Coming Back to Life

Select Bibliography of Embedded Online Works

Frederick S. Tappenden — 2017-03-31

Electronic editions of ancient texts—both recent and past scholarly publications—are a rapidly growing body of online literature. In this Select Bibliography, we present the complete list of online, open-access scholarly works that are linked in the Coming Back to Life essays. In providing this bibliography we hope to facilitate better, easier access to the growing body of digital scholarly resources available online.

Index

Frederick S. Tappenden — 2017-03-31

In lieu of a traditional print index, we encourage readers of this volume to make use of the search capabilities built into each digital interface. For online readers, there is a search bar located in the right column of the Coming Back to Life webpage. Those using either PDF or E-Pub versions are encouraged to use the search tools built into their PDF-viewer/e-Reader.

If So, How? Representing “Coming Back to Life” in the Mysteries of Mithras

Roger Beck — 2017-03-31

Porphyry (On the Cave 6) states that the Mithraists “perfect their initiate by inducting him into a mystery of the descent of souls and their exit back out again, calling the place a ‘cave’.” To this end, they designed their mithraeum as an “image of the universe” in which “the things inside by their proportionate arrangement” served as “symbols of the elements and climates of the cosmos.” This paper argues that Porphyry is correct, at least for a number of mithraea and their communities in Ostia, Rome, and the vicinities. The test case is the Ostian “Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres” (Sette Sfere). Here, the solstices are set at the mid points of the side-benches, the summer solstice on the left as one enters and the winter solstice on the right. The equinoxes lie at the ends of the central aisle, the spring equinox at the cult-niche end and the autumn equinox at the entrance end. The aisle thus replicates the equinoctial diameter of the universe. The descent and return of souls, for the comprehension and, arguably, the ritual enactment of which the mithraeum was designed, follows a route from a gate in the sphere of the fixed stars at the summer solstice in Cancer down through the seven spheres of the planets to genesis and mortal life on earth; at death and apogenesis, the soul retraces this route back up through the seven planetary spheres and out of an opposite gate in the sphere of the fixed stars at the summer solstice in Capricorn. This soul-route is attested by Proclus and Origen as well as by Porphyry. Accordingly, the “Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres” stands as a stunning example of Porphyry’s description, even if it cannot be generalized to other mithraea which themselves do not exhibit the same rich array of cosmic symbols.

The Cosmology of the Raising of Lazarus (John 11-12)

Troels Engberg-Pedersen — 2017-03-31

The aim of this essay is to bring out the function of chapters 11–12 within the overall structure of the Fourth Gospel in order to elucidate the precise manner in which this text imagines the “porosity” between death and life, of which Jesus’ raising of Lazarus is a striking example. The theses will be (i) that the two chapters are so closely connected in strictly literary terms that they constitute a single, coherent tract within the Gospel, (ii) that they have a single theme, which is that the raising of Lazarus points directly forward to, and is to be understood and explained in the same way as, not only Jesus’ own resurrection but also that of all Christ believers, (iii) that the text half-presupposes and half-articulates a cosmological framework along the lines to be found in contemporary Stoicism that explains the very possibility of raising and resurrection and hence the apparent “porosity” of death and life that the text is pointedly addressing, and finally (iv) that these ideas are brought together in a claim that constitutes a climax of the whole Book of Signs: that in order to “believe in Jesus” in the full, proper way one must understand him not just as somebody who has come from God, but also as somebody who will now literally return to God when he is resurrected from death. That—and only that—belief will lead to the resurrection of believers, too. In arguing for these theses, the essay addresses the conceptual relationship between “believing” (πιστεύειν), “hearing” (ἀκούειν), “speech” or “words” (ῥήματα), “reasoning” (λόγος) and “spirit” (πνεῦμα) in John, using a Stoic, philosophical framework for elucidating the inner connection between these notions in John. Here the essay argues that there is an intrinsic connection in both John and Stoicism between matters of understanding (cognition, epistemology) and matters of event (fact, ontology). This is the reason why the overarching theme of the text is not just the connection between the events of the raising of Lazarus and the resurrection of Jesus and believers (thesis [ii] above), but also the understanding of that connection (thesis [iv] above). While the essay aims to lay bare an underlying cosmological framework that accounts for the apparent “porosity” of death and life, it also emphasizes that this possibility of “radical transformation” transcends the normal framework of human life, both in John and in Stoicism. Here the role of πνεῦμα in both John and Stoicism is emphasized. A possible difference remains. In John more than in Stoicism, while the “porosity”—the very possibility of transcending death—is there, its actualization appears to require direct divine intervention from above.

