Поэма «Героический триумф Христа» (Triumphus Christi heroicus)

Illness, Pain, and Health Care in Early Christianity

The rhetoric and the ritual practices associated with sacrifice filled the ancient world. They were potent tools that maintained a balance between the powers of heaven and earth. They were also impressive vehicles used politically for establishing and maintaining social control. In short, the idea of sacrifice was itself a form of social discourse - a rhetorical means that generated and constituted social identity through the exercise of power. In this work, George Heyman offers a fresh perspective on the similarities between pagan Roman and Christian thinking about the public role of sacrifice in the first two and a half centuries of the Christian era. He shows that both imperial Rome and early Christianity capitalized on the rhetoric of sacrifice as a discursive means to craft their location, their identity, and their social power within the cosmos. Early Christian authors, like those responsible for the New Testament and other Christian literature, adopted this sacrificial discourse in order first to understand the death of Jesus and then later to valorize the deaths of the early martyrs. Heyman shows that such a discourse, however, was not unique to early Christianity. The sacrificial practices associated with the Roman imperial cult also established civic and national pride throughout the Empire. Because of their refusal to participate in the normal Roman civic sacrifices, Christians were perceived as a threat to the complex and fragile balance of power that existed between the gods and the state. The earliest Christians responded by crafting the death of Jesus in sacrificial rhetoric and exalting the spectacle of the martyr in imitation of the biblical Christ. Even though they refused to participate in Roman sacrifices, Christianity created its own social order through a novel formulation of sacrificial discourse. While many scholars have researched the discourse of the Roman imperial cult, none has included a comprehensive analysis of the impact of this discourse on early Christianity. This book offers a synthesis of contemporary theory and historical data, a novel approach to the power of sacrifice and conflict between Rome and early Christianity.

The term “mysticism” is a modern scholarly category, not an ancient concept. Although the etymology of the term “mysticism” (from the Greek word myeo [“to be initiated”]) has roots in Greek mystery cults, ancient people did not use the term to describe their religious experiences. “Mysticism” is rather an etic term, a modern analytic tool for investigating a cluster of religious phenomena in ancient literature. In early Jewish and Christian literatures, mysticism refers to religious experiences which embody the act of revelation itself, an encounter with God. Since only written records are available to us, the modern reader has no direct access to ancient religious experiences. Nevertheless, the value of these mystical texts is that they contain diverse projections and reflections of ancient authors’ beliefs and of their desire to understand a reality beyond the human realm and to experience a direct connection with a transcendent God. This connection is accessed either through ecstatic experiences or particular praxes, often resulting in the transformation of the mystics and the attainment of esoteric knowledge. Scriptural interpretation plays a pivotal role in the development of early Jewish and Christian mystical texts. On the basis of foundational scriptures, especially Genesis 1–3; Exodus 24 and 33; Ezekiel 1, 8, 10, and 40–48; Isaiah 6; and Daniel 7, ancient Jewish and Christian writers competed to explain certain biblical motifs and reinterpret them within particular sociocultural situations. The common mystical themes shared in both early Jewish and Christian literature include visions of an anthropomorphic God, stories about heavenly ascent, revelations of hidden secrets, angelic adjurations and liturgies, and transformative divine encounters. The range of materials brought to bear on early Jewish and Christian mysticism include Jewish apocalyptic and pseudepigraphic texts, Hellenistic Jewish Texts, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the New Testament, early Christian literature, Gnostic Texts, and Hekhalot Literature. This chronological order does not indicate a linear progression toward a discrete tradition; rather, the varied application of similar themes and literary forms represents the diverse nature of Jewish and Christian mystical traditions.

