The Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic

by Daniel S. Richter

  15.For Phidias’s statue as a tourist destination in this period, cf. Arrian, Epictetus 1.6.23–25, who criticizes someone who travels to Olympia to behold it, and regards it as a misfortune to die without seeing such sights.

  16.Totti 1985, no. 45; see Harland 2011; text in Friedrich 1968. So too the author of the Cyranides, a compilation of magical law, claims in the preface the he read the text on a stele that he was shown at Alexandria in Babylon: see Kaimakes 1976, 16–17

  17.See Halfmann 1986, 115; Millar 1977, 28–40.

  18.Suet. Vesp. 8.7.1; Tac. Hist. 4.82; Henrichs 1966.

  19.Suet. Vesp. 8.5.6; Tac. Hist. 2.78. So too Pythagoras was supposed to have visited Mt. Carmel (Iambl VP 3.14–17). For Mt. Carmel, see Lipinski 1995, 284–288 and now Ovadiah and Pierri 2015, who publish graffiti from "Elijah's Cave", the earlier ones dating from 2nd-3rd centuries AD.

  20.Apollo Grannus: Cass. Dio 78.15, 6; Pergamum: Herodian 4.8.3.

  21.He also visited Athens “to perform sacred rites” (id.3.7).

  22.Trajan: Joannes Malalas, Chronographia 11, p. 270 Dindorf; Halfmann 1986:188; Hadrian, Anth. Pal. 6.332; Hadrian: Aelius Spartianus, Vit. Hadr. 14.3; Julian: Amm. Marc. 22.14.4; Joannes Malalas, Chronographia 13, p. 327; Julian, Mis. 361d; Lib. Or. 18.69 (2:112, 14 Foerster).

  23.Zeus Kasios: see Fauth 1990.

  24.Hadrian: Halfmann 1986, 199; Caracalla: Cass. Dio 78.16.7, Herodian 4.8.3–5. Halfmann 1986, 214. See in general Erskine 2001, 252–253.

  25.Bernand and Bernand 1969, 166ff., n.168; Totti 1985, no. 35.

  26.On this, Bowersock 1984; on Julia Balbilla, see Rosenmeyer 2008.

  27.For the authorship, see Lightfoot 2003.

  28.Hajjar 1977, 1:177–178 (n. 158–163); for the pilgrimage more generally, 2:521.

  29.Bordeaux Pilgrim: Kötting 1950, 92–93; Egeria: Hunt 1982, 164–166; Paula: Hunt 1982, 171–172.

  30.Lane Fox 1986, 180: “While Christians travelled to the holy land and marveled at God’s wrath against the Jews, pagan choirs were travelling yearly to Claros to sing and to see their delegates ‘enter’ the temple tunnels.”

  CHAPTER 40

  1.For the problems of identifying these works according to a precise genre of apologia, see variously Frede, 1999, 225–231; Young 1999, 82–92; Parvis 2007; Fredouille 1995. I use the term here loosely to designate works sharing a similar Tendenz rather than composition according to narrow structural characteristics.

  2.Benz 1951. The death of Christ would, of course, prove the most important model for martyrdom; but His refusal to give a spoken defense was rarely, if ever, followed. Cf. Origen, C. Cels. praef. 1–3.

  3.For similar influence on Athenagoras, Leg., see Rankin 2009, 161–162.

  4.Justin, 1 Apol. 60.1, 5, alluding to Pl. Tim. 36bc. There was, therefore, an elision of the person of Socrates, the person executed in an unjust trial by the Athenians, and the doctrines elicited from the dialogues of Plato. In addition to the elements raised here (the act of dying for the truth, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul), Socrates’s general use of reason (logos) would be significant in the early Christian apologetic imagination; see the discussion below in the second section of the present chapter.

  5.See also Legat. 7.29–32, 11.18–20, 17.28–29, 22.9–11.

  6.Justin, Dial. 11.5, 110.4, 116.3, 119.3, 123.1, 138.2, 135.6.

