Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins (PSCO 27.1 was not available) Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins No. 27.2, December 7, 1989 Topic for 1989-90: Rethinking Social Description of Jewish and Christian Communities in Late Antiquity Chairpersons for the year: Ross Kraemer and Howard Clark Kee Secretary for the year: David Rech Minutes by Allen Kerkeslager, July 1998, based on cassette tape recording. Meeting of December 1989 Bentley Layton, Yale University "Social Description of Gnostics and Gnosticism"* Introduction *Layton mentioned that the contents of this paper were being prepared for JBL, but readers should search elsewhere for a published version, if one exists, since it cannot be found in the issues of JBL that appeared in 1989 or the immediately succeeding years. This paper will deal with two issues: (1) The problem of method (How can we know about large movements like those involving the Gnostics with so little evidence? Is it best not to reconstruct anything at all in such a case?); (2) the basic results of the application of the methods employed in the discussion of the first issue. The term "Gnosticism" only dates back to the 17th century and the history of this term remains an object for future study. But the term "Gnostics" is documented from the 2nd to the 6th century CE. The ancient sources, not a priori modern notions of "Gnosticism," must be used to reconstruct the history of these Gnostics. The term "Gnostic" is used in two different ways nowadays: First, it is used in an ancient historical sense, to refer to the ancient people who called themselves Gnostics. Second, it is used in the sense of a philosophical category, as an instance of the category "Gnosticism," a term that assumes a consensus about the meaning of "Gnosticism." Only the first use of "Gnostic," the historical use, interests us here. The word gnostikos is one of more than 4,000 Greek words that were formed in the period from classical Greece to Late Antiquity on the basis of the productive adjectival ending -tikos or -ikos. The suffix contained the idea of "relating to, exhibiting the characteristics of, able to, or productive of." Thus gnostikos referred to that which "related to, exhibited the characteristics of, was able to, or was productive of" something associated with the Greek word stem gno- (as in gignosko, gnosis, and so on). Plato created gnostikos to describe the skill of an ideal ruler in his Politicus. Thus the word began as a friendly, well-meaning word. The word was never used to describe a group of people until its use in the plural (hoi gnostikoi) to refer to Gnostics in the second century CE. It thus had a new, different, intellectual, perhaps even jargonistic sound. Its qualities would have been heard as admirable, not pejorative. It was not an expression of abuse, but of pride and solidarity. It thus must have originally been some group's name for itself, even though we know the name only from its enemies. The reason for the group's preference for this name is unclear, but the group may have focused the use of the term on its associations with the tree of knowledge mentioned in the LXX. Philo actually uses gnostikos precisely for the purpose of referring to this tree. Method There are a number of problems with the study of these people who called themselves "Gnostics." (1) Direct evidence is sparse and comes almost entirely from the pens of their enemies. (2) Gnostics were also known or written about under names other than "Gnostics." (3) Sources commonly associated with Gnostics can be attributed to them only circumstantially. (4) Because of its pseudepigraphic character, Gnostic literature provides little evidence for social description of the Gnostics as a group. In view of these difficulties, the history of the Gnostics must rest on a careful control of the documents used for the study of the Gnostics. Since so little remains from the Gnostics, a six-step method must be applied that controls the sources. This method moves from identifying the most certain sources in step one to identifying the least certain sources in step six. The focus of this method is on developing a corpus of distinctively Gnostic sources rather than in analyzing a theme somehow associated with Gnostics. (Step 1) Ancient testimonia to a group explicitly calling themselves hoi gnostikoi (Gnostics) are collected and registered. The most important are found in Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus of Rome, Plotinus, Porphyry, and Epiphanius; also a lost work of Justin Martyr and some material in Celsus. Epiphanius says that the Gnostics were also known by other names, some of which he lists. These testimonia contain four kinds of information: (a) descriptions of activities, beliefs, and practices of self-styled gnostikoi; (b) summaries, excerpts, and paraphrases of their Scriptures; (c) lists of titles of some of their Scriptures; (d) other ancient names of the Gnostics. (Step 2) The Scripture summaries and titles can then be compared with known literature to see if they can be used to identify any of this literature as Gnostic. With regard to the summaries and comparison of them with apocryphal works, Irenaeus's statements about the Gnostic creation myth can be found in the "Secret Book According to John" [Apocryphon of John]. With regard to the titles provided in the testimonia, three stand out: Porphyry, writing about his teacher Plotinus's seminar (which met 262-270 CE), refers to Gnostic works, three of which are identifiable: the Oracles of Truth of Zostrianos (found in the so-called Nag Hammadi documents); Allogenes ("the Foreigner"; found in the so-called Nag Hammadi documents); and the Book of Zoroaster, which is excerpted in the Secret Book According to John. Thus we now can identify four books so far as Gnostic. (Step 3) The content of these identifiably Gnostic texts is then compared with the content of all known unassigned early Christian literature. A distinctive cosmography, philosophical creation myth, cast of characters, and so on emerge from the identifiably Gnostic literature that can be compared to that found in other texts. On the basis of steps 2 and 3, Hans Martin Schenke identified a coherent corpus that he called Sethian Gnostic (and later Gnostic Sethian). The structure of the mythography found in this corpus also has parallels in Valentinian mythography, but Valentinus and his followers must be kept separate as a distinct mutation or denomination of Gnostics and thus will not be discussed here. The result thus far is then nine additional works of Gnostic literature, eight of which are found in the Coptic Nag Hammadi corpus, the other from an Oxford Coptic manuscript. These can be considered Gnostic Scripture. (Step 4) All testimonia of Christian authors whose mythmaking is similar to the Gnostic mythography found in the Gnostic corpus are then analyzed, no matter what sectarian name is given to them; e.g., Irenaeus's summary on Saturninus of Antioch; Epiphanius's Sethians and his Archontics; the Audians described by Theodor bar Konai. This provides us with more names of Gnostic groups and more names of Gnostic books and persons. (Step 5) The new names derived from the preceding step 4 are then made the object of a search in ancient literature. By this stage we must recognize that we are now probably dealing with several varieties of a species of the overarching group known as Gnostics. In addition, we must remember that we are dealing with three centuries of material, which represents a long period of time for change and development. Thus the groups analyzed at this stage may not necessarily agree in their mythology with Schenke's corpus identified through steps 2 and 3. (Step 6) The new testimonia to self-styled Gnostics and persons identified as Gnostics on the basis of the other names surveyed in the preceding step 5 are studied to eliminate any that clearly do not fit the Gnostic type of myth as represented in steps 2 and 3. The need for this sixth and final step is a delicate and debatable matter because scholarly opinions on how much one should eliminate through this method will vary. The product of the application of these six steps is that the center piece of evidence is the Secret Book According to John [Apocryphon of John], which Irenaeus explicitly assigns to the gnostikoi. Other works, titles, and names are in the periphery around this center. Actions, beliefs, and practices attributed to the Gnostics by their enemies have not been considered in this method because they are often less distinctive and too easily allow for false and hostile reporting. Emphasis in this method is rather on the formation of a body of evidence based on the delimitation of a literary corpus. The literary corpus seems much more to be an expression of group identity because of its shared myth of origins, jargon, and references to insiders and outsiders. Results of Analysis The methods outlined above may be applied to result in a picture of the social and literary history of the Gnostics that is much more controlled than other reconstructions because certain data can be eliminated. Other sources that can supplement the testimonia are described in Stephen Gero's essay on Borborite Christians of the Byzantine East (see also his essay in the conference papers edited by Charles Hedrick and Robert Hodgson, published by Hendrickson). In the pre-Constantinian period, Gnostics are mentioned in Antioch, Alexandria, Rome, and probably Coptic Egypt. The first to be mentioned are Saturninus of Antioch (before 155) and the Gnostics who influenced Valentinus (either in Alexandria or in Rome, or in both). The Valentinian reformation of the Gnostic school occurred in Rome about 150 CE. The ascetic ethics of Gnosticism were noted by Irenaeus in his discussion of Saturninus: vegetarianism, celibacy, and presumably sexual continence. This resulted in a flood of anti-Gnostic literature. The translation of Gnostic texts from Greek to Coptic almost certainly took place before Constantine's final victory. In the post-Constantinian period, Gnostics are noted in the additional geographical regions of areas dominated by speakers of Aramaic and Armenian. In this later period, as orthodox Christians and Zoroastrians both gained official recognition and support in their respective