Ultimate Reality in Ancient Christianity Christ Blood Sacrifice and Redemption

Ultimate Reality in Ancient Christianity Christ and Redemption Paula Fredriksen Introduction In Christianity, as in Judaism, God is the ultimate reality-the absolute foundation of everything that is, and the end toward which all points. То grasp the conception of God that inf ormed the religious convictions of those first Christians whose work survives in the New Testament (NТ), we could all stop reading here and move directly over to Saldarini's �ssay: the God of (non-Gnostic) Christians was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Later Trinitarian and Christological theology will articulate strong variations on this idea of deity, but its basic contours, identifiaЬly ЬiЬlical, remain. То f ocus on their idea of God, then, will not move us very far along in an investigation of what made these early generations Jews of а peculiar sort-that is, Christians. То do that, we must attend to Christi­ anity's characteristic, indeed foundational, ultimate reality: Jesus Christ. 1 propose to ignore those NТ passages so f avored Ьу the high philo­ sophical formulations of patristic theologians, such as the Johannine Pro­ logue or Philippians 2:5-п. The Christologies they classically sup­ ported-essences, substances, persons, and processions-only obscure our view of the ways that "Jesus Christ" functioned as an ultimate reality for the first generations of the new movement. I propose, rather, that we attend to the ways that Jesus appears as, is imagined as, or functions as а Ыооd sacrifice. I will concentrate on the earliest stratum of the NT evi­ dence, namely, the Pauline epistles, to present а reconstruction of the way that both Paul as а Jew of the late Second Temple period, and Paul's mid-first-century formerly pagan audience would have understood the 'person and work' of Jesus Christ. I will then move from this reconstruc­ tion to see how it makes coherent the rich sacrificial imagery that we have in other, slightly later NТ writings: the Gospels of Matthew and John, the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Apocalypse of John. We have to stop thinking theologically and instead think sacrificially. Purity, holiness, sep­ aration, Ыооd, flesh, eating: these orient us in the first-century under­ standing of the new reality wrought in Christ. Paul, the Gentiles, and the God of Israel "••. in the priestly service of the gospel of God." (Romans т5:тб) Moderns tend to analyze ancient religions in terms of their ideas. Thus, ancient Judaism was monotheist, 'nationalist', and exclusive; paganism, polytheist and, while local, in principal ecumenical.1 In terms of reli­ giously motivated practices and behavior, however, Jews and pagans were much more alike than different. What bound them together-in­ deed what distinguishes all modern Western religion, grosso modo, from ancient-was cult: the offerings, Ыооd sacrifices, and purity rules univer­ sally prescriptive of antiquity's religious etiquette. Greek males sacrificed, usually within the oikos, Ьу pouring out the animal's Ыооd and burning the fat and bones to or for the god(s), par­ celing out and eating roasted viscera (liver, lungs, hearts, and kidneys), boiling and distributing other meat to а wider circle of worshipers (in­ cluding, perhaps, women). The point of the act was not the animal's death, but the ritual reorganization of its body, which in turn culticly es­ taЬlished lines of kinship and generated for these men а family relation­ ship through the pure Ыооd of sacrifice that women could achieve only through the impure Ыооd of childbirth.2 As in majority culture, sacrifice in Judaism was а male preserve. Jewish men-primarily priests but, de­ pending on the category of the offerin:g, also non-priests-sacrificed at the temple in Jerusalem.3 The details of these offerings bulk large in the last four of the five books of the Torah, and they might Ье brought for many reasons: worship and communion with God, glorification of him, purification, atonement, thanksgiving, commemorative feasting.4 Again, the Ыооd would Ье poured out оп the altar, the animal's body reorga­ nized and distributed (some to the altar, some to the priest, some to the worshiper; though in the case of а burnt offering the altar's fire consumed the entire animal). For both Jews and Gentiles, those in proximity to the altar had to Ье in the correct state of purity-an objective ontological cat­ egory as much if not more than а moral category.5 Jewish proximity to holiness was governed Ьу another binary distinc­ tion: not only impure/pure but also common or profanelholy (НеЬ. chollkadosh). А Ьlemished animal, or а priest with а physical imperfec­ tion, was not suited to Ье brought near or minister at the altar. Such а priest may eat sacred food-that is, he can Ье pure-but he may not serve because, since Ыemished, he is common. His presence would profane the altar, not (since purity is not at issue) defile it.6 Gentiles did not have di­ rect access to the altar for а similar reason: "though not inherently im­ pure, Gentiles are inherently profane," 7 that is, common, Ьу definition not members of the holy nation set apart Ьу God, Israel. Paul composed the letters we have to his Gentile communities in the mid-first century­ that is, well before Titus's destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. This means that Paul's (Pharisaic) religious sensibllity was rooted in the an­ cient and prestigious cultic practices of Israel estaЫished Ьу God as а sign of his special favor toward Israel (the latreialavodah of Romans 9:4), practiced in the Temple where his kavod (Paul's doxa, again 9:4) uniquely dwelled. It is an obvious point, but it bears considering, as does another: when he wrote, the movement for which he served as apostle was itself within Judaism: the God his Gentiles were now to worship was the God of Israel. А third point: Paul's position-that Gentiles do not have to become Jews in order to participate in Israel's salvation-is itself traditional, to Ье found at least as early as some passages in the classical prophets, and as late as а century or so later in other Jewish apocalyptic texts and (less exotically) in synagogue prayers.8 Taking all this together, then, we may proceed to our main question: How, in Paul's mind, does Christ as Ыооd sacrifice effect Gentile redemption and, indeed, the re­ demption of the world? "The transference of the language of sanctuary and sacrifice to Chris­ tian life is central to Paul." 9 But how does this transference work, and what does it tel1 us about Paul's Christology? Не easily uses the forms of latreuo, the word for cultic service (cf., latreia above) to characterize the piety of the community: "We are the true circumcision who worship Ьу the spirit of God" (hoi pneumati theou latreuontes, Philippians 3:3). His Gentiles now serve "the living and true God" (1 Thessalonians 1:9); through Christ's sacrifice, they have been swept up into the redemptive drama of Israel, itself in its final stages. Paul presents Christ as а Ыооd sacrifice at а number of points in his letters, but he neither coordinates these usages nor particularly explains them. I Corinthians 5:7: Christ as Paschal Sacrifice "Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that а little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven, that you тау Ье а new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ our pascha has Ьееп sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." 2 Corinthians 5:2I: Christ as Sin Sacrifice "We beseech on behalf of Christ, Ье reconciled with God. For our sake he made him hamartia who knew по sin, so that we might become the right­ eousness of God in him." Romans 3:24: Christ as Atonement Sacrifice "Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified Ьу his grace as а gift, through the redemption which is in Christ ]esus, whom God put forward as а hilasterion through faith Ьу his Ыооd." If, as I suggested above, Paul's sacrifice-language must Ье understood within the context of Temple and Torah, we must note that his usages here seem impressionistic and certainly unsystematic. The reference to the pascha in 1 Corinthians 5:7, for example, upon examination, turns out to Ье less а Christological image than а very Jewish way of keeping time. The immediate point of this passage is Paul's exhorting the (Gen­ tile) Corinthians in the ekklesia to seemly behavior (cf. their boasting, in chap. 4, and misplaced arrogance, v. 2 above). Не then moves into а sus­ tained metaphor comblning morality and preparations for Pesach. "Leaven" obviously stands in for pride (which "puffs up"). Christ as pas­ chal sacrifice then comes in as а way of warning the Corinthians that it's too late in the day to persist in acts of porneia. In the language of Paul's metaphor, it's already I4 Nisan and there's still chometz in the house-a thought that would probaЬly panic а trained Pharisee more than this au­ dience. Compared to the analogies between Christ and the paschal lamb drawn in the passion narrative at John 19:36, Paul hardly exploits his Christological possibllities here at all. Comparison with other NT writings-the operative metaphors in He­ brews or Revelation with Christ as Ыооd sacrifice; or