In this article, I argue that several biblical texts, including some previously unrecognized ones, impelled the foundational argument of the initial apologetic letter that Theophilus, the bishop of Antioch in the late-second century, addressed to a non-Christian friend named Autolycus. This statement should not be understood as a denial of the personal agency of Theophilus. The focus here is not on the latter but rather on the surprising influence of these particular biblical texts in Theophilus’s mental and social worlds. I focus not only on biblical passages which Theophilus may have consciously used and which appear in biblical indices in modern editions of Ad Autolycum, but also on previously unrecognized ones which nonetheless leave subtle traces in this ancient apology, and which Theophilus may even have used unconsciously.

In order to uncover the delicate traces of some of these passages, an intertextual approach is used. In this regard, this study aims to transcend an all too common tendency to use the term “intertextual” in a faddish way, to use the term without much awareness of intertextuality theory, and to use the term in a vague way without declaring what specific type of intertextuality is in view.Footnote ¹ In this present study, I harness specifically the insights of literary theorist John Hollander concerning a literary device he entitles “literary echo.”Footnote ² Often literary echoes sound when the quotation of a mere brief phrase of a classic text evokes memory of nearby unquoted portions. Ancient and modern authors alike may consciously or unconsciously use this automatic recollection of the unquoted portions to support their arguments. Likewise, they may consciously or unconsciously use such automatic recollections by way of “twisting” the meaning of a classic text creatively and ironically in their production of new texts. Numerous publications by New Testament scholar Richard B. Hays and his many followers in the biblical studies guild exemplify Hollander’s approach to intertextuality.Footnote ³ I will delineate this specific intertextual approach by reference to Hollander’s location in the history of intertextual studies and by reference to an ancient practice of incessant meditation upon a classic corpus for the sake of cultivating the creation of new texts which incorporate both conscious and unconscious uses of the corpus. This approach will show that literary echoes of these biblical passages sound in the letter to Autolycus partly because Theophilus embraced this venerable practice that was characteristic of skilled ancient authors and orators. In so doing, this study also seeks to deepen the sensitivities of the patristic and early Christian studies scholarly guilds to such subtle literary echoes. This kind of sensitivity can help us discover some typically unnoticed ways that Scripture was used in the largely illiterate cultures of antiquity. Thus, this study can show how a sensitivity to literary echoes can open deeper views into the formation of the apologetic strategy of Theophilus’s first letter, into his conformity to ancient ideals regarding the creative use of a classic corpus, and into how Scripture functioned in his second-century community and in early Christianity more broadly.

The study of ancient texts through sensitivity to literary echoes has deeply impacted biblical scholarship since 1989 through the work of the aforementioned Richard B. Hays and kindred biblical scholars. One indication of this impact was the standing-room-only crowd of several hundred scholars at a two-and-a-half-hour review panel discussion of Hays’s then recently published volume, Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness, at the 2014 annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in San Diego.Footnote ⁴ The discussion panel included major biblical scholars besides Hays: Francis Watson, Markus Bockmuehl, and Marianne Meye Thompson. But while biblical scholarship has become attuned to literary echo, and while the early Christian authors whom we study experienced it, even if they did not know its modern terminology, specialists in patristics and early Christian studies have generally, almost without exception, failed to notice it.

Not all biblical scholars have accepted Hays’s intertextual approach. William Scott Green presents a particularly detailed response to Hays’s work on literary echoes in the New Testament, consisting of two challenges.Footnote ⁵ First, Green objects to Hays’s use of an intertextual approach as a vehicle for exploring meaning in the letters of Paul, since the central purpose of intertextual approaches according to Green is to demonstrate the fluidity of meaning in texts rather than any stable meanings. Hays responds by observing that Green does not seem to notice his own treatment of this very issue.Footnote ⁶ Hays observes a mischaracterization of intertextuality by Green that would always make all texts absolutely fluid. While this may be true with some intertextual theories, it is not so with others. Hays points out that his own work on intertextuality in the Scriptures of Israel and the letters of Paul treats not only the fluidity of meaning in those texts but also the stability of meaning in those same texts. Not only so, neither of the intertextual theorists upon whom Hays relies advances the radical post-structural project of Julia Kristeva or its contention that textual meaning is absolutely fluid.Footnote ⁷

Green presents a second challenge to Hays’s intertextual approach.Footnote ⁸ Green objects to this intertextual approach also because of its reader orientation. Green takes from this that Hays believes that all meaning is produced only in the minds of readers and none is produced in the minds of authors. The consequence of this would be that any literary echoes of the Scriptures of Israel in the letters of Paul are in the final analysis only illusions imagined by Hays alone, which Paul of Tarsus could never have perceived. Hays responds to this challenge first by questioning how widely recognized literary echoes, such as those of Homer in Joyce’s Ulysses and those of Virgil in Dante, could possibly fail to be perceived by Joyce and Dante. Hays also responds to this challenge by observing that Green’s challenge is also undermined by Green’s own appreciation of Hays’s volume on literary echoes in Paul’s letters, where Green deems it to be a disciplined study free from wild leaps of imagination that violate a given text. Hays concludes from this that Green’s second challenge really amounts to a reminder to readers to be sensitive to intertextual meanings, a reminder that Hays himself is eager to make.

The assumption by Green that an especially radical theory of intertextuality, such as that of Julia Kristeva, defines intertextual analysis as a whole is somewhat understandable, since Kristeva invented the term “intertextuality.” Nonetheless, other thinkers, especially Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault, also developed the concept of intertextuality, and she builds on their work.Footnote ⁹ Such influential mid-twentieth-century thinkers, many of them contributors to the French journal Tel Quel, strongly rejected the language theory of Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure posited that words and other language symbols possess meaning by how they distinguish themselves from other symbols. And in his view, languages are static systems. Propelled by the squalls of the mid-twentieth-century French political scene, Kristeva and her like-minded dialogue partners zealously rejected Saussure’s conception of languages as purely static systems. Rather, they argue, meaning is invariably fluid, texts are inherently social, and they are always in dialogue with other texts.

