In the late fourth- or early fifth-century bilingual Codex Bezae (D), Lk. 6.5 includes the following agraphon in Greek and Latin: ‘On the same day, when [Jesus] saw someone working on the Sabbath, he said to him, “Man, if you know what you are doing you are blessed, but if you do not know then you are cursed and a transgressor of the law”’. Although scholars generally agree that this passage did not originate with the author of Luke, its precise origin and meaning remain contested. Previous studies implicitly agreed that the agraphon’s origin must be sought in the texts and traditions of the earliest Christian era. Based on literary parallels between Lk. 6.5D and the writings of Church Fathers, especially from the fourth century ce, this article argues that the Sabbath-Worker agraphon originated in the throes of later Christian polemic against Jewish and Judaizing practices of Sabbath observance.
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Recently the walking, talking cross in the Gospel of Peter has been interpreted as a popular belief or a common apocalyptic motif, irrelevant for understanding the gospel’s christology. I argue that the animated cross should be understood as a manifestation of the resurrected Lord. This is demonstrated through a comparative study of epiphanies from Greek, Roman, and Jewish literature in which gods are identified and manifest by their unique signs, including talking trees. Since this cross appears simultaneously with the Lord’s enormous resurrected form, I conclude that the Gospel of Peter represents a polymorphic christology.
-Coauthored with Joseph G. Miller.
Edition of P.Duk. inv. 728 (early sixth century CE) appears to record the marriage-gift of part of a monastery from the wife to the husband. This document has several interesting features. First, it one of only a small handful of deeds written in the voice of a woman. It is also unique in its use of key language from both marriage contracts and free-standing deeds of gift. Although it is most likely a free-standing deed of gift, it is clearly associated with the contractual language of marriage through this statement: “Moreover, it is binding that you neither are able nor will be able to cast me out from your household for the entire time of my life until my death. But if you did want to cast me out from your household before my death without lawful cause or fornication, in that case this gift of mine is void and without effect everywhere presented.” Lastly, the document adds to the evidence for the lay ownership of monasteries in sixth-century Egypt, and includes language typical of the later, more ecclesiastically developed testamentary transmission of monasteries; for instance, the early 7th century Testament of Apa Abraham (P.Lond. 1.77). The papyrus fragment is nearly a foot in length (30 cm) and less than half a foot in width (12.6 cm). A high-resolution image is available at Duke Library
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In Mark 6:49–50 Jesus walks on water to meet his disciples in their boat. When they see him approaching, they cry out in fear: “It’s a Ghost!” Commentators have long assumed that the belief in ghosts haunting the sea was simply a timeless folktale that Mark adapted to highlight the disciples’ miscomprehension of Jesus — a major motif in Mark. Mark indeed sets the scene for a classic tale of a haunting specter through his use of the word φάντασμα (“ghost”), the nighttime hours, the necessary faint light from the approaching dawn, and the disciples’ fearful response. Yet I argue that Mark diverges drastically from a key component of ancient ghost stories that involve water: ghosts cannot walk on water. I review Greek and Latin sources that include accounts of ghosts and water to show the following: (1) water is a hazard for ghosts—e.g., the sea serves as the final resting place for the phantom driven into it and presumably destroyed; (2) water is a boundary for spirits—e.g., rivers function to impede the unburied dead from entering their rest and the buried dead from escaping their realm; (3) water is foreign to ghosts—e.g., one who dies at sea must remain forever lost unless called to a cenotaph on the shore; (4) since water is dangerous for the ghost, it is even used as a defense to ward off unwanted spooks.
Having demonstrated the absurdity of the idea that a ghost would appear walking on water, I then return to Mark’s Gospel. Mark is explicit that the disciples thought Jesus was a ghost when they saw him walking on the water—when they witnessed him doing one thing that ghosts did not do. To explain why Mark included this absurdity, I review another famous instance of a ghost story that deviates from expectations. In the Haunted House (Mostellaria), a Roman comedy of Plautus, the credulous nature of the credulus senex is exaggerated through his insistence on believing a ghost story that diverges from audience expectation to such an extent that it appears absurd. I conclude that Mark similarly emphasizes the disbelief of the disciples when he presents them believing the absurd instead of recognizing Jesus’s divinity—in Greek and Latin literature divine men and gods walking on water, but ghosts do not. Mark 6:49–50 indeed presents a striking example of the disciples’ miscomprehension of Jesus, not by repeating a traditional tale, but by diverging from it in a way that seemed absurd.
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