John's offensive teasing in chapter 6 about eating Christ's flesh, or even in chapter 2 with Christ's body compared specifically with the Temple-underscores how foggy Paul's use of Ыооd sacrifice language for Christ really is. Examples 2 and 3 above, for example, lose their clarity once considered in light of the practicalities of Levitical sacrifice. Hilastёrion тау mean "atone­ ment," but it might also mean "act of reconciliation," Stanley Stowers has recently noted, having nothing to do with sacrifice. Не also observes that ancient Mediterranean sacrificing cultures, Jewish and Greek, at­ tached no special significance to the death of the animal itself. "The sac­ rifice was the ritual use-disorganization and reorganization-of the animal's body that took place after the killing." Sacrifice is not about death, "whereas Paul's reference in Romans 3 is precisely on the signifi­ cance of Christ's death."10 So too with hamartia at 2 Corinthians 5:21. The Hebrew hattat be­ hind the Septuagint's (LXX) translation would mean а sin offering (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:3: Christ died "for our sins"). But such sacrifices cleanse the place (and sancta), not the person. Blood offerings purge the Temple, or its altar: they do not cleanse the sinner.11 The closest analogy to the way Paul seems to imagine the dynamics of cleansing here is the scape­ goat, offered at Yom Кippur, who bears away the sins of the community. But Paul nowhere avails himself of this image, and besides-a nod to his eucharistic instruction-you don't eat scapegoats. Unpacking Paul's language of sanctuary and sacrifice does not get us very far in terms of his Christology: an image of Christ as а particular sort of sacrifice never emerges. But given that Christ's ultimate impor­ tance for Paul is the way that he integrates Gentiles into the redemptive drama of Israel, we might get further in our investigation Ьу attending to the way Paul speaks about these Gentiles. The Thessalonians, for ex­ ample, having once worshiped idols, now turn and serve "the living and true God" (1 Thessalonians 1:9). This results in their hagiasmos, ren­ dered in the RSV, via the Latin, as "sanctification." Accordingly they must now abstain from morally polluting acts such as porneia; each should use his wife or his own body (skeuos) "in hagiasmo and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God." For these Gentiles who, through the gospel, do know God have been called "not for impurity" (akatharsia, the moral consequence of fornication and idolatry) but "in holiness" (hagiasmos; 4:4,8). Elsewhere, he ad­ dresses such Gentiles simply as "holy," hagioi (Romans 1:7, RSV "saints"; 1 Corinthians 1:2). They have been made holy in Christ (1 Corinthians 1:2). Paul exhorts his Gentiles to non-Gentile behavior Ьу asking, "Do you not know that you are God's Temple, and God's spirit dwells in you? . . . For God's Temple is hagios, and you are" (r Corinthians 3:r6). "Your body is а temple of the holy spirit"-like the one inJerusalem (6:r9; cf. Matthew 23:2). "We are the Temple of the living God," (2 Corinthians 6:r6). His Gentiles are also sacrifices (thusia) to that God, "holy and ac­ ceptaЬle" (Romans r2:r). Through baptism, God's spirit has incorpo­ rated them, somehow, into the eschatological, sacrificed, and resurrected body of Christ: false gods, hostile astral powers, and Sin itself no longer have power over them (r Corinthians r2:r2-r3, 27; Galatians 3:28, 4:3-9; cf. Romans 6:п). T hanks to Christ, through his death, Ьу the Spirit, in baptism, they have been set apart. То Ье "set apart" for God is, of course, the ЬiЬlical understanding of "made holy." If we understand Paul's language of separation and sanc­ tification in terms of the ЬiЬlically based Ьinary terms governing prox­ imity to holiness, we can begin to make sense of his vision of Gentile re­ demption in Christ. For the Gentile's proximity to holiness is what Christ, through his death and resurrection, has accomplished. "In Christ," these Gentiles have eschewed their former morally polluting acts, with respect to which they are now "clean." But the operative term, the опе that signals their eschatological change of status, is hagias­ mos, holiness: they now-through his spirit, miraculously-are set apart for and Ьу God. То hear this (as we do through the Latinized En­ glish of our translations) as "sanctification" has us facing off toward а sacramental, ecclesiastical future that Paul did not know would exist. Understood within the context of Paul's religion, however-pharisai­ cally oriented late Second TempleJudaism-the term means simply that, through Christ, in