0028–6885 | volume 55 | number 3 | july 2009
NEW TESTAMENT STUDIES Published quarterly in association with studiorum novi testamenti societas
NEW TESTAMENT STUDIES
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EDITOR OF NEW TESTAMENT STUDIES J. M. G. Barclay (Durham, England) Editorial Board K. Backhaus (München, Germany) S. Byrskog (Lund, Sweden) E. Cuvillier (Montpellier, France) I. Dunderberg (Helsinki, Finland ) J. Fitzgerald (Miami, FL, USA) C. Gerber (Hamburg, Germany) J. Green (Pasadena, CA, USA) J. Herzer (Leipzig, Germany) J. J. Kanagaraj (Bethel Bible Institute, Danishpet, India) C. Karkolis (Athens, Greece) L. M. McDonald (Arizona, USA) M. MacDonald (Antigonish Nova Scotia, Canada) A. Reinhartz (Ottawa, Canada) D. Sim (Melbourne, Australia) G. Steyn (Pretoria, South Africa) F. Tolmie (Bloemfontein, South Africa) P. Trebilco (Otago, New Zealand) H. van de Sandt (Tilburg, The Netherlands)
EDITOR OF THE SNTS MONOGRAPH SERIES J. M. Court (Canterbury, England) THE OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY ex officio: President of the Society for 2008–2009: A. B. Du Toit, (Pretoria, South Africa) Past-President : D. Marguerat, (Lausanne, Switzerland) President-Elect : A. Lindemann, (Bielefeld, Germany) Deputy President-Elect: A. Yarbro Collins, (Yale, CT, USA) Secretary : M. de Boer, (Amsterdam, Netherlands) Assistant Secretary : R. A. Piper, (St Andrews, Scotland) Treasurer : H. K. Bond, (Edinburgh, Scotland) For further information on the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, please look at the website at https://www.surfgroepen.nl/sites/snts
New Testament Studies is an international peer-reviewed periodical whose contributors comprise the leading New Testament scholars writing in the world today. The journal publishes original articles and short studies in English, French and German on a wide range of issues pertaining to the origins, history and theology of the New Testament and early Christianity. All contributions represent research at the cutting edge of the discipline which has developed a wide range of methods in recent years. The periodical embraces exegetical, historical, literary-critical, sociological, theological and other approaches to the New Testament, including studies in its history of interpretation and effects. Published under the auspices of Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas
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‘(Bethany) beyond the Jordan’: The Significance of a Johannine Motif* D O U G LA S S . EA R L 1 Forster Avenue, Sherburn, Durham DH6 1EW, England email:
[email protected] There are three occurrences of the phrase πέραν τοῦ Ἰορδάνου in John (.; .; and .) at a location identified in . (problematically) as Bethany. The significance of the phrase and location is developed first by exploring Bethany as Bashan via Micah .–, Jer .– and Ps , and secondly by considering the significance of ‘crossing the Jordan’ in the OT and QS. The gospel is shown to invert the traditional motif; for John one finds life with God in Jesus by crossing the Jordan out of Israel, to Bashan, indicating an unexplored symbol in the Fourth Gospel. Keywords: Jordan, Bashan, Batanaea, Bethany, Bethabara
There are three references to the Jordan in John’s gospel, all occurring in the identical phrase πέραν τοῦ Ἰορδάνου (across the Jordan) (.; .; and .). The first of these, to which the later two refer, refers to the place where John the Baptist was baptizing. Following the major textual witnesses, the location is generally taken to be a place called Bethany. This location has occasioned considerable debate as there is no known Bethany ‘across the Jordan’ (if one takes the perspective of being located in Israel), and because there are textual witnesses that identify the location as Bethabara; of the major textual witnesses , , *א, A, B, C*, L, Wsupp, Δ, Θ, Ψ* read Βηθανίᾳ while א reads Bηθαραβᾷ and C, Tvid, Ψc read Βηθαβαρᾷ. Both textual variants appear to be known by Origen, who prefers Bethabara, since ‘the meaning of the name Bethabara is * I am grateful to Professor R. W. L. Moberly for comments on a draft of this paper. I shall use the traditionally accepted title ‘John’s gospel’ to refer to the Fourth Gospel without wishing to make any claims regarding authorship. The Greek New Testament (ed. B. Aland et al.; UBS th ed. [corrected], ) . UBS reads Bηθανίᾳ, but only with a rating of C which indicates that ‘the Committee had difficulty in deciding which variant to place in the text’ (). Origen, Commentary on John, ., in R. E. Heine, Origen: Commentary on the Gospel according to John Books – (FC ; Washington: The Catholic University of America, ) .
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appropriate for the baptism of the one who prepares for the Lord a prepared table, for it is translated, “house of preparation.”’ Origen does, however, suggest that Bethany is also appropriate for it means ‘house of obedience’, although he notes that there is ‘no place in the vicinity of Jordan with the same name as Bethania’. Brian Byron summarizes various attempts to solve the difficulty regarding the location before offering his own solution, in which he argues that one should adopt an ‘eastern’ rather than ‘western’ perspective for interpreting the comment of being ‘across the Jordan’ in ., based on the symbolism of crossing the Jordan in the OT, thus reading ., ‘These things happened at Bethany across the Jordan—it was at the Jordan that John used to baptize’ to allow Bethany here to refer to the Bethany close to Jerusalem mentioned in John .. If correct, this symbolism would reflect Jesus as the new Joshua crossing into the land in a new stage of salvation history. Byron’s solution is motivated by dissatisfaction with other theories: .
.
. . .
The ‘Two Bethany’ theory, which he is dissatisfied with owing to the lack of evidence for the existence of a suitable ‘second Bethany’, even though the theory has ‘virtually total support from today’s scholars’; Pierson Parker’s theory, based on Classical Greek usage, in which he argues that John . has the sense of ‘These things took place in Bethany, which is across from the point of the Jordan where John had been baptizing’, a reading that Byron notes has been described as ‘grammatically impossible’, and has failed to gain support; The minority textual witness to Bethabara; The theory that John made a mistake; Bethany understood as a corruption for another location, with Batanaea being the strongest candidate, a theory that he does not discuss in detail but rejects on the grounds that there is no manuscript evidence for it, and thus that it is a ‘gratuitous suggestion’ that ‘would hardly be acceptable’.
Byron’s hypothesis is ingenious—the gospel does not indicate what geographical perspective should be adopted—and has the merit of developing the symbolism of the OT in a text, John’s gospel, that is widely recognized as highly symbolic. Origen, Commentary on John, ., in Heine, Origen, . Origen, Commentary on John, ., in Heine, Origen, . B. Byron, ‘Bethany Across the Jordan: Or Simply Across the Jordan’, Australian Biblical Review () –, here . Cf. Byron, ‘Bethany’, –, and Origen, Commentary on John, .–, in Heine, Origen, –. See Byron, ‘Bethany’, – for discussion and bibliography. P. Parker, ‘Bethany beyond Jordan’, JBL . () –, here . See Byron, ‘Bethany’, – for discussion and bibliography. Byron, ‘Bethany’, , .
‘(Bethany) beyond the Jordan’
But a difficulty with Byron’s hypothesis is that it does not account for John . and .–, which refer back to .. However, it is, perhaps, surprising that there have been few attempts to consider or to develop a symbolic account of the phrase πέραν τοῦ Ἰορδάνου in John’s gospel, and of the location referred to in .. One exception is the commentary of Raymond Brown, where in a reading not unlike Origen’s, he suggests, If Bethabara, “the place of crossing over”, is the correct reading…then John may be calling attention to the Joshua–Jesus parallelism. Just as Joshua led the people across the Jordan into the promised land, so Jesus is to cross over into the promised land at the head of the new people… Perhaps, however, this very plausible symbolism makes the poorly attested name Bethabara all the more suspect.
While Brown raises the right sorts of issues, I think that there is a better solution available.
. The Location of John . as Batanaea, or Bashan
While Byron, and previously Brown, helpfully raise the possible significance of the symbolism in ., I think that there is a different solution available that is deeply and perhaps disturbingly symbolic, based partly on the suggestion that the location in John . is in fact Batanaea, outside the land of Israel, as argued in detail by William Brownlee and by Rainer Riesner, a suggestion followed by A. Köstenberger, and D. A. Carson. C. K. Barrett rejects Brownlee’s case for Batanaea as unconvincing, but suggests that ‘., seem carefully worded so as to distinguish Bethany near Jerusalem from the other Bethany’. Indeed, the majority of recent commentators, both in English and German scholarship, appear to favour (sometimes cautiously) the view that the Bethany referred to in . is an unknown location that is to be differentiated from the Bethany of . without further discussion, although Siegfried Schulz suggests R. E. Brown, The Gospel according to John I–XII (AB ; New York: Doubleday, ) . W. H. Brownlee, ‘Whence the Gospel according to John?’, John and Qumran (ed. J. H. Charlesworth; London: Geoffrey Chapman, ) –; R. Riesner, ‘Bethany beyond the Jordan (John :): Topography, Theology and History in the Fourth Gospel’, Tyndale Bulletin () –; A. Köstenberger, John (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, ) –; D. A. Carson, The Gospel according to John (PNTC; Leicester: Apollos, ) –. C. K. Barrett, The Gospel according to John: An Introduction with Commentary and Notes on the Greek Text (London: SPCK, nd ed. ) . E.g. J. Becker, Das Evangelium nach Johannes, Kapitel – (Ökumenischer Taschenbuchkommentar zum Neuen Testament /; Würzberg: Gütersloher Verlaghaus Gerd Mohn, ) ; Brown, John, –; A. T. Lincoln, The Gospel according to Saint John
DOUGLAS S. EARL
that ‘An diesen Versen wird deutlich, wie problematisch das Verhältnis von Verkündigung und Historie bei Johannes ist’. But while Brownlee considers the symbolic nature of Batanaea in detail, he does not consider the significance of being ‘across the Jordan’ in John, although he does consider the significance of crossing the Jordan in QS in another essay. Crucially, however, Brownlee observes that ‘Batanaea is a Hellenized form of the Aramaic equivalent of the Hebrew name Bashan’. Indeed, Marcus Jastrow lists ּ˕בְתנַיּ˕יא, ּבוְּתנַן, ּׂבוְתנְיִין, ּׂבוְתנ˕יִיםand ּׂבוְתנַיֵּיas various Aramaic equivalents of ּ˕ב ׁ˕שן, and A. Schalit lists Bαταναία and Bατανέα as equivalents to LXX Bασαν and OT ּ˕ב ׁ˕שןin Josephus. Furthermore, Brownlee notes that the region of Batanaea is known in Arabic as el-Betheneyeh, which ‘comes the nearest to the Evangelist’s Be ̄thania’, and suggests that while the original names of Bethany and Batanaea ‘were probably etymologically different…they were still close enough to each other in orthography for the Evangelist to assimilate them one to the other in his spelling’. Riesner develops his argument that Bethany (John .) is Batanaea by considering topography and timing in the narrative, and concludes that the apparent equation of the two places named Bethany in John (. and .) has ‘deep theological significance’ since what ‘began in the region specially marked out by the Jewish messianic hope (Batanaea) through the proclamation of John the Baptist…finds its completion through the cross and resurrection of Jesus in
(Black’s New Testament Commentaries; London: Continuum, ) –; R. Schnackenburg, The Gospel according to St. John ( vols.; London: Burns and Oates, ET ) .–; H. Thyen, Das Johannesevangelium (HNT ; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, ) –, ; U. Wilckens, Das Evangelium nach Johannes (NTD ; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ) . S. Schulz, Das Evangelium nach Johannes (NTD; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ) . W. H. Brownlee, ‘The Ceremony of Crossing the Jordan in the Annual Covenanting at Qumran’, Von Kanaan bis Kerala: Festschrift für Prof. Mag. Dr. Dr. J. P. M. van der Ploeg O. P. zur Vollendung des siebzigsten Lebensjahres am . Juli (ed. W. C. Delsman et al.; Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker, ) –. Brownlee, ‘John’, . M. Jastrow, ‘ּבוְתנַיֵּי, ּׂבוְתנ˕יִים, ּׂבוְתנְיִין, ּבוְּתנַן, ’ ּ˕בְתנַיּ˕יא, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Bavli, the Talmud Yerushlami and the Midrashic Literature (London: Shapiro, Vallentine & Co., ) . (See for example the use of ּ˕בְתנַיּ˕יאfor ּ˕ב ׁ˕שןin the Jerusalem Targum of Deut ..) A. Schalit, ‘βαταναία’, A Complete Concordance to Flavius Josephus (Suppl. ; Leiden: E. J. Brill, ) . (See for example Josephus Ant. . [Bαταναία] and . [Bατανέα].) Brownlee, ‘John’, . Brownlee, ‘John’, . Riesner (‘Bethany’, –) develops a similar argument, and adds, ‘the variation between τ and θ is no difficulty’, being attested elsewhere ().
‘(Bethany) beyond the Jordan’
Jerusalem, which events are already typified in the raising of Lazarus (at Bethany)’. However, Brownlee pursues a different sort of argument, considering the symbolic significance of Batanaea as Bashan in relation to three OT texts and their resonances with John . First, he discusses the significance of the imagery of shepherding in Micah .–, Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock that belongs to you, which lives alone in a forest in the midst of a garden land; let them feed in Bashan and Gilead as in the days of old. As in the days when you came out of the land of Egypt, show us marvelous things.
and seeks to associate this concept with ‘shepherd terminology as the disciples “follow” Jesus (:, )’. Secondly, he considers Jer .–, I will restore Israel to its pasture, and it shall feed on Carmel and in Bashan, and on the hills of Ephraim and in Gilead its hunger shall be satisfied. In those days and at that time, says the LORD, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought, and there shall be none; and the sins of Judah, and none shall be found; for I will pardon the remnant that I have spared.
linking the idea of the removal of sin here with the work of the ‘Lamb of God’ in John .. Finally he notes that Ps .– (Eng.), O mighty mountain, mountain of Bashan; O many-peaked mountain, mountain of Bashan! Why do you look with envy, O many-peaked mountain, at the mount that God desired for his abode, where the LORD will reside forever?
is ‘suggestive’, but does not develop this further. He concludes that Riesner, ‘Bethany’, . Thus Brownlee’s and Riesner’s analyses support the location of John . as Batanaea = Bashan, but with the original text of John . reading Bηθανίᾳ understood as OT Bashan. Thus no emendation is required. I do not, however, wish to make quite so strong a claim regarding the original reading of John . given the many variants in spelling, and since the move to assimilate the locations of John . and . could easily have occurred at an early stage in the transmission of the text, possibly for the sort of theological reasons that Riesner outlines. The point that I wish to develop is that the location of . is to be understood as Batanaea = OT Bashan, even if there is no good reason to doubt the original reading as Bηθανίᾳ. Unless stated otherwise all translations are from the NRSV. Brownlee, ‘John’, . He also refers to John . here. I am not sure that the associations that he seeks to make here with John are convincing, but in the wider context of the gospel the idea of Jesus as shepherd is clear (e.g. John .), suggesting a resonance with Micah .–. Brownlee, ‘John’, –.
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the Evangelist draws upon the semantic development of Bashan > Batanaea > Bethany. The place where Jesus called his first disciples was given a preeminent place because the scriptures encouraged the Evangelist to believe that Messianic hopes were centred there; and by assimilating the name of Batanaea to that of the village of Bethany, he linked the north shore of the Sea of Galilee with the redemptive events at Jerusalem.
However, while pointing us in the right direction, I think that there is more that lies behind the significance of Batanaea (Bashan), and indeed of ‘crossing the Jordan’ in John. I would like to develop their significance in several stages. First, I would like to reflect further on the symbolic significance of Bashan in the OT. Secondly, I shall consider the significance of crossing the Jordan in the OT and in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Thirdly, I shall consider the significance of the references to crossing (or being across) the Jordan in John in their narrative contexts before finally tying the various threads together to develop the significance of the symbolism of πέραν τοῦ Ἰορδάνου and Bethany = Bashan in John, with the symbolism indeed suggesting that the location of . is OT Bashan.
. The Symbolic Significance of Bashan Developed
It might be possible to go further than Brownlee regarding the significance of Bashan, even if there are some difficulties with the three OT texts that he cites, as we shall see. D. J. Simundson notes on Micah .– that, These verses address God as the shepherd…urging God to let the people again feed in Bashan and Gilead. These areas were noted for their excellent pasture land (Num :; Jer :). They had been lost to Israel since the eighth century BCE. This is another expression of the people’s hope for return to the land that had been promised to them from ancient times but had fallen under foreign domination.
Likewise, D. R. Hillers notes that Bashan and Gilead have symbolic significance, with Bashan understood as ‘traditionally luxuriant’. However, the reference to Bashan in the second colon of Jer . is awkward, being absent in the LXX—a capricious abridgement perhaps. But W. L. Holladay Brownlee, ‘John’, . Thus the conclusion that Riesner and Brownlee reach is similar—that John assimilates the two locations for symbolic theological reasons. D. J. Simundson, ‘The Book of Micah’, The New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville: Abingdon, ) .–, here . D. R. Hillers, Micah (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, ) . Cf. W. McKane, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah. Vol. . XXVI–LII (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, ) . LXX (Rahlfs) reads καὶ ἀποκαταστήσω τὸν Iσραηλ ϵἰς τὴν νομὴν αὐτοῦ καὶ νϵμήσϵται ἐν τῷ Kαρμήλῳ καὶ ἐν ὄρϵι Eφραιμ καὶ ἐν τῷ Γαλααδ καὶ πλησθήσϵται ἡ ψυχὴ αὐτοῦ (Jer . LXX).
‘(Bethany) beyond the Jordan’
argues that its omission from the LXX should be the preferred witness to the original text since the observation that ‘the fourth colon of the verse has two words suggests that only two words are original here’. But questions relating to the ‘authenticity’ and to the history of the text here are notoriously difficult. However, the reference to Bashan may well be absent in the earliest form of the poem, a poem which may or may not have been authentic to Jeremiah the prophet, but added at a sufficiently early stage in the development of the text to have been known to John. Targum Jeremiah, although notoriously difficult to date, but having early roots, reads מתנןfor בׁשן, which Jastrow takes as an Aramaic equivalent name. However, Robert Hayward renders מתנןas ‘fatness’, understanding the text to be drawing on the metaphoric connotations of Bashan. But however מתנןis to be construed, it indicates the existence of a reading associated with Bashan. Jeremiah . is not extant at Qumran, although Emmanuel Tov notes that in the extant witnesses to Jeremiah at Qumran, some are close to the LXX while others are close to the MT. Thus it is difficult, and probably impossible, to determine what version of Jer . was available to John, or at least whether the sort of significance that Bashan had in the MT here was circulating in the context of the composition of the gospel. But given Micah .– and the Targumic reading, it is quite possible that the MT reading of Jer ., if not original, was established by the time the gospel was composed. But even if the reading ‘Bashan’ was not known to John, the addition of Bashan to the text itself witnesses to the developing significance of the site, and thus the plausibility of John’s development of it. I shall assume that the reading with ‘Bashan’ was known to John.
W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah : A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah Chapters – (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, ) . Cf. Holladay, Jeremiah, . See also G. L. Keown, P. J. Scalise and T. G. Smothers, Jeremiah – (WBC ; Dallas: Word, ) – for a sympathetic critique of Holladay and a survey of other approaches to ‘authenticity’ and to the development of the text. There is little discussion of the specific textual problem of Bashan in the commentaries (e.g. Keown, Jeremiah –, –; W. Rudolph, Jeremía [HAT /; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, ] –). Robert Hayward, after discussing the difficulty of dating, argues that the foundations of Targum Jeremiah ‘were laid already by the early second century A.D.’ (The Targum of Jeremiah Translated, with a Critical Introduction, Apparatus, and Notes [The Aramaic Bible ; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, ] ). Jastrow, ‘‘ַמְתנַן,ַמְתנ˕ן,’’ַמְּת׳, . He understands the reference to Carmel in similar terms, thus reading ‘they [Israel] shall be provided for in a fruitful and fat land’, since Carmel signifies fruitfulness and Bashan fatness (Hayward, Targum, ). E. Tov, ‘Jeremiah’, Qumran Cave X: The Prophets (ed. E. Ulrich et al.; DJD ; Oxford: Clarendon, ) –, esp. , .
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Bashan appears to develop an eschatological significance within the prophetic literature, being the place where Israel will live in abundance with their hunger satisfied and their sin pardoned (Jer .–), and the place where God will shepherd his people, accompanied by wonders ( )נפלאותas when he led Israel out of Egypt (Micah .–). These themes all find development in John, even if they also find some qualification—Jesus ‘feeds’ his followers, but primarily with his body (.–), bringing abundant life as the good shepherd (.) who takes away sin (.), and performs miraculous signs (σημϵῖα), the importance of which finds development or reinterpretation and qualification (e.g. .–; .). Even if the MT reading of Jer . was not known to John, most of these aspects of the Bashan symbolism were available at the time of the composition of the gospel via Micah .–, with the possible exception of the forgiveness of sin that is made explicit in Jer .–. Turning to Psalm , Ps .– (Heb.) reads, Our God is a God of salvation, and to GOD, the Lord, belongs escape from death. But God will shatter the heads of his enemies, the hairy crown of those who walk in their guilty ways. The Lord said, “I will bring them back from Bashan, I will bring them back from the depths of the sea, so that you may bathe your feet in blood, so that the tongues of your dogs may have their share from the foe”.
However, there is a problem with v. (Heb.), which the MT reads, אמר אדני מבׁשן אׁשיב אׁשיב ממצלות ים
and the LXX reads,
ϵἶπϵν κύριος ἐκ Βασαν ἐπιστρέψω ἐπιστρέψω ἐν βυθοῖς θαλάσσης in that there is no object for the verb. Is it Israel that will be brought back or the enemies of YHWH? Moreover, as James Charlesworth has argued recently, it is probable that originally בׁשןreferred to a ‘dragon-snake’ rather than the place Bashan, with the text now being defective. But the issue here is again of course how John, and his contemporaries, might have read and used the In addition to these prophetic texts it is possible that there is an intertextual resonance between Amos . and John with regard to Bashan, although it is difficult to know whether this is intentional. Charlesworth argues that cognates of בׁשןmean ‘dragon-snake’ in early western Semitic, and that owing to considerations of meter and parallelism the text should read מחר בׁשן, thus rendering the verse, ‘The Lord spoke: “[From the den of] the dragon-snake I will bring (them) back, I will bring (them) back from the depths of the sea’ (J. H. Charlesworth, ‘Bashan, Symbology, Haplography, and Theology in Psalm ’, David and Zion: Biblical Studies in Honor of J. J. M. Roberts [ed. B. F. Batto and K. L. Roberts; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns,
‘(Bethany) beyond the Jordan’
psalm. Unfortunately there is little to go on from Qumran regarding the interpretation of this verse, but the Midrash on the Psalms indicates that . was indeed read with Israel as the object of the verb: The Lord said: “I will bring again from Bashan” (Ps. :)—that is, bring those whom wild beasts devoured; “I will bring My people again from the depths of the sea” (ibid.)—that is, bring those who drowned in the depths for the hallowing of the Name. [Or, reading the end of the verse, I will bring them again from the depths of the sea, and taking the word them to refer to the enemies of Israel, the verse means that] even as the Holy One, blessed be He, requited Og, the king of Bashan, and requited Pharaoh and the Egyptians at the Red Sea, so will the Holy One, blessed be He, requite the mighty men of wicked Edom.
Thus Ps . (Heb.) may well have been read by John as a reference to YHWH bringing Israel back from Bashan. In other words, it was possible to read Bashan as being the site for God’s eschatological redemptive activity, the place where he will lead his people from, as may be inferred from the reception of Psalm , and as developed in John . and .–, as we shall see. In summary, then, there are a number of important eschatological themes associated with Bashan symbolically in Ps , Micah .– and Jer ., themes that find important resonances with John. Now, to consider John’s development of the symbolic significance of Bashan further, it is noteworthy that John emphasizes the location of Bashan as πέραν τοῦ Ἰορδάνου ‘across the Jordan’, being a comment that may be a clue to an extension to the significance for Bashan for John. Indeed, it is this feature of the place, that it is ‘across the Jordan’, that is emphasized in the two other references to . in John, namely, . and .. Does this introduce a new dimension to the symbol for John, particularly as ‘crossing the Jordan’ was important in the OT? We shall now consider the significance of ‘crossing the Jordan’.
. Crossing the Jordan in the Old Testament
I would like to begin by considering the significance of ‘crossing the Jordan’ in the book of Joshua, being the paradigmatic instance of crossing the Jordan in the OT. A Leitwort in Joshua is the root עבר, used repeatedly (but far from
] –, here ). See M. E. Tate, Psalms – (WBC ; Dallas: Word, ) for a defence of the traditional reading of the text as the location Bashan. Charlesworth, ‘Bashan’, . W. G. Braude, The Midrash on Psalms (Yale Judaica Series ; vols.; New Haven: Yale University, ) .. Moreover the KJV renders the verse, ‘The Lord said, I will bring again from Bashan, I will bring my people again from the depths of the sea’.
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exclusively) with reference to crossing the Jordan, leading Daniel Hawk to observe that the ‘Jordan valley not only constitutes a boundary but also a defining symbol and a point of reference. Traversing it signifies Israel’s entry into the measure of life YHWH gives’. Indeed, it is significant that elsewhere in the OT the Jordan is not presented as a barrier to crossing into the land (cf. Gen .; Josh .; ., –; Judg .; .; .; .; Sam .), which accentuates the symbolic nature of its crossing, especially in Joshua. Indeed, Richard Nelson suggests that the miraculous Jordan crossing in Joshua is symbolic, ideological and confessional in significance (Josh .; Ps .; Micah .–), reflecting Israel’s entry into the full measure of life with YHWH. This is confirmed by Josh , the story of the Transjordanians and their altar, for attention is drawn to the symbolic importance of crossing the Jordan through the use of the verb עבר, or rather its surprising lack of use here. For example, Robert Polzin notes that when the Israelite delegation left the Transjordan to report back to the Israelites in Canaan (.), although the crossing of the Jordan is indicated, in no case is the verb עברever used; ‘The reason for this is that “the crossing over” had already taken place’. The only place where עברis used is where one might expect it in . in the speech of the Cisjordan delegation, where its use demonstrates that the delegation believes that the two and a half tribes must ‘cross’ into Israel. In other words, the use of the crossing language refers to the crossing into or out of life in the community of Israel, understood as crossing into or out of life with YHWH. Indeed, the significance of עברin terms of ‘crossing’ into the covenant with YHWH is illustrated in Deut . (Heb.) ( )לעברך בברית יהוה אלהיךand :, in which crossing the Jordan into the land is juxtaposed with crossing into life.
. Crossing the Jordan in QS
This ‘crossing’ imagery is developed in the Community Rule, QS, which uses עברto describe ‘crossing into’ the covenant, which is identified with ‘crossing’ into the community. QS .– reads, ‘All who enter the order of the community shall cross ( )עברinto the covenant in God’s presence and do all that he commanded’ and Brownlee observes that QS contains a ‘liturgy’ that enacts this crossing, a ‘crossing ceremony’ that is associated with lustration (QS The root occurs times in Joshua. It occurs times in the verses of Josh – that narrate the crossing of the Jordan. L. D. Hawk, Joshua (Berit Olam; Collegeville: Liturgical, ) . Cf. R. D. Nelson, Joshua (OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, ) , and D. Jobling, ‘“The Jordan as a Boundary”: Transjordan in Israel’s Ideological Geography’, The Sense of Biblical Narrative: Structural Analyses in the Hebrew Bible II (JSOTSS ; Sheffield: JSOT, ) –, here –. Nelson, Joshua, –. R. Polzin, Moses and the Deuteronomist (New York: Seabury, ) .
‘(Bethany) beyond the Jordan’
.–.). Noting the repeated use of עברin the liturgical section of the text, he suggests that The fact that [Deuteronomy] : indicates the intention of “crossing into the sworn covenant” and : speaks of “crossing the Jordan” may have led the people of Qumrân to equate the two uses of the verb ʿāba ̱ r. Symbolically one was also passing over into the land which God had promised the patriarchs by covenant. This suits the military character of the procession as depicted in the Community Rule, making of the event an annual memorial of the Conquest.
Moreover, he notes that the instructions for the order of the procession in the ceremony (QS .–) evoke the instructions for the procession of Israel across the Jordan in Joshua, adding weight to the view that this ‘crossing’ ceremony in the community is, in some sense, a ‘re-enactment’ of the Jordan crossing in a new context that uses Joshua as its inspiration. These observations led Brownlee to conclude that John’s baptisms in the Jordan may also owe something to Qumrân. He was awaiting there the coming of a messiah, one mightier than he, who would judge as with fire all moral vipers and usher in the Kingdom of God. His insistence that the rite of baptism meant nothing except as people brought forth fruits worthy of repentance agrees precisely with the emphasis of QS iii,–, which declares that apart from an inner, spiritual cleansing, one remains a moral leper, to be called “unclean, unclean”. Like the Essenes, John was “preparing the way of the Lord in the wilderness”… Crossing of the Jordan was also reminiscent of crossing the Red Sea (Josh. :f.; Pss. :; :, ). Hence baptism in the Jordan could suggest baptism in the Sea (I Cor. :).
Thus the symbolic significance of the crossing of the Jordan existed in the era in which the gospel was composed. But if crossing the Jordan into Canaan symbolizes crossing into life with God, a symbolism reflected in baptism in the Jordan, with life in the land symbolizing life with God, how is it that in John (and only John), John the Baptist and Jesus are said to minister across the Jordan, that is, on ‘the wrong side’? I shall now consider the three references to πέραν τοῦ Ἰορδάνου in John.
. Crossing the Jordan in John
In the first episode in which πέραν τοῦ Ἰορδάνου occurs (.–) the reference concludes the account in which John the Baptist is questioned about his baptisms by the priests and Levites sent by the Jews from Jerusalem (.),
Brownlee, ‘Ceremony’, – (Brownlee’s translation). Brownlee, ‘Ceremony’, . Brownlee, ‘Ceremony’, . Brownlee, ‘Ceremony’, .
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an account in which the tension between ‘the Jews’ and Jesus is introduced, and an account that also serves to prepare for the introduction to Jesus’ public ministry. Here, the reference to Bethany/Batanaea as πέραν τοῦ Ἰορδάνου identifies the site of the dialogue between John the Baptist and the priests and Levites, making it explicit that John the Baptist’s ministry is taking place ‘across the Jordan’ with respect to Jerusalem, outside the land of Israel where YHWH dwells. People are coming to John here for baptism, crossing the Jordan in order to do so. In the second episode (.–) the phrase occurs in the middle of a dialogue that results from a question posed by some of John the Baptist’s disciples regarding ceremonial washing (καθαρισμός, .), being the third of three contrasting responses to Jesus from ‘within the world of Judaism’ in .–., reflecting the responses of ‘the Jews’, Nicodemus and John the Baptist. Here, Jesus is said to have been with John πέραν τοῦ Ἰορδάνου (.), establishing Jesus’ ministry ‘across the Jordan’ (i.e. outside the land), even if here he is said to be ministering in the Judean countryside (.). As in ., the phrase is used in the context of baptism. In the third episode (.–) the phrase occurs after a lengthy dispute between ‘the Jews’ and Jesus, and here Jesus is said to go back across the Jordan (i.e. outside the land) to the place where John had been baptizing (.), a note that is followed by the comment that many came to Jesus and believed in him at that place (.). The reference here forms an inclusio with ., thus marking the conclusion of a major stage of Jesus’ public ministry. Here Jesus leaves the scene of violence at the temple in Jerusalem to cross the Jordan to the place where he and John had baptized, and he stays there. The context from which Jesus departed is important, being the Feast of Dedication, in which the re-consecration of the temple was celebrated. But what is portrayed here is, in fact, ironically, a desecration of ‘the true temple’ (i.e. Jesus) for John, for . indicates that there is no need to look to the Jerusalem temple (Zion) any more since Jesus replaces the temple (cf. .), yet Jesus is violently rejected by
F. J. Moloney, The Gospel of John (SP ; Collegeville: Liturgical, ) . This account launches the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, which, together with the third occurrence of the phrase (.), then forms an inclusio around the public ministry of Jesus in a postulated ‘original form’ of John (see Brown, John, ). For the reading that I am developing it will be unnecessary to probe the history of the text that we now have. Moloney, John, –. R. Bultmann (The Gospel of John: A Commentary [Oxford: Blackwell, ET ] –) takes .– with what follows rather than with what precedes, although this appears to be a minority view. Cf. Brown, John, ; Moloney, John, . Thyen develops the link between .– and the significance of the witness of John the Baptist (Johannesevangelium, –). Moloney, John, .
‘(Bethany) beyond the Jordan’
‘the Jews’ (.–), even though he has been portrayed as giving life (.–) owing to his oneness with the Father, whose works he reflects here. As Moloney puts it, ‘the Jews’ ‘celebrate their allegiance to the God of Israel present in the Temple, but they are not prepared to accept that same God, visible in the works of Jesus’. But despite ‘the rejection of Jesus in vv.–, vv.– keep alive the story of a response to Jesus as many come to believe in him in a different place (v.)’. And this, it seems, is the crucial point. The different place is ‘across the Jordan’, outside the land, outside the place where God was traditionally encountered. While for John ‘the Jews’ reject Jesus the ‘true temple’ as the locus of God’s presence, so for John to follow Jesus one rejects the Jerusalem temple and the land of Israel and its symbolic connotations, the sites traditionally associated with God’s presence. Such rejection is symbolized by crossing the Jordan ‘in the wrong direction’ to the symbolic location of Bethany = Bashan. Coupled with the commonly perceived antagonism towards ‘the Jews’ in John, what this indicates is that for John a rejection of a number of central assumptions of the construction of identity in first-century Jewish society is required to follow Jesus, and thus truly to know and worship God. That society is, moreover, portrayed as corrupt, violent and blind in the world of the text, perhaps to legitimate such a shift in identity construction, something that accentuates the symbolic nature of the text perhaps.
Cf. Moloney, John, –. Moloney, John, . For a number of recent perspectives on the question of John’s attitudes to ‘the Jews’, see the collection of papers in R. Bieringer, D. Pollefeyt and F. Vandecasteele-Vanneuville, eds., AntiJudaism and the Fourth Gospel: Papers of the Leuven Colloquium, (Assen: Van Gorcum, ). For a recent, detailed analysis of the portrayal of ‘the Jews’ in John, and its significance, see R. Hakola, Identity Matters: John, the Jews and Jewishness (NovTSup ; Leiden: Brill, ). Hakola argues for an ambivalence in John’s portrayal of Jewishness. It is interesting to note, however, that it is symbolism drawn from the OT itself that is used to subvert the traditional significance of the temple and land. Indeed the rejection of ‘the Jews’ as portrayed in the world of the text in John seems to be associated with violence and evil deeds, rather than with Jewishness per se. For example, R. W. L. Moberly suggests, ‘the portrayal of the Jews as “of the devil” in John is entirely correlate with their murderous intent toward Jesus, as eventually realized in John . To abstract and essentialize this portrayal and to suppose on that basis that John is “anti-Semitic” is to commit a major error. It is “of the devil” to be murderous, not to be Jewish’ (‘Johannine Christology and Jewish-Christian Dialogue’, Scripture’s Doctrine and Theology’s Bible [ed. M. Bockmuehl and A. Torrance; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, ] –, here ). Moreover, the rejection of the temple is also associated with its corruption through ‘commercialization’ (.–). In other words, in the world of the text Jewish society is portrayed as being pervaded by corruption and violence, and it is this that is to be rejected to follow Jesus, however this might or might not reflect the historical circumstances of Jesus’ ministry.
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The true dwelling place of God is now in Jesus on the other side of the Jordan, to whom people come crossing the Jordan but in the ‘wrong’ direction, a place where Jesus ‘remains’, with the result that many believe. In other words, the symbol of crossing the Jordan into the land of Canaan as symbolizing entry into life in its fullness with God is inverted by John—now, to enter into such life (cf. .) one must cross ‘out of’ Israel and into new life with Jesus outside the land and Jewish society. These are shocking reinterpretations of a cherished and established motif, comparable perhaps with Paul’s reinterpretation of Gen . in Romans . Crossing the waters of the Jordan, and baptism, remains the symbol for entry into new life, but it is a symbol that has been inverted— one must cross ‘the other way’, to what was taken to be ‘outside’ the land. This kind of reading, while perhaps somewhat novel, is, in fact, fairly close to Cyril of Alexandria’s, in which he commented on ., Leaving Jerusalem, the Savior seeks a refuge in a place with springs of water so that he might signify obscurely, as in a type, how he would leave Judea and go over to the church of the Gentiles, which possesses the fountains of baptism and where many approach him crossing through the Jordan. This is signified by Christ taking up his abode “beyond” the Jordan. Having crossed the Jordan by holy baptism, they are brought to God, for truly Christ went across from the synagogue of the Jews to the Gentiles and then “many came to him and believed” the words that the saints spoke concerning Christ.
