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Bible, Art, and Ritual at Dura- Europos, Syria

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Bible, Art, and Ritual at Dura- Europos, Syria The World’s Oldest Church Synkrisis Comparative Approaches to Early Chris tian ity in Greco- Roman Culture Series Editors Dale B. Martin (Yale University) and L. L. Welborn (Fordham University) Synkrisis is a pro ject that invites scholars of early Chris tian ity and the Greco- Roman world to collaborate toward the goal of rigorous comparison. Each volume in the series provides immersion in an aspect of Greco- Roman culture, so as to make possi ble a comparison of the controlling logics that emerge from the dis- courses of Greco- Roman and early Christian writers. In contrast to older “history of religions” approaches, which looked for similarities between religions in order to posit relations of infl uence and de pen dency, Synkrisis embraces a fuller concep- tion of the complexities of culture, viewing Greco- Roman religions and early Chris tian ity as members of a comparative class. The diff erential comparisons pro- moted by Synkrisis may serve to refi ne and correct the theoretical and historical models employed by scholars who seek to understand and interpret the Greco- Roman world. With its allusion to the rhetorical exercises of the Greco- Roman world, the series title recognizes that the comparative enterprise is a construction of the scholar’s mind and serves the scholar’s theoretical interests. Editorial Board Loveday Alexander (Sheffi eld University) John Bodell (Brown University) Kimberly Bowes (University of Pennsylvania) Daniel Boyarin (University of California, Berkeley) Fritz Graf (Ohio State University) Ronald F. Hock (University of Southern California) Hans- Josef Klauck (University of Chicago) Stanley K. Stowers (Brown University) Angela Standhartinger (Marburg University) The World’s Oldest Church Bible, Art, and Ritual at Dura- Europos, Syria Michael Peppard New Haven & London Copyright © 2016 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e- mail sales . press@yale . edu (U.S. offi ce) or sales@yaleup . co . uk (U.K. offi ce). Set in Bulmer type by Westchester Publishing Services. Printed in the United States of Ame rica. Library of Congress Control Number: 2015937851 ISBN 978-0-300-21399-7 (cloth : alk. paper) A cata logue rec ord for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 populo Syriae, primis cunabulis Christianorum This page intentionally left blank Contents Ac know ledg ments ix Introduction: January 18, 1932, Excavation Block M8 1 one Dura- Europos and the World’s Oldest Church 5 two Anointed like David 46 three Lord and Shepherd of the Water 86 four The Pro cession of Women 111 five A Woman at a Well 155 Conclusion: Paradise Restored 202 List of Abbreviations 221 Notes 223 Bibliography 263 Subject Index 285 Index of Ancient Sources 311 Color plates follow page 128 This page intentionally left blank Ac know ledg ments When I set out to teach my fi rst university class, I asked Lisa Brody of the Yale University Art Gallery if I could have some digital images of the Dura- Europos house- church for teaching purposes. She graciously obliged with a CD of more than two hundred archival photographs. As I went through them to select the best for a lecture on early Christian ritu- als, I returned again and again to the photos of female fi gures pro cessing around the room. It looked like an ancient torch- lit wedding pro cession. What began as a class lecture became a short article; invitations to lecture on the topic followed; the article became two articles and several diff erent public lectures. And still more remained to be said, which has now be- come this book. My sincere thanks go fi rst, then, to Lisa Brody and Megan Doyon at the Yale University Art Gallery, without whom my initial sparks would have had no fuel. The expansion from initial scintillae of thought to full- blown argu- ments depended, though, on many other gracious colleagues and patrons. Foremost among these is Robin Jensen, who welcomed me into the world of art history as if it had been my primary fi eld all along. She encouraged me to pursue my sometimes wild ideas and helped me to know which were best to chase. Andrew McGowan and Felicity Harley- McGowan were similarly supportive over meals and emails, as were my steering commit- tee colleagues on the Art and Religions in Antiquity group of the Society of Biblical Lit erature. For other acts of scholarly kindness, I acknowledge Harold Attridge, David Brakke, Stephen Davis, George Demacopoulos, Lucinda Dirven, Ben