Teachers, Texts, and Scribes

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1 REVIEW ARTICLES Teachers, Texts, and Scribes Robert M. Royalty, Jr Teachers and Texts in the Ancient World: Philosophers, Jews Christians, H. Gregory Snyder, Routledge 2000 (Hb , Pb ), pp. xv + 325, Hb 50, Pb Guardians of Letters: Literacy, Power, and the Transmitters of Early Christian Literature, Kim Haines-Eitzen, Oxford University Press 2000 ( ), pp. x + 212, Hb The codex, a book of papyrus sheets sewn together in quires, was the dominant choice for texts among early Christians over the more established roll (or scroll for the text-critical lay-person) favoured by both Jews and the Romans. Possible reasons for this preference have been debated by scholars, but the issue receives a fresh, if oblique, examination in these two books. In one of those frequent coincidences in academic circles, two dissertations in early Christian studies have been published simultaneously that both look not so much at the content of ancient texts but at how these texts were actually used. The studies complement each other well: Snyder looks at how texts were produced and used by teachers while Haines-Eitzen studies how scribes participated in the transmission and (re)production of early Christian texts. Snyder covers philosophers from the first century BCE to the second century CE and Jewish groups, including Christians, in the first century CE. Haines-Eitzen focuses on second- and thirdcentury Christian scribal practices. Both wrote clearly masterful dissertations that have made the transition to monograph well. And, while neither book bears significant stylistic scars from their earlier lives, both are written for readers with extensive knowledge of ancient philosophy, ancient Judaism, and early Christianity. These are not introductory works for the beginner but will be highly rewarding for scholars of the topics and periods addressed. While these are specialized works, both books raise critical historical issues for the study of early Christianity that have wider implications. Published by Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

2 Review articles 489 The appeal to the Bible is made so often in religious discourse, lay or academic, that few stop to think what exactly scripture meant in the first few centuries of Christianity or how it was accessed by Christians. Snyder and Haines-Eitzen have given us glimpses into the incredible complexity of readers, texts, teachers and scribes during this period. Contemporary readers might think of students toting the NRSV to the classroom or a Bible study with everyone reading from the same printed copy of the NIV. Nothing could be further from the case. Snyder highlights the role of the teacher, whose ability to read and explicate would have placed him or her in a strongly authoritative position. Haines-Eitzen shows us how variable and amorphous the text itself was and how important the role of the scribe who copied the texts was. Snyder has written a detailed, erudite and comprehensive work that explores the use of texts in teaching settings in a wide spectrum of the ancient world: the four main Schools of Greek philosophy as well as a variety of Jewish groups and teachers. In his General Introduction, Snyder describes the aims of the study as exploring the variety of textual encounters in text-centered religious and philosophical groups, from around 100 BCE to 200 CE. By text-centered, Snyder means a group to whom a corpus of texts was central to its identity. That Stoics, Platonists, Essenes and Christians, can be combined in one study is both a strength of the work and a challenge for any reader who is not familiar with any one group. But, as Snyder points out, religion and philosophy were more closely intertwined in antiquity than is generally understood today, since philosophy was focused on cultivating the moral life. And, while he uses the word group for both Epicureans and Essenes, he examines the nature of the school in the ancient world and also uses that term frequently, warning his reader against presuming any particular institutional framework for an ancient school. By textual encounters, he means the actual reading and explication of a text, usually in a school setting, by a teacher, who for Snyder is ultimately a performer who recreates the text in a textual performance. As Snyder warns (p. 11), there is not one main thesis at work but a buffet of smaller conclusions that build to a bass chord behind the whole, the idea of teachers in the ancient world as textbrokers. Of particular interest to readers in religion, this idea emerges in the study of Jesus in Palestine and is then (re)applied more generally in the conclusion to the other groups studied. The book divides into two main sections; different readers might well focus on one or the other. The first section consists of four chapters on the philosophical schools: the Stoics, Epicureans, Aristotelians (or Peripatetics), and Platonists (or Academics). Snyder s basic focus throughout is how philosophers used texts in the classrooms and how philosophical texts show evidence of classroom activity. In each