Reviewed by: In the Eye of the Animal: Zoological Imagination in Ancient Christianity by Patricia Cox Miller Steven D. Smith Patricia Cox Miller. In the Eye of the Animal: Zoological Imagination in Ancient Christianity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. Pp. 271. $79.95. ISBN 978-0-8122-5035-0. Miller's book is a welcome contribution to the growing field of animal studies in antiquity. Over the space of an introduction, five chapters, and a brief afterword, Miller masterfully elucidates a tension in early Christian literature between an anthropocentric rhetoric that disparages non-human animal life and a persistent tendency in these same texts to think about animals "in terms of their emotional, ethical, psychological, and behavioral continuities with human beings" (4). Miller's brilliant close readings of patristic texts are thoroughly informed by a broad range of theoretical insights from leading thinkers in the field of animal studies. Miller appears equally at home with the works of Jean-Christophe Bailly, Jacques Derrida, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty as she is with the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke and Wallace Stevens, all of whom here enter into a rich dialogue with the likes of Origen, Ambrose, Augustine, Basil of Caesarea, and Gregory of Nyssa, among others. The Introduction lays out the problem of the conflicting attitudes towards human-animal relationality in early Christian thought and literature and nicely situates the book's theoretical orientation. Chapter 1, "Animals and Figuration," uses birds as a case study for the various roles (spiritual, ethical, Christological) that animals play in the zoological imagination of early Christian writers. Miller's discussion of the dove is especially interesting, because she shows how Christian writers de-eroticized and spiritualized what was traditionally a symbol of potent sexuality. Chapters 2 and 3 share the title "The Pensivity of Animals," with a focus on "zoomorphism" and "anthropomorphism," respectively. Chapter 4, "Wild Animals," engages with the figuration of animals in the literature of monastic asceticism; Miller's recurring interest in the subversive quality of animal fabulae works well with the book's overall thesis. Chapter 5, "Small Things," employs the insights of "new materialism" to focus on the "vibrant materiality" of worms, mosquitos, flies, and frogs within the early Christian zoological imagination. In the brief afterword, Miller brings together her various readings of the ambiguous attitudes towards non-human animals in patristic literature and synthesizes them under the sign of a Christian kosmos that harmonizes and seeks affinity between its dissimilar parts. The great value of Miller's work is its delineation of how early Christian literature provides evidence of a lively discourse that ran contrary to and even disrupted the conventional anthropocentric view of the kosmos, a view inherited from the Greco-Roman philosophical tradition. The passages that Miller collects and analyzes in this volume illustrate without a doubt that patristic writers celebrated human entanglement with non-human animal life, "even when those relations are paradoxically presented as both positive and negative in the same text" (192). But early Christian writers were not alone in antiquity in presenting such an ambiguous or paradoxical relationship with non-human animal life. Though she deftly traces continuities between the patristic texts and modern ideas about human-animal entanglement, Miller misses an important opportunity to engage more deeply with the inheritance of non-Christian writers from the Roman Imperial period who sometimes shared with their Christian counterparts a sympathetic fascination with the natural world that contrasted sharply with the [End Page 374] conventional disparagement of non-human animals as "irrational creatures" (ἄλογα ζῷα). Miller duly notes parallels and differences between passages from patristic texts and similar passages from non-Christian writers such as Pliny and Aelian. But if, as Miller concludes, early Christianity heralded "a rhetoric of cosmic resemblance, connection, harmony, and affinity that does not debase animals but includes them . . . in the material and spiritual enchainments that are the created order" (194), then the book would have benefitted from a more searching inquiry into how the Christian writers were responding to, modifying, or consonant with their non-Christian counterparts in the creation of this new rhetoric. Finally—and it may seem churlish to note this, but it must be said—a more careful editorial...

