Is it fair to use the sequence of offerings in Leviticus 8 and Numbers 6 as models for Christian worship? After all, these two texts are specialized – the “filling” ceremony for the priests and the rededication of a Nazirite. When we find the same sequence in Chronicles, it’s also for specialized ceremonies, like the temple rededication in 2 Chronicles 29. I believe the sequence does work more generally, but to see it we need to discern the logic that... Read more
Carlin Barton closes a brilliant article comparing concepts of honor, sacrifice, and sacramentum found among martyrs and gladiators with some observations on the wider cultural import of her work. One of her main aims is to overcome the perception that Christians and Romans were working in completely separate symbolic universes, a perception that fundamentally shapes the historical work of Gibbon and Nietzsche’s genealogy: “For Edward Gibbon, like Friedrich Nietzsche, the Romans were the strong and the noble. Both saw a... Read more
Yoder argues that from the time of the Babylonian captivity, the Jews developed a proto-“free church” model of community life. True in some respects. Jews didn’t have their own polity. But I’ve got doubts if that’s a fair characterization of Jews in and after the exile. Why? The Bible for starters. Jews in exile are not isolated in their ghettos. They are seeking the peace of the city; Daniel, Nehemiah, Mordecai, Esther are the heroes of the time, and all... Read more
Maximilian of Tebessa is often cited as an example of early Christian pacifism. When Roman officials pressured him to accept a military seal and swear the sacramentum by reminding him that other Christians served without qualms, he still refued, saying “They know what is expedient for them; but I am a Christian, and I cannot do evil.” What, exactly, is the evil that he would have to do? Killing? Swearing? Idolatry? It’s not easy to tell. (more…) Read more
Warwick Ball’s Rome in the East is a treasure trove. Instead of telling the story of Rome from an occidental standpoint, he goes east and looks back. What does Roman history look like from Arabia, Syria, Edessa, India? One of his remarkable conclusions is that before the triumph of the west the west had itself been conquered by the east. Commenting on Constantine’s found of Constantinople, he observes: (more…) Read more
In reaction to the lax respectability of the majority church, many hardy souls retreated to the desert or the frontier. So the story goes. Only the monastery was another form of cultural conformity. RA Markus ( The End of Ancient Christianity ) says that “the ideal of the philosophical life was among the most important of the sources which nourished Christian monasticism . . . . In contrast to Judaism, where asceticism played only a minor role and one confined... Read more
Florence Dupont points out in her Daily Life in Ancient Rome that in Latin enemy ( hostis ) andguest ( hospes ) “were formed from the same root, which had the meaning ‘the other who is similar to you.’” Read more
In her study of Roman gladiatorial combat and arenas ( Blood in the Arena: The Spectacle of Roman Power ) Alison Futrell describes the Phoenician practice of human sacrifice transplanted to Carthage: “The young victim was placed in the arms of the bronze image of Ba’al Hammon, arms that sloped downward toward a pit or large brazier filled with burning embers. Once the child had been cremated, the ashes were removed and placed in an urn, which in turn was... Read more
Hippolytus tells the story that Apsethus of Libya trained parrots to fly over North Africa crying out “Apsethus is a god,” and Libyans were taken in and began to offer sacrifices to him. Then a “clever Greek” caught one of the parrots, and retrained it to cry out: “Apsethus, having caged us, compelled us to say Apsethus is a god.” Betrayed, the Libyans burned Apsethus at the stake. All you can say is, that’s some parrot. Read more
In his encyclopedic Later Roman Empire , A. H. M. Jones explains that the church after Constantine failed to transform ordinary social behavior and culture not because it was too lax but because it was too rigorist. Ordinary Christians felt they couldn’t live up to the standards, and responded by delaying baptism to their deathbed or retreating into monasteries. Little direction was given to Christians in civil service: “Pagan philosophers down to the end of the fourth century produced countless... Read more
Leithart
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