2. Defining Pauline Theology

To designate Priscillian's work a precursor of the modern discipline of Pauline theology requires some definition of the latter.Footnote ¹⁰ Today ‘Pauline theology’ frequently refers to analyses of Paul's thinking on particular theological (or even non-theological) subjects. To speak of Paul's theology of x, y, or z is thus to speak of the ways in which Paul treats x, y, or z as theological loci. Such considerations often correspond to the contingent dimension of Pauline theology, to evoke Beker's classic distinction,Footnote ¹¹ and sometimes belong to the first phase of a larger theological undertaking. ‘Pauline theology’ also then refers to that larger theological undertaking, which is the attempt to draw together an entire system or, for some, a core of Paul's total theological thinking. This form of Pauline theology is usually expressed in terms of ultimate coherence or systemisation and involves the comprehensive presentation of Pauline data (though usually epistolary data alone).Footnote ¹² As James Dunn puts it, ‘a theology of Paul cannot be more than the sum of the theology of each of the individual letters, and yet it has to be more than simply the sum of the letters' theologies’.Footnote ¹³ What Dunn's paradox names is the fact that, although Pauline theology is in some sense the aggregate of Pauline epistolary parts, the ordering and synthesis of those parts remains the handiwork of an interpreter who is doing theology every bit as much as she or he is reconstructing it. Since Pauline theology, like all theology, is ‘a second-order discipline dependent on the first-order language’,Footnote ¹⁴ the personality of the theologian cannot be disentangled from the theological procedure.

The first challenge in composing a Pauline theology in the comprehensive sense is to determine the systemic foundation on which to organise it.Footnote ¹⁵ A Pauline theology requires an order or grounding, but since the letters do not explicitly deliver this, it has to be extrapolated. One traditional way of organising Paul's theology in modern scholarship is on the basis of Romans. This approach recalls Phillip Melanchthon's Loci communes (1521) and is adopted by Dunn and others prior to him.Footnote ¹⁶ Like Melanchthon's great work, which attempts to systematise the whole of Christian teaching on the basis of the structure of Romans, this approach to Pauline theology takes the argumentative construction of Romans (or its supposed argumentative construction) as scaffolding upon which to coordinate the rest of the epistolary data. The presumption underwriting this approach is that Romans represents Paul's most systematic presentation of his thought (a ‘compendium of Christian doctrine’, as Melanchthon would have it), and therefore it offers the most reliable template for organising his theology in systematic terms.Footnote ¹⁷

Priscillian's approach, though differing in its organising principle, still corresponds with the modern procedure in that he uses an independently derived structure for presenting Paul's thought. For Priscillian that structure is, very broadly, the shape of the Old Roman Creed (i.e. the Apostle's Creed), a tradition to which he and Marcellus of Ancyra are our earliest witnesses.Footnote ¹⁸ Priscillian's first eleven canons thus concern Pauline thinking about God and God's relation with the world. Canons 12 to 20 concern the person of Christ, and then canon 21 the Holy Spirit. From canon 22 onwards Priscillian treats numerous subjects, such as the problem of sin and the effects of salvation, various ethical and ecclesial matters, and then specific issues related to the biography and teaching of Paul (canons 61–78), especially his teaching on the Law (canons 64–70). The canons then conclude in 82–90 with nine propositions regarding the ‘general resurrection’Footnote ¹⁹ and then the final judgement and eternal destiny of the righteous – in other words, ‘the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting’.Footnote ²⁰

What makes Priscillian's work so curious – and so intriguing – is the fact that the enterprise of organising Pauline data into a structured Pauline theology is otherwise a decidedly modern endeavour. In other words, the scholarly study of Paul represented by his Canons is without precedent and without successor for well over 1,000 years. Albert Schweitzer traced the modern interest in a Pauline ‘system of thought’ to early nineteenth-century German-speaking scholarship. He appointed the Swiss theologian Leonhard Usteri's work, The Development of the Pauline System of Doctrine (1824), as ‘the starting-point of the purely historical study of Paulinism’.Footnote ²¹ Schweitzer is certainly correct about the modern innovation of ‘purely historical’ Pauline research. But he is also correct about the interest in ‘Paulinism’, or a Pauline ‘system of theology’, as a characteristic feature of modernity. Ancient authors certainly interacted with Pauline theology in many modes – as in the case of Pauline pseudepigrapha, or Pauline commentary, or Acts and other biographical traditions, or every scribe or patron involved with a Pauline manuscript – but they did not compose theologies of Paul in the sense in which Paul's theology is regarded as a subject in its own right. One simply does not find ancient treatises with titles along the lines of On the Theology of St Paul. Except in the case of Priscillian.