In most modern interpretations of Paul's writings and early Christian history, ethnicity is implicitly or explicitly defined as natural, inherent, immutable, or otherwise given. Paul's letters are often read to support the view that the identities of Christ-believers, in contrast to other Jews, transcend fixed, bodily characteristics we associate with ethnicity and race. After all, Paul's writings include such powerful passages as Gal 3:28: There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, male and female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus. This verse is frequently invoked to support reconstructions of an inclusive and egalitarian impulse in the Jesus movement. For example, Rosemary Radford Ruether echoes Gal 3:28 when she writes that class, ethnicity, and gender are . . . specifically singled out as the divisions overcome by redemption in Christ.1 Our goal is to challenge the conceptualizations of race and ethnicity in such interpretations of Paul and early Christianity. This task arises out of our own interest in the politics and ethics of interpretation, specifically from the view that all reading is ideological.2 As scholars culturally marked as white and Christian, we feel an obligation to struggle against both racist and anti-Jewish interpretive frameworks that have served to mask and sustain white Christian privilege.3 This twofold ethical commitment leads us to favor a view of race and ethnicity that is widespread today but not typically used to interpret Paul's writings or early Christian self-definition.4 Specifically, instead of presuming that ethnicity and race are fixed aspects of identity, we approach these concepts as dynamic social constructs.5 We see them as characterized by an interaction of appeals to fluidity and fixity that serve particular political and ideological interests. Using this dynamic approach allows us to transform the ways we have been trained to think about race and ethnicity and their saliency for interpreting Paul. Our proposed model encourages a rethinking of traditional interpretations in which the understanding of ethnicity or race as given operates as a foil for a non-ethnic, all-inclusive Christianity. In this binary understanding, earliest Christianity is conceived of as a universal, voluntary movement that specifically rejected the significance of ethnoracial identification for membership and thereby broke from its Jewish roots.6 Since the universalizing image of Christianity is emphatically portrayed as voluntary or achieved, the implied or explicit contrast is a form of community that is involuntary and particularboth features frequently attributed to ethnicity and race. This understanding of early Christianity has had paradoxical effects.7 On the positive side, if Paul is interpreted as having defined religiosity as distinct from ethnoracial identifications, then Christian practices and structures that contribute to racist and ethnocentric oppression can be viewed as contravening universalitic and egalitarian ideals inherent in earliest Christianity. This kind of universal and inclusive vision of early Christianity has enabled antiracist reforms and has been central to the biblical interpretations of many ethnic and racial minorities.8 When ethnoracial differences are understood as natural and are used to explain and justify social inequalities, then it can be liberative to argue that some of Paul's teachings-and subsequent Christian interpretations of them-offer an alternative vision for human community, in which such differences are transcended, made irrelevant, or obliterated. On the negative side, however, this understanding of Christianity can have both racist and anti-Jewish effects. The view of early Christian universalism as non-ethnic can lead us to ignore the racism of our own interpretive frameworks and overlook how early Christian discourse relies on ancient modes of othering. Gay Byron's recent study demonstrates the polemical use of color symbolism in early Christian writings, including polemics that uncomfortably anticipate modern forms of racism. …

This chapter seeks to answer the question is why certain early Christian writers do not enlist the stereotype of the dangerous female sorceress evident elsewhere, especially given the widespread rhetorical war on “heretical” movements, groups that supposedly favored women’s participation and leadership. Instead early Christian writings depict women consistently as victims of men’s magic rather than as magicians themselves. In an effort to understand this peculiarity of early Christian rhetoric, the chapter first provides a context for it by surveying depictions of magic from a variety of ancient non-Christian sources. Next, it examines depictions of magic from diverse early Christian sources, drawing attention to the pattern of male magician and female victim that emerges throughout. Finally, the chapter considers the ideological function of “magic” in early Christian rhetoric and explores possible reasons why Christian writers gendered magic the way they did.Keywords: early Christian writings; female sorceress; gender; magic

