Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, information access, and more
To Canterbury to see Luke Lavan who is an archaeologist working at Ostia and generally interested in daily life in late antiquity. In passing he says that most ordinary people imagine senators in late antiquity running around in togas as in the early empire. I’d never given the idea a moment’s thought. What DID they wear at that time? I wish I’d thought to ask.
When did the Romans stop wearing the toga?
After scribbling about the Paris magical codex, and giving a link to a “preview only” version of Adolf Deissmann’s Light from the ancient East (1910), I wondered if a full version was around online. Perhaps I might scan that spell of pagan exorcism from it, I thought. Off I went to Google books; but no joy!
I’m so used to finding stuff there, that it was actually a shock to find so many “snippet” versions. So I went to Archive.org, and found it there. Relief!
Imagine you were an archaeologist. You have people digging for you, you end up with a heap of photos, some plans, a cardboard box full of artefacts, pottery, bones … perhaps a crate with the Ark of the Covenant in it … and you need to make this stuff accessible to people who live in basements a long way away. What do you do?
I’ve been thinking about this a bit. I don’t pay a huge amount of attention to archaeology, but there are a fair number of open-access journals which publish things.
Trouble is, archaeologists are really bad at publishing. Stuff just gets left in store-cupboards.
I wonder if the answer is simply to create a bunch of PDF’s from the dig; scan the scribbled notes, the plans, and turn them into PDF files. Upload the photos — not necessarily OCR any of this — and just stick it online in a directory on a web server. Maybe hook it all together using the software from Wikipedia Commons. That seems to work fairly well.
Do we need to do more, to facilitate public accessibility? Would that be very onerous?
In Firmicus Maternus, The error of profane religion, 16, we read the following exhortation to the emperors (ca. 350):
3. These temples, very holy emperors, one should call them bonfires. Yes, bonfires of poor wretches, this is the name which is right for them. Because the deplorable servitude of men has led them to raise temples instead of tombs for people charged with crimes. Here we maintain the flames that have burned their bodies, the ashes of the dead are kept in obedience to an impious law; their despicable fate is renewed in the blood of victims daily, the sad lamentations for their death are commemorated by annual ceremonies of mourning, a groan comes to awaken the old pain, the low minds of men learn to honor and to imitate the parricides, incests and murders represented in the rites.
4. These abominations, most holy emperors, must be extirpated radically, in order to destroy them; apply to them the most severe regulations of your edicts, do not allow the Roman world to be sullied any longer by this disastrous error, that the impiety of these practices, a true plague, should not gain in power, and that the domination of that which seeks the ruin of the man of God should last no longer. Some refuse, conceal themselves, and desire with a feverish passion their own death. Come all the same to the assistance of these poor wretches, deliver them: they are perishing! It is so that you might remedy this wound that the supreme God has entrusted the empire to you. We know the danger to which their crime exposes them, we know the punishment reserved for their error: better to release some in spite of themselves than to leave them to their own desires to run to their perdition.
5. The sick like what harms them. When disease has seized the body of a man, the sick clamour for what would prevent them from recovering their health. A spirit oppressed by the languor of a disease always wants what will increase it, it mistakes and scorns the remedies of the experts, it resists the care of the doctor, and tends with an impassioned haste towards its own loss. If evil is gaining ground, it uses the most powerful remedies, the medicine that seeks the good of the patient, is more energetic. The repugnant food, the bitter drinks, those who refuse them are made to take them by force; and, if their disease still progresses, iron and fire are employed. Cured finally, returned to health, the man who underwent against his will the care that was given him because of his disease, recognizes, his spirit once again strengthed, that all these torments were inflicted on him for his good.
This is the authentic language of religious persecution. “It’s for your own good”, the inquisitor cries. And who decides what is right for me? Why, the inquisitor! We need not suppose Firmicus Maternus insincere; but we know that all too often those who claim this right over us have proven to be very insincere and self-seeking. The emperors here are Constantius II and his ill-fated nephew, Gallus. Few of us would willingly live under the rule of either.
So it was during the Cold War. There were not lacking people who knew what was best for me better than I did. “The will of people” must prevail, they cried; but somehow “the people” always meant “people other than me”.
It would be nice to think that we have got past this stage, where a minority — or even a majority — force their views on others, “for their own good.” Sadly there seems no sign of it. Those who have power always seem to become arrogant.
