Two men in the same family dream of flight and construct a means to ascend into the sky near a seacoast. Are these Daedalus and Icarus or the Wright brothers? Moreover, both "Daedalus" and "Wright" may be translated "craftsman." This is not just an odd coincidence (except for the name, maybe), but arises from a deep desire in the human psyche to transcend earthbound locomotion. The desire to see death overcome is also deeply rooted, and can just as well represent a groping toward transcendent reality as a weakness toward the fabulous (Acts 17:27).
Fair question, but more one of psycho-spiritual continuity. Take the concept of the heroic. Humans invented the heroes of mythology, or cast men in a heroic mold. Then God sends his Son and says, in effect, "This is what you have been blundering and groping after in your visions of the heroic--the reality at which it clumsily points--if you have eyes to see it."
What stands out to me here is how Mary Magdalene’s role in John’s account fits both the “translation fable” frame and disrupts it. In those Greco-Roman parallels, the focus is usually on the hero’s body and the declaration of their divinity. In John, the first to interpret the empty tomb isn’t Peter or “the disciple Jesus loved,” it’s Mary—though her first interpretation is that someone took the body. That detail alone tells me the evangelist wasn’t just imitating pagan tropes, but reframing them through a deeply Jewish and countercultural lens, where the testimony of a woman became the hinge point for the whole story.
Thanks. Have I officially made it into the canons of Biblical studies?
What you present here fits perfectly with my tentative theory. There was reality for sure - the belief in Jesus' resurrection which was a given for the 40 years up to when Mark wrote. But then Mark chose to express the old belief with the motif of a translation fable, and he was the first to do it.
Well, Romulus and Cleomedes were disappeared by the gods when they were alive, according to the narratives Plutarch cites. Poor Alcmene’s dead body outright turned to a stone, but before she was buried. This interestingly mirrors her son Hercules’s own death, when he burns on the pyre and Jove takes his soul to the stars, per Ovid’s telling.
Aristeas’s “death and resurrection” story plausibly has a natural basis rather than a mythical one: He fainted in a shop one day, the owner assumed he was dead and went out to tell everyone, and Aristeas awoke before everyone came back, subsequently fleeing town in embarrassment. This incident of course took on greater significance when he wrote an epic poem seven years later about Hyperborea and the Arimaspi, in which he claimed to travel to the northern lands while “Phoibos-possessed.” (Shades of Edgar Cayce much?)
As for CALLIRHOE, I think it’s more plausible that Chariton borrowed from and cashed in on Christianity as a locally-known religious tradition than Christianity borrowed from Chariton’s popular historical novel. BP Reardon notes in his essay on Chariton (p. 328: https://web.archive.org/web/20220425170505id_/https://brill.com/downloadpdf/book/edcoll/9789004496439/B9789004496439_s014.pdf) that Chariton took inspiration from local Aphrodite cults around Miletus for his tale, so taking inspiration from local Christian cults would fit this MO. If Acts 20 is to be believed, Paul the Apostle and other Ephesian church members met in Miletus, so Chariton plausibly heard the Christians preaching from there. Chariton simply took early Christian stories about the tomb, changed the characters, and amped up the dramatic effect with bigger crowds and a dramatic speech by Chaereas.
The way you’ve clipped the speech makes it seem as though Chaereas thinks the gods really did take Callirhoe, but this is not so. Chaereas continues: ‘“But, even so, she should not have disappeared from the world so quickly or for such a reason. Thetis, too, was a goddess, but she remained with Peleus and bore him a son, while I have been deserted at the very peak of my love. What is my fate? What will become of me, poor wretch? Shall I kill myself? With whom shall I be buried? For this was my hope in my misfortune, that if I could no longer share my bed with Callirhoe, at least I would share her grave. My lady, I offer you my defense for staying alive: you compel me to live. I shall search for you over land and sea—yes, if I may, I shall even rise into the sky. Only I beg you, my darling, do not flee from me.”
