Czachesz 01 Grotesque Bodies

The Grotesque Body in Early Christian Discourse

Istvn Czachesz

Hell, Scatology, and Metamorphosis

Published by Equinox Publishing Ltd.UK: Unit S3, Kelham House, 3 Lancaster Street, Sheeld, South Yorkshire S3 8AFUSA: DBBC, 28 Main Street, Oakville, CT 06779

www.equinoxpub.com

First published 2012

Istvn Czachesz 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN-13 978-1-84553-885-9 (hardback) 978-1-84553-886-6 (paperback)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Czachesz, Istvan, 1968-The grotesque body in early Christian discourse : hell, scatology, and metamorphosis / Istvan Czachesz. p. cm.(BibleWorld) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 9781-845538859 (hb: alk. paper)ISBN 9781-845538866 (pb: alk. paper) 1. Christian literature, Early--History and criticism. 2. Human body in literature. 3. Grotesque in literature. I. Title. BR67.C93 2012 233.5--dc23

2011030165

Typeset by S.J.I. Services, New DelhiPrinted and bound in ??

CONTENTS

Preface vii Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1

Part I Hell1 Grotesque Bodies in the Christian Underworld 92 Torture in Hell and Reality 273 Body and Morality 404 The Bride of the Demon 56

Part II Scatology5 Deviance Labeling: The Politics of the Grotesque 816 Scatological Humor 97

Part III Metamorphoses7 Polymorphy 1158 Speaking Asses and Other Devoted Animals 1309 Metamorphoses of Christ 14110 Counterintuitiveness and Embodiment

The Grotesque in Cognitive Perspective 15711 Epilogue 181 Bibliography 189 Index of Ancient References 218 Index of Authors ???

Chapter 1

GROTESQUE BODIES IN THE CHRISTIAN UNDERWORLD

Didymon the flute-player, on being convicted of adultery, was hanged by his namesake. This ancient Greek joke is quoted as an example of a chreia in Aelius Theons Progymnasmata.1 It makes use of at least two correspondences. On one hand, two dierent meanings of the word di/dumoj are involved. First, it is the flute players name, meaning twin brother (as with Jesus disciple Thomas called Didymus);2 the second half of the joke evokes the plural of the word in the meaning of testicles.3 On the other hand, the flute players punishment corresponds to the sin that he committed. Beyond these primary and obvious sources of humor, the anecdote implies several other levels of meaning. For example, it can be interpreted in the framework of widespread associations of flute players with gaiety: [aulos] was an instrument that produced bawdy music and deformed the face and so was not proper for free women, or even citizen men. Plato (Republic 399d) banned it from his ideal city, and according to Aristotle (Politics 1341), citizens could listen to it, but should not learn to play it for it was not considered a moral instrument.4 Our text adds an unexpected twist to the popular image of flute players: whereas in most literary references they appear as instruments or objects of ecstasy and lust,5 the Didymon joke characterizes its protagonist as the originator of sexual transgression. Thus the text confirms as well as generates prejudice.The point involved in the punishment itself, the comical position

of hanging upside down from ones testicles, aects the listener in a dierent way. Whereas the puns and intertextual references generate satisfaction, the indication of the punishment brings about a certain ambivalent inconvenience, rather than relief. Although it can be seen as humorous, it is better called grotesque. The image of the human body evoked in the joke is surprising, distorted, and disturbing.6

10 The Grotesque Body in Early Christian Discourse

The sorrowful fate of Didymon is not unparalleled in Jewish and Christian literature, where it normally belongs to the scenario of hell. In Jewish Apocalypses, men and women are often hanged by their genitals or nipples.7 In these sources, however, the punishment is meant dead earnest rather than humorous. Hanging by the genitals also appears as a punishment for adultery in the underworld of Lucians True Story. Cinyras, one of Lucians traveling companions, abducts the wife of another member of the crew. The adulterer is whipped with mallow, bound by the genitals, and taken o to the abode of the wicked, where he is later seen wreathed in smoke and suspended by the testicles.8 Comparing the occurrences of the same motif in Lucians hell and the Jewish Apocalypses shows that whereas the former exploited the humorous aspects of grotesque body images, the latter used them to horrify the readers.

A similar punishment is found in the first Christian description of hell, which is contained in the Apocalypse of Peter (ApPt), where it occurs in the euphemistic variant of hanged by the feet (Ethiopic: thighs).9 This punishment is far from being the only example of grotesque imagery in the ApPt. In this early Christian apocalyptic source, images of the grotesque body fill the infernal landscape. In this chapter, I will undertake a literary analysis of the grotesque body in the ApPt, asking about the connection between sins and punishments, the relation of the punishments with each other and the overall structure of hell, as well as the relation of the description of hell to the narrative frame of the text. In Chapter 2 I will return to this writing as I investigate the sources of the punishments in the ApPt and the Apocalypse of Paul (Visio Pauli), including the question of whether they can reflect the actual suerings of Christians, or punishments used otherwise in the ancient world.

