Metamorphoses: Resurrection, Body and Transformative Practices in Early Christianity (Ekstasis)

Metamorphoses

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Ekstasis Religious Experience from Antiquity to the Middle Ages General Editor John R. Levison

Editorial Board David Aune · Jan Bremmer · John Collins · Dyan Elliott Amy Hollywood · Sarah Iles Johnston · Gabor Klaniczay Paulo Nogueira · Christopher Rowland · Elliot R. Wolfson

Volume 1

Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York

Metamorphoses Resurrection, Body and Transformative Practices in Early Christianity Edited by Turid Karlsen Seim and Jorunn Økland

Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York

앝 Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI 앪 to ensure permanence and durability.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Metamorphoses : resurrection, body, and transformative practices in early Christianity / edited by Turid Karlsen Seim and Jorunn Økland p. cm. - (Ekstasis, ISSN 1865-8792 ; v. 1) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 978-3-11-020298-4 (alk. paper) 1. Body, Human - Religious aspects - Christianity - History of doctrines - Early church, ca. 30-600. 2. Change - Religious aspects Christianity - History of doctrines - Early church, ca. 30-600. I. Seim, Turid Karlsen. II. Økland, Jorunn. BT743.M46 2009 2301.11-dc22 2008051564

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

ISBN 978-3-11-020298-4 ISSN 1865-8792 ” Copyright 2009 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in Germany Painting on the cover: “firefox” by Elliot R. Wolfson, New York City, 2007, oil on canvas, 24 * 24. Cover Design: Martin Zech, Bremen

Contents

Turid Karlsen Seim and Jorunn Økland Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Turid Karlsen Seim The Resurrected Body in Luke-Acts: The Significance of Space

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Adela Yarbro Collins Ancient Notions of Transferal and Apotheosis in Relation to the Empty Tomb Story in Mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

41

Karen L. King “In your midst as a child” – “In the form of an old man” Images of Aging and Immortality in Ancient Christianity . . . . . . . . . . .

59

Jorunn Økland Genealogies of the Self: Materiality, Personal Identity, and the Body in Paul’s Letters to the Corinthians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

83

Vigdis Songe-Møller “With What Kind of Body Will They Come?” Metamorphosis and the Concept of Change: From Platonic Thinking to Paul´s Notion of the Resurrection of the Dead

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109

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123

Outi Lehtipuu “Flesh and Blood Cannot Inherit the Kingdom of God:” The Transformation of the Flesh in the Early Christian Debates Concerning Resurrection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

147

Einar Thomassen Valentinian Ideas About Salvation as Transformation

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Troels Engberg-Pedersen Complete and Incomplete Transformation in Paul – a Philosophical Reading of Paul on Body and Spirit

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Contents

Hugo Lundhaug “These are the Symbols and Likenesses of the Resurrection”: Conceptualizations of Death and Transformation in the Treatise on the Resurrection (NHC I,4) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

187

István Czachesz Metamorphosis and Mind Cognitive Explorations of the Grotesque in Early Christian Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

207

Antti Marjanen Male Women Martyrs: The Function of Gender-Transformation Language in Early Christian Martyrdom Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Denise Kimber Buell Imagining Human Transformation in the Context of Invisible Powers: Instrumental Agency in Second-Century Treatments of Conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

249

Samuel Rubenson “As Already Translated to the Kingdom While Still in the Body” The Transformation of the Ascetic in Early Egyptian Monasticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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John J. Collins The Angelic Life

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291

Liv Ingeborg Lied Recognizing the Righteous Remnant? Resurrection, Recognition and Eschatological Reversals in 2 Baruch 47-52 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

311

Bibliography

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Indices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Index of References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Index of Modern Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Index of Subjects and Persons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

367 367 388 395

Introduction TURID KARLSEN SEIM AND JORUNN ØKLAND1 In this volume we explore how ideas and experiences of transformation were expressed in early Christianity, asking the following questions: In which ways and to which extent did the faith in an individual resurrection accommodate processes of transformation? What were the frameworks within which transformative ideas such as resurrection and also experiences of having become "a new being" were shaped? Which analogies did they refer to, and what were the parameters by which transformation was noted and actually asserted? How did taxonomic patterns, that is constructions of an ordered design of the created world, accommodate or challenge transformative movements? The focus on transformation helps connect various topics that so far have been studied separately or from the perspective of a particular discipline or selection of sources. In addressing the questions, we draw on the rich diversity of Christian and Jewish groups and beliefs and discover ever again that, even in controversy, the boundaries between them are often blurred and porous. While taking chronology into account, we hesitate to speak of development in evolutionary terms. Since the religious, philosophical and cultural environment was significant for the formation and articulation of their beliefs, we examine how they depended upon and actively exploited existing forms of thought, speech and behavior – that is how they yielded to given discourses while slowly establishing new ones. The establishment of new forms of behavior means that it was possible to connect faith in resurrection and ethical ideas and practices pertaining to a new life. What we learned is laid out in the many essays that constitute the corpus of this volume. They speak for themselves but are briefly introduced in the outline below. It is, however, necessary in this introduction to comment more comprehensively on the broader framework of metamorphosis. In addition we have to reflect on the fact that the trans-

1

Turid Karlsen Seim is professor and director of The Norwegian Institute in Rome, University of Oslo, Italy; Jorunn Økland is professor at the Centre for Gender Research, University of Oslo. while at CAS: Senior Lecturer at the Department of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield, UK.

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Introduction

formation of gender plays less of a role in this volume than one might have hoped or planned (see separate section below).

Metamorphosis and Resurrection as Reflection on the Self It has been claimed that the stories of metamorphoses of humans or deities that have been passed down to us from the ancient world represent a narrative way of getting at issues of self, personal identity, and the paradox or problem of change in human selves and shapes. Ancient philosophers addressed the same concerns in other terms and genres, and many of the contributions in this volume refer to their discussions: what remains of the past through sudden changes, or through sets of changes? How can this inconstant, changeable and material body accommodate and help one hold on to identity, continuity and eternal life? As will become clear in this volume, the same concerns and questions that were addressed in the stories of metamorphoses or in philosophical discussions over sameness, permanence and change were also addressed by the stories of resurrection. As Karen King notes in her essay, ”Christians shared the ancient conviction that fleshy bodies are subject to the same conditions of mutability and instability that applies to all matter ….bodies were constantly metamorphosing throughout people’s lives.” Richard Sorabji has analysed these ancient convictions in more detail. To the crucial question “what makes an individual the same person over a period of time?” Sorabji answers with Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle – and with the early Christians and their belief in resurrection.2 It is on the basis of such thematic resemblances that are evident to scholars even far outside the biblical field, that many contributors to this volume have chosen to consider resurrection as one form or sub-category of metamorphosis, and also as an adjustment of the concerns generating stories of metamorphoses into an emerging Christian worldview. If Christianity started with the resurrection of Christ, stirring the hope that also those who belonged to him would resurrect, it is perhaps no surprise that resurrection rather than metamorphosis more generally became the focus of the debates over change and transformation of human selves and shapes. Tales about transformation, Metamorphoses, formed a well-known genre in antiquity. Such narratives of metamorphosis told about hu-

2

Richard Sorabji, Self: Ancient and Modern Insights about Individuality, Life, and Death (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 57-78.

Metamorphosis and Resurrection as Reflection on the Self

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mans or deities who emerged as animals, plants, or differently-looking humans. Some element of their original abilities, qualities or mentalities was always retained, such as the ability to speak or reason. Best known today is the 15 volume work by Publius Ovidius Naso, written at the dawn of the first century CE. The perspective on metamorphosis presented there is that the world is constantly undergoing transformation. Individual stories in his work sample spectacular transformations that seemingly disregard the normal boundaries and order of nature, as human beings may be transformed to animals, plants or rocks. However, the stories do not represent a liebhaber’s collection of curiosities. They are to Ovid intriguing expressions of the Heraclitean principle of panta rei, the fluidity of all forms. The constant, underpinning question remains whether there is any permanence or continuity in this fluidity and if so, whether it can be traced and recognised. In most of the stories the metamorphosis implies that the bodily human form disappears, yet some personal characteristics endure and become even more obvious since so much else has changed. The transformation helps in fact make manifest a constitutive continuity. Change represents a paradox, in that it presupposes its own opposite: non-change or sameness. About 150 years later, Apuleius wrote another famous Metamorphoses, more often today called the Golden Ass (asinus aureus). It tells the story of Lucius who rather naively rubs himself with a magic ointment and is transformed into an ass even if he keeps his human mind. Notwithstanding its more entertaining qualities, Apuleius’ Metamorphoses emphasizes the polarity between Lucius’ magically induced transformation to an ass and his recovery to humanity made possible only through divine intervention. There are great differences between Ovid and Apuleius, but they are mentioned as illustrations of how tales of transformation do address significant questions about the ontological or ethical status of a certain taxonomic order. Which features carry continuity or reveal a continued presence in a different form? Are continuity and/or recognisability always important? Which are the structuring principles in such a taxonomy? Are certain taxonomic boundaries considered uninfringeable, that is: did it have absolute limits so that certain transformations were unacceptable, even unthinkable, and which categories were used as boundary-markers? Taxonomic presuppositions such as these most often remain implicit to a degree that when they become explicit one is unaware of their significance. In our context, it is further interesting to note that Ovid’s Metamorphoses was produced in the Augustan era and thus was contemporary to some of the Jewish writings mentioned in this volume, and preceded

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Introduction

many of the Christian writings under discussion by just a few decennia. One could therefore reflect on whether the more general notions of metamorphosis in this period also in a more direct way contributed to the development of resurrection as a central focus in Christian thought. The belief in resurrection provided a similar opportunity to reflect on the metamorphosis of the body and whatever was retained in the process through death and resurrection. The relationships between the narratives of metamorphosis in Ovid, Apuleius and other Graeco-Roman authors and the Christian and Jewish texts of resurrection and various forms of heavenly experience or exposure will, however, not be further explored in this volume. The essays provide close readings of the Jewish and Christian texts without taking this larger framework much into consideration and rather drawing on philosophical texts. It is, however important to highlight the larger phenomenon of metamorphosis narratives and its inherent questions because they have provided a general frame of reference for much of the reading work carried out in the essays. It is also clear that the vocabulary and conceptual repertoire of metamorphosis unlocked the texts in new ways for the contributors, so that many of the innovative qualities of the project are a direct consequence of the invocation of this repertoire. But metamorphosis and resurrection tie in with broader debates also today. The nature of the self and of identity have been much debated topics, not only in contemporary philosophy, but also in broader intellectual discussions in the late or post-modern period.3 The connection is well stated by Caroline Walker Bynum: “We are, as these odd old tales suggest, shapes with stories, always changing but also always carrying traces of what we were before. ... Indeed I would suggest that we, as we reflect on the European tradition of metamorphosis, are like another of Ovid’s transformations: Narcissus. For even if we gaze at our own reflection when we bow low over the pool of our literary past, that gazing is a mark of who we are, and who we are is, in part, what we have been. The stories of our high tradition, like our folklore, are a significant component of what we think with. Hence our self-reflexivity, our tendency to study ourselves, is a mark of the self we carry with us as we bend over the pool.”4

Bynum’s quote makes clear how the latest preoccupation with the self and identity is just another twist in a very old habit of self-reflection (in both meanings of the term), which also contributes to a further devel3 4

See e.g. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Caroline Walker Bynum, Metamorphosis and Identity (New York: Zone Books, 2001), 188-9.

Missing Gender?

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opment of our selves. But the quote also brings to the surface some of the historical discourses enclosed in the modern concepts and debates, which then can be seen as containing and continuing old tensions. It must also be acknowledged, however, that some of the aporias of previous moments of self-reflection may have been resolved along the way. The essays offered here add further detail to the image we see as we bend over the pool – perhaps also showing someone we had never imagined could be ourselves. Whose image do we see? It is clear that when the first Christians looked in the mirror, dimly, who they saw was not primarily themselves, but Christ, since their own selves in some sense had be replaced with Christ in baptism. They were “being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:18). Transformation thus can also be seen as a disciplinary and ethical programme – including transformation as designed by a hierarchical configuration of gender; martyrdom and the ascetic agon as transformation, and the idea that likeness to the angels might be attained and life in paradise rehearsed already before physical death. By Jesus’ resurrection death was rendered invisible as one always looked past and beyond it; there is indeed in most of the material a remarkable disinterest in physical death. Frequent address of christological issues is inevitable in a volume where resurrection and transformation into the image of Christ are key topics. Some of the essays revisit the relationships between the death and resurrection of Christ and the death and resurrection of all believers (one of the themes in 1 Cor 15). Others nuance the picture of the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus.

Missing Gender? A type of change that has been frequently addressed in recent scholarship on Early Christianity the last 20-30 years is gender transformation: In many Early Christian texts women are described in male terms, embodying male virtues and even going through physical changes that give them a more male appearance. Within the context of a project on metamorphosis, body and transformative practices, Early Christian notions of gender and gender-bending have a self-evident place – from the outset. Still, apart from a few exceptions, gender is less in focus in the essays presented here. And the essay that focuses the most on gender transformation concludes on a “negative” note, that the stories of women becoming male in Early Christian texts are not as widespread

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Introduction

as recent literature might suggest. Still, this does not lead us to conclude that gender was an unimportant site of transformation in Early Christianity. Several of the contributors have spent much of their time previously researching exactly that, and even had plans for continuing this vein of research as part of the project. But it became clear as the project settled, that gender transformation and gender bending have been so intensely researched in recent years that other types of human transformation are now in more urgent need of analysis and interpretation. Perhaps gender transformation needs eventually to be inserted back into the larger picture. The current volume thus represents a way of transferring some critical insights and methodological advances from the area of gender studies to the study also of other human phenomena in the ancient world. A short perusal of the bibliography should make clear the debt to feminist and other gender critical methodologies, although gender is neither a primary category of analysis nor a primary thematic focus of analysis. It should, however, be remembered that there are no stories of women making heavenly journeys, and not all believers in the resurrection believed in the resurrection of women. Some believed that women would be resurrected as men or as “genderless” beings still defined in masculine terms.

Research Process This collective volume is based on the joint work of an international research group studying Metamorphoses: Resurrection, Taxonomies and Transformative Practices at the Centre for Advanced study (CAS) at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo during the academic year 2006-2007.5 A generous grant made it possible for the group to work together over a longer period of time, and even if the composition of the group changed during the year, we maintained a collective working pattern in order for the individual contributions to be shaped by an interactive process within the group. The weekly group meetings were instrumental in this respect. Here we discussed work in progress and pondered at close hold many of the texts which are included as primary sources in this volume. First drafts of the essays in this volume were first presented at a CAS-conference in June 2007 and since revised in light of the exchange. This process of ongoing mutual response is evident from the many cross-references in the volume. It is equally evident that the project did not assume an overarching theoretical model but 5

For further information see www.cas.uio.no.

Outline of the Volume

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left each participant with the freedom to contribute from his or her own theoretical position, method and field of expertise. This did not create tensions but rather a multifaceted ongoing exchange that allowed for complexities to be appreciated, proving fruitful for the wide-ranging outcome.

Outline of the Volume I The Case of Jesus The story about the death and resurrection of Jesus is at the core of early Christian beliefs, and some will say that it is also at the beginning of it. The essays by Turid Karlsen Seim and Adela Yarbro Collins consider ideas and practices in antiquity which may have informed the narratives about Jesus’ resurrection and ascension in the gospels of Luke and Mark, whereas Karen King in her essay discusses the significance of the many stories of multiform appearances of Jesus in various stages of life. Turid Karlsen Seim studies the relationship between the resurrection and the ascension stories in Luke-Acts with a particular look to the significance of spatial movement and the qualities of Christ’s resurrected body. Before the ascension, which represents the closure of Jesus’ mission on earth, he is described in more physical terms than anywhere else in the gospels’ post-resurrection stories, because he is still on earth. The ascension story has, apart from some form-critical studies, been under-researched, probably because of a certain embarrassment felt by scholars of a scientific age which no longer believes heaven to be “up there”. Are the qualities of Jesus’ body subject to change by his move from earth to heaven? Seim answers in the affirmative and draws on other texts where the shape and quality of the resurrected body are dependent on the place where it occurs, e.g. 2 Baruch and 1 Corinthians 15. She also explores the appearances from heaven in Acts. In the narrative of Luke-Acts, spatial categories as they intertwine with temporal, are fundamental in defining and redefining bodies. Consequently, they are also fundamental in defining who belongs to this world/time and who are considered worthy of experiencing the resurrection of the dead and attaining the other world/time. Adela Yarbro Collins explores two models, which she thinks Mark had for his portrayal of the divinization of Jesus. The story of the empty

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Introduction

tomb is a Markan innovation, implying that Jesus has left the world of human beings and been transferred to the heavenly world. The first model is Elijah, whose appearance at the transfiguration of Jesus reveals that Jesus’ resurrection would be analogous to the transferal of Elijah to heaven. Both events occur by the will and power of God and nothing remains on earth from their bodies. However, Elijah does not die and is not exalted to the same degree as Jesus. The second model is the apotheosis of Roman emperors with the story of Romulus as the prototype. Several early Christian writers allude to this legend, and Arnobius uses it to support Christian beliefs about Jesus’ death and resurrection/ ascension. While seeking out similarities with the Markan account and the story of Elijah, Yarbro Collins explores the various Roman accounts of the legend as well as ideas and practices associated with the divinization of Roman emperors, which she assumes were familiar to the author and ancient audiences of Mark. Like the emperors, Jesus dies before being exalted to heaven, but whereas Jesus gained in power, they had less after death. By imitating the imperial practice of deification, Mark positions Jesus as the true divi filius vis-à-vis Rome and the emperor, challenging their claim to divinity by replacing them. In relation to texts where Jesus is portrayed as a child, an old man or as being polymorph, Karen King discusses various strategies that Christians developed for squaring the mutability of aging with the belief in the human potential for immortality with its required immutability. Attention might be shifted from the body to the condition and development of the soul; one stage in life might be seen as representing the transcendent ideal; or polymorphic visions in which the multiform appearance of Jesus at different life stages made them see beyond the metamorphoses of materiality to the unitary spiritual reality. Most attractive to King is a strategy that calls upon believers not merely to see beyond the material to the spiritual but to see the divinity in all stages and circumstances of Jesus’ life – also his childhood and his suffering and death. This enables them to cultivate their spiritual connection to God in every stage of their own life, and to see God in their fellow human beings. By cultivating the capacity to see what is spiritual already in this life of the flesh, to see past the flesh and its metamorphoses, they are able not only to face death in joy but to ignore it as a lie that Jesus rendered invisible

Outline of the Volume

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II Paul and Claiming Paul A. Paul In studies of early Christian notions of metamorphosis and resurrection, it is obvious that much space will have to be given to Paul and 1 Corinthians 15. Paul’s Corinthian correspondence and especially this chapter captured much scholarly imagination and represented a certain centripetal power in the project. No less than three essays in this volume include readings of 1 Corinthians 15, and another three essays include discussions of its later impact. Even in the other parts of the volume there are frequent references to 1 Corinthians 15 and certain other passages in 2 Corinthians, such as in Seim’s essay in part I, which bases much of its treatment of taxonomy on 1 Cor 15. The three essays dealing at some more length with 1 Corinthians 15 proper share a further feature. They are informed by broader philosophical discussions, ancient and modern, which are not directly invoked by Paul himself but still seen by the authors of the essays as useful interpretive keys to unlocking this very rich text. By using modern, materialist theories of the self, in particular Rosi Braidotti’s understanding of the self as nomadic, as something always in process, always metamorphosing into something different, Jorunn Økland interprets 1 Corinthians 15 and 2 Corinthians 12.1-7. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul emphasizes sequences but implicitly also the metamorphosis from corruptible to incorruptible, from weak to strong, from animate to pneumatic – without any soul to guarantee the continuity. The continuity is situated in Christ whose image they carry who are “in Christ”. Paul is lost for words in face of such a complete metamorphosis, yet he argues for a continuity that is not self-identical but metamorphic. Does the plant remember that it once was a seed? In 2 Corinthians 12.1-7, Økland takes at face value Paul’s claim of an actual experience and tries to understand “the alterity of his perceptions”. His dilemma in the passage is that he remembers experiencing something that he cannot properly account for, something that transgressed his previously held world-views and notions of the body. This makes the nicely ordered cosmologies of 1 Corinthians 15 collapse. Paul talks of himself as not necessarily self-identical. Only God and Christ seem to hold it together. Økland concludes that the quest for continuity is a misdirected tracing of the lost soul. Instead she follows Braidotti in speaking of an “in-between” subject or an embodied memory. Vigdis Songe-Møller takes as her point of departure the problem of change in Greek philosophy: If the visible world is a reflection of the

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Introduction

static world of ideas, how can one account for change? Parmenides concluded that change cannot really exist. Plato was obsessed with change because it could not be rationally explained, still it occurs. He situated change by invoking a place outside of place and time: it lurks between motion and rest and occurs suddenly, in a short moment. Songe-Møller introduces Paul and 1 Corinthians 15 into this debate and explores the parallels, but also the differences, between Paul’s statement that, “we will all be changed, in an instant” (15:52) and Plato’s notion of sudden change. She points out that whereas Plato tried to account for change in general by an extraordinary and inexplicable moment, Paul explained an extraordinary change, namely the resurrection, with reference to a unique moment. It is this shared notion of the radical and abrupt change, the singular and unpredictable event, that has also made philosopher Alain Badiou interested in Paul. SongeMøller includes a discussion of his interpretation of Paul with reference also to Paul’s conversion experience as narrated in the Acts of the Apostles. Reading 1 Corinthians 15 together with a range of other texts (Phil 3:2-21; 2 Cor 2:14-5:10; Rom 8:9-13) Troels Engberg-Pedersen explores the idea of complete and incomplete transformation in Paul. He finds that a full and complete cognitive transformation happened when Paul and his addressees became Christ followers and received the cognitive and material pneuma. Then follows a period of gradual, physical transformation through this life, which is where Paul and his addressees find themselves as he writes. This material transformation will be completed at the resurrection of the dead. The gradual, physical transformation has two intimately connected sides: the body of flesh and blood literally dies gradually until it shares completely Christ’s body at his death while at the same time the pneuma is already at work transforming the body. Against most interpreters, Engberg-Pedersen holds that flesh and blood will not in some sense be “shed” in such a way that it is only what remains that will be resurrected. In Paul’s body there is the concomitant and simultaneous presence of the life of Jesus (for which the pneuma is responsible) and Jesus’ death, which is seen in Paul’s mortal flesh. Also in Romans 8:10 Paul states that the Romans are in fact dead, and the pneuma is now at work in them, generating life. B. Claiming Paul The impact of 1 Corinthians 15 and other Pauline passages is traced in various ways in the essays by Outi Lehtipuu, Einar Thomassen and Hugo Lundhaug. These essays make clear that for many early Chris-

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tians, Paul was someone whose authority was not likely to be contested, regardless of the side of the debates on which one was located. The section of the book dealing with Paul and his early readers is entitled “Paul and Claiming Paul” rather than “Paul and his earliest reception history” or similar, because it becomes evident that some of the interpretations beyond receiving Paul and using Paul to think with, are also about claiming Paul and donning his authority. Including works of Irenaeus and Tertullian as well as the Gospel of Philip, Outi Lehtipuu studies the debates on the resurrection in Early Christian texts, especially how the transformation of the body was envisaged with reference to the Pauline statement “flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God” (1 Cor 15: 50). One side took this verse to mean that only the “soul” element of the human would be resurrected, the other side that the earthly body of flesh would be resurrected, in perfected form. It is the latter side, represented by Irenaeus and Tertullian, who had the harder task, and they also at times admit that Paul comes dangerously close to teaching spiritual resurrection. Their view was partly developed in opposition to those who understood the verse in more spiritual terms and who considered the verse irreconcilable with any faith in the resurrection of a body made of earthly, human flesh. Lehtipuu points out that both Paul and other early traditions of resurrection were ambiguous enough for diverging views to develop, and that the different interlocutors regarded themselves as the best Pauline interpreters. The underlying agenda concerned who could rightfully claim to be a Christian. Notions of resurrection thus functioned as a boundary marker dividing people into “us” and “them”. Einar Thomassen delineates how the soteriological process by Valentinian texts can be variously portrayed as a manifestation of the latent spiritual seed, so that when the Savior-Light appears he draws to himself those who share his fundamental nature; as a divine pedagogy, an education or maturation whereby the seed, sometimes seen to be weak, incomplete, womanish and deformed, will mature to be receptive of the Savior; or as a transformation from a state of deficiency to completeness where the language of biological generation with its multiplicity of connotations is symbolically displayed. The inconsistencies are looked at diachronically since the Valentinian texts employ images and motifs charged with a prehistory which inevitably has left layers of meaning. Thomassen also explores “the logical architecture” of the Valentinian system, its groundwork being a dynamic monistic ontology using the notions of extension and contraction deriving from the roots as NeoPlatonism in Late Hellenistic monistic Neopythagoreanism. Finally, he

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Introduction

reflects on the puzzle inherent in the very concept of transformation: one desires to be saved as oneself and at the same time as something other than what one is here and now. The Valentinian material shows some of the contradictory ways this dilemma is dealt with in a system where oneness is the supreme value but duality refuses to be eliminated. By examining “metaphorical blends” in the Treatise on the Resurrection, Hugo Lundhaug explores how they shape as well the rhetorical exposition as the doctrinal understanding of resurrection, in close interplay with Scriptural exegesis (primarily Pauline texts – 1 Cor 15:44, 2 Cor 4:16-5:4, Rom 7:22-23). Resurrection is strongly affirmed but in a manner that speaks of two different kinds of flesh and also two different kinds of bodies, one that dies and one that lives on. It represents the uncovering of an internal, invisible body within the outer visible body which is destined to die. The uncovering seems to take place when, in the resurrection, the spiritual swallows the psychic and fleshly person. Resurrection involves an ascension in connection with which the inner members, “thought” and “mind”, will receive new flesh of a different kind. The conceptual blend of resurrection, birth and death facilitate an original interpretation of the much debated metaphor of old age as “a χόριον of the body”. The material body and life provide the place and time needed for a pregnancy to develop towards the birth of the new and superior resurrection body immediately upon the death. Resurrection may be acquired also before death, by practicing an ascetic life, and perhaps also by way of a necessary initial reception through a (baptismal) ritual involving dying, resurrecting and putting on Christ.

III. Formation and Transformation of Selves The last section in the volume deals more thematically with issues of formation and different forms of rituals and practices that in various ways are defined by transformative categories. István Czachesz focuses on grotesque stories of inter-species metamorphosis, bodies without clear boundaries and bodies that behave in unexpected ways. The grotesque is preoccupied with bodily boundaries and limits, and how these are negotiated, blurred and exceeded e.g. through metamorphosis between basic categories such as human, animal, plant, artifact and natural object. The most common forms of metamorphosis are between human and animal or deity and animal. Human characteristics such as the ability to speak are retained, which may reflect that texts are written to humans who see themselves as the

Outline of the Volume

13

centre of the universe. Still an ability to speak violates basic expectations about animals. In order to understand why the grotesque was seen as an effective and clearly favored persuasive tool by Early Christian authors, Czachesz draws on cognitive theory in establishing a taxonomy of the grotesque. Appealing to innate perceptions of fundamental differences between human, animal, plant, artifact and natural object, and also activating fundamental feelings of fear and disgust, the mind more easily grasps and remembers grotesque images because they violate expectations and create feelings of disgust or empathy. Since they are more easily remembered, they are also strong persuasive tools. Antti Marjanen shows how gender transformation already early on was a symptom of spiritual advancement in Christian circles, but became increasingly more important as seen in the Christian martyrdom accounts. In these accounts feminine gendered language is used to represent weakness, irrationality, passivity, and spiritual inferiority. Marjanen notes that the examples of full transformation of women into men are very few. Instead, he finds numerous accounts of women martyrs, who overstep ordinary gender roles and assume masculine qualities. This applies above all to women gladiators, athletes and soldiers, but also women martyrs who advocate the Christian truth by rhetorical means behave in a masculine way. Even if some feminine qualities were useful in a martyr situation, like endurance and patience, there was never a question of men incorporating these qualities and thus crossing the gender boundary in the opposite direction. In the end, Marjanen wonders if the emphasis on masculine qualities in the women martyrs was not only a symptom of their spiritual perfection, but also due to the fact that such qualities (e.g. firmness and force) were actually required in the situation. Denise K. Buell focuses especially on inter-species metamorphosis, i.e. transformation that challenges the boundary between human and divine. But first she asks what sense it makes to speak about transformation, including conversion, within anthropological paradigms where the human person is not an independent, autonomous and selfidentical individual as modern notions of the self assume, but a site of contestation for various external powers, demonic or divine. Buell analyses this complex field, particularly the various metaphors, using Mary Keller’s notion of “instrumental agency”. Tatian and Clement of Alexandria describe the human as a living and moving statue in which the numinous power dwells. For the Christian person, pneuma and logos are the transformative substance and force that have entered into the person and changes it from within. These views also translate into ethi-

14

Introduction

cal practices. First, the human ought to be trained to be the perfect instrument for the divine. Second, since the body’s orifices and their associated senses were particularly vulnerable to attack, these were sites of particularly intense regulation. Third, since some transformation was indeed possible, acting as a divine instrument also meant attracting divine power which in turn could lead some Christians to transform across a species boundary – from human to divine. Samuel Rubenson introduces the letters of Ammonas from midfourth century Egypt and explores how they speak about bodily experiences of transformation and heavenly realities. Comparing them with the better known letters of Antony, he questions the assumed polarization between a mystical and a philosophical tradition in early Egyptian monasticism. In the letters of Ammonas there is no reference to resurrection of the body nor is there any indication of an ontological dualism between flesh and spirit. Ideas of spiritual growth and of bodily experiences of heavenly and divine realities are predominant, including a gradual transformation of “the body of corruption”. The recipients are encouraged to strive for such experiences, which are seen as constant facts being described primarily in sensual terms. By means of divine power the ascetic labor becomes easy, marked by freedom, joy, sweetness and rest. It entails revelations and knowledge of secrets set in heaven but the content of these are not communicated in writing but only in personal encounters. The transformation of the ascetic takes place in the body and transforms it. Although they foresee a future and final and spatial translation to heaven, everything it signifies is already within reach in the present: the heaven is open and the true light visible; both the spatial and the temporal divide between the divine and the human sphere are transcended. John J. Collins analyses early attestations of ideas of exaltation in Jewish writings, noting that they cannot be categorized in terms of the binary contrast of resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul. Nor is it clear whether they imply a resurrected body of flesh and blood; they refer to the elevated righteous luminous beings, donning a garment of glory. The main part of his contribution deals with the Dead Sea Scrolls. Here fellowship with the angels is constitutive of the sectarian, male celibate community, whose members apparently claim some measure of transformation as a present reality. In the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice the community somehow sees itself as joining the angels in worshipping God without spatially ascending to heaven, but perhaps through repetitive, hypnotic recital. Also the Hodayot speak of the being in communion with angels, including themes of purification and communication of knowledge. While Collins acknowledges that the

Mapping Convergences

15

hymns retain a strong sense of the flesh-bound state of humanity, he also observes that the idea of communion with the heavenly host means that they regarded themselves as transformed to a considerable degree. There is a remarkable lack of any reflection on death as a problem and no unambiguous references to resurrection. The emphasis is on continuity between life with the angels in the present and its fuller realization in the future. This foretaste was sufficient powerful for mortality to be rendered insignificant. Liv Ingeborg Lied reinterprets the meaning and function of the recognition motif in 2 Baruch 47-52. She traces three periods in God’ revelation of history in this text: the first is the perverted period of wicked reign in the corruptible world; the second is the process of change towards eschatological reversal of power in favor of the righteous who are also “those who know”. This includes a day of judgment when all will be recognizable in order to be judged – both the living and the resurrected dead will appear unchanged. Lied contests that the text speaks about recognition of the resurrected as a form of identification of the persons they once were (i.e. before they died). Baruch deals with opposing groups: the wicked versus the righteous – and they are recognized in virtue of which group they belong to. The righteous must be recognized so that righteousness will be victorious in the end, in contrast to the wickedness and unfairness of the present world. After the judgment there will be further, but separate processes of transformation for the righteous and the wicked: the righteous to further heavenly splendor and beauty, whereas the wicked will perish with the corruptible world. In the third period (51:7-16) the elevation and transformation of the righteous continues as they enter heavenly world.

Mapping Convergences When the results of the manifold contributions in this volume are difficult to summarize, this is no coincidence. Not only do the contributions cover a variety of sources and contexts from a period of several hundred years. Even more important is the shared conviction that, as established borderlines have become blurred, early Christianity and Judaism in a Greco-Roman context can no longer be interpreted in harmonizing and evolutionary terms. In exploring how an inconstant and changeable body is able not just to hold on to, but even develop or gain identity by being transformed, these contributions have cracked open the solidity of long established views. The contributions show that though the term metamorphosis is not used at all in many writings, the per-

16

Introduction

spective of metamorphic change was instrumental in readdressing the early Christian faith in resurrection and eternal life. One all-important location or event of transformation according to early Christians and also many Jewish groups was a future resurrection of the dead, be it universal or not. In a Christian context, the belief in Jesus’ death and resurrection further shaped and determined such ideas and served as a primary identity marker. Also the fact that the resurrected Jesus was no longer to be seen in earthly circumstances had to be accommodated. In Part 1 the resurrection/ascension stories in the gospels of Mark and Luke, even if read through very different lenses, converge in illuminating the significance of spatial movement and a transposition from earth to heaven as an ultimate transformative moment. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead was regarded as both unique and prototypical. The prototypical or paradigmatic implication was programmatically developed in various ways. It was perceived in sacramental terms and/or it might be ritually performed and experienced in a communal space set aside for the purpose of worship – shared with the heavenly host. It was translated into ethical practices and further developed into an ascetic discipline bringing about transformation through a gradual spiritual growth into the likeness and perfection of Christ – often expressed in sensual terms. The line of death lost its impact and became porous, and the bodily mutability or transformation caused by the course of time was superseded by an indifference to the physical body as Christians gazed beyond it to the ultimate transformation into glorious light and into a state of timelessness. The religious community provided the home for processes of transformation, and in Christian communities structures were established for promoting and accommodating the cultivation of spiritual discernment and growth. Members were enabled to move beyond the confinements of the constant transformations of the flesh and become perfect instruments for the divine. The belief in the resurrection of all Christians did not start with the written narratives of the resurrection of Jesus but with Paul’s transformation of the discourse on human continuity and change into a discourse on death, resurrection, and salvation. 1 Corinthians 15 has been immensely influential in the history of Christianity, and this volume brings more clearly to light just how important the chapter became as point of departure for further reflection on bodily change and resurrection. The centripetal pull of the chapter also illuminates how and why the pre-existing Greco-Roman discourse on metamorphosis was for a while completely absorbed into the early Christian discourse on the

Mapping Convergences

17

resurrection of all believers, where contributions were often presented as interpretations of 1 Corinthians 15. Further, the essays dealing directly with the Pauline text also uncover how the key texts in 1 and 2 Corinthians share an extended interface with the broader Greco-Roman philosophical and literary discussions of continuity, change and metamorphosis. The Pauline texts in question contain the generative questions and constitutive elements behind those broader discussions. But Paul reassembled the pieces in a strikingly different way, which is why the shared interface has not yet been sufficiently recognized. The necessary focal point for Paul which allowed him to reassemble and restructure the Greco-Roman discourses on human continuity and change was Christ’s death and resurrection, which were seen to carry paradigmatic significance. Still, in Paul’s own texts “in Christ” is a rather open term compared to what it became later. In the essays presenting us with glimpses of the afterlife of Paul’s texts in various groups of early Christianity, it becomes clear how central the Corinthian correspondence was in the early Christian discussions of resurrection and salvation. Since Paul set the agenda early on, he quickly reached authoritative status. This means that in the disputes that followed, all sides had to persuasively argue how Paul fitted best with their perspective, they all had to claim Paul as their own. Part 2 further demonstrates how the notion of resurrection made already urgent questions of the body and of the human self even more acute. One could therefore conclude that rather than seeing early Christianity as a movement that disparaged or rejected the body, it was a movement preoccupied with the body, its meanings, possibilities and limitations. Transformation was seen to take place in the body as well as transforming the body. In Part 3, which deals mainly with post-canonical literature, metamorphosis in the traditional, pre-Christian sense returns. This is a curious return given what was said above about the absorption of this discourse on continuity, change and metamorphosis into Paul’s discourse on death and resurrection. The explanation is perhaps exactly Paul’s reluctance to describe the new and unknown in any detail. What does it mean to be “in Christ,” what words did he hear in heaven? Paul describes several movements from known to unknown forms, and he comes close to being apophatic about it. His texts thus become a new episode in the discourse on metamorphosis, in that “from known form to known form” becomes “from known form to unknown form.” However, the unknown is hermeneutically very difficult to relate to, the unknown has to turn into something known. So later early Christian

18

Introduction

authors in some sense had no choice but to try to fill in the picture. Many later texts carrying the name of Paul expands on 2 Corinthians 12 and intimates what he really saw and heard in heaven, even if Paul in that text insists that it is forbidden for humans to utter the unspeakable words he heard. This is also the period in which stories of transitions into other existing forms return, i.e. the classical metamorphosis narratives as we know them from pagan literature. Animals and interspecies transformation return, well-known forms again transform into other wellknown forms. Thus, such transformation was still seen as conceivable at some level. Multiformity might illustrate several related themes: God’s greatness, the multiformity of ways in which God may appear, and ultimately the need to transcend appearances by cultivating inner spiritual wisdom. The spatial and temporal divide is transcended through a foretaste powerful enough for mortality to be rendered insignificant and for resurrection and heavenly translation to be regarded as completion.

The Resurrected Body in Luke-Acts: The Significance of Space The Resurrected Body in Luke-Acts TURID KARLSEN SEIM1 Überschrift 2: für Kpitel ohne Ü2 wird hier Ü1 Kurzform wiederholt In a speech to an audience of Jews in Pisidian Antioch, Luke has Paul with reference to LXX Psalm15:10 contrast David and Jesus as follows: For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, died, was laid beside his ancestors and experienced corruption; but he whom God raised up experienced no corruption (διαφθοράν) (Acts 13:36).2

Paul’s speech echoes the longer inaugural exposé by Peter at Pentecost, in Acts 2:24-31. Here Peter states that Jesus was crucified and killed, but God raised him up – that is freed him from the pangs of death3 because death could not hold him in its power. This is presented as a fulfillment of LXX Psalm 15:8-10. Since David, to whom the psalm is ascribed, died and was buried in a grave they still know, he cannot be the one intended by the promise of the psalm. Rather David spoke prophetically of the incorruptibility/resurrection of his messianic descendant who by the witness Peter is identified as “this Jesus” whom God raised up. Jesus was not left to Hades nor did his flesh see corruption – or as some versions to v. 31 interestingly say balancing σάρξ with ψυχή: his soul was not left to Hades and his flesh did not see decay.4 This is language signifying a complete immortality: Jesus, flesh and soul alike, is regarded as imperishable. The accounts related to Jesus’ body and tomb in Luke 24 may seem to affirm this corporeal incorruptibility. When the women arrive in the _____________ 1 2 3 4

Turid Karlsen Seim is professor and director of The Norwegian Institute in Rome, University of Oslo, Italy. If nothing else is mentioned, the translations are from NRSV Codex Cantabrigiensis together with several early translations read “the pangs of Hades”. There is, however, no reason to assume this as the primary reading. It is rather a matter of further precision making clear that whereas σάρξ may decay, ψυχή does not decay but may go to Hades. Concerning the idea of incorruptibility and not being left in the Netherworld (Hades or Sheol) see the article of John J. Collins in this volume, where he claims that “the idea of an incorruptible “body” that is not flesh and blood is (…) in fact more typically Hellenistic than the Platonic idea of immortality”.

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tomb where they had seen Jesus’ dead body been laid, they enter but, contrary to their expectations, they do not find it and the dazzling messengers ask them why they look for “the living among the dead”. Jesus is not dead, he has commended his spirit into God’s hands (Luke 23:49) and he is not among the dead but among the living. Jesus’ dead body was wrapped in linen cloth and laid in a previously unused tomb (Luke 23:53) but according to the Lukan narrative his body was never anointed for burial. There is no symbolic anointing beforehand as in the gospels of Mark, Matthew and John.5 When the women who had been with him from Galilee, at early dawn on the first day of the week go to the tomb with ointments and spices they had brought for his body, their preparations are to no avail since his body is not there. The living is not among the dead. God freed him from the pangs of death and did not leave him to experience corruption. Jesus’ physical body is resurrected; this is the narrative about how it was not left to perish but returned to the land of the living. Accordingly, the narratives that follow, about how the risen Jesus appears to his disciples in earthly circumstances, seem to emphasise the incorrupt physicality of his resurrected body. He may seem to arrive from nowhere and vanish suddenly but there are no markers clearly invoking that his appearances should be perceived as epiphanies. He still appears as the Jesus they knew, present among them on earth. His first appearance to the whole group of disciples in Luke 24:3643, deals with the implied ambiguities. It happens suddenly while the disciples talk together digesting the stories they have heard about more exclusive showings:6 While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you’. They were startled and terrified, because they thought that they were seeing a ghost (πνεῦμα). But he said to them, ‘Why are you frightened and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have’. And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were still disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence. Then he said to them, These are the words that I spoke to you while I was still with you…

_____________ 5 6

Mark 14:3-9 par. In the Lukan story about an anointing of Jesus by a sinful woman (Lk 7:36-50) there is no indication that this is a preparation for his burial. As for the narrative and theological strategy in Luke 24, see T.K. Seim "Conflicting Voices, Irony and Reiteration: An Exploration of the Narrational Structure of Luke 24.1-35 and Its Theological Implications" in Fair Play: Diversity and Conflicts in Early Christianity (eds. I. Underberg, C. Tuckett, and K. Syreeni. Leiden: Brill, 2002) 151-64.

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In this episode divine blindfolding is not a feature; the disciples are not kept from recognizing Jesus as were the two on their way to Emmaus. They are, however, terrified since they take him for a πνεῦμα. The manuscript D clarifies this by introducing the term φαντάσμα “ghost”, which is a possible meaning also of πνεῦμα. The term πνεῦμα appears to be used about those who have passed away. In Hebrews 12:23 they are the righteous in heaven, but in 1 Pet 3:19 it most likely refers to those who are kept incarcerated in Hades.7 The disciples fear that Jesus is a spirit on walkabout from Hades, and one point of the story may in fact be to counter such interpretations of the resurrection. Its emphatic enlisting of solid physical evidence is notable. He is the same Jesus as they once knew him. Not only is Jesus visibly recognisable, being flesh and bone he may also be touched and, having his bodily functions intact, he also eats. In no other appearance story does Jesus actually eat. Even when there is a meal involved, such as in the Emmaus episode (Luke 24:30) and also in John 21:12-14, the resurrected Jesus takes it upon himself to act as host but does not appear to partake of the food. In Luke 24:41-43 this pattern is remarkably reversed; the disciples feed Jesus and in their presence he eats the food they have prepared.8 This proves that he is neither a ghost nor an angel, since the belief that angels do not eat ordinary earthly food was axiomatic in Judaism from at least the second century BC. 9 There is also a bridging reminder to his presence among them in the past in the reference to the word he had spoken while he was still with them (24:44). He is saying nothing that they not already had been told. The way in which this is being expressed, however, is slightly _____________ 7

8

9

In the much discussed 1 Peter 3:19 the idea, which only just surfaces in the context of encouraging good deeds despite suffering, seems to be that only spirits have access to this place of incarceration after death. It says that Christ was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in/by which he went and proclaimed to the imprisoned spirits. Some claim that the imprisoned spirits refer to a particular group, but there is no agreement as to whether these are the generation of Noah, cf. v. 20, or the fallen angels of Gen 6:1-6., or indeed all deceased. Whereas an eucharistic reference may be seen in the breaking of the bread at Emmaus in Luke 24:30, A.Lieber “Jewish and Christian Heavenly Meal Traditions.” in Paradise Now. Essays on Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism (ed. A. D.DeConick; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006) 313-36. is to my mind mistaken in claiming that “these eating episodes cannot be separated from the Eucharistic meal” (p.331), and exploiting the stories extensively as a mystical meal where God is being seen and the esoteric, hidden level of scripture revealed. See D.Goodman, “Do Angels Eat?” JJS 37 (1986) 160-175. Cf. also Acts 23:6-8 where the narrator informs the reader that the Sadducees deny the existence of both angels and spirits not as such but as “modes of resurrection”, cf. K. P. Sullivan, Wrestling With Angels. A Study of the Relationship between Angels and Humans in Ancient Jewish Literature and the New Testament (Leiden: Brill, 2004) 135.

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odd, indicating the difficulties involved in affirming his presence as he speaks as well as the difference of this presence to what it was like before his death and resurrection, when he was still with them. In Acts 1 this difficulty is resolved as his post-resurrection presence is prolonged so that his teaching is resumed for a period of forty days. The purpose of his post-resurrection appearance among them is in each case to reestablish the community of his disciples. It has been suggested that Jesus in 24:39-41 shows them his feet and hands to display the stigmata so that the disciples can recognise him by the marks of his crucified body. The resurrected Lord is indeed the crucified Jesus of Nazareth. Whereas this is an explicit motif in a similar scene in the Gospel of John (John 20:25-29),10 it is significantly absent in Luke. Here the hands and feet apparently are the bodily parts that are most easily available to be touched when it comes to probe and prove that the substance of this resurrected body of Jesus is flesh and bone. Does the slightly ambiguous emphasis on recognition in this episode imply that the resurrected Jesus is not necessarily recognisable in his resurrected appearance? Many interpreters have taken the feature that the two disciples on their way to Emmaus, in Luke’s first account of a post-resurrection appearance, do not realize that their unknown companion is Jesus, to indicate that his appearance had been changed. However, in the Emmaus story the disciples’ eyes are deliberately being kept from recognising him. The imposed blindness of the two disciples is an important device of suspension, and it lasts until the moment of revealed recognition when the, to them hitherto unknown, traveler breaks the bread at supper.11 Since the blindness in this case is imposed, the Emmaus story does not undermine the fact that the resurrected Christ is recognisable as the Jesus the disciples knew. Corporeal continuity seems to prevail; the resurrected Jesus is indeed still in the flesh – which has not seen decay. According to Luke the resurrected Jesus appeared to his disciples during a limited period until he withdrew from them and was taken up to heaven. The closure of Jesus’ earthly mission is not his resurrection but his departure by ascension. His earthly existence is prolonged beyond death and grave as he is again with his disciples, reestablishing community. However, his presence among his disciples in this physical form comes to an end after which they no longer see him. _____________ 10

11

The episode with “the doubting Thomas” appears to assume wounds or marks corresponding to those inflicted on Jesus’ body at the crucifixion – with an emphasis on the pierced side which in John has a particular symbolic significance. See Seim, “Conflicting Voices”, 160–62.

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In Luke this radical change is narratively explained by a transfer of Jesus from earth to heaven employing a spatial cosmology. In an article on the hermeneutical challenge which Luke’s ascension narrative pose, James Dunn notes that the ascension has provoked surprisingly little interest, be it in treatments of the life of Jesus or in Christology, or even in treatments of Christian doctrine.12 Dunn’s explanation of this lackadaisical attitude is that the spatial movement depicted in the episode, is at best puzzling and more likely embarrassing for an age which no longer conceives of heaven “up there”. Even if this to Dunn means that the tradition should be pursued in search of a reconstructed factual event behind the narrative,13 his diagnosis may well be right. Meaning and truth claims are to the so-called modern mind often intimately attached to a kind of scientific or empirical factuality which pre-modern presentations cannot possibly meet. Since a pre-modern cosmology no longer is regarded as scientifically sustainable, Christian theology has tended to submit and take refuge to the future as the last unknown. The temporal, eschatological perspective has therefore become all-predominant and mythological stories about spatial mobility between heaven and earth are left behind. It is, however, important not to oversimplify or misinterpret the spatial approach in crude literal term; a spatial approach may also apply to a mental, symbolic map.14 Lately the restoration of mythology and a renewed interest in early Jewish and Christian mysticism and angelogy have to some degree changed the situation described above, as has continued form-critical work on the various types of ascension stories. In this article the focus is more limited on the narratives of Jesus’ post-resurrection appear-

_____________ 12

13

14

“The Ascension of Jesus: A Test Case for Hermeneutics” in Auferstehung – Resurrection: The Fourth Durham-Tübingen Research Symposium: Resurrection, Transfiguration and Exaltation in Old Testament, Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity. (Eds. F.Avemarie and H.Lichtenberger. WUNT 135; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001) 301322. In her Harvard 2006 Dissertation, “Lifted Up From the Earth: The Ascension of Jesus and the Heavenly Ascents of Early Christians,” 43-44, kindly made available to me, Catherine Playoust critically examines and dismisses such historical reconstructions. Also Playoust, “Lifted Up,” 2-15, discusses the embarrassing nature of the doctrine of the ascension for those exposed to Western science and philosophy and the various strategies involved in alleviating the uneasiness. She makes clear that by adopting a spatial understanding of what heaven meant in antiquity she sees herself as parting from those who presume “that language about heavens was frequently used by ancient authors as a metaphor about something else” (p. 8). I think, however, that she here draws to sharp a distinction.

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ances and ascension in Luke-Acts in order analytically to trace the significance of space in relation to resurrected body.15 The ascension story represents material peculiar to Luke, and it is used twice in remarkably different versions (Lk 24:50-51 and Acts 1:911). However, there is every reason to believe that the two versions are meant to refer to the same once-only event. In neither version is there any description or mention of the passage to heaven itself; the ascension is not portrayed as a travel and there is no hint of a conquest of cosmos as Christ travels through the many spheres. The version in the Gospel is primarily a closing act. It is marked by terms of closure; and its perspective is that of the disciples: Jesus is taken out of their sight. He is no longer visible and touchable in their midst and he never again appears on earth in the form of flesh and bone. There is no reassurance of everlasting ubiquity, no promise that Jesus himself will be with them always and everywhere as it happens in the concluding great commission in Matthew 28:16-20.16 Indeed, Jesus no longer has his place on earth; he has been shifted to heaven and he has left them behind. However, in his place the disciples will receive the Holy Spirit that he pours out from on high. The Spirit empowers and guides them, indeed becomes the divine presence on earth and in history as the course of events continues to develop through a constantly on-going process of promise and fulfilment. In fact, Jesus had to move to the heavenly space in order for the Holy Spirit to come upon them (Acts 2:33). The first version of the ascension of Jesus in Luke 24:50-51 seems to follow upon the appearances of the resurrected Jesus within the very same day and it is marked by brevity. The explicit mention that “he was carried up into heaven” is missing in some manuscripts,17 but the sense of departure is unmistakable as is also the element of divinization as they worship him. It brings the narrative of Jesus’ earthly life to an end. The second version, in Acts 1:9-11 is the opening story of Luke’s second volume. It serves together with the preface as a rehearsal of or _____________ 15

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M.C.Parsons, The Departure of Jesus in Luke-Acts. The Ascension Narratives in Context. (JSNTSup 21; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1987) raises the same question, but his approach is more specifically designed by a particular literary, narrative method. The concluding scene of the Gospel of Matthew is therefore strictly speaking not, as often assumed, a departure scene nor does it tantamount to an ascension. Even if the post-resurrection appearances do cease, the story of the life of Jesus is in Matthew left open and transparent due to his ever-presence with them. Correspondingly, there is no promise of the spirit being sent in his absence. Codex Sinaiticus prior to scribal corrections, D and it. For further assessment see Playoust, “Lifted Up,” 48 n.13.

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rather a bridge to the Gospel.18 However, it represents a far more explicit and elaborate story than the one first told, and the ascension is no longer assumed to take place on the very same day as the appearances but only after a period of forty days during which Jesus is “giving instructions through the holy spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen”. This emphasis on the election and instruction of the apostles prepares for the exclusive role of the apostolic collegium in relation to the restoration of the people of God in the first part of Acts.19 Differently from the earlier gospel version of Jesus’ ascent, the more detailed second version exhibits according to Gerhard Lohfink the vocabulary and narrative features characteristic of the Gattung “rapture story” (Entrückung):20 it concludes a person’s time on earth, it is witnessed on earth and narrated from the perspective of these witnesses. In contrast to heavenly journeys where the traveler is bound to return in order to communicate what he has seen or learned, a rapture story assumes that the traveler remains in heaven. It also differs from the category of assumption in that it involves the whole person, soul and body – no trace is left on earth. It is not just a mystical experience of exaltation or the elevation of the soul after death. A further prominent feature of “rapture“ is that there is no death experience; it represents a promotion to immortality and deification. In the Greco-Roman tradition “rapture” seems to have collapsed into a literary convention with which Luke most likely has been familiar as several motifs in his accounts reveal: the cloud, the mountain, the _____________ 18

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While not underestimating the divergences between the two volumes, I remain convinced that they are written by the same author but that the second volume did not follow immediately and may not have been planned or even foreseen when the first was written. M. C. Parsons explains the seemingly intolerable temporal difference between the two stories in functional, contextual terms, Departure of Jesus, 194-95. For further elaboration of the role of the apostles see T.K. Seim, The Double Message. Patterns of Gender in Luke-Acts (Edinburgh/Nashville: T&T Clark/Abingdon Press, 1994), 160-62. Playoust, “Lifted Up,” 48 persuasively counters those who take this Lukan development of the story in Acts to prove that a separate, visible, witnessed ascension as a separate thread from the resurrection/exaltation is a Lukan innovation on which later tradition depends. In fact, “Acts seems to have taken most of the secondcentury to become widespread and influential” and the first source to refer to a forty-day duration is Tertullian (Apol.21). Die Himmelfahrt Jesu. Untersuchungen zu den Himmelfahrts- und Erhöhungstexten bei Lukas (StANT 26; München: Kösel, 1971). Lohfink also claims that Luke was the first to translate and visualize the kerygma of Jesus exaltation into a rapture story. However, by examining several ascension-related texts from the late first to mid-second century AD, Playoust, “Lifted Up,” 47-69, succeeds in demonstrating that exaltation traditions during this period were developed into ascension traditions multiple times without any apparent dependence on Acts 1.

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visibility of the event as attested to by eyewitnesses, their joy and their worship. Arie W. Zwiep critically expands Lohfink’s use of primarily Greco-Roman sources and claims that even though the rapture category in early Judaism had become somewhat suspect, it was not uncommon towards the end of the first century.21 It developed according to a fixed pattern, which may be recognized in the Lukan account - especially the version found in Acts. It includes an advance announcement of what will happen, an instruction often lasting for forty days of those who stay behind to ensure that the teaching will not perish; the terms ἀνάλημψις and ἀναλαμβάνομαι to describe the event, and a set terminus ad quem of the raptured person’s preservation in heaven and his return for an envisaged role in the eschatological drama. It is important for Zwiep not only to distinguish between the ascension stories and what he calls “exaltation imagery” but to set them sharply apart. The lack in the ascension stories of any reference first and foremost to Psalm 110:1 but also to Daniel 7:13-14 and Psalm 68:19, which speak of exaltation, makes Zwiep insist that Luke has not intended any connection to be made between Acts 1:9ff and 2:32-36, since here Peter in his speech refers to Psalm 110:1 and uses the language not of ascension but of exaltation. In a narrative perspective Zwiep’s assumption is insupportable, and it is possible only because he entertains a sharp division between redaction and tradition and argues on strictly form-critical grounds: The exaltation of Jesus to the right hand of God which Peter refers to in Acts 2:32-36, does not belong to the rapture type of ascension but is rather a heavenly journey. It stems from tradition and is therefore not truly Lukan. But why does Luke have Peter make such a point of it? Theologically, Zwiep claims that the event to which Peter refers, is not the ascension but the resurrection, and the ascension is nothing but the last post-resurrection appearance of Jesus. Luke reserves Psalm 110 exclusively for the interpretation of the Easter event to mark resurrection as exaltation.22 Zwiep quotes with sympathy Klaus Berger’s phrase “Auferstehung in den Himmel hinein” and shares the understanding that the appearances of the resurrected Jesus in Luke 24 are manifestations from heaven of the already exalted

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22

Arie W. Zwiep, The Ascension of the Messiah in Lukan Christology. (NT S 87; Leiden: Brill, 1997). This monograph has to some part been condensed in the article “Assumptus est in caelum. Rapture and Heavenly Exaltation in Early Judaism and Luke-Acts” in Auferstehung – Resurrection, (Eds. F. Avemarie and H. Lichtenberger. WUNT 135; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001) 323-50. The dating of some of the sources on which he draws may be debatable. Ascension of the Messiah, 110.

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Lord.23 He comes and goes from above but only during a period of forty days when an exclusive, apostolic instruction takes place (Acts 1:2-8). According to Zwiep, this is how Luke safeguards the authenticity of the Christian kerygma over against Gnostic exploitations of the post-resurrection period of teaching.24 The appearance stories and the ascension in the Gospel of Luke are subsumed into the version in Acts 1 which is to be regarded as the theologically overruling or more fully accomplished story. The post-resurrection appearance stories display, according to Zwiep, the appearance of a heavenly being in a human mode of being – to be form-critically distinguished from more spectacular manifestations of the heavenly world. In some odd asides, Zwiep also indicates that even if those who are raptured to heaven in the Jewish and Christian stories were not deified, they had to undergo the necessary physical transformation to fit the heavenly conditions, and moreover that the ascension puts Jesus “on a heavenly sidetrack, waiting for his glorious comeback at the parousia”.25 The heavenly, possibly transformed Jesus is temporarily up there on a sidetrack until he again is called upon to be part of earthly (?) eschatological events. In this way Zwiep is able not just to combine a spatial perspective with a temporal but to subsume it into an overruling temporal scheme as simply a digression. Whereas the ancient texts move freely within a spatially shaped cosmology as well as mythically conceived sequential narratives in ways that make spatial and temporal categories interact, modern interpreters tend to focus on the temporal, in this case eschatological, dimensions and the temporal categories serve to overrule the spatial categories. This is not to say that Luke does not expect a return at the end of time of Jesus as the Son of Man. It is also clear that Luke, differently from the promise of the ubiquity of the almighty in the concluding scene in the Gospel of Matthew, sees Jesus as having departed and from above fulfilling the promise that the Holy Spirit be poured out.26 _____________ 23

24 25 26

Ascension of the Messiah, 159-63, drawing on J.E. Alsup, The Post-Resurrection Appearance Stories of the Gospel Tradition. A History-of-tradition Analysis with Text-Synopsis. (Calwer Theologische Monographien 5. Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1975). See also Adela Y. Collins article in this volume, where she assumes that in the Gospel of Mark , the story of the empty tomb implies that Jesus has been transformed, has left the world of human beings, and has been transferred definitively from earth to heaven. However, Mark does in consequence not narrate the resurrection appearance stories that both he and his audience knew. “Assumptus est”, 347, and more extensively in Ascension of the Messiah, 171-75, 188. Ascension of the Messiah, 182. In this there is a remarkable affinity, despite the difference in language, between the gospels of Luke and John – by which they differ significantly from the gospels of Mark and Matthew.

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However, to speak of “an absentee Christology”, that is “not only his physical absence but also the present inactivity of the exalted Lord”,27 is to take it too far. In Acts there are, however extraordinary, accounts of two appearances from above - to Stephen and to Paul. It is also the exalted Jesus who according to Acts 2:33 pours out the Holy Spirit that possesses, inspires and guides the followers of Jesus but never becomes their permanent possession. Furthermore, it is inherent to the Lukan concept of remembrance that Jesus continues to be present in the collective commemoration of “what he told them when he was still with them”. The Gospel story concludes by his departure but yet constitutes a continued presence by replacement.28 In this present article, Luke’s periodization is of less concern; the focus is rather on the assumed qualities of the resurrected body and the question whether these qualities are subject to change as he moves from earth to heaven, and in case, how he is perceived as being changed. In 2 Baruch, also called the Apocalypse of Baruch, a Jewish writing from early Second Century CE and preserved in Syriac though originally written in Greek,29 spatial and sequential, temporal categories interact by serving different purposes. Resurrection is at least in one account described as a two-stage process: For the earth will surely then give back the dead; it receives them now in order to keep them, transforming nothing in their appearance but as it has received them so it will give them back. And as I have delivered them to it, so it will raise them. For those who are then alive must be shown that the dead have come alive again, and that those who went [away] have come [back]. And when they have recognised those they know now, then judgment will become effective, and that which was spoken of will come to pass. And after this appointed day is over, the pride of those who are found to be guilty will be changed, as will also the glory of those who have been found righteous. For the shape of the evildoers will go from bad to worse, like those who suffer torment. Again the glory of those who have now been justified (….) their faces will shine even more brightly and their appearance

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29

Zwiep, Ascension of the Messiah, 182. See T.K. Seim “In Living Memory…. Reflections on “Collective Memory” and Patterns of Commemoration in Early Christianity”, in Cracks in the Walls. Essays on Spirituality, Ecumenicity and Ethics, (Eds. E.M. Wiberg Pedersen and J. Nissen. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2005) 93-106. For further presentation and discussion, see the article on 2 Baruch by Liv Ingeborg Lied in this volume. My interpretation draws on hers with some minor divergences. See also G. Stemberger, Der Leib der Auferstehung. Studien zur Anthropologie und Eschatologie des palästinischen Judentums im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter (ca. 179 v. Cr.[sic] – 100 n.Chr.) (Analecta Biblica 56; Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1972) 85- 91.

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(or splendour) will then be glorified in transformations, and the form of their face will be turned into the light of their beauty to enable them to acquire and receive the immortal world which is promised to them (2 Bar 50:1-51:3)30

In this vision of Baruch, there is first a universal resurrection when the earth gives back the dead. There is at this stage no indication of transformation; they are all in some way recognizable as those whom the earth once received. The continuity and identity of those raised is therefore important but the quality of this identity, namely the features that are subject to recognition, is not necessarily individual. There can, however, be no mistake as to their righteousness or unrighteousness. The judgment is unfailingly just. When recognition has taken place and judgment has been passed accordingly, transformation may happen. Those deemed to be righteous are elevated and their shape is blurred into a luminous beauty. The punishment of the evil-doers is the horror of “the decaying shadows of their former selves” (51:5) but also that they will have to witness the glorious state of “those who are now their inferiors”, as these are transformed to look like angels and are made equal to the stars (51:5, 10). This happens as they attain a timeless world which is now invisible, indeed the “extent of Paradise will be spread before them” 51:11), and in the end their splendour will exceed even the splendour of the angels (51:13). An interesting and significant element in this two-stage process is the connection established between the shape in which the resurrected appear and the place where it occurs. In the resurrection from the earth, on the earth, the resurrected bodies maintain recognizable features. But during the transposition to “the heights of the world now invisible” an ever increasing transformation to beauty and splendour occurs for those named righteous, whereas the unrighteous is deformed to shadow and nothingness. There is a consistent dichotomy at work, which is expressed morally, visually and spatially. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul argues didactically rather than polemically in defense of a resurrection from the dead.31 In the eschatological scenario of 1 Corinthians 15, there is, differently from 2 Baruch, no universal resurrection. According to the order laid out in the brief apocalypse in vv. 23-28, only those who belong to Christ follow him in being resur_____________ 30 31

The translation is in this case a blend of various others, included the one by Liv Ingeborg Lied. I agree with Jeffrey Asher’s identification of Paul’s type of argumentation in this chapter as being didactic rather than polemical, Polarity and Change in 1 Corinthians 15. A Study of Metaphysics, Rhetoric, and Resurrection, (HUTh 42; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000) 48-58. For further perspectives on 1 Corinthians 15, see the articles by Troels Engberg-Pedersen and Vigdis Songe-Møller in this volume.

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rected. 32 This limitation explains why there in 1 Corinthians 15 is submission or vindication of the powers opposed to God, but no judgment. It represents a clarification of how death ultimately will be destroyed as the last enemy. Cosmology and eschatology are made to intersperse by the way in which spatial categories are matched by temporal or rather sequential categories. Hence, continuity as expressed by recognizability plays no role – like it does in apocalyptic texts such as 2 Baruch where a main purpose is to reassure the righteous that in the end justice will be victorious through a double outcome. Nor is there any need for a twostage process. In 1 Corinthians 15 resurrection from the dead is not perceived as bodily restoration;33 rather it involves a transformation, which requires that also those still alive when it happens, are subject to radical change. In the second part of the chapter, vv. 35-57, Paul addresses in unusually direct terms “foolish” questions pertaining the nature of the resurrected body: “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” (v. 35). He maintains that the relationship between the present body and the one recreated in the resurrection is analogous to that between a seed and the plant growing from it as the seed itself perishes, “dies”. There is some kind of dependency and sequence, but there is no apparent likeness. The analogy covers for continuity, but primarily it allows for this continuity to have an emphasis on difference and contrast. Fundamental to Paul’s line of argumentation in this second part of 1 Corinthians 15 is a taxonomy, an orderly description of God’s work of creation, its categories and differences, found in vv. 38-41: Not all flesh is alike, but there is one flesh for human beings, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing and that of the earthly another, There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and yet another glory of the stars, indeed, star differs from star in glory.

Jeffrey R. Asher has shown that the varieties of terrestrial and celestial bodies as listed by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15.38-41, correspond to descriptions found in ancient Greek and philosophical sources. Still, the correspondence is limited: these lists serve other purposes and, more _____________ 32

33

In her article in this volume, Jorunn Økland, intriguingly explains this as being due to the way in which Paul perceives continuity as being “situated in the one whose image we carry, Christ”, so that “continuity only applies to those who are “in Christ””. This is why Paul takes no interest in the empty tomb, if he at all was familiar with that tradition.

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significantly, they lack the contrast established between the two kinds, the locative polarity which argumentatively precedes the temporal. The background or origin of this particular taxonomy therefore remains nebulous.34 Paul regards this taxonomy as the divinely created design of creation (1 Cor 15:38-41). Fundamental to it is the division of cosmos into two opposite spaces of habitation, the terrestrial and the celestial. The genus of σῶμα was accordingly divided into two opposite species (heavenly bodies and earthly bodies) and under each of the two species further subdivisions, sharing the same basic quality, might be distinguished. The emphasis is not on the internal classification in each group but on the qualitative difference between earthly and heavenly. The quality of all earthly bodies is carnal even if they do not share the same kind of flesh, whereas the heavenly bodies are characterized by their radiance, δόξα. A certain kind of body belongs to a particular space; it has its own habitat. Σάρξ is characteristic of and belongs on earth; δόξα is characteristic of and belongs in heaven – these categories serve as spatial boundary markers. From this follows that “flesh and blood will not inherit the kingdom of God and the perishable cannot inherit the imperishable” (1 Cor 15:50) 35 Hence transposition from an earthly existence to heavenly is not conceivable without transformation from flesh to glory. In order to move across the divide, radical change or transformation is necessary. This is only possible due to the creative will and power of God, who gives to each a body as he chooses.36 The taxonomy in 1 Corinthians 15, _____________ 34

35

36

Polarity and Change, 140, In Hesiod’s Works and Days 276-278 four kinds of terrestrial life-forms are listed: humans, beasts, fish and fowl. Similar lists can be found in Sophocles and Vergil. Greek philosophers also spoke, even after the discovery of the wandering planets, of a threefold division of the sun, the moon and the stars. Asher’s work does not solve the problem of the “provenience” of the taxonomy in 1 Corinthians 15. It does, however, represent a major step forward since most commentators on the passage follow the parallels listed by Strack-Billerbeck and assume that the taxonomy represents an allusion either to the classification of animals in Jewish dietary laws or more likely to the priestly account of creation in Genesis 1. At one level this is undoubtedly adequate and there is no contradiction between Gen 1 and Paul’s cosmological indications in 1 Corinthian 15. But the similarity is far from striking and especially the emphatic contrast between the two different series of bodies in the Pauline passage is at best implicit in the Genesis account. Which to Asher’s mind is the reason why the Corinthians did not believe in the resurrection: it violated the principles of their cosmological doctrine and they probably argued that it is absurd to think that a terrestrial body could be raised to the celestial realm, Polarity and Change, 144. In the philosophical context presumed by Jeffrey Asher, transformation or change represented a problem and was not easily accommodated. So also Vigdis SongeMøller who in her article in this volume explores the paradox of change in Platonic

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accordingly, also emphasizes that among terrestrial and celestial bodies alike, differentiation is evident. The differentiation is not so much aimed at hierarchical configurations as at maintaining the creative diversity of the will and power of God – on earth as in heaven. This might mean that the idea of what might be considered transgressive change in itself needed to be bolstered. The resurrection as Paul sees it, is therefore a transposition from being an earthly creature to becoming a heavenly - in the sense that flesh is perishable and therefore subject to ultimate change: that of corruption through aging and death. Earthly bodies, as constituted by σάρξ, do not possess immortality, they are deemed to perish like a seed in the soil. Transposition from an earthly existence to heavenly is not conceivable without transformation from flesh to glory. In an instant the resurrection body becomes a transformed body, conform to the requirements of celestial existence as it by divine creative intervention attains the glorious distinctions of celestial bodies. The one feature, which in this taxonomy seems to resist adaptation to a divide that can be overcome only by complete transformation, is the assumption (1 Cor 14:40b) that also terrestrial bodies possess δόξα37 Of course, Paul explicitly states that the δόξα of heavenly bodies is different from that of the earthly, but it still means that earthly bodies are not without δόξα and that this quality somehow is the reflection of the creator in creation. Human beings as created by God are potentially what one might call “blended beings”.38 Are similar taxonomic presuppositions traceable in Luke-Acts? Are spatial boundaries being negotiated in similar ways? The emphasis in the Lukan post-resurrection stories on the physical presence of the resurrected Jesus before he was lifted up, have already been stated. Does, _____________ 37

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philosophy and how parallels may be discerned between Paul and Plato in the way they both deal with change by referring it to ”the inexplicable instant”. In order fully to maintain the absolute polarity, Asher cannot possibly accept that the δόξα of v. 40b is identical with the δόξα of v. 41. He relegates the problem to a foot-note as he establishes a distinct semantic difference between the term δόξα as referring to terrestrial bodies (v. 40b) and to celestial bodies (v. 41). In the latter case it simply means light whereas in the first it refers “to the radiance of all created bodies in the cosmos because they are products of God’s creative power”(Polarity and Change, 105 n. 38) Cf. also the gender hierarchy in the so-called kefale-structure of 1 Cor 11:3-12 where Paul draws on a cosmological order which assumes that human beings as created in God’s image has δόξα, as it is hierarchically reflected from God to Christ, from Christ to the man and from man to woman. One might pursue this further by exploring how δόξα relates to πνεῦμα and vice versa. An indirect contribution to this is Troels Engberg-Pedersen’s article in this volume interpreting Paul’s understanding of body and spirit in light of Stoic philosophy.

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however, the corporeal nature of Jesus post-resurrection appearances in Luke 24 essentially or ontologically define the nature of the resurrected body, or does it depend on the earthly location?39 The ascension removed Jesus from the eyes of those remaining on earth, and his physical presence among tem was brought to an end. However, on two occasions he does act/reappear from on high: to Stephen at his martyrdom and to Paul on the road to Damascus.40 The story of Paul’s conversion is reiterated three times (Acts 9:3-9; 22:6-11; 26:12-18). The three versions are not identical but they are all significantly different from the earlier accounts of Jesus’ appearances in the period between his resurrection and ascension. In the last of the three versions, Paul tells King Agrippa about his experience, referring to it as “a heavenly vision” (26:19) - thereby indicating that it was an appearance of the heavenly Jesus. However, all three versions agree that not much was seen apart from a bright blinding light. Jesus’ appearance to Paul is not characterized by Jesus’ bodily presence but by the absence of any corporeal form. There is no way by which he can be recognized by physical features. In stead, he makes himself known by compelling words identifying the speaker as Jesus, in 22:8 even as Jesus from Nazareth. Thus a striking contrast is established between the reference to the speaker as being the earthly Jesus and the lack of any bodily appearance by which he might be recognized. He can be heard but not seen as he simply appears in or as light. The continuity or identification is by name, but not by flesh and bone. In Acts 6:15 as the council opens its proceedings against Stephen, one of the seven. Prior to his speech of defense, we are told that as all those who sat in the council looked intently at him, they “saw that his _____________ 39

40

In posing this question I differ radically from Crispin Fletcher-Louis, Luke-Acts: Angels, Christology and Soteriology (WUNT 94; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997). To him the spatial dimension is less significant and indeed represents a problem, since he, despite the language of “angelomorph”, is concerned with. In his conclusion, p. 250, he claims that “whilst transformation in the Jewish context is frequently achieved on ascent to the heavenly realm, this is nowhere present in Luke-Acts. Rather transformation is possible through association with the incarnational presence of Jesus, the angelomorphic Son of Man”. Many of those who have written extensively on the post-resurrection appearance stories, mention also these post-ascension appearances in Acts but they are primarily interested in keeping them form-critically separate from the gospel stories. According to John Alsup they belong to the Gattung of “heavenly radiance appearance” which is of a distinct different but not primary origin (Post-Resurrection Appearance Stories, 84-85). To Arie Zwiep Luke’s reiterated report of Christ’s appearance to Paul on the Damascus road represents a problem which he deals with primarily in terms of how Paul, outside of the constraints of the forty-days scheme, gains authentication of his mission – later confirmed by the apostles in Jerusalem. (Ascension of the Messiah, 173-74).

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face was like the face of an angel”. This may be a premonition of the martyrdom by which the proceedings of the council conclude.41 In any case it indicates that his countenance was in some way illuminated, but only as a likeness to angels.42 After Stephen’s speech, immediately preceding his execution, it is reported twice that Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, was privileged to gaze into heaven where he saw the δόξα of God and Jesus standing prominently at the right hand of God (7:5559).43 “Look,” he said, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God”, and later he prays in an allusion to Jesus’ last word on the cross “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”.44 In this passage there is an element of recognition but no indication as to particular features of identification. There is in the episode an intriguing interchange of names: The heavenly Son of Man is Jesus and vice versa.45 The heavenly figure at the right hand of God is Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of Man. As predicted in Luke 22:69, Jesus as the Son of Man has taken his seat “at the right hand of the power of God”. _____________ 41

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43

44

45

Cf. Hans Conzelmann, Acts of the Apostles. (Hermeneia .Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987) 48. Also in the story of Jesus’ transformation in Luke 9:29 the change of the face is mentioned first. Similar descriptions are found in LXX Daniel 3:92, and later in Acts of Paul and Thecla 3, and less parallel in the Martyrdom of Polycarp 12:1: “his face was full of grace”, even though this martyrdom also states in 2:3: “The fire of their cruel torturers had no heat for them, for they set before their eyes an escape from the fire which is everlasting and is never quenched, and with the eyes of their heart they looked upon the good things which are preserved for those who have endured (…) shown by the Lord to them who were no longer men but already angels.” These examples may be inspired by Acts 6:15. On this I agree with Sullivan, Wrestling With Angels, 120-21, and remain unpersuaded by Crispin Fletcher – Louis’ attempt at also in this case to see angelization as ontological, that is ”something integrated into Stephen’s life before his death” (LukeActs, 96-98). For the discussion as to why Jesus is standing, see; Jacob Jervell, Die Apostelgeschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998) 252, with the sound conclusion that “Im Zusammenhang ist aber nur wichtig, dass Jesus sich zur rechten Gottes befindet”. Alan Segal suggests that the gaze into the open heaven may indicate that Stephen at the moment of his martyrdom is lifted up, Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in the Religions of the West (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 466, 481. See also Zwiep, Ascension of the Messiah, 177. For the parallels between Jesus’ and Stephens’ trials and martyrdoms, cf. Abraham Smith, ““Full of Spirit and Wisdom”: Luke’s Portrait of Stephen (Acts 6:1-8:1a) as a Man of Self-Mastery”, in Asceticism and New Testament (Eds. Leif E.Vaage and Vincent L. Wimbush. New York, London: Routledge, 1999) 97-114. This is the only mention of the title Son of Man outside of the gospels and also the only time when it is not used by Jesus himself. Alsup claims that Luke (reluctantly? reworks a Stephen-tradition which contained the account of his martyrdom and vision (its Gattung being “an ἐν πνεύματι representation perhaps influenced by the heavenly radiance type with characteristic mention of light”) by the identification of Jesus as the Son of Man (Post-Resurrection Appearance Stories, 83).

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In Luke the identification of the Son of Man with Jesus is clear. It may, however, be that Jesus moves towards becoming this Son of Man, and that this temporal dimension converges with a spatial dimension between earthly and heavenly existence, most clearly expressed in Luke 12:8-9 “And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God; but whoever denies me before others will be denied before the angels of God.” The correspondence between Jesus and the Son of Man is maintained both in relation to a temporal perspective and a difference in spatial allocation. The Son of Man saying closest to the vision of Stephen in Acts 7:55 is found in Luke 9:26 in a teaching by Jesus on the cost of discipleship (9:23-27). After Jesus has foretold his disciples that the Son of Man will suffer rejection and be killed to be raised again on the third day, he tells them that to follow him will or rather should lead them to lose their life for his sake: If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. What does it profit them if they gain the whole world but lose and forfeit themselves? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words, of them the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. But truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.

This promise is in fact fulfilled to Stephen in Acts 6-7. It also leads on to the story about the transformation of Jesus before the eyes of three of his disciples (Luke 9:28-36). By a slight change of wording, so that rather than “in the glory of the Father” as in Mark 8:38, Luke has “in his glory and that of the Father …” Luke makes the transfiguration an immediate fulfillment of this prediction.46 As pointed out above, in the post-resurrection appearance stories in Luke 24 there is an earthly, sarkic ordinariness about Jesus. Also the ascension story describes the departure of Jesus from his disciples and his transposition from earth to heaven without mentioning any transformative traits. His ascent simply means that he disappears from the sight of his disciples and there seems to be no interest in the travel as such. However, in the transfiguration story, which Luke shares with Mark and Matthew,47 transformative features are predominant. Jesus _____________ 46 47

See Luke Johnson, The Gospel of Luke (SP 3; Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press 1991). For discussion of history of tradition and of genre, see Adela Collins, Mark. A Commentary. (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007) 414-19. She thinks that it probably was not originally a resurrection-appearance story, but rather evokes an

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takes with him three of his disciples up on the mountain, and while he prays, the appearance of his face is changed and his clothes become dazzling white.48 He is transformed into brightness and three of his disciples are there to witness it. Traditional markers of epiphany are abundant in the story: the mountain setting, heavenly visitors, clouds and voices from above, as well as a bright and shining whiteness. As Jesus is transfigured, Moses and Elijah appear, also they according to Luke “in glory”. It is peculiar to Luke that they with an unusual choice of terms speak about Jesus’ departure (ἔξοδος) – which he is about to accomplish in Jerusalem. Moses and Elijah are not just great figures from the past representing the Law and the Prophets and being present since the promises they were given are about to be fulfilled. They are among the immortals, those who did not see death but according to Jewish tradition were taken up to heaven. Especially Elijah was famous for his translation to heaven (Sir 48:9: Jos.Ant. 9.2.2 par. 28),49 but also Moses was assumed not to have died (Jos.Ant. 4.8.48 par. 325-326). Like them Jesus will be translated up into heaven. In a not altogether persuasive attempt at applying Jewish angelic categories to the Lukan Jesus, Crispin Fletcher-Louis tries not to claim that Jesus is presented as an angel, or the Angel of the Lord, but that he is angelomorphic in the sense that he has angelic attributes.50 Christ is both more human than can be expected of an angel and also more fully divine since he receives worship. For Jews, says Fletcher-Louis, angelic categories could be used without exhausting identity in either human or divine direction. Fletcher-Louis’ reading of Jewish sources is illuminating, especially the way in which he shows how an angelic life can be disassociated from eschatology thus supporting an emphasis on spatial perspectives. However, besides the fact that he is overstating his case, my main question concerns his persistent quest for Jesus’ true identity. _____________

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49 50

ancient genre of epiphany and metamorphosis. The transfiguration could then be understood in two different ways: either the true nature of Jesus as divine being is momentarily revealed, or it is a temporary change in anticipation of the final one. Whereas the Synoptic accounts agree about the transformation of his clothes to splendid whiteness, they describe differently how his face is being changed, cf. Sullivan, Wrestling With Angels, 114-16. He sees it as an aspect of angelophanies – the only case in which Jesus might be considered angelomorphic even if it is not entirely clear that he became an angel since indeed the term is obviously absent. I find Sullivan’s comment on “the recent spate of work on angelomorphic Christology” appropriate when he says that they have “to look at antecedents, later identifications, and especially angelomorphic descriptions of Christ to develop their material” – the point to my mind being that the Gospel material dwindles in to very little indeed. The significance of Elijah is also addressed by Adela Collins and Samuel Rubenson in their contributions to this volume. See above n. 39.

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He is looking for a stable and essential continuity in Jesus’ identity between the two periods of his existence. Jesus has to be essentially the same both in his earthly life and in his heavenly (pre)existence. Since the continuity is attached to the angelic or angelomorphic attributes, they must be discernable throughout. The earthly Jesus must therefore be proven to possess such angelic features as might be expected from the Jewish material on which Fletcher-Louis abundantly draws. In his interpretation of the story of the transfiguration of Jesus he therefore sees only two possibilities:51 The mortal Jesus experiences transformation at this point, becoming more angelomorphic for the first time, or the angelomorphic identity which Jesus already possessed is made manifest for the first time, Fletcher-Louis is caught by his own logic and has to insist on the latter. The transfiguration is not to be regarded as a transformation – indeed there was no such moment, only many moments of unveiling. The question, however, remains as to what the unveiling reveals. Does it have to be that he is in real fact an angel? Or is it rather, as I myself believe, a glimpse, a preview, a trailer of the heavenly, immortal Jesus, which entails a transformation of his bodily form different from its earthly physicality? Significantly, the transfiguration story is located in the narrative between Jesus’ first prediction of his rejection, suffering and resurrection and the second. Immediately afterwards the travel narrative starts; Jesus’ ἔξοδος has begun. Ultimately the way leads not just to Jerusalem, but to heaven: “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Lk 9:51). The story about the transfiguration differs from the appearances of the resurrected Jesus and may seem to have more in common with the account of Paul’s encounter with the ascended Jesus of Nazareth. It carries the marks of epiphany and divine δόξα; it represents a glimpse of a heavenly existence which is not there to stay as everything returns to earthly ordinariness. It bears witness to the conviction that transposition from an earthly existence to a heavenly requires bodily transformation. In order to describe the heavenly body categories of light and brightness (δόξα) are employed. These are noticeable substances yet without tangible solidity. They mark difference rather than continuity and recognisability. It affirms a sort of resurrected body but not its flesh and blood and bone.52 _____________ 51 52

Luke-Acts, 38-50. According to John J. Collins in his article in this volume, early apocalyptic literature does not provide much description of the transformed heavenly state beyond referring to the elevated righteous as luminous and shining sometimes in terms of donning glory as a garment, and thereby attaining equality with the angels. Cf. also Sul-

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In Luke the spatial dichotomy leads to or is converted to social dichotomies which allows for a connection to be made while respecting the taxonomic dichotomy. The heavenly life is proleptically realized on earth in ways that do not transgress the taxonomic order. One is invited to live “as if ”. By means of a convoluted case configured to demonstrate that faith in resurrection is absurd, the Sadducees, who did not hold this faith, try to trap Jesus (Lk 20:27-39).The example is based on the institution of the Levirate marriage, and a thematic cluster of marriage, death and progeny is being addressed. 53 In all the Synoptic versions of this dispute, the different nature of the resurrected life is emphasized. Marriage has no further role to play, it is irrelevant. The trap of the Sadducees has no catch: in the resurrection the woman belongs to no man at all. When the dead are raised, they neither marry nor are they given in marriage; they are like angels in heaven (Mk 12:25). In Mark and Matthew this is spelt out in temporal categories as a dichotomy between this life and the resurrected life to come. Only in the future life will marriage be forsaken. In the Lukan version this is different. Luke develops a lengthy response which is almost a small treatise on the ethos of resurrection and immortality. It exhibits a pleonastic compilation of terms, indicating that traditional Jewish concepts are interpreted in Greco-Roman terms as it happens also in other Jewish writings at the time. Resurrection is being recast as immortality: Jesus said to them, ‘The sons of this aeon marry and let themselves be married, but those who are considered worthy to attain the other αἰών and the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor do they let themselves be mar-

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livan, Wrestling with Angels, 138-39: ”no specific traditions of humans transforming into angels in the afterlife seem to be evident prior to the first century CE. (….) Early traditions about the afterlife may have understood human passing as leading to communion with the divine as stars (=angels) in the heavens.” Originally in The Double Message, 208–29, and further developed in “Children of the Resurrection: Perspectives on Angelic Asceticism in Luke-Acts” in Asceticism and the New Testament, 115-26. Sullivan, Wrestling with Angels, 133-34, maintains that the emphasis in Luke 20 is on “correct interpretation” as this is one of three pericopes grouped together in order to demonstrate the superiority of Jesus’ scriptural interpretation to that of other groups. This may well be right, but represents nevertheless a limited focus. I do, however, agree with his point if not his wording (p. 138-39), that, even if we accept that Luke intended for this audience to understand the teaching of Jesus as an outline for living the resurrection life, it still represented human action mimicking the life of the angels. It did not mean that humans were perceived as being transformed into angels in their earthly lives. This further means that I have not been persuaded by Crispin Fletcher-Louis’ in many ways complimentary attempt at consolidating my interpretation of this passage by applying what he calls a history-of-religions examination of the Jewish context of Luke-Acts (Luke-Acts, 81-88, 106107).

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ried. Indeed they cannot die anymore, since they are like angels (ἰσάγγελοι) and they are God’s sons, being sons of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised, Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now God is not God of the dead but of the living; for to him they are all alive.

The Lukan discourse does not totally abandon the temporal categories but the antithetic design between what is and what will be, is being transposed to an already existing distinction between those who belong to this αἰών and those who are considered worthy of a place in the other αἰών and the resurrection of the dead. The term αἰών has both a spatial and a temporal connotation. The temporal dichotomy between present and future is converted to a social dichotomy in the present. In this present earthly existence the body is marked by immortality by not depending on procreation of posterity: Over against the Sadduceean position that a man should ἀνíσταναι σπέρμα and gain immortality by posterity, the Lucan Jesus holds that marriage and thereby procreation is no longer necessary in order to survive death; in stead there is resurrection and immortality. They are ἰσάγγελοι and sons of God τῆς ἀναστάσεως υἱοὶ ὄντες.54 The hapax legomenon ἰσάγγελος is significant. It may reflect the same kind of equality with angels as Philo’s ἴσος ἀγγέλους γεγονώς, which involves that they possess ἀϕθαρσία, incorruptibility. However, it represents equality of status rather than of nature.55 They are like the angels because they as sons of the resurrection are granted immortality. The ascetic ethos of abandonment represents the way in which the goal itself may be reflected and realized. They are not sons of this αἰών but sons of the resurrection and thereby granted immortality. Still being on earth, they on have been redefined but yet not transformed.

_____________ 54 55

Some versions among them Codex Cantabrigiensis read: for being God’s sons of resurrection, they are like angels. Cf. Sullivan, Wrestling With Angels, 134.

Ancient Notions of Transferal and Apotheosis in Relation to the Empty Tomb Story in Mark Ancient Notions of Transferal and Apotheosis ADELA YARBRO COLLINS1 tel ohne Ü2 wird hier Ü1 Kurzform wiederholt This study concerns the divinization of Jesus of Nazareth in Mark. The process of divinization appears to have two stages. From the baptism until the death of Jesus, he is divine in the sense that he has more authority and power than ordinary human beings, but is not yet on a par with the God of Israel. With his resurrection, he is exalted to the same level as God in terms of power and authority. This exaltation is predicted in the passage that opens with Jesus’ question, “How can the scribes say that the messiah is son of David?”2 The exaltation of Jesus to divine status is implied in the next verse by the citation of Ps 110:1 and its application to the messiah: “The Lord said to my Lord, sit on my right until I put your enemies under your feet.” It is also predicted in Jesus’ reply to the high priest at his trial before the Sanhedrin. When the high priest asks Jesus if he is the messiah, he responds, “I am, and you will see the Son of Man sitting on the right of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven.”3 Both of these passages imply that, with the resurrection, Jesus is exalted to a divine status as God’s primary agent in ruling and judging. The fulfillment of these predictions is implied by the discovery of the empty tomb and by the words of the young man sitting in the tomb, who is surely meant to be understood as an angel.4 He says, “He is risen; he is not here.”5 In the context of the Gospel as a whole, this statement implies that Jesus has been transformed, has left the world of human beings, and has been transferred to the heavenly world. My aim is to put this portrayal of the divinization of Jesus in Mark in cultural context by proposing that the evangelist had two primary models for this portrait. The first is the story of Elijah in 1-2 Kings. The _____________ 1 2 3 4 5

Adela Yarbro Collins is professor at Yale University Divinity School, USA. Mark 12:35. Mark 14:61-62. Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 795-96. Mark 16:6.

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other is the complex of traditions related to the apotheosis of the Roman emperor. Let us begin with Elijah. Elijah is explicitly mentioned a number of times in Mark. In 6:14 the narrator remarks that Jesus’ name and mighty deeds had become known. The next verse states that some of the people thought that Jesus was Elijah. This idea recalls the prophecy at the end of Malachi that God would send Elijah “before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.” It could signify either the returned Elijah himself or an Elijahlike figure. Similarly, when Jesus asks the disciples in 8:27 who people say that he is, one of their responses is “Elijah.” Furthermore, Elijah appears with Moses at the transfiguration of Jesus. After the transfiguration, Jesus tells the three disciples that Elijah has already come.6 It is probably implied here that John the Baptist was Elijah returned. Nevertheless, there are many prophetic features in Mark’s depiction of Jesus, and some of his miracles recall mighty deeds of Elijah.7 As Elijah caused a jar of meal and a jug of oil to feed a few people for many days, so Jesus caused a few loaves and fishes to feed thousands for one meal.8 As Elijah raised the son of a widow from the dead, so Jesus raised the daughter of Jairus.9 In the books of Kings, one clue to the source of the power of Elijah is the statement “But the hand of the Lord was on Elijah; he girded up his loins and ran in front of Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel.”10 This description is impressive because Ahab was traveling in his chariot! Another is the request of Elisha, when Elijah was about to be taken up by the whirlwind, “Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.”11 It is likely that “your spirit” means “the spirit with which God has endowed you.” As Elijah’s power to work miracles and prophetic authority were granted to him by God through a gift of the divine spirit, so also Jesus was endowed with the spirit of God at his baptism. The narrative sequence of Mark implies that it was Jesus’ possession of this spirit that allowed him to teach authoritatively and to perform mighty deeds. As noted earlier, Elijah appeared at the transfiguration of Jesus. As they walked down from the mountain, Jesus instructed the three disciples who had witnessed the event “to tell no one what they had seen _____________ 6 7 8 9 10 11

Mark 9:13. Yarbro Collins, Mark, 44-52. Cf. 1 Kgs 17:8-16 with Mark 6:30-44 and 8:1-10. Cf. 1 Kgs 17:17-24 with Mark 5:21-24a, 35-43. 1 Kgs 18:46. 2 Kgs 2:9.

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until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.”12 This instruction suggests that Elijah appeared in order to reveal to the disciples and to the audience of Mark that Jesus’ resurrection would be analogous to the transferal of Elijah in a whirlwind to heaven.13 The main points of similarity between the resurrection of Jesus and the transferal of Elijah are that the events occur by the will and power of God and that nothing remains on earth from their bodies. The main differences are that Elijah does not die, as Jesus does, and is not exalted to the same degree as Jesus. Elijah is divinized only in the sense that he is made immortal and transported to heaven, presumably into the presence of God. Scholars who study ruler cults and the imperial cult also discern two types or stages of divinization. Some who write in German use the term “Vergöttlichung” for the first stage and the term “Vergottung” for the second.14 In relation to Rome, “Vergöttlichung,” being made godlike, refers to the approval and exercise of honors that were similar to those usually accorded the gods, but which did not legally elevate the honorand to one of the gods of the state.15 Rather, they gave the honorand a certain elevation of status in the human-political realm. “Vergottung,” being made a god, on the other hand, means the official reception of a human being into the ranks of the gods of the state in accordance with the laws relating to the sacred. To speak of “Vergottung” in a Roman context, the criteria must be fulfilled that are given with the other gods of the state: a cult-name, a cult-place, a functioning cult, i.e., one particularly related to Rome, and an official state priest. These criteria are clearly fulfilled in the creation of a new god in the consecratio or apotheosis of the (deceased) emperor.16 The pre-republican kings and the later triumphators were living human beings treated as god-like in Rome. Both the early kings and those who later celebrated triumphs appeared as an earthly Jupiter. _____________ 12 13 14

15

16

Mark 9:9. 2 Kgs 2; Yarbro Collins, Mark, 402-3, 429. Kostas Buraselis, “I. Einleitung: Terminologische Vorklärung,” in “3.d.Heroization, Apotheosis,” in Thesaurus Cultus et Rituum Antiquorum (ThesCRA) (6 vols., Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2004-2006), 3.d = 2.125-214, I. = 2.126-29, esp. 128, col. 1; Helga Gesche, Die Vergottung Caesars (Frankfurter Althistorische Studien 1; Kallmünz: Michael Lassleben, 1968), 9-10. According to Ittai Gradel, the depiction of the living emperor with divine attributes in sculpture and other media “had the advantage of fruitful ambiguity, since it could be interpreted anywhere on a scale from complete identification to merely a parallel between the heavenly and the earthly monarch, and hence cater for several views of the emperor and his position”; “III. Apotheose. B. Roman apotheosis, 1-3,” in “3.d.Heroization, Apotheosis,” 2.186-198, esp. 189, col. 2. Gesche, Vergottung, 9-11.

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They wore the typical dress of Jupiter, that is, a purple cloak, later replaced by the embroidered toga picta. They carried a scepter with the figure of an eagle on the top and wore a golden wreath upon their heads. Most strikingly, their faces were painted red, as was the face of the image of Capitoline Jupiter. The question whether these men were divine or human was not the issue. “The dress of the triumphator was simply the emblem of supreme power or status.”17 Living emperors were sometimes portrayed with attributes of Jupiter in discreet court portraiture or in places outside Rome.18 A relief from Aphrodisias in Asia Minor portrays the living Augustus with the eagle of Zeus/Jupiter beside him.19 The living Tiberius is presented in the “Jupiter costume” on a sardonyx cameo in five layers.20 The living Claudius is portrayed in the same way by a statue from Lanuvium (a city of Latium, southeast of Rome).21 Another example was the living Julius Caesar. Cicero, Suetonius, and Dio Cassius all report that, during his lifetime, images of Caesar were placed in temples along with the image of a traditional, state god.22 He was not yet an official Roman state god, but he was honored as god-like, as σύνναος θεοῖς. Cicero attests that, during his lifetime, Caesar’s image was carried in procession with those of the gods.23 Dio distinguishes between the image of Caesar, which he calls an ἀνδριάς or εἰκών, and the cult statue of a god, which he calls an ἄγαλμα. Nevertheless, the inclusion of Caesar’s image in the procession implied that he was more similar to the gods, or enjoyed their favor to a higher degree, than other human beings.24 _____________ 17 18 19

20 21 22

23

24

Gradel, “Roman Apotheosis,” 188, col. 2. Christopher H. Hallett, The Roman Nude: Heroic Portrait Statuary 200 BC-AD 300 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 230-31. Hallett, Roman Nude, 162, plate 92. The relief dates to the early 1st cent. CE. Hallett argues that statues of the nude or partially nude emperor do not necessarily depict deceased Divi, because the Divi were normally portrayed wearing the toga (ibid., 225). Ibid., 171, plate 97; for discussion, see ibid., 225. Ibid., 168, plate 96. Cicero Letters to Atticus 12.45.2; 13.28.3; Suetonius Lives of the Caesars, The Deified Julius 76.1; Dio Cassius Roman History 44.4.4; 44.6.4; cf. Appian Roman History, The Civil Wars 2.106. For discussion, see Gesche, Vergottung, 26-27. Cicero Letters to Atticus 13.44.1; 13.28.3; Gesche, Vergottung, 28-29. According to Kostas Buraselis, the last historical act of Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, was to have a statue of himself as a god made part of a procession along with the twelve (traditional) gods; “III. Apotheose. A. Die griechische und hellenistische Apotheose, 1. through 4.a.iii,” in “3.d.Heroization, Apotheosis,” 2.158-74, esp. 166, col. 2. For references and discussion, see Gesche, Vergottung, 26-29.

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Analogously, Jesus is portrayed during his lifetime as exercising an activity normally reserved to God when he declares to the paralytic that his sins are forgiven.25 Although the epithet “son of God” does not necessarily imply full divinity,26 its use by a heavenly voice at the baptism and transfiguration implies divine favor beyond the ordinary. The transfiguration itself is ambiguous. Although its purpose in Mark is probably to anticipate Jesus’ transformation in resurrection, it is open to the interpretation that Jesus was a divine being or at least a god-like being walking the earth.27 As the resurrection of Jesus is previewed in the account of the transfiguration, divine honors were actually voted for Julius Caesar during his lifetime, although these would take effect only after his death.28 The practice of deifying (some) dead emperors began with the deification of Julius Caesar by the senate in 42 BCE with clear reference to the precedent of Romulus.29 Like the story of Elijah, the story of Romulus may be characterized as legend or even myth. Romulus and his twin brother Remus were the sons of the priestess Rhea Silvia and the god Mars. The brothers are the traditional founders of Rome, and Romulus, according to tradition, its first king. One of the oldest accounts of the transferal and apotheosis of Romulus is that of Livy.30 According to him, Romulus was about to review the army near the swamp of Capra when “suddenly a storm came up, with loud claps of thunder, and enveloped him in a cloud so thick as to hide him from the sight of the assembly; and from that moment Romulus was no more on earth.”31 The senators, who had been standing beside Romulus, asserted that he had been caught up on high in the blast. Then, when a few men had taken the initiative, they all with one accord hailed Romulus as a god and a god’s son, the King and Father of the Ro-

_____________ 25 26

27 28 29

30 31

Mark 2:5; Yarbro Collins, Mark, 185. Adela Yarbro Collins, “Jesus as Messiah and Son of God in the Synoptic Gospels,” in eadem and John J. Collins, King and Messiah as Son of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008) 123-48. Yarbro Collins, Mark, 418-19. Gesche, Vergottung, 40-55. Gradel, “Roman Apotheosis,” 187, cols. 1-2; Gesche, Vergottung, 84, 94. On the connections between Augustus and Romulus, see Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price, Religions of Rome (2 vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1.182-84. Livy 1.16.1-8. Livy 1.16.1; trans. from B. O. Foster, Livy (14 vols.; LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1919), 1.57.

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man City, and with prayers besought his favour that he would graciously 32 be pleased forever to protect his children.

There was a rumor that the senators had rent the king in pieces due to their growing dissatisfaction with his rule. This rumor, however, did not become widely accepted, in large part due to the following incident: And the shrewd device of one man is also said to have gained new credit for the story (of apotheosis). This was Proculus Julius, who ... addressed the assembly as follows: “Quirites, the Father of this City, Romulus, descended suddenly from the sky at dawn this morning and appeared to me. ... ‘Go,’ said he, ‘and declare to the Romans the will of Heaven that my Rome shall be the capital of the world; so let them cherish the art of war, and let them know and teach their children that no human strength can resist Roman arms.’ So saying,” he concluded, “Romulus departed on 33 high.”

An interesting similarity between this account and the narrative of Elijah’s transferal is that the removal from earth takes place during a storm. According to the Greek version, Elijah is taken up in a whirlwind or hurricane (συσσεισμός).34 According to Livy, the setting is a storm (tempestas), and Romulus is taken up by a cloud (nimbus).35 The appearance to Proculus Julius is similar to the appearance stories in Matthew, Luke, and John, especially to the commissioning of the Eleven.36 For comparison with Mark, it is important to note that the account of Livy presupposes that Romulus had definitively left the earth and been transferred to heaven. Nonetheless, he could return briefly to earth to appear to Proculus Julius. Similarly, the empty tomb in Mark _____________ 32 33 34 35 36

Livy 1.16.3. Livy 1.16.5-7. 2 Kgs 2:11. Livy 1.16.1. Matt 28:16-20. John E. Alsup’s study is marred by his reliance on an inappropriate use of the category of the θεῖος ἀνήρ; The Post-Resurrection Appearance Stories of the Gospel Tradition: A History-of-Tradition Analysis with Text-Synopsis (Calwer Theologische Monographien 5; Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag; London: SPCK, 1975). He may be right that the “Hellenistic” apotheosis stories “offer little help in making precise the actual origins of the gospel appearance story Gattung” if there is such a thing (ibid., 270; emphasis original). But they provide rich cultural comparative material that suggests how the Gospel accounts may have been read and understood by their audiences in the first few centuries CE. Wendy Cotter, in contrast, argues that the Gospel appearance stories belong to the same basic genre as the Greco-Roman apotheosis accounts; “Greco-Roman Apotheosis Traditions and the Resurrection Appearances in Matthew,” in The Gospel of Matthew in Current Study: Studies in Memory of William G. Thompson, S.J. (ed. David E. Aune; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 127-53, esp. 129-30.

