exodus itself” (p. 262). 19 In Exod 3:7, the Samaritan and the LXX add “and the Girgashite” after “the Perizzite.” See
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tion is also given as the “land of the Canaanites” (so Exod 13:11; 34:11), or the land that YHWH “swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (Exod 33:1).20 This emphasis on leaving and the lack of a specific cult site as the goal distinguish an exodus from a “pilgrimage,” which, in my usage, emphasizes a specific sacred destination. In the ancient world, pilgrims are those who (1) leave their daily sphere of activity, (2) to go to a place that the community has designated to be holy, (3) in order to worship or communicate with the divine. Pilgrims usually also return to their home again, although this is not always emphasized in textual accounts, which tend to be more concerned with the cultic destination.21 Further, although sometimes the condition of “hardship” is included in definitions of pilgrimage, this is generated more by the later experience and penitential purposes of pilgrimage in the late antique period and the Middle Ages.22 In the context of ancient pilgrimage, when ritualized journeys to the shrine are prescribed once every four years, two years, or even three times a year,23 this condition of hardship is less emphasized.24 K. G. O’Connell, “The List of Seven Peoples in Canaan: A Fresh Analysis,” in The Answers Lie Below: Essays in Honor of Lawrence Edmond Toombs (ed. H. O. Thompson; Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984), 221–41. 20 My interpretation of the destination in Exodus is different from that given by Mark Smith (Pilgrimage Pattern, 16), who claims that in the Priestly redaction of the text, the destination of the journey is “the mountain of God.” Smith states, “It may be suggested tentatively that the priestly redaction may have interpreted the Exodus passages as the people’s pilgrimage to the mountain,” in contrast to the book of Numbers, which “might be regarded as depicting a pilgrimage journey from the mountain to the sanctuary-land, but not in a manner precisely parallel to Exodus” (pp. 286–87). 21 There is no mention of the return trip in the pilgrimage legislation in Exod 23:17; 34:23; and Deut 16:16, only the instruction that all the males are to appear before YHWH three times a year. 22 For the inclusion of hardship in pilgrimage (based on its inclusion in Muslim pilgrimage), see Johnsson, “Pilgrimage Motif,” which borrows the definition from H. B. Partin’s dissertation, “The Muslim Pilgrimage: Journey to the Center” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1967), 145–52. Partin recognizes four aspects of pilgrimage: separation from home and usual activity, a sacred place as a destination, a fixed purpose (purification or forgiveness of sins, of which attainment is associated with arrival at the destination), and hardship (so that failure is a possibility). In the Christian tradition, more common before the Reformation perhaps, hardship in pilgrimage is part of the penitential process that can allow a purging of sin. In a description and analysis of St. Patrick’s Purgatory (a pilgrimage site in Ireland), Victor Turner and Edith Turner write, “[i]n the ‘economy of salvation’ in pre-Reformation theology, living souls require penitence as the dead require purgatory.” See their classic work, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 113. 23 In ancient Greece, the festivals at Olympia and Pythia were celebrated once every four years, whereas the festivals at Nemea and Isthmia were celebrated every two years. See Matthew Dillon, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in Ancient Greece (London/New York: Routledge, 1997), 99. In Israel and Judah, all males were to appear before YHWH three times a year (Exod 23:17; 34:23; and Deut 16:16). 24 The condition of hardship is not included in the definitions of pilgrimage given by
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In addition to the distinctions between geography and purpose (leaving oppression vs. going to worship), the different journeys also have different sociological consequences.25 The exodus was a one-time event involving the entire community. Indeed, participation in the exodus is the defining moment in the constitutive life of the community and their God (“I am YHWH your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt” [Deut 5:6; cf. Neh 9:9–11]). In contrast, the journey out of Babylon was never viewed as a single event. Several journeys from Babylon are mentioned in the Ezra-Nehemiah material. In addition, there is no sense that those who participated in the first return, recorded in Ezra 1, were granted a higher status in the community. Indeed, the account of the return emphasizes several times that this journey was voluntary, with no aspersions cast on those who did not come along. After listing those who arose to go on the journey as the heads of the families of Judah and Benjamin and the priests and the Levites, a significant aside specifies the travelers more closely as “all the people whose spirit was stirred by God” (wjwrAta !yhlah ry[h lkl [Ezra 1:5]). Here I would question C. F. Keil’s assertion that only the returnees were obedient to God.26 It seems that this interpretation is based less on Ezra 1 than on Josephus’s Antiquities 11.1, where Josephus specifies that those who stayed behind in Babylon were “not willing to leave their possessions.”27 But the biblical text provides no psychological or spiritual portrait of those who remained behind; it reveals only that the spirits of those who went were stirred by God. Obedience to God in Ezra 1 has to do with a correct response to this divine stirring in the individual rather than a return en masse. The lack of a list naming the returnees over against those who continued to reside in Babylon also suggests the nonconstitutive nature of this first journey out of Babylon. Ezra 1–2 does not distinguish the returnees from those who remained or those who came later. The compendium of names in Ezra 2 may seem to function as such a list: “Now these were the people of the province who came from the captive exiles . . . they went (wbwvy) to Jerusalem and Judah, Matthew Dillon and Mark Smith. In his work on ancient Greece, Dillon defines pilgrimage as “paying a visit to a sacred site outside the boundaries of one’s own physical environment” (Pilgrims and Pilgrimage, xviii). In his work with ancient Israel, Smith describes the “major features of pilgrimage” as including the “sacred journey and arrival to the temple, with the prayers and sacrifices which ensue” (Smith, Pilgrimage Pattern, 16). 25 The distinctions that I draw between the two journeys differ somewhat from Eugene H. Merrill’s analysis of the motifs of exodus and pilgrimage in the prophetic literature. He identifies the two elements of pilgrimage as a “gathering from throughout the earth (not merely from a single place of bondage) and the emphasis on Zion and the temple” (Merrill, “Pilgrimage and Procession,” 262). 26 Keil, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, 25. 27 Josephus, Ant 11.1.3: polloi; ga;r katevmeinan ejn th'/ Babulw'ni, ta; kthvmata katalipei'n ouj qevlonte".
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all to their own towns. They came (wab) with Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Nehemiah” (Ezra 2:1–2).28 But this compendium is actually a list of those who settled in Judah rather than those who returned in this one trip.29 This would explain the surprising absence of Sheshbazzar from the list. Moreover, the number of people included, much larger than the totals of the original deportees (10,000 in 2 Kgs 24:14; 8,000 in 2 Kgs 24:16; and 4,600 in Jer 52:28–30), weighs against seeing it as a list of the first return. Further, the inconsistencies in the list suggest several different sources. The names are first listed by family names (Ezra 2:3–18), then by place-names (Ezra 2:19–28), then by family names again (Ezra 2:29–32), then by place-names again (Ezra 2:33–34), and finally by the family of Senaah (Ezra 2:35). This is the ordering of Kurt Galling;30 other scholars divide the list differently, but the extant and visible seams show that the list is certainly not smooth. This list may have been cobbled together from different registers during 539–538 to 515 (so Wilhelm Rudolph), or from a collection of general names for this period, or a combination of the two (as Lester Grabbe suggests).31 It may also have been originally generated (in any of its forms) for the purpose of taxation or as a list of the “fathers’ houses” (twba tyb) of the civic temple community.32 Regardless of the exact details of any of these scenarios, the list clearly does not catalogue only those who went on the first trek from Babylon to Jerusalem. Heinrich Schneider’s distinction between those who are in the act of returning to Judah and those who have already returned should be maintained.33 I also agree with his claim that the list in Ezra 2 names those who
28 The more original reading of the list in Ezra 2:1–67 is better preserved in the two witnesses of Neh 7:6–69 and 1 Esdras. See Ralph W. Klein, “Old Readings in I Esdras: The List of Returnees from Babylon (Ezra 2 // Nehemiah 7),” HTR 62 (1969): 99–107. 29 This is in distinction to the list of returnees in Ezra 8, entitled “these are the heads of the fathers’ houses, and this is the genealogy of them that went up with me from Babylon.” This is indeed a list of those who made the journey with Ezra. Yet there is not the same potential ideological weight as the list in Ezra 2, because these returnees are not part of the premier group. This list in context is now just that—a list of returnees. It is not a list of the returnees—those who came out of Babylon and constitute the new Israel. In its narrative context, it designates only those who returned with Ezra. 30 Kurt Galling, “The Goµlaµ-List According to Ezra 2//Nehemiah 7,” JBL 70 (1951): 149–58, esp. 152. A revision of the article is found in “Die Liste der aus dem Exil Heimgekehrten,” in Studien zur Geschichte Israels im persischen Zeitalter (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1964), 89–108. 31 Wilhelm Rudolph, Esra und Nehemia (HAT 20; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1949), 7–28. Rudolph considers it a list of returnees, “Die Heimkehrerliste.” Lester L. Grabbe, Ezra-Nehemiah (Old Testament Readings; London/New York: Routledge, 1998), 14. 32 So Joel Weinberg, The Citizen-Temple Community (trans. Daniel L. Smith-Christopher; JSOTSup 151; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992), 49–61. 33 As Heinrich Schneider points out, the Heimkehrenden (“those who are coming home”) and the Heimgekehrten (“those who have returned”) must be distinguished—and Ezra 2 is a list of
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eventually returned. It is not a list of those who traveled with the first group to Jerusalem. Since it is from the group that stayed behind in Babylon that subsequent heroes such as Ezra and Nehemiah arose, it is plausible that the author needed to be delicate with regard to this list.34 A list to glorify the first returnees would reflect poorly on those who stayed in Babylon. Yet the leadership of men such as Ezra and Nehemiah in the community of the returnees was not tainted by staying in Babylon after Zerubabbel’s expedition set out for Jerusalem. Those who stayed behind are portrayed sympathetically—they even give gifts to the returnees. This first trek was voluntary, and those who went were not honored above those who stayed behind. Unlike the exodus, this was not a journey that marked the self-identification of a group. In addition, drawing the parallel between entering into a new land, the promised land, and the returns in Ezra is difficult because the land is no longer new and unexplored territory. They return to a land in which they have already settled; they come to Yehud as returnees instead of strangers. Peter R. Ackroyd’s claim that the land is indeed new for the returnees, at least in a spiritual sense, somewhat overstates the point of the text.35 In sum, while both a pilgrimage and an exodus involve a journey of the community, the separate journeys have different emphases and sociological functions. That the return from Babylon was accomplished in a series of journeys rather than a single constitutive one distinguishes it from an exodus. The serial nature of the returns recorded in Ezra, the emphasis on the destination as Jerusalem, and a thick cultic component in the narratives—seen in the stress on worship, cultic personnel, and pilgrimage vocabulary—combine to underscore their identity as pilgrimage.
III. Ezra 1–2 As befits a pilgrimage, Ezra 1–2 emphasizes the destination as a holy place. Unlike in the exodus, where the travelers went to “the land,” Ezra 1–2 specifies the destination as Jerusalem three times (“Whosoever of YHWH’s people . . . let him go up to Jerusalem” [1:3–4]; “All these Sheshbazzar brought up . . . to Jerusalem” [1:11]; “As soon as they came to the house of Y HWH in the latter. Specifically, it is a list of the “‘Einwohner der Provinz’ Juda” (Die Bücher Esra und Nehemia [HAT 4.2; Bonn: Peter Hanstein, 1959], 92). 34 This point is also made by Throntveit, Ezra-Nehemiah, 16. 35 Ackroyd suggests that the author links the two groups as people “at the beginning of a new and this time a spiritual entry into the land” (“The Chronicler as Exegete,” JSOT 2 [1977]: 2–32, esp. 17).
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Jerusalem” [2:68]). In a related way, the chapters emphasize the presence of YHWH in Jerusalem, referring both to YHWH’s location (“he is the God who is in Jerusalem” [1:3]) and to the building of God’s “house” (Ezra 1:2, 3, 4, 5; 2:68 [2x]). Although the text emphasizes that YHWH has the geographical flexibility to influence the decisions of Cyrus in Persia (Ezra 1:1) and that he is “the God of heaven” (1:2), it concomitantly emphasizes YHWH’s unique presence in Jerusalem. The purpose of the journey to Jerusalem in Ezra 1–2 is specifically religious, namely, to worship, which, at this point in the narrative, had to be preceded by rebuilding the temple. According to Cyrus’s edict, YHWH charged the emperor “to build (twnbl) him a house at Jerusalem” (1:2). Accordingly, Cyrus permitted YHWH’s people to go up to the city “and rebuild (@byw) the house of YHWH” (1:3).36 When YHWH stirred up the spirits of the people, it was so that they would “go up to build (twnbl) the house of YHWH in Jerusalem” (1:5). The items that the travelers carry with them also attest to this goal of worship. Not only do they travel with silver, gold, goods, and animals; they also have “freewill offerings” that have been designated specifically “for the house of God in Jerusalem” (1:4, 6). To these offerings, which the returnees take as if by proxy, Cyrus adds the gold and silver temple vessels that Nebuchadnezzer had seized (1:7–11).37 Carrying such items, the travelers are to restore the cult of YHWH in its physical form so that YHWH could again be worshiped in Jerusalem. The account also employs the vocabulary of pilgrimage.38 The predominant verb used to describe the return is hl[.39 The term appears in 1:3 in 36 Here I disagree with Kurt Galling (“Von Naboned zu Darius,” ZDPV 70 [1954]: 4–32, esp. 11–13), who reconstructs two original edicts (one for rebuilding, one for return) which are here consolidated. J. Liver maintains that Cyrus’s decree is primarily related to the building of the temple, with the permission for return only incidental (“The Return from Babylon, Its Time and Scope,” [in Hebrew] EI 5 [1958]: 114–19). In contrast to the memorandum in Ezra 6:3–5, however, the edict in Ezra 1 holds both activities (to go up and to build) as inseparable. 37 The list of vessels is difficult, in terms of both vocabulary and arithmetic. Some of the terms appear nowhere else in the MT, including lfrga and !ypljm. Besides the difficult vocabulary, the number of the vessels is difficult to calculate. The total number of vessels is given in Ezra 1:11 as 5,400, a number that conflicts with the inventory in Ezra 1:9–11. 38 Although ggj/gj is often used in the Hebrew Bible to designate a pilgrimage feast, other terms used to describe journeys to a sacred place are those of travel. There is nothing specifically cultic or ritualistic about these terms, since most appear frequently in the Hebrew Bible and can encompass secular meanings. Nevertheless, some travel terms have a particular use as designators of special journeys to holy sites. This linguistic situation is similar to that of ancient Greek, which had no specific term for pilgrimage. Pilgrims in Greek texts are designated simply as “those going,” “those coming,” the ones who wish “to go, to sacrifice, to seek an oracle and to watch,” “those attending a panegyris,” and “the watchers” (see Dillon, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage, xv–xvi). 39 The term used for the settlement of the people in the land in Ezra 2:1 is bwv.
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Cyrus’s edict (l[yw), in 1:5 in anticipation of the journey (twl[l), and twice in 1:11 in a summary of the event (once applied to the vessels [hl[h] and once to the people [twl[h]).40 This is the verb used to designate travel in the pilgrimage legislation of Exod 34:23–24, “no one shall covet your land when you go up (^tl[b) to appear before YHWH your God three times in the year,” and it describes the journey of Elkanah and his family to Shiloh (1 Sam 1:3, 7, 24). The prophets also use it in their visions of future worship in Jerusalem: in Mic 4:2//Isa 2:3, many nations will say, “Come, let us go up (hl[nw) to the mountain of YHWH.”41 Another verb that is used less frequently to describe the return is awb (wab in Ezra 2:2 and !awbb in 2:68). This term also can have connotations of pilgrimage: it is used in Hezekiah’s declaration that those from Beer-Sheba to Dan are to come (awbl) and keep Passover in Jerusalem (2 Chr 30:5); in Isa 27:13 the prophet envisions a future day when those who are in Assyria or Egypt will come (wab) and worship YHWH in Jerusalem; in 1 Kgs 8:41 = 2 Chr 6:32 it is used to describe a foreigner coming (abw) from a distant land to pray; and in 1 Kgs 14:3, 5 it describes how Jeroboam’s wife left the royal residence to come (tab/hab) to Ahijah of Shiloh.42 In addition to emphasizing the holy destination and purpose and using the 40
Williamson has drawn attention to the possible exodus parallels that Ezra 1:11 may indicate with the use of hl[h (“Composition of Ezra i–iv,” 14–15). See also the article by J. Wijngaards that Williamson cites: “ayxwh and hl[h: A Twofold Approach to the Exodus,” VT 15 (1965): 91–102. Wijngaards notes that the formula hl[h + object (Israel) + “from Egypt” is used forty-one times throughout the Hebrew Bible to refer to the exodus, and that there are several instances where the formula also includes the phrase “to the land” (either $rahAla or hbwf $raAla or similar variations [Gen 50:24; Exod 3:8, 17; cf. Exod 33:1; note also hzh [rh !wqmhAla in Num 20:5]) (pp. 98–99). Thus, the fuller formula, according to the verses that Wijngaards cites, is hl[h + object (Israel) + “from Egypt” (using the prefixed preposition A@m/m) + “to the [or this] land” (using the preposition Ala). Ezra 1:11b does indeed include the first three elements of the formula (with the replacement of “from Egypt” with lbbm), and thus the exodus imagery seems operational. However, there are two differences in the notice of the traveler’s destination: instead of being marked with Ala, it is marked with l; and instead of being designated “the land,” it is the specific site of Jerusalem (the verse reads !l`wryl lbbm hlwgh twl[h). These differences may be considered only minor variations on the exodus formula, but hl[h can also describe the presenting of gifts at the altar on the occasion of a pilgrimage feast (1 Kgs 12:32). 41 The prophecy in Isa 2:3//Mic 4 lacks any reference to the pilgrim’s return home, which may be explained by the passage’s emphasis on the cult site and the journey to it, as well as by the eschatological overtones. For other uses of hl[ in what I would consider to be pilgrimage contexts, see Jer 31:6 and the account of Moses and Joshua going “up (l[yw) into the mountain of God” (Exod 24:13, 15, 18). 42 The term is also used to describe the journey to the place where YHWH is (Deut 31:11; Isa 30:29), where other gods are (Judg 9:46; 1 Sam 5:5; 2 Kgs 10:21 [3x]; 2 Chr 23:17; Ezek 20:29; Hos 9:10), or where a prophet resides (2 Kgs 4:42; Ezek 20:1, 3; cf. Ezek 14:4, 7). In a related way, the H form of awb is used to designate the bringing of sacrifices and offerings to YHWH (Gen 4:3, 4; Num 15:25; Mal 1:13 [2x]), to the priests (Lev 2:2; 5:11, 12; 2 Kgs 12:5 [2x], 10 [2x], 14 [Eng. 12:4, 9, 13]) or into the temple (2 Chr 31:10; 34:9), or into YHWH’s storehouse (Mal 3:10).
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vocabulary of pilgrimage, Ezra 1 also contains a call to pilgrimage. Cyrus’s call to go up to Jerusalem, sent throughout the land via a herald (Ezra 1:1), has no parallel in the exodus material. It is more closely aligned with the calls to pilgrimage in texts such as 1 Sam 11:14, where Samuel entreats the people, “Come, let us go up (hklnw wkl) to Gilgal,” and Isa 2:3, where the people themselves say to one another, “Come, let us go up (hl[nw wkl) to the mountain of YHWH” (note the parallel use of the jussive in Ezra 1:3). In addition, there are several parallels between the call in Ezra 1 and 2 Chr 30, where Hezekiah’s call to the Passover festival in Jerusalem is recorded: “Children of Israel, turn back to YHWH . . . and enter into his sanctuary” (2 Chr 30:6–9). The two calls were issued in both an oral and a written form: “Hezekiah sent word (jlvyw) to all Israel and Judah, and wrote letters (btk twrga) also to Ephraim and Manasseh that they should come to the house of YHWH” (2 Chr 30:1); “Cyrus . . . sent a proclamation (literally, ‘he made a voice pass,’ lwqArb[y) throughout all his kingdom, and also in a written edict (btkmb)” (Ezra 1:1). In addition, like Cyrus’s edict, which was sent via a herald “throughout all his kingdom” (Ezra 1:1), Hezekiah’s call went throughout the land (“from Beer-Sheba to Dan”).43 Finally, like all pilgrims (and in contrast to those in the exodus who leave the place where they are currently living to dwell in another place), the travelers in Ezra 1–2 return home. Instead of returning to Babylon, however, the people return to what could be called their true home—namely, their ancestral towns in Yehud. The text uses the term “town” with a possessive three times to specify the ultimate destination of the travelers after their trip to Jerusalem (wry[l vya, Ezra 2:1; !hyr[b, Ezra 2:70 [2x]). The emphasis on the return home from Jerusalem is even clearer when the final verse of the account is compared to the parallel versions. In Neh 7:72 (Eng. 7:73) and 1 Esdr 5:45 (Eng. 5:46) the term “their towns” is used only once. The account in Ezra 1–2 may retain some exodus imagery. Nonetheless, with its focus on Jerusalem as the destination, its emphasis on worship, its use of pilgrimage vocabulary and expressions, as well as the return home from the worship site, the account pictures the return from Babylon as a pilgrimage as well. Similar aspects of pilgrimage are found in the journey of Ezra and his companions in Ezra 7–8.44 43
Even if the later author/editor of Ezra expanded the original audience intended by the proclamation from a more localized community, as Williamson argues (“Composition of Ezra i–iv,” 9), the parallel between other calls to pilgrimage in the Hebrew Bible remains. When Williamson excludes 2 Chr 30:5–9 as comparable to Cyrus’s edict, his objection is based on content and lack of imperatival form, and concludes that “the Chronicler has merely put a Levitical sermon into the mouths of the king’s messengers.” I would argue that, at least on the basis of their shared purpose (to call a pilgrimage) and in the account of how such an account would be published (in an oral and written form), 2 Chr 30:5–9 remains a valid parallel to Ezra 1:1. 44 The difficulties of dating Ezra’s return to Jerusalem and its relation to that of Nehemiah
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Journal of Biblical Literature IV. Ezra 7–8
Like Ezra 1–2, this account also emphasizes the sacred destination of the travelers. Jerusalem is named as the destination five times (Ezra 7:7, 8, 9, 13; 8:31, and cf. 8:32, where the entire party traveling with Ezra stayed in the city for three days). In addition, the designation of the temple as “the house” (tyb) of YHWH occurs twelve times (Ezra 7:16, 17, 19, 20, 23, 24, 27; 8:17, 25, 30, 33, 36), with the added distinction four times that this house is “in Jerusalem” (Ezra 7:16, 17, 27; 8:30; and cf. the expression in Ezra 7:15: “the God of Israel, whose dwelling [hnkvm] is in Jerusalem”). The group also takes along gifts from their community and the king to be used in the temple: “silver and gold” from the king and his counselors (Ezra 7:15), “silver and gold” from Babylonia, and “freewill offerings” from the people and the priests (Ezra 7:16), which are to be used to buy sacrificial animals and grain and drink offerings to be “offered on the altar” of YHWH in Jerusalem (Ezra 7:17). The group also brings along “vessels (aynam) . . . for the service of the house of your God” (Ezra 7:19). The king declares that additional funds for “whatever else is required for the house of your God” can be acquired from the royal treasury (Ezra 7:20) and instructs the treasurers in the province Beyond the River to give silver, wheat, wine, oil, and salt “for the house of the God of heaven” (Ezra 7:21–23). Similar to the accounting of vessels in Ezra 1, the record of Ezra’s journey also lists an inventory of gold and silver vessels given to them by the king, the political establishment, and the people of Israel (Ezra 8:26–27), which Ezra pronounces “holy” along with the priests who carried them (Ezra 8:28). Although the final verses of the edict command Ezra to appoint magistrates and judges to judge (Ezra 7:25–26), the cultic purpose of his journey is manifest.45 Along with the cultic vessels and emphasis on temple gifts, the presence of cultic personnel is frequently mentioned. The group originally set out with priests, Levites, temple singers, gatekeepers, and temple servants (!ynytnh) (Ezra 7:7). These religious functionaries apparently were not enough. When Ezra realized that there were no Levites among the people who were going up to Jerusalem with him, he sent a special delegation to Iddo at Casiphia, to ask are legendary. It is not clear if it is Artaxerxes I or II who is referred to in the phrase the “seventh year of King Artaxerxes” (7:7). For a survey of the research, see Ulrich Kellermann, “Erwägungen zum Problem der Esradatierung,” ZAW 80 (1968): 55–87; see also Othniel Margalith, “The Political Role of Ezra as Persian Governor,” ZAW 98 (1986): 110–12, for a reconstructed political situation that may have propelled Ezra’s return in 458 B.C.E. 45 So Koch, “Ezra and the Origins of Judaism,” 185: “The main part of the edict of ten verses concerns the house or dwelling of the God who is in Jerusalem, and the equipment for its worship. Therefore the purpose of the march is not the Law and its validity, but the establishment of a permanent and effective worship.”
