Illuminating the Dura-Europos Baptistery: Comparanda for the Female Figures

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Journal of Early Christian Studies 20:4, 543–574 © 2012 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Portions of this research were presented at the 2010 Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting and the 2011 Oxford Patristics Conference. I thank those in atten-dance, especially David Brakke, Alan Cadwallader, Stephen Davis, James Francis, Allisyn Kateusz, Catherine Taylor, and L. Michael White, for their feedback. I am also grateful to Robin Jensen, Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, Maureen Tilley, the anonymous readers at JECS, and Lisa Brody and Megan Doyon at the Yale University Art Gallery.

1. For recent analyses of the political and military history of Dura-Europos under Roman control, see Nigel Pollard, Soldiers, Cities, and Civilians in Roman Syria (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000); Peter Edwell, Between Rome and Persia: The Middle Euphrates, Mesopotamia and Palmyra under Roman Control (Lon-don; New York: Routledge, 2008); Simon James, The Excavations at Dura-Europos,

Illuminating the Dura-Europos Baptistery: Comparanda for the Female Figures

MICHAEL PEPPARD

This essay reconsiders the identifications and interpretations of two of the paintings from the Dura-Europos baptistery: a woman at a well on the southern wall and the procession of women on the eastern and northern walls. Previously unheralded artistic and textual comparanda provide support for al-ternative identifications of the baptistery’s female figures. This essay offers new reasons why the woman at a well could be interpreted as the Virgin Mary, and the procession of women could be interpreted as the wise and foolish virgins of Jesus’ parable. In the end, though, it will provide rationales for polysemic interpretations of these figures.

In 1931, a team of archaeologists discovered the earliest securely dateable Christian church: a third-century “house church” in Syria. In the fortified military town of Dura-Europos, situated on what was then the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire, the Christian building was in use for sev-eral decades of the third century before being intentionally buried by the Romans to build a rampart against the invading Persians.1 The misfortune

544 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

1928 to 1937: Final Report VII, The Arms and Armour and Other Military Equip-ment (Oxford: Oxbow, 2010).

2. Histories of the excavation and the exhibition of the baptistery can be found in Michael Rostovtzeff, Dura-Europos and Its Art (Oxford: Clarendon, 1938); Ann Perkins, The Art of Dura-Europos (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973); Clark Hopkins, The Discovery of Dura-Europos (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979); Susan B. Matheson, Dura-Europos: The Ancient City and the Yale Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery, 1982; revised, 2001).

3. Carl H. Kraeling, with a contribution by C. Bradford Welles, The Excavations at Dura-Europos, Final Report VIII, Part II: The Christian Building (New Haven, CT: Dura Europos Publications; New York: J. J. Augustin, 1967). On the type of early Christian domus ecclesiae, or “house church,” see L. Michael White, The Social Ori-gins of Christian Architecture, 2 vols., Harvard Theological Studies 42 (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press, 1996–97), esp. 2:123–31 on this particular building.

4. The most recent scholarship on many aspects of the excavation can be found in Dura-Europos: Crossroads of Antiquity, ed. Lisa R. Brody and Gail L. Hoffman (Chestnut Hill; Chicago: McMullen Museum of Art: dist. by University of Chicago Press, 2011), including Charles B. McClendon, “The Articulation of Sacred Space in the Synagogue and Christian Building at Dura-Europos,” 155–67, Michael Peppard, “New Testament Imagery in the Earliest Christian Baptistery,” 169–87, and Patricia DeLeeuw, “A Peaceful Pluralism: The Durene Mithraeum, Synagogue, and Christian Building,” 189–99. See also Edge of Empires: Pagans, Jews, and Christians at Roman Dura-Europos, ed. Jennifer Y. Chi and Sebastian Heath (New York; Princeton: Insti-tute for the Study of the Ancient World: dist. by Princeton University Press, 2011).

of the Roman garrison—it was defeated in that battle—was good fortune for modern scholars. Soon after its discovery, this “Pompeii of the Syrian desert” became widely celebrated. The surviving wall paintings from the baptistery, which are among the earliest Christian art from anywhere, were brought to the United States and installed in the Yale University Art Gallery.2 Over time a consensus formed about the baptistery’s interpreta-tion—a consensus solidified by Carl Kraeling’s archaeological report of 1967.3 The art became appropriately famous to scholars of early Chris-tianity, but since that final report, there has been only sparse criticism of Kraeling’s main conclusions. When the art was removed from its gallery in the late 1970s, being deemed materially unfit for further display, critical reflection on the consensus views continued to fade away. Less than fifty years after it was unearthed, the baptistery seemed to have been reburied.

Some of the antiquities from Dura-Europos have recently been on dis-play again, and scholarship has advanced through two exhibition catalogs.4 The present essay will build on current research with respect to two of the paintings: the woman at a well on the southern wall and the procession of women on the eastern and northern walls. The interpretation of these two parts of the artistic program can be refreshed by comparison with some

PEPPARD / DURA-EUROPOS BAPTISTERY 545

5. With Kraeling, Christian Building, 69, but contra Perkins, Art of Dura-Europos, who claims that “she is alone, the small space available forbidding the addition of the figure of Christ as commonly seen in Roman catacombs” (54).

6. Kraeling, Christian Building, 68. The identification is supported by virtually everyone who mentions the painting, e.g., Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 442; Leonard V. Rutgers, “Dura-Europos: Christian Community,” Religion Past and Present, ed. Hans Dieter Betz, Don S. Browning, Bernd Janowski and Eberhard Jüngel, 14 vols., 4th ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 4:217; Robin M. Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art (London; New York: Routledge, 2000), 87, Living Water: Images, Symbols, and Settings of Early Christian Baptism (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 277, and Baptismal Imagery in Early Christianity: Ritual, Visual, and Theological Dimensions (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2012), 195.

7. John 4.1. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.

previously unheralded artistic and textual examples of eastern provenance. These comparanda provide support for alternative identifications of the baptistery’s female figures: specifically, this essay offers new reasons why (1) the woman at a well could be interpreted as the Virgin Mary, and (2) the procession of women could be interpreted as the wise and foolish vir-gins of Jesus’ parable. Beyond these arguments, this essay ultimately will provide rationales for polysemic interpretations of the female figures in the baptistery. Even as new comparanda should unsettle established identifica-tions of the murals at Dura-Europos, they should not necessarily compel us to settle on different, stable interpretations. The ritual context of the artistic program—coupled with relevant textual examples of polysemy in late ancient Syria—encourages us to leave the doors of interpretation open.

AN ABSENCE SPEAKS (A COUPLE LINES)

On the southern wall, near the baptismal font, one sees a woman bent over a well (Fig. 1). She is holding the rope of her water vessel and looking out at the viewer, or perhaps over her shoulder. She is alone. There was space to paint another person behind her, as the photograph in situ shows, but that space is empty.5 The image has usually been regarded as the Samari-tan Woman at the Well—according to Kraeling, “interpreters have had no doubts”—and almost no one has doubted it since. Indeed there are con-nections with baptismal ritual to warrant that identification.6 The pretext for the episode in the Gospel of John is that Jesus was under suspicion of “making and baptizing more disciples than John [the Baptist]” (4.1), and so he left Judea and headed back to Galilee, passing through Samaria.7 The baptismal allusions continue at the well of Jacob, where he engages

Fig. 1. Woman at a well, in situ. South wall, Christian building. Yale University Art Gallery, Dura-Europos Collection.


8. E.g., Irenaeus, Haer. 3.17.2; Tertullian, Bapt. 9; Jerome, Ep. 69.6. Ephrem, Hymni in Festum Epiphaniae 7.20–21 and Hymni de Virginitate 22.3, but see below about polysemy in Ephrem’s interpretation.