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implies that Jesus had been transferred definitively from earth to heaven. This implication is not undercut by the prediction of Jesus in 14:28 and the reminder of the angel in 16:7 that Jesus “would go before (the disciples) to Galilee.” These statements refer to the resurrection appearance story or stories that the evangelist (and his audience) knew, but which he does not narrate.37 Since Mark does not narrate appearances of the risen Jesus, it is impossible to determine whether he would have portrayed them as theophanic or as realistic. The appearance of the risen Jesus to the eleven in Matt 28:16-20 is of the theophanic or visionary type, like the appearances to which Paul refers in 1 Cor 15:5-9.38 The author of Luke-Acts depicts the appearances of the risen Christ to Paul as Christophanies.39 The appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene in John may also be theophanic, since she does not recognize him until he addresses her.40 The appearance of the risen Jesus to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary in Matt 28:9-10, however, is realistic since they recognize him immediately and take hold of his feet. His appearances to the disciples in John are also realistic, since he invites Thomas to put his finger in the wounds of his hands and his hand into the wound of his side.41 Even if he is not portrayed as eating in John 21, he cooks breakfast for the disciples and serves them.42 The appearances to the disciples in Luke 24 and Acts 1 are also realistic. It seems that in the Emmaus story43 and in the third appearance of Jesus in John44 the ritual meals of the community are (re-)founded and associated with Jesus’ role as host. In the appearances in Luke-Acts the risen Jesus instructs the disciples and prepares them for their role as apostles.45 Let us return now to Romulus. Another early account of his apotheosis is that of Ovid in his Metamorphoses.46 Ovid begins with _____________ 37

38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

On 14:28 and 16:7 as allusions to the appearances of the risen Jesus, see Adela Yarbro Collins, “The Empty Tomb and Resurrection according to Mark,” in eadem, The Beginning of the Gospel: Probings of Mark in Context (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 119-48, esp. 136-37. See also Yarbro Collins, Mark, 667, 670-71, 801. On the resurrection of Jesus in Mark as a translation or transferal of Jesus from earth to heaven, see Yarbro Collins, “The Empty Tomb,” 138-48; eadem, Mark, 791-94. Paul’s description of God’s “revealing” (ἀποκαλύψαι) the risen Christ to him in Gal 1:15-16 is similar. Acts 9:3-9; 22:6-11; 26:12-18. See the study by Karlsen Seim in this volume (p. 29). John 20:11-18. John 20:26-29. John 21:9-13. Luke 24:13-35. John 21:9-14. Karlsen Seim, in this volume, especially p. 22-23. Ovid Metamorphoses 14.805-828.

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Mars addressing Jupiter, arguing that the time had come “to grant the reward which was promised to me and to thy worthy grandson, to take him from earth and set him in the heavens.”47 When Jupiter then hid the whole “sky with his dark clouds” and “filled the earth with thunder and lightning,” Mars descended in his chariot and caught Romulus up. “His mortal part dissolved into thin air, as a leaden bullet hurled by a broad sling is wont to melt away in the mid-heavens. And now a form clothes him, worthier of the high couches of the gods, such form as has Quirinus, clad in the sacred robe.”48 It is noteworthy that Romulus is taken up in a chariot, as is Elijah. More importantly, this text is evidence for the identification of Romulus with Quirinus, the god associated with the site of Rome.49 Although the identification is not historically reliable, it was accepted from the third century BCE onward.50 This case and others provide evidence that the Romans, like the Greeks (sometimes), linked a change of name to deification. Julius Caesar became Divus Iulius, and Caesar Augustus became Divus Augustus.51 One could argue that Jesus of Nazareth also has a change of name at his resurrection or apotheosis by becoming Jesus Christ or Jesus (the) Messiah. The name “Jesus Christ” appears in the introductory titular sentence of Mark in association with “the gospel.” One could argue that this is not his name in the text of Mark itself, but is used here to refer to the risen Christ. In 8:29, Peter says to Jesus, “You are the Christ.” Jesus’ rebuke in the following verse “that they might speak to no one concerning him” may be interpreted as an indication that he is indeed the messiah designate, but has not yet begun to exercise that role in the full sense. In 9:41, Jesus says “For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink on the basis that you belong to Christ, truly I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward.” The saying presupposes a missionary situa_____________ 47

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49 50 51

Quotation from ibid., 14.810-11; trans. from Frank Justus Miller, Ovid (2nd ed. rev. by G. P. Goold; 6 vols.; LCL; Cambridge: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1984), 2.359. Ibid., 14.816-28; Miller and Goold, 2.359. Immediately following, the transferal of Romulus’ wife is narrated (829-51). The latter account may have served as a precedent for the apotheosis of the wife of the emperor and other relatives. Cicero de re publica 2.20; Buraselis, “Einleitung,” 128, col. 2. Gradel, “Roman Apotheosis,” 187-88. The identification was present in Ennius; on his fragments, see Alsup, Appearance Stories, 233, n. 661. E.g., Ino and her son Melikertes become Leukothea and Palaimon; Kostas Buraselis, “III. Apotheose. A. Die griechische und hellenistische Apotheose, 1. through 4.a.iii,” in “3.d.Heroization, Apotheosis,” 2.158-74, esp. 159-160. A change of name at deification is also attested for Aeneas, who became Indiges; Ovid Metamorphoses, 14.581-608, esp. 608; Gradel, “Roman Apotheosis,” 187-88.

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tion in the future.52 Thus the title or new name, “Christ”, pertains to the time after Jesus’ resurrection. As mentioned earlier, in 12:35 Jesus asks, “How can the scribes say that the messiah is son of David?” His quotation of Ps 110:1 in the next verse makes clear that the issue is the postresurrection status of Jesus.53 Similarly, when the high priest asks Jesus if he is the messiah, he responds, “I am, and you will see the Son of Man sitting on the right of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven.” His positive response may be understood as indicating that he is the messiah designate, since the elaboration of that response concerns the exaltation of Jesus after the resurrection. The last time the name “Christ” or better, the epithet “messiah” is used in Mark is in the mocking of Jesus by the chief priests in 15:32, “Let the messiah, the king of Israel, come down now from the cross, in order that we may see and believe.” The ironic portrayal of Jesus as a king in chapter 15 is an important part of Mark’s reinterpretation of the concept of “messiah” or “king of Israel.”54 The predictions of the coming of the Son of Man in glory and power, however, make clear that, after the resurrection, Jesus, as “Jesus Christ” or “Jesus the Messiah,” will exercise his messiahship or kingship. Another early account of the apotheosis of Romulus, the oldest one in Greek, is that of Dionysius of Halicarnassus.55 Like Livy and Ovid, he places the disappearance of Romulus in the setting of a storm.56 He notes that some writers “believe that he was caught up into heaven by his father, Mars.”57 He states at first that the “more plausible accounts say that he was killed by his own people” and gives a lengthy account of the political reasons for his assassination, concluding with the remark that he seemed “to be exercising his power more like a tyrant than a king.”58 A bit later, however, he says: Be that as it may, the incidents that occurred by the direction of Heaven in connexion with this man’s conception and death would seem to give no small authority to the view of those who make gods of mortal men and 59 place the souls of illustrious persons in heaven.

_____________ 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

The Twelve have already been sent out and have returned; cf. Mark 6:7-13, 30. Mark 13:21 is irrelevant, since the reference is to false messiahs, as the next verse makes clear. Yarbro Collins, Mark, 53-72. Dionysius of Halicarnassus Ant. Rom. 2.56.2-7; 2.63.4. Ibid., 2.56.2. Ibid.; trans. from Earnest Cary, The Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (7 vols.; LCL; London: Heinemann; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1937), 1.473. 2.56.3; Cary, 1.473. 2.56.6; Cary, 1.475.

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He then goes on to tell how, “when his mother was violated, whether by some man or by a god, there was a total eclipse of the sun and a general darkness as in the night covered the earth, and that at his death the same thing happened.”60 In his discussion of the kingship of Numa, Dionysius says that the latter ordered that Romulus, under the name of Quirinus, be honored with a temple and sacrifices throughout the year. In this context, he mentions that: while the Romans were yet in doubt whether divine providence or human treachery had been the cause of his disappearance, a certain man, named Julius, descended from Ascanius (a son of Aeneas), who was a husbandman and of such a blameless life that he would never have told an untruth 61 for his private advantage, arrived in the Forum and said that, as he was coming in from the country, he saw Romulus departing from the city fully armed and that, as he drew near to him, he heard him say these words: “Julius, announce to the Romans from me, that the genius to whom I was allotted at my birth is conducting me to the gods, now that I have finished 62 my mortal life, and that I am Quirinus.”

Dionysius differs from Livy in placing the appearance of Romulus to Julius when Romulus is about to be transferred to heaven, rather than after he had been taken up.63 Plutarch, like Livy, describes the appearance experienced by Julius Proculus as an epiphany of the one who had already ascended into heaven.64 Dionysius’ presentation of Romulus in transit is analogous to the appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene in John, when he had not yet ascended to the Father. The later appearances to the disciples in John appear to be analogous to the epiphanies of Proculus in the accounts of Livy and Plutarch. Plutarch also emphasizes that “Romulus disappeared suddenly, and no portion of his body or fragment of his clothing remained to be seen.”65 Another distinctive element in Plutarch’s account is Romulus’ revelation to Proculus that Romulus had come from the gods and was destined to be with humankind only a short time. After founding the city destined to be the greatest on earth, he was to dwell once again in _____________ 60 61

62 63 64 65

Ibid. A later Greek writer says that Livia, Augustus’ wife, bestowed a million sesterces upon a certain Numerius Atticus, a senator and ex-praetor, because he swore that he had seen Augustus ascending to heaven after the manner of which tradition tells concerning Proculus and Romulus; Dio Cassius 56.46.1-3. Dionysius of Halicarnassus Ant. Rom. 2.63.3-4; Cary, 1.495. Gerhard Lohfink, Die Himmelfahrt Jesu: Untersuchungen zu den Himmelfahrts- und Erhöhungstexten bei Lukas (München: Kösel Verlag, 1971), 35. Plutarch Lives, Romulus 28.1-3, Lohfink, Himmelfahrt, 35. Plutarch Romulus 27.5; trans. from Bernadotte Perrin, Plutarch’s Lives (11 vols.; LCL; London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam, 1914), 1.175.

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heaven.66 Plutarch also criticizes the whole tale, and others like it, because, in his view, “to mix heaven with earth is foolish.” Something within human beings comes from the gods and returns to them, “but only when it is most completely separated and set free from the body, and becomes altogether pure, fleshless, and undefiled.”67 Plutarch also knows the conjecture that the senators slew Romulus.68 This is an opportune time to mention that a number of early Christian writers alluded to the Romulus legend, including Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Arnobius, and Augustine.69 Arnobius, a Christian apologist who flourished during the reign of Diocletian, assumed that Romulus had been torn in pieces by the senators and noted that the Romans affirm that he then ascended into heaven. He uses this example to support Christian beliefs about Jesus’ death and resurrection or ascension.70 As noted earlier, the transferal and apotheosis of Romulus was an important precedent for the apotheosis of the emperors. The ideas and practices associated with the divinization of the emperors were surely familiar to the author and ancient audiences of Mark. The imperial cult was widespread in the East, including cultic honors given to the living emperor. It was practiced even in Palestine, where Herod the Great built temples dedicated to Augustus and Roma in Caesarea on the sea, Banias, and Sebaste. These temples were maintained and updated by his sons. Thus even though there is no explicit mention of the imperial cult or the deification of the emperors in Mark, these traditions were part of the cultural scene in the Mediterranean world. The transferal of Jesus differs from that of Elijah, as noted earlier, and from that of Romulus in that neither Elijah nor Romulus, in the main version of the story, dies before being taken to heaven. The emperors, however, did experience death before becoming divine. The death of Julius Caesar is a dramatic example. Ovid includes in his Metamorphoses an account of Caesar’s death and apotheosis.71 In this account, Ovid honors the living Augustus by honoring Caesar: _____________ 66 67

68 69 70 71

Plutarch Romulus 28.2; Perrin, 1.179. Ibid., 28.6-7; Perrin, 1.181. On the distinction between “earthly” bodies and “heavenly” bodies, see the discussion of 1 Cor 15:36-44a in the study by Troels EngbergPetersen in this volume (pp. 124-25). Ibid., 27.5-8; Perrin, 1.175, 177. Cotter, “Apotheosis Traditions,” 136-38. Ibid., 137. Ovid Metamorphoses 15.745-870.

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It was not so much his wars triumphantly achieved, his civic deeds accomplished, and his glory quickly won that changed him, illustrious in war and peace, to a new heavenly body, a flaming star; but still more his offspring deified him. For there is no work among all Caesar’s achieve72 ments greater than this, that he became the father of this our Emperor.

After elaborating this point, he adds “So then, that his son might not be born of mortal seed, Caesar must needs be made a god.”73 When Venus saw that an armed conspiracy against her son was forming, she tried to prevent Caesar’ death.74 “The gods were moved indeed; and although they were not able to break the iron decrees of the ancient sisters, still they gave no uncertain portents of the woe that was at hand.”75 “Yet even so, the warnings of the gods were unable to check the plots of men and the advancing fates”.76 When Venus tries to protect Caesar by hiding him in a cloud, as she had protected Paris and Aeneas, Jupiter speaks to her as follows, “Dost thou, by thy sole power, my daughter, think to move the changeless fates?”77 Jupiter then tells her that in the abode of the three sisters, there are tablets of brass and solid iron on which all that happens, including the future, is inscribed.78 He says that he has read them and will tell her what is to come. The years that Caesar owed to earth are finished, “That as a god he may enter heaven and have his place in temples on the earth, thou shall accomplish and his son.”79 Jupiter then “prophesies” the accomplishments of Augustus, ending with the remark, “and not till old age, when his years have equalled his benefactions, shall he attain the heavenly seats and his related stars”.80 Returning to Caesar’s fate, he instructs Venus, “Meanwhile do thou catch up this soul from the slain body and make him a star in order that ever it may be the divine Julius who looks forth upon our Capitol and Forum from his lofty temple”.81 The narrative then continues: Scarce had he spoken when fostering Venus took her place within the senate-house, unseen of all, caught up the passing soul of her Caesar from his body, and not suffering it to vanish into air, she bore it towards the stars of heaven. And as she bore it she felt it glow and burn, and released it from

_____________ 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81

Ibid., 15.746-751; trans. (modified) from Miller and Goold, 2.417, 419. Ibid., 15.760-761; Miller and Goold, 2.419. Ibid., 15. 780-842. Ibid., 15.781-782; Miller and Goold, 2.421. These portents are described in 15.783-798. Ibid., 15.799-800; Miller and Goold, 2.421. Ibid., 15.803-808; Miller and Goold, 2.421, 423. Compare the (heavenly) “book of truth” in Dan 10:21. Ovid Metamorphoses 15.808-819; Miller and Goold, 2.423. Ibid., 15.819-839; Miller and Goold, 2.423, 425. Ibid., 15. 840-842; Miller and Goold, 2.425.

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her bosom. Higher than the moon it mounted up and, leaving behind it a 82 fiery train, gleamed as a star.

Ovid’s account differs from Mark in its polytheism and its rich detail. Yet the two accounts share the idea that a violent death at the hands of enemies is divinely ordained and “must” happen. In both cases, the one who suffers violence and death is vindicated by God or the gods and exalted to heaven. During Caesar’s lifetime, it was voted that he would be buried inside the pomerium, the sacred boundary of the city of Rome.83 An ancient tradition, however, prohibited burial within that boundary. The traditional rule held sway and Caesar’s ashes were buried in his family tomb.84 The fact of Caesar’s burial raises the question whether it is the body or the soul that is deified. Elias Bickermann took as his point of departure the evidence that Helvius Pertinax in the late second century and Septimius Severus in the early third were cremated twice.85 In the first funeral, the emperor’s physical body was cremated. Afterward, his bones or ashes were buried in the usual way. In the second, a wax model or effigy of his body was cremated.86 Bickermann concluded that the rite of consecration or deification of the emperor was identical with the traditional notion of Entrückung, that is, the transferal from earth to heaven of the entire body of the one so favored. In the second funeral of the emperor, the effigy, representing the whole body of the deceased, was burned and disappeared entirely. Like the friends of Herakles who found no bones on his pyre when it ceased burning,87 so the wax image would leave no bodily elements behind. Bickermann interpreted this second cremation as a magical ritual that effected transferal. Florence Dupont argued, following Bickermann in part, “that the apotheosis of the emperor had to do with the body, not the soul.”88 Dupont is right that the notion of apotheosis was not necessarily connected with the Platonic idea of the immortal soul. As Ovid’s account of the apotheosis of Julius Caesar shows, however, it was not necessary that the whole body of the emperor disappear entirely. It was the soul, the anima, of _____________ 82 83 84 85

86 87 88

Ibid., 15.843-850; Miller and Goold, 2.425. Gesche, Vergottung, 50-53. Beard, North, and Price, Religions of Rome, 1.180. Elias Bickermann, “Die römische Kaiserapotheose,” Archiv für Religionswissenschaft 27 (1929): 1-31; reprinted in Römischer Kaiserkult (ed. Antonie Wlosok; Wege der Forschung 372; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1978), 82-121, esp. 86-92. See Herodian’s account of the two funerals of Severus: 4.1-2. Diodorus Siculus 4.38.5; cited by Bickermann, “Die römische Kaiserapotheose,” 99. Florence Dupont, “The Emperor-God’s Other Body,” in Fragments for a History of the Human Body (ed. Michel Feher; New York: Urzone; Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989), 3.396-419, esp. 398.

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Caesar that was transformed into a star. Without the assistance of the gods, the soul would have vanished or dissolved into air.89 The narrative of the empty tomb in Mark, however, does depict the total disappearance of his body. What Dupont affirmed of the second cremation of some emperors applies even more forcefully to the empty tomb story in Mark: “What, then, in the imaginary funeral corresponds to the imago of the human funeral? There is only one answer: absence. An absence expressing an elsewhere.”90 Although Jesus died, unlike Elijah and Romulus, his body disappears entirely, as theirs also do.91 An analogy to the empty tomb of Jesus may be found in Plutarch’s Life of Numa, the second king of Rome according to tradition. Plutarch says that Numa’s body was not burned because he did not wish it to be. Instead, “they made two stone coffins and buried them under the Janiculum,” a hill west of the Tiber and outside the boundaries of the ancient city. “One of these held his body, and the other the sacred books which he had written out with his own hand, as the Greek lawgivers their tablets.”92 After some discussion of the reason for burying the books, Plutarch goes on to say that: about four hundred years afterwards, when Publius Cornelius and Marcus Baebius were consuls, heavy rains fell, and the torrent of water tore away the earth and dislodged the coffins. When their lids had fallen off, one coffin was seen to be entirely empty, without any trace whatsoever of the 93 body, but in the other the writings were found.

Plutarch does not comment on the significance of the discovery of the empty coffin. The reason may be that it was clear to his audience that this “absence” implied an “elsewhere,” that is, Numa’s deification. When Augustus died in 14 CE, the senate voted his deification immediately after the funeral.94 According to Ittai Gradel’s reading of Dio Cassius, “the funeral differed in scale, but not in kind from traditional noble funerals, with the interesting exception that an eagle was let loose

_____________ 89 90 91

92 93 94

Ovid Metamorphoses 15.843-846; Miller and Goold, 2.424-425. Dupont, “The Emperor-God’s Other Body,” 417. The implication is probably that both the soul and the body of Jesus become immortal, as is also implied in Acts 2:24-31; 13:34-37. See the discussion in the study by Karlsen Seim in this volume (p. 19). Plutarch Lives, Numa 22.2; Perrin, 1.379, 381. Ibid., 22.4-5; Perrin, 2.381. The fullest description is that of Cassius Dio 56.31.2-43.1; see also Suetonius The Twelve Caesars, Divus Augustus 2.100; Gradel, “Roman Apotheosis,” 196, col. 1 through 197, col. 1. See also Beard, North, and Price, Roman Religion, 1.208-9.

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from a case on the pyre, when it was lighted.”95 Some modern scholars have doubted that the eagle rite was part of Augustus’ funeral, since Suetonius does not mention it.96 Gradel has argued persuasively, however, that Suetonius, whose account is much shorter than that of Dio Cassius, only mentioned details that were unique to Augustus and omitted elements that would have been familiar to his urban Roman audience. Dio Cassius, in contrast, needed to give a full account since his Greek audience would have been less familiar with the details.97 Gradel also argues that the eagle ritual was invented for the occasion of Augustus’ funeral.98 After Augustus’ funeral, a junior senator, Numerius Atticus, swore in public that he had seen the late emperor ascending to heaven.99 Some scholars have inferred from this oath (and the one following the deification in 38 CE of Diva Drusilla, Caligula’s sister) that deification was contingent upon some kind of proof of this sort that the emperor had actually been transferred to heaven.100 Gradel has pointed out, however, that these oaths played no role in the legal process of deification and that they seem to rely solely upon individual initiative. It is likely, as he suggests, that these oaths were inspired by the tradition of Proculus’ oath that he had seen the deified Romulus.101 Tiberius and Caligula were not deified, although Caligula was able to persuade the senate to deify his sister Drusilla. Claudius, Vespasian, and Titus were also deified. In my view, Mark’s Gospel was written before Vespasian and Titus were deified, but the author may have known about the apotheosis of Claudius.102 The Markan Jesus is similar to the emperors in dying before being exalted to heaven. He differs from Julius Caesar and Augustus in the _____________ 95

Gradel, “Roman Apotheosis,” 196, col. 1. See also Ittai Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion (Oxford Classical Monographs; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), 27182, 298-99, 305-20. 96 E.g., Bickermann, “Die römische Kaiserapotheose,” 93; Simon Price, “The Consecration of the Roman Emperor,” in Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies (ed. Simon Price and David Cannadine; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) 56-105, esp. 95. 97 Gradel, “Roman Apotheosis,” 196, cols. 1-2. 98 Ibid., 196, col. 1. 99 Ibid., 197, col. 1; Suetonius says that an ex-praetor swore that he had seen Augustus’ spirit ascending to heaven; Divus Augustus 2.100. 100 Bickermann, “Die römische Kaiserapotheose,” 84, 121; Price, “Consecration;” Cotter, “Apotheosis Traditions,” 134. 101 Gradel, “Roman Apotheosis,” 197, col. 1. See also idem, Emperor Worship, 295-97. 102 On the deification of Claudius, see Gradel, “Roman Apotheosis,” 197, cols. 1-2; Donna W. Hurley, Suetonius: Divus Claudius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 14, 241-42. See also Gradel, Emperor Worship, 299-304.

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circumstance that each of the two emperors was believed to have one divine parent. Mark mentions nothing of a virginal conception implying that Jesus was the son of God in a relatively strong sense, as Matthew and Luke describe him.103 Another difference is that the power and authority of the emperors were greater when they were alive, as Jupiter on earth, than after they had died, as just one god among many. The Markan Jesus, in contrast, has a far more powerful position after death, in being seated at the right hand of God. His power will become manifest when he returns as Son of Man. Since the Gospel of Mark was written at a time when Roman power and influence were massive facts of life, it is to be expected that, in describing the role of Jesus in the events of the last days, the author would position himself indirectly and Jesus directly vis-à-vis Rome and the emperor. The point at which this positioning is most clear is the acclamation of the centurion at the foot of the cross.104 He says, “This man really was God’s son.” The phrase used, υἱὸς θεοῦ, was familiar in the eastern Mediterranean world as the Greek translation of the Latin Divi filius, an official title of Augustus as son of the deified Caesar.105 Placing this saying in the mouth of a Gentile, a provincial officer in the Roman army,106 was equivalent to challenging the right of the living emperor to claim to be Jupiter on earth. More pertinently, it was a challenge to the claim to divinity on the part of the deified emperors. They are not really sons of God or even of a god. In tracing the theme of Jesus’ divinity in comparison with that of the Roman emperors and their prototype Romulus, we have seen the way in which a subject of imperial Rome both imitates the practices of deification current in Rome and attempts to criticize them by “oneupping” them and replacing them. It is important to keep in mind that during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, worship of a living or dead human being expressed and was a symptom of the absolute power of the person being so honored in relation to his or her worshippers.107 This culturally based union of the political and the religious no doubt affected how ancient audiences received the Gospel of Mark. The analogies between the divinization of _____________ 103 I am grateful to Denise Buell for calling this difference to my attention in this context. 104 Mark 15:39. 105 Yarbro Collins, Mark, 767-68. 106 Ibid., 764-65. 107 Gradel, “Roman Apotheosis,” 194, col. 2. Cf. Simon R. F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge, UK/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984).

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Jesus and that of some emperors suggest that ancient audiences perceived the role of the risen Christ in terms of political power as well as religious significance.

“In your midst as a child” – “In the form of an old man” Images of Aging and Immortality in Ancient Christianity Images of Aging and Immortality in Ancient Christianity KAREN L. KING1 Überschrift 2: für Kapitel ohne Ü2 wird hier Ü1 Kurzform wiederholt “But the righteous, even though they die early, will be at rest. For old age is not honoured for length of time, or measured by number of years; but understanding is grey hair for anyone, and a blameless life is ripe old age.” (Wisdom of Solomon 4:7-9 NRSV) “There is an earned innocence, I believe, which is as much to be honoured as the innocence of children.” (Gilead by Marilynne Robinson)2

Two recently discovered manuscripts from Egypt contain Coptic translations of second century gospels in which Jesus is portrayed as a child. In an enigmatic aside to readers, the Gospel of Judas says that often Jesus did not reveal himself to his disciples but ”you will find him in their midst as a child.”3 In the Gospel of the Savior, Jesus tells his disciples, ”I am in your midst as a child.” 4 How are these declarations to be interpreted? The answer is not immediately clear insofar as images of Jesus as a child are widespread in the Christian writings of the first centuries C.E., where they appear in a wide variety of literary contexts, are used to discuss diverse issues, and serve multiple purposes. Christian images of aging are of course firmly embedded within the ancient Mediterranean context. Yet while, for ancients as for moderns, _____________ 1 2 3

4

Karen L. King is professor at Harvard, USA. Robinson, Gilead, p. 30. GosJudas 33.18-21. References to the Coptic text follow the manuscript page and line numbering of the critical edition by Kasser and Wurst, Gospel of Judas, pp. 184-235; translations into English are mine unless otherwise noted. GosSav 107.57-60; Emmel 73. References to the Coptic text follow the manuscript page and line numbering of the critical edition by Hedrick and Mirecki, The Gospel of the Savior. I follow here the codicological reconstruction with textual emendations of Emmel, “The Recently Published Gospel of the Savior,” as well as his English translation (with some minor changes noted). The numbering of the references throughout refers first to the Coptic text in Hedrick and Mirecki, then gives the numeration of Emmel’s reconstruction.

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the human experience of bodily change over time requires consciousness of the inevitable mutability of bodily aging, how such transformations are conceptualized and evaluated is far from universal, given the enormous variation in social-ideological-material conditions.5 Even within a limited geographical area, such as the ancient Mediterranean, a shared discourse of bodily change will be deployed differentially depending, for example, on the distinctions made,6 the strategic modes of differentiation employed,7 the characterizations of differences given,8 the resources being activated,9 the fields in which the discourse is deployed,10 where different players are positioned, and the ends in view.11 Such diversity of deployment suggests that Christians would have articulated distinctive emphases and alternative views, as well as reproduced common discursive elements, and Christian literature proves this to be the case. Scholars have, for example, examined Christian theological imagination of the resurrected body, noting that Christians shared the ancient conviction that fleshly bodies are subject to the same conditions of mutability and instability that applies to all matter. Perhaps nothing marked that instability more clearly than the experience of aging, the inevitable mutations that time works upon each human being from birth to death. Yet in the ancient world, these transformations were conceived variously. Ancient physicians and philosophers, for exam_____________ 5

6 7 8 9 10

11

As Bryan Turner puts it, “the body is a physiological potentiality which is realized socially and collectively through a variety of shared body practices within which the individual is trained, disciplined and socialized” (Body and Society, 25). For comparative studies, see Carse, “Shape-Shifting”; Lange, “Christos Polymorphos; Lubac, “Different Manifestations of Christ and the Buddha.” For example, stages of life. For example, oppositional, hierarchical, complementary, or scaled. For example, in tying particular stages to life to particular moral, physical, or intellectual characteristics. The assumption here is that any particular deployment of an aging discourse will engage only select elements and strategies that it enables. This analytic offers a tool to analyze how a limited number of distinctions and modes of difference regarding aging were available for improvisational deployment across a wide range of fields to do widely varying kinds of work. Some common fields for deployment included rhetorical praise or blame, such as is found in funerary encomia and burial inscriptions or public declamation (to praise a young man for his maturity or to slander one’s opponent as childish or senile); medical distinctions between disease and aging for purposes of proper healing and amelioration of symptoms; in philosophy or education, for determining what is age-appropriate for physical instruction and intellectual formation (including athletics and physical punishment); in Christian theology for articulation of a range of moral and spiritual conditions, especially with regard to eschatological ideals, polemics, or pedagogies. For more on my use of the conceptuality of “bodies” and “fields,” see Bourdieu, “Programme for a Sociology of Sport.”

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ple, speculated that the origin of life was due to innate heat or sustaining fire.12 Bodies were conceptualized as mixtures of qualities (hot and cold, wet and dry) with their corresponding substances (fire and air, water and earth). At birth, moisture was said to dominate over dryness. As one matured, this balance tipped in favour of dryness. The ideal was often figured as a mature (male) body, whose perfection consisted of a balance of qualities with dryness and heat dominating. Aging was the deterioration of this balance as bodies became dryer and colder, until finally the innate fire of life was extinguished.13 Particularly problematic was the fact that life itself was a very “fluid” – and thus potentially dangerous – affair, especially insofar as sexual intercourse and reproduction, as well as eating and drinking, were necessary for the continuation of the species as well as the individual, and yet these were often diagnosed as sites of imbalance and depletion. Physicians often attempted to regulate bodily humours by offering regimens that would restore balance to the body.14 This kind of framework presupposed that bodies were constantly metamorphosing throughout peoples’ lives, and it allowed some flexibility for various formulations of balance, mean, and moderation as ideal states (if not ultimately remedies for aging and death). Christian literature often shows similar kinds of presuppositions, but the realities of aging posed a particular theological problematic for them: how to square their belief in the human potential for immortality – with its required immutability – with the ultimately unavoidable mutations of aging. One way this problem was treated was to imagine that the fleshly resurrection of believers required an immutable body that would not eat or drink, defecate, have desire or engage in sex, would not procreate, would never be ill – and would not age.15 A primary strategy for realizing such a body was the ascetic life, which aimed at a physical ideal in which images of dryness and hardness (e.g., rocks and gems) predominated over those of wetness and softness (e.g., pliable _____________ 12

13

14 15

This sustaining fire was regularly distinguished from the kind of fire which consumes. See, for example, Aristotle Gen. Anim.737a1-9; Galen, “On Marasmus”, in Theoharides, p. 376. See, for example, Aristotle Gen. Anim.766b27-34; Galen ”On Marasmus”; see also Niebyl, “Old Age” and Solmsen, “The Vital Heat.” It is notable regarding ancient imagination of immortality that Galen clearly states that aging and death are not necessary, but result as a consequence of the fluid condition of the body at birth. That fluidity was initially necessary for shaping the body, but the requirement for the body to dry out in order for it to mature meant that it continued drying – until the heart itself was dried and life ended (“On Marasmus” in Theoharides, 374). See, for example, Galen’s discussion of differences due to age in Mixtures I.2.522-23, 577-598; On the Body 810. See, for example, Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh, 57-61; On the Soul 56.

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seeds and plants), as Caroline Walker Bynum has argued. She concludes that for the church fathers who were writing around 400 C.E.: “[T]he paradigmatic body was the body of the saint, purified in life by denying those natural processes (especially nutrition and procreation) that threaten stability, and glorified in death by becoming a jewel-like relic that miraculously protects the living against the decay of illness and death.”16 Teresa Shaw has further demonstrated that dietary regimes designed by medical doctors to keep the body in a healthy humeral balance were redeployed by Christian ascetics to shape their bodies into the dry hardness required for immortal existence.17 In this seemingly paradoxical logic, it is the experience of bodily mutation that makes it possible to imagine transformation into the immutability of agelessness. Although such strategies tended to give up the medical ideal of humeral balance in favour of extreme dryness, the ideal of balance was nonetheless maintained through the notion of “age transcendence,” as Christian Gnilka argues. He points in particular to Gregory Nazianzan’s formulation: “A true philosopher (i.e., Christian) welcomes the end of life as the time appointed for a necessary liberation, and crosses over graciously to that life to come, where no one is immature or aged, but everyone shares the age of spiritual perfection!”18 Here, he argues, we find a clear dissociation of aging in terms of spiritual development from aging as stages of bodily development. This Christian ideal of age transcendence thus separates what much of Greco-Roman discourse on aging had tied together. One of the most common distinctions in antiquity described aging in terms of stages of life, especially youth, prime of life, and old age.19 Stages of life were primarily but variously characterized by differences in three areas: physical fitness, moral development, and reasoning capacity.20 In particular, childhood was characterized negatively by physical weakness, the inability to speak, lack of reasoning capacity, or moral incompetence (esp. lack of courage and _____________ 16 17 18 19

20

The Resurrection of the Body, 113. Shaw, The Burden of the Flesh. Trans. Daley, Gregory of Nazianzus, pp. 111-112. Writers variously considered 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, or even 10 different stages (see. Goldin, Children and Childhood, p. 2; Parkin, Old Age in the Roman World, pp. 15-35, 299-301). These most often included baby, child, youth, prime of life, old age, and a wide variety of associated terms. It is notable that these stages almost universally were solely gendered male. Discussion of the life stages of women is not distinguished or even mentioned as such in any of the literature I have thus far considered, although we do find references to female stages of life as girl, virgin, married woman, mother, and women who no longer menstruate. See Golden, Children and Childhood, pp. 1-22; “Change or Continuity,” 183-184.

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the incapacity for moral judgement); positively by innocence, humility, and naiveté. Children were often said to be free of the passions and desires that came with age, and thus could occasionally be represented as pure vessels of divine prophecy.21 Maturity could also be characterized positively (by wisdom, experience, prudence, courage, or physical strength), but especially old age was characterized negatively (by physical weakness, illness, loss of reasoning capacity, or other such signals of the decline toward death). But the Christian ideal of age transcendence that Gnilka describes, rather than associating certain stages of life with particular moral characteristics, offered a vision of the ideal spiritual state as one that simultaneously combined the best characteristics of youth (innocence and freedom from passion) with the best of aging (wisdom and self-control).22 Gnilka argues, for example, that in his Life of Macrina, Gregory of Nyssa offered an alternative mode of age transcendence when he discussed resurrection as the restoration of human nature to the original condition in which it was created by God. At that time, there was neither childhood nor old age, any more than illness or physical deficiencies, since all suffering came about only later as a consequence of human sin. Differences in physical age would therefore disappear with the resurrection.23 But ancient Christian reflection on aging was not always tied to questions about resurrection, whether of Jesus or of believers. Images of aging also occurred, for example, in polymorphic appearances of Jesus (Christ, Savior).24 Some early Christian texts use polymorphy to urge Christians to cultivate a capacity for spiritual vision that looks past appearances in order to apprehend divine truth. This perspective calls for a certain disregard of bodily age and appearance in favor of the cultivation of the soul.25 A story in the Acts of Peter 20-21 illustrates this point. Three blind widows come to Peter, wishing to be healed, but instead Peter instructs them about cultivating the inner eye that they _____________ 21

22 23

24 25

See Golden, Children and Childhood, pp. 1-22 and also “Change or Continuity,” which, while arguing against a more positive attitude toward children in the Hellenistic period, paints a good portrait of select historiographical representations of children and childhood. For Christianity, see Bakke, When Children Became People, esp. 15-109. Gnilka, Aetas Spiritalis, 65. Gnilka, Aetas Spiritalis, 154. Tertullian offered a different view: “We maintain that every soul, whatever be its age on quitting the body, remains unchanged in the same, until the time shall come when the promised perfection shall be realized in a state duly tempered to the measure of the peerless angels” (de Anima 56; trans. Coxe, pp. 232-233). For a discussions of how to define “polymorphy” with regard to Christian literature and practice, see Garcia, “La polymorphie du Christ.” For the theological diversity of polymorphic Christology, see Cartlidge, “Transfigurations of Metamorphosis Traditions”; Bovon, “The Child and the Beast.”

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already possess: “If there be in you the faith that is in Christ, if it be firm in you, then perceive in your mind that which you do not see with your eyes, and though your ears are closed, yet let them be open in your mind within you. These eyes shall again be shut, seeing naught but men and oxen and dumb beasts and stones and sticks; but not every eye sees Jesus Christ.”26 As they pray, an unspeakable, invisible light shines into the hall, so brilliant that it blinds the vision of seeing persons. But as the light pierces the eyes of the three blind widows, and each sees the Lord – but differently: one see a handsome old man, another a young man, and the third sees a boy. Peter praises God for the miracle and simultaneously sums up the lesson: “God is greater than our thoughts, even as we have learned of these aged widows, how they behold the Lord in diverse forms.”27 This anecdote reinforces teaching Peter had already given in a previous chapter about why Jesus appeared in the form of a human being: Because of people’s limited perceptions, God revealed himself as “great and small, fair and foul, young and old, seen in time and unto eternity invisible” and much more, so that people could perceive that Jesus “is all things and there is none other greater than he” who is door, light, way, bread, water, life, resurrection, refreshment, pearl, treasure, seed, and so on.28 In this case, polymorphy simultaneously illustrates several related theological themes: God’s greatness, the multiformity of ways in which God exists, and the need to transcend appearances by cultivating inner, spiritual vision. In this kind of presentation, youth and old age are but one element among others, but one that is particularly appropriate for conveying the multiformity of God in the human Jesus. These themes of divine multiformity and spiritual insight appear in other early Christian literature as well. The Secret Revelation of John, for example, also recounts a vision of Christ’s polymorphic, divine nature and it also uses that vision to stress the need to look beyond the appearances of the world to perceive the divine. But because it offers a different theological framework, these themes work differently as we will see. The revelation begins when Christ appears to John in brilliant light, first as a young man ( ), then an old man ( ), and finally a woman ( ): And lo, a young man [appeared to] me. But [when I saw] that the likeness ( ), [in which there] was a light, was an old man, [I gazed] into it. I did

_____________ 26 27 28

Acts of Peter 21 trans. Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 2, p. 304. Acts of Peter 20 trans. Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 2, p. 305 (modified). Acts of Peter 20 trans. Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 2, p. 304.

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not [understand] this wonder, (which gave the impression) that [there was a woman] with many forms [in the light]. Her forms ( ) appeared through one another. (I thought), if she is one, [how] can she consist of three faces ( )?29

When John sees these forms, he is frightened and confused, but the Savior comforts him and resolves his confusion by saying: “John, wh[y] are you doubting and [fearful]? 10For you are not a stranger [to this like]ness. Do not be faint[hearted! 11I am the one who dwells with [you (pl.) al]ways. 12I am the [Father.] I am the Mother. [I] am [the S]on. 13I am the one who exists for ever, undefil[ed and un]mixed.” 14N[ow I have come] to instruct you [about what] exists and what [has come] into being and what mu[st] come into being, 15so that you will [understand] the things which are invisible a[nd those which] are visible, 16and to t[each you] about the perfe[ct Human].”30

The Savior’s revelation, both in the polymorphic appearance and in his words to John about it, addresses a number of themes, including prominently the eternal nature of the divine31 and the unity of God.32 It also _____________ 29

30 31 32

BG 21:3-13. Critical text in Till-Schenke, Die Gnostischen Schriften, p. 82-83; see also the critical edition of Waldstein and Wisse, The Apocryphon of John; English trans. cited from Pleše, Poetics of the Gnostic Universe, 29. As the brackets in the translation show, a significant lacuna mars the Berlin Codex (BG) version of SRJ at this point. The corresponding passage in Nag Hammadi Codex II reads “a servant” ( ). The lacuna in BG has been variously restored as “likeness” ( Waldstein and Wisse, The Apocryphon of John, p.16 ) or “woman” ( Schenke in Till-Schenke, Die Gnostischen Schriften, p. 82-83). Here I am following Pleše’s suggestion that the lacuna be filled by instead of , as Schenke suggested (see the discussion of Pleše, Poetics of the Gnostic Universe, p. 28-40). As Pleše notes, Schenke’s restoration of the lacuna as “woman” is supported internally on two grounds: 1) the lacuna requires a feminine noun, and 2) the three forms (old man, woman, and child) correspond well to Christ’s own proclamation that he is “the Father, the Mother, and the Son,” that is, the Invisible Spirit, Barbelo-Pronoia, and Allogenes-Christ. In addition, Pleše brings to bear a “history-of-religions” parallel from a new fragment of the Acts of Philip published by François Bovon in which a man named Stachys has a vision of a handsome young man with three forms or faces (ActPhil 14:4). Plese reports: “The first had the shape of a beardless youth carrying a jar; the one in the middle, of a woman (γυνη, παρθενος) clad in a glorious garment, a torch in her hand; and the third was of an older man”(Pleše, Poetics of the Gnostic Universe, p. 38). Philip subsequently interprets this vision of Christ as the perfect man, the great spirit, and the father, concluding “you are with us in three perfect forms, the images of the invisible” (ActPhil 14:5; see Pleše, Poetics of the Gnostic Universe, p. 39). SRJ 3.9-16 (BG); numbering follows my translation in The Secret Revelation of John. See, for example, Junod, ”Polymorphie du Dieu Sauveur,” 42-43. As Pleše puts it, the Savior’s manifestation “conveys the mystery of the divine nature which can be condensed in a simple formula: God may be seen either under a threefold or under a single aspect. The Savior’s visual revelation serves thus as a fi-

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prefigures central themes that are addressed more fully in the rest of the work, which tie together the nature of God, the Savior, and humanity. First, the Savior’s appearance as youth, old man, and woman reflects the primary theology of the text in which God is figured as a divine triad of Father, Mother, and Son. The Savior declares that all these are revealed in him. As Son, he is also Christ and the First Man, whose image appeared on the waters below as the model for the creation of humanity by the lower world rulers. Hence humanity is linked with the divine through the divine image, the Perfect Human. Moreover, because the world below is modelled on the divine realm, the divine household of Father, Mother, and Son needs to be seen as the model for the family of Adam, Eve, and Seth in the human realm. But the Savior’s revelation also stresses that the purpose of Christ’s appearance is to teach John how to distinguish what is pure, undefiled, and eternal, from what is impure, mixed, and subject to becoming and destruction. This revelation is necessary because the rulers of the world work purposefully to lead humanity astray. Salvation consists in accepting the truth of the Savior’s teaching, receiving the holy spirit from the Mother, and overcoming the passions and errors that lead one astray – not only from God, but from one’s own properly spiritual nature. This theme is declaimed loudly here, when the Savior tells John that he is eternal, holy, and pure, and that he will instruct him about what exists, what has come into being and what will be. Like the blind widows in the Acts of Peter, this knowledge will allow John to understand what is invisible and distinguish it from what is merely visible, but unlike Peter’s instruction, the Savior’s point is to enable people to expose the arrogance and ignorance of the powers at work in the world by discerning the true Spirit from the counterfeit. The strong contrast be_____________ gurative preamble to his ensuing self-portrayal as a trinity-in-unity: ‘I am the Father, I am the Mother, and I am the Son’” (Poetics of the Gnostic Universe, p. 38-39). He notes further: “The Christ who appears in multiple forms (πολύμορφος) to his disciples was a widely used motif in the early Christian literature, and the meaning of his polymorphy, its βούλημα, was a controversial subject among the first theologians. For some, multiformity had more to do with different spiritual capacities of recipients than with Christ’s real nature. For others, it proved that Christ was, in fact, without any form and above all determinations. For some, again, polymorphy was the visible expression of Christ’s multiple potencies, virtues, or perfections (ἐπίνοιαι), in contrast with the unity, simplicity, and ineffability of the transcendent Father. For others, it was the symbol of Christ’s paradoxical status, of his being one with and, at the same time, different from the other members of the divine triad. Due to lacunas in the text of BG, John’s position in regard to this issue remains somewhat ambiguous. The unity of the Savior he refers to, does he sees [sic] it as underlying, occasioning, or transcending the plurality of forms?” (Poetics of the Gnostic Universe, p. 32-33).

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tween the immaterial divine world above and the material world below primarily serves a social critique aimed at forming a particular way of being in the world. The Savior’s revelation aims to produce readers who recognize that deception and violence are tools of the weak and the malicious – not of the true God. They are urged to seek and cultivate their true spiritual natures, created in the Image of the First Human and filled with the Spirit of the Mother. By linking the nature of God and humanity, the Savior’s polymorphy signals both the presence of the divine in human bodies – old and young, male and female – as well as simultaneously their potential for spiritual transformation and transcendence. These examples demonstrate not only that the polymorphic image of aging could be used to reflect on themes other than the resurrection, but also that any image is complex and complexly reverberates with themes in the rest of the work in which it operates. When we examine the images of Jesus as a child in the two Coptic gospels, we thus need to consider them not only with regard to ancient discourse of aging more generally, but with regard to how they fit thematically in their respective literary and theological contexts. It is also necessary to place them comparatively within the diverse field of Christian deployments of images of aging in order to see the ways in which these gospels both belong to that field and are distinctive.

The Gospel of Judas33 Near the beginning of the newly rediscovered Gospel of Judas, a strange sentence appears, stating: “Frequently he (Jesus) would not reveal himself to his disciples, but you would find him in their midst as a child” (33:18-23). There are a number of difficulties with this sentence. First of all, the Coptic term translated as “child”, , is otherwise unattested.34 But even if we accept the editor’s reading as “child,” there are two other oddities with this sentence: Why would Jesus not reveal him_____________ 33

34

For an account of the discovery of the Gospel of Judas, see Kasser, “The Story of Codex Tchacos.” The critical edition of the Coptic text may be found in Kasser and Wurst, The Gospel of Judas, pp. 184-235. For a brief introduction to the Gospel of Judas, see Pagels and King, Reading Judas. For see Crum, A Coptic Dictionary, p. 631a, aBohairic; Kasser et al., The Gospel of Judas, p. 20, n. 7. Antti Marjanen has suggested that is a previously unknown Sahidic variant of the Bohairic (email correspondence). Other terms would be expected, for example: (“child”) or (”youth”).

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self to his disciples? And what are we to make of the interruption in the story’s flow by the unexpected change from third person description to direct address to the reader – “you will find him in their midst”?35 We will return to these difficulties below. What might Jesus’s appearance as a child indicate? At first glance, the point might be to suggest that Jesus’s appearance as a child shows that the physical body is not a limitation for a divine being; rather it demonstrates how malleable the body is. Its birth, growth, and death are only appearances compared with the eternal stability of the spirit. After all, the Gospel of Judas does not tell about Jesus’s “birth” (as do the infancy narratives of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke) nor about his “becoming flesh” (as does the prologue to the Gospel of John), but rather it talks about him “appearing on earth” (GosJud 33:6-7). Moreover, the Gospel of Judas says that Jesus once left his disciples in order to visit the holy race “not in these realms” (36:11-19) but later returned, further lending credence to the view that Jesus’s appearance on earth serves to contrast material mutability with divine immutability, in keeping with Jesus’s teaching about the ultimate destruction of the lower realm and its rulers on the last day (GosJud 40:25-26; 55:15-20). But more is going on here, for equally odd is the first part of the sentence, which states that Jesus “would not reveal himself to his disciples.” It would seem that it was precisely because he was a child that the disciples did not perceive his presence in their midst. Yet the image of Jesus as a child was a common notion in ancient Christianity. Two of the New Testament gospels, the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, tell of Jesus’s birth, and Luke also has a story of Jesus as a young man impressing the elders in the Temple with his wisdom (Luke 2:41-52). This picture of Jesus as a child who was wise beyond his years (a puer senex) is elaborated in greater detail in the legendary second century Infancy Gospel of Thomas, where Jesus confounds his poor teacher, Zacchaeus, and strikes dead some children who wrong him. Although Jesus raises the children back to life in the end, he laughs at how the adults misunderstand his actions, admonishing them to greater insight: “Now let that which is yours bear fruit, and let the blind in heart see. I have come from above to curse them and call them to the things above, as He commanded who sent me for your sakes” (InThomas 8:1).36 This portrait of Jesus laughing is very reminiscent of the Gospel of Judas, in which Jesus laughs at the foolishness of his disciples and admonishes them to _____________ 35

36

This second person address might indicate a secondary addition, but whether that is the case or not, we still have to ask what point this sentence is making in its current literary context. Trans. Oscar Cullman in Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha. vol. 1, p. 446.

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higher spiritual knowledge (GosJudas 34:2-35:5). In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus himself teaches about the wisdom to be learned from children. He tells his disciples that “the man old in days will not hesitate to ask a small child of seven days old about the place of life, and he will live” (GosThomas 4),37 but there the point is not about Jesus as a child but that creation (the pristine universe God created in seven days, represented here by a seven-day-old child) holds the whole meaning of life. So, too, in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples that they must “turn and become like children” in order to enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:1-6; 9:13-15),38 and later tradition will also picture the Spirit who guides Paul as a child (Apocalypse of Paul 18:3-22). In all of these cases, including the Gospel of Judas, the image of the child points to a figure which was wide-spread in antiquity,39 that of the puer senex, the child who is wise beyond his years. Because of his purity and innocence, such a child was thought to be able to convey the hidden or unexpected presence of the divine. 40 Such images are found outside of Christianity as well. Cicero, for example, relates a charming Etruscan story about the origins of divination, in which a farmer, ploughing deeper than usual, rouses a figure named Tages, who “had the appearance of a boy but the wisdom of an old man.” Tages proceeds to teach “the whole of Etruria” about the science of soothsaying, illustrating how the “wise child” could be connected with inspired teaching.41 Clement of Alexandria is perhaps the strongest voice among early Christians to argue that the ideal state of the Christian is childlike.42 He talks, for example, about people who have wasted the stages of their lives (ἡλικιῶν) in atheism, coming only in old age to the state of guileless children: _____________ 37 38 39

40

41 42

Trans. Layton in Nag Hammadi Codex II,2-7, vol. 1, p.55. All Biblical translations are from the New Revised Standard Version. Gnilka distinguishes the Christian ideal of spiritual transcendence of age, the “puersenex” motif in which a boy attains spiritual maturity, and three other forms: 1) the child with the characteristics of old age; 2) the well-known adage that old age is a second childhood; and 3) images of the polymorphic Christ such as are found in the Acts of John or Peter (see Aetas Spiritalis, pp. 37-45). For further discussion of the “puer-senex,” see Curtius, European Literature, 98-105; Garcia, “L’enfant vieillard.” A charming Christian example of such a child appears in a work referred to as the Coptic Gospel of Bartholomew, in which the seven-month old child of Joseph of Arimathea asks his father to save him from the milk of his wetnurse – the wife of Judas Iscariot – because she and her husband have taken blood money! See Schneemelcher, Neutestamentliche Apocryphen, vol. 1, pp. 437-440; text and German translation in Mattias Westerhoff, Auferstehung und Jenseits, p.53. Cicero, De divinatione II.xiii (text and trans. in Falconer, Cicero, p. 426-429). See the brief discussion of Bakke, When Children Became People, 58-63.

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“You have been boys (παῖδες), then lads (μειράκια), then youths (ἒφηβοι), then men (ἄνδρες), but good you have never been. Have respect to your old age (γῆρας); become sober now you have reached the sunset of life; even at the end of life acknowledge God, so that the end of your life may regain a beginning of salvation. Grow old to daemon-worship; return as young men to the fear of God; God will enroll you as guileless children (παῖδας ἀκάκους)” (Exhortation to the Greeks X.84).43

In what sense are Christians properly called children? Clement tells us: “Rightly, then, are those called children who know Him who is God alone as their Father, who are simple, and infants, and guileless, who are lovers of the horns of the unicorns. To those, therefore, who have made progress in the word, He has proclaimed this utterance, bidding them dismiss anxious care of the things of this world, and exhorting them to adhere to the Father alone, in imitation of children” (Paedagogus I.5).44

He goes on and praises children as gentle, tender, delicate, simple, guileless, destitute of hypocrisy, straightforward and upright in mind, which is the basis of simplicity and truth. Christians are members of the new race, in contrast to the old: “In contradistinction, therefore, to the older people, the new people are called young, having learned the new blessings; and we have the exuberance of life’s morning prime in this youth which knows no old age, in which we are always growing to maturity in intelligence, are always young, always mild, always new: for those must necessarily be new, who have become partakers of the new Word. And that which participates in eternity is wont to be assimilated to the incorruptible: so that to us appertains the designation of the age of childhood, a lifelong spring-time, because the truth that is in us, and our habits saturated with the truth, cannot be touched by old age; but Wisdom is ever blooming, ever remains consistent and the same, and never changes.” (Paedagogus I.5)45

For Clement, this eternal youth belongs to moral reformation: “Truly, then, are we the children of God, who have put aside the old man, and stripped off the garment of wickedness, and put on the immortality of Christ; that we may become a new, holy people by regeneration, and may keep the man undefiled. And a babe, as God’s little one, is cleansed from fornication and wickedness” (Paedagogus I.6).46

_____________ 43 44 45

46

Text and trans. from Butterworth, Clement of Alexandria, pp. 230-233. Trans. Coxe, “The Instructor,” 213. Trans. Coxe, “The Instructor,” 214. Note that Clement can draw upon both negative and positive descriptions of childhood, applying the negative characteristics (lack of reasoning, fearfulness, foolishness, and so on) to Jews or to believers prior to conversion, while the positive characteristics, he says, properly belong to Christians. Trans. Coxe, “The Instructor,” 217.

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As he puts it, “the childhood which is in Christ is maturity, as compared with the law.” Or again, “those things which have been concealed from the wise and prudent of this present world have been revealed to babes.”47 For Clement, then, Christians are eternal children, reformed from the sins and errors associated with aging in order to return to the perfections of childlike innocence, purity, and oracular wisdom. His diction easily invokes the puer senex. Here, however, such an ideal state applies not only to Jesus, but to every Christian since childhood is properly the model of Christian life – and immortality. As Gnilka notes, Clement assumes a striking disjuncture between physical and spiritual age, since presumably one can attain to the status of child of God at any stage of life. In that sense, we might mistake Clement’s language as “simply” metaphor. But given his belief in the bodily resurrection, it is quite possible he was characterizing a permanent eschatological condition: the end of the age is the new age; Christians are the new people; immortality is not agelessness but eternal youth. The childlike condition of the soul in this life marks the permanent condition of the immortal resurrected self in the eschaton. It is not strictly metaphor, but transformation that Clement has in mind. Perhaps in the Gospel of Judas, too, the child Jesus is understood to be this kind of puer senex, although it has to be noted that nothing is said explicitly about him being wise or giving instructions and oracles as a child though he appears as the wise teacher and revealer throughout the rest of work. Nor is childhood presented as an ideal for his disciples. Indeed it would seem that the point being made most clearly in this passage is rather one which is made repeatedly elsewhere in the Gospel of Judas – that Jesus’s own most intimate disciples did not perceive his true nature and identity due to their lack of spiritual insight. They could not “see” beyond his childlike appearance to comprehend his true nature. The disciples’ misunderstanding points more strongly to another notion that was especially widely deployed in Christianity: that people perceived Jesus only as they were able – or in the case of the Gospel of Judas, unable. Origen, for example, castigates the non-Christian Celsus because he is unable to perceive the divine Logos in Jesus: “(H)ow did he fail to notice that his (Jesus’s) body differed in accordance with the capacity of those who saw it, and on this account appeared in such form as was beneficial for the needs of each individual’s vision? It is not remarkable that matter, which is by nature subject to change, altera_____________ 47

Trans. Coxe, “The Instructor,” 218, 217. See also Mark Golden, Childhood in Classical Athens, 10.

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tion, and transformation into anything which the Creator desires, and is capable of possessing any quality which the Artificer wishes, at one time possesses a quality of which it is said ‘He had not form or beauty’, and at another time a quality so glorious and striking and wonderful that the three apostles who went up with Jesus and saw the exquisite beauty fell on their faces.”48 He goes on, “The doctrine has an even more mysterious meaning since it proclaims that the different forms of Jesus are to be applied to the nature of the divine Logos. … And I would include also the different stages of his life, and any of the actions which he did before he suffered and after he rose again from the dead.”49 Origen’s point is that Christ’s different appearances, including his different ages, belong to the economy of salvation; it is less about bodily form than it is about his care for souls at different stages of ascent to God.50 The disciples in the Gospel of Judas, however, most clearly resemble Origen’s opponent, Celsus, for they are unable to see past the external appearance of Jesus as a child to perceive his essential nature. They, too, are serving false gods with the consequence that they are unable to perceive the higher divine reality. As in the Secret Revelation of John, the image of Jesus as a child in the Gospel of Judas communicates more than one message. Although the disciples’ misunderstanding is certainly not incompatible with docetism or the image of Jesus as puer senex, the most explicit theme is clearly that of rhetorical blame: Jesus appeared as child in their midst, but the disciples did not perceive the presence of the divine revelation in Jesus. Right at the outset, the reader is prepared for what will come: the exposure of the disciples’ inability to grasp Jesus’s identity or to understand his teaching. The reader, on the other hand, is able to find him in their midst, even as a child. This contrast has the effect not only of disturbing the image the readers may have had of the disciples as authoritative guides to understanding, but it also constructs the readers as people who have superior insight. They are implicitly warned not to accept the teaching of “the twelve” uncritically. By the end of the Gospel of Judas, _____________ 48 49 50

CCels VI.77; trans. Chadwick, Contra Celsum, p. 390. Chadwick, Contra Celsum, p. 390, 391 (my emphasis). Following McGuckin, “The Changing Forms of Jesus,” pp. 219-220. Origen writes: “If the immortal divine Word assumes both a human body and a human soul, and by so doing appears to Celsus to be subject to change and remoulding, let him learn that the Word remains Word in essence. He suffers nothing of the experience of the body or the soul. But sometimes he comes down to the level of him who is unable to look upon the radiance and brilliance of the Deity, and becomes as it were flesh, and is spoken of in physical terms, until he who has accepted him in this form is gradually lifted up by the Word and can look even upon, so to speak, his absolute form” (CCels. IV.15; trans. Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum, pp. 193-194).

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they will have learned that only those who have grasped Jesus’s teaching are able to perceive the perfect human within themselves, and only they have the capacity for spiritual discernment to perceive the divine image, even in a child.

The Gospel of the Savior51 In the Gospel of the Savior, the Lord tells his disciples, “I am [in] your midst li[ke] a child”52 (107:5-60; Emmel 73). On first glance, this declaration may seem very similar to Jesus’s appearance to the disciples as a child in the Gospel of Judas. But although the Gospel of the Savior is extremely fragmentary (only seven parchment leaves plus a number of unplaced fragments survive), it is nonetheless clear that the statement appears in quite a different literary context. Both gospels contain dialogue between the Savior and his disciples set in a time just before the crucifixion, but in the Gospel of Judas the disciples are unable to perceive Jesus’s presence as a child whereas in the Gospel of the Savior, the Savior speaks to them directly and affirms his presence as a child. Thus the Gospel of the Savior lacks the polemic against the twelve disciples found in the Gospel of Judas. Instead the Savior’s statement is part of his teaching to all his followers, who are explicitly called “apostles.” In the extant portion of the gospel, they not only receive revelation from Jesus, but are also participants in a mountaintop vision in which the Savior ascends to the seventh heaven to the throne of God, prostrates himself before his Father, and asks three times to have “this cup” removed. All this is witnessed by the apostles who become “as spiritual bodies” clothed with “the power of our apostleship.” The passage of interest for our purposes here takes place after they descend, when the apostles ask the Savior about the nature of his resurrection appearance. The passage begins in a fragmentary sentence, but continues in one of the best preserved sections of the manuscript: “three [days I will] take you [...] with me and show you [the] things you desire [to] see. So [do not be alarmed] when [you] see [me]!”

_____________ 51

52

The Gospel of the Savior is known to us from fragments of a Coptic translation of a 2nd c. gospel originally composed in Greek, preserved in a (6th-7th c?) parchment codex now housed in the Egyptian Museum, Berlin (Papyrus Berolinensis 22220). A critical edition of the Coptic text may be found in Hedrick and Mirecki, The Gospel of the Savior; see also Schenke, “Das sogenannte ‘Unbekannte Berliner Evangelium’ (UBE)”; and Emmel, “The Recently Published Gospel of the Savior,” who offers an important reordering of the pages and new restorations. Here we find the usual Coptic terminology: . For the use of the plural, see Polotsky, Collected Papers, p. 231; Hedrick and Mirecki, The Gospel of the Savior.

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We said to him, “Lord, in what form ( ) will you reveal yourself to us, or in what kind of body ( ) will you come? Tell us!” John responded and said, “Lord, when you are ready to reveal yourself to us, do not reveal yourself to us in all your glory, but change your glory into [some other] glory so that [we might be able to bear] it, lest we see [you and] despair from [fear]!” [Then the Savior] replied, “[Rid] yourself [of] this [fear] that [you] are afraid of, so that you might see and believe! But do not touch me until I ascend to [my Father and your Father], to [my God and] your God, to my Lord and your Lord! If someone [comes close] to me , he [will get burned. I] am [the] blazing [fire. Whoever is close] to [me] is close to [the fire]. Whoever is far from me is far from life. So now gather [unto] me, O my holy members ( ), [... 6 lines untranslatable...].” [He] said to us, “I am [in] your midst in [the manner] of a child ( ).” He said, “Amen!” 53 “ A little while I am among you.”’ [...] responded, “Amen!”

Some points here are more clear than others. The disciples are fearful that they will be overcome by the glorious form or body of the revealed Lord, but the Savior tells them not to fear. They need to see and believe. On the other hand, they are not to touch him until he ascends. The notion of Jesus’s glorious appearance was much discussed among early Christians, especially with reference to accounts of the transfiguration. Origen, for example, argued that only three of the disciples were invited to the mountain with Jesus because at that time only they were advanced enough to be able to see his glory, and similarly, not everyone had the capacity to see the resurrected Jesus.54 Does the presence of Jesus as a child belong to this theme, following as it does on Jesus’s discussion of his fire-hot, glorious bodily form? It is not entirely clear, especially since about six lines of text are missing just before Jesus’s self-declaration about being like a child in their midst. Why, then, are readers presented here with the notion that Jesus is present among his disciples as a child? This statement is placed at the beginning of his self declarations detailing the rehearsal of his earthly career. It is interesting that when asked about his future form and body (“in what form will you reveal yourself, in what kind of body will you come?”), the Savior describes how he exists in the world: he is among them as a child; he is plotted against because he is a stranger to the _____________ 53

54

For more on this section, especially the use of the singular “he said,” see the discussion of Schenke, “Das sogenannte ‘Unbekannte Berliner Evangelium’,” pp. 202-203; Emmel, “The Recently Published Gospel of the Savior,” p. 58, n. 73 ff. See Contra Celsum II.64.

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world; he grieves for the world; he is the king and son of the king; he is fighting; he is himself sent, and he sends apostles; he has overcome the world and become free; he will be given vinegar and gall, and be pierced in the side with a spear. He admonishes his disciples to know themselves, to go out, to grieve for the world but also to rejoice and not to let the world overcome them; they should become free and acquire life and rest. Finally he tells them, “Whoever does not partake of my body and my blood is a stranger to me.” To each of these selfdeclarations and admonitions, the apostles respond, “Amen!” 55 Is “being a child” a reference to the earliest stage of his life before he is plotted against and killed? What about the other ways he is described: as a stranger, mourner, king and son of the king, warrior, apostle, conqueror of the world? The description of being “like a child” takes its place among those. Perhaps the emphasis of the child image falls on the well-known images, portraying Jesus as an innocent or as the pure, prognostic child who speaks in prophetic oracles. Yet, as in the Gospel of Judas, these points are not made explicitly. What is clear is that by the end, the disciples are meant to perceive the full identity of the Savior: the one who ascends to heaven and speaks directly with God, who appears in a glorious body and is fire, and who in his crucifixion overcomes the world and rules as king; this Jesus is also the one who lived as a child. It would seem that the disciples – and hence all believers – are being called upon to recognize the glorious Lord in the whole career of Jesus, from childhood to crucifixion. In this case again, the transformation that the Gospel of the Savior desires to effect is to be found less in Jesus’s resurrection from this body of flesh into a transfigured body of glory than in furthering the capacity of the apostles to discern Jesus’s true divine nature while still in his body, including during his life stage as a child. In the Gospel of the Savior, this bodily nature apparently does not block the disciples’ understanding of Jesus’s divine nature since they perceive a vision of his heavenly stature during his ministry and before the resurrection.56 Every stage in Jesus’s life holds a lesson for _____________ 55

56

We might speculate that this is a ritual fragment embedded in the revelation, perhaps like the prayer from Qumran discussed in this volume by John Collins, and perhaps with a similar purpose of authorizing the prayer by giving it a divine revelatory origin? Whether the Gospel of the Savior continued with a narrative of the crucifixion and resurrection is unknown. But it may be that the gospel could end before these were narrated, as the disciples already have seen all they need to know in order to understand the nature of the Lord and his saving action in the world, as we see in both the Gospel of Mark (where no resurrection is recounted in the version ending at 16:8) and the Gospel of Judas.

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his followers, as he tells them: “I am fighting [for] you. You too, wage war! … I am being sent. I in turn want to send you. … I have overcome the world. And you, do not let the world overcome you! … I will be [pierced] with a spear [in my] side. He who saw it, let him bear witness – and his testimony is true!” (GosSav 108.26-33, 45-49, 59-64; Emmel 8586, 89, 92-93). In this way, the transformation in Jesus’s resurrection from this material body to a transfigured, glorious body, is also the revelation of who they are and what path they need to follow; as Jesus tells them: “Become acquainted with [yourselves], that you might profit me, and I will rejoice over your work!” (GosSav 108.12-16; Emmel 80)57 The admonition that those who see the crucifixion should become witnesses may also belong to the arena of martyrdom; as Jesus is tortured and killed, so also might they be in bearing witness to Jesus’s life and teaching. Jesus’s most poignant Christological declaration, however, is not made to his followers, but to the cross: “[Do not] weep, O [cross], but rather [rejoice] and recognize [your] Lord as he [is coming toward] you, that he is [gentle] and [lowly]!” (Emmel 108-10958). Here surely Jesus is the model for how his followers should face persecution: rejoicing as they approach their deaths, gentle and lowly. Throughout the work, Jesus teaches them not merely to see beyond the material to the spiritual, but to see what is spiritual in Jesus’s life and deeds, to comprehend the divine not only in the vision of glory but also in his suffering and death – and in his childhood. It is only fear that keeps them from this truth. By receiving Jesus’s revelation and overcoming their fear, they are able to take on the garment of apostleship and become witnesses to the truth. In this, Jesus is their model: “I lay down my life for you. You too, lay down your lives for your [friends], so that you might please my Father! For there is no greater command than this, that I should [lay down my] life [for ] humankind” (GosSav Emmel 19-21). This fate is what Jesus alludes to when he says to them that “If someone [comes close] to me, he [will get burned. I] am t[the] blazing [fire. Whoever is close] to [me] is close to [the fire]. Whoever is far from me is far from life” (GosSav 107.39-48; Emmel 71). Where should we place this kind of presentation in the practices of Christian life? It could fit, as Origen’s presentation does, in a polemical context, as a stab against those who mocked Christians worshipping a man as a God, a human who not only had been put to an inglorious death but who had lived as a mere child. If so, the gospel’s point would _____________ 57 58

I follow here Emmel’s restoration (“The Recently Published Gospel of the Savior,” 68). Following the restoration of Emmel (“The Recently Published Gospel of the Savior,” 70).

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be that only some of Jesus’s followers were able to perceive his glorious divinity even while he was in the material body. But given that the image of the child appears among Jesus’s injunctions to the apostles to rejoice in this world and not to grieve, it may have served more directly to turn Christians to an understanding of the spiritual value of bodily existence, not only in ritual practice (note the admonition that it is necessary to partake of his body and blood59), but in celebrating the Savior’s triumph over death and in facing their own deaths in joy without fear. We might better understand this notion that Jesus’s own career imparted meaning to every stage of life by looking to Irenaeus, who made the remarkable – and remarkably insistent – argument that Jesus lived to be an old man. Irenaeus disputes the claim that Jesus’s ministry lasted only one year, arguing instead that he reached nearly fifty years old, having begun his ministry around age thirty, and he cites the Gospel of John 8:56, 57 (Isaiah 53:2) to prove it: “For when the Lord said to them, ‘Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it, and was glad,’ they answered Him, ‘You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?’ Now, such language is fittingly applied to one who has already passed the age of forty, without having as yet reached his fiftieth year, yet is not far from this latter period.” (22.6)

But why is Irenaeus straining so hard to make this argument? He seems to have two interests. The first was to counter charges that Jesus’s teaching was that of an immature youth. In his opinion, those who say Jesus taught only one year are thereby: “robbing Him of that age which is both more necessary and more honourable than any other; that more advanced age, I mean, during which also as a teacher He excelled all others. For how could He have had disciples, if He did not teach? And how could He have taught, unless He had reached the age of a Master?”

The second interest is theological, or more precisely incarnational. For Irenaeus argues that by living to the age of fifty, Jesus sanctified every stage of human life: “Being a Master, therefore, He also possessed the age of a Master, not despising or evading any condition of humanity, nor setting aside in Himself that law which He had appointed for the human race, but sanctifying every age, by that period corresponding to it which belongs to Himself. For He came to save all through means of Himself – all, I say, who through Him are born again to God – infants, and children, and boys, and youths, and old men. He therefore passed through every age, becoming an infant for infants, thus sanctifying infants; a child for children, thus sanctifying those

_____________ 59

GosSav 105.11-14; Emmel 96.

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who are of this age, being at the same time made to them an example of piety, righteousness, and submission; a youth for youths, becoming an example to youths, and thus sanctifying them for the Lord. So likewise He was an old man for old men, that he might be a perfect Master for all, not merely as respects the setting forth of the truth, but also as regards age, sanctifying at the same time the aged also, and becoming an example to them likewise. Then, at last, He came on to death itself, that He might be ‘the first-born from the dead, that in all things He might have the preeminence,’ ‘the Prince of life,’ existing before all, and going before all.” (22.4)

Irenaeus marks “the stage of early life” as up to 30 years, but from the fortieth and fiftieth years a person begins to decline toward old age. It is that latter age “which our Lord possessed while He still fulfilled the office of a Teacher, even as the Gospel and all the elders testify” (22.5). Thus, for Irenaeus, Jesus’s existence must have encompassed all the stages of life so that he can serve as an example for imitation to every person, no matter what one’s age.60 To children, he modelled piety, righteousness and submission; to old men, he exemplified all the virtues of a master in his incarnation, in true flesh and blood. This modelling is the fundamental purpose of the incarnation, for, according to Irenaeus, Christ became flesh in order to restore humanity to the full likeness to God lost due to apostasy in the sin of Adam and Eve. The restoration of this likeness occurs through vision of God, especially as revealed in the incarnation of Christ and in his ministry, death, and resurrection. “He became what we are so that we might become what he is.”61 Aging enters this equation as part of “the law that God appointed for the human race.” What is required is not a transcendence of age and its metamorphoses, but a kind of taxonomic sanctification; that is, sanctification takes place primarily through achieving those moral behaviors appropriate to a person’s stage of life. Here there is technically no polymorphy, conceived as simultaneous appearances, because Christ himself cannot be limited or fixed to a single life-stage since he is a teacher for all, as Irenaeus stresses.62 But Irenaeus’ images of Jesus aging also allow a Christian pedagogy in which practices aimed at forming Christian bodies to a restored likeness to God could be conceived as age-specific. Nothing about the practices Irenaeus recommends are, however, in any way specifically Christian – they conform to standard moral teaching in antiquity about the ideal virtues of child_____________ 60 61 62

I frame this sentence inclusively, but I am not sure how gender inclusive Irenaeus’ argument or intention is here. See Against Heresies V. preface-I.1. McGuckin argues that this presentation fits well with his notion of Christ’s existence as recapitulation (see “The Changing Forms of Jesus,” 221, n. 18).

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ren, youth, mature, and aged men. What makes them in any sense “Christian,” as Gnilka would stress, is that they have been clearly tied to one particular Christological (incarnational) and eschatological schema. It is interesting that the Gospel of the Savior marks many of the same points in Jesus’s career as Irenaeus does: a child, a master and teacher, his death, and resurrection; and it, too, thereby Christianizes the many different positions in which one might find oneself in the world, not only in age, but also as a stranger, a warrior, someone who is high (a king) and someone who grieves and suffers, who is persecuted and abused. In these ways, Jesus in the Gospel of the Savior sanctifies multiple aspects of human living. His appearance in glory is only one manifestation to his disciples. They are to embrace all these life experiences – bodily experiences – as simultaneously manifestations of the divine. 63 Irenaeus and the Gospel of the Savior are pointing toward something quite profound about how Christians could see Jesus’s life and death as a model for cultivation of spiritual perfection. His career from child to adult – and according to Irenaeus, even into old age – not only sanctified every stage of human aging but also made possible the polymorphic imagination of God, who could be simultaneously the glorious Savior and the lowly, gentle man on the cross. For Irenaeus, the imitation of Jesus made possible the restoration of the likeness to God in which humanity was created but which people had lost due to sin. For the Gospel of the Savior, Jesus was similarly the revelation not only of God, but also of humanity’s true spiritual nature. Both gave a high valuation for the bodily career of Jesus, as well as his divinity. In the Gospel of the Savior, Jesus clearly is a person of flesh and blood, and he says of his own death that he will “die with joy and pour out my blood for the human race” (Emmel 52). Yet one sentence in particular seems to indicate that the final state of believers will not be material, for Jesus _____________ 63

Another articulation of this notion that the divine encompasses the full range of human experience, in all its complexity and contradictions, lies in the Nag Hammadi tractate Thunder Perfect Mind. There the simultaneous affirmations of contraries, which as Anne McGuire puts it, ”displaces the duality of apparent opposites with paradoxes that cross and nullify the boundaries between them” by pointing toward the multiplicity within the divine (Searching the Scriptures, 104). The voice of Thunder overcomes the fragmentation of the self by naming, cherishing, insisting upon the multiplicity of self-hood and experience – including the experience of age: “Come forward to me, you who know me and you who know my members, and establish the great ones among the small first creatures. Come forward to childhood and do not despise it because it is small and it is little. And do not turn away greatnesses in some parts from the smallnesses, for the smallnesses are known from the greatnesses” (Thunder 17.19-32).

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admonishes his disciples: “So now [while] you are in the body, do not let matter rule over you!” (GosSavior Emmel 11). Here the difference from Irenaeus is clear, since he affirms the bodily resurrection of believers in the strongest terms. Yet contrary to Irenaeus’ insistence that such a position makes a mockery of Jesus’s incarnation, death, and the eucharist ritual, the Gospel of the Savior interprets them, drawing heavily upon the Gospels of Matthew and especially John, in ways that make them theologically central. In the Gospel of the Savior, the image of Jesus as a child works on multiple themes that are prevalent throughout the text. It not only answers the question of why only some people perceived Jesus’s divine nature, but it asks believers to see the divine in every stage of Jesus’s life and in every condition in which he lived, including that of a child. Because of this, everything Jesus said and did is instructional, a model or admonition to follow. Believers are asked to cultivate spiritual vision, to see the divine in themselves and each other. They are called upon to be witnesses to the truth, which may very well mean to suffer with joy the kind of torture and violence that Jesus underwent. And just as God loved Jesus, so He loves them.

Conclusion We have only begun to scratch the surface in describing the various ways Christians deployed representation of bodily aging as they appear in early Christian literature – there is no claim here to a comprehensive treatment of the topic. But enough has been said to allow us to speculate briefly about the questions we raised at the beginning: How did Christians square their belief in the human potential for immortality – with its required immutability – with the lived experience of aging, the inevitable mutations that time works upon each human being from birth to death? One very common strategy was to shift attention from the body itself to the condition of the soul. This move required an entire rhetoric which uncoupled the link between bodily age and spiritual or moral maturity. A young child could show the wisdom of age, and an old man qualities of child-like innocence. Stages of the soul’s development could then be treated almost independently of bodily aging. Alternatively, ideals could be sharpened that focused on representing one age as that of the transcendent ideal, the resurrection body: that of the child or more frequently the mature man – but never the decaying body of the elderly. Another deployment involved polymorphic visions, in which the multiform appearance of the divine at different life stages

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pushed the visionary to see beyond the metamorphoses of materiality to the unitary spiritual reality beyond them, calling for a kind of blindness to the mutations of the physical body itself. Variations on this perspective could be put to diverse rhetorical uses, especially to blame those who could not see past the bodily appearances of Jesus as a child or a suffering victim to perceive his divine nature. But the view that I have found most attractive are those which call upon believers to perceive the divine in the all stages of Jesus’s life – and therefore to see God in their fellow humans, whether young or old, and to cultivate their spiritual connection to God in every stage of their own lives. Such a perspective does not require a belief in the transformation of the mutable material body into an immutable material body, but it does require the capacity to perceive what is immutable even now in what is constantly subject to change and metamorphosis. The call to avoid the external and look within might seem to lead to an avoidance of viewing bodies at all – hiding them in caves or under impenetrable clothing, or even thinking that the blind have an advantage because they are not distracted by mere appearances, but for Gregory and for the desert fathers it was much more that the physical body itself should be the window onto the soul. The ideal philosopher or monk should embody the values of the spirit, for example in preserving a mature body into old age, letting physical beauty be a mirror of inner beauty, letting ugliness be overshadowed by spiritual loveliness. As Gregory of Nazianzan puts it: the true philosopher “gives no opportunity to be observed externally, but turns the onlooker’s gaze to ‘the inner person.’” (cf. Rom 7:22; Eph 3:16). No matter what stage of life, the goal was to cultivate and convey inner spiritual perfection.64 On this point all Christians could agree. The gospel depictions of Jesus as a child in the Gospel of Judas and the Gospel of the Savior fit well within the rhetorical deployments of these Christian images of aging, even as they articulate their own distinctive theological understandings, views that would come into conflict with what ultimately won the title of “orthodoxy.” Yet we understand their distinctive place in the history of Christianity only if we can see how much they share with other Christians. To perceive glorious divinity in the child Jesus requires spiritual discernment acquired through understanding of the true revelation given by the Savior. In the end, the most important consequence for me in all this is the way in which the topic of growing old unto death is both ever present and almost completely absent in Christian literature. Even as stories of _____________ 64

See Gregory of Nazianszus, Oration 26.10-11.

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Jesus’s childhood, death, and resurrection were being told and retold as they came to take a central place in Christian theology – such as we see in both the Gospel of Judas and the Gospel of the Savior – Christians rarely turned their reflective gaze upon the frailties of vulnerable children or of aging bodies in their decline toward death. Instead they neutralized the charged contrast between aging and immortality, frequently by allegorizing or metaphorizing childhood and old age, even as they invited the perceptive to see God in every human body at every stage of life. They suspended the transformations of time by focusing on the ultimate metamorphosis into timelessness.65 It was timeless eternity that was to be cultivated in this life, patterned on humankind’s originary likeness to God, and directed toward the final age. Death, when it comes up at all, is merely the place where some draw a line – but the line itself is porous and unclear, for even now Christians are called upon to embody so far as possible that state they will attain finally after death – even when that embodiment is primarily achieved through a learned and continually strived-for indifference to the physical body and its powerful metamorphoses. In my initial proposal for this essay, I wrote “Many early Christians perceived death as a moment when reality is bared and truth appears in naked clarity.” I now think that statement is fundamentally wrong. For early Christians, it is not death that bares reality, but the cultivation of the inner eye, of the capacity to see what is spiritual already in this life of the flesh, past the flesh, beyond its metamorphoses. And that means never to look at death itself, but always look past and beyond it, to ignore it as a lie that Jesus rendered invisible in glorious light.

_____________ 65

I thank Gordan Kaufman for emphasizing to me the importance of time.

Genealogies of the Self: Materiality, Personal Identity, and the Body in Paul’s Letters to the Corinthians Genealogies of the Self JORUNN ØKLAND1

“I should say that there were two Cratyluses”2

A history of the present asks what historical discourses are enclosed in modern concepts and debates. What do the modern concepts and debates resolve compared to previous moments in history, what do they hide, which historical tensions have they absorbed? As David Halperin states, ”To write the history of the present is a deliberately paradoxical project. For such a history is necessarily and inevitably framed by contemporary preoccupations and investments. And yet, for that very reason, it looks to the past for something lacking in the present, something that can offer a new leverage against the contemporary problems with which the historian is engaged. Such a history privileges neither the present nor the past, but the unstable relation between the two. Those of us who locate ourselves at their uncertain intersection do so in the hope of finding ourselves changed by the experience.” 3

Following this genealogical procedure,4 if we want to move back in time in order to explore one of the separate discourses that anticipate the modern concept of the self, and that thus constitutes, so to say, one of the “sources” of the modern self,5 an obvious place to look is in the _____________ 1

2 3 4

5

Jorunn Økland is professor at the Centre for Gender Research, University of Oslo. While at CAS: Senior Lecturer at the Department of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield, UK. Cratylus character in Plato, Cratylus, 432c. David Halperin, How to Do the History of Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 23. The type of genealogical method pursued here is the one often associated with Michel Foucault and David Halperin among others. See Halperin, History of Homosexuality, 1-23. Cf. Charles Taylor’s book Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

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earliest Christian discourses of the body and resurrection.6 Paul is our earliest Christian author, and his texts represent an un-tapped potential in modern discussions of self.7 Hence, I will in this essay present as a contribution to a genealogy of the self a close reading of 2 Corinthians 12 and a semi-close reading of 1 Corinthians 15. The genealogical approach implies that rather than complying with the modern and largely subconscious categories, and rather than just applying a modern theory to an ancient text, I will here let the critique go both ways, by using also Paul’s texts to turn the spotlight back on the modern categories that might prevent us from understanding what he is saying. We start by making our way back in time through the history of the self, guided by Raymond Martin and John Barresi.

1 The History of the Self and Processes of Becoming In their book The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self,8 authors Martin and Barresi maintain that although there were previous, disparate views on the self and personal identity in ancient Greece, it was not until the early Christians needed to make sense of the Christian dogma of the postmortem resurrection of humans that a continuous tradition of reflections on these issues emerged.9 Those previous incidents of reflection on self and identity focused on issues of continuity and change:10 “there must be a sense of same person according to which someone can remain the same person in spite of changing. Saying what this sense is, or what these senses are, is the philosophical problem of personal identity.”11 There _____________ 6

7

8 9

10 11

In this vein, issues of mind and self – as well as 1 Corinthians 15 – are addressed within the first 5 pages of Caroline Walker Bynum’s The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). See however Theo K. Heckel, “Body and Soul in St Paul,” in Psyche and Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment (ed. J. P. Wright and P. Potter; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 117-132 (119). Raymond Martin and John Barresi, The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self: An Intellectual History of Personal Identity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006). Martin and Barresi, Soul and Self, 2. It is this substantial historicising of the self that makes Martin and Barresi’s book more useful as a point of departure in our context than e.g. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality Volume Three: The Care of the Self (New York: Pantheon, 1986), who operates with an anachronistic notion of the self, and sees the definition of the self mainly in sexual/medical terms; or Taylor’s book mentioned above, which only substantiates its discussions properly in the coverage of the modern world. This is also what Songe-Møller confirms elsewhere in this volume. Martin and Barresi, Soul and Self, 3, cf. 4.

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was also some reflection on the possibility of survival of bodily death, above all in Plato’s Phaedo. I will in this essay use Martin and Barresi’s terminology: – –

a “theory of the self” is an explicit theory that tells us “what sort of thing the self is, if indeed it is a thing.” a “theory of personal identity” is a theory of “personal identity over time, that is, theories that explain why a person, or self, at one time is or is not the same person or self as someone at some other time.”12

Martin and Barresi point out that through the history of the soul and self, philosophers and theologians have had three main epistemologies and philosophical frameworks to draw on: –

–

–

–

First, the earliest church fathers were trained in Greek philosophy and drew upon materialist atomism, or more precisely on its descendant variety Stoicism. The materialist atomists held that material bodies are temporary configurations of material fragments (atoms) that constantly come together and pull apart in an ever-changing universe. Second, Platonist thought took over from Stoicism early on, and fundamentally shaped Christian theology on the soul as a unified, timeless, immaterial entity residing in a changeless realm. Thirdly, Aristotelianism entered the discussion in the 13th century, above all through the works of Thomas Aquinas. This view held that there was a changeless dimension within every material object. Greek materialism re-entered the discussion at a later point again, namely at the birth of modern science in the 17th century, and has remained the most important frame of reference for discussions of self and personal identity ever since.

The latter point on materialism re-emerging as a main explanatory framework in the 17th century presupposes that one, as Martin and Barresi clearly do, keeps out of view the continued religious preoccupation with the soul even in the age of rationalism and Enlightenment. After all, the birth of modern science more or less coincided with the birth of Pietism, which emphasises the soul very strongly. In the 18th century this interest in the soul energised the preoccupation with resurrection among self – and personal-identity theorists, a preoccupation also registered by Martin and Barresi.13 The preoccupation was sparked _____________ 12 13

Martin and Barresi, Soul and Self, 2. Martin and Barresi, Soul and Self, 2 and 159.

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by the fact that the inherited Medieval – and the new Pietist – notion of the immaterial soul that had previously accounted for the phenomenon of resurrection, was no longer usable in a rationalist, materialist, scientific framework. Still many of the materialists, such as Joseph Priestly, did not want to give up on the idea of resurrection. In their survey, Martin and Barresi devote relatively little space to Paul. Typically, the Pauline texts they do mention are 1 Corinthians 15 and a couple of texts from 2 Corinthians, but not chapter 12 where Paul describes his heavenly journey.14 They present Paul as a materialist thinker, but not directly influenced by Philo and Stoicism. They rather locate Philo’s strong influence on Christian theology to the 2nd century and the period of the apologists, and view his direct influence on the canonical documents themselves (especially the Gospel of John) as more or less loose hypotheses that have to carry a heavy burden of proof.15 One of the insights we gain from Martin and Barresi is how wrong we end up if we read the texts written by Paul, shaped within some kind of materialist framework (in Paul’s case a variant of Stoicism influenced by Jewish philosophy) using the “glasses” of the subsequently developed notion of the Christian soul. One way of turning the spotlight back onto the effects of those glasses, and perhaps even discarding them, is instead to use modern, materialist theories of the self to read Paul. There is a chance they might be closer to Paul than the traditional Christian doctrines on the soul. One example of such a modern, materialist thinker is Rosi Braidotti, who also reacts against the modern notion of the self as an identical, integrated – and isolated – whole. In her book appropriately (in our context) entitled Metamorphoses,16 she says: “I would therefore rather keep a sober perspective on what I consider as the great challenge of contemporary social theory and cultural practice, namely how to make the new technologies enhance the embodied subject.

_____________ 14 15

16

In their discussions of Paul they draw heavily on the work of Theo Heckel (Heckel, “Body and Soul,” cf. Martin and Barresi, Soul and Self, 46-52). Martin and Barresi, Soul and Self, 55. This is mentioned to position them, and myself, in relation to Engberg-Pedersen’s essay in this book. Locating Paul more broadly, as they do, within the materialist vein of Greek philosophy, where also Stoicism belongs, I consider entirely correct. Identifying concrete terminological or other links between 1 Corinthians 15 and Stoic philosophy or Philo is possible, but one must be careful not to insist that Paul uses the terms at the same intensional level as the philosophers. Rosi Braidotti, Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming (Cambridge: Polity, 2002).

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… My specific target in this regard is the tendency, which I consider nihilistic, that consists in declaring the superfluity of the body and its alleged irrelevance, or else to reduce it to ‘meat’, or to the status of a familiar parasite… This results paradoxically in both accelerating and denying its mortality, rendering bodily pain and suffering irrelevant in the process. Against such denials, I want to re-assert my bodily brand of materialism and remain to the end proud to be flesh!”17

The extremely interesting parallels between the latter part of this quote and 2 Cor 12:7-10 (Paul’s weakness, pain and the thorn in the flesh) will not be paid its full due here, but will be an undercurrent throughout this essay. We will just note here the paradox that in spite of various materialisms underpinning modern notions of the self (as Martin and Barresi point out), very few are explicitly reflecting along the lines Braidotti suggests. This lack of self-reflexive reflection on the self could with Braidotti be labelled as an “imaginative deficit of our culture, that is to say our collective inability to find adequate representations of the kind of embodied nomadic subjects we have already become.”18 Thus her aim is not just to suggest a materialist theory of the self, but also to suggest the self as something always in process, something always becoming and coming into being – in short, always metamorphosing into something different. She believes this metamorphosis takes place perhaps because of the addition of new layers or aspects of our selves (such as artificial limbs and other technological, bodily improvements), but rather than characterising the ensuing changes enacted at the depth of subjectivity “fragmentation”, she calls it “multiplicity” and “nomadism”. This terminology obviously refers back to her previous, acclaimed Nomadic Subjects,19 but the connotations from her “theory of becoming” back to the meaning of the Hebrew name of God, Jahve – “I will become who I will become,” are difficult to miss for a biblical scholar. Thus she calls for a conceptual and representational shift in perspective: “I have quarrelled with the nostalgic tendency which accounts for changes, especially technological ones, in a paranoid mode that renders them as ‘monstrous’, pathological, decadent or threatening. I have also offered, both in this chapter and in chapter 4, counter-readings of these changes in such a way as to highlight their positivity and force.”20

_____________ 17 18 19 20

Braidotti, Metamorphoses, 257. Braidotti, Metamorphoses, 258. Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory (Columbia University Press, 1994). Braidotti, Metamorphoses, 258.

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It is this current intellectual and “soul-less” climate that has urged a reconsideration of ancient notions of metamorphosis, continuity and change in general, and of early Christian notions of resurrection and personal identity in particular. As Martin and Barresi state, “in our own times the soul’s descendent, the self, has become theorized as something that lacks unity and that itself requires an explanation.”21 Within Pauline studies, the fact that the notion of the soul has lost its explanatory force has opened up new questions. The soul used to explain the continuity between the pre-resurrection and post-resurrection bodies of 1 Corinthians 15 and the earthly body and the (possibly) heaventravelling body of 2 Corinthians 12:2-3. We may have deconstructed the soul as a Platonic product and hence rendered it useless as interpretive key to Paul, but what to use instead to make sense of what he says about body, resurrection, and personal identity? This is now an open question that makes new readings of the texts possible. But in this history of the present, the movement also goes the other way, from the ancient world to the modern: Paul’s first and disparate thoughts on the heavenly body, the thorn in the flesh, and Christ living in him, might be taken as examples of the kind of adequate representations that Braidotti is looking for.

2. ”Spitze und Krone” 22 – 1 Corinthians 15 Since the Gospel stories focus so firmly on the resurrection of Jesus, Paul’s texts that are earlier, more dogmatic in form, and talk about all Christ-believers, set the agenda for the later Christian intellectual explorations of body and resurrection, into which usable fragments from the Gospel stories were inserted. As Jan Bremmer points out, “Paul seems to have been the first to present Jesus’ resurrection as the beginning of the collective eschatological resurrection, whereas in traditional Jewish thought individual resurrection, as in the case of Jesus, had been typical only of martyrs like the Maccabees.”23

1 Corinthians 15 in particular has ended up as an authoritative statement on Christian resurrection,24 and the chapter is in Martin and Bar_____________ 21 22 23 24

Martin and Barresi, Soul and Self, 4. Karl Barth, Die Auferstehung der Toten: Eine akademische Vorlesung über 1. Kor. 15 (Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1953), 57. Jan Bremmer, The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife (London: Routledge, 2002), 43. Bremmer also points out that Phil. 1:22-23 and 2 Cor 5:1-10 seem to suggest that Paul thinks he will be with Christ immediately after his death (Bremmer, Afterlife, 57).

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resi’s view the real reason why the doctrine of the resurrection was later developed into one of the central tenets of Christianity.25 It is generally assumed that Paul wrote all of 1 Corinthians before 2 Corinthians (in one or many parts), and that therefore whatever he says in the first letter would historically have been a preparation and provided a sounding board for the latter. We will therefore first briefly comment on 1 Corinthians 15 before we move on to 2 Corinthians 12. Vast is the multitude of Protestant exegetes who have attempted to explain Paul’s confused and confusing denotations of soul, body, flesh and spirit. When Karl Barth characterised 1 Corinthians 15 as the peak and crown of the letter then, he only formulated more excellently what previous generations of theologians and exegetes had always meant, at least if one measures quantitatively the amount of theological text devoted to this chapter. Other essays in this volume deal in more detail with the chapter: In short, Songe-Møller traces notions of continuity, change and the instant in 1 Corinthians 15 in light of Greek philosophy, and Engberg-Pedersen shows that what Paul argues in this chapter fully overlaps with “Stoic philosophy” synthetically understood. The comments on 1 Corinthians 15 included below do not exclude any of these arguments and perspectives, but acknowledge that it is in the end Paul rather than Zeno who has been the more influential on European notions of the self (even if he is not perhaps the sharper thinker among the two). Therefore, Paul is the more important conversation partner if one wants to write a genealogy of the modern notions of the self. I follow mainstream readings of the chapter in seeing as Paul’s main concern here to make the Corinthians understand that resurrection has not yet taken place for everyone.26 Resurrection properly speaking presupposes death. The Corinthians cannot pretend that they are already resurrected with Christ, anticipate the kind of freedom from earthly constraints that follows resurrection, and deny that any further resurrection will happen (15:12). We get an impression earlier in the letter that over-realized eschatology was a problem. For example, the Corinthians were apparently pretending that they were already living the resurrection, everyone was speaking the angelic tongue language at the same time, and the flesh was “left behind” to do its own dirty business. This is a very traditional understanding of the rhetorical situation behind 1 Corinthians, but still one that in my view highlights _____________ 25 26

Martin and Barresi, Soul and Self, 49. See overview over interpreters who read the chapter this way (incl. Heinrici, Käsemann, Barrett, Bruce, and others) and a discussion of this view in Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 11734.

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the division in Paul’s attitude to an embodied life, a division that I am not so sure was as much the Corinthians’ as Paul’s own. Antoinette Wire has carefully reminded us not to take everything he puts into the Corinthians’ mouths for – face value,27 as their views rather than as various types of projections of his own. In Paul’s view, only Christ has so far been resurrected and translated into a different dimension (cf. the notion of first fruit in 15:20). If Christ is resurrected, then such a phenomenon exists, then it is possible. In 1 Corinthians 15 then, Christ’s resurrection proves the resurrection of the dead. What has happened to Christ will happen to all Christians, (15:20 and 23). Paul further counters the “smart” rhetorical traps, if the dead resurrect, how do they do it and what kind of body will they have? (15:35). Paul considers it an ignorant question with a self-evident answer: Everyone can see what happens to a seed when put into the soil (15:36-37): a totally new plant emerges, but of the seed there is nothing left. Still it is true that different seeds give rise to different bodies (15:38). Paul here in the middle of the passage talks about various types of bodies, σώματα. But importantly, when he starts out on his discourse on resurrection in 15:12, he does not talk about the resurrection of σώματα, but rather of νεκρῶν, the resurrection of the dead, i.e. those who are dead. This must surely be significant, but exactly what it signifies is a bit unclear. We must remember that faith in the “resurrection of the body” was something that only became creed hundreds of years later. Since he refers back to the Corinthians in 15:12, it is possible that “resurrection of the dead” was the standard expression used by them. What is clear, however, is that he considers those people ἄφρων (irrational, 15:36-37) who believe that the raising up of the dead is about putting a seed – or a dead body - into the earth, and then the identical entirety and composition will surface again, only alive (15:18, cf. 15:51). The raising up of the dead thus in this context is not at all the same as the raising up of the body and absolutely not the same as the raising up of the flesh, and this is what Paul continues to point out categorically: “flesh (and blood) cannot inherit the Kingdom of God” (15:50). There are many types of flesh, human flesh, animal flesh, bird flesh, and fish flesh (15:39), but all flesh is subject to decay and corruption and cannot inherit incorruption. A transformation is necessary (15:51-52). _____________ 27

Antoinette Wire, The Corinthian Women Prophets: A Reconstruction Through Paul’s Rhetoric (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 163, 287 n. 8. Cf. also her headings such as “Their Common Identity or Paul’s Differentiation of Gifts” (135) and “Their Communal Speaking or Paul’s Hearing of Individuals“ (146).

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In 15:40-41 we learn that there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, and they have different δόξα, which I suggest we translate “aura,” we just have to forget the New-Age-connotations of the term. The reason for this suggestion is that “glory” is a term emptied of meaning in everyday language today outside of the Bible translations. Since there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, “body” is not in itself a distinctive feature of heavenly vs. earthly existence. That is why the seed metaphor is so apt, and why any faith in the resurrection of the body really would not be a big deal for Paul. To understand this, we might refer to the Aristotelian distinction between εἶδος or μορφή, form, and ὕλη, matter.28 We only have to remember that Paul was no philosopher, that all known texts by him have come into being in attempts to connect to and communicate with particular churches, and that this means that even his in-corporation (understood quite literally!) of terminology contributes to his formation of a hybrid, networked self (cf. Braidotti above): terms may be aliens in his mouth, but still connect him to the network. In the heat of the argument, Paul can utilise any philosophical model at hand. He walks in and out of discourses,29 supports various theories, sometimes also philosophical theories. The fact that he does not do so faithfully, or does not always appear as a Stoic philosopher does not prevent him from sometimes doing it. This just means that his texts must be interpreted on a text-to-text basis. When Paul explains the distinction between the earthly body and the post-resurrection body, he further emphasises that the σῶμα ψυχικόν, the animated body comes first, and only after the raising up we get a spiritual or pneumatic body (σῶμα πνευματικόν). The distinction is expressed in temporal, not spatial terms, but here as elsewhere in Paul’s world-view the spatial and temporal categories overlap and reinforce each other.30 He outlines his taxonomy on a cosmic scale, presenting sequences of events and places. He thus emphasises se_____________ 28

29

30

Bultmann, too, points out the similarities here between Paul and Aristotle’s understandings of the body, but rejects that Paul is Aristotelian on rhetoricalmethodological grounds: ”Es ist methodisch falsch, für die Interpretation von σῶμα von dieser Stelle auszugehen, an der sich Paulus verleiten läßt, auf die Argumentationsweise seiner Gegner einzugehen, und dabei den σῶμα-Begriff in einer für ihn sonst nicht charakteristischen Weise verwendet. Genuin paulinisch ist in diesen Versen nur der Grundgedanke: es gibt menschliches Sein – und auch in der Sphäre des pneuma – nur als somatisches. Unpaulinisch aber ist der Gebrauch von σῶμα als ’Form’, ’Gestalt’” (Rudolf Bultmann, Theologie des Neuen Testaments [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1968], 193-194). Cf. further explanation of this in Jorunn Økland, Women in Their Place: Paul and the Corinthian Discourse of Gender and Sanctuary Space (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 26-30, 241. Cf. Økland, Women in Place, 32-34.

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quence, but implicitly then also the metamorphosis of the first order into something which is both continuous and discontinuous with the previous order: from corruptible to incorruptible, from weak to strong, from animate to pneumatic (15:42-43).31 But the first order is a necessary precondition for the metamorphosis. Next, Paul uses the course of nature to prove this sequence, and hence to prove the (Platonizing) philosopher wrong: First the seed, then the plant. The emphasis on sequence: first dust, then spirit, throughout this passage, and the fact that he seemingly understands also the spirit, πνε μα in material terms,32 are two further reasons to place Paul among the materialists, ancient and modern, rather than among the Platonizing or logos-speculating philosophers. This does not of course prevent him from incorporating the terminology of such philosophers and using it to connect with broader discourses. It is important to note that there is no immortal soul here. Paul seems to talk about a piece of flesh given its form by God, and animated in an ancient Hebrew sense. The human being is σῶμα,33 and when he uses the term ψυχικόν it resonates with the ancient ideas about Jahve blowing the breath of life into the nose of the earthling in Gen. 2:7 and animating it.34 From this idea follows that Jahve’s animation of the flesh ceases when the fleshy body dies, and that no soul exists independently of it. Also Daniel Boyarin comments on how Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 combines what Boyarin stages as the binary oppo_____________ 31

32 33 34

There have been endless discussions of how Paul argues here. Some, such as David Hay (see e.g. David M. Hay, ”Philo's Anthropology, the Spiritual Regimen of the Therapeutae, and a Possible Connection with Corinth,” in Philo und das Neue Testament: Wechselseitige Wahrnehmungen [ed. R. Deines and K.-W. Niebuhr; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004], 127-142), perceive that Paul here argues against the understanding of the creation stories of which Philo is an exponent. This understanding implied that the spiritual human being was created first (Gen 1:26-27), and that the materialisation, the increased density of the hyle, resulted in material bodies appearing in Gen 2:7. In van Kootens words, ”most of those who do regard Philo’s writings as relevant for discerning the meaning of 1 Cor 15 construe a difference between Paul and Philo, assuming that Paul is in fact arguing against a Corinthian version of the two types of man anthropology also known from Philo.... Paul seems to deliberately invert Philo’s sequence of the first, pneumatic-heavenly man and the second, psychic-earthly man” (George Van Kooten, Paul's Anthropology in Context (WUNT, 1st series; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008], 221). See Engberg-Pedersen elsewhere in this volume. This is pointed out by Bultmann, Theologie, chapter 4, esp. 197. The translation of adam as “earthling” or “earth creature” rather than “Adam” in the stories of Genesis before the naming of Eve in Gen 2:23 is standard in feminist biblical scholarship from Phyllis Trible onwards, and is increasingly being used also in contemporary Bible versions (Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality [London: SCM, 1992], 76-82, 98).

