SOURCE: Hodgson, Jr., Robert. “Valerius Maximus and the Social World of the New Testament.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 51, no. 4 (October 1989): 683-93.

[In the following essay, Hodgson focuses on Valerius's depiction of Tiberius and representation of Roman religion in the early Christian era in the Memorable Doings and Sayings.]

Valerius Maximus, a historian and anthologist who wrote under Tiberius, is a significant source of information for reconstructing the social world of early Christianity. This article presents a few passages from Valerius' Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilium Libri Nouem (Of Noteworthy Deeds and Sayings Nine Books)¹ and briefly indicates their value for studying two aspects of the social history of imperial Rome. The first is the issue of emperor worship under Tiberius. The second is Roman religion under the same emperor.²

I. ROMAN SOCIAL HISTORY: THE IMPERIAL CULT UNDER TIBERIUS

Valerius dedicated his book of historical and moralizing anecdotes to Tiberius with the following panegyric:³

Thus, I invoke you, O Caesar, with this book; you in whose hands the common counsel of humans and gods has deigned to place over sea and land the governance; you who are the savior surest of the fatherland; you by whose divine foresight the virtues of which I shall shortly speak are most lovingly cultivated, the vices, however, most severely chastened. Now since the orators of yesteryear began nobly by calling upon Jupiter Optimus Maximus; since the most glorious poets commenced by calling upon the power of a god—my thin volume will all the more justly have gained your goodwill. For the gods of the others exist as a matter of belief, but you, however, are physically present, equal in devotion to your father and in luster to the comet of your grandfather. Through their remarkable brilliance much renown and distinction have accrued to our religious rites. For we inherited most of the gods but we gave to the world the Caesars.

What are we to make of this laudation? Does Valerius' adulation of Tiberius amount to no more than a literary fiction?⁴ Or does it presuppose a cult of Tiberius in Rome?⁵ Or is Valerius' valorization of the emperor a very early expression of a larger political strategy whose purpose, at least from the second century onwards, lay chiefly in using the imperial cult to stabilize political power?⁶

Now conventional wisdom has long taught that Tiberius scrupulously avoided—in Rome, at least—cult titles, special priesthoods, sacred days, and sacrifices, any arrangement in fact that might be understood as worship of the living emperor. “Under Augustus' successor, Tiberius, a conscious effort was made to discourage the cult of the living emperor,”⁷ writes Koester. So, too, we must understand Latte's quip that Valerius' panegyric upon Tiberius is not to be taken literally.⁸ One source for this modern point of view is an address by Tiberius before the Senate which Tacitus recreates:⁹

Since the deified Augustus had not forbidden the construction of a temple at Pergamum to himself and the city of Rome … I followed the precedent already sealed by his approval with all the more readiness that the worship of myself was associated with veneration of the senate. But though once to have accepted may be pardonable, yet to be consecrated in the image of deity through all the provinces would be vanity and arrogance. … As for myself, Conscript Fathers, that I am mortal, that my functions are the functions of men … this I call upon you to witness. … For they will do justice, and more, to my memory, if they pronounce me worthy of my ancestry, provident of your interests, firm in dangers, not fearful of offenses. …

Even if it were true that Tiberius avoided the public trappings of a cult organized around his living person, in Rome at least, it does not follow that he scorned the mythology associated with the emperor cult. Nor is it evident that the prologue to Valerius' Factorum is an innovation, posturing, or pure flattery. After all, the prologue opens an anthology of Roman life designed to provide magistrates, orators, moralists, and history writers with plain and convenient case studies in Roman religion, morality, and public life. The prologue creates rather the impression that the ideology for the emperor's cult is known in Julio-Claudian Rome of the 20s.

Let us consider one side of Valerius' adulation of Tiberius. Throughout the long history of ruler cults in Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome a single idea helped energize it: the nearness of the ruler to his subjects, in contrast to the remoteness of the gods. Here is, for example, a panegyric to Maximian from the third century c.e.:¹⁰ “People invoked, not the god familiar from hearsay, but a Jupiter close at hand, visible and present, they adored a Hercules who was not a stranger but the emperor.” The antiquity of such a sentiment may be judged from this panegyric in honor of Demetrius Poliorcetes from the fourth century b.c.e.¹¹ “The other gods are far away or do not have ears or do not exist or do not pay any attention at all to us, but you we see present, not of wood or stone but real.”