After collecting a set of links to all the volumes of the PL online, Rod Letchford has done the same for the volumes of the Patrologia Graeca which are online:
http://cyprianproject.info/PG.htm
This again is fantastically useful, considering how awkward it can be to find particular volumes. Thanks Rod!
In the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris is an early fourth century papyrus codex (ms. supplement grec 574) which contains a variety of texts, spells, hymns, etc. It is 36 folios in length – large for a papyrus, and contains 3274 lines.
The manuscript was acquired in Egypt by the collector Giovanni Anastasi (# 1073 in his collection) and bought at auction in Paris by the BNF in 1857. It probably comes from Thebes (=Luxor). Apparently Anastasi was told that his papyri were found in a grave there, perhaps sometime around 1825, although we cannot be sure of this. Anastasi certainly sold a larger collection of papyri to the Dutch archaeologist C. J. C. Reuvens, the founder and first director of the Oudheidkundig Museum in Leiden, sometime after 1825.1
The codex seems to be the working handbook for an Egyptian magician, compiled from many sources. It contains more than 50 documents, doubtless acquired from various sources, and is the single most comprehensive handbook of magic known from the ancient world. The documents contained in it must all be 4th century or earlier — possibly much earlier — and each document has its own history prior to being copied into the codex.
The text was printed by Karl Preisendanz, Papyri Graecae Magicae, vol. 1, Leipzig, 1928, rev. 1973, as item IV (hence PGM IV). Various online versions of this seem to exist. An English translation was made by H.-D.Betz, The Greek Magical Papyri in translation, 1986. There is an enormous secondary literature.
The best known of these texts is on lines 475- 834, the so-called Mithras liturgy, a series of prayers which begins by invoking Sol Mithras and may — or may not — have some connection to the mysteries of Mithras.
Other parts show Jewish influence, and one spell, an exorcism ending with the words — Come out of NN — on line 3019, contains the words:
I adjure you by the God of the Hebrews, Jesus, Jaba, Jae, Abraoth, Aia, Thoth, Ele, …. 2
and ends with Ptah, which shows how magicians were willing to tap into supposed names of power in just the way recorded in Acts. It also contains a string of the seven vowels of the Greek alphabet (a, e, h, i, o, u, w) which Eusebius tells us in the Praeparatio Evangelica 11.6.36 was treated by the pagans as a name of power equivalent to the Hebrew Tetragrammaton. Its presence in the spell shows that he was right. The same series are also used in the Mithras liturgy.
1 Pieter Willem van der Horst, Jews and Christians in their Graeco-Roman context, p. 269. Here.
2. A. Deismann, Light from the ancient East, pp.258-260 prints the full text of a two leaf spell with English translation, online here.
Rod Letchford has written to say that he has compiled a list of links to all the volumes of the Patrologia Latina available online. It’s here:
http://cyprianproject.info/PL.htm
Apparently they all work from where he is, in Australia.
I’ve had an email directing me to a webpage supposedly containing an article by Mohammad Moqadam (Moghdam), with the subtitle “The Second International Congress of Mithraic Studies, Tehran 1975″. This makes the claim:
The Saviour was born in the middle of the night between Saturday and Sunday, 24th and 25th of December, 272 BCE, and according to those who believed in Him from an Immaculate (Anahid) Virgin (Xosidhag) somewhere not far from lake Hamin, Sistan, Lived for 64 years among men, and ascended to His Father Ahura Mazda in 208 BCE.
and is widely quoted by a certain sort of writer.
This article does not seem to be scholarly. There are no real references in it to the texts being quoted, edition, etc. Many of these texts are unfamiliar to me, although I know of al-Tabari. But it sounds as if he is quoting this from an unspecified edition, in translation… what translation?
His quotes, if genuine — just imagine whether we could check these; it would be very difficult — suggest that by the Islamic period some of the Persians believed that the events of the life of Jesus took place during the Arsacid period. No doubt such a confusion is possible. But I don’t see the point of it, unless I am missing something.
The vague reference to Elise Vardapet, that the lord Mihr had a human mother…. this is really not much good. The real reference is the Elisaeus Vardapet, “History of Vartan”, in a speech given by Christian bishops to the Sassanid governor trying to fend off a persecution.
https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/?p=2648
Some of the claims made seem rather odd to me. But … I don’t actually see, in any of this, evidence for the claim he makes about a virgin birth of Mitra. Is it actually there, anywhere?
