The Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic
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Removing what Bowie calls the “defective” present from the plan of history was one way in which Africanus could deal or, better, not deal with the reality of Roman rule in the East. The other way was to embrace it, in this case by honoring Rome with a royal Eastern pedigree extending back to the times of Ninus and Semiramis. In Africanus’s euhemeristic construction of the founding of Rome, the earliest god-kings of Italy were not indigenous rulers, but rather members of a celebrated Assyrian dynasty, descendants of Shem who colonized and civilized Italy and the West.67 This is bold revisionist history, with a decidedly Eastern twist. Rome now boasts a respectable ancient “Semitic” ancestry, traceable to the earliest recorded kings of Assyria. It is thus probably more than by chance that the publication of Africanus’s chronicle coincided with his embassy on behalf of Emmaus. Roman colonization of the East was not domination by a foreign Western power, but rather a return to its ancestral homeland.
EDESSA’S CHRISTIAN ELITES IN LATER TRADITION
At least initially, Christians and non-Christians understood that there was more to Bar Daysan and Africanus than their religion. Over time, however, Christian tradition tended to collapse their identities into the more recognizable categories of “Christian and pagan,” “orthodox and heterodox.” In Eusebius’s view, Bar Daysan’s expertise in debate and his refutation of astral determinism almost compensated for his failure to fully rid himself of the “filth” of the Valentinian heresy.68 Later writers were less forgiving. Were we to depend only on Ephrem, the main thing we would know about Bar Daysan was that he was a well-dressed and high-born Christian heretic.69 Probably because Africanus gravitated to technical and antiquarian disciplines and had no disciples, he managed to escape the charge of heresy. But later generations were disturbed that a pillar of the early Church could have written a work like the Cesti. Unsettled by its embrace of “Hellenic error,” a scholiast to Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History concluded that the work must have been written by a pagan writer of the same name and time.70 We need not resort to such desperate measures to rescue Africanus for the Church. His resourcefulness and versatility, multiple identities, and skill at reinvention are very much in keeping with the spirit of the age.
FURTHER READING
For Syria, Hellenism, and the Roman Near East, readers should consult Millar 1987 and 1993, Butcher 2003, esp. 223–398, Sartre 2007, esp. 274–363, and Andrade 2013, esp. 245–339.For Edessa, Segal 1970 and Ross 2001 are good starting points. There has been a recent revival of interest in Tatian’s critique of Greek paideia in the context of cultural trends of the Second Sophistic, including comparisons with Lucian; see esp. Nasrallah 2005, Nasrallah 2010, 56–70, and Andrade 2013, 261–287. Drijvers’s monograph 1966 on Bar Daysan contains a good summary of the ancient witnesses (including non-Christian) to his life and work; see esp. 166–212. See further Teixidor 1992, Denzey 2008, Ramelli 2009. On Bar Daysan’s ethnography of India, see Müller 1980, Sedlar 1980, Reed 2009, and Biffi 2011. For Africanus and the Second Sophistic, see Adler 2009, Roberto 2011, 29–65.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary
Julius Africanus. Chronographiae. Edited by M. Wallraff and U. Roberto. Translated by W. Adler. Berlin, 2008.
Julius Africanus. Cesti. Edited by M. Wallraff, C. Scardino, L. Mecella, and C. Guignard. Translated by W. Adler. Berlin, 2012.
Egeria Itinerarium. Edited and translated by G. Rowekamp: Reisebericht. Freiburg, 1995.
Ephrem. Hymns against Heresies. Edited and translated by E. Beck: Des heiligen Ephraem des Syrer Hymnen contra Haereses. Louvain, 1957.
Epiphanius. Panarion. Edited by K. Holl. Leipzig, 1915–2006.
Eusebius. Onomasticon. Edited by E. Klostermann. Leipzig, 1904.
Eusebius. Supplementa ad quaestiones ad Stephanum. PG 22.957–976.
Moses Khorenats’i. History of the Armenians. Translated by R. W. Thomson. Cambridge, MA, 1978.
Tatian. Oratio ad Graecos. Edited and translated by Molly Whittaker. Oxford, 1982.
Secondary
Adler, W. 2009. “The Cesti and Sophistic Culture in the Severan Age.” In Die Kestoi des Julius Africanus und ihre Überlieferung, edited by M. Wallraff and L. Mecella, 1–15. Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 165. Berlin.
Anderson, G. 1986. Philostratus: Biography and Belles Lettres in the Third CenturyA.D. London.
Andrade, N. J. 2013. Syrian Identity in the Greco-Roman World. Cambridge.
Biffi, N. 2011. “Ciò che Bardesane venne a sapere sull’India.” Classica et Christiana 6: 305–335.
Bowersock, G. W. 1969. Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire. Oxford.
Bowie, E. L. 1974. “The Greeks and their Past in the Second Sophistic.” In Studies in Ancient Society, edited by M. I. Finley, 166–209. London and Boston. Revised reprint from P&P 46 (1970): 3–41.
Briant, P. 2006. From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire. Winona Lake, IN.
Brock, S. 1992. “Eusebius and Syriac Christianity.” In Eusebius, Christianity and Judaism, edited by H. W. Attridge and G. Hata, 212–234. Detroit, MI.
Butcher, K. 2003. Roman Syria and the Near East. Los Angeles.
Caseau, B. 2004. “The Fate of Rural Temples in Late Antiquity.” In Recent Research on the Late Antique Countryside, edited by W. Bowden, L. Lavan, and C. Machado, 105–144. Leiden.
Denzey, N. 2008. “Bardaisan of Edessa.” In A Companion to Second-Century Christian “Heretics”, edited by A. Marjanen and P. Luomanen, 159–183. Leiden.
Dihle, A. 1964. “The Conception of India in Hellenistic and Roman Literature.” PCPS 190, NS 10: 15–23. Reprinted in Antikeiund Orient, edited by V. Pöschl and H. Petersmann, 89–97. Heidelberg, 1984.
Drews, R. 1965. “Assyria in Classical Universal Histories.” Historia 14: 129–142.
Drijvers, H. J. W. 1966. Bardaisan of Edessa. Assen.
Drijvers, H. J. W. 1982. “A Tomb for the Life of a King: A Recently Discovered Edessene Mosaic with a Portrait of King Abgar the Great.” Le Muséon 95: 167–189.
Drijvers, H. J. W. 1994. “Apocryphal Literature in the Cultural Milieu of Osrhoëne.” In History and Religion in Late Antique Syria, edited by H. J. W. Drijvers, 231–247. Aldershot.
Flinterman, J.-J. 1995. Power, “Paideia” and Pythagoreanism: Greek Identity, Conceptions of the Relationship between Philosophers and Monarchs and Political Ideas in Philostratus’ “Life of Apollonius”. Amsterdam.
Flinterman, J.-J. 2004. “Sophists and Emperors: A Reconnaissance of Sophistic Attitudes.” In Paideia: The World of the Second Sophistic, edited by B. E. Borg, 359–376. Berlin.
Fotjik, J. E. 2009. “Tatian the Barbarian: Language, Education and Identity in the Oratio ad Graecos.” In Continuity and Discontinuity in Early Christian Apologetics, edited by J. Ulrich and A.-C. Jacobsen, 23–34. Frankfurt am Main.
Gelzer, H. 1967. Sextus Julius Africanus und die byzantinische Chronographie. 2 vols. New York. First published in 1898.
Hammerstaedt, J. 2009. “Julius Africanus und seine Tätigkeiten im 18. Kestos (P. Oxy. 412 col. II).” In Die Kestoi des Julius Africanus und ihre Überlieferung, edited by M. Wallraff and L. Mecella, 53–69. Berlin.
Jones, A. H. M. 1971. Cities of the Eastern Roman Provinces. 2nd ed. Oxford.
Jones, C. P. 2004. “Multiple Identities in the Age of the Second Sophistic.” In Paideia: The World of the Second Sophistic, edited by B. E. Borg, 13–21. Berlin.
Kofsky, A. 1998. “Mamre: A Case of a Regional Cult?” In Sharing the Sacred: Religious Contacts and Conflicts in the Holy Land, edited by A. Kofsy and G. G. Stroumsa, 19–30. Jerusalem.