Dunning, Gail Hoff man, Blake Leyerle, Dale Martin, Candida Moss, Jeanne- Nicole Saint- Laurent, Stephen Shoemaker, Maureen Tilley, Terrence Tilley, Jennifer Udell, and Larry Welborn. I am ever grateful to Christiana Peppard, a consummate scholar and endlessly sup- portive partner. Arguments from this book were presented as invited lectures at Columbia University, Yale University, McGill University, and New York ix x A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, along with con- ferences in the United States, England, and Germany. I am grateful to all those who provided feedback along the way. Portions of chapters 1, 4, and 5 appeared previously in two published articles: “New Testament Im- agery in the Earliest Christian Baptistery,” in Dura- Europos: Crossroads of Antiquity (ed. Lisa R. Brody and Gail L. Hoff man; Chestnut Hill; Chicago: McMullen Museum of Art: dist. by University of Chicago Press, 2011), 169–87; and “Illuminating the Dura- Europos Baptistery: Com- paranda for the Female Figures,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 20 (2012): 543–74. The editors at Yale University Press, especially Jennifer Banks and Heather Gold, have been enthusiastic and expert in guiding the manu- script forward. Without the fi nancial support of vari ous entities, the re- search for this book would have gone on much longer than it did. Special thanks go to the Faculty Fellowship program at Fordham University and also for a generous research grant from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, which enabled an extra semester’s leave from teaching. With that research leave, I had originally planned to spend time in Syria. Although most of the artifacts from Dura- Europos were removed to museums de cades ago, I nonetheless wanted to see the site with my own eyes and walk through the western gate of the city with my own feet. I thought I would also make a pilgrimage to the artistic remains at Mar Musa al- Habashi, the monastery refounded as a place of Muslim- Christian prayer and dialogue by Fr. Paolo Dall’Oglio, S.J., whom I had met once in the United States. I had tentative plans to work on my Aramaic and Syriac language skills at the university in Aleppo. Yet the civil war in Syria raged on. The beginning of my research leave corresponded exactly to the tragic bombings at Aleppo University ( January 15, 2013), where I had hoped to study. This book about the oldest church building in Syria was thus written under a dark cloud of despair. I read daily about tragedies both large and small throughout contemporary Syria, even as I wrote daily about its ancient beliefs and cultures. The refugee crisis in Syria and its surrounding environs has reached historic A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s xi proportions, the increasing numbers rendering futile our attempts to grasp the burden of suff ering on each individual. Even those dedicated to peace building, such as Fr. Paolo— still missing as I write this— have not escaped the war’s grasp. With solemnity, I dedicate this book to the people of Syria, the cra- dle of Chris tian ity. This page intentionally left blank The World’s Oldest Church This page intentionally left blank Introduction: January 18, 1932, Excavation Block M8 Clark Hopkins reflected on a momentous day in the east Syrian desert and penned in his diary: “In the fresco room in front of the tower south of the Main Gate the dirt came off one section and showed 5 people in a boat—2 standing below, one on a bed on the shore. Above, a god on a cloud.”1 Over the next three days, Hopkins and Henry Pearson, professors in Yale University’s departments of classics and fi ne arts, respectively, would dig, scrape, and brush away seventeen hundred years of the past. Working with their Armenian foreman, Abdul Messiah, they found that each wall of the rectangular room contained a diff erent painting: a shepherd with a fl ock of sheep; a male and a female fi gure near a tree and a serpent. Shortly thereafter, they found the fi rst inscriptions amid the frescoes, one of which read, “Christ, remember me, the humble Siseos.”2 Suddenly the paintings took on a stunning symbolism. That “god on a cloud” was not an image from Syrian or Roman my thol ogy. It was one of the oldest depictions of Jesus Christ. Hopkins and Pearson had uncovered the world’s oldest ex- tant Christian church— dating from about the year 250. As fi eld director of the excavations at Dura- Europos, one of the most successful and revelatory archaeological eff orts in the Middle East, Hopkins had become rather used to such discoveries.
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