Sins and PunishmentsThe Apocalypse of Peter was written in the first half of the second century.10 The text has been preserved in two dierent versions: the Greek text of the Apocalypse was excavated in Upper Egypt in 188687, near the city of Akhmim;11 the Ethiopic text, which is longer than the Greek, was published in 1910 and soon thereafter identified as a witness of the Apocalypse of Peter.12 For the interpretation of the text I will proceed from the longer version, following the practice of contemporary scholarship.13

Grotesque Bodies in the Christian Underworld 11

The narrative frame, constituting the first major division of the extant text of the ApPt, is contained in the Ethiopic text (E).14 On the Mount of Olives, the disciples approach Jesus and ask him to tell them about the signs of the last days and the end of the world. Most of Jesus answer (chs 12 E) echoes eschatological passages from Matthew 24.15 In the next part of the Ethiopic text (chs 36 E), Jesus shows Peter in his right handand on the palm of his right everything that shall be fulfilled on the last day: resurrection, Jesus coming with glory on the clouds, and the final judgment. This is followed by the second main unit, dealing with sins and punishments. In this part of the book, the Ethiopic (chs 713 E) and the Akhmim text (chs 314 A) run basically in parallel, the Ethiopic version being somewhat longer. The third main unit deals with the fate of the righteous, largely resembling the synoptic transfiguration scene.16 This section is found at the end of the Ethiopic version (chs 147 E), but it is placed before the description of hell in the Akhmim text (chs 120 A).

After this quick overview of the composition of the extant parts of the book, let us take stock of the sins and punishments found in the ApPt.17

First of all, we can observe that the punishments of the ApPt present a distorted picture of the whole body. The head is in the mud; hair is used to hang up women by it; eyes are burned; there is a burning flame in the mouth; people bite their tongues and are hanged up by them. Innards are eaten by worms; flames burn people waist-high; men are hanged up by their thighs a euphemism for genitals.18 Legs are also involved when the rich ones dance on sharp pebbles. The whole body is dressed in rags, roasted on flames, and often hanged upside down. These images can be compared with the appearance of the righteous (as well as of Moses and Elijah in the Akhmim text), where many of the body parts (hair, faces, shoulders, also clothing) are described as beautiful and harmonic (620 A; 156 E). The beautiful bodies of the saints are contrasted with the distorted bodies of the condemned.The whole body is at the same time dissected. As the Ethiopic text

writes of the fallen maidens, Their flesh will be torn in pieces. Whereas hell is described as a horrendous place in general, and the entire body is subjected to punishment, most of the time, typically by immersion or hanging, we can also observe a focus on particular members of the body in each case. Can we identify an underlying logic that determines how dierent sins are connected to particular punishments and body parts? According to the most widespread view, the underlying logic of sins and punishments in the ApPt can be compared to the law of retribution


Sin PunishmentBlaspheming the way of righteousness. Hanged from the tongue, fire.(22 A; 7.12 E)Turning away from righteousness. Pool of burning mud.(23; 7.34)Women who beautified themselves for Hanged from the hair over bubblingadultery. (24a; 7.56) mud.Men who committed adultery with those Hanged from the legs, head in the mud, women. (24b; 7.78) crying, We did not believe that we would come to this place.Murderers and their accessaries. Tormented by reptiles and insects, their (25; 7.911) victims watching them and saying, O God, righteous is thy judgment.Women who conceived children outside Sit in a pool of discharge and excrement, marriage19 and procured abortion. with eyes burned by flames coming from (26; 8.14) their children.Infanticide. (8.510 E) Flesh-eating animals come forth from the mothers rotten milk and torment the parents.Persecuting and giving over the righteous Sit in a dark place, burned waist-high, ones. (27; 9.12) tortured by evil spirits, innards eaten by worms.Blaspheming and speaking ill of the way Biting ones lips, getting fiery rods in theof righteousness. (28; 9.3) eyes.False witnesses. (29; 9.4) Biting ones tongue, having burning flames in the mouth.Those who trusted their riches, did not Wearing rags and driven (dancing) on have mercy on the orphans and widows, sharp and fiery stones.and were ignorant of Godscommandments. (30; 9.57)Lending money and taking interest on the Standing in a pool of blood, pus andinterest. (31; 10.1) bubbling mud.Men behaving like women, women having Endlessly throwing themselves into anintercourse with each other. (32; 10.24)20 abyss.Those who made idols in place of God. Standing in a place filled with great fire.(33a; 10.56)??? (33b A)21 Man and women hitting each other with fiery rods.Those who abandoned the ways of God. Burned, turned around and roasted.(34; 10.7)Those who did not obey their parents. Slip down from a fiery place repeatedly.22 (11.15 E) Hanged and tormented by flesh-eating birds.


(lex talionis) in the Torah.23 The famous principle of talion is read in Exodus 21: You are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, bruise for bruise.24 However, if we take a closer look at the tortures, we find that the order of sins and punishment in the ApPt is similar to but not quite identical with the lex talionis. The principle of measure for measure retribution is realized in its proper sense only in two cases in the ApPt: (1) the persecutors of Christianity are burned on fire and eaten by worms; (2) victims are watching their murderers being eaten by reptiles and insects. Even in these passages some interpretation is required to clearly identify the principle of talion.

It is possible to tweak the principle of talion so that it explains more sins and punishments in the text.25 In a more general sense, the principle of talion means that some punishment is fitting the crime or commen-surate with it. Yet the logic of the ApPt seems to be more rigid and not too concerned with actual legal hermeneutics. As it explains so little in our text, it is better to abandon the concept of talion altogether. Instead of proceeding from the eye-for-an-eye principle of the Pentateuch (and other ancient traditions), I suggest that the punishments of the ApPt follow a principle that is formulated in a well-known passage of the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5:2930):

If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it o and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of body than for your whole body to go into hell.

