The Urban World and the First Christians

Steve Walton, Paul Trebilco, David W. J. Gill

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781467449052
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Storia del cristianesimo

In the tradition of The First Urban Christians by Wayne Meeks, this book explores the relationship between the earliest Christians and the city environment. Experts in classics, early Christianity, and human geography analyze the growth, development, and self-understanding of the early Christian movement in urban settings. The book's contributors first look at how the urban physical, cultural, and social environments of the ancient Mediterranean basin affected the ways in which early Christianity progressed. They then turn to how the earliest Christians thought and theologized in their engagement with cities. With a rich variety of expertise and scholarship, The Urban World and the First Christians is an important contribution to the understanding of early Christianity.

PART I

Early Christianity in Its Ancient Urban Setting(s)

Complicating the Category of Ethnos toward Poliscentrism

A Possible Way Forward within Second Temple Ethnography

ANTHONY LE DONNE

Modern historians have long described Second Temple Jews as members of a religion called Judaism. Religious specialists have traditionally acknowledged that the people we label “ancient Jews” were delineated by ethnicity too. But most of our collective efforts have been dedicated to the religious elements of the Second Temple period. While this is still common practice, some have challenged the category of “religion” as applied to this people and period. Perhaps, it is argued, religion was not a category emic to ancient worldviews.¹ Indeed, the fact that the term Ioudaismos is not well attested in the Second Temple period invites us to rethink our (perhaps anachronistic) categories. Furthermore, if we are on shaky ground with religious categorization, perhaps we will find more solid footing with ethnic categorization.

Can we avoid the modern conceptual baggage associated with the term “Jew” when translating Ioudaios? Maybe the term “Judean” would better represent the conceptual mapping of this period. But such a move assumes that ethnic categorization is less problematic. In this chapter I will argue that it is not. Because our efforts have been dedicated to the religious elements of Second Temple Jews/Judeans, much less effort has been invested in defining the emic category of ethnos. In this chapter I will suggest a few avenues that might lead to a better understanding of ethnicity as it was understood by Second Temple Jews/Judeans. Chief among these avenues is the way that ethnos was defined in relationship to the concept of polis. Orientation toward the governance, customs, worship, etc. of a particular city was primary in determining ethnos in the Second Temple period.

This chapter will: (1) discuss how physical traits associated with “race” by modern minds were seen differently in Hellenistic antiquity; (2) discuss how Hellenistic thinkers conceptualized ethnos as an extension of poliscentrism; (3) suggest that Second Temple Ioudaioi were poliscentric with varying ways of expressing their orientation toward Jerusalem.

1. Phenotypes and Physiognomic Stereotypes

Hellenic and Hellenistic antiquity did not suffer from the baggage created by nineteenth-century scientific racism. Stereotypes based on physicality influenced both thought-worlds, but in much different ways.

Modern, Western minds tend to relate certain characteristics of physicality to ethnic delineation. The “popularly used physical features to define races” tend to be the most easily recognizable features like “skin pigmentation, hair type, lip size,” etc.² From the 1800s onward such associations gave way to the analysis of genetic and phrenological consistency within races. Enlightenment thinkers such as Arthur de Gobineau (1816–1882) emphasized physically internal factors with the hope that certain moral and cultural tendencies would be demonstrated biologically. The simplistic associations between race and physical traits were problematized as early as the work of Franz Boas (1858–1942).³ Ethnologists now give almost no credence to anthropometric methodologies of earlier generations except to explain the emergence of scientific racism. It is now commonplace in ethnic studies to describe race as a social construct that reinforces political, economic, and other cultural hierarchies.⁴ It would be safe to say that contemporary ethnic studies do not study race as their primary object, but rather racism. Consider these words of Benjamin Isaac, “race does not exist, racism does.”⁵ Isaac does not represent every ethnologist in this statement, but such statements are commonplace in the field. He explains:

Since the concept of race as such is merely theoretical, since it is a quasi-biological construct invented to establish a hierarchy of human groups and to delineate differences between them, and since it does not work in practice, attempts have been made from the beginning [of racial theory] to incorporate other features which are not physiological. The designation “race” in the sense of subspecies cannot be applied by definition to language groups (the Aryan race), national groups (the English race), religious groups (the Christian or Jewish race), groups with one or more physical features in common, such as skin color, or the entire species of humans (the human race): such usages are biologically and scientifically meaningless.⁶

Even if Isaac is viewed as extreme, he points to a common principle in ethnic studies: implicit in racial theory is the notion of superior and inferior races. Race is as much a matter of perception as it is anything else. At the same time, these perceptions have created realities in the modern world that cannot be ignored.⁷

Physical anthropologists distinguish major categories of human traits as either phenotypes—visible anatomical features such as skin color, hair texture, and body and facial shape—or genotypes—genetic specifications inherited from one’s parents. Races have traditionally been classified chiefly on the basis of the most easily observable anatomical traits, like skin color, internal and blood traits have been de-emphasized or disregarded.⁸

While the genotypes of race are de-emphasized or disregarded, the problem of racism persists and thus the anthropological significance of phenotypes continues to be of interest. The object of study here is the social reality created by the popular and entrenched racial interpretations of “skin pigmentation, hair type, lip size,” etc. And, moreover, these interpretations vary from culture to culture.