Thus the symbolic account that I wish to develop exists, in a latent form, in traditional Christian interpretation of John. Finally, the references to being ‘across the Jordan’ appear to form an inclusio for a significant narrative in John (. and .), but the references also demonstrate movement and progression—for only John the Baptist is present in ., Jesus and John are both reported as ministering here in ., yet it is Jesus alone ministering in .. So the phrase also functions as a literary motif or, perhaps, structural marker that highlights the progression of Jesus’ ministry; This may suggest that μένω (.) ought to be read in the imperfect rather than aorist form, even if it is the only occurrence of μένω in the imperfect in John, since the imperfect would emphasize Jesus’ abiding presence ‘across the Jordan’ outside the land. Here is where people must go to find life with God. (Cf. Brown, John, ; L. Morris, The Gospel according to John [NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, rev. ed. ] ). Cf. J. D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (London: T&T Clark, ) –. Interestingly, Brown perceives land as an important theme in ., which he translates with a parenthetical comment about the land thus emphasizing its importance; ‘To his own [land] he came, yet his own people did not accept him’ (John, ). Commentary on the Gospel of John . in J. C. Elowsky, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture New Testament IVa: John – (Downers Grove: IVP, ) –. Cf. Brown (John, ) who regards .– as the original ending of Jesus’ public ministry. If this is correct, then the symbolic significance of . is strengthened.
‘(Bethany) beyond the Jordan’
John indeed becomes lesser as Jesus becomes greater, as per .–, and as the locus of God’s action and presence is revealed.
. The Significance of ἐν Βηθανίᾳ πέραν τοῦ Ἰορδάνου
Given the significance of Bashan that we saw earlier in Micah .–, Jer . and Ps . [Heb.], and the significance of ‘crossing the Jordan’ developed above, the location of John . as Bethany = Batanaea = Bashan makes good sense, with Jesus later ‘remaining’ across the Jordan where people come to him to find life in God (.–). For it is on the luxuriant pastures of Bashan that God will shepherd his people as ‘the good shepherd’ (John .–), feeding his people—ultimately with Christ himself (.–), forgiving their sin (.), bringing life in fullness and abundance (.), and it is from Bashan that God will lead his people out (.) and back to himself with ‘wonders’ comparable with the Exodus—through Jesus’ death and resurrection (.–). This symbolic significance is accentuated when John is compared with the synoptics, for there is no indication in the synoptics that Jesus and John the Baptist ministered ‘across the Jordan’. What one does find, however, is a note that Jesus did cross the Jordan to minister later on in his life (Matt .; Mark .), where the reference to Jesus crossing the Jordan introduces a debate with the Pharisees concerning divorce. What this suggests is that John’s gospel is keener to portray Jesus (and John the Baptist) as ministering across the Jordan, at a specific location outside the land. This might well be taken as an indication of the symbolic (rather than historical) significance of these references in John in the way developed above. However, what this report of Jesus ministering across the Jordan in Matthew, Mark and John necessitates is his re-crossing of the Jordan, in the ‘correct’ direction, to go to Jerusalem for the crucifixion. Should this be taken to indicate that the traditional symbolism of the Jordan crossing is in fact adopted in the gospels? Possibly in Matthew and Mark it is. But what then of John? It seems that John is happy to exploit the full potential of the symbolic resources at his disposal, perhaps using the plenitude of the same symbol in different ways. While John’s gospel is highly symbolic and probably not a ‘historical’ witness as such, nonetheless it is still broadly constrained by actual events of Jesus’ life, and in particular his journey to Jerusalem leading to his crucifixion, resurrection and appearances to his disciples, events that were interpreted by early Christians as being the fulfilment of God’s promises to Israel, and of her hope of a saviour. But for John it seems that this desire to understand Jesus as the fulfiller of Israel’s history and hopes (e.g. .; .–) stands in some tension with his desire to portray If John regards God as dwelling here in Bashan then an ironic inversion of Ps .– (Heb.) is suggested comparable with the ironic inversion of the symbolism of crossing the Jordan.
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certain central aspects of first-century ‘Jewish’ identity—here, the temple and the land—as needing to be abandoned to find life with God, legitimated via the portrayal of a systemically corrupt and violent society that rejects Jesus, at least in the world of the text. Thus perhaps, as Hakola suggests, the notion of ‘Jewishness’ is for John rather more ambivalent than is often suggested.
. Conclusion
The phrase πέραν τοῦ Ἰορδάνου has a symbolic significance in John that inverts the traditional symbolism of crossing the Jordan; one must cross the Jordan in the ‘wrong’ direction to find life with God, indicating the rejection of cherished Jewish assumptions regarding temple and land. Life with God is now found in Jesus, the ‘place’ where God dwells, the true temple of God, in Bethany = Batanaea = Bashan. This location makes good sense, with its symbolic significance in John reflecting an exploration of Jer ., Micah .– and Ps . [Heb.]. While Jesus will cross the Jordan in the ‘correct’ direction on his way to Jerusalem, something that might reflect the traditional use of the symbol in the synoptics, in John this appears to suggest that the author relishes the possibility of juxtaposing various symbols, and even different aspects of the same symbol, to fully exploit their potential, while being broadly constrained by the actual life of Jesus as the one rejected, crucified and raised from the dead as the light and saviour of the world.
Hakola, John. Hakola does not consider the themes developed here, however.
New Test. Stud. , pp. –. Printed in the United Kingdom © Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S0028688509000228
‘Extraction from the Mortal Site’: Badiou on the Resurrection in Paul* L . L. WE L B O R N Fordham University, Department of Theology, 441 East Fordham Road, Bronx, NY 10458, USA email:
[email protected] This essay explores the heuristic force of Alain Badiou’s theory of ‘truth-processes’ for an understanding of the psycho-social effect of Paul’s gospel upon first-century inhabitants of the Roman Empire, both elite and lower class. Badiou’s analysis of the ‘situated void’ around which existence is constructed directs attention to figures of the subject as ‘living death’ in the literature of the first century, illuminating the process by which a new, liberated self came forth, in response to Paul’s message of the resurrection. An immanent critique of Badiou’s singular emphasis upon the resurrection as the Pauline ‘truth-event’ gives rise to an hypothesis regarding Paul’s description of his gospel as ‘Christ crucified’ in his later epistles: Paul dared to name the ‘situated void’ around which the existence of slaves was constructed in order to redeem the oppressed, whose identities were submerged in shame, from the annihilating power of the cross. Keywords: Alain Badiou, truth-event, resurrection, crucifixion, interpellation, Walter Benjamin
In Badiou’s Saint Paul, the philosopher applies his theory of ‘truth processes’ to the founder of Christianity. Badiou finds in Paul’s epistles the formal model of the temporality of the truth-event, which has undergirded his earlier analyses of the ruptures in the fabric of social life in the domains of art, science, love, and politics. The NT scholar may feel obliged to collaborate on * This essay is the revised text of a paper presented at a special session of the Pauline Epistles section of the SBL in Boston, November . I wish to express my sincere gratitude to all those who offered responses and criticisms, especially Lou Martyn, Ward Blanton, John Barclay, Neil Elliott, John Riches, Wolfgang and Eckhard Stegemann, and Robert Jewett. For sustained dialogue on Paul and the philosophers, I am especially grateful to Locke Welborn and Rabbi Bernard Barsky. Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism (trans. R. Brassier; Stanford: Stanford University, ). Alain Badiou, L’être et l’événement (Paris: Seuil, ); English ed. Being and Event (trans. O. Feltham; London: Continuum, ).
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Badiou’s project, since Badiou heralds the rediscovery (by an atheist!) of the archetypal truth-event in Paul’s declaration ‘Christ is resurrected’. Drawn to this project by Badiou’s ability to articulate the relevance of Paul’s gospel in a secular idiom, the historian of Paul’s world may find work to do at the point of Badiou’s most important achievement—which is to have exposed the dark, mortal site from which new life emerges, for purposes of theologico-political reflection. Along the way toward an analysis of the construction of death in the Roman Empire, we may find ourselves approaching a more adequate understanding of the representation of the subject in the mid-first century, illuminating the sense of disillusionment and catastrophe that pervades the literature of Paul’s contemporaries, to which the message of the resurrection is addressed, and from which a new, liberated self comes forth by means of a subjective division. On the other side of Badiou’s account of the Resurrection as truth-event, we will encounter the limit of Badiou’s interpretation of Paul, in his insistence that Jesus’ death does not belong to the operation of evental grace. It will be argued that Badiou’s attempt to disjoin death from resurrection leads him to place the Pauline concept of the Christ in dangerous proximity to the Nietzschean idea of the Overman as a figure of pure self-affirmation. A disclaimer is in order, from the outset: the immanent critique of Badiou’s Paul that follows is informed by philosophical premises which have much in common with Badiou’s own. Immersed in Heideggerian existentialism as a student, an encounter with the writings of Walter Benjamin in the early s led to engagement with the works of Georg Lukács and Louis Althusser. The usefulness of Lacan’s psychology for analysis of the representation of the subject, even in the case of the literature of antiquity, also belongs to the assumptions of this essay, especially as ethical dimensions of the Lacanian ontologization of the subject are reflected and mediated by Slavoj Žižek. Eric Santner’s account of the ‘undeadness’ of the subject opened a fresh perspective on Paul’s understanding of death. Finally, this essay shares the professed aim of Giorgio Agamben’s seminar on Paul: ‘to restore Paul’s letters to the status of the fundamental messianic texts for the Western tradition’. Thus, the reader should not expect to find here a critique of Badiou’s philosophy in its entirety, but rather an attempt to think with and through Badiou’s reading of Paul, until, in the Badiou, Saint Paul, , . Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: MIT, ); Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (London: New Left Books, ). Slavoj Žižek, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Center of Political Ontology (London: Verso, ). Eric Santner, On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life: Reflections on Freud and Rosenzweig (Chicago: University of Chicago, ). Giorgio Agamben, The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans (Stanford: Stanford University, ) .
‘Extraction from the Mortal Site’
end, we venture to think against Badiou’s understanding of Jesus’ death, abandoning, finally, Badiou’s basic premise of the singularity of the resurrection in the operation of evental grace. For those who come fresh to Badiou’s philosophy, it may be useful to situate the book on Paul within Badiou’s larger project, by recapitulating the argument of his Ethics. Badiou’s concept of a ‘truth-event’ describes the ways in which human beings undergo tears in the fabric of their social lives, ruptures which, in principle, allow not merely for the emergence of new objects of desire, but rather for the fundamental restructuring of the coordinates of desire, through radical shifts in the direction of life. According to Badiou, our embeddedness in the customs and opinions of the world we inhabit is structurally susceptible to a disruption that ‘compels us to decide a new way of being’. Such ruptures bring about a transformation of the social animal that I was into the human subject I am to become: ‘a socialized animal is convoked by certain circumstances to become a subject—or rather, to enter into the composing of a subject. That is to say, at a given moment, everything he is—his body, his abilities—is called upon to enable the passing of a truth along its path. This is when the human animal is convoked to be the immortal that he was not yet’. Badiou gives examples of what can count as ‘truth-events’ from the realms of politics, love, science, and art: the French Revolution of , the meeting of Heloise and Abelard, Galileo’s creation of physics, Haydn’s invention of the classical musical style. Each such event generates within our animal inertia a ‘vital disorganization’ that can become the source of a radically new kind of subjective stance: Every pursuit of an interest has success as its only source of legitimacy. On the other hand, if I ‘fall in love’, or if I am seized by the sleepless fury of a thought, or if some radical political engagement proves incompatible with every immediate principle of interest—then I find myself compelled to measure life, my life as a socialized human animal, against something other than itself. And this above all when, beyond the joyful or enthusiastic clarity of the seizing, it becomes a matter of finding out if, and how, I am to continue along the path of vital disorganization, thereby granting to this primordial disorganization a secondary and paradoxical organization, that very organization which we have called ‘ethical consistency’.
An adequate understanding of Badiou’s notion of a vital rupture in the fabric of being requires us to probe more deeply into the circumstances in which the Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil (trans. P. Hallward; London: Verso, ). Badiou, Ethics, . Badiou, Ethics, . Badiou, Ethics, . Badiou, Ethics, .
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socialized animal is convoked to become a human subject. Badiou builds upon Althusser’s concept of ‘interpellation’ to describe the process by which ideology compels us to accept our determinate place within the socio-symbolic edifice, which is a place of guilt and servitude. Badiou recognizes that a break emerges insofar as the norms of the socialized human animal are articulated around a void: ‘You might ask what it is that makes the connection between the event and that “for which” it is an event. This connection is the void of the earlier situation. What does that mean? It means that at the heart of every situation, as the foundation of its being, there is a “situated void”, around which is organized the plentitude (or the stable multiples) of the situation in question’. Badiou gives as an example of such a ‘situated void’, one from the realm of politics: ‘Marx is an event for political thought because he designates, under the name “proletariat”, the central void of early bourgeois societies. For the proletariat— being entirely dispossessed, and absent from the political stage—is that around which is organized the complacent plentitude established by the rule of those who possess capital’. Thus, Badiou draws the following conclusion about the relationship between the event and its circumstance: ‘the fundamental ontological characteristic of an event is to inscribe, to name the situated void of that for which it is an event’. Now we are able to comprehend why Paul is a foundational figure for Badiou in the history of the emergence of a universal subject, and hence for the existence of any truth whatsoever: unlike effective truth-procedures which aim at the production of a universal in the domains of science, art, politics, and love, ‘there occurs with Paul…a powerful break’, whose ‘immense echo’ reverberates backwards and forwards in time, a break which deserves to be called ‘theoretical’, because the situated void which Paul’s proclamation inscribes and names is nothing other than death itself. Paul’s declaration ‘Christ is resurrected’ blasts open the continuum constructed around death. Badiou explains, ‘For Paul, the Resurrection is that on the basis of which life’s center of gravity comes to reside in life, whereas previously, being situated in the Law, it organized life’s subsumption by death’. Louis Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, –. See also Ernesto Laclau, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory (London: New Left Books, ) –; Žižek, The Ticklish Subject, , –, . Badiou, Ethics, . Badiou, Ethics, . Badiou, Ethics, . Badiou, Saint Paul, . Badiou, Saint Paul, . Badiou, Saint Paul, ; cf. Žižek, ‘The Politics of Truth, or, Alain Badiou as a Reader of St. Paul’, The Ticklish Subject, –. Badiou, Saint Paul, .
‘Extraction from the Mortal Site’
Badiou emphasizes that, for Paul, ‘death’ does not signify a biological terminus, but rather a certain subjective stance or path, a way of dying to life within life, a living-death. Badiou takes Rom . to be a ‘central aphorism’: ‘The thought of the flesh is death; the thought of the spirit is life’. Badiou comments: ‘The death about which Paul tells us…has nothing biological about it, no more so, for that matter, than life. Death and life are thoughts, interwoven dimensions of the global subject’. Death is ‘the real, configured through the subjective path of the flesh’. ‘Resurrection’ therefore designates the possibility of a disruption of this peculiar death-in-life that constrains human existence. The crucial point for Badiou is that it is precisely from this void, that is, from this uncanny site of deathin-life, that the upsurge of life signified by the Christ-event first becomes possible. That is the meaning of Badiou’s assertion that ‘death is the evental site immanent to the situation’, and, in that sense, ‘enters into the composition of the event itself’. Badiou explains: ‘Death is the construction of the evental site insofar as it brings it about that resurrection will have been addressed to men, to their subjective situation’. Badiou sums up: ‘Christ has been pulled ek nekrōn, out from the dead. This extraction from the mortal site establishes a point wherein death loses its power’. For NT theologians schooled on Bultmann, Badiou’s concept of death as a subjective path towards the void, a death-constrained immobility, will evoke the Heideggerian notion of ‘inauthenticity’. But, for Badiou the Marxist, our death-in-life is not a personal anxiety, distractedness, or numbness generated by our ‘thrownness’ into being. Thus, for examples of what Badiou terms the ‘symptomal torsion of being’ around the void, we should not look to that group of tombstone jingles, half-prose, half-verse, found in various forms in every quarter of Paul’s world: ‘I was not. I came to be. I am not. I don’t care’.
Badiou, Saint Paul, –; cf. Žižek, ‘Badiou as a Reader of St. Paul’, . Badiou, Saint Paul, . Badiou, Saint Paul, . Badiou, Saint Paul, –. Cf. Eric Santner, ‘Miracles Happen’, The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology (ed. S. Žižek; London and Chicago: University of Chicago, ) . Badiou, Saint Paul, . Badiou, Saint Paul, . Badiou, Saint Paul, . Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (trans. J. Stambaugh; Albany: State University of New York, ). Badiou, Saint Paul, , distinguishing Paul’s thought from that of the early Heidegger. Badiou, L’être et l’événement, ; cf. Žižek, ‘Badiou as a Reader of St. Paul’, . IG , ; for further examples, see R. Lattimore, Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs (Urbana: University of Illinois, ) –; W. Peek, Griechische Grabgedichte (Berlin: Töpelmann, ) . Note the conjecture of Imre Peres, Griechische Grabinschriften und neutestamentliche Eschatologie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, ) : ‘Wahrscheinlich waren
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Rather, Badiou conceives of the void that ‘Resurrection’ names as a social and political construct. Because Badiou articulates his understanding of the Christ-event as a commentary on Corinthians –, ‘the ‘world’ that Paul declares has been crucified with Jesus is the Greek cosmos, the reassuring totality that allots places, and orders thought to consent to those places’. We do not wish to deny that Paul understood his gospel as the overthrow of that regime of discourse which aimed at securing mastery for the wise man. But students of the cultural project of being Greek under Rome are increasingly aware of the various ways in which the ideology of wisdom, in the form of rhetoric and philosophy, served Roman interests and reinforced empire. Thus we may seek to supplement Badiou’s project of naming the situated void of the Christ-event by exploring figures of subjectivity as ‘living-death’ in the Roman world of the mid-first century. In this experiment, we will be following the logic of Paul’s own exposition of the gospel in Corinthians –: after penetrating the ideological mask of Greek wisdom ( Cor .–), Paul exposes the naked face of ‘the rulers of this age’, who had ‘crucified the Lord of glory’ ( Cor .–). In a handful of recent studies, critics of Silver Age literature have noted the number of works in which the characters seem to be dead before actually dying. What has changed in Roman society to account for this transformation in the figure of the subject? Paul Miller suggests that a fundamental split in the nature of subjectivity occurred in the late first century BCE, a split that was symptomatic of a change in the structure of power. The answer lies in the consolidation of the political and cultural order around the figure of the emperor. Perhaps we should have attended more closely to Tacitus’s bitter insistence that the slavishness fostered by Augustus and his successors had destroyed the Roman character. For an example of this split in the subject, we turn to Ovid. In his poetry from exile, Ovid constructs his condition as a living death in which true death,
diese oder ähnliche Lebensvorstellungen vor allem für höhere Schichten und in grösseren Städten typisch, inspiriert durch das kulturelle Leben im Theater und die Möglichkeiten zu Lebensgenuss’. Badiou, Saint Paul, . E.g. Ramsay MacMullen, Romanization in the Time of Augustus (New Haven: Yale University, ); Simon Goldhill, ed., Being Greek under Rome: Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic, and the Development of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University, ); Andrew WallaceHadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University, ). T. N. Habinek, The Politics of Latin Literature: Writing, Identity, and Empire in Ancient Rome (Princeton: Princeton University, ); P. A. Miller, Subjecting Verses: Latin Love Elegy and the Emergence of the Real (Princeton; Princeton University, ); B. Dufallo, The Ghosts of the Past: Latin Literature, the Dead, and Rome’s Transition to a Principate (Columbus: Ohio State University, ). Miller, Subjecting Verses, –. Tacitus Ann. ..; ..
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while desired, nevertheless eludes him: in Tristia ., Ovid portrays his departure into exile as a funeral; in ., Ovid casts himself in the role of traditional erotic elegy’s excluded lover knocking in vain on the door of death; in ., he looks forward to death, since it will mean his longed-for return to Rome, once his wife has transferred his bones there; in ., he describes himself as a ghost, his body already reduced to ashes and buried in a tomb; in Ex Ponto ., Ovid exhorts his friend Maximus to number him with the dead. Ovid’s exile poems are a testament to the consolidation of Augustus’s power. Indeed, in their expressions of dependency on the emperor’s mercy and frank acknowledgment of his authority, they provide a model of imperial subjecthood. Literature contemporary with the inception of Paul’s mission gives expression to a deepening disillusionment with the realities of Roman rule, especially in the aftermath of the Caligula crisis. This literature is also conspicuously ‘haunted’ by figures of death-in-life, whether in the form of ghosts, or persons who have returned from the dead, or pictures of the world as a ruined place, from which all vitality has been withdrawn. Making all proper allowances for rhetorical hyperbole in Philo’s invective against the Emperor Gaius, it is nevertheless clear how much genuine disappointment, and later revulsion, accompanied the revelation of madness and cruelty at the center of Roman power, as Philo and his contemporaries discovered that the weight of empire could turn a young man, whose accession had aroused so much hope, into a monster: As the author of general ruin and destruction,…you changed what gave pleasure and joy into discomfort and grief and a life which all men everywhere find unworthy of the name. And so insatiable and quenchless were your lusts that you stole all that was good and valuable, whether from east and west, or from all other regions of the world southwards or northwards, and in return you gave and sent them the fruits of your own bitterness and all things Miller, Subjecting Verses, –; Dufallo, The Ghosts of the Past, –. On the importance of the Caligula crisis, see A. Barrett, Caligula: The Corruption of Power (New Haven: Yale university, ) –. Dufallo, The Ghosts of the Past, –; J. G. Fitch, Seneca VIII Tragedies (LCL ; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, ) . There is a pressing need for rhetorical analysis of Philo’s political writings In Flaccum and Legatio ad Gaium, where virtually every line is shaped to meet his rhetorical ends. Philo’s rhetorical subtlety is so great as to give impressions contrary to what occurred, without complete fabrication. See the brief treatment of rhetorical aspects of the Legatio in Daniel R. Schwartz, ‘On Drama and Authenticity in Philo and Josephus’, SCI (/) –; Manuel Alexandre, Rhetorical Argumentation in Philo of Alexandria (Atlanta: Scholars, ). There is relevant material in the insightful articles by Allen Kerkeslager, ‘The Absence of Dionysios, Lampo, and Isidoros from the Violence in Alexandria in CE’, SPhA () –; ‘Agrippa and the Mourning Rites for Drusilla in Alexandria’, JSJ () –; ‘Agrippa I and the Judeans of Alexandria in the Wake of the Violence in CE’, REJ () –, to whom I owe sincere thanks for guidance in the matter of Philo’s rhetoric.
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mischievous and hurtful that abominable and venomous souls are wont to generate… You stripped the cities of all that tends to well-being and happiness, and turned them into hotbeds of what makes for confusion and tumults and the height of misery… You rained miseries untold one after the other as from perennial fountains on every part of the inhabited world.
Philo insists that knowledge of Caligula’s crimes was not restricted to those who, like himself, were highly placed: ‘In every mouth there was common talk about these inexpiable abominations, though quietly and in undertones, since fear prevented open discussion’. The effect of Caligula’s reign upon Jews and Jewish sympathizers must have been shattering. God had intervened to save a remnant of the Jewish community of Alexandria, Philo believed, though many perished in the pogroms. But Philo’s confidence was broken: there is a bitter irony and a sense of hopelessness about Philo’s Legatio ad Gaium that is not characteristic of his writing generally. Pessimism about human nature steals into Philo’s thought. An even darker vision of the world and human nature is found in Seneca’s tragedies. Here we enter a world of moral chaos, in which isolated individuals are driven to acts of violence by gigantic passions. Seneca’s Hercules returns from the underworld at the height of megalomania, and resolves to storm the gates of heaven; descending rapidly into madness, he slaughters his wife and children. Making allowances for the nature of tragedy, it is difficult not to see the bleak world depicted in Seneca’s Hercules as a reflection of the macabre reign of Caligula, who likewise ‘overstepped the bounds of human nature in his eagerness to be thought a god’, descended into madness, and murdered members of his own family. Amphitryon’s account of the paradoxes of his world echoes the dark experiences of Seneca’s own times: ‘Crime which prospers and flourishes is given the name of valor; good people take orders from the wicked; might is right, and laws are stifled by fear’ (–). In Seneca’s Hercules, death manifests itself in the rhythms of everyday life: dawn and birdsong awaken ‘hard toil, bestir every care’ (–); crowds in the cities are ‘conscious of fleeting time’ and ‘hold fast the moments that will never return’ (–); the throng moving
Philo Leg. Gai. –, . Philo Leg. Gai. . Philo Leg. Gai. –. D. and E. Henry, The Mask of Power: Seneca’s Tragedies and Imperial Rome (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, ). J. G. Fitch and S. McElduff, ‘Construction of the Self in Senecan Drama’, Mnemosyne () –. Seneca, ‘Hercules’ Seneca VIII Tragedies (LCL ; trans. J. G. Fitch; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, ) –. Philo Leg. Gai. . Barrett, Caligula, –.
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through the streets is on its way to the underworld, ‘each with a sorrowful sense of being buried beneath the whole earth… All around is turbid emptiness, unlovely darkness, the sullen color of night, the lethargy of a silent world, and empty clouds’ (–); sleep is the ‘languid brother of hardhearted Death’ (), from whom fearful humans gain advance knowledge of the ‘long night’ that is to come (–). In seeking the reasons for the pervasive insecurity that marks the characters of Senecan tragedy, it is worth remembering that ‘Seneca himself lived through and witnessed, in his own person or in the persons of those near him, almost every evil and horror that is the theme of his writings. Exile, murder, incest, the threat of poverty and a hideous death were the very texture of his career’. Seneca’s epistles return repeatedly to the thought of suicide: he directs the reader’s attention to ‘any tree,…any vein’, as the path to freedom. In Letter to Lucilius, he confesses a longing for suicide: ‘death little by little, in a steady weakening not without its pleasures, a peaceful annihilation I know well, having lost consciousness several times’. A more thorough analysis of the representation of the subject in the mid-first century would demonstrate that the figure of death-in-life, which makes its appearance in Ovid, Philo, and Seneca, was by no means idiosyncratic, but was endemic, at least in the literature of persons of a certain social class. In the writings of those who were most self-conscious and articulate, we glimpse a subject cringing around a void, simultaneously registering and repressing knowledge of the death-driven situation by which his existence was constrained. The ground of this experience of disillusionment was not personal, despite Philo’s fixation upon the wickedness of Caligula, but structural: the geopolitical expansion of the Roman Empire, and the emergence of sole sovereignty, exercised through an ongoing ‘state of exception’, ensured that ‘the actions of one man, the emperor, could indeed affect the known world’. And what if this one man were unable to bear the weight of Empire, and descended into paranoia, or exploded in megalomania? The family history of the Euryclids at Corinth demonstrates that the suspicion of a Tiberius could reach out to a provincial city and result in exile and the confiscation of property. In any case, the effect of the political changes of the first century upon the way in which men such as Ovid, Philo, C. J. Herrington, ‘Senecan Tragedy’, Arion () . Seneca Ep. . Seneca Ep. ; see the comments of P. Veyne, Seneca: The Life of a Stoic (New York and London: Routledge, ) . On the Principate as a ‘state of exception’ in the Schmittian sense, see Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago, ) –. Fitch, Seneca VIII Tragedies, . K. M. T. Chrimes, ‘The Family and Descendants of C. Julius Eurykles’, Ancient Sparta: A Re-examination of the Evidence (Manchester: Manchester University, ) –; G. W. Bowersock, ‘Eurycles of Sparta’, Journal of Roman Studies () –.
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and Seneca chose to represent the figure of the subject is writ large upon their works: they portray increasingly isolated individuals, wracked by obsessive emotions and a sense of supine powerlessness. We may reasonably conjecture that Paul’s converts in Philippi, Thessalonica, and Corinth would have been susceptible to these experiences, as well, even if they were less self-conscious and articulate than Seneca. Now let us imagine the day when a gentile Godfearer, someone like Gaius of Corinth (cf. Cor .; Rom .), would have heard Paul preach for the first time at the house of Titius Justus next door to the synagogue. The announcement that God had sent the Messiah (Acts .), a figure of counter-sovereignty, would have signified an intervention, hoped for, but seemingly beyond hope, of divine power into a world where so much had gone awry. The message that God had raised Jesus out of the dead ( Thess .; Cor ., ), the very one put to death under Pontius Pilate ( Cor .), would have signified a rupture in the chain of atrocities. The promise that the Messiah would reign, enthroned in heaven, until he subjugated every inimical authority ( Cor .–), must have signified that corrupt human power over the world had been broken, shorn, and undone. If the secret of the sole sovereignty of Augustus and his successors was that it located the center of gravity in death, in utterly dependant subjecthood, then Paul’s message of the Messiah’s resurrection must have restored the center of gravity to life, so that Gaius, in hearing Paul’s gospel, would have experienced an upsurge, an insurrection of the self, with the exhilarating sensations that attend the sudden emergence of a new subject—freedom, empowerment, hope. And in the company of others who were simultaneously experiencing and declaring the event of their faith, Gaius must have begun to sense the recovery of a community that had largely disappeared amid the political changes of the preceding century. Naturally, we cannot know how deeply Gaius’s conversion penetrated, or how many of his social values were changed. But the baptism that Gaius received at Paul’s hands ( Cor .) symbolized a death of the former self and the beginning of a new life (Rom .–). We may assume that one who eventually placed his house at the disposal of the Christian community (Rom .) would have experienced a profound transformation, as he responded to Paul’s gospel. Thus far, our exploration of the nature of subjectivity in the first century has focused on the literature of the elite; and for this reason, we took Gaius, ‘the The difficulty of drawing inferences from such highly rhetorical sources as the exile poetry of Ovid, the political writings of Philo, and Senecan tragedy prevents us from speaking, as some Classicists do (e.g. Fitch), of the ‘psychology of the self’ in the first century. Instead, we have contented ourselves with the language of the ‘representation of the subject’. But to the rhetorical inventio of these writings belongs the calculation of what would have been plausible to contemporary readers. Hence, it is significant confirmation of Badiou’s account of the ‘situated void’ of Paul’s gospel that the figure of the subject as a ‘living-dead’ appears so consistently in the literature of Paul’s contemporaries.
‘Extraction from the Mortal Site’
host of the whole ekklesia’ (Rom .), and perhaps the wealthiest person we know of from Paul’s assemblies, to illustrate the psychological effect of the Pauline gospel. Yet, the majority of those who experienced a ‘calling’ as a result of Paul’s gospel, even at ‘wealthy’ Corinth, were uneducated, poor, and lowborn ( Cor .). How would such persons—slaves and the urban poor— have experienced the vital disruption in the fabric of their lives that liberated a new and fully human subject? Is it possible to comprehend the specific construction of the mortal site from which the ‘nothings and nobodies’ of the Roman world ( Cor .) were extracted? As is well known, the obstacle to such an undertaking lies in the silence of the sources: the voices of the poor have vanished from history; as Walter Benjamin observed, the place where their lives are remembered is in the mind of God. Where, then, should we look for the poor as subjects in relation to the ‘situated void’ of Roman society? In my own research, I have turned to popular comedy, and especially the mime, as a means of access to the thought world of the lower classes of the Roman Empire. On the stage, one encounters portraits of slaves and the poor in abundance, since, in accordance with the Greek and Roman theory of the laughable, their weaknesses and deficiencies, both physical and intellectual, were taken as subjects of ridicule. Here I found, initially to my surprise, that the figure of the subject is represented not as one who suffers death in general, but a particular kind of socially shameful death, namely, the cross. The most popular mime of Paul’s day was evidently the Laureolus of a certain Catullus. Numerous references by historians and satirists make it possible to reconstruct Steven Friesen, ‘Poverty in Pauline Studies: Beyond the So-called New Consensus’, JSNT . () –, at . Gerd Theissen, The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity: Essays on Corinth (Philadelphia: Fortress, ) –. Walter Benjamin, ‘The Task of the Translator’, Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings I (ed. M. Bullock and M. Jenings; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, ) ; cf. Walter Benjamin, ‘Über den Begriff der Geschichte’, Gesammelte Schriften I. (ed. R. Tiedemann; Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, ) –. L. L. Welborn, Paul, the Fool of Christ: A Study of Corinthians – in the Comic-Philosophic Tradition (London: T&T Clark, ). Aristotle Ars Poet. a; Cicero De Orat. .; Quintilian Inst. Orat. ..; M. Grant, The Ancient Rhetorical Theories of the Laughable (Madison: University of Wisconsin, ) ; G. M. A. Richter, ‘Grotesques and the Mime’, American Journal of Archaeology () –; R. Garland, The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Greco-Roman World (Ithaca: Cornell University, ) –; Welborn, Paul, the Fool of Christ, –. Welborn, Paul, the Fool of Christ, esp. –. Mimorum romanorum Fragmenta (ed. M. Bonaria; Geneva: Instituto di Filologia Classica, ) . On the popularity of the Laureolus mime, see A. Nicoll, Masks, Mimes and Miracles: Studies in the Popular Theatre (New York: Harcourt, Brace, ) –; R. Beacham, The Roman Theater and its Audience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, ) .
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the plot: Laureolus is a slave who runs away from his master and becomes the leader of a band of robbers; in the final scene, he is crucified. The crucifixion was enacted with a considerable degree of stage realism. Josephus reports that ‘a great quantity of artificial blood flowed down from the one crucified’. According to Martial, a condemned criminal was forced to take the part of Laureolus at a performance during the reign of Titus, and actually died on the cross. In the opening scene of the ‘Adultery Mime’ from Oxyrhynchus, the archimima orders that two of her slaves be ‘fastened to the trees’. When a slave’s complicity in the plot to murder his master is uncovered, at the conclusion of the same mime, the master loudly calls for the ‘stake’ to be brought. In the denouement of a mime-inspired tale in the tenth book of Apuleius’s Metamorphoses, the slave who has assisted his mistress in an attempt to murder her stepson is hanged on the cross. The most vivid references to crucifixion in ancient literature are found in the comedies of Plautus, where the lives of slaves are portrayed with unparalleled sympathy. Examination of these passages indicates what a large space the specter of the cross occupied in the consciousness of the servile class. The slave Sceledrus in Plautus’s Miles Gloriosus confesses: ‘I know the cross will be my tomb. That’s where my ancestors rest—father, grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather’. In Plautus’s Mostellaria (a story of a ‘haunted house’), the slave Tranio, realizing that his demise looks imminent, asks: ‘Anybody here want to make some easy money? Anybody ready to be crucified in my place today?… I’m offering a talent to anyone prepared to jump on a cross…, after that he can come and claim the money, cash on the nail!’ The pages of Plautus are full of such gallows humor. Even more frequent are the passages in which slaves use the word Josephus Ant. .; Suetonius Calig. ; Martial De Spect. ; Juvenal .–; Tertullian Adv. Val. ; cf. T. P. Wiseman, Catullus and his World (Cambridge: Cambridge University, ) –, –. For reconstruction of the plot, see H. Reich, Der Mimus (Berlin: Weidmann, ) –; Nicoll, Masks, Mimes and Miracles, –. Josephus Ant. .. Martial De Spect. . POxy , lines –; cf. H. Wiemken, Der griechische Mimus. Dokumente zur Geschichte des antiken Volkstheaters (Bremen: Schünemann, ) –. POxy , line ; cf. Wiemken, Der griechische Mimus, . ˙ Apuleius Met. .; on the mimic elements in this scene, see J. Winkler, Auctor and Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius’s Golden Ass (Berkeley: University of California, ) –. E. Segal, Roman Laughter: The Comedy of Plautus (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, ) . Segal, Roman Laughter, –. Plautus Miles Gloriosus –. Plautus Mostel. –; cf. J. Meggitt, ‘Laughing and Dreaming at the Foot of the Cross: Context and Reception of a Religious Symbol’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Ethics, and Society () –. E.g. Miles –, –; Persa –; Stichus –; Asinaria , –; Epidicus –.
‘Extraction from the Mortal Site’
‘crux’ in vulgar taunts, calling one another ‘cross-meat’ and ‘cross-bird’, or bidding one another to ‘go be hanged!’ How deeply slaves lived in the shadow of the cross is illustrated by episodes from satires and novels. Horace criticizes a master who crucified his slave for finishing off a half-eaten plate of fish which he had been told to remove from the table. In his novel, Petronius tells how one of Trimalchio’s slaves was crucified for having cursed the soul of Caligula; the notice of his death is read out by a clerk from a long list of things that happened that day on Trimalchio’s estate, such as the harvesting of wheat, and the breaking-in of oxen. The novelist Chariton, who was probably writing in the middle of the first century CE, gives a grim depiction of the crucifixion of sixteen slaves who were working on a chain gang in Caria. Shut up in a dark hut, under miserable conditions, the slaves broke their chains in the night and tried to escape, but failed because the dogs’ barking gave them away. Chariton relates the outcome: ‘Without even seeing them or hearing their defense, the master at once ordered the crucifixion of the sixteen men. They were brought out of the hut chained together at foot and neck, each carrying his cross’. Juvenal describes a Roman matron blithely sending a slave to the cross, merely because she is of a humor to do so; when her husband asks what offense the slave has committed worthy of death, the lady replies that she has no reason, but, after all, a slave is not really a man. The omnipresence of the cross in popular literature portraying the lives of slaves stands in striking contrast to the social constraint upon discourse about the cross in the literature of the elite. Cicero is representative of his social class, when he insists, in a well-known passage of the Pro Rabirio, that ‘the very word “cross” should be far removed, not only from the person of a Roman citizen, but from his thoughts, his eyes and his ears… The mere mention of such a thing is shameful to a Roman citizen and a free man’. The surviving literature illustrates how consistently members of the upper class adhered to this principle. There are no references to the cross in learned Roman writers such as Lucretius, Virgil, Statius, or Aulus Gellius; and there is little or no mention of crucifixion in Greek writers like Plutarch, Dio Chrysostom, Aelius Aristides, or Maximus of E.g. Aul. ; Bacch. , ; Cas. , , , ; Persa ; Captivi , , , , ; Asin. ; Cur. , ; Menaech. , ; Mostel. ; Poen. , , , , . Horace Sat. ..–. Petronius Satyr. . B. P. Reardon, Collected Ancient Greek Novels (Berkeley: University of California, ) . Chariton .; trans. in Reardon, Collected Ancient Greek Novels, . Juvenal .–. M. Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross (Philadelphia: Fortress, ) –. Cicero Pro Rabirio .. Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World, .
