Jim Davila points us to an unusual new title, The Occult Sciences in Byzantium, edited by Paul Magdalino and Maria Mavroudi. Its primary focus seems to be alchemy and astrology, as precursors to modern sciences.

This volume represents the first attempt to examine occult sciences as a distinct category of Byzantine intellectual culture. It is concerned with both the reality and the image of the occult sciences in Byzantium, and seeks, above all, to represent them in their social and cultural context as a historical phenomenon. The eleven essays demonstrate that Byzantium was not marginal to the scientific culture of the Middle Ages, and that the occult sciences were not marginal to the learned culture of the medieval Byzantine world.

First published in 1981, Andrew Louth’s The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys has never gone out of print. The author, an Orthodox priest and patristics scholar at the University of Durham, traces certain intellectual currents — purification, illumination, union, etc. — as they develop through the works of Plato, Philo, Plotinus, Origen, Augustine, and others. Though a pagan, Plato emphasized man’s spiritual nature and forged a philosophical vocabulary that the early Fathers would later appropriate for Christian theology. Nevertheless, Louth clearly demonstrates that patristic theology is not baptized Platonism (as some historians of religion assert). Plato, for example, held the soul to be divine by nature, and the mystical ascent to be a return or homecoming. For Christians, the soul is divinized by grace. Man is made in God’s image, but there remains an ontological gulf between creature and creator.

Later chapters examine the works of John of the Cross (16th century) in light of his patristic forebears. While some Eastern Orthodox critics judge John to be deviant from the tradition of the Fathers, Louth sees John’s doctrine as differing in “perspective rather than anything fundamental.” Indeed, Louth concludes that “these different styles [Eastern and Western] draw out different areas of mystical experience … [T]his is but evidence of a tension within a deeper unity, and suggests that East and West have much to learn from one another here.”

The final chapter considers the qualities that make Christian mysticism distinctive, particularly “The Mystical Life” lived within “the Mystical Body.” Louth argues that “Christian mystical theology is ecclesial; it is the fruit of participation in the mystery of Christ, which is inseparable from the mystery of the Church. Within the Platonic tradition the mystic is an individual, or at best the member of an intellectual elite.”

In an important new afterword, the author goes so far as to argue — against some comparative religionists, and against a position he himself had formerly held — that the phenomenon of mysticism is, in truth, something distinctively Christian.

Many books present the Church Fathers’ methods of biblical interpretation as an academic artifact or a curiosity of intellectual history, superseded by our own critical insights. In Reading the Bible As God’s Own Story, biblical scholar Father William Kurz, S.J., presents them as a life skill for ordinary Christians.

The “genius of the early fathers,” he says, was their habit of giving “intense attention to details in the text” while always reading “each individual passage in the light of Scripture’s essential story line.” The Bible — especially as it was proclaimed through the liturgical lectionaries — told one grand story of creation, fall, and redemption, a story that was universal, yet intimately personal.

Kurz, a New Testament scholar at Marquette University, notes that the “common academic approaches” of his contemporary colleagues “limit interpretation to only those senses that were available to a reconstructed ‘original’ first-century audience.” The Fathers’ methods, however, allow for a “theological reading” of biblical texts — a reading that permits life application throughout the ages, as well as an intelligent and constructive response to the erroneous interpretations of heretics.

Kurz presents the Fathers’ methods through the works of two early Christian teachers, Irenaeus (second century) and Athanasius (fourth century), both of whom had to marshal a strong biblical theology to oppose emerging heresies (Gnosticism for Irenaeus and Arianism for Athanasius).

It’s a very useful book at an astonishingly low price.

An interesting review of a book that has come up here before, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea.

Marcus is the sequel to Father Michael Giesler’s first novel, Junia: The Fictional Life and Death of an Early Christian. Set in second-century Rome, Marcus tells the story of a young pagan nobleman as he first encounters Christianity.

Since Marcus is a philosophy student, the novel represents the inevitable clash of ideas as they play out in conversations, books, and ordinary lives. Marcus’s contemporaries are stirred up by the teaching of Justin, the Christian philosopher and sometime resident of Rome. Christian students are seeking a language that will enable them to distinguish the Logos of John’s Gospel from Stoic uses of the same word. Meanwhile, Gnostic heresies are just beginning to emerge within the churches. And ordinary pagans look with incredulity upon the Church’s exaltation of celibacy, chastity, and virginity — as if it’s the spoilsport at the pagan orgy.

