Paul, the Corinthians and the Birth of Christian Hermeneutics (review)

Blossom Stefaniw

Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 20, Number 1, Spring 2012, pp. 172-174 (Article) Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.1353/earl.2012.0004

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172 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

For iconophile theologians, it appears that each creation can be referred to as an image in the extended meaning, for all creations are modeled after ideas in the mind of God, the heavenly prototype. (9293, citing I. M. Resnik)

Although Strezovas article is cited elsewhere in the pages of Symbol and Icon surrounding these examples, there would be no way for a reader of the book to understand the importance of Strezovas words and ideas to the formation of these passages. One could say that all these problems exist because the author has not yet adopted certain conventions of citation. Yet Ivanovic; does cite secondary sources in the conventional manner throughout the book, using quotation marks or doubly indented blocks of text to indicate his direct dependence on the words of another scholar. As examples, note his use of the usual citation methods to credit the work of R. Roques at Symbol and Icon, 10; V. Lossky at 24; L. Bouyer at 30; E. Kitzinger at 70; and J. Marion at 87. The presence of these more conventional references to secondary works alongside the problematic passages like those I have been discussing leaves the impression that any words that appear outside of quotation marks in the book are either Ivanovic;s paraphrase of another author, marked as such with a footnote, or his own prose. As the examples above have shown, that would be a false impression. While these problems of attribution are disconcerting in their own right, the books relationship to the work of other scholars has an even larger consequence. Because so much of Symbol and Icon is built around passages from previously published books and articles, the book does not have a center. It does not offer its own, new argument about its topic, the role of Dionysian thought in the iconoclastic controversy. Readers seeking a scholarly treatment of that topic should look elsewhere and perhaps start with Andrew Louths St. Denys the Areopagite and the Iconoclast Controversy in Denys lAropagite et sa postrit en Orient et en Occident, ed. Ysabel de Andia (Institut dtudes Augustiniennes, 1997) or his more recent work in Rethinking Dionysius, ed. Sarah Coakley and Charles M. Stang (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). In conclusion, I cannot recommend that the readers of JECS or institutional libraries buy this book.

Ellen Muehlberger, University of Michigan

Margaret M. Mitchell Paul, the Corinthians and the Birth of Christian Hermeneutics Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. To read this book is both a privilege and an education because it is to see a master of her craft do what she loves with a sure hand and a keen heart. In this volume, Mitchell pursues a clearly articulated agenda to develop and demonstrate a new way of thinking about early Christian exegesis that takes the strategic and rhetorical quality of this interpretive work more seriously (ix). Thus grounding

