You are on page 1of 26

-1-

A Myth for the World: Early Christian Reception of Infanticide and Cannibalism
in Josephus, Bellum J udaicum6.199-219

Honora H. Chapman, Santa Clara University
October, 2000

The Christian Fathers adapt, comment upon, and quote Josephuss detailed and
dramatic description of the destruction of Jerusalem for a variety of literary and
theological purposes.
1
They cite the scene of Marys cannibalism at B.J. 6.199-219 more
often than any other from the War because it provides them with vivid evidence to
corroborate passages in the scriptures concerning the two destructions of Jerusalem and
Gods punishment of his people for sin.
2
Josephuss Christian readers also appreciate his
use of tragic themes and diction in the scene of cannibalism.
3
They choose, however, to
ignore that his rhetorical purpose in this tragic passage is to encourage his readers to have
compassion for the majority of Jews who suffered during the war with the Romans
because of the actions of the Jewish rebels. In this paper I shall offer an analysis of the
scene of Marys cannibalism within the context of the B.J. Then I shall examine how
Melito, Origen, Eusebius, Basil, John Chrysostom, Jerome, and pseudo-Hegesippus read
and employ the Josephan passage.


Josephus, B.J . 6.199-219

The story of Marys cannibalism occurs in Book 6, right at the climax of his account
of the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., and it serves dramatically as the catalyst for
the destruction of the Jewish Temple. By setting this abomination of cannibalism directly

1
H. Schreckenberg has extensively probed the reception of Josephus by later Christians; see, for instance,
his Die Flavius-Josephus-Tradition in Antike und Mittelalter, Leiden: Brill, 1972; Rezeptionsgeschichtliche
und textkritische Untersuchungen zu Flavius Josephus, Leiden, 1977; Josephus und die christliche
Wirkungsgeschichte seines Bellum Judaicum,ANRW 2, pt. 21, sec. 2, ed. W. Haase, Berlin, New York,
1984, pp. 1106-1217; The Works of Josephus and the Early Christian Church, in L. Feldman and G.
Hata, edd., Josephus, Judaism, and Christianity, Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1987, pp. 315-324.
2
See Schreckenberg (1972), pp. 186-191, for a list of passages in B.J. and the later authors who used them;
he does not mention Melito of Sardis in connection with 6.199-219. On the use of the story of the
cannibalism of Mary, see most recently S. Mason, Josephus and the New Testament, Hendrickson, 1992,
pp. 11, 15, 32. In his chapter The Use and Abuse of Josephus, p. 11, Mason remarks, Of all the
Christian references to Josephus that have survived from the ancient world and the Middle Ages, the
passage most commonly cited from his works, next to his reference to Jesus [Ant. 18.63-64], is one that
describes a horrible act of cannibalism during the Roman siege.
3
Schreckenberg has detected the historians use of tragedy and comments generally on its effect upon
Christian readers of the Bellum: On the whole, Josephus awakened, especially with his Jewish War, the
emotions of his Christian readers; indeed, his depiction of the destruction of Jerusalem was in individual
scenes composed almost like a tragedy and, especially at certain climaxes of the story, was perceived in just
this way by Christian readers. They felt horror and fright in the face of the Jewish catastrophe; they felt, at
the same time, on account of the frequently moralizing historical view of Josephus, a certain edification and
satisfaction in stationing themselves on the side favored by God, in The Works of Josephus and the Early
Christian Church, trans. by H. Regensteiner, in Josephus, Judaism, and Christianity, ed. by Louis H.
Feldman and Gohei Hata, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987, p. 320.

-2-
before the destruction of the Temple, Josephus plainly is creating a disaster of biblical
proportions, especially for his Jewish audience, who would know of the first destruction
and other dire cases of cannibalism from the scriptures. At the same time, he tempers his
description with topoi and pathos gleaned from Greek tragedy and historiography.
4

Josephus sets the scene for Mary in Bellum 6 by painting a picture of the social
breakdown within Jerusalem as the siege persists and of the indescribable sufferings
5

of those perishing from famine. Throughout the B.J. the victims are the majority of the
Jewish people, and the villains are the Jewish rebels, whom he excoriates for turning the
Temple into a polluted brigand-stronghold.
Josephus introduces the story of Marys cannibalism with a rather lengthy prologue:

But why should I tell about their shamelessness in eating inanimate food because
of the famine? For I am about to reveal a deed of such a kind that has never been
recorded by Greeks or barbarians, awful to tell and unbelievable to hear. For my
part, so that I might not seem to my future audience to be telling tales, I would
gladly have left out this misfortune, if I had not had countless witnesses among
my own contemporaries. Above all, I would be paying cold respect to my country
if I lied in my account of the things it has suffered.
6


There are several issues to address in this introduction to the Mary episode: its supposed
uniqueness in both the Greek and Jewish worlds, its emotional impact, its credibility with
respect to his future audience, his insistence upon the use of eye-witnesses, and, finally,
his desire not to be considered a traitor to his country but to present accurately through an
account (logos) the sufferings of his own people. I shall analyze each of these elements
in this prologue in relation to Josephuss overall historiographic agenda before turning to
his narrative of the scene itself.
In this prologue to Marys cannibalism, Josephus first tantalizes his audience by
claiming that he will reveal a deed unparalleled in Greek or Jewish history. The few
modern scholars who have examined this passage assume that Josephus has made a slip,
is ignorant, or is lying, but none provides satisfactory explanation for his motives in
doing any of the above. Thackeray notes, Josephus strangely ignores the parallel
incident at the siege of Samaria, recorded in 2 Kings vi.28f.
7
Thackeray assumes that

4
Most recently, L. Feldman has mentioned the intense drama in Josephus description of the final
debacle of the Jews and of t he destruction of the Temple in Book 6 of the War, notably the account (War
6.201-213) of Maria, the Jewess who was led by the famine to devour her own child, in The Influence of
the Greek Tragedians on Josephus, in A. Ovadiah ed., Hellenic and Jewish Arts, Tel Aviv, 1998, p. 60.
5
B.J. 6.193.
6
B.J. 6.199-200:
|oi i ti q v t o u _oi, o voi tiov ou iiou it ytiv, ti i yo p ou ou qio oov t pyov oi ov q t
op Eiiqoiv q t opo opo poi, i oo pqoi, pi|o v t v ti ti v, oioov o|ouooi. |oi tyoy
t q o oii tpotu tooi oi , ou i, o vpo oi,, |o v opt itiov q v ouopo v q t o,, ti q o v
|o t ouo v ti _ov o ti pou, o pupo,. o iio, t |oi u_po v o v |ooti qv q opi i _o piv |
outtvo, ov ioyov o t ovtv o t pyo.
7
Thackeray (1928), vol. 3, p. 434, n. a. At 2 Kings 6:26-31, a Samaritan woman in direct speech informs
the besieging king of Aram that she and another woman had made a pact to eat each of their sons; she has

-3-
Josephus knew the Hebrew story and chose not to include it.
8
Thackeray in his note also
relates this incident in the Bellum to the warnings of Gods retribution for Israels
violation of the commandments in Deuteronomy 28.57 and Baruch 2.2f. Price augments
these Biblical citations with others, including rabbinic parallels.
9

I, however, do not think that Josephuss omission is strange but actually essential to
his historiographic goals. We should draw a comparison between Josephuss claim here
of the incomparable nature of Marys cannibalism and the historians larger claim in the
preface of the Bellum that this war between the Romans and the Jews was the greatest of
all ever waged.
10
In this, he is hearkening back to Thucydides claim of the
Peloponnesian War surpassing all previous wars.
11
Great wars require great climaxes. In
his story of Mary Josephus is laying out an extraordinary explanation for why the
cataclysmic destruction occurs in Jerusalem. It, therefore, would only have deflated the
grandeur and supposed uniqueness of his material at this point to refer to the Samaritan
cannibalism in 2Kings.
An understanding of the scriptural background is essential for reading the passage of
Marys cannibalism. Besides the account in 2Kings of the Samaritan mothers
cannibalism, the Hebrew literature set dramatically during the Babylonian exile
repeatedly foretells/reports cannibalism during the siege of Jerusalem which led to the
destruction of its first Temple and the captivity of its people. What is key to these
previous exilic texts, especially Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Ezekiel, is that Israel
interpret its sufferings, including engaging in cannibalism,
12
as punishments from
Yahweh for not keeping the Jewish Law, and specifically for profaning the Temple.
Parents, both fathers and mothers, will eat their own children. Ezekiel emphasizes that
this act is unprecedented.
13
Perhaps Josephus is also building upon this idea when he
claims that the Mary story is unparalleled.

given up her own child, which they cooked and ate, but now the other is hiding her son. Upon hearing this
the king tore his garments.
8
S. Schwartz, Josephus and Judaean Politics, Leiden: Brill, 1990, p. 43, n. 79, proposes that Josephus did
not even know this story in 2Kings when he was composing the B.J.
9
J. Price Jerusalem Under Siege: The Collapse of the Jewish State, 66-70 C.E., Leiden: Brill, 1992, p. 156,
nn. 122 and 123.
10
B.J. 1.1 and 1.4.
11
Thucydides 1.1.
12
Jeremiah 19:9: I shall make them [Septuagint: They will] eat the flesh of their own sons and
daughters; Lamentations 2:20: Should women eat their offspring, the children they have cared for?
[LXX: Shall women eat the fruit of their womb? The butcher has made a gleaning; will the infants
suckling at the breasts be slain?] Should the priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?,
4:10: The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children, who became their food in the
destruction of the daughter of my people; Ezekiel 5:9-10: And I shall do to you what I have never done
before and will never do again because of your abominations. Therefore fathers will eat their children in
your midst, and children will eat their fathers; and I shall make judgements against you and I shall scatter
all your survivors to every wind; also see Baruch 2:3, which was not part of the Hebrew Bible.
13
Baruch 2:2 also makes this claim.

