Christopher B. Zeichmann

Christopher B. Zeichmann

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Author: Christopher Zeichmann

Early Publication on Queer Biblical Interpretation

By on April 24th, 2015 in Academics, Scripture

As part of my forthcoming, and long gestating, project on homonormative and heteronormative interpretations of the Healing of the Centurion’s Slave, I endeavoured to collect all references to publications referring to possible sexual subtexts to the passage (Matthew 8:5-13//Luke 7:1-10).  One obscure, but important, publication I got my hands on was Tom Horner’s annotated bibliography of relevant works called “Homosexuality in Biblical Times.”  This work was a running publication and grew regularly: 6 pages as of 1977, 1 more in 1978, and a final page as of 1979.  It seems to have been self-published, so it’s long out of print. Since it’s just an annotated bibliography, there isn’t any original research here, but it may be of interest to historians of interpretation and especially historians of queer interpretation.

Anyway, Horner’s little book can be found here, and my article “Rethinking the Gay Centurion:Sexual Exceptionalism, National Exceptionalism in Readings of Matt 8:5-13//Luke 7:1-10” will be out in late June via The Bible and Critical Theory.

Military Industrial Complex in the Golden Age

By on April 22nd, 2015 in comics

Last night I started reading The Complete Stardust the Super Wizard, which collects the stories about a Golden Age superhero created by Fletcher Hanks.  If I remember correctly, Stardust comics were produced around 1940 or so.

 

One story that surprised me was one wherein Stardust fought war profiteers – or at least a group that intended to profit, but were thwarted by him.  This reminded me of a similar story in a Superman story from around the same time, which follows the same basic blot.  The politics of the very early Superman comics were considerably different from those of Stardust – the first two or so years of Superman comics seem to depict him as a populist anarchist that goes around punching those who abuse their power (combating, e.g., spousal abuse, the prison industrial complex, union-busters), whereas Stardust is more interested in foiling the plans of those with ambitions to flat-0ut destroy the planet Earth (a sort of benevolent space deity).  Even so, the overlap suggests some kind of hesitancy toward producers of equipment for warfare, a concern no doubt related to the looming threat of U.S. involvement in WWII.

 

Contrast this with recent cinematic depictions of Batman and Superman, both of whom are billionaires whose fortunes are sustained by the production of military equipment.  I haven’t read many comics from the period shortly before or during US involvement in WWII, but I suspect that there was a significant change in attitudes around that time.  Captain America #1 famously depicted the title hero socking Hitler, even before the U.S. declared war – one assumes that anything that might be seen as opposed to the war would at some point be seen as near-treasonous.  The political ideology of Iron Man and Batman movies, of course, attend to a wildly different context: Batman regularly situates its hero in discourses about police militarization and Iron Man directly evokes the War on Terror.

 

Even as there are comic heroes in recent years who fall more toward the Stardust-Superman end of the anti-warfare spectrum, it seems Marvel’s and DC’s most valued properties do not launch extended criticisms of the military-industrial complex in the same way as in the Golden Age.  They tend to be supporting characters (e.g., early Anarky) or open to revision in short order (e.g., the first two or three issues of New 52 Superman).

The (Un)Subversive Jesus

By on December 20th, 2014 in Academics, ideological criticism

Robert Myles has yet another fantastic blog post, this time examining the entirely conventional rhetoric of subversion in historical Jesus studies.

This is good food for thought as I write about the conventionality of scholarly work on the question of taxation in the Gospel of Mark.  If these scholars’ Jesus were really so radical, why are they getting published by traditional media and the consumers of these books continue their lives with no difference except feeling somewhat better about themselves?  Has N.T. Wright’s work ever figured even vaguely into a political demonstration?

SBL Presentation

By on November 17th, 2014 in Uncategorized

I will be presenting a paper at SBL in San Diego this coming weekend, titled “Centurion as Rank of Peace? Social and Ideological Underpinnings of a New Testament Trope.” It will be in the Synoptic Gospels section  (S22-244) on Saturday.