For example, Bakhtin stimulated Kristeva with his idea of dialogism. Motivated by his experiences under the repression of totalitarian Russia, Bakhtin explores how medieval civil and ecclesial authorities used language to maintain their power, and how lower classes resisted official speech through expressions of satire during carnivals. During carnival feast days, peasants dressed as nobles and played humorous roles. The humor allowed them to express subversive ideas. And they were protected not only by their humor but also by a degree of obscurity, since no single voice prevailed. Bakhtin sees the same phenomena in the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Charles Dickens, where neither the narrator nor a single character presents the central message. Rather, a cast of various characters express the essential subversive message. Bakhtin also shows how even a monologue actually represents the multiple voices of a dialogue, since mental and audible monologues invariably represent and respond to competing prior or contemporary voices.

While Bakhtin and Kristeva focus on how texts intersect in authors, Barthes focuses on how texts intersect in readers. The strength of his approach resides in how he addresses the common difficulty in many traditional explorations of influences on an author of differentiating between allusions and cultural commonplaces. Barthes sidesteps this demanding quagmire in his reader-oriented theory. By Barthes’s account, a reader retains the voices of previously read texts, but in the mind of the reader these voices function in ways identical to cultural commonplaces. Critics have appreciated the sophistication that Barthes brings to studies of textual reception as compared with traditional authorial influence studies.Footnote ¹⁰ However, they also observe that Barthes’s theory tends ultimately to fail as a vehicle for rigorous analysis of a given text, since it considers all intertexts to be potentially relevant. As a consequence, it cannot effectively identify especially relevant intertexts.

Foucault overcomes this weakness by addressing how political, legal, medical, psychological, racial, and other social authorities functionally exclude and restrict various intertexts not only in their publication, but also even in their composition as these social forces press on the mental worlds of authors. Thus, Foucault shifts the focus of literary analysis away from the genius of great authors toward the institutional and social location of a given author.

Kristeva develops these insights of Bakhtin, Barthes, Foucault, and other dialog partners with her own rejection of Saussure’s portrayal of languages as static structures. Although space does not allow a comprehensive summary of her probing analysis, a few of its prominent features can be sketched here. Like Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, and fellow contributors to the literary journal Tel Quel, Kristeva embodies the radical spirit of 1960s France. She rejects Saussure’s view that languages are static systems by emphasizing that in reality, societies continually struggle to establish and re-establish connections between linguistic signifiers (or signs) and what those signifiers reference in the real world. Speaking from her Marxist background, she views Saussure’s structural view of language as a promotion of a stultifying official view of speech that elevates the speech marketed by capitalist systems in the forms of books, educational classes, and other commercialized media, and lowers non-official and non-commercial voices in society. Kristeva conceives of the evolution of languages as kindred to the evolution of art, whereby images tended to be symbolic until the later medieval period when a spirit of realism emerged. In her view, realism in both art and linguistics forces the question of the meaning of what is depicted in an immediate and unquestionable way that precludes substantial thought and dialogue. In this light, Saussure’s static, structural view of language systems functions the same way and enforces an artificial stability. The reality according to Kristeva is that languages are ever social and constantly changing, and every text represents a deconstruction and subsequent reconstruction of prior texts. Her theory handles unwritten texts as well as written ones, since it encompasses every expression. Specifically, she considers the functions of the “social text” of unwritten utterances to be identical to the functions of written texts. We can view her theory with her geometric analogy, where contemporary voices in a given dialogue inhabit a horizontal plane.Footnote ¹¹ Vertical planes represent the evolution of linguistic signs in a linguistic system over time. Here, intersections between temporal vertical planes and a particular contemporary dialogical horizontal plane inhabit multiple, even innumerable points, rather than a single one. This geometric vision of Kristeva’s thought, then, represents well the instability and ever-changing states of languages and dialogue in her theory. This instability entails that any given word can carry more than a single meaning at any given time. She aptly summarizes this perspective by asserting that, “Any text is the absorption and transformation of another. The notion of intertextuality replaces that of inter subjectivity.”Footnote ¹² Here the term “subjectivity” brings to mind the agency of authors who are subjects who speak. Certainly, in her theory, the agency of great authors is de-emphasized, and the effects of multiple texts which intersect in a buzz of social and historical dialogue is emphasized. We see here also an apt use of the now famous term “intertextuality” which Kristeva created. Space here only allows this brief summary of her thought. The scope of her theory is indeed quite broad. She follows Foucault’s expansive approach by deeply working out not only the linguistic implications of her literary theory, but also its political, philosophical, social, psychological, and historical implications. Emerging from her Marxist background and the enthusiasms of 1960s France, her theory is indeed radical in multiple ways. Yet, numerous scholars, ignorant of the history of intertextual studies, err when they define intertextuality solely by reference to Kristeva. In the history of literary theory, her fairly radical intertextual theory is only one of many.

Michael Riffaterre serves as an apt example of the next wave of intertextual theorists who emerged in response to Kristeva and the other 1960s French pioneers. These newer thinkers appreciate many of the strengths of the pioneering theories, but they also endeavor to address weaknesses. Riffaterre follows Barthes by focusing on the reader. He constructs an approach that addresses the major weakness of Barthes’s intertextual theory, namely its struggle in a pragmatic sense to facilitate rigorous analysis of a given text. Sometimes considered a structuralist, Riffaterre is actually in a traditional sense neither a structuralist nor a post-structuralist. Although he concerns himself with linguistic structures, these are only whatever linguistic structures which may arise in the minds of readers. Thus, he differs from traditional structuralists. And against traditional post-structuralists, he is extremely dissatisfied with ambiguity and incoherence. Therefore, his theory strives for resolution of all ambiguity and incoherence by means of rigorous searches for particular intertexts which bring clarity to any given text. Specifically, this quest in his theory for clarity and semantic solidity, as opposed to its absolute fluidity, proceeds by way of two stages of interpretation. In the initial stage, a preliminary and somewhat naive but nevertheless necessary one, a reader interprets words according to their generally accepted senses. But then in a second stage of analysis, the reader perceives what Riffaterre terms “ungrammaticalities”: ironic surprises, figurative language, and instances of ambiguity. These spur the reader to look deeper by searching for particular intertexts which can resolve every ungrammaticality. In this way, Riffaterre asserts the reality of a single correct meaning of any given text. Thus, he rejects Barthes’s and Kristeva’s unending and ultimately unresolved searches for the meaning of a given text.Footnote ¹³

