The Old Testamentò in Byzantium Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Symposia and Colloquia Series Editor Margaret Mullett Editorial Board John Duffy John Haldon Ioli Kalavrezou The Old Testamentò in Byzantium Edited by Paul Magdalino and Robert Nelson Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection © 2010 by Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, D.C. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. 14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Old Testament in Byzantium / edited by Paul Magdalino and Robert Nelson. p. cm. Selected papers from a symposium held Dec. 2006, Dumbarton Oaks. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-88402-348-7 (alk. paper) 1. Bible. O.T.—Criticism, interpretation, etc.—Byzantine Empire—Congresses. 2. Theology—Byzantine Empire—Congresses. I. Magdalino, Paul. II. Nelson, Robert S., 1947– BS1171.3.O43 2010 221.09495'0902—dc22 2009020763 www.doaks.org/publications Designed and typeset by Barbara Haines Cover and frontispiece image: Exaltation of David, Paris Psalter, Paris, Bibl. Nat. gr. 139, fol. 7v. CONTENTSò Acknowledgments vii one • Introduction 1 Paul Magdalino and Robert Nelson two • The Greek Bible Translations of the Byzantine Jews 39 Nicholas de Lange three • The Prophetologion: The Old Testament of Byzantine Christianity? 55 James Miller four • Psalters and Personal Piety in Byzantium 77 Georgi R. Parpulov five • Illustrated Octateuch Manuscripts: A Byzantine Phenomenon 107 John Lowden six • Old Testament “History” and the Byzantine Chronicle 153 Elizabeth Jeffreys seven • Old Testament Models for Emperors in Early Byzantium 175 Claudia Rapp eight • The Old Testament and Monasticism 199 Derek Krueger nine • New Temples and New Solomons: The Rhetoric of Byzantine Architecture 223 Robert Ousterhout ten • Old Testament Models and the State in Early Medieval Bulgaria 255 Ivan Biliarsky eleven • Connecting Moses and Muh. ammad 279 Jane Dammen McAuliffe Abbreviations 299 About the Authors 303 Index 307 vi contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTSò The major renovations at Dumbarton Oaks from 2003 to 2008 prompted Alice- Mary Talbot, then Director of Byzantine Studies, to explore other venues and other times for symposia and colloquia. Early in this period plans were afoot to hold a major exhibit of Bible manuscripts at the Freer Gallery of Art, which holds a small but important collection of early Greek Bible manuscripts, seldom seen in public. The planned exhibition inspired Dr. Talbot to form an alliance with the Freer and Sackler Galleries, to hold a concomitant symposium on the Bible. Paul Magdalino and Robert Nelson, Senior Fellows of Dumbarton Oaks, continued the planning of that symposium with Dr. Talbot’s help. The Freer’s impressive exhibit, “In the Beginning: Bibles Before the Year 1000,” displayed more than threescore early manuscripts of the Bible, in many languages, loaned from collections around the world. The Dumbarton Oaks symposium, “The Old Testament in Byzantium,” held 1–3 December 2006 in the Meyer Auditorium of the Freer Gallery, shared in the success of that exhibit, and has resulted in this eponymous volume. As always, Dr. Talbot was gracious and efficient in shepherding the papers delivered at that symposium into the published material that makes up the vol- ume in hand. We are grateful for her aid in this and so many other scholarly endeavors in the past. We also wish to remember the hospitality of the Freer and the Sackler and Dr. Ann Gunter, then the Curator of Ancient Near Eastern Art and Head of Scholarly Publications and Programs at the Galleries, and to thank the staff of the Publications Department at DO for their meticulous care in con- verting talk into print. vii This is the second volume in the series Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Symposia and Colloquia. The first, published in 2009, was Becoming Byzantine: Children and Childhood in Byzantium, edited by Alice-Mary Talbot and Arietta Papa- constantinou. Other volumes in progress include San Marco, Byzantium, and the Myths of Venice (edited by Henry Maguire and Robert Nelson), and Trade and Markets in Byzantium (edited by Cécile Morrisson). Paul Magdalino Robert Nelson viii acknowledgments ònine New Temples and New Solomons The Rhetoric of Byzantine Architecture Robert Ousterhout For Rick Layton, in gratitude At the Orlando, Florida theme park “The Holy Land Experience,” the Temple of the Great King stands out as the dominant attraction.1 A grandiose build- ing, its design is based on the Temple of Jerusalem. Nearby, the divine presence, the shekinah, is recreated nightly with smoke and lights. The Tomb of Christ, represented by General Gordon’s Garden Tomb, simply pales by comparison.2 The striking contrast between