Theology for the Masses

Conversations in Theology and its interaction with Culture

Book Recomendations

Scott, over at Grace is Unfair, asked his readers for book recommendations.  Since Tom has asked for a list of readables from us, I thought I’d double-dip my recommendations here.  This is not a list of essential books, nor the most influential books I have read.  Instead, they are some good books that will help round any person.

Religious Studies

Gods of the City, edited by Robert Orsi - This is a collection of essays and case studies done on religious people in cities. It touches on all kinds of topics. There is a study of a Hindu temple in DC, a absolutely fascinating look at racial construction through a study of the Italian Harlem, the sacralizatrion of secular space by the Salvation Army, and the Japanese Presbyterian Church among others. (I have this book - can lend)

Playing Indian by Philip Deloria We constructed "Cowboys and Indians.

Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa by David Chidester: You will be blown away by this book. The anchor. The power of religion in defining the other. (can lend)

Early Christianity

Women and Christian Origins, by Ross Shepard Kraemer (Editor), Mary Rose D’Angelo (Editor) Another collection of essays; this time on women in early Christianity. Some are good essays, such as real women in the undisputed letters of Paul. Others are not so good, such as (I have this book - can lend, but I use it a lot)

The First Urban Christians by Wayne A. Meeks - Meeks looks at the earliest Xian documents (the letters of Paul) to describe tensions and texture of the first Christians, which were found in cities. The introduction is a pretty good description of NT scholarship in its own right.

In Memory of Her by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza This is a controversial work, but the best of trustful feminist scholarship. Schüssler Fiorenza is a hard-nosed german new testament scholar who teaches at Harvard. This work is an excellent sociological and exegetical study of the earliest Christians. She does not damn nor whitewash Paul - a rare thing in any scholarship on the subject.

The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles translated by William Wright. This is a interesting and sometimes unintentionally hilarious collection of Syrian acts of the apostles. It isn’t all of them (no Acts of Peter, for instance), but it will give you an idea of what popular Christians were consuming and producing at the time. (as opposed to the official story of the early church fathers) This work is over 130 years old and now in the public domain. I made a copy of it on lulu which I think you might like rather than the huge volume that also contains the Syriac manuscripts tradition.

Religious History

Augustine of Hippo by Peter Brown

The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism by Harry S. Stout

Arc One – Critiquing Roman Gender Roles

Wednesday, we looked at the an overview of the rhetorical effect of the Acts of Thecla to better understand how it functioned in the early Christian mind.  Today, we will examine the first arc of gender criticism in detail in the Acts of Thecla.

The narrative structure of the Acts of Thecla consists of two four-part arcs.¹ I have modified Aubin’s two three-part arcs by including the parallel episodes of confrontations between Thecla and Paul. While she acknowledges the existence of these episodes, she excludes them from the arcs. I have included them since they provide the resolution of the arc. The components of the arcs are listed as follows

1. Pauline instruction and rejection of suitor,
2. arrest and trial,
3. execution and deliverance, and
4. confrontation and contrast with Paul.

The first arc consists of the conversion of Thecla and rejection of a suitor. The arc opens with the active Paul entering Iconium preaching a variation of the Beatitudes that promote celibacy and ascetic lifestyle. The passive Thecla is enamored with this message and for three days and three nights listens to Paul preach. Passivity was a gendering mark of the feminine as was activity a mark of the masculine.²  The “three days and three nights” reference may draw the reader back to Jesus’ time in the tomb before his resurrection and symbolize what is happening in Thecla as she listens to Paul preach. Thecla is critiqued by her family which criticizes her along gender lines, referring to her as one that is paralyzed, distracted, and full of passion.³With her first step away from the Roman construct of female passivity, she decides to follow Paul and takes her first step into action by deciding not to marry her influential fiancé. This entrance into agency and action places here at odds with her family, her fiancé, and the city. Her fiancé throws Paul in jail. She is still a passive observer at this point in the story. She does not actively disavow her fiancé, only passively withdraws from him. She does not act towards him, but instead does not follow through with her socially prescribed actions. As such her rejection is more tacit than explicit.

In the second part of the first arc Thecla, her first arrest and first trial, she attaches herself to Paul though the shedding of feminizing possessions, her mirror and bracelets. Again, while Thecla shows some agency in seeking out Paul, she still is passive though out her arrest and trial alongside Paul. Additionally, she does not speak during her trial. The agents working against her are the Roman ideological bastions of family and state. Her actions are threatening to the state and to her family because of the worry that her example will spread. Two statements by her opponents underscore this. First, the governor, the representative of the Roman state, questions her about her abandonment of social duty, saying “Why do you not marry Thamyris according to the law of the Iconians?”⁴  After she refuses to answer, her mother, the representative of the Roman family, petitions the governor to execute Thecla, saying, “Burn the lawless one! Burn her who is no bride in the midst of the theater in order that all the women who have been taught by [Paul] may be afraid.”⁵  The story shifts away from Paul at this point as he is sent away with a beating and begins to center more on Thecla, as she is sentenced to be burned at the stake. Thus, in the second episode of the first arc Thecla passively challenges through the sin of omission the status quo of the family and state and as a result is condemned to die as a result.

