3. SEXUAL VICE AND CHRISTIAN APOLOGIA

1. Robert Grant, Greek Apologists, esp. 1–33. Also see Emily J. Hunt, Christianity in the Second Century: The Case of Tatian (London: Routledge, 2003), 9–10, 56–59.

2. See, for example, Anthony J. Guerra, “The Conversion of Marcus Aurelius and Justin Martyr: The Purpose, Genre, and Content of the First Apology,” Second Century 9 (1992): 171–87. Guerra speculates that Justin had some reason to hope that at least Marcus Aurelius would convert, given his well-known conversion to Stoic philosophy. See also L. W. Barnard, Athenagoras: A Study in Second Century Christian Apologetic, Théologie Historique 18 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1972), 11–13, 22–24. Barnard argues that Athenagoras may have prepared his Legatio as an address to be delivered in the emperor’s presence: “Is it fanciful to suggest that Athenagoras was favourably impressed with the Emperor’s philosophic bearing in Alexandria and felt that, at least, he would give him a hearing as a Christian philosopher?” (24). On the difficulties faced by Stoic philosophers who were perceived to go too far in their critique of the emperor, see Francis, Subversive Virtue, esp. the discussion of Musonius Rufus, 13–14. See also Ramsay MacMullen, Enemies of the Roman Order: Treason, Unrest, and Alienation in the Empire (London: Routledge, 1966), 63–65.

3. L.W. Barnard, Justin Martyr: His Life and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 1–4, 12–13.

4. Noted by Grant, Greek Apologists, 54.

5. The Legatio is usually dated between 176–78 C.E. See William R. Schoedel’s introduction to Athenagoras Leg. ix–xii.

6. Interestingly, Marcus Aurelius had argued the opposite in his Meditations: Zeus, the principal god of the pantheon, made it possible for him to lead the ideal Stoic “life according to Nature” (Med. 1.17, 5.8). Clearly, Marcus Aurelius was not ready to abandon the worship of Zeus, though not for the reasons Athenagoras suggested. See discussion in R. B. Rutherford, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: A Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 188–93.

7. Schoedel’s translation.

8. McGehee argues that Tatian’s Oratio ad Graecos was intended to be read as a protreptikos, a speech designed to attract students. See his “Why Tatian Never ‘Apologized’ to the Greeks,” JECS 1 (1993): 143–58.

9. Whittaker’s translation.

10. In other words, the actor teaches men to adopt the passive position in sexual acts.

11. Whittaker’s translation.

12. Beard, North, and Price, Religions of Rome, 1:310. See further Millar, Emperor and the Roman World, 562–63; Mark J. Edwards, “Justin’s Logos and the Word of God,” JECS 3 (1995): 279–80. It is possible that some of these treatises were intended as protreptic, speeches seeking to recruit students. See Anthony J. Guerra, Romans and the Apologetic Tradition, 3–21; and Michael McGehee, “Why Tatian Never ‘Apologized,’” 143–58. Even so, I would argue that an in-group audience is probably to be imagined.

13. Young, “Greek Apologists,” 81. Furthermore, the diversity of the titles given to these works by their authors (petitions, orations, appeals) signifies that the circumstances in which they were produced were different and that they were governed by different literary genres (90–91).

14. Young, “Greek Apologists,” 84.

15. Justin’s familiarity with and sympathy towards Greek philosophy has been a particular interest of scholars. See the classic work of Robert Joly, Christianisme et philosophie: Etudes sur Justin et les Apologistes grecs du deuxième siècle (Paris: Editions de L’Universite de Bruxelles, 1973), esp. 9–78. Joly also considers the Epistle to Diognetus, Tatian, Aristides, Athenagoras, Melito, Theophilus of Antioch, and Tertullian. See further Mark J. Edwards, “On the Platonic Schooling of Justin Martyr,” Journal of Theological Studies 42 (1991): 17–34; Arthur J. Droge, Homer or Moses? Early Christian Interpretations of the History of Culture (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1989), 49–71.

16. Taking a different approach, Tatian argued that Christianity, the “barbarian philosophy,” was far superior to Greek philosophy, which is entirely corrupt. For discussion, see McGehee, “Why Tatian never ‘Apologized,’” 143–58.

17. Theophilus singles out Epicurus, Chrysippus, and Plato for critique.

18. Athenagoras cited Plato in Leg. 6.2, 16.4, 19.2, 23.5–9. In paragraph 6, Athenagoras notes with approval Plato’s opinion that it is difficult to discover the creator of the universe (Plato, Timaeus, 28c, 41a); in section 16 Athenagoras employs the authority of Plato to buttress his argument that one ought to examine the beauty of the universe to understand the powers of God (Plato, Timaeus, 33c); in 19 he further observes that Plato believed in an eternal, uncreated God (Plato, Timaeus, 27d); in 23 Athenagoras reminds his audience of Plato’s previous critique of the idea that the gods could beget offspring (Plato, Timaeus, 40d–e).

19. Justin adopted this argument from others. There was already a traditional argument claiming that the Greeks had stolen their ideas from Jewish scriptures. See Monique Alexandre, “Apologétique judéo-hellénistique et premières apologies chrétiennes,” in Les apologistes chrétiens et la culture grecque, ed. Bernard Pouderon and Joseph Doré (Paris: Beauchesne, 1998), 1–40.

20. Justin mentions these “good” philosophers, at least in part, so that he can claim that those who proclaimed the truth were often persecuted in a manner similar to the Christians, concluding that the same gods or demons that now inspire the current crop of rulers to abuse the Christians once inspired former, corrupt rulers to persecute the few good philosophers (1 Apol. 5). This argument is hardly a ringing endorsement of non-Christian philosophy.

21. Rebecca Lyman, “2002 NAPS Presidential Address: Hellenism and Heresy,” JECS 11, no. 2 (2003): 209–22.

22. Lyman, “2002 NAPS Presidential Address,” 218. See also Tessa Rajak, “Talking at Trypho: Christian Apologetic as Anti-Judaism in Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho the Jew,” in Apologetics in the Roman Empire, ed. Mark J. Edwards, Martin Goodman, and Simon Price (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 58–80. Rajak notes that Justin discusses Platonism at length in his Dialogue, only to dismiss it: “So Platonic philosophy is momentarily elevated; but only to lend force to the exposure of its pretensions” (67).

23. See Alain le Boulleuc, La notion d’hérésie dans la littérature greque, IIe–IIIe siècles, vol. 1, De Justin à Irénée (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1985), 52–54, 58–64: “les anciens philophes ont connu une vérité partielle, la vérité entière étant celle du Logos, révélée aux prophètes plus anciens que les philosophes” (59).

24. Discussed by Lyman, “2002 NAPS Presidential Address,” 218–19.

25. A point made previously by R. M. Price. Price observes that though Justin was willing to acknowledge that some philosophers were inspired by the Logos (the persecuted philosophers Socrates, Heraclitus, and Musonius Rufus in particular), his primary object was to demonstrate that “good” philosophers always suffer persecution at the hand of men who allow themselves to be swayed by demons. He was not interested in arguing that these philosophers could actually achieve virtue without Christ. See R. M. Price, “Are there ‘Holy Pagans’ in Justin Martyr?” Studia Patristica 31 (1997): 153–69.

26. Whether or not he had access to Paul’s letters, Justin never cited Paul explicitly. His knowledge of Paul’s letters, therefore, cannot be assumed.

27. With most scholars, I read Ephesians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus as pseudonymous.

28. On the pseudonymity of Titus and the other “Pastoral Epistles” (1, 2 Timothy and Titus), see Lewis R. Donelson, Pseudepigraphy and Ethical Argument in the Pastoral Epistles (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1986), 7–66.

29. Further evidence that this is a pseudonymous letter since Paul, a “Hebrew born of the Hebrews and as to the law a Pharisee”(Phil 3:5), would hardly include himself among the gentiles, before they found Christ, who had been “slaves to various desires and pleasures.”

30. A move that was famously described as “love patriarchy” (Liebespatriarchalismus) by Gerd Theissen. See the critique of Theissen’s perspective in Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 76–80

31. “By constructing submission as the natural relationship of wife to husband and justifying it by analogy to Christ and the church, the author [of Ephesians] has made obedience to husbands a requirement for wives”: Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, Community and Authority: The Rhetoric of Obedience in the Pauline Tradition, Harvard Theological Studies 45 (Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 1998), 139. See also Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 251–79

32. Bishops and deacons were required to be “the husband of one wife,” a reference to one marriage, not to polygamy: 1 Tim 3:2, 12. For further discussion of the “widows” in the Pastorals (who may not be “widows” at all but young women who have adopted celibacy and demanded the authority that came with their vow), see Dennis R. MacDonald, The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon (Philadelphia: Westimster Press, 1983); Margaret MacDonald, “Rereading Paul: Early Interpreters of Paul on Women and Gender,” in Women and Christian Origins, ed. Ross Shepard Kraemer and Mary Rose D’Angelo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 236–53; Gail Corrington Streete, “Askesis and Resistance in the Pastoral Episles,” in The New Testament and Asceticism, ed. Leif Vaage and Vincent Wimbush (New York: Routledge, 1999), 299–316. Antoinette Clark Wire envisions a community of celibate women—the “widows” of the Pastorals—already in place when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians, (see her Corinthian Women Prophets).

33. As Corrington Streete has noted, this “Paul” instructs gentiles-in-Christ to display a sort of “householder asceticism,” whereby sōphrosynē was practiced within a harmonious, hierarchical household (309). See further Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 284–91: “The patriarchal order of the house, when applied to the order of the church, restricts the leadership of wealthy women and maintains the social exploitation of slave-women and men, even within the Christian household community” (291). See also David Horrell, “From adelphoi to oikos theou: Social Transformation in Pauline Christianity,” JBL 120, no. 2 (2001): 293–311.

34. For a detailed discussion of the commonplace “Concerning Household Management” as found in Stoic, Hellenistic Jewish, and Neopythagorean authors during the period in which these texts were written, see David Balch, Let Wives be Submissive: The Domestic Code in 1 Peter, SBL Monograph Series 26 (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1981), 51–62. Some would argue that the household code found in Colossians and taken up and expanded in Ephesians challenges traditional Greco-Roman hierarchical notions about the household by demanding mutual subjection. I am not convinced by these readings. As seen in the Greco-Roman literature already surveyed, the “rhetoric of conjugal unity” was (a) not limited to Christians and (b) did not erase hierarchical distinctions. Rather, these rhetorics, while recommending love and reciprocity between the spouses, assumed the secondary, derivative status of wives. See further Cohen and Saller, “Foucault on Sexuality,” 35–59.

35. Plut. Mor.144C. Indeed, Plutarch concluded, it is more important for a man to enforce harmony in his household than to protect “his” women from outside harm since it is easier to conceal a rape than the misdeeds of an openly promiscuous daughter: “For it is much more likely that the sins of women rather than sins against women will go unnoticed by most people.” For discussion, see Sarah B. Pomeroy, ed., Plutarch’s Advice to the Bride and Groom and a Consolation to his Wife (Oxford: Oxford University Pres, 1999). On the wife and mother as “a moral barometer for the household,” see Richard Hawley, “Practicing What You Preach: Plutarch’s Sources and Treatment,” in Plutarch’s Advice to the Bride and Groom and a Consolation to his Wife, ed. Sarah B. Pomeroy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 116–17.

36. Philo Spec. 3.169–171; Philo Post. 181; Joseph Ap. 2.199–126; M. Aur. Med. 1.9. For further relevant examples, see those listed and explained by Balch, Let Wives be Submissive, 52–56.

37. The Acts of Paul and Thecla has been the subject of much scholarly debate. Some have found in the story evidence for a community of women who embraced virginity, sought autonomy from the strictures of patriarchal households, and embraced Thecla as their hero. See, for example, Burrus, Chastity as Autonomy; Stevan L. Davies, The Revolt of the Widows: The Social World of the Apocryphal Acts (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980); Ross Shepard Kraemer, “The Conversion of Women to Ascetic Forms of Christianity,” Signs 6 (1980): 298–307. Dennis MacDonald has famously argued that the Pastoral Epistles were written, in part, to oppose the emphasis on female virginity and independence promoted by the Acts of Paul; see MacDonald, The Legend and The Apostle. Some have questioned the possibility that much, if any, historical evidence about the lives of women can be gleaned from the tale. Kate Cooper has offered the most extensive case for this position; see Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride, esp. 45–67. See also Lynne C. Boughton, “From Pious Legend to Feminist Fantasy: Distinguishing Hagiographical License from Apostolic Practice in the Acts of Paul/Acts of Thecla,” JAAR 71 (1991): 362–83.

38. Acta Pauli et Theclae, Ed. R. Lipsius, in Acta apostolorum apocrypha, ed. R. Lipsius, Vol. 1 (Leipzig: Mendelssohn, 1891; repr., Hildesheim: Olms, 1972), 235–71. English translation by J. K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).

39. This model—a proper Greek virgin daughter or chaste wife rejects the demands of her family and city in favor of the call of virginity in Christ—was standard fare in the Apocryphal Acts: Mygdonia and Tertia refused further intercourse with their husbands after hearing Christ preached by Thomas; Maximilla rejected the advances of her husband with the assistance of the apostle Andrew; Drusiana died just in time to escape the amorous desires of her husband’s slave Callimachus, only to be resurrected by the apostle John (Acts of Thomas, 82–138; Acts of Andrew, 13–64; Acts of John, 63–86). Thecla’s enormous and lasting popularity is attested in several early Christian sources. She served as a model in Christian celebrations of female askesis: later Christian saints were compared to her, early Christian art depicted her triumphs in the amphitheater, and her story received a series of elaborations, culminating in a fifth-century Life of Thecla. For discussion of the development of the “cult of Saint Thecla,” see Stephen J. Davis, The Cult of Saint Thecla: A Tradition of Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). The text of the Life of Thecla has been edited, with French translation, by Gilbert Dagron, Vie et miracles de Sainte Thècla: Texte grec, traduction et commentaire, Subsidia Hagiographica 62 (Brussels: Socièté des bollandistes, 1978). See also the excellent discussion of the rewriting of Thecla’s memory in Elizabeth A. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).

40. On the romance, see esp. Simon Goldhill, Foucault’s Virginity: Ancient Erotic Fiction and the History of Sexuality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Niklas Holzberg, The Ancient Novel: An Introduction, trans. Christine Jackson-Holzberg (New York: Routledge, 1995); David Konstan, Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994); B. P. Reardon, The Form of Greek Romance (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991). A handy collection of the romances in English translation has been compiled by B. P. Reardon, Collected Ancient Greek Novels (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). Cooper discusses the novels as well, The Virgin and the Bride, 20–43. Reardon sums up the novel as follows: “The pattern of Greek love-romance, then, is as simple as it could be. Loving couple, their travels and trials; the vicissitudes of Fortune, which may take on a providential aspect; the happy ending. A perennial pattern” (Reardon, The Form of Greek Romance, 34). The expected “happy ending” is, of course, marriage.

41. Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride, 55.

42. Cooper’s claim that the Apocryphal Acts were not “about women” has been challenged by Shelly Matthews. She remarks, “How is it conceivable that in the early church, which was never an exclusively male sect, questions about authority and social order could have nothing to do with women?” See her “Thinking of Thecla: Issues in Feminist Historiography,” JFSR 17, no. 2 (2001): 50 (emphasis in the original). Matthews offers an important critique of Cooper’s perspective. Still, I agree with Cooper that, rhetorically speaking, these stories could have been intended as weapons in a battle for prestige, whatever the gender of the participants.

43. Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride, 58–59.

44. Donelson, Pseudepigraphy, 174.

45. Compromise positions were possible. For example, Ignatius of Antioch encouraged the “sisters” to love the Lord and be satisfied with their husbands in the flesh. The “brothers” were exhorted to love their wives as the Lord loves the church, an echo of the earlier Pauline letters Colossians and Ephesians. Still, Ignatius was quite pleased with those who chose celibacy over marriage, so long as they did not boast of their exceptional self-control—“if anyone is able to honor the flesh of the Lord by maintaining a state of purity, let him do so without boasting”—and he celebrated his own triumph over desire (Ign. Pol. 5.2; Ign. Rom. 7.2–3). See Schoedel, A Commentary; Ehrman’s translation. The extent to which Ignatius was actually acquainted with the Pauline epistles, including the deutero-Pauline epistles Colossians and Ephesians, continues to be debated. Nevertheless, Ignatius clearly recognized the authority of Paul and, on several occasions, claimed Paul’s authority to legitimate his position. See Andreas Lindemann, “Paul in the Writings of the Apostolic Fathers,” in Paul and the Legacies of Paul, ed. William Babcock (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1990), 25–45; and Paulus im ältesten Christentum: Das Bild des Apostels und die Rezeption der paulinischen Theologie in der frühchristlicen Literature bis Marcion, Beiträge zur historischen Theologie 58 (Tübingen: J. P. Mohr, 1979).

46. 1 Apol. 27. William Harris offered the following comment on this passage: “[Justin] wanted to turn the charge back on the accusers, and as far as reproduction and sexuality were concerned, child-exposure was their most vulnerable point…. This was a rhetorical dispute, but one of some importance in the struggle of Christians to dominate the sphere of sexuality” (“Child-Exposure,” 11).

47. Unless otherwise noted, English translation from L.W. Barnard, St. Justin Martyr: The First and Second Apologies, Ancient Christian Writers 56 (New York: Paulist Press, 1997).

48. The husband of such a woman was free to kill any slave paramour of his wife and he was required to divorce her, D 48.5.21.1, Papinian; D 48.5.24.1, Ulpian; D 48.5.25.1, Macer. For discussion, see Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 283–84.

49. Barnard’s translation, with slight emendations.

50. See the discussion of the lex Julia de adulteriis coercendis, the lex Julia de maritandis ordinibus, and the lex Papia Poppaea in Gardner, Women in Roman Law, 35; Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 277–98.

51. She believed it would be wicked to continue to lie with such a man. Perhaps Justin had Paul’s injunction to avoid joining the “members” of a Christ follower with the “members” of a prostitute (1 Cor 6:15–17), though Justin never quoted Paul explicitly.

52. See Williams, Roman Homosexuality, 86–95, 123–25, Veyne, “Homosexuality,” 25–27; Richlin, The Garden of Priapus, 138–39; Gleason, Making Men, 405–8.

53. Elaine Pagels, “Christian Apologists and ‘The Fall of the Angels’: An Attack on Roman Imperial Power,” Harvard Theological Review 78 (1985): 304. Everett Ferguson offers a helpful summary of Justin’s beliefs regarding the demons: the demons are identified with the Watchers, angels who lusted after women (Gen 6:2–3; 1 Enoch 6—see discussion in Chapter 2); they are the “gods” worshiped by non-Christians; they are responsible for the evils suffered by humanity, including the persecution of the Christians; Christ is/will be victorious over them. See Ferguson, Demonology of the Early Christian World, Symposium Series 12 (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1980), 105–34.

54. For example, Octavian Augustus hoped that he would be remembered for his virtus, clementia, iustitia, and pietas, composing a list of his moral, social, and military “achievements” to be erected following his death (RG 8.5, 10.1–2, 27.3, 35.1). On the erection of this record of his achievements, written on golden tablets and displayed before his mausoleum, see Suet. Aug. 101.4. On the relationship between the Res Gestae and Hellenistic theories of kingship, see Brian Bosworth, “Augustus,” 1–18. Bosworth argues that a sophisticated, educated audience would immediately understand the Res Gestae for what it was: an elaborate justification of the deification of Augustus. Augustus, Tiberius, Trajan—each emperor was, at one time or another, said to personify virtue, at least in theory. As we observed in Chapter 1, by the second century the good emperor had come to represent the justice, peace, concord, abundance, and prosperity of the empire, at least in theory; his virtues were said to secure the well-being of the empire and to guarantee the favor of the gods.

55. Justin wrote his “apologies” in Rome. The latter addition to the first petition was addressed to the Roman Senate in light of what Justin viewed as the outrageously unjust behavior of Urbicus, prefect of Rome.

56. Barnard’s translation.

57. Justin understood Christianity to be the fulfillment of Judaism. He argues that the Hebrew prophets pre-dated the Greek philosophers, that the prophets directly foretold the coming of Christ, and that Jews who did not accept Christ had been rejected by God. From Justin’s perspective, the old law of Israel has been abrogated by Christ. See 1 Apol. 30–45 (the prophets foretold Christ), 59–64 (Plato copied his insights from Moses); Dial., esp. 11–15, 71–74, 112–14. For discussion, see esp. Rajak, “Talking at Trypho,” 9–80. On Justin’s use of Hebrew Bible sources, see the extensive study by Oskar Skarsuane, The Proof from Prophecy: A Study of Justin Marytr’s Proof-Text Tradition: Text-Type, Provenance, Theological Profile, Supplements to Novum Testamentum 56 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987).

58. See, for example, Plato, Timaeus, 40d–e.

59. On Hadrian’s munificence, see Cass. Dio 69.5.2–3. Hadrian’s impressive building and restoration projects are discussed by Mary T. Boatwright, Hadrian and the Cities of the Roman Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000). The temple of Venus and Rome was “the largest temple ever built in the city.” See discussion in Beard, North, and Price, Religions of Rome, 1:256–59.

60. Justin mentions Antinous in the context of his attack on the Romans for their participation in homoerotic sex. He ends this section with a rather barbed reference to Antinous and Hadrian: “And it is not out of place, we think, to mention here Antinous, who was recently alive, and whom everybody, with reverence, hastened to worship as a god, though they knew who he was and what was his origin” (1 Apol. 29; Barnard’s translation). Craig Williams views Hadrian’s devotion to Antinous as evidence of the relative acceptance of male homoerotic sex between a superordinate man (in this case, Hadrian) and his subordinate (in this case, Antinous, a young male slave; Williams, Roman Homosexuality, 60–61). Perhaps Hadrian’s public declaration of his love for Antinous—celebrated in the city and religious cult Hadrian founded in his honor following Antinous’ untimely death—is best understood in light of Hadrian’s effort to associate himself with Greek philosophy, in this case by associating himself with “Greek love.” See Jaś Elsner, Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph: The Art of the Roman Empire, 100–450 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), esp. 177–83. Though Christians often made snide remarks regarding Antinous, Hadrian clearly believed that celebrating his youthful male lover could recommend him to his subjects. For further Christian critique, see also Athenagoras Leg. 30.2; Tatian Or. 10.1–2. Interestingly, Celsus compared the alleged impropriety of the Christians with the iniquity of the “revelers of Antinous in Egypt”; see Origen, Contra Celsum, in Origen: Contra Celsum, 5 vols., ed. with French translation by Marcel Borret, Sources Chrétiennes (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1967–76), English translation by H. E. Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 5.63.

61. On the apotheosis of divus Antoninus and other divine emperors, see Simon Price, “From Noble Funerals to Divine Cult: The Consecration of Roman Emperors,” in Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies, ed. D. Cannadine and S. Price (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 56–105. For a discussion of a famous column depicting the apotheosis of Antoninus Pius and the empress Faustina, see Lise Vogel, The Column of Antoninus Pius (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973).

62. Cass. Dio 71.36.4. Famously, Marcus Aurelius seems to have penned his own set of moral reflections grounded in Stoic philosophy. Usually identified as the Meditations, this work was not well known in antiquity (copies today are made from a MS of sixteenth-century origin though most scholars accept it as authentic). See discussion by P. A. Brunt, “Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations,” JRS 64 (1974): 1–20.

63. According to at least one interpreter, the inclusion of Marcus Aurelius in this list of addressees was no accident. Marcus Aurelius’ well-known adherence to Stoic thought could have given peculiar weight to Justin’s appeal to philosophy. Indeed, six Christian apologists referred directly to Aurelius in their pleas; see Guerra, “The Conversion of Marcus Aurelius,” 171–87; Robert Grant, “Five Apologists and Marcus Aurelius,” Vigiliae Christianae 42 (1988): 1–17. This interpretation seems to me to be highly improbable.

64. For Origen, Contra Celsum, see note 60.

65. Celsus’ work “constitutes a fairly extensive compendium of arguments against Christianity,” some that had been put forward earlier and some that Celsus himself developed: Micahel Frede, “Origen’s Treatise Against Celsus,” in Apologetics in the Roman Empire: Pagans, Jews, and Christians, ed. Mark Edwards, Martin Goodman, and Simon Price (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 133. See also Arthur Droge, Homer or Moses?, 72–81; Pierre de Labriolle, La Réaction païenne: Etude sur la polémique antichrétienne du Ier au IVe siècle (Paris: L’Artisan du Livre, 1934), 117–27; Grant, Greek Apologists, 133–39.

66. Schoedel’s translation.

67. For further discussion of the “Thyestian banquets and Oedipean union” charge, see Henrichs, “Pagan Ritual,” 18–20. See also Rives, “Human Sacrifice”; McGowan, “Eating People”; Jeffrey W. Hargis, Against the Christians: The Rise of Early Christian Polemic, Patristic Studies 1 (New York: Peter Lang, 1999), esp. 1–16.

68. Rives, “Human Sacrifice”; McGowan, “Eating People.”

69. Plin. Ep. 10.96. See further Robert L. Wilken, Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984); Stephen Benko, Pagan Rome and the Early Christians (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986); Labriolle, La Réaction païenne.

70. Tac. Ann. 15.44. See discussion in Wilken, Christians as the Romans Saw Them, 49–50.

71. Suet. Ner. 16.

72. Lucian De mort. peregr. 11–13. On Lucian’s relatively benign critique, see Labriolle, La Réaction païnne, 108: “Lucian est le seul écrivain païen que paraisse trouver cette folie à peu près inoffensive” (emphasis in the original).

73. Keith Hopkins, “Christian Number and Its Implications,” JECS 6 (1998): 196.

74. Pliny, Ep. 96. For discussion, see also Wilken, Christians as the Romans Saw Them, 21–30.

75. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 38.

76. On the need for a steady supply of prisoners for the amphitheater, see Kathleen M. Coleman, “Fatal Charades: Roman Executions Staged as Mythological Enactments,” JRS 80 (1990), 47–55.

77. Holt N. Parker, “The Observed of All Observers: Spectacle, Applause, and Cultural Poetics in the Roman Theater Audience,” in The Art of Ancient Spectacle, ed. Bettina Berhmann and Christine Kondoleon, National Gallery of Art Studies in the History of Art 56, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts Symposium Papers 34 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 163–79; and Kathleen M. Coleman, “Informers on Parade,” in The Art of Ancient Spectacle, ed. Bettina Berhmann and Christine Kondoleon, National Gallery of Art Studies in the History of Art 56, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts Symposium Papers 34 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 231–45; David Potter, “Martyrdom as Spectacle,” in Theater and Society in the Classical World, ed. Ruth Scodel (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 53–88, esp. 65–66; Garnsey, “Legal Privilege,” 141–65; Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege, 164–65. William Ian Miller has observed that victims tend to be coded as “female” and victimizers as “male”: “Victimizers, according to our common notions, will tend to be male, and victims, if not female to the extent as victimizers are male, will, in many settings, be gendered female nonetheless. A male victim is a feminized male”: William Ian Miller, Humiliation: And Other Essays on Honor, Social Discomfort, and Violence (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993), 55. Though this is clearly an overstatement, the presupposition that dominance is “male” and submission “female” does inform ancient discourses about punishment, especially punishment of the body.

78. D 48.19.10.2, Macer: “quia et solus fustium ictus grauior est quam pecniaris damnatio”; Watson’s translation. See also D 48.19.16.6, Claudius Saturninus. Saterninus cited a saying of Demosthenes, “the greatest of Greek orators,” noting that the insult of being beaten is worse than the blow itself.

79. Callistratus clarified the policy: “It is not the custom for all persons to be beaten with rods, but only freemen of the poorer classes; men of higher status are not subject to beating with rods, as is specifically laid down in imperial rescripts” (D 48.19.28.2, Callistratus; Watson’s translation). James Rives discusses the (unusual) decision of Hilarianus, the Roman procurator who ordered the execution of Perpetua, Felicitas, and their companions. Hilarianus arranged for Perpetua to be executed in the arena by beasts, a punishment normally reserved for humiliores (people of low status). Rives speculates that Perpetua was from Roman citizen family of the decurial class and hence a honestior. Hilarianus’ decision to utterly humiliate her by sentencing her to the beasts, then, indicates how deeply offended he was at Perpetua’s revocation of her status and duty when she declared herself to be a Christian. See Rives, “The Piety of a Persecutor,” JECS 4, no. 1 (1996): 1–25.

80. Defined in the Digest as treason, murder, conspiracy against one’s master, arson, sacrilege, and brigandage. See D 48.13.7, Ulpian (“I know indeed that many have been condemned to the wild beasts for sacrilege, some even burned alive, and others hanged on the gallows. But the penalty should be tempered to restrict condemnation to the beasts to those who have formed a band, broken into a temple, and carried off from there the god’s offerings by night.”); D 48.19.6.2, Ulpian (there are classes of punishments, the appropriate punishment is determined, in part, by the status of the person charged); D 48.19.8.2, Ulpian (“enemies of the state” and deserters are to be burned alive); 8.11 (younger men condemned to the hunting games are first degraded to the status of servi poenae; compare D 48.19.12, Macer); D 48.19.11–12, Callistratus (slaves and free men of low rank are condemned to death by fire when they conspire against their masters, as are arsonists); D 48.19.28.15–16, Callistratus (brigands ought to be hung so that the spectacle of their death will deter others; notorious people and slaves ought to receive more severe punishments); D 48.19.38.2, Paul (those who insight a mob are either hanged, thrown to the beasts, or deported to an island, depending upon their status). I do not assume that these jurists describe the actuality of Roman punishment. Rather, their discussion of ideal practice reveals the status-based attitudes embedded in idealized Roman legal procedure. See also Coleman, “Fatal Charades,” 55–58. Coleman notes that the practice of punishing low-status offenders more severely than those of higher status was in place at least by the time of Hadrian.

81. Kathleen Coleman, “Informers,” 241–42; Potter, “Martyrdom,” 65: “The body of the condemned became a vehicle for the reaffirmation of the public order, and, indeed, for a reaffirmation of the power of the central government, as only an imperial governor possessed the ius gladii which gave him the power to inflict capital sentences.”

82. Elizabeth Castelli discusses the implications of the “male” gaze to Perpetua’s representation of her martyrdom. By being looked at and victimized, Perpetua was gendered female, yet Perpetua imagined herself as “male.” See her Visions and Voyeurism: The Politics of Sight in Early Christianity, Protocol of the Colloquy of the Center for Hermeneutical Studies (Berkeley: Center for Hermeneutical Studies, 1995). On the “male” gaze in the context of Roman spectacles, see Parker, “Observed of All Observers,” 165, 168.

