Preaching and Practicing the Sabbath in Late Antique North Africa Öffentlichkeit
Rakotoniaina, Marie-Ange (Fall 2020)
Published
Abstract
According to most recent studies, the Lord’s Day appeared in the wake of the distinction between Jewish and Christian practices. Yet the process by which early Christian communities envision the week as culminating with Sunday as a day of worship, which subsequently became a day of rest for Gentiles, is far from being linear. Traces of late antique Christian observance of the Sabbath have puzzled historians of late antiquity and liturgical scholars who generally thought the fourth century to mark the wide adoption of the seven-day week with Sunday as a Christian day of worship. Whether they are signs of continuity or rupture, these practices also meet with the skepticism of Christian leaders who firmly repudiate the notion of resting on the Jewish Sabbath.
It is precisely when Sabbath observance undergoes condemnation from bishops and seems to attract the attention of late ancient Christian communities that this project starts. It is an attempt to read against the grain of episcopal disapprovals (including that of Augustine’s sermons) to retrieve from (and beyond) them the possibility of a different kind of Sabbath devotion.
At the crossroads of early Christian studies, liturgy, and late ancient history, I argue that the Christianization of the Sabbath transforms this mark of Jewish observance into a distinctive characteristic of Christian devotion, in the late fourth and early fifth century. This approach suggests that the academic study of religious practices illuminate the study of sacred texts. I assess Augustine’s exegesis of biblical texts (especially the Psalms) in relation to Roman African practices of organizing days into units of time. To examine how Roman Africans structured and experienced time will enlighten how Augustine’s interpretation of the Sabbath helps his audience to re-think and live their relationship to time. The five chapters of this dissertation seek to unveil how Augustine’s preaching create a specific Sabbath devotion in relationship to God, rest and time.
Each chapter considers Augustine’s refashioning of both rest and time. His preaching on the subject of the Sabbath displays the interaction of biblical exegesis, religious devotion and liturgical practice in the changing contexts of late antique North Africa. Once condemned by bishops in various synods from Nicaea to Laodicea, the notion of rest remains central in Augustine’s preaching on the topic of the Sabbath. Rather than presuming that preaching the spiritual interpretation of the Sabbath necessarily leads to the repudiation of its observance, this dissertation seeks to outline how this preaching opens new possibilities of observance and piety. Inspired by Jean Daniélou who inaugurated a thread of research that focused on the richness of Augustine’s figurative interpretation of the Sabbath, I suggest that this interpretation invites a fresh appreciation of Sabbath practice within Roman African ways of thinking and living time, rest and devotion.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction Writing the History of the Sabbath in late antique North Africa:
Rethinking Time, Rest and Devotion………………………………………………………..........1
Chapter 1 Time in Late Antique North Africa: Representations and Experiences………………….27
I. The Iconographic Contexts of Preaching………………………………............................... 31
II. Toward a Pastoral Education to Time:
Reinvesting the Symbolism of Time, Seasons and the Celestial Spheres………………..... 48
Chapter 2 Roman African, Christian and Jewish Practice of the Week:
Navigating Syncretic Configurations of Time…………………………………………..........…61
I. Unearthing the Heavens of the Ancients:
Toward the Dual Origins of the Weeks……………………………….....................................................64
II. Of Competing Gods and Moveable Planets:
The Mosaic of Weeks in Late Antiquity………………………………....................................................78
III. (Re)Inventing the Christian Week: Rendering Time to God…………................................97
Chapter 3 Preaching the Sabbath, Redefining the Meaning of the Week………………………….....115
I. Redefining the Seventh Day and Time Within Millennialist Interpretations of the Week:
the Spirit and the History………………........................................................................118
II. Toward the Mathematics of Hope:
Of Sabbath, Rest and Numbers ………………………………………......................................127
III. The Sabbath and the Week at the Threshold of Eternity……………..................................146
Chapter 4 Preaching the Sabbath and Redefining Rest……………………………………………..........161
I. Preaching the Sabbath Rest Against the Jewish Otium……………… ..............................168
II. The Letter and the Spirit: Spiritualizing the Third Commandment.…............................178
III. From Earth to Heaven:
Keeping the Spiritual Sabbath with an Eschatological Orientation ……………………………189
Chapter 5 Practicing the “Sabbath of the Heart” (en. Ps. 91): Orthopraxis and
Devotional Reconfigurations of the Seventh Day ……………………………………….........206
I. The Apology of Interiority
Or Practicing the Sabbath with the Heart ………………………………..................................210
II. The Singing Heart:
Of Sabbath, Music and Obedience in en. Ps. 32 (2)………………….....................................218
III. The Searching Heart: Of Sabbath, Symbols and Desire………………...................................226
Epilogue Setting Hearts at Rest …………………………………………………………………....................234
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………………….........................237
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