Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity

161 Pages·1990·10.41 MB·English

by  Jonathan Z. Smith

• •
IVlne
Drudgery Divine
Chicago Studies in the History of Judaism
Edited by
William Scott Green and Calvin Goldscheider
Drudgery Divine
On the Comparison of Early
Christianities and the Religions of
Late Antiquity
Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion, XIV
School of Oriental and African Studies
University of London
JONATHAN z. SMITH
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
JONATHAN Z. SMITH is the Robert o. Anderson Distinguished Service
Professor of the Humanities and in the College, and a member of the Committee
on the History of Culture at the University of Chicago. His books include
Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown and To Take Place: Toward Theory in
Ritual, both published by the University of Chicago Press.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
© 1990 by School of Oriental and African Studies
All rights reserved. Published 1990
Printed in the United States of America
99 98 97 96 95 94 93 92 91 90 5 4 3 2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smith, Jonathan Z.
Drudgery divine: on the comparison of early Christi ani ties and the religions
of late antiquity I Jonathan Z. Smith.
p. cm. - Gordan lectures in comparative religion; 14) (Chicago studies in
the history of Judaism)
Lectures delivered at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of
London, 1988.
Includes bibliographies and indexes.
ISBN 0-226-76362-5 (cloth). - ISBN 0-226-76363-3 (pbk.)
1. Christianity and other religions-Roman-Study and teaching-History.
2. Christianity and other religions-Greek-Study and teaching-History.
3. Rome-Religion-Study and teaching-History. 4. Greece-Religion
Study and teaching-History. 5. Mysteries, Religious-Study and teaching
History. 6. Christianity and other religions-Judaism-Study and teaching
History. 7. Judaism-Relations-Christianity-Study and teaching-History.
8. Christianity-Origin-Study and teaching-History. 9. Apologetics
History. I. Title. II. Series. III. Series: Chicago studies in the history
of Judaism.
BR128.R7S55 1990
291' .09'015-dc20 90-38519
CIP
i§ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
CONTENTS
PREFACE Vll
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IX
ABBREVIATIONS Xl
I. ON THE ORIGIN OF ORIGINS I
II. ON COMPARISON 36
III. ON COMPARING WORDS 54
IV. ON COMPARING STORIES 85
V. ON COMPARING SETTINGS II6
INDEX 144
For Siobhan and Jason, a daughter and a son sans pareil
A patient pursuit of facts, and a cautious combination and
comparison of them, is the drudgery to which man is subjected
by his Maker, if he wishes to attain sure knowledge.
Thomas Jefferson
Notes on Virginia (I78I)
PREFACE
WHEN, in the first two decades of this century, Louis H. Jordan
presented his classic briefs for the defence of comparative religion
to the courts of both academic and public opinion, he could
appeal to the widely shared assumption that comparison was the
scientific method par excellence. He could point, by way of
analogy, to its triumphs in the fields of comparative anatomy and
philology and could promise the same for religious research. 1
There appears to be no such consensus or confidence today.
Indeed, it may be argued, comparison has come to be, for many
in the field, the sign of unscientific procedure, abjured in the
name of responsibility towards the concrete specificity of their
objects of study. This crise de conscience makes all the more urgent
the task of rethinking the comparative enterprise in modes
appropriate to the academy's self-understanding as well as to its
perception of the processes and goals of disciplined inquiry.
In what follows, I shall be reflecting on the comparative
endeavour by means of a classic and privileged example: the
comparison of early Christianities and the religions of Late
Antiquity, especially the so-called mystery cults.
I have chosen this example for reasons having little to do with
its possible intrinsic interest. Rather, I have selected it because
there is an unusually thick dossier of the history of the enterprise.
Literally thousands of monographs, dissertations and articles have
been addressed to the question,2 so that one is able to compare the
comparisons and undertake archaeological work in the learned
literature in such a way as to highlight both theoretical and
methodological issues as well as matters of 'interest', queries as to
what is 'at stake' in the various comparative proposals.
1 See, J. Z. Smith, Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions (Leiden,
1978): 254-56.
2 See, among others, the rich bibliographies by K. J. Priimm, Religionsgeschichtliches
Handbuch for den Raum der altchristlichen Umwelt (Freiburg im Breisgau): 215-356;
R. Pettazzoni, 'Bibliographie des religions a mysteres dans l'antiquite,' Cahiers d'histoire
mondiale, 2(1954-55): 661-67; B. M. Metzger, 'A Classified Bibliography of the Graeco
Roman Mystery Religions, 1924-1973, with a Supplement, 1974-77,' ANRW,
2.17.3:1259-1423.
Vlll DRUDGERY DIVINE
I have selected this privileged example as well because, for the
almost four centuries. of this enterprise here passed in review, the
data brought to the comparison, both from early Christianities
and from the religions of Late Antiquity, have remained remark
ably constant. This is an area of scholarly inquiry, not unlike
others within the human sciences, where progress is made not so
much by the uncovering of new facts or documents as by looking
again with new perspectives on familiar materials. For this reason,
matters of methods and models ought to be central. In the pages
which follow, 'what interests us here is not so much the
connections between phenomena as the connections between
problems'3.
3 v. N. Volosinov (M. Bakhtin), Marxism and The Philosophy of Language (Cambridge,
Mass., 1973): xv.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS book contains the revised texts of the Louis H. Jordan
Lectures in Comparative Religion as delivered at the School of
Oriental and African Studies (University of London) in March,
1988. I am grateful to the School for the invitation to prepare
these lectures and for providing a stimulating series of seminars in
which they could be discussed. I am especially indebted to
Professor J. E. Wansbrough, the Pro-Director of the School, and
to Professor J. R. Gray, Chairman of the Centre of Religion and
Philosophy, for many courtesies and good conversations. Miss
N. C. Shane did much to make our visit to London a memorable
one both for my wife and myself.
Three of the chapters were delivered, in a somewhat different
form, as the Selma Pilavin Robinson Lectures at Brown Univer
sity, sponsored by the Judaic Studies Program, in March, 1988.
As they have on other occasions, Professors J. Neusner and
E. Frerichs were both generous hosts and gentle goads in enabling
me to clarify the relationships between these particular studies
and other investigations shared with members of the Program.
There is no other Judaic Studies program in America which is
consistently hospitable to this sort of generic discourse.
The graduate students of the Early Christian Literature pro
gram at the University of Chicago, organized by Colleen
Stamos, hosted a series of evening seminars in which the several
chapters were discussed at an early stage of their drafting.
In preparing this text, most especially the first chapter, I have
often envied the printed catalogue of Dr. Williams Library
(London). This distress was considerably eased by the fine
holdings and extraordinary assistance of the staffs of the Depart
ment of Special Collections at the Joseph Regenstein Library
(University of Chicago) and of the Meadville/Lombard Theolog
ical School (Chicago).
Jason Smith served as my mystagogue, initiating me into the
intricacies of word-processing and rescuing me on more than one
occaSIon.