Certificates of Pagan Worship

P.Mich inv 158. Certificate of Sacrifice from the Decian era.

During his reign (249-251 CE), Emperor Decius ordered that everyone in the Roman Empire was required to make a sacrifice to the Gods. An official record of this sacrifice was to be made and submitted to the local bureaucracy. Several examples of these "Certificates of Sacrifice" (Latin: libelli) have been preserved, likely due to the vast numbers that must have flooded the many local administrative offices of the Roman Provinces. Here is a typical example of a lebellus below, P. Mich inv 158.

"τοῖς ἐπὶ θυσιῶν κώμης
Θεαδελφίαςπαρὰ Αὐρηλίας Βελλι̣ᾶ̣ Πετερήως καὶ τῆς ταύτης
θυγατρὸς Καπῖνις ἀὶ θύουσε τοῖς θεοῖς διετελέσαμεν καὶ νῦν ἐπὶ παρόντων ὑμῶν κατὰ τὰ προστεταγμένα ἔσπισα καὶ ἔθυσα καὶ ἐγευσάμην τῶν εἱερων καὶ ἀξιῶ ὑμᾶς
ὑποσημιώσαστε ἡμῖν. διευτυχ(εῖτε).
(hand 2) Αὐρήλιοι Σερῆνος καὶ Ἑρμᾶς εἴδαμεν ὑμᾶς θυσιάζοντος
(hand 3) Ἑρμᾶς σ(εσ)η(μείωμαι).
(hand 1) (ἔτους) α Αὐτοκράτορος Καίσαρος
Γαίου Μεσίου Κυίντου {Τρ[αιανοῦ]}
Τραιανοῦ Δεκίου Εὐσεβοῦς
Εὐτυχοῦς Σεβαστοῦ
Παῦνι κζ."

Here is an English translation of the libellus.

"To those in charge of the sacrifices of the village Theadelphia, from Aurelia Bellias, daughter of Peteres, and her daughter, Kapinis. We have always been constant in sacrificing to the gods, and now too, in your presence, in accordance with the regulations, I have poured libations and sacrificed and tasted the offerings, and I ask you to certify this for us below. May you continue to prosper.;
(2nd hand) We, Aurelius Serenus and Aurelius Hermas, saw you sacrificing.;
(3rd hand) I, Hermas, certify.;
(1st hand) The 1st year if the Emperor Caesar Gaius Messius Quintus Traianus Decius Pius Felix Augustus, Pauni 27." (P.Mich inv 158)

(http://papyri.info/ddbdp/p.mich;3;158)

Though P.Mich inv 158 is from the Fayyum region of Egypt, the lebelli were, of course, used even father west in Carthage. At this time Cyprian of Carthage felt it necessary to address this issue of offering sacrifices to the gods in his treatise "On the Lapsed." In chapter 27 he mentions a specific practice that Christians (in Carthage at least) were doing as a response to the moral delima.

"27. Nor let those persons flatter themselves that they need repent the less, who, although they have not polluted their hands with abominable sacrifices, yet have defiled their conscience with certificates. That profession of one who denies, is the testimony of a, Christian disowning what he had been. He says that he has done what another has actually committed; and although it is written, You cannot serve two masters, Matthew 6:24 he has served an earthly master in that he has obeyed his edict; he has been more obedient to human authority than to God. It matters not whether he has published what he has done with less either of disgrace or of guilt among men." (http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050703.htm)

Here Cyprian mentions two types of deceptions. 1) christians forging a libelus and submitting it to the authorities, 2) having someone else perform the sacrifice in their place. Both of these Christian responses were unacceptable to Cyprian. 

One small ellement of this whole affair is this, how did Cyprian know that Christians were forging these libelli? My guess is that some, presumably overcome with guilt, were approaching their local Church leaders to ask for forgiveness. No matter how these actions of forgery came to light, it is an interesting example of the ways in which allegedly sinful actions of Christians were exposed within Christian these communities. In this case the sin involved a textual deception, the forging of documents. Perhaps the same type of exposure would occur if Christians were to, say, forge a Gospel, or significantly alter the text of a Gospel or other Christian writing.

Aristotle's Long Lasting Library

A first century copy of Aristotle's Constitutions. Papyrus 131

In connection with his academy it is known from ancient sources that Aristotle possessed a collection of books, a combination of his own, student's, and other philosopher's writings. Aristotle handed down this library on to his successor Theophrastus, who then bequeathed the collection to his follower Neleus. After Neleus failed to step in the leadership role of the Academy, he moved the collection to Skepsis (in Asia Minor). After this time the library was poorly cared for, at one point being buried in a trench! Years later the library was acquired by Apellicon, an Athenian collector and the books were moved to Athens. Strabo (quoted at length in full below), notes that Apellicon attempted to restore these works, without success, by filling in the lacuna now present in these copies due to decay. Later Sulla took (stole) the entire library and took it to Rome. Here booksellers gained access to these works and poorly transcribed them and circulated these poor copies widely. At this time, Aristotle's and Theophrastus's books would have been some 250 years old (Gamble, "Books and Readers in the Early Church," 177). Following is Strabo's account in full;

