Greek Christian Poetry in Classical Forms. the Codex of Visions From the Bodmer Papyrus and the...

GREEK CHRISTIAN POETRY IN CLASSICAL FORMS: THE CODEX OF

VISIONS FROM THE BODMER PAPYRI AND THE MELDING OF

LITERARY TRADITIONS

Kevin James Kalish

A DISSERTATION

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iii

ABSTRACT

This dissertation presents a new chapter in the story of Christian cultures

engagement with classical literary culture. The Codex of Visions, part of the Bodmer

Papyri discovered in upper Egypt in 1952, provides the material for my study. This

codex contains previously unknown and anonymous Greek Christian poems dating

from the mid-fourth to the mid-fifth century. The nature of the codex is eclectic, and I

base my analysis on four narrative poems from the codex. These poems, though

composed according to classical prosody and employing archaic diction, nonetheless

deal with Christian themes, from visions of heaven to retellings of Bible episodes. I

argue that these poems show how Christian poets in Late Antiquity melded Christian

and classical traditions to form a new type of poetry.

Chapter One gives an introduction to the codex and provides background

information on Christian poetry in Late Antiquity and the classical tradition. The

Vision of Dorotheus, a poem that recounts a vision of heaven narrated by a Roman

soldier, is the subject of Chapter Two. In a poem on Abraham and the Sacrifice of

Isaac (Chapter Three), the poet imagines what Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac would have

said to each other before the sacrifice. Chapter Four discusses two poems on Cain and

Abel. Cains lament evokes monologues from Greek tragedy, whereas Abel, in

Hades, paraphrases Psalm 101 and looks forward to the coming of his savior. The

poems on Abraham, Cain, and Abel take rhetorical devices as their starting points:

characterization (ethopoiia) and paraphrase are used as the basis for poetic

experiments in retelling Biblical episodes.

iv

An important conclusion from this study is that these poems imitate the poetry

of Gregory of Nazianzus, the fourth-century bishop, theologian, and poet. Since we

know that Gregory composed most of his poetry in the 380s, this establishes a more

precise date for these poems. Subsequently, these poems from the Codex of Visions

provide a glimpse of how Christian poetry developed after Gregorys classicizing

poetry and before the emergence of new poetic forms in the sixth century with the

poetry of Romanos the Melodist.

v

ABBREVIATIONS

Abbreviations for papyri follows the Checklist of Editions of Greek, Latin, Demotic,

and Coptic Papyri, Ostraca, and Tablets found online at

LSJ A Greek-English Lexicon, ed. H.G. Liddell, R. Scott, and H.S.

Jones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)

LXX Septuaginta, ed. Alfred Rahlfs (Stuttgart: Deutsche

Bibelstiftung, 2006)

PG Patrologia Graeca, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris, 1857)

PGL A Patristic Greek Lexicon, ed. G.W.H. Lampe (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1961)

OCD Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. Simon Hornblower and

Antony Spawforth, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1996)

vi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to express my gratitude to all of those who made this possible. First, I

would like to thank my committeePeter Brown, Andrew Ford, Daniel Heller-

Roazen, and Stratis Papaioannou (Brown University)for seeing this project to its

completion. The composition of my committee reflects the interdisciplinary nature of

my time at Princeton. Peter Browns advice, encouragement, and generous spirit have

helped me at every stage of this work. Andrew Ford has ensured that one foot remains

in Classics. Stratis Papaioannou agreed to serve as an outside reader, and his

perspective and careful comments have helped immensely. Beyond my committee,

many at Princeton and beyond offered guidance and suggestions. My first stab at the

Vision of Dorotheus came about during a seminar taught by Constanze Gthenke,

and little did I know then the direction that paper would take me. Raffaella Cribiore

encouraged me to take on this project when I was a student at the Summer Seminar in

Papyrology sponsored by the American Society of Papyrologists (Columbia

University 2006); she has provided the much need papyrological expertise throughout

the process. AnneMarie Luijendijk, since her arrival at Princeton, has answered many

papyrological questions. Towards the end of the process, Eileen Reeves was

instrumental in answering procedural questions and helping me find teaching. Valerie

Kanka offered much needed assistance with administrative details.

vii

Support of various types, as well as continual inspiration, came from the

Program in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University. Hellenic Studies provided

financial support with a Stanley J. Seeger Fellowship as well as a home away from

home. I have also benefited from financial support in Comparative Literature with the

Joseph E. Croft 73 Summer Fellowship, (2004, 2005) and the Mary Cross Summer

Fellowship (2004). The Center for the Study of Religion, with their Graduate

Research Award, provided funding and a forum for presenting an earlier version of

Chapter Two. The Byzantine Studies Association of North America encouraged my

efforts with their Graduate Student Prize.

Numerous friends at Princeton also deserve my thanks. Matt Milliner

graciously read the entire dissertation and offered valuable feedback. Many have read

portions or offered feedback on various talks based on this dissertation. But most of

all it is the friendship that I cherish. My thanks go out to, among others: Craig

Caldwell, Jack Tannous, Richard Payne, Dan Schwartz, David Michelson, Petre

Guran, Nebojsa Stankovic, Scott Moringiello, Leah Whittington, Dawn LaValle,

Alana Shilling, Nick Marinides, Andrew Hui, and Christian Kaesser.

Most of all I wish to thank my family. My parents, in addition to all the

support and love they have offered, instilled in me the sense of dedication and

perseverance to see this project to its conclusion. To them and to my siblings I offer

my thanks. My wife Erin has learned more about early Christian poetry than she ever

wanted to know. Her love, support, and editorial expertise have made all of this a

reality. My daughter Elizabeth has helped in ways she can barely imagine. Much of

this was written as we awaited her birth. Since then, she has offered much need

viii

diversions and a reminder that scholarship needs to be balanced with time playing

outside. To Erin and Elizabeth I dedicate this work.

ix

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................................. III ABBREVIATIONS...................................................................................................................................V ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .....................................................................................................................VI TABLE OF CONTENTS .........................................................................................................................IX CHAPTER ONE: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE CODEX OF VISIONS FROM THE BODMER PAPYRI AND THE MELDING OF LITERARY TRADITIONS ..........................................................10 CHAPTER TWO: A TRIP TO HEAVEN RETOLD IN HOMERIC VERSE BY A ROMAN IMPERIAL GUARD: THE VISION OF DOROTHEUS (P.BODM. 29)............................................31 CHAPTER THREE: VISUALIZING DIALOGUES: THE IMAGINED SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND SARAH IN TO ABRAHAM (P. BODM. 30) ..............................................................66 CHAPTER FOUR: GIVING A VOICE TO THE DEAD: ETHOPOIIA IN THE POEMS ON CAIN AND ABEL (P. BODM. 33 AND 35) ...................................................................................................119 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................................156 APPENDIX ONE ...................................................................................................................................168 WORKS CITED.....................................................................................................................................169

10

CHAPTER ONE: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE CODEX OF VISIONS

FROM THE BODMER PAPYRI AND THE MELDING OF LITERARY

TRADITIONS

HOMERS ISLAND OF CALYPSO AND THE CHRISTIAN PARADISE

In an anonymous poem from the Bodmer Papyri addressed to the righteous

( ), the life of Christian virtue is recommended because it will bring the

faithful follower to paradise. God himself, so writes the poet, has brought the

unnamed martyr whom he loves to Ogygia, the Homeric island where Calypso dwelt: 1

[][]2

[] ,

] [] 3

[] [] .

[that one alone, whom God loves, he snatched eagerly away and carried

1 ll. 1-4. For the text of the poem, see Andr Hurst and Jean Rudhardt, Codex des Visions: Pomes

Divers, Papyrus Bodmer 30-37 (Munich: Saur, 1999).

2 Hurst and Rudhardt suggest as an alternative [], which makes more sense.

3 It is standard in these poems to spell Christ with an eta, something that will be discussed further in

Chapter Two.

11

to the island Ogygia, on account of (his) martyrdom,

leading (him) to the holy paradise; for the sake of Christs commands

he died, he who was plentiful in wisdom.]

It comes at first as a surprise to see the Christian paradise linked with an island that in

Homer is a sensuous paradise. Ogygia is the island where Odysseus spends a few

years with the nymph Calypso before finally returning home. This poem from the

Bodmer Papyri, with its use of elegiac distichs and archaizing diction, attempts to

create a classicizing piece of Christian writing. Thus, the reference to Calypsos

island may be the classicizing impulse gone too far. Tertullian famously asked what

Athens has to do with Jerusalem; we might wonder what Ogygia has to do with

paradise.