83. Parker comments: “The symbolism of sexual penetration underlies all these attacks on the body of the elite Roman, attacks which are directed especially at the face. And of all the penetrations of the body, the most degrading is irrumatio, oral rape. Anyone who is the victim, who submits to it, is impurus, a word which has marked overtones of oral sexual debasement” (“The Observed,” 175). For the gendered implications of viewing deaths in the arena as “sacrifice,” see Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory. Castelli notes that sacrifice is often coded for gender in such a way that those who perform the sacrifice are male and those who are sacrificed are female. Christian theorizing regarding martyrdom inverts these gendered categories, elevating passivity and submission to the level of “manliness.”

84. Martyrdom of Polycarp, ed. and trans. Bart D. Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1, LCL (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), 9. “Thus begins a tradition whereby the martyr’s endurance comes to be linked explicitly with masculinity and tied also to images of athleticism and militarism” (Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory).

85. Martyrs of Lyons (Epistle of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne), ed. and trans. Herbert Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 19.

86. Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, in Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité suivi des Actes, ed. with French translation by Jacqueline Amat, Sources Chrétiennes 417 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1996), 10.7–15. For further discussion, see Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, and Visions and Voyeurism, 14–16; Judith Perkins, The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era (New York: Routledge, 1995), 109–21: “The martyrs are never portrayed as victims, but their ordeals are incorporated into the universal and traditional ideology of athletic games” (111). On the significance of naming Perpetua’s rival as an Egyptian, see Gay L. Byron, Symbolic Blackness and Ethnic Difference in Early Christian Literature (London: Routledge, 2002), 45.

87. Justin’s insistence that passive endurance was equivalent to manliness () and that nobility () remained possible throughout the humiliating process of public execution was hardly a traditional reading of these virtues. For further discussion, see Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory; and Brent Shaw, “Body/Power/Identity: Passions of the Martyrs,” JECS 4 (1990): 269–312. See also Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999), 74–81; and Virginia Burrus, “Reading Agnes,” 25–46. Boyarin concludes that like the late-antique Christians described by Burrus, both the rabbis and the fathers identified with female virgins and martyrs as a way to disidentify with a Rome “whose power was stereotyped as a highly sexualized male” (79).

88. Babbitt’s translation.

89. For discussion, see William V. Harris, Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 245.

90. Chapter 18 lists ten prescriptions against anger; see discussion in Rutherford, The Meditations, 34.

91. Plut. Mor. 6. English translation W. C. Helmbold,

92. See also Sen. Clem. 1.7.4: “Those placed in lowly station are more free to use force, to quarrel, to rush into a brawl, and to indulge their wrath; when the odds are matched, blows fall light; but in a king, even loud speech and unbridled words ill accord with his majesty” (Basore’s translation).

93. Athenagoras added, “It is these demons who drag men to the images. They engorge themselves in the blood from the sacrifices and lick all around them” (Leg. 26.1). Tatian linked the murderous violence demanded by the gods with the spectacles demanded by crowds in the amphitheatre: “You [who sponsor spectacles] sacrifice animals in order to eat meat and you buy men to provide human slaughter for the soul, feeding it with bloodshed of the most impious kind. The bandit murders for the sake of what he can get, but the rich man buys gladiators for the sake of murder” (Tatian Or. 23.2).

94. Compare Theophilus Ad Auto. 3.14; Athenagoras Leg. 11.3.

95. According to Katherine Welch, a penchant for bloodthirsty violence and illicit sexual desire were also linked in Greek critiques of Roman rule. For example, Philostratus, Lucian, and Dio Chrysostom all decried the violent spectacles performed in Athens, comparing Athens to the Roman colony Corinth and calling the Athenians to reject the impious, perverse, and violent gladiatorial shows performed there. See her “Negotiating Roman Spectacle: Architecture in the Greek World: Athens and Corinth,” in The Art of Ancient Spectacle, ed. Bettina Berhmann and Christine Kondoleon, National Gallery of Art Studies in the History of Art 56, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts Symposium Papers 34 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999), 125–45.

96. Grant proposes that Justin wrote his Apology in response to Polycarp’s arrest and execution (Greek Apologists, 53). Musurillo surveys the evidence and concludes that the date of Polycarp’s death cannot be fixed with any certainty: Herbert Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), xiii.

97. Musurillo’s translation.

98. Acta Carpus, in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, ed. and trans. Herbert Musurillo (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 5, Greek recension. On the date of this martyrdom, see discussion in Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, xv–xvi. Eusebius placed the martyrdom during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (Eusebius Hist. Eccl. 4.15.48). Others argue that these Christians were executed during the Decian persecution. On the Decian persecution, see esp. James B. Rives, “The Decree of Decius and the Religion of Empire,” JRS 89 (1999): 135–54.

99. Miller observes, “the violence of dandified decadence not only thwarts the usual gender typing of violence, it also bears the markings of the cruel. This kind of violence seldom pretends to moral justification; it is unaccompanied by excusing anger or justifying indignation. It is simply for the beauty of it, for the fun of it, the pleasure of it” (Miller, Humiliation, 88). Also see Lincoln, Authority, 75–76 on violence as a form of speech.

100. Perkins, The Suffering Self, 32.

101. Young, “Greek Apologists,” 80–81.

4. THE FALSE TEACHERS OF THE END TIME

1. That the author intends the whore to stand for Rome is clear from his identification of “her” as “seated upon many waters” (17:1), “seated upon seven mountains” (17:9), and as “the great city which has dominion over the kings of the earth” (17:18). See Barbara R. Rossing, The Choice Between Two Cities: Whore, Bride, and Empire in the Apocalypse, Harvard Theological Studies 48 (Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 1999), 6–9; Frederick J. Murphy, Fallen Is Babylon: The Revelation to John (Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 1998), 1–3, 5–7, 348–85; Catherine Keller, Apocalypse Now and Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 74–77; Leonard L. Thompson, The Book of Revelation: Apocalypse and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 174–75; Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Revelation: Vision of a Just World, Proclamation Commentaries (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 95–101. Schüssler Fiorenza suggests that the image of the great harlot derives from Isa 23:17, “which, especially in its Greek form, understands the international commerce and wealth of Tyre as the ‘hire’ paid to a harlot” (96).

2. Christopher Rowland’s comments are helpful here. He suggests that in apocalyptic writing “the present has been suffused with a critical character.” The language adopted offers those who use it a “sense of privilege and destiny” and gives “ultimate significance” to their historical actions. Rowland, “Apocalyptic and the New Testament,” in Apocalypse Theory and the Ends of the World, ed. Malcolm Bull (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 38–57 (quotations drawn from pages 42, 49, and 55 respectively).

3. For discussion, see Murphy, Fallen Is Babylon, 215–22, 313–21; and Keller, Apocalypse Now and Then, 74–75.

4. Stephen O’Leary offers helpful definitions of “apocalypse,” “eschatology,” and “apocalyptic eschatology”: Eschatology is “discourse about the last things … the furthest imaginable extensions of human and cosmic destiny.” Apocalypse is “that discourse that reveals or makes manifest a vision of ultimate destiny.” Apocalyptic eschatology “argues for the imminence of this Judgment in which good and evil will finally receive their ultimate reward and punishment”: O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 5–6. As already observed, numerous Christian authors appealed to the last things and the end of time to buttress their argument that the (true) Christians are crucial actors in a cosmic drama in which the righteous (i.e., the Christians) will ultimately triumph. So, for example, Paul exhorts the Roman Christians to “give place to the wrath [of God]”( Rom 12:19) and praises the Thessalonian Christians for turning from idols to serve God while they wait for the return of the Son “who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thess 1:10). The author of Colossians reminds his readers that when Christ appears, “then you, together with him, will appear in glory” (Col 3:3). The authors of the synoptic gospels include extended descriptions of the tribulations of the end times, warning the faithful to “watch” (Mark 13:1–37; Matt 24:3–44; Lk 21:7–36). This warning is repeated in the Didache, together with the promise that the “saints” will receive salvation (Did. 16.1–8). Other examples include 1 Cor 15:20–57; Eph 1:9–14; 1 Thess 4:13–5:11; 2 Thess 2:1–12; 2 Tim 3:1–9; 1 Pet 4:3–7; 2 Pet 3:2–13; 1 John 2:18–20; Barn. 4–6, 9–14; Justin 1 Apol. 28; Justin 2 Apol. 7. The apocalyptic “genre” has been variously identified; the working definition used by the Society of Biblical Literature Genres Project has been influential. According to this definition, apocalypse is “a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial insofar as it involves another, supernatural world.” See John J. Collins, ed., “Apocalypse: The Morphology of a Genre,” Semeia 14 (1979); and Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998), 2–9. Though Revelation is the first example of a document calling itself an “apocalypse” elements of the genre appear in a number of earlier texts, for example: 4 Ezra; 1 Enoch; Apoc. Ab.; Apoc. Bar.; CD 5.8; 4Q181; 4Q521, fr. 2. The “Prophecies of the Potter” offers an interesting Egyptian example: text in Ludwig Koenen and Reinhold Merkelhach, “Die Prophezeiungen des ‘Töpfers,’” ZPE 2, no. 3 (1968): 178–209, discussion in L. Koenen, “The Prophecies of a Potter: A Prophecy of World Renewal Becomes an Apocalypse,” in Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of Papyrology, ed. Deborah H. Samuel (Toronto: Hakkert, 1970), 249–54. On “apocalypse” as an ancient literary designation, see Morton Smith, “On the History of and in Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East, Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Apocalypticism, ed. David Hellholm, 2nd ed. (Tübingen: Mohr./Siebeck, 1989), 9–20.

5. Most scholars suggest that this “John” cannot be John the apostle, John the author of the Gospel of John, or John the Baptist, but was another John altogether. See discussion in Murphy, Fallen Is Babylon, 33–41.

6. On the development of the figure of Satan and the association of Satan with “false” Jews or Christians by their opponents, see Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan (New York: Random House, 1995), esp. 47–49, 59–60, 147–49.

7. Translation my own. Compare 1 John 4:1–6. For discussion, see Gregory C. Jenks, The Origins and Early Development of the Antichrist Myth, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 59 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991), 351–53; L. J. Lietaert Peerbolte, The Antecedents of Antichrist: A Traditio-Historical Study of the Earliest Christian Views on Eschatological Opponents, Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 49 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), 96–113.

8. Grant’s translation. Eusebius quotes the Greek original (Eusebius Hist. Eccl. 4.14.7–8). Irenaeus recounts this meeting between Polycarp and Marcion in order to exhort the Christians of his own day to follow the example of the apostles and early disciples. Polycarp and Paul, Irenaeus argues, avoided false teachers. If they encountered such deviants, they always offered a swift and pointed rebuke. Irenaeus quotes the “Paul” of Titus to confirm his position, “as Paul too says: ‘After a first and second warning, avoid the heretic, knowing that such a man is perverted and when he sins is self-condemned’” (Adv. Haer. 3.3.4; compare Eusebius Hist. Eccl. 4.14.8 and Titus 3:10–11). Polycarp, in turn, was probably alluding to 1 John. In that epistle, the “little children” (teknia, i.e., Christians) are warned to watch out for antichrists and false prophets who are “of the world” and say what is “of the world.” These antichrists commit sin and are “of the devil.” Indeed, they are “the children of the devil” (ta tekna tou diabolou; 1 John 2:18–19, 3:7–10, 4:1–6). On the relationship between Poly. Phil. 7.1 and 1 John, see Peerbolte, Antecedents of Antichrist, 112–13.

9. Along similar lines, the author of Ephesians warns Christians to be on guard against the “sons of disobedience” who deceive “with empty words” and hide their deeds in darkness. These deeds are too shameful to mention—“it is a shame even to speak about the things they do in secret” (Eph 5:6, 11–12, quotation from 12). Because of them and their fornications, impurity, and idolatry, the wrath of God comes (Eph 5:6). The “sons of disobedience” and the “children of light” (i.e., the true Christians) are, “Paul” asserts, engaged in a contest with earthly and heavenly consequences (Eph 6:12: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the powers, against the authorities, against the rulers of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the heavenly places.”)

10. On the traditional character of these vices, see Martin Dibelius and Hans Conzelmann, A Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles, trans. P. Buttolph, A. Yarbro, and H. Koester, Hermenaeia (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972), 115–16. Dibelius and Conzelmann question whether the author of this letter sought to accuse his opponents of being unchaste, arguing that he would have been much more specific had he intended to make such a charge. Still, his vice list implies licentiousness (“profligates,” “lovers of pleasure”) and the mention of “weak” or “little” women suggests to me that the accusation of sexual depravity is a subtext here. See also MacDonald, The Pauline Churches, 179–80.

11. MacDonald, Early Christian Women, 62–63. On the similarities between the polemic of the Pastoral Epistles and similar, equally stereotypical accusations lodged by Greek moralists against their opponents, see Abraham J. Malherbe, “Medical Imagery in the Pastoral Epistles,” in Paul and the Popular Philosophers (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 121–36.

12. Walter Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, 2nd German ed., ed. George Strecker, trans. Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), originally published as Rechgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum, Beiträge zur historischen Theologie 10 (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1934).

13. Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy, xxii. (this section trans. Robert A. Kraft); also see 35.

14. Baur, Orthodoxy and Heresy, xxiii–xxiv. On the situation in Edessa, Bauer concluded that there was “a foundation that rests on an unmistakably heretical basis. In relation to it, orthodoxy comes to prevail only very gradually and with great difficulty” (43). In terms of Egypt, Bauer finds no representative of “ecclesiastical” Christianity at all until 189 C.E. (53). Rome was the only place that was not dominated by a form of Christianity that was eventually deemed “heretical” (95–110).

15. Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy, 100.

16. In the second chapter, I discussed the very material from 1 Corinthians cited by Bauer to establish his claim that Gnostic ideas were present in Asia Minor as early as Paul.

17. Bauer never explicitly defines “heresy” but does state that “orthodoxy” implies adherence to apostolic teaching. “Heresy” and “heretic” then refer to the opponents of “the apostles” and those who claimed to preserve apostolic teaching. For a definition of “orthodoxy,” see Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy, 38. Still, unlike the “church fathers,” Bauer does grant the “heretics” the status of “Christian.”

18. Examples of the suggestion that rival Christian teachers are innovators who do not conform to what was handed down by the apostles or, alternatively, that true Christians hold onto apostolic teaching, include Col 2:8; 2 Thess 2:2–3; 1 Clem 42.1–4, 47.1–7; Ign. Eph. 11.2; Ign. Mag. 13.1; Ign. Smyrn. 6.2; Iren. Adv. Haer. 3.1–4.3.

19. Marcel Simon, “From Greek Hairesis to Christian Heresy,” in Early Christian Literature and the Classical Intellectual Tradition: In Honorem Robert M. Grant, ed. William R. Schoedel and Robert L. Wilken, Théologie Historique 54 (Paris: Éditions Beauchesne, 1979), 101–16.

20. As Pagels demonstrates, many so-called Gnostics claimed that their views were derived from the authentic writings of the apostle Paul. Elaine H. Pagels, The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975). Also see Pheme Perkins, The Gnostic Dialogue: The Early Church and the Crisis of Gnosticism, Theological Inquiries (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 12.

21. See McGuire, “Women, Gender, and Gnosis,” 262–66.

22. Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy, 135–41, on Eusebius Hist. Eccl. 5.17.2–18.11. However, this observation did not lead Bauer to question the reliability of the abuse heaped upon Paul’s opponents in Corinth, the targets of the ire of the author of Revelation, or Justin’s and Irenaeus’ Gnostics. Instead, he accepts the suggestion that these particular “deviants” were libertine, freethinking gluttons who could not resist their sexual impulses.