-4-
These exile reports of cannibalism, both the Biblical and Josephuss, would have been
conceived by a Jewish author, especially a priest,
14
and read by a Jewish audience as
fulfilment of the original warnings of Gods punishments for sacrilege recorded in
Leviticus 26
15
and Deuteronomy 28. Both passages contain cannibalism committed
against children. The Levitical warnings proceed to the destruction of Israels cities and
sanctuaries and the dispersion of its people into the land of their enemies.
16
The
warnings in Deuteronomy more explicitly contextualize the accursed cannibalism with
the onslaught of the enemy. Deuteronomy also creates a character, the tenderest and
most fastidious of women. Once a grand woman, who has never ventured to set the
sole of her foot upon the ground, she now is a hateful wife and, worse still, a desperate
mother reduced by starvation to eating both the afterbirth and her own baby.
17

That Josephus was working from this biblical material seems evident; we should now
consider how he could adapt it for his historiographic purpose. Philo provides keen
insight into how a hellenized Jew would consider and shape a narrative of cannibalism
based on these scriptural passages for a hellenized audience in the first century C.E.
Philos treatise entitled On Rewards and Punishments traces how God rewards those who
follow the Law handed down to Moses, and how transgressors are punished. After
describing the earthly blessings for the just and pious, Philo graphically elaborates on the
punishments found in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. On the famine and drought that
will ensue, causing people to turn to cannibalism, Philo comments: The tales of
Thyestes will be childs play compared with the extreme misfortunes, which the times
will produce in great abundance.
18
Thyestes is a natural choice when referring to

14
As a priest performing the daily whole-offering (or Tamid) at the Temple in Jerusalem before the war,
Josephus would have recited a shorter version of Yahwehs blessings and curses upon Israel from
Deuteronomy 11. This idea of rewards and punishments was intrinsic to the relationship between Yahweh
and Israel and was reiterated in daily Temple ritual.
15
On Josephuss later interpretive use of Leviticus 19 in Contra Apionem 2.190-216, see Alan Kirk,
Some Compositional Conventions of Hellenistic Wisdom Texts and the Juxtaposition of 4:1-13; 6:20b-49;
and 7:1-10 in Q, Journal of Biblical Literature 116.2 (1997), pp. 235-257, especially p. 251 and n. 56, and
Chart 2 on pp. 252-253. Kirk shows that Leviticus 19 provides the structure for elements of Jewish religion
and customs which Josephus chooses to include here in C.A. 2. I would emphasize that Josephus never
quotes the Scriptures directly because this would not be easily recognizable nor necessarily appeal to his
gentile audience, and yet his Jewish readers would understand the context/source for his comments.
16
Lev. 26: 30-41; 36, 38, 39, 41, 44.
17
Deuteronomy 28: 53, 56-57. Thackeray (1928) notes this passage. [Notice also, however, that
Deuteronomy 28:54-55 describes first the most tender and fastidious man, who eats his own children,
before mentioning the woman.] BT Gittin 56a adapts this Deuteronomy passage about the woman to tell the
story of Martha b. Boethus, who dies from the famine during the siege of Jerusalem; two scholars have
situated Josephuss account of Mary within the context of the rabbinic exegeses: N. Cohen, The
Theological Stratum of the Martha b. Boethus Tradition: An Explanation of the Text in Gittin 56A, HTR
69 (1976), pp. 187-195, and B. Visotzky, Most Tender and Fairest of Women: A Study in the
Transmission of Aggada, HTR 76 (1983), pp. 403-418.
18
Philo, de Praemiis et Poenis, 134:
ooouq t t tti oovi, o v o voy|oiov, o ot o iiopiotvt, ouov ptovoi t oiiqio
oyio,, ou ovov ovtiov |oi qtv pooq|ovov, oiio |oi ov oi|tiooov |oi iioov ot
oi yo p |oi oq p ui ou oop|o v |oi qqp oioy_vov uyopo, |oi otiov otioi |oi yovto
v oi t, o ti t oi o otvt otpoi o v uvoot pov |o|oi |oi t o pooi pooi o Out otio oi
io [|oi ] ouy|pivotvo oi , u tpoioi , o v ouopo v, o , tyoioupyqoouoiv oi |oipo.

-5-
cannibalism, since in the myth he (albeit unwittingly) ate his own children. Philo then
dwells on the horrible consequences of not obeying God: But ills that last and waste
away both body and soul produce new sufferings more profound than the ones described
in tragedies, which seem to be told because of their excesses.
19
Philo, therefore, makes
it very plain that tragedy is the natural point of association for his hellenized audience
when discussing extreme human suffering, whether real or hypothetical and regardless of
religion.
In this introduction to the Mary episode Josephus is also insisting upon his own
personal integrity as a historian who tells the truth, based on eye-witness account, and
who records it for posterity. Here he is aspiring to Thucydidean reliability,
trustworthiness, and permanence.
20
All of these qualities are part of Josephuss mission
statement in the main introduction to his history.
21
As Josephus explains, there were
witnesses to Marys deed, and consequently his insistence upon accuracy in his main
introduction would be a sham were he not to include the event. Moreover, his personal
attachment to the suffering of his people is a posture which he has already assumed in his
main introduction to his history of the war.
22

Finally, by using the word logos to describe his account about Mary, Josephus is
asserting its truthfulness. He insists that he is telling a logos (and, therefore, not a mythos)
about an event which ushers in the climax of the war. Yet we shall discover that he
consciously uses the narrative tactics of mythos and chooses to have Marys cannibalism
play out on the tragic stage in order to make his logos a more compelling and convincing
apologia to his audience. Though it may seem ironic to us, Josephus lays claim to
Thucydidean accuracy when presenting a story imbued with myth. This myth, the story
of Mary, in turn, introduces his greatest mythos of all in the Bellum: his explanation for
the burning of the Temple.
Josephus commences his main account of Mary in the following way:

There was a woman among the people who live beyond the Jordan named Mary,
daughter of Eleazar, of the village of Bethezuba (this means the house of
hyssop), distinguished by birth and wealth, who escaped with the rest of the
people to Jerusalem and became involved in the siege.
23


The very first words in this passage, gyne tis, immediately alert his audience that he is
going to be telling an engaging story involving an otherwise minor character. Throughout
the Bellum Josephus uses tis in combination with a noun in order to introduce

19
Ibid., 136: :
|oi yo p ti _oito p I yo,, i o,, t vtio poq ,, o ii tu |oiooo ytvoi o v t i |oipo v, ti o v
ov o vutptov opo v t pyoooio _poviovo t |oi q|ovo u_qv t |oi oo o o v tpoyo
qtvov, o i u tpoio , tutu ooi o|ti , opu tpo t u|t |oivoupyti v.
20
Thucydides 1.20-22.
21
See especially 1.2: accuracy valued over the invective or praise in others accounts; 1.6: his efforts to
educate all near and far accurately; 1.16: at great expense and effort he presents his memorial of great
accomplishments; 1.18: a war he experienced personally; 1.30: his history is for lovers of truth.
22
B.J. 1.11-12.
23
B.J. 6.201: luvq i,....Mopi o ou voo

-6-
provocative or exemplary material.
24
This use of tis to introduce paradigmatic material
is also a trait shared by a type of narrative that at first glance appears quite different from
that of Josephuss history: the fable. As the grammarian Theon formulates it, a fable is a
false logos giving the semblance of truth.
25
While the fabulist represents truth
through a false story, the historian purports to be presenting a true story while using
the tools of fiction.
Josephus commences his story by giving details of Marys fathers name and home in
Peraea. He provides the details about her great wealth and high social position perhaps in
order to increase his audiences respect for her and to prepare for the tragedy of her great
fall. She takes refuge in Jerusalem, only to lose all her belongings to rebel raids.
26

The focus of this passage rests upon Marys emotional state. Josephus highlights the
terrible vexation that drives her to reproach and curse the looters, who, in turn, are
provoked to act against her.
27
The historian now must explain how she arrives at the
horrible point where she would decide to eat her own baby, who has remained
unmentioned up to this point. He then suspends the narrative, in order to build up to the
supposedly unparalleled deed, by crafting a comparatively long sentence and by delaying
introduction of the baby until Marys dramatic direct address:

But when no one out of either anger or pity killed her, and she was tired of finding
any food for others, and it was difficult now to find it from any source, and the
famine was advancing through her innards and marrow while her anger was
burning stronger than the famine, she, under the influence of her anger, along with
necessity, went against nature and seizing her child, who was an infant at the
breast, said, Poor baby, in the midst of war and famine and civil strife, why
should I preserve you? There will be slavery with the Romans, if we are alive
under them, but the famine is beating out even slavery, and the rebels are harsher
than both. Be food for me and for the rebels a fury and for the world a myth, the
only one lacking for the calamities of the Jews.
28


24
For instance, in his account early in book 2 of the period shortly after the death of Herod, Josephus
introduces three colorful pretenders to the throne with this tis formula. B.J. 2.57 (Simon of Peraea),
parallel passage in Ant. 17.273 [Tacitus, Hist. 5.9 has Simo quidam]; B.J. 2.60 (a shepherd called
Athrongaeus), parallel passage in Ant. 17.278; B.J. 2.101 (a young Jew from Sidon), parallel passage in
Ant. 17.324. Also, at B.J. 2.118, Josephus introduces the founder of the rebellious Zealots in the same way,
parallel passages in Ant. 18.4 and Ant. 18.23. None of the parallel passages in Ant. uses tis.
25
Theon, Progymnasmata 3: ioyo, tuq , ti |oviov o iqtiov.
26
It is interesting to note that Josephus does not tell us here how much food cost at the inflated prices
which siege induces, while the account in 2Kings and the rabbinic story of Mary do dwell on such details.
27
B.J. 6.203.
28
B.J. 6.204-207:
o, ou t opouvo tvo , i, ou t ito v ou q v o vq pti, |oi o t v tu pti v i oii ov o iioi, t |oi
o, ovo_o tv o opov q v q q |oi o tu pti v, o iio , t io oo y_vov |oi utio v t _o pti |oi
ou iiou o iiov t t|oiov oi uoi, ououiov ioou oo q v o pyq v to q , o voy|q, t i q v uoi
v t_opti, |oi o t|vov, qv ou q oi , u oo oio,, o pooot vq pto,, ti tv, o iiov, t v o
ito |oi iio |oi oooti ivi ot qpqoo, o tv opo Pooioi, ouitio, |ov qootv t ou ou
,, o vti t |oi ouiti ov o iio ,, oi oooioooi ootpov _oitotpoi. I i, ytvou oi po
q |oi oi , oooioooi , t pivu , |oi o Hio u o, o ovo, t iitiov oi , Iouoiov ouopoi ,.

-7-

This passage is rich with tragic imagery and themes crucial to Josephuss history as a
whole.
The picture of a passionate female from Greek tragedy strongly emerges. Josephus
explains Marys emotional state in terms very familiar from Greek tragedy: she is
overwhelmed by the goads of orge and anagke,
29
anger and necessity, to
commit a deed against nature. The combination of anger, necessity, and an unnatural
act committed by a mother are characteristics which Josephus and his audience would
have readily identified with Euripides Medea. In Euripides play, Medea is driven by
orge against her former husband, Jason.
30
After killing Jasons new bride (and his new
father-in-law), Medea believes she must kill her own children, an unnatural act, so that
they will not be killed by another: Surely it is necessity for them to die; and since it is
necessary, I, the very one who bore them, will kill them.
31

The audience of the Bellum also finally learns the crucial piece of information just
before her speech: Mary has a child. Josephus heightens the suspense and tragic pathos
by delaying this revelation until the beginning of Marys tragic monologue. When Mary
seizes her baby, she mirrors the violence of the rebels guards who have snatched her
property earlier. That the baby is a nursling makes it that much more vulnerable, thereby
increasing the pathos and inviting the audiences pity.
This component of a mother and child suffering during siege is one shared in the
Hebrew and Greek traditions, surely because the literary topos is a reflection of the
realities of war through which both cultures suffered. Homers Andromache serves as the
archetype in Greek literature of the pathetic woman left alone with a babe in arms after
the father has died in war. The tragedians turned to Homers poetry on the Trojan War as
a source of inspiration for describing the pain of war, as did Thucydides and later
historians. Likewise, Josephus turns to Greek tragedy and historiography as inspiration
for shaping this moment in his narrative. Josephus, however, is also recalling the Hebrew
prophetic literature of lamentation, which decries the plight of women in war.
32
The