home empires (Roman and Persian), the Gnostics began to suffer increasingly more violent persecution at the hands of official religious and political authorities. Persecution by the Zoroastrians, incidentally, is not only curious, but also disastrous for the theory that the Gnostics were the classic example of dualists. In this period Gnostics are mentioned as being in Egypt (335 CE); Palestine (350 CE); Arabia (i.e., Transjordan) among the Ebionites (340 CE); various parts of Syria (later 4th century to 578 CE); Cilicia (340 CE); Galatia (350 CE); Constantinople (422 CE); Lesser (Byzantine) Armenia (350 CE); Osrhoëne (370-476 CE); and Greater (Persian) Armenia (360-578 CE). In Egypt, Epiphanius found Gnostics hidden within the church: Peter the Archontic Gnostic was an ordained priest until his detection in 343 and afterwards lived with his Gnostic inclinations undetected in Judean desert monasticism. In the fourth century, the Gnostics were known to use the OT/NT allegorically to justify or disguise their views. Theodore of Mopsuestia (400 CE) considered them difficult to distinguish from non-Gnostics. Nestorius (422 CE) found them attending orthodox church services in Constantinople and detected crypto-Gnostics among the clergy. Ascetic or monastic associations of Gnostics are attested from ca. 335 (Epiphanius's sojourn in Egypt) to 570 CE (the flight of Persian Gnostic monks into Syria). Public debates between Gnostics and orthodox are noted in Cilicia in 340. Eventually the Gnostics came to be called by the pejorative name Borborians or Borborites (derived from the word for "filth" and also a play on both "Barbello" and "barbarian" [barbaros]). Together with this innuendo was a slander on the sexual promiscuity of Gnostic worship services, though this is common slander leveled at a wide variety of denominations throughout history is at odds with the asceticism of Gnostic piety and the participation of Gnostics in orthodox worship. The establishment of the political power of the orthodox allowed the orthodox to take increasingly strong measures against the Gnostics. Beginning about 335 a series of legislation was enacted with the result that many Gnostic priests were defrocked, their Scriptures were in danger of destruction, their baptism was nullified, they were forbidden to build churches, and their legal testimony was declared invalid. The most violent persecutions of Gnostics were in Byzantine Armenia ca. 400 and later in Sassanian Persia starting in 565. In both the pre-Constantinian and post-Constantinian periods, all opponents, both Christian and pagan, treat them as a species of Christian, as a hairesis (possibly to be translated as "sect" or some other type of group). But the exact social relationship between Gnostics and non-Gnostic Christians is unclear. Surviving Gnostic mythography, which is pre-Constantinian, appears exclusivist. It possessed a distinctive myth of origins, a strong expression of group identity, a special jargon, and a distinctive initiatory sacrament. But pre-Constantinian sources do not tell us if they had separate parishes or tried to exist undetected like the Valentinians. Post-Constantinian sources do depict them as an unwanted element within the established church at large. They then may be called a sect, but neither the precise meaning of the term nor their social evolution can be reconstructed. Various Gnostic teachers can be identified, however. These include Saturninus of Antioch (before 155); Adelphius, Alexander of Libya, Aquilinus, Demostratus, Lydus, and Philocomus (all before 251); Eutachtus of Satylla (place name spelling?) and Peter the Archontic (both ca. 350); and possibly a Gnostic scribe, Pchesis Eugnostos, copyist of Nag Hammadi codex 3. "In summary: The Gnostics were a species of esoteric Christians characterized by a distinctive mythography. That's what you get if you apply the method" (Layton's exact words). Ancient names for varieties of this species include Archontics, Barbellites, Borborians, Borborites, Kottians, Levites, Phibianites, Saturnalians, Secundians, Sethians, Socratites, Stratiotics, Zikaiai. Some of these names (especially Borborites) were polemical tags devised by their enemies. Their activity is attested from the early second to the late sixth centuries CE. Though their mythography is best known from apocrypha that was translated into Coptic, the main language of their literature was clearly Greek and this language was spoken internationally. It is thus an accident of geography that we know their works through Egyptian missionaries, who translated about a dozen works into Coptic in about the third century, works that were later transmitted and preserved with non-Gnostic writings in the so-called Nag Hammadi codices, perhaps in a time of persecution. But this surviving material is only the tip of a giant Gnostic iceberg. Concluding Observations: The So-Called Nag Hammadi Texts In 1946 about a dozen manuscripts appeared on the Cairo antiquities market. These included the remains of bound copies of Coptic manuscripts copied in the fourth century CE. In 1948 Emile Puech and Jean Doresse identified some of these manuscripts as "gnostique." Eventually all 12 1/2 codices became the property of the Coptic museum in Cairo except for a small fragment that belongs to Yale University and the cover of codex 1, which is owned by the Claremont Graduate School. The remains of a similar codex appeared for sale on the antiquities market in 1983, but it is not thought to be part of the same ancient lot and its present whereabouts are unknown to me. Jean Doresse traced the discovery of the manuscripts to a vast but poor necropolis of the Roman period at the base of a cliff face across the Nile from the agricultural town of Nag Hammadi and not far from a fourth century monastery founded by St. Pachomius. Doresse called the manuscript collection a "bibliothèque" (library). In 1974, James Robinson organized an archaeological excavation at the site pointed out by Doresse at the base of the cliff, which was known as Jabal al-Tarif. Robinson found a peasant who admitted to being present at the initial discovery in 1945, at which time the peasant claims to have witnessed his brother's find of a large clay jar that contained the manuscripts at a precise spot to which the peasant pointed under a boulder on the cliff talus. But subsequent excavation showed that this was not an ancient burial site, contrary to the peasant's claim that next to the jar was a fresh corpse laying on a bed of something like charcoal. This discrepancy has never been explained and casts doubt on the peasant's story. The nearby necropolis included burials with hieroglyphic inscriptions from as early as ca. 2300 BCE and others from much later periods, including one with a burial cloth dated by Carbon 14 to ca. the fifth century CE. Findings in other graves included Byzantine coins of 503-641 CE and various sherds. At least two of the caves had been used as Coptic hermitages in the early Byzantine period. Thus comparison has often been made with the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a case in which the archaeology of the nearby site (Qumran) and the content of the scrolls are mutually illuminating. The question was whether or not a similar situation applied with the so-called Nag Hammadi texts. [During the discussion after Layton's paper, Ross Kraemer pointed out that whether or not such a situation even exists in the case of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Qumran has itself been called into question.] Doresse in 1972 had pointed out that a monastic installation was recorded on a map from 1866 by the cliff face of Jabal al-Tarif. But the identification on the map may have simply referred to the Byzantine cave hermitage, despite Doresse's belief that it referred to an archaeological ruin. Thus any hopes of finding an ancient Gnostic monastery were completely unsupported by the results of Robinson's excavation. Robinson reported no sign of habitation in the area except the Byzantine hermit caves, where the manuscripts might have been read, but certainly not copied. In addition, the site identified by the peasant turned out not to be a burial site, so association with nearby graves was also problematized. The codices thus appear to be a hoard. This hoard was stashed in a jar and buried in the rock debris of the talus. This may have occurred in a time of oppression, but objections have been raised to this hypothesis. The lack of any archaeological context for the manuscript hoard parallels the lack of specific references to a social organization or community in the texts themselves. No evidence exists that a monastic community was ever found at Jabal al-Tarif. Nevertheless, the monastic hypothesis has still played a role in scholarship. John Barns analyzed the fourth century papyrus documents that had been glued together to form the bindings for the codices. In a posthumously published work, he concluded that the discarded scraps referred to Cenobytic monastic life and mentioned Pachomius and his adjutant Paphnutius. Barns thought that this suggested that the scraps had been discarded in a fourth century Pachomian monastery. He proposed that if they had been discarded there, they were also probably reused there by the monastery's binder to bind a Gnostic codex and all the other codices in the so-called Nag Hammadi documents. This would suggest the existence of a group of ostensibly orthodox Christian Coptic monks collecting for their own purposes a body of heretical Gnostic literature. Indeed, one of Pachomius's own monasteries was only a few kilometers away from Jabal al-Tarif. The problem with Barns's theory was that when closer scrutiny of the cartonnage was made by G. M. Browne and J. C. Shelton, it was found that the scraps from the bindings were mostly Greek and mostly discarded government documents, along with some private correspondence. Some of this material did include monastic texts, but none were Pachomian and the texts only testified to unorganized hermits. Some of the manuscript readings used in support of Barns's theory were found to be incorrect and the single letter from Paphnuta to Pachoma may simply refer to persons who coincidentally shared the same name with the more famous bearers of these two common names. Overall the scraps