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Download PDF Datastream Resistance and Multiplicity: Readings of the Acts of Mariamne and Philip By Gail E. Armstrong B.A., The Pennsylvania State University, 1996 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University Providence, Rhode Island May 2012 © Copyright 2012 by Gail E. Armstrong This dissertation by Gail E. Armstrong is accepted in its present form by the Department of Religious Studies as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date_____________ ______________________________ Prof. Ross S. Kraemer, Advisor Recommended to the Graduate Council Date_____________ ______________________________ Prof. Stanley K. Stowers, Reader Date_____________ ______________________________ Prof. David Konstan, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date_____________ ______________________________ Peter M. Weber, Dean of the Graduate School iii Vita Gail Armstrong was born on September 18, 1973 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. She lived in the U.K. from 1975 until 1990, and it was here that her love of Roman history and the study of religion first began. Her classmates came from a variety of religious traditions, including Hinduism, Sikhism, Islam, and more. Exposure to the different practices and beliefs of her friends had a profound effect on her developing academic mind. Gail earned her B.A. from The Pennsylvania State University, majoring in History, English, and Classics, with minors in Religious Studies and Jewish Studies. In 1995 she received a Dorot Foundation Travel Grant to participate in an archaeological survey of the Jezreel Valley in Israel. She received another Dorot Grant in 1996 to participate in that year’s dig season at Megiddo, Israel. From 1998 to 2001, Gail was a Master’s student in the Religious Studies Program at New York University, under the guidance of Prof. William E. Arnal. From 2001 to 2012 she was a doctoral student in the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University in the area of Early Christianity. From 2006-2008 Gail was a Faculty Fellow in Religion at Stonehill College, MA where she taught courses in World Religions. From January 2007 to December 2007, Gail was a Visiting Instructor at Connecticut College, where she taught classes on Myth and Ritual, Christian Traditions, and Women in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Gail has presented papers at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting (2006, 2007, 2009) and at the North American Patristics Society Annual Meeting (2004). She has published “Sacrificial Icononography: Creating History, Making Myth, and Negotiating Ideology on the Ara Pacis,” Religion & Theology 15 (2008), 340-356. iv Acknowledgements I thank my advisor and my mentor, Prof. Ross S. Kraemer, who not only introduced me to the wonderful world of apocryphal Acts, but who believed in me and supported me throughout this (lengthy) journey. Her guidance, support, and patience have allowed me to see this project through. I thank her for believing in me. I thank Prof. Stanley Stowers, whose teaching and advice has lent theoretical and methodological rigor to my scholarship. A debt of gratitude is also owed to Prof. David Konstan who also believed in me and in the project. His vast knowledge has improved what follows in almost immeasurable ways. I can think of no better committee for a project such as this and I am very grateful for their support and advice during its creation. I thank Prof. Paul B. Harvey Jr. at The Pennsylvania State University who saw my love of ancient history and religion and who nurtured it with sarcasm. I also thank Prof. Bill Arnal who was my advisor during my time at NYU. Although his classes were occasionally peculiar, he always encouraged me to believe in myself as a scholar. I am lucky to have had the support and love of some wonderful people throughout my graduate career: Jamie Marcu, Nat Morehouse, Eduard Iricinschi, Daniel Ullucci and many more. My friendship with Kevin McGinnis, who was my first friend and colleague at Brown, has been one of the most important of my life. Kevin has served (and continues to serve) as a sounding board for much of my scholarship. He has pushed and challenged me, never afraid to tell me I’m wrong (even when I’m not). To him, I dedicate my footnotes. To my great friend, Jaime Sperling, I dedicate my En and Em dashes. Her editing skills have greatly improved the following pages and her friendship has meant the world to me. v This project may have languished even longer if not for the advice and support of Professor “just get it done” Landon D. Reid. I thank him for pushing me, for