How did early Christians read the theophanies of the OT? In his rich and extensively researched volume (the first of a projected three-part project), Bucur seeks to answer this question by situating early Christian exegetical practice within a performative, liturgical context that discerned in OT theophanies the presence of Christ. He is dissatisfied with the nomenclature of “typology,” foreshadowing, prefiguring, or allegory, and even rewritten Bible—all of which fail to appreciate that early Christians regarded the real presence of the to-be-incarnate Son in the OT. Since exegesis occurred in or for liturgical settings, it is insufficient to identify this as a purely literary phenomenon. Thus, Bucur proposes the term christophanic exegesis as capturing early Christian assumptions better.Eight of the book’s ten chapters trace the reception history of a key theophanic text(s): Gen 18, Exod 3 and 33, Pss 98/99 and 131/132 (cf. Exod 24), Isa 6; Hab 3:2 (LXX); Dan 7; and 3 (there is no chapter devoted to Ezek 1, but discussion of the text does appear within other chapters). Each chapter follows a similar pattern. Bucur attends to features within the text itself that generated speculation within Jewish and Christian interpretive tradition. He traces Christian interpretations through the first millennium (and occasionally beyond) in a wide array of doctrinal, apologetical, and polemical texts; in liturgical materials (liturgy, hymnography, and sermons); and in iconography (several color images illustrating visual exegesis are included). He consistently finds evidence that Christians initially and most commonly regarded theophanies as direct encounters of Christ (this gave way to allegorical trinitarian interpretations only later). Consequently, the categories “typology” or “foreshadowing” often employed by scholars to account for these interpretations amounts to a scholarly “blind spot.”Bucur supplies his corrective to this blind spot in the first and final chapters of the book. He begins the book with an analysis of the encounter with Jesus on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24. The disciples failed to recognize Jesus because the glory of his resurrected state rendered him invisible to those who are not open to the presence of God. Thus, they needed their eyes opened to the reality of Christ present and in Scripture. For Bucur, this serves well as a paradigm for how Christians approached theophany passages. Exegesis (opening the Scriptures) occurred in a liturgical context (Jesus breaking bread) and with a transformational focus (our hearts burned within us). Scholars tracing Christian reception of theophanies must be sensitive to the aims and posture of Christian authors themselves. Insofar as language of “typology” or “allegory” overlooks the identification of Christ in and as the object of scriptural theophanies in Christian reception, and reduces it to “exegetical or theological convention” (p. 265), it is ultimately unsatisfactory. In the final chapter, Bucur turns to these terms directly, contending that they unhelpfully precondition scholars’ evaluations of Christian sources, not least in being defined in distinction from each other. Christ was not only found in representational form, or by way of analogy to biblical precursors, but encountered as an epiphany by Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, and others. Christian interpreters arrived at this through “performative exegesis” (a category borrowed from Geza Vermes). In a liturgical context, Christians desired to reenact the experience of figures in the text and so participate with them in that experience.There is much to commend in this volume. Bucur has canvased a dizzying range of sources, scholarly disciplines, and time periods in a way that few would dare to attempt. So far as I could tell from my own research areas, he consistently displays awareness of relevant scholarship and maintains a focused argument without minimizing distinctive elements. Moreover, his call to attend more appreciatively to the aims and context of early Christian biblical interpretation is a welcome one.The primary contribution of the book is to point to the intersection of the identification of Christ in scriptural theophanies with the hermeneutical context and aims of Christian interpreters. However, much of the book’s content is given over to establishing only that Christian interpreters identified Christ in scriptural theophanies. This slippage yields two interrelated weaknesses. First, after cataloging the reception of Christophanic exegesis, Bucur devotes surprisingly little space to reflecting on the relationship between this exegetical emphasis and the liturgical context in which it was nourished. Thus, there is not much demonstration in the book of the claim in the final chapter that all Christians were engaged in “performative exegesis.” What in the sources privileges this explanation over, say, a purely theological one, as may be advanced to account for Christological readings of non-theophanic passages? Second, Bucur’s arguments for the “earliest” Christian reception implies an interest in chronology; however, when a trinitarian interpretation of theophanies may be just as old, he pivots to pointing out that a Christophanic reading was the more “influential” tradition. Although Christophanic exegesis does appear to be generally earlier, this may strike some as inconsistent argumentation. Bucur might have drawn more attention to the performative, liturgical contexts of these interpretations and less to establishing simply whom Christians identified as appearing in scriptural theophanies. These criticisms aside, the book is a rich catalog that advances an important and welcome invitation to reconsider how early Christians read Scripture.

