Antichrist Research Articles

Ecumenism of Blood and Christian Churches in Contemporary Nigeria

There has recently been an upsurge in the persecution of Christians in Nigeria, especially in northern Nigeria by the militant Islamic sect Boko Haram, and in the Middle Belt and other areas of the country by Muslim Fulani herdsmen. One of the characteristics of these persecutions is that while they are targeted mainly at Christians, these Christians are never separated along the lines of their denominations. This article highlights the ecumenical implications that the scenario holds for the various Christian churches in Nigeria, churches that before now have been schooled in elements of extreme denominationalism.

Matthieu Pignot: The Catechumenate in Late Antique Africa (4th–6th Centuries). Augustine of Hippo, His Contemporaries and Early Reception, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 162, Leiden/Boston (Brill) 2020, 414 S., ISBN 978-90-04-43189-8, € 132,–; $ 159,–.

Article Matthieu Pignot:The Catechumenate in Late Antique Africa (4th–6th Centuries). Augustine of Hippo, His Contemporaries and Early Reception, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 162, Leiden/Boston (Brill) 2020, 414 S., ISBN 978-90-04-43189-8, € 132,–; $ 159,–. was published on July 1, 2022 in the journal Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum / Journal of Ancient Christianity (volume 26, issue 1).

Nienke M. Vos and Albert C. Geljon, eds.: Rituals in Early Christianity. New Perspectives on Tradition and Transformation, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 164, Leiden (Brill) 2021, XII + 363 pp. + 16 illustrations, ISBN 978-90-04-44097-5, € 25,–; $ 25,– (hardback).

Article Nienke M. Vos and Albert C. Geljon, eds.:Rituals in Early Christianity. New Perspectives on Tradition and Transformation, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 164, Leiden (Brill) 2021, XII + 363 pp. + 16 illustrations, ISBN 978-90-04-44097-5, € 25,–; $ 25,– (hardback). was published on July 1, 2022 in the journal Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum / Journal of Ancient Christianity (volume 26, issue 1).

„Non licet esse vos!”

“Non licet esse vos!” ‒ The Legal Basis of the Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire from Nero to Valerian (AD 64‒260)
 
 The Roman legal system did not discriminate the citizens on the basis of their religious affiliation. We are aware of individual cases in which certain ethnic groups and/or religions – mostly Greeks, Egyptians, Jews – have suffered certain disadvantages or restrictions, but we have no knowledge of a case in which the practice of a religion was forbidden in toto. It seems that until the persecution of Diocletian, which is already outside the time frame of this study, Roman laws (leges publicae populi Romani) did not name Christianity, therefore they could not prohibit its practice. Although imperial letters – such as Trajan’s, Hadrian’s, or Marcus Aurelius’ sacrae litterae – were also considered legal sources, and these occasionally referred to the Christians by name, they did not speak of the legal basis for the persecution, but only regulated the order of proceedings against Christians who have been already arrested. Thus, to the best of our knowledge, we would search in vain for the origin of the “You are not allowed to exist!” (non licet esse vos) quoted by Tertullian in the Roman laws of the 1st‒3rd century AD. The Roman legislators were aware of the origin and essence of Christianity, so instead of an open ban – which, I repeat, would have been unprecedented in the history of Roman law – they tried to repress them by laws and regulations about which they knew exactly that Christians would not obey them because they could not without breaking their religious precepts.

Claudian’s "Gigantomachia": Coping with Reality and Dealing with Loss

The subject of Claudian’s Gigantomachia, narrating the great war between the Gods and the Giants, is vividly felt in the fourth century AD, given the historical context during which it was written. This piece, besides being mythological in a Christian world, remains unfinished, and the perspective of the incomplete end raises some questions: did Claudian do it voluntarily? Was he forced to do so? Was the end lost? And more generally, why would an official poet choose to write on a subject which does not align with the new way of thinking of a Christian Roman Empire, while rewriting a myth which tends to echo the military and the political context he was living in? In order to see through this perspective, it may be interesting to observe Claudian’s adaptations in rewriting the myth in order to grasp the different aspects of the context he was living in and that he was trying to mirror, and also to question the function of such a narration for Claudian himself, between pessimism towards loss and hope for a brighter future. This study, which focuses on the difficult adaptation of Pagans to the Christian era, allows to see, through a thorough study of Claudian’s Gigantomachia, the expression of a personal belief in an epic poem. Late Christian Antiquity poetry therefore appears both as a means to express one’s feelings and to overcome them.