9. See Theirry Maertens, “History and Function of the Three Great Pericopes: The Samaritan Woman, the Man Born Blind, the Raising of Lazarus,” in Adult Baptism and the Catechumenate, ed. Johannes Wagner, Concilium 22 (New York: Paulist Press, 1967), 51–56; Normand Bonneau, O.M.I., The Sunday Lectionary: Ritual Word, Paschal Shape (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1998), 96–100.

10. See Robin M. Jensen, “Living Water: Images, Settings, and Symbols of Early Christian Baptism in the West” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1991), 291–95, 412 [= Jensen, Living Water, 193–94, 277–78], and Baptismal Imagery, 193–96; and Jean Louis Maier, Le baptistère de Naples et ses mosaiques (Fribourg: Editions universitaires, 1964), 80–87.

11. On the story’s resonance with Jacob’s well, see Jerome Neyrey, S.J., “Jacob Tra-ditions and the Interpretation of John 4:10–26,” CBQ 41 (1979): 419–37; Harold W. Attridge, “Genre Bending in the Fourth Gospel,” JBL 121 (2002): 9.

the woman in a dialogue about “living water” (ὕδωρ ζῶν): she thinks he is speaking about “running” water as opposed to stagnant water, but he explains that he can give water that becomes “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (4.10–15). This continues Jesus’ teaching that “water and spirit” are necessary for eternal life (3.3–5).

Other early Christian texts resonate with this text-image relationship. The promotion of “living” or “running” water as the best water for Chris-tian baptism is exemplified in the Didache (ὕδωρ ζῶν, 7.1–2), perhaps of Syrian provenance. The common interpretation of the Samaritan woman as a sinner in need of repentance also implies the connection of baptism with repentance in early Christianity (e.g., Mark 1.4–5). Some early Christian authors, such as Tertullian and Ephrem, connect the Samaritan Woman directly to baptism,8 and the narrative even seems to have had a liturgical Sitz im Leben during the ancient catechumenate, at least as attested in the fourth-century West.9 Finally, one other baptistery from late antiquity, San Giovanni in Fonte (Naples), includes the Samaritan Woman with Jesus as part of its artistic program.10 Seeing the painting at Dura-Europos as the Samaritan Woman has often encouraged, therefore, an interpretation of the baptismal ritual primarily as repentance and cleansing of sin through living water.

We should recall, though, that women visit wells all over the bibli-cal landscape. Betrothal at a well is a type-scene in the Hebrew Bible: Rebecca and Isaac; Rachel and Jacob; Zipporah and Moses. Each meet-ing involves courtship and marriage, and the Gospel of John adapts this motif or “bends the genre,” subverting the expectation of its audience.11


12. Kraeling, Christian Building, 69. Cf. Ephrem, Carmina Nisibena 31–34. Origen, Hom. in Gen. 10.3 also connects the stories of Rebecca and the Samaritan Woman.

13. Dominic E. Serra, “The Baptistery at Dura-Europos: The Wall Paintings in the Context of Syrian Baptismal Theology,” EL 120 (2006): 77–78.

14. Prot. Jas. 10.1 (ed. Wilhelm Schneemelcher and trans. Robert McL. Wilson, New Testament Apocrypha, 2 vols. [London: James Clarke & Co.; Louisville: West-minster John Knox Press, 1991], 1:430).

15. Prot. Jas. 11.1 (ed. Émile de Strycker, La forme la plus ancienne du Protévan-gile de Jacques [Brussels: Bollandistes, 1961], 114).

16. It is also possible that the angel was painted in the (unpreserved) upper reg-ister of the wall, above and to the side of the female figure, just as in Vat. gr. 1162 (Vatican), mss. grec 74 and 1208 (Paris), and at the Chora church, Kariye Djami (see n. 19 below).

The absence of Jesus from this painting distinguishes it, however, from the other well-known representations of John 4. Kraeling thus entertained the possibility that the account of Rebecca at the well had inspired the image in question, based on Ephrem’s many allusions to Rebecca and Laban, and also Dura-Europos’s geographical proximity to the legendary site of that event (in Harran, Roman Carrhae, northern Mesopotamia).12 But Krael-ing ultimately solidified the consensus about John 4, and I know of only one scholar that dissents from it.

Dominic Serra has suggested, in a very quick treatment, that an apocry-phal text might better explain the image.13 Using a scene from the Protevan-gelium of James, Serra instead proposes that the more prominent “woman at the well” in Syrian Christianity was the Virgin Mary. According to the ancient text, Mary was one of the “pure virgins of the tribe of David” called forth to work on weaving the veil for the Temple of the Lord.14 Dur-ing a break from her work, she “took the pitcher and went forth to draw water, and behold, a voice said, ‘Hail, you are highly favored, the Lord is with you, blessed are you among women.’ And she looked around on the right and on the left to see from where this voice could have come. Then trembling she went to her house,” where a second annunciation scene occurs.15 At the first annunciation scene, Mary’s certainty of her solitude is characterized by her looking all around in wonderment for whence the voice could have come (πόθεν αὕτη εἴη ἡ φωνή). Therefore, one cogent explanation of the vacant space behind the woman in the Dura-Europos image is that it represents (or, rather, does not represent) the bodiless voice of the apocryphal annunciation.16 In the story, as in the art, the angel was invisible. The absence speaks.

This proposal can be strengthened with some artistic comparanda. The so-called “Annunciation at the Well” was common in eastern iconogra-phy throughout the Byzantine era, and, though rarer in the West, two of


17. On these points, see Erica Dodd, The Frescoes of Mar Musa al-Habashi: A Study in Medieval Painting in Syria (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Stud-ies, 2001), 34–38; and David R. Cartlidge and J. Keith Elliott, Art and the Christian Apocrypha (London; New York: Routledge, 2001), 78–79. For the earliest examples, see Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, trans. Janet Seligman, 2 vols. (Lon-don: Lund Humphries, 1971), 1:35 and figs. 53 and 57.

18. I was not able to receive timely permissions to reprint these, but they can be seen in Schiller, Iconography, figs. 53 and 57, in addition to many other publications in print or online. Mary is imagined filling her pitcher from a spring, not a well, in these two ivories, and some versions of the textual tradition also have a word for “spring.” See Abraham Terian, The Armenian Gospel of the Infancy: With Three Early Versions of the Protevangelium of James (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 150–70.

19. Illuminated gospel book, ms. grec 74 (Bibliothèque nationale, Paris), printed in Evangiles avec peintures byzantines du XIe siècle, ed. Henri Omont (Paris: Berthoud Frères, 1908), 93; James of Kokkinobaphos, Homilies on the Virgin, contained in: Vat. gr. 1162 (Vatican Library), folio 117v; and ms. grec 1208 (Bibliothèque natio-nale, Paris).