The third episode resolves the crisis of the second episode and doles out the consequences for the parties involved. Thecla is saved from the pyre by a hailstorm sent by God that kills many of the onlookers in the crowd. Here we see in her time of trail being protected by God and her opponents punished. In the reader’s minds, Thecla and her ideals are vindicated while the values of the state and family are conversely condemned.

As Thecla is beginning to show agency and is moving away from the Roman conception of feminity at the resolution of the first arc in the fourth episode, Paul begins to move away from the ideal of masculinity. She actively seeks out and finds Paul, who becoming more and more passive in the story, hiding in a cave. Paul, the hero earlier in the story, moves farther away from this ideal through her dealings with Thecla in the fourth episode. At the turn of the fourth episode Thecla and Paul exchange places in the narrative. Thecla has now earned the right to be a confessor and even to forgive sins. ⁶ She still, however, seeks instruction from Paul but finds none. In fact, Paul slides towards Thecla’s opponents in his denouncement of Thecla’s desire to be baptized. Yes, he is foreshadowing her self-baptism but his reasons are suspect. He is afraid of her falling into temptation because of her beauty, not lack of virtue. Paul is thus discredited through this process, given Thecla’s courage at the theater.⁷ 

Thus, Paul is moving into the realm of the imagined feminine my means of his increased passivity and Thecla is moving into the realm of the masculine with her gradual accrual of action.  Monday, we will look at the second arc in which Thecla and Paul complete this journey.

1. Aubin, "Reversing Romance? The Acts of Thecla and the Ancient Novel," 261. [↩]
2. Ibid. [↩]
3. Acts of Thecla 10. [↩]
4. Acts of Thecla 20.  [↩]
5. Acts of Thecla 20. [↩]
6. Davis, The Cult of St. Thecla: An Introduction to Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity, 73. [↩]
7. Aubin, "Reversing Romance? The Acts of Thecla and the Ancient Novel," 267. [↩]

Loan words and OT Dating

Our very own Hank, from Think-Wink, linked to בלשנות (balshanut), which is a biblical linguistics blog, on the topic of loan words in the Hebrew Bible.  There the claim is made that:

Some scholars have argued that Biblical Hebrew was never a fully spoken language, but was an artificial literary language created by post-exilic scribes. For instance, Ullendorff’s paper “Is Biblical Hebrew a Language?” BSOAS 34 (1971): 241-55, Knauf’s “War ‘Biblisch-Hebräisch’ eine Sprache?” ZAH 3 (1990): 11-23, and North’s “Could Hebrew Have Been A Cultic Esperanto?” ZAH 12: 202-17. In this article, Eskhult argues that if BH is an artificial language created only in post-exilic times, then loanwords ought to be fairly equally distributed throughout the various books and genres contained in the Bible… 

[However], the Akkadian, Egyptian, and Persian loanwords seem to follow the pattern of the political history described by the biblical texts. It is difficult to explain such a connection if the language was artificial and late. Further, Perisan loanwords abound within the books that are obviously late, but do not appear at all in the Pentateuch.

For those of you following along at home, this is important because it suggests the tradition behind the biblical text dates to the periods and cultures from which the text itself claims to be writing, compared to being composed entirely as an after-thought. 

Shower Question of the Day: Jesus and Women

Does the BC position ever use anything from Jesus to support their claims?  If not, what does that mean for their theology?

I was thinking about that this morning as I was wondering about the merits of ESF’s claim that Christianity developed from the Jesus movement into the Early Missionary movement and then into a group which gradually patriarcalized it.

While doing so, I could not think of where BC’s use Jesus for their claims, just some Old Testament and the later Pauline tradition (but, then again, not the early stuff, which would further ESF’s claim about the early missionary movement).

Anyone with thoughts?  Am I wrong here?  There are just musings from a person getting ready.

Why I am not a Calvinist

Once upon a time, there were two men who were similar in many ways. Both were powerful and creative. Both were kind and loving. Both were well-respected in their towns. Both were fathers. And both were exceptional artists. In fact, the artistic community argued all the time as to which was the greatest, and the general consensus was that their crafts surpassed mere human judgment.

