Wayne Meeks: The Image of Androgyne: Some uses of a Symbol in
Earliest Christianity
I. WOMAN’S PLACE
…The proper relation of wife to
husband is expressed by the verb douleuein,
“to serve as a slave”, and the sole legitimate purpose of marriage and of
sexual intercourse is procreation. We shall look in vain in Philo, therefore,
for any advocacy of equalization or unification of the opposite sexes. His
attitude towards male and female roles is, on contrary, more conservative than that
of his gentile environment. To the extent that Alexandrian Jewish community as
a whole tended to grant more legal equality to women than did the biblical
laws, on the other hand, it did so evidently more by accommodation to Egyptian
custom than in distinction from it.
The options are not vastly
different if we consider all the varieties of Judaism in Second Commonwealth Palestine ,
yet without abandoning male domination. Nowhere in Judaism do we hear of any
real tendencies to harmonize the social roles of male and female, except to the
limited extent that Hellenized Jews follow the general, but by no means
universal trend toward equality. Only perhaps in the strange vigil of the
Therapeutae, as Philo describes it, is there something like a ritual
unification of the sexes, which in ecstatic songs dissolves their strict
separation observed in the everyday life of this ascetic community.
If any generalization is
permissible about the place of women in Hellenistic society of roman imperial
times, it is that the age brought in all places a heightened awareness of the
differentiation of male and female. The traditional social roles were no longer
taken for granted but debated, consciously violated by some, vigorously
defended by others. While the general status of women had vastly and steadily
improved over several centuries, the change brought in some circles a bitter
reaction in the form of misogyny. The groups that made possible full
participation of women with men on an equal basis were few and isolated; the
Epicurean school is the only important example. Among those who advocated
preservation of status quo, the constantly salient concern is a sense of order:
everything must be in its place, and the differentiation and ranking of women
and men became a potent symbol for the stability of the world order. That
concern comes through clearly, for example, in the protestation by moralists
about the “natural” difference in hair styles of men and women. Thus the
aphorism of an anonymous Attic comedian was still valid: “Woman’s world is one
thing, man’s another!”
II. THE BAPTISMAL UNIFICATION
FORMULA
I suggested at he outset that
when Paul speaks of reunification of pairs of opposites in Galatians 3:28 he is
not engaging in ad hoc rhetoric but quoting a bit of the liturgy of baptism. It
is time now to vindicate that assertion by formal analysis and to inquire about
the symbolic and social context of the language. The reunification language is
found three times in the Pauline corpus: in Galatians 3:28, where the unified
opposites are Jews/Greek, slaves/free, male and female; in 1 Corinthians 12:13
Jews/Greek, slaves/free, and in Colossians 3:11, where the terms are expanded:
Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave,
free. Perhaps there is an echo of the formula also in the “whether among the
gentiles, in one body” of Ignatius, to the Smyrnaeans 1:2. The following
observations bespeak a quoted formula: (1) A synopsis shows the consistency of
the mayor motifs: baptism into Christ (or, “one body”), “putting on Christ (Or,
“the new man”), simple listing of two or more opposites, and the statement that
“all” are “one” or that Christ is all. The simplicity of the basis pattern,
within which details of wording may vary widely, is characteristic of the liturgical
and kerygmatic formulas which New Testament scholarship has isolated in recent
years. The declaration is associated in every instance with baptism, though it
is not baptism as such which is under discussion in the letters. The formula
stands out from its context – most clearly in Galatians 3:28, least clearly in
Colossians 3:11, precisely where the context is filled with other motifs which
probably come from baptismal parenesis. The allusion to Genesis 1:27 in the
third pair of Galatians has no connection with the immediate context nor with
any of Paul’s themes in Galatians. Only the first pair, Jew/Greek, is directly
relevant to Paul’s argument. The second pair, slave/free, may be connected with
what follows, as Paul compares “adoption” or coming of age with release from
slavery. If so, the connection is verbal, not material, for in the argument
“slavery” and “freedom” are used metaphorically, while in verse 28 all the
pairs refer quite concretely to social status. Hence it is more like the
occurrence of “slave or free” in the formula that suggested this turn in the
argument rather then reverse. There is a change of person from first plural in
verse 25 to second plural in verse 29. We may therefore speak with some
confidence of a “baptismal unification formula” familiar in congregations
associated with Paul and his school. Of course, it is a moot question who first
may have introduced such a statement into baptismal parenesis – it may
perfectly well have been Paul himself. The point is, however, that it was not
an idiosyncratic notion of his, but imbedded in the act of initiation into the
Christian congregation.
If the foregoing form-critical
analysis is correct, then a resident of one of the cities of the province Asia who ventured to become a member of one of the tiny
Christian cells in their early years would have heard the utopian declaration
of mankind’s reunification as a solemn ritual pronouncement. Reinforced by
dramatic gestures (disrobing, immersion, robing), such a declaration would
carry – within the community for which its language was meaningful – the power
to assist in shaping the symbolic universe by which that group distinguished
itself from ordinary “world” of the larger society. A modern philosopher might
call it “a performative utterance”. So long as it is spoken validly, as
perceived within the community’s accepted norms of order, it does what it says.
Thus, though we might suppose that the only possible realistic function of such
language would be to inculcate an attitude, the form of the statement is not
“you ought to think…”, but “there is…” A factual claim is being made, about an
“objective” change in reality that fundamentally modifies social roles. New
attitudes and altered behavior would follow – but only if the group succeeds in
clothing the novel declaration with “an aura of factuality”.
We have seen evidence for an
intensified sense of role oppositions in Greco-Roman society and both a longing
to overcome them, and a fear of such change. These currents would assure that
the baptismal reunification formula would at least attract attention. Whether
it would be taken seriously is another matter. Its “aura of factuality” could
be enhanced in two ways: (1) by the internal coherence of the larger symbolic
system of which it was a part, that is, by its mythical context; (2) by the re-patterning
of the ordinary behavior of persons in the group, so that the structures of
social relationship would mutually reinforce one another. New Testament
scholarship in the past fifty years has given a great deal of attention to the
former, surprisingly little to the later. Here I want both to describe the main
outlines of the underlying myth of reunification and to offer at least a few
guesses about some social functions of that myth.
III THE MYTH
…
(изв. HISTORY OF RELIGION – a quarterly journal, February 1974, no.
3)
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