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One suggestion has been that Theophilus doesn't mention Jesus as a way of keeping this secret from Autolycus. I think there are big problems with this scenario.

Autolycus isn't just a blank slate (Book 3, Chapter 4). This scenario assumes that Autolycus hasn't heard any rumours of a human founder to Christianity. But given the traditional view, how is that possible?

And Theophilus doesn't just take out one doctrine that might be abhorent to Autolycus (for example that a human man could be God's son). He cuts Jesus right out. He doesn't mention him as a founder, or even (like John) as a source of quotes.

It isn't clear exactly what Autolycus's presumed problem would be with mention of Jesus. After all, Autolycus is a pagan, and should not find the idea of a Godman abhorrent. Is it the humiliating punishment? But how is Crucifixion so different from what happened to Prometheus.

Maybe it was that Autolycus would be offended by the idea of a religion started by an executed criminal? First, Theophilus could have just left that part out. But more important, I think this is a terrible argument, because in fact, having a crucified founder wouldn't be a liability, but a godsend.

Compare two accounts.

"We Christians are persecuted. You guys say we have sex with our sisters. But it isn't true!"

Of course, the Pagan is thinking, "You would say that." It's always easier to defend a third party then to defend yourself. That's why it's much more effective to say,

"Our founder, Jesus, was a great man, who said those wise things. But he was unfairly persecuted, and even killed as a result of slanders against him. But far from discouraging his followers, we have continued to grow in numbers to this day. Just like him, we are persecuted when people believe slanders against us, but this is what he prophesied would happen."

The point is that by glorifying a persecuted figure of the past, you make a model through which to understand the persecution of today. Remember that our best evidence is that Christians were persecuted, so making Christians out to be accepted members of Roman society was not an option. The persecution has to be explained, not simply denied.

offa

Theophilus is St. Matthew and Jesus is "the word of God". A living being. Each time you discover "the word" in the New Testament it is a cloaked reference to Jesus.

Thanks,
Offa

Roger Pearse

The chapter titles in the Ante-Nicene fathers are all the work of the 19th century editors, to the best of my knowledge.

Ancient texts were not divided into anything smaller than a book, or sometimes a paragraph. There is a manuscript of Augustine's De Civitate Dei (the City of God), written in his lifetime and most likely in his own scriptorium in Africa which has no divisions in it at all. (The Romans did develop a form of punctuation in the early decades of the Christian era but abandoned it in the 3rd century under Greek influence.) Not even words are divided by spaces.

However works also had summaries. These seem to emerge in the 1st century AD -- Pliny the Elder has book 1 entirely filled with them; and they exist for Livy, Pompeius Trogus, and so on. These either appeared at the front of the book in one chunk, (cf. Pompeius Trogus, Pliny I) or at the front of each book of the work. In the latter case, they seem to have been longer, and sometimes consist of a series of sentences, sometimes with numbers against them. The chapter divisions in the manuscripts of Eusebius' Praeparatio Evangelica book 1 do not correspond to these sentences or numbers, even though portions of the summary have been transported into the text to serve as chapter titles. Augustine tells us in a letter that he sent a summary of the City of God to Firmus. So these summaries could circulate by themselves (indeed Pompeius Trogus' History is lost -- we have the summaries, however, which shows this process happened elsewhere). But even when they exist, they often don't make it into English translations. There are some for every work of Eusebius, but they don't appear in the ANF series.

Were these summaries authorial? I think they came in during the late 1st century, and then were added retrospectively. Probably they have a reasonable chance to be authorial in second century works onwards, or at least sometimes.

Chapter titles appear in the City of God only in the 6th century.

However, whether the manuscript(s?) of Theophilus contain them or not, I do not know. Even critical editions tend to be vague on such things.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Vorkosigan

Good to see your well-read and level-headed self here, Roger. Drop in more often, eh?

Vorkosigan

Roger Pearse

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Vorkosigan
Good to see your well-read and level-headed self here, Roger. Drop in more often, eh?QUOTE]

Thank you for your kind note -- much appreciated. The topic of summaries and chapter titles is one which I think interesting, which is very obscure, and I was glad to have the opportunity to talk about it.

All the best,

Roger Pearse