The first man announced an art show to be held in his private gallery at his home. He invited all the most prominent artists and art critics in the world, and promised that the revelation of his latest work would surpass all he’d done before. The night of the show arrived, and the artist’s home was truly a who’s who of the art world – everyone who was anyone was there. As the evening progressed, everyone agreed that these pieces were truly astounding, that they far surpassed the artist’s previous works. Frequently, guests were found weeping as they viewed various pieces, so moving was his mastery of his craft.

Several hours into the evening, the gallery door swung open and the artist’s young son came running into the gallery, clutching a piece of paper in his hand and saying, “Daddy! Daddy!” The artist was in front of the central display piece of his show, and when the son ran up, he excused himself from his conversation and bent down to his son.

“Yes, my boy,” he said softly, “what is it?” The boy excitedly waved his paper in front of his father.

“Look, Daddy! I did it just like you!” The artist took the piece of paper and turned it over. On it was a finger-painting, clearly crafted with all the patience and skill of a five-year-old.

“This is very nice, son. You did a good job,” the artist said, with the patronizing kindness unique to parents. “Why don’t you go show it to Mommy?”

“Put it on the wall, daddy! Put it by yours!” the boy begged.

“Son, this is a serious art show,” the artist replied. “Your daddy is a very important person, and he makes art that is beautiful and praiseworthy. You’ve just done a finger-painting. It wouldn’t be right for me to hang it in here, with all these glorious pieces of art that I’ve created. To display anything you’ve created in here would demean and devalue all of the glorious things I’ve done. I’ll hang this in my office.”

Dejected, the child left, finger-painting now crumpled in his small, unskilled fingers. As he shuffled out of the gallery, the crowd – which had been silently observing – began to whisper their approval. It would be a shame, they agreed, to tarnish the obvious brilliance of this room with such amateurish work. It was clear that the boy would never be half the artist his father was.

Shortly thereafter, the other artist also announced an opening, and he too promised work to surpass all that he’d done before. And once again, the cream of the art community crop gathered in a home gallery to experience an opening of epic proportions. And, as promised, the pieces were brilliant… each more beautiful and breathtaking than the last. And the final piece, the grandest of them all, the pinnacle of the opening surpassed everyone’s hopes. It was quite clearly one of the greatest masterpieces ever committed to canvas.

And once more, several hours into the opening, the door to the gallery cracked open, and this artist’s young daughter ran in, also with a painting in hand. “Daddy, Daddy!” she cried, “Look! I did just like you!”

The father swept his daughter up in his arms and with a growing smile looked down at his daughter’s crude, unskilled finger-painting. “It’s beautiful, honey. Simply beautiful. I know just where I’m going to hang it.”

With that, he set her down and handed the painting back to her. Then he walked over to his masterpiece, the central exhibit of his opening. As he approached it, the whispers in the room – which until now had been muted – grew into a low hum. The father grasped his painting and pulled it down off the wall and cast it to the floor, then turned to his daughter. “Honey,” he called, “may I have your painting?” The child brought her paper over to him and handed it up. The father took it and mounted it in the place where his crowning achievement had once stood. As he did so, the murmering grew to a dull roar, the outrage of the guests clear as they eyed the abandoned masterpiece.

Still smiling, but eyeing the crowd with comprehending eyes, the Father picked his daughter back up. “My dear child,” he began, never taking his eyes off of her, but addressing the crowd with his voice, “you are my greatest creation, the crowning joy of my life. Nothing else I have ever or will ever create could compare with you.” As he continued, voice choked with love and… yes pride, tears filled the corners of his eyes. “You made something the same way I do, and you did it as well as you could. Nothing could make me happier, or bring me greater glory and fame than this beautiful, talented person you’re becoming.”

The girl never left his side for the rest of the evening. And the father never ceased to display his most glorious masterpiece.

Overview of the Acts of Thecla

Monday we finished looking at the Thecla Cult in early Christianity.  Today we will take stock of the actual text itself before looking at the tides of rhetoric it employed.

The textual tradition of the Acts of Thecla effectively co-opted and modified established patterns rhetoric for its own ends. We will explore one of these pre-existing rhetoric patterns that the tradition drew from, the Roman romance novel.¹ 

As mentioned earlier, the Acts of Thecla is a second century account of a female disciple of Paul’s, Thecla.It was included along with Third Corinthians in the Acts of Paul. The relation between the Acts of Paul and the Acts of Thecla is uncertain. It is possible that the Acts of Thecla was originally crafted independent from the Acts of Paul and later inserted. This is evidenced by the shift in protagonist and its ability to stand on its own as an independent work. Some scholars, such as Goodspeed and Davis, assert the opposite, that the Acts of Thecla was originally crafted as a part of the Acts of Paul and later separated.²  They point to the rather abrupt beginning of the Acts of Thecla. The lack of a proper introduction implies that the work piggy-backed on the introduction of the Acts of Paul and signifies a common point of creation. Even if the Acts of Thecla was originally a part of the Acts of Paul, the Acts of Thecla became separated relatively quickly.³ For our purposes, the relationship between the two works is largely irreverent because we our analysis will privilege the oral tradition that served as a source for either the Acts of Thecla or the Acts of Thecla portion of the Acts of Paul.

