Volume 18, Issue 3

Clement of Alexandria’s interpretations of Gen 1:26−27 are made in reaction to what he perceived to be heretical Valentinian interpretations of the same passage. Clement’s notes on Valentinian biblical interpretation, the Excerpta ex Theodoto, contain the content against which he is reacting, which he perceives to be heretical in terms of their determinism: people made according to the “image” and the “likeness” of God consist of two different classes of people, non- Christians and ecclesial Christians respectively. On top of this the Valentinians add one more category of humanity which is according to “its own” nature-this is the category to which the gnostic Christians, the Valentinians, belong. Clement counters this perceived determinism by having “image” and “likeness” correspond to two stages of the Christian life: “faith” (πίστις) and “knowledge” (γνῶσις) respectively. By doing this, he appropriates this aspect of Valentinian theology into his own orthodox-that is, apostolic and ecclesiastical-Christian theological and philosophical project.

Doubtlessly, Callistus, Bishop of Rome (217?−222?), was added to the list of honored martyrs of the City of Rome (Depositio martyrum). But whether or not he actually was martyred, as the Acta Callisti suggest, is controversially debated. The author of the Refutatio omnium haeresium (Elenchos), an opponent of the bishop, does not at all refer to his death. He does mention, however, that Callistus was sentenced to the mines of Sardinia. After his return, Bishop Victor (189?−199?), and implicitly the author as well, acknowledges him as a confessor. Because the terminology is not definite at this point in time, the confessor Callistus is described as a martyr and added to the list of martyrs after his death. The missing narrative of his violent death that is implicated by the title martyr is invented by the Acta. The efforts to underscore the reliability of the Acta through the similarly novelesque Historia Augusta are unconvincing. Therefore the Acta are of no importance for the determination of the facts about the life and death of Bishop Callistus. However, they provide insights on the development of the tradition of Callistus in Trastevere, the Catacombs of Calepodius as well as the topography of Rome at the end of the 5th century.

In late antiquity and the middle ages, many expositors compare the liturgy of the Eucharist (or the mass/the Divine Liturgy) with the accounts of Jesus’ Last supper claiming continuity and identity for a tradition in whose early phases diversity and change were abound. This essay departs from five issues regarding aspects of change between the early Christian sympotic celebrations of the Eucharist and the state of affairs in the middle ages: first, the quantity and quality of food to be consumed; second, the combined (as against separate) blessing or consecration of bread and wine; third, the timing of the celebration in the afternoon and evening versus the early morning; fourth, its compulsory combination with a liturgy of the word that is, moreover, performed preceding the Eucharist and not following the meal as it would be customary in ancient Greece and Rome; fifth, the later reservation of the presidency to clerics of the church. At least these five aspects of change in Eucharistic celebrations can be explained with recourse to the Roman custom of patrons receiving their clients almost every morning in the framework of the morning salutatio. Thus, it is indicated how the churches of Carthage moved from Eucharistic celebrations in the style of dinner parties and communal meals towards distributions of gifts to clients at a meeting with their bishop as patron of the church. This thesis explains why the loss of prandial Eucharists began long before Constantine. It explains when and why Christian churches in the Roman Empire abandoned a celebration that lent itself to the spontaneous interpretation as a mimetic celebration of the Last Supper thus creating the need to emphasize-eventually as part of the ritual itself in the form of the recitation of institution narratives-that the Eucharist is still the same, although it lost most of its mimetic allusions to its alleged pattern in the first century. The gradual adoption of the social institution of the morning salutatio also explains the parallel existence of different forms of Eucharistic celebrations: Its adoption and adaptation is an answer to the growth of the churches in certain places which could remain unimportant for others.

The last two books in what has survived of the fourth century biblical manuscript Codex Sinaiticus are the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. This article is an investigation of the correctors’ treatment of the text of the Shepherd of Hermas in this codex, and advances our knowledge at various points of both Codex Sinaiticus and its textual revisions of the Shepherd of Hermas. Furthermore, it attempts to assess the relevance of the corrections for the reception history of the Shepherd of Hermas.

Basil of Caesarea, in his polemic against astrology (Homiliae in hexaemeron 6,5−7), makes direct, creative uses of Origen’s anti-astrological treatise (Philocalia 23). My argument is based on an identical context, namely the interpretation of Gen 1:14b, and five close similarities in content, some verbatim, between Basil’s sermon and Origen’s anti-astrological polemic (and in one case a passage from De principiis). These five similarities are on the topics of the definition of genethlialogy, the system of genethlialogy, aspects, the life of the stars, and fatalism. In each instance, Basil uses Origen in a different way. These uses run the gamut from the wholesale adoption of Origen’s definition of genethlialogy to the refutation of Origen’s belief that the stars are alive. Adaptation is necessitated, not only by Basil’s inherent creativity and relative independence from Origen, but by the fact that the rhetorical form of Basil’s treatment is different from Origen’s: whereas Origen offers a commentarial treatment with a systematic question-and-answer structure, Basil’s argument is a rhetorically sophisticated diatribe, which uses sarcasm and mockery to entertain as well as persuade its audience. Basil uses Origen sometimes freely, sometimes verbatim, but always critically, to support his own goals.

The author presents a new reconstruction of most of the Greek text of a confession of faith which has only been preserved in its entirety in a Latin translation ascribed to Acacius of Beroea (ca. 330−433 C.E.; cf. CPG 6481). The extant Greek fragments have come down to us under the name of Amphilochius of Iconium (d. 398/404); they have once again been included in a recent edition of Amphilochius’ work by Michel Bonnet and Sever J. Voicu (Sources Chretiennes, vol. 553). Nonetheless, the present article argues that the Christological passages of the text better fit the situation in the aftermath of the Third Ecumenical Council of 431 and in fact resemble the Christmas sermons delivered by one of Acacius followers, Paul of Emesa, in Alexandria in 432/433.