20. On the annunciation in the Byzantine Kariye Camii / Kariye Djami (Monas-tery of the Chora) in Istanbul, see Jacqueline Lafontaigne-Dosogne, “Iconography of the Cycle of the Life of the Virgin,” in The Kariye Djami: Studies in the Art of the Kariye Djami and Its Intellectual Background, ed. Paul A. Underwood, 4 vols. (Lon-don: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), 4:161–94.

its earliest examples come probably from north Italy.17 They are the copy of a fifth-century ivory known as the Werden casket and the fifth-century ivory diptych from the Milan cathedral treasury.18 Illuminated manu-script pages of the annunciation from later centuries very clearly resem-ble the painting from Dura-Europos (Fig. 2, eleventh century), and some examples are striking in their formal similarity (Fig. 3, twelfth century).19 These illuminations from an illuminated gospel book and James of Kok-kinobaphos’s Homilies on the Virgin—though many centuries removed from Dura-Europos—offer the closest artistic comparanda to our third-century woman at a well. Perhaps the grandest extant version of this scene is a mosaic from the inner narthex of the late Byzantine monastery at Chora (not pictured).20 As with the previous examples that feature a fly-ing Gabriel, Mary looks over her shoulder at the angel approaching from above, here coming from a different panel of the artistic program. This example is late but nonetheless worth including because its female figure can be contrasted with the portrayal of the Samaritan Woman in the same church, who is looking toward Jesus in a posture of dialogue, just as in the fourth-century example of the Samaritan Woman from San Giovanni in Fonte, Naples (not pictured).

The female figure at Dura-Europos can also be compared fruitfully with an artistic program closer in geographical proximity: the paintings of the

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21. Dodd, Frescoes, xvii.22. Not shown here (cf. Dodd, Frescoes, Plate 14).

medieval monastery of Mar Musa al-Habashi (St. Moses the Ethiopian), located about eighty kilometers northeast of Damascus, which has been published in full by Erica Cruikshank Dodd. The eleventh- and twelfth-century frescoes comprise “the only full program of medieval church decoration to have survived in greater Syria.”21 The triumphal arch shows Christ Emmanuel above the window and Gabriel and Mary on the sides (Fig. 4). Their names are inscribed in Greek and Syriac. Her body is turned away from Gabriel, and her head turned back to face him. Her presence at a well is supported by the water jug in the bottom corner of the fresco.22 Notice also the lines of incarnation that connect the Christ Emmanuel with the Virgin Mary.

Such traditional iconographic features of the annunciation may help us to understand a strange and virtually unnoticed feature of the female figure at Dura-Europos. Upon close inspection, one can see that the absence behind the woman is not totally silent—it speaks a couple lines. That is to say, the painting at Dura-Europos shows two lines touching the woman’s back, lines which grow wider with distance from her body

Fig. 4. Christ Emmanuel and Annunciation. The chapel, east pediment over the triumphal arch. Mar Musa al-Habashi. Erica Cruikshank Dodd.


(Fig. 5). The lines are difficult (but not impossible) to see in the photos of the wall in situ (Fig. 1), and they are included in one of the drawings in the archaeological report—the “new tracing” done in the field “to show additional details.”23 The lines are not depicted, however, in the drawing most commonly reproduced.24 In Kraeling’s text they are described simply as “unexplained.”25 With the new interpretation, the lines could represent a motion toward the woman’s body, as if something were approaching her or entering her. A voice? An incarnation? Other iconography of the annunciation from the Byzantine era portrayed lines coming from heaven, often with a dove included as well.26 Although it is difficult to connect all of these dots across intervening centuries, the evidence supports a cumu-lative argument that scholars should now strongly consider the woman at a well in Dura- Europos to be an iconographic representation of the annunciation that draws upon the traditions recorded in the Protevange-lium of James. As such, this would be the earliest securely dateable por-trait of the Virgin Mary.27

Reimagining the scene as a depiction of annunciation might also help to explain another rarely mentioned aspect of the woman’s figure. She has a five-pointed star on her torso (Fig. 5), which Kraeling calls “unusual” and “unexplained.”28 He does not offer a compelling construal of the star, regardless of whether the painting represents Rebecca or the Samaritan Woman (the two options he considers).29 However, with our new inter-pretation of the scene, this star may signify the spark of incarnation in the body of the Virgin. In eastern Christianity, the metaphors of baptism, incarnation, nativity, and illumination were often woven together.30 In his

23. Kraeling, Christian Building, 68 (Fig. 7), with description on 67.24. Kraeling, Christian Building, Plate XL, 2.25. Kraeling, Christian Building, 69.26. Dodd, Frescoes, Plate V. See many examples in Schiller, Iconography of Chris-

tian Art, vol. 1, figs. 64–129.27. There are also paintings probably to be identified as the Virgin Mary in the

catacombs, e.g., in the Catacomb of Priscilla and that of Ss. Peter and Marcellinus, which may be more ancient than this one, but Dura-Europos has the distinction of being securely dateable because of its having been intentionally buried in a known timeframe.

28. Kraeling, Christian Building, 69.29. Kraeling, Christian Building, 186–88.30. Many examples of initiation as illumination are found in Joseph Ysebaert,

Greek Baptismal Terminology: Its Origins and Early Development (Nijmegen: Dekker & Van de Vegt, 1962), 158–78. See also the connection of incarnation, baptism, and illumination in Ephrem, Hymni de Ecclesia 36 (trans. Sebastian Brock, “St. Ephrem on Christ as Light in Mary and in the Jordan: Hymni de Ecclesia 36,” Eastern Churches Review 7 [1975]: 137–44). In Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 40, In sanctum baptisma

Fig. 5. Tracing of woman at a well. Christian building. Yale University Art Gallery, Dura-Europos Collection.


(Epiphany, 381 c.e.), “baptism” is interchangeable with φωτισμός, “illumination” or “enlightenment,” to the extent that Rufinus’s Latin translation of this oration usually renders φωτισμός as baptismus.

31. Ephrem, Hymni in Festum Epiphaniae 15, esp. 15.40–49.32. Ephrem, Hymni de Ecclesia 36.2–4 (trans. Brock, “St. Ephrem on Christ as

Light,” 138).33. Serra, “Baptistery,” 77.34. The one-to-one correspondence method has also been warned against in Jensen,

Understanding, 27–30, and the excellent treatment of the Dura-Europos baptistery by Annabel Jane Wharton, Refiguring the Post Classical City (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 51–63.

hymns Ephrem frequently connects these themes to the annunciation. For example, in his final hymn for the feast of the Epiphany, he constructs a dialogue between Mary and the Magi, during which they mutually dis-cover that the angel and the star are manifestations of the same being.31 The angelic voice and the star are two forms of the same epiphany, that the newly conceived baby is a king and Son of God. Here in the painting the unseen angel of the annunciation may be represented by the manifest star of incarnation. Elsewhere in Ephrem’s corpus, the same spark of light illumines both the womb of Mary and the river Jordan. The opening images of the hymn, “Blessed is the Creator of Light,” for instance, describe how: “The Light settled in Mary, it polished her mind, made bright her thought and pure her understanding, causing her virginity to shine. The river in which he was baptized conceived him again symbolically; the moist womb of the water conceived him in purity. . . . In the pure womb of the river you should recognize the daughter of man, who conceived having known no man.”32 Ephrem connects the light of incarnation with the waters of the baptismal river and incarnational womb.

If correctly identified as a representation of the annunciation, the paint-ing at Dura-Europos would be the earliest securely dateable example of that scene. The idea is exciting and enticing. Yet one must remember that an angel-less icon of the annunciation would actually be unique. In the other examples, Gabriel is there, occupying that empty space in the example from Dura-Europos. The fact also remains that the Samaritan Woman features prominently in the early Christian imagination of bap-tism, though much more in the West than in Syria.33 Most importantly, I would contend that the Protevangelium of James cannot provide the key to unlocking the image of Dura-Europos’s woman at a well any more than the Gospel of John does. Against the method of Kraeling and many other interpreters of the baptistery, for the most part I would resist proposals of one-to-one correspondences between images and texts, as if the paint-ings were allegorical treasures that the right biblical text could unlock.34


Rather, I regard the painting of a woman at a well as polysemic in its ritual context, a methodological point which will be further described below. The woman at the well invites the neophyte in the ritual space to imag-ine multiple, intertwining texts: the betrothal of Rebecca, the Samaritan Woman, the annunciation to Mary. It opens up the viewer to the ideas of virginity, spiritual marriage, incarnation, and new birth. The web of image, text, and ritual is spun with multiple threads, and it captures a surplus of meanings.

