Epiphanic Evolutions in Earliest Christianity: Margaret M. Mitchell

Epiphanic Evolutions in Earliest Christianity Author(s): MARGARET M.
MITCHELL Source: Illinois Classical Studies, Vol. 29, Divine Epiphanies

in the Ancient World (2004), pp. 183-204 Published by: University of
Illinois Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23065347
Accessed: 08-06-2020 09:31 UTC
10
Epiphanic Evolutions in Earliest Christianity
MARGARET M. MITCHELL
I. Approaches to "Epiphany" in the New Testament
The topic of this volume—epiphany in the Greco-Roman world—is mos

well suited to the corpus of early Christian texts, because epiphanic sel
consciousness lies at the very heart of this religious cult which proclaime
divine appearance in an unlikely place—a crucified figure who rose fro
the dead—even as the language of "epiphany" in the western world
been dominated by the Christian feast designated by that name. Yet it i
curious fact that the exact word elusama occurs only in some of the la
documents of what will later become "The New Testament,"1 whereas t
phenomenon of divine self-revelatory acts—though without use of the te
€iu4>dveia—pervades the earliest Christian traditions. Past New Testam
scholarship has investigated "epiphany" largely from two directio
lexicographic analysis on the one hand, and literary study on the other
Representative of the former approach is Elpidius Pax, who sought
catalogue uses of the term etiLcJjaveia and its cognates from Hom
through late antique times, in order to establish the conceptual backgrou
against which the New Testament uses of the term should be understood
Pax (and Pfister, whose Pauly-Wissowa article was an essential resource f
him)3 emphasized the visual component in eiucjxxvEioa.4 Pax divided th
lexical data into categories of "secular" and "religious" uses of the term
and, in Christian sources, into "historical" and "eschatological." Su
divisions were linked to rather broad evaluative conclusions about t
essential difference between the Jewish (Old Testament) view of epiph
1 2 Thess and the "Pastoral Epistles," which date from the late first or early second cent
(see references and discussion below).
2 Pax 1955.
3 Pfister 1924.
4 "Unter 'Epiphanie' verstehen wir das plötzlich eintretende und ebenso rasch weichende
Sichtbarwerden der Gottheit vor den Augen der Menschen unter gestalteten und ungestalteten
Anschauungsformen, die natiirlichen oder geheimnisvollen Charakter tragen" (Pax 1955:20).
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184 Illinois Classical Studies 29 (2004)
and that of Greco-Roman popular religion.5 The uneasy tension between

"term" and "concept" for such a study (that Pax acknowledged but could
not overcome),6 was given direct attention two decades later by Liihrmann,
who argued against him that, "Doch bezeichnet 4iri(j)ai;ei.a ja in klassischer
Zeit nie das, was wir unter 'Epiphanie' verstehen."7 Liihrmann's own
solution was to downplay the role of the visual in "epiphanies" and instead
seek to demonstrate that both the biblical and the non-biblical uses of the
term (including inscriptions) could be readily comprehended under a
definition of eiri<txxv€i.a as an event which evoked recognition of divine
assistance, especially military, by whatever indices it was made known.
This sort of approach to the question of Christian "epiphany," though with
different results, was undertaken more recently by Andrew Lau, who agreed
with Pax that the term can be understood by establishing a relevant lexical
field, but, because he found it especially prominent in 2 Macc, sought to
show continuity between Jewish and Christian concepts of divine epiphany,
and to retain the visual element so strongly suggested by the etymology of
the term, over against Lührmann.8 The contribution of this philologically
oriented research has been the amassing of the widest possible range of
sources which employ the term €iu()><xma and cognates—most valuably the
inscriptions (though concentration on only this term can of course leave out
much that might be relevant). While lexical study is essential to the general
5 One can get a feel for these kinds of sweeping generalizations from the following: "Als
etwas grundlegendes Neues mufi man dabei die Ausbildung einer eschatologischen Epiphanie
ansehen. Sie hängt eng mit der Art und Weise zusammen, wie die Epiphanie betrachtet wird:
der Grieche betont starker das Sehen, der Hebräer das Hören; bei dem einen herrscht die
Raum-, bei dem anderen die Zeitvorstellung vor. Ftir die Antike bedeutet die Epiphanie
lediglich den Einbruch der Gottheit aus dem Jenseits ins Diesseits oder der Aufstieg des
Menschen aus der sichtbaren Welt mit all ihren Nöten und Schwierigkeiten in die unsichtbare,
die voll unaussprechlichen Gliickes ist. Anders der Hebräer: er steht in einer Entwicklung, die
von der Vergangenheit tiber die Gegenwart in die Zukunft reicht. Es gibt aber dabei kein
Zurück, sondern nur ein Vorwärts, das bestimmt wird durch das von Gott gesetzte Ziel und
sich vollendet in der Heilszeit. Die Erscheinungen Gottes dienen einzig und allein diesem
Zweck; sie sollen den Weg ebnen und den Blick immer freier werden lassen. Die Epiphanien
der griechischen Götter sind dagegen ziellos. Ihnen fehlt eine einheitliche Ausrichtung" (Pax
1955: 144-45).
6 See, for instance, Pax 1955: 20-21, 174-179. The methodology which Pax employed was
the standard of his day, enshrined most famously in the reference work edited by Gerhard
Kittel (Kittel-Friedrich 1964-76), which was cogently critiqued by Barr 1961 and 1987.
7 Lührmann 1975: 185-199.
8 Lau 1996: 224: "As one representative Hellenistic-Jewish literary document, 2 Macc
would then be most appropriate to supply the terminological, conceptual and theological
background for the significance of the eni(|>dvEia word-group in the [Pastoral Epistles]." While
Lau has rightly questioned the utility and accuracy of seeking to deny categorically the visual
component in texts which mention or depict an eiu<t><xvaa, his own approach, of mapping the
meaning from 2 Macc onto the Pastoral Epistles, seems too rigid a way to think about how
authors (and readers) work.
Margaret M. Mitchell 185
historical orientation of modern readers, the moment scholars seek to pin