Reviewed by: Slandering the Jew: Sexuality and Difference in Early Christian Texts by Susanna Drake Carly Daniel-Hughes Susanna Drake Slandering the Jew: Sexuality and Difference in Early Christian Texts Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013 Pp. 173. $55.00 Slandering the Jew traces the production of a stereotype: the sexually degenerate Jew. In this revised dissertation, Drake analyzes representations of Jews as sexually perverse, effeminate, and dangerously sexually aggressive as a “topos” that featured in Christian writings from the first to the fifth centuries (2). A lucid and sophisticated study, this work builds on recent discussions of how early Christian discourses of alterity and deployments of sexual slander contributed to Christian self-definition. Drake follows other late antique historians (notably Daniel Boyarin and Virginia Burrus) in applying post-colonial theories—in this case hybridity and stereotype—to explore Christian representations of Jews as an assertion and repetition of difference precisely where “border-lines” were least secure. Drake argues that sexual slander, with its imagery of “permeability, penetration, and adulteration” (54), enabled Christians to figure Jews as Other, thereby shoring up Christian subjectivity. Perhaps her most important contribution is establishing how this discursive production intensified when Christian claims to Jewish scriptures coupled with their assertions of ascetic identity. Chapter One begins with Paul, who contributes indirectly to the stereotype that she outlines. It is not the sexual predilections of Jews, but of Gentiles, that he uses to enjoin sexual purity on his Christ-believing audience. Informed by New Paul scholars like Stanley Stowers and Caroline Johnson Hodge, Drake reads Paul as utilizing Jewish stereotypes about licentious nations, in combination with Greek and Roman moral discourse, to construct his virtuous community. Later Christian writers, she argues, reworked Paul’s rhetoric of sexual in combination with his dichotomy between flesh and spirit to support their supersessionist claims to Jewish scripture (83). Drake completes the chapter with a survey of second-century materials to demonstrate that, while attested (e.g., the Dialogue with Trypho), sexual slander was neither inspired by Paul nor a regular feature of anti-Jewish polemic in this period. Origen of Alexandria—the subject of Chapter Two—did utilize Paul’s rhetoric, however, to advance the image of a sexually deviant and hermeneutically challenged Jew. The “Jew” provided a foil by which the church father authenticated both the allegorical reading practices of early Christians and their ascetic identity. Helpfully, Drake does not attempt to reconcile Origen’s characterization of Jewish interpretation with his congenial interactions with Jewish scholars themselves, as others have done. Guided by post-colonial approaches, she argues that the “Jew” in Origen’s texts occupies an ambivalent place, at once “desired and disavowed” (8; 57). For Origen, the “Jew” indicated the constant presence of the literal (and with it the carnal) that threatened to undermine the ascetic Christian exegete. Chapter Three treats early Christian interpretations of the book of Susanna as it appears in the Greek version by Theodotion. Drake maps a hermeneutical trajectory of early Christian readings that begins with Hippolytus’s Commentary on [End Page 589] Daniel, includes visual representations of the narrative from the Catacombs, and focuses primarily on Origen’s Letter to Africanus. In these readings the lascivious elders commonly stand in for the Jews, and Susanna, the chaste maiden, for the Christians. Drake argues that early Christians seized upon gendered implications of this story to establish Jewish-Christian difference. For Origen, the narrative offered another opportunity to fuse chaste sexuality with allegorical interpretation, and perverse sexuality with literal reading. This study closes with an analysis of John Chrysostom’s eight homilies Adversus Iudaeos, with their imagery of Jews as pseudo-men and prostitutes, and of Judaizers (those who attend synagogues and observe Jewish festivities) as predators who easily beguile Christian women. Relying on Homi Bhabha’s conception of stereotype, Drake argues that Chrysostom’s construction of the licentious Jew and Judaizers represents an “anxious” repetition of difference (97), revealing (and perhaps also supporting) the instability of Jewish and Christian identities and communal borders in late antique Antioch. Drake’s conclusion asks us to consider Christian violence enacted on Jews in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries as a “material effect” of...

Detailed studies of the influence of the deutero-canonical books on the New Testament and early Christian literature are relatively rare. Direct citations from the Apocrypha, that can be detected in the New Testament, has led to the view in some quarters that they have little value for the student of early Christianity. This chapter seeks to re-examine this perception by assessing the reception in selected early christian writings of one of these deutero-canonical texts, the Book of Tobit. It explores if the first Christians read Tobit, the theological and narrative themes which are present in both Tobit and Luke-Acts, and the reception of Tobit in second century Christian Literature. It is clear that Book of Tobit must be included in any consideration of the trajectory of development from the Hebrew Bible to early Christian beliefs about angels, prayer, charity, and the inclusion of gentiles in God's salvation. Keywords:Book of Tobit; Christian literature; early Christianity; Hebrew Bible; Luke-Acts; New Testament

Where did the idea of sin arise from? In this meticulously argued book, David Konstan takes a close look at classical Greek and Roman texts, as well as the Bible and early Judaic and Christian writings, and argues that the fundamental idea of ‘sin’ arose in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, although this original meaning was obscured in later Jewish and Christian interpretations.