Engineering the reconstruction of Hawrān’s Ecclesiae during late antiquity: case of Julianos church in Umm el-Jimal, Jordan

This study challenges the stylistic-based classical prototype of the early Byzantine churches in the basaltic Hawrān region in the Middle East- the birthplace of Christianity and home to the world's most ancient Christian architecture and engineering ideologies. We focus on the engineering of the apsidal zone and its structural and architectural implications in relevance to the prototypical arcuated one. The instrumental case of Julianos Church in Umm el-Jimal provides an insight into the effect the local material and structural technique have on the formation of complex roofing structures for the apsidal zone. The detailed interpretation of the structural engineering reconstruction is coupled with historical research and digitally generated 2D and 3D reconstruction models. The findings indicate that the apsidal zone's engineering could have responded to Hawrān's unique material, structural techniques, and seismic measures. We finally compare the early twentieth-century scholars' stylistic-based interpretation of the apse roof to contemporary engineering-based reconstruction research based on historical evidence and contextual studies. Future researchers and conservators should consider a holistic approach that balances stylistic/engineering reconstruction processes carefully and numerically. The builders of Hawrān should have introduced novel engineering of their ecclesiastical architecture that differs from its 'classical' counterpart.

Nazis of Copley Square: The Forgotten Story of the Christian Front by Charles R. Gallagher

Reviewed by: Nazis of Copley Square: The Forgotten Story of the Christian Front by Charles R. Gallagher Sean Brennan Nazis of Copley Square: The Forgotten Story of the Christian Front. By Charles R. Gallagher. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021. 313 pp. $29.95. During the years leading to and during the Second World War while the U.S. military engaged in combat with the Axis powers, within American society there was also the threat of far-right organizations who were sympathetic to—if not openly supportive of—Hitler’s regime, its aspirations of European conquest, its desire to defeat, and the threat of “Judeo-Bolshevism.” This is the subject of Charles Gallagher’s impeccably researched study of the activities of the Christian Front from the mid-1930s to the early 1940s, in New York City and Boston, two of the centers of their activities. While the temptations to make constant comparisons between the supporters of this organization and more recent historical events, Gallagher, for the most part, maintains his focus on the historical context of this organization, avoiding the easy trap of presentism. Gallagher spends his first two chapters establishing the historical and theological foundations of the Christian Front, how its name [End Page 91] emerged in opposition to the Popular Front governments in Mexico in the 1920s and Spain in the 1930s, the communist members of which were notorious for their persecutions of the Catholic Church, as well as the specter of the militantly atheistic Soviet regime. He then provides a deeper explanation of the theology of the Mystical Body of Christ, which argued that persecution of Christians anywhere was an assault on Christians everywhere, as well as the idea of “Judeo-Bolshevism,” a form of anti-Semitism that viewed Jews in America and Europe as inherent supporters of Communism, a view that led some to advocate and even prepare for the overthrow of the American government to purge it of Jewish and Communist agents, who were often viewed as one and the same. While he is not the main figure of the book, the notorious Detroit-based radio priest, Father Charles Coughlin, with his message of anti-Semitism, anticommunism, social justice, and hatred of Franklin Roosevelt’s administration, was an enormous spiritual inspiration to many of the unsavory yet complex figures depicted by Gallagher. The author convincingly demonstrates how the insular Irish Catholic communities of New York and Boston were fertile ground for recruitment into the Christian Front’s various organizations, not only due to the belief of many in “Judeo-Bolshevism” but also a hatred of Great Britain for its long and cruel rule of Ireland. In later sections of the book, Gallagher discusses how the Christian Front expanded its supporters to include Protestants, women, and even some African Americans. Nor does he reduce the support of Catholic clergy for the Christian Front to just Coughlin, pointing at numerous members of the Catholic clerical hierarchy were openly sympathetic to its goals and worked to protect its most notorious members when they could. The main figure in the first third of the book is John Cassidy, a failed applicant to the FBI who then turned to transform the Committee of American Christians Against Communism, which he led, into a paramilitary organization with recruits and weapons from the New York National Guard. Although Cassidy’s organization was eventually raided by the FBI and he and other leaders were placed on trial, their acquittal following the suspiciously botched prosecution gave second life to the cause of the Christian Front. The focus of the book then shifts to Boston and a failed businessman named Francis Moran, who became a disciple and then agent of Father Coughlin’s Union Party, which attempted in 1936 to challenge both the Republican and Democrat parties for the loyalty of American voters. While rejecting the paramilitary tactics of Cassidy, Moran became a constant propagandist throughout Boston and the northeastern United States advocating American neutrality in any future European conflict, and eventually a tacit alliance with Hitler against the Communist threat. This led to a relationship with a sinister character named [End Page 92] Herbert Scholz, an SS officer who served as the director of the...