down the meaning of any particular instance of the term fctrujxiveia by a
Christian author through reference to any or many others, it becomes
apparent how much larger issues of religious experience and expression, of
innovation and tradition, and language and community (to say nothing of
exegetical considerations within each text itself) lurk very close to the
surface of what appear to be rather cut and dried comparative and
quantitative analysis. Hence lexicographical studies, for all their industry
and importance, cannot alone or entirely resolve questions of meaning and
significance in particular contexts.
A second approach was put on the map early in the last century by the
great scholars of form criticism of gospel traditions, Martin Dibelius and
Rudolf Bultmann, who employed the term "epiphany" to describe the genre
and purpose of individual gospel narratives, such as the baptism, the
transfiguration, the walking on the water, and various types of resurrection
scenes.9 Here, too, questions of literary form have been emplotted on and
intermingled with the larger history-of-religions question of whether, when
we do find an "epiphanic phenomenon" in Christian texts, it reflects
Hellenistic or Jewish religious influence. Their simple dichotomy between
what is "Jewish" and what "Hellenistic" has of course been hugely
eroded,10 as evidenced by the recent two volume study by Marco
Frenschkowski that collects a wide array of Greek, Roman, Jewish and
Christian sources having to do with "relevation" and "epiphany" (taken as a
subcategory of the former), which he amasses into a "gemeinantike
mythische Paradigma ... die Sehnsucht des antiken Menschen nach dem
Deus praesens."11 What is gained in breadth by this extensive collection is
not quite matched by analytical clarity, however, as he dances among
"tradition-historical," "history of religions," "psychology of religion,"
literary "motif-analysis" and theological inquiries in trying to give shape to
this disorderly pile of interesting material. Other recent literary analyses of
epiphany have been enclosed within more defined comparative work on
early Christian and Greco-Roman miracle stories, perhaps because
"epiphany" as a literary form is precisely what is not yet established,12
whereas the form of miracle story is easier to define, delineate and
9 Dibelius 1935: esp. 266-86 (see also Dibelius-Conzelmann 1972: 104, for a more
lexicographic approach from the same scholar); Bultmann 1963: more rarely, but see, e.g.,
290. Pfister 1924: 321-23, also included a list, with particular emphasis on the wine miracle at
Cana (John 2:1-12) as an epiphany.
10 Hengel 1974; the essays in Engberg-Pedersen 2001.
11 Frenschkowski 1995, 1997 (quotation from the latter, p. 224).
12 See the complaint of Kee 1972: 137-38: "it is doubtful that the term 'epiphany' has a
sufficiently precise meaning to illuminate meaningfully the history-of-religions background of
this Markan pericope."
identify.13 The question of whether or not to identify any particular g

narrative as an "epiphany" (in terms of either form or content
inextricably linked with other hotly contested issues, such as t
relationship between historical events and fictional accounts, the liter
and phenomenological question of whether such narratives are intend
capture an objective or subjective experience (and, in either case, whe
visual or auditory), and whether and how such texts are referential (i
metaphorical, allegorical, literal). Hence, as with the lexicographic deb
these literary studies of early Christian "epiphanies" have a hard time
getting out of the starting-gate of definitional issues.
II. A Different Approach, Focusing on "Epiphanic Logic"
While neither lexicographic nor literary study is avoidable (for all th

internal problematics), and both have appropriately led New Testa
scholars to see the texts they study in a wider tableau of ancient reli
movements and texts, I shall offer here for the sake of discussion a differ
approach to the question of "epiphany" in earliest Christian text
focusing upon what I term the "epiphanic logic" inherent in a wide rang
Christian literature. Rather than strive for a new set of sharp delineatio
designations, I would like to look at the concept of epiphany—wh
define simply and broadly as "a mediated manifestation of a deity"—
phenomenon at the very heart of the developing early Christian liter
culture. The concept of epiphany as mediated divine presence w
marvelously malleable one which could be exploited in a range of way
early Christian writers who sought religious symbols and mechanism
which to articulate their missionary cult and its place in local and wo
history. Instead of seeking the external "background" for the exact t
eiu<|)<xv€ux, by which to fix the meaning of the word in any particular e
Christian text (which always runs into the problem of moving from pa
to direct influence), I would like to take a different tack, and focus m
attention where the evidence lies—in and among the early Christian t
themselves. Is it possible to trace an inner-Christian development
epiphanic traditions? I proceed to answer the question, as posed in this
by proposing that the inaugurator of early Christian relig
phenomenology and the poetics in which it was wrapped was in a profo
13 See Theissen 1983: 94-99: "Any miracle can be regarded as an epiphany. Epiphani
the narrower sense, however, occur when the divinity of a person becomes apparent not m
in the effects of his actions or in attendant phenomena, but in the person himself
Characteristic motifs of an epiphany are extraordinary visual and auditory phenomen
terrified reaction of human beings, the word of revelation and the miraculous oiJhxvloh
disappearance."
sense the apostle Paul. I shall argue that he is especially important for the
question of early Christian ideas about "epiphany" because his own self
consciousness as an apostolic emissary was rooted in cultural
commonplaces about the mediatorial role envoys and letters (both of which
Paul quite deftly employed) could play to make an absent one present. Once
this piece of the picture is in place, I would like to explore (briefly, in each
case) two trajectories or strands of Christian "epiphanic evolution" that
drew upon, and yet transformed, the Pauline conceptualization of
"evangelistic" manifest-divinity. As we shall see, later Christian authors
were grappling with the extraordinary epiphanic legacy Paul left, despite
the fact that he himself did not even use the term. But first we begin with
Paul himself.
III. Paul, the Epiphanic Envoy
In letters written in the decade of the 50s C.E., a self-declared religious

proficient named IlaüAot;, as he was traveling about Asia Minor, justified
his esoteric knowledge and the legitimacy of his teaching authority by
appeal to divine aTTOKaAm|uc, "revelation, disclosure" (Gal 1:12). Perhaps
one of the simplest indexes of the ambiguous character of Pauline language
about "epiphanies" is the fact that there remains considerable scholarly
debate14 about how to translate the very simple phrase kv €|iol in a key
sentence in his letter to Christ-converts in Galatia:
"0x6 õe eüõÖKrjoei' [o 0eõc] õ dij>opioa<; (ie ek KOiHac; |a.T|Tpöc; |iou Kai

Kaleoac Sia rfj<; xapitoi; autoO diroKaA.u»|/ai tov ulõv auraü eu f/W. iva
euayyfAiC<>>nai avxov kv roie '£9i>taiv, eü0eo)c oi Tipoaav€0enr)v oapKi
Kai a'lâti ...
When God, who set me apart from my mother's womb and called me through
his grace thought well to reveal his son ei> eôi, so that I might proclaim the
good news of him to the nations, immediately I did not consult with flesh and
blood ... (Gal 1:15-16).
Is Paul recounting the event that he had earlier (with an equally ambiguous
genitive), referred to as Si' äiroKaXüujjeax; 'IriaoO Xpiaiou ("through a
revelation of/about Jesus Christ"), as God having "revealed his son to
me,"15 or is he saying that God "revealed his son in me,"16 such that Paul is
14 For general discussion of this exegetical point, see Betz 1979.