BOOK REVIEWS173 interpretive work in its immediate agonistic situation and its larger rhetorical tradition, Mitchell turns away from the worn, unhelpful, misleading, but still taught labels of allegorical or literal, and also builds up a viable alternative that carries a substantial historical payload. Mitchell reads the corpus of letters represented in the canonical books of 1 and 2 Corinthians within what she terms the agonistic paradigm of interpretation, giving full weight to the function of the letters in dealing with persistent contrariness, misunderstandings, and questioning of Pauls authority. On the basis of such sound methodological engineering, Mitchell is able to trace out the ways that Paul connects interpretation to questions of leadership, his own role, and the obligations of the Christian. These letters show Paul struggling to interpret and re-interpret himself in the face of competing interpretations, or misinterpretations, put forward by his original audience. The variability and energy of this effort is characterized by Mitchell as typical for later Christian hermeneutics, which also navigate strategically between poles of the clear and the unclear, the testimonial or the mysterious. It is this ad hoc, contingent, and agonistic process of argument that Mitchell sees at the root of early Christian hermeneutical projects. In her own words, Proper understanding of the rhetorical techniques involved in ancient exegesis counsels appropriate caution about prematurely systematizing from any single moment of interpretation and the rationale given there. . . . All early Christian exegesis is strategic and adaptable. . . . The goal of ancient biblical interpretation was utility to the purpose at hand, however contextually dened. And this began with Paul (x). Due to conicts, contestation, and confusion in this relationship, Paul deploys a range of hermeneutical justications for the proofs and evidence he summoned in support of particular points he wished to make in this succession of missives (10). Mitchell thus sees Paul as arguing about the meaning of words, episodes and relationships and as using discussion of hermeneutical principles persuasively towards this end. Throughout the book, Mitchell develops the idea of the Christian practice not of commenting on scriptural texts, but rather of commenting with them. This is demonstrated by means of an examination of the reception of Pauls debates with the Corinthians in Gregory of Nyssas Commentary on the Song of Songs, which is skillfully worked through each chapter. Gregory cites the Corinthian epistolary corpus as evidence for his opinion on what constitutes adequate interpretation, and he builds on Pauline hermeneutical techniques. That is, the Corinthian letters are not the object, but rather the medium of commentary in this case. And this is what is meant by emphasizing how early Christian commentators continue to comment with, rather than on, Scripture: meaning construed as belonging to the text is a tool with which one can address or argue about other religious issues, and indeed the issues at which Paul directs his agonistic hermeneutics (authority, personhood, the obligations of the individual Christian) continue to be problems at which commentary is directed. There are three main points argued for in this volume. The rst is to establish that in the Corinthian correspondence we have a dynamic process of negotiated meaning between Paul and the Corinthians, through the series of letters interpreting and re-interpreting what is written, stated and visually presented. (106). Second,

174 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES Mitchell demonstrates that once published the Corinthian correspondence was to provide patristic exegesis with a treasure house of equipment for their own agonistic tasks involving scriptural interpretation (107). Third, Mitchell has continued the work of complicating the map of patristic exegesis... by demonstrating that exegetes at both Alexandria and Antioch employed this agonistic paradigm for strategic incorporation of textual evidence, and to show how they remarkably turn Pauline adaptability to their own ends (107). The historical and theological substance that becomes evident through M itchells approach to this corpus demonstrates the sheer scope of what is obscured when undergraduates are taught the fruitless literal/allegorical or Alexandrine/Antiochene dichotomies. One hopes that we can now move more rmly onto the complicated, but also ingenious and human, map of Christian exegesis and let go of failed paradigms.

Blossom Stefaniw, University of Mainz

Adam M. Schor Theodorets People: Social Networks and Religious Conict in Late Roman Syria Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011, xv+342. Schors purpose is to understand the dispute between dyophysites and miaphysites in the decades leading up to the Council of Chalcedon. He proposes to do so by approaching the dispute not simply through its theology but through the social relationsthe alliances and conictsof its participants. Schor introduces the concepts and techniques of social network analysis, a methodology nurtured in sociology and mathematics but now widespread in other disciplines. The subject of his analysis is Theodoret of Cyrrhus and the dyophysites (or Antiochenes) assembling around him, and the letters and conciliar records documenting their contacts. With this network in mind, Schor claims that the christological dispute was not simply about doctrine or contested authority, but part of the formation of partisan religious community (15). Schors network analysis unfolds over several chapters in Part I. In Chapter One, he outlines the social cues he takes to be Antiochene, such as repeated reference to doctrinal exactness (akribeia) in treatises and correspondence (25). In Chapter Two, he uses these cues to map the shape of the Antiochene social network, including its bishops, clerics, ascetics, and laity. In the subsequent three chapters, he follows this network over time. The story presents a continuous chain of episcopal recruitment beginning with Meletius of Antioch in the 360s and 370s. The story continues through the crisis caused by the Council of Ephesus in 431 and the resulting schism in the Antiochene community. The story ends with Theodorets own efforts to reunite the Antiochene network collapsing in the face of attacks by Dioscorus of Alexandria in the years before Chalcedon. Part II (Chapters Six through Eight) gives life to this network by showing it in