The concept behind this utterance is that certain crimes are committed by certain parts of the body. The idea occurs also in rabbinical Judaism: Those bodily members which commit transgression are punished in Gehenna more than the rest of the members.26 In the hell of the ApPt, as well, the members that committed specific sins are often punished rather than the whole body: blasphemy is connected with the tongue and lips, false witness with the tongue and mouth, adultery with womens hair and mens genitals. In the Torah, the person as a whole is made responsible for his or her deeds, and pays with the body part hurt in other people. In the Sermon on the Mount and the ApPt, individual members of the body get out of control, cause people sin, and therefore have to be punished. Where does this idea come from? What kind of anthropological concept does it imply? I will elaborate on these questions in more detail in the


final part of this chapter, especially because they provide important clues about the history of composition of the text.

The Grotesque Image of HellThe contrast between heaven and hell is particularly suggested by the head-downward position of bodies. Such an image of the body also occurs in the New Testament. Judas who evidently has a Satanic character in the Lukan writings27 falls head downwards, his body bursts open, and all his intestines spill out (Acts 1:18). Apart from that case, hanging head downwards is not explicitly mentioned in the Bible,28 but it appears in the Acts of Peter, where Peter is hanged on the cross head downwards. Here, however, it is interpreted as the symbol of heavenly, rather than infernal, realities.29 In the ApPt, in contrast, the upside-down position of the body expresses the idea of hell as the realm of a negative reality. This is meant in the sense of being the opposite rather than the place of non-being. Whereas in Jewish Scriptures the underworld is populated by shadows in the stage of half- or non-existence,30 in the ApPt the inhabitants of hell are as active as they were in their existence in this world. The hell in our text is as real as the present world, the world below being a grotesque variation of the world as we know it.

Ridiculing the rich and mighty of this world is also found in references to hell in Jewish Scriptures. The shadows of Sheol are mocking the king of Babylon at his arrival:31

You have also become weak, as we are; You have become like us. All your pomp has been brought down to the grave, along with the noise of your harps; maggots are spread out beneath you and worms cover you Is this the man who shook the earth, and made kingdoms tremble, the man who made the world desert, who overthrew its cities and would not let his captives go home?

Ridiculing the rich in the underworld is also found in Greek authors. Lucian dedicates a great part of his Menippus to describing the post-mortem fate of the rich. When they die, Menippus reports after returning from Hades, Tyche takes back their costumes into which she dressed them in their earthly lives (chs 12, 16). Later Menippus describes Hades as the opposite of earthly reality, a social utopia:32

But you would have laughed much more heartily, I think, if you had seen our kings and satraps reduced to poverty there, and either selling salt fish on account of their neediness, or teaching the alphabet, and getting abused and hit over the head by all comers, like the meanest


of slaves. In fact, when I saw Philip of Macedon, I could not control my laughter. He was pointed out to me in a corner, cobbling worn-out sandals for pay. Many others, too, could be seen begging at the cross-roads your Xerxeses, I mean, and Dariuses, Polycrateses.

Lucians concept of post-mortem fate parallels the story of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus in Lukes Gospel.33 After both of them die, angels carry the beggar to Abrahams bosom, whereas the rich man goes to Hades and is tortured with fire. When he cries to Abraham, Abraham replies to him: Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things. But now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.34 One is reminded of this passage when reading about the unmerciful rich people in the ApPt, who enjoyed all luxury in their lives, but are condemned to wearing rags and being dragged on fiery pebbles in the underworld. The latter punishment is certainly grotesque, but not ridiculous in the same way as Lucians underworld. Lucian depicts the rich in situations in which we find the poor of this world; Luke gives the rich man a stock punishment, as it were; the ApPt, notwithstanding, creates a sophisticated and absurd punishment, where the rich actually continue what they did in their earlier life. They neither beg nor do humiliating jobs, nor sit in mud or excrement. As a grotesque imitation of their earthly luxury and festivals, they wear filthy rags and dance on fiery stones,35 eternally driven by demons and tormenting angels.The medieval idea of the dance of death is anticipated in this picture.

In scenes depicting the dance of death or danse macabre, a series of characters representing members of dierent social classes and groups are shown dancing with a figure representing death.36 The dance of death communicated relentless criticism against all strata of society.37

What the Greek authors and the Christian texts have in common is the sorrowful post-mortem fate of the rich of this world. There are, however, major dierences between the two literary traditions. Lucian, on one hand, selects well-known earthly rulers to display them in inferior situations. He does not condemn their earlier behavior, and ridicules them without the slightest interest in moral issues, with the only purpose of raising laughter among his readership. He displays lofty irony at the pride of the rich of this world. This is a social utopia with hardly any serious social considerations. The passages in Luke and the ApPt, on the other hand, do not picture any known people in hell. They do not take an interest in the characters themselves, but rather in their moral qualities, especially as measured against the background of Jewish and Christian


values. They display moral allegories in hell rather than real people: These are they who were rich and trusted in their riches (30 A; 9.7 E). The same applies to all kinds of sinners mentioned: for example, these were they who blasphemed the way (22 A; 7.2 E), these were they who had adorned themselves for adultery (24 A; 7.6 E). Lucian uses flesh and blood figures of this world and places them into his fantastic landscapes, but the hell of the ApPt is populated by moral allegories.

Another grotesque notion about hell is that people are sitting there in filth. The idea that people sit in dirt in hell seems to be an archaic one. It has been compared with the purifying rituals of the mystery cults:38 sinners are dirty and they remain eternally in dirt in the underworld. The general term used in such passages is mud or filth (bo/rboroj), but there are also many references to bodily materials and discharges: blood, sweat, pus, and excrement, the latter occurring especially frequently.

