5.3 ANÁLISIS ECONÓMICO
5.3.2 INGRESOS Y BENEFICIOS
In the Long Recension of Philadelphians, we once again see pedagogically inflected reading habits giving new shape to expressions found in the Middle Recension. In
particular, the strikingly different materials included in the Long Recension highlight the effects of wider discursive practices which framed Jewish–Christian difference as a matter of cognition. Where the Middle Recension (once again) relativizes terms like χριστιανισµός and ἰουδαϊσµός in favor of practices that conform the reader to Christ (e.g. submission to bishop as God; exegesis only through a Christological lens), the Long Recension explicitly constructs religious conformity as something that of necessity involves belief.
Like Magnesians 8–10, Philadelphians 6 has played an important role in attempts to locate the “Parting of the Ways” and discussions of the ways Christians inscribe “Jewishness” to articulate or evoke a corporate identity.378 In particular, this
passage has invited consistent attention as evidence for diaspora Jewish communities
378 See, e.g. Dunn, Partings of the Ways, 344–345; Robinson, Ignatius and the Parting, 203–241. On the matters of identity in Ignatius, see especially Lieu, Image and Reality, 23–56.
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that did not require circumcision for full inclusion.379 Unlike Magnesians however, the
Long Recension of Philadelphians 6 lacks any reference to χριστιανισµός or ἰουδαϊσµός. The passage from the Middle Recension that has caused so much scholarly speculation about uncircumcised Jews has no direct parallel in the Long Recension. Instead of amending and clarifying the Middle Recensions terminology, the Long Recension replaces talk of χριστιανισµόν or ἰουδαϊσµόν with a list of Christological errors, some of which are explicitly connected to Jewishness. The differences illustrate the kinds of reading and writing practices that helped make early Christian rhetoric intelligible and useful for later readers.
The passage which has generated the most attention in modern scholarship reads:
If someone expounds Judaizing (ἰουδαϊσµὸνἑρµηνεύῃ) to you, do not listen to him. It is better to hear Christianizing (χριστιανισµὸν) from a man who has a circumcision (περιτοµὴνἔχοντος) than Judaizing (ἰουδαϊσµόν) from a
foreskinned (ἀκροβύστου) one. If both do not speak about Jesus Christ, they are to me steles and tombs of corpses (τάφοινεκρῶν), upon which are written only the names of men (Phild 6.1, MR).
These brief lines, with their hints of circumcised Christians and foreskinned Jews have generated a surprising degree of debate with regard to distinguishing rhetoric from reality. Multiple readers have used these passages to reconstruct something of the history of the churches in Asia Minor and to make a claim as to which figure in this comparison was the target of Ignatius’s rhetoric.380 Typically, scholars see one as a
purely rhetorical formulation while the other has a specific, real-world referent. Most claim the circumcised Christianizer is identified with Paul, early apostles, or even Jewish
379 Gaston, “Judaism of the Uncircumcised,” 33–44; Barrett, “Jews and Judaizers, 220–244; Speigl, “Ignatius in Philadelphia,” 360–376; Donahue, “Jewish Christianity,” 81–93; Wilson, Related Strangers, 164–165.
380 Barrett, “Jews and Judaizers,” 234; Niebuhr, “’Judentum’ und ‘Christentum,’” 229–231; Lieu,
Image and Reality, 31–32; Gaston, “Judaism of the Uncircumcised,” 37; Wilson, Related Strangers, 164; Trebilco, Jewish Communities, 28.
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Christians while the foreskinned Judaizer is interpreted as referring to Gentiles who espoused and expounded Judaism.381 That is, the circumcised Christian has a historical
referent while the foreskinned Judaizer is a contemporary person or group.
