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Strategies of Interpretation of the Bible in the Lausiac

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Strategies of Interpretation of the Bible in the Lausiac Yuliya Minets CONSTRUCTING IDEALS OF CHRISTIAN LIFE: STRATEGIES OF INTERPRETATION OF THE BIBLE IN THE LAUSIAC HISTORY OF PALLADIUS OF HELLENOPOLIS MA Thesis in Medieval Studies CEU eTD Collection Central European University Budapest May 2008 CONSTRUCTING IDEALS OF CHRISTIAN LIFE: STRATEGIES OF INTERPRETATION OF THE BIBLE IN THE LAUSIAC HISTORY OF PALLADIUS OF HELLENOPOLIS by Yuliya Minets (Ukraine) Thesis submitted to the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Medieval Studies Accepted in conformance with the standards of the CEU ____________________________________________ Chair, Examination Committee ____________________________________________ Thesis Supervisor ____________________________________________ Examiner ____________________________________________ Examiner CEU eTD Collection Budapest May 2008 CONSTRUCTING IDEALS OF CHRISTIAN LIFE: STRATEGIES OF INTERPRETATION OF THE BIBLE IN THE LAUSIAC HISTORY OF PALLADIUS OF HELLENOPOLIS by Yuliya Minets (Ukraine) Thesis submitted to the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Medieval Studies Accepted in conformance with the standards of the CEU ____________________________________________ External Examiner CEU eTD Collection Budapest May 2008 CONSTRUCTING IDEALS OF CHRISTIAN LIFE: STRATEGIES OF INTERPRETATION OF THE BIBLE IN THE LAUSIAC HISTORY OF PALLADIUS OF HELLENOPOLIS by Yuliya Minets (Ukraine) Thesis submitted to the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Medieval Studies Accepted in conformance with the standards of the CEU ____________________________________________ External Supervisor CEU eTD Collection Budapest May 2008 I, the undersigned, Yuliya Minets, candidate for the MA degree in Medieval Studies declare herewith that the present thesis is exclusively my own work, based on my research and only such external information as properly credited in notes and bibliography. I declare that no unidentified and illegitimate use was made of the work of others, and no part of the thesis infringes on any person’s or institution’s copyright. I also declare that no part of the thesis has been submitted in this form to any other institution of higher education for an academic degree. Budapest, 26 May 2008 __________________________ Signature CEU eTD Collection TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction……………………………………………………………………...………1 Chapter 1. The Author and his Works in their Contemporary Context………..………10 Chapter 2. The Solid Ground of Textual Analysis……………………………………..41 Chapter 3. Interpreting the Bible: Narrative Strategies and Rhetorical Devices………55 Chapter 4. Interpreting Biblical Ideas: Shifts in Focus………………………………...76 Chapter 5. The History of One Idea: The idea of asceticism in the Lausiac History………………………………………………………………………………...110 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….121 Appendix 1. Overview of Polish and Russian Historiography on Lausiac History…..125 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………..…129 CEU eTD Collection i INTRODUCTION The transition from paganism and the ancient Graeco-Roman culture to Christianity, the development of the Christian religion in the fourth and the fifth centuries A.D. needed to be supported by elaborated narratives in which the representation of ideal Christian lifestyle(s) would be given, and ideals and values of righteousness and asceticism would be proposed and expounded. The main research question of the present study is how biblical texts were used to construct ideals of exemplary Christian lives in the early Eastern Christian writings while paying particular attention to the different purposes and the “target audiences” of the texts analyzed. The rhetorical structures1 where the biblical quotations, references, and allusions to the Scripture were used will be investigated as well as their understanding and interpretation by Late Antique Christian authors, the meanings which were read into the sacred texts and used for developing ideas and ideal images of Christianity in the fourth and fifth centuries. The main source for this study is the text authored by Palladius, the bishop of Hellenopolis (363/364 – 431), the Lausiac History. Another work of the same author, the Dialogue on the Life of John Chrysostom, will also be used as a term of comparison. Furthermore, wherever it is necessary to define the position of Palladius and his works in his contemporary context, I will also discuss other texts which constituted the Christian discourse in the fourth – fifth centuries. The present study belongs to the rapidly developing academic field which investigates the processes of the construction of Christian discourse in the cultural and CEU eTD Collection ideological conditions of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages; its conclusions 1 By the term “rhetoric” or “rhetorical structure” which will be frequently used in the current work I mean the same concept as was used by Averil Cameron: “Finally, a problem with the word “rhetoric,” for I do not (obviously) use it in its technical sense, but rather in the current, far looser sense it seems to have acquired, by which it can mean something like “characteristic means or ways of expression”” in Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse, Sather Classical Lectures 55 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 13. 1 should be relevant for the understanding of the processes of creating Christian narrative as a complex, articulated system of texts meant to encapsulate and enforce a certain worldview. My own contribution will be the clarification of the ways and methods in which biblical texts were used by some Eastern Christian writers in order to build up different ideals of Christian life depending on the aims and potential audiences of their texts. Previous researchers who adopted this approach, most of all Elizabeth Clark, have focused especially on the Western part of the Christian world and on Latin writings. Similar research on the Greek texts produced by Christian authors in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity are, to the best of my knowledge, not too well represented in the existing scholarship. Palladius is crucial for such an investigation because this author was able to produce two texts which are very different from each other in terms of style, language, and level of theological elaboration, precisely because they targeted two very different audiences.2 The Aim and Subject of the Study My research analyzes the different strategies employed by Palladius when he uses and interprets the text of the Bible in his works in order to construct and present to his readership ideals of Christian life. I investigate the representation of different types of the exemplary Christian life in the texts of Palladius, including the monastic ideal, the secular ascetic ideal appropriate for ordinary Christians, and the ideal of the CEU eTD Collection authoritative Church leader. The objectives of the present study are, first of all, to characterize Palladius’s strategies of using and reworking biblical texts (i. e., his rhetorical strategies), 2 See below the section about the sources. 2 especially when he made deliberate changes to the meaning of the passages from the Scripture he quoted or when he introduced a new emphasis in them by intentionally changing the text and the context of biblical words. Second, I will try to define the exemplary images and ideas which Palladius produced from such reading of the Scripture, and place them in his contemporary cultural, literary, and ideological context. This will offer the opportunity to trace the development of the key issues, concepts, and ideas of the Christian discourse from within as far as it is possible for a modern scholar. In other words, by beginning with the textological aspects of Palladius’ works, I move beyond these, to the level of the development and transformation of ideas, that is, to the level of mental processes such as self-understanding and identity; this approach helps us to understand the construction of the Christian discourse. One very important point, in which I strongly believe, is also worth mentioning: there was no solid, unitary whole that can be labeled “the Christianity of the fourth-fifth centuries.” The most important point is to understand that there were many different trends and parties inside “Christianity itself.” These developed in different, sometimes even contradictory, ways. Moreover, one should exclude teleological approaches and retrospective projections of our modern understating of later Christianity onto its early origins: it was not obvious that Christianity would develop as it did. Issues of Methodology My research is a part of the historical field on the crossroads of textual studies, CEU eTD Collection the history of ideas and mentalities. It is also related to hermeneutics, semiotics, and theories of narrative. Particularly, I share the idea that every text is connected with previous literary tradition and depends on previous texts even more than it is connected with the reality of life which this text tries to explain or describe. Therefore, I will use 3 some concepts originally formulated in the framework of poststructuralism, namely, the intertextuality and discourse. The concept of intertexuality, used in my study, grounds
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