Chrysostom in Antioch makes extensive use of Samaritans as an exegetical technology of community discipline; Cyril in Jerusalem writes against them as a keenly-felt, albeit sporadic, religious threat. One of the more striking other fourth - century interactions with Samaritans, not yet translated into English and absent from Pummer’s collection, comprises a large section of what survives of the On False Asceticism of another bishop, rather less well known; Amphilochius of Iconium.146
On False Asceticism was written between 375 and 381—a few years prior to Chrysostom’s orations, and more or less simultaneous with the probable date of
146 Amphilochius possesses the rare honour of, as of the time of writing, being the only
“heresiologist” whose concerns have drawn the attention of a scholar writing in The Journal of Roman Studies: Peter Thonemann, “Amphilochius of Iconium and Lycaonian Asceticism” in JRS 101 (2011): 185-205. On False Asceticism was first published, from the only surviving manuscript, with extensive commentary in Amphilochiana, I. Teil, ed. Gerhard Ficker (Leipzig, 1906), 21-280; the standard edition and that used here is Amphilochii Iconiensis Opera, ed. Cornelis Datema (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978), 185-214. All translations are my own; Amphilochius’ On False Asceticism has not yet been translated. Relatively few scholars have shown much interest in Amphilochius otherwise: see Constantine Bonis, “What are the Heresies Combatted in the Work of Amphilochios Metropolian of Iconium (ca 341/5 – ca. 395/400) ‘Regarding False Asceticism’?” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 9 (1963), 79-96; E. Rosson, “Anfilochio di Iconio e il canone biblico ‘Contra Haereticos,’” SP 43.2 (1996): 131-57; also a brief treatment in Andrew S. Jacobs, Christ Circumcised: A Study in Early Christian History and Difference (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 92-94.
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Epiphanius’ hefty heresiological catalogue, the Panarion.147 It targeted ascetic groups
at Iconium, in Lycaonia.148 Amphilochius’ treatise, as Andrea Sterk notes, with the exception of a short sixth-century flurry of interest, was “otherwise lost to semiobscurity.”149 It is, however, one of the earlier examples of a very common
heresiological variant. Rather than a heresiological catalogue in the style of Hippolytus or Epiphanius, it systematically compares one named Christian group to a variety of heresies to emphasize the seriousness of their deviance.
Basil of Caesarea had already written to Amphilochius concerning a number of Lycaonian groups that concerned him in three letters (Ep. 188, 199, and 217) that came to be read as authoritative canonical letters in later centuries.150 Basil’s arguments against the group’s deviance are fragile—he resorts at one point to arguing that their baptism was unacceptable because it was indistinguishable from orthodox baptism (Ep. 199), merely performed outside the authority of the bishop. He also makes a comparison to Marcionite teachings which appear not to stand up to scrutiny either, making no appearance in the surviving parts of Amphilochius’ treatise directly written against the group.
But Basil’s somewhat flimsy argumentation does make the stakes of the Lycaonian problem visible—a group baptizing in the same way the bishopric ordained
147 See Chapter 3, following.
148 On Christianity in Lycaonia, see now Cilliers Breytenbach and Christiane Zimmerman, Early
Christianity in Lycaonia and Adjacent Areas: From Paul to Amphilochius of Iconium (Leiden: Brill, 2018).
149 Andrea Sterk, Renouncing the World yet Leading the Church (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 2009), 97.
150 Translated into English by Andrew Radde-Gallwitz in The Cambridge Edition of Early
Christian Writings, Volume Two: Practice, ed. Ellen Muehlberger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
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were nevertheless diverging from the official position of the bishop when it came to the features of the life for which baptism served as the initiation—specifically, partaking in Eucharist wine and, a common problem that Chrysostom also rails against, spiritual marriage.151 Not only did they do so, but they appear to have done so with relative confidence in their own position. In his recent discussion of Amphilochius, Peter Thonemann connects the references of Amphilochius to deviant groups under his diocesal authority to this sparse – but extant – evidence for the concretely monumentalized existence of “heretical” groups otherwise known from their representation in Christian heresiology.152 Thonemann points to an inscription from Kindyria in Lycaonia which incorporates a scornful reference to Christians who drink wine as part of a funerary threat:
Meiros, son of <Va>lentinus, of the enkrateis, set this up while living and in his right mind for himself and his cousin Tatis and his brother Paulos and his brother Pribis, in memoriam. If any of the Winedrinkers inters [another body], he will have to reckon with God and Jesus Christ [MAMA VII 96].153
Fergus Millar notes a similar epigraphic example from Deir Ali south of Damascus, dated to 318/9 CE, which marks a building as the “Synagōgē of the Markiōnistai of the village of Lebaba of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ”.154 What