 

Here is the abstract:

More than anywhere else in the New Testament, the passion narrative features the military and its ensigns. Strangely, the Gospels seem deeply ambivalent about the military in this section: on the one hand soldiers mock and crucify Jesus, on the other the centurion is the first person to recognize Jesus’ divine sonship and they are not responsible for his condemnation to death. This tension is often glossed over; some scholars emphasize the latter (and so must claim that the centurion’s confession indicates something other than what it seems to), while others understand the centurion’s confession as justification or anticipation of Christian inclusion of the Gentiles (disregarding soldiers’ role in Jesus’ abuse). Instead of opting for one or the other option in this dichotomy, I would like to propose that the fundamental ambiguity of the military in the New Testament is not fully appreciated, as soldiers plainly serve disparate function over the course of a single chapter in Mark. Indeed, this tension is common in the New Testament. While common soldiers are often viewed negatively in narrative portions of the New Testament, officers of the rank centurio are uniformly depicted positively (e.g., Mark 15:39, Q 7:1-10, Acts 10:1-8, 27:1-3, 43). To explain this tension, I will draw upon papyrological evidence regarding soldier-civilian relations in the Roman Near East to discern the social structures that encouraged peasants and other civilians to perceive centurions positively and common soldiers more negatively. For example, sales typically occurred via special contract that could only be characterized as extortion and low-ranking soldiers appear to have been responsible for procuring such supplies from provincials. Officers, on the other hand – especially those ranked centurion and higher – had considerably greater agency and their individual dispositions played a larger role in their public perception; they mediated conflicts between locals, determined which regions to police for thieves, and the like. By illuminating the social conditions that cultivated such understandings of the military, we are better positioned to discern the distinctive comportments New Testament authors held toward the Roman Empire and the military more specifically.

 

Update on Military Inscription Discovered in Jerusalem.

By on November 7th, 2014 in Uncategorized

Here is the additional information I have found:

 

Text: [1st hand] Imp(eratori) Cae[sari divi Traiani] | Parthic(i) [f(ilio) divi Nerv]ae nep(oti) | Traiano [Hadri]ano August(o) | pont(ifici) ma[x(imo)] trib(unicia) pot(estate) XIIII | c[o(n)s(uli)] III p(atri) p(atriae) | l[eg(io) X F]reten[sis] [2nd hand] [Antoninia]na{e}

Translation: [1st hand] To the Imperator Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus, son of the deified Traianus Parthicus, grandson of the deified Nerva, high priest, invested with tribunician power for the 14th time, consul for the third time, father of the country. Dedicated by legio X Fretensis [2nd hand] Antoniniana. (Trans. Avner Ecker, with slight revisions)

Provenance: Jerusalem 129-130 CE

Bibliography: CIIP 1.715

 

The CIIP entry, of course, precedes the discovery of the new fragment but has an otherwise exhaustive bibliography.  One hopes that an errata entry will be included in an eventual supplementary volume.

New military inscription discovered in Jerusalem

By on October 21st, 2014 in Uncategorized

From the Jerusalem Post.  The English translation reads:

To the Imperator Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus, son of the deified Traianus Parthicus, grandson of the deified Nerva, high priest, invested with tribunician power for the 14th time, consul for the third time, father of the country [dedicated by] the Tenth Legion Fretensis Antoniniana.

 

I hope to be able to find a Latin transcription and will update this when I do.

Bad Theology = Gnosticism

By on October 7th, 2014 in Academics

I’ve been busy, so I’ll return to the series on Jews and the Roman army shortly.

 

I just wanted to publicly reminisce about the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the way to discredit a given theological position was by suggesting it was a form of modern gnosticism.  I think that rhetorical move is more or less behind us, thankfully.

Jews in the Early Roman Army, Part I: Unambiguous Instances in the Diaspora

By on August 24th, 2014 in Academics

I’ve found a number of inter-related issues frustrating when writing my dissertation around the question of who constitutes relevant data for discussion of Palestine and the early Roman Empire.  I’m planning a short series of blog posts around the authenticity politics of Judaism and the Roman army.