The Acts of Thecla begins with Paul as the primary protagonist and moves Thecla from her Roman household toward her eventual discipleship.⁴ The work opens in Asia Minor. Paul is traveling to Iconium, present day Konya, after fleeing Antioch. At this point in the Acts of Paul, Paul had previously been outside of Rome. This disjointment of the narrative of the Acts of Paul suggests that the Acts of Thecla is a separate work which was inserted into the Acts of Paul. The flight from Antioch in chapter 1 of the Acts of Thecla most likely refers to the tradition in the canonical Acts of the Apostles where Saul and Barnabas are run out of Antioch Pisidia in chapter 13 and their next destination is Iconium, where they are consequently run out of town in chapter 14. This suggests one of two things, either that the author of the Acts of Thecla was familiar with the Acts of the Apostles or that these two accounts are multiple attestations of the historicity of the events.

Understanding the Narrative

In some senses the text is a variant of the Roman romance novel and in others a complete reversal. Roman romance novels were reproductions of the Roman civic ideal. They “[encoded] marriage as a theme signifying both domestic and imperial harmony.”⁵  Cooper argues that romantic novels illustrate “concerns about the social consequences of imperiled marriage – dynastic strife and social instability.”⁶  The Roman romance novels elevate marriage by elevating its role in the narrative and connect it to the maintenance of civic values.⁷   Cooper frames the genre in terms of defending the city and the state from social dissolution by means of reinforcing social norms. This includes the defense of marriage; the ancient romance novel “may have been perceived as an attempt to stabilize a founding instituting of the social order by calling attention to its charms.”⁸  In order to accomplish this task, the text must rely on strict constructions of gender roles which mirror serve to bolster the established gender roles.

If this is one of the functions of Romance novels in antiquity, the Acts of Thecla utilizes this rhetoric tool, but modifies it for its own ends. As we explore the rhetoric in the narrative, we will find a constant theme of rejection. The assumed feminine is rejected though Thecla’s move into action; the assumed masculine is rejected through Paul’s move into passivity; and the community’s ideological opponents, Roman societal norms, are rejected through Thecla’s deliverance from their attacks.

Friday, we will be taking a look at the first story arc of the Acts of Thecla and see how all of this is working.

1. Melissa Aubin, "Reversing Romance? The Acts of Thecla and the Ancient Novel," in Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative, ed. J. Bradley Chance Ronald F. Hock, and Judith Perkins (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 258. [↩]
2. Kate Cooper and Catherine Fales Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity (Harvard University Press, 1996), 28. [↩]
3. Aubin, "Reversing Romance? The Acts of Thecla and the Ancient Novel," 259. [↩]
4. Cooper and Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity, 37. [↩]
5. MacDonald, The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon 14.#38@14} MacDonald dates the Acts of Paul, which contains the Acts of Thecla between 150-190 CE. Given that the Acts of Thecla was an independent tradition (if not an independent text) that was merged with the Acts of Paul, it was likely crystallized at an earlier date. [↩]
6. Edgar Johnson Goodspeed, "The Acts of Paul and Thecla," The Biblical World 17, no. 3 (1901): 185. and Davis, The Cult of St. Thecla: An Introduction to Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity, 7. [↩]
7. Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament and Other Early Christian Writings: A Reader (Oxford University Press, USA, 2003), 278. [↩]
8. When describing the events in the narrative, items in quotes reflect the translation of the Acts of Thecla as reproduced in "The Acts of Thecla.". [↩]

Devotees of Hagia Thekla

Last Friday, we looked at the physical shrine of Hagia Thekla and what it said about gender roles in early Christianity.  Today, I wanna look at the actions and attitudes of the real people who lived and traveled there.  We will see that the devotees that worshiped, vistied, and lived at Hagia Thekla were from a variety of diverse backgrounds that cut across societal, gender, and geographical lines.  This attests to Thecla’s pull in the early Christian period. 

The primary sources for getting a glimpse at the patronage of Hagia Thekla are the later texts surrounding the tradition. Mining these sources will help identify those people consuming the tradition and illuminate its appeal. The author of Life and Miracles collected miracle accounts from the area that most likely date from 370-420 CE.¹  As we will see, the text paints a site that is largely patronized by women and betrays a tension with patriarchal encroachment. The book “presents a picture of pilgrimage practice and martyr cult suffused with the presence and activity of women.”²  Fifteen of the miracle stories in Miracles involve women and complains in chapter 44 about not being able to collect all of the accounts. There are four classes of devotees described by these texts: wandering itinerants, pilgrims, monastics, and married devotees. Each of these types is attested to in the Diary of Life and Life and Miracles.

