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‘Without Lies or Deception’: Oracular Claims to Truth in the Epistle to Titus*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 May 2017

J. Albert Harrill
J. Albert Harrill*
Affiliation:
Department of History, The Ohio State University, 106 Dulles Hall, 230 Annie and John Glenn Ave., Columbus, OH 43210, USA. Email: harrill.5@osu.edu
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Abstract

The claim to communicate the divine ‘without lies or deception’ appears both in the Epistle to Titus and in contemporaneous debates about the truth value of oracles, but not because of any direct literary borrowings from an original source. The Epistle to Titus exemplifies a trend in the second century that created from oracular one-liners a literary discourse about divination, which defended traditional religious knowledge against the rise of unauthorised agents. Shared responses to contemporary phenomena best explain the parallels – and, for example, the quotation of a pagan oracle in the letter, ‘All Cretans are liars’ (Titus 1.12).

Keywords

Epistle to TitusGreco-Roman oraclesintertextualityLiar Paradoxone-linersSecond Sophistic
Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , July 2017 , pp. 451 - 472
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

*

Sections of this essay received helpful criticism at an international conference on ‘Literary Interactions under Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian’, held at Boston University in June 2015, and at the annual meeting of the North American Patristics Society held in Chicago in May 2016.

References

1 Writing under the pseudonym of the apostle Paul, the author images a rhetorical situation in which Paul schools his young delegate Titus, left behind on Crete, on how to put the remaining missionary work in order.  On the date and provenance of the work, see the excellent summary of the status quaestionis in Marshall, J. W., ‘“I Left You in Crete”: Narrative Deception and Social Hierarchy in the Letter to Titus’, JBL 127 (2008) 781–803 Google Scholar, at 783–4, who joins an emerging critical consensus to give the Pastoral Epistles a later date range (ca. 100–40).  Pervo, R. I. (The Making of Paul: Constructions of the Apostle in Early Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010) 83)Google Scholar offers specific dating within 120–5.

2 On the character of the polemic in Titus, which shares themes found also in 1 Timothy, see Ehrman, B. D., Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) 367–84Google Scholar.

3 This emphasis on the epistolary Paul before the reader as the sole apostle and gospel herald whom one can trust appears throughout the Pastoral Epistles (1 Tim 2.7; 2 Tim 2.8–10); Meade, D. G., Pseudonymity and Canon: An Investigation into the Relationship of Authorship and Authority in Jewish and Earliest Christian Tradition (WUNT 39; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1986) 123Google Scholar.

4 On Clement and classical culture, see Frend, W. H. C., The Rise of Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) 252–3Google Scholar; and Droge, A. J., Homer or Moses? Early Christian Interpretations of the History of Culture (HUTh 26; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1989) 139–49Google Scholar.

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7 Tatian, however, does know about ‘Epimenides the Cretan’, listing him in a catalogue of Greek writers appearing after Moses; Tatian, Or. Graec. 41.1 (Whittaker, OECT, 72–3).

8 On Athenagoras and the charge of ‘atheism’, see Frend, Rise of Christianity, 241–2.

9 Athenagoras, Leg. 30.5; text and trans. Schoedel, W. R., ‘Legatio’ and ‘De Resurrectione’/Athenagoras (OECT; Oxford: Clarendon, 1972) 74–5Google Scholar.

10 Athenagoras, Leg. 30.3–5 (Schoedel, OECT, 74–5).

11 Palmer, D. W., ‘Atheism, Apologetic, and Negative Theology in the Greek Apologists of the Second Century’, VC 37 (1983) 234–59Google Scholar, at 246.  Athenagoras’ sophisticated reading of Callimachus picks up the marked ambiguity to truth in the constitution of the poet's voice.  The Cretan saying in Callimachus thus follows a trend in Hellenistic poetry which deliberately chose ambiguity as a rhetorical device to encourage intertextual reading practices; see Goldhill, S., ‘Framing and Polyphony: Readings in Hellenistic Poetry’, PCPS, n.s., 32 (1986) 25–52 Google Scholar.