Lampe, P. 2003. From Paul to Valentinus. Minneapolis, MN.
Lendon, J. E. 2006. Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity. New Haven, CT.
Millar, F. 1987. “The Problem of Hellenistic Syria.” In Hellenism and the East: The Interaction of Greek and Non-Greek Civilizations from Syria to Central Asia after Alexander, edited by A. Kuhrt and S.
Sherwin-White, 110–133. Berkeley, CA.
Millar, F. 1993. The Roman Near East: 31 BC–AD 337. Cambridge, MA.
Müller, K. E. 1980. Geschichte der antiken Ethnographie und ethnologischen Theoriebildung. Wiesbaden.
Nasrallah, L.S. 2005. “Tatian, Lucian, and the Second Sophistic.” Harvard Theological Review 98: 283–314.
Nasrallah, L. S. 2010. Christian Responses to Roman Art and Architecture: The Second-Century Church amid the Spaces of Empire. Cambridge.
Porter, J. I. 2001. “Ideals and Ruins: Pausanias, Longinus, and the Second Sophistic.” In Pausanias: Travel and Memory in Roman Greece, edited by S. E. Alcock, J. F. Cherry, and J. Elsner, 63–92. Oxford.
Ramelli, I. 2000. “La Chiesa di Roma in età severiana: Cultura classica, cultura cristiana, cultura orientale.” Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia 54: 13–29.
Ramelli, I. 2009. Bardaisan of Edessa: A Reassessment of the Evidence and a New Interpretation. Piscataway, NJ.
Reed, A. Y. 2009. “Beyond the Land of Nod: Syriac Images of Asia and the Historiography of ‘The West.’” History of Religions 49: 48–87.
Roberto, U. 2011. Le “Chronographiae” di Sesto Giulio Africano. Soveria Mannelli.
Ross, S. K. 2001. Roman Edessa: Politics and Culture on the Eastern Fringes of the Roman Empire, 114–242CE. London.
Santos, N. 1981. “La dinastia de los Severos y los cristianos.” Euphrosyne 11: 149–171.
Sartre, M. 2007, The Middle East under Rome. Cambridge.
Sedlar, J. W. 1980. India and the Greek World: A Study in the Transmission of Culture. Totowa, NJ.
Segal, J. B. 1970. Edessa: The Blessed City. Oxford.
Teixidor, J. 1992. Bardesane d’Edesse: La première philosophie syriaque. Paris.
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Vieillefond, J.-R. 1970. Les “Cestes” de Julius Africanus: Étude sur l’ensemble des fragments, avec édition, traduction et commentaire. Paris.
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CHAPTER 43
CHRISTIAN APOCRYPHA
SCOTT FITZGERALD JOHNSON
43.1 INTRODUCTION
THE multifarious corpus of Christian apocryphal literature authored, copied, read, and translated from around 100 to 500 CE constitutes in many ways what could be termed the “dark matter” of the Second Sophistic and Late Antiquity.1 This literature is “dark” first and foremost because it is only rarely included in surveys of the period. Classicists often know little to nothing of this rich corpus. Indeed, The Cambridge History of Classical Literature has no entry on Christian literature at all, even though the Second Sophistic is reasonably well represented.2 Likewise, collected volumes on the novel or romance in the ancient world—such as Oxford Readings in the Greek Novel—may sometimes have a cursory discussion of Christian apocryphal literature, but when they do the focus is almost solely on the relatively limited subset of texts called the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, rather than the corpus of Christian fiction as a whole.3 However, for a world like that of the Second Sophistic, and the postclassical period generally, which we have grown accustomed to seeing as complex, vibrant, multicultural, and intensely engaged with the concepts of minority identity and the past, it is remarkable that Christian apocryphal texts remain so underrepresented. Indeed, those descriptors apply to nearly every apocryphal text produced in this period.