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for “ministers (!ytrvm)” for the house of God (Ezra 8:17). The delegation was a success, and several families of Levites and 220 temple servants joined the group (Ezra 8:20). In addition, Ezra’s genealogy emphasizes his status as priest (Ezra 7:1–5), and he is specifically designated a priest three times in the account (Ezra 7:11, 12, 21).46 There is a similar use of pilgrimage vocabulary in this account, including the use of hl[ and awb. The author records that Ezra “went up (hl[) from Babylonia” (Ezra 7:6), and the other members of the group also “went up (wyl[)” to Jerusalem (7:7). Ezra “gathered leaders from Israel to go up (twl[l)” with him (7:28) and records, “These are the family heads and the genealogies of those who went up (!yl[h) with me from Babylonia” (8:1). Significantly, the text also refers to “the journey up from Babylon” (lbbm hl[mh, 7:9), using a rare term that in its plural form is found also in the superscription to the “songs of ascents” (twl[mh ryv, Pss 120–134). Less frequently, the term awb is used: “we came (awbnw) to Jerusalem” (Ezra 8:32); “those who had come (!yabh) from captivity” (8:35); the entire group “came (abyw) to Jerusalem” (7:8); and “he came (ab) to Jerusalem” (7:9).47 Finally, as befits a pilgrimage, Ezra’s journey ends with sacrifice. His coterie arrived in Jerusalem, remained for three days (Ezra 8:32), and on the fourth day handed over the gold, silver, and vessels (8:33). Then they sacrificed: “At that time those who returned from captivity, the returned exiles, offered burnt offerings to the God of Israel” (8:35).48 46 The designation of Ezra as priest is seen also in the Nehemiah material. Although the title of “priest [and] scribe” is used for Ezra in Neh 8:9 (rpsh @hkh arz[), there is a textual tradition that Neh 8:1 should read “Ezra the priest” (@hkh arz[) instead of “Ezra the scribe” (Leningrad Codex: rpsh arz[). In the Ezra material, Ezra is portrayed as a lawmaker (Ezra 7:6, 10, 11, 12, 21, 25, 26), yet this law pertains to the cultic sphere just as much as (if not more than) to the secular sphere. The previous references to the “law of Moses” in Ezra (Ezra 3:2 and 6:18) have to do with the cultic protocols regarding the altar, the keeping of the festivals, sacrifice, and priestly duties. 47 Note also the following vocabulary of journey in the account: the Letter of Artaxerxes provides that anyone who volunteers “to go (^hml) to Jerusalem with you may go (^hy)” (Ezra 7:13). ^lh is used to describe Jephthah’s daughter and her companions when they went and mourned on the mountains for two months (Judg 11:37), and when, subsequent to her death, the daughters of Israel would go out regularly to lament her (Judg 11:40). Other examples of the use of this term to describe a journey to a place of worship include Deut 14:25; 26:2; 1 Chr 21:30; 1 Kgs 3:4; Isa 30:29; and Jer 3:6. Examples from outside the Hebrew Bible include the letter from Mari in which Kiru, the daughter of Zimri-Lim, asked her father’s permission to leave her situation to “go” (lu-ul-li-kaam-ma) and sacrifice to the gods of her father (ARM X 113.20-22, quoted by Bernard Frank Batto in Studies on Women at Mari [JHNES; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974], 128). The Letter of Artaxerxes also proclaims to Ezra, “you are sent (jylv) by the king” (Ezra 7:14). 48 Another possible parallel to the exodus in Ezra 7–8 might be the motif of divine protection during the journeys. YHWH’s protection of the journey is a concern in Ezra’s return, and, after the group had fasted and prayed for a “straight way” (hrvy ^rd, Ezra 8:21–23), the narrator announces that “the hand of our God was upon us, and he delivered us from the hand of the enemy and from
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In contrast to these two pilgrimages in Ezra is Nehemiah’s more secular journey to Jerusalem. Although he traveled to a sacred place, the author downplays Jerusalem’s function as a cult center in the account and emphasizes Nehemiah’s extracultic work in the city. Nehemiah goes to Jerusalem not to worship but to rebuild the wall (Neh 1:3; cf. 2:5). In his discussion with the king, the name Jerusalem is never even mentioned; it is designated only as “the city, the place of my ancestors’ graves” (Neh 2:3), and Nehemiah asks to be sent “to Judah, to the city of my ancestors’ graves” (2:5). Further, unlike Ezra, Nehemiah is not designated as a priest. Neither is he accompanied by temple personnel, nor does he carry any cultic vessels or money designated for sacrifice given to him by the king. Instead of gifts to be put to religious uses, the king gives to Nehemiah a letter for Asaph so that Nehemiah can procure timber for gates and the wall (Neh 2:8). When Nehemiah reaches Jerusalem,49 he stays three days and then inspects the walls and gates (Neh 2:11–15), in contrast to the sacrificial acts of Ezra and his party (Ezra 8:32, 35). Throughout his time in Jerusalem, the text never mentions explicitly that Nehemiah went into the temple. The only time Nehemiah is explicitly related to the temple is when Shemaiah invites him to meet there because of threats against Nehemiah’s life. To this invitation Nehemiah responds, “Should a man like me run away? Would a man like me go into the temple to save his life? I will not go in!” (Neh 6:11). In contrast to this journey of Nehemiah, the returns in Ezra are heavily weighted with pilgrimage imagery. The people went up to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple and worship, with their cultic vessels and cultic personnel. In both instances, the journeys were voluntary and partial. Only some of the community went to Jerusalem, and no aspersions are cast on those who stayed behind. This explicit acknowledgment that the return was accomplished in a series of journeys (rather than in a single one participated in by the entire community) ambushes along the way” (8:31). This description may recall YHWH’s presence in the cloud “to lead [the people] along the way (^rdh !tjnl)” and fire for light (!hl ryahl) so that they might be guided out of Egypt during the day and during the night (Exod 13:21; cf. Exod 40:36–38; Num 9:17–23). See Thomas W. Mann, “The Pillar of Cloud in the Reed Sea Narrative,” JBL 90 (1971): 15–30; Mann shows that the pillar of fire and cloud serve as both war palladium and divine guide (note especially Exod 14:24, where YHWH looked down from the pillar of fire and cloud “and threw the Egyptian army into a panic”). See also Thomas W. Mann, Divine Presence and Guidance in Israelite Traditions (JHNES; Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 130–39. The motif may, however, simply refer to the divine protection prayed for by most travelers. In Ps 107:4–7, the hungry and thirsty, wandering in desert wastes, cry out to YHWH, who delivers them by leading them “in a straight way” (hrvy ^rdb) to an inhabited town. Pilgrims who are going to God’s dwelling ask that God send out his light and truth so that he might lead the wanderer to God’s holy hill (Ps 43:3). Since there are no explicit linguistic parallels between Ezra 8 and the exodus narratives regarding this motif and the desire for divine protection of travelers is not unusual, it is difficult to construe this as a convincing parallel. 49 The vocabulary of journey is awb (Neh 2:7, 9, 11).
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distinguishes it from the exodus. This aspect of the returns, along with the other points mentioned above, emphasizes the pilgrimage nature of the returns in Ezra.
V. Pilgrimage as a Motif of the Return Detecting a second exodus motif in the accounts of the return to Jerusalem makes a powerful statement about the rebirth of the postexilic community and the power and grace of God. According to Williamson, the motif encourages readers to see the return “as an act of God’s grace that can be compared in its significance with the very birth of the nation of Israel itself.”50 Yet do exodus-based interpretations fully account for the textual data? Given that the identity of the people is of tremendous concern in this period, perhaps the author/editor wanted to sketch more fully the character of this reborn community. If the community has been reborn, what has it become? The motif of pilgrimage may help to provide an answer. By using the motif of pilgrimage to describe the returns, the author can further define the identity of the community. The community has been reborn specifically as a worshiping community, a community that places Jerusalem and its temple at the center of its worship life. The author of Ezra suffuses the text not only with stories about the building of the temple but also with narratives about the keeping of pilgrimage feasts. Immediately after the conclusion of the first group’s return from Babylon and resettlement in their towns (Ezra 2:70), the narrative recounts the departure of the “sons of Israel” from these towns to go and celebrate the festival of Booths (twkshAgj) in Jerusalem (Ezra 3:1–4; cf. Neh 8:13– 18). The text then centers on the rebuilding of the temple and its dedication (Ezra 3–6). Significantly, directly following the ceremony of the dedication of the temple is the celebration of another pilgrimage feast: Passover and the feast of Unleavened Bread (Ezra 6:19–22). At this feast the community is expanded to include “all who had joined them and separated themselves from the pollutions of the nations of the land to worship YHWH, the God of Israel” (Ezra 6:21). Here the text gives a definition of the community that includes not only those who had been exiled to Babylon and had returned but also those who join with the returnees to worship. The act of worship is held up by the author as the true litmus test for inclusion in the community. Recognizing the motif of pilgrimage in the returns in Ezra also gives the text literary coherence and more fully comprehends the historical experience. As a book, Ezra would still fall into two major cycles (Ezra 1–6 and 7–10), but 50
Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, 20.
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instead of each cycle beginning with a “second exodus” (thus raising the problem of having Ezra’s return as a second “second exodus”), the cycles each begin with a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Seeing a series of returns instead of one major one also corresponds to a more accurate historical picture, in which the return occurred as a series of settlement waves back to Yehud. Finally, recognizing the motif of pilgrimage in the returns in Ezra may facilitate further specification of the fulfillment of “the word of YHWH by the mouth of Jeremiah” with which the book opens. Scholars such as Jacob Myers and Avigdor Orr point to this fulfillment, for which YHWH “stirred up” the spirit of Cyrus, in the fall of Babylon and the end of exile (citing Jer 25:11–12 and 29:10).51 Yet, as Williamson notes, such interpretations seem “too generalized.” Williamson himself argues that the fulfillment refers to the time when YHWH “would stir up the spirit of Cyrus . . . [so] that he would order the rebuilding of the temple and the return of the exiles” (and he notes that Jer 51 can be read in light of Isa 41, 44, and 45).52 Moreover, recognition of pilgrimage in Ezra allows an even more direct sense of Jeremiah’s prophecy. In his vision of the future restoration, after the people have been restored and brought back to the land by YHWH, Jeremiah proclaims that a call for pilgrimage will again go out in the land: “For there shall be a day when sentinels will call in the hill country of Ephraim: ‘Come, let us go up (hl[nw) to Zion, to YHWH our God’” (Jer 31:6). Perhaps the author of Ezra took this picture of a nation that makes pilgrimages to Jerusalem and employed it as a motif of going up (hl[n) that would usher in the new age. 51
Myers, Ezra, Nehemiah, 6; Avigdor Orr, “The Seventy Years of Babylon,” VT 6 (1956):
304–6. 52
Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, 9–10.
JBL 123/1 (2004) 75–84
PAUL’S ARGUMENT FROM NATURE FOR THE VEIL IN 1 CORINTHIANS 11:13–15: A TESTICLE INSTEAD OF A HEAD COVERING
TROY W. MARTIN
[email protected] St. Xavier University, Chicago, IL 60655
Paul’s notorious argument in 1 Cor 11:2–16 for the veiling of women in public worship is frequently criticized for being logically convoluted and confused.1 Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza expresses the scholarly assessment of Paul’s argument: We are no longer able to decide with certainty which behavior Paul criticizes and which custom he means to introduce in 1 Cor 11:2–16. Traditionally, exegetes have conjectured that Paul was insisting that the pneumatic women leaders wear the veil according to Jewish custom. Yet, v. 15 maintains that women have their hair instead of a head-covering (peribolaivou), and thus militates against such an interpretation. In a very convoluted argument, which can no longer be unraveled completely, Paul adduces several points for “this custom” or hair fashion.2 1 This article interprets Paul’s argument from nature in 1 Cor 11:13–15 against the background of ancient physiology. The Greek and Roman medical texts provide useful information for interpreting not only Paul’s letters but also other NT texts. For other studies that utilize these sources for NT exegesis, see my article “Whose Flesh? What Temptation? (Gal 4.13–14),” JSNT 74 (1999): 65–91, and my forthcoming article “Paul’s Pneumatological Statements and Ancient Medical Texts.” See also Annette Weissenrieder, “The Plague of Uncleanness? The Ancient Illness Construct ‘Issue of Blood’ in Luke 8:43–48,” in The Social Setting of Jesus and the Gospels (ed. Wolfgang Stegemann, Bruce J. Malina, and Gerd Theissen; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), 207–22, and her 2001 Heidelberg dissertation, “Krank in Gesellschaft: Krankheitskonstrukte im LukasEvangelium auf dem Hintergrund antiker medizinischer Texte,” which is forthcoming in English from Mohr-Siebeck. Dr. Weissenrieder and I are currently working on a multivolume work entitled Ancient Medical Texts and the New Testament, the purpose of which is to make these texts and their exegetical significance more widely known in the field of NT studies. 2 Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 227–28.
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Similarly, Victor Paul Furnish comments: There is no doubt that Paul also means to provide a theological basis for his instructions about the hairstyle of women who pray or prophesy, but in this case his argument is obscure, at least to modern interpreters, and it may well have seemed unsatisfactory even to the apostle himself. At any rate, in the end he abandons argument altogether by suggesting that if his directives are not followed the Corinthians will be departing from the convention that obtains in other congregations (v. 16).3
Describing Paul’s argument as “bewilderingly difficult,” Marion L. Soards states, “One hopes that the Corinthians had an easier time following Paul’s logic than do modern readers.”4 One may hope, but the scholarly assessment is that neither the Corinthians nor possibly even Paul himself completely comprehended this argument for the veiling of women. While many features of this argument in 1 Cor 11:2–16 require explanation, the argument from nature in vv. 13–15 is particularly problematic.5 The rationale for the natural shame of a man with long hair is obscure (vv. 14–15a). Especially problematic is the statement that a woman’s long hair is given to her instead of a covering (ajnti; peribolaivou) in v. 15b. As traditionally understood, this statement nullifies the previous argument that a woman should wear a covering since her long hair apparently serves that purpose. A satisfactory explanation of this argument from nature should resolve the apparent contradiction and enable this argument to support Paul’s contention that women should wear the veil in public worship. The term peribovlaion in v. 15b provides the key for explaining this argument from nature. This portion of the verse is usually translated, “For her hair is given to her instead of a covering (peribolaivou).” In an influential article, Othoniel Motta argues that peribovlaion here means some type of head covering. Paul Ellingworth and Howard Hatton explain, “The word translated covering is a general word for a garment, possibly one used as an outer covering. Although it does not specify any particular piece of clothing, there seems to be an obvious relation between this verse and the discussion in verses 4 and 5 about a covering for the head.”6 Even though these scholars have identified the 3 Victor Paul Furnish, The Theology of the First Letter to the Corinthians (New Testament Theology; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 77. 4 Marion L. Soards, 1 Corinthians (NIBCNT; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999), 221, 224. 5 For an analysis of the entire argument, see Troy W. Martin, “Veiled Exhortations Regarding the Veil: Ethos as the Controlling Factor in Moral Persuasion (1 Cor 11:2-16),” forthcoming in the collection of papers from the 2002 Heidelberg Rhetoric Conference. 6 Othoniel Motta, “The Question of the Unveiled Woman (1 Co. 11.2:16),” ExpTim 44 (1933): 139–41; Paul Ellingworth and Howard Hatton, A Translator’s Handbook on Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians (Helps for Translators; London: United Bible Societies, 1985), 221.
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dominant semantic domain of this word, the term peribovlaion has a much broader semantic range. Since peribovlaion is contrasted with hair, which is part of the body, the physiological semantic domain of peribovlaion in 1 Cor 11:15b becomes particularly relevant. Euripides (Herc. fur. 1269) uses peribovlaion in reference to a body part. He casts Hercules as complaining, “After I received [my] bags of flesh, which are the outward signs of puberty, [I received] labors about which I [shall] undertake to say what is necessary” (ejpei; de; sarko;" peribovlai! ejkthsavmhn hJbw'nta, movcqou" ou}" e[tlhn tiv dei' levgein). A dynamic translation of the first clause would be: “After I received my testicles (peribovlaia), which are the outward signs of puberty.” In this text from Euripides, the term peribovlaion refers to a testicle.7 Achilles Tatius (Leuc. Clit. 1.15.2) plays on this meaning of peribovlaion in his erotic description of a garden in which Clitophon seeks an amorous encounter with Leucippe. Achilles Tatius describes the entwinings of the flowers, embracings of the leaves, and intercourses of the fruits (aiJ tw'n petavlwn periplokaiv, tw'n fuvllwn peribolaiv, tw'n karpw'n sumplokaiv). He portrays this erotic garden by allusions to male and female sexual organs. The term periplokaiv alludes to the female hair, the term peribolaiv to the testicles in males, and the term sumplokaiv to the mixing of male and female reproductive fluid in the female. Achilles Tatius’s description of this garden associates female hair and the testicle in males.8 Ancient medical conceptions confirm this association. Hippocratic authors hold that hair is hollow and grows primarily from either male or female reproductive fluid or semen flowing into it and congealing (Hippocrates, Nat. puer. 20).9 Since hollow body parts create a vacuum and attract fluid, hair attracts semen. Appropriately, the term kovmh refers not only to hair but also to the arms or suckers of the cuttlefish (see Maximus of Tyre, Phil. 4.5). Hair grows most prolifically from the head because the brain is the place where the semen is
7 Words in the semantic domain of clothing also occur in the semantic domain of body parts. For example, the hippocratic author of Fleshes (Hippocrates, Carn. 3) likens membranes to tunics (citw'na"). Some may interpret Euripides’ statement as referring to the scrotum, but the plural peribovlaia more likely refers to the testicles rather than the scrotum (o[sch), which is singular. Furthermore, the scrotum is visible from birth, whereas the testicles enlarge and become pronounced at puberty. 8 For other texts that describe erotic gardens, see Erotica Antiqua: Acta of the International Conference on the Ancient Novel (ed. B. P. Reardon; Bangor: ICAN, 1977), 34–35. 9 Émile Littré, Oeuvres completes d’Hippocrate (10 vols.; Paris: J. B. Baillière, 1839–61; repr., Amsterdam, 1961–62), 7.506.23–7.510.17. For a summary of the Hippocratic and Aristotelian conceptions of hair, see Lesley Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 83–85.
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produced or at least stored (Hippocrates, Genit. 1).10 Hair grows only on the head of prepubescent humans because semen is stored in the brain and the channels of the body have not yet become large enough for reproductive fluid to travel throughout the body (Hippocrates, Nat. puer. 20; Genit. 2).11 At puberty, secondary hair growth in the pubic area marks the movement of reproductive fluid from the brain to the rest of the body (Hippocrates, Nat. puer. 20; Genit. 1).12 Women have less body hair not only because they have less semen but also because their colder bodies do not froth the semen throughout their bodies but reduce semen evaporation at the ends of their hair (Hippocrates, Nat. puer. 20).13 According to these medical authors, men have more hair because they have more semen and their hotter bodies froth this semen more readily throughout their whole bodies (Hippocrates, Nat. puer. 20). The nature (fuvsi") of men is to release or eject the semen.14 During intercourse, semen has to fill all the hollow hairs on its way from the male brain to the genital area (Aristotle, Probl. 893b.10–17). Thus, men have hair growth on their face, chest, and stomach. A man with hair on his back reverses the usual position of intercourse. A man with long hair retains much or all of his semen, and his long hollow hair draws the semen toward his head area but away from his genital area, where it should be ejected. Therefore, 1 Cor 11:14 correctly states that it is a shame for a man to have long hair since the male nature (fuvsi") is to eject rather than retain semen. In contrast, the nature (fuvsi") of women is to draw up the semen and con10 Hippocrates himself may have held a different view, for Galen (Definitiones medicae 439) states, “The seed is secreted, as Plato and Diocles say, from the brain and the spinal marrow, but Praxagoras, Democritus, and Hippocrates too, [say that it is secreted] from the whole of the body” (translated by Philip J. van der Eijk, Diocles of Carystus: A Collection of the Fragments with Translation and Commentary, vol. 1, Text and Translation [Ancient Studies in Medicine 22; Leiden: Brill, 2000], 85). Aristotle (Gen. an. 783b.38–784a.4) affirms the brain as the origin of the reproductive fluid. 11 The author of Airs, Waters, Places (Hippocrates, Aer. 22) states that cutting the vein behind each ear renders a man impotent. This statement assumes that this cutting severs the connection between the brain and the genitals. See also Hippocrates, Genit. 2 and Loc. hom. 3. 12 J. Chadwick and W. N. Mann translate the latter, “This [reproductive] fluid is diffused from the brain into the loins and the whole body, but in particular into the spinal marrow: for passages extend into this from the whole body, which enable the fluid to pass to and from the spinal marrow. Once the sperm has entered the spinal marrow it passes in its course through the veins along the kidneys. . . . From the kidneys it passes via the testicles into the penis” (Hippocratic Writings [New York: Penguin Books, 1978], 317–18). See also Aristotle, Gen. an. 728b.27–29. 13 For texts illustrating the ancient debate of whether women’s bodies were colder or hotter than men’s, see Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 230–31. 14 Aristotle, Gen. an. 730a.33–730b.2; 739a.37–739b.3; 765b.7–15; Soranus, Gyn. 1.8 (33).
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geal it into a fetus (Hippocrates, Genit. 5; Nat. puer. 12).15 A woman’s body is simply one huge gland, and the function of glands is to absorb (Hippocrates, Gland. 3).16 The author of Glands writes: In women the substance of the glands is very rarefied [ajraihv-loose textured], just like the rest of their bodies. . . . The male is close-pressed like a thick carpet both in appearance and to the touch. The female, on the other hand, is rarefied [ajraiovn-loose textured] and porous [cau'non] like a flock of wool in appearance and to the touch: it follows that this rarefied and soft tissue does not reject moisture. (Hippocrates, Gland. 16)17
Earlier, this author describes glands with these same descriptive adjectives and likens the glands to wool (Gland. 1). Just as loose-textured, porous glands absorb, so also the loose-textured, porous body of a woman absorbs. This author also writes that glands and hair fulfill similar bodily functions. Just as glands absorb the excess bodily fluid that flows to them, so also hair collects the excess, frothed fluid that rises to the surface (Hippocrates, Gland. 4). What glands do within the body, hair does on the surface of the body. As one large gland designed to absorb male reproductive fluid, a woman’s body is assisted by long hollow hair that increases the suction power of her hollow uterus (Aristotle, Gen an. 739a.37–739b.20). Consequently, another author, Pseudo-Phocylides, appropriately states, “Long hair is not fit for males, but for voluptuous women” (a[rsesin oujk ejpevoike koma'n, clidanai'" de; gunaixivn) (212).18 This conception of hair as part of the female genitalia explains the favorite Hippocratic test for sterility in women.19 A doctor places a scented suppository in a woman’s uterus and examines her mouth the next day to see if he can smell 15 See also Aristotle, Gen. an. 739b.1–20; 765b.15–16; and Soranus, Gyn. 1.8 (33); 1.14 (46); 1.10 (36); 1.12 (43); and 3.13 (47). 16 See also Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 56. Soranus (Gyn, 1.9 [34–35]) states that a woman’s uterus is similar to her whole body. In selecting a female capable of conception, he recommends looking “for a woman whose whole body as well as her uterus is in a normal state. For just as no poor land brings seeds and plants to perfection, but through its own badness even destroys the virtues of the plants and seeds, so the female bodies which are in an abnormal state do not lay hold of the seed ejected into them, but by their own badness compel the latter also to sicken or even to perish” (trans. Owsei Temkin, Soranus’ Gynecology [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956], 34). 17 Paul Potter, Hippocrates Volume VIII (LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 124–25. 18 P. W. van der Horst, “Pseudo-Phocylides: A New Translation and Introduction,” in OTP 2:581. 19 See Hippocrates, Aph. 5.59; Aristotle, Gen. an. 747a. Soranus (Gyn. 1.9 [35]) rejects the validity of this test not because he rejects the theory on which it is based but because he conceives of “certain invisible ducts” that can conduct the scent upward without being able to conduct the reproductive fluid, which has a greater viscosity.
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the scent of the suppository. If he smells the scent, he diagnoses her as fertile. If he does not smell the scent, he concludes she is sterile because the channels connecting her uterus to her head are blocked. The suction power of her hair cannot draw up the semen through the appropriate channels in her body. The male seed is therefore discharged rather than retained, and the woman cannot conceive. Aristophanes (Eccl. 523–24) plays on this Hippocratic test in the scene where Blepyrus accuses his wife Praxagora of sexual unfaithfulness during her clandestine early-morning excursion. She denies the accusation and invites Blepyrus to test her fidelity by smelling her head to see if she smells of the sweet odor of semen from her head (eij th'/ kefalh'/ o[zw muvrou).20 Blepyrus doubts the veracity of the test by inferring that a woman can engage in intercourse without scent. Praxagora’s response admits that some women can have intercourse without the scent of semen from the head but she cannot. Of course, an infertile woman could because the scent of semen would not be drawn to her head but a fertile woman could not. Fertile women who engage in illicit intercourse eat garlic to mask the scent (Aristophanes, Thesm. 492–94). Praxagora affirms both her fertility and her fidelity by inviting Blepyrus to smell her head.21 This conception of hair as part of the female genitalia also explains one of Soranus’s signs of conception. He uses the adjective frikwvdh" to describe the
20 Stephen Halliwell translates Praxagora’s test as “Why, smell my hair for trace of scent,” and Blepyrus’s response as “What? Can’t a woman be fucked without some scent?” (Aristophanes: Birds, Lysistrata, Assembly-Women, Wealth: A New Verse Translation with Introductions and Notes [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997], 173). Aristophanes (Lys. 937–47) plays on the double meaning of muvron as the scent of perfume and of semen in the exchange between Myrrhine and Kinesias, who is pressuring her to satisfy his erection. She stalls by claiming that they need perfume (muvron) and asks, “Do you wish that I should perfume (murivsw) you?” He protests with an oath since he should perfume her in the act of intercourse rather than the other way around. He then interjects, “O that the perfume (muvron), Master Zeus, might stream out!” Of course, Kinesias refers to his desired ejaculation. Finally, he curses the man who first refined (eJyhvsa") perfume (muvron). The verb e{yw means to boil and refers to the bodily function of frothing bodily fluids. Hence, it often means to nurse, for milk is frothed blood. Semen is also frothed blood, and this verb refers both to the refining of perfume with fire and to the frothing of semen in the male body. Throughout the exchange, therefore, Aristophanes plays on the double meaning of muvron as both perfume and semen. See also Plato (Resp. 398a), who stipulates that an effeminate bard (Resp. 395d) be sent away from the ideal city after having myrrh poured down his head and after being crowned with fillets of wool. Both of these actions symbolize the effeminateness of the bard. 21 R. G. Ussher explains this test from the common practice of a woman’s perfuming before intercourse (Aristophanes Ecclesiazusae: Edited with Introduction and Commentary [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973], 148). Perfuming, however, explains neither Praxagora’s confidence in the test nor her invitation to smell her head rather than other parts of her body that would have been perfumed. In contrast, the Hippocratic test explains both of these features of the scene.