A MANUSCRIPT ILLUMINATES (A DARK NIGHT)

The primary image on the lower panels of the eastern and northern walls is a procession. It begins on the eastern wall, where all that remain are five pairs of feet (Fig. 6). On the northern wall is what seems to be a door (Fig. 7) followed by a lacuna, until the procession resumes with portions of three women approaching a large structure (Fig. 8). (There was room for two more women in the portion of the northern wall no longer extant, making a total of five on each side of the door.) The women are dressed

Fig. 6. Five pairs of feet, in situ. East wall, Christian building. Yale University Art Gallery, Dura-Europos Collection.


35. Among those who seem assured of the empty tomb identification are André Grabar, “La fresque des saintes femmes au tombeau à Doura,” Cahiers Archéologiques 8 (1956): 9–26; Kraeling, Christian Building, 80–88; and recently L. Michael White, Scripting Jesus: The Gospels in Rewrite (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2010), 396–97. White uses the Greek “gospel harmony” fragment from the excavation (P.CtYBR inv. DPg 24 [= P.Dura 10 = NT uncial 0212]) as a means of corroborat-ing that interpretation of the painting. However, there is not one extant version of the Diatessaron or another gospel harmony that has five women at the tomb. White

in white, veiled, and each carries two items: a torch in the right hand and an unidentified vessel in the left (Fig. 9). The scene has been interpreted most often as a representation of the myrrophores, the women going to the empty tomb of Jesus to anoint his corpse. In this interpretation, the vessel in the left hand carries the anointing unguents, and the structure they approach is a sarcophagus. Their prominence in this ritual context would thus signify an interpretation of anointing and immersion baptism as an experience of death and resurrection (cf. Rom 6.3–11).

Some scholars evince certainty about this identification, but many remain open to other interpretations.35 Indeed a few scholars argue for

Fig. 7. Bottom of a door, in situ. North wall, Christian building. Yale University Art Gallery, Dura-Europos Collection.


reconstructs them as part of his argument, but the parchment itself only has one proper name and that during a prior scene. Most interpreters further believe that the opening sentence of the fragment refers to “the wives of those who had followed him,” which would imply an undetermined number of female disciples present dur-ing the Passion narrative. Scholars who support multiple possible interpretations of the processing women include Jensen, Living Water, 277, and Baptismal Imagery, 201; Wharton, Refiguring, 53–54; Thomas F. Mathews, The Clash of the Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 153; Gerasimos P. Pagoulatos, Tracing the Bridegroom in Dura (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2008), 44–50.

36. The most recent is Serra, “Baptistery at Dura-Europos,” but the position was defended in the years after the excavation by Otto Casel, in a note appended to Johannes Kollwitz, “Bezeihungen zur christlichen Archäologie,” Jahrbuch für Litur-giewissenschaft 13 (1933): 311; Gabriel Millet, “Doura et el-Bagawat: La parabole des vierges,” Cahiers Archéologiques 8 (1956): 1–8, a posthumous publication writ-

an entirely different identification: the scene may represent the Parable of the Ten Virgins (Matt 25.1–13).36 Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, an expert on the portrayal of women in classical and Christian art, describes the “iconographic elements” that allow her to identify the female figures at

Fig. 8. Women approaching a white structure, in situ. North wall, Christian building. Yale University Art Gallery, Dura-Europos Collection.


ten in 1934–35; Joseph Pijoan, “The Parable of the Virgins from Dura-Europos,” Art Bulletin 19 (1937): 592–95; Erich Dinkler, “Die ersten Petrusdarstellungen. Ein archäologischer Beitrag zur Geschichte des Petrusprimates,” Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 11 (1939): 12; and Johannes Quasten, “The Painting of the Good Shepherd at Dura-Europos,” Mediaeval Studies 9 (1947): 1.

37. Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, “On the Visual and the Vision: The Magdalene in Early Christian and Byzantine Art and Culture,” in Miriam, the Magdalen, and the Mother, ed. Deirdre Good (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005), 132. Elsewhere (Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, “‘I Understand the Mystery, and I Recognize the Sacrament.’ On the Iconology of Ablution, Baptism, and Initiation,” in Ablution, Baptism, and Initiation in the Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Early Christian World, ed. David Hellholm, Tor Vegge, Lars Hartman, and Øyvind Nordervall, 3 vols. [Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2011], 2:1731), she offers a list of “common visual characteristics associated with virginity in Classical art”: “long, loose flowing hair; loose unrestrained white garments; heroic androgynous body; and any of the follow-ing attributes—crescent moon, white flowers, clear glass jar/bottle, and a companion animal, most often, a little dog.”

Dura-Europos as virgins: “heroic androgynous bodies; flowing hair covered with a veil; loose, unrestrained, and predominately white garments; and a clear (glass?) container.”37 (Ironically Apostolos-Cappadona had turned to the Dura-Europos baptistery in the course of doing research about Mary Magdalene in Christian art, only to conclude that the common identifica-tion of the women as myrrophores may be mistaken.) Elsewhere I have presented further textual evidence in support of interpreting the women as bridesmaids or virgin brides, drawing from the writings of Aphrahat,

Fig. 9. Procession of women. Exhibition photograph. Yale University Art Gallery, Dura-Europos Collection.


38. Peppard, “New Testament Imagery,” 174–78.39. Peppard, “New Testament Imagery,” 176.40. Most English translations of the parable portray the virgins as holding “lamps”

and not “torches.” However, the Greek word (λαμπάς) almost always means “torch,” as explained by most Greek dictionaries and many commentaries on the Gospel of Matthew. Cf. Joachim Jeremias, “ΛΑΜΠΑΔΕΣ Mt 25.1, 3f., 7f.” ZNW 56 (1965): 196–201; W. D. Davies and Dale Allison, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 3 vols. (ICC; Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 1997), 3:395–96. Jennifer Udell has recently argued that in Greek vase painting torches were on their own enough to indicate a wedding procession, and they came specifically to signify legitimacy in marriage in both poetic and artistic traditions (Jennifer Udell, “Times of Day and Times of Year in Greek Vase Painting,” Ph.D. Diss., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 2012). As a loan word in Latin, lampas frequently refers to weddings, such that the phrase lampade prima was sufficient to signify “at her first marriage,” i.e., attainment of mature womanhood (e.g., Statius, Silvae 4.8.59).

41. Dodd, Frescoes, 70. Millet, “La parabole des vierges,” argues that the paint-ing of a procession of seven women at the monastery of el-Bagawat in Egypt is also a representation of this parable, but others offer different interpretations. E.g., Cart-lidge and Elliott, Art and the Christian Apocrypha, 36, gives tentative support to the theory of Gertrud Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, 5 vols. (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus G. Mohn, 1966–91), vol. 3, fig. 1, that suggests a procession of temple virgins; Henri Stern, “Les peintures du mausolée de ‘l’exode’ à el-Bagawat,” Cahiers Archéologiques 11 (1960): 105–6, argues for a procession before the tomb of St. Thecla. The best treatment of the procession in relation to Thecla is Stephen J. Davis, The Cult of St. Thecla (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 159–72.

42. Josef Wilpert, Die gottgeweihten Jungfrauen in den ersten Jahrhunderten der Kirche (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1892), 65–76, Taf II 1 and II 5. Wilpert argues that Taf II 5, from the Via Nomentana, shows five foolish virgins (processing) and four wise virgins (seated inside at the wedding feast) because he regards “die Verstorbene [buried in the room] als eine von den klugen Jungfrauen; sie sollte die Zahl vervoll-

Ephrem, the Acts of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the baptismal cat-echeses of Cyril of Jerusalem and John Chrysostom.38

I have also suggested an artistic comparandum from the aforementioned church at Mar Musa al-Habashi.39 The relevance of that artistic program becomes clear when we see that the frescoes adorning its iconostasis rep-resent a procession of wise and foolish virgins: the five wise are on the left of the door to the sanctuary and the five foolish are on its right (Fig. 10). The wise virgins are clearly carrying torches as they approach the door to the bema, where the wedding feast-cum-Eucharist is celebrated.40 Since the iconography of the ten virgins appears little in the West before the twelfth century, Dodd suggests that this motif survived primarily in ancient Syria and Palestine to be passed to Europe during the Crusades.41 It should be noted, though, that long before the Dura-Europos excavations, Josef Wilpert had identified two catacomb paintings as representations of the parable.42 The parable seems to have been more popular in the East,


ständigen, und darum hat er für sie einen Platz bei dem Mahle bestimmt” (69). He argues further that the deceased is represented in between the five and the four as an orant, perhaps to symbolize her liminal status between death and resurrection. If it is ever decided that only four women were present inside the door on the north wall of the Dura-Europos baptistery, the Via Nomentana example would then provide a possible comparandum for interpreting a seemingly incomplete artistic program. It would be somewhat analogous to the fifth eucharistic loaf (on the altar during the ritual) completing the four loaves (in the floor mosaic under the altar) at Tabgha’s Church of the Multiplication in Galilee.

43. See Sebastian P. Brock, “Early Syrian Asceticism,” Numen 20 (1973): 6, on the popularity of the parable in Syrian exegesis and exhortation.

44. I am grateful to Alan Cadwallader for first bringing this to my attention. The facsimile edition is Codex purpureus Rossanensis, Rossano calabro, Museo dell’Arcivescovado: vollstandige Faksimile-Ausgabe im Originalformat der Handschrift (Roma: Salerno editrice; Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1985). The

especially Syria, but a group of five or ten torch-bearing women process-ing toward an artistic focal point was not unknown in ancient Christian art from the West.43

But the most compelling comparandum for the procession at Dura-Europos is the fourth illumination of Codex Purpureus Rossanensis (also called the “Rossano Gospels”; Fig. 11).44 This manuscript (designated

Fig. 10. Iconostasis. North half, west face (detail). Mar Musa al-Habashi. Erica Cruikshank Dodd.

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commentary is Codex purpureus Rossanensis. Museo dell’Arcivescovado. Rossano calabro: Commentarium (Roma: Salerno editrice; Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Ver-lagsanstalt, 1987).

45. Guglielmo Cavallo, “The Purple Codex of Rossano: Book, Object, Symbol,” in Codex purpureus Rossanensis (trans. Salvatore Lilla), 27–32.

46. On the different gestures of blessing or condemnation in Syrian iconography, see Dodd, Frescoes, 180–85.

47. William S. Loerke, “The Rossano Gospels: The Miniatures,” in Codex pur-pureus Rossanensis, 129, writes that the virgins on the left “have just returned from replenishing their flasks,” but they appear clearly to be empty, to contrast with those on the right. If so, then this is a case where the allegorical interpretation of the parable as a scene of eschatological judgment—in which the oil represents good works—has influenced the artistic depiction of the parable itself. See André Grabar, Christian Iconography: A Study of Its Origins, Bollingen Series 35 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 90, which calls the illumination “removed from the simple translation of the sacred account into iconographic language: here again liturgy intrudes between gospel text and the miniature.”

by Nestle-Aland as 042 or Σ and hereafter in this article “Codex Ross.”) contains the entire Gospel of Matthew and almost the whole Gospel of Mark. It is dated between the fourth and seventh centuries, with most estimates proposing the later portion of that timeframe. Its provenance is almost certainly Asia Minor, Palestine, or Syria, and paleographer Gug-lielmo Cavallo argues that Syria is the only likely possibility.45 Codex Ross. thus provides a chronological middle point on the trajectory of Syr-ian iconography that runs from Dura-Europos to Mar Musa al-Habashi.

The identification of the illumination is not in question, since the page is titled, “Concerning the Ten Virgins.” The scene moves from left to right, with the five foolish virgins approaching the door from the left and the five wise already inside on the right. Christ is gesturing from inside toward the door.46 The distinction between the two groups of women is starkly por-trayed by their garments: those of the foolish are multi-colored, while those of the wise are white with golden trim. The torches of the foolish contain mere embers, while those of the wise are blazing. Upon closer inspection, one can see that the flasks of oil are transparent, showing empty contain-ers on the left and partially full ones on the right.47

The space outside the door is not illustrated, but the inside offers a few details. The night sky corresponds to the parable, which takes place at mid-night (Matt 25.6), and other features elaborate its meaning. Four streams of water flow from a rocky spring and converge into one river below the feet of the wise virgins. Above the rock are green lines that appear to be vines, and where the river terminates at the door, a small tree sprouts. The tops of trees are visible against the night sky, above the heads of the


48. E.g., Kraeling, Christian Building, 85–87; White, Scripting Jesus, 396. 49. Kraeling, Christian Building, 79, describes the detail of the brown oil visible

through the transparent container.50. Kraeling, Christian Building, 44.51. Exod 17.1–7; Num 20.7–11; Ps 78.20, 105.41, 114.8; Isa 48.21. The event

was interpreted typologically with respect to baptism by Paul in 1 Cor 10.4 and many others followed. It was also artistically juxtaposed with baptismal scenes.

52. See Jensen, “Baptism as the Beginning of New Creation,” chap. 5 of Baptismal Imagery, which highlights motifs of paradise. Cf. Paulinus of Nola, Ep. 32.10, which describes the rock and four streams in the vault of the decoration of the basilica of Felix.

53. See Lucinda Dirven, “Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained: The Meaning of Adam and Eve in the Baptistery of Dura-Europos,” Eastern Christian Art 5 (2009): 43–58.

54. Kraeling, Christian Building, 44.

women. These features suggest a scene of paradise, in line with the preva-lent early Christian interpretation of the parable as a portrayal of the Last Judgment and admission to eternal life.

The illumination bears several iconographic similarities with the artistic program at Dura-Europos. The pattern of five women, a door, and five more women is the best construal of the extant portion of the procession at Dura-Europos. Even staunch defenders of the empty tomb interpre-tation admit that the intact northern wall portrayed five women.48 The comportment of the female figures is virtually identical in both examples: the women inside the door wear loose, white garments and each carries a blazing torch and container partially filled with oil.49 The star-studded night sky of the manuscript is also present in the Dura-Europos baptistery, having been painted there on the ceilings of both the canopy over the font and the entire room (Fig. 12).50 The flowing river from the rock undergirds the vision of paradise in the manuscript illumination, even as the memory of “water from the rock” supported baptismal ideas for early Christian authors.51 The water calls to mind the four branches of the river of Eden (Gen 2.10–14), a popular motif in Christian iconography, which is found or alluded to at multiple sites of early Christian initiation.52 As with the “river of the water of life” in the vision of the New Jerusalem (Rev 21.6; 22.1–2, 17), this fourfold river evokes the new creation and the restora-tion of paradise. The Dura-Europos baptistery is full of water imagery, of course, and the restoration of paradise is suggested by the inset painting of Adam and Eve just over the font.53 The mostly missing upper register of the south wall of the baptistery bears part of what seemed to be a garden scene, and the pilasters supporting the rear of the canopy have “an overall grape and leaf design,” as if they support vines growing up from the font.54 The front of the canopy is “decorated in imitation of a fruit garland,”

Fig. 12. Ceiling of canopy. Christian building. Yale University Art Gallery, Dura-Europos Collection.


