Decoding Early Christianity

Reviewed by: Paul, the Pastoral Epistles, and the Early Church Jerry L. Sumney Paul, the Pastoral Epistles, and the Early Church. By James W. Aageson. [Library of Pauline Studies.] (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers. 2008. Pp. xvi, 235. $24.95 paperback. ISBN 978-1-598-56041-1.) James Aageson's engaging book examines the ways various groups within the early Church developed and utilized differing images of Paul. Rejecting the notion that only Gnostics and others on the fringe of the developing Church accepted Paul as an authority, he shows how various early Christian writers used both their image of Paul and Paul's letters as sources for their theological positions. Aageson's method is to compare the patterns and structures of the [End Page 761] thought and theology of individual writings, rather than identifying features of the tradition and comparing each text to that synthetic structure. Using this method, Aageson concludes that 2 Timothy was either written by someone other than the author of 1Timothy and Titus or that the situation it addressed was so different that it required a significant reorientation of thought. He also finds diverse patterns of thought in the manners in which Ignatius, Polycarp, Clement of Rome, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen develop their images of Paul and use Pauline texts. Aageson's analysis of how the Acts of Paul constructs and uses its image of Paul undermines the notion that this work simply opposes the line of tradition the Pastorals represent by showing that in some ways, it stands close to the image of Paul in 2 Timothy, while in others, it opposes the outlook of 1Timothy and Titus. Aageson demonstrates clearly that the church fathers did not belong to a monolithic tradition of developing orthodoxy that demanded conformity; rather, they drew on a range of developing trends, trends that sometimes stood in tension with one another. Christians such as those who wrote the Acts of Paul drew on some of the same trajectories, even as they interpreted them differently and used their image of Paul to advocate alternative views. Still, most recognized Paul as an authority and by the third century drew on his writings as authoritative. The complexity Aageson uncovers shows that no simple model of conflict or separate trajectories sufficiently accounts for what we find in early Christian writings. Neither can models that assume movement from orthodoxy to heresy, or the reverse, explain the differences and commonalities in the theological structures and thought of these works. Aageson suggests a "multiplex"approach that recognizes commonality and tension within a shared tradition that contains competing elements and makes competing uses of common materials. Readers will disagree with some specifics of Aageson's interpretation of individual texts, but such disagreements do not undermine his comparisons or his method of comparison. One might also ask for a larger and more diverse comparative base, but the series in which the book appears limits its length, as well as its explicit exchange with the scholarly literature on the works it does treat. These quibbles do not, however, significantly weaken Aageson's convincing case for acknowledging the complexity of the development of the Church's theology, ecclesiology, and ethic through the third century and the resultant need to move beyond the oppositional models that many still use to interpret the theological differences present in the early Church. [End Page 762] Jerry L. Sumney Lexington Theological Seminary Copyright © 2008 The Catholic University of America Press

Illness, Pain, and Health Care in Early Christianity

This fascinating and lively book provides the first comprehensive discussion of the production, circulation, and use of books in early Christianity. It explores the extent of literacy in early Christian communities; the relation in the early church between oral tradition and written materials; the physical form of early Christian books; how books were produced, transcribed, published, duplicated, and disseminated; how Christian libraries were formed; who read the books, in what circumstances, and to what purposes. Harry Y. Gamble interweaves practical and technological dimensions of the production and use of early Christian books with the social and institutional history of the period. Drawing on evidence from papyrology, codicology, textual criticism, and early church history, as well as on knowledge about the bibliographical practices that characterized Jewish and Greco-Roman culture, he offers a new perspective on the role of books in the first five centuries of the early church.

This essay seeks to examine the evidence from early Christianity (the New Testament and the church fathers) not only for the transmission of the Twelve (the Minor Prophets) as a single work but also for the reading of the Twelve as a unified composition. It identifies several examples of exegesis shaped by the reading of the Twelve as a single composition, showing that early Christian writers were aware of the larger context of the Book of the Twelve from which citations are made. Discussion focuses on three areas: citation formulae, text and canon (including manuscripts and canonical lists, and the early history of interpretation.