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sensation a woman feels when she conceives after coitus (Gyn. 1.12).22 Owsei Temkin translates that she is conscious of “a shivering sensation,” while James Ricci explains that she “feels erection of the hair on the skin.”23 Soranus’s connection of conception with the physiological experience of a chill often accompanied by erection of hair on the skin relates the hair to a woman’s reproductive processes, and one Hippocratic author recommends that a woman neither bathe nor get her hair wet after coitus if she wants to retain the semen (Hippocrates, Mul. 1.11).24 This conception of hair probably explains the frequent depilation of women’s pubic hair.25 Although sometimes inflicted on male adulterers, depilation of the pubes is common among Greco-Roman women and enhances their attractiveness to males.26 Plucking, singeing, and applying caustic resins are the means of removing the hair, but singeing is the most effective in enhancing fertility.27 In Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae (13), Praxagora praises the lamp for singeing the flowering hair. Vase paintings depict women engaged in singeing the pubes, and to infiltrate secretly the Thesmophoria and appear as a woman, Mnesilochus submits to the depilation of his pubes by singeing.28 Bettina Eva Stumpp surmises that the practice originally served a hygienic and then an aesthetic purpose before becoming the dominant fashion.29 Depilation serves a 22
See also Hippocrates, Carn. 19. Temkin, Soranus’ Gynecology, 43; James V. Ricci, The Genealogy of Gynaecology: History of the Development of Gynaecology throughout the Ages 2000 B.C.–1800 A.D. (2nd ed.; Philadelphia: Blakiston Company, 1950), 118. The role of the woman is to cool the hot male semen and congeal it into a fetus. The sensation of a chill, therefore, indicates that conception has occurred. Since erection of body hair is a physiological response to a chill, Ricci appropriately identifies this response as one of Soranus’s signs of conception and appropriately indicates that hair plays an important role in the female reproductive system. 24 See Martin, Corinthian Body, 237–38. 25 See W. A. Krenkel, “Me tua forma capit,” WZ Rostock 33, no. 9 (1984): 72–75; K. J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality: Updated and with a New Postscript (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 105–6, 117; Ussher, Aristophanes, 73; Bettina Eva Stumpp, Prostitution in der römischen Antike (Antike in der Moderne; 2nd ed.; Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1998), 106–7; and Gerd Hagenow, “Kosmetische Extravaganzen (Martial Epigramm III. 74),” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie n.F. 115 (1972): 48–59. 26 For depilation as the punishment for adulterous males, see Aristophanes, Nub. 1083. N. M. Kay comments, “Depilation of the pubic area of males is not commonly attested” (Ausonius: Epigrams: Text with Introduction and Commentary [London: Duckworth, 2001], 261). He notes, however, that Ausonius “deals with the subject of male depilation being an indication of passive homosexuality” (p. 260). For male attraction to a depilated feminine pudendum, see Halliwell, who explains, “The practice was meant to please male preferences for visible, youthful pudenda” (Aristophanes, 268). See also Stumpp, Prostitution, 107. 27 Krenkel, “Me tua forma capit,” 74–75. 28 J. D. Beazley, Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters (Oxford: Clarendon,1942), 218; Aristophanes, Thes. 216, 236–48. 29 Stumpp, Prostitution, 106. 23
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hygienic purpose by removing the pubic hair and destroying its power to draw reproductive fluid to the genital area. In contrast to plucking the hair, singeing seals the opening in the hair and more effectively removes the suction power of the pubes. Thus, depilation of the pubes and especially depilation by singeing enhances female fertility by removing the pubic counterforce to the upward draw of the hair on the head, and postmenopausal women cease or should cease depilating the pubes (Martial, Epigram 10.90). Finally, this conception of hair explains why prepubescent girls were not required to wear the veil whereas adult women were. Before puberty, a girl’s hair is not a functioning genital and does not differ from a boy’s hair. After puberty, however, this situation changes. Tertullian draws an analogy between prepubescent children and Adam and Eve, who were naked before they became aware of genital differentiation. Afterwards though, Tertullian notes, “They each marked the intelligence of their own sex by a covering” (Virg. 11 [ANF 4:34]). Noting the growth of the pubes to cover the female pudendum, Tertullian exhorts, “Let her whose lower parts are not bare have her upper likewise covered” (Virg. 12 [ANF 4:35]). Tertullian’s analogy and exhortation presume that hair becomes a functioning part of a young woman’s genitalia at puberty similar to the way testicles begin functioning at puberty as part of the male genitalia in facilitating the dissemination of semen.30 Prepubescent girls, therefore, need not cover their hair, but pubescent young women should, and Tertullian recommends that the extent of the veil be “co-extensive with the space covered by the hair when unbound” (Virg. 17 [ANF 4:37]). The masculine functional counterpart to long feminine hair, then, is the testicle.31 Aristotle calls the male testicles weights that keep the seminal chan30 In contrast to pubescent girls, who began to cover their hair, pubescent boys cut their hair as a rite of passage. In his life of Theseus, Plutarch describes a custom at Delphi of youths’ sacrificing their hair when they reach puberty (Thes. 5.1; Bernadotte Perrin, Plutarch’s Lives with an English Translation by Bernadotte Perrin [LCL; 11 vols.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967], 1.11). He writes, “Since it was still a custom at that time for youth who were coming of age to go to Delphi and sacrifice some of their hair to the god, Theseus went to Delphi for this purpose.” The custom evidently involved the shaving of the head, because Theseus only shaved the front part of his head, and his action was considered so unusual that this hairstyle or tonsure became known as Theseis. The physiological reason Theseus shaved only the front part of his head is that the brain, which produces and stores the semen, is located there. See Aristotle, Gen. an. 783b.38–784a.4). This rite probably had several meanings. From a physiological perspective, however, the hair that had attracted the reproductive fluid upward before puberty is shaved as the testicles develop and begin to attract this fluid downward in pubescent boys. 31 The Greek term o[rci" refers both to male testicles and female ovaries. However, ancient medical science did not ascribe a corresponding reproductive function to testicles and ovaries. The testicles served as receptacles for reproductive fluid and performed the final frothing to transmit the heat that carried the form of the individual. The Hippocratics, however, do not ascribe such a function to ovaries. Their flat shape was not conducive to attracting reproductive fluid. Dean-Jones
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nels taut (Gen. an. 717a.30–717b.5). Their function is to facilitate the drawing of semen downward so it can be ejected. Without them, the seminal channels draw up inside the body, and the male becomes unable to dispense semen into the female. The female is not given such weights but instead develops a hollow uterus and appropriate vessels to draw the semen upward (Gen. an. 739a.37– 739b.20).32 Thus, testicles do not develop at puberty for females as they do for males. Long feminine hair assists the uterus in drawing semen upward and inward; masculine testicles, which are connected to the brain by two channels, facilitate the drawing of semen downward and outward (Hippocrates, Loc. hom. 3). Long hair is a glory for the female fuvsi" but a shame for the male fuvsi" as Paul correctly states in 1 Cor 11:14–15a. This ancient physiological conception of hair indicates that Paul’s argument from nature in 1 Cor 11:13–15 contrasts long hair in women with testicles in men. Paul states that appropriate to her nature, a woman is not given an external testicle (peribovlaion, 1 Cor 11:15b) but rather hair instead. Paul states that long hollow hair on a woman’s head is her glory (dovxa, 1 Cor 11:15) because it enhances her female fuvsi", which is to draw in and retain semen. Since female hair is part of the female genitalia, Paul asks the Corinthians to judge for themselves whether it is proper for a woman to display her genitalia when praying to God (1 Cor 11:13). Informed by the Jewish tradition, which strictly forbids display of genitalia when engaged in God’s service, Paul’s argument from nature cogently supports a woman’s covering her head when praying or prophesying. In Isa 6:2, the seraphim who participate in the divine liturgy have six wings. Two are for flying, two cover the face for reverence, and two cover the feet for modesty. The term feet euphemistically refers to the genitals of the seraphim.33 The priests in Yahweh’s service receive special instructions for approaching the altar so that their nakedness is not exposed (Exod 20:26). As a further precaution when entering comments, “Nor did they [the Hippocratics] feel it necessary to discover a female analogy to the testicles. In both sexes, they believed that the seed was drawn either from all over the body at the time of conception or from a reservoir in the head. Although both sexes supplied seed it was accepted without question that they differed in reproductive anatomy. Moreover, the Hippocratics were not compiling an anatomy for its own sake and their models of disease and procreation in women worked well for them without having to invoke two small organs which had only been seen in quadrupeds and whose function was not immediately apparent” (Women’s Bodies, 68). 32 The Hippocratic author of Ancient Medicine (Hippocrates, Vet. med. 22) describes the shape of the uterus as designed for the attraction of fluids. See Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 65–67. Soranus lists one of the initial signs of conception as the lack of moisture in the vagina because “the whole of the moisture [reproductive fluid] its greater part having been directed upward” (see Temkin, Soranus’ Gynecology, 43–44). 33 Marvin H. Pope, “Bible, Euphemism and Dysphemism in the,” ABD 1:721. See Ronald A. Veenker, “Forbidden Fruit: Ancient Near Eastern Sexual Metaphors,” HUCA 70–71 (1999–2000): 57–73.
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the tent of meeting or approaching the altar, these priests wear “linen breeches from the loins to the thighs to cover their naked flesh” (Exod 28:42–43 RSV). Again, “flesh,” a euphemism, refers to the genitals (Lev 15:2, 19; Ezek 16:26; 23:20). These breeches are for the glory and beauty of the priest (Exod 28:40), while exposure of the genitals subjects the priest to guilt and death (Exod 28:43). Informed by this tradition, Paul appropriately instructs women in the service of God to cover their hair since it is part of the female genitalia. According to Paul’s argument, women may pray or prophesy in public worship along with men but only when both are decently attired.34 Even though no contemporary person would agree with the physiological conceptions informing Paul’s argument from nature for the veiling of women, everyone would agree with his conclusion prohibiting the display of genitalia in public worship. Since the physiological conceptions of the body have changed, however, no physiological reason remains for continuing the practice of covering women’s heads in public worship, and many Christian communities reasonably abandon this practice. Confusing a testicle with a head covering will render even the deftest of arguments “convoluted” and prevent anyone from being “able to decide with certainty which behavior” the argument reproaches or recommends. The problem with Paul’s argument from nature for the veiling of women in public worship arises not from Paul’s convoluted logic or flawed argumentation but from the philological confusion of modern interpreters who fail to understand the ancient physiological conception of hair (kovmh) and confuse a testicle (peribovlaion) with a head covering. Ancient philology and physiology demonstrate that both Paul and the Corinthians probably comprehended quite well this cogent argument from nature for the veiling of women. 34
Thus, Annie Jaubert, among others, argues that the covering signified decency and honor rather than subordination (“Le voile des femmes [I Cor. XI.2-16],” NTS 18 [1971–72]: 425–28), but see Troels Engberg-Pedersen, “1 Corinthians 11:16 and the Character of Pauline Exhortation,” JBL 110 (1991): 681–82 n. 9.
JBL 123/1 (2004) 85–97
PAUL’S MASCULINITY
JENNIFER LARSON
[email protected] Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242
Paul’s letters to the Corinthians show that his opponents in Corinth made a number of specific criticisms of his physical appearance and character. Scholars have examined in detail the social context of these charges.1 When we view the criticisms against the background of Greco-Roman social conventions in the first century, we can see how Paul’s opponents were able to use the prejudices of the time against him: physical unattractiveness or disability detracted from one’s ability to lead and persuade others, as did indicators of low social status such as a lack of education or participation in manual labor. In their invective against Paul, the opponents conformed to widely recognized rhetorical strategies, tactics with which first-century Corinthian audiences must have been quite familiar.2 For all the attention to the historical setting of these charges, one aspect of 1 After this article was accepted, I became aware of J. Albert Harrill, “Invective against Paul (2 Cor 10.10), the Physiognomics of the Ancient Slave Body, and the Greco-Roman Rhetoric of Manhood,” in Antiquity and Humanity: Essays on Ancient Religion and Philosophy Presented to Hans Dieter Betz on His 70th Birthday (ed. Adela Yarbro Collins and Margaret M. Mitchell; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2001), 189–213, which draws some of the same conclusions. While Harrill, like Peter Marshall (n. 3 below), concludes that the Corinthian opponents use the rhetoric of physiognomy to portray Paul as servile, I make the complementary argument that cultural assumptions about gender were basic to their attack and to Paul’s response. I would like to thank Adam Porter of Illinois College and the anonymous referees of JBL for their comments and suggestions. 2 On the Corinthians as consumers of rhetorical performances, see Maud Gleason, Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 8–20; Timothy B. Savage, Power through Weakness: Paul’s Understanding of the Christian Ministry in 2 Corinthians (Cambridge/New York/Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 71; Bruce Winter, Philo and Paul among the Sophists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 116–49, 204. The rhetoric of accusation used by Paul’s opponents was first pointed out by Hans Dieter Betz, who locates the dispute in the context of contemporary debates between sophists and Socratic/Cynic philosophers (Der Apostel Paulus und die sokratische Tradition: Eine exegetische Untersuchung zu seiner “Apologie” 2 Korinther 10–13 [BHT 45; Tübingen: MohrSiebeck, 1972], 44–69).
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the opponents’ invective has been neglected: how the criticisms of Paul engaged cultural expectations about manliness and its relationship to authority. For this discussion, I will focus primarily on 2 Cor 10–13, where Paul most often seems to quote from or allude to his detractors’ criticisms. I take it as reasonably well established that the opponents he refers to in this section of 2 Corinthians were hellenized Jews who themselves possessed some rhetorical education. They and Paul were functioning within a context of Greco-Roman social values and expectations acknowledged by both sides.3 Recent investigations into perceptions of gender in the Greco-Roman world have shown that masculinity was viewed as an attribute only partially related to an individual’s anatomical sex. Whereas breasts and womb ensured that their possessor would be viewed as essentially feminine, the same was not true for anatomical males.4 Because masculinity was all but identified with social and political dominance, there was no assumption that all males must be masculine. The masculinity of slaves, for example, was by definition impaired.5 Personal dignity, bodily integrity, and specific details of one’s appearance were all factors in individual self-assessment and in men’s evaluation of one another’s masculinity. Elite men of the day were constantly concerned with the maintenance of their masculinity, because it both displayed and justified their positions of power. Unlike noble birth, which was immutable, masculinity was a matter of perception. While elites always represented their masculinity to out3 For the view that the opponents are hellenized and/or partake of Greco-Roman rhetorical standards, see Dieter Georgi, The Opponents of Paul in Second Corinthians (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 315–19; Peter Marshall, Enmity in Corinth: Social Conventions in Paul’s Relations with the Corinthians (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1987), 398–99; Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1995), 53; Savage, Power through Weakness, 71; Winter, Philo and Paul, 235–36. For Paul’s education and rhetorical training, see Christopher Forbes, “Comparison, Self-Praise, and Irony: Paul’s Boasting and the Conventions of Hellenistic Rhetoric,” NTS 32 (1986): 22–24; Marshall, Enmity in Corinth, 181; Abraham J. Malherbe, Paul and the Popular Philosophers (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 67–77; George A. Kennedy, A New History of Classical Rhetoric (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 258; Martin, Corinthian Body, 51–68; Stanley E. Porter, “Paul of Tarsus and His Letters,” in Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period 330 BC–AD 400 (ed. Stanley E. Porter; Leiden/New York: Brill, 1997), 533–38; Winter, Philo and Paul, 237–41. 4 Gleason, Making Men, 58–60. For detailed discussion of the premodern “one sex model” according to which women were viewed as underdeveloped males, see Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 1–62; Martin Corinthian Body, 29–37, 198–249. 5 On the relations of gender and power in Rome, see Amy Richlin, The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor (rev. ed.; New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), xiii–xxxiii; Sandra Joshel, “The Body Female and the Body Politic: Livy’s Lucretia and Verginia,” in Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (ed. Amy Richlin; New York/ Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 120–26, 130 n. 8. On the incompatibility of slavery and traditionally constructed masculinity, see nn. 23, 28 below.
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siders as innate, among insiders it was implicitly recognized that masculinity was a performance requiring constant practice and vigilance.6
I. The Corinthians’ Criticisms The criticisms of Paul can be divided into two main categories. First, there are attacks on his physical appearance and skills as a speaker, both aspects of his rhetorical performance. Second, there are attacks on his personal character, as revealed in the charges of personal inconsistency or vacillation, accommodation or being overly eager to please, engaging in manual labor rather than accepting financial support, and so on. Paul as Public Speaker In 2 Cor 10:10, Paul directly quotes his detractor(s): o{ti aiJ ejpistolai; mevn, fhsivn, barei'ai kai; ijscuraiv, hJ de; parousiva tou' swvmato" ajsqenh;" kai; oJ lovgo" ejxouqenhmevno", “For his letters, they say, are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech is of no account.”7 Critical to understanding Paul’s relationship to the Corinthians is the crucial relationship of rhetorical performance to what we might call the performance of gender. Maud Gleason’s recent work has shown that rhetorical skills were inextricably tied to virility and manhood. Any man who aspired to a position of leadership in the first-century Roman world would have been subject to an almost continuous evaluation of his virility by his auditors and rivals. The sophists of Roman Corinth, in particular, were noted for their arrogance and intense rivalries.8 In 2 Cor 10:10, Paul’s opponents called into question his skills as a public speaker, which was a recognized gambit among oratorical adversaries. Today, when much less value is placed on public speaking skills than in the past, it is difficult to imagine how minutely speakers were scrutinized and their performances judged by both audience and rivals. Proper tone of voice, posture, gestures, dress, personal adornment, and other less concrete qualities were routinely cited by professionals as requirements for success. We have good reason to believe that Corinthians of the first century, even those with a lesser education, would have been experienced with regard to the evaluation of speakers. Whereas the finer points of stylistics might be lost on those with less education, 6 On the performance of masculinity in the early empire, see Gleason, Making Men, chs. 4–6; Erik Gunderson, Staging Masculinity: The Rhetoric of Performance in the Roman World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 59–110. 7 Grammar also permits the alternative translation “he says” for fhsivn, which would imply a single critic. 8 See Dio Chrys. Or. 8.9, with discussion in Winter, Philo and Paul, 126–32.
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the personal bearing of a speaker, the strength and richness of his voice, and his gestures were open to judgment by all. Cicero’s description of “the perfect orator” (Or. Brut. 18.59) gives some idea of how public speaking skills were tied to masculinity: He will maintain an erect and lofty carriage, but with little pacing, and never for a long distance. As for darting forward, he will keep it under control and use it seldom. There should be no effeminate bending of the neck (mollitia cervicum), no waggling of the fingers, or marking of the rhythm. Rather, he will control himself (se ipse moderans) by the pose of his whole torso, and by the manly attitude of his body (virili laterum flexione) . . . .
Because performance as a speaker was also gender performance, deficiency in presentation created an opening for a speaker’s rivals to denounce him as “effeminate” (mollior)—even a man’s chosen word order could be so criticized.9 Cicero himself suffered this fate at the hands of his opponents. Calvus, one of the Atticists who prided themselves on their masculine severity and strength, described Cicero as “limp and enervated” (solutum et enervem) while Brutus derided him as “subdued and feeble in the loins” (fractum et elumbem).10 Here rhetorical performance is explicitly evaluated in terms of male sexual vigor. But virtually any criticism of a man’s mode of public speech could indirectly impugn his masculinity. In this case, Paul’s “bodily presence” is described as “weak” (ajsqenhv"). Exactly what was intended by this choice of words is unclear, since the expression parousiva tou' swvmato" (“bodily presence”) was not in regular use before Paul’s time.11 It could refer to the overall impression received by onlookers: Was this man forceful and authoritative? Did he command attention? Ancient orators were thought to dominate and 9 Sen. Controversiae 2, pref. 1; see also Sen. Ep.114, “On style as a mirror of character,” in which Seneca argues that physical appearance and speaking style were indexes of masculine (upright) or degenerate (feminine) character. 10 Tac. Dial. 18.5; cf. Plut. Cic. 18.1–4; Dio Cass. 46.18.4–6. 11 Winter argues that the closest equivalent in the technical rhetorical vocabulary was hypokrisis, “delivery,” which encompassed various aspects of ex tempore performance including personal appearance and voice (Philo and Paul, 208–11). The expression parousiva tou' swvmato" was later used by church fathers, e.g., Chrysostom (Anom. 48.802.18), who says that some people aid the church with money, but others through their bodily presence and zeal. Savage gives a list of scholarly interpretations of the “presence” criticism and concludes that “[Paul] is being faulted for his failure to impose himself violently upon the church, and specifically, to mete out punishment and discipline” (Power through Weakness, 64–69). On the importance of apostolic “presence” and the ways in which letters could substitute for physical presence, see Robert W. Funk, “The Apostolic parousia: Form and Significance,” in Christian History and Interpretation: Studies Presented to John Knox (ed. William R. Farmer, C. F. D. Moule, and Richard R. Niebuhr; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 249–68; Richard Ward, “Pauline Voice and Presence as Strategic Communication,” SBL Seminar Papers, 1990 (SBLSP 29; Atlanta: Scholars Press 1990), 283–92.
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master their audiences, so one who lacked a forceful self-representation could be described as “weak.” Another possibility, not mutually exclusive of the first, is that the reference is to actual physical disability, puniness, or weakness. According to Dale Martin, Paul’s opponents are criticizing him in 2 Cor 10:10 for “a lack of consistency in his self-presentation.” Paul is violating the standards of rhetoric because one’s letters are supposed to serve as a substitute for one’s physical presence. A well-written letter should accurately portray the sender, but Paul’s letters are weighty and strong, whereas in person he seems weak and unimpressive.12 Yet the mere observation that Paul’s demeanor in person and the tone of his letters do not match is a relatively tame criticism. Paul is being criticized as much for deficiencies in his personal appearance and speaking skills as for inconsistency. The opponents are not suggesting that Paul would do better to make his letters consistent with his personal presence or vice versa; they are insisting that Paul’s personal presence itself is ineffective, and that the contrast between his communications by letter and those in person magnifies the problem. Contrast the description of Paul’s performance as “weak” and “of no account” with Seneca’s description of an orator whom he greatly admired, Cassius Severus (Seneca Controversiae 3, pref. 2–3). His oratory was strong (valens), polished, full of vigorous ideas. No one was in more complete control of the emotions of his audience. His body was remarkably large; his voice extremely strong (valentissima), yet sweet. He possessed a style of delivery that would have made any actor’s reputation, without being at all reminiscent of an actor (i.e., effeminate). Seneca comments that Cassius Severus was far more impressive in person than when read, noting that this is true for most public speakers. In the cases of both Severus and Paul, there was a discrepancy between the effects of written and oral communication. In Paul’s case this was viewed as a problem, whereas in Severus’s case it was not. Paul’s opponents criticize his speech (lovgo") as contemptible or of no account (ejxouqenhmevno") (2 Cor 10:10).13 By “speech,” do they refer to style or to content? In view of the way in which the sources on rhetoric and physiognomy consistently view both physical appearance and the sound of the voice as dual requirements for success as a public speaker, it seems that the opponents are referring to a lack of properly impressive (i.e., masculine) deportment in the way Paul both looks (bodily presence) and sounds (speech). Speech played a crucial role in the performance of gender. Gleason cites an astonishing array 12 Martin (Corinthian Body, 53) cites Demetr. Eloc. 4.227, which says that a good letter provides “glimpses of character” (to; hjqikovn). 13 In 2 Cor 11:6 Paul allows that he may be an amateur (ijdiwvth") at public speaking, but defends his knowledge (gnw'si"). This passage too may reflect charges by the opponents that Paul lacked formal rhetorical training or was simply a poor speaker.