Yet neither Junia nor Marcus is a “novel of ideas.” Giesler’s plots turn mostly on matters of friendship, romantic attraction, rejection, betrayal, and the desire for revenge. Always looming large are the dangers that attended Christian life in the empire: denunciation, humiliation, martyrdom.

Dramatic, engaging, and easy reads, both of Giesler’s novels should be required beach consumption for Christians. Though they’re written by a celibate priest, they’re much sexier than The Da Vinci Code (for example), yet they’re still appropriate for teens on up.

Both books, Junia and Marcus, are ideal imaginative entries into the world of the pre-Nicene Church.

Thus, we are thrilled that Father Giesler is coming to Pittsburgh next week. I hope to see you at one of his public events.

About a year ago, I posted a short review of The Christian Catacombs of Rome: History, Decoration, Inscriptions, by Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, Fabrizio Bisconti, and Danilo Mazzoleni. I wrote a long review for last October’s issue of Touchstone Magazine, and the full version follows.

The Roman catacombs are a veritable city of the dead. More than sixty miles of labyrinthine corridors have been discovered so far, and archeologists are still finding more. Estimates of their population range into the millions. And they are our richest source of evidence of early Christian life.

A lavishly illustrated coffee-table volume, The Christian Catacombs of Rome allows us to walk those corridors with three of the world’s leading experts on the subject. All are members of the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission on Sacred Archeology; all teach archeology at Roman universities.

From their intimate knowledge of thousands of inscriptions, artifacts, bone fragments, and artworks, the authors give us brief and brilliant glimpses of the ordinary lives of the early Christians, answering questions like: What kind of work did they do? Were they poor, rich, or middle-class? (See below.) How old were they when they married? (Women were 14-20, men 20-30.) What qualities did they value in their spouses and in their children? (No surprise here: fidelity, affability, concord, integrity.) How did they die? (Relatively few were martyrs.)

UNDERGROUND WORKS
The catacombs were dug by a professional corps of tunnelers out of the soft volcanic rock at the outskirts of Rome. Following soon after were an army of artists and artisans: brick masons, stone masons, plasterers, sculptors, mosaic and fresco artists, not to mention priests and mourners.

And much of this industry bustled during a time of intermittent persecution. Though the Christian catacombs represent the first massive public work of the Church, they were, so to speak, an underground economy.

The book divides neatly into three sections. Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai sketches the catacombs’ origin and development, giving readers a concise but complete introduction to the subject. He covers not only the history of their construction, but also the history of their excavation — which, given the crude methods of past centuries, was sometimes their destruction.

In the second section, Fabrizio Bisconti examines the artistic decoration of the catacombs and its interpretation (a field given to much controversy). In the final section, Danilo Mazzoleni highlights the 40,000 inscriptions that embellish the tombs, inscriptions that range from graffiti scratched in plaster to poems chiseled in marble.

All three sections are packed with useful and fascinating details. Mazzoleni, for example, uses the epitaphs to show us what the early Christians did for a living. They were “bricklayers, cleaners, dyers, seamstresses, shoemakers and cobblers . . . doctors and veterinarians, lawyers, notaries, stenographers, couriers, teachers, and clerks of grain administration.” Thus, we see the whole range of professions and social classes, and probably in close proportion to their distribution in Roman society.

Along the way, he challenges the fairly common assertion that the pre-Constantinian Christians were overwhelmingly pacifist. On the contrary, he writes, “diverse specialties and every rank” of the military are represented in Christian catacomb inscriptions, “including praetorians (the corps was disbanded by Constantine), cavalry and equites singulares.”

CHRISTIAN NAMES
Mazzoleni also analyzes the names bestowed and taken by the Christians of Rome. Readers can follow the trends through those early centuries, learning, for example, that relatively few chose biblical names, and many chose the names of martyrs (there are 3,000 Lawrences in one catacomb alone!). It was more common, however, to choose names with theological associations, such as Agape (love), Irene (peace), Anastasius (resurrection), Spes (hope), Quodvultdeus (what God wills), and so on. And many Christians seem to have stuck with the old, traditional Roman names, the names of pagan deities (Hermes, Hercules, Aphrodite, Eros).