29
See Colin Macleod, Collected Essays, Oxford, 1983, Thucydides and Tragedy, pp. 140-158, for a
stimulating analysis of themes, such as necessity (p. 154, in Euripides Hecuba), in the tragedians and
Thucydides, especially his speeches. As Macleod points out at the end, the two main sources for the
material of these fifth-century composers were life experience and Homer.
30
Euripides, Medea, on Medeas anger: lines 121 (Nurse), 176 (Chorus), 447 (Jason), 520 (Chorus), 870
(Medea), 909 (Jason).
31
Ibid., 1062-3: ovo, o o vo y|q |oovti v t ti t _pq , / q ti , |tvou tv oi tp t tu ootv.
(These lines are reiterated at 1240-1241, and could be deleted, as editors have, at either location.) Another
tragedy which stresses the role of necessity in forcing a parent to kill children is Euripides Heracles,
which Thackeray claims was a favorite of Josephus. Before the hero appears, his wife, Megara, prepares
her children for death at the hands of the tyrant, Lycus. She tells the chorus of Theban elders that their
anger against Lycus is just (275-6), but that she cannot struggle against necessity (282) t hough she loves
her children. Much later in the play, after Heracles is driven mad by /uooo and kills his family, he tells
Theseus that he performed such a heinous crime out of necessity (1281). The compulsions of tyranny and
madness likewise play out at the climax of the Bellum.
32
For instance, Lamentations 2:10-12: children, still nursing, begging for food and taking consolation at
their mothers breasts; also 2:20: Will the infants at the breast be slain? In response to this type of
imagery the apocalyptic poem of consolation in Isaiah 66 converts this horrible reality of war into an image
of joy, where a revived Jerusalem can suckle her people and offer comfort like a mother (66:11).

-8-
Christian gospels, which were composed in response to the Hebrew tradition as well as
current realities at the end of the first century C.E., also attest, through the prophecies of
Jesus, to the theme that women and their babes will suffer because of war and the
destruction of Jerusalem.
33
Josephus is shaping his narrative within both the Greek and
Hebrew lines of thought, including the Hebrew prophetic literature of lamentation.
After seizing her infant at the breast, Mary delivers a short tragic monologue. As with
other speeches in the Bellum, it reflects Josephuss own apologetic Tendenz.
34
What
makes this speech remarkable, however, is that it is uttered by a woman, Mary.
35
Marys
speech is unusual for the Bellum because it comes directly from the mouth of a
woman;
36
it is more unusual still in that it is addressed to a baby. (Let us remember that
Josephus could have had Mary simply direct her words to the rebels, who were the source
of her agony.) Babies are hardly the typical addressees of set speeches in Graeco-Roman
historiography, especially at the climax of an historical account. Instead, this rings of the

33
In these gospel narratives, Jesus predictions about the destruction of Jerusalem (in the tradition of the
Hebrew Scriptures, including Lamentations and Daniel) and the coming of the Son of Man are in response
to his disciples drawing his attention to the Temple; in all three synoptic accounts, the Temple (its stones,
buildings, and decorations) is a spectacle which Jesus is invited to view. He then views it, and he finally
pronounces judgment on it. For the specific predictions on women and their children, see Mk. 13.17:
ou oi t oi , t v yoopi t _ou ooi, |oi oi , qioou ooi, t v t |ti voi, oi , q t poi,, Alas for
women who are pregnant and for the ones nursing in those days. This prediction is found verbatim at Mt.
24.19 and Lk. 21.23. The gospel of Luke, however, changes the spectacle which triggers Jesus dire
prediction: instead of Jesus warning about seeing in the Temple the abomination of desolation from
Daniel 9:27, Lukes Jesus warns about seeing Jerusalem encircled by an army, 21:20. Both Josephus and
Luke, though working within the parameters of Greek historiography, clearly reveal understanding of the
Hebrew background in their writings. Luke, unlike the other gospels, returns to this theme of woe for
women and children in the description of Jesus walking to Calvary: at 23:28-29, Jesus responds t o the
people, including women, who are lamenting his fate by saying, Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for
me; weep rather for yourselves and for your children. For the days will surely come when people will say,
Happy are those who are barren, the wombs that have never borne, the breasts that have never suckled!
(This is a direct contrast to the blessing pronounced by Jesus mother, Mary, in the Magnificat, 1:48, and to
the blessing of the woman in the crowd upon Jesus mother at 11:47.) Luke is reflecting and soon quoting
from Hosea 9-10 in this section, but one cannot help wondering if the plight of women in Jerusalem during
the war (including the story of Josephuss infamous Mary) had not somehow come to his attention. On
Lukes possible awareness of Josephuss writings, see Mason (1992), pp. 185-225.
34
David Aune, The New Testament in Its Literary Environment, Philadelphia: Westminister, 1987, pp.
107-108, gives a good short assessment of Josephuss use of speeches. He states: Josephus included 109
speeches in Wars (excluding very short statements and conversations). All are uniformly cast in the
authors language and style, all are deliberative or advisory, and all are vehicles for his personal
viewpoint...[Aune here provides examples of several important speeches.]...The high percentage of
speeches in indirect discourse (55 percent) is significant, for they are used to convey content rather than to
display the authors rhetorical skills.
35
Previous historians had, of course, resorted to speeches by women to heighten the drama of a scene:
witness the self-sacrificial Lucretia, whose suicide serves as the catalyst for the end of monarchy at Rome,
in Livy Book 1, and Oenanthe in Polybius Book 15.29.8-14. Oenanthe screams a pithy speech at women in
a temple, concluding: if it is the will of the gods, I trust that you will one day taste the flesh of your own
children. Polybius then describes the mutilation of Oenanthe and others by the mob at 15.33.8-10.
36
Elsewhere in the Bellum, only in Book 1 does the historian give direct speeches to women. These
speeches occur during the highly dramatized saga of the destruction of the oikos of Herod and his tragic
downfall, when women are being tortured in order to gather information about the poisoning of the kings
brother, Pheroras.

-9-
role of children in Greek tragedy, as in Euripides Medea and even more in his Trojan
Women,
37
which had as its archetype the role of Astyanax as a focus of pathos in
Homers Iliad.
38

Women, children, and the gods are also considered among the main conventional
objects of concern before battle in Greek historiography.
39
Josephus, however, raises this
typical element to a much more dramatic level by allowing a woman to speak to her child
in order to explain just what is at stake in the war he is describing. We cannot possibly
determine whether this is a new adaptation of the conventional mention of women and
children at the climax of a history of a war, since so many histories that we know of from
antiquity are now lost. We can assume, however, that Josephus presents the scene with
Mary very deliberately in order to further his apologetic aims and to appeal to his
audiences taste.
There is more here, however. The fact that Mary is addressing her own son and
commanding him to serve a higher purpose through his death belongs to the tradition of
the Jewish stories in 2 and 4 Maccabees describing the courageous mother who urges her
seven sons to resist the attempts of Antiochus Epiphanes to hellenize the Jews and to
endure his punishments.
40
Josephus, too, is telling a story of resistance to political
power, but not so much against the foreign Romans, who potentially would enslave the

37
Andromache addresses her child Astyanax for the last time at 740-779.
38
This is not, however, to say that children do not figure as dramatic foci of attention in Classical and
Hellenistic historiography; see Mark Golden, Change or Continuity? Children and Childhood in
Hellenistic Historiography, in edd. M. Golden and P. Toohey, Inventing Ancient Culture, Historicism,
Periodization, and the Ancient World, London: Routledge, 1997. Golden has recently argued rather
convincingly that one cannot assume that more interest in and different sentiments toward children are
defining characteristics of the Hellenistic age (p. 191). He provides a table showing the frequency of
words for child (teknon, pais, and paidion) appearing in Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophons Hellenica,
and Polybius 1-5. Herodotus clearly outstrips the others in referring to childrenfour times as often as
Thucydides. After examining these authors along with fragmentary Hellenistic historians and Plutarch,
Golden concludes, p. 190: Perhaps, to put the case at its strongest, Polybius was as unwilling to admit
children into his work as Thucydides and Xenophon but more prone to use them to arouse pathos (for both
of which propositions we have found evidence) and more apt to present them in a variety of ways (for
which we havent).
39
Though Herodotus does not use children as a focus of pity when the Persians are attacking Athens, he
does show that children are an object of concern by mentioning at 8.41.1 that the Athenians issued a
proclamation that anyone there should save both children and household members by evacuating to
Troezen, Aegina, and Salamis. Thucydides, the least likely to tug on the heartstrings of his readers by
referring to children, does have Gylippus and the generals at the height of the conflict at Syracuse remind
their men that had the Athenians taken their city, they would have applied the most indecent treatment to
their children and women (7.68.2). Thucydides then turns back to Nicias to report his actions as a general
in response to the crisis the Athenians are facing. The historian editorializes upon the nature of Niciass
exhortation of his men and the fact that the general resorts to the stock appeals to soldiers in such a crisis
situation at the climax of a war, including concern for women, children, and the gods of their fathers
(7.69.2). Before these conventional items, however, Thucydides has Nicias echo Pericles Funeral Oration
by reminding the men of their own reputations, their famo us forefathers, and the unmatched freedom of the
Athenian way of life. Thucydides presents these elements as particular to Athens and not just the standard
talk of desperate generals.
40
Josephus may not have used 2 or even 4 Maccabees, but this does not rule out the possibility that he had
heard the tales of martyrdom they contain.

-10-
mother and child, but against the rebels, whom the historian has been so careful to blame
for the famine and the forthcoming destruction of Jerusalem.
Mary offers an interpretation of what her babys death signifies: food, fury, and myth
all rolled into one. On the practical level within the story, the baby will serve as food to
alleviate the mothers hunger. On the thematic level, the baby will play the tragic role of
a fury after its death (like those in Aeschyluss Oresteia), hounding the rebels for the
crimes they have committed.
41
The echo of the Oresteia resounds, especially since
Josephus is condemning the rebels yet again for their murderous oikeia stasis and
homophylos phonos.
42
Finally, the label of myth
43
elevates the baby to a role in a
tragedy, which is a further clue to the nature of this particular narrative.
44

The baby embodies all the suffering of the Jews in this war by suffering murder,
dismemberment, and consumption at the hands of his own mother. Josephus states:

And with these words she slew her son, and then having roasted the body, she
devoured half of it, while the rest she covered and was safeguarding.
45


The baby is roasted, and only half is consumed while the rest is held in reserve as
leftovers. Scheiber
46
has suggested that Josephus has derived his idea of a mother with a
half-eaten baby from the very end of Petroniuss Satyricon as we have it. Here Eumolpus
justifies his requirement that his inheritors eat him up after he dies by pointing to the
historical precedents of cannibalism during the sieges at Saguntum, Petelia, and
Numantia, where in the final case mothers were found who were holding half-eaten
bodies of their children at the breast.
47
One also, however, might conjecture that
Josephus could have known of the story from Polybiuss monograph of Scipios siege of

41
Josephus, however, does not create a happy counterpart to Aeschyluss neat incorporation of the Furies
into the city of Athens at the end of the Eumenides; this makes sense since there is no happy ending for the
Jews with the fall of Jerusalem.
42
D. Ladouceur, Josephus and Masada, in L. Feldman and G. Hata, edd., Josephus, Judaism, and
Christianity, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987, p. 110, comments on these in relation to the
episode of Masada in book 7.
43
Josephus uses the word mythos only once elsewhere in the B.J. at 3.420, where he describes the traces of
Andromedas chains at Joppa. It also clearly foreshadows Josephuss own interpretation of Apions canard
about Jews sacrificing and eating a Greek every year: this is full of everything to do with tragedy.
44
In keeping with Philos association of mankinds sufferings with tragedy and this account in Book 6,
later in C.A. 2.97 Josephus interprets Apions canard about Jews sacrificing and eating a Greek every year:
A tale of this kind is full of everything to do with tragedy, huiusmodo ergo fabula non tantum omni
tragoedia plenissima est.
45
B.J. 6.208:
|oi ou o o it youoo |ti vti o v ui o v, t ti o qoooo o t v q iou |otoiti, o t ioio v |o
o|oiuooo tuiotv.
46
A. Scheiber, Zu den Antiken Zusammenhangen der Aggada, Acta Antiqua Academia Scientiarum
Hungaricae 13 (1965), pp. 267-272.
47
Petr., Sat. 141: Cum esset Numantia a Scipione capta, inventae sunt matres, quae liberorum suorum
tenerent semesa in sinu corpora.