the Spirit, these Gentiles are по longer соттоп or profane (chol) but holy (kadosh), and thus suitaЬle to Ье brought close to Holiness. Understanding how Paul constructs the ultimate reality of Christ and of Gentile redemption within this Levitical matrix in turn opens up his understanding of his mission, what he felt himself called to, the ultimate (and existential) reality of his apostolate, especially as he prepares to go toJerusalem: to einai те leitourgon Christou Iesou eis ta ethne hierour­ gounta to euangelion tou Theou hina genetai he prophora ton ethnon eu­ prosdektos hagiasmene еп pneumati hagio; "to Ье а [Temple] servant of ChristJesus to the nations, sacrificing the Gospel of God, so that the of­ fering of the Gentiles may Ье ассерtаЫе, made holy Ьу the holy spirit" (Romans r5:r6). А caveat about translation. Just as the RSV obscures Paul's Temple language at Romans 9:4, where doxa becomes "glory" (Lat. gloria) and latreia becomes "worship" (Lat. obsequium), so here with leitourgos as "minister" and hierourgeo as "priestly service." 12 Behind Paul's doxa stands the Hebrew kavod, God's glorious presence that dwells on earth in the Temple in Jerusalem-Paul's named destination in this closing chap­ ter. Kavod evokes the Shekinah. Similarly, latreia in Paul's native context recalls avodah: the cult revealed Ьу God through Moses on Sinai to Is­ rael, and preserved before God's presence at his altar inJerusalem. "Wor­ ship" is too Ьloodless а translation. If Temple and Torah stand behind Romans 9, so too Romans r 5. "Minister" seems fair for the Latin minister, but given the inevitaЫe interposition of the Reformation between Paul's day and ours, its ancient meaning specifically of "а priest's attendant" (Lewis and Short), and thus its specific association with the Jerusalem altar, disappear.13 And while "priestly service" fits hierourgounta, the Latin sanctificans inevitaЬly conjures sacrament. Paul's "priestly service" means cult: when Paul says hieros here, he's thinking cohen. In brief, Paul draws deeply on the wellsprings of his religious tradi­ tion-Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy; the ultimate reality of Torah-to articulate his convictions concerning the newly re­ vealed ultimate reality of the Gentile's redemption in Christ. Hence too the catena of prophetic quotations (nevi'im, the next canonical layer after Torah in Tanak) with which Paul closes Romans, praising God for his gracious inclusion of the Gentiles in Israel's worship. T he Gentiles' moral and spiritual transformation articulated and evinced the miraculous change in their status vis-a-vis the Temple-thus God-from common to holy.14 It confirmed Paul's religious convictions as а Jew that in the death and resurrection of Jesus, God had begun the final transformation of the world, as he had promised Israel so long ago. "For I tel1 you that Christ became а servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and so that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy" (r5:8-9). Paul's use of these ЬiЫical images can Ье confusing if we look for some kind of system. Не has none. He's improvising, playing stunning varia­ tions from the scriptural sheet music. All the images spill, merge, and mix messily with each other. The Gentiles are the offering and they send their offering too. T hey have been made both pure and holy. T hey are God's Temple and so тау соте near it. Christ is some kind of Ыооd sacrifice, but no single ЬiЬlical paradigm controls the metaphor. His death empo':­ ers the Gentiles to break free of the cosmic forces that encourage the1r moral impurity; the spirit sets them apart, in holiness, for God. One last observation: familiarity with ЬiЫical imagery aside, Paul's lan­ guage of purity and sacrifice-not the Levitical details, but the principles of purity, sacrifice, and eating-would have intrinsically made sense to his Gentile audience because of their own embeddedness in their own ancient Mediterranean sacrifice culture.And Paul presents the Eucharist-"flesh" and "Ьlood" of the sacrificial meal-as controlled Ьу altar etiquette (r Corinthians ro:ц-2r; cf.