Luke’s prologue presses the question raised in Part I (“What is a Gospel?”) into new territory: what about the many other writings that variously recorded Jesus’s life and/or teachings not included in the New Testament canon? Many of them also accrued the title “Gospel,” generally conformed to the definition outlined in Part I, and populated the literary landscape of early Christianity into Origen’s own day. This chapter considers how, in Origen’s view, one may distinguish the four received Gospels from the many others, and how he understands Luke (in particular) to have participated in this process of discernment in the way he hands on the traditions he receives. Origen cannot accept that Luke’s own language allows one to reduce his intent with these narratives to matters of plain facticity. Something, as Luke says, had “come to pass among us,” something of which he and his tradents had become fully convinced, something that had made of them all servants of its proclamation: “attendants of the word.” In other words, the very writing of these stories becomes, in Origen’s view, a form of “spiritual reading” of Jesus’s early life.

9.1 [603] So then, by taking up our shield a longside the doctrines of the truth with the utmost endurance, so it seems to me, we have held our own against the nonsensical words of those who know only how to disparage our doctrines.1 But because our opponent bears down upon the ineffable glory with all his sails unfurled and dares, as it were, to lead forth his profane ideas in unbearable assaults, expending his most effective resources on the task of stripping the nature of God the Father of his progeny and stripping the true Son, who came from his nature, of his hypostasis2 (for he does away with his existence and engages in such extremely perilous undertakings), come now, “putting on the breastplate of justice,” while also lifting up “the shield of faith” and whetting against him “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,”3 let us show that he is a liar and in his extreme arrogance all but kicks against the goads4 and leaps down into the deep pit of destruction.5 [604]

1 The successes of your holy empire are noteworthy, remarkable, and cannot be expressed in words, and the incomparability of your piety, which is like an inheritance come to you from above, you have successfully defended from the arrows of envy, thanks to the skill in all things excellent that you received from your father and also your grandfather,1 as is obvious in this instance.2

Sacra: Letter omicron, concerning conceit and appearance, and that being is better than seeming; for this is a hindrance to virtue2

The concept of leadership has not received much attention in Assyriology as it was overshadowed by the concept of kingship and its omnipresence in ancient Mesopotamia. As the available sources mostly are written from the perspective of the leader – in the case of ancient Mesopotamia this is the king or the city ruler – also Assyriologists mostly took this standpoint and wrote ‘history from above’. Much scholarly effort was invested in the study of various aspects of kingship. Because of the scarceness of sources discussing the experience of the ruler’s leadership and the abundance of royal inscriptions, we usually do not take the perspective – to use a widespread political metaphor – of the sheep, but only that of the shepherd. Nevertheless, there are some texts that critic the leadership of kings. These texts are mostly of literary nature but they allow us at least a partial ‘view from below’, as they describe the problems of people living under a powerful king.

There has never been a time when the life of Jesus has not presented some occasion for scandal. Although the primordial scandal of the Christian Gospel unfolded around the figure of a crucified Messiah, this book takes as its principal subject a derivative scandal: the scandal of the Christian Gospels; namely, the impediments – even offenses – to literary, historical, and logical sense that only seem to multiply in proportion to one’s intimacy with the narratives of the four Evangelists. The suggestion of such things will itself be scandalous to some.

What sort of thing are the narratives of the life of Jesus, literarily speaking? (History? Biography? Fiction? Myth?) And what bearing does their genre have on the manner of interpretation proper to them? This chapter attends to Origen’s account of the Gospels’ genre, literary precedents, and relationship to other forms of ancient literature in order to establish why he believes the Gospels cannot be read as transparently historical narratives. Here, I propose that the kind of narratives Origen believes the Evangelists compose is directly comparable to the stories one finds throughout the scriptures of Israel. Furthermore, Origen also relates the Gospels’ literary similarity to Jewish biblical narrative to the way they both share a similarly complex relationship to facticity. The Gospels, in sum, all narrate the deeds, sufferings, and words of Jesus “under the form of history”; these historical narratives are of a mixed character, interweaving things that happened with things that didn’t and even couldn’t, with an eye toward presenting the events recorded to have happened to Jesus figuratively.

