Jews and Others
ing the Sabbath (Pan. , ; trans. Williams I, pp. –). But precisely this
case shows that, no matter how polemical Epiphanius’ intentions, and how
regardless he was of the sources or dates of his information, we cannot always
reject his constructions of heretical groups as fantasy. For instance, Jerome
offers confirmation, based on the evidence of his period as a hermit near
Chalcis in the s, that there was indeed a community of ‘‘Nazareni’’ in
Beroea, who used the gospel of Matthew in its original Hebrew and had al-
lowed him to copy it.^46 Moreover, documentary evidence, in the form of a
remarkable Greek inscription of / from Deir Ali, south of Damascus,
shows that Epiphanius’ notion, which recurs several times in his work,^47 of
a heretical community as established in a remote village, could correspond
to reality. This long-known inscription served to mark a building identi-
fied as the ‘‘Sunagōgē of the Markiōnistai of the village of Lebaba of the
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.’’^48 These Marcionites were therefore very self-
consciously a localreligiouscommunity but were not differentiated as either
an ethnic or a linguistic one. In that, they will have resembled the various
heretical village congregations in the territory of Cyrrhus which Theodo-
ret claims to have ‘‘brought back to the truth’’: eight villages of Marcionites,
one of Eunomians, and one of Arians.^49 These were real communities, which
sometimes resisted the imposition of orthodoxy by force. But there is no
implication that they were distinct in language or ethnic identity from their
more orthodox neighbours.
It was thus perhaps most clearly at the (literal) borders of Jewish or Sa-
maritan territory that there might arise sharp contrast, and conflicts between
groups which might be (more or less) clearly differentiated, by ethnic iden-
tity, religion, and language. But before we touch on the relevant geographi-
cal area, it should be stressed that Christians could also feel the threat of
the Jewish presence, as expressed in the form of communities living out-
side Palestine, possessing synagogues and observing the Law and the annual
calendar of festivals, but apparently conducting their public, communal exis-
tence in Greek. This seems to be the implication of the well-known sermons
against ‘‘Judaizing,’’ preached by John Chrysostom to the Christians of Anti-
och, and warning them against attending the local synagogues and observing
. Jerome,dervir.ill.;seeEp. , , and Theodoret,Haer.fab.comp.,(PGLXXXIII,
col. ).
. See, e.g., Epiphanius,Pan. , , on the teacher of the heresy of the ‘‘Archontikoi,’’
who lived in a village called Kapherbaricha on the borders of the territory of Jerusalem and
Eleutheropolis. Trans. Williams I, p. .
.OGIS,no..
. Theodoret,Ep. ,CorrespondanceII, ed. Y. Azéma (), .