п:23-30, on the consequences of participat­ ing in the sacrifice and meal when unfit). Finally, Paul's use of meat lan­ guage for the Eucharist speaks to his effort to upgrade this meatless, bread-centered meal within its pagan context, where such were the meals of females, and meat meals the singular preserve of men and method of binding together the household (oikos) in social birth. Christ as Blood Sacrifice in Later NT Writings "Behold the Lamb of God." (John т:29) All the other writings in the NT collection are composed after the year 70, thus after the destruction of the Temple. Whether as Christian Jews (Matthew, John, and arguaЬly the authors of Hebrews and Revelation) or Christian Gentiles (again, the author of Hebrews and Revelation),15 these authors had to make sense of Judaism without а Temple, and thus without cult-the burden, again, of much of God's instruction in four of the five books of Torah. As the chapter on Judaism in this volume re­ minds us, traditional narratives, laws, prophecies, revelation, history it­ self are "ultimate realities" alongside-or as acts of-the.ultimate Ulti­ mate Reality, God. In these changed circumstances, then, without the Temple, we see how these authors begin to fill the void left Ьу Rome Ьу using Temple language and sacrificial imagery specifically to define and describe Christ, the Reality to whom they and their communities appeal in making their claim to Ье the sole legitimate interpreters of the revela­ tion to Israel. Two significant differences between these later writers' use of sacrifi­ cial imagery for Christ and Paul's are the dropping away of purity and holiness language, and the way that they regard the (now no-longer standing) Temple. Both points are related. For Matthew and John, Christ's death serves as а metonymy for the Temple's destruction-expli­ citly inJohn 2:r9-2r; narratively in Matthew 24 and at 27:5r, when the Temple's curtain tears in two.16 For the author of Hebrews, the earthly Temple is relativized Ьу the existence of the heavenly, eternal Temple, the one in which Jesus himself perpetually serves both as perfect high priest and as perfect Ыооd sacrifice (Hebrews 9:п-r2). For these writers, аЬ- sent the earthly Temple, God's holiness is no longer localized, so purity and holiness as cultic terms no longer matter: they continue to Ье used, but only as moral metaphors. T he author of Revelation goes yet а step further: Christ is Sacrifice (the Lamb); but when he returns and the hea­ venlyJerusalem descends, it comes without any Temple, "for its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb" (Revelation 2r:22). All these authors understand Christ's crucifixion specifically as а Ыооd sacrifice.Matthew's Christ at the last supper presents the bread and wine as his own body and Ыооd, to Ье eaten. T his effects "forgiveness" (26:28 thus, а sin offering; cf. 20:28, а ransom). An implication of Hebrew's image of Christ as high priest and sacrifice might Ье the Yom Kippur of­ fering of а goat (cf. 9:I2); in any case, the author is explicit on the medi­ ating role of priesthood and Ыооd offerings ("For every high priest cho­ sen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins," 5:r). T he author of Revelation consistently presents Christ as "the Lamb," specifically on Mount Zion (ц:r); а slain lamb who "Ьу [your] Ыооd did ransom men for God" (6:r, 9); his sacrifice enaЬled his followers to serve as priests (hence their white robes) before God's throne "and within his Temple" (7:r3-r5). If any one thing categorizes the Johannine images for Christ, it is their bewildering variety: Christ appears as God's Word, Lamb, Son, True Vine, Eternal Water, Bread of Life, Bread from Heaven, the Sheepgate, the Light of the world. Nonetheless, John's two clearly developed refer­ ences to Christ, his body, the Temple, and Passover are foregrounded Ьу their rhetorically important position in his narrative: at the beginning of the mission, on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (2:r3-22); at the end, again inJerusalem, on the cross (r9:I4, 3r-33). T his particular sacrifi­ cial image-tied in via 6:47-58 specifically with eating bread/flesh and drinking wine/Ьlood, and with resurrection/lifting up-thus forms а sort of dramatic inclusio bracketing John's story.John knows his LXX. His Ьlackly humorous emphasis on eating Christ's flesh to have eternal life (which makes the narrative audience and even some of the disciples too queasy to stay on, v. 60) recalls the corban Pesach, which commandment is fulfilled explicitly Ьу eating (Exodus I2:7 on its Ыооd, which saves from death; v. 9ff: "They shall eat the flesh ...and you shall let none of it remain until the morning ... you shall eat it"; Deuteronomy r6:7, "and you shall boil it and eat it"). It's а good analogy.T he person offering does not get to eat the sin sac­ rifice, and nobody eats the Yom Kippur sacrifice. Everyone must eat the Pesach sacrifice.Perhaps it wasJohn's development of this theme that led him to shift the narrative chronology of the Passion, moving it back one day from Mark's, whereinJesus dies the night of the Passover meal.Here, Jesus dies on