15 Hence taking the preposition ev as merely marking the Dative of Indirect Object. This
kind of grammatical pleonasm—of prepositions moving in on simple case endings—was
characteristic of the Koine dialect, as is well known.
16 See Lightfoot 1865: 82-83: "It does not speak of a revelation made inwardly to himself,
but of a revelation made through him to others." Grammatically, in fact, it could be either,
somehow himself the locus of a divine revelation to others, especially those

he identifies in the following 'iva clause: iva eüayyeXi(w|ioa aüiöv kv to!;
eOveaiv? In the former case Paul, the self-styled envoy (dtrõoToloi;) of Jesus
Christ (1:1, 17) is the recipient of an epiphany that would spur him "to
preach the good news among the Gentiles," but the latter translation would
mean that Paul understood himself as the epiphanic medium through whom
God's son, Jesus, is revealed to others. The ambiguity is undeniably
inherent to the phrase kv e|ioi. In my judgment such a double entendre is
most likely deliberate in a letter which combats simultaneous threats to
Paul's gospel and to Paul himself, arising out of the question whether a
signifying mark on the body—circumcision—is required for Christ
believers. In Paul's mind his gospel and his person are fully united, to such
a degree that to reject or even suspect one is ineluctably to deny the other.
That the phrase kv e(j.ot might be intentionally polyvalent receives
confirmation from the fact that there is evidence for both options in the
wider literary context of this letter. If one regards Gal 1:12 as the most
important part of the framing context, then there seems to be a slight edge
toward the former interpretation—that Paul was the recipient of a
theophany (or Christophany), termed an "unveiling" or "revelation"
(<xiroK:aAui|/i.q) of God's son.17 But if one takes seriously Gal 4:14, the
implication is that Paul understood himself to be the proper äyyeloQ Qeoü,
indeed, one appropriately welcomed on his earlier visit in Galatia, he says,
w<; XpioTÖv 'Iipoüv.18 The religious logic sustaining such a bold claim is
stated by Paul clearly, even astoundingly, using the same pregnant phrase,
in Gal 2:19-20: XpiotQ auveaTaüptoiicu' (w 6e ouketl eyu, (rj õe ev eôl
Xptatog ("I have been co-crucified with Christ; I no longer live, but Christ
lives in me"). Given Paul's sense that his own self, his own body, is the
repository of the Christ whom he proclaims, we must take seriously and
perhaps even literally the visual language he employs in Gal 3:1 to describe
the missionary moment that generated the Galatian Christian assemblies:
ole Kat' 6cJ>0aX|j.ouc 'Irjootig XpLOiöq irpoeypai}>r| eotaupG)|ievo<;. Christ cru
cified was "placarded before the eyes" of the Galatians when they
encountered Paul, in whose very body the crucified Christ lives. After all,
as he sternly notes at the conclusion of the letter, eyw yap za any [lata toC
'Ir|oou kv tu oufiau (iou (kotaCu ("I bear in my body the distinguishing
marks of Jesus" [6:17b]).
construed as the locative use of kv (Smyth §153If.), or, equally possible, as instrumental
(Smyth § 1507b).
17 Indeed, 2 Cor 12:1, for example, would suggest that Paul was continually experiencing
oiruaoiai Kai auoKaXüi|/€ic Kupiou.
18 This is true, not just in spite of, but perhaps because of, Paul's doGeveta trie oapKoc,
which the Galatians did not eôufitmv or 4£eirrfeiv (Gal 4:14).
All of this evidence (just to highlight some key points in what is a

tightly woven argument) demonstrates that Paul saw himself as a one-man
multi-media presentation of the gospel of Christ crucified. The message (to
emyytli-oy) and messenger (Paul the äiroatoloc) were indivisibly united in
re-presenting to the audience an aural-visual icon of Christ crucified, which
is the gospel.19
This Pauline self-understanding as epiphanic envoy is given its fullest
expression in another argument of self-defense that he wrote to Christ
believers in Corinth ca. 53 C.E., in a letter now found in 2 Cor 2:14—7:4.20
In response to detractors who regarded his bodily weakness and suffering as
a sign of divine disconfirmation, Paul throws the onus back onto his
auditors by implying that by not perceiving the gospel in him, they are,
ironically, revealing their own ontological-eschatological identity as "those
who are perishing" (ol duoAAiJuevoi [2 Cor 2:15; 4:3, 9]; cf. 1 Cor 1:18).
Rather than reflecting accurate knowledge about him when they claim he is
a fraudulent "peddler" (2:17) and "deceiver" (4:2), a kind of "smoke and
mirrors man," they actually, Paul claims, reveal their own depravity. Some
of the mechanics of how "God reveals his son in me" are articulated in the
epistemologically bipolar position Paul sets up, in which he presents
himself as a fully legitimate, individual epiphanic procession of the
crucified Jesus.21The first epiphanic mode Paul claims in this letter to
Corinth is, surprisingly, not visual, but olfactory. He states that it is through
him22 that "God manifests (4>avepo0v) the scent of the knowledge of him
[Christ] in every place." Paul is such a powerful place of Christophanic
encounter that he is (he asserts), Xpicrcou euwõia, "Christ's sweet smell,"
which belongs to God (tü 0e<3) (2 Cor 2:15). Paul is human incense that
declares the imminence of the divine presence.
In this text the nasal epiphany soon gives way to the visual by means of
a complex argumentative interlude on the hermeneutics of the spirit as
contrasted with the letter-based and visually prohibited Mosaic dispensation
(2 Cor 3:4-18). The concentration on the "veil" of Moses here works both
offensively and defensively in Paul's argument, as he claims that because
19 Cf. also 1 Cor 1:23; 2:2; 15:3-4, and many passages in 2 Cor discussed below.
20 In my judgment this is the fourth in the sequence of letters Paul wrote to the Corinthians
(see the reconstruction of the correspondence in Mitchell 2002 and 2003).
21 See the splendid treatments of the language and metaphors of a cultic procession in this
letter by Duff 1987, 1991a and 1991b.
22 The pronoun is actually plural here, 6i' rmüu, "through us," as often in this argument.
Commentators notice the issue of pronouns in the Corinthian correspondence, and rightly
wonder if the "we" is meant to include just Paul, or Paul and his missionary team, or Paul and
his listeners, or all Christians. In this case, since Paul is defending his own 'ikocvottic,
"competency," for his apostolic mission, it seems quite clear that he is referring to himself. See
Thrall 1994: 105-107, 195-96.
his face is always unveiled (unlike Moses') he (and theoretically all on his
side) can look upon the divine iconic glory unhindered (rpel<; õe irdvteq
dvaK£KaXu|j.|jiuw npoocõtrci) tr)v öö£au Kupiou KatoirtpiConevoL Tf)v autriv
elKÕva [2 Cor 3:18]),23 and that such revelatory access to the divine
presence as he uniquely possesses guarantees the truthfulness of the XoyoQ
rati 0eoö "word of God" (i.e., "the gospel") that he now represents for
them. Our attention to epiphanic logic may help resolve the exegetical
quandary of why the veil seems to dance somewhat illogically in this dense
argument between and among Moses and the Israelites, on the one hand,
and Paul, the gospel, and the Corinthians, on the other; that is because the
veil signals the very point of possible epiphanic intersection and
obfuscation between divine presence and human attentive capabilities, even
as it functions as a symbol of the seer and the danger his epiphanic
knowledge as raw divine power could cause unprotected eyes. But Paul
inverts the image, such that it is not what is behind the veil that should
worry the Corinthians (i.e., a mendacious messenger for profit), but what
lies in front. Hence the ascription of the mask to Paul, he ingeniously
maintains against his opponents, is actually an "unmasking" of the true
ontological identity of those who make the blasphemous charge, for those
who cannot perceive the truth in Paul's gospel, "the light of the gospel of
the glory of Christ, who is the icon of God" («Ikcov tou 0eoö [4:4]), have
had their very thoughts blinded by "the god of this age," rendering them
incapable of genuine epiphanic insight (2 Cor 4:4).
And what is the "cult image" that Paul claims to carry about in his one
man epiphanic parade? It is "the dying of Jesus he carries around in the
body" (xf)v veKpcooiv tou 'Ir)coü kv xq> ow|i<m TTtpujjepovtei; [4:10]), "so
that also the life of Jesus might be manifested in our body" (iva. kocI f) (cot|
tou 'Ir|aou ev t(3 aw[acm rpwv (j)avep«0f| [4:10b]).24 Paul contends that
the necrotic epiphany currently on display in his body actually signals the
resurrection epiphany to come. It is precisely here that we can see how the
visual and the verbal clearly come together in the Pauline gospel, for these
two epiphanic events (death, life) correspond precisely with the two main
episodes of the narrative proclamation about Jesus which Paul calls "the
gospel" (to cwxyyeA-iov).25 The gospel story that Paul orally proclaimed to
the Corinthians, and all others he encountered, had a simultaneous visual
23 For various translation possibilities of this complex sentence, see Thrall 1994: 282-95.
24This is the treasure displayed in the the ostracon that is his own flesh: "Ex0^ & tõk
0r|oai)põu toütov 'tv iotpaiavoK; OKcfeuv (2 Cor4:7).
25 See esp. 1 Cor 15:3-6, where four episodes are named, but the burial is part of the death,
and the appearances are part of the resurrection, so it is still essentially a two-act drama. The
shorter form of the kerygma can be seen in 1 Thess 4:14, and Rom 10:9 (for an analysis of the
hermeneutics of shorthand reference to "the gospel" in Paul, see Mitchell 1994).
counterpart in Paul's own physical self as participating in and replicating