23. See, for example, King, What is Gnosticism?; Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”; Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption, 15–17; Wisse, “The Epistle of Jude,” 133–43; J. J. Buckley, “Libertines or Not: Fruit, Bread, Semen, and Other Bodily Fluids in Gnosticism,” JECS 2 (1994): 15–31; Pagels, The Gnostic Paul; G. A. G. Stroumsa, Another Seed: Studies in Gnostic Mythology, Nag Hammadi Studies 24 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1984), 173; James E. Goehring, “Libertine or Liberated: Women in the So-called Libertine Gnostic Communities,” in Images of the Feminine in Gnosticism, ed. Karen L. King (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 329–44. Goehring notes that “there are no recognizable sources from these communities themselves by which to test the accounts of the heresiologists.” He also observes that supposedly deviant religious sects are routinely accused of “sexual deviation.” Nevertheless, he continues to assume that there were libertine Gnostic groups, though he refuses to suggest that “libertine” is a negative designation. See the helpful survey of approaches to Gnosticism by McGuire, “Women, Gender, and Gnosis,” 257–60. For a discussion of the ideological function of the term “heretic,” see Elizabeth A. Clark, “Ideology, History, and the Construction of Woman,” JECS 2 (1994): 155–184; and Virginia Burrus, “The Heretical Woman as a Symbol in Alexander, Athanasius, Epiphanius, and Jerome,” Harvard Theological Review 84 (1991): 229–48. Important proponents of the earlier view include Benko, Pagan Rome, 63–73; Hans Jonas, Gnosis und spätaniker Geist, vol. 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1934), 170; and Stephen Gero, “With Walter Bauer on the Tigris: Encratite Orthodoxy and Libertine Heresy in Syro-Mesopotamian Christianity,” in Nag Hammadi, Gnosticism, and Early Christianity, ed. Charles W. Hedrick and Rogert Hodgson Jr. (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1986), 287–307.

24. For the argument that the opponents of Paul in Corinth may have possessed an antinomian attitude, see Walther Schmithals, Gnosticism in Corinth, trans. J. Steely (Nashville: Abington Press, 1971); Hurd, The Origin of 1 Corinthian; Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians; Witherington, Conflict and Community; Terry, Discourse Analysis of First Corinthians. On Jude, see J. Daryl Charles, Literary Strategy in the Epistle of Jude (Scranton: University of Scranton Press, 1993), 52; Richard J. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, Word Biblical Commentary 50 (Waco, Tex.: Word Books, 1983), 11–12; Duane F. Watson, “The Letter of Jude,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 12 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), 475; Charles Bigg, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude, International Critical Commentaries (New York: Scribner, 1922), 313–15; J. N. D. Kelly, A Commentary on the Epistles of Peter and Jude, Black’s New Testament Commentaries (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1969), 265. On 2 Peter, see Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 154–57; Donald Senior, 1 and 2 Peter (Wilmington, N.C.: Glazier, 1980), 100; Kelly, A Commentary, 328. On the opponents of the Pastorals, see Dibelius and Conzelmann, Pastoral Epistles, 116. Dibelius and Conzelmann grant that the opponents may by libertine, though they call this hypothesis into question on the evidence of Gnostic tendency toward asceticism, not libertinism.

25. McGuire, “Women, Gender, and Gnosis,” 264.

26. Justin 1 Apol. 16, 26; Iren. Adv. Haer. 1.6.3; 1.28.2. See also Arist. Apol. 17.2; Tatian Or. 25.3; Athenagoras Leg. 3.1; Tertullian Apol. 7.1–8.9; Minicius Felix Oct. 9.5–7.

27. Given the centrality of sexualized language to the Christian (and non-Christian) discourses of legitimization examined in this book, it seems to me that these charges cannot be read as secure historical evidence of much of anything.

28. On the literary relationship between Jude and 2 Peter, see Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible 37c (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 135; Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 141–43; Eric Fuchs and Pierre Reymond, La Deuxième Épitre de Saint Pierre, l’Épitre de Saint Jude, Commentaire de Noveau Testament 13b (Paris: Delachaux & Niestlé, 1980), 20–24; Hubert Frankemölle, 1. und 2. Petrusbrief, Judasbrief, Die Neue Echter Bibel (Würtzburg: Echter Verlag, 1987), 82–84; A. R. C. Leaney, The Letters of Peter and Jude: A Commentary on the First Letter of Peter, a Letter of Jude, and the Second Letter of Peter, Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 100–104; Kelly, A Commentary, 225–37.

29. On the popularity of The Shepherd in the early church, see Carolyn Osiek, The Shepherd of Hermas, Hermenaeia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), 4–7; Martin Dibelius, Der Hirt des Hermas, vol. 4 of Die apostolishen Väter, Handbuch zum Neuen Testament (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1923), 421–23.

30. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter , 6; Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, 27. Even if we accept the argument of Bauckham that the point of the letter is to be found in the concluding exhortation (Bauckham, “appeal”), the polemic against false teachers occupies sixteen of verses of the twenty-five verse letter (Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 4). References to biblical and apocryphal traditions in Jude include Exodus (5), Watchers (6), Sodom and Gomorrah (7), Moses and the archangel Michael (9), Cain, Balaam, and Korah (11), and a quotation of 1 Enoch (14).

31. See Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, 29, 35. See also the rhetorical analysis of Jude offered by Charles, Literary Strategy, 25–48; and Duane F. Watson, Invention, Arrangement, and Style: Rhetorical Criticism of Jude and 2 Peter, SBL Dissertation Series 104 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 29–79.

32. There are fourteen words in Jude that appear no where else in the New Testament. The author demonstrates a familiarity with Greek idiom, and the diction of Jude has been favorably compared with Luke-Acts, Hebrews, and 2 Peter (which borrowed from Jude). See N. Turner, “The Literary Character of New Testament Greek,” NTS 20 (1974): 107. On the use of Greek idiom in Jude, see Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 6.

33. One recent study states, “Nothing definite can be said about the author, origin, or date of the Epistle of Jude” (Watson, Invention, 473).

34. Bigg, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary, 313–15; W. G. Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament, 14th ed. (New York: Abingdon, 1966), 299; Kelly, A Commentary, 265; E. M. Sidebottom, ed., James, Jude, and 2 Peter, The Century Bible (London: Nelson, 1967), 75–76.

35. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 11–12; Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, 32; Leaney, Letters of Peter and Jude, 83, 85.

36. Charles, Literary Strategy, 52. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 11–12. Bauckham further identifies this group as itinerant charismatics. Watson agrees, arguing that they are antinomian itinerant prophets (Invention, 475). Still, little can be said about the author’s opponents or the purpose of his letter beyond the polemical evidence he himself offers. Thus all attempts to identify the specific place of writing, the identity of the author, and the occasion for its composition can only be speculative (Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, 32).

37. Several commentators note Jude’s polemical use of See esp. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 45 and Charles, Literary Strategy, 33, 39–40, 168–69

38. The citation of “the predictions of the apostles” here in Jude suggests to some exegetes that this letter must be postapostolic (i.e., late first or early second century), but see Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 103; and Watson, Invention, 474.

39. The source of this story is disputed, though it is loosely based on the tradition of the death of Moses (Deut 34). Bauckham argues that Jude 9 may reflect a lost section of the Testament of Moses: Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 178–206. See also Charles, Literary Strategy, 149–53; D. H. Wallace, “The Semitic Origin of the Assumption of Moses,” Theologische Zeitschrift 11 (1955): 321–28. I am following Bauckham’s exegesis of this verse, preferring the Bauckham’s translation and interpretation to that of, for example, the RSV. (Bauckham: “But when Michael the archangel, in debate with the devil, disputed about the body of Moses, he did not presume to condemn him for slander, but said, ‘May the Lord rebuke you.’” RSV: “But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, disputed about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a reviling judgment upon him, but said, ‘The Lord rebuke you.’” ) For an alternative view, see Kelly, A Commentary, 264–65. Whichever translation is preferred, the point seems to be that judgment is best left to God.

40. See discussion in Geza Vermes, “The Story of Balaam,” in Scripture and Tradition in Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 1973), 127–77.

41. On the relationship between Jude and 1 Enoch, see James C. VanderKam, “1 Enoch, Enochic Motifs, and Enoch in Early Christian Literature,” in The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early Christianity, ed. James C. VanderKam and William Adler, Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum 4 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 35–40.

42. The textual tradition is inconsistent here. Most manuscripts read “the Lord.”

43. Kelly suggests that the use of “to deuteron” here is an implied reference to the rescue from Egypt (A Commentary, 256).

44. On this story in 1 Enoch 6–11, to which Jude most likely refers here, see Albert-Marie Denis, Introduction aux pseudépigraphes Grecs d’Ancien Testament, Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970), 15–30; George W. E. Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature Between the Bible and the Mishnah: A Historical and Literary Introduction (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), 48–55; Maxwell J. Davidson, Angels at Qumran: A Comparative Study of 1 Enoch 1–36 and Sectarian Writings from Qumran, Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Supplement Series 11 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992), 31–78; D. S. Russell, Divine Disclosure: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 37–42. According to VanderKam’s careful analysis, Jude knew at least 1 Enoch 1 and 6–11 (“1 Enoch,” 35). References to the “Watchers” who fornicated with women may also be found in CD 2.14–23, 2 Enoch 18, 2 Apoc. Bar. 56:12–15, T. Reub. 5.6–7, and Joseph Ant. 1.3.1.

45. On the composite character of “1 Enoch,” see E. Isaac, introduction to the Ethiopic Apocalypse of Enoch, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1, ed. James H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1983), 5–12. VanderKam argues that Jude may have known 1 Enoch 1.9 (“1 Enoch,” 35).

46. The passage in Jude does not directly correspond to any of the Greek versions of 1 Enoch, however, and therefore may be an allusion rather than a direct citation. See H. J. Lawlor, “Early Citations from the Book of Enoch,” Journal of Philology 25 (1897), 164–225. Bauckham reconsiders the issue carefully, concluding that Jude knew the Greek version but made his own translation from the Aramaic. This supports Bauckham’s larger thesis that the author was fluent in Hebrew and Aramaic (Jude, 2 Peter, 94–96). Enoch was also cited by the author of the Epistle of Barnabas (Barn. 4.3), but that citation does not appear in any edition of Enoch currently available.

47. On this passage as a critique of the earthly priesthood, see Martha Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 20–23.

48. As we have seen, traditions about unfaithful Israel frequently described unfaithfulness in terms of illicit desire and sexual infidelity. The people lusted (epithumeō) after rich food. Their lack of faith was referred to as fornication/whoring (porneuō and cognates). Men of Israel were seduced into worshipping Baal when they fornicated with Moabite women. Paul’s reference to these events is telling. Arguing that Christians should avoid idolatry, he warns the Corinthians not to “fornicate” (porneuō) like unfaithful Israel, for “twenty-three thousand fell in a single day” (1 Cor 10:8; Num 25:1–18. See also Heb 3:7–4:3; CD 3:6–10).

49. So Wisse, “The Epistle of Jude,” 138; Kelly, A Commentary, 254–5. Bauckham and Charles would disagree.

50. I am in agreement with Bauckham here that the “strange flesh” that the men of Sodom and Gomorrah are accused of desiring does not necessarily refer to their desire for homoerotic intercourse but rather for the “strange flesh” of the angels. See Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 54 (Watson disagrees: Invention, 489). Still, the sexual content of their sin is clear. They “fornicated” (ekporneuō) and “went after strange flesh.” Sodom was said to be guilty of various other sins including hatred of strangers (Wis 19.14–15), selfishness (Ezek 16:46–50), and sexual immorality in general (Jubilees, 16.5–6; T. Levi 14.6). Interestingly, T. Levi also mentions Enoch, the marrying of foreign women by unfaithful Israelite men, and the dangers of becoming “like Sodom and Gomorrah” (14.1–8). See H. W. Hollander and M. de Jonge, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985), 169–71.

51. My reading of the examples offered in Jude 5–7 privileges the (presupposed) sexual content of each of the three episodes. Though the majority of exegetes have also noted that fornication implicitly connects these verses (see, for example, Kelly, A Commentary, 253–259, Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 54–55, and Wisse, “The Epistle of Jude,” 138), Charles would disagree.

52. These same three examples are referred to in Sir 16.7–10, CD 2:17–3:12, and 3 Macc 2:4–7 to illustrate God’s judgment upon the ungodly. See Watson, Invention, 488.

53. Throughout the Septuagint, false prophets were said to “dream dreams” and to mislead the people. So, according to Deuteronomy, false prophets, dreaming dreams (LXX), encourage Israel to follow other gods. Such prophets must be rejected, even killed, for their words lead Israel astray (Deut 13:2–4, 6, LXX). Jeremiah laments that false prophets “dreaming dreams” cause the people to forget their God, just as their ancestors did when they worshiped Baal (Jer 23:25–28): The false prophets, saying “I have dreamed dreams!” (LXX) try to lead the people to forget the name of God, “just as their fathers forgot my name for Baal.” Zechariah worries that the lying dreams of the dreamers guide the people falsely (Zech 10:2). Thus, by accusing them of “dreaming,” Jude compares the current false prophets with the false dreamers of old. Still, dreaming could also be depicted as a positive channel of divine revelation across the cultures of the Mediterranean world. Old men who “dream dreams” were offered as a sign of God’s restoration of Israel in Joel 2:28. See Patricia Cox Miller, Dreams in Late Antiquity: Studies in the Imagination of a Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994)

54. Most contemporary scholars read as referring to “lordship” or “divine sovereignty,” on analogy with Did. 4.1 and Herm. Sim. 5.6.1 (e.g., Kelly, A Commentary, 262 and Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 54–55). Other options include that the false teachers reject ecclesiastical authority or that the false teachers reject a class of angels known as “” (analogous to Col 1:16; Eph. 1:21). The first option has been largely rejected. The second is difficult given that “” is rendered in the singular. As Kelly notes, verse 4 suggests that Christ is the appropriate designation: “[they] deny our only master and lord, Jesus Christ.” Bauckham suggests that the author’s fondness for catchwords offers further evidence that he intended to pick up the charge he first made in verse four.

55. See Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 57.

56. To Bauckham, the charge “slandering the angels” means that the false teachers offended the angels who were in charge of guarding the created order (the position rejected by the Watchers when they lusted after women): “We can well imagine that the false teachers, reproached for conduct which offended the angels as the administrators of the moral order, justified themselves by proclaiming their liberation from bondage to these angels and speaking slightingly of them” (Jude, 2 Peter, 58). Watson suggests that the inappropriate behavior of the Sodomites toward the angels is analogous to the “reviling” attributed to the false teachers (489).

57. Pointed out by Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 56.

58. Israel’s disobedience is repeatedly described as defilement, especially sexual defilement. For example, in Leviticus, God commands Israel not to give their children (lit. “give of his seed”) to Molech (Gk. archonti, “a ruler”) (Lev 20:1, 3, LXX). If they do, they will defile (miainō) God’s “holy things” (Lev 20:1–5). Jeremiah, denouncing Israel for apostasy, asked, “How can you say, ‘I am not defiled [miainō] and I have not gone after Baal’?” since this is precisely what unfaithful Israel has done (Jer 2:23, LXX). Indeed, “she” (i.e., Israel) has been handed over to the “lusts of her soul,” for “she loved strangers and went after them” (Jer 2:24–25). Recounting the sorry behavior of Israel in the wilderness, Ezekiel notes that, despite God’s warnings, the sons of Israel defiled themselves (miainō) with the habits of Egypt (Ezek 20:7, 8, LXX). Thus, in Leviticus and the prophets, illicit religious behavior is frequently equated with illicit sexual behavior. Not surprisingly, illicit sexual behavior is also described in terms of defilement (miainō and cognates). For example, a woman who commits adultery is said to defile herself (Num 5:13, 14, 20, 27, 29); a man who commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife defiles her (Ezek 18:6, 11); and Shechem’s rape of Dinah is described as a defilement (Gen 34:5, 13, 27).