the day and at the time when, in the Temple courts, the Pass­ over lambs were still being slaughtered. And, in case anybody missed the point, John alone emphasizes that the Romans did not break Jesus' legs (19:32-33), thus preserving his status as а kosher offering (cf., Exodus 12:46, "you shall not break а bone of it"). Exodus might have redeemed from Egypt; but this Passover offering brings eternal life and redemption from the darkness of the lower cosmos. Ultimate Realities True to its Jewish matrix, earliest Christianity focuses on Torah, Temple, offerings, and community as it speaks of the ways that God works re­ demption in history. Metaphysics will соте to dominate the Christian understanding of biЬlical revelation, and the revelation of Christ, only centuries after the period we have studied here. The fundamental-or ul­ timate-emphasis early on is social: eating а sacrifice together Ьinds and creates community with others and with God. At this stratum, then, there is little to Ье said of intellectual models of apprehending ultimate reality (cf. Eckel's remarks on Buddhism and ra­ tional cognition). God as Ultimate Reality will Ье parsed, in the patristic period, with the same commitment to intellectual elegance and clarity as we find in Vedanta Desika's lsvarapariccheda, when the texts we have looked at will provide а hermeneutical point of departure for theological speculations. But the earliest Christian communities whether Jewish or Gentile were evidently comfortaЬle with intellectual messiness-some­ thing, perhaps, that we should expect of any new religious (and thus so­ cial) movement in its radioactive first phase. In its insistent concreteness, the Chinese sensiЬility on these issues is perhaps truest to the tone of our authors. And its construction of Reality (shi) as "solid, substantial, hard, authentic, real" (see 1.1.2) stands in sharp contrast to the platonizing intellectual tradition-where non­ empirical is precisely more "real"-which, Ьlended with ЬiЬlical narra­ tive, defines Christianity in its classical phase. T he experience of Ulti­ macy in Paul's communities, brought about Ьу the shared sacrifice meal of the Eucharist, produces concrete effects, both spontaneous (the disrup­ tive charismata of glossolalia and prophecy) and ordered (correct moral behavior toward others and in oneself): as Kohn points out, "Reality, if it is to Ье real at all, has to Ье part of experience" (1.1.2). But the early Christian cosmos is much less staЬle than the Chinese, thanks to its eschatology. T he cosmos stands on the brink of а huge trans­ formation, imagined historically: even the astral stoicheia, the elements of the universe, are being affected Ьу Christ's resurrection and will Ье de­ feated or transformed at his (imminent) return (Galatians 4). So too will Ье the bodies of those in the community, their flesh changed from "physi­ cal" to "spiritual" in keeping with the new order (1 Corinthians 15, pas­ sim). T hus while following the Dao leads to harmonious realization of cosmic order in the self, following "the Way" does not, because the cos­ mos is damaged, disrupted, subject to futility, and groaning while it awaits transformation (Romans 8). And nothing like the sage's realization of the ultimate occurs, or has time to occur, in paleo-Christianity's social world: the spirit of God, accessed through ritual acts like immersion and eating, is а disruptive, kinetic jolt presaging the Kingdom to соте. Christ as Ыооd sacrifice, ekklesia as sacrifice-created community, sick­ ness and death as the consequence of approaching the sacrifice in the wrong state ( "this is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died" 1 Corinthians п:30)-all point to the non-abstract, concrete, in­ trinsically social way that earliest Christians imagined both Christ and sal­ vation. It is this mode of imagining the Ultimate that marks earliest Chris­ tianity as the ancient Mediterranean religion it was, and marks off the point from which it will grow from а sect within Judaism into the separate religion and culture-neither Jew nor Greek-that it will later become. Notes Hence Nock's distinction between 'adherence' and 'conversion'. See Arthur Darby Nock, Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo (London: Oxford University Press, 1933). 