‘At these words the crowd broke into lamentation, and all began to mourn for Callirhoe as though she had just died. Warships were immediately launched and many shared in the search. Warships were immediately launched and many shared in the search. Hermocrates himself explored Sicily, and Chaereas, Libya. Some were sent off to Italy and others were ordered to cross the Ionian Sea. However, human effort proved utterly ineffective, and it was Fortune who brought the truth to light—Fortune, without whom no work is ever brought to completion, as may be learned from what happened.’ (LCL translation, pp.147-149).
Chaereas’s speech kicks off the big search for Callirhoe. He doesn’t so much think she was actually a goddess, and in fact he discounts this, thinking the gods would never be so cruel to take someone away from those who loved them so dearly. Rather, consumed with romantic frenzy for Callirhoe, he vows to find her even if by some rare chance she’s been taken by the gods. This moment is an attempt by Chariton at powerful romantic drama, not evidence of a widespread theological translation belief where anyone whose body was missing was deemed a god.
Thanks for your engagement. There is ambiguity as to whether all of the figures have died (I've made an edit to reflect this.) But I was not proposing a genetic connection between John and Callirhoe. I also never claimed that this is a translation fable, but rather a text which 'plays on the conventions of a translation fable.'
Oh, I never meant that you were claiming a genetic connection between GJohn and CALLIRHOE. What I was trying to get at was that CALLIRHOE betrays just how odd Christianity would have seemed at the time: The Christian empty tomb narrative signifies that a nobody (not a poet, not an athlete, not a king, not a man of great physical feats) was deified/exalted under circumstances that would normally suggest a tomb robbery. The way CALLIRHOE plays with the conventions of popular translation fables (which included, as I contend, the Christian empty tomb narrative) itself rejects the very idea that the discovery of a non-masculine/emasculated person’s empty tomb would ever be associated with a miracle. And the story was popularly received if Persius’s dismissive reference is anything to go by (Reardon, pp.315-316), so I can only assume this perspective on deification/translation was popular in the Greco-Roman world.
Two men in the same family dream of flight and construct a means to ascend into the sky near a seacoast. Are these Daedalus and Icarus or the Wright brothers? Moreover, both "Daedalus" and "Wright" may be translated "craftsman." This is not just an odd coincidence (except for the name, maybe), but arises from a deep desire in the human psyche to transcend earthbound locomotion. The desire to see death overcome is also deeply rooted, and can just as well represent a groping toward transcendent reality as a weakness toward the fabulous (Acts 17:27).
Would you say this is an example of parallelomania, Darek?
Fair question, but more one of psycho-spiritual continuity. Take the concept of the heroic. Humans invented the heroes of mythology, or cast men in a heroic mold. Then God sends his Son and says, in effect, "This is what you have been blundering and groping after in your visions of the heroic--the reality at which it clumsily points--if you have eyes to see it."
What stands out to me here is how Mary Magdalene’s role in John’s account fits both the “translation fable” frame and disrupts it. In those Greco-Roman parallels, the focus is usually on the hero’s body and the declaration of their divinity. In John, the first to interpret the empty tomb isn’t Peter or “the disciple Jesus loved,” it’s Mary—though her first interpretation is that someone took the body. That detail alone tells me the evangelist wasn’t just imitating pagan tropes, but reframing them through a deeply Jewish and countercultural lens, where the testimony of a woman became the hinge point for the whole story.
Thanks. Have I officially made it into the canons of Biblical studies?
What you present here fits perfectly with my tentative theory. There was reality for sure - the belief in Jesus' resurrection which was a given for the 40 years up to when Mark wrote. But then Mark chose to express the old belief with the motif of a translation fable, and he was the first to do it.
Well, Romulus and Cleomedes were disappeared by the gods when they were alive, according to the narratives Plutarch cites. Poor Alcmene’s dead body outright turned to a stone, but before she was buried. This interestingly mirrors her son Hercules’s own death, when he burns on the pyre and Jove takes his soul to the stars, per Ovid’s telling.