Sign pointing the way to the Convent of Saint Thecla in modern day Maalula

Itinerant wandering was a relatively common practice in early Christianity.³  Self-imposed exile and homelessness by Christians “provided a way of separating from the world by leaving home and stability, and embarking on a life of travel.” ⁴  Miracles 34 describes itinerants journeying to the shrine that are attacked by local bandits and saved by Thecla. These women were virgins⁵ that lived out ascetic virtues. Normally itinerant wanderers would have no particular destination in mind for their wanderings, yet Miracles 34 suggest that this wanderer was based at the shrine when Thecla asks why the men have driven this wanderer away from Thecla’s house. If this is the case, this it is possible that a section of the devotees based at the shrine practiced ascetic wandering. This would have been a fruitful method of disseminating the Theclan tradition and oral stories.⁶   It also emulates the model Thecla herself provides as both a wanderer and a monastic.⁷

In contrast to the wanderers based at the shrine, there was also an international pilgrimage centered on the shrine. Pilgrimage was a specialized form monasticism based on ascetic travel and wandering.⁸  We should be wary of importing the medieval stereotype of pilgrimage based on Chaucer.⁹  Instead, we should think of “pilgrimage and the pilgrim in the classical philosophical sense of a ‘foreigner… who want[s] to go home.”¹⁰  Dietz claims that pilgrimage was largely the domain of women.¹¹ Dietz suggests that:

It was women, rather than [men], travelers who most often set up monasteries and xenodocia. The patterns of late antique Christian travel defy out assumptions about social and gender roles. Itinerant spirituality held a special appeal to women, perhaps the relatively marginal role of women in late antique society made them ideally suited to its pursuit.¹²

The Convent of Saint Thecla in modern day Maalula, next to the supposed cave mentioned in the extended edition of the Acts of Thecla

Egeria was considered to be the quintessential pilgrim in late antique Christianity.¹³ For her, it was the journey itself not the places visited that defined the pilgrimage.¹⁴  However, after this, “perhaps the most important part of [traveling] was meeting holy people.”¹⁵  Their stories were collected and passed along; as a matter of fact, it was the continuity of holy people at a site that made the site holy, not the ground itself. Pilgrimage to the site was regular to the degree that it had become routinized by the time Egeria was traveling in the late fourth century. She records four-step liturgy consisting of an arrival prayer, a reading of the entire Acts of Thecla, prayer and the Eucharist, and departure.¹⁶  In addition to a ritualized liturgy, military protection, and increasingly regular routes to the shrine contribute to the routinization of pilgrimage to the shrine.¹⁷

View from inside of the cave at Hagia Thekla.

As noted above, Hagia Thekla had a substantial monastic community. Both Egeria and the Writer of Life and Miracles attest to this community. Egeria describes the possible community’s leader as a deaconess named Marthana.¹⁸  She is the only person named by Egeria. However, the Life and Miracles refer to male guardians on more than one occasion. Therefore it is uncertain if she lead the entire monastic community or only the female devotees. These cells consisted of both men and women;¹⁹ the females were referred to as aputactitae, or virgins.²⁰  These people served the shrine, offering hospitality to any travelers. As mentioned above, they might also have employed ascetic wandering as part of their monastic life.

In addition to these virgins, there were the local and regional married devotees of the Theclan shrine. The Miracles attest to several married women that appealed to Thecla and were granted their prayers. Once such instance is in Miracles 14 where a married woman appeals to Thecla for the religious faith of her husband Hypsistios. She does not live at the shrine nor at the nearby city of Seleucia; she traveled at least 80 kilometers. Thecla convinces Hypsistios to join the Christian community after first strickening him with an illness and then appearing to him as a chambermaid, the result of which is his confession of a Trinitarian formula of belief. Another story, Miracles 42, tells of a woman who leaves her husband and joins the theater. Losing her beauty as a result of this, she travels to Hagia Thekla and petitions her. Thecla appears to her and restores her beauty and her husband. These stories demonstrate that the Thecla tradition as it had developed in the fifth century was welcoming to married women and “despite their emphasis on ascetic values (e.g. women’s flight from family) the Miracles do not portray a clientele restricted to and elite, semi-eremitical caste of virgins or a privileged stream of visiting nuns.”²¹ One did not have to separate from their marriage nor abstain from sexual relations with their spouse in order to participate within the tradition.

