Early Christianity in Pompeian Light

People, Texts, Situations

Bruce W. Longenecker

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781451490107
• eBook ISBN: 9781506418971
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Scholars of early Christianity are awakening to the potential of Pompeii's treasures for casting light on the settings and situations that were commonplace and conventional for the first urban Christians. The uncovered world of Pompeii, destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E., allows us to peer back in time, capturing a heightened sense of what life was like on the ground in the first century – the very time when the early Jesus-movement was beginning to find its feet. In light of the Vesuvian material remains, historians are beginning to ask fresh questions of early Christian texts and perceive new contours, nuances, and subtleties within the situations those texts address. The essays of this book explore different dimensions of Pompeii's potential to refine our lenses for interpreting the texts and situations of early Christianity. The contributors to this book (including Carolyn Osiek, David Balch, Peter Oakes, Bruce Longenecker, and others) demonstrate that it is an exciting time to explore the interface between the Vesuvian contexts and the early Jesus-movement.

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Enhancing Texts

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Powers and Protection in Pompeii and Paul: The Apotropaic Function of the Cross in the Letter to the Galatians

Natalie R. Webb

In the Roman world of the first century ce, the lines between death, illness, demon possession, and other dangerous forces were anything but clear. Belief in good and bad spirits pervaded the culture, giving people a way to cope with the unknown or the feared. What we moderns tend to psychologize and individualize or explain based on economic or physical determinism, the ancients saw as a larger cosmic problem. Death, illness, and bad fortune, omnipresent in the human experience, perennially raise deeply rooted concerns about protection and security.

Paul’s letter to the Galatians plunges us into the first-century worldview concerned with malicious use of magic and dangerous supernatural powers (see for example Gal 1:4; 3:1, 13; 4:3, 8–10; 5:20). While these and other such references are often downplayed by contemporary translations, it is my contention that they represent real and pervasive concerns for Paul and his Galatian audiences. This realm of spiritual powers and the human manipulation of such in the Greco-Roman world is demonstrated vividly in the material evidence from Pompeii and Herculaneum, towns destroyed in 79 ce by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius but preserved in the layers of ash that covered them for centuries. As Alastair Small notes, “in Pompeii, as elsewhere in the Roman world, there was a substratum of popular religion for which there was no dogma or myth, but which aimed to control supernatural forces by magic.”^[1] While the religious backgrounds of the Greco-Roman empire (usually concerning the well-known pantheon of gods, the imperial cult, and philosophical-religious writings) are often used to illuminate readings of the New Testament, the material remains from Pompeii add to this background by providing a unique and vivid picture of the daily on-the-ground concerns with dangerous spiritual forces and the practical need for protection against evil.

This essay begins by highlighting some of the material evidence from Pompeii that demonstrates this pervasive problem of spiritual forces and the crucial need for a solution to protect against them. Literary evidence will also be considered in order to aid our understanding of the material culture. This background will then be used to illuminate Paul’s letter to the Galatians. While there is not a one-to-one correspondence between Roman Italy and Roman Asia Minor, a similarly pervasive concern about dangerous powers and strategies of protection will emerge and, as I will show, Paul’s message of the cross is offered as protection from evil forces for his Galatian congregants.^[2]

Much scholarship focuses on big-picture theological issues (salvation, redemption, the eternal destiny of individuals or humankind) or on the social function of the letter in shaping Christian identity. These are no doubt important questions to address. Nonetheless, this project will approach Galatians with an alternative question in mind: what did Paul’s message mean for ancient Greco-Roman readers who were concerned with the practical problem of dealing with forces of evil, and what kinds of practical solutions were available to them? It is my hope that the evidence from Pompeii will help paint a picture of these all-encompassing concerns that may help the modern interpreter to “take a seat in one of the Galatian congregations, in order—as far as possible—to listen to the letter with Galatian ears.”^[3]

Powers and Protection in Pompeii

A walk around the ruins of Pompeii brings millions of visitors each year face to face with facets of Greco-Roman religion in the first century. While the ancient temples of Roman deities such as Apollo, Jupiter, Venus, and the Egyptian goddess Isis bear witness in grand form to the importance of the public cults, a lower-level sphere of spiritual influence was also thought to be at work in these towns. The remnants of household and neighborhood religious/superstitious practices permeate every block of the towns with the remains of protective images, inscriptions, and household shrines. It is to some of these that we now turn.

The Problem

Life in the world of first-century Pompeii was fragile and infused with the ever-present threat of evil powers that caused death, illness, and bad fortune. While these powers are themselves seldom depicted in the material evidence, the means of dealing with such powers can be found in almost every home and on many street corners in the Vesuvian towns. These protective solutions from the Vesuvian material remains correspond with depictions of the powers believed to control human destiny in Greco-Roman literature.

Astrological belief was widespread in the ancient Roman Empire, and while it was given popular credibility by philosophy and mathematics,^[4] astrology was closely connected to magical practice in its attempt to gain some control or knowledge of the cosmic powers at work in the world. According to Small, “the stars were emanations of the divine providence that determined human behaviour,” and the earliest evidence of the seven-day planetary week as a consequence of astrology comes from Pompeii.^[5] The triclinium of the Pompeian house at 5.4.b names the planetary deities in the order of the calendar (CIL 4.6779). Similarly, the residence at 6.17.6 displayed a painting of the busts of Saturn, Sol, Luna, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus.^[6] Rome’s relationship with astrology was complex. Astrologers were often consulted by emperors, but were also banned from Rome on multiple occasions.^[7] Tacitus writes that astrologers were “a tribe of men untrustworthy for the powerful, deceitful toward the ambitious, a tribe which in our state will always be both forbidden and retained” (Hist. 1.22). The belief in invisible connections between the stars and earth gave plausibility to the use of magic to manipulate these connections and made the consultation of astrologers both dangerous (it was often linked with conspiracy^[8]) and highly desired.^[9]

In addition to the influence of the stars on human destiny, the influence of demons was a major concern. Plutarch brings together some of the earlier literature on demons from Homer, Hesiod, and Plato. In these, there are both good and bad demons that are “an interpretative and ministering class, midway between gods and men” (Plutarch, Is. Os. 26). Our concern here is with the belief that “everything gross, wicked, bizarre, or irrational” could be attributed to the wicked intermediaries.^[10] Plutarch writes that “in the estimation of the superstitious man, every indisposition of his body, loss of property, deaths of children, or mishaps and failures in public life are classed as ‘afflictions of God’ or ‘attacks of an evil spirit’” (Superst. 7).^[11] A close connection between demons and illness is demonstrated widely in the literary evidence.^[12] Georg Luck affirms that “[a] wide range of unexplained pathological conditions—epilepsy, insanity, even sleepwalking or the delirium of a high fever—were interpreted as the work of evil spirits.”^[13] In addition to the trouble thought to be caused by demons, the spirits of the dead were also potentially dangerous.^[14] The tombs lining the roadsides leading to Pompeii would have been a constant reminder of this threat. Joanna Berry notes that “the Romans . . . believed that the spirits of the dead could do harm to the living unle...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table Of Contents
• Front-Matter
• Editor’s Preface
• Envisioning Situations
• Enhancing Texts
• Contributors
• Abbreviations
• Photography Permissions and Credits
• Bibliography
• Index of Names
• Index of Ancient Sources