Reviewed by: Medicine, Society, and Faith in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds Faye Getz Darrel W. Amundsen. Medicine, Society, and Faith in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. xv + 391 pp. $39.95. For more than two decades, Darrel Amundsen has produced some of the most interesting and useful publications on ancient and medieval medicine available today. Medieval canon law, the writings of the early Christian fathers, late Roman medical legislation—these topics and more form the subjects of articles and contributions to collected volumes that no one interested in early medicine should be without. Unfortunately, these valuable pieces have been scattered over the years through numerous sources, because Amundsen, like many classicists, has never written a book. Johns Hopkins’s handsome production of many of this writer’s essays is especially welcome. [End Page 335] Amundsen is at his best when he is examining (and exploding) the sorts of hackneyed notions about early medicine that are repeated so often that they are assumed to be true. “Medieval Canon Law on Medical and Surgical Practice by the Clergy” (Bull. Hist. Med., 1978) dismisses the canard that clerics were forbidden to use the knife. The actual situation was not as simple as historians previously had assumed, and Amundsen’s scholarship into this subject is truly groundbreaking. Another essay of major significance is “Casuistry and Professional Obligations: The Regulation of Physicians by the Court of Conscience in the Late Middle Ages” (Trans. Stud. Coll. Phys. Phila., 1981), which remains one of the most important discussions of the unique demands placed on the medieval physician ever published. Also very valuable, especially to the teacher, are survey pieces on medicine and the early church. “The Medieval Catholic Tradition,” taken from a collected volume edited by Ronald Numbers along with Amundsen (Caring and Curing: Health and Medicine in the Western Religious Traditions, 1986), brings together themes difficult to find discussed elsewhere. An equally useful summary is “Medicine and Faith in Early Christianity” (Bull. Hist. Med., 1982), a meticulous examination of attitudes toward healing by early Christian writers. Amundsen’s more recent work deals by and large with bioethics, a philosophical and legal discipline whose historical roots extend back to the 1960s. The writer tells us in his preface that an anonymous referee remarked that “care must be taken when presenting historical essays which describe issues that are of current concern” (p. x). Suicide, abortion, infanticide, and topics of sin and disease indeed are with us still, and Amundsen is bold to deal with these problematic issues. Writers like Peter Brown, Caroline Bynum, and Joan Cadden offer a nuanced and contextualized approach to early Christians’ bodily concerns. By contrast, there is a distinct lack of historical context for many of Amundsen’s conclusions that is all too apparent in the book’s introduction. This schematic finality may appeal to the philosophically and legalistically minded, but the historian, like the anonymous referee, must remain cautious. Faye Getz Cooksville, Wisconsin Copyright © 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Reviewed by: The Silencing of Slaves in Early Jewish and Christian Texts by Ronald Charles Mary Ann Beavis ronald charles, The Silencing of Slaves in Early Jewish and Christian Texts (Routledge Studies in the Early Christian World; London: Routledge, 2020). Pp. xvii + 272. $124. This book sets out to examine a wide range of early Jewish and Christian texts in which enslaved figures are represented and, according to Charles, rendered silent, by their authors, “who had no intrinsic interest in slaves . . . used, abused, and silenced their enslaved characters to articulate their own social, political, and theological visions” (p. 1) The Jewish texts considered all belong to the so-called Pseudepigrapha: Sibylline Oracles, Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Testament of Job, Letter of Aristeas, Jubilees, Joseph and Aseneth, and Wisdom writings that include Ahiqar, 3 Maccabees, Pseudo-Phocylides, and the Sentences of the Syriac Menander. The early Christian writings are both canonical and extra-canonical: 1 Corinthians, Philippians, Philemon, the Gospels, Acts, the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas, Acta Perpetuae, Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne, and the Acts of Andrew. C. approaches these texts through the lenses of Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing [End Page 330] the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon, 1995), and Subaltern studies, to “uncover small tales constructed around slaves, or better, to consider how particular narratives could be understood differently if the reader pays attention to enslaved persons in their characterizations in the texts” (p. 12). Not surprisingly in a project that covers so much ground, the results are uneven. In my reading, several “small tales” stand out: the slave woman in the Testament of Job who gives her own loaf of bread to Satan, disguised as a stranger, when Job snubs him (7:5). Admittedly, the woman is rebuked for her kind act, but by Satan, hardly a reliable character. C. pays special attention to the slave characters—an unnamed slave girl and Malchus, the male slave of the high priest named in John 18:10—who figure in the scene of the denial of Peter (Mark 14:66–68; Matt 26:69–71; Luke 22:56; John 18:15–26), meticulously detailing the unique features of each narrative. C. highlights both the devalued figure of Rhoda (Acts 12:1–16) and the unnamed fortune-teller of Acts 16:16–18, characters often neglected by interpreters. Although all act/speak truthfully (and, in the case of the slave woman in Testament of Job, righteously), their words are dismissed, like the true words of the women disciples in Luke 24:11. Similarly, the slave Felicitas is sidelined by the freeborn Perpetua in the Passion, and both women are silenced in the Acts. In the Acts of Andrew, the body of the slave woman Euclia is used, abused, and discarded to preserve the chastity of her Christian mistress Maximilla: “The body of the elite woman is protected, while the body of the slave is exploited” (p. 196). Several of C.’s interpretive moves are less compelling. Some of the references to slaves in the pseudepigraphal writings he includes are slight or nonexplicit, as with the figure of Hermon in 3 Maccabees 5, who “is not explicitly called one [a slave] in the text” (p. 47). The observation that “he is an administrative person, who is in danger of being killed because of the king’s caprice” (p. 47), suffices to explain his vulnerability. C. adopts the traditional, but highly contested, hypothesis that Onesimus (Phlm 10) was a runaway slave, although why a fugitive slave would seek refuge by visiting a Roman prisoner is not explained. C. assumes that Epaphroditus (Phil 2:19, 25; 4:18) was a freedman (and thus outside the scope of the study), although he could just as likely have been enslaved or freeborn. To be sure, Eusebius’s construction of Blandina as a Christ figure whose death has cosmic significance (p. 182) subordinates her to a “highly theologized salvation history” (p. 183), but this is no different from his portrayal of other martyrs, enslaved or free. Charles’s study features a conclusion that thoroughly summarizes his analysis, chapter by chapter, seemingly in response to the critiques of...