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of examples in which a man’s voice is thought to betray his deficiencies in masculinity. A soft (mollis) or high-pitched voice could seriously damage a speaker’s chances of success, and voice training was considered a necessary form of exercise not only for improvement and maintenance of one’s speech but for general health. Male health, closely linked with masculinity, depended on the circulation of pneuma, a vital substance taken in through breathing and through the pores of the body. Speaking in low tones aided in the distribution of pneuma, while using a high-pitched voice constricted the pneuma. For this reason, men were cautioned to limit vocal exercises in which the pitch was progressively changed (as in piano scales).14 Likewise, the “weaker” voices of children, women, and eunuchs, as well as ill persons, were attributed to a deficiency of pneuma. Aristotle, Cicero, and Plutarch bear witness to the fact that a low, deep voice was thought to reflect a man’s nobility or dignity.15 Simplistic, ad hominem attacks on an opponent seem shocking and unworthy to the modern reader. Our cultural standards of argumentation do not permit us to attack an opponent on the grounds that he stutters, or has a tic in his eye, or because he is a poor excuse for a man with a high girlish voice. Yet these kinds of arguments were not at all unusual in antiquity and judging by their popularity, they seem to have carried weight with audiences. A common forensic strategy was to attack the rival’s right to speak at all, rather than the content of his speech. In both Greek and Roman settings, the right to speak in public was dependent on one’s recognized masculine status. A man who renounced his masculinity by participating in passive sexual acts, dressing as a woman, or the like could lose his political rights, including the right of public speech. Therefore, an opponent might try to impugn his rival’s masculinity by accusing him of gender deviance.16 14 Gleason, Making Men, 82–102. See, e.g., Plut. Cic. 3.5, where Cicero’s friends are described as concerned for his health because his vehemence led him to speak in too high a voice. For voice quality, see also E. C. Evans, “Physiognomics in the Ancient World,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 59, no. 5 (1969): 40–41. 15 For weak voices attributed to women, eunuchs, and the ill, see Quint. Inst. 11.3.19; Oribasius “On Healthy Declamation” 6.10.10 (text and French translation in vol. 1 of Charles Daremberg, ed., Oeuvres d’Oribase [6 vols; Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1851–76], 452–64). For deep voices, see Arist. Gen. an. 787A (a deep voice is a mark of a “nobler nature” and deepness is a form of superiority), Eth. nic. 1125a 34; Cic. Or. 17.56; Plut. Mor. 780a. On pneuma, see also Martin, Corinthian Body, 168–74. 16 See, e.g., Sen. Contr. 5.6, which quotes the law that “an unchaste (impudicus) man shall be barred from speaking in public.” The case cited concerns a youth who went out in public dressed as a woman, was raped, and was subsequently barred by a magistrate from speaking. See Stanley F. Bonner, Roman Declamation in the Late Republic and Early Empire (1949; repr., Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1967), 105. For other examples of attacks on masculinity in Roman rhetoric, see Richlin, Garden of Priapus, 81–104; Harrill, “Invective against Paul,” 201–9. The Greek orator Aeschines often accused his opponents and their associates of being kivnaidoi, or pathics, as a way
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I am not suggesting that Paul’s opponents explicitly accused him of sexual deviance or even effeminacy, but instead that their attacks must be understood in terms of a cultural context that held authority, rhetorical skill, and masculinity to be almost synonymous. To attack one was to attack the others. By questioning Paul’s rhetorical skills in terms of his lack of personal gravitas, opponents questioned his ability, and right, to lead. Paul’s Personal Character Several charges are subsumed under this heading, but all have in common the suspicion that Paul is deficient in the masculine virtues or has willingly allowed his masculine autonomy to be abrogated. The essence of the GrecoRoman concept of masculinity was that a “real” man does not cede power or control to another, as slaves and women do. As traditionally constructed, masculinity was closely tied to the concepts of personal freedom and power over others and was incompatible with Paul’s concept of “willing slavery” in Christ.17 A number of passages in Paul’s letters suggest that he was criticized for vacillation or inconsistent behavior. In 2 Cor 1:17–18, he discusses the charges that he is unreliable in his travel plans (th'/ ejlafriva/ ejcrhsavmhn) and denies that he “says both yes and no” (oJ lovgo" hjmw'n oJ pro;" uJma'" oujk e[sti nai; kai; ou[). The quality of “lightness” (ejlafriva, Lat. levitas) was the opposite of the masculine virtue of weightiness or dignity, gravitas. In terms of character, it described an individual who was fickle, unsteady, unreliable, or changeable.18 In traditional gender ideology, women’s fickle character justified male oversight and control. According to the second-century legal expert Gaius (Inst. 1.144), “the ancients desired women to be in tutelage because of their lightness of mind.” As I discussed above, the difference between Paul’s demeanor in his letters and in person drew negative attention from his critics. This is another form of inconsistency, but at the core of the rivals’ critique is not a strictly rhetorical of delegitimizing their right to bring suits and to speak in public (Aeschin. Fals. leg. 88.6; 99.5; 151.4; Tim. 131.4; 181.10). See also John Winkler, “Laying Down the Law: The Oversight of Men’s Sexual Behavior in Classical Athens,” in Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World (ed. D. Halperin, J. Winkler, and F. Zeitlin; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 171–209. Cf. Plut. Mor. 88c, where kivnaido" and malakov" (effeminate) are mentioned as common terms of attack. 17 On the relations in antiquity between manliness, power, and freedom, see Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, volume 2 of The History of Sexuality (trans. R. Hurley; New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 78–86. 18 For the metaphorical meaning of ejlafrov", see LSJ, s.v. In his essay On Listening to Lectures (Mor. 44c), Plutarch describes the overeager audience member as “light minded (ejlafrov") and flighty (ojrnewvdh").” Other spectators may conclude that this individual is a flatterer. In Mor. 752e, ejlafrav is used approvingly to describe the desired quality of passivity in a wife, as opposed to a tendency to domineer.
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point. Instead, the implication is that Paul is too cowardly to exert discipline over his congregation. He does not back up his weighty words with deeds. Their criticism seems to be echoed indignantly by Paul in 2 Cor 10:1: “I who am submissive (tapeinov") when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I am away.” The word tapeinov" is a status term often used to describe the behavior of slaves, flatterers, and others who abase themselves.19 Vacillation and cowardice were character traits associated in antiquity with the stock figure of the flatterer. Peter Marshall has shown in detail how the charges against Paul can be understood as attempts to paint him as a flatterer.20 Two passages in particular illustrate how the debate was framed. One is 1 Cor 9:19–23, where Paul says, “I have made myself a slave to all” (pa'sin ejmauto;n ejdouvlwsa) and “I have become all things to all people” (toi'" pa'sin gevgona pavnta). While there is no consensus that Paul is quoting his adversaries here, the possibility is attractive. Such admissions, in the context of Greco-Roman culture, would have been shocking, for it was precisely the unsavory flatterer who acted in a servile fashion and accommodated himself to the whims of others. Given the negative impact of such statements, it makes sense to assume that Paul is quoting the calumnies of his enemies and ironically accepting them as a badge of honor (much as the Cynics accepted the derisive epithet “dogs” and made it their own). Similarly, in 1 Cor 10:33 Paul says plainly that he tries to please all men in every regard (pavnta pa'sin ajrevskw). Paul explains that he does not seek his own advantage by this behavior (as would be expected in the case of individuals behaving thus), but instead he seeks “the advantage of many, that they may be saved.”21 Implicit in but missing from Marshall’s analysis of the flatterer is the further observation that flattery was utterly inconsistent with the ideals of masculinity.22 By accommodating himself to the wishes of others rather than acting autonomously, the flatterer willingly surrendered his freedom of choice. In the 19 Marshall, Enmity in Corinth, 323–25. On positive connotations of the term tapeinov" in Socratic/Cynic philosophy, see Betz, Apostel Paulus, 45–57. 20 Marshall, Enmity in Corinth, 281–325. 21 Other passages bearing on the charge of flattery include Gal 1:10 and 1 Thess 2:4–5, where Paul similarly disavows the idea of “speaking to please mortals” and “words of flattery.” For the more positive connotations of “pleasing everyone,” see Margaret M. Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), 147–49. 22 Several traits of the flatterer were also those traditionally applied to women: cowardice, deceptiveness, impulsivity. The second-century C.E. physiognomist and sophist Polemo discusses these “feminine” traits (1.192–94F). For text, see Richard Förster Scriptores physiognomonici graeci et latini, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1893). His views are closely related to those in Arist. [Physiogn.] 809b–810a. For the opponents’ charge that Paul was crafty and deceitful, see 2 Cor 12:16. For the characterization of females and “effeminates” in ancient physiognomical texts as weak, deceitful, and cowardly, see Evans, “Physiognomics in the Ancient World,” 9, 35.
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social system of the first century, autonomy was what separated “real men” from women, slaves, freedmen (who still owed obligations to their former masters), and pseudo-men or effeminates (who gratified other men sexually). Elite males were highly conscious of the fact that each of these groups was subject to their sexual demands; their right to sexually penetrate members of these groups was a reflection of their political and social dominance. According to a celebrated saying of the advocate Haterius, “Loss of sexual virtue (impudicitia) is a crime in a free man, a necessity for a slave, and a duty (officium) for a freedman.”23 What was most appalling about free, elite males who played a passive role in intercourse was that they willingly surrendered the masculine prerogative, thus allying themselves with lower-status groups who were expected to conciliate, flatter, and provide pleasure to their superiors. Contempt for the flatterer, on the one hand, and the cinaedus or pathic male, on the other, stemmed from the same source.24 A typical descriptive term for prostitutes was blandus, “fawning” or “wheedling”—also characteristic of the flatterer. Public speakers who tried to please the masses were not exempt from this charge: according to a pseudepigraphic letter of Diogenes, not philosophers but eunuchs try to “please many.”25 Many of the more elite among the Corinthians must have felt similarly aghast at Paul’s choice to earn his own keep rather than accept the apostle’s due of financial support. Because it limited a man’s autonomy and forced him to be at the beck and call of others, manual labor detracted from masculine dignity.26 According to Cicero (Off. 1.150), the occupations of all workmen who were paid for their labor were to be regarded as illiberales et sordidi, because the very fact of receiving a wage was a form of slavery. Most artisans’ workshops 23 Sen. Contr. 4 pref. 10. Likewise, in Petron. Sat. 75.11, the freedman Trimalchio explains that “nothing the master orders is immoral.” See also Moses I. Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (London: Chatto & Windus, 1980), 95–96. 24 Plut. Mor. 13b–c: flatterers are freeborn but choose to be slaves. On the flatterer’s willing loss of autonomy, see Marshall, Enmity in Corinth, 311. Eagerness to please causes suspicion of unmanliness (Gleason, Making Men, 65). 25 Blandus: e.g., Sen. Contr. 1.2.12: “if anyone doubted whether she was a whore, let him hear how blanda she is.” Cf. Contr. 1.2.2; 1.2.5; etc.; Diog. Ep. 11: eij s i dev oiJ toi' " pov l loi" ajrevskonte" gavlloi ma'llon h] filosovfoi. For the Cynic epistles, see Abraham J. Malherbe, The Cynic Epistles: A Study Edition (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1977). 26 For discussion of Paul’s refusal to accept support from the Corinthians, see Marshall, Enmity in Corinth, 218–58 with bibliography. It could be argued that Paul was appealing to the Socratic tradition that the philosopher must preserve his autonomy by refusing pay, yet Paul did accept support from the Philippians (Phil 4:15–17) and “other churches” (2 Cor 11:8). Another explanation is that Paul rejected the commercialism of the sophists (Winter, Philo and Paul, 165–66). In any case, Paul’s manual labor made him vulnerable to upper-class suspicions about his willing self-abasement.
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employed slaves, and the social status of free artisans was tainted by association.27 Finally, if we take Paul’s peristasis catalogue in 2 Cor 11 as reflecting at least in part some of the sneers of his opponents, certain entries are of particular interest. Paul’s open admission that he had been flogged by both Jewish and Roman authorities (2 Cor 11:23–25) was certainly the boasting of a “madman” because of the shame and humiliation incurred by the recipients of such punishments. The manner of one’s punishment proclaimed one’s social status. By Roman custom, flogging was reserved for noncitizens, except in the army, and was particularly associated with the chastisement of slaves.28 Though Acts says that Paul possessed Roman citizenship, this passage indicates either that he was not in fact a citizen or that he did not successfully appeal to citizenship status in order to avoid punishment. In any case, Paul proclaimed to the Corinthians that his bodily integrity, a prerequisite of masculine dignity as well as social and political status, had been violated on numerous occasions. The connection between gender and an individual’s lack of control over his or her person was summed up by Clement of Alexandria (Paed. 3.19.2): “to do (to; dra'n) is the mark of the man; to suffer (to; pavscein) is the mark of the woman.”
II. Paul’s Response A full analysis of Paul’s response is beyond the scope of this article, but if, as I have argued above, Paul’s opponents were appealing to the gender norms of the time in order to discredit him, Paul’s response constitutes a rejection of certain traditional standards of masculinity. This rejection is not complete and radical, for Paul himself appeals to gender assumptions to make some of his own arguments and is not completely consistent. Overall, however, he seems to 27 See Ronald Hock, The Social Context of Paul’s Ministry: Tentmaking and Apostleship (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), 33–34. Compare Plut. Per. 1.4–2.2: workmen are to be despised. 28 The lex Porcia of the second century B.C.E. granted Roman citizens the right of appeal against corporal punishment, and this rule continued to be cited through the early imperial period. The application of Roman law was never entirely consistent, however, and it is certain that there were occasional exceptions to the rule, especially in situations involving crowd control. See Peter Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970), 139–40, 261–62. On flogging as a typically servile punishment, see K. R. Bradley, Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire: A Study in Social Control (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 119. Discussions of how the condition of slavery dehumanized its victims are plentiful; see, e.g., Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 35–101; Finley, Ancient Slavery, 93–122. There has been less discussion of how slavery de-masculinized male slaves through castration, sexual abuse, and other means. Finley refers to the common ancient and modern practice of addressing adult male slaves as “boy” (Greek pai'"; Latin puer).
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be attacking the tendency to equate masculinity (and therefore leadership ability) with outward demonstrations of dominance and power. The fact that he addresses these issues provides additional evidence for the view presented above that cultural assumptions about gender are at the foundation of the Corinthian opponents’ attack. He signals the basis of his argument in the first verse of 2 Cor 10: “I myself, Paul, appeal to you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ.” Meekness (pra/ovth") and gentleness (ejpieivkeia) are not traits immediately associated with masculinity; they point to a different model of behavior based not on human standards (kata; savrka) but on divine ones.29 Taking Christ as his model, Paul argues that weakness, humility, and suffering in the cause are badges of honor in God’s eyes (the clearest statement of this position is found in 2 Cor 12:5–10). Paul makes his “weakness” a virtue by criticizing several contrasting behaviors of his opponents, behaviors that can be interpreted as hypermasculine. The opponents boast and indulge in self-praise; they constantly measure and compare themselves to each other (and presumably to Paul). They assume a dominant, arrogant attitude toward others whom they view as their inferiors: ajnevcesqe gavr ei[ ti" uJma'" katadouloi', ei[ ti" katesqivei, ei[ ti" lambavnei, ei[ ti" ejpaivretai, ei[ ti" eij" provswpon uJma'" devrei. kata; ajtimivan levgw, wJ" o{ti hJmei'" hjsqenhvkamen, “For you put up with it when someone enslaves you, or preys upon you, or takes advantage of you, or acts arrogantly, or gives you a slap in the face. To my shame, I must say, we were too “weak” for that!” (2 Cor 11:20–21 NRSV). In this passage Paul neatly casts the charge of compliant passivity back onto the Corinthians, who have surrendered their autonomy to Paul’s hybristic rivals. By contrast Paul’s alleged “weakness” is revealed as the restraint and selfcontrol expected from those entrusted with positions of power. In other passages, however, Paul openly embraces and acknowledges the characterization of himself as “weak,” but insists that his critics are judging by merely human standards (e.g., 2 Cor 11:21, 29–30; 12:5, 8–10). In spite of his rhetorical insistence on his own “weakness,” Paul recognizes that in order to win back the respect of the Corinthians, he must make a forceful demonstration of his personal authority. In 1 Cor 4:21, he had asked whether they wished him to come to them “with a stick” (ejn rJavbdw/), as a father might an errant child, or “with love in a spirit of gentleness” (ejn ajgavph/ pneuvma29 Gentleness in males was not a negative characteristic but could arouse suspicion. Seneca’s harsh evaluation of Maecenas’s character in Ep. 114–18 insists that while Maecenas appeared to be mild (mitis), he was in fact not mild but effeminate (mollis). Among philosophers there was debate over the relative value of gentle and harsh moral reproofs; see Malherbe, Paul and the Popular Philosophers, 42–45.
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tiv te pra/ovthto"). Toward the end of 2 Corinthians, it is clear that Paul feels he has received his answer. He must conform to the Corinthians’ expectations about the qualities of a leader. Therefore he issues warnings and insists that when he does come to Corinth, he will not be lenient (2 Cor 13:2: ouj feivsomai). The parent–child metaphor implicit in 1 Cor 4:21 is elsewhere made explicit (1 Cor 4:14–15; 2 Cor 11:2–3; 12:14; etc.). In view of the role of the Roman paterfamilias as an archetype of powerful masculinity, it is notable that Paul repeatedly describes himself as a father and his congregation as children. Furthermore, he strengthens the traditional (both Jewish and Greco-Roman) gender imagery in 2 Cor 11:2–3, where he places himself in the role of a father arranging his daughter’s marriage, while the congregation is characterized as a willful daughter who lacks the female virtue of submissiveness. Elsewhere Paul chooses metaphors that emphasize his masculinity: in 1 Cor 9:24–27 he is a victorious athlete, and in 2 Cor 10:3–5 a warrior.30 By strongly identifying with Christ in his weakness, however, Paul was using a dangerous strategy. For those who viewed things “in the flesh,” he was liable to the charge of being a “fool.” But he also may have found resistance from some male converts to the idea of “strength in weakness,” because weakness was so strongly associated with femininity. The opponents’ argument could have held implications beyond the simple accusation of unfitness that lies at the surface of 2 Cor 10–13. Perhaps it also pointed to a fundamental difference between the christology of Paul and that of his opponents. Did the opponents place in the foreground a conception of Jesus as a triumphant and powerful worker of wonders, glossing over the shameful, “weak” manner of his death? Whereas Paul boasted of his sufferings, the opponents were proud of their spiritual experiences and powerful deeds. In their opinion (but not Paul’s) these attested to the authenticity and vividness of their representation of Christ. While Paul claims that the power of the Christ comes to its completion in weakness (2 Cor 12.:), they must have believed that the power of the Christ was present in the mighty deeds of his messengers. Paul presents his fate not only as the fate of Christ but as a representation of the Christ; the opponents seem to have done the same.31 30 Malherbe argues that the warrior metaphor used by Paul draws upon a contemporary philosophical debate over the self-presentation of the philosopher (Paul and the Popular Philosophers, 91–119). The debate focused on whether Odysseus, who sometimes appeared weak, duplicitous, and even cowardly, was an appropriate role model. The same debate can also be viewed as a discussion about differing modes of masculinity: Odysseus’s flexibility and willingness to undergo humiliation in order to achieve his goals are contrasted to the unyielding bravery and masculine pride of his enemy, Ajax. On Malherbe’s arguments, see also Harrill, “Invective against Paul,” 211–12. 31 Georgi, Opponents of Paul, 280.
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Dieter Georgi’s seminal work in this area has led to much discussion but no consensus on the nature of the opponents’ teachings. Here I simply suggest that the gender expectations discussed in this article as they applied to Paul also may have affected the reception of the figure of Jesus in the minds of new converts. To some groups, particularly elite Roman males, a “muscular Jesus” would have appealed far more than a Jesus whose triumph was revealed in his weakness.32 32 These issues are pertinent to the nineteenth-century and contemporary debates over the masculinity of Jesus and the “effeminacy” of the iconography of Jesus. See David Morgan, Visual Piety: A History and Theory of Popular Religious Images (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1998), 97–123; Muscular Christianity: Embodying the Victorian Age (ed. Donald E. Hall; Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press 1994).
JBL 123/1 (2004) 99–135
BOASTING OF BEATINGS (2 CORINTHIANS 11:23–25)
JENNIFER A. GLANCY
[email protected] Le Moyne College, Syracuse, NY 13214-1399
Paul writes that he bears ta; stivgmata tou' !Ihsou' in his body (Gal 6:17). J. Louis Martyn comments, “Considering his physique to be a major form of communication, alongside the words of his letter, Paul points literally to his own body. He can do this because his body tells the story of the forward march of the gospel, just as do his words.”1 Martyn shares the widely held view that Paul’s stivgmata are literal scars “from Gentile stones and from Jewish whips” (2 Cor 11:24–25).2 These “Jesus scars,” Martyn continues, “reflect the wounds of a soldier sent into the front trenches of God’s redemptive and liberating war.”3 Tracings of whips and magistrates’ rods, however, are not prima facie the wounds of a soldier, cicatrices ennobling a warrior’s breast. They are, typically, markings of a servile body, insignia of humiliation and submission. Who, then, reads Paul’s somatic markings as badges of martial valor: the Christians of Galatia? the Christians of Corinth? scholars? Paul himself? In the introduction to his Anchor Bible commentary on Galatians, Martyn invites the reader “to take a seat in one of the Galatian congregations, in order—as far as possible—to listen to the letter with Galatian ears.”4 Following Martyn, I propose to read Paul’s storytelling body, as far as possible, with Galatian eyes, with Corinthian eyes A version of this paper was presented at the 2003 meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature to the Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible Group. I am grateful to David Andrews, Karmen MacKendrick, and Elizabeth Salzer for their comments on an earlier draft of this article. I am also grateful to Wayne Stevens for his efforts on behalf of my research. In my quotations from Greek and Latin sources I have, in many instances, adapted the translations cited in the notes. 1 J. Louis Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 33A: Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1997), 568. 2 A view set forth as early as Jerome (Comm. Gal. 3.6.17). For modern studies, see n. 122. 3 Martyn, Galatians, 568. 4 Ibid., 42.
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(see Gal 6:17; 1 Cor 4:9–13; 2 Cor 6:4–5; 11:24–26). Because Paul’s rhetoric pivots, at times, on the posturing of his body, the project of interpreting Paul includes the task of interpreting his body language. In this article I read the body language of 2 Cor 11:23–25, where Paul, boasting, elaborates on the character of the beatings he has endured; more broadly, I ask how Paul’s boasting of beatings contributes to the complex argument of 2 Cor 10–13. Every body tells a story; every body tells stories. Each body has multiple stories to tell, and the markings of any body may be read in multiple ways. A ribbon of scar tissue across a woman’s abdomen tells the story of a cesarean delivery or of a hysterectomy. In a farming community, a severed limb is an icon of a farm machinery accident; in a land at war, a severed limb is an icon of a land mine exploding. The legibility of an individual body is contingent on social bodies, particularly on the socially inscribed body that is the object of the gaze and the socialized eyes of the one who gazes. Paul may understand his body to tell a story “of the forward march of the gospel,” as Martyn suggests, but those who catch a glimpse of what Stephen D. Moore calls “the map of his [Paul’s] missionary journeys that has been cut into his back” may well read other stories, some shameful, scored there.5 In his influential study of peristaseis catalogues in the Corinthian correspondence, John T. Fitzgerald argues that, in Greco-Roman literature, “[t]he scars that the good man sometimes bears on his body are visible tokens of his virtue, ‘so that not by hearsay but by evidence of their own eyes men can judge what manner of man he is’ [Xenophon Ages. 6.2]. The endurance of hardship is thus the proof of virtue, the seal of integrity.”6 Fitzgerald implies that in the corporal idiom of Mediterranean antiquity, a man’s scarred body tells a virtuous, virile story. By extension, Paul’s scars attest to a praiseworthy endurance of hardship. However, Fitzgerald’s quotation from Xenophon is selective. Xenophon addresses Agesilaus’s ajndreiva, his manly courage, established in battle.7 Xenophon writes that, as a consequence of valor in combat, Agesilaus bears “in his own body visible tokens [shmei' a ] of the fury of his fighting [emphasis added], so that not by hearsay but by the evidence of their own eyes
5
Stephen D. Moore, God’s Gym: Divine Male Bodies of the Bible (New York: Routledge, 1996), 28. 6 John T. Fitzgerald, Cracks in an Earthen Vessel: An Examination of the Catalogues of Hardships in the Corinthian Correspondence (SBLDS 99; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 43. Scott B. Andrews has rightly noted that Fitzgerald (among others) “does not describe how any particular type of hardship list differs . . . in function from another type” (“Too Weak Not to Lead: The Form and Function of 2 Cor 11.23b–33,” NTS 41 [1995]: 263–76, esp. 264). 7 On ajndreiva, see Stephen D. Moore and Janice Capel Anderson, “Taking It like a Man: Masculinity in 4 Maccabees,” JBL 117 (1998): 249–73, esp. 253.
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men could judge what manner of man he was.”8 By effacing the explicitly martial context in which scars are legible as signs of virtue, of ajndrei'a, Fitzgerald leaves the impression that the endurance of any hardship, any physical ordeal, is equally exemplary. On a first-century view, however, hardships might ennoble or degrade a man; scars might testify to heroism or contemptibility. The scars that some men bore in their bodies, impressed by lash and rod, testified not to virtue but to a lack of integrity. Recognition of the semiotic distinction between a breast pierced by a sword and a back welted by a whip is crucial to reading Paul’s body language in 2 Cor 11:23–25. In boasting of beatings, Paul boasts not of his ajndrei'a but of his humiliating corporal vulnerability. Pierre Bourdieu argues that we make sense of human bodies—and human bodies make sense—through a “system of structured, structuring dispositions, the habitus.”9 Habitus—“embodied history, internalized as a second nature and forgotten as history”—translates itself into knowledge borne in the body:10 Adapting a phrase of Proust’s, one might say that arms and legs are full of numb imperatives. One could endlessly enumerate the values given body, made body, by the hidden persuasion of an implicit pedagogy which can instil a whole cosmology, through injunctions as insignificant as “sit up straight” or “don’t hold your knife in your left hand”, and inscribe the most fundamental principles of the arbitrary content of a culture in seemingly innocuous details of bearing or physical and verbal manners, so putting them beyond the reach of consciousness and explicit statement.11
Reading Paul’s body language is difficult because, with the passage of time, the discourse of the familiar fades. Downcast eyes, a blush spreading across a face, the deliberate exposure of dermal markings—facial expression, demeanor, and posture cease to bear shared meanings.12 We do, however, have clues for reconstructing those meanings, for interpreting the “bodily hexis” that “is political mythology realized, em-bodied, turned into a permanent disposition, a durable way of standing, speaking, walking, and thereby of feeling and thinking.”13 The scars of a first-century body instantiate relationships of power, of legal status (freeborn, freed, or enslaved), of domination and submission, of honor and shame, and of gender. In drawing attention to his stivgmata and enumerating his beatings, Paul relies on a vocabulary of corporeality shared by his readers. 8 Xenophon, Scripta Minora (trans. E. C. Marchant; LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925). 9 Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980), 52. 10 Ibid., 56. 11 Ibid., 69. 12 Carlin A. Barton explores the meanings of the blush in Roman corporal vernacular (Roman Honor: The Fire in the Bones [Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001], 199–269). 13 Bourdieu, Logic of Practice, 69–70.