3. Priscillian of Avila and his Canons on the Letters of the Apostle Paul

The most famous and secure fact about Priscillian is that he was executed in the mid 380s in the German town of Trier (Augusta Treverorum). A former Spanish bishop and already censured heretic, Priscillian stood trial before the Christian emperor Maximus for, among other things, cavorting with women and engaging in sorcery (the latter was a capital offence). Upon his conviction he was executed, and so the ancient heresy of Priscillianism was born.Footnote ²² Prior to 1886, when eleven lost Priscillianist tractates were discovered by Georg Schepss in the University of Würzburg library, all that remained of this Spanish heretic besides his infamy was his surprisingly influential Canones Epistularum Pauli Apostoli.Footnote ²³ Composed sometime in the second half of the fourth century, the work is extant in twenty-two Vulgate manuscripts ranging from the ninth to the fifteenth century – and this despite Priscillian's reputation as a heretic.Footnote ²⁴ It even remained influential up until the Renaissance, when it was imitated by Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (Jacobus Faber Stapulensis).Footnote ²⁵ The editio princeps, based on Codex Cavensis (ninth century), was published in 1843 by Angelo Mai.Footnote ²⁶ Other editions informed by additional manuscripts include those of Schepss,Footnote ²⁷ Wordsworth and WhiteFootnote ²⁸ and De Bruyne.Footnote ²⁹ An English translation of the entirety of Priscillian's corpus has now been provided by Marco Conti.Footnote ³⁰

The work as we now know it in the extant Vulgate traditions comprises three parts: (1) two introductory prologues – one by a Bishop Peregrinus and another by Priscillian himself; (2) the ninety ‘canons’, which are discrete propositional statements of Pauline theology with a list of supporting citations from the letters themselves; and (3) Priscillian's edited version of the fourteen Pauline letters (with the addition of Hebrews). Most important about this edition is that it includes Priscillian's novel paratextual system, which divides each letter into numbered testimonies (testimonia) – or we might say verses – for purposes of citation.Footnote ³¹ He also appends the corresponding canon numbers, where they exist, next to the testimonia numbers to cross-reference the Pauline data with his theological summations.

The Canons are preceded in all extant versions first by a preface from an otherwise unknown Bishop Peregrinus, who explains that although the canons have been affixed to Jerome's Vulgate, Jerome is not their author.Footnote ³² Peregrinus identifies Priscillian as the author but then assures the reader that, though a heretic, Priscillian's Canons are still full of many indispensable things and any trace of heresy has been dutifully corrected.Footnote ³³ After Peregrinus’ remarks comes Priscillian's own introduction, which describes his method of textual division and explains how to read the Canons in relation to his cross-referencing system. Priscillian's introduction is presented as a personal response to an unidentified confidant who had asked him to provide a simple defence, or bulwark (propugnaculum),Footnote ³⁴ against the deceits of heretics. Priscillian explains that he has decided to focus his efforts on the ‘scriptures set in the middle’, by which he means ‘the fourteen letters of the most blessed Paul the Apostle’. He explains that he first determined ‘to distinguish the meanings of the testimonies in their text’ (in earum textu sensus testimoniorum distinguere). The verb distinguo can also, in rhetoric and grammar, mean ‘to divide’ or ‘to punctuate’ or even ‘to mark pauses in a discourse’, which is how Priscillian is using it here to describe his philological project.Footnote ³⁵ As Priscillian goes on to explain, he has ‘distinguished’ or ‘divided’ the sense or meaning of the testimonia by numbering them in black ink beginning with one and continuing until each letter's end.

With this citation system in place Priscillian next began composing his canons. As Priscillian explains, the canons are numbered one (i) to ninety (xc), but in red ink instead of black. He also notes that the canons are intended to convey the ‘flavour’ (sapor) or essence of the testimonies, and he indeed sticks closely to keywords in the letters, even as he recombines them. Below each canon are then listed the citations from the letters that supply the ‘flavour’ for Priscillian's theological propositions. The first canon illustrates Priscillian's procedure:Footnote ³⁶

The numbering of the ninety canons is important because throughout his edition of the letters Priscillian has also incorporated the canon numbers, where they exist, next to whichever testimonies are cited. This completes the circle on the cross-referencing scheme. One can read Priscillian's work from the canonical synthesis back to the Pauline data or from the Pauline data to the canonical synthesis. One can read all the citations in a given canon in relation to one another, or trace how a given passage is used in various canons. The relationship between the canonical proposition and the citations supporting it is, therefore, mutually reinforcing. The references supply the raw material for the theological synthesis, but the synthesis also informs how those texts are then read individually and in relation to one another. As Chadwick notes, this unique combination of dogmatic Pauline propositions with accompanying citations from the letters is ‘designed to give the reader a coherent picture of what Priscillian thinks central in Pauline theology’.Footnote ³⁸ It is, indeed, an ambitious attempt to construct a comprehensive account of Pauline theology, but it is also much more than this. Although Priscillian's ingenious technology for coordinating primary textual knowledge with secondary theological synthesis remained without parallel for over a millennium following, the technological and theological principles that animated Priscillian's work have become foundational elements in modern scholarship.Footnote ³⁹

Priscillian's normal practice in dividing the Pauline letters is to ‘distinguish’ testimonia in what amounts to anywhere between two and four modern verses – although sometimes much less, sometimes much more. Table 1 illustrates the number of testimonia into which each letter is divided, as well as how many times material from each letter is used in the Canons. Priscillian usually divides according to what he takes to be reasonable sense units or where he sees structural or thematic shifts. The one letter that most frequently departs from this typical practice is Hebrews. Some testimonia, such as testimonium 19 in Hebrews, approach chapter length according to modern standards (Heb 10.35–11.35[suos]), while others, such as testimonium 20 in Hebrews, are little more than half a modern verse (Heb 11.35[alii]–11.35[resurrectionem]). The use of much smaller divisions is not, however, unique to Hebrews, and it appears to occur in expressions for which Priscillian has specific purposes, or in ones that involve stark contrasts, which he then divides into discrete propositions. It seems that his approach to division was from the outset motivated by his plan to cite the various testimonia in his larger theological synthesis.

Table 1.

Epistolary Data in Priscillian's Canons

*This is where Priscillian has located Colossians in his edition of the letters. Priscillian is not alone in placing Colossians here. See E. Harrison Lovering, Jr, ‘The Collection, Redaction, and Early Circulation of the Corpus Paulinum’ (PhD diss., Southern Methodist University, 1988), esp. 259–62.

In an age accustomed to information technology like book division, versification, indexes and tables of contents, it is important to underscore the ingenuity of Priscillian's Canons as the earliest extant index keyed to a literary corpus by means of a numerical system. Nothing prior to Priscillian's Canons approaches this degree of technological sophistication. Although the novelty of his system should not be overlooked, aspects of his apparatus were not without precedent.

4. Paratexts in Antiquity

Since the work of the literary theorist Gérard Genette, it has become common to refer to textual devices such as titles, prefaces and tables of contents as ‘paratexts’.Footnote ⁴⁰ As Genette remarks, a text

Hence, although a paratext is not a part of the text proper, it is indispensable to the text as a ‘threshold’Footnote ⁴² that conditions a reader's expectations for the work to follow. Paratexts are, then, not superfluous adornments to the text. They are instead integral to it and affect any reading of it, even if only in subliminal ways. As Laura Jansen puts it, ‘Far from being an issue that preoccupies only the theoretically minded, the matter of the paratext is always – albeit often imperceptibly – already at work in the hermeneutic process.’Footnote ⁴³

The study of ancient paratexts is a fairly recent development, but one that is quickly progressing along multiple avenues of investigation.Footnote ⁴⁴ In 2011 the University of St Andrews hosted a conference that resulted in a collection of essays published in 2014 under the title The Roman Paratext, and in 2015 a four-year project funded by the European Research Council began, with the aim of cataloguing more than 500 biblical paratexts from more than 2,500 Greek manuscripts.Footnote ⁴⁵ Isolated studies of biblical paratexts have recently appeared and more are sure to follow.Footnote ⁴⁶ Yet so far Priscillian's important contribution to this literary form has been entirely overlooked.

