On "Ignatius of Antioch" by Allen Brent ***

This study of one of the early "bishops" of Antioch, one who wrote seven letters that are preserved for us and that were written on an extended journey across Asia Minor to the Italian peninsula on his way to be martyred by being fed to wild beasts in the Colosseum in Rome. The story may seem a bit farfetched (Why an overland trip? Would he really be free to talk and write so much?), but Brent discusses in large part what the circumstances were that caused the situation and why just such a thing was possible in the second century. With regard to being able to write and visit on his journey or even being sacrificed in Rome, Brent brings out various accounts that predated or only shortly postdated Ignatius's experience. Cicero, for example, a century earlier, makes note of prisoners being transported to Rome for gladiatorial games. Lucian and Samosota wrote a satire that closely mimics the Ignatian experience of people visiting a traveling prisoner--and some laws make mention of attempts to curtail such free and easy access, showing that a bribe certainly helped to make such visits possible and that laws had to be written to try to prevent just such occurrences.

Why Ignatius would have traveled all the way to Rome is another question that Brent addresses. He sees it as a case where putting Ignatius to death in Antioch would have created too much of a stir. Sending him away, thus, avoids the potential for more violence and fighting. What would Ignatius have done that would have created such stir? Brent makes the case that the strife was all internal to the Christian faith--namely, how to run the church. Ignatius was a proponent of a one-bishop-rule system. By placing himself in the fray and refusing any attempts at pardon, he made a martyr of himself in order to bring unity to the church in the city. Guilt-riddled, men might see what he was willing to do and change their ways accordingly. (I'm not sure I quite believe this, but Brent makes a decent case using cryptic comments from the letters).

Ignatius's main arguments for a bishop, slated next to a council of presbyters and a set of deacons, is drawn, Brent argues, largely from pagan mystery religion and Grecian city-state political systems under Roman oversight. The metaphorical counterpart in Christianity is the Eucharist, in which authority sits in a U-shape. The bishop stands in for God the Father, the presbyters as god's council (a type of the apostolic council), and the deacons as types of Christ, who take the bread and wine into the congregation. Ignatius, in his journey to Rome, takes on a procession like that made within the mystery religions, in which again he stands in for God and his various greeters as stand-ins for the gods, all in an effort to bring unity to the church (as such a procession would bring unity to the state), with the sacrifice to follow at the end. Various quotes from the letters seem to somewhat back up this claim. Indeed, even if Ignatius was not modeling his argument on pagan rites, as Brent seems to be arguing, he likely was at least applying similar terms to make his point, even as the New Testament writers use traditions such as Roman athletic events to make their points.

Ignatius's letters, some thirteen or so in number, are accepted or rejected a spurious by various critics. Six are rejected by almost all, but the other seven are more so accepted. It is these seven that Brent devotes his time examining, and these seven that he argues actually are legitimate. One chapter is given over to countering the arguments of some more-recent scholars who reject some or all of the letters. Another chapter is devoted to how Polycarp's letter fits in with the Ignatian letters. Polycarp's one surviving letter is largely seen as authentic, but some scholars see the mention of Ignatius in it as a forger's interpolation. Brent seems pretty convincing in noting that probably the main reason we even have Ignatius's letters is that Polycarp gathered them, even as his letter makes mention of doing.

Brent also addresses why Polycarp would save such letters if they maintain a position in which pagan ideas are used to justify a version of church government. He sees the link here largely as both Ignatius's and Polycarp's fight against Docetism, the martyrdom of Ignatius being perhaps one of the greatest arguments against the doctrine.

On "The Church in Antioch in the First Century CE" by Michelle Slee ***

This work essentially sets out to examine two sets of Christian communities that existed in the church in Antioch during the first century: one open to Christian converts and one that expected converts to become fully Jewish before becoming Christian. Slee bases this reading on the disagreement that is recounted in Acts 15 and more especially in Galatians 2, and then sees the Didache and the book of Matthew as being written by these two separate communities (the Didache by that of the community open to Gentiles and Matthew by that open only to Jews). The argument is very clearly set forth--outlined at the start, summarized as one hits each chapter, and then summarized again at the end of the book. What could have been difficult reading was very clear.

Slee also does a very good job of summarizing the scholarship surrounding her various assertions, both those for and against her positions. The effect is to give readers a full sense of the opinions out there, but it also to an extent takes from the overall convincingness of her case. Her opinion seems, in such context, merely yet another one rather than the distinctive answer. Indeed, I felt as if she were quite straining in her overall thesis by the end, because so many various "facts" have to line up as she sees them for her overall point to be true.

We have to, for example, accept that the Didache was written in the first century (the earlier the better) and that Matthew was written around 80 CE--and both in Antioch. Many scholars agree with these dates and the place, but if one doesn't, nearly the entire argument falls away. Further, one must accept that James and the Jerusalem church, after making an agreement with regard to how to treat Gentiles, went back on that agreement, thus splitting Paul off from the other apostles and most especially James. Slee even tries to make a case that the letter reproduced in Acts was not written in Jerusalem or at the conference at all--rather, it was created in Antioch by a Didachist faction and the writer of Acts introduced it into his account (the real agreement, which was nevertheless rescinded, was noted earlier in James's speech; because the speech and the letter don't line up precisely, one must be from some other source--as if there would be any point in quoting both if they did line up precisely!).