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The difficulty of interpreting a lost habitus is intensified by the complexity of the social location of 2 Cor 10–13, written to urban Christians shaped by intersecting Greek, Roman, and Jewish thought worlds. 14 These thought worlds were not mutually exclusive, nor were they isomorphic, nor were they stable. What it meant to be Greek, Roman, or Jewish was in flux in the first century. Of Greek literature composed in the Roman Empire, Tim Whitmarsh writes: Practically all the Greek texts that survive from this period were written by Roman citizens, men whose identity was (I argue) radically fissured. . . . it makes no sense to write of “Rome and the Romans as the Greeks saw them.” . . . not only was the relationship between “Greece” and “Rome” (these terms conceived of as “imaginary” rather than geopolitical entities) fluid and oscillatory, but also the very concepts of “Greek” and “Roman” were under constant definition, scrutiny, review and redefinition.15
Where, then, shall we look for clues on how the Corinthians might have responded to a glimpse of Paul’s back? In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke relates an incident that takes place in Philippi: magistrates, responding to public pressure, order the flogging of Paul and Silas. Luke emphasizes the Roman identity of the city, of the accusers, and of the beaten missionaries (Acts 16:19–39).16 That Paul and Silas are Jewish, Greek-speaking Roman citizens, strangers in a Macedonian city whose inhabitants appeal to Roman officials on the basis of shared political allegiance, illuminates the complexity of (self-)identity under the empire. Nonetheless, Luke’s recurring emphasis on explicitly Roman elements of the scene focuses the reader’s attention on the meaning of flogging and flogged bodies in a mien wherein signal aspects of Roman “political mythology” are embodied. In untangling strands of meaning woven into the fabric of Paul’s reference to his repeated beatings in 2 Cor 11:22–25, I follow Luke’s lead and emphasize, though not exclusively, dimensions of Roman hexis 14 While I assume that the Corinthians share—with one another, the superapostles, and Paul—similar dispositions in reading bodies, we must allow the possibility of misinterpretations not only between ancient communities and modern interpreters but also among Corinthians of varying backgrounds. Cf. Pierre Bourdieu, “The Sentiment of Honour in Kayble Society” (trans. Philip Sherrard), in Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society (ed. Jean G. Péristiany; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 191–241, esp. 193–97. 15 Tim Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and the Roman Empire: The Politics of Imitation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 2. 16 I am concerned not with the historicity of the incident but with Luke’s location of the incident in an explicitly Roman context. Beverly Roberts Gaventa cautions against insisting that Paul refers in 1 Thess 2:2 to the incident familiar from Acts 16 (First and Second Thessalonians [IBC; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998], 23). Earl J. Richard argues more absolutely, and less convincingly, against identifying 1 Thess 2:2 with the incident in Acts 16 (First and Second Thessalonians [SacPag 11; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995], 78).
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which imbue with significance not only scars but also a man’s public exposure of his own wounds: like Philippi, Corinth is, of course, a Roman colony.17 I follow Luke in assuming that Roman bodily habitus would provide the inhabitants of such a city with most of their cues for responding to (the display of) a whipped body. As now the corpus of Paul’s writings conjures for us images of Paul’s physical corpus when still alive, so in his own day his words prompted those who knew him to recall his absent body. Paul bids the reader to remember his wounds. Did Paul, when present in a community, use his body to persuade, to exhort, or to inspire? If Paul expects the Galatians to understand his stivgmata to be marks on his back, they are likely to have seen those marks, and, with or without his guidance, to have read the story of his punishments inscribed there.18 Perhaps when Paul stood in the midst of a congregation, he bared his back and offered an interpretation of the history of its markings, reminding his dubious audience that whips had similarly lacerated Jesus’ flesh. Perhaps, shame-faced and tongue-tied, Paul explained his stripes during chance encounters in the baths.19 Every body has stories to tell. What story is told depends not only on the storytelling body but also on the audience that studies that signifying corpus.20
I. Battle Scars In his War against Jugurtha, Sallust supplies a speech for Gaius Marius as he garners support for war. He contrasts two kinds of self-boasting. His aristocratic rivals, he claims, boast of family and lineage. He, on the other hand, boasts of only what is his own: his accomplishments, his difficulties, and, ultimately, the marks on his own body.21 Consideration of his rhetorical strategy 17
On Roman and Greek influences in Corinth, see Donald W. Engels, Roman Corinth: An Alternative Model for the Classical City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). 18 Donald Guthrie suggests that “the marks of Jesus would be the scars of persecution. Some of the Galatians had seen those scars” (Galatians [NCB; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973], 152). 19 Garrett G. Fagan reviews evidence attesting to “the prevailing atmosphere of nakedness at the baths” (Bathing in Public in the Roman World [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999], 24–29, esp. 26). 20 In my formulation of these questions, I am influenced by Maud Gleason’s exploration of Josephus’s treatment of the human body as signifier (“Mutilated Messengers: Body Language in Josephus,” in Being Greek under Rome: Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic, and the Development of Empire [ed. Simon Goldhill; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001], 50–85). 21 Matthew Leigh argues that the display of wounds in Roman discourse encodes conflict between persons of higher and lower status (“Wounding and Popular Rhetoric at Rome,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 40 [1995]: 195–215).
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helps situate Paul’s self-boasting in 2 Cor 11:23b–33 and introduces the rhetorical functions of war wounds in Roman discourse. Marius mentions his triumphs in passing while emphasizing obstacles overcome and privations endured. He asserts, “From my childhood to my present time of life I have so lived that I am familiar with every kind of toil and danger” (85.7).22 His rivals, noble in heritage but not in manly valor, “begrudge me my office; then let them begrudge my toil, my honesty, even my dangers, since it was through those that I won the office” (85.17). Marius calls attention to his hardships for a variety of purposes, although not, as a Cynic or Stoic might, to highlight his serenity amidst turmoil. Through his struggles, Marius says, he has established himself as a man. In response to those who rest their claims to authority in ancestry, Marius replies that he is more like the valiant ancestors than the soft descendants. He insists that he has not lived through a lifetime of tribulations in order to glorify himself, but rather to promote the good of those before whom he now stands. “But I have learned by far the most important lesson for my country’s good . . . to strike down the foe, to keep watch and word, to fear nothing save ill repute, to endure heat and cold alike, to sleep on the ground, to bear privation and fatigue at the same time” (85.33). His opponents display portraits of their noble ancestors. Marius offers to set before them evidence of his own nobility: “I cannot, to justify your confidence, display family portraits or the triumphs and consulships of my forefather; but if occasion requires, I can show spears, a banner, trappings and other military prizes, as well as scars on my own breast. These are my portraits, these my patent of nobility, not left me by inheritance as theirs were, but won by my own innumerable toils and perils” (85.29–30). Some in Sallust’s audience would have been more impressed by the display of family portraits than of wounds. Many, however, would have fallen in formation behind the soldier who, though lacking a pedigree, referred proudly to the marks carved into his own chest. As ancestral portraits could be read as evidence of familial nobility, so Marius’s scars could be read as evidence of personal nobility. Marius makes his battle-scarred body a factor in competition over authority, even as he instructs his listeners how to read those scars. Paul, too, presents his scarred body in competition over authority. The act of exhibiting a wounded and scarred body was a standard move in Greco-Roman selfpresentation. I outline the rhetorical function of war wounds—and the display of such wounds—before turning specifically to the question of whether the recipients of 2 Cor 10–13 would have read the latticework of lacerations on Paul’s flesh as honorable manly emblems of a soldier’s courage.23 22
Sallust (trans. J. C. Rolfe; LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921). In his discussion of “tribulation lists” in Paul, Robert Hodgson cites a number of examples of the display of wounds in Greek and Roman literature. He does not explore the place of wounds 23
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Throughout Greek and Roman literature, scars incurred in combat serve, in Plutarch’s words, as “inscribed images of excellence and manly virtue” (w{sper eijkovna" ejgkecaragmevna" ajreth'" kai; ajndragaqiva") (Mor. 331C).24 Matthew Leigh argues that the display of war wounds as the climax of argumentation is a distinctively, though not uniquely, Roman practice.25 Orators referred verbally to their battle scars. They opened their tunics in order to exhibit those scars. A Roman crowd milling about an orator required no instruction to decode his gesture when he bared his chest. Without speaking another word, his scar tissue testified to a brave confrontation with an adversary’s sword. Quintilian conceded that a person’s display of his or her body as a spectacle could be more credible than declamation. He offered an example familiar to his readers: “Thus when Antonius in the course of his defense of Manius Aquilius tore open his client’s robe and revealed the honorable scars which he had acquired while facing his country’s foes, he relied no longer on the power of his eloquence, but appealed directly to the eyes of the Roman people” (Inst. 2.15.7).26 Manius Aquilius could not be dishonorable, his honorable scars implied, a claim that, though silent, drowned out the roar of evidence presented by the prosecution. Before Roman eyes, a man’s cicatrized breast was the incarnation of a martial narrative. Quintilian, following Cicero, referred to the orator’s sermo corporis, his body language. Erik Gunderson writes that Quintilian’s ideal oratorical body was “made for reading”: “The shapes which have been discovered are arbitrary to the extent that other knowledges of the body could be imagined, but they are specific and specifically efficacious to the extent that these readings of the body have real and worldly effects in Roman society.”27 The orator’s sermo corporis exemplified a bodily hexis, an embodiment of political mythology and values. Specifically, the semiotic significance of invoking or displaying dermal insignia of valor was widely appreciated. Josephus supplied the example of Antipater the Elder, who appeared before Julius Caesar to defend himself against charges in Roman gestural rhetoric or ask whether the use of such battle-scarred imagery to describe Paul’s marking by whip and rod is apt (“Paul the Apostle and First Century Tribulation Lists,” ZNW 74 [1983]: 59–80). 24 For additional references to (display of) war wounds in Greek and Latin texts, see Leigh, “Wounding and Popular Rhetoric at Rome.” 25 Even more broadly, Leigh suggests that it is difficult to cast “anything as typically Greek, Spartan, Roman, or whatever in antiquity. Ancient Mediterranean literature reflects common values and expresses these values through anecdotes which are morphologically very similar” (“Wounding and Popular Rhetoric at Rome,” 198). 26 Quintilian (trans. H. E. Butler; 4 vols.; LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920). 27 Erik Gunderson, “Discovering the Body in Roman Oratory,” in Parchments of Gender: Deciphering the Bodies of Antiquity (ed. Maria Wyke; Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 169–89, esp. 183.
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of disloyalty. His defense relied not on spoken but on somatic language. He claimed to have no use for words: “his body, while he was silent, shouted it [his loyalty] aloud” (B.J. 1.197). Maud Gleason comments, “This shouting, silent body did indeed effect a successful cross-cultural communication, probably because the display of one’s scars as testimony in self-defense was a Roman gestural convention.”28 What a warrior’s scars shout is a tabloid of masculinity. Scars testify that a man, scorning both pain and death, has risked both. Noting the association between vir and virtue (ex viro virtus), Cicero argues that a “man’s peculiar virtue is fortitude, of which there are two main functions, namely scorn of death and scorn of pain. These then we must exercise if we wish to prove possessors of virtue, or rather, since the word for ‘virtue’ is borrowed from the word for ‘man,’ if we wish to be men” (Tusc. 2.18.43).29 (In Greek, ajndreiva captures a similar nexus of masculinity and courage.30) Within the Roman sermo corporis, the vocabulary of battle scars—and display of battle scars—was finely calibrated. An unfriendly audience, for example, could read a tale of cowardice in unbroken flesh on a man’s chest.31 The forensic gesture of a defendant baring his chest to expose in his flesh honorable signs of valor, earned in combat, was sufficiently familiar to be the subject of parody. Cicero, having informed his audience that Verres made a practice of satisfying his lust by forcibly bedding the wives and daughters of respectable households, demanded to know whether Verres’s defense would entail the customary display of wounds.32 Would Verres, Cicero asked, “bare his breast, show the people of Rome his scars—scars made by women’s teeth, the imprinted records of lechery and foulness?” (Verr. 2.5.33).33 Fluency in the somatic dialect thus enhances appreciation for the myriad uses of the trope of battle scar, as well as the actual exhibition of such scars, in ancient discourses. Not all battle wounds, for example, are honorable. Scar tissue marking chest, throat, or face tells a story of courage in combat. Scar tissue marking a man’s back tells a story of cowardice. Allusions to war wounds typically specify their location. So Livy’s Servilius proclaims, “I possess a body adorned with honourable scars, every one of them received in front” (45.39.16). 28
Gleason, “Mutilated Messengers,” 66. Cicero (trans. J. E. King; 28 vols.; LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927). 30 See Moore and Anderson, “Taking It like a Man,” 253. 31 E.g., Ovid Metam. 13.262–67; Diodorus 8.12.1–16. 32 Accusations of predatory libido were a standard element in Roman political invective. See J. Roger Dunkle, “The Greek Tyrant and Roman Political Invective of the Late Republic,” TAPA 98 (1967): 151–71. 33 Cicero, The Verrine Orations (trans. L. H. G. Greenwood; 2 vols.; LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967). 29
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Leigh emphasizes “the pathetic significance of the pectus-tergum opposition,” the difference between physical injury incurred meeting a foe head-on or running away from him.34 Aelian preserves the tradition that, when a Spartan mother received word that her son had died in battle, she personally sought his body on the battlefield. If the wounds on her son’s corpse were in the front, she arranged for burial in the family plot. If the wounds were in the back, she slunk away; the corpse was left for anonymous burial (12.21). Like Spartan mothers, ancient audiences were critical readers of the stories told by corporal inscriptions. In a footnote to his observation that Paul’s stivgmata reflect his military role in advancing the gospel, Martyn alludes to the battle scars on Antipater’s body limning his loyalty to Caesar: “As Antipater was said to bear on almost every part of his person the marks of wounds showing his loyalty to Caesar . . . so Paul points to his body as it testifies to his belonging to the crucified Jesus.”35 How analogous, however, are Antipater’s cicatrices to Paul’s stivgmata? Who would designate Paul’s stiv g mata as “signs of excellence [ta; shmei' a th' " ajrethv"],” as Josephus refers to Antipater’s scars (B.J. 1.193)? Is Antipater’s exposure of his scars parallel to Paul’s insistence in various passages that the reader acknowledge his wounds and the incidents in which he was wounded? Ancient audiences distinguished between the mark of a sword slashing a courageous breast and the mark of a sword slashing a cowardly back. They distinguished even more sharply between the martial tracing left by a sword and the servile tracing left by a whip or a rod. The Corinthian Christians would have appreciated the nuances implicit in the markings of a man’s corpus: not every scarred body told an honorable story.
II. The Whippable Body36 In Roman habitus, whipping was the archetypal mark of dishonor. In his litany of hardships endured in the course of training and military campaigns, Sallust’s Marius includes some details that Paul also registers; he speaks of being hungry, cold, and forced to sleep in conditions that deprive him of slumber. Such conditions were at times associated with poverty and misfortune— 34
Matthew Leigh, Lucan: Spectacle and Engagement (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 214–15. Martyn, Galatians, 568 n. 73, following a suggestion by William Klassen, “Galatians 6:17,” ExpTim 81 (1970): 378. 36 I intend the term “whippable” to echo an adjective Plautus applied to a slave, uerberabilissime, “eminently beatable” (Plautus Aul. 633, quoted in Richard Saller, “Corporal Punishment, Authority, and Obedience in the Roman Household,” in Marriage, Divorce, and Children in Ancient Rome [ed. Beryl Rawson; Oxford: Clarendon, 1991], 144–65, esp. 154). 35
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thus the potential dishonor of poverty and misfortune—but they were at the same time the kinds of experiences that hardened a man, made him virile. Being subject to beating, being vulnerable to the power of another man (or woman) to order a whipping, was not a rite de passage associated with maturing to manhood but a state that diminished any claim to manliness. (I discuss later the exceptional case of the Spartan diamastivgwsi", the ritual flagellation of ephebes at the altar of Artemis Orthia.) Stoic and Cynic moralists regularly contended that beatings, however brutal, were not a source of veritable injury; Richard Saller notes that this philosophical contention had no impact on a conventional wisdom that persisted in seeing beating and other corporal punishment as inherently degrading.37 The scars of a man’s body tell a story, but not every man’s body tells a war story. We have considered the function of the display of war wounds in firstcentury somatic rhetoric. Josephus describes an incident that illustrates the function of the display of a different kind of wound. In Tarichaeae, Josephus claims, a crowd massed in opposition to him. Feigning capitulation, he agreed to meet with representatives of the crowd. Then he dragged the delegates into the building “and whipped them until their innards were laid bare” (B.J. 2.612). Throwing open the doors, he exhibited the delegates’ flesh, drenched in blood. Intimidated and terrified, the mob dispersed. Commenting on the incident, Maud Gleason writes, “This is the body language of dominance.”38 Josephus’s action endowed him, Gleason notes, “with an air of decisive manliness on the Roman aristocratic model.”39 Relationships of power, of domination and submission, and of honor and shame were enacted somatically. Not all instances of the exhibition or uncovering of marks inflicted by whips were so dramatic. Flogging was the most commonly practiced species of corporal punishment. The ability to order a whipping signaled a person’s dominance over another; the inability to resist a whipping, the dishonor of the person whipped. Within an idiom that was distinctively though not uniquely Roman, corporal punishment was routinely associated with slaves; vulnerability to corporal punishment signaled servility. Over the course of the history of the Roman Republic, the de jure right of all citizens to immunity from corporal punishment in the public sphere, notably from the lictors’ rods, was established; the citizen’s right and, still more, expectation of corporal inviolability extended into the empire.40 Richard Saller has argued that this privilege was translated into domestic bodily hexis, so that, although Roman fathers had the 37
Ibid., 152. Gleason, “Mutilated Messengers,” 59–60. 39 Ibid., 63. 40 Richard A. Bauman explores the complex terrain of criminal penalties, legal status, and social status (Crime and Punishment in Ancient Rome [London: Routledge, 1996], ch. 4). 38
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legal right to beat their sons, in large measure the association of being beaten with dishonor, servility, and submissiveness guaranteed that the backs of legitimate sons were free from the scars that characterized the backs of slaves.41 Dishonorable bodies were whippable; honorable bodies were not.42 Because vulnerability to beating was a servile liability, any free person who was whipped or struck suffered an injury to honor far in excess of whatever temporary pain or permanent mark was inflicted.43 Philo’s account of Flaccus’s campaign against the Jews of Alexandria relies on a corporal idiom associating honor and status with immunity from beating and gradations of dishonor and low status with various kinds of beatings. Writing for an audience unfamiliar with the somatic dialect of Alexandria, Philo spells out its peculiarities. Flaccus ordered the members of the Alexandrian gerousia to be rounded up and taken to a theater, where they became a spectacle. “Then as they stood with their enemies seated in front to signal their disgrace he ordered them all to be stripped and lacerated with scourges which are commonly used for the degradation of the violent malefactors” (10.75). While beating itself dishonored the victims, that dishonor was intensified by Flaccus’s choice of implements: “There are differences between the scourges used in the city, and these differences are regulated by the social standing of the persons to be beaten” (10.78). Members of the gerousia were whipped with the scourge used against the Egyptians, an implement that struck forcibly against the dignity of the Jewish leaders. Philo stresses that Flaccus exhibited his contempt through this choice: For it is surely possible when inflicting degradation on others to find some little thing to sustain their dignity. . . . Surely then it was the height of harshness that when commoners among the Alexandrian Jews, if they appeared to have done things worthy of stripes, were beaten with whips more suggestive of freemen and citizens, the magistrates, the gerousia, whose very name implies age and honour, in this respect fared worse than their inferiors and were treated like Egyptians of the meanest rank and guilty of the greatest inequities. (10.78, 80)
Philo plays on the reader’s comprehension of the semantics of corporal control, as enacted within the corporal vernacular of Alexandria. The outrage is the assimilation of honorable bodies to a degraded habitus. Roman history records a number of instances where honorable persons 41
Saller, “Corporal Punishment, Authority, and Obedience in the Roman Household,” 151. Peter Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970), 141. 43 Virginia Hunter has argued that a similar equation prevailed in classical Athenian thought (Policing Athens: Social Control in the Attic Lawsuits, 420–320 B.C. [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994], 182). See also N. R. E. Fisher, “Hybris and Dishonour: I,” Greece and Rome 23 (1976): 177–93. 42
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whose bodies should have been inviolate were nonetheless subject to whippings by public authorities. Such treatment brought dishonor and ignominy to the one who endured it. Both Cicero and Philo, for example, sought to discredit the perpetrators of what they saw as illegitimate violence. They did not set out to intensify or reinforce the shame of the victims, but they could not erase it. As the climax of his charges against Verres, Cicero recounted the story of the flogging and crucifixion of a Roman citizen, Gavius of Consa. For an audience that would not balk at the sight of a slave being brutalized, Cicero detailed Verres’s treatment of Gavius. Verres ordered that Gavius should be “flung down, stripped naked and tied up in the open market-place” (Verr. 2.62.161). Gavius attempted to avert the beating by announcing his citizenship, but Verres ignored his plea: “He then ordered the man to be flogged severely all over his body. There in the open market-place of Messana a Roman citizen, gentlemen, was beaten with rods; and all the while, amid the crack of the falling blows, no groan was heard from the unhappy man, no words came from his lips in his agony except ‘I am a Roman citizen’” (Verr. 2.66.162). Cicero did not argue that Gavius was impervious to Verres’s insult. Verres was wicked, but he also effectively degraded Gavius, into whose skin an emblem of submissiveness was beaten. Whether Gavius, Paul, or any other victim of the magistrates’ rods was able to resist internalizing such stigmatization is another question, one to which we shall return. The Acts of the Apostles reports that after Peter and other apostles were beaten, they rejoiced that they had been deemed worthy to be dishonored [ajtimasqhvnai] for the sake of Jesus’ name (5:40–41), a formulation that encapsulates the nexus of flogging and dishonor while expressing the idiopathic Christian elevation of abasement. Kathleen McCarthy has argued that, in Plautus, the clever slave, the servus callidus, “may not relish the actual pain involved in whipping but refuses to see this physical act as depriving him of honor.”44 Nonetheless, in ordering a slave to be whipped, a slaveholder acted out a script through which he or she demonstrated mastery over a submissive body. Those witnessing the act appreciated these semiotics; those who later viewed the cutaneous evidence, raw or cicatrized, had no doubt about the story etched by strokes of the whip. This point is difficult for modern audiences to appreciate. For us, the slaveholder occupies a morally untenable position. The practice of corporal punishment is an onerous symbol of the immorality and 44 Kathleen McCarthy, Slaves, Masters, and the Art of Authority in Plautine Comedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 26. See also Erich Segal, Roman Laughter: The Comedy of Plautus (2nd ed.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987); Holt Parker, “Crucially Funny, or Tranio on the Couch: The Servus Callidus and Jokes about Torture,” TAPA 119 (1989): 233–46; William Fitzgerald, Slavery and the Roman Literary Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 32–47.
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dishonor of slaveholding. Quite the opposite was the case in antiquity. Matthew Roller argues, “Physical and legal degradation corresponded in Roman society to moral degradation.”45 That one’s body was whipped and therefore whippable constituted evidence of suspect character. 46 Paul’s whippability—for his announcement that he had been repeatedly lashed and beaten with rods defined him as eminently beatable—marked him as dishonorable, even contemptible. Jonathan Walters has argued that bodily inviolability was an essential component of Roman masculinity.47 To be penetrated, or even to be liable to corporal violation, was inconsistent with respectable masculinity; in order for a man to protect his reputation and his status, he had to (be able to) protect the boundaries of his body from breaches of any kind.48 Men of lower status—particularly, although not exclusively, slaves—were neither required nor able to guard their bodies against various incursions. Walters argues, “Sexual penetration and beating, those two forms of corporeal assault, are in Roman terms structurally equivalent.”49 The festival of the Lupercalia supplies a graphic illustration of the interchangeability of beating and sexual penetration in the Roman sermo corporis. According to Ovid, the Lupercalian practice of publicly whipping respectable matrons, their bodies at times partially or fully exposed, originated in a directive of Juno, who supposedly ordered: “the sacred he-goat must enter the women of Rome.”50 Permitting the Luperci, ministers of Pan Lykaios, to have sexual relations with the matrons would have satisfied Juno’s command. Instead, Juno’s mandate was taken to require that the hide of the 45 Matthew Roller, Constructing Autocracy: Aristocrats and Emperors in Julio-Claudian Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 226. 46 See Maud Gleason’s discussion of the correspondence between social status and moral character (“Truth Contests and Talking Corpses,” in Constructions of the Classical Body [ed. James I. Porter; Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1999], 83–125). 47 Jonathan Walters, “Invading the Roman Body: Manliness and Impenetrability in Roman Thought,” in Roman Sexualities (ed. Judith P. Hallett and Marilyn B. Skinner; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 29–43. 48 See Robert A. Kaster on sexual penetration as a brute expression of social dominance (“The Taxonomy of Patience, or When Is Patientia Not a Virtue?” CP 97 [2002]: 133–44, esp. 141–42). 49 Walters, “Invading the Roman Body,” 39. 50 The vulnerability of respectable Roman matrons to public whippings during the Lupercalia does not nullify the association of whipping with dishonor and servility; rather, the whipping of matrons in a ritual context exemplifies suspension of quotidian rules in a well-defined festival context, the topsy-turvy world of the carnival, which ultimately never threatens mundane order. The Lupercalia was not the only ritual whipping of women in antiquity. Consider also Pausanius’s reference to a festival of Dionysus held at Alea, where, on the model of the Spartan whipping of ephebes at the altar of Artemis Orthia, women were whipped (8.23.1); the evocative but enigmatic frescoes of the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii; and the whipping of enslaved women by freeborn women at the Matralia (Plutarch Quaest. rom. 267D).