151 See Leyerle, Theatrical Shows, esp. 75-99.
152 For the importance of epigraphy within the discipline see Fergus Millar, “Epigraphy,” in
Sources for Ancient History, ed. Michael Crawford; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 80-136; for the type of information ancient historians invest in extracting from inscriptions, see the seminal article by Ramsay MacMullen, “The Epigraphic Habit in the Roman Empire,” AJP 103.3 (1982): 233-46.
153 Thonemann, “Amphilochius,” 197. For this curse-formula, Louis Robert, Hellenica 11-12
(1960), 399-413.
154 OGIS no. 608. For the inscription, as well as other references in Epiphanius and Jerome to
deviant groups in remote villages, see Fergus Millar, The Greek World, The Jews, and The East, ed. Hannah M. Cotton and Guy M. Rogers (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 391 - 92.
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matters to these scholars is not so much the existence of “Marcionites” or “Encratites” alongside other Christians. Our written sources attest that members of such groups rubbed shoulders with those valorized by posterity as exemplary, as in for example the martyrdom of Pionius alongside a follower of Marcion.155 Rather, for both Thonemann and Millar, an air of excitement characterizes their treatment of the material as if epigraphy, by dint of being engraved in something so solid, can finally be mobilized to write robust social or conceptual history.156
But there is more to Amphilochius’ text than having its plausibility confirmed by stonework. As noted above, the On False Asceticism is not complete. But those pieces which survive represent a striking mobilization of heresiological rhetoric; specifically, an extended weaponization of the relationship between Samaritans and Jews. The repertoire of difference takes a very different form, however, than in Chrysostom. Despite Amphilochius’ shared use of the psogos, Chrysostom’s Samaritans served as a fossilized biblical trope used to attack Judaizers. His Samaritans do not factor into his heresiological grid, either as an imagined opponent or a theological risk. In contrast, Amphilochius’ Samaritans are represented as genuinely schismatic as Samaritans. In this respect, then, Amphilochius resembles Cyril. But unlike the bishop of Jerusalem, Amphilochius’ treatise does not target Samaritans directly. Rather, it aims by means of analogy to mobilize genuinely anti - Samaritan rhetoric as an anti-Lycaonian polemic. Amphilochius’s repertoire does so,
155 Martyrdom of Pionius 21:5; Éric Rebillard, Greek and Latin Narratives about the Ancient
Martyrs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 77.
156 For a recent instance of an ancient historian examining the role of material things in
motivating specific types of story about the ancient world, see Seraf ina Cuomo on the Saldae aqueduct in “A Roman Engineer’s Tales,” JRS 101 (2011): 143-65.
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furthermore, by reworking a biblical past into an alternate history, numerous fe atures of which appear nowhere else in our surviving texts from antiquity.157
The Samaritan section of Amphilochius’ treatise involves three main parts. First, he traces the name “Samaritan” back to the rebellion of Jeroboam. Jeroboam, idolatrous and arrogant, rejected the true people of God.