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13 Further evidence of the Buried Zeus myth in early Christian apologetic without reference to the Cretan Liar appears in Minucius Felix, Oct. 22 (ca. 240), which incorporated earlier fragments of a debate between a pagan and Christian (perhaps in 170).  On this work, see Frend, Rise of Christianity, 291–3.

14 Celsus, The True Doctrine (apud Origen, Cels. 3.43); text Borret, M., Contre Celse ii/Origène (SC 136; Paris: Cerf, 1968) 100Google Scholar; trans. Chadwick, H., Contra Celsum/Origen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) 157Google Scholar.

15 Origen, Cels. 3.43 (Borret, SC 136.102); trans. Chadwick, Contra Celsum, 157.

16 Origen, Cels. 3.43 (Borret, SC 136.102–4); trans. Chadwick, Contra Celsum, 158.

17 On the evidence for (later) pagan critique of Paul, see Harrill, J. A., Paul the Apostle: His Life and Legacy in their Roman Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) 116–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 A commentary on Titus belongs to Origen's lost exegetical works; see Quasten, J., Patrology, vol. ii: The Ante-Nicene Literature after Irenaeus (Westminster: Christian Classics, 1986) 51Google Scholar.

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20 On this paradigm, see Mitchell, M. M., Paul, the Corinthians and the Birth of Christian Hermeneutics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 21–2Google Scholar; and Eden, K., Hermeneutics and the Rhetorical Tradition: Chapters in the Ancient Legacy and its Humanist Reception (Yale Studies in Hermeneutics; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997) 7–19 Google Scholar.

21 Jerome, Comm. Tit. 1.12–14; text Bucchi, F., S. Hieronymi Presbyteri Opera, Pars i: Opera exegetica. 8, Commentarii in Epistulas Pauli Apostoli ad Titum et ad Philemonem (CCSL 77C; Turnhout: Brepols, 2003) 28–9Google Scholar; trans. Scheck, St. Jerome's Commentaries, 303–4.

22 On the figure of the chresmologist in the Second Sophistic, see Bendlin, A., ‘On the Uses and Disadvantages of Divination: Oracles and their Literary Representations in the Time of the Second Sophistic’, The Religious History of the Roman Empire: Pagans, Jews, and Christians (ed. North, J. A. and Price, S. R. F.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) 227Google Scholar.  See also Dibelius, M. and Conzelmann, H., The Pastoral Epistles: A Commentary (trans. Buttolph, P. and Collins, A. Y.; ed. Koester;, H. Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972) 136Google Scholar.

23 Jerome, Comm. Tit. 1.12–14 (Bucchi, CCSL 77C.30–1); trans. Scheck, St. Jerome's Commentaries, 306, altered.

24 E.g. an iambic line of a comedy of Menander (1 Cor. 15.33, ‘Bad company ruins good morals’) here, and a half-line of the Phaenomena of Aratus (Acts 17.23, ‘For we are indeed his offspring’) there; Jerome, Comm. Tit. 1.12–14 (Bucchi, CCSL 77C.31); trans. Scheck, St. Jerome's Commentaries, 305.

25 Jerome, Comm. Tit. 1.12–14 (Bucchi, CCSL 77C.31–2); trans. Scheck, St. Jerome's Commentaries, 307.

26 On the rise of oracles and their new roles, see Busine, A., ‘Oracles and Civic Identity in Roman Asia Minor’, Cults, Creeds and Identities in the Greek City After the Classical Age (ed. Alston, R., Nift, O. M. van and Williamson, G.; Leuven: Peeters, 2013) 175–96Google Scholar.

27 Chaniotis, A., ‘Megatheism: The Search for the Almighty God and the Competition of Cults’, One God: Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire (ed. Mitchell, S. and Nuffelen, P. Van; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) 136–7, 176Google Scholar.