Coming Back to Life in and through Death: Early Christian Creativity in Paul, Ignatius, and Valentinus

Frederick S. Tappenden — 2017-03-31

This paper examines notions of coming back to life in/through death in the writings of Paul and two of his second century interpreters: Ignatius of Antioch and Valentinus. I demonstrate that, in the Pauline tradition, there are many ways of mapping notions of death and life to the human body. My departure point is 2 Corinthians 3–4, where notions of life in death and life through death are configured in relation to recurrent spatial metaphors of verticality, proximity, and containment. With these spatial mappings in view, I turn next to Ignatius of Antioch and Valentinus, demonstrating that the conceptual tension Paul proposes in 2 Corinthians tends to be parsed out and prioritised differently among his early readers. Ignatius and Valentinus utilise the same spatial categories as Paul, though they do so with different emphases: Ignatius stresses all the same somatic spaces, though he does so with a different connective logic; Valentinus, on the other hand, tends to prioritise notions of proximity and containment over those of verticality. In the end, though Paul is quite forthcoming regarding the body and its place in his resurrection ideals, his early readers build on and modify this somatic element. Paul’s thinking about resurrection is marbled by interpretive creativity that attempts to negotiate both the apostle’s own writings and the lines between death and life for those who follow in his footsteps.

“Tell Me What Shall Arise”: Conflicting Notions of the Resurrection Body in Fourth- and Fifth-Century Egypt

Hugo Lundhaug — 2017-03-31

In the turmoil around the turn of the fifth century, controversy over the legacy of Origen took center stage, and questions regarding the nature of the resurrection were among the main points of contention. What was the nature of the resurrection body? In what sense will post-resurrection life represent a continuation or a break with the present one? How are key scriptural passages, such as 1 Cor 15 to be understood? What is the role of ritual or ascetic practice? This essay shows how, when compared with more well-known players of the controversy, two texts from the Nag Hammadi Codices and writings by the powerful Upper Egyptian abbot Shenoute of Atripe may give us additional insight into how these questions were debated. It is argued that on the level of phrases, terminology, and allusions there is much agreement, while important disagreements regarding how to conceptualize the resurrection leads to distinctly different interpretations of the key biblical texts. And while creeds were introduced to curtail certain interpretations, they also led to new interpretations, as creedal phrases were also redefined and reinterpreted to suit the preferred conceptual models of different interpreters.

Living without the Dead: Finding Solace in Ancient Rome

Valerie M. Hope — 2017-03-31

Devastated by the death of his daughter Tullia, Cicero struggled to assuage his grief. Cicero did all that was expected of an elite man—seeking comfort from friends and philosophy, from reading and writing, from remembering and commemorating—yet to the dismay of his friends he was still unmanly in his grief. This paper looks at the strategies used and available both to express and control grief in the Roman world. How did the bereaved negotiate a new role both for themselves and for the dead? How did they both display and conceal their grief? Grief was both a public performance and a private journey, and, as Cicero discovered, for the bereaved the tensions between public and private could be an emotional and practical minefield. Focusing on evidence from the late Republic and first century CE, the paper explores how individuals, after the public performance of the funeral, lived with their grief. It investigates ideals and counter ideals (including gender stereotypes) for the behaviour of the bereaved, and how bereavements were rationalised and consoled through various mechanisms such as support networks, rituals, beliefs (religious and philosophical), public monuments, personal mementos, art and literature. The dead could not be brought back to life, but for those left behind the dead were often a potent presence which could have a negative or positive impact on the future of the bereaved.