In Aristophanes Frogs, when Heracles prepares Dionysos to his tour of hell, he describes the infernal landscape to him:39

Then youll see lots of mud [bo/rboroj]and ever-flowing shit [skw~r]; in it liesanyone who ever wronged a stranger,or snatched a boys fee while screwing himetc.

In a fragment, Aristophanes also writes of a river of diarrhea in the underworld.40 Lucian writes about three rivers: One of slime [bo/rboroj], another of blood, and a third of fire.41 In the renaissance, the motif was picked up and elaborated on by Rabelais,42 who predicted the fate of one his characters, the heretic poet Raminagrobis, as follows:43

His soul goeth to thirty thousand cartsful of devils. Would you know whither? Cocks-body, my friend, straight under Proserpinas close stool, to the very middle of the self-same infernal pan, within which, she, by an excrementitious evacuation, voideth the fecal stu of her stinking clysters and that just upon the left side of the great cauldron of three fathom height, hard by the claws and talons of Lucifer, in the very darkest of the passage which leadeth towards the black chamber of Demogorgon. O the villain!

Excrement in the hells of Aristophanes and Rabelais induced laughter in the readers and spectators. But laughter was, at the same time, coupled with fear. The underworld was real: it could be ridiculed but not ignored. When we call these images grotesque rather than simply humorous, we indicate that hell was comical as well as threatening. We have traced the grotesque elements, among others, in the upside-down position


of the body, the lower body parts, the distracted members, and the discharged fluids. Excrement is not infernal only because it is dirty or disgusting, but rather because it is the final product of the body. In other words, it belongs to the lower part of the bodily universe.44

Although such language is not characteristic of the Bible, Paul can be caught making an obscene joke about his enemies. In his epistle to the Galatians, arguing against the teachers who require that Christians be circumcised, he writes, As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate [a)poko/ptw] themselves. (Gal. 5:19).45 The joke also has a secondary edge, alluding to the false teachers cutting in (e0gko/ptw) on the Galatians who were running a good race (Gal. 5:7). The sequence of puns and allusions is made up somewhat in the fashion of Aristophanes. In the same epistle, Paul calls the Galatians his little children to whom he has given birth (Gal. 4:19). In sum, Pauls claim on the Galatian church is expressed with the help of a series of sexually charged metaphors.The topics of castration and childbirth also occur in the ApPt. We

have already discussed the former, which is evoked when men are hanged by the genitals. As for childbirth, we especially have to mention the place in hell for unmarried women who procured abortion. They are sitting in a pool of blood and fecal matter; their eyes are burned by the flames that come out of their children. This scene presents us with a riddle. Clement of Alexandria seems to refer to this passage three times in his Eclogues.46 His comments concentrate on the role of protecting angels (thmelou=xoi a!ggeloi), who bring up and nourish aborted fetuses and exposed children. Clement, however, does not reflect on the role of these children at the punishment of the parents.47 In the ApPt, the fetuses are handled similarly as murdered victims (ch. 25 A). They also watch the punishment of their murderers, but rather than praising God for his justice, they take an active part in torturing them.48 They resemble the tormenting angels and evil spirits active at other places of hell, and appear to be some kind of demon or dwarf. It seems that in early Christian literature only the ApPt assigns an active role to children in punishing their parents who committed abortion or infanticide, or exposed them.49 Many other texts mention that children accuse such parents while the latter are punished, but the children never (except in the ApPt passage) become instruments of the punishment.50

Early medieval folklore traditions about Herlequins army contain similar images. The earliest written source of this tradition is probably


the Ecclesiastical History of Ordericus Vitalis (1075ca. 1143), reporting the vision of a priest:51

A great crowd on foot appeared All lamented bitterly and urged each other to hurry. The priest recognised among them many of his neighbours who had recently died, and heard them bewailing the torments they suered because of their sins. Next came a crowd of bearers They were carrying about five hundred biers, two men to each bier. On the biers sat men as small as dwarfs, but with huge heads like barrels. One enormous tree-trunk was borne by two Ethiopians,52 and on the trunk some wretch, tightly trussed, was suering tortures, screaming aloud in his dreadful agony. A fearful demon sitting on the same trunk was mercilessly goading his back and loins with red-hot spurs while he streamed with blood. Walchelin at once recognised him as the slayer of the priest Stephen, and realised that he was suering unbearable torments for his guilt in shedding innocent blood not two years earlier, for he had died without completing his penance for this terrible crime.

Next came a troop of women, who seemed to the priest to be without number, riding in womens fashion on side-saddles which were studded with burning nails. Caught by gusts of wind they would rise as much as a cubit from the saddle, and then fall back on the sharp points. So their buttocks were wounded by the red-hot nails, and as they suered torments from the stabs and burning they cried out, Woe, woe, loudly bewailing the sins for which they endured such punishment. Indeed it was for the seductions and obscene delights in which they had wallowed without restraint on earth that they now endured the fire and stench and other agonies too many to enumerate.

The procession is closed by great troops of priests and knights, among whom Walchelin identifies a number of notable persons. Human judgment, he comments, is often in error, but nothing is hidden from Gods sight. For men judge from outward appearances; God looks into the heart (ibid.).The tradition quoted by Ordericus Vitalis focuses on the same basic

idea as the description of hell in the ApPt (and the Apocalypse of Paul): both provide a list of sins and punishments. The ApPt seemingly oers a topography of hell, but in reality it only contains a plain list without relating the dierent places (or sins) to each other. The account of Herlequins army describes a few sins and punishments in detail. However, it takes more interest in the groups and persons who suer punishments in hell. Through the eyes of Walchelin, it describes typical social groups of the time and mentions several known figures by name. This feature of the text reminds one of Lucians Menippus 1118. The grotesque, but at the


same time very earnest, report of sins and punishments carries on the tradition of the ApPt.