Moses the Hellenic Sage: Re-reading Julian’s Against the Galileans

Some sixty years after Julian the Apostate died on a Persian battlefield, Cyril of Alexandria responded at length to one of the emperor’s final treatises, the anti-Christian Against the Galileans. Christians like Cyril were long preoccupied with Julian’s treatise, and this fixation suggests that its rhetorical potency endured well after the demise of its author and his short-lived political threat. Despite this fixation by ancient Christians, modern scholarship routinely treats Against the Galileans as intellectually and rhetorically anemic, leaving unanswered how Julian’s text could have unsettled so many Christians. This article explores what was so compelling about Against the Galileans. In short, it argues that the enduring existential heft of Julian’s treatise lay in the strategy of narrative subsumption: drawing on his training in Christian scripture and doctrine, Julian fractured the Christian master narrative and rearranged the shattered pieces into a new coherence within his alternative, Hellenic narrative. Julian’s subtle strategy is most evident in the way he co-opts Moses as a mediocre Hellenic-style sage and lawgiver—a fact that also explains the misleading analyses of Against the Galileans in modern scholarship. These evaluations routinely overlook Julian’s nuance by regarding him as flatly critical, as ambivalent, or as outright inconsistent in his treatment of Moses. This article argues to the contrary that Julian’s subtle co-opting of Moses offers a window onto his grander strategy: to undermine the Christian narrative by offering a more compelling account of its key episodes, reconstrued within a Hellenic narrative.

The reception of Jubilees in Greek catena manuscripts of Genesis

Several Greek catena manuscripts preserve material from Jubilees, offering valuable witness to the largely lost Greek version of the book. Yet how did material from this Second Temple composition become part of a late ancient Christian anthology? This article interrogates the transmission of Jubilees material in catena manuscripts of Genesis. Rather than offering direct witness to Greek manuscripts of Jubilees, this material had already been appropriated and restructured before the compilers of catena manuscripts collected and reorganized it around the textual frame of Greek Genesis. Two conduits account for the availability of this material: the use of Jubilees among late ancient chronographers and a widespread genealogical tradition, derived from Jubilees, that names the wives of biblical patriarchs. In late antiquity, the Book of Jubilees often circulated not as a unified composition but as individual units which were assimilated into other structuring frameworks, whether the schemata of chronographers or the (margins of) the Greek Bible itself. The late ancient reception of Jubilees thus foreshadows the atomism of modern text-critical appropriations. The conclusions of this article invite similar exploration for other Second Temple texts.

COMMENTARIES ON JOB, HOSEA, JOEL, AND AMOS. By Julian of Eclanum. Translated and edited by Thomas P.Scheck. Ancient Christian Texts. Downer's Grove, Ill: IVP Academic, 2021. Pp. xlix + 289. $60.00.

COMMENTARIES ON JOB, HOSEA, JOEL, AND AMOS. By Julian of Eclanum. Translated and edited by Thomas P.Scheck. Ancient Christian Texts. Downer's Grove, Ill: IVP Academic, 2021. Pp. xlix + 289. $60.00.

Moment of Reckoning: Imagined Death and Its Consequences in Late Ancient Christianity by Ellen Muehlberger

Moment of Reckoning: Imagined Death and Its Consequences in Late Ancient Christianity by Ellen Muehlberger

The Cultural Heritage of "Black Stones" (Lapis Aequipondus/Martyrum) of Leopardi's Child Home (Recanati, Italy).

A macroscopic lithological study and physical (hardness, size, weight) investigations, coupled with laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) chemical analyses of three egg- and one pear-shaped polished black stones, exposed in the library of the child home of the famous poet Giacomo Leopardi, at Recanati (Italy), were carried out. They are characterized by different sizes: two with the same weight of 16.9 kg and the two smaller ones of 5.6 kg each, corresponding to multiples of standard roman weights (drachma and scrupulum). These features and the presence of some grooves on the rock artefacts, probably for grappling hooks, suggest an original use as counterweight for the four black stones herein classified as amphibole-bearing serpentinites whose lithologies are far away from Recanati (probably coming from geological outcrops in Tuscany). The four serpentinite stones closely match with the so-called Lapis Aequipondus used in antiquity by the Romans as counterweights. Due to the presence of lead rings or iron hooks in these stones, Lapis Aequipondus were also used for martyrdoms during the persecution of Christians in the Roman period, attached to the necks of martyrs that were then thrown in the wells or attached to the ankles of hanging bodies. This is the reason why these stones are also known as Lapis Martyrum, venerated with the relative martyrs, in several churches of Rome. The four black stones investigated probably arrived at Recanati from Rome after the middle of the 19th century. In the past, Christians also called Lapis Martyrum the “devil’s stones” (Lapis Diaboli). This could also be the reason for the popular belief that black stones cannot be touched by people, except those of the Leopardi dynasty. This work contributes to the cultural heritage of Leopardi’s child home, as the four black stones had never been investigated.