"From Scepsis came the Socratic philosophers Erastus and Coriscus and Neleus the son of Corsica's, this last a man who not only was a pupil of Aristotle and Theophrastus, but also inherited the library of Theophrastus, which included that of Aristotle. At any rate, Aristotle bequeathed his own library to Theophrastus, to whom he also left his school; and he is the first man, so far as I know, to have collected books and to have taught the kings in Egypt how to arrange a library. Theophrastus bequeathed it to Neleus; and Neleus took it to Scepsis and bequeathed it to his heirs, ordinary people, who kept the books locked up and not even carefully stored. But when they heard bow zealously the Attalic kings to whom the city was subject were searching for books to build up the library in Pergamum, they hid their books underground in a kind of trench. But much later, when the books had been damaged by moisture and moths, their descendants sold them to Apellicon of Teos for a large sum of money, both the books of Aristotle and those of Theophrastus. But Apellicon was a bibliophile rather than a philosopher; and therefore, seeking a restoration of the parts that had been eaten through, he made new copies of the text, filling up the gaps incorrectly, and published the books full of errors. The result was that the earlier school of Peripatetics who came after Theophrastus had no books at all, with the exception of only a few, mostly exoteric works, and were therefore able to philosophize about nothing in a practical way, but only to talk bombast about commonplace propositions, whereas the later school, from the time the books in question appeared, though better able to philosophise and Aristotelise, were forced to call most of their statements probabilities, because of the large number of errors. Rome also contributed much to this; for, immediately after the death of Apellicon, Sulla, who had captured Athens, carried off Apellicon's library to Rome, where Tyrannion the grammarian, who was fond of Aristotle, got it in his hands by paying court to the librarian, as did also certain booksellers who used bad copyists and would not collate the texts—a thing that also takes place in the case of the other books that are copied for selling, both here and at Alexandria. However, this is enough about these men." (Strabo, Geogr. 13.1.54; translation taken from Perseus)

 There are several intriguing features of this account that should be drawn out.

• This library contained copies of Aristotle's and Theophrastus's works that were made under their direction, yet, because of the decay of long years, the transcriptions made directly from these copies were poorly done and thus interjected textual corruptions early in the history of transmission, both during Apellicon's time and years later when Sulla possessed the library in Rome.
• These books did last for at least 250 years or so (supporting Houston's conclusion that books in antiquity had a useful life of 100-300 years), however, these authorial copies of Aristotle's and Theophrastus's works were not always available for use because at some point the collection was buried in a trench!
• The collection, though preserved over two centuries by the time it came to Rome, passed into many different hands and was transported across a wide geographical region. Different communities with their own agendas and priorities controlled access to these texts.

_____________________________________________

Gamble, Harry Y. Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.

Houston, George W. Inside Roman Libraries: Book Collections and Their Management in Antiquity. Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2014.

Myths About Autographs on Google Books

For those readers who may be interested, one can read the entire content on Google Books of my chapter contribution "Myths About Autographs" in the newly released "Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism."

Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism

It was exciting to receive in the mail last week my pre-release copy of "Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism." I am only about half of the way through the book and I just have to say that it is a fantastic piece of scholarship! Every chapter has easy to read prose, with technical terms explained. Yet each presents rigorous scholarship with footnotes and references equal to any high level scholarly tome. It is an honor to have my own modest piece, Chapter 2 "Myths About Autographs" alongside such high caliber scholarship. Peter Gurry and Elijah Hixson did a stellar job of editing and bringing the different chapters together in a cohesive unit. It is my prayer that "Myths and Mistakes" will serve well those wishing to better understand a field that encompasses a broad array of disciplines.

Sacred Words Conference

Revisiting the Shift from the Roll to the Codex Book Form

Recently, Brent Nongbri published an article in JSNT raising valid concerns with regard to using objectively dated rolls to assign dates to codices based on palaeography (see previous post). This JSNT article, and the subsequent interchange with Nongbri on the blog, got me thinking about the fantastic new resource put together by Grant Edwards.

"The Collaborative Database of Dateable Greek Bookhands"

The online database is very user friendly and it's sorting and filtering tools are quite intuitive. One drawback about using the data found in LDAB (which is a fantastic resource) is that many of the dates for the material referenced are not derived objectively.  Thus, any conclusions relying on the dates of the material obtained from LDAB (for example determining when the codex supplanted the roll) may not be as secure.

I thought that it might prove to be an interesting exercise to query the new "Collaborative Database of Dateable Greek Bookhands" for this information. Of course, objectively dated manuscripts are extremely rare and one should be careful about drawing sweeping conclusions from the information. 

All the same, using the "Filter" option to show only the format of "codex" gave only 32 results. The earliest codex being P.Bodmer 20 of the 4th century with some examples extending out to the 9th century (though with only one other 4th century example).