  7.The charge and entire court case are fictitious (as Isocrates declares at Antid. 8); he is clearly adapting Socrates’s Apology (as recorded by Plato) as a literary model; see notes in the Loeb edition, passim. For more general uses of excerpting in the classical period, see Konstan 2011.

  CHAPTER 42

  1.For the Hellenization of Syria, see Millar 1987, 110–133; Butcher 2003, 274–289.

  2.Whittaker 1982, xii.

  3.Whittaker 1982, xii–xv.

  4.See Lampe 2003, 290.

  5.For Tatian and Greek paideia, see Fotjik 2009; Lampe 2003, 426–440; Nasrallah 2010, 65–70.

  6.Jos. Ag. Ap. 2.154.

  7.On the importance of relics, see Porter, 2001, 67–76.

  8.See Jones 2004, 19–20.

  9.Cf. Diod. Sic. 2.4; see further Drews 1965.

  10.Jones 2004, 19–20.

  11.Briant 2006, 7. On Ninus and Semiramis in the founding myths of cities of Asia Minor, see Yildirim 2004, 40–46.

  12.Cf. (Ps.-?)Lucian, De Dea Syria, 12, where the narrator’s version of Deucalion has the hero and his family surviving the flood in an ark.

  13.Joseph. Ant. 1.93, quoting Berossus.

  14.Joseph. Ant. 20.25–26.

  15.See Trebilco 2006, 86–95.

  16.See Egeria Itinerarium; Reisebericht, 202.20–28 [19.19], ed. Rowekamp.

  17.Julius Africanus, Chronographiae, F 23, 18–23, ed. Wallraff.

  18.Chron. F26, 13–22.

  19.Chron. F29.

  20.Joseph. BJ 4.533.

  21.For description of the festival in his own day (fifth century), see Sozom. Hist. eccl. 2.4. For recent discussion, see Caseau 2004, 123–126; Kofsky 1998, 19–30.

  22.Chron. F30b, 4–11. For unknown reasons, Africanus locates the tree in Shechem, not Hebron.

  23.Chron. F30a, 15–17.

  24.Euseb. Hist. eccl. 1.13.5.

  25.See Drijvers 1982, 167–189; Ross 2001, 133–135. For further arguments against Abgar’s Christianity, see Brock 1992, 212–234, esp. 222–224.

  26.Cesti F12, 20.35–57, ed. Wallraff.

  27.Cesti F12, 20.1–24.

  28.For the Greek devaluation of archery, see Lendon 2006, 33–34; 47–48; 55–56; 96, 310.

  29.Lucian, Toxaris, 8.

  30.Cesti F12, 44–45.

  31.Euseb. Quaest. Steph. suppl. (Migne, PG 22.965A).

  32.See Euseb. Hist. eccl. 4.30.1, who states that his students translated his numerous Syriac treatises into Greek. On the Greek education of his son Harmonius, see Sozom. Hist. eccl. 3.16.5. See further Ross 2001, 119–123.

  33.Epiph. Pan. 56.3, ed. K. Holl, 2.338.9–11.

  34.On Bar Daysan as a representative of the cultural values of Edessa, see Drijvers 1994, 237–238.

  35.Gelzer 1967, 1, 8.

  36.For Edessa after the removal of Abgar, see Millar 1993, 476–481; Ross 2001, 57–68.

  37.Epiph. Pan. 56.5. ed. Holl.

  38.Moses of Chorene, History of Armenia, 66 (Tomson, 212–213).

  39.Dio of Prusa, Or. 49.7.

  40.Flinterman 2004, 359; see further Flinterman 1995, 178–181.

  41.Porph. Abst. 4.17.60–63.

  42.For discussion of other similarities between Dio and Bar Daysan, see Anderson 1986, 147–148.

  43.See further Dihle 1964, 63; Drijvers 1965, 173–176; Müller 1980, 311–321; Reed 2009, 66–70; Sedlar 1980, 170–175.

  44.Porph. Abst. 4.17.10

  45.History of Armenia, 66 (Thomson, 212).

  46.Chron. F46, 52–54.

  47.Cesti F10, 50–53. For discussion, see Hammerstaedt 2009, 53–69.

