Das Neue Testament und sein Text im 2. Jahrhundert

5 Celebrations of Torah in Judaism

If the Christian custom to read the Gospels in formalized meetings should emulate rabbinic celebrations of Torah reading, one may construct Christian Liturgies of the Word as created in opposition to their Jewish parallels. In that case, one may wonder what it means that the Gospel does not seem to replace the Torah or why the reading of the Gospel was furnished with special authority by its assignment to certain members of the clergy, if it should have been regarded as inferior to a preceding Old Testament reading.

5.1 Paragons of Jewish Philosophers: Therapeutai and Therapeutrides

Philo claims that Therapeutai and Therapeutrides can be found everywhere in the ancient world, but especially near Alexandria and in a place above the Mareotic Lake living in solitary, detached houses (which they never leave throughout six days of the week).1 Regarding books, they only possess “laws, oracles (delivered) through the prophets, hymns” as well as other material that is useful for knowledge and piety.2 They read the Holy Scriptures and “have also writings (syngrammata) of men of old, the founders of their way of thinking, who left many memorials (mnēmeia3) of the form used in allegorical interpretation …”4.

This group is Philo’s allegory for ideal congregations of Jews. They meet on the seventh day of the week in order to listen to a discourse of the (male) senior scholar among them. Every fiftieth day, they celebrate a festival, beginning with prayer, then reclining for a banquet, first listening to an exegetical speech concluded with hymn-singing. After a frugal meal of bread (seasoned with some hyssop) and water, they hold a vigil of singing and dancing.5 Philo’s Jews-as-philosophers do not read any text at their gatherings. This group is fictional in a narrow sense (of real persons living near the Mareotic sea and everywhere around the Mediterranean). The properties that they share with Justin’s group are not due to a Judeo-Christian tradition. Such similarities are due to the fact that both Justin and Philo present their own groups as philosophers—like other Greeks and Romans with similar interests.

5.2 Ritualization of Rabbinic Study Sessions

An inscription of the early first century C.E. from Jerusalem mentions a synagogue built for the “reading of the Law and the teaching of the commandments” and adds that the donor, Theodotos, also built “the guest room, the chambers, and the water fittings, as an inn for those in need from foreign parts …”.1 Torah reading is thus established as an activity of Diaspora groups and mentioned by a priest.2 As the corpus of rabbinic texts does not yield reliable information for this epoch, the shape of actual performances of Torah reading that could have influenced Christians of Justin’s time, cannot be recovered. Intellectuals such as Rabbis, Justin’s Christian group, Pythagorean philosophers, and other groups studied and expounded texts. The typically rabbinic performance of Torah reading developed at the same time as the emergence of Christianity.3 Thus, the Tannaim study the sacrificial laws that prescribe the sacrifices on the festival days when these sacrifices were offered in the Temple.4 This practice of anamnetic reading was not or not only motivated by an interest in the understanding of texts. It enabled the rabbis to perform a sacred obligation.5

Rabbinic services of Torah reading neither provide a structural model for the Christian sequence of a Liturgy of the Word followed by the Eucharist (or the other way round) nor for the internal staging of a hierarchy of importance between different corpora of texts. There is no reason to assume any interdependence between the development of the typically Christian and rabbinic ritualization of the reading of sacred texts. Serious studies cannot reach firmer conclusions than “It is not unreasonable to assume some historical relationship …” between the rabbinic Sabbath morning liturgy and analogous performances in Christianity.6

5.3 The Gospels and the Haggadah of Pesach

It has been claimed that the Gospels or the Passion Narratives should have been written in order to be read or recited during (Proto-/Judaeo-) Christian celebrations of the Pascha as a replacement of the Haggadah of Pesach. The Haggadah is not, however, a literary genre, but a single text. It is first attested in the tenth century. The conclusion of the central rabbinic textual corpora provides a terminus post quem for the composition of the oldest recensions of the Haggadah.1 The Gospels already circulated for half a Millennium before the Haggadah was conceived. Christian groups started to celebrate the Pascha—perhaps as an anti-Pesach—around the middle of the second century.

6 Conclusions

In search of liturgical Gospel readings as part of a Liturgy of the Word, first traces emerge in the third century. The custom is well established at the end of the fourth century. The assessment of predecessors of this practice requires a distinction between testimonies for interests of groups in these texts and a ritualized performance of readings. The mere existence of the texts proves that they were read. It does not point to communal, let alone ritualized readings. Origen’s testimony points to a much less standardized situation than it can be reconstructed for sources of the later fourth century. Tertullian discusses scriptural texts at meetings of his Christian group. He does not yet know a Liturgy of the Word. Justin’s session of philosophical studies preceding the Eucharist on the Days of Helios is the only possible predecessor of both the Liturgy of the Word and any communal study of Gospel material. However, the claim that Gospel readings began in the latter part of the second century cannot only be based on this argumentum e silentio, because the late first and early second centuries are notoriously undocumented in the history of Christianity. Further arguments are required.