The prolific Umberto Eco also contributes to intertextual studies in multiple ways. In his The Open Work, he celebrates the reception of “fields of possibilities” of meaning and affect in a given work rather than merely a single, authoritative meaning.Footnote ¹⁴ Accordingly, Derrida hailed The Open Work as Eco’s most important book.Footnote ¹⁵

Eco also advances intertextual thought in perhaps his most influential work, his postmodern novel, The Name of the Rose. This novel is his most popular work, with millions of copies sold. It also ranks among postmodern novels which have drawn the greatest scholarly attention. To understand this attention, we recall an important insight about intertextuality from literary theorist Linda Hutcheon. She observes that all historical texts depend on “paratexts,” such as footnotes citing other historians or the so-called raw data of history, including diaries, government records, newspaper articles, and so forth. She also emphasizes that this so-called raw data of history is textual and thus removed from historical events per se. Her broader point is that all of these works, all texts and all of their given paratexts, are products of their authors’ interpretations and are also themselves open to multiple interpretations. She further observes that postmodern historical novels make abundant use of such paratexts to both authenticate and also challenge authority.Footnote ¹⁶ And here we find Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism. Thus, it is no surprise that scholarly reception of The Name of the Rose observes numerous overtones of Bakhtin’s thought in the novel. Indeed, his tension between official speech and subversive speech runs throughout. One might be tempted to presume that Eco champions the destabilizing challenge to rigid orthodoxy through the voice of the protagonist, William. However, this easy presumption stands on a slippery foundation. Birgit Eriksson demonstrates that Eco supports the legitimacy of both official and subversive speech. Specifically, Eco believes that readers must be free on one hand to seek unifying concepts (“orthodoxy”) and on the other, to follow unpredictable intertextual trails.Footnote ¹⁷ This recalls the above-mentioned celebration by Eco of a given work’s field of possibilities.

Hutcheon’s insights about paratexts remind us that all historical accounts and all works of historical fiction, such as The Name of the Rose, function within vast textual webs. Indeed, Eco incorporates in The Name of the Rose abundant intertexts from the Bible, Aristotle, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jorge Luis Borges, and Conan Doyle, to name only a few. Eco presents more than a mere murder mystery set in the medieval period. Rather, he braids into the novel textual elements from multiple eras including the present. Moreover, multiple interpretations trace routes through these textual webs at every point. In observing this aspect of postmodern novels, Hutcheon reinforces Barthes’s idea that a reader retains the voices of previously read texts.Footnote ¹⁸

Like Riffaterre, some more recent intertextual theorists argue for the solidity of textual meaning. Others follow Kristeva by positing the absolute fluidity of textual meaning. And yet other intertextual theorists occupy various midpoints along a spectrum extending between Kristeva and Riffaterre. If space here allowed, we could gain glimpses of many additional intertextual theories. Nevertheless, as we recall the small set of intertextual theories discussed above, representing only a mere portion of the history of intertextual studies, we learn that although each of these literary theories is indeed an intertextual one, some differ greatly from Kristeva’s famous intertextual theory.

Although some intertextual theories join Kristeva’s by asserting the absolute fluidity of textual meaning, others, such as those of Hollander and Hays, explore not only the fluidity of meaning in texts but also the stability of meaning in those same texts. This reality can undermine a common “knee jerk reaction” of rejecting intertextuality out of hand by some scholars, who out of ignorance of the history of intertextual scholarship, falsely assume that any intertextual analysis must invariably assume the absolute fluidity of textual meaning.

All of the intertextual theories that we have considered so far enjoy the advantage of rendering a nuanced view of how languages and texts actually function in real life. They allow more nuance and realism than that typically supplied by a structural and more simplistic approach, such as that of Saussure, that depicts languages as static systems lacking apparent effects from social forces or implications for them.

We see in this brief history of intertextual literary theories that intertextuality itself is defined neither by a commitment to the absolute fluidity of texts nor by a radical political agenda, since some intertextuality theories lack one or the other of these commitments. What then is the actual essence of intertextuality? Jay Clayton and Eric Rothstein provide a helpful answer: “We start with the generalization that influence has to do with agency, whereas intertextuality has to do with a much more impersonal field of crossing texts.”Footnote ¹⁹ This movement of emphasis away from the genius of “great authors” takes account of the reality that the relatively few “genius authors” are not the only voices who shape speech and bodies of literature. In reality, these select literary stars are joined by innumerable lesser authors and speakers, all of whom react either consciously or unconsciously to forces at work in their historical, political, religious, economic, and social locations. And one need not be as radical as Foucault and Kristeva to use or contribute to literary theories which account for such nuances.

Despite the reality of the long afterlives of texts supported by the abundance of theoretical work on intertextuality, some of which is summarized above, modern skepticism nevertheless abounds about memory abilities of ancient semi-literate cultures and their propensities to hear literary echoes. However, this skepticism rests largely upon the historical distance separating the modern world from ancient ones. Socrates predicted such skepticism in the course of approving an ancient Egyptian rebuke to the god said to have invented letters. He also reminds us of the intense commitment to memory development in Greco-Roman antiquity, a commitment largely foreign to the modern world:

There indeed was great respect for memory in antiquity. We are further reminded of the extensive efforts devoted to memory development in Theophilus’s age by the lengthy discussion in Ad Herennium of a venerable Roman memory method (Ps.Cicero, Heren. 3.28–40).Footnote ²¹ This is the most extensive surviving ancient discussion of memory. Its author reveals Roman expectations about memory abilities by declaring, “The natural memory must be strengthened by discipline so as to become exceptional,” (Ps. Cicero, Heren. 3.16.29)Footnote ²² and “In every discipline artistic theory is of little avail without unremitting exercise, but especially in mnemonics theory is almost valueless unless made good by industry, devotion, toil, and care” (Ps.Cicero, Heren. 3.24.40).Footnote ²³ And while modern readers might find it odd that an ancient rhetorical handbook such as Ad Herennium would include an extensive discussion on mnemonics, since modern speakers do not typically devote long hours towards memory development, Frances Yates supplies the explanation: Roman orators developed their memory abilities so that they could give lengthy speeches from memory “with unfailing accuracy.”Footnote ²⁴ The mnemonic system recorded in Ad Herennium and other extant ancient handbooks supplied a method for memorizing not only all of the detailed topical parts of a speech or treatise, but also one for memorizing even its exact words, should one desire to do so. The author of Ad Herennium called this system an “art of memory” and its product “artificial memory” (Ps. Cicero, Heren. 3.16.28).Footnote ²⁵ It entailed elaborate placement of images associated with words or concepts into locations in an imagined scene. By mentally traversing these places, one may accurately recall lengthy sequences of words or details. In this way, beginning from any given word in a memorized text, one may recite the text accurately word-for-word, forward or backward. Furthermore, it was not unknown for ancient speakers actually to use this method for memorizing a text. Augustine of Hippo for example relates that he asked a friend of his named Simplicius to recite the penultimate lines of all of the books of Virgil (Augustine, An. orig. 4.7.9).Footnote ²⁶ According to Augustine, Simplicius was able to do so with perfect accuracy. Augustine then asked his friend to recite from memory the line preceding each of these penultimate lines. Again, Simplicius recited them all from memory accurately.

