Literacy, Orality, and the Brokerage of Power and Authority in Late Antique Egyptian Christianity (original) (raw)
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The Heythrop Journal, 2011
In the contribution to the sociology of religion included in his massive work on Economy and Society, Max Weber gives a brief genealogy of what he calls 'innerworldly asceticism,' tracing the phenomenon the analysis of which he would become famous for in the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism back to the middle ages. Here he suggests that labor as a hallmark of Christian monasticism is a distinctively western phenomenon, receiving its 'strongest expression in the starkly simple, methodical regulations of the Cistercians.' 1 By contrast, 'oriental and Asiatic types of salvation religion,' including the spirituality of the eastern Christian churches, manifest a tendency toward otherworldly 'contemplation.' 2 Now, as a community and as a monastic program, the Cistercians have their genesis in a revival of the rule of St. Benedict, whose ideals were being eroded, or so they claimed, by the liturgical excesses of the Cluniacs. 3 Benedict's Rule, however, has as one of its primary historical predecessors the rule developed by Basil of Caesarea in the fourth century, which had provided the framework for monastic life in eastern Orthodox Christianity for centuries. Benedict himself does not hide this debt: at the end of the Rule, he suggests that this document is but a poor beginning, and that for a deeper understanding of monastic life, one should read Basil's rule. 4 Moreover, it is not the case that Benedict merely supplemented Basil's rule with stricter prescriptions regarding labor. If anything, Basil's rule says more about work than Benedict's does. The purpose of this paper is not to disprove Weber's genealogy of innerworldly asceticism (it is doubtful that this historical issue is of utmost importance in the evaluation of Weber's deployment of that concept), but rather to give an interpretation of one of the most important documents in the history of the development of the Christian monastic conception of work, namely, Basil's Asketikon (i.e., his 'rule'). The paper takes this document, whose composition is occasional in nature, being Basil's response to questions that arose as ascetics began to live in communities of their own rather than in preexisting households, as its point of focus. We shall argue that Basil was more concerned, first, with the justification of the ascetic life as a viable option among other ways of life and, second, with the elaboration of how the work of a community of ascetics would meet a variety of material needs, than he was with articulating a spirituality of work that made of work an ascetic virtue in itself. In a variety of ways we hope to illustrate, work could serve as a training ground for the virtues, but it was such as a single component subsumed under a larger spiritual program, the goal of which was a devotion to God with a totally undistracted state of mind.
[2016] Responses to Revelation: Alexandrian and Cappadocian Text Production and Hermeneutics
In the second decade of the 20 th century a small group of Jewish German intellectuals was considering resuscitating Schelling's late project of a philosophy of revelation. In his Star of Redemption, Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) reads the attempt of thinking revelation, which plunged idealism in an abyss of trans-speculative silence and in the depths of the via negativa, as the dawn of a different, thoroughly positive, line of approach not only to revelation itself but also to the thought that goes to revelation's encounter. Rosenzweig construes revelation as a complex speech-act that invites and enables a liturgical response. Instead of a semantics of revelation stretched beyond its speculative limits, Rosenzweig envisages a pragmatic of revelation and a performative-liturgical semiosis. Our group reunites three philosophers with a patristic background and an expertise in the modern and recent philosophies of language. We shall use the semantic-pragmatic tension at the heart of the Rosenzweig-Schelling debate to explore the possibility of a performative liturgical function of patristic literature as an alternative to the already well-studied semantic and speculative directions of this same literature. Our central concern will be taking seriously this literature's claims to being an extension of and a diligent response to scriptural revelation. To this end, we propose a set of analyses of Origen's exegesis of Proverbs 22:20-21, John 1:1-2, and Phillipians 2:6-11, as well as a few, more comprehensive, interpretations of Cappadocian homiletic literature, which we shall place in dialogue with Rosenzweig's Sprachdenken, Benveniste's theory of enunciation, and Austin's performative linguistics; with Lévinas' philosophy of language and its Lyotardian elaboration, as well as with Zizioulas personalist reformulation of patristic ontology.