the dying ("co-crucifixion") and, by the logic of replication of the narrative,
the promise of living ("co-resurrection") in the gospel story of Jesus.26
Given Paul's intensely personal and individualistic religious claim—to
be the epiphanic envoy of the son of God—how could he be more than a
one-man movement? As we saw in our opening passage of Gal 1:16, Paul
regarded the purpose of the "revelation" he had received as missionary: so
that the good news of Christ be proclaimed to gentiles (i.e., non-Jews). The
dynamics of the Pauline missionary cult involved at least three mechanisms
of reduplication of the envoy and what he re-presents: baptism (Rom 6:3
5),27 ecclesiological identification by which the cohort of believers is
thought to constitute to ocõfia XpiotoO ("the body of Christ"),28 and an
ethical program rooted in his call for others to imitate him, even as he offers
himself as a nmrynfe, "graphic copy," of Christ's suffering death.29 As we
can see, the diplomatic commonplace that an envoy represents the one by
whom he is sent is what generates this religious logic of the aTrootolog, who
in both word and deed represents his distant sovereign.30 In all three of
these social mechanisms (baptism, corporate ecclesiology, ethical
imitation), the person of Paul the apostle plays a unique role in early
Christian epiphanic economy.31 But if Paul as epiphanic envoy is so central
to the gospel being re-presented in the cosmos, what happens after he is
dead?
IV. Epiphanic Evolution I: The Gospel According to Mark
One of the first "epiphanic evolutions" from this foundation, I suggest, may
be seen in the literary revolution forged by "Mark," the pseudonymous
26 See the explicit statement in Phil 3:10-11: omnop<t>i.C6nevo<; x<5 Qavfcbf afrcoO, el nug
Kaiaiaiioa) etc tt|i> t&vaamoiv TT]v <k veKpcõw; ef., also Rom 6:1—11, discussed below. That
central to Paul's theology is the "Epiphaniecharakter den apostolischen Leiden" was
recognized especially by Güttgemanns 1966 (quotation from p. 118, and throughout his
monograph, including a section devoted to "Die Epiphanie Jesu an der apostolischen Existence
nach 2.Kor. 13,1^1" [142-54]).
27 What I have termed the "synecdochical logic" (Mitchell 1994) of Pauline gospel
hermeneutics means that every time one episode of the foundational narrative is named, the
others are thereby assumed and incorporated. Baptism is the iynchpin by which individual
"life-narratives" become grafted onto the meta-plot of Christ's death and resurrection.
28 1 Cor 12; Rom 12. This gives epiphanie status to the group as a whole, animated by the
spirit of Christ received at baptism (1 Cor 12:13).
29 Seel Cor 4:16; 11:1; 2 Cor 1:5-7.
30 Mitchell 1992.
31 That is, as least in Christian groups that trace their founding to him. These audacious
claims for his person were surely a main reason Paul was a controversial and much opposed
figure in early Christian circles.
author of a Christian text written ca. 70 C.E. that enshrines unmistakably the
principles and vocabulary of Pauline epiphanic envoyage as we have just
elucidated them, but in a new form.32 For Mark the author, the term
e{xxyyeA.iov, which as we have seen was for Paul an oral account indivisibly
linked with the living, somatic testimony of the apostle, becomes located,
no longer in any individual purveyor of the tale, but in a written text. There
are longstanding debates on whether the term euayyeAiov in Mark 1:1 (apxfl
toü eijayyeAlou 'Ir)oo0 XpurcoO [uloü 0eoO]) is meant to serve as the title of
the work or not, if it was even genuine to the author, and if in either case the
term is a generic designation of the whole.331 think it most likely that Mark
1:1 is both original and a simple introductory formula which identifies the
contents of the whole as to euayyeA.iov. At any rate, that later Christian
writers did eventually identify the term with this type of biographic Jesus
literature is indisputable. Using the Pauline term euayyeALOv sometimes
even in the Pauline sense of "oral proclamation," as in 1:15 where Jesus
himself takes Paul's role (!), Mark crafts a text that was once famously
referred to as "a passion narrative with an extended introduction."34 That
designation is not entirely accurate, but it has the virtue of signaling
effectively a point important for the present discussion—that Paul's
thorough-going emphasis on the death of Jesus is resoundingly echoed in
Mark's eüocyyeXiov. This much has often been recognized by New
Testament scholars.35 What has perhaps escaped notice, however, is that
Pauline "synecdochical hermeneutics"36 vis ä vis the gospel—such that one
event, most often the cross, can be used to evoke logically the whole (sc. õ
Xöyoc; tou ataupoü in 1 Cor 1:18)—is also the key to Mark's enigmatic
ending in 16:8, which has caused no end of conversation and controversy.37
The episodic passion predictions of 8:31; 9:31 and 10:33-34, prophetic plot
summaries from the reliable voice of Jesus, have already told the reader that
he will rise from the dead. Hence the whole work, by the same narrative
logic Paul embodied,38 points to the resurrection even without narrating it,
and the epiphanic reaction of the women ("fear"/"awe"/"ecstasy") is to a
32 On the contemporary "renewal of the theory of Markan Paulinism," see Marcus 2000 and
Black 1996.
33 For the extensive literature see Guelich 1989: 3-14.
34 Kähler 1964: 80 n. 11.
35 So also Marcus 2000.
36 See n. 27 above.
37 See, e.g., Petersen 1980.
38 It also nicely transforms the warrant of the Pauline gospel, Kata to? ypacjxxc, which refers
to the prophets of Israel (Isa 53:5f.; Hos 6:2; Jonah 2:1) to Jesus' own prophetic voice
(signalled by 6el in the first prediction, which puts his logion in conformity with the scriptures
of Israel).
kind of "null-epiphany." Paradoxically, it is not seeing Jesus (but the