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goat ritually slaughtered for the Lupercalia should be cut into thongs, and those thongs used to beat the matrons (Ovid Fast. 2.425–52).51 The functional equivalence of sexual penetration and beating also plays out in Latin vocabulary. J. N. Adams observes, “One of the largest semantic fields from which metaphors for sexual acts were taken in Latin is that of striking, beating, and the like,” particularly in instances where sexual penetration is itself punitive.52 Percidis, for example, with a root meaning of “to hit hard,” serves as a euphemism for both anal penetration and forcible oral penetration by a penis, a usage that is perhaps more common in inscriptions than in literary sources.53 T. P. Wiseman concludes that, for the Romans, the purpose of rape or other coercive sexual activity “was humiliation, to express dominance and treat the victim like a slave (here too the parallel with corporal punishment is close).”54 In Roman political invective, the charge that an official had abused his power could be equally substantiated by the accusation that he had ordered the flogging of a Roman citizen or by the accusation that he had raped respectable wives, sons, and daughters, persons whose protected bodies were sexually forbidden to him.55 (Contemporary academic culture, at least as influenced by feminism, does not consider the victim of rape to be touched by dishonor. This, however, is a recent and by no means universally accepted perspective. In antiquity, although a perpetrator of outrage was responsible for wrongdoing, dishonor nonetheless infected the victim of a rape—or of a beating.56) Not every body that is beaten is sexually penetrated, and, of course, not every body that is sexually penetrated is beaten. Nonetheless, these two kinds of corporal vulnerability were symbolically and practically connected in the first century. Walters writes of the semiotics of power in Roman bodily habitus: “The contours of social status demarcated by the distinction between the sexually penetrable and the impenetrable are, broadly speaking, the same as those 51 At various times in Roman history, the beatings were more or less severe. By the second century, Juno’s mandate seems to have been satisfied by having matrons extend their hands for the Luperci to beat. By the third and fourth centuries, visual evidence (a North African mosaic floor, a Roman sarcophagus) suggests that matrons were stripped and subjected to brutal whippings. For discussion and visual evidence, see T. P. Wiseman, “The God of the Lupercal,” JRS 85 (1995): 1–22. 52 J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 145. 53 In literary sources, see, e.g., Martial 9.47 (where percidis refers to anal penetration) and 2.72 (where percidis seems to refer to forcible oral penetration). See Guillermo Galán G. Vioque, Martial, Book VII: A Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 361. 54 T. P. Wiseman, Catullus and His World: A Reappraisal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 10–14, esp. 12. 55 Dunkle, “Greek Tyrant and Roman Political Invective of the Late Republic.” 56 The whip seems to have inflicted less dishonor than sexual penetration. See, e.g., Livy 8.27.7.
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we see when we examine the distinction between the beatable and the unbeatable.”57 The cluster of meanings associated with the most common forms of corporal vulnerability—vulnerability to sexual penetration and vulnerability to beatings—would color the reactions of first-century Corinthians to Paul’s whippable body. From a distance of two millennia, we may find it difficult to read Paul’s body: are those badges of valor or marks of dishonor? In the first century, however, scar tissue on a breast pierced in battle was readily distinguished from a crosshatching of weals on a back. One variety of anecdote found in Roman histories turns on the semiotics of this dermal distinction.58 During the Sabine wars, Livy tells us, in the days before Roman citizens were guaranteed the immunities later promised them by custom and law, men who should have been recognized as heroes were instead reduced to the indignities of debt bondage. Those whose military service had helped guarantee Roman liberty were virtually enslaved. One old man’s body vividly testified to this outrage. Making himself an example, the old man stood in the forum and “displayed the scars on his breast which bore testimony to his honourable service in battle” (2.23.4). He then told the story of what his life had been like since he had returned from duty. He arrived home to discover his property damaged by the enemy: crops stolen, house torched. Falling into the hands of usurers, his financial situation worsened, until finally his creditors carried him off, “to the chaingang and the torture-chamber. He then showed them his back, disfigured with the wales of recent whipping (2.23.6-7).59 The sight of the old man’s wounds, front and back, incited the crowd. To Roman eyes, a man whose breast was nobly cicatrized should not be subject to the ignominy of the lash. The point of the story is not that the veteran who demonstrated his manliness in battle continued to demonstrate his manliness in other harsh circumstances. Rather, the point is that the veteran whose semeiophoric breast verified his claim to honorable manhood should not be degraded by being treated as less than a man, that is, by treatment only appropriate for those whose contemptibly low status rendered them beatable. Livy does not confuse battle wounds and disciplinary stripes. His anecdote is predicated on the symbolic distinction between these two kinds of corporal markings. III. Earning his stripes Scored in the skin of Livy’s ill-used veteran, front and back, are stories of martial valor and of degradation. Livy is not alone in exploiting the simultane57
Walters, “Invading the Roman Body,” 41. For additional examples of such anecdotes, along with analysis of their function in Roman literature, see Leigh, “Wounding and Popular Rhetoric at Rome,” 210–11. 59 Livy (trans. B. O. Foster; 14 vols.; LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919). 58
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ous sameness and differences of scars. For example, the (mis)identification of humiliating insignia—stripes welted into a back by a whip—as martial crests is familiar from comedy. In a different vein, ancient writers marveled at the Spartan contest of the diamastivgwsi", in which the blood of flagellated ephebes soaked the altar of Artemis Orthia. The diamastivgwsi", generally touted as a ritual enactment of ajndreiva, nonetheless elicited scoffing from some who were unable or unwilling to perceive any instance of subjection to the whip as the mark of a man. A question in reading 2 Cor 10–13 is whether Paul’s contemporaries might, like some modern scholars, read his body as battle-scarred, a question that turns on whether Paul’s contemporaries would treat his endurance of repeated bouts of whipping as noble, admirable, or even respectable. Before we consider the place of 11:23–25 in the argument of chs. 10–13, we therefore consider texts where the marks of whipping or other (typically) humiliating physical assaults are (mis)taken for honorable signs of masculinity. The comedies of Plautus are prominent in discussions of the literary representation of slavery and physical abuse, because, as William Fitzgerald observes, Plautus “continually finds new ways of figuring the immutable fact that the slave is the being who is beaten.”60 Plautus’s slaves, preferring corporal pain to moral or emotional submission, laugh off the incessant stream of abuse directed at them. McCarthy argues that Roman audiences embraced Plautine comedy because each member of the audience “occupies a number of different (and shifting) positions in relation to domination in his or her daily life,” so that “slavery functions in Plautus as a medium for the fantasies and anxieties of the mostly citizen audience.”61 Because, in the complex hierarchy of Roman society, each audience member had to submit daily to the authority of some dominant figure, the intransigence of comic slaves evoked appreciative laughter: “[P]hysical pain is only part of the effect of whipping intended by the master; what whipping is supposed to accomplish is branding the slave with marks of shame and dishonor that go far deeper than the scars on the skin. . . . But when we think of the clever slave’s attitude towards whipping, it is exactly this degradation that is missing. . . . In fact, the most consistent attitude expressed by clever slaves is to talk about their scars as a mark of honor.”62 The Plautine slave’s identification of bruises and welts as marks of honor includes, in places, explicit reliance on martial imagery. In Asinaria, for exam60
W. Fitzgerald, Slavery and the Roman Literary Imagination, 38. McCarthy, Slaves, Masters, and the Art of Authority in Plautine Comedy, x. 62 Ibid., 27. For an alternate view, see Joseph J. Hughes, who defines the servus callidus as “a braggart who . . . gleefully usurp[s] the language of almost every profession and social standing to glorify his next move” (“Inter tribunal et scaenum: Comedy and Rhetoric at Rome,” in Roman Eloquence: Rhetoric in Society and Literature [ed. William J. Dominik; London: Routledge, 1997], 182–97, esp. 184). 61
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ple, the slaves Libanus and Leonida produce lists of each other’s acts of valor. Leonida notes that Libanus was repeatedly suspended and beaten by eight strong men. Libanus, in turn, notes that, by his indifference to beating, Leonida wore out eight lictors. Combat duty, Libanus suggests: “All these regiments, battalions, and armies of theirs have been put to flight, after fierce fighting. . . . Who’s a more valiant man than I am at absorbing blows?” (555–57).63 McCarthy argues that the audience derives pleasure from such verbal bandying because they identify—temporarily—with the slaves who resist customary submissiveness. Through this limited identification, the audience member imagines acting out of a subjectivity that is not inscribed by the dominating will of another. While McCarthy offers a compelling reading of the social function of humor in the comedies of Plautus, the success of individual jokes is nonetheless contingent on the audience’s instinctive acknowledgment of the difference between dishonorable and honorable corporal marks. A scene from Curculio offers an example of another servile character who, in jest, identifies his dishonorable markings as badges of valor. Curculio is not a slave but a parasite; according to literary stereotype, parasites, in service to their bellies, are willing to dishonor themselves by absorbing both verbal insults and the physical humiliations of vicious practical jokes.64 Lyco, a banker, encounters Curculio on the street and mocks him by calling attention to the fact that one of his eyes is bandaged. Curculio insists that he lost his eye to a catapult shot. Lyco replies, “Oh well, little I care whether it was shot out, or knocked out when a pot of cinders was cracked on your head” (396–97). In an aside, Curculio acknowledges Lyco’s prescience, but he still parries, “I won the honourable wound beneath this bandage in defense of my country and, I beg you, do not outrage me in public” (399–400). Curculio, Lyco, and the audience know that Curculio has not fought for anything other than the satiety of his guts; the humor derives from the incongruity of calling a brand of dishonor a badge of honor. Paul never labels his own marks battle scars, nor does he use the language of military engagement to describe his subjection to whip and rod. Perhaps one reason that he avoids such an explicit comparison is the realization that the analogy would open him to mockery, a mockery that, at least in Corinth under the influence of the superapostles, would further erode recognition of his authority as an apostle. At the same time, Paul’s habit of listing his beatings alongside—as no different in kind from—his other tribulations raises the possibility that, like a slave in a comedy, he refuses to be defined by the whip’s degrading inscription of his skin. I return to this question in my analysis of the place of Paul’s boasting of beatings (2 Cor 11:23–25) in the argument of chs. 63 Plautus (trans. Paul Nixon; 5 vols.; LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1916). 64
Athenaeus Deipn. 6.239–40; 6.250a.
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10–13. First, however, I consider a ritual in which strokes of the whip spelled honor rather than dishonor, the marks of a whipping signs of manhood rather than imprints of servility. In the Spartan flagellation contest, the diamastivgwsi", elite young men vied at the altar of Artemis Orthia to determine who would be last to withdraw from the savage whipping: blood saturating the shredded flesh of his back, the winner’s indifference to pain proclaimed his virile courage and self-control.65 Tertullian cited the diamastivgwsi" as the pinnacle of pagan fortitude (Apol. 50.9; Mart. 4.8; Nat. 1.18). Inspired by Tertullian, we may wonder whether Paul’s endurance of repeated whippings qualified him as at least a rival of the contestants. The diamastivgwsi" was a popular spectacle in the Roman era. Some contestants apparently died as a result of the severe whipping; Plutarch, a spectator, claimed to have witnessed contestants at the point of death (Lyc. 18.1).66 Cicero, who also alluded to visiting Sparta for the ritual, typifies the assessment of most who refer to the ritual: the flagellation contest was exemplary training in masculinity (Tusc. 2.14.34; 2.18.43). After you have witnessed the fortitude of Spartan youths, Cicero demanded, would you, “if some pain happen to give you a twitch, cry out like a woman and not endure resolutely and calmly?” (2.19.46). The diamastivgwsi" thus represented one highly circumscribed instance in the script of ancient masculinity where the degrading connotations of being whipped were overwritten by the hegemonic masculine virtue of self-control.67 At the diamastivgwsi" the identification of stripes from a whip with insignia of valor was something other than a laughing matter. Still, some laughed. So strong was the association between flogging and dishonor that even the stylized whipping at the altar of Artemis Orthia elicited expressions of contempt. Both Lucian and Philostratus record such voices, although since those voices are heard in the context of dialogues, neither Lucian nor Philostratus explicitly espouses the position that participants in the ritual flogging are thereby degraded. At the same time, neither rejects that position. In Lucian’s dialogue Anacharsis, or Athletics, two legendary figures, the Athenian Solon and the Scythian Anacharsis, debate the merits of the quintessentially Greek practice of athletics. The dialogue culminates in a discussion of the diamastivgwsi". Anacharsis diagnoses the Greek belief that this 65 For a collection of testimonia to the diamastivgwsi", see Nigel M. Kennell, The Gymnasium of Virtue: Education and Culture in Ancient Sparta (Studies in the History of Greece and Rome; Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 149–61. 66 Ibid., 74: “Although death was not common, its mere possibility added a tangible element of risk for the ephebes to confront.” 67 On self-control, particularly in excruciating circumstances, as the hegemonic masculine virtue, see Moore and Anderson, “Taking It like a Man.” See also Craig A. Williams, Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 138–42.
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ritual whipping of young men inculcates manliness in them as a risible sign of madness. He asks Solon why, if the practice is so meritorious, the Athenians have not adopted it. When Solon responds that the Athenians are content with their own exercises, Anacharsis guffaws: “No: you understand, I think, what it is like to be flogged naked, holding up one’s arms. . . . Oh, if ever I am at Sparta at the time when they are doing this I expect I shall be very soon stoned to death by them publicly for laughing at them every time I see them getting beaten like robbers or sneak-thieves or similar malefactors” (39).68 So indelible is the imprint of humiliation on one who is whipped that Anacharsis insultingly refuses to allow the possibility that the whip might inscribe honor on a man’s body.69 In Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius of Tyana, the association of whipping with servility prevents the Egyptian sage Thespesion from perceiving any wisdom in the Spartan contest. Thespesion asks Apollonius to confirm what he has heard—that Spartans are beaten publicly—and Apollonius assures him that the most noble and distinguished are so beaten. “‘Then what do they do to household slaves,’” Thespesion asks, “‘when they do wrong?’” Learning that the Spartans employ the same whip [mavstix] both at the altar of Artemis Orthia and in the punishment of servile wrongdoers, Thespesion presses further: “‘Then these excellent Hellenes are not ashamed . . . to reflect that they are governed by men who are whipped before the eyes of all?’” Rebutting the argument that ritual submission to the whip teaches virile self-control and fortitude, Thespesion asks: Why teach a patient endurance suited only for a slave [ajndravpodon]? (6.20). 70 No matter the circumstances, Thespesion implies, a man who is whipped loses his claim to honor: so what kind of people would acknowledge the authority of leaders who had been publicly whipped? Neither dialogue (between Solon and Anacharsis, between Thespesion and Apollonius) has a victor; the genre of dialogue allows multiple voices to be heard and to remain in play. However, discussion of the flagellation contest effectively brings each dialogue to a close. Both Solon and Apollonius claim that there are further arguments to be made in defense of the ritual—but each demurs from making such arguments. Spectators gazing at the naked bodies of adolescents lashed until bloody assure us that they are witnessing a ritual of initiation into manhood; mocking laughter from Anacharsis and Thespesion challenges the contention that a back 68
Lucian (trans. A. M. Harmon; 8 vols.; LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1921). 69 See discussions of Anacharsis, or Athletics in Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and the Roman Empire, 123–25; R. Bracht Branham, Unruly Eloquence: Lucian and the Comedy of Traditions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Pres, 1989), 83–102. 70 Philostratus, The Life of Apollonius of Tyana (trans. F. C. Conybeare; 2 vols.; LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1917).
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may honorably earn its stripes. Although most writers who refer to the diamastivgwsi" emphasize the virile self-control of contestants, Thespesion’s question—Why teach a patient endurance suited only for a slave?—is predicated on the servile and degrading associations of any subjection to the whip. A male slave’s endurance of countless floggings was not validation of masculine fortitude but confirmation of his exclusion from a socially recognized manhood.71 Who might have interpreted the stripes on Paul’s back as honorable emblems of battles fought, contests won? In Corinth, a chance glimpse of Paul’s stivgmata—or a recital of his humiliations by whip and rod—would have been more likely to elicit contempt than admiration. In 2 Cor 10–13, Paul must reassert his apostolic authority while countering Corinthian reaction to his evident whippability.
IV. Boasting of Beatings Paul’s story, as known in the Corinthian churches, has somatic dimensions (see 2 Cor 10:1, 10). In 2 Cor 11:23–25, Paul provides greater detail about the blows to which he has alluded in several previous letters to the Corinthians (1 Cor 4:11; 2 Cor 6:5); we may easily imagine that Paul also spoke about those incidents when he was in Corinth, and even speculate that he had—intentionally or not—exposed fleshy souvenirs of those episodes.72 In 11:23–25, however, Paul not only specifies the frequency and type of floggings to which he has been subjected: he boasts about those beatings. An emerging consensus holds that Paul’s boasting in the fool’s speech (11:21b–12:10) exhibits familiarity with protocols of self-praise in rhetorical theory and practice.73 No such consensus holds regarding the content of Paul’s boasting. While some scholars treat Paul’s 71 In enduring beatings, a slave was perceived to embody patientia, but not patientia as a virtue allied to fortitude, rather, patientia as “the essence of slavery . . . not a testing and assertion of will . . . but a complete absence of will by someone at the rock bottom of the social hierarchy” (Kaster, “Taxonomy of Patience,” 138–39). On slavery and masculinity, see Jennifer A. Glancy, Slavery in Early Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 24–29, 34–38. 72 I regard 2 Cor 10–13 as a discrete letter, written later than 2 Cor 1–9 (constituting an earlier letter, or possibly letters). However, that position is irrelevant to my arguments regarding the function of Paul’s boasting of beatings in the context of the argument of these chapters; the same arguments hold if chs. 10–13 conclude a longer letter. 73 E. A. Judge, “The Conflict of Educational Aims in New Testament Thought,” Journal of Christian Education 9 (1966): 32–45; idem, “Paul’s Boasting in Relation to Contemporary Professional Practice,” ABR 16 (1968): 37–50; Hans Dieter Betz, “De Laude Ipsius (Moralia 539A– 547B),” in Plutarch’s Ethical Writings and Early Christian Literature (ed. Hans Dieter Betz; Leiden: Brill, 1978), 367–93; Christopher Forbes, “Comparison, Self-Praise, and Irony: Paul’s Boasting and the Conventions of Hellenistic Rhetoric,” NTS 32 (1986): 1–30; Scott Hafemann, “‘Self-Commendation’ and Apostolic Legitimacy in 2 Corinthians: A Pauline Dialectic?” NTS 36
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listing of hardships in 11:23b–33 as an ironic inversion of first-century values, others—seemingly a majority—argue that this same listing is consistent with the Greco-Roman rhetorical practice of acknowledging hardships, often as demonstrations of virile fortitude. Few scholars distinguish among the hardships listed in 11:23–33, so that survival of a shipwreck appears to be as dishonorable—or honorable—as endurance of lash and rod.74 Acknowledgment of the specific meanings of flogged bodies in a first-century habitus is essential for appreciation of Paul’s rhetorical strategy in the fool’s speech. Ancient Scars, Modern Eyes Writing of Paul’s tribulations, scholars sometimes imply that the very fact of adversity carried a social stigma in the first century. Timothy B. Savage writes, for example, that 2 Cor 11:23-29 is “a list of personal afflictions so horrific that it would have elicited feelings of extreme contempt among his readers. By boasting of such humiliations the apostle would seem to be reveling in his disgrace.”75 Such a broad assertion that the Corinthians would find the tribulations of 2 Cor 11:23–33 to be contemptible is untenable.76 We consid-
(1990): 66–88; Frederick W. Danker, “Paul’s Debt to the De Corona of Demosthenes: A Study of Rhetorical Techniques in 2 Corinthians,” in Persuasive Artistry: Studies in New Testament Rhetoric in Honor of George A. Kennedy (ed. Duane F. Watson; JSNTSup 50; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), 262–80; Glenn S. Holland, “Speaking Like a Fool: Irony in 2 Corinthians 10–13,” in Rhetoric and the New Testament: Essays from the 1992 Heidelberg Conference (ed. Stanley E. Porter and Thomas H. Olbricht; JSNTSup 90; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993, repr., 2001), 250–64; Margaret M. Mitchell, “A Patristic Perspective on Pauline periautologiva,” NTS 47 (2001): 354–71; Duane F. Watson, “Paul’s Boasting in 2 Corinthians 10–13 as Defense of His Honor: A Socio-Rhetorical Analysis,” in Rhetorical Argumentation in Biblical Texts: Essays from the Lund 2000 Conference (ed. Anders Ericksson, Thomas H. Olbricht, and Walter Überlacker; Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2002), 260–75. 74 Forbes is an exception: “‘Labours’ is of course an entirely respectable topic, but imprisonments and beatings by both the Jewish and Roman authorities, not to mention stonings, are hardly calculated to inspire confidence in the respectability of anyone’s position” (“Comparison, SelfPraise, and Irony,” 19). 75 Timothy B. Savage, Power through Weakness: Paul’s Understanding of the Christian Ministry in 2 Corinthians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 63. See also Stanley B. Marrow, Paul: His Letters and His Theology (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist, 1980), 183; David E. Garland, “Paul’s Apostolic Authority: The Power of Christ’s Sustaining Weakness (2 Corinthians 10–13),” RevExp 86 (1989): 371–89, esp. 375; Hafemann, “‘Self-Commendation’ and Apostolic Legitimacy in 2 Corinthians”; Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, The Theology of the Second Letter to the Corinthians (New Testament Theology; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 115. 76 Against the view that Paul’s clandestine getaway from Damascus (2 Cor 11:32–33) was intrinsically humiliating, L. L. Welborn has adduced convincing evidence that clever escapes could be seen not as weak maneuvers but as daring and expedient tactics (“The Runaway Paul,” HTR 92 [1999]: 115–63, esp. 117). Additionally, he has demonstrated that the mime forms part of the backdrop against which the Corinthians would respond to Paul’s “foolishness.” I am not, however, con-
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ered at length the speech Sallust composes for Marius. His iteration of hardships is, in a number of respects, parallel to Paul’s. Marius boasts repeatedly of toil and dangers, including exposure to the elements, rough sleeping conditions, fatigue, and privation of necessities, just as Paul’s speech itemizes his “toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked” (2 Cor 11:27).77 Both Marius and Paul follow standard canons of self-praise by including such elements. In his treatise on the acceptable parameters of self-praise, Plutarch outlines the reasons one might, in the context of self-praise, speak of what is not transparently praiseworthy. He writes, “when faults not altogether degrading [aijscrov"] or ignoble are set down beside the praise they do away with envy. Many blunt the edge of envy by occasionally inserting into their own praise a confession of poverty and indigence or actually of low birth” (Mor. 544B).78 Along with such extrinsic “antidotes [favrmaka] to self-boasting,” one may boast even more effectively of hardships and perils “inherent in the very content of the praise,” that is, challenges confronted for the sake of the audience one addresses. Plutarch supplies the example of Cato, who went without sleep for his country’s good (544D). To characterize the entirety of 11:23–33 as a catalogue of humiliations thus ignores the theory and practice of self-praise in antiquity.79 While even poverty and low birth could surface in boasting of oneself, Plutarch tells us that what is aijscrov"—degrading, dishonorable, disgraceful, infamous—plays no role in a litany of self-praise (Mor. 544B), a point overlooked by many scholars who argue that, in boasting of hardships, Paul adheres to first-century canons of self-praise. Hans Dieter Betz, for example, writes, “In Laud. ips. Plutarch argues that men fighting Tyche are admired for propping vinced by his overall thesis, that in the fool’s speech Paul enacts the role of a mime and that particular verses of the fool’s speech correspond to particular characters known from mime. For example, he claims that an audience would have recognized the stock character of the “leading slave” in 11:21b–23 because Paul there boasts of what he dares to do and of his office. Given both the brevity of the pericope and the looseness of the connections, I do not think the Corinthians would have inferred that Paul spoke in these verses as a “leading slave.” Nor does Welborn offer sufficient evidence to support his suggestion that within such a short performance a mime might enact a dizzying variety of roles. 77 I thus disagree with the scope of Watson’s contention that Paul “boasts of what is degrading and ignoble: his imprisonments, floggings, whippings, beatings with rods, and being hungry, cold, and naked. Brushes with the law and lack of necessities were not virtues in his culture” (“Paul’s Boasting in 2 Corinthians as Defense of His Honor,” 273). 78 Plutarch’s Moralia (trans. Phillip H. De Lacy and Benedict Einarson; 15 vols.; LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959). 79 Moreover, in order to espouse the position that, when Paul boasts of himself, he boasts exclusively of things that exhibit weakness (cf. 12:5), one would have to maintain that Paul represents himself as weak when he boasts that he is a Hebrew, an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, and a minister of Christ.
