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PONDER-MASTERSREPORT-2014.Pdf (5.901Mb) Copyright by Ross Philip Ponder 2014 This report committee for Ross Philip Ponder certifies that this is the approved version of the following report: Visions of the End: The Dreams and Death of Vibia Perpetua APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Supervisor: _____________________________ Steven J. Friesen _____________________________ L. Michael White Visions of the End: The Dreams and Death of Vibia Perpetua by Ross Philip Ponder, B.A., M.Div. Report Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts The University of Texas at Austin December 2014 DEDICATION To Fred L. in honor of his life of service ְו ִשׁ ַ֤בּ ְח ִתּֽי ֲאנִ ֙י ֶאת־ ַה ִשּׂ ְמ ֔ ָחה ֲא ֨ ֶשׁר ֵאֽין־ ֤טוֹב ָלֽאָ ָד ֙ם ַ֣תּ ַחת ַה ֔ ֶשּׁ ֶמשׁ ִ֛כּי ִאם־ ֶל ֱא ֥כוֹל ְו ִל ְשׁ ֖תּוֹת ְו ִל ְשׂ ֑מוֹ ַח ְו ֞הוּא יִ ְלֶ֣ונּוּ ַב ֲע ָמ ֗לוֹ יְ ֵ֥מי ַח ָיּ֛יו ֲא ֶשׁר־ ָנֽ ַתן־ ֥לוֹ ָה ֱאל ִ֖הים ַ֥תּ ַחת ַה ָ ֽשּׁ ֶמשׁ And I commended mirth, because a person has no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry; for this will go with them in their labor during the days of their life that God has given them under the sun. Qohelet 8:15 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Professors Steven J. Friesen and L. Michael White for their careful guidance and support at all stages of this project. Their insightful feedback greatly improved the quality of this report. All errors and shortcomings are my own. My family deserves a special note of gratitude. My wife, Sarah Pratt Ponder, inspires me with her boundless and generative capacity of love. My parents, Drs. Karen and Wendell Ponders, taught me the way to ask questions and instilled in me the curiosity to wind up in a doctoral program. My brothers, Dr. Warren Ponder and Alan Ponder, also provided support in their one ways: whether a quick conversation on the phone or a special package in the mail. They all deserve my unending gratitude and love. All abbreviations and formatting conventions in the bibliography as well as the remainder of the report follow Patrick H. Alexander, The SBL Manual of Style: For Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical and Early Christian Studies (Peabody, Mass. Hendrickson, 1999). v Visions of the End: The Dreams and Death of Vibia Perpetua by Ross Philip Ponder, M.A. The University of Texas at Austin, 2014 Supervisor: Steven J. Friesen After being arrested and jailed with other Christians in 203, Vibia Perpetua, a young matron, requests a dream-vision (visio—a technical term for a prophetic dream) to determine their fate. Perpetua sees a bronze ladder reaching up to the sky where a gray- haired man offers her cheese in a paradisal garden. Scholars often use this so-called stairway to heaven in order to characterize early Christian martyrdom in North Africa as apocalyptic ascent (Balling 1994, Frankfurter 1998, Moss 2012) or to attribute such phenomena, however tangentially, to the renewal movement of the ‘New Prophecy’ (Butler 2006). While not disputing the presence of apocalyptic features in the martyrologies of North Africa, this reports contends that such descriptions tend to be homogenizing and imprecise. Instead, the present study further nuances the debate by analyzing the function of dream-visions in the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis and the oneirology—i.e., the study of dream interpretation—in Tertullian’s De anima. Both documents, composed in the first fifteen years of the third century, reveal discursive vi practices marking boundaries around Christian identity in Roman North Africa (Rebillard 2012). Dream-visions in the Passio lend authority to the text—placing it alongside the “examples of ancient faith” (vetera fidei exempla; 1.1)—and train martyrs to die for God in the arena. The present study argues that dream-visions in the Passio, rather than fitting a form-critical definition of apocalypse or adherence to a single group identity, illuminate some third century debates of Christians with their many identities regarding prophecy, death, and dreams. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables……………………………………………………………………………..ix List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………..x I. Introduction..……………………………………………………………………………1 II. A Sketch of the Passio’s Narrative……….…….…….…….…….…….…….………..4 III. Method in the Madness: On Narrative, Negotiation, and Charismata……….………12 IV. Dreaming Dreams and Seeing Visions as Authoritative..…………………………...21 V. The Dream-Vision as Preparation for Martyrdom………………………………........26 First Dream-Vision…………………………………………………………........29 Second and Third Dream-Visions………………………………………………..41 Fourth Dream-Vision…………………………………………………………….46 VI. Perpetua’s Fifth Dream-Vision? The Narrator’s Conclusion..…………………........52 VII. Conclusions.