Although these two texts are separated from one another by almost seven hundred years, they reveal a bold and powerful idea which helped launch the ancient ruler cults. Thus, we are claiming for Valerius that his panegyric upon Tiberius belongs to a long established ruler-cult ideology, and the implication is that Tiberius may have invited such adulation. On Price's theory, the ruler-cult ideology helped centralize and stabilize imperial authority.¹² Together with Roman law, governors, soldiers, politicians, and diplomats it constituted the reality of Roman rule for the average citizen of the empire. Did Tiberius require such a stabilizing of his power? Without pretending to answer this question in a definitive way, we can still recall how Tiberius responded to the events of the fall of 31 c.e. which culminated in Sejanus' conspiracy against the emperor.

In his chapter on Loyalitätsreligion¹³ Latte points out that immediately upon the death of Sejanus in October of 31 c.e. Tiberius dedicated an altar to his own numen in the provinces. Since the death of Sejanus preceded the publication of Valerius' anthology by only a matter of weeks, and since Valerius accords Tiberius divine epithets not only in his dedicatory preface but also elsewhere in the Factorum,¹⁴ then it is conceivable that Valerius is indeed reflecting the mood of an emperor who wants to use the emperor-cult ideology to consolidate power in the face of treason. Of course such a view cuts across the grain of established scholarship.¹⁵ But our interpretation of Valerius does lend support to Weinstock's thesis that the cult of the living emperors had sprouted already as early as Julius Caesar.¹⁶

From the perspective of NT studies a revised portrait of Tiberius could make a difference in how we envision the origin and social setting of Roman Christianity under his successors; how we reconstruct the ideology and precedents for Nero's and Domitian's persecution; and how we depict the social and religious pressures that triggered far-reaching social-ethical exhortations like the call for submission to imperial authority in Romans 13. To the extent that the dating and interpretation of writings such as 1 Peter and Revelation presuppose a clash between Roman authorities and Christian communities, to that extent we should know how early the ideology of the ruler cult sprang up in Rome and how seriously it was enforced. A revised portrait of Tiberius could also sharpen our reconstruction of pagan criticism of Christianity. In turn, such a reconstruction could guide us in determining what initiated and constituted early Christian apologetics (Luke-Acts and Justin's Apology).¹⁷

II. ROMAN SOCIAL HISTORY: RELIGION UNDER TIBERIUS

How does Valerius advance our understanding of Roman religion under Tiberius? Let us first recall that Book One of the Factorum is Valerius' analysis of Roman religion under eight headings: punctiliousness in religious ceremony, feigning religion for state purposes, superstition, auspices, omens, prodigies, dreams, and miracles. Broadly speaking these headings deal with the ritual side of religion rather than with its mythic, doctrinal, social, or ethical aspects.

But Valerius does not wish to gull us with this tidy portrait, for he knows that Roman religious ritual is itself an arabesque. Introducing Book One, he tells us in carefully crafted prose about its antiquity, its functionaries, its debt to Etruscan lore, the sway of Apollo, its ties to affairs of state as well as to those of the heart, and the intricate machinery of prayers, vows, thanksgivings, omens, and sacrifices:¹⁸

Our ancestors ordained that the established and formal religious rituals be performed on the strength of the expert knowledge of the priestly colleges; that the sanctioning of those state affairs which were to be carried out successfully come from the observation of the augurs; that the prophecies of Apollo be confined to the books of the seers; and that the defenses against supernatural occurrences come from the doctrine of the Etruscans. Moreover, according to ancient custom, one turned to religion in the form of prayer, when some cause was to be entrusted to a god; in the form of a vow, when some favor was requested; in the form of a thanksgiving ceremony, when some token was offered to fulfill a vow; in the form of a favorable omen in response to divination or lots; in the form of a sacrifice, when a formal ritual was to be celebrated in order to avert the danger due to prodigies and lightning.