Another view inside the modern day remains of Hagia Thecla

Lastly, there was a male contingent at the shrine. This group is attested to in the Miracles and in Egeria’s diary account. In the fourth century there were living quarters of an indeterminate number and percentage at the shrine before it was moved.²² Their influence in the cult is uncertain. On the one hand, it is the women that feature prominently in the narratives; on the other hand, it is possible to detect patriarchalizing patterns within the narratives. For instance, in Life “inventions of female vulgarity” is used to describe the jewelry that Thecla uses to bribe Paul’s jailers.²³ This evaluation is absent from the earlier traditions.²⁴  There are multiple accounts of the male guardians accompanying traveling women in Miracles. Other sections of Miracles describe the female in terms of reduced masculinity. For the writer of Life and Miracles the way for females to achieve true piety was to move into the realm of men. We see this in the words of the governor who witnessed Thecla’s trail of beasts comments on her “forceful and manly qualities.” ²⁵  It is most likely that these are not the overwhelming views and attitudes of the cult of Thecla, given the predominance of women at the shrine, but are the result of the attitudes of the male writer who paraphrased the Acts of Thecla and collected the oral accounts of the women at the shrine. Finally, these traces of patriarchal undercurrents demonstrate that Hagia Thekla cult did not develop independently from men.

Above we have seen that the devotees of Hagia Thekla and consequently the Thecla tradition were from a varied background; there were monastics, wanderers, pilgrims, virgins, married women, and men devotees. The Hagia Theckla shrine gave devotees a way for female Christians to express their religious views. The presence and footprint of males on the site demonstrates that the site and the cult centered on it did not privilege males over females. However, the larger feminine footprint was due to the fact that this was one of the few sites which allowed female expression. Given this varied clientele, let us know explore the roots of the Thecla tradition to see out of what this robust devotion originated.

Wednesday, we will be traveling farther back in time and looking at the text itself and looking at how it constructed and commented on gender roles.

1. Ibid., 41. [↩]
2. Ibid., 49. [↩]
3. See chapter 10 of Maribel Dietz, "Itinerant Spirituality and the Late Antique Origins of Christian Pilgrimage," in Travel, Communication, and Geography in Late Antiquity: Sacred and Profane, ed. Linda Ellis (Ashgate Publishing, Ltd, 2004). [↩]
4. Ibid., 126. [↩]
5. Life and Miracles 34 [↩]
6. Dietz, "Itinerant Spirituality and the Late Antique Origins of Christian Pilgrimage," 133. [↩]
7. Acts of Thecla, Chapter 23 and 40, Acts of Thecla-Seleucia Chapters 43 [↩]
8. Dietz, "Itinerant Spirituality and the Late Antique Origins of Christian Pilgrimage," 125. [↩]
9. Linda Ellis, "Reconsidering Late Antique Pilgrimage," in Travel, Communication, and Geography in Late Antiquity: Sacred and Profane, ed. Linda Ellis (Ashgate Publishing, Ltd, 2004), 111. [↩]
10. Ibid. [↩]
11. Dietz, "Itinerant Spirituality and the Late Antique Origins of Christian Pilgrimage," 126. [↩]
12. Ibid., 133. [↩]
13. Ibid., 126. [↩]
14. Ibid., 129. [↩]
15. Ibid., 129. [↩]
16. Egeria, "Diary of a Pilgrimage," in Women’s Religions in the Greco-Roman World: A Sourcebook, ed. Ross Shepard Kraemer (Oxford University PressUS, 2004), 236. lines 20-25. Egeria also records a similar process at other places on her journey. [↩]
17. For a detailed argument for the ritualization of the pilgrimage of Hagia Thekla, see Davis, The Cult of St. Thecla: An Introduction to Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity, 65-72.. [↩]
18. Egeria, "Diary of a Pilgrimage," 237. Chapter 23, Line 11. [↩]
19. Ibid. Chapter 23, Line 24. [↩]
20. Ibid. Chapter 23, Line 13. [↩]
21. Davis, The Cult of St. Thecla: An Introduction to Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity, 61. [↩]
22. "The Acts of Thecla," in Women’s Religions in the Greco-Roman World: A Sourcebook, ed. Ross Shepard Kraemer (Oxford University PressUS, 2004), 237. Chapter 23, Line 23 and 24. [↩]
23. Life 8. [↩]
24. "The Acts of Thecla," 301. Chapter 18. [↩]
25. Life 23 [↩]

Individual Communion: A Contradiction in Terms

The Shrine of Hagia Thekla

Previously, I talked about the cult of Thecla in general.  Today, I wanna look briefly at the physical shrine to Thecla at Seleucia.  We will see, through its physical development and imperial patronage, its popularity and subsequent influence on the minds of second through seventh century Christians.