simply are the products of town rubbish heaps and shed no light at all on the context in which the codices were copied. The idea that the texts were copied in a Pachomian monastery thus should be buried. The documents were originally composed in Greek and were post-Christian. Thus they theoretically could have been composed almost any time from 30 to 350 CE. The Coptic language is simply an irremovable filter through which the Greek contents must be viewed. The collection of texts is not originally Coptic; it is not a library, but a hoard; it is not really from Nag Hammadi, but from across the river; it was not necessarily all composed even in Egypt; and it was not even Gnostic, since only 12 of the 55 documents in the hoard belong to identifiably Gnostic works. Thus it is preferable to call this collection of documents the Jabal al-Tarif hoard. These documents need to be completely reevaluated in the light of this perspective rather than under the rubric of Gnosticism, which has obscured the previous study of these texts. The hoard consists mostly of Christian apocryphal documents that cannot be assumed to be Gnostic. They must be analyzed individually or in appropriate groupings to see what their own denominational, mythic, or theological tendencies may be. The remaining works must also not be thought of simply as artifacts of the Gnostics. The Gospel of Thomas, for example, is not Gnostic. DISCUSSION During the discussion after the paper, Layton emphasized that rather than studying the theme of esoteric knowledge, as Kurt Rudolph did, his method described above is rigidly historicist and allows him to define more clearly the boundaries of the object of study by focusing on a literary corpus. Thus dealing with esoteric Islamic philosophers is beyond the scope of Layton's study. Besides the problem of defining boundaries under the approach taken by Rudolph, Rudolph tended to exaggerate the antiquity of the Mandean texts that he studied. One illustration of this is an occasion in which Layton was collating a Coptic manuscript in the British Library when Rudolph was present working on a Mandean text. Rudolph showed the Mandean text to Layton and suggested to Layton that the Mandean text may have been written in the seventh or eighth century, even though it was on paper. On analyzing the paper, which was in a rather sturdy condition, Layton discovered a Venetian watermark on it. Of course, a 19th century manuscript may still attest to a second century text. But Rudolph obviously tended to exaggerate the antiquity of his sources. One question raised in the discussion concerned Layton's omission of the Valentinians from his analysis. Layton replied that he distinguished the Valentinians from the Gnostics to point out the sketchiness of the evidence for the Gnostics. But he stated that the Valentinians were indeed a branch of the gnostikoi (Gnostics) reformed by Valentinus. But the Valentinian books were not included in the count of the 12 books from the so-called Nag Hammadi texts that he earlier said were Gnostic. With regard to the use of Clement of Alexandria as a source, it must be kept in mind that Clement is valuable as a source but is humorously revisionist. He does not actually call his own group "the true Gnostics" but rather speaks of "the true Gnostic" as a type of individual. His mode of polemic is an elaborate game in which he takes the term used by a group with which he disagrees and applies it implicitly as an ideal term for members of his own group. Clarifying Layton's method, Layton emphasized that his method focuses on the formation of a literary corpus, as in the approach of Hans Martin Schenke, not a philosophical belief system, as in the approach of Kurt Rudolph or (as is unspeakable) Hans Jonas. This provides a more certain body of Gnostic material and helps eliminate other material so that the data can be reduced to a manageable corpus with a distinctive mythography. One objection raised against this method was the question of what evidence one has that one should accept the testimony of the heresiologists that there really was a distinct sect who identified themselves as Gnostics. Layton replied that there really is no evidence; we cannot know whether there really was such a sect or whether it was merely a loose grouping of isolated individuals who shared similar ideas. The documents are pseudepigraphic and do not really tell us much about the life world and practices of the people who produced them or even how the documents were used. Despite Layton's denial that most of the so-called Nag Hammadi documents are Gnostic, he recognized that the problem of the Gnostic identity of the documents is very complex. He stated that a work is in some sense Gnostic simply if Gnostics used it. People were Gnostics, not books, so in this sense it is possible that all of the Nag Hammadi documents were Gnostic. But we really cannot know anything for certain about the Gnostics without projecting ourselves back in time and doing an ethnographic study involving participant observation, which is obviously not possible. Thus we also cannot know why certain documents were buried together among the so-called Nag Hammadi texts. The fact that Gnostic and other texts were collected together in the so-called Nag Hammadi codices most certainly tells us nothing at all about their authors. The Gnostic texts were written early in the movement's history, while the testimonies about the Gnostics were written later (obviously so, since the testimonia are precisely testimonies to the documents). Thus Gnostic origins can only be reconstructed by extrapolating from the social nexus of the testimonia and the documents. The mere existence of a later collection of documents is of no use for this purpose. Finally, the question of the affiliation of the largest portion of the Jabal al-Tarif [Nag Hammadi] documents has to be reopened. Most of the Jabal al-Tarif documents have been viewed under a cloud of Gnosticism and thus have been excluded from studies of orthodox Christianity and other movements to which, under reevaluation of these documents, they might or might not belong. The documents may shed considerable light on the non-Gnostic groups in which they were produced, possibly including groups within orthodox Christianity. ///////END OF TEXT 27.2//////// Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins No. 27.3, January, 1990 Topic for 1989-90: Rethinking Social Description of Jewish and Christian Communities in Late Antiquity Chairpersons for the year: Ross Kraemer and Howard Clark Kee Secretary for the year: David Rech Minutes by Allen Kerkeslager, August 1998, based on cassette tape recording. Meeting of January 1990 David Utz, University of Pennsylvania "Social History of Christians in Iran from the Third to the Sixth Centuries CE" [[[TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Utz provided a handout that included a list of the foreign words used in the paper. Unfortunately this list was not available to me when I transcribed the tape. The spelling of many of the foreign words used in the paper is therefore in serious doubt. I have nevertheless included some wild guesses based on what could be heard in the tape, which was itself not always very clear. When these guesses were especially insecure, I have marked them with question marks (?). These guesses will be of little use to the non-specialist, but they might at least be close enough to the correct transliteration to help specialists in Utz's field who would like to have an idea of the sources and terms to which he refers.]]] In surveying the social history of Christians in Iran in Late Antiquity, that is, in an area that was continually under the administration of the Sasanians from the mid-third century CE to the mid-seventh century CE, one is immediately faced with problems that revolve around the nature of the sources for this period of Iranian society. Traditional indigenous historiography portrays this society as a proto-Islamic society along Zoroastrian lines. But it is clear from other sources that this is misleading, that a number of distinct religious communities existed and flourished in this period. At the same time this period is of interest because of disjunctions in religious history in Late Antique Iran and because of the disjunctive nature of Late Antiquity Iranian society. These disjunctions contrast sharply with the Iranian tendency to portray Late Antique Iranian society as homogenous. Analysis of Christianity in Iran in this period also raises broader issue about whether disjuncture in religious history does not become a factor in the development of religious communities. The traditional indigenous historiography of the period found its definitive formulation in the lost Middle Persian work, Hwataynama (spelling???), the official chronicle of the Sasanians. This was used as the basis of early Islamic accounts in Arabic and Persian, the most extensive and important ones being al-Tabari's annals, specifically the section on the Sasanians, and another work. This traditional historiography is also represented in various middle Persian works and works of eschatological historiography presenting the history of Zoroastrian society as a prophecy from Ahura Mazda to Zarathustra. One of the examples of this is the Bahman Yasht. In all of these works Iranian society is viewed as a thoroughly Zoroastrian society, marred only occasionally by various heretics. There is no indication that Christians within Iranian society were distinguished from the more general term, "the destroyers of the sovereignty of Iran and the religion," who are polluting the earth, water, and fire with corpses and thereby not doing their part to reconstitute creation in its primeval perfection. This attitude is underscored in an eschatological passage in the Bahman Yasht concerning the evil age to come after the Zoroastrian millennium. When Christianity is explicitly mentioned, it is always mentioned as the normal religion of foreigners, especially the inhabitants of the Roman and Byzantine empires. Thus the traditional indigenous social and historical view is quasi-Islamic, with religion being viewed as both a body of personal belief and practice and a social and communal way of life, i.e., combining the sovereignty and well-being of Iran with the health of