Πλὴν ἀλλ’ εἰ καὶ Μωϋσῆς πολλάκις τὰ αὐτὰ ἔγραψεν ἀλλαχοῦ μὴ ἀνενεγκεῖν θυσίαν, ἀλλ’ Ἱεροβο<ὰ>μ ὁ <υ>ἱὸς Ν<α>βάτ, ὁ ἀγενής, ὁ μὴ φοβούμενος τὸν θεόν, ὁ τοῦ νόμου καὶ τῶν προφητῶν ἐπιλαθόμενος, ἀποσχίζει τὸν λαὸν ἀπὸ <Ἱερουσαλ>ὴμ καὶ ἀποστασίαν διδάξας ἐνομοθέτησεν ἐν αὐτοῖς μὴ ἀναβαίνειν εἰς Ἱερουσαλὴμ μηδὲ ἐκεῖ ἀναφέρειν τὰς λατρείας ἃς προσέταξεν ὁ νόμος, μηδὲ ἐπακούειν τῶν γραφῶν, μηδὲ ὅλως βλέπειν τὸν οἶκον τοῦ θεοῦ, λογιζόμενος τοῦτο, ὅτι ἐὰν ὁ λαὸς ἔρχηται εἰς Ἱερουσαλὴμ καὶ ἐπακούῃ τῶν ἐντολῶν τοῦ θεοῦ, προστεθήσεται τῷ οἴκῳ τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τιμήσει τὸν ἔννομον βασιλέα καὶ αὐτὸν καταλείψει. Τί οὖν ποιεῖ διὰ τὴν φιλαρχίαν καὶ κενὴν ἀπάτην; Ἵνα δόξῃ ἄρχειν τοῦ λαοῦ, δύο δαμάλεις ἵστησι χρυσᾶς τοῖς ὄρεσι λέγων· Οὗτοι οἱ θεοί σου, Ἰσραήλ, οἱ ἐξαγαγόντες σε ἐκ γῆς Αἰγύπτου· τούτοις προσκύνει, μὴ ἀνέρχου εἰς Ἱερουσαλήμ. Καὶ νομοθετήσας ταῦτα τῷ λαῷ ἀπέστησεν αὐτοὺς ἀπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τῆς Ἱερουσαλήμ.
Even Moses often wrote the same things—often!—not to offer sacrifice elsewhere, but Jeroboam the son of Nabat, the bastard, unafraid of God, the attacker of the law and the prophets, tore the people away from Jerusalem and having taught them apostasy made it a law for them neither to go to Jerusalem nor to offer any of the offerings which the law commanded, nor to obey the scriptures, nor to even set eyes on the house of God reasoning thus: that if the people went to Jerusalem and obeyed the commands of God, they might presents offerings in the house of God and honour the lawful king and abandon him. What, then, did he do because of such lust for power (philarkhia) and empty vanity? In order that he might seem fit to rule the people, he set up two golden calves on the mountains saying, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you out of Egypt. Worship these—do not go up to Jerusalem.” And having legislated these things for the people, he took them away from God and Jerusalem”.158
157 They do share key features intriguingly, with two sections from Tertullian’s treatise Against
Marcion (3:13.8-10; 4:35.9-11), but this probably reflects independent development of the potential for identity-generation of the biblical past—not any influence or textual link. The significance of this remains to be explored. The association of Samaritan origins with Jeroboam also appears in John of Nikui’s likely late seventh-century Chronicle 93:4-9 (=Pummer no.165), but only in terms of idolatry.
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Amphilochius shows Jeroboam as motivated by philarkhia, a lust for power that threatens the church. Read straight, this signals that Amphilochius comes from the same camp of ecclesiastical order as Chrysostom.159 But in Amphilochius, philarkhia glosses the monarchic Israelite past, and in doing so shapes a novel account of Samaritan religious error. 1 Kings 11-12 recalls how Jeroboam, an Ephraimite (1 Kings 11:26), was declared king by Israel against the House of David (1 Kings 12:19 - 20).160 Specifically, it recalls how he repeated—and doubled the sin of Aaron. Having been appointed king by the ten tribes, Jeroboam, to avoid the heart of the people turning back to Rehoboam of Judah—the inevitable result of their offering sacrifices in Jerusalem—forged two golden calves, and declared them to represent the Lord, the god of Israel (1 Kings 12:27-8).
Amphilochius transforms this story of Israelite division into an origin story of the Samaritans.161 It is Jeroboam, Amphilochius argues, who gave the northerners the
name “Samaritan” as an expression of self-pride. In this way, Amphilochius, like Origen, Epiphanius, and Jerome, recognizes in the name “Samaritan” the claim made
159 See Chrysostom, In Eph 10 and 11 on philarkhia as church destroying; Kelly, Golden Mouth,
101.
160 We know at least three distinct versions of Jeroboam’s ascent in the MT and LXX versions;
see for an overview Marvin A. Sweeney, “A Reassessment of the Masoretic and Septuagint Variants of the Jeroboam Narratives in 1Kings/3 Kingdoms 11-14,” JSJ 38 (2007): 165-95. Note, however, that whilst these often differ significantly, Amphilochius’ Samaritan origin narrative is not present in any of them.