As referenced Wednesday, Hagia Thekla, the main shrine dedicated to Saint Thecla, was located a mile south of Seleucia on the southern coast of Asia Minor. The earliest manuscript tradition only casually mentions this city as the place where Thecla travel to and died a peaceful death.¹  Despite this, the city became the center around which the cult was centered. An international pilgrimage developed around this site to the extent that “regiments were stationed in Seleucia, offering pilgrims protection from the potential threats or robbery or assault.”²

The shrine there underwent several physical changes during its history; these changes are important because they demonstrate the importance of the Thecla tradition at the time. The original location of the site is unknown; more than one literary work suggests a different location than the earliest archaeological find and we are certain the site has been the subject of embellishment in the past. Both the Life and Miracles ((Ibid., 37.)) and Egeria’s diary³  speak of a much simpler site which was not connected to grotto.⁴  The earlier of the two works, Egeria’s diary from 384CE,⁵ establishes the upper limit at which the original shrine would have to have been built.  However, there is strong evidence that the shire, and therefore the Theclan devotion, may date back into the second century⁶

The importance of Hagia Thekla is underscored by site itself and its embellishment. The diary of Egeria describes a simple hillside shrine and church with many cells which housed devotees. In the second half of the fifth century the shrine was moved to a natural limestone grotto in the area and a small, three aisled church was built at the new site.⁷ Later in the fifth century the emperor Zeno sponsored the site and consequently build over the shrine and church, increasing it in size four-fold.⁸  According to the 6th century historian Evagrius, Zeno was overthrown by his rival Basiliskos in 476 CE and spent time in Isauria. He attributed his protection and rise back to power to Saint Thecla.⁹ The expanded site included a public bath, four cisterns, and another small church. The architectural style matches that of the time.¹⁰  This imperial patronage and the increased building activity reflect the changing needs and increased demands of the pilgrimage site.

Hagia Thekla was connected with political intrigue and was embellished, which demonstrates its importance in the second¹¹ through seventh centuries.  This attests to the vitality of the Thecla tradition and implores us to seek out the tradition’s drawing power in the minds of its adherents.

Now that we have explored the importance of the cult of Thecla, we can now turn to its makeup structurally, socially, and ideologically.  Monday, I’ll look at the devotees to the shrine and we can see what life was like there and in doing so, peer into the the thoughts and expectations of this important, but often overlooked, group of Christians.

1. Acts of Thecla 43. [↩]
2. Davis, The Cult of St. Thecla: An Introduction to Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity, 69. [↩]
3. Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels to the Holy Land, 121. [↩]
4. The grotto was the supposed location of the cave to which Life and Miracles and Acts of Thecla-Seleucia refer. [↩]
5. vs. the Life and Miracles from 450 CE [↩]
6. This upper limit may or may not be approximate to the actual founding of the shrine there. A case could be made for the shrine dating back to the writing down of the Acts of Thecla as it makes a point to mention the location of Seleucia even though it makes no sense whatsoever in the narrative. Perhaps as is the case with the Acts of Thecla-Seleucia, the author intended to give legitimacy to the location of the shrine at Seleucia. If this is the case, which is much more unlikely, the upper limit would be dropped to the late second century. What is certain is that the shrine and its pilgrimage were well established by 384CE and originated at a substantially earlier point in time. [↩]
7. Davis, The Cult of St. Thecla: An Introduction to Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity, 37. [↩]
8. George H. Forsyth, "Architectural Notes on a Trip through Cilicia," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 11 (1957): 223. The original site was around 20 meters long and the embellishment under Zeno resulted in a basilica that was over 80 meters long. [↩]
9. Davis, The Cult of St. Thecla: An Introduction to Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity, 38. [↩]
10. Ibid. [↩]
11. This is the most optimistic date, but it was certainly important well before 385 CE [↩]

Chloe Part 1 - Her People

This is my first post in my series of real women in Paul.  This series is inspired and based heavily on “Reading Real Women Through the Undisputed Letters of Paul” as found in Women and Christian Origins.  We will be looking at all of the women mentioned by name in the undisputed letters of Paul, which incidentally, are about the only place in the Pauline corpus that women are mentioned by name.  The undisputed letters of Paul consist of 1st Thessalonians, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Philemon, and Romans.  Since these are the only places where women are mentioned by name in the Pauline corpus, we won’t bother ourselves with the merits of dividing the Pauline corpus into the undisputed, disputed and pastorals, for our focus is on the real women with whom Paul dealt.  As such, we will be examining the following historical Christian women in this order: Chloe, Prisca, Euodia and Syntyche, Apphia, Phoebe, and Junia.  With these preliminaries out of the way, will will now turn to our first actual woman Paul wrote about : Chloe (part I).

