In his 1989 article entitled “Apologetic Literature and Ambassadorial Activities,” William R. Schoedel considers “aspects of the form of apologetic literature in the early church and Judaism.” More specifically, he attempts to discover possible models for the literary character of the Christian apologies, and in particular the Embassy of Athenagoras, in the various kinds of addresses that ambassadors delivered before the emperor when presenting appeals and requests. Examples of such addresses include the ambassadorial speech discussed by the third-century rhetorician Menander Rhetor, the legal oration as exemplified by Philostratus in his treatment of the trial of Apollonius of Tyana, and the imperial libellus or petition. Schoedel draws two clear conclusions from this investigation. The first is that the literary form of Athenagoras's Embassy is an “apologetically grounded petition,” that is, a “mixed form that as such appears to have no real precedent in the Greco-Roman literary tradition.” The second is that “there is good reason to think that [it] was written to be presented to the emperor or delivered before him.” The present article will explore the ideas and arguments that led Schoedel to each of his conclusions and will offer an alternative interpretation of the evidence in each case.

In the centuries since Tertullian asked, “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” the dichotomy between these two cities and their respective cultures has assumed almost mythical proportions. Scholars have expended a great deal of energy to show that this sentiment has a greater prescriptive value than a descriptive one. It now seems apparent that for nearly a thousand years, from the time of Alexander to the Muslim conquest, the Jews of Palestine lived in and successfully negotiated with Greco-Roman culture. The question that remains open is the depth and intensity of this interaction. It would plainly be both irresponsible and beyond my capabilities to attempt any type of comprehensive answer to this question.

Contact between cultures is a complex phenomenon that often involves accepting foreign ideas until these become new ways of self-expression. The case of the phoenix is of special interest, in this respect, because in antiquity it was associated with the sun temple at Heliopolis and miraculous forms of rebirth. The phoenix motif also appears in a variety of early Jewish and Christian writings, thus allowing for a comparative appreciation of its rabbinic reception. In light of these other intercultural encounters, it becomes clear that the rabbis were familiar with the details of the Hellenistic phoenix myths, and not only adapted the story to their own values but even enhanced its mythological dimension. In this way, the rabbis continued the Hellenistic practice of reactivating an ancient Egyptian myth. In contrast to the symbolic approach of early Christianity, the rabbis characteristically chose to accommodate the phoenix on a literal level, interpreting it mythopoeically, that is, by creating myth. Their interpretation of the phoenix moreover illuminates important, yet hitherto unnoticed aspects of rabbinic mythology.

In a recent article entitled “Le monachisme égyptien et les villes,” Ewa Wipszycka cataloged for the later Byzantine period the abundant evidence of monastic habitation in or adjacent to the towns and villages of Egypt as well as in or on the margins of the cultivated land. Her analysis, which begins after the late third- to fourth-century formative period of Antony, Pachomius, and the Lower Egyptian semi-anchoritic centers in Nitria, Scetis, and Cellia, supplies convincing evidence of the rhetorical selectivity employed in the portrayal of Egyptian monasticism by the authors of the literary sources. In the literary texts, the dominance of monastic sites located in places of solitude generates a monastic geography of physical isolation. While acknowledging this dominance in the literature, Wipszycka draws together the infrequent literary references and the more numerous documentary examples of less physically isolated and more socially integrated monastic centers. The resulting picture of Egyptian monasticism is spatially and socially more complex than that derived from the literary sources alone.

In his Vita sancti Patricii, written in the late seventh century, Muirch depicts St. Patrick, the national apostle of Ireland who lived in the fifth century, with a number of interesting characteristics. In this paper I shall demonstrate that the sources behind Muirch's account of Patrick included biographies of New Testament apostles. These biographies provide a background in religious literature for some of the events which, according to Muirch, befall Patrick on his missionary journey around the island of Ireland.