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Tyre. What is truly remarkable is the absence of the words crux and patibulum from the works of Caesar, despite the fact that he is known to have used crucifixion as a punishment; the same is true of the younger Pliny, who as governor of Bithynia must have condemned many to the cross. Inevitably, there are references to crucifixion in Greek and Roman historians who recount wars and rebellions; but even in such cases, there is reticence, and a tendency to portray crucifixion as a barbarian mode of execution. It is clear that the rarity of references to crucifixion in canonical literature is not an historical accident, but a reflection of the social and aesthetic values of upper-class writers. What makes the silence of the upper class with respect to crucifixion more significant is the fact that the practice was so widespread in the Roman world. In speaking of the ubiquity of the cross, I do not have in mind the occasional use of crucifixion as the ‘supreme penalty’ (summum supplicium) in notorious cases of high treason, nor the more frequent use of crucifixion as a means of suppressing rebellious subjects in the provinces, but rather the regular employment of the cross as a punishment for slaves in cities throughout the Roman Empire. Just outside the Esquiline Gate at Rome, on the road to Tibur, was a horrific place where crosses were routinely set up for the punishment of slaves. There a torture and execution service was operated by a group of funeral contractors who were open to business from private citizens and public authorities alike. There slaves were flogged and crucified at a charge to their
Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World, . Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World, . Caesar De Bello Hispaniensi .. Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World, . E.g. Livy ..; Valerius Maximus ..; Appian Bell. Civ. .; Strabo ..; Dio Cassius ... Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World, . Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World, . E.g. Cicero In Verr. ..–; cf. P. Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University, ) –. E.g. Josephus B.J. ., , , , ; .; ., –; Ant. .; .; cf. Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World, –. J. Vogt, Ancient Slavery and the Ideal of Man (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, ) –, , –; K. Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves: Sociological Studies in Roman History (Cambridge: Cambridge University, ) –; K. Bradley, Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire: A Study in Social Control (New York and Oxford: Oxford University, ) –. Plautus Miles Gloriosus –; Tacitus Ann. ..; ..; CIL VI, , ; R. Lanciani, Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries (London: Macmillan, ) –; Wiseman, Catullus and his World, –. O. F. Robinson, ‘Slaves and the Criminal Law’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte () –; Wiseman, Catullus and his World, –; K. Bradley, Slavery and Society at Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University, ) .
‘Extraction from the Mortal Site’
masters of sesterces per person. Passing references in the satirists disclose aspects of the grisly scene: Varro mentions rotting corpses; Horace speaks of whitened bones; Juvenal describes the way in which the Esquiline vulture disposed of the bodies: ‘The vulture hurries from dead cattle and dogs and crosses to bring some of the carrion to her offspring’. An inscription from Puteoli confirms that such places of execution, with crosses and other instruments of torture, were found throughout Italy, and probably outside the gates of every large city in the Roman Empire. At these places of execution, it is impossible not to recognize the real reason for the silence of the upper class with respect to crucifixion: crucifixion was the ‘slaves’ punishment’ (servile supplicium). One can still hear the tone of shock and revulsion in the voices of Roman writers of a certain class, when they speak of the exceptional circumstances under which the ‘slaves’ punishment’ came to be inflicted upon Roman citizens and free men. Following Badiou’s suggestion to direct our attention to the mortal site from which new life is extracted, we have arrived at a place where we are able to look more deeply into the ‘situated void’ of Roman society. Now we can see that the cross was not merely a ‘lacuna in the discourse’ of the upper class, to use Giorgio Agamben’s term, but is perhaps better described as the specific, material density within the situated void around which Roman power was constructed. Indeed, the cross was not only the ominous specter around which the consciousness of the slave cringed, but because the cross was the evil instrument by which the legal institution of slavery was maintained, that extracted the surplus upon which the power of the ruling class depended, the cross may be identified as the dark, gravitational center which, whether recognized or repressed, allotted places to all those who lived within the socio-symbolic edifice of the Roman Empire, and compelled thought to consent to those places. In my view, it was an historic moment when Paul, in the course of his correspondence with Corinth, began to articulate his gospel as a ‘message about the cross’ ( Cor .). In Badiou’s terms, Paul dares ‘to name the situated void’ L’anneée épigraphique () ... Varro Ling. Lat. .. Horace Sat. ..–. Juvenal .–. L’année épigraphique () and ; cf. Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World, ; Bradley, Slavery and Society at Rome, . W. L. Westermann, ‘Sklaverei’, Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft Suppl. VI, –. E.g. Livy ..; Valerius Maximus ..; Tacitus Hist. ..; cf. Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World, n. . G. Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive (New York: Zone Books, ). The pre-Pauline kerygmatic formulae do not contain the word ‘cross’ at all. The formula preserved in Cor . speaks of the death of Christ, but not of the manner of his death.
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of that for which Christ was an event. Paul seizes upon the cruel and disgusting term which the educated elite of the Roman world least wanted to hear, and pronounces it with a vengeance. But what is surprising, from the point of view of Badiou’s philosophy, is Paul’s drastic reduction of the content of the gospel, which omits not only the details of Jesus’ life (which never mattered to Paul in the first place), but also, astonishingly, the resurrection! That this omission was conscious is demonstrated by Paul’s repeated choice of the perfect participle, estaurōmenos, to describe more precisely the Christ whom he proclaims ( Cor .; .): Paul insists that the continuing and present significance of the Christ, even after his death and resurrection, consists of nothing other than the fact that he is the crucified. How can we understand this development in Paul’s thinking? And what challenge does it pose to Badiou’s understanding of the Resurrection as the archetypal ‘truth-event’? I would submit that it is no accident that this drastic constriction in the content of Paul’s gospel is found in that portion of the writing known to us as Corinthians where Paul champions the cause of the ‘nothing and nobodies’ against the destructive partisanship of the rich and the strong, a partisanship driven by their over-valuation of ‘eloquent wisdom’. Badiou rightly identifies as ‘the most radical statement’ in Corinthians – the following: ‘God has chosen the things that are not in order to bring to nothing those that are’ ( Cor .). But Badiou does not connect Paul’s provocative assertion that God has chosen the nothings of the world with Paul’s reduction of the content of the gospel to ‘the message about the cross’. The truer Marxist, Paul claims that the purpose of God’s intervention in history was not the liberation of a universal subject from the path of death, but rather the redemption of the many oppressed, whose identities are submerged in shame, and whose lives are in danger of disappearing, on account of the annihilating power of the cross. I propose to appropriate two concepts from Walter Benjamin in an effort to understand how the crucified rather than the resurrected Messiah could be a vital rupture in the death-constrained existence of the oppressed. Benjamin suggests that the redemption of those whose lives are in danger of being forgotten takes place, paradoxically, through a process of mortification and living-on.
In Paul’s earliest epistle, Thessalonians, both the noun and the verb are lacking. Cf. T. Heckel, ‘Der Gekreuzigte bei Paulus’, BZ () –; Welborn, Paul, the Fool of Christ, –. Cor .. H.-W. Kuhn, ‘Kreuz’, Theologische Realenzyklopädie () ; Heckel, ‘Der Gekreuzigte bei Paulus’, –. Cor .; Welborn, Paul, the Fool of Christ, –, –. Badiou, Saint Paul, . Benjamin, ‘The Task of the Translator’, –; A. Chowdhury, ‘Memory, Modernity, Repetition: Walter Benjamin’s History’, Telos () –.
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Benjamin compares this process to the gluing together of the fragments of a broken vessel: the result does not constitute a new, seamless totality, but remains essentially fragmentary, a vessel of broken parts. In his last essay, Benjamin describes the messianic event as a moment of ‘arrest’, a ‘cessation of occurrences’, accompanied by a ‘shock’, after which the struggling, oppressed worldlings are able to live on, in openness to further moments of immanent redemption, by dint of a ‘weak messianic power’. Applying these categories to Paul’s argument in Cor .–, we infer that the proclamation of the crucified Messiah summoned the weak and the low-born into the material density of the cross, where Christ’s willingness to suffer the very death which threatened their existence became the resource for living-on in righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. This constant process of mortification and living-on is expounded by Paul in a crucial passage of the writing known to us as Corinthians: But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that it may be clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in our body the mortification (nekrōsis) of Jesus, in order that the life of Jesus may be manifest in our body. For constantly we the living are being handed over into death on account of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be manifest in our mortal flesh ( Cor .–).
Later in the same epistle, Paul penetrates more deeply into the psychology of the one who experiences the shameful death of the Messiah: ‘For the love of Christ constrains us, being convinced of this: that one died for all…’ But notice that Paul does not continue as we might expect, ‘so that all might live’; rather, Paul writes: ‘one died for all, and therefore all died. And on behalf of all he died, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for the one who for their sake died and was raised’ ( Cor .–). In the operation of evental grace, Paul decisively shifts the balance between death and resurrection in favor of death, not death as the mortal condition, but death as the self-contraction of the Messiah, on behalf of the oppressed. We may now attempt to imagine the day when members of the lower class— ‘Chloe’s people’ let us say—heard Paul’s ‘message about the cross’, and were ‘called’ into the paradoxical experience of power in weakness, so that their lives Benjamin, ‘Task of the Translator’, ; cf. Paul de Man, ‘Walter Benjamin’s “The Task of the Translator”’, Yale French Studies () –. Benjamin, ‘Über den Begriff der Geschichte’, Thesis XVII, –. See the comments on this text by R. Bultmann, Der zweite Brief an die Korinther (KEK ; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ). Compare Žižek’s differentiation of the Lacanian subject from the subject as represented by Badiou in The Ticklish Subject, –.
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came to be characterized by a sense of justice, sanctity, and freedom ( Cor .). Paul makes it clear for whom his cross-gospel had this unexpected consequence: for the most part, they were members of the lower class, those who lacked education, wealth, and birth ( Cor .). It is at this point that failure to understand Paul’s thought is most significant. Martin Hengel, the most diligent researcher of crucifixion in the ancient world, opines that, because the cross was such a horror to slaves and the poor, the message of the crucified Christ ‘was hardly an attraction to the lower classes of Roman and Greek society’. Nothing could be farther from an adequate understanding of the psycho-social dynamic of Paul’s gospel. In the message that the anointed one of God had died the contemptible death of a slave, slaves and the poor heard that they had been ‘chosen’ by God ( Cor .–). The message that the Christ had shared the fate of a piece of human garbage, one of those whom life had demolished, and who had touched bottom —this message was a power capable of rescuing those who trusted in it from despair over the nothingness of their lives ( Cor .b, b, ), so that, even if they lived in the shadow of the cross and died a bit every day, and even if the cross should be their tomb, as it was of their fathers and grandfathers, its power over them was broken and undone, so that they could live-on with value and meaning and love and hope, because the one who had died in this contemptible way was the anointed one of God. Badiou’s most significant failure to understand Paul occurs at this point. Badiou asserts that ‘for Paul…the event is not death, it is resurrection’. He reiterates, ‘Death…cannot be constitutive of the Christ-event… What constitutes an event in Christ is exclusively the Resurrection’. Thus, Badiou insists that Jesus’ death does not belong to the operation of evental grace, but is only ‘an operation that immanentizes the evental site, while resurrection is the event as such’. Badiou is led to this disjunction between Christ’s death and resurrection by his desire to ‘de-dialecticize’ the Christ-event, to liberate the Christ-event from its Hegelian captivity, in which resurrection is nothing but the negation of the negation, a moment in the self-realization of the Absolute. Badiou seeks to ‘avoid the pitfalls of the morbid masochist morality that perceives suffering as inherently redeeming’. But is Badiou right to deny that Paul’s thought is dialectical? Badiou insists, ‘resurrection…comes forth out from the power of death, not through its negation’. The emergence of new life is not a dialectical outcome of the dense materiality of death-in-life; rather, ‘the sudden emergence of new life
Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World, –. Badiou, Saint Paul, . Badiou, Saint Paul, . Badiou, Saint Paul, . Badiou, Saint Paul, –. Žižek, ‘Badiou as a Reader of St. Paul’, . Badiou, Saint Paul, .
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remains of the order of grace’. Surely, Badiou is right in insisting that one who is dead in sin cannot give to himself the possibility of new possibilities. ‘Something must happen, something beyond one’s own control, calculations, and labor, something that comes from the locus of the Other’. But for Paul, the Event which happens, and which faith declares, consists of Christ’s death and resurrection. Again, we may find ourselves asking whether a more instructive analogue to Paul’s proclamation of the Christ-event as death and resurrection is not to be found in Walter Benjamin’s notion of ‘dialectics at a standstill’: at the moment when one hears the word of the ‘crucified Christ’, the constant motion of positing the self in a dialectic between law and desire is arrested, and sudden insight into the death of the Messiah on behalf of all ignites a revolutionary upsurge of life. Badiou’s answer to the question ‘Why Christ must die, and to what end Paul expands on the symbol of the cross?’ falsifies the argument of Romans . Badiou explains that ‘Christ dies simply in order to attest that it well and truly is a man who, capable of inventing death, is also capable of inventing life’. But in Romans , Paul argues that Jesus died, not merely to manifest his share in the universal human condition, but to commend God’s love towards the weak and ungodly (Rom .–). And Paul asserts that this hitherto unimaginable ‘act of righteousness’, namely, Jesus’ death for the weak and sinners, is the free gift of grace, the event that reverses the consequences of Adam’s sin and ends the reign of death (Rom .–). Badiou’s interpretation of Romans seems a willful misreading: ‘death counts for nothing in the operation of salvation’. But Paul describes the saving event as ‘being united with Christ in a death like his…Our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For he who has died is free from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him’ (Rom .–). As a result of Badiou’s misrepresentation of the Christ-event, as consisting only of resurrection without death, Paul becomes Nietzschean, and the new man in Christ becomes the Overman. Badiou asserts: ‘Both [Paul and Nietzsche] share the same desire to initiate a new epoch in human history, the same conviction that man can and must be overcome’. How different is Badiou, Saint Paul, . Santner, ‘Miracles Happen’, . See the analysis of the relevant passages in Benjamin’s ‘Theses’ and the ‘Arcades Project’ by Rolf Tiedemann, ‘Dialectics at a Standstill’, Walter Benjamin: The Arcades Project (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, ) –. Badiou, Saint Paul, . Badiou, Saint Paul, . Badiou, Saint Paul, . Badiou, Saint Paul, . Badiou, Saint Paul, .
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Paul’s final exhortation to Christians in the tenements of Trastevere who, beyond honor and shame, beyond the holy and the profane, beyond all superego inculpation, are enjoined to ‘enslave’ themselves to the Messiah and seek to please not themselves but one another, the powerful ones being obligated to ‘bear the weaknesses of the powerless ones’ (Rom .; .–).
See the very insightful commentary on these passages by Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, ) –.
New Test. Stud. , pp. –. Printed in the United Kingdom © Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S002868850900023X
It is No Longer I Who Live: Justification by Faith and Participation in Christ in Martin Luther’s Exegesis of Galatians* STE PH E N CH ESTE R North Park Theological Seminary, 3225 West Foster Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60625, USA email:
[email protected] Traditional Protestant accounts of Paul’s theology are often criticized for their inability to relate justification by faith and the participatory categories of Paul’s thought. The two are driven apart by sharp distinctions between declaring and making righteous, between justification as a once for all external act and regeneration as an internal lifelong process. The way is left open for justification to be treated as a legal fiction. Contrary to popular misconceptions, these difficulties do not stem from Martin Luther. In his exegesis of Paul, Luther intimately connects justification by faith and participation in Christ, integrating the two effectively. This article explores the manner in which Luther does so, evaluating his exegetical conclusions and assessing their relevance for contemporary attempts to interpret Paul’s theology. Keywords: Galatians, Luther, justification, participation, imputation, objective/ subjective genitive
In recent debates in Pauline theology, one of the perceived weaknesses of the Reformation tradition of reading Paul has been its failure to express adequately the connection between justification by faith and participation in Christ. As Richard Hays puts it, ‘The greatest weakness of the traditional postReformation understanding of “faith” and “justification” is, as Gerhard Ebeling rightly observed, that it offers no coherent account of the relation between the
* An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Paul Seminar of the British New Testament Conference in . I am grateful to all those who participated in the discussion on that occasion. This article is part of larger project on Reformation readings of Paul subsequently to appear as a book with Eerdmans. I use the phrase ‘participation in Christ’ throughout this paper since it is the one most familiar from Pauline scholarship. However, it seems more usual in Luther scholarship to refer to ‘union with Christ’.
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doctrine of justification and Christology’. Hays’ complaint has some force, for, anxious to avoid any hint of righteousness by works, many Protestant accounts offered sharp distinctions between God’s declaring and making the believer righteous, between justification as a once for all external act and regeneration as a lifelong process. The result was that justification granted the believer right standing before God, but it was not clear how it accomplished participation in Christ. The two appeared to operate independently, courting the danger of justification functioning as a cold legal fiction divorced from any real sense of an encounter with Christ. Hays makes his complaint in the context of his work on the disputed genitive phrase πίστις ’Ιησου̑ Χριστου̑, work that has been instrumental in securing acceptance by many Pauline scholars of a subjective genitive reading (the faith/ fulness of Jesus Christ) rather than the previously traditional objective genitive reading (faith in Christ). In this debate, Hays understands there to be momentous issues at stake in relation to Pauline soteriology. He labels the subjective genitive reading as a christological interpretation and the objective genitive as an anthropological interpretation. ‘The christological reading highlights the salvific efficacy of Jesus Christ’s faith(fulness) for God’s people; the anthropological reading stresses the salvific efficacy of the human act of faith directed toward Christ’. The christological subjective genitive reading explains the connection between justification by faith and Christology in terms of participation by Christians in the saving faithfulness of Christ, whereas the anthropological objective genitive reading suffers from the dangerous tendency ‘to reduce the gospel to an account of individual religious experience, or even to turn faith into a bizarre sort of work, in which Christians jump through the entranceway of salvation by cultivating the right sort of religious disposition’. There is ‘not enough grounding of our theological discourse in the story of Jesus Christ’. Such fears also figure strongly in a significant recent work by Douglas Campbell, another advocate of the subjective genitive construal of πίστις ’Ιησου̑ Χριστου̑ and of a participatory model of Paul’s soteriology, who repeatedly labels understandings of Paul’s soteriology that focus on justification by faith as ‘contractual’ and ‘anthropocentric’. R. B. Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative Substructure of Galatians :–: (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, rev. ed. ) xxix (his emphasis). Hays is referring to G. Ebeling, Word and Faith (London: SCM, ) . Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ, . Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ, . Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ, lii. D. A. Campbell, The Quest for Paul’s Gospel (London/New York: T&T Clark International, ). See in particular Chapter , which is entitled ‘The Contractual (JF) Construal of Paul’s Gospel and its Problems’, and Chapter , where two sub-headings speak of ‘The Anthropocentric Construal of “Faith” in Paul’. Campbell does not engage extensively with actual interpreters of Paul for whom justification by faith is central to Paul’s soteriology.
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Given all of this, a consideration of the relationship between justification by faith and participation in Christ in Martin Luther’s exegesis of Paul seems most unpromising. For Luther is, after all, both the progenitor of the Reformation tradition of interpreting Paul’s soteriology primarily in terms of justification by faith and the most famous advocate of the objective genitive interpretation of πίστις ’Ιησου̑ Χριστου̑. One might expect his work to exemplify the difficulties to which Hays and Campbell react. Having committed himself to an anthropological understanding of faith in the disputed genitive phrase, Luther ought to have great difficulty in relating justification by faith to Christology. This paper will argue that the opposite is in fact the case. In his exegesis of Paul, Luther displays a profoundly participatory understanding of justification in which human faith is of salvific significance solely because it is itself christocentric. I will demonstrate this claim first through a general description of the exegetical basis of Luther’s understanding of justification. This will be followed by a closer look at Luther’s handling of Gal .b–, a text where, in his famous Galatians commentary of , the christological dimensions of his understanding of justification are especially plain. It is also a text that contains one of the disputed genitive phrases, and it is thus particularly useful in assessing the claims made about the relationship between justification and Christology by advocates of the subjective genitive interpretation. Luther simply assumes an objective genitive reading at this point, and so our discussion of his reading of the verse will say nothing directly about the exegetical basis of the debate. However, the fact that Luther can display a participatory understanding of justification when assuming an objective genitive reading is itself significant for the debate. At one point, Campbell
Instead, he constructs a model of such a construal of Paul’s gospel in the abstract so that it can exemplify multiple failings in interpretation and act as a foil in relation to which Campbell’s own view of Paul’s soteriology can be presented positively. Campbell’s recent The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ) appeared too late to be taken into account in the writing of this article. The term exegesis is here and subsequently used in a very general fashion. For, of course, Luther was not a critical exegete in our contemporary sense of the term, nor did he produce historical-critical commentaries. His procedures for, and presentation of, biblical interpretation were shaped by the expectations of his own era. For a discussion of the differences, see K. Hagen, Luther’s Approach to Scripture as seen in his ‘Commentaries’ on Galatians (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, ) –. To be fair, Hays says very little that could be construed as blaming Luther for the frequent difficulty in Protestant accounts of relating justification and Christology. Campbell has a rather more contradictory attitude. On the one hand, he is clear that Luther cannot simply be identified with what he terms the Justification by Faith (JF) model of Paul’s soteriology, which he constructs on the basis of descriptions of Federal Calvinism. See The Quest for Paul’s Gospel, , , . On the other hand, Campbell’s description of the JF model is sprinkled with apparently negative references to Luther. See , , , –.
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rhetorically asks, ‘Could it really be the case that Luther’s favorite letter is a sustained witness to Paul’s christocentric conception of faith?’ I will argue that not only is Paul’s letter such a witness, but also Luther’s commentary. Luther has a rather different understanding of christocentric faith from either Hays or Campbell, but it is christocentric nonetheless.
. Justification in Luther’s Exegesis: Christocentric Faith and Imputation
Luther is an elusive thinker whom scholarship finds difficult to pin down. He returns to the same themes and ideas again and again in his vast corpus of work, but rarely for the sake of producing tightly defined doctrines. He produces tracts for the times and expositions of scripture, but not systematic theology. As a result, his characteristic ideas and themes appear not for their own sake but in the service of other goals. Luther is more concerned to counter the arguments of his critics, or to communicate clearly the meaning of the biblical authors, than he is with achieving consistency in the use of his intellectual resources. This is not necessarily to allege that Luther contradicts himself, although his ideas certainly develop during the course of a turbulent career spanning several decades. Rather, it is to acknowledge that his thought is as sprawling as it is fertile. To adapt a metaphor current in NT studies, Luther’s thought resembles the complexity and variety of a great Gothic cathedral, not the clean lines of a modernist building. There may be genuine coherence and unity, but the structure could scarcely be described as uniform or regular. It is therefore potentially misleading to discuss Luther’s ‘view’ or ‘understanding’ or ‘doctrine’ of justification by faith or, indeed, participation in Christ, as if they constituted single, easily definable entities. In his exegesis he provides different explanations of them as he is prompted by the demands of the text and of debate. Justification can be particularly difficult to pin down. Concern with it permeates his writings, Luther perceiving it as relevant to virtually every other theological issue. Texts where Paul is not directly discussing justification, as well as those where he is, speak powerfully for Luther about that topic. Its all-encompassing nature means that Luther can employ together explanations of justification that were in later eras to seem quite distinct. In what follows, our concern is thus with his dominant or typical patterns of explanation. In recent decades there has been increasing recognition among Luther scholars that participation in Christ is crucial to his explanations of justification. This has been asserted by a group of Finnish Luther specialists, working in the context Campbell, The Quest for Paul’s Gospel, . G. Theissen, A Theory of Primitive Christian Religion (London: SCM, ) –, – applies the metaphor of a semiotic cathedral to early Christianity.
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of ecumenical exchanges between Lutheranism and Russian Orthodoxy, who regard Luther’s explanations of justification as fruitful in dialogue with Orthodox notions of theosis or divinization. Opponents have sometimes criticized their work as too reliant on the early writings of Luther, and the commentary on Galatians is therefore a particularly significant text in the debate since it is perhaps Luther’s most influential exegetical work and indisputably represents his mature thought. At times in the commentary, Luther’s thoughts on justification do appear to reflect widespread preconceptions about what he must have taught as the progenitor of Protestant theology. When commenting on Gal ., ‘Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’, Luther suggests that its application to the believer is that God reckons ‘imperfect faith as perfect righteousness for the sake of Christ’. This works in the following way: Christ protects me under the shadow of His wings and spreads over me the wide heaven of the forgiveness of sins, under which I live in safety. This prevents God from seeing the sins that still cling to my flesh. My flesh distrusts God, is angry with Him, does not rejoice in Him etc. But God overlooks these sins, and in His sight they are as though they were not sins. This is accomplished by imputation on account of the faith by which I begin to take hold of Christ; and on His account God reckons imperfect righteousness as perfect righteousness and sin as not sin, even though it really is sin. See C. E. Braaten and R. W. Jenson, eds., Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, ) and T. Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith: Luther’s View of Justification (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, ). I am not equipped properly to assess the claims made by the Finns about Luther and theosis. They seem at first blush counter-intuitive, but Luther’s Christology is deeply indebted to the Alexandrian Church Fathers for whom theosis certainly was a central concern. Writing before the Finns, M. Lienhard, Luther: Witness to Jesus Christ—Stages and Themes of the Reformer’s Christology (Minneapolis: Augsburg, ) , – twice mentions the possible significance of the theme of divinization for Luther on the basis of his familiarity with patristic writings. However, even if the Finns are wrong to interpret Luther’s emphasis on union with Christ in justification in terms of theosis, this does not in itself invalidate the claim that such an emphasis is of great significance for Luther. See C. R. Trueman, ‘Is the Finnish Line a New Beginning? A Critical Assessment of the Reading of Luther Offered by the Helsinki Circle’, WJT () – (–). Luther lectured on Galatians several times and produced two major commentaries. The first of these was published in (based on lectures delivered in /), the second in (based on lectures given in ). It is the commentary that has claimed a hugely significant place in the history of interpretation. LW : = WA :, –. References to Luther’s texts are to the English translation Philadelphia Edition, Luther’s Works (ed. J. Pelikan and H. T. Lehmann; Philadelphia/ St. Louis: Concordia, –) and to the Latin and German Weimar Edition, D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar: H. Böhlaus Nachfolger, –). References to WA DB are to the sub-section within the Weimar Edition dealing with the German Bible (Deutsche Bibel). LW :– = WA :, –.
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Although Luther does not use explicitly forensic imagery (he rarely does so), the context is clearly God’s judgment of sin, and his explanation of justification sits easily with subsequent Protestant understandings of it as a declaration of acquittal. God judges justly because, cloaked in Christ’s righteousness, the believer appears in God’s sight as a righteous person and not as a sinner. However, the believer continues to sin, and the strength with which this is asserted would appear to support an understanding of the famous formula simul iustus et peccator as ‘righteous before God but a sinner in fact’, a feature which could lead the unsympathetic to speak of a merely fictional righteousness. Yet while this description of justification is genuinely Luther’s own, and genuinely significant in his theology, to present it as a summary of his teaching on justification in this Galatians commentary would be highly misleading. There are other explanations of justification that form the context of the one quoted above, with which it overlaps to give a very different overall picture. It is important to note in the quotation above that Luther says that imputation takes place, ‘on account of the faith by which I begin to take hold of Christ’. For Luther presents a rich understanding of faith that itself has several dimensions. Each time Paul uses this one word, it carries multiple connotations for Luther. Indeed, if one reads through the commentary alongside his earlier commentary from , it is perhaps the transformation in his concept of faith that forms the most significant development in Luther’s understanding of Galatians. The nature of faith receives little reflection in the earlier commentary, but by it is a major topic. Even in Luther’s comments on . alone, there are several strands to his discussion of faith. As one might expect, the statement ‘Abraham believed God’ leads Luther to understand faith as trust in God’s promises. Abraham believed against reason that God would keep his promise that the aged Sarah would have a son. Similarly, the Christian is called upon to embrace ‘the foolishness of the cross’ ( Cor .–), and so ‘faith slaughters reason and kills the beast that the whole world and all the creatures cannot kill’. However, this is not all. In thus believing God’s promises, faith acknowledges God for who He is. It regards him as ‘truthful, wise, righteous, merciful, and almighty, … as the author and donor of every good’. God has been given his place by his creatures, his glory affirmed, and so ‘faith justifies because it renders to God what is due him; whoever does this is righteous’. Further, by this giving to God of his glory, faith ‘consummates the deity; and, if I may put it this way, it is the creator of the deity, not in the substance of God but in us’. Luther goes so far as to compare faith, in its relationship with works, to the divinity of Christ in relation to his humanity:
LW : = WA :, LW : = WA :, LW : = WA :, LW : = WA :,
–. –. –. –.
It is No Longer I Who Live Let faith always be the divinity of works, diffused throughout the works in the same way that the divinity is throughout the humanity of Christ. Anyone who touches the heat in the heated iron touches the iron; and whoever has touched the skin of Christ has actually touched God. Therefore faith is the ‘do-all’ ( fac totum) in works, if I may use this expression. Thus Abraham is called faithful because faith is diffused throughout all of Abraham. When I look at Abraham doing works, therefore, I see nothing of the physical Abraham or of the Abraham who does works, but only Abraham the believer.
Thus when Luther says, ‘Christian righteousness consists in two things, namely, faith in the heart and the imputation of God’, it is important to recognize that faith itself involves participation in Christ. In his earlier comments on .–, where Paul asserts that justification is by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, Luther emphasizes that Christ himself is present in faith. ‘Faith justifies because it takes hold of and possesses this treasure, the present Christ…the Christ who is grasped by faith and who lives in the heart is the true Christian righteousness’. This is compared to the mysterious presence of God in the darkness on Mt. Sinai or in the Holy of Holies in the temple. In an important passage, Luther uses another image: Here it is to be noted that these three things are joined together: faith, Christ, and acceptance or imputation. Faith takes hold of Christ and has him present, enclosing him as the ring encloses the gem. And whoever is found having this faith in the Christ who is grasped in the heart, him God accounts as righteous.
Thus, faith takes hold of Christ and has him present, and because the righteous one is present in faith, imputation is possible. To return to Luther’s comments on ., ‘to take hold of the Son and to believe in him with the heart as the gift of God causes God to reckon that faith, however imperfect it may be, as perfect righteousness’. Christ himself is the gift received by the believer. It is therefore clear that imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the believer is not defined over and against, or even in indifference to, participation in Christ. The presence of Christ in faith secures an intimate relationship between imputation and the participation of the believer in Christ. God imputes because the Christian believes, but the faith of the Christian is itself a divine gift in which Christ is
LW : = WA :, –. LW : = WA :, –. LW : = WA :, –. LW : = WA :, –. I. D. K. Siggins, Martin Luther’s Doctrine of Christ (New Haven/ London: Yale University, ) comments, ‘Luther loves to illustrate the character of faith by the figure of an empty container. Faith is merely a husk, but Christ is the kernel. It is a purse or coffer for the eternal treasure, an empty vessel, a poor little monstrance or pyx for gems of infinite worth’. LW : = WA :, –.
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present. This christocentric conception of faith means that, for Luther, imputation itself involves participation in Christ.
. Justification in Luther’s Exegesis: Joyous Exchange and the Story of Christ
The understanding that God imputes Christ’s righteousness to the believer on account of his presence in faith is closely related to Luther’s principal explanation of how such imputation takes place. For he frequently asserts that between Christ and the believer there is a ‘joyous exchange’ in which, having taken upon himself the sins of the world, Christ gives to the believer his righteousness. What is ours becomes his, while what is his becomes ours. In the Galatians commentary, this is expressed particularly clearly in Luther’s lengthy comments on Gal ., ‘Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us’. Luther rages against those, especially Jerome, who are nervous at the apparent impiety of the idea that Christ was cursed by God. Instead, Luther thinks it absolutely necessary to emphasize that, although innocent in his own person, Christ became ‘the greatest thief, murderer, adulterer, robber, desecrator, blasphemer etc., there has ever been anywhere in the world’. If he is not, then Indeed, Luther is explicit that Christ is more than the object of faith. See LW : = WA :, –, : ‘It takes hold of Christ in such a way that Christ is the object of faith, or rather not the object but, so to speak, the One who is present in faith itself’. Trueman, ‘The Finnish Line’, distinguishes between properly understanding the presence of Christ in faith in relation to its effects in imputation and declaration and mistakenly understanding it in the terms urged by the Finns. R. W. Jenson, in his ‘Response to Mark Seifrid, Paul Metzger and Carl Trueman on Finnish Luther Research’, WTJ () – implies that Trueman has allowed a prior understanding of imputation exclusively in terms of acquittal to determine what he finds in the commentary in the face of the evidence: ‘it will make a great difference whether we interpret the passages about Christ’s indwelling by what we antecedently think we know imputation is, or let what Luther says about Christ’s relation to the believer in the particular passage tell us what he there means by imputation’ (). The understanding that justification is effected through joyous exchange is vital to a proper appreciation of the exegetical basis of imputation. The idea that it is Christ’s righteousness that is gifted to the believer in justification is sometimes disputed on the grounds that support for the notion comes only from Cor ., where Christ is termed ‘our righteousness’, and Cor ., where, in Christ, Christians become ‘the righteousness of God’. See N. T. Wright, What St. Paul Really Said (Oxford: Lion, ) –. Yet Luther reads all texts that contain the idea of exchange (e.g. Rom .; Gal .; Phil . –) as supporting the view that Christ’s righteousness is given to believers. Taking the idea from the Fathers, especially Athanasius and Augustine, Luther concentrates on righteousness as it provides the answer to sin and is prominent in Paul’s vocabulary. However, he does also include other properties of Christ in the exchange. LW : = WA :, –. Unsurprisingly, Luther uses Gal . and Cor . to expound the idea of joyous exchange in his lectures on Deuteronomy (–) when commenting on .. See LW :– = WA :, –, .
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his righteousness cannot become the Christian’s righteousness, and salvation is lost. As it is, having taken on himself the sins of the world, Christ is able to give to the believer his righteousness. ‘By this fortunate exchange with us He took upon Himself our sinful person and granted us His innocent and victorious Person’. Luther links this exchange with Christ’s emptying of himself (Phil .), a text that he also used to express the same idea years previously in an important sermon entitled Two Kinds of Righteousness (preached late /early ). Because of Christ’s willingness to empty himself by taking upon himself all sins, the believer ‘can with confidence boast in Christ and say: “Mine are Christ’s living, doing and speaking, his suffering and dying, mine as much as if I had lived, done, spoken, suffered and died as he did”’. Thus, what Luther achieves by linking together texts such as Gal . and Phil . in discussion of justification, even when neither of them ostensibly concerns justification, is to root God’s act of justification for the individual Christian in God’s wider action in the world. It depends on incarnation, flowing from the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. For it is only in becoming human that the Son of God is able to take upon himself the sins of humanity, and it is only in remaining divine that he is able to overcome both sin and death. As Luther explains, again in his comments on Gal ., because Christ takes upon himself the curse of the law, his person becomes the site of a titanic duel. The curse clashes with the blessing of the eternal grace and mercy of God in Christ, and because in the same person, who is the highest, the greatest, and the only sinner, there is also eternal and invincible righteousness, therefore these two converge: the highest, greatest and the only sin; and the highest, the greatest, and the only righteousness. Here one of them must yield and be conquered, since they come together and collide with such powerful impact. Thus the sin of the entire world attacks righteousness with the greatest possible impact and fury.
By the very reason of Christ’s divine nature, the duel inevitably has a positive outcome. All evils are conquered and put to death, including death itself, God’s purpose being that through Christ ‘the whole creation was to be renewed’. Here, the death of Jesus is the decisive act in God’s invasion of a world previously held in thrall to hostile powers. The significance for the justification of the believer LW : = WA :, –. LW : = WA :, –. For a helpful general discussion of this relationship, see G. Yule, ‘Luther’s understanding of Justification by Grace Alone in Terms of Catholic Christology’, Luther: Theologian for Catholics and Protestants (ed. G. Yule; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, ) –. LW : = WA :, –. LW : = WA :, –.
