Slandering the Jew: Sexuality and Difference in Early Christian Texts PDF
Preview Slandering the Jew: Sexuality and Difference in Early Christian Texts
Slandering the Jew 21849 Divinations: ReReaDing Late ancient ReLigion series editors: Daniel Boyarin, virginia Burrus, Derek Krueger a complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher. Slandering the Jew sexuality and Difference in early christian texts susanna Drake university of pennsylvania press philadelphia 21849 21849 copyright © 2013 University of Pennsylvania Press all rights reserved. except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United states of america on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of congress cataloging-in-Publication Data Drake, susanna. slandering the Jew : sexuality and difference in early christian texts / susanna Drake. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (Divinations : rereading late ancient religion) includes bibliographical references and index. isBn 978-0-8122-4520-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. sex—Religious aspects—christianity—History of doctrines— early church, ca. 30–600. 2. christianity and other religions— Judaism—History—early church, ca. 30–600. 3. Judaism— Relations—christianity—History—talmudic period, 10–425. 4. church history—Primitive and early church, ca. 30–600. i. title. ii. series: Divinations. BR195.s48D73 2013 261.2'609015—dc23 2012047257 To Richard Drake and to the memory of Julia Angevine Drake Thomas Strickler and Mildred Martin Strickler 21849 21849 Contents introduction 1 1. The Making of carnal israel: Paul, Barnabas, Justin 19 2. origen Reads Jewishness 38 3. sexual/textual corruption: early christian interpretations of susanna and the elders 59 4. “ a synagogue of Malakoi and Pornai”: John chrysostom’s Sermons against the Jews 78 conclusion 99 List of abbreviations 107 notes 111 Bibliography 141 index 165 acknowledgments 175 21849 21849 This page intentionally left blank This page intentionally left blank Introduction Antioch, 386 ce In his first sermon against the Jews, delivered in Antioch in the autumn of 386 ce, John Chrysostom told a story of an abduction in which a “defiling and unfeeling man” forced a Christian woman, “elegant and free, well-b ehaved and faithful,” to enter a synagogue. The woman resisted her attacker. She pleaded with Chrysostom to help her. Heroically, the newly ordained priest came to her rescue: “I was fired with jealousy,” Chrysostom said, “and burning with anger, I rose up, I refused to let her be dragged into that transgression, I snatched her from the hands of her abductor! I asked him if he was a Chris- tian, and he said he was. . . . I told him he was no better than an ass if he, who said that he worshiped Christ, would drag someone off to the dens of the Jews who had crucified him.”1 This licentious abductor claimed to be a Christian, but, in Chrysostom’s eyes, he was tainted with the stain of Jewishness. The abductor believed that an oath sworn in the synagogue was more powerful than one sworn in the church. It was precisely this sort of dangerous religious hybrid— this impure “half Christian”2— that Chrysostom railed against in his sermons Adversus Iudaeos. The sexualized depiction of the heretical Christian- Jew as a male predator who preyed upon pure Christian women was not lost on Chrysostom’s audience.3 In Adversus Iudaeos, John Chrysostom frequently depicted Jews and so- called Judaizers as lascivious wolves in pursuit of innocent Christian sheep, and he asserted that he himself was the good shepherd who protected the sheep from their Jewish predators.4 His self- presentation as a stalwart guard- ian of Christian women went hand in hand with the gendered and sexualized portrayal of his religious opponents. Delivered at a time when the church in Antioch was more imperial than imperiled, his first sermon against the Jews made use of this narrative of violent abduction and aggression to map differ- ences between “true” Christians and their heretical Others, Jews and Juda- izers especially. Chrysostom’s portrait of a heretical Judaizer luring a pure(ly) 21849
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