Examples of the fathers mistaking secular history for sacred?

[Ben C. Smith]

The title of this thread is not my favorite, but it was not easy fitting the concept into the allotted character count.

I am looking for examples of the church fathers interpreting something from history or from the surrounding culture (be it Greek, Roman, Egyptian, or whatever) and (mis)interpreting it as applying to Christianity somehow. Two examples that I have so far:

1. Eusebius interprets Philo's descriptions of the Therapeutae in On the Contemplative Life as referring to the early Christian church as described in Acts.
2. Justin Martyr interprets a statue to Semo-Sancus as being dedicated to Simon Magus. (It does not matter that Simon Magus may not be a true and proper Christian, whatever that may mean; he is related to early Christianity in a way that Semo-Sancus is not, and that is all I need.)

I am not interested in this connection with parallels, whether real or imagined, between various pagan gods like Hercules and various Christian apostles or other figures, unless the church father has well and truly mistaken the pagan figure for a Christian one. Comparisons are not good enough; the two figures have to be taken to be one and the same.

Also, the examples have to be relatively clear and noncontroversial among critical scholars. For example, if it were to turn out that, actually, most or even a good many critical scholars think that Philo really was describing early Christians, then the example is of no use for my purposes.

Finally, I would prefer an outer chronological boundary of about the time of Jerome, Augustine, and Rufinus, just for the sake of containment and convenience (early century V or thereabouts), but if the exception is good I would take it.

I know that I have seen more than just the above two examples of this phenomenon before, but I have never until now set out to collect them or think of them as a distinct phenomenon worthy of its own investigation.

Thanks in advance!

Ben.

[Secret Alias]

The statue of Jesus and Mary Eusebius reports was in Paneas.

[Secret Alias]

The Cross in the sky with Constantine.

[Ben C. Smith]

The statue of Jesus and Mary Eusebius reports was in Paneas.

Do you mean Jesus and Veronica? Good one. Added.

[Ken Olson]

This may not be uncontroversial enough to qualify (and may even be what prompted for your question), but Julius Africanus on Thallus:

On the whole world there pressed a most fearful darkness; and the rocks were rent by an earthquake, and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down. This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his 'History', calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun.

It’s not clear whether the identification of the eclipse recorded by Thallus with the darkness at the crucifixion was made by Thallus himself or (perhaps more likely) by Africanus.

[Ben C. Smith]

This may not be uncontroversial enough to qualify (and may even be what prompted for your question), but Julius Africanus on Thallus:

On the whole world there pressed a most fearful darkness; and the rocks were rent by an earthquake, and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down. This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his 'History', calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun.

It’s not clear whether the identification of the eclipse recorded by Thallus with the darkness at the crucifixion was made by Thallus himself or (perhaps more likely) by Africanus.

Not what prompted my inquiry, and not so controversial for my own part as to disqualify it. Added. Thanks!

The statue of Jesus and Mary Eusebius reports was in Paneas.

Do you mean Jesus and Veronica? Good one. Added.

I think I find most persuasive the supposition that the statue was of Hadrian as Restitutor:

Hadrian Restitutor.jpg (58.54 KiB) Viewed 8872 times

But I am open to other options.

[mbuckley3]

The (late C2) Abercius inscription, well laid out on your TextExcavation site, states that he met a 'basilissa' in Rome, presumed to be code for the church. The (late C4) 'Life' reads this literally, claiming he met the empress Faustina and exorcized her daughter, being rewarded with a bath house and grain dole for his home town of Hierapolis.
The 'Life' is fantastical and full of anachronisms, used some form of an Acts of Peter as a narrative template, yet 'somehow' gets right the names of various C2 local luminaries and a very time-specific title of Marcus Aurelius. Peter Thonemann (an essay in 'Historical & Religious Memory in the Ancient World') plausibly argues, in detail, that the first half of an imperial letter quoted in the 'Life' is in fact genuine, copied from a stone inscription still visible in the C4, then expanded to serve the narrative purpose. Similarly, a bath house was a standard imperial benefaction; if that at Hierapolis memorialized Faustina, it goes towards accounting for that part of the Christian story.
I presume that this process is what you are looking for from examples on this thread. Where possible, this sort of triangulation from the physical environs is preferable to hypothecating yet more 'lost' literary sources, or claiming a writer 'made it all up' ex nihilo.