Metaphor of Slavery in Writings of Early Church: From New Testament to Beginning of Fifth Century, by I. A. H. Combes. JSNTSup 156. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998. Pp. 210. $57.50. Commenting on Rom 1:1, Origen speculates on reasons behind Paul's selfdescription as slave in light of his insistence elsewhere that those who live in Christ have received not spirit of slavery but rather spirit of adoption as sons. problem is one of logical inconsistency, and Origen explores number of possibilities for reconciling disparity. His ingenious solution is to infer that Paul understands marriage as form of slavery, and that Rom 1:1 is evidence that when Paul received his call he had wife. This solution has not been influential in history of interpretation. Nonetheless, Origen identifies conundrum with important theological ramifications: seemingly incommensurable uses of tropes of slavery in NT and other early Christian writings. Metaphor of Slavery in Writings of Early Church, revision of 1991 University of Cambridge dissertation, offers thorough introduction to complexities that inform early Christian reliance on metaphors rooted in discourse of slavery. Combes approaches Christian appropriation of language of slavery as case study in religious metaphor. Problems arise when those who deploy religious metaphors confuse them with literal descriptions of world: The area in which this problem probably causes most consternation today is that of use of 'social relationship' terms in speaking of (p. 11). Can society that has rejected monarchy still rely on metaphor of God as King, for example? Combes sets out to examine early Christian permutations of metaphor of human being as slave of God or Christ. Combes concedes that social structure of slavery in ancient influences development of Christian metaphors of slavery, but argues that the theology which makes sense of use of such metaphor creates its own dynamic which results in this metaphor unfolding at completely different pace from any discernible change in relevant culture (p. 15). More strongly, Combes suggests that results of case study supply a reason for disentanglement of religious language from contemporary society, freeing it from need to seek social relevance and (p. 171). first chapter offers an overview of slavery in antiquity, drawing on recent scholarship to provide background for argument of volume. As Combes rightly acknowledges, the ancient world is not itself coherent entity for study, but consists of number of societies geographically and chronologically distant from one another. In light of this acknowledgment, emphasis on classical Greece in section on GrecoRoman seems peculiar. section on slavery in ancient Near East draws largely on OT, but relevance of OT representation of slavery for understanding practice and ideology of slavery in early Christian era is not articulated. More helpful is section offering brief survey of metaphoric uses of slavery in ancient world. Combes also devotes chapter to early church's treatment and perception of actual (rather than metaphoric) slaves. earliest sources take for granted that gospel reaches out to slave as to free. Later sources, however, document some of obstacles that slaves encountered in their pursuit of Christian life, including restrictions on baptism or ordination of slaves in absence of owner's consent. heart of Combes's argument lies in chapters on metaphors of slavery in NT and patristic writings. …

The study of early Christianity overlaps with closely related fields of study such as New Testament canonical literature, Historical Jesus studies, and early Christian history (or church history/patristics). This survey will concentrate on the broader conceptualization of the formation of the religio-historical phenomenon named Christianity, the religio-historical contexts that formed the matrix for the emergence of Christianity, Christianity as the taxonomizer for a number of cultural practices or as a subset of the broader Greco-Roman Mediterranean culture including its cultural production, and the history of scholarship on early Christianity. Broadly speaking, early Christianity as a historical phenomenon is framed by two “events,” namely, at the one end, the career of Jesus of Nazareth and the subsequent formation of Jesus- or Christ-groups in the 1st century ce, and at the other end, in the 4th century ce, the Constantinian revolution which signaled the Christianization of the Roman Empire (or which goes by the shorthand of “Nicaea”—after the Council called in 325 ce). These are not hard and fast boundaries as there are good reasons to include subsequent developments beyond the Council of Chalcedon, into the 6th century ce, in the purview. Beyond that, the study of early Christianity also encompasses the newly emerged field of “Christian origins,” by which is specifically referred to the interdisciplinary, non-theological theorizing of the origins of Christianity. All in all, this bibliographic overview assumes, in line with new directions in scholarship on early Christianity, that the study of early Christianity is best approached from the perspective of the newly defined study field of early Christian studies. The difference between early Christian studies and disciplines such as early church history and patristics is constituted by the fact that early Christian studies is informed by theories of history and of religion and is practiced as a kind of cultural studies.

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: Repetition in Hebrews: Plurality and Singularity in the Letter to the Hebrews, Its Ancient Contexts, and the Early Church by Nicholas J. Moore Scott D. Mackie nicholas j. moore, Repetition in Hebrews: Plurality and Singularity in the Letter to the Hebrews, Its Ancient Contexts, and the Early Church (WUNT 2/388; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015). Pp. xv + 276. Paper €94. Repetition and singularity are prominent themes in the Letter to the Hebrews and are most conspicuous in the author's comparison of the Levitical sacrifices with Jesus's selfoffering. Levitical sacrifices are "continuously offered, year after year," thereby providing a "reminder of sins, year after year" (10:1-3), while Jesus's self-offering is singular and conclusive, "once for all" and "for all time" (10:10-14). This revision of a dissertation supervised by Markus Bockmuehl at the University of Oxford (2014) analyzes occurrences of repetition and singularity in conjunction with three main topics—revelation, repentance, and ritual—and challenges the common scholarly appraisal of repetition as unequivocally negative. Moore provides a valuable survey of these themes as they appear in the Hebrew Bible (in the prophetic critique of sacrifice), Second Temple literature (Jubilees, Dead Sea Scrolls, [End Page 713] Philo), Plutarch, and early Christianity. Hebrews' apparent exclusion of post-baptismal repentance exercised massive influence on the theology of many early Church Fathers, and M. offers a fine discussion of such issues as repeating repentance, baptism, and sacrifices in Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Epiphanius, and Chrysostom, among others. Turning to Hebrews, M. first analyzes the role of repetition in relation to revelation. He convincingly demonstrates that the repeated and pluriform (πολυμερῶς καὶ πολυτρόπως) speech of God "through the prophets" in Heb 1:1 is not negatively contrasted with the eschatological divine speech mediated by Jesus; rather, this text attests to their continuity, as the author's high regard for the multifaceted divine revelation "to the fathers" is evidenced throughout by the author's dependence on the LXX. In fact, "the very plurality of this speech is fundamental to enabling the audience to comprehend the full magnitude of the Son's character and achievements" (p. 105). Moreover, the two revelatory addresses stand in a dialogical relationship, creating a "hermeneutical circle whereby the OT explains the Christ event, and the Christ event in turn leads to a new understanding of scripture" (p. 107). Though many have interpreted Hebrews' harsh warnings concerning the unrepeatability of repentance as rhetorical hyperbole, an impassioned and exaggerated piece of exhortation, M. disagrees, contending that "Hebrews' extends the once-for-all character of Jesus' death to the appropriation of the benefits of his atoning act—Christian conversion or repentance—thus rendering it unrepeatable" (p. 116). An excellent discussion of repentance in Jewish/Christian and philosophic sources yields the conclusion that μετάνοια in Hebrews solely "indicates a change of mind at the very highest level," namely, "an initial and absolute repentance or even conversion experience" (p. 123). The decisive factor, however, is not the quality or degree of human remorse but a divine "renewal" that enables true repentance, as evidenced by Heb 6:6 and the bleak portrayal of Esau in 12:16-17 (pp. 124-27). The sin and apostasy that place a Christian in this irrevocable position probably involve a "persistent, drawn out … drifting away," which eventually leads to a definitive "single act of irremediable turning away"; though Hebrews is "deliberately vague about what might constitute such apostasy" (pp. 129-30). Furthermore, the "re-crucifying" (ἀνασταυρόω, 6:6) of Jesus would involve an attempt to repeat and double the shame Jesus suffered at the cross, and this represents the only truly negative instance of repetition in Hebrews (pp. 138, 211). M.'s discussion is problematized by the fact that Hebrews never directly contrasts Jesus's "once for all" sacrifice with "re-repentance," though he notes this difficulty and attempts to address it (p. 141). The final topic, sacrifice and ritual, looks closely at what is perhaps Hebrews' most important comparative critique of the tabernacle cult, in 10:1-18. M. contends that the "repetition and plurality" found in this section's portrayal of the Levitical cult carry "predominantly negative associations," yet "such repetition is an indication rather than...

