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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
In Jesus the Magician I argued that the earliest pagan reports of persecutions of Christians—those in Suetonius, Tacitus, and Pliny the younger—indicate that the persecutors believed the Christians were practicing magic. Here I want to explain their belief by reviewing the eariest evidence for Christian congregational practices and indicating how these practices would have been understood by the ancient Christians' neighbors. This does not imply that there were not other grounds for the persecutors' belief. Magic seems to have figured in the charges for which Jesus was condemned; it certainly was prominent in the propaganda against his cult that was spread by rival Jewish groups. Such propaganda doubtless shaped the expectations with which many outsiders viewed early Christianity, and people are apt to see what they expect to see. Nevertheless, Pliny's famous letter shows that Roman authorities sometimes tried to get beyond rumor to the facts. Accordingly we should ask what the facts would have looked like to men of the Greco-Roman world in the late first and early second centuries, a world in which magic was practiced on all levels of society and almost universally believed to be effective. As “the facts” we may take, with some reservations, the evidence about Christian congregations to be found in Paul's relatively unquestioned letters—Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, or Philippians, and Philemon.
1 Smith, Morton, Jesus the Magician (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978) 50ff.Google Scholar and the notes on p. 180.
2 Suetonius Nero 16.2; Tacitus Annals 15.44.3–8; Pliny Letters 10.96.
3 Jesus the Magician, 41.
4 Ibid., 54–60.
5 This argument seems to have been orginally designed as a proof for the resurrection, perhaps in connection with the dispute reflected in 1 Corinthians 15. However, as the context shows, Paul is here reusing it as an argument to prove that the Christian life here and now is of a different sort than before baptism, and that the change of nature should be reflected in a new morality.
6 Papyri graecae magicae (henceforth PGM), ed. Preisendanz., K. (2d ed., ed. A. Henrichs; Leipzig, 1973–1974) 2Google Scholar vols., cited by papyrus number (in this collection) and line. Here 4.154–220ff. Salvation by union with a god's form appears in 2 Cor 3:18, cf. Phil 2:6. There are numerous other NT parallels, see Jesus the Magician, 193, first note to p 104. For parallels to Paul's equation of “being in” Christ and “having” Christ or the spirit, see Reitzenstein, R., Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen (3d ed., 1927; reprint ed., Darmstadt 1956) 73.Google Scholar
7 Lewy, H., Chaldaean Oracles and Theurgy (Cairo, 1956) 204–13Google Scholar; (recently reedited by M. Tardieu).
8 Apuleius Metamorphoses 11.23 with the commentaries of Griffiths (1975) and Hildebrand (1842); “Lampridius,” Commodus 9, with those of Casaubon and Salmasius (in the Hacks edition, Leiden, 1671).
9 E.g., Delatte, A. and Derchain, P., Bibliothèque Nationale … Les Intailles magiques gréco-égyptiennes (Paris, 1964) 89–104; 221–31.Google Scholar
10 Further expressions of important elements of the notion, especially death and resurrection in Christ, appear in 1 Cor 6:14 (read exegeirei, the lectio difficilior; 2 Cor 5.15f; Gal 2:19f.; 5:24; Phil 1:21; etc).
11 PGM 4.333ff.; 1391ff.; 1871ff.; 2730ff.; 5.330ff.; 58.
12 PGM 4.2000–99 is the best example.
13 1 Cor 7:35. As Lietzmann suggested (ad loc) the word seems to have been coined by Paul. The earliest subsequent usages (Dorotheus of Gaza, Pseudo-Macarius) are based on this text, of which they show the developed orthodox interpretation. The editors of TWNT omitted the word as of no theological importance.
14 1 Cor 12:11; cp. 12:4–9; Rom 12:5ff. In 1 Cor 12:28 all are gifts of the one God.
15 PGM 7.635 (a spell to get “the true Asclepius and not some deceptive demon instead of the god”); 8.81 (a spell to get “the true prophet”), lamblichus De mysteriis 2.3ff. gives a long list of criteria by which spirits of different sorts can be distinguished.
16 2 Cor 13:3; contrast 1 Cor 7:10, where he did have good tradition, therefore appealed to it, and therefore was more modest in 7:12. Magicians often represented themselves as the god present and speaking; references to such passages, under ego, fill most of a column in the index of PGM.
17 1 Cor 1:16; cp. PGM 3.591ff., “We recognize (our debt of) thanks to Thee (Helios) … who hast given us mind … that we may know thee … who hast deified us by knowledge of thyself.”
18 Gal l:15f.; see the many passages collected in Jesus the Magician, 125f. and notes.
19 2 Cor 12:6ff.; Gal 2:2; and often.
20 For a full account see Hopfner, T., Griechisch-ägyptischer Offenbarungszauber (Leipzig, 1921–1924) 2 vols. (Studien zur Palaeographie und Papyruskunde, 21 and 23).Google Scholar
21 For “revelation” Paul uses apokalypsis, but this need not be taken to refer to a work having literary form or eschatological content like those of the NT Apocalypse. The use of apokalypsis for works of this latter sort began (so far as we know) with the title of the NT book, probably given it half a century or more after Paul's time. See my article in the forthcoming volume of the International Conference on Apocalyptic held at the University of Uppsala in 1979. Paul unquestionably used apokalypsis for revelations that answered immediate, practical questions, e.g., Gal 2:2. It seems likely that most revelations given the members of Pauline communities, like most of those sought in the magical papyri, were of this sort.
22 Rom 8:14ff. (ho pater is Paul's translation); again Gal 4:6. With abbaabba compare hubbahubba and the like in modern popular songs; ecstatic utterances in western society have probably changed little through the ages.
23 Bonner, C., “Traces of Thaumaturgic Technique in the Miracles,” HTR 20 (1927) 171ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
24 Pistis Sophia, trans. Schmidt-Till, chaps. 136, 142, discussed in my Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1973) 233Google Scholar, where the many parallels from magical texts are cited.
25 PGM 7.643ff. The Demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden (henceforth DMP) eds. Griffith, F. and Thompson, H. (London, 1904; cited by column and line) 15.1–23; 21.10ff.Google Scholar See Jesus the Magician, 110ff. (where PGM 7.643 is translated) 122 (where DMP 15.8ff.) and 146f. for a brief discussion of some other proposed explanations of the rite. Bickerman, E. (“Ritualmord und Eselskult” MGWJ 71 [1927] 171ff. and 255ff.)Google Scholar has shown that drinking human blood is a rite used in primitive societies all over the world to establish alliances. Such usage presumably often reflects belief in its magical efficacy.
26 In PGM the great example is 13.139–209, parallel 441–563, but there are many minor instances: 4.95ff., 2978ff., etc.
27 Against the Galileans 100 A.
28 See the evidence in Jesus the Magician, 110 and notes on 196.
29 1 Cor 2:4; 2 Cor 1:12; 12:12; Rom 15:19; cf. Gal 3:2.
30 Jesus the Magician, 47ff. and notes.
31 2 Cor 4:10 and the many parallels cited ad loc in Nestle-Aland. PGM l.lff. (the life of the drowned and thus deified hawk); 4.1823ff., 2943ff.; 7.335ff.; 12.32ff., 311ff.