  48.Chron. F98.

  49.Africanus, Epistle to Aristides, in Euseb. Hist. eccl. 1.7.14.

  50.Chron. T2a.

  51.Cf. Millar 1993, 375–376.

  52.On Severus Alexander’s dealings with Christians, see Ramelli 2000; Santos 1981.

  53.See Jones 1971, 279.

  54.Euseb. Onom. 90.15–17, ed. E. Klostermann.

  55.Sozom. Hist. eccl. 5.21.6–7.

  56.On Greek sophists in Rome, see Bowersock 1969, 43–58.

  57.Cesti F10.51–52.

  58.See Trapp 2007.

  59.See Vieillefond 1970, 50–52, esp. 52; Adler 2009, 11–15.

  60.Cesti F12, 10.4–5.

  61.Chron. F34, 1–11. On Africanus’s chronicle in the context of Hellenistic historiography, see Roberto 2011, 67–106.

  62.Euseb. Hist. eccl. 6.7.1.1–7.

  63.Chron. F93, 1–13; 30–103.

  64.Bowie 1974, 166–209.

  65.Chron. T11, 5–7.

  66.Chron. F93, 84–86.

  67.Chron. F24.

 
68.Euseb. Hist. eccl. 4.30.

  69.Ephrem, Hymns against heresies, 1.12.1–2, ed. Beck.

  70.Cesti T1b.

  CHAPTER 43

  1.I would like to dedicate this chapter to the memory of Professor François Bovon (1938–2013), an inspiring scholar, a dear friend, and the gentlest of souls.

  2.Kenney 1982–1985.

  3.Swain 1999; see also the major collection of Schmeling 2003, which includes a wealth of discussion about Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles but pays less attention to other categories of Christian fictional literature.

  4.Young, Ayres, and Louth 2004, 20–35.

  5.A foundational study in this vein is Hägg 1983, which was very prescient in seeing in the Second Sophistic a wide range of related literary styles.

  6.Apostolic Constitutions 6.16.3, ed. Funk.

  7.Cf. 2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:16–21.

  8.Bovon 2011, 318–322; Bovon 2012.

  9.Hist. eccl. 3.25, ed. Bandy.

  10.The Gelasian Decree was not the only such list: others include the List of the Sixty Books (seventh century), and the Stichometry of Nicephorus (fourth or ninth century). For these texts and others, see Hennecke and Schneemelcher 1991, 34–43. The phrase “lost scriptures” is the title of Ehrman 2003.

  11.Euseb. Hist eccl. 6.31; Adler 2009, 4; and, generally, Neuschäfer 1987.

  12.See Grafton and Williams 2006.

  13.See W. A. Johnson 2000, 2010.

  14.See the “Further Reading” section at the end of this chapter.

  15.See Junod 1992; Kraft 2007; Reed 2009; and Shoemaker 2008.

  16.On this point, see Bauckham, Davila, and Panayotov 2013, xxxii; and more generally, Davila 2005 and Kraft 2009.

  17.Kaestli 1977. The Manichaean Psalm Book (fourth century) names individual apostolic legends as part of a canon: see Klauck 2008, 3–4.

  18.Bovon 1995, 173.

  19.Cameron 1991, 89–119; Johnson 2007.

  20.Elliott 2013, 456.

  21.On these difficulties and others, see Bovon 1999.

  22.See Baldwin 2005 and Thomas 2003.

  23.For further discussion of these basic concepts, see Lapham 2003.

  24.Bovon 1988. See also Koester 1990.

  25.On the debates surrounding the definition of “Gnosticism,” see now Brakke 2010.

  26.On the textual criticism of the Nag Hammadi codices as related to their reception history, see Emmel 1997.

  27.On apocrypha in Syriac, see Debié, Jullien, Jullien, and Desreumaux 2005.

  28.See Koester 1989.

  29.E.g., Mark 1:1; 1 Peter 1:25; 2 Samuel 4:10; 2 Kings 7:9.

  30.Tuckett 2005.