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is that it is this same Christ, the incarnate son of God, human and divine, who fought and conquered sin and death in his person, who exchanges his righteousness with the believer’s sinfulness and who is present in the believer’s faith. On this basis, Luther is able intimately to connect the justification of the individual with the apocalyptic dimensions of Paul’s theology in general and with the story of Jesus Christ in particular. Following the lead of Karin Bornkamm, Marc Lienhard suggests that, in the Galatians commentary of , Luther’s personification of powers such as sin, the law and death in their enslaving of humanity and their assault on Christ leads him to ‘insert the believer directly into the history of Christ’. Outside of participation in that history lies only defeat.
. Christocentric Faith in Luther’s Exegesis of Gal .b–: What it is not
We have now seen that, far from having difficulty in relating justification to Christology, Luther makes Christology vital to his understanding of what Paul says about justification in at least two ways. First, the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the believer by God occurs on account of the presence of Christ in faith. Participation in Christ is involved in imputation itself. Secondly, the principal means by which such imputation takes place is ‘joyous exchange’ in which what is ours becomes Christ’s in order that what is his might become ours. It is only by receiving what is his, and thus by participating in Christ through faith, that the believer is justified. However, simply establishing that Luther offers a strongly christological account of justification and of the part played in it by human faith still leaves a vital question unanswered. What does Luther mean by participation in Christ in its relationship with justification by faith? Here the work of the Finns has not been as helpful from the perspective of NT scholarship as it might have been, since they have discussed the matter primarily in relation to Luther’s ontology. Their affirmation that the union is an A renewed emphasis on the apocalyptic dimension of Luther’s own theology has been a strong feature of recent Luther scholarship. See especially H. A. Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil (New Haven/London: Yale University, ). Lienhard, Luther: Witness to Jesus Christ, referring to K. Bornkamm, Luthers Auslegungen des Galaterbriefs von bis —Ein Vergleich (Berlin: de Gruyter, ) –. Trueman, ‘The Finnish Line’, : ‘the meaning of “union with Christ” is not a universal given. Marriage union, legal union, ontological union – these all offer models of understanding the idea that may well differ in significant ways’. See T. Mannermaa, ‘Why is Luther so Fascinating? Modern Finnish Luther Research’ (–), R. W. Jenson, ‘Response to T. Mannermaa’ (–), S. Juntunen, ‘Luther and Metaphysics: What is the Structure of Being according to Luther?’ (–) and D. Bielfeldt, ‘Response to S. Juntunen’ (–), all in Union with Christ (ed. Braaten and Jenson). The Finns are here reacting against a strong Kantian tradition in German Luther scholarship that reduces
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ontological one does not take us very far forward in exegetical terms, especially as Luther ‘wrote little about such questions as “What is the ontological structure of the world?”’ It is here that his exegesis of Gal .b– is so revealing, offering the chance to explore what Luther meant exegetically by participation in Christ in relation to justification by faith. However, it is vital to place Luther’s comments in historical context, first noting the long-established tradition of interpreting participation in Christ that Luther rejected. As H. A. Oberman puts it, Luther attacked the whole medieval tradition as it was later confirmed at the Council of Trent. According to this tradition the ‘iustitia Christi’ is granted in justification to the sinner as gratia or caritas. But the ‘iustitia Dei’ is not granted together with or attached to the ‘iustitia Christi’. … The ‘iustitia Dei’ is the standard according to which the degree of appropriation and the effects of the ‘iustitia Christi’ are measured and will be measured in the Last Judgment.
The key point here is that grace is connected to love and is understood as something that God does within a person. It is infused, and God accepts the sinner because the righteousness of Christ has wrought a renewal within the person. Christ in his righteousness enters into a person and, with their co-operation, produces a righteousness that is inherent to them. There is an objective judgment based on what the human has become. As Daphne Hampson puts it, ‘life is to be conceived of as a via for our transformation. … “In the end” the human should be able to stand before God on account of his merits. That merit is gained through working with God’s grace, in which the human remains rooted’. The principal exegetical basis for this view of grace as infused is Gal ., where Paul asserts that, with regard to the hope of righteousness, what counts is not circumcision or un-circumcision but ‘faith working through love’.
union with Christ to a non-ontological existential union of the will of God with the human will. Jenson, ‘Response to T. Mannermaa’, comments that ‘according to the Kantians, we cannot deal with being but only with relations. According to Luther according to Mannermaa, a certain mode of relation is being’. Juntunen, ‘Luther and Metaphysics’, . H. A. Oberman, ‘Iustitia Christi and Iustitia Dei: Luther and the Scholastic Doctrines of Justification’, HTR . () – (). Trueman, ‘The Finnish Line’, criticizes the Finns for failing to take sufficient account of careful work by Oberman and others on the theological context in which Luther worked. This criticism is correct, but Trueman’s assumption that careful attention to historical context will weaken, rather than simply clarify, the Finns’ overall case does not follow. See D. Hampson, Christian Contradictions: The Structures of Lutheran and Catholic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University, ) – (–). It should be noted that, contrary to popular Protestant prejudices, this theological framework is not Pelagian. Although the human will co-operates with divine grace, the process always and necessarily begins with the latter.
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This is interpreted to mean that only a faith formed by love ( fides caritate formata) can justify. In a tradition which understood faith primarily as intellectual belief ( fides), that faith should be formed by love appeared necessary if it were to be truly alive. Luther has an entirely different view of both faith and grace. Defining faith much more in terms of trust ( fiducia), Luther is able to regard faith as itself inherently active. ‘Paul does not make faith unformed here, as though it were a shapeless chaos without the power to be or do anything; but he attributes the working itself to faith rather than to love. … He makes love the tool through which faith works’. In Gal ., Paul is not discussing justification, and ‘the hope of righteousness’ is an eschatological reference. It is the hope of future freedom from the sin that during their earthly lives clings to the flesh of those who have already been justified. That it should be active through love is indeed the hallmark of true faith, but such activity is not the cause of justification. Luther imagines Paul explaining that ‘I am speaking about genuine faith, which, after it has justified, will not go to sleep’. True faith inevitably expresses itself in love of neighbor, but such works of love do not justify a person. As regards grace, the distinctive nature of Luther’s position can be seen clearly in his preface to the commentary. Here Luther distinguishes between active and passive righteousness. Under the former heading come all the different kinds of righteousness, ‘including the righteousness of the Law or Decalog, which Moses teaches’, that properly govern human life on earth. However, disaster follows from confusing these diverse forms of active righteousness, expressed in human works, with the righteousness that justifies before God. That justifying righteousness is ‘heavenly and passive. We do not have it of ourselves; we receive it from heaven. We do not perform it; we accept it by faith’. To be under grace is to have passive, justifying righteousness. Grace is not the infused enabler of active righteousness but the attitude of God towards the believer with which righteousness by faith is granted. This understanding of grace had been part of Luther’s theology since , when he wrote his treatise Against Latomus. Commenting
LW : = WA .:, –. LW : = WA .:, –. LW : = WA :, –. LW : = WA :, –. This distinction between active and passive righteousness that provides a framework for the commentary as a whole is used by Trueman, ‘The Finnish Line’, – to question the validity of the Finns’ views. However, the active nature of the concept of faith that appears throughout the commentary, and especially in the discussion of Gal ., shows that in using the term ‘passive righteousness’ Luther is pointing to the nature of grace as favor and to the nature of true righteousness as sheer gift, not to the gift of faith as itself essentially passive. Luther’s opposition to righteousness by works does not lead him to assign participation in Christ exclusively to sanctification. He is apparently not concerned, as later Protestantism was to become, that a participatory concept of justifying faith might leave the door open to righteousness by works.
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on Rom ., Luther asserts that grace is ‘an outward good, God’s favor, the opposite of wrath’. In what may be an overly subtle piece of exegesis, Luther distinguishes between this as the meaning of Paul’s reference to ‘the grace of God’ and faith as ‘the inward good which purges the sin to which it is opposed’. Such faith is what is intended by Paul’s reference to ‘the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ’. Christ alone among all men and women merits God’s favor, hence it is only in the grace that he has that sinners may receive the free gift that is faith in Christ. Thus, Luther maintains that ‘the grace of God is always something external to man, and an absolute, rather than a partial, quality. Man is either totally under grace or totally under wrath. In contrast to this, faith (and its antithesis, sin) are seen as internal and partial’. Luther certainly provides explanations of justification that are both christological and participatory, but in these explanations grace and faith are defined in a manner incompatible with the view that grace is an infused habit and that justifying faith is formed by love. Luther does not perceive the Christian life as a journey towards righteousness in co-operation with divine grace such that the Christian eventually merits heaven (usually via purgatory) on the basis of what he or she has become. This is not the framework within which he understands participation in Christ, and he is explicit about it in his comments on Gal .b–. When Paul says that ‘it is no longer I who live’, this means ‘not in my own person or substance’. Anyone who could live in his or her own person or substance in such a way as truly to exhibit a faith formed by love, something LW : = WA :, . This rejection of the Augustinian view of grace seems to have been the result of Melanchthon’s influence upon Luther. For prior to Against Latomus, including in the Galatians commentary of , Luther still gives to grace the function of purifying from sin. It is Melanchthon, drawing on the philological work of Erasmus, who defines grace as favor. See R. Schäfer, ‘Melanchthon’s Interpretation of Romans .: His Departure from the Augustinian Concept of Grace Compared to Luther’s’, Philip Melanchthon (–) and the Commentary (ed. T. J. Wengert and M. P. Graham; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, ) –. LW : = WA :, –. For a cogent analysis of the passage in Against Latomus, see S. Peura, ‘Christ as Favor and Gift (donum): The Challenge of Luther’s Understanding of Justification’, Union with Christ (ed. Braaten and Jenson) –. A. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification (Cambridge: Cambridge University, ) . This is a helpful summary that becomes less so when McGrath goes on to suggest that these definitions of grace and faith permit Luther ‘to maintain what is otherwise clearly a contradiction within his theology of justification – his simultaneous insistence on the external nature of the righteousness of Christ, and the real presence of Christ in the believer’. Analyzing Luther’s exegesis of Paul from within our own historical context, where justification by faith and participation in Christ have often been considered separate categories in Paul’s thought, there is a danger that we think of Luther as overcoming a problem by bonding together two opposites. In fact they are not to him opposite categories. LW : = WA :, .
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which in Luther’s view is impossible, would in any case not be saved. For they ‘would have only a historical faith about Christ, something that even the devil and all the wicked have (James .)’.
. Christocentric Faith in Luther’s Exegesis of Galatians .b–: What it is
Having established an understanding of the concept of participation in Christ that Luther rejected, we may now turn to his comments on Gal .b– in order to explore the concept of participation that he affirmed. As soon as one examines in detail Luther’s comments on Paul’s assertion that having been crucified with Christ he no longer lives but Christ in him, it becomes apparent that Luther takes the death of the self suggested here very seriously. Far from being gradually changed into the likeness of Christ through co-operation with infused grace, the Christian must leave behind his or her own life for that of Christ: Christian righteousness is, namely, that righteousness by which Christ lives in us, not the righteousness that is in our own person. Therefore when it is necessary to discuss Christian righteousness, the person must be completely rejected. For if I pay attention to the person or speak of the person, then, whether intentionally or unintentionally on my part, the person becomes a doer of works who is subject to the Law. But here Christ and my conscience must become one body, so that nothing remains in my sight but Christ, crucified and risen… By paying attention to myself… I lose sight of Christ, who alone is my righteousness and life.
Luther rams the point home again, cautioning that ‘when it comes to justification, therefore, if you divide Christ’s person from your own, you are in the Law; you remain in it and live in yourself, which means that you are dead in the sight of God and damned by the law’. But as he is not paying attention to his own person, and not dividing himself from Christ, the apostle can say that ‘I am not living as Paul now, for Paul is dead.’ Who then is living? ‘The Christian’. Paul, living in himself, is utterly dead through the Law but living in Christ, or rather with Christ living in him, he lives an alien life. Christ is speaking, acting, and performing all actions in him; these belong not to the Paul-life, but to the Christ-life. … ‘By my own life I am not living, for if I were, the Law would have dominion over me and hold me captive. To keep
LW : = WA :, –. LW : = WA :, –. LW : = WA :, –.
It is No Longer I Who Live it from holding me, I am dead to it by another Law. And this death acquires an alien life for me, namely, the life of Christ, which is not inborn in me but is granted to me in faith through Christ’.
For Paul to continue to live as Paul would be death for him, but to die and for Christ to live in him is life. Salvation depends not on perfecting the life that he already had, but on living an alien life. Thus, the Christian has Christ’s righteousness through participation in him, but that participation does not work on the basis of a transformation of the self of the Christian. It works rather on the basis of the leaving behind and abandonment of that self. As one contemporary Lutheran theologian expresses it, ‘faith as self-forgetfulness is the most intensive form of certainty of God’. To speak of participation in Christ understood in this way as involving a changed or renewed life is therefore potentially misleading. It is simply not radical enough to capture Luther’s sense that union with Christ involves the recreation of the person. If we are to speak of a restoration or healing of the self in this regard, then it can only be on the basis that the Christian has to come out of him- or herself in order to come to him- or herself. In this sense that faith ‘places us outside ourselves’, Luther is repeating an idea that had long been central to his theology, for in , in his famous tract The Freedom of the Christian, Luther had written that, ‘a Christian lives not in himself, but in Christ and his neighbour. Otherwise he is not a Christian’. This soteriological necessity to live an alien life means that There is no linear progress from being a sinner to being justified. It is not that that which is given in creation is transformed through grace. It is only through a discontinuity, through repentance and failure, that in response to the good news of the gospel the human being can come to gain a sense of himself through trusting not in himself but in God.
LW : = WA :, –, . E. Jüngel, Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, ) . See LW : = WA :, –: ‘This is the reason why our theology is so certain: it snatches us away from ourselves and places us outside ourselves, so that we do not depend on our own strength, conscience, experience, person, or works but depend on that which is outside ourselves, that is, on the promise and truth of God, which cannot deceive’. Luther is here commenting on the cry ‘Abba, Father’ in Gal .. LW : = WA :, –. Hampson, Christian Contradictions, . Hampson thus emphasizes that justification does not exist in any kind of continuity with the believer’s previous life. It does not grow out of life as a creature as we know it. However, salvation reinstates what creation was intended to be so that we relate to God in the manner first intended (hence my use of the term re-creation above). The discontinuity stems from the fact that through sin what was intended for creation was so grievously and entirely lost ().
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Luther knows well that this radical discontinuity between a person’s own life and his or her life in Christ is open to an obvious objection. To the charge that Paul still appears as Paul with no apparent change, Luther affirms that to the casual, surface-level observer Paul still indeed appears as Paul. He uses physical things such as food and clothing just like any other human being. However, this is only ‘a mask of life’, for although Paul lives in the flesh, it is not on the basis of his own self. Before his conversion, Paul spoke blasphemy, but after it words of faith. Before, Paul spoke, but after, Christ speaks. The voice and tongue were the same in each case, but the words came from an entirely different source. Luther himself cannot teach, preach, write, pray or give thanks except by using the physical instruments of the flesh, but ‘these activities do not come from the flesh and do not originate there; they are given and revealed divinely from heaven’. This alien and spiritual life cannot be perceived by the unspiritual person, who does not recognize its true source. The unspiritual person remains ignorant of the fact that ‘This life is not the life of the flesh, although it is a life in the flesh; but it is the life of Christ, the Son of God, whom the Christian possesses by faith’. Living a life in the flesh that is nevertheless not a life of the flesh but is rather the alien life of Christ, the Christian is inevitably the locus of a struggle. He or she faces constant strife between two modes of existence occupying the same body. When the life lived by the believer is that of Christ grasped by faith (the Christ-life not the Paul-life), the Christian is truly and wholly righteous because Christ is truly and wholly righteous. Nevertheless, it is only outside of him- or herself in Christ that the Christian is righteous. ‘I am a sinner in and by myself apart from Christ. Apart from myself and in Christ I am not a sinner’. The righteousness possessed by the believer remains alien, for when faith falters and the Christian lives from the self (the Paul-life not the Christ-life), then the Christian is truly and wholly a sinner. Here we have the true sense of the much misunderstood phrase simul iustus et peccator. Luther does not mean by it that the Christian is partially transformed and still partially sinful, forever suspended mid-way through a stalled process of becoming righteous as a result of internal renewal. The righteousness of Christ granted to the believer in justification is real, not fictional. However, its realization in practice LW : = WA :, . LW : = WA :, –. LW : = WA :, –. Oberman, ‘Iustitia Christi and Iustitia Dei’, –, – finds significant the vocabulary used here by Luther. Justifying righteousness is different understood as possessio than as proprietas. The former term denotes legal occupancy and enjoyment of something, the latter ownership proper. As it is possessio, ‘the righteousness granted is not one’s property but one’s possession’. Hampson, Christian Contradictions, draws an analogy with a library book. Once it is borrowed from the library I have it legitimately in my possession, but I am not its owner. LW : = WA :, –.
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depends upon whether or not Christ is grasped in faith day by day, and this thus becomes the crucial question of Christian existence. Will the Christian live by faith and hence in Christ and hence as righteous, or not? There is a sense in which the Christian can grow in faith and make progress in it, and Luther makes reference to this. It is possible to learn to trust more fully. However, precisely because, as with justification itself, the nature of this progress depends on the appropriation of Christ in faith, such progress in faith is also a return to the beginning. It can never cohere into a stable internal quality of the Christian’s own, since faith concerns the relationship of the believer with Christ. To have trusted God today and to have lived the life of Christ still leaves open the question of what will be the case tomorrow. The human propensity to sin by turning from Christ to self remains, for ‘to the extent that I look back to myself and my sin I am miserable and the greatest of sinners’, hence the need for the Christian ever to take hold of Christ in faith anew. The practical implications of this can best be illustrated by means of Luther’s exegesis of Gal ., where Paul describes the contest in the life of the Christian between the flesh and the Spirit. Sin clings to the flesh, and therefore the Christian will sin. There will be occasions when the flesh wins out over the Spirit. Nevertheless, the Christian life does not on this account seem to Luther a joyless struggle with sin. It cannot be since Christians enjoy the grace of God. ‘This is the wisdom and the comfort of those who are truly godly, that even if they have sins and commit sins, they know that because of their faith in Christ they are not imputed to them’. This security concerning salvation liberates the Christian from despair, while the very fact that there is a struggle between flesh and the Spirit is a sign of spiritual vitality. ‘It is all right for anger or sexual desire to be aroused in them, provided that they do not capitulate to it; it is all right for sin to stir them up, provided that they do not gratify it. In fact, the godlier one is, the more he is aware of this conflict’. The Christian can therefore join battle against the flesh with gusto, ultimate victory secure in Christ. This means that although the Christian is indeed both justified and a sinner, the relationship between the See, for example, LW : = WA DB :, –; LW : = WA :, –; LW : = WA :, –, . J. D. Trigg, Baptism in the Theology of Martin Luther (Leiden: Brill, ) comments that ‘the image that most fully represents Luther’s understanding of the Christian life is that of a spiral, … A continual return to the start is not the opposite of progress for Luther; it is the very essence of it’. WA .:, –. This translation, from The Third Disputation against the Antinomians (), is given in Jüngel, Justification, . LW : = WA .:, –. LW : = WA .:, –. There is thus a temporal aspect to simul iustus et peccator. On the one hand sin will cling to the flesh of the Christian throughout earthly life, the conflict between the flesh and the Spirit ceasing only with death. On the other, God’s act of justification determines the whole of
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two is asymmetrical, for ‘righteousness is supreme and sin is a servant’. The reason for this is that even the triumphs enjoyed by the flesh ultimately serve the ends of righteousness, driving the Christian back to reliance on Christ: For when his flesh impels him to sin, he is aroused and incited to seek forgiveness of sins through Christ and to embrace the righteousness of faith, which he would otherwise not have regarded as so important or yearned for with such intensity. … Through such an opportunity a Christian becomes a skillful artisan and a wonderful creator, who can make joy out of sadness, comfort out of terror, righteousness out of sin, and life out of death, when he restrains his flesh for this purpose, brings it into submission, and subjects it to the Spirit.
The Christian lives in the shadow of sin and death but is able to snatch victory from their clutches by transforming them into their own opposites through righteousness by faith. Confronted by a struggle between two modes of existence, it is the daily appropriation of the presence of Christ in justifying faith that enables the believer to create joy, comfort, righteousness and life rather than sadness, terror, sin and death. For Luther, justification by faith and participation in Christ are fully integrated aspects of Paul’s thought.
. Conclusions and Implications
We have now seen both the central importance of participation in Christ to Luther’s interpretation of justification by faith and the significance of this for the way in which he understands the Christian life. Thus far our exploration has been concerned with clarifying our knowledge of Luther’s interpretation, but we must now consider the significance of his exegesis for our own attempts to understand Paul’s theology. It should be acknowledged that there is much in Luther’s exegesis that could be questioned. In particular, Luther reads Gal .b– in a way that emphasizes the discontinuity between pre-Christian life and life in Christ. Salvation lies not in transforming the self but in its dying and being left behind. This fits well with the current emphasis on the apocalyptic nature of Paul’s theology, but could be regarded as one-sided in ignoring the hints of continuity
existence such that the Christian lives now from the future on the basis of promise and hope. See Hampson, Christian Contradictions, and Jüngel, Justification, –. LW : = WA .:, . LW : = WA .:, –, . Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ, xxxviii–xl moves in the second edition to align himself with J. L. Martyn’s insistence on the apocalyptic nature of Galatians. Campbell too is convinced of the apocalyptic nature of Paul’s thought.
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provided by Paul’s continuing to speak in the first person. However, Luther’s significance for us consists not so much in whether his exegesis should be regarded as correct in every respect as in the resources that he provides for our own thinking. Luther makes justification by faith central to his reading of Paul in a way unknown within ‘New Perspective’ readings, but neither can his view of Paul’s theology easily be identified with that of Bultmann or other existentialist readers of the apostle. In relation to the recent history of Pauline theology, Luther brings something of a fresh perspective. While there will be many aspects of his Pauline interpretation with which we must disagree, there are also important points at which we may benefit and learn from him. There are four features of the exegesis that we have examined that I believe to be worthy of particular note: .
Luther offers an account of Paul’s soteriology in which making justification by faith central does not imply any neglect of Christology. That this is possible does not prove that justification is for Paul the touchstone of all true theology as it was for Luther, but it does nullify some of the arguments often alleged to show that to take justification as important to Paul’s soteriology must be an error. The charge that by imputed righteousness Luther means fictional righteousness is simply erroneous, for while righteousness remains alien to the believer it is essential from Luther’s perspective that the believer live an alien life. The suggestion that making justification by faith central to Paul’s thought leads to a contractual view of his soteriology is also challenged. For Luther does not only insist that human faith is a gift from God, but also that Christ is present in that faith. Such faith does not justify
For an interpretation that emphasizes continuity, see M. Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon, ) –. Discontinuity is essential for Luther at least in part because of his struggles with spiritual despair (Anfechtungen), which lead him to regard the self as the last place in which to find assurance or security. F. Watson, Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles: Beyond the New Perspective (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, rev. ed. ) criticizes Bultmann’s interpretation of Paul, suggesting that ‘if “works” is abstracted from its concrete relation to Judaism, then “faith” will be abstracted from its concrete reference to the Christ’. The abstraction of faith from concrete reference to Christ is a failing of Bultmann’s existential approach, but Watson’s diagnosis of the cause is not wholly convincing since Luther abstracts works from concrete relation to Judaism without abstracting faith from concrete reference to Christ. Hampson, Christian Contradictions, : ‘It is of course a complete farce to say that according to Luther God leaves man corrupt!’ This allegation is particularly ironic given that Luther is reacting against a rather contractual understanding of justification. Following William of Ockham, the theological movement known as the via moderna linked promise and covenant. God has entered into a covenant (pactum), whereby if a person does quod in se est (what lies within one), which is to humble oneself before God and to repent of one’s sins, God has pledged to give the gift of grace and to justify. It is the bilateral nature of this covenant that Luther rejects in favor of
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because it is the appropriate response to God’s grace and is the right kind of religious disposition to fulfill the human side of a contract between God and humanity, but rather because it grasps hold of Christ. By assuming an objective genitive reading of πίστις ’Ιησου̑ Χριστου̑ while at the same time offering a thoroughly christocentric account of the human faith to which it refers, Luther’s exegesis calls into question some of the claims made concerning what is at stake theologically in the contemporary debate. To suggest, as advocates of a subjective reading often do, that the objective genitive reading necessarily represents an anthropological view as opposed to a christological one is false. Luther does famously reject anything that might be considered speculative theology, insisting that we know God as he reveals himself to faith. We know God as he is God for us. To this extent, all Luther’s theological statements are indeed anthropological. However, as we have seen, the human faith to which God reveals himself has present in it the Christ who lived as a human being and who overcame sin and death. There is no divorce between such faith and the story of Jesus Christ. Further, his righteousness never becomes the property of the believer but always remains alien. ‘Christ is, of course, a reality pro nobis and in nobis, but he is also and remains extra nos’. Christology is not absorbed into anthropology. Indeed, Luther might be regarded as bringing an appropriate balance to the relationship between the two. Human faith has a vital soteriological role, but it does not compromise divine initiative and is not itself to be identified with individual religious experience. For what matters is not the cultivation of faith as an experience but the presence of Christ within it. Faith relies on the objective word that is Christ, believing ‘against reason, feeling and experience’. The story of Jesus Christ as contained in Paul’s gospel is not one that can be presented as reasonable in terms of human experience. If the faith of the individual is based on no more than his or her own religious experience, then it will wither in the face of struggles with doubt like Luther’s own. Luther gives us a perspective that may lead us to see as false the choice apparently confronting contemporary
divine unilateralism in justification. See A. McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross: Martin Luther’s Theological Breakthrough (Oxford: Blackwell, ) Chapter . Hampson, Christian Contradictions, quotes W. von Loewenich, Wahrheit und Bekenntnis im Glauben Luthers: Dargestellt im Anschluss an Luthers grossen Katechismus (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, ) : ‘Luther’s theology does not begin with a general doctrine of God, with God’s aseity, or the immanent trinity, only then afterwards to turn to what God in his abstract nature means for me. To Luther that would represent the speculation of the theology of glory, … When Luther speaks of God, he speaks of that God who has turned towards humankind’. Lienhard, Luther: Witness to Jesus Christ, . Hampson, Christian Contradictions, .
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interpreters between reducing Paul’s soteriology largely to a matter of human decision or marginalizing the faith of the Christian and saying little about it. Luther’s christocentric conception of the faith of the Christian effectively integrates in Paul’s soteriology justification by faith and participation in Christ. Modern Pauline scholarship has often debated the relative importance of the two, wishing to relegate one or other type of language to a subsidiary status. By defining justification by faith in thoroughly participatory terms, Luther can give full theological weight to both sets of vocabulary. Whether Luther’s way is the only way to integrate and to give full theological weight to both sets of vocabulary is debatable, but that he does do so ought to be regarded as an exegetical advantage. For Paul’s texts lack the clear indicators of relative importance that modern scholarship seeks. Giving full weight to all the data respects the historical limits of our knowledge of Paul’s intentions as an author. It may also help to direct our attention to the potentially more answerable question of how Paul puts together the different elements of his theology in his texts. In his emphatic insistence on the presence of Christ in faith, and in his sense that Christians must live by such faith day by day, ever returning to Christ anew, Luther offers resources not only for contemporary descriptions of justification in Paul but also of participation in Christ. Having argued for the importance of participation in Paul’s theology, E. P. Sanders comments that ‘We seem to lack a category of “reality”—real participation in Christ, real possession of the Spirit—which lies between naïve cosmological speculation and belief in magical transference on the one hand and a revised self-understanding on the other’. As we have seen in his treatment of Gal .b–, the presence of Christ in faith marks an insistence by Luther on more than a revised self-understanding, but that presence is manifested in
Having decided () that the heart of Paul’s theology lies in participatory rather than juristic categories, E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (London: SCM, ) expresses puzzlement at Käsemann’s insistence on the apparently confusing procedure of defining righteousness by faith in participatory categories. What Käsemann is actually seeking is a dialectic between the different elements in Paul’s theology in which they interpret each other. See D. Way, The Lordship of Christ: Ernst Käsemann’s Interpretation of Paul’s Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, ) . The extent of Käsemann’s debt to Luther is both unsurprising and clear. Much as we may legitimately be interested in the theology of Paul the person as an important figure in the history of human thought, from the perspective of Christian theology it is Paul’s texts that are canonical and must be interpreted. Answering some questions about Paul’s communicative intentions on the basis of the evidence provided by the texts themselves is a precondition of their interpretation, but that does not mean that we have sufficient evidence to answer in anything other than provisional manner many of our questions about the theology of Paul the person. To make such provisional answers normative in our theological interpretation of Paul’s texts is to hide theological preferences behind historical argument. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, .
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the believer in terms that can make sense in relation to contemporary categories of reality. The struggle to live by trust in God’s promises in the midst of a world marred by sin and death is not entirely beyond our understanding. We know what it is to trust or to fail to trust another. To trust in God’s promises is to look to a future reality beyond the present and to live on its basis. Nevertheless, it is the locating of the presence of Christ and of that future hope precisely in the present reality of the struggle, and not in the transcendence of it, that makes Luther’s understanding of participation in Christ accessible to us as a theological and exegetical resource. The invitation extended by these four points to think with Luther about Paul is not one that has been much accepted in recent scholarship, where the prevailing tenor has been the need to think against Luther about Paul. However, much of that mood is based on misunderstandings of Luther’s interpretation of Paul among NT scholars. E. P. Sanders speaks bluntly of Luther’s erroneous emphasis on ‘fictional, imputed righteousness’. Even when the tone is less prejudicial, Luther is often one-sidedly identified with exclusively forensic views of justification. Morna Hooker says that Luther argued that justification imagery ‘was that of the law court, and that the word meant “to declare righteous”’. Philip Esler concludes that ‘there is no sign of Luther’s imputed righteousness in Galatians (the “declaratory” or “forensic” meaning)’. Such misunderstandings matter because of Luther’s central place in the history of Pauline interpretation. If we fail to understand what he says about Paul then we fail properly to understand our own place in that history as we respond positively or negatively to positions Campbell, The Quest for Paul’s Gospel, makes it plain that in stressing the participation of the Christian in the faithfulness of Christ he is not calling for mere imitation of Christ. Paul ‘is finding in his own life the experience and life of Christ figuring forth. He is participating in Christ…in particular, he is participating in Christ’s weakness’ (his emphasis). This is helpful, as is Campbell’s emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit in participation in Christ. However, there is lacking an explanation of how this participation takes place in a way that it is not primarily imitative. In his emphasis on the presence of Christ in faith, Luther potentially allows us to say more about this missing step of analysis. It is true, of course, that Luther takes a very different view of what Paul means by ‘the works of the Law’ from that dominant within contemporary scholarship. However, the charge that he projected back onto Paul his own struggles with a guilty conscience, or that he took such struggles to be typical of Jewish experience with the Law, is simply false. See S. J. Chester, ‘Paul and the Introspective Conscience of Martin Luther’, Biblical Interpretation . () –. E. P. Sanders, Paul (Oxford: Oxford University, ) . M. Hooker, Paul: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Oneworld, ) . Despite this, there are some striking similarities between Luther’s emphasis on ‘joyous exchange’ and Hooker’s own important suggestion that ‘interchange’ is central to Paul’s explanations of the salvific significance of Christ’s death. P. Esler, Galatians (London: Routledge, ) .
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for which Luther is perceived to be responsible. Turning the usual story of Pauline interpretation on its head, Daphne Hampson comments that Albert Schweitzer’s explanation of justification in Paul as ‘righteousness, in consequence of faith, through the being-in-Christ’ coheres exactly with that of Luther. It is true of course that Schweitzer does not follow Luther in making justification so defined central to Paul’s theology, but the similarity between them is genuine. To adopt the usual approach and to tell the story of the discipline as if Schweitzer’s work marks a straightforward rejection of Luther, preparing the ground for the even greater rejection that was to come with Sanders, is simply a distortion. Our problem is not so much that we read Paul through the eyes of Luther, but more that we read Luther through the eyes of Bultmann and reject the two together. Only when we abandon that procedure and tell the story of Pauline interpretation in a different way will we be able to read Luther’s Pauline exegesis in a discriminating manner, reaching different conclusions from Luther where necessary but taking advantage of the considerable resources that he has to offer for our own efforts to interpret Paul.
Hampson, Christian Contradictions, – and A. Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (London: A. & C. Black, ) , –. As Hampson notes, Schweitzer himself failed to see this sense in Luther. However, Schweitzer was not helped by the Luther scholarship of his day, an excuse no longer available to contemporary Pauline scholarship.
New Test. Stud. , pp. –. Printed in the United Kingdom © Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S0028688509000241
Roman Crete and the Letter to Titus G E O R G E M. W I E L AN D Carey Baptist College and Laidlaw-Carey Graduate School, 473 Great South Road, Penrose, Auckland 1642, New Zealand email:
[email protected] Crete is rarely taken seriously as a plausible actual destination for the NT letter to Titus. Investigation of Roman Crete, however, yields intriguing points of contact with puzzling features of the letter. Patterns of social organisation on the island correlate closely to the structure of behavioural instruction in Titus .–, suggesting that it might have been shaped specifically to that environment. Unusual elements of the major theological statements in Titus correspond to aspects of Cretan religion in ways that could represent intentional engagement. There are implications for identifying the letter’s provenance and interpreting it as a missionary document. Keywords: Titus, Crete, household code, Zeus, Artemis, Isis
The implied destination of the letter to Titus has long puzzled scholars. ‘Why Crete is chosen here’, Houlden confesses, ‘is a mystery to us’. Dibelius and Conzelmann speculate that ‘a known situation—in this case Acts .—was used as a point of departure by the Pastorals’ author’. For Quinn the churches on Crete, like the Ephesian church envisaged in the letters to Timothy, have a typological function, and readers should recognise in them ‘the more archaic, Jewish–Christian congregations of the Christian movement being updated according to a Pauline model’. Oberlinner asks whether the purpose of locating the addressee on Crete might be to indicate the geographical spread of Pauline influence. In any event, if, as is generally held, ‘the artificiality of the occasion for the letter is obvious’, an investigation of actual conditions on the island of
J. L. Houlden, The Pastoral Epistles (Handsworth: Penguin, ; repr. London: SCM, ) . M. Dibelius and H. Conzelmann, The Pastoral Epistles (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, ) . J. D. Quinn, The Letter to Titus (AB ; New York: Doubleday, ) . Quinn, Titus, . L. Oberlinner, Titusbriefe, Die Pastoralbriefe . (HTK .; Freiburg: Herder, ) –. Dibelius and Conzelmann, Pastoral Epistles, .
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Crete could hardly be expected to contribute much to an understanding of the letter’s content. There are, however, a number of features of the letter to Titus that have proved difficult to explain. These include the description of God as ἀψϵυδής (.), the association of saving with the training effect of grace (ἐπϵφάνη γὰρ ἡ χάρις τοῦ Θϵοῦ σωτήριος…παιδϵύουσα ἡμᾶς, .–), and the specifying of the ‘washing of rebirth’ as the means of God’s saving (ἔσωσϵν ἡμᾶς διὰ λουτροῦ παλιγγϵνϵσίας καὶ ἀνακαινώσϵως, .), all unique within the NT literature. The form of the domestic instruction given in .–, where subjects are categorised according to age and sex rather than in the more standard pairs of domestic relationships, is another peculiarity. At the same time historians of Crete stress that island’s distinctive character within the Mediterranean world. Speaking of ‘the idiosyncratic nature of its development’, archaeologist M. Prent comments, ‘Whereas the later history of the island is broadly comparable to that of other regions in the Aegean, it also displays distinct peculiarities. In addition to the relative strength of Bronze Age traditions, these concern certain aspects of Cretan socio-political organisation and the continuity of contact with the Near East’. Recent archaeological studies seem to confirm that this distinctiveness continued well into the Roman period. Whereas the Roman geographer Strabo (/ BCE– CE) remarks that some of Crete’s traditional political institutions had been superseded by Roman administration (Strabo, Geogr. ., ), L. Vance Watrous and Despoina Hadzi-Vallianou conclude from their archaeological survey of the Mesara region that, ‘Dorian social practices, concering male initiation, marriage, and kinship relations, seem to have continued longer in Early Roman Crete, at least into the third century AD’. Is it possible that some of the unusual features of the letter to Titus could correspond to any of those ‘distinct peculiarities’ of the letter’s stated destination, the island of Crete? The exploration of such questions is assisted by advances in archaeological and historical studies of Roman Crete. Long neglected in favour of its glorious Mycenaean and Minoan predecessors, ‘[t]he Roman period on Crete has received M. Prent, Cretan Sanctuaries and Cults: Continuity and Change from Late Minoan IIIC to the Archaic Period (Religion in the Graeco-Roman World ; Leiden/Boston: Brill, ) . L. Vance Watroud and Despoina Hadzi-Vallianou, ‘Mesara Romana (BC–AD)’, – in L. Vance Watrous, Despoina Hadzi-Vallianou and Harriet Blitzer, The Plain of Phaistos: Cycles of Social Complexity in the Mesara Region of Crete (Monumenta Archaeologica ; Cotsen Institute of Archaeology: University of California, ) . In interpeting Strabo his universalising and, hence, romanising tendency has to be taken into account (see Katherine Clarke’s illuminating discussion of Strabo, along with Polybius and Posidonius, in Between Geography and History: Hellenistic Constructions of the Roman World [Oxford Classical Monographs; Oxford: Oxford University, ], , where she describes their ‘concern to express the unity of the Roman world’).