brightly clad young man) that leads them to post-epiphanic paralysis.
In its invocation of the resurrection by means of the logic of the full
gospel plot, Mark's composition is an embodiment of the Pauline
hermeneutic of the gospel (as we have described it), while also
incorporating some early Christian traditions about Jesus that Paul either
did not know or did not use his letters to tell. A chief collection of material
Mark sought to integrate into the Pauline kerygma about the crucified and
risen son of God39 was a body of miracle stories. Mark found a solution to
the theological problem this juxtaposition caused—the sheer incongruity of
a crucified miracle worker40—precisely in the religious sensibility shared
by miracle stories and Paul's view of the crucifixion-resurrection
proclamation: both are epiphanic, but in different ways. This clash of
epiphanic logics (the divine revealed in õuvd|i€ic;, or the divine revealed in
ignominy and exaltation) gave rise to both "the messianic secret"41 and
Mark's favored literary technique, irony. To some degree both of these
Markan innovations were already present in Paul's teaching and letters. For
Paul the crucifixion was "the power and wisdom of God," "God's wisdom
which had been hidden in a mystery, which God foreordained before the
ages for our glory, which none of the leaders of this age knew; for if they
had known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory" (1 Cor 1:23
24; 2:7-8). The Messiah, utterly unrecognized, is revealed at the
paradoxical moment of rejection and utter humiliation rather than glory.
This same theology of the death of Jesus is at work in Mark, but the
medium for its "replay" before the eyes of the audience is neither an
encounter with Paul's evangelistic presentation nor an ecclesiastical ritual,
but narrative retelling. The Jesus who is the central character of Mark's
gospel is introduced in the classic epiphany scene of the baptism, but
already there it is clear that something odd is afoot, for the implausibly
huge crowds Mark had summoned to the banks of the Jordan ("all the
Judean land and all the Jerusalemites" [1:5]) see nothing when Jesus is
baptised in the Jordan by John. The divine voice speaks, yes, but to Jesus
himself ("you are my son, the beloved, in whom I have been well-pleased"
[1:11]). As (putative) event, the scene is a somewhat oxymoronic "private
39 Within the confines of the present essay I shall not be able to engage the burning (but
probably largely unanswerable) question of whether the author of Mark's gospel had some of
Paul's letters in front of him as he wrote. But even without deliberate textual imitation, any
member of a Pauline church in the decade immediately following Paul's death would have
encountered and adopted some of his ways of talking about "the gospel" and its place in past
and present.
40 As narratively expressed by the mockers at the foot of the cross: üXXouq Ioqocv, eautõu
oi> Suuatai ouoai (15:31).
41 See Tuckett 1983.
epiphany"; but as a narrative, it is a textual epiphany to the knowing reader

who will subsequently from a superior vantage point be treated to episode
after episode in which people (crowds, followers, nefarious religious
opponents) encounter Jesus but do not comprehend his true identity. Mark's
"book of secret epiphanies"42 offers its readers/auditors nothing less than a
privileged supernatural point of view, one the human reader shares with the
deity (who reappears in the second grandly formal epiphanic scene in the
narrative, the Transfiguration, to repeat the message that Jesus is his
beloved son [9:7]) and with the demons, who likewise are privy to the
secret.43
And what is that secret? That Jesus, as son of God, is the Messiah, the
Davidic king, who comes to inaugurate his kingdom in the holy city of
Jerusalem, but in a decidedly unexpected fashion. With this plot summary
guiding the action, Markan readers are inductively schooled in the central
tool of his epiphanic literary composition—irony—as Jesus arrives in the
holy city in a mock epiphanic procession which ends with him
unceremoniously sneaking back to the suburbs that very night (11:11); is
anointed in a leper's dining room by the stealthy hand of an unnamed,
suspect woman (14:3-9); is crowned with thorns, robed in purple, and in
jest offered the appropriate gesture in response to an epiphany,
upooKuvrioK;, by the Roman cohort (15:16-19). His coronation is,
paradoxically, with thorns of torture, accompanied not by acclamation but
derision, surrounded by no royal retinue, but left in utter abandonment. But
because of the privileged knowledge given to the reader from the outset of
the work, s/he nods knowingly with the Roman centurion who serves as
literal caption to the enscripted (yet colossally missed) epiphany: äXr|0(3(;
ouTog av0pcoiTo<; uloc GcoCi fjv (15:39). The oral gospel has become text, a
literary icon of the crucified messiah. Mark (the text) is (incorporeal) Paul
for all time: Jesus Christ crucified can be seen there.
42 This famous formulation is from Dibelius 1935: 230; it was repristinated recently by
Frenschkowski 1997: 148-224.
43 The man with the "legion" of demons appreciates Jesus' epiphanic presence, and gives
the proper response: irpooKwetv and acclamation (lr]oo0 ule toO 0€oö toO ui|narau) (5:6; other
epiphanies recognized by demons may be found, e.g., in 1:24, 34, 39-45). Most striking of all
is 3:11: k<u to irveufiara to <xra0apTO, oxav amov €0€upouv, Trpooeiuirrov auxq) Kal CKpaCov
Xtyowtc, oti. Eu ei o uios toO GeoO, and Jesus' response, which is to forbid them to replicate
in any way his own self-manifestation to others: Kai ttoXAA auxoti; 'iva (jf| aiixõv
<j)ai>epõi> nouiauau' (3:12).
V. In the Whirlpool of the Markan Epiphanic

Revolution—Matthew and Luke44
Both Paul and Mark created literary texts that were highly successful, not
only in their own broad circulation among Christian communities, but also
in the sequels they spawned. The Markan trajectory out of the Pauline mode
led to even more successful rewrites in Matthew (ca. 80-90) and Luke (late
first or early second century), who liked his essential project of narrative
recreation of Jesus' life and death, but thought it needed refinement,
particularly to leave less for the epiphanic imagination of the reader to fill
in. Hence both sought to narrate in grander terms the epiphanies enclosing
the narrative: the birth of the godly child on the one hand, and the
resurrection appearances Mark had deliberately kept off stage, on the other.
And inside this just-too-tempting impulse to fill the literary gaps Mark left,
Matthew and Luke also sought to contemporize the means by which Christ
epiphanies could be mediated to their own readers living in post-Pauline
times.
Luke emphasizes that the risen Jesus mysteriously appears in the
person of a wayfaring stranger through the church practices of scripture
study and "the breaking of the bread" of the community (Luke 24:13-49),
and he brings to the forefront to irv€U(ia ayiov, "the holy spirit," as a
democratizing epiphanic medium giving all members of the church some
equal access to the divine presence. But by sending Jesus back up to heaven
(indeed, twice),45 Luke emphasizes that spectacular epiphanies of the
resurrected one are a thing of the past, and now very much the exception 46
Luke's extension of the gospel narrative beyond the tomb and into a second
volume on the spread of the mission (see Acts 1:1) makes a further claim on
history as the locus of divine epiphanic activity, extending into the present,
in the progress of the inspired missionary cult.
44 The Gospel according to John represents the epiphany of the self-exegeting Jesus who, as
Xoyoc, himself "exegetes" God to humans in both word and flesh (as especially in the prologue,
1:18: 0€Õf ouõeIc eoSpaKev TTamoxf' (lovoyeiî; Gfõ; o tof etc tõi* kõXitou tou llaipõc tKctvoq
e5r)yiioato). John's gospel is composed of signs and discourses (long monologues punctuated
by the refrain eyco €l|n) in which he expatiates on his own divine identity. John's Jesus, "the
one whom the father has sent," participates in the very same epiphanic envoyage we have seen
in Paul; he is the divine legate who re-presents—for epiphanic acknowledgement or
rejection—the God who sent him (12:45-49).
45 The "ascension" (a dramatic mechanism for epiphanic closure) appears only in Luke-Acts
in the New Testament, forming both the finale to the gospel of Luke (24:50-53) and the
opening event of Acts (1:9-l 1).
46 Paul had also sought a means of expressing epiphanic closure in 1 Cor 15:8, where he
insists that "last of air (eoxatov navrai>), Christ appeared also to him, though out of the
sequence of other such appearances ("as though an eapuna, 'one untimely born'").
Matthew's special emphasis on the internal life of church commun

is given pointed expression in a collection of parables about the end-
judgment which he adds to Mark's mini-apocalyptic discourse (Matt
25:46). The last of these, which is seen as in many ways this go
signature statement—the "great parable" of the sheep and goats—ex
epiphanies beyond the life of Jesus or its cultic replication (in bapt
eucharist) and into the realm of ethics, because the needy person who
Christ-believer might feed or clothe presents one with a secret epiph
the Lord, to which one either responds with suitable action to meet
need, or risks eternal damnation for epiphanic obstinance
obstructionism (Matt 25:31-46).47 The life of believers as Matt
describes it here is filled with deliberately missed Christophanies w
will have fulfilled their religious purpose if the needy are served in p
the deity. This Matthean ethical program is entirely consistent with
Christology with which he bookends his narrative: Jesus is Emm
"God with us," who, as the famous last line of this gospel (which wa
become the church's favorite) reads: koi! lõou eyw jxeG' ei(ii ir
xät; rpepac; eax; tfjc auvttleiac tou alüvoe (28:20). An omnip
epiphany in some sense defies it very own religious raison d'etre: a
appearance of the deity is predicated upon the assumption that the de
not usually available for viewing.48 Even on Matthew's own term
worshipper is not expected to be a perpetual magos, for the ea
astrologers in Matthew's carefully crafted infancy narrative in chap
follow a star and offer the proper response to the epiphany it broadc
TTpooKwr|OLC and offerings—but then they return home (2:12), and li
on. Matthew offers a new form of epiphanic etiquette: the Jesus-follo
not to engage in a perpetual irpooKuvriou;, but is to look up and fee
clothe that stranger who is the Lord Jesus manifest in disguise.
narrative personification of the "holy spirit" and Matthew's con
premeditatedly oblivious divine-human encounters move the me
epiphanic presence beyond past time and beyond their own narratives
into the quotidian lives of their readers as epiphanic media.
VI. Epiphanic Evolution II: Paulus redivivus
By most scholarly judgment, there were at least two stages of

pseudepigraphic Pauline letters. The "deutero-Paulines," Ephesians,
47 See the language of non-epiphany in the text: KÜpie, tote of u6o(ifv; which is repeated
three times in 25:37-39, and again in 44.
48 Frenschkowski 1995: 9 and passim, emphasizes the temporal divide, such that the past
was the time the divine was more available than the present. This is only one way to
conceptualize the gap, of course.
Colossians and 2 Thessalonians, were likely written sometime between the

70s and the 80s (once a collection of Paul's letters had begun to circulate),
to update Paul's pastoral theology to respond to new situations, and the
"Pastoral Epistles" (1 and 2 Tim and Titus) even later (sometime in the
early second century). Because the living Paul communicated most
effectively from a distance via letters (according to 2 Cor 10:10 better than
he did in person), "Paul" was able to speak from beyond the grave in new
epistolary compositions crafted in his name.49 It is in these documents that
we find the first early Christian uses of the actual term eirKjxžveia.
2 Thess is a most ingenious text. It is patterned—in both literary and
theological method—on the genuine Pauline 1 Thess, in which Paul had
addressed a pastoral crisis among these Macedonian Christians occasioned
by the death of some believers (by "natural causes" or possibly by some
form of sporadic persecution) before the arrival of Christ from heaven, as
Paul's gospel had promised (1 Thess 1:9-10). The historical Paul's
response, crafted in a letter sent from Athens or Corinth back to the church,
was to assure these new Christ-believers that the death of their confreres
was a part of the original plan, still on the blueprint of the basic gospel
message. He comforted them by scripting a new episode into his
apocalyptic narrative about an event he terms the TTapouoia, "appearance" of
Jesus (2:19; 3:13; 4:15; 5:23): when "the Lord himself, in a command, in
the voice of an archangel and in a trumpet of God, will come down from
heaven" (4:16). He tells his Thessalonians that, by "a word of the Lord,"
they should know that "those who have gone to sleep through Jesus"
(4:14)5° wjn actually rise first, and will be joined by the living Christ
believers in a "snatching up into the clouds" for an äuavtrioLC, "encounter,"
with the Lord in the air (4:16-17) which will result in an existence of
endless (if undetailed) epiphany (koci oütcoc irdvroTe ahv Kupuo €oõ|i€0a)
(4:17b). Paul insists upon the pastoral power of this revised apocalyptic
scenario to overcome the apparent disconfirmation of the gospel message
caused by the non-occurrence of the epiphanic event—"comfort one
another with these words" (irapaKaXelie allr|Xou<; kv ToXg Xoyoig toutoic)
(4:18). He also assures them that, appearances to the contrary, his Xoyoc is
not to be distrusted, for in receiving it they received oi) Xoyov dvGpwuwv
alla Ka0u<; eoxiv alr|0(õ<; Xoyov 0eo£> (1 Thess 2:13). As in Paul's
Galatians, the message and messenger are inextricably linked. His loyoi
49 According to ancient epistolary theory, such as ps.-Demetrius, Eloc. 4. 227, a letter

