Confession in the Greco-Roman world: a social and cultural history

Thesis

This thesis presents a history of confession in the Greco-Roman world, focusing on literary, papyrological and epigraphic evidence from beyond the Judeo-Christian tradition. It provides a typology of confession of wrongdoing, identifying two originally distinct practices – divine-justice confession and autoscopic confession – in operation in the period from Aristotle to Augustine. It also offers an account of development over time, arguing that confession's history is best explained not by a model of cultural transfer from East to West, as previous scholars have seen it, but by socio-political changes in the wider structure of Greco-Roman society which encouraged practices of confession. This thesis therefore challenges the work of previous commentators, from Foucault to those who have understood confession as 'un-Greco-Roman' and the product of 'oriental' religious influence. For autoscopic confession, the key turning point was the development of philosophical schools in the Hellenistic age and the Epicurean invention of ethical injunction. Its practice was exhorted, routine and governed by a discourse of self-improvement. For the 'divine-justice’ form, a number of factors fostered its practice which were contingent upon how divine interests and expectations were conceived, and which might be explained over time by four main trends: a shift from silence to speech in what was expected of the accused; the introduction of new paradigms of terrestrial justice and legal realities under the Principate; a competitive religious marketplace where theodical anxiety encouraged vocality; and transformation in concepts of wrongdoing, culpability and regimes of divine justice. These findings change the way we ought to understand early Christian confession, from the autoscopic practices of monasticism to the divine-justice confessions of the Shepherd of Hermas, to even the work of Augustine himself. Ultimately, it was the political transformation from Republic to Empire which provided the climate in which Foucault’s ‘confessing animal’ could thrive.

Authors: Potts, J

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-qzvxzpdzg
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Roman religion; confession; Roman history; guilt; epigraphy; expiation; Greek religion; Ancient South Arabia; monasticism; wrongdoing; early Christianity; belief; cognitive history; sin; Roman law
• Subjects: Ancient Confession; Roman law; Religion and sociology; Religion; Greco-Roman history; Classics