Shaye Cohen has challenged these readings, arguing that they do not go far enough. He suggests both figures were invented for the sake of creating a rhetorically effective antithesis.382 In a compelling argument, Cohen identifies the paradoxical aspect
of the comparison as that which gives the figure its rhetorical punch. Within two nested comparisons (Christianizing is better than Judaizing; foreskinned is better than
circumcised), the combination of Christianizing and circumcision alongside a foreskinned Judaizer creates a more memorable paradox than simply asserting that Christianizing is always and everywhere better than Judaizing regardless of the state of a man’s prepuce.383
While persuasive on many levels, this reading of the Middle Recension raises questions as to why such a position would be so dramatically altered in the Long Recension. If the scribe of the Long Recension and other ancient readers read this as Cohen argues it should be read, why alter the text so dramatically? According to Cohen’s analysis, the rhetorical goal is to memorably remind (or persuade) the reader that Christianizing is of central importance for participating in the realities of the
resurrection. Such a sentiment is hardly out of place in the fourth century, especially at Antioch where John Chrysostom preached his famous sermons “Against the Judaizers.” This idea is equally at home with the Long Recension’s assertion that ἰουδαϊσµός is
381 E.g. Gaston, “Judaism of the Uncircumcised”; Wilson, Related Strangers, 164–165. 382 Cohen, “Judaism without Circumcision,” 408.
383 Cohen calls this a “paradoxical bipolar antithetical comparison” (Cohen, “Judaism without Circumcision,” 409–412) and identifies similar structures in a number of ancient sources. In each case, the structure is used to create a more memorable assertion of the precedence of some value or practice over a variety of other goods. It creates a hierarchy of value where an assertion of a single supreme value provides no such clear ordering of value.
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something that has ceased to exist (Magn 10.1 LR). Yet, this is part of the Middle Recension is not reproduced in the Long Recension.384
I suggest that, in part, the difference arises from the scribe of the Long
Recension’s pedagogical orientation to the Middle Recension.385 The Middle Recension’s
rhetoric creates difficulties for someone primarily seeking instruction and information. Talk of circumcised Christianizers and foreskinned Judaizers highlights the justificatory, persuasive thrust of the Middle Recension’s rhetoric rather than providing a clear
exposition of an agreed upon position.386 The concluding conditional statement in the
Middle Recension creates analogous issues for a pedagogically oriented reader. The text reads, “if both do not speak about Jesus Christ, they are to me steles and tombs of corpses (6.1 MR).” The statement’s hypothetical aspect relativizes even the comparative worth of “hearing Christianizing” as it raises the possibilty that even the one
“Christianizing” may fail to “speak about Jesus Christ.” Just as the first conditional claims it is always better to hear χριστιανισµόν, the concluding conditional implies that such a label is no guarantee that the speaker actually preaches Jesus Christ. Both someone Christianizing and someone Judaizing are portrayed as equally capable of failing to speak properly about Jesus Christ. The former signifier may be better than the latter, but it too can be an empty category, a human name inscribed on a tomb. For a
384 There is a general trend in the Long Recension to use χριστιανισµός and ἰουδαϊσµός with less frequency. χριστιανισµός appears five times in the Middle Recension but only three times in the Long Recension. The same is true for ἰουδαϊσµός which is used four times in the Middle
Recension and only three times in the Long Recension. What is perhaps more revealing of the redactors understanding of such terminology is the fact that none of the additional letters of the Long Recension use the term, though they do mention Jews and “Jewish” ways of doing things on multiple occasions.
385 While this orientation is clear in the Long Recension, it would be useful to determine if this orientation persists in other likely by the same scribe, the Apostolic Constitutions and a commentary on Job by an “Arian” named Julian. On this connection, see Hagedorn, Der Hiobkommentar, xli–lvii.
386 It seems to me that we see a similar pattern in the relationship between Pauline and deutero- Pauline letters. Justificatory aspects of Pauline rhetoric are minimized in favor of portraying Paul as a purveyor of clear, practical teaching.
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reader seeking instruction from this text, it clearly answers what is important—speaking Jesus Christ—but not how such a thing is properly done. The Middle Recension’s forceful rhetoric and its theatrical play on (some) reader’s expectations about the relationship between circumcision and Jesus-devotion serves only to highlight the distance between reader and text.
As in Magnesians, the Middle Recension primarily evaluates χριστιανισµός and ἰουδαϊσµός in terms of action and directionality. Both must be evaluated in terms of their effectiveness at leading people toward the absolute centrality of Jesus Christ. Without the correct focus on the messiah Jesus, “Christianizing” is itself an empty term, capable of leading the hearer astray. The comparison of anyone who fails to “speak about Jesus Christ” to “steles and tombs of corpses, upon which are written only the names of men (6.1 MR),” suggests a concern about appearance and reality reflected elsewhere in the Middle Recension.387 Just as a tombstone carries only a name and not the reality of a
person, so too designations like “Christianizing” are human names that do not necessarily reveal what they ought.