The importance of ritual properly performed may be seen in the twenty-one Roman and nine foreign examples of punctiliousness in religious ceremony. Valerius recalls the day on which the mitre fell from the head of Q. Sulpicius during a sacrifice and caused him to resign a priesthood. Likewise, he remembers the day on which the cry of a shrewmouse during a ceremony led Fabius Maximus and C. Flaminius to resign the dictatorship and magistracy of horse, respectively.¹⁹ On a more sublime note he reports the scrupulousness which led to the personal sacrifice of M. Atilius Regulus:²⁰

He was led away from a most spectacular victory to the bitter fate of a prisoner of war, thanks to the treacheries of Hasdrubal and the Spartan chieftain Xantippus. Then later he went as a legate to the senate and Roman people in order that several Carthaginian youth could be exchanged for the life of a single old man. But, having advised against the exchange, he requested to return to Carthage. And indeed he sailed back, though he was by no means ignorant of the mercilessness and savagery of their god because of his deed. But he had sworn to them that if their prisoners were not exchanged, he would himself come back.

The importance of such examples for reconstructing the social world of Julio-Claudian Rome and early Christianity lies in the accent which Valerius places on ritual, particularly sacrifice.²¹ The renewed interest in the rituals of ancient Mediterranean religion, including sacrifice, is raising fresh questions that bear in a material way on the study of the NT and early Christianity. There is, for example, Burkert's anthropological approach which starts with paleolithic hunter traditions to explain sacrifice as a form of appeasement and community formation. From a psychological point of view Girard has equated sacrifice with the sublimation of violence. Smith and Neusner have raised far-reaching questions about the persistence of sacrificial language, theories, and systems in ancient religions long after the required temple and priesthood have vanished.²² Given the sacrificial language in the theology (1 Cor 5:7; John 6:53), moral teaching (Rom 12:1), and missiology (Rom 15:16) of the NT, it is inevitable that this research will affect how NT scholars read their texts. For example, when, how, and why does the interpretation of Jesus' death as a sacrifice become an explanation of his crucifixion? With respect to the timing, Mack says that the sacrificial interpretation of Jesus' death is relatively late, since Q interprets Jesus' death as a martyrdom, while Paul treats the death of Jesus as the necessary first step in the formation of the cult of the risen Christ.²³

Valerius devotes Chapter Three of his anthology to the topic of superstition. Unhappily this chapter has survived only in later epitomes and they offer but four examples: the suppression of the Bacchae in 187 b.c.e., Lutatius Cerco's frustrated attempt to consult the oracle of Fortuna at Praeneste in 241 b.c.e., L. Aemilius Paulus' destruction of the temple of Isis and Serapis in 219 b.c.e., and the banishment of Chaldeans and Jews from Rome by the peregrine praetor Cn. Cornelius Hispalus in 139 b.c.e.:²⁴

Accordingly, Cornelius Hispalus drove the Chaldeans out of Rome and commanded them to leave Italy within ten days, so that they could not retail their foreign lore. The same Hispalus likewise banished the Jews from Rome and caused their private altars to be removed from the public places, because they had attempted to introduce the Romans to their sacred rituals.

These four instances of superstition depict pernicious exercises of religion which Valerius felt smothered the finer instincts of the state. Such examples enlarge our understanding of precisely what superstitio meant in Julio-Claudian Rome.²⁵ It amounted to more than irregular divination, magical arts, foreign ritual, or folk religion. For Valerius it aimed at violent social change.

Let us surmise what may lie behind Valerius' vignettes of superstition. Some ten years earlier in 19 c.e. Tiberius had condemned both the rites of Isis and those of the Jews in Rome.²⁶ We suggest that Valerius is praising Tiberius for these earlier suppressions because he wishes to warn the emperor of perils still to come, and to encourage him to proceed again against such religious associations.

For the student of the NT and early Christianity Valerius' case studies in superstition are germane. After all, it was precisely under the later Julio-Claudian emperors that superstitio became a label by means of which pagans expressed their contempt for Christianity. Our view is that this label aimed at exposing Christians as engineers of res nouas moliri (“violent social change”), a charge which would easily follow from the apocalyptic side of early Christianity.²⁷

Chapter Six of the Factorum is Valerius' collection of prodigies, and it merits our attention on two counts. First, one catches a glimpse in this list of an important aspect of Roman social psychology under the Julio-Claudians: the love of stability and order, the fear of violent change. Secondly, this catalogue reminds us that lists of prodigies provide one of the common literary forms with which Romans, Jews, and Christians described religious experience.²⁸

With regard to the first point we can note how Valerius lionizes Sulla, the dictator whose administration created important precedents for the establishment of the empire:²⁹

No less a token of success is what follows. L. Sulla, the consul during the Social War, saw that suddenly a snake had slithered out from the base of the altar as he was sacrificing in front of the command tent on the fields of Nola. Thereupon with the strong encouragement of the diviner Postumius he led his army in an operation and captured a very well-fortified camp of the Samnites. This victory proved to be the first step and the basis of his future very wide-ranging powers.