55. Kraeling, Christian Building, 45.56. Grabar, “La Fresque des saintes femmes,” 10; Kraeling, Christian Building, 81. 57. Kraeling, Christian Building, 213.58. Letter of Clark Hopkins to Michael Rostovtzeff, dated April 18, 1932, cited

in Kraeling, Christian Building, 231.59. See Millet, “La Parabole des Vierges”; Peppard, “New Testament Imagery.” 60. E.g., ms. grec 74, folio 49, Bibliothèque nationale de France. In addition, sev-

eral examples of tents in the art of the Roman era can be seen on Trajan’s column.61. Pagoulatos, Tracing the Bridegroom; Peppard, “New Testament Imagery.”

depicting grapes, ears of grain, and pomegranates.55 Taken together, all of these iconographic similarities between the illuminated manuscript and the artistic program of the baptistery should invite serious consideration during any attempt to interpret the procession of women.

Why then is Codex Ross. not normally discussed in connection with the baptistery? Simply stated, the problem with interpreting the procession of women as the Parable of the Ten Virgins has always been the large white structure to which the women are processing. That is to say, the proverbial elephant in the room might be a sarcophagus. In the early debates about the painting, both André Grabar and Carl Kraeling dismissed the parable interpretation primarily out of indubitable conviction that the white struc-ture in the baptistery is a sarcophagus.56 Defenders of the sarcophagus interpretation then labor to explain why there are no other distinguishing features of the empty tomb account or its iconography: angel(s), guards, women afraid, or any indication that the corpse has risen from the dead. Kraeling admits that the supposed empty tomb scene is “fundamentally so different from all later treatments of the subject and in [its] own period stand[s] so thoroughly alone, that there is no basis for comparison.”57

In fact, the initial field reports called the structure not a sarcophagus but “a white building,” which is another valid way of seeing it.58 Early interpreters that connected the painting to the parable imagined it as the house of the bridegroom, but a better proposal might be a tent or bridal chamber—a different structure housing the wedding festivities.59 A gabled structure of similar appearance, being no taller than the women (as also at Dura), is pictured in some Byzantine illuminations of the Parable of the Ten Virgins.60 The connection of a bridal chamber (as metaphor or ritual) to Christian initiation in Syrian Christianity has been well documented and examined, even with respect to the Dura-Europos baptistery specifi-cally.61 We could then amplify the connection of wedding parable, bridal chamber ritual, and baptismal font by reference to the practice of veiling the baptismal font itself. The Testamentum Domini and the Apostolic Constitutions, liturgical “church orders” likely of Syrian provenance,


62. Apost. const. 8.11.11 (ed. Marcel Metzger, Les constitutions apostoliques, SC 320, 329, 336 [Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1985–87], 336:176), cited also by Pagoulatos, Tracing the Bridegroom, 97 n. 283.

63. Macarius of Jerusalem, Letter to the Armenians 228.3–10. For translation and commentary, see Abraham Terian, Macarius of Jerusalem, Letter to the Armenians (A.D. 335): Introduction, Text, Translation and Commentary (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2008).

64. Test. dom. 1.19 (ed. Grant Sperry-White, The Testamentum Domini: A Text for Students, with Introduction, Translation, and Notes [Nottingham: Grove Books, 1991], 46–47), cited also by Pagoulatos, Tracing the Bridegroom, 97 n. 283.

65. Kraeling, Christian Building, 81.66. Cyril of Jerusalem, Procat. 1, 3–4 (PG 33:332–40).67. Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 40.46, In sanctum baptisma (PG 36:425), dating

to Epiphany, 381 c.e.

both prescribe a veiling of the sanctuary area.62 In his fourth-century Let-ter to the Armenians, Macarius of Jerusalem prescribes a veiled sanctuary that includes both a font and table for the Eucharist.63 The Testamentum Domini prescribes a veil specifically for the site of baptism (literally, the “house for the place of baptism”).64 If one thus imagines the canopied font in Dura-Europos to have been surrounded by one such “veil of pure linen,” then its resemblance to the painting of the white structure would not be difficult to see.

The second reason for Kraeling’s rejection of the parable interpretation is that the door in the painting (Fig. 7) should be shut if it was to have symbolized the parable.65 If the goal of the artist was to represent only the exclusionary function of the parable, I would agree. If the artist was intending the processional painting to have a haptic and invitatory func-tion, however—to draw forward those present in the room toward the font—then leaving the door open would make more sense. In fact, the opening section of Cyril of Jerusalem’s Procatechesis, addressed to the “candidates for illumination” (φωτιζόμενοι), describes how they have car-ried the “torches of a wedding procession” (νυμφαγωγίας λαμπάδες) and the “door” has been “left open” for them (ἀνετὴν ἀφήκαμεν τὴν θύραν) to enter the “wedding feast” of their initiation.66 Recall also that the frescoes at Mar Musa al-Habashi surround the bema’s entrance, which can be both open and closed, a scene one also would imagine when hearing Gregory of Nazianzus’s evocation of the Parable of the Ten Virgins in his baptismal homily.67 Whether the door is open or closed does not determine whether or not the image corresponds to a text, but rather shapes the experience of the viewer as one of either invitation (as in Dura-Europos and Mar Musa al-Habashi) or discrimination and exclusion (as in Codex Ross.).


68. The manuscript adapts the verse to be about women: in LXX = αὐτούς, in codex = αὐτάς. The Commentarium on the manuscript misses this feature (Loerke, “Miniatures,” 156).

69. In addition to Chrysostom and Augustine, Methodius, Symposium 7, and the Epistula apostolorum 42–44, are also relevant for understanding how this text was interpreted in the third century. The latter connects the entrance to the wedding of Matthew 25 with entrance into the sheepfold of John 10—and we should recall that the next painting in the baptistery’s artistic program is a shepherd watering a flock of sheep.

70. Augustine, Sermon 43 (PL 38:577): de oleo interno, de conscientiae securitate, de interiore gloria, de intima caritate. Cf. Methodius, Symposium 7.2, and Ep. apost. 43.

The texts presented underneath the illumination in Codex Ross. cor-roborate the divisive function of the door that the picture there suggests. On the right side, David condemns the foolish virgins, “They were put to shame, for God brought them to naught” (Ps 52.6c [LXX]).68 Hosea curses them, “Woe to them, for they turned away from me! Wretches! For they acted irreverently toward me” (Hosea 7.13ab [LXX]). The left side offers versions of two verses from Psalm 45 (44 [LXX]), a text to accompany a royal wedding. The text on the far left describes a procession of virgins at a wedding: “behind her, virgins shall be led away to the king” (Ps 44.15a [LXX]). The pronoun refers to the king’s daughter from the previous verse in the psalm, which is partially presented in the next column of the manu-script: “All the glory of the king’s daughter [is] within” (Ps 44.14a [LXX]). In its original context, that verse was intended to capture the glorious external ornamentation of the princess while she waits in hiding before the wedding. Her glory is manifest in her clothing, while she is “within” her private chamber before the ceremony. In the context of Codex Ross., however, it is likely that the words “glory within” (δόξα ἔσωθεν) do not describe a bride in her chamber. They evoke both the glory of admission into the wedding feast of eternal life and the glorious inner self required to gain that admission.

