La conversion de Gaza au christianisme: La Vie de S. Porphyre de Gaza par Marc le Diacre (BHG 1570) ed. by Anna Lampadaridi (review)

Porphyry became bishop of Gaza in the late fourth century. Because the cult of the local deity Marnas still dominated the city, initially he and his small congregation faced harassment. Porphyry sent Mark, one of his deacons, to Constantinople, where John Chrysostom helped to acquire an imperial letter ordering the closure of the temples at Gaza. A few years later Porphyry himself traveled to Constantinople. This time Eudoxia, wife of the emperor Arcadius, arranged to send imperial officials and soldiers to enforce a new edict, and she also contributed funds and marble columns for the construction of a church. After Porphyry's return, the great temple of Marnas was burned. Five years later Porphyry presided at the dedication of a new church, supposedly "the largest at that time," which was called the Eudoxiana after its imperial patron. He died in 420.

Porphyry's career seems to contribute so much to our understanding of the great religious and social upheavals in the later Roman Empire. His dealings with the imperial court illustrated the delicate balance between central administration and cities on the periphery. His increasing authority exemplified the rise of bishops as municipal powerbrokers. The replacement of a temple by a church encapsulated in miniature the transition from paganism to Christianity.

But is any of this factual? Because no other ancient text mentioned Porphyry, all information about his life is derived from a Vita in Greek attributed to Mark the Deacon. Scholars have long used the important edition (with a French translation) by Henri Grégoire and M.-A. Kugener, published in 1930. In her excellent new volume Anna Lampadaridi offers a better edition of the Greek text (with another French translation), as well as an extensive commentary on philological, literary, and historical issues. In her introduction she considers again the fundamental concerns about the authenticity of the Greek Vita.

The author of the Vita introduced himself as a confidant who shared some of Porphyry's adventures. But the prologue of the Vita and other passages were directly borrowed from the Historia religiosa written by Theodoret of Cyrrhus in the mid-440s, and some passages hinted at theological controversies among monks in Palestine during the mid-sixth century. One possibility is that the existing Vita was a redaction of an earlier memoir written by Mark the Deacon. Lampadaridi suggests instead that the Vita was closer to fiction, and that its purpose was to highlight the disappearance of paganism. Rather than an eyewitness report about the bishop, the Vita was a retrospective validation of the emergence of Christianity, "un récit patriographique" that "nourished the memory" (p. 37) of the construction of the city's huge new church.

A related puzzle is the relationship between the Greek Vita and a Georgian Vita, edited by Paul Peeters (AB 59 [1941], with a Latin translation). Peeters argued that the Georgian Vita was a translation of an original version in Syriac; he also suggested that the Greek Vita had been based on a Syriac version. Other scholars have reversed the sequence by arguing that the Syriac version behind the Georgian Vita was instead a translation of an original Greek Vita. Since some names and episodes differed between the two Vitae, these arguments about priority have significant consequences. Lampadaridi now eliminates a Syriac version from the transmission and concludes that the Georgian Vita, despite the omissions and additions, had been translated directly from the Greek Vita.

Lampadaridi's stimulating introduction and commentary should revive interest in the Greek Vita as both a literary narrative and a possible historical source. Perhaps it will also inspire the publication of a complete translation of the Vita into English.