One illuminating subsection covers “Humiliating names or nicknames.” These names “were sometimes used by some faithful as a life-long act of modesty, precisely because of their unpleasant significance. . . . This is the case of Proiectus and Proiecticus, which meant ‘exposed,’ and the unpleasant Stercorius, [which] can be understood as ‘abandoned in the garbage.’ . . . At the Catacomb of Pretestato, one of them was in fact named Stercorinus.”

The authors (or translators) are being polite. Stercorius is most accurately translated by what kids call “the S-word.” Thus, Stercorinus (the diminutive) means “Little S***,” or “Dear S***.”

Why would Christians bear such a name? It is likely that these particular Romans were, as infants, rescued from the dungheap — the place where Romans abandoned “defective” or female newborns. After all, the pagan philosopher Seneca said: “What is good must be set apart from what is good-for-nothing.”

I’ll bet that no small number of those “good-for-nothings” were rescued by Christian families. They were lucky to be alive, but surely they still had to suffer the taunts of playmates, who were pleased to remind them of their lowly origins.

As Mazzoleni points out, they may have kept those demeaning names as “a life-long act of modesty” — or perhaps as an act of triumphant irony. The joke, after all, was on the pagan world, which would soon enough die out for the crime of murdering its young. These children who were dung in the eyes of Imperial Rome knew that they were precious in the sight of God.

And in the catacombs they were buried among popes and praetorian guards. Nicolai remarks on the “uniformity of the tombs” that demonstrates the “heavily egalitarian ideology of the new religion.” In the catacombs, Stercorius is immortal, even in a merely historical sense, thanks to the work of these three authors. Reading their book is a profoundly religious experience.

Darrell Pursiful (aka Dr. Platypus) has written a most thoughtful, long, and generous review of my book The Mass of the Early Christians. Since Darrell is so many things I’m not — a scholar (New Testament), a virtuous man, and a Baptist — I’m blown away. Non sum dignus.

I’m grateful for his criticism, too — which will help me to argue for a third edition in a couple of years!

Dr. Rodney Whitacre’s A Patristic Greek Reader is now shipping from Amazon. In case you missed my advance review, a few months back, I’ll run the risk of repeating myself, since I think this is a useful and important book.

It’s more than a book, actually. It’s an opportunity to learn Greek from a superlative teacher and to learn Christianity from the greatest ancient masters. Says the publisher: “Passages that have played a major role in the history of Christian thought are included, as well as passages that contribute to matters of spirituality and pastoral care. Several passages are of more purely historical interest.” The book includes Greek texts, English translations, and abundant helpful notes. If you want to know more, visit the Library of Congress and view the table of contents.

Dr. Whitacre’s anthology is unique, a model of both pedagogy and mystagogy. The Spirit has been leading the churches to “return to the sources,” and A Patristic Greek Reader is a beautiful beginning for that journey. Very highly recommended.

OK, so you know everything there is to know about Antioch and Alexandria. Now, go east, young nerd. Learn about the schools of the Syriac Fathers, starting with Nisibis and Edessa. I just learned of a book by Adam H. Becker, called Fear of God And the Beginning of Wisdom: The School of Nisibis And the Development of Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia … It’s reviewed here: “This rich and fine book (a revision of the author’s doctoral dissertation) provides an intellectual and institutional history of the scholastic culture of the Church of the East—above all of the School of Nisibis—in the late antique and early Islamic periods. The work sheds light on the development of Christian paideia in Late Antiquity and the rise of the Babylonian Jewish academies, and exposes the importance of the East-Syrian school movement as the background to the intellectual culture to come, a point that has not yet been fully appreciated.”

Evagrius Ponticus lived a troubled life in the fourth century, and he’s had a troubled afterlife. In his youth he was hounded out of Constantinople by a jealous husband. He made his way to safety in the Egyptian desert, where he penned some classics of spirituality. (It was he who gave us the much-quoted line: “A theologian is one who prays, and one who prays is a theologian.”) After his death, his writings got caught up in the Origenist purges. He’s enjoyed a bit of a revival in recent decades. Now there’s a new book, an anthology and biographical study in one, for which we may rejoice. There’s a review here. Hat tip: Rogue Classicism.