its religion. It is thus no surprise that this indigenous historiography presents only the viewpoint of late Sasanian clerical and secular officialdom. Like Livy's Ab Urbe Condita with its edificatory purposes, the official historiography of Iran is designed to present a specific view of society and history. Fortunately, other materials are extant that originated independently of this tradition. The most important are inscriptions of early Sasanian kings and other powerful officials. The most important for the history of Christians and other non-Zoroastrian communities are the four inscriptions of Kartir, a powerful cleric from the reign of Bahram II (ca. 276-293 CE). In the longest versions of these inscriptions, Kartir mentions by name seven specific religious communities that he persecuted. Four of these can be certainly identified: Yahud (Jews); Shraman (Buddhists); Brahman (Hindus); Zandiq (Manicheans). The three others are more difficult to identify: Nasrai; Christian; Machatach. Machatach (which may form a pair with Zandiq [Manichean]), has been explained by some scholars as "baptists," perhaps residual Elchasites that had not been converted by Mani and his disciples. H. W. Bailey proposed an Iranian etymology that would account for this. Nasrai and Christian might also form a pair (just as do Shraman and Brahman), with various hypotheses proposed to explain the terms. E.g., Christian might mean Marcionites and Nasrai might mean Christians. Alternatively, Christian might mean Christians and Nasrai might refer to Mandeans [apparently according to Bailey; in the discussion following the paper, Utz mentioned that Bailey argued that the Mandeans called themselves a name similar to Nasrai]. Or both "Christian" and "Nasrai" may refer to Christians, with Christian referring to Greek-speaking Christians (especially deportees from Antioch and other cities after the activity of Shaphur earlier in the century) and Nasrai Aramaic-speaking Christians indigenous to Mesopotamia. This last theory is supported by the report of the Seret (??? spelling) chronicle that there were two churches in Rev Artashir, the metropolis for Persis, each with its own language (Greek and Syriac). It would also have support in the Carola (?) Christians [in India] who distinguished between "Christians" of Latin origin and "Nasrani" as the usual appellation of Syro-Malabar Christians. More details about Christian communities under the Sasanians are found in other sources, most notably in the writings of Armenian historians of this period, especially Agathangelos, Faustus of Buzan, Lazar of Par, Moses of Koren (?), and Yegishey (?). From this historiographic literature it is clear that the social history of Christianity in this period is intimately linked to the social history of Armenia more generally. It must be borne in mind that until the 220s CE, Iran and Armenia had been ruled for almost 200 years by separate kings of the same Arsacid family and shared virtually the same type of organization of society and polity. The Armenian Arsacid royal family and the families of the various had their exact social counterparts in Parthian Iran, and these families were in fact inter-linked. Therefore with the death with the Arsacid Artabanus V and the wholesale disbanding of the Parthian court and social infrastructure, the growth of Sasanian administration and society in the third century must have posed a substantial threat to the existence of the old Arsacid society in Armenia, its last bastion. Consequently it is not hard to imagine that the conversion of Tiridates III to Christianity in the second decade of the fourth century helped to provide an organizational network for maintaining traditional Arsacid social structures and the old Naharar families. This is best exemplified in the salient feature of the ecclesiastical structure of the Armenian church. Rather than being organized around cities (i.e., a metropolis and its bishop), as in most of Christendom, in Armenia the ecclesiastical structure was organized around families. Each Naharar family had its bishop directly responsible to the Katholikos, who (until 387) was the bishop of the royal family so to speak. The ambiguous nature of Armenian Christianity is clearly expressed in Yegishey's (?) account of the events leading up to the battle of Pabarar (?) in 451, during which the Sasanian government tried to forcibly convert the Armenians to Zoroastrianism (found in an Armenian book). The social history of the Armenian Christians in Iran under the Sasanians is thus not that of a subaltern group. Another conspicuous Christian community under the Sasanians is represented in various Syriac and Arabic writings, especially the Syriac acts of various martyrs and saints, and the Synodicon (acts of various synods of the Iranian church, i.e., Nestorian church), and other chronicles such as the Seret (?) chronicle and others of varying reliability and usefulness. In contrast to the Armenian church, the Syrian church in Iran is organized into various ecclesiastical provinces, each of which was headed by a bishop in a particular metropolis, sometimes with other bishops under him. The bishop of Seleucia Ctesiphon, the capital of Sasanian Iran, eventually became the Katholikos of the Sasanian church. The persecution of these Christians was a function of the waxing and waning of the social and political influence of the Zoroastrian clergy rather than a particular policy objective of the Sasanian administration. The official administration's attitude is better expressed in the Seret (?) chronicle's statement about why Shaphur III (late fourth century) released Christian prisoners: It was more valuable for the Sasanians if Christians pursued a livelihood and paid taxes. The preponderance of the members of this community lived in urban centers, a tendency that seems to be its only clearly distinguishing social feature. This seems to be especially the case in Persis, a representative region on the Iranian plateau, not in the alluvial lowlands of Mesopotamia and Susiana. This comes as no surprise in view of the traditional dichotomy in Iran and central Asia between urban culture and the countryside, a social factor which later repeatedly played a role in the social history of Islam in the area until well into the early modern period. The Syriac sources concerning Christians in Iran underscore a point made earlier about the indigenous historiography of this period. In discussing the monarch Yasdiqir I (ca. 399-421 CE), under whom the watershed synod of 410 (the first one in the Synodicon of Mar Isaac) was convened, indigenous historiographers have used epithets such as "the sinner," while Syriac sources use epithets such as "the victorious and illustrious king." This disjuncture in perspectives in the sources is clear and no doubt reflects a serious disjuncture in society itself. Beyond individual Iranian Christians whose names appear in various Christian Syriac writings and the fact that or Persis, the homeland par excellence of the Persians, was a major ecclesiastical province of Sasanian Christianity already by the beginning of the fifth century, what more concrete evidence is there for the existence of an Iranian Christian community separate and distinct from Iranian members of Syrian communities? To what extent had Christianity penetrated traditional Iranian society per se? The evidence for answering these questions is two corpora of material: (1) a fragmentary Psalter in middle Persian discovered by the second German Turfan expedition in the ruins of a Christian monastery at Bulayiq (?) north of Turfan in Chinese Turkestan; (2) six dedicatory inscriptions in middle Persian on stone slabs, the middle of each of which is ornamented with a characteristic leafed (?) cross. Of these inscriptions, four are in Khotiem (?) in Carola state, India; one is in Travankur, which is also now a part of Carola state; and one is in a church on Mt. Saint Thomas in Madras. All six stone slabs reportedly bear the same inscription: "Our Lord Messiah, have mercy on Gabriel the son of Chaharbocht, the grandson of Durzad, who made this." What is noteworthy about these inscriptions is their orthography and that they are paleographically strikingly similar to that of the Middle Persian fragmentary Psalter discovered in central Asia, in contrast to Zoroastrian texts (e.g., use of instead of Zoroastrian book Pahlavi for the enclitic pronoun in the first person plural; the characteristic initial form of the letter daleth instead of the Zoroastrian book Pahlavi form). This indicates that the Iranian Christians maintained a scribal tradition and orthography for writing Middle Persian separate and distinct from both the Zoroastrian clergy and the Sasanian chancellery. Within the social context of writing in Iran in Late Antiquity, this would prove a separate and distinct community of Christian Iranians of some critical mass. There remains, however, the important unanswered question as to why there would be Christian Middle Persian inscriptions in south India. The answer is analogous to why the Coptic Manichean literature was found in Upper Egypt, written in Lycopolitan Coptic, the particular dialect of Lycopolis in Upper Egypt. In turn, the answer will give us additional insight into the social history of Christians in Iran in Late Antiquity. It should be recalled that Lycopolis was a major transshipment point between the Nile and the Red Sea for the maritime trade between Egypt and South Arabia, the Persian Gulf, India, and East Africa. The discovery together with the Coptic Manichean materials of fragments in Aramaic in the special Manichean alphabet supports the theory that the early Manichean missionaries in Egypt were Syrians. It is only natural to suppose that these Syrians in Lycopolis in Upper Egypt were involved directly or indirectly with the maritime trade. Analogously, the presence of Middle Persian Christian inscriptions in south India, especially in the Indian state of Carola, is not at all surprising if one bears in mind the importance of the Malabar coast as the preeminent destination of maritime trade with India beginning with the first century CE, when Roman sailors pioneered the use of the monsoon winds to sail directly from the Red Sea across the Indian Ocean to India. The anomalous modern ethnography