Another reason we might consider apocryphal literature to be dark matter is its sheer bulk. There are so many texts in this category that one chapter can hardly do them justice: independent works easily number in the hundreds and many involve complex reception histories and manuscript traditions. In terms of languages, Greek and Latin are only the basic starting points; often the best version of a given text, even if originally written in Greek or Latin, survives today in Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, Arabic, or Ethiopic. The requisite skills to do philological justice to Christian apocrypha are rarely, if ever, to be found in a single scholar. This prospect is daunting: even the authoritative, multiauthor Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature includes only one small section on apocryphal writings.4 In the present chapter, therefore, I cannot presume to address the entire corpus, much less its textual transmission. Instead, with an eye to the common absence of such texts in surveys of late classical or “postclassical” literature, I will attempt to show that this “dark matter” resonates strongly with the fundamental principles of the Second Sophistic, especially as the period has been defined in the past decade or two.5 Moreover, I will argue that, if Christian apocrypha were to be regularly included alongside the standard authors and texts of the emergent Second Sophistic and late antique canons, then historians of ancient literature would have a much more diverse toolkit to employ in constructing their broader interpretations of the period.
43.2 DEFINITIONS
To begin with the word itself, “apocrypha” comes from the Greek adjective ἀπόκρυφος (“hidden,” “secret”), and some of these works certainly pitched themselves as revealing esoteric information (e.g., Apocalypse of Paul, fourth century CE). While it is sometimes stated that “apocrypha” is a modern coinage, this is not entirely true. Today’s familiar use of the term “apocrypha” in an extended, denigrating sense, can clearly be found in the ancient world as, for instance, when the fourth-century Apostolic Constitutions uses it to describe Old Testament writings ascribed to Israel’s patriarchs and prophets (what we call the Pseudepigrapha) as “apocryphal” works which were “enemies of the truth.”6 Nevertheless, early Christian categorizations of apocryphal writings were often more granular than this, and many writers allowed for a nuanced position between canonical and heretical.
Let us consider Origen’s terminology from the middle of the third century. He does not use the term “apocrypha” per se, but he has a developed system for classifying early Christian writings. For Origen, “canonical” (ὁμολογούμενα, lit. “agreed upon”) meant authoritative and divinely inspired;7 “heretical” (ψευδῆ, lit. “forged”) meant deceptive and evil; and “disputed” (ἀμφιβαλλόμενα, lit. “doubted”) implied a recognition that some books were already subjects of debate, though he offers no precise standards of authenticity. This third category clearly included books that Tertullian (ca. 200), for instance, had already called “useful writings” (scripta instrumenta), indicating not just that they were either “in” or “out” but that they could stand somewhere in the middle, functional but not authoritative.8 Origen included in his “disputed” category some works that we would not call “apocrypha” today, such as the letter of 2 Peter and the Shepherd of Hermas (one of the so-called “Apostolic Fathers”).
At the beginning of the fourth century, Origen’s intellectual grandson Eusebius of Caesarea added to this category of “disputed books” (βίβλια ἀντιλεγόμενα) by placing in it not only 2 Peter, but also 2 and 3 John, as well as James.9 This was an expansion but also a restriction, since “disputed” now applied only to debated books within what we would recognize as a New Testament canon. In the category of “spurious” or “counterfeit” (νόθος, lit. “bastardized”)—also described as “the inventions of heretical men” (αἱρετικῶν ἀνδρῶν ἀναπλάσματα) which “ought to be shunned completely” (παντῇ παραιτητέον)—Eusebius, differing from Origen, placed books from the “Apostolic Fathers” like Shepherd of Hermas, the Didache, and Barnabas, as well as books we would call “apocrypha,” such as the Acts of Paul and the Apocalypse of Peter. It is therefore important to str
ess at the beginning that definitions of Christian apocrypha fluctuated in antiquity, and to a great degree our modern categories are constructions, despite their dependence upon ancient language.
The famous Gelasian Decree, a sixth-century list of banned books from Rome, labels a whole host of works as spuria and, as such, reads more like a library catalog of what literate Christians actually had on their shelves, rather than a list of “lost scriptures.”10 Regardless of whether or not they were considered “scripture” by those who were defining the terms of “apocrypha,” in no respect can we say they were lost. Indeed, the opposite was true. Authoritarian statements by individual writers or councils in Late Antiquity against such texts should be interpreted as confirmation of the broad popularity of apocryphal literature—as is suggested by the transmission history itself—rather than as evidence of its demise as the result of suppression.