Aristeas’s “death and resurrection” story plausibly has a natural basis rather than a mythical one: He fainted in a shop one day, the owner assumed he was dead and went out to tell everyone, and Aristeas awoke before everyone came back, subsequently fleeing town in embarrassment. This incident of course took on greater significance when he wrote an epic poem seven years later about Hyperborea and the Arimaspi, in which he claimed to travel to the northern lands while “Phoibos-possessed.” (Shades of Edgar Cayce much?)
As for CALLIRHOE, I think it’s more plausible that Chariton borrowed from and cashed in on Christianity as a locally-known religious tradition than Christianity borrowed from Chariton’s popular historical novel. BP Reardon notes in his essay on Chariton (p. 328: https://web.archive.org/web/20220425170505id_/https://brill.com/downloadpdf/book/edcoll/9789004496439/B9789004496439_s014.pdf) that Chariton took inspiration from local Aphrodite cults around Miletus for his tale, so taking inspiration from local Christian cults would fit this MO. If Acts 20 is to be believed, Paul the Apostle and other Ephesian church members met in Miletus, so Chariton plausibly heard the Christians preaching from there. Chariton simply took early Christian stories about the tomb, changed the characters, and amped up the dramatic effect with bigger crowds and a dramatic speech by Chaereas.
The way you’ve clipped the speech makes it seem as though Chaereas thinks the gods really did take Callirhoe, but this is not so. Chaereas continues: ‘“But, even so, she should not have disappeared from the world so quickly or for such a reason. Thetis, too, was a goddess, but she remained with Peleus and bore him a son, while I have been deserted at the very peak of my love. What is my fate? What will become of me, poor wretch? Shall I kill myself? With whom shall I be buried? For this was my hope in my misfortune, that if I could no longer share my bed with Callirhoe, at least I would share her grave. My lady, I offer you my defense for staying alive: you compel me to live. I shall search for you over land and sea—yes, if I may, I shall even rise into the sky. Only I beg you, my darling, do not flee from me.”
‘At these words the crowd broke into lamentation, and all began to mourn for Callirhoe as though she had just died. Warships were immediately launched and many shared in the search. Warships were immediately launched and many shared in the search. Hermocrates himself explored Sicily, and Chaereas, Libya. Some were sent off to Italy and others were ordered to cross the Ionian Sea. However, human effort proved utterly ineffective, and it was Fortune who brought the truth to light—Fortune, without whom no work is ever brought to completion, as may be learned from what happened.’ (LCL translation, pp.147-149).
Chaereas’s speech kicks off the big search for Callirhoe. He doesn’t so much think she was actually a goddess, and in fact he discounts this, thinking the gods would never be so cruel to take someone away from those who loved them so dearly. Rather, consumed with romantic frenzy for Callirhoe, he vows to find her even if by some rare chance she’s been taken by the gods. This moment is an attempt by Chariton at powerful romantic drama, not evidence of a widespread theological translation belief where anyone whose body was missing was deemed a god.
Thanks for your engagement. There is ambiguity as to whether all of the figures have died (I've made an edit to reflect this.) But I was not proposing a genetic connection between John and Callirhoe. I also never claimed that this is a translation fable, but rather a text which 'plays on the conventions of a translation fable.'
Oh, I never meant that you were claiming a genetic connection between GJohn and CALLIRHOE. What I was trying to get at was that CALLIRHOE betrays just how odd Christianity would have seemed at the time: The Christian empty tomb narrative signifies that a nobody (not a poet, not an athlete, not a king, not a man of great physical feats) was deified/exalted under circumstances that would normally suggest a tomb robbery. The way CALLIRHOE plays with the conventions of popular translation fables (which included, as I contend, the Christian empty tomb narrative) itself rejects the very idea that the discovery of a non-masculine/emasculated person’s empty tomb would ever be associated with a miracle. And the story was popularly received if Persius’s dismissive reference is anything to go by (Reardon, pp.315-316), so I can only assume this perspective on deification/translation was popular in the Greco-Roman world.