The most cursory reading of early Christian literature demonstrates that the representation of women presented major difficulties. They attracted attention from Christian writers — almost exclusively male — both as members of the Christian community and as the subject of discourse. Much of the latter was negative in character, expressing suspicion of the female and denying women a place equal to that of men in the Christian dispensation. Yet it coexisted not merely with a glorification of female virgins in general, and especially of the virgin mother of Jesus, but also with the description of the relation of the soul and God in explicitly sexual and bridal imagery. This chapter explores some of these tensions within the context of early Christian texts and asks what they mean in relation to early Christian attitudes to women. I use the term 'early Christian' rather broadly, since I shall be concerned not primarily with the New Testament period but with the centuries during which Christianity became the majority religion in the empire, and especially the period from Constantine (AD 306–37) to the sixth century.

300Reviews The bilingual dictionary receives cursory treatment in this book even though the writing of bilingual dictionaries usually preceded the writing of monolingual dictionaries in the early history of lexicography. Dozens and dozens of problems unique to bilingual lexicography are neglected or ignored in this book even though the bilingual dictionary is an important tool for international understanding by virtue of its contribution to translation and interpretation. The title of the book might well have included the word "monolingual" in order to read Dictionaries. The Art and Craft of Monolingual Lexicography. Nevertheless, Landau has created what may be the best book ever published for the teaching of lexicography. It has just the right mix of simplicity and complexity. The author combines accessibility for the novice with professional considerations of interest to those already in the discipline. Roger J. Steiner University of Delaware * * * A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. Arndt, William F., F. Wilbur Gingrich, and Frederick W. Danker. 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. xl + 900 pp. $42.50. Shorter Lexicon of the Greek New Testament. Gingrich, F. Wilbur, and Frederick W. Danker. 2d ed. Chicago: U Chicago P, 1983. xii + 221 pp. $20.00. Why make a dictionary for the Greek words of the New Testament and other early Christian writings? Why not use existing dictionaries of ancient Greek? One reason is that including only the words of these Christian writings makes possible more thorough treatment than could be given in the same space to a more comprehensive vocabulary. But a more important reason is that the Greek of these writings is not classical Greek. At least as long ago as the seventeenth century, Reviews301 scholars noticed the differences between the Greek of the New Testament books and that of most literary writings of the first century, which used much the same Greek as the writings of the Classical period several hundred years earlier. Some ascribed the differences to the influence of Hebrew on Christian writers; others contended that it was a purer Greek, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It was not until the 1890s, when non-literary writings in first-century Greek were discovered, particularly in Egyptian papyrus records and letters, that the Greek of the New Testament was recognized for what it was—the everyday Greek of the Hellenistic world of the first century A.D., known as koine, "the common language." As the English of today differs from that of Chaucer, Koine differed from Classical Greek in vocabulary, word forms, and grammar. To help read Koine Greek, grammars and dictionaries have been made, though none yet covers the whole corpus of writings in Koine. The Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (hereafter GELNT) is the latest product of a long line of philological dictionaries developed by New Testament scholars and their critics. The first dictionary of New Testament Greek was a Greek-Latin glossary published in 1 522. New Testament words were first explained in English in 1639. The present work is a lineal descendent of a Greek-German dictionary published in 1910. This was revised, first in 1928, by another German scholar, Walter Bauer, and his editions with their thorough scholarship came to dominate the field. The first edition of GELNT (1957) was a translation and adaptation of Bauer's fourth edition (1952). The present work is augmented in part from Bauer's fifth edition (1958). It is the product of more than fifteen years of revision by W. Wilbur Gingrich, professor emeritus of Greek and religion at Albright College, Reading, Pennsylvania, and by Frederick W. Danker, a professor in the Department of Exegetical Theology, New Testament, at Christ Seminary-Seminex and at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. How well does GELNT meet the needs and expectations of its prospective users? As a measure of this, the reviewer will use the findings of a survey that he conducted in 1967 to learn what users of New Testament lexicons wanted. 302Reviews Does the dictionary cover all the texts being studied by scholars of the New Testament and Early Christian writings? All respondents to the survey, of...