28 Bendlin, ‘On the Uses’, 212–13, 228.

29 Bendlin, ‘On the Uses’, 196, 198, 202–3.  On this cultural meaning of παιδεία for the Greek πεπαιδευμένοι as a series of competitions over prestige and status, see Whitmarsh, T., Greek Literature and the Roman Empire: The Politics of Imitation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) 5–6 Google Scholar, et passim.

30 Bendlin, ‘On the Uses’, 203.

31 Plutarch, On the E at Delphi 17, Mor. 391f–392a; text and trans. Babbitt, F. C., Moralia/Plutarch, vol. v (LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993) 238–9Google Scholar.

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33 Plutarch, On the Failure of Oracles 25, Mor. 407a–f; Schröder, S., Plutarchs Schrift De Pythiae oraculis: Text, Einleitung und Kommentar (Beiträge zur Altertumskunde 8; Stuttgart: Teubner, 1990) 398–401 Google Scholar.  Plutarch aims to deflect a specific charge against the Delphic oracle, namely, that the introduction of clarity in its oracular sayings, no longer weaving them in epic verse, has somehow removed their truth and dignity.  Similar apologetics against unauthorized diviners recur in Plutarch's biographies (Cic. 17.4; Mar. 42.4–5).  See also Bendlin, ‘On the Uses’, 228.

34 Euripides: Νηρέως προφήτης Γλαῦκος, ἀψευδὴς θεός (Orest. 364); ἐν ἀψευδεῖ θρόνῳ (Iph. taur. 1254), an epithet for the Pythian tripod; and, in scholia, Ζεὺς ἐν θεοῖσι μάντις ἀψευδέστατος ( Nauck, A., Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1983 2) no. 1110)Google Scholar, perhaps a fragment of Archilochus ( Collard, C. and Cropp, M., Fragments: Oedipus–Chrysippus, Other Fragments/Euripides (LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008) 617Google Scholar).

35 See also Croesus’ acceptance of the Delphic oracle's verse about him as ‘divination without deceit’ (μαντήιον ἀψευδές) (Herodotus, Hist. 1.49), and Psammetichus’ consultation of ‘the most infallible oracle’ (μαντήιον ἀψευδέστατον) in Egypt (Hist. 2.152).

36 Additional evidence: Theocritus, Id. 24.65; biblical literature (Num 23.19; Wis 7.17); Sibylline Oracles 3.701 (OTP, i.377); Philo of Alexandria (Drunkenness 139; Migration 190; Heir 4; Dreams 220–1; Joseph 95–6; Moses 2.280–5); Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ant. rom. 4.2; Ovid, Fast. 425; Strabo, Geogr. 10.1.3; Pausanius, Descr. 1.34.4, 7.21.12 and 9.23.6; as well as in papyri (e.g. PSI x.1102 (Oxyrhynchos, ca. 217–72 ce)).  See also Dio Chrysostom, Or. 11.125; 32.13 and 35.22 (cf. Pausanius, Descr. 22.3–4); with Kim, L., Homer between History and Fiction in Imperial Greek Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) 85–139 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.  In polemic against false oracles: Sibylline Oracles 4.1–5 (OTP, i.384); Philo, Spec. Laws 4.52; Josephus, A.J. 1.15–16; Strabo, Geogr. 9.2.11; and Artemidorus, Interpretation of Dreams 2.69.  See Dibelius and Conzelmann, Pastoral Epistles, 131.

37 Kokkinia, Ch., Die Opramoas-Inschrift von Rhodiapolis: Euergetismus und Soziale Elite in Lykien (Antiquitas 3/40; Bonn: Habelt, 2000) 56 (no. 54, xiii D 1), 97 (trans.)Google Scholar.  This very large inscription arranges numerous official documents (thirty-two honorary decrees and thirty-eight official letters, all dating to between ca. 120 and 60 ce) into a monumental collage honouring the impressive dossier of Opramoas’ euergetism in the cities of Lycia.  Bendlin, ‘On the Uses’, 175–8.