As we turn to the question of perceptions of ethnos in the Second Temple period we must acknowledge that ancient interpretations of phenotypes differ from our modern, racially-invested interpretations. One possible avenue to discover such differences is by way of classical physiognomic discussions.

Hellenistic physiognomic ideology supposed that it was possible to recognize personality traits by observing a person’s physical features. Analogues to “known” animal characteristics were often employed or presupposed. Cross-species comparison was fundamental to this school of thought (e.g., large cow-like eyes bespoke cowardice because cows lack courage). Also fundamental was a set of ideals that bespoke nobility of character. Perceptions of moderate characteristics were more ideal than extremes (e.g., being of middle-range height was better than being too tall or too short). I do not put forth this short section on physiognomy as an explanation of ancient ethnic categorization. Nor do I have the space to offer a robust history of the idea. Rather, I include only a few examples to demonstrate how some ancient minds perceived and categorized the social world based on what we have called phenotypes.

According to Ps.-Aristotle, the “soul and body react on each other; when the character of the soul changes, it changes also the form of the body, and conversely, when the form of the body changes, it changes the character of the soul.”⁹ In this introduction to a physiognomic perspective, one’s external characteristics reflected something of one’s personality and vice versa.

Consider then this description of Caligula by Suetonius:

He was very tall, and extremely pale, with a huge body, but very thick neck and legs. His eyes and temples were hollow, his forehead broad and grim, his hair thin and entirely gone on the top of his head, though his body was hairy. While his face was naturally forbidding and ugly, he purposely made it even more savage, practicing all kinds of terrible and fearsome expressions before a mirror. (Cal. 50)¹⁰

Caligula is a helpful example because he represents a figure who was almost universally despised in retrospect and who departs in so many ways from Suetonius’s physiognomic ideal. Suetonius emphasizes Caligula’s goat-like appearance and disposition: “The goat was of this appearance. Creatures with hairy legs are sensual. . . . He has a pale skin and is covered with black, straight hair, which is a sign of cowardice, which indicates stupidity and foolishness.” Notice, for the purpose of this chapter, that Caligula is described as pale-skinned twice and that his black, straight hair is emphasized. According to this physiognomy, such features indicate cowardice. There is no indication that a pale-skinned, straight-haired man might be considered “white” in Hellenistic antiquity in the way that he might in a modern mind. Moreover, in this context it was superior to be darker-skinned and have curly hair. Consider Homer’s description of Eurybates:

Furthermore, a herald attended [Odysseus], a little older than he, and I will tell you of him, too, what manner of man he was. He was round-shouldered, dark of skin, and curly-haired, and his name was Eurybates; and Odysseus honored him above his other comrades, because he was like-minded with himself. (Od. 19.245 [Goold, LCL])

Modern readers might associate the description of a man “dark of skin and curly-haired” to be a statement of racial heritage. But in this ancient context, these phenotypes bespoke the camaraderie and honor of the individual man. Finally, Suetonius’s description of Augustus suggests that physiognomic ideals differed in many ways from modern, phenotypical aesthetics.

He was unusually handsome and exceedingly graceful at all periods of his life, though he cared nothing for personal adornment. His expression, whether in conversation or when he was silent, was so calm and mild. He had clear, bright eyes, in which he liked to have it thought that there was a kind of divine power, and it greatly pleased him, whenever he looked keenly at anyone, if he let his face fall as if before the radiance of the sun; but in his old age he could not see very well with his left eye. His teeth were wide apart, small, and ill-kept; his hair was slightly curly and inclined to golden; his eyebrows met. His ears were of moderate size, and his nose projected a little at the top and then bent slightly forward. His complexion was between dark and fair. He was short of stature (although Julius Marathus, his freedman and keeper of his records, says that he was five feet and nine inches in height), but this was concealed by the fine proportion and symmetry of his figure, and was noticeable only by comparison with some taller person standing beside him. (Aug. 79 [J. C. Rolfe, LCL])

Notice in this case that one could be seen as handso...