This poem from the Bodmer Papyri is not the only example of Ogygia taking

on different meanings. Ogygia takes on a range of possible meanings in post-

classical Greek. Among Christian authors, it can mean simply immense, as in Basil

of Seleuciensis: (because of the greatness

of the deeds).4 It also comes to mean archaic or primitive, because of a primeval

and antediluvian king Ogygus, who was sometimes associated with Thebes in Egypt

(but also Athens and Boeotia). Ignatius the Deacon,5 in his life of Nicephorus I,

Patriarch of Constantinople, says: 4 Basil of Seleuciensis, Sermones, ed. J.-P. Migne, vol. 85, Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series

Graeca (PG) (Paris: 1857-66), 461 line 51.

5 born ca.77080, died after 845

12

(one must embrace the ancient worship of tradition).6

According to a tradition handed down via the Hellenistic poet Lycophron and his 12th

century Byzantine commentator Tzetzes and recounted by the editors of this poem,

Ogygia was also associated with the Isles of the Blessed where heroes went after their

deaths.7 The tradition that Tzetzes recalls is a complicated one; suffice it to say, some

ancient sources placed Ogygia in the West, and thus associated it with the Isles of the

Blessed, which were also placed in the far West. There is no indication that Tzetzes

knew the poems from the Bodmer Papyri, but clearly a tradition of exegesis

transmitted this seemingly obscure understanding of Homers Ogygia as a stand-in for

paradise. The poem from the Bodmer Papyri offers our earliest evidence of this

Christian reading of Ogygia.

As these few examples suggest, by Late Antiquity the island of Calypso had

come to mean something different from what it meant in Homer. This poem expects a

knowledge of mythological interpretation and exegesis on the part of the reader or

auditor. When this poem from the Bodmer Papyri uses Ogygia, it is something more

than a poor attempt to write classicizing Christian poetry or a misunderstanding of

source texts. The imagery and allusions at work in this poem, while at first baffling,

demonstrate a sophisticated reading of both pagan and Christian literature. One could 6 See Ignatius the Deacon, Vita Nicephori, ed. Carl De Boor, Opuscula Historica (Lipsiae: Teubner,

1880), 165.

7 Hurst and Rudhardt, Codex des Visions: Pomes Divers, 97. In addition, see the recent edition of

Lycophron and in particular the notes to ll. 1204 and 1206 in Lycophron, Alexandra, ed. Andr

Hurst and Antje Kolde (Paris: Belles lettres, 2008).

13

even call such obscure language deliberate obscurity, perhaps a kenning; it forces one

to pause and work out how Ogygia can stand in for the Christian paradise.

This brief moment from one of the poems from the Bodmer Papyri highlights

the issues to be covered in this dissertation. These poems from the Bodmer Papyri

meld the classical tradition with Biblical exegesis; a Christian heaven is talked about

but in the language and meter of the pagan past. Seemingly obscure references and

imagery turn out to convey a tradition of interpretation. The verse form and frame of

reference is classicizing, but the poets nonetheless write about Christian themes.

THE CODEX OF VISIONS AS A NEW CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF

CLASSICIZING GREEK POETRY

The history of Christian poetry composed in classical forms is a long and

varied story. When the emperor Julian (361-363) forbade Christians from teaching in

the schools, the Apolinarii (father and son) recast Scripture into classical formsor so

the historians Sozomen and Socrates tell us.8 While Julians ban may have given the 8 Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica V.18; Socrates Historia ecclesiastica III.16. For more on this see

Michael Roberts, Biblical Epic and Rhetorical Paraphrase in Late Antiquity (Liverpool: Francis

Cairns, 1985), 4; K. Thraede, "Epos," in Reallexikon fr Antike und Christentum, 999ff. The works

of the Apolinarii do not survive; the Homeric Psalter attributed to Apollinaris is a fifth-century

work. See Joseph Golega, Der homerische Psalter. Studien ber die dem Apolinarios von Laodikeia

zugeschriebene Psalmenparaphrase (Ettal: Buch-Kunstverl, 1960). Eusebius and Clement of

Alexandria mention Hellenistic Jewish paraphrases; the Exagoge of Ezekiel the Tragedian survives

in part. See Ezekiel, The Exagoge of Ezekiel, ed. Howard Jacobson (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1983).

14

initial motivation, it cannot explain the entire phenomenon, especially as these

classicizing Christian poems continued to be written well after Julians brief reign.

Latin poets led the way in this literary phenomenon of the Biblical epic with Juvencus,

the first we know of who recast portions of the Bible as epic poetry. 9 Following suit,

the Greek authors (ps.) Apollinaris,10 Nonnos, and Eudocia11 all engage in this

practice. Certainly by the fifth century there is a real vogue for composing epic poems

based on portions of the Bible in Homeric or Vergilian meters. In addition, late

antique authors were not the only ones to attempt to meld classical forms and

Christian narrative in their poetry. This tradition continues at least until Paradise

Lost, John Miltons monumental poem that intertwines the classical tradition of epic

with the Christian narrative of salvation history.

Although this history of classicizing poetry has been recounted many times,

poems from the Bodmer Papyri provide a new chapterand perhaps one of the

earliest chapters. The Bodmer Papyri itself is a unique collection. This group of papyri

codices was discovered in upper Egypt in 1952, though its precise provenance remains

9 Roberts, Biblical Epic and Rhetorical Paraphrase in Late Antiquity. See also Roger Green, Latin

Epics of the New Testament: Juvencus, Sedulius, Arator (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006);

Carl P. E. Springer, The Gospel as Epic in Late Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, 1988).

10 Golega, Der homerische Psalter.

11 Mary Whitby, "The Bible Hellenized: Nonnus' Paraphrase of St John's Gospel and 'Eudocia's'

Homeric Centos," in Texts and Culture in Late Antiquity, ed. J. H. D. Scourfield (Swansea: Classical

Press of Wales, 2007).

15

unknown.12 It has the pagan Greek classicsparts of the Iliad and plays by

Menanderas well as scriptural texts (both Old and New Testament books),

apocryphal texts (Shepherd of Hermas, Nativity of Mary, St. Pauls third letter to the

Corinthians), and other Christian literature. One codex in particular from the Bodmer

Papyri, known as the Codex of Visions, presents previously unknown Christian poems

all composed in classical meters.

This anthology of anonymous poems, the Codex of Visions, forms the basis for

the present study. I specifically address those poems that engage in narrative and

paraphrase; the other poems, of a hortatory and didactic nature, will be the subject of

future work. Paleographic criteria and the format of the codex puts the papyrus at the

second half of the fourth century or the beginning of the fifth century, but the six

different hands make it difficult to be more precise.13 The papyrus is not the

autograph copy of the poets: for example, corrections are made above certain lines,

which suggests the scribes knew other versions of the poems. Although the text

12 For an overview of the contents of the Bodmer Papyri, as well as details concerning the date and

possible provenance of this collection, see Rodolphe Kasser, "Bodmer Papyri," in The Coptic

Encyclopedia, ed. A. S. Atiya (New York: 1991); Rodolphe Kasser, "Introduction," in Bibliotheca

Bodmeriana: The collection of the Bodmer Papyri (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2000).

13 Rodolphe Kasser, Guglielmo Cavallo, and Joseph Van Haelst, "Nouvelle description du Codex des

Visions," in Papyrus Bodmer 38, ed. A. Carlini (Cologny-Genve: Foundation Martin Bodmer,

1991), 123-24. Cavallo suggest the beginning of the 5th century, while Van Haelst argues for the

second half of the 4th century.

16

survives in Egypt, it could have been written elsewhere and then circulated and was

copied in Egypt.

These poems have only recently appeared in print and their interpretation has

only just begun. In 1984 Hurst, Reverdin, and Rudhardt published the Vision of

Dorotheus (P. Bodm. 29)14 a narrative poem recounting the vision of heaven

experienced by a poet called Dorotheus. His vision imagines a heaven with God,

Christ, and angels, but the heavenly realm look suspiciously like the Roman imperial

court. In 1999 Hurst and Rudhardt published the remaining poems from the codex,

giving it the title Codex of Visions.15 Many of the poems from the Codex of Visions

recast Biblical episodes. These poems take part in Christian exegesis, but they do this

in classical meters and use archaic diction. One poem (To Abraham, P. Bodm. 30)

imagines what Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac might have said before the sacrifice. Two

separate poems imagine the speeches of Cain and Abel (What would Cain have said

having slain Abel, P. Bodm. 33, and What would Abel have said after being slain

P. Bodm. 35). With the publication of these poems, an early and formative stage in

this encounter between Christian exegesis and classical poetry has been recovered. I

14 Andr Hurst, O. Reverdin, and Jean Rudhardt, Papyrus Bodmer 29: Vision de Dorothos, Papyrus

Bodmer 29 (Cologny-Genve: Foundation Martin Bodmer, 1984).

15Hurst and Rudhardt, Codex des Visions: Pomes Divers. On account of the two vision narratives, the

Vision of Dorotheus and the first three visions of the Shepherd of Hermas, the editors have called

it the Codex of Visions. While 70% of the codex is vision narratives, this title does not account for

the other poems. These shorter pieces often are concerned more with the underworld than with

heaven.

17

intend to show what this encounter looked like and the ways in which these new

poems change our understanding of Christian poetry in Late Antiquity.

While these poems are similar to the Biblical epics in style and meter, they are

shorter pieces and focus on one particular episode; or, as is the case with the Vision

of Dorotheus, they apply the style of Biblical epic to the unlikely genre of vision

narratives. Since the poems on Cain and Abel present themselves as rhetorical

exercisesthe practice of characterization (ethopoiia)some have suggested that this

codex was either produced or used in a school setting.16 In addition, the six different

scribal hands, something that one does not often find, argue for this provenance.

Joseph Van Haelst first suggested the idea of the text coming from a school of

advanced learning in Panopolis.17 Raffaella Cribiore points out that advanced students

and scholars who could not afford more expensive copies would copy entire works in

their own hands:

The Bodmer papyri exemplify this tendency: whole codices containing

Christian works and Menanders comedies were copied, with mistakes

and corruptions of every kind, by studentsor perhaps sometimes by

teachersin fluent but somewhat unprofessional handwriting. These

texts originated in a Christian school of advanced learning in Panopolis,

16 Jean-Luc Fournet, "Une thope de Can dans le Codex des Visions de la Fondation Bodmer,"

Zeitschrift fr Papyrologie und Epigraphik 92 (1992).

17 Kasser, Cavallo, and Van Haelst, "Nouvelle description du Codex des Visions," 108, 18, 24.

18

where religious works were studied side by side with traditional

authors.18

Kasser concurs with this hypothesis, suggesting that the likely owner of this codex

would no doubt be a scriptorium teacher, progressively building up a respectable and

varied library to suit the needs and tastes of his customers and pupils.19

Others have seen these poems as coming from a religious community. The

case for the Bodmer Papyri coming from a monastic setting was made most strongly

by James Robinson. 20 This interpretation has been accepted and promulgated in

various works,21 even while the editors of the Bodmer Papyri have raised serious

objections on a number of accounts.22 As Jean-Luc Fournet observed in his discussion

18 Raffaella Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind. Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt.

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 200.

19 Kasser, "Introduction," LV.

20 James M. Robinson, The Pachomian Monastic Library at the Chester Beatty Library and the

Bibliothque Bodmer (Claremont: Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, the Claremont Graduate

School, 1990).

21 Eldon J. Epp, "New Testament Papyri and the Transmission of the New Testament," in Oxyrhynchus:

A City and Its Texts, ed. A. K. Bowman (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 2007), 323; Harry Y.

Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven:

Yale University Press, 1995), 173.

22 See Kasser, "Bodmer Papyri," 49. See also the refutation of Robinsons views in Kasser, Cavallo,

and Van Haelst, "Nouvelle description du Codex des Visions," 105 note 5.

19

of the Cain and Abel poems, these poems, as examples of ethopoiia exercises, argue

against the idea of the codex coming from a monastic setting. 23

The context for these texts does not have to be either a school or a monastery.

Another option is that this collection belonged to a wealthy collector. Kasser suggests

that the collector might have been a Martin Bodmer of Late Antiquity (the collector

after whom the collection is named), a rich landowner, with a taste for old favorites

and the new writings of the time. Gianfranco Agosti argues that these compositions

are not like the usual school texts, especially since ethopoiia is used for exegesis; he

suggests that they may be from a community interested in pagan paideia as well as

Christian culture.24 Based on the archaic language of the poems and the use of learned

allusions to both classical authors and contemporary ones, we can assume that these

texts were produced and enjoyed by an audience that would appreciate and understand

the display of paideia evident in the poems. While we know little about how poetry

was performed or circulated during this period, we do have one revealing anecdote.

When Arator held a public recital of his retelling of the Acts of the Apostles in

Vergilian hexameters, it lasted four days because of the constant repetitions that they

demanded with manifold applause.25 The crowd, consisting of religious, lay, and 23 See Fournet, "Une thope de Can dans le Codex des Visions de la Fondation Bodmer," 253.

24 Gianfranco Agosti, "L'etopea nella poesia greca tardoantica," in thopoiia: la reprsentation de

caractres entre fiction scolaire et ralit vivante l'poque impriale et tardive, ed. Eugenio

Amato and Jacques Schamp (Salerne: 2005), 45.

25 For the Latin text recounting this episode and father discussion, see Green, Latin Epics of the New

Testament: Juvencus, Sedulius, Arator, 391-92.

20

even various people from the congregation, gathered in the church of St. Peter ad

Vincula for this poetry reading. Evidently people enjoyed this kind of poetry and its

performance could take place in settings outside of the school, even in a churchbut,

notably, not as part of a liturgical service.

RHETORIC, THE SCHOOL ROOM, AND POETRY

Whether or not this codex was the product of a school, the typical exercises of

the schoolroom inform how one reads these poems. The poems on Cain and Abel

most directly show how the practices of the schoolroom shaped the crafting of verse,

but all of the narrative poems exhibit traces of the rhetorical school to some degree.

The preliminary exercises called progymnasmata formed the minds of students. As

Cribiore has said, the progymnasmata were meant to warm up his muscles, stretch his

power of discourse, and build his vigor. 26 The student encountered these exercises at

the advanced level, the rhetorical school. The list and sequence of exercises differ in

the various surviving handbooks, but among the exercises we find the following:

fable (mythos), narrative (digma, digsis), anecdote (khreia), maxim (gnm),

refutation (anaskeu), confirmation (kataskeu), common-place (topos), encomion

(enkmion), invective (psogos), comparison (synkrisis), characterization (ethopoiia,

26 See Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind. Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt., 222.

Handbooks on progymnasmata are collected and translated in George Alexander Kennedy,

Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition and Rhetoric (Leiden: Brill, 2003).

21

prospopoeia), description (ekphrasis) thesis or proposition (thesis), law (nomos) and

paraphrase (paraphrasis).27

Since the structure of education in antiquity has been dealt with thoroughly

elsewhere,28 I will turn instead to the role of poetry in the schoolroom. As students

advanced to the rhetorical school, the final stage in ones education, the emphasis was

supposed to turn to prose. The purpose of rhetorical training, after all, was to prepare

to take part in civic life in the public sphere, where oratory predominated. Creating

poets was not the primary goal of the school system. Yet, as Cribiore observes, poetry

was more common in schools than once thought.29 In another place she dispels the

idea that the use of poetry in the rhetorical school was only an Egyptian phenomenon:

Far from pointing to an eccentric phenomenon and to the exclusive

predilection of the Egyptians from poetry, they are symptomatic of the

fact that poetry was cultivated in schools of rhetoric anywhere, even

though school examples outside of Egypt are hard to come by.30 27 Kennedy, Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition and Rhetoric, xiii. Paraphrase is

not mentioned in Kennedys discussion here, but paraphrase is used in Theon.

28 See Raffaella Cribiore, Writing, Teachers, and Students in Graeco-Roman Egypt (Atlanta: Scholars

Press, 1996); Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind. Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt.

See also Teresa Morgan, Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1998).

29 Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind. Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt., 230.

30 Raffaella Cribiore, The School of Libanius in Late Antique Antioch (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 2007), 162.

22

A recent collection of essays on ethopoiia corroborates Cribiores point. Ethopoiia

changes from a rhetorical exercise limited to the schoolroom to a device common to

poetry. Agosti traces the ways in which poetic ethopoiia begins to appear already in

the first and second centuries AD;31 furthermore, one finds this exercise in

characterization at work in many longer poems.32

That this rhetorical device in particular should give rise to poetic compositions

should come as no surprise. Aelius Theon, in his Progymnasmata33 says that

prospopoeia (the term he uses to cover all types of characterization exercises) are

good practice for writing a variety of works: characterization is not only practice for

writing history, but it is also useful for oratory, for dialogues, and for poetry; even in

our daily life it is most useful for our conversation with others. It is extremely helpful

for understanding prose writings.34 The practice of composing imagined speeches

serves as a training ground for an array of uses from the literary to the quotidian. The

31 Agosti, "L'etopea nella poesia greca tardoantica," 36ff.

32 Ibid., 45ff.

33 Aelius Theon, Progymnasmata, ed. Michel Patillon and Giancarlo Bolognesi (Paris: Belles Lettres,

1997). Previously, Theon was considered the earliest, but recent work has suggested a later date (1st

century AD or later); see Malcolm Heath, "Theon and the history of the progymnasmata," Greek,

Roman and Byzantine Studies 43 (2003/2004).

34 Theon, Progymnasmata, 60.19-31. See also Ruth Webb, "The Progymnasmata as Practice," in

Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity, ed. Yun Lee Too (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 306.

23

progymnasmata are not ends in themselves, but instead they form the thoughts and the

languagethat is, they shape how students think about literary composition.35

The Cain and Abel poems use the device of ethopoiia for the crafting of

monologues; these poems represent only one voice and take on the persona of the

Biblical character. In To Abraham, multiple voices are imagined. As Theon

observed, the practice of imagining isolated speeches prepares one for writing

dialogues. To Abraham conjoins imagined speeches of Abraham, Sarah and Isaac.

We see Theons words put into action as ethopoiia leads to the construction of a

dialogue. But the dialogue is not fully developed; since little back and forth occurs

between the speakers, it might be better to call this dialogized ethopoiia. Even the

Vision of Dorotheus incorporates elements of ethopoiia as it imagines what a

Roman imperial guard would have said if transported to heaven.

POETRY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

After a decline in the production of poetry in the second and third century, a

revival of poetry occurred in Late Antiquity.36 Poetry even takes over areas that were

35 Webb, "The Progymnasmata as Practice," 290.

36 Much of the following discussion is indebted to Alan Cameron, "Poetry and Literary Culture in Late

Antiquity," in Approaching Late Antiquity. The Transformation from Early to Late Empire, ed.

Simon Swain and Mark Edwards (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 328. A recent book

situates the poems from the Codex of Visions within the context of late antique poetry from Egypt;

unfortunately it came out too late to incorporate in the present study. See Laura Migulez Cavero,

24

once the domain of prose. Louis Robert shows that dedications composed in prose

during the second and third centuries came to be composed in classicizing elegiacs or

hexameters in the fourth century.37 Why this resurgence of interest in poetry? For one

thing, poetry was a means to preserve culture; and, perhaps more importantly, it was

also a way to manifest culture (paideia). As Alan Cameron states, poetry was

paideia in its most concentrated form.38

In the late fourth century, Gregory of Nazianzus produced a massive amount of

poetrymuch of it autobiographical, some of it didactic, some hortatoryand almost

all of it in ancient meters.39 A prolific writer, Gregory of Nazianzus wrote poems in

almost every ancient meter and genre, and so he is a fitting point of comparison when

investigating late antique Greek Christian poetry. Although he was not the only poet

around, his writings came to dominate in the Byzantine school curriculum.40

Poems in Context: Greek Poetry in the Egyptian Thebaid 200-600 AD (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,

2008).

37 Cameron, "Poetry and Literary Culture in Late Antiquity," 331.

38 Ibid., 345.

39 Most of Gregorys poetry comes from the 380s. See Brian Daley, Gregory of Nazianzus, The Early

Church Fathers (London: Routledge, 2006); John Anthony Mcguckin, St. Gregory of Nazianzus: An

Intellectual Biography (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2001).

40 On the early reception of Gregory, see Jennifer Nimmo Smith, A Christian's guide to Greek culture:

the Pseudo-Nonnus commentaries on sermons 4, 5, 39 and 43 by Gregory of Nazainzus, Translated

texts for historians v. 37 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001), xxxiii. On the Byzantine

reception, see Robert Browning, "Homer in Byzantium," Viator 6 (1975): 16-17.

25

Subsequently, he offers the modern scholar the greatest resources for comparison

since so much of his poetry survives. Gregory is often known, at least in modern

scholarship, for his autobiographical poems,41 but he also composed many classicizing

poems on Biblical themes. Among his Dogmatic Poems,42 one finds poems that

recount the Decalogue of Moses (in dactylic hexameters, PG 37.476), the miracles of

Elijah and Elisha (in iambic trimesters, PG 37.477), and the genealogy of Christ (in

dactylic hexameters, PG 37.480), as well as many others.

Gregorys poetry also highlights important aspects of the transformation of

poetry in this period. His poems on Biblical subjects are but one example of this

transformation. His avoidance of strict adherence to classical strictures on prosody is

another indication. Cameron summarizes the issue as follows:

41 The way Gregory is read today and how he was read in Byzantine differ significantly, as modern

scholarship has been more interested in the autobiographical elements. For a good discussion of the

changing ways Gregory has been read, see the introduction in Preston Edwards, "'Epistamenois

agoreuso: on the Christian Alexandrianism of Gregory of Nazianzus" (Dissertation, Brown

University, 2003).

42 I follow the classification given in the only complete edition of Gregorys works to date, although a

new complete edition is in process. See Gregory of Nazianzus, Carmina, ed. J.-P. Migne, vol. 37-

38, Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Graeca (PG) (Paris: 1857-66). These divisions are a

modern construction; references will include both volume/column from Migne and the traditional

breakdown of Poemata Theologica (Book 1), which contains Poemata Dogmatica (1.1) and

Carmina Moralia (1.2) and Poemata Historica (Book 2), which contains Carmina De Seipso (2.1)

and Poemata Quae Spectant Ad Alios (2.2).

26

Yet given the fact that in everything but prosody Gregory shows

considerable technical competence, his false quantities (a

characterization that reveals our own classicizing perspective) are not

really likely to be the result of ignorance. The explanation of the

paradox is surely that he deliberately ignored classical quantities when

it suited him.43

Gregorys willingness to diverge from the traditions of the past serves as a model for

what the poets from the Codex of Visions are doing. Moreover, Camerons way of

discussing Gregorys false quantities indicates a major change in approaches to the

literature of this period. No longer is all change and transformation viewed as

deviation. Whitmarsh, in discussing the creation of canons of taste, notes how in

previous scholarship all post-classical literature was perceived to be derivative.44

Recent scholarship has taken a different approach, and new models have provided

43 Cameron, "Poetry and Literary Culture in Late Antiquity," 338-39.

44 Tim Whitmarsh, Ancient Greek Literature (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), 12. Scourfield sums up

the situation as follows: the view from the twenty-first century reveals in the fourth a period that in

its variety, creative experiment, and, above all, productivity, can only be regarded as flourishing.

Modern scholarship has nonetheless displayed a tendency to regard the literature of Late Antiquity

as something essentially second-rate. J. H. D. Scourfield and Anna Chahoud, Texts and Culture in

Late Antiquity: Inheritance, Authority, and Change (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2007), 2.

27

ways to approach late antique literature without the blinders of nineteenth-century

classicism.45

At issue in these poems from the Codex of Visions, as with much of late

antique poetry, is the question of originality and imitation. Often the very terminology

is colored with notions of this literature being derivative, as when words such as

plunder, pastiche, or mere imitation are used. I suggest that an apt and fitting term

for this convergence of traditions and the emergence of new forms and new

vocabulary is melding. This term, itself a combination of two different terms

melt and weldvividly demonstrates what these poets do in their compositions.

Different words come together in new combinations to give birth to previously

unheard-of phrases, and formerly pagan terms are invested with Christian meaning.

Poetic forms like epic meter become the vehicle for mediations on Biblical episodes.

Moreover, melding offers a more symbiotic model that avoids the problems of

unidirectional influence and dependence.

IMPORTANCE OF CODEX OF VISIONS

What then is the significance of the Codex of Visions? While other poets from

the periodsuch as Gregory of Nazianzus and Nonnospresent us with polished,

refined verse that has had a long manuscript history, these poems provide something

else. The sometimes imperfect use of archaic verse and the oftentimes perplexing

45 On this change in methods, see Jakov Ljubarskij, "Quellenforschung and/or Literary Criticism:

Narrative Structures in Byzantine Historical Writings," Symbolae Osloenses 74 (1999).

28

imagery are among the many qualities that make the Codex of Visions so interesting:

these poems show the tradition of classicizing Christian poetry at its early,

experimental stage. Since these poems survive only in this codex, they present us with

access to the imaginative world of late antique poets feeling their ways towards new

poetic traditions. We know almost nothing of the identity of the author or authors, the

date of composition, where the poems where written, or the context in which these

poems were read or performed or studied. But we have the poems. Thus any

discussion must give heed to the poems as poems since they hide from us so much

else.

Consequently, my primary purpose in this dissertation is to unpack the

meaning of these poems by exploring the poetic language. I focus on the ways in

which metaphor and imagery work and how the poets weave a web of allusions and

intertextual borrowings. Likewise, I examine the ways in which exegesis and

paraphrase operate within a poetical text. My approach is, following Geoffrey Hill,

to trace and find out the whole drift, and occasion, and contexture of the speech, as

well as the words themselves.46 I present an analysis and interpretation of four

poems from the codex. The Codex of Visions presents poems (and one work of prose)

of varying types, but my concern here is with the narrative poems. While the other

poems, primarily of a didactic character, also deserve further exploration, they are

only used as comparanda in the present work. I draw attention to the hybrid nature of 46 Geoffrey Hill, The Enemy's Country: Words, Contexture and Other Circumstances of Language

(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 23. Hill is himself quoting from Hobbes, On Human

Nature.