One of the grotesque elements in Walchelins vision is the image of women on horseback.53 The description of their riding contains overtly obscene references. The tiny beings with large heads on the cons resemble the aborted fetuses of the ApPt, but are not explicitly identified as such. They are obviously associated with the fearful torturers, although they do not play a role in enacting the punishments. If we add the womens position in the army immediately after the murderer on the gibbet, we cannot exclude that Walchelins vision, similarly as the ApPt, refers to abortion.

In the ApPt, the children are members of the infernal court, sharing the job of the tormenting angels and evil spirits. Their figure unites aspects of birth and death: they are unborn and still alive, eternally torturing their own mothers. The women are sitting in blood and excrement up to their necks. Is this a reconfigured image of child-birth, symbolizing abortion as the birth of death? It is dicult to give an exact account of how the intended readers of the text interpreted this scene. I will argue that the representation of women and aborted children is the central image of the infernal landscape in the ApPt.

Pregnant DeathIn order to understand the infernal imagery of the ApPt we have to look at the introductory parts contained in the Ethiopic text. Let us begin with the parables of the fig tree. The text combines two dierent sayings on the fig tree by Jesus.54 According to the first saying, as the sprouting of the fig tree marks the coming of the summer, so the events depicted by Jesus mark the coming of the last days.55 The second saying is about the man who wants to cut out his barren fig tree, but his servant asks him to leave it there for one more year.56 In ApPt 2 (E), the sprouting of the fig tree is the sign of the last days, whereas the second parable is only introduced to interpret the first one so that the fig tree would refer to Israel. This is the conclusion concerning the last days: Then shall the boughs of the fig-tree, i.e. the house of Israel, sprout, and there shall be many martyrs by his hand: they shall be killed and become martyrs (2.11 E). The interesting outcome of the fig-tree passages is that in the last days there will be a mixture of birth and death. The house of Israel will bring sprouts but will immediately kill them. In the last days, Israel


will give birth to martyrs. Or, using the pivotal image of the ApPt, Israel will be like a woman procuring abortion.

In the next section, everyone, including the righteous, the angels, and Jesus, weeps when they see the distress and sorrow of the sinners. Peter quotes a saying of Jesus from the New Testament: It were better for them that they had not been created.57 But Jesus refutes him (3.56 E): Thou resistest God For he has created them and has brought them forth when they were not. Creation is good and necessary, the text argues, even if it falls into sin, death and suering.58The next section also deals with birth and death. It describes the

resurrection to judgment, also mentioned in Revelation, when God will command hell to open its bars of steel and to give up all that is in it (4.3 E). All the beasts and fowls shall be commanded to give back all flesh that they devoured (4.4 E). First, the prophecy of Ezekiel on the revivi-fication of the bones is quoted (4.78 E),59 then the picture of the seed sown in the earth (4.1011 E):60

As something dry and without a soul does a man sow (them) in the earth; and they live again, bear fruit, and the earth gives (them) back again as a pledge entrusted to it. And this which dies, which is sown as seed in the earth and shall become alive and be restored to life, is man.

We should note that the metaphor applies not only to the righteous. On the day of judgment there will be a birth of all people from the underworld.61 In Rev. 20:1415, sinners are thrown into the lake of fire, together with Hades and death. The ApPt does not know such a radical solution. Envisaging sinners in the dierent areas of Hades is much more spectacular than simply throwing all evil into a gigantic trash can, as it were. Thereby hell retains its ambiguous and transient nature. It remains in motion eternally, populated with damned souls, demons, and tormenting angels, who live their lives in this upside-down universe. Hell also retains its ambivalent function of birth and death. It appears as a huge, Gargantuan belly, where people are smoked and roasted, all kinds of bodily fluids are flowing constantly here and there, fire completes the digestion, and excrement is produced.

We can note that the image of death digesting people is known from both Christian and other sources. A comparable interpretation of death occurs in the apocryphal Christs Descent into Hell.62 In this text, Satan calls Hades devourer of all and insatiable (pamfa/goj kai\ a)ko/restoj, 4.12). Hades tells Satan that Lazarus, whom it swallowed, was snatched


from its entrails forcibly only by a single word. Hades also complains that it feels all people whom it devoured since the beginning of the world are disquieted and it has pain in the stomach (4.3). In Egyptian mythology, the mythological figure of the Devourer waits while the dead are being judged and swallows the guilty immediately.63

Passages by Lucian and Rabelais contain similar allusions to the underworld.64 Lucian in his True Story (1.302.2) narrates his adventure in the belly of a whale before visiting the islands of the saved and the condemned.65 The group spends more than a year and a half in the whale (1.39). The innards of the whale are populated by the city-states of dierent grotesque creatures: smoked people with eel-eyes and crab-faces, tritons with the lower bodies of sword-fishes, crab-handed, tunny-headed and other strange figures (1.35). Two men, father and son, have lived for 27 years in this world. The association with the underworld is made explicit when the two say We suppose we are dead, but we trust we are alive.66 Their hope is fulfilled in the end: after defeating the army of the infernal creatures and killing the whale, Lucian and his associates get out to the sunlight, taking the father and his son with them.