William A. Graham likewise challenges typical modern assumptions about memory and consumption of texts in Theophilus’s world.Footnote ²⁷ He reminds us that even after the spread of books and reading during the classical Greek period, ancient publication of works operated typically through public reading rather than through production of physical texts. Texts were most commonly transmitted orally, not visually, and stored in memories rather than in physical libraries. Even when texts were read, they were easily read only when readers already knew them (this is perhaps germane to the above-quoted claim by Socrates that letters are “an elixir . . . not of memory, but of reminding”). And copious memorization was a regular component of ancient education, even at the most elementary level. Across the Greco-Roman world, students at the so-called “primary” level all regularly memorized and then recited from memory numerous passages throughout their years of basic education.Footnote ²⁸ So in Theophilus’s day, it was not only the highly educated, those who benefitted from handbooks like the aforementioned Ad Herennium, who devoted extensive ongoing effort in developing memory ability. Even sub-elite students, destined for only a rudimentary education, experienced years of intense memory development.Footnote ²⁹ This helps explain the interesting report from Satyrus that not merely a few, but rather, “many of the Athenians” (πολλοὶ τῶν Ἀθηναίων) taken captive during the unsuccessful Athenian military campaign against Sicily during the Peloponnesian War were able to gain favor with their captors and thus save their lives by reciting from memory verses from the poems of Euripides (Satyrus, Vita Euripidis frag. 39.19).Footnote ³⁰ Similarly, Pliny the Younger attests to this kind of memory skill when he describes his authorial method. He typically worked out not only his train of thought, but even “choosing and correcting the wording” of lengthy passages of composition, entirely in his mind. Only then would he cast his creation into written form by summoning a scribe and dictating his composition from memory, word-for-word (Pliny, Ep. 9.36).Footnote ³¹ It is no surprise then, that both structures and even punctuation of most ancient works were formed so as to facilitate mnemonics.Footnote ³²

There were additional memory techniques. Although Greek authors such as Alcidamas, Plato, and Aristotle did not know the later “art of memory” of Roman rhetorical handbooks, they nonetheless advocated assiduous development of the “natural memory.” This entailed intense concentration, repetition, and natural associations.Footnote ³³ Using these techniques, Hippias displayed impressive feats of memory.Footnote ³⁴

What about Theophilus himself? Aside from his deep familiarity with ScriptureFootnote ³⁵ as a hearer of sermons and as a preacher of his own sermons (which surely entailed at least some unintentional memorization of it), would he also have known the aforementioned methods to memorize texts from the Scriptures, even ones quoted in his own sermons? As it turns out, evidence indicates that he probably knew sophisticated memorization techniques. He enjoyed an advanced education. It had imperfections. Nicole Zeegers-Vander Vorst, following Johannes Geffcken, shows decisively that Theophilus’s knowledge of the poets and philosophers was shallow. Indeed, most of his quotations of them are from ancient anthologies, not from complete works.Footnote ³⁶ However, since the above-mentioned “art of memory” was one of the major elements of Roman rhetoric, as attested by extant handbooks such as Ad Herennium (ca. 86 BCE), Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria (ca. 95 CE), and Cicero’s De oratore (55 BCE), the key issue here is the degree of Theophilus’s training in rhetoric. This was extensive. My fairly recent study demonstrates that he was highly skilled as a rhetor and would have gained extensive training in rhetoric.Footnote ³⁷ Both at a high level and at the level of detail, his sole extant work exhibits consistent rhetorical brilliance. Therefore, he would have known the above-discussed advanced art of memory as well as basic ones. We cannot presume that his abilities to recall classic texts were as undeveloped as is typical in the modern highly literate West. And if he held a rich cache of memorized Scripture, he would have been well-positioned to use literary echoes of Scripture, even unconsciously. This claim finds additional support not only in above-discussed intertextual theories, but also in an ancient ideal expressed by Seneca, as we shall see shortly.

The impressive although often forgotten memory abilities of highly oral cultures in antiquity, insights from intertextuality theorists about the long afterlives of texts and about how languages actually function in real life in both literate and oral cultures, and the attention in the New Testament studies guild spurred by Hays’s intertextual work all recommend the utility of a sensitivity to literary echo as we consider the second-century Christian apology of Theophilus.Footnote ³⁸ As we embark on our exploration of the first letter by Theophilus to his non-Christian friend Autolycus, we will examine intertextuality in its opening lines, where we will discover the emergence of the overall apologetic strategy of the entire letter. Examining these opening lines in order, starting with the first, we will encounter echoes of certain biblical texts which not only answer his non-Christian friend’s two specific challenges, but which also impel the foundational apologetic argument of the entire letter.

