Barbarian or Greek?: The Charge of Barbarism and Early Christian Apologetics by Stamenka E. Antonova (review)

Originating in the author's doctoral thesis at Columbia University, this book examines the use of the word "barbarian" or "barbarism" in the literary debates of the first centuries c.e. The—rather surprising—result is that there is a wide variety of implications connected with the use of the term "barbarian," and this applies to both pagan and Christian authors.

In the second chapter (the first chapter is a short prologue), Antonova contextualizes the material within ancient rhetorical practices and explains her theoretical framework, which rests on postcolonial theories and on literary constructions of identity ("self" and "other"). Relevant examples from Aristotle and Quintilian are thoroughly examined, whereas examples from early "Second Sophistic" authors are not included here. The context of the "Second Sophistic," however, plays some role in the analysis of Philostratus and Lucian of Samosata in the following chapter.

Chapter Three then examines the conceptualizations and representations of the "barbarian" in Greco-Roman literature. For the Latin tradition the author takes a look at authors such as Caesar, Cicero, Tacitus, and Seneca; for the Greek tradition, the author turns to Aristides, Dio Chrysostom, Philostratus, and Lucian. Antonova should have paid attention to the Middle Platonic philosopher Kelsos's True Logos here (a text which can be extracted from Origen, which was excellently done in recent works: Horacio E. Lona, Die Wahre Lehre des Kelsos: Übersetzt und erklärt [Freiburg: Herder, 2005]; and Johannes Arnold, Der Wahre Logos des Kelsos: Eine Strukturanalyse [Münster: Aschendorff, 2016]). However, it can be shown that the use of the term "barbarian" covers a wide range of meanings, including low social class, low education, immorality, and criminality, and above all foreign-ness in language and ethnic descent. This insight helps us to understand why nearly all of the Christian apologists in the first centuries saw themselves forced to react in one way or another as soon as the term "barbarian" was used as a charge against early Christianity.

Chapters Four and Five represent the major part of the book. Both examine how the apologists deal with the charge of "barbarism." It was certainly a wise decision to concentrate on some selected authors from the second to the early fourth centuries here, and also to divide the analyses into one chapter on the Greek and another one on the Latin writers. Proceeding chronologically, Antonova begins with the Greek authors (Chapter Four) and presents short studies on Justin, Tatian, Clement, Origen, and Eusebius of Caesarea. For the use of the term "barbarian," it is possible to identify five major significations: first, it serves as a reference to foreign origin and tongue; second, as a reference to the contents and style of scripture; third, it is connected with criticism of certain features of Christian language; fourth, it has the sense of belonging to a low and uneducated segment of society; fifth, it implies sub-human behavior. This wide range of implicit and explicit accusations connected with the term "barbarian" is sometimes sustained by the apologists, sometimes re-defined, and sometimes even turned into a counter-charge or a positive argument. In Justin Martyr's argument, for example, the "barbarian" character of Christian preaching actually proves the fact that the rise of Christianity cannot be due to human efforts, but evidently owes itself to the godly spirit instead.

For the Latin Christian texts, Antonova chooses Tertullian, Arnobius, and Lactantius as her major references. As a result we find (similar to the Greek apologetic tradition) an enormous semantic range in the term "barbarian," both in pagan charges against Christians and in apologetic refutations of these charges. However, at least in Tertullian, the construction of the "other" by using the term "barbarian" reaches fantastic and nearly unrealistic dimensions, maybe due to the author's tendency to rhetorical exaggeration. But interestingly enough, in Tertullian we also find an example for an "inner-Christian" use of [End Page...