RT Article
T1 Ethiopianising the Devil: o mélas in Barnabas 4
JF New Testament studies
VO 65
IS 2
SP 223
OP 245
A1 Rothschild, Clare K. 1964-
LA English
PB Cambridge Univ. Press
YR 2019
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1663492352
AB Although interpreters refer to the association between blackness and evil in ancient texts as essentially universal, specific reference by Christians to the counter-divine with the colour epithet ? ????? is new with the Epistle of Barnabas. Black is applied as an honorific to certain Egyptian deities, but it is never used in Egyptian religion with reference to the counter-divine. Furthermore, black demons proliferate in late third- and fourth-century Egyptian monastic texts, but these witnesses postdate Barnabas. The first explicit reference to the devil as black after Barnabas is in Didymus the Blind, who interprets the reference as 'Ethiopian'. Exploring the origin and background of this nickname for the counter-divine, this essay argues that Didymus accurately apprehends Barnabas' intention: namely, that 'the Black One' does not merely reflect the universal association of blackness and evil in Roman antiquity, but, rather it reflects the appropriation of an ethnic stereotype in an apocalyptic context with distinctly anti-imperial resonances.
K1 Apostolic Fathers
K1 Caracalla
K1 Epistle of Barnabas
K1 Ethiopian
K1 the Black One
DO 10.1017/S0028688518000395