[Ben C. Smith]

The (late C2) Abercius inscription, well laid out on your TextExcavation site, states that he met a 'basilissa' in Rome, presumed to be code for the church. The (late C4) 'Life' reads this literally, claiming he met the empress Faustina and exorcized her daughter, being rewarded with a bath house and grain dole for his home town of Hierapolis.
The 'Life' is fantastical and full of anachronisms, used some form of an Acts of Peter as a narrative template, yet 'somehow' gets right the names of various C2 local luminaries and a very time-specific title of Marcus Aurelius. Peter Thonemann (an essay in 'Historical & Religious Memory in the Ancient World') plausibly argues, in detail, that the first half of an imperial letter quoted in the 'Life' is in fact genuine, copied from a stone inscription still visible in the C4, then expanded to serve the narrative purpose. Similarly, a bath house was a standard imperial benefaction; if that at Hierapolis memorialized Faustina, it goes towards accounting for that part of the Christian story.
I presume that this process is what you are looking for from examples on this thread. Where possible, this sort of triangulation from the physical environs is preferable to hypothecating yet more 'lost' literary sources, or claiming a writer 'made it all up' ex nihilo.

What a beautifully obscure example. Love it. Thanks.

[Ben C. Smith]

The (late C2) Abercius inscription, well laid out on your TextExcavation site, states that he met a 'basilissa' in Rome, presumed to be code for the church. The (late C4) 'Life' reads this literally, claiming he met the empress Faustina and exorcized her daughter, being rewarded with a bath house and grain dole for his home town of Hierapolis.
The 'Life' is fantastical and full of anachronisms, used some form of an Acts of Peter as a narrative template, yet 'somehow' gets right the names of various C2 local luminaries and a very time-specific title of Marcus Aurelius. Peter Thonemann (an essay in 'Historical & Religious Memory in the Ancient World') plausibly argues, in detail, that the first half of an imperial letter quoted in the 'Life' is in fact genuine, copied from a stone inscription still visible in the C4, then expanded to serve the narrative purpose. Similarly, a bath house was a standard imperial benefaction; if that at Hierapolis memorialized Faustina, it goes towards accounting for that part of the Christian story.
I presume that this process is what you are looking for from examples on this thread. Where possible, this sort of triangulation from the physical environs is preferable to hypothecating yet more 'lost' literary sources, or claiming a writer 'made it all up' ex nihilo.

What a beautifully obscure example. Love it. Thanks.

Interestingly, if the views of some past masters happen to be true — namely, that the Abercius in the inscription was actually a priest of Cybele or some such — then the entire inscription itself becomes an example of the phenomenon dealt with in this thread.

[GakuseiDon]

Ben, not sure if this is what you are after, but some early Christians wrote how pagan history reflected Scriptures.

Origen, Contra Celsus, Book 4, Ch 11: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... en164.html

After this, being desirous to show that it is nothing either wonderful or new which we state regarding floods or conflagrations, but that, from misunderstanding the accounts of these things which are current among Greeks or barbarous nations, we have accorded our belief to our own Scriptures when treating of them, he writes as follows: "The belief has spread among them, from a misunderstanding of the accounts of these occurrences, that after lengthened cycles of time, and the returns and conjunctions of planets, conflagrations and floods are wont to happen, and because after the last flood, which took place in the time of Deucalion, the lapse of time, agreeably to the vicissitude of all things, requires a conflagration and this made them give utterance to the erroneous opinion that God will descend, bringing fire like a torturer." Now in answer to this we say, that I do not understand how Celsus, who has read a great deal, and who shows that he has perused many histories, had not his attention arrested by the antiquity of Moses, who is related by certain Greek historians to have lived about the time of Inachus the son of Phoroneus, and is acknowledged by the Egyptians to be a man of great antiquity, as well as by those who have studied the history of the Phoenicians. And any one who likes may peruse the two books of Flavius Josephus on the antiquities of the Jews, in order that he may see in what way Moses was more ancient than those who asserted that floods and conflagrations take place in the world after long intervals of time; which statement Celsus alleges the Jews and Christians to have misunderstood, and, not comprehending what was said about a conflagration, to have declared that "God will descend, bringing fire like a torturer."