In Rabelais novel, the narrator descends into Pantagruels mouth and throat.67 There he finds great rocks (the teeth), fair meadows, large forests, great and strong cities. The history of the latter he writes in a book. This is a new world, which is in fact more ancient than the earth out there. He meets people who hunt pigeons coming from the underworld. Dangerous fumes break up from the depth that is, from Pantagruels stomach and kill more than 22,000 citizens. The narrator does not intrude further into the heros body. But the mouth and throat, which he visits, are evidently characterized as the entrance of the underworld.68

We have seen that the ApPt also associates hell with a huge belly, swallowing and digesting people, but also giving them back in the last days at Gods command. The fearful and the humorous walk hand in hand in the description of hell. Death is a strange carnival, an upside-down universe, where earthly life continues in unexpected ways. The imagery of hell is based on the vision of the distorted, dissected, and oversized human body or body-parts. Instead of the all-consuming lake of fire in Revelation, the ApPt envisages everlasting hell as a complex structure, a grotesque and sensual synthesis of birth and death.


Notes 1. Aelius Theon (firstsecond century CE), Progymnasmata 99.2. The joke is

also recorded (in dierent forms) by Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 6.51 and 68.

2. Jn 11:16; 20:24; 21:2. 3. It was probably a slang expression, cf. R. F. Hock and E. N. ONeil, The Chreia

in Ancient Rhetorich. I. The Progymnasmata (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1986), p. 313.

4. J. Neils, Others within the Other: An Intimate Look at Hetairai and Maenads, in Cohen (ed.), Not the Classical Ideal, pp. 20326 (225). For flute players, see H. Estienne et al., Thesaurus Graecae Linguae (Graz: Akademische Verlagsanstalt, 1954), s.v. au0lhth/j; E. Forcellini et al., Lexicon totius Latinitatis (Padua: Typ. Seminarii, 5th edn, 18641926), s.v. tibicen.

5. Playing the au0loi/ raised associations with fellatio, cf. R. F. Sutton, The Good, the Base, and the Ugly: The Drunken Orgy in Attic Vase Painting and the Athenian Self, in Cohen (ed.), Not the Classical Ideal, pp. 180202 (191). For a flute-playing young shepherd and satyr, see M. Pipili, Wearing an Other Hat: Workmen in Town and Country, in Cohen (ed.), Not the Classical Ideal, pp. 15379 (169); for flute players raped by Tiberius, see Suetonius, Tiberius 44.

6. For grotesque bodies in classical Greek art and comedy, see H. P. Foley, The Comic Body in Greek Art and Drama, in Cohen (ed.), Not the Classical Ideal, pp. 275311.

7. The relevant passages are quoted by S. Liebermann, On Sins and Their Punishment, in idem, Texts and Studies (New York: KTAV Publishing House, 1974), pp. 2951 (33, 4143, 47); M. Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell: an Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and Christian Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), pp. 8292; R. Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead: Studies on the Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (Supplements to Novum Testamentum, 93; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1998), pp. 4996.

8. Lucian, True Story 2.2526 and 31; trans. B. P. Reardon, Collected Ancient Greek Novels (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 642, 644. Also quoted by Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, p. 216.

9. ApPt 24 A, 7.7 E. A and E stand for the Akhmim Codex and the Ethiopic text, respectively (see below). See C. W. M. Verhoeven, Symboliek van de Voet (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1957), pp. 90127 for the foot as a fertility symbol. He rejects the connection with the genitals which is, however, evident in our sources.

10. Cf. Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, pp. 16061 and E. J. C. Tigchelaar, Is the Liar Bar Kohba? Considering the Date and Provenance of the Greek (Ethiopic) Apocalypse of Peter, in J. N. Bremmer and I. Czachesz (eds), The Apocalypse of Peter (Studies on Early Christian Apocrypha, 7; Leuven: Peeters, 2003), pp. 6377 (6571). For earlier research, see R. Bauckham, The Apocalypse of Peter: An Account of Research, in W. Haase (ed.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der rmischen Welt II.25.6 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1988), pp. 471250; J. N. Bremmer and I. Czachesz, The Apocalypse of Peter (Studies on Early Christian Apocrypha, 7; Leuven: Peeters, 2003).


11. Papyrus Cairensis 10759, also known as the Akhmim Codex, also contains the Gospel of Peter and the first part of 1 Enoch. J. N. Bremmer, The Apocalypse of Peter: Greek or Jewish?, in Bremmer and Czachesz (eds), The Apocalypse of Peter, pp. 116 (12); P. Van Minnen, The Greek Apocalypse of Peter, Bremmer and Czachesz (eds), The Apocalypse of Peter, pp. 1539; T. J. Kraus and T. Nicklas, Das Petrusevangelium und die Petrusapokalypse: Die griechischen Fragmente mit deutscher und englischer bersetzung (Neutestamentliche Apokryphen, 1; Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2004), pp. 2530, 101103.

12. D. D. Buchholz, Your Eyes Will Be Opened: A Study of the Greek (Ethiopic) Apocalypse of Peter (Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988); C. D. G. Mller, Apocalypse of Peter, in W. Schneemelcher and R. M. Wilson (eds), New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 2 (Cambridge and Louisville, KY: James Clarke and Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), pp. 62038 (621).

13. Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, pp. 16265. 14. In discussing the Ethiopic text, I rely on the translations by Buchholz, Your

Eyes Will Be Opened, pp. 162244 and Mller, Apocalypse of Peter. When not noted otherwise, citations follow the latter.