Shrine and Idol Destruction in Three Carolingian Hagiographic Texts

Examination of shrine and idol destruction stories included in three hagiographic texts rewritten by élite Carolingian authors shows that this thematic element may illuminate the concerns and horizon of expectation of the revisers. Destruction episodes contributed to stories of eponymous heroes that shaped the heritage and identity of monastic communities, and even seemed worth projecting into the ancient Christian past. In the absence of uniform disciplinary and doctrinal guidance regarding relics, stories of the destruction of unholy matter may also have delineated the boundary separating legitimate from illegitimate devotional objects and practices.

The Reception of the Hebrew Prophets in Ancient Christianity

This contribution discusses the ways in which the Hebrew prophets in Greek and Latin translations were received by Christians from the second to fifth centuries CE, preceded by an impression of the New Testament use of these prophets. Besides the vast amount of ecclesiastical references and commentaries, it also deals with Marcionite and Gnostic views. It demonstrates that Christians most often read the prophets as testimonies to Christ and the communities of those who believed in him. Allegorical readings came up soon and were justified by Origen of Alexandria (185–254 CE), whose interpretations were most influential in subsequent centuries. In the fourth century, a reaction against the allegorical reading of the prophets arose in Antioch, Syria; the “Antiochene school” rather limited its approach to the historical context of the prophets, except for texts read Christologically in the New Testament. This article also considers the question whether the Christian appropriation of the Hebrew prophets may be deemed legitimate.

“Snake”, “Life” or “Mother of All Living”? The Meaning of the Name חַוָּה (Eve) And Its Role in Gen 3

In Gen 3:20, the redactor of the Book of Genesis reports for the second time the scene of naming the woman created by God from Adam’s rib (cf. Gen 2:21-23). The name אשׁה (woman) used by Adam in Gen 2:23 obviously relates—at least phonetically—to the noun אישׁ (man). In this way, the editor expresses the idea of a certain relationship between man and woman. The existence of a similar, simple connection between the name חַוָּה (Eve) and the title אם כל־חי (the mother of all living) is far less obvious and this conundrum has been noticed by translators and exegetes for at least 2000 years. An echo of these difficulties seems to be perceptible in the text of the Septuagint, in the writings of Philo and Josephus, in the Targums, as well as in the writings of some ancient Christian writers. This article represents one further attempt to present the panorama of modern hypotheses concerning Eve’s name and the role this naming play in Gen 3.

New Horizons in the Study of Early African Christianity

Teaching early Christianity in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa since 2002, has convinced this author how important it is for African Christians to know of the deep roots of Christianity in Africa, and recognize the important early African theologians, Tertullian, Origen, Athanasius and Augustine, just to name a few. This argument has a significant precedent among 19th century African Christians encouraged by the unbroken presence of Christianity from antiquity in Ethiopia. In the US, Thomas Oden promoted the study of pre-Islamic Christian Africa through the Centre for Early African Christianity, and publications like the series, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. This Centre has also encouraged universities in Africa to get involved in deciphering archeological materials and documents from North African sites as evidence for Christianity from its earliest days; the study of such documents has recently been established at the University of Jos (Plateau State, Nigeria). These initiatives are doubly significant because Christianity is growing phenomenally throughout Africa and is often accused of being “mile wide and an inch deep”.