contained a virtual portrait of the soul of its author. This means that the letter form which could
convey Paul's living presence from Ephesus to Corinth could still do so when the historical
author was absent because dead (see the insightful treatment of Betz 1995).
50 This is a euphemism for "the dead in Christ" (4:16).
promise the epiphany upon which his correspondents have their hearts and
lives set.
In 2 Thessalonians an early Christian pastoral theologian who valued
Paul and had read 1 Thessalonians responds to what appears, remarkably, to
be the opposite situation: some sort of troublingly enigmatic epiphany has
occurred, which has created confusion on the part of believers about where
they are situated on the prophetic map of history that was their confession
of faith. This author learned from Paul the power of letter-writing to
respond to such pastoral-theological crises, and, mimicking even the
epistolary structure of 1 Thess,51 enlivened the dead Pauline hand to take up
the stylus yet again (see 3:17) to combat the new epiphanic outrage. After
praising the faith of his readers (who are not just Thessalonians, but all late
generation Christians who turn to texts for insight), and granting them a
form of eschatological triage through an imaginative anticipation of the
torments their enemies will experience "at the revelation of the Lord Jesus
from heaven with the angels of his power" (1:3-12), the pseudepigraphic
author comes straight to the point:
We ask you, sisters and brothers, concerning the coming (napouoia)

of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our meeting (tiuowaYwyti) with him,
that you not be quickly shaken out of your minds or disturbed, neither
through the spirit, nor through a message (5iä Xöyou), nor through a letter
purportedly written by us (öi' 4irujToAf|<; (i<; 6i' rmuy), to the effect
that the day of the Lord has come (2 Thess 2:1-2).
After his initial denial that any pronouncement of epiphanic actualization

had come from a genuine Paul (through any of the three media of Pauline
presence, dead or alive: prophecy, oral statement or letter), the author seeks
to explain that the current situation, in which someone has made a
disastrous appearance, is fully consonant with the Pauline apocalyptic
blueprint. He terms this figure o avGpcomx; xfjc; avofna;, o ulöc trie
dnwietag, õ ävTiK6Lji€vo<; Kai (mepoapõ|ievo<; girl iravta leyõ|j.evov Geöv fi
oepao|ia (2:3-4; cf. o avo|io<; in 2:8), phrases that entail a deliberate cast
reversal of the "son of God" whom Paul promised would come on the
clouds. This apocalyptic anti-hero, "Paul" grants, will, in a satiric
caricature, have his own rapouoia (2:9; cf. 2:3, 6, 8), but it will be short
lived. Indeed, after the "restraining force" of the present is removed, then
(2:8) "the lawless one will be revealed" only to be immediately destroyed
by an even more powerful epiphany of the Lord (f| eTttâveia trie
TTapouaiac autou [2:8]). Here the word tTuctxxveia is virtually otiose, meant
to add a bigger stick, perhaps, to the existing Pauline term, irapouota, which
has been parodistically applied to the man of lawlessness. The point is
51 See Trilling 1972:67-108.
clear: the lawless one's parousia, which is Kat' evepyeiav tou Saxava, will
surely (even despite its outwardly flashy appearance in õuvcqieiq, oTiiiela and
■tepccta [2:9]) lose the epiphanic duel our author is forecasting. The double
formula f) CTicJiaueia Tf|<; tiapouaiai; in all its pleonasm nicely signals the
second order of epiphanic reflection going on here, for what the Lord
reveals is his own parousia—the event promised by Paul—hence the Lord
comes primarily to assert the truthfulness of the Pauline gospel. This is
quite clear in 2 Thess 1:7-8, where the epiphany of Christ will confirm the
epiphanic promise made on his behalf by Paul, who wields the gospel: ..
in the relevation of the Lord Jesus from heaven, with the angels of his
power, in a fiery flame, giving vengeance to those who do not know God
and those who do not obey the gospel [i.e., "my gospel"!] of our Lord
Jesus." Later the shocking revelation is made that behind the deceiving
figure is none other than God himself, who has pulled the strings behind
stage to fashion faux epiphanies in order to lead astray those who refused to
believe in his true self-manifestation (2 Thess 2:11-12).
The Pastoral Epistles were written by an even later follower of Paul,
who understands well that the dead Paul is now being claimed by people
with quite different theologies and aims and objectives. This pseudonymous
composer has as his main concern the securing of his version of the Pauline
uapa0r|KT| ("deposit") for later generations (1 Tim 6:20; 2 Tim 1:12, 14).
This author seeks to codify—from the lips of Paul himself—the essential
elements of his theological, catechetical and administrative legacy for all
time. This small letter-corpus is, paradoxically, an attempt to fix the
dynamic epiphanic medium of the genuine Pauline letters. The term
6TTi(j)av€La appears conspicuously in all three letters, in 1 Tim 6:14; 2 Tim
1:10; 4:1, 8; Titus 2:13.52 What has always puzzled scholars about the term
and concept of eiu4>avei.a in these late New Testament texts is its double
referent: it appears at times to connote the historical advent of Christ's birth
and career, and at others his still-future return, which the historical Paul
consistently called his irapouoia.53 For example, 1 Tim 6:14 contains the
instruction to retain the commandment unadulterated "until the 'epiphany'
(|ieXPL trie CTiâveLai;) of our Lord Jesus Christ," even as Titus 2:11
employs the verb to refer to a past, completed event: 'Eire<t>dvr| yap ri xapt-c
töö 0eoO ouT-qpiot; too lv ävGptoiroic- Yet later in that same sentence,
without a hint of contradiction, is a reference to the anticipation that his
52 See also the verb in Titus 2:11; 3:4. The concentration of these terms (and others) is
one of the convincing signs that these letters are a corpus which shares the same purpose,
theological vision, and author (with Dibelius-Conzelmann 1972: 1-10 against Johnson
2001:68-72).
53 Among many treatments see Windisch 1935; Dibelius-Conzelmann 1972: 104; Hasler
1977; Oberlinner 1980; Liihrmann 1975: 197-99; Bassler 1996; Lau 1996.
readers now live in expectation of "the blessed hope and 'epiphany' of the
glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ" (Trpooöex<Vevot tt)v
|j.aKapiav eliuöa Kai €iri4>äv£iav xf|C 56^r|C tou p.€yäAou 0eoö Kai aairrpoc
rpcõv 'Ir|ooü Xpiaioü)" (Titus 2:13). Viewing these letters in the vortex of
the Pauline "epiphanic logic" that they have inherited (and in turn seek to
co-opt and conscribe), serves to resolve the apparent conundrum. The
revelatory event is neither singular nor dual, past nor future, because it is
not confined to any static moment. As with the epiphanic economy Paul
inaugurated, the tiucjiavcia described in the Pastorals includes not just an
isolated event (known or anticipated) but the entire history of its mediated
revelation through the Pauline proclamation—itself such a dynamic force
that it outlived the apostle himself. This can be seen most clearly in 2 Tim
1:9-10, which salutes the divine saving call said to have been extended by
his own plan and act of grace (x<*piq),
Tr)v 6o0etoav r||itv ev XpLoxcj 'Ir|ooO
npõ xpovwv cdwvacoi»,
tpavfpcjOeloav 6e vvv
õia xfji (mijjaueiac toO awxfjpoc r^üv XpiotoO 'Itiooö,
KaiapyiioavTOi; tov Oauatov
(JxJTLoau'TO^ õe (a)T]V Kai <x<t>0apoLai'
6 ia toi) füayyfXiou elg 5 k\k%r\v eyw Kfjpu? Kal airooToXog
Kai õiöäoKalot;.54
which was given to us in Christ Jesus
before the times of old,
but was manifested now
through the "epiphany" of our savior Christ Jesus,
by annihilating death,
by illuminating life and incorruptibilty
through the gospel for which I was appointed herald, apostolic envoy
and teacher.
This tight formulation effects a clear parallelism and indeed an