Curiously, it is this aspect of names on tombs that remains similar between the Middle and Long Recensions. The Long Recension concludes its pedagogical list of erroneous beliefs and practices by saying “all such people are steles and tombs of the dead upon which are written only names of dead men (6.7 LR).”388 Here however, the
“names of dead men” are not the human labels adopted by or expounded to the assembly. Instead, they are the names of the “heretics” given as exempla of erroneous beliefs. The pedagogical list consists of a series of conditionals that culminates in
387 E.g. Romans 3.
388 The only difference between the Middle and Long Recensions in this phrase is the inclusion of the adjective νεκρῶν to modify ἀνθρώπων. This subtle difference reflects the larger differences found in this section of the Long Recension. The Long Recension makes “names” refer to heretics while the Middle Recension appears more concerned with the limits of classification.
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identifying all those mentioned in the list as “steles and tombs.” Simon Magus (6.2), Ebion389 (6.3), and Nikolaios390 (6.6) are named as negative exempla, as deviants from
correctly Christian ideas. Other errors are explicitly associated with the designation Jew, either through the term ψευδοϊουδαῖος391 (6.1) or by association with the “Christ-
murdering Jews (χριστοφόνωνἰουδαίων, 6.5).” By adopting such labels and deviant beliefs, the people involved attach themselves to the names of dead men rather than the name of the resurrected Christ.
Rather than looking to other portions of the letter to establish how someone speaks correctly about Jesus Christ, the scribe of the Long Recension takes the Middle Recension’s discussion of Judaizing, Christianizing, and speaking Jesus Christ as a springboard for addressing the question of how to speak about Jesus Christ. The Long Recension employs a consistent formulation: “if someone (ἐάντις) confesses/says
389 It is not completely clear whether this is treated as a proper name or not. Given that the Long Recension refers to one “named Ἐβίων” as a “poor man (πένης),” the redactor appears to know the Aramaic root of the term (at least from Origen, as did Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica 3.27 and Ecclesiastica Theologia 1.14). Nevertheless, the use of the term ἐπίκλην connotes personal names rather than merely an adjective for impoverishment and suggests that at least some authors who knew of the word’s roots thought that it had been adopted as a personal name.
390 In most manuscripts of the LR, the “Nikolaitans” are referred to as “falsely-named.” It seems likely that the redactor wished to make clear that those who called themselves or were called by this name had in some way misunderstood the intentions of Nikolaios. Cf. Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 3.4. In Epiphanius, Nikolaios is no longer depicted as misunderstood (Panarion 25.1). Instead, he is unable to maintain the demands of continence in marriage and thus makes his sexual activity a component of access to salvation. Epiphanius’ account seems to draw from a stream of tradition leading back to Irenaeus (Adversus haereses 1.26) while a competing tradition runs through Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius (Historia ecclesiastica 3.29), and the Long
Recension (Trallians 11.2, Philadelphians 6.6). All seem to agree that the Nikolaitans advocate sexual immorality (presumably on the basis of Revelation 2:6 and 14–15 where Nikolaitans and those who hold to the “teaching of Balaam” and “practice fornication” are juxtaposed). However, they disagree on whether Nikolaios deliberately or accidentally gave rise to such errors.
391 This term appears only in the Long Recension (Philadelphians 6.1; Trallians 10.5) and a citation of the Long Recension of Trallians in the Chronicon Paschale, p. 416, line 17. As Cohen notes in passing, a pseudo-Jew seems to be what we would mean by a “Jew,” that is someone who identifies themselves or is identified by others as having some marker of Jewishness deemed sufficient for inclusion in a larger class of people. Cohen, “Judaism without Circumcision,” 400. This is supported by Trallians 10.5 in which the “pseudo-Jews” are characterized as those who “judged” Jesus before his execution. This leaves open space for an understanding of “Jew” as a positive designation for others devoted to Christ, much as Paul says the “real” Jew is the one with circumcision of the heart (Rom 2:28–29), thus arguing for the possibility of gentile Jews.