Theophilus launches his apology right from the start, in the very first line, exactly as his culture would have expected, when he solicits the good graces of his audience by intimating his disinterest in rhetorical showmanship.Footnote ³⁹ Indeed, it was not uncommon, not only for Christian authors but also for pre-Christian Greek authors, to seek sympathy from audiences by claiming to disavow rhetoric, all while actually employing trusted rhetorical techniques.Footnote ⁴⁰ In this regard, Robert Grant’s edition of Ad Autolycum notes a reminiscence of 2 Tim 3:8c within the first few lines of the treatise.Footnote ⁴¹ Here, Theophilus borrows a phrase from the verse, “the mind warped” (τὸν νοῦν κατεφθαρμένον), to describe those who glory in the empty vanity of rhetoric for itself.Footnote ⁴² Thus, as a skilled Christian speaker, his use of the “mind warped” language of 2 Tim 3:8c as a description of those who seek the empty grandeur of mere rhetorical flourish was entirely appropriate. But his rejection of empty words not only recalls 2 Tim 3:8c, it also recalls some additional passages appearing earlier in 2 Timothy. For example, 2 Tim 2:14 warns the disciple not to wrangle over words, while 2:16 warns them to avoid words that are “empty” (κενοφωνία).

Theophilus then proceeds to draw from the wider biblical context of 2 Tim 3:8c, even though he does not quote from it. 2 Timothy 3:8c seemed to function for him like a rock tossed into a serene pond. The rock disturbs the expected view and draws an observer’s initial attention to a specific area. But the rock also produces waves which radiate outward in ever-expanding rings, drawing the observer’s gaze also to the surrounding area and then to the region surrounding that. In like manner, Theophilus gradually steps further away from 2 Tim 3:8c itself, the biblical recollection that Grant notices, in order to attend to ever-widening glimpses at its surrounding textual background. Indeed, he draws his audience initially to the heart of a subtle inclusio structure and later to its outer boundaries:Footnote ⁴³

Although inclusio is a modern term, scholars have nevertheless demonstrated the presence of the kind of structure that it describes in a number of early Christian texts, including among others the New Testament, the Didache, Justin Martyr’s Apologia 1, Gregory Thaumaturgos’s Oratio panegyrica in Origenem, Gregory of Nazianzus’s Oratio 31, and Cyril of Jerusalem’s Oratio catechetica magna.Footnote ⁴⁴ So it would not be surprising if Theophilus’s community had at least a semi-conscious perception of this subtle inclusio structure.

Although he does not quote any of the biblical verses surrounding the three words which he recalls from 2 Tim 3:8c, the short phrase at the center of this delicate inclusio, nevertheless his subsequent discussion indicates that these unquoted verses consciously or unconsciously shape his apology. They sound through literary echo.

Literary echoes can be more delicate, ghostly, and mysterious than explicit quotations or even allusions.Footnote ⁴⁵ Authors sometimes produced literary echoes by quoting very short phrases of classic texts. Other times there was no actual quotation at all, but perhaps a mere recollection of some imagery of a classic text in combination with its verbal rhythm. Indeed, some intertextuality specialists distinguish allusions from literary echoes on the basis that echoes need not be intended by an author.Footnote ⁴⁶

Indeed, the ancients themselves valued the use of a classic corpus for the production of creative new texts through re-use and conscious and even unconscious twisting of classic texts, as Seneca reminds us (Ep. 84).Footnote ⁴⁷ He advises Lucilius to follow the example of the bees. Just as bees flit about gathering pollen rather randomly among various fields of flowers, so also should a skilled author flit about in a classic corpus, constantly gathering insights here and there. And just as bees use the gathered pollen without memory of the specific source of each particle of pollen and subsequently combine their gatherings in a rather mysterious way to produce something entirely new, their delicious honey, so also should a wise author be continually immersed in classic texts. In this immersion, wisdom and insights are gathered here and there, often without memory of the specific source of each particle of enlightenment. A proficient author digests the gathered ideas so that they ferment within, their inner fermentation guided by reason (Ep. 84.4–7). Yet reason is not the only force at work here. According to Seneca’s analogy, this mental fermentation combines ancient insights not only consciously, but even unconsciously and mysteriously. And the identities of classic textual ingredients are lost not merely through authors forgetting their specific locations in the classic corpus. The identities of these textual ingredients are masked also by their creative transformation. Seneca readily admits that sometimes features of a new work will imitate classic texts, but yet the imitated features become so artfully transformed that one sometimes can no longer identify the individual sources (Ep. 84.8). The mind buries them away, but nevertheless they mysteriously mold the form of the new text (Ep. 84.7). Accordingly, the new text that emerges out of this creative gleaning of classic texts is clearly something different from its various ingredients (Ep. 84.5). We see here that ancient authors prized the creative twisting of the original sense of a classic text, for the sake of bringing out a deeper meaning, or an allied perspective, or for the sake of expressing original thoughts. The ancient process that Seneca describes of randomly and consciously and unconsciously absorbing a classic corpus in order to create new texts resurrects itself in the literary echoes described by Hollander.

Echoes of classic texts resonated frequently in oral cultures, where audiences relied on their developed memory skills and thus were accustomed to recalling classics from memory. Christian antiquity was predominately illiterate.Footnote ⁴⁸ Largely illiterate audiences could readily recall unquoted language lying proximate to quoted or alluded phrases of classic writings. Thus, illiterate hearers were especially sensitive to literary echoes. They appreciated the ironic pleasures which these echoes created. In this light, a modern sensitivity to literary echoes can help us to step out of our own highly literate culture and to enter more deeply into the largely oral cultures of Christian antiquity.

Moreover, sensitivity to literary echo is crucial for perceiving Theophilus’s actual use of Scripture. There is very much more of it than might appear at first glance. His obvious allusion is only to 2 Tim 3:8c (κατεφθαρμένοι τὸν νοῦν, “warped in mind”).Footnote ⁴⁹ But the unquoted biblical phrases surrounding these three words from 3:8c, to which this rather obvious allusion refers, echo indeed in his following words, starting with those closest to the center of the inclusio, and then proceeding to those further out. The heart of this delicate 2 Timothy inclusio refers to those who have warped minds and thus are discredited for the faith. Theophilus uses the recollection of 3:8c to refer to those who, having warped minds, are wretched and who glory in the empty praise of mere rhetorical showmanship. His subsequent discussion echoes both 3:7–8b and 3:9, the outer ring of the inclusio. Both passages refer to those unable to perceive the truth. After mentioning this inability, they each declare an allied reality, 3:7–8b declaring how these ones stand against the truth, and 3:9 declaring that in the end their folly will become evident to everyone. These echoes sound through Theophilus’s charge against his friend Autolycus: he also stands against the truth, since he mocks the name of God and ridicules his invisibility (Theophilus, Autol. 1.1.4–1.2.1). Not only so, he remains absolutely frustrated in his desire to see God, since the “eyes of his soul” are obscured by cataracts of godlessness and vice (1.2.2–33). His folly is evident to those able to clearly see (1.2.23–28), and it will be evident to everyone in the end (1.3.17, 1.14.7).