Carola, especially the large Syrian Christian community that traces its origins to the apostle Thomas, serves still as a legacy and reminder of this fact, as well as the large number of Roman gold coins that have been discovered there in recent years. The trade patterns of Sasanian Iran are usually characterized as a continuation of those of Parthia, which was predominantly land-based trade characterized by the use of caravans. But this is not necessarily the case. The Sasanian government generally had better control of the lower Tigris and Euphrates rivers and was therefore in the necessary position to be directly involved in the maritime trade in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. Perhaps this was even one of the political and economic factors in the geo-political ascendancy of Persis and the future Sasanian royal family. In any event the Christian Middle Persian inscriptions from Carola seem to prove that Iranians from this period were involved with the maritime trade with south India and that a critical mass of Iranian Christians reached south India as part of the functioning of this particular economic infrastructure. A clearer idea of this Late Antique economic infrastructure, albeit from a later period, can be obtained from the tenth century Arabic work "Book of the Curiosities of India," a collection of travel accounts personally collected by a Persian navigator from various sea captains and other sailors. It gives a general idea of the general geographical horizon and social complexion of the Syro-Iranian maritime trade in the Indian Ocean in Late Antiquity. In conclusion, we have seen that Iranian society during the early Late Antique period was not homogenous. This is clear from the disparate views of this society preserved by its various constituent communities. Furthermore, the dramatic collapse of the Zoroastrian component of that society beginning in the seventh century underscores this disjunctive social situation. The Christian communities in Iran in this period are a central factor in this problem of social disjuncture. It seems clear that the social basis of the Zoroastrian community was especially the land-based agrarian infrastructure of the De'gans (?), the country squires of Late Antique Iran. This becomes increasingly apparent after the collapse of Sasanian central administration in the mid-seventh century, when the De'gans became the preservers of Zoroastrian religion and heritage and the basis of Zoroastrian society as a specific communal way of life, a role that they continued to maintain into the eleventh century. Christianity, in contrast, found its social basis in social groups that developed over against the backdrop of the old agrarian infrastructure dominated by Zoroastrians. These other social groups included the old Arasacid social order, especially in Armenia; the urban population; and the traders, especially those whose trading expertise depended on a very specialized and (from an agrarian point of view) arcane and exotic geographical knowledge about the sea and maritime infrastructure. Christianity in Iran seems to have had its basis in the needs of these social groups, which fell outside the traditional Zoroastrian social circuit. DISCUSSION In the discussion that followed the presentation of the paper, Utz emphasized that there were groups of Iranian Christians, often in areas in which one might otherwise expect only Zoroastrians, who were separate and distinct from the organized Armenian and Nestorian (Syrian) Christians, even when Armenian and Syrian Christians inhabited the same areas. Utz's distinctions are based on an attempt to grapple with an attitude displayed by the Zoroastrians, in which they seemed allow some groups the freedom to adhere to religious beliefs other than Zoroastrianism while at the same time restricting the freedom of other groups, who were expected to maintain a commitment to Zoroastrianism. E.g., even in the time of the Achaemenian kings, Xerxes as described in a Persian inscription goes to try to convert the Diva worshippers, but not the Elamites, Babylonians, and others whom he did not feel the need to convert. The later Armenians are an ambiguous case; sometimes the Zoroastrians felt the need to convert them and make them part of the Zoroastrian "Umma" (to use an Islamic term), and sometimes they did not. Thus the question that Utz is trying to address is whether or not there were some areas, times, or groups of people in which the Sasanians (and Zoroastrian clerics such as Kartir) felt that a Christian population could be permitted and other areas, times, and groups of people in which they did not feel that a Christian population could be permitted (e.g., the Iranian plateau). Another issue is whether or not the Zoroastrian community viewed Christians as Zoroastrians who had apostatized. The issue of loyalty is also tied to political concerns: Christians in Iran sometimes appealed to Roman and Byzantine authorities to put pressure on the Sasanians in times of persecution and oppression. In such situations the Iranian government may have argued that the Christians would be left alone as long as they did not cause any more people to become apostates from Zoroastrianism. The inscriptions of Kartir describing his persecution of the seven groups say that he "struck" or "smote" () (?) them. His purpose in doing this was bring them back from apostasy; Kartir did not care about the Syrians in Edessa or Nisibis because they were the wrong type of people (see preceding paragraph). As stated previously, some of the seven groups he persecuted are fairly clear while others are problematic. The "Yahud" must be Jews. The next two terms are the "Shraman" and the "Brahman." The "Shraman" must be a Middle Persian word derived through Prakrit from Sanskrit "Shramana," which is the word for a Buddhist monk and possibly a Jain monk, though Jains probably did not go to Iran. Thus it probably refers to Buddhists of some sort. The "Brahman" (of Sanskrit origin and probably also through Prakrit) technically should be just Brahmans, representatives of the priestly class of traditional India, especially representatives of Brahmanical Hinduism. Probably this then refers to some kind of Hindu group. The next terms are "Nasrai" and "Christian," for which various theories have been proposed. Father Jean Demanash (?spelling?) felt that "Christian" referred to the Marcionites while "Nasrai" referred to Christians, because Marcionites sometimes called themselves Christians while the term "Nasrai" is used even to this day by Syrian or Chaldean (and Arabic) Christians to describe themselves. But one problem with this theory is that Marcionites did not use the term "Christian" universally for themselves. [Ross Kraemer also pointed out that in inscriptions from the last half of the third century in northern Asia some individuals call themselves "Christians," which most people believe refer to Montanists. The relevance of this is unclear.] Utz noted that another theory (and the least popular) is that "Christian" is Christians and "Nasrai" is Mandeans because of a term that Mandeans use for themselves. The third theory and the most popular is that the Zoroastrians themselves made a distinction between "Christian," the Greek-speaking Christians (those deported by Shaphur from Antioch and brought into Iran to perform skilled labor) and "Nasrai," the local Aramaic-speaking Christians. The Seret (?) chronicle, an eleventh century Nestorian text based probably on older material, states that at one time there were two Christian churches in Rev Artishir, the metropolis of Persis. One of these was called the church of Rome and the other the church of the Para-man-un (??), in one the service was performed in Greek and the other in Syrian. In Baghdad, in the intellectual circle of Ibn Nadin (?) in the tenth century, there were still references to Marcionites, Bar Daisanites, and copious descriptions of the Manicheans (see English translation by Dodge). Possibly at least the Bar Daisanites and certainly the Manicheans still existed at that time. The next term in Kartir's inscriptions is the "Zandiq," a term used elsewhere in Middle Persian to refer to the Manicheans and thus identified in the Kartir inscriptions with the Manicheans. The term "Zandiq" was also used to refer to "apostates" (i.e., apostates from Zoroastrianism) and thus much later was used for Mazdaqites, but there were no Mazdaqites at this time. In Armenian books of the fifth century Zandiq is clearly used for Manicheans. The usual etymology of Zandiq is that it refers to someone who has his or her own Zan, i.e., hermeneutics, especially in exegesis of the Avesta. Later the term is used by Islamic authors for persons who are dualists and against the unity of God, including Mazdaqites, Manicheans, and Zoroastrians. But it is admittedly difficult to think of the Manicheans as apostates from Zoroastrianism. The remaining term, the "Machatachs," is unclear. Bailey has proposed an Iranian etymology that would make it similar to an Arabic term used to refer to "baptists" in Mesopotamia, in which case the term might refer to a baptist group, such as the Elchasites that had not been converted by Mani. The Kartir inscription was written in ca. 280 and Mani was executed in the 270s, so it is likely that at the time of the inscription many Elchasites from the communities of his origin still remained who had not yet accepted Manicheanism. But what "Machatach" refers to is unclear. In clarifying the status of the Armenians, Utz stated that Armenia continued to function as a kingdom until 387, though how much independence it had is a matter of debate because of the Sasanian presence. Eventually Armenia was partitioned between Rome and Iran. But even after this the Iranian Armenian Christians still thought of themselves as Christians, since the Armenian court had been converted in the early fourth century. Sporadically there were, however, attempts to force them to convert to Zoroastrianism. The most famous of these attempts was in the middle of the fifth century. This is described by Yegishey, an Armenian, and Lazar of Par (Parq?) (both writing in Armenian). Both of these works are translated in a book by Robert Thompson. This attempt to forcibly convert the Armenian Christians culminated in the battle of Abarar (?) in 451, which is still an important feast day in the Armenian church. The problem with the Armenians for the Zoroastrians was that they were often ambivalent about whether they should be Zoroastrians or were permitted to be Christians. This is because the Armenians had long shared a similar social structure and system of social relations with Iranian society. This had been especially true in the Parthian period, in which the same family was in power in both areas. The Armenian Christians were also closer to the Zoroastrians than the syncretistic Greco-Iranian pagan religions. The Zoroastrians thus may have viewed the Armenians as the last bastion of Arsacid society and its princely family, which had constituted the pre-Sasanian regime. The church in Armenia was constructed around these old Arsacid families. Zoroastrians in the tenth century are agriculturists out in the country. The De'gans (country squires) were already important in late Sasanian society in Iran and became increasingly important in Islamic society. By the late Sasanian period they had acquired enough influence to socially eclipse the remnants of the great Sasanian families. The fact that this is where Zoroastrian communalism hangs on in Islamic society suggests that it was also in this agricultural base that Zoroastrianism found its strength in the Sasanian period. Utz noted that some Zoroastrians did go to India in the tenth century, but there still are probably more Zoroastrians in Iran than in India (despite the implications of the work of Mary Boyce mentioned by Ann Matter). Utz estimated that at most there are only about 100,000 Zoroastrians in India and their population in India is declining, while there are probably more than that in Iran, including entire Zoroastrian villages (one of which was studied by Boyce herself). Ann Matter pointed out that Boyce's work suggests that modern Zoroastrianism is an urban phenomenon. Utz did not accept this view of the Zoroastrians. Utz conceded that Boyce has done some magnificent work on the Zoroastrians, but is skeptical of characterizing the Zoroastrians as an urban community. In modern India the Parsees are indeed an urban phenomenon, limited mostly to Bombay. But in Iran, Zoroastrian villages were still the primary expression of Zoroastrian community life in the time of Boyce's studies in 1979. The major metropolitan centers that have Zoroastrians in Iran are Tehran, Yazd, and Kerman in Iran. In the tenth century they were clearly a phenomenon in the countryside. Boyce's own work on a rural Zoroastrian village suggests that she recognized the older nature of Zoroastrianism as an agrarian phenomenon and probably would have agreed with Utz's emphasis on the agrarian base of Zoroastrianism under the Sasanians. In response to a question about whether there is any evidence that the Kartir inscription's "Machatach," "Nasrai," or "Christian" imply ethnic distinction, Utz responded that there is none (except in the very limited sense of the possible but unproved linguistic distinction between Aramaic-speaking indigenous Christians and Greek-speaking Christians brought into Iran from Antioch by Shaphur). The reason why Nasrai and Christian have been explained together is because it is supposed that they might be a pair, as is the case with Shraman and Brahman. If the Nasrai and the Christian were indeed distinguished linguistically and perhaps with a slightly different church organization, Kartir may have believed that they were two different groups, despite the fact that they actually were both Christian groups. One discussant asked whether or not the fact that there were seven groups in Kartir's list might be of significance. Utz responded that, given the importance of seven in Zoroastrianism, this might be a definite possibility, though no one has argued this. David Efroymson asked whether the distinction between the countryside and urban centers was really that significant in Iran, given the agricultural interests of the cities and the agriculture focus of older traditional pagan religious rituals in cities. Utz responded that cities in Iran were much more than just centers for agriculture, despite the agricultural concerns of cities, and thus the distinction between urban Christian social interests and agrarian Zoroastrian social interests is a real one. Utz emphasized that the cities were places for specialized purposes, such as transport, trade, crafts, and employment that generated hard currency. Hard currency was desperately needed by the Sasanians and it is even the explicit reason given by Shaphur III when he stated that he preferred that Christians remain unmolested so that they could pay taxes. In this way the Iranians wanted the same kind of benefits that Palmyrenes received from caravan trade. But inscriptions show that even running a caravan was very complicated in antiquity and involved many specialized tasks. Cities provided close proximity to a wide variety of specialists in a large specialized labor force. [Utz's response continued but the tape ends abruptly in mid-sentence at this point]. /////////END OF DOCUMENT 27.3/////// [PSCO 27.4 was not available] Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins No. 27.5, April 26, 1990 Topic for 1989-90: Rethinking Social Description of Jewish and Christian Communities in Late Antiquity Chairpersons for the year: Ross Kraemer and Howard Clark Kee Secretary for the year: David Rech Minutes by Allen Kerkeslager, July 1998, based on cassette tape recording. Meeting of April 1990 Martin Goodman, Oxford University "Problems in Jewish Identity in Late Antiquity"* [*No formal title was actually given on the tape] The problems to be addressed in this presentation include the following: (1) How much agreement was there in Late Antiquity about who was a Jew? (2) What was the relationship between Jewishness as an ethnic designation and Judaism as a religion? (3) In marginal cases, who decided Jewish status and how did they make their decisions known? (4) How much affect, if any, did the views of non-Jews about Jewish identity have on Jews' self-identification? (5) How much change did the views on these issues undergo during the Roman period and why? The reasons for undertaking this analysis are that there is a tendency among scholars to refer to Jews in the Roman world or Jews' relation to Christians as if it was obvious who they meant. But this presupposed clarity is not always necessarily the case. There is also a lot of modern discussion of Jewish proselytism and apostasy without always much of an idea of social realities. There is also a tendency to ignore change in Jewish society by Roman historians, theologians, and sometimes even Jewish historians. E.g., while it is much more common to emphasize diversity in pre-70 CE Judaism, there is still a tendency to see a monolithic rabbinic Judaism after 70 CE. Finally is the very general question of how much Gentile understandings of Jews affected Jews themselves. To illustrate the complexity of the problem, Josephus' Contra Apionem may be considered. This book is the only extant example of Josephus's Jewish apologetics. The opponents are Greek Gentile opponents. Unlike earlier apologists, such as Eupolemus in the second century BCE, Josephus did not try to present the Jews as a sort of Greek; but rather he tried to present them as superior to Greeks. He wrote Contra Apionem in ca. 100 CE in Rome, as a Roman (a member of one of the Roman upper classes), for a patron who was Roman and in an attempt to appeal to a Roman audience (not a Greek audience). Thus he tries to present Jews not in Greek or Jewish terms, but in Roman terms. Josephus himself had become a Roman citizen during the Jewish revolt of 66-70 CE. So the qualities of Judaism stressed in Contra Apionem book 2 are the antitheses of the faults of the Greeks according to Roman prejudice and strangely akin to Roman qualities as the Romans thought of themselves. E.g., Jews, like Romans, don't like innovation; Jews, like Romans place community before the individual; they emphasize being sober in times of celebration; they dislike homosexuality; they honor parents; they take seriously their duty to their friends; they love justice and hard work; they fight bravely in defensive wars; occupy themselves with agriculture; and put their wisdom into practice rather than just preserving it as theory. Unlike Greeks, Jews have a notably serious attitude to life and are willing to die for their law. This appeal to Roman perspectives exemplifies the complexities of Jewish reactions to outsiders' views. Reasons and evidence for supposing a lack of clarity about Jewish views on these issues in Late Antiquity must include a number of considerations. Jews do indeed seem surprisingly clear about who is and who is not a Jew in antiquity. Thus the reasons do not come from particular explicit testimony. Rather the evidence for ambiguity may be found in considerations of practicalities and by inference from marginal cases known to have existed. E.g., What does one do with offspring of one Jewish parent? What does one do with ethnic Jews who have proselytized into some other religious tradition? Are they Jews anymore? Important evidence can be found in statements about proselytes, which help to show the status of who was and who was not Jewish. Certain cases did in fact demand that Jews know who was and was not Jewish. E.g., the following: (1) Situations in which non-Jews went beyond the temple barrier and thus could be killed, as described by Josephus and as witnessed to by inscriptions. (2) Marriage. (3) Creating a minyan, a quorum of ten Jewish males needed for prayer. (4) Ordinary social life, specifically in the spheres of food and drink (as indicated in the rabbinic prohibition against Gentile wine or the pre-70 prohibition against Gentile oil, which was mentioned by Josephus and was probably a taboo as early as the third century BCE, as implied in a case in Antioch). In these cases one certainly did not guess; one needed to actually know who was really a Jew and who was not. Failure to do so could result in a serious violation of the Law. Then who is to decide whether or not one is Jewish in such matters? In some cases, the priests in Jerusalem must have arrogated this privilege to themselves. For example, they were probably the ones who decided