the two monuments may be exaggerated for one simple reason: the Tomb still exists (and thus verisimilitude is in order), while the Temple does not. The official website differentiates them for us, explain- ing that the Tomb is an “exact replica,” whereas the Temple is “a breathtaking representation.”3 The brainchild of Reverend Marvin Rosenthal, a Baptist pastor who had converted from Judaism, the Holy Land Experience has been criticized by local Jewish groups who claim its real purpose is to convert Jews to Christian- ity. To be sure, although Old Testament sites and monuments are represented in the theme park, they are given a New Testament spin. This holds true for the Byzantine period as well. Although the Jewish Tem- ple of Jerusalem had disappeared long before the Byzantine period, the idea of the Temple loomed large then as it does now. As at the Holy Land Experience, 1 A. Wharton, Selling Jerusalem: Relics, Replicas, Theme Parks (Chicago, 2006), 189–232. 2 Perhaps in response to Protestant criticism of the “shabby theatre” at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in 1886 General Charles Gordon popularized an alternative site for Christ’s Resur- rection, the so-called “Garden Tomb,” near the Damascus Gate, which subsequently became the focus of Protestant devotion. Although its authenticity has been consistently discounted by his- torians, it “conforms to the expectations of simple piety”; see J. Murphy-O’Connor, OP, The Holy Land (Oxford, 1980), 146–48. 3 See http://www.theholylandexperience.com (accessed 22 February 2008). 223 Figure 1 Jerusalem, Herod’s Temple, hypothetical reconstruction (after J. Comay, The Temple of Jerusalem [New York, 1975], 166) however, in Byzantine times the Temple was invariably viewed through the lens of Christianity. Just as the Old Testament was never interpreted as a Jewish book but instead read in relationship to the New Testament, the idea of the Temple of Solomon was also Christianized. For the Byzantines, it offered a potent if prob- lematic architectural image—or rather images. The Tabernacle, Solomon’s Tem- ple, Zerubbabel’s Temple, Herod’s Temple, and the visionary temple of Ezekiel all had distinct identities that may have come to the fore in particular contexts, but in the polyvalent allegorical language of the Byzantines they were often conflated.4 Nevertheless, the basic features, proportions, and dimensions were known from a variety of sources; from these the Temple could have been repli- cated (Figs. 1–2).5 Indeed, with the possible exception of Noah’s Ark, the Temple is the sole architectural exemplar presented in the Old Testament. All the same, 4 The literature on the Temple is voluminous; for a convenient summary with extensive bibli- ography, see B. Narkiss, “Temple,” Encyclopaedia Judaica (Israel, 1971), 15:942–88; for a popular survey, J. Comay, The Temple of Jerusalem (New York, 1975); and more recently, M. Goldhill, The Temple of Jerusalem (Cambridge, MA, 2004). 5 For the descriptions, see 1 Kings 6; 7:13–51; 2 Chronicles 3–4; Ezekiel 40–48; Ezra 1–6; Jose- phus, Jewish Wars 5, among others. 224 robert ousterhout Figure 2 Ezekiel’s Temple, hypothet- ical reconstruction, with measurements in cubits (after J. Wilkinson,From Synagogue to Church: The Traditional Design [London, 2002]) there were scriptural objections to its reconstruction: Christ had prophesied the destruction of the Temple, and according to Christian thought it should remain in ruins until the end of time. Thus, the challenge for the Byzantine builder would have been how to represent symbolically the sanctity, the divine presence of the Temple, without falling into theological error or, in the worst-case sce- nario, bringing about the Apocalypse. In this chapter, I attempt to come to grips with the metaphorical language of Byzantine architecture, in which the Temple figures prominently as a power- ful, potent, and multivalent image. As an architectural historian, however, I am interested not so much in the nuances of the text as in how its language might assist us in interpreting architectural forms. The distinctions noted in the Holy Land Experience may be important for the Byzantine architectural context as well. There is a difference between a “replica,” based on a physical model, and a “representation,” based on a textual description. Similarly, in Byzantine archi- tecture, it is important to distinguish between the language of words and the language of forms. Byzantine rhetoricians often used metaphor to equate a Byz- antine church with the Temple in ways that are both allegorical and anagogi- cal, even when there was very little if any physical similarity between buildings. Indeed, any Byzantine church could become an “image” of the Temple through the appropriation of its terminology: