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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 December 2024
This article asks what Paul’s claims about cosmology signify in terms of his competitive position on the nature and purpose of the moon. Specifically, in an age in which discourses and demonstrations involving the moon were rife, I argue that Paul is invoking principals shared by writers like Plutarch on the “double death” of the human being (first as soma on the earth, then as psyche/nous in orbit around and on the moon) and that he envisions an afterlife among the stars in pneumatic form that, to the degree it is anthropomorphic, is ideally male. I also posit that this aspect of Paul’s thought has been overlooked, in part due to the idiosyncratic-yet-pervasive translation of doxa in Paul as “glory” rather than in terms related to typologies and judgment, as it is elsewhere in Greek philosophical literature.
Thank you to my anonymous reviewers, the members of the University of Miami’s Antiquities Interdisciplinary Research Group, the participants in The Nadine Beacham and Charlton F. Hall Sr. Visiting Lectureship at the University of South Carolina, the faculty in religion and classics at the University of Southern California, as well as Jaswinder Bolina, Nancy Evans, Stephen Hebert, and Stanley Stowers for their advice and guidance in writing this piece. I am responsible for any errors.
1 I am borrowing the Loeb Classical Library translation for “vulture-calvary” in this instance. I also adopt the term “Puppycorn” below (n. 3); Lucian, Works (trans. A. M. Harmon; vol. 1; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1913). Otherwise, all translations are my own, unless noted.
2 For more on the Endymion and Selene myth, see Karen ní Mheallaigh, “Selene and Endymion: Desire and the Female Gaze,” in eadem, The Moon in the Greek and Roman Imagination: Myth, Literature, Science and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020, hereafter, Moon) 21–26. On Endymion and Selene and the afterlife, Paul Zanker and Björn C. Ewald’s Living with Myths: The Imagery of Roman Sarcophagi (trans. Julia Slater; New York: Oxford University Press, 2012) offers multiple examples of the pair featured on sarcophagi, with Selene descending down to a naked, sleeping Endymion; 96–103, 158–62, 203–7, 240–44, 334–44.
3 Κύων (“dog”) and βάλανος (“acorns”).
4 Presumably indicating the gastrocnemius muscle of the leg.
5 Karen ní Mheallaigh, Reading Fiction with Lucian: Fakes, Freaks and Hyperreality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) preface.
6 Kathy L. Gaca, The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics, and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017) 6.
7 οὐρανός does not only possess a general or amorphous sense of “heaven” but the far reaches of the concave ceiling of visible stars. Ocellus, for instance, divides the cosmos into three parts, including the “heavens” (οὐρανῷ) as the upper regions encompassing the moon, sun, and stars as distinct from both the earth and the “mid-air” region between the earth and moon (On the Nature of the Universe, 9–10); also cited in Ní Mheallaigh, Moon, 104 and discussed below.
8 I use the term “Middle Platonism” in a broad sense, encompassing a period of development from about 100 BCE through the 3rd cent. CE, while acknowledging that this is not a category from antiquity; for more on this terminology, consider John Dillon, The Middle Platonists 80 B.C. to A.D. 220 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), and From Stoicism to Platonism: The Development of Philosophy, 100 BCE–100 CE (ed. Troels Engberg-Pedersen; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
9 Cf. Phil 3:19–21 and 2 Cor 4:1–5:10; I will discuss the use of the terms δόξα and οὐρανοῖς in each of these passages in what follows. Colossians 2:16 also makes mention of a “new moon” (νεομηνίας).
10 For more on the concept of “wonder culture,” consider Ní Mheallaigh, Reading Fiction with Lucian, passim, and Joseph A. Howley, Aulus Gellius and Roman Reading Culture: Text, Presence and Imperial Knowledge in the ‘Noctes Atticae’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) preface.
11 For Augustine on “double death” (duplae morti), see Trin. 4.3.
12 Philo variously describes these wise men as wise scholars or associates (σοφίας ὁμιλητάς), practitioners of wisdom (ἀσκηταὶ σοφίας), or “righteous” or “blameless” men (ἀνεπίληπτον. . . ἀνθρώπων). I have taken some liberties with “outer space” above for the sake of simplicity; a more literal translation is “aether,” which I will discuss. On the concept of “soul death” in Paul, see Emma Wasserman, particularly her The Death of the Soul in Romans 7: Sin, Death, and the Law in Light of Hellenistic Moral Psychology (WUNT 2.256; Tübingen: Mohr Seibeck, 2008). NB: Tertullian also refers to Stoic sublunar “wise souls” (animae sapientes) with the derogatory term “Endymiones”: “But shall our sleep be in the aether with Plato’s boys, or in the air with Arius, or in the environs of the moon with the Endymiones of the Stoics?” (sed in aethere dormitio nostra cum puerariis Platonis aut in aere cum Ario aut circa lunam cum Endymionibus Stoicorum?; De anima 55); also cited in Ní Mheallaigh, Moon, 109.
13 Stanley K. Stowers, “Paul and the Terrain of Philosophy,” Early Christianity 6 (2015) 141–56, cit. 149.
14 On the concept of “participation in Christ”: Stanley K. Stowers, “Matter and Spirit, or What is Pauline Participation in Christ?,” in The Holy Spirit: Classic and Contemporary Readings (ed. Eugene Rogers; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) 91–105.
15 A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, vol. 1, Translations of the Principal Sources with Philosophical Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) 278.
16 Bart Howard, “Fly Me to the Moon” (1954), perhaps best remembered for Frank Sinatra’s cover in 1964’s It Might as Well Be Swing with Count Basie, released with Reprise records.
17 Also useful is Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science: During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era (vol. 1; New York: Columbia University Press, 1923).
18 Ibid., 25–26. For an excellent overview on philosophical opinion on the nature of the stars as it relates to immortality: M. David Litwa, “Divine Corporeality and the Pneumatic Body,” in We Are Being Transformed: Deification in Paul’s Soteriology (Boston: de Gruyter, 2012) 119–51.
19 Thorndike, A History of Magic, 25–26.
20 Pliny the Elder laments about astrology: “there is no one who is not eager to learn the future about himself and who does not think that this is mostly truly revealed by the sky”; cited from Thorndike, A History of Magic, 60.
21 Here I am interfacing with Ní Mheallaigh’s argument about the moon relative to the actions of Alexander of Abonouteichos, to be discussed: “Alexander proves himself to be a creative innovator of the ordinary bag of tricks. He also places the Moon centre-stage in a complex drama of religious belief and scepticism. . . between the gullible ‘idiots’ who belong ‘over there’ in far-flung cultural wastelands like. . . Pontus, and the sophisticated readers who are identified with the normative centre, the city of Rome” (Moon, 45). NB: she ultimately nuances this claim, stating that to reduce reception to a binary of urban sophisticates and suburban boors is an oversimplification.
22 There is a fair degree of overlap between theories of the moon as mirror and as eye in Greek literature and philosophy. This is due, in no small part, to its light and reflectivity and, thus, visibility. Parmenides, for instance, supported a theory of heliophotism, suggesting that the moon is “ever-gazing at the rays of the sun” (DK28 B15 [G33; LM D 28]), while also calling the moon “round-eyed” (κύκλωπος, DK28 B10 [G24; LM D 12]); for more examples and a detailed discussion of ancient theories on sight and reflectivity, including the moon as a dilating and contracting pupil, see Ní Mheallaigh, Moon, 68–82.
23 Xenophanes and Heraclitus are representative examples in this case; Heraclitus suggests that the moon is a colossal concave bowl (σκάφαι) brimming with fire and aimed at the earth. Cf. Ní Mheallaigh, Moon, 58.
24 Ní Mheallaigh, Moon, 28–29. This uterine imagery also pertains to Plutarch’s theory (relevant to Paul) that the moon is a receptacle for souls and, therefore, has the potential to be penetrated with seed and/or ensouled and/or bring forth new life.
25 Herclides fr. 98a–99; Ní Mheallaigh, Moon, 107 n. 209.
26 Cited from Augustine, Civ. 7.6 (fr. 226); Ní Mheallaigh, Moon, 108.
27 Macrobius, In somn. I 11, 1–12, esp. 5–6; Ní Mheallaigh, Moon, 105, 107. cf. n. 7. Philo also describes this region as specifically “dusky” (σελήνην ἀέρι ζοφερῷ, Abr. 205–206), which may intend to invoke a sense of “gloomy” (ζοφος).
28 For example, Sappho fr. 96.
29 Cicero, Rep. 6.16; Ní Mheallaigh, Moon, 107; Litwa, “Divine Corporeality and the Pneumatic Body,” 139. There is a rich body of literature on what one might term journeys to heaven or space, including texts like the Testament of Abraham. For more on this genre, one useful source is Catherine Hezser, “Ancient ‘Science Fiction’: Journeys into Space and Visions of the World in Jewish, Christian, and Greco-Roman Literature of Antiquity,” in Christian Origins and Hellenistic Judaism: Social and Literary Contexts for the New Testament (ed. Stanley E. Porter et al.; Leiden: Brill, 2013) 397–438.
30 Pliny, Nat. 18.340–56.
31 “[Pliny] is openly incredulous about the gem glossopetra, shaped like a human tongue and supposed to fall from the sky during an eclipse of the moon and to be invaluable in selenomancy”; Thorndike, A History of Magic, 98; Nat. 37, 59.
32 Hippolytus, Haer. 4.37–38.
33 Concerning lunar-inspired amulets, of note are lunulae. Typically associated with young women, there are multiple styles of lunulae that have been found as grave goods and in funerary portraits throughout the Mediterranean. This raises the question of whether the crescent was always, as scholars tend to conclude, apotropaic or associated with fertility and menstruation—perhaps they are related in some measure to the afterlife. Supporting the idea that this kind of cosmic-themed jewelry was à la mode in the 1st cent.—and among the imperial family in particular—Domitia wears a lunula as she processes with the Augustan family on the Ara Pacis (my gratitude to John Bodel for bringing this to my attention). Beyond the elite, however, there is evidence that Flavian soldiers wore similar pendants on their belts and/or placed them on the bridles of their horses. There was also a general imperial-era penchant for placing crescents on pets like dogs and cats. For more on the lunulae, some useful bibliography includes H. Wrede, “Lunulae in Halsschmuch,” Wandlungen. Studien zur antiken und neueren Kunst, Ernst Homann-Wedeking gewidmet (Waldassen: Stiftland-Verlag, 1975) 243–54, and Christopher A. Faraone, The Transformation of Greek Amulets in Roman Imperial Times (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018).
34 Such associations with lineages may have additional significance for early Christianity insofar as Paul also argues for ties between pneuma and kinship.
35 Lucian: Alexander or the False Prophet (trans. Peter Thonemann; New York: Oxford University Press, 2021) 34.
36 Iamblichus, for example, suggests that Pythagoras was from the moon (Vit. Pyth. 6.30); in the same passage cited above, Plutarch cites the Dioscuri.
37 For a thorough discussion of Lucian’s approach and tone in Alexander, I recommend Thonemann, Alexander, 1–36.
38 Lucian, Alex. 26–40, esp. 35. John Kloppenborg’s Christ Associations: Connecting and Belonging in the Ancient City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019) presents a great deal of data on the senatorial sponsorship of both formal cultic associations and more entrepreneurial religious actors in the imperial period. On the question of conspicuous patronage among the curial classes, see his section “The Attraction of the Elite to Christ Assemblies,” 332–39.
39 Lucian, Alex. 8–17; Ní Mheallaigh, Moon, 44–46.
40 Kloppenborg locates little evidence that Christ associations enjoyed sponsorship from the senatorial or equestrian strata until the late 2nd cent.; Kloppenborg, Christ Associations, 327. Also consider Thonemann’s analysis of “the widespread ‘renaissance’ of oracles in the Greek world under Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines” in Alexander, 30.
41 “Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)” by Lennon/Ono and the Plastic Ono Band released in February 1970 as a single under the Apple Record label.
42 Some representative examples include Abraham J. Malherbe, “ ‘Gentle as a Nurse’: The Lyric Background to I Thessalonians ii,” Novum Testamentum 12 (1970): 203–17; Abraham J. Malherbe, Paul and the Popular Philosophers (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989); Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics (Edinburgh: Westminster John Knox, 2000); Wasserman, The Death of the Soul in Romans 7; Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Cosmology of the Self in the Apostle Paul: The Material Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Stanley K. Stowers, “Jesus as Teacher and Stoic Ethics in the Gospel of Matthew,” in Stoicism in Early Christianity (ed. Tuomus Rasimus et al.; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2010); Stowers, “Paul and the Terrain of Philosophy”; Jennifer Eyl, Signs, Wonders, and Gifts: Divination in the Letters of Paul (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).
43 Stowers, “Paul and the Terrain of Philosophy,” 156.
44 On the concept of “realist ontology,” consult Stanley Stowers, “What is Pauline Participation in Christ?,” in Redefining First-Century Jewish and Christian Identities (ed. Fabian E. Udon et al.; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008).
45 A portion of this passage is also referenced in Litwa, “Divine Corporeality and the Pneumatic Body,” 139. Litwa additionally cites Josephus, who claims that the soul, once released from the body, settles “among the stars” (ἄστροις ἐγαθιδρύει); J.W. 6.47.
46 I have borrowed the translation “heavenly country” from the LCL 141:54–55. For additional examples of the “rising soul” motif—including in Plato and Plutarch—consider Alan Segal, “Heavenly Ascent in Hellenistic Judaism, Early Christianity and their Environment,” ANRW 2: 23.2 (1980): 1333–94, esp. 1346–51.
47 ταπεινώσεως has the sense of “lowness,” “baseness,” “submissiveness,” or “humble” in terms of stature or morality. Standard English translations of the term—for example, in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)—will often use “humiliation” (i.e., “the body of our humiliation”), which arguably reflects a later (and therefore anachronistic) theological sense of the body as inherently shameful, or mirrors gospel accounts of Christ humiliated at the crucifixion. For more, consult: Chris L. de Wet, “Modelling Msarrqūtā: Humiliation, Christian Monasticism, and the Ascetic Life of Slavery in Late Antique Syria and Mesopotamia,” in Social Control in Late Antiquity: The Violence of Small Worlds (ed. Kate Cooper et al.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020) 105–30. On sexual humiliation within late antique asceticism, see Kyle Harper, From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013).
48 Stowers makes a similar, but more elaborate, point in his “Paul and the Terrain of Philosophy” (154) which I will discuss further below. For more on the composition—and survival—of the soul in Greek and Roman philosophical thought: The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self: An Intellectual History of Personal Identity (ed. Raymond Martin et al.; New York: Columbia University Press, 2006) and Christopher Gill, The Structured Self in Hellenistic and Roman Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). NB: I transliterate soma as body to indicate its distinction in Paul’s thought from sarx, or “flesh,” which has significance for my coming discussion of 1 Cor 15:35–58.
49 Litwa, “Divine Corporeality and the Pneumatic Body,” 121. To Litwa’s catalog of literary and philosophical examples we might add the resurrected hero described in some detail, and to similar effect, in Philostratus’s Heroicus.
50 Litwa, “Divine Corporeality and the Pneumatic Body,” 137, emphasis original.
51 The Stoics, rather, saw the corporate soul as immortal but not necessarily that of the individual; Diogenes Laertius, Vit. phil. 7.156; Litwa, “Divine Corporeality and the Pneumatic Body,” 139.
52 It is possible this passage is invoking the language of the LXX translation of 2 Chron 2.
53 When Paul speaks of “putting on” a heavenly body, he may have in mind the LXX translation of Isa 61:3 in which a “generation of righteousness” is given “a garment of doxa instead of a pneuma of neglect” (καταστολὴν δόξης ἀντὶ πνεύματος ἀκηδίας).
54 I have taken some liberties with my translation of “διακονία τοῦ θανάτου ἐν γράμμασιν ἐντετυπωμένη λίθοις” for clarity; Paul’s invocation of service or “ministry” here parallels his discussion of the new covenant in the previous line.
55 Oddly, several English translations replace “hearts” with “minds” in this passage.
56 For instance, Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics; Wasserman, The Death of the Soul in Romans 7; Engberg-Pedersen, Cosmology of the Self in the Apostle Paul.
57 “οἴδαμεν γὰρ ὅτι ὁ νόμος πνευματικός ἐστιν: ἐγὼ δὲ σάρκινός εἰμι, πεπραμένος ὑπὸ τὴν ἁμαρτίαν.”
58 Litwa, “Divine Corporeality and the Pneumatic Body,” 148. Litwa’s reference to “weight of δόξα” is likely indicating the sense of gravity or weight that attends kabod (כָּבוֹד) in the LXX, from which doxa is often derived.
59 φωστῆρες has the sense of “light given off by heavenly bodies, primarily the moon and the sun”; see R. C. Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1953) 164. Parallels can also be found in Gen 1:14, 16; Qumran 1QS 10:3; 1QM 10:11; 1QH 1:11; 7:25; 9:26.
60 The NRSV simply translates this as “shine like stars in the world.” Of note, φωστῆρες appears in the LXX of Gen 1:14–18, discussed below. Elsewhere, Stowers notes “Greek, wider Mediterranean, and West Asian materials also attest to the idea that gods had very special kinds of bodies characterized by bright splendor”; Stanley Stowers, “The Dilemma of Paul’s Physics: Stoic-Platonist or Platonist-Stoic?,” in From Stoicism to Platonism (ed. Engberg-Pedersen) 234.
61 Not unrelated to this discussion is the development of the doxographical tradition within philosophy during the late Republic and imperial periods. For more on this movement, its participants, and its consequences: Gill, The Structured Self in Hellenistic and Roman Thought, 217–18.
62 Cf. Plato, Tim. 28a.
63 Jessica Moss, “Plato’s Doxa,” Analytic Philosophy 61 (2020) 193–217, cit. 193. Doxa is occasionally presented in scholarship as a diametric foil to the kind of knowledge obtained through reasoned perception, which is considered more reliable, permanent, or “true.” Plato’s well-known concept of the Forms offers a useful illustration; while the Forms are associated with Being and epistēmē or knowledge of what is intelligible, doxa, by contrast, is associated with the perceptible world or with what is Becoming. The difficulty with this descriptive comparison, however, is that it oversimplifies Plato’s so-called Two Worlds hypothesis and suggests a synthetic definition of doxa is possible when Plato also suggests that it is possible to possess doxa of Forms. For more on Plato’s usage of the term and contemporary mistranslations of doxa in modernity as “belief” or “faith,” see ibid.
64 Ibid., 195.
65 For multiple examples of “scientific knowledge” as a result of sense-perception: Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1:41–42.
66 Ibid., 41, 1:256–58.
67 On “opinion”: “a term which covers all epistemic conditions of the non-wise man”; ibid., 1:258.
68 Sextus Empiricus, Math. 8.63; Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 16, 1:81–82.
69 Plutarch, Stoic. rep. 1056E–F; Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 41E, 1:255.
70 Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 253.
71 Plutarch’s Fac. is often invoked in such scholarly discussions. In addition to Ní Mheallaigh, Moon, passim, Samuel Sambursky, Physics of the Stoics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014) 41–43.
72 As Sambursky states: “Like atomic theory, the continuum theory of the Greeks was essentially speculative, based on theoretical conceptions and developed along purely epistemological lines. Although both theories occasionally refer to experience and use examples and analogies borrowed from the sphere of daily life, there is no question of any recourse to systematic experimentation”; Sambursky, Physics of the Stoics, 44.
73 Ibid., 41.
74 Ní Mheallaigh, Moon, 91.
75 Sextus Empiricus, Math. 7.147–149; Ní Mheallaigh, Moon, 92.
76 “Man on the Moon” by R.E.M. released on Automatic for the People in October 1992 under Warner Bros. Records.
77 Jennifer Eyl, “Semantic Voids, New Testament Translation, and Anachronism: The Case of Paul’s use of Ekklēsia,” MTSR 26 (2014) 315–39.
78 Paul may be aware of the use of the term as far back as Parmenides, where “glory” hardly obtains. This is perhaps an area worthy of further comparative research, as Parmenides’s perception of doxa is arguably more holistically similar to the ways in which Paul deploys it throughout his letters in the context of perception and forms.
79 Stowers, “Dilemma,” 235–36. Elsewhere, Stowers makes a convincing case for the Corinthians letters expounding on the notion that the pneumatic bodies of those in Christ “will have qualities similar to or superior to the stars” and, likewise, that their “ordinary consciousness and cognition” will be replaced not simply with “cosmic” pneuma (πνεῦμα τοῦ κόσμου) but with “the pneuma of God so that we might understand the things given to us by God (τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ, ἵνα εἰδῶμεν τὰ ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ χαρισθέντα ἡμῖν, 1 Cor 2:12).
80 Paul does not cite a specific passage from the LXX on the creation of the cosmos but references phrasing similar to what is found in Gen 1:3; Ps 112:4; Isa 9:2; “Out of darkness, light [is] to shine” (Ἐκ σκότους φῶς λάμψει, 2 Cor 4:6).
81 One representative example is David A. Burnett, “A Neglected Deuteronomic Scriptural Matrix for the Nature of the Resurrection Body in 1 Cor 15:39–42,” in Scripture, Texts, and Tracings in 1 Corinthians (ed. Linda Belleville et al.; New York: Lexington Books, 2019).
82 For more discussion of the Stoic and Platonic elements of this language, including further bibliography: Stowers, “Dilemma,” 234–36.
83 The verse 2 Cor 4:6 ends with τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν προσώπῳ Χριστοῦ. This is often translated as “in the face of Christ,” although προσώπῳ can mean something more akin to countenance or how one perceives the image in front of them.
84 In addition to the bibliography already cited in this piece from Engberg-Pedersen, Litwa, Stowers, and others, consider John Dillon, The Platonic Heritage: Further Studies in the History of Platonism and Early Christianity (New York: Routledge, 2012).
85 Dillon, The Platonic Heritage, passim; Stowers, “Dilemma,” 241.
86 Jennifer Eyl, Signs, Wonders, and Gifts, 6.
87 Ibid., passim.
88 Ní Mheallaigh, Moon, 188.
89 David Bowie, “Starman” released as a single from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972) by RCA Records.
90 Stowers, “Paul and the Terrain of Philosophy,” 154.
91 Lucian, Verae historiae. My profound gratitude to the anonymous peer-reviewer who brought this passage to my attention, along with the translation.
92 For more on this topic, I recommend Taylor Petrey, Resurrecting Parts: Early Christians on Desire, Reproduction, and Sexual Difference (New York: Routledge, 2015).
93 Aristotle, Gen. an. 737a 25–30.
94 Gaca, The Making of Fornication, 29–30.
95 I have taken some liberties with “the Theater of All,” given the full context of this passage—i.e., contrasting those “without” flesh to those burdened by it, forced to stare at the ground instead of at the rotating stars and planets above them.