  31.There are three extant fragments of the Gospel of Thomas in Greek, all from Oxyrhynchus: POxy. 1, POxy. 654, POxy. 655. The extant Coptic text is not an exact translation of the Greek.

  32.See Pagels 2003 with Most 2005, 242–244; also the older critique of Fitzmyer 1980. See also Dunderberg 2013.

  33.On the onomastics of Judas Thomas in this literature and elsewhere in Late Antiquity, see S. F. Johnson 2016, 111–114 (revising both Johnson 2010, 16n60 and Johnson 2008, 16n62). On the twin motif, see Stang 2016. On the Acts of Thomas, see Klijn 2003; and Bremmer 2001.

  34.On infancy narratives generally, see Elliott 2006; Davis 2014.

  35.See Elliott 2009, 3–25.

  36.See Klijn 1992.

  37.See Elliott 1997.

  38.Bovon 2003a.

  39.These dates are approximate and are taken from Klauck 2008, 3. In the ninth century, Photius knows these texts as a collection entitled “Circuits of the Apostles” (αἱ περίοδοιτῶν ἀποστόλων) authored by a Leucus Charinus. The Manichaeans claimed Charinus as the author of the entirety of their apocryphal canon. See Phot. Bibl. cod. 114, ed. Henry, with a discussion at Klauck 2008, 5–6.

  40.On the Acts of John by Prochorus, see Junod and Kaestli 1983. On the Acts of Philip, see Bovon, Bouvier, and Amsler 1999; Bovon and Matthews 2012.

  41.For this point, see Elliott 2013, 468.

  42.See Stang 2016; Foster 2007; and Klauck 2008, 31–32. On the theology of the Apocryphal Gospels, see Frey and Schröter 2010; and Schröter 2013.

  43.See Bremmer and Formisano 2012.

  44.Klauck 2008, 2. See also Bovon 2003a.

  45.For an extended discussion of this topic, see Davis 2001.

  46.See Bremmer 1996.

  47.On this point with reference to the ancient novel, see Bowie 2003.

  48.Johnson 2006c, 1–14.

  49.On this text see Dagron 1978; Johnson 2006c. The Miracles half has been translated in Talbot and Johnson 2012. On the parallel history of apocrypha dealing with Stephen, see Bovon 2003b.

  50.See Shoemaker 2002; and now Shoemaker 2016, which attempts to place devotion to the Virgin Mary much earlier in the history of Christian literature.

  51.For more on this question in relation to the rise of Thecla devotion, see Johnson 2006c, 221–226.

  52.Johnson 2006b; Pinheiro, Perkins, and Pervo 2012.

  53.On these texts, see in the present volume Morgan (chapter 25), Selden (chapter 27), and Zeitlin (chapter 26).

  54.Apollonius King of Tyre: Kortekaas 2004, 2007. Alexander Romance: Stoneman 2008. Jewish Novels: Wills 1995, 2002.

  55.This list is adapted from Bremmer 2001, 164, who in turn is summarizing the conclusions of Söder 1932.

  56.See Bowersock 1994; Price 1997; also now Harper 2013, 121–132, 194–213.

  57.See Bowie 2003.

  58.On the “Hymn of the Pearl,” see Poirier 1981.

  59.On the Odes of Solomon, see Lattke 2009.

  60.Ed. Rehm and Strecker 1992 (Homilies), 1994 (Recognitions). See also Hennecke and Schneemelcher 1991–1992, 483–541.

  61.Cf. Acts 8:9–24. See Ferreiro 2005 and Zwierlein 2013. On the Acts of Peter, see also Bremmer 1998.

  62.The Grundschrift has recently been placed through internal analysis into a northern Mesopotamian cultural milieu in the early third century: Bremmer 2010; Kelley 2006. The Clementine literature has been associated with both Justin Martyr—a Greek Christian apologist teaching at Rome from the 140s—and, especially, his disciple Tatian, who composed his harmony of the Gospels, the Diatessaron, around 172, after having returned from Rome to his native Syria (Perrin 2002, 30–34). The Diatessaron seems to have a close affinity with the text of the canonical Gospels used by both the Gospel of Thomas and the Clementine Grundschrift. On this larger question of the dissemination and influence of the Diatessaron, see Petersen 1994 and Quispel 1975.