To start, it is commonly assumed that Jews were rarely or never in the Roman army.  Mary Smallwood, for instance, writes that “military service . . . was always bound to cause difficulties for the Jews of the Diaspora because of their dietary laws, which made their inclusion in gentile units impracticable, and their inability to carry out any duties on the Sabbath.”[1]  This post will offer evidence to the contrary, limiting our interest to the period 66-136 CE and those of unambiguously Jewish character.

1) A particularly well documented example is Jesus (also known as Sambathion) son of Papius who served as a decurion in Egypt.  Eight ostraca indicate he paid various taxes, ranging from 96-110 CE. The ostraca were all discovered in Edfu. Those collected in CPJ include 2.220; 2.298; 2.304; 2.311; 2.321; 2.405.

2) Hananiah the centurion paid the Jewish tax immediately before the War of Quietus broke out in Egypt (16 May 116 CE). O.Edfou 159 = CII 2.229

3) A centurion named Benjamin evidently lived in Parembole in the Nile Valley.  He had a son named Simon and a grandson named Thanoum. Notably, his grandson’s epitaph – located in Jaffa – has the word shalom on it in Aramaic script.  These suggest that Jewish identification remained important for later generations and was not abandoned as a matter of course after enlisting. CII 2.920

If we were to expand the period of interest, a number of other figures would be worthy of mention, including Hungarian Jews in the Roman army (e.g., CIL3.10315, 3.10318), Jews in the Royal Emesene Army (e.g., AE 1933.46-48; CII 1.640), as well as Jews serving under the Ptolemies and Seleucids are also known (e.g., CII 2.1450; CPJ 1.18-32).

In the next post, I will discuss a few Palestinian Jews who served in the Roman army.

 

[1] E. Mary Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule from Pompey to Diocletian: A Study in Political Relations (Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity 20; 2nd ed.  Leiden: Brill, 1981) 127.

P.Yadin 11 on Magonius Valens

By on August 18th, 2014 in Uncategorized

Welcome to the inaugural post of my new blog.  I wanted to start it off with a look at a fascinating papyrus originating from the Judaean village of Ein Gedi from 6 May 124 CE.  It was published as P.Yadin 11, but the official SBL Handbook abbreviation is 5/6Ḥev 11.  The monumental work of the late Yigael Yadin has led scholars to prefer citation of the documents in his name instead of the SBL-authorized manner.

After the Judaean War, a number of factors contributed to an increased debt-load for villagers in Palestine.  These factors ranged from a sharp increase in the monetization of the economy (See chapter 11 of Danny Syon’s forthcoming book Small Change in Hellenistic-Roman Galilee) to the transfer of land to imperial loyalists and veterans. The upsurge of debt resulted in a need for loans, which were sometimes procured from the soldiers in an unofficial capacity. The best attestation to this phenomenon in Palestine is a document attesting a forty denarii loan from the centurion Magonius Valens to an Ein-Gedi resident named Judah. The surviving document is a Greek copy of an Aramaic original treating a courtyard as collateral for a loan. Magonius was part of a temporary garrison (cohors I Thracum miliaria) that camped on both the eastern and western border of the courtyard in question, as well as a praesidium to the north; a bathhouse in the area was discovered and may have served the unit in question.[1] The document was given to Judah, while the Aramaic original stayed with Magonius, leading to a strange situation where neither the creditor nor the debtor held a copy in a language they found intelligible;[2] the witnesses include a combination of Jewish and Roman names – the latter monikers presumably belonging to other auxiliary soldiers. In this particular case, it seems the centurion convinced Judah to sign an agreement to repay a 60 denarii loan, when in fact Judah had only received 40: in the initial copy of the text, the word forty is scratched out and replaced by sixty, but only in the second copy did the scribe correctly list the amount Magonius demanded.[3] Comparison with P.Yadin 19 reveals that Judah managed to repay the loan, since he still owned the courtyard in 128 CE.[4] This overt extortion was exceptional, even if loaning practices were predatory by their very nature: the loan attested in Mur114 and most other documents for soldiers’ loans to civilians during the Principate appear voluntary, to the extent that anyone would consent to such terms.[5]

 

The Greek text does not transfer well to my blog at this point, but you can read the full version of P.Yadin 11 here.