29

the poems. Although composed in epic verse and written in a deliberately archaizing

fashion, these poems also engage in the exegesis of Biblical texts. Likewise, these

poems reveal characteristics usually associated with liturgical poetry. In addition, I

situate the poems from the Codex of Visions within the broader story of Christian

poetry in Late Antiquity. One new argument presented in this dissertation is that these

poets knew the poetry of Gregory of Nazianzus. A number of complex allusions

demonstrate that these poets may be called the first school of Gregory.

A standard view of Greek Christian poetry goes like this. In the fourth and

fifth centuries, Christian poets like Gregory of Nazianzus, Synesius, and the school of

Biblical epic poets attempted to unite the classical and Christian spirit in their verse.

This is how Maas and Trypanis describe it in their edition of Romanos. 47 After this

failed attempt, classical poetry was abandoned as a model for religious poetry

though it remained part of elite literary cultureand other influences gave rise to the

great flowering of hymnody in the sixth century, seen especially in the work of

Romanos the Melodist.48 This portrayal is obviously a straw man, but the assumptions

behind it color many discussions of Greek poetry in Late Antiquity. Certainly the

vogue for writing in classical meters petered out amongst religious poets, and Syriac

poetry played an undeniably significant role in the shaping of Byzantine hymnody. 47 Romanus, Cantica, ed. Paul Maas and C. A. Trypanis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), xiii.

48 For the texts of Romanus, see Ibid; Romanus, Hymnes, ed. Jos Grosdidier De Matons (Paris:

Editions du Cerf, 1964). On the place of Romanus in the history of liturgical poetry, see Jos

Grosdidier De Matons, Romanos le Mlode et les origines de la posie religieuse Byzance,

Beauchesne Religions (Paris: Beauchesne, 1977).

30

But was the chasm so vast between someone like Gregory of Nazianzus and

Romanos? It would be surprising if there were not some hybrid forms and poetic

experiments that came in between these two bookends.

The poems from the Codex of Visions show characteristics of both of these

traditions. They use classical forms, but they also use devices common to liturgical

poetry: acrostics, imagined speeches of Biblical characters, and paraphrases of the

Psalms. Biblical texts are often their starting point, but then they improvise from there.

These poems look backwards and forwards: the classical tradition is retained but also

transformed, while Biblical episodes are rewritten in fresh and playful ways. In these

poems we see the first inklings of poetic developments that will become the hallmark

of medieval literature. Allegorical exegesis gives rise to readings of Biblical scenes

that at first seem obscure; indeed the poets take delight in that which is difficult and

requires work. Likewise, chronology is not adhered to, but a poetics of prolepsis is at

work. Future events are seen as already having occurred. Indeed, these poems, as

hybrid forms, serve as a bridge between the two traditions of classicizing and liturgical

poetry. By crossing this chasm, the story of Christian poetry changes. The poems

from the Codex of Visions challenge us to rethink how Christian poetry developed.

31

CHAPTER TWO: A TRIP TO HEAVEN RETOLD IN HOMERIC VERSE BY

A ROMAN IMPERIAL GUARD: THE VISION OF DOROTHEUS

(P.BODM. 29)

INTRODUCTION

Religious vision narratives are nothing new in the world of late antique

literature.49 In this regard, the Vision of Dorotheus (P.Bodm. 29) from the Bodmer

Papyri seems like yet another vision of a trip to heaven. Except this trip is told by a

Roman soldier who describes a heaven that does not look much different from the late

Roman imperial court. Moreover, the poem employs archaizing verse, making the

Vision of Dorotheus one of the earliest surviving examples of a Greek Christian

poem composed in the meter and language of classical epic. The fragmentary text

contains many gaps (of 343 lines, only 22 are fully intact), and questions concerning

authorship, date, or provenance remain difficult to answer. Part of the Bodmer Papyri

discovered in 1952,50 the Vision of Dorotheus was first published in 1984,51 and a

49 See Martha Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1993). More recently, RaAnan S. Boustan and Annette Yoshiko Reed, Heavenly

Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2004).

50 See Chapter One for more on the Bodmer Papyri and the Codex of Visions.

51 Hurst, Reverdin, and Rudhardt, Papyrus Bodmer 29: Vision de Dorothos.

32

revised edition appeared in 1987.52 Recent scholarship, though arriving at this by

different means, places the Vision of Dorotheus in the mid to late fourth century.53

With the recognition that we are limited in what we can know for certain about

the date and provenance of the poem, I want to leave aside these issues for the moment

and proceed to other aspects of the poem that have not been discussed. This chapter

will explore instead the literary aspects of the poem.54 Authorship has been a concern

in previous scholarship, but only in so far as scholars have attempted to correlate the

Dorotheus of the poem with a known person from the period. Instead I will show how

Dorotheus can be read as a literary character, a fictive I retelling his vision.

Connections with Gregory of Nazianzus reveal how the poet was part of a broader

tradition, and these moments of intertextuality may suggest other ways to situate the

poem in its historical context.

52 P. W. Van Der Horst and A. H. M. Kessels, "The Vision of Dorotheus (Pap. Bodmer 29)," Vigiliae

Christianae 41 (1987): 313-59. Because of the improvements made to the text, quotations will be

from this edition, but translations will be my own, unless otherwise noted.

53 For a summary of previous scholarship on the date of the poem, see Jan N. Bremmer, The Rise and

Fall of the Afterlife: The 1995 Read-Tuckwell Lectures at the University of Bristol (London:

Routledge, 2002), Appendix 3.

54 Here I am indebted to Gianfranco Agosti, who has led the way in studying the Vision of Dorotheus

in its literary context. In particular, the following has proved extremely useful: Gianfranco Agosti,

"I poemetti del Codice Bodmer e il loro ruolo nella storia della poesia tardoantica," in Le Codex des

Visions, ed. Andr Hurst and Jean Rudhart (Genve: Librairie Droz, 2002).

33

Finally, I will argue that the poem contains previously unnoticed elements of

parody. The impulse to archaize was a common drive amongst poets of all stripes

from Hellenistic times and beyond. But the Vision of Dorotheus uses archaic verse

to relate a vision of heaven, and ascents to heaven were not traditionally topics for

epic verse. It is not strictly a cento or biblical paraphrase, since it is not constructed

entirely of verses from Homer nor does it take for its subject matter an episode from

the Bible. It also differs from the work of Gregory, whose poetry deals with many

topics but not dream visions. Even so, it works within the same milieu as Gregory and

the biblical epic poets. Straddling these different genres, the Vision of Dorotheus

creates a hybrid by adapting the formal structure of epic poetry for the unlikely

purpose of relating a vision narrative. At a time when Homeric centos where on the

rise and Christian poets were taking up the poetry of the past, the Vision of

Dorotheus uses archaizing verse for an unlikely purpose. This mixing of an archaic

verse form with an unusual vision of heaven raises the question: can a vision narrative

of a Christian heaven be told in the meter and language of Homer? Or does such an

attempt instead result in parody? Indeed, it seems that the poem parodies vision

narratives, in particular Gnostic ascents to heaven.

LITERARY CONTEXT

Even with the fragmentary text, one can see the lineaments of the narrative.55

The narrator of the poem, a certain imperial functionary whose name we later learn to

be Dorotheus, tells of how he was at his post as a gatekeeper at the imperial palace 55 I follow the summary and the edited version of Kessels and Van der Horst for my account.

34

when sleep overcame him. A vision comes to the sleepy soldier, who now finds

himself in a palace again as the gatekeeper, but it is a heavenly palace: the court of a

Roman emperor is transferred to heaven. The characters one expects to find in

heaven are thereChrist, Gabriel, and other angelsbut it is an unusual heaven. The

heavenly ranks do not look all that different from the late Roman military. Heaven is

populated with ranks such as praepositus, domesticus, tiro, biarchus, ostiarius and

primicerius. The narrator here shows his familiarity with late Roman military and

administrative offices. Dorotheus undergoes a transformation and receives a position

of honor. He becomes a tiro (recruit) among the praepositi at the palace near the

biarchoi (commissary-generals): []

(l. 43). After Dorotheus receives this position of honor, he becomes overly

proud and goes beyond the doorway that he is supposed to guard. Here the text is

especially corrupt, but we gather that Dorotheus falsely accuses an old man before

Christ. He regrets his mistake and asks for the dream to stop. Christ, smiling,

chastises Dorotheus for forsaking his position at the gate and orders him to be

punished by scourging. Dorotheus is placed in prison, and Gabriel supervises the

gruesome scourging of Dorotheus. After the flagellation, Christ brings Dorotheus

back to his previous position at the gate. Because of the blood that covers him,

Dorotheus must wash himself. Then Christ instructs him to be baptized, and

Dorotheus chooses the name Andreas because he wants to make up for his lack of

courage. The following section is difficult to reconstruct, but after instruction from

Christ, Dorotheus is again placed as guardian of the gate although he asks God that he

be made a veredus (l.310)i.e. he asks to be sent far way. At the end Dorotheus

35

returns to his original earthly position as gatekeeper, though he is now clothed with a

cloak, an orarium, a glittering girdle or belt, and he wears breeches (ll. 332-3). The

vision ends and the poet tells how all this was placed on his heart so that he should

sing of it year after year.