Justin’s meetings on the Days of Helios are at most remote prototypes of Liturgies of the Word. As leader of a group of philosophers and as a staunch anti-Marcionite, Justin reacted quickly to the newest trends in Christianity. He put the correct versions of the new compositions as well as other texts that supported his approach (apparently Old Testament texts) on the reading list of his group. Justin’s brand of Christianity vanished with the demise of Christian groups organized as circles of philosophers.1 Even if the practice to study and discuss texts independent of one’s sympotic table-talk was neither liturgical nor typically Jewish or Christian, the sudden emergence of Gospel material together with (Old Testament) Prophets cannot be attributed to the novelty of this literature, let alone to a kind of ecclesiastical authority. The choice of texts manifests Justin’s opposition against Marcion. Second century additions to Marcion’s Gospel (cf. Luke 4:16–22; 24:27) and Justin’s reading assignment of “prophets” point into the same direction. Anti-Marcionism is not a re-alignment of Christian and Jewish customs, but an innovative elevation of the role played by the Old Testament in Christianity.

This is borne out by the observation that the emergence of the Christian Liturgy of the Word is not dependent upon the ritualization of the rabbinic services of Torah reading and prayer. The developments of both Christian and rabbinic traditions follow different lines and interests. The remote parallels between rabbinic and Christian approaches to the reading of texts (either in literary fiction or in actual practice of groups) are due to their common roots within the Greek and Roman ways of living and studying as philosophers. The supposition that Christian groups adopted or inherited Jewish Diaspora customs of reading and studying Torah does not moreover explain the later prominence of the Gospels in Christian liturgies. Even if the Gospels should have been written in the late first century, there was just no Christian liturgy in which they played an essential role. Sympotic meetings of Christians provided a framework for discussions of all kinds of texts and topics. They do not require Gospel texts like the later Liturgies of the Word. It is still not evident for Origen that Gospel readings were indispensable.

Justin’s group does not perform Liturgies of the Word in their third and fourth century shape and function. Therefore, it is not more than a tentative suggestion that these later Liturgies of the Word took their shape independent of Justin but because of the same reasons. Ephrem the Syrian still wrote tractates against Macion (and others). Opposition against Marcion thus united churches which diverged in other questions. Justin’s choice of texts reveals the same motivation as later designs of liturgies without being their precursor. In later epochs, an obligatory Liturgy of the Word came to stage the sanctity of the canonical Gospels as well as their superiority over other texts. Readings of Old Testament texts supported the same case. The performance of Liturgies of the Word and its ritualized emphasis on the Gospels thus emerged in order to shape and express Christian identity and orthodoxy as Anti-Marcionite.

Apart from these only tentative suggestions, the origins of the Gospels must be reconstructed based on historical and textual data. Gospel texts emerge in the middle of the second century as reading material of a group of intellectuals/philosophers (Justin). A century later, their reading is attested in the first traces of a Liturgy of the Word preceding the celebration of the Eucharist. The history of Christian liturgies does not require a date of origins for the Gospels before Justin. Even that time—as well as several decades after Justin’s death—Christianity did not practice any type of liturgy that required Gospel readings.

Christian Manuscripts from Egypt to the Times of Constantine1

Willy Clarysse, Pasquale Orsini

1

Our study of Christian book production before Christianity was officially recognised by Constantine includes the third and early fourth centuries, because in our opinion only a handful of papyri can be attributed to the second century, the theme of this conference. Luxury books like the codices Vaticanus, Alexandrinus or Sinaiticus clearly belong to the period of the victorious church (after AD 324). Our interest is in the preceding period.

The present study is an extension of our project on New Testament manuscripts published in the Leuven Ephemerides in 2012.1 There we opposed the early datings of several papyri proposed by some New Testament scholars, who intruded upon the field of palaeography. We presented a survey of the New Testament papyri there, studied from a palaeographer’s point of view. On the whole, our datings are not so different from those in Nestle-Aland, but they have the advantage of being studied from a single point of view, and being compared to all contemporary papyrus texts, not only to Biblical texts. For the present occasion, we have added Old Testament papyri and church fathers.

Our presentation is the result of a collaboration between a papyrologist, mainly a documentary papyrologist with an interest in book production (LDAB) and a Greek palaeographer, also interested in literary papyri. Because our starting points are different, there were several occasions where agreement was not self-evident.