identification between the Christophany in the flesh of Jesus and that to be
found in the apostolic teaching of Paul.55 The bold claim of this text is that
the epistolary epiphany of the Pauline proclamation (even or especially in
54 This passage is laid out as poetry in the Nestle-Aland 27th edition, but I think the
arrangement given there has not quite accurately represented the parallelism in clauses in
this text (hence the arrangement given in the body of this paper is my own).
55 See the valuable comments of Bassler 1996: 310-25: "This passage [2 Tim 1:9-10]
thus confirms that the Christ event and proclamation are construed by this author as parallel
epiphanic events. This has a significant corollary: as long as the revelatory aspect of the
Christ event is emphasized, that event and the proclamation of it are functionally
equivalent" (p. 321). I agree completely, and would even go further to say that the events
are not just parallel or equivalent, but are actually mutually intertwined, as Paul is a genuine
epiphanic medium or intermediary of the Christ-epiphany which is itself an epiphany of the
deity.
its pseudepigraphic form) now mediates the full spectrum of divine

disclosure—from before recorded history on into the future.
VII. Conclusion
In this essay I have sought to understand the epiphanic logic of the early
Christian missionary Paul, and trace its evolutionary movements within
early Christian literary traditions into narrative gospel texts on the one
hand, and pseudepigraphic letters, on the other. In proclaiming that Jesus
was the elxcov toö 9eo£> ("image of God") and himself his |j.L|a.r|Tric;,
aiTooToloc, and õi<xkovo<; ("imitator" "apostle," and "envoy"), Paul set in
motion forms of mediation of the divine presence that were to leave an
immeasurable mark on the religious sensibility of earliest Christianity as it
spread throughout the Mediterranean world and beyond. The epiphanic
media of the early Christian cult were to be neither tornx; nor tomb, but
apostolic envoys and then texts, which they claimed were the site where one
could palpably encounter the divine presence.56 The epiphanic evolutions
we have traced in early Christian literary culture amount to a media
revolution by which trans-local, trans-generational readers were placed in a
privileged position for a Christ-encounter of their own. The eventual
success of missionary Christianity was ultimately dependent upon this bold
move.
University of Chicago
56 The texts are experienced, of course, from quite early on, via a fully s
program of immersion, both in public reading (as in Justin, 1 Apol. 67) and ritu
reenactment of the narratives.
Illinois Classical Studies 29 (2004)
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Epiphanic Evolutions in Earliest Christianity: Margaret M. Mitchell

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Epiphanic Evolutions in Earliest Christianity Author(s): MARGARET M.

MITCHELL Source: Illinois Classical Studies, Vol. 29, Divine Epiphanies

Epiphanic Evolutions in Earliest Christianity

I. Approaches to "Epiphany" in the New Testament

The topic of this volume—epiphany in the Greco-Roman world—is mos

and that of Greco-Roman popular religion.5 The uneasy tension between

historical orientation of modern readers, the moment scholars seek to pin

identify.13 The question of whether or not to identify any particular g

II. A Different Approach, Focusing on "Epiphanic Logic"

While neither lexicographic nor literary study is avoidable (for all th

III. Paul, the Epiphanic Envoy

In letters written in the decade of the 50s C.E., a self-declared religious

"0x6 õe eüõÖKrjoei' [o 0eõc] õ dij>opioa<; (ie ek KOiHac; |a.T|Tpöc; |iou Kai

14 For general discussion of this exegetical point, see Betz 1979.

somehow himself the locus of a divine revelation to others, especially those

All of this evidence (just to highlight some key points in what is a

counterpart in Paul's own physical self as participating in and replicating

IV. Epiphanic Evolution I: The Gospel According to Mark

kind of "null-epiphany." Paradoxically, it is not seeing Jesus (but the

epiphany"; but as a narrative, it is a textual epiphany to the knowing reader

V. In the Whirlpool of the Markan Epiphanic

Matthew's special emphasis on the internal life of church commun

VI. Epiphanic Evolution II: Paulus redivivus

By most scholarly judgment, there were at least two stages of

Colossians and 2 Thessalonians, were likely written sometime between the

49 According to ancient epistolary theory, such as ps.-Demetrius, Eloc. 4. 227, a letter

We ask you, sisters and brothers, concerning the coming (napouoia)

After his initial denial that any pronouncement of epiphanic actualization

51 See Trilling 1972:67-108.

This tight formulation effects a clear parallelism and indeed an

its pseudepigraphic form) now mediates the full spectrum of divine

Barr, J. 1961. The Semantics of Biblical Language. Oxford.

Oberlinner, L. 1980. "Die 'Epiphaneia' des Heilswillens Gottes in Christus

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