The use of paratexts in ancient literature corresponds to the developing interest in systems for dividing texts into discernible units and then in more precise systems for citing portions of a text. In an illuminating article Carolyn Higbie has traced the development of ancient citation conventions from the Hellenistic through to the Roman period. In the oldest form, authors were cited simply by name or by name and work, though occasionally a specific scene or subject was also mentioned.Footnote ⁴⁷ Aristotle is a characteristic example of the more specific form of citation (Poetics 1454b):

Here Aristotle is referring to Euripides’ Medea 1317 and Iliad 2.155. Since those texts did not originally have any ordered divisions or features that could be cited, this is as precise as his reference can be. In time numbered textual divisions were added to works like those of Homer and Euripides, and these were then used for purposes of citation, but this only occurred centuries after the original compositions. In 99 bce, for instance, the Lindian Chronicle refers to the second book of Herodotus’ Histories: ‘About which Herodotus the Thurian testifies in the second book of his Investigations (ἐν τᾶι Β τᾶν ἱστο[ρι]ᾶν).’Footnote ⁴⁸ Similarly, in a second-century CE papyrus, the second-century BCE scholar Apollodorus of Athens is said to have written a commentary on ‘book 14’ of the Iliad (see Pap. Med. 19 [= Pack² 1197]).Footnote ⁴⁹ These are the earliest extant references to Homer and Herodotus being cited by book division.

While the earliest forms of book division were later editorial supplements to previously undivided texts, the historian Ephorus (fourth century bce) was perhaps the first author to use book division as a compositional principle,Footnote ⁵⁰ and in this he was followed by his fellow historian Polybius (second century bce).Footnote ⁵¹ The earliest surviving tables of contents in Latin date to shortly after this time.Footnote ⁵² From around the first century bce onward, book division became more common and, accordingly, authors began citing works by book number more frequently. Cicero and Quintillian are prominent examples among Latin authors who from the outset of composition structured the content of their works by book, but the author who made the most extensive use of this device was Pliny the Elder. He in fact devoted the entirety of the first book of his thirty-six-book Natural History to a table of contents for the work that follows.Footnote ⁵³ His adopted nephew Pliny the Younger may have been deliberately following his uncle when he prepared his edition of his own letters, for he too began each of the nine books of his collection with a table of contents listing the addressees and incipits for each letter.Footnote ⁵⁴ By the third century ce, citation by book number was more frequent, as seen, for example, in Athenaeus, who cited numerous authors, and not just the likes of Homer and Herodotus, by book number. As Higbie notes, this third-century evidence ‘suggests an increasingly literate world, in which writers consult texts and provide citations for their readers’.Footnote ⁵⁵ The degree to which paratextual navigation was being used by the early fifth century can be seen in the acta from the Council of Carthage held in 411. In his preface to the minutes of the council, the notary Marcellus explained that he included an enumerated table of contents as a ‘shortcut’ (conpendium) to enable readers to find quickly what they were searching for, and the subsequent list of capitula runs to forty-six pages in the critical edition of the text, comprising 882 headings.Footnote ⁵⁶

Hence, by the time Priscillian was writing in the late fourth century, the division of a sufficiently lengthy work into a series of enumerated sections was relatively common, but what sets his innovation apart from those already discussed is that he divided the Pauline corpus not into ‘books’ (libri; βίβλοι) or ‘chapters’ (capitula; κεφάλαια) but much smaller testimonia, which allowed for a significantly more precise citation system. The identification of individual scriptural proof-texts as testimonia had been going on for at least a century in the Latin West,Footnote ⁵⁷ and it is likely that the impetus for Priscillian's project also was the selection of useful proof-texts for theological debate, as he himself indicates in his preface. Yet by sectioning and enumerating not merely isolated passages, but instead each Pauline letter in its entirety from beginning to end, he created a comprehensive citation system with utility exceeding the original design of its author. In this respect he was probably following a path blazed by an earlier fourth-century author, Eusebius of Caesarea.