3 490 Review articles section, texts are examined in detail to glean information about how teachers and their students actually used texts. The expert will be delighted but the novice should beware, since Snyder assumes detailed knowledge about sometimes arcane subjects in ancient philosophy. He develops an interesting hierarchy. Stoics, typified by Epictetus and Seneca, take more freedom with their texts than did the other schools, viewing their texts more as a means to a moral end. Epicureans hold their founder s texts in high esteem but show a greater tendency to recast them into new forms, perhaps because of the social makeup of the group. Aristotelians focus more than any other group on the texts of their founder, with greater attention to philological matters and detailed commentaries than the other schools. The wide popularity of Plato s writings produced both commentaries for study and abstracted epitomes and anthologies that allowed a student to study Plato s philosophy without the literary distractions of the dialogues themselves, such as Socrates habitual irony. There is a wealth of other information in these chapters on the schools, teachers, practices, and texts, from Epictetus four-fold method of textual analysis (pp. 23 7) to a discussion of ancient Cliff Notes on Plato s Timaeus (pp ), that will reward the scholar of this period. One point for contemporary teachers is the difference in how a text was conceived of and used in the classroom 2000 years ago. Many of the texts that have survived from the ancient schools are in fact products of the schools, either as lecture notes, commentaries for students, or anthologies for study. The second section is Chapter 5, Jewish and Christian Groups. This is in turn divided into four parts, one each on Philo, Qumran, the scribal culture of Palestine, and Christian groups. The lack of connection with the previous section is problematic. Of these four, only Philo could have much connection to the philosophical schools. The time period in this section moreover is shifted backwards; all texts are from before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, with the exception of the Epistle of Barnabas, which also could be a firstcentury text. Thus, any parallels found between the philosophical schools and the ancient Jewish or Christian groups seem more accidental than significant. Two perhaps unintended results of this juxtaposition are the further separation of the Jewish Palestinian milieu of early first-century Christianity from its eventual Greco- Roman philosophical identity in the second century and beyond, and an even closer connection between the methods of Jesus and Qumran, as explained below. For Philo, Snyder discusses the relationship of his writings to the classroom but finds that Philo s own devotional activity was the formative context for his writings. Like Seneca, Philo saw his role as a teacher actualized in his writing. Three main findings from the study

4 Review articles 491 of Qumran are the importance of textual performance in the community, because of the religious function of reading texts; the egalitarian approach to the explication of texts within the community, an approach that stands out within all the groups studied here; and an emphasis on writing that Snyder connects to a programmatic attachment by the community to Jubilees. For scribal culture elsewhere in Palestine, Snyder highlights the role of the scribe as text-broker. In a culture in which Torah dominated society but in which most people were illiterate, the Jewish scribe would have considerable power. Snyder traces the conflict in the Gospels between Jesus and the scribes to the interpretive textual activity of Jesus that would have challenged the authority of the scribes to control the Torah texts. Snyder overstates the case that this convincing interpretive conflict was one significant strand in the cable that drew [Jesus] to his death (p. 189). What he fails to note, but would be of great interest to Jesus scholars, is that Jesus open-source textual methodology, as Snyder constructs it, mirrors his own description of the egalitarian approach in the Qumran community. Finally, in his discussion of early Christian groups, Snyder portrays Paul as a text-broker for his communities. Paul used his textual interpretation to bolster his own authority rather than to open the scriptures for communal reading, rejecting interpretations by other teachers who challenged him. In a fascinating exposition of the Epistle of Barnabas and 1 Clement, Snyder shows how these two texts could have been used as anthologies of scripture for pedagogical performance (a point that relates to the Christian use of the codex, pp ). He concludes the work by developing a spectrum of the relationship of teachers and texts in the various groups and teachers studied. What do the Stoics have to do with Qumran? Not much, really, unless one s focus is the mixed world of first-century Christianity. Snyder s work is comprehensive, illuminating, and of great value to scholars of ancient philosophy, Judaism, and Christianity. There is an underlying sense that what it s really about is Jesus and Paul and their respective, if somewhat contradictory roles as text-brokers within their religious communities, but that he does not want to make this point, with its profound contemporary ramifications, too explicit. The reader who is just interested in the philosophical schools or Qumran will find much here, but unless that reader also has specific interests in early Christian studies she or he will not read the other side. Snyder writes on page 49 that it is a well-known fact that collecting books was not a matter of purchasing pre-existent copies. This is the starting point for Haines-Eitzen, quoting P. Oxy. 2192, a request to a friend for copies of Hypsicrates Characters in Comedy. This story is a frequent touchstone in the book, as are the accounts of transmission of

5 492 Review articles Christian literature in Shepherd of Hermas Vision and Eusebius History of the Church 6.23, which describes Origen at work with various copyists. The manufacture and circulation of texts is Haines-Eitzen s central focus. While her study of Greco-Roman and early Christian scribal practices is comprehensive, her central theses are more focused than Snyder s. Haines-Eitzen sets out to show that Christians do not appear to have hired professional scribes but used a private network of Christian scribes who were also the users of the literatures. These scribes did more than copy texts: as users, they modified and corrected texts within particular theological and ideological contexts. The period of study is the second and third centuries CE. Haines-Eitzen draws on a wide variety of evidence: literary accounts of scribal activity, the papyrological corpus, and epigraphic evidence. Her call for a comprehensive social history of scribes in the second and third centuries CE (p. 8) is well-served by this detailed attention to all the available evidence. Chapter 1 locates the copyists of early Christian literature first by examining different models for text transmission in the Roman world: public professional scribes, private secretarial scribes, multifunctional scribes, and nonprofessional copyists. For the second and third century, there is only one Christian text that describes copying, the passage from Hermas mentioned above. While this one story emphasizes the nonprofessional aspect of the copy, the overall silence of Christian literature suggests that Christians used the same means as non- Christians to produce texts. Only in the fourth-century, with the emergence of monastic communities, do literary sources glorify the task of copying as one that could raise a person s religious status. Chapter 2, originally published in the Journal of Early Christian Studies (vol. 6 [1998], pp ), describes the under-appreciated and often significant role women had in copying texts, particularly in private contexts. Chapter 3 examines the training of Christian scribes. Here, Haines-Eitzen finds that the early Christian scribes were most often in the middle space between the documentary and literary styles of writing, suggesting that they tended to be multifunctional scribes without extensive training in copying literary texts. Also, in the course of looking at the longest early Christian papyri (P 45, P 46, P 47, P 66, P 75, P 72, the Egerton Papyrus 2, the Michigan Papyrus of The Shepherd of Hermas, and P. Bodmer V), she finds one, P 72, that exhibits evidence of a nonprofessional Christian scribe familiar with liturgical texts. Chapter 4 studies the transmission of early Christian literature, in which Haines-Eitzen argues for the primacy of private scribal networks and even more vigorously against the existence of scriptoria in the second and third centuries (it is here, pp. 91 6, that codices are treated in an excursus). Finally, in Chapter 5, she discusses how early Christian scribes despite what prior scholars have maintained, neither totally

