Rome and the East
Paul’s Heresy and Local Culture?
As so often, the effect of examining and dismissing large-scale assumptions
which have been too hastily accepted is only to replace them with more pre-
cise doubts and questions. For all that is argued above, can we really be sure
that the story of Paul does not reveal the suppression of a strain of local belief
and liturgical practice by the prevailing orthodoxy of the Greek church? We
must note, for instance, that among his opponents were men of established
reputation in contemporary pagan Greek culture. His principal Antiochene
opponent, the presbyter Malchion, was a learned man who was (apparently)
the chief teacher of rhetoric at Antioch;^167 while among those who came
to Antioch to examine his case was Anatolius from Alexandria, a student of
arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, physics, and rhetoric, who was successively
head of the Aristotelian school at Alexandria and bishop of Laodicea.^168
On the other side, the resemblance between Paul’s view of Christ and Jew-
ish belief was (as noted above, text to nn. –) unmistakable. We cannot
provethat Paul was not influenced by members of the substantial Jewish com-
munity in Antioch;^169 the example of Origen at Caesarea shows that learned
discussions between Jews and Christians were still possible.^170 It may be noted
that two Antiochene Christians of the generation after Paul, the presbyter
Dorotheus^171 and the important theologian and biblical scholar, Lucian of
Antioch,^172 are both attested as having had a profound knowledge of He-
brew. But whatever was said in later Christian literature about the Judaising
tendencies of Paul or his followers, this particular line of attack was not used,
so far as we know, by his contemporaries. On the contrary, they clearly re-
garded his heresy as a revival of that of Artemon (or Artemas);^173 of the latter
. If that is what is meant by the puzzling phrase of Ensebius,HE, , , ‘‘who stood
at the head of a school of rhetoric, one of the Greek educational establishments at Anti-
och’’ (Loeb translation). Note M. Richard, ‘‘Malchion et Paul de Samosate: le témoignage
d’Eusèbe de Césarée,’’Eph.Theol. Lovanienses (): .
.HE,,,.
. See C. H. Kraeling, ‘‘The Jewish Community at Antioch,’’Journ. Bib. Lit. ():
.
. See, e.g., M. Simon,Verus Israel^2 (), ; H. Chadwick,Origen: Contra Celsum
(), .
. Euseb.,HE, , – .
. Suda, s.v.Loukianos. See G. Bardy,Recherches sur Saint Lucien d’Antioche et son école
(), ff., ff.
.HE, , – (two extracts from the synodal letter); cf. Pamphilus,Apologia pro
Origene(PGXVII, –); Theodoret,Haer. Fab. comp.II,(PGLXXXIII, ).