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increased academic attention in recent years’. Of special interest is the city of Gortyn, which local tradition identifies as the site of the first Christian mission on Crete and the ministry of Titus. Set in the plain of Mesara in southern central Crete, and with access to the sea via the port of Lebena, Gortyn became the capital of the Roman province of Crete and Cyrenaica after the Roman occupation of BCE. The odeon containing the famous Law Code of Gortyn has received significant attention, but work on the praetorium is still in progress, and by far the greater part of the Roman city remains to be excavated. It is becoming more possible, however, to describe features of life on Crete in Roman times and ask whether aspects of the letter to Titus might be particularly appropriate to a Cretan environment. We shall proceed to consider some possible connections.
. Cretan Society and the Ethical Distinctives of Titus
Almost a century ago Martin Dibelius proposed that Stoic tables of duties for the various members of Hellenistic households lay behind apparently similar material in Colossians. While the extent of literary dependence on Greco-Roman models has been questioned, it has become standard J. Francis and G. W. M. Harrison, ‘Review Article: Gortyn: First City of Roman Crete’, American Journal of Archaeology . () – (), referring particularly to work over the past two decades of the Archaeological School of Athens and the Italian Archaeological Mission under the direction of Professor A. Di Vita, published in Gortina Vols. , , , (Monografie della Scuola Archeologica di Atene e delle Missioni Italiane in Oriente , , , ; Padua: Bottega d’Erasmo, –). See also the brief description of recent work by A. Bingham, ‘Crete’s Roman Past’, History Today () . Work is also underway on Roman Knossos, led by Dr Ken Wardle of Birmingham University (reports of current work are available at http://artsweb.bham.ac.uk/aha/kaw/Knossos/job.htm – accessed ..). Susan E. Alcock discusses aspects of Hellenistic and Roman Crete and their relationship to earlier Cretan periods in ‘Cretan Inventions’, Chapter of Archaeologies of the Greek Past: Landscape, Monuments, and Memories (Cambridge: Cambridge University, ) –; see references to other work on Roman Crete on p. n. . Results of the on-going excavations of Gortyn are being made more widely accessible by Cretan archaeologist Dr. Antoni Vasilakis in a series of both technical and popular publications, e.g. Gortyn (Iraklio: V. Kouvadis – V. Manouras, n.d). See R. F. Willetts, ed., The Law Code of Gortyn (Berlin: de Gruyter, ); and more recently A. S. Vasilakis, The Great Inscription of the Law Code of Gortyn (Heraklion: Mystis, n.d.), with bibliography. One find that recently gained wide media coverage was archaeologist Anna Micheli’s discovery of marble statues of the goddesses Athena and Hera dating from the Roman period, lying in the theatre where they had fallen during an earthquake that destroyed much of the city in CE. See newspaper report by Kate Roberts, ‘Important Find at Gortyn’, Crete Gazette, December , – (http://www.cretegazette.com/pdf/newsdec.pdf – accessed ..). Martin Dibelius, An die Kolosser, an die Epheser, an Philemon (HNT; Tübingen: Mohr, ). See, e.g., W. Schrage, ‘Zur Ethik der neutestamentlichen Haustafeln’, NTS () –; D. Lürhmann, ‘Neutestamentliche Haustafeln und Antike Ökonomie’, NTS () –.
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practice to speak of NT Haustafeln, or household codes (Eph .–.; Col .– .; Pet .–.; Tim .–; .–; .–, –; Titus .–.). Although Titus .– is commonly listed along with those other examples, it differs from most of them in interesting ways. Comparable instructions in Col .–. and Eph .–. are set out in pairs of relationships that would be appropriate to a standard household (i.e. wives–husbands, children–parents, slaves–masters), and assume a degree of reciprocity within each pair, but ‘[i]t is a characteristic feature of the “household rules” in Titus that the congregation is divided by age and sex, not by family relationships’. There are instructions for older men (πρϵσβῦται, .), older women (πρϵσβύτιδϵς, .–), younger women (νέαι, .–), younger men (νϵώτϵροι, .), Titus himself (.–), and slaves (δοῦλοι, .–), before instructions are provided for the whole Christian community (.–). A range of explanations has been offered for the differences. Some have discerned within the NT a process of ‘adaptation of the household code to the household of God. The household code format, a kind of convention in moral discourse, has already been Christianised within the Pauline tradition and used for codifying ethical norms (Colossians, Ephesians); now further development produces the earliest “church order”’. From this perspective, the self-understanding of the church as ‘God’s household’ has suggested the adoption of standard household norms governing relationships and behaviour to regulate life within the Christian community. There are considerable difficulties, however, in tracing a line of development from the supposedly earlier Christian Haustafeln in Colossians and Ephesians to later church-oriented adaptations in Titus .–. and Pet .–.. Such is the divergence in form and content between the instructions in Titus and Peter and those in Colossians and Ephesians that H. von Lips
Ben Witherington III objects that, ‘while discussion of household management was a standing topic in antiquity, both before and after the New Testament era, I can find no direct evidence of a household table and certainly nothing like what we find in the New Testament with reciprocal pairs that are commanded directly’. Women and the Genesis of Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University, ) . Useful surveys are provided by David C. Verner, ‘The Haustafeln in Previous Research’, The Household of God: The Social World of the Pastoral Epistles (SBLDS ; Chico, CA: Scholars, ), –; David L. Balch, ‘Household Codes’, in Greco-Roman Literature and the New Testament (ed. David E. Aune; SBLSBS ; Atlanta: Scholars, ) –; I. Howard Marshall, Excursus : ‘Household Codes and Station Codes’, The Pastoral Epistles (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, ) –. C. K. Barrett, The Pastoral Epistles (NCB; Oxford: Clarendon, ) . The members of this community are described as ‘those who have come to believe in God’ (οἱ πϵπιστϵυκότϵς θϵῳ ῀ , :). F. Young, The Theology of the Pastoral Letters (Cambridge: Cambridge University, ) . Tim .; cf. the depiction of the church leader as God’s οἰκονόμος in Titus ..
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concludes that, ‘[m]an kann dies aber nicht als Weiterentwicklung oder gar Auflösungserscheinung interpretieren, sondern muß darin eine Paralleltradition sehen’. To account for the codes in Titus .–. and Pet .–. he finds it necessary to posit a separate Station Code tradition dealing with the duties of various classes of people within society. The material in Titus, however, differs even from that in Peter, both in its form and in the theological and ethical grounding of the instructions. Even if it were possible, then, to identify some Station Code source, that in itself would not be sufficient to explain the particular shape of the instructions to the Christian community envisaged in Titus. As Verner argues, the variety in form of the NT codes ‘strongly suggests that they address real, concrete, and in some cases persistent social needs within the church’. Could those ‘real, concrete… social needs’ be found in specific conditions on the island of Crete? Throughout its history Crete has both shared aspects of culture with the Greek mainland and exhibited its own distinctive characteristics. Notable among the latter are the practices of male communal dining in ἀνδρϵία (men’s halls) and the separation of children into age groups for education and eventual initiation into adult society. Prent gives the following account: H. von Lips, ‘Die Haustafel als “Topos” im Rahmen der urchristlichen Paränese: Beobachtungen anhand des .Petrusbriefes und des Titusbriefes’, NTS () – (). See Marshall’s analysis (Pastoral Epistles, ). Verner, Household, . Pertinent is A. T. Lincoln’s complaint in relation to Colossians, that ‘while considerable attention has been paid to the origins of the household code, very little has been given to the function of the code’ (‘The Household Code and Wisdom Mode of Colossians’, JSNT [] –, ). The literary sources for these practices are Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae .– (citing Dosiades, an earlier historian of Crete, and an otherwise unknown work by Pyrgion, Cretan Customs), Strabo ., – (citing the fourth-century BCE historian Ephorus), and Aristotle Pol. . (fourth century BCE). On Strabo see n. above. There are complex issues regarding the use of Athenaeus as an historical source. Writing in Rome in the late second or early third century CE (and therefore after the NT period) his ‘dinner-table discussions’ preserve fragments of several hundred earlier works (mostly before the NT period). Students of earlier periods for whom Athenaeus’s fragments comprise their primary literary sources have to assess the accuracy with which Athenaeus has preserved them. The results are mixed. On the one hand it has been claimed that ‘his use of notes, and the potential accuracy that suggests, is evident from identical fragments separated by many books’ (Liv Mariah Yarrow, Historiography at the End of the Republic: Provincial Perspectives on Roman Rule [Oxford Classical Monographs; Oxford: Oxford University, ], ). Christopher Pelling, however, offers examples of Athenaeus ‘recasting his materials in substantial ways’ (‘Fun with Fragments: Athenaeus and the Historians’, Athenaeus and his World [ed. David Braund and John Wilkins; Exeter: University of Exeter, ], – []). Similarly Robert J. Gorman and Vanessa Gorman, ‘The Tryphê of the Sybarites: A Historiographical Problem in Athenaeus’, JHS () –, conclude that to the accounts of the fall of Sybaris in his sources Athenaeus (or an intermediary) has added a moralising explanation of that demise as a consequence of ennervating luxury. For the purposes of the present investigation,
Roman Crete and the Letter to Titus a basic and recurring characteristic in the education of both boys and girls is the organisation into different age groups or choruses, probably from the age of six or seven. In these choruses, children were instructed in the traditions, history, norms and values of their communities. They engaged in music, song, dance and physical exercise, they learnt various practical skills and were familiarized with sexuality, often involving homo-eroticism.
Among males παῖδϵς (children), νϵώτϵροι (young men), and πρϵσβύτϵροι (older men) are distinguished. This pattern recalls the Spartan model whose goal had been to nurture the fighting qualities that it was felt the community’s warriors would need. Those were still prized on Crete. Plutarch lists Cretans among ‘the most warlike of peoples’ (Mor. .d). Cretan armour was highly developed, suggesting ‘an interest in martial arts which the Cretans must have practised mainly on each other’. Cretan mercenaries featured in many conflicts, and their role against Roman forces, together with accusations of Cretan involvement in piracy, gave Rome the pretext to impose governors in the first century BCE.
however, the issue is less the accuracy of Athenaeus’s reproduction of older sources than the extent to which Athenaeus’s descriptions reveal realities of life in the Mediterranean during the Roman period nearer to his own time. Born in Naucritus, Egypt, a student in Alexandria and writing in Rome, Athenaeus was well placed to acquire current knowledge of the Mediterranean world. It is quite likely that he might even have called in on Crete which was a regular stopping point on the shipping lane from Egypt to Greece and Rome (see Paul Erdkamp, The Grain Market in the Roman Empire: A Social, Political, and Economic Study [Cambridge: Cambridge University, ], ). Recent archaeological studies add credibility to the view that distinctive features of Cretan life as represented by Athenaeus continued to pertain during the Roman period relevant to the present investigation (see n. above). Prent, Cretan Sanctuaries, –. Cretan maturation rites, specifically the ἁρπαγή with its apparent institutionalisation of paedophile rape, were notorious in the ancient Mediterranean world. See A. Bowie, ‘Religion and Politics in Aeschylus’ ΟΡΕΣΤΕΙΑ’, CQ NS () –; cf. J. Bremner, ‘Paederasty’, Arethusa () –. George Forrest describes military training in archaic Sparta, where a child was ‘completely robbed of home and family between the ages of five and thirty and even thereafter compelled to devote his days to military training and his evenings to the company of his messmates’. He notes that ‘in Crete…many close similarities to Spartan customs can be seen’. (‘Greece: The History of the Archaic Period’, The Oxford History of the Classical World [ed. John Boardman, Jasper Griffin, and Oswyn Murray; Oxford: Oxford University, ], – []). R. F. Willetts, The Cambridge Ancient History . (ed. J. Boardman and N. G. L. Hammond; Cambridge: Cambridge University, nd ed. ) . E.g. Josephus Ant. ., . S. V. Spyridakis writes, ‘Crete was one of the leading centers of piracy and the slave trade in the Eastern Mediterranean throughout the Hellenistic Age’. He supplies evidence for Jewish slaves, possibly prisoners of war, on Crete in the second century BCE (‘Notes on the Jews of Gortyna and Crete’, ZPE [] – [– n. ]). See Appian Bell. civ. ...
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In this martial environment the primary role models for νϵώτϵροι were the seasoned fighters. At the all-male communal meals described by Athenaeus, the πρϵσβύτϵροι received the largest portions of food and if they wanted to they had the right to consume greater quantities of wine (Deipn. .d). Read against this background the exhortation in Titus . that older men should be νηφάλιοι, σέμνοι, and σώφρονϵς perhaps assumes a sharper profile. After dinner tales of exemplary courage were told to urge the younger men toward manly virtues (προτρϵπόμϵνοι τοὺς νϵωτέρους ϵἰς ἀνδραγαθίαν, Deipn. .d). Titus for his part is to serve as a τύπος καλῶν ἔργων for the νϵώτϵροι of his communities (.). With the men’s halls serving as the focus for male community life, women’s lives revolved around the household. This is the setting for the instructions concerning women in Titus .–. These are characterised again by a distinction in age categories between older women (πρϵσβύτιδϵς, .) and younger women (νέαι, .). Upon the former group are urged responsibilities relating to exemplary behaviour and the training of the latter group. Carolyn Osiek and Margaret MacDonald comment, ‘Every cultural and religious tradition that practices any kind of gender separation develops distinctive teaching traditions for men and women’, and in these instructions in Titus .– they find evidence of ‘a continuing custom of whose content we know very little: older women are to form character in younger women while male teachers do the same for young men’. There is of course nothing specifically Cretan about older women passing on guidance to younger women in a domestic context. What is unusual, however, is ‘terminology practically unexampled in this correspondence or in biblical Greek’ in .–a, which depicts the role of the senior women in almost priestly terms (ἱϵροπρϵπϵῖς, .). Interestingly, votive offerings found in the temple of Athena in Gortyn include representations of ‘young females in the confinement of some kind of structure’, which Prent suggests may refer to ‘a period of temple service for the girls’ that might have formed part of their education. Is Titus .– hinting at an analogy to service performed by women in the temples, indicating that the behaviour of Christian women in their households could have the character of service offered to God?
Carolyn Osiek and Margaret Y. MacDonald with Janet H. Tulloch, A Woman’s Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, ) . See the discussion of age categories in the Greco-Roman environment and in a range of NT documents in John M. G. Barclay, ‘There is Neither Old Nor Young? Early Christianity and Ancient Ideologies of Age’, NTS . () –. Barclay comments that ‘Titus .– represents many of the classical assumptions about age’. This pertains to the instructions both to the older men and to older women. The older women, however, though urged to ‘control their tongues and their appetites for drink’, also ‘have a crucial role to play in socialising the younger generation of wives (αἱ νέαι) into the proper family ethos, to ensure that they are domestic, motherly, and obedient to their husbands’ (). Quinn, Titus, . Prent, Cretan Sanctuaries, .
Roman Crete and the Letter to Titus . Cretan Religion and the Theological Distinctives of Titus
a. Zeus the Deceiver and the ἀψϵυδὴς θϵός (.) The great god of the Cretans was Zeus. From ancient times they had claimed to be guardians of both his birthplace on Mt. Ida and his tomb. Archaeological finds at the Idaian cave and elsewhere attest to a continuation or even intensification of the worship of Zeus in the Roman period, and symbols of Zeus Cretagenes appear consistently on coins of the Roman province of Crete. It was specifically the Cretan claim to possess the tomb of Zeus that provoked the accusation in Calimachus’s Hymn to Zeus that Κρῆτϵς ἀϵὶ ψϵύσται. The characterisation, however, extended far beyond that single instance. Polybius describes the breaking of a treaty and subsequent massacre as a prime example of the Cretans’ ‘habitual ferocity’ (Polybius .). The currency of such terms as κρητίζϵιν, to lie, κρητισμός, falsehood, and the expression, πρὸς Κρήτα κρητίζϵιν, ‘to meet craft with craft’, suggest a widespread perception. Moreover this was not considered altogether a disgrace. ‘The Greeks…admired people who, like Odysseus, could prevaricate their ways out of danger’, so ‘we may take the reputation of the Cretans as oblique, amused praise’. Writers commented on not only the ability of Cretans to deceive but also their proclivity to be deceived. Josephus tells of Crete’s Jewish community being hoodwinked by a pretender to Herod’s throne (Ant. .; cf. B.J. .). Dishonesty in public life continued under Roman rule; in fact, their conquest owed something to deception. (Appian Bell. civ. .–). Mark Antony later attempted to wrest Crete from Rome with a forged document, and between and CE no less than five
See Alcock, Archaeologies of the Greek Past, –. She argues that Zeus traditions, along with those of the other iconic Cretan figures, Minos, and the Trojan War heroes, ‘became more emphasized, evidently at the expense of other, less widely compelling memories, in the early Roman era’ (, Alcock’s emphasis). Κρῆτϵς ἀϵι ψϵῦσται · καὶ γὰρ τάφον, ὦ ἄνα σϵιο κρῆτϵς ἐτϵκτήναντο σὺ δὲ οὐ θάνϵς· ἐσσι γὰρ ἀαι. Callimachus Hymn. Jov. .–. See S. Heyworth, ‘Deceitful Crete: Aeneid . and the Hymns of Callimachus’, Classical Review NS () –; N. Hopkinson, ‘Callimachus’s Hymn to Zeus’, CQ () –. See Reiner Faber, ‘ “Evil Beasts, Lazy Gluttons”: A Neglected Theme in the Epistle to Titus’, WTJ () – (). See Dibelius and Conzelmann, Pastoral Epistles, – for references and discussion; Quinn comments that ‘the mendacious character of the Cretans was a byword in the Greek language’ (Titus, ). E.g. Plutarch Aem. . E.g. Aesop Fab. ; Polybius .; Plutarch Aem. .; Lys. .. E. K. Simpson, The Pastoral Epistles: The Greek Text with Introduction and Commentary (London: Tyndale, ) ; cf. J. N. D. Kelly, The Pastoral Epistles: I & II Timothy and Titus (BNTC; London: A. & C. Black, ) . F. Will, ‘Notes from Crete’, Arion () – (–).
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governors were recalled to Rome to face corruption charges. In reiterating the Κρῆτϵς ἀϵὶ ψϵύσται reproach in Titus ., then, the author was accurately reflecting ancient perceptions of Crete and its inhabitants. Not only the Cretans, however, but Zeus himself, was notorious for deception and trickery. The Iliad furnishes several examples. His wife Hera accuses Zeus of being crafty-minded (δολομήτης, .) and demands an assurance that he will not cheat her by failing to do what he has promised (ψϵυστήσϵις οὐ δ᾿αὖτ ϵ τέλος μύθῳ ἐπιθήσϵις, .). Nestor waits to see whether or not Zeus’s promise will prove false (ϵἰ τϵ ψϵῦδος ὑπόσχϵσις ϵἰ τϵ καὶ οὐκί, .–). Agamemnon fears that Zeus has decided to play a cruel trick on him (νῦν δὲ κακὴν ἀπάτην βουλϵύσατο, .) and is at a loss for what to do because ‘Zeus has changed again’ (Διὸς ἐτράπϵτο φρήν, .; cf. δὴ γὰρ νόος ἐτράπϵτ᾿ αὐτοῦ, .). Asios complains, ‘Father Zeus, you really are a lover of lies’ (φιλοψϵυδής, .). In his philosophical discussion of the perfection of the gods (Resp. .–) Plato took issue with Homer, objecting that gods should not be represented as lying, since ‘there is no falsehood at all in the realm of the spiritual and the divine’ (πάντῃ ἄρα ἀψϵυδὲς τὸ δαιμόνιόν τϵ καὶ τὸ θϵῖον, Resp. .), but the old legends continued to hold the popular imagination. In . God is described as ἀψϵυδής. While the idea of God’s truthfulness and dependability is pervasive in the biblical literature, the term ἀψϵυδής is a biblical hapax. Against the background of endemically deceitful Crete the On this and other background see I. F. Sanders, Roman Crete: An Archaeological Survey and Gazetteer of Late Hellenistic, Roman and Early Byzantine Crete (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, ). It is certainly not necessary to argue as E. F. Scott does that a real Cretan destination should be ruled out on the grounds that a missionary ‘would not have gone to work by insulting their country, as he does here’. The Pastoral Epistles (MNTC; London: Hodder & Stoughton, ) . Cf. Quinn, Titus, : ‘The bitter hyperbole of the argument at this point makes it difficult to believe that the author of Titus seriously envisioned the persuasion and conversion of Cretan opponents to the Pauline mission’. The works of Philo and Josephus illustrate the currency of Homer in the Hellenistic Jewish environment. Philo calls Homer ‘the most illustrious of all the Greek poets’ (Mut. ) or simply ‘the poet’ (Migr. ; Q.G. III.), and quotes often from the Iliad (Conf. ; Migr. ; Contemp. ; Aet. ; Prov. .) and the Odyssey (Migr. ; Mut. ; Contemp. ; Aet. ; Legat. ; QG ., ): cf. Josephus, A.J. .; C. Ap. .; ., , . On the notable success of Zeus Hypsistos in Greece and Asia Minor in Roman times see Elena Muñiz Grijalvo, ‘Elites and Religious Change in Roman Athens’, Numen . () –. In the OT Balaam confesses, ‘God is not a human being, that he should lie’ (Num .) and Ps . (LXX .) has God declare, ‘Once and for all I have sworn in my holiness; I will not lie to David!’ (ϵἰ τῷ Δαυιδ ψϵύσομαι). In the NT, Heb . cites God’s promise and oath as two things in which ‘it is impossible that God would prove false’ (ἀδύνατον ψϵύσασθαι [τὸν] θϵόν). In both Hebrews and Titus the considerations that buttressed OT faith in God’s promises now support a faith that interprets them in Christian terms (Titus .; Heb .–, ).
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introduction of ὁ ἀψϵυδὴς θϵός (.) could be heard as a contrast with lying humans, whether the Cretans in general (.) or specifically the envisaged opponents (.), but there may also be a polemical contrast with the Cretans’ god. Another encounter between Christian missionaries and worshippers of Zeus is illustrated in the account in the book of Acts of the experience of Barnabas and Paul in Lystra (Acts .–). In the speech attributed to the missionaries in Acts .–, C. Breytenbach finds an ‘Anti-Zeus-Tendenz’, presenting the ‘living God’ in terms that directly challenge claims made on Zeus’s behalf in Asia Minor in the first century CE. In a missionary approach to Crete, jealous of its association with Zeus, the declaration of ὁ ἀψϵυδὴς θϵός, the God who does not lie, would be a plausible strategy, in this instance not claiming for God activities and qualities for which Zeus had been given credit, but suggesting a contrast between a deceitful and capricious deity and the truthful and dependable God of Christian missionary proclamation. b. Potnia The ̄rōn and the Taming of ‘Wild Beasts’ The saying cited in Titus . characterises Crete’s population as not only ‘always liars’ (ἀϵὶ ψϵῦσται) but also ‘wild beasts’ (κακὰ θηρία). Ironically, Crete enjoyed the reputation of being free of wild animals, but the implication here is that the beastly characteristics were exhibited by its human inhabitants. The organisation of young men into ἀγέλαι (herds) for training is suggestive. As As suggested by Marshall, Pastoral Epistles, . Faber (‘ “Evil Beasts, Lazy Gluttons” ’, –) develops the argument that in citing Callimachus’s accusation the author of Titus is implying that just as Cretans held heterodox views in relation to traditional beliefs about Zeus, now ‘the false teachers hold theological convictions that are opposed to the truth’ (). R. M. Kidd refers to traditions of Zeus’s deception, concluding, ‘And that Titus’s biblically unique reference to the Christian God as being “unlying” stands in self-conscious contradistinction to a chief deity whom Titus’ Paul would consider to be an immoral liar I consider to be altogether likely’ (‘Titus as Apologia: Grace for Liars, Beasts, and Bellies’, Horizons in Biblical Theology [] – []). Cf. P. H. Towner’s suggestion that the reference to a God who does not lie ‘could well lampoon the character of the Zeus of Cretan tales, who in fact did lie to have sexual relations with a human woman’ (The Letters to Timothy and Titus [NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ], ). C. Breytenbach, ‘Zeus und der lebendige Gott: Anmerkungen zu Apostelgeschichte .–’, NTS . () –. He writes, ‘Paulus und Barnabas verkündigen nun, daß der lebendigen Gott “vom Himmel her…durch Regen fruchtbare Zeiten (gab)”. Der lebendigen Gott ist ὁ ἀγαθουργῶν, nicht Ζϵὺς Καλακαγαθίος. Er ist der wetterbestimmende Himmelsgott, der durch Regen fruchttragende Zeiten gibt (διδοὺς…καιροὺς καρποφόρους) und eben nicht Zeus, der auch Phrygien, Pisidien, Isauria und Lykaonien als Wettergott verehrt wurde und für den in Ostphrygien die Namen Καρποδότης, ᾿Επικάρπιος, Εὔκαρπος und sogar Καρποφόρος belegt sind’ (). ‘Es ist eine berechtigte Frage, ob die Rede in Apg nicht von einer Anti-Zeus-Tendenz her gestaltet wurde’ (). See Pliny Nat. .; Plutarch Inim. util. c. Quinn, Titus, ; Kidd, ‘Titus as Apologia’, ; Towner, Timothy and Titus, .
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Prent explains, ‘The taming of animals as a simile for the education of the young was popular in the ancient Greek world… In Crete, this concept is exemplified by the term agela, which puts the Cretan male adolescents on a par with herds of horses or cattle’. How were those ‘wild beasts’ to be tamed? Archaeological findings at Gortyn are interesting in this connection. On the acropolis above the city, worship was offered to a protector goddess. Although the shrine is to Pallas Athena, associated in Classical times with Artemis the hunter goddess, some continuity with the Mycenaean Cretan goddess Britomartis is evident in the iconography at the site, depicting the goddess with an animal in each hand, under control. This is Potnia The ̄rōn, the ‘Mistress of beasts’, or tamer of wild animals. Clay figures of adolescent males in armour are among the votive offerings, seeming to indicate that the help of Potnia The ̄rōn was invoked at a significant transition point in the process whereby youths were prepared for and initiated into adult roles. According to Prent, The presence of Potnia Theron at the EIA sanctuary of Gortyn does not simply constitute a relic of earlier times, nor was there unselective borrowing from the Near East. Both manifestations of the deity can be related specifically to the initiatory functions of the deity. The martial aspects of the Palladion, apart from indicating broader functions as protector of the community, gave the young male initiands a means of identifying with the deity. Her representation as Potnia Theron, or a goddess reigning over wild nature, assumed a more specific meaning in connection with the idea of a ‘taming of the young and uncivilised’ that took place in her sanctuary.
In Titus ., ‘[t]he grace of God is pictured in a somewhat unusual way as a teacher who guides people into a new way of life’. To tame the passions was of course a general aspiration espoused by most Hellenistic philosophers, so the claim of Christian missionaries to offer a means of actually realising that ideal need not be specific to Crete. It would certainly be appropriate, however, in a Cretan context. Kidd argues that the three-fold virtuous outcome described in Titus ., ‘lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly’ (σωφρόνως καὶ δικαίως καὶ ϵὐσϵβῶς ζήσωμϵν), corresponds in a programmatic way to the three-fold disparagement of the Cretan character in .. While the point by
Prent, Cretan Sanctuaries, . Prent, Cretan Sanctuaries, . Prent, Cretan Sanctuaries, . Marshall, Pastoral Epistles, –. For an extended treatment see M. C. Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Martin Classical Lectures NS ; Princeton: Princeton University, ). ‘In the context of the letter to Titus these two clusters are mutually defining: the whole saying at : about Cretans being “liars, beasts, and bellies” sets up the sweeping theological statement at : about grace coming to teach us to live “soberly” (i.e. not as bellies), “justly” (i.e. not as beasts), and “piously” (i.e. not as liars)’ (Kidd, ‘Titus as Apologia’, ).
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point correspondence he proposes may be difficult to sustain, it is quite plausible that in an environment where the help of a deity is sought in relation to training and character development, a missionary approach might include a presentation of the character-shaping effect of the divine gift of grace (.–) appropriated by those who put their hope in ‘our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ’ (.). c. Isis and Salvation Through Washing (.–) A third unusual theological statement occurs in the reference in Titus .– to salvation ‘through the washing of rebirth and renewal through the Holy Spirit whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour’ (διὰ λουτροῦ παλιγγϵνϵσίας καὶ ἀνακαινώσϵως πνϵύματος ἁγίου, οὗ ἐξέχϵϵν ἐφ᾿ ἡμᾶς πλουσίως διὰ᾿Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν). Mention of ‘the washing of rebirth and renewal’ (.) has naturally suggested the image of baptism and possible associations with the mystery religions, though the exact nature of any relationship is difficult to establish. Prominent in the praetorium of Roman Gortyn is a temple to Isis and Serapis, consistent with the well-attested popularity of Isis around the Mediterranean during the Roman period. The clearest literary evidence for Isiac rites is in the well-known Metamorphoses of Apuleius, the story of Lucius, who, having been changed into the shape of a donkey as a penalty for meddling in magic, seeks a saving transformation back into human form. Finally arriving through many labours and trials at the ‘harbour of quietness and the altar of mercy’ (XI.), Lucius is ‘reborn’ (renatus, XI., ), not only recovering his
For discussion see, e.g., the excursus, ‘Rebirth’, Dibelius and Conzelmann, Pastoral Epistles, –; Marshall, Pastoral Epistles, –; Oberlinner, Titusbrief, –; Quinn, Titus, – ; B. W. R. Pearson, ‘Baptism and Initiation in the Cult of Isis and Serapis’, in Baptism, the New Testament and the Church: Historical and Contemporary Studies in Honour of R. E. O. White (ed. S. E Porter and A. R. Cross; JSNTSS ; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, ) –. Details are given in Vasilakis, Gortyn, –. Another temple in the praetorium, formerly assumed to be devoted to Augustus, has recently been reinterpreted as a second temple to an Egyptian goddess, possibly Isis (Vasilakis, The Great Inscription of the Law Code of Gortyn, –). ‘By the middle of the nd century B.C.E., the cult of Isis had become universal and had spread throughout the Hellenistic Roman world’ (A. Tripolitis, Religions of the Hellenistic-Roman Age [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ], ). See also F. Solmsen, Isis among the Greeks and Romans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, ); R. Salditt-Trappmann, Tempel der ägyptischen Götter in Griechenland und an der westküste Kleinasiens (Leiden: Brill, ), reporting studies of over fifty temples spread over a wide geographical area. An account of the popularity of Isis worship and discussion of points of contact with the NT is provided by Elizabeth A. McCabe, An Examination of the Isis Cult with Preliminary Exploration into New Testament Studies (Lanham: University Press of America, ). Multis et variis exanclatis laboribus magnisque Fortunae tempestatibus et maximis actus procellis ad portum Quietis et aram Misericordiae tandem, Luci, venisti.
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human form but entering into a life of service of the goddess Isis, who is described as ‘eternal saviour of the human race’ (humani generis sosipatrix perpetua, XI.). Titus .– also describes a transformation from beastly behaviour (.) to devotion to doing good (.), brought about by a saviour God (.) on the basis of his mercy (.), and involving a rebirth and renewal of life (.). As in the story of Lucius, the rebirth in Titus . is closely associated with a washing. Water played a significant role in the Isis cult, reflecting the importance of the River Nile in its foundation myth and practices. An Isis temple typically included a ‘nilometer’, a cistern-type installation incorporating a large basin fed by a water pipe entering the structure at a higher level. R. A. Wild explains: there must have been certain times when water coursed through the large main and splashed down into the basin to cause it (probably) to overflow. Worshippers at this sanctuary very likely looked upon such moments as a symbolic renewal of the Nile flood, a visible manifestation of the power of their god over the forces of life.
It is interesting that Titus .– employs the image of water poured out (ἐκχέω) rather than the plunging or immersing in water that might be suggested by the verb βαπτίζω. The use of the verb ἐκχέω may echo the pouring out of the Spirit at Pentecost, interpreted as a fulfilment of the prophecy of Joel .– (Acts ., , ), but it would also be an appropriate image in relation to Isiac rites. Wild’s study of the water installations in the temples of Isis leads him to conclude that ‘a ritual pouring or sprinkling of water over the heads of those to be purified was widespread in Isis-Serapis worship’. Against such a background, the claim in Titus .– to transformation through the pouring out of the Spirit effecting a washing of rebirth could be heard as a
See the description in McCabe, Examination of the Isis Cult, –. See R. A. Wild’s full-length study, Water in the Cultic Worship of Isis and Serapis (Leiden: Brill, ). Wild, Water in the Cultic Worship of Isis and Serapis, –. See p. for a plan of the Gortyn temple (following Salditt-Trappmann) identifying the Nile water crypt. On βαπτίζω as an intensive of βάπτω with the sense of ‘to immerse’, see A. Oepke, ‘βάπτω, κτλ’, TDNT .– (). See Quinn, Titus, –; Marshall, Pastoral Epistles, –; also my discussion in The Significance of Salvation: A Study of Salvation Language in the Pastoral Epistles (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, ) –. Wild, Water in the Cultic Worship of Isis and Serapis, . While the association with the Nile and renewal of life is distinctive to Isis, ritual washing is of course a feature of many religions and cults. Another local example is found in Lebena, Gortyn’s port, whose Asklepeion drew supplicants from around the Mediterranean world in quest of healing through bathing and epiphany (see Vasilakis, Gortyn, –, –).
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counter claim to the hope of renewal of life through a drenching in water in the rites of Isis. It is striking that peculiarities discovered in each of the three theological statements in Titus, the ἀψϵυδής God (.), the training operation of grace (παιδϵύουσα ἡμᾶς, .), and a saving transformation through the pouring out of the Spirit to effect a washing of rebirth and renewal (διὰ λουτροῦ παλιγγϵνϵσίας καὶ ἀνακαινώσϵως πνϵύματος ἁγίου, οὗ ἐξέχϵϵν ἐφ᾿ ἡμᾶς, .–), can all be matched to particular features of the religious life of Roman Crete. This is not of course to suggest that these correspondences could only have been made on Crete. Zeus was universally worshipped, the cult of Isis had spread widely, and ideals of paideia were pervasive in the Greco-Roman world. In each case, however, it is at least plausible that a missionary approach to the people of Crete might have included the shaping of aspects of the Christian message in conscious engagement with the features of Crete’s religious life that have been described.
. Incidental Glimpses of Crete in Titus
Alongside the letter’s ethical instruction, corresponding to the structure of Cretan society, and its theological statements, relating to aspects of Cretan religious life, there are a number of other features and details of the letter to Titus that might be considered particularly appropriate to Crete. a. ἐπιδιορθόω (.) The use of the verb ἐπιδιορθόω to describe Titus’s task is worthy of note (.). Not only is this a NT hapax but it is also extremely rare in pre-Christian Greek literature. The solitary recorded occurrence is in Crete, in a secondcentury BCE inscription from Hierapytna, referring to the activity of a regional administrator. Evidently this rare term had some currency in Crete in the context of political organisation. Might its appearance in Titus . reflect familiarity with that sort of usage?
CIG . = Inscriptiones Creticae , –. Quinn, Titus, –, notes the reference but makes no comment on its Cretan location. A comparison may be made with the issue of local terms in the book of Acts. See Colin J. Hemer, The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History (WUNT ; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, ) particularly Chapter . ‘Types of Knowledge Displayed in Acts’ (–); Chapter , ‘The Evidence of Historical Details in Acts’ (–); and the excursus, ‘Names and Titles in Acts’ (–).
