andrewcriddle wrote: ↑Sun Jun 28, 2020 6:26 am
The alleged letter of Hadrian is from one of the minor lives of the Historia Augusta and is probably entirely fictitious.
Andrew Criddle
Much of
Historia Augusta is spurious: that is true. Because it appeared within a larger history corrupted by many forgeries, this fragment has likewise been declared (by some scholars) a falsification from Late Antiquity (c.AD 390).
I disagree: we shouldn't assume every thing in it is "entirely fictitious"; that kind of thinking is blindered. If your point is that 'Hadrian's Letter' specifically is likewise "entirely fictitious" - well, that particular was also
never a consensus view. (I understand this upsets Christians, but that doesn't bother me.)
Moreover, in recent years an excellent scholarly study revisited the question, persuasively arguing its validity. For myself, I've formed my own opinion on that matter.
The letter is slightly problematic but records something factual; it's a fragment from a written report from some moment c.AD 90-150. Our Roman reporter (someone attached to the royal household) making an inquiry, in situ, about the Jews. 'He' was told 'everyone worships Serapis'; the unnamed informatant (s) wished to placate an investigator. That oversimplification allows for gentiles - 'Egyptians' (Judeo-Egyptians) and those who might be nominally 'Christian' to 'venerate' Serapis and attend the temple complex for whatever purposes while still following their own creeds. That is explicit, here. By then, Judeo-/Christian gnostic preachers had 'taken over the synagogues' (Cerinthus, et al.); Judaism in Alexandria didn't just disappear, it was replaced. Christianity was known but unorthodox, fluid; in ALEXANDRIA, it grew out out of proto-gnostic preachings.
As clear-cut evidence, ‘Hadrian’s letter of AD 134’ would be a primary source for the Serapis-Christ connection and first confirmation of Christians in Alexandria. (I suspect its abit older.)
“From Hadrian Augustus to Servianus the consul, Greetings. The land of Egypt (praises of which you have recounted to me, dear Servianus) I have found to be wholly light-minded, fickle, and following after rumors. There, those worshipping Serapis are Christians, and devotees of Serapis are {calling/styling themselves} ‘bishops of Christ’. There is no chief of the Jewish synagogue, no Samaritan, no Christian presbyter, who is not an astrologer, bird-diviner, or fortune-teller. Even Patriarch himself, if he comes to Egypt, is forced on the one hand to show reverence Serapis, and on the other to Christ” and later “There is one God whom all worship, both Christians, Jews, and Gentiles.”
German historian Hermann Dessau’s devastating critique of the Historia Augusta (1889) once led most academics to reject the
Historia and everything in it as false. In the Late 20th Century, many serious scholars began to reconsider this information; we may question its date. If it is assumed essentially valid, then ‘Hadrian’s Letter of AD 134’ implies the following about the religious context in Alexandria at some point in time:
1) The only Egyptian Mystery cult mentioned is ‘Serapis’.
2) Followers of Serapis seem like (Roman?) Christians.
3) Some advanced devotees style themselves as bishops.
4) Jewish, Samaritan and Christian leaders practice divination.
5) The highest Jewish authority would respect both Serapis and Christ.
The letter refers only to people(s) implicitly considered Jewish, not Greek. Other religions, cults and ethnic groups are not relevant at all, so ignored: the letter's subtext is really 'what's happened to the Jews’. Where are they? Most have been subsumed within the Graeco-Egyptian cult, if we see ‘Serapis devotees’ were acculturated or assimilated Gnostic Jews, perhaps considered apostates to any orthodox Jews of the period. The Roman author’s opinion is superficial and limited, muddled on deeper questions of identity: “illic qui Serapem colunt, Christiani sunt et devoti sunt Serapi, qui se Christi episcopos dicunt.” Alexandrian Jews are broadly divided into four groups: Serapis, Christian, traditionalist/orthodox and Samaritan types. (“Samaritans” represent other Semites: an older, indigenous, rural ethnic long disloyal to Jerusalem. Are Samaritans
at this point a mix of Judeo-Egyptians and/or Judeo-Chaldeans indigenous to Middle- and Upper Egypt?) With caution, we might guess that 'Judeo Serapis devotees are somewhat synonymous with those sects Hippolytus (c.AD 220) variously termed Ophite, Cainite, and Sethian Gnostics. However, these groups did not call themselves Gnostic, and we do not know what (formerly?) Jewish Gnostics called themselves. Of Christians, the letter does not claim
all are compelled to worship Serapis, nor has Christianity been in conflict with the Serapis cult. Logically, there is no Christian orthodoxy (yet); some must be Gentiles, some ‘Jews’ (mixed, assimilated). In other words, eraly Christian and (Judeo-) Serapis devotees alike co-exist in an environment of religious syncretism. To a foreigner, the (Jewish or Gentile) followers of Christ or Serapis seem indistinguishable, and Alexandrian Jews are so divided in parties of almost equal power before the Jewish Patriarch. Furthermore, we can reasonably infer said ‘bishops of Christ’ are even less orthodox Gnostic factions; the competing leaders of secondary (and rival sects) are simplified, conflated: just more ‘devotees of Serapis’ to disinterested Roman eyes.
As what date could such a context have existed as described? It must have been early, within two generations of Mark, if we accept that Christianity was so formally established then (c.AD 60). Here, we are told various (Judeo-)Christian and (Judeo-)Serapis factions co-exist with the (vaguely alluded to? remains of a? ) Jewish community. Logically, the Destruction of the Temple and Jewish War (AD 70) was already a distant historic event, irrelevant to the author. Among a once large, diverse cosmopolitan Hellenistic Jewry, something like mass apostasy (in the wake of the Temple’s destruction) had occurred a generation earlier (so too beyond mention). What’s more, nothing otherwise hints at the (earlier and later) violent conflicts of AD 115 and AD 135, any unforeseen events to this Roman writer but of certain Imperial importance. From context, such great tragedies of the Jewish attack on the Serapeum (AD 115) or the Bar Kochba Revolt (AD 132-6) would have otherwise warranted comment here,
if recent. Instead, we may reasonably suppose ‘Hadrian’s Letter of AD 134’ is apparently a few decades older, most reasonably dated to
a)c.AD 90-110,
b), just before AD 135, or
c) after AD 145.
Unfortunately, this outsider account reveals little about the newly forming and growing factions of unorthodox or apostate ‘Jews’ at the end of First Century or early in the 2nd C. AD. Their belief systems were not yet so distinct or well-known that a visiting foreigner would grasp whatever ideological differences existed for residents themselves. But the Letter was apparently written well before any official persecution of Christianity in Africa (AD 180), in a time when Christianity was still in flux, embryonic and undefined, before any ‘orthodoxy’ and therefore somewhat early (c.AD 70-120.) In Egypt, there was only one Christian bishop serving until the 3rd Century; ecclesiastical Christianity begins under Demetrius (-AD 232) if we accept the Church Fathers' line. The reality on the ground was certainly different. Eusebius not only Christianized Philo's Therapeutae, he cleansed and sanitized the record for Rome (as Bauer [1971] suggests,
p.44-46)
For chronological reasons, the letter must also predate Valentinus (AD 100-160), founder of perhaps the largest Gnostic school of the day (c.AD 135), by a generation or so.
Dating this is what's complicated, debatable. But 'Hadrian's Letter' does confirm what the OTHER period sources addressed above reveal: that cosmopolitan Jews had already disappeared into the Serapis cult which was considered Egyptian. A Joseph/Serapis synthesis expresses a relic Judaism by AD 150-175, although perhaps this myth originated deeper in Egypt 200-300 years earlier.