59. Noted by Bauckham: “Jude is therefore identifying the sin of the false teachers as corresponding to that of the second and third types” (Jude, 2 Peter, 56).

60. Neyrey, comparing Jude to Philo, also notes that “defilement” often refers to sexual immorality in particular and is linked to apostasy (2 Peter, Jude, 67–68).

61. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 63. On the idea that sexual indulgence leads to destruction, see also Rom 1:18–32; 1 Tim 5:6 (“She who lives luxuriously is dead while she lives”).

62. Joseph Ant. 1.52–66.

63. According to Philo, Josephus, and Pseudo-Philo, Balaam led Israel into the apostasy described in Num 25:1–5. See Philo Mos. 1.295–300; Joseph Ant. 4.126–30; Ps-Philo 18.13. As Bauckham notes, “Jewish tradition remembered Balaam primarily as a man of greed, who for the sake of reward led Israel into debauchery and idolatry” (Jude, 2 Peter, 81). See also Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, 73. The author of Revelation accused the church in Pergamum of tolerating members who follow the teaching of Balaam, “who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel that they eat food sacrificed to idols and fornicate” (Rev 2:14).

64. Num 16:1–35, 26:9–10. For later traditions about Korah, see Psalm 106:16–18; Sir 45.18–19; Ps-Philo 16.1; Joseph Ant. 4.12–13. See discussion in Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 83–84; and Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, 73.

65. Cain was cursed by God (Gen 4:11–12; according to T. Benj. 7.2–5, Cain suffered for two hundred years prior to being destroyed by the Flood); Balaam was put to death (Num 31:8); Korah was swallowed up by the earth (Num 16:30–33).

66. The use of “” (LSJ “a rock over which the sea dashes; a ledge of rock,” s.v. ) is puzzling here. Some commentators have preserved the reading “reef” or “sea-rock” and understood Jude to be arguing that the false teachers are like dangerous reefs—“close contact with them will result in [metaphorical] ship-wreck” (Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 85. See also Kelly, A Commentary, 270–71). Others understand to be equivalent to meaning “blemish” or “spot”: Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, 74–75; R. Knopf, Die Briefe Petri und Judä, Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar über das Neue Testament 12 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1912); BDF § 45; the English translations found in the NRSV and the RSV. Jude’s earliest interpreter, the author of 2 Peter, read “” as “stain” or “blemish” (2 Pet 2:13). No matter how one translates “,” however, Jude clearly intends to imply that “these” have spoiled community meals in some way.

67. With the majority of scholars, I am reading “en tais agapais humōn” as a reference to the community meals of the Christians Jude is addressing (cf. 2 Pet 2:13; Ign. Smyrn. 8.2). See Kelly, A Commentary, 269–70; Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 86–7; Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, 75; Sidebottom, ed., James, Jude, and 2 Peter, 89; Leaney, Letters of Peter and Jude, 94.

68. “Admiring faces,” appears in the LXX as a translation of a Hebrew idiom that seems to mean “show partiality,” esp. for the sake of a bribe. See Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 99–100; Kelly, A Commentary, 279.

69. On Jude as a source for the author of 2 Peter, see Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 141–43; Tord Fornberg, An Early Church in a Pluralistic Society: A Study of 2 Peter, Coniectanae biblica New Testament Series 9 (Uppsala: CWK Gleerup, 1977), chap. 3.

70. An early-second-century date for 2 Peter is suggested by the mention of the letters of Paul (considered to be scripture); the recitation of the complaint that “ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things have continued as they were”; and the reminder to the “beloved” that they ought to remember the commandment of the Lord that they received “through your apostles” (3:16, 3:4, 3:2) For discussion, see Frankemölle, 1. und 2. Petrusbrief, 80–82; Fuchs and Reymond, La Deuxième Épitre, 39–40; Senior, 1 and 2 Peter, 99–101. Some scholars suggest an earlier date, however—perhaps late first century: Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 157–58; Ceslas Spicq, Les Épitres de Saint Pierre, Sources Bibliques (Paris: Librairie Lecoffre, 1966), 194–96. Whatever the date, most would agree that 2 Peter is pseudonymous. Jerome, noticing the striking differences between 1 and 2 Peter, attempted to account for the serious differences in style and language between the two letters by suggesting that Peter used two different interpreters to assist him in the composition of the letters (Jerome Ep. 120). This suggestion has proven to be unsatisfactory, however, both to ancient and modern readers. Eusebius, for example, noted that apostolic authorship was not universally accepted by the churches (Hist. Eccl. 3.3.4; 6.35.8). Bauckham pronounces modern attempts to demonstrate a possible literary relationship between 1 and 2 Peter “unsuccessful” (Jude, 2 Peter, 43–44), a sentiment shared by Kelly (A Commentary, 235). Perhaps the most decisive evidence against Peterine authorship is the overwhelming evidence for a late-first-century or early-second-century date. If Peter was martyred circa 64 C.E., as is commonly believed, then he could not have penned this document (noted and discussed by Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 159; Fuchs and Reymond, La Deuxième Épitre, 30–31). Bauckham, noting the relationship of 2 Peter to the testamentary genre, suggests that pseudonymity was an appropriate choice for this author. The author, writing a “testament” in letter form, sought to faithfully interpret the teachings of Peter in light of his own situation, presenting these teachings as the final words of the apostle to the faithful, a strategy he shared with the authors of, for example, the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs and the Testament of Job (Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 131–32, 161).

71. The biblical anti-examples are found in 2 Peter 4–9; also see Jude 7. On the sexual overtones of “,” “,” and cognates in the Septuagint, see discussion of Jude 8 above.

72. Reminiscent of warnings in the Septuagint that Israel ought not to follow after (poreuomai) other gods. So, for example, Deut 6:14: “Do not follow other god from among the gods of the Gentiles around you”; Deut 8:19: “If you … follow after other gods and serve and worship them … you shall perish”; Jer 13:10: “Wanton [hubris] Judah and wanton Jerusalem … following after other gods, are enslaved to them and worship them.” See also Deut 11:28, 28:14, 30:17; Ezek 5:6–7; 20:18–21.

73. Envisioning adultery, according to one teaching attributed to Jesus, is as bad as actually committing the act (Matt 5:28 and parallels).

74. See discussion of the metaphors “slave to desire” and “slave to sin” in Chapter 2.

75. 1 Thess 4:3–7; Rom 1:18–32; Eph 4:17–23; 1 John 2:15–17.

76. Ign. Eph. 7.1; Ign. Smyr. 4.1. Compare Muson. 10.26–30.

77. Perhaps this interpretation can make sense of the difficult use of the term “” (“to sell, to trade”) in 2 Pet 2:3. BAGD suggests that this term be translated “they will exploit you,” a translation followed in the RSV (s.v. “”). Another possibility, suggested by Kelly and Neyrey, is that “to buy” rather than “to sell” is the sense of the term here. Thus, Neyrey translates the verse “in their greed they will buy you with specious arguments” (2 Peter, 107). Kelly remarks “their false words are of course the specious arguments or fictitious claims they will use to buy over converts” (A Commentary, 329). Alternatively, “Peter” may be implying that the false teachers will sell duped Christians to desire and licentiousness by their pseudo-teachings. They will act as pimps to those who, through their apostasy, become “prostitutes.” Later Peter remarks, “They promise freedom, they themselves being ruled by corruption. For whatever overpowers someone, by that he is enslaved” (2 Pet 2:19). The danger to those who listen to the false teachers is that they, too, will become slaves of lust.

78. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 155.

79. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 156. According to Bauckham’s reading of Jude, the false teachers Jude opposed were itinerant charismatics resembling the super-apostles who troubled Paul in Corinth. The opponents of the author of 2 Peter, by contrast, promoted a Hellenistic skepticism about the relevance of apocalyptic thought.

80. Kelly, A Commentary, 328.

81. Senior, 1 and 2 Peter, 100. According to Senior, they also boasted about their knowledge and exploited other Christians for economic gain, characteristics they shared with later “gnostic heretics.” Still, “we cannot be sure if there is any connection between the two groups.” Fuchs and Reymond also suggest that the opponents of 2 Peter were proto-Gnostic in type, though they do not repeat the charges of licentiousness and antinomianism that “Peter” made against them (La Deuxième Épitre, 27–29).

82. See, for example, various depictions of Antony: Cass. Dio 51.10–11, 15.2–4; Plut. Ant. 25.1. Plutarch suggests that Antony was undone by his love (erōs) for Cleopatra: “Such, then, was the nature of Antony, where now as a crowning evil his love for Cleopatra supervened, roused and drove to frenzy many of the passions (pathē) that were still hidden and quiescent in him, and dissipated and destroyed whatever good and saving qualities still offered resistance” (Perrin’s translation). Antony is further accused of reveling in luxury, engaging in licentious practices, and abandoning his lawful, Roman wife for a foreigner. See esp. Demetrii cum Antonio comparatio 4.

83. Aelius Aristides, in P. Aelii Aristidis Opera quae exstant omnia, ed. F. W. Lenz and C. A. Behr (Lugduni Batavorum: Brill, 1976), English translation by C. A. Behr, Aristides: Panathenaic oration and In defence of oratory, LCL (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), 188. “If they were servants of the desire of the crowds and harangued what the audience approved, it would be impossible for them to have spoken boldly, not to mention to be proud beyond other men. But I think they know in their hearts that they do not serve pleasures, but chastise desires, nor look to the multitude, but the multitude looks to them, nor are ruled by ordinary citizens, but themselves rule the multitude.”

84. “Not every king derives his scepter or his royal office from Zeus, but only the good king…. he is not to become licentious or profligate, strutting and gorging with folly, insolence, arrogance, and all manner of lawlessness … but to the best of his ability he is to devote his attention to himself and his subjects, becoming a guide and a shepherd of his people, not, as someone has said, a caterer and a banqueter at their expense” (Dio Chyrs. Or. 1.13).

85. See, for example, 1 Thess 4:4–5; Eph 2:1–3; Col 1:21–22; Titus 2:1–2; Justin 2 Apol.

86. See, for example, 1 Tim 3:1–7, 5:1–21; Titus 2:12; Col 3:18–4:1; Ign. Pol. 4–5; Gos. Thom. 22, 79; Acta Pauli et Theclae, 5–6; Justin 1 Apol. 15, 29; Theophilus Ad Auto. 3.15; Thom. Cont. 139.1–12, 140.1.

87. Chadwick’s translation, 66. Still, Clement argues, Christians may marry and, if they do, should not abstain from married sexual intercourse as long as the intercourse is self-controlled and for the sake of begetting children. To claim otherwise is contrary to Scripture and a blasphemy against the law and the Lord (Clement Strom. 3.9–12). For discussion, see Brown, The Body and Society, 132–39.

88. Martin, Corinthian Body, 212–18. For further discussion, see Chapter 2.

89. 2 Pet 3:7: “But by the same word [of God that created the heavens and the earth] the present heavens and earth have been reserved for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly people Jude 14–15: “Behold, the Lord came with his holy myriads, to execute judgment on all, and to convict the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness which they have committed in such an ungodly way” (citing Enoch).

90. Wisse, “The Epistle of Jude,” 142.

91. J. Reiling makes a similar observation in his examination of the false prophet who is denounced in Mandate 11 of The Shepherd: “The distinction between the false prophets and false teachers … is of a typological nature and not necessarily an exact description of historical facts,” an argument he supports by analogy with Iren. Adv. Haer. 1.13 and 4.33. J. Reiling, Hermas and Christian Prophecy: A Study of the Eleventh Mandate, Supplements to Novum Testamentum 37 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973), 64.

92. See, for example, Gal 5:13; 1 Clem 30.1; Herm. Vis. 1.1.8–9, 3.7.2; Sim. 9.13.7–9.

93. See, for example, Iren. Adv. Haer. 1.13.1, 1.25.3–6, 1.26.3; Epiph. Pan. 25.1–4. Quoting the same Proverb cited by 2 Peter while denouncing a sect of heretics first mentioned by Revelation (and about which he had not direct knowledge), Epiphanius notes, “He [Nicolaus] had an attractive wife, and had refrained from intercourse as though in imitation of those whom he saw devoted to God. He endured this for a while but in the end could not bear to control his incontinence. Instead, since he wished to return to it like a dog to its vomit, he looked for poor excuses, and invented them in defense of his own state of intemperance … because he was ashamed of his defeat and suspected that he had been found out, he ventured to say, ‘Unless one copulates every day, he cannot have eternal life’” (Williams’s translation, 77). Compare Proverbs 26:11; 2 Pet 2:22 (on dogs returning to their vomit); Rev 2:6 (for the first mention of the “Nicolaitans”); Clem. Strom. 3.26.6; Iren. Adv. Haer. 1.26.3; Hippolytus Haer. 7.36.3; Eusebius Hist. Eccl. 3.29.2–4.

94. Bauer cites Hermas “who has no heresies in view” as evidence that Rome was initially “spared controversy with the heretics” (Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy, 114).

95. Though The Shepherd does not contain an explicit attack against any specific “false” Christians, I have chosen to include it here to illustrate that the typical false Christian described in this text directly conforms to representations of the “opponents” discussed above and of the “heretics” discussed in more detail below. The close parallels between the ideal type described in The Shepherd and the purportedly “real” false prophets, teachers, and heretics described elsewhere further call into question the portrait of pseudo-Christians offered by Jude, 2 Peter, Justin, and Irenaeus, among others.

96. There is little agreement as to the precise date of The Shepherd of Hermas. Some have argued that The Shepherd was written as early as 80 C.E.: J. Christian Wilson, Toward a Reassessment of the Shepherd of Hermas: Its Date and Its Pneumatology (Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen Biblical Press, 1993), 9–10, 24–61. Discounting the evidence of the Muratorian Fragment, Wilson concludes that internal evidence suggests a late-first-century date. Osiek objects to Wilson’s “unhistorical assumptions,” however (The Shepherd of Hermas, 19 n. 143). Tugwell also prefers an early date, perhaps as early as 60–70 C.E.: Tugwell, The Apostolic Fathers, Outstanding Christian Thinkers Series (Harrisburg, Penn.: Morehouse Publishing, 1989), 47. Martin Dibelius argues, based in part on a reference to Clement in Herm. Vis. 2.4.3, that the early stage of the work was completed during the first quarter of the second century: Dibelius, Der Hirt des Hermas, 453. Still, no one view has held sway. For a helpful overview of the issues involved, see Osiek, The Shepherd of Hermas, 18–20; and Bart D. Ehrman, introduction to The Shepherd of Hermas, trans. Ehrman, in Apostolic Fathers, LCL (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), 2:162–73.

97. In her study of The Shepherd, Carolyn Osiek has argued that this document is properly read as conforming to the genre “apocalypse.” She concurs with the judgment of Adela Yarbro Collins that “since Herm is characterized both by apocalyptic eschatology and by revelation mediated by otherworldly beings, there is no good reason to exclude it from the genre ‘apocalypse’” ; Collins, “The Early Christian Apocalypses,” Semeia 14 (1979): 75; and Osiek, “The Genre and Function of the Shepherd of Hermas,” Semeia 36, ed. Adela Yarbro Collins (1986): 115. Also see David Hellholm, Das Visionenbuch des Hermas als Apokalypse, Coniectanea Biblica, New Testament Series 13, no. 1 (Uppsala: CWK Gleerup, 1980). Others have been more reluctant to accept this designation, however; see P. Vielhauer, “Apokalyptik des Urchristentums 1. Einleitung,” in Neutestamentliche Apokryphen II; Apostolisches, Apokalypsen und Verwantes, ed. E. Hennecke and W. Schneemelcher (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1964), 408–54. By calling The Shcpherd an “apocalypse,” I seek to highlight the importance of eschatology and revelation to this document, not to solve the problem of its genre.