Cyril of Alexandria was a central figure in many of the theological developments and religious conflicts that challenged the stability of the fifth-century eastern Roman Empire. Crucial moments during his episcopacy (412–44) marking wider and more complex developments may be seen with sharp clarity in the outbreaks of overt violence between Christians and Jews and between Christians and “pagans” in the metropolis of Alexandria during the first years of his episcopal career. Moreover, roughly halfway through his tenure as bishop, he would involve himself in a doctrinal dispute underway in the eastern capital of Constantinople, opposing its bishop Nestorius because he believed the truth of the gospel was dangerously undermined by what he took to be Nestorius’ errant Christology. Through the savvy manipulation of ecclesiastical and imperial politics, Cyril succeeded in having Nestorius deposed by the Council of Ephesus in 431, though it took eighteenth months of negotiations to restore communion between the warring factions.

Origen’s examination of Jesus’s baptism in Against Celsus offers readers a particularly secure first footing for apprehending his sense of the Gospel narratives’ “mixed” character. That Jesus was baptized by John is hardly problematic, historically speaking. But the events narrated to have taken place directly after the baptism presented no less difficulty for readers in antiquity than they do for readers today. Origen preserves Celsus’s dismissal of the descent of the dove and voice from heaven as an obvious fiction. Origen, however, resists the judgment. Why? His reply to Celsus puts the whole complex of first principles detailed in Part I to work. According to Origen’s view, one can receive the narrative to be “true” inasmuch as it depicts, in figurative language drawn from prophetic literary tropes, Jesus’s own interior inspiration at the commencement of his public ministry. In short, the story narrates something real, something “historical” even, precisely insofar as it is entirely spiritual. The Evangelists then came to share in the same kind of vision Jesus is said to have had at his baptism and narrated “in figures” what they, too, had “perceived in their own understanding.”

A prevalent idea in scholarship on Athenian politics of the classical period is the assumption, based on figures like Pericles and Demosthenes, that political leadership depended on the ability to give good advice and communicate well with fellow citizens in the Council and Assembly. Without necessarily challenging this assumption, the present chapter focuses on a mechanism for attaining political leadership that has received less attention: gift-giving to both individual citizens and the entire community. Athenians with political ambitions built networks of followers (clients) through private gifts, but the phenomenon has not been fully appreciated because of the supposition that nothing comparable to the Roman patron/client relationship existed in the Greek polis. This chapter focuses on the case of Demosthenes.

10.1 [675] We have, I believe, given an account of the shadow in the law that is precise, since the enemy of the truth attempted – I do not know how – to persecute us and bizarrely brings the indictment of lawlessness against people who, more than anyone else, have made a firm determination to fulfill those divine laws in a more rational and precise manner than those who are conversant with the bare types alone. But since he takes us to task for absolutely everything we say and do, observe how he plunges us, so to speak, into yet more accusations, and says we stand in opposition even to the holy mystagogues themselves and have given no regard to the apostolic tradition, but instead have turned wherever our whim might carry us – and what’s more, without being taken to task for it! For he again writes as follows:1 [676]

This chapter focuses on the way the Livian conception of political leadership reflects the corresponding Ciceronian theory. Although Livy does not seem to use any specific term for ‘leadership’, the latter is given a prominent role in his theory regarding the progress and the decline of the res publica: in his much-commented-on passage of his preface (praef. 9), both the relaxation of disciplina and the role of the leaders (uiri) are elucidated by reference to Cicero’s theory and terminology of leadership. Disciplina should then be defined as a way of moral and political life transmitted from one generation to the other, which is essentially based on the principle of obedience to an ‘enlightened’ political leadership. The characteristics of efficient leadership are expressed by Livy in various comments or speeches throughout the work. The role attributed to the people and the leaders in Livy’s scheme also reveals a close affinity with Cicero’s theory of the ideal leader as a moderator rei publicae, especially in the De re publica. Livy also promotes some leaders of the Roman past as exempla which have incarnated the Ciceronian ideal of leader.