In this book, Susanna Drake studies the rhetoric of sexuality and gender in the writings of Paul, Justin Martyr, the author of Barnabas, Origen, and Chrysostom. She focuses her attention particularly on sexual slander, that is, the use of derogatory sexual slurs to defame one's enemies. In the case of each of the texts she considers, the author deploys sexual slander and stereotyped gender differences to create and naturalize community borders between “Christians” and “Jews.” Drake argues that these authors borrowed a known Greco-Roman trope (sexual slander), one that was also used by late ancient Jews against their ideological opponents (“idolators”). They turned the tables by using it not only against non-Christian Romans, but especially against the Jews.
In her first chapter, “The Making of Carnal Israel: Paul, Barnabas, Justin,” Drake argues that Paul, born and bred a Hellenistic Jew, continued after his conversion to use sexual slander tropes, as did other contemporary Jews: the gentiles were the most sexually immoral of peoples. Thus in Paul's writings, porneia and idolatry remained gentile, not Jewish, traits. Paul's dichotomy of “flesh” and “spirit” entailed the creation of a new and different kind of community border, differentiating not between Jew and gentile, but between believers and nonbelievers (whether Jews or gentiles). It was writers like Justin Martyr and the author of the Epistle of Barnabas who first turned sexual slander specifically against Jews. They expounded not Paul but Hebrew biblical texts. The author of Barnabas focused on the food laws of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, while Justin suggested that the Jews' tendency to read scripture literally (carnally) led them to be more immoral sexually. Justin used the example of Jacob, the polygamous householder, and Jewish proclivities to establish this kind of domestic arrangement, as evidence. By understanding Jacob to have been truly polygamous, the Jews had no problem allowing the same practice (a licentious one, in Justin's view) within their community. Thus the Jews themselves became “carnal” for Justin.
Drake focuses the next two chapters on Origen. In the first, “Origen Reads Jewishness,” she argues that Origen exegetically linked the arguments of Justin and the author of Barnabas back to Paul, thereby understanding Paul's dichotomy between flesh and spirit as one that represented a distinction between Jews and Christians. Jews, because of their more literal reading of scripture, were necessarily literal themselves––that is, flesh-focused or carnal––in respect to their bodies. They did not practice repression of their bodily desires and therefore remained slaves to their own licentiousness. Christians read scripture spiritually, and therefore understood a life lived in conformity to scripture as an ascetic one. Origen strengthened Justin's argument by recourse to Paul. In Origen's understanding, Paul actually preempted Justin's argument with his flesh/spirit divide. Origen, however, also added a gendered perspective: because of their “weak” reading of text and inability to control their bodies, Jews became feminized, weak males, while the Christian ascetics developed into strong masculine heroes.
In her third chapter, “Sexual/Textual Corruption: Early Christian Interpretations of Susanna and the Elders,” Drake discusses the very early Christian iconography that depicted Susanna and the elders. I found this chapter the most interesting because it focused on material as well as textual culture in order to round out the evidence. Drake brings in images from the catacombs to emphasize that as early as the third century, Christians identified with Susanna's dilemma: Should she commit adultery and sin against God, or refuse the elders' desires and risk losing her life? The persecuted Christians of this century clearly saw their predicament in a similar light: Should they perjure themselves in God's court or lose their lives in a Roman court?
Drake argues that Origen picked up and elaborated on this early Christian vulnerability to ––or anxiety about––persecution from both sides. In this scenario, Origen situated the Christian as an innocent, chaste, and persecuted female against the licentious persecuting Jewish male. For Origen, Jews and their carnal reading of scripture threatened the Christian community as if the male Jews were constantly persecuting Christian women.
Drake's final chapter, “A Synagogue of Malakoi and Pornoi,” concerning John Chrysostom's Sermons against the Jews, suggests that Chrysostom, he “of the golden mouth,” brings all of these stereotypes together in one epic discourse of violence and sexual slander against the Jews of Antioch. While acknowledging that many scholars have studied these texts before her, she notes that few of them have focused on their rhetoric, rather than on the historical reality they supposedly portray. Drake argues that the rhetoric creates borders and promotes future ideal realities, rather than documenting actual ones. While Chrysostom's Sermons against the Jews rail against Jewish behavior and practice, his audience remains Christian. His sermons attempt to throw up barriers between “Christian” and “Jewish,” Christian and Jew, and aim to draw the Christians back or away from all things Jewish, into a Christian orthodoxy constructed by Chrysostom.
In conclusion, Drake suggests that the violence that broke out against Jews and Jewish property later in the fourth century in the Roman Empire should be connected back, at least in part, to this trajectory of “discursive violence” that she traces here. On the one hand Justin, the author of Barnabas, and Origen use sexual slander that pegs Jews as sexually immoral; on the other Origen and Chrysostom skew Jewish gender in various directions (male, weak; male licentious; female licentious) in order to valorize Christian behavior (Christian ascetics are male and strong; persecuted Christians are chaste females), as well as to degrade Jews, Judaism, and Jewish practice. Drake highlights these developments to show how this sort of rhetoric was used by Christians to justify disenfranchising and eventually torturing heretics, Jews, and any other opponents.
Drake brings the postcolonial discourse of oppression, stereotyping, and violence to bear on the late ancient context. Christians saw themselves as vulnerable to the Jews they had “colonized,” both in the past and in the future, thus justifying the violence they legislated against Jews and their property in the late Roman Empire. The very act of stereotyping the other, even from a position of power (or especially from a position of power), suggests ambivalence, a love/hate relationship, or at least dependence on the “other.” The very words of violence or degradation point to an anxiety about control and suppression of the “other.”
Drake brings a refreshing and interesting reading to texts that have been read and analyzed many times before. Though her conclusions may not be surprising or radical, her presentation of the material (and the ease of following her argument and evidence) highlights and provokes strong consideration of her claim: pay closer attention to the rhetoric!