In the first few lines of the narrative, one already sees how Homeric language

interweaves with Christian theology:

[ ]

, , [ ],

[ ]. (lines 1-3)

[To me, a sinner, the holy God sent from Heaven

Christ, his image, the brilliant light sent to the world

who put the charming desire for song in my breast]

The second line evokes the Gospel of St. John ( ,

, John 1:9), but in the Vision of

Dorotheus the light is not the standard Koine but the archaic Aeolic form,

. Moreover, this poem uniquely combines two epic words ( ) to

render St. Johns . The pure God ( ) has dispatched

Christ from heavenChrist the image of God, a divine light to the world for me

(the narrator), a sinner. Again, with the phrase a Christian idea is

rephrased in the language of epic. St. Paul describes Christ as the image of God,

(2 Corinthians 4:4). In the Vision of Dorotheus, Christ is an

36

, an image of him [God], which looks archaic and proper to epic

because of the old form of the pronoun () and the form of the archaic genitive

ending (-). The word as a term for image, however, is not common to

classical epic but rather to later prose.56

Much of the seemingly archaic diction in this poem is actually based on

Hellenistic models, such as Apollonius of Rhodes or even Quintus of Smyrna. The

poem is full of such combinations of genuinely archaic epic forms alongside newer

formulations (such as the seemingly epic adverb , which is found in late epic

writers such as Apollonius of Rhodes, but not in Homer). Even though the poet does

not hesitate to incorporate Roman military terms, the actual words of the New

Testament are virtually absent: here the poet seems determined to depict God in the

language of epic. The Vision of Dorotheus is hard to classify: on the one hand, it is

highly imitative and archaizing; on the other hand, it is very contemporary and

innovative.

When the poet of the Vision of Dorotheus describes in the first line how God

sent Christ to him, a sinner ( [ ]

), is the word used rather than the term more common to Christian

literature, , simply because one is found in Homer and the other appears

later? No Christian author before Gregory of Nazianzus uses ,57 but it

56 is not used in reference to Christ. It is used on occasion to refer to the divine image in

man. See PGL.

57 The adjective is used by some patristic authors: see examples in the PGL.

37

occurs frequently in Gregorys poetry.58 In his poem Peri Tou Patros (the first of the

Poemata Arcana) he writes , (l.9). This phrase is itself an

allusion to Callimachus Hymn to Apollo, (In Apollinem

l.2).59 After Gregory , a word uncommon in the New Testament and early

Christian literature, then becomes a word loaded with significance among the

Christian poets paraphrasing the Bible in epic verse. It is almost a catchword marking

their work as part of the tradition of Greek Christian poets. The first line of the

Metaphrasis Psaltorum (attributed to Apollinarus), though it looks rather unlike the

Septuagint translation ( , )

highlights how the word becomes part of the tradition of Biblical epics: ,

.60 In turn, Nonnus uses it in his

Paraphrase of St. John a number of times, as in the following example:

58 A search on the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae produces some 49 citations from Gregory of

Nazianzuss poetry.

59 Gregory of Nazianzus, Poemata arcana, ed. Claudio Moreschini and D. A. Sykes (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1997), 81. The phrase occurs again in Poemata Arcana 3.52, where the words are

in the same metrical position as in Callimachus (Commentary, 131).

60 Psalm 1.1 Apollinaris of Laodicea, Apolinarii Metaphrasis Psalmorum, ed. Arthur Ludwich (Leipzig:

Teubner, 1912). Though attributed to the fourth century father and son duo, the Apolinarii, who

famously attempted to render the whole of the Bible into Classical forms during the reign of Julian,

this paraphrase is likely a fifth century work. See Golega, Der homerische Psalter.

38

. 61 As this Homeric word enters the lexicon of the Greek poets, does it

remain simply an allusion to its classical past? The Vision of Dorotheus gives an

early instance, alongside Gregory of Nazianzus, of how the word transforms.62 This

line in the Vision of Dorotheus is not an isolated instance: it appears a number of

times in various forms both in the Vision of Dorotheus and in the other poems of the

codex.63 no longer means jerk (the closest equivalent to its sense in

Homer); now it takes on the significance of sinner with all the implications of

Christian theology. When the poet of the Vision of Dorotheus writes of God

sending Christ to him, a sinner, the tenor of has undergone a change.

In tracing the transformation of this one word, one must ask: is the poet

alluding to any poetic ancestors (Gregory of Nazianzusmore like a contemporary,

Callimachus, or even Homer) or is the poet a passive receptacle of previous poetry?

Or put another way, are these instances accidental parallels coming from a poet

steeped in the school curriculum, or does the poet manipulate the material in order to

draw attention to how these references are refashioned? Take for instance the

61 9.83. Nonnus, Paraphrasis S. Evangelii Ioannei, ed. Augustin Scheindler (1881). A team of Italian

scholars is preparing new editions of Nonnuss paraphrase, many of which have already appeared,

though not for the section in question.

62 A similar point is made by Hurst, Reverdin, and Rudhardt, Papyrus Bodmer 29: Vision de Dorothos,

38. The editors do not, however, take into account how other Christian poets make use of this word.

63 Vision of Dorotheus ll. 1, 96; Le Seigneur ceux qui sofffrent 10; Eloge] du Seigneu Jsus 6;

Adresse aux Justes 98. For the other poems from the codex, see Hurst and Rudhardt, Codex des

Visions: Pomes Divers.

39

flagellation of Dorotheus. The poet describes Christs anger as Dorotheus is put into

prison. While Christ sits in a court like a Roman emperor, he acts with rage, more in

line with the heroes in Homer. Not one but two interwoven Homeric similes illustrate

Christs rage:

] []

] ,

[He stood there like a lion straining its wrath, with his jaws

whetting his white fangshe then ordered that I be thrown in]

(ll. 140-141)

Kessels and van der Horst observe in their commentary that the first simile, of

the lions jaws, recalls Od. 16.175, when Athena transforms Odysseus from his

beggarly appearance and sets straight his jaw ( ). The

following image, of the lion grinding his teeth, comes from a depiction in the Iliad of a

boar whetting his tusks in anticipation of an attack (

, whetting his white fangs with his bent jaws Il. 11.416).

Kessels and van der Horst suggest that the poet has degenerated the line from the

Odyssey and mingled it with the description of the boar from the Iliad; at another point

they call this method the thoughtless reception of a Homeric passage.64 But is there

another way to approach this? It seems unlikely that this melding of images results

from thoughtless reception and that these parallels emerge without intention.

64 Van Der Horst and Kessels, "The Vision of Dorotheus (Pap. Bodmer 29)," 352 n. 140, 358 n, 295.

40

Specifying when allusion occurs and what the poet intends by an allusion always rests

on shaky ground; however, it is clear that the poet is not passively rehashing these

lines from Homer. The poets use of these lines does more than show that Homer was

a source and a repository for filling out the verse. Homers words are building blocks

for the poet to craft a new scene.

It may appear that the poem is solely concerned with things like flagellations

and that the language of the poem relies strictly on epic, but the poem also has

moments that sound liturgical. Two passages stand out, and these demonstrate how

the poetry of the past is being transformed for new ends. Likewise, these passages

suggest that the chasm between Christian liturgical poetry and classicizing poetry may

not have been as deep as once thought. First, as Dorotheus first describes the imperial

palace and his impression of the Lord, he slides into praise:

[

. [

[].

[]

.

[(I saw) the immortal, wholly unbegotten and self-originate Lord

in the palace; the one whom no thing can behold. Nothing on the earth,

nor the moon, nor the sun, nor the stars,

neither night nor cloud approach where dwells

41

the one who sees all, the everlasting Lord who sees in every direction]

ll. 11-15

The first thing to notice is the use of anaphora, a common characteristic in Greek

hymnody of all varieties. As the poet puts the inexpressible into words, unusual terms

must be fashioned: the adjective is only found in this poem. Along

with , these terms highlight the uncreated and self-originate status of the

Lord. MacCoull claims that these terms are Gnostic and that is

synonymous with the word , a word that appears in the Nag Hammadi

text Eugnostos. This word, however, is also found in the works of Gregory of

Nazianzus when he discusses the un-begotten Father (De Filio, oration 29, section

12).65 The poet here seems to be describing God the Father, for in line 19 Christ and

the Father are both mentioned. The idea of the God who sees all things and whom no

one can approach is common in both Platonic and Christian thought.