keeping me sane, and for helping me find my way when I was lost. I must also acknowledge Gail Tetreault, who retired from the department before the project was complete. I am eternally grateful for her friendship and support. Final thanks go out to my sister Sharon and her husband David, both of whom were convinced that trips to France would encourage me to finish. Thanks also to my friend Joe Tolar, who along with Sharon, was instrumental in making the final stages of writing and editing possible. I dedicate my dissertation to Jasper, my constant companion and my comfort; to my parents who never really understood, but were proud anyway; and to everyone who ever asked, “how’s the dissertation coming?” vi Table of Contents 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE PROJECT 1 1.2 GOALS AND METHODOLOGIES 4 1.2.1 PROLEGOMENON AND ELIMINATING SECONDARY STATUS 5 1.2.2 RESISTANCE AND MULTIPLICITY 6 1.2.3 INVERSIONS AND RESISTING THE LUKAN-EUSEBIAN MYTH—A POSSIBLE READING 7 1.3 THEORETICAL ISSUES AND METHODOLOGY 9 1.4 STRUCTURE 11 2 THE ACTS OF MARIAMNE AND PHILIP 13 2.1 THE NARRATIVE 13 2.2 PUZZLING ELEMENTS OF THE STORY 14 2.2.1 CHARACTERS 15 2.2.2 COMMISSIONS 15 2.2.3 LANDSCAPE AND TRAVEL 16 2.2.4 MINISTRY 16 2.2.5 MARTYRDOM 17 2.3 BACKGROUND TO THE ACTS OF MARIAMNE AND PHILIP 18 2.3.1 MANUSCRIPTS AND CRITICAL EDITIONS 19 2.3.2 DATING, PROVENANCE, AND AUTHORSHIP 21 2.3.3 GENRE 24 2.4 CONTEXTUALIZING THE ACTS OF MARIAMNE AND PHILIP 26 2.4.1 MAJOR AND MINOR ACTS 27 2.5 REVIEW OF SCHOLARSHIP 29 2.5.1 FRANÇOIS BOVON 29 2.5.2 OTHER SCHOLARS 33 3 APPROACHES TO AUTHORSHIP, COMMUNITY, AND IDENTIFICATION 39 3.1 AUTHORSHIP 40 3.1.1 AUTHORSHIP AND RESISTANCE 41 3.2 COMMUNITY AND IDENTITY 44 3.2.1 RECEPTION OF THE ACTS 48 3.3 CONCLUSION 51 4 CONSTRUCTING CHARACTER 54 4.1 BACKGROUND 54 4.2 PHILIP 55 4.2.1 EARLY PHILIP TRADITIONS 56 4.2.2 PHILIP IN THE GOSPELS 58 4.2.3 PHILIP IN ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 62 4.2.4 THE APOCRYPHAL AND GNOSTIC PHILIP 65 4.3 MARIAMNE 70 vii 4.4 READING MALE AND FEMALE IN THE ACTS OF MARIAMNE AND PHILIP 83 4.4.1 MALE AND FEMALE AS ONE 83 4.4.2 CONSTRUCTING THE “OTHER” 85 4.3 CONCLUSIONS 90 5 COMMISSION NARRATIVES 91 5.1 OVERVIEW OF COMMISSION NARRATIVES IN ANTIQUITY 91 5.1.1 ELEMENTS OF COMMISSIONS 93 5.2 RECENT SCHOLARSHIP 99 5.2.1 THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST 104 5.2.2 THE HEBREW BIBLE 107 5.2.3 GRAECO-ROMAN LITERATURE 113 5.2.4 THE NEW TESTAMENT 115 5.3 THE COMMISSION OF MARIAMNE AND PHILIP 121 5.3.1 COMPARING THECLA 134 5.4 CONCLUSION 135 6 FANTASTIC LANDSCAPES AND JOURNEYS OF PERIL 137 6.1 DEFINING SPACES 138 6.1.1 HERE, THERE, AND ELSEWHERE: NARRATIVE INTERSPATIALITY 139 6.2 LANDSCAPES: IMPLICIT MEANINGS OF PLACE AND SITES OF NEGOTIATION 143 6.2.1 THE MOUNTAIN 145 6.2.2 THE WILDERNESS 146 6.3 IMAGINARY GEOGRAPHIES 151 6.4 MARIAMNE, PHILIP, AND BARTHOLOMEW IN THE WILDERNESS 154 6.4.1 LIMINALITY: SPACE AND TIME 155 6.5 THE CITY 156 7 MINISTRY AND MARTYRDOM 163 7.1 MINISTRY 164 7.1.1 THE HEALING OF STACHYS 164 7.1.2 BAPTISM AND TEACHING 168 7.1.3 NICANORA 169 7.2 THE MARTYRDOM 175 7.2.1 PHILIP’S DEATH 179 7.2.2 THE “FUNCTION” OF MARTYRDOM 182 8 CONCLUSION 185 BIBLIOGRAPHY 188 viii 1 INTRODUCTION The Acts of Mariamne and Philip belongs to the relatively small corpus of texts known as the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. These apocryphal Acts belong to the larger “class” of early Christian literature and are most commonly compared and contrasted with the ancient Hellenistic novels/romances. Both have received increasing attention from scholars in the last few years, with the “romances” serving as a genre against which scholars have attempted to classify and understand the apocryphal Acts. Although there are five “primary” apocryphal Acts, M.R. James deemed the Acts of Mariamne and Philip “secondary.” It has struggled to overcome this categorization in subsequent years and thus scholarship on the Acts is sparser than it is for the “primary” Acts of Peter, John, Andrew, Paul, and Thomas. 1.1 Background to the Project In 1924 M.R. James published The Apocryphal New Testament1 in which he did two things of great importance for the study of the Acts of Philip. First, he provided a synopsis of acts I–IX and the Martyrdom and discussed these within the context of apocryphal Acts. In so doing, James was the first to provide an English translation of Bonnet’s 1903 critical edition. While his inclusion of the Acts of Philip could, perhaps, have served to draw the attention of scholars, his second move instead negatively affected scholarship on the Acts of Philip for the next half century.
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