who crossed the barrier in the temple. It is also hard to see what other way Idumeans could have been turned into Jews in Josephus's story of John Hyrcanus's conversion of the Idumeans in the 120s BCE, since John Hyrcanus was in fact the high priest. Whether or not one accepts the veracity of the story, the point is that Josephus accepts it as reasonable that the high priest could make these people into Jews. If the priests or the high priest decided who is Jewish before 70, what happened after 70 when there were no longer high priests and the influence of the priests declined immeasurably? And what about the situation in the fourth century CE outside of Judea, when Jews went on pilgrimage to the temple site during festivals? Who decided who was Jewish on these occasions? Who decided who were Jews among those who went to the temple at Leontopolis? And so on. Maybe it is again an issue of Jewish leaders who decided these questions. Perhaps local management decided who belonged to a minyan and who could marry whom. If so, perhaps it was the . But if so, then did traveling Jews take a certificate from one to another? And which Jewish community leaders among the many synagogues in Rome decided who was Jewish? Even in Palestine there was diversity and such diversity created similar ambiguities. If a Sadducee says one is a Jew and a Pharisee says one is not, what is the ordinary Jew who does not belong to any sect to do? What about Jews who think of themselves as Jews but are not defined as such by the Rabbis? If these questions cannot be answered in discussions of proselytes, they perhaps cannot be answered at all. The case of Izhates of Adiabene shows no official Jewish authority present when he actually is circumcised and becomes Jewish. No rabbi or official Jewish authority was there to say whether he had done it properly. He simpy becomes circumcised and says that he is a Jew. In a few cases the lack of clarity about who was a Jew is clearly in evidence. E.g., Josephus talks about Greeks in Antioch in the 3rd century BCE who in some way are associated with Jews, but Josephus does not find it necessary to be clear whether they are Jews or non-Jews. Herod the Idumean is a test case for all the Idumeans and thus all proselytes. Herod is called half Jewish, but one cannot be half Jewish in covenant practice. Josephus's term is theological nonsense. Yet Idumeans think of themselves as Jewish, Josephus says. The problem is the same with people often considered apostates. Tiberius Julius Alexander, a Roman , is said by Josephus to "not remain standing by the practices of the people," but Josephus does not say whether he was still Jewish or not Jewish. Why then was there all this ambiguity? Because there was no official authority that customarily said who was and who was not Jewish. The Romans ultimately exercised authority in this sphere (even though they were not Jewish at all) because they needed to make a decision about Jewish identity for the purposes of collecting and transferring the funds to Jupiter Capitolinus. This tax was to be placed on all Jews, but how the term "Jew" was defined is not at all clear. CPJ 2.421 takes the definition of for granted in its description of who paid the tax, but the definition must have been set in Rome. This is implied in Suetonius, who describes the story of various individuals in Rome who did not live openly Jewish lives and did not want to pay the tax but were found to be Jews, including the case of a man of 90 who was stripped to see if he was circumcised. This ambiguity and its affects in cases such as this most likely explain the statement of Nerva when he said on his coins that "the malicious accusation of the Jewish tax had been removed." The phrase most likely referred to a reform of the abuses under Domitian. If so, after Nerva apostates didn't have to pay the tax. If one was not openly religiously Jewish, even if one was ethnically Jewish, one did not have to pay. So those paying are just those professing themselves as Jews. They are the ones counted as Jews by the state, both male and female, all of whom must pay the tax of two denarii from age three upward. Later testimony of the third century says that it is "those who continue to observe their ancestral customs" who pay the tax. Thus to pay the tax formed a means of self-identification as a Jew. Epictetus and Tacitus complain about Gentiles who follow Jewish customs. But Cassius Dio says that "Jew" is also applied to proselytes by the third century. Roman legal texts tend to speak of Jews as religious individuals, but not always. In a text from the mid-second century they are called a rather than a nation. In ca. 200 they are called a , which is a version of . In the third century they are called a in a legal text. At the end of the fourth century, they were called a by analogy with Christianity or a by contrast with it. In the early fifth century an anti-Jewish law calls them a and a (which is roughly equivalent to in this case). Thus the Romans did not always think of the Jews as a religion rather than a nation, but they tended to do so. The question then is what this does to Jewish perceptions of themselves and Gentile hangers-on whom the Romans decided were not Jews and who then had to make a decision about their identity. In contrast to the third century BCE in Antioch, it seems much easier after Nerva's reforms for Jews to distinguish the non-Jews in their midst. They could do this simply on the basis of who paid the and who did not. Thus after about 100 CE Jews must decide whether Jews who hang around the synagogues are simply to be ignored because they are not Jewish or are to be given some kind of unique status. The Aphrodisias inscription provides an example of one solution to this problem. It distinguishes persons with Jewish names from "godfearers" who have non-Jewish names. The inscription probably belongs to the early third century CE, though the dating is problematic. The inscription honors righteous Gentiles without Jews seeming to have any other desire for their personal status than that they be righteous Gentiles; i.e., no interest in proselytism is implied. Their status is clearly defined as "godfearers" and this status is acceptable. In total contrast is the Tosephta's treatment of avodah zerah. The Aphrodisias inscription assumes that the city council members who are are Gentiles, since only Jews could be exempt from pagan worship in the city cult. In contrast, the Tosephta's description of the seven laws of the sons of Noah included a prohibition of idolatry for everybody. Thus the rabbis would not have been pleased with the Aphrodisias inscription's honoring of Gentile city council members who could not have avoided participation in the pagan worship of the civic cult. Thus the Aphrodisias inscription is certainly not evidence for the spread of rabbinic Judaism in the third century CE. The rabbis in fact assumed that Gentiles always engaged in idolatry, as the prohibition on Gentile wine shows, since it was assumed that a Gentile who is left with wine for 30 seconds will make a libation from it to pagan gods. In fact one rabbinic text (in b. Baba Kamma [tape unintelligible; check either 30a-b or 38b]) suggests that rabbis believed that Gentiles were so inclined toward idolatry that they were freed from responsibility to keep the Noachide laws. This harsh attitude of the rabbis may actually be more normal than the one implied in the Aphrodisias inscription and may indicate a shift not only among rabbis, but also among Jews as a whole. The hostility focused on Gentile idolatry in rabbinic texts after 100 CE is actually relatively new. Most Jews before 100 were relatively tolerant as long as Gentiles practiced idolatry in their own country and did not expect Jews to engage in the same behavior. For Josephus and Philo this is explicit. They interpret Gen 1:14-19 in its statements about God making the sun, moon, and stars for the nations to mean that God made them for the Gentiles to worship. In addition, Philo elaborates on Exod 22:37 LXX as an injunction against reviling "gods," i.e., pagan gods. If it is correct to say that such a shift in attitudes toward Gentile idolatry did occur and that the Tosephta provides evidence of this, it might be possible that this is just a rabbinic innovation. But it may also be a more general Jewish attitude change. Evidence for this includes the attitudes of Jewish rebels in the revolt under Trajan. Temples of Apollo, Artemis, and many other gods were destroyed and statues of the gods were mutilated in Cyrene and Alexandria. Jews in 115 CE, not so long after 96 CE, have thus become intolerant of pagan idolatry. It seems reasonable to seek a cause for this in the new attitudes toward Jews held by the Roman state. If the Romans wished to see Jews more as a religious group than a state, a religion with a God opposed to the Roman gods, then some Jews might be inclined to accept that view rather than the irenic view of a Josephus. These Jews might have seen themselves as warriors for the Lord in a universal arena in which true religion was at loggerheads with the idolatrous religion of false gods. This seems at any rate to be implied in the definition of Judaism presupposed in Late Antiquity. There is a singular lack of concern in rabbinic writings with the ethnic definition of Jewishness. Modern debates over matrilineal or patrilineal descent revolve around a remarkably small corpus of scattered texts. For the rabbis, what distinguishes Israel from the nations is not Israel's history or its land or its ethnic origins, unlike the wicked, polluted, idolatrous, and disgusting outside world. Rather Israel is to be made Israel by the Torah. That is what constitutes Jewish identity for them. DISCUSSION In the discussion that followed the paper, Goodman emphasized that outside energy, not just internal issues within the Jewish community, helped to shape attitudes inside the Jewish community. This is exemplified in the situation at Aphrodisias, which differs from settings before the imposition of the and the events of the reigns of Domitian and Nerva. The attitude implied at Aphrodisias differs remarkably from pre-100 CE attitudes because it is not just irenic toward the practitioners of idolatry who hang around the synagogue. Rather it assigns them a precise