While modern students of early Christianity may perceive these above-mentioned literary echoes based on their familiarity with the text of 2 Timothy, they nonetheless remain in danger of missing additional literary echoes, these additional ones sounded by the Scriptures of Israel. Theophilus’s second-century community heard them ringing more loudly than do typical modern specialists in early Christianity, for his generation knew the Scriptures of Israel as well as those of Jewish descent who composed most of the Christian movement in its first decades, as Oskar Skarsaune has shown.Footnote ⁵⁰ Mention of Jannes and Jambres in 2 Tim 3:7–8 owes to traditional Jewish and Christian reflections on these characters, reflections born of this deep ancient immersion in the Scriptures of Israel.

Admittedly, a few manuscripts of 2 Timothy use Ἰωάννης, “John,” in place of Ἰάννης, “Jannes,” and others use Μαμβρῆς, “Mambres,” in place of Ἰαμβρῆς, “Jambres.” But in Jewish tradition, “Mambres” was an alternate form of “Jambres” and referred to the same figure.Footnote ⁵¹ These few variations need not trouble us.

While Jannes and Jambres appear nowhere in (LXX) Exodus, they are named and identified with the Egyptian magicians of Exod 7:11ff and 9:11 in some Jewish Targums, the earliest of which may be nearly contemporary with 2 Timothy. Their names also appear in later Jewish and Christian writings, as well as in Pliny the Elder and Apuleius.Footnote ⁵² In these traditions, Jannes and Jambres were the Egyptian sorcerers and idolaters who opposed Moses who gave the First Covenant. In like manner, Theophilus’s non-Christian friend Autolycus opposed Jesus the New Moses who gave the New Covenant.

We find another parallel between ancient Egypt and second-century Antioch. According to Theophilus, the officials of the Egyptian court and Autolycus likewise opposed the biblical God and gloried in their own rhetoric while by contrast, both Moses and Theophilus remained faithful to the biblical God and disavowed their own rhetorical skill. Moreover, both Pharaoh and Autolycus suffered with defective hearts. Pharaoh hardened his own heart in Exod 8 on the one hand, and on the other hand, the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart elsewhere in Exodus (LXX Exod 7:3, 13–14, 22; 8:11, 15, 28; 9:7, 12, 35; 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10; 14:4, 8; cf. 4:21). Likewise, Autolycus could not perceive God according to Theophilus, because the “ears of his heart” (τὰ ὦτα τῆς καρδίας) could not hear (Theophilus, Autol. 1.2).Footnote ⁵³

Theophilus not only evokes memory of the Egyptian magicians Jannes and Jambres. He also celebrates the Lord’s triumph over them. But here additional literary echoes reverberate. He enumerates unworthy elements in the initial line: eloquence and fluency that produces delight and empty glory. When we consider each of these elements one by one, we discover striking irony. First in this string of elements is eloquence and fluency. Moses’s trepidation at the prospect of confronting Pharaoh in the face of his own lack of verbal poise suggests that Pharaoh’s court entertained eloquent speakers. By contrast, Moses was “slow of speech” (ἰσχνόφωνος; Exod 4:10). Next, we encounter the element of delight. While the Egyptian court enjoyed the delight of such eloquence and so much more, God’s people labored in misery. But we feel a premonition that this was not to last, for we also read in Exodus that the Lord knew their sorrows (Exod 3:7). Finally, at the very end of this initial sentence by Theophilus, we encounter the element of glory. And while in Exodus the Egyptian magicians generated empty glory, the Lord displayed authentic glory. Likewise, Theophilus closes the opening sentence of his apology with the “wretched mind” language of 2 Tim 3:8b, referring to the mindset and empty glory of mere rhetorical showmen. Like the denizens of the Egyptian court, Autolycus delights in the hollow glories of rhetorical ornamentation rather than the authentic glory of the true God. And similar to the misery of oppressed Israel held captive in Egypt, late-second-century Antiochene Christians endure the miseries of recurrent Roman persecutions.

These biblical recollections would have fallen easily into the minds of the largely illiterate yet biblically formed Christian community of ancient Antioch. Theophilus would have shared the easy memory recollection of vast stores of Scripture of his mostly illiterate flock. Images of Jannes and Jambres, mentioned in 2 Tim 3:8a, likely came instantly and unavoidably to their memories. These Antiochene Christians would have automatically visualized the dramas of Exod 3 and the Lord’s triumph over Jannes and Jambres. They would have instinctively applied the Exod 3 drama and the related Jannes and Jambres exegetical traditions to second-century Antioch and its frequent slanders and persecutions of Christians (Theophilus, Autol. 3.4; 3.30). These biblical echoes would have reminded them that despite the oppressions from those devoted to false gods, the biblical God nevertheless rescues his people.

Would a Roman religionist like Autolycus have considered this point at all relevant? Perhaps, since the debate depicted in Ad Autolycum concerned who is the true god. However, this question might have been partly moot. From all indications, Theophilus advanced this point not only for the sake of his friend Autolycus and other curious outsiders, but also for the benefit of his own disciples. His letters provided them with apologetic arguments, which they could subsequently re-express in their own inter-religious encounters, and also with assurances that could strengthen their trust in the Lord.