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b. κατὰ πόλιν (.) With settlements strung along its unusually extensive coastline, Crete was known in antiquity as ‘the island of a hundred towns’. The instruction that elders be appointed ‘town by town’ (κατὰ πόλιν, .) could of course make good sense in many locations, but it is at least compatible with an island setting such as Crete, where a missionary movement would see opportunity in a series of centres of population connected easily by sea as well as by overland routes. c. οἱ ἐκ τῆς πϵριτομῆς (.) In comparison with the letters to Timothy, Titus seems to accent the confrontation between a Gentile Pauline leader and Judaising opposition. Only here do the opponents specifically include οἱ ἐκ τῆς πϵριτομῆς (.). In the same expression in Gal . Dunn discerns ‘an identity determined by or focused in the act and fact of circumcision—hence the metonymy “the circumcision”, not “the circumcised”’, indicating a specific faction within Judaism. In Titus . the adverb μάλιστα seems to specify οἱ ἐκ τῆς πϵριτομῆς as a particular group among the many ἀνυπότακτοι, ματαιολόγοι καὶ φρϵναπάται who threaten the church. Titus also encounters ᾿Ιουδαϊκοι μύθοι (.) rather than the general μύθοι in and Timothy ( Tim .; .; Tim .), and is warned against ‘quarrels about the law’ (.). ‘False teachers are indeed in evidence’, Fee writes, ‘but the letter as a whole is not dominated by their presence’. Josephus and Philo attest the presence of a significant Jewish population on Crete. Stylianos Spyridakis, historian of Crete, locates the principal Jewish population in Gortyn, the administrative capital for the Roman province of Crete and Cyrenia. In view of the links between Ptolemaic Egypt and Crete he suggests that, ‘it is very likely that the Jews of Gortyn came from the city of Alexandria’. Gortyn is traditionally held to be Crete’s first ecclesiastical Homer, Iliad .. D. W. J. Gill summarises information about the πόλϵις of Roman Crete in ‘A Saviour of the Cities of Crete: The Roman Background to the Epistle to Titus’, The New Testament in its First Century Setting: Essays on Context and Background in Honour of B. W. Winter on his th Birthday (ed. P. J. Williams ; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ) – (–). J. D. G. Dunn, ‘Echoes of Intra-Jewish Polemic in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians’, JBL () – (). On μάλιστα see R. A. Campbell, ‘ΚΑΙ ΜΑΛΙΣΤΑ ΟΙΚΕΙΩΝ—A New Look at Timothy .’, NTS () –; and T. C. Skeat, ‘Especially the Parchments: A Note on Timothy .’, JTS NS () –. G. D. Fee, and Timothy, Titus (NIBC; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, ) . G. A. Couser suggests that the approach is preventative rather than corrective (‘God and Christian Existence in and Timothy and Titus’ [PhD diss., University of Aberdeen, ], ). Josephus A.J. .; B.J. .; Vita (describing his third wife as a Jew from a notable Cretan family); Philo Legat. . See also Macc . and Acts .. S. V. Spyridakis, Ptolemaic Itanos and Hellenistic Crete (University of California Publications in History ; Berkeley: University of California, ) n. . The suggestion is developed
Roman Crete and the Letter to Titus
centre, and it would not be surprising if a Christian mission located itself in such a leading town, nor that both recruits and opposition to the Christian movement should come from the Jewish community already established there. d. Apollos (.) It was not only Alexandrians who might be predisposed to ‘stupid controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law’ (.), but if the sort of Hellenistic Judaism that flourished in Alexandria furnished part of the environment envisaged by the author, who better to help than Apollos (.), the learned Alexandrian Jew encountered in Acts .–; Cor .–, and so on? e. Zenas the Lawyer (.) What of ‘Zenas the lawyer’ (.)? Otherwise unknown in the NT, he has been variously identified as an expert in Jewish law, or, as his pagan name might suggest, a Roman lawyer. In fact it was common for lawyers to visit Crete in Roman times. The famous stone panels on which were inscribed the Law Code of Gortyn dated from c. BCE but had been restored under Roman rule and were prominently displayed to facilitate study. Crete became ‘a centre of pilgrimage for legal inspiration’.
. Conclusions and Implications
It has been argued here that several unique features of the content of the letter to Titus correspond to specific social and cultural realities on Roman Crete. This suggests that a Cretan provenance for the letter may not be so implausible as is often assumed. If Crete is not the actual destination, then it may only be concluded that the author has gone to great lengths to construct the implied destination with remarkable verisimilitude. In the light of this series of correspondences to aspects of Cretan society, culture, and religious life, readings that assume that the letter is interested only in the internal ordering of the Christian community are insufficient.
and further evidence adduced in the same writer’s ‘Notes on the Jews of Gortyna and Crete’, ZPE (): –. Θ. Β. Τζϵδακης, ‘Συντομος ἱστορια της ἐπισκοπης Κνοσου’, Κρητικα Χρονικα ΚΑ () – (). See brief discussions in, e.g., W. A. Lock, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, ) ; Marshall, Pastoral Epistles, ; Oberlinner, Titusbriefe, –; W. D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles (WBC; Nashville: Thomas Nelson, ) . Willetts, CAH .: . Bonny Thurston represents this approach when she affirms that, ‘[t]he writer of Titus is primarily concerned with church order’ (‘The Theology of Titus’, HBT . [] – []). Cf. Verner, Household, –; Quinn, Titus, ; Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, .
GEORGE M. WIELAND
An adequate appreciation of the letter must also take into account its concern for the integrity of the church’s witness in the men’s halls, women’s quarters, and households where the ideal of grace-trained living put forward in this letter was to be lived out in concrete behaviour (.–; .–), and for effective communication of the content of Christian faith in terms that would have resonated with religious beliefs, aspirations, and practices current on Crete in the Roman period. The letter to Titus is understood most satisfactorily as a product of early Christian mission and an intriguing example of creative missionary engagement with a specific environment.
Chiaoek Ho argues for a missionary orientation of all three Pastoral Epistles in his PhD dissertation, ‘Do the Work of an Evangelist: The Missionary Outlook of the Pastorals’ (University of Aberdeen, ), and in his chapter in Entrusted With the Gospel: Paul’s Theology in the Pastoral Epistles (ed. A. J. Köstenberger and T. L. Wilder; Nashville: Broadman & Holman, forthcoming).
New Test. Stud. , pp. –. Printed in the United Kingdom © Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S0028688509000253
The Text Form of the OT Citations in Hebrews Chapter 1 and the Implications for the Study of the Septuagint S U SAN D O C H E RT Y Newman University College, Bartley Green, Birmingham B32 3NT, England email:
[email protected] This paper offers a detailed investigation of the LXX texts underlying the seven OT citations in Hebrews chapter , taking account of significant twentiethcentury manuscript discoveries and recent developments in the field of Septuagintal Studies. The findings are then related to the study of the use of the OT in the NT more generally, and to some important current issues in the study of the LXX, such as the value of Lucianic readings. This investigation supports the growing consensus that the author of Hebrews reproduced his scriptural citations faithfully, so that the burden of proof should now rest with those who argue for a deliberate alteration of his source. Keywords: Hebrews, Septuagint, Lucianic recension, use of OT in NT, textual criticism
. Context: The OT Citations in Hebrews and Current Issues in Septuagintal Studies
‘Replete with quotations, allusions, general references and echoes, Hebrews packs more of the Old Testament into its complex discourse than any other New Testament writing… Simply stated, the uses to which Hebrews has put the Old Testament are the book’s bone and marrow’. George Guthrie’s account of the extent of the influence of OT texts and themes on the structure and theology of the Letter to the Hebrews is hardly controversial, and recognition of this fact has resulted in numerous publications on the use of the OT in the epistle. Some of these have attempted detailed analyses of the specific OT citations, investigating either their text form or the exegetical techniques employed by the author to interpret them. Among the most influential of these studies of G. H. Guthrie, ‘Hebrews’ Use of the Old Testament: Recent Trends in Research’, Currents in Biblical Research . () – (–).
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the OT citations in Hebrews are those by Caird, Thomas, Howard, McCullough, and Cadwallader. The existence of such an extensive and valuable body of literature on this subject might be taken as an indication that opportunities for further fruitful research in this area are likely to be limited, but, on the contrary, I suggest that in fact the time is opportune for a new investigation into the form(s) of Greek biblical text underlying the citations in Hebrews, one which deliberately seeks to make connections between NT research and the study of the LXX. Two factors in particular have prompted this conclusion. First, a study of Syriac forms of the book of Psalms by Robert Hiebert brought to my attention the existence of the reading in Papyrus Bodmer XXIV of the prepositional phrase ἐν δοκιμασίᾳ at the beginning of line two of Ps ().. This form, of course, agrees with the citation of this text in Heb . against other major LXX witnesses, which use the verbal form ἐδοκίμασαν. Although it is now almost twenty years since the publication of Hiebert’s book, this important textual witness does not appear to have been noted by any commentators on Hebrews. This suggests that detailed study of other individual OT citations in the letter may also uncover previously neglected textual variants, or help to extend our understanding of the forms in which scripture circulated in the first century CE. Secondly, important advances have been made in the field of Septuagintal Studies over the last two decades, some of which have not yet been fully appreciated by NT scholars. The significant manuscript finds at Qumran and Nahal Hever, together with the work of a new generation of LXX specialists, ˙ ˙ are changing perceptions about the multiplicity of forms in which the scriptures circulated in both Greek and Hebrew in the early post-biblical period, and about the value of specific manuscript traditions, particularly the Lucianic or Antiochian recension. This means that the serious exegete can no longer be content, as some of the earlier commentators on Hebrews were, with comparing the textual form of OT citations in the NT with only the major LXX
G. B. Caird, ‘The Exegetical Method of the Epistle to the Hebrews’, CJT . () –. K. J. Thomas, ‘The Old Testament Citations in Hebrews’, NTS (–) –. G. Howard, ‘Hebrews and the Old Testament Quotations’, Nov.T. () –. J. C. McCullough, ‘The Old Testament Quotations in Hebrews’, NTS () –. A. H. Cadwallader, ‘The Correction of the Text of Hebrews Towards the LXX’, Nov.T. . () –. R. J. V. Hiebert, The ‘Syro-Hexaplaric’ Psalter (Atlanta: Scholars, ) . For further details see J. M. Dines, The Septuagint (London: T&T Clark, ) –; E. Tov, The Greek and Hebrew Bible: Collected Essays on the Septuagint (Leiden: Brill, ) ; and E. Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Leiden: Brill, ) –. See the introductions to the Lucianic recension in Dines, Septuagint, –, and in N. Fernández Marcos, The Septuagint in Context: Introduction to the Greek Versions of the Bible (Leiden: Brill, ) –.
The Text Form of the OT Citations in Hebrews Chapter and the Implications
witnesses like Codices Alexandrinus and Vaticanus. It also suggests that there is a very strong case for a reappraisal of some of the earlier critical editions of individual books of the LXX, which were published at a time when the editors either did not have access to all the manuscripts and other evidence now available, or were not sufficiently aware of the need to take seriously alternative readings from the Lucianic and other traditions. Discussing the Göttingen edition of the Psalms, for example, Albert Pietersma has concluded that: ‘More so-called L (i.e. Lucianic) readings have ancient roots than is evident from Rahlfs’ edition’. The need for NT commentators to be more alert to this recent research and more sophisticated in their approach to the use of the Greek bible in the early Christian texts has already been recognised by some, for instance Timothy McLay. Detailed research into the Vorlage of the OT citations in certain NT books, drawing on all available textual evidence, is also currently being undertaken by a small number of scholars, notably Maarten Menken and Gert Steyn. Considerable scope remains, however, for the expansion of these efforts. Section two of this paper will therefore examine in detail the seven direct OT citations found in Hebrews chapter , and attempt to establish very precisely the nature of the text form underlying them. The final part of this study will then draw out some conclusions and consider the implications of these findings for current issues in the study of both the LXX and the use of the OT in the NT. Hebrews chapter would seem to make a useful representative starting point for an investigation of this kind, despite its short length, because of the number of definite scriptural citations which it includes and the evident importance of
A. Pietersma, ‘The Present State of the Critical Text of the Greek Psalter’, Der SeptuagintaPsalter und seine Tochterübersetzungen (ed. A. Aejmelaeus and U. Quast; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ) – (). Peter Flint has, largely on the basis of his extensive study of the Qumran Psalms Scroll (QPsa), likewise criticised Rahlfs for ‘disregarding Lucianic manuscripts almost completely’ (P. Flint, ‘Variant Readings of the Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls Against the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint Psalter’, Der SeptuagintaPsalter [ed. Aejmelaeus and Quast] – []; cf. P. Flint, The Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls and the Book of Psalms [Leiden: Brill, ] ). R. T. McLay, The Use of the Septuagint in New Testament Research (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ). M. J. J. Menken, Old Testament Quotations in the Fourth Gospel: Studies in Textual Form (Kampen: Kok Pharos, ). G. J. Steyn has been engaged in an investigation of the Vorlage of several of the explicit OT citations in Hebrews over a number of years. See, e.g., his: ‘A Quest for the Vorlage of the “Song of Moses” (Deut ) Quotations in Hebrews’, Neotestamentica . () –; ‘Psalm in Hebrews’, Neotestamentica . () –; ‘The Vorlage of Psalm :– (:–) in Hebrews :–’, Hervormde Teologiese Studies . () –; and ‘The Occurrence of Ps (): in Heb :: Possible Liturgical Origins’, Neotestamentica . () –.
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the OT to its author. In addition, almost all of the quoted texts are taken from the Psalms, a point of interest for this study, as it is the view of a number of leading contemporary LXX scholars that the Psalms volume in the Göttingen series, published by Rahlfs in , is in particularly urgent need of re-editing and updating. Flint, for example, has estimated that Rahlfs elected to use only about one hundred of the over one thousand manuscripts available to him, largely discounting the evidence of the versions, patristic sources, and Lucianic readings, and Pietersma has critiqued Rahlfs’ method for determining relationships between manuscripts. Since other important sources, such as the Bodmer papyri and Qumran manuscripts, have been discovered subsequently, it is more than possible that a detailed examination of the Psalms cited in Hebrews will uncover significant new readings, which should influence the debate about the extent to which the author of the epistle cited his scriptural sources accurately.
. The LXX Sources of Specific OT Citations in Hebrews
.. Citations Showing No Divergence from Standard LXX Readings Three of the seven OT citations in Hebrews chapter are given in a form identical to the reading found in all the major witnesses to the LXX, namely Ps . in Heb .a and Ps (). in Heb .. The citation in Heb .b, whether it is assumed to be taken from Sam . or Chron ., likewise reflects the LXX exactly. In all three cases, there is no evidence for the existence of any textual variants. .. Citations with Minor Variations from Standard LXX Readings ... Psalm (). in Hebrews . There is just one difference to be noted between the citation as given here in Hebrews and almost all witnesses to the text of the LXX. At the end of the second line, Hebrews has the form πυρὸς φλόγα (flame of fire) rather than the standard LXX reading πυ̑ρ φλέγον (fire and flame/flaming fire). The text as given in Hebrews is attested in one correction to LXXA, some manuscripts assigned to the Lucianic group and in the Bohairic and Sahidic versions, as
For a fuller study of the exegesis of the OT citations in Hebrews, see S. Docherty, The Use of the Old Testament in Hebrews: A Case Study in Early Jewish Bible Interpretation (WUNT II. ; Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, ). Flint, ‘Variant Readings’, ; cf. n. above. See also E. Ulrich, ‘The Dead Sea Scrolls and their Implications for an Edition of the Septuagint Psalter’, Der Septuaginta-Psalter (ed. Aejmelaeus and Quast) –. See his ‘Present State’, –.
The Text Form of the OT Citations in Hebrews Chapter and the Implications
noted in the apparatus in the Göttingen edition. However, these witnesses are few and not particularly valuable, and were judged by Rahlfs to be secondary and influenced by the reading in Hebrews. Most other commentators (for example Attridge and Katz) agree. This view is now open to question, however, in the light of the discovery of support for the form in Hebrews in Papyrus Bodmer XXIV, a Christian but possibly pre-Hexaplaric manuscript. Even Cadwallader accepts this reading as a possible genuine variant, despite the general thrust of his study, which stresses the tendency of scribes to correct the text of the OT citations in Hebrews towards the LXX. The fact that alternative readings for this phrase are found also in Symmachus (πύρινην φλόγα) and Aquila (πυ̑ρ λάθρον) makes it more likely that the source text used by the author of Hebrews contained a variant reading.
... Psalm ().– in Hebrews .– This citation is largely given in Hebrews in exactly the same form in which it is found in most witnesses to the LXX. The only differences occur in the form of the second line of v. of Psalm () as reproduced in the last line of Heb .. Here, Hebrews has an extra καί at the beginning of the line and places the definite article ἡ before the first occurrence of ῥάβδος, rather than the second, where it occurs in the LXX, thus making ἡ ῥάβδος τῆς 1ὐθύτητος (the sceptre of righteousness) the subject of the sentence, not the predicate. No witnesses to support the reading in Hebrews, nor any other variants, are given in the textual apparatus of Rahlfs’ edition. Most commentators conclude that the author of Hebrews has made minor changes to his source here, probably to emphasise the parallelism between God’s throne in the first line and the royal staff of God or the son in the second clause. The addition of καί in particular is taken as an example of his characteristic tendency to divide an OT citation into two to make two different points. However, Ellingworth notes the textual and exegetical problems in the A. Rahlfs, ed., Psalmi cum Odis (Septuaginta X; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ) . H. W. Attridge, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, ) . P. Katz, The Text of the Septuagint: Its Corruptions and their Emendation (Cambridge: Cambridge University, ) . Cadwallader, ‘Correction’, . C. Spicq, L’Épître aux Hébreux ( vols.; Paris: Lecoffre, –) .. Rahlfs, Psalmi cum Odis, . See, e.g., Thomas, ‘Old Testament Citations’, ; McCullough, ‘Old Testament Quotations’, ; and Steyn, ‘The Vorlage of Psalm :–’, . This is emphasised by both McCullough, ‘Old Testament Quotations’, , and P. Ellingworth, The Epistle to the Hebrews: A Commentary on the Greek Text (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ) .
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Hebrew original underlying the first line of this citation, which could have resulted in minor differences in translation and thus led to variant readings. .. Citations Differing More Significantly from Standard LXX Readings ... Deuteronomy .(LXX) in Hebrews . Determining the scriptural source of this citation is not a straightforward task, and this verse and its underlying OT text have consequently been the subject of several detailed studies, such as those by Cockerill and McLay. One possibility is that it is taken from Ps ()., which reads προσκυνήσατ1 αὐτῷ πάντ1ς οἱ ἄγγ1λοι αὐτου̑ (worship him, all his angels). However, most commentators take the view that it is in fact a citation of the LXX form of Deut ., καὶ προσκυνησάντων αὐτῷ πάντ1ς υἱοὶ θ1ου̑ (and let all sons of God worship him). This conclusion presents some difficulties, because the verse differs from the equivalent section in the MT. However, the Qumran discoveries have yielded a Hebrew text (QDeutq) which does contain the clauses found in the LXX but absent from the MT, thus making it more probable that the Greek form of the passage is based on a genuine Hebrew tradition. Deuteronomy . has the third person plural aorist imperative form of the verb ‘to worship’, as in Heb . but not Ps ()., which uses the second person plural, but there is a difference between Hebrews and the LXX at the end of the line, where Hebrews has πάντ1ς ἄγγ1λοι θ1ου̑ (all God’s angels) and the LXX πάντ1ς υἱοὶ θ1ου̑ (all God’s sons). Some commentators think it likely that the author of Hebrews made this change to his source himself, as the reading of the majority of LXX manuscripts would not suit his whole argument in ch. about the uniqueness of Christ’s sonship. However, the apparatus in the Göttingen edition reveals considerable textual uncertainty throughout this verse, some of which was perhaps occasioned by the potentially theologically difficult phrase ‘God’s sons’, which may have been changed in some textual traditions to ‘angels’, as is the case in some other verses in the LXX where ‘sons of God’ or ‘gods’ occurs in the MT (e.g. Ps .[]; [].; [].; Job .; .; Ellingworth, Epistle to the Hebrews, : ‘The MT underlying the first line is obscure and probably corrupt…’ G. L. Cockerill, ‘Hebrews :: Source and Significance’, Bull.Bib.Res. () –. R. T. McLay, ‘Biblical Texts and the Scriptures for the New Testament Church’, Hearing the Old Testament in the New Testament (ed. S. E. Porter; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ) –. See, e.g., Thomas, ‘Old Testament Citations’, ; Cockerill, ‘Hebrews :’; McLay, ‘Biblical Texts’; Ellingworth, Epistle to the Hebrews, ; H. Braun, An die Hebräer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, ) ; C. R. Koester, Hebrews (AB ; New York: Doubleday, ) . On this Qumran text and its relationship to the reading in Hebrews, see, e.g., Attridge, Commentary on Hebrews, . J. W. Wevers, ed., Deuteronomium (Septuaginta III.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ) .
The Text Form of the OT Citations in Hebrews Chapter and the Implications
.). The variation may also have arisen from simple transposition, either by the author of Hebrews or already present in his source, of the parallel clause in the fourth line of the verse. A version of this text almost exactly the same as that given in Heb ., including the phrase καὶ προσκυνησάντων αὐτῷ πάντ1ς οἱ ἄγγ1λοι θ1ου̑ (note the additional οἱ, not present in Heb .), is attested in the Ethiopic versions, and also the Odes (.), a group of hymns attached to the Psalter of Codex Alexandrinus and other major LXX manuscripts from about the fifth century. Ellingworth therefore considers this evidence irrelevant, as it is of a relatively late date and may have been influenced by the text in Hebrews. McLay, on the other hand, concludes that Odes . and Heb . are related to a longer reading of this text which was preserved in the Old Greek but not the MT, and this view is shared by Steyn. I agree that it would be difficult to rule out completely the possibility that the Odes was drawing on earlier textual traditions. The evidence of the Odes and of the Qumran text (QDeutq) would, therefore, seem to indicate that the author of Hebrews was citing his source faithfully, but that it differed from the text printed as standard in modern critical editions of the LXX. ... Psalm ().– in Hebrews .– There are a number of differences between Hebrews and the majority reading of the LXX in this case. First, the pronoun σύ, addressing the Lord, is placed at the beginning of the citation in Hebrews, whereas it is the third word of the line in the LXX. Most commentators regard this as a deliberate change on the part of the author for emphasis, or to connect this scriptural text clearly with the previous one, which ends with the word σου. This is the view of Thomas, for example, and although he may be correct, his study as a whole is weakened by the fact that he does not consider much evidence beyond that contained in the two major textual witnesses to the LXX, Codices A and B. In fact, there is some evidence, particularly in the versions such as the Old Latin, for considerable variation in the word order in this line. The next differences occur in the first line of Heb ., where the last line of Ps (). is being quoted. Hebrews has ἑλίξ1ις (you will roll up) against the LXX reading ἀλλάξ1ις (you will change), the verb which occurs also at the end of the line, and repeats ὡς ἱμάτιον (like a garment) after this verb. The textual apparatus in the Göttingen edition lists some supporting evidence for ἑλίξ1ις rather than ἀλλάξ1ις in witnesses from the Alexandrian, Vaticanus, and Ellingworth, Epistle to the Hebrews, . There is also some discussion of these alternative readings in Thomas, ‘Old Testament Citations’, . McLay, ‘Biblical Texts’, . Steyn, ‘Vorlage of the “Song of Moses” Quotations’, –. Thomas, ‘Old Testament Citations’, . See the textual apparatus in Rahlfs, Psalmi cum Odis, .
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Lucianic traditions, as noted by Attridge, but not for the repetition of the noun. There are, then, sufficient textual witnesses to convince many commentators that ἑλίξ1ις may have been present in the text before the author of Hebrews, but most conclude that the repetition of ὡς ἱμάτιον was a deliberate addition made to his source for stylistic reasons, in order to make the imagery more vivid, or to emphasise the contrast between the changeable nature of the angels and the eternal son. However, McCullough has argued for accepting the entire reading in Hebrews as a genuine LXX variant, and now Flint’s more recent study of the Qumran Psalms Scroll (QPsa) has revealed the existence of a Hebrew text containing the repetition of ‘like a garment’ which would seem to support his position.
. Conclusions and the Implications for NT and LXX Study
This analysis of Greek versions of the biblical texts cited in Hebrews chapter has, then, highlighted information relevant to the study of the Letter to the Hebrews, of the use of the OT in the NT generally, and of the LXX. First, evidence has emerged to support some readings in Hebrews which differ from the form of the text in standard critical editions of the LXX. Manuscripts uncovered in recent decades, such as Papyrus Bodmer XXIV, QDeutq, and QPsa, for example, indicate that the author of Hebrews may well have been citing a genuine textual variant rather than deliberately altering his source where his version of Deut ., Ps ()., and Ps (). (cf. also Ps []. in Heb .) differs slightly from the standard LXX form. This serves to strengthen the growing consensus of contemporary Septuagintal scholarship about the fluidity of the scriptural text in the first century CE. Indeed, the Letter to the Hebrews, and the writings of the NT as a whole, should now be seen as themselves witnesses to the textual pluriformity which characterised this period. Secondly, this study has sought to take account of changing scholarly perceptions about the antiquity of the Lucianic recension and its value as an authentic witness to the Old Greek. If this view is correct, then greater weight will need to be given to those cases where readings found in manuscripts from the Lucianic tradition support the form of the text given in Hebrews chapter (for example, Attridge, Commentary on Hebrews, . See Rahlfs, Psalmi cum Odis, . This is the view of, e.g., F. Schröger, Der Verfasser des Hebräerbriefes als Schriftausleger (Regensburg: Pustet, ) , and Ellingworth, Epistle to the Hebrews, . E.g. Thomas, ‘Old Testament Citations’, , and Attridge, Commentary on Hebrews, . McCullough, ‘Old Testament Quotations’, . Flint, ‘Variant Readings’, . This point is made by Dines, The Septuagint, .
The Text Form of the OT Citations in Hebrews Chapter and the Implications
πυρὸς φλόγα in the citation from Ps []. in Heb ., or ἑλίξ1ις rather than ἀλλάξ1ις in the last line of Ps []. in Heb .). Wider consideration of other citations of the OT in the NT which might also be related to Lucianic readings could, therefore, be useful in adding to our understanding of both the history of this recension and of the use of scripture by the NT authors. Thirdly, this investigation adds support to the calls of scholars such as Pietersma and Flint for a thorough revision and updating of the Göttingen Psalms volume. The evidence of the Qumran biblical manuscripts and other recent discoveries such as the Bodmer papyri all needs to be incorporated in a new critical edition of the LXX Psalms. As noted above, the NT itself may also witness to some genuine alternative LXX readings, and scholars are aware of other potentially valuable sources for the task of better reconstructing the original text which are largely untapped, for instance biblical quotations in Philo and Josephus, the vast body of patristic writings, and early versions of the bible based on the LXX such as the Old Latin and the Coptic. Dines, for example, regards the use of the LXX in the works of Philo as ‘a resource that awaits further study…’, and Fernández Marcos states that ‘the question of biblical quotations is the weakest point of the Cambridge and Göttingen editions’. There are certainly great difficulties in making use of the patristic biblical commentaries and other writings for the critical study of the LXX, since they frequently include citations from memory, or citations which have been conflated, or influenced by parallel passages, or by the form of a text in the NT. A pre-requisite for further progress in this area is, therefore, the publication of good new critical editions of patristic works. Fourthly, this study suggests that the author of Hebrews generally cited his scriptural source texts accurately. It concludes that differences between the form of the text in Hebrews chapter and the LXX are only likely to result from authorial intent in the case of Ps ().–, cited in Heb .–, and that the changes made to the text in that instance are very minor. These findings have a bearing on judgments about the attitude of the author to scripture, a subject which has been a matter of debate among Hebrews commentators, with Thomas and McCullough perhaps representative of opposite ends of the spectrum. For Thomas finds in the citation of the OT in Hebrews ‘a pattern of significant changes [from the LXX] which must be more than accidental…’, while Dines, The Septuagint, . The pioneering work of Peter Katz should not, however, be overlooked as a demonstration of what could be achieved by further substantial studies in this area; see P. Katz, Philo’s Bible: The Aberrant Text of Bible Quotations in Some Philonic Writings and its Place in the Textual History of the Greek Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University, ). Fernández Marcos, Septuagint in Context, ; cf. Dines, The Septuagint, . As recognised by, e.g., Dines, The Septuagint, –, and Fernández Marcos, Septuagint in Context, –. Thomas, ‘Old Testament Citations’, .
SUSAN DOCHERTY
McCullough, on the other hand, argues that almost all of these differences reflect genuine variant readings, or are only minor stylistic changes. This examination of the OT citations in Hebrews chapter supports McCullough’s emphasis on the complexity of the textual state of the LXX in the first century CE rather than Thomas’ view of the author’s creative approach to his scriptural sources. Indeed, both the results of this study and the consensus among current LXX scholars about the extent of textual fluidity in the first century would indicate that it is now safer to operate with the presumption that the form of all the citations in Hebrews can be supported by textual evidence rather than rush to the judgment that the author freely altered scriptural quotations to suit his theological purposes. That the writer of Hebrews should have cited biblical texts faithfully is not very surprising in view of his context within early post-biblical Judaism, given that respect for the accurate reproduction of the words of scripture is evident among his exegetical contemporaries, the rabbis, the targumists, and the commentators who produced the Qumran pesharim. For all of these ancient Jewish exegetes, as it would seem also for the author of Hebrews, it is through the interpretation of scriptural texts and their arrangement in different contexts that they can receive new meanings, not through the alteration of their wording. Fifthly, this study has consequences for the study of the NT beyond Hebrews. A detailed examination of each OT citation individually of this kind does yield results which are far more precise than the general and rather vague statements about ‘affinities with Codices A and B’ which are still to be found in some commentaries on NT writings. It has become clear that establishing as accurately as possible the form of the source text underlying an OT citation in the NT is a necessary first step to its thorough exegesis, and to a fuller consideration of the ways in which each individual NT author approaches the scriptural text. This study has emphasised the situation of textual pluriformity which existed in the
McCullough, ‘Old Testament Quotations’. For a recent and extremely enlightening study of the exegetical techniques and principles of the rabbinic interpreters, see A. Samely, Rabbinic Interpretation of Scripture in the Mishnah (Oxford: Oxford University, ). On attitudes to the Hebrew scriptures evident in the targumim, see A. Samely, The Interpretation of Speech in the Pentateuch Targums: A Study of Method and Presentation in Targumic Exegesis (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, ). This point is well made by commentators such as George Brooke and Timothy Lim, despite the all-too-pervasive assumption that the pesher genre takes great liberties with the scriptural text in applying it to the life of the interpreters’ community. See in particular G. J. Brooke, ‘Reading the Plain Meaning of Scripture in the Dead Sea Scrolls’, Jewish Ways of Reading the Bible (ed. G. J. Brooke; JSS Supplement ; Oxford: Oxford University, ) –. See also T. H. Lim, Holy Scripture in the Qumran Commentaries and Pauline Letters (Oxford: Clarendon, ) –.
The Text Form of the OT Citations in Hebrews Chapter and the Implications
first century CE, which has been acknowledged, at least in theory, by some commentators for many years—McCullough, writing in , states this clearly at the outset of his paper, for example, and a recent article by McLay, likewise claims that ‘an essential characteristic of the Scriptures of the early church was pluriformity’. However, this recognition has not yet been acted upon sufficiently by the majority of NT interpreters. It must, however, also be acknowledged that an investigation such as this faces substantial difficulties in the task of definitely determining genuine variant readings, in the absence of any hard and fast method for doing so, and in view of the likelihood that copies of the LXX were altered by Christian scribes over time to conform to the readings in the NT and vice versa. Several criteria for weighing up the worth of different manuscripts are obviously well established in text criticism and will continue to be valuable, namely assessing the date, provenance, and general nature of the manuscripts witnessing to a particular reading, and the extent of independent support for it. It would also seem sensible to consider the use of the OT by an NT author as a whole, so that if he is found to be generally faithful to his source in his citations, it would seem wise to be wary of attributing to him an intentional change in some cases, without fully considering the evidence for a textual variant. It may be necessary also to undertake a detailed examination of individual LXX manuscripts on their own merits when seeking to reach conclusions about the genuineness of alternative readings; if, for example, an LXX manuscript which offers support for a variant reading contained in Hebrews can be shown to agree consistently with the NT in disputed cases, it may legitimately be suspected of having been altered by Christian scribes to conform to it. In view of the tendency for copies of texts regarded as sacred to converge over time, there may be a case for establishing readings on the basis of an approach of ‘maximum textual dissimilarity’, accepting as the best readings those in the Hebrew tradition which differ most from the LXX, and in the LXX those which differ most from the MT and the NT. These very real problems notwithstanding, I contend that efforts to reach judgments about text form in citations should continue to be made. It cannot be sufficient in every case for commentators to keep an open mind about whether or not an NT author was deliberately altering his OT source when quoting it, as a decision about this impacts crucially on conclusions about his exegetical methods and attitude to scripture. In short, I am suggesting that the current state of thinking within the field of Septuagintal Studies now reverses the burden of proof, placing it on those who would argue against a variant reading and for a definite theologically motivated alteration of a biblical source-text, rather than the other way round. McLay, ‘Biblical Texts’, . Cadwallader’s important study of this point (‘Correction’) has been mentioned above, and Attridge (Commentary on Hebrews) is also alert to this possibility.
New Test. Stud. , pp. –. Printed in the United Kingdom © Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S0028688509000277
Hebrews 12.5–13, the Wilderness Period, and Israel’s Discipline* M AT T H EW T H I E S S E N Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA email:
[email protected] Since the author of Hebrews locates his readers in Israel’s wilderness period in Heb .–. and .–, the discussion of παιδ1ία in .– should be interpreted in light of early Jewish conceptions of Israel’s time in the wilderness. Confirmation that this is the correct context in which to understand .– will be found in Deuteronomy, Wisdom, Philo, and Josephus, all of whom, like Hebrews, consider endurance of the disciplinary period of the wilderness necessary in order to inherit the promised rest. For this reason, Hebrews warns of Esau, the paradigmatic example of the undisciplined person who forfeits his inheritance. Keywords: discipline, Deuteronomy, Esau, Hebrews, wilderness
In the only monograph-length study of Hebrews currently published, N. C. Croy has argued that, while it ‘is admittedly not among the most celebrated passages of the epistle…, one should not think that this passage is inconsequential, a sort of epistolary backwater’; on the contrary, it ‘seems to express supremely the letter’s paraenetic aim’. In contrast to Heb .–, which has drawn considerable scholarly attention, no doubt due to its christological import, one is hard
* I am grateful to Richard B. Hays and David M. Moffitt for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper. N. C. Croy, Endurance in Suffering: Hebrews :– in its Rhetorical, Religious, and Philosophical Context (SNTSMS ; Cambridge: Cambridge University, ) (emphasis original). In addition, see the unpublished work of S. P. Logan, ‘The Background of Paideia in Hebrews’ (Ph.D. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, ). Cf., for instance, P. Andriessen, ‘Renonçant à la joie qui lui revenait…’ La nouvelle revue théologique () –; P.-E. Bonnard, ‘La traduction de Hébreux ,: “C’est en vue de la joie que Jésus endura la croix”’, La nouvelle revue théologique () –; N. C. Croy, ‘A Note on Hebrews :’, JBL () –; P. Ellingworth, ‘New Testament Text and Old Testament Context in Heb. .’, Studia Biblica III: Papers on Paul and Other NT Authors (ed. E. A. Livingstone; JSNTSS ; Sheffield: JSOT, ) –; E. Schüssler Fiorenza, ‘Der Anführer und Vollender unseres Glaubens: Zum theologischen Verständnis des Hebräerbriefes’, Gestalt und Anspruch des Neuen Testaments (ed. J. Schreiner; Würzburg: Echter, ) –; J. J. Scott, ‘Archegos in the Salvation History
Hebrews .–, the Wilderness Period, and Israel’s Discipline
pressed to find much discussion of .–. The purpose of this paper is to begin to fill in this scholarly lacuna by contextualizing the rather mundane paraenesis of this passage within the underlying narrative of the letter to the Hebrews. It will be argued that the quotation from Prov .– and subsequent discussion of παιδ1ία in .– should be understood as an allusion to the παιδεία that Israel experienced in the wilderness period. By connecting the current situation of his readers to the discipline endured by Israel in the wilderness, the author is able to encourage his readers to locate themselves at a momentous time in Israel’s history—a time in which entry into God’s promised rest is imminent.
. The Narrative World Underlying the Letter to the Hebrews
As I have argued elsewhere, the author of Hebrews rewrites the history of God’s people as an extended wilderness period. Through his use of Psalm , a psalm in which David claims that even in his own day Israel had not entered into God’s promised rest, the author concludes that Joshua failed to give the people rest (Heb .–.). Such a claim not only contradicts Josh .–, which states that YHWH gave Israel rest (καταπαύω) on every side, but also differs
of the Epistle to the Hebrews’, JETS () –; T. Söding, ‘Zuversicht und Geduld im Schauen auf Jesus: Zum Glaubensbegriff des Hebräersbriefes’, ZNW () –; and W. Trilling, ‘“Jesus der Urbeher und Vollender des Glaubens” (Hebr XII,)’, Das Evangelium auf dem Weg zum Menschen: zur Vermittlung und zum Vollzug des Glaubens (ed. O. Knoch ; Frankfurt: Knecht, ) –. Apart from Croy’s monograph, this author has found only two articles that deal with Heb .– : G. Bornkamm, ‘Sohnschaft und Leiden: Hebräer ,–’, Geschichte und Glaube . Gesammelte Aufsätze (GET ; Munich: Chr. Kaiser, ) –, and T. Mende, ‘“Wen der Herr liebhat, den züchtigt er” (Hebr , ): Der alttestamentliche Hintergrund von Hebr ,–; ,–; ,–’, TTZ () –. In this way, the author is at work not merely in reporting on the world but also in producing a world which his readers are to inhabit, as has been suggested by L. T. Johnson, ‘The Scriptural World of Hebrews’, Int . () – (). See M. Thiessen, ‘Hebrews and the End of the Exodus’, NovT . () –, for detailed argumentation. In this article I have tried to follow the counsel of Johnson, ‘Scriptural World’, : ‘If our question is how Hebrews imagines a certain kind of world, then we must allow our imaginations to be engaged, not by this or that part of the text, but by the composition as a whole’. On Hebrews’ use of Psalm , see P. E. Enns, ‘The Interpretation of Psalm in Hebrews .–.’, Early Christian Interpretation of the Scriptures of Israel: Investigations and Proposals (ed. C. A. Evans and J. A. Sanders; JSNTSS ; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, ) –, and D. Flusser, ‘“Today if You will Listen to His Voice”: Creative Jewish Exegesis in Hebrews –’, Creative Biblical Exegesis: Christian and Jewish Hermeneutics through the Centuries (ed. B. Uffenheimer and H. G. Reventlow; JSOTSup ; Sheffield: JSOT, ) –.