161 Interestingly, Mordechai Coogan also thinks that the story of Jeroboam’s treason in the
LXXA/LXXB accounts reflects rivalry with Samaritans; 1 Kings (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 356. In these Greek accounts, very different from Amphilochius’ approach, the condemnation of the house of Jeroboam occurs prior to the narration of Jeroboam’s cultic wrongdoings rather than after it (as in MT, and in Amphilochius). His treachery is cemented with his marriage into the Egyptian royal family (Sweeney, “Jeroboam Narratives,” 171). Whilst this at first suggests Amphilochius follows a text closer to the MT, his emphasis on Jeroboam’s culpability resembles the Greek LXXA/LXXB.
161
by the Samaritans to be shamerin (םירמש), “keepers of the law.”162 The Greek of
Amphilochius (φύλαξ νόμου) directly translates not only the Hebrew (םירמש) but also the interpretation of legal fidelity. He embeds it, however, in an extended narrative of revolt: Βλέπεις τί ποιεῖ κενοδοξία, τί ἐργάζεται ἀλαζονεία καὶ ὑπερηφανία; Ἐπήρθη κατὰ τοῦ ἐννόμου βασιλέως, ἠναγκάσθη λοιπὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ πάθους τῆς φιλαυτίας καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν τὸν θεὸν ἀσεβῆσαι. Καὶ τί πρὸς ταῦτα; Σαμαρείτην ἑαυτὸν καὶ τὸν λαὸν ὀνομάζει· Σαμαρείτης δὲ τῇ Ἑβραίων φωνῇ <ἐστ>ι φύλαξ τοῦ νόμου. Ἆρα ἀκ<ο>λούθως Σαμαρείτου ὄνομα ἑαυτῷ ἐπέθηκεν ἢ ἐψεύσατο;
You see what vain glory does, what boastfulness and arrogance bring about? He was raised up against the lawful king, he was compelled by the sickness of self-love even to act impiously against God himself. And what more? He named himself and the people “Samaritan”— Samaritan in the Hebrew language is a “guardian of the law.” So did he consistently succeed or fail to live up to the name of “Samaritan”?163
Amphilochius diagnoses what he understands as latent in 1 Kings; Jeroboam’s behaviour was inflicted on his people. Not only does Jeroboam fail to observe the prescriptions of the law, he also raises up idols precisely out of desire to preserve his own rule and keep the people’s attention fixed on himself. But adding to 1 Kings 12, Amphilochius’ story represents Jeroboam driven to idolatry due to his arrogance against the rightful king, claiming the observance explicit in the name “Samaritan.”164 Amphilochius expands on his critique:
Εἰ ἦς φύλαξ <τοῦ> νόμου, ἐφύλασσες ἂν τὸν νόμον, ἀνήρχου εἰς τὸν ναὸν τοῦ θεοῦ, ἐκ<ε>ῖ τὰς ἀπαρχὰς καὶ τὰς δεκάτας καὶ πάσας τὰς εὐχὰς ἀνέφερες, ὡς ὁ <θεὸς δ>ιὰ
<Μωϋσ>έως ἐνετείλατο, καὶ ἦς ἀληθῶς φύ<λαξ τοῦ νόμο>υ. <Ἀλλὰ
162 Origen, Hom. In Ez. 9:1; Comm. in Jo. 20:35.321; Epiphanius, Pan. 9.1.2, Holl. 1.197.16-19;
Jerome, Comm. in Amos 2.4.1/3.
163 Haer. 582-88.
164 Again, the same association appears in John of Nikui, Chronicle 93:5 (= Pummer no.165); the
link between Jeroboam and idolatry is so well established in late antique interpretation that it is somewhat surprising the link to the Samaritans as a group is made only rarely.
162
τοὐναντίον> ἀπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ ἀπέστησας τὸν <λαὸν> αὐτοῦ, εἴδωλα ἀνέστησας, καὶ φύλακα σεαυτὸν λέγεις τοῦ νόμου.