-11-
Numantia.
48
Polybius in his Histories glorifies his friend Scipio,
49
and it would be no
surprise if a laudatory account of the Roman generals capture of Numantia inspired
Josephus to draw a literary and historical parallel between Scipio and Titus both facing
cannibal mothers.
50

The rebels now appear, and Mary invites them to eat part of her sacrifice:

This child is my own, and the deed is mine.
51
Eat, for I, too, have eaten. Dont be
weaker than a woman
52
or more compassionate than a mother. If you are pious
and turn away from my sacrifice, then I have eaten for you, and let the left-overs
remain for me.
53



48
This piece is mentioned by Cicero in Ad Fam. 5.12.2. Also, in de Rep. 6.11 (Somnium Scipionis), Cicero
has Scipio Africanus the Elder predict to Scipio the Yo unger: bellum maximum conficies, Numantiam
excindes.
49
See, for instance, Polybius Hist. 31.25, on the close relationship between Polybius and Scipio, and
Scipios fine character. Scipio appears once in the B.J. at 2.380 in Agrippas list of historical exempla of
nations that defied Rome and fell.
50
S. Cohen, Josephus, Jeremiah, and Polybius, History and Theory 21 (1982), p. 367, compares the
careers of these two historians. A. Eckstein, Josephus and Polybius: A Reconsideration, Classical
Antiquity 9 (1990), pp. 175-208, draws many apt parallels, both thematic and linguistic, between the two
authors, but he does not mention this scene.
51
The use of this with the first person possessive adjective and her invitation to the rebels to eat this
child partly resembles the words attributed to Jesus at the Last Supper, a meal timed in the Christian texts
with Passover. (Mary, however, never invites the rebels to drink blood or enter into any covenant.) In
Pauls formula in 1Corinthians, Jesus breaks bread and says: Take, eat. This is my body which is for your
sake, do this as a memorial of me (1Cor 11:23-27),
ou o ou t oiv o oo o o u t p u o v ou o oiti t ti , q v t q v o vo vqoiv; the synoptic
gospels contain variants: Mt. 26:26-9, iott oytt, ouo toiv o ooo ou, Take, eat; this is
my body; Mk. 14:22-25, iott, ouo toiv o ooo ou, Take; this is my body; Lk. 22:14-20,
ou o t oiv o oo o ou o u t p u o v io tvov, This is my body which has been given for your
sake. Jn. 6:51-8, on the bread of life, is a discourse in response to the Jews arguing and asking: How can
this man give us his flesh to eat? (No touto here.) G. Feeley-Harnik, in The Lords Table: Eucharist and
Passover in Early Christianity, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981, p. 130, states that the
Christian eucharist is a reversal of the Jewish Passover. There is possibly a suggestion, then, that Mary has
performed a perverted Passover-type meal, where instead of a lamb, an Israelite baby has been slaughtered.
Josephus, however, does not place the time of her cannibalism at Passover; he does later at 6.421 explain
that so many Jews were caught up in the siege of Jerusalem because they had gathered for Passover in early
spring. It may be that Melito a century later understood a connection between Josephuss account of Mary
and Passover when he employed it in his Peri Paschasee below. In Book 7 Josephus will use the reversal
of Passover and the Aqedah (see especially 7.385 and 401) in his rendition of the mass suicide at Masada.
52
The only other place in Josephus where we find this phrase weaker than a woman is in the Slavonic
addition to B.J. 1.650, which draws a direct comparison to the martyrdom of Eleazar, the seven brothers,
and their mother.
53
B.J. 6.211:
q tov, tq, ouo o t|vov yvqoiov |oi o tpyov tov. oytt, |oi yop tyo tpo|o. q y
tvqot qt oio|otpoi yuvoi|o, qt ouototpoi qpo,. ti u ti , tu otti , |oi q v t q v
o oopttot uoiov, t yo t v u i v tpo|o, |oi o ioio v toi tivoo.

-12-
Josephus clearly has made Mary a woman from Greek tragedy, both in proclaiming this
murder-cannibalism her deed
54
and by referring explicitly to her status as a woman
and a mother as a challenge to the rebels. She is, in fact, a latter-day
Medea/Agave/Andromache hybrid.
55
Medea, before she murders her children in
Euripides play, calls their deaths her sacrificial offerings,
56
and agonizes over their
fate at the hands of enemies should she not dispatch them. Euripides Agave does not call
her son Pentheuss brutal death and dismemberment a sacrifice in the extant portions of
the play, but she does invite the chorus to share the banquet.
57
Mary does not dwell
upon her babys bloody, severed limbs or try to put her babys body back together again
as Agave may have at the end of the Bacchae,
58
but both women and their people suffer
the same fate of dispersion.
59
In similar fashion, Andromache in Euripides Trojan
Women challenges the conquering Greeks, who are seizing her child Astyanax, to feast
on his flesh.
60
With Astyanaxs death Troy can fall, just as Jerusalem falls after the
death of Marys baby in the B.J.
Josephus then reports, in the tradition of political invective, that the rebels depart
having almost eaten the human flesh.
61
The historian has used this image of the rebels as

54
Titus has already disavowed a tragic deed when viewing oozing bodies of dead Jews at B.J. 5.519;
this episode echoes Sophocles Antigone 410-412, 427-8.
55
See Feldman (1998), pp. 60-62, on Josephus Indebtedness to Euripides, and also his Josephus as a
Biblical Interpreter: The Aqedah, JQR 75 (1985), 212-252.
56
Euripides, Medea 1054, oi , t oi oi u ooiv.
57
Euripides, Bacchae 1184, t t_t vuv oi vo,.
58
E.R. Dodds ed., Euripides Bacchae, 2
nd
ed., Oxford, 1960, pp. 57-59, provides several ancient and
medieval adaptations of and citations to the Bacchae in an attempt to help fill the lacuna perceived after
line 1329, which is the second line of Agaves speech in response to Kadmus. Dodds reports on p. 57 that a
third-century rhetorician, Apsines wrote in his Rhetoric [ed. Walz ix. p. 587 and 590] with regard to
Eurpides Bacchae that the mother grasped in her hands each of his limbs and lamented over each of them,
t|ooov yop ouou ov tiov q qqp tv oi, _tpoi |poouoo |o t|ooov ouov oi|itoi.
The twelfth-century Christus Patiens also may be used (as Dodds remarks in his introduction, wit h great
caution, p. lvi) to help reconstruct this lost portion of the Bacchae; lines 1471-2 read: the bloodstained
limbs cut into furrows, o oioupo |oi |oqio|iotvo tiq
59
Josephus may have seen a thematic connection between the fate of the Jews after the war and possible
lines from Dionysuss speech at his epiphany at the end of the Bacchae where the god may have
pronounced his sentence upon the Thebans as punishment for their blasphemy against him:
o ou oti v ti ioov ou |puo |o|o./ ii q o iioo, opo poi, ti |ov, (o|ov)/
o iti, t oiio , ti ooi |ovoi, uyo v / ou itiov (ovti|ovt,) oi uooi ovt,, I shall not hide the
evils which the people must now suffer. They must leave the city, making way for barbarians, and
unwillingly go to many cities, the unlucky ones dragging the yoke of slavery, (reconstructed from Christus
Patiens, lines 1668-9 and 1678-9, in Dodds edition).
60
Euripides, Trojan Women 775, oi vuot ou t oo p|o,. [In the Iliad Achilles in book 22 and Hecuba
in 24 declare in their rage that they are capable of cannibalism; Andromache never speaks of it, even in
reference to her son.]
61
B.J. 6.212. See A. McGowan, Eating People: Accusations of Cannibalism Against Christians in the
Second Century, Journal of Early Christian Studies 2 (1994), 413-442, for the use of charges of
cannibalism against political enemies; the Catilinarian conspirators are the most famous political examples:
Sallust, B.C. 22 and Plutarch, Cicero 10. McGowans analysis is excellent, but he does miss the

-13-
virtual cannibals twice before, and returns to it again when he claims that they would
have eaten corpses had the Romans not captured them first.
62
The rebels are the true
villains here, not Mary, as Titus will soon make clear in his reply to this deed.
We now receive the mixed audience response of Jews in the city and of the Roman
soldiers just outside of it. Josephus engages in wordplay when the mythos of the
mothers deed gets out and is interpreted by the residents of Jerusalem as mysos, an
atrocity.
63
Josephus reports the Roman armys response to hearing the news of the
pathos: a mixture of incredulity, pity, but mostly deeper hatred (misos) towards the
Jews.
64
The triple wordplay creates a causal link and explanation for the events to
follow: the mythos of the mysos inflames Roman misos. This helps to explain the
Romans ferocity later in the assault upon Jerusalem.
Marys tragic act of cannibalism also provides the ultimate justification for the
destruction of the Temple. Josephus gives Titus a defense speech in indirect discourse in
which he claims that God knows that he has shown clemency by offering peace,
autonomy, and amnesty, and yet the Jews have chosen the opposite. He then blames the
Jews for first setting fire with their own hands to the Temple which is being preserved