Bringing Back to Life: Laments and the Origin of the So-Called Words of Institution

Angela Standhartinger — 2017-03-31

Recent research into the origins of early Christian meals focuses on the social form of the Graeco-Roman banquets and symposium. What remains to be seen, however, is how the so-called “words of institution” transmitted by Paul to the community at Corinth functioned at some of those meals. In this paper I show that the tradition cited in 1 Corinthians 11:23–25 describes most likely a funerary banquet. Here food might be shared between the living and the dead while laments and dirges not only present the context of that meal—a passion story—but also enable an imagined reunion with the deceased so as to raise her or his voice and speak in her or his name. The paper shows how the performance of (funerary) meals might have functioned to those who believed in resurrection.

Guarding His Body, Mourning His Death, and Pleading for Him in Heaven: On Adam's Death and Eve's Virtues in the Greek Life of Adam and Eve

Vita Daphna Arbel — 2017-03-31

Daphna Arbel is a professor emerita of biblical/early Jewish literature working particularly in the areas of Near Eastern and biblical literature/mythology, gender/feminist criticism, early Jewish “mysticism,” and the discursive history of ancient women. She has published widely in these areas, including: Forming Femininity in Antiquity: Eve, Gender, and Ideologies in the Greek Life of Adam and Eve (Oxford University Press, 2012); Beholders of Divine Secrets: Myth and Mysticism in the Hekhalot and Merkavah Literature (SUNY Press, 2003); and ‘And So They Went Out’: The Lives of Adam and Eve as Cultural Transformative Story (with J. R. C. Cousland and D. Neufeld; T&T Clark, 2010). Professor Arbel is currently working on her new monograph, entitled ‘The Most Beautiful Woman’: On Femininities in the Song of Songs and Beyond (funded by SSHRC).

ABSTRACT: This paper focuses on a remarkable representation of the archetypal first woman found in the Greek Life of Adam and Eve (GLAE) of antiquity, one of the most influential narratives about Adam and Eve after Genesis 2–3. Treating Eve as a culturally constructed figure, the paper employs observations from critical feminist theory, among other methods, to demonstrate how one GLAE narrative scene, known as the account of Adam’s death (GLAE 31–42), not only abandons the formulaic image of Eve as the sinful figure, responsible for inflicting death on Adam and all humanity, but also subtly represents her as playing a beneficial, virtuous role in the context of Adam’s death. In a nuanced reading of this account, the paper explores an interesting correspondence between distinct death-related roles allocated to both Eve and the angels in the event of Adam’s death, including caring for his body, mourning his decease, pleading for him after his passing, and witnessing his final ascent to heaven. It then considers the possible ideological implications of this unique representation of a virtuous Eve in the context of the account of Adam’s death, the complete GLAE, and the broad cultural context of its writers and audience.

Hippolytus and Virbius: Narratives on “Coming Back to Life” and Religious Discourse in Greco-Roman Literature

Katharina Waldner — 2017-03-31

This paper concentrates on the plethora of stories about Hippolytus’s gruesome end and his coming back to life. I trace these stories through their many iterations from classical through Roman times, beginning with Euripides and moving on to the versions told by Pausanias, Virgil, and Ovid. Each telling of these tales provides a different way to think about the borders between life and death, as well as between gods, heroes, and mortals—and about politics, religion, and poetry. In relation to all these topics, the story about Hippolytus’s coming back to life was good to think with. For Euripides, Hippolytus provides an example of polis-related discourse in late fifth-century BCE Athens. In Hellenistic times, Hippolytus became attached to Italian mythology, probably already by Callimachus. Finally, the versions told by Virgil (Aeneid) and Ovid (Fasti and Metamorphoses) demonstrate sophisticated ways of dealing with the new phenomenon of apotheosis in Roman religion and its meaning for Augustan poetry.

Disarming Death: Theomachy and Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15

Jeffrey A. Keiser — 2017-03-31

This essay reads Paul’s apostrophe to Death in 1 Corinthians 15:54–55 in relation to the wider literary topos of theomachy, or god-fighting. The god-fighter is typically a human or a demigod who, by challenging the gods, threatens to subvert the natural order of the cosmos. A close reading of 1 Corinthians 15 in comparison to other examples of the theomachy topos in Greek, Roman, and Jewish writings shows that Paul presents Christ as a god-fighter throughout this chapter. Paul concludes this presentation with a set of strategically reworked scripture quotations, which he uses to taunt the personified figure of Death for failing to defeat Christ. Far from providing a mere rhetorical flourish, as commentators have suggested, these quotations illustrate the mythological significance of Christ’s coming back to life. As a complement to Paul’s exegetical and philosophical defense of bodily resurrection, they show that the old gods and daimones no longer hold sway over the power of life and death.