Over against Sulla's devotion Valerius places the disregard of a prodigy by C. Flaminius, the nouus homo and populist reformer who helped set the stage for the social upheavals under the Gracchi. The hostile aristocratic tradition upon which Valerius is drawing reported that Flaminius had gotten his consulship without taking the auspices. Moreover, he had ignored a series of prodigies, the heeding of which could have prevented the catastrophe at Lake Trasimenus where Hannibal ambushed him and his army in 217 b.c.e.:³⁰

Indeed if only such a measure of recklessness had exacted its penalty just from him and not also from a most crushing defeat of the Roman people! For in that battle fifteen thousand Romans were slaughtered, six thousand captured, and ten thousand abandoned the standards.

We said that Valerius' prodigy list also merits our attention because such lists are one of the common denominators in Roman, Jewish, and Christian depictions of religion. Valerius' prodigies come from periods of violent disorder and social crisis.³¹ They include a fire nimbus, lightning, a flood, serpents, a talking ox, Midas' ants, Plato's bees, infants with the head of an elephant, and shields that run with blood. For Valerius the terror which follows when a prodigy is neglected teaches us a lesson:³² “Thus the warnings of the gods, when held in contempt, burst forth in a destructive rage; thus is human wisdom chastened, whenever it exalts itself above the divine.”

A Jewish list of prodigies which are signs of a time out of joint and which were fatefully disregarded turns up in Josephus' account of the temple destruction during the First Jewish War:³³

This is how the unhappy people were beguiled at this stage by charlatans and false messengers of God, while they disregarded and disbelieved the unmistakable portents that foreshadowed the coming desolation, and, as though thunderstruck, blind, senseless, paid no heed to the clear warnings of God.

Josephus' prodigies include stars and comets, a fire nimbus around the temple and altar, a lamb born from a cow, a sanctuary gate that opens mysteriously, chariots running across the heavens, and a simple peasant named Jesus son of Anias who for days on end repeated in the temple court the line “A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the sanctuary. …”³⁴

Finally, we may note the lists of prodigies that appear in the Synoptic apocalypse (Mark 13:24-26) and Pentecost narrative (Acts 2:19-20). In both instances the narrative setting combines social crisis with a presumed ignorance of the meaning of the prodigy. For students of the NT such lists of prodigies raise certain questions.³⁵ What is the historical connection between pagan prodigy and apocalyptic sign? Has the apocalyptic tradition borrowed the prodigy from Greek and Roman paganism, or does a common source lie behind both? Can one discern a common fund of social and philosophical problems behind such lists? What concrete occasion or need led to the drafting of prodigy lists?

Valerius Maximus offers a rich dossier of texts for reconstructing the social world of early Christianity. His anecdotes from Roman and Greek history often throw fresh light on chapters of Mediterranean social and religious history in which NT scholars take a lively interest.

Notes

1. Our translations are from K. Kempf, Valerii Maximi Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilium Libri Nouem cum Iulii Paridis et Ianuarii Nepotiani Epitomis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1888).

2. The following texts have informed our view of the general social and religious history of the late republic and early empire: S. Weinstock, Diuus Iulius (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971); K. Latte, Römische Religionsgeschichte (Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft 5/4; Munich: Beck, 1960); H. Koester, Introduction to the New Testament (2 vols.; Foundations and Facets; Philadelphia: Fortress; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1982); M. Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire (2 vols.; 2d ed.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1957); S. R. F. Price, Rituals and Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1984). For the social world of early Christianity we have turned to C. Osiek, What Are They Saying about the Social Setting of the NT? (New York: Paulist, 1984); D. L. Balch, Let Wives Be Submissive: The Domestic Code of 1 Peter (SBLDS [Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series] 26; Chico, CA: Scholars, 1981); J. Gager, Kingdom and Community: The Social World of Early Christianity (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1975); A. J. Malherbe, Social Aspects of Early Christianity (2d ed.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983); W. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven/London: Yale University, 1983); G. Theissen, The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity: Essays on Corinth (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982); P. Lampe, Die stadtrömischen Christen in den ersten beiden Jahrhunderten (WUNT [Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament] 2/18; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck] 1987); K. Berger, “Hellenistisch-heidnische Prodigien und die Vorzeichen in der jüdischen und christlichen Apokalyptik,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.23/2 (ed. W. Haase; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1980) 1429-69.