We begin with Chloe because out of all the women on our list, her mention is the briefest.  1 Corinthians 1:11 is all we hear from Paul about Chloe:

For information has been given to me concerning you all, my brothers (and sisters), by those of Chloe that there is strife among you.¹

Τῶν Χλόης: “those of Chloe” is all we hear from Paul about Chloe.  How much can we really say about this woman?  More than one might think.  We will try to answer three questions: 1) Who were Chloe’s people? 2) Was Chloe a member of the Christian community in Corinth? and 3) If any, what influence did Chloe have in the Christian community at Corinth?    We will answer the first question here and deal with the last two in the next post on this topic.

Who were Chloe’s People? The only real attribute we can assign to Chloe is the fact that she had “people.”  And we even have to infer that from the text.²  It is these people who have informed Paul about the strife or discord among the Corinthians. They were most likely members of the Christian community at Corinth.  They could have been specially commissioned by Chloe to seek out Paul for the purpose of reporting a community update.

There were four general poles of status in the Roman empire: family status, gender, birth into freedom/slavery, and wealth.  Depending on the the values of each resulted in greater or lessor autonomy.  For example, slaves of the wealthy, which ran their owner’s household and often their business affairs, lived better and enjoyed a higher status than those who were free, but of poor familial status and were poor.  Thus, for these people to be sponsored for travel meant that it is very likely that they were slaves of a person of high class. (We’ll deal with Chloe and her relatively high class in the next post.)  What is certain, is that they needed no introduction and were respected within the Corinthian Christian community.  This does not mean they were leaders, but they were in high standing.

Even though there is no indication that Chloe’s people were leaders in their community, that does not mean that slaves were not leaders of Christian communities.  We have the Roman governor Pliny the Younger asking the emperor Trajan for advice on how to deal with some Christians he had rounded up.  The interesting thing for us is that chief among them were two female slaves that served as leaders for the group.³  The only Christians that Pliny mentions specifically are two female slaves which he terms deaconesses.  In dispatches of this nature, it was common only to mention the leaders of the group in question. This is not surprising, given Paul’s incorporation of an early baptism ritual in his letter to the Galatians which declared an abandonment of gender, class, and race as status markers upon entrance into the Christian community.⁴

Later interpreters of Paul would advise slaves to accept their Roman class status and to lay low in their real-world freedom for the sake of keeping the Romans off their backs.⁵ If there was anything the Romans hated, it was a disruption of the status quo.  This is why private associations were so dangerous.  The Romans thought that anything done in private was meant for political subversion and upheaval – why else would they be meeting in private?  So strong was this thinking, the emperor Trajan let a city burn down instead of allowing Pliny the Younger to fund a fire brigade.  Let that soak in for a second – the Romans would rather let a perfectly good city to burn to the ground than allow firefighters have an association!

All official mention of Christianity by the Roman governmental officials indicates that they were seen as either a voluntary association or burial society.  For a slaves to start proclaiming that they were free (politically, not just metaphorically) by virtue of their religion would only invite the wrath of the Roman government upon the Christians.

Back to Chloe’s people.  While we don’t know a whole lot about them, they were likely prominent members of the Christian community at Corinth and slaves of a wealthy woman.  They were most likely not leaders in the community, but they did seem to carry some influence.  Additionally, we see that by the end of the first century and the beginning of the second, there were (female) leaders of Christian communities who were slaves.

What does this mean for us, as American Christians living in a situation where there are no slaves?  Firstly, we see a early Christian opposition to slavery, but an subsequent drive to not rock the boat in the Roman empire.  There is a contradiction here: at once there is a delegitimization of slavery⁶ and a impetus to begrudgingly accept this ungodly institution for the sake of the Kingdom of God.  I don’t like this, but it is there.  It is there as a survival strategy, not because God was down with slavery. Violence is discouraged as a means for obtaining political freedom.  The lesson that we can learn today is that we Christians should not accept the evils of this world, but work against them especially now that we are politically free.  Additionally and most importantly, we should concern ourselves with Christian witness to others above all.

The next post in the series will look at Chloe herself.  Stay tuned!

1. εδηλώθη γάρ μοι περὶ ὑμῶν, ἀδελφοί μου, ὑπο τῶν Χλόης ὅτι ἐπιδες ἐν υμῖν εἰσιν. [↩]
2. The text in question reads τῶν Χλόης.  Τῶν is an genitive plural pronoun which seems to introduce Χλόης, but Χλόης is singular.  Thus we know that we are talking about a masculine group of things which belong to Chloe.  Since the presence of a single male in a group changes the group from feminine to masculine, this could be a mixed group or an all male group. [↩]
3. See Pliny the Younger, Letters 10.96-97, 111-113 CE. [↩]
4. See Gal 3:28 [↩]
5. see Eph 6:5-8 [↩]
6. See Gal 3:28 and 1 Tim 1:8-11 [↩]