Talitha Qum! An Exploration of the Image of Jesus as Healer-Physician-Savior in the Synoptic Gospels in Relation to the Asclepius Cult

Frances Flannery — 2017-03-31

Using social memory theory, I examine three pericopes in the Synoptic Gospels—(i) the raising of Jairus’s daughter from the dead, (ii) the healing of the chronically bleeding woman, and (iii) the raising from the dead of the son of the widow of Nain—to argue that already by the late first century or early second century the earliest Christian audiences of the Gospels would have heard these stories through the lens of traditions associated with the most famous healer of the time, Asclepius—the dream-god known as the “Savior” and “Divine Physician.” I show that the Synoptic Gospels construct the figure of Jesus as healer and divine doctor by contesting the reputation of Asclepius, establishing that Jesus was a better Divine Physician who overcame the constraints of geography, money, time, travel, and ritual that Asclepius placed on his suppliants. This interpretation, firmly situated within the context of Hellenistic Judaism and the influence of the Greco-Roman Asklepieia, resolves a number of puzzling textual elements in these pericopes.

Equal to God: Jesus’s Crucifixion as Scheintod

Meredith Warren — 2017-03-31

John’s Gospel depicts Jesus as simultaneously fleshly and divine. Nowhere is this clearer than in the moment of his crucifixion, where Jesus’s physical body is lifted up and glorified. I argue that his crucifixion—and notably, his survival—establishes firmly Jesus’s divinity. In comparing Jesus’s sacrificial death on the cross to the sacrificial Scheintoten (“apparent deaths”) of the Greek romances, I propose that Jesus’s death and his escape from it work within the Gospel to establish his divinity. The protagonists of the novels appear to die and at the same time are taken as deities by those whom they encounter, even by their own romantic partners. In narrative, these deaths appear real; their loved ones behave and react to a narratively real death, and for a time, even the reader mourns for the character. Scheintoten point to the divinity of the heroines, since ordinary people are incapable of returning from the dead. Likewise, the moment of Jesus’s death in John is left unarticulated, creating a similar instant of unreality in the narrative in which Jesus’s death both occurs and is survived, signifying his divinity. Reading Jesus’s survival of his crucifixion within the literary framework of Scheintod presents Jesus’s divinity—and John’s christology—as participating in the idea-world of the ancient Mediterranean, an approach which illuminates the function of Jesus’s death in John.

Dedication

Frederick S. Tappenden — 2017-03-31

Volume dedication and other front matter.

Foreword

Gregory Nagy — 2017-03-31

Volume foreword, by Gregory Nagy.

Preface

Frederick S. Tappenden — 2017-03-31

Volume preface, by the editors.

Abbreviations

Frederick Tappenden — 2017-03-31

Complete list of abbreviations used in this volume.

Contributors

Frederick Tappenden — 2017-03-31

Information about the contributors to this volume.

“We Are Called to Monogamy”: Marriage, Virginity, and the Resurrection of the Fleshly Body in Tertullian of Carthage

Carly Daniel-Hughes — 2017-03-31

Tertullian’s four writings on marriage (two letters “To His Wife,” “Exhortation to Chastity,” and “On Monogamy”) have often disturbed his modern readers. In them, he does not applaud marital monogamy, but suggests that sexual intercourse and childbearing are ungodly, potentially damning enterprises. This paper aims to situate these treatises in conversation with his soteriology. It shows how these writings register tensions that emerge in his claim that the fleshly body will endure in the resurrection, but sexual desire will not. Sexual difference, it argues, is at once central to his soteriological equation, and yet one that exceeds his attempts to define it. Tracing Tertullian’s view of salvation of the flesh, this paper in particular illustrates how his persistent coding of the flesh as feminine works to retain sexual difference, and leads to his promotion of “monogamy,” and not as we might expect, virginity, as the figure of the resurrected life. The paper reveals that when early Christian theorizing about the resurrected body not only had to negotiate the complexities that the sexually differentiated body implied, but also had potentially broad implications to authorize or undermine particular conceptions of gender roles as well as social and familial arrangements.