Translation (as published in the editio princeps, with light modifications): In the consulship of Manius Acilius Glabrio and Torquatus Tebanianus one day before the nones of May, in Ein Gedi village of lord Caesar, Judah son of Elazar Khthousion, Ein Gedian, to Magonius Valens, centurion of cohors I milliaria Thracum, greeting. I acknowledge that I have received and owe to you in loan forty sixty denarii of Tyrian silver, which are fifteen staters, upon hypothec of the olive (…?) courtyard in Ein Gedi belonging to my father Eleazar Khthousion, whereof I have from the said Elazar trusteeship to hypothecate and to lease out, the abutters of the said courtyard being, on the east the camp and Jesus son of Mandron, west of the camp and the factory of the said Eleazar my father, south a market and Simon son of Matthew, north a street and the camp headquarters; which money I will repay to you on the calends of January in the coming the same year during the said consulship, and the interest of the said money I will deliver to you monthly at the rate of one denarius per hundred denarii per month. If I do not repay you on the specified terminal date as aforewritten, you will have the right to acquire, use, sell and administer the said hypothec without any opposition, and the right of execution both upon me and upon all the posessions everywhere of my father Eleazar, both those which you have acquired and those which we may additionally acquire, will be available to both you and to your representative and to every other person legally presenting this document through you or for you, proceeding validly in whatever manner the one instituting the proceedings chooses, the lease which I hereby leased to you remaining valid. Translation: I, Judah, son of Eleazar Khthousion […] have hypothecated according to the aforewritten terms […]. It was written by Justinus. || [hand 2] Gaius Julius Procles. [hand 3] Kallaios son of John, witness. [hand 4] Onesimus, son of Ian[…], witness. [hand 5] John son of […]os, witness. [hand 6] Joseph son of Sai[…]os, witness. [hand 7] Simon son of Simon, witness [hand 8] Theodore son of […]os, witness.

 

[1] Hannah M. Cotton, “Courtyard(s) in Ein-gedi: P.Yadin 11, 19 and 20 of the Babatha Archive,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 112 (1996): 197-201. Cotton also observes that comparison with P.Yadin 19 indicates cohors I milliaria Thracum left Ein-Gedi by April 128, but military diplomas show the unit remained in Palestine (RMD 3.160; CIL 16.87). Gwyn Davies and Jodi Magness recently disputed that the cohort was ever in Ein-Gedi, though: Gwyn Davies and Jodi Magness, “Was a Roman Cohort Stationed at Ein Gedi?” Scripta Classica Israelica 32 (2013): 195-199.

[2] Jacobine G. Oudshoorn, Roman and Local Law in the Babatha and Salome Komaise Archives: General Analysis and Three Case Studies on Law of Succession, Guardianship and Marriage (Studies on the Desert of Judah 69; Leiden: Brill, 2007), 156.

[3] Naphtali Lewis, The Documents from the Bar-Kochba Period in the Cave of Letters: Greek Papyri [P.Yadin] (Judean Desert Studies 2; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1989), 41; Oudshoorn, Roman and Local Law, 160.

[4] See Cotton, “Courtyard(s) in Ein-gedi” for a discussion of how the courtyards mentioned in P.Yadin 11, 19, and 20 relate to each other.

[5] Cf. Mur113. See the extensive discussion of the papyrological data in Lothar Wierschowski, Heer und Wirtschaft: Das römische Heer der Prinzipatszeit als Wirtschaftsfaktor (Habelts Dissertationsdrucke: Reihe Alte Geschichte 20; Bonn: Habelt, 1984), 17-30. Two additional documents are worth singling out as relevant: 1) P.Hamb. 1.2 = CPJ 2.417 involves a 600 drachmae transaction between three Egyptian Jews and a soldier of ala Vocontiorum. 2) One soldier in Aelia Capitolina (i.e., Jerusalem) loaned a sum to another in 188 CE, as documented in P.Mich. 7.445.