15. Cf. Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, pp. 17583. 16. Mk 9:213 and parallels. 17. Cf. Buchholz, Your Eyes Will Be Opened, pp. 30811; Bauckham, The Fate of

the Dead, pp. 16667. 18. For the euphemism, see the examples discussed above. Cf. Bauckham, The

Fate of the Dead, p. 215. 19. The Greek text is fragmentary; for dierent emendations, see Kraus and

Nicklas, Das Petrusevangelium und die Petrusapokalypse, pp. 11012. The Ethiopic has infanticide as a separate sin. Cf. Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, pp. 9697.

20. One of the Ethiopic manuscripts adds idolatry. Both Ethiopic mss contain a remark on those who cut their flesh; cf. Buchholz, Your Eyes Will Be Opened, pp. 21215. For cultic tattooing and cutting in antiquity, see W. Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), p. 81; D. E. Aune, Revelation 616 (Word Biblical Commentary; Dallas: Word Books, 1998), pp. 46569 and n. 45 below, this chapter.

21. This group is mentioned only in the Akhmim text. The sins are not specified. 22. Cf. the punishment of the homosexuals above. 23. D. A. Fiensy, Lex Talionis in the Apocalypse of Peter, Harvard Theological

Review 76.2 (1983), pp. 25558 (25558), applies this rule as the main herme-neutical key to the text. The term lex talionis originates from talis, such. The principle of measure for measure punishment is known from the ancient Near East as well as from Greece and Rome, yet it seems to have played the most important role in Jewish tradition; cf. recently, J. F. Davis, Lex Talionis in Early Judaism and the Exhortation of Jesus in Matthew 5.3842 (London: T. & T. Clark International, 2005).

24. Exod. 21:2325; cf. Gen. 9:6; Lev. 24:20; Deut. 19:19. 25. Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, pp. 21718, identifies the same form of the

principle of talion in 11 punishments (out of a total of 21); see Chapter 3 below.


26. Liebermann, On Sins and Their Punishment, pp. 3940, translates Rabbi Meir of Rothenburgs quotation from an unknown midrash. Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, pp. 21415, quotes other occurrences and interprets this view as an extension of the lex talionis.

27. Cf. Lk. 22:3, The Satan entered Judas, called Iscariot. 28. Cf. G. Bertram, krema&nnumi, in G. Kittel et al. (eds), Theologisches Wrterbuch

zum Neuen Testament, vol. 3 (Stuttgart, 1938), pp. 91520 (91618); Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, pp. 8285.

29. Acts of Peter 38. Cf. J. Bolyki, Head Downwards, in J. N. Bremmer (ed.), The Apocryphal Acts of Peter (Studies on the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, 7; Louvain: Peeters, 1998), pp. 11122.

30. E.g. Job 10:21; 26:5; Pss 88:10; 94:17; Eccl. 9:10; Isa. 26:14; Ezek. 32:21. Cf. T. J. Lewis, Abode of the Dead, in D. N. Freedman (ed.), The Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 2 (New York: Doubleday, 1992), pp. 101105; J. Jarick, Questioning Sheol, in Stanley E. Porter, Michael A. Hayes and David Tombs (eds), Resurrection (Sheeld: Sheeld Academic Press, 1999), pp. 2232 (2232); C. Houtman, Hlle II. Altes Testament, in H. D. Betz et al. (eds), Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, vol. 3 (Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 4th edn, 2000), pp. 184647 (184647).

31. Isa. 14:1011, 1617. 32. Lucian, Menippus 17, trans. A. M. Harmon in Loeb. 33. Lk. 16:1931; cf. Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, pp. 7980; Bauckham, The Fate of

the Dead, pp. 97118; O. Lehtipuu, The Afterlife Imagery in Lukes Story of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Supplements to Novum Testamentum, 123; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007).

34. Lk. 16:25. 35. The passive voice of the Greek kuli/w has an active meaning: roll, whirl

along, grovel (of bees), roll about (in pantomime), cf. H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, and H. S. Jones, A GreekEnglish Lexicon. With a Revised Supplement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), s.v. The ApPt 34 uses stre/fw for rotating people on fire.

36. Already Bernard of Clairvaux (10901153) portrays the death procession; cf. L. P. Kurtz, The Dance of Death and the Macabre Spirit in European Literature (Publications of the Institute of French Studies; New York: Columbia University, 1934), pp. 1112. The genre is especially widley attested in poetry and fine arts from the fourteenth century; cf. H. Rosenfeld, Der mittelalter-liche Totentanz: Entstehung, Entwicklung, Bedeutung (Beihefte zum Archiv fr Kulturgeschichte, 3; Cologne: Bohlau, 2nd edn, 1968), pp. 5679; L. Silver, Danse Macabre, in J. R. Strayer (ed.), Dictionary of the Middle Ages. IX. Mystery Religions Poland (New York: Scribner, 1987), p. 93; M. Grams Thieme et al., Totentanz, in N. Angermann et al. (eds), Lexikon des Mittelalters. VIII. Stadt (Byzantinisches Reich) bis Werl. (Mnchen: Lexma, 1997), pp. 898901; C. Vincent, Danse Macabre, in A. Vauchez and A. Walford (eds), Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, vol. 1 (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2000), pp. 407408.

37. See esp. J. M. Sola-Sol, Dana general de la muerte, in Strayer (ed.), Dictionary of the Middle Ages, vol. 9, pp. 8586.


38. See A. Dieterich, Nekyia: Beitrge zur Erklrung der neuentdeckten Petrusapokalypse (Leipzig and Berlin: Teubner, 2nd edn, 1913), pp. 7273; Bremmer, The Apocalypse of Peter: Greek or Jewish?, pp. 116.