If you were a guardian of law, you would have guarded the law, you would have gone up to the temple of God, offered up there the first fruits and tithes and all the prayers, as God commanded through Moses—and you would have been truly a guardian of law. But in contrast you drew his people away from God, you raised up idols—and you call yourself a guardian of the law!165
The Mosaic law, he argues, demanded veneration of the temple in Jerusalem , with all appropriate tithes, prayers, and festival observances. Since Jeroboam did not such thing, he failed to guard the law. He also dragged his people away into idolatry. Significantly, Amphilochius does not acknowledge the Samaritan Pentateuch’s claims that such acts were properly performed towards Gerizim.166 The proper site of worship, for Amphilochius, remained Jerusalem—he does not mention the precise details of the Samaritan mistake despite its appearance in the Gospel of John. The Samaritans’ schismatic identity manifests itself in aggression towards Jews:
Πά<ν>τως φύλακές εἰσι τοῦ νόμου οἱ τῇ Ἱερουσαλὴμ παραμένοντ<ες> καὶ τὰς ἐντολὰς τοῦ νόμου καὶ τῶν προφητῶν φυλάσσοντες. Ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἠρκέσθη μόνον τὸ ψευδὲς ὄνομα ἑαυτῷ περιθεῖνα<ι>, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀκάθαρτον λέγει τὸν λαὸν τοῦ θεοῦ τὸν παραμένοντα τῇ [τε] Ἱερουσαλὴμ καὶ τοῦτον βδελύσσεται κατὰ κράτος ἐβδελυγμένος ὢν καὶ ἀκάθαρτος. Οὐδὲ γάρ τινος ἅπτεται ὧν ὁ λαὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, οὔτε σκεύει τινὶ κέχρηται ᾧ τὸ πρὶν ἐχρήσατο ὁ λαὸς τοῦ θεοῦ. 165 Haer. 588-93.
166 A detailed review of the inclusion of Gerizim in the Samaritan Pentateuch remains Ferdina nd
Dexinger, “Das Gerizimgebot im Dekalog der Samaritaner,” in Studium zum Pentateuch. Walter Kornfeld zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Georg Braulik (Vienna: Herder, 1977), 111-33. For an introductory overview of significant SP “variants,” see Pummer, Samaritans, 202-7. For specifics on editing and compilation, see Esther Eshel and Hanan Eshel, “Dating the Samaritan Pentateuch’s Compilation in Light of the Qurman Biblical Scrolls,” in Emanuel: Studies in Hebrew Bible, Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls in Honor of Emanuel Tov, ed. Shalom M. Paul, Robert A. Kraft, Lawrence H. Schiffman, and Weston W. Fields (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 215-40; Adrian Schenker, “Textgeschichtliches zum
Samaritanischen Pentateuch und Samaretikon,” in Samaritans Past and Present: Current Studies, ed. Menachem Mor and Friedrich Reiterer (Studia Samaritana 5; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 105 -21); Emanuel Tov, “Proto-Samaritan Texts and the Samaritan Pentateuch,” in Crown, The Samaritans, 397-407; Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible: Third Edition, Revised and Expanded (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012 [1992]), 80-99..
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They are entirely guardians of the law who remained in Jerusalem, and guarded the commandments of the law and of the prophets. But it was not sufficient just to keep the false name, he also calls the people of God remaining in Jerusalem unclean, and renders them thoroughly loathsome: the one being loathsome who is also unclean [probably short citation from Job 15:16.] For they touch no one who is of the people of God, or drink from some vessel from which the people of God previously made use.167
Here, Amphilochius adds a hook to the story of 1 Kings. Jeroboam doubles down on his own failure. Not content with leading his people away from Jerusalem, and the true commandments of the law and prophets, he intensified his anti -Jerusalem policy. Amphilochius portrays Jeroboam calling those resident in Jerusalem, the real people of God, “loathsome.” He even uses τὸ βδέλυγμα, the visceral LXX terminology for ritual impurity throughout Leviticus and Deuteronomy, as well as Psalms and Wisdom literature, as well as the basic form of the eschatological “desecrating sacrilege” (τὸ βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως) of Daniel 9:37, 11:31, and 12:11, and a visceral, affective term for a peculiarly intolerable form of disgust more broadly.168 His attention to detail extends both to touch and to vessels; Jeroboam harnesses purity law to try and establish that the Israelites in Jerusalem are inauthentic, unclean even to the touch, whilst he continually calls himself (falsely) the guard of the law that makes them so.
In the second part of his argument, Amphilochius clarifies the reason Samaritan