Reviewed by: Anti-Judaism and Early Christian Identity: A Critique of the Scholarly Consensus Lawrence E. Frizzell Miriam S. Taylor. Anti-Judaism and Early Christian Identity: A Critique of the Scholarly Consensus. Studia Post-Biblica, 46. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995. Pp. ix + 207. $56.00. This is a “slightly edited version” of a 1991 D. Phil. thesis at Oxford supervised by Dr. Martin Goodman. Taylor “examines the consensus view of the patterns of Jewish-Christian interaction in the early patristic period, and the hypotheses that this view has generated about the sources of and motivations for anti-Judaism within the Church” (1). Reacting to Adolf von Harnack’s interpretation of Christian growth and expansion, Marcel Simon’s Verus Israel (cited only in the 1986 English translation) became the basis for the consensus of scholars, the “conflict theory of Jewish-Christian relations . . . that the vitality of the synagogue resulted in a collision with the church” (2). In an effort to overcome anti-Jewish biases, “scholars have theorized about the religious, social, political and environmental dimensions of what is conceived of as a complex phenomenon rooted in conflict” (3). Taylor makes a sweeping critique of the scholarship on this topic and rejects the approaches which seek to pinpoint the pressures of living Judaism on the Church. Was there rivalry for converts between Church and Synagogue? Jews seem not to have had missionary goals, but this did not make Judaism less vital or dynamic. Success or failure of Judaism was not seen to be dependent on its ability to win over the gentile world (20). Taylor finds that scholars read back from the post-Constantinian era in their effort to understand [End Page 289] conflicts of the earlier period. Rather, Ignatius of Antioch and the Didascalia are attacking “Judaizers” within the Church. Taylor evaluates efforts “to situate church and synagogue within Roman society” (48). Three hypotheses are criticized: 1.) Christians had an inferiority complex in the face of the powerful and secure synagogue. 2.) Their strategy was to take for themselves some of the political privileges enjoyed by the synagogue. 3.) Jews were hostile to the growing Church. In response to # 1 and 2, Taylor uses Melito of Sardis to show the limitations of socio-political speculation about the second century situation. “There is no basis for the widely held claim that second and third century Jews were involved in the persecution of their Christian contemporaries” (114). Were anti-Jewish ideas in the early Church taken from pagans or adopted from traditions of biblical interpretation? Taylor contends that Christian “objections to Judaism clearly have their source in a peculiarly Christian strain of thought and sentiment” (121). Three main themes can be found in the anti-Jewish writings of the early Fathers: a.) Christ is the promised Messiah, foretold by the prophets. b.) Ritual aspects of the Mosaic Law are abrogated in favor of a new spiritual law. c.) Salvation history is understood in terms of judgment and promise, interpreted in terms of response to Christ; election of the gentile Church contrasts with God’s rejection of sinful Jews (122). Rather than positing conflict as the basis for the persistence of these themes over several generations, Taylor sees “symbolic anti-Judaism,” rooted in theological ideas, to provide the answer. Taylor next presents theological dimensions of anti-Judaism in early Christian writers, especially Justin, Tertullian, Origen and Lactantius. A long discussion shows the inadequacy of social and cultural analysis by scholars promoting the “conflict theory.” For Church Fathers, Judaism “occupied the negative side of the dialectical dualism that was so intrinsic to Christian thought. It represented that aspect of scriptural history and tradition which the Church had abandoned or rejected or disowned. It was in the real sense of the word, a theological foil for Christian self-affirmation” (166). The rejection by Marcion of all “Jewish symbols” is refuted by orthodox theologians who said that “the fault lay not with the symbols but with the people” (171). Taylor proposes that “the anti-Judaic corpus became a source of tradition in its own right used in the illustration of intra-mural doctrinal and pastoral issues” (169). Taylor finishes by reviewing the inadequacies of the “conflict...