  63.The Homilies was revised by an Arian editor who sought to include some basic metaphysical doctrine—namely, the “disposition of the syzygies,” or binary opposites—but it still retains some of the Jewish-Christian heritage thought to underlie the Grundschrift (e.g., vegetarianism) and which is missing from the Recognitions. See Reed 2007.

  64.These texts were edited and presented alongside a hypothetical retro-translation into Greek by Frankenberg 1937.

  65.The term “forgery” is favored by Ehrman 2011 and 2013. Ehrman is heavily dependent for terminology on the classic treatment of Speyer 1971, who speaks instead of Schwindelliteratur and literarische Fälschung. I consider Speyer’s treatment to be the more subtle, but, regardless, Erhman does not consider nearly the range of literature that Speyer does. A clearer example of Schwindelliteratur or literary hoax is found, for instance, in the early medieval Cosmography of Aethicus Ister, discussed at Speyer 1971, 77–78. This text invents sources out of whole cloth in order to buttress its claim to being an authentic (theretofore lost) work of Jerome (Herren 2011).

  66.For select anthologies of this huge corpus, see Bauckham, Davila, and Panayotov 2013; Charlesworth 1983; and Sparks 1984.

  67.See also Reed 2008.

  68.On question-answer literature, see Papadoyannakis 2006, and Volgers and Zamagni 2004. On Christian dialogue literature in Late Antiquity, see now Cameron 2014.

  69.Pervo 1987; Bovon 1995, 161.

  70.Cameron 2006.


  71.Hägg 2012, 380–389.

  72.Hägg and Rousseau 2000; Whitby 1998.

  73.See Bovon 1981.

  INDEX

  Achilles Tatius, 16, 389, 399, 405–16, 472, 649, 677, 688n39, 712n27

  asianism of, 57, 60

  cult and rituals in, 735n36

  Leucippe and Clitophon of, 55, 119, 353, 405–6, 413–16, 421, 470, 606, 616

  myths of, 410, 471

  See also asianism; novel, the

  Adrastus of Aphrodisias, 574, 591. See also Aristotelians

  Aelian of Praeneste, 6, 28, 359–60, 448–50, 457–58, 485–86, 539, 724n25

  atticism of, 44, 49–53, 58, 60, 108, 150, 720n7, 723n65, 724n17

  epistolography of, 509, 511–12, 518

  On the Characteristics of Animals of, 28, 447, 449, 452, 454

  Varia Historia of, 358–59, 447, 456, 459

  See also atticism; oratory; sophists

  Aelius Aelianus, 193

  Aelius Aristides, 5, 41, 49, 142, 233, 255–67, 346, 352, 371, 382, 384, 431, 563

  atticism of, 51, 53, 424, 484

  autobiography of, 615

  the civic theater and, 184, 625

  education and, 140, 191, 477, 695n4, 696n14

  Hellenocentric universalism of, 635

  Monody to Smyrna of, 55

  oratory of, 89, 147, 171, 205, 213, 311, 425, 604, 695n8

  Panathenaikos of, 89–93, 342, 424

  Platonic discourses of, 261–62

  on poetry, 263–64

  polemics of, 261–63

  religion and, 605–6, 615, 734n26

  Roman Oration of, 93, 207, 736n1

  Roman triumphalism of, 487

  Sacred Tales of, 12, 259–61, 348, 354, 614

  as a sophist, 374

  See also atticism; oratory

  Aelius Paion, 494, 499. See also melic poetry; poetry

  Aesop, 143, 340, 696n14. See also Corpus Aesopicum; fable

  aesthetics, 363, 405, 415, 629

  anticlassical, 58–60

  apocalyptic, 679, 681

  artworks and, 364

  of atticism, 56, 377

  of blood and violence, 282

  butch, 130

  of erotic works, 406, 412

  Latinity and, 71, 74, 78

  of miscellaneousness, 448, 458

  See also asianism; atticism

  Alcaeus, 429. See also poetry