6 Review articles 493 wild or uncontrolled in their methods changed texts within the boundaries of contemporary theological and ideological disputes, such as anti-jewish sentiments, animosity towards women, or Christological issues such as the relation of Christ and Jesus physical body. The third-century Bodmer codex, a collection of nine or ten early Christian texts by six different scribes, receives extensive attention in both chapters 4 and 5 for the various hands, content of the texts, and singular readings. A summary of findings concludes the book, in which Haines-Eitzen suggests further work on the Jewish context of copying texts; here of course Snyder s work on the Qumran community is most appropriate. The comprehensiveness of the study, the sharp and clear focus throughout, and the extensive and nuanced attention to both the testimony of the literary evidence and the realia of the papyrological and epigraphic evidence make this a most significant study. Nonetheless, there are some problems. The specificity of Haines-Eitzen s theses can be problematic; much of what she sets out to prove is either obvious (Christians copied Christian texts and changed them; see her own comment to that effect on p. 130) or, conversely, hangs on relatively thin evidence. This is especially the case in chapters 3 and 4. In Chapter 3, only one of the papyri examined, P 72, shows clear evidence of having been written by a Christian scribe, but this forms the basis of a private network of Christian scribes in Chapter 4. The conclusions of Chapter 3 are mostly negative; Haines-Eitzen even includes a description of what she had hoped to find instead (pp. 74 5). Chapter 4 attacks, almost tendentiously, the idea that second and third century Christian literature was copied in scriptoria. Haines-Eitzen is very effective at poking holes in the theories of scholars who support this idea but less successful at recognizing problematic areas in her own evidence. Much in her argument in Chapter 4 hinges on the colophon to the Martyrdom of Polycarp (see pp. 80 3). Haines-Eitzen avoids the issue of historical accuracy for this colophon but then uses it as historically accurate for her period (p. 83). There is no other Christian literary evidence from the second or third centuries adduced and, indeed, she never examines whether this colophon itself could have been the product of a scriptorium (it could be dated to a much later period). While the focus is on scribal activity in the second and third centuries, the constant use of fourth and fifth century evidence, or extraneous evidence such as a passage from Jubilees on page 37 or Quintillian on page 86, neither of which support the point being made, further highlight the lack of evidence for portions of her argument. This problem, however, may be nothing more than a result of Haines-Eitzen s admirable effort to argue a strong thesis with the evidence she has. If she is overstated, Snyder, who presents a buffet of ideas with a gradually emerging bass chord, is understated.

7 494 Review articles Haines-Eitzen hides nothing and pushes the implications of her study for our understanding of the social history of the critical first centuries of Christianity. Snyder holds back from drawing the fullest religious implications from his intriguing studies of Jesus and Paul. Haines-Eitzen is clear, forceful, and sometimes overly polemical in her writing. Snyder s equally clear style tends to the idiosyncratic, if sometimes precious, and might send the less erudite reader to the dictionary once too often. Both have written valuable monographs in the social history of Roman antiquity and early Christianity that demonstrate a firm grasp of prior scholarship and, more importantly, move the discussion to new areas with fresh perspectives. They are worth the study, well beyond their respective views on the Christian use of the codex. Robert M. Royalty, Jr is BKT Assistant Professor of Religion, Wabash College, Indiana.

The Dead Sea Scrolls. Core Biblical Studies. George J. Brooke University of Manchester Manchester, United Kingdom

The Dead Sea Scrolls. Core Biblical Studies. George J. Brooke University of Manchester Manchester, United Kingdom RBL 06/2014 Peter W. Flint The Dead Sea Scrolls Core Biblical Studies Nashville: Abingdon, 2013. Pp. xxiv + 212. Paper. $29.99. ISBN 9780687494491. George J. Brooke University of Manchester Manchester,