The Church Fathers did not neglect to give attention to widows and articulate what they believed was their role in the Church. Modern studies are quite abundant focusing mainly from the New Testament, the early Church, and the Middle Ages. One era that has been marginalized is widows in sources from late antique Roman and Suevic-Visigothic Hispania. Early Christian writers are noted for background only, the focus here are the conciliar texts dating from the fourth through seventh centuries.

Reviewed by: Philo of Alexandria and the Construction of Jewishness in Early Christian Writings by Jennifer Otto Todd Berzon Jennifer Otto Philo of Alexandria and the Construction of Jewishness in Early Christian Writings Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018 Pp. 256. $84.50. Jennifer Otto's detailed yet eminently readable monograph sees in Philo of Alexandria a hermeneutic of collective identity for three early Christian writers, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Eusebius of Caesarea. Philo's own identity, as a Jewish biblical interpreter and Platonic thinker, afforded these authors the conceptual space in which to elaborate the contours of Christianness vis-a-vis a proximate Jewishness (the author generally avoids the terms Christianity and Judaism because, she says, they anachronistically connote the category of religion). Otto further contends that Philo was harnessed by Christians not simply to elaborate the differences between Jewishness and Christianness, but also "to establish Christianity as a virtuous way of life, parallel to the pursuits of the philosophical schools" (2). Otto's book thus concerns itself with the circumstances in which early Christians invoked Philo as an interpreter who could link facets of Christianness, Jewishness, and (pagan) philosophy and yet simultaneously differentiate them. The Introduction situates Philo's Christian reception in relation to a number of highly contentious issues in the study of early Christian representations of Jewishness. Otto conceptualizes Philo as a lens for revisiting questions about the parting of the ways, the differences in Christian usages of the terms Ioudaioi, Hebraioi, and Israel, the relationship between ancient notions of ethnicity and way of life, and the idea of Christianity as a philosophy. Otto's survey of the relevant scholarly literature is helpful and clear, though the various sub-sections of the Introduction have a disjunctive flow. It is only in the ensuing chapters that the relationship between these questions becomes slightly clearer. In Chapter One, Otto elaborates how Clement likely came to possess Philonic texts. Her aim is to rebut the dominant scholarly theories which argue that Clement's source must have been either a Jewish teacher in Alexandria or a school tradition with Jewish roots. But if, as Otto insists, the Alexandrian Jewish community was virtually decimated after the Trajanic revolt of 115–117, Clement would have needed an alternative source. Otto thus proposes that Clement came into contact with Philo's works through the vibrant (non-Jewish) philosophical networks in Alexandria. Because the philosophical schools of Alexandria were open to consulting outside works, Philo's writings were almost certainly part of the city's broader philosophical exchanges. While Otto is correct that the consensus theory about Clement's acquisition of Philo (via some sort of connection to Jews) necessitates a fair amount of speculation, her alternative suggestion is no less speculative. There is simply no direct evidence to support her claim, and it is not clear how it materially affects her analysis in subsequent chapters. Chapters Two, Three, and Four examine how Clement, Origen, and Eusebius describe Philo's exegetical skills and ethnic identity. Chapter Two investigates Clement's four overt references to Philo. In two of those cases, Clement calls Philo "the Pythagorean" even where he is also called an expert interpreter of the [End Page 342] Mosaic law and/or historian of the Jewish people. Why, Otto asks, would Clement describe Philo this way? Her answer is that the ascription "Pythagorean" worked to present Philo as a barbarian sage who blended the wisdom of Hebraism and Hellenism. Philo's exegetical skills "can thus be wielded by Clement both against Christians who protest the validity of Greek education and against philosophers who denigrate the teachings of the ekkelsia as a novelty" (89). Chapter Three focuses on Origen, who drew upon Philo's biblical allegorizing to bolster Christian efforts to uncover the veiled intent of scripture. For that reason, Origen often (and anonymously) refers to Philo as a predecessor, literally as "one of those who came before us." But in calling Philo his predecessor, Origen is not rendering him into a proto-Christian; rather, in Otto's estimation, the term "signals Origen's awareness of Philo as an interpreter of old who . . . correctly perceived the hermeneutical depths of the narratives recorded in Israel...

