Christian Antioch: A Study of Early Christian Thought in the East

227 Pages·1982·4.62 MB·English

by  D. S. Wallace-Hadrill

CHRISTIAN ANTIOCH

CHRISTIAN ANTIOCH
A study of
early Christian thought
in the East
D. S. WALLACE-HADRILL
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE
LONDON NEW YORK NEW ROCHELLE
MELBOURNE SYDNEY
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521234252
© Cambridge University Press 1982
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1982
This digitally printed version 2008
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 81-17100
ISBN 978-0-521-23425-2 hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-09436-8 paperback
Contents
Foreword page vii
Abbreviations viii
Introduction: survey of the history of Antioch 1
1 The religious background to Antiochene Christianity:
pagan, Jewish, gnostic 14
2 The interpretation of the biblical record 2 7
3 Historiography in the Eastern Church 52
4 The doctrine of the nature of God 67
5 The use of Greek philosophy by the Eastern Church 96
6 The human experience of Christ and the salvation of man 117
7 Antiochene theology and the religious life 151
Appendix 1. Eastern representation at Nicaea 165
Appendix 2. The feminine element in Syrian Christianity 167
Notes 169
Bibliography 207
Index 215

Foreword
This book had its beginning, I think, on a day early in the second World
War when I asked Professor Thomas Walter Manson to recommend a book
which would give me a general view of all that was meant by the term
'Antiochene'. He replied, 'There isn't such a book', and then with the
twinkle of the eye which endeared him to so many, he added, 'so you had
better write it.' The present book, thirty-nine years later, is far from being
the book which that greatest of scholars may have had in mind, but I have
tried to make it one which might have been useful to me in my youth.
I have been fortunate in the generous understanding of my wife; in the
scholarship of my friend, Mr J. K. Waddell, who many times saved me from
my own ignorance; in my surgeon, Mr Robert Ryall, who gave me that very
great gift, time in which to finish what I had begun; and in the constant
support of my brother, Professor J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, to whom I dedicate
a book which would have been better if I had more often acted on his
advice.
MICHAELI, FRATRI ET SOCIO
Aldenham, Hertfordshire D. S. W.-H.
Abbreviations
A.C.O. Ada Conciliorum 0ecumenic orurn, ed. E. Schwartz (Berlin,
1914ff.)
C.S.C.O. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium (Louvain,
1903ff.)
C.S.E.L. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (Vienna,
1866ff.)
G.C.S. Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei
Jahrhunderte (Leipzig and Berlin, 1897ff.)
H.T.R. Harvard Theological Review (New York, 1908ff.; Cambridge,
Mass., 1910ff.)
J.R.S. Journal of Roman Studies (London, 191 Iff.)
J.T.S. Journal of Theological Studies (London, 1900-5; Oxford,
1906-49; N.S., Oxford, 1950ff.)
P.G. Patrologia Graeca, ed. J. P. Migne (162 vols., Paris, 1857-66)
P.L. Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne (221 vols., Paris, 1844-64)
Pat. Or. Patrologia Orientalis, ed. R. Graffin and F. Nau (Paris, 1903ff.)
Pat. Syr. Patrologia Syriaca (Paris, 1894-1926)
S.C. Sources chretiennes (Paris, 1941ff.)
T.U. Texte und Untersuchungen (Leipzig)
Z.A.T. W. Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
Z.N.T.W. Zeitschrift fur die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft
Introduction: survey of the history of
Antioch
The name * Antioch' can denote three different areas: the walled city; the
administrative region, comprising the surrounding countryside and its
villages, extending perhaps as far as fifty miles from the city; the ecclesias-
tical diocese, whose vast extent is shown on the map.1 This brief introduc-
tory survey is confined largely to the city. Succeeding chapters will spread
wider to embrace cultural centres elsewhere in the diocese. The adminis-
trative region surrounding the city is not directly treated at all.
The geographical location of Antioch was in part the cause of its wealth
and importance and was in part the cause of its eclipse. It was built in a fer-
tile, well-watered region which controlled an important network of roads
linking east with west and north with south. It was, however, situated on a
geological formation which made it prone to severe earthquakes and the
eventual southward extension of the city up the slopes of Mount Silpius
rendered it dangerously vulnerable to attack from above. The combination
of repeated destruction by earthquakes and the skilful use of the higher
slopes of the mountain by the Persian invaders in the sixth century A.D.
and the Arab invaders in the seventh ensured that despite its great com-
mercial and military importance the role of Antioch as the key city of the
eastern empire could not survive indefinitely.
The founding of Antioch shortly after the death of Alexander the Great
in 323 B.C. formed part of a plan to secure north western Syria in the con-
trol of Seleucus Nicator, into whose hands this part of Alexander's immense
territories fell. Seleucus had obtained Syria by force of arms, defeating
Antigonus atlpsus in 301 B.C. Antigonus had already begun to build a city
in a strong position between the River Orontes and the Lake of Antioch,
but Seleucus chose a new site about five miles to the south east, between
the river and the north western slopes of Mount Silpius, named it after his
father Antiochus, and brought to it a population composed of Athenians
from the abortive city of Antigonia, some descendants of earlier settlers in
the district and a large number of his own Macedonian soldiers with their
wives and children. Within a century the male nucleus of the population is
said to have comprised 6,000 men. A great attraction of this site was the
proximity of Daphne, less than ten miles down river to the south west, an
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