38 Burrell, B., Neokoroi: Greek Cities and Roman Emperors (Cincinnati Classical Studies, n.s., 9; Leiden: Brill, 2004) 255Google Scholar.

39 Bendlin, ‘On the Uses’, 178, with references to IDidyma 83 (third century ce, after Caracalla); found also in Merkelback, R. and Stauber, J., Steinepigramme aus dem griechischen Osten, vol. i: Die Westküste Kleinasiens von Knidos bis Ilion (Stuttgart/Leipzig: Teubner, 1998) 94Google Scholar.  Cf. also LSJ s.v. ἀψευδής.

40 This work, entitled Γοήτων φώρα, is preserved extensively in Eusebius, Prep. ev. 5.18–36 and 6.7.  See Hammerstaedt, J., Die Orakelkritik des Kynikers Oenomaus (Athenäum Monografien, Altertumswissenschaft 188; Frankfurt: Athenäum, 1998)Google Scholar; and Busine, A., Paroles d'Apollon: pratiques et traditions oraculaires dans l'Antiquité tardive (ii e–vi e siècles) (Religions of the Graeco-Roman World 156; Leiden: Brill, 2005) 333–4Google Scholar.

41 Bendlin, ‘On the Uses’, 230–1.

42 For a further satire of oracular ‘truth’ and its protocols, see Lucian of Samosata, Alexander the False Prophet.  Jones, C. P., Culture and Society in Lucian (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986) 133–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 On the Roman Callimachus, see Acosta-Hughes, B. and Stephens, S. A., Callimachus in Context: From Plato to the Augustan Poets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015)Google Scholar.  On reflexive allusions, see Barchiesi, A., Speaking Volumes: Narrative and Intertext in Ovid and Other Latin Poets (ed. and trans. Fox, M. and Marchesi;, S. London: Duckworth, 2001) 117–19Google Scholar.

44 Callimachus, Hymn. 1.1–10; trans. Cuypers, M., ‘Prince and Principle: The Philosophy of Callimachus’ Hymn to Zeus ’, Callimachus ii (ed. Harder, M. A., Reguit, R. F. and Wakker, G. C.; Hellenistica Groningana 7; Leuven: Peeters, 2004) 95–6Google Scholar.  ‘Ida’ names a mountain in Crete and ‘Parrhasia’ the region of Arcadia.

45 Barbantani, S., ‘Callimachus on Kings and Kingship’, Brill's Companion to Callimachus (ed. Acosta-Hughes, B., Lehnus, L. and Stephens, S.; Leiden: Brill, 2011) 182–89Google Scholar; Acosta-Hughes and Stephens, Callimachus in Context, 149–51.

46 This saying is an apostrophe of Truth and Justice speaking to Epimenides in a dream during his long sleep in the cave of Zeus; West, M. L., The Orphic Poems (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983) 44–53 Google Scholar.  Testimonia: FGrH 457 T 1–2, 4.

47 Hesiod, Theog. 26–8; trans. Evelyn-White, H. G., Homeric Hymns, Epic Cycle, Homerica/Hesiod (LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995) 81Google Scholar.  An excellent study of the invective in the rebuke is Katz, J. T., ‘“Mere Bellies”? A New Look at Theogony 26–8’, JHS 120 (2000) 122–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Koning, H. H., Hesiod, the Other Poet: Ancient Reception of a Cultural Icon (Mnemosyne Suppl. 325; Leiden: Brill, 2010) 299–304 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Barchiesi, Speaking Volumes, 117–18.  See also Hopkinson, N., ‘Callimachus’ Hymn to Zeus’, Classical Quarterly 34 (1984) 139–48, at 140Google Scholar; Goldhill, ‘Framing’, 27–30; Lüddecke, K. L. G., ‘Contextualizing the Voice in Callimachus’ “Hymn to Zeus”’,  Materilai e discussioni per l'analisti dei testi classici 41 (1998) 16Google Scholar; Stephens, S. A., Seeing Double: Intercultural Poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003) 79–114 Google Scholar; and Klooster, J., ‘Apostrophe in Homer, Apollonius and Callimachus’, Über die Grenze: Metalepse in Text- und Bildmedien des Altertums (ed. Eisen, U. E. and Möllendorff, P. von; Narratologia 39; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013) 168Google Scholar.