39. Aristophanes, Frogs 14548, trans. J. Henderson in Loeb. 40. Aristophanes, Gerytades, frag. 146.13 Kassel-Austin. 41. Lucian, True Story 2.30. 42. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, p. 388, remarked that at the head of

the medieval presentations of the underworld we must place the so-called Apocalypse of Peter.

43. F. Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel 3.22; idem, Gargantua et Pantagruel, vol. 2 (Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1936), pp. 5960; trans. F. Rabelais, T. Urquhart, and P. A. Motteux, Gargantua and Pantagruel (Great Books of the Western World, 24; Chicago: Encyclopdia Britannica, 1955), p. 171.

44. This connotation is indicated in Modern Greek, where esxatia& can also mean excrement. I thank Lautaro Roig Lanzillotta (University of Groningen) for this remark.

45. Pauls pun may have been inspired by the famous self-castrating galloi (eunuch priests) in the Anatolian cult of Attis and Cybele; cf. Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults, pp. 6 and 7778. A similar joke is made by Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 5.12.21; for this parallel and the rhetorical purpose of Pauls passage, see P. Lampe, Gewaltige Worte werden gewaltttig: Verbalkrieg aus der Ferne im Zweiten Korintherbrief als Kompensation kraftlosen persnlichen Auftretens?, in G. Theissen and P. v. Gemnden (eds), Erkennen und Erleben: Beitrge zur psychologischen Erforschung des frhen Christentums (Gtersloh: Gtersloher Verlagshaus, 2007), pp. 23146.

46. Clement of Alexandria, Eclogues 41, 48, 49; trans. R. P. Casey, The Excerpta ex Theodoto of Clement of Alexandria (Studies and Documents, 1; London: Christophers, 1934).

47. According to Clement, this is accomplished by the tiny flesh-eating beasts (qhri/a lepta_ sarkofa&ga) that come forth from the milk of the mothers.

48. In ApPt 8.510 E on infanticide, the victims are accusing their parents but do not play an active role in their punishment. This is similar to the function of the murderers in ApPt 25 A.

49. For a comparison with the Graeco-Roman practice of abortion, see recently, P. Gray, Abortion, Infanticide, and the Social Rhetoric of the Apocalypse of Peter, Journal of Early Christian Studies 9.3 (2001), pp. 31337.

50. For a survey of relevant passages, see Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, pp. 96101. 51. Ordericus Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History 8.17. For text and translation, see

M. Chibnall, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, vol. 4 (Oxford Medieval Texts; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), pp. 23949; Chibnall, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, vol. 4, pp. xxxviiixxxxix, calls the tradition of great antiquity and widespread occurrence.

52. For Ethiopians as demonic figures, see Chapter 4, n. 24 below. 53. Cf. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, p. 392. 54. Cf. R. Bauckham, The Two Fig Tree Parables in the Apocalypse of Peter,

Journal of Biblical Literature 104.2 (1985), pp. 26987 (26987). 55. Mt. 24:3236; Mk 13:2829; Lk. 21:2931. 56. Lk. 13:68.


57. ApPt 3.4b E; cf. Mk 14:21. The New Testament passage has be born instead of be created.

58. The problem of theodicy in the APt discussed by Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, pp. 13248; for a critical re-evaluation, see L. Roig Lanzillotta, Does Justice Reward the Righteous? The Justice Pattern Underlying the Apocalypse of Peter, in Bremmer and Czachesz (eds), The Apocalypse of Peter, pp. 12757.

59. Cf. Ezek. 37. 60. Cf. 1 Cor. 15:3549. 61. For the idea of resurrection as giving back the dead, see Bauckham, The Fate

of the Dead, pp. 26989. 62. The Descencus Christi ad inferos has been preserved as an extension of Acts of

Pilate, forming the the second part of the Gospel of Nicodemus. The dating of the text is uncertain, but probably it is not earlier than the fourth century. Cf. F. Scheidweiler, The Gospel of Nicodemus: Acts of Pilate and Christs Descent into Hell, in Schneemelcher and Wilson (eds), New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 1, pp. 50136. The text was published by C. v. Tischendorf, Evangelia Apocrypha, adhibitis plurimis codicibus Graecis et Latinis maximam partem nunc primum consultis atque ineditorum copia insignibus (Lipsiae: Avenarius et Mendelssohn, 1853), pp. 30111.

63. Book of the Dead 30 and 125, on which I will say more in Chapter 3 below. 64. Speculations on Gods cosmic body in Greek and Jewish tradition oer

interesting parallels, but the underworld in not included in them; cf. G. A. G. Stroumsa, Form(s) of God: Some Notes on Metatron and Christ, Harvard Theological Review 76.3 (1983), pp. 26988; idem, Savoir et salut: traditions juives et tentations dualistes dans le christianisme ancien (Patrimoines; Paris: Cerf, 1992), pp. 6584.

65. Cf. K. B. Copeland, Thinking with Oceans: Muthos, Revelation and the Apocalypse of Paul, in J. N. Bremmer and I. Czachesz (eds), The Visio Pauli and the Gnostic Apocalypse of Paul (9; Leuven; Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2007), pp. 77104.

66. Trans. Reardon, Collected Ancient Greek Novels, p. 631. Lucian, True Story 1.33, teqna&nai me\n ga_r ei0ka&zomen, zh=n de\ pisteu/omen.

67. Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel 2.32. 68. Accoding to E. Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western

Literature (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957), pp. 23335, Rabelais used Lucian, but notwithstanding Lucians fabulous creatures, Rabelais depicted a familiar world, everything just as home.

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