That is to say, the texts do much more than praise or condemn the virgins. They conjure an intertextual web of meaning, whose intricacies can be partially understood by consulting patristic commentaries.69 For example, in Augustine’s interpretation of the parable, the wise virgins had torches that burned with “internal oil, assurance of good conscience, interior glory, and innermost charity.”70 The “interior glory” ascribed to the virgins in the parable may have influenced the reception and trans-mission of the psalm verse, which in turn influenced the artistic depiction of the foolish virgins at the door with empty flasks. John Chrysostom’s commentary on the psalm takes a similar tack, arguing that the golden


71. John Chrysostom, Expositiones in Psalmos (PG 55:182–203; trans. Robert Charles Hill, St. John Chrysostom: Commentary on the Psalms, 2 vols. [Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1998], 1:257–84).

72. John Chrysostom, Expositiones in Psalmos (trans. Hill, 1:279).73. This is one of the longest psalm commentaries in the entire collection.74. John Chrysostom, Expositiones in Psalmos (trans. Hill, 1:257).75. John Chrysostom, Expositiones in Psalmos (trans. Hill, 1:261–62). Cf. Metho-

dius, Symposium 9.2.76. John Chrysostom, Expositiones in Psalmos (trans. adapted from Hill, 1:279).

This sentence is followed by a quotation of Gal 3.27, “As many of you as were bap-tized into Christ have put on Christ.”

77. John Chrysostom, Expositiones in Psalmos (trans. Hill, 1:283, modified).

garment of the bride should be seen as symbolic of her soul: the “glory within” is the mind, soul, and virtue of the virgin bride.71 The golden trim of the white garments in Codex Ross. perhaps portrays such an interpre-tation of the psalm. Chrysostom further explains that the Psalmist added this phrase to protect against future misinterpretations, lest “any of the more materialistic listeners form an idea [about the bride’s garment] at the level of the senses.”72

Chrysostom sees the wedding imagery of the psalm as an opportunity to play off the marriage metaphors of the New Testament and extend a lengthy string of typological interpretations.73 The superscription of the psalm as “a song for the beloved” (44.1 [LXX]) means it was “composed with Christ in mind”; another superscription, “for those to be changed,” refers to the “great change” that Christ worked in Christians, transform-ing them by grace.74 The “grace” of the psalm (44.3 [LXX]) calls to mind the incarnation, the “grace which became flesh” at Jesus’ baptism (when he was called “beloved”).75 Chrysostom explicitly connects the bride’s garment with the ritual of baptism: “It was the king who wove this gar-ment, and she wore it through her baptism.”76 Similar to Codex Ross., he compares the virgins of the psalm with the wise virgins of the parable, who will “go to meet the bridegroom carrying bright and glowing torches and welcome him.”77

Other connections to Christian initiation—and the imagery of the Dura-Europos baptistery specifically—resound in Chrysostom’s exposition of the psalm. The psalm speaks of a “mighty one” as having been “anointed” with the “oil of gladness” (Ps 44.8 [LXX]), just as happens during Chris-tian initiation. Chrysostom connects this with the anointing of Christ by the Spirit at his baptism, which is the type of subsequent Christian bap-tism. Then, in order to explain why the same figure in the psalm can be both militaristic (“strap your sword to your thigh,” Ps 44.4 [LXX]) and


78. John Chrysostom, Expositiones in Psalmos (trans. Hill, 1:269). 79. See Schiller, Iconography, 41–42, although admittedly the connection is not

made explicitly until the eleventh century and onwards (i.e. a depiction of David holding this psalm quotation over the annunciation scene).

80. In John 19.38–42, the body had been anointed already by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. On the problems of lining up the gospel accounts with the painting, see Kraeling, Christian Building, 85–87.

81. The earliest representations of that scene include illuminations from two Syriac manuscripts, usually dated to the sixth century (Syr. 33 fol. 9v., Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, and the Rabbula Gospels fol. 13r, Medicean-Laurentian Library, Florence), both of which show two women at the tomb carrying vessels but not torches. These illuminations are compared with similar amulets and ampullae in Allie M. Ernst, Martha from the Margins: The Authority of Martha in Early Chris-tian Tradition, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 98 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2009), chap. 6, “Picturing the Myrrophore.”

peaceful (“fair” and “beautiful” with anointing unguents, Ps 44.4, 8–9 [LXX]), Chrysostom refers to Moses and David as types of Christ. David, an anointed one, was gentle and meek with Saul, but also “the gentle David laid Goliath low, put the army to flight, and carried the day.”78 In later traditions, the call of Ps 44.11 (LXX) for the daughter to “incline your ear” was explicitly connected to the annunciation, so that Mary’s bent head in the artistic tradition was imagined as a manifestation of the vir-gin bride in the psalm.79 Following the trail of Psalm 45 (44 [LXX]) thus leads us, in the end, back to the baptistery’s art and ritual. Chrysostom’s interpretations invoke the ideas of incarnation, baptism, anointing, David and Goliath, marriage, and the wise virgins. New artistic comparanda lead to different textual comparanda, and the combinations can generate new interpretations of some very old paintings.

I am not prepared to conclude, though, that the painting of the proces-sion of women is a certain representation of the Parable of the Ten Vir-gins. The white structure in the painting does not fit perfectly as a one-to-one correspondence with that text, and many viewers will still see it as a sarcophagus instead of a bridal chamber. That being said, I also con-tend that the empty tomb interpretation poses problems of equal gravity. The issue of the number of women present in the paintings has already been discussed well by others, but I would argue that the larger problem for the empty tomb interpretation is the torches. With the empty tomb interpretation of the procession, it is difficult to explain why the women would have them: the Synoptics recount multiple women, but they come at dawn; John and the Diatessaron narrate Mary Magdalene’s visit in the dark, but she is alone and not coming to anoint the body.80 I am not aware of any artistic comparanda of the myrrophores that show them carrying torches.81 Interpreting the painting as a wedding procession, however,


82. A discussion of methodological shifts over the past generation can be found in James A. Francis, “Visual and Verbal Representation: Image, Text, Person, and Power,” in A Companion to Late Antiquity, ed. Philip Rousseau (London: John Wiley and Sons, 2009), 285–305, and “Biblical not Scriptural: Perspectives on Early Christian Art from Contemporary Classical Scholarship,” SP 44 (2010): 3–8.

83. Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), 27–28.

84. Wharton, Refiguring, 54, 60, and esp. 68–69 (and the literature cited there) for explanation of her distinction between optic (visual) and haptic (bodily), which is slightly different than their original art-historical usage.

perfectly resolves that problem. In short, the imagery is corroborated by artistic comparanda from Syria and proximate textual traditions. Reading the parable along with the painting suggests that in the darkness of mid-night, the oil of anointing leads to the illumination of baptismal marriage.