opportunity to incorporate this example of infant cannibalism from Josephus into his larger discussion of
the symbolism of infanticide at pp. 435-6.
62
B.J. 4.541 (on Simon), 5.4 (on Jewish factionalism), 6.373 (on rebels in the underground tunnels).
Josephus may have been inspired by Sallusts B.C., as with his portrayal of John of Gischala in the B.J.
63
B.J. 6.212: ...ovtiqoq tu to, o iq ou uoou, q oii,. Perhaps Josephus was again drawing
from Euripides Bacchae in choosing to use the word mysos. According to Dodds p. 57, the Schol. Ar.
Plut. 907 quotes a fragment from Euripides Bacchae: ti q yo p i iov t ioov t , _t po, uoo,.
Josephus has previously used this word mostly to describe the crimes committed in Herods household in
1.445, 503, 525, 530, 630, 638. At 1.530, Josephus highlights the framework of Greek tragedy he is using
in the story of Herod by labelling Eurycles the destroyer of this house and the dramaturge of the whole
atrocity, o v t iuto vo q , oi |i o, |oi poooupyo v o iou ou u oou, Eu pu|it o, while Herod
calls him savior and benefactor. Between the Herod drama in Book 1 and the Mary scene, Josephus only
used this word mysos when he editorializes on the pollution of the Temple, asking at 5.19: What misery to
equal that, most wretched city, hast thou suffered at the hands of the Romans, who entered to purge with
fire thy internal pollutions (o tuiio uoq)? I use Thackerays t ranslation because it captures the
histrionic nature of Josephuss question.
Josephuss account of Marys cannibalism shares many elements found in the tales of (pseudo-
)cannibalism later found in the novels of Achilles Tatius and Lollianos. For instance, Achilles Tatius also
engages in wordplay in Kleitophons tragic monologue over the supposedly dead and cannibalized
Leukippe. He bemoans many aspects of her death, listing them off: its foreign location, its violence, the fact
that she is a purifying sacrifice for [the] impure bodies of the brigands, that she had to see her own
evisceration, and worst of all, that her insides are inside the outlaws, victuals in the vitals of bandits, 3.16
(vuv t q ov oioy_vov oou oq iqoov ytyovt poq). Here J. Winklers clever translation
[found in B. Reardon, Collected Ancient Greek Novels, Univ. of California, 1989] is a reflection of the
Greek wordplay of taphe, burial, and trophe, food. In essence, Kleitophon does not dwell upon his own
loss, but instead encapsulates the meaning of Leukippes death in his short speech, just as Mary has in her
short speech to her baby. For a treatment of the narrative of cannibalism in this novel and in the fragments
of Lollianoss Phoenikika, see J. Winkler, Lollianos and the Desperadoes, JHS 100 (1980), pp. 155-181.
64
B.J. 6.214: ou , t oiiou , ti , i oo, ou t vou, oopo tpov. I think that Josephus deliberately
reuses elements of this particular paronomasia of mythos/mysos/misos at Ant. 8.128-9 where he reshapes
the destruction of the Temple in the dream of Solomon at 1Kings 9:7-9. In Ant. Josephus says the
destruction will be worthy of uov and that people will ask why the Hebrews were so hated
(tioqqoov) by God. (These are not the terms used in LXX.)

-14-
by us for you.
65
The use of the first person plural stands out in the middle of indirect
discourse, which only emphasizes Josephuss argument that the Romans and their leader
have great concern for the Temple. Titus then declares that such people, who would set
their own Temple on fire, are worthy of such food as Marys cannibal feast.
66
The
Roman general pronounces his verdict: he will bury this atrocity of infant-cannibalism
(to tes teknophagias mysos) in the very destruction of the country and vows not to
leave in his oikoumene a city standing for the sun to look upon where mothers are fed
thus.
67
Titus finally condemns the men specifically for creating the situation by not
submitting to the Romans.
Josephus clearly presents Marys cannibalism as an event closely connected with the
destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem. Josephus first fashions a remarkable tragic
mythos about a mother desperately killing her baby for food. Mythos becomes mysos
when she eats part of it and offers the rebels the rest. When they find out, the Romans
now have adequate reason for feeling misos towards the Jews because of such a crime.
Hence, Titus, who is presented as ultra-clement, can now blame the Jews for the
destruction of their city and Temple before it even happens in the narrative. In Josephuss
telling of the story, and in Tituss response to it, Mary is a tragic victim driven to an
insane act by the rebels, who are ultimately to blame. Thus ends the tale of Mary in the
B.J.; she has served her narrative purpose and is never mentioned again.


Melito of Sardis, Peri Pascha 52

The first Christian attestation to the account of Marys cannibalism occurs in Peri
Pascha,
68
a homily attributed to Melito, a prolific second-century writer, bishop, and
eunuch at Sardis according to Eusebius.
69
This homilys inflammatory rhetoric against

65
B.J. 6.216.
66
B.J. 6.216: ti voi |oi oiou q, poq , o i ou,.
67
B.J. 6.217: |oiu tiv
tvoi o q , t|vooyio, uoo, ou o o q , opio, ooi |oi ou |ooititiv t i q , oi
|outvq, qiio |oopov oiiv, tv q qtpt, ouo ptovoi.
68
This text is reconstructed from a melange of Greek and Coptic papyri and codices, as well as texts in
Georgian and an epitome in Latin. I shall be referring to the text found in S. G. Hall, Melito of Sardis, On
Pascha and Fragments, Texts and Translations, Oxford, 1979; also see O. Perler, Mliton de Sardes,
Sources Chrtiennes 123, Paris, 1966. Previous MS editions include: C. Bonner, The Homily on the
Passion by Melito of Sardis and Some Fragments of the Apocryphal Ezekiel, Studies and Documents 12,
London and Philadelphia, 1941[A]; M. Testuz, Papyrus Bodmer XIII, Mliton de Sardes, Geneva, 1960
[B]; J. E. Goerhing, The Crosby-Schyen Codex MS 193, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium,
vol. 521, Louvain: E. Peeters, 1990 [Coptic text with English translation].
69
Eusebius H.E. 4.13, 21, 26 (where he lists Melitos works including The Easter Festival, Books 1 and
2, which most scholars do not believe is the same as this homily; this section also contains quotes from
Melitos petition to Antoninus and a quote from his Extracts, which lists his canon of the Old Testament),
5.24 (Eusebius quoting from Polycrates of Ephesuss letter to Victor at Rome concerning all the Asian
bishops who observed the fourteenth day of the lunar month as the beginning of the Paschal feast,
including Melito the eunuch who lived entirely in the Holy Spirit, and who lies in Sardis waiting for the
visitation from heaven when he shall rise from the dead), 28 (For who does not know the books of
Irenaeus, Melito, and the rest, which proclaim Christ as God and man?), and 6.13.

-15-
Jews as unrepentant sinners and killers of Christ/God
70
provokes scholars to explain
what kind of Christian
71
would compose such a text and to evaluate the status of and
relations between the Christian and Jewish communities at late antique Sardis. The Peri
Pascha does not stand alone as potential evidence for these social and religious aspects of
Jewish life in Sardis. Scholars generally rely upon two other major pieces of evidence:
the notices quoted in Josephuss Antiquities concerning the privileges granted to Jews at
Sardis in the first century B.C.E.
72
and the fourth-century archaeological remains of a
grand synagogue, which was built in basilica form into the corner of a bath-gymnasium
complex and which was flanked by a colonnade of shops that were owned by and served
both Jews and Christians.
73
The decrees in Josephus, however, date about two hundred
years before and the remains of the synagogue over one hundred years after the homilys
assumed date of composition in the mid-second century.
74

In a recent article Lynn Cohick sensibly warns the reader of this homily against
leaping to conclusions about religious conflicts at Sardis (especially by using the fourth-
century synagogue as a sign of second-century Jewish power) and instead asks us to
consider seriously broader social concerns and developing Christian thought, which may
affect greatly the interpretation of the homily.
75
Cohick comments approvingly on the
observations of Miriam Taylor:


70
See E. Werner, Melito of Sardes, The First Poet of Deicide, HUCA 37 (1966), pp. 191-210. He
investigates the possibility that Melito was the source for t he seventh-century Improperia, a set of 15
reproaches supposed to have been uttered by a dying Jesus against the Jews, most of whose motifs sound
like an anti-Jewishly twisted version of Dayenu, p. 193. [At the time Werner wrote, the Catholic,
Byzantine, and Georgian rituals still used them in the Good Friday liturgy.]
71
No one seems to dispute that the author of this homily was a Christian at the time of its composition, but
there is controversy regarding the authors identity and sectarian sympathies. A. Stewart Sykes suggests in
Melitos Anti-Judaism, Journal of Early Christian Studies 5 (1997), pp. 271-283, that Melito himself was
a Jew teaching a form of Jewish Christianity surrounded by a strong Jewish community, p. 280.
Furthermore, the same author in The Lambs High Feast: Melito, Peri Pascha and the Quartodeciman
Paschal Liturgy at Sardis, Leiden: Brill, 1998, argues, as have previous scholars, that Melito was a
member of one of those groups of Christians who became known as Quartodecimans, t hose who kept
Pascha in the fourteenth of Nisan, in accordance with the custom that had been handed down from
Judaism, p. 2. On the other hand, Lynn Cohick, Melitos Peri Pascha, in edd. H. C. Kee and L. H.
Cohick, Evolution of the Synagogue: Problems and Progress, Harrisburg: Trinity, 1999, p. 124, remarks
(based on H.E. 4.26.3-11, 13-14 and 5.24.2-6) that Eusebiuss description of the author as a
Quartodeciman is not obviously reflected in our homily, and his quotation allegedly from the Peri Pascha
is not found in our homily. Moreover, nothing in the homily hints of its provenance. With that in mind, and
to prevent confusion, I will not refer to the homilys author as Melito.
72
Josephus, Ant. 14.231-2, 14.235, 14.259-261 (on these last two, see P. Bilde, Was hat Josephus ber
die Synagoge zu sagen? in edd. J. U. Kalms and F. Siegert, Internationales Josephus-Kolloquium Brssel
1998, Mnster, 1999, pp. 15-35), and 16.171.
73
See ed. G. M. A. Hanfmann, Sardis from Prehistoric to Roman Times, Harvard, 1983. Five essays on
the Sardis synagogue by A. T. Kraabel appear conveniently together in Diaspora Jews and Judaism:
Essays in Honor of, and in Dialogue with, A. Thomas Kraabel, Univ. of South Florida, 1992. On the shops:
J. S. Crawford, The Byzantine Shops at Sardis, Harvard, 1990.
74
For a reevaluation of the inscriptional evidence see M. Bonz, The Jewish Community of Ancient
Sardis: Deconstruction and Reconstruction, in Kee and Cohick, 1999.
75
Cohick (1999), p. 123.