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sites of platonic dualism and “Hebraic anthropologies,” where the body does not represent a problem ”because of its sheer materiality as part of the created, physical world.”35 As the theology of the resurrection of the body developed, it presupposed some kind of continuity, which could be understood in different ways as bodily, material, or spiritual continuity, continuity of the soul, etc.. This is understandable, because without any kind of continuity it would not make sense to talk about personal identity before and after. Rather one would only note that one person dies here and another one is brought to new life there, one shadow emerges in the heavens; in short, totally unrelated phenomena. Such a discontinuous notion of resurrection would actually come closer to notions of reincarnation, apart from one difference: those who believe in reincarnation still maintain that there is a connection even if as particular manifestations of a soul we do not remember our previous manifestations. There is no soul in our text that could guarantee the continuity between the animated body and the pneumatic body. What is then the continuity between what is sown in the earth and destroyed, and what is raised? If there is neither resurrection of the flesh nor of the soul, where then is the personal identity seated? Is it I who am raised, or is it not-I? First, perhaps 15:49 might be key: Such as we carried (past) the image of the animalic (i.e. Adam), so we shall also carry (future) the image of the heavenly (i.e. Christ). The continuity thus could be situated in the one whose image we carry, Christ. If this is what Paul means, then the continuity only applies to those who are “in Christ.”36 This is far from a safe interpretation because the text is rather unclear, but I still see it as the likeliest interpretation. Paul himself seems unable to give a further, proper account of this, he just calls it a mystery (15:51). Here then, and as we shall see also in 2 Corinthians 12, he ends up in a position well formulated by Terry Eagleton: “There is a paradox in the idea of transformation. If a transformation is deep-seated enough, it might also transform the very criteria by which we could identify it, thus making it unintelligible to us. But if it is intelligible, it might be because the transformation was not radical enough. If we can talk about the change then it is not full-blooded enough; but if it is full-blooded

_____________ 35 36

A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 63. For a reading that also sees these alternatives, i.e. reads the text in the same way, but interprets the possibilities entirely differently, see Bultmann, Theologie, 199-200.

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enough, it threatens to fall outside our comprehension. Change must presuppose continuity—a subject to whom the alteration occurs.”37

A Paul lost for words in face of metamorphosis is a Paul who envisages a transformation so full-blooded that it threatens the personal identity of the subject to whom the altered state occurs, and thus it falls outside the comprehension of that subject. Second, searching for the key in the text-external discourses Paul’s terminology connects to, one could suggest along Aristotelian lines that a continuity exists in the σῶμα as form, although the material varies according to space (earth or heaven). But as should be clear by now, Paul cannot easily be fitted into any one of the ancient philosophical discourses, so also this suggestion has to remain speculative. Still among the options available, I see Paul as coming closest to an Aristotelian/Stoic line of argument on this topic – which of course does not prevent him from sounding more like a Platonist elsewhere. Thirdly, with Braidotti in mind however, one could answer that it is such questions (and also Terry Eagleton’s presupposition of a stable subject) that are wrong, and that with a materialist, hybrid and nomadic view of self and personal identity, the continuous metamorphosis of the self is seen as the rule rather than as exception in need of explanation. Braidotti talks about the self as an enfleshed memory that repeats itself and is capable of lasting through sets of discontinuous variations.38 Such a notion of self can explain how Paul can both presuppose some kind of continuity between “before” and “after” by labelling the process “raising up” and transformation (15:51), while at the same time view the stages as discontinuous (with reference to the list of opposites earthly-heavenly, etc.). Thus it seems to me that Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 is trying to argue for a continuity that is not selfidentical, but metamorphic, and this is an idea that it is impossible to grasp within the parameters given us as well by traditional theologies of the soul as by ordinary modern (inclusive of its mirror-image: postmodern) notions of self and personal identity. But can the plant remember that it has once been a seed? This issue becomes even more acute when we move on to 2 Corinthians 12.

_____________ 37 38

Terry Eagleton, “Subjects and Truths,” New Left Review no. 9 (May-June 2001): 155160. Braidotti, Metamorphoses, 229-230, see full quote in this essay’s conclusion.

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3. “The Authentic Self Seized by Faith” 39 - 2 Corinthians 12 Against the background of 1 Corinthians 15’s views on continuity and its promotion of a particular taxonomy including a rigid temporal sequence at the end of days, we move on to 2 Corinthians 12. The passages have in common a certain inaccessibility: their notions of body, self and personal identity are difficult to make sense of, as the ample amount and wide spectrum of proposals in secondary literature demonstrate. I start with a translation (my own) of the passage in question (12:1-7): It is necessary to boast, but it isn’t healthy/useful. I will now move over to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a human in Christ who fourteen years ago, whether in the body I don’t know or whether out of the body I don’t know, God knows, having been raptured this guy to the third heaven. And I know this particular man, (whether in [the] body or without the body I do not know, God knows) that he was raptured into paradise, and heard unspeakable things said/unutterable words, which it is not allowed for man to utter. Of such a one I will boast, but of myself I will not boast, unless in my weaknesses. If I will want to boast I will not be a fool, because I will speak the truth. But I am reluctant, lest any one should think as to me above and beyond what he sees me [to be], or whatever he may hear of me. And that I might not be exalted by the exceeding greatness of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn for the flesh, an angel of Satan…

3.1 Meaning – Intertextual, Contextual or Contingent on Social Situation? The narrative is extremely brief, considering the vast scope of its content. This means there are a number of basic issues to consider before we can even start to ask questions about self, personal identity, and the body. – First, the issue of genre and what kind of ascent story this is. As Paula Gooder points out, most of the research on this passage has been preoccupied with identifying its literary parallels. This “parallellomania” has only increased in the contemporary period, even if already Semler was making such attempts in the 18th century.40 Still, a certain idea of what to read the text as is necessary for understanding its no_____________ 39 40

Rudolf Bultmann, The Second Letter to the Corinthians (trans. R. Harrisville; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985), 220. Paula R. Gooder, Only the Third Heaven? 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 and Heavenly Ascent (Library of New Testament Studies; London: T&T Clark, 2006), 11-12.

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tions of self. James Tabor classifies 12:2-4 as an example of “ascent as a Foretaste of the Heavenly world.”41 I follow Tabor and others who read the passage similarly, but hasten to agree with Paula Gooder that due to its brevity the text is a rather unusual representative of the “Heavenly Travel”-genre.42 In so many stories belonging to this genre, the narrator or protagonist is given a particular message to communicate. Paul is clearly not, which means that in our passage the experience itself is foregrounded. This is unusual also compared to the other texts authored by Paul, the Apostle, the envoy of Christ. Gooder also observes that in 2 Corinthians 12-scholarship preoccupied with genre and literary parallels, the reader is frequently presented with lists of similar terminology and similarities in narrative sequence. Still, the frequent presentation of possible similarities has not led to a more in-depth scrutiny of these similarities, and proper acknowledgement of the differences.43 – Second, the issues of literary integrity and rhetorical situation of the larger literary unit to which the passage belongs, namely “Paul’s Apology,” 2 Corinthians 10-13.44 Interpretations of the passage have proven to be very volatile to various scholarly notions of these issues. Before the preoccupation with literary parallels described under the previous point became dominant, it was more common to try to determine the genre of the broader section that our passage belongs to, and by this detour determine also the intention behind the passage proper – an approach that has been renewed and strengthened with the advent of rhetorical criticism. 45 The clue to the function of the passage in this vein of research is καυχᾶσθαι in 12:1, 5 and 6. Paul tries to impress the Corinthians by mentioning his heavenly travel. They boast about religious experiences, he has such experiences but does not boast about them unless “forced to” (see below). Margaret Mitchell for example, compares Paul’s rhetoric of self-boast in 2 Corinthians 11-12 with Plu_____________ 41

42 43 44

45

James Tabor, Things Unutterable: Paul’s Ascent to Paradise in its Greco-Roman, Judaic and early Christian Contexts (Studies in Judaism; Lanham: University Press of America, 1986), 81, 113-125. Gooder, Third Heaven, 20. Gooder, Third Heaven, 19. For this designation, see e.g. Jan Lambrecht, Second Corinthians (Sacra Pagina 8; Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1999), 152: “Paul’s Self-Defense (10:1-13:10);” Hans Lietzmann, An die Korinther I/II (5th ed.; Handbuch zum Neuen Testament 9; Tübingen: Mohr, 1969), 139: “eine temperamentvolle Selbstverteidigung.” For a full overview over the “Semler” or “four-chapter” hypothesis, see Murray Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 29-41. See e.g. J. David Hester Amador, “Revisiting 2nd Corinthians: Rhetoric and the Case for Unity,” in New Testament Studies 46 (2000): 92-111; Margaret M. Mitchell, “A Patristic Perspective on Pauline periautologia,” New Testament Studies 47 (2001): 354-371.

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tarch’s "de laude ipsius,“ but questions whether ancient readers before John Chrysostom would have made the same connection.46 A variant of this reading strategy, which forefronts the function of the passage in the argument of 2 Corinthians 10-13, is the old suggestion that the latter is identical to the tearful letter (“Tränenbrief”),47 and thus a separate letter, based on the assumption that Paul was so beside himself with grief over the Corinthians that he turned mad.48 Among the extant Pauline letters, these chapters seem to be the ones written in the strongest affect, and Paul’s apparent confusion and repetition of himself in 12:2-4 are seen as pathological symptoms. As to the readings that understand the rhetorical situation as the primary clue to unlocking 2 Corinthians 10-13, it is not difficult to imagine that Paul’s authority was questioned in Corinth, especially by the “super-apostles” (ὑπερλίαν ἀποστόλων, 12:11). But he would have had a range of alternative ways of dealing with the situation. His response in 2 Corinthians 10-13 in general, and his inclusion of his heavenly journey in this Apology in particular, thus reflect at least a certain level of choice even if Paul scripts his autobiographical story as one that is neither important nor interesting in itself, it is only there because he is “forced to” respond with identical weapons to those used to attack him. A problem when the meaning of the text is seen as a function of its rhetorical situation, is that the hermeneutical problems are just transferred from the level of the text to the historical situation behind it; they do not disappear and they are not really resolved either in this particular case, since the situation has to remain entirely hypothetical and anyway is reconstructed exclusively on the basis of the text the historical situation is supposed to explain!49 _____________ 46 47

48

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Mitchell, “Pauline periautologia.” See an overview in David Horrell, The Social Ethos of the Corinthian Correspondence: Interests and Ideology from 1 Corinthians to 1 Clement (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 302-312). This theory does not properly solve the problem that it is not really tears Paul expresses in these chapters, but rather “folly,” boasting and divine revelations. For similar reasons, Narrenede was the older, source-critical designation of 2 Cor 1013, a designation also used by Bultmann, Second Letter, 218-219. See also Harris, Second Corinthians, 661-2 and 777. This problem of circularity is particularly acute in Leif Carlsson’s “Round Trips to Heaven: Otherworldly Travellers in Early Judaism and Christianity” (Ph.D. diss., Dept. Of History and Anthropology of Religions, Lund University, 2004). But in all fairness it has to be said that the problem arises because he tries harder than most interpreters to integrate studies of heavenly travels with studies of the rhetorical function of the passage in Paul’s polemic against his Corinthian opponents, and with the social situation in Corinth.

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The cost of focusing so firmly on the function of the passage in the larger context of 2 Corinthians 10-13, is that questions about the meaning of the passage itself disappear. The passage must surely fit the broader authorial intentions behind 2 Corinthians 10-13, however these intentions are understood. But even if they may explain why the author was led to share his heavenly journey with the Corinthians, authorial intentions do not mono-causally determine and explain the content of the narrative - not even for those who hold that Paul’s authorial intentions are readily available to modern scholars. Within the context of an interdisciplinary project on metamorphosis and resurrection, another study of 2 Corinthians 12:2-4 in light of its literary parallels would surely have fitted very well. But as I hope to have made clear, in this essay I will not seek refuge in form-criticism out of embarrassment by Paul’s description of his spatial movement, which is not in accordance with modern cosmologies (cf. Seim p. 23-24). Hence we are returning to the initial questions of self, personal identity and the body that are made even more acute by Paul’s spatial movement.

3.2 Vision, Revelation, and Experience For students trying to trace moments in the genealogy of the self, it is noteworthy that Paul mentions straightforwardly that someone is “beamed up” to the third heaven. Many modern readers of 2 Corinthians 12 presuppose without discussion that Paul, as many other ancient authors of apocalypses, is talking about a vision or a dream. A recent example is Leif Carlsson in that he does not distinguish between having visions or revelations, and being physically moved.50 But from Tabor’s work mentioned above, it is clear that 2 Corinthians 12:2-4 should be differentiated from the Book of Revelation and other narratives of heavenly journeys in which the narrator is asleep when given a vision. The vision hypothesis is indeed supported by the framing verses 12:1 and 7, where Paul uses the terms for vision and revelation (ὀπτασίας and ἀποκαλύψεις). Rather than harmonising these framing devices with the content of 12:2-4, we will, however, distinguish between narrative framework (12:1 and 7) and that with which the frame is filled, the core narrative (12:2-4),51 and just acknowledge the tension _____________ 50 51

Leif Carlsson, “Round Trips,” 169. These are the verses together with 7b-10 that Gooder takes as the core narrative of ascent (Gooder, Third Heaven, 195-203).

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between them. A rationale behind the drive towards reading 2 Corinthians 12 as an account of a vision seems to be the modern idea that since no one can travel to heaven, really, Paul must only be talking about a vision. But that is not what Paul himself claims. In Paul’s sacred scriptures, the current Hebrew Bible, there is nothing wrong with having visions or dreams, rather the opposite. If Paul wanted to share a vision, it would be no problem to talk about it as such. In fact, it would have been easier for him, because he would not have had the problem of the body to deal with (12:2-3). In the core narrative, Paul does not imply that the experience was just a vision, dream or revelation to someone remaining firmly on the ground. The communication of the experience is direct. I want to take this textual feature for face value and see where it takes us, rather than just explaining it away. Especially from within the context of an interdisciplinary research project on metamorphosis, the strangeness of 2 Corinthians 12 might be illuminating. This means that I will assume that Paul is talking about an actual experience, and not question the experience as such. My concern is to try to understand the alterity of Paul’s perceptions of his own experiences, which are surely shaped by notions of the human body, self and personal identity that are very different from modern European ones.52

3.3 The Human Body in Space The τοιοῦτον (this one, this guy; 12:3) is characterised as an ἄνθρωπος in 12:2, a human being, in contrast to a deity, semi-divine figure or an angel. In the ancient world, the trans-celestial spatial movement described was considered to be more within the range of the bodily repertoire of such beings. For an earthling, it was clearly not. Thus although Paul introduces the incident straightforwardly, his description of it is anything but straightforward. He places it back in time, 14 years ago. He speaks in third person, a feature I will return to below. He states

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Cf. also Ernst Käsemann, “Die Legitimität des Apostels: Eine Untersuchung zu II Korinther 10-13,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 41 (1942): 33-71: “Paulus wußte sich von diesem Vorgang, dessen Realität für ihn feststand, existensiell betroffen. Man hat also die Frage nach der sachlichen und theologischen Bedeutung dieses Ereignisses nicht über der religionsgeschichtlichen und psychologischen analyse zu vergessen, wenn man Paulus selbst hören und verstehen will” (66 n. 189).

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that he does not know whether it happened in the body or out of the body in 12:2. This is then re-stated with slightly different words in 12:3. The similarities in content between 12:2 and 3 have led some scholars to suggest a haplography here, either of v. 2 as a whole, or at least of 2b (“either in the body I don’t know, or out of the body I don’t know, God knows”) in 3b (“either in the body or without the body I don’t know, God knows”). But there are also arguments against reading 12:3 as a haplography: There is no manuscript support for the haplography theory. The core passage 12:2-4 is extremely awkward stylistically: this is not elegant Greek anyway, but a passage full of infelicities, discontinuities and ruptures that the haplography theory does only little to resolve. There are also other repetitions in this passage, like “I don’t know” twice in 2b. The partial repetition of v. 2 in v. 3 might be taken as a sign of a tired, 2nd century copyist, but it might more likely be taken as an indication that Paul had difficulties expressing the unspeakable (12:4) when he first dictated this incident to his scribe. In favour of the latter view, or at least the view that Paul himself is the author of both 12:2 and 3, is also the fact that the content of the verses differs slightly. If Paul says that he was raptured without a body, there is a problem, because who was he then, and who travelled? If he decided “out of the body, definitely,” in a Corinthian context this could further easily be seen as a dispensation of the body, something of which Paul has earlier accused the Corinthians (1 Cor 6 and 8). If on the other hand he says that he was raptured in the body, he has undermined his own argument in 1 Corinthians 15: If the fleshy body cannot inherit the kingdom of God, and the corruptible cannot inherit incorruption, how can Paul the earthling go with his corruptible (and corrupting?) body to the third heaven? One difference between 12:2 and 3 is that 12:3 is formulated as a repetition, it is shorter and more efficient, apart from the τοιοῦτον, which is added to refer back to 12:2. More importantly, “out of the body,” ἐκτὸς, in 12:2, becomes “without the body,” χωρὶς in 12:3. A majority of witnesses, among them Codex Sinaiticus, has ἐκτὸς in both verses, but Aland26 opts for a lectior difficilior-reading and assumes that ἐκτὸς in 12:3 in these manuscripts is a correction of a more original χωρὶς found in P46, Codex Vaticanus and the original hand of Codex Bezae Claromontanus. Because the issue is contested, it is not safe ground to draw exegetical conclusions on the exclusive basis of χωρὶς. But both terms indicate Paul can conceive of a human person outside of the body. Or is the problem rather that he cannot, at least not from the outset? That according to his anthropology, a human is first and foremost

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an embodied self; the body is earthly material; and only after the resurrection there will be another body from a finer material and fit for another purpose? And that according to his cosmology, different cosmic spaces involve different types of materiality? If so, earthly dust and earthly flesh is incompatible with the various spheres of the heavens (cf. third heaven in 12:2). It is impossible to be a human without a body, but it is also impossible for an earthly body to travel to the third heaven. Still Paul remembers that he did 14 years ago. This is, I believe, Paul’s dilemma in this passage, and one reason why he is lost for words. 2 Corinthians 12 presents us with the nice taxonomies and sorted worldviews of 1 Corinthians 15 starting to dissolve and collapse when confronted with Paul’s own boundary-breaking experience. For how can Paul – and modern interpreters - mediate and negotiate his experience within the parameters of the taxonomy that the experience exceeds? Paul is clearly unable to, and among modern interpreters it is only Bultmann in my opinion who has taken this issue seriously. He characterises the Paul of chapter 12 as “the authentic self seized by faith.”53 Such a designation has its own problems in our context, of course, as in my view the modern notion of the authentic self has strongly contributed to our lack of comprehension of this passage. When the authentic, continuous and autonomous self is seized by faith, it is neither autonomous any longer, nor authentic nor continous. Something Other or alien has entered, taken control and disintegrated its unity. Nevertheless, from within a phenomenological and existentialist framework, Bultmann addresses the same issues of self, identity and continuity that many contributors to this volume address from within a more materialist framework (Stoic, cybernetic, or otherwise). 2 Corinthians 12 is at odds with 1 Corinthians 15 also in its more general location on the space/time-axis: Whereas Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 is preoccupied with transgression of time, i.e. getting the Corinthians to understand that resurrection follows a rigid sequence and that the resurrected state belongs firmly to the future, 2 Corinthians 12 talks about transgression of space, i.e. it talks about Paul travelling to the third heaven. The text ignores temporal sequence apart from the 14 years that have passed since the incident happened (12:2). In temporal _____________ 53

Bultmann, 2 Corinthians, 220. In this work he brings his relatively late interest in existentialism and phenomenology to bear on exegesis of 2 Corinthians. The choice of text is probably not coincidental, as 2 Corinthians 12 is in many ways an ideal point of departure to formulate a phenomenology of the self. For Bultmann on Paul and a “phenomenology of the self”, see John Meech, Paul in Israel's Story: Self and Community at the Cross (AAR Academy Series; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

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terms, 2 Corinthians 12 implies an anticipation of a future self, who one will become, within the earthling life of Paul experiencing the journey.

3.4 The use of third person Paul is speaking in third person in this passage. Although some scholars have considered the possibility that he is indeed speaking of someone else54 (i.e. he will only boast of his celebrity friends), most scholars regard this possibility unlikely, and take Paul to speak about himself, not least because of the rhetorical frame here. How would this story serve him, if it were not his own experience? If it is another person, how could it then be Paul’s boast? Paul seems to introduce a schism in himself here, between such a one, this man, and “myself.” This person was taken up, but Paul cannot account for how it happened. The third person speech has been suggested to be “modesty speech,” but I find Bultmann more persuasive when he states that “the expression derives from the idea in verse 5 that Paul’s responsible ‘I’ did not participate, that something occurred to him of which he was, as it were, an observer, or which in retrospect happened to him as to an alien… This gives expression to the unusual phenomenon, also described in the εἴτε ἐν σώματι … εἴτε ἐκτὸς.”55 Bultmann’s view fits nicely with what was stated above, that the experience transgressed the everyday, accountable Paul’s own taxonomies as found e.g. in 1 Corinthians 15. He who was very quick to limit the ec-static experiences of others (1 Cor 14), cannot speak properly of his own. Käsemann states: “Was II Kor 12 2 ff. erzählt wird, ist nicht Manifestation des Logos, sondern ein Gewahren von Mysterien. … Paulus weiß nicht einmal, in welcher Verfassung er davon betroffen wurde. Der voῦς ist dabei nicht beteiligt gewesen. Und doch handelt es sich um einen Vorgang, der auf neutestamentlichem Boden nur in der Geschichte von Jesu Himmelfahrt eine Parallele findet und den Apostel in einzig-artiger Weise begnadet hat.”56

The distinctions between “I” and “the human” (12:2), “the human” and “Christ” (12:2),57 “I” and “such a one” (12:5), Paul’s flesh and the angel _____________ 54 55 56 57

See discussion in Harris, Second Corinthians, 834. Bultmann, Second Letter, 219. Käsemann, “Die Legitimität des Apostels,” 66. Carlsson points out how the visions and revelations are made possible by Christ in 12:1 (Carlsson, “Round Trips,” 170). But it is also noted that the person himself is “in Christ” in 12:2. The parallels between 12:2 and the resurrection in Christ in 1 Corin-

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of Satan (12:7), and even Christ’s strength and Paul’s weakness (12:9) – all embodied in one singular human body, Paul – imply that Paul operates with a highly composite view of self, far more sophisticated than any modern, simplistic notion of the unified subject. Modern readers who have read 2 Corinthians 12 within such a paradigm have accused Paul of expressing a type of dual consciousness or schizofrenia – wrongly, as Bultmann points out.58 12:2-7 then, is another instance where Paul is talking about the self as not necessarily self-identical, and about himself as a cybernetic organism, just like when he says “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20). Jan Bremmer59 implies that Paul talks along similar lines also in Philippians 1:22-23 (“For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain...”) and 2 Corinthians 5:110 (“For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this [house] we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven”). From these texts, and from Paul’s inability to decide whether he travelled in or without the body, shows that Paul was able to sustain more complex thoughts of personal identity and bodily transformation than those expressed in 1 Corinthians 15.

3.5 Ineffable The story continues with slight repetitions in 12:4: In 12:2 Paul says this person travelled to the third heaven, in 12:4 it is to Paradise. In Mesopotamian traditions, Paradise was considered as a garden on earth, a notion that we can also find in the story of the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2. After the transition to the Graecophone realm, παράδεισος was equalled with the Elysian fields, where the blessed dead enjoy their afterlife. In Jewish tradition these were understood as the righteous dead rather than as the ones who had undergone the Eleusinian initiations.60 Any way, it is interesting that Paul here identifies Paradise with _____________

58 59 60

thians 15 must be explored on another occasion, where a preliminary suggestion is that it is Christ who guarantees the continuity between the seed and the plant, the fleshy earth body and the (heavenly) resurrection body. Bultmann, Second Letter, 220. Bremmer, Afterlife, 57. On Hypotheses about the Eleusinian initiation rites and their meaning, see Alan Segal, Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in the Religions of the West (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 206, 216-218. The identification of Paradise with the Elysian fields

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the third heaven, thus possibly suggesting that a journey to this place is something that happens immediately after death. The journey described then, can be seen as parallel to the journeys to Hades undertaken by certain mortals that we hear about in Greek literature.61 In Paul’s case, it is likely that being “in Christ” is what qualifies this particular human to make such an inter-celestial journey, cf. 12:2. In 12:4 we also find the expression ἄρρητα ῥήματα. As Harris points out, the term is ambiguous, signifying that which cannot be expressed or which must not be expressed.62 Paul has so far struggled to verbalise his journey so the former meaning is likely, but so is the latter. It is difficult to express what is transgressive, but it also should not be expressed, because every expression would be a reduction of it into mere human categories. But since the latter meaning is found also in the added, separate clause ”which it is forbidden for a human to speak” (12:4b), I take ἄρρητα ῥήματα to refer primarily to “ineffable words.” If we compare 2 Corinthians 12 with the only other extant apocalypse in the NT involving a peep into heaven, the Book of Revelation, we find that the stories are very different. Its author, “John,” is too preoccupied by describing what he sees and hears to actually focus on himself and his physical state. Paul seems to be too absorbed by the experience to say anything about what he actually sees and hears, so it is convenient that it is not only ineffable, but also not meant for humans. The fact that Paul does not convey much content of what he experienced in the third heaven, is something many of the later paraphrases and expansions of the text have tried to alleviate. Two related examples are the Coptic Apocalypse of Paul (Nag Hammadi) and the Latin The Apocalypse of Paul (or Visio Pauli),63 written a couple of centuries after 2 Corinthians. They do contrary to what Paul says in 12:4, and utter all _____________ 61 62

63

was assisted by the overlapping semantic fields of both terms, in direction of afterlife and green gardens and fields. See e.g. Segal, Life After Death, 206-208. Harris, Second Corinthians, 843. Other interpreters understand the term again as mere irony or rhetoric: “The verbal contradiction may be accidental, but it is probably another instance of playing upon the words of which St. Paul is fond” (Alfred Plummer, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle of St. Paul the Aposte to the Corinthians [ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1915], 345). See George W. MacRae, et al., “The Apocalypse of Paul (V,2)” in The Nag Hammadi Library in English (3rd revised ed.; ed. James M. Robinson; San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990), 256-259; Th. Silverstein and A. Hilhorst. Apocalypse of Paul. A New Critical Edition of Three Long Latin Versions. (Geneva: Patrick Cramer Éditeur, 1997). The Greek edition of the work opens with “This was revealed when he was taken into the third heaven,” which is a direct reference to 2 Corinthians 12:2. The Latin version makes an explicit link to 2 Corinthians 12, as it opens by quoting the whole passage more or less verbatim.

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the ineffable words that Paul in his great loyalty to the heavens abstained from sharing with the Corinthians. There is obviously not enough space to address all the interesting features of 2 Corinthians 12 here. One issue we must save for a later occasion is Paul’s awareness that he comes dangerously close to presenting himself as a fool (ἄφρων, 2 Cor 12:6). This surely must be understood as a disclaimer, and links in with the discussions above concerning why Paul cannot speak properly about his heavenly journey. Another issue concerns the narrative self, and whether it would be possible at all to give a self-narration when all the ordinary, immanent parameters to which the self is relative are gone: the space and location, the personal relations and networks, time, etc.. Without these, “Paul of Tarsus” as every other human person would quite literally be lost in space. The narrative self might be another paradigm within which to discuss why he is lost for words. I hope to be able to address these issues on a later occasion, and will move on to some concluding remarks.

4. “Remember Me”64 In spite of many scholars noting that Paul does not operate with a conception of soul as it was developed in later theology (or earlier in Greek philosophy), the soul ironically still continues to leave traces in readings of 1 Corinthians 15 and 2 Corinthians 12, because it is so difficult for us to unlearn the soul as explanatory key. One such trace of the lost soul is the intense quest for continuity before and after death, because what can account for it if there is no soul? This essay has tried to take as its starting point the absence in the Corinthian correspondence, of a soul representing the continuity of the person. This starting point led to a realization that the quest for continuity can in itself lead astray. The quest for continuity is but a trace of the lost soul that belongs to a different moment in the genealogy of the self, as outlined in the introduction. I have tried to explore what a reading of Paul might look like if we can neither use the soul nor its trace, a fixed element of continuity, in readings of the passages in question. Once the notion of the soul is discarded and does not any longer guarantee the continuity between the fleshly-body (corresponding to the seed in 1 Cor 15) and the spiritual body (corresponding to the plant), we realize with regard to 2 Corinthians 12 that it is equally problematic to talk about heavenly journeys _____________ 64

“Dido’s Farewell,” from Henry Purcell, Dido and Aeneas.

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with or without a body, and Paul’s inability to give a proper account comes all the more to the fore. Does this mean there has to be two Cratyluses (cf. the epigraph), two Pauls? Definitely not! Instead of the soul, instead of “continuity,” Braidotti’s “cybernetics,” her talk about “enfleshed memory” and her materialist model of becoming have been companions through this reading of Paul. Braidotti says: “Within the philosophical tradition, the genealogy of the embodied nature of the subject can be ironically rendered as Descartes’ nightmare, Spinoza’s hope, Nietzsche’s complaint, Freud’s obsession, Lacan’s favourite fantasy, Marx’s omission, [and we could add Bultmann’s foundation], a piece of meat activated by electric waves of desire, a text written by the unfolding of genetic uncoding. Neither a sacralized inner sanctum, nor a pure socially-shaped entity, the enfleshed Deleuzian subject is rather an ‘inbetween’: it is a folding-in of external influences and a simultaneous unfolding outward of affects, a mobile entity, an enfleshed sort of memory that repeats and is capable of lasting through sets of discontinuous variations, while remaining faithful to itself. The contemporary body is ultimately an embodied memory.”65

Wordy and heavy, the quote is still useful to question modern and post-modern assumptions about the embodied, self-identical subject. Perhaps Paul’s somatic self is closer to the Deleuzian “in-between” subject that is always in the process of becoming (like Jahve) and capable of lasting through sets of discontinuous variations, the cyborg hybrid. The continuity of the body either through this life or from the heaven and “back” to earth is perhaps in the end a memory thing. Braidotti’s notion of “enfleshed memory” can accommodate the fact that on the one hand there is an alienated relationship between Paul and τοιοῦτον, this guy, no experience of integrated unity, still Paul has experienced the heavenly journey and most importantly: he remembers it. He emphasises that this was a man who was “in Christ,” and that “God knows,” “God knows” (twice; 2 Cor 12: 2-3). As in 1 Corinthians 15 God and Christ seem to represent the continuity here, or to borrow Braidotti’s terms: “in Christ” could be seen as a new technology enhancing Paul as an embodied subject and linking him up to a broader network in a very material way. Braidotti’s cybernetic notion may help to think how the “alien” element (in Paul’s case Christ or the thorn) helps reconnect with the world in another way – it is not about creating a super-individual, it is about creating a connected one. If in the ancient world a human was seen less as a separate, independent entity, per_____________ 65

Braidotti, Metamorphoses, 229-230, my italics.

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haps it was not necessary to postulate so much of a fixed, individual continuity because the continuity was provided by the general or common category, in this case “Christ.” The cybernetic model is so obviously not there in Paul’s text, but still it may help us to discover Paul’s particular brand of materialism and thereby help us question modern ways of thinking about the self that I think are real obstacles when trying to understand how some ancients conceptualised embodiedness, self, personal identity and metamorphosis.

“With What Kind of Body Will They Come?” Metamorphosis and the Concept of Change: From Platonic Thinking to Paul´s Notion of the Resurrection of the Dead Metamorphosis and the Concept of Change VIGDIS SONGE-MØLLER 1 Überschrift 2: für Kapitel ohne Ü2 wird hier Ü1 Kurzform wiederholt “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” These two questions, which Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:35 puts into the mouth of an imagined – and foolish – “someone”, are questions that readers of the chapter still pose, even though we have studied Paul´s answers to – or perhaps rejection of – those foolish questions. In the rest of the chapter, where Paul, rather enigmatically, tells the Corinthians how they should think about the resurrection of the dead, he stresses that in the resurrection we will all be changed (ἀλλαγησόμεθα; 1 Cor 15:51), not gradually, but instantly (ἐν ἀτόμῳ; 1 Cor 15:52), not partly, but totally: we will become what we today are not: the perishable shall be imperishable, and the mortal shall be immortal (1 Cor 15:53). Paul´s notion of the resurrection of the dead, in other words, involves a change from one state of being to a radically different state of being. However, not only Paul, but also the imagined fool from Corinth, presupposes that there is some kind of continuity in this radical transformation, insofar as they both posit an underlying subject: Whereas the fool asks “With what kind of body will they come?”, Paul answers “We will all be changed”. Why is the first question foolish, while Paul´s answer is not? Or to put the question differently: how is the paradigm that underlies Paul´s answer different from the paradigm that underlies the imagined foolish questions? How are we to understand Paul´s notion of metamorphosis, i.e. his notion of the resurrection of the dead? In order to give an answer to those questions, foolish or not, I shall first go back to the way in which the concept of change emerged as a fundamental philosophical problem in ancient Greece.

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Vigdis Songe-Møller is professor at the Department of Philosophy, University of Bergen, Norway.

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The Paradox of Change and the Instant in Platonic Philosophy If there were no continuity in the process of change, the thing, or person, that changes, would just disappear, and one could not talk of change. The concept of change can be looked upon as no less than a paradox: change presupposes its own opposite: “no-change”, or sameness. This paradox, or the discovery of this paradox, can be traced back to the beginning of Greek philosophy: unlike his predecessors, Parmenides did not search for the origin or the end of all things, but problematized these very phenomena, and more generally: all kinds of change. Parmenides´ reflections on the paradox of change can be said to have determined the course of Greek philosophy and to some degree the later course of Western philosophy, as well. The paradox of change, as Parmenides formulated it, has as its presupposition a conviction of a certain relationship between human rationality and reality. This relationship was also first stated by Parmenides: “… the same thing can be thought and can exist”.2 If a phenomenon cannot be explained rationally, it cannot exist. Or to put it differently: reality and human rationality obey the same rules. This way of thinking has radical consequences when it comes to understanding change: according to Parmenides, change is such a phenomenon that cannot be explained by human reason. Parmenides´ argument, which leads him to the conclusion that change does not exist, is dependent on a radical distinction between being and non-being, formulated as an alternative: “Is or is not”3. Reason cannot tolerate both at once, which would involve a contradiction, and since it is impossible to “know that which does not exist”4, the choice is easy: Is. For Parmenides this is a basic truth, which determines his ontology: “there is Being, but nothing is not”5. Since the phenomenon of change involves a passage from non-being to being – or vice versa – change cannot exist. This is a radical conclusion, which contradicts our most basic experience of life and nature, which involves con_____________ 2

3 4 5

Parmenides, fragment 28 B 3. The number of the fragment is according to Hermann Diels and Walther Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin: Weidmann, 1951). The translation is Leonardo Tarán´s, in L. Tarán, Parmenides. A Text with Translation, Commentary, and Critical Essays (Princeton / New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1965). Parmenides, 28 B 8.16. Parmenides, 28 B 2,7. Parmenides, 28 B 6,1-2.

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stant change: birth, growth, decay and death. Reason forces Parmenides to deny the existence of these phenomena. The problem of change haunted Greek philosophy after Parmenides. It was perceived as no less than a scandal that such a basic phenomenon, which one experiences all the time – one hardly experiences anything else - could not be explained rationally. Plato, the spiritual heir of Parmenides, can be said to have been obsessed with change, for the very reason that he could not properly explain it. For him, change belonged to the illusionary world of the senses and of the body, which was conceived of as a mere copy of the real – and therefore rational - unchanging and eternal world, to which our soul belongs. But for Plato, unlike for Parmenides, change remained a problem; he did not simply reject it as nonexistent. In his dialogue Parmenides, Plato comes closer than elsewhere to a way of dealing with the irrational phenomenon of change. Here Plato situates change by invoking what he calls a “very strange thing”, a “queer creature”, a “non-place” (ἄτοπον), namely the instant: “… this queer creature, the instant (τὸ ἐξαίφνης), lurks between motion and rest – being in no time at all – and to it and from it the moving thing changes to resting and the resting thing changes to moving.”6 A passage from one state to another can only occur instantly, at a moment outside not only place but also time, a moment which is not a part of the world of the senses, but neither of the ideal world of reason. The instant, which according to Plato is the source of change, is placed beyond both. As a non-place it is an abyss, lacking a form, and as not belonging to any time the instant has neither a before nor an after. It is not what we call “now”, or the present. In a way the instant does not exist, it just happens. Or rather: change happens, as an inexplicable event. The word ἐξαίφνης is used by Plato in other dialogues, as well. In Symposium it is used twice in order to signify a sudden, and fundamental, change from one state of mind to another, where the new state of mind enables the person to see the world and life from a totally different perspective. Before I go into Plato´s use of ἐξαίφνης in Symposium, however, I shall – in the light of Plato´s reflections on change in Parmenides - look at Paul´s notion of the resurrection of the dead in his first letter to the Corinthians. I do not intend to speculate about a possible influence of Plato on Paul, but I hope to show that Plato´s way of deal_____________ 6

Plato, Parmenides 156 d-e. The English translation is that of Mary Louise Gill and Paul Ryan, in Plato, Complete Works, edited, with introduction and notes, by John M. Cooper (Indianapolis / Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1971).

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ing with the phenomenon of change may shed some light on some of Paul´s utterances on the resurrection of the dead.

“… We Will All Be Changed - in a Moment” (1 Cor 15:51-52) Paul´s central focus in 1 Corinthians 15 is the belief in the resurrected Christ, and the consequence of this belief: the resurrection of the dead. All and everything is dependent upon this paradigmatic event: the resurrection of Christ. This is stated clearly by Paul several times, for instance in 15:16-19: “For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.”7 Although Christ’s resurrection is a necessary condition for the resurrection of the dead on the last day, it is not a sufficient one: the belief in the resurrection of Christ is the other necessary condition. In other words: the transformation of the resurrected body - the transformation of a mortal body into an immortal, spiritual body – presupposes not only the transformation of the resurrected Christ, but also a rather different, but related, transformation: the transformation which occurs when a person gains belief in the resurrected Christ. Both these two kinds of transformations involve, I suppose, the whole person, but different aspects of the person are stressed in the two cases: whereas in his description of the resurrection of the dead Paul focuses on the transformation of the body, he focuses on the transformation of the mind in his description of the consequence of converting to the belief in the resurrected Christ. The transformation of the mind is no less radical than the transformation of the body: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Cor 5:17). Paul uses similar metaphors when he describes the transformation of the body (in death) and the transformation of the mind (in life), for instance the metaphor of putting on new clothes: “For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality” (1 Cor 15:52-53). And: “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude _____________ 7

Quotes from the NT are taken from the New International Version.

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of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:22-24)8 I shall treat this metamorphosis of the mind (of the living) as a parallel to the metamorphosis of the body (of the dead). Let me first look closer at the phenomenon of the resurrection of the dead. Paul introduces his teaching on the resurrection of the dead as a metamorphosis of the body in a somewhat puzzling way, by posing the two questions I started with, put in the mouth of an imagined “someone”: “But someone may ask: How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” (1 Cor 15:35). I shall focus on the last of these two questions. Who is this imagined someone (τις) among the Corinthians, from whom Paul expects, at least rhetorically, such a question? A person whose views accord with Platonic or Aristotelian thinking would not be likely to pose it, unless in irony or mockery.9 For such a person there could be no question about an eternal, heavenly bodily existence. Within Platonic and Aristotelian thinking, a body, as such, undergoes change, which includes decay and death. An atomist or a Stoic might, at least theoretically, ask such a question, but it could also be the case that Paul, as a method for explaining his thoughts on the resurrection of the dead, has in mind a person who was not necessarily trained in philosophy, but who was brought up with traditional Greek mythology. I shall venture on an interpretation that understands the foolish “someone” not necessarily as an unlearned Corinthian, but at least as one who was familiar with traditional Greek mythology.10 _____________ 8

9

10

See also Col. 3:9-10: “Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” This question has by most scholars been interpreted as a reflection of the mockery and sarcasm of the Corinthians who opposed the idea of the resurrection of the dead, and to whom Paul refers in 1 Cor 15:12. This is, however, not a necessary interpretation, and I will explore the possibility that Paul, as a method for explaining his ideas of the resurrection, makes up a question that he thinks someone among the Corinthians may honestly ask. For a short summery – and critique - of the different theories about the Corinthian opponents to Paul´s teaching of the resurrection of the dead, see Jeffrey R. Asher, Polarity and Change in 1 Corinthians 15. A Study of Metaphysics, Rhetoric, and Resurrection (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), chapter III, 1.2: “The Problem With Theories Regarding Opponents as an Interpretative Context of 1 Corinthians 15”, pp. 36–48. Most scholars seem to agree that the members of the Corinthian community were divided into wealthy persons on the one hand and artisans and perhaps slaves on the other, and also that the number of wealthy members was relatively small. It is not likely that either the artisans or the slaves in Corinth at the time of Paul had any philosophical education. Therefore, only a discourse that includes popular mythological views will be understood by everyone. I therefore find it plausible that Paul, in his exposition of the resurrection of the dead, in the form of an answer to an im-

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The Greeks were familiar with the conception that eternal existence includes bodily existence. Or perhaps rather: that there are bodies which live forever and which are not a part of nature’s cycle of birth, growth, decay and death, namely the bodies belonging to gods and to very special humans, whom the gods decided to give the status of immortals.11 A transformation of mortals into immortals actually required a bodily transformation, a transformation from a mortal human body to an immortal divine body. The Pythagorian/Platonic dualism between body and soul is not present in Greek mythological thinking. Rather, there is another dualism, namely between two kinds of bodies: human and divine. An unlearned person, who was familiar with Greek mythology, might very well respond to Paul´s prophesy of the resurrection of the dead with the question: “With what kind of bodies will they come?” In his book A Radical Jew, Daniel Boyarin, basing himself on a paper by Patricia Cox Miller,12 suggests that the distinction “between the subbodies of human beings and the super-bodies of the gods” in Greek mythology explains “Christian imagining of the transformed body of the perfected Christian”, as we find it in 1 Corinthians 15.13 For Boyarin this means, I suppose, that the “combination of Platonic dualism and an anthropology that does not regard the body as ´problematic because of its sheer materiality as part of the physical world´”,14 was already prepared for in Greek mythological thought. This is, as far as I can see, _____________

11

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13 14

agined fool, will draw, not only on philosophical theories, but also on common mythological knowledge. After all, an aim of the letter as a whole seems to be to bring unity to the community and to reconcile factionalism (cf. Margaret M. Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation: An Exegetical Investigation of the Language and Composition of 1 Corinthians (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991)). This aim can only be reached if Paul manages to talk to all of the members. Moreover, Paul´s rebuke in chapter 8 at those who sacrifice to idols makes it likely that the strong influence that rituals (which were based on traditional mythology) had on common people, was a serious worry to Paul. For a discussion on the social status of the members of the Corinthian community, see Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 70-76. In Greek mythology, Achilles and Heracles are among the most well known mortals to whom the gods accorded immortality. For a discussion of resurrection and eternal existence within ancient Greek mythology, see Dag Øistein Endsjø, “Oppstandelse og evig liv i det gamle Hellas”, pp. 49–62 in Kropp og oppstandelse, edited by Troels Engberg-Pedersen and Ingvild Sælid Gilhus (Oslo: Pax Forlag, 2001). Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew. Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1994); Patricia Cox Miller, “Dreaming the Body: An Aesthetics of Asceticism”, in Asceticism, edited by Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis (New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 281300. Boyarin, A Radical Jew, p. 62. Boyarin, A Radical Jew, p. 64. Boyarin´s quote is from P. Cox Miller.

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only partly true. Boyarin argues for a special kind of hierarchical dualism that permeates Paul´s writings: “There is flesh and spirit. The spirit is higher and more important, but the flesh is not to be disregarded either.”15 The “body itself”, Boyarin claims, “becomes for him [Paul] a dualist term”16, insofar as the spiritual body is radically different from the fleshy, mortal body. The dualism between mortal and immortal bodies within Greek mythology is, however, of another kind than the bodily dualism of Paul. The distinction between “the sub-bodies of human beings and the super-bodies of the [Greek] gods” is taken from Jean-Pierre Vernant. He calls the divine bodies “sur-corps” since, although they are bodies, they are not burdened with the very qualities that were regarded as characteristic of a body: change, decay and death. And while human bodies are marked “with the seal of limitation, deficiency, and incompleteness”17, divine bodies are not. Whereas mortals eat in order to stave off bodily decay from one day till the other, and have intercourse in order to continue their race, the gods were known to eat, drink and have sex for pleasure.18 In other words: unlike the Pauline divine body, the bodies of Greek gods were desiring bodies.19 When Paul expects “someone” in his Corinthian congregation to ask the question “With what kind of body will they rise?”, he may envisage that this “someone” would like to get a more detailed description of the resurrected body: Will it be like the bodies of the gods, whose lives were full of bodily pleasures? Will it, for instance, be a beautiful body like that of Aphrodite, whom all the male gods desired, or will it be an extremely strong body like that of Ares? Are those the kinds of questions that Paul expects from someone in his Corinthian congregation and to which he cries out: “You fool!”? (1 Cor 15:36). Paul´s answer to this foolish question must have puzzled the members of the Corinthian communities, both learned and unlearned: “You fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies” (1 Cor 15:36). _____________ 15 16 17

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Boyarin, A Radical Jew, p. 64. Boyarin, A Radical Jew, p. 62. Jean-Pierre Vernant, “Mortals and Immortals: The Body of the Divine”, in Jean Pierre Vernant, Mortals and Immortals. Collected Essays, edited by Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 31. For a discussion of this point, see my book Philosophy Without Women. The Birth of Sexism in Western Thought (London: Continuum, 2003), chapter 2: “Thought and Sexuality: A Troubled Relationship”. Several of Paul´s statements, for instance “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’" (1 Cor 15:32) and “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor 15:50) suggest this: that heavenly body is not burdened with bodily desires, such as desires for sex, food and drink.

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What does it mean that the seed which is sown, must die in order to come to new life? The image of the death of a seed was a familiar one in Greek mythology: Persephone, the daughter - or rather an aspect - of the goddess of vegetative growth, Demeter, spends three months of the year in Hades, or with Hades, the god of death, and the remaining nine months among the living. This myth tells the story of the cycle of vegetative life: the seed dies before it comes to new life in springtime. As a story of the cycle of life, it stresses the continuity of life and death rather than the disruption between the two. Death is a kind of sleep, rather than a disappearance or a wiping out of the “old” being.20 Paul´s point, however, seems to be the opposite: “When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else” (1 Cor 15:37). This way of describing the relationship between before and after death is not only contrary to mythological thinking, but also to Platonic and Aristotelian thought, where we also find, at least indirectly, the image of the seed: according to Platonic thinking, the seed of a man secures his physical continuity after death, since the seed contains a new “himself”21, and according to Aristotelian thinking, the seed is potentially the same kind of being as that from which the seed originally came. Both Plato and Aristotle refer to the seed in order to stress the continuity of the race between the generations, whereas the function of Paul´s image of the seed seems to be a disruption within the individual before and after death. For Paul, death is the “last enemy” (1 Cor 15:26). The implication of this metaphor is well formulated by Oscar Cullmann: “When one wishes to overcome someone else, one must enter his territory. Whoever wants to conquer death must die; he must really cease to live – nor simply live on as an immortal soul, but … lose life itself, the most precious good which God has given us.”22 _____________ 20 21

22

Cf. Hesiod, Work and Days, edited with prolegomena and commentary by M.L. West (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 116. Plato, Symposium: “Pregnancy, reproduction – this is an immortal thing for a mortal animal to do … (206c); “ … reproduction … is what mortals have in place of immortality” (206e); “… mortal nature seeks so far as possible to live for ever and be immortal. And this is possible in one way only: by reproduction, because it always leaves behind a new young in place of the old.” (207d); “Now, some people are pregnant in body, and for this reason turn more to women and pursue love in that way, providing themselves through childbirth with immortality and remembrance and happiness, as they think, for all time to come.” (208e) In other words: the seed that “people” (i.e. men) are “pregnant” with, will secure their (imperfect, since bodily) immortality, i.e. continuity; this suggests that the male seed contains the new being, which is a new “himself” (“a new young in place of the old”). The English translation of Symposium is that of Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff, in Plato, Complete Works. Oscar Cullmann, Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? The Witness of the New Testament (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1958), pp. 25f.

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Paul might think that the “someone” who may ask “With what kind of body will they come?”, is a fool for several reasons. He is a fool if he hopes for a beautiful body like that of Apollo or fears a lame body like that of Hephaestus. He is equally a fool if he thinks that there is a continuous cycle of life and death. Paul introduces another kind of immortal body, based on another kind of relationship between life and death: “it is sown a psychic body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a psychic body, there is also a spiritual body” (1 Cor 15:44). The words “soul” and ”psychic” are rarely used by Paul. Within the just cited and the following two verses, however, he uses them four times, each time in contrast to “spirit” and “spiritual”.23 In 15:45 Paul cites Genesis 2:7 ("So it is written: ´The first man Adam became a living soul´"), where “living soul” refers to the breath of life that God breathed into man made of “the dust of the ground”.24 It is therefore reasonable to translate σῶμα ψυχικόν with “natural body” in contrast to “spiritual body”. This is also the most common translation.25 On the other hand, in this letter Paul is confronting Greeks, and among them “the wise” (σοφός), “the scholar” (γραμματεύς), “the philosopher” (συζητής; 1 Cor 1:20), and I suppose that it is far from improbable that Paul was familiar with the body-soul dichotomy in Hellenic thinking. The very special word construction σῶμα ψυχικόν is in the context of Hellenic thinking rather provocative, and if Paul here has the traditional body-soul split in mind, this strange expression stresses in a very effective way that Paul distances himself from Hellenic philosophical thinking: he not only unites soul and body, but also explicitly says that man’s soul will die along with the body.26 I suggest that Paul here uses this expression in _____________ 23

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“It is sown a psychic body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a psychic body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living soul"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the psychic, and after that the spiritual.” (1 Cor 15:44-46) Gen. 2:7: “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (21st Century King James Version). In 12 of the 19 English translations of The New Testament at www.biblegateway.com σῶμα ψυχικόν in verse 44 is translated with “natural body”. The other translations are: “natural (physical) body” (Amplified Bible), “natural human body” (New Living Translation), “physical body” (Contemporary English Translation), “human body” (New Life Version), “earthly body” (New International Reader´s Version), “beastly body” (Wycliff New Testament), “body for this world” (Worldwide English (New Testament)). Not one of them translates ψυχικόν with a word that has anything to do with soul. Whereas for Plato the expression σῶμα ψυχικόν is more or less a contradiction in terms, for Aristotle it would be possible. It could mean a body which is formed, or animated, by its special soul: an animal body is different from a human body because of their different kinds of soul. σῶμα ψυχικόν could also be used to mean a

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order to stress the newness of his message: even what you, Corinthians, call a soul, will die, together with the mortal body. The Corinthians have to throw away their usual conception of death and life after death.27 That his message of the resurrection of the dead breaks radically with the Greek intellectuals´ way of thinking, Paul has already made clear: “Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? … Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Cor 1:20-23). If not the immaterial, immutable soul, then what secures the continuity of the individual before and after resurrection? The answer must be: “the body” – in some way or other: “But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each (ἑκάστῳ) seed he gives its own (ἴδιον) body” (1 Cor 15:38). Although may be translated with “each kind”, ἴδιον clearly signifies the personal or individual. In other words: each seed, i.e. each earthly body, will, it seems, get its own individual resurrected body. Therefore, the individual is, in some way or other, the same before and after resurrection; and this sameness has something to do with the body. In other words: the soul, according to Paul, totally disappears in death, but the body does not: it is raised. This is certainly a provocative way of putting it! In his chapter in this book Troels Engberg-Pedersen argues, to my mind convincingly, that, although there is a total transformation of each individual body, there is also a continuity: “That, I suggest, is the point of the τοῦτο that Paul repeats four times in 15:53-54. … If this something is going to “put on” immortality and incorruption, then it must, as it were, be there.”28 There is, however, nothing in the text which states exactly what kind of continuity this is: even though each individual has a body before and after resurrection, it is not the same body. More generally: we cannot point at any special part of the individual that remains the same. The continuity of the person before and after resurrection can, it seems, only be put in negative terms: it does _____________

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living body as opposed to a dead body. On the other hand, Aristotle explicitly opposes “psychic” and “somatic” parts of the human being: “We may assume the distinction between bodily (σωματικαί) pleasures and those of the soul (ψυχικαί)” (Nicomachean Ethics 1117b28). As far as I know the word construction σῶμα ψυχικόν is not to be found in the Greek philosophical corpus. Cf. Asher, Polarity and Change, pp. 41-43. According to Asher the pneumatikonpsychikon antithesis was unfamiliar to the Corinthians. If this is the case, 15:44 must have sounded very strange in the ears of the Corinthians, both learned and unlearned. T. Engberg-Pedersen in this volume, p. 110.

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not seem to depend on an unchanging element, an element which remains the same before and after death and which, like the Platonic soul, does not ever, and cannot, undergo any kind of change. Or, to put it differently: continuity is not based on the essence of the individual, on that which determines what kind of being this individual is. This is nothing but a repetition of the statement with which I started: the change is total. If the change is total, if each individual changes from what she is (perishable and mortal) into what she is not (imperishable and immortal), then what remains the same? There is no rational answer to this question, and Paul does not try to explain it. Rather, he points to the will and agency of God: “God gives it a body as he has determined” (1 Cor 15:38). God, in other words, can be supposed to create continuity, independently – or beyond – the limitations of human reason.29 The metamorphosis of the resurrected body, so Paul tells us, is a mystery: “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed - in a flash (ἐν ἀτόμῳ), in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality” (1 Cor 15:5153). Ironically, the phenomenon of change is as great a mystery to the Greek philosophers in the Platonic tradition as the metamorphosis of the body is to Paul. Neither can be explained by human reason. And for both Plato and Paul, there is something beyond human rationality, for which this “something beyond” is its presupposition: for Plato it is the Good (in the Republic) or the Beautiful (in Symposium),30 and for Paul it is God. The “foolishness”, according to the learned Greeks, of Paul´s message (1 Cor 1:23) is perhaps no more foolish than Plato´s “explana_____________ 29

30

Cf. Descartes, who stresses that God should not be thought within the boundaries of human reason: God creates truth. See for instance Descartes´ letter to Père Mersenne, April 14, 1630: “Que les vérités mathématique, lesquelles vous nommez éternelles, ont été établies de Dieu et en dependant entièrement, aussi bien que tout le reste des creature.” In Descartes, Œvres philosophique. Tome I (1618–1637) (Paris: Éditions Garnier, 1988), p. 259. See for instance Republic 508b-e: “Let´s say, then, that this [the sun] is what I called the offspring of the good, which the good begot as its analogue. What the good itself is in the intelligible realm, in relation to understanding and intelligible things, the sun is in the visible realm, in relation to sight and visible things. … So that what gives truth to the things known and the power to know to the knower is the form of the good.” And 509b: “Therefore, you should also say that not only do the objects of knowledge owe their being known to the good, but their being is also due to it, although the good is not being, but superior to it in rank and power”. The Good is thus not only beyond human reason and knowledge, but also beyond being: both being and knowledge is “due to” the Good. The English translation of Republic is that of G.M.A Grube and rev. C.D.C. Reeve, in Plato, Complete Works.

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tion” of change: while Plato situates every kind of change in the instant (ἐξαίφνης), Paul situates this extraordinary change – the resurrection of the dead – in the moment (ἐν ἀτόμῳ).31

“… Suddenly a Bright Light from Heaven Flashed around me” (Acts 22: 6) Ἐξαίφνης is once put in the mouth of Paul, in the Acts, when Paul tells of his conversion, which is also a kind of metamorphosis: “About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly (ἐξαίφνης) a bright light from heaven flashed around me. I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, 'Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?' " 'Who are you, Lord?' I asked. " 'I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,' he replied. My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me” (Acts 22:6-9).

In his book St. Paul. The Foundation of Universalism Alain Badiou calls Paul´s conversion an event, something which happens, “purely and simple”, unexpectedly and uncontrollably, on an anonymous road;32 Paul sees a light and hears a voice, and he puts his belief in what he sees and hears, without asking for explanation or for proof. Paul´s be_____________ 31

32

Asher argues that the introduction of the notion of change in 15:51-52 functions as the solution to the problem of resurrection: in order to correct the foolish, imagined interlocutor in 15:35, who, according to Asher, “denied that there is a resurrection of the dead” (Polarity and Change, p. 166), on the ground that “it is impossible for a terrestrial human body (flesh and blood and corruptible) to attain a celestial dwelling” (p. 152), Paul “is emphasizing change, that is, the transformation that the human body must undergo during the resurrection to comply with the strictures of cosmic polarity” (p. 163). According to the principle of cosmic polarity, which the Corinthians dissenters, according to Asher, adhere to, there is a sharp distinction between the sub- and superlunary realms; therefore a terrestrial body cannot ascend to a heavenly habitation. Paul therefore, to a certain degree, agrees with the Corinthian dissenters; only if he can show that the body undergoes a radical change, he can convince them that there is not only a resurrection of the dead, but a resurrection of the body. I find Asher´s thorough analysis convincing, but, as far as I can see, he fails to recognize that by introducing the notion of change, Paul is not only offering a solution to a problem, but is inscribing himself in a long philosophical tradition, in which change is one of the central problems. According to Asher, Paul´s notion of change is similar to a long range of philosophers´ notion of change (his analyses of this similarity are too sweeping to be convincing), but Asher does not seem to face the fundamental problem – or paradox – of change. Alain Badiou, The Foundation of Universalism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), p. 18.

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lief, or conviction, is, according to Badiou, unconditioned: It is not dependant on having met Jesus, on having heard stories about his life, his death and his resurrection. It is independent of empirical or theoretical knowledge; it belongs to another order, to the order of event. To put it differently: there is no “natural” explanation for Paul´s conversion, just as there is no “natural” explanation for the resurrection of the dead. Neither event can be explained by human reason; they are both, so Badiou, conditioned by the divine. Badiou´s classification of Paul´s conversion, as well as of the resurrection of the dead, as an event that can be explained neither empirically not theoretically is, to my mind, a fruitful perspective. The temporal dimension of such an event is, necessarily, placed beyond empirical time. It belongs to the instant. As already mentioned, Plato uses the word ἐξαίφνης twice in Symposium, both times to describe a radical conversion of mind. I shall here mention one of them. In the so called “ladder of love”, Diotima describes the ascent from ignorance to full knowledge, driven by erotic desire. The first part of this ascent is completed by gradual steps – from the desire for one beautiful body to all beautiful bodies, then from the desire of beautiful bodies to beautiful souls, until the lover is overwhelmed by “the great sea of beauty”33. Diotima explains how and why the philosopher-lover ascends from one step to the other; there is a reason, a logos, for his ascent: the beauty, which he desires, is the same in all objects – in bodies, in souls, in knowledge – and he is therefore driven from the love of single examples of beauty to that which is common to all beautiful things. The lover’s last step, however, towards “the divine Beauty itself in its one form”34, cannot be explained by the logos, which has determined the steps so far. The last step is rather a jump into what Diotima calls “the final and highest mystery” (τὰ δὲ τέλεα καὶ δε ἐποπτικά, ὧν ἕνεκα καὶ ταῦτα ἔστιν).35 The rational continuity of the ladder is broken: “You see, the man who has been thus far guided in matters of Love, who has beheld beautiful things in the right order and correctly, is coming now to the goal of Loving: all of a sudden (ἐξαίφνης) he will catch sight of something wonderfully beautiful in its nature; that Socrates, is the reason for all his earlier labors.”36

_____________ 33 34 35 36

Plato, Symposium 210d. Plato, Symposium 211e. Plato, Symposium 210a. Plato, Symposium 210.

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The only “explanation” that Diotima can give, is that it happens instantly. “The divine Beauty itself” is the presupposition for all rationality and is thus itself above human reason.37

Conclusion Although Paul is far from being a Platonist, there are several parallels between Paul and Plato in their ways of dealing with radical change. Both of them describe not only ontological change, but also radical change of mind by pointing to an event which occurs in an instant and to an entity which is beyond human reason. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul is preoccupied with three events: the resurrection of Christ, the resurrection of the dead and the faith in Christ. All these events involve radical change, so radical that Paul may have felt a necessity of giving some kind of an explanation. Since for Plato all change is radical change, it might not be a complete coincidence that Paul here comes very close to Plato´s way of thinking. Whereas Plato explains all kinds of change by the extraordinary and inexplicable moment, Paul explains this extraordinary change, the resurrection of the dead, by a similarly extraordinary moment, which is on the verge of time: at the last trumpet, and obviously beyond human reason. Both Plato and Paul single out an extraordinary change of mind which enables the philosopher and the Christian, respectively, to grasp the truth. Also these changes of mind are explained by the inexplicable instant. And where Plato points to the unconditioned Good, or to the unconditioned Beauty, Paul points to the active and creative will of God.

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The second time ἐξαίφνης is used in Symposium, is in the last section of the dialogue, after the speech of Socrates/Diotima, when Alcibiades, the well-known politician, with whom Socrates had had some kind of love affair, rovers into the party. Alcibiades is drunk and does not notice the presence of Socrates, not even when he is seated beside him. Suddenly (Symposium 213c) he becomes aware of the presence of Socrates, and his way of talking and behaving changes. Alcibiades´ sudden awareness of Socrates and his correspondingly sudden change of behaviour is an obvious (metaphorical?) parallel to the philosopher’s sudden view of the Beauty itself. Cf. Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness. Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 184 f.

Complete and Incomplete Transformation in Paul – a Philosophical Reading of Paul on Body and Spirit Complete and Incomplete Transformation in Paul TROELS ENGBERG-PEDERSEN1 Überschrift 2: für Kapitel ohne Ü2 wird hier Ü1 Kurzform wiederholt This essay addresses two issues. I will first present an interpretation of Paul’s conception of the transformation of the individual human being that he expected to take place at the resurrection. The analysis will be based mainly on 1 Corinthians 15.2 Next I will sketch an understanding of Paul’s conception of the already half-transformed life of Christ followers who are living in the present world before the resurrection. Here the basic texts will be from Phil 3:2-21, 2 Cor 2:14-4:18 and Rom 8:1-13. The aim is to articulate a coherent understanding of these two stages in the lives of Christ followers that makes concrete and direct sense within the ways of thinking that were available in Paul’s world. It should be noted that while I will be drawing on – and in some cases analysing quite closely – the passages mentioned, the aim here is not to do regular exegesis. That would require, among other things, that we considered the overall point of the passages within the context of the letter: why Paul wrote like that just there. Instead, the attempt will be to articulate an overall conception of the precise state of Christ followers both now and in the future and the claim will be that this conception is both presupposed and also directly expressed in those passages. Some of the questions that we shall address to Paul’s text are informed by broader philosophical categories – both ancient and modern – that are not directly invoked by Paul himself. But the claim remains that the overall conception we shall be articulating is in fact Paul’s own. In this essay the term transformation is intended to stand for a change that is complete. When people have been transformed in this sense, both they themselves and onlookers will say that they have changed completely. Such a change need not, of course, cover every_____________ 1 2

Troels Engberg-Pedersen is professor at the Biblical Studies Section of The Faculty of Theology at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. I am convinced that Paul’s account of the resurrection in 2 Cor 5:1-10 fits in closely with the picture he gives in 1 Corinthians 15, but there is insufficient space here to show this.

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thing there is to be said about them. In almost all cases there will be some aspects in respect to which they have not changed. Thus transformation will always be relative to some framework that defines the relevant aspect in respect to which the change has occurred. It remains the case that relative to such a given framework, the change indicated by speaking of a transformation should be understood as being complete: where the person previously was such and such (say, A), he or she now is something else (B, C, D or ...) that implies the contradictory of A. One issue that will concern us is in what respects Paul speaks of a real transformation in Christ believers at various stages in their lives and the extent to which he may wish only to speak of an incomplete transformation in some of these respects. Another issue concerns different types of (complete or incomplete) transformation: whether cognitive, physical (that is, ontological), moral, social or something else.3

The Resurrected Life Three passages in 1 Corinthians 15 are directly relevant to the question of how Paul understood the transformation of the body at the resurrection, including the “pneumatic” resurrection body itself that he mentions at 15:44. The three passages are: the “mytho-poietic” one of 15:2028, the more directly cosmological one of 15:35-49 and another, more “mytho-poietic” one of 15:50-55. I have argued elsewhere for an understanding of the two latter passages that may be summarized as follows.4 In the whole of the cosmological passage of 15:35-49 Paul does three major things. He first (15:3644a) answers the question concerning the resurrection body in terms of a distinction between earthly bodies and heavenly bodies, where the latter are also, by implication, pneumatic ones. This answer, I contend, presupposes a Stoic cosmology. The basic idea is the contrast between bodies that are earthly and bodies that are heavenly (cf. 15:40), which Paul directly connects with the contrast between a body that is “psychic” and one that is “pneumatic” (15:44). Thus psychic belongs with earthly and pneumatic with heavenly and this last bit is to be understood in accordance with the only cosmological position in Paul’s _____________ 3 4

These reflections on the term transformation itself spring from discussions within the CAS project, not least at the follow-up seminar in Rome, 8-10 May 2008. See TE-P, “A Stoic Understanding of Pneuma in Paul”, in TE-P and Henrik Tronier (eds.), Philosophy at the Roots of Christianity (Working Papers 2; The Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, 2006) 101-123. I take over here some paragraphs directly from this essay.

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world that distinctly took the heavenly phenomena of the sun, the moon and the stars (explicitly mentioned by Paul in 15:41) to be made up of bodies that consisted of pneuma. Thus Paul’s pneuma is a material entity, a kind of “stuff”.5 Next (15:44b-46), Paul relates his answer to a tradition of interpretation of Gen 2:7 that we know from Philo of Alexandria. From this tradition he apparently took over the idea of two “Adams”, one pneumatic and the other psychic. But he also corrects the tradition by insisting on a chronological sequence, with the pneumatic Adam coming last. Here, of course, he is already speaking specifically of Christ in a manner that has been prepared for earlier in the chapter (at 15:22). In effect, what 15:44b-46 does is to describe the Christ event in the light of philosophical speculation about Gen 2:7. Finally, in 15:47-49 Paul combines the cosmological tale of 15:36-44a with the content of 15:44b-46. He fits the two traditions he is relying on (Stoic cosmology and a Jewish, philosophical Genesis tradition) into his Christ event conception of a chronological sequence of the two men (Adam and Christ) by articulating the idea of a change in human beings: from wearing the visible appearance of the earthly “clay” man (Adam) to wearing that of the heavenly man (Christ, 15:47) – namely, a body that is pneumatic. Thus there are two basic points: (a) of a pneumatic heaven against an earthly earth and (b) of a change from earthly man to heavenly man. The third of our three passages (15:50-55) obviously harks back to the first one (15:20-28) in its elaborate use of apocalyptic imagery, including the idea of finally conquering death. But it also directly continues the second one. By saying “What I mean is this ...” (Τοῦτο δέ φημι, 15:50), Paul explicitly states that he is now going to spell out what he has just said.6 And indeed, the overall theme of 15:50-55 is precisely that of the future change (ἀλλαγή, cf. 15:51, 52). In 15:53-54, however, Paul also adds a specific, philosophical point about the pneumatic body that had not been so clearly stated in 15:35-49. We should conclude that _____________ 5

6

I take over this characterization (“stuff”) from Dale B. Martin’s splendid book on The Corinthian Body (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1995) e.g. p. 128. (Compare in general his chapters 1 on “The Body in Greco-Roman Culture” and 5 on “The Resurrected Body”, with which I both agree and disagree.) A. C. Thiselton finds it “tempting” to interpret Τοῦτο δέ φημι as “what I mean ... is this”, but settles for “this I affirm ...:” since he concurs with “Weiss, Jeremias, Collins, and others”, who “stress the beginning of a new pericope” at 15:50 (The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGT, Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K.: Eerdmans and Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2000) 12901291. A reference to 1 Cor 7:29 (see Danker in BDAG with φημί meaning “mean”) should have persuaded Thiselton to stay with his first intuition.

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whereas we moderns may feel that the apocalyptic, more “mythopoietic” section of 15:50-55 speaks an entirely different kind of language from the ostensively more “scientific” language of 15:35-49, Paul himself did not see any such difference. Three points are made in 15:50-55. (a) “Flesh and blood” (σὰρξ καὶ αἷμα, 15:50), meaning the ordinary, corruptible body (cf. φθορά), cannot “inherit” the kingdom of God and incorruption (ἀφθαρσία). (b) Instead (15:51-52), there will be a change, which will touch both the dead and the living. (c) And this change (15:53-54) will mean that “this corruptible (something)” and “this mortal (something)” (meaning this individual body) puts on “incorruption” and “immortality”. Here the process that Paul has in mind is the one that in the Aristotelian tradition was called “substantive change”: that the whole substance changes into an altogether different, new substance.7 Thus Paul had the idea that “this” individual body of flesh and blood, this clay body made out of earth, will be transformed so that what was previously a body of flesh and blood will now be a body made up of pneuma. It is not that the flesh and blood will in some sense be “shed” in such a way that it is only what remains that will be resurrected.8 Rather, the individual body of flesh and blood will be transformed as a whole so as to become through and through a pneumatic one. Here there is a genuine and complete transformation. What previously was A (a body of flesh and blood) now is B (a pneumatic body), which implies the contradictory of A: from corruptible to incorruptible. If we try to spell out Paul’s idea, it seems to be that Christ as pneuma will physically and literally come from heaven and transform the individual body of flesh and blood of believers; in this way he will turn them into _____________ 7

8

The contrasting kind of change in Aristotle is “alteration”, e.g. so-called “qualitative change”: Socrates (being one and the same substance) was previously white, but is now black (sunburned or the like). By contrast, substantive change is exemplified by a change from a living being to a corpse (or, as in Paul’s case, the other way round). For substantive change in Aristotle, see De Generatione et Corruptione I.4, 319b10-18: “there is ‘alteration’ when the substratum is perceptible and persists, but changes in its own properties ... The body, e.g., although persisting as the same body, is now healthy and now ill; ... But when nothing perceptible persists in its identity as a substratum, and the thing changes as a whole (when e.g. the seed as a whole is converted into blood, or water into air, or air as a whole into water), such an occurrence is no longer ‘alteration’. It is a coming-to-be [γένεσις] of one substance and a passingaway [φθορά] of the other ...” (tr. H.H. Joachim in The Works of Aristotle [ed. W.R. Ross, vol. II, Oxford: Clarendon, 1930 and later]). Against Martin (and a host of others): e.g. Martin, The Corinthian Body, 126 (sarx and psyche have been “sloughed off along the way”) and 128 (“shed”). (Incidentally, in both passages Martin is very close to seeing – and even saying – that the notion of a heavenly, “pneumatic body” was a Stoic specialty among “the philosophers”.)

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bodies that are through and through pneumatic and that will physically and literally come to stay together with himself in heaven. I shall come back in a moment to the notion of complete transformation (passing-away and coming-to-be) that is being expressed here. Before that we must speculate a little on exactly how Paul imagined this transformation to take place. Had he been a Platonist, he would probably have been thinking in terms of shedding the body of flesh and blood.9 That would also have been the case had he been a genuine Stoic and nothing but that. For according to the Stoics, too, the soul of the wise man will arise “balloon-like from the corpse” to take its place in heaven alongside other heavenly bodies made up of pneuma.10 Had Paul been Philo he might have described the resurrection of Christ followers along the lines of Philo’s account of the post-mortem existence of especially egregious people like Moses. Of him Philo says that as the time came when he was going to be sent from earth “to heaven” to “become immortal” (ἀθανατίζεσθαι) after “having left this mortal life behind”, he was summoned thither by the father, who “resolved (ἀναστοιχειοῦν) his twofold nature of soul and body (σῶμα καὶ ψυχή) into a single unity (εἰς μονάδος ... φύσιν), transforming his whole being (ὅλον δι’ ὅλων μεθαρμοζόμενος) into mind (νοῦς), pure as the sunlight” (Mos. 2.288, basically LCL tr.). Here we do find the idea of transforming the whole being into a single substance. And Philo even employs a specifically Stoic term for this operation (that of ἀναστοιχειοῦν, see later). But Philo would have been too Platonic for Paul since the end stage for Philo is simply that of νοῦς, whereas what Paul wants is a pneumatic body. Where, then, can we find an idea similar to Paul’s that might help us understand it better? The solution is once more Stoic, but different from the Stoic conception of the fate of individuals. Rather, as I have suggested elsewhere, Paul thinks of the fate of his individual Christ followers along the lines of the way the Stoics thought that the world as a whole will finally be “resolved” (with the Stoic technical term on which Philo is also drawing) into pure, material energy and thought: into God himself, at the moment when (as Paul also has it) God will become “everything in everything” (15:28, at the end of 15:20-28; cf. also Rom 8:19-22). This _____________ 9

10

The fact that Paul thought of the pneuma as some form of physical stuff already shows that he was not a Platonist. This does not prevent him from speaking from time to time in ways that sound somewhat Platonic, e.g. in 2 Cor 4:18 where he contrasts the visible with the invisible. I am quoting here from A.A. Long, “Soul and Body in Stoicism”, Phronesis 27 (1982) 34-57, espec. 53. (Also in Long, Stoic Studies [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996].)

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process – which the Stoics called “conflagration” (ἐκπύρωσις) and which they understood as a total, physical transformation of the present world as a whole into a pneumatic state11 – is the one that the individual, Pauline Christ followers will also undergo. That is what happens when their body of flesh and blood is transformed into a body that is pneumatic. At this point it is worth asking two questions that stray even further away from Paul’s own text. If Paul had the idea of a complete transformation of the whole of the psychic body of Christ followers into a pneumatic body along the lines suggested, (i) should we find some direct continuity between the two bodies? (ii) and should we think of some form of individual subjectivity all through the process in the sense that there is an individual awareness, on the part of the person who is changed, to the effect that “I, who previously was that, now am this”? First on continuity: definitely yes. That, I suggest, is in fact the very point of the τοῦτο that Paul repeats four times in 15:53-54: that “this corruptible (something)” and “this mortal (something)” (meaning this individual body) will put on incorruption and immortality. If “this mortal and corruptible something”, which must consist of flesh and blood, is going to put on immortality and incorruption, then it must, as it were, be there for that operation to be successful. But since flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God (see 15:50), this body of flesh and blood must also necessarily be changed away from (being made up of) flesh and blood. Thus, as we saw, it must be transformed, namely, into an altogether different kind of body: the pneumatic one. In short, we do have a case here of what Aristotle would have called “substantive change”. This is not strange since Paul is after all speaking of a change from being dead or dying (mortal) to being eternally alive (immortal), that is, of a process of passing-away that is also one of comingto-be. At the same time there will be a kind of continuity across this kind of transformation even though it is in itself complete and changes everything in the initial body of flesh and blood.12 Will there then also be individual subjectivity across that change? It is hard to know and my reply here will be almost purely speculative. My guess is that there will be a kind of awareness of oneself (the _____________ 11 12

For this idea compare, e.g., the texts in A.A. Long & D.N. Sedley (eds.), The Hellenistic Philosophers (2 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) § 52. In Aristotle, too, there is continuity in “substantive change”, which is accounted for in terms of the Aristotelian notion of “prime matter”. It is arguable that in some cases, at least, the expression “prime matter” in fact refers to individual perceptible beings, not to some nebulous, underlying stuff.

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pneuma will take care of that since it is not only a material but also a cognitive entity), but one that is rudimentary in the following sense: it is an awareness that the pneumatic body that one now is (as one oneself sees it) is the same body as the fully individual and subjective body that one once was. Taken by itself, however, there is probably not much sense of individual subjectivity in the newly generated pneumatic body itself. For that body rather forms part of the shared pneumatic body that is Christ or, perhaps, God himself when God is everything in everything. I said that this suggestion is almost purely speculative. That is true with regard to the pneumatic body. Paul simply does not spell out anywhere how he imagined the future state of Christ followers in terms of individuality and subjective self-awareness. For the psychic body of flesh and blood, by contrast, there is more to go on. When, in his various vice lists Paul identifies what is wrong about that body, the essential culprit is precisely a too strong sense of subjectivity and individuality: either sinners will focus inordinately on their individual bodies or else they will focus on themselves in explicit contrast with others whom they will oppose.13 Thus if I am right in guessing along these lines, the total, material transformation that Paul imagined would take place at the resurrection would overcome this kind of individuality and subjective self-awareness since both are tied to the body of flesh and blood. The individual pneumatic body, by contrast, rather forms part of a pneumatic fellowship (koinônia).

The Life of Believers Before the Resurrection Suppose that Paul had the idea I have just presented of a complete physical transformation at the resurrection. How, then, did he think that Christ followers would be living up until that moment? This question reflects the fact that the pneumatic transformation that Paul has in mind is not just situated in the (near) future: it has also – partially – taken place in the (near) past when Paul and his addressees became Christ followers. At least, Paul is happy to say that God has “prepared” (κατεργάσασθαι) Christ followers for the resurrection by giving them the pneuma as a down payment (ἀρραβῶν, 2 Cor 5:5). But precisely only as a down payment, which means that the pneumatic transformation has only partially begun. And that is what raises the question: ex_____________ 13

Compare my analysis of Paul’s notion of the flesh as employed, e.g., in Galatians, in Paul and the Stoics (Edinburgh/Louisville: T&T Clark/Westminster John Knox, 2000) 152-153.

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actly how did Paul imagine the life of Christ followers, who would already have “received” the pneuma (cf. Gal 3:2 for λαμβάνειν τὸ πνεῦμα) that God had given them to prepare them for the physical resurrection, but who would also, still, be living in flesh and blood? In other words, how does the idea of a future, complete, pneumatic transformation fit in with the much messier situation of human beings living in the present in flesh and blood, but also with the pneuma somehow already at work? I think one can discern a specific pattern of ideas in Paul on this issue, not just in a single text but in several texts. This in itself suggests that the pattern constitutes a fairly coherent and basic idea in Paul’s thought world. The pattern has three elements. First, there is the idea of a complete transformation already in this life that is cognitive. Second, there is the idea of a transformation already in this life that is physical or material, but not yet complete; instead, it is incipient and gradual, as it were on its way towards the final, bodily transformation at the resurrection. Third, there is an idea that constitutes the flip side of the previous one: of a dying away of the physical body of flesh and blood, which is itself only incipient and gradual. Let us consider in some detail two texts where this pattern can be found: Phil 3:2-21 and 2 Cor 2:14-4:18 (+ 5:1-10).

Different Types of Transformation in Phil 3:2-21 The first idea we noted is that in a certain respect believers – at least Paul himself – have already undergone a transformation that is complete. As we shall see in Philippians 3, Paul describes this experience or event in terms of seeing and getting to know. Thus it is a transformation that is cognitive. Elsewhere, he explicitly speaks of a cognitive transformation when he exhorts his Roman addressees as follows: “... be transformed by the renewal of your mind (μεταμορφοῦσθε τῇ ἀνακαινώσει τοῦ νοός) ...” (Rom 12:2). As shown in Philippians 3, however, in his own case this “renewal” had already taken place. We need to have this famous passage in front of us: Phil 3:4-12 (NRSV, revised). 4 ... If anyone should wish to put confidence in the flesh, I [could do so] even more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. 7 Yet

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whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. 8 More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of him I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through Christ faith, the righteousness from God based on faith, 10 that I may know him [Christ] and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming conformed with him in his death, 11 if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 12 Not that I have already grasped it or have already become perfect; but I pursue it to get hold of it since Christ Jesus, too, has got hold of me.

Consider the first half of this account of Paul’s own conversion. Paul has already left all his previous assets behind as part of his experience of the “overwhelming impact of the knowledge (γνῶσις) of Christ Jesus, my Lord” (3:8). Everything other than Christ he regards as a “loss” and “rubbish”. Thus it is clear that he himself considered this transformation to be complete. What previously had positive value now has its contradictory: negative value. It is also clear that he took the change to be a cognitive one. It was a matter of “knowing” Christ and “regarding (ἡγεῖσθαι)” everything else in certain ways. In describing himself in this way, Paul does not necessarily imply that his addressees have undergone the same experience. But he does use his self-account as a way of enjoining them to adopt the same kind of directedness towards Christ that he has described in his own case. That happens in 3:12-17, where he breaks off his description of his own forward-looking attitude in order to give his addressees an opportunity to become part of the same kind of directedness. The precise way in which he ties them in with his own experience is noteworthy and it forces us, as we shall see in a moment, to consider in detail what he says of himself between his initial account of his own cognitive transformation (3:7-8) and his turn to his addressees (3:12ff). He ends his self-account by expressing the hope that he will eventually arrive at the resurrection from the dead (3:11), and then breaks off by saying that he himself has not yet reached or grasped “it” (the “it” being not directly expressed in the text) nor is he yet “perfect” (3:12a); still, he pursues “it” in the hope that he may grasp “it” corresponding to the fact that he has himself been grasped by Christ (3:12b). It is this state of pressing forward (cf. 3:13-14) that he then uses to urge his addressees to engage in the same pursuit (3:15-16) and to take himself as their model (3:17). But exactly what is the “it” that Paul has not yet grasped? And what is he aiming to say in the complex and crucial verses between his account

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of his own initial, cognitive transformation in 3:7-8 and the expression in 3:11 of his hope to arrive at the resurrection in the future? Let us consider the possible referents of “it”. In 3:11 he has spoken of the resurrection from the dead that he is hoping to arrive at. If we bring in the description of the resurrection that he gives at the end of the chapter (3:21), we will see that in Philippians, too, this future event implies a change that is not just a cognitive but also a bodily and physical one. It occurs when Christ “will trans-form (μετασχηματίζειν) the body (σῶμα) of our lowliness into being con-formed with (σύμμορφον) the body (σῶμα) of his glory in accordance with the energy (ἐνέργεια) of his having the power (δύνασθαι) also to subject everything to himself” (my tr.). Is it this physical change, then, that Paul has not yet reached or grasped (the term in 3:12 is ἔλαβον)? Is he speaking in material terms of reaching or grasping the resurrection? Or is he rather speaking in cognitive terms of grasping Christ, corresponding to the fact that he has himself been grasped by Christ? Two considerations seem to suggest that the reference is not after all to the resurrection itself. Since Paul clearly presupposes both in 3:11 and wholly explicitly in 3:20-21 that the resurrection lies in the future, and since he does not appear to be at all up against people in Philippi who might have thought of a “resurrection in the present”, 3:12 would come out very lamely if the reference were to the resurrection: of course you have not grasped it, Paul, since it lies in the future! Also, it seems initially rather likely that the idea of Christ’s having grasped Paul refers back in some way to the description he has just given in 3:7-8, where the change was described in cognitive terms as a matter of “knowing Christ Jesus”. If we go by this, we might take it that what Paul has not quite grasped (and so he is not perfect) but strives cognitively to grasp is – Christ. Here the idea could be that although Paul has in fact undergone a cognitive transformation that is complete (by 3:7-8) in the sense that he has come to know the only thing that matters (Christ), he may not, perhaps, have “deepened” this knowledge in such a way that there is cognitively in him nothing but Christ. If this cognitive reading were the proper one, we would have the idea of a continuing cognitive transformation in the present life that springs from an initial cognitive transformation that was in one way complete, but in another way allowed for some deepening. This, incidentally, would certainly be within the horizon of Paul’s thought inasmuch as he does speak earlier in the letter of “progression” (προκοπή) in his addressees (1:25); and it could be supported by noting that Stoicism, for instance, has exactly the same idea. There one may have grasped the ultimate truth about the good

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without being able to see exactly how it informs each particular situation. So there is a need for further deepening.14 However, it is hard to see how such a reading will fit what appears to be Paul’s very categorical statement in 3:7-8 to the effect that his cognitive transformation is already utterly complete. In addition, there is the textual fact that with 3:12 coming directly after 3:11 the initially obvious thing for the implied “it” to refer to actually is the resurrection from the dead (or something closely connected with it). Furthermore, should we really take it that Christ has “grasped” Paul distinctly and exclusively in a cognitive sense only? These considerations all land us in an aporia. The “it” that Paul has not yet grasped can hardly be the physical state of the resurrected body. But neither is it likely to be merely a full, cognitive grasp of Christ. So what is it? This is where we need to go back to the verses that come in between Paul’s account of what did happen to him (cognitively) and led to his being where he is now (3:7-8) and the expression of his hope for what should happen in the future (3:11). In the intervening verses (3:8 end-3:10) he is very precisely speaking of something that lies between his present state and the fixed future event of the resurrection. This is clear, for instance, from his use of ἵνα (“in order that”, 3:8 end) and what is probably also a final use of the article with an infinitive at the beginning of 3:10 (τοῦ γνῶναι, “in order that I may get to know ...”). Thus he is in fact speaking of the state he goes on to describe in 3:12-14 as one of his pursuing “it” (3:12), which is also his pursuing “the prize of God’s upward call in Christ Jesus” (3:14). A careful analysis of the two-three verses we are considering shows that it can be seen to contain two parallel phrases: ἵνα – πίστει (3:8 end3:9) and τοῦ – αὐτοῦ (3:10). What is more, in these two phrases the first elements probably correspond to one another, as do the second ones. That is, to ἵνα Χριστὸν κερδήσω (3:8 end) corresponds τοῦ γνῶναι αὐτόν (3:10 beginning), and to εὑρεθῶ ἐν αὐτῷ (3:9 beginning) there may be a correspondence in τοῦ γνῶναι ... τὴν δύναμιν τῆς ἀναστάσεως αὐτοῦ (3:10). The point is that both ἵνα Χριστὸν κερδήσω and τοῦ γνῶναι αὐτόν seem to speak of knowing, the latter explicitly so and the former by implication from Paul’s talk in 3:7-8 of loss and gain in a cognitive context. By contrast, the expression εὑρεθῶ ἐν αὐτῷ employs Paul’s superficially quite enigmatic talk of being in Christ: can _____________ 14

I have explored this theme in Stoicism in The Stoic Theory of Oikeiosis: Moral Development and Social Interaction in Early Stoic Philosophy (Studies in Hellenistic Civilization II; Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1990) 128-140.

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this be made clearer by his talk of getting to know the power of Christ’s resurrection? Here is a suggestion: the “power” of Christ’s resurrection is the pneuma, God’s pneuma, which according to Rom 8:11 may both “live in” believers – “His pneuma that lives within you” – and will also be the instrument “through” (διά) which God will raise the mortal bodies of believers. By coming to “know” this power, Paul will also come to be “found in” Christ. For Christ, too, as Paul says elsewhere (cf. 2 Cor 3:17), is pneuma. On such a reading Paul is saying that while he has already undergone a transformation that is cognitive and complete – one of being struck by the “overwhelming impact of the knowledge (γνῶσις) of Christ Jesus, my Lord” (3:8) – he is also at present undergoing a physical change in the form of a process that consists in gradually being taken over more and more by the material pneuma in order that he may eventually and finally come to be found in Christ. This reading takes the idea of being found “in” Christ in a completely literal sense and it finds an easy means for doing so in the notion of the material pneuma. But why, then, does Paul speak here also in cognitive terms of “knowing” Christ (3:10 beginning) and “gaining” him (3:8 end)? Because the pneuma is both a material thing and a cognitive one. This means that the material process of being taken over by the pneuma is in fact also at the same time a cognitive process, and presumably the one we noted of getting an ever more deepened grasp of Christ. This should not be taken to be inconsistent with the claim that Paul’s initial conversion was both cognitive and complete. As he describes it, it was. Still, since he remains a person of flesh and blood in the present world, there is plenty of room for speaking of a gradual change into being a person who is completely aligned with that initial grasp. We have now found that there is both a cognitive and a physical side to Paul’s ongoing transformation and both are based on possession of the pneuma. May we then also read this back into his account of the initial transformation itself and take it that Paul would see the pneuma to be present then and to explain that cognitive transformation? Plainly, yes. In fact, we may now see the latter half of 3:12 to be precisely saying this. Paul is pursuing the pneuma to get hold of it since Christ Jesus, too, (in the form of the pneuma) has initially got hold of him. In this way we have found a solution to our aporia concerning the referent of “it” in 3:12. What Paul has not yet grasped is neither the resurrection as such nor Christ just like that. Rather, it is the complete possession of the pneuma which will eventually transform Paul’s body at the resurrection, and this complete possession of the pneuma is also

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the complete possession – both in a cognitive and a physical sense – of Christ. Furthermore, those two things, one may guess, are in fact not much different from – the resurrection itself. In this way all of our intuitions may be said to have been partly right. There remain two phrases in 3:9 and 3:10 respectively that we should also account for as part of this reading of Paul’s overall line of argument in these verses: the reference to righteousness in 3:9 and to sharing in Christ’s sufferings and death in 3:10. The first reference of course takes up the one to righteousness under the law at 3:6. Paul is marking the change from one type of righteousness to another. What is intriguing is the question of the relationship between the phrase “not having etc.” and the immediately preceding “in order that I may be found in him”. In any case it is noteworthy that we here find the two ideas that lie behind the two distinct scholarly categories of “participation” and “forensic speech” being extremely closely connected by Paul. But exactly how? There seem to be two possibilities. Either “not having etc.” spells out what the state of being found in Christ (also) consists in. This is the weakest reading and it may well be right. The other possibility is that “not having etc.” indicates a cause or presupposition for the state of being found in Christ. This is a stronger, or more specific, reading and consequently more difficult to maintain. It could be supported by the fact that in Romans (cf. 5:1) righteousness as resulting from πίστις is apparently followed by being in a state that is permeated by the pneuma (cf. 8:1-13). Similarly, it could be supported by what appears to be a kind of theory in Galatians to the effect that πίστις is followed by obtaining the pneuma (cf. 3:2, 3:14, 4:6). Be that as it may. In either case, Paul’s reference to the proper kind of righteousness in Phil 3:9 clearly aims at strengthening the idea of directedness towards Christ since it comes about “through Christ faith” and “based on (that) faith” in the believer. Then the remaining phrase: Paul’s expression in 3:10 of his desire to come to “know … a sharing (κοινωνία) with” Christ’s sufferings by acquiring the same “shape” (συμμορφιζόμενος) as Christ in his death. How should we understand this? The fact that Paul uses the term συμμορφίζεσθαι here, which he then takes up again in 3:21 (σύμμορφον), suggests that already in 3:10 he is speaking of a bodily change, but of a type that we have not come across until now. In fact, in the two passages he will be speaking of a bodily change in two directions, here of becoming like Christ in his death and there of becoming like Christ in his glory. Thus, sharing in Christ’s sufferings will literally mean coming to have a body that “has the same shape as Christ’s in his death”, a body that is on its way towards dying (in its aspect of flesh

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and blood). This idea may seem far-fetched, but elsewhere (Gal 6:17) of course Paul does say that “I ... carry around in my body the tattoomarks of Jesus”. If this reading of 3:10 is correct, then what we find here is the flip side of the transformation to which Paul has just been referring earlier in the verse. He desires, so he says, to know the power of Christ’s resurrection, that is, gradually to come to obtain more and more of the pneuma. But the flip side of that is that his body of flesh and blood will simultaneously acquire the same shape as Christ’s in his death, in other words, that it will gradually die away. Summarizing on Paul’s account of his own transformation in Philippians 3, we may say that there are basically three forms of change that Paul has undergone in the period before the final transformation at the resurrection which is referred to and described in 3:11 and 3:21. The first is a transformation that has already taken place. It is cognitive and as it is described in 3:7-8, it must be understood to be complete. However, while it is the cognitive side that is emphasized, we have also seen that it is likely to be the result of reception of the pneuma, when Paul was laid hold on by Christ. The second change is a transformation which has only begun and consists in gradually coming to “gain” Christ and be “found in” him and gradually getting to “know” him and the “power for resurrection”. This change is a material one since it consists in receiving more and more of the pneuma, some of which Paul had already received when he was initially “grasped by Christ”. At the same time it also has a cognitive side to it of deepening his knowledge of Christ so that he may finally come to be nothing but a person with the knowledge by which he was initially struck. Finally, there is the flip side of the latter process, when Paul gradually and materially becomes more and more like Christ in his death. That the two last types of change were understood by Paul to be material and bodily (in addition, as I have insisted, to having a cognitive side to them) is shown by the fact that he does speak precisely of two types of body in 3:21 and of a transformation from one into the other: the human body in the present, which is a “lowly” one, and the body of glory of Christ with which the future human body will be made isomorphic. Only, in 3:8-12 the two types of body are understood to be present at the same time in the here and now. With this reading of Philippians 3 we have opened up for saying far more about Paul’s picture of his own transformation than merely taking it to be cognitive and complete. We have also found Paul to be referring to a gradual physical take-over in the present life by the pneuma. And we have seen that he had the further idea of a corresponding wasting-away of his physical body of flesh and blood until it

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becomes like Christ’s in his death. Thus, all three elements in the complex pattern of Paul’s picture of his own life here and now are in place.

Different Types of Transformation in 2 Corinthians 2:14-5:10 The same three elements in the pattern are found in 2 Corinthians 3-4. Here 4:6 provides an account of what appears to be Paul’s own founding experience and the account is clearly given in cognitive terms. God “has caused a light to shine (ἔλλαμψεν) in our hearts to provide the enlightenment (φωτισμός) that consists in knowledge (γνῶσις) of the glory of God on the face of Jesus Christ” (my tr.). There is both knowing and seeing here. But the idea in the two chapters seems to be that Paul’s own founding experience as described in 4:6 exemplifies everyone’s “turning towards the Lord” (3:16), which is then followed by an account in 3:18 of what this means for “us all”: “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed (μεταμορφούμεθα) into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit” (NRSV). Here, then, we both have the idea of a cognitive and complete, initial transformation on Paul’s part and of a continuing transformation on the part of both Paul and his addressees. Is the latter, then, also purely and distinctly cognitive? There is no doubt that it is in fact cognitive. It is, after all, a matter of seeing the glory of the Lord with unveiled faces (though still as in a mirror). But it also seems that Paul has the idea of the transformation as being something more than cognitive. He does after all say that “we” are (all) being transformed by or in the seeing, as if this was a matter not just of the understanding but of “us” as wholes. And he states that the transformation is operated “by the Lord, (who is) the spirit”. If the pneuma is a material entity, then necessarily something more than a cognitive transformation is being envisaged here. Finally, there is the enigmatic phrase “from glory to glory”. Elsewhere, as we have seen, “glory” (δόξα) is closely connected with the idea of the resurrected body (cf. Phil 3:21) and also, by implication, with the pneuma that operates the resurrection (cf. 1 Cor 15:35-49). It is possible, therefore, and indeed rather likely, that the idea in 2 Cor 3:18 is that the transformation of “us” that is being operated by the pneuma is a transformation of “our” bodies as wholes from being infused with a certain amount of pneuma – and the glory that corresponds with that – into a more extensive infusion with more pneuma and more glory.

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This reading does not, of course, leave the cognitive level behind. On the contrary, the gradual, material change may also be accompanied by a gradual deepening at the cognitive level in the way that we discussed in connection with Paul’s self-account in Phil 3:7-10. This fits since, as we saw, the pneuma is both a material and a cognitive entity. We may conclude that in addition to the idea of an initial transformation that is cognitive and complete, and which is most clearly exemplified in Paul’s own case, there is also the idea that the initial transformation, which once more has probably come about through the reception of the pneuma, is followed by a change of Christ followers which is physical and material and only gradual, but which may also imply a cognitive deepening. Christ followers, here including Paul himself, are gradually being filled more and more – and hence being transformed in their bodies – by the material pneuma which they initially received as a down payment. (For the latter idea see 2 Cor 1:22 and 5:5.) This process was referred to with respect to Paul himself at Phil 3:8 end-10 and 3:12 and is referred to with respect to all believers in the latter half of 2 Cor 3:18. It is also what is referred to at 2 Cor 4:16 when Paul says of himself that “our inner nature is being renewed day by day”. So far, then, what we have in 2 Corinthians 3-4 is first a cognitive transformation to begin with; this transformation is a complete one, at least in Paul’s own case; and it is a transformation that comes with reception of the (material and cognitive) pneuma. Second, we have a gradual change that is physical (but also cognitive) and that gradually transforms the body of flesh and blood that Christ followers continue to carry around on their way towards the final and complete, material transformation that will take place at the resurrection of the dead. But then, 2 Corinthians 4 also articulates the third idea that I earlier characterized as the flip side of the idea of a gradual physical change. This is the idea expressed, for instance, at 4:10, where Paul speaks of himself as “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus”, just as he had spoken in Phil 3:10 of sharing in Christ’s sufferings “by becoming like him in his death”. What it means is – quite literally – that Paul is moving towards having a body of flesh and blood that is physically dead. Of course, we must say: near-dead since the body of flesh and blood remains physically there until he will in fact die (or be resurrected before that). But the point is that the physical body of flesh and blood gradually – and in a wholly literal sense – dies away, atrophies – at the same time as the body of flesh and blood is also being transformed by the pneuma into a body that is now no longer one of flesh and blood,

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but a pneumatic one. These two processes are two sides of the same process. Second Corinthians 4:7-5:10 spells out this double aspect of Paul’s picture of the present state of Christ believers: the being transformed and the dying away. He is in fact speaking of himself, but as always he does so with an eye on his addressees: ideally, they, too, would have the same experience. Paul begins by stating that he has the “treasure” he has just mentioned in 4:6, namely, as we saw, his own cognitive conversion experience, in the “earthen pots” of his fragile body of flesh and blood (4:7). After a few verses he identifies this combined state in a striking manner (4:10-11): .. always carrying around in the body the death of Jesus, in order that the life, too, of Jesus may become manifest [or visible] in our body. / For we who are living are constantly being given up to death because of Jesus [in the various ways he has just described in 4:8-9], in order that the life, too, of Jesus may become manifest [or visible] in our mortal flesh.

Here Paul is speaking of a number of ways in which the death of Jesus is found and may be seen in his own body of flesh and blood and saying that this serves a special purpose, which is that the life, too, of Jesus may become manifest or visible in that same, mortal body. But what is the time frame? When does he expect the latter thing to happen? Is it something that will take place in the future? Or is it something that is taking place already now? One might think that the idea of Jesus’ life becoming manifest in Paul’s mortal flesh would indicate that he is thinking of the present. However, that idea might also mean that Jesus’ life will become manifest – in the future – in Paul’s mortal flesh (as it is now), namely, when that flesh will be transformed by the life of Jesus into the resurrection body. For we already know from 1 Corinthians 15 that it is the very same body that is now mortal and fleshly but will eventually be something quite different. Is Paul not relying on this idea and so in fact speaking of the future in the quoted lines? Indeed, he goes on a little later (at 2 Cor 4:14 and more extensively in 5:1-10) to spell out precisely what will happen at the resurrection, that is, in the future. Against this reading, which would imply that Paul is speaking of the future in 4:10-11, too, stands the fact that he also claims (in 4:13) that we already now “have” the pneuma of faith, just as he has said in 4:7 that we “have” the treasure in earthen pots. Moreover, in 5:5 it is said that God has already now equipped believers for the resurrection by having given them the pneuma as a down payment. So, something of what will become more fully present at the resurrection is already there in the present. Does Paul then think that his present, mortal body of

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flesh and blood is also in some way and to some extent the playing ground for what will eventually be far more strongly there: the pneuma, when “the mortal thing is (finally) engulfed by life” (cf. 5:4)? In fact, yes. For Paul himself brings together the deadliness and affliction (θλίψις) of his present life with the life and glory (δόξα) of his future life (cf. 4:17) when he states in 4:16 that “even though our outer person is being wasted away, nevertheless our inner (person) is being renewed day by day”. This verse functions as a turning-point around which we get, first, a description of Paul’s present affliction (4:7-15) and then an account of his hoped-for glory (4:17-5:10). The fact, then, that he brings these two accounts together as something that is simultaneously located in his own body – both in its exterior and its interior – shows that although the life of Jesus will presumably only in the future become fully and completely manifest and visible in Paul’s mortal body of flesh and blood, the process itself towards that state has already begun. To some degree the life of Jesus is already manifest in Paul’s mortal body even though this is overlaid by the far more manifest presence of Jesus’ death, that is, by the wasting away of Paul’s body of flesh and blood. We should conclude that 2 Corinthians 4 makes wholly explicit what I argued was in fact also present in Phil 3:10: the idea of the concomitant and simultaneous presence in Paul’s body of the life of Jesus (for which the pneuma is responsible) and Jesus’ death, which is seen in Paul’s mortal flesh (sarx).

Romans 8:9-13 as Final Proof? As we are working towards our conclusion on types of transformation in Paul, it is worth considering Rom 8:9-13. The understanding for which I have argued of the kind of transformation envisaged by Paul at either end of the spectrum will probably not meet much resistance. The initial change is no doubt – at least also – a cognitive one and the final change is no doubt – at least also – a physical one. The same agreement will hardly be given to the proposed account of the interim period, where I have placed two gradual changes, one of being gradually taken over by the physical (and cognitive) pneuma and one of gradually and literally wasting away in one’s mortal body of flesh. Perhaps Rom 8:913 may provide additional support for this picture. In Rom 8:1-13 Paul describes the solution to the problem connected with living under the Jewish law that he has spelled out in 7:7-25. The solution includes a general account of the consequences of the Christ

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event (8:1-4) and a specific account of how these consequences have impinged on his Roman addressees (8:9-13, NRSV revised): 9 But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, the body [σῶμα] is dead [νεκρόν] because of sin, while the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will make alive your mortal bodies also through [διά] his Spirit that dwells in you. 12 So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh – 13 for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

The first thing to be noted here is the careful manner in which Paul backs up his claim that the Romans are “in the pneuma”: (i) God’s pneuma inhabits them, (ii) they “have” the pneuma of Christ, and (iii) Christ is in them. From God’s pneuma to Christ’s pneuma to Christ, and from its inhabiting them to their having it to his being in them: Paul is no doubt speaking of one and the same thing – a take-over of the Romans by Christ who is pneuma. The second thing to be noted is the striking claim that while “the body (σῶμα) is dead”, the pneuma that is present in them is, means or generates life for them, to which Paul adds an even more striking set of ideas: ... dead because of sin and ... life because of righteousness (8:10). The former idea is exceedingly difficult to understand.15 If the body is dead, are the bodies of the Romans also dead? How can that apply to the present? And how has the body become dead because of sin? The idea about the pneuma is presumably the somewhat more straightforward one that if Christ is in them, then the pneuma that is thereby also in them generates life for them since they are righteous. Here too, however, one may ask whether Paul is actually speaking of the present. With regard to the question about the time-frame, we must note that Paul goes immediately on (8:11) to speak of something that will happen in the future, namely, that God will make the Romans’ mortal bodies alive by means of the pneuma that lives in them. This must imply that if the claim of 8:10 that the body is dead does mean that the bodies of the Romans are in some way dead, then that must be a fea_____________ 15

J. A. Fitzmyer’s interpretation may stand here as a representative for many others. Taking τὸ μὲν σῶμα νεκρὸν διὰ ἁμαρτίαν in a concessive sense (“though the body be dead because of sin”), he paraphrases as follows: “Without the Spirit, the source of Christian vitality, the human “body” is like a corpse because of the influence of sin ...; but in union with Christ the human “spirit” lives, for the Spirit resuscitates the dead human body through the gift of uprightness” (Romans, Anchor Bible 33; New York: Doubleday, 1993) 490-491. The interpretation I shall propose is quite different.

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ture of the present. For in the future their “mortal” bodies will not be dead, but will be made alive. Similarly, the fact that Paul appears to be going on in 8:11 to draw out the future consequences of what he has said in 8:10 suggests that the pneuma means life to the Romans in the present. Then the earlier questions: does what Paul says about the body in fact have implications for the bodies of the Romans? Are their bodies dead in the present? It is difficult to think otherwise. For Paul speaks so massively in verses 9-11 of the pneuma (and Christ) dwelling in them, which can hardly mean anything other than in their bodies. And this idea also makes immediate sense of the point he goes on to make in 8:11 to the effect that God will raise their (mortal) bodies through his pneuma “that dwells in you” – namely, in those bodies. In all this I am presupposing that there is a clear and sharp distinction between the two terms νεκρόν and θνητά. Where the former means “dead”, the latter means “mortal”, that is, “liable to die”. In a way, however, this only makes the whole issue even more perplexing. If the Romans’ bodies are already dead, then why will God sometime in the future make their mortal bodies come alive, as if they were not yet dead? In short, what does it mean for Paul to say that if Christ is in the Romans, then in their case the body, that is, their bodies, are already dead? The addition of “because of sin” should help us find an answer. Earlier in the passage Paul has said something important about sin when he describes the Christ event as follows (8:3, my tr.): God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and to deal with sin and he condemned sin in the flesh.

Here Paul appears to be speaking not just of Christ’s having been sent but also of his death, which is seen as a condemnation on God’s part of sin in the flesh. If this is correct, then it is highly noteworthy that the protasis of 8:10 says: “if Christ is in you”. In the light of 8:3 this may mean more than just that they have the pneuma in them. It may also mean that just as Christ died in order to effect God’s condemnation of sin in the flesh, so the bodies of the Romans, too, will actually be dead if the Christ who himself did die is in them. The phrase “because of sin” may then be spelled out as meaning “since Christ died because of sin”. If Christ is in fact in the Romans, then their bodies will be like his: dead as his was because of sin. On such a reading, the first half of 8:10 very closely resembles the first 11 verses of Romans 6, where baptism is interpreted as a process of dying together with Christ “so that the body of sin might be destroyed” (6:6, NRSV). Still, of course, if Christ is in the Romans, it will also follow that the pneuma that is in them – and Christ is precisely also pneuma – will mean life for them “because of right-

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eousness”. And here, too, the added phrase may mean “since by Christ’s act you are righteous”. Thus the picture of the Romans that Paul is painting at 8:10 appears to be this: that by having Christ in them their bodies are now dead because those bodies are similar to the Christ who died in order for God to deal with sin – but the pneuma that they also have means life for them since by that same act of Christ they have become righteous. The Romans both have bodies that are dead and a pneuma that generates life. But are their bodies literally dead? Both yes and no. They should be literally dead, but are not yet quite so. Conversely, the pneuma does not (yet) quite generate life for them. It is this not quite perfect situation that will then find its final resolution at the resurrection as described in 8:11, when through his pneuma that already now does dwell in the mortal (and dying) bodies of the Romans, God will make those bodies come alive, by finally transforming them (as we know from elsewhere) so that these mortal bodies, which in a way were already dead, are now finally made completely alive by the pneuma. I conclude that in the exceedingly compact verse of 8:10 Paul is describing exactly the two features of the proper Christ believer that I spoke of as being the flip side of one another. If Christ is in the Romans, then they too can say what Paul had said of himself in 2 Cor 4:16: that “even though our outer being is wasting away, our inner being is being renewed day by day”. Only, here Paul says of them that their bodies are in fact dead and the pneuma concomitantly at work in them, generating life. Here are two obvious objections to this reading. I have taken Paul at his word: the Romans’ bodies are dead. Why, then, should he go immediately on to exhort these Romans to “kill” (θανατοῦτε) “the deeds of the body” by means of the pneuma (8:13), even saying that if they do that, then they will “live” (ζήσεσθε)? Even more, I have taken Paul to speak of a literal death in this verse corresponding to his claim that the pneuma is literally, physically and materially present in them. Why, then, should he go on to address them in distinctly cognitive terms, as one necessarily does when one engages in paraenesis (as here in Rom 8:11-13)? This is where we may finally get hold of the fundamental shape of Paul’s picture. First, he is speaking of a set of events that are at the same time both physical and cognitive. Reception of the pneuma near the beginning of the process is both a physical and a cognitive event. So is the effect of the presence of the pneuma in believers’ bodies as they move on towards the resurrection. And so is that final event itself: a concluding complete physical transformation of the body to which

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corresponds the cognitive experience of having finally grasped Christ through his pneuma (cf. our reading of Phil 3:12). This dual character of the various events of which Paul is speaking dissolves the second problem: just as one may address the material pneuma in cognitive terms, so one may use the same terms to address people who are taken to be moving towards literal death. Second, within this physical-cum-cognitive set of events there is no doubt that the final set is by far the most important one: it is what gives shape to everything that comes before. However, in another respect the most important set is the initial one, where the Christ believer is set distinctly apart from the rest of the world, both physically by receiving the down payment of the pneuma and cognitively in conversion as at least modelled to the Philippians by Paul himself. Physically, this change is not complete from the beginning. And this is what accounts for the process between the two poles that Paul speaks of as one of wasting away and being constantly renewed. Cognitively, however, the difference between before and after is so great that Paul is here tempted to say two things at the same time: both that the initial, cognitive change is (at least in his own case) utterly complete and also that it of course allows for concrete deepening. The latter picture provides the space that is needed for paraenesis. The former picture, however, pinpoints a logical feature of paraenesis itself that is part of its very definition: that paraenesis does not really add anything new; rather, it presupposes that the addressees already know everything, at least in principle. From time to time this dual character of the process of paraenesis at the cognitive level even spills over into the physical account. That happens, for instance, when Paul claims that the Romans’ bodies are already are dead (8:10) or that they have already been crucified with Christ in baptism (cf. 6:6). Corresponding to what we just said about the process at the cognitive level, we may therefore say that at this level, too, Paul wishes to say two things at the same time, both that the physical change was – in all relevant respects – complete from the beginning and also that there remains space for a further process towards the final transformation. Only, whereas we can construct a sensible account at the cognitive level (with the distinction between an initial grasp that is in a way complete and its further deepening), in the case of Paul’s statements about the character of the initial physical change we must insist that he here overplays his hand: even if Christ is in the Romans as a result of their having received the “first fruits” of the pneuma (cf. 8:23), their bodies are in fact not literally dead! Still, one can easily see why Paul gives his statements this extra twist. It fits his

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understanding of paraenesis at the cognitive level. And it emphasizes that the crucial event vis-à-vis the rest of the world lies in the initial reception of the pneuma. This interpretation of Rom 8:10 fits in with, and gives added point to, a few verses in Galatians that have always intrigued interpreters (Gal 5:24-25, NRSV revised): 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.

Here we have the following ideas that also go into the Romans passage: belonging to Christ; having crucified the body; living by the pneuma – and paraenesis. What is most striking, however, is the idea that belonging to Christ at one and the same time reflects the two aspects of Christ that are his death (the crucifixion) and his life (the resurrection). As applied to believers these are precisely the two elements in their present life that constitute what I have called the flip sides of one another: having crucified the fleshly body and living by the pneuma, where both are meant to be taken quite literally. Seen in this light, a verse like Phil 3:10, which we have already studied, also comes out with its true meaning. Here too we have the idea of getting to “know Christ and the power of his resurrection”, that is, experiencing more and more strongly the pneuma in oneself, and at the same time also the idea of “sharing in his sufferings by becoming conformed with him in his death”. Both that kind of dying and that kind of living are found in those who belong to Christ.

Conclusion My theme has been ideas of complete and incomplete transformation in Paul. I have argued for a specific understanding of the idea of complete transformation in connection with the final resurrection. Here it is certainly a complete and physical transformation, whereby the body of flesh and blood is being physically and completely transformed into a body that is through and through pneumatic. (We also saw, however, that Paul might well think of this final, physical transformation as a final, cognitive one.) I have also argued for finding the idea of a complete transformation at the beginning of the whole process, when Paul and his addressees became Christ followers. Here, however, the transformation – though complete – is only a cognitive one, which, however, reflects the fact that

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Paul and his addressees have received the cognitive and material pneuma when they became Christ followers. Following on this initial change, which is complete at the cognitive level but incomplete at the physical one, there begins a process of material change towards the final physical transformation that will only take place at the resurrection. And here I claimed that there are two intimately connected sides to this process: that of the body of flesh and blood literally dying away and that of the pneuma gradually gaining more and more of the upper hand in that body. In both cases, however, there also is a cognitive side to the process, which I spoke of as a deepening of the initial cognitive transformation. It is unproblematic, however, to speak of the process as being both a physical and a cognitive one. For the pneuma is both a cognitive and a material phenomenon. It is equally unproblematic to speak of the initial cognitive change as being complete and as also being in need of deepening. For cognition has several levels that allow for that. Finally, I have claimed that these various transformations, which we have developed on the basis of 1 Corinthians 15, Philippians 3 and 2 Corinthians 3-4, are given what is perhaps their most striking expression in Romans 8, where Paul speaks most directly of a physical takeover, that is, of a complete transformation generated by the material pneuma not just in the future (8:11), but also in the present (8:9-10). With Christ in them, the Romans have bodies here and now that are dead, but a pneuma that generates life. We also saw, however, that here, at least, Paul somewhat overplayed his hand. The same will hold for those other passages we noted: Gal 5:24 and Phil 3:10. All through, however, I have insisted on trying to take literally what Paul says as making excellent sense within the philosophical ways of thinking that were available to him in his own world. Though the resulting reading may make it quite difficult for us to apply Paul’s ideas directly in the modern world, it has the advantage of making them stand out as part of their own world rather more sharply than they are normally seen.

“Flesh and Blood Cannot Inherit the Kingdom of God:” The Transformation of the Flesh in the Early Christian Debates Concerning Resurrection The Transformation of the Flesh in the Early Christian Debates OUTI LEHTIPUU1 Überschrift 2: für Kapitel ohne Ü2 wird hier Ü1 Kurzform wiederholt One of the fiercest battles in early Christianity was fought over the correct understanding of resurrection. Hints of this battle are already seen in the New Testament,2 but the debate seems to have reached a new level from the latter half of the second century onward when the expression “resurrection of the flesh” (σαρκὸς ἀνάστασις, carnis resurrectio) was introduced and became the crux of the matter.3 Indeed, several writers in different parts of the Christian world devoted whole tracts to this question, often under the name of On the Resurrection, or the like. These include e.g. (Pseudo-)Justin in Rome, Athenagoras probably – as the name indicates – in Athens,4 Tertullian in Carthage, and the unknown author of the Nag Hammadi tract the Treatise on the Resurrection (NHC I,4).5 Practically all Christians in this period agreed on some kind of a survival of the human after death6 but whereas some envisioned _____________ 1 2

3

4 5 6

Outi Lehtipuu is a researcher at the Department of Biblical Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland. Cf. 2 Tim 2:17-18: “Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth by claiming that the resurrection has already taken place.” All biblical quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version, if not otherwise noted. Gunnar af Hällström, Carnis Resurrectio: The Interpretation of a Credal Formula (Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 86. Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1988), 9-11. The New Testament writings use expressions such as “resurrection of the dead (ἀνάστασις τῶν νεκρῶν)”, “resurrection of the righteous (ἀνάστασις τῶν δικαίων)” or just “resurrection” with no attributes. The earliest occurrence of the term “resurrection of the flesh” seems to be in Justin Martyr’s Dial. 80,5; see Claudia Setzer, Resurrection of the Body in Early Judaism and Early Christianity: Doctrine, Community, and Self-Definition (Boston & Leiden: Brill, 2004), 74-75. Philip of Side, however, writing in the fifth century, places Athenagoras in Alexandria; af Hällström, Carnis Resurrectio, 42. See the analysis of this writing and its way of understanding “resurrection of the flesh” in Hugo Lundhaug’s article in this volume. According to the sarcastic comment of Tertullian, there is “…the one single solitary Lucan” who maintains that the soul will not survive. However, even he seems not to teach a total annihilation at death but expects something to rise. See Res. 2.12. All

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only the survival of the soul, others maintained that the soul could not exist without a body. Thus, according to Tertullian, “The salvation of the soul I believe needs no discussion: for almost all heretics, in whatever way they accept it, at least do not deny it.”7 In contrast, the salvation of the body needed a lot of discussion. For Tertullian and many other Church fathers, it was this selfsame earthly flesh that would be resurrected, albeit in a perfected form. They based their views on Paul, especially on his discussion in 1 Corinthians 15 where the apostle speaks of resurrection. However, as part of his discussion Paul also wrote that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.”8 This apparent denial of the resurrection of the flesh proved to be problematic for these advocates of bodily resurrection and some of them, notably Irenaeus and Tertullian, devoted a lot of space to crafting elaborate exegeses showing that Paul, after all, does not refute the resurrection of the flesh.9 This was necessary since they knew that others took the verse to support a more spiritual view of the resurrection and to reject the survival of the earthly body after death. In the words of Irenaeus, “… this [passage] is cited by all the heretics in their folly with an attempt to show that God’s formation [sc. the body] is not saved.”10 Two such examples have survived:11 one is in a polemical passage in the first book of Irenaeus’ Against Heresies, the other in the Nag Hammadi treatise, the Gospel of Philip. The early Christian debate concerning the right understanding of resurrection has roused keen scholarly interest and studies on the topic abound.12 Some of the more recent important contributions include Gunnar af Hällström’s study Carnis Resurrectio: The Interpretation of a Credal Formula and Claudia Setzer’s book Resurrection of the Body in Early Judaism and Early Christianity: Doctrine, Community, and SelfDefinition. My approach, however, differs from both of these. Whereas af Hällström writes a history of dogma wishing to shed light on the _____________ 7 8 9 10 11

12

quotations from Tertullian are, if not otherwise noted, by Ernst Evans in Tertullian’s Treatise on the Resurrection (London: SPCK, 1960). Res. 2.12. 1 Cor 15:50. Irenaeus Haer. 5.9-14; Tertullian Res.48-50. Haer. 5.9.1. All translations of Irenaeus are my own, if not otherwise noted. Noormann points out that given Irenaeus’ claim that “all heretics” (ab omnibus haereticis) use this verse, it is surprising to find so little evidence of this; Rolf Noormann, Irenäus als Paulusinterpret: Zur Rezeption und Wirkung der paulinischen und deuteropaulinischen Briefe im Werk des Irenäus von Lyon (WUNT 2. Reihe 66. Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck), 1994), 501-502. However, most writings of those who were labeled “heretics” were later destroyed which means that only an arbitrary sample of them have survived. See the bibliography in af Hällström, Carnis Resurrectio, 11-12.

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development of the formulation of the Apostolic creed, my interest lies in how different early Christians read and interpreted Paul in general and his discussion on resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 in particular. Like Setzer, I am interested in questions of identity and self-definition and how different representations of resurrection belief served as tools for boundary drawing between insiders and outsiders. But my focus is on inter-Christian debates and group demarcation between different Christian groups while Setzer also discusses Christian self-definition over against paganism.13 I concentrate on what different early Christian writers meant by the word “flesh,” how they envisioned the resurrected flesh, and how they understood Paul’s claim that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.”

Who Has the Right to Lean on Paul’s Authority? Despite the different views of resurrection, all the above-mentioned ancient writers have at least one thing in common: they all use Scriptures to legitimize their views.14 The single most important authority for them was the apostle Paul who enjoyed a quite extraordinary position; he was the apostle par excellence, to whom many writers simply referred as ὁ ἀπόστολος.15 A case in point is Irenaeus who cites him more frequently than any other authority16 and opens his five volume _____________ 13

14

15 16

Setzer does claim that belief in resurrection stands for many ancient authors “as a boundary marker between authentic representatives of the faith and those who only claim to belong;” Setzer, Resurrection, 4. However, even though she discusses different Christian views on resurrection, she fails to make adequate distinctions between terms like “resurrection, “resurrection of the body,” and “resurrection of the flesh.” In her view, these all seem to represent the “authentic” Christian understanding which is that of the “growing church” (p. 149). Setzer refers to Hopkins in arguing that belief in resurrection was useful as a unifying symbol for the small Christian communities that absorbed outsiders as new members at a rapid rate; Setzer, Resurrection, 134-35, 149-50; cf. Keith Hopkins, “Christian Number and Its Implications” (JECS 6 [1998], 185-226.) But was “resurrection” such an easy shorthand symbol that could be used to unite Christians over against their pagan environment? The fierce polemic over resurrection in ancient sources attests to the contrary. Of the above-mentioned writers, Athenagoras is exceptional since he cites Paul only once (1 Cor 15:53 in Athenagoras, Res. 18). This might indicate that he is addressing his writing mainly to non-Christians. See, e.g., the works of Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian passim; Athenagoras Res. 18; Treat. Res. 45,24. It is typical of Irenaeus to introduce a quotation of Paul with the words ὁ ἀπόστολός φησιν (apostolus ait, etc.); see, e.g., Haer. 1.1. Prae; 5.2.2.; 5.10.2.; 5.14.3.; 5.28.2; 5.31.1.; 5.35.2. This formula occurs frequently especially in the fifth book of Against Heresies

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work with a (deutero-)Pauline quotation17 – obviously these writers made no distinction between the genuine Pauline letters and those ascribed to him. One reason for Paul’s prominent position was the wide distribution of his letters early on. One indication of this is the report of the trial of the Scillitan martyrs who were tried and condemned to death in Carthage in 180. According to the report, the condemned had in their possession copies of Paul’s letters and their major spokesperson Separatus defends himself with words echoing 1 Timothy 6:16: “… I serve that God whom no one has seen, nor can see with these eyes.”18 Moreover, the second century church was predominantly of gentile origin in many parts of the Christian world. Thus, Paul, the apostle of the gentiles, was considered their apostle and revered in a special way.19 However, both Paul and other early traditions of resurrection were ambiguous enough to allow for diverging views to develop.20 Many early Christian writers found it disturbing that their rivals used Paul and claimed to represent his authority as well. In many sources, there are complaints of how difficult it is to distinguish true teaching from false. Irenaeus, for example, finds fault with those whom he calls “heretics” since they “…speak like us but think otherwise (ὅμοια μὲν λαλοῦντας, ἀνόμοια δὲ φρονοῦντας);”21 they “…imitate our phraseology”22 and “…transfer [expressions found in Scripture] out of their natural meaning to a meaning contrary to nature.”23 It is his church alone, according to Irenaeus, that proclaims the truth it has received from the apostles, preserves it, and transmits it further.24 Similarly, Tertullian complains that his opponents deceive people by purposefully talking about the resurrection of the flesh even though they mean something else: _____________ 17

18 19 20

21 22 23 24

where he wishes to prove his point “from the rest of the teachings of our Lord and the apostolic epistles” (Haer 5.Prae.); Cf. Noormann, Irenäus, 517-23. The quoted passage is 1 Timothy 1:4. Irenaeus writes: “Some persons reject the truth and introduce false statements and ‘endless genealogies, which provide questions,’ as the Apostle says, ‘rather than the divine training that is in faith.’” Translation by Robert M. Grant (Irenaeus of Lyons. London & New York: Routledge, 1997). The Latin runs: “... quem nemo hominum vidit nec videre his oculis potest;” cf. the relevant part of 1 Tim. 6:16: ὅν εἶδεν οὐδεὶς ἀνθρώπων οὐδὲ ἰδεῖν δύναται. Noormann, Irenäus, 40-41. On the New Testament traditions concerning resurrection, see Outi Lehtipuu, “Biblical Body Language: Spiritual and Bodily Resurrection” (in Anthropology in Context: Studies on Anthropological Ideas within the New Testament and its Ancient Context. Edited by M. Labahn and O. Lehtipuu. Leuven: Peeters, forthcoming.) Haer. 1. Prae. 2. Haer. 3.15.1. Haer. 1.9.4. Haer. 5. Prae.; cf. 1.8.1.

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Thereafter then, having by faith obtained resurrection, they are, they say, with the Lord, whom they have put on in baptism. In fact, by this device they are accustomed often enough to trick our people even in conversation, pretending that they too admit the resurrection of the flesh. “Woe,” they say, “to him who has not risen again in this flesh,” to avoid shocking them at the outset by a forthright repudiation of resurrection. But secretly, in their private thoughts, their meaning is, Woe to him who has not, while he is in this flesh, obtained the knowledge of heretical secrets: for among them resurrection has this meaning.25

So powerful is the rhetoric of these Church fathers that often scholars have taken their side and concluded that those representing an opposing view adopted their language26 even though they deviated from the apostolic tradition.27 However, the author of the Gospel of Philip, whose view of the resurrection certainly contrasts with that of Irenaeus and Tertullian, also leans on Paul’s authority and he also worries about the correct understanding of crucial terminology. According to him, Names given to the worldly are very deceptive, for they divert our thoughts from what is correct to what is incorrect. Thus one who hears the word “God” does not perceive what is correct, but perceives what is incorrect. So also with “the father” and “the son” and “the holy spirit” and “life” and “light” and “resurrection” and “the church” and all the rest – people do not perceive what is correct but they perceive what is incorrect, [unless] they have come to know what is correct.28

From his point of view, it is his opponents who falsify the Christian tradition and deceive others. A comparison between the ways Irenaeus and Tertullian on the one hand and the author of the Gospel of Philip on the other hand understand the Pauline statement “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” shows how one and the same text can be used for promoting quite different views. However, in contrasting the writings of these authors, I am not suggesting any direct controversy between them. Given the fact that the surviving texts must represent just a small _____________ 25 26

27 28

Res. 19.6. This is maintained, e.g., by A.H.C. van Eijk in his otherwise well-balanced article, “The Gospel of Philip and Clement of Alexandria: Gnostic and Ecclesiastical Theology on the Resurrection and the Eucharist” (VC 25 [1971], 94-120), 100: “Apparently these gnostics tried, rather successfully, not only to copy the language of ecclesiastical theologians, but also to incorporate some of their points.” In this respect, the article is a product of its own time. Recently, Noormann has argued that Irenaeus’ position comes closer to the intentions of Paul than do those of his opponents; Irenäus, 508-12. 53,23-35. Translation here as elsewhere by Wesley W. Isenberg in the Nag Hammadi Library in English (ed. James M. Robinson. San Francisco: Harper, 1990).

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and arbitrary sample of all those circulating in antiquity29 and the problems of dating the Nag Hammadi texts,30 any such direct dispute must be deemed unlikely. Moreover, the early Christian debates were often struggles on several fronts simultaneously, as the diverse polemics in any one writing reveal. It would be an oversimplification to envision only two sides in the debate, say, the promoters of the resurrection of the flesh on the one hand and those of a spiritual resurrection on the other. Even so, a comparison of these texts is sensible as they represent different stances in a debate that went on for centuries.31 The analysis of the different texts yields some interesting results. Despite the different outcome, many of the arguments are surprisingly similar. However, judging from the bitterness of the polemics, the different groups were socially far apart. Or, to be more precise, they wanted to be sharply distinguished from those representing a divergent view. Whether the outsiders could tell the difference, say, between Irenaeus and those whom he calls heretics, is another matter. Actually, it was not always easy for the insiders to tell the difference, either.32 This made the threat of those whose view deviated from that of the author the more dangerous.

Irenaeus: Flesh and Blood Without the Spirit Cannot Inherit the Kingdom of God The longest and most elaborate treatment of the Pauline statement “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” is found in the fifth book of Irenaeus’ Against Heresies.33 Irenaeus cannot accept the claim that body – which for him means the earthly flesh – would not survive death. Those who think otherwise do not acknowledge the _____________ 29 30

31

32 33

Cf. Hopkins, “Christian Number,” 200. The dating of the Gospel of Philip varies considerably; see Herbert Schmid, Die Eucharistie ist Jesus: Anfänge einer Theorie des Sakraments im koptischen Philippusevangelium (NHC II,3) (Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 88. Leiden: Brill, 2007), 11-14 and Hugo Lundhaug, “‘There is a Rebirth and an Image of Rebirth’: A Cognitive Poetic analysis of Conceptual and Intertextual Blending in the Exegesis on the Soul (NHC II,6) and the Gospel of Philip (NHC II,3).” (Ph.D. diss. University of Bergen, 2007), 32127. Whereas the former favors an early date, ”the last third of the second century,” the latter considers a fourth century date the more probable. Unfortunately, any dating remains speculative. See Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 2001336. (Lectures in the History of Religions, New Series 15; New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). See Irenaeus’ complaints, e.g., in Haer. 3.16.6-8. Haer. 5.9-14. See also Setzer’s analysis of this section; Resurrection of the Body, 128-30.

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power of God, the creator.34 If only the soul were raised, the resurrection would be partial. However, salvation concerns the whole human being. Moreover, Paul calls the human body the temple of God35 and Christians members of Christ.36 “Therefore,” Irenaeus reasons, “to say that the temple of God in which the Spirit of the Father dwells and the members of Christ do not participate in salvation but are brought down to perdition, is not that the utmost blasphemy?”37 From this point of view, Paul cannot mean that the flesh is excluded from the resurrection. What 1 Corinthians 15:50 says is that flesh and blood alone (carnem solam; τὴν σάρκα καθ’ ἑαυτήν), that is, those who do not have the spirit of God in themselves, cannot inherit the kingdom of God. According to Irenaeus, human beings are composed of three parts: flesh, soul, and spirit. One of these dominates; those whom the spirit rules are spiritual (spiritales), those whom the flesh rules are carnal (carnales), while those whom the soul rules fall in between. If the soul follows the spirit, it will be raised up by it, but if it follows the flesh, it falls into “earthly desires” (in terrenas concuspicentia). The spiritual ones also have the flesh but since the spirit is stronger than the flesh,38 the weakness of the flesh will be absorbed by the strength of the spirit.39 But those who do not have the spirit are dead because it is the spirit who makes human beings alive.40 In addition to this “ontological” argument based on the tripartite anthropology, Irenaeus provides an ethical argument closely related to the former one.41 Those who follow the flesh do the works of the flesh and will die. In support of his argument, Irenaeus refers to different _____________ 34

35 36 37 38

39

40 41

Cf. Haer.5.3. If God was capable of creating humans out of the dust of the earth, Irenaeus reasons, why would he not be able to re-create them after death? Actually, Irenaeus argues, it is easier to re-create the body that once existed from the substance that is dissolved into the earth than to create bones and sinews in the first place. 1 Cor 3:16. 1 Cor 6:15. Haer. 5.6.2. Here Irenaeus refers to Jesus’ words according to which the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak (Matt 26:41). Elsewhere (Haer. 5.2.3; cf. 5.3.3), he echoes different Pauline passages such as 2 Cor 12:9 (power made perfect in weakness) and 1 Cor 15:53 (the perishable and mortal body will put on imperishability and immortality) to make a similar point. Strictly speaking, Irenaeus continues his argument, the flesh does not inherit but it can be inherited. This is shown in the words “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matt 5:5). Earth, which is the substance of the flesh, remains an object of the Spirit that can take the flesh for inheritance into the kingdom of God (Haer. 5.9.4). Haer. 5.9.1-3. Noormann, Irenäus, 505.

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Pauline passages such as “…those who are in the flesh [ἐν σαρκὶ ὄντες] cannot please God”42 and “…if you live according to the flesh [κατὰ σάρκα], you will die; but if you by the Spirit put to death the works of the body [τὰς πράξεις τοῦ σώματος], you will live.”43 Of special importance to him are the different Pauline vice lists, especially the one in Galatians.44 There Paul gives a long list of things – starting with fornication and ending with gluttony – which he explicitly calls “the works of the flesh” [ἔργα τῆς σάρκος] and warns that “those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”45 All in all, for Irenaeus it is not the substance of the flesh as such that is excluded from the kingdom of God but the carnal nature of those who do not possess the Spirit and therefore do “the works of the flesh.” Irenaeus completes his reasoning with two further arguments. First, he claims, this is not the only place where Paul promotes the resurrection of the flesh.46 If 1 Corinthians 15:50 referred to flesh and not to fleshly works, Paul would contradict himself.47 Lastly, Irenaeus uses a christological argument. Paul cannot have meant that the substance of flesh and blood does not inherit the kingdom of God since he speaks “everywhere” (ubique) about the flesh and blood of Christ.48 This he does first, to prove the humanity of the Lord and secondly, to confirm the salvation of the flesh. Even though the flesh of the Lord was differ_____________ 42 43 44 45 46

47

48

Rom 8:8. Rom 8:13; Haer. 5.10. Gal 5:19-21; cf. 1 Cor 6:9-11 cited as well in 5.11.1 and Col 3:5 cited in 5.12.3. Haer. 5.11. Irenaeus refers, e.g., to 1 Cor 15:53 where Paul talks about the corruptible and mortal flesh that shall put on incorruption and immortality (Haer. 5.13.3). Strictly speaking, Paul does not use the word “flesh” or even “body” but the abstractions τὸ φθαρτόν and τὸ θνητόν which does not prevent Irenaeus from interpreting them as referring to the flesh. In the same vein, Irenaeus refers to several other Pauline passages to prove his point. For example, “the body of our humiliation” (τὸ σῶμα τῆς ταπεινώσεως ἡμῶν; Phil 3:21) means “this body of flesh” and the “mortal” that “may be swallowed up by life” (2 Cor 5:4-5) is “quite clearly” (manifestissime) the flesh; “...for the soul is not mortal, neither is the spirit” (Haer. 5.13.3.). Similarly, he interprets passages where Paul talks about his sufferings together with his hope for the future life (such as 2 Cor 4:10; Phil 3:10 and a combination of 1 Cor 15:32 and 15:13-21) to speak about the continuity of the fleshly substance through death and resurrection (Haer. 5.13.4.); cf. Noormann, Irenäus, 507. In Irenaeus’ view, “...in all these [passages], … they [his opponents] must either allege that the apostle contradicts his own opinion, regarding the statement ‘Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God;’ or, they will again be forced to make wicked and crooked interpretations (malignas et extortas expositions) of all the sayings [of Paul] in order to twist and alter the sense of the words” (Haer. 5.13.5.). Haer. 5.14.1.

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ent from ours in the respect that he did not commit any sin, its substance was similar to ours, Irenaeus reasons.49 What attracts the attention in Irenaeus’ reasoning is the contradictory evaluation of the flesh. On the one hand, it is part of God’s creation, an indispensable part of a human being, the precious temple of God. But, on the other hand, it is weak, bound to “earthly desires” and in need of the power of the Spirit in order to be saved. Similarly, the expression “flesh and blood” both stands for the negative “works of the flesh” and refers to Jesus and the salvation of the flesh. This kind of ambiguity can also be found in the Pauline teaching. However, Paul uses several words, mostly σῶμα and σάρξ, and seems to make a distinction between them.50 Paul is not quite consistent in his use of these words but usually σῶμα refers either neutrally to the human body51 or positively to the church as the body of Christ.52 The word σάρξ can also be used in a neutral sense to refer to the human flesh as opposed to the spirit53 but often it is viewed negatively to denote the weakness of humans and their ability to sin.54 In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul uses both σῶμα and σάρξ to refer to earthly bodies (that comprise of different kinds of flesh)55 but only the word σῶμα when speaking of heavenly bodies that surpass the earthly bodies in glory.56 This distinction is lost in Irenaeus

_____________ 49

50

51 52

53 54

55 56

Haer. 5.14.3. Later (5.31.2.) Irenaeus argues that the destiny of the believers will be similar to that of the Lord who was taken up into heaven in the same body in which he was raised. Irenaeus justifies his claim by quoting Luke 6:40: “No disciple is above the Master, but everybody who is perfect shall be as his Master.” On these terms, see, e.g., Robert Jewett, Paul’s Anthropological Terms: A Study of Their Use in Conflict Settings (Leiden: Brill, 1971), 49-166, 201-304; Robert H. Gundry, Soma in Biblical Theology with Emphasis on Pauline Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1976); Udo Schnelle, Neutestamentliche Anthropologie: Jesus – Paulus – Johannes (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1991), 66-75. Rom 1:24; 1 Cor 6:13; 2 Cor 4:10; Gal 6:7. E.g., Rom 7:4; 1 Cor 10:16-17; 11:24-27; 12:12-27. Only in Romans does Paul use the word σῶμα in a negative fashion but then it is usually more specially qualified, e.g., as “body of sin” (σῶμα τῆς ἁμαρτίας; Rom 6:6), “mortal body” (θνητὸς σῶμα; Rom 6:12), or “body of death” (σῶμα τοῦ θανάτου; Rom 7:24). The only exception is the above-mentioned verse Rom 8:13 where Paul speaks of “the works of the body” (τὰς πράξεις τοῦ σώματος). As in, e.g., 1 Cor 5:5; 2 Cor 7:15. Rom 7:5,18,25; 8:3-5,9,12-13; 13:14, etc. Additionally, Paul uses the word σάρξ to refer to a human perspective (e.g., 1 Cor 1:26; 2 Cor 1:17). In the deutero-Pauline epistles, it is also used to underline the humanity of Christ (Eph 2:14; Col 1:22, 1 Tim 3:16). Cf. 1 Cor 15:39. Gundry, Soma, 167; Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 124-26.

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who does not differentiate between corpus and caro when referring to resurrection but speaks constantly of the “flesh” only. Another interesting point is to compare Irenaeus’ anthropological ideas to those of his opponents. There are some strikingly similar features. The starting point for Irenaeus’ view is his interpretation of the creation and the dichotomy between the body and the soul on the one hand, the soul and the spirit, on the other. In his reading of Genesis 2:7, God first formed the flesh of Adam out of the earth, and then breathed the breath of life into him. This made Adam into a psychic being with body and soul, but it is only the “life-giving spirit”57 that makes him spiritual.58 This kind of interpretation of the creation of Adam occurs in many early Christian texts and comes quite close to the creation myths in many Nag Hammadi writings.59 For Irenaeus, the “natural” human being is body and soul; only participation in the divine Spirit makes the human being perfect.60 Irenaeus combines this idea with the first creation story: the human being as body and soul is the image of God, the perfect human being who consists of body, soul, and spirit is also the likeness of God.61 “But if the soul lacks the Spirit, the one who is such is really (only) psychic, and being left carnal, he will be imperfect.”62 The way Irenaeus uses the Pauline words τέλειοι and πνευματικοί as opposites of ψυχικοί and σαρκικοί63 resembles what he accuses his opponents of doing. Similarly, in his interpretation of the verse “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” he divides people into three classes: the carnal, the psychic, and the spiritual in a similar manner to which he accuses his rivals.64 To sum up Irenaeus’ argument, flesh and blood as such cannot inherit the kingdom of God since without the Spirit they are bound to carnal deeds. However, those who participate in the Spirit of God will be saved in their entirety – including the flesh. The Spirit transforms _____________ 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

Cf. 1 Cor 15:45. Haer. 5.12.2. Cf. Apoc. John 19,4-33; Hyp. Arch. 88,11-17; Orig. World 114,36-116,8; Apoc. Adam 66,14-25. Noormann, Irenäus, 493-94; cf. Eric Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 17. Cf. Gen 1:26. Haer. 5.6.1. Cf. 1 Cor 2:16-3:3. Cf. Haer.1.6.1-2; 1.7.5. Contra Noormann, Irenäus, 496. He maintains that for Irenaeus, the psychic and the pneumatic do not represent two classes of human beings but two different phases of humanity: the Adam and the Christ humanity. This kind of reading, however, does not take into full account Irenaeus’ arguments in Haer. 5.6., 5.9., and 5.12., referred to above.

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the flesh that is needed in the earthly paradise. In the end of his book,65 Irenaeus describes a millenarian paradise where the transformed flesh will not grow old but the saved will enjoy a glorious, incorruptible state on the renewed earth.

Tertullian: All Flesh Will Be Raised and Judged Some decades later, Tertullian follows along the lines of Irenaeus in his treatise On the Resurrection.66 He, too, argues that believing in the immortality of the soul means only “half a resurrection (dimidia resurrectio).”67 The full resurrection must concern the whole human being, including the flesh. For this reason, the apostle cannot deny the salvation of the flesh; he condemns the works of the flesh, not the flesh itself.68 This is also the meaning of the verse “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.”69 Tertullian ties the meaning of “flesh and blood” closely together with Paul’s previous discussion concerning Adam and Christ.70 “Flesh and blood” are “the image of the earthly man” (ἡ εἰκών τοῦ χοικοῦ); that is, the “Adamite” being without the Spirit of Christ. In addition, Tertullian brings in a further argument: the verse does not actually deny the resurrection of the flesh and blood but their entry to the kingdom of God. All human beings will be resurrected in the flesh and judged but those who are mere flesh and blood are not allowed to enter the kingdom of God. Thus, flesh and blood are kept out of the kingdom on account of guilt, not of substance (nomine culpae non substantiae).71 _____________ 65 66

67 68

69

70 71

Haer. 5.33-36. The treatise is known in manuscripts both by the name of de resurrectione mortuorum and de carnis resurrectione or de resurrectione carnis. For the sake of simplicity, I refer to it by the English name On the Resurrection. Res. 2.2; cf. Irenaeus Haer. 5.31.1; Epiphanius Pan. 2.9.3. Res. 46. Here Tertullian refers to Rom 8:8-9 (cf. Irenaeus Haer.5.10.2.): “But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, because the Spirit of God dwells in you.” He reasons that Paul addresses these words to people who evidently are in the flesh, i.e., alive; therefore, the words “in the flesh” must mean that they are not “in the works of the flesh”, i.e., they do not live “carnally” (carnaliter viverent). Cf. af Hällström, Carnis resurrectio, 70. Res. 48-50. Tertullian argues that the question in 15:35 (“How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?”) already implies that the resurrection is defined as corporeal and that the following discussion – including v. 50 – is about the quality of the bodies. 1 Cor 15:45-49. Cf. af Hällström, Carnis Resurrectio, 68-69.

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The fact that both Irenaeus and Tertullian devote lengthy discussions to refuting any conflicting opinions shows that there actually were Christians who did understand resurrection differently, who believed, e.g., that the soul would ascend to heaven immediately after death or that the resurrection had already taken place and that the body would not survive death. The Church fathers were well aware that the verse 1 Corinthians 15:50 gave a scriptural backing for these kinds of ideas.72 The controversy over the correct understanding of resurrection was, to a great extent, a controversy over the correct understanding of Scriptures.73 Irenaeus accuses his opponents of bad exegesis. He calls “vain and truly unfortunate” (vani et vere infelices) all those who do not perceive the “manifest and clear” (manifesta et clara) meaning of Paul’s saying. They are like the tragic Oedipus who blinded himself. Those who cling to the literal sense of the verse have lost their true meaning: “they pick two words [namely: flesh and blood] from Paul without having understood the apostle’s meaning or investigated the content of the words.”74 In a similar vein, Tertullian attacks his opponents and their way of using Scriptures. As a matter of fact, he first accuses them of repeating the same arguments that the pagans use, instead of using Scriptures.75 In his view, if they were to “…base their questionings on the Scriptures alone … they will not be able to stand.”76 Secondly, he refutes their claim that the preaching of the prophets should be understood figuratively.77 It is true, he admits, that “sometimes and in some places” (interdum et in quibusdam) the prophets used allegories and should be interpreted spiritually. This, however, does not apply to resurrection for two reasons. First, the corporeal resurrection is manifest elsewhere in Scriptures and “…things uncertain should be prejudged by things cer_____________ 72 73

74

75

76 77

Irenaeus Haer.5.9.1; Tertullian Res. 48. See, e.g., Tertullian Res. 22 where he aims at showing how “…Scriptures forbid us … either to assume that the resurrection is already present in the acknowledgement of the truth, or to claim that it ensues immediately upon departure from this life.” Haer. 5.13.2. In another passage, Irenaeus compares the exegesis of his opponents to a random collection of Homeric verses to make up a Homeric-sounding story that Homer, however, never composed (Haer. 1.9.4.). “Is there anything a heretic says which a gentile has not already said, and said more frequently?” asks Tertullian (Res. 4.1.) According to him, the typical objections against the resurrection of the flesh include the following: 1. How can a body that has been burnt on a funeral pyre or eaten by wild beasts be recovered? 2. Why would a lame or a one-eyed person want the body back? 3. What function would the preservation of, e.g., sexual, alimentary, and respiratory organs serve? 4. Must the body again experience hardships such as sores, disease, and death? Res. 3.6. Res. 20-21.

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tain, and things obscure by things manifest.”78 Secondly, Tertullian reasons that “… it is not likely that that aspect of the mystery to which the whole faith is entrusted … should turn out to have been ambiguously announced and obscurely propounded.”79 Interestingly, Tertullian must also admit that sometimes Paul seems to teach spiritual resurrection.80 This is most evident in the deuteroPauline letter to the Colossians where “the apostle” links resurrection to baptism: “…when you were buried with him in baptism, wherein you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God who raised him from the dead.”81 However, in Tertullian’s reading, to be dead spiritually does not exclude becoming dead corporeally. On the same principle, when Paul declares believers to be spiritually raised in baptism, he does not deny that they will rise again corporeally.82 Lastly, Tertullian invokes the divine necessity: as Paul himself has predicted, “…there have to (δεῖ) be factions (αἱρέσεις) among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine (δόκιμοι).”83 These could not exist without a perverse understanding of Scriptures. However, even though there might be some materials to support such a heretical understanding of resurrection, there are plenty of other scriptural passages to correct these.84 Tertullian also follows Irenaeus in maintaining that the resurrection flesh must be this very same flesh that took part in the hardships of life. Since it is the flesh that is destroyed by persecution or is affected by ascetic practices, the same flesh must be raised to receive its just reward. Similarly, it is the body that is responsible for the sins it has committed since the soul can never be apart from the flesh. God would be unjust if it were the soul alone that received either the reward or the punishment actually deserved by the body.85 However, the resurrected flesh will be a transformed flesh. Again, Tertullian quotes 1 Corinthians 15:51-52: _____________ 78 79 80 81

82 83 84 85

Res. 21.2. Res. 21.3. Res. 23-25. Col. 2:12. Paul himself never explicitly linked resurrection with baptism. According to him, baptism means participating in Christ’s death (Rom 6:4) while resurrection would happen only in the future (Rom 6:4; cf. 2 Cor 4:14.) It is only in the later Pauline tradition where baptism means both the death and the resurrection of the believer. Thus, insistence on spiritual resurrection in baptism, “at the entrance into faith” in no way contradicts the fulfillment of resurrection at the end of the age (Res. 25.6). 1 Cor 11:19. Res. 40.1; 63.8. Res. 8;15;41.

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“We all shall certainly rise again, but we all shall not be changed (omnes quidem resurgemus, non autem omnes demutabimur), in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump” – not all, but those only, he means, who are found in the flesh – “And the dead,” he continues, “will rise again, and we shall be changed.”86

This quotation follows the reading of the Western text type whereas the version chosen for the critical text of Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament runs: “We shall all not die but we all will be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable and we will be changed.”87 This reading, which in all probability represents Paul’s original idea, lays emphasis not so much on the resurrection itself but on the transformation; some will be resurrected and transformed, but others, namely those who will still be alive when the Lord comes, will only be transformed (they do not need to be resurrected since they are alive all along).88 Thus, all will be changed but not all will be raised. In the Western text type, we find the opposite: all will be raised but not all will be changed; only those who are “in the flesh.” All flesh will rise; then follows a change into an angelic state. Those who are in the flesh, i.e., alive will be changed. In Tertullian’s reading, Paul talks about this change when he declares that the corruptible will put on incorruption and the mortal will put on immortality.89 The flesh will be swallowed up by life;90 in other words, the mortal flesh does not disappear but will put on a kind of immortal, heavenly over-garment. This cannot happen with those who are dead since their flesh is already swallowed up as _____________ 86 87

88 89 90

Res. 42.1. The manuscripts attest four basic readings of verse 51. 1) Most manuscripts, including such unicials as B, D2, and Y, support the reading chosen by Nestle-Aland: “we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed (πάντες οὐ κοιμηθησόμεθα, πάντες δὲ ἀλλαγήσομεθα).” 2) Some manuscripts, e.g., and C, have the opposite: “we will all sleep, but we will not all be changed (πάντες κοιμηθησόμεθα, οὐ πάντες δὲ ἀλλαγήσομεθα).” This variant might be explained by the embarrassment caused by the death of the apostle and his generation. 3) A couple of manuscripts, including the early papyrus P46, negates both verbs: “we will not all sleep, but we will not all be changed (πάντες οὐ κοιμηθησόμεθα, οὐ πάντες δὲ ἀλλαγήσομεθα).” This is perhaps a conflation of the two other readings. 4) The variant found in Tertullian (πάντες ἀναστησόμεθα, οὐ πάντες δὲ ἀλλαγησόμεθα) is prominent among the manuscripts belonging to the Western text type such as the unicial D together with some Latin translations and the works of some Church fathers. For details, see Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (New York: United Bible Societies, 2nd ed., 1994). For more on the idea of transformation in Paul’s thinking, see the articles of Troels Engberg-Pedersen and Vigdis Songe-Møller in this volume. 1 Cor 15:53. Cf. 2 Cor 5:4.

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they are dissolved into earth. At the resurrection, these dead will receive a renewed body.91 In what way the transformation of the living flesh can be called a resurrection is something Tertullian does not explain any further. In the end of his treatise,92 Tertullian gives a detailed description of what the transformed, resurrected flesh will be like. Even though it is the selfsame flesh that has gone through the earthly life, it will be made perfect; all wounds and defects will be healed. The resurrected bodies will have alimentary organs and both sexes will retain their sexual organs even though there is no eating and procreation in heaven. But these organs must also be present at the judgment so that the whole human being can be judged.93 Here Tertullian probably thinks especially of “sins of the tongue” and sexual sins, even though he does not mention them explicitly.94 In addition, these organs have other functions on earth, as well: for example, the mouth is needed for praising God and teeth help with articulation and serve as an adornment of the mouth. The “lower parts” (inferna) of both male and female are also needed for excretion. Moreover, intestines and genitals can be inactive and inoperative as shown by all those who fast, who are voluntary eunuchs, virgins wedded to Christ, and all those who are barren – why not so in heaven?

The “Ophites:” Jesus Rose in a Spiritual Body Compared to these chapters-long treatments of 1 Corinthians 15:50 in Irenaeus’ and Tertullian’s works, the ones reflecting the opposite view are quite brief indeed. The first example is found in Irenaeus’ description of a group that is traditionally linked with the so-called “Ophites.” Irenaeus calls these Christians simply “others” and refers to them using _____________ 91 92 93

94

In the same passage, Tertullian speculates how the recently dead still belong to the first category since their earthly body has not yet totally decayed; Res. 42.6-9. Res. 57-63. The idea that the soul and the body need to be united at the judgment also occurs in many other texts, e.g., 4 Ezra and 2 Bar. On the latter text, see the article of Liv Ingeborg Lied in this volume. Another interesting example is the story of the lame and the blind man in the so called Apocryphon of Ezekiel preserved in Epiphanius Pan. 64.70,5-17 and b. Sanh. 91ab. In many descriptions of hell, the punishments equate the sins committed, e.g., those who have blasphemed are hung by their tongues, women who have plaited their hair in order to seduce men are hung by their hair, and men who have had intercourse with these women are hung by their thighs. See, e.g., the Apocalypse of Peter 710 (in Ethiopic).

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the third person pronoun. The mythology of the group, however, especially the mentioning of nous that was twisted in the shape of a snake95 resembles what other heresiologists say about the “Ophites.”96 According to Irenaeus, this group believed that Christ descended from the realm of the Father of all into a man called Jesus but left him before he was crucified. After his death, Christ, however, did not forget him [sc. Jesus] but sent down on him a certain power that raised him up again in his body. This body they call ensouled [animale] and spiritual [spiritale], because he left the worldly elements [of the body] in the world. But when the disciples saw that he had risen from the dead, they did not recognize him;97 no, not even Jesus [did they recognize], namely, in what manner he rose from the dead. This they claim was a very great error among the disciples that they thought he had risen in a worldly body, since they were ignorant of the fact that Flesh and blood do not inherit the kingdom of God.98

This group of Christians used the verse 1 Corinthians 15:50 to support their kind of docetic Christology and to reject the bodily resurrection of Jesus. According to them, Christ had descended on a holy man, Jesus, but departed from him before the crucifixion. However, through the power of Christ, Jesus was raised but his resurrected body was psychic and spiritual and it was an error to think he had risen in the flesh. Whether they thought the same concerning resurrection in general, remains unclear but is likely. In his treatise On the Flesh of Christ, Tertullian also claims that those who deny the humanity of Christ do so expressly in order to refute the resurrection of the flesh since it would be a leading argument for the resurrection of the flesh if Christ had risen in the flesh.99 It is plausible that docetic Christology and spiritual understanding of resurrection often went hand in hand but this was not necessarily always the case. _____________ 95 96

97 98

99

Cf. Haer. 1.30.5. For more on Ophites, see Tuomas Rasimus, “Paradise Reconsidered: A Study of the Ophite Myth and Ritual and Their Relationship to Sethianism.” Ph.D. diss. University of Helsinki, 2006. This is an allusion to the Emmaus story; cf. Luke 24:16. Haer 1.30.13. Translation by Dominic J. Unger in St. Irenaeus of Lyons Against the Heresies 1 (Ancient Christian Writers 55. New York: Paulist Press, 1992). I have modified the translation of the last sentence since Unger has the Pauline quotation: Flesh and blood do not inherit the kingdom of heaven whereas the Latin runs: caro et sanguis regnum Dei non apprehendunt. All in all, Irenaeus cites the verse 1 Cor 15:50 in slightly different versions; cf. “... caro et sanguis regnum Dei hereditare non possunt” (5.9.1.); “... caro et sanguis regnum Dei possidere non possunt” (5.9.4 and 5.13.5); “... caro et sanguis regnum Dei non possident” (5.10.1.) Tertullian, Carn. Chr. 1.

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The Gospel of Philip: What Will Rise Is the Flesh and Blood of Jesus Another example of a text that quotes 1 Corinthians 15:50 and uses it to reject the resurrection of the earthly flesh is the Gospel of Philip.100 Some are afraid lest they rise naked. Because of this they wish to rise in the flesh, and [they] do not know that it is those who wear the [flesh] who are naked. … “Flesh [and blood shall] not inherit the kingdom [of God].” What is this which will not inherit? This which is on us. But what is this, too, which will inherit? It is that which belongs to Jesus and his blood. Because of this he said “He who shall not eat my flesh and drink my blood has not life in him.”101 What is it? His flesh is the word [=Logos], and his blood is the holy spirit. He who has received these has food and he has drink and clothing.102

According to the writer, it is wrong to believe that one needs the earthly flesh – “this which is on us” – at the resurrection to avoid nakedness. Ironically, he remarks that only those who have a body can be naked, i.e., without clothes.103 Nakedness itself is to be avoided; a little later the writer declares that “no one will be able to go in to the king if he is naked.”104 But the true clothing is not this earthly flesh which “will not inherit the kingdom of God.” The true clothing is received in the Eucharist. It is the flesh and blood of Jesus – i.e., the Logos and the Holy Spirit – that provide the clothing, the true flesh needed for the resurrection. Thus, the author does not use the Pauline quotation to deny bodily resurrection as such. On the contrary, the “naked” spirit cannot rise on its own without “flesh and blood.” The author goes beyond Paul in claiming that actually a certain kind of flesh and blood shall inherit the kingdom of God, namely, the flesh and blood of Jesus. By identifying these with Logos and the Holy Spirit, the author gives a spiritual interpretation to the Eucharist – and to the resurrection body.105 The flesh that rises is a “spiritual flesh” – an idea that the au_____________ 100 For a fuller treatment on the resurrection belief in the Gospel of Philip, see Schmid, Eucharistie, 131-223 and Hugo Lundhaug,’s forthcoming article “Transformation and Redefinition: Resurrection of the Flesh in the Gospel of Philip (NHC II,3).” 101 John 6:53. 102 Gos. Phil. 56,26-57,8. 103 Martha Lee Turner, The Gospel According to Philip: The Sources and Coherence of an Early Christian Collection (Nag Hammadi and Manichean Studies 38. Brill: Leiden), 232. 104 Gos. Phil. 58,15-17. 105 Some scholars deny the sacramental emphasis of the passage, see, e.g., Turner, Gospel, 233. However, in the overall context of the passage, a eucharistic understanding seems probable. Cf. Schmid, Eucharistie, 171-78.

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thor no doubt found in line with Paul’s teaching on the “spiritual body.”106 What is striking in this passage is the very use of the word flesh ( ). In the author’s view, the resurrection of the flesh is necessary: I find fault with the others who say that it [=the flesh] will not rise. Then both of them are at fault. You say that the flesh will not rise. But tell me what will rise, that we may honor you. You say the spirit in the flesh, and it is this other light in the flesh. It is a word [logos] this other one that is in the flesh.107 For whatever you will say, it is nothing outside the flesh that you say. It is necessary to rise in this flesh, since everything exists in it. In this world those who put on garments are better than the garments. In the kingdom of heaven the garments are better than those who have put them on.108

The flesh that must be resurrected is clearly something other than the earthly flesh. The author finds fault both with those who argue for the resurrection of the earthly flesh and those who claim that only the “naked” spirit or soul will rise. For him, resurrection takes place in the flesh. But, as we have seen, it is not the material flesh but the flesh of Jesus which is the Logos.109 Little wonder, then, that Irenaeus found it frustrating when his opponents “…speak like us but think otherwise” and Tertullian complained that his rivals deceive people by the way in which they speak of the resurrection of the flesh!110

_____________ 106 Cf. 1 Cor 15:44. 107 Here I translate differently from Isenberg. In this difficult passage, the writer seems to be opposing a view according to which only the spirit, that is, a light in the flesh but alien to the flesh will rise. Instead, argues the writer, the “other one” that will rise is in the flesh. See the detailed discussion in Schmid, Eucharistie, 187-94. He suggests that the word logos (here with an indefinite article) means simply “something” that is in the flesh (p. 192). 108 Gos. Phil. 57,9-22. 109 Cf. Lundhaug, “Rebirth,” 219-20. 110 In his On the Resurrection, Tertullian claims that the followers of Valentinus, together with some others, teach only the soul’s immortality while despising the body (Res. 2.2). The above analysis of the Gospel of Philip – usually labeled a Valentinian writing – does not confirm this. On the contrary, it polemicizes against the resurrection of the soul alone. However, the writing seems to correspond to Tertullian’s other allegation, that of talking about the resurrection of the flesh but meaning something else by it (Res. 19.6).

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Resurrection, Interpretation of Scripture, and Authentic Christianity The comparison of the different texts that quote 1 Corinthians 15:50 to justify their view on resurrection reveals some interesting differences and similarities. It is only the “Ophites” (according to Irenaeus) who use the Pauline quotation to reject the idea of the resurrection of the flesh altogether. In their opinion, Jesus only rose in an ensouled and spiritual body since “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” All the other writers claim that flesh and blood properly qualified actually do inherit the kingdom. However, the author of the Gospel of Philip clearly represents a different view from Irenaeus and Tertullian. Instead of the earthly flesh, it is the flesh and blood of Jesus that rise, he argues. The author would agree with the Ophites that resurrection does not involve the “worldly elements,” the earthly flesh. The promoters of the resurrection of the earthly flesh also make clear that resurrection entails a transformation. None of them imagined the life to come to equal this-worldly life with all its deficiencies and imperfection; on the contrary, it would be living in a perfected state that involves a transformed flesh. This transformation, however, was rather an “enhancement of what is, not metamorphoses into what is not.”111 Even though the outcome in the Gospel of Philip is different from that of the Church fathers, they all use arguments that closely resemble each other. Both allude to Paul’s discussion about clothing and nakedness.112 The necessity of proper clothing in order to avoid nakedness and so to be able to approach the king resembles Tertullian’s teaching on the Spirit that clothes flesh and blood with incorruptibility and immortality so that they may be able to inherit the kingdom of God.113 Moreover, Irenaeus connects resurrection with the Eucharist by combining Paul’s Eucharistic saying about sharing in the blood and body of Christ114 with the idea of Christians being members of Christ’s body.115 According to him, the sharing of the flesh and blood of Christ in the Eucharist means nutrition for the members of Christ through the flesh and blood of Christ.116 This brings salvation, as (deutero-)Paul writes to _____________ 111 Bynum, Resurrection, 8. Bynum traces this change of view to the Middle Ages but it can already be seen in the Patristic texts. 112 Cf. 2 Cor 5:1-4. 113 Tertullian Res. 42.12-13; 50.5. 114 1 Cor 10:16. 115 Eph 5:30. Cf. Noormann, Irenäus, 490-91. 116 Haer. 5.2.2-3. Cf. Haer. 4.18.5.

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the Colossians.117 Irenaeus concludes: “And in the whole letter the Apostle clearly testifies that we have been saved by the flesh of our Lord and his blood.”118 It is conceivable that the author of the Gospel of Philip found support for his view of the Eucharist and its salvific function in Paul’s letters, as well. Scholars often interpret the Gospel of Philip as representing realized eschatology: the resurrection is a present reality experienced in the Eucharistic ritual.119 Indeed, the author emphasizes that it is necessary to experience resurrection before one dies: “Those who say they will die first and then rise are in error. If they do not first receive the resurrection while they live, when they die they will receive nothing.”120 However, when talking about the resurrection and the Eucharist, the author uses verbs in the future tense.121 This suggests that, in his view, the resurrection has a future aspect, too. This future salvation is experienced at the present in the Eucharist.122 This is not far from the way Irenaeus seems to understand the ritual.123 However, for Irenaeus, the material elements of the Eucharist are a sign and a symbol of the resurrection of the flesh – which brings him back to the proper meaning of 1 Corinthians 15:50: “If then flesh and blood are what make life for us, it was not literally said of flesh and blood that they cannot inherit the kingdom of God, but of the carnal actions we have mentioned which turn man toward sin and deprive him of life.”124 Another similarity in all the above-mentioned writings is their polemical character. The author of the Gospel of Philip is very clear in claiming that those representing a different understanding of resurrection – both those who promote the resurrection of the earthly flesh and those who deny every kind of resurrection of the flesh – are at fault. Similarly, Tertullian polemicizes against his rivals, often ridiculing them openly. Ironic statements such as “What voice of an archangel, what trumpet of God, has yet been heard, except perhaps in the sleep-

_____________ 117 Col 1:22: “… he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him…” 118 Haer 5.14.3. Translation by Grant, Irenaeus. 119 E.g., Noormann, Irenäus, 504. 120 Gos. Phil. 73,1-4; cf. 56,15-19; 66,16-20. 121 (”shall inherit” 56,34-57,1; 57,2); (”it shall rise” 57,10); (”the flesh shall rise” 57,12); (”that which shall rise” 57,13). 122 Similarly, Schmid, Eucharistie, 156-62. 123 See also Schmid, Eucharistie, 332-37. 124 Haer. 5.14.4.

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ing-places of heretics.”125 can be found all through his treatise. The style of Irenaeus is perhaps less sarcastic but the polemical character is obvious and sometimes even more explicit. According to him, whereas Marcion blasphemes openly, Valentinians do so “by a perversion of the sense [of Scripture]” and both should be “recognized as agents of Satan by all those who worship God.”126 The author of the Gospel of Philip draws a similar conclusion – yet addresses his polemics in the opposite direction. The author warns that all those who hold diverging views are not genuine Christians at all. He writes: “If one go down into the water and come up without having received anything and says, ‘I am a Christian,’ he has borrowed the name at interest. But if he receive the holy spirit, he has the name as a gift.”127 This resembles closely the claim of Justin Martyr. According to him, there are “…some who are called Christians, but … who say there is no resurrection of the dead, and that their souls, when they die, are taken to heaven” and warns his partner in dialogue, “…do not imagine that they are Christians.”128 For Tertullian, resurrection is a similar divide. According to him, “…one cannot be a Christian who denies that resurrection which Christians confess, and denies it by such arguments as non-Christians use.”129 These examples show that the question concerning resurrection thus ultimately had to do with Christian identity and the issue of who _____________ 125 Res. 24.7. Cf. Res. 22.11.: “And is there any now who has risen again, except a heretic?” 126 Haer. 5.26.2. Cf. Ps-Justin, Res. 10. In the light of this quotation, it is impossible to maintain with Osborn (Irenaeus, 5) that Irenaeus was as peace-loving as his name indicates and that power play was not important for him. Osborn writes: “His irenic approach shows that his objection to heresies on matters of faith had little to do with a struggle for power. … Even on matters of faith, elsewhere he prays for his adversaries whom he loves more than they love themselves.” This is certainly what Irenaeus himself claims (Haer.3.25.7) but it is another matter to take his testimony at face value! 127 Gos. Phil. 64,22-27. Cf. Gos. Phil. 67,9-27: Truth did not come into the world naked, but it came in types and images. The world will not receive truth in any other way. There is a rebirth and an image of rebirth. It is certainly necessary to be born again through the image. Which one? Resurrection. The image must rise again through the image. The bridal chamber and the image must enter through the image into the truth: this is the restoration. Not only must those who produce the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit do so, but have produced them for you. If one does not acquire them, the name (“Christian”) will also be taken from him. But one receives the unction of the […] of the power of the cross. This power the apostles called “the right and the left.” For this person is no longer a Christian but a Christ. 128 Translation by Roberts & Donaldson in the Ante-Nicene Fathers. 129 Res. 3.5.

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may rightfully claim to be a Christian. In this struggle, all leaned on Paul’s authority and claimed to be the only true heirs of the apostle. Referring to Paul and other prior Christian tradition shows that the authors wanted to identify themselves with the larger Christian body and the apostolic tradition.130 Their rivals were not true Christians but agents of Satan. In this way, the belief in resurrection and especially its correct understanding functioned as a boundary marker that divided Christians into “us” and “them,” into insiders and outsiders. The harshness of the polemic reveals that deviant interpretations of “resurrection” – even of “resurrection of the flesh” – were a real threat for the identity and self-definition of many early Christian groups.

_____________ 130 Contra Noormann, Irenäus, 529, who claims that Irenaeus’ interpretation is a continuation (Weiterführung) of Paul’s teaching whereas his opponents represent the views of Paul’s opponents.

Valentinian Ideas About Salvation as Transformation Valentinian Ideas About Salvation as Transformation EINAR THOMASSEN1 Überschrift 2: für Kapitel ohne Ü2 wird hier Ü1 Kurzform wiederholt In his violent attack on the Valentinians in Book 31 of the Panarion, Bishop Epiphanius, amongst other grievances, also ridicules their views on resurrection: They deny the resurrection of the dead, uttering some senseless fable about it not being this body that rises, but another one which comes from it and which they call “spiritual” (μὴ τὸ σῶμα τοῦτο ἀνίστασθαι, ἀλλ’ ἕτερον 2 μὲν ἐξ αὐτοῦ, ὃ δὴ πνευματικὸν καλοῦσι). But [salvation belongs?] only to those among them who are spiritual, and to those called “psychic” – provided, that is, the psychics act justly. But those called “material”, “carnal” and “earthly” perish utterly and are in no way saved. Each substance proceeds to what emitted it: the material is given over to matter and what is carnal and earthly to the earth. (Pan. 31.7.6–7; trans. P. R. Amidon)

It is somewhat amusing that what Epiphanius here calls a “senseless fable” of the Valentinians in fact seems to be sound Pauline doctrine. The spiritual body that rises from the present one as a new and transformed being is precisely what Paul speaks about in 1 Cor 15:44: σπείρεται σῶμα ψυχικόν, ἐγείρεται σῶμα πνευματικόν. In other words, the Valentinians appear to have held a view of the resurrection that was more in agreement with Paul than was the doctrine professed by the heresy-hunting bishop. The sound Paulinism of the Valentinian doctrine of resurrection becomes more questionable, however, in the company of the theories about various categories of humans referred to in the text. The Valentinians are content that not all humans will be resurrected, not everybody will acquire the spiritual body. Some people are of a merely material nature and will disintegrate into the base source of their transient existence when they die. Others are spiritual from the outset, and will achieve resurrection by virtue of their inborn nature. Others again, the “psychicals”, have a chance to acquire a spiritual body if they behave _____________ 1 2

Einar Thomassen is Professor of Religion at the Department of Archaeology, History, Culture Studies and Religion, University of Bergen, Norway. A couple of words seem to be missing in the Greek text.

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well, but they may also fail to do so if they do evil deeds. Such ideas about various kinds of human beings and their different capacities for salvation may not have been in Paul’s mind when he wrote 1 Cor 15:35–57. On the other hand, Paul was certainly not a universalist either. There are those who are saved and those who are perishing (1 Cor 1:18, 2 Cor 2:15). Thus, the resurrection with a spiritual body cannot have been envisaged by Paul as a prospect for all human beings; only a limited number of believers will be granted the privilege of being changed into the incorruptible image of the heavenly human being.

The Three Kinds The question might be asked, however, why it is that some human beings come to believe in the message of salvation while others reject it. That question is what the Valentinian theory of different human kinds is meant to answer. The explanation can only be, the Valentinians thought, that humans possess different predispositions, and that these predispositions make them respond in different ways to the appearance of the Saviour and to his teaching. Thus, the Tripartite Tractate makes the reactions to the Saviour the litmus test of whether one belongs to one or the other of the three human categories: Humanity came to exist as three kinds with regard to essence: spiritual, psychical, and material .... They were nevertheless not known at first, but only when the Saviour came to them, shedding light upon the saints and revealing what each one was. The spiritual kind is like light from light and like spirit from spirit. When its head appeared, it immediately rushed to it. At once it became a body for its head. It received knowledge straightaway from the revelation. The psychical kind, however, being light from fire, tarried before recognizing the one who had appeared to it, and still more before rushing to him in faith. ... The material kind, however, is alien in every respect: it is like darkness that avoids the shining light because it is dissolved by its manifestation. For it did not accept his [coming], and is even [...] and filled with hatred against the Lord because he revealed himself. (NHC I 118–19; my translation)

By reflecting on the fact that not all human beings will be saved and resurrected, the Valentinians attempt to take Paul’s soteriology one step further. The classification of humans into “immediate receivers”, “tarri-

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ers” and “rejecters”3 is, moreover, given a further explanation in terms of a physical theory and a myth of origins. The three categories are conceived as “substances”, and the origins of these substances are explained in the language of a mythical narrative.4 The material substance originated in the “passion” of the aeon Sophia; this passion, which disrupted the harmony of the divine Pleroma, was cut off from the Pleroma together with the passionate Sophia herself. The substance of soul, on the other hand, came into being as a result of Sophia’s conversion after she realized her error, together with her repentance and the prayer for help she directed to her brothers and sisters in the Pleroma. The spiritual substance, finally, was generated by Sophia when the Saviour was sent out by the Pleroma to help her: the vision of the Saviour and his accompanying angels inspired her to bring forth a “spiritual seed”, representing her joyful response to the vision and the hope of being united with what she saw. The spiritual seed are images of the Saviour and his angels, and they reside together with their mother Sophia as a “church” in an intermediary region – below the Pleroma, but above the cosmos. After having brought forth these three substances, Sophia created the cosmos; in doing so she brought the material and psychical substances to order, using as her unwitting tool the Demiurge, the lord of the psychical powers. Thus there exist three substances, deriving from three different states of mind: matter from passion, soul from repentance and spirit from joy. The cosmos is composed of matter and soul; spirit is located in a separate region above the cosmos. This spirit is turned both upwards toward the Pleroma of which it is an image, and downwards toward the cosmos, providing its matter with form and its soul with the rationality of regular motion. Into the cosmos are placed human beings. The Demiurge (again moved by Sophia) creates the choïc human shape and breathes into it a soul. Into the human protoplast Sophia then, unbeknownst to the Demiurge, inserts a spiritual seed. This spiritual seed becomes a latent component of humanity, waiting to be actualized by the future descent of the Saviour into the cosmos. In this process from seed to actualization a redemptive economy is unfolded, analogous to Paul’s vision that there is “sown a physical body, raised a spiritual body” – in fact, the salvation historical scheme of the Valentinians can be regarded as a commentary on Paul’s statement. _____________ 3 4

Similar concerns are at work in the Apocryphon of John, where Eleleth, the fourth luminary, is the abode of the “tarriers” (BG 36; NHC II 14). In the following I synthesize the accounts of the Valentinian “system” in Irenaeus, Haer. 1.1–8, [Hipp.], Haer. 6.29–36, Tri. Trac. etc.

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It is in this process from seed to actualization that the idea of a transformation may find a place. But what is the nature of this transformation?

The Manifestation of the Seed Valentinian ideas about the process leading from the created human being to the resurrected, spiritual human, can be found in several texts. One version is found in the Excerpts from Theodotus: The followers of Valentinus maintain that when the animated body had been fashioned, a male seed was implanted by the Logos in the elect soul while it was asleep, an effluence from the angelic (nature), in order that there should be no deficiency. And this operated like leaven, uniting what seemed to be separate, the soul and the flesh, which had in fact been put forth separately by Sophia. And Adam’s sleep was the forgetting of the soul. ... Therefore when the Saviour came, he awakened the soul and enflamed the spark. For the words of the Lord are power. Therefore he said, ‘Let your light shine before men.’ And after his resurrection, he infused his spirit into the apostles and blew out and separated the earth like ashes, while he enflamed and gave life to the spark. (Exc. Theod. 2–3)

The story is that after the first man had been fashioned (by the Demiurge, on may assume) as a ψυχικὸν σῶμα, the Saviour-Logos inserted into him a spiritual seed. (Unusually, the sower in this text is the Saviour himself and not Sophia.5) That the seed derived from the angels (ἀπόρροια τοῦ ἀγγελικοῦ) must be an allusion to the idea that it had been brought forth by Sophia as an image of the angels surrounding the Saviour. Deposed in the first human, the seed is further described as a spark (σπινθήρ), and when the Saviour came into the world he set the spark ablaze through the power of his words. He thereby also set it apart, i.e. liberated it, from the material body. Now, it is noteworthy that although the image of the seed as such suggests a biological process of growth and development, the idea of such a process is not really elaborated on in the account. Rather than a gradual development of maturation, the point made in the text is simply that the seed remained hidden throughout history until it was finally revealed by the Saviour.6 _____________ 5

6

This is most likely an early version of the story. See Einar Thomassen, The spiritual seed: the church of the ‘Valentinians’ (Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 60; Leiden: Brill 2006), 434–35. The idea that the spiritual seed served to keep soul and body together gives a function for the seed, and is also closely connected with its hiddenness, since the mani-

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In order to better express this point, the image of the seed is therefore replaced by that of a spark. Like the image of the seed, the contrast between spark and flame expresses a contrast between latency and actualization, but in this case, there is no connotation of a development from the first state to the second. The basic soteriological idea in the account cannot, therefore, sustain the initial biological metaphor. In this case no real transformation takes place, only a manifestation of something that already exists. The spirit is hidden, because it is united with matter and soul, and the work of the Saviour is to detach the spirit from matter, thereby making it shine forth, releasing it and enabling it to return to the Pleroma. The idea is similar to the one we have already encountered in the Tripartite Tractate: the three kinds of humans “were ... not known at first, but only when the Saviour came to them, shedding light upon the saints and revealing what each one was.” It is as if the spiritual seed only needs to be made manifest in order to be redeemed. It suffices for it to become detached from matter; it does not need to be transformed in any way. The idea reminds one of what Irenaeus says about the Valentinians comparing their own spiritual nature to gold in mud, incorruptible and incapable of being changed in any way.7 An important difference between the text from the Excerpts and that from Tri. Trac. is that the former speaks about matter, soul and spirit in general anthropological terms, as if applicable to all humans, whereas the latter uses these three categories to classify various kinds of human beings. Thus the first text describes the manifestation of the latent spiritual component in man after its having been concealed within the body and soul, while the second text describes the manifestation of a special group of spiritual persons who until the arrival of the Saviour-Light were indistinguishable from the psychical and hylic people surrounding them. This is an important difference, but it need not concern us at the moment, since they are, basically, two versions of a common soteriological schema, and it is this schema itself that is of primary interest here. The question is: is the process of salvation thought about as a _____________ 7

festation of the seed coincides with the separation of the spirit and soul from the body. ‘Just as gold, when placed in mud, does not lose its beauty but retains its own nature, since the mud is unable to harm the gold, so they say that they themselves cannot suffer any injury or lose their spiritual substance, whatever material actions they may engage in’ (Iren. Haer. 1.6.2). I think it likely that the metaphor was used by the Valentinians themselves; there are similar things in the Gospel of Philip # 22, 48 (NHC II 58, 64); also cf. Gospel of Thomas # 29. The implication Irenaeus draws from it, however, i.e. that it gave the spirituals licence to commit immoral acts, is no doubt his own invention.

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transformation, or is it, as the two texts seem to be making out, rather a manifestation of what already exists, a stable nature, an ousia that remains immutable from the beginning to the end?

Real Transformation Other Valentinian texts, however, seem to tell a different story. Sometimes we are told that the temporary sojourn of the spirit in the cosmos, its momentary union with soul and matter, constitutes a necessary learning process. This is a perspective that can also be found in the Tripartite Tractate, where the idea of a divine pedagogy pervades the argument throughout. The pedagogical value of the cosmos can be conceived either positively or negatively. In the first case the world is seen as an image or a reflection of the eternal aeon; it is therefore able to teach us something about that aeon, as in a mirror, darkly (Tri. Trac. 104). In the second case the lesson to be learned is this: we may appreciate the bliss of spiritual eternity better after having experienced the sickness and corruption of physical existence (ibid. 107). The one lesson does not seem to exclude the other, since they appear in close proximity in the same document. If the spiritual seed is intended to learn something during its incarnate life in body and soul, this must mean that the spirit is somehow modified during the process. A statement to this effect occurs in Irenaeus: The offspring of their mother, Achamoth ... was inserted secretly into the Demiurge without his knowing it, in order that through him it might be sown into the soul that derived from him and in the material body, and, having been born and grown up there (κυοφορηθὲν 〈τε〉 ἐν τούτοις καὶ αὐξηθὲν), might be prepared to receive the perfect Logos (ἕτοιμον γένηται πρὸς ὑποδοχὴν τοῦ τελείου 〈λόγου〉). ... This seed, moreover, they say is the Church, counterpart of the Church above, and this they consider to be the human being who is within them. (Iren. Haer. 1.5.6)

Thus the seed will mature during its life in the body so as to become receptive of the Saviour when he presents himself. This does not seem to be quite consistent with the idea that the spiritual nature of the seed is already given and immutable. If you are supposed to learn something, the possibility must evidently exist that you may in fact fail to do so and in the end not pass the exam. This inconsistency suggests that there may be some structural ambiguity in the soteriological theory. The ambiguity on this point becomes even more acute when we are confronted with texts that paint a rather negative picture of the condition of the spiritual seed in the world. Several texts stress the weakness,

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incompleteness and even deformity of the spiritual seed before its redemption. Consider, for example, the following passages from the Excerpts from Theodotus: For as long as we were children of the female only, like of a shameful union – incomplete, like babies, senseless, weak and unformed, brought forth like abortions – we were children of the Woman. But once we were given form by the Saviour, we became children of a Man and of a bridal chamber. (68) So long, then, they say, as the seed is yet unformed, it is the offspring of the female, but when it is formed, it is changed to a man and becomes a son of the bridegroom. It is no longer weak and subject to the cosmic forces, both visible and invisible, but having been made masculine, it becomes a male fruit. He whom the Mother generates is led into death and into the world, but he whom Christ regenerates is transferred to life into the Ogdoad. And they die to the world but live to God, that death may be loosed by death and corruption by resurrection. (79–80)

Here still another view of the soteriological process is presented. According to the first view presented above (Exc. Theod. 2–3; Tri. Trac. 118–19), the spiritual seed is permanently immutable – it only needs to be made manifest; according to a second perspective (Iren. Haer. 1.5.6; Tri. Trac 104, 107), the spirit needs to grow and mature. Now we are told that the seed is weak and deficient, like a woman, possessing all the negative characteristics of the mother Sophia who gave birth to it in a rash passion, without her male partner. The deficiency of the created human being is also stressed in a passage in Tri. Trac.: For the [form] that the Logos8 brought forth [was] deficient in such a way that he was [afflicted] by sickness. It did not resemble him, for he brought him forth into [oblivion], ignorance, [...], and all the other sicknesses, having given him only the first form. (105)

Here, the condition of humanity is described both as defective – a lack of knowledge and health – and as incomplete: the first human was given only a “first form”.

_____________ 8

“The Logos” is the preferred designation in Tri. Trac. for the figure that is normally called Sophia in other Valentinian systems.

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Images of Transformation The soteriological process can thus be variously portrayed (1) as a manifestation, (2) as an education or a maturation and (3) as a transformation from a state of deficiency to completeness. The tensions and potential inconsistencies between these different visions can be analysed internally, from the point of view of the philosophical presuppositions of the system itself, and I shall attempt to do so in the concluding section of this paper. It is also interesting, however, to look at these divergences in a diachronic perspective, since the texts express their ideas about soteriological transformation by employing images and motifs which each has a prehistory and have been transmitted with layers of meaning that cannot be totally controlled when they are being reused. The idea of a manifestation seems to a large extent to derive from apocalyptic scenarios. The text from Tri. Trac. 118 which says that the Saviour came, “shedding light upon the saints and revealing what each one was” is using a motif also found in Hermas, Sim. 4.2: ‘When the grace of the Lord shines down, then all those serving God shall be revealed, and they will be made manifest for all.’ Similar ideas are found in 1 En. 104.2: “Be hopeful, because formerly you have pined away through evil and toil. But now you shall shine like the lights of heaven, and you shall be seen.” Also, the parable of the tares in Matt 13:24–43 describes how the good seed grows together with that sown by the devil, but when the angels come to reap, the good seed will shine (ἐκλάμψουσιν) like the sun (13:43; cf. Dan 12:3). The motif is complex; actually there are two motifs that tend to merge, the first being that of the saints who will be recognized, the second that of being raised or transformed into a luminous existence. The latter motif, moreover, may also be developed in the direction of an astral soteriology: the saints will become stars, or like stars.9 In the Valentinian texts, both the motif of becoming recognized and that of becoming luminous are present (the spark was enflamed; ‘Let your light shine before men’, Exc. Theod. 3). On the other hand the idea of turning into a star is evidently not an attractive prospect for a Valentinian Christian. Whereas the apocalyptic texts generally speak about transformation in this context,10 in the Valentinian texts the redemption is not so much a matter of being turned into light as of actualizing an inherent quality. _____________ 9 10

See also 1 En. 49.4; 2 En. 46.4; 2 Bar. 83.2–3; Diogn. 6.1–4; Ep. Apost. 36; Iren. Haer. 1.24.6 (Basilides). See the contributions by John J. Collins and Liv I. Lied in this volume.

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The spirituals are “light from light” (Tri. Trac. 118), that is, there is an ontological consubstantiality between the spirituals and the transcendent world, and when the Saviour-Light appears, he draws to himself those who share his fundamental nature. On the other hand there may be a case for discussing to what extent analogous notions of predestination may also be present in the apocalyptic texts. For instance, in Matt 13:37–43 the good seed, the children of the kingdom, is sown by the Son of Man and the evil seed, the children of the evil one, is sown by the devil; thus the “shining” of the righteous may signify just as much the disclosure of their identity as the transformation into a luminous new form of being. The situation may be similar in other of the apocalyptic texts where this motif occurs. The idea of an educational process also implies, as already noted, a form of transformation: living in the material world enables the spiritual seed to grow and learn, in preparation for its reception of the Saviour.11 This idea is a variant of the general Christian theological notion of a divine pedagogy, which forms part of an economy of salvation planned through the providence of God. As is well known, theories of this kind are found in Irenaeus12 as well as in Clement of Alexandria13 and Origen,14 and I shall make no more comment on this theme here, apart from suggesting that the affinities between the Valentinian and the more “mainstream” theological ideas about the divine oikonomia and soteriological pedagogy is an understudied area. The other texts quoted above use the language of biological generation to describe a more drastic process of transformation effected by the Saviour. Thus, Exc, Theod. 68, 79–80 portray the transformation as a rebirth. From being the children of a single parent we are reborn as children having both parents. The first birth was not even a proper birth, but rather a miscarriage; only when the Saviour appeared were we truly born as well-formed children. This is a theme that can also be found in the Gospel of Philip: When we were Hebrews we were orphans, with only a mother, but when we became Christians we had a father and a mother. (# 6, NHC II 52)

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14

In addition to the passages from Tri. Trac. referred to above, see also Iren. Haer. 1.5.6, 1.6.1, 1.7.5, 2.19.4 and Val. Exp. (NHC XI,2) 37. E.g. Eric Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001), especially chapters 4 and 10. See the recent survey of literature on Clement by Eric Osborn, ‘One hundred years of books on Clement’, VC 60 (2006) 367–388 (with special attention to the theme of the divine economy). Hal Koch, Pronoia und Paideusis (Berlin: de Gruyter 1932).

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In this text, the theme of Sophia’s malformed children is used to describe the transition from a Jewish to a Christian identity – the mythological theme serves as an interpretive frame for the change of socioreligious affiliation. A multiplicity of connotations are involved in this symbolism: the idea of orphanage, or the lack of a father, as a state of deprivation; the stigma of illegitimacy associated with single motherhood;15 the quasi-scientific and mythological notions that a female by herself is able to produce a deformed child;16 and finally the more abstract Valentinian idea that perfection arises out of the union of two, while imperfection is the result of singularity.17 Closely related to this theme in the texts from Exc. Theod. is that of a change from femaleness to maleness: from being “female”, i.e. weak and deficient, we were transformed by the Saviour into male beings, complete and fully formed. This theme is further attested in Heracleon. In frg. 5 (commentary on John 1:23) he says that the relationship between the Saviour and John the Baptist is the same as that between the Logos and the “voice” (φωνή). The voice which is akin to the Logos, Heracleon says, will become Logos, just as woman is transformed into man (τὴν φωνὴν οἰκειοτέραν οὖσαν τῷ λόγῳ λόγον γίνεσθαι, ὡς καὶ τὴν γυναῖκα εἰς ἄνδρα μετατίθεσθαι; Orig. In Joh. 6.111). Here, Heracleon is clearly alluding to, as a familiar idea, a topos from Valentinian soteriology: the female will become male. This idea is, of course a widespread one in ancient Christianity, and I do not have to go into its many attestations here.18 A related way of conceiving the transformation is indicated in the text from Tri. Trac. 105, where mention was made of a “first form”. This is, I think, a concept borrowed from ancient embryology, where the foetus is sometimes said to attain a first form at an early stage of its

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16

17 18

An interesting possible parallel is found in Gos. Thomas # 105, if the text is corrected according to a suggestion once made by Johannes Leipoldt: “Whoever knows not father and mother will be called the child of a whore”; see H.-M. Schenke, Das Philippus-Evangelium (Nag Hammadi Codex II,3) (Texte und Untersuchungen 143; Berlin: Akademie-Verlag 1997), 161. It may well be that the emphasis here is on knowing both one’s father and one’s mother. James E. Goehring, “A classical influence on the gnostic Sophia myth”, VC 35 (1981) 16–23; Richard Smith, “Sex education in gnostic schools”, in Karen L. King (ed.), Images of the feminine in gnosticism (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press 1988), 345–360; E. Aydeet Fischer-Mueller, “Yaldabaoth: The gnostic female principle in its fallenness”, NovTest 32 (1990) 79–95, at 85–89. “Whatever emerges from a syzygy is a pleroma, whatever from one single is an image” (Exc. Theod. 32.1). See in particular Antti Marjanen’s contribution to this volume.

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development in the womb.19 It thus refers to a state of partial formation – only at the moment of birth is the child fully formed. The image is thus rather close to that of the “abortion” used in Exc. Theod. 68 (see above), though here the aspect of the incompleteness of the foetus that is stressed is more its capacity for further formation than its actual deformity. Thus, the perspective is more that of the gradual formation of the embryo towards the moment of birth than the radical transformation of a rebirth. In this sense the image shares the perspective of the theme of the divine pedagogy commented upon above. A last theme involving soteriological transformation must also be commented upon. Certain Valentinian texts speak about a transformation into angels. According to Exc. Theod. 21, the distinction male/female is equivalent to that of angel/cosmic human: ... the female (elements), having become male, enters into the Pleroma. Therefore it is said that the woman is changed into a man and the Church here below into angels. (τὰ θηλυκὰ δὲ ἀπανδρωθέντα ἑνοῦται τοῖς ἀγγέλοις καὶ εἰς πλήρωμα χωρεῖ. διὰ τοῦτο ἡ γυνὴ εἰς ἄνδρα μετατίθεσθαι λέγεται καὶ ἡ ἐνταῦθα ἐκκλησία εἰς ἀγγέλους.)

The union with angels is an idea that is also encountered in Irenaeus’ description of Valentinian eschatology: The spiritual beings will divest themselves of their souls and become intelligent spirits, and without being hindered or seen, they will enter into the Pleroma, and will be bestowed as brides on the angels around the Saviour (νύμφας ἀποδοθήσεσθαι τοῖς τοῦ Σωτῆρος ἀγγέλοις). (Iren. Haer. 1.7.5)

In this last text it is not precisely said that the spiritual humans will be turned into angels, only that they will be united with them in a conjugal relationship. It seems likely, however, that these are just two ways of referring to the same idea; becoming married to an angel doubtlessly means that one acquires the nature of an angel oneself. It is an intriguing question what the background may be to this idea of a marriage with angels. I have not been able to find a satisfactory answer, though several components of the idea may be considered. “Angels” in general represent the idea of a superhuman form of existence, one to which humans may aspire or be transformed into. The transformation into angels may be an eschatological prospect in an apocalyptic context, a disciplinary project that can be partially or proleptically realized in this life in an ascetic context, or an experience induced by communal cultic participation or by the general sense of belonging to a sect of the elect, as seems to be the case in some Qumran _____________ 19

Galen, De plac. Hipp. et Plat. 6.6.32, 8.4.5, Adv. Lycum 7.3; [Porph.] Ad Gaurum 35.3–5 Kalbfleisch; Diog. Laert. 8.29; Thomassen, Spiritual Seed, 309–313.

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documents.20 In the latter context, the idea of the angels as a collective, a “host”, is particularly important. Generally speaking, “angels” not only represent a different and higher level of being than humanity in a taxonomy of ontological categories; they are also, as personifications of the state to which one aspires, hypostatizations of the soteriological identities of the believers, both individually and collectively. Becoming united with one’s angel therefore means attaining that state, and to be incorporated into the eternal community of saints. For the Valentinians, the angels are mediators between the Pleroma and the spiritual seed of humans. They are manifestations of the aeons, and the seed came into being as images of the angels. The angels appeared to Sophia as a host accompanying the Saviour.21 This motif reuses a traditional divine epiphany scenario,22 but has a much more metaphysical (actually Platonist) significance in the Valentinian system. The Saviour and his angels manifest the Pleroma as being simultaneously one and many – the Saviour its unity, the angels its multiplicity. The multiplicity of the angels is, moreover, a necessity with regard to the condition of existence in the lower world: because the spirituals exist as discrete individuals, they can only be assimilated to the unity of the Pleroma through the particularizing mediation of the angels. It is this assimilation that is conceived of as a marriage, and this is the ideological context for the concept of the “bridal chamber”. This concept appears in two contexts. One is eschatological, as in Iren. Haer. 1.7.1: When the whole seed is perfected, ... will the mother, Achamoth, leave the place of the Middle, enter into the Pleroma, and receive her bridegroom, the Saviour, ... with result that the Saviour and Sophia, who is Achamoth, form a pair (συζυγία). These then are said to be bridegroom and bride, but the bridal chamber is the entire Pleroma. The spiritual beings ... will enter into the Pleroma, and will be bestowed as brides on the angels around the Saviour.

Here, the bridal chamber is the Pleroma, and the unification with the angels takes place after the ascent out of the body, a process that will be completed at the end of the world when the entire spiritual seed has passed through cosmic existence and the apokatastasis will occur.23 In other texts the bridal chamber is a ritual act performed in this life: “baptism ... is also called ‘the bridal chamber’” (Tri. Trac. 128),24 and the _____________ 20 21 22 23 24

Several variants of the idea are treated in the articles in this volume. Iren. Haer. 1.2.6, 1.4.5; Exc. Theod. 35–36, 44.1–2; Tri. Trac. 87. Cf. Deut 33:2; Zach 14:5; 1 En. 1.9; Matt 16:27; 1 Thess 3:13; etc. Similarly Iren. Haer. 1.21.1; Exc. Theod. 64 Also Iren. Haer. 1.21.3, and probably 1.13.6 and 9. The several references to the bridal chamber in the Gospel of Philip are notoriously difficult to pin down, though they

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union with the angels may also be closely associated with baptism.25 This suggests that the Valentinians could use the same ideas about soteriological transformation in different contexts, which were not felt to be mutually exclusive. Whether to describe the event of the Saviour’s epiphany in the world, to explain the meaning of the rituals of initiation or to imagine the final restoration of the Pleroma, the same language might be used: receiving the Saviour, being reborn, becoming a child of two parents, changing from female into male or attaining the union with one’s angelic partner.

The Dialectics of Unity and Duality In this last section of the paper I shall return to the problem of the apparent contradiction in Valentinian soteriology, that redemption is sometimes seen as simply a manifestation of what already exists as an immutable reality, and at other times as a profound transformation and the attainment of a new identity. From one point of view, the spiritual seed deposited in the first human is only waiting to be revealed and released by the advent of the Saviour; from another perspective, the seed is seriously deficient and must either be subsequently formed through a process of growth, or be totally transformed by having its deficiency replaced by fullness. How can these diametrically opposite soteriological ideas co-exist in the same system of thought? In order to better understand this apparent inconsistency, one needs to refer to the logical architecture of the Valentinian system as a whole. The Valentinian treatises represent perhaps the earliest attempt in the history of Christian theology to translate the Christian hope of salvation into an all-encompassing philosophical system. The groundwork of this attempt is a dynamic monistic ontology using the notions of extension and contraction, much akin to what we find in Neoplatonism and deriving from the same historical roots as Plotinus’s system, namely Late Hellenistic monistic Neopythagoreanism.26 Successive events of extension (ἔκτασις) and contraction (συστολή) in fact make up the narrative of the Valentinian philosophical myth. First, the divine fullness, the Pleroma, spreads out from a single source into plurality. _____________ 25

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seem in some places at least to be associated with initiation rites (e.g. # 68, NHC II 67). In Exc. Theod. 21–22, 35–36 the angels are baptized together with Jesus in the Jordan, so that we may each receive our angel when we ourselves are baptized; see my Spiritual Seed, 377–383. I have tried to show this in Spiritual Seed, chapter 23.

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This movement of outward extension is ultimately concretized in the last of the aeons, usually named Sophia, who, overcome by “passion”, drifts into infinity until her extension is ultimately arrested by cutting her in two. The Pleroma then withdraws from the cut-off part, which as infinite extension becomes the source of matter, devoid of form. After this cutting off-operation, the Pleroma contracts inside the so-called Boundary and is consolidated and given form. In subsequent phases, formative agents are emitted from the Pleroma to the formless Sophiamatter outside. In this context, too, the language of extension and withdrawal is used. The formative agent, who is given names such as Christ, Jesus or the Saviour, “extends himself” to Sophia and then withdraws.27 It is though this operation that matter and soul are distinguished and given form, and at the same time the spiritual seed is produced by Sophia, as images of the aeons of the Pleroma, after she has turned round from her extension into infinity in order to face the Pleroma, the source of form. This spiritual seed is still, however, attached to matter and soul and needs to be redeemed from these impediments. When the Saviour ultimately descends from the Pleroma into the world of matter, the pattern repeats itself once more. The descent, which implies an incarnation, signifies an extension of spirit into matter, analogous to what happened to Sophia at the beginning, and it is followed by a new withdrawal, when the Saviour returns from the Cross to the Pleroma. The Saviour’s “passion” in the world is thus homologous to the earlier passion of Sophia: in both cases the passion means that spirit is temporarily subjected to the forces of irrationality and matter. The chief expression of this meaning of the incarnation of the Saviour is the crucifixion: at the cross the Saviour “extends” himself into matter, symbolized by his spreading out the limbs of his body and letting them be fixed to a piece of wood. At the end of his incarnation he gives up his spirit, that is, sets the spirit free from the body, and then returns to the pure spiritual realm. The Cross thus serves to separate spirit from matter, just as the two parts of Sophia were separated at the beginning by the Boundary. That is also why Σταυρός is one of the names of the Boundary encircling the Pleroma. This brief summary should make it clear, I hope, in what sense the Valentinian system can be called a philosophy of Christianity. The _____________ 27

E.g. Iren. Haer. 1.4.1 “Christ took pity on her, extended himself (ἐπεκταθέντα) through the ‘Cross’ [i.e. the Boundary] and, by his own power, imparted to her form, but only in respect of substance, not of knowledge. Having done this, he hastened back above and withdrew his power” (συστείλαντα αὐτοῦ τὴν δύναμιν); for other examples, Spiritual Seed, 275–79.

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Christian ideas about fall and redemption are here given a metaphysical interpretation through a monistic philosophy that seeks to solve the ontological problem of mediating between unity and multiplicity by means of a theory of extension and contraction. It follows that all elements of the Valentinian narrative must be interpreted on the basis of these premises, and that also includes the Valentinian views on soteriological transformation and resurrection. The ambiguities relating to the status of the spiritual seed, i.e. whether it is already essentially perfect and only needs to be manifested or is essentially deficient and needs to be transformed, must therefore be understood in relation to the underlying structure of the monistic ontology itself. This structure, in fact, is itself deeply ambiguous. Once the first principle starts to unfold into something other than itself, difference inevitably becomes uncontrollable, and that is why Valentinian protologies typically describe long chains of generation where the successful mediation of unity and duality is constantly being deferred from one level of being to the next: once the monad becomes a dyad it will multiply itself into a tetrad, an ogdoad and a triakontad, and the continued unity of the whole depends on the precarious unity of each of its constituent aeons, they themselves being “syzygies”, double beings consisting of a masculine and a feminine component, one but at the same time two. When Sophia, the female component of the last aeonic syzygy, breaks the unity through her divisive “passion” and is removed from the Pleroma, the initial tension is not solved but only radicalized. Cut off from the divine plenitude, Sophia is from one point of view nothing, the non-being of matter, but from another point of view she is still an aeon whose proper place is in the Pleroma. This ambiguity in the status of the fallen aeon reflects the situation that the tension between unity and duality inherent in the process of generation itself has not been stabilized with the elimination of Sophia: in so far as she is still “something”, the Pleroma is lacking a member and the crisis of extension has not been resolved.28 _____________ 28

The texts are struggling with this dilemma. Some affirm that once Sophia and her passion had been removed, the Pleroma was consolidated and achieved perfect form (e.g. Iren. Haer. 1.2.5–6; Exc. Theod. 31). Irenaeus’ main source states that Sophia’s fate became a lesson for the aeons. The couple Christ-the Holy Spirit was produced to educate and consolidate the Pleroma, and in this way it was brought to perfect unity – described as a state where each of the aeons is simultaneously all the others, and the single part is the same as the whole. At least one text, however, the Tripartite Tractate, admits that the Pleroma did not become perfect after the elimination of the errant aeon: “For not only earthly humans need the redemption, but the angels need the redemption as well, and the images, and even the Fullnesses of the aeons and those marvellous luminous powers needed it—so as to leave no doubt with regard to anyone. And even the Son, who constitutes the type of the redemption of the All,

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The ambiguity of Sophia’s status also affects her seed. On the one hand, the spiritual seed can be seen as sharing the deficiency, formlessness and nothingness that characterize Sophia as the cause of matter. That is why they have to be formed, or even transformed into something they were not before – their deficiency will be replaced by fullness. On the other hand they can also be seen as spiritual natures that are of the same substance as the aeons of the Pleroma, and from this perspective redemption becomes instead a matter of revealing this innate quality. The variations in the ways the Valentinians imagined the process of redemption should therefore be understood in the light of this ambiguity. Now, the ambiguity in the status of Sophia and her seed that produces these variations is itself a product of the constantly deferred mediation of oneness and duality that takes place in the unfolding of the Valentinian system. Ultimately, the separation between the Pleroma and the spiritual seed in the cosmos is an expression of the original duality which began with the self-duplication of the Father into Father and Son, and which eventually led to the crisis and separation of Sophia. The restoration of the spiritual seed to the Pleroma can therefore be seen as that which brings about the definitive resolution of the initial ontological tension. It does not do so, however, without continual ambiguity. For in the end, two competing notions of the result of the restoration remain. Either, the restoration is conceived as a complete oneness, a return to the situation at the very beginning;29 or, it will result in a state of equilibrial duality where the two members of the dyad are individually distinct but the threat of separation has been overcome. If complete oneness is the aim, two opposite options exist for construing the soteriological process. One option is to envisage a complete transformation, so complete that one may speak about a replacement of deficiency with fullness, or, in other words, of non-being with being. The other option is to think that there is no transformation at all, only the manifestation of what already exists as an immutable reality. In both cases, the solution is to regard the empirical world as irreality, an illusion – only the oneness of the divine truly exists. Becoming to_____________

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[needed] the redemption, having become human and having submitted himself to all that was needed by us, who are his Church in the flesh. After he, then, had received the redemption first, by means of the word that came down upon him, all the rest who had received him could then receive the redemption through him. For those who have received the one who received have also received that which is in him” (Tri. Trac. 124-25). Here, the Pleroma itself remains ‘unredeemed’ until the Saviour himself has descended into the cosmos and been redeemed from it; everything else is then redeemed through him – an apokatastasis by chain reaction. Tri. Trac. 127, 132.

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tally transformed and understanding that one already possesses eternal being are two parallel ways of articulating the soteriological implication of the realization that the world is actually nothing.30 The other way of conceiving the restoration, by seeing it as the joining of two partners in a harmonious relationship, is what is expressed by the metaphors of male and female and angels and humans. Here, not the assimilation to oneness, but the stabilization of duality seems to be the eschatological vision. But once again the texts are ambiguous. On the one hand, spiritual humans “will be bestowed as brides on the angels around the Saviour” (Iren. Haer. 1.7.1): it is a male-female relationship where the two partners form a happy union. On the other hand, we have also seen that humans are conceived as females that will be changed into males. This idea implies not only that femininity is seen as deficiency and masculinity as completeness, but also that the female is associated with division and plurality, and the male with oneness. The two ideas are curiously combined in Exc. Theod. 21: “the females, becoming men, are united to the angels and pass into the Pleroma.” The text presumably does not imply a homosexual marriage; rather, it seems to be the result of a blending of two soteriological models, one that sees oneness, associated with masculinity, as the soteriological ideal of ultimate completion, and another that imagines that ideal as the complementary union of two individuals in the form of a syzygy. In this way, the ambiguity inherent in the problem of how to mediate between oneness and duality, which forms the most basic metaphysical presupposition of the system, reappears at the end in the soteriological visions of the system. In soteriological terms, this ambiguity translates, I think, into the question of whether personal individuality will in some way be retained in the apokatastasis. Are we all going to be ultimately assimilated to oneness, or will we, in our future disembodied and soul-free existence as spiritual beings in the transcendent world, become the members of a harmonious community, enjoying personal relationships with others. I am not sure the Valentinians themselves knew the precise answer to that question.

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This is the perspective underlying such texts as the Gospel of Truth and the Treatise on Resurrection, where the idea of a total transformation and that of the manifestation of an already existing reality exist side by side.

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Conclusion: Valentinian Resurrection As was noted at the beginning of this paper, the Valentinians could envisage their soteriological goal in good Pauline style as a resurrection in a spiritual body. However, resurrection for them did not imply the raising of dead and buried bodies for them to face judgment on the last day. The concept of resurrection is not, in fact, used very often in Valentinian texts, and when it does, it is usually reinterpreted as apokatastasis, restoration.31 It is a matter of bringing all the spiritual seed from Sophia into the Pleroma. That seed will continue to be sown into human bodies for a certain amount of time, until the store of seed in the realm of Sophia is exhausted.32 It will pass through short human lives, in order to be educated and to be baptized. Through that ritual we will either liberate our internal spiritual self from the powers of matter, or acquire a spiritual self given to us by the Saviour from without in the form of the angel, with whom we are either conjoined as a marital couple or into whom we are totally transformed, becoming ourselves allmale angels. This soteriological process may be thought to take place in the ritual itself, or the ritual may be seen as a preparation for the process, which really takes place after the death of the individual, during the ascent of the spirit from the physical world, or, finally, it may also be thought to be realized fully only at the very end, when all the spiritual seed has passed through human existence and is gathered together into the Pleroma. These are all additional ambiguities of Valentinian soteriology and eschatology, which cannot be treated here. Finally, it may be observed that on a very basic level the Valentinians were facing the same sort of puzzle as much other soteriological thought that uses the idea of transformation. One desires to be saved as oneself and at the same time as something other than what one is here and now. This puzzle is inherent in the very concept of transformation, and the Valentinian material shows some of the contradictory ways the puzzle is dealt with in a system where oneness is the supreme value but where duality nevertheless refuses to be eliminated.

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Exc. Theod. 7.5, 61.5–8, 80.1–2; probably implied in Heracleon fr. 15; Treat. Res. 44. Tri. Trac. 123, 135; Exc. Theod. 67.3; Iren. Haer. 1.6.1, 1.7.1. 1.7.5.

“These are the Symbols and Likenesses of the Resurrection”: Conceptualizations of Death and Transformation in the Treatise on the Resurrection (NHC I,4) Conceptualizations of Death and Transformation

HUGO LUNDHAUG1 Überschrift 2: für Kapitel ohne Ü2 wird hier Ü1 Kurzform wiederholt “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” (1 Cor 15:35 RSV). Paul’s rather cryptic way of answering this relatively straightforward question did little to stop the question from being asked time and again throughout the history of Christianity.2 In the present article I will explore how one particular early Christian text, the Treatise on the Resurrection (NHC I,4), one of the tractates from the socalled Nag Hammadi Codices, interprets Paul’s answer to this question. The resurrection is, as the title of the tractate indicates, its central theme. In the following analysis I will investigate how the resurrection is conceptualized in this text. More specifically I will focus on what metaphors the text uses to conceptualize the resurrection, and how they shape its rhetorical exposition and understanding of key aspects of the doctrine in close interplay with Scriptural exegesis.

1. Resurrection: How, When, and of What? The implied author of the purported letter,3 which in the only extant manuscript witness is entitled the Treatise on the Resurrection,4 sets the _____________ 1 2

3

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Hugo Lundhaug is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo, Norway. See, e.g., Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (Lectures in the History of Religions, New Series 15; New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). Whether this is a “genuine” letter or simply a treatise written as a letter is impossible to know. For references to the various scholarly positions on this issue, see Malcolm L. Peel, “The Treatise on the Resurrection,” in Nag Hammadi Codex I (The Jung Codex): Notes (ed. Harold W. Attridge; NHS 23; Leiden: Brill, 1985), 137. Treat. Res. has been described as “one of the densest and most problem-ridden texts of the [Nag Hammadi] Library,” but also one “whose diminutive size is quite out of

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stage by stating that there are many who are “faithless” ( ) concerning the resurrection (Treat. Res. 44.8-9),5 and tries in the remainder of the text to explain to his “son” Rheginos, and the latter’s “brothers,” why belief in the resurrection is important, and, crucially, exactly how this concept is to be understood. “What, then, is the resurrection?” (Treat. Res. 48.3-4) is thus the central question this text sets out to answer. “Rheginos” is told not to doubt the resurrection (Treat. Res. 47.2-3), nor to think that it is “a fantasy” ( ) (Treat. Res. 48.10-13). What, then, does resurrection _____________

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proportion to its importance” (Bentley Layton, “Vision and Revision: A Gnostic View of Resurrection,” in Colloque International sur les textes de Nag Hammadi [Québec, 22–25 août 1978] [ed. Bernard Barc; BCNH Études 1; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1981], 190). It has come down to us in a single copy, in the Coptic language, as a part of Nag Hammadi Codex I. The manuscript is astonishingly well preserved, with very few lacunae. For facsimile reproductions of the manuscript, see Michel Malinine, et al., De Resurrectione (Epistula ad Rheginum): Codex Jung F.XXIIrF.XXVv (p. 43–50) (Zürich: Rascher, 1963); The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex I (Leiden: Brill, 1977). For editions of the Coptic text, see esp. Malcolm L. Peel, “The Treatise on the Resurrection,” in Nag Hammadi Codex I (The Jung Codex): Introductions, Texts, Translations, Indices (ed. Harold W. Attridge; NHS 22; Leiden: Brill, 1985), 123–57, but cf. also Malinine, et al., De Resurrectione; Jacques É. Ménard, Le Traité sur la résurrection (NH I, 4): Texte établi et présenté (BCNH Section “Textes” 12; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1983); Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Treatise on Resurrection from Nag Hammadi: Edited with Translation and Commentary (HDR 12; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1979); Bentley Layton, Coptic Gnostic Chrestomathy: A Selection of Coptic Texts with Grammatical Analysis and Glossary (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 156–60. The text has been preserved in the Lycopolitan L6 dialect of Coptic (cf. Rodolphe Kasser, “A Standard System of Sigla for Referring to the Dialects of Coptic,” Journal of Coptic Studies 1 [1990]: 141–51; what is now commonly referred to as Lycopolitan [L] was previously known as Subachmimic [A²]). For a discussion of the dialect of Treat. Res. in relation to other texts written in the same, or closely related, dialect, see Wolf-Peter Funk, “How Closely Related Are the Subakhmimic Dialects,” ZAS 112 (1985): 124–39. All translations from Coptic throughout this article are my own. The issue of faith is not merely incidental, as Treat. Res. states later on, in a polemic against philosophy, that “if there is someone who does not believe, he cannot be persuaded” ( ), before proceeding to further contrast “faith” ( ) with “persuasion” ( ) (see Treat. Res. 46.3-7). In fact, as Treat. Res. makes clear, even a “philosopher” ( ) will be saved and resurrected if only he believes (see Treat. Res. 46.8-10). For a discussion of the anti-philosophical polemics of Treat. Res., see Luther H. Martin, “The AntiPhilosophical Polemic and Gnostic Soteriology in ‘The Treatise on the Resurrection’ (CG I, 3),” Numen 20:1 (1973): 29. For an example of a similar dichotomy between faith and persuasion in the patristic literature, see Athanasius, Vita Antonii 80.1. Bentley Layton, however, interprets Treat. Res.’s stated emphasis upon faith in contrast to persuasive rhetoric as “disdain for reasoned argumentation” on the part of the author, and reads Treat. Res.’s stated dichotomy between persuasion and faith instead as one between demonstration and gnosis (Layton, “Vision and Revision,” 207 and 205).

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entail according to Treat. Res.? The explanation given is not exactly straightforward. The treatise affirms that “the dead shall rise” ( ; Treat. Res. 46.7-8), but this resurrection of the dead turns out to be a more complicated concept than it might at first appear, for we are told that the body ( ) will be left behind (Treat. Res. 47.34-35), and that “the visible members” ( ) shall not be saved (Treat. Res. 47.38-48.1). What is this resurrection then? First of all, despite the stated destruction of the visible members, it seems that it is not merely a resurrection of the dead that is at issue here, but more specifically a resurrection of the flesh. This is hinted at by way of a rhetorical question: “Therefore do not be in doubt concerning the resurrection, my son Rheginos, for (even) if you did not (pre-)exist in flesh ( … ), you received flesh ( … ) when you came into this world. Why shall you not receive (the) flesh ( … ) when you ascend into the aeon?” (Treat. Res. 47.1-8). The argument seems to be that we receive flesh in connection with our entry into this world, and therefore we should logically also receive flesh when we leave this world and enter into the next.6 But is this latter “flesh” of the same kind as the former? The reference to two different, but analogous, “receptions” of flesh – the one at birth and the other in connection with the ascent into the aeon – indicates that it is not. Elsewhere as well Treat. Res. indicates that the former flesh is indeed different from the latter, when the implied author admonishes “Rheginos” that he should not “live in accordance with this flesh” ( ), evidently referring to the visible this-worldly flesh, while simultaneously implying the existence of another, better kind (Treat. Res. 49.11-12).

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Cf. Peel, “The Treatise on the Resurrection,” 179. Contrary to Bentley Layton I do not interpret this passage as a “dialogue between the author and an imaginary interlocutor … in which the lecturer himself adduces possible objections and then answers them” (Layton, The Gnostic Treatise, 77). From this premise Layton translates rather freely as follows: “Now (you might wrongly suppose) granted you did not preexist in flesh – indeed, you took on flesh when you entered this world – why will you not take your flesh with you when you return to the realm of eternity?” (Layton, The Gnostic Treatise, 23). Peel finds Layton’s translation to be “a tendentious effort to make the text conform to orthodox Middle Platonic teaching about survival of the bare soul after death,” and I agree with him that the passage should be read as being “adressed straightforwardly by the author to Rheginos” (Peel, “The Treatise on the Resurrection,” 179).

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2. The External and the Internal Body “How, then, is it that the visible dead members shall not be saved, for the living members within them was going to arise? What, then, is the resurrection? It is always the uncovering of those who have arisen” (Treat. Res. 47.38-48.6).7 As we can see, Treat. Res. not only speaks about different kinds of flesh, but also, it seems, about different bodies, one that dies and one that lives on. The material body, referred to as “the visible dead members” ( ), are not destined for salvation, for resurrection is instead defined as an “uncovering” ( ) of “the living members within them” ( [ ] #ï # ), i.e., within the “visible members.” Treat. Res. seems, then, to operate with a concept of an internal body, constituted by the internal, invisible, living members, that resides within another body constituted by the external, visible, mortal members. The latter is destined simply to die, and is most probably to be identified with the body (σῶμα) that is left behind by “the one who is saved” ( ) (Treat. Res. 47.34-35). But what is the nature of the internal body that rises? It has been claimed that Treat. Res. “makes no reference whatsoever to a special form of resurrection flesh,” or “resurrection body,”8 and that the terms σῶμα and σάρξ are synonymous for the author of Treat. Res.9 But we have already seen that, in connection with the ascent to heaven, the internal members seem to receive flesh of a different kind than the perishable flesh of the “visible members.” While the text does not explicitly mention a “spiritual flesh,” or a “spiritual body,” the references to a different flesh gained in connection with the ascent, taken together with the description of a “spiritual resurrection” ( #) that “swallows” ( ) both “the psychic” ( % & #) and “the fleshly” ( #) (Treat. Res. 45.39-46.2), a “spiritual resurrection” that is in fact directly identified with the ascent (Treat. Res. _____________ 7

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I read at Treat. Res. 47.38 as a variant spelling of (Sahidic ) (cf. Layton, The Gnostic Treatise, 25, 158; for a survey of other readings, see Peel, “The Treatise on the Resurrection,” 187–88). Peel claims that such a reading “presupposes an aural confusion between and ,” and argues that this would be “an unlikely error if the scribe was visually copying the manuscript” (ibid., 187). I would, however, be inclined to see the manuscript reading as indicating that the manuscript was not in fact copied visually, but rather by dictation. Cf. also 48.14, where is likewise used instead of in . See Layton, “Vision and Revision,” 208, 211. Against this view, see, e.g., Peel, “The Treatise on the Resurrection,” 142–43. See Layton, “Vision and Revision,” 211 n.96.

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45.39-46.2),10 would seem to indicate rather strongly that the new flesh is thought to be of a spiritual kind. This implication is further strengthened when we read the passages in question together with intertextually linked parts of 1 and 2 Corinthians. A key aspect in this regard is the metaphorical use of the concept of “swallowing.” The reference in Treat. Res. to the spiritual resurrection “swallowing” ( ) both the psychic and the fleshly may fruitfully be understood in light of the concept expounded in 1 Cor 15:44 of there being both a “psychic body” (σῶμα ψυχικόν) and a “spiritual body” (σῶμα πνευματικόν) – the former being sown and the latter arising – and the reference some verses later, in 15:54, to death being “swallowed” in victory. In such an intertextual reading the sowing and arising described in 1 Cor 15:44 thus becomes analogous to the entry into, and ascent from, this world, mentioned at Treat. Res. 47.5-8. Treat. Res. also uses the metaphor of swallowing in three other instances, and there are also other New Testament texts that may have a distinct bearing on the interpretation of the use of this metaphor in Treat. Res. “The Savior swallowed death” (Treat. Res. 45.14-15) proclaims Treat. Res., but Christ is also said to have “raised himself up,11 having swallowed the visible by means of the invisible” (Treat. Res. 45.19-22),12 and later we are told that “the imperishability [flows] down upon the corruption, and the light flows down upon the darkness, swallowing it, and the fullness fills/perfects ( ) the deficiency” (Treat. Res. 48.38-49.6). We thus have references to the spiritual swallowing the psychic and the fleshly, the invisible swallowing the visible, light swallowing darkness,13 and immortality swallowing mortality. The latter clearly recalls 2 Cor 5:4, with its reference to mortality being swallowed by life, but we also notice the parallelism in Treat. Res. between the resurrection of Christ and that of the Christians. Christ is said to have risen “having swallowed the visible by means of the invisible” (Treat. Res. 45.19-22), and it seems that the same goes for the _____________ 10 11 12 13

Cf. Origen, Princ., II.10.3. We will return below to an analysis of the preceding metaphorical description referred to in this statement. For the notion that Christ raised himself up, cf. Athanasius, Inc. 31.4. We will return below to the role of Christ in prefiguring the salvation of the individual Christian. Considering the extended use of First Corinthians in Treat. Res., the reference to light swallowing darkness may easily be read in connection with 1 Cor 4:5, but in the context of Treat. Res.’s discourse on the resurrection, Luke 11:36, which speaks about the body (σῶμα) needing to be full of light rather than darkness, may be an equally relevant intertext. Overall, however, it may be argued that 1 Cor 15:53-54 is the central intertextual focus, with its dichotomies corruption-incorruption, mortality-immortality, and the reference to death being swallowed in victory.

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Christians: their resurrection is the uncovering of their invisible internal living members – their internal body. If we are justified in equating this resurrection with the “spiritual resurrection,” referred to above (Treat. Res. 45.39-46.2), the uncovering of the internal body would seem to take place when the spiritual swallows the psychic and the fleshly parts, or aspects, of the person in question.14 These passages in Treat. Res. thus make perfect sense when understood in light of 2 Cor 4:16-5:4. This Pauline intertext, which ends with the statement in 2 Cor 5:4 about mortality being swallowed by life, begins in 2 Cor 4:16 with a reference to an “external man” (ἔξω ἄνθρωπος) that “perishes” and an “internal [man]” (ἔσω [ἄνθρωπος]) that is “renewed” daily. It then goes on, in 4:18, to speak about the things that are seen, which are temporal, and the things that are not seen, which are eternal. Further significance is added when this passage is then also understood in intertextual combination with the description made in Rom 7:22-23 of the contrast between the “internal man” (ἔσω ἄνθρωπος) and “the members” (τὰ μέλεα).15 By an interpretive blending of these passages, Treat. Res. regards both the internal and the external ἄνθρωπος as being constituted by μέλεα, and consequently speaks of internal and external “members.” Read together, then, these Pauline intertexts provide us with a rationale for Treat. Res.’s internal body consisting of invisible, incorruptible members, and the external one consisting of mortal, visible members. Moreover, the contrast made in 2 Cor 5:1-2 between the perishable earthly and the imperishable heavenly bodies thus makes good sense when understood from the perspective of Treat. Res.’s interpretation of the resurrection.16 Treat. Res.’s reference to the reception of flesh in connection with the ascent,17 would moreover seem to imply that the invisible internal living members attain new flesh.18 What then constitutes these internal members themselves? What “shall not perish” ( ) is elsewhere specified by Treat. Res. as “the thought of those who are saved” ( ) and “the mind (νοῦς) of those who have known him” ( ; Treat. Res. 46.21-24), i.e., those who have known Christ. It is thus likely that Treat. Res. equates the mind _____________ 14 15

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This is in line with Troels Engberg-Pedersen’s interpretation of Paul’s understanding of the resurrection, in the present volume. On this contrast in Rom 7:22-23 in comparison with 2 Cor 4:16, cf. Anders-Christian Lund Jacobsen, “The Constitution of Man According to Irenaeus and Origen,” in Körper und Seele: Aspekte spätantiker Anthropologie (ed. Barbara Feichtinger, et al.; Beiträge zur Altertumskunde 215; München: K. G. Saur, 2006), 79 n.33. Cf. Peel, “The Treatise on the Resurrection,” 143. Cf. Peel, “The Treatise on the Resurrection,” 136. Cf. Peel, “The Treatise on the Resurrection,” 142–43.

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(νοῦς) with the internal members, and that it is the mind that shall receive new, spiritual, flesh in connection with the Christian’s ascent to heaven, after having shed the material body as well as the soul, or psychic element.19 But how is this understood?

3. Conceptualizations of Life and Death At this point we also need to consider the way in which Treat. Res. blends the concepts of resurrection and birth. For in the rhetoric of this text, these concepts are implicitly presented as being analogical, both involving exit from one world, or state of being, and entry into another. This analogy brings to the fore not just the relationship between birth and resurrection, however, but also the connection between death and resurrection. As we shall see, the way in which death and resurrection are here closely associated with certain metaphorical conceptualizations of life constitutes the basis of a range of what the treatise itself refers to as “the symbols and likenesses of the resurrection” ( ; Treat. Res. 49.6-7), and which we may refer to as metaphorical blends.20

3.1. Life is a Pregnancy and Death is Birth – The Processual Dimension Even by themselves, the parallelisms between entry into, and exit from, this world, open up for a comparison between the concepts of birth and _____________ 19

20

Insight into Treat. Res.’s concept of the νοῦς is, however, obscured by the fact that this is the only instance in the treatise where the term is used. Peel notes that this salvation of the mind has the “distinctly Christian twist” that it is contingent on knowledge of Christ and belief in his resurrection (see Peel, “The Treatise on the Resurrection,” 173). The terminology of “blending” derives from the cognitive theories of Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner (see esp. Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, “Conceptual Integration Networks,” Cognitive Science 22:2 [1998]: 133–87; Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities [New York: Basic Books, 2002]; for an introduction to this theoretical framework and an extensive application to the study of ancient texts, see Hugo Lundhaug, “‘There is a Rebirth and an Image of Rebirth’: A Cognitive Poetic Analysis of Conceptual and Intertextual Blending in the Exegesis on the Soul [NHC II,6] and the Gospel of Philip [NHC II,3]” [Ph.D. diss., University of Bergen, 2007]; for a shorter introduction and application of the theory, see Hugo Lundhaug, “Conceptual Blending in the Exegesis on the Soul,” in Explaining Christian Origins and Early Judaism: Contributions from Cognitive and Social Science [ed. Petri Luomanen, et al.; Biblical Interpretation Series 89; Leiden: Brill, 2007], 141-160).

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resurrection, but a blending of these concepts also surfaces in a more explicit manner elsewhere in the treatise. In the middle of a discussion of the fate of the body we are presented with the following metaphorically based argument: “The χόριον21 of the body is old age, and you exist in corruption having the deficit as a profit. For you shall not give (away) that which is better when you depart” (Treat. Res. 47.17-22). Old age is here referred to as a χόριον, or, more specifically, “the χόριον of the body” ( & ). Now, χόριον is not an unambiguous term and as such it may carry a variety of metaphorical implications. The most pertinent metaphorical source domain for the argument that is made in Treat. Res., however, is that of human birth. In this sense, the term χόριον refers to the membrane covering the fetus in the womb, but may also, at the same time, carry connotations of the entire afterbirth, i.e., all that which is expelled and discarded at birth.22 As it employs this term here, then, Treat. Res. invites the reader to consider life, death, and resurrection in terms of the more concrete and easily grasped concepts of pregnancy and birth. For, notwithstanding the rather awkward phrasing of the passage wherein it appears, the way the term χόριον is employed in Treat. Res. may be regarded as a metaphorical description of old age within the framework of a specific metaphorical conceptualization of life and death. But how are we to understand the metaphor? It has been suggested that, metaphorically, the term χόριον, as it is used in Treat. Res., simply “represents that which has had its useful purpose, but which ultimately is discarded.”23 However, this interpretation downplays the important metaphorical implications that may arise from the fact that χόριον not only denotes the waste-products of pregnancy and birth, but also a membrane.24 It has also been claimed _____________ 21 22

23

24

I have deliberately left the Greek term χόριον untranslated at this point. See the discussion below. See, e.g., LSJ, 1999a; Layton, The Gnostic Treatise, 81–82; Malcolm L. Peel, The Epistle to Rheginos: A Valentinian Letter on the Resurrection (NTL; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969), 84. Peel, The Epistle to Rheginos, 84; cf. also Horacio E. Lona, Über die Auferstehung des Fleisches: Studien zur frühchristlichen Eschatologie (BZNW 66; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1993), 225; Peel, “The Treatise on the Resurrection,” 182. In his Contra Celsum Origen employs the concept of the χόριον as a metaphor for the body (See Cels. VII.32; cf. Peel, “The Treatise on the Resurrection,” 182), using the term specifically in its sense of afterbirth. Origen’s usage is only superficially similar to that of Treat. Res., however, for in contrast to Origen, Treat. Res. does not use the term as a metaphor for the body, but rather for old age, and plays specifically on the metaphorical implications arising from the fact that the word χόριον may denote a membrane. The term may also denote the membrane covering a chicken in the egg. If we choose to understand χόριον to refer to the membrane covering the chicken in the egg, we

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that χόριον is here simply “a harsh and unprepared (also undeveloped) metaphor for ‘body’.”25 This, however, runs counter to the fact that Treat. Res. does not, in fact, state that the body is the χόριον. It is old age that is “the χόριον of the body.”26 This again implies that the body is metaphorically something other than a χόριον, for if old age is the χόριον of the body, then what is the body? Moreover, since, as we have seen, Treat. Res. operates with both an internal and an external body, which one is it? Further, the metaphor also implies the birth of something, and from something, when the χόριον of old age is broken through and left behind, which leads to the question of the identity of this metaphorical baby. So, let us see how this conceptual blend works. Old age is metaphorically the thin membrane that is traversed and discarded when the metaphorical baby is born. Since old age can be considered to be a boundary state between life and death, the moment of metaphorical birth can be understood as death, and consequently the implied metaphorical pregnancy is to be understood as life. Within the overall rhetoric of Treat. Res., the only candidate for the baby that is born from this metaphorical pregnancy would seem to be the “living members” ( ) that in this life is located inside the visible ones that perish, which means that it is the internal body that is metaphorically the baby that is born from the external. As we have seen, Treat. Res. understands the resurrection as the uncovering of this internal body, which would then happen at the death of the external, perishable, one. For Treat. Res. resurrection thus becomes the birth of the internal living body, and actually also identical with its metaphorical conceptualization of death. It is worth noting, however, that the metaphor of old age as the χόριον of the body would only seem to work well when we presuppose the concept of a full human life that runs its course through to a natural death at advanced age, in which case old age may be regarded as the boundary state through which the pregnancy of life passes chronologically to the metaphorical birth that is death. It is thus interesting that this text in fact has even more to say concerning the ageing of the external, perishable, body. As we saw, one exists here in this world in _____________

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may understand death as the hatching of the chicken from the egg. The moment the chicken breaks through the shell and leaves behind the membrane that has covered it in the egg thus becomes a way to conceptualize the moment of death. Life becomes the gestation of the chicken in the egg, and old age the the boundary (the membrane) one has to break through and leave behind in order to get to the new life. Layton, The Gnostic Treatise, 82. Layton, however, argues that “of the body” must here be a genetive of constituency, since, in his view, “only in a very strained sense is old age itself ‘the envelope of the body’” (Layton, The Gnostic Treatise, 84).

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“corruption” ( ) and is to regard the resulting “deficit” ( ) as a “profit” ( # ). This makes sense when we interpret this “corruption” as a metaphorical description of the gradual deterioration of the physical body with old age. The “deficit” resulting from the ageing of this body is to be regarded as a profit, for it means that the birth of the internal, “living,” body moves closer, as the womb constituted by the external body is left behind as the inner body passes through the boundary of old age.27 An implication that may be drawn from this is that the physical decay brought on by ageing is not something that should be looked upon negatively – quite the contrary, since death is simply the birth of something better, a new body with a different kind of flesh.28 As it is employed in Treat. Res., the metaphor of earthly life as a pregnancy thus highlights the transitory nature of the material body and bodily life, while emphasizing the continuation of life in a new and better kind of body after death. Can this perhaps also tell us something about the possible implied audience/readers of Treat. Res.? From the present analysis it would in fact seem that an ideal reader of Treat. Res. would be an elderly one, which may again imply that one of the questions the treatise is addressing is the relationship between the ever changing external material body and the resurrection body. One of the questions that were asked in the early Christian centuries was the question of whether one is going to arise in the exact same body one has when dying.29 This was a question that needed to be answered, for if one were to rise in exactly the same body, then it would not be advisable to live to a ripe old age. Treat. Res.’s metaphor of old age as the χόριον of the body, and of the latter’s decay as a profit, would, however, serve as a consolatory answer to such worries, turning the decay of old age into something positive.30 However, even though the decay of the material body is thus presented in a positive light, and death is conceptualized as birth, this does _____________ 27

28 29 30

The reference to the decay of the earthly body as “a profit” ( # ) also has intertextual connotations. It resonates well with Phil 1:21, with its references to life as “Christ” and death as “a profit” ( # /κέρδος). Cf. Peel, The Epistle to Rheginos, 84. Cf., e.g., Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body. One might here also note that Treat. Res. utilizes the metaphorical potential inherent in the concept of the χόριον rather selectively, for while the membrane covers the foetus throughout the pregnancy, old age is only an aspect of the last phase of the metaphorical pregnancy. From the perspective of conceptual blending theory, this is a good example of “selective projection” of elements and structure from the structuring input space to the blended space in a so-called “single-scope network” (see, e.g., Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think). For more on early Christian views on ageing, see Karen King’s article in the present volume.

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not mean that Treat. Res. has a wholly negative view of the body. For, as we have seen, it is this material body that serves the metaphorical function of the womb in the metaphorical conceptualization of life as a pregnancy, and this conceptual blend highlights the importance of the material body and life in this world as the time and place of the development and maturation needed to effectuate the birth of what we may regard as the resurrection-body. Granted, the physical, external body is described as “that which is worse” ( ; Treat. Res. 47.22)31 in relation to the inner, spiritual one, but Treat. Res. nevertheless grants that “there is grace for it” ( ; Treat. Res. 47.24).32 While it remains unclear what this “grace” actually consists in, there does not seem to be any wholesale disparagement of the physical body as such in this text, but rather a pronounced emphasis on the relatively higher value of the inner body in relation to the outer.

3.2. Life is a Place, and Death is Departure – The Spatial Dimension The passage concerning the χόριον ends with the statement that “you shall not give (away) that which is better when you depart” (Treat. Res. 47.21-22). This is an expression of the rather common conceptual metaphor of death as departure,33 which again depends on the basic conceptualization of time as space, for we may observe that the concept of the passage of time is blended with the concept of physical movement through space. The departure associated with death is in this text quite literally understood as an ascent to “heaven” ( ) (Treat. Res. 45.27, 36), also referred to as “the aeon” ( ; Treat. Res. 47.8). The change in bodily state from life to death is thus not only envisioned as the crossing of a boundary, but also as a spatial departure upwards. What we now need to look into in more detail is the relationship between death, resurrection, and ascent.

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Cf. Layton, “Vision and Revision,” 197–98. Layton argues, not very convincingly, that this is an impossible translation, opting instead for “what it [the body] owes is gratitude” (see Layton, The Gnostic Treatise, 25, 155–56; Layton, “Vision and Revision,” 191–94). For the interpretation chosen here, cf. Peel, The Epistle to Rheginos, 33, 85; Peel, “The Treatise on the Resurrection,” 153. For references to ancient uses of this metaphor, see Peel, The Epistle to Rheginos, 84– 85.

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3.3. Life is a Day, and Death is Sunset – The Temporal Dimension At a relatively early stage Treat. Res. makes use of the common conceptual metaphor of life as a day, expressed more specifically through the constituent metaphor of death as the sunset of life. Treat. Res. elaborates upon it within a distinctly Christian framework, however, and relates it to the resurrection: But if we are manifest in this world wearing him, it is the rays of that one that we are, and it is by him that we are ruled until our setting, that is, our death in this life. It is by him that we are drawn to heaven, like rays by the sun, not being detained by anything. This is the spiritual resurrection that swallows the psychic as well as the fleshly. (Treat. Res. 45.28-46.2)

First and foremost, death in this life, that is, the death of the external body, is here understood in terms of the setting of the sun – the moment of death equaling the moment the sun sets. Treat. Res. expands upon this common framework, however, by specifying that “we,” i.e., the Christians, are the rays of the Savior Jesus Christ, thus simultaneously understanding Christ as the sun, and the Christians as the sun’s rays. This then enables the text to argue that just as the rays of the sun are drawn to the sun at sunset, the Christians are drawn to Christ at their death.34 Even more important, however, are the implications of this blend with regard to the interpretation of the resurrection, since Treat. Res. explicitly states that this process of being drawn to heaven at death, like the rays to the sun at sunset, is to be identified with “the spiritual resurrection” ( #). The implications of this are twofold. Firstly it implies that this “spiritual resurrection” happens immediately upon death, and, secondly, it equates resurrection with ascent to heaven. This is moreover an ascent that cannot be hindered, for it follows from this blend, and this is also made explicit in the text, that just as it is impossible to detain the rays of the sun when the sun goes down, it is impossible to stop the Christians from going up to the Savior in heaven when they die. The metaphor of death as a sunset, as it is used in Treat. Res., thus combines the spatial and temporal aspects of death and resurrection by cleverly integrating the ascent theme by reference to the sun’s rays returning to their origin. Treat. Res. thus very closely connects the death of the external physical body with both ascent and resurrection – the latter two concepts having seemingly been merged. _____________ 34

The Christians are thus “light from light” (φῶς ἐκ φωτός), a description that is of course well known from the Nicene and other fourth century creeds, where it is applied to Christ (see, e.g., J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds [3rd ed.; London: Longman, 1972], 215–16).

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The immediacy of the resurrection/ascent at the death of the external body is something Treat. Res. stresses rather strongly. The text reports that “there are some who wish to know … if he who is saved, when he leaves behind his body ( ), shall he be saved immediately?” (Treat. Res. 47.31-36) The answer given is simple, but effective: “Do not let anyone doubt concerning this” (Treat. Res. 47.36-37). Since the text disengages the concept of the resurrection from the external body belonging to this-worldly existence, referred to as “the visible dead members” ( ), the salvatory ascent involves only the inner members, and resurrection is defined as “the uncovering … of those who have arisen” ( … ). The specification that the resurrection is “always,” or “at every occasion” ( ), such an uncovering would seem to highlight the fact that Treat. Res. is not referring to a “general resurrection” of all Christians at the end of time, but rather to a phenomenon that is repeated at every occasion when the internal members of a person are freed from the external ones at his or her physical death in this world. But what about the reception of flesh? Treat. Res. states concerning the one who is resurrected that “it is this which existed before that he shall himself receive again” (Treat. Res. 49.34-37). The reference to the one who is saved “receiving” ( ) again that “which existed before” indicates that the spiritual resurrection flesh received in connection with the resurrection/ascent existed prior to the individual’s earthly incarnation. This, moreover, indicates that Treat. Res.’s rhetorical premise, “if you did not (pre-)exist in flesh” ( ( ; Treat. Res. 47.4-5), expresses a hypothetical case that is not supported by the implied author, who rather seems to support the idea of a heavenly pre-existence in a superior kind of flesh – the flesh one will receive again in the resurrection.

4. Past, Present, and Future Resurrection: The Already and the Not Yet We have seen above that Treat. Res. uses the term “resurrection” to refer to an immediate post-mortem resurrection-ascent. Yet, the question concerning when the resurrection is supposed to take place is a bit more complicated than that, for, as it is used in Treat. Res., the term “resurrection” is not temporally confined to the post-mortem state, but has a wider field of reference. This-worldly practice and insight are key concepts in this regard:

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For if he who shall die knows about himself that he will die, even if he does many years in this life he is brought to this. Why do you not see yourself as having risen,35 and you are brought to this? If you have the resurrection ( ),36 but continue as if you shall die – yet that one knows that he has died – why, then, do I forgive your lack of practice (( ) )?37 It is necessary for each one to train ( ) in a number of ways, and for him to be released from this element, in order for him not to go astray.38 (Treat. Res. 49.16-34)

The important concept of having the resurrection is introduced by way of a question to Rheginos of why he does not already in his present state see himself as “having risen.” This concept must be understood as an important corollary of the paradoxical claim that resurrection is something that happens to “those who have arisen.” But how exactly may one receive and have the resurrection already in this life?

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Cf. Col 2:20ff. This is the only passage where Treat. Res. refers directly to the resurrection using the Coptic term , rather than the Greek ἀνάστασις ( ). For the latter, see Treat. Res. 44.6; 45.40; 47.3; 48.4, 10-11, 16, 31; 49.7, 16; 50.17-18. What characterizes this only example of the use of the Coptic instead of is the fact that it is closely juxtaposed with the use of the same word as a verb: Rheginos is asked why he does not see himself as “having risen” ( ), and the concept of having “the resurrection” ( ) is introduced. The use of the Coptic term at this point, then, seems to serve first and foremost the purpose of facilitating a play on the Coptic word meaning “to rise” ( ), which is employed at several points throughout the tractate. Consequently there is no reason to believe, even though Treat. Res. uses elsewhere, that a hypothetical Greek “original” would have used a word different from ἀνάστασις where our preserved Coptic text uses . The conclusion that there does not seem to be any substantial difference in meaning between these terms in Treat. Res. is supported by the way in which the treatise uses the latter in its introduction to the recently quoted passage, telling Rheginos that he should “come out of the divisions and the fetters and then (or: already) you have the resurrection”; # # (Treat. Res. 49.13-16). The terms and are thus interchangeable when used as references to the concept of “having the resurrection.” Intertextually, the phrase “come out” ( ) may, especially as it is used here within the context of a resurrection discourse, directly evoke Jesus’ command in John 11:43 to Lazarus to come out of the tomb. The Greek δεῦρο ἔξω of John 11:43 is translated in the Lycopolitan New Testament (see Herbert Thompson, The Gospel of St. John According to the Earliest Coptic Manuscript: Edited with a Translation [Publications of the Egyptian Research Account and British School of Archaeology in Egypt 36; London: British School of Archaeology in Egypt, 1924]); in the Sahdic version (see Hans Quecke, Das Johannesevangelium saïdisch: Text der Handschrift PPalau Rib. Inv.-Nr. 183 mit den Varianten der Handschriften 813 und 814 der Chester Beatty Library und der Handschrift M 569 [PapyCast 11; Rome/Barcelona: Papyrologica Castroctaviana, 1984]). Cf. 1 Tim 4:7-8; Col 2:20ff. Cf. Col 2:20ff.

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Firstly, in order to reap the benefits of having the resurrection one needs to acknowledge it. As we saw in the passage quoted above, if you “see yourself as having risen,” then you will indeed arise. And resurrection, as we saw earlier, was defined as the “uncovering,” when the external body is stripped off at death, of the internal body of those who have already acquired the resurrection in this life. This rather circular definition should not simply be regarded as an example of illogical or flawed argumentation, however, for it does, quite effectively, serve to connect the goal of post-mortem resurrection with this-worldly practice. But what kind of practice? It seems we must here distinguish between two aspects: the practice that effects the reception of the resurrection in this life, and the practice that ought to follow such a reception. With regard to the latter we saw that it was necessary to “practice” (γυμναζεῖν) or “train” (ἀσκεῖν) in order to prevent one from “going astray” and to facilitate the release from the material elements. Here the use of the terms γυμναζεῖν and ἀσκεῖν may well be understood as references to some sort of ascetic practice.39 Resurrection may be acquired by refraining from a life “in accordance with this flesh” (Treat. Res. 49.11-13) and by realizing that one has already died and risen again. This personal insight, however, combined with an acknowledgement of the necessity of “practice” and “training,” is not necessarily the whole story. For, even though the text “makes no mention of baptism whatsoever,”40 we cannot exclude the possibility that Treat. Res. operates with the concept of a necessary initial reception of the resurrection by means of ritual, rather than, or in addition to, ascetic practice. The statement that the one who has acquired the resurrection “knows that he has died” ( ; Treat. Res. 49.27-28) might for instance be understood as a reference to the recollection of some kind of ritual death and resurrection, a rather common early Christian interpretation of the rites of Christian initiation, and baptism in particular, drawing on Rom 6:1-11.41 There are also other parts of Treat. Res. that may be interpreted in the same vein. For instance, the treatise cites Paul to the effect that the Christians (referred to in the first person plural) have participated in _____________ 39 40 41

For patristic references, see PGL 243b, 324a. Peel, “The Treatise on the Resurrection,” 163. For the importance of Rom 6:1-11 in early Christian interpretations of baptism, cf., e.g., Thomas M. Finn, Early Christian Baptism and the Catechumenate: West and East Syria (Message of the Fathers of the Church 5; Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1992), 9–10; Thomas M. Finn, From Death to Rebirth: Ritual and Conversion in Antiquity (New York: Paulist Press, 1997), 255–56; Kilian McDonnell, The Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan: The Trinitarian and Cosmic Order of Salvation (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1996), 217, 230–32.

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Christ’s death and resurrection. Treat. Res. claims that “as the apostle said: ‘we have suffered with him and we have risen with him and we have gone to Heaven with him’” (Treat. Res. 45.24-28). The crucial question with regard to the praxis that is here presupposed by Treat. Res. is what this participation, referred to in the past tense, refers to. Understood against the background of Rom 6, this Pauline quotation, which is actually not a quotation, but rather a composite allusion to Rom 8:17 and Eph 2:6,42 may plausibly be interpreted as a reference to baptismal initiation. Yet another concept utilized in Treat. Res. that may be understood in light of ritual practice, and especially baptism, is that of “wearing” ( /φορέω) Christ. We have seen that Treat. Res. likens Christians who “wear” Christ to the rays of the sun, but how does one put him on? Since the terminology of putting on Christ, when encountered in an early Christian context, often carry strong connotations of ritual initiation,43 this metaphor may also be interpreted in that light.44 Such an interpretation is furthermore strengthened if we read Treat. Res.’s metaphor of wearing Christ intertextually with Gal 3:27, where Paul closely connects the putting on of Christ with baptism.45 It is, however, fair to point out that since Treat. Res. never explicitly refers to initiatory ritual, it is of course impossible to know whether such an interpretation of the text was intended by its author, and it can plausibly be argued that the interpretation of ascetic practice, or a Christian way of life in more general terms, may in itself account for the imagery discussed here. The putting on of Christ referred to in Treat. Res. may, with 1 Cor 15:49 in mind, for instance be understood in terms of the ritual acquisition of the internal body that will rise at the death of the exterior one. Still, we may just as well regard this acquisition as a result of ascetic, or other, practice. In any case, only those who _____________ 42 43

44

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Cf. Peel, The Epistle to Rheginos, 70–72; Peel, “The Treatise on the Resurrection,” 162. See, e.g., Sebastian P. Brock, “Clothing Metaphors as a Means of Theological Expression in Syriac Tradition,” in Typus, Symbol, Allegorie bei den östlichen Vätern und ihren Parallelen im Mittelalter (ed. Margot Schmidt; Eichstätter Beiträge 4; Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1982), 11–38; Jonathan Z. Smith, “The Garments of Shame,” HR 5 (1966): 217–38; Nils Alstrup Dahl and David Hellholm, “Garment-Metaphors: The Old and the New Human Being,” in Antiquity and Humanity: Essays on Ancient Religion and Philosphy: Presented to Hans Dieter Betz on His 70th Birthday (ed. Adela Yarbro Collins and Margaret M. Mitchell; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 139–58. It is here also worthy of note that often when we encounter the garment metaphor in early Christian mystagogy it is formulated in terms of the putting on of light. Such an interpretation of baptismal initiation would fit very well with Treat. Res.’s description of the Christians as beams of light from Christ the Sun. The connection between Treat. Res. 45.30-31 and Gal 3:27 has also been suggested by Peel, The Epistle to Rheginos, 136.

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have put on Christ will be “drawn to heaven” when they die. Since Treat. Res. makes no direct references to ritual, and thus does not explicitly link its understanding of the resurrection with ritual initiation, all we can conclude is that this is an interpretive possibility, albeit a possibility that is strengthened if we presuppose a Sitz im Leben for Treat. Res. among Christians who, based on Romans 6, interpreted baptism in terms of death and resurrection, and who employed the garmentmetaphor mystagogically. What we may say with greater certainty, however, is that the treatise operates with the concept of an already experienced resurrection which it links with what seems most likely to be interpreted as ascetic practice.

5. Conclusion: Resurrection According to the Treatise on the Resurrection Now, in summary, how does Treat. Res. treat the resurrection? We have seen that there are certain key conceptual metaphors that underlie the rhetoric of this text. Resurrection is closely connected to three distinct conceptualizations of death, which are again intimately connected to corresponding conceptualizations of life. These are the metaphorical conceptualizations of death as birth, death as departure, and death as sunset, which are connected to the metaphors of life as a pregnancy, life as a place, and life as a day respectively. These metaphors highlight different aspects of the resurrection. The metaphors of death as birth and death as sunset are, for example, central to the tractate’s argument for the immediacy of the resurrection. Quite paradoxically, but well within the logic of the text, resurrection is linked simultaneously to both birth and death. What becomes apparent is the intriguing fact that Treat. Res.’s concept of the resurrection is actually in many respects identical to its underlying conceptual metaphors of death.46 One might even say that its understanding of the resurrection is based on a literalizing reinterpretation of these metaphors. The concepts of death and resurrection are thus in important ways merged, and resurrection, like death, emerges from this text partly as a new birth and partly as a departure, thus establishing both its immediacy and its boundarycrossing nature. And resurrection, as death, is a departure upwards – an ascent that is a direct consequence of the tractate’s elaboration of the metaphor of death as a sunset. Moreover, the spatial metaphor of de_____________ 46

In early Christian discourse, as Karen King notes in her article in the present volume, the topic of death is ubiquitous and absent at the same time.

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parture and the processual metaphor of birth also imply that death is not simply the end, but also a beginning of, and an entry into, something new. Moreover, the idea that resurrection requires cultivation and involves an uncovering of something internal is also connected with the conceptual metaphors of life as a pregnancy, and death – and resurrection – as birth. A different metaphor that serves to highlight related aspects is that of the body as a garment. Resurrection is in this sense the shedding of the material body, like a garment, by those who have already acquired the resurrection in this life. This shedding/uncovering happens at death. Resurrection is thus something that ultimately takes place when the external body of those who have already been resurrected dies. Resurrection thus happens at the death of the perishable body, but it has also already taken place, most probably by means of some kind of ascetic and/or ritual practice. As for the underlying anthropology, the contrast posited in Treat. Res. is not primarily one between σάρξ and πνεῦμα, but rather between the internal and the external, the visible and the invisible, the perishable and the imperishable. As we have seen, Treat. Res. operates with a concept of bodies constituted by internal, invisible, living members and bodies constituted by external, mortal, visible members. Both of these bodies have flesh, albeit different kinds of flesh – one associated with this present world, and another associated with the next. The view that the material this-worldly flesh shall arise is opposed. Nevertheless, Treat. Res. seems to hold that resurrection still involves some kind of “flesh.” This new “flesh” emerges as the spiritual flesh of an inner embryonic body that needs to be cultivated in the present life, but which is at the same time in some sense preexistent. The perfectly cultivated inner body will then ascend in a perfected state immediately upon the death of the material body. In the preceding analysis of Treat. Res. we have seen how Treat. Res. implicitly strives to answer the question of 1 Cor 15:35 concerning the nature of the resurrection, and that it draws crucially on both 1 Corinthians and other Pauline texts in formulating its own answers.47 Echoing 1 Cor 15:50, Treat. Res. affirms that the material flesh will have no part in salvation. Moreover, the text agrees with what 1 Cor 15:39 points out, namely that not all flesh is the same flesh, and it is in line with 15:40, concerning the different kinds of bodies. From this, Treat. Res. seems to draw the conclusion that not only is there a flesh that is _____________ 47

In fact, Treat. Res.’s understanding of Paul comes strikingly close to how Troels Engberg-Pedersen, in the present volume, argues Paul himself understood the resurrection.

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not destined for salvation, but there is also a different kind of flesh which indeed is, and which the text defines in conscious agreement with 1 Cor 15:44, while also drawing crucially on other Pauline texts, most notably 2 Corinthians and Romans. Last, but not least, we have seen that Treat. Res. regards the resurrection as both a past, present, and future event and experience, and that it argues strongly for the absolute necessity of acquiring, and having faith in, the resurrection already in this life.

Metamorphosis and Mind Cognitive Explorations of the Grotesque in Early Christian Literature Metamorphosis and Mind Cognitive Explorations ISTVÁN CZACHESZ1 Überschrift 2: für Kapitel ohne Ü2 wird hier Ü1 Kurzform wiederholt The word “grotesque” did not exist in antiquity. It has been coined from the Italian grotto after the excavation of Nero’s Domus Aurea in the fifteenth century. The walls of this palace were decorated with “graceful fantasies, anatomical impossibilities, extraordinary excrescences, human heads and torsos.”2 In modern literary studies, the concept of the grotesque was introduced by Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975).3 Bakhtin especially explored this subject in his study of the art of François Rabelais (ca. 1494–1553), which appeared in English as Rabelais and his World. In this book, Bakhtin introduced the term “grotesque realism” to identify a peculiar aesthetic concept of the human body, which he found in Rabelais and traced back to folk culture.4 Grotesque realism shows the body without clear boundaries, focusing on the apertures, convexities and offshoots. There is an emphasis on activities in which the body exceeds its limits, such as copulation, pregnancy, childbirth, agony, eating, drinking, and defecation. The grotesque body is a phenomenon in transformation, in an as yet unfinished metamorphosis of death, birth, growth, and becoming.

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István Czachesz is a fellow of the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Finland, and a Privatdozent at the Faculty of Theology, University of Heidelberg, Germany. A. K. Robertson, The Grotesque Interface (Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert/Iberoamericana, 1996), 10. М. Бахтин, Творчество Франсуа Рабле и народная культура средневековья и ренессанса (Москва: Художественная литература, 1965); English translation: Rabelais and His World, trans. H. Iswolsky (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1968); cf. R. M. Berrong, Rabelais and Bakhtin: Popular Culture in Gargantua and Pantagruel (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986); A. Simons, “Creating New Images of Bakhtin,” in Studies in Eastern European Thought 49 (1997), 305–17. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 18.

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1. Uses of the Grotesque in Early Christian Literature In my forthcoming monograph I deal with three different domains where early Christian literature uses grotesque imagery:5 the grotesque in hell, in social rhetoric, and in the realm of the divine. I will give a few examples from each domain.

1.1. Hell The central chapters of the Apocalypse of Peter, dating to the late first or early second century,6 describe the punishments of different sins in the underworld.7 At this place I can only give a selection, focusing on the cases that are most relevant for my present contribution. People who blasphemed “the way of righteousness” are hanged from the tongue and burned by fire (ApPt 22 A; 7.1–2 E).8 Other sinners are hanged up from different body parts, such as hair or legs. Women who conceived children outside marriage and procured abortion sit in a pool of discharge and excrement, with their eyes burned by flames coming from their children (26 A; 8.1–4 E).9 As for parents who committed infanticide, flash-eating animals come forth from the mothers’ rotten milk and torment the parents (8.5–10 E). Those who persecuted and gave over “the righteous ones” sit in a dark place, are burned waist-high, tortured by evil spirits, and their innards are eaten by worms (27 A; 9.1–2 E). Various other sinners sit in burning mud and bodily discharges, such as blood, pus, and excrement. Those who blasphemed and spoke ill of “the way of righteousness” bite their lips and get fiery rods in their eyes (28 A; 9.3 E). False witnesses bite their tongues and have burning flames in their mouths (29 A; 9.4 E). They who trusted their riches, did not have mercy on the orphans and widows, and were ignorant of God’s commandments, are wearing rags and are driven on sharp and fiery stones (30 A; 9.5–7 E). Men behaving like women and women _____________ 5 6 7 8 9

I. Czachesz, The Grotesque Body in Early Christian Literature: Hell, Scatology, and Metamorphosis, Habilitationsschrift (Heidelberg, 2007). J. N. Bremmer and I. Czachesz, eds., The Apocalypse of Peter (Leuven: Peeters, 2003). I. Czachesz, “The Grotesque Body in the Apocalypse of Peter,” in Bremmer and Czachesz, The Apocalypse of Peter, 108–26. ‘A’ and ‘E’ stand for the Greek Akhmim Codex and the Ethiopic text, respectively. The Greek text is fragmentary; for different emendations, see E. Klostermann, Apocrypha I. Reste des Petrusevangeliums, der Petrusapokalypse und des Kerygmata Petri (Berlin: DeGruyter, 1933), 11, notes. The Ethiopic has infanticide as a separate sin. Cf. M. Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell: An Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and Christian Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 96–97.

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having intercourse with each other endlessly throw themselves into an abyss (32 A; 10.2–4 E).10 Men and women, whose sin is unspecified, hit each other with fiery rods.11 They who did not obey their parents slip down from a fiery place repeatedly; they are also hanged and tormented by flesh-eating birds (11.1–5 E).12 Slaves who did not obey their masters chew their tongues, and are burned in eternal fire (11.8–9 E). They who did charity and regarded themselves righteous are blind and deaf, pushing each other onto live coal (12.1–3 E). The fourth century Apocalypse of Paul, better known by its Latin title as the Visio Pauli, gives us a somewhat different list of sins and punishments.13 Besides omitting some of the sins and tortures, it contains a number of new ones, as well: piercing of the bowels with hooks (dragging the entrails through the mouth in the Coptic version),14 hitting people with stones and wounding the face, worms proceeding from the mouth and nostrils, cutting the lips and the tongue with a fiery razor, wearing burning chains in the neck, sitting in ice and snow, sitting in a pit of pitch and sulphur, or wearing clothes drawn with these substances, and the closing of the nostrils. Previously I have suggested various possible sources of these images:15 they might have had their origin in real life, particularly in the Roman practice of torture (possibly as applied to the martyrs), Jewish or Greek literary tradition, or they may have been invented by the early Christian authors. Yet our concern is with the question of why they (and not other punishments) were recorded in these lists, and what their function was in early Christian discourse. Other grotesque images are connected with people’s lives in this world, rather than with their fate after death. In the Acts of Thomas 30–8, the apostle finds the corpse of a handsome young man beside the road, _____________ 10

11 12 13

14

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One of the Ethiopic manuscripts adds idolatry. Both Ethiopic mss. contain a remark on “those who cut their flesh,” cf. D. D. Buchholz, Your eyes will be opened: A study of the Greek (Ethiopic) Apocalypse of Peter (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1984), 212–15. For cultic tattooing and cutting in antiquity, see D. E. Aune, Revelation 6–16 (Nashville: Nelson, 1997), 465–69; W. Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 81. This group is mentioned only in the Akhmim text. The sins are not specified. Cf. the punishment of the homosexuals above. J. N. Bremmer and I. Czachesz (eds.), The Visio Pauli and the Gnostic Apocalypse of Paul (Leuven: Peeters, 2007), with discussion of former scholarship; I. Czachesz, “Torture in Hell and Reality: The Visio Pauli,” in Bremmer and Czachesz, The Visio Pauli, 130– 43. E. A. W. Budge, Miscellaneous Coptic Texts in the Dialect of Upper Egypt (London: British Museum, 1915). This text is not identical with the Apocalypse of Paul in Nag Hammadi Codex V. Czachesz, “Torture.”

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and begins to pray. Soon a huge serpent or dragon (δράκων, which is also black according to the Syriac text) comes forth from the bushes, and recounts how he killed the man, because he made love to a beautiful woman whom the dragon loved. The apostle then converses at length with the dragon and finally commands him to suck out the poison from the corpse. The serpent obeys and bursts up, the apostle in turn raises the young man, who becomes his follower. In another episode (ATh 42–50), a woman tells Thomas about her encounter with a “troubled and disturbed” young man, who came up to her after she left the bath, and asked her to sleep with him. She refused him, but he appeared to her in dream and had sexual intercourse with her. This has been going on for a long time, until she met the apostle. The mysterious lover turns out to be a demon, who negotiates for a while with the apostle, but then leaves his “fair wife.” In a third episode (ATh 62–81), mother and daughter are attacked by a man and a boy on the street: the men are black, their teeth are like milk and their lips like soot. From that day, the two women are struck on the floor time to time unexpectedly. The apostle exorcises them and the demon in the mother turns out to be the one he expelled in chapters 42–50. Stories of demonic possession are frequent in the Gospels and other early Christian literature, yet the grotesque representations of the demons set these stories apart from most comparable narratives.

1.2. Social Rhetoric In a second group of texts, grotesque images are used to mock and ridicule the adversaries of early Christians. Many times we read about grotesque labels attached to Jesus and his followers. Jesus is called “a glutton and a drunkard” (Matthew 9:11/Luke 7:34); Paul “a plague” or “pestilence” (λοιμός, Acts 24:5–6), “sorcerer” and “deceiver” (Acts of Peter 4); Peter a “busybody” or “troublemaker” (περίεργος, Acts of Peter 34). Yet most of the time it is the Christians who use such labels, calling Pharisees and Sadducees in the Gospels “brood of vipers” (Matthew 3:7; 23:32), Herod Antipas a “fox” (Lk 13:32), Simon magus “the foulest (pestilentissimus) of men” (Acts of Peter 14) and “abomination” (horrendum, Acts of Peter 14). The Epistle to Titus 1:12 quotes Epimenides’ hexameter that “Cretans are always liars, vicious brutes (κακὰ θηρία), lazy gluttons (lit. ‘bellies’).” The most powerful applications of the grotesque in the domain of social rhetoric are found in narratives that employ scatological humour,

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so typical of Greek comedy and the popular mimus,16 to ridicule the antagonists of the Christian narratives. In the Acts of Peter, the senator Marcellus is mislead by the tricks of Simon magus, whom he even entertains in his own house. Upon the arrival and mighty miracles of Peter (e.g. raising a smoked tuna fish), however, Marcellus turns against his teacher, rushes into his house and throws curses at his head (Acts of Peter 14). Then the servants take Simon, beat him with rods and stones, and complete the treatment by emptying chamber pots (vasa stercoribus plena) onto his head. In the Passion of Andrew, the Christians of Patras assemble in the palace of the proconsul Aegeates. As they are celebrating the day of the Lord in the room of Maximilla, wife of the proconsul, servants report the lord of the house is coming home. Andrew prays and asks the Lord Jesus that everyone could leave before the proconsul enters the room. And behold, Aegeates is immediately struck with diarrhea (“he was troubled by his bowels,” ὑπὸ τῆς γαστρὸς ὠχλήτη), asks for a lavatory seat, and sits on it while the brothers, made invisible by Andrew, are able to steal out beside him.

1.3. The Bright Side of the Grotesque The power of grotesque images is also employed in language about the divine. Various early Christian writings suggest that Jesus was capable of appearing in different forms, both simultaneously and subsequently.17 In the Acts of John 88–89, Jesus simultaneously appears to James as a child and to John as a handsome man. Not much later he appears to John as a bald headed man with “thick and flowing beard,” and to James as a youth whose beard is just starting. In the same text, John reports that Jesus’ body was sometimes soft, but sometimes hard as stone; his eyes were always open; he left no footprints on the _____________ 16

17

J. H. Henderson, The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974) 187–203; E. Segal, Roman Laughter: The Comedy of Plautus (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987, 2nd edition); H. Wiemken, Der griechische Mimus: Dokumente zur Geschichte des antiken Volkstheaters (Bremen: Schünemann, 1972). Cf. K. J. Reckford, Aristophanes’ Old-and-new Comedy (Chapel Hill, N. C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1987); D. F. Harvey and J. M. Wilkins, The Rivals of Aristophanes: Studies in Athenian Old Comedy (London: Duckworth and The Classical Press of Wales, 2000); I. C. Storey, Eupolis: Poet of Old Comedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). This phenomenon has been called polymorphy in recent scholarship. Definitions of polymorphy vary as well as theories of its origin. For two recent discussions of the subject see Czachesz, The Grotesque Body, 127–46; P. Foster, “Polymorphic Christology: Its Origins and Development in Early Christianity,” The Journal of Theological Studies 58 (2007), 66–99.

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ground, and he was often a small figure looking upwards to the sky. During his transfiguration on the mountain, Jesus’ head reaches heaven; when John walks up to him, he turns around, suddenly becoming a small man, and pulls John’s beard. In the Acts of Peter 20–21, blind women see Christ in different forms simultaneously. Some see an old man, whose appearance they cannot describe; others see a young man (iuuenem adulescentem), still others a boy. In various Apocryphal Acts, Christ routinely appears as a beautiful young man, or in the form of the protagonist.18 In the Acts of Andrew and Matthias he appears as a ship captain (5, 17) and as a little child (18, 33) and claims he can appear in any form he wishes (18). Occasionally Jesus appears in the form of animals. The lamb of Revelation is a well-known example, but precisely because of its familiarity we seldom think about it as a case of theriomorphic representation. Jesus also appears as an eagle in various writings. In the Apocryphon of John, which paraphrases the biblical story of creation, Jesus Christ, the Savior, teaches Adam and his wife Eve: “I appeared in the form of an eagle on the tree of knowledge […] that I might teach them and awaken them out of the depth of sleep. For they were born in a fallen state and they recognized their nakedness” (NHC II.23.26–33).19 In the Acts of Philip 3.5–9 (probably 4th century),20 the apostle Philip prays and beseeches the Lord Jesus to reveal himself. Suddenly a huge tree appears in the desert. When Philip looks upwards, he catches glimpse of the “image of a huge eagle,” the wings of which are “spread out in the form of the true cross.” Philip addresses the “magnificent eagle,” and asks it to take his prayers to the Savior. He calls it “chosen bird,” the beauty of which is “not of this place.” Suddenly he realises that it is the Lord Jesus Christ “who revealed himself in this form.” The apostle praises the Lord, and Jesus (still in the form of an eagle) exhorts the apostle. Speaking animals are stock-material in the Apocryphal Acts.21 In the Acts of Paul, the apostle baptises a speaking lion, which he meets _____________ 18

19

20 21

Czachesz, The Grotesque Body, 132–33. Cf. P. J. Lalleman, “Polymorphy of Christ,” in J. N. Bremmer, ed., The Apocryphal Acts of John (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1995), 97–118, esp. 109. The short version of the text probably dates to the second century, cf. G. P. Luttikhuizen, “A Gnostic Reading of the Acts of John,” in Bremmer, The Apocryphal Acts of John, 119–52 at 124–5. This passage is found in the long version. I. Czachesz, Commission Narratives: A Comparative Study of the Canonical and Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (Leuven: Peeters, 2007), 140, note 1. Ch. R. Matthews, “Articulate Animals: A Multivalent Motif in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles,” in F. Bovon, A. G. Brock, and Ch. R. Matthews, eds., The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 205–32; I.

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again when he is sentenced to the animals in Ephesus.22 In the Acts of Peter 9–12 a dog serves as the apostle’s messenger, summoning Simon Magus. In the Acts of Thomas, both speaking animals of the Hebrew Bible are featured: the apostle destroys the serpent of Eden (31–3, see above), and speaking asses assist him twice in the narrative (39–41; 68– 81). Philip in his Acts meets three articulate animals: the eagle that is Jesus Christ (Acts of Philip 3.5–9); a leopard and a kid, which he baptises and which will even receive the Eucharist (chapters 8 and 12). Other animals do not speak but display intelligent behaviour otherwise: for example, bugs obey the apostle in the Acts of John 60–61, leaving his bed and waiting outside of the house during the whole night, until John lets them back into their dwelling.

2. Violating Expectations: Counterintuitive Ideas Although I have given rather diverse examples of the grotesque in the first part of my contribution, it is certainly true of all of them that they show things in surprising, non-standard ways. Normally speaking, no scary animals are born of mothers’ milk, nobody changes his stature in a second, people are not foxes, eagles do not speak, and servants do not empty chamber-pots on the heads of their masters. Things work in these texts in ways we do not see in everyday experience. How elements that violate everyday expectations affect the attractiveness and memorability of ideas is explained by Pascal Boyer’s model of minimal counterintuitiveness. Boyer’s theory is based on the assumption that the human mind has been shaped by evolution for millions of years. Our minds did not develop to think about just everything in the world, but primarily to secure our survival amongst a particular set of challenges. Therefore, we are predisposed to pay attention to certain aspects of the world around us (e.g., predators, prey, human faces, depth), and think in particular ways about that information (e.g.,

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22

Czachesz “Speaking Asses in the Acts of Thomas: An Intertextual and Cognitive Perspective,” in G. H. van Kooten and J. T. A. G. M. van Ruiten, eds., Balaam and His Speaking Ass (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 275–85. Hamburg Papyrus 1–3. Paul meets the lion another time in the Coptic fragment of the Acts of Paul, preserved in Papyrus Bodmer XLI (R. Kasser and P. Luisier, “Le Papyrus Bodmer XLI en édition princeps: l’épisode d’Éphèse des Acta Pauli en copte et en traduction,” Le Muséon 117 (2004), 281–384). Cf. T. Adamik, “The Baptized Lion in the Acts of Paul,” in J. N. Bremmer. ed., The Apocryphal Acts of Paul (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1996), 60–74.

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fighting, fleeing, cooperating, mating).23 The human mind is not a blank slate when we are born, but rather it is a well-adapted organ which we can use to solve specific tasks in the world. Experimental work has shown that humans share a number of ontological categories to make sense of their environment.24 Ontological categories represent “the most fundamental conceptual cuts one can make in the world, such as those between animals and plants, artifacts and animals, and the like.”25 Experiments have also shown that “at the ontological level there are clusters of properties that unambiguously and uniquely belong to all members of a given category at that level. All animals are alive, have offspring, and grow in ways that only animals do.”26 In other words, people have particular expectations toward objects belonging to a particular category. Psychologists have not yet reached a final agreement regarding the set of basic ontological categories, but the following list is widely supported: HUMAN, ANIMAL, PLANT, ARTIFACT, and (natural) OBJECT.27 Boyer’s theory of counterintuitiveness suggests that religious ideas violate intuitive expectations about ordinary events and states, inasmuch as they “combine certain schematic assumptions provided by intuitive ontologies, with non-schematic ones provided by explicit cultural transmission.”28 Or, as he more recently summarised his model, “religious concepts generally include explicit violations of expectations associated with domain concepts,” that is, they violate the attributes that already children intuitively associate with ontological categories. The idea of a ghost that can go through walls, for example, is based on the ontological category of human beings, but violates our expectations _____________ 23 24 25 26 27

28

Evolutionary psychology examines such aspects of human cognition. A representative study is S. Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York: Norton, 1997). F. C. Keil, Semantic and Conceptual Development: An Ontological Perspective (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979), 46–62. F. C. Keil, Concepts, Kinds, and Cognitive Development (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1989), 196. Keil, Concepts, Kinds, 214. Keil, Semantic and Conceptual Development, 48; S. Atran, “Basic Conceptual Domains,” Mind and Language 4 (1989), 7–16; idem, In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 98; P. Boyer, “Cognitive Constraints on Cultural Representations,” in L. A. Hirschfeld and S. A. Gelman, eds., Mapping the Mind: Domain Specificity in Cognition and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 391–411, at 400–1; idem, Religion Explained: The Human Instincts that Fashion Gods, Spirits and Ancestors (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 90. For a slightly different account, see J. L. Barrett, “Coding and Quantifying Counterintuitiveness: Theoretical and Methodological Reflections,” forthcoming. P. Boyer, The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 48, 121, and passim.

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about intuitive physics that should otherwise apply to humans. Concepts that contain such violations, Boyer suggests, “are more salient than other types of cultural information, thereby leading to enhanced acquisition, representation, and communication.”29 Boyer’s theory has been tested in various experiments. Justin Barrett and Melanie Nyhof added three types of concepts to a simple narrative framework:30 (1) expectation-violating items included a feature that violates intuitive assumptions for the ontological category to which the object belongs (e.g., a living thing that never dies); (2) bizarre items that included a highly unusual feature that violates no category-level assumption (e.g., a living thing that weighs 5000 kilograms is strange, but such a feature is not excluded by ontological expectations about living things); (3) ordinary items with a usual feature (e.g., a living thing that requires nutrients to survive). Subjects had to read the story and write it down from memory; the results were used as input data for a second generation, whose versions in turn were read and written down by a third group. Barrett and Nyhof found that during the three subsequent recalls of the story, counterintuitive and bizarre items were remembered significantly better than common items. Experiments run by Pascal Boyer and Charles Ramble produced similar results.31 Ara Norenzayan and Scott Atran conducted a different experiment.32 They suspected that the narrative framework in the previous experiments biased the recall of different types of items; therefore they gave subjects only lists of items without a narrative framework.33 Their initial findings contradicted Boyer’s theory: the more intuitive an item or a set of items was, the better it was remembered. However, when Norenzayan and Atran compared the results of the immediate and delayed recalls (after three minutes and one week, respectively), they found that memory for minimally counterintuitive items decayed less then for intuitive or excessively violating ones. Recently both the role of _____________ 29

30

31 32

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P. Boyer and C. Ramble, “Cognitive Templates for Religious Concepts: Crosscultural Evidence for Recall of Counter-intuitive Representations,” Cognitive Science 25 (2001), 535–64 at 538. J. L. Barrett and M. A. Nyhof, “Spreading Non-natural Concepts: The Role of Intuitive Conceptual Structures in Memory and Transmission of Cultural Materials,” Journal of Cognition and Culture 1 (2001), 69–100. Boyer and Ramble, “Cognitive Templates.” Atran, In Gods We Trust, 100–7; A. Norenzayan and S. Atran, “Cognitive and Emotional Processes in the Cultural Transmission of Natural and Nonnatural Beliefs”, in M. Schaller and C. S. Crandall (eds.), The Psychological Foundations of Culture (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004) 149–69. As in the previous experiments, the lists were balanced against various influences, see Atran, In Gods We Trust, 101–3.

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context and the long-term advantage of counterintuitive ideas has been confirmed by experiments conducted by Lauren Gonce and her collaborators.34 A new look at Barrett and Nyhof’s results reveals that also in their experiment the memory of counterintuitive ideas decayed less; they paid no attention to this probably because of the absolute advantage of such concepts in both immediate and delayed recall in the experiment.35 Since grotesque images always include one or more elements that violate everyday experience, Boyer’s model explains why such images are attractive and why they are remembered. Most of the examples in this article indeed contain only limited violations of ontological templates. Bodies in hell are distorted only in one or two ways at a time; stories with drastic humour retain a believable setting to which they add only few scatological elements; and animals speak or listen to the apostles but are not weird otherwise. Whereas Boyer’s theory of counterintuitiveness certainly explains some elements of the grotesque, including its attention-grabbing nature and memorability, it does not explain others. To begin with, not all violations in our examples affect ontological expectations. Metabolism certainly belongs to our ontological expectations about human beings – its occurrence in scatology rather violates learned expectations about the settings in which it should occur and the ways it should be described. This, of course, cannot be taken as a disproof of Boyer’s theory, which is mainly intended to explain our belief in ghosts, spirits, and gods. Nevertheless, it must be noted that some recent experiments did not find a difference (in terms of memorability) between the violation of ontological and other categories.36 More importantly, this model does not yet explain why grotesque images are different from other kinds of counterintuitive ideas (the very idea of God, to mention an obvious example) that are not felt to be grotesque.

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L. O. Gonce et al. “Role of Context in the Recall of Counterintuitive Concepts,” Journal of Cognition and Culture 6 (2006), 521–47; M. A. Upal et al., “Contextualizing Counterintuitiveness: How Context Affects Comprehension and Memorability of Counterintuitive Concepts,” Cognitive Science 31 (2007), 415–39. Barrett and Nyhof, “Spreading Non-natural Concepts,” 85–87, 89–90. K. Steenstra, “A Cognitive Approach to Religion: The Retention of Counterintuitive Concepts” (Master’s thesis, Radboud University, Nijmegen, 2005).

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3. Metamorphosis and Mind The concept of metamorphosis offers another perspective to approach the grotesque in early Christian literature. Dead people in hell, however strangely they appear and behave, were originally people like you and me who have been changed into a different form. The eagle that talks to Philip is actually Jesus who appears as an eagle. In a less spectacular way, many of the grotesque images have come into existence by changing either ‘normal’ things (of which we have first-hand experience from everyday life) or counterintuitive ones into new, surprising forms. This is not self-evident, because there are many counterintuitive ideas that do not include an element of metamorphosis. For example, Ezekiel’s throne vision (Ezekiel 1:5–25) describes a structure that has not come to existence (according to the narrative) from something that belongs to ordinary experience. Whereas ancestors (or saints) used to be ordinary people, this cannot be said of God – at least in Jewish and Christian thought. In this part of my article, I will argue that although ‘metamorphosis’ can have several different meanings in ancient and modern usage, it is ultimately related to the manipulation of everyday expectations attached to ontological categories. When Ovid speaks of metamorphoses, he generally means that someone or something assumes a completely different form – which is, however, a usual form otherwise. According to his invocation, Ovid wants to deal with “shapes transformed into new bodies” (in nova … mutatas formas … corpora).37 If we look at his metamorphoses, we can see that the “new bodies” are most of the time quite usual objects, plants, animals, or human beings. The same is true of the metamorphosis of Lucius in the Ass Novel (in both Pseudo-Lucian’s and Apuleius’ versions). At other times, however, Ovid’s heroes do assume forms that are unusual in themselves: Hermaphroditus is merged with the nymph Salmacis (IV.274–388); some people become divine beings, such as Hercules, Aeneas, Romulus, and Hersilia.38 Among Ovid’s metamorphoses there are also ones in which somebody or something acquires a new and unusual feature, rather than undergoing a thorough change. A good example is Icarus who flies using the wings made by his father Daedalus. Some examples from the New Testament correspond to the latter two types in Ovid’s book. When the Gospels write of Jesus’ metamorphosis (μεταμορφώθη) on the mount of transfiguration,39 he _____________ 37 38 39

Ovid, Metamorphoses I.1. For the latter, see I. S. Gilhus, Animals, Gods and Humans: Changing Attitudes to Animals in Greek, Roman, and Early Christian Ideas (London: Routledge, 2006), 79. Mark 9:2; Matthew 17:2; cf. Luke 9:29.

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still remains in human form but acquires unusual attributes: “his face shone like the sun, and his garments became white as light.” (Matthew 17:2). When Paul suggests believers would be transformed into Jesus’ image (2 Corinthians 3:18, τὴν αὐτὴν εἰκόνα μεταμορφούμεθα), he certainly does not refer to Jesus’ bodily appearance on earth, but some other form that is unknown from everyday, first-hand experience. Given the range of metamorphoses we have in these examples, it seems advisable to start out with a rather broad understanding of metamorphosis, which spans from the growing of strange attributes to a complete change into either normal or unusual shapes. Our observations about counterintuitiveness (that is, the violation of expectations attached to universal ontology) and metamorphosis allow for a characterisation of grotesque phenomena. Objects can fall under four rubrics with regard to counterintuitiveness and metamorphosis (see Table below). (1) The first type involves both metamorphosis and at least one counterintuitive element. Ovid’s Hermaphroditus and heroes undergoing apotheosis are examples of this category. Among the grotesque motifs mentioned in this article, we can refer here to the monsters born of breast milk; devout animals; or Jesus appearing as a speaking eagle. (2) The second type contains only metamorphosis, without a counterintuitive element. Ovid’s Icarus certainly belongs to this category. Do his heroes changed into animals also belong here? This needs further clarification, which we will undertake later on. Many grotesque images are created in this way, such as people in hell assuming strange positions and suffering various ordeals; victims of scatological humour; and Jesus appearing as a ship captain or a child. (3) The third type contains only a counterintuitive element, but no metamorphosis. Various gods, at least ideally, belong to this category (in practice, however, most deities have the inclination to assume different shapes). In the realm of the grotesque, demonic figures fall under this rubric: the huge dragon, the young man lurking at the bath, and the black man and his son. (4) Objects of the fourth type include no counterintuitive element, neither have they undergone a metamorphosis. It is hard to find an example among the grotesque images studied in this article that would fit here. Strange things do occur in our natural environment – but are they grotesque? Our fantasy can also create objects and monsters that nevertheless do not violate ontological expectations – but again, are such things grotesque? It seems reasonable to hypothesise that grotesque images minimally involve either counterintuitiveness or metamorphosis.

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Table 1 METAMORPHOSIS

yes

no

1) devout animals; Jesus appearing as a speaking eagle

3) demonic figures

2)

4) ???

no

COUNTERINTUITIVENESS

yes

people in hell assuming strange positions and suffering ordeals; victims of scatological humour; Jesus appearing as a ship captain or a child

We have already seen how counterintuitive ideas arise from the innate ontological expectations that dwell in our minds. Is the phenomenon of metamorphosis also related to these mental structures? It seems very much so. Frank C. Keil, whose experimental studies have greatly contributed to our understanding of ontological expectations, has undertaken a study with Michael H. Kelly about the metamorphoses in Ovid’s book and the fairy-tales of the Brothers Grimm.40 Kelly and Keil have looked at all transformations in Metamorphoses, and observed in which ontological category the metamorphosis starts and where it ends. In general, Kelly and Keil found that metamorphoses are unlikely to cross the boundary between animate beings (including gods, humans, and animals) and inanimate things. Taken both texts together, 73 percent of animate beings remained animate and 81 percent of inanimate objects remained inanimate. Metamorphoses do not normally change people into chairs, or hammers into gods. A look at our sample reveals that this is also true of the metamorphoses involved in grotesque motifs. In most of them we find animate beings that also remain _____________ 40

M. H. Kelly and F. C. Keil, “The More Things Change…: Metamorphoses and Conceptual Structure,” Cognitive Science 9 (1985), 403–16.

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animate: gods, humans, or animals. One exception seems to be the monsters born of breast milk – but even in this case the underlying assumption might be that the monsters are actually born from the mothers. More direct examples might be derived from other parts of biblical literature, such as Lot’s wife in Genesis 19. This example shows, however, that once an animate being turns into an inanimate one, it loses most of its fascination – Lot’s wife as a salt pillar is much less interesting than, let us say, Lucius as an ass. An example of the opposite metamorphosis is John the Baptist’s claim that God is able to raise children for Abraham out of stones (Matthew 3.9) – which is, however, never realised. A closely related subject – which we cannot explore in more detail in this article – is whether the resurrection of the dead requires that the dead retain an animate ontological status. In the Apocalypse of Peter they certainly do. What can we observe if we look at the data on a finer scale? What about the metamorphoses that remain within the animate/inanimate categories? In order to be able to handle the wealth of data, Kelly and Keil divided metamorphoses into two groups: those where a “conscious being” (that is, human or god) is being transformed, and those where the starting shape involves members of other ontological categories. What they found was that more than half of the humans and gods who underwent a metamorphosis ended up as animals (51 percent in Ovid and 52 percent in the Grimms’ fairy-tales). Approximately a fifth of them were transformed into other humans or gods (20 percent in Ovid and 23 percent in Grimm). Exactly ten percent in both texts became plants, and a little more than ten percent (12 and 11, respectively) became inanimate objects. Some five percent became liquids (which are handled as a different ontological category by the authors), and there are three cases in Ovid (2 percent) when conscious beings become events rather than objects. The level of similarity in the data from Ovid and the Grimms is all the more surprising since the two texts are divided by a great historical distance. We can add here a rudimentary comparison with Greek mythology, based on the catalogue of P. M. C. Forbes Irving. Considering only the amount of motifs in different categories, we find similar proportions as Kelly and Keil found in Ovid and the Brothers Grimm. Animal metamorphoses (particularly metamorphoses into birds) are the most widespread, followed by metamorphoses into plants, stones, and other objects.41 _____________ 41

P. M. C. Forbes Irving, Metamorphosis in Greek Myths (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 196–319. Forbes Irving’s catalogue does not include the transformations of gods, witches, magicians, or inanimate objects.

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Even on a finer scale, Kelly and Keil conclude, the stability of ontological status is observable. The further we move away from the original ontological category, the less likely we will find there the final state of the metamorphosis. In terms of their hypothesis, this is because all humans at an early age develop a sense that things cannot be manipulated so that they change their ontological category. Most children at the age of five still admit that a horse can be changed into a zebra by painting stripes on it, tailoring its mare and tail, and teaching it to behave like a zebra.42 At the same time, they resist the idea that a toy bird can be changed into a real bird by similar operations. What is really interesting, is that similarity between the starting and ending form does not seem to influence their judgment: “children are just as likely to allow an insect to be turned into a mammal or an insect into a fish as they are to allow one mammal to be turned into a closely related one.”43 These findings can be used to explain the relative ontological stability in Metamorphoses and the Grimms’ fairy-tales: things tend to remain in their ontological categories, or if they do change them, they shift into neighbouring ones. But there is one piece of data that is not explained by the stability of ontological categories, namely the dominance of god-animal and human-animal transformations among animate beings. According to Ingvild Gilhus, in the Roman world it was easier for a god or human to change into an animal than the other way around because “gods, humans and animals in Ovid’s Metamorphoses are also locked into a system that in several ways functions hierarchically.”44 This system allows for changes toward “lower categories,” makes some exceptions for humans who may occasionally become gods, but does not let animals change into higher forms. “The system,” Gilhus concludes, “also implies a more fundamental division between animals and humans than between humans and gods, which is in accordance with a general tendency in people’s thinking concerning animals in these centuries.” Whereas this model agrees on several points with the universal ontology account (existence of a locked system; greater distance between humans and animals than between gods and humans), it also yields some serious difficulties. First, it introduces a time-bond element, connecting the hierarchical system of Metamorphoses to the way of thinking “in these centuries.” How can it be then that the same proportions are

_____________ 42 43 44

Keil, Concepts, Kinds, and Cognitive Development, 195–215. Keil, Concepts, Kinds, and Cognitive Development, 211–13. Gilhus, Animals, Gods and Humans, 82.

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found in the fairy-tales of the Brothers Grimm?45 Second, and more importantly, it does not explain why there are ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ places in the assumed hierarchy. The special status of humans in the universe is a widely shared insight, yet Adam was made of the dust of earth – as was man in Metamorphoses I.76–88.46 For a second time, after the flood, humans are made of stones (I.381–415), as Deucalion and Pyrrha obey the divine command and throw stones behind them. The challenge has been recognised by Kelly and Keil, who emphasise the “fundamental similarities between conscious beings and animals.” Whereas this may explain why many humans become animals rather remaining humans, it does not account for the asymmetry of the metamorphoses (human to animal rather than animal to human), which has been addressed by Gilhus. To find a solution, it may be useful to focus both on how metamorphosis between humans and animals happens and the results of such metamorphoses. This is how Arachne is made into a spider and Lucius into an ass:47 So saying, as she turned to go she sprinkled her with the juices of Hecate’s herb; and forthwith her hair, touched by the poison, fell off, and with it both nose and ears; and the head shrank up; her whole body also was small; the slender fingers clung to her side as legs; the rest was belly. (Ovid, Metamorphoses VI.139–45, Miller) Then I hastily tore off all my clothes, dipped my hands eagerly into the box, drew out a good quantity of the ointment, and rubbed all my limbs with it. I then flapped my arms up and down, imitating the movements of a bird. But no down and sign of feathers appeared. Instead, the hair on my body was becoming coarse bristles, and my tender skin was hardening into hide. There were no longer fingers at the extremities of my hands, for each was compressed into one hoof. From the base of my spine protruded an enormous tail. My face became misshapen, my mouth widened, my nostrils flared open, my lips became pendulous, and my ears huge and bristly. The sole consolation I could see in this wretched transformation was the swelling of my penis – though now I could not embrace Photis. (Apuleius, Metamorphoses III.24, Walsh)

Both episodes describe the metamorphosis of a human being into an animal – but what are the attributes changing here? In both cases it is _____________ 45

46

47

For animal-human metamorphoses in more fairy-tales, see G. Brunner Ungricht, Die Mensch-Tier-Verwandlung: Eine Motivgeschichte unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des deutschen Märchens in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Bern: Peter Lang, 1998). In Genesis 2.7, God also breathes the “breath of life” (Heb. nishmath chayyim, Gr. πνοὴ ζωῆς) into Adams’s nostrils. In Metamorphoses I, the stones transform into humans “by the power of the gods” (superorum numen, I.411), but nothing is added to them. Cf. Gilhus, Animals, 80.

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only the outward appearance that receives attention – nothing is told about the inner parts or the mental processes. Lucius reports the whole metamorphosis in first person, making it evident that he remained Lucius all the time. Actually Lucius remains the narrator of the whole novel, losing his ability to speak, but retaining his human mind. As Gilhus rightly observes about Ovid’s Metamorphoses, “Most striking in many of these transformations is the way that being an animal is described as being in a foreign place. It is as if the human soul is peeping out from an animal body, and the human consciousness is trapped within the beast.” This aspect of metamorphosis is hardly “striking” if we compare it once more with experimental evidence. The way Arachne and Lucius are transformed is similar to the alleged operations that were used in the above-mentioned experiments conducted by Keil. As we have seen, the experiments have shown that whereas five-yearolds would accept that by such operations, for example, horses turn into zebras, they resist the idea that this works across ontological categories. The human mind seems to have the tendency to assume continuity in animate beings – which cannot be turned into other beings in the same way as chairs into tables. Let us now look at the results of the metamorphoses. As the statistics of Kelly and Keil show, in Ovid and the Grimm fairy-tales most animate beings remain animate, animals being the most frequent resulting form. As a rule, these animals will receive human traits that they do not have otherwise. It is precisely these human features that make such animals interesting to the reader, and indeed, this is the very reason animal metamorphoses are so popular. The result of such metamorphoses is a counterintuitive being, in the sense that it violates basic ontological expectations (to different degrees) about animals. Since readers continue to think about these animals as humans in an animal shape, they will attribute to them thoughts and feelings beyond that what is explicitly mentioned in the text. Even if the human aspect in the animals is sometimes flattened by the text,48 an animal shape still makes it much easier to retain such traits than would the form of an inanimate object. The resulting forms of animal metamorphoses may come very close to another type of metamorphosis, which is frequent in early Christian texts, when animals receive in the narrative some level of human intelligence. Such beings are also counterintuitive and seem to do the same job as the results of the animal metamorphoses. Yet there is a basic difference in how readers treat them: in terms of the _____________ 48

As Gilhus, Animals, Gods and Humans, 89, argues. We may add that in this respect there are great differences between individual cases.

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ontological model, devout animals essentially remain animals, and the reader will be less willing to supply them with human traits that are not explicitly mentioned in the text. Here the default assumptions about animals are continued, which are, however, less rich than our assumptions about human beings. What would a real animal-into-human metamorphosis look like? In fact, there are examples of such metamorphoses, but not in the literature under consideration. Werewolves might be good candidates; however, they can be probably better described as people changing into wolves temporarily than the other way around.49 In Japanese folktales, animals often transform into humans.50 These metamorphoses are different from the human to animal transformations of Ovid and the Grimms in several respects. First, the process of transformation is never described.51 Second, the metamorphosis does not involve a special difficulty, no magical act is needed, and the animal can even change its shape repeatedly in both ways.52 Third, the metamorphosis takes place with a particular purpose (of the animal).53 Finally, the perfection of the metamorphosis plays a major role in the stories: if the animal is recognised, it has to flee or can be killed.54 Without a deeper analysis of the material, it can be observed that in most of these folktales (with the exception of a single variant) the animals have a human psyche already before the metamorphosis: they are thankful, want to marry a human, or to fight with him.55 Consequently, readers attribute to these creatures human thoughts and feelings both before and after the metamorphosis. In sum, they are thought about as humans in an animal shape rather the other way around.

_____________ 49

50 51 52 53 54 55

Cf. Brunner Ungricht, Die Mensch-Tier-Verwandlung, 161–3; D. Ogden, Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) 175–78; J. R. Veenstra, “The Ever-Changing Nature of the Beast: Cultural Change, Lycanthropy, and the Question of Substantial Transformation (From Petronius to Del Rio),” in J. N. Bremmer and J. R. Veenstra, eds., The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period (Leuven: Peeters, 2002), 133–66. I. Vogelsang, “Die Verwandlung vom Tier zum Menschen im japanischen Volksmärchen” (Dissertation, Universität Hamburg, 1997). Vogelsang, “Die Verwandlung,” 16. Vogelsang, “Die Verwandlung,” 16, 43–44. Vogelsang, “Die Verwandlung,” 26–34. Vogelsang, “Die Verwandlung,” 34–42. Vogelsang, “Die Verwandlung,” 26–34.

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4. Emotional Effects Whether we read about humans turned into animals, or hanging head downwards in hell, or doing their business before an invisible congregation, we cannot help drawing various inferences about their thoughts and feelings. In doing so we rely on our ability to read the minds of other people,56 which we can achieve even in cases when the other one is not there, is dead, or is only a fictional character.57 Yet the way we do this may be considerably different if images of the human body are involved. In the final part of my contribution I will explore this dimension of the grotesque representations in early Christian literature. A recent finding in developmental psychology has been the surprising fact that – notwithstanding the former claims of Jean Piaget – children imitate facial expressions and other bodily movements at a very early age, indeed, right after birth.58 Children can imitate hand movements already during the first six months of life and as soon as 42 minutes after birth they imitate facial acts.59 So-called mirror-neurons have been identified in the brains of monkeys that facilitate the imitation of goal-directed motion: these neurons are activated whenever the monkey sees another individual (monkey or experimenter) making a goaldirected action with the hand or with the mouth.60 Imitation is not necessarily conscious: one has to think only about the contagiousness of yawning. Humans synchronise many aspects of their behaviour spontaneously, without taking notice of it.61 People have the tendency to automatically mimic and synchronise movements, facial expressions, _____________ 56 57

58

59 60

61

Ch. Frith and U. Frith, “Theory of Mind,” Current Biology 15 (2005), R644. M. Taylor, Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); J. M. Bering, “Intuitive Conceptions of Dead Agents’ Minds: The Natural Foundations of Afterlife Beliefs as Phenomenological Boundary,” Journal of Cognition and Culture 2 (2002), 263–308; E. V. Hoff, “A Friend Living Inside Me – The Forms and Functions of Imaginary Companions,” Imagination, Cognition and Personality: The Scientific Study of Consciousness 24 (2005), 151–90. A. N. Meltzoff, “Elements of a Developmental Theory of Imitation,” in The Imitative Mind: Development, Evolution, and Brain Bases (ed. A. N. Meltzoff and W. Prinz; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 19–41. For an introduction to imitation, see S. Hurley and N. Chater, “Introduction: The Importance of Imitation,” in Perspectives on Imitation: From Neuroscience to Social Science (ed. S. Hurley and N. Chater; 2 vols: Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 2005), vol 1, 1–52. Meltzoff, “Elements of a Developmental Theory of Imitation,” 22–23. G. Rizzolatti et al., “From Mirror Neurons to Imitation: Facts and Speculations,” in Meltzoff and Prinz, The Imitative Mind, 247–66; G. Rizzolatti, “The Mirror Neuron System and Imitation,” in Hurley and Chater, Perspectives on Imitation, vol 1, 55–76. R. W. Byrne, “Social Cognition: Imitation, Imitation, Imitation,” Current Biology 15 (2005), R498–500; S. Strogatz, Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order (New York: Theia, 2003).

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postures, and emotional vocalisations with those displayed by others.62 A widespread use of imitation is “social mirroring,” the purpose of which is to show empathy or mutual identification,63 but imitation also enables us to engage in joint action and sophisticated cooperation.64 The effects of imitation extend beyond signalling or carrying out actions together and influence our thoughts and feelings. We can also use imitation when we do not actually carry out the imitated actions. There are important clues suggesting that imitation fulfils a major role in understanding the thoughts and emotions of others. On the analogy of the mirror neurons in monkeys, it has been found, that also in humans the observation of actions performed by others activates cortical motor representation – that is, brain areas are activated that are responsible for the movement of different parts of the body.65 In humans, however, this response involves a wider range of actions, such as intransitive and mimed actions: reaction has been detected in the muscles of subjects observing both transitive and intransitive actions, and even meaningless hand or arm gestures. There are similar findings about emotion: the same brain parts that are involved in the feel of disgust and pain are also activated when we empathise with such emotions.66 This leads to the “unifying view” of social cognition, suggesting that these brain areas can be activated also when decoupled from their peripheral effects, enabling us to simulate and thereby understand the actions and emotions of others.67 Not only we do not actually have to carry out actions or be exposed to pain in order to empathise with them, but also a limited amount of information is sufficient to activate the relevant brain areas and elicit empathy. In monkeys, the mirror neurons represent actions whether they _____________ 62 63 64

65 66

67

R. W. Gibbs, Embodiment and Cognitive Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 249. R.W. Byrne, “Social Cognition.” M. Brass and C. Heyes, “Imitation: Is Cognitive Neuroscience Solving the Correspondence Problem?” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9 (2005), 489–95; L. Q. Uddin et al., “The Self and Social Cognition: The Role of Cortical Midline Structures and Mirror Neurons,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11 (2007), 153–57. V. Gallese, Ch. Keysers, and G. Rizzolatti, “A Unifying View of the Basis of Social Cognition,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8 (2004), 396–403. C. Keysers et al., “A Touching Sight: SII/PV Activation During the Observation and Experience of Touch,” Neuron 42 (2004), 335–46; T. Singer et al., “Empathy for Pain Involves the Affective But Not the Sensory Components of Pain,” Science 303 (2004), 1157–62. Gallese et al., “A Unifying View,” 400; A. N. Meltzoff and J. Decety, “What Imitation Tells Us About Social Cognition: A Rapprochement Between Developmental Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 358 (2003), 491–500. Imitation certainly does not provide the full story about mind-reading, see our remark on false beliefs below.

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are performed, heard, or (partially) seen.68 In humans, disgust is represented in the brain when only the facial expression of disgust is observed.69 It is, however, questionable whether the “simulation theory” can explain more complex thoughts about other people’s mental states. For example, simulation is not sufficient to account for the attribution of false beliefs – that is, beliefs that differ both from one’s own beliefs and the true state of the world.70 Notwithstanding the very early presence of imitation, the understanding of such scenarios emerges not earlier than between the ages of 4 and 6 years.71 In light of recent neuroscientific research, we can now make some observations about the images of the grotesque body in our texts. It is arguable that these vivid spectacles of human bodies more directly activate empathising sensations than references to more sophisticated behaviors and thoughts that occur in other literary discourses. In terms of what we learned about (involuntary) imitation and empathy, we have good reason to believe that descriptions of postures, movements, limbs, faces, eyes, mouth, nose, ears, genitals, and other body parts, as well as various means of torture related to them, are understood by activating respective neural circuits in our brains and muscles. Many of the descriptions of the punishments in hell also report the reactions of the victims, describing their fear, cries, and groans – supplying additional sources that stimulate the reader’s sensations and emotions. There are at least two additional factors that may further intensify these interpretations. First, the emotions that the images of suffering and distorted bodies most likely elicit are fear and disgust. Fear and disgust are two basic emotions that have deep (if not the deepest) evolutionary roots and they are processed by dedicated neural circuits (that is, brain parts that deal only with them). These emotions are indispensable for avoiding danger and for the survival of the organism.72 Fear is responsible for detecting threat and occurs rapidly and without conscious awareness: for example, people suffering from phobias react to the images of snakes or spiders even when they see them without noticing it (that is, subliminally). Disgust is thought to be originally responsible for avoiding contamination and disease by eating, but its usage has extended with time. By activating exactly these two vital emotions, many images of the _____________ 68 69 70 71 72

Gallese et al., “A Unifying View,” 397. Gallese et al., “A Unifying View,” 400. Cf. J. Ward, The Student’s Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience (Hove, UK: Psychology Press, 2006), 325. U. Frith and Ch. D. Frith, “Development and Neurophysiology of Mentalizing,” Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 358 (2003), 459-73, esp. 460. Ward, Cognitive Neuroscience, 315.

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grotesque body make a very rapid and even unnoticed impression on the reader. Another mechanism that reinforces the effect of body images is the connection between bodily movements and emotions. According to the theory of William James (known as the James-Lange theory of emotion), we experience emotions because we perceive changes in our bodies. Although the James-Lange theory has been dismissed by experimental research, it is true that bodily experiences influence emotional experience.73 Patterns of movements can be reasonably linked with different emotions, and a loss of sensation due to injury decreases the experience of emotions.74 In different experiments, the facial expression of subjects was artificially influenced, for example by having to read certain words or holding objects between their lips, while they had to read stories.75 The results have shown that the inadvertent facial expressions of the subjects changed the emotions which they associated with the stories or the characters in them. Similar results were found when subjects had to assume various bodily postures. In consequence, if we somehow imitate the postures and movements of the bodies in the texts, these simulations may also secondarily modify our emotional experience. Although this explanation may seem redundant since empathy involves simulation anyway, it is arguable that rich details and multiple sources of interpretation amplify the effect of the text. In sum, there are a number of factors which make grotesque representations of the human body emotionally salient. Such representations include the description of tortures in hell, the drastic scenes of the Apocryphal Acts (with references to metabolism, bowels, head etc.), mockery such as “glutton and drunkard” and “lazy gluttons” (lit. ‘bellies’),76 and discussion of Jesus’ body as well as his pulling John’s beard in Acts of John 90. All of these treatments of the human body are likely to be represented in the mind of the reader or listener using basic simulations of simple actions and sensations related to the respective body parts. The types of sensations and emotions occupy a broad scale, ranging from simple mentions of body parts, natural processes, and touching of the body (John touches Jesus) to the infliction of pain by fire, hitting, biting, hanging, and other means. _____________ 73 74 75

76

Ward, Cognitive Neuroscience, 320. Gibbs, Embodiment, 252–53. F. Strack et al., “Inhibiting and Facilitating Conditions of the Human Smile: A Nonobtrusive Test of the Facial Feedback Hypothesis,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54 (1988), 768–77; R. Larsen et al., “Facilitating the Furrowed Brow: An Unobtrusive Test of the Facial Feedback Hypothesis Applied to Unpleasant Affect,” Cognition and Emotion 6 (1992), 321–38; Gibbs, Embodiment, 253–55. Matthew 7:19; Luke 7:34; Titus 1:12, respectively.

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Given the evolutionary importance of pain, fear, and disgust, we can conclude that images evoking such sensations and emotions stand apart from the rest of the list, somewhat similarly as counterintuitive ideas stand apart from other violations of everyday experience.

5. Toward a Cognitive Theory of the Grotesque If we now combine the three aspects of analysis introduced in this chapter (counterintuitiveness, metamorphosis, and emotions), we arrive at a threedimensional representation of grotesque elements in early Christian literature. Table 2 shows two dimensions, violation of everyday experience and emotionally salient imagery, on the horizontal and vertical axes, respectively. The third dimension, metamorphosis, can be understood as a change of positions in the chart. Table 2 EMOTIONALLY SALIENT BODY IMAGERY fear or disgust

demons with black lips; demon sleeping w/ woman in sleep

speaking serpent that bursts up?

[e.g. sheep with five legs]

J.’s body hard/soft; animals born of breast milk

bodies in hell, scatological jokes

J. as ship captain, child, young man

[e.g. illness]

[e.g. repulsive illness]

counterintuitive

speaking animals, J. reaching to sky (?)

yes

yes

no

VIOLATION OF EVERYDAY EXPERIENCE

no

There are four areas in the table that deserve special attention: the top row, the third column, the upper right corner, and the bottom left corner. The top row and the third column of the table are both related to features of grotesque images that are connected to innate modules of the mind, shaped by evolutionary history. The mental representations

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of the items in these areas involve different mechanisms in the mind than do the representations of items in the rest of the table. In particular, they are likely the most attention grabbing, and increasingly so as we proceed from left to right and bottom to top. The least impressive images are found in the bottom left cell of the table. These are ordinary items, such as a ship captain, child, or young man. The reason that they are still grotesque is because they are metamorphosed representations of Jesus. However, they do not exhibit any extraordinary feature in themselves: they do not perform miracles or walk through walls. They are not permanent representations of Jesus, only results of short-lived metamorphoses. This cell is not permanently inhabited by any item. The same holds true for the upper right corner. The only item that fits here is the speaking serpent that bursts up: at this moment, the imagery is likely to activate our brain areas responsible for disgust – an assumption that could be only confirmed by experimental tools. This image also occupies this cell only for a moment, thereafter disappearing from the scene. The behaviour of both of these areas can be explained by the requirement that excessively counterintuitive ideas do not survive in the long run. It seems that a similar combination arises if we add to counterintuitive images body imagery that evokes fear and disgust. If images undergo a metamorphosis, they can either stay within the same cell, or move toward less or more salient cells (by moving toward the lower left or upper right corners, respectively). Theoretically, they can also increase their expectation violating component while decreasing their emotional component. A metamorphosis remaining in the same area is Jesus appearing as an eagle – again, a metamorphosis that is only temporary. Metamorphoses pointing to the left and/or upward include speaking animals, various punishments in hell as well as scatological jokes. Speaking (or articulate) animals undergo a metamorphosis: they usually gain these qualities when they meet the apostles – and most likely lose them when they depart. The difference between scatological jokes and hell is that bodies in scatological jokes change back to normal bodies, whereas bodies in hell do not. To sum up, grotesque images activate mental modules that seem to be served by dedicated neural structures and shaped by evolutionary history, modules that are related to innate ontology and the emotions of fear and disgust. In addition, grotesque images involve often shortlived metamorphoses into or from shapes that are related to these mental modules.

Male Women Martyrs: The Function of Gender-Transformation Language in Early Christian Martyrdom Accounts The Function of Gender-Transformation Language ANTTI MARJANEN1 Überschrift 2: für Kapitel ohne Ü2 wird hier Ü1 Kurzform wiederholt Martyrdom is probably one aspect of Christian life from the second to the fourth century, in which men and women were basically treated in an equal manner. There is no reliable way to know the exact division between male and female martyrs during the period. The general impression one gets from early Christian martyrdom accounts is that there were many women who shared the tragic fate of martyrdom with their male fellow Christians. Clearly, the methods of torture varied and special cruelties and forms of humiliation were developed for martyrs of each sex; yet there is no indication that women actually received more lenient treatment.2 Still, the successful performance of martyrdom, if the expression may be allowed, usually demanded qualities that were generally considered masculine. The very act of martyrdom and the preparatory operations preceding or leading to it also occurred in contexts normally linked with male spheres of influence, such as court sessions, prisons, and arenas.3 _____________ 1 2

3

Antti Marjanen is professor at the Department of Biblical Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland. Johannes N. Vorster (“The Blood of the Female Martyrs as the Sperm of the Early Church,” R&T 10 [2003]: 66-99, esp. 69-78) has emphasized that women measuring low on the hierarchical scale of the social body could easily be maltreated and humiliated more than men. Likewise, in several martyrdom accounts women are either threatened with rape or the possibility of being sent to a brothel. Common to our sources is that the threat does not materialize, since divine intervention prevents the sexual violation from happening. Even in the one instance where a young woman, Irene, is said to have been sent to a brothel “no man dared to approach her,” because the Holy Spirit “preserved and guarded her pure and inviolate” (Irene in the Martyrdom of Saints Agape, Irene, and Chione at Saloniki, 5-6 [Herbert Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford Early Christian Texts; Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), 291]). Whether or not the texts represent wishful thinking, they at least indicate that the danger was real. There are references to women gladiators in ancient sources but, on the whole, women’s participation in gladiatorial games was exceptional; see Thomas Wiedemann, Emperors and Gladiators (London: Routledge, 1992), 10, 26, 37, 112, 133.

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The purpose of this investigation is to analyze how the authors of early martyrdom accounts portrayed their female protagonists coping with the world of persecution and torture and how these descriptions served the literary strategy of any given author. I am especially interested in those texts where the successful performance of martyrdom presupposes that women martyrs overstep and transgress ordinary gender roles and expectations.

1. Sources The relevant martyrdom accounts I am using in this study are found in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs collected by Herbert Musurillo, in the martyrdom accounts of Holy Women of the Syrian Orient translated and introduced by Sebastian Brock and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, and in the Coptic Martyrdoms of the Pierpont Morgan Collection edited by E. A. E. Reymond and J. W. B. Barns. In addition, I have also studied some apocryphal acts, such as the Acts of Paul and Thecla and the Acts of Philip. The age of the texts from which the material derives varies considerably, but I would argue that with regard to the use of gendertransformation language in various martyrdom accounts the question of dating is not of great importance, so long as we stay within the period of late antiquity until the 6th century. Before dealing specifically with the use of gender-transformation language in martyrdom texts, I give a brief overview of the way other early Christian texts used gendered language, even the transgression or transformation of gender roles, in connection with their description of Christian life, values, and qualities. This sketch will give us instructive comparative material for the analysis of the martyrdom accounts.

2. Gendered Language and the Description of Christian Life in Early Christian Texts In many cultures, but in the ancient Mediterranean in particular, feminine gendered language is used to represent human weakness, irrationality, sensuality, passivity, cowardliness, instability and spiritual inferiority. Masculine terminology on the other hand symbolizes that which is valiant, rational, chaste, active, courageous, immovable and spiritually perfect. These stereotypes appear not only in popular speech

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but also in the teachings of various philosophical schools.4 Such views clearly affected the way the hierarchy of men and women, maleness and femaleness, was conceived. Both in the streets of the Mediterranean cities and in the lecture rooms of the philosophers, women were placed far below men and barely above beasts. Indicative of these sentiments is a statement by Philo who characterizes human progress in virtue by saying that it “is indeed nothing less than the giving up of the female gender [γένος] by changing into the male” (Quaestiones et Solutiones in Exodum 1.8).5 Considering the contemporary popular and philosophical discussion, it is no wonder that the stereotypical usage of gendered language crept into the area of religion, including Christianity. There are numerous examples whereby an undesirable religious condition is described in feminine-gendered language. To give but a few examples: Christ of the gnostic tractate Second Treatise of the Great Seth (NHC VII,2) admonishes his readers: “Do not become female lest you give birth to evil and its siblings: to jealousy and division, anger and wrath, fear and halfheartedness and empty, non-existent desire” (65.24-31). In the Nag Hammadi Apocalypse of Peter (NHC VII,3) the author divides Christians into various categories according to their spiritual level and dedication. The “little ones” who have been given immortal souls are called , “the brotherhood that really exists,” whereas those who lack immortal souls and represent only an imitation of the “brothers” are identified as , “sisterhood.” In a thirdcentury Christian wisdom text, Teachings of Silvanus (NHC VII,4), persons who have abandoned control of the mind (νοῦς) in their lives have cut off maleness and turned themselves to femaleness alone, with the result that they have become psychic, i.e., inferior Christians (93.9-15). The author of Zostrianos, a second-century Sethian text, exhorts readers: “Flee from the madness and bondage of femaleness and choose for yourselves the salvation of maleness” (131.5-8).6 To cite an example outside the Nag Hammadi corpus, Didymus the Blind states: “In the order of the perceptible reality one cannot change one’s nature but in the spiritual reality one can… The one who is in the state of being a woman can grow and become male one day” (Fr. in Gen. 63 [SC 233, p. 160]). Didymus’ text shows that pejorative feminine terminology is not _____________ 4

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For examples of this kind of attitude, see Marvin W. Meyer, “Making Mary Male: The Categories ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ in the Gospel of Thomas,” NTS 31 (1985): 554-70, esp. 563-67. This reference is pointed out by Meyer, “Making Mary Male,” 564. Translated by John H. Sieber in Nag Hammadi Codex VIII (NHS 31; ed. John H. Sieber; Leiden: Brill, 1991), 223.