Рецензия на издание: Таинство будущего: исследования o происхождении библейской типологии / пер. с фр. В. Н. Генке под общ. и науч. ред. А. Г. Дунаева. М.: Издательство Московской Патриархии Русской Православной Церкви, 2013. 448 с. ISBN 978-5-88017-428-7

Cardinal Jean Danielou (1905-1974), a world-renowned Catholic theologian and professor at the Faculty of Theology at the Catholic Institute in Paris, The Mystery of the Future1 deals with the emergence and development of a typological interpretation of the so-called Six Books of the Bible (from Genesis to Joshua). It consists of five studies, each tracing the history of a single exegetical theme from its biblical prehistory in the Old and New Testaments and in Judaism, both Palestinian and Alexandrian, and then in the writings of the Church Fathers to about 400 BC. The task the author had set himself with regard to these several topics was to establish the links between the typological exegesis of the New Testament, on the one hand, and the exegesis of the great teachers of the fourth century, on the other, in order to find out whether there was a continuity and what it consisted in. J. Danielou has made a significant contribution to the study of ancient Christian exegetics. Although this book was written more than half a century ago, it remains an unrivalled and much sought-after study in terms of its intention and composition and its breadth of outlook.  

The Memory of Goodness: Eva Fleischner and Her Contributions to Holocaust Studies ed. by Carol Rittner and John K. Roth

Reviewed by: The Memory of Goodness: Eva Fleischner and Her Contributions to Holocaust Studies ed. by Carol Rittner and John K. Roth Eugene J. Fisher The Memory of Goodness: Eva Fleischner and Her Contributions to Holocaust Studies. Edited by Carol Rittner and John K. Roth. Greensburg, PA Seton Hill University, 2022. Pp. 249. $19.95, paper. Anyone interested in Jewish-Christian relations should read this book. It begins with a summary of the work of Eva Fleischner (1925–2020). She was half-Jewish on her father's side and fled Europe in 1938. The book contains twelve essays by Fleischner in three parts. In the first she narrates how she became involved in Shoah studies. She discusses the challenges of teaching the Holocaust to Christians and Jews because it raises questions about the validity of Christianity since the perpetrators were Christians. She provides a summary of the history of the Christian teaching of contempt, which paved the way for racial Antisemitism. While Jews could "escape" Christian persecution by converting to Christianity, under Antisemitism one was doomed to death simply for being a Jew. The fourth essay in this section discusses the "crucial importance" of the Holocaust for Christian self-understanding, given the horror of the genocide. In the second section, "Rescue and Responsibility," Fleischner describes her interviews with those in France who hid Jews from the Vichy government and the Nazis. This is an uplifting set of stories of real people, mostly women, risking their lives to save those in peril of death. The chapter asks why there were so few, and it asks readers what they might have done in those dire circumstances. This can be the source of deep dialogue among Christians and between Christians and Jews. She goes on to speak of the struggle of Jewish children who were saved in Catholic homes and were often baptized and raised as Catholics to accept, after the war, the fact that they were actually Jews, which many of them, having been hidden when very young, never knew. Again, this is deeply moving and digs deeply into how each of us can understand who we are. The section ends [End Page 317] with a reflection of a Jew who is asked for forgiveness by a dying Nazi. The Jew does not answer but remains silent. Fleischner notes, citing Elie Wiesel, that only the victims can forgive those who harmed them, and the victims are dead. The Nazi must seek forgiveness from the God of Israel if he or she is sincerely repentant. The final section of the book deals with Jewish-Christian relations during and since the Shoah. She describes how the Catholic Church and other Christian traditions have re-thought the ancient Christian teaching of contempt toward Jews and Judaism since Auschwitz, reformulating their teachings and working to accept the reality of the irrevocable (cf. Romans 9–11) covenant between the God of Israel and the people of Israel. The covenant emphasizes the fact that Jesus lived and died a pious Jew of his time and sought to rejuvenate his people, the Jews, relying on the only Bible he knew, the Hebrew Scriptures. She delves deeply into the spirituality of Pope Pius XII, his good qualities, and the fact that he did not fully live up to the challenges of his time. The book concludes with a search into the life and works of the great Jewish thinker, Abraham Joshua Heschel, which helped both Jews and Christians to redefine their relationship toward a full encounter with their past and a hope for a better future for all. To do this we—Catholics and other Christians—need to encounter anew the living God in a living people, the Jews, and in their faith and lives. Eugene J. Fisher Saint Leo University, St. Leo, FL Copyright © 2022 Journal of Ecumenical Studies

The Art of the Jesuit Mission in 16th-Century Japan: The Italian Painter Giovanni Cola and the Technological Transfer at the Painting Seminario in Arie

The Jesuit Mission in Japan was characterized by the establishment of the first painting Seminario in the Far East supervised by the Italian Jesuit Painter Giovanni Cola, who arrived in Nagasaki from Rome in 1583. The activity of the painting school focused on the production of sacred images needed for the Missionaries' evangelization effort, and it soon became a hub of Renaissance technology. European pigments were made available to Japanese and Chinese painters who trained at the Jesuit facility. New archaeometric studies have enabled to present in this work, for the first time, a renewed interpretation of historical records, also revealing, along with documentary evidence, that Arie, a place located in Kyushu, where the Seminario stayed between 1595 and 1597, played a major role as it hosted the first European glass workshop in the Far East. The systematic use of pigments introduced at Arie influenced the production of scared images both in Japan and China. However, the overall technological transfer proved an asymmetrical process due to the fierce persecution of Christians from 1614, and, as a consequence, local production of imported pigments will not start until the lifting of the ban on Christianity in 1873 with the return of Europeans to Japan.

“Arise, Let Us Leave This Place”: John 14:31b and Pseudo-Epiphanius

“Arise, Let Us Leave This Place”: John 14:31b and Pseudo-Epiphanius Michael Heintz John behr, in his recent and magisterial study of John the Theologian and His Paschal Gospel,1 numbers, among the compositional aporias that trouble modern readers, John 14:31b: ἐγείρεσθε, ἄγωμεν ἐντεῦθεν (“rise, let us be on our way”; NRSV). Jesus speaks these words at the Last Supper, yet immediately proceeds to continue discoursing for three more chapters (15–17). Despite their apparent oddness to modern readers, the manuscript tradition leaves no indication of early or later editors attempting to correct, omit, transfer, or expand upon these three words; the phrase apparently posed no challenge to their reading or understanding of the text. 2 And yet likely because of its awkwardness (seemingly leading nowhere), it has been omitted in the Roman Catholic Lectionary, where significant portions of John 13–17 make appearance on the Sundays following Easter and form something of a lectio continua during the weekdays (weeks 4–7) of the Easter season.3 A shorter version of the same phrase—ἐγείρεσθε ἄγωμεν—is recorded [End Page 421] by both Mark (14:42) and Matthew (26:46), without variants in either case; in both instances the line is uttered in Gethsemane, as Judas approaches to hand Jesus over to the authorities. In the Synoptics, the line does not pose the same quandary as does its placement in the Johannine narrative. However, in all three instances, the line is spoken in a context in which Judas and his act of betrayal figure prominently. The context of the Johannine narrative is not yet the garden, but Jesus’s supper in the company of his disciples. Having indicated that he is well aware that he will be betrayed, Jesus, signaling to the Beloved Disciple the one who would betray him, hands the morsel (τὸ ψωμίον) to Judas, who takes it (μετὰ τὸ ψωμίον . . . λαβώ;ν). The evangelist indicates that in the very act of reception, Satan entered Judas (John 13:27). Judas’s departure was immediate, and the evangelist adds the detail, “it was night” (ἦν δὲ νύξ; 13:30); this is no mere descriptive aside, but rather a theological commentary (John 1:5; 3:19; Luke 22:53). What amounts to the first sacrilegious communion is substantially an anti-communion: a refusal by Judas of the offer of communion made by the Lord in his gesture of handing Judas the morsel.4 This act is thus effectively a counter-sign: Judas receives the morsel from the Lord and simultaneously intends to hand him over, signaling by this very act his chosen complicity in the satanic rebellion. Judas recapitulates the primal sin of Adam: what was intended as gift is seized and grasped as possession; the communion established, offered, and intended by God is broken only by human choice. The essence of sin is to take as possession what is intended to be received as gift. Adam (here and throughout a synecdoche for the first couple) sought to grasp and to possess what was not and could not be his other than by divine gift. In an Irenaean hermeneutic, Philippians 2 unties the cord knotted in Genesis 3: Christ relinquishes the prerogative of divinity which is properly his, precisely in order to offer it as gift. Both the initiative and the gift are divine. Augustine makes this precise connection with verbal hints at Genesis 3 and Philippians 2 in explaining John 14:31: “Adam had ‘grasped’ the sin when, having been duped, he presumptuously reached out his hand in order unlawfully to seize upon the title of divinity, which was [End Page 422] conferred on the Son of God by nature, not by robbery.”5 Perhaps it is the case that Judas, disheartened that the pomp and promise that attended Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem just a few days earlier seem to have fizzled and petered out into mere idle talk and foot-washing, chose to take matters into his own hands by his collusion with the Jerusalem authorities. In his failure to understand the divine plan, he sought to wrest control of the situation from Jesus, even as he receives, quite disingenuously, the Lord’s offer of communion. There is extant from Christian antiquity a homily attributed to Epiphanius of Salamis...