3. I.1.Prologue: Te igitur huic coepto, penes quem hominum deorumque consensus maris ac terrae regimen esse uoluit, certissima salus patriae, Caesar, inuoco, cuius caelesti prouidentia uirtutes, de quibus dicturus sum, benignissime fouentur, uitia seuerissime uindicantur: nam si prisci oratores ab Ioue optimo maximo bene orsi sunt, si excellentissimi uates a numine aliquo principia traxerunt, mea paruitas eo iustius ad fauorem tuum decucurrerit, quo cetera diuinitas opinione colligitur, tua praesenti fide paterno auitoque sideri par uidetur, quorum eximio fulgore multum caerimoniis nostris inclitae claritatis accessit: reliquos enim deos accepimus, Caesares dedimus. Price (Rituals, 246-47) writes that Pliny's panegyric on Trajan is the earliest extant instance, and that one must wait until the third and fourth centuries c.e. for panegyrics that place the emperor in close proximity to the divine. Valerius' prologue indicates that Price has overlooked a first century c.e. witness.

4. Thus Latte, Religionsgeschichte, 308 n. 3.

5. Thus Weinstock, Diuus Iulius, 172, 381.

6. Thus Price, Rituals, 239-48.

7. Koester, Introduction, 1. 369.

8. Latte, Religionsgeschichte, 308 n. 3.

9. Tacitus, Annals, 4. 37-38.

10. Quoted by Price, Rituals, 247. We could make the same point about the growth of imperial ideology under Tiberius by tracing the history of another important term in Valerius' prologue: providentia (“foresight”). See J.-P. Martin, Providentia Deorum (Collection de l'École française de Rome 61; Rome: École française, 1982).

11. Price, Rituals, 38.

12. Ibid., 239-48.

13. Latte, Religionsgeschichte, 315-16. Rostovtzeff, Social History, 1. 78-79, accepts with some reservation the view of Tacitus in Annals 4.37-38 that Tiberius shunned divine honors, as did Claudius after him. He does acknowledge, however, that both “were forced by political considerations to accept a certain amount of divine worship, especially in the Eastern provinces and in the newly annexed provinces of the West.”

14. See 2.9.6; 5.5.3; 9.11.

15. See R. Seager, Tiberius (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California, 1972), 144-50.

16. Weinstock, Diuus Iulius, 172, 381. Price (Rituals, 213) explains that “language assimilated the emperor to god, but ritual held back.” This sentiment strikes us as overly cautious.

17. P. Lampe's otherwise formidable account of Roman Christianity (Die stadtrömischen Christen) is a good example of a presentation of the origin and social description of Christianity in Rome that could have profited from a reading of Valerius. Although Lampe can argue persuasively that Paul is aware of social stratification in Rome (ibid., 63), his discussion of what the emperor-cult ideology in Rome of the 50s might contribute to a description of Roman Christianity or an interpretation of a text like Romans 13 is minimal. The conventional picture of Tiberius and the consequent dating of an aggressively enforced emperor cult to the time of Nero and beyond is a working assumption in many studies of the pagan criticism of Christianity. See, for example, R. MacMullen, Enemies of the Roman Order: Treason, Unrest, and Alienation in the Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1966) and R. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven: Yale University, 1984).