5. Ancient Christian Paratexts, Priscillian's Pauline Canons and Eusebius’ Gospel Canons

Paratexts for the books that would eventually become the New Testament were first developed as early as the second century with a series of prologues to the Pauline letters that may go back to Marcion's edition of the Corpus Paulinum.Footnote ⁵⁸ The fourth century, however, seems to have been a period of particularly intense development of this genre, with the most prominent example being the Eusebian Canons, which were translated into Latin in the early 380s and passed to the Latin world along with Jerome's Vulgate edition. There is also at this time widespread evidence for the division of biblical books into chapters, known in Greek as κεφάλαια and in Latin as capitula.Footnote ⁵⁹ To the fourth century likewise belong the earliest components of the so-called Euthalian apparatus, which is the most comprehensive attempt to supply all of the New Testament texts, apart from the Gospels, with paratextual content in Greek. The Euthalian edition included for each book (Acts, catholic epistles and Pauline epistles) a prologue, a list of κεφάλαια, a ὑποθέσις (or introductory summary), a list of scripture citations in the letter (with the title ἀνακεφαλαίωσις θείων μαρτυρίων) and various other lists and historical information.Footnote ⁶⁰ It is also worth pointing out that Priscillian's work on the Pauline corpus was not the only paratextual endeavour undertaken by him or those in his movement. Although they were long known as the Prologues of the Monarchians, the four anonymous prefaces to the Gospels that appear in over one hundred Vulgate manuscripts are now widely regarded as in fact traceable to Priscillian himself, or at least to his later followers.Footnote ⁶¹ These gospel prologues (combined with the Canons on Paul) evince a great interest within his movement in producing editions of biblical texts equipped with paratextual content, content that long persisted in the Latin biblical tradition despite his association with heresy.Footnote ⁶²

Priscillian's Canons thus fit within a wider interest in the fourth century in producing new editions of sacred texts equipped with paratextual apparatuses, but his creation has the most in common with, and was likely influenced by, the Canons for the four Gospels composed by Eusebius. One similarity between the two systems is that they each provide a more precise system of enumeration by breaking a lengthy text up into smaller sections, a feature that, as previously noted, does not appear in any literature prior to this point. Moreover, the purpose of this sectioning is identical in both systems. Eusebius’ ten κανόνες compiled numbers for gospel sections that exhibited parallels between them, and Priscillian arranged his ninety canones so as to bring together Pauline data from across the corpus under dogmatic headings. In other words, among all of the biblical paratexts experimented with in the fourth century, only the systems of Eusebius and Priscillian are not simply paratexts; they are also hypertexts that create a web of textual links across a given corpus. It is also highly probable that Priscillian borrowed his mise-en-page from Eusebius, since he says the sequential numbers for the testimonia are written in the margin of each letter in black, while the number of the appropriate canon is written in red,Footnote ⁶³ the same colour-scheme as that described by Eusebius in his Letter to Carpianus. The fact that Priscillian chose to call his lists of passages canones also implies a likely link with Eusebius, since this native Greek term is very rare in Latin in either pagan or Christian literature prior to this time, and only begins to be regularly used around the time of Priscillian.Footnote ⁶⁴ If he had simply been looking for a term to refer either to his ninety propositions or to the list of numbers attached to them, canon would hardly have been the obvious choice.Footnote ⁶⁵ It is unlikely that both Eusebius and Priscillian independently came up with the idea for such a system of numeric cross-referencing, so Priscillian was probably inspired to undertake the task of producing Pauline paratexts by the prior efforts of Eusebius.Footnote ⁶⁶ It was in the early 380s that Jerome was busy translating the Gospels, including Eusebius’ Canons, into Latin for Pope Damasus, so it is no stretch of the historical imagination to suppose that Priscillian might have been aware of Eusebius’ system around the same time further west.