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sharply from the biblical narrative in which God’s people settle the land, establish monarchs, and build the Temple. For Hebrews, although Joshua brought the Israelites into the land, the people’s existence upon it was not characterized as a permanent rest. Rather, their existence was that of a sojourner, much like Abraham’s time in the land (.–)—a tenuous existence marked by struggle. As a result of this apparent historical revisionism, in the summary of Israel’s history found in ch. , the author of Hebrews finds it necessary to omit elements of Israel’s past which assume Israel’s possession of the land. In summarizing Israel’s history, the author claims that they had not received what had been promised to them, and would only do so together with the readers of Hebrews: ‘And all these being well-attested by faith did not receive the promise, since God foresaw something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us’ (.–). These verses encapsulate the author’s re-narration of Israel’s history—a narration in which the author has placed both himself and his readers in the wilderness period together with all the generations of God’s people who have been awaiting entry into God’s promised rest. The paraenetic payoff of this narrative for the author is that, by situating his readers in this period, he is able to provide a compelling reason why they are currently enduring hardship and suffering. At the same time, the author places his readers at the very cusp of entrance into God’s promised rest in order to demonstrate the temporal nature of the hardship his readers endure.
Cf. K. Backhaus, ‘Das Land der Verheißung: Die Heimat der Glaubenden im Hebräerbrief’, NTS () – (), who argues that the ‘Wanderexistenz und die bleibende Fremdheit’ of Abraham and the forefathers characterizes the existence of the people of the promise (emphasis original). Although M. Cosby, The Rhetorical Composition and Function of Hebrews : In Light of Example Lists in Antiquity (Macon: Mercer University, ), argues that Hebrews belongs to the Greco-Roman genre of an ‘Example List’, H. Thyen, Der Stil der JüdischHellenistischen Homilie (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ), is correct in arguing that the chapter is best understood as a retelling of Israel’s history. C. Spicq, L’Épître aux Hébreux (Sources Bibliques; vols.; Paris: Gabalda, –), arguing for a mediating position, claims that Hebrews is a combination of rewritten history and an example list. This connection between Hebrews – and Hebrews has been noted by W. G. Johnsson, ‘The Pilgrimage Motif in the Book of Hebrews’, JBL () – (), who argues that ‘ideas implied and inchoate in :b–: reach explicit expression in chap. ’. All translations are my own, unless otherwise noted. So too, K. L. Schenck, Cosmology and Eschatology in Hebrews: The Settings of the Sacrifice (SNTSMS ; Cambridge: Cambridge University, ) –, although Schenck offers a considerably different account of the narrative underlying the letter. Cf. Thiessen, ‘Hebrews and the End of the Exodus’, , and D. M. Allen, Deuteronomy and Exhortation in Hebrews: A Study in Narrative Re-presentation (WUNT /; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, ) .
Hebrews .–, the Wilderness Period, and Israel’s Discipline . The Wilderness Period as Discipline in Jewish Tradition
Given this narrative framework of the letter, the quotation of Prov .– and the following discussion on the nature of God’s discipline in Heb .– should be understood in relation to Jewish conceptions of Israel’s period of wandering as a time of παιδεία. As early as Deut ., a verse that parallels Prov .–, the wilderness period was viewed as the disciplinary action of God. As part of his speech to the people of Israel at the end of the forty-year period of wandering, Moses reminds the Israelites of their exodus from Egypt and their time in the wilderness: ‘Know in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, YHWH your God disciplines you’ (Deut .). Deuteronomy views the events of the exodus and wilderness wandering as a disciplinary period, meant to train the people in obedience to the law (cf. .). Significantly, for the comprehension of our passage, the LXX translation of Deuteronomy states that God disciplines (παιδεύω) Israel like a father disciplines (παιδεύω) his son (.) and links this to the testing in the wilderness (.–): ‘And you will remember all the ways which the Lord your God led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments, or not…’ Already in the book of Deuteronomy we see a tradition that emphasizes the instructional nature of the wilderness period, not the punitive aspect of that time period. This tradition is extended in the LXX translation of Deuteronomy Although perceptions of the wilderness were highly variegated in both the OT and non-biblical Jewish literature, this article is restricted to the disciplinary perception. For studies on the diverse traditions surrounding the wilderness, see, for instance, R. L. Cohn, The Shape of Sacred Space (Chico, CA: Scholars, ) –; R. B. Leal, Wilderness in the Bible: Toward a Theology of Wilderness (Studies in Biblical Literature ; New York: Peter Lang, ); L. Wall, ‘Finding Identity in the Wilderness’, Wilderness: Essays in Honour of Frances Young (ed. R. S. Sugirtharajah; LNTS ; London: T&T Clark, ) –; and, most recently, H. Najman, ‘Towards a Study of the Uses of the Concept of Wilderness in Ancient Judaism’, DSD . () –. M. V. Fox, Proverbs –: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB A; New York: Doubleday, ) –, argues that, in view of the parallels with Job . and Deut ., Prov . was likely a common maxim. W. L. Lane, Hebrews ( vols.; WBC ; Dallas: Word, ) ., notes the similar language between the two passages but does not discuss the possible significance of Deut . for Hebrews . As Croy, Endurance in Suffering, –, and D. A. deSilva, Perseverance in Gratitude: A SocioRhetorical Commentary on the Epistle ‘to the Hebrews’ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ) –, have pointed out, Prov .– clearly envisions punitive discipline. The possible influence of Deuteronomy on Hebrews’ understanding of Prov .– may explain how the author of Hebrews could understand παιδ1ία not as punitive but as instructional, an observation also made by Allen, Deuteronomy and Exhortation, . On the distinction between educative and punitive discipline, see Croy, Endurance in Suffering, and J. A. Sanders, Suffering as Divine Discipline in the Old Testament and Post-Biblical Judaism (Rochester: Colgate Rochester Divinity School, ).
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itself. The recital of Israel’s history found in the Song of Moses again discusses Israel’s time in the wilderness. Although not connected explicitly to Israel’s exodus, as in Deuteronomy , Deut . says that God taught or cared for ()בין Israel in a wild land. The possible ambiguity of the Hebrew word ביןis clarified by the LXX rendering παιδεύω. Further, like Deuteronomy , the Song of Moses portrays this disciplining God as a father and Israel as his children (cf. .–). In his study on wilderness traditions in the Bible, R. B. Leal says of Deuteronomy: ‘[W]ilderness is not just an incidental and almost fortuitous interlude between slavery in Egypt and conquest of the Promised Land. It becomes part of a pre-ordained plan for the constitution of a people worthy of Yahweh’. Thus, Deuteronomy portrays the wilderness period as a necessary time of discipline, a time in which God’s people are prepared for entry into the land of promise. That the tradition of viewing the wilderness period as a time of discipline would be picked up by Hebrews is not surprising given both the influence that the book of Deuteronomy has had on the letter and the fact that just such a tradition was deployed in a number of later Jewish writings, demonstrating that it continued to be a popular perception of the wilderness period. The Wisdom of Solomon, a first-century BCE or early first-century CE work of Egyptian provenance, is heavily indebted to exodus traditions, as P. Enns has demonstrated. The dependence upon such traditions extends also to the According to KB, the polel of ביןmeans ‘to take care of’, while the hiphil means ‘to teach’. Since the polel of ביןis rare, it is understandable that the LXX has rendered the word as παιδ1ύω. Similarly, the targumim and Sifre Deuteronomy also interpret the polel of ביןas instruction, although both specifically relate it to instruction in Torah. See also the parental imagery of the eagle watching over its young in Deut .. As P. C. B. Andriessen, ‘La Teneur Judéo-chrétienne de He I et II B-III.’, NovT . () – (), states, ‘L’idée de l’adoption divine est particulièrement chère au rédacteur du Dt’. Leal, Wilderness in the Bible, . So too, Cohn, Shape of Sacred Space, , who states that for Deuteronomy ‘the forty years in the wilderness was a necessary stage in the molding of the people’. Cf. Allen, Deuteronomy and Exhortation, and G. J. Steyn, ‘Deuteronomy in Hebrews’, Deuteronomy in the New Testament (ed. M. J. J. Menken and S. Moyise; LNTS ; London: T&T Clark, ) –. C. Larcher, Le Livre de la Sagesse ou la Sagesse de Salomon ( vols.; Etudes Bibliques ; Paris: Gabalda, –) .–, argues that Wisdom was written after the Roman conquest of Egypt in BCE, while D. Winston, Wisdom of Solomon (AB ; Garden City: Doubleday, ) –, has argued that it was written at the time of Caligula (– CE). Although D. Georgi, Weisheit Salomos (JSHRZ .; Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, ) –, has argued that Wisdom was written in Syria during the second century BCE, his position has garnered little support. P. Enns, Exodus Retold: Ancient Exegesis of the Departure from Egypt in Wis :– and :– (HSM ; Atlanta: Scholars, ). See also B. J. L. Peerbolte, ‘The Hermeneutics of Exodus in the Book of Wisdom’, The Interpretation of Exodus: Studies in Honour of Cornelius Houtman (ed. R. Roukema; CBET ; Leuven: Peeters, ) –.
Hebrews .–, the Wilderness Period, and Israel’s Discipline
subsequent wilderness period, as seen in Wisdom’s discussion of the events at the waters of Marah: For when they [the wilderness generation] were tried (πειράζω), though they were being disciplined (παιδεύω) in mercy, they learned how the ungodly were tormented when judged in wrath. For you tested (δοκιμάζω) them as a father does in warning (νουθετέω), but you examined the ungodly as a stern king does in condemnation (Wis .–).
Both the punitive and instructional aspects of παιδεία are evident in this text, though the author attributes the punitive aspect to God’s dealings with the nations and the instructional aspect to God’s dealings with his own people. The author is not concerned with the exegesis and clarification of this account, but rather with utilizing the ‘motifs and themes from Exodus to illustrate and clarify the position of his readers’. As Peerbolte concludes, ‘[T]he Exodus story becomes a hermeneutical framework for understanding the conditions in Alexandria…’ Again, we see a connection between God’s discipline of his people in the wilderness and the familial relationship this discipline evinces: with Israel God acts as a father, with Egypt he acts as a stern king. Philo, another Alexandrian Jew, also seems aware of and employs a tradition in which the wilderness period is seen as a time of testing and training. In Life of Moses ., he claims that the manna that God provided was meant to teach (παιδεύω) Israel not to bear up grudgingly, but to persevere (ὑπομένω). This passage is unique in that it is God’s good provision that is meant to discipline them. Nonetheless, we see the more standard view in a detailed discussion of παιδ1ία in Preliminary Studies –, a passage in which Philo uses the wilderness period to serve as an allegory for life, linking the event at Marah (Exod ), Deuteronomy , Prov .–, and the figure of Esau. For Philo, the wilderness period represents life, the tests (such as at the waters of Marah) represent Cf. Exodus . For other biblical passages that refer to this event and call the behaviour of the people into question, see Num .–; Deut .; .; LXX Pss .–; .. As S. Cheon, The Exodus Story in the Wisdom of Solomon: A Study in Biblical Interpretation (JSPSS ; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, ) , notes, Wisdom ignores or reinterprets the clear statements of Exodus regarding the guilt of the people in complaining against God. Peerbolte, ‘The Hermeneutics of Exodus’, . Peerbolte, ‘The Hermeneutics of Exodus’, , who reads Wisdom against the backdrop of Egyptian idolatry and not overt persecution. In contrast, Cheon, Exodus Story, –, believes the historical events behind what the author views as God’s discipline is the Alexandrian pogrom of CE. Peerbolte’s reading has the benefit of linking the use of exodus traditions with Wisdom’s strong polemic against idolatry, while Cheon’s reading makes good sense of the emphasis on discipline by placing it within the context of Jewish suffering in Alexandria. Although even within the context of Deut . mention is made of the food and clothing God provided for the people while in the wilderness (.–).
MATTHEW THIESSEN
παιδ1ία, and Egypt represents passion (πάθος). In reference to the statement of Exod ., that at Marah God tested (πειράζω) them, Philo claims that in testing (δοκιμασία) lies much toil and bitterness, which cause some to lose heart and, like weary athletes (ἀθληταί), to drop their hands in weakness (χεῖρες ὑπ’ ἀσθενείας), determining to return to Egypt to indulge passion (Prelim. Studies ). In contrast, others face the dangers of the wilderness (ἔρημος) with patience and persevere in the contest of life (τόν ἀγῶνα τοῦ βίου διήθλησαν, ). In light of the value of testing, Philo admonishes his readers not to turn away (ἀποστρέφω) from afflictions such as these, ‘for the admonished soul (νουθετουμένη ψυχή) is fed by the disciplines (παιδεία) of doctrine’ (). Accordingly, Philo reminds his readers of the words of Moses to the people of Israel after the period in the wilderness by quoting Deut .: ‘Remember every way which the Lord your God led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you (ἐκπειράζω) and discerning (διαγινώσκω) what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments, or not’. For Philo, Deut .– creates a theological problem because the text states that God did evil (ἐκάκωσεν) to Israel. Thus, he says that these things must be understood allegorically; by κακόω one should understand that God disciplined (παιδεύω), admonished (νουθετέω), and chastened (σωφρονίζω) them (). This demonstrates clearly that affliction is a good thing—something that people without wisdom do not realize. In fact, discipline is such a blessing that its most humiliating form, slavery, is considered of value, something that Philo demonstrates by referring to Isaac’s ‘blessing’ in which Esau is condemned in slavery to Jacob (–; cf. Gen .). According to Philo, it was for this reason that Solomon said: ‘My son, do not disregard the discipline (παιδεία) of God, nor lose courage when you are reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives’ (Prelim. Studies ; cf. Prov .–). Philo concludes that discipline draws one close to God because there is no relationship closer than that of a father to a son. Thus, Philo’s discussion of παιδεία in Preliminary Studies demonstrates that the close verbal similarities between Deut . and Prov .– were not lost on Jews writing around the time of the author of Hebrews. Further, it shows that Philo believed that the wilderness period represented the trials of life, something that could be compared to an athletic contest. Finally, this examination of All translations from Philo are taken from F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker, Philo ( vols.; LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, –). While Deut . and Prov .– are not explicitly linked in any other extant Jewish literature from the Second Temple Period, they are linked in later rabbinical literature. Cf. Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Bahodesh and Sifre Deuteronomy . Croy, Endurance in Suffering, . This accords with Philo’s argument that the Law was given in the desert because God needed first to purify Israel (Decalogue –). On the basis of this, U. W. Mauser, Christ in the Wilderness: The Wilderness Theme in the Second Gospel and its
Hebrews .–, the Wilderness Period, and Israel’s Discipline
Preliminary Studies shows that Philo viewed παιδεία as a demonstration of the close bond between God and his people—a bond that can only be compared to the relationship between father and son. These traditions regarding Israel’s wilderness period are not limited to Alexandrian Judaism, as Josephus’s treatment of the wilderness period in Jewish Antiquities demonstrates. In fact, we see the same mixture of athletic imagery, wilderness period, and discussion of trials and discipline in Josephus’s retelling of the biblical narratives as we found in Philo’s account in Preliminary Studies. In response to the people’s complaint in the desert, Moses states that God was testing them (δοκιμάζω) to see what strength and memory of God’s past deeds the people possessed (Ant. .). Thus the events at Marah served as an exercise for the people (γυμνάζω) that they failed to persevere in (ὑπομονή), and for which they were reproved (ἐλέγχω). Additionally, Josephus connects God’s punishment of Israel in the wilderness with his paternal relationship to them: ‘Moses, emboldened, now approached the people and announced that God, moved by their insolence, would exact retribution, not indeed proportionate to their errors, but such as fathers inflict upon their children for their admonition’ (Ant. .). For Josephus, the discipline that Israel endured under the leadership of Moses is an integral part of the identity of his contemporary Ἰουδαῖοι for, at the beginning of Antiquities, he states that he intended to make clear who the Jews were—that is, what fortune they had endured, what lawgiver disciplined (παιδεύω) them in piety (Ant. .). The literary evidence from Deuteronomy, Wisdom of Solomon, Philo, and Josephus indicates that there was an established tradition within early Judaism of interpreting the wilderness wanderings as a period of educative discipline (sometimes described using athletic imagery) in which God’s people were prepared for entry into the land of promise, and that this discipline demonstrated the legitimate familial ties between the people and God their father.
Basis in the Biblical Tradition (SBT ; Naperville: Allenson, ) , argues that Philo sees the wilderness ‘as a training field on which skills are developed which are necessary for the establishment and administration of a sound national life’. All quotations from Josephus are taken from H. St. J. Thackeray et al., eds., Josephus ( vols.; LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, –). A similar view of the wilderness as a place of testing and training is found in the later rabbinic commentary on Exodus, Mekhilta de Rabbi-Ishmael. Cf. Mekhilta, Beshallah : ‘“of the wilderness”, indicates that it was for the purpose of refining them, as it is said: “Who led thee through the great and dreadful wilderness”, etc. (Deut. .); “by the Red Sea”, indicates that it was for the purpose of testing them, as it is said: “And they were rebellious at the sea, even at the Red Sea” (Ps. .)…’, and Mekhilta, Vayassa’ : ‘Hence what must be the meaning of “And there He proved them”? There God tested Israel’. Quotations are taken from J. Z. Lauterbach, Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael ( vols.; Philadelphia: JPS, ) . and ..
MATTHEW THIESSEN
. Hebrews .– and God’s Wilderness Discipline
Through the use of Prov .–, the author of Hebrews indicates to his readers that the difficulties and trials they are encountering do not mean that God has been unfaithful to them; instead, these difficulties are God’s παιδεία, and thus evidence that they are God’s children: ‘My son, do not disregard the discipline of the Lord, nor lose courage when you are reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives’ (Heb .–; cf. Prov .–). Yet, in light of the interpretive tradition observed above and the broader narrative framework previously established by the author of Hebrews, the citation of Prov .– and the subsequent discussion of παιδεία (Heb .–) should be understood as referring to the readers’ current situation in the wilderness, despite the fact that neither the wilderness wanderings nor Deuteronomy are specifically mentioned. Corroboration for this interpretation of Hebrews’ discussion of God disciplining the readers as a father does his children can be found by comparing Heb .– to the wilderness traditions of Deut , Wisdom, Philo, and Josephus. The athletic imagery in Philo’s discussion of God’s discipline in the wilderness period finds correspondences not only in Josephus’s account of the wilderness generation but also in Hebrews . Philo’s portrayal of the παιδεία in the wilderness as an allegory for the contest of life (ὁ ἀγὼν τοῦ βίου, Prelim. Studies ) is similar to that of Heb .–, where the author, in the context of Israel’s continuing exodus, exhorts his readers to run the race (ἀγών) set before them with perseverance. As Johnson states: ‘The image of the race is drawn from the Greek culture of competitive games. But because of this marvelous intertwining of
On the issues surrounding this scriptural quotation, see P. Ellingworth, The Epistle to the Hebrews: A Commentary on the Greek Text (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ) . Presumably the author uses Prov .– and not Deut . since the Proverbs citation can be used as a direct exhortation to his readers, and thus the author can ask: ‘Have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?’ Cf. Bornkamm, ‘Sohnschaft’, , who states that the author uses the citation ‘als Gottes eigenes Wort an den Frommen’, and L. T. Johnson, Hebrews: A Commentary (NTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, ) , who says that ‘the author contemporizes the passage: it does not simply speak to ancient students of the sages. It speaks for God, who now addresses the author and his hearers as “sons” ’. This is part of a larger trend throughout the letter, as noted by Johnson, ‘Scriptural World’, –. The only commentators who have detected the influence of Deut . on Hebrews are Spicq, L’Épître aux Hébreux, ., and Allen, Deuteronomy and Exhortation, –. This accords with Johnson, ‘Scriptural World’, , who argues that ‘the composition reveals an extraordinarily comprehensive and thorough reader of the Greek translation of Torah known as the Septuagint (LXX). The author’s liberal use of citation and allusion suggests a confidence that the composition’s readers share some degree of that competence’.
Hebrews .–, the Wilderness Period, and Israel’s Discipline
textual allusion, the hearers know that this race is one of pilgrimage begun by Abraham as he looked for a lasting city (Heb :–)’. Further, just as Josephus claims that God exercised (γυμνάζω) and reproved (ἐλέγχω) the first wilderness generation (Ant. .–), so too, the readers of Hebrews are being exercised (γυμνάζω, Heb .) and reproved (ἐλέγχω, Heb .), although in contrast to the wilderness generation who failed in endurance (ὑπομονή, Ant. .), the author exhorts his readers to run the race with perseverance (ὑπομονή, Heb .). In view of the author’s concern to portray Israel’s wilderness wandering as a present reality for his readers, it seems that this mixture of athletic imagery with a discussion of παιδ1ία is meant to evoke Jewish traditions that portrayed the wilderness period as an athletic contest in which God disciplined his children in preparation for their entrance into the land. The placement of the present generation in the wilderness within the textual world of the letter to the Hebrews finds a contemporary, physical parallel in the Qumran Community. By reminding his readers that God disciplines his children and by linking it with athletic imagery, the author further intimates that they are in the wilderness period and must submit to God’s discipline if they want to live (.), for unless the readers of Hebrews go through the wilderness discipline, they are illegitimate children who, like Esau, forgo their inheritance.
Johnson, ‘Scriptural World’, . Although he does not see the connection between Deuteronomy’s account of the wilderness generation as a period of discipline where the people of God were trained for entrance into the land of promise, deSilva, Perseverance in Gratitude, , understands the discipline of Hebrews as training for the kingdom. See, for instance, QS .–, where the community will separate itself from the wicked by entering the ;מדברand QM ., where the community members (the sons of Judah, Levi, and Benjamin) are referred to as those exiled to the wilderness ()גולת המדבד. S. Talmon, ‘The “Desert Motif” in the Bible and in Qumran Literature’, Biblical Motifs: Origins and Transformations (ed. A. Altmann; Studies and Texts III; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, ) – (), rightly states: ‘Ultimately the “desert” became the locale of a period of purification and preparation for the achievement of a new goal. This goal is the conquest of the Holy Land…’ Cf. also M. Bernstein, ‘Q fragment and the “Desert Theology” of the Qumran Sect’, Emanuel: Studies in Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, and Dead Sea Scrolls in Honor of Emanuel Tov (ed. S. M. Paul; Leiden: Brill, ) –, and A. Schofield, ‘The Wilderness Motif in the Dead Sea Scrolls’, Israel in the Wilderness: Interpretations of the Biblical Narratives in Jewish and Christian Traditions (ed. K. E. Pomykala; TBN ; Leiden: Brill, ) –. Similarly, the wilderness as a period of testing and preparation can be found in NT literature outside of Hebrews, in particular, Jesus’ temptation, for which see W. R. Stegner, ‘Wilderness and Testing in the Scrolls and in Matthew :–’, BR () –, and Mauser, Christ in the Wilderness, –. Lane, Hebrews, ., suggests that καὶ ζήσομ1ν (.) evokes the covenant blessings of Deut .–, where obedience leads to life in the land. This allusion would again strengthen the author’s effort to demonstrate that his readers are in the wilderness period.
MATTHEW THIESSEN
. Esau as Despiser of the Inheritance
Having attempted to encourage his readers by situating them at the very end of the wilderness period, along with all previous generations of God’s people, the author employs stock imagery of discouragement (αἱ παρ1ιμέναι χ1ῖρ1ς καὶ τὰ παραλ1λυμένα γόνατα) and calls the people to renew their strength (.–). The readers are called to strive for peace and to guard against any root of bitterness that might defile them (.–). This reference to a root of bitterness (ῥίζα πικρίας), an allusion to Deut ., again places the people in the wilderness about to enter into the land of promise and serves to warn them of lurking danger. Why does the author appeal to the negative example of Esau after situating his readers in the wilderness period? It is possible, as attested throughout Philo’s writings, that Esau functioned in Jewish tradition as a paradigmatic example of an undisciplined person, a character flaw that was well known to both the author and readers. For instance, in Alleg. Interp. ., Esau allegorically stands for the life of the undisciplined (ἀπαιδ1υσία). In Prelim. Studies his name is interpreted as ‘an oak because he is unbending, unyielding, disobedient, and stiff-necked by nature, with folly as his counselor’. In Questions and Answers on Genesis, Philo repeatedly portrays Esau as given to vice and lust. In QG ., he has a mind Apparently the author does not think that death has ended the wilderness period for previous generations, since he states that those who had gone before would not be perfected apart from the recipients of the letter (Heb .). Johnson, Hebrews, , rightly states of the great cloud of witnesses: ‘[T]hese witnesses themselves need the present generation to complete the race if they are themselves to be perfected’. Cf. Jer .; Ecclus .; .. If Ellingworth, Epistle to the Hebrews, , is correct that the author is alluding to Isa . (ἰσχύσατ1, χ1ῖρ1ς ἀν1ιμέναι καὶ γόνατα παραλ1λυμένα), then exodus imagery is again evoked (cf. Isa ., ). As noted above, in discussing the events at Marah, Philo states, ‘many people are very quickly fatigued and fall, thinking labour a terrible adversary, and they let their hands fall out of weakness (αἱ χ1ῖρ1ς ὑπ’ ἀσθ1ν1ίας), like tired athletes, determining to return to Egypt to the indulgence of their passions’ (Prelim. Studies ). Thus, like Heb ., Philo also places drooping hands in the context of the exodus where they signify the danger of falling back from entry into the land of promise. For the textual issue surrounding this verse and LXX Deut ., see C. R. Koester, Hebrews: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB ; New York: Doubleday, ) –, and H. W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews: A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, ) –. While Preliminary Studies does not refer to Esau’s indiscipline in discussing Gen ., as noted above, Philo does refer to Esau’s disciplining by his father by being made a slave to Isaac (Prelim. Studies –). Adding up all the parallels between Hebrews and Philo’s Preliminary Studies, we see that both have a discussion of παιδ1ία in the context of the wilderness, deploy the imagery of an athletic contest, refer to drooping hands, and mention Esau as a negative example. This striking collocation of motifs in both Preliminary Studies and Hebrews raises the question of the possible dependence of the author of Hebrews on Philo,
Hebrews .–, the Wilderness Period, and Israel’s Discipline wild and untamed and intractable and ferocious and bestial; and some (are like) dogs because they indulge immoderate impulses and in all things act madly and furiously. In addition to this, being a man of the fields, he is without a city and a fugitive from the laws, unknowing of right behaviour and unbridled and refractory and not having anything in common with righteous and good men.
In words which parallel Heb ., Philo states: ‘For it was not for the sake of a trifling cooked pottage that [Esau] gave up his rights as first-born and yielded to the younger [brother] but because he made himself a slave to the pleasures of the belly. Let him be reproved and condemned as one who never was zealous for restraint and continence’ (QG .). Esau is ‘the perfectly untamed and undisciplined man’ (QG ., ), whose father is grieved by his indiscipline. Hebrews has a similar understanding of Esau, although he functions not only as the primary example of one who rejects God’s discipline but also as one in whom the horrific consequences of such unwillingness to be disciplined are made manifest. Esau sold his birthrights (πρωτοτόκια) for a single meal, and therefore no longer had any share in the inheritance. Unlike the πρωτότοκος Jesus, who received the inheritance of a better name (Heb .), Esau provides an example of someone who is denied his inheritance (.). In fact, the author argues that Esau found no opportunity to repent, despite his shedding of tears. Likewise, if the readers of Hebrews do not endure God’s discipline, they too might become immoral and forfeit their inheritance, which includes God’s promised rest. Although Jesus, the ἀρχηγός, has now opened up a way for God’s people to obtain the promised inheritance, the recipients of the letter still find themselves
as has been argued by C. Spicq, ‘L’Épître aux Hébreux et Philon: Un cas d’insertion de la literature sacrée dans la culture profane du er siècle (Hébr. V,-VI, et le “De sacrificiis Abelis et Caini” de Philon)’, ANRW .. () –, and has been argued against by R. Williamson, Philo and the Epistle to the Hebrews (ALGHJ ; Leiden: Brill, ). Translations of QG taken from R. Marcus, Philo: Supplement : Questions and Answers on Genesis (LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, ) . The plural is used in LXX Genesis , although the MT has the singular ‘( בכרתוhis birthright’). The Israelites are the πρωτότοκα, who are delivered from the destroying angel in Egypt (Heb .) and who are now in the heavenly Jerusalem (.). The identity of the πρωτότοκα in . has been a matter of dispute (for instance, by E. Käsemann, The Wandering People of God: An Investigation of the Letter to the Hebrews [Minneapolis: Augsburg, ] , who argues that they are angels), though Ezra . and Jub . use a similar phrase to connote the people of God, and the previous reference in Heb . identifies the firstborn with Israel. Cf. Lane, Hebrews, .–; Attridge, Epistle, . While rabbinic literature generally contains an equally negative view of Esau, it is striking that at least one text (Gen. R. .), in contrast to Hebrews, claims that he did repent. The import of this christological title is uncertain, as the monograph by P.-G. Müller, ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΡΧΗΓΟΣ: Der religionsgeschichtliche und theologische Hintergrund einer
MATTHEW THIESSEN
outside this promised rest and in a period of παιδ1ία. The author assures them that this is to be expected and is the proof that they belong to God’s family, according to Prov .–. In fact, this is exactly the pattern provided for them by the example of Jesus, who, although a son, learned obedience through what he suffered (Heb .). As a result, they are not to grow discouraged, nor are they to behave like Esau by impatiently selling their πρωτοτόκια.
. Conclusion
In accord with the contention of this article, Allen has argued for the strong connection between Hebrews’ readers and the original wilderness generation, but states: ‘Despite the significant correspondence between the wilderness generation and Hebrews, the latter never explicitly says that its readers are in the wilderness or wandering aimlessly in it. The closest Hebrews comes to placing the readers specifically in the desert is .–, which equates the audience’s suffering with [the] positive παιδ1ία of the wilderness era’. Yet the narrative world in which the author has placed both himself and his readers in Heb .–. and .– has been clearly defined as Israel’s wilderness period; therefore, the author does not need to make explicit reference to the wilderness in .– since the underlying narrative of the letter has already located the readers in this period. Additionally, as this examination of the wilderness traditions in Deuteronomy, Philo, Wisdom, and Josephus has demonstrated, numerous verbal clues exist within .– which lead to the conclusion that the author is deploying certain Jewish beliefs which a knowledgeable reader would have recognized as evoking the period of Israel’s wilderness wanderings. Just as Deuteronomy, Philo, Wisdom, and Josephus understand the wilderness period as a time of discipline, so too, the author of Hebrews understands the wilderness as a period of discipline. In a manner similar to that of Philo, Hebrews
neutestamentlichen Christusprädikation (Peter Lang: Frankfurt, ), makes clear. Nonetheless, the fact that ἀρχηγοί figure prominently in OT wilderness traditions (cf. Num .–; .–; .–) suggests that Jesus should be understood as the ἀρχηγός who faithfully enters the promised rest, in contrast to the ἀρχηγοί of Moses’ day who did not. Cf. Thiessen, ‘Hebrews and the End of the Exodus’, –. While Schenck, Cosmology and Eschatology, , is correct in asserting that ‘Christ’s death is arguably the focal event of Hebrews’ narrative world’, this does not take away from the fact that the paraenesis focuses on the less-than-triumphant experience of the readers. As Lane, Hebrews, ., states: ‘there is a necessary and integral relationship between sufferings and a filial relationship with the Lord’. On the close connection between Jesus’ sonship and the sonship of the letter’s recipients, see Bornkamm, ‘Sohnschaft’, and Johnson, Hebrews, . Allen, Deuteronomy and Exhortation, (emphasis original).
Hebrews .–, the Wilderness Period, and Israel’s Discipline
interprets the wilderness period as the trials of life endured by God’s people. By doing so, he is able to utilize this Jewish tradition about the wilderness period to encourage his readers. Although the preceding argument has demonstrated that Heb .– has much in common with Jewish wilderness traditions, there are, to be sure, a number of differences. For Hebrews, the readers are to have a confidence rooted in the fact that this is the way that God has always dealt with his people—that suffering is a form of divine discipline. Even more encouraging for the readers is the reminder that Jesus has indeed passed through the wilderness period and entered into the joy set before him. Johnson states of Heb .–: These verses are critical to understanding both the Christology of Hebrews and its vision of discipleship. Yet, because the metaphorical field within which they work is often missed, the following section can be regarded as the intrusion of an offensively banal bit of advice. We are, in fact, within the same metaphor as in :–, where the moral life was sketched in terms of participation in athletic games.
Johnson’s remarks about the seeming banality of the passage echo the statements made by Croy, noted in the introduction to this article. If the arguments found herein are persuasive, then one must re-contextualize the athletic imagery found throughout Hebrews : while to a Greco-Roman Gentile, the athletic imagery would call to mind the metaphor of the moral life as an athletic game, this language has undergone further development within Greco-Roman Judaism so that the athletic imagery evokes a specific contest—the contest endured by Israel in the wilderness. Thus, the athletic imagery and discussion of discipline contained within Heb .– is anything but ‘offensively banal’; rather, through such language the author signals to his readers that they are to re-envision their lives so as to place themselves in the wilderness, a place where God’s people have always found themselves. Israel’s wilderness period thus functions similarly to the Greek institution of the gymnasium. The fact that the readers of the epistle to the Hebrews find themselves in the gymnasium of the wilderness should encourage them since it demonstrates the legitimacy of their sonship to God and socializes them for their imminent entry into the promised rest.
Cf. Mende, ‘Wen der Herr liebhat’, –. Johnson, Hebrews, . As Johnson, ‘Scriptural World’, , states: ‘Hebrews therefore successfully imagines the world that scripture itself imagines. As a result, scripture is a world in which Hebrews and its hearers can dwell’. Cf. W. W. Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture ( vols.; Oxford: Oxford University, –).
New Test. Stud. , pp. –. Printed in the United Kingdom © Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S0028688509000216
Tears of Repentance or Tears of Gratitude? P.Oxy. 4009, the Gospel of Peter and the Western Text of Luke 7.45–49 M AT T I MY L LYKO S K I Faculty of Theology, PL 33, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland email:
[email protected] In an article published earlier this year (NTS .: –), a full reconstruction of the less intelligible side of P.Oxy. (lines –) was presented, and it was argued that this text belongs to the Gospel of Peter. These lines parallel the Lukan pericope of the sinful woman (Luke .–) and demonstrate that the Gospel of Peter used manuscripts that represent the Western text of the earlier Gospels. The most notable Western feature, the omission in P.Oxy. of Luke .b–, is no coincidence. There are weighty arguments for the omission of these verses in the Lukan original as well. Keywords: papyri, textual criticism, the Gospel of Peter, Luke , forgiveness . The Reconstruction and its Parallel
In a previous article, I have proposed the following reconstruction of P.Oxy. recto: P.Oxy. , unknown side
μύρῳ ἤλει]ψε[ν καὶ οὐ διέλ(ε)ιπεν το]ὺς[ πόδας μου wιλοῦσα. σὺ δὲ τὸ[ ἔλαιον ἐμοὶ οὐ
παρέσχ[ες οὐδὲ εἰσελθόντι μ[οι wίλημα ἔδωκας. διὰ[ τοῦτο λέγω σοι ὅτι ἀwε(ί)ω[νται αὐτῇ πολλαὶ ἁμα[ρτίαι.
Luke .– () wίλημά μοι οὐκ ἔδωκας· αὕτη δὲ ἀw’ ἧς εἰσῆλθον οὐ
διέλιπεν καταwιλοῦσά μου τοὺς πόδας. () ἐλαίῳ τὴν κεwαλήν μου οὐκ ἤλειψας· αὕτη δὲ μύρῳ ἤλειψεν τοὺς πόδας μου. () οὗ χάριν, λέγω σοι, ἀwέωνται αἱ ἁμαρτίαι αὐτῆς αἱ πολλαί, ὅτι ἠγάπησεν πολύ· ᾧ δὲ ὀλίγον ἀwίεται, ὀλίγον ἀγαπᾷ. () εἶπεν
The detailed argument for this reconstruction is presented in M. Myllykoski, ‘The Sinful Woman in the Gospel of Peter: Reconstructing the Enigmatic Other Side of P.Oxy. ’, NTS () –.
Tears of Repentance or Tears of Gratitude?