………………………………………………………………………...56 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………..59 Vita……………………………………………………………………………………….72 viii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Major Events in the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis……………….11 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Perpetua’s Ladder Vision from the Acrosolium of Peter and Marcelinus…….37 Figure 2: Perpetua’s Ladder Vision from Quintana de Buerba………………………….39 Figure 3: Detail of Perpetua’s Ladder Vision from Quintana de Buerba………………..41 x I. Introduction This paper explores two interrelated questions about the way that we read the dream-vision reports of Vibia Perpetua in the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis (henceforth Passio), given that Perpetua spends almost half of the written account experiencing dream-visions.1 Why would the narrative of the Passio portray the divine call to martyrdom by means of sleep and trance episodes? What kind of benefit did the dream-vision report bring to the narrative over other modes of divine communication? In general, scholars of early Christianity have answered both questions by asserting that the Passio is, in some sense, apocalyptic, an answer that I will argue stands in tension with the way that Perpetua’s dream-visions function in the overall narrative. 2 One reason that 1 Hereafter cited as the Passio. Also note that in all cases I use the Latin and Greek as presented in Thomas J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). English translations of the Passio are my own. I use the term “dream-vision” rather than “vision” and/or “dream” based on the work of John S. Hanson (“Dreams and Visions in the Graeco-Roman World and Early Christianity,” ANRW 23.2 [1980]: 1395-1427). Hanson noted that Greek texts mainly feature, “a fairly loose application of a variety of terms that can mean “dream” or “vision” or both…[demonstrating] the difficulty, if not impossibility, of distinguishing between a dream and a vision” using terminology alone (“Dreams and Visions,” 1408). 2 “Apocalyptic” in secondary literature takes on two usages: 1) as an adjective describing a broader category of literature than the literary genre of the “apocalypse” (E.g., John J. Collins, “What is Apocalyptic Literature?” in Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature [ed. John J. Collins; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014] 1- 16, esp. 6-8); and 2) to describe a worldview that there will be an imminent and catastrophic end to this world. The latter usage conflates some more classic definitions of apocalypticism with apocalyptic (e.g., Lorenzo DiTommaso, “Apocalypses and Apocalypticism in Antiquity (Part I),” CBR 5 [2007]: 235-286; and idem, “Apocalypses and Apocalypticism in Antiquity (Part II),” CBR 5 [2007]: 367-432). These two usages are helpful for understanding the purpose and function of the Passio. For an overview of scholarly trends on dreams and visions in ancient Christianity and early Judaism, consider Frances Flannery, “Dreams and Visions in Early Jewish and Early Christian Apocalypses and Apocalypticism,” in Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature (ed. John J. Collins; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014) 104-120. 1 scholars turn to the Passio is that its dream-vision reports can offer the voice of a late antique woman, the dream-vision reports being a locus classicus for her subconscious desires.3 What David Frankfurter has termed “the legacy of Jewish apocalypses in early Christianity” tends to render the dream-vision reports as miniature adapted apocalypses.4 However, in focusing on subconscious desires of the martyrs and on apocalyptic features, this work has overlooked what the dream-vision reports do for the story of the Passio. In the pages below, I argue that the dream-vision reports prepare Perpetua to become a martyr, a role that promises her an elevated status. By plotting the narratological function of the dream-vision reports, I propose that dream-visions, preserved in ancient literature, highlight a text’s divine origin, and ascribe both legitimacy and immediacy not only to the dreams themselves but also to a text’s larger narrative arc.5 Dream-vision reports 3 Peter Dronke (Women Writers of the Middle Ages, 6-7) argue passionately that the dream-visions are genuine to the historical Vibia Perpetua, employing a psychoanalytic method. However, the historicity of the dreams are less important for the present study. Whether Perpetua dreamt the dreams or saw the vision is not the point; rather, the goal of the present study is to read the dreams as Elizabeth Clark suggests, “as literary productions before they are read as sources of social data” (History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004] 159). This point is relevant in light of the fact that Perpetua’s diary is framed within a narrative designed by later individuals. 4 David Frankfurter, “The Legacy of Jewish Apocalypses in Early Christianity: Regional Trajectories,” in The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early Christianity (ed. James C. VanderKam and William Adler; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999) 129-200. 5 Several studies have addressed how the literary trope of dreaming served as a tool of authentication in ancient sources across the Mediterranean.
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