role within the synagogue. This contrasts significantly with Josephus's vague description of the Greeks at Antioch in the third century BCE, because the at Aphrodisias are clearly identified as Gentiles, not proselytes, yet are still given a formal status in the synagogue. Not only the question of individual identity, but also the question of community identity has become a distinctively religious one at Aphrodisias. The occupations mentioned in the inscription indicate that some of the individuals involved must be Gentiles. The use of the term at Aphrodisias is a formal one that refers to a clearly-defined status; it is not an informal descriptive term. In this the term contrasts sharply with its use in the first-century evidence, in which the term appears to be used informally and without a clearly defined group in mind. It simply refers to Gentile sympathizers in the first century and no reason exists for these individuals to make up a formal group. The people implied in the term were not consistently distinguished from proselytes in the third century BCE at Antioch in the sense that one could say, "Jews sit on this side, proselytes sit there, and sit over there." This distinction probably was also not clear in the first century CE. But it certainly was clear at Aphrodisias in the second or third century CE. In the first century the can be identified as Gentiles sympathetic to Judaism and generally described, but what exactly was implied in this description was probably not clearly known in every case. As Louis Feldman pointed out, the term could even be used to refer to Jews in some cases. In fact, the term was also similarly ambiguous in the first century. Sometimes it was used in the technical sense of one who converted to Judaism from a Gentile background, but in other cases it was used to refer to persons who were already Jewish and who were affiliating themselves with Essenism (in Josephus), Pharisaism (in Matt 23:15 and elsewhere), or some other Jewish movement. Terms thus can have both a hypothetical technical sense and an informal descriptive sense. With regard to a question about how these issues relate to Christianity and its impact on Jewish self-identity, Goodman noted that it is surprising how relatively little the Rabbinic texts have to say about Christianity even in discussions of issues or in settings in which they could have written screeds about it. If they are writing about Christians, it is only in a coded way. This does indeed seem to be so in some cases, but it is typically very tentative. Religious communities exhibit a remarkable ability to be able to ignore each other. In addition, during the rise of Christianity, it was not just the Romans, but also Jews themselves who identified themselves through payment of the Jewish tax after 96 CE and, from this point on, did so voluntarily. The impact of the rise of Christianity on Jewish identity is thus in some sense another issue. But this obviously does not clarify what happened to all the Jewish Christians or Jews who were Christians who did not come under pressure to decide whether or not the payment of the Jewish tax mattered for their own identity. John Gager pointed out that a reading of Urbach and other modern scholars who discussed the Mishnah tractate Avodah Zerah suggests that the rabbinic attitude toward idolatry was a constant derived from earlier tradition, in contrast to Goodman's suggestion that the later Tosephta statements about avodah zerah indicate a shift of attitude. Goodman pointed out in response that the rabbinic texts only treat the issue of how Gentile idolatry affects Jews (e.g., in the case of defilement caused by use of Gentile wine). But this does not say much about Gentiles themselves. Rabbinic texts are about Jews and do not really display an interest in Gentiles. What is said about Gentiles in the discussions of avodah zerah is that Gentiles are rather disgusting. Jews thus seem more hostile to Gentile idolatry in the second and third century, but at the very same time Jewish attitudes toward Jews mingling with Gentile idolatry seem to have become more lenient. Even so, Jewish apostates were still known; Jews who openly and totally rejected Judaism were called and other Jews were called and other terms. Idolatry is always there, however, as something that Gentiles should not do. In the Greco-Roman world before 70 CE, Jews did not care much about Gentile idolatry as long as it was not in their land. Gentile idolatry was annoying in Wisdom of Solomon, but it was called outright wicked in the later rabbinic texts. Josephus, purportedly quoting Hecataeus, does indeed refer to Jewish attacks on idolatry, but Hecataeus (or pseudo-Hecataeus) praises Jews for not allowing paganism in their own land, not for attacks on idolatry outside their land. But the Tosephta condemns Gentile idolatry everywhere. Jews no longer saw the religious area in which they worked as just their own unique land, but every land was theirs as the Diaspora developed and thus they felt the right to insist on rules normally applied only in Israel. What is striking is that while the Tosephta insists that all Gentiles give up idolatry, it does not also insist that they become Jewish and there are only a few hints of such an insistence on conversion in other texts. In this there is a contrast with the early Christians, who insisted that those who became Christians give up idolatry. The Tosephta's exhortations are thus rather depressing. They would leave the Gentiles permanently sinners who have given up idolatry but yet who would have no religion of any kind. It was a matter of indifference whether or not these Gentiles became Jews, unlike the Christian interest that idolaters be converted. There were, however, some exceptions to this indifference. In the end of the second and in the early third century there were a few rabbis who thought that it was a good thing to bring Gentiles into Judaism. The reason that they give for this is that Abraham brought non-Jews into Judaism. But this interest and line of reasoning was not representative of the mainstream. Rabbinic texts still set apart proselytes as a unique category of ("foreigners"), unlike Christians, who were all just "Christians" after their conversion. The tag (or in Greek inscriptions, ) was attached to names and remembered even after full Jewish status was attributed . Perhaps this was optional; one could call oneself a proselyte or not. But in rabbinic texts are still a distinct category, even when they were treated as part of Israel. But since they were all part of Israel, why keep mentioning their unique status? The answer is that they must indeed have some unique status, some double identity. They must have been viewed in some way as special. Ted Bergren and Ross Kraemer suggested that perhaps sometimes the word "proselyte" may have simply been used, like occupational terms or patronymics, to distinguish one person of the same name from another of the same name. David Stern pointed out that one of the rabbinic passages previously discussed that mentions may have been intended precisely for the purpose of forbidding the use of the term to shame someone or remind someone of the fact that one was not born into a Jewish family. He also pointed out that the passage cited above complaining that the Gentiles were so inclined toward idolatry that they were no longer responsible for the Noachide laws (cf. above) must be set within the larger context of the rabbinic view that the Noachide laws were used as a rationale by which God could justify punishing the Gentiles at the end of history for transgressing these laws. The Gentiles were in fact never expected to keep the Noachide laws. God knew that they would not keep even the minimal laws of the Torah, but he gave the Noachide laws so that they could be justifiably punished at the end of history. Howard Kee stated with regard to the use of "proselyte" in a way similar to a patronymic that in light of the emphasis on genealogical origins in statements by Paul and others in the New Testament, the social function of a patronymic was to indicate genealogical continuity. Proselytes may have presented a problem for this concern. Ross Kraemer responded to Kee, however, by stating that epigraphically patronymics are not used to trace back genealogy more than one or two generations. Goodman added that most Jews probably could not point to a long genealogy anyway. The fact that the priests had special archives to preserve the records of their genealogies, as Josephus states, implies that the preservation of priestly genealogies may have been unique. Contrary to Kee, lack of concern for genealogical origins seems to have increased in the first few centuries CE. Goodman emphasized (in response to Bob Kraft's questions about the role played in Jewish identity formation by differentiation between synagogues) that Jews normally did not have to worry about other Jews with whom they were associated, including those with whom they worshiped in a synagogue. Separation of various groups into distinct synagogues is unlikely. Though public prayer was practiced in synagogues, this did not necessarily imply that one could not join in prayer with others in the same synagogue or that one would necessarily feel the need to join in prayer only with those who said their prayers in precisely the same way. Sadducees and Pharisees were self-identified groups, but their influence with the people implies that they went to the same synagogues as the rest of the people. In this they contrasted with the distinct communities of the Essenes, but outside of the isolated Essene communities even the Essenes did not have their own unique synagogues anyway. There has been too much emphasis on synagogues as a means to Jewish self-identification. Scrolls are taken out, read in a language that no one understands, translated into a language that probably many did not understand, and then taken back to be put away. It is just a sacred ritual with a sacred object that functions in this respect like a Gentile idol. There is very little opportunity in this ritual to develop a separation within or between synagogues based on ideological affiliation. Whether the reader of the Torah is a Sadducee or a Pharisee is irrelevant in such a setting. //////////END OF DOCUMENT 27.5////////////