The majority of essays in this volume result from a conference held at the University of Erfurt in 2017. The goal is to explore the application of spatial temporal theory to the study of early Christian martyrdom. In the words of the editors, the volume “seeks to address the ways in which a series of texts from emergent Christianity represent and produce configurations of time and space and the ways they invited their original audiences to enter into them” (1). Their application of the theory “rejects the idea that space or time are inert backdrops or empty containers, and rather considers them as expressions and outcomes of a processual reality” (6).
In terms of methodology, the essays can be divided into four groups. The first group includes three essays that represent the most theoretically dense contributions to the volume. Michael J. Thate argues that the traumatized author of Hebrews and the associated traumatized community are attempting to navigate “the complex transgenerational phenomenon of post-traumatic place making” (15) by reinterpreting the death of Jesus as a sacrifice through the ritual practice of the Eucharist, which becomes a source of group therapy. Harry O. Maier considers the context for the writing of Revelation and rejects the idea that the text is responding to trauma. Instead, he argues that the text creates trauma by imagining rhetorical spaces in which the readers are either among the witnesses or the blasphemers. Chris A. Frilingos asks whether the death of Zacharias in the Proto-Gospel of James is a martyrdom. He tests the narrative against the three traits of martyrology suggested by Daniel Boyarin's Dying for God (Stanford University Press, 1999) and concludes that this is a story of Zacharias dying to defend his family, not his faith.
The second group is comprised of an essay by Jan N. Bremmer on the Acts of Phileas. This is a detailed textual study that, ironically, notes that space and time are not important to the authors of the accounts. Bremmer rejects claims that martyrdom accounts should be universally seen as fictions and argues that the version in the Beatty Papyrus brings us close to the original events. The death of the bishop served as a model for his community and later believers.
The third group of authors applies delimited theoretical insights to their particular questions with productive results. Eric C. Smith studies the case of Ignatius through Achille Mbembe's theory of necropolitics—resistance by subjected persons to allow colonial powers to determine who lives and dies and where they are buried. By coming to Rome and dying there willingly, Ignatius reclaims sovereignty over his fate and allies himself with Jesus through “a story of solidarity among colonial subjects at the eastern periphery of the Empire” (128). L. Stephanie Cobb employs Michel Foucault's heterotopia to a space often overlooked in the martyrdom accounts: the prison. Historical sources agree that prisons were horrific places; however, some Christian authors reinterpreted these spaces as locations in which the confessors and martyrs defeated the imperial powers. Prisons became palaces in which Christians were trained for victory (Tertullian) and enjoyed refreshment (Passion of Perpetua and Felicity). These faithful witnesses endured the worst that the empire had to offer, and in doing so they marked the total victory of Christianity over Rome. Nicole Hartmann compares two later retellings of the martyrdom of Ignatius to show that each served regional cultic purposes. The Antiochene Acts focuses on the part of the story that occurred in that city, including the trial and eventual placement of the relics. Thus, it provides a foundation story for the Ignatian relic cult in that city. The Roman Acts, slightly later, puts its emphasis on the Roman trial and martyrdom, which is modeled on the stories of Peter and Paul. The relics of Ignatius are then added to theirs in order to protect that city. Thus, the two martyrdoms represent separate traditions seeking to claim Ignatius’ legacy in the service of different ecclesiastical ambitions. Katharina Waldner contends that Eusebius attempts to create a Christian identity that is particularly Palestinian through his Martyrs of Palestine. He connects martyr stories either by linking them to the same place or, if they happened in different places, to the same time period. Eusebius also introduces the heavenly Jerusalem as a “thirdspace” (190) that appropriates and obscures the Jewish place in the history of martyrdom.
Jennifer Otto's fascinating essay on the reception of the martyrs in the Mennonite tradition comprises the fourth group. Otto analyzes the first part of Thieleman van Braght's Martyrs Mirror, which includes accounts of early Christian martyrs. A point of emphasis is showing the continuity of a faithful remnant from the apostolic period to the Mennonite present. Otto demonstrates that van Braght constructs a narrative “to reinforce the essential conformity of all true martyrs to a uniform, Mennonite faith” (208).
The martyrs and their stories hold this volume together, rather than a particular theoretical approach. There are many insightful essays within that invite us to consider not only the rhetoric of the martyrdom stories but also the rhetoric of later interpreters of those stories. A few essays reflect a genre of theoretical writing characterized by a laborious density of allusions to other scholars by name within the text (instead of using the footnotes for this) and the use of jargon that is expected to do the heavy work of argument-building. For this reviewer, those particular essays were less convincing.
This volume certainly deserves scholarly attention, for it provides important contributions to ongoing conversations about the construction and reception of early Christian martyrological traditions.