Indeed, we find a number of suggestions of a Christian audience of the apology as well as some non-Christian ones. For one thing, Grant finds indications that Theophilus reused Christian catechetical writings in his letters to Autolycus.Footnote ⁵⁴ And Frances Young extensively reinforces the case that Theophilus authored his apology not only for outsiders like Autolycus, but also for insiders.Footnote ⁵⁵ She assembles a persuasive case that second-century apologetic works are not identified by a particular genre, but by a particular rhetorical aim. She argues in this regard that the essential aim of Ad Autolycum and other second-century Christian apologetic works was to justify the position of early Christians who distinguished themselves as a unique people who stood apart from both Jews and from the prevailing culture. Consequently, they suffered from unjust accusations and other legal and social threats. Young takes account of evidence such as Justin’s detailed challenge of contemporary non-Christian Jewish biblical interpretations and messianic convictions, Theophilus’s self-identification as a Christian, his extensive and strident rejection of the Greco-Roman poets and philosophers, along with evidence she amasses from Tatian, Athenagoras, and other early Christian apologists. This of course does not disavow early Christian use of the Scriptures of Israel and the classics and assumptions of their Greco-Roman culture. Indeed, these challenges demanded that second-century Christians engage with these Jewish and non-Christian texts and assumptions. Thus, they rejected contemporary Jewish claims, and disavowed Greco-Roman religions and literatures. Consequently, they enjoyed neither the protections accorded to Jews nor the safety of the prevailing Roman culture. They needed to justify their position as a “third race,” to use Tertullian’s terminology, before governmental authorities, before curious Jewish or Greco-Roman religionists such as Autolycus, and also to themselves, given the anxiety surrounding their precarious situation (Tertullian, Nat. 1.8).Footnote ⁵⁶ Therefore, we stand on reasonably solid ground when we envision not only curious Greco-Roman religionists like Autolycus, but also Christians, and perhaps even a few non-Christian Jewish outsiders attracted to Theophilus’s robust celebration of the Scriptures of Israel, seated in the audience of Theophilus’s apology.

With the third sentence of his apology, Theophilus reminds his non-Christian friend of the precarious position of Christians by addressing his friend’s attacks on Christianity. He mentions three attacks on Christianity by Autolycus. Theophilus describes the first attack quite vaguely, mentioning only that it flowed from Autolycus’s boasting of his gods. Theophilus did not need to be specific about this first attack, because he mentions it merely to introduce the matter at hand. Since he describes the next two attacks more fully, we will linger on those. We will find that Theophilus fends off both attacks by alluding to a complex of biblical intertexts, especially an unquoted portion of (LXX) Ps 113. In so doing, he begins to form the foundational argument of his first apologetic letter. And this foundational argument will progressively strengthen thanks to echoes of additional biblical passages.

The first of these two specific attacks is ostensibly upon the title χριστιανός, “Christian,” but by implication, it is actually an attack on the name of Theophilus’s God, an attack upon the title Χριστός, “Christ.” Theophilus answers it by dramatically seizing Autolycus’s sword, as it were, and using it against his attacker. This is the rhetorical device of βία, “violence,” a rhetorical over-powering whereby an orator seizes an attack used against them in order to turn it back against the attacker. It was a cherished maneuver that delighted ancient audiences (Ps.Hermogenes, Inv. 3.3).Footnote ⁵⁷ When Autolycus attacks the name of God, he also uses a rhetorical device which delighted audiences, the play on words (Ps. Cicero, Heren. 4.20).Footnote ⁵⁸ He evidently mocks the title Χριστός based on its sonic resemblance to a term frequently applied to slaves, χρηστός, “serviceable [one],” or “servant,” but sometimes used in the even more derogatory sense of “simple” or “silly.”Footnote ⁵⁹ Theophilus “seizes Autolycus’s sword” by eagerly bearing the name of his God, Χριστός, because his desire is to be indeed χρηστός, “useful,” to God. He then proceeds to imply that Autolycus himself is the “simple” one, the “silly” one, because Autolycus can not be useful to God in any way, for Autolycus is blinded by the cataracts on the eyes of his soul (Theophilus, Autol. 1.2).Footnote ⁶⁰

At this point, Theophilus explains exactly why Autolycus is so useless to God, why he is so blind, by alluding to (LXX) Ps 113:13–14, and then to 113:12. These allusions are partial verse quotations and are so strong that the biblical indexes of both Grant’s critical edition of Ad Autolycum and Biblindex recognize them.Footnote ⁶¹ These partial verse quotations assert only that the idols themselves are useless and blind, for they can neither see nor hear. But the logic of Theophilus’s reply to his non-Christian friend’s attack depends on the nearby verse sixteen, which he does not quote, even partially. This verse declares that all who make idols and all who trust in them become like them: useless and blind. Theophilus’s maneuver of “seizing Autolycus’s sword” reaches its dramatic climax. Although Theophilus quotes only a portion of Ps 113:12–14, he nevertheless relies at this point on the logic of an unquoted neighboring verse in the psalm. As we shall see, it was especially the literary echo of this unquoted verse that here shapes his essential apologetic defense.

He also brings to mind verse five, although he does not quote it either. Here then is another literary echo. This text exhorts the faithful to give glory to the name of the Lord. And this of course was precisely Theophilus’s desire after his non-Christian friend mocked the name of the Lord.

As we pause to hear even more echoes of the unquoted portions of Ps 113, we hear not only similar themes, but also the very setting of Theophilus’s apologetic letter. The psalm begins by contrasting Egypt, “a barbarous people” (λαὸς βάρβαρος),Footnote ⁶² with Israel, which for the psalmist is God’s sanctuary and God’s dominion. But the church of Antioch experienced a kindred contrast. Dwelling in the capitol city of the eastern province of the Roman Empire, in an age when both Theophilus and Justin Martyr complained about Christians dying daily under Roman hands, Theophilus’s flock surely felt they were living among “a barbarous people” like those described by the psalmist (Theophilus, Autol. 3.30; Justin, Dial. 18). Yet in the midst of such a hostile environment, the church of Antioch stood as God’s sanctuary and the locus of his dominion in Antioch.

After these resonances of these initial lines of the psalm, further echoes follow. The psalmist paints joyous imagery of the natural realm rejoicing at God’s saving actions and trembling at his presence. Since illiterate Antiochene Christians preserved the psalm not between the covers of a book or within the rolls of a scroll, but in their memories, they would automatically recall imagery of the waves of the sea fleeing, mountains skipping like rams, and the earth trembling at the presence of the Lord (Ps 113:3).

