How to Read Heresiology

In 1864 Giovanni Battista de Rossi (1822–1894) dedicated the first volume of La Roma sotterranea cristiana to Rome’s “second Damasus,” the Risorgimento pope, Pius IX (1846–1878).1 The comparison is still striking. The new Christian archaeology, then so furiously revealing subterranean shrines and ancient tombs originally discovered or lavishly embellished by the “first” Damasus (366–384), owed as much in practical terms to Pius’s patronage as to de Rossi’s tireless excavations. Twelve years before, in January 1852, Pius had approved the Commissione di Archeologia Sacra, whose mandate included “the systematic and scientific exploration” of the Roman catacombs. Two years after that, on May 11, he joined de Rossi (as he would elsewhere on other occasions) to view San Callisto’s papal crypt, where a month earlier de Rossi had recovered the precious fragments of two large marble tablets elegantly inscribed with Damasus’ name and verses.2 But most significantly, perhaps, Pius had urged de Rossi to produce the magisterial study that quickly replaced Antonio Bosio’s Roma sotterranea, published in 1632.3 With some justice, then, this pope, so opportunistic and energetic in changing times, assumed the role that in de Rossi’s eyes the fourth-century bishop had played in the Roman underground’s first age of discovery.4 But Damasus’ name was no less magical for de Rossi’s disciples who inherited his hunt for “i monumenti più famosi dell’età eroica del cristianesimo,” for the pursuit, they could imagine, had truly begun in the days of Damasus.5 Orazio Marucchi’s (1852–1931) handbook of Christian archaeology not only proclaimed Damasus the premier “poète des martyrs” but also pronounced him “nearly” the first Christian archaeologist.6 Sévère Charrier, in turn, openly applauded Damasus’ entanglement of research and mission. Charrier’s “premier archéologue chrétien” may have recovered and adorned the tombs of the saints to honor these “héros de la foi” and preserve

Damasus and the Invention of Early Christian Rome

In her book Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, Averil Cameron argues that hagiography can be characterized as a “continual reworking and reenactment of idealized Christian biography, the pattern of Christian truth in action.”1 Found first and foremost in the Gospels, “the Christian story is itself a biography”; thus later Christians, through the writing of saints’ lives, “could present an image of the life in imitation of Christ, the life that becomes an icon.”2 Following this line of thought, but taking it to a different part of the New Testament, Philip Rousseau and Tomas Hägg have remarked that “no Christian biographer or panegyrist could entirely escape the apostle Paul’s evocation of the ‘new man’—especially since the idea was linked with ‘putting off mortality and putting on immortality.’”3 Surely it is this “new man” who provides the model for Peter Brown’s holy man, most recently defined by Brown in terms of the “ ‘transformation’ of his person, through a Spirit-filled ascetic discipline and through the imaginative alchemy associated with the return of Adam, in the desert, to his Paradise Regained.”4 With this new emphasis on transformation rather than translocation, Brown now finds “the issue of his male gender . . . that much more interesting,” “for maybe holy men were not ‘men.’” Figures like the angelic Symeon the Stylite, he suggests, “had transcended the categories of gender as normally defined.”5 While the rhetoric of the angelic life may well indicate a desire to construe the character of men like Symeon apart from sexual behavior (Brown specifically mentions procreation as what defined “normal” malegendered identity), it does not indicate that maleness had ceased to function normatively as a measure of religious status. Although, as Elizabeth Clark has pointed out, “gender-bending” was a feature of Christian portrayals of ascetic heroes from early on, Thecla being a notable example, still the gender that was “bent” was typically female rather than male.6 There was no male

Is There a Harlot in This Text? Hagiography and the Grotesque

PART I: TRANSFORMATIONS OF RELIGION IN LATE ANTIQUITY PART II: THE TRUE PROPHET PART III: RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES AND GOD'S LAW PART IV: THE WAY TO MECCA

