OXFORD CLASSICAL MONOGRAPHS Published under the supervision of a Committee of the Faculty of Classics in the University of Oxford The aim of the Oxford Classical Monograph series (which replaces the Oxford Classical and Philosophical Monographs) is to publish books based on the best theses on Greek and Latin literature, ancient history, and ancient philosophy examined by the Faculty Board of Classics. Animal SacriWce in Ancient Greek Religion, Judaism, and Christianity, 100 bc–ad 200 MARIA-ZOE PETROPOULOU 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With oYces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ß Maria-Zoe Petropoulou 2008 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 978–0–19–921854–7 13579108642 Preface As a Greek born in Athens, during my childhood I often came across the spectacle of tourists, who were swarming around the temples of Attica in order to admire the artistic miracles of ancient Greece. At the same time, being born a Christian in a big modern city, I had the experience of a cult that had nothing to do with animal sacriWce. My knowledge of animal sacriWce at that time was limited to stories from the Old Testament, which, as I was taught, referred to an old cultic reality Wnally outdated by Chris- tianity. Furthermore, mentions of a ‘temple’ other than a ‘church’ in narra- tions belonging to the New Testament always constituted a puzzle to me, because I had stayed with the impression that anything pertaining to a temple other than a Christian church ‘ought to’ belong to the Old Testa- ment. It took me much time to realize that, in the early years of Christianity, the successor to Solomon’s Temple was still standing in Jerusalem, and much more time to think of that temple as an area where animal sacriWces were performed. Due to my romantic view of Greek marble temples, I was also late in accepting that, much to my disappointment, what is left from Greek shrines today is far removed from their functional proWle: in fact, the smell of animals—dead or approaching their death—was what mainly reigned in the sacred areas of ancient Greece. These late realizations are directly con- nected with the questions from which the present book has stemmed. I wanted to explore the fact that Christianity is known as a religion with no altars for slaughter, in combination with the historical fact that early Christians came from religious environments where animal sacriWce was practised. Did the absence of sacriWcial interest on the part of Christians come about suddenly and abruptly? Or was it a gradual development? In order to study this issue, I have chosen to start from a date when Greek and Jewish animal sacriWce was still practised (100 bc), but Christianity had not yet appeared. I have chosen to stop before the better-documented third century, but at a date when Christianity had already expanded in the Mediterranean as a religion without altars for slaughter (ad 200). At that point Greek animal sacriWce was still practised, whereas oYcial Jewish animal sacriWce had stopped long before (ad 70). The area of my study is the Greek-speaking East and Jerusalem. By the term ‘Greek-speaking East’, I mean—roughly—mainland Greece, the Ae- gean islands, Asia Minor, and any area of Greek settlement where Christians vi Preface came or could come into contact with Greek pagans.1 Egypt is not consid- ered, given the diVerences in the Greek material coming from an area with a very distinctive local religious culture.2 In the book, I shall not deal with Roman ritual, but rather with Greek ritual in an area and a period of Roman inXuence. The main reason for this limitation is that the Wrst encounter of Christianity with paganism took place in Greek-speaking areas, so it would be extremely important to envisage this cultural encounter in its original form. Readers must have noticed that I have so far avoided choosing the following as the main question: ‘why did Christians not oVer animal sacriWces?’ In the course of the book, it will become obvious that such a question might be misleading, and only partly legitimate. However, acknow- ledging that the question will progressively arise in the reader’s mind, I have ventured to express an answer to the question of ‘why’ in the last section of the book (Epilogue). This answer constitutes the counterpoint to Section 2 of Chapter 1, where my suggestion on the way in which the issue of sacriWce can be studied is presented. In the remaining chapters the issue of animal sacriWce is studied both from the point of view of Greeks and Jews separately, and in combination with Christians. Thus, Chapter 2, on Greek animal sacriWce, can function in itself as the Wrst systematic approach to Greek sacriWce in the Roman period, but it mainly points to the problems possibly generated within Greek communities by the emergence of Christianity. Similarly, Chapter 4, on Jewish animal sacriWce, focuses on some aspects which have not been emphasized in the bibliography on late Second Temple Judaism, but it also emphasizes the multifarious character of the Jewish context, which formed the background to Christianity. Finally, Chapter 6, on early Christians and animal sacriWce, shows that the implication of unity contained in the term ‘Christianity’ is in fact misleading, since the diVerent religious backgrounds of the groups which this religion encompassed resulted in a wide spectrum of responsiveness to the new message. Chapters 3 and 5 are ‘bridges’, which help the reader understand the fundamental diVerences between the Greek and Jewish sacriWcial systems, and make more obvious the contrast between, on the one hand, two religions in the context of which animal sacriWce took place, and, on the other hand, the religion of Christianity, which called the practice of animal sacriWce into question. 1 On pagan cities in Palestine, see Schu¨rer (1973–87), vol. 2.I, pp. 85–183. More recently, Belayche (2001). 2 The most recent description of the multifold Egyptian religious world is Frank- furter (1998). Preface vii In seeking to draw conclusions on animal sacriWce for each of the three religions studied here, I have come to realize that one cannot help utilizing sources from within the speciWc religious context. However, a few cases do not follow this pattern (for instance, Pliny on Christians, or Paul on tables laden with meat). In order to make clear the scope of the study, I should specify that by ‘animal sacriWce’ I mean the ritual slaughter of an animal for various religious purposes. In my treatment of religious animal slaughter, I include both alimentary and non-alimentary slaughter.3 In this book, priority is given to the sacriWcial use of animals, and not of other sorts of organic or non-organic matter. Since there is also evidence for non-animal oVerings in the period 100 bc–ad 200, I acknowledge that my disregarding this evidence might be criticized by readers. As a response to this supposed criticism, I must stress that, Wrst, the sacriWcial status of non- animal oVerings is still disputed among scholars,4 and as such these cannot constitute a safe basis for a comparative study. Second, the prominence given to animal oVerings characterizes both Greek religion and Judaism, as I will specify in the course of the book. Third, I chose to focus on animal sacriWce because, among all the other types of sacriWce, animal sacriWce is the one most often mentioned or alluded to in Greek pagan, Jewish, and Christian texts, so I see it as the basic common ground between the three religions. Finally, I have to warn readers of what they will not Wnd in this book, despite their reasonable expectations. This book does not deal with human sacriWce. Even if the authors used in our study talk about the issue, the relevant discussion would be beyond the scope of this book. My study focuses on everyday Greek and Jewish ritual reality, and human sacriWce cannot be considered as such. Furthermore, the fact that reports on human sacriWce were actually inXuenced by conceptual categories such as Greeks–Jews, Greeks–barbarians, myth–history, reality– 3 By contrast with that of J.-P.