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deployed for women only but for every Christian who has not reached sufficient spiritual maturity. The last four texts also demonstrate the logical consequence of the pejorative use of femaleness as a negative religious symbol. Its opposite, i.e., maleness, becomes a metaphor for liberation from femaleness and thus stands for salvation or religious advancement. Although these and other texts speak about maleness and femaleness in symbolic terms, supposedly affecting all people’s lives,7 a tendency can also be seen which limits this kind of symbolic use of gendered terminology to women only. In other words, spiritually ordinary women are “females,” whereas spiritually extraordinary women can “become males” or “like males,” whatever this meant in each particular case. The idea of gender transformation as an indication of spiritual advancement is not confined to Christianity. In the Jewish Joseph and Aseneth,8 which portrays the conversion of Aseneth to the Jewish faith, her repentance is accepted by a heavenly messenger who describes her subsequent transformation as follows: “… you are a chaste virgin today, and your head is like that of a young man.” Religious, genderedtransformation language is also found outside the Mediterranean context. Mahâyâna-Buddhism developed a theory of the transformation of the female into male, whereby even a woman could become a Buddha. Sasagu Arai refers to a text in Lotus Sutra, in which the 8 year-old daughter of the dragon-king changed into a man, went to the Spotless World in the south, attained perfect enlightenment, and became a Buddha.9 There are also traces of the idea of gender transformation in later religious texts. In the mystical Islamic tradition of Sufism it is said that one can receive instruction from a woman, because a woman who has become male in the way of God is no longer a woman.10 _____________ 7

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Kari Vogt (“‘Männlichwerden’ – Aspekte einer urchristlichen Anthropologie,” Concilium 21 [1985]: 434-42, esp. 437) has pointed out that in his Homiliae in Josue (SC 71, p. 267) Origen, for example, states explicitly: “It is the difference between hearts which decides whether somebody is a man or a woman. How many women are there who before God belong to strong men, and how many men must be counted among weak and sluggish women.” There has been much controversy over the religious character of Joseph and Aseneth. Nowadays, there are not many who regard it as Christian but there is a developing consensus on its Jewish character; see Randall D. Chesnutt, From Death to Life: Conversion in Joseph and Aseneth (JSPSup 16; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 71-76. Sasagu Arai, “‘To Make Her Male’: An Interpretation of Logion 114 in the Gospel of Thomas,” StPatr 24 (1993): 371-76, esp. 376. See Helena Hallenberg and Irmeli Perho, Heijastuksia valosta – mystikkojen islam (Helsinki: Yliopistopaino, 1992), 35.

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Although many kinds of religious texts and traditions refer to gender transformation as a symbol for religious perfection or improvement, in Christian texts from the second to the fourth century it gains an especially visible role. The most famous text, in this regard, is probably the last logion of the Gospel of Thomas, in which Jesus states that women can enter the kingdom of heaven on condition that they make themselves males (114). What is actually meant by “making oneself male” is debated. Interpretations vary from the restoration of an androgynous prelapsarian human being to the renunciation of inferior female spirituality and the advancement to male spiritual perfection. It is also suggested that in the case of the latter, the gender transformation may also involve a concrete male impersonation.11 Whether or not Gos. Thom. 114 should be understood in these concrete terms, in the apocryphal acts there are several references to women whose “becoming or making oneself male” is not only an internal transformation but affects their physical appearance as well. In the Acts of Paul and Thecla (40) we can read how Thecla, after her “self-administered” baptism in the pool of the seals, undergoes a change in her outward appearance by putting on male dress (40). This act marks both her accomplishment of having preserved her virginity and her advancement to a higher spiritual level. In the Acts of Thomas, Mygdonia cuts her hair short and thus demonstrates her refusal to surrender to sexual intercourse with her husband (114). Another instructive example of male impersonation is presented in the Acts of Philip, in which the Savior admonishes Mariamne, who together with his brother Philip and Bartholomew prepares herself for a missionary enterprise, as follows: σὺ Μαριάμνη ἄλλαξον σου τὴν ἰδεάν καὶ ὅλον τὸ εἶδος τὸ γυναικεῖον (MS V 8.4 [95]).12 The request of the Savior implies that Mariamne adopts a male appearance. A somewhat different case of the concrete gender transformation is provided by a Syrian fourth- or fifth-century hagiographical story of Pelagia, a wealthy and beautiful prostitute of Antioch, who hears a moving sermon by a visiting Egyptian bishop Nonnos and is converted and baptized by him.13 After her baptism, she renounces her wealth, secretly puts on male attire and retires to the life of a recluse on the _____________ 11

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For various interpretations of Gos. Thom. 114, see Antti Marjanen, The Woman Jesus Loved: Mary Magdalene Traditions in the Nag Hammadi Library and Related Documents (Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 40; Leiden: Brill, 1996), 48-52. François Bovon, Bertrand Bouvier & Frédéric Amsler, Acta Philippi: Textus (Corpus Christianorum: Series Apocryphorum 11; Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 244. An English translation of the text is found in Sebastian P. Brock and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient (Updated Edition with a New Preface; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 40-62.

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Mount of Olives. There she becomes known as the eunuch Pelagios. She has lost her earlier beauty but now she is famous for her virtuous life and her performance of miracles. It is only when she dies that people become aware of her biological sex. The story ends with a somewhat amusing, but rather revealing, reference to people’s reaction: “Praise to you, Lord; how many hidden saints you have on earth – and not just men, but women as well!” Was this comment read as an instructive indication that even some women may, by the grace of God, reach a spiritual height that is ordinarily reserved for men? Or was it conceived, as a modern reader tends to see it, as an ironical twist in the narration, which emphasizes that a woman can be seen as a spiritual hero only if she disguises herself as a man?14 The term “male” was also used to describe the excellence of those ascetic women who remained virgins or widows and devoted their lives to charity, ardent meditation and prayer, and the study of the Bible. Wanting to emphasize the great significance of his sister as his instructor, Gregory of Nyssa calls Macrina a man (Vita Macrinae 1 [SC 178, p. 140]). John Chrysostom praises his disciple, Olympias, as follows: “Don’t say ‘woman’ but ‘what a man!’ because this is a man, despite her physical appearance” (Life of Olympias 3).15 The previous examples, which could easily be multiplied, provide vital background for the study of early Christian martyrdom accounts. They reveal four tendencies in the ancient use of gender-transformation language: (1) If gendered language is used to describe spirituality or a Christian way of living more generally, feminine terminology stands for a less successful performance, if not for failure; (2) becoming male is

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It is difficult to know how common it was that women wanted to demonstrate their spiritual excellence by male impersonation. The fact that this kind of conduct was criticized suggests that it was not altogether unusual. Philo, for example, does not show any understanding of women who assumed the dress of men (De virtutibus 21), despite the fact that he had a high regard of women members among the socalled Therapeutae in Alexandria (De vita contemplativa). In Christian churches, as well, male impersonation by women was strongly criticized. The fourth-century synod of Gangra accepted a canon, according to which every woman who, even though under pretence of asceticism, changes her apparel and puts on that of a man ought to be anathematized (Canon 14; for the canons of the Council of Gangra, see Karl-Georg Schon, ”Konzil von Gangra” in http://www.pseudoisidor.mgh.de/html/ 075.htm [7.1.2006]; for an English translation, see Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers [second series; ed. P. Schaff et al.; New York: Christian Literature, 1899; repr. Peabody: Henrdickson, 1994], 14:91-101). The reference is derived from Karen Jo Torjesen, When Women Were Priests: Women’s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of Their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 211.

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a symbol of spiritual progress;16 (3) femaleness can be transformed into maleness through a religious conversion or spiritual growth; (4) the transformation may be a mental or spiritual process (conversion, spiritual growth) or a change in life-style (e.g., sexual asceticism); when gender transformation is seen as a mental or spiritual process, it may apply to both sexes, but it may also take place through concrete actions by which one changes one’s appearance (e.g., a woman putting on male dress or cutting her hair).

3. Gender Transformation in Early Christian Martyrdom Accounts When I decided to study gender-transformation terminology in martyrdom accounts and thus moved into an area where the protagonists are typically male, I assumed that the descriptions of women martyrs would contain many language examples of “women becoming male”. Instinctively, I imagined that managing life in this specific situation of Christian existence would favor women martyrs with a manly attitude. I was not completely wrong but not right either. There are not very many martyrdom texts in which the expression “woman becoming male” appears. This does not mean, however, that martyrdom accounts do not contain descriptions of women martyrs who overstep ordinary gender roles and assume male qualities. This is especially true with two kinds of women martyrs: first, women martyrs portrayed as gladiators, athletes, and soldiers;17 second, women martyrs depicted as advocators of the Christian truth. _____________ 16

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The Nag Hammadi Exegesis on the Soul provides an exception to this general rule. In that text the conversion of the soul is depicted as a turning of the fallen soul’s male genitalia to the inside so that it regains its female womb, i.e., that the original female state of the soul is restored. For an excellent analysis of the text, see Hugo Lundhaug, “‘There is Rebirth and an Image of Rebirth’: A Cognitive Poetic Analysis of Conceptual and Intertextual Blending in the Exegesis on the Soul (NHC II,6) and the Gospel of Philip (NHC II,3)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Bergen, 2007), esp. 65-137. Whether the exceptional use of gender-transformation language points to a late (perhaps a fourth-century) dating of the text in a time when a female virgin becomes a symbol of the ideal Christian existence, as Lundhaug seems to suggest (137; 374375), or whether the exceptional use of gender transformation language is not due to the late composition of the document but is rather caused by the author’s desire to picture the restored relationship of Christ and the soul in terms of a marriage in which the redeemed soul appears as a female partner, does not have to be decided here. The difference between the three categories is not very distinct in the texts. In the case of the martyrs in Lyon, for example, they are frequently called as athletes

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3.1 Women Martyrs as Christian Gladiators, Athletes, or Soldiers As several martyr texts suggest, one background against which martyrdom as a phenomenon has to be seen is the world of gladiators, athletes, and soldiers. A martyr’s contest often resembles that of a gladiator in an arena.18 Although the martyrs, unlike the gladiators, very seldom had any real chance to survive their ordeal, the similarity between their fight and that of the gladiators was recognized both by Christian themselves and their persecutors. In the Martyrdom of Pionius the Presbyter and His Companions,19 proconsul Quintillian is said to have addressed Pionius as follows (20): “You accomplish very little hastening towards your death. For those who enlist to fight the beasts for a trifling bit of money despise death. You are merely one of those.” Another example of a text which views martyrdom in language derived from athletic contexts is a Syrian martyrdom account Febronia.20 The women of a convent face the challenge of being seized by Roman soldiers and taken to court. The abbess of the convent, Bryene, encourages the title character of the text, Febronia, by saying: “Remember the wrestlers who went before you, who underwent a glorious martyrdom, receiving a crown of victory from the heavenly ringmaster of the light. These people were not just men, but they include women and children as well” (15).21 In the gladiatorial and athletic context endurance, strength, and courage were qualities which were required. All of these qualities were normally connected with manly behaviour. To be sure, endurance (pa_____________

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(ἀθλητής or ἀγωνιστής; e.g., Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.1.17, 19, 36), whereas the occasion of their martyrdom is described in terms of gladiatorial games (e.g., Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.1.37, 53). The vision where Perpetua sees her future martyrdom is also clearly staged in a gladiatorial framework (The Martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas 10.7-13). In the Coptic Martyrdom of Saints Paese and Thecla, Paese and Thecla are encouraged to act as soldiers before their martyrdom (see below), whereas their actual interrogations and tortures linked with them take place in an arena, the normal context of gladiatorial games. For athletic and military terminology in early Christian martyrdom accounts, see Andrei-Dragoş Giulea, ”Heavenly Images and Invisible Wars: Seven Categories of Biblical and Extra-Biblical Imagery and Terminology in the Acts of the Martyrs of Lyons and Vienne,” Archæus 10 (2006): 147-165, esp. 163; Nicole Kelley, ”Philosophy as Training for Death: Reading the Ancient Christian Martyr Acts as Spiritual Exercises,” CH 75 (2006): 723-747, esp. 726-727; Elisabeth A. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 61-67. Musurillo, The Acts of Christian Martyrs, 136-167. Brock and Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, 150-176. Brock and Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, 160. One of the earliest Christian texts in which martyrdom is seen in terms of a fight by an athlete or a gladiator is Ign. Pol. 3:1.

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tientia or ὑπομονή) was considered a female virtue as well, because it was usually associated with passivity and more precisely with giving birth.22 To be able to endure the pain of delivery, women had to have patientia.23 Yet, patientia alone was not sufficient in the face of martyrdom. Especially in the context where martyrdom was seen against the background of gladiatorial games, “endurance” gained a different shade of meaning and was coupled with “courage,” a significant male characteristic. It was not enough to cope with the pain a mother had to endure while giving birth, but a gladiator had to have endurance and courage, while standing erect and being prepared, even to die in an arena.24 It is symptomatic of this trend that when Seneca speaks about that quality which was required of athletes and those politically tortured, he referred to “courageous endurance” as distinct from female patientia.25 When martyrdom accounts present scenes in which women martyrs are encouraged to show endurance joined with courage and strength they presuppose that women are transgressing their ordinary gender roles. In the Coptic Martyrdom of Saints Paese and Thecla, which sets its events during the Diocletian persecutions, the female protagonist of the text, Thecla, arrives in Alexandria together with a party, _____________ 22

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It was exactly because of its passive character that ὑπομονή was primarily considered a female virtue and manly only to a lesser degree. Nevertheless, Brent D. Shaw (“Body/Power/Identity: Passions of the Martyrs,” JECS 4 [1996]: 285) has pointed out that for the survival of men ὑπομονή was just as important as “male virtues of assertive and purposive action,” although it traditionally also contributed to the disparagement of those men who chose to resort to it and not to resist unjust treatment. Vorster, “The Blood of the Female Martyrs,” 89. A new content of ὑπομονή is already illustrated by Luke 21:19; 1 Pet. 2:18-20; Ign. Pol. 3:1 and especially 4 Macc 17:2-18 (for an analysis of the text, see Shaw, “Body/Power/Identity,” 278-280). A further example of a similar understanding of ὑπομονή is found in the Testament of Job, in which feminine ὑπομονή, characterized as female endurance of pain in childbirth (T. Job 18.4), proves to be superior to the athletic power of Satan (27:2-5) and is thus elevated to a new and higher level. Similar examples of a new courageous ὑπομονή are also provided in Christian texts. According to the source used by Eusebius the martyrs of Lyon are described as follows: “[T]hey manifested the power of martyrdom in deed, speaking to the pagans with great openness, and showing forth their nobility by their perseverance [ὑπομονή], fearlessness [ἀφοβία], and courage [ἀτρομία]” (Hist. eccl. 5.2.4; Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 82-83). Cf. also the passage in the Acts of Philip (MS V 15.15-16 [121-122]; Bovon, Bouvier & Amsler, Acta Philippi, 366) in which Philip, Bartholomew, and Mariamne are captured by public executioners and threatened with death by their leader. Yet they exhibit such ὑπομονή and ϰαρτερία that while being dragged away they arouse great amazement among onlookers who are said to glorify God because of the courageous endurance of the martyrs. Shaw, “Body/Power/Identity,” 269-312, esp. 291-300.

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consisting of Mary the Virgin, Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, and the angels Gabriel and Raphael. There Thecla’s brother Paese is in prison and there both he and she will experience a martyr’s death. When Thecla parts company with her fellow travellers Mary the Virgin exhorts her as follows: “Be not faint-hearted, but courageous … be strong, fear not” (72 R i 4-6, 30-31).26 Mary’s words not only resemble the words of encouragement which the angel Raphael had directed to Paese earlier, when he appeared to him in prison ( ; “Find strength and be a brave man”; 61 V i 1921).27 They also recall a similar phrase used in 1 Sam. 4:9, where a military chief urges his troops to face a superior army in battle. David also employs similar words when he calls Solomon in order to deliver final instructions on ruling over the kingdom of Israel. Thus, Mary’s words to Thecla are taken from the world of military and political affairs exhorting her to become a “Christian soldier.” When Thecla is later presented in the arena her militant courage becomes useful as she assumes the role of an athlete. Blandina, a slave woman from second-century Lyons, is also portrayed as a Christian gladiator in the martyrdom account preserved by Eusebius in his Historia ecclesiastica (5.1.3-5.1.63). Having successfully undergone the first day of torture, this woman, whose mistress doubted whether her bodily weakness would ever allow her to make a bold confession of faith, proved her pessimistic mistress wrong. As the text quoted by Eusebius says, through her confession of faith Blandina “like a noble athlete got renewed strength … and Christ proved that the things that men think cheap, ugly, and contemptuous are deemed worthy of glory before God” (5.1.19, 17; translation by Musurillo). According to the author of Blandina’s story, she proved to be a concrete example of inversion in the social order. A second century slave woman, who united in her person two inferior components of the social body – woman and slave – climbed several echelons in societal and Christian hierarchy by successfully assuming the role of a Christian gladiator in her martyrdom. She provided a new identification model for Christian women, by showing how gendered and societal limitations could be transgressed.28 _____________ 26 27 28

E. A. E. Reymond and J. W. B. Barns, Four Martyrdoms from the Pierpont Morgan Coptic Codices (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973), 60-61. Reymond and Barns, Four Martyrdoms, 47. Gail Corrington Streete, “Women as Sources of Redemption and Knowledge in Early Christian Traditions,” in Women and Christian Origins (ed. Ross S. Kraemer and Mary Rose D’Angelo; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 352.

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Not all scholars are satisfied with the new identification model the women of early Christian martyrdom accounts gave their readers. Johannes Vorster asks pointedly: “Why was the gladiatorial model used to portray the enduring capabilities of female martyrs? … Why choose a model representing the epitome of virile, brutal masculinity?”29 While admitting that the possibilities of finding better identification models for women from their own everyday life within a patriarchal society might have been limited, Vorster believes that the gladiatorial model served the interests of the texts’ male authors. Identification with women in stories, which presented them as spiritual gladiators and soldiers, meant subscribing to the perfection of males and maintaining the gender hierarchy. Ultimately, women, even martyr women, could reach the same spiritual level as men only when they “became males” (see below). Even if Vorster’s criticism of the gladiatorial model for describing early women martyrs is justified he overlooks one thing. Of course, it is true that the gladiatorial model is the most dominant but it is not the only one in early Christian martyrdom accounts. Even though Blandina is depicted as a Christian gladiator it is not the sole characterization given to her in the account preserved by Eusebius. In the last scene of the text, an entirely new dimension of this woman is presented (Hist. eccl. 5.1.53-55). Blandina is in the arena together with a boy of fifteen, Ponticus. They are the last ones to be slaughtered. Blandina strengthens her young colleague and helps him endure every torment with nobility. Finally it is Blandina’s turn, but she is no longer depicted as a gladiator who is ready to fight to the end. The author portrays a new image: “… like a noble mother encouraging her children, she sent them before her in triumph to the King, and then, after duplicating in her own body all her children’s sufferings, she hastened to rejoin them, rejoicing and glorifying in her death as though she had been invited to a bridal banquet instead of being a victim of the beasts” (Hist. eccl. 5.1.55). Musurillo has suggested that this portrait of Blandina as a mother of the suffering martyrs has its prototype in the mother of the Jewish martyrs in the Second Book of the Maccabees (2 Macc. 7:1-42; cf. also 4. Macc. 8:1-17:6).30 Be that as it may,31 the most important thing is that a Christian martyrdom account provides women readers with an identi_____________ 29 30 31

Vorster, “The Blood of the Female Martyrs,” 91. Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 79. It is of interest that the mother of the Jewish martyrs in the Second Book of the Maccabees is said to have ”fired her woman’s reasoning [λογισμός] with a man’s courage [θυμός]” when she encouraged her sons to take up the challenge of martyrdom (7:21).

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fication model that fits better within the boundaries of a female gender role than that of a gladiator or an athlete. Nevertheless, even the role of mother does not remain within the limits of expected norms but is transformed in the case of Blandina.32 The expected reaction of a mother would be to protect her children against any external danger.33 Blandina is portrayed as the one who encourages her children to take up the challenge of martyrdom. Unlike an ordinary mother, she thus sends her children to death. The point of the story is to emphasize, however, that this death is a gate for a new and better life.

3.2 Women Martyrs as Advocates of the Christian Truth The court hearings that martyrs faced were occasions, which usually required skills better suited to the education of men who normally had at least some training in rhetoric. Vorster even goes so far as to say: “To speak in public was the prerogative of the male.”34 He sees this principle confirmed in early Christian martyrdom accounts. Vorster maintains that the authors of the texts participate in re-asserting the gender expectations of the society and let men talk and defend their beliefs and the superiority of the Christian faith, while women keep quiet or only resort to brief and simple comments. To Vorster’s surprise, even Perpetua, clearly the main character of the text which bears her name, does not present a proper defense of the Christian faith when she appears before the governor Hilarianus.35 For Vorster, this is all the more surprising because the speeches held in front of the judges provided the best opportunity – both in the real and literary world – to invert roles by demonstrating the wisdom and moral excellence of the defendant over against his or her accusers. Vorster is partly correct, of course. In most martyrdom accounts, men do take the lead in defending the truthfulness and superiority of _____________ 32 33

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This was pointed out by Adela Yarbro Collins in the Metamorphoses project seminar at the CAS, Oslo, June 12, 2007. This tension between the natural attitude of a mother and obedience to a religious conviction is explicitly reflected in the Fourth Book of Maccabees where the mother of seven sons encourages the martyrdom of her children to prove the strength of Jewish religion (14:11-16:25). Vorster, “The Blood of the Female Martyrs,” 84. This may be explained by the peculiar literary strategy of the Martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas. The propaganda aims of the text are not carried out in connection with Perpetua’s appearance before the governor. They are seen in her dialogues with her father, in the narration of her visions, and finally in the description of her control over events in the arena where she decides for herself how she will depart from this world.

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the Christian cause. Yet there are remarkable exceptions which show that gender roles were transgressed in this matter as well.36 I offer three examples. Each contains a strong polemical edge but also considerable rhetorical power. And while men probably wrote them all, at least they give their female voices the satisfaction of beating their male opponents. The first is taken from Febronia. After having been brought to the arena and stripped by the soldiers, Febronia is derided by her judge Selenos who insinuates that, in fact, she enjoys being naked and able to show her shapely features. Febronia replies: “Listen, judge, my Lord knows that I have never seen a man’s face up to this very moment, and just because I have fallen into your hands I am called shameless and impudent woman! You stupid and imperceptive man, what athlete entering the contest to fight at Olympia engages in battle wrapped up in all his clothes? Doesn’t he enter the arena naked, until he has conquered his adversary? I am waiting in expectancy for tortures and burning by fire; how could I do battle with these while I have my clothes on? Should I not meet the torture with a naked body, until I have vanquished you father Satan, throwing scorn upon all your threats of tortures?”37 The second example derives from the Coptic Martyrdom of Saints Paese and Thecla. After having met her brother in the prison in Alexandria, Thecla and Paese are brought together to the Duke who urges Paese to sacrifice. Before Paese has time to say anything, Thecla, the brave-souled woman ( ), asks the Duke why they have to sacrifice to Apollo. After all, the god had not been strong enough to heal the Duke when he became ill. Instead, Paese had to do it (74 V ii 29-31).38 Later, when Thecla and other Christians are repeatedly brought to the Duke who always tries to convince them to sacrifice, Thecla has had enough of it. She answers the Duke’s request: “Like a woman who is foolish so that her parents and kinsfolk are wearied _____________ 36

37 38

Female Christian martyrs were not the only women portrayed as defenders of their personal integrity and mental freedom against brutality of men. Brent D. Shaw (“Body/Power/Identity,” 271) refers to the second-century Greek romance Leukippē, in which a slave woman Leukippē resists her master, who tries to control and violate her body, by delivering a speech filled with rhetorical power. See Brock and Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, 166. Thecla strongly contradicts the expextations held by a more traditional understanding of women’s behavior in a situation like this. For example, Philo insists that it is shameful if a wife publicly opens her mouth to defend her husband: “The audacity of women who when men are exchanging angry words or blows hasten to join in, under the pretext of assisting their husband in the fray, is reprehensible and shameless in a high degree” (De specialibus legibus 3.172).

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with teaching her, and she does not obey them and feel shame; and like a dog which returns to its vomit and is abhorred; so it is with you also” (84 R ii; my translation). Thecla surely scored points for that, at least in the minds of the male readers. It is of course paradoxical that she reverses traditional gender roles and beats her opponent by using a rhetorical device which builds on a traditional understanding that foolishness is more easily associated with a woman than with a man. The third example comes from a later period, from a sixth-century martyr text, in which the persecution was not launched by Roman forces but by the Jews who had established a kingdom in southern Arabia and wanted to expel local Christians.39 The text speaks about a curious figure, a Christian slave woman Mahya. Despite the hagiographical character of Mahya’s account, she is introduced as “a disagreeable woman, impudent, and abusive, disliked by everyone because of her disagreeable character.” The text which follows is puzzling. Not only does it present a surprising depiction of its protagonist but it also contains irony, extreme hatred toward oppressors, and great encouragement to face the challenge of martyrdom. Here is a portion of Mahya’s story: Now when Mahya heard that her owners and her family and companions had been put to death, she dashed out into the street, put a belt around her waist like a man, and ran through the streets of the town shouting: “Men and women, Christians, now is the moment to pay back to Christ what you owe him. Come out and die for Christ, just as he died for you. Whoever fails to come out to Christ today does not belong to him; whoever does not answer Christ’s call today will not be required again tomorrow. This is the time of battle! Come and assist your Lord Christ, for tomorrow the gate will be closed and you won’t be able to go in to him. I know you hate me. By Christ, from today on I will not be your enemy; no, by Christ, I will not be abusive to you. Look at me: there is no one as wicked as me; follow me, so that I don’t have to go alone – otherwise the Jews will run away from me as usual, and will not put me to death.” That is what she was shouting out all the way until she reached the king’s presence. When some Jews who knew her saw her, they told the king: “This woman is the very Satan of the Christians: there is not a single devil that does not live in her.” She then addressed the king: “I am speaking to you, Jewish butcher of the Christians! Get up and butcher me too, for I am a Christian, a maid of Harith son of Ka‛b whom you killed yesterday. Don’t imagine that you have won a victory over my master. No, my master has been victorious over you; for it is you who have been vanquished, in that you have played false to your God, and my master has won over you, seeing that he did not play false and deny Christ. I am telling you that had you come out against

_____________ 39

See Brock and Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, 100-21, esp. 109-11.

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my master with a robber band, I would have met you with spear and sword, and I’d have kicked you with my feet. But had my master so wanted, he’d have squashed you like a fly.”

Whatever one thinks about the text, one thing at least is clear. There is nothing in this text about any lack of courage, timidity, or passivity that should characterize the “normal” behaviour of Mediterranean women. And who can say that a Mediterranean woman cannot defend her conviction? Certainly, Mahya’s speeches do not meet Quintillian’s requirements for a well-shaped speech, but can one deny the presence of rhetorical power? It is still another matter whether the portrait of Mahya, a silly woman, can provide a persuasive identification model for Christian women or for any Christian, for that matter. Is she simply too extreme? Still, she is called a blessed woman later in the text, and the text was included in a hagiographical collection. The confusion this text faces is increased by the fact that Mahya is not credited with any reward for her boldness. We are not told that she was then taken to heaven or given a crown of victory. Nor are we told that she was assigned a day on which she was to be commemorated, as is the case with some other Syrian martyrs. In the story she does not even receive a proper burial. The text simply concludes by saying that after she was killed she was thrown into a wadi. What function could this kind of account have? Or was there any? And if there was not, why was the story preserved, copied, and transmitted? In any case, these three examples provide sufficient grounds to critique Vorster’s view that in the descriptions of trials women conform to the cultural patterns of their time. Do they really, without exception, stay quiet and let men, who have supposedly received rhetorical training, handle the defense of martyrs and the Christian cause? Our examples, which could be multiplied, demonstrate that even in martyrdom accounts, women can be portrayed as transgressing their ordinary gender roles. Whether or not this means that these texts always served as identification models for “real women” is not certain. Rather some of the texts may have been written or read in order to strengthen men’s egos. If lowly Christian women could successfully combat their opponents why could men not do so, given their rhetorical training and other advantages? It is also possible that women were used to embarrass or humiliate pagans while providing instructive examples of how pagan judges more than failed to expose the guilt and indecency of the women martyrs. Indeed, while torturing Christians and sentencing them to death, even they transgressed their own cultural and legal

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rules and values.40 Both in Febronia’s and Mahya’s case this seems likely.

3.3 Women Martyrs as “Becoming Males” As mentioned earlier, the material studied here did yield some occurrences of “women becoming male” but not as many as expected. There were two explicit cases and one implicit, which may actually be reacting critically to the whole idea.41 I start with the instance I regard as an implicit case with a possible critical edge to it. In the Martyrdom of Saint Crispina (3) the title character Crispina is brought before the judge, the proconsul Anullinus, who, in order to disgrace her, commands that she be “disfigured by having her hair cut and her head shaved with a razor till she is bald.” As a consequence of this act she “becomes (like) a male” in the same way that Mygdonia does in the Acts of Thomas, but in this case the operation is not seen in a positive light. It is an ignominy meant to disgrace her. It may be bold speculation but we must ask whether behind this text there is an attempt to criticize the practice of male impersonation and to say that it is something that is forced by persecutors. The author of the text seems to say that such an act bears no mark of spiritual advancement; rather it is a shameful act. The first of the other two instances that introduce the experience of “be(com)ing (like) male” is in the Martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas (7). It is interesting that the expression appears in the vision where Perpetua sees herself in the middle of an arena, forced to fight an Egyptian gladiator who symbolizes the Devil. Somehow the vision anticipates the final destiny of Perpetua although the details of the vision do not match the actual event. When Perpetua prepares herself for the fight in her vision, her assistants strip off her clothes and begin to rub her down with oil; she then suddenly realizes that she is a man (masculus). This coincides nicely with what we have seen in other texts, which place the martyrdom in a gladiatorial context. In that context _____________ 40 41

This was suggested by Einar Thomassen in the Metamorphoses project seminar at the CAS, Oslo, June 12, 2007. In this study I did not want to include martyrdom accounts where women became Christ-like figures, such as Blandina. She “was hung on a post … in the form of a cross” and her fellow-martyrs saw in her “him who was crucified for them” (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.1.41). Nor did I want to include Febronia, whose martyrdom is portrayed by the onlookers as a suffering “for the salvation of many” (cf. Mark 10:45; for the text of Febronia 29, see Brock and Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, 169). Although the texts speak of women assuming the role of Christ, the actual idea of gender transformation is not involved.

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manly qualities are expected from all including women. So, if the distinction can be justified, as I think it is, the case of Perpetua “be(com)ing male” does not stand for spiritual advancement or perfection but for an extra portion of courage, strength and firmness needed for the fight. This fits in well with the concluding section of the text where Perpetua herself, in a courageous, controlled, and masculine manner, directs the shaky gladiator’s sword to her throat and thus determines the moment of her own death. In light of these events, it is not surprising that the martyrs in the text are not only called beatissimi but also fortissimi. Febronia is our final example of a woman martyr who “becomes male.” When the Roman soldiers seize her in order to take her for trial at the theatre, the abbess Bryene promises to pray for her, trusting that she will endure her contest. She will get to her heavenly bridegroom, who is watching her contest, and to the hosts of angels, who are standing there before him carrying the crown of victory, as they await her end. Febronia promises to be worthy of Bryene’s trust and says: “In a woman’s body I will manifest a man’s valiant conviction.” 42 Even here the context of Febronia’s promise seems to suggest that “a man’s valiant conviction” has more to do with the firmness she wants to demonstrate while facing the challenge of martyrdom than with spiritual advancement.

4. Conclusion Unlike other types of early Christian texts, which use gender-transformation language, early Christian martyrdom accounts give a different impression. The transformation or the transgression of gender roles, i.e., women obtaining male qualities or in rare cases “becoming male,” has to do with the successful endurance of martyrdom rather than with spiritual progress in or through the act itself. Maybe that is the reason why the explicit gender-transformation language, “women becoming male,” is largely missing in martyrdom accounts. Still, it is clear that even in these texts the endurance of martyrdom by women presupposes an overstepping or transgression of gender roles, which can be described as a transformation, both in terms of language and a mental process.

_____________ 42

Brock and Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, 162-163.

Imagining Human Transformation in the Context of Invisible Powers: Instrumental Agency in Second-Century Treatments of Conversion1 Imagining Human Transformation in the Context of Invisible Powers DENISE KIMBER BUELL2 Überschrift 2: für Kapitel ohne Ü2 wird hier Ü1 Kurzform wiederholt Indeed we warn you3 to be careful lest the δαίμονες … should mislead you and turn you from reading and understanding what we have said. They struggle (ἀγωνίζομαι) to make you their slaves and servants. They ensnare, now by apparitions in dreams, now by tricks of magic, all those who do not fight (ἀγωνίζομαι) with their all for their own salvation—even as we also, after our conversion by the Word, have separated ourselves from those δαίμονες and have attached ourselves to the only unbegotten God through his son.4

For Justin Martyr, what is at stake in conversion to Christianity is no less than a question of which kinds of invisible forces hold sway over humans. Even when explained as impure and debased spiritual powers,5 δαίμονες are a real threat to humans, precisely because they may trick humans to believe that false things are true. But humans are not merely passive puppets or pawns in a cosmic battle. While vulnerable to negative forces and capable of being animated and protected by di_____________ 1

2 3

4 5

This article is based on the joint work of an international research group studying Metamorphoses: Resurrection, Taxonomies and Transformative Practices in Early Christianity at the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo during May and June 2006-07. Thanks to Laura Nasrallah and Karen King for comments on this paper prior to the June 2007 conference and to the Centre participants for their feedback. Denise Kimber Buell is professor and chair of the Department of Religion, Williams College, USA. Putatively, the emperors Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius (see Justin Martyr, 1 Apology 1.1). Translation closely follows that of Barnard (Justin Martyr, The First and Second Apologies, English translation by Leslie William Barnard [Ancient Christian Writers 56; New York: Paulist, 1997]). 1 Apol. 14.1. I.e., the corrupt progeny of human women and fallen angels (2 Apology 5). For a detailed discussion of Justin’s aetiology of demons, and how it offers him a way to address gentiles differently from Jews, see Annette Yoshiko Reed, “The Trickery of the Fallen Angels and the Demonic Mimesis of the Divine: Aetiology, Demonology, and Polemics in the Writings of Justin Martyr,” JECS 12:2 (2004): 141-171.

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vine forces, humans have also to take action, to “fight with their all for their own salvation.” The ideal is to cultivate oneself as God’s instrument, as a self able to know, receive, and even transmit divine agency. Justin expresses one version of a logic that permeates many ancient texts, Christian and non-Christian alike: that humans are inevitably instruments of external agencies. What does it mean to speak about transformation, including conversion, when humans are understood as instruments of external powers, demonic or divine? Justin conceptualizes human agency not so much in terms of individual, autonomous freedom, but in terms of “instrumental agency” to spiritual forces both good and evil.6 How can and ought a Christian best prepare to be the right sort of instrument to the right sort of spiritual forces? Early Christians offer a range of answers to these questions, positing a greater or lesser porousness to the boundaries of the human person, and differing views about the site of authentic selfhood. Justin Martyr’s agonistic imagery represents humans as objects of cosmic contest; he exhorts humans to enlist themselves as soldiers on the side that will accomplish their salvation. Justin’s slightly younger contemporary Theodotos, also adapted agonistic imagery, describing the unbaptized human as both the site of cosmic contest (the potential prize) and that which is instrumentalized by cosmic powers (good and bad).7 Theodotos cautions that the transformation produced in baptismal rituals may either permanently seal demonic powers into oneself or permanently protect one from them, by means of an infusion of divine power.8 If Theodotos’s imagery portrays humans as even more porous than Justin’s, Clement of Alexandria tends in the opposite direction. Clement, writing a generation after Justin and in the same intellectual context as Theodotos, promotes an understanding of the human self as malleable, like a wax tablet, but also capable of being trained to discern _____________ 6

7

8

Mary Keller develops the concept of “instrumental agency” in her analysis of possession. See Keller, The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power, and Spirit Possession (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), esp. pp. 9-10 and 73-101. I discuss this concept further in the next section. Excerpts of Theodotos 67.1-73.3. The transformation of baptism, for this text, is described not only as death and rebirth, but also instrumentally: “From the moment one comes up from baptism, he is called a slave of God even by the unclean spirits and they now tremble at the one whom they had recently possessed (ἐνεργέω)” (Exc. Theod. 77.3). Translation closely follows that of Casey (see The Excerpta ex Theodoto, English Translation and edited with introduction and notes by Robert Pierce Casey [Studies and Documents, edited by Kirsopp Lake and Silva Lake; London: Christophers, 1934]). Exc. Theod. 83.

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demonic from divine power and thus to resist demonic influence. For Clement, senses such as sight and hearing are sites of intensive regulation, since he imagines these as vectors not only for bridging the gap between self and others but also for altering the human person, for better or worse.9 All three of these Christian authors illustrate possibilities of conceptualizing an instrumental relationship between the human and invisible forces. In what follows, I shall first elaborate what I mean by an instrumental understanding of humanity relative to invisible powers and why instrumentality illuminates dynamics of the ancient Roman social and philosophical context. Examples from Tatian’s Oration to the Greeks and Clement’s Protreptikos provide illustrations of how second-century Christians deployed arguments about human transformation to critique contemporary understandings about human-divine relations, even as Christians shared with their non-Christian contemporaries an instrumental understanding of human agency. The final section of the paper explores the polemical function of instrumental imagery among Christians. Here, Clement of Alexandria’s Stromateis serves as the primary example. Clement rejects alternative Christian renderings of instrumental agency, especially the idea that external forces may literally penetrate the human person, for good or ill.

Instrumental Agency A number of New Testament texts describe believers as God’s slaves, slaves being the quintessential instrumental social category in antiquity.10 Paul’s striking image of having died, so that Christ now lives in him,11 likewise communicates an ideal of becoming and being a divine _____________ 9 10

11

See extended discussion below of Clement’s Protreptikos and Stromateis. E.g., Rom 6:16, 1 Peter 2:16. Second-century examples of this language of enslavement include the Excerpts of Theodotos, compiled by Clement of Alexandria in the late second century. This text also portrays humans as targets of and instruments in a cosmic battle between forces of good and evil. Even as the wicked powers are firmly located as inferior to the power of God and the savior, humans may be easily attacked and enslaved by bad powers, and require the assistance of Christ to ensure success against these wicked powers and attain salvation. For Theodotos, according to Clement, there are beneficial powers in the cosmos that help humans in this battle before baptism, but they “are not sufficient to follow and rescue and guard us” against the “opponents who attack the soul through the body and outward things and pledge it to slavery” (Exc. Theod. 73.1). Baptism, in this text, is a change (μεταβολή) that affects the soul, not the body (77.2), and “one is called God’s slave, even by the unclean spirits, from the moment one comes up from baptism” (77.3). Gal 2:20.

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instrument or vessel, a view that he extends to his readers in Romans, by saying “Do not yield your members (μέλη) to sin, as instruments or weapons of wickedness, but yield yourselves to God, as ones who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness.”12 So too, the imagery of being the temple or spiritual house of God or living stone also depicts the human-divine relationship in terms of the divine occupying the human.13 This imagery indicates a view that agency is not simply the domain of an autonomous self but also of the forces that may penetrate or control it, in the manner of an occupant of a dwelling (including a deity in a temple) or a master to a slave. When such imagery takes center stage, we find the one occupied or owned depicted as having what Mary Keller calls “instrumental agency.”14 That is, one in and through whom external forces, including δαίμονες and deities, act in this world has agency in relation to its capacity as an instrument. Instrumental agency posits a porousness of the boundaries of the human. For early Christians, this porousness is both a source of concern and an opportunity for transformations that lead to salvation. The opening quotation from Justin Martyr’s First Apology expresses one version of this concern. Christians must struggle both to separate themselves from δαίμονες and become God’s instruments—a move that ideally protects Christians. But Christians must also remain vigilant, since Justin thinks that δαίμονες also operate through some who claim to be Christian, including Marcion and Simon Magus.15 When humans are portrayed ideally in an instrumental relation to the divine, conversion entails cultivating the relationship between one’s body and soul as well as the relationship between one’s composite self and external

_____________ 12 13

14 15

Rom 6:13. Temple or house: 2 Cor 6:15, 1 Pet 2:5; living stone: 1 Pet 2:4. The author of the Epistle to Barnabas writes: “Before we believed in God, the dwelling of our heart was perishable and weak, just like a temple built by hands, for it was full of idolatry, it was a house of demons because what was done was opposed to God” (Barn. 16.7). Justin’s student Tatian puts it, “the Spirit of God is not with all, but, taking up its abode with those who live justly, and intimately combining with the soul…the souls which are obedient to wisdom have attracted to themselves the cognate spirit…” (Oration to the Greeks, 13). Coxe’s English translation consulted (Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 2: Fathers of the Second Century: Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria [entire], English translation by A. Cleveland Coxe [American edition; 1885; reprinted, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995]). Keller, Hammer and Flute, especially 73-101. See, e.g., 1 Apol. 26.1-4; 56.1-5; 58.2-3. See also discussion in Reed, “The Trickery of the Fallen Angels.”

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forces towards an outcome in which, ideally, the human becomes the proper instrument for God.16 External powers descend into the human soul and seek to strengthen or lead it astray, also according to the roughly contemporary Secret Revelation of John. For this text, the Spirit of Life and the counterfeit Spirit compete for the human, although the former is clearly presented as superior. The human response to these external forces matters for the process of salvation. While the Spirit of Life descends into all human souls (recalling also Justin’s notion of the logos spermatikos in all humans), some souls may still be led astray—at least temporarily—by the presence and power of the counterfeit or despicable spirit.17 In contrast, “[t]hose upon whom the Spirit of Life will descend and (with whom) it will be powerfully present, they will be saved and become perfect.”18 As Karen King suggests, this text seems to offer a model of ethical action as the main human response, based on the teaching embodied in this text.19 Justin and the Secret Revelation of John both imagine a kind of battle between invisible forces that takes place over and within humans, and both counsel saving knowledge and ethical action for the person who would gain salvation and eternal life.20 They differ, of course, in their _____________ 16

17 18

19 20

In the genre of martyrdom literature, we find a spectacular example of this instrumentalization in the description of Christ manifesting himself through the outstretched body of the Christian slave woman Blandina: “through her presenting the spectacle of one suspended on something like a cross, and through her earnest prayers, she [Blandina] inspired the combatants with great eagerness: for in the combat they saw, by means of their sister, with their bodily eyes, Him who was crucified for them, that He might persuade those who trust in Him that every one that has suffered for the glory of Christ has eternal communion with the living God” (Martyrs of Lyons and Vienne 28; see Acts of the Christian Martyrs, Volume 2, introduction, edited, and English translation by Herbert Musurillo [Oxford: Clarendon, 1972]). SRJ 23.18-31. SRJ 23.4. Translation is that of Karen L. King, contained in King, The Secret Revelation of John (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), p.69. This translation is from the text preserved in Nag Hammadi Codex II; the parentheses duplicate King’s editorial marks, here indicating material that King “has supplied in order to render the translation into a more fluent English prose” (p.25). King, The Secret Revelation of John, pp. 138-142. Irenaeus, strident critic of rival Christian views, including those contained in a version of the Secret Revelation of John, nonetheless shares with it the view that the human is a site of contest for invisible external forces. He interprets the strong man story from Matthew and Luke to argue that while his readers are the “vessels and house” formerly occupied by the diabolical “strong man,” the devil is no match for the Lord, who binds the devil: “Now we were first the vessels and the house of this [strong man] when we were in a state of apostasy; for he put us to whatever use he pleased, and the unclean spirit dwelled within us. For he [the devil] was not strong

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respective understandings of the place of God in relation to creation. What I want to stress with these examples is that instrumental agency does not position the human as merely a passive victim, but requires humans to respond and develop themselves so as to achieve salvation. Keller develops the concept of instrumental agency to account for both external powers (spirits, ancestors, deities) and humans in the context of possession, especially when the possessed has no consciousness or memory during or after possession. In these contexts, it is the human body that is instrumentalized by possessing external agencies, suggesting that instrumental agency pertains to bodies (not conscious subjects). We cannot simply transfer Keller’s definition, then, to contexts in which human persons remain conscious while engaging with external agencies.21 Rather, even imagery as stark as that of enslavement needs to be read not simply as an ideal of cultivating the human body to be the perfect instrument for the divine but, as Troels Engberg-Pedersen has suggested for Paul’s writings, an alignment of the human with divine agency that is also conscious and intentional.22 The human must desire and seek out this alignment to be free from misalignment (with other external agencies); external agencies do not merely impose themselves on powerless bodies. Nevertheless, human will is not sufficient to accomplish this alignment, but requires divine action. For EngbergPedersen, this alignment is a transformative process accomplished by the acquisition of a new “epistemological capacity,” πνεῦμα, which enables humans to understand new and genuine knowledge (σοφία).23 _____________

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23

as opposed to he who bound him, and spoiled his house, but as against those persons who were his tools, inasmuch as he caused them to wander away from God: these the Lord did snatch from his grasp” (Against All Heresies 3.8.2; see Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Volume V: Irenaeus, Vol. 1., edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1888]). It is beyond the scope of this paper to consider early Christian prophecy, but this is another context in which ancient authors, Christian and non-Christian, discuss the relationship between human and non-human agencies. Whether viewed as legitimate or not, prophecy and oracle are usually framed in terms of an invisible agency speaking through a human instrument. When oracular or prophetic utterances are made by a speaker who does not have any recollection of them after the fact, one finds a closer parallel to the cases Keller considers. For further discussion of prophetic speech, see especially Laura Nasrallah, “An Ecstasy of Folly”: Prophecy and Authority in Early Christianity (Harvard Theological Studies 52; Cambridge, MA: Harvard Divinity School, 2003). Troels Engberg-Pedersen, “Self-Sufficiency and Power: Divine and Human Agency in Epictetus and Paul,” in Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment, edited by John M. G. Barclay and Simon Gathercole (London: T&T Clark, 2006), p. 127. Ibid., p. 138.

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While Engberg-Pedersen insists that it does not make sense to speak of a “distinction between divine and human agency” in Paul’s writings,24 I would nuance this view in light of a modified version of Keller’s instrumental agency. The infusion of divine πνεῦμα makes sense precisely if we do grant a distinction between divine and human agencies. I agree that these are not opposed in Paul’s writings, however. Instead, human agency ideally makes the human person subject to divine agency in a way that instrumentalizes not simply the material body but also the soul and cognitive faculties through a transformation of the human self from one without πνεῦμα to a “new creation,” filled with πνεῦμα. Πνεῦμα recurs in Christian writings as a divine substance that enters or is activated in the human as part of the process of salvific transformation. When Christ is identified as λόγος, “reason” may be understood also as a transformative force. Writing a century after Paul, Justin’s writings imagine both demonic and Christic forces as ones that may penetrate and seek to control the human person, such that exorcism in the name of Christ offers one of the most powerful ways to expel demonic powers (2 Apol. 6).25 But, as Annette Yoshiko Reed convincingly stresses, Justin also associates human subjection to these invisible forces with the mental states of irrationality (demonic) and reason (divine). The cultivation of reason, for Justin, is a human undertaking necessary to free oneself from demonic control and enter into right relation with God.26 At the same time, it is important to remember that Justin’s close identification of Christ with reason, as λόγος, which he depicts as a spiritual “seed” implanted in the human, makes the most sense if we understand reason as both an invisible external force available to humans and the ideal product of tuning the human in proper relation to this divine force. Religious discourses build “room for both external forces and individual practices” in ways that “destabilize the potential dichotomy of agent and patient” and foreground “the ambiguity of individual responsibility in relation to larger systems of power.”27 We can read many early Christian discussions of transformations associated with conversion in light of instrumental agency. Exorcism, baptism, and chrism are important in many early Christian texts and lives as practices that signify and perform major transformations, including the expulsion of wicked powers, infusion of di_____________ 24 25 26 27

Ibid., p. 139. See Reed, “The Trickery of the Fallen Angels,” p. 162. Ibid., p. 162. Keller, The Hammer and the Flute, p. 77.

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vine power, remodelling of one’s soul, and sealing of one’s soul from evil.28 These practices constitute moments in a more comprehensive transformative process, which may include practices explicitly framed as capable of transforming or perfecting the body as the perfect vehicle for the spirit, or the perfect receptacle for divine seed.29 As Samuel Rubenson’s paper in this volume also shows, the ascetic life can be imagined as producing and anticipating one’s belonging in heaven. Speaking of the human as having instrumental agency preserves the notion of individuality—there is a self to be saved. It also makes it possible to locate the individual as a member of a group in relation to external agencies. The person could become one of God’s slaves, God’s people, God’s heirs, rather than a slave to the Devil, δαίμονες, or fate (εἱμαρμένη). The transformative process thus entails not only a shift in the individual’s relationship to divine powers but also in relation to other humans, as one becomes legible in relation to a group.30

Historical Context: Situating Instrumental Agency in Empire Foregrounding instrumental agency helps us to analyze the production of Christian identities and practices in the context of the Roman empire, for at least three reasons. First, the conditions of empire include systemic forces that cannot be comprehended by the simple dichotomies of domination and resistance. Christians were imbricated in networks of power that relied on instrumental agency: slaves, soldiers, colonial administrators, and domesticated animals were all subject (willingly or _____________ 28

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These rituals are crucial to examine as well as sites for negotiating human-divine relations and effecting transformation, as the contributions in this volume by Hugo Lundhaug and Outi Lehtipuu show. See also Henry Ansgar Kelly, The Devil at Baptism: Ritual, Theology, and Drama (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985). I have in mind here what Catherine Bell refers to as “ritualization.” As Bell puts it, “ritualization is a way of acting that is designed and orchestrated to distinguish and privilege what is being done in comparison to other, more quotidian, activities. As such, ritualization is a matter of various culturally specific strategies for setting off some activities from others….and for ascribing such distinctions to realities thought to transcend the powers of human actors” (Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992], p. 74). The relationship of transformative processes to claims about shifting and demarcating collective belonging are discussed in a number of the papers in this volume. See especially the essays by John Collins, Liv Ingeborg Lied, Einar Thomassen, Karen King, and Samuel Rubenson. For the marking of this new collective belonging as ethnic or racial, see Denise K. Buell, Why This New Race: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).

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not) to the will of human others. Female bodies, especially maternal bodies, were regularly figured as instrumental, whether construed as subject to male authority, constitutively passive and penetrable, vessels for male seed, or containers for new life.31 An instrumental notion of agency presupposes that human beings are not, as discrete individuals, the ultimate sources of agency, but rather, sites for manifesting the wills and desires of external agencies. In the social landscape of the Roman empire, it is not surprising to find texts that demand that a human accept, resist, cultivate him or herself in relation to external powers, including in ways that refract and destabilize social and political norms. Second, the philosophical discourses from which many Christians drew also elaborated models of the human in instrumental terms— often locating the relations of the composite human person as one in which the body was ideally the instrument of the soul, or the governing part of the soul. Third, instrumental agency helps to explain contemporaneous religious practices and some of the Christian critiques of these practices. Phenomena such as oracles, prophets, and the dreams of healing cults epitomize the idea of non-human external agencies communicating through human bodies (for good or ill). Christians, like their nonChristian contemporaries, do not accept these practices uncritically, but neither do they reject the possibility that external agencies may express themselves through humans. For example, when Tatian unsurprisingly rejects the efficacy of healing cults, such as the popular cult of Asclepius famously patronized and praised by Tatian’s contemporary Aelius _____________ 31

A very different way of characterizing the porousness of the self is through the imagery of rebirth. Depicting believers as reborn may connote an instrumental relation between the believer and the divine, insofar as divine πνεῦμα is what regenerates and hence animates and shapes the believer. God or a Christian teacher is often viewed as the one who generates or deposits the seed which results in the new birth; thus, rebirth requires an external agency, even as the individual’s participation and cultivation is required for the process to be successful. See, for example, Acts of Andrew 44.9-16, in which Stratocles speaks of Andrew having sown seeds of salvation in his soul, which then must be nourished in order to flourish. As Thomassen also discusses in his contribution, Clement attributes to Theodotos the view that we must be shaped by the savior (μορφόω) in order for us to be complete, no longer senseless, weak, and shapeless (like ἔκτρωμα) (Exc. Theod. 68), which is repeated slightly later in a discussion of baptism: “So long, then, they say, as the seed is yet unformed (ἀμόρφωτος), it is the offspring of the female, but when it received form, it was changed into a man (ἀνήρ) and becomes a son of the bridegroom” (79). In addition to cosmological narratives alluded to in this phrasing, this passage echoes an understanding of an embryo as receiving its form from male seed that determines and enables its growth and development.

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Aristides, he relies on the assumption that invisible powers may affect, if not invade, humans: The demons do not cure, but by their art make humans captives…For, as it is the practice of some to capture persons and then restore them to their friends for a ransom, so those who are esteemed gods, invading the bodies of certain persons, and producing a sense of their presence in dreams, command them to come forth into public, and in the sight of all, when they have taken their fill of the things of the world, fly away from the sick, and, destroying the disease which they had produced, restore humans to their former state.32

Tatian’s critique unfolds first by attributing illness to demons and then by collapsing the differences between demons and those venerated as gods. He does not, however, fully reject the notion that external forces may enter humans and may heal them. For Tatian, humans do need healing, but for him this means restoration—to the original condition of human creation, into God’s likeness: if we cultivate our flesh to be “like a temple, God is pleased to dwell in it by the spirit, God’s representative; but if it not be such a habitation, humans surpass wild animals in speech only—in other respects their life is like theirs (beasts), as one who is not a likeness of God.”33 In his view, the loss of likeness to God arose from the wrong kind of instrumental relation: “matter desired to exercise lordship over soul.”34 For Tatian, the self might seem to be identified with the soul, but the authentic human is a composite organized with the correct relations: a body in and through whom the soul expresses its likeness to God, to the extent that the divine spirit chooses to inhabit it. Just as the body ought to be trained to be the perfect instrument for the soul, so too the composite human (enfleshed soul) ought to be trained to be the perfect instrument for divine spirit. Second-century Christians thus define themselves and exhort others to transform themselves in the context of these three factors: of cosmologies populated with invisible as well as visible powers, of anthropologies that imagine humans as composite and mutable beings, and of social conditions characteristic of a slavery-dependent, colonizing empire. I turn now to a closer look at how an appeal to instrumental agency serves early Christian authors in articulating their anthro_____________ 32 33

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Orat. 18. Orat. 15. Of course, Tatian is not alone in this view. Other early Christians, including Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria, also frame transformation in terms of restoration, including specifically the restoration of a lost “likeness” to God, with reference to Gen 1:26. Orat. 15.

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pologies and soteriologies, specifically as it bears on the kinds of transformations entailed in Christian conversion.

The Human Instrument: Christian Critique of “Pagan” Statues Tatian’s discussion of the causes and cures for disease and Clement of Alexandria’s critique of mystery cults and cult statues might seem to have little in common at first glance; yet both rely on instrumental notions of human agency to define both what constitutes the human and the kinds of change necessary to accomplish human salvation. As Tatian well knew, religious practices of the time did not limit instrumental agency to human bodies. Statues were especially understood as potential instruments for divine power. As Deborah Steiner puts it, “the concept underpinning the efficacy ascribed to images venerated in cult” is that “the statue acts as a vessel, a potential or actual container for the numinous power that could take up residence inside.”35 The idea that statues may be vessels for the divine seems corroborated in religious practices: “assuming the god resident within the habitation that the image supplies, [ritual activities including prayer, procession, burial, washing] aim to make divinity emerge and act on behalf of those performing the rite.” That is, “the idols were not so much ‘representational’ as ‘persuasive’ objects, whose external appearance and deployment were thought directly to influence the conduct of the divinities portrayed.”36 Christian texts repeatedly condemn religious practices, especially pertaining to the use of statues. Instead of interpreting this only in terms of a venerable tradition of invective _____________ 35

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Deborah Tarn Steiner, Images in Mind: Statues in Archaic and Classical Greek Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 79. She continues: “Statues repeatedly articulate the problem of how closely façade and interior, surface and depth cohere. Not just the nature of gods, but that of fellow men and women can be at issue here” (Steiner, Images in Mind, pp. 79-80). The current work of Laura Nasrallah explores how early Christian rhetoric about statuary, especially statuary that presents humans with divine attributes, needs to be evaluated in the context of the visual landscape of the Roman Empire (see Nasrallah, “The Earthen Human, The Breathing Statue: The Sculptor God, Greco-Roman Statuary, and Clement of Alexandria,” forthcoming in Beyond Eden: The Biblical Story of Paradise [Genesis 2-3] and Its Reception History, edited by Konrad Schmid [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008]). My conversations with her about her work-in-progress have helped to sharpen my own analyses of Clement’s Protreptikos. Steiner, Images in Mind, pp. 105-106. For this position, Steiner is indebted to Christopher Faraone. See Christopher A. Faraone, Talismans and Trojan Horses: Guardian Statues in Ancient Greek Myth and Ritual (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

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against idolatry, I think we need also to recognize its bearing on Christian arguments about how to cultivate the correct kind of instrumental agency. Clement of Alexandria, for example, promotes an instrumental relationship between human and divine that locates the human firmly as a divine vessel and instrument; at the same time, he rejects the idea that one may encounter the divine through an aniconic or iconic vessel, such as a statue, or that one may cultivate relationships with divine powers as if to use them as instruments for human desires.37 Clement both lambastes veneration of statues and construes Christians as “authentic” statues, insofar as Christians, not sculpture, are containers for the divine. This argument pervades his treatise ostensibly addressed to a Greek audience, the Protreptikos. He writes: “we are they who, in this living and moving statue (ἄγαλμα), the human, bear about the image of God, an image which dwells with us, is our counsellor (σύμβουλος), companion, the sharer of our hearth, which feels with us, feels for us. We have been made a consecrated offering to God for Christ’s sake.”38 _____________ 37

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Surviving Christian amulets and magical spells to effect healing—as well as less pleasant goals such as curses—suggests another dimension of instrumentalization, more in continuity with local non-Christian religious practices. As Karen King has argued, the list of demons associated with specific parts of the psychic body in the longer version of the Secret Revelation of John (16.1-17.63) may correlate with practices undertaken to “help cleanse the body of evil influence and thereby bring healing” (King, The Secret Revelation of John, p. 152; see also pp. 114-118, 153). Protreptikos 4.59.2. I am closely following the Loeb translation by Butterworth here, with some emendations of my own (Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks, The Rich Man’s Salvation, To the Newly Baptized, English translation by G. W. Butterworth [Loeb Classical Library 92; 1919; reprinted, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999]. Citations follow critical edition by Otto Stählin (Clemens Alexandrinus, erster Band, Protrepticus und Paedagogus, edited by Otto Stählin [Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte 12; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1905]). See also the forthcoming interpretation of this passage offered by Laura Nasrallah, which productively locates Clement’s discussion of statues both in relation to interpretations of Genesis 2 and Roman statuary (Nasrallah, “The Earthen Human,” forthcoming). Philip Harland is surely correct that the landscape of religious practices, including processions played a role in the imagery early Christian authors such as Ignatius and Clement of Alexandria selected to communicate Christian collective identity and practices. (Harland, “Christ-Bearers and Fellow-Initiates: Local Cultural Life and Christian Identity in Ignatius’ Letters,” JECS 11:4 (2003), pp. 481-499). He suggests that the image of “God-bearing” and its Christian-inflected variation of “Christ-bearing” would have both been drawn from and intended to recall processional practices of bearing statuary and other sacred cult objects. In a footnote, Harland calls attention to how non-Christian authors, including Philo and Epictetus already play with the imagery of bearing the divine within the human soul, as the proper way to worship in contrast to carrying around “some external God, made of silver and gold” (Epictetus, Discourses 2.18.14). Philo explicitly glosses

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This passage communicates a strikingly instrumental understanding of the relationship between humans and God.39 Clement portrays Christians as statuary animated by God in sharp contrast to non-Christians who mistake cult images for that which is animated by the divine. Christians are the offerings for Christ’s sake, not libations or other offerings made by a human to request divine favors. Humans are represented as stones with the paradoxical capacity for life, unlike statues crafted by human hands which can only be animated by ghosts or daimonic spirits masquerading as gods. At the outset of the Protreptikos, Clement critiques Orpheus, Amphion, and Arion for making music influenced by demons which led humans both to worship “stones and wood” and indeed to become themselves mere wood and stones in the stupidity of their idol worship.40 But the savior Clement proclaims can make “men out of stones” and bring to “real and true life” those who were “otherwise dead.”41 This imagery clarifies the perilous effects that bodily actions can have on one’s ontological status as well as the significance of wielding the body properly. _____________

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the concept of God-bearing in terms of Genesis 1:26) (see On the Creation 69; noted in Harland, “Christ-Bearers and Fellow Initiates,” p. 487n16). But Harland does not develop an interpretation of the precise rhetorical elements that Christian authors emphasize and the elements that they alter to craft simultaneously a critique of local religious practices and identities and an alternative to them. Clement also imagines that humans can develop themselves to become proxy agents of the divine. In the Protreptikos, Clement not only asserts that: “the Logos of God himself not speaks to you plainly, having become human, in order that such as you may learn from a human (παρὰ ἀνθρώπου) how it is even possible for a human to become a god (θεός)” (Prot. 1.8.4), and also that “there is nothing more like [God] than any one of us who becomes as righteous as possible” (Prot. 10.97.2). This notion of human progression accords with Clement’s self-description as one who offers to become a counsellor (σύμβουλος) to his listeners (the same term he uses for divine presence in humans) (Prot. 10.95.3). Prot. 1.3.1. Prot. 1.4.5. Thus, having associated hypocrites and other outrageous humans with serpents, wolves, and savage beasts, Clement insists that “all of these most savage beasts and all such stones, the heavenly song transformed into gentle humans…..See how mighty is the new song! It has made humans out of stones and humans out of wild beasts. They who were otherwise dead, who had no share of real and true life, revived when they but heard the song” (Prot. 1.4.3, 5). This passage obviously foregrounds hearing, and the transformative power that music may have. Musical instruments offer ideal imagery for communicating a subjectivity in which external forces (the musician) interact with the individual (the lyre or flute) to exert action or force in the world (music). But statuary in antiquity also could communicate a comparable idea; as Deborah Steiner writes, statues were viewed “first and foremost not as representational or aesthetic objects but as performative or efficacious agents, able to interact in a variety of ways with those who commissioned, venerated, and even on occasion defaced them” (Steiner, Images in Mind, p.xii).

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Clement seeks to convince his listeners of three interlocking points: 1) that which ordinary statues seem to represent (the gods) is not really real—but either dead or demonic; 2) these statues are made by human hands, not divine ones, and at best represent the vessels, not the invisible divine reality; 3) those who venerate that which these statues represent mistake matter and death for reality and thus become themselves stone and wood. While the first two points echo traditional biblical polemic against idolatry, this third point indicates Clement’s view about the serious implications of misapprehending true from false. As we shall see, while divine power can restore those who have become wood and stones, Clement insists that his listeners also take responsibility for their senses.

What Changes and How? For Clement, sense perception bears directly on the question: How can one become the best sort of instrument for the best sort of divinity? Taking responsibility for one’s senses features prominently in a number of second-century Christian texts. Imagery of illumination, awakeness, and sobriety, all denote concerns with the conditions of the self to use one’s senses properly.42 Theories of sight and hearing in particular converge with instrumental understandings of selfhood insofar as these senses are crucial vectors by which the external forces enter into and affect the individual and by which the individual might transform her or his apperception of reality. The concern for sight and hearing allows early Christian authors to develop an instrumental understanding of agency that addresses local religious practices, philosophical discourses about representing the divine as well as about vision, scriptural invective against idolatry, and interpretations of biblical accounts of creation, as well as rival Christian views. In the Protreptikos, Clement of Alexandria invokes the senses of hearing and especially sight to disparage “Greek” and local religious practices as contributing to human degeneration, turning them into stones and wood or irrational (and sometimes deaf) beasts who need to _____________ 42

E.g., of the texts mentioned earlier, the Secret Revelation of John uses sensory imagery related especially to sight, hearing, memory, alertness, touch, and taste both to narrate misperception and to exhort true perception. The text as a whole embodies the importance of authentic hearing and seeing, as it is contextualized as a revelatory discourse of the savior to John, initiated by an appearance of the savior. Within the narrative, the plotline is advanced by uses of sense perception that either trap, divide, or mislead on the one hand, or free, unify, and instruct to salvation on the other hand (e.g., SRJ 26.1-31).

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alter their looking and listening in order to be able to really see and hear the truth that can restore them and, indeed, perfect them.43 Clement opens the Protreptikos by focusing his audience’s attention on hearing, emphasizing the ear as a porous site through which a human might be transformed into subhuman or even inorganic matter. By listening to Logos’ song, not the maddening, dehumanizing songs of mysteries or Sirens,44 one can be transformed back into a gentle human and remolded to resemble one’s original archetype—once more becoming a living statue animated by the image and likeness of God. That is, correct hearing actually allows one to be reshaped, in a mixing of aural and plastic imagery. The onus is on the listener, to block one’s ears from false sounds and teachings. Even more than hearing, Clement stresses the significance of sight in the Protreptikos. As Simon Goldhill has shown, Clement “fully incorporates the theory of the eye” that flourishes in educated secondcentury Greek writings, a materialist theory indebted to Platonic and Stoic ideas. According to this view, looking stamps (ἐναποσφραγίζω) and impresses (ἐναπομάττω) the soul with an image of what is seen: “what is at stake in looking is your very soul, the truth of things. How you look is part of your relation to God.”45 The stakes of Clement’s _____________ 43

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At the end of his Protreptikos, Clement of Alexandria writes: “Only the God-fearing human is rich, wise and well-born, and therefore the image, together with the likeness, of God.” (Prot. 12.122.4). Clement draws on Gen 1:26 to insist that all humans are divine creations, and thus all are eligible for salvation. But he argues that his audience of putative “Greeks” have ceased to be accurate images and thus require both self-cultivation and transformation by the Logos. The image of the Sirens appears near the end of the Protreptikos, where Clement reprises the musical image, calling his listeners to ignore the deadly siren song of custom, by lashing themselves to the wood of the cross, in order that God may safely pilot them to heaven’s harbors, so that they may see God and be initiated into the real holy mysteries (Prot. 12.118.1-4). Christian mysteries are the real deal, of which the Bacchic mysteries are mere semblance (see Prot. 12.118.5-120.1). Simon Goldhill, “The erotic eye: visual stimulation and cultural conflict,” in Being Greek Under Rome, edited by Simon Goldhill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 174. As Goldhill’s article stresses, looking is erotically charged: “looking is a kind of copulation, a sexual embrace before the act of fornication, a corruption akin to adultery or prostitution” (179, 175). Clement, in his critique of statues, certainly draws upon biblical, Philonic, and Pauline condemnations of idolatry, but he also marries these to a theory of the eye to argue that “wrong looking is wrong living….Worshipping statues is but a weaker form of copulating with them” (174). Copulation is, of course, another way to represent the breaching of the boundaries of self. Understanding looking as an action bearing on the state of one’s soul and relation to God illuminates the way Clement connects idolatry with sexual licentiousness. Kathy L. Gaca’s excellent study of porneia explores this in greater detail for Clement’s work. See Gaca, The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics, and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity (Hellenistic Culture and Society 40; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), pp. 247-272.

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critique of statues as mere dead things becomes clearer if one accepts the possibility that perceiving statues in the wrong way might actually lead to a shift in one’s very being; his theory of sight helps explain his warning that those who venerate statues themselves become stones and wood, degenerating from their status as God’s creation. Even when the soul is foregrounded as the site of transformation, flesh carries significant weight. The flesh is the visible boundary of the individual; furthermore, with properly calibrated vision, one can discern the state of the invisible interior by examining its surfaces. What can you see when you can really see? According to Clement, you see that priests and those who worship at local temples are putrid devotees of death: In this passage, he vividly connects this charge to the bedraggled embodied state of the humans who serve such false external agencies: “Let any of you look at those who serve the idols (τοὺς παρὰ τοῖς εἰδώλοις λατρεύοντας). One will see that they have filthy hair, dirty and tattered clothing, complete strangers to baths, with claws for nails like wild beasts, and many lack their genitals. They are actual proof that the precincts of idols are so many tombs or prisons.”46 By contrast, Clement exhorts his listeners: “Receive the Christ; receive sight; receive your light”—injunctions cleverly sandwiched between a quotation from the Psalms (“the commandment of the Lord shines far, giving light to the eyes”) and the Iliad (“Thus shall you well discern who is God and who is but mortal”).47 To be initiated into the true (Christian) mysteries means to receive a seal (σφραγίζω), become holy (dance with angels, sing hymns of praise to God), and to be changed to become like the archetype of which humans are imperfect images: “O you who were formerly images (εἰκόνες), but do not all resemble [your model], I desire to restore (διορθεύω) you to the archetype, that you may become even as I am. I will anoint you with the ointment of faith, whereby you cast away corruption; and I will display the bare form (γυμνός σχῆμα) of righteousness, in which you shall ascend to God.”48 The one who regains the image and likeness of God is the only rich, sane, wellborn person.49 _____________ 46 47

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Prot. 10.91.1. Prot. 11.113.2. See Psalms 19:8 and Iliad 5.128. This sandwiching epitomizes Clement’s appropriation of both scriptural and philosophical materials and his claim that Christianity is the one saved γένος constituted out of the peoples from the “Hellenic training” and the “law” (Strom. 6.42.2; for more on Clement’s notion of Christians as a γένος, see Buell, Why This New Race). Slightly later Clement continues this motif of light and vision: “Let us remove the ignorance and darkness that spreads like a mist over our sight; and let us get a vision of the true God (Prot. 11.114.1). Prot. 12.120.4-5. Prot. 12.122.4.

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This one lives a good life, which means being obedient to God and imitating the Logos—through Clement as his proxy. The Logos “has built his temple (νεώς) in humans so that he might install/consecrate (ἱδρύω) God in humans.”50 While being able to perceive the truth accurately is a motif that threads through many early Christian texts, Clement’s understanding of how sight works actually hints at a way in which he situates his understanding of instrumental agency in distinction from rival Christians in Alexandria. Let me speak to this briefly, to give some sense of how instrumentality could be nuanced in different ways.

How is the Human an Instrument? Intra-Christian Polemics about Agency and Conversion In his multi-volume Stromateis, Clement resists the imagery of demonic invasion and occupation. Instead, Clement portrays the human soul as impressionable, in the manner of a wax tablet: “all passions are imprints made in the soul when it is malleable and yielding, and like seal impressions of the ‘spiritual’ powers against whom we are wrestling.51 I suppose it is the job of the powers of wickedness to try to implant something of their own nature in each being with a view to wrestling down and securing power over those who say no to them.”52 This imagery is quite consistent with that of the Protreptikos, in understanding the effect of sensory perception, especially seeing, as shaping the soul. What is significant for my argument is that Clement makes this point specifically to contrast with rival Christian views in Alexandria, notably those of the study circles associated with Basilides and Valentinus, both of whom flourished before Clement’s day.53 Clement sets up a debate with writings ascribed to Basilides and Valentinus in order to present a concept of instrumental agency that is more appealing, I would venture, to elite males, but that also perhaps gives all people a _____________ 50 51 52 53

Prot. 11.117.4. See Steiner, Images in Mind, p. 115 and p. 115n144. Clement uses a common term here for the installation or consecration of a cult statue in a temple. Clement is clearly alluding to Eph 6:12. Strom. 2.110.1. I understand Clement as having no more official sanction than the heads of these study circles in his day (see David Brakke, “Canon Formation and Social Conflict in Fourth-Century Egypt: Athanasius of Alexandria’s Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter,” HTR 84 [1994]: 395-419; and Denise K. Buell, Making Christians: Clement of Alexandria and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999], pp. 79-94, 180182).

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better sense of how they might control their (inevitable) condition of being instruments of δαίμονες or the holy spirit/logos. Clement explains the process by which some humans fall prey to these powers: The powers of which we have been speaking offer souls readily disposed to that sort of thing spectacles of beauty, fancies, adulterous acts, pleasures, and similar seductive appearances, rather as drovers wave their branches in front of their animals. They trick those who cannot distinguish true pleasure from false, or a beauty that is perishable and insolent from beauty of holiness; they enslave them and lead them on. Each decision, continually impressed upon the soul, leaves an inner perception stamped upon it. And the soul, without knowing, is carrying around an image of the passion. The cause lies in the act of seduction and our assent to it.54

Clement does not deny that there are demonic external forces, but he stresses that their deleterious effects arise from humans mistaking falsehood for truth—these evil powers offer falsehoods in the guise of truth and make humans their instruments when humans misuse their senses and become molded and “stamped” with false pleasures and passions. By emphasizing pedagogical imagery, Clement portrays the human person as more bounded than porous; impressionable, but also responsible for cultivating resistance to bad influences. He presents the ideas promoted by Basilides and Valentinus as very different. The former, he writes, says that passions are spirits that attach themselves to the human soul and “bring the desires of the soul into a plausible likeness of animals,” causing the human “to imitate the actions of the animals whose characteristics they hold within them.”55 Clement disparages this approach as one that turns the human into a kind of Trojan horse, “the image of a wooden horse in the poetic myth, enfolding in one body an army of so many different spirits.”56 He goes on to criticize Valentinus for portraying humans as occupied by evil spirits before conversion. Clement cites Valentinus as stating, there is only one good being…through him alone can the heart become pure, when every evil spirit has been driven from the heart….I suppose the heart’s experience is like a caravan site. It too has holes bored and dug into it and is often filled with filth when people stay there and behave outrageously…The heart also, unless it takes care in advance, experiences something similar, being unpurified and a home for many spiritual powers. But when the Father, the only good being, has visited it, it becomes sanctified

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Strom. 2.111.3-4. Strom. 2.112.1-2. Strom. 2.113.2.

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and blazes with light. In this way, the man with a heart that receives blessings because he will see God.57

Why does Clement object to this view, when it seems to recall Clement’s own depiction of the relationship between divine and human agencies in the Protreptikos? The criticism that Clement launches here is that Valentinus neither adequately accounts for the vulnerability of the soul nor adequately credits the human with the possibility of making a “change of obedience” that would lead to salvation. Clement emphasizes “choice” (προαίρεσις), that faith is not only necessary but has real soteriological value.58 Nonetheless, this choice is only legible in relation to the reality of divine power, to transform— reform—the individual (conform back to archetype of image; adopt as son) and only meaningful insofar as the individual engages in a sustained and life-long process of Christian paideia that affects all aspects of life, from sleeping, eating, bathing, clothing, sex, and so on. In the context of the section with which we are immediately concerned, Clement responds to the views of Basilides and Valentinus by invoking The Epistle to Barnabas as his apostolic witness. The irony is that Clement has to gloss Barnabas to avoid sounding too similar to his Christian rivals. Clement writes, “I do not need lots of words to describe how we say the activities of the devil and the unpurified spirits flow into the sinner’s soul. I need merely to call as witness the apostolic figure of Barnabas when he says ‘Before we believed in God, the habitation of our heart was weak and corruptible, in very truth a temple built with hands. For it was filled with idolatry and a home for evil spirits, through acting contrary to God.’” Clement, however, denies that Barnabas is saying that spirits actually inhabit human bodies. Rather, Clement insists “he is saying that sinners perform acts comparable to those of evil spirits; he is not saying that the actual spirits live in the soul of the man without faith.”59 Barnabas is now made to say that faith does not drive away evil spirits but rather brings forgiveness of sins; additionally, he argues that the way that God comes to live in us is by the teachings of the Logos (and our faith in them). Clement’s critique of his rival Christians may seem a bit forced. But his arguments indicate that at least one Christian author preferred to define instrumentality less as a form of spiritual occupation than in terms of the stamping and molding more commonly associated with pedagogical training. In contrast to the gritty images of enslaved or enlisted bodies that predominate in other texts, Clement’s kind of ar_____________ 57 58 59

Strom. 2.114.3-6. See e.g., Strom. 2.9.2. Strom. 2.116.3-117.1.

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gument might have appealed to free, paideia-aspiring men of Alexandria in particular, folks who might have been accustomed to wielding other humans as instruments or raised to idealize self-mastery.

Conclusion For Clement, as for many other early Christians (and, indeed, nonChristians), the questions are: Which master will one serve?60 How can one transform oneself to create the conditions for activating or receiving divine power? By belonging to God, not the devil or daimonic powers, one becomes transformed in ways often described as healed, sealed, reborn, or free of fate or death.61 Did one actually receive the holy spirit in baptism or do demonic powers cling invisibly within?62 Has one been “sealed” and thereby protected? How can one remain vigilant to and free from demonic powers? How can one read the surfaces of the body or world to determine the workings of invisible powers? These are some of the questions that arise within and can be addressed with an understanding of selves in the world whose agency is not autonomous and limited to the individual. As I have demonstrated with just a few examples, secondcentury sources vary in how they answer these questions, even as they share a common understanding of the self as contingent—produced in

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In his Protreptikos, Clement of Alexandria’s understanding of all humans as created by the Christian God produces an argument of restoration, repentance, and recognition: he exhorts his listeners to acknowledge God as creator and serve God, repenting of having been formerly misled to worship other false gods: “I would ask you, whether you do not think it absurd that you humans who are God’s last creation, from whom you have received your soul (ψυχή) and entirely belong, should serve another master?” (Prot. 10.92.2). See also later in this chapter: “Acknowledge your master. You are God’s handiwork; how could that which is his peculiar possession rightly become another’s?” (Prot. 10.103.3). Some Christians even figure transformation as crossing a sex or species boundary— from female to male or from human to divine (e.g., Gospel of Thomas 114 [sex] and Prot. 1.8.4 [species]). “It is fitting to go to baptism with joy, but since unclean spirits often go down into the water with some and these spirits following and gaining the seal together with the candidate become impossible to cure for the future, fear is joined with joy, in order that only one who is pure may go down to the water” (Exc. Theod. 83).

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relationship to an internal diversity (at least body and soul) and external forces (human and non-human). Early Christian authors employ a range of instrumental imagery to talk about the formation and transformation of Christian selves. Musical instruments, statuary, buildings, as well as categories of social bodies (especially those of children, students, mothers, and slaves) all can be used to emphasize a transformative process in which humans cultivate (e.g., through ἄσκησις, prayer, or prescribed ethical programs) ways to invite in or ward off different external agencies as well as ways to instrumentalize their own bodies. There is certainly much more of this instrumental language to be explored.63 Early Christian texts regularly formulate transformations in ways that may strike modern Western readers as odd or even uncomfortable, because of their unfamiliar way of speaking about self and agency. Early Christians, like their ancient contemporaries did not hold a modern Western view of the autonomous self, where agency is aligned with individual consciousness and an individual self with distinct physical and psychic boundaries. Nonetheless, the concerns of these early Christian texts resonate with concerns identified in missiological, anthropological, postcolonial, and feminist writings from modern periods:64 how _____________ 63

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I could imagine interesting examinations of the gendered ways that this language gets elaborated, to the extent that female bodies are imagined as penetrable and vessel-like, especially in the context of pregnancy (including annunciation stories). The challenges that we face in interpreting early Christian texts find an analogue in some contemporary anthropological discussions of agency, especially informed by postcolonial and feminist theory,—especially questions about how to interpret “religion” and claims about external, non-verifiable agencies such as spirits and deities. For example, Bronwen Douglas argues that one can find significant traces of indigenous emphases on autonomous spiritual agency in ethnographic descriptions of taboos and customs surrounding them, which Catholic missionaries cite for their own purposes as evidence of native belief in original sin (Douglas, “Encounters with the Enemy? Academic Readings of Missionary Narratives on Melanesians,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 43:1 [2001]: 37-64). In a related vein, Webb Keane has argued that Dutch Calvinist representations of Sumbanese traditional religion encodes a shared belief in external invisible agents even as the Christians accounts disparage Sumbanese for ascribing external agency to the wrong things (such as objects) or in the wrong way (in their ritual practices and prayers), and the Sumbanese critique Christians of hubris for addressing the divine directly (Keane, “From Fetishism to Sincerity: On Agency, the Speaking Subject, and their Historicity in the Context of Religious Conversion,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 39:4 [1997], pp. 678, 689). Amy Hollywood asks about how feminists might allow ourselves to be challenged by medieval women mystics’ expressions of freedom as “self-abjection in the face of the divine other” (Hollywood, “Gender, Agency, and the Divine in Religious Historiography,” The Journal of Religion 84:4 [2004], p. 528). Further exploration of the different understandings of selfhood and agency produced and communicated in early Christian texts may be able to shed light on contemporary struggles over questions of agency arising especially in conditions of postcoloniality, global

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are individuals located and connected in systems of power? What kinds of understandings of the self are revealed or imagined in texts that exhort transformations? How do we (and our ancient sources) adjudicate claims about external, invisible non-human agencies and their bearing on understandings and ideals about humanness (and human difference)? Early Christian texts resemble some modern non-Western sources insofar as they locate the human’s relationship to invisible powers as one requiring vigilance and cultivation to ensure individual and social well-being, cosmic order, and salvation (however imagined). While questions of choice and free will do arise in early Christian texts, they are posed in the context of presuming the existence and agency of external, invisible powers. Our understanding of both modern and ancient contexts can benefit from further analysis of what is at stake in the crafting of agency and subjectivity.

_____________ capitalism and modern forms of negotiating the political with the religious, as these conditions increasingly destabilize the possibility of claiming selfhood and agency as autonomous. I do not mean either that early Christian texts provide an “answer” to contemporary questions or that the contexts of antiquity and the present are the same. Rather, I want to signal that the interpretive relationship between ancient and modern is not simply unidirectional. In a recent article, Jonathan Z. Smith offers a deliberately provocative juxtaposition of modern spirit possession in a context of Christian missionizing to pose fresh questions about the Corinthian reception of Paul’s gospel. See Smith, “Re: Corinthians,” in Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 340-361.

“As Already Translated to the Kingdom While Still in the Body”1 The Transformation of the Ascetic in Early Egyptian Monasticism The Transformation of the Ascetic in Early Egyptian Monasticism SAMUEL RUBENSON2 Überschrift 2: für Kapitel ohne Ü2 wird hier Ü1 Kurzform wiederholt In studies of early Christian asceticism the last decades have witnessed a rather dramatic change in interpretation. Earlier emphasis on ascetic practice as a sign of disdain for the body, related to a strongly dualistic anthropology, have given way to a reading of Christian ascetic texts as expressions for a strong belief in the possibility and even necessity of transforming the body. In his magisterial study of early Christian understanding of body and society Peter Brown argues that the early Christian ascetics differed radically from some of their contemporary pagan ascetics in that they did not consider the body as primarily a nuisance, ultimately irrelevant, but rather as the central stage for their struggle for salvation. The body was a holy temple, something that ought to be offered to God. Their ideal was not deliverance from the body, but the transformation of the body into a perfect vehicle for the spirit.3 Other scholars have emphasized the performative and communicative aspects of ascetic practice.4 Others have argued that we should not, as has been done in much previous research, primarily look into various forms of Platonism in order to interpret early Christian ascetic ideology, but rather into Stoi_____________ 1

2 3

4

Ep.Amm. VIII.2 G: καὶ οὕτως ἔσεσθε ὡς ἔδη μετατεθέντες εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν, ἔτι ὄντες ἐν σώματι; (S): hâkhanâ hâwên atûn aykh mâ deshtanîtûn lekhûn lemalkûtâ kad ‘adkîl bepagrâ. Samuel Rubenson is professor at the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies, Lund University, Sweden. Peter Brown, The Body and Society. Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, CUP Press 1988, p. 176-177 (on the basic difference between Origen and Celsus) and p. 222, 235-237 (on the desert fathers). See Richard Valantasis, “A Theory of Social Function of Asceticism”, Vaage, Leif & Wimbush Vincent L. (eds), Asceticism and the New Testament, New-York – London 1999; Gavin Flood, The Ascetic Self. Subjectivity, Memory and Tradition, Cambridge – New York: Cambridge University Press 2004.

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cism. In particular the intense ongoing research into the writings of Evagrius of Pontus shows how much Evagrius depended on Stoic anthropology and especially Stoic psychology.5 The emphasis here is not on any separation of soul, or mind, from body, of immaterial from material, but rather on the making the body and soul to conform to the logos, the rational capacity, and thus create harmony and stability in the entire person. Others still are increasingly looking into trajectories that link the emergence of monastic tradition with Jewish apocalypticism and various forms of sectarian mystical traditions, whether Gnostic or not, suggesting a interrelation between asceticism and mysticism in a common anthropomorphic image of God.6 This shift in current research is related both to a shift in what sources we use, and to reinterpretations of standard sources. Previous scholarship on early monasticism has focused on hagiography, as well as descriptions by prominent representatives of the church and its hierarchy. Stories about the desert ascetics fighting demons and exposing themselves to severe practices of self-mortification have dominated the view, and the condemnations of various practices by the authorities have been used as evidence. Sayings and anecdotes in the Apophthegmata Patrum as well as descriptions in the Life of Antony have for example been taken at face value as evidence for practices of the desert fathers, without much reflection on the specific setting of the texts themselves or on their literary form.7 In recent studies the educational and apologetic character of the texts as well as their relation to pagan literary traditions have undermined much of the results of earlier studies.8 _____________ 5 6

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Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind. From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, Oxford 2000. Earlier attempts to find a background for emerging monasticism in Philo’s Therapeutae, among the Essenes, or in the Qumran documents are revisited, but focus is now rather on the apocryphal OT literature. See for example Alexander Golitzin, “‘The Demons suggest an Illusion of God's Glory in a Form’: Controversy over the Divine Body and Vision of Glory”, Studia Monastica 44 (2002) pp. 13-43 and Rowan Williams, “Faith and Experience in Early Monasticism: New Perspectives on the Letters of Ammonas”, Akademische Reden und Kolloquien der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen Nürnberg, Bd. 20, Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nürnberg 2002. For a succinct and pertinent discussion see James E. Goehring, “The Encroaching Desert: Literary Production and Ascetic Space in Early Christian Egypt”, Journal of Early Christian Studies 1 (1993), pp. 281–296. For the Life of Antony, see Samuel Rubenson, “Anthony and Pythagoras: A Reappraisal of the Appropriation of Classical Biography in Athanasius’ Vita Antonii”, Beyond Reception – Mutual Influences between Antique Religion, Judaism, and Early Christianity, ed. David Brakke, Anders-Christian Jacobsen and Jörg Ulrich (Frankfurt: Peter Lang 2006), pp. 191-208. For the Apophthegmata Patrum see Lillian Larsen, “Pedagogical parallels: Re-reading the ‘Apophthegmata Patrum’” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia Uni-

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More significantly a wide variety of other texts have increasingly been used to study the lives and views of the earliest monastic tradition. Papyrological studies have revealed that the monks of fourthcentury Egypt were much less isolated and also less ascetic than the texts let us believ, and comparative work on non-orthodox texts suggests less sharp boundaries between various forms of Christian and non-Christian asceticism.9 Even more important are a number of texts attributed to fourth-century Egyptian Christian ascetics, but only partly edited and studied.10 Against a perceived sharp dichotomy between the ascetic tradition of the fourth-century Coptic Nag Hammadi codices and the early monastic movement, these texts witness to a more complex web of ascetic and monastic communities giving rise to a variety of expressions for their understanding of ascetic life and the relation between the divine and the human, the body and the mind. Of particular interest in connection with early monastic views on resurrection and the transformation of the body are the letters of Ammonas. These letters, dated to the mid-fourth century, have for long been recognized as one of he most important witnesses to the first stages in the development of Christian mysticism. In them the experience of various kinds of heavenly realities as already present in bodily life is a dominant theme, and the letters have in recent debates on Egyptian monasticism, and especially on the first Origenist controversy, been regarded as witnesses to an ancient monastic tradition deeply rooted in Jewish mysticism. The letters are here claimed to represent an anti-philosophical trajectory opposed to the Alexandrinian _____________ 9

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versity 2006) and Per Rönnegård, “Threads and Images: The Use of the Bible in the Apophtheghmata Patrum,” (Ph.D. diss., Lund 2007). In general see Samuel Rubenson, The Letters of St. Antony. Monasticism and the Making of a Saint, Minneapolis 1995. For the papyrological works see i.a. Ewa Wipszycka, “Le Monachisme égyptieen et les villes”, Travaux et Mémoirs 12 (1994), pp. 1–44. For others texts see i.a. James E. Goehring, “Monastic Diversity and Ideological Boundaries in Fourth-Century Christian Egypt”, JECS 5 (1997), pp. 61–84 and Heinrich Holze, “ANAPAUSIS im anachoretischen Mönchtum und in der Gnosis”, ZKG 106 (1995), pp. 1-17. For the letters of Antony see Rubenson (1995). The letters of Ammonas have in a number of recent articles been discussed in relation to the letters of Antony, see David Brakke, “The Making of Monastic Demonology: Three Ascetic Teachers on Withdrawal and Resistance”, Church History 70 (2001), 19–48, Williams (2002) , Samuel Rubenson, “Wisdom, Paraenesis and the Roots of Monasticism” Early Christian Paraenesis in Context ed. by James Starr and Troels Engberg.Pedersen (BZNW 125), Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 2004, pp. 521–534, and idem ”Argument and Authority in Early Monastic Correspondence”, Foundations of Power and Conflicts of Authority in Late-Antique Monasticism. Proceedings of the International Seminar Turin, December 2-4, 2004 (Orientalia Lovaniensia Aanalecta 157), Louvain 2007, pp. 75–87.

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theological tradition represented by the letters of Antony and the writings by Evagrius of Pontos. 11 In this contribution I will make an attempt to systematize the references to bodily experiences of transformation and of heavenly realities in the Ammonas letters and try to situate them in within the early monastic tradition. By doing this I want to question the prevalent polarization between a mystical and a philosophical tradition in early Egyptian monasticism.

The Letters of Ammonas The letters of Ammonas are known to us in a number of versions, preserved in Arabic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Georgian, Greek, and Syriac.12 The numbers of letters preserved in the different languages varies, as does the order of the letters. There are, moreover, substantial differences between the various versions and to some extent even between manuscript traditions within one of the versions. Given the importance of the letters and the growing scholarly debate on the interpretation of them, it is unfortunate, and somewhat surprising, that little effort has been made to compare all the versions and try to establish a more firm foundation for an analysis and interpretation of them. The only substantial analysis, albeit only of the Arabic, Greek and Syriac, is still the article by Franz Klejna printed 1936.13 The letters were first published in 1641 in a Latin translation of the Arabic version, and in 1855 an Armenian version of three letters was printed as part of the Vitae Patrum.14 But it was only with the critical _____________ 11

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See Golitzin (2002) and Williams (2002) developing suggestions made by Georges Florovsky and Graham Gould in their interpretations of the first Origenist controversy. A Coptic version is attested by quotations in Shenoute, by the colophon of the Arabic version and by a reference in the medieval Coptic author Abû-l-Barakât. See Samuel Rubenson, “The Arabic Version of the Letters of St. Antony”, Actes du deuxième congrès des études arabes chrétiennes, OCA 226, Rome 1986, p. 19-29. Franz Klejna “Antonius und Ammonas, eine Untersuchung über Herkunft und Eigenart der ältesten Mönchsbriefe”, Zeitschrift für katholischen Theologie 62 (1938), pp 309-348. The only attempt at a comparison of all versions is made for the translation of the letters into French by Dom Bernard Outtier and Dom Lucien Regnault, Lettres des Pères du Desert. Ammonas, Macaire, Arsène, Sérapion de Thmuis, Spiritualité Orientale 42, Abbaye de Bellefontaine 1985. Abraham Ecchellensis, Sanctissimi patris nostri Beati Antonii magni…epistolae viginti. Nunc primum ex Arabico Latini juris factae, Paris 1641. In accordance with the Arabic mss the letters are here, as well as in the reprint of the text in Patrologia Graeca, attributed to St. Antony and printed as letters 8-20 in a collection where the first seven

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edition of a Syriac version in 1915 and a Greek version in 1916 that scholars became aware of these texts.15 An Ethiopian version of two letters was published in 1963 and a Georgian version of one letter in 1976.16 The published text of the letters thus presently consists of 14 letters in Syriac, 13 in Arabic, 8 in Greek, three in Armenian, two in Ethiopic and one in Georgian. In addition another 12 letters are known in Georgian mss. The authenticity of the letters and their attribution to Ammonas, a fourth century monk and disciple of Antony known also from other sources, taken for granted by the editors, and strongly defended by Klejna, has been upheld in all recent studies. The important differences between the letters of Ammonas and the letters of Antony have even been used to question the authenticity of the latter, but as I have argued elsewhere, and will point out below, there are also important similarities between the two collections. Noteworthy is the common dependence on the letters of St. Paul, in style as well as in terminology and perspectives. 17 It is obvious that the authors of the letters model their own relation to their disciples on how they interpret Paul’s relations to his disciples.18

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letters are the genuine letters of St. Antony. The Arabic text of the entire collection was printed in Cairo in 1899: Anbâ Murqus al-Antûnî, Kitâb Raudat al-nufûs fî rasâ’il al-qiddîs Antûniyûs, Cairo 1899, p. 48-140. For the Armenian see Vitae Patrum II, Venice 1855, pp. 597–603. Syriac: Michael Kmosko, Ammoni Eremitae Epsitolae (Patrologia Orientalis X.VI), Paris 1915, pp. 555–616. Greek: Francois Nau, Ammonas, successeur de saint Antoine (Patrologia Orientalis XI), Paris 1915, pp. 393–502. An earlier, but uncritical Greek edition was made by Augoustinos Iordanites, TOU OSIOU HMWN ABBA AMMWNA EPISTOLAI PENTE…, Jerusalem 1911. An additional Greek letter was later printed in G.L. Marriott, “Macarii Anecdota”, Harvard Theological Studies 5 (1918), pp. 47-48 (where it appears as Macarius, Homily 57). Ethiopic: V. Arras, Collectio Monastica (CSCO 238-239), Louvain 1963. Georgian: Gerardus Garitte, “De Unius ex Ammonae epistulis versione iberica”, Le Muséon 89 (1976), pp. 123-131. See Rubenson 2004, p. 530–531 and 2007, p. 86. The letters of Ammonas (Ep. Amm.) are in the following quoted according to Kmosko’s edition of the Syriac text with the exception that the beginning of letter X in the edition of the Syriac is regarded as the end of letter IX as attested in the Greek and Georgian versions and in accordance with the French translation by Outtier and Regnault. Where the Greek text is significant reference to it is given in parenthesis in accordance with the edition of Nau. Translations are my own. The letters of Antony (Ep. Ant.) are quoted according to the English version in Rubenson 1995. See for example Ep. Amm IV.1 and Hebr 5:14; V.1 and 2 Tim. 1:3–5; V.2 and Rom 1:11; VI.2 and 1 Thess 2:8; IX.3–4 and 2 Tim 3:5.

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Heaven on Earth The letters of Ammonas are dominated by ideas of spiritual growth and experiences of heavenly and divine presence, and Ammonas has been regarded as a major pioneer in Christian mysticism. In the letters there are abundant references to divine and secret mysteries and revelations, to things that cannot be written down and to bodily experiences of heavenly and divine realities. These are both described as something the author himself has had and as something the recipients of the letters can attain under certain conditions. Although the term resurrection does not appear in the letters of Ammonas, the basic idea of a gradual transformation from the “body of corruption” to “the body of the resurrection” referred to in the letters of Antony, is manifest.19 The main object of the exhortations in the letters is to encourage the recipients to seek for these experiences, to persist in their struggle for them and to interpret any loss of them as temporary. and as a trial. The letters of Ammonas are directed to people who belong to heaven, to “the kingdom”20 or “the kingdom of heaven”.21 In contrast to the letters of Antony there is, however, no attempt to teach an overarching protology or cosmology, and thus no references to a creation in the image of God or to an original spiritual essence,22 nor is there any ontological dualism between “flesh“ and “spirit”, as in Antony’s references to “fleshly love” and “godly love”, or “fleshly names” and “spiritual names”, or to a spiritual identity signified as being “true Israelites”.23 Words specifically denoting “flesh” as opposed to “spirit” do not occur, and the references to “body” make up a difficulty of their own, to which I will return. The basic images for this belonging to heaven are the interconnected Biblical concepts of childhood and inheritance. The recipients are children of the kingdom in virtue of being adopted.24 By imitating Christ, who is sent, as it says, “to heal the infirmities and sicknesses of men”, the perfected souls are “made worthy of adoption as sons of God”.25 This image of adoption is paralleled in the letters of Antony where it is linked to a transfer from being a servant to being a son, for which Antony uses a combination of John 15:15, Rom. 8:15-17, and 1 _____________ 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

For the body of the resurrection see Ep.Ant I.71. Ep.Amm. IV.1. Ep.Amm. VII.1. For the protology and cosmology of Antony see Rubenson (1995), pp. 64–68. See Ep.Ant. III.3–5, IV.2–3, V.1–2. Ep.Amm. IV.1. For the Pauline background see Rom 8:17, Gal 3:29, Gal. 4:7. Ep. Amm. XII.3.

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Cor 5:16.26 In both collections adoption is linked to the concept of kenosis, of Christ descending from heaven to heal human kind, as well as to the outpouring of the Spirit, in Antony’s letters even designated as the “Spirit of adoption”. There is, furthermore, in both collections of letters a clear connection between the status of adoption and spiritual knowledge, knowledge about one’s own identity.27 The central feature of this adopted childhood in the letters of Ammonas as well as Antony is its connection to inheritance. Ammonas reminds the recipients that since they belong to what is eternal, what is from above, and is living, they are counted in the inheritance of God, they have a heavenly inheritance, their own portion as a reward for all their labour.28 They will inherit what cannot be seen.29 This inheritance is what God has promised to their fathers, and they are entitled to it as “children of promise”.30 With reference to Gen. 28:10–15 relating Jacob’s vision of ascending and descending angels and the promises he receives about inheriting the land, Ammonas reassures his addressees that they as children share in the blessing and the promises made to their fathers.31. The same concept of inheritance is also used in Antony’s letters with a specific reference to the ascetics being joint heirs with the saints.32 Another way of expressing this belonging to heaven are references to having a specific place in heaven prepared, probably based on John 14:2. Ammonas writes about it as “the place of rest”, or “the divine rest” and, moreover, makes clear that the ascetic can already in the body see his place in heaven.33 This explicitly spatial interpretation of belonging to heaven is also recurrent in the references to ascending to _____________ 26 27

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Ep. Ant. II.26-30; IV.4-12. In Antony’s letters this connection is created by John 15:15 and the idea of Jesus revealing to his disciples “what the Father has taught him”. In Ammonas’ letters the status as adopted children of the kingdom is the basis for a “new vision” revealing the greatness of the heavenly inheritance, echoing Eph. 3:14-16. Ep. Amm I.1 and VII.1. The reference in the latter to “having a portion of the Kingdom of Heaven”: menâthâ d’malkûthâ dashmayâ has a background in Ef. 1:11ff. Ep.Amm I.1, Ep.Ant VII.45. Ep.Amm IV.1 (G III.1): τέκνοις τῆς ἐπαγγελίας; bnayë me‘ulkânâ. Promise also plays an important role in the letters of Antony, see for example the references to the “law of promise” ὁ νόμος τῆς ἐπαγγελίας in Ep.Ant. II.7–8, discussed in Rubenson (1995), p. 74 note 1. Ep.Amm VII.1. Ep. Ant III.3; IV.12-13, where Antony states that since the monks are “joint heirs with the saints” no virtues are alien to them. Antony also states that souls and bodies will be sanctified and inherit together (Ant I.22), to which I will return when discussing the concept of body in the letters. Ep.Amm. VI.1: “Showing them their places while yet in the body”; VII.2.