2019
The Derveni Papyrus has been often misread and misunderstood for six main reasons. (1) First, because the papyrus was falsely labeled as ‘Orphic’ in the very first report. (2) Second, because another misleading label – ‘Presocratic’ – was soon after that attached to its author. (3) Third, because the rhetorical/grammatical terms of the Derveni author τὰ κοινά καὶ τὰ ἴδια (sc. ὀνόματα or ῥήματα) “common and peculiar names” that provide a clue for understanding his theory of language and the origin of religion have been misunderstood as alleged ‘echoes’ of Heraclitus’ own terminology. (4) Fourth, because of the failure to distinguish between two types of pantheism in early Greek thought, the naturalistic and the ethico-religious. (5) Fifth, because of the failure to distinguish between two types of allegoresis of myth: constructive (friendly and apologetical in purpose) and deconstructive (polemical or atheistic). (6) And, last but not least, the widespread (after Tsantsanoglou [1997]) misinterpretation of πάριμεν in PDerv., col. V as an alleged indication of the author’s religious profession. Mistake (1) is addressed in § (II), mistake (3) in § (IV), mistake (5) in § (II), mistake (6) in § (XI). The attribution of PDerv. to Prodicus of Ceos proposed in this article is based on verbal coincidences of peculiar phrases and terms in PDerv. and Prodicus’ fragments; Prodicus’ peculiar theory of the origin of the names of gods and religion from agriculture and other τέχναι ‘useful’ for human race is directly attested in PDerv.; there is also the evidence found in both Aristophanes and Themistius that Prodicus wrote an allegorical interpretation of the Orphic theogony. The demonstration of our thesis is presented in 11 sections (§) and three appendices (App.). After preliminary remarks on the necessary distinction of the two types of pantheism and allegoresis in Greek thought (§ [I]) we define in § (II) the literary genre, the general purpose, and the hermeneutical method of the Derveni treatise, and draw a preliminary intellectual portrait of its author describing his peculiar features, a kind of ‘composite image.’ In § (III), we argue for Prodicus as the author of PDerv. and present the 19 testimonia on which this attribution is based. These include both the verbatim quotations with Prodicus’ name that find an exact correspondence in the text of PDerv and the common peculiar features of language and style. In § (IV), we propose a reconstruction and interpretation of the text of col. IV that contains a quotation from Heraclitus. This column is of primary importance for understanding the aims and allegorical method of the author in general, as well as for his theory of names. In § (V), the problems of the original title and the date of the Derveni treatise are addressed, as well as its relation to the psephisma of Diopeithes (432 BC). In § (VI), the philosophical sources of Derv.T are discussed. Apart from the Anaxagorean source of the Derveni author’s cosmology and theory of matter recognized long ago, we discuss the possible influence of Democritus while dismissing “Leucippus”, Diogenes of Apollonia, and the Eleatics. We point to Protagoras as an important source of anthropology for the Derveni author and to Heraclitus as the source of his philosophy of language (including functionalist semantics) and criticism of popular religion. In § (VII), we briefly present our reasons for rejecting the ascription of PDerv. to other authors (Epigenes, Stesimbrotos, Euthydemus, Diagoras of Melos). § (VIII) expands the discussion of Prodicus’ atheistic sobriquet ‘Tantalos’ in § (III) by focusing on two cryptic Tantalos passages in Euripides’ Orestes. Taking the torture of Anaxagoras before his trial as a historical fact (which the new reconstruction of Philodemus’ account by Eduardo Acosta Méndez has brought to light, and which Christian Vassallo confirms in this volume, DAPR, T7), we interpret the tortures of Tantalos as an allusion to Anaxagoras’ trial, a cryptic commemoration of the 20th anniversary of his death, and a makarismos of the heroic martyr of science, analogous to Euripides’ cryptic commemoration of Protagoras’ death in Ixion. § (IX) searches for further reflections of the ‘avian’ theme (ὀρνίθειον in PDerv., cols. ΙΙ and VI) in Aristophanes’ Birds and Clouds. It starts with the attribution of a neglected comedy fragment in the Suda Lexicon to Aristophanes’ Seasons and connects the comic passages in the Clouds on ἀλεκτρυών with Prodicus’ orthoepeia. The passage on ‘Persian cock’ as a prehistoric king in Birds 481–492 is interpreted as a parody of Prodicus’ theory of the origin of religion and civilization. § (X) discusses three ‘Heraclitizing’ passages (apart from col. IV) in cols. V, XX, and XXII, and arrives at the conclusion that cols. V and XX contain either hidden verbatim quotations from Heraclitus or paraphrases close to the original text with authentic terms and phrases, whereas col. XXII contains a summarizing exposition of Heraclitus’ philosophy of lan- guage and religion (the invention of polytheism by poets due to their ‘ignorance’). In § (XI), the hypothesis that Euripides may have taken with him to Macedonia a copy of Prodicus’ work on religion, since he quotes it in the Bacchae on which he worked at that time, is advanced. A copy of it may have been made for the library of Archelaus in Pella. In App. (1) we defend the traditional 5th cent. date and the Preplatonic character of PDerv. in response to Luc Brisson’s Stoic hypothesis. App. (2) clarifies our use of the term peritrope and explains the Derveni treatise as a naturalistic peritrope of a religious text. App. (3) identifies a neglected reflection of Prodicus’ benefaction theory of religion in Xenophon’ Memorabilia with parallels from PDerv.
Ethiopic Literary Production Related to the Christian Egyptian Culture
Paola Buzi - Alberto Camplani - Federico Contardi (eds.), Coptic society, literature and religion from late antiquity to modern times. Proceeding of the Tenth International Congress of Coptic Studies, Rome, September 17th-22th, 2012 and Plenary Reports of the Ninth International Congress of Coptic Studies, Cairo, September 15th-19th, 2008 (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 247, Leuven: Peeters, 2016), I, pp. 503-571.