18. I.1.1: Maiores statas sollemnesque caerimonias pontificum scientia, bene gerendarum rerum auctoritates augurum obseruatione, Apollinis praedictiones uatum libris, portentorum depulsiones Etrusca disciplina explicari uoluerunt. prisco etiam instituto rebus diuinis opera datur, cum aliquid commendandum est, precatione, cum exposcendum, uoto, cum soluendum, gratulatione, cum inquirendum uel extis uel sortibus, inpetrito, cum sollemni ritu peragendum, sacrificio, quo etiam ostentorum ac fulgurum denuntiationes procurantur. In his study of caerimonia (“Caerimonia,” Glotta 32 [1953] 101-38) K.-H. Roloff has shown that the plural form caerimoniae most generally means “religious rites,” while the singular maintained the older signification “god's holiness” or “human reverence.” The bond between “religious rite” and “holiness” in caerimonia reveals why it is wrong to characterize Roman religious ritual as void of any theology. The connection between ritual and holiness helps explain why Romans viewed Jews and Christians with such contempt: they absented themselves from that side of public life in which the presence of the divine was most keenly felt.

19. 1.1.5.

20. 1.1.14: … qui ex uictore speciosissimo insidiis Hasdrubalis et Xantippi Lacedaemonii ducis ad miserabilem captiui fortunam deductus ac missus ad senatum populumque Romanum legatus, ut [ex] se et uno et sene conplures Poenorum iuuenes pensarentur, in contrarium dato consilio Karthaginem petiit, non quidem ignarus ad quam crudeles quamque merito sibi infestos [deos] reuerteretur, uerum quia his iurauerat, si captiui eorum redditi non forent, ad eos sese rediturum.

21. Sacrifice figures in the following examples from Book One: 1.1.4; 1.1.5; 1.1.8; 1.1.11; 1.5. ext. 2; 1.6.4; 1.6.7; 1.6.8; 1.6.9.

22. See W. Burkert, Homo Necans (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1972); idem, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Sather Classical Lectures 47; Berkeley: University of California, 1979); R. Girard, Violence and the Sacred (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1977); R. North, “Violence and the Bible: the Girard Connection,” CBQ [Catholic Biblical Quarterly] 47 (1985) 1-27; B. Mack (“Introduction: Religion and Ritual,” Violent Origins [ed. R. Hamerton-Kelly; Palo Alto, CA: University of Southern California, 1987] 1-69) gives the pertinent bibliography for Smith and Neusner.

23. B. Mack, “Sacrifice and Christian Origins,” public lecture at Southwest Missouri State University, Springfield, MO, January 25, 1988. Any study of ritual in the NT and early Christian literature which does not take into account recent anthropological and ethnological research is open to the charge of ignoring important historical and evolutionary perspectives. See for example the otherwise excellent study of R. Daly, Christian Sacrifice: The Judaeo-Christian Background before Origen (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1978).

24. 1.3.3: Chaldaeos igitur Cornelius Hispalus urbe expulit et intra decem dies Italia abire iussit, ne peregrinam scientiam uenditarent. Iudaeos quoque, qui Romanis tradere sacra sua conati erant, idem Hispalus urbe exterminauit arasque priuatas e publicis locis abiecit.

25. Some recent studies of superstition include E. Benveniste, Indo-European Language and Society (Miami Linguistic Series 12; Coral Gables, FL: University of Florida, 1973) 239-67; S. Calderone, “Superstitio,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt I.2 (ed. W. Haase; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1972) 377-96; D. Grodzynzki, “Superstitio,” REA [Revue des études anciennes] 76 (1974) 36-60; L. F. Janssen, “Die Bedeutungsentwicklung von superstitio/superstes,” Mnemosyne 28 (1975) 135-88; M. Smith “Superstitio,” SBLASP [Society of Biblical Literature Abstracts and Seminar Papers] (ed. K. H. Richards; Chico: Scholars, 1981) 350-55.

26. See E. M. Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule (SJLA [Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity] 20; Leiden: Brill, 1981) 202. Latte (Religionsgeschichte, 282) summarizes earlier measures taken against the cult of Isis. Smallwood (ibid., 165) provides a fat dossier of texts for the virulent anti-Semitism of Sejanus, Tiberius' praetorian prefect.