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up courage and for overcoming self-pity, lamenting, and self-abasement”; thus, Paul’s boasting of weaknesses (2 Cor 11:30) was “by no means alien to the culture.”80 As he details his labors and hardships, Paul exhibits familiarity with conventions for self-praise. However, his enumeration of repeated instances in which he was publicly flogged violates expectations for such boasting: subjection to whip and rod was aijscrov". In their emphasis on the manliness of confronting manifold physical challenges, contemporary scholars assimilate the stripes scored in Paul’s flesh to cicatrized emblems of martial valor while ignoring the power relations—of legal status, domination and submission, honor and shame—incarnated in flogged bodies by Roman habitus.81 Several influential works on Paul’s use of peristaseis catalogues lay the groundwork for the position, by now widely held, that Paul’s endurance of tribulations testifies to his fortitude.82 John T. Fitzgerald argues that Paul’s opponents boasted “of their hardships as diakonoi of Christ and that their letters of recommendation contained peristaseis catalogs.”83 While Fitzgerald suggests that the content of Paul’s boasting would resemble that of the superapostles, he does not offer a systematic analysis of 2 Cor 11:23–33.84 In his 80
Betz, “De Laude Ipsius (Moralia 539A-547B),” 388. For a sampling of related positions, see Ralph P. Martin, who writes that Paul endured countless blows “as a sign of courage” (2 Corinthians [WBC 40; Waco: Word Books, 1986], 376); Ernest Best, who writes, “How many untold stories of courage, compassion, and endurance lie behind this list!” (Second Corinthians [IBC; Atlanta: John Knox, 1987], 114); Danker, who writes that Paul “displays courage” in 11:23–27, “a catalogue of perils . . . which have the net effect of establishing his own personal prestige” (“Paul’s Debt to the De Corona of Demosthenes,” 272, 277); Colin G. Kruse, who writes that “the trials list of vv. 23–29 . . . could be construed as triumphalist” (The Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians: An Introduction and Commentary [TynNTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991], 193); A. E. Harvey, who writes that “piling on case after case of apparently heroic endurance was a rhetorical device from which Paul may well have drawn perhaps unconscious inspiration” (Renewal through Suffering: A Study of 2 Corinthians [Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996], 99); Bruce J. Malina and Jerome H. Neyrey, who write that Paul boasts of his “strength and might” in 2 Cor 11:23–33: “Paul claims superiority to them [his rivals] in terms of his deeds of the body. . . . He actually numbers his beatings . . . to emphasize strength and endurance” (Portraits of Paul: An Archaeology of Ancient Personality [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996], 58); Jan Lambrecht, who writes that, in 11:23–33 (and other passages), “Paul was admirably, heroically strong!” (“Dangerous Boasting: Paul’s Self-Commendation in 2 Cor 10–13,” in The Corinthian Correspondence [ed. R. Bieringer; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1996], 325– 46, esp. 338); Lambrecht also writes that in “vv 23b–28, Paul proves his own superiority by listing external hardships, adverse circumstances . . .” (idem, Second Corinthians [SacPag 8; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999], 198); Holland, “Speaking Like a Fool,” 259. 82 A martial context is also implicit, though unacknowledged, in Klassen’s argument that Antipater’s stripping to reveal his wounded (battle-scarred) body helps us better understand Paul’s stivgmata, which testify to his “loyalty to Jesus,” the result of “the service which he had rendered Jesus” (“Galatians 6:17”). 83 J. Fitzgerald, Cracks in an Earthen Vessel, 25. 84 Ibid., 26 n. 97. 81
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treatment of 6:3–10, he classifies Paul’s “blows, imprisonments, and riots” under the putative category of “catalog of punishments” (noting that riots, while not themselves a punishment, frequently provoke punishment). However, the examples that Fitzgerald cites in his treatment of “catalog of punishments” do not establish that boasting of corporal punishment was an established practice.85 Moreover, while he adumbrates examples from Greco-Roman literature in which heroic men boast of scars, he fails to note that these men are war heroes who earned their scars in combat, nor does he acknowledge that some scars spell out ignominious tales.86 Both Robert Hodgson and Martin Ebner cite traditions of Alexander and Heracles as a context for understanding Paul’s self-boasting in 11:23–29.87 They quote at length from passages in Plutarch and Arrian where Alexander itemizes dangers he has confronted; Hodgson comments that the Alexandrine tribulation lists are “reminiscent of the buffetings, famines, storms, rivers, and treachery of 2 Cor 11:23–29.”88 Alexander announces, “My body bears many a token [suvmbolon] of an opposing Fortune” (Plutarch Mor. 327A), and he continues to detail the dangers of a sustained military campaign, including not only famine but also “storms, droughts, deep rivers” (327C). Since Paul writes of shipwrecks, drifting at sea, and dangerous rivers, the parallelism is, to a certain extent, clear. Alexander’s “buffetings,” however, have nothing to do with subjection to whip and rod, but with combat injuries. According to Arrian, Alexander challenges his troops: “Let anyone who carries wounds strip himself and show them; I too will show mine. For I have no part of my body, in front at least, that is unwounded; there is no weapon, used at close quarters, or hurled from afar, of which I do not carry the trace” (Arrian Anab. 7.9.1–2).89 Without explicitly describing the markings of Paul’s body as battle scars, Hodgson reads Paul’s body as telling a soldierly tale: he mistakes the humiliating insignia carved on Paul’s flesh by whip and rod for virile emblems of martial valor.90 85
Ibid., 193, 48. Fitzgerald is hardly alone in this oversight. Danker, for example, refers readers to Aeschines’s Against Ctesiphon on “the receipt of honor for endurance of hardships.” The passage to which Danker refers involves public inscriptions celebrating soldiers who endured much toil and great dangers while on a successful military campaign (Aeschines Ctes. 183–85; Danker, “Paul’s Debt to the De Corona of Demosthenes,” 265 n. 2). 87 Hodgson, “Paul the Apostle and First Century Tribulation Lists,” 76–80; Martin Ebner, Leidenslisten und Apostelbrief: Untersuchungen zu Form, Motivik, und Funktion der Peristasenkataloge bei Paulus (FB 66; Würzburg: Echter, 1991), 118–22, 161–72. 88 Hodgson, “Paul the Apostle and First Century Tribulation Lists,” 76. 89 Arrian, History of Alexander and Indica (trans. E. Iliff Robson; LCL; 2 vols.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929). 90 Hodgson cites Ananus’s speech in Josephus’s Jewish War as “illuminating comparative material for Paul’s trial lists.” Ananus attacks the Jerusalem populace for their complacency, specifically mentioning that they did not protest even when flogged. Hodgson writes, “In passing, one 86
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While Hodgson seeks parallels for Paul’s tribulation lists outside Stoic literature, John Fitzgerald and Ebner draw extensively on Stoic and Cynic peristaseis catalogues, particularly those of Seneca and Epictetus.91 For Seneca and Epictetus, physical pain and public humiliation are matters of indifference; they argue that, while a man should not deliberately seek such experiences, endurance of wrongful corporal punishment is nonetheless virtuous. To advocate indifference to the pain and ignominy of being whipped, however, does not establish beatings as a legitimate subject for boasting. Moreover, as we think about Paul’s storytelling body in a Corinthian context, we should recall Richard Saller’s insistence that the philosophical contention that being whipped did not degrade a man had no impact on the perceptions of a public shaped by a habitus in which servility and dishonor were incarnated by whippability.92 This is due, in part, to the conservatism of habitus, which, Bourdieu argues, “tends to ensure its own constancy and its defense against change through the selection it makes within new information by rejecting information capable of calling into question its accumulated information.”93 An argument for the moral indifference of a whipped body would not expunge the ingrained habit of reacting to a whipped body with contempt. The question of attitudes toward endurance of pain and humiliation crystallizes a difficulty inherent in relying on Seneca and Epictetus to reconstruct an intellectual “background” for Paul. Seneca is a contemporary of Paul; Epictetus a generation younger. If Seneca and Epictetus transmit changeless Stoic doctrines, then we may be justified in relying on them as we flesh out an intellectual milieu that also shaped Paul. However, Seneca’s writing represents a break with earlier Stoic traditions on a number of counts, particularly with respect to the body in pain. Catharine Edwards notes a tension between Seneca’s concern with the body and older Stoic indifference to bodily status.94 Brent D. Shaw similarly notes that Seneca treats the “nexus of pain, torture and endurance/patience” with a novel intensity.95 Seneca plays a pivotal role in the story of Roman letters during the first century, a century in which—at least in will want to note the material agreement with 2 Cor . . . 11:23–29 in the matter of beating.” He does not acknowledge that the passage from Josephus stresses the humiliation of being flogged (“Paul the Apostle and First Century Tribulation Lists,” 69). 91 J. Fitzgerald, Cracks in an Earthen Vessel; Ebner, Leidenslisten und Apostelbrief, esp. 112–15. 92 Saller, “Corporal Punishment, Authority, and Obedience in the Roman Household,” 152. 93 Bourdieu, Logic of Practice, 60–61. 94 Catharine Edwards, “The Suffering Body: Philosophy and Pain,” in Constructions of the Classical Body (ed. James I. Porter; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 252–68, esp. 254. See also Roller, Constructing Autocracy, 103–6. 95 Brent D. Shaw, “Body/Power/Identity: Passions of the Martyrs,” JECS 4 (1996): 269–312, esp. 292.
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part because of a shifting political landscape—traditional values were being transformed.96 As a result, although the relationship between Senecan and Pauline attitudes toward corporal pain and public degradation merits consideration, we cannot rely on Seneca (or, later, Epictetus) to reconstruct the habitus that shaped Corinthian response to Paul’s whippable body. The paradoxical nature of Paul’s boasting of beating eludes many commentators. Regarding Paul’s declaration that on three occasions he had been beaten with rods, commentators are chiefly concerned to establish that, although Roman law prohibited magistrates from ordering the flogging of a citizen, social reality did not always conform to legal mandate.97 Citizens were occasionally beaten. By focusing on the juristic implications of the scene— whether Paul’s vulnerability to magistrates’ rod belies Luke’s ascription of citizenship to him—commentators overlook the meaning of such treatment for those shaped by Roman habitus. Citizen or not, free or slave, a beaten body was a dishonored body; any free person who was publicly stripped and battered with rods suffered an effective reduction in social status.98 Even a single occasion of flogging dishonored a man; multiple occasions of flogging would raise questions about the character of a man unable or unwilling to guard his body against violation, who might even be perceived to invite such treatment.99 On five occasions, Jewish leaders whipped Paul. According to Deuteronomy, official whippings were restricted to forty lashes because more stripes would degrade the recipient of the blows (25:3).100 Gentiles in the Corinthian churches were unlikely to be familiar with this scriptural scruple: thirty-nine 96 A story well told in Carlin A. Barton, “Savage Miracles: The Redemption of Lost Honor in Roman Society and the Sacrament of the Gladiator and the Martyr,” Representations 45 (1994): 41–71; idem, Roman Honor. 97 Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962), 410; C. K. Barrett, A Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (BNTC; New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 297; R. Martin, 2 Corinthians, 377; Victor Paul Furnish, II Corinthians: Translated with Introduction, Notes, and Commentary (AB 32A; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984), 517; Frederick W. Danker, II Corinthians (ACNT; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1989), 182; Kruse, Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, 196; Paul Barnett, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 543; Margaret E. Thrall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (2 vols.; ICC; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1994, 2000), 739–42. 98 “For a high-status person to be subjected to one of these typically ‘servile’ punishments was regarded as singularly damaging to his status” (Roller, Constructing Autocracy, 205). 99 Georges Bataille’s observation that “no greater drive exists than a wounded person’s need for another wound” raises another series of questions—outside the scope of this article—about Paul’s submission to repeated beatings (Guilty [trans. Bruce Boone; Venice, CA: Lapis Press, 1988], 31). F. Gerald Downing suggests that, after the manner of a Cynic, Paul incited violence against himself (Cynics, Paul, and the Pauline Churches [London: Routledge, 1998], 155–56). 100 In this context, Hans Windisch notes that Paul ultimately received 195 lashes (Der zweite Korintherbrief [KEK; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1924], 355).
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lashes would constitute thirty-nine strikes against the recipient’s integrity.101 Perhaps more importantly, other references to the thirty-nine lashes dating from the Roman era exhibit no concern for the dignity of the one whipped; in fact, these texts insist on the degrading character of the punishment. Josephus represents the thirty-nine lashes as an explicitly disgraceful penalty, inflicted on free persons only because they first outrage their own honor through enslavement to wealth (Ant. 4.8.21). The story Josephus reads in the imposition of the thirty-nine lashes is informed by a Roman habitus: whipping, which brings dishonor to the one who is whipped, is suitable only for slaves, so one who is whipped, even if legally free, warrants description as servile. The mishnaic elaboration of administration of the thirty-nine lashes dwells on abasing dimensions of the practice, with no recognition of the scriptural hesitancy to avoid inscribing degradation along with the stripes (m. Mak. 3.12–14): The offender may not stand upright during the whipping, but must bend low. Synagogue officials bind the offender’s hands to pillars and grab the offender’s garments, ripping them so that the upper torso is naked. With all his strength, the synagogue leader wields the leather whip, delivering one-third of the strokes to the front of the torso and two-thirds to the back. (Marks of a whip slashing across a man’s chest would not, however, be mistaken for pectoral war wounds.) The rabbis consider possible denouements for the beating: it may be so severe, for example, that the one who is whipped dies. Or the humiliation of the beating may have a scatological outcome, in which case the punishment is halted, presumably because the end of abjection has been achieved: “If he [that was scourged] befouled himself whether with excrement or urine, he is exempt [from the rest of the stripes]. R. Judah says: A man [is exempt only if he befouled himself] with excrement, and a woman [if she befouled herself] with urine” (m. Mak. 3.14).102 Given the complex relationship of legal texts to lived reality, we should not take the mishnaic scene as an accurate description of the delivery of the thirtynine lashes in the first or even the second century. Moreover, few (if any) Corinthian Christians would have witnessed a synagogue whipping. They had, however, observed many other whippings, mostly of slaves, and they could envisage—more easily than we can—the public humiliation, the instantiation of relationships of dominance and subjection, honor and dishonor, carved into Paul’s lowered, stripped, flinching body. Paul says that, if he must boast, he will boast of things that exhibit his weakness (2 Cor 11:30). When he boasts of beatings, he boasts of what is 101 By the first century C.E., the forty lashes seem to have been customarily meted out stopping one stroke short of the fortieth snap of the whip. 102 The Mishnah (trans. Herbert Danby; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933).
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aijscrov": dishonorable, degrading, and ultimately, morally suspect. To us, Paul’s endurance of brutal whippings may be more likely to betoken heroism than contemptible weakness and abasement. In our postures and demeanors, we embody a different sociopolitical mythology.103 Shaw argues that Paul’s writings played a key role in modification of the classical corporal hexis. He writes: The connection between bodily position and moral evaluation, and the revolution in values connected with valuing the inferior, the humble, the womanly, that which merely accepts and endures (from a prone position) is clearly indicated by the history of the words that were used to describe being low to the ground or prone—tapeinos and allied terms (meaning low, prone, close to the ground, and consistently associated with being poor, weak, insignificant, and womanly). . . . The almost palpable association of moral status and bodily position was so strong and so inalterable that the classical conceptions that pervaded the thought-world of the Greek polis and all its successor ideologies surrendered no ground on this matter. To be tapeinos . . . had an indelible connection with shame, humiliation, degradation and, inexorably, with that which was morally bad. . . . It is the Christian writings . . . that revolutionize these values wholly by their total inversion. Paul boasts of his selfabasement and humility. . . . Indeed, he actually creates a new virtue— tapeinosophrune (tapeinosofruvnh) [sic, for tapeinofrosuvnh]—the voluntary abasement of the self and one’s body.104
The Story of a Body As Paul confronts a challenge to his apostolic authority in Corinth, he commits what may seem like a tactical error: he boasts of his beatings. Why does he highlight his corporal abasement during a crisis of Corinthian confidence in his apostolic authority? On a strategic level, Paul’s whippability is already an issue in Corinth: he cannot avoid the topic. Paul has previously written—and likely spoken about—his beatings. The charges brought by the superapostles implicate his somatic vulnerability; one gambit for confronting such 103 John Chrysostom’s reading of Paul’s storytelling body points to the modification of classical bodily hexis in late antiquity. He says that, like a soldier emerging bloody from battle, Paul bears in his body evidence of manly virtue [ajndragaqiva], so that Paul’s exhibition of wounds in Gal 6:17 is more persuasive than any argument he might make in his own defense. Chrysostom, however, introduces this reading of Paul’s body by noting its peculiarity, since in Gal 6:17 Paul seems to vaunt what is disgraceful [o[neido"] (Hom. Gal. 6.4). Would the Corinthians likewise infer that Paul’s corporal markings spell out a martial story? Even after centuries of mounting Christian influence, Chrysostom—who, unlike the Corinthians, has no doubts about Paul’s authority—acknowledges the degradation of Paul’s bodily appearance. Chrysostom is informed by centuries of Christian tradition—along with his own close reading of Paul—in his positive valuation of Paul’s abased mien, although even he is unable to free himself entirely from the sense that Paul’s wounds are shameful. 104 Shaw, “Body/Power/Identity,” 303–4.
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charges is to disarm the opponent by admitting the accuracy of the charges.105 Beyond such practical considerations, Paul perceives that in his marked body the story of Jesus’ passion is legible.106 He thus has both tactical and theological reasons for boasting of his publicly humiliating beatings. We learn from 2 Cor 10:1–11 that the Corinthians have Paul’s body on their minds. 1 Corinthians 4:9–13 informs us of one way Paul presented his beaten body at a time when his authority was not under attack from the superapostles, a self-presentation relevant to later Corinthian reaction to Paul’s corpus. Describing himself as weak and dishonored (4:10), Paul writes, “To the present hour we are hungry and thirsty, we are poorly clothed and beaten [kolafizovmeqa] and homeless, and we grow weary from the work of our own hands” (1 Cor 4:11–12a). Two vivid images bracket this list of hardships. Introducing the list, Paul pictures himself as a prisoner condemned to death in an amphitheater, in a cosmic spectacle orchestrated by God (4:9). Concluding the list, Paul describes himself as filthy waste (4:13). The latter metaphor suggests that Paul perceives his travails as a missionary, including the public abuse of his body in beatings, to leave him in a state of abject contemptibility.107 How does the inaugural metaphor of spectacle inform a reading of Paul’s body, limp from beatings? Carlin A. Barton writes of the “extreme ambiguity” associated with gladiators and also with those, not themselves gladiators, condemned to die in the arena: “Gladiators were the defeated and humiliated outcasts from society and the most highly charged and sacred warriors within the community. They inspired both worship and disgust, emulation and loathing, sympathy and revulsion.” 108 Within the frame of the spectacle, one who 105 Barton discusses this as a strategy of Roman literature of the early Empire (Roman Honor,
183–95). 106 Paul’s imaginary body, as evoked by self-references in the epistolary corpus, is marked not only by whip and rod. The stretch marks date from his labor as an expectant mother (Gal 4:19) and his breasts still leak from nursing his congregations (1 Thess 2:7; 1 Cor 3:1–2). As Beverly Roberts Gaventa has argued, “By speaking in first person as a nursing mother, Paul compromises his own standing as a ‘real man’” (“Mother’s Milk and Ministry in 1 Corinthians 3,” in Theology and Ethics in Paul and His Interpreters: Essays in Honor of Victor Paul Furnish [ed. Eugene H. Lovering, Jr. and Jerry L. Sumney; Nashville: Abingdon: 1996], 101–13, esp. 112). Gaventa’s work on tropes of maternity and lactation in the epistles suggests that we might well speak of Paul’s crucified masculinity (cf. Gal 6:14). See also eadem, “The Maternity of Paul: An Exegetical Study of Galatians 4:19,” in The Conversation Continues: Studies in Paul and John in Honor of J. Louis Martyn (ed. Robert T. Fortna and Beverly R. Gaventa; Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), 189–201; eadem, “Apostles as Babes and Nurses in 1 Thessalonians 2:7,” in Faith and History: Essays in Honor of Paul W. Meyer (ed. John T. Carroll, Charles H. Cosgrove, and E. Elizabeth Johnson; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990), 193–207; eadem, “Our Mother St. Paul: Toward the Recovery of a Neglected Theme,” PSB 17 (1996): 29–44. 107 On Paul’s choice of and attitudes toward manual labor, see Ronald F. Hock, The Social Context of Paul’s Ministry (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980). 108 Barton, “Savage Miracles,” 51–52.
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scorned pain and death might elicit admiration, but as the spectator stepped back from the frame, the courage of the gladiator—still less the condemned man—could not erase the degradation that forced him into the arena. A man whose life was so expendable that he could be killed to amuse others qualified as rubbish or dregs, terms Paul applies to himself (1 Cor 4:13). Of the various sufferings Paul lists in 1 Cor 4:11–12, battering is the only one in which he would be publicly exhibited, stripped of his clothes, physically vulnerable to those intent on subjecting him to violence—like a condemned man in an arena. Paul does not suggest that his endurance of beatings is virile or heroic. Rather, the vocabulary of 1 Cor 4:9–13 evokes the abject habitus of a beaten body. During Paul’s absence from Corinth, the superapostles have challenged his apostolic authority. They have maligned him on a number of counts, including, for example, his rejection of financial support from the Corinthian churches (2 Cor 11:7–11). They have also ridiculed Paul’s sermo corporis. Faceto-face, his appearance is base [tapeinov " ] (2 Cor 10:1), his speech contemptible, and “the presence of his body is weak [hJ de; parousiva tou' swvmato" ajsqenhv"]” (10:10). What do the superapostles mean by the accusation, “the presence of his body is weak”? Scholarly opinion varies, from the position that Paul is sickly to the contention that “it is unlikely that one who was so inured to incessant hardship and journeying could be described as a weakling.”109 In general, though, even scholars who acknowledge that the superapostles may allude to some physical weakness of Paul’s argue that the adjective ajsqenhv" refers ultimately to low social status, a lack of honor, or simply a weak claim to apostolic authority.110 Because NT scholars have not acknowledged that relationships of power were embodied, they have not appreciated the centrality of Paul’s body to the superapostles’ campaign against him.111 An important exception is J. Albert Harrill, who argues that Paul’s opponents targeted his body in their invective. Harrill contends that, through the superapostles’ allegation that Paul’s bodily 109 P. Hughes, Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 362. Furnish suggests that the superapostles’ reference to the weakness of Paul’s body may imply sickliness, although he argues that the weakness “is inclusive of more than his state of health” (II Corinthians, 478–79); similarly, Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly, “A Girardian Interpretation of Paul: Rivalry, Mimesis, and Victimage in the Corinthian Correspondence,” Semeia 33 (1985): 65–81; R. Martin, 2 Corinthians, 312. 110 P. Hughes, Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 362; David Alan Black, Paul, Apostle of Weakness: Astheneia and Its Cognates in the Pauline Literature (New York: Peter Lang, 1984), 136; Hamerton-Kelly, “Girardian Interpretation of Paul,” 74; Rudolf Bultmann, The Second Letter to the Corinthians (trans. Roy A. Harrisville; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985), 190; Arthur J. Dewey, “A Matter of Honor: A Social-Historical Analysis of 2 Corinthians 10,” HTR 78 (1985): 209–17, esp. 213; Thrall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 631. 111 Danker argues that Paul “lacks personal presence”; he rightly emphasizes the importance of corporal self-presentation in the establishment of authority in ancient contexts (II Corinthians, 155).
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appearance was weak, they “tried to question Paul’s manhood and right to dominate others.”112 The superapostles’ jab at Paul’s physical fitness impugns him as servile. Harrill’s survey of ancient sources, especially his treatment of physiognomic handbooks, documents the widespread understanding that social status was somatically expressed.113 The allegations that Paul was base, weak, and contemptible were parallel (10:1, 10), calling into question both his social status and his apostolic authority; these allegations were also, not incidentally, somatic. As moral degradation was understood in the first century to be expressed in physical degradation, so corporal degradation was construed as a marker of a fundamental contemptibility.114 For the superapostles and some members of the Corinthian churches, the debility of Paul’s somatic presentation undermined his claim to authority in the community.115 Re-membering Paul’s storytelling body from clues in his epistolary corpus, we also know that he had been repeatedly flogged, and that, most likely, his body still bore souvenirs of those beatings. The weakness of Paul’s corporal self-presentation thus seems inseparable from his evident whippability. Like Thespesion mocking the Spartans for submitting to governance by men who have been publicly whipped, perhaps the superapostles asked: What is it like to follow an eminently beatable leader? The question of Paul’s authority to discipline the community underlies 10:1–11. Paul presents his 112 J. Albert Harrill, “Invective against Paul (2 Cor 10:10), the Physiognomics of the Ancient Slave Body, and the Greco-Roman Rhetoric of Manhood,” in Antiquity and Humanity: Essays on Ancient Religion and Philosophy Presented to Hans Dieter Betz on His 70th Birthday (ed. Adela Yarbro Collins and Margaret M. Mitchell; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2001), 189–213, esp. 211. 113 Harrill bases his argument on 2 Cor 10:10. He does not track other clues Paul supplies about his body, nor does he explore the credibility of the superapostles’ charge—that is, whether Paul’s body would have been legible as weak and servile. Following Saller, he notes, albeit briefly, that “the repeated physical abuse of the whip broke down and re-shaped the bodies of slaves, thereby creating in actuality the slave body that ideology required” (“Invective,” 194–95). He does not acknowledge the relevance of this insight for interpreting the allegation that Paul’s bodily appearance was weak. Although Harrill comments that Paul “even boasts of his bodily weakness in a catalogue of hardships (2 Cor 11:23–29),” he does not mention that Paul’s “bodily weakness” includes subjection to repeated floggings (ibid., 209). Harrill argues that, in describing his body as weak, “Paul defends himself by assuming the sch'ma of a slave in the fashion of Odysseus,” who disguised himself as a slave by whipping himself and dressing rags, thereby securing admission to Troy (ibid., 212; after Abraham J. Malherbe, “Antisthenes and Odysseus, and Paul at War,” HTR 76 [1983]: 143–73; cf. Homer Od. 4.244). Unlike Odysseus, however, Paul did not flagellate himself. Rather, he was repeatedly and publicly whipped and beaten with rods. He did not choose the sch'ma of a slave. Instead, to first-century eyes, a tale of abasement was legible in his scars, so the superapostles described his whippable body as weak in appearance. 114 Roller, Constructing Autocracy, 226. 115 My argument is independent of Hock’s argument that the hexis of manual labor shaped Paul’s somatic self-presentation, undermining his status and so his claim to authority in Corinth. Our approaches are, however, ultimately compatible (Hock, Social Context of Paul’s Ministry, 60).