49 Helpful to my analysis is the study of intertextuality proposed by Hays, R. B., Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989) 14–33 Google Scholar, even if I complicate his clear distinctions between citation, allusion and echo.

50 Cic. Div. 2.11; cf. Acad. 2.95; 2.147–8; .

51 Sen. Ep. 45.10; text and trans. Gummere, R. M., Epistulae morales/Seneca, vol. i (LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979) 296–7Google Scholar.

52 Additional evidence: Arr. Epict diss. 2.7.34; 2.18.18; 2.21.17; 3.2.7; and 3.9.21; Plut. Mor. 1059d, 1070d.  Related references in J. A. Harrill, ‘Accusing Philosophy of Causing Headaches: Tertullian's Use of a Comedic Topos (Praescr. 16.2)’, StudPatr 65 (2013) 359–65.

53 Plutarch, On Listening to Lectures 11, Mor. 43c; text and trans. Babbitt, F. C., Moralia/Plutarch, vol. i (LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986) 232–3Google Scholar.

54 Plutarch, Reply to Colotes 29, Mor. 1124c; text and trans. Einarson, B. and Lacy, P. H. De, Moralia/Plutarch, vol. xiv (LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996) 292–3Google Scholar.

55 Plutarch, Progress in Virtue 7, Mor. 78f; text and trans. Babbitt, Moralia, i.418–19.

56 Plutarch, Progress in Virtue 7, Mor. 79a; text and trans. Babbitt, Moralia, i.420–1.

57 Plutarch, Progress in Virtue 7, Mor. 79b; text and trans. Babbitt, Moralia, i.420–1.

58 Plutarch, Oracles at Delphi 29, Mor. 408d.

59 On the form of the ancient handbook tradition in deutero-Pauline writings, see Harrill, J. A., Slaves in the New Testament: Literary, Social, and Moral Dimensions (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006) 97–103 Google Scholar.

60 Ridicule of the opponents as mere sophists runs throughout the Pastoral Epistles; see Dibelius and Conzelmann, Pastoral Epistles, 21, 66, 68, 113, 119, 120, 135, 151.

61 In this regard, the portrait of Paul in Titus provides an instructive contrast to that in his undoubted letters, where he offered himself as the very model of a freelance religious expert; see Wendt, H., At the Temple Gates: The Religion of Freelance Experts in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016) 146–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 Cf. Thiselton, A. C., ‘Does the Bible Call All Cretans Liars? “The Logical Role of the Liar Paradox in Titus 1:12, 13: A Dissent from the Commentaries in the Light of Philosophical and Logical Analysis”’, Thiselton on Hermeneutics: Collected Works with New Essays (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006) 217–28Google Scholar (first published in BibInt 2 (1994) 207–23).

63 On recognisable one-liners in the repertoire of Second Sophistic writers, see Anderson, G., The Second Sophistic: A Cultural Phenomenon in the Roman Empire (London: Routledge, 1993) 79Google Scholar.  Cf. the figure of the chresmologist (Bendlin, ‘On the Uses’, 227) that Origen and Jerome see in the passage.

64 On the multiple ways in which diverse authors in the Second Sophistic created a mimetic form of literature both to construct and challenge cultural links with the classical past, see Whitmarsh, Greek Literature, 41–89.

65 Sandmel, S., ‘Parallelomania’, JBL 81 (1962) 1–13, at 1Google Scholar.  See also the helpful critique of Frankfurter, D., ‘Comparison and the Study of Religions of Late Antiquity’, Comparer en histoire des religions antiques: controverse et propositions (ed. Calame, C. and Lincoln, B.; Collections Religions 1; Liège: Presses universitaires de Liège, 2012) 83–98 Google Scholar.