The implied irony is powerful. If the very earth could tremble at the presence of the Lord, why could not Autolycus restrain himself from mocking this God, for at least a moment, that he might begin to fear him. Theophilus’s audience would have appreciated his use of irony, both here and also in the opening sentence of his apology, as we observed earlier.Footnote ⁶³

We perceive yet more echoes of unquoted portions of the psalm. When Theophilus quotes Autolycus’s third attack aimed specifically against the invisibility of God and implied in the mocking challenge, “Make your God visible to me!,” he faintly echoes the concern in vv. 9–10 to glorify God’s name, lest the nations should say “where is their God?” The theme of glory suggested by the echoes of this psalm reinforces similar glory themes evoked by the above-mentioned echoes of Exodus texts and of their associated Jewish and Christian exegetical traditions. The logic of the psalm here is that Israel must glorify God’s name lest the ancient Near Eastern neighbors of Israel should think that Israel failed to glorify its God because its God had departed from among them. But Theophilus twists the sense of this verse by turning the nations’ question in the psalm into the quotation of Autolycus’s mocking challenge. Yet Theophilus surely felt that this twisting was warranted, for his non-Christian friend Autolycus essentially asked this very question contained in Ps 113:10 as he mocked the biblical God. But as we have recalled, the twisting of a classic text is one of the marks of both Seneca’s ideal for the use of a classic corpus in generating new texts as well as a mark of literary echo. We have discovered here at the beginning of the apology this kind of textual twisting of 2 Tim 3, Exod 4–9 and associated exegetical traditions, and (LXX) Ps 113. Here is a busy intersection of intersecting texts, yet one producing complex harmony rather than chaos. And the textual twisting of all of these texts in Theophilus’s early Christian apology preserves this intricate harmony.

As we have seen, Autolycus mocked the biblical God by drawing attention to his invisibility. And so at the beginning of the letter, Theophilus quotes Autolycus’s challenge: “Make your God visible to me!” (Δεῖξόν μοι τὸν θεόν σου; Theophilus, Autol. 1.2.1). But Theophilus also quotes this same challenge in the very final sentence of the letter when he writes, “Since you put before me your demand, my friend, ‘Make your God visible to me!’—this is my God” (1.14.31).Footnote ⁶⁴ This is another instance of inclusio. This particular inclusio structure frames the entire letter, and establishes its foundational apologetic focus. Admittedly, Theophilus certainly addresses other issues besides the invisibility of God in his first letter to Autolycus. He discourses on the plausibility of resurrection, and the folly of false gods, just to name two examples (1.8–10).Footnote ⁶⁵ But by closing his προοίμιον (“introduction”) with a quotation of Autolycus’s challenge to show the biblical God, followed by a lengthy discourse answering this challenge, and then by closing the entire letter with a second quotation of Autolycus’s challenge, he establishes the foundational apologetic focus of the letter, to which he will add his other apologetic remarks. At its very core, the foundational issue of Ad Autolycum 1 is the invisibility of the true God and how nonetheless he can be known.Footnote ⁶⁶

We have seen that Theophilus’s basic answer to Autolycus’s challenge comes from an unquoted portion of the psalm proximate to his allusion to a few words in the psalm. To put it plainly, Theophilus answers that the reason that Autolycus can not see God is not because the biblical God is not real. Rather, Autolycus can not see God because Autolycus himself is blind. For Theophilus and his community, a complex of biblical intertexts and especially this unquoted verse, Ps 113:16, supplies the ultimate diagnosis: those who make and worship useless and blind idols become like them—useless and blind.

Indeed, this diagnosis of both idols and those who worship them, that all of them are useless and blind, sets the course of Theophilus’s entire apologetic letter. We have seen that he answers Autolycus’s second attack, connected to the slave moniker “serviceable [one],” or “servant,” by declaring that he is a Christian because he wants to be serviceable, that is, useful, to God. And by contrast, Autolycus is useless to him. Theophilus then answers the third attack by discoursing on the blindness of Autolycus’s soul. For Theophilus then, this unquoted verse, Ps 113:16, sounding as a faint literary echo, explains everything: Autolycus worships useless and blind idols and so has become himself useless and blind. And as Theophilus thus answers the mocking challenge from his friend, “Make your God visible to me!,” he answers that basic challenge that motivates essentially the entirety of his first apologetic letter to Autolycus. Echoes of this and other biblical texts in the very initial lines of the apology set its entire course. Its end lies in its beginning.

Ironically, none of the key biblical passages supporting this essential apologetic argument reside among those explicitly quoted by Theophilus. Rather, all of these key biblical passages encompass unquoted verses resonating as literary echoes. These key passages include unquoted verses residing not far from the short phrase in 2 Tim 3:8, to which Theophilus alludes. Beginning in the second line of the apology, these faint literary echoes establish an ethic of arriving at truth and so set the stage for the apology.Footnote ⁶⁷ Then practically in the next breath, beginning in the fifth line, we hear the delicate echo of (LXX) Ps 113:16 that creates the foundational argument of the entire apologetic letter. This important literary echo finds support from echoes of additional unquoted verses from the psalm. These in turn find further support from harmonious echoes of unquoted passages in Exodus. And despite some modern accusations of incoherence in Theophilus, his discourse is by no means entirely aimless, since these literary echoes at the very start established his aim, and Theophilus holds it steady till the very end. If space allowed, we could consider scores of further literary echoes supporting this same aim. For example, later in the apologetic letter, a protracted hymn of literary echoes of the Lord’s speech to Job enriches, strengthens, and deepens the essential apologetic argument.Footnote ⁶⁸

These realities weaken a prevailing anachronistic stereotype of Theophilus that depicts him as a disorganized and incoherent thinker. Moreover, a direct and detailed scholarly response to this modern stereotype comprehensively challenges it.Footnote ⁶⁹

Lest this challenge to the stereotype should seem to undermine the historical quality of this study, we should note that weakening the stereotypical image of Theophilus does not destroy his historical particularity. It merely shows that his particularity is richer and more sophisticated than previously suspected.

The study of ancient texts through sensitivity to literary echoes has truly impacted biblical scholarship over the last quarter century. But while biblical scholarship has become attuned to literary echoes, and while the patristic authors we study experienced it, patristic and early Christian studies scholarship has generally, almost without exception, failed to notice this kind of intertextuality. But a sensitivity to it offers great potential to these scholarly guilds. This study demonstrates how a sensitivity to literary echoes can produce deeper understanding of the formation of the strategy of Theophilus’s initial apologetic letter, of his conformity to ancient ideals regarding the creative use of a classic corpus, and of functions of Scripture in his largely oral second-century community and in early Christianity more broadly.