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tapeivnwsi" as parallel to Jesus’ meekness (10:1), but discourages the Corinthians from interpreting this self-abnegation as an inability or unwillingness to exercise authority (10:1–2, 11). In this context Paul refers to the charge that the presence of his body is weak, and indeed context and charge may be linked: Paul was perceived as the sort who was subject to the rod, not the sort likely to wield a rod.116 The superapostles, on the other hand, seem ready to pick up the rod. Immediately before he commences his foolish boasting in 2 Cor 11:21b, Paul refers to the humiliation of the Corinthian churches by the superapostles: “For you put up with it when someone enslaves you, or preys upon you, or seizes you, or takes advantage of you, or slaps you in the face” (11:20).117 Paul’s association of the acceptance of physical and verbal blows with servility confirms his fluency in a first-century corporal vernacular.118 With the crack of an open palm across a cheek, the superapostles have asserted their dominance, and the Corinthians have submitted. For Paul, the problem is not that the Corinthians have humbly absorbed the stinging blows; the problem is that, in their submission to the authority of the superapostles, they have subjugated themselves and the gospel Paul preaches. To characterize the effect the superapostles have had on the Corinthians, Paul relies on the analogy of enslavement.119 116 Savage suggests that the charge of somatic weakness is linked to Paul’s failure to discipline the community (Power through Weakness, 66). 117 Cuthbert Lattey suggests that the translation of lambavnein (2 Cor 11:20) should convey the idea of physical force (“lambavnein in 2 Cor xi.20,” JTS 44 [1943]: 148). Scholarly opinion is divided on the question of whether the superapostles have physically expressed their mastery over the Corinthians, or whether their seizing and slaps are metaphorical. Given the ubiquity of corporal expressions of dominance around the ancient Mediterranean world, even in synagogues and churches, I am persuaded that Paul refers to physical aggression in this verse. My argument, however, requires only that Paul demonstrate—as he does in 11:20—his habituation to a corporal vocabulary associating submission to corporal punishment with enslavement. Against the view that Paul’s reference to a slap across the face refers to flesh-to-flesh contact, note that he refers to “your [pl.] face” rather than to “your faces.” Those who express ambivalence on the question of whether Paul refers metaphorically to violence include Barrett (Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 291), Bultmann (Second Letter to the Corinthians, 212), Barnett (Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 533), and Thrall (Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 717–18). For the view that the violence is metaphorical, see Windisch, Zweite Korintherbrief, 347; Furnish, II Corinthians, 497; Danker, II Corinthians, 177; Lambrecht, Second Corinthians, 190. For the view that Paul refers to physical violence—in particular, literal slaps on the face—see P. Hughes, Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 400; R. Martin, 2 Corinthians, 364–65; Kruse, Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, 193. 118 “When a power-holder’s relationship . . . is figured as that of a master in relation to slaves, he is most often said or implied to be imposing corporal punishments of various (typically slavish) sorts” (Roller, Constructing Autocracy, 262–63). 119 Although he is prepared to discipline the Corinthians when he returns (2 Cor 13:1–3, 10), he will not do so as a slaveholder. In chs. 10–13, Paul applies several metaphors to himself that could govern the disciplinary role he foresees for himself. He describes himself as a military com-
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If the superapostles have enslaved the Corinthians by disciplining them, have synagogue officials and magistrates enslaved Paul by flogging him? Paul moves from his mockery of the Corinthians for permitting the superapostles to abuse them to his foolish boasting, self-praise that prominently features a catalogue of tribulations, most of which do not qualify as ignominious (11:23–33).120 He lists his beatings near the outset of the catalogue (vv. 23b– 25a). He does not deny or minimize his somatic history, with which the Corinthians are already familiar, which has, moreover, already been targeted by the superapostles in their attack on his authority. As Martyn observes, “On the whole, Paul drew no distinction between malevolent persecution at the hands of various authorities and such disasters as shipwrecks and floods.”121 Indeed, in his lists of tribulations faced, Paul treats his subjection to floggings in the same fashion that he treats his travel escapades and privations of such necessities as food, drink, and shelter (1 Cor 4:9–13; 2 Cor 5:4–5; 11:23–27). Paul does not represent insignia of humiliation as emblems of valor, but neither does he acknowledge that those who have flogged him have mastered him. His resistance to definition by those who have whipped him is an implicit criticism of the Corinthians, who have, Paul alleges, been mastered by the superapostles. If Paul does not concede that the wales of his back tell a story of his enslavement by those who have lifted whip and rod against him, what story does his body tell? We return to Paul’s allusion to ta; stivgmata tou' !Ihsou', widely taken to be a reference to the scars he has acquired in the course of his missionary activity, particularly the tracings made by lashes, rods, and stones mander (10:3-6) and the father of the community (11:2; 12:14–15). John T. Fitzgerald notes the importance of Paul’s presentation of himself as father of the community for his disciplinary role in 2 Cor 10–13 (“Paul, the Ancient Epistolary Theorists, and 2 Corinthians 10–13,” in Greeks, Romans, and Christians: Essays in Honor of Abraham J. Malherbe [ed. David L. Balch, Everett Ferguson, Wayne A. Meeks; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990], 190–200, esp. 196). Officers and fathers were understood to rely sparingly on corporal punishments; the whip symbolized the relationship between slaveholder and slave, not the relationship between officer and soldier and certainly not the relationship between father and child (Saller, “Corporal Punishment, Authority, and Obedience in the Roman Household”). A slaveholder subjugated a slave through physical assaults, keeping the slave in a permanent state of dishonor and humiliation; a father—at least in theory—sought the good of the one who was disciplined, and an officer sought the good of the company. (Excessive reliance of some officers on corporal punishment was nonetheless an issue at various points in Roman history. On discipline in the military, see J. S. Reid, “On Some Questions of Roman Public Law,” JRS 1 [1911]: 68-99, esp. 83–93.) Thus, although Paul represents the submission of the Corinthians to the discipline of the superapostles as servile, he evokes other possibilities—as father, as commanding officer—for interpreting his own role as disciplinarian. 120 While the superapostles are likely to have followed the standard practice of including labors and hardships in their own boasting, Paul boasts that he has endured “far greater labors, far more imprisonments” (v. 23b). Paul gives no hint that the superapostles have boasted of beatings. 121 Martyn, Galatians, 568 n. 72.
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(Gal 6:17; 2 Cor 11:24–25).122 Stivgma has servile connotations—delinquent slaves were often tattooed or branded.123 On one reading, through the stigmatic metaphor, Paul implies that the marks inscribed in his flesh by whips and rods brand him as Jesus’ slave. That reading, however, is vexed. A slaveholder brands a slave; Paul did not receive his scars at the hands or directive of Jesus, but at the hands of those who opposed the gospel. Moreover, Paul’s reference to stivgmata grounds his demand that those who have opposed him should cease to trouble him.124 Under Roman law, when a slaveholder tattooed a slave, he or she not only marked the slave as his or her property but also increased the slave’s vulnerability to physical or verbal assaults by others.125 If Paul’s stivgmata 122 While treatments of Gal 6:17 routinely identify Paul’s corporal markings as souvenirs of the hardships of Paul’s apostolate, typically with explicit reference to 2 Cor 11:23–25, Paul’s invocation of his talismanic stivgmata is less frequently adduced as relevant for understanding why Paul boasts of beatings. For the view that Paul’s stivgmata are literal scars from injuries incurred in the course of apostolic ministry, see James Hope Moulton, “The Marks of Jesus,” ExpTim 21 (1910): 283–84; Ernest De Witt Burton, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (ICC; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1921), 360–61; G. S. Duncan, The Epistle of Paul to the Galatians (MNTC; London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1948), 193; Klassen, “Galatians 6:17;” Guthrie, Galatians, 152; Hans Dieter Betz, “stivgma,” TDNT 7:657–64, esp. 663; idem, Galatians: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 324–25; Carolyn Osiek, Galatians (New Testament Message 12; Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1980), 90; F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians: A Commentary on the Greek Text (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 276; Charles B. Cousar, Galatians (Interpretation; Atlanta: John Knox, 1982), 151; Hamerton-Kelly, “Girardian Interpretation of Paul,” 74; A. E. Harvey, “Forty Strokes Save One: Social Aspects of Judaizing and Apostasy,” in Alternative Approaches to New Testament Study (ed. A. E. Harvey; London: SPCK, 1985), 88; John S. Pobee, Persecution and Martyrdom in the Theology of Paul (JSNTSup 6; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1985), 95; Ronald Y. K. Fung, The Epistle to the Galatians (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 313; R. A. Cole, The Letter of Paul to the Galatians: An Introduction and Commentary (TynNTC; rev. ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 239; Richard N. Longenecker, Galatians (WBC 41; Dallas: Word, 1990), 300; D. Lührmann, Galatians: A Continental Commentary (trans. O. C. Dean, Jr.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 122; Frank J. Matera, Galatians (SacPag 9; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992), 227; James D. G. Dunn, The Epistle to the Galatians (BNTC; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993), 347; Leon Morris, Galatians: Paul’s Charter of Christian Freedom (Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 191; Moore, God’s Gym, 28. 123 C. P. Jones argues that slaves were generally marked by tattoos, not brands (“Tattooing and Branding in Greco-Roman Antiquity,” JRS 77 [1987]: 139–55). 124 Dale B. Martin comments that “the purpose for which Paul brings up the marks is to preclude judgments on his actions by outsiders. The only one who legitimately judges a slave is that slave’s master” (Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990], 59–60). Martin suggests that the stivgmata may have been actual tattoos. See also Bruce, Epistle to the Galatians, 275. 125 “Thus, the praetor does not promise an action for every affront in respect of a slave . . . for it is highly relevant what sort of slave he is, whether he be honest, regular and responsible, a steward or only a common slave, a drudge or whatever. And what if he be in fetters, branded, and of the deepest notoriety?” (Justinian Dig. 47.10.15.44). Roman law was not uniformly applied throughout the empire; we cannot infer that practices advocated in legal codes conform to social realities.
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identify him as a slave of Christ, his expectation that his stivgmata would protect him seems fundamentally misplaced. These inconsistencies prompt consideration of other readings of the metaphor. Erhardt Güttgemanns argues that “die leiden des Apostels nicht anderes als die Epiphanie der Kreuzigung des irdischen Jesus sind.”126 Following Güttgemanns, Martyn argues that Paul’s scars make manifest the tracings of Roman whips on Jesus’ own body, tracings that are, inherently, servile.127 Paul not only claims that he bears in his body ta; stivgmata tou' !Ihsou'; he also claims that in his body he always carries “the putting to death of Jesus [th;n nevkrwsin tou' !Ihsou']” (2 Cor 4:10).128 Paul’s storytelling body bears in ta; stivgmata tou' !Ihsou' the putting to death of Jesus, a tale inscribed in Paul’s flesh—as in Jesus’ flesh—by strokes of the whip.129 Paul’s welted skin is parchment on which is legible the agonizing story of Jesus’ humiliations preceding his life-giving death (cf. 2 Cor 4:11); the flagellation of Jesus figures prominently among those humiliations.130 Because Paul believed that in the stripes of his own flesh the story of Jesus’ passion could be read, he ascribed phylactic properties to his stivgmata. But to those informed by Roman habitus, his whipped body instead announced that he was whippable. Roman law is, however, a useful index of Roman ideology; what is relevant here is the belief that a branded/tattooed slave was infamous and therefore deserved even less respect of person than other slaves (The Digest of Justinian [ed. Theodor Mommsen, Paul Krueger, and Alan Watson; 4 vols.; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985]). 126 Erhardt Güttgemanns, Der leidende Apostel und sein Herr: Studien zu paulinischen Christologie (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966), 134. 127 So Martyn, Galatians, 568–69. 128 In deciphering Paul’s stivgmata (Gal 6:17), scholars frequently allude both to 2 Cor 11:23– 25 and to 2 Cor 4:10. Those interpreting Paul’s boasting of beatings (2 Cor 11:23–25) refer much less frequently to Gal 6:17 or 2 Cor 4:10. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, who writes that in 2 Cor 11:23–25 Paul “graphically illustrated . . . ‘bearing in the body the dying of Christ,’” is an exception (Theology of the Second Letter to the Corinthians, 115–16). See also Forbes, “Comparison, SelfPraise, and Irony,” 19. 129 Osiek writes that it is likely that Paul’s stivgmata memorialize “the physical effects of his labors and the suffering that he has had to endure in his missionary work . . . or even more specifically to the effects of several beatings (2 Cor 11:23–25). These are physical scars which manifest the dying of Jesus (2 Cor 4:10)” (Galatians, 90). On the parallelism of Gal 6:17 and 2 Cor 4:10, see also Herman N. Ridderbos, The Epistle of Paul to the Churches of Galatia (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956), 228; Guthrie, Galatians, 152; Betz, Galatians, 324 n. 129, 325; Fung, Epistle to the Galatians, 314; Matera, Galatians, 232; Dunn, Epistle to the Galatians, 347. 130 In his references to the death of Jesus, Paul does not explicitly mention the ritualized abuse and humiliation Jesus endured as prelude to crucifixion, although he would have known that it occurred, if only because flogging regularly preceded execution (see Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire, 138). Contrast Mark 10:33–34 and parallels, where Jesus anticipates that he will be mocked, spat upon, and whipped. Attention to the meaning of flogging and flogged bodies in a Roman habitus has implications for appreciating ancient reactions to the passion of Jesus; the scope of the present article precludes discussion of those implications.
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Paul writes to the Corinthians that he boasts of things that show his weakness (11:30; 12:9–10). In boasting of beatings, he has done precisely that. He has already mentioned the charge of the superapostles—a charge he does not deny—that the presence of his body is weak (10:10). To those habituated to a first-century somatic idiom, Paul’s physical weakness, which I have argued is expressed in his whippability, would raise suspicions about his claims to authority. He nonetheless boasts of his beatings, and not only because the Corinthians are already cognizant of his history of floggings. His debility unites him to Christ: “For he was crucified out of weakness [ejx ajsqeneiva"], but lives by the power of God. For we are weak in him [or: with him], but in dealing with you we will live with him by the power of God” (13:4). In writing that Jesus was crucified “out of weakness,” Paul acknowledges the socially conditioned meaning of a condemned, flagellated, and ultimately crucified body. Jesus’ vulnerability to corporal abuse and violation—being whipped, spat upon, and crucified— incarnates his degradation and dishonor. Paul is weak in—or, with—Jesus (13:4), bearing in his own body the marks of the events leading to Jesus’ death (4:10). The superapostles have convinced many Corinthian Christians, their perceptions shaped by Roman hexis, that Paul’s abused body testifies to the weakness of his claim to apostolic authority. Paul does not try to revamp the prevailing habitus; he does not call dishonor honor. Rather, he represents his abject mien as cruciform. In his somatic weakness, both consequence and condition of his beatings—for, on a first-century view, only a whippable body is whipped, and whipped repeatedly—the Corinthians should read the degrading and powerful story of the execution of Jesus.
V. Conclusion Martyn suggests that Paul treats his physique as a medium of communication. But what story does his body tell? Many scholars identify Paul’s scars as tokens of virtue. I have argued that, within a Roman habitus, scars that established a man’s virtue or virility were typically incurred in battle. Display of war wounds was a common feature of Roman somatic rhetoric. Those habituated to a first-century corporal idiom distinguished between a breast pierced in battle and a back welted by a whip: not every scarred body told a war story. Whippability was a token not of honor, excellence, or virility, but of dishonor, abasement, and servility. In analyzing Paul’s boasting of beatings, scholars often cite examples of heroism attested by wounded bodies, although they do not always acknowledge the martial context of those wounds. Scholars have, moreover, passed over the semiotic distinction between a battle-scarred body and a flogged body. In boasting of beatings, Paul does what he says he does: he boasts of things that show his weakness.
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I have argued that Paul boasts of beatings both for strategic reasons—his abused body is already the subject of discussion and even derision in Corinth— and for theological reasons—he believes that the story of Jesus’ death is legible in the scar tissue that has formed over welts and lacerations inflicted by rod and whip. Other readings are possible. For example, in 2 Cor 10:3–6, Paul relies on martial imagery to assert his authority, including his disciplinary authority.131 One could therefore argue that martial imagery remains implicit in Paul’s recitation of hardships in 11:23–33, so that the list functions as an overview of adversities Paul has confronted on military campaigns for Christ.132 On this view, in cataloging his hardships, Paul substitutes an enumeration of episodes in which he was subjected to lash and rod for standard references to hand-tohand combat. Such an interpretation still has to acknowledge and account for the varying connotations of battle scars and disciplinary stripes. What would it mean in first-century Corinth to identify dermal ridges from flogging as souvenirs of combat? Would it be self-mocking, ironic, defiant, or heroically brave? Insignia carved by whips were (mis)taken as emblems of valor by slaves in ancient comedies, and, in a different way, by witnesses to the Spartan diamastivgwsi". As we have seen, the association between whippability and dishonor was so strong that even ephebes flagellated at the altar of Artemis Orthia did not, ultimately, escape jeers. Whips and rods had inscribed Paul’s flesh. The Corinthians, habituated to a first-century corporal idiom, could not read a straightforward tale of manly valor in Paul’s storytelling body. 131 He announces that, once he has crushed the opposition, he will take as prisoners the thoughts of the Corinthians in order to assure their submission to Christ. His phrasing implies a military preparedness to punish (10:5–6) (Malherbe, “Antisthenes and Odysseus, and Paul at War,” 145). 132 Malherbe comments that the precise relationship of 10:1–6 “to the rest of chs. 10–13 is difficult to determine” (ibid., 166).
JBL 123/1 (2004) 137–142
CRITICAL NOTE A PRE-DEUTERONOMISTIC BICOLON IN 1 SAMUEL 12:21?
Near the conclusion of Samuel’s farewell address in 1 Sam 12, we encounter this charge to the people of Israel (v. 21):
.hM;hâ e WhtèoAyKi Wly£Xiy" aløèw“ Wly[üi/yAaløî rvá,a} WhTofih' yr¢Ej}a' | yK¢i WrWs–T; alçøw“ Do not turn away to follow worthless things, which can neither profit nor save but are worthless. (NJPS) The phraseology and style of v. 21 have none of the characteristically Deuteronomistic features of the surrounding speech of Samuel.1 In fact, it is entirely possible to discern two strata of speech in this pericope. The people ask the venerable prophet to intercede on their behalf because of the guilt they have incurred by requesting a king (v. 19). This is followed immediately by the first speech stratum, presumably a preDeuteronomistic account of Samuel’s initial response (v. 20a): “But Samuel said to the people, ‘Have no fear.’” The second stratum follows in an expansion of this initial answer
I am grateful to John H. Choi and Brent A. Strawn for their suggestions on an early version of this note. 1 On the distinctive style and phraseology of Deuteronomy as it influenced the Deuteronomistic History (DH), see Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972; repr., Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1992), 320–65; Norbert Lohfink, Das Hauptgebot: Eine Untersuchung literarischer Einleitungsfragen zu Dtn 5–11 (AnBib 20; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1963), 295–312; and S. R. Driver, An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1961), 98–103. Of course, 1 Sam 12 contains one of the several speeches offered by the main characters of the DH, which, according to Martin Noth, gave organizational framework to the whole, and reiterated the Deuteronomic parenesis of Moses placed at the head of the DH (Deut 1–4). See Martin Noth, The Deuteronomistic History (trans. D. J. A. Clines et al.; JSOTSup 15; Sheffield: University of Sheffield, 1981), 5, and 59–60; Steven L. McKenzie, “Deuteronomistic History,” ABD 2:160–68; Baruch Halpern, The First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and History (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), 144–240; Sandra Lynn Richter, “The Deuteronomistic History and the Place of the Name” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2001), 2–9. The whole approach, of course, has come under recent criticism. See The Future of the Deuteronomistic History (ed. Thomas Römer; BETL 147; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2000), and Israel Constructs Its History: Deuteronomistic Historiography in Recent Research (ed. Albert de Pury, Thomas Römer, and Jean-Daniel Macchi; JSOTSup 306; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000).
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using characteristically Deuteronomistic language (vv. 20b–22).2 Paradoxically, v. 21 itself deviates from this stereotypical language. Combined with this change of phraseology, the verse’s description of idols as “worthless” or “nothingness” (WhTo, see below) is an explicit condemnation of idolatry, which moves us beyond the more general Deuteronomistic exhortations against “other gods.” These changes of theme and phraseology have led P. Kyle McCarter to suggest that we have in v. 21 a late, postDeuteronomistic addition to the text.3 This brief note will build on McCarter’s proposal by suggesting that the content of 1 Sam 12:21 itself is an excerpted bicolon, most likely from a stanza well known at the time of its inclusion in the text. Then I will explore the implications of this observation for the syntax of v. 21, and suggest a possible Sitz im Leben for the verse in relation to recent work on the history of Israelite religion. The excerpted poetry begins after the problematic occurrence of yKi4 near the beginning of v. 21.
Wly[üi/yAaløî rvá,a} WhTofih' yr¢Ej}a' . . . after the worthless, which do not profit
[5+5;12]
5
hM;hâ e WhtèoAyKi Wly££Xiy" aløèw“ and do not save for they are worthless!
[5+4;10]
It appears that a verb has been omitted at the beginning of this excerpt and replaced in
2 For this analysis, see P. Kyle McCarter, I Samuel: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 8; New York: Doubleday, 1980), 216. Likewise the second portion of Samuel’s answer (v. 23) was similarly expanded (vv. 24–25). On the basis of these characteristic formulae, McCarter takes vv. 6–15 as a self-contained and thoroughly Deuteronomistic composition, while vv. 1–5 and parts of vv. 16–25 were a pre-Deuteronomistic source, which was uniformly critical of the monarchy (pp. 213–21). McCarter thus takes the structure of vv. 20–25 as organized around the original sources’ replies, modified by stereotypical Deuteronomistic expansions (p. 216). 3 McCarter, I Samuel, 217; and see Ralph W. Klein, 1 Samuel (WBC 10; Waco: Word, 1983), 118. 4 All references to yKi in this note will refer to the first occurrence of the conjunction in v. 21, rather than the second, which is taken here as causal. 5 Following David Noel Freedman’s system of counting words, stresses, and syllables (see “Acrostics and Metrics in Hebrew Poetry,” HTR 65 [1972]: 367–92; repr. in Pottery, Poetry, and Prophecy: Studies in Early Hebrew Poetry [Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1980], 51–76, esp. 53). The numbers in brackets represent the number of words, plus the number of stresses followed by a syllable count after the semicolon. Freedman’s system is not universally accepted, however. Michael Patrick O’Connor, for example, has presented an alternative method of understanding Hebrew colometry, proposing syntactic patterns rather than ones that are metric or rhythmic. See his Hebrew Verse Structure (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1980); see also William L. Holladay, “Hebrew Verse Structure Revisited (I): Which Words ‘Count’?” JBL 118 (1999): 19–32; and idem, “Hebrew Verse Structure Revisited (II): Conjoint Cola, and Further Suggestions,” JBL 118 (1999): 401–16.
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v. 21 with WrWs–T; alçøw“, which picks up the theme of apostasy from v. 20.6 The most likely candidate is a form of ^lh, which is common in a collocation with yrEj}a' to connote commitment of life and purpose, and is sometimes used to designate idolatry (see, e.g., Deut 11:28; Judg 2:19; Ruth 3:10; 1 Kgs 11:10; 21:26; 2 Kgs 23:3; Jer 7:9).7 Particularly pertinent may be Elijah’s taunt, because of its clear polemic against idolatry: “if YHWH is God, follow him [wyr:j}a' Wkl]], but if Baal, then follow him [wyr:j}a' Wkl]]” (1 Kgs 18:21). In our verse, whatever verb originally opened the bicolon has been replaced with the concept of “turning,” probably repeated from v. 20. But the “turning” has been subtly changed for contrastive effect, from “turning from” YHWH (v. 20) to “turning unto” worthless idols (v. 21). The verse is a bicolon with chiastic structure, as follows. A WhTofih' yr¢Ej}a' (“after the worthless”) B Wly[üi/yAaløî rvá,a} (“which do not profit”) B' Wly£Xiy" aløèw“ (“and do not save”) A' .hM;hâ e WhtèoAyKi (“for they are worthless!”) The hiphil verbs at the core explain why the idols are worthless, since they have no salvific value, in contradistinction to YHWH. But what of the peculiar use of yKi near the beginning of v. 21? Nearly all interpreters have acknowledged that the standard connotations for the particle (i.e., causal, evidential, result, temporal, conditional, adversative, concessive, asseverative, etc.)8 are inadequate or out of place in this verse, and they conclude with the versions (LXX and Vulgate) that yKi is a secondary addition to the MT.9 However, its syntactical awkwardness makes the MT the lectio difficilior and perhaps, upon further reflection, preferable to the versions. Assuming that the words that follow yKi are an excerpted poetic fragment, it might be possible to take the conjunction as recitativum introducing direct speech.10 6 Note the