A frustrating, infuriating article, I think. It ends with another such example:
It is written in the Bayan al- Adyan, that “the Manicheans say that Jesus called men to Zoroaster.
Is it? What is this text? Where do we find it? And so on.
I think we can stick this article down the toilet, I’m sorry to say. Whether the claim made is true or not, the article does not substantiate it.
My queries about the Chronicle of Zuqnin led me to read the translation of the Third Part of the Chronicle by Witold Witakowski. This covers the period from the reign of Anastasius (ca. 500) to the end of the century.
In the Byzantine empire no political dissent was permitted. The emperor was absolute, and he made all the decisions. Dissent was a capital offence. But a certain amount of religious disagreement was permitted. Human nature being what it is, this ensured that all the political disagreements of the empire expressed themselves in theological language and debased theology to the service of personal ambition. Those doing this were mostly Greeks, and they did it in the language of Aristotle. They also discovered that, while agora-democracy was illegal, they were allowed to get together in church councils and vote each other into exile, much as they had ostracised each other a millenium earlier.
The long disagreements between Alexandria and the rest of the empire came to a head at Chalcedon in 451. But this merely served to ensure half a century of violent disagreements. The emperor Zeno had tacitly abandoned the council in his Henotikon, and Anastasius followed him in a policy of supporting the status quo — no Chalcedonians disturbing the peace in monophysite regions, no monophysites doing the same in Chalcedonian regions. The position was weakened by the fact that Constantinople was Chalcedonian, while the emperor was clearly not.
The succession of Justin, a Chalcedonian, led immediately to persecution of the monophysites, and this continued under Justinian, although the latter’s wife Theodora was a monophysite and protected them to some extent. The Chronicle of Zuqnin quotes verbatim from the lost Second Part of the Ecclesiastical History of John of Ephesus, who witnessed what went on. The story starts in 527 AD, when the Patriarch Ephrem appointed a man named Abraham bar Kaili as bishop of Amida, in the monophysite area.
In Amid a man by the name of Abraham, a cleric of that church, became bishop. He was called Bar Kaili and (although) his family came from Tella he arrived in (Amid) from Antioch. Then Satan possessed him totally, and he devoted himself to violent persecution without mercy, to pillage and the destruction of people’s souls more than his earlier and more recent predecessors. This villain used (all means) including the killing, crucifixion and burning of believers in a barbarous and cruel way, without mercy. Impudently he plotted by every means foul ruses for the destruction of people—tortures, cruel scourging and pernicious confinement in prison, both in the tribunal building and in the deepest pit which was in the prison, into which murderers and others sentenced to death were thrown and where they were executed, after which their bodies were secretly removed and cast in desolate graves, like those of dumb animals.
In order to deceive the Amidenes’ keen ardour for the true faith he pretended to them that he would not preach (the doctrine of) the Council. But during the time of the dux Thomas, a Goth who was the dux at that time, he gave orders to bring and crucify four persons at every single gate. They hung on their crosses till the evening. As next day the commemoration of the blessed Mother of God was to be celebrated outside the northern gate of Amid, the wicked bishop rode out to celebrate it. When he saw the bodies hanging on the crosses he forbade them to be taken down until it was necessary because of the smell of corruption. (Only) then would he let them to be taken down and buried.
Also when he learned that there was an uprising (and the people) were shouting these words, “Behold! the new martyrs by the hand of the Christians have appeared! So why do the Christians blame any longer the pagan judges who did that, when now they themselves, like those, do (the same)”, he tormented men and women because they had stood up against him when he demanded that they should accept the Council of Chalcedon.
And all these things (happened) in our presence and we saw it with our (own) eyes.
First he expelled and ousted (the monks from) all the holy monasteries in the vicinity of the city, and then from the whole country around it. Also he made a list of the quarters, mansions and houses of the city, of men and women, each one by his name. He demanded that they be entered on to the church register and that they receive communion, even babes, and not only those which had been born but also those which had not yet been born. He demanded that the women should be registered so that when they had given birth, they should bring the (babes) to be baptized. If it happened that a new-born child died or (that a babe) was miscarried, unless clergy came to see it, the family of the dead babe which had not been brought to be baptized was in danger. And these evil deeds, that is pillaging and destruction, were done not only in this city but in all the country around it and in the (whole) diocese of Amid.
On the holy martyr Cyrus.