There are, however, two marked differences between the two systems that highlight the way in which Priscillian adapted Eusebius’ concept to his own purpose. First, if Eusebius’ Canons were stimulated by criticisms of the inconsistency of the four Gospels, this is a fact that he nowhere reveals either in his prefatory Letter to Carpianus or in the internal logic of his apparatus, which in fact resolves nothing. In contrast, Priscillian introduces his Canons on Paul with an explicitly polemical agenda. His system was the result of a request from an anonymous correspondent for ‘a very firm bulwark against the heretics’ crafty deceit’.Footnote ⁶⁷ Such concerns appear alien to Eusebius’ composition (and to the related work of Ammonius prior to him).Footnote ⁶⁸ The second major difference is immediately obvious from a quick glance at the layout of each work on a page. Eusebius presented his κανόνες as a series of ten numeric grids with no further textual content aside from a title at the top of each table noting the number of the canon and the names of the Gospels contained therein. In contrast, Priscillian's system has, for each of the ninety lists of references, a statement standing at the head that integrates the Pauline data under consideration into a single proposition. The addition of these propositions gives his apparatus a theological focus, in contrast to the numerical abstraction of the Eusebian Canons. At least two later users of Eusebius’ apparatus made modifications to it that resemble Priscillian's Canons. A sixth-century papyrus from Egypt includes fragments of Eusebius’ tables, and alongside some of the numbers in the tables are brief marginal descriptions of the content of the adjacent sections. This, however, was by no means a systematic treatment, and it seems to have been limited to certain passages that were to be read at certain feasts throughout the ecclesiastical year.Footnote ⁶⁹ A more thorough attempt was made in Codex Brixianus, a sixth-century purple codex in which each parallel in all ten canons was accompanied by the opening words of the scene, an addition that expanded the entire sequence to over 150 pages.Footnote ⁷⁰

Both of these systems postdate Priscillian, and neither of them extends the usefulness of Eusebius’ apparatus to any great degree. Eusebius’ goal was not to create a dogmatic table of contents but rather to provide a means of finding parallels among the four Gospels, and to convert his ten canons into a table of contents requires either that one be very selective, or expand the system to ungainly proportions. Moreover, the randomness of the sequence of parallels in Eusebius’ system precludes any logical progression through the tables. In contrast, Priscillian's system intends from the outset to be a dogmatic index, with topics arranged roughly according to the order of the church's creed, and by being situated at the head of the Pauline corpus his ninety canons exert a more explicit control over the interpretation of the sacred text that follows. One way of characterising this distinction is to say that Eusebius’ system presumes that its user will begin from some point in the midst of reading one of the Gospels and then seek to find parallel passages (the very process he describes in his Letter to Carpianus), while Priscillian's paratext sits at the front of the letters as a key to reassembled Pauline data under dogmatic headings. Two different styles of scholarship are thus encouraged by the two apparatuses: Eusebius’ system for the scholar or even casual reader of the Gospels interested in exploring the richness of the gospel tradition, and Priscillian's for the heretic-fighter or homilist who needs a proof-text to win an argument or a statement of dogmatic clarity to distinguish what is errant.

To some degree this distinction between the systems of Eusebius and Priscillian is a result of the differing challenges raised by the Tetraevangelium and the Corpus Paulinum. This is to recall two seminal articles in twentieth-century New Testament scholarship: Oscar Cullmann's ‘The Plurality of the Gospels as a Theological Problem in Antiquity’Footnote ⁷¹ and Nils Dahl's ‘The Particularity of the Pauline Epistles as a Problem in the Ancient Church.’Footnote ⁷²

As outlined by Cullmann, the challenge with respect to the Gospels was explaining why there was more than one definitive version of the life of Jesus. This plurality threatened to undermine any sense of unity in the Jesus tradition, thereby jeopardising Christianity's claim to truth. By contrast, the challenge with the Pauline letters was that they were such obviously occasional writings, prompted by the specific circumstances of specific churches, that a leap was required to posit the universal applicability of these so very particular texts. Eusebius’ Canons for the fourfold Gospel and Priscillian's Canons on Paul may be viewed as attempts to address these divergent challenges. The remarkable achievement of Eusebius’ system is that it neither obscures the discrepancies between the four Gospels, nor does it abstract from the fourfold witness to a reconstructed life of Jesus (or a harmony). The numerical abstraction and apparent randomness of the tables ensures the neutrality of the system as a means to study the Gospels themselves, without overtly telling the reader how to reconcile the differences. It thus codifies the plurality of the Gospels without resolving any presumed problem of contradiction. By contrast, Priscillian's Canons directly confront the problem of particularity by generalising the Pauline data, creating synthetic propositional statements that are arranged according to a sequence alien to the Pauline letters. Removed from the circumstances that gave rise to the individual letters, these statements, although presented in Pauline idiom, obtain a timeless quality so as to ensure their universal applicability.Footnote ⁷³ For the problem of gospel plurality, Eusebius’ paratextual technology facilitates systematic comparison. For the problem of Pauline particularity, Priscillian's paratextual technology provides an abstract synthesis.