98. Hermas may well be a historical figure, but the text is more allegorical than autobiographical. Doubts about the historical reliability of biographical information offered by the author were raised by Dibelius in his important early commentary (Hirt des Hermas, 419–20). To Dibelius, Hermas’s family and their sins represent the church and its sins. Particularly troubling to those who want to argue for historical reliability is the opening scene of the text—the bath of Rhoda in the Tiber. See Dibelius, Hirt des Hermas, 429–30. Extensive discussion of Dibelius’s argument and of the issue of historicity may be found in Martin Leutzsch, Die Wahrnehmung sozialer Wirklichkeit im “Hirten des Hermas,” (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989), 20–49.

99. The woman-church appears as the principal revealer in the first 4 Visions. The Shepherd is introduced in Vision 5 and remains Hermas’s guide throughout the rest of the document. The disappearance of the woman-church from the initial visions, coupled with the existence of ancient text editions of The Shepherd that include only Visions 1–4 or Vision 5 and following, suggest that the early visions were first intended to serve as a separate unit. Nevertheless, the relative thematic unity and self-referential qualities of The Shepherd suggest a single author. See the helpful discussion of this issue in Edith McEwan Humphrey, The Ladies and the Cities: Transformation and Apocalyptic Identity in Joseph and Aseneth, 4 Ezra, the Apocalypse, and The Shepherd of Hermas, Journal for the Study of Pseudepigrapha Supplement Series 17 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 126–29.

100. The Bodmer Papyrus manuscript (P. Bod. 38), for example, probably contained only Visions 1–4. Antonio Carlini, “La tradizione testuale del Pastor di Ermo I nuovi papiri,” in Le Stade del Testo, ed. Gugielmo Cavallo (Lecce: Adriatica Editrice, 1987), 29. Noted by Osiek, The Shepherd of Hermas, 3. See also Humphrey, The Ladies and the Cities, 128–29; and Ehrman, introduction, 169–72.

101. Most famously Stanislas Giet, Hermas et les pasteurs: Les Trois auteurs du Pasteur d’Hermas (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963). Geit’s thesis is now largely rejected. See Robert Joly, “Hermas et le Pasteur,” Vigiliae Christianae 21 (1967): 201–18; and Ehrman, introduction, 165–66.

102. Osiek, The Shepherd of Hermas, 10.

103. As Osiek rightly points out, the document is self-referential, with Herm. Sim.10.1 presupposing Herm. Vis. 5 and Herm. Sim. 10.3 presupposing Herm. Sim. 9.10–3. Moreover, the book is unified in theme and language. Osiek suggests that the loose structure of the book, a structure that has contributed to theories of multiple authorship or multiple redactions, is best explained by the use of the text as a basis for oral proclamation (Osiek, The Shepherd of Hermas, 12–16). Whether or not one is satisfied with this explanation, Osiek succeeds in demonstrating the unity of theme that links the book together as it now stands.

104. Aune suggests that repentance is the organizing theme of the entire text: David E. Aune, The New Testament in its Literary Environment, Library of Early Christianity (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1987), 247. Humphrey objects, arguing that it is a mistake to seek “either a dogmatic or thematic ‘core’ passage which overshadows the rest of the work” (The Ladies and the Cities, 125). Osiek accepts the view that metavnoia is the major theme but notes: “It is a mistake to look for perfect overall consistency in the text…. Each story or unit must be taken primarily on its own merits, with a glance to possible relationships with other passages, but without expecting overall consonance of details” (Osiek, The Shepherd of Hermas, 28–38).

105. All in all, the terms “” “” or “paenitentia” occur 156 times. See Ingrid Goldhahn-Müller, Die Grenze der Gemeinde: Studien zum Problem der Zweiten Busse im Neuen Testament unter Berucksichtigung der Entwicklung im 2. Jh. bis Tertullian, Gottinger theologische Arbeiten 39 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989), 245. Cited in Osiek, The Shepherd of Hermas, 28 n. 218.

106. For more on the importance of dipsuchia to The Shepherd, see Reiling, Hermas and Christian Prophecy, 32–33. Reiling suggests, rather convincingly in my opinion, that dipsuchia is best understood as “the opposite of : a divided allegiance; they have the Lord on their lips, not in their heart.” It is also the opposite of pistis (faith).

107. Young has argued that “becoming a real man” is the organizing theme of the Shepherd. Hermas, Young notes, becomes ever more “manly” as the text progresses. At the beginning of the text, he is convicted of failing to control his household/church. By the end, he takes his place as the “man,” supported by the virgins who become his assistants. According to Young’s interpretation, the fitness of a church and its members is measured on a trajectory of “maleness” where to be male is to be in control of oneself (exhibited through sexual purity) and one’s household (which in the case of Hermas includes the church): Steve Young, “‘Being a Man’: The Pursuit of Manliness in The Shepherd of Hermas,” JECS 2, no. 3 (1994): 237–55. Young’s provocative exegesis fits well with my own reading. Still, I would add that the enkrateia promoted—and the “manliness” that this enkrateia implies—is constituted by the control of epithymia. If one is plagued by wicked desire, one has not truly achieved self-control nor has one found true faith. The Shepherd repeatedly drives home this point when describing the failures of weak Christians or the wickedness of false Christians and apostates. The author’s concern for metanoia and the critique of dipsuchia are not superseded. Rather, the urgent need for repentance is created, in part, by problems associated with desire. Moreover, double-mindedness leaves Christians open to the temptations of wicked desire and the machinations of the devil—especially to the seductions of false prophets or false spirits that seek to lead astray the slaves of God.

108. See also Herm. Vis. 1 (a Christian ought not to sin in his heart); Herm. Vis. 3 (Christian “stones” are rejected for disobedience, hypocrisy, wickedness, wavering faith, divisiveness, loving the riches of the world); Herm. Mand. 4 (Christians must be pure, avoiding porneia and thoughts of porneia); Herm. Mand. 6 (an angel of wickedness seeks to lead Christians to sin); Herm. Mand. 12 (evil desire must be cast off); Herm. Sim. 5.7 (keep your flesh and your mind pure); Herm. Sim. 6.2 (the angel of luxury and pleasure seeks to beguile the faithfull with wicked desires); Herm. Sim. 7.5.4 (apostate Christians surrender to desire and the devil).

109. Compare Herm. Mand 6.2 (the angel of evil causes people to desire extravagant food and drink, reveling, delicacies, and women); Herm. Sim. 6.2 (angels of luxury and pleasure beguile the faithful with wicked desires). Note also that the personified vices in Herm. Sim. 9 are called “evil spirits.”

110. See also Herm. Mand 4; 6; Herm. Sim 6.2, 7.5, 9.19.

111. Reiling suggests that the author of Hermas utilized technical language of (“pagan”) magical divination to describe the “emptiness” of the divinatory acts engaged in by the “” thereby suggesting that false prophecy was meant to be seen as a “pagan intrusion” into the Christian community (Hermas and Christian Prophecy, 45–47).

112. “Luxury” and “indulgence” are also denounced in Herm. Sim. 6.4.4; Herm. Mand. 6.2.5; 12.2.1, often appearing as .

113. This charge is especially important to The Shepherd; See Reiling, Hermas and Christian Prophecy, 52; Osiek, The Shepherd of Hermas, 145.

114. Crescens, Justin suggests, denounced the Christians just to satisfy the mob (hoi polloi).

115. Hence the “double-minded” make the mistake of seeking out false prophets who fulfill their desires. Herm. Mand. 11.1 (see Reiling, Hermas and Christian Prophecy, 32–34).

116. For a summary of the chief differences between the two visions, see Osiek, The Shepherd of Hermas, 220.

117. In Herm. Vis 3.8.3–8, there are seven women/personified virtues who hold up the tower.

118. The significance of the clothing of the virgins or vices is clear. The virgins wear linen and are dressed (i.e., seemingly, becomingly, in a fitting way): Herm. Sim. 9.2.4. The vices wear black, a sign of impurity and sin throughout this Similtude, and are wild : Herm. Sim. 9.6.4, 8.1, 4–5, 19.1. Compare Herm. Vis. 4.2.1, where the world is described as the black markings on a terrible beast. The red markings show that this world must be destroyed in blood and fire. For further discussion of the significance of the color black in Christian discourse, see Byron, Symbolic Blackness, esp. 17–28, 77–103.

119. Reminiscent of the view that God handed over (paradidōmi) non-Christians to lust in Rom. 1:18–32.

120. This kind of moralizing call to repentance seems to be quite different from the suggestion of Jude and 2 Peter that one is either faithful and thus self-controlled or faithless and therefore licentious. Indeed, the seemingly loose standards of The Shepherd earned the work the designation “lover of adulterers” and “shepherd of adulterers” from Tertullian (Pud. 10). Many Christian authors held The Shepherd in high regard, however, esp. Origen; see Origen, De principiis, in Traité des principes. Origène; introduction, texte critique de la version de Rufin, traduction, commentaire et fragments, Latin translation of Peri archon, by Rufinus, edited with French translation by Henri Crouzel and Manlio Simonetti, 5 vols., Sources chretiennes 252–253, 268–269, 312 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1978–1984), 4.2.4; Iren. Adv. Haer. 4.20.2; Clement Strom. 1.181; 2.3; 2.55–59. Robin Lane Fox suggests that it was precisely this teaching on “one further chance of repentence” that ensured the future popularity of the work: Fox, Pagans and Christians (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 389. Still, the (repentance) that The Shepherd calls for is offered only once and in light of the eschatological situation (see, for example, Herm. Vis. 1.3.2, 3. 7.6, 8.9; Herm. Mand. 4.7–8. Osiek remarks: “It is not a question of ritual or repeated action, not a discipline or an expectation, but personal and corporate transformation through the power of the good spirit” (The Shepherd of Hermas, 30). Furthermore, apocalyptic warnings about the coming exclusion of all sinners—be they guilty of , a wicked thought, or worse—from the eternal life promised to the saints are found throughout. Such warnings suggest that in the end the standard for inclusion in the kingdom of God will actually be quite high. Hermas’s own transformation from one who commits adultery in his heart to one who, assisted by the virtues, experiences no wicked desire at all is paradigmatic of the kind of that is required.

121. Pagels, The Origin of Satan, 47–60. She identifies the Essenes as the sectarian Jews who began this process. Foreign occupation of Palestine was, to the Jews of Qumran, “evidence that the forces of evil had taken over the world and … infiltrated and taken over God’s own people, turning them into allies of the Evil One” (57).

122. Pagels, The Origin of Satan, 112–181, esp. 150: “Many Christians believed that even more dangerous were Satan’s forays among the most intimate enemies of all—other Christians, or, as most said of those with whom they disagreed, among heretics.”

123. Bernard McGinn, Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil (San Fancisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), 4.

124. This special punishment is referred to in Jude 6; 2 Pet 2:4; Rev 20:10–15; and alluded to in Herm. Vis.4.3.6, 5.7; Herm. Mand. 8.3–4; Herm. Sim. 6.7, 8.11.3–4, 9.33.1, 10.4. The persuasive possibilities of these sorts of arguments are readily apparent; see discussion in O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse, esp. 4–61.

125. Justin 1 Apol. 36; Iren. Adv. Haer. 1.21.3; Epiph. Pan. 26.4–5.

126. Iren. Adv. Haer. 6.3, 1.13.2–6.

127. Iren. Adv. Haer. 1.25.3.

128. Iren. Adv. Haer. 1.24.2, 1.28.1; Clement Strom. 3.3.12, 3.9.63, 3.12.80–81. But see 1 Tim 4:3 for an earlier example, with discussion in Margaret MacDonald, The Pauline Churches, 179–83 and Dennis MacDonald, The Legend and The Apostle.

129. Justin 1 Apol. 15; Iren. Adv. Haer. 3.12.13, 4.16.5, 5.8.2; Clement Strom. 3.1.4, 3.5.41, 3.7.59.

5. ILLICIT SEX, WICKED DESIRE, AND THE DEMONIZED HERETIC

1. Justin’s 1 Apology is commonly thought to have been written in 156 C.E. Irenaeus wrote the first five books of Adversus haereses sometime between 175 and 189 C.E. See Grant, Greek Apologists, 52–53 and Grant, Irenaeus of Lyons, Early Church Fathers (London: Routledge, 1997), 6–7.

2. In his first “apology,” Justin mentions a treatise that he composed against all heresies that he promises to make available to the emperor, should he be interested (1 Apol. 26; see also Justin Dial. 35.2–7, 80.1–5). The reference to this treatise against heresies is usually understood to refer to a heresiological work—the first of its kind—written by Justin but now lost. See Jean-Daniel Dubois, “Polémiques, pouvoir et exégèse l’exemple des gnostiques anciens en monde Grec,” in Inventer L’Hérésie? Discours polémiques et pouvoirs avand l’inquisition, ed. Monique Zerner, Collection du Centre d’Etudes Médiévales de Nice 2 (Nice: Centre d’Études Médiévales, 1998), 41; le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie, 1:40–91.

3. English translation my own. Irenaeus goes on to note that some, while pretending to live chastely with these women as sisters, are exposed when the “sister” turns out to be pregnant by her “brother.”

4. English translation my own.

5. Unger’s translation.

6. Compare Rev 2:6, 14–15.

7. English translation my own.

8. I borrow the terms “heresiological representation” from le Boulluec (La notion d’hérésie, 1:19). My arguments here would not be possible without the invaluable contributions to the study of heresiology and Christian identity formation by Alain le Boulluec, Denise Kimber Buell, Virginia Burrus, Elizabeth Clark, Bart Ehrman, Karen King, and Michael Allen Williams. I rely heavily on their important work throughout this chapter.

9. Earlier generations of scholars tended to read Justin’s and Irenaeus’ polemics as historical reports in a manner similar to some interpreters of Jude and 2 Peter, often joining their ecclesiastical forbears in an energetic denunciation of those who would dare to promote sexual immorality in the name of Christ. This argument appears even after the important intervention of Walter Bauer in 1934, an intervention that challenged scholars to avoid simple repetition of the antiheretical views of the church fathers (Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy; on the reception of Bauer’s work, see appendix 2 to the English edition, “The Reception of the Book,” written by George Strecker, revised and expanded by Robert A. Kraft, 286–316; also see Michel Desjardins, “Bauer and Beyond: On Recent Scholarly Discussions of in the Early Christian Era,” Second Century 8, no. 2 [1991]: 65–82”). Though few contemporary scholars uncritically accept the evidence offered by Justin, Irenaeus, and the heresiologists that followed their lead, the view that there were at least some Christians who experimented with “free love” or something like it persists (see Brown, Body and Society, 61, for the “free love” suggestion; Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, 19–20; Benko, Pagan Rome, 63–67), as do attempts to reconstruct the beliefs and practices of the Simonian “Gnostics”; see, for example, Roukema, Gnosis and Faith, 22; see also Beyschlag, Simon Magus, 193–201; but compare Gerd Lüdemann, Untersuchungen zur simonianischen Gnosis (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1975), 84–85; Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis: The Nature and History of an Ancient Religion, trans. Robert McL. Wilson (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1983), 296. Karen King has written a comprehensive and, to my mind, devastating critique of scholarship that takes heresiology at its word, examining the content of ancient Christian polemical construction of heresy and observing the repetition of these ancient categories and their politics in the works of modern scholars (What is Gnosticism?).