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(ὁµολογῇ/λέγῃ)392x and y but denies/thinks (ἀρνῆται/νοµίζῃ) z, such a one is (ὁ
τοιοῦτοςἐστίν)…” This clear and consistent structure creates an easily followed digest of correct and incorrect teaching about Christ.393 Both readers and hearers would have had
little trouble identifying correctly Christian attitudes, especially as the verb ὁµολογῇ (agree with, confess) consistently introduces those ideas which the audience should embrace. Repetitive formulations coupled with the example of specific heretics enable easy digestion and recall of correctly Christian attitudes. This format reduces the potential complexity that arises from the Middle Recension’s formulations of Judaizing and Christianizing and encourages the reader to see theological deviance as something easily identified and separated from Christian communities. By placing this on the pen of Ignatius, the Long Recension implies that such clarity has always been part of the
Christian story.
This list contributes to the image of communal purity and peacefulness effected by both the similarities and differences between the recensions.394 By using conditionals,
the Long Recension provides an easy way to test belief, but the uncertainty inherent in
392 The vocabulary for acceptable speech is very consistent with only two instances where ὁµολογῇ is not used for protasis of the conditional. The language for incorrect activity is highly varied, encompassing the activities of denying, thinking, believing, and speaking. This rhetorical
structure itself inculcates the heresiological trope of united orthodoxy over and against a heretical diversity and competition.
393 It has long been a staple of histories of heresiology that the digests of various sects and their teachings were rooted in doxographies produced by Hellenistic philosophical schools in order to inculcate an awareness of the teachings deemed most important for identifying the differences between the schools, though often without the explicit polemical intent found in most Christian sources. Recently, Smith, Guilt by Association, 1–48, has argued that we should look to the deutero-Pauline epistles for the proximate sources of early heresiology, in part, because this better explains the preference for polemical rather than pedagogical emphasis in Christian heresy catalogues. However, the rhetorical structure of Philadelphians 6 (LR) provides a clear case of polemical content that was composed with pedagogical purpose. That is, the distinction between pedagogy and polemic is an arbitrary one insofar as polemic often attempts to inculcate and bolster a specific set of values. Similarly, in his focus on early heresiology, Smith does not take into account the rapidity with which such catalogues were pressed into a simultaneously
polemical and pedagogical role in monastic and other ecclesiastical settings. See, Cameron, “How to read Heresiology.”
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conditionals effectively avoids any direct or indirect accusation that such proscribed beliefs exist among the audience. Similarly, the repetition of ὁτοιοῦτος (such a one) reinforces the notion that this deviance is not present among the audience. It subtly encourages readers to see incorrectly Christian beliefs and statements as distinct and distant from themselves. Various glosses on the heretical exempla solidify this sense of separation between audience and heresy. The named offenders are identified as children of the devil (6.1–2), possessed by “the apostate dragon (6.4),” and strangers to Christ (6.6). Threats of false teaching and theological error all derive from outside. Nothing in the list’s rhetorical structure suggests that the reader will find themselves under censure.
Despite the lack of reference to Judaizing or Christianizing in the Long
Recension, concern with Jewishness remains. The list constructs Jewishness as a form of Christological error, a failure to believe the correct things about Christ. The first
conditional asserts that someone who “denies that Christ is the son of God is a liar, just like his father the devil, and such a one is a pseudo-Jew of the lower circumcision (6.1 LR).” Further on in the list, Jews are again employed as a sign of deviance. The Long Recension asserts that someone who says that “the incarnation was an appearance (δόκησιν)” and “is ashamed of (Christ’s) suffering…denies faith no less than the Christ- murdering Jews (6.5 LR).” Even a docetic Christology is dangerously Jewish.
Surprisingly, it is not the Ebionites with their supposedly Jewish-Christian focus on the humanity of Christ who are identified with Jews.395 Instead, the whole range of
Christological deviance is on par with “Jewish” error, from a Christ who is not the Son of God to a Christ who is so ethereal as to only appear human. Incorrectly Christian beliefs
395 This is striking given modern scholarship’s focus on “groups” such as Ebionites being “too” Jewish in their Christology. Here, the Long Recension identifies Jewish participation in Jesus’ death with Christological formulations that both deny “Son of God” status to Christ and assert absolute divinity such that incarnation and passion are in appearance only.
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amount to the same thing, a denial or refusal of faith that is consistently figured as Jewish. Whatever else Jews might be, they are at base an example of Christological error.396
This reduction of Jewishness to Christological error is closely coupled with the Long Recension’s presentation of Christianness as rooted in correct speech and cognition. The Long Recension’s structure repeatedly emphasizes certain ways of speaking and the thoughts that precede such speech as excluding a person from relationship to God. Almost all forms of correct speech are identified throughout this