Later as Dorotheus asks Christs mercy after his transgression (ll. 102-04), he

again invokes the idea of the Lord who sees all ([], l.14):

65 L. S. B. Maccoull, "A Note on Panatiktos in Visio Dorothei 11," Ibid.43 (1989): 293-95. Bremmer

likewise challenges MacCoulls claims and shows how this language may be found in Stoic texts as

well; see Bremmer, The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife: The 1995 Read-Tuckwell Lectures at the

University of Bristol, 131. The word also appears in Ignatius, Letter to the Ephesians. 7.2, for which

see John Behr, The Way to Nicaea (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2001),

90.

42

[] .

[Have mercy one me, thou who art everywhere and hearest all,

who taketh hold of the conspicuous earth and the wide sky,

neither night nor cloud is able to see God himself by any means.

(ll. 102-04).

The repetition of , followed by two different verbs but with the same ending,

gives the passage a hymn-like quality. The initial phrase ( ) could come

from Callimachus or Gregory of Nazianzus66, who both use this construction with

frequency. As in the previous example, Dorotheus entreats the Lord with a description

of the inaccessible dwelling place of the Divine, again using the phrase neither night

nor cloud. Moreover, no one is able to see God himself. This phrase has a parallel

in one of Gregory of Nazianzuss poems:

.67 Both poets use and in the same metrical position.

While this in itself is not remarkable, the number of parallels with Gregorys poetry

continues to increase and suggests that these are more than parallels.

66 See Fragment 638 in Callimachus, "Fragmenta incertae sedis," in Works, volume 1, ed. Rudolf

Pfeiffer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949). Also l. 138 in Callimachus, "In Cerem," in Works, volume

2, ed. Rudolf Pfeiffer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953).. See Gregory of Nazianzus, PG 37.765.1.

In addition, see Synesius, Sinesio di Cirene. Inni., ed. Antonio Dell'era (Roma: Tumminelli, 1968).

Hymn 1 line 114 ff.

67 PG 37.1532

43

The emergence of Greek Christian liturgical poetry is a complex process, and

both the poet of the Vision of Dorotheus and Gregory of Nazianzus display elements

of liturgical poetry. Take for instance the way that Dorotheus describes God as being

everywhere present and hearing all things ( ).

This line may allude to a line from the Odyssey. When Odysseus is praising the bard

Demodocus, he says that the singer was present and heard it all (

8. 491). This Homeric passage, certainly not a hymn,

contains the same two verbs but lacks the anaphoric construction. Whereas in Homer

this line refers to a bard, in the Vision of Dorotheus it refers to the Lord. In the

comic poet Philemon (4th or 3rd century BC) similar phrasing occurs that plays with

this repetition: ,/

/ .68 In a moment of

surprising cultural interchange, Christian authors adapt what Philemon says about

to depict God. In the Acta Ioannis we find a rhetorical flourish on this phrase (

).69 This same language appears

again in a sermon of Gregory Thaumaturgos:

, , []

68 T. Kock, Comicorum Atticorum fragmenta, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1884). Fragment 91 l. 10.

69 Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha ed. Richard A. Lipsius, Max Bonnet, and Heinz Kraft (Hildesheim:

Olms 1959 (repr)), 108.8.

44

;70 Eventually this works its way into the prayer to the Holy Spirit that

begins many services in the Byzantine office: , ,

, 71 The poet

of the Vision of Dorotheus can be seen as part of the process by which liturgical

prayers are fashioned out of the long tradition of Greek literature. From Homer to

comedy to sermons, elements are melded together to form something new.

Dorotheus prayer ( ) resonates with this

popular prayer of the Byzantine officea prayer so popular that even Satan knows it,

according to a kontakion of St. Romanos. O thou who art everywhere present and

fillest all things ( ) cries out Satan to his

companions when he beholds the crucifixion.72

DOROTHEUS THE POET AND HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Central to the poem is the conceit that Dorotheus is recounting a vision. Line

300 ( ) raises the question of Dorotheuss

identity. Some have assumed that the poet was a member of the religious community

70 Gregory Thaumaturgos, Sermo in omnes sanctos, ed. J.-P. Migne, vol. 10, Patrologiae Cursus

Completus, series Graeca (PG) (Paris: 1857-66), 1201.38.

71 One of the opening prayers at many of the liturgical offices. See for instance the beginning of

Akolouthia Mesonyktikou in the Hrologion to mega, (Athens: Phs, 2005).

72 Romanus, Cantica, kontakion 21.

45

that assembled this library of papyri texts,73 but such a view is based on speculation

and the assumption that the poet must be the narrator and that the papyri came from a

monastery. At the end of the poem, the subscription states /

. This line can be read in various ways: most have

taken it to mean the end of the vision of Dorotheus, son of Quintus the Poet. Livrea

argues that it could also read end of the vision of Dorotheus Quintus, the Poet.74

Another reading would be the end of the vision of Dorotheus, by Quintus the poet.

Each reading seems equally plausible. There is a danger, however, if we read

Dorotheus the son of Quintus and assume that this signifies a filial relation. Often

son simply means student or disciple in both literary and religious contexts.75

Neither Dorotheus nor Quintus are uncommon names, so there is little to go on.

The poet has laid a successful trap and caused readers to assume that the I of

the poem signifies that the narration is a unambiguous autobiography.76 Previous

readings have proceeded from the assumption that what the poet describes must reflect

73 Dorotheus is mentioned in other poems in the codex, but it remains unclear whether this Dorotheus is

someone actually known by the authors of the other poems. See Hurst and Rudhardt, Codex des

Visions: Pomes Divers, 13ff.

74 Enrico Livrea, "Vision de Dorothos," Gnomon 58 (1986): 688.

75 St. Paul addresses Timothy as his son (1 Cor 1.2) and Libanius refers to his pupils as sons. See

Cribiore, The School of Libanius in Late Antique Antioch, 58.

76 On the difficulties of autobiography and rhetorical constructions of the self in Greek literature, see

Tim Whitmarsh, The Second Sophistic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 79ff.

46

the actual experience of the poet.77 As a vision narrative, the Vision of Dorotheus

presents a fictional I with the conceit that this I is the actual person who

experienced the vision. Martha Himmelfarb, who discusses the abundant Jewish and

Christian vision narratives, writes the following concerning the I of these accounts:

I argue that the apocalypses are best understood not as literary adaptations of

personal experiences but as imaginative literature. 78 Her conclusions about the

literary aspects of these narratives certainly apply to the Vision of Dorotheus.

Lessons learned from medieval literature, which is full of vision narratives, pertain to

late antique literature as well: just as Dante the poet is distinct from Dante the pilgrim,

so too is the narrator of the Vision of Dorotheus distinct from the poet.79 The

77 Livrea claims without hesitation: Il protagonista-narratore, che senza dubbio da identificare con

lautore. . . Livrea, "Vision de Dorothos," 687. Bremmer, though less assertively, asks Did the

poet describe a personal experience? Jan N. Bremmer, "The Vision of Dorotheus," in Early

Christian Poetry. A Collection of Essays, ed. J. Den Boeft and A. Hilhorst (Leiden: Brill, 1993),

261. Gelzer is the only one to see the I of the poem as an example of ethopoiia and cautions

against correlating the I of the poem with the author. Thomas Gelzer, "Zur Visio Dorothei: Pap.

Bodmer 29," Museum Helveticum 45 (1988): 250. See his more developed discussion of the author

in Thomas Gelzer, "Zur Frage des Verfassers der Visio Dorothei," in Le Codex des Visions, ed.

Andr Hurst and Jean Rudhardt (Genve: Librairie Droz, 2002).

78 Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses.

79 Many of the strongest figures in the tradition of medieval criticism have maintained, for a number of

different reasons, that the literary I is not the sign of an actual being but, rather, a specifically

poetic figure. Daniel Heller-Roazen, Fortune's Faces: the Roman de la Rose and the Poetics of

Contingency (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 30.

47

Vision of Dorotheus is more properly read as a rhetorical exercise that imagines

what a Roman soldier, a certain Dorotheus who sleeps on the job but whose mind is

full of Homeric verse, might say after an ascent to heaven.

If identifying Dorotheus with one of the many known people (and specifically

poets) proves to be a dead end, then other avenues for dating the poem must be

explored. Often Gregory of Nazianzus is considered the fount and source of the Greek

Christian poetic tradition.80 Gregory himself tells us that he is not the only one

composing verse; in fact, he depicts a world overrun with poets: Seeing many people

in this present age writing / words without measure which flow forth easily.81 Most

of Gregorys poetry comes from late in his life (380s), which raises an interesting

possibility: did Gregory know the Vision of Dorotheus, thus giving a better sense of

the date of the poem? Or does the poet of the Vision of Dorotheus know Gregorys

poetry, which would suggest that the poem is from the close of the 4th century at the

earliest? Certainly they are both part of the same tradition, as is evident from the

many parallels brought to light in this chapter.

