6.1 [411] This is the right moment to state again the words of the God-breathed scripture. For it said: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue; those who control it will eat its fruits.”1 For, although it is possible for those who wish to think well to derive benefit from the goods of the tongue, provided that it were somehow to be attuned to orderliness and the duty of speaking words that would earn everyone’s admiration for having used it best, [nonetheless] some redirect their own words towards what is inappropriate. Their perverse and wicked words have even reached such a point that [412] they think nothing of those things that exceed the bounds of every vice, they let loose their wanton tongue against God, and they take up their weapons against the ineffable glory. The inevitable result of these actions will certainly be that they are convicted for the most extreme vices.

8.1 [532] Although the clever Julian undertakes a war against the ineffable glory1 and lets loose the arrows of his own understanding against matters that transcend [our] intellect, nonetheless they all miss the target.2 For he lies and boasts and makes mention of the God-breathed scripture, pretending indeed to know what is in it, but he is exposed as in fact understanding nothing at all, as an examination of the actual facts would demonstrate for us. For those who have recently been gathered together into “a holy people”3 by their faith in Christ and who are also doers of good works and experts in radiant and admirable pursuits, these he has called defiled, extremely disgusting, pitiable, disreputable, good for nothing, and every other term of abuse like this!4 Moreover, as if this tirade against us was not enough, [533] in still other ways too he tries to prove that we do not realize just how demented we are, nor indeed do we know how to walk straight down the path of truth, but that we, so to speak, jump off5 the highway, disregarding the commandment delivered through Moses – and this entirely – and diverging from the views of Moses and the holy prophets who came after him. So he again writes as follows

4.1 [254] Julian has, therefore, denounced God’s glory and cried out most disgracefully against the doctrines of Moses, as though it was otherwise impossible for him to secure a winning verdict for the Greeks’ superstitions unless he vilified the teachings of Christians1 – a tactic in keeping with his deceptions and love of slander.2 And yet, surely it would have been necessary and better, at least in my view, if he supported their opinions with the facts themselves – assuming there is something true in them – and didn’t deck them out in the inventive bombast3 of certain persons,4 just like those women, for example, who are courtesans and suppose they can dispel the shame of their activity with seductive chit-chat and superficial make-up.5

1.1 [11] Those wise and sagacious experts in the sacred doctrines marvel at the beauty of the truth and highly regard the ability to understand “a parable and an obscure word, both the sayings of the wise and their obscure utterances.”1 For by thus focusing their exact and discerning mind on the God-breathed writings, they fill up their souls with the divine light, and by setting their ambition upon achieving an upright and most lawful way of life, [12] they may also become providers to others of the highest assistance.2 For it is written, “Son, if you should become wise for yourself, you will be wise also for your neighbor.”3

Origen makes sense of the Gospel traditions by receiving them as if the Evangelists were themselves figurative readers of the life of Jesus. Advancing this thesis one stage further, this final chapter discovers Origen locating the inspiration for the Gospels’ literary form in the figure of Jesus himself. That is, Origen believes that the canonical records of Jesus’s life indicate that he also was a “spiritual reader” of this particular epoch in the history of Israel and, ultimately, the role of his own life therein. For an archetypal expression of Jesus’s figurative mode of discourse, no series of passages more clearly establishes Origen’s view – that Jesus himself “intended to teach what he perceived in his own understanding by way of figures” – than his interpretation of Jesus’s prophetic Son of Man sayings. Here, I show that one can take up the whole matrix of first principles developed in the preceding chapters on the nature of the Gospel narratives and may, with startling immediacy, transpose them into a distillate of the nature of Jesus’s own discourses.

Up to this point, Part II has considered Origen’s approach to particular Gospel passages without invoking parallel narratives from more than one Gospel. In the process, it has become clear that Origen’s view of the figurative nature of the Gospels does not originate merely in noticing discrepancies among the four received Gospels. Having established this more fundamental point, we may now attend to the occasions where his reading does proceed by way of comparative reading of parallel pericopes. The cluster of narratives surrounding Jesus’s ascent(s) to Jerusalem provides an especially textured model of Origen’s approach to Gospel difference. Here, Origen does not simply exhibit an inchoate awareness of the various critical difficulties that arise when one reads the four Gospels synoptically; he engages these challenges in great detail and develops a sophisticated account of the Gospels’ literary formation in light of them. Still, whatever differences or discord one discovers among the Gospels on the level of history, narrative, and even in their very ideas of Jesus, there remains, for Origen, a more fundamental agreement – a harmony of spirit – among the four Evangelists’ visions.

Part II of this study finds itself advantaged by Origen’s presence near the epicenter of another epochal seism in the history of Gospel criticism: the controversy surrounding Gotthold E. Lessing’s editing and publication of “fragments” from Hermann S. Reimarus’s previously unpublished “Apology or Defense of the Rational Worshippers of God.” In the midst of publishing (and defending the publication of) the seminal sixth and seventh extracts, Lessing composed “On the proof of the spirit and of power” (1777) – an essay that has proved, in its own way, at least equally iconic for the emergence of modern historical consciousness.

The Palmyrene banqueting tesserae, clay entrance tickets to religious banquets, have been revisited over and over again since the publication of the RTP in 1955. These small but often elaborate objects have been used as lenses into Palmyra’s religious life and the general organization of social, cultural and religious life in the city. However, only in recent years have they become the object of new detailed studies, which aim to systematically examine this unique group of objects within their local context. In this contribution, the focus is on disentangling the tesserae as physical objects to be used, touched and looked at; in particular it seeks to understand a facet of their rich iconographic repertoire, which in so many ways stands in contrast to the otherwise allegedly streamlined visual art repertoire found at Palmyra, namely that of the signet seal impressions. These signet seal impressions were impressed on many of the tesserae, most likely by the sponsor of the banquet, who left his personal mark on the tickets. The seal impressions give us insight into the images circulating in Palmyra in the Roman period in a material group, which today is almost lost to us, namely the glyptic art.

This chapter focuses on Palmyra’s choices in weaving a wider network of social ties to both the Mediterranean and eastern world in order to enjoy the recognizable success that lasted several centuries. It gleans evidence of the presence of Palmyrenes in the Mediterranean, Egypt, the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, before discussing the observable strategies in terms of strengthening commercial ties or choices in items of trade based on their high commercial value and lightness in terms of transport, such as silk or pearls.

Origen’s surprising presence within David F. Strauss’s genealogy of the critical examination of the life of Jesus ought to stir contemporary readers from slipping into their own forms of presumption regarding when, exactly, reading of the Gospels first became critical or what the term “critical” even means. Strauss’s presentation also underscores the difficulty of fashioning a portrait adequate to such a unique figure and introduces the need to retrieve Origen’s own first principles of Gospel reading. Here, I lay the requisite groundwork for addressing Part I’s overarching question (“What is a Gospel?”) by showing that, for Origen, the term “Gospel,” strictly speaking, does not designate just any discourse bearing the early Christian proclamation, but rather one that does so under the form of narratives of the life of Jesus. The stage is thus set for the more pivotal – and tortuous – question: What kind of narratives are they?

This chapter explores the sacral aspects of Achaemenid Persian kingship. It attempts to precisely illuminate the ruler’s relationship with the divine and to demonstrate that the assumption of priestly prerogatives was an important aspect of his office. To better appreciate the political function of religion, this study provides cultural and historical contexts for the royal appropriation of sacral attributes. It further contributes to the recent field of study regarding a possible soteriological dimension to Achaemenid ideology by assessing and synthesising new and previously cited evidence for the existence of such an element, as well as its possible applications.