2. Му very condensed characterization rests on Stanley Stowers, "Greeks Who Sacrifice and Those Who Do Not," The SocialWorld of the First Christians: Essays in Honor ofWayne А. Meeks, ed. L. Michael White and О. Larry Yar­ brough (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 293-333. See also (for Jewish ЬiЬlical sacrifices as well) Nancy Jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever: Sacri­ fice, Religion, and Paternity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 3. In principle, such sacrifice was restricted to Jerusalem. ln fact, we know from Josephus of at least one other temple, built Ьу dissenting Zadokite priests during the turmoil of the early Hasmonean period, in Leontopolis in Egypt; and Philo states that Jews in the diaspora sacrificed the paschal lamb where they were. 4. Most recent complete study: Е. Р. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 всв-66 СЕ (Philadelphia: Trinity Press lnternational, 1992), esp. chap. 7. 5. Semen defiles, according to Leviticus and Numbers, not because sexual ac­ tivity (always understood: between married partners) was sinful, but because semen was specifically one of the polluting genital effluvia. With some pagan cults, the two categories, ontological and moral, evidently were sometimes 1. mixed: "In many pagan cults, rules of sexual purity governed entry into а temple and sometimes participation in worship. Generally they excluded people who had recently had sex or specifically committed adultery, but the exclusion was usually brief. Before sleeping in Pergamum's great shrine of Asclepius, clients were expected to have abstained from sex for two days; elsewhere, one day, or а quick wash, sufficed. . . . The rules for а puЬlic cult in Pergamum demanded а day's interval after sex with one's wife, two days' after sex with someone else's." RoЬin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (Lon­ don: Harmondsworth, r986), 347. On moral impurity as а distinct category within Judaism, see Jonathan Кlawans, "Gentile Impurity in Ancient Judaism," Association for Jewish Studies Review 20.2 (r995): 285-3r2, esp. 29off. 6. 1 rely here esp. on Кlawans, iЬid. On the Ьlemished priest, e.g., see Lev 2r:r8. 7. IЬid., 292. 8. For the full argument, see Р. Fredriksen, "Judaism, the Circumcision of Gen­ tiles, and Apocalyptic Норе: Another Look at Galatians r and 2," Journal of Theological Studies 42 (r99r): 532-64. 9. William Horbury, "Land, Sanctuary and Worship," Early Christian Thought in its Jewish Context (New York: Cambridge University Press, r996), 207-24, at 2r9. ro. For Stower's entire argument on construing hilastёrion, see А Rereading of Romans (New Haven: Yale University Press, r994), 206-r3. The quotation is from р. 207, with specific reference to the work of J асоЬ Milgrom. п. For а review of the ЬiЬlical evidence, see Jacob Neusner, The Idea of Purity in Ancient Judaism (Leiden: Е. J. Brill, r973). On Levitical impurities, J. Milgrom's Leviticus r-rб А New Translation with Introduction and Com­ mentary (New York: DouЬleday, r99r). Mary Douglas, in Purity and Dan­ ger (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, r966), and her more recent "In the Wilderness: The Doctrine of Defilement in the Book of Numbers," Religion 26 (r996): 69-89, offers а cultural-anthropological analysis of the ancient Israelite purity system. r2. Lexicographical information from Charlton Т. Lewis and Charles Short, А Latin Dictionary Founded оп Andrews' Edition of Freund's Latin Diction­ ary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, r969); Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, А Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Ox­ ford University Press, r996); and William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, А Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Lit­ erature: А Translation and Adaptation of the Fourth Revised and Augmented Edition of Walter Bauer's Griechisch-deutsches Worterbuch zи den Schriften des Neuen Testaments und der йbrigen urchristlichen Literatur (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, r957). r3. Cf. the LXX's use of leitourgia at Num 8:25 for the performance of service in the Tabernacle; cf. 4:32 LXX. Ч· This might Ье one reason to take seriously the accusation related (and dis­ avowed) in Acts 2r:28, where Paul is accused of "bringing Greeks into the Temple." r5. I incline to think that both were Jews, because of their deep familiarity with ЬiЬlical texts, which were not commonly availaЫe outside of synagogue communities. This same fact accounts for Paul's unselfconscious usage of ЬiЬlical texts, tropes, and figures for his Gentiles: they too must have fre­ quented the synagogue (and рrоЬаЫу continued to), or they would have had по prayer of understanding him. r6. This is а theme that Matthew picks up from his narrative source, Mark. For the full argument, see Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ (New Haven: Yale University Press, r988).