10. Clark, Reading Renunciation, 39–42. See also Guila Sfameni Gasparro, “Asceticism and Anthropology: Enkrateia and ‘Double Creation’ in Early Christianity,” in Asceticism, ed. Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 130.

11. Heresiology seeks to impose a certain image of the adversary so that, when one speaks of another, one also speaks of himself (le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie, 1:11–19).

12. As Cameron has observed regarding Byzantine heresiology: “[Heresiology] names the many heresies it wishes to condemn; in so doing it differentiates them from a stated norm, and thereby defines the nature of that norm; it classifies, that is, it imposes an ordering on things according to the principles of the writer; it lays down a virtual hierarchy of heresies according to their own origins; and finally it prescribes their nature, and thereby defines and lays down the structure of knowledge”: Averil Cameron, “How to Read Heresiology,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33, no. 3 (2003): 477, emphasis in the original. Cameron is here describing the heresiological contribution of Epiphanius of Salamis. For further discussion, see Aline Pourkier, L’Hérésiologie, 29–52; J. Rebecca Lyman, “Ascetics and Bishops: Epiphanius on Orthodoxy,” in Orthodoxy, Christianity, History, ed. Susanna Elm, Éric Rebillard, and Antonella Romano, Collection de l’École Française de Rome 270 (Paris: de Boccard, 2000), 149–61; Frances M. Young, “Did Epiphanius Know What He Meant by Heresy?,” Studia Patristica 17 (1982): 199–205; Gerard Vallée, A Study in Anti-Gnostic Polemic: Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Epiphanius (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1981).

13. On the illegitimate-succession argument, see esp. le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie, 114–57; Denise Kimber Buell, Making Christians: Clement of Alexandria and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999); King, What is Gnosticism?, 31–39; Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 189, 192–93. On this argument in the writings of later heresiologists, see Virginia Burrus, The Making of a Heretic: Gender, Authority, and the Priscilliantist Controversty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Averil Cameron, “Jews and Heretics—a Category Error?” in The Ways That Never Parted, ed. Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 2003), 350–51; Susanna Elm, “The Polemical Use of Genealogies: Jerome’s Classification of Pelagius and Evagrius Ponticus,” Studia Patristica 33 (1997): 311–18.

14. According to Jude, current pseudo-prophets resembled the Hebrew fornicators in the wilderness, the angels who lusted after women, and the men of Sodom who sought intercourse with angels; according to 2 Peter, his targets were like the disobedient angels, the sex-crazed generation destroyed by the flood, and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.

15. In their writings, the Jews were accused of being congenitally sinful and hard of heart and the deeds of their infamous ancestors were taken as a proof of the argument. As Justin put it, “[you Jews] eagerly committed fornication with the daughters of foreigners, and committed idolatry, and did so again afterwards, when the land had been entrusted to you”; Irenaeus repeated the charge: “they turned to make a calf and turned back to Egypt in their minds, desiring to be slaves rather than free men,” forcing God to give them a law “conformed to their desire” that could enslave them and, therefore, control their illicit, idolatrous impulses” (Justin Dial. 132.1; Iren. Adv. Haer. 4.14.3–15.2, quote from 15.1). On the use of the golden calf episode as a supposed proof of Jewish obstinacy, see Pier Cesare Bori, The Golden Calf and the Origins of the Anti-Jewish Controversy, trans. David Ward, South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism 16 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990), esp. 29–33.

16. For further discussion of early Christian claims regarding their superior “race” or “ethnos,” see esp. Denise Kimber Buell, “Race and Universalism in Early Christianity,” JECS 10, no. 4 (2002): 429–68; Buell, “Rethinking the Relevance of Race,” 449–76; Caroline Johnson Hodge, “‘If Sons, Then Heirs.’”

17. A note on the word [genos]”: The term implies descent from a common ancestor; it can be translated as “nation,” “race,” “kind,” “people,” “family,” “kin,” and even “stock” or “breed,” depending on the context. Following Buell, I argue that Justin uses the term to construct the Christians as a distinct ethnic group, a “people” and a “family” separate from others, characterized by their religious and moral practices as well as their kinship to one another. I will often leave the term untranslated to indicate that it is a technical term with a culture-specific meaning. Buell has argued that the most appropriate translation of the term may well be “race” since, as she rightly points out, the rejection of the term “race” among contemporary scholars presupposes an early Christian rejection of race or ethnicity in favor of universalism over particularity, a rejection that never occurred. Indeed, as Buell and Hodge have shown, ethnoracial thinking was central to the construction of Christian identity, whether by Paul, who viewed the gentiles as joining the lineage of Abraham by means of adoption, or Clement of Alexandria, who sought to classify the Christians as “the one genos of the saved people [laos],” separate from others (Strom. 6.42.2; cited by Buell, “Rethinking Race,” 461; on Paul’s use of kinship language and metaphors, see Hodge, “‘If Sons, Then Heirs,’” 56–138).

18. In Justin’s and Irenaeus’ reading, biblical tales of apostasy predict a just, foreordained separation of those from the “seed of Abraham,” the Jews, from “true Israel,” that is, the church. The Christians, they assert, have now become the true race (genos) of God (Justin Dial. 120.1, 135.3–6; Iren. Adv. Haer. 4.23.1, 26.1).

19. English translation my own.

20. Justin and Irenaeus, then, participated in a long standing tradition in Greco-Roman antiquity of identifying one’s ultimate progenitor as divine. See Jonathan M. Hall, Ethnic Identity.

21. Numerous scholars have noted a peculiar redefinition of the term among Christian authors. Already in his letter to the Galatians, Paul asserts that the “heresies” (haireseis) ought to be counted among the “works of the flesh” (Gal 5:20), yet the view that “heresies” are a negative phenomenon was not present in the writings of Paul’s Greek contemporaries. See discussion in Simon, “From Greek Hairesis”; H. von Staden, “Hairesis and Heresy: The Case of the haireseis iatrikai,” in Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, vol. 3, Self-Definition in the Greco-Roman World, ed. B. Meyer and E. P. Sanders (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), 76–81; and the helpful overview by Michel Desjardins, “Bauer and Beyond,” 65–82. Le Boulluec attributes the invention of the entirely negative, Christian meaning of the term to Justin (La notion d’hérésie, 40–91).

22. Arr. Epct. diss. 2.19.20. See also Diog. Laert., a summary of earlier summaries of the philosophical schools known as (Peri Haireseōn [On schools of thought]).

23. Stoics (Justin 2 Apol. 8, 13; Justin Dial. 2.1–3); Peripatetics (Dial. 2.1); Cynics (2 Apol. 3) Socrates (1 Apol. 5, 18; 2 Apol. 10; Dial. 1.1); Plato (1 Apol. 18, 59–60; 2 Apol. 13; Dial. 4.1); Pythagoras (2 Apol. 18; Dial. 4.1). On the “heresies” of the Jews, Justin offers the following comment: “do not suppose that [these so-called Christians] are Christians, any more than if one examined the matter rightly he would acknowledge as Jews those who are Sadducees, or similar sects of Genistae, and Meristae, and Galileans, and Hellenians, and Pharisees, and Baptists” (Dial. 88.4).

24. Barnard’s translation. On the “seed of the Logos” in Justin, especially as this concept is applied to Socrates, see Michel Fédou, “La Figure de Socrate selon Justin,” in Les Apologistes chrétiens et la culture greque, ed. Bernard Pouderon and Joseph Doré, Théologie Historique 105 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1996), 51–66, esp. 60–62. Fédou notes that Justin’s theory of the Logos and his inclusion of Socrates among those who received a portion of the Logos admitted both Jews and people from “the nations” (i.e., the gentiles) into the company of those who could be “Christians before Christ.” Nevertheless, I would add, only Christians had received the fullness of the Logos.

25. Barnard’s translation.

26. Compare Justin Dial. 5.1–7.3: “For things are not seen nor comprehended of all, save of him whom God, and his Christ, shall have given understanding” (7.3; Williams’s translation).

27. I am adopting the now-widespread view that the Dialogue with Trypo was primarily directed at Christians. See esp. Michael Mach, “Justin Martyr’s Dialogus cum Tryphone Iudaeo and the Development of Christian Anti-Judiasm,” in Contra Iudaeos: Ancient and Medieval Polemics Between Christians and Jews, ed. Ora Limor and Guy G. Stroumsa (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1996), 27–47; Rajak, “Talking at Trypho”; Judith Lieu, Image and Reality: The Jews in the World of the Christians in the Second Century (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1996), 103–9 (though Lieu leaves open the possibility that Jews or at least proselytes were included in Justin’s intended audience). The more general comments by Guy Stroumsa and Paula Fredriksen regarding Christian anti-Jewish rhetoric are also very helpful. See Guy G. Stroumsa, “From Anti-Judaism to Antisemitism in early Christianity?” in Contra Iudaeos: Ancient and Medieval Polemics Between Christians and Jews, ed. Ora Limor and Guy G. Stroumsa (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1996), 1–26 and Paula Fredriksen, “What Parting of the Ways?” in The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 2003), 35–64.

28. As he put it the Apology, the ancestors of Israel were moved by God’s “prophetic spirit” to reveal that there would be a “new covenant” ( a new “inheritance”) brought by Christ and given to Christians to the exclusion of most Jews (1 Apol. 30–45).

29. English translation my own.

30. Thus, the law, the observance of Sabbath, and the sacrifices were given by God as a vain attempt to keep the Judeans from worshipping idols and forgetting God (Justin Dial. 19.6, 92.4). In the wilderness, Israel lusted after flesh to eat (Dial. 131.6), made a calf, and eagerly committed fornication with the daughters of foreigners (Dial.132.1, 19.5). As a nation, Israel sacrificed children to demons (Dial. 19.6, 133.2) and practiced polygamy, a practice that continues to this day (Dial. 134.1).

31. As Mach has recently observed in his analysis of the Dialogue, “the system according to which the whole of the Jewish Bible becomes a Christian book exacts a high price: the polemics against the Jews” (Mach, “Justin Martyr’s Dialogus,” 46). Mach offers a brilliant analysis of Justin’s rhetorical procedures and epistemological assumptions, suggesting that Justin’s method guarded the church from Marcion’s non-Jewish “Christianity” by reinterpreting the law as “God’s answer to sinful Israel.” On the second-century Christian effort to produce a Jewish Bible that is actually a “book of Christ,” see further Hans von Campenhausen, The Formation of the Christian Bible, trans. J. A. Baker (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972), 65–102 (with caution regarding Campenhausen’s approach to “the Gnostics”).

32. Justin’s strategy may be compared with the claim in 1 Peter 2:9 that the Christians are a “chosen genos” distinct from all others and the suggestion in the Martyrdom of Polycarp that the Christians are a “godly and pious genos” (Martyrdom of Polycarp, 3), as well as several other examples.

33. This could be contrasted with the philosophers, some of whom received a “seed of the Logos” that enabled them to speak truth even before the advent of Christ (1 Apol. 46).

34. Williams’s translation.

35. Justin’s discussion of the Christians as God’s “heirs” and “sons” seems also to be quite literal. As Roman inheritance law suggests, privileges and wealth were distributed and controlled on the basis of relations to a common agnate (D 5.2.1, Ulpian: “For one’s cognates beyond the degree of brother would do better not to trouble themselves with useless expense since they are not in a position to succeed”). Elite Roman women could inherit property from their fathers, but patrilineal control of the family property was viewed as the norm (D 5.2.5, Marcellus: “For those who are not descended in the male line also have the power to bring an action, since they do so in respect of a mother’s will and are constantly accustomed to win”). On the importance of Roman inheritance law to “fraternal pietas” (the Roman ideal of brotherhood), see Cynthia J. Bannon, The Brothers of Romulus: Fraternal Pietas in Roman Law, Literature, and Society (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997). She explains: “While the sui heredes [heirs to the household] included all family members under the father’s potestas at the time of his death, brothers were central in Roman approaches to sustaining the family over the generations. Sisters and brothers alike were sui heredes, yet sisters were not so closely associated with consortium [joint family ownership of property] because of the practice of dowry and because of the traditional priority of male relatives in intestate succession” (28). I would suggest that Justin uses terms such as [diathēkē]” (covenant or inheritance) to mean that the members of the Christian household have become the actual heirs to divine privilege.

36. Williams’s translation.

37. Christ “came according to the power given to him by the almighty father calling [us] into love and blessing [eulogian] and repentance and one shared household [synoikian]” (Dial. 139.4). Concordia /homonoia was frequently cited as one of the benefits of empire. Personified concordia was worshiped as a goddess and featured on imperial coins from the reign of Augustus onward (Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, “Image and Authority in the Coinage of Augustus,” JRS 76 [1986]: 66–87, esp. 77). Greek cities advertised their endorsement of good reciprocal relations between themselves, other cities and the empire at large (Swain, Hellenism and Empire, 219–20; Swain discusses this emphasis on concord in light of Dio’s speech “On Concord with the Nicaeans). The concordia enjoyed between rulers and their subjects was an important theme in late-antique imperial representation (see Roger Rees, Layers of Loyalty in Latin Panegyric, AD 289–307 [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002], 56–67).

38. The devastation of Jerusalem was viewed by Justin as a just, divinely ordained punishment (Dial. 16.2–18.3, 19).

39. For a more detailed exploration of Justin’s arguments here, see Lieu, Image and Reality, 136–40.

40. Justin here employs his own form of “ethnic reasoning” (see Buell, “Rethinking the Relevance of Race,”464; and Buell, “Race and Universalism”; but compare Lieu, Image and Reality, 136). Buell’s discussion of “ethnic reasoning” is inspired by the work of Hall, Ethnic Identity, esp. his analysis of “oppositional” and “aggregative” modes of ethnic reasoning. Oppositional reasoning develops binary classifications, primarily for the sake of polemic; aggregative reasoning formulates ethnicity through connections (17–33); see also Jonathan M. Hall, Hellenicity, 9–19. Read in this light, Justin clearly engages in both types of argument: the Christians are a genos in opposition to other (corrupt) groups; they are also a genos that has been incorporated into the line of Abraham, Judah, and Jacob.

41. Before the advent of Christ, God gave the Jews the law in an attempt to keep them from their (purportedly) innate tendency to engage in these “crimes.” After Christ came, the Jews continued in their (ancestral) bad behavior, persecuting not only Christ but the Christians, while continuing to practice polygamy and to remain otherwise enslaved to desire.

42. Grant’s translation.

43. Unger’s translation.

44. Ehrman notes that Acts already portrays the truth as what was given by the apostles to the church on the basis of their eyewitness testimony though in Acts: “Most converts are said to remain true to the apostolic message. And theological issues are readily resolved by an appeal to apostolic authority” (Lost Christianities, 167).

45. Irenaeus knew Justin’s writings, including his lost work against the heresies, and drew at least some of his arguments from him; he citesJustin’s work against Marcion specifically (Iren. Adv. Haer. 4.6.2). On the relationship between Justin and Irenaeus, see le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie, 113–14, 157.