Here is (something) most terrible, grievous and cruel: (the story of) a priest whose name was Cyrus, from the village of Ligin, who was seized and required to receive communion. When he refused, he was brought to the city before the bishop. He violently shouted at him in indignation saying:
“Why do you not receive communion?”
And he answered:
“You make your communion repugnant to me and I cannot partake of it, for communion given by force is not a communion.”
Then (the bishop) swore:
“You will not leave here, but you will take communion.”
(Cyrus also) swore:
“I will never accept the forced communion from you.”
Then the bishop had the Eucharist brought and gave orders to hold the priest, to fill a spoon (with the Eucharist) and to put it into his mouth. (But) as he shut his mouth they could not insert the spoon into it. Then the bishop gave orders to bring a whip, to stick its handle into (the priest’s) mouth and in this way to get the spoon (also) into his mouth. They held his teeth apart (so forcefully) that they were nearly pulled out. With the handle (of the whip) inserted in his mouth he mumbled, not being able to move his tongue nor to speak normally to them. He swore saying:
“By Christ’s truth, if you put the Eucharist into my mouth, I will spit it out upon your faces.”
Thus in bitter wrath and threatening (him) with death they inserted the spoon to one side of the whip and poured the Eucharist into his mouth. But he blew and ejected it from his mouth. Accordingly they called him “the Spitter”.
When Bar Kaili saw what that priest did, he used it as a pretext to kill him which had been his intention (in the first place). As the others perished by his hand so he would cause also (the priest) to perish. Intoxicated with the ferocity and cruelty of Satan, who “was a murderer from the beginning”, he promptly gave orders to carry wood and fire to the tetrapylon (187) in the city and (there) to burn the priest. It was the Wednesday of fasting in Holy Week. So he had the priest put in [the tetrapylon] and wood gathered there from the vicinity. They set him on fire and burned him. (The people of) the city wailed and wept at this horrible and heart-rending sight, as they watched a man burning and dense smoke rising as from dumb and irrational beasts (being burnt). This was a hideous and inhuman deed, which, with all its ferocity, stupidity and obduracy of heart, (only) dumb beasts can inflict on each other. All (the people of) the city were so agitated and shocked at the evil deed of burning that priest in (such) iniquity and wickedness that they thought to burn Bar Kaili, doing to him the same thing that he had displayed by burning that priest. There were (however) some nobles of the city (who) out of fear of the emperor restrained them from doing so. Many people however separated themselves from (Bar Kaili) regarding him as a murderer and a Jew, and they ceased (to receive) communion from him.
(Bar Kaili) being afraid lest the matter become known to the emperor and lest he sentence him to be burnt as he himself had burned (a man), in anticipation he wrote falsely and informed (the emperor) that a certain priest had trampled the Eucharist with his feet, and because of this had been burned. Thus he managed to deceive (the emperor) and to cause the murder to pass (without consequences).
That we have not deviated from the truth, nor misrepresented it in what we have described, the Lord is our witness and all the contemporaries of that wicked and ferocious deed. This evil became known all over the East and West, and everybody was horrified by what was done by people wearing the robes of priesthood but far removed from its virtues.
(187) A monumental gate-like construction with four entrances built in Roman cities on the cross of the main streets. The best example in the East is the Great Tetrapylon in Palmyra (3rd c. A.D.).
Bar Kaili had, of course, no more religion in him than a plank of wood. He was a hatchet-man, chosen precisely for his lack of conscience and in the knowledge that his violence would be exercised on the dissenting population, in order to force them to conform.
The wicked bishop is a constant figure down the centuries. James of Edessa describes such folk very accurately in his damaged Chronicle:
But the bishops who had swerved from [the faith, since] they were [not accepted] by the churches, and they would not endure their [communion], not considering their folly, — — — — — — — — — [out of] desire of power made use of worldly authorities and [the sword of tyranny — — — — ] to get possession of churches and sees [and the flock — — — — which] was purchased with the blood of Christ.
It might be supposed that such actions would not happen today. A look at the accounts of the behaviour of bishops in the Episcopal Church of the USA on VirtueOnline reveals precisely the same behaviour. In the USA they cannot murder and torture. But the law allows them to seize churches which they did not build from those who did, expell the congregations, and sell the property for their own profit; and they are doing this all over the USA. The church is pursuing just such a policy against dissenters now.
Perhaps it is something about episcopacy as an institution. It is depressing to see, nevertheless.