-16-
She argues convincingly that the homilys descriptions and details about
Jews/Judaism are biblical images, with little or no reference to second-century
Sardis. In examining the characteristics of Israel in the homilys anti-Jewish
section, one is struck with the overwhelming number of biblical comparisons and
the absence of examples of second- or third-century C.E. Jewish practices.
Israels crime seems to be that it did not recognize the miracles of Jesus or the
person of Jesus as the Messiah (PP 84-90). Whereas Chrysostoms sermons
against the Judaizers include ample examples of specific interactions between
Christians and Jewish [sic] in fourth-century Antioch, our homily offers only
characteristics or incidents from biblical accounts.
76


Taylor and Cohick, therefore, emphasize the essentially scriptural basis of Melitos
description of Jews and Judaism. Cohick does not mention Melitos use of the Bellum
Judaicum, but this only encourages one to examine closely how Melito might have
adapted Josephuss text for his literary purposes.
I would simply stress here that we need to view Melitos incorporation of the story of
Marys cannibalism into his scripturally-based interpretation of the Pascha primarily as a
rhetorical strategy. The fact that Melito would turn to the B.J., the product of a Jewish
author, is in itself an interesting comment upon the availability of the text (or excerpts
from it) in second-century Asia Minor and upon the desire of a Christian to use it.
Furthermore, it is possible that Melito drew upon Josephus as an extra-biblical source
elsewhere in his lost works listed by Eusebius at H.E. 4.26.
But can we be so sure that Melito is actually using Josephuss account from B.J. 6 at
Peri Pascha 52? After all, Melito never refers to Josephus, whereas other Christian
authors we shall examine do mention the historian by name as their source.
Schreckenberg presents a scholarly consensus that this paragraph of the homily exhibits
an allusion to Josephuss story.
77
Hardwick weighs the evidence: Although one cannot
say with certainty that Josephus account of the Roman siege of Jerusalem was in
Melitos mind, elements in Melitos text reflect the situation in the B.J. rather than what
we find in Scripture. Hardwick observes that the sufferings in P.P. are not of foreign
origin, just as Josephus depicts the source of Jewish trouble as internal party politics,
and the cannibalism described by Josephus is the ultimate tragedy as it is for Melito.
78


76
Ibid., pp. 136-7, on M. Taylor, Anti-Judaism and Early Christian Identity, Leiden: Brill, 1995. Also see
L. Cohick, Melito of Sardiss PERI PASCHA and Its Israel, Harvard Theological Review 4 (1998), pp.
351-372, which presents what might be considered an extreme position, while upholding previous, though
not universal, scholarly opinion that the homily may address Marcionite charges, p. 372: I have
suggested that this homily reveals little regarding Jews or Judaism in the authors time. Indeed, it centers on
defining Christianity over against a hypothetical Israel that the unknown author has created largely for
rhetorical purposes. This approach in no way discredits the evidence that Judaism in the early centuries was
active and vibrant in some cities. It simply suggests that this homilys anti-Jewish rhetoric is no the place to
find evidence for Jews or Judaism of its time.
77
H. Schreckenberg, Rezeptionsgeschichtliche und textkritische Untersuchungen zu Flavius Josephus,
Leiden: Brill, 1977, pp. 13-14, where he cites Perler, who originally suggested this in 1966 (see pp. 164-5
ad P.P. 52, l. 382), and von Campenhausen in assent.
78
M. E. Hardwick, Josephus an an Historical Source in Patristic Literature Through Eusebius, Scholars
Press, 1989, pp. 17-18.

-17-
I believe that Hardwick and the others are correct in seeing a textual relationship between
P.P. 52 and the B.J., and I shall now expand upon their observations.
79

The immediate context for the Josephan borrowing is the homilys description of the
destruction (apoleia) of mankind by sin (P.P. 48-56), a destruction which the author
labels kaine de kai phobera, strange and terrible at P.P. 50. In no respect is this
destruction limited to Israel, the Jewish people, whom he excoriates later, nor is it
linked directly to the destruction of Jerusalem. This general destruction includes self-
destruction, as mankind becomes parricides, infanticides, and fratricides (P.P. 51). Hall
aptly notes here: This passage is inspired both by biblical ideas (Gen. 4:8; Judg. 9:5;
John 13:8; Lev. 18:21; Wisd. 12:5) and by Greek mythological figures such as Orestes,
Agamemnon, and Medea.
80

Mankinds self-destruction culminates in P.P. 52, a mothers cannibalism. Halls text
reads:

o t |oivo tpov |oi otpo tpov t i [q, yq,] qu pio|to
qqp i, qto oop|ov ov tytvvqotv,
<|oi > pooq to o v t t pttv oooi,,
|oi ov |opov q, |oiiio, ti, |oiiiov |oopuootv,
|oi otpo , oo, t yivto q uou_q , qqp,
o t|uqotv |ooivouoo t|vov +ou|ti pooioiouv+.
81


Melito introduces the deed as to de kainoteron kai phoberoteron, emphasizing its
extraordinary nature in comparison to all the other heinous sins. Melito has used this
exact phrase as the beginning of P.P. 23, thereby linking this tale of cannibalism back to
the death of the Egyptians firstborn at the old Passover. Josephus in similar fashion
claims that Marys deed was unparalleled. And just as Josephus starts his story with
gyne tis, Melito introduces his account with meter tis,
82
thus cutting away all the
background on Mary which Josephus provides; he instead concentrates on the key
necessary detail: she is a mother.
The baby, whom Josephus finally introduces as to teknon and pais hypomastios
and whom Mary addresses as brephos in her speech, is transformed in Melito
immediately into his fated end: flesh (to be eaten), sarkon. In the next line the mother is
tasting the child who once nursed at her breasts,
83
echoing Josephuss pais

79
I am perplexed by Stewart-Sykes (1998) choosing to compare the P.P. to Josephuss Antiquities in
section 3.1.5 on Peri Pascha as Rhetorical History, pp. 77-83 and then deciding not to discuss the one
passage, P.P. 52, which seems to indicate that Melito had at least seen or heard of Josephuss B.J.
80
Hall, p. 29, n. 16, on PP. 51.
81
Halls translation, p. 29: But the strangest and most terrible thing occurred on the earth: / a mother
touched the flesh she had brought forth,/ and tasted what she had suckled at the breasts;/ and she buried in
her belly the fruit of her belly,/ and the wretched mother became a terrible grave,/ gulping, not kissing [see
my n. 85s below], the child she had produced.
82
On reading qqp, Hall is following O. Perler, Mliton de Sardes, Sources Chrtiennes 123, Paris,
1966, p. 88, who was relying on B here (against Bonner who restored o]qp in A. The Coptic MS
confirms B.
83
At P.P. 18, Egypt is personified as a woman whose breasts of delicacy are torn.

-18-
hypomastios and swiftly making the consumer the consumed. How Melito has poetically
condensed and focussed this material is truly startling; not a word is wasted. In the
following line Melito indulges in heavy alliteration with kai ton karpon tes koilias eis
koilian katorussen, and the bounty of her belly she buried in her belly. Basil, whom I
shall discuss below, also engages in this anaphora with belly when describing the
cannibalism but uses a different word.
What follows? And the wretched mother became a dreadful (phoberos again)
tomb, gulping down (katapinousa)
84
the child whom she conceived, no longer
talking. ouketi proslaloun at the end is obelized in Halls text: Papyrus Bodmer XIII
(B) has the participle, but Perler changes it to pooioio , and Hall in his notes
suggests that it would be better to consider that just an epsilon has slipped out of the verb
(pootio iouv).
85
We should, however, consider the overall parallelism with the
original Egyptian Passover described earlier in the homily. At P.P. 22, Melito has already
used the participle katapinon to describe Hades swallowing their firstborn.
86
Then,
in an incredibly macabre scene, an Egyptian child pitifully asks who is holding him
(father?, mother?, etc.), only to be silenced by the silence of death.
87
This scene
replays again with another Egyptian child denying his firstborn status on the technicality
of having been begotten on the third conception (!), but he fell face-down being
silent.
88
It makes sense then for the mothers child in P.P. 52 to be the one no longer
speaking, and in this way Bs reading (and the Coptic texts) would stand.
89


84
In P.P. 21, the dead children at the Egyptian Passover are also eaten: the death of the firstborn was
insatiable and the dead become the food of Death. (There is quadruple wordplay here with tropaion,
rhope, trophe, and trope, which Hall, p. 11, calls crude.)
85
Halls suggestion of kataphilousa, kissing, (which he uses in his translation to replace proslaloun)
does play off katapinousa cleverly, but since there is no kissing in the biblical or Josephan scenes of
cannibalism, it is probably best not to ignore the text in B and introduce it here. The Chester Beatty and
Michigan papyrus (A), breaks off after ouketi; for the text, see C. Bonner (1941), pp. 120-121.
Furthermore, the Coptic text has: the wretched mother became a fearful tomb, having swallowed the child
who was silent, whom she had borne. (The Coptic, however, has the mother consume children at the
beginning of this scene, but ends with a singular one.) This text is found in J. E. Goerhing (1990), pp. 28-29
(Coptic with English translation). Goehring states in his introduction, p. 5: A careful comparison with the
Greek witnesses suggests that no direct relationship exists between the Crosby-Schoyen text (C-S) and any
of the surviving Greek versions.The splendid rhetorical style and phrasing of the Greek text is often
lacking in the Coptic version either because it was not of major interest to the scribe or because it lay
beyond his competence to translate it.
86
P.P. 22: |oi o q, |ooivov ou , pooo|ou, ou o v. T. Halton observes this in Stylistic
Device in Melito, HEPI HA2XA, in P. Granfield and J. Jungman, edd., Kyriakon: Festschrift Johannes
Quasten, Mnster, 1970, pp. 249-255, here p. 252.
87
P.P. 25: q ou ovoou oioq.
88
P.P. 26: pqvq , t t itv oiyo v. Also note that Melito uses the same verb pooq to here in
P.P. 26 just before the silencing of the child and again in P.P. 52.
89
This silence of death does not appear in the original Exodus 12 account on which this homily is based.
We might also wonder whether the author of Peri Pascha has been inspired by B.J. 5.512-519, the account
of the effects of the famine upon the residents of Jerusalem. Here Josephus employs Thucydides
description of the plague (2.47-55) and Sophocles Antigone to heighten the pathos over the corpses. [
Halton, p. 252, also comments on P.P. 26 where all Egypt stank with the unburied bodies: a
reminiscence of Soph. O.T. 17, Antig. 412,? (Hall, p. 15, n. e, notes Wisdom 18:12.)] One phrase from this

