Margaret M. Mitchell

Patristic Counter-Evidence to the Claim that ‘The Gospels Were Written for All Christians’

Ματθαιος μeν eγραψeν Eβραιοις θαυματα Χριστου, Μαρκος δ Ιταλιη, Λουκας Αχαιαδι, Πασι δ Ιωαννης, κηρυξ μeγας, ουρανοϕοιτης. (Gregory of Nazianzus, Carmina dogmatica 1.12.6–9) Richard Bauckham has called on scholars to abandon the reading strategy of redaction criticism that had risen to prominence especially in the 1960s, and return to the way the gospels had always been understood before that – as having been written ‘for all Christians’. The present essay resituates this debate as actually yet another instance of a very old and enduring hermeneutical problem in the exegesis of Christian literature: the relationship between the particularity and universality of the gospels. Study of patristic gospel exegesis reveals no author who says the gospels were written ‘for all Christians’, and, even more importantly, shows that early Christian readers – through evangelist biographies, localizing narratives, audience request traditions, and heresiological accounts of the composition of individual gospels, as well as in their theological reflections on the fourfold gospel – engaged in a sustained and deliberate dialectic between the local and universal audiences of the gospels which defies any simple dichotomy between ‘specific’ and ‘indefinite’ readers.

John Chrysostom on Philemon: A Second Look

Recently in this journal Allen D. Callahan argued for a bold, distinctive interpretation of Pauls Epistle to Philemon. Contrary to the conventional interpretation, Onesimus was not a (runaway) slave, but was Philemons own estranged blood brother. Rather than an appeal for forgiveness for a fugitivus , or a request to retain a slave for further service, the Epistle to Philemon is the apostles attempt to bring about reconciliation between two brothers. Callahans thesis constitutes a powerful reminder of how the interpretation of each of Pauls letters, perhaps especially this shortest and most subtle letter, depends acutely upon the interplay between historical reconstruction of the original context and the text itself. Callahan calls for a reconsideration of the most basic, universal presupposition of the interpretation of the letter—that Onesimus was Philemons slave.

Chicago’s “Archaic Mark” (ms 2427) II Microscopic, Chemical and Codicological Analyses Confirm Modern Production

Comprehensive testing and analysis (microscopic, chemical and codicological) of University of Chicago ms 972-Gregory-Aland ms 2427 confirms that it is a modern production made sometime between 1874 and the first decades of the 20th century.

The Corinthian Correspondence and the Birth of Pauline Hermeneutics

The epistolary archive preserved in canonical 1 and 2 Corinthians constitutes an inestimably valuable resource for reconstruction of early Christian missionary tactics and conflicts, social composition of Pauline churches, and the development of Pauls theology in the crucible of dispute. The Corinthian archive provides us with the fullest body of evidence in the Pauline corpus of a succession of letters and verbal exchanges back and forth between Paul and his correspondents. This chapter focuses on three key stages of negotiated meaning in any Pauline letter, beginning with the first Pauline interpreter in what has become a long history of exegesis-Paul himself. It concludes that the preceding overview of reading strategies used by Paul and the Corinthians in the course of negotiating the meaning of his letters is not meant to be exhaustive, but to represent some essential ways the two partners dialogued about the legacy and effects of these texts. Keywords: Christian missionary tactics; Corinthian correspondence; Pauls theology; Pauline hermeneutics

Patristic Rhetoric on Allegory: Origen and Eustathius Put 1 Samuel 28 on Trial

The standard textbook diagram of early Christian exegesis as characterized by a basic dichotomy between Alexandrine allegory and Antiochene literalism has eroded considerably in the past decades. Earlier scholars were not unaware that there were problems with an absolutely neat polarization of exegetical camps, but now even a guarded reaffirmation of the older consensus model (i.e., one that acknowledged “border concepts” mediating between the two, such as Antiochene typology or θeωρ α) would find far fewer adherents than two decades ago. Recent research has significantly altered the map of patristic exegesis by emphasizing the broad array of reading strategies employed by early Christian biblical interpreters and shifted the approach from a systematic investigation of biblical interpretation as solely rooted in philo-

Marcion and the ‘canon’

Marcion is an intriguing figure in early Christian history. He has commanded attention on two topics: the churchs appropriation of the scriptures of Judaism, and the emergence of a canon of specifically Christian scriptures. A major corollary of Marcions ditheism was a sharp disparagement of the creation. His disdain for the material order found two principal expressions, namely docetic Christology and moral rigorism. Ditheism, docetism and devaluation of the material world and the body, Marcions teaching is in other ways distinct from Christian Gnostic systems. Beyond his ditheism, what drew the strongest fire of Marcions critics was his view of Jewish scripture. Marcions rejection of the scriptures of Judaism amid the challenges posed by the Christian employment of Jewish scriptures, it had some appeal within the Gentile church. Marcions activity was the sine qua non of the formation of the New Testament, and that the New Testament canon arose principally or even exclusively as a reaction to him.