εἶπον δὲ
αὐτῷ ἐκ [ τῶν συνανακειμένων· [ Διὰ τί ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί[ σου ἁμαρτίας ἀwεῖς, κ(ύρι)ε; [ ]ουθ[
..]αμαι[ ..]προ.[ ..].πη.[ ..]..ν..[ ..]…αι[
..]…….[
δὲ αὐτῇ, Ἀwέωνταί σου αἱ ἁμαρτίαι. () καὶ ἤρξαντο οἱ συνανακείμενοι λέγειν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς, Τίς οὗτός ἐστιν ὃς καὶ ἁμαρτίας ἀwίησιν;
() εἶπεν δὲ πρὸς τὴν γυναῖκα, Ἡ πίστις σου σέσωκέν σε· πορεύου εἰς εἰρήνην.
Translation: ‘she anointed […] with ointment and did not stop kissing my feet, but you neither provided me with oil nor gave me a kiss. Therefore I say to you: Her many sins are forgiven her.’ They said from among those who were at the table: ‘Why do you forgive sins in your name, Lord?’
It is necessary to note that some uncertainties remain as regards the precise wording of the lost letters in each line. In line , εἶπον δέ may have alternatives. In line , the words διὰ τί—or διὰ τί σύ—could be replaced with another, corresponding expression like πῶς or πῶς σύ; a reconstruction like μένων αὐτῷ· ἐν τῷ ὀ- is possible, but unlikely. This reconstruction makes it likely that P.Oxy. is a fragment of a Gospel. Dieter Lührmann has reconstructed, on the basis of comparison with the parallel text Clem .–, the other side of P.Oxy. as follows (lines are in brackets, letters visible in fragment are in bold): () ὁ θερισμός . () γίνου δὲ ἀκέραιος ὡς αἱ πε () ριστεραὶ καὶ wρόνιμος () ὡς οἱ ὄwεις. ἔσεσθε ὡς () ἀρνία ἀνὰ μέσον λύκων. () εἶπον πρὸς αὐτόν. ἐὰν οὖ () (ν) σπαραχθῶμεν; () ὁ δὲ ἀποκριθεὶς λέγει μοι. οἱ () λύκοι σπαράξαντες τὸ () ἀρνίον οὐκέτι αὐτῷ οὐ () δὲν δύνανται ποιῆσαι. Δι () ὸ ἐγὼ λέγω ὑμεῖν. μὴ wο () βεῖσθε ἀπὸ τῶν ἀποκτεν () νόντων ὑμᾶς καὶ μετὰ τὸ () ἀποκτεῖναι μηκέτι ποι () ῆσαι δυναμένων μηδέν.
Dieter Lührmann, ‘P. Oxy. : Ein neues Fragment des Petrusevangeliums?’, NovT () –, esp. –.
MATTI MYLLYKOSKI
Lührmann’s reconstruction is widely accepted, but his conclusion that the fragment is part of the Gospel of Peter has not only been welcomed but also contested. Now, setting aside for a while the identification of the Gospel of the fragment, it is obvious that the author of this Gospel drew not only upon a tradition similar to Clem .– but also directly upon the Gospel of Luke. The side reconstructed here must be the recto because the version of the Lukan story must have taken up much space on the previous papyrus page. Between line of the recto and line of the verso reconstructed by Lührmann, we have some lines of unknown content. It is reasonable to assume that the story of the sinful woman ended with a poignant saying of Jesus and that the discourse then soon moved over to the sending out of the disciples known from Matt and Luke . There is enough space for such a sequence, and it not necessary to assume that the side reconstructed here was not simply a recto but a previous column in a manuscript that was written in double columns per page. Some observations on the narrative strategy strengthen the assumption that the side reconstructed here is the recto of a page that possibly once belonged to a papyrus codex. P.Oxy. verso is less eschatological and much more antagonistic in tone than the accounts in Matthew and Luke. The martyrdom of the disciples becomes the central theme of the discourse. The sayings of Jesus in lines – and – are based on Matt .b, a (Luke .) and (Luke .); they indicate that the harvest mentioned in line is part of a saying like that of Matt .– (Luke .). This arrangement of different pieces of tradition may be partly understood in terms of Luke’s interest in introducing the themes of discipleship and mission immediately after the story of the sinful woman (.–; cf. also the parable of the sower in .–). On the recto, the story of the sinful woman is turned into a dispute about Jesus’ authority to forgive sins; the scene underlines the conflict between Jesus and the Jewish religious authorities. In one way or another, this conflict paves the way for Jesus’ discourse on the mission and martyrdom of his disciples. They must also The major critique of Lührmann’s view is that of Paul Foster, ‘Are there any Early Fragments of the So-Called Gospel of Peter?’, NTS () –, esp. –. Foster has criticized Lührmann’s identification of the fragment with the Gospel of Peter because the text reconstructed by Lührmann and the traditions preserved in Matt .b and Clem .– cannot be traced back to the same basic forms and because the verbal agreements between these texts are rather slim. However, it is very difficult to fit Luke . into lines –. Lührmann, Evangelien, –. The tiny remains of ink in line do not allow a reconstruction. However, line may have included the words πολὺς ὁ before θερισμός. It is interesting to see that some versions of the Diatessaron move from Luke .– to the sending out of the disciples in Luke . The Pepysian Gospel Harmony (ed. Margery Goates; Early English Text Society, Original Series ; London: Oxford University, ) moves directly from Luke .– to the sending out of sixty and twelve disciples. The Arabic version (Diatessaron de Tatien [ed. A.-S. Marmardji; Beyrouth: Imprimerie Catholique,
Tears of Repentance or Tears of Gratitude?
call people to repentance and forgive their sins in the name of their Lord. During their mission, they will be persecuted and killed by their enemies who are foreshadowed by Jesus’ host and the other guests who do not acknowledge Jesus’ authority to forgive sins. The reconstruction of the recto of P.Oxy. strengthens the theory that this fragment is not only a part of a Gospel but a part of the Gospel of Peter. In addition to the I-narrator pointed out by Dieter Lührmann and the vocative ΚΕ in line , the author of this Gospel, as in the text known to us through the Akhmîm fragment, has used the Gospel of Luke in a creative way. Furthermore, both here and in the Akhmîm text, Lukan stories are interpreted for anti-Jewish purposes. Herod and Pilate (Luke .– and Gos Pet –) as well as the repentant evildoer (Luke .– and Gos Pet –) are both seen through specifically anti-Jewish lenses. Against this background, it is not at all difficult to understand why the story of the sinful woman is interpreted in terms of an authority conflict and located immediately before Jesus’ intensive discourse on the mission, persecution and martyrdom of his disciples. The version that we have in P.Oxy. obviously included most of the narrative elements of the story in Luke .–. In lines –, the author quotes Luke’s presentation (vv. –a) in a different order. Before that, he has obviously described what Luke says in v. . The different presentation of the actions of the host (H) and the sinful woman (W) in P.Oxy. and Luke reveal some important aspects of the Pseudo-Petrine redaction: P.Oxy. recto lines – (W) anoints Jesus (W) kisses Jesus’ feet (H) provides no oil for Jesus (H) does not give a kiss to Jesus
Luke .b– (H) does not give a kiss to Jesus (W) kisses Jesus’ feet (H) does not anoint Jesus’ head (W) anoints Jesus’ feet
The author of the Gospel of Peter has changed the order of these items in order to sharpen the conflict between Jesus and his host. Correspondingly, the exemplary actions of the sinful woman—which reflect love and faith—no longer appear as a positive contrast to the negligence of the pious host. As already mentioned, Pseudo-Peter does not accept the idea that the host should have anointed Jesus’ head; instead, he should only have provided oil for him that he could have done it himself. This clumsy idea distances the host from Jesus more than was necessary in the Lukan story. On the other hand, Pseudo-Peter has also
]) has, after Luke .–, the order John .–; Luke .–; Matt .–; Luke .–. Saint Ephrem’s Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron (trans. Carmel McCarthy; JSSS ; Oxford: Oxford University, ) has the harvest saying of Matt . (.) follow Luke .– (.–).
MATTI MYLLYKOSKI
toned down the affectionate side of the woman’s actions. He describes how the woman first anoints Jesus’ feet and only then starts kissing them; in his presentation, there is no place for the Lukan phrase ἀw’ ἧς εἰσῆλθον. He has also replaced Luke’s καταwιλοῦσα with the more sober wιλοῦσα. Thus far, the affinities of the P.Oxy. recto with the Western text are dependent on the reconstruction that fills in the lost lines of the fragment. However, in line , the fragment does not follow the text of Luke attested by most witnesses and accepted as original by NA . It is precisely here that the above-suggested similarities between P.Oxy. and the Western text become essential for the understanding of this fragment. As A. F. J. Klijn has demonstrated, the Gospel of Peter known through the Akhmîm fragment is clearly drawing upon the Western text of the canonical Gospels. In P.Oxy. line , the author of the Gospel of Peter offers neither Jesus’ reasons for his claim that the woman’s sins are forgiven (Luke :bc) nor his formal declaration of forgiveness (v. ). Jesus’ words, ἀwε(ί)ω[νται αὐτῇ πολ]λαὶ ἁμα[ρτίαι, are immediately followed by the response from among the guests. Pseudo-Peter formulates this response in a way that allows him to develop a brief but sharply focused dialogue on the authority of Jesus. This brings his redaction of the Lukan scene much closer to the charge of blasphemy known from Mark . parr. The missing Lukan verses are these: v. b v. c v.
ὅτι ἠγάπησεν πολύ. ᾧ δὲ ὀλίγον ἀwίεται, ὀλίγον ἀγαπᾷ. εἶπεν δὲ αὐτῇ, Ἀwέωνταί σου αἱ ἁμαρτίαι.
Did the pseudo-Petrine author know these verses from the manuscript which he used and simply discard them? Let us take this possibility seriously. In theory, it is possible that Pseudo-Peter knew these sentences and used them partly in lines –. The only instance in which this seems to be possible is line in which the letters πη may indicate the sentence ὅτι ἠγάπησεν πολύ. However, if this option is followed, the other lines are still very difficult to reconstruct. On the other hand, some expressions in v. bc may be seen as support for such a conclusion. Pseudo-Peter would not want the reader to understand that Jesus’ host loves ‘little’ but that he does not love at all. In addition, he is not interested in the love motif, but in the authority of Jesus and the conflict it raises. However, v. points in the opposite direction. Pseudo-Peter would hardly have discarded v. , which emphasizes Jesus’ status as the one who has the authority to forgive sins. Therefore it is easiest to assume that the author of the Gospel of Peter simply did not know these verses. A. F. J. Klijn, ‘Het evangelie von Petrus en de Westerse Text’, in Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift () –. See also J. Denker, Die theologiegeschichtliche Stellung des Petrusevangeliums. Ein Beitrag zur Frühgeschichte des Doketismus (EHS.T , Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, ) –.
Tears of Repentance or Tears of Gratitude?
It is much more striking that parts of vv. b– are missing from independent witnesses of the Western text. In the light of the evidence that will be presented below, it seems likely that Pseudo-Peter, writing in the second third of the second century, did not have these verses in the manuscript of Luke he used. The list of missing parts in the deviant manuscripts is brief but calls for explanation: Codex Bezae (D) Old Latin manuscript e Diatessaron of Ephraim Venetian Diatessaron
v. v. v. v.
bc c c c–
The Venetian Diatessaron has been regarded by some scholars as a late and spurious version of the harmony tradition going back to Tatian. However, taken together, these witnesses point at readings which can be traced back to the second or third century. The earliest witness for vv. b– as an integral part of the Lukan story is the third-century papyrus P (Papyrus Bodmer XIV/ XV). If P.Oxy. now proves that the author of the Gospel of Peter used a text of Luke which did not include vv. b–, it is very difficult to dismiss the deviant Western readings as various secondary omissions. Furthermore, it is difficult to explain the origins of such omissions if vv. b– are considered a wellattested part of the original text of Luke. The trouble with Luke .b– does not end with explanations of simple textual variations, but goes much deeper than that. The interpreters have seen the key problem of the story in the stance of the sinful woman: Was she already forgiven or does Jesus proclaim her sins forgiven only in the house of the Pharisee? There are three basic problems related to this question: () there is a tension between v. and vv. –; () the proclamation of forgiveness is repeated after Jesus’ words to the sinful woman (v. ) in v. ; and () love is the ground of forgiveness in v. , while according to Jesus’ words in v. the sins of the woman are forgiven because of her faith. Scholars have offered For a survey of Luke . in the Diatessaron tradition, see Tjitze Baarda, ‘ “Non-canonical Version” of Luke ,b? The Reading τίνα [αὐτῶν] πλεῖον ἠγάπησεν Ascribed to the Diatessaron’, New Testament Textual Criticism and Exegesis (FS J. Delobel; ed. A. Denaux; BETL ; Leuven: Leuven University, ) –, esp. –. The value of the Western medieval harmonies and the existence of an old Latin version of the Diatessaron have been disputed by Ulrich B. Schmid, ‘In Search of Tatian’s Diatessaron in the West’, VigChr () –. For the traditional view on the role of Western harmonies in Diatessaron research, see the discussion of William L. Petersen, Tatian’s Diatessaron: Its Creation, Dissemination, Significance, and History in Scholarship (VigChrSup ; Leiden: Brill, ) –. On the literary and source-critical problems of the story, see particularly J. Delobel, ‘Lk , in its Context: An Old Crux Revisited’, The Four Gospels , vol. (FS F. Neirynck; BETL -B; Leuven: Leuven University, ) –, esp. –.
MATTI MYLLYKOSKI
various explanations of these problems. Particularly in previous scholarship, many interpreters have thought that the forgiveness shown to the woman is the result of her love. Nowadays most scholars rather assume that the woman was forgiven before she entered Simon’s house. Some of them, defending the historicity of the story, assume that Jesus, out of pastoral concern, directed his personal word to the sinful woman in v. . Some others suggest that the tensions in the text are due to the final verses composed by Luke, who has integrated the parable in vv. – with the narrative. Some interpreters think that only Luke has taken the woman’s act of love as the basis for Jesus’ declaration of forgiveness. All these theories must presuppose that Luke did not quite master the story he was working on. This brief survey shows that the presence of vv. b– in the text is directly involved precisely with the key problem of the pericope. Up to v. bc, the Pharisee has treated the woman as a notorious sinner, while Jesus already knows that she is no longer a sinner and that her sins are forgiven. Only on the basis of v. bc does the act of the sinful woman become an act of repentance, to which Jesus responds in v. by declaring to her that her sins are forgiven. Once vv. b– are removed, this tension disappears, and we can see that Luke was a master of his narrative. The actions of the woman must be seen as a sign of love and gratitude, not repentance. Furthermore, the double formulation of the forgiveness in vv. a and speaks for the secondary character of vv. b–. The reading of Codex Bezae reveals the development of the tradition. The clumsy repetition of Jesus’ forgiving words after his direct address to the woman had the advantage of clearly pointing out that the woman was still a sinner when she came into the house of the See, e.g., Julius Holtzmann, Die Synoptiker (HCNT I.; Tübingen/Leipzig: Mohr ) . Thus, e.g., I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke (Exeter: Paternoster, ) , and John J. Kilgallen, ‘Forgiveness of Sins (Luke :–)’, NovT () –, esp. –. Jürgen Roloff, Das Kerygma und der irdische Jesus: Historische Motive in den Jesus-Erzählungen der Evangelien (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, nd ed. ) –, finds the story historically reliable but suggests that vv. – and were added later. Joseph Fitzmyer, The Gospel according to Luke I–IX (New York: Doubleday, ) –, excludes vv. c– as a Lukan redaction which served to combine the apophthegma (vv. –, –ab) and the parable (vv. –). Fitzmyer also mentions Church fathers and modern scholars who read the story in these terms. For example, Ernst Haenchen, Der Weg Jesu: Eine Erklärung des Markus-Evangeliums und der kanonischen Parallelen (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, nd ed. ) , finds an original connection between v. a and v. and proposes a simple traditional ending: ‘Jesus said to the woman: “Go in peace.” ’ The whole speech of Jesus in vv. b–, in turn, is a Lukan addition that introduces the declaration of forgiveness. According to Delobel (‘Lk ,’, ), precisely the declaration of Jesus in v. a is added by Luke. He suggests that the Markan parallel in Mark .– provided the basic setting of the story—anointing of Jesus by a woman at a meal—while the story of the sinful woman, including the parable, stemmed from the oral tradition.
Tears of Repentance or Tears of Gratitude?
Pharisee and that she needed to have Jesus’ explicit absolution on the basis of her acts of repentance and love. What about v. bc? In a stimulating and learned study from , Walter Henss has—with reference to the work of Johann Christian Zahn in — argued that the original text of the Diatessaron had the question of Jesus in v. b in another form than in the most manuscripts: τίνα [αὐτῶν] πλεῖον ἠγάπησεν (‘Which one [of them] did he love more?’). Henss tries to demonstrate that this is the original reading and that it was influential in radical Pauline and Gnostic circles which stressed that Christ loved the ‘elect ones’ more than others. Accordingly, the canonical form is a correction of the text against the ‘elect ones’. Henss further assumes that v. bc is also a later addition which was meant to rebut such a misinterpretation. He demonstrates that behind v. c, there is a positively formulated agraphon: Cui enim plus dimittitur, plus diligit (‘For the one who is forgiven more, will love more’). This agraphon appears in some texts of the Western fathers (Irenaeus Adv. haer. ..; Origen Hom. in Ps. .; Cyprian Test. .); Henss thinks that the agraphon was added to these texts later. He finds the earliest indisputable quotation only in John Chrysostom’s Hom. in Acta Apost. : Ὧι γὰρ πλεῖον ἀwέθη, πλεῖον ἀγαπήσει. He draws the conclusion that the agraphon becomes more widely attested only around . According to him, the original text of Luke demonstrated the repentance and love of the sinful woman; v. bc is merely a secondary ecclesiastical explanation which glorifies her act of love. However, the textual basis of this theory is poor; Tjitze Baarda has convincingly demonstrated that all relevant versions of the Diatessaron read Luke . like the majority of the witnesses: τίς αὐτῶν πλεῖον ἀγαπήσει αὐτόν. In spite of the problems in his interpretation of v. , Henss draws deserved attention to the separate character of v. bc and the presence of the gnomic saying in v. c. In the light of his findings, it is possible to explain how this saying was attached to the text with the help of v. b. The addition of these sentences separates the two similar vv. a and from each other and seeks to adapt the new understanding of the story as well as possible to the parable in vv. –: the acts of love seen under the roof of the Pharisee clearly demonstrate why her many sins are declared forgiven. Once vv. b– are dropped from the original text of Luke, there is no need for complicated literary reconstructions of a pre-Lukan story. Without these verses Luke’s presentation is quite coherent. He counts the sinful woman among the tax collectors and sinners, friends of Jesus (Luke .), who have received the good news, repented and changed their lives. In the ensuing story, she becomes a W. Henss, Das Verhältnis zwischen Diatessaron, christliche Gnosis und ‘western Text’ (BZNW ; Berlin: de Gruyter, ) –. Baarda, ‘Non-canonical Version’, –.
MATTI MYLLYKOSKI
living example of such a new life. The parable of the two debtors justifies Jesus’ proclamation of forgiveness and love; the woman, who was once a sinner, loves Jesus—and God—more than does his host, the Pharisee who has not sinned nearly as much as she. This makes the Pharisee a counter-character who cannot recognize Jesus as someone who has the authority to forgive sins. Jesus says to the Pharisee what the sinful woman already knows, and the woman, with her extremely loving and grateful act, makes a confession to Jesus: he is the one who has the divine authority to forgive sins, and he includes all repentant sinners in the realm of his good news. Finally, in v. , Jesus turns to her and says what she already knows: it is not her repentance or even her love that saves her, but her faith in Jesus as the one whom God has authorized to forgive sins. In the early history of interpretation, the Lukan story was received as an important text concerning the forgiveness of sins. Irenaeus, the earliest witness to the pericope among the Church Fathers, simply quotes the beginning of the story in his survey of the Gospel of Luke. He mentions that because of the woman, Jesus ‘spoke to Simon about the two debtors’ (Adv. haer. ..). The second witness for the Lukan story supports the theory presented in this article. The exegesis of Clement of Alexandria reveals that, in the latter half of the second century, there was a strong need to use the woman in Luke .– as a model of the repentant sinner. In his spiritual and allegorical interpretation, Clement quotes the actions of the woman and the words of Jesus in v. a (ἀwέωνται αὐτῆς αἱ ἁμαρτίαι), but not vv. b– (Paed. ..). However, he presents ‘tears of repentance’ (μετανοίας δάκρυα) as the basis of forgiveness. When this woman took with her the oil—the most expensive thing she had— she had not yet received the word and was still a sinner. The author of the Gospel of Peter, ignorant of Luke .b–, has preserved the original reading here. Correspondingly, his interpretation of the story is independent of the canonical text and the later interpretation. In lines – he changes the astonished reaction of the guests in Luke . into a direct question to Jesus about his authority. The theme of forgiveness is subordinated to the disputation about …et quoniam apud Pharisaeum, recumbente eo, peccatrix mulier osculabatur pedes eius et unguebat unguento, et quaecumque propter eam dixit ad Symonem Dominus de duobus debitoribus;… Paed. ...: Ἀλλ’ ἡ μὲν γυνὴ μηδέπω τοῦ λόγου μεταλαβοῦσα — ἔτι γὰρ ἦν ἁμαρτωλός—, ὅπερ ἡγεῖτο τὸ κάλλιστον εἶναι παρ’ αὐτῇ, τὸ μύρον, τούτῳ τετίμηκε τὸν δεσπότην. Cf. also Origen Comm. in Matth. .: ἐλθοῦσα παρὰ τοὺς τοῦ Ἰησοῦ πόδας καὶ βρέχουσα αὐτοὺς τοῖς τῆς μετανοίας δάκρυσι. According to Tertullian Adv. Marc. ., the woman won her pardon by repentance, which the Creator preferred to sacrifice. The natural social exchange of Jesus with sinners as portrayed by Luke is changed by Clement into the respectful approach of a sinner who strives for her salvation. Other Fathers of the Church offer similar interpretations (Pseudo-Cyprian Ad Novatianum ; Jerome Comm. in Hos. Prol.; Ambrose Exp. In Luc. .–; see further C. Spicq, Agapé dans le Nouveau Testament: Analyse des textes I [Paris: Gabalda, ] – n. ).
Tears of Repentance or Tears of Gratitude?
divine authority. The reconstruction of Jesus’ answer in the following lines may remain impossible. In any case, the conflict with the guests leads to a situation in which Jesus sends his disciples on their mission—and to martyrdom.
. Conclusions
On the basis of the one side of P.Oxy. reconstructed by Dieter Lührmann, it was still uncertain whether this fragment could be taken as a witness for an extended gospel text. The reconstruction presented here makes a strong case for Lührmann’s conclusion: P.Oxy. is a gospel fragment and indeed a fragment of the Gospel of Peter. The sequence of the two stories, the sinful woman in the house of the Pharisee and Jesus’ discourse on sending out his disciples, belong to the plot of this Gospel, which here and there presents Peter as the I-narrator and Jesus as κύριος—even in the speech of his opponents. The sequence of the two stories reveals the specifically anti-Jewish bias known from the Akhmîm fragment. The reconstruction of the P.Oxy. recto reveals notable affinities with the Western text and confirms, like the Akhmîm fragment, that the author of the Gospel of Peter knew the four gospels through the textual tradition which we are accustomed to call the Western text. In some cases, the Western readings challenge the traditional conception of the original text of the so-called canonical Gospels. P.Oxy. offers at least one notable instance in which it is reasonable to assume that the Western text provides clues to the reconstruction of the original text of Luke. In any case, the P.Oxy. recto is the earliest material and textual witness to the text of Luke .–.
New Test. Stud. , pp. –. Printed in the United Kingdom © Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S0028688509000150
Short Study
Manuscripts Cited by Stephanus J . K. E L LI OTT Department of Theology, The University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, England email:
[email protected] Keywords: Textual Criticism, Greek manuscripts, Stephanus
The third edition of Stephanus’ Greek New Testament (ΤΗC ΚΑΙΝΗC ΔΙΑΘΗΚΗC ΑΠΑΝΤΑ: Paris, ), known as the editio regia, is held in high regard in English Protestantism. It was this text which underlay the English translation (by W. Whittingham and others) published in Geneva in that greatly influenced the Geneva Bible published three years later. In effect, Stephanus’ edition was the Textus Receptus of the Greek New Testament for over three hundred years. Stephanus’ New Testament was a handsome folio edition (⅝ × inches) and was the first to print variant readings consistently. (Later editions of Erasmus’ text had recorded a few variants in the margin.) Stephanus cites readings from fifteen manuscripts. They are identified in the inner margins with a Greek numeral (from β´ to ις´). Our normal port of call when needing to translate earlier systems of denoting manuscripts (by numbers, letters or other sigla) into the currently agreed classification known as the Gregory–Aland system is the appendix ‘Frühere Zeichnen und Nummern’ (in C. R. Gregory, Die griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments [Leipzig: Hinrichs, ] –; hereafter Gregory ), where his newly devised registration was first published. Unfortunately, there are errors in his translation of Stephanus’ sigla. (The Sigelkonkordanzen found in
Pace Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament (New York and Oxford: Oxford University, th ed. ) , which says fourteen manuscripts were cited. α´ denotes the Complutensian Polyglot, apparently printed in (i.e. before Erasmus’ edition) but published only eight years later as vol. V of the complete Polyglot. The edition was reprinted several times between and : it is not known which printing was used by Stephanus. C. R. Gregory’s earlier identifications (Prolegomena to Constantinius Tischendorf, Novum Testamentum Graece [Leipzig: Hinrichs, th ed. ] [hereafter Gregory ]), although correct, use the earlier (Wettstein-)Tischendorf numbering. Likewise, Hermann Freiherr von Soden’s translation of Stephanus’ numbers (in his Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments [Berlin: Glaue, ] ., ) is also correct but refers only to his own, distinctive numbering.
Manuscripts Cited by Stephanus
Kurt Aland, Kurzgefaßte Liste der griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments [ANTF ; Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, nd ed. ], do not refer to or convert the distinctive numbering systems found earlier than Tischendorf.) The following is a table giving the cross-references from Stephanus’ number to the equivalent Gregory-Aland number. Column is Stephanus’ Greek numeral, Table . β´
ea
D
Cambridge, University Library Nn .
γ´
e
Paris, Bibl. natl. de France gr
δ´
eap
Paris, Bibl. natl. de France gr
ε´
eap
Paris, Bibl. natl. de France gr
Ϛ´
e
Paris, Bibl. natl. de France gr
ζ´
e
Paris, Bibl. natl. de France gr
η´
e
L
Paris, Bibl. natl. de France gr
θ´
eap
(formerly e a p)
Paris, Bib. natl. de France Coislin
ι´
ap
(formerly a p)
Paris, Bibl. natl. de France gr
ια´
ap
Lost (allocated the numbers a p)
ιβ´
e
Paris, Bibl. natl. de France gr
ιγ´
ap
(formerly a p)
Cambridge, University Library Kk .
ιδ´
e
Paris, Bibl. natl. de France Supp gr fol –, –
ιε´
apr
(formerly a p r)
Paris, Bibl. natl. de France gr
ις´
r
Lost (allocated the number r)
There is some question whether ιβ´ and ιδ´ were correctly identified. Gregory , , says that e is ‘possibly’ ιβ´ and on p. that e ‘seems to be’ ιδ´. F. H. A. Scrivener, A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament (ed. Edward Miller; London: Bell, th ed. ) ., parallels Gregory’s comments (as is often the case with his comments on individual manuscripts). That identification, queried by Wettstein, is now confidently made, thanks in large measure to Scrivener, A Plain Introduction, .– n. . The agraphon about the man working on the Sabbath, found only in D , is printed in the inner margin and is signalled after Luke .. apr is ‘unbekannt’ according to Gregory , .
J. K. ELLIOTT
column the contents (using the conventions e = gospels, a = Acts and/or the Catholic Epistles, p = Pauline corpus, including Hebrews, r = Revelation), column contains the generally agreed identifications with the normal number in use today (and, where relevant, the former, Tischendorf, numbers in brackets), the final column specifies the library and its call-number reference. It will be seen that all but two of the identifiable manuscripts are in Paris. Minuscule manuscript , now in Cambridge, seems to have once belonged to Stephanus’ friend Vatablus in Paris, so an earlier link for this manuscript with Paris is explicable. In Stephanus’ day most of them had been in the Royal Library there; some were in private hands, although they too were deposited later in the National Library. It was natural for Stephanus, as the king’s printer, to celebrate Garamond’s large Greek-type with an edition of the most important Greek text and to use for it manuscripts predominantly from the Royal collection. Two manuscripts are unidentified. Stephanus claims in his prefatory Epistle to Readers that he had had access to the readings of D through collations made by ‘friends in Italy’. Our knowledge of the whereabouts of D prior to its having being deposited by Beza in Cambridge University Library is usually based on Beza’s statement in his letter of December th, to the Senate of Cambridge University accompanying the gift of the manuscript to the University, namely, that he acquired it from the Monastery of S. Irenaeus in Lyons; his supplementary note prefixed to the manuscript itself implies it had come as booty during the sack of Lyons in . Scrivener in the introduction to his edition of the manuscript (p. viii) indicates that the manuscript may well have been in Trent in and was used to demonstrate Greek support for the Vulgate reading sic eum volo at John .: D alone among Greek witnesses adds ουτως before εως. Perhaps Stephanus did indeed receive collations of D made by friends in Italy who had worked on it there on his behalf. The errors in Gregory include the following: (a)
(b)
ι´ is said on page to be ap (= Paris, Bibl. Nat., Gk A). Scrivener
makes the same identification. But see Gregory Nachtrag p. where ι´ = (= Paris, Bibl. natl. de France gr ); ιε´ (a manuscript containing a p r) is said on page to be ‘’ (i.e. e). e = Paris, Bibl. natl. de France gr . (What of course was intended was the old a [plus p and r] that became in Gregory .)
Frederick H. Scrivener, Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, ) viii. For Gregory , has ‘a p: früher a p ’. C.-B. Amphoux and Léon Vaganay, An Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University, ) claim that Stephanus’ step-father, Simon de Colines, had collated manuscript e (= Paris: Bibl. nat. de France gr ) as well as (Stephanus’ ιδ´). Scrivener, A Plain Introduction, ..
Manuscripts Cited by Stephanus
(c)
There is a problem with the manuscript numbered ζ´. As e (originally Paris Reg. ) there is no problem in the Gospels. According to Scrivener, Vansittart’s investigations had established that identification. Gregory page says that a–p, a manuscript now lost, was cited as ζ´ by Stephanus in Acts ., seven times in the Catholic Epistles and times in Paul, an identification confirmed by Mill. Gregory therefore assumes that ζ´ was used to refer to two different manuscripts: for e and the now lost a–p for a and p. (Gregory refers to ζ´ only as having formerly been a and he ignores p on pages , .) But could Stephanus have used Paris Bibl. nat. de France gr (formerly Reg. and now Gregory–Aland eapr) for sections a and p? (Scrivener says such an identification had been made, without saying by whom.) More work on Stephanus’ use of ζ´ seems therefore to be warranted.
Stephanus himself as a pioneer is, unsurprisingly perhaps, not always very accurate. ε´ is cited at Rev .; η´ at Acts . (bis); .; .; .; ι´ at Luke .; John .; ια´ at Matt ., ; .; John .; Rev .; ιγ´ at Matt .; John : (yet again!); ις´ is cited at Luke ., ; Cor .; Tim .. Scrivener, A Plain Introduction, . is particularly scathing about Stephanus’ misquoting of the Polyglot (cf. his general assessment in A Plain Introduction. . that Stephanus was negligent and capricious). However, Scrivener in his introduction to the edition of Bezae p. ix assesses that Stephanus was more accurate in his citing of Bezae (the readings from which were second-hand from his friends) than his references to the Complutensian Polyglot which he had actually consulted. Scrivener claims that out of references to D are correctly reported (including the extensive readings at, e.g., John .; Acts .; .; ., , , as well as the famous apocryphal agraphon about the man working on the Sabbath signalled after Luke .) and in addition forty other places where D is merely ‘loosely’ reported. Wettstein had already analysed many of the wrongly cited references in . Nonetheless, modern readers may find it useful to examine (with care) Stephanus’ apparatus for access to and information on the readings of the now lost manuscripts cited (a–p, r, and, perhaps a–p). In particular ις´ is worth investigating: it is cited some times mainly up to Rev .. There are comparatively fewer manuscripts of Revelation than other parts of the New Scrivener, A Plain Introduction, .–. See also the German form of the manuscript listings in C. R. Gregory, Textkritik des Neuen Testamentes (Leipzig: Hinrichs, ) Scrivener, A Plain Introduction, .– n. . J. J. Wettstein, Prolegomena ad Novi Testamenti Graeci… (Amsterdam: Wettstein and Smith, ) .–. He was particularly scathing about Beza’s editorial methods.
J. K. ELLIOTT
Testament, so this is worth adding to the evidence. Also interesting to explore is ια´, found some times with, perhaps significantly, of them in support of Latin witnesses. In addition, not all extant manuscripts used by Stephanus are to be found regularly cited in the apparatus to modern editions (e.g. , , ), so access to some of their readings, not readily or regularly available elsewhere, may be found in an edition printed four hundred and fifty years ago. One is ζ´ in the Gospels (minuscule ). As far as I can see, no modern edition cites as a separate witness. Stephanus gives it on its own at Mark .; .; Luke . (and elsewhere alongside other manuscripts). Another rarity is minuscule , seen in Vogels’ edition but not in Nestle–Aland as a separate witness; so to obtain a flavour of its distinctive readings Stephanus’ apparatus may be worth combing. θ’ is not used in Nestle although it is found in the sparse apparatus in the UBS editions and in Merk and Souter. Yet it is cited some times in Stephanus (e.g. Matt .; Luke .; .; and note its support for αγγ1λια at John .). Access to Stephanus’ variants may be had from Beza. Beza’s New Testament incorporated the Greek text of Stephanus’ fourth edition of albeit with changes; he did not repeat Stephanus’ apparatus. Beza’s annotations do, however, refer to variants and to manuscripts, identified by numbers corresponding to Stephanus’ Greek sigla. Almost all of the references are also to be found in the notes to his earlier, Latin, edition of . It is interesting to see that Beza had access not only to Stephanus’ printed text but to the collations themselves and he drew on some ignored by Stephanus himself. This source is referred to in his Preface of . Those collations (excluding Codex Bezae) had been assembled by Robert Stephanus’ son, Henri, by . Although his second edition () may give the impression that he had actually seen the manuscripts themselves, he had not in fact consulted the manuscripts. It is also interesting to observe that Beza had access to readings in D through Stephanus prior to his acquisition of the manuscript itself. Beza did not always correctly repeat Stephanus’ variants; sometimes discrepancies between Stephanus and Beza may be explained as Beza’s corrections of Stephanus, or are due to his making his own errors or to his following Stephanus’ collations rather than the different reading found in Stephanus’ printed edition. As those collations are no longer extant we cannot verify such explanations for the differences. Beza is particularly inconsistent in citing D! Sometimes he reports the reading as Stephanus’ β´, sometimes from D itself Jan Krans, Beyond What is Written: Erasmus and Beza as Conjectural Critics of the New Testament = New Testament Tools and Studies (NTTS) (Leiden: Brill, ) – n. . Appendix II to his book (pp. –) lists the manuscripts used in Stephanus’ edition. His ζ´ is shown as e a p and as Paris, Bibl. Nat. de France gr even though this is only a Gospel manuscript! Krans, Beyond What is Written, .
Manuscripts Cited by Stephanus
(which he had to hand, alongside D ), sometimes from both without always apparently recognising that these were one and the same witness. Despite Beza’s claim that he had access to up to manuscripts it is improbable that he knew more than the ones cited by Stephanus (apart from the addition of D )—the higher figures in his prefaces ( in the first, second and fourth editions; in the third; in the fifth!) may either be mere exaggeration or typographical slips.
See Krans, Beyond What is Written, –.
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volume 55 | number 3 | july 2009
NEW TESTAMENT STUDIES Articles Douglas S. Earl (Durham, England) ‘(Bethany) beyond the Jordan’: The Significance of a Johannine Motif [279–294]
Susan Docherty (Birmingham, England) The Text Form of the OT Citations in Hebrews Chapter 1 and the Implications for the Study of the Septuagint [355–365]
L. L. Welborn (New York, USA) ‘Extraction from the Mortal Site’: Badiou on the Resurrection in Paul [295–314]
Matthew Thiessen (Durham, USA) Hebrews 12.5–13, the Wilderness Period, and Israel’s Discipline [366–379]
Stephen Chester (Chicago, USA) It is No Longer I Who Live: Justification by Faith and Participation in Christ in Martin Luther’s Exegesis of Galatians [315–337]
Matti Myllykoski (Helsinki, Finland) Tears of Repentance or Tears of Gratitude? P.Oxy. 4009, the Gospel of Peter and the Western Text of Luke 7.45–49 [380–389]
George M. Wieland (Auckland, New Zealand) Roman Crete and the Letter to Titus [338–354]
Cambridge Journals Online For further information about this journal please go to the journal website at:
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Short Study J. K. Elliott (Leeds, England) Manuscripts Cited by Stephanus [390–395]