PREMODERN POLYSEMY

Analysis of early Christian art has often focused on finding the right text.82 What text does a painting, carving, or symbol represent? Kraeling’s report and subsequent scholarship have achieved that goal admirably with respect to some aspects of the art from Dura-Europos. However, the ritual context of the paintings in the baptistery should encourage polysemic interpreta-tions in some instances. Anthropologist Victor Turner describes two of the chief properties of dominant ritual symbols to be “condensation,” by which “many things and actions are represented in a single formation” and “a unification of disparate significata,” which are “interconnected by virtue of their common possession of analogous qualities or by association in fact or thought.”83 The procession of women and, to a lesser degree, the woman at a well are dominant, polysemic symbols in this ritual space. Annabel Jane Wharton has argued along similar lines, concluding that some of the paintings in the baptistery may not have functioned as one-to-one correspondences to texts:

Simply stated, an image like the healing of the paralytic [in the upper panel of the northern wall], as a statically placed ideograph, is an easily recognized reference to a biblical salvational narrative; it functions optically as a visual sign for a text. In contrast, the procession is haptic in quality; its meaning is not located elsewhere, in a text, but rather embedded in the physicality of the action of which it was a part. . . . These figures may be read as self-reflective embodiments of the initiates.84

Wharton offers a sophisticated updating of an interpretation offered already in the late 1930s, in which the painting of the processional women was interpreted not as a literal illustration of any one text but as a portrayal


85. William Seston, “L’église et le baptistère de Doura-Europos,” Annales de l’École des Hautes Études de Gand 1 (1937): 161–77; Henri Grégoire, “Les baptistères de Cuicul et de Doura,” Byzantion 13 (1938): 593.

86. See Francis, “Visual and Verbal Representation,” 302; Thelma K. Thomas, “Art Historical Frontiers: Lessons From Dura-Europos,” in Edge of Empires, ed. Chi and Heath, 45–46.

87. Ephrem, Hymni in Festum Epiphaniae 7.4 (trans. NPNF2 13:275). Kraeling deals with some of these texts from Ephrem, but draws different conclusions about how they might influence interpretation of the baptistery.

88. Ephrem, Hymns on Virginity 23.4 (trans. Kathleen E. McVey, Ephrem the Syr-ian: Hymns [Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1989], 362). For a summary of Ephrem’s innovative argument for the Samaritan Woman’s chastity, see also McVey, Ephrem the Syrian, 354.

89. Ephrem, Hymns on Virginity 23.5 (trans. McVey, 362).

of a procession of candidates for illumination.85 In other words, the mean-ing of what appears on these walls may become clear only when we imagine what happened between them. In order to interpret the art, the required “text” is the ritual.86 Accessing that ritual is a challenge, of course, as it can only be encountered through texts and art, thereby creating a hermeneutic circle for the historian. That inescapable difficulty is all the more reason why polysemic interpretations are in many cases appropriate.

Moreover, such interpretations are no mere postmodern fad. Ephrem himself was a master spinner of polysemic ritual texts. Consider again the painting of a woman at a well, and see how Ephrem connects the biblical betrothal scenes to baptism: “At the well Rebecca received in her ears and hands the jewels. The Spouse of Christ has put on precious things that are from the water: on her hand the living Body, and in her ears the prom-ises.”87 Elsewhere he interprets the Samaritan Woman as a virgin, which allows him to connect her with Mary, the archetypal Virgin. Addressing the Samaritan Woman directly, he sings, “O, to you, woman in whom I see a wonder as great as Mary! For she from within her womb in Beth-lehem brought forth His body as a child, but you by your mouth made him manifest as an adult in Shechem, the town of His father’s household. Blessed are you, woman, who brought forth by your mouth light for those in darkness.”88 In this ritual text, the spark of incarnation and the light of evangelization are condensed into one. He continues, “Mary, the thirsty land in Nazareth, conceived our Lord by her ear. You, too, O woman thirsting for water, conceived the Son by your hearing. Blessed are your ears that drank the source that gave drink to the world. Mary planted him in the manger, but you [planted him] in the ears of His hearers.”89 Rebecca is a baptized-married bride of Christ, and the Samaritan Woman is a pregnant virgin like Mary, both of them incarnating the Word. Who,


90. John Chrysostom, Expositiones in Psalmos (trans. Hill, 1:279–80).91. John Chrysostom, Baptismal Instructions 11.4 (trans. Paul W. Harkins, Bap-

tismal Instructions, Ancient Christian Writers 31 [Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1963], 162).

92. Eph 5.32; John Chrysostom, Baptismal Instructions 1.16–17. Eph 5.25–26 states, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor.” Cited similarly by Cyril of Jerusalem, Bapt. Cat. 3.2; John Chrysostom, Baptismal Instructions 11.9; cf. John Chrysostom, Expositiones in Psalmos 5 (PG 55:63).

93. Cyril of Jerusalem, Bapt. Cat. 1.1.

then, is this woman at a well in Dura-Europos, gazing over her shoulder? She is all of these at once.

In his commentaries and catecheses, Chrysostom also combines charac-ters, metaphors, and imagery that modernist thinkers might find difficult to unravel. For example, at one moment during his commentary on Psalm 45 (44 [LXX]), other parts of which were considered above, Chrysostom has seemingly painted himself into a corner by his typological interpre-tation: he interprets one of the female figures in the psalm as both the daughter and bride of Christ—an incestuous royal union. To escape this conclusion, he says, “How is his bride his daughter? How is his daughter his bride? . . . He gave birth to her again through baptism, you see, and he also betrothed her to himself.”90 The ritual polysemy of Christian initia-tion as a birth and a wedding undergirds his textual interpretation of the psalm. Chrysostom also combines the wedding metaphor with imagery of death. In the section about the pre-wedding preparations, he teaches that interpreting “anointing” as referring to a burial is another accept-able interpretation of the ritual act. Elsewhere, in his baptismal cateche-ses, Chrysostom ruminates on the paradox of Christ as the bridegroom that “lays down his life for his bride,” and only because he dies can the marriage exist.91 Drawing on the “great mystery” of the Pauline author of Ephesians, who links marriage, death, and baptism, Chrysostom proposes that the wedding “gift” brought by the bridegroom before the marriage is his own death, “the ineffable bounty of his love.”92 Similarly, in the open-ing of Cyril of Jerusalem’s baptismal catecheses, the master metaphor is a wedding procession, but the specter of the bridegroom’s suffering seems to have haunted the festivities. Cyril teaches the candidates, “Keep unex-tinguished in your hands the torches of faith you have just kindled, so that here, on all-holy Golgotha, the man who opened paradise to the thief on account of his faith, may allow you to sing the bridal melody.”93 When the wedding metaphor of Christian initiation combines with the Pauline


94. The phrase “death mysticism” is borrowed from the influential article, Gabriele Winkler, “The Original Meaning of the Prebaptismal Anointing and Its Implications,” Worship 52 (1978): 24–45. I use the word “monstrous” to foreground the bizarre early Christian image of a bleeding bridegroom, in which wedding and funeral are one. The image became normal through repetition, but its combination must have been initially jarring.

“death mysticism” of baptism, the resulting image is mysterious, macabre, even monstrous.94 Bridal entry becomes funeral procession, and wedding march becomes funeral dirge. After the fourth century, and especially in the western tradition, the birth and marriage imagery of baptism would give way to the death mysticism of the Pauline tradition. One can see the change beginning already in the catecheses of Cyril and Chrysostom.

In third-century Syria, however, the dominant symbols of Christian ini-tiation do not only (or even primarily) signify sin and death. The traditions of anointing and baptism as birth, illumination, and spiritual marriage are well attested by texts from multiple genres. At Dura-Europos, a woman at a well does not only (or even primarily) indicate a ritual of sin and repen-tance. The procession of women does not only (or even primarily) show that initiation meant participation in death and resurrection. We would be wise, then, to keep our oil of interpretation burning, and to leave the door open. The attempts to find the right texts, the hermeneutical keys that unlock the meaning of the baptistery, will undoubtedly enhance our understanding. But it would be foolish, once inside, to use those same keys to lock the door behind us.

Michael Peppard is Assistant Professor in the Department of Theology at Fordham University

Documents

Illuminating the Dura-Europos Baptistery: Comparanda for the Female Figures