27. On apocalypticism and revolutionary tendencies among the Druids in 69 c.e. see Tacitus, Histories 4.54. For a study of Christianity as a millenarian movement see the fine study of R. Jewett, The Thessalonian Correspondence: Pauline Rhetoric and Millenarian Piety (Foundations and Facets; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986). Recent studies of how the Romans perceived Jews, Christians, Egyptians, and Druids show that superstition ranked among the earliest charges which Romans raised against such religious and ethnic groups. But they all fail to appreciate the power which superstitio as a label exercised over the Roman mind. Neither R. L. Wilken (The Christians as the Romans Saw Them [New Haven: Yale University, 1984]) nor R. MacMullen (Enemies of the Roman Order: Treason, Unrest, and Alienation in the Empire [Cambridge: Harvard University, 1966]) fully spells out the lethal climate which delations, greed, and charges of superstition combined to create in Rome of the Julio-Claudian period. Of modern studies those by L. F. Janssen (“Superstitio and the Persecution of Christians,” VC [Vigiliae christianae] 33 [1979] 131-59) and D. Lührmann (“Superstitio—die Beurteilung des frühen Christentums durch die Römer,” TZ [Theologische Zeitschrift] 42 [1986] 193-213) are praiseworthy for presenting a partial semantic and social history of superstition. The first article suffers, however, from an all too exclusive preoccupation with the etymology and meaning of superstitio at the expense of its function as a label in social and religious history. The second fails to account for any reaction among early Christians to the charge and label of superstition, as current labeling theory suggests would be the case. See T. J. Scheff, Being Mentally Ill: A Sociological Theory (2d ed.; New York: Aldine, 1984) 30, 63-72, 144-51, 177-87, 188-200. The importance of Scheff's work for an understanding of the function of superstition as a label lies, in part at least, in the ancient association of deviant religious and social behavior with mental illness. If superstitio functioned as a label for branding early Christians as engineers of unwanted, even violent, social and religious change, how did early Christians respond? One answer is the quietist ethic of Romans 13; another is the apology which Luke-Acts offers. We concur wholeheartedly with A. Malherbe (“Not in a Corner,” Second Century 5 [1985/86] 193-210) that the apologetic intent of Acts ought to be understood more broadly than is usually done. He proposes that Luke wants Paul to appear as one who can speak in the language of popular philosophers. Christianity is thus defended as a public association with nothing to hide. It strikes us, however, that the philosophical and public dress which Luke places on Paul serves also rather well to counter the charge of secretly concocted extremism and violence—one connotation of superstition.

28. See Berger, “Prodigien,” 1429-30.

29. 1.6.4: Nec parum prosperi successus quod sequitur. L. Sulla consul sociali bello, cum in agro Nolano ante praetorium immolaret, subito ab ima parte arae prolapsam anguem prospexit. qua uisa Postumi aruspicis hortatu continuo exercitum in expeditionem eduxit ac fortissima Samnitium castra cepit. quae uictoria futurae eius amplissimae potentiae gradus et fundamentum extitit.

30. 1.6.6: uerum huius temeritatis utinam sua tantum, non etiam populi Romani maxima clade poenas pependisset! in ea namque acie XV Romanorum caesa, VI capta, X fugata sunt. See also 1.6.7 and 1.6.8.

31. See 1.6.5.

32. 1.6.11: Sic deorum spreti monitus excandescunt, sic humana consilia castigantur, ubi se caelestibus praeferunt.

33. J.W. 6.5.3 §288. Quoted by Berger, “Prodigien,” 1430 n. 4.

34. J.W. 6.5.3 §301.

35. Berger, “Prodigien,” 1430. J. S. Kloppenborg's study of the requests for signs in Q and Mark (The Formation of Q: Trajectories in Ancient Wisdom Collections [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987] 128-34) points out the shifting attitudes in early Christianity towards Jesus as a sign-maker. Mark 8:11-12 absolutely rejects signs, while Q's point of view evolved through at least three stages, including allowance for one sign (Luke 11:16,29), the addition of a second and correlative sign in the coming of the Son of Man (Luke 11:30), and, lastly, the inclusion of the queen of the South as a sign (Luke 11:31-32). Kloppenborg's technically correct literary analysis suffers, from our point of view, because of a neglect of the history of religions dimension of signs as well as because of an inclination to use Mark as a foil for Q. To say about Luke 11:16,29-32 that Q understands Jesus' public preaching as an adequate ground for repentance and faith, and that this understanding is implicitly rejected by Mark 4:11-12, 33-34, and 8:11-12 (Formation, 134) is to introduce confessional issues into exegesis by reducing Q to a plaidoyer for “the sacrament of preaching.”