Since the NT papyri were dealt with in our 2012 article, our main task was checking the dates of the papyri outside the NT. This is now possible for over 90% of the published texts, thanks to photographs in the editions and online. We ended up with a database of 190 texts, where a date before AD 325 is probable. Identification of the types of handwriting often allows a more precise dating than that found in Rahlfs, Nestle-Aland or in the Leuven Database of Ancient Books (LDAB)2. We have never dated closer than 50 years, i.e. two generations. This ongoing work has been mainly the task of Orsini and will result in a list of early Christian manuscripts, which will be incorporated into the LDAB and which we hope to publish in BETL later on.3

We have excluded:

 texts dated to the fourth century in general by the editors and later scholars. The overwhelming majority of these are post-Constantinian, but we may have missed a few items here belonging to the early fourth century, when no photographs were available online or in the printed editions.

 Jewish texts, e.g. Old Testament texts with tetragrammaton, such as P. Oxy. 77 5101 (TM 140 272; Psalms; AD 50–150); we also consider P. Oxy. 65 4443 (TM 61923; Esther; AD 50–150) as Jewish.

 Coptic texts: again, most may be post-Constantinian.4

The only fixed points for our datings derive from the archival context and from contents of the texts. Two early groups of books predominate in our material: the Bodmer and the Chester Beatty codices. They were both bought in Middle Egypt in the 1950s, and it has even been suggested that they constitute the remnants of a single collection.5 But in our opinion these libraries were a diverse set, with some older and some newer books, and so the library context is only of limited help in this case.

In the main, therefore, datings of biblical manuscripts are based on palaeography. For the criteria, we refer to our previous article.6 The palaeographic categories (stylistic class, style, canon), although certainly “anachronistic” (ancient scribes wrote without knowing these principles), are useful from a heuristic point of view.

2

The results of our previous investigation of ancient manuscripts of the New Testament can be summarized as follows1:

A. The graphic outline is articulated in six areas: 1. “Severe style”, including the transitional phase leading to the upright and sloping pointed majuscule; 2. Round chancery script, which leads to the “Alexandrian stylistic class”; 3. Canonized majuscules (for the manuscripts studied here, only the biblical majuscule and “round majuscule” enter into this category); 4. Semi-formal majuscules (influenced by the round majuscule and generic round scripts); 5. “Alexandrian chancery script of Subatianus Aquila”; 6. Cursive and informal documentary writings.

B. There are no first century New Testament papyri and only very few can be attributed to the second century (three papyri, probably all written in the second half of the century2 or somewhere between the late second and early third centuries (four manuscripts).3 These conclusions remain valid despite a few minor additions and corrections to our corpus.

Our survey of the different scripts documented in our corpus of manuscripts, now including Old Testament texts and other Christian texts (apocrypha, theology, liturgy, magic, Shepherd of Hermas) is presented in the following table.

Table 1.

Script types in pre-Constantinian Christian books

The scripts most frequently used in all these types of texts are: Alexandrian stylistic class (56 manuscripts), Severe style (37 manuscripts) especially sloping to the right, documentary and cursive scripts (32 manuscripts); less common are the scripts of the transition from Severe style to pointed majuscule (17 manuscripts: 11 sloping and 6 upright), the formal round scripts (13 manuscripts), biblical majuscule (11 manuscripts). The Alexandrian stylistic class is used a lot for the Old and New Testament (25 and 20 manuscripts), less in other texts (11 manuscripts); on the other hand, the Severe style is found far more rarely in the Old Testament than in the New Testament (5 vs. 16 manuscripts) and other texts (16 manuscripts); documentary and cursive scripts are less frequent in the New Testament (7 manuscripts), than in the Old Testament (12 manuscripts) and other Christian texts (13 manuscripts).

Until the early fourth century the biblical majuscule is poorly attested in the Old and New Testament (4 and 6 manuscripts): it becomes the canonized script for Bible manuscripts only in the first half of the fourth century.

From the palaeographical point of view, there are elements of continuity and discontinuity in the production of biblical manuscripts: continuity in the use of the Alexandrian stylistic class; discontinuity in the increased use of the Severe style and in the reduced use of documentary and cursive scripts. The other Christian manuscripts sometimes follow the graphic trends of the Old Testament (for the documentary and cursive scripts), sometimes those of the New Testament (for the Severe style), and sometimes they make autonomous choices (limited use of the Alexandrian stylistic class and biblical majuscule).

The canonized scripts are only two (biblical majuscule and round majuscule), with a few manuscripts; all other scripts are “stylistic class”, “style”, documentary and informal bookhands. At this stage of the Christian book production a high quality standard had not yet been defined. The early Christian book occupies an intermediate position between formalized and informal scripts, for private use, for individual or collective use of the books. Its graphic universe meets the needs of functionality, readability, and use, but it is not yet organized into a hierarchy of graphic forms.