The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity

On 25 June 363, the emperor Julian met his death on the Persian battlefields near Ctesiphon after little more than two years as sole ruler. A few months earlier a young Cappadocian from Diocaesarea, Nazianzus in the native tongue, had announced his decision to lead “the true philosophical life,” at first to his city, and then to friends in Constantinople and elsewhere. Though he had received advanced training in Athens, his decision came as a surprise to many, who had expected him to embark on the more customary as well as lucrative career of a provincial rhetor. Nothing, at first glance, connects the emperor and his death on the battlefields of Persia with the decision of a member of the provincial elite to lead the philosophical life—were it not for the fact that the young man, Gregory, was to become one of the leading intellectuals of his day. Indeed, Gregory, later honored as “the Theologian,” is one of the most widely read and most influential authors of Byzantium, one of the three “Hierarchs” of the Orthodox Churches (with Basil of Caesarea and John Chrysostom), and a quintessential “Father” of Christianity. But why should this have anything to do with Julian? Julian the emperor and Gregory the Theologian are almost never mentioned in the same breath. If we are to trust the impression given by the scholarly literature, they might as well have inhabited different planets—even though they were contemporaries, spent much of their youth in relative proximity in Cappadocia, and overlapped for some time at Athens. The historiographic Julian and the historiographic Gregory have remained separated not so much because one was an emperor and the other merely one of his subjects. Rather, what crucially sets them apart is that one was a pagan and the other a Christian. But, what happens if we suspend the “pagan” and “Christian” aspect of their respective personae for a while, and instead bring these two men

Hellenism and Historiography: Gregory of Nazianzus and Julian in Dialogue

The phrase "in these last days" ( novissimis diebus ) occurs in Isaiah 2 and Micah 4. This article discusses how this expression was interpreted in early Christian commentaries on Isaiah and Micah. It shows that the Christian interpretation of Isaiah 2 and Micah 4 is best seen in the context of a rival Jewish understanding of the text. Jews interpreted the passage not to refer to the exile in Babylonia but to the future coming of "their" Messiah. The question, then, for early Christian exegetes was not whether the text was to be taken "historically," but to which later events was it to be applied, those that defined the Jewish people or those that gave rise to the Church.

In novissimis diebus: Biblical Promises, Jewish Hopes and Early Christian Exegesis

The choice of topics in this collection of essays on fourthand fifth-century biblical exegesis is arbitrary. There is, for example, an essay on Asterius (not the Sophist but the author of a collection of homilies on the Psalms edited by M. Richard) and another on ApoUinaris of Laodicea, but none on Cyril of Alexandria, from whom we have more exegetical works than any other commentator from this period, none on Ambrose (Commentary on Luke) nor Hilary (Commentary on the Psalms, Luke), and none on the great Latin commentator Ambrosiaster. What is offered, however, is fresh and up-to-date, and the volume is prefaced by a thorough and informative bibliographical essay by Ulrich Wickert (Berlin). It is clear that the study of early Christian exegesis is burgeoning, particularly among European scholars. Silka-Petra Bergjan writes on the "dogmatic function of exegesis according to Theodoret of Cyrus." Against the excesses of Theodore, Theodoret helped restore the place of dogmatic themes in Biblical exegesis of the psalms and prophets, while at the same time trying to preserve the historical and literary concerns of Theodore and Diodore. Ralph Hennings discusses rabbinical elements and anti-Jewish polemic in Jerome's Epistle 121, a letter written to a woman in Gaul with eleven questions about points of New Testament exegesis. Jerome gives her the interesting answer that she doesn't understand the Old Testament, hence cannot understand the New. Focusing on Jerome's comments on Col. 2.16-19 ("do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink, or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths"), Hennings argues persuasively that Jerome's polemic is best understood in the context of actual Jewish practice of his time. William Horbury's essay on demarcation and convergence in Jewish and Christian use of the Bible (does it make sense to say both communities were expounding the same book?) is intelligently argued and carefully researched. It is also a useful overview of present scholarly opinion on interaction between Jews and Christians on exegetical matters in this period. His conclusion, obvious but not for that reason insignificant, is that the differences between their respective exegeses lay not in conflict of exegetical methods but in the differences between Jewish and Christian customs and conviction. Wolfram Kinzig provides a general overview of the exegetical work of Asterius, who lived, it is conjectured, in the vicinity of Antioch, ca. 400, and who in some ways resembles John Chrysostom (e.g., in the interpretation of Psalm 5). What makes Asterius unique is that he does not use the "prosopological method," i.e., the traditional literary device of designating a particular psalm as spoken "in the person of" David or Christ. His approach is rhetorical, not beholden to any particular exegetical tradition, and Kinzig dubs him the "rhetor among interpreters of the Psalms.

https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_early_christian_studies/v003/3.2.wilken.pdf

Robert L. Wilken

Papers

In novissimis diebus: Biblical Promises, Jewish Hopes and Early Christian Exegesis

Christliche Exegese zwischen Nicaea und Chalcedon (review)

Chiliasmus und Antichrist-Mythos: Eine fruhchristliche Kontroverse um das Heilige Land (review)