Reviewed by: Reading Bodies: Physiognomy as a Strategy of Persuasion in Early Christian Discourse by Callie Callon Colleen M. Conway Callie Callon Reading Bodies: Physiognomy as a Strategy of Persuasion in Early Christian Discourse London: T&T Clark, 2019. Pp. 173. $114.00. What might a man's hair or gait convey about his Christian moral character? Quite a bit, if early Christian writers such as Tertullian or Clement of Alexandria are to be believed. In Reading Bodies: Physiognomy as a Strategy of Persuasion in Early Christian Discourse, Callie Callon shows how early Christian writers shared the same "physiognomic consciousness" as their non-Christian contemporaries. Both Christian and non-Christian writers assumed that a person's physical characteristics, when read with skill, revealed the truth about his (or less often her) moral character. Given the work that has already been done on physiognomic texts in the ancient world, this is not an especially groundbreaking conclusion. Nor does Callon present it as such. But she is right in her observation that the use of physiognomic ideas in early Christian rhetoric has been underexamined. For this reason, the book is a valuable contribution in at least two ways. As Callon argues, attending to the function of physiognomic details offers a more nuanced understanding of early Christian rhetoric. And because physiognomic ideas were so closely linked to constructions of gender, the book is also a significant addition to gender critical studies of the early church. [End Page 677] Callon begins with an overview of the widespread use of ancient physiognomy across multiple genres, all of which was put to similar purpose, namely, "to help persuade an audience to either support or disdain the individual being portrayed" (21). Nevertheless, the meanings of physiognomic references were variable both in their application and interpretation. Here Callon also highlights a tension inherent to physiognomic thought. On the one hand, ancient authors refer to physical traits as though they are inherently natural indicators that reveal a man's true character, despite efforts he may make to conceal it. On the other hand, the fact that authors regularly offered instructions on how to walk, talk, or otherwise manipulate the body to achieve a desired physiognomic outcome, suggests that such traits were not natural as much as learned. While Callon suggests several ways by which this and other tensions might be resolved, more to the point is her claim that such logical inconsistencies did not threaten the legitimacy of the physiognomic enterprise in all of its variations. The rest of the book traces the different ways that references to the body functioned in early Christian rhetoric. Perhaps most obviously, a rhetorical focus on bodily defects added to the arsenal of ways writers could denigrate theological opponents. Meanwhile, highlighting positive physical features was useful for supporting claims of Christian moral superiority. As an example, Callon suggests that when the author of the apocryphal Acts of Peter contrasts Simon Magus's "shrill" or "weak and useless" voice with Peter's "strong" and "great" one, he is likely using physiognomic indicators to showcase Simon's effeminacy (47–49). Chapter Two details this and other examples of the use of physiognomy against so-called heretics. Chapter Three shows how writers drew on physiognomy to describe (and construct?) the ideal Christian, thereby solidifying group identity. Here Callon shows us Clement of Alexandria pronouncing on a range of physiognomic topics, including the proper grooming of hair, the necessity of avoiding the effeminate "mincing gait," not to mention tips for how to avoid sweating too much. Notable in this chapter is a section that discusses the somewhat distinctive admonitions to Christian ascetics. Both male and female should be aware of appearances, but in this case, pale faces and unkempt bodies reveal the truth of the ascetic's character and devotion. Chapter Four extends and confirms the work of Stephanie Cobb (Dying to Be Men: Gender in Early Christian Martyr Texts [New York: Columbia University Press, 2008]). Here Callon explores how physical descriptions of martyrs such as Polycarp, the Martyrs of Lyon, and Prudentius affirm their masculinity, while descriptions of their torturers were often rhetorically effeminizing. As Callon puts it, "The tortured Christian can 'win' physiognomically via bodily...

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...