The center of all of this argument was tablefellowship, and more precisely the Eucharist. The Didachist was open to "Law-free" Gentiles; the writer of Matthew expected all Gentiles to become Jews so that they could share meals and was only recently even open to that. But what is a Eucharist? What does "Law-free" mean? What is Judaism (when no such unitary concept actually existed during much of the first century)? Slee didn't, for me, adequately define these terms. She admits that the Eucharist at this time wasn't well defined, which is likely, but it was unclear to me how it differed from tablefellowship in general or a love feast. If it is only the bread and wine portion of a meal, why would that be special at this time? And if the Gentiles are "Law-free," are they free to worship pagan gods or do other things forbidden in the Scriptures as long as they don't bring improper meat to the meal? The whole issue with tablefellowship with Gentiles was the idea that they were impure based on the possibility that they might be involved with pagan worship, even indirectly, in what they ate. The decree in Acts 15 was to mitigate that. So "Law-free" seems an awkward wording to use, since it imposes part of the law. And how exactly is Matthew a defense of a Jewish Christianity open only to fully converted Jews, when so much of the book critiques the Pharisees, even if it does not (as Slee brings out) critique the Scribes in the way the other Gospels do? (Slee sees the critiques as being actually about Christian factions.) Slee makes her arguments, but in the end, I found many of them unconvincing.

On “Aphraates and the Jews” by Frank Gavin ***

This short text aims to explain how the fourth-century Eastern Christian writer Aphrahat drew many of this ideas from the Jews. The first half provides basic information about life for Christians and Jews under the Sassanian Empire and the basics of the relationship between the two religious groups. The Jews seemed to have faired somewhat better, but neither group did all that well, as their religious affiliation's tie to the Roman Empire was the window through which the empire's leaders saw them: not so loyal as to be Zorastrian, like real Persians. For Jews, this meant trouble especially during the time of Julian, who promised the Jews a rebuilding of their temple; for Christians, the trouble was more constant once the Romans accepted it as the main faith of their empire. Jews occasionally, apparently, even made trouble for Christians. Christians didn't do themselves much of a favor insofar as they seemed to actually favor the Romans, given the views of the Romans about them.

Despite all that, the Christian faith and Jewish faith were still relatively close, especially having a common origin. In the latter half of the book, Gavin looks in particular at a few of Aphrahat's Demonstrations to show how Aphrahat's words mimic those of the rabbis.

On “The Formation of Christianity in Antioch” by Magnus Zetterholm ****

A really good intellectual work will often pull one toward a new way of thinking, slowly and then all of a sudden, providing an epiphany similar to what a character might receive at the end of a work of fiction. Zetterholm's book is such a work. Perhaps not quite as much of a history of Christian church in  Antioch as I would have liked, it managed to make me rethink a bit what's going on in Ignatius's letters and why the Gentile church would have an interest in a gospel mostly aimed at Jewish concerns.

Zetterholm's basic thesis is that the parting of the ways of Christians from Jews was not so much that as it was a separating of Jesus-believing Jews from Jesus-believing Gentiles. This may seem obvious, but Zetterholm focuses on what the implications for such a statement really mean.

The book begins by looking at the role of the Jewish community in Antioch. As Zetterholm makes plain, that community was not a unified front. As with any immigrant community, Jewish peoples in Antioch fell into various factions. Here, Zetterholm uses social theory to make his point. (The long summaries of such theory are perhaps what makes the work very much one of scholarly tone and less interesting than it would otherwise be.) That theory essentially posits that such immigrant communities have varying sets of people: some aim to fit in more with the community to which they've moved, some become more inclined to focus even more on preserving the culture from which they have come. And then, there are folks of various stripes in between, who merge some aspects of the old home with that of the new. So some Jewish people gave up practicing “Judaism,” while others became much more devout, and still others continued some practices while abandoning and adopting others. Judaism, at this time, Zetterholm claims, although not the definitive religion we now know it to be still had unique characteristics that all the various sects would have agreed on, even if they didn't agree on all the particulars or the meaning of those characteristics.

Gentiles in Antioch would have been attracted to Jewish synagogues because of the community that such gatherings offered. Antioch as a city would have been a dangerous and lonely place full of crime and disease. The Jewish synagogue would have offered a reprieve from such a world in ways few others legal gatherings could have. The Jesus movement's impact within those synagogues would mean that some of the synagogues more open to Gentiles would have been affiliated with the faith being forged at that time.

Much ink is spilled at this point on the Acts 15 conference and Paul's letter to the Galatians, as it is in any work about Antioch. Zetterholm, like many, if not most, Christian writers posits a split between followers of James and Paul that would be relatively permanent, with Paul demandings Gentiles remain Gentiles and James demanding Gentiles become Jewish. (The disputes in the New Testament, I would counter, don't really show this.) Nevertheless, the implications of the differing factions do play out in an intriguing way as Zetterholm sees it.

The reason is that after the destruction of the temple and the imposition of the tax on all Jewish people, Gentile believers would have been placed in an awkward position. All Jews, whether practicing or not, were subject to the tax. Gentiles, by contrast, would have only been subject to the tax if they became Jews. As such, they'd have had strong reasons not to become Jewish. Within the synagogue, however, in some communities, they could not take part unless they became “Jewish” by taking on Jewish customs. If the opted not to become Jewish, as Paul had told them they should not be, then the couldn't be full-fledged members of the synagogue and, as such, couldn't be part of a legally recognized colegium. So either they had to become fully Jews (and pay the tax) or they couldn't meet with the synagogue and thus were subject to punishment for illegal gatherings—a penalty either way. Efforts to justify Christianity to Roman authorities (as per the second-century apologists), in his reading, thus become efforts to become legally recognized gatherings separate from Jewish gatherings. As such, criticism of the Jewish faith within such writings are part of an effort to help those Roman authorities distinguish the two from one another, but with the Gentiles now claiming to better represent the ancient faith written out in the Jewish scriptures. Thus, they are still a synagogue group of sorts, in the ancientness of their beliefs, but not of the Jewish stamp, in the rebelliousness of their subjects. When Roman authorities finally do recognize the different several centuries later, anti-semitism has become part of parcel of early Christian teaching.