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heaven. The most important of these in the letters of Ammonas is the quotation from the Ascension of Isaiah, with its description of the ascent from heaven to heaven. But when the soul ascends from Hades, as long as it follows the Spirit of God, trials come over it all the time everywhere, but having overcome all trials it becomes discerning and takes on another splendour. Thus when Elijah was going to be taken up, coming to the first heaven he was amazed by its light, but when he mounted into the second he was so amazed that he said: “I consider the light of the first heaven to be darkness”, and likewise for each heaven of the heavens. Thus soul of the perfectly righteous makes progress and advances until it ascends to the heaven of heavens.34

The attribution of the ascension to Elijah, not Isaiah, is perhaps to be explained as a conflation of the traditions in the Apocalypse of Elijah and the Ascension of Isaiah.35 What is striking is that the author of the letters, after quoting the Ascension of Isaiah, states that there are ascetic who experience this ascension in their life on earth. Another Biblical figure linked to ascent and visions in the letters of Ammonas is Jacob, with references to his vision of the ladder to heaven as well as his wrestling with an angel.36 In letter VII these two stories are combined in a very creative way with an allusion to Paul’s heavenly journey, but instead of quoting 2 Cor 12:2–5, Ammonas quotes Romans 8:38 and the denial that any angels or powers, whether in the above or the below can separate him from the love of God.37 _____________ 34

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Ep.Amm X.1 (G IV.6): ὅτε οὖν ἡ ψυχὴ ἀναφέρεται ἐκ τοῦ ᾄδου, ὅσον ἀκολουθεῖ τῷ Πνεύματι τοῦ Θεοῦ, κατὰ τοσοῦτον ἐπιφέρονται αὐτῇ κατὰ τόπους πειρασμοὶ, παρερχομένη δὲ τοὺς πειρασμοὺς γίνεται διορατικὴ καὶ εὐπρέπειαν ἄλλην λαμβάνει. ὅτε δὲ ἔμελλεν ὁ Ἠλίας ἀναλαμβάνεσθαι, ἐλθὼν εἰς τὸν πρῶτον οὐρανὸν ἐθαύμασεν αὐτοῦ τὸ φῶς, ὅτε δὲ ἐπέβη τὸν δεύτερον τοσῦτον ἐθαύμασεν, ὡς εἰπεῖν, ὅτι ἐνόμισα ὡς σκότος εἶναι τὸ φῶς τοῦ πρώτου οὐρανοῦ, καὶ οὕτω τὸν καθ᾽ἕνα οὐρανὸν τῶν οὐρανῶν. ἡ ψυχὴ οὖν τῶν τελείων δικαίων προκόπτει καὶ προβαίνει, ἕως οὖ ἀναβῇ εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν τῶν οὐρανῶν. Cf. The Ascension of Isaiah VIII.21. The Syriac version does not name the prophet and avoids all reference to heaven and heaven of heavens, speaking instead of steps or degrees taksê. Elijah was a familiar representatives of Biblical eschatological and mystical tradition in early Egyptian monasticism, see David Frankfurter, Elijah in Uppe Egypt. The Apocalypse of Elijah and Early Egyptian Christianity, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1993. Antony refers to Elijah in his letter VI. 75–76. See for example letter XIII.8 where the author writes that he will make his adressees enter “Bethel” where he will interpret the vision of Ezekiel. Jacob also has a very prominent role in the letters of Antony personifying divine vision, since his name Israel is interpreted as “man seing God”. see Rubenson (1995), p. 69, note 3. Ep.Amm. VII.1–2. No Greek of this letter is preserved. The published Syriac text is probably corrupt in several instances as is evident from the unpublished Georgian version as well as the apparatus.

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The strongly spatial imagery of the letters of Ammonas is linked to notions about the “the powers of the air” trying to prevent the ascetic from reaching the heavenly sphere. The main Biblical support for this is the reference to heavenly powers in the letter to the Ephesians.38 But unlike the visions in the Life of Antony where these powers try to prevent the soul of the deceased to pass, interrogating it about its sins, the forces in the air are in the letters of Ammonas active in this life, and also possible to pass before death.39 Whereas Athanasius writes about the angels supporting the ascending soul against the forces of the air, Ammonas writes about the need to acquire the divine power that makes asceticism easy, grants freedom and joy and guides to the rest. Here Ammonas seems to be closer to St. Paul, who sees the hostile power active in other people. The idea that the ascetic can experience a kind of Himmelsreise and receive visions and revelations of great mysteries even before his death has been used as the main argument for regarding the letters of Ammonas as belonging to a very different tradition than Origen and the letters of Antony, linking them to the so called “anthropomorphites” who appear as opponents to the “Origenists” at the end of the fourth century.40 But although there is nothing in the Letters of Antony about a heavenly ascent, the idea is not only prominent in the Life of Antony,41 but also to be found in Origen, who writes about an ascent through the heavens and revelation of heavenly mysteries without, however, referring to the Ascension of Isaiah, but rather to II Cor. 12:1–4 (the ascent of St Paul) and Hebr. 4:14 (Christ ascending through the heavens).42 _____________ 38

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40 41 42

See Ep.Amm II.2 (G II.2) and Eph 2:2: κατὰ τὸν ἄρχοντα τῆς ἐξουσίας τοῦ ἀέρος. Ammonas quotes the text, but goes on to write about the ἐνέργειαι ἐν τῶ ἀέρι. See also Eph. 3:8ff. and 6:10 echoed throughout the letters of Ammonas. The quotation of Eph. 2:2 in letter II.2 is preceded by references to the possibility of acquiring the divine power ”in order to be able to spend all time in freedom, so that the work of God may be easy”, and the power is then identified with the power guiding men to God, and the power making the ascetic despise honour as well as dishonour, the comforts of the body as well as empty wisdom. Williams, p. 25–29. See Vita Antonii 65–66. The passage here has numerous intersting parallels with the letters of Ammonas, including references to Eph. 2:2, 6:13 as well as 2 Cor 12:2–4. ”If, then, you believe that Paul was caught up to the third heaven and was caught up into Paradise and heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter, you will consequently realize that you will presently know more and greater things than the unspeakable words then revealed to Paul, after which he came down from the third heaven. But you will not come down if you take up the cross and follow Jesus, whom we have as a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens. Origen, An Exhortation to Martyrdom XIII (tr. by Rowan A Greer, Origen. An Exhortation to

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Signs of Belonging to Heaven When Ammonas describes what this belonging to heaven entails, and how it is experienced, he uses a variety of human experiences. Prominent among these are joy, freedom of care, sweetness, and easiness.43 These are central features of heavenly life and are not only attainable for the ascetic in this life, but are the solid evidence for participation in heavenly realities. They represent Paradise and its delight, but a paradise that can be regained in this life in the body. They are in Ammonas’ letters not something future, but something anyone is able to acquire and experience. They are moreover not only passing glimpses of something, sudden experiences, but are referred to as more constant facts. Although the heavenly gifts may be lost as part of a kind of trial, they will return to the true ascetic and be firmly established.44 What is significant is that it is precisely this bodily life with its ascetic practice and virtuous deeds that is made sweet and easy. In several passages Ammonas explicitly connects sweetness with ascetic labour. Labour is changed into joy and gladness.45 The divine sweetness provides strength, it even makes renunciation and hatred for the world sweet. And when he has sown his seed in them, it makes them hate all the world, be it gold, silver or ornaments, or father or mother or wife or children, and so it makes all the work of God sweeter to them than honey and the honeycomb, be it toil or fasting or vigil or quiet or works of mercy.46

Joy and sweetness are, moreover, not only final results or rewards, but are even connected explicitly with the beginning of ascetic life and purification.47 The power of grace that approves the soul, prepares it to rejoice, and makes the soul fervent in God, is provided for day by _____________ 43

44

45

46 47

Martyrdom, Prayer and Selected Works, Classics of Western Spirituality, New York: Paulist Press 1979, p. 50. Ep. Amm II.2–3, III.1–4, IV,1, VI.1, VII.2, VIII.2, IX.1, 2, 4, 5, X.2, 3, XI.3, XII.1, XIII.5. The same signs are also mentioned I the letters of Antony, see Ep.Ant. I.45, III.35, IV, 13, V.8, VI.16, 99, 115. Ep. Amm IX.4–5 (G IV.5). This emphasis on a first reception of the signs of heaven, a period of trial when they seem to be lost, and finally a state where they are firmly established and the ascetic unshakeable is the most prominent concern throughout the letters. Ep.Amm. IV.1 (G III.1: οὐκετι κοπιῶσιν ἐν οὐδενὶ πράγματι, οὐδὲ φοβηθήσεται ἐν οὐδενι φόβῳ, ἀλλ᾽ ἡ ἀγαλλίασις τοῦ Θεοῦ ἔσται μετ᾽ αὐτων νυκτὸς καὶ ἡμέρας, καὶ τὸ ἔργον τοῦ Θεοῦ γλυκανθήσεται αὐτοῖς), VII.2 (G -), XII.1 (G I.1: καὶ πᾶς ὁ κάματος μεταβληθήσεται εἰς χαρὰν καὶ ἀγαλλίασαν). Ep.Amm. X.2 (G –). Ep. Amm. IX.4 (G IV.4).

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day.48 The signs of belonging to heaven are given now, and can also be lost now. In trials joy and sweetness will disappear, but return again if the ascetic is steadfast and continues to seek God with all his heart. If he does, a greater joy overtakes the ascetic and he no longer needs to pray for himself.49 Related to these signs is the important concept of rest. Here again, rest is not something that is promised in a life after death, as a reward in the afterlife, but as something attainable in the body. In letter VII, mentioned above, Ammonas writes that he prays for his disciples that they “attain to God’s place of rest”. That this place of rest is heavenly, is where Jesus went when leaving the world, is made clear by a reference to John 17:24 where Jesus in the farewell speech prays that the disciples may be where he is to see his glory. But for Ammonas this place of rest is connected with being preserved (John 17:15) from evil and with being blessed like Jacob after his wrestling with an angel in Gen 32. Blurring the chronology of the Biblical story Ammonas does not distinguish this blessing from the blessing Jacob received from his father, a blessing that made it possible for him to see the divine ladder. To Ammonas Jacob and his blessings are a model for the ascetic, who by imitating his fathers is blessed and given the vision of the heavenly host and made unshakeable and able to quote St. Paul writing that nothing can ever separate him from the love of God (Rom 8:38).50 Another important sign, already noted, is a complete freedom of fear.51 This freedom of fear is not only a freedom of fear in relation to the powers of evil and the forces of the air, but is also described as having great boldness before God.52 The freedom of fear makes the ascetic unshakeable and immovable, a theme that is also found in other monastic texts and has obvious parallels in some of the Nag Hammadi writings.53

_____________ 48 49 50 51 52 53

Ep. Amm. III.2 (G VI.2). The Syriac text has “fattens the soul”, probably a misreading of ἐπαινοῦσαν in the Greek as related to the verb πιαίνω. Ep. Amm. VIII.2 (G IV.9). Ep. Amm. VII.1 (G –). Ep. Amm. IV.1 (G III.1, quoted above) and VIII.2 (G IV.9: ἄφοβοι δὲ γενήσεσθε τότε ἀπὸ παντὸς φόβου, καὶ χαρὰ οὐράνιος ἀπολήψεται ὑμᾶς). Ep. Amm II.2 (G II.2: καὶ μεγάλην παῤῥησίαν εὑρήσατε ἐνώπιον τοῦ Θεοῦ). See Rubenson (1995), p. 66 with references.

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Revelation and Knowledge In addition and related to the more sensory pleasures like joy, sweetness, easiness and rest, Ammonas sees revelations and knowledge as the most essential aspects of the heavenly life attainable by the ascetic while still in the body. The revelations are in the letters of Ammonas usually called “mysteries”, either divine or heavenly.54 It is thus the divine and heavenly character of the revelation and the unexplorable wealth of knowledge it contains that is important. Throughout we find echoes of Pauline language, and especially of Eph. 3. But unlike Paul, Ammonas does not claim that the mysteries are revealed through Christ, although he at several places echoes Romans and once also speaks about the mysteries as the “the infinite riches of Christ”.55 The mysteries are “secrets set in heaven”, but the revelation of them fortifies and arms the soul and shows the ascetic already in “the body” his place in heaven.56 Night and day I pray that the power of God may increase in you, and reveal to you the great mysteries of the Godhead57 which are not easy for me to utter with the tongue, because they are great and not of this world, and are not revealed save only to those who have purified their hearts from every defilement and from all the vanities of this world, and those who have taken up their crosses, and again fortified their souls and been obedient to God in everything. In them the Godhead dwells, arming58 the soul. For just as trees do not grow unless the agency of water is available to them, so also the soul cannot mount upwards unless it receives heavenly joy. And if men do receive it, few are they to whom God reveals secrets set in heaven, showing them their places while they are yet in the body, and granting them all their requests.59

Except for the references to “their places in heaven” Ammonas does not say much about the content of the revelations and the knowledge attained. Although the revelations are referred to as divine or heavenly, and as mysteries, it is clear that they are also something that the author is able to reveal to his disciples, something they can learn and make use of. In addition to heavenly matters it is also a question of knowledge _____________ 54

55 56 57 58 59

Ep. Amm. III.4: râzê dalâhûthâ (no Greek), IV.1 (G III.1: μεγάλα μυστήρια), VI.1: râzê dalâhûthâ and râzê debashmayâ “mysteries in heaven” (no Greek), XII.4: râzê shemayânê “heavenly mysteries” (no Greek), XIII.3 (G VII.3: μεγάλα αὐταῖς ἀποκαλύψει μυστήρια). Ep. Amm. VI.2 (no Greek). Ep. Amm. VI.1 (no Greek). S: râzê rawrebê dallâhûthâ. S: zâynâ in pa’el = to arm, to equip. Nau translates “adornans animam”. Chitty erroneously has “feeding the soul”. Ep.Amm. VI.1

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about the essence of ascetic practices and of trials and temptations.60 At one point he speaks about receiving a “vision” and a “discernment” granting the ability to discern between good and bad. This discernment protects the ascetic from being deceived, and especially from being “snared by the pretext of the good”,61 and once he refers to knowledge as something that makes the ascetic able to be delivered from “the error of time”.62 But more often Ammonas emphasizes that what is revealed is something that cannot be put into writing, things that are not possible to relate or even to utter.63 The revelations are, moreover, not given to all, on the contrary only to a few, only to those who are purified from vanity and defilement. Among these the author obviously sees himself, and repeatedly he refers to his own experiences and to the revelations given to him daily, especially pointing out that they are different from day to day.64 In a striking passage he even compares his own experiences of temptation and trouble to Jesus and his descent from heaven: Such was my temptation. For just as, when our Lord came down from heaven, He found another atmosphere that was dark, and when he again was about to go down into Sheol, he saw an atmosphere that was even heavier than the first and said, “Now is my soul troubled” (John 12:27), so after this same pattern have I also at this time been afflicted by temptation in all kinds of ways, and troubled.65

Since the experiences are personal and not easily communicated in writing, the personal encounter of the author with the disciples is depicted as a moment of deeper revelation. What Ammonas is unable to write down, he will tell the disciples when he comes in person. He will, _____________ 60 61 62 63

64 65

Ep. Amm. XII.4 (G I.4: ἐγνώρισα ὑμῖν τῆς ἡσυχίας τὴν δύναμιν); XIII.5 (no Greek). Ep.Amm IV.1 (G III.1: ὅπως παράσχῃ ὑμῖν διάκρισιν καὶ ἀνάβλεψιν ἵνα μάθητε διακρίνειν τὴν διαφορὰν τοῦ καλοῦ καὶ τοῦ κακοῦ ἐν πᾶσι). Ep. Amm I.3 (no Greek). The passage is strongly reminiscent of the emphasis on ”knowing the time” in the letters of Antony. See Rubenson (1995), p. 81–88. Ep.Amm. I.2: promises (no Greek), V: other things (no Greek), VI.1: râzê dalâhûthâ “mysteries of the divinity” (no Greek), VIII.1,2 (G IV.9: ἐπὰν δὲ δέξησθε αὐτὸ, ἀποκαλύψει ὑμῖν τὰ μυστήρια τοῦ οὐρανοῦ. πολλὰ γὰρ ἀποκαλύψει, ἅ οὐ δύναμαι ἐν χάρτῃ γράψαι). The fact that most of these passages, as well as those referred to below do not appear in the preserved Greek is an argument for regarding the Greek as a purified version. The repeated reference to the difficulty of speaking about this is common in early monastic letters and may echo 2 Cor 12:4. Ep. Amm. XIII.4 (no Greek). Ep.Amm. XIII.5. In the Greek version of this letter (G VII) all personal references are missing, as well as the intricate comparison of the author’s experience of darkness with the references to the anguish of Jesus in John 12:27 and the imprisonment of Jospeh in Gen. 39:20. The continuaton of the letter in Syriac (XIII.8–11), which originally seems to have been a separate letter is also missing in Greek.

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as he writes, take them to Betel, where Jacob saw the ladder, and he will interpret for them the vision of Ezekiel.66

Power, Fervour and Spirit As already mentioned a central aspect of how the ascetic is able to attain the experiences and the revelations is the presence of what is termed a divine power. Again and again Ammonas returns to the necessity of receiving and cultivating this power. The divine power is given, and is sometimes referred to as “the power of grace”, or just “the power”.67 It is a guardian that encompasses the soul and protects it, and Ammonas entreats his disciples to pray for and to acquire this power.68 The power makes the ascetic despise honour and dishonour, hate worldly needs and bodily rest, and it is the power that makes it possible for the ascetic to “spend all his time in freedom”.69 It is, moreover, also the power that grants the revelations of the great mysteries of God. This power is acquired by prayer, but it also presupposes quietness and renunciation. The power is something the ascetic cultivates so that it grows. Related to the concept of power is an emphasis in the letters on fervour, in making the heart fervent in God.70 Τhe divine fervour is like fire that changes the cold into its own power.71 There are, however, two kinds of fervour. The first is the fervour of the beginning, a fervour that is irrational and troubled. Only after having resisted temptations and been proven in trials does the ascetic attain the second and greater fervour which is rational, peaceful and persevering. This second fervour gives man the capacity to see spiritual things. 72 It is, moreover, important to realize that Satan imitates God and gives a kind of fervour too, a fervour that is like joy, but is no real joy.73 _____________ 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73

Ep. Amm. XIII.8 (no Greek). The three expressions seem to be used indiscriminately. See for example Ep. Amm. III.2 (G VI.2): ἡ δύναμις ἡ θεϊκὴ and a few lines later ἡ δύναμις τῆς χάριτος. Ep. Amm. II.1–3 (G II.1–3), III.3 (G VI.3). Ep. Amm. II.2 (G II.2: λοιπὸν οὖν κτήσασθε ἑαυτοῖς τὴν δύναμιν ταύτην τὴν θεϊκὴν, ἵνα πάντας τοὺς χρόνους ὑμῶν ποιήσατε ἐν ἐλευθερίᾳ). Ep. Amm. III.2 (G VI.2: θερμαίνουσαν αὐτῶν τὴν ψυχὴν ἐν Θεῷ). Ep. Amm. III.4 (G II.3: ἡ γὰρ κατὰ Θεὸν θέρμη, οὕτως ἐστὶν ὡς πῦρ, καὶ τὸ ψυχρὸν εἰς τὴν ἰδίαν δύναμιν μεταβάλλει). Ep. Amm. X.3 (no Greek). Ep. Amm. XI.3 (G V.3: λαμβάνουσι παρὰ τοῦ διαβόλου θερμότητα ἐν τῇ ἀρχῇ , ὁμοίαν χαρᾷ, μὴ οὖυσαν χαράν).

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Connected to the concepts of divine power and fervour is the concept of the spirit. But as in the letters of Antony, Ammonas uses a variety of expressions,74 and it is often unclear if they refer to the same spirit or not. In most letters it seems as if there is no real difference. The disciples are asked to pray for the spirit, and the spirit, often designated the Holy Spirit, is said to grant joy, sweetness and revelations to those who are upright. In two letters there is an emphasis on the spirit withdrawing after a first period of joy, as a trial, and a return with even greater joy is promised to those who overcome their trials.75 But in letter XIII a sharp distinction is introduced between on the one hand the spirit of truth, also named the Holy Spirit, given to the apostles, and probably also referred to as the spirit of gentleness in the greeting, and on the other the spirit of repentance, given to those who are not yet clean.76 This second spirit has the task to prepare the souls and then offer them to the Holy Spirit. Ammonas subsequently writes about the spirit of God, handing over man to Satan to be tried, as the spirit did with Jesus after his baptism, 77 presumably referring to the Holy Spirit, who is also in letter IX and X said to withdraw to have man tried.

Body and Fruit The most difficult concept related to the heavenly home of the ascetic in the letters of Ammonas is the concept of fruit. While all versions use the metaphor of good works as fruits of the ascetic labour, the Greek, Georgian, Armenian and Arabic versions develop the metaphor and use fruit as a more independent theological concept. In almost all these instances the two oldest extant Syriac manuscripts have “body” instead of “fruit”, while the other Syriac manuscripts vacillate between body and fruit. Previous translations, as well as Williams’ analysis, have followed the two old Syriac manuscripts, regarding “fruit” as a revision, but there are good arguments against this. In addition to the fact _____________ 74

75 76

77

Ep. Amm. VIII.2 (G IV.9): “Holy Spirit” and ”spirit of joy”; IX.4 (G IV.4): “Holy Spirit”; X.1–2: “Spirit”; XIII.1–5 (G VII.1–3): “spirit of gentleness” (τὸ πνεῦμα τῆς πραότητος) “spirit of repentance” (τὸ πνεῦμα τῆς μετανοίας), “Holy Spirit”, “spirit of truth”, “Spirit of God”. Ep. Amm. IX.4 (G IV.4), X.2 (no Greek). Ep. Amm. XIII.2 (G VII.2). In the letters of Antony the distinction between two spirits is upheld by reference to two baptisms, the baptism of John and the baptism of Jesus. See Ep. Ant. VII.58l–s and Rubenson (1995), p. 79–81. Ep. Amm. XIII.5–6 (G VII.5–6). This is the only passage that refers to baptism in the letters of Ammonas, and it is not at all clear that he considers the granting of the Holy Spirit as the essence of baptism.

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that all other versions (Greek, Georgian, Armenian, Arabic and Ethiopic) have “fruit”, it also makes more sense in the context. The two old Syriac mss. are, moreover, not consistent in their application of “body” for “fruit”, using “fruit” in parallel passages (Ep. Amm. III). The use of two other related terms, adshê “species, form” and elalâthâ “harvest” in letter I and XIII, unfortunately not preserved in Greek, but having “fruit” in Arabic and Georgian, also makes it less likely that “body” is the original word. It is not entirely clear in what sense “fruit” is used in the letters. In the NT as well as in early Christian literature in general, karpos metaphorically refers primarily either to the results of or the rewards for ascetic labour, but it can also refer to the labour itself, as the visible signs of inner dispositions.78 In Antony’s letters “fruit” is used only twice and in both cases synonymously with desire, as the “fruit of the flesh”.79 Evagrius rather speaks about fruit positively and as reward, as for example “the fruits of eternal life” or freedom as a fruit of love or the pleasant fruits of knowledge.80 In Ammonas’ letters fruit seems to refer to the result of the ascetic labour or the reward for it, or perhaps the condition or status achieved. Although clearly produced by the ascetic, his fruit is from above and all living if not destroyed and scattered by Satan. The fruit of the true ascetic is acceptable to God, “reckoned by God”, and thus it abides with him. 81 It belongs to the unseen and is unchangeable.82 The perhaps most revealing passage is in letter XIII, unfortunately not preserved in Greek, where Ammonas connects the ascetic with Christ. Greet all those who have shared in the toil and the sweat of their fathers in temptation. As John says somewhere, “By the sweat of the soul God is glorified”, by the seed of the sweat of its labour, the soul shares with the Lord. They are sharing in his fruits, for it is written, “If we suffer with him, we shall also live with him (Rom 8:17), and the rest that follows. The Lord also said to his disciples, “you who have endured with me my trials, I establish for you the covenant of the kingdom, as my father has promised me, that you should sit at my table” (Luke 22:29).83

_____________ 78

79 80 81 82 83

In the LXX karpos is usually used for the result or reward of ascetic labour, it rarely denotes the work or status of the ascetic himself. A possible exception is LXX Prov. 19:22 καρπὸς ἀνδρὶ ἐλεημοσύνη. Ep. Ant. I.24, 29. Evagrius, Foundations 1; Vices 3; Praktikos 32. Ep. Amm. I.1 (no Greek), III.3 (VI.3). Ep. Amm. I.2 (no Greek). Ep.Amm XIII.10 (no Greek).

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The Syriac word used here, elalâthâ means fruit in the sense of “harvest”, and it is evident that it is related to the metaphorical use of seed in the previous sentence. What is sown by suffering with Christ is harvested through living with him. It is by being a partaker in Christ’s fruit that the ascetic gains a place at the table of the father. Here the fruit of the Lord is clearly his resurrection. The use of the metaphor of seed and fruit not only links Ammonas to 1 Cor 15, but also in an intriguing manner to the discussion about the resurrection in the Treatise on the Resurrection in Nag Hammadi Codex I, and its understanding of the resurrection as giving birth, producing fruit.84 A different approach to the use of the metaphor of fruit in the letters of Ammonas can be gained by observing the connection made between the passion of Christ and the sharing in his fruits. Although there is no explicit reference to anything cultic in the letters of Ammonas,85 the use of “fruit”, karpos, in connection with “offering” or “sacrifice” is well attested in early Christian literature. Although a ritual use of καρπὸς is not attested in the New Testament it is found in the LXX as well as in 2 Clement, and was later used in early ascetic terminology to designate the specific gifts given to holy men.86 This would also make it likely that the use of “body” instead of “fruit” in the old Syriac version can be explained by an influence of Rom 12:1, where we find an exhortation to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, or 2 Cor 6:16, a verse quoted in letter X.4, where the body is described as a temple.

Conclusions In contrast to the lively debate about the resurrection of the body and its meaning found both in some of the Nag Hammadi treatises and in relation to the legacy of Origen in monastic sources of the late fourth and fifth century, the letters of Antony and Ammonas do not contain any references to a resurrection of the body. The letters of Ammonas do not refer to resurrection at all, and in the letters of Antony the refer_____________ 84 85

86

See Lundhaug in the present volume. A possible exception is letter XIII.8, not preserved in Greek, where Ammonas after relating his own mystical expriences promises to take his disciples into Bethel to perform their vows and offer up their offerings and have the vision of Ezekiel interpreted. See “ΚΑΡΠΟΣ” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (ed. Kittel), Eerdmans 1965, p. 614–616, and Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon, p. 704.

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ences are, except for two echoes of Biblical phrases,87 to the resurrection of the mind or heart. The resurrection is linked to “the coming of Jesus”, his “gathering of us from all corners of the world”, his “remissions of sins” and his recreation of original unity.88 It is, moreover, clear that this coming of Jesus, as well as the resurrection of the heart or mind does not simply refer to a future event, but to a present decisive moment, to a coming of Jesus that is a reality now.89 The resurrection is linked to a transformation in the “time in which we are” that includes liberation, bodily transformation and restoration of original unity. In both Antony’s and Ammonas’ letters this participation in the restoration is expressed in terms of inheriting the kingdom with Christ by virtue of being adopted. Although not totally absent from Antony’s letters there is, however, in the letters of Ammonas a much stronger sense of this participation taking place in the body and being expressed as sensory experiences. Through the divine power and fervour given the ascetic experiences the joy, sweetness and ultimate rest of heaven and also shares in the mysteries that are to be revealed. The transformation of the ascetic takes place in and transforms the body. Although a future and final spatial translation to heaven, and complete transformation is implied, everything it signifies is already present. The ascetic is “as already translated to the kingdom”. As a result physical death seems to be of little significance, almost irrelevant. What is to happen after death has actually already happened. Death is totally conquered by the trues ascetic.90 Against this background the lack of an emphasis on resurrection is only to be expected. In the letters of Ammonas the ability to trascend mortal and earthly life is made visible in the descriptions of visions and revelations of heavenly mysteries. These both express and confirm the participation of the ascetic in eternal life. In the references to the ladder to heaven revealed to Jacob, as well as the ascension attributed to Elijah (in the Greek version), but actually quoting the Ascension of Isaiah, the ability to transcend is given a spatial expression, but there is nothing that reminds us of notions of a visit to a heaven from which one returns in order to share insights, nor of an invasion of the heavenly realm, or an idea of an anticipation of a future and final victory. The emphasis is clearly on the Biblical figures as examples of what is a fact in the life of the ascetic, the state reached at which heaven is open and the true light is visible, the light that makes lesser lights into darkness. The visions _____________ 87 88 89 90

Ep.Ant I.71, cf. Luke 14:14; Ep.Ant. VII.34, cf. Luke 2:34.. See Ep.Ant. II. 22–23, III.24–25, V.27–28, VI.91, VII.30. For an analysis see Rubenson (1995), pp. 82–85. See the conclusions of Karen King in her article in this volume.

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and the ascent transcend both the spatial and the chronological divide between the divine and the human sphere. In this sense one could say that the heavenly ascent and the participatory visions replace the idea of resurrection.91 This emphasis on visions, ascent and participation in the letters of Ammonas, as well as the insignificance attached to death and the lack of any teaching on the resurrection, is not at all incompatible with the very different rhetoric of the letters of Antony. As mentioned above Antony never refers to the resurrection of the body or the dead, but repeatedly to the resurrection of the mind. The resurrection is clearly a cognitive and pneumatic act. It transforms the person and makes in a sense the decay of the physical body and death irrelevant. It is a resurrection from darkness and diversity back to light and unity, a resurrection at hand for anyone who is willing to gain knowledge. This does not mean that the body as such is irrelevant, but it is only an outer condition, a temporary scene. The body makes the inner man visible. It is in the body that it becomes evident if man bears the fruits of the flesh or the fruits of the Spirit, and it is on account of the fruits that man is either reckoned by God or not. Returning finally to the hypothesis about a tension in early Egyptian monasticism between a pristine mystical trajectory with roots in Jewish apocalypticism and an Alexandrian philosophical tradition related to the world and legacy of Origen, I do not think that an analysis of the letters of Ammonas in relation to the letters of Antony supports the hypothesis. It is not only that the two collections share many basic ideas, but rather that the dichotomies between mysticism and philosophy, as well as between a language of sensory experience and an emphasis on knowledge, do not make much sense in relation to the intellectual world of early Egyptian monasticism. What we find in the letters is basically a very creative use of Biblical material, especially metaphors and ideas used by Paul, adapted to context in which transformation made more sense than resurrection.

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See Adela Yarbro Collins in the present volume.

The Angelic Life The Angelic Life JOHN J. COLLINS1 Überschrift 2: für Kapitel ohne Ü2 wird hier Ü1 Kurzform wiederholt The idea that human beings can be transported to the world of the gods is an ancient one, in the Near East as well as in Greece. One can think, for example, of Utnapishtim in Mesopotamia, or of Enoch and Elijah in the biblical tradition. In ancient Israel, however, such exaltation was exceptional. It is only at the end of the biblical period that the idea takes hold that righteous human beings, or at least righteous Israelites, would join the heavenly host after death. In Jewish tradition, this belief is first attested in the apocalyptic books of Daniel and Enoch, in the early second century BCE.2

Angelic Afterlife Most explicit is the Epistle of Enoch: “Be hopeful! For you were formerly put to shame through evils and afflictions, but now you will shine like the lights of heaven and will be seen, and the gate of heaven will be opened to you … for you will have great joy like the angels of heaven … for you will be companions of the host of heaven” (1 Enoch 104:2-6).

Essentially the same hope is attested in Daniel 12: “Many of those who sleep in the land of dust will awake, some to everlasting life and some to reproach and everlasting disgrace. The wise will shine like the splendor of the firmament, and those who lead the common people to righteousness will be like the stars forever and ever.”

It should be noted that these formulations cannot be categorized in terms of the familiar binary contrast of resurrection of the body and

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John J. Collins is professor at Yale University Divinity School, USA. See my essay, “The Afterlife in Apocalyptic Literature,” in Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner, Judaism in Late Antiquity. Part Four. Death, Life-After-Death, Resurrection and the World-to-Come in the Judaisms of Late Antiquity (Handbuch der Orientalistik 1/49; Leiden: Brill, 2000) 119-39.

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immortality of the soul.3 It is probably true that most conceptions of afterlife assume some kind of body. As Dale Martin has argued, “most philosophers speak of the soul as if it were composed of some substance that we would consider ‘stuff,’ even if they would not say that it is composed of hyle.”4 But it is not apparent that either Daniel or Enoch implies a resurrected body of flesh and blood, or bones in the manner of Ezekiel. The “land of dust” (rp( tmd)) from which the dead are raised in Daniel is probably Sheol rather than the grave. (Compare Job 17:16 where Sheol and ‘the dust’ are used in parallelism). The resurrection seems to involve elevation from the Netherworld to the heavenly realm. The immortal body is often conceived as fiery or airy, and akin to the stars in Greek thought.5 In Enoch and Daniel, too, the imagery is astral. The righteous dead will shine like the stars or like the host of heaven. In Hebrew tradition, the stars were the host of heaven, or what would be called the angelic host in Hellenistic times. In the book of Jubilees, similarly, it is said of the righteous that “their bones shall rest in the earth and their spirits will have much joy” (Jub 23:31). Here again we have a form of resurrected life that is neither resurrection of the physical body nor immortality of the soul in the Platonic sense. This literature is not philosophical, and we do not find the kind of discussion of the nature of the resurrected body that we find e.g. in Paul. But the idea of an incorruptible “body” that is not flesh and blood is by no means unusual in the Hellenistic world, and is in fact more typically Hellenistic than the Platonic idea of immortality.6 The idea of a bodily resurrection in physical terms is attested in Judaism early on, for example in 2 Maccabees 7, but it is by no means normative or standard. The early apocalypses do not provide much description of the transformed state. Both Daniel and Enoch refer to the elevated righteous as luminous or shining. Later apocalypses sometimes describe the transformation in terms of donning glory as a garment. In the later apocalypse of 2 Enoch, when Enoch ascends to heaven the Lord instructs the archangel Michael to “take Enoch, and extract (him) from _____________ 3

4 5 6

E.g. the famous essay of Oscar Cullmann, “The Immortality of Man,” in K. Stendahl, ed., Immortality and Resurrection (New York: Macmillan, 1965) 9-47. Cf. the comments of G. W. E. Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality and Eternal Life (HTS 26, Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1972) 177-80. . Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale, 1995) 104-36, especially 115. Ibid., 118, on heavenly bodies, which were usually thought to be fiery. See further Martin, The Corinthian Body, 1-37, and Troels Engberg-Pedersen, “Complete and Incomplete Transformation in Paul – a Philosophical Reading of Paul on Body and Spirit,” in this volume. See also the reflections on the nature of the resurrected body in early Christian and Gnostic texts in the essays of Jorunn Økland, Outi Lehtipou and Hugo Lundhaug, all in this volume.

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the earthly clothing. And anoint him with the delightful oil, and put (him) into the clothes of glory” (2 Enoch 22:8). The oil, we are told, is “greater than the greatest light.” When Enoch is clad in his new garments, he tells us: “I gazed at all of myself, and I had become like one of the glorious ones, and there was no observable difference.” In the words of Martha Himmelfarb, “donning such a garment can imply equality with the angels (or better!)”7 In Apoc Abraham 13:14, Azazel is told that he cannot tempt Abraham, for “the garment which in heaven was formerly yours has been set aside for him, and the corruption which was on him has gone over to you.” These admittedly later parallels describe the transformed, angelic state as donning a garment of glory. Compare also the desire of Paul to put off the “earthly tent” of the body, “because we wish not to be unclothed but to be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life” (2 Cor 5:4).8

Angelic Afterlife in the Scrolls The people who wrote the sectarian scrolls found at Qumran were certainly familiar with the books of Daniel and Enoch. Both are found there in multiple copies. They also assume that the righteous can expect a beatific afterlife, not just the dreary afterlife in Sheol as traditionally imagined. The destiny of the righteous is described as follows in the Instruction on the Two Spirits: “healing and great peace in length of days, fruitfulness of seed with all everlasting blessings, everlasting joys in eternal life, and a crown of glory with majestic raiment in everlasting light” (1QS 4:6-8).

The “fruitfulness of seed” ((rz twrp) has been controversial, since it would seem to imply continued earthly existence.9 Some of the other features, however, suggest a transcendent life that surpasses earthly experience. _____________ 7

8

9

Martha Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (New York: Oxford, 1993) 40 suggests that “the process by which Enoch becomes an angel is a heavenly version of priestly investiture.” Cf. also the promise of white robes in Rev 3:5. See further Emile Puech, La Croyance des Esséniens en la Vie Future: Immortalité, Resurrection, Vie Éternelle? (Paris: Lecoffre, 1993), 436. A. R. C. Leaney, The Rule of Qumran and its Meaning (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966), 152. J. Duhaime, “La Doctrine des Esséniens de Qumrân sur l’après-mort,” in Guy Couturier et al., ed., Essais sur la Mort (Montreal: Fides, 1985) 107, questions whether the passage refers to the afterlife at all.

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“Everlasting joys in eternal life” (xcn yyxb Myml( txm#) echoes Dan 12:2, where the phrase is Ml( yyx.10 A crown of glory (usually tr+( rather than lylk) is a symbol of honor in the Hebrew Bible. In Psalm 8:5, humanity is crowned with glory and honor, as an indication of being only a little lower than Myhl). In 1QHa 27:25 the scoffing of an enemy is transformed into a crown (lylk) of glory. It can also have an eschatological connotation. According to Wis 5:15-16, “the righteous live forever, and their reward is with the Lord … Therefore they will receive a glorious crown and a beautiful diadem from the hand of the Lord.” In Rev 2: 10, a crown of life is a reward for fidelity unto death.11 Majestic raiment (rdh tdm) may be illustrated from the transformation of the righteous on the day of judgment in 1 Enoch 62:15-16: “And the righteous and the chosen will have arisen from the earth, and have ceased to cast down their faces, and put on the garment of glory. And this will be your garment, the garment of life from the Lord of Spirits; and your garments will not wear out, and your glory will not fade in the presence of the Lord of Spirits.”

We have already noted the tendency to conceive the immortal state in terms of a garment of glory in later apocalypses.12 “Eternal light” is associated especially with the divine presence. Compare for example 1QHa 12:22-23: “you reveal yourself in me … as perfect light.” Likewise, 1QS 11:3: from the source of his knowledge he has disclosed his light. Wernberg-Møeller has astutely remarked that this whole passage in the Instruction on the Two Spirits is indebted to Psalm 21, where the blessings are those enjoyed by the king: “For you meet him with rich blessings; you set a crown of fine gold on his head. He asked you for life; you gave it to him – length of days forever and ever. His glory is great through your help; splendor and majesty you bestow on him. You bestow on him blessings forever; you make him glad with the joy of your presence.”13

_____________ 10 11 12

13

Puech, La Croyance des Esséniens, 435. Cf. also 1QHa 5:23, “everlasting peace and length of days,” Cf. Rev. 3:11. Similarly in 1 Peter 5:4 it is a reward given when “the chief shepherd” appears in judgment. Note also the splendor of the risen righteous in 2 Baruch 51:3: “their faces will shine even more brightly and their features will assume a luminous beauty, so that they may be able to attain and enter the world which does not die.” See the discussion by Liv Ingeborg Lied, “Recognizing the righteous remnant? Resurrection, recognition, and eschatological reversals in 2 Baruch 49-51,” in this volume. P. Wernberg-Møeller, The Manual of Discipline. Translated and Annotated with an Introduction (STDJ 1; Leiden: Brill, 1957) 80.

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It is disputed whether this psalm promises eternal life to the king.14 If so, the king was considered an exception to the common human lot, but that is quite conceivable. Some of the blessings, the crown, splendor and majesty were commonly associated with royalty. They are democratized in the Qumran text, but they also take on otherworldly associations in the apocalyptic worldview of the Scrolls. The final reward of the righteous is also expressed as “the glory of Adam,” in 1QS 4:22-3. The same motif is found in 1QHa 4:14-15 and in CD 3:20, which also says that the elect will live for a thousand generations.15 4QpPsa (4Q171) 3:1-2 says that those who return from the wilderness will live for a thousand generations and that they and their descendants forever will possess all the inheritance of Adam. Crispin Fletcher-Louis has pointed out that Adam was associated with the divine glory qua image of God.16 A fragmentary passage in the Words of the Heavenly Luminaries, 4QDib Ham, 4Q504 8 4-6 is plausibly reconstructed to read: “Adam,] our [fat]her, you fashioned in the image of [your] glory … [the breath of life] you [b]lew into his nostril, and intelligence and knowledge … [in the gard]en of Eden, which you had planted.”17 Genesis Rabbah 20:12 reports that Rabbi Meir read Gen 3:21 to say that God dressed Adam and Eve in “garments of light” rather than garments of skin. But the glory was lost when Adam was expelled from the garden. The glory of Adam, then, may coincide with the majestic raiment of light promised in 1QS 4.

_____________ 14

15 16 17

The argument for the immortality of the king has been made by John Healey, “The Immortality of the King: Ugarit and the Psalms,” Orientalia 53(1984) 245-54. It is disputed by John Day, “The Canaanite Inheritance of the Israelite Monarchy, “ in J. Day, ed., King and Messiah in Israel and the Ancient Near East (JSOTSup 270; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998) 85-6. The promise that those who walk in perfect holiness will live a thousand generations is also found in CD 7:5-6. C. Fletcher-Louis, All the Glory of Adam. Liturgical Anthropology in the Dead Sea Scrolls (STDJ 42; Leiden: Brill, 2002) 91-95. Trans. F. García Martínez and E. J. Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (Leiden: Brill, 1998) 1009. According to the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch (3 Bar 4:16), Adam was stripped of the glory of God after the Fall. According to Deuteronomy Rabbah 11:3, Adam claimed to be greater than Moses because he was created as the image of God. Moses replied “I am far superior to you, for your glorious light was taken away, but as for me, the radiant countenance that God gave me still abides.” See further G. A. Anderson, “Garments of Skin,” in idem, The Genesis of Perfection. Adam and Eve in Jewish and Christian Imagination (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001) 117-34.

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Fellowship with the angels in this life The investment with majestic raiment of light, and the glory of Adam, is an eschatological blessing in 1QS 4. Many texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls, however, appear to speak of fellowship with the angels as a present experience for members of the sect. So in 1QS 11:7-8 we read: “To those whom God has selected he has given them as an everlasting possession; and he has given them an inheritance in the lot of the holy ones. He unites their assembly to the sons of the heavens in order (to form) the council of the community and a foundation of the building of holiness to be an everlasting plantation throughout all future ages.”

Again, in 1QHa 11:19-21, the psalmist thanks the Lord “because you saved my life from the pit, and from the Sheol of Abaddon have lifted me up an everlasting height, so that I can walk on a boundless plain. And I know that there is hope for someone you fashioned out of dust for an everlasting community. The depraved spirit you have purified from great offence so that he can take a place with the host of the holy ones, and can enter in communion with the congregation of the sons of heaven.”

In these and other such passages the fellowship with the angels promised to the righteous after death in the Epistle of Enoch and Daniel is claimed for the members of the sectarian community. The question is whether, or to what extent, they can be said to live an angelic life in the present. The constant use of the perfect tense in these hymns suggests that the deliverance has already taken place.18 Emile Puech, however, has argued that the verbs should be read as “prophetic perfects” which bespeak a state that is assured but essentially in the future.19 It is certainly true that hymns in the Scrolls do not envision a world fully redeemed. But it is also apparent that they claim some measure of transformation as a present reality. The hymn at the end of the Community Rule says that God has given the elect “an inheritance in the lot of the holy ones” (1QS 11:7-8). The inheritance, in principle, could still be in the future. But the passage goes on to say that “He unites their assembly to the sons of the heavens into a council of the community _____________ 18

19

See H.- W. Kuhn, Enderwartung und gegenwärtiges Heil (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966); G. W. E. Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism (HTS 26; Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1972) 146-56; J. J. Collins Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls (London: Routledge, 1997) 117-23; D. Dimant, “Men as Angels: The Self-Image of the Qumran Community,” in A. Berlin, ed., Religion and Politics in the Ancient Near East (Bethesda, MD: University of Maryland, 1996) 93-103. Puech, La Croyance des Esséniens, 335-419. Note that Kuhn, Enderwartung, 176, also insists that “die futurische Eschatologie nicht aufgehoben ist” even if it is “ganz in dern Hintergrund.”

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and a foundation of the building of holiness to be an everlasting plantation throughout all future ages.” (11:8). The phrase “council of the community” is the technical name for the sectarian community in the Community Rule. The word for community is dxy, which means “union.”20 (Used adverbially, it means “together”). This passage suggests that togetherness with the angels is constitutive of the community on earth.

The dxy The kind of community designated as dxy was a new phenomenon in the history of Judaism, when it came into being in the second or early first century BCE. On a few occasions in the Second Temple period there were attempts to implement “a return to the law of Moses” in a way that involved a new commitment and the formation of a new community. In Nehemiah 10:29 certain people “enter into a curse and an oath to walk in God’s law, which was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the Lord our God and his ordinances and his statutes.”21 The movement described in the Damascus Document, of which fragments were found at Qumran, was analogous to this. The individual “must impose upon himself to return to the law of Moses with all his heart and soul” (15:12). The Damascus Document is primarily concerned with a family based movement, whose members “live in camps according to the order of the land and marry and have children,” and who contribute two days’ salary a month to the common fund (CD 14:13). The reason for the formation of that movement was the sense that the law was not being properly observed by other Jews of the time. Problems included “defilement of the temple,” which was identified as one of the “three nets of Belial” in CD 4:18. The dxy would seem to have developed out of the movement of described in the Damascus Document. Like the latter, it involves a new covenant, with provision for admission and expulsion. But it makes _____________ 20

21

Fletcher-Louis, All the Glory of Adam, 90, suggests that the designation dxy may refer to communion with the angels. Alternatively, it may be borrowed from Deut 33:5, which refers to “the union of the tribes of Israel.” The analogy with the Dead Sea Scrolls was already noted by Morton Smith, “The Dead Sea Sect in Relation to Judaism,” NTS 7(1961) 347-60. See also Alexei Sivertsev, “Sects and Households: Social Structure of the Proto-Sectarian Movement of Nehemiah 10 and the Dead Sea Sect,” CBQ 67(2005) 59-78; idem, Households, Sects, and the Origins of Rabbinic Judaism (JSJSup 102; Leiden: Brill, 2005) 94-118.

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greater demands on its members. All property is in common, and there is no mention of women or children. This association has much in common with the Essenes described by Philo, Josephus and Pliny, and most scholars believe that it should be identified as Essene. The silence on women and children in the Rule of the Yahad is compatible with reports that the Essenes, or at least one branch of them, were celibate, although celibacy is never required explicitly. The raison d’etre of the more demanding community of the dxy is spelled out most fully in column 8 of the Community Rule: “the council of the community shall be founded in truth to be an everlasting plantation, a holy house for Israel and the foundation of the holy of holies for Aaron … to atone for the land and to render to the wicked their retribution” (1QS 8:5-6, cf. 9:3-6).

Then, “when these have become a community in Israel in compliance with these arrangements, they are to be segregated from within the dwelling of the men of sin to go to the desert in order to prepare there the path of Him, as it is written, ‘In the desert prepare the way of *** …’”

It is apparent that the raison d’etre of the community is to substitute for the temple cult, which was rejected as defiled.22 The members of the yahad would atone for sin “without the flesh of burnt offerings and without the fats of sacrifice – the offering of the lips in compliance with the decree will be like the pleasant aroma of justice and the perfectness of behavior will be acceptable as a freewill offering” (1QS 9: 3-5). In the phrase found in the Florilegium, 4Q174 1.6, they would constitute a Md) #dqm, a sanctuary consisting of men.23 The passage in 1QH 11 adds to this profile the idea that fellowship with the angels would be a constitutive factor in establishing this purified worship.24 _____________ 22

23

24

See e.g. Georg Klinzing, Die Umdeutung des Kultus in der Qumrangemeinde und im Neuen Testament (SUNT 7; Göttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971) 50-106; L. H. Schiffman, “The Qumran Community’s Withdrawal from the Jerusalem Temple,” Pp. 267-84 in Beate Ego, Armin Lange und Peter Pilhofer in Zusammenarbeit mit Kathrin Ehlers; ed., Gemeinde ohne Tempel = Community without temple : zur Substituierung und Transformation des Jerusalemer Tempels und seines Kults im Alten Testament, antiken Judentum und frühen Christentum (Tübingen : Mohr Siebeck, 1999). The phrase may have more than one level of reference. See George Brooke, “Miqdash Adam, Eden, and the Qumran Community,” in Ego et al., Gemeinde ohne Tempel, 285-301. The liturgical context of fellowship with the angels is explored at length by Bjorn Frennesson, “In a Common Rejoicing.” Liturgical Communion with Angels in Qumran (Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Studia Semitica Upsaliensia 14; Uppsala: Uppsala University, 1999). Cf. Michael Mach, Entwicklungsstadien des jüdischen Engelglaubens in vorrabbinischer Zeit (TSAJ 34; Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck), 1992) 216-40.

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The Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice The main evidence that the fellowship with the angels is focused on the heavenly temple is found in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice.25 These are compositions for each of thirteen Sabbaths, which call on the angels to give praise and provide descriptive statements about the angels and their praise-giving. They do not give the words of the angels or cite any angelic hymns of praise. We are told that God “has established for himself priests of the inner sanctum, the holiest of the holy ones” (4Q400 fragment 1). They are also called “ministers of the presence in his glorious debir.” The angelic priests are depicted as divided into “seven priesthoods,” “seven councils,” and as occupying “seven precincts” (Mylwbg) in the heavenly temple. The ninth to thirteenth songs appear to contain a systematic description of the heavenly temple that is based in part on Ezekiel 40-48. The heavenly temple is evidently imagined by analogy with the earthly temple, except that no attention is paid to any outer courts. The holy place is an ‘ulam, while the holy of holies is the debir, which contains the merkavah throne. Everything is sevenfold, so there are apparently seven temples.26 It is not clear how they relate to each other. The text gives no indication of their spatial relationship, and there is no reason to correlate them with 7 heavens. The motif of 7 heavens only becomes common after the turn of the era.27 The Songs are recited by the Maskil, in the presence of the community members, who are referred to as “we” in the second song, and whose priesthood is compared to that of the angels. In the words of Philip Alexander, “we have here a public liturgy, in which a prayerleader leads a congregation, who may join him in reciting in whole or in part the words of the hymns. That congregation exhorts the angels in heaven to perform their priestly duties in the celestial temple, and somehow through this liturgical act it feels drawn into union with the _____________ 25

26 27

C. A. Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice: A Critical Edition (HSS 27; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985). “4QShirot ‘Olat HaShabbata,” in E. Eshel et al., Qumran Cave 4. VI. Poetical and Liturgical Texts, Part 1 (DJD 11; Oxford: Clarendon, 1998) 173-401; P. Alexander, The Mystical Texts. Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice and Related Manuscripts (Library of Second Temple Studies 61; London and New York: T. & T. Clark, 2006) 1361. R. Elior, The Three Temples. On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism (Oxford/ Portland, Oregon: Littmann, 2004) 34-44. Adela Yarbro Collins, “The Seven Heavens in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses,” in eadem, Cosmology and Eschatology in Jewish and Christian Apocalypticism (JSJSup 50; Leiden: Brill, 1996) 21-54.

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angels in worshipping God.”28 This does not require that the community members have ascended to heaven in a spatial sense. As Alexander has argued, “sophisticated Jews in the Second Temple period were perfectly capable of conceiving of heaven as ‘another dimension’ or a parallel universe’, and not literally as ‘up there.’29 The Songs suggest that the main activity of angels is giving praise to God. Beyond that, they offer a few characterizations of the angelic life:30 Angels are “spirits,” which is to say that they are not “flesh,” which is corruptible and mortal, and also subject to impurity.31 There is an angelic priesthood, including “ministers of the Face,” which represents the higher forms of angelic life.32 The offerings in the heavenly temple are bloodless, and can be described as a “spiritual portion” or “an offering of the tongue.”33 The priestly angels are repeatedly referred to as “Elim of knowledge,” just as God is the “God of knowledge” and heaven is a place of knowledge. These angels can pass on to human beings the knowledge they have received. The precise nature of this knowledge is never clarified in the Songs, but we shall encounter it again in other sectarian texts. The ideas about heavenly worship in the Songs of Sabbath Sacrifice were not peculiarly sectarian. But they are representative of the assumptions that inform the life of the dxy. As Philip Alexander has noted, many of the key ideas of the Sabbath Songs are alluded to in works with impeccable sectarian credentials, such as the Hodayot, the Community Rule, the Rule of the Congregation (1QSa), the Rule of Be_____________ 28

29 30 31

32

33

Alexander, The Mystical Texts, 44. Alexander is following the interpretation proposed by Carol Newsom. Fletcher-Louis has argued that the exhortations are addressed not to angels but to “angelomorphic” humans (All the Glory of Adam, 252-394). See the critique by Alexander, The Mystical Texts, 45-7. Alexander, The Mystical Texts, 54. Maxwell J. Davidson, Angels at Qumran (JSPSupp 11; Sheffield; Sheffield Academic Press, 1992) 290-1. On the notion of “flesh” in the texts from Qumran see Jorg Frey, “Flesh and Spirit in the Palesinian Jewish Sapiential Tradition and in the Qumran Texts: An Inquiry into the Development of Pauline Usage,” in C. Hempel, A. Lange and H. Lichtenberger, ed., The Wisdom Texts from Qumran and the Development of Sapiential Thought (BETL 159; Leuven: Peeters, 2002) 367-404; idem, “The Notion of ‘Flesh’ in 4QInstruction and the Background of Pauline Thought,” in D. Falk et al., ed., Sapiential, Liturgical and Poetical Texts from Qumran (STDJ 35; Leiden: Brill, 2000) 197-226. Alexander, The Mystical Texts, 57: “Highest of all the angels is the celestial high priest (Melchizedek/Michael). Below him stand the Deputy High Priest and the rest of the Angels of the face. Then come the ordinary priestly angels, followed by the hosts of non-priestly angels.” Ibid., 58.

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nedictions and the War Rule.34 Life in the dxy was structured to enable and facilitate participation in the heavenly cult. There is great emphasis on purity in the community regulations.35 According to the Rule of the Congregation, “No man defiled by any of the impurities of a man shall enter the assembly of these [the council of the community]; and no one who is defiled by these should be established in his office in the midst of the congregation, everyone who is defiled in his flesh, paralysed in his feet or in his hands, lame, blind, deaf, dumb or defiled in his flesh with a blemish visible to the eyes, or the tottering old man who cannot keep upright in the midst of the assembly; these shall not enter to take their place among the congregation of the men of renown, for the angels of holiness are among their congregation” (1QSa 2:3-9).36 The prominence of priests in the leadership of the sect is well-known, even if it is not clear whether the title “sons of Zadok” has any genealogical significance, and if their prominence fluctuates in different recensions of the Community Rule. The company of angels is probably also the reason for the absence of women and children in Serek ha-Yahad. The logic of celibacy in an angelic context is most explicitly set forth in the Book of the Watchers in 1 Enoch 15. Enoch is told to chide the Watchers for having lain with women, and defiled themselves with the daughters of men, and taken for themselves wives, and done as the sons of earth. God had given women to human beings so that they might beget children and not vanish from the earth. But God did not give women to those who existed as spirits, living forever, and not dying for all the generations of eternity. Sex has no place in the angelic or heavenly life. (Compare the saying of Jesus in Mark 12:25: “when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven”). While neither the Damascus Rule nor the Serek ever explicitly requires celibacy, this same logic most probably underlies the guarantee in CD 7:5-6 that those who walk in perfect holiness shall live a thousand generations. (This is followed immediately by the statement “And if they live in camps in accordance with the rule of the land, and take women and beget children . . .”). When the community is regarded as a meta_____________ 34 35 36

Ibid., 71. See also Frennesson, “In a Common Rejoicing”. Cf. Frennesson, “In a Common Rejoicing,” 114: “Purity and Knowledge were qualities representing the sine qua non on the part of man.” 1QSa 2:3-9; J. A. Fitzmyer, “A Feature of Qumran Angelology and the Angels of 1 Cor 11:10,” in J. Murphy-O’Connor and J. H. Charlesworth, ed., Paul and the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Crossroad, 1990) 31-47.

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phorical temple, as is the case in the Serek, requirements of purity create an additional obstacle to sexual relations.

Personal Transformation Like the Songs of Sabbath Sacrifice, the hymn at the end of the Community Rule is put on the lips of the Maskil.37 In addition to what it says about the yahad, it makes some claims that have a more personal ring to them: “As for me, to God belongs my judgment; in his hand is the perfection of my behavior with the uprightness of my heart; and with his just acts he cancels my iniquities. For from the source of his knowledge he has disclosed his light, and my eyes have observed his wonders, and the light of my heart the mystery that is to be (hyhn zr) … From the spring of his justice is my judgment and from the wonderful mystery is the light of my heart. My eyes have gazed on that which is eternal, wisdom hidden from humankind, knowledge and prudent understanding (hidden) from the sons of man, fount of justice and well of strength and spring of glory (hidden) from the assembly of flesh” (1QS 11:2-7).

Here is a claim of special revelation that is rather different from the specific revelations that we typically find in apocalypses.38 The phrase raz nihyeh also occurs in 4QInstruction, a wisdom text that is not explicitly sectarian, and in 1Q/4QMysteries. It is variously translated as “the mystery that is to be” or “the mystery of Being/existence.”39 It entails comprehensive understanding, rather than specific information. It is probably to be understood as referring to the plan of God for the world, rather than to experiential knowledge of the divinity. (Compare 1QS 3:15: “from the God of knowledge comes all that is and shall be, lk hyyhnw hywh). The claim of enlightenment is offset by a self-deprecatory passage, in verses 9-10: “I belong to evil humankind, to the assembly of unfaithful flesh . . .” But this is the condition from which the speaker has been rescued, which serves only to underline the wonderful character of the transformation. It may be that the author of this hymn was an exceptional individual who had a mystical experience. But as Carol Newsom has argued, the placement of this hymn at the end of the Community Rule suggests that it represents the culmination of formation within the community. “The character constructed for the Maskil _____________ 37 38 39

Newsom, The Self as Symbolic Space (STDJ 52; Leiden: Brill, 2004) 165-74. Cf. Mach, Entwicklungsstadien, 210-11. Matthew J. Goff, The Worldly and Heavenly Wisdom of 4QInstruction (STDJ 50; Leiden: Brill, 2003) 51-79.

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in the instructions and hymn is one that embodies the values of the sect in a particularly pronounced fashion.”40 The experience articulated in this hymn is paradigmatic for the community. Moreover, we are told that God has given such knowledge and understanding to the elect, whom he has united with the holy ones. Knowledge and understanding of heavenly realities is also entailed by fellowship with the angels. There is also some dialectic between individual and communal experience in the Hodayot. One bloc of the hymns (cols. 10-17) is usually distinguished as “hymns of the Teacher,” while the remainder is classified as “hymns of the community.”41 The attribution to the Teacher is impossible to verify, but at least these hymns reflect a distinctive, individual voice. Nonetheless, these hymns too were used in the community. Precisely how they were used is difficult to say. There is a longstanding debate as to whether they were primarily cultic or instructional in purpose.42 They are distinctly different from other liturgical compositions found at Qumran.43 They are not designated for specific occasions, and some are very long. As Daniel Falk has put it, “they are not functionally analogous to collections of prayers for specific occasions such as Daily Prayers and Words of the Luminaries.”44 Nonetheless, they contain some indications of cultic use, such as references to communal singing, first person plural speakers, calls for congregational response and references to the Maskil, who may have functioned as a liturgical leader.45 Even in cases where Hodayot reflect the experiences of an individual, they may have been appropriated by the community through common recitation.46 Both the Hymns of the Teacher and the Community Hymns speak of fellowship with the angels.47 From the Teacher Hymns, we have already cited 1QHa 11:19-21: “I thank you Lord, because you saved my _____________ 40 41

42

43 44 45

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Newsom, The Self as Symbolic Space, 173. Gerd Jeremias, Der Lehrer der Gerechtigkeit (SUNT 2; Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963) 168-267, Michael C. Douglas, “The Teacher Hymn Hypothesis Revisited: New Data for an Old Crux,” DSD 6(1999) 239-66. Svend Holm-Nielsen, Hodayot. Psalms from Qumran (Acta Theologica Danica 2; Aarhus:Universitetsvorlaget, 1960) 332-348. For bibliography on the debate see Daniel Falk, Daily, Sabbath, and Festival Prayers in the Dead Sea Scrolls (STDJ 27; Leiden: Brill, 1998) 103, n.18. Bilhah Nitzan, Qumran Prayer and Religious Poetry (STDJ 12; Leiden: Brill, 1994) 324. Falk, Daily, Sabbath, and Festival Prayers, 101. For references see Russell C. D. Arnold, The Social Role of Liturgy in the Religion of the Qumran Community (STDJ 60; Leiden: Brill, 2005) 211. For the hymns of the Maskil, see Falk, Daily, Sabbath, and Festival Prayers, 100-103, citing 1QHa 20:4-11 and 1QHa 5. Compare Arnold, The Social Role of Liturgy, 214-21. Puech, La Croyance, 417: “Que ce soit dans l’un ou l’autre type d’hymnes (du Maître ou de la Communauté) la conception de l’eschatologie n’est pas différente.”

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life from the pit, and from Sheol of Abaddon you have lifted me up to an everlasting height so that I can walk on a boundless plain.” The language here reflects the same understanding of resurrection that we have seen in Daniel 12, except that the deliverance is already effected. In this case, the hymnist shows an acute consciousness of an ongoing human condition: “But I, a creature of clay, what am I? … For I find myself at the boundary of wickedness and share the lot of the scoundrels” (1QHa 11:23-25).48 Nonetheless, he has been purified for admission into communion with the angels. Moreover, “you cast eternal destiny for man with the spirits of knowledge, so that he praises your name in the community of jubilation.” The hymnist, then, has a twosided existence. On the one side, he is still beset by enemies (and the Teacher Hymns spend a good deal of time complaining of persecution and adversity). On the other side, he is set apart from all that and can join with the angels in praising God. Elsewhere in the Teacher Hymns we read that “those who walk in the way of your heart have listened to me; they have arrayed themselves for you in the assembly of the holy ones” (1QHa 12:24-25), and that “you have brought [your truth and]your [glo]ry to all the men of your council, and in a common lot (dxy lrg) with the angels of the presence.” The themes of purification and knowledge are also prominent in 1QHa 19:3-14, a community hymn.49 This hymn thanks God for having done wonders with dust. In part, this is a matter of instruction: “you have taught me the basis of your truth and have instructed me in your wonderful works.”50 In part it is a matter of purification: “For the sake of your glory you have purified man from offence so that he can make himself holy for you … to become united with the sons of your truth and in the lot with your holy ones … so that he can take his place in your presence with the perpetual host … and with those who know in a community of jubilation.” In another Community Hymn, 1QHa 7: 7 we read, “and we are gathered in the community (dxy) with those who know … and we shall shout (for joy).” There is also a dialectic between individual and community in the so-called “Self-Exaltation Hymn,” of which four very fragmentary copies have survived, at least one of which was part of a scroll of Hodayot.51 Two recensions may be distinguished, the shorter form in _____________ 48 49 50 51

Whether this is in fact a Teacher hymn is disputed. See Puech, La Croyance, 366. Kuhn, Enderwartung, 65-66 denies that it can be attributed to the Teacher. Kuhn, Enderwartung, 78-112. On the motif of knowledge in these hymns, see Kuhn, Enderwartung, 113-175. E. Eshel, “The Identification of the ‘Speaker ‘ of the Self-Glorification Hymn,” in D. W. Parry and E. Ulrich, ed., The Provo International Conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls

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4Q491c and the longer in 4Q427 7 and 4Q471b.52 The first part of this hymn refers to “a mighty throne in the congregation of the gods” on which the speaker apparently claims to have sat. He goes on to boast “I am reckoned with the gods, and my dwelling is in the holy congregation,” and “there is no teaching comparable [to my teaching].” He also asks “who suffers evil like me” and boasts that his glory is with the sons of the king (i.e. God). Other striking phrases are found in the other fragments. The speaker is “beloved of the king, companion of the holy ones,” and even asks “who is like me among the gods?” (4Q471b). In 4Q491c this self-exaltation hymn is marked off from the following “canticle of the righteous” by a large lamed, which has been taken to indicate a separate composition. The marker is not found in other copies of the text. The canticle is most fully preserved in 4Q427: “Sing a hymn, beloved ones, to the king … Exalt together with the eternal host, ascribe greatness to our God and glory to our King.” There is no consensus as to the identity of the speaker in this hymn. The Teacher of Righteousness has inevitably been proposed, but the hymn conspicuously lacks the protestations of human unworthiness that we find in the Hodayot. On the contrary, the speaker boasts that his desire is not like that of flesh. Several other interpretations are possible: the hymn could have been ascribed to the Teacher after his death,53 or it could be the work of a later teacher,54 or it might be put on the lips of an eschatological teacher or High Priest, the messiah of Aaron.55 The original editor, Baillet, suggested the archangel Michael. That suggestion has been widely rejected, but it has recently been revived by García Martínez, at least for 4Q491c, which appears to be part of the War Scroll. _____________

52

53 54

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(STDJ 30; Leiden: Brill, 1999) 619-35; M. O. Wise, “Myl)b ynmk ym: A Study of 4Q491c, 4Q471b, 4Q427 7 and 1QHa 25:35-26:10,” DSD 7(2000) 173-219. The text is found in 4Q427 fragment 7, 4Q491c, 4Q471b, and in smaller fragments in 4Q431, which is part of the same manuscript as 4Q471b, and 1QHa 25:35-26:10. Florentino García Martínez, “Old Texts and Modern Mirages: The ‘I’ of Two Qumran Hymns,” in idem, Qumranica Minora I. Qumran Origins and Apocalypticism (STDJ 63; Leiden: Brill, 2007) 105-25 (114-8). See also his longer treatment, “Ángel, hombre, Mesías, Maestro de Justicia? El Problemático ‘Yo’ de un Poema Qumránico,” in J. J. Fernández Sangrador and S. Guijarro Oporto, ed., Plenitudo Temporis. Miscelánea Homenaje al Prof. Dr. Ramón Trevijano Etcheverría (Bibliotheca Salmanticensis, Estudios 249; Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia, 2002) 103-31. Wise, “Myl)b ynwmk ym,” 418, argues that the redactor who inserted this hymn into the Hodayot meant for the reader to think of the Teacher. I. Knohl, The Messiah Before Jesus: The Suffering Servant of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Berkeley, CA: University of California, 2000) 52-5, suggests Menahem the Essene, who is mentioned by Josephus. J. J. Collins, The Scepter and the Star (New York: Doubleday, 1995) 148; Eshel, “The Identification of the Speaker,” 635.

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In the Hodayot recension, at least, the composition is designated as a rwmzm for the lyk#m. Even the 4Q491 manuscript indicates a hymnic context (“let the holy ones rejoice,” line 2). This hymnic context is strengthened in the Hodayot redaction, where the second composition is fused with the first one, so that the hymn both begins and ends with communal praise. Wise draws a direct inference about the speaker in the first person section from the context of communal praise: “each individual member of the user group spoke of himself or herself. At least by the stage of the Hodayot redaction, they declaimed in unison and chanted, singing of their singular significance at the behest of a worship leader, the Maskil.” 56 It is true that the community would have appropriated the “I” of the speaker to some degree, but the identification need not be complete. The community could also give praise and thanks for the exaltation of a leader, whether historical or eschatological. As Philip Alexander argues, the speaker is “someone special. His experience is not something that anyone can achieve, though he can still lead others into a state of closer communion with the heavenly host.”57 Alexander regards this hymn as evidence for the experience of ascent, on the assumption that the speaker has returned to earth. This assumption is not necessarily valid, however. It may be that the heavenly throne reflects a permanent or eschatological abode, and that the speaker is not the actual author of the hymn, but the exalted Teacher or an eschatological figure.

Permanent or Temporary Transformation The self-exaltation hymn is atypical of the Dead Sea Scrolls in many respects, but it is typical insofar as the exaltation of the speaker is discussed in a cultic context.58 The question arises whether the experience of communion with the angels was limited to the context of cult. In her edition of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, Carol Newsom suggested that the repetitive, hypnotic style of the Songs was meant to induce a _____________ 56

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Wise, “Myl)b ynwmk ym,” 216. So also Arnold, The Social Role of Liturgy, 221. Eileen Schuller, “Hodayot,” in E. Chazon et al., Qumran Cave 4. XX. Poetical and Liturgical Texts, Part 2 (DJD 29; Oxford: Clarendon, 1999) 102, writes “Whoever the referent may be in 4Q491 11 I, in the recension of this psalm that is found in the Hodayot manuscripts, the ‘I’ is to be understood in relationship to the ‘I’ voice we hear speaking in the other psalms, particularly the other Hymns of the Community.” Alexander, The Mystical Texts, 88. Fellowship with the angels is also attested in the War Rule, in the context of the final battle, but that is an exceptional circumstance, and so I leave it aside here. See Davidson, Angels at Qumran, 212-34; Frennesson, “In a Common Rejoicing,” 88-92.

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sense of communion with the angels, and this suggestion has recently been revived by Alexander.59 This sense was not necessarily present in all the worship of the community. Esther Chazon has argued that communion with the angelic host takes different forms; some prayers reflect a distinction between human and angelic worshippers.60 But not all prayer texts found at Qumran were products of the dxy (or even of the broader movement of the “new covenant.”) Conversely, the word dxy occurs with remarkable frequency in connection with communion with the angels.61 Moreover, as Alexander has noted, the members of the dxy lived in a permanent state of spiritual discipline and heightened religious susceptibility. They did not have to elevate themselves as far as would people living in the ordinary world, and struggling with the cares and distractions of ordinary life.”62 It remains true that the Hodayot, with the exception of the Self-Exaltation Hymn, retain a strong sense of the flesh-bound state of humanity. But the very fact that the members could enter into communion with the heavenly host, even if not yet on a permanent basis, meant that they had already been transformed to a considerable degree.

Resurrection and Transformation The reason that scholars have tended to speak of “realized eschatology” in the Scrolls, especially in the Hodayot, is not only that the hymnists speak of communion with the angels, but also the remarkable lack of any reflection on death as a problem in these texts. There has been extensive debate as to whether the Hodayot, and the sectarian scrolls more generally, express a hope for future resurrection. The authors of the Scrolls were certainly familiar with such a hope, from the books of Enoch and Daniel. They also use language that is consonant with such a belief, but this language is poetic and admits of more than one interpretation. 1QHa 19, which we have already discussed in connection with communion with the angels, also expresses the transformation of _____________ 59 60

61 62

Alexander, The Mystical Texts, 115-6. Esther Glickler Chazon, “Human and Angelic Prayer in the Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in eadem, ed., Liturgical Perspectives. Prayer and Poetry in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Leiden: Brill, 2003) 35-48. See also eadem, “Liturgical Communion with the Angels at Qumran,” in D. K. Falk, F. García Martínez and E. M. Schuller, ed., Sapiential, Liturgical and Poetical Texts from Qumran (Leiden: Brill, 2000) 95-105. Alexander, The Mystical Texts, 103. Ibid., 116.

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the elect in another way: “to raise worms of the dead from the dust, to an everlasting council” (19:12). The phrase “worm of the dead,” t(lwt Mytm, also occurs in 1QHa 14:34 (a Teacher hymn): “Hoist a banner, you who lie in the dust; raise a standard, worm of dead ones.” There is an allusion here to Isa 26:19, which refers to those who dwell in the dust. There is also an allusion to Isa 41:14: “do not fear, worm of Jacob, men of Israel.” (The Hebrew for “men” here is ytm, a rare word that occurs only in the construct plural in the Hebrew Bible, and which has the same consonants as the more familiar word for “dead ones”). In Isaiah 41, the addressees are in a lowly state, but they are not dead. Analogously, the phrase “worm of the dead” in the Hodayot may indicate metaphorically the abject state of unaided human nature. Just as the hymnist claims to be lifted up from Sheol or the Netherworld, he claims that the dead are raised from the dust to become members of the community and so enter into fellowship with the holy ones.63 It is not necessary to suppose that the author has actual corpses in mind. It is possible that these passages have a future resurrection in mind, but the language is poetic and the reference uncertain.64 There are no unambiguous references to resurrection in the Hodayot, and even possible references are rare. This may be due in part to the genre of the hymns, but neither are there any unambiguous references to resurrection (as opposed to eternal life) in the Rule books. The main eschatological focus of these hymns is on life with the angels, which is experienced to some degree as a present reality. It is remarkable that the sectarian scrolls contain no reflection on death as a problem. The emphasis is rather on continuity between the fellowship with the angels in the present and its fuller realization in the future. In his contribution to the Festschrift for Emile Puech, George Brooke has tried to go beyond the empasse on the question of resurrection in the Hodayot. Brooke assumes that the authors were familiar with beliefs in resurrection, but “the question remains concerning what they might have done with their knowledge of these beliefs.”65 He goes on to argue, on the basis of an analysis of one Teacher hymn (1QHa 12:5 _____________ 63

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Hermann Lichtenberger, “Auferstehen in den Qumranfunden,” in Friedrich Avemarie and Hermann Lichtenberger, ed, Auferstehung/Resurrection (WUNT 135; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001) 82, states that 1QHa 19 “mit grösster Gewissheit nicht im Sinne der Totenauferstehung zu interpretieren [ist].” Puech, La Croyance, 413 finds another reference in 1QH 5:29 which seems to indicate a new creation, but not a resurrection of the dead. George J. Brooke, “The Structure of 1QHA XII 5-XIII 4 and the Meaning of Resurrection,” in F. Garcia Martinez, A. Steudel and E. Tigchelaar, ed., From 4QMMT to Resurrection. Mélanges qumraniens en homage à Émile Puech (STDJ 61, Leiden: Brill, 2006) 15-33.

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-13:4) that “it was on the basis of a belief in a future bodily resurrection that the poet … was able to construct a literary entity that proclaimed precisely how he understood his present position as totally dependent on God. God had given him illumination, knowledge of the sort that seemed as if it had virtually transformed his physical body.”66 Brooke argues that the motifs of illumination, both physical and mental, and “standing” in the presence of God “belong to the field of meaning of meaning associated with the afterlife, and with the afterlife in terms of physical, bodily resurrection.”67 As we have seen at the beginning of this article, the “physical, bodily” character of resurrection in the traditions attested in the Scrolls is more complicated than Brooke allows. Enoch and Daniel seem to envision rather what might be called a spiritual body. But Brooke is right that the transformed, illuminated life “might be understood to represent the meaning of resurrection” for the poet.68 Insofar as he speaks of resurrection, he uses it primarily as a metaphor for a transformed state in this life. How far the hymnist expected a further transformation after death is an open question. At least we should expect that the body would become more luminous in the hereafter, and freedom from irritation by the unredeemed world would presumably make some difference. But the Scrolls never clarify for us how the luminous body of the hereafter would be related to the bones that were neatly buried in single graves by the shore of the Dead Sea at Qumran. No significance is attached to the demise of flesh and blood. Since the well-attested ideal of the community was the angelic life, and angels were spirits, it is unlikely that the members had any desire to resume their bodily existence. The angelic life as experienced in the yahad may have been imperfect, but it was at least a foretaste of eternal life, and it was powerful enough that ordinary mortality was rendered insignificant. There is an obvious analogy between the transformed life as we find it in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Christian monasticism, as Samuel Rubenson describes it in this volume on the basis of the letters of Ammonas.69 There too the essential transformation takes place in the present. Revealed knowledge plays a crucial role in the transformation. The letters do not even refer to a future judgment, which appears occa_____________ 66 67 68

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Brooke, 33. Ibid. Ibid., 29. This reinterpretation of resurrection as a present experience is more explicit and emphatic in the later Gnostic texts. See the essay of Hugo Lundhaug in this volume. Rubenson, “As already translated to the kingdom while still in the body,” in this volume.

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sionally in the scrolls, and unlike the scrolls they do not make an explicit contrast between “flesh” and “spirit.” But the similarity is striking nonetheless. There is an interval of several hundred years between the demise of the Jewish sect and the rise of monasticism, and it is impossible to trace influence from the former to the latter. Rather, they shared the view that the goal of life was the presence of God in heaven, a view that was encouraged by various strands of thought, philosophical and mythical/apocalyptic, in late antiquity. In their eagerness to reach that goal, both the sectarians and the monks structured their lives so that they felt they could experience the heavenly life already in the present.

Recognizing the Righteous Remnant? Resurrection, Recognition and Eschatological Reversals in 2 Baruch 47-52 Recognizing the Righteous Remnant? LIV INGEBORG LIED1 Überschrift 2: für Kapitel ohne Ü2 wird hier Ü1 Kurzform wiederholt The description of resurrection, recognition, judgment, and of afterlife transformations in 2 Bar. 50:1-51:6 has intrigued scholars for years. Due to its uncommon inclusion of details, this particular passage has become one of the most cited and discussed parts of the early second century C.E., Jewish, pseudepigraphon, 2 Baruch. However, the recognition motif in 50:1-51:6 has not attracted the same amount of scholarly attention as the other motifs of this passage. Still, it becomes particularly intriguing to study the use of the recognition motif in the context of resurrection and judgment, since it is so rare to find it discussed in this setting. Moreover, when the recognition motif is approached as an integral part of the rhetoric of the larger narrative of 2 Bar. 47-52, an analysis of its functions in that particular context will shed new light on the related motifs of 50:1-51:6. This study will discuss the established interpretations of the recognition motif in 50:1-51:6 and provide a new reading on the basis of the argumentative context of the passage in 2 Bar. 47-52. The questions I seek to answer are: what are the functions of the recognition motif in 50:1-51:6 within the context of 2 Bar. 47-52, and what is the object of recognition in 50:1-51:6?

The Recognition Motif There has been a growing interest in recent decades in the way the recognition motif is used in Greco-Roman and early Jewish texts.2 Scholars of Greco-Roman texts have drawn attention to the functions of the rec_____________ 1 2

Liv Ingeborg Lied is a researcher at the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo, Norway. Cf. in particular Terence Cave, Recognitions: A Study in Poetics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).

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ognition motif within the plot of Greco-Roman narratives and dramas, and to the place of the motif in the standard repertoire of ancient storytellers.3 However, as among others R. Alan Culpepper and Kasper Bro Larsen have pointed out, the use of the recognition motif is also widespread in biblical and other early Christian and Jewish texts.4 The themes of recognition and non-recognition can be observed, for instance, in the story of Joseph and his brothers in Gen 42, in Judg 13 where an angel visits Menoah and his barren wife, in the Emmausnarrative in Luke 24, as well as in the various versions of the story of the witch of Endor.5 And, moreover, these texts apply the recognition motif in various manners. The many different uses of this motif suggest that any fixed definition of, or set model for, the use of the recognition motif in ancient texts is inadvisable.6 The aim of the following sketch is rather to indicate some tendencies in the use of the recognition motif in late antique texts, and to provide some hermeneutical tools for the reading of 2 Bar. 50:151:6. First of all, I take the term “recognition” to mean the act of recognizing and/or the fact of being recognized, in the sense that an observer perceives someone to be the same, or belong to the same category, as something previously known. The term may also imply a formal acceptance, or acknowledgement, of the status or legitimacy of a person or group, and last but not least, the term may involve identification of a person or group of persons.7 As Terence Cave, Culpepper, and Larsen have all pointed out, an act of recognition involves sense perception, like seeing, hearing, or smelling. Moreover, there must be something to recognize, an object, a mark or a trait. This may be a mark of a person’s individual identity or a sign of his status, class belonging, or species. However, seeing, hear_____________ 3 4

5 6 7

Cf. Kasper Bro Larsen, “Recognizing the Stranger: Anagnōrisis in the Gospel of John,” (PhD diss., Faculty of Theology, Aarhus, 2006), 5-6. Cf. R. Alan Culpepper, The Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel: A Study in Literary Design (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983); idem, The Gospel and Letters of John (IBT. Nashville: Abingdon, 1998); Larsen, ”Recognizing the Stranger,” idem, “Viden og erkendelse i Johannesevangeliet,” DTT 66 (2003): 81-106. Cf. also Diana Culbertson, The Poetics of Revelation: Recognition and the Narrative Tradition (StABH 4; Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1989). Thanks are due to Kasper Bro Larsen for sharing his doctoral thesis with me. Cf. 1 Sam 28 and L.A.B. 64. Cf. further Gen 38.26; Judg 6:11-24; Isa 53:2; Tob 5:4-5; L.A.B. 62:9; Jos. Asen. 18-19; John 20:11-18. Cf. Larsen, “Recognizing the Stranger,” 55-57. Cf. The Collins English Dictionary. 21st Century Edition (5th edition; Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000), 1288; Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary (11th edition; Springfield, Mass.; Merriam-Webster, inc, 2003).

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ing or smelling is not in itself an act of recognition: the cognitive aspect of the act is therefore central to the concept. The observer must have the ability to understand the true meaning of what he or she observes, in order to establish the identity or the type of the observed object. This means that a pragmatic occurrence, or the appearance of a person or a group of persons, will not necessarily be understood in the same manner by different observers at different occasions. Thus, recognition demands both knowledge and a situation in which the observer will be able to “know again.” As the above mentioned scholars have shown, many ancient texts apply the recognition motif to underscore the tension between occurrences and events in the narrative world, and the ability of the figures in the narrative to perceive the event as what it really is. Often, the real meaning of an event or a sign, alternatively the true identity of a person or a group, is initially hidden to the observer, and the act of recognition therefore stands out as the event that “creates a shift of perspective”8 in the observer and that introduces a turning point in the story. According to Cave, the moment of recognition brings about a shift from ignorance to knowledge; it is the moment that the figures of the narrative understand their circumstances as they really are for the first time, the moment that “resolves a sequence of unexplained and often implausible occurrences; it makes the world (and the text) intelligible.”9

The Recognition Motif in 2 Bar. 50:1-51:6: Translation and Context As suggested in the introduction, the present study aims to discuss the function of the recognition motif and the object of recognition in 2 Bar. 50:1-51:6. A closer look at this passage is now warranted: And he answered and said to me: hear, Baruch, this word and write in the record of your heart all that you will learn. For the earth will then surely give back the dead, which it receives now to keep, although transforming nothing in their appearance, but as it received [them], so it gives them back. And as I delivered them to it, so also it will raise them. For then it is needed to show those who live that the dead have come to life and that those who went [away] have come [back]. And it will happen after they have recognized one another, those who know now, then judgment will become strong, and these [things] will come, which were spoken of.

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Cave, Recognitions, 3. Cave, Recognitions, 1. Cf. further Culpepper, Gospel and Letter of John, 86; Larsen, “Recognizing the Stranger,” 5-10; 20-68.

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And it will happen when that appointed day has passed on, then after that the [elevated] pride of those found guilty will soon be transformed, and also the glory of those found righteous. For the shape of those who now act wickedly will be made more evil than it is, like those who endure torment. Also the glory of those who now have been declared justified in my Law, those in whom there has been understanding in their lives, those who planted the root of wisdom in their heart, then their splendor will be glorified in transformations, and the shape of their faces will be changed in the light of their beauty, to enable them to acquire and receive the world that does not die, which then is promised to them. For because of this especially they will groan, those who come then, that they rejected my Law, and stopped their ears so that they did not hear wisdom and did not receive understanding when they then see those over whom they now are exalted, who will then be more exalted and glorified than they, and these and those will be transformed, these into the splendor of angels, and those will waste away especially in amazement over the visions and the sight of the shapes. For first they will see, and afterwards they will be punished. (51:1-6)

In this paragraph of 2 Baruch, God reveals to Baruch what will happen on the day of resurrection, and the time that follows immediately after it. According to 50:2, the earth will give back (root pn’, or raise (root qwm), the dead just as it received (root qbl) them, to ensure that the living can be shown (root h9w’) that the dead live, and that they have returned (root ’t’ (50:3). The passage underscores that the earth has transformed (root h9lp) nothing in their appearance (çwrt’). When “those who know now” (’ylyn dhš’ yd‘yn) have recognized (’štwd‘w)10 one another (h9d lh9d), God will judge mankind, and all the things which were formerly declared will happen (50:4). After God’s judgment, those who were found guilty, as well as those who were found righteous, will be transformed (root h9lp). 51:1-6 describes the parallel processes of transformation that affect the righteous and the wicked. Whereas the appearance of the wicked will “become more evil than it is” (byš mn m’ d’ytyh) to prepare them for torment, the glory (tšbwh9t’), the splendor (zyw) and the shape of the faces (dmwt’ d’pyhwn) of the righteous will be “transformed in the light of their beauty (y’ywt’),” (51:3) to enable them to inherit the immortal, heavenly world. And whereas the righteous continue to transform into the splendor of angels (lzyw’ dml’k’), the )

)

_____________ 10

The Syriac word yd’, “to know,” is commonly translated “to know, recognize, understand, to see, perceive” in the Eshtaph‘el form, ’štwd‘, found in 2 Bar. 50:4. Cf. R. Payne Smith, A Compendious Syriac Dictionary (Edited by J. Payne Smith; Eugene, Or.; Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1999), 188; Cf. R. Payne Smith (ed), Thesaurus Syriacus I (2 vols.; Oxford, 1879-1901; Repr. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2006), 1558. Cf. Gen 27:23; 31:32; 37:32-3; 38:26; 42.7-8; Deut 33:9. This study is however not primarily a study of the use of this Syriac word, but a discussion of the use of the recognition motif in the broader context of 50:1-51:6.

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wicked will be the remorseful witnesses to the bliss of the righteous while they themselves face punishment. Most of the scholars who have discussed the recognition motif in this passage of 2 Baruch have based their interpretations either on the 1896 translation of Robert H. Charles, or on the 1985 translation of A.F.J. Klijn.11 My translation of 2 Bar. 50:1-51:6 differs from their translations on one important point. I interpret ’ylyn dhš’ yd‘yn in 50:4 as “those who know now,” rather than “those whom they now know” (Charles), alternatively “those who know each other now” (Klijn). Although all these translations of the phrase in 50:4 are possible, my translation is closer to the Syriac manuscript.12 Consequently, those who mutually recognize one another, and who are mutually recognized in 50:4, are “those who know now,” and not “those who know each other now.” It is, in other words, their status as knowledgeable that fosters recognition, not solely the possibility that they were acquainted with each other in the time before the resurrection.13 In the following, I will attempt to show that these changes in the translation of 50:1-51:6 have bearings on the understanding of the recognition motif in the context of 2 Bar. 47-52.

Recognition in the Context of 2 Bar. 47-52 2 Baruch is commonly described as a Jewish, apocalyptical, and eschatological text, written in Palestine in response to the fall of the second

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A.F.J. Klijn, “2 (Syriac Apocalypse of) Baruch,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha I (ed. J.H. Charlesworth; 2 vols; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983-85), 615-652; Robert H. Charles, The Apocalypse of Baruch (London: Black, 1896). Thanks are due to Samuel Rubenson, who made me consider this translation. Cf. also Bruno Violet, who included the option, but chose to translate yd‘yn “kennen”: “Und sobald die sich gegenseitig erkannt haben, die (sich) jetzt kennen, dann wird das Gericht in Kraft treten, und die vorhergesagten (Dinge) werden kommen” (Bruno Violet, Die Apokalypsen des Ezra und des Baruch in deutscher Gestalt (Die greichischen-christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte 32; Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1924), 275). I also prefer to keep the Syriac word rmwt’, “pride”/ “elevation” in 51:1 instead of rendering it to dmwt’. Antonio M. Ceriani, who first published and translated 2 Baruch, proposed that rmwt’ was most probably mistaken for dmwt’ , “shape,” since dmwt’ occurs in 51:2. Most translators have accepted this proposal. However, since the Syriac manuscript in fact has rmwt’, and the transformation of the elevation of the wicked is the topic of 51:5, I choose to keep rmwt’ in my translation. This means that I understand 51:1 to focus on the aspect of the wicked that displays pride and foul elevation (rmwt’), and not only as a description of their shape (dmwt’).

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temple in 70 C.E.14 2 Baruch presents itself as “The Apocalypse of Baruch son of Neriah.”15 In this manner 2 Baruch invokes the authority of Baruch, the famous scribe of Jeremiah, and situates the plot of its frame narrative in the last days of Baruch’s life at the very end of the first temple period. 2 Baruch consists of several ordered episodes of narration, prayers and laments, apocalyptic visions or revelatory dialogues with their respective interpretations, followed by Baruch’s public addresses.16 Recent contributors have argued that these episodes build a unified whole and add thematic development to the composition. In this manner, 2 Baruch describes Baruch’s gradual acceptance of the current catastrophe, and his growing understanding of the fact that the fall of the temple was part of God’s plan for the redemption of the righteous, the law-abiding remnant group in focus in 2 Baruch. Through the visions, explanations, and the ongoing dialogue with God, Baruch is convinced that the future of the righteous lies in the incorruptible, heavenly world. That heavenly world will belong to the righteous as soon as the last period of affliction in the corruptible world has been exhausted. God commands Baruch to instruct his followers in the Law, since their knowledge of the Law is crucial to their future existence: all mankind, both the righteous minority and the wicked majority, will be resurrected and face judgment, but only the righteous, those who know and live according to the Law, will live in the blissful place of God’s presence in the heavenly world.17 _____________ 14

15 16

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2 Baruch is generally acknowledged to be written in the late first or early second century. The milieu of origin of 2 Baruch remains unknown, although those who produced 2 Baruch must have been acquainted with several aspects of current discourses, which later has been labelled Christian and/or (proto-) rabbinic. 2 Baruch has been transmitted in the Syrian church, but neither the history of the text among Jews and Christians in Syria, nor the influence of Syrian Christians onto the existing version of the text can be ascertained. Today, the extant text of 2 Baruch is transmitted in a single, Syriac manuscript. This well preserved Syriac version of 2 Baruch survived as an integral part of an ancient copy of a Syriac Bible and was discovered in the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana in Milan in the late nineteenth century (Ambrosianus B21 Inf fols: 257a-265b). In addition, a Greek fragment of 2 Bar. 12:1-13:2 and 13:1114:3 was found in the Egyptian town of Oxyrynchus in the early twentieth century. These fragments stem from a fourth or fifth century manuscript. 2 Bar. 44:9-15 and 72:1-73:2 are also transmitted in three later West Syriac lectionary manuscripts. 2 Bar. 3-86 is also known from an Arabic manuscript. Cf. e.g. Klijn, “2 Baruch,” 615-16. Ktb’ dglynh dbrwk br nry’. Cf. Matthias Henze, “From Jeremiah to Baruch: Pseudepigraphy in the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch,” in Biblical Traditions in Transmission: Essays in the Honour of Michael A. Knibb (eds. Charlotte Hempel and Judith Lieu; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2006), 157-77 (163) and Martin Leuenberger, “Ort und Funktion der Wolkenvision und ihrer Deutung in der Syrischen Baruchapokalypse,” JSJ 36 (2005): 206-46 (242). This description is based on 21:23-5; 43-44; 47-52; 75:1-8 and 83-5. Some passages, like 30:1-5 and 36:10-11 may present other solutions.

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Several scholars have isolated 2 Bar. 47-52 as one of 2 Baruch’s constituent episodes.18 Sitting under an oak at Hebron (47:1-2), 19 Baruch prays to God, invoking God’s role as almighty creator (48:2-24) asking him to reveal the course of the remaining periods. The section that follows, 48:31-51:16, describes God’s revelation of things to come, interrupted by Baruch’s reflections and questions in 48:42-49:3 only. Three periods can be isolated in God’s revelation of history.20 The first period, described in 48:31-36, presents the first phase: the imminent end time. This period is presented as the perverted and abnormal period of wicked reign in the corruptible world. The end time is a period of affliction for the righteous, but a time of glory and peace for the wicked (48:31-36). The glory and the peace of that time are delusive, however, since the wicked are unaware of God’s approaching judgment. The second period, 48:37-51:6, is presented as a time of transition. This part of God’s revelation focuses on the relationship between the wicked and the righteous as the times are about to turn in favour of the righteous. 48:37-38 describes the destruction of the illusory peace of the wicked reign and introduces a time of tumults. Unrest, destruction and warfare takes over, constituting the beginning of a process of degeneration and punishment (48:37-41). The coming of “the judge” (dyn’, 48:39), possibly implying the advent of a king/judge Messiah, brings judgment and punishment to the wicked who still are alive at that time.21 Baruch interrupts God’s revelation of history in 48:42-49:3. Baruch sums up the evils of the present world order (48:42-47), and addresses his followers, announcing that he will now turn to the destiny of the _____________ 18

19 20 21

Fredrick J. Murphy, The Structure and Meaning of Second Baruch (SBLDS 78; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1985), 21 and Matthias Henze (private communication). Cf. further Gwendolyn B. Sayler, Have the Promises Failed? A Literary Analysis of 2 Baruch (SBLDS 72; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1984), 27. This is probably an allusion to the location where God made the covenant with Abraham. Cf. further 2 Bar. 55:1; 78:18. Cf. also Paul Volz, Die Eschatologie der jüdischen Gemeinde im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1934), 44. Sayler has argued that 48:38-43 describes God’s judgment of the wicked and that 50:1-4 concerns only, or primarily, the righteous (Sayler, Promises, 66). However, since “the judge” seems to focus on the living ones (48:41), this is not a final judgment of both the living and the dead. This is the Messiah’s “political,” earthly, victory over the nations, in terms of judgment. This is a typical way of describing the Messianic breakthrough in 2 Baruch (36:1-11; 39:7-40:4; 70:9-72:6) and the motif is paralleled in 4 Ezra 13:25-38. It is therefore more probable that the Messianic judgment and God’s judgment are complementary, as they are in 72-5. This implies that the wicked are punished twice (cf. 36:11; first by the Messiah and then by God).

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righteous in the heavenly, incorruptible world. In 50:1-51:6 the glorious destiny of the righteous is outlined by God as a contrast to the horrible fate of the wicked – from the general resurrection of the dead,22 the judgment and the respective transformations of the wicked and the righteous, until the destruction of the wicked is final in 51:6. The third, and last, part of God’s revelation describes the continuing transformation and elevation of the righteous, until the generations of the righteous assemble with the fathers in the proximity of the throne of God (51:13).23

2 Bar. 50:1-4: Recognizing the Dead as the Ones Who Once Lived: Former Interpretations The passage of interest to this study, 50:1-51:6, describes the transition that starts with the resurrection of the dead (50:1) and ends with the final punishment of the wicked (51:6), comprising most of the second period isolated above (i.e., 48:48 – 51:6). What is the object of recognition, and what are the functions of the recognition motif in this context? Most of the scholars who have studied the recognition motif in the context of 50:1-4,24 have suggested that the object of recognition is the visual characteristic that make it possible to recognize the dead as the persons who once lived.25 Some of these interpreters have also ascribed an apologetic purpose to the use of the motif in the passage.26 _____________ 22

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Most scholars hold that the resurrection described in 50:2 is a general resurrection, including both righteous and wicked dead. This interpretation is the most probable, since the outcome of God’s judgment (51:1) presumes that both the wicked and the righteous are judged. Both the judgment and the stress on the establishment of status after judgment would be meaningless unless all the dead are resurrected. Cf. Sayler, Promises, 66, on the alternative view that only the righteous are resurrected in 50:2. The righteous are established in the heavenly world in 51:13-16. 51:17-52:7 contains the continued dialogue between God and Baruch. This passage is debated. Cf. Bogaert, Apocalypse de Baruch I, 422. Note that most of the scholars who have studied the recognition motif of this passage, have focused on 50:1-4 alone, not on 50:1-51:6. Cf. e.g., Charles, Apocalypse of Baruch, 82-3; Volz, Eschatologie, 253-254; Joachim Jeremias, ‘”Flesh and Blood Cannot Inherit the Kingdom of God” (1 Cor. XV.50),” NTS 2 (1956): 159; Craig F. Evans, Resurrection and the New Testament (SBT 12; London: SCM Press, 1970), 16; Raymond E. Brown, The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus (New York: Paulist Press, 1973), 84-86; Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews VI, 340; Sayler, Promises, 65; David E. Garland, Reading Matthew: A Literary and Theological Commentary on the First Gospel (Reading the New Testament Series; New York: Cross-

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One exponent of both these standpoints was Günther Stemberger. His 1972 monograph Der Leib der Auferstehung: Studien zur Anthropologie und Eschatologie des palästinischen Judentums im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter (ca. 170 v.Chr – 100 n. Chr) deserves some attention, since it remains among the most thorough discussions of the recognition motif in 2 Baruch. In Stemberger’s view, 50:1-4 describes the recognition of the risen dead as the persons who once lived.27 According to Stemberger, the identity of the risen dead as the ones who once lived could be verified on the basis of their intact earthly appearance. The act of recognition had to take place immediately after resurrection, however, since the following transformation process would blur the traits of the risen dead. Stemberger held that the purpose of the recognition motif in 50:1-4 was apologetic, “gegen die Leugner der Auferstehung.” According to Stemberger, no one should be in doubt that the dead had in fact risen, since the resurrected dead could be recognized as the persons who had once died. Stemberger’s suggestions are, with room for a variety of nuances, typical of the majority of interpretations of the recognition motif in 2 Bar. 50:1-4.28 In his 1969 French introduction to 2 Baruch, Pierre-Marie Bogaert made a different interpretation of 50:1-4 than the majority of scholars. According to Bogaert, the resurrection of the dead would primarily serve as a sign to those who still were alive on that day (50:3). Further, _____________

26 27

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road, 1993), 265; Richard N. Longenecker. “Is There Development in Paul’s Resurrection Thought?” in Life in the Face of Death: The Resurrection Message in the New Testament (ed. Richard N. Longenecker; McMaster New Testament Studies; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998), 171-202 (199); Willem S. Vorster, Speaking of Jesus: Essays in Biblical Language, Gospel Narrative and the Historical Jesus (NovTSup 92; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1999), 106; Turid Karlsen Seim, “Udødelig og kjønnsløs? Oppstandelseskroppen i lys av Lukas,” in Kropp og oppstandelse (eds. Troels Engberg-Pedersen og Ingvild Sælid Gilhus; Oslo: Pax Forlag AS, 2001), 80-98 (93-4); Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus – God and Man (London, SCM Press, 2002), 72-3; Daniel J. Harrington, “Afterlife Expectations in Pseudo-Philo, 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch, and Their Implications for the New Testament,” in Resurrection in the New Testament: Festschrift J. Lambrecht (ed. R. Bieringer, V. Koperski and B. Lataire; BETL CLXV; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2002), 31; Rivka Nir, The Destruction of Jerusalem and the Idea of Redemption in the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch (SBLEBL 20; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), 162-4. Richard Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead: Studies in the Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (NovTSup; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1998), 283. Günther Stemberger, Der Leib der Auferstehung: Studien zur Anthropologie und Eschatologie des palästinischen Judentums im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter (ca. 170 v. Chr – 100 n. Chr) (AnBib 56; Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1972), 86-91. Stemberger, Leib der Auferstehung, 86-91. Cf. Bauckham, Fate of the Dead, 283; Nir, Destruction, 162.

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Bogaert understood the resurrection and recognition scene in 50:1-4 as a “‘retrouvailles’ familiales” and referred to Liber antiquitatum biblicarum (L.A.B.) 23:13 and 62:9 to clarify his position. 29 L.A.B. 23:13 describes the restoration of the fathers to their descendants and the descendants to the fathers at the very end of time, and focuses on the fathers’ acknowledgement of their descendants. L.A.B. 62:9, on the other hand, suggests that the souls of the contemporaries David and Jonathan will be able to know each other even in death. These two passages in the L.A.B., thus, describe recognition both across generations (23:13) and within the same generation (69:2). Bogaert proposed that the recognition in 2 Bar. 50:1-5 in a similar manner would serve both the restoration of generations to each other, and the restoration of the relationship between those who knew one another during their life time. When the interpretations of Stemberger and Bogaert are compared, the sheer variety of potential interpretations of 50:1-4 is apparent. It is evident that both the proposed interpretations of the recognition motif in 50:1-51:6 are possible, and can be supported by the existence of similar ideas in contemporaneous texts. 30 Stemberger’s suggestion of an apologetic purpose is possible, since the passage does stress that the dead have returned and that they have in fact been restored as they were before they died. That explicitness must serve a purpose. However, Stemberger’s suggestion of an apologetic purpose can not be affirmed on the basis of an isolated study of 50:1-4, nor by references to the function of the recognition motif in other texts only. Stemberger’s reading of the passage must be relevant to the context in which it occurs in 2 Baruch. Moreover, Stemberger has based his interpretation primarily on 50:1-3, stressing the need of the living to see that the dead have come back. Bogaert’s interpretation, on the other hand, tends to favour 50:4, indicating that not only will the sons recognize the fathers, the fathers will also recognize the sons. According to Bogaert, the dead will recognize the living, just like the living will recognize the dead. In Bogaert’s view, the scene can not be reduced to the need of the living to realize that the dead have returned: there is also something about the living that is of interest to the dead. However, Bogaert’s interpretation of 50:14 should also be discussed with an eye to the context of the passage. It _____________ 29

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Pierre-Marie Bogaert, Apocalypse de Baruch, Introduction, Traduction du Syriaque et Commentaire (2 vols; Source Chrétiennes 144-145; Paris: des Éditions du cerf, 1969, 92-93. Cf: 1 Cor 15; b. Sanh. 90b; 91b; Midr. Qoh. 1:4; Gen. Rab. 95; Eccl. Rab. 1:4:2. Stemberger, Leib der Auferstehung, 87; Bauckham, Fate of the Dead, 283.

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is not evident that 50:1-4 describes the reunion of fathers and descendants. It is possible that the restoration of the generations, the final gathering, takes place only in 51:13. The notion that the resurrection first and foremost serves as a sign also deserves some further attention. In the following, I will argue an alternative reading of 50:1-51:6 based on the new translation of 50:4, applying some of the insights of former interpreters, while questioning others. It is my hypothesis that the interpretation of the recognition motif in 50:1-4 changes if the passage is understood as intimately connected to 51:1-6, as well as an explicit part of the episode 2 Bar. 47-52.

2 Bar. 50:1-51:6 Answers 48:31-6: The Recognition Motif and the Eschatological Reversal I have suggested that the first part of God’s revelation of the coming periods of time, 48:31-36, describes the end time, the glorious period of the wicked on earth. The second part, 48:37-51:6, describes the process of change in the relationship between the wicked and the righteous in favour of the righteous, whereas the third and final part, 51:7-16, describes the final bliss of the righteous. 50:1-51:6 plays an important part in the second period, presenting a central phase of the transition. In some important respects it portrays the reversal of the glorious reign of the wicked, described in 48:31-36: And that time will rise, which is oppressing, for it will come and pass on in sudden turbulence, and it will be troublesome when it comes in the heat of indignation. And it will happen in those days that all the inhabitants of the earth will be at rest with each other, because they do not know that my judgment has come near. For at that time there will not be found many wise [persons], and the understanding [ones] will be few, but also those who know will be silent more and more. And there will be much hearsay and not few rumours, and works of fantasy will be shown, and not a few promises will be repeated, some of them without cause, and some of them will be confirmed. And glory will be turned into dishonour, and strength will be humiliated into contempt, integrity will be destroyed, and beauty will be meanness. And the many will say to the many at that time: “How has the multitude of understanding been hidden from sight and how has the multitude of wisdom been displaced”?

