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Rulers of the Air: Demonic Bodies and the Making of the Ancient Christian Cosmos

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Rulers of the Air: Demonic Bodies and the Making of the Ancient Christian Cosmos RULERS OF THE AIR: DEMONIC BODIES AND THE MAKING OF THE ANCIENT CHRISTIAN COSMOS Travis W. Proctor A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Religious Studies in the Graduate School Chapel Hill 2017 Approved by: Bart Ehrman Zlatko Pleše James Rives Elizabeth Clark Annette Yoshiko Reed © 2017 Travis W. Proctor ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Travis W. Proctor: Rulers of the Air: Demonic Bodies and the Making of the Ancient Christian Cosmos (Under the direction of Bart D. Ehrman) This dissertation uses demonology as a lens through which to explore early Christian theorizations of the body’s entanglement with nonhuman entities. Through four case studies on Christian demonologies in the first three centuries of the Common Era, I demonstrate that early Christians held to a wide variety of views on the demonic body. Early texts such as the Gospel of Mark and Ignatius of Antioch’s Letter to the Smyrnaeans, for example, portray demons as “incorporeal.” Writings from Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian of Carthage, however, depict the demonic body in ways that stress its corpulence. Despite these demonological discrepancies, in each case differences in demonic corporeality run parallel to divergences in Christian characterizations of the ideal Christian body. The hybridity of the demonic body, then, reflects broader multiplicities in Christian modes of corporeality. This suggests that the bodies of demons served as fruitful sites of negotiation and invention for Christians as they fashioned the contours of human corporeality within and among other cosmic forces. The propinquity between demonic and human corporealities, moreover, materialized in the ritual activities of early Christians. I point out that ideas regarding demonic bodies informed early Christian rites such as exorcism, the Eucharist, ritual contemplation, and baptism. In such a way, demonic bodies came to play a central role in the ritualization of Christian corporeality as an embodied repudiation of its demonic assailants. In this way, the contours of the demonic body both reflected and reproduced Christian corporeal ideologies. iii The tandem construction of demonic and human corporeality demonstrates how early Christian authors constructed the bodies that populated their cosmos – human, demon, and otherwise – as part of broader cosmic networks. Configurations of the human body, on the one hand, took shape in light of the many bodies and objects adjacent to it. Similarly, the cosmos and its denizens were fashioned relative to ideals regarding the makeup and performance of Christian embodiment. By tracing this close interconnection, my project serves the broader purposes of re- centering the nonhuman in our study of early Christianity while enriching the cosmic contexts in which the Christian body took shape. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION: BODIES OF A SUBTLER TYPE............................................1 Significant Previous Research on Early Christian Demons.................................................4 Theory and Methodology.....................................................................................................8 Demons and Bodies in the Ancient Mediterranean...........................................................15 Chapter Overview..............................................................................................................24 CHAPTER 2: DEMONS IN THE MAKING: POSSESSION, EXORCISM, AND THE DISEMBODIED DEMONIC IN THE EARLY JESUS MOVEMENT........................................................................................................29 Watchers, Giants, and Demons in Second Temple Jewish Literature...............................33 Possession and Exorcism in Second Temple Jewish Literature........................................43 Watchers and Giants in Early Christianity.........................................................................48 Demon(iac)s in the Making: Demonic Bodies in the Gospel of Mark..............................51 A Body Possessed: Jesus, Spirit Possession, and the Christian Body...............................72 A Potent Possession: Christian Exorcistic Practice and the Making of the Christian Body.......................................................................................................79 Conclusion.........................................................................................................................97 CHAPTER 3: OF DEMONS AND DOCETISTS: IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH, DOCETISM, AND THE MAKING OF THE BODY OF JESUS....................................99 Ignatius of Antioch: Life, Letters, and Adversaries.........................................................100 The Letter to the Smyrnaeans: An Overview...................................................................105 The Resurrected Body of Jesus in Early Christian Literature..........................................111 v Excursus: Early Christian “Docetism”.............................................................................129 The Coptic Apocalypse of Peter and the “Abode of Demons”........................................138 Bodiless “Docetists” and Ecclesial Politics.....................................................................152 Conclusion.......................................................................................................................163 CHAPTER 4: DINING WITH DEMONS: EARLY CHRISTIAN DEMONOLOGIES AND THE BEGINNINGS OF SACRIFICE..................................165 Sacrifice and its Discontents in Ancient Rome...............................................................167 Ancient Judaism and the Sacrifices of the “Nations”......................................................173 Early Christians and the Discourse of Demonic Sacrifice...............................................176 “The Demonic Human”: Clement of Alexandria, Demonic Sacrifice, and Christian Bodies...................................................................................................190 Conclusion.......................................................................................................................210 CHAPTER 5: BIRTH IN THE BAPTISMAL FONT, DEATH IN THE ARENA: TERTULLIAN, DEMONS, AND THE ABJECT BODY..............................................215 Excursus: Tertullian and the New Prophecy....................................................................218 Carthaginian Christians and the Abject Demon...............................................................222 Of Clay and Breath: The Body and Soul in the Writings ofTertullian............................230 The Soul and Demons......................................................................................................239 Expelling the Demon, Creating the Christian: Tertullian's On Baptism..........................243 Demons at the Games: Thwarting the Abject..................................................................250 Conclusion.......................................................................................................................268 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION: CHRISTIANS AMONG DEMONS AND HUMANS..............................................................................................................270 BIBLIOGRAPHY.......................................................................................................................275 vi CHAPTER ONE Introduction: Bodies of a Subtler Type Only those who are guarded by the spirit of God can easily perceive the bodies of demons. Tatian, Exhortation to the Greeks 15.3 Being invisible is also not the same as being a metaphor. Gregory Smith, “How Thin is a Demon?” Augustine of Hippo warned his readers: never underestimate the speed of a demon. In his Literal Commentary on Genesis, published in the early fifth century, Augustine explains that demons are able to predict events in the human sphere. This capability stems not from innate foreknowledge, but from the demons’ “far more subtle” (longe subtilior) bodies, which allow them to move swiftly across the surface of the earth to witness an event in one place and then “predict” its occurrence to unsuspecting humans in other locations.1 The fourth-century Greek Life of Antony likewise claims that demons use their bodies, “thinner than those of humans” (λεπτοτέροις…σώμασι μᾶλλον τῶν ἀνθρώπων), to witness events and then “foretell” their occurrence in other areas.2 Augustine’s and Antony’s comments here speak to two points on which early Christians agreed regarding demons: (1) the demonic body was far more “subtle” or “thin” than the fleshly corporeality of humans, and (2) this attribute served as a very powerful weapon for a very mischievous adversary. 1Augustine of Hippo, Literal Commentary on Genesis 12.17.34–38. 2Athanasius, Life of Antony 31.2–3. 1 Early Christian concurrence on the nature of the demonic body, however, only goes so far. If we turn our view to the third century, we encounter in the writings of Origen of Alexandria a theologian who is frustrated by Christian disagreements over doctrinal matters of all sorts. In On First Principles, Origen notes, among other issues, that Christians differ on whether the demonic body is “bodily” or “bodiless”: Now this [demonic] body is by nature a fine substance and thin like air, and on this account most people think and speak of it as incorporeal…It is customary for everything which is not
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