Peter's ‘Hypocrisy’ and Paul's: Two ‘Hypocrites’ at the Foundation of Earliest Christianity?

In an infamous passage in his Letter to the Galatians (2.11–14), Paul called out Peter as a ‘hypocrite’. This passage, especially when read in light of Pauls own appeal to himself as ‘all things to all people’ in 1 Cor 9.19–23, was to cause deep trouble for later Christian interpreters, who sought to defend their movement against charges from outsiders that it had a cracked and unstable foundation in dual ‘hypocrites’. This essay will introduce this ‘pagan’ critique and the cultural force it had, and the various solutions to the inherited dilemma from their scriptures that were offered by patristic authors (Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Jerome and Augustine). In light of this context, we turn to a sustained analysis of an untranslated homily by John Chrysostom, hom. in Gal 2.11 ( In faciem ei restiti ), which addresses not just the hypocrisy of Peter and Paul, but also the sticky problem of the hypocrisy of the Christian who reads this text approvingly as Pauls ‘in your face’ to Peter. Chrysostom does this by engaging in a convoluted pretence of his own.

A Variable and Many-sorted Man: John Chrysostom's Treatment of Pauline Inconsistency

Contemporary Pauline Scholarship is preoccupied, in several different arenas, with the question of Paul’s consistency or lack of it. This essay identifies precursors to the positions taken in these modern debates in the writings of John Chrysostom, Paul’s most prolific commentator and avid admirer from the patristic period. Though in many places Chrysostom sets himself the task to construct rhetorically appropriate forensic proofs to substantiate his categorical denial that Paul was “variable,” in one of his homilies in praise of Paul we find the exact opposite—not only admission that Paul was “a variable and many-sorted man,” but celebration of that fact. This article examines how Chrysostom could be so apparently inconsistent on the question of Pauline inconsistency, and inquires as to the relationship between the contours of this debate in biblical scholarship in the fourth and the late twentieth centuries.

Special Issue: Writing Religion

OnMay 19, 2011, I had the bittersweet pleasure of introducing a conference in honor of W. Clark Gilpin’s retirement from the faculty of the Divinity School. On that occasion, four of his former students, two current colleagues, and Gilpin himself engaged the subject of “Writing Religion: Representation, Difference, and Authority in American Culture.” The papers delivered on that occasion are assembled in published form in this fascicle of the Journal of Religion. W. Clark Gilpin is the Margaret E. Burton Distinguished Service Professor (now emeritus) of the History of Christianity and Theology in the Divinity School. He served on this faculty since 1984, as dean of Disciples Divinity House, as professor, as dean during the 1990s, and as the inaugural director of the Martin Marty Center (2000–2004). He has also been actively engaged in historiographic enterprises across the university, serving as director of the Nicholson Center for British Studies (2005–7) and on the executive council of the Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture (2007–10). Gilpin received his BA from the University of Oklahoma, MDiv from Lexington Theological Seminary, and MA and PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School. A historian of Christianity in America and England, Gilpin is the author of, among other works, The Millenarian Piety of Roger Williams and A Preface to Theology (both published by the University of Chicago Press). To appreciate the extensive range of Clark Gilpin’s intellectual preoccupations—past and present—one needs only to name several more works for which he was co-editor or author:

The Continuing Problem of Particularity and Universality within the corpus Paulinum: Chrysostom on Romans 16:3

This paper takes up the interplay between the “particularity” and “universality” of the Pauline letters, which was so influentially identified by Nils A. Dahl, and demonstrates that even after the canon had provided a implicitly universalizing hermeneutic for the corpus Paulinum, a late antique preacher such as John Chrysostom still felt the need to explain why the letters contain material of such an apparently situation-specific nature. Through a close reading of an untranslated homily on Romans 16:3 (“Greet Priscilla and Aquila”), we shall demonstrate how this rhetorically astute interpreter fashioned his homily precisely around this dynamic – in order to prove to his skeptical audience that it is in the particular that the universal is to be found.