-19-
Of course, what is missing in Melito are the details of how Josephuss Mary cooks,
eats half of, and then conceals the rest of her babys body, and most importantly, how she
offers it to the rebels who can barely resist eating it. Melito, however, in P.P. 55-6, picks
up the word sarks again, which he has used in the plural to describe the flesh of the
devoured child, and dwells upon the separation and division of the beautiful body of
mankind. He might even be alluding further to the B.J. when he speaks of the
kainesymphora kai halosis (P.P. 56) which encloses mankind and makes him
captive, the very fate which Mary was trying to prevent her baby from suffering. In the
texts of Josephus and Melito, the victims body becomes a symbol for the sins committed
and the consequences suffered by a larger group.
After the paragraph on the mothers cannibalism, Melito turns next in P.P. 53 to
incest and adultery as further general scriptural examples of strange, dreadful, and
outrageous behavior. Hall notes on P.P. 52 that Melito is perhaps conscious of repeated
allegations that Christians were child-eaters, cf. Theophilus, Ad Autolycum iii.3-5;
furthermore, he observes on P.P. 53 that the theme of sexual malpractice is a favorite in
Christian apologetic (Tatian, Oratio ad Graecos 33-4; Athenagoras, Supplicatio 34;
Tertullian, Ad nationes 1.16).
90
In fact, Athenagoras even uses the same verb as Melito,
katapino, to describe his own accusers unseemly and predatory sexual and eating
practices. While Athenagoras is specifically turning the accusations of cannibalism and
sexual depravity back upon his accusers, Melito juxtaposes the two sins in his general
condemnation of all mankind. Josephus, however, does not use the incest motif alongside
his account of Marys cannibalism.
What, then, are we to make of Melitos adaptation of Josephus, and how does it fit
into the homily as a whole? In the larger picture, Melitos cannibal mother and her child
serve as a counterpart to the Egyptians who lost their firstborn sons during Passover, a
scene he has so dramatically recounted in the first section of this homily. Melito has
employed many of Josephuss details from the B.J. for his depiction of mankinds sinful
self-destruction through cannibalism, but the homilist has masterfully condensed these
details and has transformed them for a new exegetical context. He does so without ever
commenting directly upon the historicity, truth-value, or literary qualities of the Josephan
text he has employed. The only true logos that Melito really cares about is Christ (P.P.
3, 4, 7, etc.), and Jerusalem as a real place
91
only matters in the homily when it serves as

famine description in the B.J. definitely evokes the mood and language which Melito later employs for the
Passover in Egypt: The city wrapped in profound silence and night laden with death, was in the grip of a
yet fiercer foethe brigands (trans. Thackeray),
oti o t tpiti _tv q v o iiv oiyq |oi vu ovoou ytouoo |oi ouov oi iq ooi _oitotpoi
. (Melito, however, does not care about the brigands.)
90
Hall, p. 29, nn. 17 and 18. See A. McGowan (1994). In Minucius Felix, Octavius 9.5, the pagan
Caecilius presents the notorious accusation against Christians that initiates were asked to beat a lump of
dough and in the process unintentionally (quasi ad innoxios ictus provocato) kill a baby wrapped in the
dough, whereupon the rest would lap up the infants blood and tear its limbs to pieces; in chapter 30 the
Christian Octavius refutes the charge and counters: nemo hoc potest credere nisi qui possit audere, No
one can believe this except a person who could dare to do it. For an examination of the background behind
this charge, also see J. Rives, Human Sacrifice Among Pagans and Christians, JRS 85 (1995), pp. 65-85.
91
Melito had been a pilgrim to Jerusalem: Eusebius H.E. 4.26, quoting Melito to a certain Onesimus:
you also wished to learn the accurate information about the ancient books.So when I visited the east
and arrived at the place where it was proclaimed and where it happened, I learned accurately about the Old

-20-
the place in the middle of which God was murdered (P.P. 94, 96). The Romans
(and rebels) from the B.J. are never specifically mentioned as instruments of Gods
punishment and destroyers of Jerusalem;
92
in fact, the only general and triumphator is
Christ.
93
We shall not encounter such a condensed and strange reworking of Josephuss
account of cannibalism in Origen, Eusebius, Basil, John Chrysostom, or Jerome; only
pseudo-Hegesippus matches Melito by going to the opposite extreme in his expansion
upon the tale of Mary.


Origen, Fragmenta in Lamentationes 105

Origen employs Josephuss account of cannibalism to explain the text of
Lamentations 4:10 in his commentary which is now fragmentary and known as
Fragmenta in Lamentationes.
94
The specific Fragment 105 on Lam. 4:10 and Fragments
109 and 115 which also mention and quote from Josephus on the destruction of Jerusalem
have received careful discussion by Mizugaki.
95
He remarks that in proportion to the
remaining fragments, this chapter [4] contains the highest frequency of references to
Josephus among all of the extant works of Origen.
96
After examining the fragments in
some detail, he concludes, The fact that there are substantial allusions to Josephus in
Fragmenta in Lamentationes proves that such historical incidents as the destruction of the
Temple and the fall of Jerusalem were significant to Origens theology.
97

In Fragment 105, Origen attempts to explain the curious lines at Lamentations 4:10:
The hands of compassionate women boiled their own children; they became food for
them [the women] in the ruin of the daughter of my people. Compassion is hardly the
first thought that comes to mind when describing cannibalism, so Origen starts off his
commentary: So that the women may not seem on account of savagery to have eaten

Testament books. K. Armstrong, Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths, Knopf, 1996, pp. 170-171, reports:
Eusebius says that crowds came from all over the world to visit Jerusalem [Eus., The Proof of the
Gospel 6:18-23], but even he could only name four pilgrims, one of whom was Melito, who had absolutely
no interest in the city of Aelia. It was worthless now because of the Jerusalem above. Melito had come to
Palestine for scholarly, not devotional, reasons: he hoped to further his biblical studies by researching the
countrys topology.There is no evidence that Jerusalem was a major pilgrim center for Christians during
the second and third centuries. My thanks to Tom Hawkins for pointing this passage out to me and for
reading an early version of this paper.
92
At P.P. 99, the Latin text adds impugnatus ab hostibus contremuisti, whereas the Greek, Coptic, and
Georgian do not have this. In any case, the line is not historically specific.
93
Christ as strategos, P.P. 105; Christ in triumph over the enemy, P.P. 102.
94
The text appears in Origenes Werke, Dritter Band, GCS, ed. E. Klosterman, Berlin, 1983; Fragment 105
at p. 273.
95
W. Mizugaki, Origen and Josephus, in edd. L. Feldman and G. Hata, Josephus, Judaism, and
Christianity, Detroit: Wayne State, 1987, pp. 325-337, on the Fragments, pp. 331-333. Also see L.
Feldman, Pagan and Early Christian Anti-Semitism, in his Studies in Hellenistic Judaism, Leiden: Brill,
1996, p. 302. Also, N. de Lange, Origen and the Jews, Cambridge, 1976, pp. 17-18, generally comments
upon Josephus and Melito among other sources for Origens writings on the Jews.
96
Ibid., p. 331.
97
Ibid., p. 333.

-21-
their children, it says they are compassionate; it attributes the suffering to the necessity
[on account] of their lack [of food].
98
Necessity (along with fury) also drives Mary
at B.J. 6.205, but Origen does not refer to the context of this passage until he has to
explain the boiling/roasting of the children, which he says happened during the siege of
the Romans.
Mizugaki has analyzed Origens use of Josephuss cooking/roasting vocabulary, but
he does not notice that Origen is not troubled by the plural cannibal mothers in
Lamentations only being one mother in Josephus. He does comment upon Origens
approval of and reliance upon Josephuss accuracy in the final line of this fragment
99

and elsewhere in his writings. For Origen, Josephus is an essential piece of extra-biblical
evidence for the truth of the scriptures, but Origen does not acknowledge that Josephus
built his description of Mary and the destruction of Jerusalem on the foundation of these
same scriptures. Furthermore, though Origin himself justifies the womens cannibalism
by using the word necessity in Fragment 105, he does not pay attention to the literary
and tragic nature of Josephuss account of Marys cannibalism whereas Basil and John
Chrysostom will; he instead values Josephuss text for certain details from the destruction
of Jerusalem which help him illuminate the diction and content of Lamentations.


Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.6.20-8

Origen quotes a bit of Josephus B.J. 6 almost verbatim in Fragment 109, but Eusebius
takes this reliance upon Josephuss exact testimony to a new level. He chooses to quote
verbatim long portions of Josephuss account of the famine in Jerusalem in B.J. 5 and 6,
especially the cannibalism of Mary, in order that those who happen upon this work may
have some partial knowledge of how the punishment of God pursued them soon after for
their crime against the Christ of God (H.E.. 3.5.7). Eusebius then introduces these
famine passages by inviting his reader to pick up book 5 of the B.J. and to go through
the tragedy of what was then done.
100
Eusebius does at least recognize the tragic nature
of Josephuss account, as will Basil and John Chrysostom. Eusebius then quotes from
book 5, followed up by 6.193-213. Cutting off just before Josephus describes the Roman
reaction to Marys cannibalism, Eusebius interjects his own interpretation that this is,
again, their punishment for their impiety and their crime against the Christ of God
(3.7.1). For Eusebius, however, the cannibalism of Mary is not only a sign of Gods

98
Origen, Frag. 105:
Ivo q o ooiv oi yuvoi |t, i o oqo tpo|tvoi o t|vo, oi |ipovo, t v ti voi qoiv q t
q , t vti o, o vo y|q pooo ti o o o,
99
Frag. 105: |oi ouo
t |oi o iio oq t o |piti o, Io oqo, t v oi , tpi o io oto, opt o|tv, And this and the
other sufferings Josephus has presented with accuracy in his [writings] on the capture.
100
Eusebius H.E. 3.6.1: t pt q ou v,
ov Ioopiov qv tqv ou Iooqou to _ti po, ou i, o voioov, o v ot po_tvov
itit q v poyo iov.

-22-
punishment, but it also fulfills the prophecy of Christ at Matthew 24:19-21 (3.7.1).
101

John Chrysostom will also see the connection between the cannibalism of Mary and
Matthew 24. Eusebius returns to this thought at 3.7.6, marveling that if one compares the
rest of Josephuss account of the war to Christs sayings, one can apprehend the truly
divine and supernaturally wonderful character both of the foreknowledge and of the
foretelling of our Savior. Whether Eusebiuss readers had access to a full text of the B.J.
or interest in investigating such comparisons is hard to determine.
102
In any case,
Eusebiuss use of extended quotation from the B.J. is not unique within the context of the
E.H. as a whole; consider, for instance, his long quotation from the written account of the
martyrs in Gaul at the beginning of E.H. 5, which is some of the most gripping reading in
his entire history. Clearly Eusebius has an eye for graphic stories, and Josephus provided
several, including the cannibalism of Mary, which Eusebius could incorporate selectively
into his overall theological argument for the triumph of the church over its enemies.


Basil, Homilia Dicta Tempore Famis et Siccitatis,
John Chrysostom, Homilia 76, I n Matthaeum,



Both Basil and John Chrysostom understood the scene of Marys cannibalism in B.J.
6 as a piece of drama/tragedy.
103
In his only extant allusion to Josephus,
104
Basil, in a
homily on hunger and thirst, speaks of how:

...a mother, who had given birth to a child from her belly received it back into her
belly in evil fashion. And the Jewish history, which the diligent Josephus
composed for us, enacts this tragedy, when terrible sufferings took hold of the
people of Jerusalem who were paying the just penalty for their impiety against the
Lord.
105


101
Hardwick, p. 124, sees further application of Marys cannibalism in Eusebius: The Preparation for
the Gospel 7.2 and the Prophetic Excerpts 3.46 connect the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the
Romans with the destruction of the city and the Temple in Daniel 9:26. For Eusebius, the gruesome details
of destruction, suffering, cannibalism and the statistics of the dead and the enslaved in the aftermath in H.E.
3 (all drawn from the Jewish War) fit the apocalyptic vision of Daniel. Eusebius juxtaposes Daniels
promise of deliverance with the prophecy of a world ruler (whom Josephus identified with Vespasian [B.J.
6.312-313]) and identifies the figure as Christ.
102
Origen also invites his readers to pick up Josephus at Contra Celsum 1.16: For anyone interested can
read what has been written by Flavius Josephus in two books on the antiquity of the Jews, where he
produces a considerable collection of writers who testify to the antiquity of the Jews.
103
Schreckenberg (1987), p. 324, n. 25, notes that both Basil and John Chrysostom perceived that the
episode of a mothers act of cannibalism was written as drama or tragedy. He also includes that
Isidore of Pelusium says (PG 78, 968) that the sorrowful fate of the Jews should serve the world as a
tragic spectacle.
104
Schreckenberg (1972), p. 88, notes this as Basils sole allusion.
105
Basil, Homilia Dicta Tempore Famis et Siccitatis, PG 31,324:
...qt po t oi o, o v t | q, yoopo, poqyoyt, oiiv q yoopi |o|ov uotoooi. |oi ou
o o po o Iouoi|q t poyo qotv i oopio, q v Iooqo, q i v o oouoi o, ouvtypooo, o t o

-23-

Basil is not speaking here of the destruction of Jerusalem or Christs prophesies. Instead,
he is simply using the example from Josephus to provide corroboration for his section on
famine as the worst of human calamities. He labels Josephus as diligent, an opinion
which agrees with our other Christian authors who comment on his accuracy. Basil also
appraises the literary nature of Josephuss B.J. as tragedy.
106

John Chrysostom uses the scene of Mary when commenting in a homily on Matthew
24 concerning Christs prophesy of coming destruction. Like Eusebius, he tells his reader
to turn to Josephuss text to get the truth of Christs prophesies.
107
He mentions
Josephus as his extra-biblical source, says that the horrors of the war surpass all
tragedy, and specifically mentions the paidophagian.
108
He links this account of
Jewish suffering to the crucifixion of Christ, as Eusebius does.
Basil and John both read the scene of Marys cannibalism as tragedy, since as
astute ancient readers they understand the literary nature of the presentation. At the same
time, however, they insist upon its truth as support for their arguments, just as Josephus
does.