Death, Resurrection, and Legitimacy in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles

David L. Eastman — 2017-03-31

In the Areopagus speech in Acts 17, Paul asserts that the resurrection of Jesus is proof that the man from Nazareth had been appointed by God and would one day judge the world. Paul believes that Jesus was the authoritative agent of divine proclamation, because he had conquered death by coming back to life. Accounts of resurrection also play a key role in establishing legitimacy in some of the apocryphal acts. This essay explores how being raised from the dead or raising others from the dead both functions in these texts as a marker of legitimacy for the apostles Peter and Paul and undermines the false claims to divine authority of Simon Magus.

Life and Death, Confession and Denial: Birthing Language in the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons

Stéphanie Machabée — 2017-03-31

This study analyzes the peculiar language of birth, abortion, and rebirth in the second-century Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons. I argue that the metaphor of birthing, particularly in its relationship to the Virgin Mother, is deemed rhetorically useful by the letter’s author in order to communicate his understanding of what constitutes a true or ‘legitimate’ Christian (that is, the confessor) and an ‘illegitimate’ Christian (that is, the denier). The author uses the notion of ‘coming back to life’ in order to demonstrate that Christian deniers are still eligible for legitimate birth through the Virgin Mother, representative of the Church, by means of life-giving confession. Thus, the author’s rhetoric simultaneously naturalizes a sharp division between legitimate and illegitimate Christians while also opening up a permeability which allows for deniers to be reinstated as confessors. This grey space may be a response to the fact that the lines in the early church between insiders and outsiders were themselves quite porous.

Weddings and the Return to Life in the Book of Revelation

Eliza Rosenberg — 2017-03-31

The wedding celebration that concludes the book of Revelation alludes to the previous death not only of the bridegroom (“the Lamb that was slain) but also of the martyrs, who appear both as wedding guests and, collectively, the bride. The familiar event of a wedding serves as a foundation for articulating a vision of the future that is posited as both previously promised and sharply different from the present. The book’s nuptial finale draws on the conventional associations of weddings with regeneration and happy endings, but by linking it with the deaths of the martyrs and juxtaposing it against the destruction of “Babylon,” it also evokes tropes of weddings gone tragically awry. These valences, which resonate throughout the book’s web of images, allow the vision to unify themes of witness and endurance of suffering with those of life of the righteous in the eschaton. Reading Revelation’s language of destruction and its language of marriage in light of one another highlights its presentation of the contrasting fates of the wicked and the fateful, both of them meeting fates that the text envisions as just.

Coming Back to Life in the Ancient Mediterranean: An Introduction

Frederick S. Tappenden — 2017-03-31

The collected essays in this volume, which have their genesis in a 2014 colloquium held at McGill University and Concordia University, examine the coming back to life thematic in a variety of ancient Mediterranean contexts. Our interests lie in the exploration of how antique communities configured, tested, and actualised the boundaries between past and present, mortality and immortality, death and life. In this introductory essay we define our problematic, outline the scope of analysis, and survey the major themes and contributions of each essay.

Many (Un)Happy Returns: Ancient Greek Concepts of a Return from Death and their Later Counterparts

Sarah Iles Johnston — 2017-03-31

Greek myths liked to meditate on why death came to particular people at particular times, on what happened to souls after death, and on the question of whether those souls could sometimes return to the world of the living. Interestingly however, with the notable exception of Alcestis (and perhaps not even always in her case), the Greeks did not imagine the return to life to be a happy thing. Myths such as those of Orpheus and of Protesilaus’ wife suggest that such returns brought tragedy for the living; myths such as that of Sisyphus suggest that the revenant himself was likely to regret his return. After analyzing the reasons that the ancient Greeks could not even begin to imagine a happy return from death, I will turn to some examples of stories about the revenants from European cultures of the 18th through 20th centuries and explore the very different ways in which they manage to send the same message—namely, that humans are better off leaving death alone, as a final decision.