The following moment of intertextuality suggests that the poet of the Vision

of Dorotheus may indeed have known Gregorys poetry. As the flagellation of

Dorotheus continues, Christ commands that Dorotheus be thrown into prison and

80 Jan Sajdak, De Gregorio Nazianzeno, poetarum christianorum fonte (Cracoviae: 1917). Gregory is

seen as source for both the Metraphrasis Psaltorum and the Paraphrase of St. John.

81 To his own verses, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nazianzus: Autobiographical Poems, trans.

Carolinne White (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 3.

48

whipped: (l. 131). He then

explains why in the next line: Dorotheus abandoned the gate, trusting in his own

wickedness ( [] l.132). As the editors

of the editio princeps note, these two lines have a parallel in Quintus Smyrnaeus:

(Posthomerica 6.265);

(Posthomerica 10.317). Quintus, in the line

from book 6, is evoking a passage in Od. 4:

(Od. 4.244). Since the poet of the Vision of Dorotheus has the words in

the same metrical position, it would appear that he is using Quintus, but he may also

have the Odyssey in mind. What the editors have not noticed, however, is that

Gregory Nazianzus reworks the same Homeric passage, on two different occasions

and in two different ways.82 In the first instance, he quotes the line almost exactly:

, / ,

/ , (and may you free me from the loose

and burdensome clay of Egypt, overcoming my enemies with injurious blows, while

providing me with an easy road).83 Here the allusion functions in such a manner that

it seems to signal to the reader, Im quoting from Homer! In another poem (PG

37.1366.14) Gregory talks about God punishing him to draw him closer to God. He

writes: (even when he

82 Both were pointed out, but without further discussion, in Enrico Livrea, "Ancora sulla 'Visione' di

Dorotea," Eikasmos 1 (1990): 186.

83 PG 37.1281.6.

49

overcomes me in my wickedness with blows). Here the allusion is more veiled. Two

words remain in the same metrical position ( and ), though the

latter appears in a different morphological form. The similarities between these lines

from Gregory and the lines from the Vision of Dorotheus are striking. Both poets

end the line with a form of the verb and use the same dative to express the

means by which they were overcome.

Many echoes of Gregorys poetry are found in the Vision of Dorotheus

beyond this one (see for instance the liturgical passages discussed above).

Furthermore, Gregorys two different re-workings of this Homeric passage suggest

that he was melding the Homeric language and that the poet of the Vision of

Dorotheus was following in his footsteps. Other Christian poets follow in Gregorys

powerful wake. Nonnus, in his paraphrase of the Gospel of John, seems to have

Gregory in mind when he writes: , ;

(18.111). The poet of the Vision of Dorotheus may be the first of the followers of

Gregory; if the codex does in fact come from Panopolis, then the poet may be the first

flowering of the great school of poets that emerged from Panopolis in the fifth century.

PASTICHE OR PARODY?

These examples show that the poet of the Vision of Dorotheus melds,

refashions, and has creative control over the inherited tradition; the poet does not

merely receive the tradition passively. Is there also an element of playfulness going

on in the reworking of previous texts? Is the poet, in fact, creating a parody by yoking

epic verse with its heroic ideals to a vision narrative of heaven? Often parody evokes

50

the idea of burlesque or satiric pastiche, but there are many degrees and many types of

parody.84 Mikhail Bakhtin recognized the importance of parody in the literature of the

Middle Ages, and his observations hold true for the literature of Late Antiquity as

well. Indeed Bakhtin saw that a central component of parody was the quoted words of

others; the stylistic problem of deciphering the direct, half-hidden and completely

hidden quotations leads to further questions about whether these quotations should be

taken seriously or not. As Bakhtin asks, is the author quoting with reverence or on

the contrary with irony, with a smirk?85 The same could be said for the Vision of

Dorotheus. Is the poet quoting Homer with reverence? Or does the poet aim for

different ends? Likewise, as Grard Genette has shown in Palimpsests, an

investigation of transtextuality (an overarching category that includes within it

intertextuality), rewriting and imitation frequently tend towards parody. And this is

particularly the case with epic poetry:

In truth the epic style, by its formulaic stereotypicality, isnt simply a

designated target for jocular imitation and parodic reversal; it is

constantly liable, indeed exposed, to involuntary self-parody and

pastiche the comic is only the tragic seen from behind.86 84 See Margaret A. Rose, Parody: Ancient, Modern, and Post-modern (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1993).

85 M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson

and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 68-69.

86 Grard Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, trans. Channa Newman and Claude

Doubinsky (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 15.

51

Whereas one expects the reworking of an older text or the imitation of a particular

style to contain an element of playfulness and a certain degree of parody when reading

Geoffrey Chaucer or Alexander Pope, no one has raised this possibility for the Vision

of Dorotheus.

We should recall just how strange it is to have a Christian vision narrative in

Homeric verse. Classicizing Christian poetry was becoming increasingly common in

the fourth and fifth centuries. Even so, among these classicizing Christian poets, none

wrote vision narratives of a trip to heaven. In Hellenistic Judaism and early

Christianity, vision narratives abound. But none of these invoke the high-style of epic

verse. Visions are also an essential aspect of apocalyptic writing, as in the Revelation

of St. John as well as other apocryphal apocalyptic accounts.87 The Shepherd of

Hermas, which begins with a series of visions,88 is even part of the same codex as the

Vision of Dorotheus. The two, however, could not be more different in style or

content.89 The visions in the Shepherd are narrated in a simpler koine, in prose not

87 See for instance Visio Pauli. This as well as other revelation accounts are collected in J. K. Elliot,

ed., The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).

88 The first part of the Shepherd of Hermas is a series of visions. Bart D. Ehrman, The Apostolic

Fathers, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). In fact the

portion of the Shepherd of Hermas in the Codex of Visions consists only of visions. See Hermas, Il

Pastore (Ia-IIIa visione), ed. Antonio Carlini, Papyrus Bodmer 38 (Cologny-Genve: Fondation

Martin Bodmer, 1991).

89 Livrea argues that the Shepherd of Hermas is Gnostic and lends support to the idea that the Vision is

also Gnostic: Livrea, "Ancora sulla 'Visione' di Dorotea," 186. Yet this points to the difficulty of

52

verse, and without allusions to Homer. Himmelfarbs work shows how the Vision of

Dorotheus shares many structural similarities with other vision narratives: the

narrator is taken up to heaven, made part of the angelic ranks, taken to the inner

courts, and re-clothed in special garments.90 Yet aside from the structural similarities,

the Vision of Dorotheus departs from what one would expect from ascent narratives:

this heaven is very Roman, and the narrator speaks like someone who has been

studying Homer and other epic poets. Granted, Hesiod recounts how the Muses visit

him in the beginning of the Theogony, but a vision of heavenin which the narrator is

taken up to heaven and meets Christ and the archangel Gabrielis quite another

matter.

Of the ascent narratives discussed by Himmelfarb, the Vision of Dorotheus

seems most like the apocryphal 2nd Enoch. This, however, creates more problems than

it solves since the text of 2nd Enoch only survives in a fourteenth-century Old Church

Slavonic translation.91 The similarities are at times striking: heaven in 2nd Enoch

contains fallen angels who are punished, armed ranks of angels, and giant angels, of

which Enoch becomes part (I looked at myself, and I was like one of the glorious

the term gnosticism, since the Shepherd was included as canonical by some Church Fathers and

was probably the most read Christian work outside of the New Testament canon. For more on this,

see Ehrmans introduction in Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, 162.

90 Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses, 4, 36-40.

91 Ibid., 38.

53

ones, and there was no apparent difference).92 The comparison with 2nd Enoch

suggests how we should read this poem. The Vision of Dorotheus takes a

recognized genre, that of vision narratives, and tells it in the style of another genre, the

heroic epicand this mixing of style with subject matter is one of the central

components of parody.93

The first two lines of the Vision of Dorotheus, in which Christ is sent from

heaven as a bright light, give the reader the expectation that what follows will describe

how Christ came into the world to save sinners or redeem those who are lost. Instead,

Christ is a Muse sent from heaven to put the desire for song in the heart of Dorotheus

( [ ] l. 3). Later in the poem, Gabriel

puts a charming song into Dorotheuss heart ( [] /

ll173-74). Remarkably, such language can be found in the epic

tradition, but in instances when a god casts strength (Il. 5. 513) or even erotic desire

into ones heart. In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, Aphrodite puts desire into the

92 2nd Enoch 9:19 H. F. D. Sparks, The Apocryphal Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).

Compare Dorotheus transformation: The long men, high as heaven, looked at me in astonishment

seeing the wondrou

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