Jerome, I n HiezechielemII, 5, 10

If we examine Schreckenbergs list of Josephan passages employed by Jerome, we
see that only In Danielem surpasses In Hiezechielem for the number of citations from the
B.J., Antiquities, and Contra Apionem.
109
When Jerome comments upon the siege of
Jerusalem as foretold in Ezekiel chapter 5, he indicates that he is using the history of the
Maccabees and Josephus to provide the historical details fulfilling the prophecies.
110

As Jerome reaches verse 10 he faces a bit of a dilemma: the verse reads that patres
comedent filios, but he cannot find historical references to such a deed. He slips
conveniently into accounts of maternal cannibalism by mentioning the mothers
cannibalism from 2Kings
111
and then adds: Iosephus quoque in obsidione Hierusalem
multa huiuscemodi facta commemorat.
112
He does not expand upon Josephuss story

tivo o q ou , Itpoooiui o, |ot iot, q , ti , o v Ku piov uootti o, t vi |ou, iopi o, ivvu v
o,.
106
At the end of this homily, Basil juxtaposes the terms mythos and logos when discussing the options
of heaven or hell at the Last Judgement: These are not a myth, but a logos which is proclaimed with an
true voice (P.G. 31.327). I wonder whether he was inspired by his reading of Josephuss story of Mary to
do so.
107
John Chrysostom Homilia 76, In Matthaeum, PG 58, 695, comments on Mt. 24:21:
|oi q i, voioq ou o u tpoii|o , ti pq ooi o ii t vu_o v oi , Iooqou ypoooi, ovovt
o ov tipqtvovv qv oiqtiov. Schreckenberg (1972), p. 90, comments that PG 58, 694-5,
verbindet irrtmlich den Fall von Kannibalismus Ant. Jud. 9, 65-66 mit dem Jdischen Krieg.
108
Ibid., o oov t vi |qot poyo i ov t |ti vo o tivo ...q v oiooyi ov.
109
Schreckenberg (1972), pp. 93-94
110
Jerome, In Hiezechielem II, 5, 1-4, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 75 (1964), p. 55, l. 44:
Machabaeorum narrat historia, and l. 47: in Iosephi voluminibus.
111
Ibid., II, 5, 10, p. 58, ll. 154-155.
112
Ibid., ll. 155-157.

-24-
because it is not quite appropriate for the line in Ezekiel since a father is not involved in
the B.J., but it is clear that the Mary passage is on his mind. Jerome admits that he cannot
find anything from the Bible or from Josephus to support paternal cannibalism in
Jerusalem (quando autem patres filios suos comederint vel filii patres, nulla narrat
historia
113
), but he cannot resist adding an argument from probability: nisi forte in
multis necessitatibus malis etiam haec facta esse credendum sit.
114
Jerome clearly
views Josephus as a reliable historical source for his exegetical purposes and feels
compelled to cite him here, despite the fact that the story of Marys cannibalism does not
entirely explain the Ezekiel passage.

Pseudo-Hegesippus, De Excidio 5.40-41

Pseudo-Hegesippuss history,
115
which extends from the Maccabees to the fall of
Masada, is clearly based primarily on Josephuss B.J. but stands as an independent text
and not a translation.
116
In his preface to Ussanis edition of pseudo-Hegesippus, K.
Mras says of the speeches in this text: In orationibus autem quibus Iosephus opus
exornavit suum, Iosippus suo indulgebat ingenio.
117
This is an understatement when
one looks at the authors adaptation of Josephuss account of Mary, which is found in the
last book of the history.
The adaptation of this scene of cannibalism and Tituss reaction to it runs much
longer than Josephuss original, and I, therefore, shall not describe it in great detail,
Instead, I would like to focus on pseudo-Hegesippuss understanding of Josephuss debt
to Greek tragedy in constructing this scene, especially the speeches. In 5.40, Marys first
speech is a substantially longer tragic monologue in which she weighs the pros and cons
of her decision, much like Euripides Medea. She dwells far more pathetically upon the
child than Josephuss Mary does, but she does retain the stated purpose for the murder:
esto ergo cibus mihi, furor latronibus et vitae fabula, quae sola deest nostris

113
Ibid., ll. 157-158.
114
Ibid., ll. 158-159. Jerome then stretches his exegetical boundaries further by offering the funny
possibility that one instead should turn ad nostram Hierusalem, quando magistri contra discipulos, id est
patres contra filios, et discipuli contra magistros, id est filii adversum patres, seditione mutua concitantur,
et impletur illud quod per apostolum dicitur: Si autem invicem mordetis et accusatis, videte ne ab invicem
consumamini! A nice idea for all academics.
115
Schreckenberg (1972), pp. 56-58, provides background and bibliography. He observes of this texts
main thrust: Der Untergang Jerusalems und die Zerstrung des Tempels durch Titus ist, von daher
gesehen, die verdiente Strafe fr die Perfidie Juden und die Ttung Jesu Christu.
116
See A. Bell, Josephus and Pseudo-Hegesippus, in L. Feldman and G. Hata, edd., Josephus, Judaism,
and Christianity, 1987, pp. 349-361. Bell cannot identify the author, but he does offer several clues which
point to a date of composition circa 370, including the following interesting observation on p. 350: To the
best of my knowledge, no one has suggested a possible relationship between the emperor Julians abortive
attempt to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem in 363 and the composition of pseudo-Hegesippuss work, the
theme of which is that the destruction by Titus was the supremum excidium (5.2). I have been
investigating Julians plan to rebuild the Temple in light of Josephus, but I cannot elaborate on it here.
117
K. Mras, preface, p. xlv, to V. Ussani, Hegesipi Qui Dicitur Historiae Libri V, Corpus Scriptorum
Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 66, Vienna: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1960.

-25-
calamitatibus.
118
After this first very extended speech, pseudo-Hegesippuss
description of the slaughter concentrates on her movements and an added prop of a
sword!
119
More noticeably different, however, is pseudo-Hegesippuss expansion of
Marys second short speech to the rebels into two much longer parts. In the first of the
two parts, she invites them to eat the part of the baby that she has saved for them, but also
then almost comically invites them to take a seat quickly so that she can serve the meal
for them like a good hostess!
120
Between the two speeches she dramatically uncovers
the ambusta membra of her baby and then resumes speaking:

hoc est prandium meum, haec vestra portio, videte diligentius ne vos frauderim.
Ecce pueri manus una, ecce pes eius, ecce dimidium reliqui corporis eius, et ne
alienum putetis, filius est meus, ne alterius opus arbitremini, ego feci, ego
diligenter divisi, mihi quod manducarem, vobis quod reservarem.
121


We notice the hoc and haec are probably derived from Josephuss touto in B.J.
6.210, and her insistence upon it really being her child comes from Josephuss
genesion,
122
but her emphasis upon the babys body parts is definite embellishment.
One might wonder whether the author of this text knew that Josephuss text was based in
part upon Euripides depiction of Agave in the Bacchae or was simply reminded of it and
went to the source for more inspiration for this detailed presentation of the dismembered
baby.
123
Of course, pseudo-Hegesippus may have been influenced by other dramatic
representations, either in text or on stage; we cannot know for certain.
When Mary finally stops speaking in pseudo-Hegesippus, the text switches the order of
initial reactions to her deed first by having the city react with horror and then by
commenting that the rebels began to be more careful about the kind of food they stole so
that they would not mistakenly eat food like that in the future;
124
this surely changes the
tenor of Josephuss remark about the rebels! The direct speech by Titus that follows
greatly expands upon the indirect speech reported in the B.J. and includes many
references to scriptures. Again, I resist recounting all the details of the speech, but we
should note that Titus here refers directly to the tragic roots of the story of Mary:
Thyesteas dapes fabulam putabamus, flagitium videmus, veritatem cernimus atrociorem

118
Pseudo-Hegesippus 5.40.1.
119
Ibid. 5.40.1: haec dicens auerso uultu gladium demersit et in frustra filium secans igni imposuit,
partem comedit, partem operuit ne quis superuenerit.
120
Ibid. 5.40.2: considite ocius, mensam adponam, mirari habetis ministerium meum
121
Ibid.
122
At 5.40.2, pseudo-Hegesippus also retains the challenge to the men not to be softer and weaker, but
turns the simple thusian into hostiam meamholocaustum meumsacrificium meum.
123
See my note 58 above concerning the reconstruction of the lines lost towards the end of the Bacchae.
Notice that in Christus Patiens l. 1470, as reported in Dodds p. 58, i ou is used to draw attention to his
head (which is covered here), and then the lines, which I have quoted above, concerning his limbs follow;
in the same way, Mary in ps.-H. uses ecce.
124
Pseudo-Hegesippus 5.41.1.

-26-
tragoediis.
125
Thus, we return full-circle to Philos interpretation of stories of
cannibalism. Pseudo-Hegesippus revels in creating speeches that go well beyond the
bounds of Josephuss text in order to heighten the drama and in doing so drive home his
point that the Jews deserved to lose their Temple.


Conclusion

Each of the Christian writers examined here draws upon Josephuss depiction of
Marys cannibalism in the B.J. to justify his own interpretation of the scriptures,
especially those which touch upon the destruction of Jerusalem. Some of them identify it
as tragedy while insisting upon its truth; they, therefore, are responding positively to
Josephuss own rhetorical cues. The tragic irony, however, of these Christian readings of
Marys cannibalism in the B.J. is that Josephus presents his account with its myth for the
world in order to exonerate the majority of his people, yet the Christians generally use it
to support their approval of the destruction of Jerusalem and condemnation of the Jews.



125
Ibid. 5.41.2.

You might also like