46. See Wayne A. Meeks, “Simon Magus in Recent Research,” Religious Studies Review 3, no. 3 (1977): 137–42; he concludes: “The quest for the historical Simon [and Helena!] is even less promising than the quest for the historical Jesus” (141). Also see Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism,” 165–66. Of course, it is at least possible that there were “Simonians,” but neither Justin nor Irenaeus seems to have had access to reliable evidence about them. One of Justin’s central claims—that the Romans had allowed a statue to be dedicated to Simon—has turned out to be false (Ehrman, Lost Christianities, 165–66; see also Grant, Greek Apologists, 46–48). Epiphanius adds still more detail—Simon was “naturally lecherous” and engaged in an “unnatural relationship” with Helena in secret. He called “the whore who was his partner” the Holy Spirit (Epiph. Pan. 21.2.3). Simon’s followers collected seminal emission and menstrual blood, stating that they are the mysteries of life and perfect knowledge (Pan. 21.4.1–2.). Simon corrupted marriages to satisfy his own lusts (Pan. 21.5.8). Yet, Epiphanius claimed, their sect is nearly extinct, for Christ ended it (Pan. 21.7.3, 22.2.4).

47. Williams comments, “The Nicolaitans constitute a textbook example of the birth and evolution of a libertine legend” (Rethinking “Gnosticism,” 170).

48. Le Boulluec notes that Irenaeus synthesized a system of scattered traditional polemic, utilizing the work of Justin and Theophilus of Antioch as well as others (La notion d’hérésie, 113–14).

49. On Irenaeus’ retelling, see McGuire, “Women, Gender, and Gnosis”; Anne McGuire, “Valentinus and the Gnostic Haeresis: Irenaeus, Haer 1.11.1 and the Evidence of Nag Hammadi,” Studia Patristica 18, no. 1 (1985): 247–52.

50. Irenaeus introduces Marcus as a special example of this phenomenon (1.15.4–20.2).

51. Marcus, a Valentinian, invented a theory of divine origins based in an erroneous, preposterous understanding of the secret meaning of letters (Iren. Adv. Haer. 1.1–15.5); Simon thought that Helena was the “Mother of All” and that he himself was an Aeon (Adv. Haer. 1.23.2); Saturninus and Basilides “taught still different doctrines” involving angels, archangels, virtues, and powers (Adv. Haer. 1.24.1); Carpocrates’ myth involved angels too, and he proposed that his followers were divine like Jesus (Adv. Haer. 1.25.2); and so on.

52. For example, Marcus’ true father is Satan; his power is achieved through one of the fallen angels (Iren. Adv. Haer. 1.15.6); Marcus and those like him are inspired by unclean spirits (Adv. Haer. 1.16.3); the Carpocratians have been sent by Satan so that the gentiles will slander the church (Adv. Haer. 1.25.3); all the heretics present “the bitter and malignant poison of the serpent who introduced apostasy” (Adv. Haer. 1.27.4). King explains that Irenaeus “strategically manipulated this genealogy to contrast the demonic origin of heretical groups with the apostolic origin of the true church. His opponents, Irenaeus insisted, were not really fellow Christians; they were the agents of the Devil. Their teaching derived from the Devil through his minion Simon and his harlot Helen, whereas the teaching of true Christians came from God through Jesus and his chosen male disciples” (What is Gnosticism?, 31).

53. And so he prayed: “I call upon you, Lord God of Abraham and God of Isaac and God of Jacob and Israel, … you who made heaven and earth and rule over all things, you who are the only true God, above whom there is no other God” to keep everyone who reads this work “separate from every heretical doctrine, godless and impious” (Iren. Adv. Haer. 3.6.4).

54. Yet these Ebionites cannot be actual “Jews” from Irenaeus’ perspective since they share the opinions of Cerinthus and Carpocrates regarding Christ. Moreover, in Irenaeus’ genealogical scheme they can only be gentiles pretending to be Jews (Iren. Adv. Haer. 4.14.3, 15.1–2). Whether they were “Jews” or simply thought of themselves as such cannot be easily determined (see Ehrman, Lost Christianities, 99–102); moreover, if ethnicity is always fictive, as Hall and others have argued, then arguments regarding their “true” identity become moot. The important question is not “Were they Jewish?” but “Did they seek to identify themselves as such?”

55. A particularly sharp rebuke since Marcion seems to have “spurned all things Jewish” (Ehrman, Lost Christianities, 103–6).

56. Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie, 117–57.

57. For example, Justin 1 Apol. 5, 14, 57; Justin 2 Apol. 5; Theophilus Ad. Auto. 2.2–3. According to Irenaeus, Ptolemaeus claimed that Silence received the seed () of the Abyss; Logos and Life emitted Man and Church “by pairing” (coniugationem/ Adv. Haer. 1.1.2; see also 1.29.1–4, 1.20.2).

58. Valentinus in particular is accused of adapting his theory of the Aeons from the writings of Hesiod (Iren. Adv. Haer. 2.21.2). They “propose random hypotheses for themselves and try to treat them from the Homeric verses” (Adv. Haer. 1.9.4). Indeed, “do not these people seem to you, O beloved, to have envisioned the Homeric Zeus … rather than the Lord of all?” (Adv. Haer. 1.12.2)

59. Irenaeus labels God’s work in the world “” that is, household management (Iren. Adv. Haer. 3.18.1; 5.6.1). The heretics reject God’s oikonomia when they reject certain doctrines deemed essential by Irenaeus, especially the resurrection of the flesh (Adv. Haer. 5.2.2). By contrast, the (Hebrew) patriarchs and prophets served God’s oikonomia, as did those who preached the gospel and transmitted the (Christian) scriptures (Adv. Haer. 3.1.1). Grant also notices Irenaeus’ fondness for “oikonomia,” though he interprets the significance of the term rather differently (Grant, Irenaeus of Lyons, 49–50).

60. For interesting comparative examples, see Bernard S. Cohen, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), esp. 3–15, 78–88; Frederick Cooper and Ann L. Stoler, “Introduction to Tensions of Empire: Colonial Control and Visions of Rule,” American Ethnologist 16, no. 4 (1989): 609–21, esp. 611–13; George W. Stocking Jr., Victorian Anthropology (New York: Free Press, 1987), esp. 78–109.

61. Justin’s and Irenaeus’ genealogical schemes are exclusively patrilineal; knowledge and authority pass from a (male) God to one legitimate son to male disciples to male church leaders, an early form of the theory of apostolic succession. As Nancy Jay has remarked, “This social organization is a truly perfect ‘eternal line of patrilineal descent,’ in which, as it were, authority descends from father to father, through the ‘one Son made perfect forever,’ in a line no longer dependent on women’s reproductive powers for continuity”: Nancy Jay, “Sacrifice as a Remedy for Having Been Born of Woman,” in Women, Gender, Religion: A Reader, ed. Elizabeth A. Castelli with the assistance of Rosamond C. Rodman (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 181. See also Buell, Making Christians, esp. 83–86. Indeed, Christianness in Justin and Irenaeus is dependent on the implantation of the divine Logos, the inspiration of the “prophetic spirit,” adoption as God’s sons, a mingling with the Logos, and the transmission of tradition as given to the apostles and by them to others (Justin 1 Apol. 23, 60; Justin 2 Apol. 13; Justin Dial. 120, 138–39; Iren. Adv. Haer. 3.19.1, 4.24.2, 5.20.1), a series of procedures that are wholly dependent upon obedience to a male god and his designated heirs.

62. Legitimate (male) prophets, apostles, and evangelists composed certain books requiring an interpretive treatment known only by the members of God’s true “family,” the Christians. The Jews misinterpreted their books since they deny Christ (Justin Dial. 11.1–23.5, 68.1–7, 93.4; Iren. Adv. Haer. 4.14.1–15.2, 23.1, 25.1–26.1); the heretics misconstrue both the Jewish (that is, the Christian) Scriptures and the writings of the evangelists, adding to them, ignoring them, or editing them violently (Justin Dial. 80.1–4; Iren. Adv. Haer. 1.8.1–8, 16.3, 20.1–2, 27.2–4, 29.4, 30.1–14). For discussion of the development of a “canon” in light of Christian controversies, see Ehrman, Lost Christianities, 229–43. On the changing understanding of Christian scripture and their use, see Gamble, Books and Readers, 215–18. On the impact of these controversies on the New Testament text, see Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption; David Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Kim Haines-Eitzen, Guardians of Letters: Literacy, Power, and the Transmitters of Early Christian Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), esp. 105–32.

63. The God of Israel is the God of the Christians; failure to adopt this God as one’s “father” leads to moral and religious corruption; “the world” (i.e., the creation) is “good” and will be preserved imperishable at the resurrection (Justin Dial. 80.4; Iren. Adv. Haer. 4.20.1–2; 5.2.2–5.2, 14.1, 18.3, 31.2). On alternative Christian ideas regarding resurrection, see, for example, Gregory Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered: Thomas and John in Controversy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995); Ehrman, Lost Christianities, 131–32.

64. I am borrowing the phrase “language of disqualification” from Cameron. She notes that the “language of binary opposition” is “standard when labeling one’s enemies as ‘the other,’” noting the “habitual resort” to genealogies of heresy among late antique heresiologists (“Jews and Heretics,” 350).

65. See esp. Rom. 3:1–26, 9:1–11:36. Johnson Hodge’s work is helpful here: she argues that Paul sought to place gentiles-in-Christ within the genos “Judean” through adoption, not to remove Judeans from the “family.” See also Stowers, Rereading Romans.

66. Irenaeus’ strategy would be adopted by later heresiologists, leading to the (intentional) confusion between heretics and Jews (see Cameron, “Jews and Heretics”).

67. Hence, “lives” often began with a recitation of the subject’s noble birth (eugeneia) and with a description of his (or her) illustrious home city, if it was distinguished in some way. Josephus, for example, began his by observing that he had been raised in Jerusalem “our greatest city,” by a father who was universally esteemed for his noble birth (eugeneia) and his upright character (Joseph Vit. 1.7). Further examples include Plut. Alex. 2.2–3 (Alexander was a descendant of Heracles); Suet. Iul. 6.1 (Julius Caesar was descended from kings and immortal gods, including Venus); Suet. Aug. 1–4 (Octavian was the descendant of an old and dignified family that originally came from Velitrae). Noble birth was among the standard topics recommended in rhetorical handbooks (see Chapter 1; for late antique practice, see Nixon and Rogers, In Praise of Later Roman Emperors, 10–12).

68. See, for example, Hadrian’s praise of his adopted father Trajan, “the descendant of Aeneas” (Anth. Pal. 6.332; discussed by Ando, Imperial Ideology, 37); M. Aur. Med. 1.1–4, 16–17 (Marcus Aurelius lists the wonderful virtues he inherited from his grandfather, his father, his mother, his great-grandfather and then from his adopted father Antoninus Pius). For further discussion of imperial claims regarding descent, see Ando, Imperial Ideology, 36–40.

69. See esp. Johnson Hodge, “‘If Sons, Then Heirs,’” 34–54; Buell, “Race and Universalism,” 461–63; Greg Woolf, Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Hall, Ethnic Identity; and Hall, Hellenicity.

70. Ezra 9:1–3, 11–12. Compare Tobit 4:12; Pseudo-Aristeas, 139. For further discussion, see Chapter 2.

71. “God made the gentiles, who were despaired of, joint heirs and fellow members and joint partakers with the saints” (Iren. Adv. Haer. 1.10.3); “people from every quarter, whether slave or free … are aware that they will be together with [Christ] in that land and will inherit the incorruptible things of eternity” (Justin Dial. 39.1).

72. I am borrowing the phrase “sex was about sex” from Ann Stoler. Stoler argues that discourse about sex, when deployed in a British colonial context, could be reflecting real concerns about the consequences of sex between British colonists and the indigenous peoples that these colonists sought to dominate. Therefore, this talk was not entirely metaphorical, though see agrees with Partha Chatterjee that talk about sexual behavior could be employed to specify the contents of “Europeannes.” See Cooper and Stoler, “Introduction, “614. See also Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002); and Partha Chatterjee, “Colonialism, Nationalism, and Colonized Women: The Contest in India,” American Ethnologist 16, no. 4 (1989): 622–33.

73. Clark cites Irenaeus, Tertullian, Theodore of Mopuestia, John Chrysostom, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Hippolytus, and Jerome.

74. Clark, Reading Renunciation, 39–42.

75. Chadwick’s translation.

76. Jerome Adv. Iovinia. 1.7; 1.8; 1.20; and Ep. 49 (48).11. Cited and discussed by Clark, Reading Renunciation, 41.

77. Clark observes, “Differentiation became all the more necessary when theories and behaviors were similar” (Reading Renunciation, 40). A similar observation was made by Sfameni Gasparro in her discussion of second-century Christian “Encratites.” She observes that despite the “wide gulf” that separates “radical” from “moderate” second-century Christian sexual ascetics, both groups shared an “ethos” that “ensures substantial homogeneity in the perception of humanity’s sexual dimension and sexual activity” (Sfameni Gasparro, “Asceticism and Anthropology,” 130). In other words, heresiologists such as Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria may have sought to distance themselves from a “radical Encratism” that rejects marriage outright, yet, upon closer examination, they appear to have had more in common with their “radical” opponents than they might want to admit. There is a difference of degree rather than of kind between them, with the “radicals” arguing that sexual abstinence is the only authentic choice for Christians and the “moderates” suggesting that marriage is the appropriate option for “ordinary believers” though sexual abstinence is preferable.

78. Clark, Reading Renunciation, 42–370. For Clark, this involved reading strategies capable of interpreting biblical (“Old” and “New” Testament) passages in favor of the sexual renunciation they sought to recommend. In this way, the “fathers” could argue that their practices were preserved in Scripture and recommended by God, Christ, and the apostles.

79. I borrow these terms from Clark and Sfameni Gasparro.

80. On the date of Celsus’ invective against the Christians, see Chadwick, introduction to Contra Celsum, xxiv–xxix. Chadwick settles for 177–80 C.E. as a conservative estimate. If Grant is correct, Irenaeus composed his books against the Valentinians c. 175–89 C.E. (Irenaeus, 6). On Celsus as a representative of standard anti-Christian invective, see Frede, “Origen’s Treatise,” 133; Droge, Homer or Moses?, 72–81; Labriolle, La Reaction païnne, 117–27; Grant, Greek Apologists, 133–39.

81. See the excellent, straightforward discussion by Margaret Y. MacDonald, “Reading Real Women Through the Undisputed Letters of Paul,” in Women and Christian Origins, ed. Ross Shepard Kraemer and Mary Rose D’Angelo (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). The apostle Junia provides a particularly interesting example. Paul mentions her in Rom 16:7, stating that she is “prominent among the apostles,” although later Christian scribes and biblical scholars were not quite willing to believe it; see Eldon J. Epp, “Text-Critical, Exegetical, and Socio-Cultural Factors Affecting the Junia/Junias Variation in Romans 16.7,” in New Testament Criticism and Exegesis: Festschrift J. Delobel, ed. A. Denaux, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovainiensium 161; (Belgium: Leuven University Press, 2002), 287–91.

82. See discussion in Chapter 3.

83. For example, Simon shares leadership with the “prostitute” Helena (Iren. Adv. Haer. 1.23.2); the followers of the Valentinian Marcus tricked women into joining by pretending to allow them to become prophetesses, only to seduce them by driving them into a sexual and religious frenzy (Adv. Haer. 1.13.4); the Carpocratians included a preacher by the name of Marcellina who led multitudes of faithful Christians astray (Adv. Haer. 1.25.6).

84. On this possibility, see Karen Jo Torjesen, When Women Were Priests: Women’s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993). Elaine Pagels associated the one God–one church–one bishop theory with ecclesiastical patriarchy in The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979). On the strategy of associating suspect religious groups with “silly women,” see MacDonald, Early Christian Women.