In the context of God’s revelation of the coming periods, 48:31-36 presents the absolute peak of wickedness in the corruptible world. Being just that, the period at the very end of the world simultaneously constitutes the low point in the history of the righteous. To the righteous few (h9dh9dn’), who are left, the time of wicked reign is a period of oppres-

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sion. The wise and understanding will be marginalized and “those who know” (’ylyn dyd‘yn) will be silent (48:33).31 According to 48:35-6, glory, strength, integrity and beauty, all characteristics commonly ascribed to the righteous, will be despised and inverted, and the multitude of intelligence (skwltnwt’) and wisdom (h9kmt’) will be hidden from sight (root ks’)32 and displaced (root šn’)33. In this manner, 48:31-6 makes the righteous minority, those who know, and the wicked majority, those who do not know (l’ yd‘yn), into contrasting groups. Whereas the righteous and their order have been suppressed, the wicked order is triumphant in the corruptible world.34 However, although the wicked is clearly in power in the end time, it is evident that their entire order is illusory. What people hear are rumours and hearsay, not the truth, and what they see are works of fantasy, not real wonders. Likewise, it is entirely coincidental whether promises are fulfilled or not: some promises are, while others are not (48:34). In what respects can 50:1-51:6 be read as the reversal of power? Firstly, in the same manner as the passage in 48:31-6 describes the dominance of the ignorant and the suppression of “those who know,” 50:1-51:6 presents the triumph of the knowledgeable over the ignorant. Whereas “those who now have been declared justified in my Law, those in whom there has been understanding in their lives, those who planted the root of wisdom in their heart” (51:3) are exalted, those who were ignorant, who would not listen and rebuked God’s Law (48:31; 51:4) get their proper punishment. In other words, 50:1-51:6 reverses the situation of the righteous vis-à-vis the wicked. Whereas the wicked were in power during the end time, the righteous triumph after the judgment of God. Secondly, 50:1-4 stresses that what happens at the day of God’s intervention is real. The miracles God produces are no illusions, and the changes that take place are not based on rumours or hearsay, but constitute bare facts. The dead appear just as they were before they died, and it is visible to the living that they live again (50:3). In other words, God produces real miracles, real dead people, and not mere phan_____________ 31 32 33 34

I understand 48:36 to be referring to the main characteristics of one single group and not to three distinct groups. Or, “covered” (Smith, Dictionary, 220). Smith, Dictionary, 586. Who are the wicked? We can imagine that the wicked are the foreign suppressors of God’s people (read: Rome (2 Bar. 35-40)). It is also possible that those who do not know are those tribes of Israel that rejected the Law and mingled with the gentiles (48:23; 75:7-8).

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toms.35 Moreover, after God’s judgment those things which were spoken of will in fact take place. God fulfils all his promises as he said he would. Fulfilment of promises is no longer accidental (48:34). The seeming glory of the wicked is in this manner overcome by the real miracles of the God of the righteous. Thirdly, the glory (’yqr’) that was dishonoured, and the beauty (špyrwt’) that turned into meanness in the end time, are again valued after God’s judgment. These qualities will even be intensified in the transformation process that follows the judgment (51:1-3). The inverted social order returns to “normal,” that is, as it should have been in God’s creation.36 When the period described in 50:1-51:6 is read as the reversal of the order of the end time in 48:31-6, it becomes clear that 50:1-51:6 belongs to an ongoing argument concerning the destiny of the opponent groups of the righteous remnant and the wicked majority, and that it presents the final turn of the tide in favour of the righteous. 50:1-51:6 describes how the situation changes and how the restoration of the righteous will occur. The passage plays out the contrast between the terrible fate of the wicked and the glorious destiny of the righteous, serving to enhance the punishment of the former and the blissful state of the latter.37

2 Bar. 50:1-4: Group Confirmation, Budding Triumph, and the Function of Knowledge The above interpretation of the connection between 50:1-51:6 and 48:316 implies that 2 Baruch focuses mainly on the difference between the group of the knowledgeable and the group of the ignorant, and that the changing relationship between these opponent groups after resurrection and judgment is underscored. Thus, it is likely that the expression

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Cf. Bernhard P. Robinson concerning the practice of optical illusions in magical contexts (“The Place of the Emmaus Story in Luke-Acts,” NTS 30 (1984): 481-497 (484). It should also be noted that 50:1-51:6 and 48:31-6 apply identical words and expressions, particularly to describe the group of the righteous and the characteristics of its members. Both passages refers to the members of the group as wise, and intelligent, they call them “those who know,” and refer to their beauty and glory. Cf. 82:1-9.

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“those who know” serves as the title of the group of the righteous in this context.38 Who are “those who know”? As I suggested above, “those who know now” (’ylyn dhš’ yd‘yn) in 50:4 probably correspond to “those who know” (’ylyn dyd‘yn) in 48:33. The implication of this suggestion is that the “now” of 50:4 points back to the period of end time, the period in which the remnant, the followers of Baruch, live and are instructed by Baruch. If this is correct, “those who know now” refers to the group of the righteous which was suppressed during the wicked reign of the end time and who used to serve as Baruch’s pupils and audience (48:31-36). However, the possibility that “those who know” serves both as a group title and as a reference to a particular knowledge needs to be explored. The first passage to be discussed is 50:1-4: why is the appearance of the dead kept unaltered in 50:1-4, does this passage present “the sign,” as Bogaert suggested, and who recognizes whom in 50:4? As mentioned above, Stemberger suggested that the appearances of the dead were kept unaltered to prove to the living that those who they could see at that time in fact were the persons they once knew.39 However, the passage 50:2-3 never says that the living identify the dead as the persons they once were. On the contrary, 50:2-3 says that the dead are shown (rt. h9w’) to the living in unaltered appearances. These unaltered appearances are the concern of the passage, not the identification of individual dead persons. Why is the unaltered appearance of the dead then of importance? In the above comparison of 50:1-51:6 and 48:31-36, I proposed that the resurrection of the dead proved God’s capacity to produce real miracles, in contrast to the works of fantasy produced by the wicked during the end time. Only God is in the position to bring the dead back from the earth. In this manner, the showing of the resurrected dead proves God’s power to the living.40 Moreover, the notion that the earth (’r‘’) has not transformed the appearance of the dead (50:2) suggests that it is not the right of the earth to touch what God has entrusted to it.41 God, the creator, is the only one who can transform the shape and the appearance of man, and, as we have already seen, God’s transformation _____________ 38 39

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This is the observation of John J. Collins. Other passages in 2 Baruch, describing or alluding to a future resurrection, tend to take the resurrection as a fact of the future age (Cf. 2 Bar. 14-15; 21:12-25; 30:1-5; 36.11; 44:1-15; 57.2; 75.7-8; 84:1; 85:10-15. Cf. further Harrington, “Afterlife Expectations,” 24). Stemberger’s suggestion is weakened by this general tendency. According to 83:7, this is the most important aspect of the time of the end. Cf. 2 Bar. 42:8.

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of the wicked and the righteous takes place only after judgment (51:16). This interpretation of the passage harmonizes both with 2 Baruch’s general stress on the notion of God as the almighty creator,42 and with the presentation of the earth as a protective container at God’s service in 6:8-10.43 So, the living are shown the unaltered appearance of the dead to ensure that God’s almighty power is evident to everyone. Unlike Stemberger, Bogaert proposed that the resurrection of the dead would serve as a sign to the living.44 Unfortunately, Bogaert did not expand on his suggestion. This leaves his proposal open for interpretation. Whatever Bogaert’s own intentions were, some aspects of 50:1-4 do support the idea that the resurrection could serve as a sign. If we accept the argument, presented above, that 50:1-51:6 describes the reversal of the situation in 48:31-6, the resurrection and showing of the dead in 50:2-3 serve as the turning point in the history of the righteous, proving that their God has finally intervened in the world order and made his almighty power visible to everyone.45 In what sense, and to whom, can the resurrection and the showing of the dead serve as a sign? On the one hand, 50:2-3 suggests that the dead will be shown to all those who are alive at that time, few or many,46 wicked or righteous. All those who live can see that the dead have returned (48:46). On the other hand, the perception of this event as a sign demands knowledge. In other words, the observer must be able to grasp the occurrence as a sign. This is how the insight of “those who know now” (50:4) first becomes relevant. _____________ 42 43

44 45 46

Sayler, Promises, 61; 63. In 2 Bar. 6:8-10 the earth is ordered to protect the holy vessels of the Jerusalem temple until the day they can once again be restored. The notion of the earth as a protective container was not uncommon in the period (Cf. 2 Bar. 42:8; 4 Ezra 7:32; 4 Bar. 3:18-9; Apoc. Dan. 35. Cf. Liv. Pro. 2:11; L.A.B. 26:4; 2 Macc 2:4-8. Cf. Sayler, Promises, 65; Nir, Destruction, 66-77; Liv Ingeborg Lied, “The Other Lands of Israel: A Study of the Land Theme in 2 Baruch” (PhD Diss., University of Bergen, 2007), 60-1; 182-3; 188-9). 2 Baruch probably attests to differing, yet related, ideas about the realm of the dead (cf. 11:6-7; 21:23; 42:7-8). Cf. further Harrington, “Afterlife Expectations,” 27. Bogaert, Apocalypse de Baruch II, 92. Resurrection is commonly found as an indicator of the coming of the last days in apocalyptic literature. Cf. e.g., Ezek 37:12-14; Dan 12:2; 1 En. 51:1-2. It is evident that 2 Bar. 50:2-3 presupposes that some are still alive at the time of resurrection (Cf. 1 Cor 15:51; 1 Thess 4:15). It is not clear who these people are, however. Most probably, those who live at that time include both righteous and wicked people, although it is possible that only a group of righteous people is left (Cf. further 29:8; 36:1-37:1). Moreover, it is not clear whether the living ones are many or few. Probably, there are only a few left, since there remains only a remnant of the righteous (48.33), and the number of the wicked has been reduced in the preceding punishment process conducted by the Judge (48:39-43).

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Several passages of 2 Baruch suggest that the righteous – those who are wise and understanding – will have the knowledge necessary to comprehend that a change of time is taking place.47 These passages suggest that the knowledgeable will understand the event of resurrection in a manner unavailable to the ignorant. Moreover, 2 Baruch generally describes instruction as an urgent matter. On several occasions Baruch’s instruction to his followers is presented as a matter of life and death.48 We should of course also keep in mind that the passage in question, 50:1-4, is part of God’s revelation to Baruch of future events, it is not a description of these events as such (50:1). God gives Baruch foreknowledge of the way of the world, and this knowledge Baruch explicitly transmits to his followers (48:48-50).49 In this manner the passage itself describes the knowledge the righteous need to perceive the sign. Consequently, at the day of resurrection and showing of the dead, there will be a marked cognitive difference between those who received instruction and became knowledgeable in their lives, and those who “stopped their ears so that they did not hear” (51:4). Whereas the resurrection and the showing of the dead would be a grand event to all, only the knowledgeable would have the ability to perceive it as a sign. The righteous, “those who know,” will therefore know that when the dead are resurrected and shown to the living, God has intervened in history. Hence, in this sense the resurrection and the showing of the dead may serve as a sign, as Bogaert suggested, but only to the righteous who still live, signalling that their process of redemption has now finally begun.50 So, who recognizes whom in 50:4? If “those who know now” refers to “those who know” in 48.33, 50:4 describes the mutual recognition of “those who know.” This means that the act of recognition is a group internal event. Even though all the living will be shown that the dead live, the act of recognition described in 50:4 applies to the members of _____________ 47 48 49

50

Cf. 28:1; 30:2; 48:38. E.g., 45:1-46:3; 76:4-5. Cf. e.g., 2 Bar. 31:1-34:1; 44:1-45:2; 76:5-87:1. Compare in particular the use of nštwd‘ in 75:7-8. This passage implies that only those who have the right knowledge will rejoice, whereas the others will grieve. 2 Baruch implies that redemption is to be understood as a process, embracing several events (Cf. 50.1-51.16; 71:1-75:8). It is noteworthy in this context that both 57:1-2 and 82:2 describe the judgment as part of a redemptive process that has already started. In these passages judgment is a positive event, being a promise (82:2) and an object of belief (57:1-2), to the righteous. Note also that 2 Baruch mentions signs from God in an eschatological context in other passages as well, however without necessarily specifying the nature of the sign (Cf. 25:2-4; 72:2 and further 4 Ezra 5:1-13; Sib. Or. 3:796-808 for other signs of the end).

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the group of “those who know” only. Not only do the living ones who have knowledge recognize the knowledgeable dead, the dead who had knowledge before they died will also recognize the living, and the other dead, of their kind. Those who recognize each other are in other words those who had knowledge “now,” referring to the group of the righteous in the end time, who at the time of resurrection can be either living or dead.51 This interpretation of 50:1-4 highlights the need of the troubled remnant of end time for hope, reassurance, and revenge. As mentioned above, Baruch has entered the last days of his life, and his followers fear that he will abandon them and leave them to destruction.52 In his instruction, Baruch reassures the followers that they will live, assumedly in the heavenly world, as long as they receive instruction and live on earth according to the Law. The description of the mutual recognition of “those who know” in 50:4 foretells that the group will be gathered again after resurrection.53 At that moment the righteous will be able to identify each other and they will be acknowledged by the other members as members of the group. In this sense, 50:1-4 describes the introduction to their victory; their budding triumph. When the dead returns to life and they are shown to the living, it becomes evident to all that only the god of the righteous is able to produce real miracles. He has intervened in history and seen to that everyone witnesses his power. Moreover, this interpretation displays the importance of the cognitive gap between the knowledgeable and the ignorant.54 In this manner, the recognition motif in 50:4 serves to confirm the identity of the remnant group vis-à-vis the wicked in the end time.

_____________ 51

52 53

54

Thus, to some extent I will defend Bogaert’s suggestion that the passage can be understood as a “‘retrouvailles’ familiales.” There is however not enough information in the passage to confirm that the recognition concerns all generations of righteous people. Although this possibility should not be excluded, since “now” could be understood as a broader category including all those who had knowledge in the “now” before they died, it is more probable that is refers to the generations of the remnant group, the followers of Baruch, described for instance in 44:1 (Cf. further 5.5; 10:3; 31:1; 33:2-3; 77:1-6). The final gathering of all the righteous probably takes place only in the heavenly world (51.13). Cf. 33:1-3; 45:1-46:7; 76:1-77.10. Possibly also that they will be reunited with Baruch. 2 Baruch says both that Baruch will die (3:2; 78:5; 84:1) and that will be taken up by the will of God (i.e., rapture) to serve as a witness at the judgment (13:3; 46.7; 48:30; 76:2). Concept of Larsen, “Recognizing the Stranger,” 9.

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The Destiny of the Righteous: From Suppression to Witnessed Exaltation (51:1-6) The description of the final destinies of the righteous and the wicked continues in 51:1-6 after the short, but crucial, mention of God’s judgment in 50:4. According to 51:1, once the appointed day – the day of judgment – has passed on, both the righteous and the wicked will be transformed by God in accordance with the outcome of the judgment (49:3). Two transformative processes take place. Firstly, 51:1-6 describes the intensification of the characteristics of the appearances of the righteous and the wicked respectively. 51:2 says that the shape of those who act wickedly will be made even more evil, whereas 51:3 describes how the splendor and glory of the righteous will be glorified in transformations, their faces changing “in the light of their beauty.” In other words, while those who belong to the group that was evil already will now look even more evil, the splendour, glory and beauty of those belonging to the group of the righteous becomes even more intense and refined. Secondly, the wicked, who used to be exalted over (root rwm) the righteous in the corruptible world, find themselves as the dethroned witnesses to the triumph of the righteous. The transformation process that follows judgment does not only serve to intensify the appearances of the wicked and the righteous, it also ensures that the tables are turned. The righteous will excel, while the wicked groan over their destiny. How does this process of transformation serve cognition, and what is the function of the recognition motif in the context of 51:1-6? In the above discussion of 50:1-4, I suggested that there was a cognitive gap between the ignorant and the knowing, implying that the ignorant did not have the insight necessary to perceive the consequences of the events to their own situation. However, after God’s judgment and transformation of the righteous and the wicked, the cognitive gap between the groups is bridged. Whereas “the multitude of understanding and wisdom” was hidden from the sight of the wicked during end time (48:36), 51:1-6 describes how this multitude reappears for the eyes of the wicked.55 God’s transformation of the righteous makes them, and their proper position, visible to the wicked. The righteous take glorious shapes and prepare to inherit the undying world (51:3). The unambi_____________ 55

Note that the disappearance of the multitude of understanding and wisdom during end time is not necessarily a given fact, but a description of how the ignorant wicked perceive the situation.

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guous shape of the transformed righteous and the location to which they are destined make it plain to see, even for those who once were ignorant, that the final triumph belongs to the righteous.56 There are two functions to the recognition motif in this passage. Firstly, the wicked are punished a second time when they are forced to witness and acknowledge the triumph of their opponents.57 They recognize their superiors after judgment as the ones they used to dominate before judgment, and they are forced to acknowledge their own failure.58 It is not enough that the wicked are made aware of their transgressions and punished by the Judge in 48:40, it is just as crucial that they see their opponents excel (51:5-6). Secondly, the recognition motif ensures that the righteous do not only tower above the wicked in 51:1-6, they also experience a witnessed exaltation. In this manner the description in 51:1-6 is there to secure justice, and to finally settle the battle between the groups. Not only will the wicked be punished twice and the righteous excel, both groups will acknowledge that this is taking place. This interpretation implies that the change that occurs in 51:1-6 is just as much a cognitive change in the observer as it is a change of the pragmatic circumstances. The passage highlights that not only will these changes in favour of the righteous occur, it has been just as important to stress that the wicked will acknowledge it and the righteous rejoice in it. The use of the recognition motif assures that everyone, both righteous and wicked, share in a common understanding of the proper relationship between the groups.

The Object of Recognition: Splendor and Evil What is the object of recognition in 2 Bar. 50:1-51:6? As noted in the discussion above, the majority of interpreters have held that on the day of resurrection each individual person would be recognized as the person he or she once was (50:1-4). Does 50:1-51:6 suggest that recognition concerns the individual person as the one he or she was, or is it possible that collective judicial statuses, identifiable in the appearance of men, constitute the objects of recognition? First of all, it is crucial to note that 50:1-51:6 describes the events and transformations in the post-resurrection era in terms of visible _____________ 56 57 58

The motif of the turn from blindness to sight is a commonplace (Cf. Isa 29:18). Volz describes the phenomenon of double judgments in contemporaneous texts (Eschatologie, 273). Cf. 4 Ezra 7:37-44. Cf. Harrington, “Afterlife Expectations,” 30; 32.

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categories, and generally favours a language of seeing.59 In other words, the imagery that the passage applies concerns the relation between observers, those who at a given time can see, and the visible objects they observe and conceive of.60 In 50:3 the dead are shown (root h9w’) to the living, the wicked see (root h9z’) the righteous in 51:5, the wicked waste away in the amazement over the visions (h9zwn’) and the sight (h9zt’) as a part of their punishment (51:5-6). The transformations that affect men after judgment are also expressed in visible categories. God’s transformative acts are described as something visible to the observer. 50:2 describes the appearance (çwrt’) of the dead. 61 The Syriac word zyw, “splendor,” “shining,” “brightness,” is a light-category (51:3; 5),62 as is nwhr’, “light” (51:3). And according to 51:3, the shape of the faces of the righteous will be transformed. It changes into “the light of their beauty” (51:3).63 However, we should also note that several of the words in the passage may refer both to visible traits and to moral, or judicial status. Importantly, this is the case for çwrt’, “appearance.” çwrt’ can in some contexts mean “moral character.”64 Moreover, y’ywt’, “beauty,” may be translated “honorableness” (51:3).65 Likewise, ’yqr’, applied in 48:35, means both “glory” and “honor,” and špyrwt’, “(moral) beauty,” may also be translated “piety” (48:35).66 The word ’p’ in 51:3 can be translated “presence” as well as “face,” suggesting that a broader spectre of meaning may be involved when the word is used.67 Several of the cate_____________ 59 60 61

62 63

64 65 66 67

Cf. Volz, Eschatologie, 46. Note also the ability to hear (51:4) and the possibility that “glory,” also can be understood as something heard (48:49; 83:14). Cf. Smith, Thesaurus, 4027-8. The Syriac word çwrt’, “appearance,” can also be translated as “image,” “pattern” or “form,” and in some contexts “ornament,” “decoration,” as well as “statue” (Cf. Ex. 26:36; 27.16; 36:37; 38.18; 2 Sam 1:24; Sir 38.28; Rom 8.29 and further Smith, Thesaurus, 3386-7 for later usage in Syriac literature). Note that the German translators of 2 Baruch translate çwrt’ “Aussehen” (following Violet, Apokalypsen, 275). The translation of the word must of course be decided by the context in which it occurs, but the tendency in the use of the word indicates a focus on the surface level, the visible aspects and the form or shape of an object. Smith, Dictionary, 114; Smith, Thesaurus, 116-7. Cf. 2 Chr 5:14; Job 40:10; Ps 21:5. This tendency of the Syriac vocabulary of course corresponds to the choice of motifs in 50:1-51:6, i.e. the motifs of resurrection, showing and recognition. All favour visible appearances. Cf. Smith, Dictionary, 476. Smith, Dictionary, 184; Smith, Thesaurus, 1534. Smith, Thesaurus, 1533-4. Smith, Dictionary, 25; Smith, Thesaurus, 278. Some words, like for instance dmwt’, “shape,” are difficult to translate. The concept of “form,” “shape” can be conceived as a visible phenomenon, but the concept implied may also be a broader one. Proba-

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gories in the passage may describe visible objects as well as the judicial status of that object, and it is likely that both meanings could be alluded to. As some scholars have rightfully pointed out, the description of resurrection, the showing of the dead to the living, and recognition in 50:1-4 is intimately connected to God’s judgment.68 Indeed, the scene described in 50:1-51:6 is fruitfully understood as a judicial scene, both in the sense that it presents visible proof at the judgment (50:1-4), and that it attests to the fairness of the outcome of God’s verdict (51:1-6). From this point of view, what can be seen must be relevant to the judgment and to the universal justice that follow.69 What is there to be seen at the day of resurrection and after God’s judgment? To answer this question, a closer look at Baruch’s questions to God in 49:1-3 is essential: But yet again I will enquire from you, Mighty One, I will ask for mercy from him who made everything. In what shape will they live, those who live in your day? Or, how will their splendor remain, [the splendor] which will be after that time? Will they then take this appearance of today and put on these limbs of bondage which are now in evils, and in which evils are fulfilled? Or will you perhaps transform these things which are in the world, as also the world?

In this passage, Baruch asks God what shape (dmwt’) the living will take at the day of judgment. Baruch wonders whether their splendor (zyw) will remain, whether they will take the appearances (çwrt’) of today, or whether God will transform (root h9lp) everything. In the following I will read 50:1-51:6 as God’s answer to Baruch questions in 49:1-3 and focus on the information these passages together provides for the interpreter regarding the appearances of mankind after resurrection. God answers the first part of Baruch’s question concerning “the appearance of today” (49:3) in 50:2-3. At the day of judgment, both the living and the resurrected dead will appear unchanged in their appearance. The dead, who have not been changed by the earth, reappear “dressed” (root lbš)70 in their “limbs of bondage” (hdm’ d’swr’), suggest_____________ 68 69 70

bly, it should be read in a creation context as a creation category, as well as a category that denotes form as a visible object. E.g. Seim, ”Udødelig og kjønnsløs,” 93; Harrington, “Afterlife Expectations,” 29-30. Cf. b. Sanh. 93b, where the Messiah judges by smell. Alternatively: “clothe themselves in.” The clothing metaphor is commonly found in Syriac literature (Cf. Sebastian P. Brock, “Clothing Metaphors as a Means of Theological Expression in Syriac Tradition, ” in Typus, Symbol, Allegorie bei den östlischen Vätern und ihren Parallelen im Mittelalter (ed. Margot Schmidt; Eichstätter Beiträge 4; Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1982), 11-38.

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ing that they are shown to the living in an earthly body. God addresses the last part of Baruch’s question in 51:1-6. After judgment, God will transform both those who were found guilty and those who were found just. They will all appear in a transformed appearance. So, mankind will first put on the appearances of today, and afterwards God will transform everything. Will splendor remain after that day? This is Baruch’s second question to God in 49:2. God answers this question in 51:1-3. According to 51:3, the splendor, as well as the glory and the beauty of the righteous, will be glorified in the transformations. In other words, God affirms that splendor will indeed remain, and even enhanced in the process of transformation that follows the judgment. Consequently, God provides confirmative answers to all of Baruch questions: yes, their splendor will remain, yes, they will take this appearance of today and be dressed in “limbs of bondage,” and yes, they will be transformed. As indicated by these answers to Baruch’s question, 2 Baruch describes the shape of those who live as subject to a process of transformation.71 The first stage concerns the resurrection of the dead among the living (50:2-3). The second stage concerns the process that transforms the righteous and the wicked after judgment (51:1-6). And one trait remains and intensifies: splendor. So, what is the object of recognition in 2 Bar. 50:1-51:6? As pointed out above, Stemberger held that the act of recognition had to take place before the transformation process, since this process would blur the identity of the resurrected dead. The intact earthly traits of individual persons made recognition possible before these traits became subject to transformation. However, some tendencies in the passage may suggest otherwise. Firstly, neither the questions of Baruch in 49:2-3 nor the answers of God in 51:1-6 display a special concern for the body of the dead as a material, fleshly, entity.72 The earth gives back the dead (myt’), not bodies (50:2). Moreover, 49:3 applies the term “limbs of bondage” and not a more common Syriac term for the fleshly body, as for instance pgr’. This does not mean that the dead are not resurrected in an earthly body, indeed, I think they are. It shows, however, that the concern is for the dead as intact entities, dressed in earthly bodies attesting to the degree of evils accomplished by the bodily members while in the cor_____________ 71

72

Cf. e.g., Seim, “Udødelig og kjønnsløs,” 98. I focus on the part of the transformation that ends with the final punishment of the wicked in 51:6. The transformation of the righteous continues in 51:7-13. Bauckham, Fate of the Dead, 283.

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ruptible world (49:3).73 This is a description of the restoration of the dead as visible objects, as socially and judicially identifiable entities.74 Secondly, this passage of 2 Baruch does not describe the final destiny of individuals, but tells the story of the opposing groups of the wicked and the righteous. The relationship between the righteous – “those who know” – and the wicked – the ignorant – is an important issue in the entire episode (2 Bar. 47-51), and this issue structures the discussion also in 50:1-51:6. Although we may imagine that the dead are resurrected and judged one by one, it is their group belonging, their type, and collective judicial status, not their individuality, which is the focus of the passage.75 In this sense, the division between the righteous and the wicked in 2 Bar. 50:1-51:6 resembles the division between sheep and goats in Matt 25:31-46.76 Thirdly, the transformation process does not change a recognizable identity into a blurred identity. In contrast, ambiguous appearances turn unambiguous and true, and hidden traits become revealed. During the abnormal order of the end time, the wicked were visibly elevated (51:1) while the righteous were lowly, hidden and displaced (51:5). In this period the true judicial statuses of the groups conflicted with their apparent social standing (48:35). To the wicked majority who could not see their opponents as they really were, the splendor of the righteous was hidden by their inferior appearance (48:36). As suggested earlier, the transformation of the wicked and the righteous in _____________ 73

74 75

76

Cf. in particular 2 Bar. 83:1-3: “For the Most High will certainly hasten his times, and he will make his seasons come. And he will surely judge those who are in his world, and he will inquire into everything openly (root šr’): into all their works which were sins (root h9t’). And he will certainly examine the hidden (root ks’) thoughts and all that is laid down in the inner chambers (twwn’) of all the members (hdm’) of man. And he will uncover (root gl’) them to everyone coming out (root npq), with blame.” Cf. further Rom 6:13. Possibly, dh9yw myt’ (50:3) could be rendered “that the dead have lived.” Violet suggested the following reading in his German translation: “Denn es kommt dann darauf an, die Leben, zu zeigen, daß die Toten (schon einmal) gelebt haben und daß die gekommen sind, welche dahingegangen waren” (Apokalypsen, 275). If this is correct, “lived life” may be interpreted as a visible quality of the dead. Cf. in particular the position of Maud Gleason, Making Men: Sophists and Selfpresentation in Ancient Rome (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). Cf. Judg 13 where Menoah and his wife do not recognize the man that comes to them as the angel he is, the people of Sodom that do not understand that the men at Lot’s house are angels (Gen 19). Cf. also the recognition of Samuel due to his robe, the linen ephod he wore in the temple (1 Sam 2:18), and the non-recognition of Saul due to his loss of power (L.A.B. 64). The office, position or statuses of Samuel and Saul are the objects of recognition in these passages. Note how Joseph is unable to recognize Aseneth in Jos. Asen. 19 because her status, and consequently her appearance, has changed due to her conversion. Cf. also 4 Ezra 7:37.

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51:1-6 implies an intensification of their basic characteristics of evil and splendor. However, it also implies a correction of the relationship between true appearance and true social status. The appearance of the righteous is no longer paradoxically splendorous (real) and lowly (delusive). After judgment, their magnificence corresponds to their glorious position. Likewise, the wicked are no longer inconsistently elevated (delusive) and evil (real). They become evil and suppressed. A fourth aspect also suggests a different reading of the passage. As pointed out above, Baruch is concerned with the continuity of splendor. He asks whether splendor will remain (root qw’) (49:2).77 God’s answer suggested that splendor would remain at resurrection and even be intensified by the transformations. This implies that splendor already characterizes the righteous in life,78 that splendor will remain their central characteristic after resurrection and that splendor will even become more intense after judgment. What about the wicked? In 51:2 we read: “For the shape of those who now act wickedly will be made more evil than it is (byš mn m’ d’ytyh), (…).” Just like splendor prevails in the righteous (51:3), evil endures and intensify in the wicked. The transformation process in this manner leaves no doubt about the real identities and positions of the righteous and the wicked. So, on earth, all men, wicked and righteous, appear in “limbs of bondage.” This is common to all, and is the necessary way of being in the corruptible world. At the day of God’s intervention, the living and the resurrected dead will appear in earthly bodies, and their “limbs of bondage” will attest to their varying degrees of involvement with corruptibility.79 Moreover, their main characteristics, splendor or evil, will display their group belonging and judicial status. In this sense, the dead, as well as the living, appear as entities relevant to judgment. Consequently, the object of recognition in this passage of 2 Baruch is the judicial status of man as this status at a given time is visible to the observer in the appearances of righteous and wicked men. To “those who know,” the righteous who recognize each other in 50:4, splendor is visible in the appearance of the members of the group and makes recognition possible. Due to their knowledge, “those who know” can see _____________ 77 78

79

Note that the choice between wickedness and righteousness must be made before death (51:3-4). In a sense, it is the outcome of the choice that is visible. Cf. 1 Cor 15:40; Hist. Rech. 4:1-2; 5:4; 7:10; 12:3; Jos. Asen. 6:1-5; 14:9; 19. Cf. W.D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: Some Rabbinic Elements in Pauline Theology (Philadelphia, Pa.: Fortress Press, 1980), 319 for further examples. Cf. also Matthias Augustin, Der schöne Mensch im Alten Testament und im hellenistischen Judentum (BEAT(AJ) 3; Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Peter Lang, 1983), 213-214. Although everyone sins and needs absolution, God will save the righteous (48:12-24; 83:1-3; 85:15).

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behind the association of bodily members with the corruptible world, and to the hidden glory, beauty, and splendor at the day of resurrection. The ignorant, on the other hand, do not recognize real evil and real splendor until their own appearances turn increasingly horrible, and the character of their opponents become unambiguously magnificent after God has transformed everything.

Concluding Remarks: Recognizing the Righteous Remnant The above interpretation of the object of recognition and the functions of the recognition motif in 2 Baruch suggests that the use of the motif can fruitfully be understood within the context of resurrection, judgment and transformation in 2 Bar. 50:1-51.6, as well as with reference to the general discourse of justice for the righteous in 2 Bar. 47-52. This description of the destiny of the righteous and the wicked, serves to highlight the final rehabilitation of the remnant of end time and ensures its everlasting triumph. The use of the recognition motif highlights the unjust and misleading character of the present, corruptible world and underscores that once, when God has delivered his verdict, the unfairness of the present world will be universally acknowledged. Since the appearances of men give away their judicial status, there will be no doubt that justice has been done at God’s judgment. After the judgment, it will be obvious to all that the wicked deserve to go under together with the corruptible world. In fact, they are intrinsically part of that world. Likewise, it will be beyond doubt that the splendorous, beautiful, and glorious members of the group of the righteous are foreign to the corruptible world. “Those who know” are similar to, possibly of the same type as, the angels of the heavenly world they are about to enter (51:5-13).80 Their appearance undeniably proves that they belong to the heavenly world of God.

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John J. Collins has made me aware of the descriptions of the angels as those who have knowledge in The Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (4Q403 24 and 31). Possibly, the term “those who know” in 2 Bar. 50:4 indicates the angelic type of the righteous. This deserves closer scrutiny.

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Indices Index of References

Index of References Bible Old Testament Genesis 1 1:26

2:23 3:21 6:1-6 19 27:23 28:10-15 31:32 32 37:32-33 38:26 39:20 42 42:7-8

31 156, 258, 261, 263 103, 260 92, 117, 125, 222 92 295 21 220, 333 314 277 314 281 314 312, 314 283 312 314

Exodus 26:36 27:16 36:37 38:18

330 330 330 330

Deuteronomy 33:2

180

2 2:7

33:5 33:9

297 314

Judges 6:11-24 13

312 312, 333

1 Samuel 2:18 4:9 28

333 240 312

2 Samuel 1:24

330

1 Kings 17:8-16 17:17-24 18:46

42 42 42

2 Kings 2 2:9 2:11

43 42 46

2 Chronicles 5:14

330

Nehemiah 10:29 15:12

297 297

368 Job 17:16 40:10 Psalms 8:5 15:8-10 15:10 19.8 21 21:5 68:19 110 110:1 Proverbs 19:22

Indices

New Testament 292 330

294 19 19 264 294 330 26 26 26, 41 286

Isaiah 26:19 29:18 41:14 53:2

308 329 308 77, 312

Ezekiel 1:5-25 37:12-14 40–48

217 325 299

Daniel 3:92 7:13-14 10:21 12 12:2 12:3

34 26 52 291, 304 294, 325 176

Zechariah 14:5

180

Matthew 3:7 3:9 5:5 7:19 9:11 9:13-15 13:24-43 13:43 16:27 17:2 18:1-6 23:32 25:31-46 26:41 28:9-10 28:16-20

210 220 153 228 210 69 176 176 180 217, 218 69 210 333 153 47 24, 46, 47

Mark 2:5 5:21-24 5:35-43 6:14 6:7-13 6:30 6:30-44 8:1-10 8:27 8:29 8:38 9:2 9:9 9:13 9:41 10:45 12:25 12:35 13:21 14:3-9

45 42 42 42 49 49 42 42 42 48 35 217 43 42 48 246 38, 301 41, 49 49 20

369

Index of References

14:28 14:61-62 15 15:32 15.39 16:6 16:7 16:8 Luke 11:36 12:8-9 13:32 14:14 20 20:27-39 21:19 22:29 22:69 23:49 23:53 24

47 41 49 49 57 41 47 75

24:13-35 24:16 24:30 24:36-43 24:39-41 24:41-43 24:44 24:50-51

191 35 210 288 38 38 239 286 34 20 20 19, 20, 26, 47, 312 47 162 21 20 22 21 21 24

John 1:23 2:34 2:41-52 6:40 6:53 7:34 7:36-50 8:56 8:57

178 288 68 155 163 210, 228 20 77 77

9:23-27 9:26 9:28-36 9:29 9:51 11:43 12:27 14:2 15:15 17:15 17:24 20:11-18 20:25-29 20:26-29 21:9-13 21:9-14 21:12-14

35 35 35 34, 217 37 200 283 277 276, 277 281 281 47, 312 22 47 47 47 21

Acts 1 1:2-8 1:9 1:9-11 2:24-31 2:31 2:32-36 2:33 6–7 6:15 7:55 7:55-59 9:3-9 13:34-37 13:36 22:6 22:6-9 22:6-11 22:8 23:6-8 24:5-6 26:12-18 26:19

22, 25, 47 27 26 24 19, 54 19 26 24, 28 35 33, 34 35 34 33, 47 54 19 120 120 33, 47 33 21 210 33, 47 33

370 Romans 1:11 1:24 6 6:1-11 6:4 6:6 6:12 6:13 6:16 7:4 7:5 7:7-25 7:18 7:22 7:22-23 7:24 7:25 8 8:1-4 8:1-13 8:3 8:3-5 8:8 8:8-9 8:9 8:9-10 8:9-11 8:9-13 8:10 8:11 8:11-13 8:12-13 8:13 8:15-17 8:17 8:19-22 8:23 8:29 8:38 12:1

Indices

275 155 202, 203 142, 201 159 142, 144, 155 155 252, 333 251 155 155 140 155 81 12, 192 155 155 146 141 123, 140 142 155 154 157 155 146 142 10, 140, 141 141-45 134, 141-43, 146 143 155 143, 154, 155 276 276, 286 127 144 330 278, 281 287

12:2 13:14 1 Corinthians 1:18 1:20 1:20-23 1:23 1:26 2:16-3:3 3:16 4 4:5 5:5 5:16 6 6:9-11 6:13 6:15 7:29 8 10:16 10:16-17 11:3-12 11:19 11:24-27 12:12-27 14 14:40 14:41 15

15:5-9 15:12 15:13-21

130 155

170 117 118 119 155 156 153 102 191 155 277 100 154 155 153 125 100, 114 165 155 32 159 155 155 102 32, 124 32 7, 9, 10, 16, 17, 29-31, 84, 86, 88-90, 92, 94, 95, 100-103, 105, 106, 109, 114, 122-24, 139, 146, 148, 149, 155, 287, 320 47 89, 90, 113 154

Index of References

15:16-19 15:18 15:20 15:20-28 15:22 15:23-28 15:26 15:28 15:32 15:35

15:35-49 15:35-57 15:36 15:36-37 15:36-44 15:37 15:38 15:38-41 15:39 15:40 15:40-41 15:41 15:42-43 15:44

15:44-46 15:45 15:45-49 15:47 15:47-49 15:49 15:50

15:50-55 15:51

112 90 90 124, 125, 127 125 29 116 127 115, 154 30, 90, 113, 120, 157, 187, 204 124-26, 137 30, 170 115 90 51, 124, 125 116 118, 119 30, 31 90, 155 204, 334 91 125 92 117, 118, 124, 164, 169, 191, 205 117, 125 117, 156 157 125 125 93, 202 11, 31, 90, 115, 125, 126, 128, 148, 153, 154, 158, 161, 162, 165, 166, 204 124-26 90, 93, 94, 109, 125, 325

15:51-52 15:51-53 15:52 15:52-53 15:53 15:53-54 15:54 2 Corinthians 1:17 1:22 2:14-4:18 2:14-5:10 2:15 3–4 3:16 3:17 3:18 4 4:6 4:7 4:7-15 4:7-5:10 4:8-9 4:10 4:10-11 4:13 4:14 4:16 4:16-5:4 4:17 4:17-5:10 4:18 5:1-2 5:1-4 5:1-10

371 90, 112, 120, 126, 159 119 10, 109, 125 112 109, 149, 153, 154, 160 118, 125, 126, 128, 191 12

155 138 123, 130 10 170 137, 138, 146 137 134 5, 137, 138, 218 138, 140 137, 139 139 140 139 139 138, 154, 155 139 139 139, 159 138, 143, 192 12, 192 140 140 127 192 165 88, 103, 123, 130, 139

372 5:4

Indices

12:5 12:6 12:7 12:7-10 12:9 12:11

140, 160, 191, 293 154 129, 138, 139 112 252 287 155 96-98 96 18, 84, 86, 89, 93-96, 98, 99, 101-105 96, 98, 102 279 9, 95 99-104 88, 99, 106 96-98, 100, 279 278 103 99, 100 100, 103, 104, 283 96, 102 96, 105 98, 103 87 103, 153 97

Galatians 1:15-16 2:20 3:2 3:27 3:29 4:7 5:19-21 5:24 5:24-25

47 103, 251 130 202 276 276 154 146 145

5:4-5 5:5 5:17 6:15 6:16 7:15 10–13 11–12 12

12:1 12:1-4 12:1-7 12:2 12:2-3 12:2-4 12:2-5 12:2-7 12:3 12:4

6:7 6:17

155 136

Ephesians 2:2 2:6 2:14 3 3:8 3:14-16 3:16 4:22-24 5:30 6:10 6:12 6:13

279 202 155 282 279 277 81 113 165 279 265 279

Philippians 1:21 1:22-23 1:25 3 3:2 3:2-21 3:4-12 3:6 3:7-8 3:7-10 3:8 3:8-9 3:8-10 3:8-12 3:9 3:10

3:11 3:12 3:12-14 3:12-17 3:13-14

196 88, 103 132 130, 136, 146 135 123, 130 130, 131 135 131-33, 136 138 131, 133, 134 133 133, 138 136 133, 135 133-36, 138, 140, 145, 146, 154 131-33, 136 131-34, 138, 144 133 131 131

373

Index of References

3:14 3:15-16 3:17 3:20-21 3:21 4:6 5:1 8:1-13

133, 135 131 131 132 10, 132, 13537, 154 135 135 135

Colossians 1:22 2:12 2:20 3:9-10

155, 166 159 200 113

1 Thessalonians 2:8 3:13 4:15

275 180 325

1 Timothy 1:4 3:16 4:7-8 6:16

150 155 200 150

2 Timothy 1:3-5 2:17-18 3:5

275 147 275

Titus 1:2 1:12

228 210

Hebrews 4:14 5:14 12:23

279 275 21

1 Peter

2:4 2:5 2:16 2:18-20 3:19 3:20 5:4

252 252 251 239 21 21 294

Revelation 2:10 3:5 3:11

294 293 294

Apocrypha Tobit 5:4-5

312

Wisdom of Solomon 4:7-9 59 5:15-16 294 Sirach 38:28 48:9

330 36

2 Maccabees 2:4-8 7 7:1-42 7:21

325 292 241 241

Pseudepigrapha 1 Enoch 1:9 15 49.4 51:1-2

180 301 176 325

374

Indices

62:15-16 104.2 104:2-6

294 176 291

2 Baruch 3–86 3:2 5:5 6:8-10 10:3 11:6-7 12:1-13:2 13:11-14:3 13:3 14–15 21:12-25 21:23 21:23-25 25:2-4 28:1 29:8 30:1-5 30:2 31:1 31:1-34:1 33:1-3 33:2-3 35–40 36:1-11 36:1-37:1 36:10-11 36:11 39:7-40:4 42:7-8 42:8 43–44 44:1 44:1-15 44:1-45:2 44:9-15 45:1-46:3 45:1-46:7

316 327 327 325 327 325 316 316 327 324 324 325 316 326 326 325 316, 324 326 327 326 327 327 322 317 325 316 317, 324 317 325 324, 325 316 327 324 326 316 326 327

46:7 47–51 47–52 47:1-2 48 48:2-24 48:12-24 48:23 48:30 48:31 48:31-36 48:31-51:16 48:33 48:34 48:35 48:35-36 48:36 48:37-38 48:37-41 48:37-51:6 48:38 48:38-43 48:39 48:40 48:41 48:42-47 48:42-49:3 48:46 48:48-50 48:48-51:6 48:49 49–51 49:1-3 49:2 49:2-3 49:3 50:1 50:1-3 50:1-4 50:1-5

327 333 15, 311, 31517, 321, 335 317 328 317 334 322 327 322 317, 321-25 317 324-26 323 330, 333 322 322, 328, 333 317 317 317, 321 326 317 317 329 317 317 317 325 326 318 330 294 331 332, 334 332 328, 331-33 318, 326 320 317-22, 32429, 331 320

375

Index of References

50:1-51:3 50:1-51:6

50:1-51:16 50:2 50:2-3 50:3 50:4

51:1 51:1-3 51:1-6

51:2 51:3 51:4 51:5 51:5-6 51:5-13 51:6 51:7-13 51:7-16 51:10 51:11 51:13 51:13-16 51:17-52:7 55:1 57:1-2 57:2 70:9-72:6 71:1-75:8

29 311-15, 318, 320-25, 329, 331-33, 335 326 314, 318, 324, 330, 332 324, 325, 331, 332 314, 319, 322, 330, 333 314, 315, 320, 321, 324-28, 334, 335 315, 318, 328, 333 323, 332 314, 321, 325, 328, 331, 332, 334 315, 328, 334 294, 314, 322, 328, 330, 332, 334 322, 326, 330 29, 315, 330, 333 329, 330 335 318, 332 332 15, 321 29 29 29, 318, 321, 327 318 318 317 326 324 317 326

72–75 72:1-73:2 72:2 75:1-8 75:7-8 76:1-77:10 76:2 76:4-5 76:5-87:1 77:1-6 78:5 78:18 82:1-9 82:2 83–85 83:1-3 83:2-3 83:7 83:14 84:1 85:10-15 85:15

317 316 326 316 322, 324, 326 327 327 326 326 327 327 317 323 326 316 333, 334 176 324 330 324, 327 324 334

2 Enoch 22:8 46.4

293 176

3 Baruch 4:16

295

4 Baruch 3:18-19

325

4 Ezra 5:1-13 7:32 7:37 7:37-44 13:25-38

326 325 333 329 317

4 Maccabees 8:1-17:6

241

376

Indices

14:11-16:25 17:2-18

242 239

Apocalypse of Abraham 13:14 293 History of the Rechabites 4:1-2 334 5:4 334 7:10 334 12:3 334 Joseph and Asenath 6:1-5 14:9 18–19 19

334 334 312 333, 334

Jubilees 23:31

292

Lives of the Prophets 2:11

325

Sibylline Oracles 3:796-808

326

Testament of Job 18.4 27.2-5

239 239

Qumran 1QH 4:14-15 5:29 11 12:22-23 27:25

295 308 298 294 294

1QHa 5 7:7 10–17 11:19-21 11:23-25 12:5 12:24-25 13:4 14:34 19 19:3-14 19:12 20:4-11 25:35-26:10

303 304 303 296, 303 304 308 304 309 308 307, 308 304 308 303 305

1QS 2:22-23 3:9-10 3:15 4 4:6-8 8:5-6 9:3-5 9:3-6 11:2-7 11:3 11:7-8 11:8

295 302 302 295, 296 293 298 298 298 302 294 296 297

1QSa 2:3-9

301

4Q174 1:6

298

4Q400 1

299

4Q403 24 31

335 335

377

Index of References

4Q427 7

305

4Q431

305

4Q471b

305

4Q491

306

4Q491c

305

4Q504 8:4-6

295

4QpPsa 3:1-2 CD 3:20 4:18 7:5-6 14:13

295 320

Qohelet Midrash 1:4

320

Early Christian and Jewish Writings Ascension of Isaiah VIII.21

278

Acts of Philip 3.5-9 8 12 14:4 14:5 MS V 8.4 [95] MS V 15.15-16

212, 213 213 213 65 65 235 239

Acts of Andrew 44.9-16

257

Acts of John 60–61 88–89

213 211

295

295 297 295, 301 297

Talmud b. Sanh. 90b 91ab 91b 93b

Gen R. 20:12 95

320 161 320 331

Midrash Deut. R. 11:3

295, 296

Eccl. R. 1:4.2

320

Acts of Paul and Thecla 3 34 40 235 Acts of Thomas 30–38 42–50 62–81 114

209 210 210 235

378

Indices

Acts of Andrew and Matthias 5 212 17 212 18 212 33 212 Acts of Peter 4 9–12 14 20 20–21 21 Acts of Thomas 31–33 39–41 68–81

28 A 29 A 30 A 32 A

208 208 208 209

Apocryphon of Adam 66.14-25 156 210 213 210, 211 64 63, 212 64

213 213 213

Apocalypse of Daniel 35 325 Apocalypse of Paul 18:3-22

69

Apocalypse of Peter NHC VII.3 7–10 7.1-2 E 8.1-4 E 8.5-10 E 9.1-2 E 9.3 E 9.4 E 9.5-7 E 10.2-4 E 11.1-5 E 11.8-9 E 12.1-3 E 22 A 26 A 27 A

233 161 208 208 208 208 208 208 208 209 209 209 209 208 208 208

Apocryphon of John NHC II 14 19.4-33 NHC II.23.26-33

171 156 212

Athenagoras Resurrection 18

149

Clement Exhortation to the Greeks X.84 70 Paedagogus I.5 70 I.6 70 Protreptikos 1.3.1 261 1.4.3 261 1.4.5 261 1.8.4 261, 268 4.59.2 260 10.91.1 264 10.92.2 268 10.95.3 261 10.97.2 261 10.103.3 268 11.113.2 264 11.114.1 264 11.117.4 265 12.118.1-4 263 12.118.5-120.1 263 12.120.4-5 264 12.122.4 263, 264

Index of References

Stromateis 2.9.2 267 2.110.1 265 2.111.3-4 266 2.112.1-2 266 2.113.2 266 2.114.3-6 267 2.116.3-117.1 267 6.42.2 264 Treatise on Resurrection 45.24 149 Didymus the Blind Fr. in Gen.63

233

Ep. apost. 36

176

Hypostasis of the Archons 88.11-17 156 Letters of Ammonas G I.4 G. I.1 G II.1-3 G II.2 G II.3 G III.1 G IV G IV.4 G IV.5 G IV.6 G IV.9 GV G VI.2 G VI.3 G VII.2 G VII.3 G VII.5-6 G VIII.2 I I.1

283 280 284 279, 281, 284 284 280-83 278, 280 280, 285 280 280 281, 283, 285 285 281, 284 284 285 282 285 271 286 277, 286

I.2 I.3 II.1-3 II.2 II.2-3 III III.2 III.3 III.3-4 III.4 IV.1 IX.1 IX.2 IX.3-4 IX.4 IX.4-5 IX.5 V V.1 V.2 V.3 VI.1 VI.2 VI.3 VII.1 VII.1-2 VII.1-3 VII.2 VIII.1 VIII.2 X.1 X.1-2 X.2 X.3 X.4 XI.3 XII.1 XII.3 XII.4 XIII

379 283, 286 283 284 279, 281, 284 280 286 281, 284 284, 286 280 282, 284 275-77, 280-83 280 280 275 280, 285 280 280 283 275 275 284 277, 280, 282, 283 275, 282 286 276, 277, 281 278 285 277, 280 283 280, 281, 283, 285 278 285 280, 285 280, 284 287 280, 284 280 276 282, 283 286

380

Indices

XIII.1-5 XIII.2 XIII.3 XIII.4 XIII.5 XIII.5-6 XIII.6-11 XIII.8 XIII.10

285 285 282 283 280, 283 285 283 278, 284, 287 286

Letters of Antony I.22 I.24 I.29 I.45 I.71 I.71 II.7-8 II.22-23 II.26-30 III.3 III.3-5 III.24-25 III.35 IV.2-3 IV.4-12 IV.12-13 IV.13 V.1-2 V.8 V.27-28 VI.16 VI.75-76 VI.91 VI.99 VI.115 VII.l-s VII.30 VII.34 VII.45

277 286 286 280 276 288 277 288 277 277 276 288 280 276 277 277 280 276 280 288 280 278 288 280 280 285 288 288 277

Epiphanius Pan. 2.9.3 31.7.6-7 64.70 64.70.5-17

157 169 161 161

Epistle to Barnabas 16.7

252

Eusebius Hist. Eccl. 5.1.3-5.1.63 5.1.17 5.1.19 5.1.36 5.1.37 5.1.41 5.1.53 5.1.55 5.2.4

240 238, 240 238, 240 238 238 246 238 241 239

Evagrius Foundations 1 Praktikos 32 Vices 3

286 286 286

Excerpts from Theodotus 2–3 172, 175 3 176 7.5 186 21 179, 185 21–22 181 31 183 32.1 178 35–36 180, 181 61.5-8 186 64 180 67.1–73.3 250

381

Index of References

67.3 68 73.1 77.2 77.3 79–80 79 80.1-2 83 104 107

186 177, 179, 257 251 251 250, 251 175, 177 257 186 268 175 175

Gospel of Judas 33:6-7 33:18-23 34:2-35:5 36:11-19 40:25-26 55:15-20

68 67 69 68 68 68

Gospel of Philip 6 22 48 53.23-35 56.15-19 56.26–57.8 56.34–57.1 57.2 57.9-22 57.10 57.12 57.13 58.15-17 64.22-27 66.16-20 67.9-27 68 73.1-4

177 173 173 151 166 163 166 166 164 166 166 166 163 167 166 167 181 166

Gospel of the Savior 105.11-14

77

107:5-60 107.39-48 107.57-60 108.12-16 108.45-49 108.59-64 109.26-33

73 76 59 76 76 76 76

Gospel of Thomas 4 29 105 114

69 173 178 235, 268

Gregory of Nazianzus Oration 26.10-11 81 Gregory of Nyssa Vita Macrinae 1

236

Heracleon frag 15 frag 5

186 178

Hermas Sim. 4.2

176

Ignatius Pol. 3:1

238, 239

Infancy Gospel of Thomas 8:1 68 Irenaeus Adversus Haereses 1.1 1.1-8 1.2

149 171 150

382 1.2.5-6 1.2.6 1.4.1 1.4.5 1.5.6 1.6.1 1.6.1-2 1.6.2 1.7.1 1.7.5 1.8.1 1.9.4 1.13.6 1.13.9 1.21.1 1.21.3 1.24.6 1.30.5 1.30.13 2.19.4 3.8.2 3.15.1 3.16.6-8 3.25.7 4.18.5 5 V.I.1 5.2.2 5.2.2-3 5.2.3 5.3 5.3.3 5.6 5.6.1 5.6.2 5.9 5.9.1 5.9.1-3 5.9.4 5.9-14 5.10

Indices

183 180 182 180 174, 175, 177 177, 186 156 173 180, 185, 186 156, 177, 179, 186 150 150, 158 180 180 180 180 176 162 162 177 254 150 152 167 165 150 78 149 165 153 153 153 156 156 153 156 148, 158, 162 153 153, 162 148, 152 154

5.10.1 5.10.2 5.11 5.11.1 5.12 5.12.2 5.12.3 5.13.2 5.13.3 5.13.4 5.13.5 5.14.1 5.14.3 5.14.4 5.26.2 5.28.2 5.31.1 5.31.2 5.33-36 5.35.2 6.29.36 22.4 22.5 22.6

162 149, 157 154 154 156 156 154 158 154 154 154, 162 154 149, 155, 166 166 167 149 149, 157 155 157 149 171 78 78 77

John Chrysostom Life of Olympias 3

236

Jos.Ant. 4.8.48 9.2.2

36 36

Justin Martyr 1 Apol 14.1 26.1-4 56.1-5 58.2-3 2 Apol 5 6

249 252 252 252 249 255

383

Index of References

Dial. 80.5

147

Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum 23:13 320 26:4 325 62:9 312, 320 64 312, 333 69:2 320 Martyrdom of Crispina 3 246 Martyrdom of Pionius 20 238 Martyrdom of Polycarp 12:1 34 Martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas 7 246 10.7-13 238 61 V i 19-21 240 72 R i 30-31 240 72 R i 4-6 240 74V ii 29-31 243 84 R ii 244 Martyrs of Lyons and Vienne 28 253 On the Origin of the World 114.36–116.8 156 Origen Contra Celsum II.64 IV.15 VI.77 VII.32

74 72 72 194

Exhortation XIII In Joh. 6.111 Princ II.10.3 Philip of Side Carnis resurrectio 42

279 178 191

147

Second Treatise of Great Seth VII.2 65.24-31 233 Secret Revelation of John 3.9-16 65 16.1–17.63 260 23.4 253 23.18-31 253 26.1-31 262 Tatian Oration to Greeks 13 15 18

252 258 258

Teachings of Silvanus NHC VII.4 233 93.9-15 233 131.5-8 233 Tertullian de Anima 56 Apol. 21 Carn. Chr. 1 On the Resurrection 2.2 2.12

63 25 162 157, 164 147, 148

384 3.5 3.6 4.1 8 10 15 19.6 20–21 21.2 21.3 22 22.11 23–25 24.7 25.6 40.1 41 42.1 42.6-9 42.12-13 46 48 48–50 50.5 57-61 57–63 63.8 On the Soul 56

Indices

167 158 158 159 167 159 151, 164 158 159 159 158 167 159 167 159 159 159 160 161 165 157 158 148, 157 165 61 161 159 61

Thunder, Perfect Mind 17.19-32 79 Treatise on Resurrection NHC I,4 147 40.27-28 201 44 186 44.6 200 44.8-9 188 45.14-15 191 45.19-22 191 45.24-28 202

45.27 45.30-31 45.36 45.39–46.2 45.40 45.48-46.2 46.7-8 46.21-24 47.1-8 47.2-3 47.3 47.4-5 47.5-8 47.8 47.17-22 47.21-22 47.22 47.24 47.31-36 47.34-35 47.36-37 47.38–48.6 47.38–48.1 47.38 48.3-4 48.4 48.10-11 48.10-13 48.14 48.16 48.31 48.38–49.6 49.6-7 49.7 49.11-12 49.11-13 49.13-16 49.16 49.34-37 49:16-34 50.17-18

197 202 197 190-92 200 198 189 192 189 188 200 199 191 197 194 197 197 197 199 189, 190 199 190 189 190 188 200 200 188 190 200 200 191 193 200 189 201 200 200 199 200 200

385

Index of References

Tripartite Tractate 87 104 105 107 118 118-19 124-25 127 128 132

180 174, 175 175, 178 174, 175 176, 177 170, 175 184 184 180 184

Val. Exp. 37

177

Vita Antonii 65–66 33.18-21

279 59

Classical Apeleius Metamorphoses III.24

222

Appian Appian Roman History, The Civil Wars 2.106 44 Aristotle De Generatione I.4, 319b10-18 Gen.anim. 737a1-9 766b27-34 Nichomachean Ethics 1117b28

126 61 61 118

Athanasius Inc. 31.4

191

Cassius Dio 56.31.2-43.1

55

Cicero De divinatione II.xiii Letters to Atticus 12.45.2 Atticus 13.28.3 Atticus 13.44.1 de Republica 2.20

69 44 44 44 48

Dio Cassius Roman History 44.4.4 44.6.4

44 44

Diodorus Siculus 4.38.5

53

Diog. Laert. 8.29

179

Diogn. 6.1-4

176

Dionysius Ant.Rom. 2.56.2-7 2.56.2 2.56.3 2.56.6 2.63.3-4 2.63.4

49 49 49 49 50 49

386 Epictetus Discourses 2.18.14 Galen Ad Gaurum 35.3-5 Adv. Lycum 7.3 The Mixtures I.2.522-23 I.2.577-598 de plac. Hipp. et Plat. 6.6.32 8.4.5 On Marasmus 61

Indices

260

179 179 61 61 179 179

Herodian Severus 4:1-2

53

Hesiod Works and Days 276-278

31

Homer Iliad 5.128 Livy 1.16.1 1.16.1-8 1.16.3 1.16.5-7 Ovid Metamorphoses I.1 I.76-88 I.381-415 I.411

264

45, 46 45 46 46

217 222 222 222

VI.139-45 14.805-828 14.810-811 15.745-870 15.746-751 15.760-761 15.780-842 15.781-782 15.799-800 15.803-808 15.808-819 15.816-28 15.819-839 15.840-842 15.843-850 15.843-846

222 47 48 51 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 48 52 52 53 54

Parmenides 28 B 1-2 28 B 2 28 B 3 28 B 6 28 B 7 28 B 8.16

110 110 110 110 110 110

Philo On Creation 69 Vit. Mos. 2.288 Quaest. in Exod. 1.8 Spec. Leg. 3.172 Virt. 21 Plato Cratylus 432c Parmenides 156 d-e

261 127 233 243 236

83 111

387

Index of References

Republic 508 b-e 509b Symposium 210 210a 210d 211e 213c Plutarch Lives, Numa 22.2

119 119 121 121 121 121 122

54

22.4-5 Lives, Romulus 27.5 27.5-8 28.1-3 28.2 28.6-7 Suetonius Lives of the Caesars 76.1 Divus Augustus 2.100

54 50 51 50 51 51

44 55, 56

388

Indices

Index of Modern Authors Index of Modern Authors

Aalen, S. 337 Adamik, T. 213, 337 Alexander, P. 299, 300, 306, 337 Alsup, J. E. 27, 33, 34, 46, 48, 337 Amador, J. D. H. 96, 337 Amsler, F. 339 Anderson, G. A. 295, 337 Antûnî, A. M. 337 Arai, S. 337 Arnold, R. C. D. 303, 306, 337 Arras, V. 275, 337 Asad, T. 337 Ashbrook Harvey, S. 232, 235 Asher, J. R. 29-32, 113, 118, 120, 337 Atran, S. 214-15, 337, 357 Attridge, H. A. 187-88, 358 Augustin, M. 334, 338 Aune, D. E. 46, 209, 338, 343 Avemarie, F. 23, 26, 308, 344, 354, 366 Avery-Peck, A. J. 291, 342 Badiou, A. 120-21, 338 Bakhtin, M. 207, 338-39, 362 Bakke, O. M. 63, 69, 338 Barc, B. 188, 353 Barclay, J. M. G. 254, 345 Barnard, L. W. 249, 338 Barns, J. W. B. 232, 240, 252, 359 Barresi, J. 84-89, 355 Barrett, J. L. 89, 214-16, 338 Barth, K. 88, 89, 338 Bauckham, R. 319-20, 332, 338 Beard, M. 53, 54, 339 Bell, C. 256, 339 Bellefontaine, A. de 274, 358

Bering, J. M. 225, 339 Berrong, R. M. 207, 339 Betz, H. D. 202, 343 Bickermann, E. 53, 55, 339 Bieringer, R. 319, 349 Bogaert, P.-M. 318-20, 324-27, 339 Botha, J. E. 365 Bourdieu, P. 60, 339 Bouvier, B. 235, 239, 339 Bovon, F. 63, 65, 212, 235, 239, 339, 355 Boyarin, D. 92, 114-15, 339 Boyer, P. 213-16, 339 Brady, M. 361 Braidotti, R. 9, 86-88, 91, 94, 106, 339 Brakke, D. 265, 272-73, 340, 360 Brass, M. 226, 340 Bremmer, J. N. 88, 103, 208-9, 21213, 224, 337, 340, 343, 353, 355, 364 Brock, S. P. 202, 212, 232, 235, 238, 243-44, 246-47, 331, 340, 355 Brooke, G. J. 298, 308-9, 340 Brown, P. 271 Brown, R. E. 318 Brox, N. 340 Bruce, F. F. 89 Brunner Ungricht, G. 222, 224, 341 Buchholz, D. D. 209, 341 Budge, E. A. 209, 341 Buell, D. K. 13, 56, 249-50, 252, 254, 256, 258, 260, 262, 264-66, 268, 270, 341 Bultmann, R. 91-93, 95, 97, 101-3, 106, 341 Buraselis, K. 43, 44, 48, 341

Index of Modern Authors

Burkert, W. 209, 341 Burnet, J. 341 Butterworth, G. W. 70, 260, 341 Bynum, C. W. 4, 62, 84, 152, 165, 187, 196, 341 Byrne, R. W. 225-26, 341 Camelot, P. Th. 341 Camplani, A. 360 Cannadine, D. 55, 359 Carlsson, L. 97, 98, 102, 341 Carse, J. P. 60, 342 Cartlidge, D. R. 63, 342 Cary, E. 49, 50 Casey, R. P. 250, 342 Castelli, E. A. 238, 342 Cave, T. 311-13, 342 Ceriani, A. M. 315 Chadwick, H. 72, 342 Charles, R. H. 315, 318, 342 Charlesworth, J. H. 301, 315, 338, 346, 352 Charron, A. 344 Chater, N. 225, 350-51, 359 Chazon, E. G. 306-7, 342, 361 Chesnutt, R. D. 234, 342 Cleveland Coxe, A. 252 Collins, J. J. 14, 19, 37, 45, 47, 75, 125, 176, 256, 291-92, 294, 296, 298, 300, 302, 304-6, 308, 310, 324, 335, 342 Conzelmann, H. 34, 342 Cooper, J. M. 111, 342, 358 Corrington Streete, G. 342 Cotter, W. 46, 51, 55, 342 Cox Miller, P. 114, 343 Crandall, C. S. 215, 357 Crum, W. E. 67, 343 Culbertson, D. 312, 343 Cullmann, O. 68, 116, 292, 343 Culpepper, R.A. 312-13, 343 Curtius, E. R. 69, 343

389

Czachesz, I. 12, 13, 207-14, 216, 218, 220, 222, 224, 226, 228, 230, 340, 343 Dahl, N. A. 202, 343 Daley, B. E. 62, 343 Davidson, M. J. 300, 306, 344 Davies, W. D. 334, 344 Day, J. 295 DeConick, A. D. 21, 344, 354 Deines, R. 92, 350 Descartes, R. 106, 119, 344 Diels, H. 110, 344 Dimant, D. 296, 344 Dolan, R. J. 362 Donaldson, J. 254 Douglas, B. 269, 344 Douglas, M. C. 303 Duhaime, J. 293, 344 Duke, E. A. 341 Dunderberg, I. 361 Dunn, J. G. D. 23, 344 Dupont, F. 53, 54, 344 Durand, G. 344 Eagleton, T. 93, 94, 344 Ecchellensis, A. 344 Ego, B. 298, 340, 360 Ehlers, K. 298, 340, 360 Eijk, A. H. C. 345 Elgvin, E. 361 Elior, R. 299, 345 Emmel, S. 59, 73, 74, 76, 77, 79, 345 Endsjø, D. O. 114, 345 Engberg-Pedersen, T. 10, 29, 32, 51, 86, 89, 92, 114, 118, 123-24, 126, 128, 130, 132, 134, 136, 138, 160, 254-55, 345, 360-61 Eshel, E. 299, 304-5, 345, 357, 361 Evans, E. 148, 345, 365

390 Fadiga, L. 359 Falconer, W. A. 69, 345 Falk, D. 300, 303, 307, 342, 345-46, 361 Faraone, C. A. 259 Fauconnier, G. 193, 196, 345 Feher, M. 53, 344 Feichtinger, B. 192, 351 Ferguson, J. 346 Fernández Sangrador, J. J. 305, 347 Filoramo, G. 360 Finn, T. F. 201 Finn, T. M. 346 Fischer-Mueller, E. A. 178, 346 Fitzmyer, J. A. 141, 301, 346 Fletcher-Louis, C. 33, 34, 36-38, 295, 297, 300, 346 Flood, G. 271, 346 Florovsky, G. 274 Fogassi, L. 352, 359 Forbes, I. 220, 346 Foucault, M. 83, 84, 346 Fowler, H. N. 346 Frankfurter, D. 278 Frennesson, B. 298, 301, 306, 346 Freud, S. 106 Frey, J. 300, 346, 353 Frith, C. D. 225, 227, 347, 362; Frith, U. 225, 227, 347, 362 Funk, W.-P. 188, 347 Gaca, K. L. 263, 347 Gallese, V. 226-27, 347, 352, 359 Garcia Martínez, F. 295, 305, 3078, 340, 342, 346-47 Garitte, G. 275, 347 Garland, D. E. 318, 348 Gathercole, S. 254, 345 Gazzola, V. 352 Gelman, S. A. 214, 339 Gesche, H. 43-45, 53, 348

Indices

Gibbs, R. W. 226, 228, 348 Gilhus, I. S. 114, 217, 221-23, 319, 345, 348, 361 Ginzberg, L. 318, 348 Giulea, A.-D. 348 Gleason, M. 333, 348 Gnilka, C. 63, 69, 71, 79, 348 Goehring, J. E. 178, 272-73, 348 Goff, M. J. 302, 348 Golden, M. 3, 62, 63, 71, 348 Goldhill, S. 263, 348 Golitzin, A. 272, 274, 348 Gonce, L. O. 216, 349, 364 Gooder, P. R. 95, 96, 98, 349 Goodman, D. 21, 349 Goold, G. P. 48 Gould, G. 274 Gradel, I. 43-45, 48, 54-56, 349 Grant, R. M. 150, 166, 349 Greer, R. A. 279, 349 Grube, G. M. A. 119 Gundry, R. H. 155, 349 Hallenberg, H. 234, 349 Hallett, C. H. 44, 349 Hällström, G. 147-48, 157, 349 Halperin, D. 83, 349 Harland, P. A. 260-61, 349 Harrington, D. J. 319, 324-25, 329, 331, 349 Harris, M. J. 96, 97, 102, 104, 349 Harvey, D. F. 211, 349 Harvey, S. A. 235, 238, 243-44, 24647, 340 Hay, D. M. 92, 350 Healey, J. 295, 350 Heckel, T. K. 84, 86, 350 Hedrick, C. W. 59, 73, 350 Heinrici, G. 89 Hellholm, D. 202, 343 Hempel, C. 300, 316, 347, 350 Henderson, J. H. 211, 350

Index of Modern Authors

Henze, M. 316-17, 350 Heyes, C. 226, 340 Hilhorst, A. 104, 362 Himmelfarb, M. 208, 293, 350 Hirschfeld, L. A. 214, 339 Hoff, E. V. 225, 350 Hollywood, A. 269, 350 Holm-Nielsen, S. 350 Holze, H. 273, 350 Hopkins, K. 149, 152, 350 Horrell, D. 97, 350 Hurley, D.W. 55, 225, 350-51 Hurley, S. 225, 350-51, 359 Iordanites, A. 351 Isenberg, W. W. 151, 164, 351 Iswolsky, H. 207, 338 Jacobsen, A.-C. 272, 351, 360 Janssens, Y. 351 Jeremias, G. 303, 351 Jeremias, J. 125, 318, 351 Jervell, J. 34, 351 Jewett, R. 155, 351 Joachim, H. H. 126 Johnson, L. T. 351 Jones, L. 342 Junod, E. 65, 351 Käsemann, E. 89, 99, 102, 351 Kasimatis, M. 353 Kasser, R. 59, 67, 188, 213, 351-52 Kaube, H. 362 Kaufman, G. 82 Keane, W. 269, 352 Keenan, J. P. 364 Keil, F. C. 214, 219-23, 352 Keller, M. 250, 252, 254-55, 352 Kelley, N. 238, 352 Kelly, H. A. 219-22, 256, 352; Kelly, J. N. D. 198, 219-23, 352 Kelly, M. H. 219-23, 352

391

Keysers, C. 226, 347, 352 King, K. L. 2, 7, 8, 59, 60, 62, 64, 66, 68, 70, 72, 74, 76, 78, 80, 82, 178, 196, 203, 249, 253, 256, 260 Kittel, G. 287 Klejna, F. 274-75, 352 Klijn, A. F. J. 315-16, 352 Klinzing, G. 298, 352 Klostermann, E. 208, 352 Kmosko, M. 275, 352 Knibb, M. A. 316, 350 Knohl, I. 305, 352 Koch, H. 177, 353 Koperski, V. 319, 349 Kraemer, R. S. 240, 342 Kranz, W. 110, 344 Kuhn, H.-W. 296, 304, 353 Labahn, M. 150, 353 Lacan, J. 106 Lake, K. 250, 342, 351, 353 Lalleman, P. J. 212, 353 Lambrecht, J. 96, 319, 349, 353 Lampe, G. W. 287 Lange, C. 347, 360, 364 Lange, G. 60, 347, 353, 360 Larsen, K. B. 312-13, 327, 353 Lassleben, M. 43, 348 Lataire, B. 319, 349 Layton, B. 69, 188-90, 194-95, 197, 353 Leaney, A. R. C. 293, 353 Lehtipou, O. 10, 11, 147-48, 150, 152, 154, 156, 158, 160, 162, 164, 166, 168, 256, 292, 353 Leipoldt, J. 178 Leuenberger, M. 316, 354 Lichtenberger, H. 23, 26, 300, 308, 344, 347, 354 Lieber, A. 21, 354 Lied, L. I. 15, 28, 29, 161, 176, 256,

392 294, 311-12, 314, 316, 318, 320, 322, 324-26, 328, 330, 332, 334 Lietzmann, H. 96, 354 Lieu, J. 316, 350 Lohfink, G. 25, 26, 50, 354 Lona, H. E. 194, 354 Longenecker, R. N. 319, 338, 354 Lubac, H. 60, 354 Luisier, P. 213, 351 Lundhaug, H. 10, 12, 147, 152, 163-64, 187-88, 190, 192-94, 196, 198, 200, 202, 204, 237, 256, 287, 292, 309, 354 Luomanen, P. 193, 354 Luttikhuizen, G. P. 212, 355 MacDonald, D. R. 342 Mach, M. 298, 302, 355 MacRae, G. W. 104, 355 Malinine, M. 188, 355 Marjanen, A. 13, 67, 178, 231-32, 234-36, 238, 240, 242, 244, 246, 355 Marriott, G. L. 275, 355 Martin, D. B. 114, 125-26, 155, 292, 355, 363 Martin, L. H. 188 Martin, R. 84-89 Matthews, C. R. 212, 355 McDonnell, K. 201, 355 McGuckin, J. A. 72, 78, 355 McGuire, A. 79, 356 McLWilson, R. 361 Meech, J. 101, 356 Meltzoff, A. N. 225-26, 356, 359 Ménard, J. E. 188, 356 Metzger, B. M. 160, 356 Meyer, M. W. 233, 351, 356 Miller, F. J. 48, 52-54, 222 Miller, P. C. 114 Mirecki, P. A. 59, 73, 350 Mitchell, M. M. 96, 97, 114, 202,

Indices

343, 356 Munier, C. 356 Murdock, W. R. 355 Murphy, F. J. 317, 356 Murphy-O'Connor, J. 301, 346 Musurillo, H. 231-32, 238-41, 253, 356 Nasrallah, L. 249, 254, 259-60, 356 Nau, F. 275, 282, 357 Nehamas, A. 116 Neusner, J. 291, 342 Newsom, C. 299, 300, 302-3, 306, 357 Nickelsburg, G. W. E. 292, 296, 357 Niebyl, P. H. 61, 357 Nir, R. 319, 325, 357 Nissen, J. 28, 361 Nitzan, B. 303, 357, 361 Noormann, R. 148, 150-51, 153-54, 156, 165-66, 357 Norenzayan, A. 215, 357 North, J. 45 Nussbaum, M. C. 122, 357 Nyhof, M. 215-16, 338 O'Doherty, J. 362 Ogden, D. 224, 357 Økland, J. 1, 9, 30, 83, 84, 86, 88, 90-92, 94, 96, 98, 100, 102, 104, 106, 292, 357 Oporto, S. G. 305, 347 Osborn, E. 156, 167, 177, 357 Outtier, B. 274-75, 358 Pagels, E. 67, 358 Pannenberg, W. 319, 358 Parkin, T. G. 62, 358 Parrott, D. M. 355 Parry, D. W. 304, 345 Parsons, M. C. 24, 25, 358 Peck, A. L. 358

Index of Modern Authors

Pedersen, E. M. W. 361 Peel, M. L. 187-90, 192-94, 196-97, 201-2, 358 Perho, I. 349 Perrin, B. 50, 51, 54 Piaget, J. 225 Pilhofer, P. 298, 340, 360 Pinker, S. 214, 358 Playoust, C. 23-25, 358 Plese, Z. 65, 358 Plummer, A. 104, 358 Polotsky, H. J. 73, 358 Price, S. R. F. 45, 53-56, 211, 339, 358-59 Prieur, J.-M. 359 Puech, E. 293-94, 296, 303-4, 308, 340, 355, 359 Quecke, H. 200, 359 Ramble, C. 215, 339 Rasimus, T. 162, 359 Reckford, K. J. 211, 359 Reed, A. Y. 249, 252, 255, 359 Reeve, C. D. C. 119 Regnault, L. 274-75, 358 Reymond, E. A. E. 232, 240, 359 Rizzolatti, G. 225-26, 347, 359 Roberts, A. 254 Robertson, A. K. 207, 359 Robinson, B. P. 323, 355, 359 Robinson, J. M. 104, 151 Robinson, M. 59 Rönnegård, P. 273, 360 Ross, W. D. 126, 360 Rubenson, S. 14, 36, 256, 271-78, 280-86, 288, 309, 315, 359 Russell, C. D. 303 Ryan, P. 111 Sagnard, F. 360 Sayler, G. B. 317-18, 325, 360

393

Schaff, P. 236, 357 Schaller, M. 215, 357 Schenke, H.-M. 65, 73, 74, 178, 360, 364 Schiffman, L. H. 298, 360 Schmid, H. 152, 163-64, 166, 356, 361 Schmid, K. 259 Schmidt, M. 202, 331, 340 Schneemelcher, W. 64, 68, 69, 361 Schnelle, U. 155, 361 Schon, K.-G. 236, 361 Schüssler Fiorenza, E. 356 Schuller, E. 306-7, 342, 347, 357, 361 Scott, J. M. 338 Sedley, D. N. 128, 354 Segal, A. F. 34, 103-4, 361 Segal, E. 103, 211, 361 Seim, T. K. 1, 7, 9, 19, 20, 22, 24-26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 38, 47, 54, 98, 319, 331-32, 361 Seng, H. 351 Setzer, C. 147-49, 152, 361 Seymour, B. 362 Shaw, B. D. 239, 243, 361-62 Shaw, T. 62, 239, 361-62 Sieber, J. H. 233 Silverstein, T. 104, 362 Simons, A. 207, 362 Singer, T. 226, 362 Sivertsev, A. 297, 362 Smith, J. Z. 202, 270; Smith, M. 297 Smith, R. P. 178, 314 Solmsen, F. 61, 362 Songe-Møller, V. 9, 10, 29, 31, 84, 89, 109-10, 112, 114, 116, 118, 120, 122, 362 Sorabji, R. 2, 272, 362 Stählin, O. 260, 363 Starr, J. 273, 360

394 Steenstra, K. 216, 363 Steiner, D. T. 259, 261, 265, 363 Stemberger, G. 28, 319-20, 324-25, 332, 363 Stendahl, K. 292, 343 Stepper, S. 363 Sternberg, T. 353 Steudel, A. 308, 340 Storey, I. C. 211, 363 Strack, F. 228, 363 Streete, G. C. 240 Strogatz, S. 225, 363 Sullivan, K. P. 21, 34, 36, 38, 39, 363 Tabor, J. D. 96, 98, 363 Tarán, L. 110, 363 Taylor, C. 4, 83-84, 363 Taylor, M. 225, 363 Theoharides, T. C. 61, 363 Thiselton, A. C. 89, 125, 363 Thomassen, E. 10, 11, 169-70, 172, 174, 176, 178-80, 182, 184, 186, 246, 256-57, 363 Thompson, H. 200, 364 Thompson, W. G. 46, 343 Till, W. 65 Toohey, P. 348 Torjesen, K. J. 236, 364 Trible, P. 92, 364 Tronier, H. 124, 345 Tuckett, C. 20, 361 Turner, B. S. 60, 345, 364 Turner, M. L. 163, 193, 196, 345, 364 Uddin, L. Q. 226, 364 Unger, D. J. 162, 364 Upala, M. A. 216, 349, 364 Vaage, L. E. 34, 271, 361-62, 364 Valantasis, R. 114, 271, 343, 364

Indices

Van Kooten, G. 92, 213, 343, 364 Van Ruiten, J. T. A. G. M. 213, 343 Vanderkam, J. C. 361 Veenstra, J. R. 224, 364 Vernant, J.-P. 115, 365 Violet, B. 315, 330, 333, 365 Vogelsang, I. 224, 365 Vogt, K. 234, 365 Volz, P. 317-18, 329-30, 365 Vorster, J. N. 231, 239, 241-42, 365 Vorster, W. S. 319, 365 Waldstein, M. 65, 365 Ward, J. 227-28, 354, 365 Weinfeld, M. 361 Weiss, 125 Wernberg-Møeller, P. 294, 365 Westerhoff, M. 365 Wiberg Pedersen, E. M. 28 Wicker, B. 352 Wiedemann, T. 231 Wiemken, H. 211, 365 Wilkins, J. M. 211, 349 Williams, R. 272-74, 279, 285, 365 Wimbush, V. L. 34, 114, 343, 36162, 364 Wipszycka, E. 273, 366 Wire, A. 90, 366 Wlosok, A. 53, 339 Woodruff, P. 116 Wright, J. P. 84, 350 Wurst, G. 59, 67, 351-52 Yarbro Collins, A. 7, 8, 27, 35, 36, 41-50, 52, 54, 56, 202, 242, 289, 299, 343, 366 Zeitlin, F. 115, 365

Index of Subjects and Persons

395

Index of Subjects and Persons Index of Subjects and Persons

Aaron 298, 305 Abortion 175, 179 Abraham 34, 39, 77, 220, 317 Achamoth 174, 180 Achilles 114 Adam 66, 78, 92, 93, 117, 125, 15657, 172, 212, 222, 295-97, 300 Aeneas 48, 50, 52, 105, 217 Age 23, 61-63, 69-72, 77-80, 85, 118, 159, 221, 227, 232, 296-97, 324 Agelessness 62, 71 Aging 8, 32, 59-63, 65, 67, 69, 71, 73, 75, 77-82 Ahab 42 Alcibiades 122 Ammonas 14, 272-89, 309 Angelic 36-38, 89, 160, 172, 181, 291-93, 295-97, 299-301, 303, 305, 307, 309, 335 Angelomorphic 33, 36, 37, 300 Angels 5, 14, 15, 21, 29, 33-39, 41, 47, 95, 99, 102, 171-72, 176, 179-81, 183, 185-86, 240, 247, 264, 278-79, 281, 291, 293, 296301, 303-9, 312, 314, 333, 335 Animals 3, 12, 13, 18, 30, 31, 90, 212-14, 216-25, 229-30, 266 Anthony 14, 272 Antony 272-80, 283, 285-89 Apocalypses 28-30, 69, 98, 104, 125, 161, 176-77, 179, 208-9, 220, 278, 291-92, 294-95, 302, 315-16, 318, 320, 325 Apokatastasis 180, 184-86 Apotheosis 8, 41-49, 51, 53, 55, 57, 218 Appearances 7, 8, 20-22, 24-28, 33,

36, 37, 46-48, 50, 63, 64, 68, 69, 72, 79, 81, 125, 170, 212, 237, 262, 313-14, 324, 328-35 Apuleius 3, 4, 217, 222 Aristotelian 2, 61, 85, 91, 94, 113, 116-18, 126, 128 Arnobius 8, 51 Ascension 5, 7, 8, 12, 22-28, 33-35, 51, 278-79, 288 Ascent 25, 33, 35, 72, 96, 98, 121, 180, 186, 189-92, 197-98, 203, 278-79, 289, 293, 306 Ascetic 12, 14, 16, 61, 159, 179, 201-4, 236, 256, 271, 273, 275, 277-89 Asceticism 34, 38, 114, 236, 271-72, 279 Aseneth 234, 333 Athenagoras 147, 149, 252 Augustus 44, 45, 48, 50-52, 54-56 Baptism 5, 41, 42, 45, 142, 144, 151, 159, 180-81, 201-2, 235, 25051, 255-57, 268, 285 Barnabas 252, 267 Baruch 15, 28-30, 294, 311, 313-20, 323-27, 331-35 Basilides 176, 265-67 Birth 12, 50, 60, 61, 68, 80, 85, 111, 114-15, 175, 177, 179, 189, 193-97, 203-4, 207, 225, 233, 239, 257, 287 Blandina 240-42, 246, 253 Bodily resurrection 71, 80, 148, 150, 162-63, 292, 309, 318 Body – of corruption 14, 276

396 – of flesh and blood 136, 138-40, 145 Buddha 60, 234

Indices

10, 126-29,

Caesar see Julius Caesar Caligula 55 Carnis Resurrectio 147-48, 157 Celsus 72, 271 Childbirth 116, 207, 239 Childhood 8, 62, 63, 69-71, 75, 76, 79, 276 Christian – tradition 151, 240 – truth 13, 237, 242 Cicero 44, 48, 69 Claudius 44, 55 Clement 13, 69-71, 97, 149, 151, 177, 250-52, 257-68, 287 Cognition 225-26, 228 Cognitive Neuroscience 226-28 Cognitive Sciences 193, 214-16, 219, 221 Community Hymns 303-4 Community Rule 296-302 Conceptualizations 187, 189, 191, 193, 195, 197, 199, 201, 203, 205, 251 Consecratio 43 Continuity 2, 3, 9, 15, 17, 29, 30, 33, 37, 84, 88, 89, 93-95, 101, 103, 105-7, 109-10, 116, 11819, 128, 154, 223, 260, 308, 334 Contra Celsum 72, 74 Coptic Gospel of Bartholomew 69 Coptic Martyrdom of Saints Paese and Thecla 232, 238-39, 243 Corinth 92, 97, 109, 113 Counterintuitive 213-19, 223, 229-30 Creation 30-32, 43, 66, 69, 92, 156, 212, 254, 261-62, 268, 276 Crucifixion 22, 73, 75, 76, 145, 162, 182 Cybernetic 103, 107

Damascus Document 297 David 19, 41, 49, 240 Dead Sea Scrolls 14, 295-97, 301, 303-7, 309 Death 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12, 15-17, 1922, 34, 38, 39, 49-53, 60-63, 7682, 88, 89, 103-5, 111-19, 13542, 145, 147-48, 152-54, 15860, 175, 193-99, 201-4, 238-39, 241-42, 244-45, 279, 288-89, 291, 307-9, 319-20 Debated metaphor 12 Deification 8, 25, 45, 48, 51, 53-56 Delightful oil 293 Demiurge 171, 174 Didymus 233 Dio Cassius 44, 50, 54, 55 Dionysius of Halicarnassus Ant 49, 50 Diotima 121-22 Disappearance 49, 50, 116, 230, 328 Disgust 13, 226-27, 229-30 Divi filius 8 Divine – Beauty 121-22 – pedagogy 11, 174, 177, 179 Divinization 7, 8, 24, 41, 43, 51, 56 Docetic Christology 162 Eagle 44, 54, 55, 212-13, 217, 230 Economy of salvation 72, 177 Egypt 59 Elevate 15, 25, 37, 43, 292, 307, 315, 318 Elijah 8, 36, 41-43, 45, 46, 48, 51, 54, 278, 288, 291 Elysian fields 103 Embryo 179, 257 Emmaus 21, 22, 47, 162, 323 Empathy 13, 226-28 Endurance 13, 238-39, 241, 247, 314

Index of Subjects and Persons

Enoch 291-94, 296, 301, 307, 309 Eucharist 21, 80, 151, 163-66, 213 Eusebius 238-41, 246 Evagrius 272, 286 Eve 66, 78, 92, 295 Exaltation 14, 23, 25, 26, 41, 49, 291, 305-6 Excerpts of Theodotos 250-51 Experience 1, 4, 9, 14, 20, 33, 51, 60, 62, 63, 72, 79, 83, 96, 98, 99, 1012, 104, 106, 111, 130-31, 139, 158, 166, 179, 228, 272-73, 276, 278-80, 283-84, 303, 306, 309-10 External body 72, 192, 195-99, 201, 204, 259 Febronia 238, 243, 246-47 Femaleness 178, 233-34, 237 Fervour 284-85, 288 Flesh 8, 10-12, 14, 16, 19-22, 24, 3033, 37, 61, 62, 72, 75, 78, 79, 82, 87-90, 92, 93, 95, 115, 120, 12630, 134-36, 138-42, 145-67, 172, 184, 189-93, 199, 204-5, 264, 292, 300-2, 309-10 – and blood 126, 155, 157, 163 – of Christ 154, 162, 165 Fruit 68, 285-87, 289 Galen 61, 179 Gangra, Concil of 236 Garment metaphor 202-3 Gender transformation 5, 6, 13, 23137, 239, 241, 243, 245-47 Gendered language 13, 232-34, 236 Genealogy 83-85, 87, 89, 91, 93, 95, 97-99, 101, 103, 105-7, 150 Gilead 59 Gladiators 231, 237-42, 246 Glory 5, 14, 28, 30-32, 35, 36, 49, 52, 74-76, 79, 91, 132, 135-37, 140, 155, 240, 253, 272, 281,

397

293-97, 300, 302, 304-5, 314, 317, 321-23, 328, 330, 332 Gospel of Judas 59, 67-69, 71-73, 75, 81, 82 Gospel stories 28, 33, 88 Gregory 62, 63, 81, 236 Grotesque 12, 13, 207-13, 216-19, 225, 227-30 Hades 19, 21, 104, 116, 278 Heaven, 7 299 Heavenly Ascents 23, 95 Hell 161, 208-9, 216-19, 225, 22730 Heracleon 178 Hodayot 14, 300, 303-8 Holy 35, 66, 68, 70, 74, 166, 264, 271, 287, 296, 298-99, 303-6, 308 – Spirit 24, 25, 27, 28, 34, 66, 151, 163, 167, 183, 231, 266, 268, 285 Homosexuality 83 Human kinds 170, 277 Identity 2, 4, 15, 29, 36, 37, 71, 75, 84, 93, 101, 114, 126, 149, 168, 177, 181, 195, 261, 277, 305, 312-13, 319, 327, 332 Ignatius 260 Iliad 264 Immortality 8, 14, 19, 25, 32, 38, 39, 59, 61, 63, 65, 67, 69-71, 73, 75, 77, 79-82, 112, 116, 119, 126, 128, 153-54, 157, 160, 165, 191, 292, 295-96 Incarnation 33, 77-79, 182 Inheritance 153, 276-77, 295-96 Initiatory ritual 181, 202 Internal body 190, 192, 195, 201-2 Intertextual 95, 152, 191-93, 196, 213, 237

398 Invisible 12, 64, 65, 225, 249, 251, 253-55, 257-59, 261-63, 265, 267-70 Irenaeus 11, 77-80, 148-59, 161-62, 164-68, 171, 173-74, 177, 179, 183, 253-54, 258 Irene 231 Isaiah 77, 278-79, 288, 308 Israel 41, 49, 130, 240, 295, 297-98, 308, 322, 325 Jacob 39, 278, 281, 284, 288, 308 Jeremiah 316 Jerusalem 33, 36, 37, 275, 319 John Chrysostom 97, 236 Judaism 15, 21, 96, 272, 291-92, 297 Judgment 15, 28-30, 161, 186, 221, 294, 302, 309, 311, 313, 316-18, 321-23, 325-32, 334-35 Julius 50, 52 Julius Caesar 44, 45, 48, 50-53, 55 Jupiter 43, 44, 48, 52, 56 Justin Martyr 147, 167, 249-50, 252-53, 255 Kingdom of God 11, 31, 35, 90, 100, 115, 126, 128, 147-49, 151-54, 156-57, 162-63, 165-66, 318 Knowledge 14, 66, 113, 119, 121, 131-32, 134, 136-37, 151, 170, 175, 182, 193, 212, 240, 254, 277, 282-83, 286, 289, 294-95, 300-4, 308-9, 313, 316, 323-24, 326-27, 334-35 Life 1, 2, 7, 8, 10, 23, 24, 34, 35, 38, 60-64, 68-72, 74-78, 81, 82, 92, 93, 103-4, 110-12, 115-18, 130, 136-37, 139-43, 145-46, 158-60, 165-66, 174-75, 179-80, 191-98,

Indices

200-5, 234-35, 252-53, 278-82, 293-96, 300-1, 308-10, 326-27 – of Macrina 63 – of Numa 54 – of Olympias 236 Light 6, 14, 16, 29, 32-34, 37, 64, 65, 89, 98, 111-12, 120, 125, 137, 142, 145, 151, 164, 167, 170, 176-77, 191-92, 202, 255, 264, 278, 288-89, 294-96, 302, 307, 314, 330 Liturgical 295, 298-300, 303, 307 Livy 45, 46, 50 Lucius 3, 217, 220, 222-23 Mahya 244-46 Maleness 5, 178, 233-35, 237 Manifestations 11, 26, 27, 60, 79, 93, 102, 170, 172-74, 176, 18081, 184-85 Marriage 38, 39, 179-80, 208, 237, 301 Martyrdom 5, 33, 34, 76, 231-32, 237-42, 244-47, 253, 279-80 Mary Magdalene 47, 50 Materialist 2, 10, 12, 76, 77, 85-87, 92, 94, 101, 106-7, 125, 127, 129, 134, 137-38, 144, 146, 164, 166, 171-72, 174, 190, 193, 196-97, 201, 204, 255, 263 Maturation 11, 172, 176, 197 Memory 46, 106, 215-16, 238, 254, 262, 271 Merkavah throne 299 Messiah 26-28, 33, 34, 41, 45, 48, 49, 295, 305, 317, 331 Metamorphosis in Greek Myths 2, 9, 61, 63, 87, 207, 209, 211, 213, 215, 217, 219-21, 223-25, 227, 229 Metaphor 13, 23, 71, 82, 112, 116, 173, 185, 187, 191, 193-98, 202-4, 234, 285, 287, 289, 309

Index of Subjects and Persons

Michael, archangel 292, 305 Mind 12, 13, 21, 56, 64, 70, 71, 84, 94, 111-13, 117-18, 121-22, 126-27, 129-30, 171, 192-93, 202, 207, 209, 211, 213-15, 217, 219, 221, 223, 225, 227-30, 233, 244, 259, 272-73, 288-89, 308 Mirror neurons 225-26 Monasticism 272-73, 281, 287, 310 Mortality 15, 18, 87, 191-92 Moses 36, 39, 42, 127, 295, 297 Mysteries 65, 93, 119, 159, 263-64, 279, 282-84, 288, 302 Nag Hammadi 65, 79, 104, 147-48, 151-52, 156, 163, 172, 178, 187-88, 209, 233, 235, 237, 253, 281, 287 Nakedness 163, 165, 212, 243 Nazareth 22, 33, 34, 37, 41, 48, 120 Neopythagoreanism 11, 181 Numa 50, 54 Old age 12, 52, 59, 61-64, 69, 70, 78, 79, 81, 82, 194-96 Olympias 236, 243 Ontological categories 180, 21415, 217, 219-21, 223 Ophites 161-62, 165 Origen 71, 72, 74, 177, 191-92, 194, 234, 271, 273-74, 279, 287, 289 Orphans 177, 208 Ovid 3, 4, 47, 48, 51-54, 217-24 Paedagogus 70, 260 Paese 238, 240, 243 Pain 87, 226, 228-29, 239 Parmenides 10, 110-11 Passion 63, 66, 145, 171, 182-83, 211, 239, 265-66, 287 Patterns of Gender in Luke-Acts 25, 101

399

Paul 9-11, 16-19, 28-34, 37, 47, 69, 83, 84, 86-94, 96-107, 109, 11146, 148-51, 153-55, 157-60, 163-66, 168-71, 187, 192, 2012, 204, 209-10, 212-13, 218, 232, 235, 251, 254-55, 275-76, 278-79, 281-82, 292-93 Pauline texts 10-12, 17, 31, 86, 88, 97, 150-56, 159, 162-63, 165, 186, 192, 202, 204-5, 282, 300, 334 Pelagia 235 Perpetua 238, 242, 246-47 Peter 19, 21, 26, 48, 63, 64, 66, 69, 161, 208-13, 220, 233 Philip 11, 44, 65, 147-48, 151-52, 163-67, 173, 177, 180, 193, 212-13, 217, 232, 235, 237, 239 Philo 39, 86, 92, 125, 127, 233, 236, 243, 260, 298 Pionius 238 Plato 2, 10, 19, 31, 32, 92, 94, 111, 113, 116-17, 119, 121-22, 127, 180, 292 Pleroma 171, 173, 179-86 Plutarch 50, 51, 54 Polemics 60, 73, 76, 148-49, 152, 164, 166-68, 188, 249 Polymorphy 8, 63-67, 69, 78, 79, 211-12 Power 8, 15, 19, 30-32, 34, 41-43, 49, 52, 55, 56, 66, 73, 119, 13132, 134, 136, 145, 153, 155, 159, 162, 167, 172, 182, 211, 250-51, 253-56, 265-66, 278-80, 282, 284, 322 Predestination 177 Pregnancy 12, 116, 193-97, 203-4, 207, 269 Priests 236, 264, 299, 301 Proculus 46, 50, 55 Protreptikos 260-63, 265, 267-68 Psalms 19, 26, 264, 294-95, 303, 306

400 Pseudo-Justin 167 Psychic 12, 117-18, 124-25, 128-29, 156, 162, 169-71, 173, 190-93, 198, 233, 260, 269 Purity 69, 71, 301-2 Quirinus 48, 50 Qumran 75, 179, 293, 296-98, 3001, 303, 306-7, 309 Rabelais 207 Rapture 25, 26, 327 Rebirth 152, 164, 167, 177, 179, 193, 201, 237, 250, 257, 268 Recognition 15, 22, 29, 30, 34, 268, 294, 311-15, 317-21, 323, 325-35 Resurrection 1-12, 14-18, 21-23, 26, 28-33, 37-39, 41, 43, 47-49, 6164, 75, 84-86, 88-91, 93, 101-2, 109, 111-14, 118, 120-24, 12939, 145-54, 156-70, 185-205, 287-89, 291-94, 307-9, 311, 318-21, 323-27, 329-32, 334-35 – of the body 7, 14, 19-25, 27-33, 35, 37, 39, 60, 80, 90, 103, 112, 115, 118-19, 124, 133, 137, 139, 147-49, 159, 161-63, 168, 190, 196-97, 292 – of Christ 2, 22, 112, 122, 191 – of the dead 90 Revelation 14, 15, 50, 64, 66, 73, 75, 76, 79, 81, 95, 98, 99, 102, 104, 170, 209, 212, 276, 279, 282-85, 288, 302, 312, 317 Reward 48, 159, 245, 277, 280-81, 286, 294 Rhetoric 12, 29, 60, 80, 81, 89, 96, 97, 102, 104, 113, 151, 187, 189, 193, 195, 199, 203, 242-45, 261, 289, 311 Ritual practices 47, 75, 77, 180, 201-4, 256, 259, 269

Indices

Romulus 8, 45-51, 54, 217 Sabbath 14, 299, 300, 303, 306, 335 Samuel 333 Sasagu Arai 234 Scatological humour 208, 210, 216, 218-19, 229-30 Scillitan martyrs 150 Scriptures 21, 79, 149-50, 158-59, 165, 167, 264 Self 2-5, 9, 12, 13, 29, 68, 79, 83-89, 91, 93-99, 101-3, 105, 107, 11213, 250-51, 256-58, 262-63, 268-70, 302-3 Self-declarations 74, 75 Selfsame flesh 148, 161 Semler, J. S. 95, 96 Serek 301-2 Sex 61, 115, 161, 210, 231, 235, 237, 267-68, 301-2 Sexual organs 161 Simon magus 210-11 Socrates 121-22, 126 Sons of Zadok 301 Sophia 171-72, 175, 178, 180, 18284, 186 Soul 8, 9, 11, 14, 19, 25, 52-54, 63, 71, 72, 80, 81, 85, 86, 88, 89, 92-94, 105-6, 116-18, 127, 14748, 152-54, 156-59, 164, 17174, 182, 193, 237, 251-53, 25558, 263-69, 272, 277-80, 282, 284-86, 292 Space 9, 19, 24, 31, 86, 94, 99, 101, 105, 144, 148, 197 Spirit 55, 141, 156-57, 250, 252-53, 277-78, 285 Spiritual body 73, 105, 112, 115, 117, 161, 164-65, 169-71, 186, 190-91, 309 Splendour 15, 29, 278, 291, 294-95, 314, 328-35

Index of Subjects and Persons

Stars

29-31, 38, 52-54, 125, 176, 291-92, 305 Stephen 28, 33-35 Suetonius 44, 54, 55 Sweetness 14, 280-82, 285, 288 Tatian 13, 252, 257-59 Taxonomy 1, 3, 9, 13, 30-32, 38, 78, 91, 95, 101-2, 180 Teacher Hymns 303-4, 308 Temple 44, 50-52, 68, 153, 252, 258, 265, 267, 287, 298-300, 316, 333 Tertullian 25, 51, 61, 63, 147-50, 157-62, 164-67 Thecla 34, 232, 235, 238-40, 243-44 Theodotos 250-51, 257 Thomas 47, 68, 69, 173, 178, 20910, 213, 233-35, 246, 268 Thunder 45, 48, 79 Thunder Perfect Mind 79 Tiberius 44, 55 Timothy 150 Titus 55, 210, 228 Tortures 80, 209, 227-28, 231-32, 238, 240, 243, 245 Transferal 8, 23, 41, 43, 45, 47-49, 51, 53, 55, 57, 150, 276 Transfiguration 8, 23, 35-37, 42, 45, 63, 74, 75, 212, 217 Transform 1-3, 5, 6, 11-18, 29-37, 60, 71, 72, 93, 94, 112, 114,

401

123-24, 130-31, 134, 136-38, 145-47, 159-61, 165, 169, 17179, 183-87, 223-24, 234-35, 249-50, 254-56, 268-69, 271, 273-75, 287-89, 309, 314-15, 328-30, 332-35 Treatise 12, 38, 147, 157, 161-62, 167, 185, 187-90, 192-94, 19697, 201-3, 260, 287 Trials 34, 41, 150, 245, 247, 276, 278, 280-81, 283-86 Tripartite Tractate 170, 173-74, 183 Unity 65, 66, 88, 96, 101, 114, 117, 180-81, 183, 289, 296 Valentinians 11, 12, 164, 167, 16986, 194 Valentinus 164, 172, 265-67 Venus 52 Vespasian 55 Visible 189-90, 192, 199, 204, 33031, 333 Watchers 301 Whirlwind 42, 43, 46 Women martyrs 13, 232, 237-39, 242, 245-46 Yahad 298, 302, 309