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Ignatius of Antioch and the Second Sophistic. A
study of an early Christian transformation of
pagan culture. By Allen Brent. (Studies and Texts
in Antiquity and Christianity, 36.) Pp. xvi+380 incl.
26 plates. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006. €84
(paper). 3 16 148794 X; 13 978 3 16 148794 1;
1436 3003
M. J. Edwards
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History / Volume 59 / Issue 01 / January 2008, pp 86 - 87
DOI: 10.1017/S0022046907002680, Published online: 07 February 2008
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0022046907002680
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M. J. Edwards (2008). The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 59, pp 86-87
doi:10.1017/S0022046907002680
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86 JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
on his years of labours in translating the exegetical works of the Antiochene
theologians, especially John Chrysostom and Theodoret, to argue against the
‘ experiential ’ bias still found in treatments of spirituality and point to the centrality
of an engagement with God through reflection on Scripture that we find in these
theologians. He focused on their understanding of prayer, and showed how much
there is to learn from these theologians, all too often neglected in this context. Then
included are the other keynote lectures. There is a fine piece by Philip Esler on how
the Lord might have understood his death, not by attempting to find access to his
inner consciousness, but by asking what kind of social identity was available in his
culture to someone, like Jesus, who suffered innocently after a mission of mercy and
healing. It also demonstrates that a high-placed bureaucrat, such as Esler now is, has
not relinquished his academic commitment. Allan Fitzgerald, in a profound essay on
Augustine’s understanding of the eucharist, takes us well beyond liturgiology into the
heart of Augustine’s faith. Susan Ashbrook Harvey shows us something of the place
of the body in the Syriac tradition, in a lecture rich in insights and full of wonderful
quotations from the Syriac Fathers. Philip Rousseau relates Evagrios’s understanding
of anger to modern philosophical and psychological accounts of the passions, drawing
on a wealth of modern discussion without, however, any mention of Sorabji’s
volume on emotion. Interspersed with these longer lectures are many shorter essays:
a fascinating discussion by Allie Ernst of the way the significant place Martha
occupies as one of the myrrh-bearers in the eastern tradition has been overlooked by
western scholars who focus on Mary Magdalene (in western tradition identified with
her sister) ; several other discussions of feminine spirituality (Rhee on martyrs, Neil
on a later letter to the Carthaginian virgin, Demetrias, unwittingly prominent in the
early stages of the Pelagian controversy) ; a couple of pieces on Byzantine spirituality
(a sharply conceived comparison of Evagrios and Gregory of Sinai by Eiji
Hisamatsu, and a discussion of Nikitas Stithatos’s understanding of the spiritual life
by one of the Japanese translators of the Philokalia, Naoki Kuwabara); lots of essays
on Augustine, especially a good discussion of the link between friendship and the
soul’s ascent by Naoki Kamimura ; and a couple of essays on the bishops’ world seen
through their letters – Augustine’s by Pauline Allen and Gregory the Great’s by
Chris Hanlon. The editors point out that this was the first of these conferences since
the inauguration of the Western Pacific Rim Patristics Society; that it flourishes is
evident from the contributors to this volume.
DURHAM ANDREW LOUTH
Ignatius of Antioch and the Second Sophistic. A study of an early Christian transformation of pagan
culture. By Allen Brent. (Studies and Texts in Antiquity and Christianity, 36.)
Pp. xvi+380 incl. 26 plates. Tübingen : Mohr Siebeck, 2006. E84 ( paper).
3 16 148794 X ; 13 978 3 16 148794 1; 1436 3003
JEH (59) 2008 ; doi :10.1017/S0022046907002680
There is more than one way of nursing a scholarly thesis from the letters of Ignatius.
There is the venerable way of the philologist, which has now become a warren,
because the question is no longer whether Ignatius wrote the corpus or one recension
of it, but whether he wrote one letter, or four, or seven. Another is the new way of the
literary botanist, who imagines that, if every trope in Ignatius is pressed hard enough
between the leaves of some rhetorical handbook written centuries later and for a
REVIEWS 87
different public, something will emerge from the resultant trickle that might not have
been divined by the application of common intelligence and tact. Then there is the
way of the dogmatic theologian, who is bound by his profession to ask more than the
text can answer. Brent’s way, which we may call that of the historian, is the first for
many years that seems more likely to narrow than to widen the prospect for
subsequent scholarship. His thesis is that the progress of Ignatius to Rome, as it is
illustrated in the imagery of his letters, is a Christian metamorphosis of ceremonies
that were regularly performed by pagan dignitaries in the cities inhabited by his
correspondents. His sobriquet theophoros, or God-bearer, a neologism in Christian
nomenclature, would be recognised by neophytes from the civic cult as the title of
the official who carried the images in a mystery procession. Evil powers were averted
in such rituals by the exhibition of effigies or tupoi, while if the object was to cement
homonoia or concord between two cities, the celebrant would commence his itinerary
with a sacrifice. The mysteries commended by Ignatius require no talismans and no
vicarious offering : it is by his martyrdom that he will become the ransom or
antipsuchon for the troubled churches, and the remedy for heresy and faction is to
recognise the ministers of the congregation as types of God and Christ. This is
sophistry unmasking sophistry, a Pauline theology which is all the more Pauline
because it seeks its pattern in Christ, not Paul. Can we prove it to be the theology of
Ignatius ? Not, as Brent admits, by the conventional tools of philology, for what he
professes to demonstrate is not so much a regular coincidence of diction, or even of
religious heraldry, as a correlation of semantic fields. Nor, even if his reading is
accepted, can he be said to have put the dating of the letters beyond dispute, for the
culture of diplomatic ostentation which he describes here persisted for at least a
century after the date that tradition assigns to the death of Ignatius. But it is difficult
to see how the recreation of civic spectacle, which would have come so naturally to
Ignatius on the road, would have served the interests of a forger in his study ; and in
any case the great merit of this book is that it shows ignorance of the exact date of a
text to be no bar to appreciation of its purpose and milieu.
CHRIST CHURCH, M. J. EDWARDS
OXFORD
Julius Africanus und die christliche Weltchronik. Julius Africanus und die christliche
Weltchronistik. Edited by Martin Wallraff. (Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie
der Wissenschaften. Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchris-
tlichen Literatur. Archiv für die Ausgabe der Griechischen Christlichen
Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte, 157.) Pp. viii+346 incl. 23 figs.
Berlin–New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2006. E98. 13 978 3 11 019105 9 ;
10 3 11 019105 9
JEH (59) 2008 ; doi :10.1017/S0022046907003405
What was the year of Christ’s nativity ? The answer of Dionysius Exiguus still
determines our chronologies, though the origin of the reckoning may be
camouflaged by the substitution of ‘ common era ’ for ‘ anno domini ’. The first
computation, however, was that of Julius Africanus, whose chronicle of 221 reached
a watershed at the year 5500 from the creation. So much we know, and we know in