Using the "Filter" option again to show only the format of "roll" yielded 68 hits. Of  these, only 8 rolls were dated from the 3/4th century out to the 8th, with the bulk falling somwhere in the 1st-3rd century mark. 
I thought it intriguing that these more objectively dated results seem to support the well noted trend, that is, that the 4th century saw a shift in book formatting from the roll to the codex.

The Limitations of Assigning Dates to Christian Codices

Published in a recent issue of the Journal for the Study of the New Testament is a new piece by Brent Nongbri.

Brent Nongbri, "Palaeographic Analysis of Codices from the Early Christian Period: A Point of Method," JSNT 42.1 (2019): 81-97.

It is a fleshed out discussion of the same topic that is found in chapter 2 of his recent book, "God's Library," (pg. 71-72). In this article Nongbri sets out a critique of the palaeographic practice of assigning dates to undated Christian codices by comparing their scripts with the scripts of securely dated rolls. The article takes issue with this method of dating Christian codices for the following reasons.

First, Nongbri rightly notes that writing styles could theoretically span generations as they were passed down and taught to student apprentices. Along with this are the examples of scribes having very long working lives of 20-30 years. In addition, there are extant writing excercises that reveal scribes practicing different scripts normally assigned to different temporal priods (Nongbri, pg 87, note 6). Therefore, drawing into question the bedrock of the paleographic method, that "graphic similarity generally equates to temporal similarity" (Nongbri, pg. 86).

Second, and more importanantly, according to the data located in the LDAB, the roll largely dropped out of use in the 4th century CE being supplanted by the codex. However, most of the securely dated samples used for comparative scripts in assigning dates to undated Christian codices are taken from rolls. Thus, Nongbri posits that this practice would artificially skew the assigned dates of these codices much earlier (Nongbri, pg. 92). Another issue is that the practice of reusing rolls to copy documents allegedly went out of vogue by the beginning of the 4th century (Nongbri, pg. 91). Therefore, it is surmised that employing re-used rolls as comparators of script style will skew the assigned dates of undated codices earlier (Nongbri, pg. 92).

I would like to make a few observations and engage with the article on a few points. As to the first critique, this is a thought provoking piece that raises some valid concerns with the method of assigning too tight of a temporal time span to styles of handwriting. It has certainly been observed that a student's hand can mimick that of their instructor (Rafaella Cribiore presents a few examples in her work). This would definitely allow for certain styles of handwriting to continue for generations. The only push back I want to offer against this notion is that this observation fails to take into consideration market and cultural demands on writing styles in vogue at the time books were copied. For example, (to use a crude modern example), many of us were taught cursive writing as children, but due to current styles in vogue and cultural conventions, few of us use cursive writing today. I think this mentality is evinced in the famous Price edict of Diocletian where the quality of a script was subject to the limits a patron was willing to pay for a book to be copied out. It would follow that, though a scribe may have been taught certain styles, books may not have been copied out in those styles because they had fallen out of vogue. Also, I would argue that the content of a book could, and did (in the case of documentary records for example) affect the type of script used. This would suggest to me that some writing styles could, theoretically have very short useful lives if the styles came and went out of style quickly. Of course, this is neither here nor there if modern palaeographers have few securely dated examples of these hands to use in reconstructing a chronology.

As to the second point, Nongbri makes a poignant and relevant critique against the dataset of securely dated writing samples used to reconstruct a chronology. If Nongbri's criticism holds, then potentially the house of cards may come tumbling down. He rightly notes at the end of the article that,

"these observations reinforce the conclusion that historial arguments should never depend too heavily upon the dates of manuscripts that have been assigned only by palaeography, especially when such arguments involve codices in the early Christian period" (Nongbri, pg. 94).

The problem here is that (as Nongbri is aware) the dates assigned to the manuscripts (codices included) in the LDAB are largely based on Palaeography. Thus, if we are to carry this criticism of palaeography to its logical conclusion, the precise era of transition from the roll to the codex is largely an open question. The chronology of when the codex supplanted the roll should take into consideration only securely dated samples along with other data as well. For example, the limited data scattered throughout the primary resources seem to indicate that it was quite normal to use a codex in writing and copying before the 4th century (Quintilian, Inst. Or 10.3.31; Martial, Epigr. 1.2; 2 Timothy 4:13, and Galen, "On the Avoidance of Grief," 31-33).  

Finally, now that Nongbri has primed the pump of doubt, so to speak, I have my own set of questions with regard to paleography. How did the social upheavals of the 4th century affect book production? Would the growing recognition of the sacredness of New Testament writings have an affect on the style of script used? How would economic factors affect the style of script used? For example, with regard to Diocletians Price edict, perhaps the well documented economic slump of the Empire in the 3rd century saw with it a decline in the use of certain types of more expensive ornate scripts. Many more things could be said. Alltogether a steller article that will likely motivate additional shifts in the discipline of Greek Palaeography.