Reviewed by: Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts Sheila Elizabeth McGinn Harry Y. Gamble. Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Pp. xii + 337. $32.50. Harry Gamble fills a gap in our knowledge of the early Christian movement by exploring the extent to which early Christians were capable of writing and reading. Beginning by debunking the form critical distinction between Kleinliteratur and Hochliteratur, with the concomitant “romantic conception of the folk community” of early Christianity (20), G. illuminates the complexities of determining literacy levels in a multilingual society. Uncovering the sociological assumptions behind prior discussions, G. shows that the literary culture of the early church involved a rich collection of texts directed at a wide spectrum of socioeconomic classes. The early Christian use and interpretation of Jewish scriptures demonstrates “a scholastic concern and activity . . . from the begin- ning . . .” (24f). Gamble’s discussion of the Christian use of the codex is a fascinating example of historical reconstruction based on close examination of the evidence. Through a painstaking analysis (in chpt. 2), he makes a strong case for the seven-churches edition of Pauline letters being the incentive for the disproportionate use of the codex form by early Christians. Eventually, the wide currency of Christian books [End Page 149] shifted the traditional preference from inscribing literary works on scrolls to codices. In his discussion of how ancient books were transmitted and “published,” G. shows that Christian writings were disseminated very rapidly and over a wide geographical area. This does not presuppose a Christian “publishing house” in the contemporary sense of the term; the closest thing to this seems to be Origen’s private scriptorium in Alexandria. But there exists plenty of evidence that churches shared copies of their documents, and that collections of Christian writings were in circulation at very early dates (e.g., the collection of the letters of Dionysius of Corinth already during his own lifetime, ca. 170). The recurrent concern that texts might be adulterated (e.g., Rev. 22:18–19; cf. Eus. HE 5.20.2) testifies to a scholarly interest on the part of Christian writers. This interest in studying texts is confirmed by the proliferation not only of copies of early Christian writings texts but also their vernacular translations for use in the more remote sectors of the provinces. The practice of keeping stenographic records of church councils reinforced a strong Christian orientation toward the written word. Christians’ reliance on sacred scriptural texts was the most significant factor in giving Christianity the external appearance rather of a philosophical movement than a religious cult. The broad distribution of Christian books at an early date and their collection by even small local communities naturally led to the establishment of larger libraries in Christian centers such as Alexandria, Caesarea, and Rome. Even smaller churches had sizeable congregational libraries by the beginning of the fourth century. Diocletian’s edict ordering the confiscation and burning of Christian books attests that they were seen as vital to the continued viability of Christian communities. In his extensive discussion of libraries in antiquity, G. shows that early Christian libraries were relatively unique in their type of holdings. These church libraries “consisted primarily of religious texts used for religious purposes, a phenomenon closely paralleled in the Greco-Roman world only by Judaism.” (196f) Yet, even from the late second century, Christian libraries included texts from classical pagan authors, and became the medium through which these classical texts were collected and preserved (202). In his final chapter on “the Uses of Early Christian Books,” G. covers the gamut from public reading of the texts in communal worship, to private reading, to bibliomancy and other magical uses. His surprisingly unsupported claim that the public reading of texts like acta martyrii “was never confused with the reading of scripture” (218) is the exception that proves the rule to his careful and sequential analysis of the evidence. True, some may rather employ a “hermeneutic of suspicion” in analyzing the evidence of private ownership and reading of Christian texts, seeing in it a stronger aristocratic bias than does G. (e...

Positive psychology offers two visions for human life: a hedonic path that focuses on the seeking of pleasure and happiness, and a eudaimonic journey that involves the development of virtues conducive to a good life. Early Christian thought offers a sophisticated critique of the strengths and weaknesses of these visions because it responded to similar ideas that were present in classical philosophical systems like Stoicism. Early Christian writers rejected hedonic understandings of human flourishing (as did most people in the classical period) and approved of a focus on virtue as necessary to a good life. They also would join with positive psychologists and criticize a narrowly medical model view of mental health. However, there are also important differences between early Christian thought and eudaimonic positive psychology. Early Christian authors had a different understanding of virtue as holistic and relational, in contrast to the more fragmented and individualistic picture of virtue and health found in most positive psychology research. These Christian writers also had a different view of suffering as having positive potential or a ‘medicinal’ quality, while positive psychology writers generally see suffering as something undesirable that needs to be eliminated. Overall, some aspects of positive psychology are not incompatible with the vision of life, struggle, and helping that was developed by early Christian writers. However, the differences are probably more notable than the similarities.

A Seat at the Table